Who Will Tell Nigerians That Misgovernment Distributes Its Pains Without Discrimination?

 By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye  

“What luck for rulers that men do not think.” ― Adolf Hitler

Many Nigerians are stuck with zero experience of what it means to live in a decently run society. Laden with a long history of mostly inept, insensitive and less-than patriotic leaders, it seems abnormal to expect any bit of improvement in their daily existence from any government. Massive infrastructural decay due to criminal neglect and regular   reports of primitive accumulations of illicit wealth by wayward and light-fingered public officers have since lost their capacities to shock Nigerian masses. 

*Buhari and Tinubu 

In fact, most people have since adjusted their lives to perennially absorb the vicious impacts of these debilitating vices. They only extract some bit of cold comfort from continually reassuring themselves that they are in such a hopeless and helpless situation where these excruciating fallouts of leadership failure will remain the resilient, inseparable companions they are condemned to perpetually coexist with – which will always be there to severely hurt their country and diminish their joy, peace and fulfillment.   

Those who lack personal resources to obtain some form of alleviation for themselves and their families resign themselves to fate hoping that they would be able to sustain the capacity to continue enduring these searing rewards of successive rudderless leaderships – which will remain their perpetual sources of torments. 

Even the Nigerians who reside in well-ordered societies, where leaders are accountable and basic amenities are meticulously provided and maintained, once they touch down on Nigerian soil automatically adjust their minds to endure the excruciating realities of life in Nigeria. They only derive some consolation from the fact that they would soon jet out again to where sanity and orderly existence are taken for granted.    

And so, when it is election season and this set of disenchanted and disoriented Nigerians are ready to vote, they do not even bother to interrogate the character, antecedents, hollow promises and other antics of the candidates having concluded that they are all the same – members of the same cult of corruption and ineptitude; rather they would seek to extract some ephemeral emotional satiation from lending their support to a candidate  who shares the same ethnic or religious identity with them. At least, they can always derive some comfort (or even animation) from the fact that their “brother” or “sister” had also joined the rampaging band of locusts, and that their votes had helped to achieve that “feat” for their own people! 

Some others will eagerly accept contaminated crumbs from the tables of these same callous, thieving politicians who have cruelly impoverished them and mortgaged the future of their children and go all out to promote and mobilize voters and even fight for them to ensure they capture elective offices to continue their boundless looting of the public treasury.

Unfortunately, in Nigeria of today, the bad, shattering news is that there is hardly any green vegetation left anywhere again for the locusts to swoop on and devour! What we have all over the place are long stretches of excruciating aridity which only rewards with poverty and hardship all that are unlucky to have Nigeria as their home at this time, except the treasury looters and their accomplices. 

A few months before the expiration of the Muhammadu Buhari regime, the London-based Economic Intelligence Unit (EIU), the research and analysis division of the Economist Group, told the world what most people already knew, namely, that Nigeria’s “debt service payments in the first four months of 2022 totalled N1.9trn, which was greater than its total revenue of N1.6trn, according to the 2023‑2025 Medium-Term Expenditure Framework and Fiscal Strategy Paper (MTEF/FSP) draft presented by the Finance, Budget and National Planning Minister, Zainab Ahmed, on July 21st.” 

In plain language, what we were told was that the amount being spent to service the huge debts accumulated by the Buhari regime, as a result of reckless borrowings, including the USD1.96 billion foreign loan for the construction of an undesirable rail line from Nigeria to Niger Republic, had far exceeded our country’s income, forcing Nigeria into the perilous state of compounding its debt burden by borrowing more money to service debts! 

Also, the Excess Crude Account (ECA), Nigeria’s savings for the rainy day, which stood at $2.1 billion when Buhari became president, instead of increasing, had by June 2022 been brutally reduced to $35.7 million. By July of the same year, it plunged further down to $376,655. It would be a huge surprise to hear that as much as one cent remained by the time the Buhari regime exited power on May 29, 2023. 

And so clearly at sea as to how to get Nigeria out of the sticky pit it was willfully dragged into on his watch, Buhari sought to derive revolting animation from playing the profligate big brother out there, dolling out USD$1 million to Afghanistan and approving N1.14 billion for the purchase of posh SUVs for Niger Republic to “strengthen their security operations” while the country he pretended to be ruling was scarily submerged in worsening insecurity. No wonder he threatened the other day to escape to Niger Republic if anyone disturbed him in his palatial country home in Daura, Katsina State. 

 For about eight months last year, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) was on strike due to very poor working conditions, and hapless parents were forced to watch the unsightly and devastating spectacle of their children’s future being toyed with by insensitive politicians whose own children were mostly studying in quality schools and colleges in better managed countries of the world. 

When will Nigerians realize that each time they are deluded by politicians   into allowing primordial sentiments to dictate their choices during elections, that they are only empowering their sworn enemies to continue their perpetual impoverishment and continuous devaluation of their lives and those of even their unborn offspring?  Shortly after the elections, the politicians they had naively adopted as their “native idols” will hurriedly converge with their “bitter opponents” of a few days ago to plan how to share the nation’s resources, thumbing their delicate noses at their so-called supporters who had foolishly cultivated lasting enmities with neighbours and friends with whom they had enjoyed many years of cordial, beneficial relationships while campaigning and even fighting to rig in their “brother” or “sister” whom they have never met and might never meet? 

Until Nigerians decide that only competent and patriotic managers should be allowed to take over the leadership of Nigeria at the national, state and council levels and steer the country away from its determined path of disaster, Nigeria, already miserably broke and prostrate, will fail beyond what anyone had thought was possible in a country ruled by human beings. 

By the way, how do candidates even emerge in Nigeria? Are they chosen on merit? Does anyone among their party delegates bother about their capacity and character? At the national conventions of the two faces Nigeria’s terminal affliction, the All Progressives Congress (APC) and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the delegates that voted to choose their presidential candidates for the 2023 elections were reportedly bought soul and body with crispy wads of US dollars – an unwholesome indulgence that unleashed further hurt on the economy. This was apart from the hundreds of millions of naira earlier squandered to purchase nomination forms and sort out other logistics. 

Now, after investing all these millions of dollars and billions of naira to secure their parties’ tickets alone and then more billions to prosecute the campaigns and buy votes from willfully impoverished Nigerians who are ready and eager to sell their future to assuage their hunger, what would be the first mission of such candidates once any of them captures power? But will Nigerians learn anything from this gloomy reality and apply themselves to wisdom in future elections for their own good?   

If Nigerians continue to allow themselves to be deluded every now and again by ethically bankrupt politicians to discard character and competence and vote on the basis of ethnicity or religion or both, they will all be here to continue suffering the consequences of their tragic decisions. 

A new government is in town now and the cost of living has gone to the skies as poor Nigerians are asked to make sacrifices while those in power swim in obscene opulence. Since many adult Nigerians were born, every new government has asked them to tighten their belts in order to enjoy a rosy tomorrow; but can anyone point to at least one single benefit that such punitive measures inflicted on the hapless people ever brought? 

What we usually see is that after sometime, things would get worse and more sacrifices would be demanded. This will continue until the particular regime quits power and the new one will come in with a reworded version of the same deceptive language: suffer today and enjoy tomorrow! A pie in the sky meant to tantalize and delude the unwary and tragically naïve people who have stubbornly refused to learn from their past mistakes! 

 Each time Nigerians go to the polls with the wrong reasons and vote or rig in mostly corrupt and incompetent candidates, all they have done is to help the perpetuation of the unimaginable suffering they are currently writhing under. Yet, despite this self-hurting preference, many of them still wallow in the grand illusion that a patriotic and competent administration will emerge to lighten their burdens and mitigate their sufferings. But is it not foolish to continue to plant mango trees every season and expect them to produce apples? How can a people persist in the fatal indulgence of   stubbornly eating and drinking poison and yet expecting to live and flourish?    

Indeed, the excruciating pains of corruption and incompetence in leaders at all levels have no tribal marks. They do not unleash their torments with any discrimination. They viciously attack everyone irrespective of his or her place of origin, voting preference or even the tribal marks of the new misruler they have helped to enthrone.  

Nigerians from Katsina, Buhari’s home state, or even the entire North that persistently gave him the loudly trumpeted twelve-million votes, can attest to this. Their region received the lion share of the boundless insecurity and excruciating poverty that distinguished Buhari’s eight-year nightmare.    

*Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye, a journalist and writer, is the author of the book, “Nigeria: Why Looting May Not Stop” (scruples2006@yahoo.com; twitter:@ugowrite)

 

Igbo Day: Think Again

 By C. Don Adinuba

There is so much the Igbo can celebrate about themselves. Take their brilliant performance in education which is phenomenal. Whether in the West African School Certificate examination or the Joint Admissions Matriculation examination or the entrance examination into Federal Government Colleges or into the Federal Government-owned School for the Gifted and Talented in Abuja, the story is the same. Even in global educational competitions, the Igbo are outstanding.

This is by no means fortuitous. By 1945 when the Second World War ended, there were a handful of Igbo graduates because the Igbo live in the interior; the Europeans who brought education to Nigeria came through the seas. Yet, within 20 years the people had begun to compete effectively with the Yoruba who had a historical advantage of over half a century over them in terms of higher education; the Yoruba have towns like Badagry and Lagos which are on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. By  1965, the Igbo had, as Chinua Achebe put it in The Trouble With Nigeria, ”wiped out their educational handicap in one fantastic burst of energy”.

Nigeria: Remove The Absurdities Not The Subsidies

 By Ige Asemudara

Successive Nigerian governments have proven irresponsible and largely insensitive to the suffering of the people. In its few weeks of mounting the power rostrum, the Tinubu administration has not evinced any exceptional trait that can trigger a perception that there will be a difference. Its starting point of glibly pronouncing that “subsidy is gone” without any thorough ideological – especially social and economical – evaluation is the barest slap planted on the faces of suffering Nigerians in recent time. 

It beats one hollow to fathom that this administration would accept to implement a policy conceived by an economic novice as the Buhari regime which lacked the tact, faith, courage or conviction to remove subsidy in its eight years of woeful hold on the nation. It does sound like eating hemlock for another person’s suicide mission.

Student Loans Law: Tinubu’s Populist And Half-Baked Policy

 By Olu Fasan

Bola Tinubu, Nigeria’s new president, was determined to hit the ground running from his first day in office. He was haunted by the ghost of his somnolent predecessor, Muhammadu Buhari, who sat desultorily on his hands, doing nothing for the first six months of his administration in 2015. Unlike Buhari, who was called, and relished being called, “Baba Go Slow”, Tinubu has been called, and enjoys being called, “Baba Go Fast”! But, in governance, going fast can be as bad as, even worse than, going slow.

*Bola Tinubu 

This is because good government depends on good policy making, and good policy making requires thoughtfulness, proper planning and a comprehensive analysis of the problem. However, Tinubu has shown a penchant for populist and half-baked policies. Populist, because they’re eye-catching and intended to show he cares about ordinary people; half-baked, because they’re poorly thought through, and defy basic rules of good policymaking.

Peter Obi @ 62: A Consistency In Charity

 By Ike Abonyi 

Yesterday, Wednesday, July 19, 2023, the former Governor of Anambra state and the Presidential Candidate of the Labour Party in the February 25, 2023 election, Peter Obi was 62 years old. On Monday he alerted his friends and well-wishers of the date and reminded them how his birthday is usually celebrated, devoid of owambe, but a time to think about the poor, the less, and the underprivileged in our society. 

*Peter Obi 

According to him in his reminder message “Wednesday 19th July 2023, marks my 62nd Birthday. While I remain immensely grateful to God for His infinite mercies, I still maintain my decision of over 20 years, that I will not celebrate my birthdays in today’s Nigeria, with the current deplorable state of the nation. 

Odds Against N500bn Palliatives By Government

 By Onyemaechi Eze

The removal of fuel subsidy by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on the first day of assumption of office was ill-timed, out-rightly ill-advised and uncalled for. The president with his team was in a better position to understand that without an enabling environment, a team on ground to drive policies, decisions made without right thoughts are always counter-productive. Nigeria is unfortunately a nation where government does not function as expected even when a team is in place, let alone when there is none.

The decision had upon announcement immediately jolted the foundation of market forces and sent shock waves through the fabrics of the general economy. Consequently, the people were exposed to unimaginable hardships. Everyone is sad, pained and disenchanted as cost of goods and services increased exponentially and still increasing. The exchange rate along with inflationary trend leaves everyone dazed. Even the rich and politicians are crying!

Tinubonomic And 8000 Litres Of Poverty

 By Gbenro Olajuyigbe

In intervention during emergencies, there is what is called Appropriate Response. Impact of inappropriate response is worse than no response. Responding to the ‘needs’ of 12 million households’ out of 43 million households in a severely polarized country is bad enough. 

*Bola Tinubu 

Aside from the existing inequality between the poor and the rich, it further bifurcates the tribe of the poor, potentially with implications for uneven patriotism and implosive crisis.  Giving the selected beneficiary (270 Naira/ 35 Cents per day) in situation where those who earn 1.9 dollar per day are regarded as living in extreme poverty amounts to glorification of poverty. 5000 Naira per poor household under Buhari, which had more intrinsic value than the touted Tinubu’s 8000 Naira, threw 133 million people into nadir of poverty.

Peter Obi And Endless Possibilities

 By Valentine Obienyem

Nigeria is crying for liberation. A lot of things have gone wrong in the country. Anambra was once like that but underwent a profound transformation from 2006 to 2014. In those years, the state witnessed an interregnum of peace and progress. At the end, the state was left with over N75 billion and other surpluses amidst recording the highest development among all the states. 

*Peter Obi 

Unfortunately, his successor ended up destroying everything that he built; proving that from civilization to barbarism only take years provided a barbarian lurking around the gate is offered a little inroad. To whom, more than any other one man, do we owe that precious and epochal liberation? Mr. Peter Obi.

Nigeria: How Subsidy Removal May Collapse The Economy

 By Luke Onyekakeyah

Ordinarily, the removal of subsidy on energy sources – petrol, kerosene, diesel and electricity would free up billions of naira for government to plow into other social and economic needs such as infrastructural development, give incentive for domestic refineries to produce more petroleum products, reduce the country’s over dependence on imported fuel, boost the economy and create jobs. Some of these are very contentious in the Nigerian context.

This line of thinking may be possible for stable economies and not one that is deep in crisis like Nigeria. Truth is that the removal of subsidy is an ill wind that could collapse the beleaguered and fragile economy of Nigeria.

Peter Obi Is Not A god

 By Chuks Iloegbunam 

(Chuks Iloegbunam uses the birthday of the Labour Party’s presidential candidate to celebrate him and the Obidient Movement) 

*Peter Obi

Yes! There’s nothing they haven’t said of Peter Obi. They have charged that he is not a god. They have said he is no more than a political opportunist. They have ridiculed his promise to change Nigeria from consumer to producer. They pooh-poohed as unfounded the statistics the man churned out on successes abroad that could be replicated back home. But the traducers wouldn’t reckon with reality. The subject of their insistent lambasting never ascribed divinity to himself. He did not circle his head with sanctity’s hallo. In the league of politicians, he didn’t claim to be more human. He only asked for the chance to lift a comatose country. 

The Governor of Enugu State

 By Chuks Iloegbunam 

There is this social media skit on democracy that is forever entertaining. In it, a teacher tells his students that, despite Abraham Lincoln’s classic definition, democracy was actually “the government of some people by some people and for some people.” Government, stressed the teacher, was for those with “bastard money.” 

*Peter Mbah

He soon proved the point, for the principal decrees the class must have a prefect. Two students vie for the position. The female student gets a majority of the votes. His male opponent receives a single vote. But he had boasted that his father was stupendously rich and had demonstrated it by giving the teacher a backhander. The teacher announces the briber, the class prefect. To the class’s protestations, he asks them to go to court and storms out. 

Self-Employment: The Path To Freedom

 By Timi Olubiyi

The number of small businesses in the formal and informal sectors of the Nigerian economy continues to increase due to the vital role that small businesses play as a driving force of any economy and the pillar of major developed economies worldwide. Despite Nigeria’s reliance on oil and revenues derived from it, the country’s economy is primarily supported by small businesses, including nano, kiosk, micro, and small businesses in particular.

A visible reference within this space includes the vulcanizers, corner shop owners, single retail marketers, repairers, painters, business centre operators, restaurants, market women, and men in the various open markets, among others. And the formal operations such as law firms, accounting firms, consulting, fintech, and real estate companies, and so on in the country.

The Game of Thrones at First Bank Nigeria

 By Ijeoma Nwogwugwu

Billionaire businessman, Femi Otedola, must be excreting bricks. In recent weeks, the often-ebullient businessman has told anyone who cares to listen that he is about to emerge Chairman of FBN Holdings Plc (FBN Holdco) – one of Africa’s largest diversified financial services groups and parent of First Bank of Nigeria Limited, the country’s oldest lender. Otedola, from all indications, was recently nominated a Non-executive Director of FBN Holdco, subject to the approval of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), as is always the case with all financial institutions regulated by the banking system regulator.

His hope was that after his nomination is approved by the CBN, at the next annual general meeting of FBN Holdco slated for August 15, 2023, other shareholders/directors of the group will elect him chairman. It remains uncertain how Otedola intends to be elected chairman, given that the current holdco chairman, Adamu Abdullahi, is an appointee of the central bank, albeit on an interim basis. 

Peter Obi As Democracy Role Model

 By Dan Onwukwe

Every election campaign has its cadence and rhythm, style and sparkle that sets it apart from previous ones. Similarly, it throws up unique individuals that have strength of character and conviction that the rest of us look up, especially in turbulent times. In all sincerity, looking back at the February  25 Presidential election, Mr Peter Obi, the Presidential candidate of the Labour Party, is an exemplar, a role model for anyone still searching for a solid philosophy that should guide and drive his ambition in life. It’s even more so for our new generation of politicians, the youth, in particular.

       *Peter Obi  

It’s not for nothing that when Obi declared his ambition to contest for the presidency, the country was aglitter. The  youths who have been yearning for  new ways of doing things, became very excited. Peter Obi, it seems, woke them up from slumber.  

Nigeria Should Avoid The Era Of Technical Hitches

 By Tonnie Iredia

In the life of a nation, especially in the third world, some strange occurrences occasionally take the centre stage to the anxiety of the people. No one is usually able to dissuade everyone from superstition during such periods especially because the occurrences are felt across board in the relevant community.

From history, we know for example, that a short period after the annulment of the famous June 12, 1993 presidential elections in Nigeria, two major leaders associated with the development died suddenly. The two leaders, General Sani Abacha who was then Head of State and Chief Moshood Abiola from whom the electoral victory was snatched reportedly died within the space of one-month in 1998. Their dissimilar deaths were attributed to what was called cardiac arrest. 

Gas Flaring Means Cash Burning

 By Ray Ekpu

Most literate Nigerians have heard or read about gas flaring but it may not mean much to them. Some of them may know that gas flaring is done in the oil producing states of the country but they may not know what it means to Nigeria or Nigerians who live in those areas.

Even though it is a very important subject in economic terms it is not a subject that most people talk or write about. But it is a subject that has featured in the lives of some Nigerians since oil was discovered in 1956 in Nigeria. That is because gas flaring brings a lot of misery to those who live where the gas is flared. We will come to this later.

In Senegal, The People Have Foiled A Constitutional Coup

 By Chidi Odinkalu

On July 3, 2023, Senegal’s president, Macky Sall, in power since 2012, publicly renounced his aspiration for a constitutionally prohibited third term, sparking asynchronised outbreak of ostentatious back-slapping. Nigeria’s former president, Goodluck Jonathan, convener of the impressively-named, West African Elders Forum, WAEF, fired off a letter describing Macky Sall as a paragon of “sacrificial leadership”. Chairperson of the Commission of the African Union, Moussa Faki Mahamat, was full of “admiration for statesmanship which privileged Senegal’s interests.”

Describing President Sall’s announcement as an act of “courage, humility, and deep faith in Senegalese democracy”, Executive Director of UNAIDS, Winnie Byanyima, claimed that he had told her in confidence two years ago that “he was not going to run for a third term but that he would announce this towards the end of his term.”

Federal Universities And Hike In Fees

 By Jerome-Mario Utomi

It is pedestrian information that while Nigerians were waiting for the commencement of governance, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on the day of inauguration, precisely on Monday May 29, 2023, announced the removal of fuel subsidy without putting palliatives in place to assist ameliorate the harsh impact of such policy reversal. 

Also newsy is that before the dust raised by such a decision could settle, another was up, as the Federal Government again implemented a coordinated but thoughtless hike in fees paid by students of most of the tertiary institutions of higher learning in the country.  What is however different is that such harrowing decisions have left varying degrees of unpalatable impacts on Nigerians. 

As Nigerians Grapple With Escalating Poverty

 By Adeze Ojukwu  

The excruciating pain and penury arising from soaring food and fuel prices have left many Nigerians seething with anger and rage. 

Since independence, the country has had a history of bad governance, characterized by graft, tribalism and unrest, due to political, cultural and religious vulnerabilities. But never in its chequered history has the society been embroiled in such massive levels of imbroglio, which peaked during the eight-year devastating hegemony of the immediate past administration. 

We’re Beasts Not Humans: Italy’s New Law Of The Sea

 By Owei Lakemfa

Italy, the beautiful south-central European country that juts into the Mediterranean Sea and embraces the Alps, giving mountainous hugs to Switzerland and France, is one of the earliest human civilizations. So civilized that its animals are protected in the country’s constitution and have fundamental rights such as the right of a dog to be walked out in the streets, at least thrice weekly. Animals kept for farming purposes have the right to food, water, satisfactory environmental conditions and right to free movement.

If animals can be so well regarded how much more humans? However, that is the basic issue. While the Italian state treats its citizens with dignity, it has laws on migrants headed for its shores that states clearly that their lives are not only worth less than that of a dog or rabbit, but that they do not even have a right to life.