Nigeria: Three Old Men In The Ring

By Dare Babarinsa

The people of Lafia trooped out last Tuesday to welcome the nation’s number one citizen to Nasarawa State. The enthusiastic welcome was an indication that Buhari still packs a lot of muscle and those who are thinking of taking him on should consider what they are up against. However, it is clear too that the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) is restive and rebellion is rearing its head from unexpected quarters. This is more so when its reign, despite the resounding victory Buhari recorded in 2015, now seems precarious if not endangered.

*Babangida, Obasanjo and Buhari 

 Buhari is the first politician to lead the progressive camp to victory at the Federal level. All attempts in the past, in 1959, 1964, 1979, 1983 and since the return of democratic rule in 1999 have failed before the tumultuous ride to power by Citizen Buhari. Now he is facing allegations of reckless partisanship, unblinking nepotism and of heart-breaking incompetence. It does not help matters that some terrorist elements have succeeded in hijacking the sporadic burst of violence by suspected Fulani herdsmen and have killed more Nigerians under the watch of Buhari than even the notorious Boko Haram insurgents.

Beyond Obasanjo’s Letter To Buhari

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

No profound insight has been offered in former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s declaration of President Muhammadu Buhari as having not passed muster. He only articulated what has not only been in the public domain but has equally been kept in focus in the domestic sphere of the president. Of course, we cannot forget so soon that Aisha, the First Lady, has been warning her husband of the political misfortune that could trail his re-election bid if he fails to make necessary amends and rescue his governance style from being a blight on the citizens’ lives. Even in the early days of this government when it was still unvarnished amid the seeming towering popularity of Buhari and when the whimpers of protest against his lack of leadership acumen were easily dismissed as emanating from ‘wailers’ who were nostalgic for a dark past of the nation, Mrs. Buhari was already giving forebodings of the sad end of this administration.

*President Buhari and Obasanjo 

Yet, we must appreciate the significance of Obasanjo’s letter which lies in its ineluctably ominous character. Obasanjo could be seen as an angel of death or an undertaker whose letters only serve as the hearse to convey a government that has irredeemably crashed to its grave. This was the case of former President Goodluck Jonathan.

Buhari’s Presidency: Facts And Fiction

By Abraham Ogbodo

I am worried about the ongoing narrative that Nigerians desired a change from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) misrule and agreed in 2015 to kick out Goodluck Jonathan and vote in Muhammadu Buhari as President.

Nothing sounds more fraudulent. Was there a consensus at anytime on that? The answer is no. Rather, the Buhari presidency was a risk specifically undertaken by a tiny but powerful clique solely for its benefit and not the benefit of Nigerians.

*Jonathan and Buhari

Now that the risk has failed and woefully too, the same clique is trying to change the narrative and make the mistake look like everybody’s mistake. It will not happen. I know the truth is always a casualty when history is being hurriedly written from many perspectives. But not this time please because I am going to tell the truth to shame the devil and stop it from escaping with vain glory. 

2019: Because Buhari Is Too Old To Run

By Martins Oloja

I would like rely on some ancient words of a wise king who once said, “there is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heaven”. Yes, there is a time to be quiet. There is a time to be loud; a time to be politically correct in the interest of peace. And there is a time to refrain from political correctness and speak truth to power in public interest. And this should include a time to tell our best friends the truth and nothing but the truth, especially the one to set them free from unnecessary fear. I am therefore fully persuaded that it is time to tell our friends, especially in the far North, some plain truth about Nigeria. Yes, Nigeria whose destiny all of us are gambling with at the moment. 

*

For the record, I have more friends in the North. I have had some personal relationship with the North that spanned about three decades. My professional profile was remarkably shaped in December 1990 when the premier newspaper in Abuja owned by investors from the North appointed me Editor of their newspaper, The Abuja Newsday. I once narrated part of the remarkable story of the first newspaper in the nation’s capital here. I had then noted that Alhaji Bukar Zarma, former editor of New Nigerian who hails from Borno state, set up the newspaper and appointed all the editors without consideration for religion and ethnicity. The Chairman of the Board of Directors was Alhaji Hassan Adamu, Wakilin Adamawa.

The Resurgence Of Boko Haram Attacks: Implications For the Nigerian State

By Arthur Agwuncha Nwankwo
One of the major backdrops upon which the Buhari administration came to power was the promise to defeat or rather crush Boko Haram within the first three months of APC’s government. There is no doubt that the Boko Haram insurgency group has been at war with the Nigerian State for about seven years now. The major reason for the insurgency is to create a pure Islamic Caliphate in the core north of Nigeria. For the insurgents, the secularity of the Nigerian State has become a huge hindrance to the puritanical pontifications of Islam and only the creation of a pure Islamic state would pacify them. For them, western education is evil and a major source of pollution to Islam. 

It was for this reason that the group initiated its earth-scorch policy of annihilating anything in its path to achieving this goal. The result has been the massive destruction of lives and property and crippling of the economy of the core north. The government of former President Jonathan was perceived to have been timid and clueless in containing the scourge of the insurgent group and in the run-in to the 2015 general elections in Nigeria, the issue of Boko Haram became an alluring political campaign matter. 

The Dancing Python And The Smiling Crocodile

By SOC Okenwa

The reckless militarization of the South-East and South-South geopolitical zones of Nigeria never started today nor yesterday. The federal government has been accused in the past - and present - of treating Igboland as a conquered territory. I remember when I travelled back home in 2013 and was driving from Onitsha to Benin City I had encountered a monstrous 'go-slow' just before the Niger Bridge head. From Upper Iweka Road towards the major entry and exit point to and from the South-East I spent several hours in the artificial gridlock that stretched well over a kilometer! It was a disgusting, suffocating spectacle to behold as motorists heading towards the bridge were forced to drive at a snail’s speed. The heavily-armed soldiers were directing traffic and monitoring every vehicle that passed by, parking some for verification of documents or passengers or waving off others.

*Burutai and Buhari 

And again traveling from my hometown of Ihiala to Port Harcourt a few days earlier, I had met some gun-wielding military and paramilitary officers posted to mount roadblocks on the ever-busy Onitsha/Owerri Expressway. After an altercation with the officers at one of the many checkpoints, I wondered if in the northern states some Igbo soldiers or policemen could be drafted and allowed to do what the predominantly northern military elements were doing on our roads in 'Biafraland.' Or was that the price to pay for losing out in the 1967-70 pogrom? Was it a harsh reminder of defeat?

The ongoing Operation Python Dance 2 in the South-East and the imminent relaunching of Operation Crocodile Smile in the South-South areas of the embattled country are not only provocative but intimidatory. The so-called "show of force" is a show of shame that advertises our country to the outside world as a nation with the jackboot mentality. It is primarily meant to intimidate the people and silence them. We hold that in a democracy such an anti-constitutional demonstration of crude force that believes in 'crush-crush' policy in a time of relative peace is uncalled for and unnecessary.

Nullification of Kenya’s Presidential Election: Implications for Nigerian Democracy

By Arthur Agwuncha Nwankwo
The recent nullification by the Kenyan Supreme Court of the August 8, 2017 presidential election in Kenya has stolen the headlines in both local and international media and has dominated conversations among so many people and groups. While the courage and boldness of the Kenyan Supreme Court is emulative and instructive, one impression that the international media has tried to create is that this is not in the character of African politics- for the judiciary to affect the political process in the manner the Kenyan Supreme Court has done. I agree that this is the first time in Africa where the judiciary has stuck to its convictions and fended off executive pressure and blackmail to deliver what has reverberated across the globe as a historic feat.

In real terms, it is in the character of Africans to expose and distance themselves from evil and deceit. This character of justice and equity is woven into the African psyche and consciousness but was significantly eroded at the behest of alien values imposed on the continent by colonial experience; an experience that has elevated the warped and otiose idea of “political correctness” far and above moral conscience, truth, justice and equity. I am, indeed, overjoyed that in my life time, Kenya, through its Supreme Court has given me hope that African values of truth are still alive; it has pointed the way forward for other African countries; it has shown that our old values of speaking the truth at all times without really caring whose ox is gored can be reinvented; and that being politically correct at the expense of truth and justice is the perfect recipe for the death of nations.

Jonathan: An Unlikely Avenger

By Amanze Obi

I am fascinated by the brewing effort by the authorities to package and sell our ex-president, Goodluck Jonathan, as an avenger. A section of the media had reported that the former president was involved in the formation and ongoing activities of the Niger Delta Avengers (NDA). The story was not speculative. It was declarative enough. If your imagination, like that of many Nigerians, has been saturated with the oddities that change has inflicted on us, you cannot but see the new image being foisted on Jonathan as comical, and therefore, fascinating. It will provide us with the opportunity to be treated to some more histrionics.

*Jonathan and Buhari

According to the newspapers that carried the ‘scoop’, the story is the product of an intelligence report.  The report claimed that Jonathan started meeting with the avengers before the 2015 general elections.  The militia group, it said, was put in place to respond in prescribed ways should Jonathan lose the elections. One such way was to do what it is doing at moment. The renewed militancy in the Niger Delta region is, therefore, believed to be the product of Jonathan’s loss. That is the story before us.

But we must note that before its recrudescence, militancy has been an issue of concern in the region. The return of civil rule in the country after many years of military interregnum brought with it a new fervour. It provided the citizenry the opportunity to let off steam. The military muzzled free speech. Civil rule was the obverse of that.

It was in the wake of the new order that some elements in the oil-rich Niger Delta, who felt that they were not getting their due from the oil exploration and exploitation in their domain began to raise voices of dissent. They queried the situation where the goose that lays the golden egg is being starved. Their repudiation and rejection of this state of affairs eventuated in the agitation for resource control. That was the political angle to the agitation.

But it also had a military wing. Some angry youths, who do not have the patience for verbal engagements resorted to brute force. Many took to oil bunkering. They needed the proceeds from the crude to line their pockets and feel a sense of belonging. If they could not share in the oil wealth legitimately, they can, at least, help themselves with the crumbs.  It was in this way that some of them seized oil and gas installations and bombed them at will. Those who stood in their way, especially foreign nationals, were taken hostage and freed only when some handsome ransom was paid.

As should be expected, the unwholesome activities of the militants pitted them against the government. But it took ex-president Umaru Yar’Adua’s amnesty programme for some level of sanity to return to the region. The Jonathan administration, being an offshoot of Yar’Adua’s, also enjoyed relative peace from the Niger Delta militants.

But all of that have changed under the Muhammadu Buhari regime, owing largely to the disposition of the president to the Christian South. The president’s actions and inactions, so far, give the impression that he wrested power forcefully from an enemy and, as such, the enemy must be stigmatised and punished. 

How Buhari Ruined Our Economy, Bankrupted 34 States Despite Fuel Price Hike

By Deji Adeyanju

In about one year of Muhammadu Buhari’s misrule, Nigeria dropped from being the largest economy in Africa to who-knows-where, as well as the number one investment destination in Africa to number 13. What a difference one year can make.

Inflation rate that was below 9% when former President Goodluck Jonathan handed over to General Buhari on May 29, 2015 is now at 15.6% under Buhari. In one year, Buhari has taken our inflation rate from single digit to double digits.

*Buhari 

Our GDP growth rate was at 6.95% under Jonathan, now it is -0.36%, the worst in Nigeria’s history. Officially, our GDP is in ‘recession’. If this is not a sign that President Buhari has ruined the economy completely in just one year, what is?

In 2013/14, Nigeria was the 3rd fastest growing economy in the world, now we are 29th in the world. With the country’s current negative GDP of -0.36, Nigeria is set to be kicked out of the top 50 economies of the world in no time.

It is important to note that there are only 4 countries with negative GDP growth in Africa in the last quarter and Nigeria is now one of them.

The notion that President Buhari met an empty treasury when he took over is false because President Jonathan handed over $30 billion in Foreign Reserves, $5 billion in accrued Liquefied Natural Gas dividends, $3 billion in the Excess Crude Account, and around $2.4 billion in the Sovereign Wealth Fund.

Buhari was handed over a budget of about N4.5 trillion passed by Jonathan, few weeks before handover. Around N5.3 trillion was received as oil income in 2015, how was this money squandered by Buhari?

With the landing cost of petrol to the country at N89 per litre given the drop in price of crude oil, the Buhari’s federal government still increased fuel price to N145 per litre. Effectively Buhari is making a profit of N56 per litre of petrol bought by Nigerian. So, why does Buhari keep giving the impression the country is broke?

With this increased revenue from a new income stream, why hasn’t the Buhari government this new income? Why can’t states get more money from the federation account? Why can’t states pay salaries?

There are those blaming governors for their inability to pay salaries after spending one year under Buhari. They are simply naive or uneducated.

The federal government of Nigeria – Abuja – is a quasi colonialist that controls everything from the states, yet it starves the states of their own money. When people say governors go to Abuja to beg for funds, I laugh.

What does Abuja generate? Absolutely NOTHING.

Nigeria: Federal Republic Of Inequality?

By Magnus Onyibe

The Federal Republic of Nigeria, FGN is the country we all call our own. Our country comprises of about 250 tribes or ethnic nationalities with the main ones being Hausa/Fulani,Yoruba, lgbo, Kanuri, ljaw, Nupe, Calabari, Tiv, Ijebu, lgara, Urhobo, Jukun, ldoma, fufulde, Ika Ibibio, Edo etc. In the inaugural speech of President Muhammadu Buhari on May 29, 2015, he was famously quoted as saying  ”l belong to everyone , l belong to no one”.

*Buhari with former Vice President Ekwueme 

That very welcoming and reassuring remark, which resonated very well with most Nigerians, became a quotable quote that featured in myriads of comments in the mainstream and online media, just as it also became a talking head in torrents of radio and television shows. The reason the quote was significant is quite simple. In the run up to the 2015 general elections, campaign rhetorics vaunting ethnic and regional sentiments were so rife that Nigeria became too polarised in such manner that the Hausa/Fulani in the northern parts of Nigeria were stacked behind, ex-military head of state, Muhammadu Buhari, who is from the Hausa/Fulani  stock, while the lgbos, ljaws and other minority tribes in the South east and South south part of Nigeria, queued up behind the then incumbent president, GoodLuck Jonathan, who is ljaw, and one of their own.

The Yorubas in the South west, who having had a shot at the presidency from 1999 to 2007,when ex-army General, Olusegun Obasanjo transited from prison to presidency, became the bride to be wooed by both the political forces from the north and south south parts of Nigeria. In the end, the Yorubas aligned with the north through acceptance of the Vice President slot which the acclaimed leader of the Yorubas, Bola Tinubu, former governor of Lagos state, conceded to a man of impeccable character, an evangelical pastor,his long time ally and former attorney general of Lagos state, Yemi Osinbajo.

Prior to his success at the 2015 polls, President Buhari had tried and failed to successfully clinch the presidency in 2003, 2007 and 2011 but on each of those occasions that he lost, Buhari swept the votes in the core northern states like, Katsina, Kebbi, Zamfara , Sokoto, etc, sometimes garnering about 12 million votes. Even with Yoruba’s vote in the kitty, Buhari still needed the votes from the South east and South south to fulfill the constitutional requirements that votes must be garnered from all parts of Nigeria for a candidate to be deemed to have won. This is to ensure that a situation whereby a particular candidate from an ethnic group with superior numerical strength, does not ride into the presidency relying only on votes from his Kith and kin.

That’s how Rotimi Amaechi, former governor of Rivers state, the heart  of South south, now minister of transport and Rochas Okorocha, incumbent governor of Imo state, the ground zero of lgbo land, became the game changers. With their support, substantial votes  in Rivers and lmo states were brought into Buhari’s kitty that already had the Hausa/Fulani and Yoruba votes and the rest, as they say is history. Politics is a game of strategy and democracy is also about numbers of people that politicians are able to swing to their side, which justifies the political dictum,majority carries the vote.

In 2015, Buhari reached out and built bridges across many deserts and rainforests into Yoruba land as well as crossed many bridges and rivers into lgbo and lkwere/Calabari mangroves and creeks and he reaped the  reward of the hard work by becoming Nigeria’s number one citizen. Now, it’s pay back time. In politics, as in business, settling lOUs is usually a very testy experience. In what many thought was a Freudian slip like the one famously made by British prime minister, David Cameroon about Nigeria being a fantastical corrupt country, in the wake of the anti corruption summit in London recently, president Buhari during an interactive session with some Nigerians and Americans, on the sideline of his visit to the USA, stated that he cannot be expected to treat the 95% who voted for him in the north equally with the less than 5% who voted in the south.

As expected in a multicultural multiethnic and multi-religious society, the comment got twisted and dissected with all manners of bias on online media platforms. Unsurprisingly, many members of the elite commentariat also took Mr. President up on the remark from the optics of the numerous ethnic and other primordial sentiments, and l thought the high level of condemnation would challenge Mr. president to offer some clarifications but that was not the case. With the public hue and cry about appointments so far made into executive positions, it would appear that Mr. President is sticking to his guns-literarily-to reward mainly voters from his home base by skewing appointments in their favour.

Buhari With Idiagbon

By Farouk Martins Aresa

President Buhari’s one-year anniversary has been anything but glorious. It has been pitiful compared to his last time around. It is a different era, yet Buhari has done what most Northern rulers do best. When he loaded his personal staff with Northerners, some of us defended him based on the fact that he was overthrown in a palace coup. He has gone further by reserving most of the strategic positions for Northerners as if Southerners and Federal character do not exist.

*Buhari 

Late Idiagbon might have taken more heat than he deserved during the first coming of Buhari as military dictator. They ruled by fiat, regardless of what others thought. Idiagbon and the Supreme Military Council then had more input in order to gratify Buhari’s power base. Eventually, they confirmed his fears and overthrew him and Idiagbon. In this case, we realize that Osinbajo is in a civilian democracy. A Vice-President is used as the President deems fit.

Idiagbon was in a way more powerful than Osibanjo as the military dispensation gave them the clout to carry out War Against Indiscipline (WAI). Most of the people that voted for Buhari this time around wanted some grip on the national purse that was looted beyond reason with so much impunity. This gave Buhari an edge over the former President Jonathan. As far as those that voted for him are concerned, he has somehow lived up to it but below expectation.

Some of us would want him to go further. While we do realize constrains of democracy, the rule of law and due process, there are ways of confronting a killer disease if the life of the country is at stake. The same way western countries confront terrorism before it devours their cultural or normal way of life. They created task forces, detentions and outside jurisdictions.

Buhari could have gone as far as Obasanjo did with the atmosphere of accountability and the fear of consequences for the type of impunity we saw in the last Administration of President Jonathan. Ribadu was forceful, visible and acted as a deterrent for corruption under Obasanjo. He even claimed he used OBJ to investigate his friends and challenged anyone to point to any head of state that gave an investigating officer so much leverage and power.

Nigeria: Change For The Worse, Litany Of Failures

By Fem Aribasala

When Buhari seized power, Nigeria’s GDP was $444. When he was overthrown in 1985, Nigeria’s GDP had dropped dramatically to $344. When Buhari seized power, one dollar exchanged for 0.724 naira. But by the time he was overthrown, one dollar exchanged for 0.894 naira; a 23% devaluation in barely two years. It was not surprising, therefore, that there was wild jubilation throughout the length and breadth of Nigeria when Buhari was overthrown.

*Buhari 

Litany Of Failure

History is now repeating itself in Nigeria. Since electing Buhari as president one year ago, Nigeria’s GDP has plummeted, with the economy suffering a negative growth in the first quarter of 2016; the worst in 25 years. Prices have skyrocketed. Investors have packed their bags and left Nigeria. Job losses and lay-offs have increased geometrically. Petrol stations have surreptitiously doubled their prices. Nigeria is now on the cusp of a recession.

Buhari was handed over $30 billion in foreign reserves by the Jonathan administration. He inherited over $2.5 billion in the Sovereign Wealth Fund; $1.4 billion in the ECA; and $4.65 billion in back taxes from NLNG. But virtually all of this has been squandered in one year of gross incompetence.

The president took the illegal and ill-advised step of providing N713 billion as bailout for insolvent state governments, without the approval of the national assembly, only to discover that those monies were squandered and not even used as intended to pay salary arrears. He squandered billions of dollars defending doggedly an unrealistic official value of the naira, only to finally admit defeat after the damage had been done.

Billions of dollars were mopped up by corrupt officials and shrewd middlemen who obtained dollars at the official N200 to $1 rate, only to sell this for huge profit at the N380 to $1 black market rate.

Babatunde Fashola boasted while in opposition that: “A serious government will fix the power problem in six months.” Now in office as Minister of Power for over six months, power blackouts have been unprecedented under his watch condemning the Buhari administration by his own words as a most unserious government.

Change For Worse

Goodluck Jonathan warned Nigerians about the bankruptcy of Buhari and the APC. His words have now become prophetic. He said in the heat of the 2015 election campaign: “The choice before Nigerians in the coming election is simple. It is a choice between going forward and backward, between the new ways and old ways, between freedom and repression, between a record of visible achievements and beneficial reforms and desperate power seekers with empty promises.”

After 365 days of a disastrous Buhari presidency, only diehard Buharimaniacs can deny that Jonathan’s warning has not come true. Propaganda has an expiration date, and it must now be abundantly clear that the expiration date for the hot air of Buhari’s government has long passed. Many of those like Dele Sobowale, Oby Ezekwesili and Wole Soyinka, who sang the praises of Buhari during the 2015 election, are already having a buyer’s remorse. Most Nigerians now realise they have been sold a fake bill of goods by Buhari and the APC.

Deregulation: Same Policy, Same Issues, But Different Politics!

By Reuben Abati

This thing called democracy, particularly the Nigerian brand, never ceases to throw up new and intriguing lessons about the relationship between government and the people, and the larger, complex socio-political environment. I had gone to Lagos on an assignment in the last two days of the year 2011, when around midnight I received a phone call from someone close to the corridors of power, informing me that a meeting had just been concluded in Abuja where a decision had been taken to deregulate the downstream petroleum sector, and thus, in effect remove the subsidy on Premium Motor Spirit (Petrol).

*Reuben Abati 

I told him I was aware of plans to that effect, since the President had been holding a series of meetings with various stakeholders and constituencies on the same subject, but as at the time I left for Lagos, no final decision had been taken. The fellow insisted he knew what he was talking about and that in the morning, the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulation Agency (PPPRA) would make the announcement. Sometimes in the corridors of power, informal stakeholders could enjoy faster access and be even more powerful than persons with formal responsibilities. There are persons and groups whose livelihoods are so dependent on government and the people in power that even a whisper at the highest level resonates immediately as an echo in their ears. I learnt very early never to underestimate such persons.

As it turned out, Nigerians were greeted with the Happy New Year news of deregulation of the downstream sector on January 1, 2012 and if you’d remember, hell broke loose. It was the end of the Nigerian people’s honeymoon with the Jonathan administration, the beginning of a long nightmare, and an opportunity for the opposition to launch an unending campaign of blackmail, name-calling and abuse against the administration. I received an early morning summon to leave Lagos and return immediately to the Villa.

The Jonathan administration was definitely not the first to seek to deregulate the downstream sector and end a regime of subsidy, as a means of ensuring greater transparency, efficiency and competition. Since 1987, every administration had tried to manage this aspect of the curse of oil. Nigeria is the sixth largest producer of oil in OPEC, and the second largest exporter of the product in Africa, at a time after Libya, at other times, after Angola. But the big problem has always been making the product available to Nigerians at home, in an efficient manner and as they say, at an “appropriate” or “correct” price. The mismanagement of oil resource, which accounts for about 90% of the country’s exports, is at the heart of corruption in Nigeria.

Fuel Price Hike: Buhari Must Apologise

By Ochereome Nnanna

 PRESIDENT  Muhammadu Buhari owes us apologies for the latest hike from N86.50k to N145 of the official pump price for Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) announced on Thursday last week by his Deputy Minister of Petroleum, Dr. Emmanuel Kachikwu.

First, he must apologise to Nigerians, on behalf of himself, his political party, the All Progressives Congress, APC, his foremost apologist, Professor Tam David-West, Labour and the hired “civil society” groups who truncated the deregulation of the downstream sector of the petroleum industry in January 2012. Second, he must also apologise to his predecessor, ex-President Goodluck Jonathan, who lost his post-electoral “honeymoon” period early in 2012 when he stuck out his neck in an attempt to lay to rest, once and for all, the bogey of fuel scarcity and its attendant high cost and human suffering which have trailed the nation for nearly thirty years.

After maligning the Otuoke-born lecturer, he went back to implement a policy that Jonathan would have carried out four years ago if not for irresponsible and unpatriotic opposition. Whenever the deregulation of this sector is contemplated, people always say the timing is wrong without telling us when the timing will ever be right. Certainly, the timing for this steep hike is wrong. It comes so soon after the equally steep hike in the cost of electricity tariffs which the Federal Government through its Power, Works and Housing Minister, Babatunde Fashola, openly approves of.

It comes at a time when thousands of people are losing their jobs and most employers cannot pay the salaries of their workers because of the parlous economic situation brought about by low oil prices, the crash in the value of the naira and the inability of the Buhari administration to tackle them. To top it all, Labour is priming for a new national minimum wage of between N56,000 to N90,000. Now that the official price of petrol has been nearly doubled, who knows the amount that Labour will now ask for? If ever there was a right time for the deregulation of the downstream sector, the year 2012 was it. We had just emerged unscathed from the worldwide economic meltdown of 2008/2009. By 2012 our Brent crude was selling for $114.26 per barrel, a trend that was generally sustained until toward the end of 2014 when the tide of transitional political was in full swing.

Unlike now when economic activities are low, poverty rate is higher than ever and most investors have fled, there was money in the system then. The economy was even becoming increasingly “dollarised” as a result of oil-fed liquidity in the system. In fact, it was shortly after this that a review of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product terms showed that Nigeria had emerged as the largest economy in Africa and the continent’s number one investors’ destination. Nigeria could have weathered the shock of deregulation much more easily than now. But the opposition would have none of it. Labour unions went on strike.