For A New Federal Republic

We stand together

2012-01-30T00:36:00.000+01:00

Continuing the theme from my earlier post "The Stories We Ignore".

Nigerians from all of the federal republic's constituent nations and communities have suffered not only in the current upsurge of political violence, but also in the general upward spike in political violence we have suffered since 1999. As usual, though, the screaming headlines make it seem like a sectional conflict between our peoples. So, I'll continue to highlight the quieter headlines that get swept under the carpet.

Muslims Demonstrate Religious Harmony, Join Christians in Church Service

Ibrahim Shuaibu, John Shiklam, Christopher Isiguzo and Victor Efeizomo
16 January 2012

As a deliberate step to rebuild confidence and heal the festering relationship between adherents of the two major religions in the country following attacks by Boko Haram on places of worship, Muslims in Kano Sunday visited churches and worshipped with Christians to foster religious tolerance.

Leader of the Muslims, who visited the churches under the platform of Kano Covenant Group, Mr. Bashir Ishaq Bashir, said the step was taken because there was the need for Christians and Muslims to live together in peace as they described the two religions as faith with doctrines that abhor violence.

Addressing the congregation in the various churches during service, Bashir said though there might be differences in practice, Islam and Christianity have a semblance which ultimate aim is to draw people nearer together as they love and cherish one another.

"We are here to deliver a message of hope, a message of peace, a message of solidarity," he said.

He said Muslims all over Kano would remain at peace with the Christians and urged the worshippers not to panic and resist inflammatory messages that were capable of bringing a breakdown of law and order.

He said: "We must desist from rumours and spreading of falsehood. No doubt Muslims have wronged their Christian brothers, and Christian brothers have wronged their Muslim brothers."

He insisted that in the face of the shortcomings, there was still the need for a peaceful coexistence.

Speaking also, Chairman of the state branch of Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Bishop Ransom Bello, emphasised the need for all stakeholders to join hands and ensure that peace reigns in Kano as violence, which could lead to destruction of lives and property under any guise, should be totally discouraged.

Bishop Bello thanked Kano State Government for its support and encouragement to the struggle to ensure that Kano remains peaceful and safe, while urging all and sundry to move about their businesses without fear or apprehension.

Among the churches visited by the group were Our Lady of Fatima Catholic Church, ECWA Hausa Service, Anglican Cathedral Church of Holy Trinity, Cherubim and Seraphim Movement Church and Calvary of Life Assembly.

Hisbah Command Guards Christian Worshippers
Hisham Habib
16 January 2012

Kano — Officials of the Kano State Hisbah Command were yesterday spotted guarding entrances to various churches in the state to give confidence to worshippers in the state.

The Hisbah officers who were in groups, were posted to various areas in Sabon Gari and along Airport road were many Christians were attending Sunday services.

A worshipper at the Royal Parish of Saint Thomas, Airport road, Barrister Ibrahim Isa Wangida who spoke to Daily Trust said he saw Hisbah men from Club Road down to the church at Airport road and was impressed to learn that they were there to give protection to the worshippers.

He said they have been made to believe that the Muslims will give them the desired protection as they will be giving to the Muslims elsewhere, adding that as a Hausa man and an indigene of Tudun Wada in Kano he is destined to be a Christian and it gives him joy to see Hisbah men around his church.

The Director General of the Hisbah Dr. Ahmad Sufi said the command had sent over 2,000 men to various locations especially to roads leading to churches and entrances and this was in an effort to keep the cordial relationship that exists between the two faiths in the state.

He said the command had been in contact with the CAN in the past and will maintain the link for a better understanding and promotion of peace through dialogue.

Nigeria: Muslim Youths Guard Churches in Minna

Aliyu M. Hamagam

9 January 2012

Minna — MUSLIM youths yesterday grouped themselves to guard churches in Minna, Niger State Capital, during Sunday Services.The youths said this was aimed at furthering their campaign for the promotion of inter-religious unity in the country.

Our correspondent observed that the youths mounted the gates of St. Mary's Catholic Church in Kpagungu area of the state capital throughout the service period.

The leader of the group, Gimba Kakanda, who spoke to Daily Trust, said, "We are protecting our fellow Christian brothers and sisters to show the world that our leaders cannot use religion to divide us. We want to send a signal by coming here to protect our fellow Christians that we are one and we can stand to protect one another".

Asked on whether they got police permit to do so, he said, "We are peaceful, we are here only to protect our brothers, and we believe that security is the responsibility of every citizen".

Brief comments

2012-01-23T02:21:00.000+01:00

For quite some time, insecurity and violence have been, or rather should have been the priority for the Nigerian public and for all three tiers of government in our federal republic. But these issues were somewhat eclipsed by the nationwide protests that followed the removal of the fuel subsidy.

Without commenting on the substance of the dispute (i.e. the fuel subsidy itself), it was interesting to see the Nigerian public broadly take positions on an issue based on the issue itself, without the intervention of the usual regional/ethnic political chess. Indeed, as I watched the protests, a part of me pondered the fact that we had wasted the 2011 Elections by casting our votes based on what we felt about the following question: Is it still "the North's" turn in the rotational presidency system, or has "the North" had enough turns and it is now the turn of the Niger-Deltal where the oil is produced?

In the context of our politico-economic reality, an issue like this one (i.e. the fuel subsidy) should really have been decided at an election, with the differing views on what to do with/to the subsidy marking the dividing line between political parties and between executive and legislative candidates.

Whatever it is you feel about the issue (and I have not expressed my own opinion), we can all agree that it is, and has always been, a politically very volatile issue.

President Jonathan had initially intended to end the subsidy early in 2011, and only included enough funding for a couple of months of it in the 2011 Budget. But having realized that he would lose the 2011 election (to be held in April) if he removed the subsidy at the end of February, the president decided to continue the subsidy payments through to the end of the year -- without adjusting the budget (expense side or revenue side) to compensate for it. So our deficit and debt went up in 2011 so as to maintain President Jonathan's reelection hopes, which is rather irresponsible.

But more to the point, if an issue is politically dangerous enough that you know you cannot win a democratic election after doing a certain thing, then it is even more important that you either make that thing subject to an election or referendum (obliging yourself to campaign hard enough to make your decision more popular before the vote), or if you are going to deceive people about what you intend to do after the election so as to win the election, then at the very least commit some time and effort after winning the election to persuading enough people to change their minds about the issue before you do it.

Sure, there was something the government pretended to be a campaign to explain the move to end the subsidy, but the thing about Nigeria is our political leaders have never really had to explain themselves to the people, nor have they ever really had to get the people's approval before doing anything ... so they don't really know how to do it, or what constitutes having done it. There was much talk of "transformation", but a "transformational leader" is one who is able to persuade the people to agree to changes which, prior to that point, they may not have agreed to.

I am almost tempted to hope that this issue stays alive until 2015, forcing the respective candidates to campaign on the issue. Whether my side of the issue wins or loses, at least it would be an election that was decided on the issues and not on regional/ethnic political chess.

Alas, with security a pressing and increasingly problematic issue, we can ill afford the distraction of the fuel subsidy debate.

Yeah, security should be the centrepiece of political debate. Unfortunately, the things we need to do to improve public security are, and sadly always have been, the sort of things our political leaders are loathe to do. Our leaders prefer to do enough to keep us from anarchy while not doing enough to get us to a plateau of stability and security.

The stories we ignore

2011-12-28T17:48:00.000+01:00

I don't talk too much on this blog about the recurrent incidents of violence in our federal republic. Violence in Nigeria is a complex, complicated, exasperating, saddening and depressing issue that cannot fully be discussed in the confines of an e-blog.

Every once in a while I try to write what I always hope would be an abbreviated essay on the problem, but even while unfinished and still growing in length, these "abbreviated" essays eventually resemble short books. And even these "short books" are insufficient to truly discuss the issue.

What I want to do in this week of bloody attacks and bloody reprisal attacks is to remind us of the stories we tend to ignore. But even so, I have had to rewrite and edit down this introduction portion, because it grew to 14 pages! I am just going to get straight to the article and leave out any commentary. There are enough people commenting on the violence. One gets the impression that the way we talk about the issue reinforces the problem rather than solves it, that we sometimes miss the forest for the trees. In any case, there are enough people talking about it.

But first the introduction.

A month ago, Tadaferua Ujorha of Daily Trust gathered reports of courageous citizens who, at risk to their own lives, did what we all wish we were brave enough to do.

I normally prefer to post a link to the source sites for news articles, or at most block-quote a relevant excerpt. It is important for Nigerian news organizations to receive the "clicks", and associated revenues accruing. They invested resources on news-gathering, and will stop doing so if they are not making money. At least one of Ujorha's collected stories came from financially-struggling NEXT, which has had to massively reduce its investment in investigative journalism.

But in this rare case, I think the article is important enough that I will post the whole thing on this blog. Not many people (if anyone at all) read my blog, and I don't if any of you who do read take the time to click on the links (many of the older links are now non-functioning anyway). I want to make sure anyone who reads this blog post will also read the article.

Of course, you may not consider it to be as important as I do, but there is a way that we have come to think of each other as Nigerians. Our perceptions of each other have been, are now, and will be quite a stumbling block on the path of doing anything of positive impact ... in security issues as much as anywhere else.

Tadaferua Ujorha's collection of reports highlights two aspects of us as Nigerians, the heroic few who risk their lives to save their fellow citizens, and also the majority of us who lock ourselves away in our homes or run to the relative safety of the nearest police or army barracks, hoping against hope that the violence does not hit us or our families. We are together in this -- believe it or not, we are all at risk, and until we realize this we are not going to get anywhere.

Read the article, and if you like it, you might want to click the link anyway. I do not know how the whole revenue-from-clicks thing works, but if you want this type of reporting, you've got to help them pay for it:

‘I will never forget you’

Written by Tadaferua Ujorha who was in Kaduna, Kano & Niger
Tuesday, 29 November 2011 05:00

He has the courage of a Lion.

Adamu Bologi, a Muslim, is not likely to forget April 2011 in a hurry. It was the month when post-election violence broke out in Niger State, as well as in other parts of northern Nigeria. Bologi left for work early that morning, as he is wont to do.
He is a Librarian at Newsline, the Niger state government-owned newspaper. Later, he left to return home to give his wife some money. Home is Tunga, a part of Minna, and Tunga is a multicultural setting, accommodating a diversity of ethnic groups. Here are bad roads, open gutters and numerous dwellings, some large, some small. Too close to each other, some would say. It was while he was heading home that rioting broke out. There was thunder in Tunga on that day, and smoke from a burning Church filled part of the sky. The ‘Corpers Lodge’ was also torched. Fear and anxiety filled the hearts of many. All of a sudden a dark cloud fell upon the area. People fled their homes and headed for the nearby police barracks, the usual point of convergence at such moments. There was pandemonium on the streets. Men, women and children fled. The nearby Conqueror’s House Church, on Bay Clinic road,was burnt. According to Bologi ‘I saw some fifty persons holding cutlasses, sticks, and knives. They were saying if you are a Muslim go inside,we are looking for Christians. There is one compound near mine. Everyone living there is a Christian. The rioters focused on that house, and all the occupants instantly fled with their children’. He says that at risk of losing his life, he ferried all of them to the nearby barracks. He did all this alone. He adds ‘There was no other Muslim with me when I was going round.They just stayed by their doors,and looked from their windows’. While returning from the barracks he met the group of rioters who were upset with him and said so. His words ‘They heard that I am the one who took people to the barracks. So they warned me’. Here he was putting his life and properties at risk. After this he met a woman weeping as she walked along the road. His words ‘When returning from the barracks I met a woman who was crying, and she had two children by her side. I asked her what was wrong, but all she could utter was ‘my husband, my husband’. I took her to my room together with the two children. I gave her water to drink, and asked my wife to look after her. I then went out to look for her husband’. It was while he was outside looking for her husband that he came across another woman, being harassed by a mob.His words ‘They beat the woman and she fell down. The woman kept running and falling down, with her child too. She stood up, ran, but was felled again. I told them to stop beating her. But they didn’t stop. She was shouting. I then put her in the mosque of my house. I asked her to remove her slippers, before entering, because we don’t enter the mosque with slippers on’. After ferrying her into the mosque, he then went outside again, to see if he could locate her husband, whom she continually referred to, amidst tears. He walked to the nearby police barracks to see if he could seek him out, and on his way back he saw a man wearing a trouser and a vest, who turned out to be her husband. He hurried with him to his house, and now reunited husband and wife.

Not a drop of blood fell

Pastor Jeremy Omachi, bold and outspoken with a commanding voice, is the man he saved.He is Igala from Kogi State, and tells Daily Trust a moving story of his experiences in the following words ‘On 18 April 2011, a day after the Presidential elections,at about 11:00am I suddenly heard people chanting. I ran out to find out what was happening. I saw groups of people coming towards our house. I locked the door, and put my wife behind me,and asked ‘why are you people after us?’ They said ‘since you people refused to vote for Buhari, and you voted for Goodluck, we have come to kill you and to burn the Church’. In the ensuing exchange he signaled to his wife to flee from the house, and she did. Then the mob proceded to attack him with matchets and sticks. Then an amazing thing happened. According to him ‘Seven times they hit my head with their matchets, but the matchet did not draw blood. So all of us were shocked, and I thought it was not real again… But you could hear the sound of the matchet as it made contact with my head. It was as though it was iron hitting iron .Somebody even asked me why my head seems to be immune to cuts from a matchet.Then I fell unconscious.’ Later, he escaped from his house and headed in the direction of the police barracks. On his way there he had an encounter with Bologi. His words ‘Bologi ran after me. He asked me to stop,and asked if I am the Pastor. Then he took me to his house. Life came into my wife, when she saw me. She had already cried and believed that I was dead’.Later in the interview with Daily Trust, Pastor Omachi says of the events ‘I see Bologi as someone who has the kind of passion that I have.May the Almighty raise up more of such in our generation.’ The duo met for the first time after the events of April, when this reporter visited Minna in September this year while investigating this story. During the meeting Bologi says that if events were to repeat themselves he would behave in a similar fashion and save many more people. His words ‘I will behave in the same way. I will do much more than I did.This is a rented house.I am paying rent. If it were my personal house, I would have done much more than I did’. Bologi’s moving story has also been captured by Next.

Hayab helps a youth

In Kaduna, Reverend Joshua Hayab, Special Adviser to the Kaduna State Governor on Christian Matters, receives a phone call a day after the presidential elections. It was from the house of Mai Ungwar Gbagyi, which is in the Television area of Kaduna, a predominantly Christian community. The call was to the effect that a Muslim youth was about to be killed at the house. In fact the mob was prepared to burn down the house,if the boy won’t be released to them. There was tension in the area. Groups there were reacting to outbreaks of violence relating to the April Presidential elections. Reverend Hayab hurries to the location, and finds a mob gathered around the house of Mai Ungwar Gbagyi. He pleads with the restive youths ,and is finally allowed to leave the house with the much troubled youth. His words ‘I pleaded with them, and I convinced them why they must not kill this boy. I put him in the car and asked the driver to lock the car. I stood outside and spoke to them some more,and then they became calm. But before I knew what was happening another mob had come. I jumped into the car and we quickly drove away’. As they drove along, they came across another mob which also wanted to despatch the muslim youth in the Reverends car. His words ‘I came out of the car,and instructed the driver to lock the car from the inside. They now said ‘this bearded man in front of your car is a muslim, and we would not allow him to pass’. They later smashed both windscreens of the car. The youth was still inside the car when this happened. Upon instruction from the Reverend, the driver sped off and escaped the mob who were lined up all over the road.The Reverend who was still with the mob, was rescued shortly thereafter by soldiers from the nearby Command Secondary School. The driver had escaped there, and alerted the soldiers on duty about what was happening. Reverend Hayab says ‘It was akin to Divine intervention.In less than five minutes ,a military car just appeared from nowhere.’.

‘I won’t forget’

Dr Garba Shehu Matazu,a former Member of the House of Representatives, and now Senior Special Adviser on Higher Education to the Katsina State Governor, tells an interesting story of events in Kaduna, on the same day Reverend Hayab was rescuing the Muslim youth. In fact both men were within minutes of each other on that day. His words ‘I got to the Abuja junction with my driver. We saw people blocking the road, putting tyres and coming out with dangerous weapons, shouting and stopping vehicles. I told my driver, lets quickly get out of Kaduna. Unfortunately,on getting to the Abuja road, we actually met our brothers, both male and female Christians, also blocking the road. There was no way we could proceed,and there was no way we could return to the town… I asked the driver to reverse.While he was doing so,the crowd began to pursue us with dangerous weapons. We got to the junction by Command Secondary School. We could not go right where we were pursued, and we could not go left to Sabon Tasha. Hundreds of them had blocked the road with dangerous weapons.I then asked my driver to enter the Command Secondary School. I met both Christians and Muslims there.Infact by entering there you had become a refugee’. Outside the school were hundreds of armed and angry youths. Paradoxically, it was a Christian soldier who took Dr Matazu to the house of the Commandant of the institution. Another paradox lies in the fact that here is a former Chair of the House Committee on Education, who by an interesting turn of events so eloquently fashioned by nature, found solace in a secondary school at a time of crises. It was within the Command Secondary School that he met Reverend Hayab, who arranged for a number of cars to be brought from Government House Kaduna. These were used to convey both the Muslim youth, earlier saved by the Reverend, Dr Matazu, as well as many others made up of both Muslims and Christians, out of the Command Secondary School, to their homes in Kaduna. Reverend Hayab says ‘I put a call across to the ADC Government House. I said look my car has been damaged. I can’t even drive the car again. I can’t even leave the Command Secondary School. I told him that I am together with Hon Matazu and a few others. Can you send a team to rescue us? As we were standing there we could see young people outside the school with daggers. They certainly wont allow anyone to pass. Then help came in the form of armed security men and a convoy of cars from Government House’. But leaving the premises of the school was a bit difficult.According to Dr Matazu ‘When we were coming out of the entrance of the school, the youths blocked us. Despite the mobile police men, the well armed SSS,who were shooting in the air, they were adamant’. On getting close to his home, he turned to Reverend Hayab, saying ‘Thank you…Thank you... I will never forget you’.The youth whom he saved was taken to Government House Kaduna, and later returned to Rigasa where he lives. Reverend Hayab says that he does not know the name of the boy whom he saved from the mob. His words ‘I don’t know his name. I saw him as a brother from another family, and I wanted to save him. Somehow in a crisis situation we can still demonstrate a good heart towards one another, because the Almighty created us to live together’. He asks rhetorically ‘In my wife’s family, her mother is the only Christian, all others in the family are Muslims, and we are all of the same Jaba tribe. Now, do you want me to look at a Muslim as an enemy, when my inlaw comes from a family that is predominantly Muslim?’

Binta’s Hijab

In Kano, a woman’s Hijab worked wonders during the April crises. Soft spoken Binta Adamu is a Nurse resident in the city. In April this year she was very close to scenes of rioting in the city. There were two Christian classmates of hers with her at that time. What to do to save their lives? Swift thinking was required. Her woman’s intuition rose to the fore. She quickly reached for two extra Hijabs and gave the Lady’s to wear. Of course, the Lady’s were more than willing to accept them in the circumstances. That is how she saved their lives, because they kept on passing mobs who looked at them through the glass of the car they were in, and concluded that the three Lady’s within, wearing Hijabs, were all Muslims. None would have thought otherwise. With the trio was Hamman Ibrahim Rassan, another classmate and a Christian from Adamawa state. He led the Lady’s to a point very close to their homes, when they parted with Hajiya Binta.

The Suleiman’s of Tudun Wada

A households previous good deeds in Kano, helped to turn their residence into a small camp for the displaced. It is human nature to always remember the kind and good inhabitants of a town. Alhaji Mohammed Suleiman also lives in Kano. In 1981, he retired from the Murtala Mohammed Hospital as Chief Nursing Officer. During the post-election violence in Kano, his residence in Tudun Wada became a Mecca for non indigenes and other distressed persons. He has lived in Tudun Wada for more than forty years, and his family is known for its good works in the community. It is as though he has been nursing or played a healing role in the community all these years. No wonder a great crowd gathered during the crises. According to Alhaji Suleiman ‘Many people rushed here,and we harboured them.Many people from around this area came. In this area our family is respected a lot. My wife,in particular, has been very kind to everybody here. That’s why a huge crowd came seeking refuge here’. Hajiya Hadiza Usman, who also hails from Kano, is Alhaji Suleiman’s neighbour in Tudun Wada, Kano. Her comments on events in Tudun Wada shortly after the elections ‘We saw people running,and so we peeped out from the doorways. We soon heard people screaming outside,and people said it was because of the election results. My neighbour came earlier that morning ,and told me that if anything happened her children were in her house, and that I should take care of them’. Thus when the crises began, Hajiya Hadiza went and brought her neighbours children to the safety of her own house. A woman from Edo State, as well as an Idoma Lady found refuge in her house ,as well.

Kind Kamuru

Something remarkable happened in Kamuru in April this year ,where the Hausa community is ‘almost as old as the community itself’, one contact says. Kamuru is located in Southern Kaduna. When rioting broke out, community leaders took steps to protect the Muslim members of the community. It is a Christian community and there is a significant Hausa presence there. However, in the dead of night, houses belonging to Muslims were burnt down. Allahmagani Yohanna tells Daily Trust about what happened next. His words ‘A group of the elite of Kamuru came together and said they should put money and materials together and visit the area ,to talk to the Hausa-Fulani victims, and to appeal to them to remain calm and to come back. The idea was to make them feel at home, and for us to put together whatever materials we could, to make life a little better for them’. He says that some of the Hausas who lost their homes eventually became refugees in houses in neighbouring Ikulu villages. ‘They took in the Hausa-Fulani, those that had been displaced. They did everything possible to make them comfortable. He says his father is the District Head of Dutsen Bako, and adds that their house was turned into a refugee camp. His words ‘We literally turned our house into a refugee camp, and encouraged all those that have been displaced to come and stay there. Those that stayed at our house were up to four hundred’. The elite of Kamuru provided foodstuff, clothes, as well as accommodation for the displaced Hausas of Kamuru. Bishop Matthew Kukah of the Sokoto Diocese hails from Kamuru. Allahmagani Yohanna adds ‘Bishop Kukah’s house did the same, by ensuring that all that were displaced were kept there. They were fed, clothed, and some of them stayed there for weeks, until it became possible for them to go back home. ‘Finally, Allahmagani Yohanna comments on the changes in society which have occurred over time. His words ‘We have differences, but we have to live with these differences. It wasn’t like this before. During my secondary school days, I hardly remembered that somebody was a Muslim,or someone was a Christian, or that someone is Hausa-Fulani. We grew up living in peace. We are Christians in our house,but during the crises we were providing the Muslims with materials they need to pray.Irrespective of our differences we are still one’.

‘Pastor, hurry into my house, hurry’

Alhaji Usman Idris is a businessman, and dwells in Ungwar Rimi,a part of Kaduna town. There’s a COCIN Church in front of his house.Over the years he has developed good relations with the Church community, such that whenever he travels, he leaves the keys of his house at the Church for safekeeping. During the April crises a mob came around ,intent on destroying the Church, and killing its Pastor. Alhaji Idris says ‘Immediately we realised that these boys would not listen to what we were going to tell them, we had to tell the Reverend to hurry inside my house, together with his family. We called the police, who eventually came, and some of the rioters were arrested. We were able to save the Pastor himself, and he has now relocated to another part of the town.But he comes to the Church daily.’ Policemen still guard the Church during the regular Hours of Worship that hold on Sundays. However, the musical instruments belonging to the church were destroyed during the attack. Alhaji Idris speaks of a fire that occurred not too long ago very close to his house.It was women from the Church who brought buckets of water out of the Church, to put out the fire at a house which belongs to a Muslim.’ Alhaji Usman Idris,who hails from Zaria, speaks of growing up and associating with the former District Head of Zangon-Kataf. His words ‘When I was a boy in secondary school,the former District Head of Zangon-Kataf who died, was a bosom friend of my father. Whenever he comes to Zaria, I leave my apartment for him. He’s a Christian, and I go to his family to spend my holidays’.

Reverend John Davun, the Pastor who found refuge in Alhaji Idris’ house, tells Daily Trust ‘If a Muslim Brother would save me because of my Faith, I would give him kudos for that. As a Christian I would embrace him. Afterall, Christianity is all about peace.’

An Imam patrols

Aminu Abdullahi Yusuf is an Imam of the Misbahul –Islam Foundation Mosque, Unguwar Rimi, Kaduna. During the crises his efforts saved more than three Churches from being burnt to the ground. This is because he organized patrols through the area. No wonder he still retains a slim athletic build. His words ‘I was at home when I received a phone call that trouble had started in Tudun Wada. I went out and saw a ball of smoke, and I went straight to the District Police Officer. The DPO was happy to see me. I asked him to give me two policemen, because when trouble started in the past I would take two policemen inside my car,and we would go street by street, line by line to see how we could keep the peace. What I did was to tell everybody coming out to go back inside. So we would be able to control the situation by this method.If any crises ever occurs I had the habit of instantly calling the Pastor of the neighbouring Church, or he would call me. We coordinate very well.’ April 2011 was very similar to previous occasions when he did his patrols. According to him ‘Unguwar Rimi was already occupied by hooligans. We went street by street ,and we patrolled around all the houses, and we were able to prevent the loss of lives or properties. The policemen were given the order to shoot at sight. I asked them not to shoot anybody, as this would escalate the crises.’ He says that he and the DPO were regularly communicating throughout the period, by means of their mobile phones.’ This went on for two days, from morning till night. It was hectic. We saved three Churches by this effort. Usually, when there is a crises in Unguwar Rimi, we make special efforts to protect the Churches. So,this time the Churches in Bakin Kasuwa, and also the one at Low Cost were all protected.’

Debt Mismanagement

2011-12-28T17:23:00.000+01:00

In 2000, perhaps as a sign of "international community" support for the year-old Fourth Republic, the Federal Republic of Nigeria and the International Monetary Fund reached a debt-rescheduling agreement. Our annual payments to bilateral (Paris Club) creditors were reduced from $2.3billion to $1billion, while annual payments to multilateral agencies (IMF, World Bank) and foreign private (London Club) lenders were cut from $1billion to $700million.

Combined payments to all foreign creditors was in effect reduced to $1.7billion-a-year. Payments to domestic (i.e. Nigerian corporate and institutional) creditors averaged $1.2billion a year, so total annual spending on debt servicing was about $2.9billion. The $1.6billion balance cut from our annual payments may have been subject to annual capitalization. I am not sure of this, but were it to have been the case, it would not substantively change the conclusions of this post.

Read this Vanguard article on Finance Minister Ngozi Okojo-Iweala and our burgeoning federal debts. Pay attention to these paragraphs:

Looking back at Nigeria debt’s profile and services in the last five years for which data are available, $2.335billion was spent by the Federal Government to service both internal and external debt in 2009. This amounted to about 50 per cent drop in the amount used for debt service in year 2008 which stood at $4.055billion. Before the debt relief of 2006, Nigeria spent $8.0429billion to service debt in 2006 and $10.1072billion in 2005.

Figures released by the Debt Management showed that in 2005 Nigeria used $8.940 billion to service its external debt paying only $1.1662billion to residents in Nigeria as domestic debt service. Nigeria’s obligation to foreign creditors in terms of debt service dropped slightly in 2006 to $6.729billion while what it used to settle due domestic debt and interest on outstanding loans inched up to $1.3137billion. With debt relief in 2006 its obligations to foreign creditors in terms of debt service nose dived southward with the payment of only $1.022billion as external debt service and $2.1629billion as domestic debt service.

I do not know if the interpretation of the numbers as expressed in those paragraph belongs to the writer of the article or to the DMO. The language conveys the impression that Nigeria lowered its annual debt service payments from a whopping $10 billion in 2005 to just $2.3 billion in 2009.

But there are crucial explanatory facts that have been omitted from the paragraphs.

Under the terms of Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala's debt cancellation deal, Nigeria had to pay $12billion to the Paris Club in order to receive the $18billion write-off. That $12billion payment was made in two (or three) tranches in 2005 and 2006; the DMO numbers for debt service payments in 2005 ($10billion) and 2006 ($8billion) in the quoted paragraphs above are comprised of that $12billion, as well as the regular debt service payments that would have been made for those two years. Breaking down the $18billion in total debt service paid in 2005 and 2006 combined gives:
(a) $12billion, the fee for the debt cancellation; and
(b) $5.8billion (at $2.9 billion-per-year) in regular payments to the Paris Club, multilateral agencies, London Club (private foreign creditors) and domestic creditors.

It would have been more appropriate for the DMO or the article's author to have said that our annual debt service payments had gone down from $2.9 billion in 2005 to $2.3 billion in 2009. This is obviously much less impressive-sounding, particularly in light of the fact that we paid $12billion for the privilege.

The counter-argument would be that $600million/annum would add up to $12 billion over 20 years. Add to this any avoided capitalization of the reduced portion of our payments per the initial agreement in 2000 with the IMF and other creditors.

This isn't a good counter-argument. If you held $12billion in potential investment funds, you wouldn't give it all away in exchange for $600million-a-year in money that will be eaten up by recurrent expenditure.

At the time of the debt deal, we were told we would save $1 billion/annum or (as they frequently said) "$20billion over 20 years", and that these funds would be allocated to the Millennium Development Goals. At that time, I wrote an essay questioning this on the following bases:
(a) You could earn the same amount of money over 20 years from compounded interest by simply investing the $12billion, while maintaining your principal;
(b) $12 billion properly invested and leveraged could have a multiplier effect on the GDP in excess of $1billion-a-year;
(c) The savings were being over-estimated because Nigeria would definitely start borrowing again, which would mean debt service payments to foreign creditors would rise again from the alleged "$0" to a new number that would cut into the so-called $1billion/annum savings; and
(d) $1billion/annum would not make much of a difference in the Nigerian federal budget, or to the Millennium Development Goals, and as such was not worth the loss of $12 billion in potential investment funds.

These are the DMO's figures on the federal government's ballooning domestic debt:

2005 = $11.83billion
2006 = $13.81billion
2007 = $18.58billion
2008 = $17.69billion
2009 = $21.87billion
2010 = $32.5billion
2011 = $40billion

Somehow, the federal government has racked up at least $28 billion in new debt in just 6 years (2005-2011)!.

The upward spike in domestic debt between the end of 2009 and the end of 2011 may have been linked to the global financial and economic crises, but may also have been driven by the effect of the approaching 2011 Elections. The only clearly identified case of election-year largesse was revealed by the junior minister in the Finance Ministry to the Senate; he said the 2011 budget included funding for only two months of the "fuel subsidy" (i.e. up till February), but the government had decided to continue paying the subsidy past February for fear of losing the 2011 Elections (held in April).

There were likely other expenditures directly and/or indirectly driven by politics. On a related note, the $4.055billion in debt service paid in 2008 (as opposed to the normal $2.3 billion) may have been linked to late payments from 2007 delayed due to spending spikes associated with the 2007 Elections.

As our public debt-load continues to rise, annual debt service payments will have to rise too. Eventually, we will return to payment levels extant before the 2005 "cancellation" deal, and shortly thereafter to payment levels from before the 2000 IMF deal. And for this, we paid over $12billion in savings.

And what has happened to our savings anyway? In the last six years we have:

(a) Spent $12 billion in reserves on the debt cancellation deal;
(b) Spent $20-$30 billion in reserves defending an artificial Naira/Dollar exchange rate;
(c) Spent $10 billion of our reserves to bail out banks caught in a "toxic asset" problem of their own creation.
(d) Spent an unknown (by me) total amount on other industrial interventions.

This adds up to $42 billion at least, but is definitely more than that. The first three were not what you might call "productive" investments; I hope someone studies the impacts of the fourth. This is where our external reserves went.

For the record, I advocated a firm and direct intervention in the banking and financial sector to fix the "toxic asset" problem. From the start I have said I do not like it, but it was (and is) economically necessary. But it is still an avoidable waste. The USA and Canada are deeply integrated economies, but Canada's banking industry fared better than its southern neighbour's when the global crises hit because they were better-regulated.

Nigeria would always have been affected in some way by the global financial crises, but our "toxic asset" problem was self-created, driven by the action of our banking industry and the inaction of our regulators. And our all-too-obvious stock market bubble was bound to "pop" even if there had never been a global crisis. Our banking/financial industry, regulatory agencies, government, and political parties (especially the PDP) bear the blame for our problems.

Personally, I think the banks should be made to repay the Nigerian public the full cost of the bailout. They don't have to do it this year, or even next year. We can wait until they are back to full health. But we should make them repay our money , though that is a different argument for another day.

With little debate or discourse, public debt is becoming a serious problem, and not just at the federal level. The states are wallowing ever deeper in debt; incoming governors always blame their predecessors for leaving behind a fiscal mess, but then work very hard during their terms to expand the mess, before finally leaving office to be accused by their successors of leaving behind a fiscal mess.

We are told that it isn't a problem, because our economy is bigger and the ratio of debt to GDP is smaller. But this isn't an excuse for racking up unproductive debts.

Brief comments

2011-12-07T00:43:00.000+01:00

Mustapha Chike-Obi, the head of AMCON told the Senate Committee on Banking, Insurance and other Financial Institutions that the 8 banks which received =N=620 billion in emergency bailout funds in 2009 have repaid the full amount to the government

What he did not say is the banks were able to make this repayment because AMCON paid over =N=1.2 trillion for the banks' toxic assets. When you blow away the fog, the Government/CBN/AMCON more or less gave the banks =N=600 billion in bailout funds, wrote off the bailout money, and then gave the banks an additional =N=600 billion for their toxic assets, on top of extra money poured into the nationalized banks to recapitalize them.

The bailout is not something I like, but I have always said that it was necessary. With that said, it would be good for Nigerians to understand how much the whole thing will cost us when all is said and done. Because we cannot go back to the days of letting the banks and the regulators get away with knowingly doing the wrong things; when they do that, we end up left with a choice of either coughing up billions we don't have to fix the industry, or watching the industry falter with problematic effects on the wider economy (which, by the way, is still growing).

In other news, the Code of Conduct Tribunal has decided it does not have jurisdiction to try Lagos State Supreme Godfather Bola Ahmed Tinubu for corruption.

Note, they did not say he was innocent. They said they were not the arena for him to be properly charged. Long story short, the Federal Government and the Peoples Democratic Party have made their point, letting Tinubu know that he is free to do what he does so long as he limits what he is doing to the constituencies they have allowed him to have.

By the way, last weekend the PDP somewhat controversially won the Kogi State gubernatorial elections over an ACN candidate backed by Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Am I being too cynical in pondering whether Tinubu got the intended message?

Events in Health Care

2011-11-12T21:52:00.001+01:00

I have posted substantively in a while.

The University of Benin Teaching Hospital performed the first stem cell transplant in Nigeria. The patient was a 7-year old with sickle cell anaemia, and the donor was his 14-year-old brother.

This is wonderful news, and I wish the child a full and complete recovery.

The cost of the surgery seems rather prohibitive for most Nigerian families. I like the underlying idea behind the newish the National Health Insurance Scheme, though it comes with the usual problems with government bureaucracy and the usual unclear policy direction. It is not likely to have the resources to support even a basic level of healthcare for the majority of Nigerians, but it is a platform from which a this level of care for the majority of Nigerian citizens.

Lagos State has its own public Health Insurance scheme. It began with a pilot project back in 2008 which has been since been expanded . The Lagos State government nevertheless admits the reach of the scheme will be far from universal, given that the majority of the state's population is in low-income, "informal" employment not covered by the scheme

Having said that, we have to think carefully about how to advance these programmes and in what direction. I am not being cynical. Let me explain myself.

There is this thing we do in Nigeria and in Africa. If we see that Europe is rich and has a European Union, we rename our non-functioning continental organization "African Union". If Europeans create a single currency called "euro", we start advocating a single African currency called "afro". If Europe switches from three continental club championships (Champions Cup, Cup Winners Cup and UEFA Cup) to two continental club championships, we follow suit, and we copy the names they use.

Rather than think about what works for us, we have become shallow mimics of what we see other people doing, creating an endless series of facades designed to look like something without actually being that thing -- and I say this without delving into the question of whether the things we are mimicking are relevant to Nigeria/Africa in the first place.

Coming closer to home, the USA has an FBI, so Nigeria creates an FIIB. The USA has an FDA, so Nigeria creates a NAFDAC. Ex-dictator Ibrahim Babangida named his two artificial political parties the Social Democratic Party and National Republican Convention, which were alleged to lean a little to the left and right respectively, like the USA's Democratic and Republican parties.

So here is my problem. Changing the name of the "Organization of African Unity" to "African Union" and mimicking all the unnecessary institutional structures of the European Unions has not in any way, shape or form advanced the continent's strategic interests. I could say the same thing for the other mimicries.

I get the impression that the inspiration behind our relatively new National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) was the United Kingdom's NHS. I worry that an official or politician, desiring to seem like he was doing something about the issue, just created a new agency/bureaucracy with a name that he or she is familiar with from his or her days as a student in the UK.

This is not to say that it cannot be made to be successful, but that I am not aware of any national debate on what our public health insurance scheme should be, who should or shouldn't be covered by it, what should or shouldn't be covered by it, should it be state-based or federal or both (and if both, who handles what), and most importantly of all, how we should fund it long-term.

I do not think a Nigerian "NHIS" would succeed in the short-, medium- or long-term if it is designed to be a simulacrum of the British "NHS", but that is a conversation/argument to have if and when our country actually gets around to deciding properly how to handle it.

To be honest, those countries that have generous welfare states have never really been able to afford it, regardless of what their politicians have told them over the decades. The conditions that allowed them to act uneconomically are coming to an end and will probably never return.

This something no one really thinks about. When Imo State Governor Rochas Okorocha announced a scheme to begin making stipend payments to schoolchildren in Imo State, he was roundly praised. I am too lazy right now to find the links, but I do believe Okorocha has either implemented or is planning to implement free healthcare and free education up to secondary school.

These popular and populist measures always earn politicians praise as "achievers" and "action governors" who have "pro-people" policies. Nobody pays much attention to the fact that the state's public debt starts to sharply rise, that spending on other vital areas (like roads, particularly in the Southeast) get squeezed or wiped out, or that projects begin with great fanfare but are then abandoned because funds run out.

Understand me. I am not saying this is a bad thing per se. Brazil's Bolsa Familia has not only raised living standards, but has kept a lot of children in school who would otherwise have dropped out (something Imo State has to worry about). But on the other hand, Brazil is a subcontinental country with the world's 10th largest GDP and is fast rising higher up the GDP list (it will overtake the United Kingdom in the near future). Where Brazil's richest state, Sao Paolo, has a bigger GDP than all of Nigeria, Imo State is not even Nigeria's richest state....

.... and most of our 36 states are already committing a problematic proportion of their revenues to servicing ever-growing (and unmonitored) debts.

Improving social welfare in Nigeria will be a complex task that involves balancing what we want to do against what we can do.

Unfortunately, there is not much debate about this in our federal republic. I keep coming back to my disappointment with the fact that the 2011 Presidential Election was deciding based on nothing more complex than whether you thought it was (vote Buhari) or was not (vote Jonathan) still the North's turn in the North/South Rotational Presidency system. Ours is a three-tier federal system, so this was neither the only electoral race nor the only "issue" at stake at the polls, but it is a good indicator of the level of the "debate" surrounding the election.

And no, I am not suggesting that we Nigerians are not interested in the important, substantive issues. Quite the contrary. Start a conversation with a group of Nigerians on the substantively important issues, and you will get a myriad of very serious opinions on the way forward. You will not agree with all of the opinions, but that is (supposed to be) the nature of democratic politics.

What annoys and flabbergasts me is the fact that our politics has NEVER reflected our debates and discussions on the vital issues facing the federal republic ... and the the fact that we the people are actually quick to drop our concerns to rally behind the divisive laagers the politicians stoke.

Another from Asuquo EB

2011-11-09T03:00:00.000+01:00

Culled from BusinessDay

On the Economy

2011-10-03T19:01:00.001+01:00

THE GOOD

The Nigerian middle-class is growing demographically, expanding to make up 23% of the population according to Business Day. It is also getting wealthier, incomes rising in tune with the growth in the GDP.

Some of you, particularly those who live "abroad" may have done the Naira-to-Dollar conversion on Business Day's figures, and might be thinking this is not a lot of money we are talking about. But you would be missing the point if you did that. Let me put it this way, read the millions of articles praising places like Brazil, China and India for cutting poverty and growing their middle-class, and you will find that these are exactly the income numbers they used to make the optimistic case for the improvement in social welfare in those economies.

We Nigerians are an entrepreneurial people. As we say in pidgin, e go betta.

THE INTERESTING

Read this interview of Alhaji Sani Aminu Dutsinma, published by Daily Trust. He discusses non-interest banking, avoiding the sensationalism surrounding Sanusi Lamido Sanusi's move to establish guidelines for the establishment of non-interest banking institutions, and providing real information about what exactly is being proposed.

THE WORRYING

There is a difference between capitalism and the sort of the sort of thing that happens when business moguls and politicians collaborate to transfer publicly-owned de facto monopolies into private hands.

Why is the Securities and Exchange Commission in such a rush to "demutualize" (euphemism for "privatize") the Nigerian Stock Exchange? If ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo was still in office, I would have predicted they would "sell" it to Transcorp.

As near as I can tell, the current "Mutual" structure does not mean it is owned by government, rather that it is "owned" (sort of) by the members of the Stock Exchange (i.e. by anyone with trading rights on the Exchange).

I suppose the SEC would justify their move by pointing to the fact that many of the world's biggest stock exchanges demutualized in the last 20 years. We Africans like copying whatever we see other people doing, even if it is not relevant to our situation.

But more importantly, the demutualization of the world's major stock markets was one of several key parts of the process that led to the Great Recession, the global economic crisis of the last four years. It is not a good idea, no matter what doctrinaire ideologues might tell you.

THE UNCLEAR

It is probably the fault of the journalist who wrote this article, or maybe of the editor who published it. But you can make up your own mind after you read this report of a press conference held by Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala at the conclusion of the IMF and World Bank Annual Meetings.

To me, it seems to say a lot without saying anything. If she was quoted properly, she does seem to be laying all our problems at the door of the IMF, IFC and World Bank (and China), seemingly in the (unrealistic) hope that they will solve the problems for us. On the other hand, she was being asked about the IMF and World Bank Annual Meetings, so maybe she was just focusing on what those multilateral bodies could do for us. And on the third hand, she is career World Bank bureaucrat, who probably thinks that the road to Promised Land runs through the Bretton Woods.

Good news on the banking front

2011-10-02T00:41:00.001+01:00

It appears the long-running banking industry bailout and restructuring programmes are on the road to success. And the good news seems to have lifted the stock market.

Troubling data from our prisons

2011-09-29T18:12:00.001+01:00

‘74% of prison inmates un-convicted’

About 35,000 (representing about 74 per cent) of the over 48,000 inmates languishing in Nigerian prisoners are un-convicted while majority had spent years in jail before their trial commenced, a rights group has said.

The Legal Officer, African Program of Open Society Justice Initiative Professor Chidi Odinkalu made the remarks yesterday at a press conference organized by the Rights Enforcement and Public Law Centre (REPLACE) in Abuja.

I wonder if these statistics are true. I do not trust the government's numbers, but I am just as dubious of numbers introduced by NGOs and multilateral agencies. It is quite unfortunate because accurate statistics are vital for economic planning.

It would not be so bad if the government were using real statistics in its internal planning while feeding we the people rosy-but-fake statistics. Unfortunately, I fear our government deceives itself every bit as much as it deceives us.

As for the NGOs and multilateral agencies, lets just say that I am continuously amazed at their ability to project population (and health, education, etc) figures for Nigeria when we have never had a fully credible census at any point in our history.

Nonetheless, this NGO, the Rights Enforcement and Public Law Centre, makes a very important point. It doesn't matter if the "real" percentage is 74 or 54 or 94, the truth is the majority of citizens languishing in our prisons have not been convicted of anything. And many of them, who might actually be innocent, end up serving more time awaiting trial than they would have been sentenced to if they had been found guilty.

Inland Waterways to become Inland Superhighways

2011-09-27T03:19:00.000+01:00

Dredging of the River Niger from Baro to the coast is mostly complete. The Federal Government has insisted from time to time since July that there are plans to dredge the River Benue as well. It is apparently part of the Ministry of Transportations "Nigerian Transportation Masterplan"

The dredging of the two major rivers is part of a drive to use the inland waterways as commercial corridors, as shown in the map below (click to enlarge):

[Disclosure: I got the map from the Nigeria pages of SkyscraperCity, though I can't recall which specific thread I got it from]

Business Day's Asuquo EB on recurring crises in Jos

2011-09-15T15:14:00.000+01:00

Culled from the excellent publication Business Day 15th September 2011.

Scapegoating "non-indigenes"

2011-09-08T17:24:00.000+01:00

Governor Theodore Orji of Abia has just been criticized for "disengaging" (i.i. sacking) non-indigenes in the Abia State Civil Service.

Governor Fashola of Lagos State "deported" (as though they were citizens of a foreign country) 3,029 non-indigene "beggars" to their "states of origin". (If you don't trust The Nation, here is a link from NEXT).

This sort of thing has happened frequently over the decades, in every state. For the most part, you cannot predict when a state governor will whip out the "scapegoat non-indigenes" card, except when new states are created from old states; the tendency is for the old state to sack all indigenes of the new state who remain in what had until recently been a shared state bureaucracy.

I complain rather frequently that not much discourse or debate occurs before policy is implemented in Nigeria. But it is not just a before-the-fact problem, it is an after-the-fact problem too. We go around in circles on issues (for example electricity) not simply because not much thought went into the policy in the first place, but because after the policy has failed nobody really gives much thought to why it failed. The popular thing is to classify the failure as being the result of "corruption" or "the Nigerian factor" or blame whichever region/ethnicity/religion of the country we do not belong to, blah, blah, blah.

Then a few months or years pass, and we do the same thing again, with the usual fanfare (and lack of discourse and debate), only be be shocked, shocked I tell you, when the thing doesn't work as well as promised.

Let me ask a question.

What was the effect on important statistics (e.g. unemployment, poverty, crime rate, etc) of sacking non-indigenes from your state civil service or deporting "non-indigene" beggars to their states of origin?

I don't just mean in the present instance (Orji and Fashola) but historically. Our states have done things like this so many times that we have (or should have) built up more than enough data to make an empirical, peer-reviewable set of findings on the efficacy of scapegoating non-indigenes in the name of serving indigenes.

Do you know of any studies of said effects?

I don't.

Yet our states keep doing it.

I am not going to pretend that I have the hard data. Nobody does, because far too many people don't care, and the few of us who do (me, for example) can have no access to the data because none of our state (or federal or local) governments keeps any such data. If you ask them, they will insist that the programme had fantastic and wonderful effects ... but then our governments lie to us so unabashedly that it has actually become counterproductive for them, in the sense that nobody in Nigeria really believes the government even when the government is telling the truth (assuming they ever do).

So no, I won't pretend to have the data.

But using my ordinary human powers of observation, it occurs to me that scapegoating non-indigenes has NO EFFECT WHATSOEVER on the welfare of indigenes. It is not that it makes their lives worse or makes their lives better, it is that IT HAS NO EFFECT.

It is cruelty for cruelty's sake.

The political/economic powers-that-be and leaders of thought, rather than admit they have no idea how to improve their state, distract and misdirect people by labeling non-indigenes as the source of the state's problems. Getting rid of the "foreigners" (their Nigerian citizenship counting for nothing) is portrayed as the only solution available to the "Action Governor", who duly take action.

In the warped world of our public discourse, this actually garners them popularity from a section of their state's population; lets face it, human beings in general are rather prone to this type of argument. Indeed, the saddest part of the saga is that those sacked or deported are the lucky ones; the unlucky ones become the targets of violent mobs of unemployed, unemployable, destitute youths who see what possessions the non-indigenes have as having been taken at the expense of "sons of the soil" like themselves.

On a different but similar note ....

Former FCT Minister Nasir El-Rufai rendered as many as (or more than) 800,000 people homeless by bulldozing their dwellings in and around Abuja. According to him, "Abuja is not for everyone," by which he meant the Capital City of the Federal Republic was not meant for the poor. It was not built for poor economic migrants, people El-Rufai thought should go back to their states of origin instead of messing up his shiny-shiny Abuja with their dishevelled presence. The people who should have questioned El-Rufai, be they legislators or the Nigerian commentariat, were full of praise for him for trying to reimpose the outdated, obsolete, unrealistic-from-day-one Abuja "masterplan".

But seriously, does anyone think that any amount of bulldozing will stop poor people from migrating to Abuja? And does anyone think the high cost of accommodation in the city won't inspire the creation of "informal" settlements?

If you don't masterplan for poor people showing up, that won't stop poor people from showing up. Why was there no debate and no discussion of replacing the unrealistic masterplan with a new one that took REALITY into consideration?

I just don't understand how and why it is politically and socially acceptable to try to deport Nigerians from Abuja or any other state in which they live. Because that is all they are doing ... trying.

Eventually, the people return, and in bigger numbers.

You can adapt your development planning model (assuming any exists) to reflect rational and realistic expectations in terms of the influx of economic migrants, or you can continue trying to deceive people that you are doing something by harassing, discriminating against and or deporting non-indigenes.

Central Bank

2011-08-08T16:36:00.000+01:00

You've probably heard by now that the Central Bank of Nigeria, the National Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Asset Management Company have "nationalized" four banks.

I've been an advocate of forthrightly and determinedly fixing the mess in our banking industry ... but I hope someone, somewhere is keeping a tally of the cost. We've spent billions so far, and it looks like we will spend billions more.

I am on record, on this blog, as saying the Federal Republic could probably afford to spend $10 billion (=N=1.5 trillion). At the time, this seems the most trustworthy estimate for the amount of "toxic assets" on our banks' books. This being Nigeria, I am not sure what we have spent so far; I would like to know if we have breached the $10 billion barrier -- because if we have, my opinion on the continued bailout will change.

In other Central Bank news, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, the Central Bank Governor, wants =N=2 trillion in pension funding unlocked so it can be used as capital to finance infrastructure projects.

Let me choose my words correctly.

The thing about Sanusi is he is a politicians masquerading as a Central Banker. Wait, wait, before you get the wrong idea, I mean it in the best way possible.

When he was first appointed to head the CBN, I was happy about the appointment.

Most public figures in Nigeria are "blank"; as a citizen, you have no idea what is in their mind. We shouldn't be surprised, because most of them don't have anything in their mind beyond the acquisition of money, power, women or some combination of the aforementioned. I am frequently dismayed by the realization that people in positions of economic and political power do not seem to have spent so much as one second thinking deeply about the issues.

When they are forced to express an opinion, they just regurgitate, as though it were fact, one of several colloquial assumptions that float around in Nigerian public discourse. The decisions we make, and actions we take, based on these assumptions have generally led us down the wrong path. Yet, no one ever truly interrogates these assumptions, or subjects them to empirical analysis.

Sanusi, on the other hand, was someone for whom I could say I had some idea of what his thought-out opinions were on the issues. I had been reading his essays and transcribed speeches for years before his CBN appointment. Sometimes I agreed with him, sometimes I did not, but you could always tell that he was thinking and not simply regurgitating.

He always sounded like a politician (hence my comment above, which was meant, as I say, in the best possible sense). He never, too my knowledge, wrote about the intricacies of the banking system or of national/continental/global finance. It was mostly sociopolitical and sociocultural commentary, and his comments on economic issues were less the data projections of a banker and more the talk of a politician advocating a development agenda.

Thus, I am not surprised that Sanusi has been using his CBN position to interject himself in economic policy areas that lie outside the constitutional remit of a Central Bank governor.

He has intervened in the Agricultural industry. He has intervened in the Electricity industry. And he is intervening in Infrastructure. And while I am still for the most part supportive of his interventions in the Banking/Insurance/Finance sector, I will be honest and tell you that I think some of his actions should have been policy decisions of the federal executive and legislature in tandem ... and not the decision of a single man.

I'd like to say that Central Bank governors are not elected, and that certain kinds of decisions are appropriately left to branches of the government that are elected ... but it is a difficult argument to make when those branches of government are intellectually moribund. Whatever is "constitutionally" proper, the unfortunate "practical" reality is if Sanusi waits for the Aso Rock and the Assembly to generate/initiate and legislate/approve strategically necessary initiatives, he (and we the people) will be waiting forever.

But this, ironically, is my problem with Sanusi's desire to unlock the pension funds for the purpose of infrastructure investment.

Entities like the IMF and World Bank are wrong when they say we should make the investment environment suitable for "foreign investors".

Our strategic priority is, was, and will always be making the investment environment suitable for domestic investment. Nigeria will not be saved or transformed by outside investors; if anything those foreign investors will only arrive in bulk to join in chopping after we Nigerians have already done all of the heavy lifting of economic transformation.

As such, it would of major benefit if we could unlock pension funds for investment in capital infrastructure.

The problem is Nigeria's political, constitutional, legal and policy framework are ... problematic. The way we handle major infrastructural projects, even in supposed showcase states like Lagos, is ... problematic. Our regulatory framework is ... problematic. Our law (and contract) enforcement is .... problematic. Our system of documentation and data-gathering has produced a country that thinks all of its football players are over-aged, and that doubts every Census that has ever been held.

In fact, Sanusi knows the environment is problematic. If he didn't, he wouldn't be trying so hard, and so often to bypass the Federal Government and essentially dictate Nigerian development policy from his perch at the Central Bank. Everything that Sanusi does is a loud announcement of his lack of confidence not only in the executive and legislature, but in the judiciary too. Heck, Sanusi has become the judge, jury and .... the man who sacks errant bank bosses who should probably be behind bars.

Do we really want to pour our PENSION funds into such an environment?

George W. Bush, the ex-president of the United States, suggested investing his country's pension assets in the stock market. Had his plan succeeded, the US social security fund would have taken a massive hit. Yes, this is a simplification of what Bush planned, I know, but you get why I am concerned.

We shouldn't put the cart before the horse.

Reforms first. Investment later. Without the reforms, the investment will likely be wasted.

Sanusi should have run for President. And he and his allies should have built a multi-ethnic political faction to fill enough Assembly seats and state governor's mansions to put a reform agenda squarely in practice ... as a prelude to subsequent massive investment in infrastructure.

PS: It has not escaped my attention that the =N=2 trillion that Sanusi is seeking to unlock for Infrastructure is roughly equivalent (when converted) to the $12 billion that Nigeria gifted the Paris Club in exchange for what was called debt cancellation. I have argued (in less detail on this blog; in greater detail elsewhere) that Nigeria would have been better off spending that money on Infrastructure, using it to leverage even more investment than the $12 billion corpus. Alas, in Nigerian "democracy" there is no real debate about issues; things just happen without anybody inquiring empirically as to whether there is a better thing we could have done with the resources. Say to anyone, "but this is a waste", and they will say to you "Well, if they didn't spend it on XYZ, it just would have been stolen anyway." Which says a lot. All said and done, Nigeria borrowed something like $19 billion from the Paris Club, but paid the Paris Club something between $55 billion and $60 billion -- this being Nigeria, the exact numbers are unclear.

Asuquo E.B.

2011-08-08T15:44:00.001+01:00

This image is culled from BUSINESS DAY.

I am a daily reader of the excellent newspaper Business Day. For the record, they have paid me nothing for the "endorsement".

Nor have I received anything for telling you this: "Asuquo E.B.", their resident editorial cartoonist, is quite good at his craft. His jabs are pithy and well-directed 98% of the time.

Per the other 2%, well, he did something I don't think anyone in his position should do -- he took sides during the 2011 Presidential Election. He is a citizen, fully entitled to cast his vote for the candidate of his choice, but there is a difference between a satirist and a political propagandist, and Asuquo's election-season bias affected his work.

Still, no two people agree on everything all the time.

I look forward to enjoying Asuquo E.B.'s work for years to come.

And just in case anyone is wondering, I am NOT opposed to interest-free banking (a.k.a. "Islamic Banking"). We should do whatever it takes to bring the majority of Nigerians into the banking system. Indeed, we should forget about what other countries do or do not do and stop trying to mimic Europe, North America or West Asia (a.k.a. the "Middle East"). A proper banking system suited to the environment of Nigeria would be a mix of forms that are otherwise considered "formal", "informal", and "traditional". Somehow, we have to draw it all together into a larger, stronger whole. And if the introduction of interest-free banking will spur on a deepening of the capital market in parts of the country that are currently "under-banked", then I am all for it.

Explain it to me

2011-07-08T16:06:00.000+01:00

Someone I know accused one of our state governors of staging a robbery. State funds meant to pay off workers in a sector disadvantaged by state government policy were taken from the ministry building by "armed robbers".

Someone else I know got angry about what he felt was a baseless accusation.

They began to argue.

I kept quiet and observed.

I find that when I express my views on Nigerian issues amongst my fellow citizens, I am always the statistically negligible minority viewpoint. Let me put it like this, if we were in the First Republic, the only way to unify the supporters of the NPC, AG, NCNC, UMBC, COR and NEPU would be to ask me to speak on the issues facing the First Republic -- instantaneously, they would all gang up to shout me down. And so we would march toward Civil War.

But I digress.

I won't say the governor's name, because this blog post is not about the governor. It is about we the people, we the citizens of the federal republic, as exemplified by these two arguing acquaintances.

The first guy stuck to his guns, insisting Governor XYZ was a crook who obviously staged the robbery so he could pocket the funds, and then issue new funds for the payoff.

You would think the second guy would restrict his argument to telling the first guy that he had no proof and was merely contributing to the ever-growing stack of rumours inundating Nigeria. This would actually be a conclusive, indisputable point.

But no, that is not what he did.

The second guy, instead, said to the first guy "Governor XYZ would not stoop so low" as to stage a robbery.

This baffled me. No, I should say I was flabbergasted. It was without a doubt the stupidest thing I had ever heard.

Let me explain. Governor XYZ won the 2011 gubernatorial elections after a lot of violence, vice and avarice. The "vice and avarice" were camouflaged, but the violence was not. The capital city of the state witnessed, in broad daylight, a running battle between thugs loyal to the Governor and thugs loyal to the Governor's former godfather. They set buildings and vehicles on fire, among other things.

And this is the man that the second guy says "would not stoop so low" as to carry out petty theft?

So let me get this straight.

Governor XYZ will gladly involve himself in mindless, thuggish violence, endangering the security of the citizens of his state, and promoting communal violence .... but is too good for petty theft?

That doesn't make a shred of sense. And he is not alone. It is bad enough that so many of my countrymen doggedly defend their favoured politicians, but what I don not understand is how they bring themselves to believe certain things about those politicians when we can all clearly see by their in broad daylight actions that they are nothing like what their supporters profess to believe them to be.

People will see a politician who has been corruptly looting his entire political career, and tell you they expect him to lead the fight against corruption. That doesn't make sense.

People see a politician who is part of the reason armed militia and communal violence are so pervasive, and tell you they expect him to improve public security. That makes no sense.

People see a politician who would be in prison if our police force, prosecution services and judiciary were efficient, and tell you he is the man to reform all those institutions. Why would you think that?

He wouldn't stoop so low? This from a man who saw the same thing I saw? The same thing everybody saw? My brother, he has already in your full view stooped lower.

Politics, Politicking and Politicians

2011-07-08T15:26:00.000+01:00

[NOTE: This post should have gone up last weekend]

Weekly Trust just published an interview with new Imo State Governor Rochas Okorocha. It is your usual, standard, run-of-the-mill political interview, with the usual question and the usual answers, except for one thing -- the first question:

In the past twelve years you have changed political parties like eight times. Does that mean we’ll see you ditching APGA anytime soon?

Governor Okorocha's response was ... what you would expect him to say. But the things our politicians do in search of power bespeaks the ultimate question of what they really stand for. There is pragmatism, and then there is blowing anywhere the wind is blowing as opposed to building an institutional structure that keeps people safe. The wind tends to blow powerfully in the wrong direction, and part of the reason people create government is to protect them against the wind.

As a side note, Daily Times reports Reuben Abati will take over as President Jonathan's official spokesman.

If you don't know, Mr. Abati is on the editorial and management staff of the Guardian and is a long-time, influential columnist on the paper. Sometimes his columns make sense and sometimes they don't (a bit like my blog, some of you might say).

On a serious note the Nigerian media industry suffers because of its financial dependence. The federal- and state-owned media are controlled by the governments, which limits their editorial freedom. Alas, the privately-owned media are bankrolled by powerful plutocrats and politicians, which limits their editorial freedom too. The politicians and the plutocrats have similar interests, so while the private press have a longer leash than their government-owned counterparts, there is only so far they can go in criticizing the status quo -- and there are specific individuals they are not free to criticize.

One of the private newspapers has vociferously criticized everything CBN Governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi has done. At first I couldn't figure out why they were so opposed even to relatively uncontroversial things ... until I discovered the newspaper was owned by the brother of one of the banking chiefs Sanusi threw out. The woman had stolen from her bank and essentially bankrupted it, but that didn't matter to her brother's paper, which is still on a mission of vengeance.

The political preferences of the paper owners also explains why some politicians are praised despite doing awful things, while other politicians have their dirty laundry washed in public. That, and "brown paper bag" journalism.

In any case, one of the most cynically amusing aspects of politics all over the world (and it does happen all over the world) is when a person gets a lucrative government job and starts defending the very things they criticized when they were outside government. As soon as he settles in, Mr. Abati will start intelligently explaining to us all why everything he used to claim was bad is in fact really quite good.

Diezani's dodgy deals

2011-06-12T19:55:00.001+01:00

You should read this investigative report from NEXT.

I suppose everyone is innocent until proven guilty, but I am cynically amused that Femi Falana has been retained to defend the interests of the beneficiaries of this reportedly dodgy deal. There is a reason most Nigerians don't take the protestations of "progressives" seriously ....

Former minister of petroleum, Diezani Allison-Madueke, (L) shakes hands with then acting President Goodluck Jonathan after taking the oath of office during the swearing-in ceremony of new ministers in Abuja, April 6, 2010.
Photo Credit: NEXT

Soba back on seat

2011-06-07T15:53:00.000+01:00

Back in March of 2011, I wrote this blog post titled "Convivial Form, Violent Substance". At the top of the post is a picture of bruised and battered Hajiya Halima Aminu Tijjani, a female politician from Kaduna State who was brutally beaten up by party political thugs on the orders of Barrister Musa Soba, Kaduna State Chairman of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN).

Nothing happened to Barrister Soba. The police did not arrest or investigate him. His party did not sanction him. Society did not ostracize him.

Part of me wants to be angry with we the citizens of Nigeria, because it seems like we do not care about important things like this. On the other hand, part of me realizes that things like this are NORMAL in our federal republic. For most citizens, getting upset at this is like getting upset at the sunrise, the sunset and the change of seasons. It is part of the natural order, and frankly the only thing that would have surprised people would have been if Barrister Soba did not behave the way he did.

I bring him up again because the Kaduna State ACN suspended Barrister Soba last month, not for his criminality, but because the party didn't do well in the State. It is bad enough that this is the only reason they would suspend him ...

... but what makes it worse is the national ACN (a euphemism for ex-Governor Bola Ahmed Tinubu of Lagos) "nullified the suspension", as reported by the newspaper NEXT.

So, Barrister Soba is back in charge of the Kaduna State ACN.

Sorry, Hajiya Halima Aminu Tijjani. It seems nobody but me gives a damn about you.

Famous Names

2011-05-31T14:26:00.000+01:00

Did you know that one country alone accounts for 67% of all the electricity generated in Sub-Saharan Africa? Did you know that country has a population of 50 million, and is facing a crisis because it does not generate sufficient electricity for its people and its economy?

Think about that. Two-thirds of the electricity produced in Africa is not enough for a country of 50 million people to achieve its full economic potential.

Doesn't it make you wonder how we in the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa manage with the 33% share we generate, doesn't it? Makes you think of those night-time pictures taken from space where Africa is the only continent that is totally dark (aside from a bright strip along the Mediterranean coast, and a few dots in South Africa, the 67% country).

Now, you are probably wondering why I am dragging up these old, boring statistics.

Simple reason.

An acquaintance of mine, who happens to be a big fan and supporter of the existing political order in Nigeria, decided to let me know that the world approved of our political system by listing the foreign leaders who attended the recent presidential inauguration.

He was quite proud of this list he sent me, even though 86% of his mostly African dignitaries list was made up of some of Africa's brutal dictators, thieving kleptocrats and the administratively clueless.

The man sent me a list of the sort of leaders that keep Sub-Saharan African in the dark -- literally, figuratively and metaphorically -- and he was so proud that their presence legitimized our inauguration!

There is a fear I have sometimes that things are a certain way in Africa because we the people actively support the things (and people) that guarantee that things will be that way.

Not an eloquent statement of my fear, but you get the point.

Working on something

2011-05-17T21:16:00.000+01:00

I haven't posted on this blog in 3 weeks. Much has happened since the elections. Enough time has passed for us to see whether trends are likely to change, whether there have been any paradigm shifts or watersheds crossed.

I am working on something that will hopefully get disseminated beyond the limited confines of this blog. After that, I will be back to commentary.

Predictable and Inevitable

2011-04-26T04:17:00.000+01:00

A month ago, I wrote this post about violence in the build-up to the election. It was a blog post. Blog posts are of necessity brief. To fully and exhaustively discuss violence in the 2011 Elections would require a volume of books; a thorough examination of the place of violence in Nigerian politics historically would require a library of books.

One of the things I pointed out (perhaps not as clearly as I would have wanted) is the connection and (oddly enough) disconnection between political VIPs and the armies of thugs that wreak violence in the name of politics.

The violence in Akwa Ibom was ostensibly "PDP" against "ACN", but (as noted in the post) it had little or nothing to do with Goodluck Jonathan (PDP President), Nuhu Ribadu (ACN Presidential candidate) or Bola Tinubu (ACN Supremo). It was a turf war between local warlords, ex-Governor Victor Attah and current Governor Godswill Akpabio. Attah may cloak himself in ACN colours but he does not take orders from Tinubu; and it is politically weak Jonathan who needed governors like Akpabio to "deliver" states like Akwa Ibom for him and not the other way around.

That blog post referenced incidents of violence ostensibly involving all the major parties, PDP, ACN, ANPP, CPC and APGA. I say "ostensibly" because each violent outcome was the product of local and individual specifics, local and individual quarrels, local and individual VIPs, local and individual Big Men, local and individual political, economic and social dynamics.

Atop this post was the picture of a bruised and battered woman. Her name is Hajiya Halima Aminu Tijjani. She is a Kaduna State politician who was viciously beaten up by thugs on the orders of Barrister Musa Soba, the Kaduna State Chairman of the ACN. I do not like Bola Tinubu. I do not like Nuhu Ribadu. Actually, I do not like any Nigerian politicians. But the honest truth is neither Tinubu nor Ribadu had anything to do with Musa Soba's decision to beat, batter and bruise Hajiya Tijjani. None of the national ACN leaders asked him to have her beaten. What he did to her was "normal" politics in Nigeria. Go to that blog post and click on the link to the Daily Trust article on the story -- there are examples of other such "muscular" political acts (and bear in mind, most political thuggery doesn't get reported by the media; read this blog by journalist China Acheru about journalists being intimidated into silence in 2007).

But, while the respective VIPs of the different parties do not necessarily give the orders authorizing the violence of their underlings .... they do not publicly or privately condemn those underlings, nor do they lift a finger to try to stop them or their armies of thugs. What they do instead is criticize the violent underlings of all the other parties, while pretending not to notice the violent underlings of their own party. In my prior blog post on this issue, I included links to pre-election articles quoting President Jonathan condemning violent CPC thugs, and candidate General Buhari (rtd) condemning violent PDP thugs. Neither man mentioned or acknowledged the thugs from their own parties. I don't recall Shekarau saying anything about ANPP thugs; Tinubu was silent on ACN thugs; and Peter Obi barely acknowledged that a world existed beyond the borders of the electoral constituency he was trying to manipulate in favour of Dora Akunyili (in part by using thugs of his own).

These "grassroots" political machines go by different colloquial names in Nigerian discourse; a news media pundit or beer parlour discussant, for example, make talk about Chief/Alhaji XYZ's "structures on the ground", when discussing his electoral chances. The local warlords, comparatively low-level bosses who run these "grassroots" machines, are more often than not the direct or indirect employers of the various armies of political thugs who are used for the purposes of intimidation, protection, "manipulation" (i.e. rigging) ... and violence.

Each national government on Earth encompasses so much more than its army, but near-every government on Earth feels it strategically necessary to have an army to defend its domain against encroachment by other national governments.

It works the same way with these "grassroots" machines or "structures on the ground". They are much more than just their violent thug branch, and do much more than rote violence. Nevertheless, each machine or "structure" feels it necessary to hire a gang of thugs lest they become the victims of violent encroachment (or takeover) by a rival machine's thug army.

By the way, the preceding paragraph does more (so much more) to explain 12 years of violence in the Niger-Delta than the unfortunately unexamined claims that the "militants" are fighting to stop the exploitation of the Delta's peoples. Each of the so-called "militant" groups started as the violent branch of a local politician's "structures on the ground"; they fought against each other and terrorized the civilian population in order to secure territory for their respective political sponsors. In between elections, when money from politicians dried up, these "militants" would turn to the financially more lucrative work of blowing up pipelines in order to siphon vast amounts of crude oil for sale in illicit international markets. When election season returns, they go back to working for the politicians who kept the Police and Army from disturbing their oil bunkering operations.

Yes, I know the army struck against specific, particular bunkerers, but it was one of those Ribadu-type things, where a single person who has fallen out of political favour is targeted while the numerous people who are still in favour are allowed to continue business-as-usual. Of course they protected their once-and-future allies. Be serious. This is a "Human" political phenomenon that is not restricted to Nigeria.

In any country in the world, be it a democracy or a dictatorship, people in power are indebted to whoever put them in power and go through a great deal of effort to keep those "constituencies" happy so as to assure their continued support; if the army put you in office, you spend a disproportionate amount of the budget on the army; if unions put you in office, you pass laws that allow union bosses take something to their members when it is time for the next election for union leadership; if corporate money put you in power, you cut taxes for corporations.

The key to understanding why these "grassroots" political machines act with criminal impunity lies in this musing from my prior blog post:

Would the bosses of "grassroots" political machines wield such power without the patronage and protection of the Big Men? Or is it the Big Men who would not wield the power they control without the backing of the machine bosses? Either way, the two groups work hand in hand to dictate political outcomes.

In Nigeria, these "structures on the ground" are the decisive chess pieces wielded by the VIPs and Big Men. Unlike checkers (a.k.a. "draught"), chess is not decided by who has no pieces at the end; you can checkmate an opponent, even if he has "structures" still in play. However, as with chess, you can look at the "structures" available to each candidate, study how those "structures" are arrayed on the board, and come to a conclusion as to who has the higher probability of check and mate.

Insofar as the ACN "structures" are controlled by Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the electoral fortunes of ACN candidate Nuhu Ribadu were entirely in Tinubu's hands; had Tinubu sold his candidature to the CPC per the long-running negotiations, that would have been the end of Ribadu as a presidential candidate (and even now, pundits are speculating that Tinubu cut a last-minute deal with Goodluck Jonathan, by way of explaining why ACN-dominated states went en masse for the incumbent rather than the ACN candidate).

But I digress.

Political VIPs and Big Men rely on these local warlords to "deliver" communities, LGAs, senatorial zones, states and regions on election day. They know what these warlords do. They know what will happen when the warlords go to work. The VIPs and Big Men know what the short-term, medium-term and long-term effects of this type of politics are. Unfortunately for the Federal Republic, the Big Men and VIPs perceive the likelihood of their directly benefiting in the short-term to be sufficient enough to warrant blithely consigning the country to seriously negative medium- and long-term effects.

This is the complicated back-story to the outbreak of violence in the North of the Federal Republic in the aftermath of the Presidential election.

Supporters of Goodluck Jonathan, blame second-place finisher General Mohammedu Buhari (rtd) for the violence. My opinion of Buhari is the same as my opinion of every Nigerian politician, Jonathan inclusive -- I am NOT a fan or supporter. However, the accusers seem to imply that Buhari ordered his supporters to kill their fellow citizens and spread anarchy across a handful of northern cities. This is most certainly a lie. Buhari gave no such order. If anything, Buhari has as much (or should I say as little) control over the thuggish wing of his "structures" as Jonathan has over Akpabio's violent "structures" in Akwa Ibom, or Bola Tinubu over Attah's "structures" in the same state.

On the other hand, they are right to criticize Buhari for his hesitation to fully and properly criticize the violence. With that said, they are quite hypocritical in doing so, because they too hesitate to criticize the violence of their structures too.

Aside from his failure to enforce the criminal laws against violent pro-PDP "structures", I have not forgotten the unseemly quickness with which President Goodluck Jonathan exonerated MEND from culpability in the Abuja bomb blasts before there had been even a cursory examination of the evidence, much less a full and conclusive investigation. Unsurprisingly, "militant" leaders in the Niger-Delta have pledged their unflinching support for him and (ominously) warned against any plot to undermine his government. Look at the list of those making the pledge: Chief Government Ekpemupolo (a.k.a. Gen. Tompolo), Chief Ateke Tom, Alhaji Asari Dokubo, Chief Bibopre Ajube (a.k.a. Shoot At Sight), General Ezekiel Akpasibewei, Farah Dagogo, Africa Ukparasia, Paul Ezizi (a.k.a.Comdr. Ogunbos), Pastor Reuben Wilson, Joshua Macaiver, Ferdinand Amaibi (a.k.a. Busta Rhymes, Tamunegiyeifori Proby (a.k.a. Egbele), Kenneth Opusinji (kula Community), Kile Selky Torughedi (a.k.a. Gen. Young Shall Grow) Bonny Gawei, Aboy Muturu, and Hendrick Opukeme. This is a list of men who should be in prison for VIOLENT crimes committed against Nigerian citizens, Nigerian infrastructure, and against institutions of the Federal Republic like the Army and Police. Yet, here they are, as free as free can be, making veiled threats, while our jails are full of innocent citizens who "await trial" for years on charges for which there is no evidence (like the 13-year-old boy arrested and accused of "attempted murder" by way of throwing a sachet of pure water at the car of the Imo State governor).

There is a point I am trying to make.

You see, I understand the way we have been taught to think. There is a 9 in 10 chance that any Nigerian who has read this blog post up to this point is about to accuse me of being an apologist for the extremists who wreaked violence in the North after the election or of being an opponent of Jonathan (or supporter of Buhari) who is trying to tar Jonathan with the same brush as Buhari.

That is how we have been taught to think.

And that is one of many roots of the problem ... but I will not digress from what I am trying to say.

You see, this is NOT about Jonathan as an individual, NOR is is it about Buhari as an individual. Attacking either one of them as an individual is POINTLESS.

This is about the POLITICAL SYSTEM AS A WHOLE.

The Federal Republic of Nigeria is now, and has seemingly always been, governed by a political process in which violence is a NECESSARY part of the system's functioning. If your body is alive, your lungs are going to breathe; if the Nigerian political system continues to exist as it does today (and always has), there will be violence.

All the finger-pointing at this individual or that individual, at this ethnic group or that ethnic group, at this region or that region, at this religion or that religion .... is entirely besides the point.

Somalia is violent despite being a country of uniform ethnicity and religion. Rwanda has been violent for decades despite being mostly Roman Catholic. Cote d'Ivoire has been a semi-disaster for 20 years despite once being known as a West African miracle. Point being, if you do the things that make violence inevitable, then violence will be inevitable

Be honest with yourself. You know, and I know, that if the Independent National Electoral Commission had declared anybody other than Jonathan the winner of the election, the Niger-Delta "militants" listed above would immediately have started blowing up oil pipelines again. Violence is inherent in our system.

As if this isn't bad enough, the VIPs and Big Men are not as much in control of their respective "structures" as they like to pretend. They don't want to reform, restructure and transform the Police and security agencies. They don't want to reform, restructure and transform our political system. And they don't want to destroy their "structures" in case they may need them. And so, when local warlords go on the warpath, the response of a sequence of governments has been noticeably limp. They first wait to see if the violence will subside on its own, and if it doesn't they send in the Army to frighten the thugs into a ceasefire by means of blasting everything in sight. A few token thugs are taken into custody (though I have never heard of any of them being convicted) .... and life goes on exactly as it did before, with the GUARANTEE of a repeat of the violence in a few weeks or months depending on the circumstances. In fact, one of the most annoying things about government in Nigeria is the fact that everyone in the country has a firm grasp of where/when/why communal violence will break out, yet there is never any sign of the government/police/SSS/etc doing anything to pre-emptively or pro-actively responding to forestall repetitive crises.

Keeping with my earlier metaphor, forestalling violence for them is like you or me trying to hold our breath. We might be able to do it for a while, but eventually we are forced to gulp down huge mouthfuls of air. The same is true for our political system; when the violence gets out of hand, they use the Army to put a stop to it, but ultimately they are all utterly reliant on a brand of politics that makes violence a predictable and inevitable result ... so they open the door, and allow it to happen because they see benefits for themselves in the short-term.

True Courage

2011-04-25T20:33:00.000+01:00

An inspiring story reported by NEXT about a Nigerian citizen who risked his life to save his fellow citizens during the post-election violence.

I have two comments for NEXT though.

Firstly, identifying the gentleman by name is risky enough; going further to tell the whole world his place of employment is putting his life in danger. Any violent radical who thinks what he did was wrong could easily go there looking for him.

This is something I don't understand about the Nigerian media in general. They do not investigate or report important stuff we citizens need to know because they don't want to put themselves at risk of commercial, political, and physical retaliation .... but they think nothing of broadcasting other people's phone numbers, home addresses and even graphic pictures of corpses without regard to the sensitivities of family members of the deceased.

Secondly, there is heavy emphasis in NEXT's report (and in the subsequent online public commentary) about how this was a "Moslem" helping "Christians". The impression they give is that they think this singular fact makes it a "man bite dog" story.

Let us be honest with ourselves. When it comes to life-and-death issues, to circumstances where a person runs a real risk of losing their life if they do the right thing, Nigerians in general (regardless of religion or ethnicity) are extremely reluctant to put themselves on the line to protect their fellow citizens .... even if that fellow citizen is of the same ethnic, religious, kindred or village origin.

It is why Fela Kuti sang that song about us being so afraid to die we would never rise up against our oppressors.

It is why incomprehensible things happen to Nigerians all over Nigeria, and there is no reaction whatsoever from the public .... not while it is happening, not after it happens. No reaction. No effort. Nothing.

What this gentleman did is amazing by NIGERIAN standards, not by "Moslem" standards. More than that actually, because what he did was impressive by HUMAN standards; most people on Earth simply would not have done what he did. Even as I salute him, I can but pray that I would find similar courage if I ever found myself in a similar situation.

I wish he was a policeman. Or maybe I should say I wish the Nigerian Police Force was more like him. Either way, he was out in the streets, facing down thugs and protecting citizens.

I have immense respect for him. What he did makes him far more useful to Nigeria and Nigerians than all the useless politicians who ran in the 2011 Elections, both those who "won" and those who "lost".

God bless him.

Multiple reports of post-election violence.

2011-04-18T16:09:00.002+01:00

I don't suppose I need to post links. You are all probably monitoring the situation too.

Four More Years of PDP

2011-04-17T22:16:00.000+01:00

It looks like President Goodluck Jonathan will "win" this weekend's polls without the need for a run-off. His Peoples Democratic Party remains the largest in the Senate and the House of Representatives, albeit by a reduced margin. The PDP is likely to have deals in place with APGA, and there are rumours that the failure of the CPC/ACN talks led to a secret PDP/ACN deal that handed the Southwest to the PDP in the presidential race. Whatever happens, whatever coalitions are formed in the federal legislature, the next four years will be similar to the last twelve.

The upcoming Gubernatorial and State Assembly polls should be .... tense. From the citizens' perspective, I am not sure it matters which of the factions win the final leg. Whatever happens, we will end up with imperial Governors who rule their states like private property, and State Assemblies that either act as a rubber-stamp (if dominated by the same faction that won the Governor's mansion) or as block-headed obstructionists (if won by a different faction from that which won the Governor's mansion). Precedent suggests the possibility turnout will be lower than turnout for the federal races these past two weekends.

Life will go on.

Same as usual.

Where a sachet of water is a deadly weapon

2011-04-17T22:07:00.002+01:00

Usually, I prefer to post a link to stories carried by Nigerian newspaper websites, so if you wished to read the story, you'd give the web traffic to the professionals who invested resources, time and effort in reporting the story.

Today, for the first (and I hope only) time, I will post the full text of a news report. On the off-chance that NEXT edits the report in the future, I want you to see the story exactly as I saw it few days ago. This is the link to the story on NEXT's website.

Boy, 13, jailed for pelting Obasanjo's convoy with 'pure water'

By Nicholas Ibekwe
April 14, 2011 04:58PM

A 13-year-old boy, Precious Efurueze, who is accused of allegedly attempting to kill former president Olusegun Obasanjo and the governor of Imo State, Ikedi Ohakim, in Owerri on 31, March, by stoning their campaign convoy with sachets of pure water; was on Wednesday denied bail by a chief magistrate court in Owerri.

Master Efurueze is among 18 people charged with attempted murder for participation in the attack on Messrs. Obasanjo and Ohakim. Notable among the accused is Prince Madumere, the chief of staff to the gubernatorial candidate of the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA), Rochas Okorocha.

At the resumed hearing of the suit yesterday the presiding magistrate, V.C Isiguzo, while delivering ruling on the application for bail for the accused, explained that her court has no jurisdiction on two of the charges because they are punishable by life imprisonment. Mrs. Isiguzo, however, turned down the accused's request to be granted bail until the conclusion of the substantive suit.

The chief magistrate explained that her reason for denying the accused bail is that they had been charged with felony which carries a punishment of life imprisonment if found guilty. She said the offence is a serious one and, therefore, should not be treated lightly.

Speaking to newsmen at the end of the court session, Greg Okemiri, the counsel representing the 12th to the 16th accused persons, while expressing his displeasure with the ruling of the magistrate, hinted that the reason the application was denied may be political. He was also angered by the continued detention of Master Efurueze who, he explained, under the law of the country, by virtue of being a minor, is considered incapable of committing a crime.

"The law describes him as not capable of committing crime yet," he said. "All these things are in our law. Sometimes I feel very sad that we do not want to do things right. You see someone who the law describes as not capable of committing a crime yet, and you remand him in an adult prison." Mr. Okemiri, however, stated that he has taken steps to see that the boy is released soon. The case was adjourned to May 30, for further hearing.

Can you believe it? A 13-year-old kid, charged with "attempted murder" for throwing sachets of pure water? Not "disorderly conduct" or something like that, but "attempted murder"?

And the kid is denied bail because ....? Is he a criminal mastermind? Perhaps he will graduate to throwing handfuls of dry leaves if we don't keep him under lock and key with hardened, adult criminals for room-mates?

Why did his lawyers ask for bail anyway? Why didn't they ask the judge to dismiss the case? I strongly doubt the police can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the boy threw sachets of water in the first place (our treatment of evidence and crime scenes leaves a lot to be desired). But even if they can, it is simply impossible to legally sustain a murder case against a 13-year-old sachet-of-water-thrower.

The judge's rationale for denying bail is the severity of the crime, a felony punishable by life imprisonment. Before she got to the question of whether bail can be awarded, shouldn't she have first made a finding as to whether a prima facie felony case exists in the first place? Shouldn't she have quashed the charges the moment she realized the ridiculous nature of the case? At the very least she could have instructed the prosecutors to revise their charges against the boy to something that makes sense (and is applicable to what he actually did), at which point she would be free to grant him bail based on the new charges?

There is simply no prima facie evidentiary rationale for the boy's detention on a murder charge. Not only should the judge have issued an order setting him free, she should also have strongly cautioned the police against wasting the court's time with such an unprofessional "case".

You know what probably happened?

The Imo State Governor is driving through the streets with his guest ex-President Obasanjo, and some people embarrass him by throwing sachets of "pure" water at their cars. The governor orders the police to "arrest those hooligans".

The police then round up everyone standing in the vicinity from which sachets were thrown. They have no pictures, no video, no eye-witness accounts, nothing linking the people standing around there other than the fact that they were standing there when water was thrown. The police tell them that even if they were not among, they either (a) saw the people who did it; or (b) supported the people who did it. Either way, "you are coming with us to the station". Someone, the governor or over-zealous policemen seeking the governor's favour, come up with the bright idea of charging the sachet-of-water-throwers with attempted murder.

Sensing an opportunity, the governor orders the police to arrest the lieutenants and functionaries of his principal political opponent, Rochas Okorocha, on charges of "inciting" the throwers of water sachets, thus causing a "security breach". The governor probably does not know that a 13-year-old boys was among the detainees. When he asks the Police Commissioner whether his orders have been carried out, the Commissioner likely tell him "yes" and maybe gives him the number of people arrested and the names of the VIPs arrested for incitement ... but the "hooligans" who actually threw sachets of water are not important enough to be named, and the Commissioner probably sees absolutely nothing about arresting a 13-year-old for attempted-murder-by-water-sachet that should warrant specially reporting it to the governor. Heck, the Commissioner's subordinates probably didn't tell him; they too see nothing especially out of the ordinary with charging a child with attempted-murder-by-means-of-water-sachet.

The case then comes to a judge who knows the case is stupid, and knows it is wrong to lock up a 13-year-old with hardened, adult criminals in an abominable Nigerian jail, but who also knows that if she releases even one of the governor's enemies without the governor's explicit approval, she will feel the governor's wrath. Even if the governor would think it stupid to have arrested the boy if someone had told him, that does not mean he would forgive a judge for acting as if she could overrule an order that came from him.

If the boy's lawyers were serious about getting him out, they would "leak" his story to Al Jazeera or CNN or Sky News. Governments in Nigeria are far more concerned about their image in the global media than they are about their image among Nigerian citizens.

If this story went worldwide, the governor (or frankly the president) would not only order the boy's release, but would then very loudly order the Police Commissioner to investigate how such a thing could have happened. The Commissioner will promise thunder-and-lightning for anyone found to have breached regulations.

Then time will pass ... everyone will forget ... life will go on same as usual ... but at least the boy would be free.

Scandal in the Oil Ministry

2011-04-11T00:31:00.000+01:00

The newspaper NEXT has published a story about corruption in the Federal Ministry of Petroleum Resources. The story itself is .... disturbing if true, but interestingly they have also posted:

(a) A rough video which they purport to be an undercover sting-type meeting with the man who collects the bribe money on behalf of the Minister.

(b) An audio clip which they purport to be the phone call setting up the sting. They pose as oil importers calling the man who collects the bribe to set up the exchange.

They have posted links to the above two media clips, as well as links to PDF transcripts of the audio and video clips.

Officials at the Ministry have (predictably) denied the allegations.

I don't know what to believe. Oh, I am sure there is monumental corruption in the oil industry (not just in Nigeria, but worldwide) .... but NEXT's sting did not produce a "smoking gun" linking the Minister or anyone else to the man they spoke to on the audio and video clips.

Election

2011-04-11T00:29:00.000+01:00

You've probably all heard/read/seen the news of the explosion at the INEC offices in Suleja, and the subsequent explosion at a vote collation centre in Maiduguri, as well as the blast in Kaduna. Campaign season has been violent as usual, and these were the thugs' end-of-season exclamation points.

Voting in the National Assembly elections went off relatively peacefully this weekend.

I am tempted not to say anything about the election itself, and to focus (as per usual) on issues that are never mentioned or addressed by politicians in their campaigns or in office. Notably, consolidation and cost-cutting in our over-expensive, over-burdensome administrative structure (as sketched out in this, and many other prior blog post) will simply not happen. Fundamental reform of the Nigerian Police Force (argued for in this, and many other prior blog posts) will not happen either.

Besides, there is no point saying anything when results are not final. Not just the results for the National Assembly, but all results. Only then can you say what patterns have been revealed.

So far the only "pattern" (if it holds out) established is that the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) has become the new AD/UPN/AG-type party that controls the Yoruba-majority states. I suppose this is good news for the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) and the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) which each seemed to be aiming (despite rhetoric to the contrary) to take the NCNC/NPP and NPC spots for the Igbo-majority and Hausa-majority states respectively. I don't know what that means for the Peoples Democratic Party, heirs to the NPN/SDP/NRC "gather all the Big Men together under one tent" strategy, nor am I sure what that means for the prospects of pan-Nigerian political parties (as opposed to regional outfits). All I can say is if the All Nigerian Peoples Party (ANPP) is wiped out in Kano by the CPC (likely) but holds on to Borno and Yobe, they would have metamorphosed from a new NPC into a new version of the late Waziri Ibrahim's GNPP.

Is it me, or do we just go around in circles, coming back to the same place we started rather than moving forward to something different .... something better?

Another interesting trend is some of the early victories by opposition parties over the PDP have involved former members of the PDP running on opposition party tickets after failing to win the PDP ticket. Prominent among these early winners is George Akume, who was an 8-year PDP governor of Benue State, and is now a newly re-elected ACN senator (having only recently decamped to the ACN).

In the fluid world of Nigerian politics where men hop from party to party depending on short-term Realpolitik, it is hard to conclude that the victory of any one party in a specific election means anything different from the victory of a rival party in that same poll.

First Principles

2011-04-04T20:37:00.002+01:00

I'll restate something for the record. I've said this several times since I started this blog.

Every political, economic and sociocultural leader in Nigeria claims to be interested in reforms. They all make promises, give assurances. They all claim to be Born-Again (Christian) or Pro-Shariah (Moslem). They all point fingers at everyone else in the world other than themselves when answering the question of who is responsible for the lack of movement in so many significant issue areas.

For me, the day I know reform, restructuring and transformation has begun in Nigeria is the day we begin a concrete and irreversible process to:

(a) Consolidate the 36 States and 1 too-large Territory into a sub-national second-tier of 6 Administrative Regions and 4 condensed Territories (these smaller territories would fulfill both second-tier and third-tier functions);

(b) Consolidate the 774 constitutional Local Government Areas and the dozens of unconstitutional Governor-created L.G.A.-equivalents into no more than 72 third-tier sub-national units (exclusive of the 4 condensed Territories which serve both second-tier and third-tier functions).

(c) Set constitutional limits to permanently right-size the legislative and executive components of the new administrative divisions, cutting by 50% or more the combined number of "elected" political officeholders (governors, parliamentarians, etc) unelected appointees political office (e.g commissioners, ministers, supervisory councilors, members of commissions/panels/advisory boards/etc, etc) and the respective political supporting cast of each of these officeholders (assistants, special assistants, senior special assistants, media officers, security votes, etc). For example, the size of the federal legislature should drop from 469 (360 in the lower house, 109 in the upper house) to 315 (300 in the lower house, 15 in the upper house), with a lowered ceiling on the salaries, perks and privileges of members, as well as the numbers of assistants, senior assistants, special assistants, senior special assistants and other hangers-on feeding out of the treasury trough

.

The three things mentioned above are only the beginning ... but without this beginning, nothing else will work. It is simply not possible to move forward under the present administrative structure. It is burdensome, an albatross on our necks.

Consolidation would not only make resources available for productive use, but would (much more importantly in my view) create a better platform at all three tiers for long-term planning and the optimal maximization of complementary economic potentialities.

I really do believe that this is the starting point (only the starting point, mind you, not the destination) for any reform, restructuring and transformation in Nigeria, so much so, that these first principles are responsible for the cynical approach my blog takes to Nigerian politics.

You see, if we enacted these three reforms, the number of politicians and political hangers-on directly supported by the public treasury by around half (50%) if not more. Inasmuch as criminal theft (a.k.a. looting, corruption or graft) is a problem, the greater problem to our fiscal health lies in the legal waste built into the system. Indeed, direct financial support of an excessive number of political operators is the lesser cause of legal waste; many more, so many more political patrons and clients are supported by the public treasury indirectly.

Hence my cynicism.

To expect the politicians to enact these reforms is like expecting them to commit financial and political suicide. The domains they control (from states and LGAS to ministries and commissions) are too fractured for effective, rational government. But direct control of a small pot of money is more appealing to them than having to queue up with thousands of other political jobbers for fiscal favours from someone else.

And can you imagine how powerful that someone else will be, what with his control of a bigger pot of money? This consideration is probably of paramount importance to them. If they were guaranteed that it would be them in control of the larger, rationalized entities, they would sign up for reform immediately! But all of them are already engaged in vicious, do-or-die political battles to control the existing LGAs, states and legislative/parliamentary constituencies; if you consolidate, then you merely increase the number of people with whom they would have to vie for imperial control of public resources. Part of the reason our states and LGAs were atomized in the first place was Big Men and warlords seeking to avoid having to contend with other Big Men and warlord by creating a small enough space upon which they could exert total control.

It puts me in a difficult position. I am a firm believer in something I know the political system will never produce. Concomitantly, I cannot in any way, shape or form deceive myself into supporting any of the politicians or political parties, because their many fake promises are simply impossible to deliver without enacting these three first principles.

Reform the Police

2011-04-04T20:36:00.003+01:00

A very good friend of mine just survived a terrible incident while traveling from Lagos to Aba.

He was traveling in a bus that was driving a few vehicles behind another bus. Through the windshield he saw what appeared to be a uniformed "policeman" flag down the bus ahead of them. As soon as the bus stopped, a group of armed robbers sprang out of the bushes to attack that first bus.

This happened in broad daylight, at 3:00pm in the afternoon.

While this is awful, it isn't the reason for my post per se. Unfortunately, violent crime is a feature of this planet. It happens everywhere. There is no place on Earth in which you are free from the risk.

No, it is what happened next. My friend's bus was able to make a U-turn and escape the fate of the first bus. Some way down the road, the ran into that inevitable feature of our inter-city expressways, the police checkpoint; such extortion choke points are one of several reasons there is little "express" about our "expressways".

At the checkpoint they notified the police that there was a robbery in action just a short way up the road. The police reply? They said they were "not on robbery patrol", and that was the end of it.

This is the reason for my post.

In all the years I lived in Nigeria, I was never the victim of a direct crime; all of us are victims of various unpunished crimes, but that is another story. I am glad I wasn't, because if criminals had attacked, I would have been entirely defenseless. In those days, only the wealthy and well-connected had telephones; and even if we had had a telephone, the unpleasant truth is the police would not have responded to a distress call. They would have said their vehicle was in disrepair, or that there was no fuel in the vehicle; if we were lucky, they would show up the next day in the afternoon or evening and ask us to defray the cost of the fuel they used to come to our home (never mind the fact that their investigative skills were so poor, and their arrival on the crime scene so late, and their professional disinterest so great, that they were unlikely to ever "solve" the crime in spite of our having coughed out money to pay for their gas.

This is the problem. It is a bigger problem than crime.

There are violent criminals everywhere in the world, but the difference in the citizens' experience of crime lies entirely in the mind of the criminal. Where a criminal thinks he can do what he wants with a high probability of getting away with it, citizens' experience is worse. In contrast, where a criminal thinks there is a strong chance he will be captured, prosecuted and punished, crime doesn't vanish, but citizens' experience of it is different.

This is a reality even within countries with better police forces than ours. In the United States, for example, the police forces give a higher priority to crime prevention in wealthier neighbourhoods and a lower priority to poorer neighbourhoods, and it shows in those neighbourhoods' varying experiences of crime.

Nigerian criminals are not intrinsically worse than criminals elsewhere, and while some idiots like to talk as though all Nigerians are criminals, we as a the peoples of Nigeria are not any worse than any other peoples in the world.

The problem is Nigerian criminals are well aware that their odds of being apprehended and prosecuted range from minimal to negligible. This is why assassins can stroll casually in the busy, crowded streets of cities like Lagos and Onitsha, patiently approach their victim, calmly kill him in front of everybody, take the time to pump extra bullets to make sure he has no chance of survival, stretch their muscles, ponder the philosophies of Emmanuel Kant, read several books, make phone calls to their girlfriends, and then (and only then) stroll to their getaway vehicles to flee the scene. Well, they don't really "flee", they just calmly drive away.

Now you may be offended by my facetious remarks in the preceding paragraph, but trust me, it is grim, gallows humour ... the humour of the powerless man lamenting his fate.

They have no fear at all.

In fact, if by some chance a few of their colleagues are arrested, the criminals too-frequently launch frontal assaults on police stations and prisons to free said colleagues. We don't keep statistics, but I bet Nigeria has been the scene of far more "daring" attacks on prisons and police stations than any country outside an active war zone.

They have no fear at all.

The systems and institutions of law enforcement in our Federal Republic have been in desperate need of reform, restructuring and transformation since before Independence. In fact, the Colonial and Pre-Colonial systems of such were each in their way as problematic as the Post-Colonial variant has turned out.

It isn't just the Nigerian Police Force, but the nature, structure, form and functionality of the judiciary and of the legal profession.

Look around at the candidates in the oft-postponed 2011 Elections at all three tiers. Do any of them sound like they appreciate the depth of the problem? Do any of them sound like they have a thought-through, realistic plan to begin the long process of reform? Do any of them have the credibility to inspire trust in cookie-cutter promises of reform?

How many times have we changed governments since 1960?

What impact have these changes ever had on the Nigerian Police Force?

We have a much more intractable problem. You see, the people with the power to instigate reform are people who are threatened by the prospect of law enforcement institutions that work well. They know what they do, and they know that what they do would make them targets of any effective law enforcement regime .... so there is no reform and there never will be.

Ouattara's militia advances

2011-04-04T20:36:00.000+01:00

In certain parts of Africa, most notably Chad and the Central African Republic, there have been multiple occasions when what was known as the "rebel" army becomes domestically and international recognized as the "government" army, while the erstwhile "government" army takes up the mantle as the new "rebel" army. Cote d'Ivoire is about to get its first taste of this phenomenon.

Alassane Ouattara's Forces Nouvelle look set to replace Laurent Gbagbo's "National Armed Forces" as the "government" army. No one is saying this (because everyone is officially supposed to support Ouattara), but it is likely his current martial success is built on the direct intervention of Blaise Campaore, President of Burkina Faso. Indeed, some of the "Ivoiriens" in Ouattara's triumphant army are likely officers and regular enlisted soldiers from the Burkinabe Armed Forces. Both sides are reportedly using Liberian mercenaries. Unsurprisingly, there are reports of atrocities by both the "government" and "rebel" armies.

Some think this is the end-game of the Ivoirien crisis, but such thoughts have been uttered before.

Nearly two decades ago, the autocratic Felix Houphouet-Boigny died.

In Houphouet's final years, his Prime Minister, Alassane Ouattara, was the de facto "Acting President", but according to law the Presidency was meant to pass to the President of the Ivoirien National Assembly, Henri Konan Bedie. Rather than step aside for Bedie to take the office, Prime Minister Ouattara attempted to use his de facto control of the powers of the presidency to subvert the transition and to consolidate power in his own hands. After a political mini-crisis, Ouattara's efforts failed, and he went into exile when Henri Konan Bedie was confirmed as president.

Gaining the presidency and forcing his rival into exile were not enough for Bedie, who decided to make it constitutionally impossible for his rival Ouattara to be a political threat. Bedie inaugurating the an ideology he called "Ivoirite" and passed laws he argued were necessary to (for all intents and purposes) protect the political supremacy of pure-blood Ivoriens from perfidious "foreigners" in their midst. Bedie's definition of "foreigner" was designed to apply to Alassane Ouattara, to invalidate his citizenship and disqualify him from running for political office. That was bad enough to begin with, but any law written to use the facts of Ouattara's life to invalidate his citizenship was bound to have the effect of invalidating the citizenship of millions of Ivoiriens in the north of the country, whether intentionally or not.

This sparked a bigger crisis, and when Bedie realized he could count on the support of General Robert Guei, who had been appointed army chief by the late Houphouet-Boigny, in his fight with Ouattara, he sidelined Guei and went on to "win" an election that was boycotted by both Ouattara's and Gbagbo's parties. In response, General Guei overthrew President Bedie and held a quick election. Having tasted power, and desiring to keep it, Guei upheld Bedie's Ivoirite-derived laws barring Ouattara from participating in the elections. By all accounts, Guei then lost the election to Laurent Gbagbo, but nevertheless declared himself the winner. A civil uprising forced Guei from office, sending him into internal political exile. Laurent Gbagbo, who had spent the last decade-and-half of the Houphouet-Boigny autocracy campaigning for democracy (and who had won an election from which Guei had blocked Ouattara), became President.

Alas, Gbagbo too became a convert to "Ivoirite" ideology, as well as to Bedie's statutory sleight-of-hand that banned Ouattara from running for office. In response, a rebel army, backed by Ouattara and by Burkinabe President Blaise Campaore, swept the northern half of the Cote d'Ivoire before French and Senegalese troops intervened to force the incipient Civil War into a stalemate. In the opening stages of the war, ex-president General Robert Guei was murdered in mysterious circumstances.

International intervention had the effect only of freezing the frontline. A decade went by with no progress on any core issue. Eventually an election was held; the rebel army controlled the north and the government army the south, and each side rather blatantly rigged in its domain. The final results said Ouattara had won; the Gbagbo side rejected this. After more stalemate, war resumed; this time the French and the "United Nations" did not stop the rebel advance as they had done the first time, and as I type this Ouattara's forces have more or less overrun the entire country save a few parts of Abidjan.

Firstly, let me state clearly that the autocratic political tradition of modern Cote d'Ivoire is the root of the countries present-day difficulties. As with most other countries in Africa, modern Cote d'Ivoire was "amalgamated" by the French, who then imposed what was in effect a colonial dictatorship over the country. Independence in 1960 meant only that the dictatorial French colonial governor was replaced by the dictatorial Felix Houphouet-Boigny. The French colonial government did not allow citizens to choose their government democratically and tolerated no internal opposition; the Houphouet-Boigny regime was exactly the same. Both the French and Houphouet would defend their political dictatorships by arguing that they brought economic progress to the country.

Eventually Houphouet died.

Ouattara, Bedie and the late Robert Guei were all political scions of the autocratic Houphouet Era. All three of them understood that the way the system worked is if one man takes the presidency, that man holds it for life, exercises the powers of Augustus Caesar, and crushes any rivals without remorse. There was no such thing as letting someone else be president for a while and then taking your turn some time later (as is done in Tanzaniza, Mozambique, South Africa, Botswana and has been suggested in Nigeria).

The reason Ouattara initially tried to block the transition of power to Bedie is he wanted to be president and knew if he let Bedie have it, he would never get to be president. Unsurprisingly, when he was forced to let Bedie have it, Bedie did nothing other than come up with ways to make sure he kept it and Ouattara never got it. Then Robert Guei got in on the act, and eventually the biggest disappointment of all, Laurent Gbagbo, joined the train.

Gbagbo was supposed to be different. While Ouattara, Bedia and the late Guei had all profited (financially as well as politically) from aligning themselves over decades with the Houphouet-Boigny autocracy, Laurent Gbagbo had been the lone voice crying out for democracy for over a decade before Houphouet-Boigny's death. And he had suffered the consequences -- anyone who thinks Houphouet was a genial old man, need only read up on Houphouet's treatment of Gbagbo. But much like other long-term preachers of democracy in Africa, Gbagbo turned out to be every bit as much an autocrat as the man he reviled (Senegal's Abdoulaye Wade is another example of a long-time democracy campaigner who metamorphosed into a pseudo-monarchic autocrat when he finally attained office).

The important thing you should note is NONE of the Ivoirien rivals is or was a true believer in democracy and limited government. The Ivoirien Civil War is not about "democracy"; it is about which autocrat gets to inherit Houphouet's throne. If anything, the rivals' collective abhorrence of democracy is the CORE REASON the Cote d'Ivoire is at war with itself.

None of them can afford to allow a rival to occupy the office because they know that in so doing they would forever lose their chance to occupy it themselves. NONE of them believes that his rivals will allow for democratic elections; the contest for power of necessity thus takes undemocratic form. Under the prevailing political environment, the only way to take office is to SEIZE it ... and once you have it, to do anything, even criminal things, to keep it

And all power is concentrated in the Office of the President, which means it is the only office worth having and no one cares about the National Assembly (a meaningless institution) or the Regions (which exist only as administrative devices for the Presidency). No one is satisfied to control X number of Regional governments or to have X number of representatives in Parliament. You are either the president or you are nobody.

In a prior post, I voiced my opposition to the idea of using of Nigerian soldiers to assist or actualize any of the rivals' presidential ambitions. As a matter of principle and altruism, if we truly want to see what is best for our sub-regional neighbours, we would have advocated:

(a) placing both armies under the neutral command of West African officers seconded for the purpose; stores of arms and munitions would have to be independently located and placed under direct ECOMOG control -- only a gun and a handful of bullets would be assigned to soldiers in each army, and all would be restricted to territory they already occupied;

(b) establishing an interim, technocratic government, responsible to ECOWAS, to reestablish basic unified governance across the country in a pseudo-federal format. ECOWAS would control the national government, while elected regional assemblies are formed in the 19 regions. Unlike national-level politics, there is less scope for post-election gridlock at the Regional level. The ECOWAS-mandated national government could serve as a neutral political device through which the 19 regional governments work together to decide upon nationwide, pan-Ivoirien policy. The principal rivals, and any of their associated within defined degrees of relationship would be barred from serving in any of these governmental structures.

(c) In five years or so, elections to a National Assembly could hold under ECOWAS jurisdiction, but not to the Executive, which would still be controlled by ECOWAS. We could then begin a five-year process of seeing if the different political parties can work together to pass legislation (which the ECOWAS-mandated will have no power to block, unless it can show the legislation would have the effect of reignited Civil War-era tensions).

(d) If all goes well, elections for President would take place in 10 years, when the National Assembly is up for re-election.

(e) All of the warring parties would have to agree to it in total; ECOWAS would go in there peacefully to carry out the plan and not as a party to the war or to fight any side in the conflict.

I know what you are thinking. The plan above is unrealistic.

I know.

I agree.

It is unrealistic.

For one thing, it presumes an ECOWAS and member-nations that are much less useless than currently exists. Unfortunately, most countries in ECOWAS are in dire need of cleansing themselves, and as such have neither the inclination nor the means nor the imagination to conduct such an exercise in the Cote d'Ivoire.

For another, it assumes a Nigeria that is much more efficacious in its internal governance and external diplomacy. As it stands, we have neither the standing (morally or politically), nor the capacity (resource-wise or administratively), for any such intervention.

Finally it presumes that the rival parties in Cote d'Ivoire (and their armies) would voluntarily agree to a plan whose very intent is to sanitize the Ivoirien political system by removing them and their cohorts entirely from it. They are willing to waste their fellow citizens' lives for their ambitions; you can hardly expect them to give up those ambitions because you remind them that they have a responsibility to their people.

But as "unrealistic" as the plan may be, it is the only scenario in which the loss of the lives of Nigerian soldiers would be justified. None of the Ivoirien rivals is worth dying for -- they are individually and collectively not worth the many Ivoirien lives wasted over their rivalry -- nor is the success of any of the trio likely to result in anything of value to the West African sub-region or to the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Neo-Houphouetistes like Ouattara and Bedie would run the Cote d'Ivoire like an overseas department of France, with concomitant roadblocks to West African trade and cooperation, based on the ridiculously colo-mental notion of an "anglophone" and "francophone divide. Antipathy would be specifically aimed at Nigeria, a country neo-Houphouetistes have always treated as an existential threat to their preferred order of things.

Gbagbo's xenophoic tirades against the people of the northern half of his country make him unsuitable for the presidency in a sub-region comprised entirely of multi-ethnic, multi-relgious amalgamated countries. Like the rest of the Ivoirien political elite, Gbagbo too thinks of Nigeria as an existential threat.

And you have the unspoken-but-likely intervention of Burkina Faso's Blaise Campaore on the side of Alassane Ouattara. If there was a Kingdom of People in West Africa Who Hate Nigeria, Campaore would be their king. It was Campaore, along with Houphouet-Boigny and Moammar Ghaddafi, who principally backed Charles Taylor's NPFL and its offshoot, the RUF.

The case of Liberia and Sierra Leone is instructive for those who envision a more strategically cohesive foreign policy from Nigeria. The thing about us is we have a very weak conception of what constitutes our strategic interests in our sub-region or even worldwide. So when events start to go in a way that is opposite to our real interests, we barely notice, because we barely notice our real interests anyway. Things that could be nipped in the bud, stopped when they are still small (Taylor's initial army comprised 25 men) are allow to metastasize until they are so big that there is nothing we can do about it with our limited resources.

The economic and political relationship between Nigeria and Cote d'Ivoire over the last 50 years has been rubbish from the perspective of either countries' strategic interests. The current Ivoirien Civil War will not result in any significant change to this state of affairs. Heads, we lose. Tails, we lose.

The Goodluck Jonathan administration will be looking for the "international community" to endorse its anticipated victory in the 2011 Elections, and so may be inclined to oblige them by recognizing the new Ouattara regime and helping to legitimize it (in part by joining everyone else to pretend it was only Gbagbo's forces who committed human rights violations and gross crimes against civilians). Ouattara will accept Jonathan's endorsement .... and then set about restoring Cote d'Ivoire as a French department.

I hate to see the Ivoirien people suffer. But I hate even more to REWARD the men who are the source of their suffering, and to retain the system of governance that gave rise to the suffering.

But what option is there? Nigeria, the so-called "Giant" is in no position to influence outcomes ... and even if we were, I bet you we would do the opposite to what is in our (and the Ivorien) interests.

No Comment on Election Postponement

2011-04-04T00:23:00.000+01:00

I have absolutely nothing to say about the first postponement and the second, subsequent, postponement of the already postponed date.

Commenting on the vagaries of our elections is like commenting on the sunrise and sunset.

It is natural.

It is "normal".

Until such a point as we overhaul the system, reform our Federal Republic from its very roots, this will remain our reality.

Not so electrifying

2011-04-04T00:17:00.001+01:00

A top aide to the President on electricity has denied the federal government promised 10,000MW of electricity generation by December 2011, and insisted the government had only promised 4,947MW by December 2011.

I suppose we should .... applaud?

Jailed in Akwa Ibom

2011-04-04T00:17:00.000+01:00

Editor's Note: This post should have been put up on the blog days ago

This is a follow-up to this post on violence across the country by thugs on the payroll of the four major parties (PDP, ANPP, ACN and CPC).

The gubernatorial candidate of the Action Congress of Nigeria in Akwa Ibom State was been arrested, arraigned and denied bail subsequent to election-related mass violence in Akwa Ibom.

The arrest of James Akpanudoedehe does not imply sudden governmental interest in prosecuting the perpetrators of political violence. On the contrary, the action is part and parcel of the political rivalries that generated violence in the first place.

The current governor of Akwa Ibom State, Godswill Akpabio, used to be the political godson of his predecessor, Victor Attah. After eight years mired in allegations of corruption, ex-Governor Attah essentially imposed his godson Akpabio on the state as his successor. But the defining characteristic of the Fourth Republic has been godsons turning against their godfathers once they (godsons) feel the reins of power are securely in their hands. It is so constant a pattern that I am shocked the many godfathers haven't realized the pointlessness of their investments; on the other hand, the inability to learn productive lessons from experience is itself a defining character trait of the Nigerian politician.

Like every other godfather faced with disobedience and betrayal from a godsons, ex-Governor Attah responded by using his political machine to make life difficult (understatement) for Governor Akpabio. The two men, and their respective political machines/alliances have been at war.

James Akpanudoedehe, the arrested ACN candidate in the 2011 Akwa Ibom gubernatorial race, is the new favoured godson of ex-Governor Attah; he is a proxy candidate for the Attah Faction in the denouement of their war with the Akpabio Faction.

The Attah Faction intended to show their strength by making their candidate the PDP nominee, thus forcing Governor Akpabio to leave the PDP and restoring control of the state party machinery to Attah. Unfortunately for them, the Akpabio Faction proved stronger. Or maybe Akpabio won because President Goodluck Jonathan's electoral machine/alliance decided it was better not to anger a man who would remain governor at least until the elections itself; Nigerian governors, with their near-imperial control of state treasuries and government structures, are the single most powerful force in the process of manipulating the results of elections, so unless you actually removed Akpabio from office before the campaign season and the polls, he could join another party and "deliver" his state to someone else.

Long story short, James Akpanudoedehe lost the PDP nomination race, and this being the Fourth Republic, he promptly decamped (with his godfather's blessing), leaving the PDP and joining the ACN after securing the usual guarantee that he would be the ACN's candidate. There is nothing ideological about it; both parties ideology is to acquire office and to use office to financially benefit political patrons and clients.

I doubt there were any new personal political connections either.

The ACN supremo, ex-Governor Tinubu is only interested in placing all the Yoruba-majority states under his thumb; he benefits from having a "heavyweight" in Akwa Ibom give the ACN the deceptive appearance of a pan-Nigerian outlook. For a while, the semi-retired insurgent Mujaheed Dokubo-Asari was in line to be the controlling influence of the ACN in Rivers State, before he was forced out by intra-party rival Tonye Princewill. Having Attah (for all his corruption allegations) be the force behind ACN in Akwa Ibom is a step up from all that.

Ex-Governor Attah, on his part is a dyed-in-the-wool PDP man who is only interested in controlling his Akwa Ibom fief. I don't know what Attah's plans are. He may intend his machinery in the state to take the ACN name for convenience, or he may intend James Akpanudoedehe to return to the PDP fold should he triumph at the polls. In reality, if Akpanudoedehe wins he would most likely turn against Attah and make a similar deal with Tinubu to whatever arrangement brought Chris Ngige into the ACN after his battles with the godfathers of the Uba Family in Anambra. In quite a few states, the one-on-one battles between godfathers and ex-godsons has mutated into three-way contests after replacement godsons did the same thing to the godfather as was done by the prior godson.

Yeah, I know you are thinking.

But be honest with yourself. This is the sum total of our politics.

There are no alternative policy options on debate. Just sets of hungry men, salivating over the national cake and pulling strings in the background to dictate results regardless of citizen preferences.

Anyway, my point is this ....

James Akpanudoedehe was arrested on the orders of Governor Godswill Akpabio. The arrest was NOT motivated by an interest in law-and-order, public security or justice. Governor Akpabio opportunistically took advantage of the violence to lock up his strongest opponent in the 2011 "Elections", and to tie the man's resources up with fighting a criminal indictment.

A lot of citizens don't care about such distinctions, and would be happy enough to see anyone arrested for the violence. But understand my basic problem with Nuhu Ribadu: If an agency like the EFCC removes a corrupt politician that is opposed to President Obasanjo, in order to pave the way for a corrupt politician that supports Obasanjo, then we are still left with a corrupt politician in charge of the treasury -- nothing has changed. Put it in more simplistic terms: If you replace a politician who steals $1 million a month and opposes Obasanjo with a politician who steals $1 million a month and supports Obasanjo, then you have not made any difference to the fiscal outcome.

Both sides, Akpabio's and Attah's, are willing to hire thugs and to use those thugs to wreak violence. Both sides, Akpabio's and Attah's, think their personal rivalry is more important than the safety and security of the people of Akwa Ibom. If one side "wins", the people of Akwa Ibom are still left with a Governor that values his political ambitions far more than any considerations of citizens' safety and security. There are implications to having people like that as governors; it is no surprise that the Niger-Delta has witnessed record levels of political violence since the launch of the Fourth Republic in 1999. You might think that it would be peaceful if one warlord "prevails" over another, but when people make peaceful change (i.e. democratic elections) impossible, they make violent attempts at change inevitable. It is a situation that generates an endless number of warlords willing to try their luck and chance whoever happens to be the dominant warlord.

If Governor Akpabio wins this year's election, he will attempt to impose a godson on the state in 2015 .... and will then be obliged to go to war with that godson almost immediately as soon as the 2015 Election ends.

Akwa Ibom will be back to square one.

Keeping Track of Spending

2011-03-27T22:50:00.000+01:00

Take some time out of your day and read this article from Daily Trust.

There are other jumbo spending packages not mentioned by Daily Trust, particularly spending at the second- and third-tier, as well as spending that was not disbursed by the Central Bank of Nigeria.

I wonder (and worry) sometimes if anyone knows how much money our three tiers of government receive and spend. Crime films popularized the notion of mobsters keeping two sets of accounting "books", one for the taxman and one for their internal use. I doubt our governments keep records of the many off-the-books transactions, but the official numbers used by the Minister, Commissioners and Supervisory Councillors of Finance are not fully reflective of reality.

Nevertheless, we must make every effort to keep track of what our three tiers of government say they are spending, what they say they are spending it on, what was actually spent, and what were the measurable outcomes of the spending.

Highlights from Daily Trust's article on the subject of earmarked spending and credit facilities in the last couple of years):

Four Banks' Bailout: =N=650 billion (US$4.3 billion)

Banking Sector Toxic Asset Bailout (AMCON): =N=1.037 trillion (US$7 billion)
The AMCON-led bailout was in the form of bonds yielding 10.125% due 31st December 2013.

Aviation Intervention Fund: =N=300 billion (US$2 billion)
Intended more to bailout banks stuck with non-performing aviation-related loans

Electricity/Power: =N=300 billion (US$2 billion)
CBN and Bank of Industry credit facility

SME/Manufacturer's Loan Restructuring Facility: =N=200 billion (US$1.3 billion)
The Daily Trust article was not very clear on whether this was the same as, or different from, Textile Industry intervention funds (nor were they clear on whether the Textile Industry fund was =N=100 billion or =N=200 billion).

Entertainment Industry: =N=30 billion (US$200 million)
The Daily Trust Article incorrectly said $200 million is equal to =N=150 billion. The value of the Naira moves up and down, but $200 million is more or less about =N=30 billion.

Commercial Agriculture Credit Scheme: =N=200 billion (US$1.3 billion)
Who is getting this money? What are they using it for?

Automobile Intervention Fund (speculated): =N=550 billion (US$3.7 billion)
To encourage Nigerian consumers to buy Made-In-Nigeria cars, buses, etc.

ECOWAS and Cote d'Ivoire

2011-03-25T18:30:00.002+01:00

The 39th Ordinary Summit of the Heads of States and Government of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) ended yesterday in Abuja, and while NEXT chose to see the statement released as a statement of intent for military action in Cote d'Ivoire (this editorial gives away their perception that war is imminent), I see ECOWAS' statement as being the usual, dangerous fudge.

It is "usual" because they have not really decided to do any specific thing other than keep pushing a decision down the road until the situation resolves itself. But it is dangerous becomes sometimes people end up in wars they do not want to fight because they keep making commitments to fight, and (especially) engaging in the gamble of drawing lines in the sand and promising to fight if someone crosses that line; almost always they truly and deeply hope the person backs down and doesn't cross their line, yet once the line is crossed they must either fight or lose credibility.

You shouldn't talk about military action unless you are serious about it.

And Nigeria shouldn't be getting involved in military actions of uncertain duration, uncertain length and uncertain expense. The budget and debt situations of the self-anointed dozen or so countries who named themselves the "international community" mean they cannot credibly promise to refund our expenses.

Alas, the Federal Government could care less what I or any other citizen thinks. They are too busy trying to impress the "international community" and play at being a regional giant. For all I know, NEXT may be right, and the government may be planning a military intervention in Cote d'Ivoire.

If it has to happen, we shouldn't take sides.

I know the "international community" says Ouattara won the election (only Heaven knows how they are so sure when the vote was rigged in both the North and South of the country).

And I know Laurent Gbagbo is yet another in the line of believers in the concept of Ivoirite, a xenophobic, tribalist, regionalist, divide-and-rule device invented by ex-President Henri Konan Bedie as a strategy for cementing his hold on power.

But the reality of the Ivoirien political situation is the country has to move beyond Neo-Houphouetist politics and politicians, and must specifically move past the personalities and political factions and rivalries associated with Bedie, Ouattara and Gbagbo. These men are polarizing figures, and their continued dominance of the political stage is an invitation to future instability, regardless of what happens in the present case.

That is the view from Cote d'Ivoire's domestic angle.

From the point of view of Nigeria's strategic regional interests, it hardly matters which of the three major factions wins the presidency. Ouattara and Bedie (both political scions of the Houphouet-Boigny) would govern the country as an overseas department of France, with monetary policy drawn up in Paris, and fiscal policy designed in the IMF offices in Washington; they would both treat Nigeria as an existential threat and not as an ally or trading partner. And while Laurent Gbagbo hates the French (because they were allies of his lifetime rival Houphouet-Boigny, a man who undemocratically oppresses Gbagbo and his supporters), he too sees Nigeria as an existential threat, and not as a regional ally or potential major tradting partner.

As with most of our "Big Brother" nonsense since 1960, we would be in effect facilitating the rise of a government (one way or another) that will treat us with utter disdain, regardless of the fact that we helped them.

All things considered, if Nigerian soldiers go into Cote d'Ivoire, it shouldn't be to fight one faction as the ally of another faction. We should only go in to serve as a neutral force, spread out around the country, to superintend a new national election in which everyone with a political history is barred from contesting. We should only go in at the invitation of both factions, consequent on both sides agreeing to the plan for new elections with a completely clean and new slate of candidates.

Of course neither side will agree to this .... and I have no problem with that, so long as neither side expects our soldiers to DIE to put them in office. I am tired of people using Nigeria to chop awoof. If you want us involved in resolving your disputes, do it our way; if you don't want to do it our way, then don't ask us to risk our lives and money to do it your way -- it is your way, so you take all the risk and leave us out of it.

We need to start articulating firm positions consistent with our strategic outlook, rather than just parroting whatever happens to be the reigning (and always temporary) opinion of the "international community"

EDIT: I thought I was the only one who felt a new election should be held, with the current faction leaders barred from standing again. As it turns out, a South-Africa-based Ivoirien professor agrees with me somewhat.

EDIT-2: Some of you may be wondering why my comments above do not address the humanitarian situation. There is violence in Cote d'Ivoire and the possibility (though not guarantee) of worsening violence if nothing changes in the immediate future. In reality, my comments do address the humanitarian situation, not by attacking the symptoms but instead by attacking the disease itself. I repeat again that the Neo-Houphouetist brand of politics embodied by Bedie, Ouattara and Gbagbo is the proximate source of the political, economic and sociocultural crises in the Cote d'Ivoire -- and it is militias loyal to these men that are responsible for the violence. To end the symptoms, you have to end the disease. It is long past time for a new post-colonial Cote d'Ivoire to emerge from the political debris of the old, neo-colonial Cote d'Ivoire.

Convivial Form .... Violent Substance

2011-03-25T04:26:00.000+01:00

Hajiya Halima Aminu Tijjani (Photo Credit: Daily Trust)

Hajiya Halima Aminu Tijjani, is a senatorial candidate running on the ticket of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) in Kaduna State. She was viciously beaten by thugs acting on the orders of the Barrister Musa Soba, Kaduna State Chairman of the ACN.

My last post before this one had videos and links to videos of the 2011 Presidential and Vice-Presidential debates organized by NN24. Whatever you think of the candidates and of their answers to the questions, the debates present a particular image of how Nigerian politics is conducted.

But dig a little deeper and you find out that politics in Nigeria has changed very little since the First Republic. It is VERY violent, and female candidates are not spared. Daily Trust reported on female candidates who have endured vicious beatings, attempted kidnapping, and intimidation by thugs (it is 3-pages long with a lot of information, though I would have liked a lot more detail).

Before you tell me I shouldn't blame the principals for the actions of such "low level" political operators, let me remind you that these operators, these political bosses, these wielders of "structures" and "machines" that control outcomes "on the ground" are the people the political VIPs hire and pay to produce what you might call favourable outcomes on behalf of the VIP.

It is why I don't take politicians seriously when they criticize their rivals (but not themselves or their allies) for instigating violence, as President Jonathan did here, and General Buhari did here.

Speaking of those two candidates, any number of CPC-aligned thugs have responded violently to the arrival of the PDP presidential campaign train in their cities, while pro-Jonathan PDP governors have not hesitated to use hired thugs, uniformed security officials (who are supposed to be neutral) and illegal, unconstitutional edicts and proclamations (without parliamentary approval) to hinder or quash the campaign rallies of the president's rivals.

Would the bosses of "grassroots" political machines wield such power without the patronage and protection of the Big Men? Or it is that the Big Men would not wield the power they control without the backing of the machine bosses? Either way, the two groups work hand in hand to dictate political outcomes.

It is one of several reasons our Police Force and general law enforcement are deliberately kept dysfunctional. When political bosses hire thugs and send thugs to beat, intimidate or assassinate other politicians, they do so on the understanding that the powers-that-be will let them get away with it. Even if the assault is done by an opponent of someone who has power, the person with power would still prefer to let it go because he knows he will want to do the same thing soon, and he does not want to start a tradition or custom of people who do things like that getting arrested. Besides, he knows the day will come when he is no longer in power, when the other Big Men could revenge against him if he punished them too much when he had power.

And visiting such violence on women isn't even a new thing. A classmate of mine, a mother of two and a women's leader in one of the smaller "opposition" parties, was murdered. Not to mention the fact that women are, like men, general victims of the low-intensity, below-the-radar violence that characterizes "elections" in Nigeria.

If only the image presented by the debates reflected reality.

EDIT:

Scene of political violence at Fortune High School (Photo Credit: Sahara Reporters)

While I was still composing this post, more political violence broke out in Akwa Ibom, Ekiti, Jigawa, Edo and Ondo States. Various bands of thugs loyal to the Peoples Democratic Party, the Action Congress of Nigeria, the Congress for Progressive Change and the All Nigerian Peoples Party were variously involved in the murder, mayhem and destructions.

A few links: In Akwa Ibom; in Jigawa, Ondo and Ekiti; pictures of the Akwa Ibom aftermath from Sahara Reporters.

You cannot rig in a territory you don't "control". Like urban gangs the world over, these thug armies are laying claim to "turf" ahead of the polls.

Expect the presidential candidates to express their dismay and disappointment, their shock and their horror, their resolve to bring the guilty to justice, blah, blah, blah, blah.

VIDEO: The Presidential Debates - Minus the President

2011-03-25T04:10:00.000+01:00

THE VICE-PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES

I tried to find an embeddable video for the Vice-Presidential Debate that was organized by cable news channel NN24, moderated by Kadaria Ahmed (of NEXT), and boycotted by the PDP's incumbent Vice-President Namadi Sambo. While there are brief, embeddable clips on Youtube, but if you want a full-length version, click on this link hosted on the website Yousabi.com to watch a full 84-minute video of the event.

THE PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES

I did find two videos of the 2011 Presidential Debates, which were also organized by cable news channel NN24, also hosted by Kadaria Ahmed, and also boycotted by the PDP candidate, incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan.

The first video was edited (not by me) and begins with Buhari's opening statement, and runs for 73 minutes, while the second video begins earlier (allowing you to hear Kadaria Ahmed's opening statement) and runs for only 58 minutes.

The second video is interesting because you hear the audience applaud after Kadaria Ahmed's comment on the President's absence. If you are wondering why the audience applauded, it is because they had been sitting there for an hour or so waiting for the President, who had said he would show up but then didn't and didn't bother to tell anyone he had changed his mind. When he had not arrived by the time set for the debate to begin, NN24 delayed proceedings by an hour or so because they thought he was being fashionably late (as self-important, pompous Big Men usually are) and they didn't want to start live broadcast of a debate only for the President (technically the most important candidate to have on the stage) to wander in halfway through. Eventually, after an hour, they decided to begin the debate .... at which point Kadaria made her comment and the audience applauded.

FIRST VIDEO: EDITED (NOT BY ME) FULL VERSION

SECOND VIDEO: INCLUDES KADARIA AHMED'S OPENING COMMENTS

Restoration of trust

2011-03-25T04:07:00.001+01:00

The Federal Government evacuated around 4,000 Nigerians from Libya and closed the embassy in Tripoli. I overheard two Nigerians discussing this, and lamenting the fact that Nigerians have so low an opinion of their government that some did not think the government would lift a finger to help stranded Nigerians.

They have a point. An important one. Too many of us Nigerians take the pessimistic view of things. It is a drawback to our progress and one of many reasons you won't see Tunisia/Egypt-style popular uprisings in Nigeria.

It is a paradox really.

On the one hand, we are the most optimistic people on Earth. We offers prayers to the Almighty, give thanks for our many blessings, and look toward the future with hope. As we say in pidgin, somehow, some way, e go betta. Our optimism is a disadvantage actually; so many of us believe we might one day rise to a position of power and influence that it is impossible to rally people to fight sources of dysfunction like corruption -- no one wants to fix the dysfunction until after they have had a chance to milk it and enjoy it for themselves (after we have enjoyed our share and left office as wealthy men, we convert and become latter-day believers in reform, criticizing all of our successors, one after another, for doing the same exact things we did when we were in office).

On the other hand, the late Fela Anikulapo-Kuti mocked us all as being so afraid of dying we are incapable of rallying to fight for our own commonweal. We assume any effort made to improve things will fail, that anyone who believes otherwise is a mugu, and that people who fight for a better Nigeria will suffer while they live and die unlamented by a populace that never cared enough to lift a finger to help. Apathy set in long ago, long before our villages sold our fellows as slaves, long before our twins were killed in the bush; we have been apathetic so long, I am not sure we remember how to fight for our rights. It is like people believe it is better to have no constitutional rights and be alive, rather than die in a fight for rights that you do not believe you will ever have.

Both my blogs reflect this Nigerian duality.

If I didn't have faith in Nigeria, if I didn't believe our federal republic could be so much more than what it is, if I didn't think only a brief period of reform, restructuring and transformation lay between us and our ideal destiny, then I would have given up hope long ago and would not be as passionate about the issues as I am or so disappointed that the necessary reforms are not even being contemplated. I have no apathy in my bones, none!

On the other hand, anyone who reads my blogs will get the sense that I don't think anything will change anytime soon.

Funny, isn't it?

No, not really funny. Kind of sad to be honest.

Our spiritual duality as citizens extends to our opinions of politicians and captains of industry.

On the one hand, we praise them and hail them, partly in admiration and respect, and partly because in our society you have to kiss the arse of the man above you (and oppress the man below you) if you want to maintain your own little niche in our insufficient economy.

On the other hand, our society assumes every politician and plutocrat is a thief, a vagabond, an unprincipled, unethical, philandering, nation-destroying rogue. Citizens assume they are all "guilty until proven innocent"; if any prove to be innocent, citizens view him as a mugu who doesn't know he is supposed to enrich himself.

So, yes, those two Nigerians I referenced in the first paragraph are right. There is a profound cynicism among us Nigerians. Religion, Football and Cynicism, the three core Nigerian beliefs.

With that said ...

Most of us Nigerians spent at least some of the first two decades of our lives believing the best, making the optimistic assumption, and hoping with all of our hearts.

We were disappointed again, and again.

Our beliefs, optimism and hopes were used, abused, manipulated, distorted, betrayed and then discarded like trash ... again and again.

This kills our hope. This kills our dreams.

They destroy our trust.

The idealistic part of our souls is crushed by the weight of reality slapping us in the face, and we are left most of us bitter, twisted, cynical, frustrated. We are a happy people, but beneath all of our smiles lies simmering rage -- one small spark, and we go off! Eventually, most of us give up on our dream of a better Nigeria, and shift our ambitions towards exploiting the many dysfunctions of the existing Nigeria for our personal pecuniary gain.. Those who succeed become dependent on the dysfunction, and are inspired to destroy anything and anyone that might want to reform the country. Those who don't succeed remain hopeful, first that they will one day get their chance to hammer, and later that their children will get the hammering chance they never had; these children become adults who have been taught to be both fervent in their religious observance and at the same time frighteningly sociopathic in their pursuit of wealth (at the high end) and survival (at the low).

As I type this, it occurs to me that I must still be extremely optimistic about the federal republic, because I refused to make that transition. Usually when you say that, people laugh at you and say it is only because you have never had a chance to "chop" ... but I did have such an opportunity, as I noted in this recent blog post, and turned it down. A powerful person offered me what would have been a dream job in Abuja, based on the job description anyway. But as is often the case, what the job really was, and what the job had been advertised to be, were two different things. I very quickly realized that in practice I would be working for someone whose job was rigging elections.

I couldn't do it.

I didn't do it.

You don't have to believe me. That too is a reflection of the loss of trust. A Nigerian is the one person on Earth who will never believe that another Nigerian turned down a chance at illicit money and illegal political power.

Believe it or not, I was thus briefly exposed to the inner world of the people who run elections in Nigeria. They were so comfortable with what they were doing. Joking and laughing at people who criticized them. If I had opened my mouth and said, "But what you are doing is wrong," they would have laughed even harder. As it stood, I smiled and nodded, told him I would let him know in a couple of days, then sent him an email to say "No".

Moments like that make you feel that we are quite far from where we need to be.

Which brings me back to the two Nigerians in the first paragraph who were complaining about the pervasive cynicism in Nigeria.

Again, I say they are right, but it is not on us the people to spontaneously start trusting institutions that have betrayed us and continue to betray us even now.

It is for those institutions to EARN our trust back.

And that cannot happen if we the people remain estranged from our institutions.

We must take them back and make them be what we want them to be.

The people who currently run our institutions do not believe they need to earn the public's confidence. Like the man who offered me a job, they would laugh if you earnestly asked them to do their jobs in a manner that would restore your trust.

In fact, that is the funny thing about Nigeria. The way our country works, you are supposed to kiss the arse of the man above you ... and oppress the man below you. The idea that somebody who is "up" should work hard to earn the trust of someone who is "down" is anathema. "Democracy" is supposed to moderate this natural human tendency; since there are always more people "down" than there are people "up", the "up" people agree to all sorts of wealth redistribution systems and constitutional rights of pro forma equality so as to make nice to the "down" people who could (in theory) vote to seize all their wealth. But in Nigeria, there is no such moderation; as Machiavelli might have said, power exists to do whatever power wants (maybe he did say it, I don't know, I've never read Machiavelli).

There is an arrogance, a shamelessness to it. Take the Nigerian Police Force, who routinely look us all in the eye and LIE about extra-judicial killings. When exposed, they make it quite clear to all and sundry that they could care less about being caught lying about something so important.

Everyone in Nigeria assumes the Police lies about everything. Everyone knows that most people killed and/or arrested by the Police are not guilty of anything. Everyone knows the Police are incapable of properly investigating a crime. Everyone knows the Police defend corrupt leaders against the people, rather than defending the people against corrupt leaders.

The Police have an AWFUL public image, just abysmally awful.

And guess what? The Nigerian Police Force do not give a damn about it. They are not interested in earning the people's trust. The upper echelon of the Force holds all of us Nigerian citizens in contempt. Who are we to talk when they are talking? If they hear pim, they will unsheathe their AK-47s and shoot us down like dogs.

I don't understand it.

The phenomenon runs across-the-board phenomenon, embracing even the national pastime, football.

All over the world, people are suspicious of the "official age" of Nigerian football players. In Nigeria itself, cynicism rules, Nigerians don't trust Nigerians, and we all secretly assume every player is guilty of age cheating until proven innocent. Those players who do use their real and true age live under the same cloud of suspicion as their less honest colleagues.

We all know this suspicion exists and that it is pervasive.

Age-cheating thing is driven by the desire to make oneself attractive to European clubs ... and by the Nigerian public's any-means-necessary desire for "glory" in age-restricted international competitions for small boys.

The thing is, age-cheating doesn't achieve what the cheats want it to achieve.

As of 2011, it would be politically incorrect for the managers of European clubs to say out loud that they make adjustments in magnitude of pay and length of contract offered to Nigerian players to hedge against their suspicions that the players are four or more years older than they claim.

And as far as fans' desire for international success, we all know our senior national team suffers in the long-run. We all know that we are paying for our small boy trophies with the loss of the really important senior trophies.

Yet we keep doing it. We know we are not deceiving anyone. We know we are only shooting ourselves in the foot. But we keep doing it.

In fact, it is a very good example of how optimism is killed.

Nigeria hosted the last Under-17 World Championship in 2009, and we were all happy when the MRI scan ruled out so many players the NFF had been planning to use in the tournament. Our optimism soared.

Then came Fortune Chukwudi and Kayode Olanrewaju ... and the realization that MRI scanning was not scientifically fool-proof.

Mind you, I don't want to gang up on these two young men. I understand the financial pressures they are under, and I realize a contract in Europe would change their lives and the lives of their families.

In fact, right now I am not concerned with Fortune or Kayode, but with the Nigerian Football Federation. We were lucky that the broader football world does not take small boy competitions as seriously as we do, so the issue didn't get HUGE media coverage. Nevertheless, the revelations about Fortune Chukwudi did go around the world.

Here was an opportunity for the NFF to once and for all quash all those rumours about Nigerian players by proving Adokiye Amiesimaka was wrong or mistaken. Unless Fortune and Kayode suddenly emerged out of a vacuum, they would each have built up a young lifetime's worth of documentary proof (even if they have nothing else, they have school report cards) and character witnesses. If I put on my cynic's hat and speculate, the NFF could even have forged documents, faked proof, and paid witnesses to lie.

What bothers me is they didn't do anything.

FIFA has always known teams cheat at age-restricted competitions, but strangly prefers to act only when it has no other option. As soon as the NFF realized FIFA was not going to torpedo the tournament by making a big fuss out of the Fortune Chukwudi affair, they flat out didn't care that everyone was talking about us as cheats. The NFF pretended they had heard nothing from Adokiye, had seen nothing in the news. Vague allusions to saboteurs and enemies and unpatriotic behaviour was as much as we got. We even kept using Fortune in matches, as if to give the world a middle finger. It is like we were saying "Ha ha ha, we cheat and you know it, and we don't care, ha ha ha!"

Tomorrow when people say they don't trust the ages of Nigerian players, someone will say we are cynics. Here is the one agency whose duty to Nigerian players, Nigerian football and Nigerian fans is to restore CREDIBILIITY in the system, and it quite clearly does not care about the fact that it has no credibility.

Heck, the Nigerian Football Federation is the source of the "21 or 28" song the Newcastle fans sang about Obafemi Martins. In the last few years the NFF have occasionally put up websites and occasionally taken down websites. On one occasion when a site was up, they listed a birth-date for Martins that was different from his "official" birth-date. Now, it is quite possible it was a genuine mistake, and that Martins is using his real age .... but there is so much doubt swirling around, so little credibility, that managers in Europe likely assumed Martins was 28 (his club career has certainly become rather erratic of late).

And they don't care! The NFF doesn't give a damn about the fact that it generates nothing but distrust.

I am glad the Federal Government evacuated those Nigerians in Libya. On behalf of my fellow citizens I say thank you and kudos.

But I still don't trust you.

Nigeriocracy

2011-03-24T18:15:00.000+01:00

So, I was witness to yet another conversation between people with varying opinions on the Fourth Republic.

One person said "democracy" as practiced in Nigeria was too expensive (not just in terms of what is taken or wasted when a person is in government, but also the expense in money, lives and injuries from their fight to get into office and stay there) and delivered to little value for all the expense. He was of the opinion that the Federal Republic should be a one-party dictatorship. And yes, he trotted out China as his example of an economically successful one-party state.

The other person said "democracy" is a process and not an event. He argued the Fourth Republic was "young", that we were still "learning" and that we would get better at it with time.

They are both wrong.

We are neither practicing "democracy", nor are we in the process of it. And our history, dare I say "civilization" is as old as anywhere else in the world; we have had enough time to make enough mistakes over millennia -- if we refuse to learn from our mistakes, it does not mean we are too "young" to know right from wrong.

But if we are not practicing "democracy", then what should we call the operating system of Nigerian governance?

I do not think Political Science has a word for it. Despite the similarities, it is not an oligarchy or plutocracy nor is it a feudal or corporatist state. Despite "federal character", our is neither a consociational nor confessional state. We have never really had an "autocracy" or "dictatorship" per se (on a couple of occasions we did come close), and while we have never been exactly "federal", we have never been anything remotely approaching "unitary" either.

All that talk about "Westminster" and "Presidential" is window-dressing. Our First Republic had much in common with the rest of post-Independence Africa, but was also rather unique on our continent, for any number of reasons, the consequences of regional federalism being just one driving force of the disparity. Actually, all of our experiments with civilian-rule have been unique in Africa; federalism again drove some, but by no means all (or even most) of the differences. There are peculiarities about Nigeria's politics (too lengthy to discuss here) that allowed us to be the only country in Africa to defeat an attempt to amend the constitution for a Third Term without resort to extra-constitutional means (on the extremely rare instances that tenure-extension were defeated in Africa, it was done by means of military coup or more recently citizen "revolutions").

The same could be said for our years of military rule, each more accurately described as military-led "diarchies" of soldiers and civilians. It would take too long to discuss, but know that there is a reason Nigeria have never had the 20-year, 30-year and 40-year presidencies that occur elsewhere in Africa (and the world), in spite of supposedly being ruled by "dictators".

So what is the operating system of Nigerian political governance? I am not a Political Scientist, but as near as I can tell, Political Science does not have a word to describe our political system.

It is time for our professors to write a scholarly papers and books outlining the Nigeriocracy paradigm. They should be sure to academically break down the different strains of Nigeriocracy. It could be sub-divided into military-led and civilian-led Nigeriocracy, or maybe divided by time-period, as each Era practiced Nigeriocracy differently.

Why not?

Our academics, who learned everything they know from educational systems set up by European imperial powers during the Colonial Era. Like kindergarten kids trying to jam a shapes or blocks into the wrong slot, rather than give up and put it in the right slot, the academics tend to try too hard to fit Nigeria/African political paradigms into neat, predefined European slots.

European feudal history drives it's present-day political paradigms. Conservatives are ideological heirs to the supporters of the monarchy, aristocracy and Church. Socialist rhetoric about peasants and the proletariat gives you a clue as to their historical origins. When the British yab their Liberal-Democrats as being "too posh to be Labour, and too nice to be Tories", the bespeak a centuries-long line of city-based merchants, skilled workers, artisans, scribes, clerics, army officers and others who were neither serfs/peasants nor aristocrats/royals. Even the relatively "new" Greens are an echo of what used to be agrarian political parties dedicated to Farmers' interests.

Other parts of the world have modern political paradigms that are just as rooted in their own particular histories. The easiest example is Taiwan, where the two major political coalitions are pro-business, pro-trade and "conservative", but differ on the singular, Taiwan-specific issue of the island's relationship with the Peoples Republic of China. And that issue is itself only one the latest manifestations of a political metamorphosis in Greater China that began with the decay and decline of the Imperial Era and the intervention of European, North American and Japanese power.

Anyway, before I end up writing a book ....

... we Nigerians need to recognize the existence of something I am now calling "Nigeriocracy".

We need to study it and understand it.

Then we need to get rid of it and replace it with something that actually works and that better reflects an undistorted expressions of our real, underlying web of potential choices, potential options and potential futures.

But while I am on the subject ....

.... people who think dictatorship is good and democracy bad because China is currently doing well are engaged in intellectual dishonesty. They look only at the last 30 years and insist it proves dictatorship produces wealth. They pretend not to notice the decades when tens of millions died because the dictators didn't know what they were doing, and the people had no way of making the dictators stop enforcing policies that were creating famine. And they have completely forgotten the centuries of decline under dictatorial Emperors who were equally clueless.

When a system cannot regenerate itself politically, or change its government to match its changing reality, it will wither away. Even in officially democratic countries in Europe, men who come to office (and to politics) full of energy and ideas, usually leave office a decade later (and politics decades later) as washed-up, worn-out failures whose careers had long outlived their political usefulness.

If you are governed by a royal dynasty, a permanent one-party state, or a strongman dictator, you have no ability to influence whether you get a "good" one or a "bad" one. But, and this is important, even if you do get a "good" one, it will eventually lose steam, decay and decline, and you will be in no position to swap it out for something better.

I am just saying.

How to react

2011-03-24T17:31:00.000+01:00

A distant acquaintance of mine has taken up a new job. Lets say it a public relations job with a quasi-governmental agency. The "agency" in question is very public, very well known, possibly the best known agency in the country, so I am being deliberately vague; any more information than what I have given above and you will immediately and instantly know who (and what) I am talking about. I don't want to personalize it; it is not about him, and I don't want to sound like this is a comment on him.

The thing is this:

My acquaintance is someone whom I have relied on to give me the unvarnished truth. His previous job gave him access to the truth about certain things; not everything, not even most things, but certain, specific things. He gave away enough of what he knew to the public to be good at his job (one of the best in the country actually), but by his own admission kept most of what he knew unpublished; to do otherwise would mean losing his job, losing his access to off-the-record information, dire financial consequences for his family and possibly worse.

Nevertheless, I had access to some, by no means all or even most of what he knew but would never publish. It was not much, but it was valuable ... to me anyway.

We citizens of the federal republic are kept in the dark about so many things. We simply do not know. The frightening thing is life goes on and you have to make very important decisions every day in order to move forward in your own life, so we are compelled as citizens to form very, very firm opinions about things that we are actually ignorant of. It is maybe part of the reason wuruwuru has taken hold in our society; we are trying to bend the rules so we guarantee a specific outcome, since we have no foundation from which to build towards that outcome in a normal. With so many things utterly uncertain, we cheat to introduce a measure of (self-defeating) certainty.

I will be honest and hold up my hand and admit to my lack of information. I have written many posts on this blog about the "Toxic Asset" problem in the Nigerian banking industry, and if you have read all of them, you will notice that I have been scrounging around for information, have been making educated guesses on what little information they have allowed us to have, and have frequently raised doubt on what they tell us are the official numbers (it is either their numbers are mutually contradictory, or the numbers are a bit like telling a person that you harvested a bumper crop of cassava when that person knows for a fact that maize was the only thing you planted and maize was the only thing that grew on that farm all year -- if you are going to say it metamorphosed into cassava, you have to offer some kind of explanation or facts to people so they can see a rational connection between facts that point one way and statements that point another).

Yet, we still have to form opinions on these things. We have to ....

.... though in practice we don't. Most Nigerians are perfectly willing to let the government do whatever it wants to do.

If they like the person who happens to be leading the governmental entity (too often for reasons that have nothing to do with job performance) they react to every utterance with praise, and react to anyone questioning the leader's decision-making with scorn.

Conversely, if they do not like the person leading the governmental entity (again, too often for reasons that have nothing to do with job performance), they react to everything he says and does with unfounded accusations and suspicions (everything Sanusi Lamido Sanusi does, for example, is greeted by certain commentators with accusations he is punishing ethnic groups XYZ and ABC, and empowering a "cabal" from ethnic group LMN).

But when you listen to what we citizens say or read what we write, you realize we are forming these opinions based on little or nothing in the way of empirically substantiated fact. More importantly, because we allow the powers-that-be to do whatever they want anyway, it does not really matter whether our opinions as citizens are right or wrong. The decision-makers and policy-designers do not care what we think, and do not respond to our opinions; and we do nothing to make them responsive.

Anyway, this is my conundrum.

My acquaintance has a new job that (within the operating context of Nigeria) is a massive career boost for him, both professionally and financially.

Part of me is happy for him.

But part of me is sad, because it is now his job to be the spin-doctor of that agency. Instead of feeding me with little snippets of behind-the-scenes factual information, he will now receive a monthly salary in exchange for making up the lies that he used to infinitesimally expose.

Okay, okay, obviously he is not going to be lying the whole time. I know that. He doesn't really have to. We Nigerians take so little interest in what our governmental and quasi-governmental agencies do, rarely questioning what they say or measuring what they say against what they should be saying (and more importantly doing), so my acquaintance could basically get away with repeating the bland, meaningless, nothings that people in his (new) position are paid to repeat ad nauseam to the public.

It is just such a change from being someone who (secretly) questioned the nothing that officialdom fed us to being someone who creates and provides the nothing on behalf of officialdom.

This happens a lot it seems. People who were critics of the way things are done when they were on the outside instantly transforming into defenders of the very things they criticized once they are on the inside.

It would be fair of you to ask if I would do the same if I had the opportunity.

The thing is, I did have the opportunity. As I have mentioned two or three times on this blog, I was offered a well-paying, fantastic, Abuja-based job some years back. If you looked at the job description on paper, it was a dream job for me. But regardless of what was written on the job description sheet, the practical truth is had I taken that job I would have been working for a man who was paid to rig elections. This is not an impression or a suspicion but a fact. I can't go into detail, but this was something I saw and experienced for myself, and immediately said "I can't do this". I've spent my whole life opposed to the practice of election rigging. How could I close my eyes and pretend to myself that I didn't know? How could I take a pay cheque every month while compromising myself like that?

Please don't tell me about "working from within" to change the system. All that happens is the system changes you. I hadn't even agreed to take the job, and I was already surrounded by a bunch of yes-men who were hailing my would-be boss, kissing his arse, for doing things that should have been criminally prosecuted! I was expected to join them and hail him, to join them and laugh at his stupid jokes about what he was doing. How many years of doing that before it becomes part of your true personality? Those men were not born arse-kissers, and at some point in their lives they may actually have desired a better Nigeria every bit as much as I do. Yet, there they were, hailing a man for doing the opposite of what our country deserves.

Come to think of it, the man in question lost political favour a couple of years afterward, and ultimately lost his Abuja job. If I had taken that job, if I had been working for him, I would have been obliged to tenaciously defend him because if he lost his job, I would by default lose mine. It is why so many previously sensible people spend so much time defending crooks and vagabonds once they are admitted inside ... and it is why my acquaintance will start making up lies rather than telling truths that could lose him his new job.

So I am happy for him. I really am.

But I am kind of sad too.

Can't say I blame him. It is not like there is some sort of alternate political force he, no, we could throw our support to. As things stand, you either play ball by the rules of the existing system, or you suffer outside it.

I was in a position (financial and otherwise) to turn down that job. Most of my fellow citizens are not. In some respects that is even more depressing.

People and Power

2011-03-22T20:11:00.000+01:00

A fellow citizen acquaintance of mine was complaining the other day about the high cost of DSTV and HiTV. More specifically, he was complaining about how much money he would have to spend to watch the English Premier League (only Heaven knows how much money we collectively waste on the EPL; if only we invested a fraction of that on our own clubs and sporting structures).

Anyway, this acquaintance half-jokingly said that if he was a candidate for the presidency, one of his campaign promises would be to get the EPL, La Liga, UEFA Champions League, Serie A, Bundesliga and UEFA Confederation Cup to Nigerians at affordable prices.

I thought about it, and came to the depressing conclusion that a candidate who ran on such a platform would stand a strong chance of winning a surprisingly large share of the vote .... if not winning accommodations at Aso Rock outright.

I am not yabbing us Nigerians.

I am commenting on human beings in general, on people everywhere.

All over the world, democratic and pseudo-democratic politicians win more votes promising comfortable, pleasurable, substantively meaningless short-term rubbish ... and lose votes if they offer real, practical, applicable solutions to serious systemic problems.

Dictators and autocrats know this too; health care, education and transportation infrastructure can be rubbish, but holidays, festivals and carnivals will always rock. In Africa, countries that are begging for food aid will nevertheless find the resources to host major sporting tournaments, building (at great expense) for the event the sort of infrastructure their real economies desperately need but will never get.

To be honest, even the richest country in Africa is guilty of this. South Africa in the next few years (if it hasn't happened already) will outgrow Apartheid-era infrastructure that was originally designed to service 10% of the population only. One can't help but wonder if the billions of dollars spent hosting several events in the last 17 years (of which the 2010 World Cup was the biggest), might not have been better spent updating and expanding infrastructure. The promoters of these sort of big events always say that there are economic benefits to be accrued from hosting .... but the reality is the organizing bodies (e.g. IOC, FIFA, IRB, ICC, etc) reap profits without costs, while the host nations reap costs without profits.

Don't get me wrong. I am quite happy South Africa hosted the event. I am not sure why they felt the need to build so many new stadia, when they already had enough World-Cup-level stadia to have hosted the event long before they decided to apply for the hosting privilege. And as I have said above, this sort of thinking is not strictly "African".

One thing I have never understood about the United States is how cities that are struggling with debts and poor social services nevertheless decided to build multi-billion dollar stadia and then hand over ownership entirely and for free (!) to professional sports franchises that could afford to build their own stadium. They do not sell it or allowing the team to use municipal property on contract. No, they give it away like a Christmas or Sallah gift; it is now the property of the franchise which gains a massive new asset on its balance sheet without paying a kobo for it. I lived in Washington DC at a time when the city was closing down hospitals that catered to the poor because of budget difficulties, and when the city's public schools were acknowledged to be abysmal, yet the city was talking about using its money to build a stadium for a baseball team. It didn't make sense.

The strange thing is we the people then complain profusely because our governments fail to deliver those substantively more important things that have a more substantively more significant effect on our substantive quality of living.

It is a paradox.

Saving Nigeria's Lions

2011-03-22T19:37:00.000+01:00

As the fake presenter on the old BBC sketch comedy show Monty Python would say, "And now for something completely different".

This post is about lions. This interesting report from Daily Trust tells of people who are trying to save what few lions left roaming the small and ever-shrinking geographic slice of our federal republic that can still be called "wilderness". The species has disappeared from three of five locations, and there are only 50 adult lions left in those two remaining locations (Kainji Lake National Park, and Yankari Game Reserve).

Political Gists

2011-03-14T19:28:00.000+01:00

From NEXT: The absence of ideas and substance in the 2011 campaigning.

From Business Day: The High Cost of Campaigning

Our Sovereign Wealth

2011-03-12T04:29:00.000+01:00

The National Assembly is in the process of considering a bill to establish a Sovereign Wealth Fund. The bill will most likely be passed.

In recent years, there has been much discussion of doing this.

I like the idea of a Sovereign Wealth Fund. I believe it is a good thing. But I fear that unless we fix the substance of economic governance, it will not matter what form we give that governance.

The Excess Crude Account was ostensibly set up to operate in a specific and particular way. In reality, it operated within the context of the substance of our economic and political governance ... and so an account that had $20 billion at one point is now nearly empty.

Lots of other things were ostensibly set up to operate in specific and particular ways. Nigerian Airways. The National Electric Power Authority (by whatever name). The Nigerian Police Force. Each and every federal budget since the début of the Fourth Republic nearly 12 years ago. Charles Soludo's "consolidation" of banks. The Economic and Fiscal Crimes Commission.

The list goes on. It is a long list. A looooooong list.

Over decades, we have repeatedly created entities, programmes, plans, projects, agencies, etc, etc, etc ... things that are always intended (or so we were told) to serve a specific and particular purpose .... things always end up functioning very, very, very differently from what we were told was the plan.

The outcome is always disappointing.

And we always claim it is the Nigerian Factor.

There is no such thing as a Nigerian Factor. The fact is, if you plant beans, you will harvest beans. Once you have planted beans, you cannot then say that the Nigerian Factor is the reason you didn't harvest yam. You didn't harvest yam before you never planted it in the first place. That agency you created and named the "Yam Planting Agency" planted nothing but beans because that was what you wanted, and so a harvest of beans and nothing but beans is what you will get.

Accept responsibility!

This history worries me.

It worries me regarding the Asset Management Corporation.

And it worries me regarding the Sovereign Wealth Fund.

One way or another, these entities are not going to function the way they are supposed to. And it is very disappointing to me, because we need both entities, and we need both entities to function exactly as they are supposed to.

I want to see fundamental reforms to the way we do things. If we don't change what we substantively do, then it won't matter what bright new ideas we profess to have, because it just won't work.

The governing board of the Sovereign Wealth Fund is to be an unwieldy leviathan that draws in all sorts of characters, including (depressingly) the president and the 36 governors .... the same people who depleted the Excess Crude Account, and spent it all on recurrent waste and political patronage. The very Assembly right now moving to pass the bill has NEVER in the last 12 years adequately performed its role as a check and balance on the executive.

We are planning on putting a big, juicy stack of money into a pot that no one of ethical standing will watch over.

Fiscal Oil

2011-03-08T23:38:00.000+01:00

So prices of crude oil have spiked up in recent days, and analysts worldwide have had fun discussing every aspect of it.

In terms of our Federal Republic, there is a curiously contradictory outcome.

On the one hand, higher oil prices mean more revenue for the government and higher GDP growth figures. The infamous "Excess Crude Account", which had been on the brink of being completely depleted, has bounced back, with an estimated US$2.1 billion in new funds accrued to the account in the last seven weeks. And we all know how the Obasanjo II Administration claimed the credit for "economic growth" in the early 2000s when demand from India and China exogenously raised the barrel price of Nigerian crude.

But on the other hand, the equally infamous "fuel subsidy" somewhat negates the effect. We get a certain price for our exports of unrefined crude. We then import refined fuel products. Part of the price of the imports is paid by the consumer, and the rest, the so-called subsidy, is conventionally assumed to be paid by the federal government, but is apparently actually paid by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).

Trustworthy (emphasis on trustworthy) information about the fiscal picture of our federal republic is scarce. All three tiers of government have a vested interest in making sure no one can accurately track exactly how much money is coming in to government coffers and how much is going out. But as near as I can tell, there is a fiscal sleight-of-hand going on. The extra revenue is going to the government, not the NNPC, but the extra expense is going to the NNPC, not the government. The government is free to spend the "awoof" as though it were free money, a true windfall, with no costs attached, making no provisions to deal with funding the subsidy since that is the NNPC's responsibility ... while the NNPC faces increased costs which it cannot offset against the fiscally detached, surging revenue stream.

In the last year or so, there has been much discussion of whether or not the NNPC is bankrupt. I have not said anything about it on my blog, because there is very little substantive information on which to base an opinion (which is, alas, the normal state of things in our Federal Republic). The different sides of the argument just insist on their position, and say a few meaningless things designed to sound as if they have given you the fiscal facts even though they haven't actually said anything about anything, least of all the NNPC.

What is certain is the NNPC owes billions in payments to the importers of refined fuel products. In January of 2011, a report in the excellent Business Day said the NNPC's debt to importers was =N=499 billion (US$3.3 billion), and quoted sources who predicted the debt would rise to =N=600 billion (US$4 billion) by June of 2011.

In addition to this, NNPC reportedly owes =N=450 billion (US$3 billion) to the Federal Government, or more appropriately the Federation Account from which all three tiers of government are "allocated" funds. The National Assembly has variously attempted to force the NNPC to cough up the funds, which seems to be something of an exercise in fiscal self-delusion.

And I don't know if it has been released yet, or if the investigation is still on-going, but I have not yet heard the result of the probe into the =N=1.2 trillion (US$8 billion) "scandal" involving the mishandling, mismanagement, misallocation and alleged embezzlement (of a portion thereof) of fuel-subsidy-related expenses managed by the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) in the five years between 2005 and 2010. The investigation began in December, 2010.

Because the NNPC cannot pay its debts, the Federal Government must, every so often, grant, allocate or (amusingly) loan billions of dollars to the NNPC to service its debts. Since these funds ultimately come out of the federal budget, the federal government in effect has spent =N=2 trillion (US$13.3 billion) on the fuel subsidy in the last four years.

Last year, the Deputy Finance Minister, Remi Babalola, ignited controversy when he said the NNPC was "insolvent". What followed was a year of denials by the federal government and by the NNPC ... until February 2011 when Business Day ran a report captioned:Finally, NNPC admits: ‘We are broke’. Speaking at the Oil and Gas Conference and Exhibition in Abuja, the corporation's senior officials went so far as to say corporate failure was possible if the NNPC didn't undergo "transformation" major Oil and Gas Conference. Interestingly, they also said the NNPC cannot pay its =N=450 billion (US$3 billion) debt to the Federal Government until the Federal Government pays the NNPC =N=1.156 trillion (US$7.7 billion) in reimbursements for fuel subsidy expenses.

This is our fiscal dilemma.

On the one hand, higher barrel prices for crude oil mean more revenue for our three tiers of government, and higher GDP growth.

And on the other hand, the dubious structure of our accounts means the gains are less than they appear to be ... and the three tiers of government will continue the practice of spending as "profit" funds that should have gone to pay the costs of the subsidy.

It is the sort of thing that led to problems for RISONPALM, for Nigerian Airways, for the Refineries, the Railways and everything else. It is not just that we consume capital rather than invest it. It is not just that we consume "input" as though it were "output", leaving us with insufficient input to create future output. It is not just that we consume funds that should have been used for maintenance. But we are now taking the money that is supposed to pay for our subsidy, and spending it on short-term consumables as though it were "profit" from increased crude prices.

Electrified

2011-03-08T23:03:00.000+01:00

We want to be a "Top 20 by 2020" economy.

Our economy is currently smaller than South Africa's.

Our population is [u]officially[/u] three times South Africa's.

To have the same GDP per capita as South Africa has today, our economy would have to be three times as large.

South Africa generates 40,000MW of electricity .... and has been suffering power outages for years.

Nigeria does NOT generate up to 10,000MW of electricity.

Depending on what type of technology you use, it could take up to $1 billion to generate 1,000MW.

Do the mathematics.

Ask yourself if there is even a single candidate for (rigged) election at any of the three tiers of government who has a plan that is rational and feasible.

We are wasting time.

It is OUR money, isn't it?

2011-03-06T00:34:00.001+01:00

This happened recently:

Five students were killed and several others reportedly injured during a riot by students who wanted a share of the ₦15 million distributed by the Akwa Ibom State governor Godswill Akpabio. The tragedy occurred yesterday at the Government House Uyo and the Ibom Hall where undergraduate students and unemployed graduates gathered at the instance of the state governor.

...........................................................................................................

Mr. Akpabio had announced a ₦10 million largesse for undergraduate students who were supposed to get their money at the Government House. His running mate in the gubernatorial election, Nsima Ekere, was billed to distribute the rest ₦5 million to unemployed graduates who converged at the Ibom Hall.

Trouble started with the rumour that organisers of the event have taken away ₦4 million out of the ₦10 million given to the students. After waiting for more than four hours for the remaining ₦6 million to be shared, the students started a protest.

The protest turned into a stampede as security agencies tried to remove them from the premises. In the ensuing scramble, gunshots were fired by the police and the protesting students responded by hurling stones at the police officers.

Some months ago:

For the nation’s 50th year anniversary celebrations the president’s wife, Patience Jonathan, decided to share bags of rice to “alleviate the poverty” of local women – and did this in the crudest, most elementary way possible – by calling people together and throwing them bags of rice like beggars.

By the time she was through, there were plenty of casualties, some fatal, as citizens struggled not just for rice but also against the complete absence of crowd control measures or indeed any kind of preparation to handle the melee that was sure to ensue from that method of distribution.

The bottom line: someone wanted to make a public show of doing good, but the action was neither thought through nor planned well; a metaphor for many of this administration’s handling of crucial issues.

When these politicians (and their wives) want to generate cheap popularity, they pull stunts like this. There is really no institutionalized or systemic government-run social welfare net in our Federal Republic. Oh, there are a lot of agencies that in theory fulfill that role, but in practice with an estimated (more like guess-timated) 70% of the population in need of some form of social welfare assistance (including significantly health care, education and nutrition), the fact is most Nigerians don't receive anything of note from any of the three tiers of government.

Mind you, it isn't simply a lack of will. Much more important than that is the lack of resources, even if the will was there. On this blog, I have criticized Amina Az Zubair and the Millennium Development Goals Office because they keep talking about what they believe they will achieve, without being honest about the fact that they have never been given sufficient resources/funding to achieve the things they say they want to achieve.

Adding all three tiers of government in the Federal Republic together, there simply isn't enough in the budget to fund any such programmes .... and what little funding there is (relative to our HUGE population) is wasted on a political-administrative structure that pays for far too many political office-holders of one sort or another, as well as funding the patron/client networks connected to each office-holder "legally" (examples include excessive/unnecessary/disadvantageous contract awards and the use of one's office to bend commercial/market/economic decisions in the direction of one's self, one's patrons and one's clients) and illegally (including but not limited to outright theft).

Every once in a while, in every state of the Federal Republic you hear of political figures magnanimously distributing rice .... or motorcycles .... or raw cash. Sometimes the political figure establishes himself as a "Pillar of Sports", pouring cash into the state's professional football club, or creating a new club from scratch.

They do this in a highly personalized way. Rather than create an institutionalized or systemic method of continuously and consistently provided welfare assistance for citizens, they prefer random, one-off EVENTS .... with the magnanimous political figure clearly identified as the source of the largesse.

But are they really the source? Aren't they just spending GOVERNMENT MONEY, which belongs to all citizens, and which is supposed to be budgeted for in an organized fashion on a yearly basis .... as opposed to spent in bulk on nothing more than the private whim of a political figure? And I am not just talking about individuals who are in government; those out of government are usually spending funds acquired through dubious, unfulfilled contracts -- and in one case giving us millions of dollars from a billion-dollar stash gained from the receipt of an oil block given by a military dictatorship that bought political influence by dashing oil blocks to political friends (and federal ministers).

They take our money .... and then make us thank them for dribbling a few crumbs of our own money back into our hands. We have to beg them, kiss their arses, and praise them to high heaven because money that could have improved electricity, water-supply, education, healthcare or roads went into someone's pocket, and that someone has pitied us and dashed us a few kobo to use and buy groundnut.

How did we allow ourselves to fall so low?

Democracy II?

2011-03-03T15:33:00.000+01:00

Some days ago, I posted this piece called "Democracy?", discussing Bauchi Governor Isa Yuguda's executive order banning any campaign but that of President Jonathan from placing posters or banners in any of Bauchi's principal cities and towns. No campaign paraphernalia is to be allowed in public within 20 kilometres of the cities and towns except that of the President.

Today comes this report from Daily Trust about the PDP governors of Niger, Ebonyi and Benue banning, barring or blocking the presidential campaign rallies of the CPC, ANPP and ACN respectively.

Ah, the joys of "dem-go-crazy".

Doctors on Strike

2011-03-03T06:58:00.000+01:00

Do something for me. Read this article. Think about it.

Now answer a question for me.

Why do doctors and nurses in Nigeria go on strike?

A commenter on another website had this to say:

Cause and effect. The strike is the effect. We should be looking at causes. Govts shouldn’t be creating conditions that force doctors to go on strike.

It is easy to say they should be on a higher moral plane, but being on a higher moral plane does not mean they should allow a criminal govt to continue shafting them. If you are a doctor in Naija, you would have seen way too many people die from criminal negligence by the govt, from inadequate equipment to NEPA doing their thing during surgery, to babies in incubators dying when there is a power failure, etc. Being a doctor required to work in terrible conditions can make you immune to the suffering of your patients.

A second commenter concurred with him:

Boy, until you enter the 'situation' yourself, its kind of easy to talk. I am against doctors striking myself, but don't forget that doctors too are victims of a negligent government. A doctor that hasn't been paid for six months is equally in danger of his own sick child or pregnant wife dying needlessly from poor facilities.

Moreover doctor's strikes have often been less about salaries and more about inadequate or non-existent facilities.

As a doctor, how many times for instance can you use your personal money to buy drugs or drips or needles for a patient you know is sure to die if you don't? These things happen regularly, nobody hears about them but everyone hears about the strikes.

I have my own personal stories from when I was a rookie doctor in Naija

That is certainly one way to look at it .... a way of looking at it that does not, cannot, will not comfort those who have watched members of their families die while doctors and nurses are striking.

What makes it so much worse is their going on strike achieves NOTHING.

I am not old, but I am not young, and I have seen so many of these medical strikes come and go .... and all I have to say about the success-rate of these strikes is the current strikes are about the same issues that were not resolved by the previous strikers! These issues will not be resolved by the current strikes either. And so long as Nigeria remains politically, fundamentally, structurally, systemically, economically, societally and institutionally the same as it is now, future strikes will be just as useless in resolving these issues.

Look, either a person or group takes firm (dare I say "revolutionary") action to change the political, fundamental, structural, systemic, economic, societal and institutional nature of the Federal Republic of Nigeria .... or they should stop wasting our time (and our lives)!

These doctors and their strikes have NO EFFECT on the basic, core nature of the way things are. Supposedly, 2011 is an election year, but health care (or the lack thereof) will play no role whatsoever in deciding which of the politicians occupy the Presidency, National Assembly, State Assembly, Governorships, etc .... and will play little or no role in what policy decisions these politicians make when they are in office. After we have wasted so much money and time on the charade, the countdown will begin till the next doctors and nurses strike.

PS: Yes, I saw the part of the article where it said a woman in critical need of emergency medical care was turned away because her husband didn't have =N=150,000.00 to pay for a Caesarean section. Unfortunately, this is also "normal" in Nigeria. I saw it upfront and personally decades ago when I broke my arm as a child. I have never forgotten it. I will never forget it.

Revolution in Nigeria?

2011-03-03T06:31:00.001+01:00

The Federal Executive Council says an Egyptian-style revolution is impossible in Nigeria. Laughably, a spokesman said this is because Nigeria is "being run on constitutional order where the tenure of office of leaders is fixed". As though the people rebelled simply because of the length of tenure of the North African autocrats. The young Tunisian who set himself on fire, sparking the chain of events, did not do so merely because Ben Ali had been in office for decades.
as reason for his optimism.

The Speaker of the House, Dimeji Bankole (who becomes a mirror-world parody of himself more and more with each passing day) added his voice to the noise, telling a delegation of German parliamentarians a revolution was impossible in Nigeria because the "acceptance of democracy by the citizens" meant "North Africa’s experience was, therefore, not applicable to Nigeria".

Oh come on Dimeji. You know more than most that our democracy is all form and no substance.

But, while the FEC and the Speaker are definitely self-serving with their comments, they may have a point.

No revolution is imminent in Nigeria.

In our Federal Republic, nearly everyone is "marginalized" in one way or another; for example, we are all marginalized politically, because we still can't use our votes to decide who should hold political/government office. Unfortunately, we the people are divided against ourselves, each of us believing himself and his group to be the victims of "Nigeria" (where "Nigeria" is defined as every other individual and sociocultural group not ourselves).

But there is one other, possibly more influential issue.

I look at the transition in Egypt and Tunisia, and it seems to me the pre-existing political elite are still in charge, save for the musical-chairs removal of respective unpopular figureheads.

I suspect Nigerian citizens are reluctant to put their lives on the line and die for "change", because we all believe that the political beneficiaries of any such action on our part will not be much different from the people we would have died to remove from office. I suspect the average Nigerian citizens believes the consequent and subsequent economic structure following their sacrifice would not be much different from the economic structure they died to change.

No one actually says this out loud ... but nobody ever bothers to protest or fight when there is a rigged election, a military coup or an annulled election. Deep down in our hearts, Nigerians believe the victims and beneficiaries of such plots and shenanigans are more like each other than they are like we the average citizens.

We would not be fighting to free ourselves, but fighting to decide which of several political barons will oppress us for the next few year. Our lives won't change either way, so we don't even waste our time thinking about it, much less doing something about it.

But let me tell you something.

You know what will happen after the 2011 (rigged) elections?

The same things that happened before it. Jos will erupt in violence. Random killings will continue in the Northeast. There is quite a long list of things that will just continue as usual ... and even though these things happen with the frequency of the sunrise and the sunset, the federal, state and local governments will continue to react as though they were surprised and thus unprepared.

But there is one man with cautious optimism. A man who provided a ray of intelligent commentary on the comparison between Nigeria and the status quo ante in North Africa before the citizen revolts. Unsurprisingly it comes from Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, the current Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria. Speaking after receiving an honorary doctorate from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka he affirmed that our Federal Republic had everything it needed to succeed and warned that unless we harnessed our strengths to achieve our true potential we would be running the risk of a North-African-style popular revolt in Nigeria.

Apex Socio-Cultural Organization of A Geo-Political Zone

2011-03-03T05:58:00.000+01:00

We often talk about countries doing things.

(a) Tensions rise between Ethiopia and Eritrea.

(b) Rwanda invades DR-Congo.

(c) Nigeria wins the 2012 Nations Cup.

We know what we mean when we say these things, but if these statements are taken literally, it is as if we are saying:

(a) Tensions rise between 85,000,000 individual people and 5,000,000 individual people.

(b) 11,000,000 individual people invade 71,000,000 individual people.

(c) 120,000,000 individual people win the 2012 Nations Cup.

It doesn't make sense, does it? When we speak of entire nations "doing" something, we are really referencing the specific decisions and actions of a micro-minority of that country's overall population.

It is not pedantic. It is actually quite important, especially in the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Far too many of us Nigerians tend to hold EVERYONE in an ethnic/regional/religious group responsible for the decisions and actions of a micro-minority of members of that group.

Far too many of us Nigerians treat the statements and actions of the unelected (and often self-proclaimed) "leaders" of ethnic/regional/religious as though these statements and actions ipso facto represented the thoughts, desires, wishes and intentions of everyone in the groups these "leaders" claim to speak for. In particular, I am sick and tired of the Nigerian news media imbuing the words of "apex sociocultural/geopolitical groups" with a credibility they do not deserve and have not earned or proven.

Like all Nigerians, I too am part of an ethnic community, a regional community and a religious community. The thing is, when the publicly-claimed, so-called "leaders" of my specific groups open their mouths, NOTHING they say reflects anything I have ever thought, hoped, wished, desired or intended in my entire life ... yet the media treats them as if they are my leaders, as if what they say reflects my opinion ... and depending on where I am in Nigeria when crises break out, I could actually pay with MY LIFE when youths from another sociocultural group attack me to punish me for being (in their minds) complicit in decisions by men I don't even like, and for supporting (as far as they are concerned) actions that I in fact had opposed from the start.

It doesn't make any sense.

We are so powerless as citizens that we do not influence anything. We are like spectators in our own country. Yet we keep blaming each other for stuff none of us are in control of, rather than joining our forces together to fight for ALL OF US to finally be in control of our individual and collective destinies after thousands of years of being puppets in our own land.

PS: If you are wondering what prompted this post, well, I was privy to a conversation involving a group of Nigerians, the majority of whom believed that sociocultural groups benefit from having "one of their sons" in political power. A corollary to that argument is the insistence that the sociocultural groups whose "sons" are not in power are "marginalized". The reality is ALL OF NIGERIA is marginalized, has been marginalized and will remain marginalized deep into the future because we the ordinary people are too busy treating each other as rivals and enemies to work together to end our collective marginalization. Raise your head up and look around; not only are we marginalized in our own country, but are country (inasmuch as it pretends to be an African "giant") is thoroughly marginalized in strategic world power politics and the ever-more-complex global economy.

One good move, two bad moves

2011-03-03T05:03:00.000+01:00

GOOD MOVE:

The Central Bank of Nigeria has banned banks from funding political campaigns.

BAD MOVES

Even as the federal and state governments run up new mountains of unproductive debt, the Senate has approved new debt for the first and second tiers of government.

The courts grant yet another set of inexplicable tenure extensions to state governors, this time to five governors at one go. The courts keep acting as if the constitution was designed to give the protect the politicians' right to four years in office.

Contrary to the courts' illogical, irrational, inexplicable and probably unconstitutional perspective, I have said repeatedly on this blog that the four-year term is meant to constitutionally guarantee citizens the right to choose their political leaders every four years; when you extend terms willy-nilly, you end up with a situation like Anambra State, where the citizens went SEVEN YEARS (from 2003 to 2010) without substantive input in their own governance.

The four-year term is designed as a democratic protection for citizens, not a job-safety device for politicians. The slow-moving courts need to speed up the adjudication of electoral disputes, rather than continually grant politicians tenure-extensions that defeat the purpose of democracy.

PS: You know the funny thing? It doesn't really matter, does it? Look at me, using Anambra State as an example .... as though any of the "elections" held there were substantively democratic. Maybe the courts grant tenure-extensions because they know it doesn't defeat democracy since there is no democracy to be defeated in the first place. Maybe the courts think they are better-placed to impose candidates on the citizens, rather than leaving it to Big Men's back-room deals. Why else did the courts name Rotimi Amaechi the Governor of Rivers State even though he was not even on the ballot and consequently received exactly ZERO VOTES?

The River Dredged

2011-03-01T16:01:00.000+01:00

I still believe fixing AND EXPANDING the railways is a much, much, much, much higher priority than dredging the River Niger. A functional, pan-federal rail network would connect the ENTIRE federal republic and support economic development and social welfare in more ways than I can describe on a blog.

However ....

.... since the federal government decided to prioritize the dredging project, I am pleased to see that it is coming together nicely.

Yes, you heard me. I gave the federal government a compliment. And I stress that the compliment is for the government, not for any particular president, because this project cuts across the past two or three presidential administrations (definitely the last two, and probably the one before them).

Read about it in this report from Daily Trust. I can't wait to take a trip down the River myself.

Democracy?

2011-02-28T16:23:00.000+01:00

Bauchi State Governor Isa Yuguda has banned the placement or display of campaign posters and banners in the state capital and the 20 local government headquarters.

Only one campaign is exempt from the ban -- the presidential campaign of President Goodluck Jonathan. The PDP presidential candidate is the only person allowed, per Yuguda's order, to place or display campaign posters, banners and paraphernalia in the City of Bauchi and in any of the 20 LGA-HQs.

“Any interested politicians who wants his posters, banners and billboards to be placed, should do so 20 km away from the state capital and local government headquarters. Politicians are allowed to paste posters or place posters, banners and billboard in their houses or shops but not outside.

“The ban includes all posters, banners and bill boards of all contestants except that of Mr President and Vice President.”

“Anyone who violated the order would be arrested and prosecuted in accordance with the thuggery law, passed by the State House of Assembly.”

Now, ordinary people such as you and I might think this is an undemocratic, should-be-illegal exercise of the power of the governor's office to give an undemocratic, should-be-illegal advantage to the Presidential candidate of his political party.

But Isa Yuguda and his advisors are not ordinary people like you and me. They have apparently concluded that allowing political parties equal access to the public eye would (in their words) "pose security problems" for the state.

Security problems for the state?

Don't they mean electoral problems for Isa Yuguda and Goodluck Jonathan?

To devalue or not to devalue ... that is the question.

2011-02-28T04:41:00.001+01:00

I am NOT a fan of the International Monetary Fund. If I began to explain to you why I feel this way, it would not only distract from the issue I want to address in this post, but will also take a few years of your life from start to finish.

The IMF recently concluded its most recent Article IV "consultation" with Nigeria. Daily Trust reported the IMF asked Nigeria to devalue the Naira, while the excellent Business Day had a typically more detailed take on the IMF's "advice".

Much has been said and written about this in the Nigerian news media, and on blogs and online fora. For starters, I just want to reiterate a post I wrote not too long ago about our dysfunctional economy that does not benefit from currency devaluations. It is weird. Lots of countries in the world pray for their currency to be weaker than others; some go beyond mere prayer to artificially distort the currency market so their currency is unnaturally weak relative to their trading partners. As I said in the prior post on this subject, one of the effects of living with our dysfunctional economy so long is we Nigerians do not seem to be aware that we suffer from Big Power currency manipulation more than the Big Power's do; the United States and China go back and forth arguing about currency manipulation, but if you were serious about restructuring and "normalizing" the Nigerian economy, you would soon discover that much of what should be your competitive advantage has been erased by market manipulation by Big Powers -- including China's cheap currency as well as the much more frequently complained-about Euro-American agricultural and industrial subsidies. We do not realize how badly we are affected because we are not trying to normalize our dysfunctional economy; essentially, if the Big Powers stopped distorting the markets this instant, we would still be entirely unable to take advantage of it, so while it is theoretically important, the existence or non-existence of these distortions does not practically affect any Nigerian's life prospects in a way that would cause him to be presently angry about it.

Whatever it says in the textbooks, and whatever the IMF is pretending to be their motives and intentions, devaluing the Naira will probably not produce whatever it is they think it will produce. Policy-making in the Federal Republic is a process of loudly declaring the importance of saving $1 billion, then spending far more than $1 billion to save $1 billion while pretending you are spending nothing, immediately followed by the initiation of a new "innovative" move that you promise will revolutionize Nigeria, loudly telling everyone the new move will cost only $3 billion, though the cheapest possible cost for it is $9 billion, and the padding of corruption will mean that $15 billion will be spent .... after which point we will discover the new "innovative" move doesn't work as well as promised. And the whole thing, everything I just wrote, would all be premised on the initial declaration that we have to save $1 billion.

Nevertheless ....

Nigerians have generally been opposed to any talk of devaluation. The conversation has been predicated on the assumption that the IMF wants deliberately, and of its own volition, inflict a lower-valued Naira on Nigeria. The Central Bank Governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi has also weighed in, disagreeing with the IMF and saying he did not think the Naira was overvalued.

The thing is, the Central Bank of Nigeria has expended around US$30 billion of our foreign reserves in the last two or three years to defend the Naira's exchange rate. It started under Charles Soludo, and continued under Sanusi Lamido Sanusi. I do not know if this policy is continuing; Sanusi very recently said the depletion of the reserves had stopped, though he appeared to say the Central Bank had been defending the Naira against "speculative attack" (as opposed to saying the CBN was sustaining the Naira at a value higher than its market value; interestingly, while the official exchange rate still hovers around =N=150/$ like the CBN wants it, on the parallel market the Naira trades at up to =N=157/$).

But my thing is, if you have spent $30 billion defending the value of the Naira, essentially spending half of your accumulated reserves to do so, would it be wrong of me to say that the Naira had already been devalued by the markets and that we have in effect spent a fortune we cannot afford to hide the reality from ourselves.

Think about what we could have done with $30 billion, both as a raw number, and as seed money to leverage even larger amounts of investment. Depending on what type of technology you use, $30 billion could have raised our electricity generation by at least 30,000 MW, which added to the 10,000 MW of theoretically-existing installed production capacity, it would take us up to 40,000 MW, which is about what South Africa generates (and is 66% of the existing capacity of Sub-Saharan Africa). Of course, our supposed existing 10,000 MW doesn't actually exist....

.... and nobody would be foolish enough to spend all of the $30 billion on one thing, even if that thing is as valuable as electricity. But what I am getting at is there are a lot of productive things you could do with $30 billion, things that would stimulate the deeper, broader and faster GDP growth our Federal Republic so desperately needs.

Instead we spent it all to achieve nothing beyond fixing the exchange rate of our Naira at a particular place .... which doesn't really do anything other than allow us to continue importing things that we should have been exporting in the first place. The absence of economic support infrastructure (like effective and efficient railways, electricity, water, etc, things $30 billion could have helped) makes us so dependent on imports of even the most basic manufactures that we have become a nation that will willingly waste $30 billion to keep imports comparatively cheap because if we allowed the Naira to devalue we wold find our existing industrial base would be in no position to truly take advantage of it. It becomes a vicious, self-reinforcing circle of waste and dysfunction.

Indeed, had we allowed the Naira to depreciate, any plan to invest that $30 billion in leveraging much more to fix our infrastructure would have instantly come up against dramatically higher prices for importing capital equipment and other input, since no such thing is produced in Nigeria or anywhere nearby in equally dysfunctional Africa. All of such imports will be in dollars (not Shillings or Rand or CFA) which would diminish the efficacy of the $30 billion. So we opted to spend it all producing nothing other than a Naira at a politically-fixed rate.

Sanusi says our foreign reserves are starting to recover, albeit at a glacially-slow pace. Events in West Asia and North Africa have driven up the barrel-price of crude oil, which is to our fiscal benefit. This is a good thing, I suppose, though it is another reminder of how important pumping out raw, unprocessed crude really is, and how comparatively unimportant are all of the sectors that in theory are supposed to benefit from currency devaluation, and that would in theory have benefited from a leveraged two or three times that $30 billion in investment in infrastructure improvement. Unproductive stuff is so much more important to our economic well-being than important stuff; it is both a cause and a consequence of dysfunction.

Politicians and Violence in the Delta

2011-02-28T01:50:00.000+01:00

The so-called "militants" in the Niger-Delta have spent the last 12 years alternating between working as violent enforcers for politicians, and stealing crude oil from our sprawling system of pipelines.

Now that we are in an election year, it seems they have gone back to working for politicians. The offices of the Labour Party in Yenegoa, capital of President Jonathan's home state Bayelsa, were blown up by persons unknown. It is not the only incident of violence related to the upcoming elections (there have been outbreaks all over the Federal Republic), but this one has all the markings of a "militant" attack. Heaven knows how much explosives the "militants" have stockpiled for blowing up pipelines and creating vast environmental damage via oil spills as a corollary to to their stealing.

Elsewhere in the Niger-Delta, the slavish mentality of the security services resulted in the avoidable deaths of 16 citizens (and in injuries to dozens more) at a campaign rally for President Goodluck Jonathan's in Port Harcourt.

For some reason our public security agencies have always acted as though they were the personal political servants of whoever occupied the position of maximal leadership. It has been this way since 1960. It was this way during the colonial era. It was the same in the pre-colonial era too.

Reform isn't just a thing we do on the outside to institutions, systems and structures. It is also something we must all do on the inside, in our hearts and souls. We must change the way we think. Those tasked with providing security to the public need to start acting like they understand their job description. They are supposed to protect we the people against illegal leadership and unconstitutional behaviour, yet they have always done the opposite, all the way to pre-colonial times, helping bad leaders impose themselves on us and compelling us to suffer for the vanity of these leaders.

In a way I don't blame the security men. If they hadn't acted the way they had, they would have been subject to disciplinary action (ironic, isn't that?), and we the people would not have stood up to protect them for the unjust treatment. But that is our collective faults. We are supposed to be working together, civilians and soldiers alike, so we can all live without having to distort our behaviour in negative ways just to survive in a system that rewards negative behaviour and punishes positive behaviour. But instead of working together ....

Divided and easily conquered

2011-02-28T01:34:00.002+01:00

A member of an online forum read this Sun News interview of Senator Walid Jibrin and immediately launched on the usual xenophobic bile about cattle herders, Northern oligarchy, Northern ruling elite, Northerners this and Northerners that. Reading through the ethnophobic (i.e. tribalis) rubbish this forum commentator wrote, I felt the usual depression I get when I begin to think of how far we as Nigerians have to go before we reach the metaphoric Promised Land.

Walid Jibrin's comments are symptomatic of an uncomfortable large majority of the ENTIRE Nigerian ruling elite, not just the ruling elite of a particular region. In different ways, on different subjects, an in different settings, the utterances of the titans that rule our polity, economy and society are more frightening than any horror film ever made. Oddly enough, the fact that their words provide rhetorical ammunition for communal violence is not the thing that scares me most. What scares me most is the things they say are so .... stupid that you despair of the fact that these are the decision-makers whose pervasive and direct influence on our country's past, present and future is, was, and will be unmoderated by anything so trivial as democracy, rule of law, constitutionalism, accountability, checks-and-balances, free market competition, economic regulation, or anything else.

Back in 2003, during the (rigged) elections, and years before the current imbroglio in Nigeria's banking industry, I read a very long, in-depth interview with the CEO of one of the big banks ... and the things he said were so daft that I could not believe he was the "decider" at such a large bank. Bear in mind that in our system of doing things, the "oga" or boss is all-powerful; any hint of initiative from his underlings is treated by the boss as a direct attack on the boss, an act of insubordination, a threat to the oga's position, an indicator that you wish to usurp oga's role.

It was neither the first nor last time I have been shocked by the silliness uttered by so-called experts. One that stands in my mind is a respected economist and university professors who has severally sat on advisory councils and panels for a number of Nigerian presidents. When a journalist sat down to talk to this man about the economy, policy issues and development, he said things that would academically embarrass a 100-level Economics student.

People keep thinking that there is something fundamentally wrong with Nigeria, some Nigerian Factor that explains why things are never normal in our Federal Republic, why our own dey always get k-leg.

There is nothing mysterious about it. The fact is the people charged with making the most important decisions do not have even the foggiest conception of what it is they are supposed to be doing. They know they should be doing something, so they do something. Ask them, and they will defend the something they chose to do vociferously, even if it is quite visibly taking us on the wrong path to the wrong destination. Because, and this is the second part of the problem, it is we the people who suffer the consequences of being on the wrong road; from the decision-makers' perspective, whatever road we are on, good or bad, they have political, economic and social power, and that is what really motivates us as human beings. Money, power, status, influence, and all that these things can bring you.

The bank CEO loves being a CEO; it doesn't matter that his bank is an empty shell heading towards collapse. The economist I mentioned above is respected across the country, is consulted by presidents, sits on important policy-making committees and is treated like a wise, experienced elder; it doesn't matter to him that his brand of "advice" is likely part of the reason our economy is dysfunctional (heck, he probably thinks the mythical Nigerian Factor is what ruined the implementation of his excellent advice).

Nor is Walid Jibrin the first Nigerian VIP to gladly say things that promote ethnic and religious fear, distrust, dislike, hate and at times violence. Some of them know what they are doing, and do it deliberately, using the old tactic of divide-and-conquer, divide-and-rule to protect the system from challenge by the masses. But others, and I bet Walid Jibrin is in the group, do not think what they are saying is dangerous; they honestly and truly believe that are analyzing the situation appropriately and correctly.

Hearing a Nigerian Big Man talk like that is .... perturbing, but what is truly scary is the number of regular, everyday Nigerian citizens who express the same sort of thoughts. In the case of we the people, there is little to gain from divide-and-rule, so when any of our number talk in such a fashion, it is usually backed up by belief.

Which brings me back to this forum commenter who took Walid Jibrin's words as his inspiration to go of on an ethnophobic rant about Northern Nigerians. If you told this man that his words are just as terrible and dangerous as those of Jibrin, he would probably look at you as though he thought you were mad. Indeed, if you pointed to the words of a politician from the commenter's region or state, expressing similar ethnophobic beliefs about Nigerians from the North, he would probably defend that person's statements, hail that person for telling it like it is -- which is exactly what Walid Jibrin and his supporters would say.

You see, the political/economic/social elite are not the only people who make the mistake of choosing the wrong path in the belief that it is the right path. We the people, we the masses of the Federal Republic, do the same thing everyday. The Big Men are able to stay in power, to stay in control, because we the people echo their missteps and mistakes.

It is why we are divided. It is why we are easily conquered.

It is why revolution, reform, restructuring and transformation remain unlikely.

And so we get to listen to our leaders say things that are either dangerous or silly. We watch them say these things with gravity and solemnity, as though they were sharing knowledge and guidance. Much of the time, they know neither the import nor impact of what they say, but they say it anyway because "protocol" requires them to say something at that point even if they have nothing to offer.

And we the people don't care. One citizen bluntly expresses a widespread attitude to the alleged "democracy" of the Fourth Republic:

“In the last two months, I have decamped to more than seven political parties because it comes with a price: a motorcycle, cloths or money. This is our period of harvest even though at the end of the day, I am going to choose credible candidates, irrespective of their political leanings,” Yunusa Abdulmumini, an Okada rider said. It is now very common to hear a story that party A, B or C had harvested “thousands of decampees” during its rally either in Maiduguri, Cibok, Gwoza, Monguno or any other place.

Funny, he seems to think "at the end of the day" his vote will actually count. If you do not bother to create a functioning democracy, you will not have a functioning democracy. Your vote will be meaningless, the announced "result" will not reflect your vote, and you have no business complaining about it because the time you should have spent fighting the politicians to create democracy you spent instead collecting motorcycle, cloths or money to jump from party to party making a little money as a rent-a-crowd to make each decamping Big Man appear to be bringing "his people" (as though they are his private property) into the new party he has joined.

You might say that other countries have similar problems. Politicians, generals, bureaucrats, technocrats and intellectuals the world over like to create the outward impression that they have a better-than-average understanding of their countries' major and minor crises, but the evidence of history indicates their much-vaunted expertise is more myth than real. Mostly, they muddle through. Mostly, they get lucky. Mostly, when luck runs out, they are unable to stop it happening, ameliorate it or shorten its duration.

So yes, this is a problem all over the world.

But when the chips are down or there is an opportunity for resource gains, the political, economic and social leaders elsewhere in the world will do whatever is necessary to seize (by economic, military, political or social force if necessary) a more advantageous position that our leaders have given ours. The never-ending global "war" for wealth and resources is almost never fought along moral, ethical, just, fair or righteous lines.

If the use of slaves will drive wealth-creation for some, they will go and get slaves. If forcefully taking the land and resources of other populations will give an advantage to some, they go and drive people off their land. If distorting global markets (or supposedly "multilateral" agencies) so they function in a manner advantageous to some will give advantage to some, then the potential benefiting parties go all out to first distort and then defend the distortion to the limits of their capability to do so. If they can get away with beggar-thy-neighbour mercantilism, enjoying access to other people's markets while denying access to their own market, they will do whatever they have to do to create the mercantile opportunity (even if the opportunity is given in exchange for committing their soldiers to potential death in a war that otherwise doesn't concern their countries).

Whatever needs to be done, they do, regardless of moral import.

Don't misunderstand me. You probably think I am making nasty comments about the rest of the world. You are wrong.

Our ancestors were confronted with iron ships, Maxim guns, superior military technology and tactics .... and we were all cheaply and easily (oh so easily) conquered and turned into colonies of Europe. Just like that. Their political/economic/social/intellectual leaders over time had made a sequence of decisions (many of them horrendous) over a long period of time (centuries really) motivated by a vast array of historical stimuli, emergencies as well as by the usual avarice of humanity and human societies.

Now, contrary to those who claim Nigeria is a "young" country, "only 50 years old", as an explanation for why we shouldn't expect any better than what we have got, the reality is our ancestry as human beings is as old as anyone else's. We are all humans, and we have all lived on this planet the same number of millennia. We the people of Nigeria and Africa ended up in a situation where we were technologically behind the conquering colonialists of Europe because our political/economic/social/intellectual leaders made a sequence of decisions across several centuries that resulted in our being behind on these indicators as of the era of colonial conquest.

Frankly, our "leaders" are so much more likely to devote their energies to governing us in a manner that satisfies the strategic interests of everyone else on Earth, while failing to even contemplate or understand, much less effectuate our own strategic interests.

And far from holding them to account, we are too busy dividing ourselves against ourselves, and fighting ourselves in the achievement of nothing of value to ourselves.

EDIT 01-03-11: Daily Trust ran a report on a statement issued by the Peoples Democratic Party asking opposition parties to leave Bode George alone.

The first response under the article starts out complaining that Bode George served only 2 years for a massive crime, while other people sit in prison 10 years for "mere allegations". My initial instinct was to agree with the commenter, because I thought he was talking about the tens of thousands of citizens who have sat in jail for years "awaiting trial" (or in some cases awaiting basic arraignment, or awaiting a family member to bribe the arresting officers), citizens who had never been convicted of anything but who had nevertheless served YEARS of hard time in our less-than-healthy prisons.

That is what I thought the commenter meant .... until I read further and realized the commenter's only gripe was that Sani Abacha's henchman Major Hamza Al-Mustapha had spent a decade in prison while Bode George had only spent two.

So he doesn't really care about our broken system of justice. All he is asking for is that we make sure the pervasive injustice is balanced along ethnic/regional/religious lines; if a Southwestern criminal is given a light sentence and a hero's welcome, then a Northwestern criminal should also be given a light sentence and a hero's welcome.

You see what I mean? It is such a self-defeating ideology, and it is shared by an unfortunately large number of our fellow citizens.

Bode George forgives you

2011-02-27T22:36:00.001+01:00

Are you one of those people who thinks thieves are bad and criminals should be punished? Bode George forgives you.

The criminal forgave those he stole from at a Thanksgiving held at the Cathedral Church in Lagos Island to commemorate his release from Kiri-Kiri prison following the end of a ridiculously light 2-year de facto sentence.

The ex-con retains a certain degree of popularity, his release prompting celebration among his supporters, aides, clients, patrons and allies.

Bode George, thank you for forgiving me. You are an ole, a barawo, an onyeoshi. It is rude of me to call you a thief in the Federal Republic's three biggest languages, but I know you forgive me.

Fool me twice

2011-02-07T17:00:00.000+01:00

There is no place in the world that is totally free from insecurity and violence, but the levels in Nigeria are abnormal. What is really frightening is we have lived with these abnormal amounts of violence and insecurity for so long that we have acclimatized to them. In other words, abnormality has become normal, and we no longer notice or realize just how abnormal the situation truly is. In fact, I daresay if we had a single year of real normality, we might take more than a while to adjust to it, because we are not used to such things; we would probably keep our mental and practical defences on alert, assuming as we do that the period of quiet was just an interlude, an interruption, before the noise restarts.

We have an urgent need to reform the Nigerian Police Force, but that is only one point on a very long list of things we need to do to improve security for the average citizen. Constitutional reforms, political reforms, societal reforms, economic reforms, each of these is just a heading under which there are an even longer list of necessary reforms that have direct and indirect effects on insecurity, violence and crime.

Yet here we are in what is supposedly an election year, and all I hear is people talking about names, personalities and ethno-regional geopolitics.

No one is analytically discussing what any of these empty names will do about police reform or any other security-related reforms.

Note I said "analytically discuss", not "mention". I bet if you asked the leading candidates or their supporters, they would all say the same bland, meaningless things about how they will "tackle" the problem. I am not an old man, but I am not a young man either, and I have heard every one of these standard promises hundreds of times over every decade of my life. I don't know if they attend a class where they are taught a list of useless promises to continue making.

I have never heard a [u]believable[/u] strategy. And even if one is produced (which it won't be), there is the even greater question whether the person making the promise will actually carry out the promise thus made.

None of them has done anything in their careers that would give a rational man confidence that they would keep their word to reform law enforcement and improve public security. Most of them are beneficiaries of the current state of affairs, and would be subject to arrest and prosecution the instant our judicial and law enforcement systems became properly functional; to believe these sorts of people when they promise reform, you would have to believe they were suicidal.

The rest of them are perfectly willing to be the servants and errand-boys of the mega-corrupt, so long as they get to wield a modicum of political authority and get to keep a few crumbs that drop off their masters' table. Do you have any idea the political upheaval that would occur if any Nigerian government or leader truly and seriously fought corruption, and/or reformed the police and law enforcement? Based on their record, none of the candidates have the balls (pardon my language) for that kind of fight. They don't. It is why they seek the easy path of serving a corrupt power-broker over the difficult path of rallying ordinary citizens into a movement that would forcefully press for real change.

And yes, I include in this criticism that leading candidate who is the most experienced of the group. He has been around since the middle of the 1960s, and served as a minister in the very corrupt regimes of the 1970s. More to the point, after 45 years as a presence in Nigerian politics, he has had no effect at all on the status quo and has not advanced the cause of reform. Yet he has supporters who will insist that he will do this and do that, even though he has not done any of those things in 45 years....

.... and the same applies to the rest of the major and minor candidates. If we gave all of them 45 years, none of them will do any of the things their supporters say they will do. Hearing them talk about what they will do in office is like hearing lions and leopards promise to be vegetarians if given political office.

Why do we believe them?

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Use the same ridiculous ruse to fool me thousands of times in a row, and I must be one of the supporters of any Nigerian politician.

No Alliance

2011-02-03T21:14:00.000+01:00

There will be no alliance between the CPC and the ACN, and no alliance between the ANPP and the ACN.

The ACN blames the CPC, but the truth is I never believed any such alliance had a snowball's chance in the Sahara.

If the parties (and individuals) in question were similarly disposed to any specific ideological, philosophical, political or policy orientation,they might been inspired to unite their forces to achieve their common aims.

It is not that their "ideology" was different.

It is that neither of them have much of an ideology to begin with.

You have two entities that formed for no other reason that to acquire power for their owners, same as PDP or any other Nigerian party. And that is the crux of the problem.

Tinubu created the ACN to place power in the hands of Tinubu.

Buhari created CPC to place power in the hands of Buhari.

Tinubu is intelligent enough to know Buhari wants all the power and doesn't want to share it.

Buhari is intelligent enough to know that Tinubu wants all the power and doesn't want to share it.

They both know that a fundamental tactic of competition for power in Nigeria and all over the Africa is convincing a rival to get his ethnic/regional/religious/factional supporters to support you in a fight for power. Once you get that power, you then use the security services to crush your erstwhile collaborator.

There is nothing that exists on this planet that would make Tinubu or Buhari trust that the other man would not turn around and dump him as soon as power was acquired. Our constitution is just a piece of paper that all governments ignore, our laws are fantastic but are never applied, our contracts are difficult to judicially enforce, and even a gentleman's agreement (like the PDP presidential rotation) can and will be broken as soon as power is tasted.

Yes, there was Olu Falae and Umaru Shinkafi in 1999, but add in Olusegun Obasanjo and Atiku Abubakar, and you are talking about four fingers of the same hand, operating under an Army-run election designed to produce a government that would ignore the crimes of the Babangida and Abacha regimes and allow the civilian and military beneficiaries of those regimes to enjoy their loot in peace.

With the likes of Tinubu and Buhari, you are talking about entirely counterpoised, power-hungry political giants, with electoral machines to match. In a Fourth Republic dominated by the big tent, Big Man consensus that is the PDP, men like Tinubu and Buhari are so driven by their own private, personal ambitions that they stand apart and still survive despite clashing repeatedly with the mass of Big Men called PDP.

The idea that one of them would bow down for the other? It was never gonna happen.

Nigerian optimism .... could it be?

2011-02-03T20:48:00.001+01:00

Journalists, academics, "intellectuals" and commentators in North America and Western Europe have often discussed the disparity in taxation and government-funded social benefits between the United States on the one hand, and Canada (to a lesser extent) and Western Europe (to a greater extent) on the other.

For the record, there is no free lunch and "government" per se doesn't fund anything. Citizens are on the hook to pay for all of it, through taxation and ever-increasing amounts of public debt.

But that is not what this blog is about.

One of the things the commentators mention frequently is what they perceive to be the optimism of the average American. The hypothesis is that poor and middle-class Americans oppose taxing the rich because they believe they may one day ascend the class ladder and become rich themselves, so they want to make sure they don't have to give away their future riches in the name of taxation.

I don't know whether the hypothesis is true or not. Even after living there for quite a few years, I quite frankly will never pretend to understand the people, the country, or their political culture. Then again, I could (and do) say the same for Western Europe and Canada.

The thing is, that hypothesis comes close to something I have always suspected is at play in Nigeria. Our economic, political and sociocultural systems are broken, yet there is no consensus for reform, restructuring and transformation.

I fear too many citizens aspire to join the elite who profitably milk the various deficiencies in our systems. And even those, particularly the poor, struggling majority, who have no chance of joining the milking crew, nevertheless hope that someone from their village, their clan, their local government area rises to join the ranks of those who treat our country as though it were their private dairy.

It is not that people don't want reform, it is that they want reform to wait until after they have got their share of the loot. I think a lot of people are actually scared that reform may happen before they get a chance to self-enrich at the expense of the greater good. No one wants to be the last soldier who dies just before the war ends; in Nigeria, no one wants to be the man who was just one step away from acquiring his own "share" when the deficiencies are fixed and it is no longer possible to become illicitly rich. Ironically, those people who are even further away from that final step are actually more adamant that nothing be reformed until they can get closer to the udders.

Is this a form of self-defeating Nigerian optimism? Do too many Nigerians harbour wholly unrealistic dreams of one day becoming masters of the lootocratic dairy?

The funny thing is we continue to live with the effects of our refusal to reform.

We lament our insecurity, but no one will ever reform the police, because if the police actually become good at investigating crimes, much of what passes for "government" and "business" in the country would either have to cease or our prisons would overflow with convicts.

The same is true of everything we lament about. There are people who make fortunes because of our electricity problems. Others who have become billionaires thanks to the comatose refineries and the fuel price subsidy. I could go on.

Alas, we the people seem to aspire to join them, rather than reform the system. Our optimism about the likelihood of it happening may just be the single most important impediment to reform, restructuring and transformation.

Irony

2011-02-03T05:59:00.000+01:00

The UK Guardian has a story about mooted Chinese "investment" in Zimbabwe. It seems this "investment" will be loans (to be repaid with interest) and lines of credit.

This paragraph....

But such an investment would be likely to heighten concerns about president Robert Mugabe's increasingly warm relationship with China, which has been accused of turning a blind eye to human rights violations across Africa.

....and this paragraph ....

Last year the Chinese embassy in Harare threw an 86th birthday party for Mugabe. Such gestures have fuelled speculation that China is content to prop up Mugabe and could even bankroll his next election campaign. It has refused to join America, Britain and the EU in imposing sanctions against the president and his allies.

.... caught my attention.

You know, I had the same thoughts about vast amounts of North American and European investment propping up vicious dictators like Equatorial Guinea's Teodoro Obiang Nguema (not to mention ex-dictator of Tunisia Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and current dictator of Egypt Hosni Mubarak).

Mugabe is bad, no doubt, but between them, Uncle Macias and Nephew Teodoro of the Nguema Dynasty have killed or driven to exile a proportion of the Equatorial Guinean population roughly equivalent to the propotion of the Cambodian population killed or exiled by Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge. Macias Nguema was the country's first president; as is the case with such regimes, he only trusted his family, and he made his nephew Teodoro his principal enforcer (which implicates Teodoro in his uncle's crimes as well as his own). Teodoro's position was eventually strong enough that he ousted and assassinated his uncle, before going on to create a country that might as well be North Korea if North Korea discovered crude oil.

Yet, is is seemingly okay for the United States to massively invest in Equatorial guinea and to politically prop up the Nguema dynasty (US Presidents actually smile and take pictures with Teodoro), since there are mineral resources to be had. Everyone knows it is better to have a dictator that guarantees the resources go to you than to have an unpredictable democracy that might actually try to develop the resources in a manner beneficial to the broader economy and not just foreign corporations and a narrow local elite. Everyone knows it. China knows it. Which is why is also okay to express "heightened concern" at China doing exactly the same thing the Americans and Europeans do.

Funny.

It is like the Cold War isn't it? Everybody backing dictators that serve their interests while hypocritically criticizing their rivals for doing the same.

Actually it is not funny.

Why do we Africans just sit by the wayside, as our economic policies, resource exploitation, political structures and governments are decided and imposed (with no democratic input from us) by internal Big Men that work hand-in-hand with external Big Powers? It has been this way for a long time, and it has not worked out particularly well for us, yet we allow it to persist. Heck, even before we fell under the sway of the external Big Powers, we spent centuries as no more than serfs to pre-colonial Big Men.

They talk to themselves and argue with themselves as to which of them should get which chunk of us, and we wait for them to decide, and once they do we let them take the chunks they have apportioned to themselves.

We just watch them.

I don't get it.

There are even people, so-called intellectuals, academics and commentators, who waste a lot of breath appealing to "the West" to come and install democracy in Africa.

Are they kidding me? Why do people keep feeding the people of Nigeria (and Africa) the false line that they are not supposed to rise up and free themselves? Telling them they are supposed to wait for a "Great Nigerian Leader" or a "Benevolent Big Power" to come and save them?

If the Tunisians and Egyptians had waited for Big Powers to come and save them, Ben Ali would still be president.

Of course, the jury is still out on whether or not the changes in Tunisia (and eventually Egypt) will be real and substantive or merely cosmetic and deceptive. There are likely a lot of internal Big Men and external Big Powers working hard to ensure that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

The thing about revolutions, all revolutions, is they always remove the sitting Czar .... and replace him with another Czar, except the new Czar makes sure no one ever calls him Czar, lest people start to wonder what the point of the whole exercise was.

It would be funny if it wasn't sad ...

2011-01-31T15:37:00.000+01:00

In a recent post I asked why the Nigerian government is so keen on military intervention in Cote d'Ivoire when there are far more strategic issues closer to home.

People(including the so-called "international community") defend military intervention in Cote d'Ivoire by claiming it would install democracy (it won't; in their hearts, none of the three major candidates believes in democracy, rule of law or constitutionalism). But if spreading stable democracy is a good enough reason for a military intervention, I asked why Nigeria didn't just intervene in Niger Republic, Chad, Cameroun and especially Equatorial Guinea, that oil-rich African version of North Korea.

Now comes news that Teodoro Obiang Nguema, Dictator of Equatorial Guinea, has been named the new Chairman of the African Union, replacing the president of Malawi.

This is ridiculous.

And don't forget the current chief executive of the AU Commission is Jean Ping, himself a product of Bongo Family dynasty that has made Gabon its autocratic private possession.

That is the problem with politics in Nigeria, in Cote d'Ivoire and at the continental level. For all the pretence otherwise, we are not really presented with a choice of believers in democracy. It is a question of which undemocratic, autocratic, authoritarian, dicatatorial, election-rigging Big Man we'll have to suffer under for the next few years.

Jos as microcosm of intra-racial racism

2011-01-31T04:57:00.000+01:00

We Africans are quick to anger when we see any act by a European, American, East Asian, Arab, South Asian or Eurasians that could be construed or misconstrued as "racism" directed at Africans or any darker-skinned peoples.

Racism does exist, has existed and I fear will always exist in different forms and varying magnitudes. It is in our nature as human beings; racist attitudes exist between the other so-called races, as well as within them. There are people who believe themselves to be generationally counterpoised warring nations, races or civilizations, but between whom the average African makes no cultural, physical or racial distinction.

With all that said ... we Africans would be better off if we took the energy and militancy we invest in opposing racism from without, and invest instead in dealing with our internal, intra-racial racism against each other. As it is, the greatest single danger to any one African individual or group at any point in history or the present is and has always been another African.

In fact, most of the bad things the other so-called races have done to Africans would not have been possible without the willing participation of Africans.

We are the ones who hunted ourselves and sold ourselves into slavery; the Europeans and Arabs only had to wait in the trading cities on the Atlantic and Indian Ocean coasts, or at the southern termini of the Trans-Saharan trade routes, while we brought ourselves to sell to them in exchange for junk.

We Africans vastly outnumbered Europeans in the imperial armies that conquered our continent to create European colonies. We went on to vastly outnumber Europeans in the colonial administrations and (more importantly) the colonial armies.

Indeed, problematic post-colonial relationships, political and economic, persist partly because the most powerful economic, political and social actors in our countries profit from these relationships much as their pre-colonial forebears did.

I do not mean to understate our experience of external racism. We were (and still are) the target of other people's attitudes of racial/cultural/biological/mental/intellectual superiority. The idea that we were subhuman, less intelligent and inferior as a "race" or civilization underpinned a rigid, institutionalized, centuries-long, globalized caste system, that assigned us the third-to-bottom position, ahead only of the aboriginal populations of the Americas, Australia and New Guinea. We were exploited for pecuniary and political gain by the rich and powerful of the supposedly higher caste humans. For sections of the poor and disenfranchised among the alleged higher castes, our lower caste status served as a psychological boost; if they were minnows among their own people, they were at least, in their own minds, minor deities when compared to Africans -- and they acted the part when interacting with us.

Still, most of the crimes committed against Africans by "foreigners" would not have been possible without African participation. And the world has always been a harsh place. Other "races" of people have been put through the torture rack; some "races" (in the Americas and Australian particularly) were damn near exterminated. People have even extended the same viciousness we suffered to people in their own "races".

The depressing fact of life on Earth is that if it is possible for someone to exploit you for their own gain, they will. The onus is on you to create as strong a bubble of security around yourself as possible.

Here again the worst enemy of the African is the African.

I could talk for ages about this problem, but this is a blog. Suffice to say my beloved Nigeria was able to muster hundreds of thousands of men to wage a Civil War against itself, but could not find the military resources to invade and destroy the Apartheid State, thus freeing millions of Africans and sparing Nelson Mandela and the others from wasting so much of their lives behind bars. Even now, we Nigerians are waging various low-intensity wars against ourselves, rather than pull together to catch up with global powers so we are not so exposed and weak by comparison.

We couldn't even do much to help people of African descent elsewhere in world; aside from the fact that we had sold them to slavery in the first place, we were so weak that we were in no position to compel any outside power to treat them better. Indeed, we were conquered easily by those same outside powers.

We were conquered piecemeal, often cooperating with the invading power to conquer neighbours we thought were rivals, only to find ourselves the target of our erstwhile allies once they were done with our neighbours.

It is said that those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it. Unfortunately, we cannot rely on our academics and intellectuals to educate us. Scratch the surface of some of them, and out pours the same intra-racial bigotry you initially thought they would oppose. As for the res, the show all the effects of a colonially-derived education system, sounding exactly like the "development partners", multilateral agencies, NGO-types, foreign entertainers and others who purport to be trying to save Africa; they all talk about us over our heads, and invariably sound, perhaps unconsciously in some instances, as though they thought we were mentally infantile, incapable of lifting a finger (or a brain cell) in our own defence or self-interest, existentially needing their intervention and intercession specifically (and the rest of the world's intervention generally) lest we perish in our helplessness.

If we reacted to our own intra-racial "racism" the way we react when we are the target of external inter-racial racism, our continent would be such a different place. But there is instead a sort of circular reasoning and self-fulfilling prophecy where people view incidents of African-on-African racism as confirmation of their own intra-racial racist beliefs, rather than see them as evidence of a cancer we all must quash.

There are Nigerians (and Africans) who senselessly celebrate when any random black man is elected mayor of some unknown city in Central or Eastern Europe, and who went into ecstasy when a black man (biracial actually) was elected President of the United States. Oblivious to irony, these same Nigerians would NEVER vote a Kanuri man governor of Delta State, or an Ijaw man Senator from Jigawa State. Ask them to do so, and they will indignantly express frightening (and unconstitutional) views about perfidious "non-indigenes" who exist only to deny "indigenes" a chance. Amusingly, if Europeans, Americans, Arabs, Japanese or Southeast Asians were to deny opportunities to Africans in their country on the basis of our being "non-indigenes", the same people would cry racism.

This makes no sense.

What the rest of the world does to us in their countries is of only marginal effect to our fortunes. What we autochthonously do to ourselves in our own countries not only affects the greater mass of African peoples (just shy of a billion), but also diminishes the protections African countries can directly and indirectly offer our people who live outside Africa.

There is no case for intervention

2011-01-31T03:38:00.000+01:00

The "international community" and ECOWAS are making unconvincing noises about using military force to dethrone Laurent Gbagbo and enthrone Alassane Ouattara. Nigeria is being pressured by the UN and the US to carry out the intervention on their behalf. The Goodluck Jonathan administration wants the dozen or so countries that call themselves "the international community" to quickly recognize their upcoming victory in the 2011 Nigerian elections, and is saying all the things the "international community" wants to hear.

Any "African" or "ECOWAS" military intervention in Cote d'Ivoire would be Nigerian in everything but name. We will be the ones providing most of the troops and doing all of the fighting, if fighting is required. The "international community" will promise finance, transport and logistics, but as our soldiers on duty in Darfur can tell you, there is a difference between what is promised and what is delivered.

Financially, politically, economically, diplomatically, strategically and morally, Nigeria really cannot afford a military intervention anywhere.

The question of which of Gbagbo or Ouattara or Bedie takes the Ivoirien presidency makes no difference to the strategic and regional interests of Nigeria. If you made a list of all the things the Ivorien government could do that would benefit joint Nigerian-Ivoirien and broader West African interests, you would have in effect have made a list of things Gbagbo, Ouattara and Bedie would never do and have never had any interest in doing. The suggestion of doing those things would cause those men to recoil in fear of Nigerian "domination"; they would then run to sell themselves and their country to France, the United States or China, depending on who offered them the best deal.

If you are morally, philosophically and ideologically committed to democracy in West Africa and Africa, well, you have nothing to gain from a Gbagbo, Ouattara or Bedie presidency. Gbagbo, like Abdoulaye Wade in Senegal, comes from the tradition of African politicians who start out leading the opposition to autocrats, only to become autocrats themselves when they finally get power. Ouattara and Bedie are scions of the Houphouet-Boigny autocracy. All three believe in rigging elections, and much like Nigerian politicians, all three rigged in the districts and regions where their machines already controlled.

If you are a modernist who wants Africa to move away from the failed politics of the past, well, you are looking at three dinosaurs left over from the Era of the Big Man. Decades after each man stepped into the political limelight, they have no new ideas or new inspiration; the chaos and instability their contest has brought to the Cote d'Ivoire is very, very old-school, much like the protagonists.

Installing one of the three as president would not make Cote d'Ivoire stable.

There are currently two large armies in the country, each occupying about half the land. One of these armies is the official government army, but in reality both of the armies are privately-owned militias loyal to specific political camps. The New Forces will never swear allegiance to President Gbagbo, and the official government army will never willingly serve a President Ouattara. Any plan to integrate the armies will be resisted by whoever eventually occupies the presidential mansion; if he mixed "enemy" soldiers with his own, and gave them the same access his soldiers have, he would feel himself surrounded at any moment by half-an-integrated-armies' worth of soldiers who would take the first opportunity to mount a coup-de-tat (and/or assassination going by the fate of former President Robert Guei).

Gbagbo, Ouattara and Bedie are the problem. The solution does not lie within them.

But forget that for a second. All of the above are just polemics.

The real issue is this.

Lets start from Nigeria. The internal security situation of our federal republic is ambiguous at the moment. And that is a deliberate understatement.

Some people will say we cannot "avoid our responsibilities" just because we have serious internal problems.

That kind of misses the point, but lets assume they are right.

Fine. Okay. You want to intervene in the politics of neighbouring countries in the interest of stability, even if we have problems of our own? Okay. No qualms.

Why don't we start with Niger Republic and Chad? Over the decades we have paid a political, economic, public safety and strategic price for living with persistent insecurity and instability in our two geographically vast northern neighbours. Our inability to positively influence events there exposes the lie of our claim to be "Giants of Africa".

To our south, apart from our inability to stop oil bunkering, there is the spectre of Equatorial Guinea in the ultra-strategic Gulf of Guinea. You want to promote democracy? This country competes with Eritrea for the title "Africa's North Korea". Before crude oil, it was a refugee camp masquerading as a country; with crude oil, well, think if North Korea discovered crude oil and the ruling family dynasty there pocketed all the money.

You want to unseat a dictator? Paul Biya is next door. In a different universe, the Democratic Republic of Congo would have been our biggest trading partner by volume, but Cameroun would have been integrated into a joint, shared economy that covered both our countries as well as every other country in the broader neighbourhood.

I am NOT saying we should intervene in Cameroun or anywhere else. In case you have not gleaned the fact by now, I am not a supporter of intervening in places, least of all when you haven't a clue what you are doing or why you are doing it.

It is nevertheless mind-boggling that we ignore problems at home and close to home in favour of ill-thought-out adventures in Cote d'Ivoire and Darfur. The weird thing is we would be in a better position to influence events in Cote d'Ivoire and Sudan if we fixed problems closer to home; we might even be able to rely on newly stable neighbours to assist us in any so-called intervention, rather than having to carry the whole load alone as usual.

Why prioritize the "international community's" interests and ignore our own? If the "international community" are so gung-ho on military intervention in Africa, I could make a long list of countries that need it far more than Cote d'Ivoire does ... starting with Equatorial Guinea. Oddly, the "international community" is good friends with the Equatotoguinean dictatorship. In fact, if Nigeria were to intervene in Equatorial Guinea, their reaction would be somewhat similar to their reaction to Iraq invading Kuwait.

I suppose if they want to militarily intervene in Cote d'Ivoire using their own troops, Nigeria is hardly in a position to stop them, but why should we use our troops to enforce their strategic aims. But if you tasked me with coming up with a solution to the Ivoirien crisis, we could talk about different ideas excluding outside military intervention.

As I said earlier, we are dealing with two large armies; the official government army has ballooned from a negligible size during Houphouet's autocracy to become the second-largest in West Africa behind Nigeria and the New Forces are at least large enough to balance the official government army. Both armies have access to mercenaries from neighbouring countries. One wonders where the armies are getting their munitions; such materiel is not manufactured in commercial quantities anywhere in West Africa.

I do not see anyone trying to use a military intervention to resolve the problem in Cyprus. Don't misunderstand me. I would hate to see Cote d'Ivoire remain divided for as long as Cyprus. That said, sometimes when you have let the situation get away from you, you have to take a step back as opposed to escalating a situation you already have no control over.

Maybe, just maybe, if the Cote d'Ivoire stabilizes along the lines of Cyprus we can create enough time and political space for new unionist political movements/parties/forces to rise on both sides of the divide. There is a desperate need for a pan-Ivoirien political movement on both sides of the line, movements that could eventually bring the two halves back together, as the West German and East German wings of the CDU did in Germany. Since there are no superpowers with vested interests in keeping Cote d'Ivoire separate, we should have long to wait. Unfortunately I do not think unity is possible so long as Gbagbo, Ouattara and Bedie are still politically relevant.

Actually, if the south and north can install temporary technocratic representation that sidelines Gbagbo and Ouattara, Nigeria and ECOWAS should take the position of neutral arbiters providing the umbrella for a timetable for the reestablishment of unity. Cote d'Ivoire may have to become a semi-federal ten-province republic, or adopt some other constitutional reforms that address fundamental questions.

The Naira and African China ....

2011-01-31T02:19:00.000+01:00

Starting under Professor Charles Soludo and continuing under Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, Nigeria (via the Central Bank of Nigeria) has depleted its external reserves by tens of billions to defend (in this case "propping up") the value of the Naira against the Dollar. They were helped in their task by the dollar's depreciation against other major world currencies in the same period. Heaven knows how much we would have spent if the dollar's value had been stable, or if it had appreciated.

Elsewhere in the world, when the currency depreciates, people start talking about how it will help exports. In Nigeria we spend tens of billions to keep the Naira up because we gain nothing from its decline.

It possible the CBN is acting to protect citizens' and firms' from the decline savings and other Naira-denominated assets losing assetsavings from eroding. It is much more likely the CBN is acting to prevent the price of imports from going up.

Which is the other side of the paradox.

Elsewhere in the world, people are happy to be able to export more and to have domestic producers claim a greater share of the local market as imports go up in price. But not Nigeria. It would be only a minor exaggeration to say our economy revolves around exporting unprocessed, unrefined crude oil and importing everything else.

We import capital equipment and spare parts, so we have to keep import prices down, or so they say. However, we are unable to use cheap labour (made more so by a depreciating currency) to attract capital investment in labour-intensive industry.

We cannot bring the textile industry back to life, so the moribund industry cannot benefit from an improved exchange rate (from the perspective of an exporter). So it is a priority to keep the Naira from a decline that would make it difficult for the people to buy imported textile products.

But it is more than that.

A few years ago, there was much talk of agricultural subsidies in Europe and North America. African governments talked about it. The Bretton Woods institutions talked about it. Commentators in the African media wrote about it. International non-governmental organizations and national "civil society" groups protested it. The World Trade Organization weighed in, as did the African Union. The European Union, the United States, Canada and Japan made the usual rhetorical statements that were (as usual) the direct opposite of what they were actually doing. Everyone said Western agricultural subsidies were destroying African agriculture, and everyone said the subsidies had to be removed.

It was quite a sexy topic for a while. Nowadays, no one talks about it much.

Agricultural subsidies were (and are) only the tip of a massive iceberg of market-distorting policies employed by global economic powers. The truth about the "free" market is it has never been free and it has never been fair. If an interested party demands some specific thing be done to make the market more free and fair, odds are the thing they are asking for is something that will distort the market to the advantage of that particular interest party (or that party's industry in general).

It is not a fair playing field, which is why I get very angry with Nigerian (and African) politics, economics and social dynamics. We are so far behind, so lacking in the basic infrastructure and superstructure we need to compete with the rest of the world, and yet we continue to waste vast amounts of time, energy and resources arguing with each other, not to mention fighting and sometimes killing each other, over rubbish that has nothing to do with maximizing our potential or achieving the strategic necessities.

What is interesting is there is a school of thought in Africa that believes the expanding trade with China is superior to the traditional trade with Europe and North America.

I am perfectly aware that the rise of China and India has been of monumental benefit to Nigeria. Once upon a time, all of the world's resource producers had to sell all of their product to a tiny fraction of the world's population. With supply high and demand limited (even people who consume to excess can only consume so much), commodity prices were low and flat. Adding India and China to the demand side of the commodity trade ratcheted up demand, even as supply remained fairly flat, and commodity prices shot up. In the first decade of the 21st century, before the Great Recession, Nigeria was able to enjoy a second Oil Boom, albeit a smaller boom than we had in the 1970s.

But if you were a Nigerian interested in diversifying our economy in general, our exports in particular, and manufacturing specifically ... you would immediately realize we were facing the same glass ceiling we faced during the era when Europe and North America dominated our import/export trade. China's currency manipulation, domestic market protectionism, lax protection of intellectual property theft, and other policies would be as much of a problem for us as the infamous agricultural subsidies (and other policies) of Europe and North America were and still are. All told, what we considered a neo-colonial trading pattern continues as always, but with China taking a share of a trade that used to be the exclusive preserve of the Europeans and North Americans.

Of course a conversation of how the trade policies of global powers affects us is just academic, virtual, ephemeral, theoretical. There is not practical import to talking about it.

You see, inasmuch as we suffer the effects of these policies, we do not actually notice the pain. We don't notice the pain because we are in no position to feel the pain.

Okay, let me speak plainly. And I will use China once more for comparative purposes.

It is not just their market-distorting policies that gives them the economic advantage over us. They also have better infrastructure, better superstructure, better administration, more effective bureaucracy and higher productivity among other advantages.

What bothers me is, even if we Nigerians fix our deficiencies in all of those sectors, we would still have to deal with the legacy of China's market-distorting policies, same as with the rest of the global powers.

When I say "legacy", I mean things that start out as short-term or medium-term distortions, but which eventually acquire a sort of permanence, and immortality if you will, until everyone (investors, consumers, traders, politicians, administrators, everybody) treats it as the "normal" structure of world production and trade even though it is in effect a permanently distorted production or trading pattern.

But like I said, we are not even at the point where we truly feel the pain.

Where we are right now, a devaluation of the Naira does not help exports. Just makes it difficult for us to import things that other countries are able to sell to use because of market-distorting policies.

Assassination in Borno

2011-01-30T23:33:00.000+01:00

The gubernatorial candidate of the All Nigeria Peoples Party in Bornu state was murdered Friday. Six other citizens, including a 12-year-old boy, were murdered in the same attack.

The Northeast, like the Niger-Delta, is caught in a low-intensity insurgency. I have yet to hear any of the candidates say anything convincing or concrete about what they will do to improve security (and to reform the security agencies).

Jos, for example, has been on fire since 1999. I have the depressing suspicion that it will still be on fire in 2015 when we gather again to hold yet another meaningless election that resolves none of the strategic political, economic or social questions.

The budget and the nomination form

2011-01-30T23:19:00.001+01:00

THE 2011 BUDGET:

The BBC's breakdown of the federal government's 2011 Budget Proposal:

Ministries: $12bn
Other government bodies: $350m
Parliament: $707m
Pensions and gratuities: $1bn
Transfers to statuary bodies: $1.3bn
Debt payments: $3.5bn
Other expenses: $2.6bn

Total Running Costs: $21bn
Capital Expenditure: $6.5bn

Total Budget: $27.6bn

THE NOMINATION FORM

Different countries have different methods of nominating candidates.

In some countries that use the parliamentary system, national and (in the case of Canada, South Africa and I believe Australia) provincial/state party leaders can impose a candidate of their choosing on a constituency even if a super-majority of the constituency party-members prefer someone else.

It is not necessarily a democratic process, even in "democracies".

That said, the idea of "purchasing" nomination forms as it is done in Nigeria is to block the poor majority and the middle-class from direct participation in politics.

The poor are at the very edge of survival, while the middle-class are making ends meet while spending what should be their retirement savings to support their extended families. Neither would have spare money to "purchase" a nomination form even if they were priced affordably, which they are not.

In a sense, the "nomination form" system guarantees godfather politics, because the forms are priced so high as to be afforded only by the rich ... or by someone who has a rich godfather. To hold political office, you must be a Big Man, or sell your soul to a Big Man.

Godsons have to repay their godfathers' investment, or their godfathers swiftly make their states ungovernable. It is interesting that political machines seem to have more "constitutional" power over states than state governments; men like Chris Uba and the late Lamidi Adedibu even gave orders to the state police as though they were commanders-in-chief.

The political office-holders have become experts at finding ways to fleece the treasury on behalf of their godfathers without technically breaking the law. It seems the job description of executive positions extends no further than the award of spurious contracts, while the legislatures have become experts at passing bills that put more money in the pocket of the legislators without explicitly saying so.

Rather than take money out of the treasury to give to their godfathers (which would be a crime), some governors have given front companies affiliated to the godfathers contracts to collect taxes and other revenues on behalf of the state. The companies are paid on commission, keeping a percentage of the revenues they collect. In effect it is the same thing; you are giving the godfather a slice of the state's treasury except you are not breaking the law.

Big Men invest a lot of money to secure political offices for themselves or for their godsons. They are keen on getting their money back, and perhaps making a profit. And we end up with high-stakes, do-or-die politics, because the competing political machines are staring at a stark choice between high profits and high losses.

The lineup and prospects

2011-01-30T22:53:00.002+01:00

The Presidential Candidates:

Peoples Democratic Party (PDP): Goodluck Jonathan (incumbent President)

Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN): Nuhu Ribadu (former EFCC boss)

All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP): Ibrahim Shekarau (Governor of Kano)

Congress for Progressive Change (CPC): Mohammedu Buhari (former Head of State)

National Conscience Party (NCP): Dele Momodu (publisher of Ovation Magazine)

All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA): No candidate "purchased" the presidential nomination form of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA). The party's most powerful political office-holder, Anambra State Governor Peter Obi, has endorsed President Goodluck Jonathan.

For years now, there has been talk of the opposition parties (defined as every party other than PDP) uniting under a single coalition banner to "dethrone" the PDP. A brief synopsis of these efforts was published by NEXT, and Daily Trust has devoted lots of column inches to months of alliance discussions between Bola Tinubu's ACN and Mohammedu Buhari's CPC.

The interminable talks between the ACN and CPC are apparently still going onbut the ANPP stepping in to present itself to the ACN as an alternative alliance partner.

This is problematic.

Underneath the official rhetoric (and ghost-written facebook posts), President Goodluck Jonathan's campaign has been built on rallying support from the southern half of the federal republic for ditching the PDP's internal "zoning" arrangements. It seems the ANPP, CPC and ACN campaigns will revolve around mobilizing support from the northern half of the country for the de facto restoring of "zoning". Given what has been happening in recent days (Jos especially), recent years (since the Fourth Republic) and in each of five decades since 1960, this is a very, very dangerous ground on which to hold an election in Nigeria -- and it doesn't help that all parties will rig, and that all parties know that all parties will rig, which means none of the parties will consider themselves to have legitimately lost regardless of the announced result.

I doubt the CPC/ACN alliance will happen. There are Big Egos and Big Ambitions involved, and two Big Men who do not trust each other. And why should they? They are each trying to use the other to get at Aso Rock; once they are there, they will forget whoever got them there as seems to be the tradition in the Fourth Republic, which will be remembered only for the wars between godfathers and their godson.

At one point, APGA was involved in the talks. In a federal republic that has been influenced (some might say scarred) by ethnic majority "tripod" politics, it is easy to see why ACN, CPC and APGA would consider an alliance with each other against the ruling party. APGA unabashedly appeals to sectionalist interests in the Igbo-majority states. In the Yoruba-majority states, ACN is increasingly replacing the Alliance for Democracy as the sectionalist party. And in the Hausa-majority states, the CPC is starting to outflank the moribund ANPP as the region's sectionalist party.

I do not support any of our parties or politicians; I do not even see any difference between the lot of them. And I have disliked ethnic "tripod" politics ever since I was introduced to it as a child during the Second Republic; learning more about our history (including but not limited to the run-up to Independence and the First Republic), made me hate ethnic "tripod" politics even more.

Still, if the ACN, CPC and APGA had somehow come up with some sort of agreement ... it would still lose to the PDP. The Peoples Democratic Party is the culmination of a 50-year process of consolidation of Big Men from all over Nigeria, united in the singular goal of creating and maintaining a stable structure to share the "national cake" amongst themselves. The party's national reach (not of voters, but of Big Men and the political machines they control) has made sectionalist parties irrelevant at the federal centre for the first time since 1960.

Maybe Governor Peter Obi knows this. Interestingly, when he endorsed Jonathan, he was not speaking not as an APGA leader, but as Chairman of the "Southeast Governors' Forum", which would (in theory) count as the endorsement of all the governors of the Igbo-majority states.

In the meantime, Tinubu and Buhari continued their 11th hour negotiations.

This election really has nothing to do with the interests of the federal republic or of its people. Different power blocs within the political class are manoeuvring their political machines in preparation for fighting (literally) for a greater or lesser share of the national cake.

Even so, it worries me.

The unspoken-but-ever-present undercurrent of violence that lies beneath the façade of Nigerian political life is has been slowly, tortuously cresting the surface since 1999. The politicians still think they can play the usual games; some even think they can parlay the violence to their advantage.

I am ... concerned about the outcome.

We are all islands

2011-01-30T21:45:00.000+01:00

I watched a gruesome video of a Tunisian protester shot dead by the Tunisian police the other day.

I was struck by the fact that the people of Nigeria have not reacted to the events unfolding in Tunisia. There were no mass demonstrations in front of the Tunisian embassy in Abuja, or in front of Aso Rock or the National Assembly to use citizen pressure to force our federal government to intercede at a maximum or speak out at a minimum in defence of the Tunisian citizens.

True, we have our own problems. I have watched videos of summary, extra-judicial executions of Nigerian citizens by our security services in the Niger-Delta and Maiduguri. Come to think of it, the people of Tunisia did not react with mass demonstrations at the Nigerian embassy.

Actually, when the people of one African country suffer for one reason or another, the people of the rest of the countries in Africa just go on with their lives, unconcerned so long as it does not affect them.

Yes, I know our governments don't listen to us, and yes, I know that any mass protest, even over events in another country, is treated by the governments of our own country as a possible coup-de-tat. The thought of thousands of people rallying together without government participation or permission, in favour of an issue the government doesn't care about, for the purpose of pressuring the government to do something it has no interest in doing, with the belief that the government is supposed to do what the people want it to ... well, the whole thing just terrifies every regime in Africa.

As for us citizens, most of us have seemingly given up hope. It is not that we do not care, it is more that we have come to accept the fact that there is nothing we can do about it even if we do care.

But in order to live like this, you have to build a very, very, very hard shell around yourself, to lock out the sights and sounds of your fellow Africans' suffering. You have to walk past him, drive by him, fly over him, and otherwise pretend you do not see him. Even as you pray, in Church or Mosque, for the Almighty to intercede on behalf of your land, your decisions and actions betray the mindset of one who does not expect anything to change, and who fears he may lose what little safety he has if the powers-that-be perceive him to be caring a little too much about the effect everything they are doing has on the ordinary citizen.

And so, if ethnic violence breaks out in Kenya or Rwanda, there is no reaction from the people or political class of Angola. If the Mozambican police crack down viciously on citizens protesting the rise in the price of staple commodities, you hear nary a whisper from the people of Ghana or Gabon. Women could be mass-raped in Congo or Liberia, and Nigerians and Moroccans just go about their day. Oh, there is xenophobic violence in South Africa? Don't expect so much as a whisper out of the people of Ethiopia.

Yes, we all have our own problems ... but if we do not stand together, who will stand with us? We are all hesitant to risk our lives for change because we know no one will come to our aid after we start; but does it occur to us that they won't take the risk of coming to our aid because they know we won't come to their aid after they have taken a risk (on our behalf or their own)?

African governments do not, will not act to prevent, forestall or ameliorate crises in other African countries. You would be wasting time and energy if you invested it in expressing anger at African governments for inaction when crises are imminent or on-going. They are just as bad when they do decide to act, usually after the crisis produces the sort of shocking images which attract the global media long after it is too late for their reports to do any good to the dead; and at that, the African governments just tag along with whatever the "international community" decides to do even though the "international community" never has a clue what to do and just sort of fumbles around until the crises resolve themselves or run out of steam.

It is what it is.

African governments barely if ever respond to potential, threatened, imminent or existing crises in their own countries; it would be self-deception to expect them to react helpfully to a neighbour's plight. Moreover, the continent's political/social/economic/bureaucratic/intellectual elite share a substantially similar, warped worldview. When the leaders of an African country do the sort of things that promote avoidable crises or make unavoidable crises unnecessarily difficult to deal with, the leaders in other African countries think they are doing the right things -- they do the same things in their own countries and see nothing wrong with it, and are just as offended as their leadership colleagues by anyone suggesting that these are in fact bad things they are doing.

I don't know if they don't care, or if they just neither realize nor understand the difference between that which is optimal and that which is self-defeating. Human beings are motivated by rational self-interest, and in this case we the people of Africa face a double roadblock: (a) the status quo is beneficial to the people with the most power to change the status quo; and (b) crises do not seem to affect the security and economic well-being of those with the most power to avoid the crises in the first place -- the rich and powerful either remain rich and powerful when the dust settles, or they fly abroad into "exile" in countries where they own real estate and have banked fortunes, leaving the poor and the middle-class behind to dodge AK-47-totting gunmen. What the rest of us perceive as terrible outcomes are in fact outgrowths of what people of power consider to be the "normal" way of doing business, politics, diplomacy, etc.

If they lack the internal motivation to stand up for what is right, they are under no external pressure to change their stance. We the people do not pressure them because we know what they will do to us if we do (and know that no one, from Africa or beyond, will stand up for us or fight alongside us).

If you are interested in peace, stability, democracy, development and progress in Africa, don't waste your hopes on the "international community", a sort of wannabe-global-junta made up of a dozen or self-anointed countries. Their rhetoric insists on their right to decide things over the heads over everyone else in the supposed interest of all humanity, but their actions are the usual self-interested strategic manoeuvres familiar to anyone who has studied great powers through history. Iraq invading Kuwait alters the political and economic dynamics of crude oil; hundreds of thousands of Rwandans getting massacred does not have quite the same strategic resonance. These powers get whatever they want from Africa, whatever the continent has or can provide that they deem necessary to their strategic interest. They don't just talk about it, they forcefully get it, doing whatever is necessary regardless of the ethics. More often than not, the things they do to advance their interests result in the opposite of what they loudly profess to be their aims as "development partners"

I am not being bitter or resentful. We Africans are going to continue suffering unnecessary negative outcomes as long as we believe the rest of the world has any intention to come and fix all of our problems for us. If we do not tackle our problems, we will suffer for it. I can't describe the feeling I got while watching documentaries of the Liberian civil war, seeing Liberians in the conflict zone wailing before the cameras begging the United States to come and save them. The Americans did not come. The Americans were never going to come. Why in the world did they expect them to?

I am not angry at the "international community". Every country on Earth acts or should act in its own strategic self-interest. We complain fruitlessly, strictly rhetorically, that other countries do not take our interests into account when making their decisions and taking their actions; practically, we do everything in our power to make ourselves useful to their interests even as we neglect our own.

Africans should start thinking and acting in our own interests. The catalyst for this change will never come from the elite; their interests are diametrically opposed to the peoples' interests. If we do not care about each other enough to fight for each other, then there is no point to it, is there?

The mooted military intervention in Cote d'Ivoire

2011-01-11T21:37:00.002+01:00

What you have in the Cote d'Ivoire are two large armies led by two men.

Having grown rapidly over the last 17 years, the "official" army, the militia supporting Laurent Gbagbo, is now the second-largest in West Africa by number of enlisted me. I am not sure of the numbers of the rebel New Forces, but I suspect they have enough force at least to balance the "government" army (or the war would have resumed).

So long as Gbagbo and Ouattara can each count on tens of thousands of soldiers to back his claim, neither man was ever going to accept defeat in an election. If you think Ouattara would have gracefully accepted defeat, had he been declared the loser, you must not have noticed what has been going on these last 17 years. There are credible suggestions that both men "manipulated" results in areas under the control of their respective armies; and even pie-in-the-sky optimists have queried the rationale of holding an election in what is still effectively a divided war zone (albeit one with a firm ceasefire).

If Gbagbo does not step down, the New Forces will not relinquish their control of the North and will not recognize his government. This much everyone acknowledges.

Unsurprisingly, no one is similarly acknowledging the fact that the 50,000-strong "official" government army is just as unlikely to accept Ouattara as its president.

The "international community" (i.e. a small group of Western European, North American and Japanese countries) has been threatening Gbagbo, trying to get him to step down for Ouattara. I personally don't think Gbagbo, Ouattara or Bedie is the solution to the Ivoirien crisis, but Ouattara is clearly the favourite of the "international community", having previously held high office at the IMF, at the BCEAO and in the neo-colonial Houphouet-Boigny government.

The "international community" may or may not have persuaded the Economic Community of West African States to back their line.

I rather suspect ECOWAS leaders couldn't care less about "democracy" in Cote d'Ivoire.

For one thing, the majority of ECOWAS member states are either undemocratic or pseudo-democratic. An organization that recognizes Yahya Jammeh of Gambia and Faure Gnassingbe of Togo can hardly presume to comment on the democratic virtues (or lack thereof) of anyone. Even the likes of Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal and Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria can hardly hold their heads up with pride and say they were properly elected (remember, Goodluck Jonathan is in office because of the monumentally undemocratic 2007 Nigerian Elections).

For another thing, the only matter of principle on which all African presidents can agree on is their own self-preservation, and as such, the idea of removing a sitting African president should ever lose office. And for something as "trivial" as not being democratic?

Thing is, the "international community" and ECOWAS have taken to declaring the existence of a military option for forcing Gbagbo from office.

I am not sure anyone takes the threat of military force seriously.

I don't.

Gbagbo doesn't seem to either.

Three (maybe four) members of "the international community" have deployable military forces of the sort that could intervene militarily in Cote d'Ivoire. Of this shortlist, all except France are tied up in other conflicts they consider strategically more important. All, including France, face voting publics who (a) are tired of war; (b) are uninterested in and possibly entirely unaware of Cote d'Ivoire and/or its crisis; and (c) do not think Cote d'Ivoire and its problems are worth the life of even one of their soldiers. France, the most likely "international community" member to intervene, is widely disliked in Cote d'Ivoire and across much of West and Central Africa, as well well as in Rwanda, which these days is considered East Africa.

The "international community" could (in theory) use bombs and long-range missiles in place of troops on the ground, but I suspect a key outcome of such an act would be greater hatred of Ouattara, France and the "international community" among any Ivoiriens not emotionally committed to Ouattara. The sight of a partially bombed-out Abidjan wouldn't play well in the rest of Africa either; because the average African does not hold a particularly high opinion of Gbagbo, Bedie or Ouattara, the average African does not thing any of them is so important he is worth bombing Abidjan for.

In fact, that is one of the sources of political apathy among the African masses, the sense that none of the politicians or political factions is worth fighting for. And you can't say the fight is for "democracy" because the masses know the politicians and factions do not believe in "democracy". Everyone sees Gbagbo using undemocratic tactics against Bedie and Ouattara; everyone has forgotten that Bedie and Ouattara were part of the Felix Houphouet-Boigny regime that used similarly undemocratic tactics against Gbagbo (back when Gbagbo was Houphouet's only substantial opposition). At the end of the day, all three of them have, are, and would use undemocratic means to keep themselves in office, and the people of Africa know it.

One gets the impression that the "international community" will get around these various handicaps by leaning on ECOWAS to either mount this putative military expedition, or to at least to provide the visible military muscle that can be pointed at to back up the verbal threats. As such there have been ECOWAS conferences (most recently in Abuja), and lots of vague talk about all options still being on the table, including the military option. This is a link to a briefing on ECOWAS involvement in the Ivoirien crisis.

I doubt any ECOWAS member state is interested in an armed intervention in Cote d'Ivoire. But I equally doubt any of them has the guts to say so to the "international community". Even without the prior experience of ECOMOG in the Liberian and Sierra Leonian wars as a guide, the assumption behind any suggestion of an "ECOWAS" intervention in Cote d'Ivoire is that it would be a Nigerian intervention in all but name -- and Nigeria has NO INTEREST whatsoever in doing such a thing. Of course, the Nigerian federal government will never openly say it has no interest in an Ivorien intervention; Presidents Obasanjo, Yar'Adua (RIP) and Jonathan have all continually promised the "international community" they would send soldiers to Somalia, but I don't think we ever will, nor do I think Obasanjo, Yar'Adu and Jonathan ever had any intention of doing so.

All things considered, a West African military intervention to dethrone Gbagbo and enthrone Ouattara is unlikely at the moment.

Still, there was an interesting opinion piece in the Guardian today, discussing what Nigeria should or shouldn't do if it is planning on a military intervention in Cote d'Ivoire.

Stand for nothing, fall for everything

2011-01-09T19:13:00.002+01:00

I have this Zimbabwean acquaintance who is a staunch, hero-worshipping supporter of Robert Mugabe. So this Zimbabwean declares the other day his belief that multi-party democracy has "failed" in Africa and followed up by insisting a one-party state was the ideal system for Africa.

First let me say I am always fascinated by that micro-minority of Africans who say multi-party democracy has failed in Africa. I always want to ask them ... when did we try multi-party democracy? I mean, if you are saying it failed somewhere in Africa, then surely it means it was tried somewhere in Africa and didn't work there. So where is this place in Africa you are talking about; when did they try it; how long did the experiment last; and when did it fail?

I was under the impression that we had spent the last 50 years doing everything in the world EXCEPT multi-party democracy. Mind you, those are two different, separate words; you can have many political parties (like Nigeria) without having "democracy". Heck, you can hold any number of elections (like Egypt) without there being any "democracy"

Ghana's experience with multi-party democracy is 10 years old; it seems to be working well for them.

Other than Ghana, the closest thing Africa has to democracy are those countries that (like Japan between 1955 and 2009) are one-party states in all but name. In those countries (as, ironically in Japan), the inertia and rigidity of the ruling parties, and the complete lack of motivation to do anything (because even if they do nothing, they still "win") retard development.

Either way, it is silly to say multi-party democracy has failed when the continent's political, economic, social and cultural elite have done everything in the world to AVOID multi-party democracy.

But that is not the worst part of it.

You see, my Zimbabwean acquaintance does not really support the one-party state, nor does he really believe it is the best system for Africa. What he really supports is Robert Mugabe and the ZANU-PF, and in order to keep them in power forever, he is quite willing to prevent the existence of democracy in his homeland.

Let me put it this way: If Morgan Tsvangirai and the MDC somehow came to power and subsequently declared Zimbabwe a one-party state, this acquaintance of mine would be the first and most vociferous opponent of the move. And in doing so, he would have proven the very reason why the one-party state is such a failure; you see, once a person and party you dislike (or in his case, hate) is in office, you cannot remove them because there are no elections. You are stuck with a situation you do not want "forever".

Yet, he sees nothing wrong with denying people who oppose ZANU and Mugabe the very constitutional right he would demand if it were Morgan Tsvangirai and MDC in office. Indeed, stupid claims like "democracy has failed in Africa" are usually uttered by the very same people who work so hard to prevent it from existing in the first place as an excuse for their actions in blocking it.

My Zimbabwean acquaintance is quite typical of the people who dominate Africa's politics, business community and society. When they are in power, they tell you Africa does not need democracy, constitutionalism, rule of law, human rights, etc, but when they are out of power and their opponents are crushing them with the same tools of state they used to use against their opponents, they become born-again believers in all of the things they did not do when in office. And if by some chance they return to office, they will simply carry on where they left off, explaining to all and sundry that democracy has never worked in Africa, and how constitutionalism and rule of law are "foreign" concepts, etc, etc.

I have another acquaintance, a fellow Nigerian. He and I get into arguments because he believes the proper response to a "bad" African government is to support the "opposition" party. I keep telling him the "opposition" party (or parties) are exactly the same as the "government" party. Opposition politicians will exploit his passion and desire for change in their quest for power, will promise him everything they know he wants, and will oppose every aspect of the current government they know he opposes....

....but if they somehow seize power, they will immediately forget about him and do exactly the same things as the current government he is opposed to.

Some of them do not even wait until their faction gains power, but instead opt for a sort of trade-by-barter or extortion. We who believe in nothing will oppose you and mobilize those who truly believe in something to oppose you too .... unless you cut us in on the deal. As soon as the ruling faction gives them a share of the political spoils, they undergo an "ideological" conversion and begin to defend the very things they were vociferously opposed to just a few seconds before.

I am baffled and exasperated by those of my countrymen who get really militant about issues of "power shift". We have had more changes of government in the last 50 years than most countries in the world, and I am not just talking about countries with lifetime dictators; the "democratic" countries of Western Europe and the United States have changed their governments fewer times than we have.

We have had army generals and civilians; we have had northerners and southerners; we have had "minorities" and "majorities"; we have had parliamentary, presidential and authoritarians systems; we have had Open Ballot, Option A-4, Closed Ballot; I could go on and on and on. We have been power-shifting like crazy and nothing about the substance of governance in Nigeria has ever changed.

Don't you understand? These people competing for the power of political office stand for nothing and believe in nothing.

You might argue that the same thing happens in other countries. Regardless of which political faction wins the world over, the fundamental nature of governance, administration, policy-making and policy-execution in those countries does not really change.

I agree, and it isn't a problem if the fundamental substance of governance, administration, policy-making and policy-execution in your country is working well enough for your country and its people. But when "the system" is a failure, a hindrance, a roadblock, then you start to run into trouble ... and the trouble starts to persist and gain a certain permanence.

[By the way, for the record, a large part of the world's current economic troubles lie in the fact that the political party systems are good for maintaining Mid-20th Century realities, but lack the flexibility or originality of thought to deal with the changed reality of the 21st Century. Honestly speaking, none of them have a clue as to what to do.

But I digress.]

If you are a Nigerian (or African) interested in fundamental reform, restructuring and transformation, then politically you have nowhere to turn. The political factions that profess to want what you want will stop "wanting" those things the moment they get into political office. Once they have access to the same "enjoyment" the current occupants of those offices are enjoying, they will forget what they promised. Actually, they never believed in their promises, only using the words to mobilize support from the masses.

And they are successful at it. Over the decades, many of the Nigerian/African masses have invested so much hope and belief in certain political figures/factions. Some of use have fought for, shed blood for, and even died on behalf of our chosen heroes and their factions. We keep doing it though time and again we have been betrayed by the very people in whom we placed so much trust. They have wasted our energies and wasted our lives and achieved little of what we truly want. Again and again it has been like George Orwell's Animal Farm ... after an initial period of morale-boosting publicity stunts (what we Nigerians call "initial gra-gra") the new regime eventually becomes indistinguishable from the old regime.

It is funny ... in a sad way.

In Nigeria, men and women who claim to be "progressive reformers" are nevertheless quite keen on gaining wealth, status and position as the technocratic managers of the very system they pretend they want to reform. Some continue talking-the-talk of reform while walking-the-status-quo-walk. Others metamorphose to become vociferous defenders of the status quo. Either way, they (secretly or openly) become enemies of true reform, because reform might eliminate their cushy positions, or at best open their jobs up to competition -- and like my Zimbabwean acquaintance, the "supporter" of one-party states, they hate the idea of having to compete for their jobs.

And so the alleged "progressives" and "reformers" make a lucrative career out of being the mouthpieces and bureaucratic functionaries of the same class of oligarchs, godfathers, plutocrats, kleptocrats and political vagabonds they once loquaciously pretended to oppose. Their only real "ideology" is doing anything that GUARANTEES themselves a political job. Their allegiance is to any political machine willing to grant them a well-paid job, with no care to the consequences to the country.

This is the point where some people will accuse me of "bad belle". As Jos burns (again), bombs explode in Abuja (again), police are killed in Maiduguri (again) and violence flares in the Niger-Delta (again), there are still many citizens willing to hail those who acquire wealth and any costs and denigrate anyone who points out the obvious -- our political system is rubbish!

For the record, a few years ago I was offered a well-paying Abuja-based job. At first, I thought it was a dream job where I would get to do some of the things I can only blog about .... but then I realized I would be working for someone who is directly and personally responsible for some of the crises faced by the federal republic in the Fourth Republic. I turned the job down. What would have been the point? I would have been drawing a salary to participate in propagating avoidable crises.

The funny thing is, the man in question has since fallen out of favour in Abuja. Had I been inclined to sell my soul for money, I would probably be jobless by now.

But you see, I have actual principles. There are things I believe to be right, and things I believe to be wrong. As I read news of the violence in Jos (for example), what would I have thought of myself if I was a part of causing the mess?

In fact, what do these people think of themselves? How can people be so bad at their jobs, but still be so pompous, self-important and arrogant? Have they no shame?

Nobody really cares about anything, except power.

Ahead of the 2011 (rigged) Elections, politicians are moving around like cockroaches surprised by someone turning on the light. Everyone is looking for guaranteed candidature and guaranteed victories at the polls. Like my Zimbabwean acquaintance, the thought of a fair contest, may the best man win, is anathema to them.

Mohammedu Buhari has created a party from scratch so he could be a presidential candidate without having to hassle with the few remaining ANPP governors. Much of the ANPP had already decamped to the PDP anyway, the trickle of movement becoming a flood during the administration of the late President Umaru Yar'Adua (RIP); Isa Yuguda and Mahmud Shinkafi, governors of Bauchi and Zamfara respectively were among the more notable decampees. What remains of the ANPP exists only because the holdouts have no hope of GUARANTEED candidatures in the PDP (their state branch is the private property of rival machines), or CPC (Buhari left the ANPP to get away from them in the first place).

Nuhu Ribadu has moved from the corruption-filled PDP to work for the corrupt Bola Tinubu because Tinubu promised him the ACN presidential ticket.

Dora Akunyili has decamped from PDP to APGA, because Governor Peter Obi will use the power of the Governor's mansion to give her the Senatorial nomination, and may have promised to hand her the gubernatorial mansion in 2014. The enemy of my enemy is my friend; Peter Obi and Dora Akunyili are both feuding with the Anambra political machines helmed by Charles Soludo (former CBN Governor), Andy Uba (former illicit cash carrier for President Olusegun Obasanjo) and Chris Uba (former breaker of every felony law in the Nigerian statute book in broad daylight and full view of everyone, though was never prosecuted, convicted or jailed).

Adams Oshiomhole had no interest in the hard work necessary to mobilize rally blue-collar workers and the poor masses into creating a left-leaning party to fight for change politicially (as opposed to hurting citizens, harming the economy, and wasting everyone's time with strikes that never achieve anything); alas, Oshiomhole decided it was much easier to ride Tinubu's powerful coat-tails into office, even though Tinubu is the sort of politician a left-leaning party should be trying to unseat.

The garrulous and oft-unintelligible Patrick Obahiagbon has defected from the PDP to the ACN. He says his "peregrination" to ACN was in response to his people who had left the PDP and joined the ACN. But why was he in the PDP to begin with? Because that was the one his people wanted him to be in? Does he have a political opinion or does he change party when "his people" ask him to? Why can't he be honest and say he was in the PDP because their political machines controlled Edo State, so any PDP candidate was guaranteed a seat in the federal legislature. Now that those political machines have switched allegiance to Tinubu's ACN, he has made sure to switch too. I bet if the machines switch to APGA or CPC or even the Chinese Communist Party, Patrick Obahiagbon will switch with them.

I know I sound harsh, but these people are supposed to be LEADERS. They are supposed to guide the federal republic in a particular direction, towards something they BELIEVE IN. But they just flit like butterflies from flower to flower looking for nectar anywhere they can find it, concerned only with filling their bellies.

They are ridiculous.

Future students of Nigerian politics will surely study the chameleon-like antics of the Ilorin political warlord, Olusola Saraki. Lets focus just on his activities in the Fourth Republic. In 1999, as a chieftain of the All People's Party (later All Nigeria People's Party, ANPP), Saraki imposed Mohammed Lawal as Governor of Kwara. When Lawal rebelled (as all Fourth Republic godsons have done to their godfathers), Saraki left the ANPP and joined the PDP, from where he handed Kwara State to his son Bukola Saraki. Since Bukola was his won, Papa Saraki probably figured he had escaped the inevitable godfater-vs-godson battle, but alas, Bukola is refusing to play along with his father's plans to impose Senator Gbemisola Saraki (Olusola's daughter and Bukola's sister) as Bukola's successor. So Papa Saraki has left the PDP and invested in an unknown micro-party called Allied Congress Party of Nigeria, his third party since 1999.

Its not like it matters. All of the parties are the same. The big ones. The small ones. The ones in government. The ones in opposition. The ones that were registered and kept vacant and disused so the owner can sell it to when a politician cannot get a nomination elsewhere and needs to rent the empty shell to use as his election vehicle (which is what Saraki seems to have done).

Everyone does it.

Nnamdi "Andy" Uba facilitated illegal movements of cash for the Obasanjo regime. Having served Obasanjo loyally, he was rewarded with (rigged) "victory" at the 2007 Anambra gubernatorial elections. But then Obasanjo was gone from Aso Rock, freeing the courts to annul Uba's so-called victory and restore Peter Obi to office. The late President Yar'Adua, keen on ridding Anambra of the Uba brothers, imposed Charles Soludo as the PDP candidate for the eventual 2010 state polls. In response, the Labour Party (which sounds like something Oshiomhole should have been leading, but which in fact is as much a joke as the rest of the parties) saw an opportunity and offered Andy Uba a guaranteed ticket as their candidate. Uba took their offer. Uba assured his new party of his loyalty by promising the Labour Party he would not dump them and return to the PDP if he won. He lost, and (you guessed it) has now defected from the Labour Party back to the PDP.

How can you take any of them seriously? What do they believe in? Do they even believe in anything? Anything at all, good, bad or otherwise? What principle are they willing to fight for, other than their own political and financial ambitions?

And where are you supposed to turn if you are interested in reform, restructuring and transformation?

The Secret Oil Deal

2011-01-05T16:48:00.002+01:00

Strange days in the Nigerian Oil industry.

Take a look at this mysterious, opaque deal to swap crude oil for imports of refined fuel.

Aside from the fact that we are committing ourselves to a long-term deal that is self-defeating, as well as being far from an optimal way to run our oil industry (surely I don't have to explain "why" to you), the deal is kind of shady (in the way such deals always are), designed to create grey areas certain people can milk.

Even now the government is going through the motions of pretending to investigate the alleged embezzlement and/or mismanagement of =N=1.2 trillion ($8 billion) related the fuel-price subsidy; the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) are being subjected to forensic audit.

The entire structure of our fuel markets make no sense. The NNPC continues to run up debts to that unproductive class of rent-seekers known as "fuel importers".

It is abnormal that Nigeria, which long ago should have become the major exporter of refined petroleum products to the African market (and the major investor in newly-discovered oil fields in Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire, Uganda, Chad and elsewhere) is planning on importing refined fuel product from Cote d'Ivoire.