ViG: Imperative Of Reducing Cost Of Governance

 By Ayo Oyoze Baje

“The only way out of the valley is uphill”
 –Anonymous
If there is one persisting, yet critical issue of national importance that must be frontally tackled by the incoming administration, after May 29, 2023 it has to be that of drastically reducing the huge burden of the cost of governance. So debilitating it has become that it is weighing down the steps towards economic recovery. Though the cost of governance is incurred by the government in the course of providing goods and services to the citizenry, the statistics on its effects on the national economy and the human development index are humongous and unsustainable.

*President Buhari 

For instance, as at April 2023 it was revealed that Nigeria reportedly spends 96.3 percent of its revenue on debt servicing! That is up from 83.2 per cent in 2021. And the World Bank has raised a timely warning on how the fiscal deficit has worsened the nation’s public debt stock. But that is just part of the scary figures on our worsening economic paradigm.

Will The Real Beneficiaries Of Petroleum Subsidy Allow Its Abolishment?

 By Anthony Agbo

Nigeria has been confronted with the economic quagmire of petrol subsidies for the past 20 years. Though the programme dates back to the 1970s, the fact that it has since become a conduit for the corrupt few around the corridors of power has been concealed by our stupendous national wealth, which eventually yielded to the mismanagement of successive governments. With our national wealth depleting faster than a rocket set for orbit, it became clear that this programme was unsustainable. 

Regardless of this obvious fact, many continue to hammer on the dangers of abolishing the programme and the possible negative impact on the ordinary person on the street. These doomsayers have big mics, too, and they talk straight to the nerves of ordinary Nigerians who swallow their bait hook, line, and sinker. The result has been the engineered uproars we see each time the matter is discussed.  

Buharism: As The Naira Collapses, So Does Nigeria

 By Tony Eluemunor  

I may not be an Economist but I don’t need an Economist to tell me that as the Naira tumbles in the foreign exchange (of curren­cies) market, thus Nigeria collapses. Or to put it in a proper perspective, thus the quality of the livelihood of Nigerians collapses, degrades, van­ishes, disappears, is tarnished, is destroyed. I added that really need­less second sentence because there could be some people out there that could claim that the country Nigeria is totally different from the citizens.

As strange as that may sound, some people actually think that the coun­try Nigeria is different from her cit­izens, or that the health of her econ­omy does not really impact on the lives of the citizenry. If not, the cost of necessities such as petrol, cement, electricity tariff, food, transportation, books, newsprint, even sachet water and bread, should not be rising ev­ery day and our leaders would be congratulating themselves for a job well done. Also, no government offi­cial has seen it fit to resign. Yes, they also tag themselves as “progressives”!

Nigeria: The Warnings From Sanusi And Danjuma

 By Lasisi Olagunju  

The Washington Post of May 29, 1979 reported an exchange between President Idi Amin Dada of Uganda and an agent of a British money-printing firm. The Ugandan dictator asked the man to help him print two million Ugandan shillings worth of 100 shilling notes. The Briton accepted the offer but "gingerly" asked Idi Amin how he was going to be paid for his services. "Print three million and take one million for yourself" was Amin's answer. 

*Danjuma 

The Ugandan leader had a minister of foreign exchange. Before Idi Amin's engagement with the Briton, the minister had informed the president that “the government coffers are empty.” Amin looked deeply at him and retorted: “Why (do) you ministers always come nagging to President Amin? You are stupid. If we have no money, the solution is very simple: you should print more money.”

Buharism: As The Naira Collapses, So Does Nigeria

 By Tony Eluemnor

I may not be an Economist but I don’t need an Economist to tell me that as the Naira tumbles in the foreign exchange (of currencies) market, thus Nigeria collapses. Or to put it in a proper perspective, thus the quality of the livelihood of Nigerians collapses, degrades, vanishes, disappears, is tarnished, is destroyed. I added that really needless second sentence because there could be some people out there that could claim that the country Nigeria is totally different from the citizens.

*Buhari 
As strange as that may sound, some people actually think that the country Nigeria is different from her citizens, or that the health of her economy does not really impact on the lives of the citizenry. If not, the cost of necessities such as petrol, cement, electricity tariff, food, transportation, books, newsprint, even sachet water and bread, should not be rising every day and our leaders would be congratulating themselves for a job well done. Also, no government official has seen it fit to resign. Yes, they also tag themselves as “progressives”! 

Africans Should Isolate South Africa

By Luke Onyekakeyah

President Muhammadu Buhari’s order to evacuate Nigerians from South Africa is a positive step in the right direction. Nigerians, indeed, Africans should leave South Africa and not regret it, as a first step towards redressing the unceasing bullying, intimidation, and arrogance of that country against fellow Africans that joined forces to liberate her from the crushing white apartheid regime. African nations should severe diplomatic relations with South Africa as a mark of protest. This land of apartheid should be isolated and let’s watch how it copes with being an island.

Good enough, an uncommon patriotic Nigerian, Allen Onyema, owner of Air Peace, offered to voluntarily evacuate the troubled Nigerian citizens from South Africa. I must commend all those in the forefront of this operation, namely: President Buhari, Air Peace Management, Nigerian High Commissioner to South Africa, Ambassador Kabiru Bala, Chairman, Nigerians in Diaspora Commission, Abike-Dabiri-Erewa, among others. The belated arrest, delay and harassment of departing Nigerians on highways and airport in South Africa, is of no consequence. It is akin to the pursuit of departing Israel from Egyptian bondage by Pharaoh and his army, which ended in disaster.

Kofi Annan @ 80: Memories and Reflections

By Professor Kingsley Moghalu

To live is to choose. But to choose well, you must know who you are and what you stand for, where you want to go and why you want to go there ­– Kofi A. Annan

The quotation above reflects my worldview. But these are not my words. They belong to someone much older and wiser, and whose mentorship and friendship has taught me many lessons in life. I salute Kofi Annan of Ghana, the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations and my boss of many years, Nobel Laureate and renowned global elder statesman as he turns 80 on April 8, 2018. 

*Kofi Annan

On a recent visit to Mr. Annan at his Foundation’s offices in Geneva, Switzerland, I was pleasantly surprised to see him just as spritely, well-kept and un-aged as I had last seen him several years ago. In 2009 I had met him at his office in Geneva to let him know I had decided to resign from my UN system career and was going into the private sector as the founder of a global strategy and risk management consulting firm. As someone who always had the courage to launch out in new, versatile directions during his 35-year UN career before he became Secretary-General, he was very encouraging of my decision to seek new horizons. Later that year, he telephoned to congratulate me on my appointment as Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria. Incidentally, the unplanned journey to that appointment began at a World Economic Forum dinner in Cape Town, South Africa at which Annan, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi and I had been among the guest attendees. 

Nigeria: The Futility Of Bandaging Septic Wounds

By Chuks Iloegbunam

December 1994 and June 2016 are two ep­ochs, separated by 22 years, which send an unambiguous and implacable message – the impracticality of the most mouthed of Nigeria’s platitudes.

Dig this: In December 1994, a hysterical crowd forced itself into a Police station in Kano and bundled out a detained Gideon Akaluka, a young Igbo trader and Christian, who had been falsely accused of using pages of the Koran like toilet paper. The mob decapitated Gideon, spiked his severed head and carried it around town like a trophy.

*President Buhari and Emir of
Kano, Sanusi

On June 2, 2016, Mrs. Bridg­et Agbahime (74), an Igbo housewife and Christian, was seized in Kano and lynched – on a false charge of blaspheming Islam. Naturally, there has been the anticipated outrage and up­roar from the afflicted camp. It could be treated just like an­other statistic: an old woman murdered because she was of an unwanted ethnic group, and because she professed a religion that, in the eyes of her killers, automatically made her an in­fidel.

There are screams for the cul­prits’ apprehension and punish­ment. But, that does not address the problem; it merely scratches at the surface of a malignant tumour. Of course, it is natural for some Nigerians to blow hot air in the face of difficult chal­lenges. Still a fundamental clari­fication is imperative because anyone unaware of the sources of their pummeling stands little chance of activating a defence mechanism.

The crucial point is the politi­cally contrived dispensability of the Igbo life. It started in 1943 in Jos, when the first massacre of Ndigbo took place. There is a documented history to it all, which the volume entitled Mas­sacre of Ndigbo in 1966: Report of the Justice G. C. M. Onyiuke Tribunal [Tollbrook Limited, Ikeja, Lagos], will help to ven­tilate.

First, some background in­formation. Following the po­grom of 1966, the Supreme Military Council of General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi set up a judicial tribunal of inquiry to investigate the grotesquery. But, days before the tribunal was to start sitting, Ironsi was assas­sinated and his regime toppled. Lieutenant-Colonel Yakubu Gowon, who succeeded Iron­si, promised that the tribunal would carry on with its assign­ment. When this promise was negated, Lieutenant-Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, the Military Governor of Eastern Nigeria, had no op­tion but to establish the Onyi­uke Tribunal via an instrument called the Tribunal of Inquiry (Atrocities Against Persons of Eastern Nigeria Origin: Per­petuation of Testimony) Edict 1966.

Soludo: The Real Idi Amin That Ran The CBN?

By Jude Ndukwe

Prof Charles Chukwuma Soludo, former governor of Central Bank of Nigeria and former governorship aspirant in Anambra State, got the nation anxious again when he declared in a no-holds-barred manner that former President Goodluck Jonathan ran the Central Bank of Nigeria in manners akin to that of Uganda’s late dictator, Idi Amin. Soludo did not fall short of accusing the former president of ordering the CBN to ‘print’ say, N3 trillion under the guise of creating an intervention fund for national stability but which is eventually doled out to prosecute an election campaign or just about anything the president fancies. He further described the CBN as the presidency’s ATM under Jonathan.

*Soludo

Such an unsubstantiated grave allegation coming from a man like Soludo is, indeed, worrisome. That a man of Soludo’s status would condescend so low, throw caution to the wind, jump on the bandwagon, play to the gallery and take advantage of the political situation in Nigeria to make spurious allegations unscrupulously against the former president is a sign of the decline and amnesia which has gripped our political class in the last eight months.
Apart from the fact that such unguarded outburst is false, the timing is instructive.

In the months prior to the appointment of Ministers by President Buhari, Soludo was so desperate to be noticed that he suddenly became vocal in condemning the immediate past administration and accused them of just anything that tickled his fancy all in a bid to get Buhari’s attention. His nearly endless tirade against Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nigeria’s immediate past Minister of Finance and
Coordinating Minister of the Economy, is legendary. Despite all his efforts, President Buhari overlooked him and settled for someone who by her deportment is timid and easily malleable than a Soludo who is brash, rash, abrasive, confrontational and does ITK (I Too Know).

After having missed that opportunity, and with the growing rumour that the job of the current CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, is hanging in the balance following the shambolic state of our economy and the continued slide in the value of the naira, it is time for Soludo to remind Buhari that he is still jobless and quite available for the CBN top job, and the only way to do this since he does not have direct access to the president is to criticise the past administration for just anything that would make him sound as being in the same boat with the president and his men, and probably be considered for a job in the current administration.

However, a look at Soludo’s leadership of the CBN between May 29, 2004 and May 29, 2009, when he held sway there leaves much to be desired.