Book Review: The Promise Of A New Era

 By Angela Agoawike

The use of biographies for election campaigns date back decades. 

Sometimes written in a hurry, a campaign biography gives highlights of the candidate’s life, introduces him to the voting public and so doing, gives an insight into his aspiration to the highest office in the land. 

The importance of a presidential campaign ‘biography’ is underlined by among others, the setting up of libraries to look for such books and store them for posterity, just like the Clarke Library of the Central Michigan University in the USA has done since the early 1960s. 

Many politicians, such as former American President Jimmy Carter released campaign biographies. As a little-known governor of the American State of Georgia, Why Not The Best? was published in 1976, during his quest for the American presidency. It was his introduction to Americans beyond Georgia. 

Buhari Is Not Coming Back!

By Toyin Dawodu

There is a saying in Yoruba Land: “Orun a re mabo.”

Translation: No one comes back from the dead.

Buhari may not be dead, but he might as well be – too sick to rule, too greedy to leave.

*Buhari 

Do I wish Buhari dead? Hell no! I wish him well. But as the president of Nigeria, he needs to either serve in his full capacity as president, or immediately resign. There is no third option here, at least not one that benefits Nigerians.

For weeks, Buhari’s administration has been reporting that he is healthy, that he is simply on an extended trip to London for medical tests. He has been away for weeks, and his administration is unwilling or unable to tell Nigerians if or when their president will return, according to the LA Times.

So, what we know for sure is even if Buhari is not sick - which is improbable, considering his appearance of late - and he is just more comfortable spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on his current medical tour instead of getting these “medical tests” done at the State House Clinic Abuja, the fact remains he so  preoccupied with his health that he is unable to lead his country. And Nigeria does not seem to have another leader poised to take his place.

I agree with Okey Ndibe that Buhari should step down.

For Buhari, A Humane Proposal: Resign!

By Okey Ndibe

There’s a chance that President Muhammadu Buhari would have come back to Nigeria by the time you read this column, but the fact that he had twice postponed his return date encourages one conclusion: That the man is really, really sick. So, here’s a humane proposal for the president: Consider handing in your resignation letter.

*Buhari 

I’m aware that some Nigerians still consider Mr. Buhari essential, if not indispensable, to our country’s prospect of rebirth. To these, a suggestion that the man ought to quit office must sound heretical – indeed seem like a prescription with a dollop of ghastly mischief. But such people are grandly deluded. Concrete ideas, not the cult of any particular personality, are best for a polity in need of ethical rejuvenation. And two years of Mr. Buhari’s tenure as president are adequate to demonstrate his paucity of ideas.

In place of robust and organic ideas for transforming Nigeria, he has merely offered us the pabulum that his reputation and goodwill are enough.

That idea, of the transformative power of President Buhari’s supposed moral gravitas, is hollow. What significant transformation have Nigerians witnessed, in any sector of their life, in the two years of Buhari’s presidency? The so-called war on corruption, Mr. Buhari’s best calling card, has failed to achieve the conviction of one significant political figure from the recent past.

After all the public drama of Dasukigate, what is the status of the case against former National Security Adviser Sambo Dasuki? If Mr. Buhari’s government has not been able to prosecute Mr. Dasuki to date, is there much hope of his administration making a noticeable dent in the war against corruption via prosecutorial means? I don’t think so.

Worse, Mr. Buhari’s much-vaunted crusade against graft has neither dampened nor discouraged the appetite for corruption in Nigeria. Police and customs officers still farm out on the road and extort bribes from hapless commuters and traders. Under Mr. Buhari’s watch, the Central Bank of Nigeria and other agencies corruptly handed out jobs to children and wards of the most privileged. Elections are still fraught with fraud, with the police and army rolled out to serve the ruling party’s partisan interests. Judicial processes operate at snail-speed; lawyers and judges collude in using incessant adjournments to derail justice. Mr. Buhari has done little more than yawn when political appointees close to him have been accused of corrupt acts.

Buhari, Call Off Customs’ Siege On Igbo Traders

By Okey Ndibe

A few days ago, a friend sent me a video of a choir made up of members of Nigeria’s security agencies singing “Feliz Navidad,” a popular Christmas song. The rendition was entirely inspiring, a thrilling combination of rousing singing, dancing and festive atmosphere. I was moved by the sheer cheeriness of the service singers, infected by their sunniness of spirit. The high professional quality of the performers was complemented by the outstanding videography.

*Buhari

In between the Christmas lyrics, members of Nigeria’s respective service arms took turns pitching messages. A female officer informed us that the police were our friends, that its officers serve and protect with integrity, and that they make Nigeria secure. Another officer, also female, touted the Nigerian Prisons Service as reformers, keeping society crime-free. A member of the Civil Defense Corps spoke about defending the defenseless.

It was, quite simply, a soaring performance, a tour de force, indeed the best rendition of “Feliz Navidad” I have ever seen or heard—and I have listened to quite a few. I couldn’t help replaying the video several times. Each time, I found myself riveted, beguiled, awe-struck, a dupe for the wholly upbeat service messages organically interjected into one of Christmas’s most captivating anthems.

Again and again, I surrendered myself to be transported by the winsome performance. Yet, I emerged from each session with an afterglow of sadness, brought rudely down to earth by the shattering awareness that there was little concordance between the reality of life in Nigeria and the mesmerizing vista projected by the video. The video vended a beatific vision to me; yet I knew that the reality of life in Nigeria was, for the most part and for the majority of Nigerians, awful, if not hellish. The video was selling me a dummy, attempting to mask the sordidness of everyday life in my country, its enchanting performance no more than an effort to narcotize its audience, to rig reality.

That dominant sense of a discrepancy between performance and reality was reinforced for me in two recent conversations. In one, a writer friend who is an academic in Canada recounted his near-brush with death. Some assailants had cornered this guy and shot him on the leg. Terribly wounded, bleeding, he had limped away from his car to seek help. In some ways, his nightmare worsened once he found the police.

First, the police had no ambulance to drive him to a hospital. They brought him back to his car, which the armed gangsters had abandoned because it was demobilized, and got him to reactivate it. Then, instead of rushing him to the hospital, they took him to their station because Nigeria has this weird practice that hospitals should not treat anybody with a gunshot wound in the absence of a police report. Meanwhile, as the police busied themselves with observing the bizarre bureaucratic protocols of generating a report, the bleeding victim slipped in and out of consciousness, gripped by a sense of his imminent death.

No, he didn’t die in the end, in part because one of the police officers finally recognized him as a senior editor at a major newspaper. Once his quasi-privileged status was established, he was able to muster just enough strength to convince the officers – against what they said was policy – to take him to a private hospital where a relative of his was a medical chief. The drive there was harrowing, marked by a traffic gridlock that slowed the car, leaving the hapless editor bleeding profusely, racked by hideous pain.

Buhari, Stop This Charade Of War Against Corruption, Please!

By Okey Ndibe

President Muhammadu Buhari should admit, today, not tomorrow, that his so-called war against corruption is unserious, tiresome, illegitimate, hypocritical, and a waste of Nigerians’ time. Right away, he ought to end the charade that claims to be a war. And then he should seek the best help he can find to focus on Nigeria’s grave economic and political crises.

*Buhari 

Last week, the Nigerian Senate, citing the damning content of a security report, declined to confirm Ibrahim Magu as the chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). The senators would not divulge the details of the security report. However, the online publication, Premium Times, stated that it had obtained the report. According to the medium, the report accused Mr. Magu of fraternising with persons who are targets of corruption investigations; of flying first class on a trip to Saudi Arabia, despite a presidential directive that public officials must fly economy; of illicit possession of sensitive documents, and of living in a house whose rent was allegedly paid by a businessman who was in the EFCC’s radar.

In other words, the Department of State Security (which authored the report on Mr. Magu) accused the country’s anti-corruption czar of being an enabler of corruption, a man embedded with the virulently corrupt.

I don’t know whether any or all of these allegations are true. At the time of my writing, several days after the Senate’s refusal to confirm Mr. Magu, President Buhari had said zilch on the issue. That presidential silence symptomises a disease that afflicts the Buhari administration, a tendency to respond to the most everyday issue after maximal delay.

Juxtapose the presidential silence against the alacrity of Premium Times, and you begin to see how luckless Nigeria is in this Presidency. In revealing the content of the DSS report, the website also disclosed that its independent investigation exposed the falsity of the allegations against Mr. Magu.

After a dismal run with the Umaru Yar’Adua and Goodluck Jonathan administrations, the governance of Nigeria is yet again, with Buhari, debilitated, marred by paralysis, inertia, and confusion. And if media reports are credible, there is a deep schism in the ranks of Mr. Buhari’s closest associates.

For months, the media had reported that elements within Team Buhari were working to remove Mr. Magu from the EFCC, or else to scuttle his confirmation. Those reports suggested that the anti-Magu coalition was bent on sabotaging Mr. Magu’s investigation and prosecution of the corrupt, inept and often laughable as that process had become.

Amina, Sambisa And The Parable Of A Wobbly Nigeria

By Okey Ndibe

A peculiarly Nigerian type of frenzy happened last week. The event was triggered by a report that a young woman named Amina Ali Nkeki, one of the more than 200 Chibok schoolgirls abducted in the night of April 14, 2014, had been rescued. The initial reports disclosed that a vigilante group rescued Amina last Tuesday, as she wandered along the edges of Sambisa Forest in the company of a man, who claimed to be her husband, but was suspected to be a Boko Haram insurgent, and a four-month baby in her arms.

*Amina Ali Nkeki, rescued Chibok girl
meets President Buhari 

From there, it was brouhaha all the way. Governor Kashim Shettima of Borno State feted the 19-year-old mother. Then, a day later, President Muhammadu Buhari welcomed Amina and her baby to Aso Rock, his official residence. The misfortunate woman was cast in a dizzying drama that featured photo-ops, speeches and global media coverage. The president cradled Amina’s baby in his arms, as he and others beamed for the cameras. Speaking on behalf of the Nigerian state, the president promised that Amina would receive the best physical, psychological and emotional healthcare Nigeria can provide.

You’d think, watching all the excitement, that all 219 schoolgirls, not just one, had been spirited from their abductors. But that was the one narrative, thumbed with the imprimatur of the Nigerian state. There was an album of counter-narratives, running the gamut from those who insisted that the whole thing was an abject hoax, a stage-managed political theatre, to those who believe that the abduction saga never happened in the first place.

Last Thursday, two days after Amina’s rescue, the Nigerian military announced a second rescue, of a youngster named Serah Luka. It was as if a slow momentum was building up, Nigeria on the cusp of finding and liberating the 200 odd victims, who are not accounted for.

But the second success story turned out a dud. Chibok parents as well as activists, who pressed former President Goodluck Jonathan – and are pressing Mr. Buhari – to bring back the schoolgirls questioned the military’s claim that Serah was one of the schoolgirls. Neither her name nor image was on the roster of the missing schoolgirls.

Whether it was an honest mistake or a calculated fib, the misidentification of Serah, as one of the Chibok schoolgirls further fueled conspiracy theories. The first and second rescues were seen as politically orchestrated maneuvers, a plot by the Buhari administration and its champions to deflect attention from biting economic crises and deepening social misery.

Some doubters wondered why Amina, who was supposed to be sitting certificate exams at the time of her abduction, was incapable of expressing herself in English. Her apparent incapacity fed speculations that she was chosen and cast in a contrived melodrama.

Buhari And The Savaging Of The Poor

By Okey Ndibe

Before the 2015 presidential election, Candidate Muhammadu Buhari essentially advertised himself as a magician. Even though oil prices were tumbling, Mr. Buhari promised to pay N5,000 a month to unemployed youth, make the country more secure, fix the perennial electric power crisis, root out corruption, strengthen the naira against the dollar and reduce the price per litre of fuel.

*Buhari 

Once elected, Mr. Buhari began a serial retreat from his promises. Nigeria’s hapless youth have received no cash.  Boko Haram may have been weakened in the northeast, but heavily armed herdsmen have maimed and killed and ramped up Nigeria’s violence quotient. And – thanks to the administration’s hectoring tone and strong-arm tactics – the southeast and oil-rich Niger Delta have become highly volatile. Power outages are as bad as ever, and arguably worse.

The war against corruption has targeted some well-known persons, among them Senate President, Bukola Saraki, former National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki, and the spokesman of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Olisa Metuh. Even so, the war appears imperiled in several ways.

One is Mr. Buhari’s failure to devise a fresh, innovative approach to combating corruption. The cases currently in court are making plodding progress – and are likely to drag on. Given the sheer number of suspects out there, the lesson is that the prosecutorial route is not particularly promising.

Besides, as I suggested shortly after his inauguration, Mr. Buhari is mired in an ethical bind: As some of the financiers of his campaign are perceived as plunderers of public funds.

More troubling still is that the president has paid scant attention to ways of plugging the loopholes that permit public officials and their cohorts to loot funds. What we have, then, is a policy of patching a system that demands an overhaul.

If I Were Buhari…

By Okey Ndibe

…I would not have traveled to China. Not at this time, no. In fact, I would tell my Chinese hosts today that I must abbreviate my weeklong visit and return immediately to my office in Abuja.

I know that some defense could be made for the current trip to China. Presidential spokesman Femi Adesina seemed to anticipate the objections to the president’s current excursion, and preemptively cast the trip in entirely positive light. “President Muhammadu Buhari,” he wrote in a press statement, “will leave Abuja…for a working visit to China aimed at securing greater support from Beijing for the development of Nigeria's infrastructure, especially in the power, roads, railways, aviation, water supply and housing sectors.”
 
He continued: “President Buhari's talks with President Xi Jinping, Premier Li Keqiang and the Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National Peoples’ Congress, Zhang Dejiang will also focus on strengthening bilateral cooperation in line with the Federal Government's agenda for the rapid diversification of the Nigerian economy, with emphasis on agriculture and solid minerals development.”
 
All that sentiment sounds high-minded and noble. Nigeria desperately needs to diversify its economy. Heck, a major tragic strain in the country’s mostly woeful narrative is the decades-long neglect of this imperative. Nigerians are paying the price for lazily laying all their eggs in the crude oil basket. We wagered on the globe staying eternally addicted to fossil fuel. We never reckoned that a time would come when there would be a glut of crude, or when the US, the world’s greatest consumer, would make a strategic turn toward domestic production.

Nigeria’s singular reliance on crude oil earnings meant a high degree of susceptibility to the capriciousness of the market. As oil prices plummeted into the valley, Nigerians suddenly realized that they were in a deep mess. Diversification of the economy, hitherto a fanciful phrase that cropped up in politicians’ speeches, became a rallying cry, one that President Buhari is rather fond of.
 
Yet, if I were Buhari, I would not only rush back to Abuja, I would also put a moratorium on all presidential foreign trips—until a semblance of normalcy returns to Nigeria.
 
As a military dictator, Mr. Buhari hardly traveled out of the country. In his civilian incarnation, he seems infected by Sokugo, the wandering spirit. In fact, his wanderlust rivals that of former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s first term in office. Like his predecessor, the incumbent president invokes the attraction of foreign investment to justify his junkets.

President Buhari’s Interesting Interview With Al Jazeera

By Okey Ndibe

During his recent visit to Qatar, President Muhammadu Buhari sat for an interview with Martine Dennis of Al Jazeera. Last weekend, close to two weeks after the trip, I finally found time to watch the entirety of the interview. I found it enlightening, for two broad reasons.

President Buhari during the interview 
(pix:Punch)

The first and minor one was to remark the interviewer’s composure and confidence. She had a grasp of her subject (Nigeria’s economic woes, widespread disappointment with Mr. Buhari’s budget, and growing apprehension about the outline of his economic and security policies). The interviewer’s full-throttle style was in sharp contrast with the fawning and deferential manner adopted by many a Nigerian reporter when given the opportunity to interview an incumbent or former president—or even lesser ranking public officials. In question after question, Ms. Dennis zeroed in on specific details of Buharinomics and politics Buhariana. And she was rather quick-footed whenever the occasion called for a follow-up question.

My major interest in the interview was the opportunity it offered to take a measure of the president’s mindset. Buhari had a few fine moments in the interview, the hallmark arriving when—reminded by Ms. Dennis that the IMF was not enamored of his refusal to devalue the naira—he replied that his country’s interest trumped the IMF’s prescription.

On the whole, however, I came away with the impression that President Buhari’s interview was simply “interesting.” And I have borrowed the word, interesting, with all its freight of ambiguities, from Mr. Buhari.

He seemed uncomfortable when the interviewer touched on the subject of how the government’s forex policy was affecting parents who are paying school fees for their children studying abroad. Yet, when she reminded him that his own children were also studying abroad—implying that he was now among the super-privileged—he seemed unfazed.

Nigeria: Ese Oruru’s Mirror

By Okey Ndibe

I received a plaintive note last week from a young man who seemed rather shocked that I had not written about Nigeria’s scandal of the moment—the harrowing story of a 14-year old girl named Ese Rita Oruru, abducted from her home in Bayelsa State, transported to Kano by a 22-year old drifter, Yunusa (alias Yellow), who contrived her conversion to Islam and then made her his bride. My young correspondent then pleaded with me to write about the Ese matter, as if the burden of rendering whole again a world turned on its head rested with whatever I was going to say.

*Ese Oruru

The matter of Ese, even the fragment of it sketched out above, is a tragic story. But what makes the story truly, deeply tragic is far less the specific details of what happened to a solitary young woman than what the Ese Affair says about Nigeria, its institutions, its attitude to children, and the vexed subject of religion.

In short, the tragedy lies in the fact that Nigeria is a country at war with its most vulnerable, weak citizens. It is a country at war with its poor, its workers, especially those of them who are minimum wage earners, its womenfolk, especially those of them who are, in every important sense, children.

Speaking to a reporter, one of Ese’s best friends at school in Bayelsa State disclosed that her friend’s dream was to become a nurse. According to this friend, Ese excelled at math, integrated science and English. In her first interview with reporters, Ese corroborated the account of her dream. In a child-friendly society, Ese would have received encouragement to enable her to achieve her professional aspiration. But this is Nigeria, a country that’s turned into a killer of dreams, if not of the dreamers. Instead of being on her way to a nursing career, Ese, who is now five months pregnant, must become the charge of nurses as she, a mere child, prepares to bring a child into the world.

How did the young man who abducted Ese manage to pull off his crime—for crime it was—in broad daylight, without anybody, civilian or uniformed, to stop him? How was it that several adults presided over the farcical conversation of the young woman without one of them pausing to ask, one, whether she was competent to voluntarily understand said conversion and, two, whether she understood the implications of what was to follow?

In her interview, Ese described the process of her ostensible conversion. “They took me to one place. Before they took me from the house to Kura, they put me in hijab, then we went to Kura. When we got there, they went to one place, and one old man came there and he would say something and they would say I should repeat. Then I would repeat. If the man said something again, they would say I should repeat and I would repeat just like that.”

A conversion indeed, just like that!

Dasukigate Has Brought Out The Best And The Worst Of Us

By Okey Ndibe

Nigerians are in the midst of a familiar feeding frenzy. On the menu, this time, former National Security Adviser (NSA), Sambo Dasuki. Prosecutors allege that Mr. Dasuki, a retired colonel of the Nigerian Army, took more than $2 billion, which was budgeted for the purchase of military weapons, and divvied it up among highly connected politicians.

*Ndibe 

It seems that every day the media unmask the names of more beneficiaries. And each revelation fuels the frenzy. Resourceful pundits have fashioned a verb out of Mr. Dasuki’s name. The phrase, to be Dasukied (also Dasukification), has come to represent a sudden windfall or diversion of funds to an illicit purpose.

Nigerians are riveted, as attentive to the unfolding drama as Americans were when, in 1998, then President Bill Clinton was accused of carrying on an affair in the White House with a young intern, Monica Lewinsky.

The scandal Nigerians have christened Dasukigate has brought out the best and the worst of us. The usual pedestrian kind of disputation has taken root in social and print media. Some commentators have mistaken an indictment for a conviction. There’s a disturbing part of our psyche that yearns for the institution of mob justice. We forget those of us who advocate this mode, that it is a monster that, in the end, spares no one. Others—typically Mr. Dasuki’s supporters—have raised partisan hell, questioning the prosecution of Mr. Dasuki when government prosecutors have turned a blind eye to the alleged graft by members of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).

Biafra As Nightmare And Fantasy

By Okey Ndibe

I have been distressed beyond words by what has crystallized as an agitation for Biafra’s divorce from Nigeria. I am disturbed that this agitation has become another occasion for the Nigerian state to demonstrate its disdain for the rule of law and the rights of citizens. I’m appalled by the violence spawned by the actions of the agitators and the state’s reaction. The immediate impetus for the violent turn is the continued detention of Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB), indeed the rabble rouser-in-chief of the neo-Biafran cause.

The government ought to release Mr. Kanu immediately, both because that’s the wisdom of the court and it’s the quickest way to defuse tension.

But Mr. Kanu’s release will not, by itself, erase the frenzied propagation of Biafra, an idea that represents a nightmare to some, and a fantasy to others. Sooner or later—sooner, one hopes, than later—Nigeria has to confront the inescapable question of what it means to be called a Nigerian.

That question (or the reluctance to engage it in any serious and sustained way) is one reason Nigeria has remained an alien and alienating idea, and susceptible to frequent acts of rejection by its ostensible citizens. Periodically, those expressions of everyday individual resentment and disaffection build into mass resistance.

It’s important to put the agitation for Biafra in the broader context of Nigerians’ longstanding disillusionment with their country. For the avoidance of doubt, this is no new phenomenon. Nigeria’s two literary giants, Wole Soyinka and the late Chinua Achebe, have wrestled with the confounding matter of Nigeria. A few years ago, Nobel laureate Soyinka asserted at a series of talks he gave at Harvard University that there was no nation yet in the space called Nigeria. Years earlier, Achebe had said to me in an interview that Nigeria had not yet been founded.

Nothing in the two writers’ claims amounted to a repudiation of Nigeria as such. No, they were making what I’d call statements of fact. The fact that Nigeria had yet to achieve a sense of national identity did not imply that such a prospect was doomed. I’d say that the two writers were warning the rest of us about what needed to be done in order to translate the abstract, ill-formed idea called Nigeria into a concrete, organic, salutary and regenerative reality.

ISI To Host Chinua Achebe Symposium

FORTY YEARS AFTER

CHINUA ACHEBE AND AFRICA IN THE GLOBAL IMAGINATION

University of Massachusetts, Amherst

14-15 October 2015

On 18 February 1975, the great African writer Chinua Achebe presented a Chancellor’s Lecture at the University of Massachusetts, entitled ‘An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.’ The lecture was subsequently published in the Massachusetts Review, and since that time it has become celebrated and iconic: a remarkable moment both in literary criticism, and in a broader cultural assessment of how Africa has been perceived and represented in the Western world. In making his case, Achebe challenged the entire framework in which works of art would be judged, and in which the discussion of Africa would be sustained.

To mark the fortieth anniversary of this epic moment, as well as the fortieth anniversary of the Distinguished Faculty Lecture Series at the University of Massachusetts, the Interdisciplinary Studies Institute will host a symposium devoted to the impact of Achebe’s lecture and its continuing legacy. In this, our aim is twofold: first, to commemorate the event itself, and its significance; and second, to bring the discussion into the present by reconsidering both Achebe’s importance, and the shape of things today in terms of the issues he raised.

Panelists and speakers include NoViolet Bulawayo, Jules, Chametzky, Johnnetta Cole, Achille Mbembe, Maaza Mengiste, Okey Ndibe, Caryl Phillips, Michael Thelwell, Esther Terry, and Chika Unigwe, among others. 

Full details of the program will be forthcoming. If you plan on attending the symposium from out of town, we urge you to make hotel accommodations as soon as possible. The UMass Visitor's Guide includes a comprehensive list of area hotels and accommodations, and can be access here. 

Source

Nigeria: CBN's New Policy Is Harming Small Scale Businesses

By Okey Ndibe 

President Muhammadu Buhari has yet to outline the direction and goals of his economic policy. Even so, major players in the country’s economy are already feeling the impact of specific policy decisions as they are emerging. For a wide segment of these critical players, the impact is negative, even grave. 

Under Mr. Buhari’s watch, the Central Bank of Nigeria has banned access to foreign exchange to certain categories of importers, including those who bring in toothpicks, rice, vegetable oil and tomato paste. The bank has also placed severe impediments on other businesses, among them manufacturers that import machinery and other goods. 

The motives behind the bank’s recent monetary policies may seem sound—as former Governor Peter Obi recently told reporters in Awka, the capital of Anambra State—but Nigerians appear to be worse off for them. 

With the price of crude oil showing no signs of going north soon, Nigerians are in for a long season of hard times. We just came off an electoral season in which all manner of politicians mopped up dollars for their campaigns. If you factor in the flight of capital—as many foreign and local institutional investors, scared of post-election uncertainty, pulled out of the stock market—the picture is of an economy certain to pass through a significant phase of scarcity and painful adjustment. The pressure on the naira remains enormous, and has led to a significant drop in the currency’s value.

The CBN’s response has been to use monetary policies to defend the naira. In pursuit of this defensive stance, the bank has chosen the role of an umpire determined to favor some players in the economy while rigging out other players. It has given the red card to importers of certain commodities. The bank also made it significantly more difficult for Nigerians to make transactions with their domiciliary accounts. It prohibited cash deposits into such accounts, and set new limits for cash withdrawals from accounts. During foreign trips, the daily withdrawal limit is N60, 000 or $300, a rule that defeats the gain of joining the global financial village of electronic bankcards. 

Chinua Achebe, 37 Other Nigerian Writers Speak On The State Of The Nation

We are troubled by the turn of events in Nigeria, and hereby call on President Goodluck Jonathan and the rest of the country’s political leadership to take immediate steps to tackle the state of lawlessness in certain parts of the nation and address the trepidation and rage that has reached dangerous levels within the Nigerian populace.

Chinua Achebe

Nigeria is witnessing a new escalation of sectarian violence, culminating in explosions that have killed or seriously wounded scores of people at churches and other centers of worship and local businesses.

As a people who lost two million citizens in a civil war, Nigerians must bring an urgent sense of history to the gloomy events. The country’s leadership should not view the incessant attacks as mere temporary misfortune with which the citizenry must learn to live; they are precursors to events that could destabilize the entire country.

We applaud President Jonathan’s declaration of a state of emergency in certain local government areas in four states. However, we have seen little indication that the country’s security and law enforcement agents are up to the task of protecting the lives and property of citizens in all parts of Nigeria.



Okey Ndibe

Clearly, the sophistication and deadly impact of the terrorist attacks suggest an agenda to create widespread fear and, possibly, to foment anarchy or war. President Jonathan has no greater duty than to ensure that Nigerians are safe wherever they live or visit within the country. He should demonstrate his recognition of that solemn duty, in our view, by doing the following:

(a) Outline both short and long term plans to comprehensively address the scourge of terror,

(b) Appoint competent and committed officials to head the various security agencies, and

(c) Serve as an agent to heal the many divisions plaguing Nigeria, and persuade all well-meaning people to enlist in the fight against festering violence.



Tess Onwueme

President Jonathan’s decision to remove fuel subsidies in the country at this time was ill-advised. Coming at the advent of the New Year, and barely a week after the gruesome Christmas Day attacks on worshippers, the policy has forced many Nigerian citizens to perceive his leadership as one that is both insensitive and possibly contemptuous of the mood of its people.

We stand with the Nigerian people who are protesting the removal of oil subsidy which has placed an unbearable economic weight on their lives. This action has clearly imposed an untenable and unfair burden on those segments of Nigerians who are already impoverished - subsisting on less than $2 a day. We call on President Jonathan to immediately change course. By reverting to the old prices of petroleum products, President Jonathan can work to diffuse tension in the country and exemplify the true servant leader who not only serves but also listens to his people. To insist on having his way, and to deploy state security and legal apparati to crush growing popular uprisings is to stamp on a highly valued tenet of democracy – the right to peaceful assembly – and to inadvertently promote greater violence in the country.



Isidore Okpewho

President Jonathan’s administration has made a persuasive case that a few highly connected Nigerians have corruptly profited from fuel subsidy. The government should swiftly bring to justice those corrupt profiteers as well as the bureaucrats who aid and abet their unconscionable parasitic activities and economic sabotage.

We acknowledge President Jonathan’s recent announcement of 25% cut in the basic salaries of political office holders.

But we believe that the move merely scratches the indefensible bloated salaries and allowances paid to Nigerian political officials. The president should also champion significant cuts in the huge cost of running the various tiers of government and the luxuries that have become the signature of those who ought to protect the commonwealth, serve the people, and not exploit them.



Besides, the culture of corruption and impunity in official quarters constitutes a grave threat to national security and to the country’s effort to establish a democratic culture and meaningful economic development.

Nigeria needs a return to relative calm to enable its people, and the Jonathan administration in particular, to focus on the task of combating the incubus of corruption, poverty and home-grown terrorism.

Signed by:
Chinua Achebe,  Okey Ndibe, Nduka Otiono, Helon Habila, Akin Adesokan, Pius Adesanmi, Tess Onwueme, Obiora Udechukwu, Yinka Tella,  Richard Ali, Chiji Akoma, Paul Ugor, Tolu Ogunlesi, Samantha Iwowo, Idowu Ohioze, Offiong Bassey, Chido Onumah, Bunmi Aborisade, Omolade Adunbi, Mahmud Obeamata, Mahmud Aminu, Nasr Kura, Gimba Kakanda, Obioma Nnaemeka, Sonala Olumhense, Ikhide Ikheola, Isidore Okpewho, E.C. Osondu, Ogaga Ifowodo, Mike Nwosu, Herbert Ekwe Ekwe, Chimalum Nwankwo, Uzor Maxim Uzoatu, Ebenezer Obadare, Ahmed Maiwada, Madina Shehu, Hussein Abdu, Auwal Musa Rafsanjani