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Tag: Azu Ishiekwene

  • Tinubu biting the bullet from day one – By Azu Ishiekwene

    Tinubu biting the bullet from day one – By Azu Ishiekwene

    President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is under fire for announcing that petrol subsidy is gone from day one. His inauguration address also touched on a unified currency exchange, high interest rate and power, among others.

    Of all these, however, the one that got the headlines was petrol subsidy and the most frequently expressed concern, is why now?

    To say, in his first speech, that fuel subsidy was gone, that a unified exchange rate was vital, and that the current interest rate was anti-people and anti-business, was the economic equivalent of an earthquake.

    Of the four preceding presidential inauguration speeches since 1999 from Olusegun Obasanjo to Buhari, none that I reviewed was nearly as audacious and as provokingly clear as Tinubu’s position was on perhaps the most crucial economic decisions as he took office.

    Obasanjo, for example, talked about corruption, loss of confidence in government and the Niger Delta crisis. His three successors spoke about infrastructure, corruption and unemployment. But none was bang on the nail, as frontal and clear, as Tinubu’s was. We’re struggling because we’re used to being lied to.

    Interestingly, in campaigns before the last general election, the other leading presidential candidates – Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Peter Obi of Labour Party – said they would remove subsidy. Obi, in fact, called it an “organised crime” and he was right.

    For a man who has his work cut out for him, Tinubu does not have the luxury of philosophy or poetry. Not when organised criminals trading on a yearly petrol subsidy of about N4.4trillion as of 2022, have left the country bleeding nearly to death. He had to make his own structural earthquake or risk uncontrolled seismic explosion. If not now, then when?

    Tinubu’s dilemma reminds me of the story of a number of leaders confronted with extremely difficult choices before they had time to settle in office. The first of them is the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who told his story eloquently in his autobiography, “Bibi: My story.”

    Israel might have had some important military successes before, but at the time Netanyahu became prime minister in 1996 the country was an economic basket case and inflation was in double digits.

    Netanyahu ran for and won the premiership against his father’s advice, against principalities in his own Likud Party and against veterans in the ruling Labour Party. Winning was hard, but making his victory count was even harder. The press and the unions hated him and didn’t hide it.

    As he rolled up his sleeves, he was shocked at what he found when he entered the cabinet room for his first meeting. The room was like a banquet hall, lined with omelets, cheese, assorted bread, tomatoes, cucumber, jam, cookies and so on.

    “The cabinet ministers were already busy munching away,” he wrote, “passing dishes to one another. It reminded me of the Shabbat Breakfast Club in the synagogue in Hull, Massachusetts.”

    It was the sort of executive indulgence that President Obasanjo also saw in Nigeria when he assumed office in 1999 and his response then, like Netanyahu’s on that day, was to scrap the nonsense immediately.

    But cabinet menu reform was the least problem on his plate. The real challenge was how to free the country from a semi-socialist nanny economy, state control, exposure to future global vulnerabilities, the dominance of monopolies, and union fat cats.

    “By far the most important reform I enacted,” he said reflecting on that very difficult period, “was to liberate Israel’s rigid foreign currency controls. In 1998, Israel still resembled many third-world countries with regards to currency. Israelis could not take more than $7,000 out of the country without special authorisation from Israel’s central bank. Returning from abroad, they had to redeposit and register all foreign currency they held inside the country.”

    His finance minister and other bureaucrats opposed his decision to announce immediate currency reforms. They argued that such a drastic step would seriously devalue the country’s currency. He bit the bullet, and his finance minister resigned in anger.

    By 2004, in spite of dire warnings of the disastrous consequences of his actions, Netanyahu had removed all foreign exchange restrictions. He transformed Israel’s economy from third to first world by following a simple rule: “Whenever possible, remove barriers to trade. Money, trade and investments generally flow to the freer economies away from the more controlled ones.”

    Of course, to unleash innovation and creativity, he also tackled the archaic educational system. He told university administrators at one point that although he had the utmost respect for the study of humanities, if he had to share government shekel between Tibetan poetry and microelectronics, he would have no hesitation putting the money in the latter.

    It wasn’t easy for China’s Deng Xiaoping either. In the face of very serious economic challenges, Xiaoping made painful decisions not very different from those of Netanyahu. He liberalised the economy, unleashed the energy of the private sector and the small businesses, and introduced one of the most controversial – yet most consequential social reforms: the one-child policy.

    Also, India remained a nearly-there economic success story until nine years ago when Prime Minister Narendra Modi took some of the most far-reaching economic reforms, restructuring the tax system and expanding financial literacy and inclusiveness to cover the so-called “untouchables.”

    From Netanyahu to Modi, the lesson is clear: a leader who inherits a broken country and an underperforming economy must take tough decisions or risk failure. Of course, tough decisions do not necessarily guarantee success. But shying away from them guarantees failure.

    Since Tinubu said on Monday that petrol subsidy was gone, he has been criticised for a speech “lacking in empathy and philosophy.” If the current subsidy regime would officially end on June 30, why did he make an obviously unpopular decision on his first day on the job without first laying out how it was going to work?

    For decades in this country, I have listened to empathetic and philosophical speeches about how subsidy only benefits the rich and how the country is being robbed to indulge them, yet nothing fundamental has been done to correct the situation. Government after government just kicks the can down the road.

    I have heard union leaders, probably the greatest obstacles to a more transparent and efficient supply system, call for “greater stakeholder engagement”, when all they really want to do is exploit and milk public disaffection by holding the system hostage with threats of strikes, the sort of attitude that makes Margaret Thatcher’s handling of the unions in the UK look like redemption moment.

    President Goodluck Jonathan came very close to scrapping subsidy in 2012. He was snagged, not by his good intention, but by the discovery that $6.8 billion collected to mitigate the impact of subsidy removal between 2009 and 2011 after petrol prices were raised from N65 to N120, had been cornered and stolen by his own government officials.

    For eight years, President Muhammadu Buhari toyed with subsidy removal. In spite of strong support even by key members of his own party, however, he couldn’t quite overcome an approach-avoidance conflict, a catastrophic hallmark of his government.

    In 2020 the minister of finance said subsidy had been removed from the budget. Yet Buhari, the minister of Petroleum Resources who once said subsidy was a scam, turned a blind eye as subsidy returned in full force reaching an all-time high according to Reuters of N4.4trillion in 2022 alone.

    For lovers of philosophy and poetry, eight years of prevarication and temporising under Buhari was enough orchestra. One more day after would have unleashed the same forces that have held us hostage for this long. Not a luxury we can afford anymore.

    The immediate fallout of Tinubu’s announcement would be messy, even ugly, with spikes in general price levels. Even though NNPC Limited has not issued import franchises in the last two weeks at least, which means the market had been hedging and anticipating Tinubu’s announcement, he had barely finished speaking when petrol queues surfaced all over the country and pump prices per litre tripled in some places.

    That’s not new or unforeseen. Nor would the outcome have been significantly different even if Tinubu had waited another year before making the announcement or if NNPC had waited another six months before confirming the removal of pump price caps.

    My guess is that after the initial inevitable chaos, the market would gradually adjust and consumers, used to the easy road, would adapt. Prodigal states, faced with shrinking handouts from Abuja, would also have to examine their fiscal choices.

    There would be a need to reduce the impact on the weak and vulnerable, the bulk of who are outside the major cities and beyond the reach of the self-serving arguments of the city elite and the unions. But even intervention cannot start unless subsidy stops immediately to free funds.

    Petrol subsidy is gone, means petrol subsidy is gone. Anything short of saying so on day one, would have amounted to kicking the can down the road, again. And that, we have seen, has been the graveyard of speeches in the last several decades full of economic philosophy and poetry but meaning nothing. Enough.

     

    Ishiekwene is Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP

  • What should Tinubu do about the Assembly? – By Azu Ishiekwene

    What should Tinubu do about the Assembly? – By Azu Ishiekwene

    Two presidents in the last 24 years provide interesting examples of how to relate with the National Assembly. And between the two, the President-elect, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, can decide how to model his relationship with the 10th National Assembly.

    The first example is President Olusegun Obasanjo. He was not only head of the executive branch, he was leader of his party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and the de facto head of its Board of Trustees. But it didn’t end there. Obasanjo was also, in a manner of speaking, head of the legislature.

    That may sound like a misnomer in a presidential system of government. But that misnomer was the norm. Among his lesser misdemeanours, Obasanjo orchestrated the removal of three Senate presidents in four years and used five in his eight-year tenure.

    In the famous case of the rather fiercely independent Chuba Okadigbo in 2000, for example, the former president executed his removal, in typical Tom-and-Jerry fashion, by literally swallowing Okadigbo whole the day after he ate a meal of pounded yam at the opening of the new Abuja home of the former Senate president.

    Whether it was the Senate or the House of Representatives, Obasanjo kept real or potential adversaries on a leash by lining their path with banana peels, the euphemism for a web of corrupt enticements which they often overcame by yielding to.

    A decade and a half after he left office as president, the hallways of the National Assembly still echo with the voices of Obasanjo’s fallen political adversaries. A number of them retaliated by pocketing bribes and still denying the former president his third term ambition.

    The second example, President Muhammadu Buhari, is on the other extreme of Executive-Legislature relationship. As soon as he assumed office, Buhari barricaded himself in the Villa. He assured those who had worked for his electoral success that he was for everyone and for no one, leaving them feeling duped.

    The consequence of his curious ambivalence was a National Assembly where the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) got in bed with the defeated PDP and became both the ruling party and the opposition party at the same time.

    The question of which option worked better is hardly meaningful without considering the context of each dispensation. The dominant party in the Obasanjo years was the PDP, which controlled 21 states in the first four years, with 59 of 109 seats in the Senate and 206 of 360 in the House of Representatives, closely followed by the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) and the Alliance for Democracy (AD).

    Also, after decades of military rule, the system was still evolving and largely in its experimental phase. Politicians were relatively new and inexperienced. There was no liaison between the executive and legislative arms. Obasanjo, a former military head of state with a pretty long list of enemies after his imprisonment, could not resist the temptation of behaving like a petty village headmaster.

    A desire to avenge and vindicate himself believing that it was his patriotic duty to do so, made him wield powers for which he would be bitterly criticised as lacking in democratic temperament.

    But Obasanjo being Obasanjo, he did not mind imitating a low-grade version of Otto von Bismarck’s philosophy, that the business of Nigeria’s redemption at the time – restructuring, corruption and a pariah economy – required bloody noses and a hand of iron.

    By the time Buhari was elected eight years later, the landscape had changed somewhat. Yet, Buhari’s hands-off approach was dictated just as much by the relatively mature political landscape as by his complicatedly insular, almost abdicatory political style.

    Tinubu is a different matter altogether. A former senator and state governor, he would be the only president in four since 1999 that combines legislative and executive experiences. His deputy, Kashim Shettima, also has the same credentials, as does party chairman Abdullahi Adamu.

    On paper, therefore, a decision about how to define the incoming government’s relationship with the legislature shouldn’t be too difficult. But as we have seen in the last few weeks, it is easier said than done.

    The conflicting statements between Shettima on the one hand, and Governor Rotimi Akeredolu of Ondo, along with Adamu and the rank-and-file on the other, show that the ruling party is split right down the middle on how to fill the positions of presiding officers.

    The highly fragmented composition of the legislature which does not give the ruling party a comfortable majority, feeding off the bitterly contested elections, has put Tinubu in a tight spot. But an even bigger headache for him is that the problem is being fomented from close quarters inside his own party.

    Both arms of the National Assembly – the Senate and House of Representatives – are engulfed in the leadership crisis, but the lower house is in the eye of the storm. The real battle is not only being fought here, it’s here, also, that the trade-offs could be made.

    Tinubu confidant and outgoing Speaker, Femi Gbajabiamila, does not want his deputy, Idris Wase, to succeed him. On the other side is another Tinubu confidant and three-time Rep, Abiodun James Faleke, who is not only pro-Wase but also locked in a battle with Gbajabiamila to become chief of staff.

    The pro-Wase group, which also includes Akeredolu, argue that it is unfair and unjust to give nothing to the North Central, which accounted for the third largest block vote, while handing the North-West two presiding posts in the National Assembly.

    If the current arrangement stands – and it’s improbable – then it would be the first time in 24 years when one zone would have two presiding officers. Aminu Waziri Tambuwal defied his party to emerge Speaker in 2011, upsetting the PDP’s zoning arrangement.

    In the wider zoning of party offices, the same tardiness dogged the APC with the current Speaker, and the Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, coming from the same zone. Yet, neither VP Namadi Sambo (who is from the same zone with Tambuwal) nor Osinbajo (from the same zone as Gbajabiamila) was a presiding officer of the National Assembly.

    It’s a danger that a party which has barely recovered from the Muslim-Muslim ticket controversy can barely afford: the prospects of two presiding officers from the same zone sitting over a joint session of the National Assembly.

    But who will bell the cat? Party chairman Adamu is in a weak position, further weakened by his love of his own position. His cautious response that his party didn’t consult widely enough before the NWC’s announcement was a token of self-preservation. He spoke through zipped lips.

    The truth, which he lacked the courage to say, regardless of the fact that he is also from the North Central, was that the lopsidedness was ill-advised and ought to be reviewed. Saying it as it is might have once again brought him in the firing line of North-West hawks in his party who want him removed. But after a successful election, what else does he have to lose?

    The North West which played a significant role in the emergence of a Southern presidential candidate in the APC because it was the fair and right thing to do, cannot hold the same party at gunpoint for a reward that is both unfair and wrong.

    It doesn’t make sense and certainly can’t be on the basis that it gave the president-elect the highest vote, when the region has remained the country’s largest vote bank in the last six major electoral cycles, irrespective of who was elected president. With seven states, unlike other zones with an average of six states each, the North West enjoys numerical advantage.

    It does seem like after overcoming multiple and multi-faceted ambushes to emerge president-elect, the trap by members of Tinubu’s inner circle – often the most problematic – may yet again require careful and considered attention. As it was with Obasanjo and Buhari, how he handles this moment could significantly define his years in office.

    Ishiekwene is Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP

  • Dangote refinery challenges global narrative – By Azu Ishiekwene

    Dangote refinery challenges global narrative – By Azu Ishiekwene

    It started like a grudge match. Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, was dealt a bad hand in a failed transaction. Later, he vowed revenge. Not in a pound of flesh, but by venturing to make his own success where he had been ambushed.

    At issue was the decision of the government of Umaru Musa Yar’Adua in 2007 to reverse the sale of the Port Harcourt and Kaduna Refineries (two of Nigeria’s moribund refineries) to Blue Star, the Dangote-led consortium.

    Blue Star had paid about $670million for the plants in the twilight of the Obasanjo administration, and gone away thinking it was a done deal. It wasn’t.

    Even though the refineries were producing at about 20 percent of their capacity at the time of sale, the Yar’Adua government, egged on by labour, insisted the “national patrimony” were under-valued and underpriced. The sale was reversed.

    Dangote walked away bruised, but unbowed. Six years later he announced plans to build a private refinery in Lagos with a capacity of 650,000 bpd – over 200,000 bpd more than the installed capacity of Nigeria’s four refineries combined.

    It sounded like a crazy idea. So crazy, Nigeria’s Central Bank Governor Godwin Emefiele said on Tuesday, that on account of it, the U.S. lender J.P Morgan threatened to expel Nigeria from its Government Bond Index for Emerging Markets.

    After unforeseen delays, including cost reviews (from the original $12-$14billion to $19billion) not to mention energy transition concerns, the glut in global supply caused by COVID 19 and spooky markets caused by the Russia-Ukraine war, the refinery is now set for official commissioning on May 22.

    One source told me on Monday that perhaps the most significant recent reason for the delay was the need to sychronise power supply to the Fluid Catalytic Cracking Unit (FCCU), which has now been significantly completed by General Electric.

    Apart from an estimated 250,000 direct and indirect jobs that the refinery would create, the refinery is also expected to spin off other business opportunities, a story that Dangote loves to share in a country with 33 percent unemployment.

    S&P Global reported two months ago that early commencement of the Dangote Refinery would not only benefit Nigeria, but could also benefit Africa currently suffering a shortage of diesel as a result of the closure of three of five refineries in South Africa.

    The continent imports about 700,000 bpd of diesel. Diesel is one of the four quality Euro-V products expected from Dangote Refinery. Others are gasoline, jet fuel and polypropylene.

    But how does Africa’s richest man propose to deal with the growing resonance of the global green army?

    He was once outspoken on global warming and its predations. At a fundraiser hosted by the Lagos State government for victims of a major flood disaster in 2011, Dangote said, “All over the world, nature is reacting. We are having extreme weather conditions…as managers of the city, our responsibility is to share knowledge with our people to prepare for the worst and hope for the best.”

    That was before he started building his refinery. For Nigeria and much of Africa, where energy resources, renewable and otherwise, remain considerably underutilised, the choice seems to swing between managing emissions, already among the lowest in the world, and expanding industrial processes required to meet rising energy demand.

    Dangote Group said it was not in denial of the dilemma it faces from green campaigners. The Group Executive Director, Strategy, Capital Projects and Portfolio Development, Devakumar G. Edwin, said five years ago that the group was dedicated to producing “efficient and clean fuels by investing in processes that meet European standards of gasoline.”

    Edwin tracked back to why the refinery was started. “Primarily,” he said, “Nigeria exports raw materials and imports finished products. When you import the finished product back, you are essentially importing poverty into the country.

    “We have always focused on import substitution. It’s what we are doing in sugar and what we’ve done in cement. So, we decided to adopt the same strategy for petroleum refining.”

    Apart from the economic implications, an NGO, Stakeholder Democracy Network, reported on its website that the quality of the stock of imported fuel could also potentially undermine air toxicity, and cause other environmental problems.

    Yet, the Energy Transition Plan (ETP), a green playbook by the government to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060, is an indication that Nigeria recognises the urgency of sustainable carbon footprint.

    The ETP comes on the heels of the Petroleum Industry Act, finally ratified in 2021. The law is supposed to introduce stability, transparency and accountability to an industry that has long resisted reform.

    The ETP anticipates a scenario in which increased investment in the sector would lead to an uptake in the use of gas as a “transition fuel” and also help accelerate the move toward decarbonisation.

    The divergence of opinions surrounding what methods to implement and what outcomes to project has in some way come to define the conversation on sustainability, with a number of developing countries even canvassing such ideas as “energy justice!”

    Large industrial projects like Dangote Refinery, which covers 2,635 hectares, are infamous for environmental challenges they present to the local ecosystem, often causing long-term damage and increased risk of displacement. Already, local populations have called attention to the disruptive effects of the refinery to the environment and their livelihood.

    The continent faces what could well be Hobson’s choice: how to overcome widespread energy poverty while at the same time not ignoring global concerns about the deleterious effects of converting its rich deposits of hydrocarbon resources. Nigeria, like many commodity-rich countries on the continent, is at a crossroads. Is there a bridge?

    Maybe. And Africa’s richest man is poised not only to fill a vital supply gap but also to do so as a business, keenly aware of all the bad habits that ruined the state refineries. Reuters quoted him as saying he was focused on starting production at the end of the third quarter of 2022 and to reach full capacity by early 2023 – a dream now deferred.

    Dangote Refinery is not Nigeria’s first experience in private refining. To plug the supply gap, previous governments issued dozens of licences for “modular refineries.”

    As a result of price caps and other regulatory hassles, however, only two of them with a combined capacity of 10,000 bpd are currently producing. Yet their combined output, even with those of rogue refineries that dot the oil-rich Niger Delta region, still fall far short of the estimated daily consumption of 72million litres daily, an estimate still viewed with suspicion in some circles.

    One and a half decades after Dangote’s Blue Star misery, the mood in official circles has changed. In 2021, the government gave state oil firm, NNPC Limited, approval to buy a 20 percent stake valued at $2.76billion in Dangote Refinery, indicating a significant shift in government attitude.

    Dangote told The Economist that the refinery would save Nigeria up to $10 billion in foreign exchange and generate approximately $10 billion in exports. The country’s perennially opaque petrol demand and supply chain could also be re-written. While the location of the Refinery could bring benefits of lower freighting costs, pump prices would still be largely determined by the markets.

    Nigeria imports 80-90 percent of all domestically consumed petroleum products. According to the Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC), Nigeria imported $11.3 billion in refined petroleum products in 2021, becoming the 18th largest importer of the products in the world, while refined petroleum was the first most imported product in Nigeria.

    Whatever the world may be saying about fossil fuels, carbon footprint and spooky markets, the hundreds of thousands of unemployed Nigerians cannot wait for the relief that the commencement of the refinery promises, even if it’s indirect.

    As Kudirat Oyefeso, a trader in Ajah, Lagos, about eight kilometres from the site of Dangote Refinery said, “It is the person who is alive and has something to do that can worry about climate change.”

    Looking back in his quiet moments 16 years after he felt hard done by the Blue Star experience, Africa’s richest man might perhaps sometimes pinch himself as he recalls how what started as a grudge match has ended up feeling like the parable of the rejected stone.

     

    Ishiekwene is Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP

  • The Fowl of Mecca and Nigeria’s Census Palaver – By Azu Ishiekwene

    The Fowl of Mecca and Nigeria’s Census Palaver – By Azu Ishiekwene

    We have a measurement problem eloquently illustrated in a Yoruba tale about a Mecca has-been. The fellow in this tale had just returned from a pilgrimage to Mecca, apparently the first to do so in his community. Upon his return, folks were understandably curious and wanted to know about the Holy Land.

    Thinking of what would best illustrate the majestic splendour of Mecca, the sojourner decided to use a native fowl as an example.

    “You all know our native fowl?,” he began.

    “Of course!,” his curious, attentive listeners chorused.

    “The fowl in Mecca is as big as a cow, if not bigger!,” he told them.

    “Oh no!,” one rather incredulous listener said, amidst the rapturous gasps of h-e-n-e-n-h-e! “Big as a cow or big as a goat?”

    “Ok,” the sojourner replied, “Let’s say it’s as big as a goat!”

    “Oh no!,” the incredulous interlocutor reposed again. “Big as a goat or as big as a rabbit?”

    This encounter continued until the sojourner, lowering his hand each time he was challenged, grudgingly lowered it until the point where nearly everyone finally concluded that the size of the fowl of Mecca was not significantly different from the size of the local one.

    The tale of the fowl of Mecca is a metaphor of our census dilemma. We have spent nearly 60 years counting ourselves and yet, the answer to Nigeria’s census question is: it depends on whose hand is at play.

    The Nigerian Population Commission (NPC) estimates that Nigeria is 218 million; the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) puts the figure at “over 200 million”; while the UNFPA and the World Bank estimate Nigeria’s population at between 216 million and 218 million, or thereabouts.

    Former President Goodluck Jonathan even said at a recent event that Nigeria is not 200m. “Far from it,” he reportedly said on April 14. “We should be about 150m.”

    As things stand, Nigeria is in the company of Afghanistan, DR Congo, Uzbekistan, Madagascar, Eritrea and Lebanon as countries without a census population. The only thing certain about the Lebanese population, for example, is that there are more Lebanese in the Diaspora than at home!

    The recent attempt to have another count in Nigeria, already overdue by 17 years, has been postponed indefinitely. After a hasty meeting on Friday night between President Muhammadu Buhari and the Chairman of NPC, Nasir Isa Kwarra, the Federal Government announced that it had decided to let the incoming administration handle the census.

    The postponement did not surprise me. After years of doing nothing, the Board of 36 commissioners and a relatively unknown chairman have become so used to pay and prestige without work that getting any serious census off the ground was always going to be a tough job.

    Ten years ago, former Managing Director of Nigerian Breweries Plc and Chairman of NPC, Festus Odimegwu, was forced to resign his position because he said Nigeria could not have a meaningful census except certain fundamental changes were made.

    He said at the time, “If the current laws are not amended, the planned 2016 census will not succeed.” By that, of course, he meant laws that make the population of states a basis for the sharing of oil revenues and political representation.

    His comment ruffled feathers. President Jonathan who already had his back to the wall sacked Odimegwu to appease deeply offended interests in the North who thought the NPC chairman could not be trusted to conduct a credible census.

    It turned out, however, that Jonathan’s sacrifice was neither enough to secure him Northern sympathy in the 2015 election nor did the census hold as planned in 2016. His successor, Muhammadu Buhari, after promising to hold the census in May 2023 has now kicked the can down the road, with no shortage of excuses.

    The most obvious one was the shift in the date of the governorship and state house of assembly elections. The NPC said the shift in state elections from March 11 to 18 complicated its original plans to have the census between March 29 and April 2.

    That is potentially true, but mainly false. The shift by one week may have momentarily affected NPC’s planning and execution, but only momentarily. The Commission was not ready, simple. Apart from those in its glass-panelled offices in Abuja and a few staff in the states, NPC has been very busy talking to itself.

    It was not the shift in election dates by a week that complicated NPC’s problem. Its unseriousness was worsened by widespread complaints about the failure of the Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) bimodal verification system. NPC was deeply worried by the prospects of a flawed count piling on the unresolved BVAS mess.

    Another sign of unpreparedness was the questionnaire – the basic instrument for the 2023 census. On April 14, the NPC Director of Public Affairs, Dr. Isiaka Yahaya, was quoted to have said in Kano that the Commission would not ask questions about religion and ethnicity in the census!

    Why not? What is it about respondents’ religion and ethnicity that NPC is so afraid of that it desperately wants to expunge from the questionnaire?

    If there was anything that needed a review, it is the often-weaponised “state of origin” which could have been replaced with “state of residence,” for example. But to pretend that it’s OK to strike out religion/non-religion and ethnicity and make us a bunch of aliens is, well, largely alien to population census. I don’t know where this idea is coming from or what NPC hopes to achieve.

    But none of the countries I have searched turned up this demographic insanity. Not India, the world’s largest multi-ethnic democracy, where everything from caste to mother-tongue and migration status is required; not South Africa or Kenya; and certainly not Ghana, Nigeria’s neighbour.

    Yet, what these countries have in common, but which Nigeria lacks, is significant degree of reliability in primary data on births, deaths, school enrolments, migrations and so on, managed in secure systems and regularly updated. Without reliable primary data, any census conducted — whether every five, seven or ten years — is a waste of time. And without this data also, no reliable planning or forecast is likely.

    It would seem that the real elephant in the room, though, is that the NPC knows the Bola Ahmed Tinubu government would reject the outcome of a census rammed down the country’s throat with only days before President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration leaves.

    They’re dealing with a familiar customer. It was Lagos State, under Tinubu, that dragged the Federal Government to the tribunal over the 2006 census, on grounds that the state’s population had been underreported by nearly half its size.

    The current Lagos Deputy Governor, Femi Hamzat, who was the Commissioner for Science and Technology at the time, produced a book on behalf of the state, entitled, “Errors, Miscalculations and Omissions: The Falsification of Lagos Census Figures,” which essentially said that instead of the 9.1 million which the NPC had awarded the state, its own shadow census showed the state actually had a population of 17.6 million.

    Nothing much came out of the legal challenge, but Odimegwu’s complaint seven years later re-echoed the sentiments of Lagos and significantly explains the scramble, this time, to nick the census before May 29.

    If Kwarra and his commissioners are deceiving themselves, Buhari knows that Tinubu’s government will not accept any census result under the current circumstances. That is why the census was postponed.

    Yet, given the current structure of the country, especially the conservatively dominated National Assembly, it would be difficult to have a credible census, even under Tinubu, without a review of the law that makes population the basis of sharing oil money.

    Under the “horizontal sharing” formula of 26.72 percent of revenue in the federation account, for example, population accounts for 30 percent. This figure could be cut to 10 percent; while internal revenue which currently gets 10 percent could be increased to 30 percent.

    Appeals not to politicise the census is empty, self-serving noise. Politicians will not relent, unless there is also a countervailing legislation that ties the extent and scope of Federal intervention in states to the taxes or royalties collected from the states and, fundamentally, to how much wealth the states themselves create.

    Nothing short of a drastic action will cut the politics of our census fowl to its true size.

     

    Ishiekwene is Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP

  • What Nigeria’s election cannot teach does not exist – By Azu Ishiekwene

    What Nigeria’s election cannot teach does not exist – By Azu Ishiekwene

    Nigeria’s February/March elections undid many things. One of them was the 63-year-old myth that no wealthy and ambitious candidate could emerge president. Until the last presidential election.

    Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Nigeria’s president between 1963 and 1966, came close. But while ownership of his extensive and authoritative newspaper chain made him influential, he was not wealthy. In any case, he was only a ceremonial president.

    The other leaders, especially the elected ones, up till now, had neither money nor ambition. And all, without exception, were also not prepared for office. A number of them even said so publicly.

    Bola Ahmed Tinubu would be the first Nigerian leader to have money and ambition and also to publicly say he is ready and prepared to rule and still get elected. Considered to be one of Africa’s wealthiest politicians, he has extensive business interests and investments from real estate and stocks to media.

    He would be the first elected president to defy the so-called “owners of Nigeria” who have over the years been obsessed that power in the hands of a wealthy and independent-minded candidate might put the beneficiary beyond their reach.

    As it turned out in the February 25 presidential election, ambition alone would not have been enough to get Tinubu over the line, especially after his own party leader President Muhammadu Buhari’s banknote redesign on the eve of the elections threw the country into financial chaos. Money, ambition and dare-devil courage combined to snatch the chestnut of Tinubu’s aspiration from the fire of adversity.

    “Do you know why he won the election?,” US diplomat and election observer asked recently. “He got the money; he had the best national organisation that worked for him and the ground game.”

    What this means for governance, whether it brings more freedom and accountability or inhibitions and opaqueness, would be interesting to see in the days ahead.

    But the loss of kingmaker leverage is not the only lesson from the 2023 elections. The unravelling myth of the sitting president as alfa and omega in determining a successor, is lesson number two.

    In the last election, Buhari showed himself as the master of strategic ambivalence. He did not want Tinubu as his successor. Yet, in his valley of indecision, he knew that the surging wave would land the shore, and was quite pleased, in spite of his misery, to go with the flow. It was not always like that.

    President Olusegun Obasanjo made his own wave. As military head of state, he moved heaven and earth to install Shehu Shagari as civilian president in 1979. And in his second coming as civilian president he went over, above and beyond the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) at the time to choose Umaru Shehu Yar’Adua as successor.

    And I remember that after he fell out with the party and tore his card, he told a visiting reconciliation party to Abeokuta comprising President Goodluck Jonathan that after God and Jonathan’s parents he was the most consequential person in making the former president.

    It now appears that those days are going, or gone. What the 2023 elections show is that every serious and determined candidate can make their own victory.

    The governor-king has been undone, too. And that is lesson number three. For decades, Tinubu, for example, ruled the roost in Lagos. He survived the wiles and deadly onslaught of the Obasanjo era, going for years without one kobo for Lagos councils from the Federal Government which illegally seized their statutory allocations following a dispute over the creation of additional councils by the Tinubu administration.

    Yet, in what his associate and Minister of Works, Babatunde Fashola SAN, recently described as “blindsiding”, Tinubu lost Lagos to Labour Party’s Peter Obi, a rookie in the presidential race. But it was not only Tinubu who suffered defeat in his stronghold.

    Other party stalwarts, including seven governors, failed to get election to their new retirement home – the Senate. Six states featuring the governors’ preferred candidates on the ballot also flipped.

    Lesson number four: Abraham Lincolns come once in a blue moon. Famous among things for contesting and losing eight elections, two of them the presidency, Lincoln could have been a distant political cousin of Nigeria’s former vice president, Atiku Abubakar, in another life. Atiku, the presidential candidate of the opposition PDP, was on his sixth attempt in 30 years.

    He did not lose the last election, though. He won it for the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) which may have found it far more difficult to keep power if Atiku had let his decades of political experience guide him.

    Unlike Lincoln whose multiple losses taught him that the only way to win the 1860 presidential election was to keep the Republican Party united, Atiku’s strategy to win was keeping his party divided.

    Even Buhari, another serial loser, had learnt that his fabled 12 million voter-base in one section of the country could not win him the presidency. It took Buhari’s Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) an alliance with Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and three other parties to win at his fourth attempt in 2015.

    In Atiku’s world of contrarian politics, the PDP “split” not into two but into four parties – Labour Party, NNPP and the Wike-led Integrity Group. In his next life, no matter the degree of temptation or provocation, it’s unlikely that Atiku would yield to the dissociative political maths of subtraction and division.

    Kenyan political veteran, Raila Odinga, shared the fifth lesson during the LEADERSHIP Awards and Conference in Abuja shortly before Nigeria’s election, but we were not listening: “Don’t trust technology too much,” he said, or something to that effect. “They can fail or be made to fail.”

    In spite of Odinga, we believed otherwise. The bimodal voter verification system (BVAS) was advertised as the gamechanger, but widely believed as the miracle-worker. Unfortunately, the system was undermined by glitches in a number of areas and the electoral management body which seemed unprepared for a Plan B, found itself seeking refuge in a backhanded electoral guideline that it was not obliged to transmit results electronically.

    Machines fail, just as people fail them. But whether they fail or are made to fail, the recourse must be clear beforehand and consequences applied.

    And yes, the ground game, infamously called “political structure” still matters. That is the sixth lesson of the last election. Even though Obi despised those who criticised the Labour Party for not having political structures, he still relied significantly on the structures of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) to mobilise support.

    Obi commanded the social media army. Unlike the APC and PDP, however, his extra-terrestrial troops were largely absent in many of the over 176,000 polling units where party agents needed to be physically present to oversee voting, counting and collation of results. If, as Joseph Stalin said, it is who counts and not who votes that matters, then LP lost the election before it was even held.

    Lesson number seven: Polls are like mini-skirts. They are short enough to attract attention but long enough to hide the subject matter. They disappointed catastrophically in the U.S. elections in 2016. It was the same in Nigeria. Nine polls, including those by Bloomberg, CNN, ANAP/NOI among others, projected Obi would win. Only three, including Stears Polls, were close to the mark.

    Even where strong anecdotal evidence suggested that the polls would be wrong, the pollsters did not let such evidence get in the way of their will. In the light of what eventually happened, there would still be enough humble pie left for pollsters, their sponsors and subscribers to eat before the next major election in Nigeria.

    Lesson number eight is that ideology is an elite fiction. Ideology is dead! The tribe is resurgent. Long live the party! Peter Obi, a self-confessed capitalist trader, ended up flying the flag of LP! Apart from Tinubu who has maintained his progressive bonafides and AAC’s Omoyele Sowore who has remained unapologetically anti-establishment, other candidates have elevated political flirting to an art.

    The courts have blessed this infidelity by ruling that it is the party and not the individual candidates that matters. And since the difference in policies and ideas among the major parties is a matter of form rather than of substance, candidates have become rolling stones gathering no moss.

    With no real incentive to debate or discuss issues in spite of elite consternation over the lack of ideology, candidates relapsed to their primordial strongholds, invoking religion and ethnicity for redemption.

    Post-election Nigeria feels like Humpty Dumpty. On top of the serious challenges of inflation, unemployment, stark economic deterioration and insecurity facing the country, not to mention the growing sub-regional instability, the incoming government has to first pick up the broken pieces of hope before it can start the difficult job of putting the country together again.

     

    Ishiekwene is Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP

  • Hadiza and the toes of the Nigerian big man – By Azu Ishiekwene

    Hadiza and the toes of the Nigerian big man – By Azu Ishiekwene

    Hadiza Bala Usman’s new book, “Stepping on Toes,” is a cautionary tale for anyone hoping to work in public service in Nigeria, particularly in the Federal Government. It’s an incredible story by the former Managing Director of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) of how to break your heart, if not your spirit, in public service.

    In Nigeria, public service is a big deal. At no time is there a greater vacancy than when a new government comes in. The turnover in this sector, which consumes nearly 60 percent of Nigeria’s yearly budget, is unknown. However, in the US, it was estimated in the April 2021 Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory that the government loses close to 3,000 of its top executives every time a new president takes office.

    It was around this period of political transition seven years ago that Hadiza, relatively young, doe-eyed and full of patriotic zeal, got her first high-profile appointment in the Mohammadu Buhari government which she had worked to bring into power the year before.

    Her recommender, major financier and former Director General of the Buhari Campaign Organisation, and the new Minister of Transport, Rotimi Amaechi, was someone she was just getting to know.

    Hadiza had earlier been appointed as Chief of Staff to Kaduna State Governor Nasir el-Rufai. She had barely settled down when Amaechi, who had obviously been impressed by her work in the campaign, called her to play an even bigger role on the national stage.

    It’s hard enough to be a female chief of staff in a male-dominated cabinet in a conservative state. It’s an entirely different matter to be appointed the first female chief executive of a 61-year-old public institution regarded as one of the country’s cash cows, with annual revenue of nearly N370 billion in 2022 that equals the budget of three states – Osun, Ekiti and Ebonyi – combined.

    Hadiza not only thought it was an honour for her country to appoint her to break the glass ceiling, she was also inspired by her father’s sterling legacy as one of Nigeria’s foremost intellectuals.

    While not everyone who gets political appointment may end up bruising toes like Hadiza, her odyssey in 1,785 days on a job where she could have served and potentially given a lot more is a warning for those contemplating political appointment.

    As Hadiza would later find out, office politics for a political appointee could be more fierce, more complicated and often more vicious than electoral politics. And if you’re going to make too much noise about principles or patriotism, Hadiza wrote, you must be prepared to resign or have your head served on the platter of the big man.

    The pressure to second-guess or suck up to your benefactor in a perpetual demonstration of gratitude could bring far more misery than contemplated.

    And it often comes down to what happens around the big decisions on contracts – money, big money. From Hadiza’s account, three major decisions: 1) her decision to break Intels’ oil and gas monopoly, a logistics infrastructure and services company in which former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has interests, and her insistence that the company, which had been unilaterally deducting 28 percent of revenues at source, should comply with the Federal Government’s Single Treasury Account policy; 2) the dismantling of the monopoly in the secure anchorage area; and the 3) reforms in dredging and water channels, brought her in a head-on collision with well-connected operators who had come to regard the maritime sector as their own oil blocks.

    For years, they had been cashing out in millions of dollars for work either poorly done or not done at all. No Hadiza was going to get in the way.

    There were minor issues, according to her, including her tight-fistedness which meant she “did nothing” for the minister from NPA. Not even “a birthday present”, someone told her. I also think going to the former Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari, and short-circuiting the minister during the Intels monopoly fight was ill-advised. But the main issues, she said, were about the contracts, the money and well, the reforms.

    As I raced through the book, written in conversational everyday language, my mind went to two friends – both women – who had been through this same road before. One of them was invited by a big man, her state governor, to serve. They got on well; so well, in fact, that after four years, he recommended her to serve on the national stage.

    Not long afterwards her problem started. The big man expected to be treated differently. He expected exemptions, waivers and downright cover-ups even in matters where Federal Government financial regulations clearly stated otherwise.

    Matters soon got to a head during the face-off between the Federal Government and the states over the Paris Club loan refunds when the woman insisted that no state could be treated differently.

    She had tried to help where possible, but she would not break the rules for her benefactor. The governor was mad. Her “stubborn” refusal to grant him a special dispensation not only bruised his toes, it was also an affront on his masculinity, his manhood. He promised to clip her wings, break them, defeather her, and then hang her out to dry.

    The governor dragged her out of office, executing his revenge by hiding in plain sight. What took Amaechi 1,785 days to achieve with Hadiza, took this governor 746 fewer days.

    The second woman’s story was slightly different. Unlike Hadiza, and the governor’s mincemeat, Yewande Sadiku had been headhunted as executive director of Stanbic IBTC to serve as Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Investment Promotion Council (NIPC) in 2016, about the same time Hadiza was appointed to NPA. Her battles were, however, of a different kind.

    They were not against the benefactor godfather’s thirsting for huge slices of contracts or libations of scotch on their birthdays. She fought against vested interests in the system aided and abetted by business moguls whom she once told me promised her that except she “played ball” by granting outrageous waivers, her tenure would be guaranteed misery.

    Her “crime” was shining the light on the Council’s affairs. Against the odds, her five-year tenure was a breath of fresh air, making NIPC one of the most transparent MDAs in its nearly 20-year history. For daring to swim against the tide, however, she was constantly attacked by the press and haunted by the National Assembly. In the end, she refused to ask for a renewal. Her position was later given to a rascal, the very kind that our broken system incubates and nurtures.

    “You will be surprised,” Hadiza wrote about her lessons, “at how you are left to fight your own battles when they occur in public service. In the days after my suspension, many of those you would have expected to intervene did not.”

    In some ways, “Stepping on Toes,” also reminds me of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala’s “Fighting Corruption Is Dangerous,” in which she told the story of how her 83-year-old mother was kidnapped during the government’s crackdown on the fraudulent subsidy cartel. She was blamed for putting her mother in harm’s way by carrying the fight against corruption on her head.

    Yet for every Okonjo-Iweala, Oby Ezekwesili or Ifueko Omoigui-Okauru who survived stepping on the toes of the Nigerian big man and his fragile ego, there are dozens of Hadizas who bear the stripes of injustice.

    The former MD of NPA was asked to “step aside” with a query sensationally claiming that N165 billion was not remitted between 2016 and 2020. The panel that investigated her however found that over N182 billion had indeed been remitted to the government’s treasury on her watch!

    Hadiza’s “offence” was then watered down from unremitted N165 billion to stepping on the minister’s big toes. She was sacrificed in the search for what was not missing. And without the courtesy of telling the public that Hadiza’s trial was an idiot’s tale, the government replaced her on the advice of the minister, whose main contribution was being Buhari’s ATM eight years ago.

    That, sadly, is how we roll.

     

    Ishiekwene is Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP

  • Why Trump’s trial doesn’t make America special – By Azu Ishiekwene

    Why Trump’s trial doesn’t make America special – By Azu Ishiekwene

    Donald Trump consolidated his record in demagoguery when he became the first former US president ever to be criminally indicted and arraigned in a Manhattan court on April 4.

    He was the first US president to complain about an election he won and also the first to openly express support for the body-slamming of a reporter. He has the distinction of introducing “shithole countries” into the presidential lexicon. And on top of this improbable political career, Trump is also the first US president to be impeached twice.

    With 34 counts of criminal conduct hanging around his neck, mostly charges of fraudulent bookkeeping, it appears that the days of Trump’s improbable political infamy are far from over.

    Others have come close. According to a report by TIME, President Ulysses S. Grant was technically the first US president to be arrested for speeding on a horse and buggy in 1872.

    Richard Nixon came very close too. He was forced to resign after the outbreak of Watergate but before he could face potential criminal prosecution, his successor, Gerald Ford, pardoned him.

    Bill Clinton also came quite close. He was impeached but was later acquitted, and escaped criminal charges by the seams of his pants, after negotiating for penance in civil damages.

    But Trump, the very epitome of improbability, trumps them all. He is on the verge of outdoing even his own record in demagoguery, yet it is only fair to presume him innocent as he gets his day in court.

    As prosecutors negotiated details of Trump’s arraignment with his lawyers, whether or not he would be handcuffed, mug-shot, finger-printed and so on, I kept wondering what would have happened if this surreal drama was playing out in an African country – any African country.

    Of course, the process in the US, so far, has been widely praised as the triumph of strong institutions, the model that developing democracies around the world should aspire to. That’s a fair point, even though the trial of former President Jacob Zuma in South Africa, though under different circumstances, was also a significant moment.

    Perhaps, it might be useful to inspect this playbook of American exceptionalism a little more. Let’s assume, for example, that on the eve of the 2019 general elections in Nigeria, the government of President Muhammadu Buhari pressed charges against the leader of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar.

    The smouldering embers from the spectacular row in 2003 between Abubakar (then the vice president and his boss, President Olusegun Obasanjo) was a big deal then.

    The details of that dispute, involving large amounts of public funds, were so messy that if Buhari wanted to embark on a fishing expedition, the government might have found grounds to bring charges.

    And indeed, as if in some form of rehearsal, close associates of Abubakar were questioned, briefly detained and released without charges. Also, whether or not Atiku could travel to the US on account of speculations that the FBI had a warrant of arrest against him in respect of a business transaction with US Congressman, Mr. Williams Jefferson, trended in the runup to the 2019 elections.

    It would have taken extraordinary nerve for the government under Buhari to formally bring charges against Abubakar, his main rival and leading opposition candidate on the eve of the elections. And even if Buhari’s government succeeded in doing so, it would have been interesting to hear what the US and other Western countries would have said.

    Would they have praised Nigeria as a good example in upholding the rule of law or would such a step have been deemed fraught and politically motivated, especially in light of the pending elections?

    I have nothing but contempt for Trump’s politics and style and would be pleased to pave him a road of thorns as he attempts to return to the White House. His presidency was a disaster.

    But fair is fair. It is difficult to imagine that the prosecution would come up with this raft of charges against him – and press them in court now – if he was not interested in running again in the 2024 elections.

    Those who think Nigeria’s scenario cited is far-fetched may wish to consider what is shaping up in Senegal, Nigeria’s western neighbour. In that country President Macky Sall who has been in power since 2012, has nearly perfected plans to run for a third term in next year’s presidential election in breach of the Constitution. To give the impression that the race against himself would still not be an easy one, however, he is also planning to create his own opposition candidate.

    He has slammed the main opposition leader, Ousmane Sonko, with charges of criminal libel and is determined to produce enough distractions to tie him up in court ahead of the polls.

    It may be convenient to argue that Sall is neither Biden, nor Ousmane, Trump. In any case, French-speaking West Africa has been more susceptible to instability and unconstitutional changes in government often triggered by flawed elections.

    Yet, it depends on who is making the argument. In the eyes of millions of Trump supporters, there’s hardly a difference between a Sall who fiddles with the Constitution to secure an illegal third term and a Biden on whose watch Trump is facing criminal charges even when President Biden’s private garage is littered with dozens of classified documents shipped off from the White House when he was vice president.

    How is the rule of law served when the Department of Justice sleepwalks over dozens of classified documents found in Biden’s garage from the Obama era, while Trump, the leading opposition candidate, is hobbled by criminal charges on the eve of the next general elections?

    Unlike obstructionist Trump, Biden has said he would co-operate fully with the Department of Justice. Still, it would be interesting to know how tons of classified documents got to his private think-tank at a time when he had no legal basis to move them out of the White House.

    If this were happening in an African country, would the US and its western allies accept that the incumbent has nothing to do with the trial of the leading opposition candidate; that it is simply the law taking its course?

    When matters get to a head in Senegal as may well be the case before the 2024 presidential election, would the US or France have the courage to call out Sall – or perhaps the increasingly authoritarian Sierra Leonean President Julius Maada Bio – for mounting road blocks in the way of opposition candidates?

    It’s easy to yield to the seduction of American exceptionalism. Yet, apart from well-documented, but carefully preserved dark secrets of US waywardness, we have seen, especially in the last 10 years, that the US is not the undimming beacon that it often pretends to be.

    The elections that brought Biden to office were marred by allegations of programmatic flaws. The US must therefore be held to the same standards that it holds the rest of the world.

    The trial of Trump on the eve of an election in which he would potentially be running against an incumbent who himself is not exactly smelling of roses, is interesting. It would give the world a good opportunity to see if America practises what it preaches.

    Who knows? The improbable Trump may well take demagoguery into the Guinness Book of Records by becoming the first US president to overcome criminal trial and defeat an incumbent. And even if he doesn’t, he would still have set the record as the first US president who went down trying.

     

    Ishiekwene is Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP

  • A British example in our rascally times – By Azu Ishiekwene

    A British example in our rascally times – By Azu Ishiekwene

    When King Charles, the head of the Church of England, is crowned on May 6, there would be two very unusual non-Protestant special guests at the ceremony, among others: British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak who is Hindu; and the Leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP) and next First Minister of Scotland, Humza Haroon Yousaf, a Muslim.

    Not two unusual guests. Three, actually. The third, Ireland’s Prime Minister and son of a Hindu Indian doctor, Leo Varadkar, is openly gay; one of the only five openly gay world political leaders.

    It gets even more interesting. Before King Charles’ arrival at Westminster Abbey, the Muslim Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, would be waiting. Buddhist Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, would be in charge of security; Foreign Secretary, James Cleverly, whose mother is a Sierra Leonean, would be on hand to welcome dignitaries; and the cashier for this extraordinary event and Chancellor of the Exchequer, Jeremy Hunt, would also be there with his Chinese wife.

    King Charles who himself is father-in-law of African American Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle, appears to have embraced this new multicultural face of modern Britain.

    Three weeks and two days after King Charles’ coronation and about 3,900 miles away, another crowning would be happening in Nigeria – the inauguration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who won the recently concluded election on the ticket of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).

    The names and faces speculated for Tinubu’s cabinet are nothing remotely resembling the Westminster mosaic.  The inauguration, in fact, comes on the heels of one of the fiercest, most fractious waves of ethnic tension in the country following a general election.

    Politicians stoked the old, dangerous religious and ethnic fault-lines leaving the country more divided than it was before the polls. The fiction that tribe and tongue was dead and that the last general election would be the burial ceremony appears to be well and truly over.

    Even though Nigeria’s highlife music legend, Oliver De Coque, famously said, “Ana enwe obodo enwe” (literally meaning a town is owned), before Nigeria’s civil war ethnic tensions were not as salient. Politicians made home wherever they found themselves.

    That was why for many years the Nnamdi Azikiwe-led National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC) dominated politics in the West, especially in Lagos, even though Azikiwe was from the country’s South-East. Some of closest confidantes of the Premier of the Northern region and leader of the Northern’s People’s Congress (NPC) Sardauna of Sokoto Ahmadu Bello were from outside the core Northern region.

    Businessmen and women from the South-East, concerned mainly about creating wealth and prosperity invested in Lagos and in other parts of the country without qualms, while Nigeria’s civil service reflected not quota or ethnicity, but competence and merit.

    And then the war happened. In spite of Nigeria’s efforts to heal and reconcile after the three-year civil war the genie of tribe, religion and ethnicity was released, first by the military, and then by politicians, turn by turn. The country has now spent the last five decades struggling with the worst demons of identity crises. We are still trying to answer the question, who are we?

    The presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, for example, campaigned in the South East that he deserved their vote because he has an Igbo wife. And then, to the embarrassment of his Igbo wife, he went to the North to say, “only a Northern president can best serve the interest of Northerners.” Others are on their own.

    When one of Nigeria’s leading entrepreneurs, Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu, said Igbos in Lagos who were attacked during the recent elections should rest assured that the “Yoruba rascals” responsible for it won’t go scot free, he didn’t mean to further stoke ethnic tensions.

    In an election in which victims of violence were not only Igbos, but even some who looked like Igbos, however, Iwuanyanwu obviously forgot that it was not only his kinsmen that deserved protection from “rascals”, but indeed every voter or citizen in harm’s way.

    The kindred spirit in Iwuanyanwu long silent in the face of the horrific violence in the South-East that has claimed the lives of scores of innocent people in the last few years, mostly Igbos, found expression hundreds of miles down South when, as a red cap chief, he felt obliged to stand up for kith and kin.

    Yet, such awkward moments in Nigeria are not only the lived experiences of red cap chiefs, politicians, or indeed ordinary citizens. Some years ago, I experienced it firsthand. My son, then in his early 20s, refused to fill out the part of a form that required his “state of origin”, on the grounds that the only state he knew was Lagos, his state of residence.

    How did Britain which appeared to be one of Europe’s racial and multicultural backwaters before 9/11 manage to reinvent itself in two decades while the bright hope of one Nigeria appears to have fallen off the wagon?

    What has Britain done differently? It has not arrived yet, especially with lingering concerns about its policing and the virtually white top echelons of FTSE 100 firms. Yet the British parliament has grown from 2001 when there were only two Muslim MPs to 19 four years ago.  After the 2019 election, 66 or 10 percent of Members of the House of Commons were from ethnic minority backgrounds.

    The changing face of British politics was not an accident. It was not entirely unforeseeable a decade ago that Sunak, Varadkar and Yousaf would rise to the top. Once Asians, who make up one-tenth of the British population, grew from their corner shops, became prominent in the economy and deepened integration while recognising their minority status, their rise to political prominence was only a matter of time.

    Even though more political parties would be represented in Nigeria’s 10th National Assembly than at any other time in the last 24 years, tribe, religion and ethnicity are still heavily in play. The evidence re-echoed in the recently leaked audio of Labour Party candidate, Peter Obi, allegedly telling a Pentecostal pastor that the 2023 election was a “religious war.”

    The younger population, less attached to ethnicity and religion, tend to have a more liberal attitude. My son, for example, like many of his generation, was prepared to forfeit a business opportunity if filling out his “state of origin” was a precondition for eligibility.

    In the rat race for nativism, not many appear to be concerned about the rapidly dwindling resources from commodity rent, combined with an even more rapidly growing population. Or that squabbles over spoils not only divide citizens from different states but also those from the same states but from different local governments and communities.

    On top of this, our institutions are still very weak. Not much gets done except you know someone or know someone that knows someone. Not that ethnic diversity is a bad thing in and of itself. The US, perhaps one of the world’s most successful stories of a melting pot, is proof of the power of the rainbow.

    Nigeria’s story has been one of how not to play ethnic or identity politics. It has been a story of how to weaponise identity to serve a small political elite that hardly remembers or cares where the next man is from when they gather to share the booty.

    The way to keep the “rascals” at bay is to recognise that it’s not only street thugs that should be called out. Thugs across party lines in the corridors of power dressed in fine, flowing garbs or stiff collars are just as guilty.

    If we’re serious enough, it shouldn’t be hard to produce the sort of mosaic inner circle expected at Prince Charles’ coronation at the inauguration of a Nigerian president. Britain offers a usable example.

     

    Ishiekwene is Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP

  • Africa: Why does Burna Boy rock more than Nigeria’s elections – By Azu Ishiekwene

    Africa: Why does Burna Boy rock more than Nigeria’s elections – By Azu Ishiekwene

    From Accra to Cape Town images of Nollywood, Nigeria’s popular movie footprint, are a common staple in homes across the continent as are the sights and sounds of its pop icons who are also amongst Africa’s biggest.

    When politics is on the menu, however, it does not appear that the rest of the continent has the same appetite for what Nigeria has to offer as it does for the country’s jollof rice, its captivating movies or perhaps the Afrobeat of superstar, Burna Boy.

    Between February and March 2023, Nigeria held its general elections; the seventh since 1999 when the country transitioned to constitutional democracy, after three decades of military rule briefly interrupted by a four-year spell of civilian rule.

    I was curious to see how Africa’s media would cover Nigeria’s election for a number of reasons.

    One, Nigeria is the continent’s largest democracy. It has nearly 20 percent of Africa’s population and is home to one of every four black persons in the world. 

    The country also has the most dispersed number of black persons, with the highest diaspora population in the US closely followed by Kenyans and Ghanaians. A common Nigerian joke is that if you arrive in any part of the world where there is no Nigerian, make your stay brief.

    Two, the country is Africa’s biggest economy. With a portfolio of $6 billion, it is also the largest continental shareholder in the African Development Bank (AfDB), and very often its biggest cashier in times of crisis. This intervention goes back to the liberation struggle through apartheid to multiple regional wars.

    Three, apart from the size of Nigeria’s economy and its population, it also makes multilateral sense to be interested in the outcome of the country’s general elections and to follow the story closely. 

    Perhaps one of the biggest issues on the continent today is the African Free Continental Trade Agreement (AfCTA), a protocol that is supposed to boost intra-African trade by up to $450 billion yearly and also create new opportunities.

    In spite of the excitement in parts of the continent, Nigeria’s outgoing president, Muhammadu Buhari, has however treated the protocol with skepticism, if not disdain. It would be in the continent’s interest to know if the incoming president would be as lukewarm as Buhari has been.

    Also, it was more than mere symbolism that the continent’s richest man and Nigerian, Aliko Dangote, after voting in the presidential and National Assembly elections on February 25, granted a press interview in which he said, “People who don’t come out to vote at elections have no reason to complain when things are not going well.” Nor should African journalists who ignore the continent’s biggest political story.

    And if these reasons are insufficient, recent events on the continent, especially the rise in unconstitutional changes in government, have shown that general elections are quite often the trigger point. 

    At least 10 African countries have presidential and or national assembly elections this year; two of Nigeria’s neighbours – Sierra Leone and Liberia – have presidential elections later this year, while half a dozen others have local elections.

    What happens in Nigeria could have a knock-on effect on its neighbours and maybe even beyond.

    It’s common to hear of how poorly the Western press portrays Africa and how Western journalists report mostly stories about disease, death and destruction, judiciously sprinkled with prejudice about tribe, religion and poverty. 

    Yet, the paradox of this charge even in the runup to Nigeria’s recent presidential election, is that politicians don’t seem to think they would have a good outing until they have paraded themselves before the foreign press in what appears to be a craven desire for validation. London’s Chatham House, a private think tank, for example, is the favourite staging post of Nigerian politicians.

    But I digress. The point is, in a season when Nigeria’s new electoral law provided five months – the longest runway yet between the start of campaigns and elections – how did the media cover it? 

    Nigeria’s media, famous for vibrancy as it is for its fleetingness and partisan cacophony is not yet out of election mode, especially following the bitter post-election wrangling among the major parties – the ruling All Progressives Party (APC); the People’s Democratic Party (PDP); and the new table shaker, the Labour Party (LP). Anyone following the Nigerian media, especially social media, might be forgiven to think Armageddon is at hand.

    CEO/Editor-In-Chief of Media Review and member of Nigeria’s National Ombudsman, Lanre Idowu, said coverage was not rigorous enough, especially because of the large number of political parties (18 in all) involved.

    “That it was so easy for candidates to pick and choose who could interview them weakened the place and importance of the media as agenda-setters,” he said. “Sections of the media overreached themselves in the way they reported the elections, not showing sufficient conflict-sensitivity.” 

    Well, if charity failed at home, how much attention did the continent’s media pay, considering what was at stake both at the bilateral or multilateral levels?

    The tragic, short answer is, not much. I wasn’t particularly surprised. Yet, for all the reasons I have given and perhaps more, I was hoping that improved interconnectivity, if not increased commerce, travel, and self-interest, would spark a greater level of attention amongst the continent’s journalists in the coverage of Nigeria’s elections.

    I took particular interest in four anglophone countries with a fairly vibrant and robust tradition of press freedom and randomly browsed coverage, just before, during and after the polls, to see if I would be disappointed. I wasn’t. 

    Not by Ghana, Nigeria’s western neighbour, which has its own district and local elections later this year. One or two TV stations, particularly, Joy FM, used feeds from a few Nigerian sources and conducted some live interviews. But the bulk of the Ghanaian press tucked the election stories inside, scrapping whatever little content they could find from online sources. 

    The Editor of a major Ghanaian newspaper, The Chronicle, Emmanuel Akli, explained why: “The Ghanaian economy is in a very bad shape,” he said. “The press is struggling. Readership is very low. Advertising is even worse. We are all struggling, and that includes Daily Graphic the biggest daily. We can’t even cover internal issues well, never mind sending reporters to cover elections in Nigeria!”

    Sierra Leonean journalists didn’t fare better. They relied mostly on reports from the foreign press, mostly BBC, for their coverage. Abdul Rahman Kamara, Manager at Sierra Leone’s Star TV, said, “It is always the wish of journalists to cover stories beyond the shores of Sierra Leone, but financial limitations have been the challenge.”

    The tragedy is not only the disservice the limitations do to historically close relations between both countries, but also, content from major foreign networks are often the echo chambers of their home governments.

    Kamara agreed that African journalists need to do more about the African story otherwise the foreign media will hijack the narrative: “Doing so,” he said, “requires a consensus that we set our own agenda through media conglomerates sharing the ideas and putting Africa first.”

    South Africa’s press tried to do a better job of it, with Mail & Guardian reporting the anxiety in Nigeria while voters waited for the results. Times Live covered the story of the main opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, Atiku Abubakar, leading a protest against the results after they were released. 

    Yet, the coverage which was significantly slanted in favour of the LP candidate, Peter Obi, was nothing to be compared with the massive interest in the over one-year-old war between Russia and Ukraine, for example, or the Julius Malema protests.

    A senior South African journalist, Ferial Haffajee, put it this way: “South African media is pretty myopic. There was some interest in Peter Obi’s chances as an outsider who resonated with young people. There was more coverage of the cash crisis (in Nigeria) and its possible impact on the election’s outcome. Burna Boy is bigger news here to be honest.”

    Kenya did much better. Perhaps because of the country’s own recent history of electoral violence, journalists there were particularly sensitive to what was going on in Nigeria. 

    In an article in one of the East African country’s leading newspapers, Nation, for example, entitled, “Why Kenya should closely follow Nigeria elections”, the writer, Muliro Wilfred Nasongo, provided insights covering everything from what the elections mean to Nigeria to why Kenyans must follow the outcome.

    Nasongo’s piece was a breath of fresh air in a moment of eccentricities when African journalists either unable or unwilling to tell an important continental story appeared to have outsourced responsibility, yet again, to foreign media networks.

    It won’t be long before Nigerian journalists, and perhaps journalists in the subregion, would face yet another test. 

    The Sierra Leonean general elections, which may well be one of the country’s most hotly contested in decades, come up in June. Only 32 years ago, that country was the theatre of a bloody four-year-long civil war. The war may have been caused by the scramble for bloody diamonds but it was sustained and prolonged by a weak and corrupt political system.

    In light of reports of the desperation by the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) of Julius Maada Bio to forestall peaceful transfer of power, a vigilant continental media could help ensure that Sierra Leone does not become the sixth African country in three years to slide into chaos over disputed elections.

    While the continent rocks the Afrobeat of its music stars, Sierra Leone’s general elections in June shouldn’t be another outsourced African story.

     

    Ishiekwene is Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP

  • Louis Odion: The matter of ‘Capacity’ – By Azu Ishiekwene

    Sometimes it feels like we have been childhood friends. That we have known each other forever. For over 30 years since our paths crossed, I can’t remember how many times I’ve called him “Louis,” much less “Louis Osaretin Odion.”

    Even now, it feels awkward to write it. I call him by the name that the closest circle of his friends has come to know and call him for nearly three decades: “Capacity!”

    And that’s what he calls me too, even though he retains the proprietary right to the moniker. He earned it from the odysseys of a life of sailing against the wind when many of his mates walked a road paved with comfort and relative safety.

    His struggles through early school life in Ikare Akoko, Ondo State (where his parents stayed after leaving Edo, then Bendel State), his decision to set forth early to fend for himself and make his own luck by accepting and applying himself even in lowly jobs, and his abiding faith in a future that rewards hard work and diligence all combined to toughen his resilience.

    These experiences have done at least two things for him. One they have given him wisdom beyond his years. It sometimes feels like he was 50 long ago. And two, his experiences have not only benefited him, they have also strengthened his shoulder for many who would lean on him along life’s journey.

    I’ve been one of them. Even though Capacity started out first as a stenographer in Concord newspapers in the early 1990s, we didn’t know each other well until he began to make editorial contributions to the Op-ed pages and later, the back page of what was then one of Nigeria’s most prestigious newspapers.

    It was a matter of sheer serendipity and generosity of heart that Tunji Bello, the Group Political Editor of Concord at the time spotted Capacity, encouraged him to get a university degree and later redeployed him from secretarial duties to the editorial department of Concord. But I still didn’t know Capacity well enough at the time.

    We began to bond more closely around 1995 when he moved to ThisDay, after the closure of Concord and following General Sani Abacha’s assault on the press, and particularly on MKO Abiola who was detained unto death after he won the 1993 presidential election.

    At ThisDay, Capacity started a weekly column, “Bottomline”, which soon became a national must read. Week after week, he brought to bear on his commentary a rare quality of insight and fearlessness which kept his growing fan base locked in and the political elite on edge.

    Capacity was a columnist that other columnists had to read, especially on politics and current affairs. One particular article in 2002 bears recalling. Entitled, “Before the Babangida candidacy”, Capacity had taken on a faceless writer whose article was published in ThisDay, promoting the candidacy of military president Ibrahim Babangida.

    After claiming he had stepped aside, Babangida was obviously still toying with the idea of running for the presidency exactly 10 years after he annulled the June 12 1993 election and was forced out by General Abacha.

    In his usual bang-on-the-nail style, Capacity hammered the hack writer saying that even if the devil had tempted Babangida and he couldn’t summon the will to say no, he ought to have borrowed the sense of shame to resist it.

    Two prominent pro-Babangida acolytes and public intellectuals descended on Capacity in a co-authored rejoinder. They attacked his motive, insisting that Babangida was exactly what a broken, wounded country needed. Then the fireworks began. The June 12 faithful-in-residence at ThisDay led by Bello, Kayode Komolafe, Sam Omatseye and Waziri Adio, launched a counterattack.

    For me as Editor of Saturday PUNCH at the time, and a columnist too, it was riveting punditry and entertainment. I recall Bello accusing the two pro-Babangida public intellectuals who were in their fifties at the time, of “ganging up to silence a ‘small boy’!”

    I was later informed that ThisDay Chairman and Publisher, Nduka Obaigbena, was obliged to call a truce, which also effectively signaled the end of the editorial road for the pro-Babangida merchants hoping to deploy the newspaper in the service of their principal.

    This fearless quality of attacking injustice or hubris which he showed early in his career remains the hallmark of his journalism. We sometimes joke that it is a carry-over from his unfinished career as an amateur boxer. Anyone who knows Capacity knows he doesn’t choose his battles carelessly. He is a fighter you would rather have in your corner.

    My interest in his work and our bond deepened after he left ThisDay as Deputy Editor and joined SUN in 2002 as the first Editor of its Sunday title. To be a title editor in SUN on the watch of the exceptional Mike Awoyinfa and Dimgba Igwe, ex-Concord staff members and SUN top guns who made Weekend Concord a soar away brand, was quite a task.

    As Editor of a weekend newspaper myself, I watched Sunday SUN initially struggle to define its identity – a cross between a wannabe red top and something a bit more serious. And then, as Capacity grew into the job, the brand slowly pulled away to become one of the most authoritative newspapers for political interviews and consequential stories. It forced me to reset Saturday PUNCH. I think my friend and Sunday PUNCH Editor at the time, Remi Ibitola, also did the same.

    But it was not until after Capacity’s tour of duty at SUN and later, National Life (where he was Managing Director/Editor-In-Chief), that we became really close.

    As MD/Editor-In-Chief, he was now straddling the delicate and often potentially hazardous line between business and editorial survival of the new title. It’s not what you find in journalism textbooks. Well-funded newspaper companies abroad are protected from such miseries, too. Their editorial departments are walled off from the business side of the operations.

    In a typical newspaper organisation in Nigeria, however, the MD/Editor-In-Chief is – or has to be – an expert at everything from circulation to advertising and from editorial content to digital marketing, if he or she really wants the business to survive.

    As Controller at the time, I was also involved in the business aspects of newspaper operations at PUNCH. It was while Capacity was trying to find his footing not as an editorial man, this time, but also as a business manager, that he began to knock on my door more often, to compare notes.

    Later, we worked together on a few entrepreneurial ventures, one or two of which we got our fingers burnt, but all of which only further deepened our bond of friendship.

    When he accepted to work as Commissioner of Information in his home state, Edo, under Governor Adams Oshiomhole, he did so with great reluctance. Capacity has no patience for bureaucracy, the worst kind of which is the mainstay of public service in Nigeria. Even though his job as a journalist has forced him in the public eye, he remains an intensely private man.

    Above everything else, accepting the job meant dividing his time and attention between Lagos and Benin, perhaps for eight straight years? He was concerned about the effect of the job on his mother whom he remains deeply fond of, and also his young family.

    Yet never one for half measures, once he took the job, he took it, at a great personal cost. He brought to his office extraordinary goodwill, professionalism and competence, for which he earned great respect and admiration.

    I used to tease him that he is one of the few public officers who drove around without a police orderly, even though he had one, and quite often spent his own money to run the office.

    Outsiders who didn’t understand his misery hardly flinched from pressing their demands, mostly financial, on the “Honourable Commissioner” to “do something.” He tried but when he had had enough, he resigned voluntarily mid-way into Oshiomhole’s second term in 2015 and in spite of pressure to stay on.

    His appointment in August 2019 as Senior Technical Assistant on Media to President (under the office of the Vice President), is well known. But positions have never been what binds us. At core, we share a deep, filial bond for family, profession, faith and justice.

    Capacity has an extraordinary network of friends and contacts across age, tribal and occupational lines whose loyalty and friendship he covets. Still, he maintains that space, which Germans call lebensraum, that allows him to enjoy the respect, loyalty and confidence of friends, and yet keep his privacy.

    If as Andrew Marr says, every editor needs an editor, Capacity is mine. He has been for as long as I can remember. He is often among my last “gatekeepers,” adding insight, challenging arguments and re-drafting awkward sentences.

    And the owl that he is, I’ve sent my articles to him week after week for the last over 20 years, and have gone to bed only to wake up to his feedback in the morning. This is one of the very few editions I won’t share with him before press. I can’t be grateful enough for his labours of friendship in good times and in bad.

    Since he insists that he is just 50, I’ll have to accept. But by my reckoning, which of course is not just a number, he has gifts far, far beyond his years!