Nigeria: Bandits As Central Bank

 By Emeka Obasi

Strange things are coming up in our country where the Central Bank sounds like an ocean of free flowing money drowning the economy while those saddled with responsibility fill their mystery and phantom accounts with solid and liquid cash.

 Recently, sixteen persons were abducted by bandits in the Gonin Gora part of the Chikun Local Government Area of Kaduna State. What came as a shocker was the 40 trillion naira ransom placed on them. How the poor souls will be able to raise that huge amount is not debatable. Literarily, they have been condemned to death.

Constituency Projects: Legislators Manipulating Nigerians

 By Tonnie Iredia

Federal legislators  in Nigeria especially senators imagine that they are the smartest people in Africa, South of the Sahara and even North of the Equator. Perhaps they are actually smart considering the ease with which they get away with a legion of transparently repulsive allegations. Indeed, no one has been able to hold our senators down to the undesirable financial transactions that people know and see about them as a group.

When analysts raised the alarm many years back that Nigerian legislators were the highest paid in the world, they published their basic salaries which were not excessive but successfully hid their several secret allowances from sundry sources. They allegedly got paid for ghost legislative aides but  no one could prove it beyond reasonable doubt; just as they virtually hypnotised public officers from going public with their dirty oversight functions.  

Nigeria: When The Chief Justice Brings The Judiciary To Ridicule

 By Chidi Odinkalu

On February 27, 2024, Nigeria’s National Judicial Institute, NJI, in Abuja opened a continuing education course for judges. The opening featured an address by the Chief Justice of Nigeria, CJN, Olukayode Ariwoola, who invited the participants to eschew “unethical conduct that could expose the judiciary to ridicule.” Beneath his text, it seemed as if the Chief Justice desired to warn the participants to stay away from interfering with a brief that he has chosen to make entirely his own. Under his watch, judicial appointments in Nigeria have become farcical.

*CJN Olukayode Ariwoola

 The fortnight before this address, it emerged that the CJN’s daughter-in-law, Oluwakemi, was at the top of a list of 12 nominees to fill judicial vacancies in the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory, FCT. In the preceding six months, he had also appointed his son, Kayode Jr., as a judge of the Federal High Court; elevated his nephew, Lateef, to become a Justice of the Court of Appeal; and made his own blood brother, Adebayo, the auditor of the National Judicial Council, NJC, which he chairs in his capacity as the CJN. With this CJN’s retirement from office due on August 22, 2024, the concerted effort to anoint his daughter-in-law to the bench would presumably showcase his credentials for gender equity within his family. Let’s not digress though.

Buhari’s Integrity: From Attenuation To Total Wipe-Out!

 By Adekunle Adekoya

Time flies! And very fast too. In this space on September 24, 2021, the column carried a piece with the headline: “The attenuation of integrity.” Those who read between the lines would have discerned that it was a commentary directed at the nation’s head honcho at the time, a retired general known to the rest of us as Muhammadu Buhari.

*Buhari 

Buhari was sold to us in 2014-2015 as the very personification of integrity, which meant he was a man of his words who would do exactly as he said. During the electioneering whose main objective, as we can now see, was not to make life and living better and easier for me and you but to oust Dr Goodluck Jonathan and his PDP cohorts from power, Buhari was sold to us as the next best thing to happen to humanity in Nigeria outside the scriptures.

Remembering MKO Abiola’s Transformer Semiotics

 By Banji Ojewale

One of the captivating political campaign lines of MKO Abiola has been immortalized in a seminal work by Professor Tunde Ope-Davies (Tunde Opeibi) of the University of Lagos. Titled Discourse, Politics and the 1993 Presidential Election Campaign in Nigeria, the book documents the drive of the gladiators to secure the mandate of the electorate.

*Abiola 

Ope-Davies’ uncanny nose for hidden details smokes out Abiola’s rush for virtually every trick in the advertising books to outwit his main challenger, Bashir Tofa, of the National Republican Convention, NRC, leading Abiola to create the famous punchline on the transformer as a metaphor for abiding leadership. MKO, as he was fondly called, was of the Social Democratic Party, SDP. He is quoted by Ope-Davies (then known as Tunde Opeibi) as saying during his search for votes that all Nigeria needed to overcome its age-old statehood concerns was ‘one transformer’, one singular and enduring personality in the saddle whose beam of integrity would permeate all of society for salutary ripples in his days and beyond.

Shettima Goofs: No Forces Want To Pull Down Nigeria!

 By Olu Fasan

Ahead of last year’s general elections, I wrote a piece titled “2023: Shettima Unfit To Be Nigeria’s Vice-President” (Vanguard, September 22, 2022). I argued that despite his education and seeming bibliophilism, Kashim Shettima suffers from negative parrhesia, expressing indecorous views freely without aforethought.

*Shettima

I wrote: “With Shettima’s inherent tetchiness and truculence, he would be gratuitously provocative. And with his uncouthness and indiscretion, he would be utterly divisive and toxifying.” Well, since he became vice-president, Shettima has done enough, with several infuriating comments, to validate my opinion of him. 

Tinubu Must Find Dollars NOT Scapegoats!

 By Ugoji Egbujo

If they leave the major bleeding points oozing to fan the man because he is sweating, then they are like our government that has left crude oil thieves to chase BDC operators.

The country is in shock. Shock is what happens when circulation fails and systems start to shut down. Our country lies prostrate, bleating, like a man run over by a hit-and-run truck. Our foreign reserves are empty. The poor can’t buy food. The government is running helter-skelter to pander to the angry masses and save itself. Truth has been sacrificed. But that won’t do. So, scapegoats must be found. Perhaps, as the Igbo say, a desperate man is entitled to act a little crazy.  

Silence In The East

 By Obi Nwakanma

A terrible time has fallen on Nigeria. There is no hiding it. Hunger is not just rampant; it is now an epidemic. There is a food crisis, and it is inevitably leading towards massive national food riots. However, a few weeks ago, a minister in the current government said that there was no scarcity of food in Nigeria. 

Well, I’m not quite certain about this minister, since most of Tinubu’s cabinet is made up of second rate, mediocre, provincial types – but elementary economics theory of scarcity connects with a price theory which is determined by the dynamics of supply and demand. Equilibrium occurs when the rise in supply meets the rise in demand. But disequilibrium happens too. This, when the demand for the resource outstrips the supply, and it leads both to exclusion, and to scarcity.

Nigeria: Renewed Wailing!

 By Ochereome Nnanna

Femi Adesina, Muhammadu Buhari’s star-struck admirer who later got employed by the Daura politician when he achieved his presidential ambition in 2015, left us with a number of acidic soundbites as a presidential spokesman. Two of them stood out.

*Bola Tinubu

The first was not exactly a soundbite, but was summarised for him into that by his colleagues in the media. Reacting to the Fulani herdsmen terrorism which his boss, Buhari, allowed (some say he facilitated it and protected the culprits with his presidential powers), Adesina shocked Nigerians with his coldblooded dismissiveness of the massacres, displacement and occupation of farming communities by the invaders.

Nigeria’s Convocation Of Clowns

 By Kenechukwu Obiezu

Nigeria is currently entertaining a conversation over whether it is a country of clowns. The conversation was ignited by Kashim Shettima, Nigeria’s Vice President. At an event in Abuja, Shettima described Nigerians celebrating the free fall of the Naira against the dollar as clowns. Particularly, Shettima chided them for their celebrations on microblogging site X.

*Shettima and Tinubu and their wives 

Clowns imply a circus, and the use of the word by Shettima evokes memories of a 2018 interview of then President Muhammadu Buhari when he described Nigerian youths as lazy.

Cash Scarcity Lingers, Food Scarcity Follows

 By Dele Sobowale

“Why is cash scarce again?” — Lekan Sote, January 10, 2024.

Lekan, one of the most perceptive columnists in Nigeria today astonished me when he asked that question. Vanguard readers knew as far back as March 2023 that another round of cash scarcity was coming. It occurred in December. It will linger for a while – as long as the Federal Government and the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, continue to miss the point. 

Nigerians should actually be asking two questions regarding cash scarcity: will it end? How? The answer to the first is “Yes”; but not next month or perhaps even March. It will certainly not end before a great deal of damage would have been done to the economy. The answer to “How?” will be left untouched for now. The FG and CBN will be shocked to know the major cause of the lingering scarcity. The stranglehold on cash supply is now assuming the characteristics of a plot. 

From Buhari To Tinubu: Under-50 Disasters In Government

 By Adekunle Adekoya

A fortnight ago, I started this column lamenting that we always have one issue to contend with all the time. I had wanted to vent my anger on power supply providers, the ones we call DisCos here, following weeks of uninterrupted blackout in many parts of the country. 

*Tinubu and Buhari 

Then news of the well-choreographed killings in Plateau State broke. We all lamented the failures of a reactive, rather than proactive security architecture that failed, time and again, to anticipate and prevent the marauders from achieving their evil objectives.

As our leaders were mouthing the usual rhetoric about the Plateau killings, convincing very few of us that action will be taken to prevent recurrences, Betta Edu happened to Nigeria.

A memo, said to have been signed by the suspended minister directing payment of more than N585 million into a private account ruled the internet for days and dominated conversations on many platforms. Earlier, as we all know, the CEO of the National Social Intervention Programme, Halima Shehu had been suspended to pave way for investigations into how N44 billion of the agency’s funds found its way into private accounts.

To complete the picture, former Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Poverty Alleviation and Disaster Management, Sadiyya Umar Farouq became a guest of the EFCC over some N37 billion of the ministry’s money that had vanished. 

My commentary will begin from the demographic angle. Please take note that Sadiyya Umar Farouq is the eldest of the trio, born in 1974. Halima Shehu was born in 1978, while Betta Edu was born in 1986, a confirmed millennial. By the way, millennials are people born between 1981 and 1996. None of the three is 50 years old yet, though Sadiyya will hit that milestone next November. By their conduct in office, they have sent the wrong signals and did incalculable damage to the school of thought that believes that Nigeria’s problems have to do with the old and ageing class of leaders that have refused to let go.

Once now and then, a president incubates a magician that is presented to the rest of us as a minister. Buhari had at least two of them. One tried to conjure a national carrier for us out of the thinnest air in Nigeria. The other, of course, is Sadiyya. If she isn’t a magician, how did she spend more than N500 million to feed schoolchildren who were in their parents’ houses during the COVID-19 lockdown? Another magical feat was how her ministry trained 177 youths on smartphone repairs, and spent N5.9 billion on that. I thought that N5.9 billion could be spent to open a factory or two that will manufacture smartphones!

It is somewhat surprising that Betta Edu could commit the offence she was accused of. What happened to her mind if education is what remained after one has forgotten what was learnt? She had been a cabinet commissioner in Cross River State, and must have been conversant with the proper procedures when it comes to spending government money. 

Or she was freewheeling on Cross River money and blind eyes were turned? Beats me how a beautiful, trained medical doctor could self-destruct this way. She could as well be one of Tinubu’s magicians, afterall she was said to have approved N2.5 million as air travel expenses for an aide to a state that has no airport. Was she trying to conjure an airport for the state?

I am equally disturbed by Halima Shehu’s predicament, given her educational background and work experience as a banker. At Inter-City Bank where she worked for about a decade, she  served as  Audit and Internal Control officer, among other duties. What happened to her experience when she came to work for government?

From their backgrounds, these women knew the right things to do, just simply opted to do what they wanted.

To the Federal Government and President Bola Tinubu, it’s reforms time. I propose that the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Poverty Alleviation and Disaster Management be scrapped without delay. My reasons are simple: there has been nothing humanitarian about that ministry since Buhari created it. 

The conditional cash transfer programme of the ministry was a failure, even from conception. What can N5,000 do for anybody in Nigeria, even before subsidy removal, not to talk of now. It is simply wasteful, and besides, unjust as nobody knows the criteria by which beneficiaries were chosen. 

What is worse is that the ministry seems to have become the ATM machine of some vested interests. Want some millions? So a proposal and take there. In addition, the ministry has failed to alleviate poverty; there is no initiative of this ministry that has the interest of masses at heart. But it has generated the disasters that these women have become. The ministry should be scrapped before it generates more disasters. 

*Adekoya is a commentator on public issues

Betta Edu And The Crime Scene Called Nigeria

 By Ikechukwu Amaechi

Dr Betta Edu, the vivacious and chirpy politician from Cross River State, must be introspecting now. Just yesterday, she had the world at her feet, literally, and Nigeria was her oyster, where, it seemed, she could achieve anything she wished.

*Betta Edu and Bola Tinubu

And she achieved a lot. Born October 27, 1986, Betta chalked up incredible attainments in only 37 years. Right from the time she completed her secondary education in 2001 at the Federal Government Girls College, Calabar and obtained her first degree in medicine and surgery from the University of Calabar in 2009, her rise to super stardom has been incredible.

Usual Sing-Song: Outrage Over Plateau Killings

 By Owei Lakemfa

In the 2023 Christmas period running from December 23-25, armed assailants in co-ordinated attacks wiped out 20 communities in  Magu, Bokkos and Bakin areas of Plateau State. They killed over 200, injured a minimum 500 and put  over 10,000 in flight.

The headlines  expressing ‘Outrage over Plateau killings’ are tragically, familiar and might  have as well been cast ten, fifteen years ago. The perpetrators are same; a trained, vicious, co-ordinated  bunch, some  assembled from  West and Central Africa states.

Killings On The Plateau: The Shame Of A Nation

 By Etim Etim

The brutal killings of over 160 Nigerians in three local councils in Plateau State on Christmas eve and Christmas Day by terrorists have once again illustrated the failure of the Nigerian State to protect its citizens. Over 20 villages across Barkin Ladi, Bokkos and Mangu LGAs were attacked in what has become a pattern of a failed or a fast-failing state. 

I am sad, pained and aggrieved by the flagrant failure of the security agencies to thwart the terrorists’ plots or arrest them after their heinous crimes. Many Nigerians, including a retired general who had once served as the Commander of Operation Safe Heaven on the Plateau, Gen. Henry Ayoola, believe that there are elements in the security agencies that collude with the terrorists and are complicit in these killings.

Nigeria: Birthday Drivels And National Celebration Of Inanities

 By Alade Rotimi-John

The provocative and obscene celebration of birthdays by public personages is fast becoming a rude national pastime. The general Nigerian audience has bemusedly endured a siege of insults for quite some time now respecting the intolerable mischief of a lewd and soulless parade of stunts. There is a total extinction of all taste even as the celebrants are vulgar, gross and illiberal.

*Mrs. Tinubu, Akpabio and his wife at Akpabio's 61st Birthday Bash

Aside from the moral contamination incident on the celebrations, their lessons are morbidly and intellectually degrading as they generally present a distorted or superficial view of the sordid Nigerian condition. Many of the ceremonies have laid bare the social insensitivity of the celebrants who are reputedly of high estate. Even as their object is to covet general praise and admiration, they have ironically received in large measure a backlash in contempt and in a free-flowing gnashing imprecations from their fellow men and women.

Nigeria: What Goes Around Comes Aground

 By Banji Ojewale

The universal principle is that what goes around must come around. It’s not so in Nigeria. With us, when what goes around goes around, it does more than coming around. As it makes its return trip, it comes aground, grounding us, leveling us, merging us with the miry mud. That’s been our history, extinct and extant. We create institutions and leaders from this back-and-forth process to form an endless cycle of vulnerable links in governance that remind us of the late poet, Christopher Okigbo: AN OLD STAR departs, leaves us here on the shore, Gazing heavenward for a new star approaching; The new star appears, foreshadows its going Before a going and coming that goes on forever… (Path of Thunder).

*Buhari and Tinubu 

 It is a villainous star, a kind of abiku that gives short-lived joy to the home where it surfaces at birth. Our present is nothing but a horrid replay of our unpleasant encounters with the past. We sowed the wind yesterday; but today we’re reaping what’s greater than the wind. What goes around comes aground.

CBN: Cash Scarcity Is Here To Stay For A While

 By Dele Sobowale

“Cash Scarcity: People are hoarding bank notes – CBN.” VANGUARD, December 14, 2023.

Governor Cardoso and his new team at the top of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, can be forgiven if the current cash scarcity being experienced has caught them by surprise.

They were not in office in March, when it was predicted on these pages that another round of cash scarcity was inevitable; after the one induced by the CBN then. Before going into the reasons why we are not free of this problem yet, permit me to make one observation; which will be helpful to the current CBN Management.  Statements such as “people are hoarding cash” are more emotional than technical or professional; and they seldom solve the problem.

Nigeria: The Poor Shall Not Die!

 By Sunny Awhefeada

Delta State born gospel singer, Harold Ikuku, re­leased a popular album that was the rave of the moment in the tough and horri­ble years that the 1990s were. The song’s motif is “I shall not die”. Although a gospel song, it reso­nated with both Christians and non-Christians as a result of its affirmative message of survival in the face of brutal economic and psychological assault on the citizenry. 

It was this song that a man sang with so much gusto on hearing of the new pump price of petrol about three weeks ago, the second of such astronomical increase within two months of the present regime. When Presi­dent Bola Tinubu said, in his in­augural speech, that petroleum subsidy was gone, his handlers must have thought that it was a masterstroke in view of the fact that petrol subsidy had become an albatross for the Nigerian polity. 

COP28: Tinubu’s Hypocrisy On Climate Change

 By Olu Fasan

So, Bola Tinubu, Nigeria’s new president, believes that climate change is a Nigerian problem after all. In fact, so much does he believe Nigeria has a climate-change problem that he led a delegation of 1,411 people to this year’s United Nations climate summit, COP28, which took place in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, from November 30 to December 12. Yet, just a few months ago, Tinubu was cynical and dismissive about climate-change mitigation in Nigeria.

*Tinubu with some members of the large Nigerian delegation to COP 28

In October last year, during the presidential election campaign, Tinubu spoke at the interactive session of the Arewa Joint Committee in Kaduna. Asked about climate change, he responded: “It’s a question of how you prevent a church rat from eating poisoned holy communion.” He then added: “We need to tell the West, if they don’t guarantee our finances, we are not going to comply with their climate change.”