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Tag: Chidi Amuta

Chidi Amuta

  • IBB at 82: What would General Babangida have done? – By Chidi Amuta

    IBB at 82: What would General Babangida have done? – By Chidi Amuta

    Today, former military president, General Ibrahim Babangida, turns 82. It has become my annual personal tradition to use the opportunity of his birthday each year to highlight the perennial relevance of the policies, ideas and practices that he emplaced over three decades ago to our preset circumstances. Each time we are confronted with a major national challenge, the question that has come to my mind has always been: What would IBB have done?  I raise the same rhetorical question today in the light of the issues that confront our new administration.

    The Niger Coup and ECOWAS 

    Perhaps the most burning issue today the coup in Niger Republic  and the spotlight on Nigeria’s leadership responsibility as a force of stabilization in the West African sub region. As IBB observes his birthday today, it might be helpful for our younger generation and the political leadership of today to have an insight into how IBB used the projection of Nigeria’s  power to stabilize war torn Liberia and later Sierra Leone.

    Of course the circumstances were somewhat different. Nigeria was under military rule transiting to democracy. But our leadership place in West Africa and indeed the entire continent was not in question. The strength of our military was in tact just a sour commitment to political stability and democratization were all values deserving external projection. 

    Babangida’s grand vision of Nigeria saw a bolder more assertive and even regionally powerful Nigeria. With Prof. Bolaji Akinyemi as Foreign Minister, Babangida pursued the kind of  bold and activist foreign policy that only befits an ambitious regional power. He was not shy to project Nigeria’s power in the West African sub region hence his direct military intervention in the civil wars in both Liberia and Sierra Leone. He saw the civil wars in both countries as direct threats to the security of West Africa. His friend, Ghanaian head of state,  Jerry Rawlings. shared his commitment. They did not wait for endless summits or convoluted resolutions. They led  the charge. Others followed. ECOMOG was born.

    In August 1990, a contingent of the Nigerian military landed at the port of Monrovia to commence what became the ECOMOG operation. As the vessels approached Monrovia, the transmission station of “Radio Freedom” which was onboard came alive with messages of hope beamed to the Liberian people. The Nigerian force was supported by a small Ghanaian contingent, which was allowed to provide the founding force Commander of ECOMOG ,General Arnold Quainoo. 

    ECOMOG  succeeded in separating the warring factions. It later graduated into an ECOWAS wide intervention initiative which stabilized the situation in Liberia. In subsequent years, ECOMOG expanded into troubled Sierra Leone with the stationing of an air base with a squadron of Nigerian Alpha jets.  That neutralized the rebels in rural Sierra Leone. Through Nigeria’s leadership, ECOMOG became an African model in the use of national power to stabilize a region. The OAU and the UN later supported the initiative into a multilateral initiative. 

    Choosing a Cabinet

    As the nation awaits the swearing in of President Bola Tinubu’s cabinet, national discourse has concentrated on the quality of most of the nominees. In a nation that boasts of some of the most outstanding technocrats and intellectuals in diverse fields,  the mediocrity of the Tinubu selection has embarrassed many. There may be no basis for measuring Tinubu’s choices against those of Babangida over thirty years ago. 

    Tinubu is a partisan politician. He has political debts to pay. He has to contend with a constitution that requires that each state be represented by one minister at least. He also has to rule over a nation that has literally been overrun by a degraded value system. On the contrary, IBB headed a military regime with no parliament to please. Meritocracy and the national interest were the abiding considerations. Political charlatanry was not in the picture.  

    IBB was an enlightened and ideas-driven president. His constant companions were mostly from among the nation’s outstanding men and women of ideas. He constantly sought the diverse views and perspectives of intellectuals. He recruited them to work with him as ministers, advisers, heads of specialized agencies and friends. To date, the Babangida administration featured the largest collection of people of ideas in government. Just a sampling:

    • Prof. Olikoye Ransome Kuti- Health
    • Prof. Bolaji Akinyemi – External Affairs
    • Prof. Babs Fafunwa – Education
    • Prof. Jibril Aminu – Petroleum Resources/Education
    • Prof. Tam David West – Petroleum Resources
    • Dr. Kalu Idika Kalu – Finance
    • Dr. Chu S. P Okongwu- National Planning/Finance
    • Prof. Gordian Ezekwe – Science and Technology
    • Prof. Emmanuel Emovon – Science and Technology
    • Prof. Sam Oyovbaire – Information
    • Prof. Wole Soyinka – Federal Road Safety Corps
    • Prof. Eme Awa/Prof. Humphrey Nwosu – National Electoral Commission
    • Prof. Ojetunji Aboyade- Economic Reform Adviser
    • Dr. Tunji Olagunju – Political Adviser
    • Prof. Ikenna Nzimiro- Adviser
    • Prof. Akin Mabogunje – Adviser
    • Prof. Isawa Elaigwu – Adviser
    • Chief Michael Omolayole –Adviser

    Fighting Inequality

    Another matter of present national interest is the viral spread of multi dimensional poverty. Nigeria has in the last decade become the world’s poverty capital with an estimated population of 130 million  poor people. 

    For Babangida, the main thrust of economic reform was the migration of Nigeria from a mixed economy to a free market format. He recognized that poverty and inequality would increase. His quest for a new social order involved a deliberate policy of poverty mitigation. 

    General Babangida believed that it was the responsibility of a compassionate government to give capitalism a human face by mitigating the alienating effects of market competition hence the efforts to ameliorate the harsh effects of the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP). The result was easily our most systematic and well thought out poverty alleviation programme to date containing: 

    • The Directorate for Food, Roads and Rural Infrastructure (DFRRI)
    • The Peoples Bank
    • Community Banks 
    • National Directorate of Employment 
    • The National Economic Recovery Fund (NERFUND)
    • The Mass Transit Programme 

    Institution Building 

    It has been said in recent times that a major part of Africa’s development has been the preponderance of strong man and a lack of strong institutions.  Central to Babangida’s grand vision and its enabling strategy was the creation of strong national institutions. In the domestic sphere, Babangida was obsessed with the establishment of a robust institutional framework for nation building. In the entire history of post -colonial Nigeria, the Babangida administration is on record for establishing the highest number of national institutions in major areas of national life. Most of these institutions have endured to the present including: 

    • Corporate Affairs Commission -CAC(1990), 
    • National Communications Commission-NCC(1992), 
    • National Deposit Insurance Corporation-NDIC(1988), 
    • National Broadcasting Commission-NBC(1992),
    • National Electoral Commission 
    • Technical Committee on Privatization and Commercialization(TCPC) which became the BPE-(1988).
    • The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (1989)
    • The Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) –(1988).
    • Technical Aid Corps (1987)
    • National Agency For Food and Drug Administration NAFDAC (1993)
    • National Women’s Commission (1992)

    Accordingly, Babangida reorganized the Nigeria Police into the present zonal command structure. Similarly, the architecture of national intelligence and security was reorganized from the former monolithic National Security Organization(NSO) to the present three branch structure of: 

    • The State Security Service(SSS), now DSS 
    • National Intelligence Agency(NIA) and 
    • Defense Intelligence Agency(DIA). 

    Insecurity and the National Guard Idea

    Our insecurity remains almost intractable. Up to the time he left office, Babangida was never in any doubt about the unsettled nature of inter-ethnic relations among Nigerian groups. It was his conviction that our federation was still unsettled, with many real and potential flash points. He believed that the present and future nature of our internal security challenges would overwhelm the police and distract the professional military. 

    Accordingly, he believed that the police is too mild and civil to contain armed insurgency while the military is too fierce to be pressed into combatting fellow Nigerians with its doctrine of terminal precision. The solution was to establish a mid intensity intermediate force- the National Guard- based in the states and specially trained and indoctrinated to manage internal security with a mixture of resolute force and patriotic compassion. The National Guard was shot down by political hawks.

    Today is a new day. IBB is 82. He left office over 30 years ago. As in previous years, it is my pleasure to join his other friends and family to celebrate a true friend and a truly outstanding nation builder and timeless patriot.

  • Behold our redeemers – By Chidi Amuta

    Behold our redeemers – By Chidi Amuta

    On President Tinubu’s ministerial nomination list, I am surprised at our surprise. I am even more disappointed by our collective sense of disappointment. The note of public consternation is palpable and almost universal among Nigerians across all divides. Not only was the list late in submission, it was incomplete on first delivery. On closer scrutiny, nearly every segment of the Nigerian public has cried out. So much of a loud bang was expected. Instead, a flatulent loud thud was heard across the land.

    The youth feel under represented at a time when our national demographics shows an undeniable youth bulge. Our women feel disappointed that in spite of their numbers and tremendous contributions to our national development from the home to the factory, from the boardroom to the bedroom, only a little more than 9 of them made a list of over 48 potential ministers.

    Worse still, those of us, the elite, the high-minded and the incurable optimists of the Nigerian ideal are even more privately angry. For us, the depressing burden of Buhari’s wasted eight years meant that a successor regime should choose from the best of Nigeria to rescue our beleaguered nation.  In our characteristic naivety and groundless idealism, we expected a lot of technocrats, citizens with know how and know why in a diversity of disciplines drawn from the private sector, the universities and the efflorescent Nigerian diaspora to adorn the federal cabinet. Alas, only a negligible  sprinkle of such persons can be found in the list. AS elite, our judgments are blinded by meritocracy, not coloured by politics and silly compromised balancing.

    But politicians and political animals of all hues are in large numbers in a list that looks more like a payback telephone directory of sundry political jobbers. Very conspicuously represented is the powerful trade union of former governors and potential ‘presidents’ who are viciously eyeing Tinubu’s seat and the opulence of the presidential villa where everything is free of charge for residents and their unlimited guests.

    Of all the presences in the ministerial nominations list, the large representation of former governors is the most worrisome and embarrassing. It is of course understandable that most of these former governors are the ones responsible for the large vote returns in favour of the president  in their respective states. The logic of crass political compensation and patronage only dictates that the president returns the ‘good turns’. But the basic requirement of a ministerial nomination also includes the public expectation that those nominated would be persons whose previous public service record should inspire the public in the expectation of better performance and service delivery. People also expect  some modicum of public accountability from the new ministers. Bit here we are with over half a dozen former governors whose only qualification is that they carry the APC card or displayed electoral favoritism towards the ruling  party.

    Otherwise, Mr. Tinubu’s selection of so many ex -governors for ministerial appointment includes some of the most embarrassing specimens of state governance in Nigerian history. Some of them ran their states aground or drowned them in debt. Others were in cahoots with bandits to bleed their states. Yet others entered into power sharing arrangements with gunmen and bandits over the preponderance of violence and monopoly of force in their states. Quite a few have just had investigation files opened at the EFCC for sundry corruption allegations while in office. Yet others presided over states in which the citizenry never knew a moment of safety and security of life and property for upwards of eight years. In a few days time, these are some the ‘honourable’ ministers that the president will swear in and our public will be forced to welcome as redeemers of our besieged nation.

    In many senses, President Tinubu has been very ‘Nigerian” in his approach to this business of cabinet selection. It has been typical Nigerian ‘cut and join’ cabinetry. Some resumes were not proof read for errors of sequence and logic. Some nominees started primary school only three years after they were born! Some nominees were not known to or cleared by the party chief priests in their states. One or two who are clear security risks escaped the eagle eyes of the security agencies. Some have cases pending in courts for unresolved cases of outright criminality but are awaiting conviction. For as long as there is as yet no conviction, you cannot exclude someone from the ministerial pork barrel simply because they are standing trial. That would be media trial and presidency spokespersons do not like that!

    In all of this, the public expected perhaps a higher degree of scrutiny both by the relevant vetting agencies and especially the president’s office whose duty it is to approve the final list that went to the National Assembly. I hear the president’s Chief of Staff is diligent at ignoring what he chooses not to see. But in many ways, the ministerial list all bore the imprint of the typical Nigerian ‘cut and join ‘ carpenter.

    The ‘cut and join’ carpenter is an ever-present metaphor of every instance of atrocious tinkering with most things that matter to us. It is ultimately a curiosity that reflects our national penchant for ad hoc solutions, short cuts, shoddiness and a general distaste for rigour even in important things. In street parlance, we are talking of the ‘any how’ and ‘anything goes’ syndrome in our national consciousness and culture. After all, “this is Nigeria!”, we casually declare, while expecting the same results as other nations who do their homework.

    We even expect the rest of the world to lower standards, bend established rules or create our own standards for us  to accommodate our untidy manners and even clap for us for ‘trying’. So, the ‘cut and join’ politician, judge or legislator etc. fall in line with their shoddy artisanal compatriots as typically Nigerian creatures of national convenience.

    On the current public and private quarrels with President Tinubu’s cabinet nominations and their equally microwave Senate confirmations, we all-President, parliament, the commentariat and plain citizens out there- have displayed our trade mark lack of method even in momentary bouts of national madness. People have expressed their disgust and disappointment and then moved on with expecting business as usual in governance. Some even expect some magic, the miracle that this bunch of ordinary men and women will do some magic simply because they bear the badge of “new ministers”!

    While we await the ritual swearing in of these Chiefs, the “honourable ministers”, our expectations need to be grounded in past experience and tempered by the anomalies of this selection. Some have pointed at the possible culpability of a good number of the new ministers for infractions ranging from wife beating to industrial scale corruption. Others have questioned the competence and basic capacity of some nominees. There is the equally important matter of the relative anonymity of the less known quantities among the new entrants. After all, it is echoed, this is a large country. You cannot possibly know everyone who has something to offer!

    Over and above all the petty grumbles, however, there are larger issues that have been raised by Mr. Tinubu’s very ordinary ministerial nominations list. The high expectations are perhaps based on an anticipation that Mr. Tinubu or anyone that was elected to succeed Buhari would govern differently from the Daura general now turned herdsman.

    That is wrong both politically and logically. Tinubu and Buhari are both APC chieftains. The party stands for only signpost progressivism but essentially ultra conservatism of the most decadent and even medieval hue. It is the party of politics as usual, of winner take all and business as usual. In many senses, Tinubu’s presidency is bound to be a continuation of the Buhari infamy. I wait to be corrected on this.

    But at best, Tinubu’s ascendance is an in house succession from among advocates of the old politics of the African Chief, the African “Big Man” who is entitled to personalize and privatize the institutions and resources of state to advance a personal political end. This is a variant of the politics of Nguema, Mobutu, Arap Moi and Omar El Bashir  only with a Nigerian coloration. In the context of that genre of African politics, it matters less who gets appointed minister. In this tradition, some ministers will recur in disguise or frontally. Mr. Festus Keyamo, Buhari’s junior minister of labour has metamorphosed into Tinubu’s megaphone and now ministerial nominee with the only qualification of insulting his superiors nd blindly praising his ever changing masters.

    In this mode of politics, the behavior of the state and its prefects never changes. We can already see it in the behavior of the big chiefs of the state. It is there in Tinubu’s endless motorcades, in Akpabio’s imperial grand entrances into the Senate Chambers, the blatant arrogance of power minions like Dele Alake in their condescending and contemptuous rhetoric and attitude towards the public. You can see it in the sheer number of jobless state officials who leave their desks and troop to the airport to welcome the president who merely took a 30 minute hop across the border to attend an ECOWAS meeting. This is the contemporary African wasteful state. It never changes. The Chief or whatever his local ethnic nomenclature is the state and vice versa.

    There is nothing so far in the political footprints of President Tinubu to suggest that he is likely to depart from the known footsteps of the African “Big Man” politics. His choice of key political figures sums it up. For party chairman for the APC, the President has literally hand –picked Mr. Ganduje, the authoritarian but dollar hugging former governor of Kano state, a new version of the famour Barkin Zuwo. For Senate President, President Tinubu assiduously worked for the emergence of Godwill Akpabio, the former Akwa Ibom State, Niger Delta Minister etc. as Senate President. This is the same man who for weeks regaled the public with comic strips from his exchanges with one Ms. Joi Nunei over the massive disappearance of funds from the coffers of the over ransacked NDDC. Before his was elected Senate Presdient, Mr. Akpabio was reportedly on medical leave abroad while the EFCC  was reportedly looking for hom over a series of ongoing investigations and corruption related cases. Mr. Akpabio has just etched his signature on the identity of the new National Assembly by the viral video of his ‘vacation allowance’ for Senators last week. No one knows exactly how much holiday allowance has been credited to the accounts of their distinguished senatorial majesties courtesy of Akpabio’s generosity. Speculations now range from a paltry N2 million to a princely N30-N50 million!  No one knows the real figure in a country where transparency is best described by the opaque black paper bag or “Ghana Must Go” money ferrhying bag! These key political figures can only signpost the moral identity of the new Presidency that has served us this tepid and embarrassing ministerial nomination list.

    There is of course no doubt  that there has been a mismatch between public expectation and political outcome since the 2023 presidential election. The expectation of the predominantly youthful voters who went to the polls expecting the emergence of a new leadership may have been vitiated by the outcomes announced by INEC. Let us make no mistake about it. Thsre were two politicaland moral propositions before Nigerians in the 2023 election season. The old Afrcian chief politics of Tinubu and Atiku was posited agiandt the new order politics of Peter Obi and his Obidients. The INEC announced electoral outcome enthroned a return to the old order. But the broad masses are expecting a new political order from the new president. This is the root of a certain dissonance between public expectation and the  political reality of the moment. It is still the dominant tension of the moment in our national public mood and discourse especially in the social media.

    The public expects Tinubu to emerge with an Obi-type governance model and perspective.  The widespread disappointment over the ministerial list is coming from this dissonance and crisis of expectation. The political and electoral system has delivered an outcome at variance with the mood and expectations of the public. The result is bound to be widespread and incurable dissatisfaction and disappointment.

    In another couple of days, a new federal cabinet will be sworn in with the usual injunctions and predictable speeches. New ministers will ascend the high pedestals of public office, many of them anonymous inconsequential entities catapulted from relative obscurity to the height of prominence and public notice. Quite a few previously impoverished and jobless entities will find work and unexpected monumental wealth. A few new scandals will germinate just as a few good men and women will find space to shine positively in the service of the nation. If for nothing else, perhaps our periodic political changes offer an opportunity for real change in the lives of a few political animals.

    Those seeking images of the promised new life can perhaps find it if they look closely. After the ministerial swearing in, a few new men of power who arrived Abuja in night buses as ordinary party men and women will drive away from the venue in sparkling new black SUVs with fierce looking armed escorts. That, really, is perhaps the new meaning of the metaphor of the New Hope in the horizon!

  • Tinubu’s many baptisms – By Chidi Amuta

    Tinubu’s many baptisms – By Chidi Amuta

    Very few presidents get the unhappy privilege of previewing the full gamut of worries that will torment their presidency all within their first 100 days. President Bola Tinubu is lucky to belong in this rare collection. In less than a hundred days in office, he has faced challenges in the key areas that make or mar any national leadership. He has hit a domestic economic storm over his sudden halt of a troublesome subsidy regime on gasoline and foreign exchange. That has unleashed still unfolding economic and social consequences. He has faced severe political indigestion over his tardy handling of a ministerial list that almost got him into a constitutional trouble. As if that was not enough political palaver, he has had to cast away the bumbling chairman and secretary of his wobbly ruling party and replaced the chairman with a dollar loving ex-governor. Still to his benefit, a group of ambitious military officers in nearby Niger Republic decided to boot out the fledgling democratic government of President Bazoum.  That has thrown in a foreign relations angle to Tinubu’s cocktail just as he assumed the ceremonial leadership of the sub-regional ECOWAS bloc.

    If the world at home and abroad were to be still and at peace for his first hundred days, Mr. Tinubu would probably have concluded that being president of Nigeria is a cakewalk. But somehow, the man is lucky to have a fair sample of what lies ahead for him. These are the previews of a presidency that will be defined by unusual happenings. Each of these challenges presages an interesting time that could redefine the life of Nigerians and the future of the nation. Hovering at the background is of course the unresolved matter of the legitimacy of the Tinubu government and the integrity of the controversial February 25th presidential election now before tribunals and courts.

    On the domestic front, the subsidy related crises have just begun. The impact of the hike in gasoline pump prices is in its infancy. The immediate rise in transportation costs, food inflation and escalating business costs are still unfolding. Labour unions are merely rehearsing long drawn protests and strikes that could linger for long stretches. The president has shown a perennial willingness to engage with representative of those hurt by his harsh policy options. That is a plus for the man.

    The end of the subsidy regime was inevitable and a matter of national survival. A national economy that is spending over 100% of its revenue on debt servicing and with an external debt burden of over 100 billion dollars has nowhere to run to for relief. Subsidy on gasoline in particular is more like a gasoline tax whose incidence falls on hapless and helpless citizens. Foreign exchange arbitrage, disguised patronage and racketeering is also a form of subsidy to users of foreign exchange which had to end. Sundry leakages like crude oil theft, illegal mining and outright pilferage from the treasury have become imperatives if the economy must survive. For Mr. Tinubu therefore, these hard decisions were national existential imperatives.

    It however remains debatable whether the President’s rather cavalier method of ending the subsidy regime is the best. Experts have argued that the subsidies could have been removed on a stage-by-stage gradual basis to cushion its impacts. But it turns out now that beyond the bravura of the Eagle Square off-script announcement of the withdrawal of the petroleum subsidy, little or no serious thought had gone into the consequences of the policy measure. That the announcement of the policy was made far ahead of the constitution of a cabinet and other critical bodies of the new government may indicate a government that is prone to hasty ad hoc policy measures than a rigorous approach to policy issues. Predictably, an equally hasty and lazy cash transfer measure was announced and touted as a comprehensive palliative. It turned out ot be lazy, haphazard and almost foolish.

    The arrangement was presumably designed to pay N8,000 a month to each of 15 million households for a six month period. When subjected to widespread public scrutiny, it turned out that the measure was not properly thought through. No one was sure of the credibility of the statistical base for the cash transfer or the authenticity of the list of projected beneficiaries. It turned out that the list that the Buhari administration had used to implement its own N5,000 per family cash transfer was adjudged unreliable and dodgy by the National Economic Council (NEC). The pressure of public opinion and outright lobbying from cash hungry state governors forced the presidency to drop the move and return to the drawing board.

    Predictably, the President has now been forced by pressure of strikes and protests from labour unions  to announce a new set of palliatives and relief measures. These range from food supply boosts, small business low interest credit incentives to provision of buses for mass transportation. In the absence of a fully formed government and a mechanism for ensuring serious implementation of the relief measures, we are still left with a scant instrument for policy implementation. What is required is not just the good intentions of a compassionate president but the combined will of a committed government as a collectivity. More importantly, government’s communication strategy needs to be revised to inform the public that the end of a subsidy regime implies a revision of our economic model. It requires time for the economic benefits of the end of subsidy to translate into beneficial outcomes. Most importantly, the federal government must re-direct the development goals of the nation from landscape decoration and white elephant projects to massive investment in social sectors of health, education and strategic infrastructure.  In his handling of the unfolding ripple effects of the end of subsidy, President Tinubu failed an elementary item in the code of presidential conduct. Presidents   preside over good and bad news. But they are not supposed to break bad news. They appoint fa;; guys to carry bad news and clean the mess. The president only appears on television with the good news when the clean up is done or almost done. Tinubu should have waited to appoint ministers to manage the subsidy removal trouble and only appear to address the nation when the palliatives and relief measures are ready.

    The political challenges and methods that will define the Tinubu presidency are already in full display. The president has obviously displayed unnecessary sloppiness in coming up with a list of ministers. A president that prides himself in having been long in politics and angling to lead could not readily come up with a list of 40 odd ministerial nominees over nearly a three month? The Nigerian public expected a faster delivery of the list to the Senate in contrast to the embarrassing delay in Mr. Buhari’s first term. Although the list has at last been delivered, the list reads more like a telephone directory of jobless strange bedfellows. The hopes that were raised in terms of the caliber of persons and the skill set required by the nation’s current state of disrepair.

    One school of thought expected Mr. Tinubu to replicate his Lagos state emphasis on technocrats and seasoned reputable experts as against politicians. Instead, what the Senate is currently considering is a mixed bag of odd fellows. There are less than half a dozen worthwhile technocrats of any description. There are less than a dozen women, fewer than eight real youth. The rest is a mixture of former governors and opportunistic political jobbers.

    Clearly, the segment of the Nigerian populace that harbored a messianic expectation of the Tinubu cabinet may be in for a rude shock. The majority of ex- governors on the ministerial list have only one major qualification: they are APC governors who helped Tinubu corner the presidential election. Other than that, they are the same governors who could not secure their states from casual bandits, who could not pay workers salaries and benefits for months on end. They are the same bunch of incompetent governors who literally sank their states in debt and shut down schools at the slightest opportunity.  The only conspicuous outsider from the APC band is former Rivers State  governor, Nyesom Wike, who is being rewarded by Mr. Tinubu for betraying his party, the PDP, and pumping up Tinubu’s vote tally by all means in his state.

    The internal politics of the ruling party, the APC, has now qually received Tinubu’s attention. The president has quickly moved to rejig the party machinery in line with his perceived cult of devotees. No one knows exactly what belief holds these devotees together other than crass loyalty to the president.  The Adamu -led executive may have been good enough to deliver Mr. Buhari’s succession plan or lack of it. Mr. Tinubu has now jettisoned that arrangement by forcing out Mr. Adamu and his secretary Mr. Omisore. Astute political observers have noted that Tinubu is reorganizing the party for his second term as president. The party has appointed or ‘elected’ former Kano state governor, Mr. Gandudje, as the new Chairman. The diehard Tinubu supporter has  a less than attractive national appeal. He is more popular nationally for a viral video in which he was shown serially pocketing wads of dollar notes from an anonymous generous giver. The matter is still under investigation in Kano state but he now has a higher responsibility as the supremo of the nation’s ruling party.

    While the ways of politicians remain forever mysterious and extraordinary, political parties remain vital national institutions for the survival of democracy. To that extent, the credibility of those who preside over and run the affairs of political parties ought to be subject to no less a rigorous integrity test and scrutiny than the very state officials periodically nominated by the parties for public offices. It may be convenient at this early stage to fill key party positions with favorites of the president. Subsequently, opposition to these questionable party officials could graduate into pockets of opposition to the political foothold of the president himself. That is usually the seed of instability in our political parties. In his political body language so far, Tinubu has been quite predictable. He is part of the old politics of assembling bad men and women to assuage a public that thrives on impressions. His cabinet selection is a mix of a few good men and a multitude of ordinary persons. They will do business as usual and disappear into the national pool of incompetent anonymity.

    By far the most telling and far reaching early challenge for the Tinubu presidency is in the sphere of foreign affairs. The coup in nearby Niger Republic has come at a ‘good’ moment for Mr. Tinubu. Many Nigerian presidents serve out their tenure without experiencing a consequential foreign policy challenge. Tinubu must be grateful to the Niger coup makers for the opportunity they have gven him to start out as a significant foreign policy president. Barely a fortnight after he assumed the ceremonial chairmanship of ECOWAS, the coup happened. In quick succession, the coup makers detained the democratically elected President Bazoum, suspended the constitution, sacke,d the government and garrisoned off the capital, Niamey. ECOWAS has issued a one week ultimatum for the coupists to back down and back off. But the soldiers  seem to have dug in. They have been openly supported by fellow juntas in Mali and Burkina Faso as well as tacitly by Russia’s Wagner Group of mercenaries which is conspicuosly present all over West Africa. More interestingly, Algeria, as an expression of its long standing historical anti-French sentiments has pledged support for the coupists. In open rebuff of Nigeria which is leading the sub regional pressure against the coup, the dictatorship in Niger has broken off ties with Nigeria and ordered ambassadors  of Nigeria, Benin, France, the United States and EU to leave Niger. The stage seems set for a major confrontation or at least a war of diplomatic nerves.

    For Nigeria, the challenge is one of diplomatic leadership in a crisis virtually next door. The implications for us are wider than many are prepared to admit. First, Niger is important to the world only because of its uranium deposits which the West is not prepared to let into the hands of rogue elements especially the Russians. For us, the location of Niger is strategically important. The ousted Niger government was a barrier against the southward spread of jihadist insurgency from the Sahel.

    For President Tinubu, therefore, the management of the Niger crisis is multiply important. It is important for Nigeria’s stabilizing role in the West African region. It is important in terms of Nigeria’s capacity to partner with the West to frustrate Russia’s ambitions in the West African sub region. At a time when French influence in the region has waned, can Nigeria fill the gap as a force for regional stability? More importantly, the spread of military dictatorships in the countries bordering the Sahel poses a challenge for the sustainability of Nigeria’s democracy and those of its neighbours like Cameroun, Benin, Togo, Ghana, the Gambia and Cote d’Ivoire.

    With a basket of unfolding domestic economic, social and political challenges, President Tinubu now has to define his authentic presidency. So far, he has not yet shown the steady hand of a prepared economic manager. Nor has he indicated a convincing capacity to choose wisely and assuredly in terms of a team to work with. But in the area of the foreign policy challenge that is unfolding in Niger, Tinubu has a clear and urgent choice to make as the ECOWAS ultimatum to the Niger junta ticks away. Will he become a ‘war president’ abroad even before he becomes a legitimate and capable leader at home? Yet, the nation and the world are anxiously waiting whether he can lead the forces of freedom in a world where the forces of freedom are now poised against a rampaging authoritarianism.

  • Nonsense comes calling next door – By Chidi Amuta

    Nonsense comes calling next door – By Chidi Amuta

    Nigeria’s immediate past president, Muhammadu Buhari, has a tragic sense of humour. His unrelenting indifference to the condition of the humanity of his compatriots often came out in the things he decided to make important or ignore. One of them is his kinship attachment to Niger Republic. In the dying days of his presidency, he seized every opportunity to underline his difficulty in presiding over fellow Nigerians towards who he had an unmistakably condescending attitude.  He either saw us as a bit more difficult to handle than the cattle in his Daura ranch.

    At other times, he bragged that his retirement would be more peaceful in Niger Republic than in riotous Nigeria. His preference for Niger Republic was not just a passing fancy or the butt of casual jokes. It was grounded in real attachment backed by dollars. He spent billions of dollars of Nigerian money to fund development projects like rail lines, oil pipelines, refineries etc. in Niger Republic. He even gifted a fleet of luxury SUVs to the government over there, insisting that sometimes we need to love our neighbors more than ourselves if possible.

    No one knows what will happen to Buhari’s nostalgic longings for Niger now that his fellow  soldiers have sacked his kinsman, president Bazoum. In what has graduated into a full -scale military coup, the Nigerien military has arrested and put away the president, sacked the government, suspended the constitution and nullified all functions of the democratic state. The two-year old democratic government that enabled the government has therefore been replaced by a military dictatorship. The television footages that have featured the rebellious soldiers does not indicate a group that is likely to hurry off from power no matter what the rest of the world says. In fact, after announcing the new leader as a certain General Abdourahmane Tchiani, former Brigade of Presidential Guards commander who had obviously been eyeing his former boss’s lavish privileges. Buhari is now left with pleading for the physical safety of his toppled kinsman. For now, no one can say what these rapacious soldiers will do if militarily challenged by the international community.

    The military putsch in Niger is part of an apparent script that has been travelling all over the West African Sahel in recent times. Similar coups have occurred recently and in rapid succession in Mali, Guinea, Chad, Burkina Faso and, to some extent, Sudan where the clashing ambitions of rival generals and warlords has burst into an open civil war. Nearly all these regressions into autocratic rule are united by certain common factors.

    The threat of jihadist terrorism and insurgency in the northernmost parts have created greater insecurity in all these countries. The national armies  have been overwhelmed by jihadist insurgents and fighters. Climate change in the Sahel at large has created more desperate hunger,  poverty and general economic distress in these agriculturally dependent countries. Economic pressure has translated into widespread unrest and urban protests. Protests have graduated into political unrest and dissatisfaction, making partisan democracy and its slovenly rituals untenable and unpopular. The existence of military establishments of ambitious and politicized officers has accelerated the recourse to coups.

    The French who used to be the stabilizing influence and force all over French speaking West Africa have in recent times become unpopular and gone into a retreat mode  given the political and economic burden of colonial era influence peddling.  The domestic social and economic situation in France have since made colonial era indulgences rather expensive and untenable. The security  and economic vacuum has in many places been filled by the presence of Russian influence through the Wagner Group private military company which serves as the Kremlin’s external affairs enforcer and buccaneer business frontier force.

    Taken together, these factors have combined to suddenly convert the West African region into the world’s next frontier of  global confrontations and strategic instability. The development in Niger Republic has even more added significance.  While the instability raged in the rest of French speaking West Africa, Niger  served as the last outpost of residual Western influence and some stability in an area of trouble. The retreating French forces still have outposts with an estimated 1,500 troops stationed in Niger Republic. The United States AFRICOM African outreach force has a little over 1000 troops stationed in Niger.

    In addition, the US has a drone base in Niger as well as  strategic air defense  installations in that country to overlook the troubles in the rest of the Sahel and also Nigeria which, for political reasons, cannot host direct Western military presence. This reporter is aware  that the US outposts in Niger serve as crtical intel feeds to the Nigerian security forces in their anti terrorism  drive. It also serves the Joint Task Force of Niger, Chad, Cameroun and Nigeria with tangential extension to Benin Republic.  At the level of political values, the two -year old democratic government of Mr. Bazoum represents, even if symbolically, the promise of democracy in an area directly confronted by Islamic jihadist terrorists and widespread fundamentalist rascality.

    With the coup in Niger Republic, Nigeria is precariously exposed to the real forces of strategic instability in the region. Niger is our immediate northern neighbor with direct extensive land borders with Katsina and Zamfara states. Similarly, Chad, our neighbor to the troubled North East  zone of Borno and Yobe states, is under a military dictatorship after the battlefield  assassination of former president Idris Derby.

    These two neighbours now under military dictatorship share borders with Nigeria in an area of clear and present insecurity. Zamfara state has literally been an ungoverned space with bandits traversing freely and operating in defiance of the elected former governor. They exert tributes, impose and collect levies from locals in return for permits to carry out farming activities. A cocktail of foreign rogue miners, official security personnel, local chieftains and bandit enforcers mostly with arms and personnel from across the porous borders make the state a hell hole of insecurity. Scouts of the Wagner Group have reportedly scoped the area for openings while earlier  sending in feelers to the National Assemby in Abuja for an open invitation for mercenary intervention in Nigeria’s counter terrorism crusade. The same situation applies to Chad from where Boko Haram and ISWAP terrorists have tormented many local governments  in Borno and Yobe States respectively while making frantic incursions into ungoverned spaces in the border areas linking Cameroun, Nigeria and Chad.

    From a national security viewpoint, therefore, Nigeria’s northern frontiers  are seriously compromised. The façade of democratic continuum between Nigeria, Chad and Niger that used to dress up an umbrella of common interest and shared security  has been fatally altered and punctured. Nigeria’s bulwark of regional security  has shifted southwards to the expanded corridor stretching from Cameroun in the East  to Benin Republic and Togo in the West. Together with these countries and the Atlantic seaboard covering the strategic Gulf of Guinea stretch, the stability of Nigeria and its survival as democracy and free market now depends.  This secueity stretch can only survive through a strengthening of ties with key Western allies. For the avoidance of doubts, Chinese economic and strategic interest in Equatorial Guinea is real as evidenced in the recent commissioning of a major Chinese navel facility in that country. Similarly, Russian influence and interest through the Wagner Group of mercenaries all over West Africa is now self- evident. .

    There is therefore a real, credible and urgent national security threat to Nigeria in the developing picture. The presence of military dictatorships sharing common borders with us towards a troubled northern zone is a threat not just to our internal security but also to our democracy since influences travel easily across borders. The challenge for Nigeria in my view is both diplomatic and strategic in a national defense and security sense. Nigeria cannot expect its foreign relations and regional security posture to remain the same as before.

    The global power context of West Africa is changing rapidly. The virtual departure of the French as a security stabilization partner and economic force in the region is a tectonic shift. The increasing shift of US security interest from the Middle East is important for the war against terrorism even in the Sahel. The more secure the US homeland becomes against terrorists attacks, its interests in global anti terrorist war will wane. How we handle the jihadist onslaught, the influence of Russia and the spread of military dictatorships around us should be the preoccupation of Nigeria’s foreign policy in the years ahead.

    The coup in Niger Republic in particular indicates a tragic failure of intelligence and foreign policy strategic thinking on Nigeria’s part. You cannot claim to be a great regional power if you are incapable of influencing developments in your immediate neighbourhood. Nigeria ought to be in a position to  influence political and security developments in Niger, Chad and Benin. Given our sporadic border disquiet with Cameroun, we ought to be actively interested in political developments in that country as well. But tragically, Mr. Buhari presided over Nigeria for eight years without a sentence being uttered by Abuja on Nigeria’s new foreign policy challenges let alone any indication of a strategy for engagement with neighbours on the most elementary international developments like climate change or cross border refugee movements.

    Most importantly, at no time under either Jonathan or Buhari was there any indication in our foreign policy body language that we were conscious of the implications of our democracy for political directions and developments in our immediate neighbourhood. We just drifted along, content in the pathetic illusion that foreign relations and policy only means scrambling the presidential jet at short notice to attend every Boy Scout Movement conference everywhere in the world.  And yet, this is the same Nigeria that decisively intervened to alter, for good, the future histories of Liberia and Sierra Leone. When nations fail or decay, you can tell by what they helplessly allow to happen in their neighbourhood!

    In the context of the coup in Niger Republic and what it means for Nigeria’s future external relations, however, the Tinubu administration can still manage to cobble more serious engagement approach. The new president can use his present ceremonial garb as Chairman of ECOWAS to quickly engineer first a West Africa –wide multilateral coalition to compel the junta in Niger to set a deadline for a return to democracy. That could be the lead on to dismantling  other despotisms in the region.  But he and his colleagues will ultimately need to procure an African Union and United Nations mandate backed by reasonable force to discourage further slide of the region into military authoritarianism. The upsurge of military dictatorships in West Africa needs to be communicated to the world as a dangerous international development which, if unchecked, could negatively affect the future history of the rest of Africa at a time when the world is faced with more urgent and serious economic and technological challenges.

  • A Life in a Day at 70 – By Chidi Amuta

    A Life in a Day at 70 – By Chidi Amuta

    Tomorrow, I shall be 70. I call it the 70th checkpoint. A friend calls it climbing to the 7th floor even though I do not know how many floors there are.  It would be at exactly at 9 am tomorrow.  It was at that hour on that rainy July day at Aba General Hospital that the dam broke. The dam of water and blood burst open and this mayhem of a life made land fall.

    My grandmother, eternal narrator of memory, did not recall that there were any comets seen in the sky on that day to announce this birth. There was neither an earthquake nor a hurricane to make this birth anything special. It was just an ordinary rainy day in its season. Ever since then, it has been raining a combination of laughter, tears and surprises nearly every day in the last seven decades.

    People expected my father to blow a trumpet to announce a child he and his wife almost did not have. But he refused to borrow anyone’s trumpet to herald their joy, insisting that children whose births are heralded by trumpet flourishes end up badly. As I reflect on my birthday tomorrow, I am sure there are friends and well-wishers who would want me to blow a trumpet about the bumpy trajectory that my life has been.  My response is simple: You do not blow a non-existent trumpet!

    All things considered, turning seventy in this place is a miracle that could baffle the greatest miracle merchant. Seventy years of surviving deadly childhood diseases, overcrowded ghettoes or the evil eyes of village witches as a village boy… Seventy years of dodging the bullets of war, the ambushes of armed robbers… Seventy years of studying sometimes on empty stomach, under leaky roofs and with candle light… Seventy years of hunger and skipping meals. It has been seventy years of traversing this dangerous land on rickety wagons on dangerous pot holed roads. Or flying in creaky contraptions in the air.

    Seventy years, each day literally begun with a surfeit of bad news… an epidemic of preventable afflictions…A preventable flood here, terrorists bombings there, a few kidnappings here and there… You live life with tragedy as an entitlement and ill fortune as an endowment of providence….When good fortune comes, it is cause for festivity.

    A lot of the people I have encountered on this journey mostly think I grew up with a silver spoon!  But they’ll be shocked by the truth. There was no spoon let alone a wooden, clay or wrought iron one. You ate your Eba with bare hands! Later in life, when the eba became a bowl of rice, you went in search of a spoon, not caring what it is made off. So, do not set out looking for a silver or golden spoon only to get back and find there is no food to eat! If there is no food, it will not matter what the spoon in your hand is made of. Only people who take the next meal for granted can afford the luxury of debating what the spoon is made of.

    Growing up in a rural setting with occasional holiday peeps into the urban neon light at Aba meant setting high goals. The supreme goal was to escape from the vicious ogre of want and poverty. The principal goal of my life has been to run very fast away from the ogre of a humble background. It is a race you run without looking back.  What is chasing after you is deadly and unrelenting. There is no time to look back, You fear that if you look back, the ogre will catch you and trap you back into hell or use the razor blade of poverty to shred you! You have to run like mad. At 70, I am still running that race.

    My late father told me some truths that have guided my journey so far: According to him, the son of a poor man with poor school examination results will end up in the dungeon of life because  ‘’poor plus poor is equal to “poorest’’ QED! He taught me other inconvenient truths as well. Breaking the barrier of a humble background literally means breaking concrete walls with your head. A humble background means that you do not just reach your destination, you must ‘arrive’ with a splash to be noticed.  Make some noise so that people notice your presence! When you get to a city or a country, befriend Caeser. When you get to an office or business premises, do not exchange words with the security guard or the janitor. That is beating a dead horse! The bunch of keys the janitor is carrying around lead to someone else’s treasure rooms. Ask instead to see the owner of the business. Ask to see the Managing Director, the Minister, etc. Be a Nigerian: bold, audacious and daring.  At the church premises, ask to see the General Overseer. If they won’t let you in, go back and establish your own church. Give yourself the title of General Overseer! When next they call a meeting of religious leaders, you will be sitting in the front row to the amazement of the small people who never gave you access!

    For me, every new day is a blessing but also a looming battle in a war whose end is not in sight. I wake up at 5.30 am every day. Meditations and stretches follow. Then a mental map through the oncoming day. It is a mini battle plan. Never leave home without a compass or battle plan. Otherwise you will get lost in the jungle. Do the mandatory wake up cup of black coffee preferably with a few nuts- almonds, cashews, peanuts. Do not clog up the system with heavy food so early when you have earned nothing today.

    I do an early morning ride with my 14-year-old son to school at 6.30 am. It is just to wish him ‘a nice day’ at drop-off at the school. It is a ritual that is both a prayer, a wish and a rejection of my own ordeals with school. As he disappears into the school entrance, I recall the bush paths that I took every day to the village school. I never liked school but studied hard to earn my freedom from the confinement of dormitories, classrooms and campuses.

    Thereafter, from about 8 am, it is exercise time.  I do an average of one hour of physical exercise in my private gym at home five days in a week. It is usually a mixed regime: 20-30 minutes mid to fast walk on the treadmill, another 20 minutes on the bike. I get to do pull downs on a lathe, a bit of weights with 5-7.5 kg dumb bells. Some days, I do 50 push -ups or struggle with the abdominal machine.

    While I am in the gym, no phone calls or chats. The phone is for workout music delivered through my ear pods. No distractions or interventions. Absolute privacy. I end every exercise session with a dance. I dance to the music of Davido, Burna Boy, Rema, Flavour, good old Stephen Osadebe, Rex Lawson, Oriental Brothers. My taste in music traverses generation, geography, clime and period. Whatever the music, just dance and be possessed with the spirit of the creativity of song and rhythm. Out of the rhythm of the universe, reality was born. Those who dance are in tune with the first law of the universe. Ever wondered why, without being taught, babies begin to swing their heads to the tunes of great music?

    As a habitual newsman, news is my endless daily diet. Even when I am working out in the gym, I am glued to the news. I catch up and stay with the news across the globe on all major platforms and significant networks. News is the life blood of my industry. Life is incomplete without the punctuation of tragedy. An earthquake here, a street protest there, the compulsory school shooting somewhere in America everyday, the mad man in North Korea with the nasty habit of firing silly missiles into empty seas and spaces to blackmail America into listening to his bluster. America’s threats keep him in power as the heroic defender of his hermit kingdom.

    From Nigeria, bandits sack a school and terrorists cart all the innocent school girls into slavery. The soldiers and policemen arrive a few hours too late with bags of excuses on why they cannot find rag tag terrorists on slow moving lorries or on donkeys with a hundred innocent girls as captives. Still from Nigeria, some big man is reported to have pocketed a billion dollars from the commonwealth! It is all in the day’s news.

    The morning bath after workout is a daily baptism of mild fire in a steam cubicle. Thereafter, breakfast ensues. It is a mixed grill of yet more coffee, wheat bread toast and fruits, enough to keep the engine running for the rest of the day.

    Morning rituals over, I go to the office to earn a keep. All manner of people stop by to say hello. Most of them come with a proposal in their pocket. They know a business that can make you richer if you collaborate with them. But the business can only work if it is driven by your own money, not theirs! They never leave without narrating their ordeal with the landlord, the hospital or the greedy school proprietor who wants to deny ‘junior’ an education because of a paltry school fees in arrears since last year. There is always a dying grandmother in hospital in the village in urgent need of money to pay the hospital, or another burial to fund!

    Thanks to the Covid-19 emergency, I now work mostly from home. The home office is my study. It is my best place in the house. There, I have the company of innumerable books. Books everywhere. The best books are those by great authors who have died. A multitude and cocktail of my favorite authors both dead and alive: Kofi Awoonor, Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, Kazuo Ishiguro, Dennis Brutus, Ayi Kwei Armah, William Shakespeare, Sophocles, John O’Donohue, Chimamanda Adichie, Mahmoud Darwish, Mourid Barghouti etc, etc

    Books upon books on every shelf are among the things in life that keep me happy. My favourite subjects are: political theory and philosophy, poetry, biography, intelligence and espionage, serious fiction… I buy books online literally everyday either in hard copy for physical delivery from Amazon or local book sellers or I buy books to read electronically on Kindle. I read an average of two books a week.

    I have just read a brilliant new novel by an unusual young Nigerian writer, Stephen Buoro. It is called The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa (“Life in Africa is a long prayer…”). I was reading that side by side with a non -fictional work – The Tragic Mind-by the great war journalist, Robert D. Kaplan (“Without order, civilization is impossible…”).

    Television is a constant after work. Even if you do not want to watch it, it is there watching you in its overwhelming presence in your living room and in every room and sitting space the house.  It is a constant surveillance. The television is an ever present spy from George Orwell’s 1984. “Big Brother is watching you” seems to be the constant unspoken refrain of the ubiquity of the television age.

    Digital television is another matter. You subscribe to 100 plus cable channels and watch mostly only 3. We are all subsidizing the global racket of multi channel digital television business! They sell and bill you for 300-400 channels even though they know we all have only two eyes and only an average of one television viewing hour per day. In a world that is now a market place, everybody is selling everybody else some dodgy package, ripping off everybody else. The capitalist dogs of war are on the loose everywhere. Eat thy neighbor seems to be the universal dictum! Just sign here or click there and your money is gone to the wind of the global information blizzard.

    For me, the must-watch channels for relaxation are few.  Cartoon Network and Animal Planet or National Geographic Wild are favourites. I like Animal Planet because the animals do not pretend like us humans. If they are hungry and find a prey, they jump at it, devour it and move on! If they want to have sex, they go after a vulnerable female and get it over with!

    I like the cartoon channels because the characters are carriers of possibility. On Cartoon Network, give me :   “The Amazing World of Gunball” where everybody has an enlarged colourful head full of tricks. Rigby in “Regular Show” tells us that the distance between dreams and possibility is just one quick dash away. Kids dwell in the world of the imagination; that is why they are hooked to cartoons. Their parents are too busy chasing after the same things that kept me on my toes for the better part of seventy years. We used to call it the ‘rat race’ but the rat is now a digital mouse attached to your computer keyboard. Just click and your money comes or goes. Rat poisons and cats have exterminated most rats. So, there are hardly any rats left to chase after these days. So people chase after nothing in particular.

    At other times, television is Comedy Central, celebrating the perpetual laughableness of life. With comedy, you are constantly and permanent walking on banana peels. You are constantly laughing at our foibles as humans. It pays to take a step back and distance yourself from life. Laugh at the things others consider serious and important. Most of all, look in the morror and laugh at yourself as part of the comic pageant of life.  Laugh at the bank manager and his obsession with the figures of other people’s money. Laugh at the lies of politicians. Laugh at the cleric and his gown as he pretends he can show you salvation.

    Laugh at the new transgender generation as adult males cellotape their manhood to their bodies in a hard effort to feign womanhood. ‘Oga, your son is now a girl!,  screams your curious neighbour! ‘Madam, your daughter is about to take a wife!’, another neighbor laughs aloud. In the end, everything is comedy. Everything is nothing and nothing is nothing! A crisis of language is looming. Soon, father and mother, man and woman, husband and wife will be erased from human memory in a neuter world.

    In my lonely moments everyday, it is time to reflect on the past and project into the future. The past is the home of memory, of things forgotten and forever remembered. It is time to connect the past to the present and tremble at the future. Time to think of those who were here and are now gone. My parents, the eternal presences even in their absence.

    The dinner table is the gathering point of the day’s harvest. It is more of bonding time for the family than about food. Dinner is the daily sacrament of love and family unity. Each day’s dinner is more of a communion of saints bound by blood who narrowly missed canonization. It is the hour to commune and break bread in your bond with those sent to you from above to make life livable. At the dinner table, the burdens of the day are off–loaded in conversation. A trouble shared is a burden made lighter.

    As the day recedes and nature prepares to obey the heavy necessity of night, enveloping us all in the blanket of darkness, I spare a thought for my country. This place is more of paradise in bondage. It will break loose some day and unleash its goodness. As I prepare for the greetings of friends and family on my birthday tomorrow, I am comforted by the assurance that at the 70th checkpoint, I am 7 years older than my country, this beautiful land that today’s youth fondly call Naija!!

  • Ribadu and the myths of national security – By Chidi Amuta

    Ribadu and the myths of national security – By Chidi Amuta

    The office of National Security Adviser in Nigeria has acquired a string of curious myths. Think of a public office somehow above open discussion by citizens except in whispers and hushed speculations. Imagine a department of state that can interfere in the affairs of other departments without much qualms and cite ‘national security’ as the enabling source of authority. Contemplate a public office that incurs huge expenses and spends public money without much regard for the rules of open public accountability. Think again of a publicly funded office that can be used to conceal nefarious political spending and often monumental corruption in the assurance that few questions would be asked. To sustain the halo of inscrutability around the office of the NSA, all that is required is to couch a dubious spending as a matter of ‘national security’. Just stamp the enabling memo ‘confidential ’. Place the paperwork in a folder with the bold inscription: ‘Top Secret”. End of the matter. No questions asked. No consequences for billions spent in invisible transactions.

    An extension of this myth of national security as a fetish is what has come to be known as ‘Security Vote’ in all of our 36 states. To service the unquenchable thirst of this ubiquitous deity, all state governors yank off huge sums of state funds every month for free unaccounted spending in the name of ‘security vote’. With that latitude in place, a governor is free to ‘donate’ hundreds of millions of Naira in support of every conceivable cause. A recent survey puts the security vote per state at an average of N250 million every month. The richer states reportedly charge much more on the treasury of their states. For the 36 states, that comes to a princely sum with hardly any accountability requirements.

    Yet every state has detachments of official federal security agencies: Police, Department of State Security, Army, Air Force and Navy (where applicable), Civil Defense Corps, all with their respective budgeted federal funding. As with the federal level, once these curious state expenditures are dubbed ‘security votes’, no more questions are asked. Of course in some states, real internal security threats require state governments to augment the funding of official federal security agencies. States donate vehicles to aid police logistics. Others augment the duty allowances of security personnel in their states.

    In the general lack of accountability requirements among state governors, abuses have become rampant. It has drawn the attention of the Nigerian Governors Forum which is said to be working on a peer accountability protocol to check the excesses of some of their members. In general, security in Nigeria has become a thriving industry, almost a deity above questioning, reproach and reprimand.

    We must quickly admit that the specific operational mechanics of national security are universally protected from open discussion in barber shops. Similarly, in nearly every country, times and situations of grave national emergency and the pursuit of sensitive national interest, security personnel and agencies do get waivers from routine accountability requirements. Senior security officials  get permits in such situations to ‘play’ with cash to achieve specific objectives. For instance, at the early stages of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, CIA field operatives carried huge cash troves to facilitate ingress and egress of operational assets or to acquire vital intelligence.  They could pay off warlords and influential mullahs or buy over informants to ease the progression of advancing troops.

    In Nigeria, a strange type of needless myth of secrecy surrounds everything ‘security’. The office of National Security Adviser is the bastion of this myth of secrecy. At different times and under different presidents, the office has served different functions sometimes at variance with constitutional stipulations. On the functions of the NSA and his office, the constitution is unambiguous. The NSA is just one of the gamut of presidential advisers albeit one entrusted with counseling the president on matters of national security.

    A consequence of the deification of the NSA’s office is the erroneous belief that only persons with a military, police or security background qualify to be appointed National Security Advisers. Thus we have had an unbroken string of retired military and police persons as NSAs. This of course is a gross misconception. The misconception underplays the deeply intellectual requirement of that office. In the best traditions of the presidential system, an NSA should possess a broader intellectual grasp of aspects of national security. He or she needs to have the capacity to connect all aspects of the security needs of the nation to the uniqueness of national history, economy, society and culture at any given time.

    The ideal NSA must therefore be able to connect all aspects of the national reality to credible security threats to the government and people at any given moment in time. Poverty, hunger, environmental challenges, ethnocentrism, religious bigotry etc are as much matters of national security as bandits, terrorists, separatist militias and cross border military manoeuvers by a hostile neighboring state.  Most importantly, the NSA must be able to relate the perceived security threats of the moment to the specific agenda of his president.

    Because national security is dynamic, the ideal NSA must be able to maintain a synergy with existing defense and security establishments in order to deal with the immediate security challenges. It is because of this broad intellectual requirement of the office that the US from where we cloned our constitution has had a tradition of appointing either renowned intellectuals or intellectually inclined military or security persons as NSAs.

    In the pure intellectual  tradition, America has had the likes of Henry Kissinger, Condoleeza Rice, Zbigniew Brezinski,  Susan Rice and Jake Sullivan as NSA. In the ranks of outstanding persons with military and security background, there have been the likes of Collin Powell, Michael Flynn and H .R Mcmaster in that capacity. Even those with a military background are required to show outstanding intellectual acuity in their understanding of the multi faceted nature of America’s complex national security burden.

    Of course, we need to locate America’s choices of the intellectual type NSA to its historical, locational and geo strategic obligations. North America and specifically the US is the territorial equivalent of an aircraft carrier. Surrounded by three great oceans, nothing must threaten the security of people living on and defending the ‘carrier’ nation. All troubles must take place far away from the carrier platform and ‘homeland’. The theatres of trouble must be places far away. America can go far away to contain troubles, put out fires, project its power  and advance its national interests in order to maintain its global pre-eminence and secure the homeland. This has remained the basic pillar of America’s national security doctrine over the decades. It is essentially a foreign policy-driven notion of national security.

    For this reason, the events of 9/11 were a rude shock to American national security thinking. As a consequence, the creation of a separate department of Homeland Security was a consequential alteration of US national security doctrine. It has meant a subtle division between domestic and external aspects of national security for the first time. The realization is that the “aircraft carrier” nation now also requires internal protection from its resident adversaries as well.

    In Nigeria’s instance, however, national security has remained an essentially domestic preoccupation. There have been occasional external pressures in the past. Threats either from Apartheid South Africa, jihadist terrorists from the Sahel across the northern borders and border skirmishes from Cameroun have sporadically and periodically flared up. But these have remained largely external threats which have been the headache of the professional military.

    Within this essentially domestic orientation, Nigeria’s national security picture has been copiously dynamic. We have had the series of crises that produced the civil war, the upsurge of micro nationalist pressure, the rise of militant regional nationalism, sectarian violent eruptions (the Maitatsine uprising), rise of sectarian and jihadist terrorism (Boko Haram), intra communal violent eruptions (Zango-Khataf, Modakeke/Ife , Shagamu crises,  the rise of militant separatism (IPOB, Niger Delta militancy), herdsmen versus settled farmer clashes, urban cultism, banditry, transactional kidnapping, armed robbery etc. Different presidents have adopted different strategies to contain whichever of these threats confronted them.

    President Umaru Musa Yar’dua assumed office literally under a barrage of gunfire. Militancy in the Niger Delta was the most potent and urgent national security threat. The military was literally outgunned and overwhelmed. His NSA was under immense pressure to reassert the armed superiority of the state. State governors under severe threat had alternative ideas on how to secure their states. A number of them in the troubled Niger Delta applied for arms import waiver and licenses to import military grade weapons and munitions. One governor then got a license from the then NSA to bring in helicopter gunships and surveillance drones. Authority was quickly granted and stripped down equipment was flown in, assembled and handed to the military. Bombardments of militants camps followed, thus forcing the trouble makers to surrender and submit to the amnesty programme. Yar’dua used the office of NSA was used to achieve a clear national security objective.

    President Jonathan was ignorant on national security. He could literally not distinguish between a pistol and a rifle. So he got help from the late General Azazi, a fellow Niger Delta citizen as NSA. No one knows whether Azazi’s purely military approach would have worked since he died prematurely. Jonathan later changed his NSA as well as the meaning of national security. The definition of National security was broadened to include and prioritize the political security of the incumbent president. Thus, resources deployed towards political ends to advance the power hold of the incumbent president and party were legiimate national security spends.

    Literally, all hell was let loose. A deluge of political money was unleashed. Politicians, journalists, hair dressers, unbranded facilitators, herbalists, aafas, marabouts and Pentecostal prayer warrior pastors were all drafted to the political bazaar to ensure Jonathan won in 2015. The office of the NSA became the cash office! Jonathan lost. The money disappeared.

    When Mr. Buhari assumed office in 2015, one of his first ports of call as an anti corruption trumpeter was the office of NSA. He shredded the veil and revealed that humongous amounts of public money had been funneled and casually shared out for purposes of defeating him in the election. Multiple arrests were made and some paltry change recovered. Some weak cases were filed in court. Jonathan’s NSA, my friend Sambo Dasuki, was put away almost indefinitely for presiding over the money bazaar in the name of ‘national security’. Not much came out of that drama by way of convictions.

    Buhari appointed his own NSA. A president who was a retired combat general with an NSA that was also a good retired intelligence officer raised hopes of better national security. But the face of national security had drastically altered. All manner of non- state actors had their signatures on the face of the nation . Herdsmen emerged as killers from nowhere to terrorize communities that had hitherto welcomed them and their cattle amicably. Kidnapping became a business. Shooting farmers became a sport. Bandits took over farmlands and extorted ransom and tributes. Separatist rascals took up arms against the state, claiming phantom sovereignty and territory. Faith became weaponized as places of worship became targets of terror attacks. As NSA, only Mr. Monguno knows what exactly he achieved in that office in eight years.

    Therefore, of all the appointments so far announced by Mr. Tinubu to date, those of the NSA and the service chiefs are perhaps the most significant from point of view of national security. Death is everywhere in the land and fear of death and insecurity is now the greatest unifier of all Nigerians.

    The choice of Mr. Ribadu as NSA is quite consequential. He was the founding Chairman of the now infamous EFCC. Even though he allowed the agency to periodically drift into political abuse, the consensus is that he left a positive mark. A section of the public thinks the security situation could improve under his watch. But that optimism can only be predicated on the hope that he can rescue the office of NSA from its serial infamy and accumulated fallacies and myths.

    To succeed, Mr. Ribadu must jettison the illusion that the office of NSA is in any way superior to those of the other presidential advisers. His task area is only different. For Mr. Ribadu, the challenges are well defined but the solutions lie beyond familiar approaches. He, in collaboration with the service chiefs, must seek solutions from outside the traditional box of national security myths.

    The situation is dire, urgent and could get worse. Since Mr. Tinubu was sworn in, over 500 Nigerians have died in the hands of bandits and sundry gunmen. Plateau state alone has recorded over 200 fatalities in the last less than 20 days. Those statistic could get more frightening unless something drastic is quickly done. Here are a few areas of darkness:

    Our defense and security effort must change its spatial orientation. Security agencies must retake all ungoverned spaces in the country. Bandits, terrorists, kidnappers and killer herdsmen all operate from and are based in forests, bushes, savannahs often beyond the reach of security forces. These spaces serve as fortresses for non-state actors while security agencies operate from urban inhabited spaces. Our ungoverned spaces have become an alternative republic from where assaults are mounted against the state and citizens.

    The new NSA needs to urgently research, probe and unravel the relationship between political interests and violent actors in different parts of the country. Which politicians arm the various gunmen? What percentage of the ‘unknown gunmen’ in the South East, for instance, are sponsored by political interests?  What percentage are separatist militia activists?

    When and why did herdsmen make the transition from innocent cattle herding to armed terrorism and criminality? What politicians invited and armed these herdsmen mostly from neighboring countries to advance their interests? Where did the guns come from?

    We need a deeper understanding of the interface between security agencies and criminal cartels operating in different parts of the country. There is a strong argument out there that as criminal violence has grown, so also has the security establishment become a series of business cartels and racketeering rings.

    Since kidnapping became an industry, how does it interface with other sectors of the economy? Most kidnap ransom payments are made through the banking system. How come the banks have not helped in providing leads to the kidnappers and other criminal networks?

    There have been reports of a close link between government agencies and criminal gangs involved in illicit economic activities. Illegal mining of solid minerals in northern states and oil theft in the Niger Delta stand out. In spite of this knowledge, there have been scant arrests, prosecutions, indictments or earth shattering disclosures.

    Mr. Ribadu comes into office at a time of unusual challenges. The bulk of Mr. Buhari’s toxic legacy happens to be in the area of insecurity. Of course, Mr. Ribadu’s appointment comes with a mixture of cautious optimism and cynicism. He has a rather interesting mixed ancestry. He is a policeman. He has been an active partisan politician. He has had a handshake with Nigeria’s corruption high command. The man has experience in power and public office. He has a working knowledge of Nigeria’s crime and corruption industry. But he remains first and foremost a Nigerian policeman. The police knows us and we know them well. This mutual knowledge contains the prospects and problems of Mr. Ribadu as the new NSA.

  • Putin, Mercenaries and African Democracy – By Chidi Amuta

    Putin, Mercenaries and African Democracy – By Chidi Amuta

    In the dying months of the Buhari administration, an upsurge in terrorist activities in the Nigerian North East led to a resurgence of the debate as to whether Nigeria needed to engage foreign mercenaries in its war against jihadist terrorists in the country. The debate was not new.

    It had also raged, somewhat differently, in the final months of the Goodluck Jonathan administration. It is in fact said that certain interests in the Jonathan national security apparatus clandestinely engaged some private military companies from South Africa to take on the ISWAP and Boko Haram elements.  The hope then was that the input of the South African mercenaries would make a significant enough difference in the security situation in the North East to facilitate Jonathan’s victory in the then postponed presidential elections in 2015. Everything was thrown in including paying for arms in cash and airfreighting the dollar payments and the arms with aircraft sometimes belonging to known clergymen!

    The debate in the final days of the Buhari presidency was somewhat different. It featured on the floor of the National Assembly briefly. This time around, the debate was being fueled by a lobby group operating from neighbouring Chad and Niger Republic. They were paid agents of the publicity wing of Russia’s  Wagner Group of mercenaries seeking to expand its influence in the Sahel and West Africa. Hopefully, that debate has died a natural death. The new administration in Abuja needs to keep it in the morgue of national discourse without losing sight of its import for our national security in the months ahead.

    The brief unexpected revolt in Russia two weekends ago may claim more casualties than Vladimir Putins’s grip on power in Moscow. The Wagner Mercenaries corporation, owned by Putin and his friend, Yevgeny Prigozyn, is on a roller coaster ride into untidy oblivion as well. But unknown to many, the Wagner Group was the propeller of the Kremlin’s influence on and threat to Africa’s precarious democracy. The imminent meltdown of the mercenary force is therefore also a clear danger to democracy in many African countries.

    Ordinarily, developments in far away Russia should not be much of our business in these parts. Russia has not quite shown an overt interest in African affairs except in recent times with its isolation over the Ukraine war. For most African countries, relations with Russia have remained more of a nostalgic ideological remnant of the Cold War years. Except for South Africa and one or two others, Russia has remained more of diplomatic decoration than a consequential strategic   ally. Somehow, however, both the Ukraine war and the sudden implosion of the Wagner Group of mercenaries have increased the relevance of Russia in Afrcia’s global perspective.

    The Ukraine war has unsettled African economies by threatening grain supplies and unsettling energy prices and prospects. The Wagner Group which began as a rogue money making parastatal of the Kremlin became a major power player in a number of African countries. In addition to being contracted to do a major part of the work of the Russian military in Ukraine and elsewhere, it was used to branch out to troubled parts of the world to return profit and expand the influenced of the Kremlin. African countries remain hosts of the uncanny presence of the Wagner mercenaries even as the group itself comes undone by complications of power in Russia itself.

    The Wagner implosion leaves more than 6,000 of its mercenaries already stationed in Africa literally decapitated from their Russian command and control center. The attempted revolt in Russia and the untidy meltdown of the Wagner Group have raised some questions: What is the plight of those African countries for whom the Wagner mercenaries have become a security stabilization force? In places where the Wagner force has been used by autocratic regimes to obstruct democratic forces, what are the prospects now that Wagner is endangered?

    Until the attempted weekend revolt, the link between the Kremlin and the Wagner mercenaries was still hazy. The collapse of the revolt has exposed the extent and international meaning of the Wagner Group. As it turns out, Wagner is both an untidy business venture and an unusual non -state tool in the service of a rogue state. It was first a private military company owned Putin’s estranged hot dog merchant friend, Yevgeny Prigozym, himself a serial criminal and alumnus of major Russian prisons. It is not merely a mercenary fighting force. It is mostly a dangerous business manned by proven criminals using the force of sophisticated arms and a military camouflage to meddle in dangerous places around the world. Above all, it remained a curious arm of Russia’s defense infrastructure.

    The Group is reportedly also in cahoots with cells of the Russian Mafia. In the raging Ukraine invasion, for instance, a contingent of 400 mercenaries from the Wagner Group were dispatched to infiltrate into Kyiv for the sole aim of assassinating President Zelensky. Ukrainian intelligence uncovered the plot and it has been frustrated so far. Undeterred, Moscow is reportedly in the process of increasing the Ukraine Wagner Group mercenary task force to 1000, to carry out various destabilization operations in the light of the frustration of the Russian mission in Ukraine.

    In return, the Wagner forces got paid by the Kremlin as a defense contractor. Off shore, Wagner rewarded itself and its patron companies with cash and mineral concessions.

    Nothing else throws Vladimir Putin’s uncanny reputation into better relief than the existence and uses of the Wagner Group. Here is Putin, the leader of a global power contender and counterpoise to the West. He presides over one of the largest and most equipped military forces in the world. Yet he co-established a state sponsored mercenary force and outsourced a major war of nationalist re-assertion to this private army.

    Yet, the reality is that the Wagner Group was founded and has been run more like a parastatal of the Russian Defense and foreign affairs ministries. Unsurprisingly, it was none other than Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavarov who in the wake of the Wagner revolt immediately sprang into action to reassure all that the activities of the Wagner Group in Africa and elsewhere will proceed as before. Matters only took a dangerous turn when it seemed the Defense ministry and the military high command felt threatened by the growing powers of the Wagner mercenaries.

    Putin may have doused the Wagner threat in Russia by chasing away his pal Prigozym into emergency holding exile in Belarus. He may have   effectively neutralized  the Wagner forces through an untidy mixture of demobilization, outright sack or mass export into exile. No one knows exactly what will become of the Wagner mess in Russia and Ukraine where they are holding captured ferritory.

    But Wagner remains active and in business in a number of countries especially in Africa. The last roll call of Wagner presence in Africa includes Central African Republic, Libya, Mozambique, Sudan, Mali, Guinea, Chad and Burkina Faso. In all these African countries, the Wagner Group operates as a private military company engaged by endangered states and their presiding autocrats. They are used to bolster weak official military forces often against the threat of jihadist militants. More importantly, the group is engaged in the more lucrative security of remote mineral sites which are often under constant threats from non -state actors.

    In the Central African Republic, the Wagner force is particularly entrenched. It is involved in state security, mineral exploitation and political manipulation. In addition to being a security force bolstering the decrepit local army, it has recruited locals from one of the contending ethnicities to further terrorize the opposition and institute a reign of terror marked by killings and repression of the opposition. Wagner is in addition involved in political propaganda to bolster its client autocrat in power. In return, its affiliate Russian companies are involved in massive exploitation of minerals especially gold which it massively evacuates to Russia.

    It has been established that gold exports from Central African Republic and Mali in particular are supplying Russia with the gold reserves to frustrate and douse Western sanctions against Russia in the Ukraine war.

    Mali presents another face of the entanglement of Wagner in Africa’s unfolding political quagmire. The military junta in the country recently chased away the French ambassador to the country. In quick response to an increasing reciprocal diplomatic nastiness, President Emmanuel Macron ordered the withdrawal of a French stabilization force of over 3500 from Mali. The French troops had in 2013 gone to save the government in Bamako from being toppled by Islamic jihadists advancing from its northern regions and poised to overrun the country. The French troops quickly neutralized the jihadist advance and saved Mali from becoming an Islamic fundamentalist state.

    Quite significantly, the Bamako junta has quickly signed on a contingent of 1,000 Russian mercenaries to replace the withdrawing French troops. The Russian mercenaries came from the Wagner Group which enjoys the support and patronage of the Kremlin and sections of corporate Russia.

    The Russian mercenaries in Mali are merely an expeditionary force tacitly supported by the Kremlin to probe a strategic opening in the West African region. With close links to Russian intelligence and big business, the Wagner Group mercenaries are out to explore new areas of strategic vulnerability and declining Western influence in troubled spots around the world.

    In the short run, the Russian mercenaries are likely to neutralize the jihadist menace in Mali and wherever else they go in West Africa, making their services an attractive security option to more troubled countries. These would be countries from which the French may still withdraw or those with ineffective national security apparatus.

    Through the mercenaries, Russia may however have a wider interest than instant cash payments and mineral concessions for their services. In return for securing vital mineral locations, they are known to have negotiated lucrative mineral prospecting rights and contracts for major Russian corporations.

    If the Wagner venture becomes more lucrative in the years ahead, an ambitious and aggressive Moscow might see an opening to expand its strategic influence in West Africa if only to fill the gap being left by a major West European power, namely, France.

    If what is happening in Mali is an indication of the direction of developments in West Africa’s French speaking states, the presence of Moscow inspired mercenaries and hordes of Chinese contractors and free lance minerals marauders in the region could herald a tectonic shift in the strategic character of the region. Russiana dn Chines players may be on their way to increased influence in parts of Africa.

    French speaking countries bordering the Sahel have recently begun to witness a systematic reduction in French influence and support. Social and economic circumstances are worsening as France curtails its economic support for its erstwhile colonies. Islamic jihadist insurgents have recently ramped up pressure on these countries, squeezing their weakened security forces.

    In turn, their fragile democratic governments are being systematically overthrown by ambitious military adventurists. In quick succession, Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso and Chad have all recently witnessed military coups. In each case, the cocktail of justifications by coup makers have included the bad handling of jihadist insurgency and terrorist pressure by elected governments.

    Russian presence and influence in Africa through the Wagner Group stands out for its peculiar nature. The Russian adventurers are not in Africa to fund and build infrastructure like the Chinese are doing. They are not out to replace Western powers like France and Britain on a civilizing mission. Nor are they in Africa to win converts to any recognizable ethos or culture. They are also not ambassadors of any code of governance behavior. Democracy is not nearly their business. You cannot give what you do not have at home.

    On the contrary, the Russians are here primarily for business. The strategic goals of the Russian government are however tied to this fundamental primary economic exploitation objective. They are a primarily an extration force of mineral  thieves, contract seekers and power adventurers. In return for stabilizing the security of their host countries against rampaging jihadists and other power adventurers, they get paid in cash or through mineral concessions. Yet they are a deliberate force of influence seeking on a global scale. Notably, Mr. Putin is not an agent for development or enlightenment unlike his Soviet Union predecessors that at least pretended to counter Western development propaganda. Putin is essentially an extractive power influencer.

    As a military contractor, Wagner’s political interest  is in securing the interests of the strong men who invite them into African countries. In almost all cases, these strong men are autocratic leaders who came to power at the expense of fledgling democratic administrations. They are either coup makers and junta leaders or unpopular politicians who need a foreign military force to elbow out their opponents by neutralizing the existing weak national military force.

    The continued presence and influence of such a force cannot be in the interest of either Africa’s development or the future of democracy. As the future of the Wagner Group hangs on a balance in Russia itself, there is a challenge for the African Union and individual African states. The continued presence of mercenary forces like the Wagner Group and similar other rogue forces needs to be recognized as a threat to Africa’s quest for stability, genuine development and democracy in the years ahead. A continental stand on the role of mercenaries in Africa is urgently required.

  • The ministers Tinubu does NOT need – By Chidi Amuta

    The ministers Tinubu does NOT need – By Chidi Amuta

    President Bola Tinubu has displayed a commendable preparedness to be president. He has, in just one month, shown a keen familiarity with the current state of the nation. In line, he has made bold policy pronouncements indicating an unmistakable eagerness to be different from his tepid and clueless predecessor. Whether it is in the devaluation of the Naira or the dramatic removal of the troublesome oil subsidy, Mr. Tinubu has shown the courage to take charge and an awareness of the burden of power. He has in the process displayed two essential qualities of executive presidency: a sense of direction and decisiveness. He has coupled these with the requisite willingness to engage, negotiate and hear voices from important contending quarters in the nation.

    However, the time is still short. Nothing has so far been achieved in concrete terms. The policy directions that have been indicated can in the short term only lead to more hardship and suffering. Both the fuel subsidy removal and the Naira devaluation have already ushered in considerable inflation and cost of living spikes. But Mr. Tinubu is lucky. Eight years of Buhari’s rudderless incompetence prepared our citizens for the very worst. Even the indication that here comes something positively different is enough to inspire patience and endurance. The hope is that with time and popular forbearance, the policies should lead to the desirable direction of a better life for the majority. No one can as yet swear by the blank cheques that the Nigerian populace has issued to the Tinubu administration at this onset of its honeymoon days. While Mr. Tinubu has shown that he understands what our desperate situation requires, the current public mood indicates a society that is willing to give the new president a chance.

    But so far, the president has acted and spoken largely through a personal ambit of presidential authority. Soon after inauguration, he spoke alone at Eagle Square when he casually shut off the fuel subsidy. That is a classic demonstration of the loneliness of ultimate power. Since then, he has acted and indicated directions only in the company of a slim collection of advisers and personal aides. But thetime aloud for brash displays of sovereign swagger are running out. There is a limit to how effective presidential authority can be when the machinery of state is run only by a well intentioned president surrounded by a handful of boisterous advisers and enthusiastic foot soldiers.

    He now needs to fully constitute a government. Only then can his good intentions and actions reflect the collective wisdom of the nation he is elected to govern. In other words, Tinubu now needs a cabinet to begin translating his statements of good intentions and nice wishes into the tangible actions of a government. It is precisely in the choice of ministers that the prospects of Tinubu’s legacy may lie.

    In a representative political setting, erecting a cabinet requires a deft combination of politics and clear executive discerning. The president needs to play the politics of managing our diversity in the choice of those he appoints as ministers. He also needs to navigate the interests of his party and the pressure of other contending parties and interests in the National Assembly. Above all else, he has to inspire the confidence of the local populace inand the international community in the caliber and capacity of those he chooses to run the affairs of the Nigerian state as ministers.

    Perhaps inadvertently, Mr. Tinubu has defined the caliber of ministers he needs to activate the promise of his opening policy shots. He wants boldness in policy measures. He wants speed in initiating policies and implementing programmes. He probably wants a reasonable level of credibility and transparency in those who will wear the toga of key state officials. Above all else, his policy indicators imply that his ministers must have the knowledge base, proven capacity, competence and experience to understand the complexity of the issues that urgently confront today’s Nigeria. Without saying so in many words, there is every indication that Mr. Tinubu is in a hurry to catch up on grounds lost by his embarrassing predecessor.

    His options are clear and well defined. He either hires a cabinet of politicians, seasoned technocrats or a combination of the two. In a UK-type parliamentary system, his choice would be simple. He would just need to select from among the leading MPs in his party to constitute a cabinet in a relatively short time. But the presidential system and the imperatives of republican democracy offer a different template. It is made even more complex by the sheer expanse and diversity of the Nigerian landscape as well as the rich bank of manpower available in Nigeria at home and abroad.

    The simple formula under the presidential system ought to be that once a president is elected, the assumption is that the entire nation becomes his constituency. It is from that wide expanse that he is challenged to choose the best hands and heads to run the affairs of state. He may in theory not be limited by considerations of partisanship. But in reality, the president needs to reward his political party associates and key supporters whose support earned him victory. He also needs to reflect the interests of vital constituencies and special interests. An ally may be a great political mover but a totally useless administrator and hopeless manager of resources and manpower.

    In the context of what is emerging as the Tinubu imperative, therefore, the job description and scale of competence of the ministers he needs have been self-defined. It does seem as though he has implicated himself into hiring a cabinet dominated by technocrats, knowledgeable and experienced hands and not necessarily politicians. His record as governor of Lagos state suggests thahe is at his best when he goes out to head -hunt knowledgeable experts and competent hands from across board to run the affairs of state. Will he follow that pattern which has worked for him previously?

    All things considered, Tinubu’s options are somewhat narrow. He cannot follow the pure technocrat/intellectual dominant cabinet that we see in a place like Singapore where the cabinet reads like an Ivy League university faculty list of who graduated from which top Western university. The Singaporean model is historical and specific. They are coming from a history of Spartan meritocracy in a foundation laid by their late founder, the great Lee Kuan Yew. They do not have our history of nasty politics and silly compromises and compulsive glorification of mediocrity.

    On the contrary, Tinubu’s options are defined by the scope and nature of what he has defined as his priorities. It is also defined by the immediate backdrop of his predecessor for whom a cabinet literally meant no more than a room full of human political furniture. Buhari and his cabinet ruined the nation and brought us to this sordid pass. They did this by just sitting there and doing practically nothing except in a few cases of commendable performance. Minimally, then, Tinubu has to have a better and different cabinet from Buhari. In this sense, the nature of the Tinubu cabinet has been defined by the minuses of the Buhari catastrophe as well as his own early definition of his policy pathway.

    In this regard, the president has an immediate model and precedent in the current US cabinet. President Joe Biden literally had his cabinet options defined by the minuses of Donald Trump’s excesses. He won the election on a platform of diversity, competence and character against the background of Donald Trump’s record of bigotry, nastiness, division, incompetence and amorality. So, Biden went for a diverse and very ‘American” cabinet. From his choice of the first African American and female vice president, he appointed a Latino secretary of Homeland security, an openly gay Secretary, a number of women, blacks and youth secretaries. He even has a black Defense Secretary in the illustrious General Lloyd Austin. Deeper down, there is a mixture of a few Democrat political figures as well as very outstanding technocrats and intellectuals from his NSA and Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken.

    The immediate Nigerian backdrop in terms of Buhari’s ministers is a disgraceful throwback. It was mostly a parade of anonymity and rank incompetence. Of the few that were recognizable, half were noteworthy for reasons of their public nuisance and notoriety in matters of either crass incompetence or questionable credibility. For some, visibility was more the public consequence of their portfolio rather than whatever content and value they brought to the job that gave them visibility. Admittedly, there were a few good men in the pack.

    The majority were a vast uninspiring army of office occupants and seat warmers. There is a slew of viral anecdotes on aspects of the conduct of the Buhari ministerial class. It is said that the former president only saw most of the vast majority of his ministers at the weekly Federal Executive Council meetings where he often has to be reminded of the names of most ministers. Otherwise, most were never summoned to brief the president on their portfolios since there was no brief or marching orders from the onset. They were not required to submit monthly, quarterly or annual briefings or reports on their stewardship. Reportedly, there were no performance targets, no time lines, and no scoring formula to assess which ministers were doing what or who was succeeding or failing in what. In Buhari’s cabinet, 99 percent of the ministers stayed in office for the entire eight years until some had to opt out either from boredom or under the guise of going to contest the 2023 presidential election.

    The result was an embarrassing lack of co-ordination in the activities of the ministers. In times of national crises, government acquired many voices. A cacophony of clashing and distressed choristers at the altar of an absentee deity. While trying to defend the same administration, different key officials and ministers presented a chaotic chorus of dissembling voices and competing narratives held together by nothing in particular.

    Yet, Nigerians assumed there was a government in Abuja entrusted to cater for their interests and welfare. But to what end? The concept of ultimate responsibility resting with the President was in doubt as the presidential seal of finality was permanently missing. The president was either mostly absent or in detached aloofness. The nation doubted whether in fact anyone was in charge. That is how the theory that Nigeria was a packed flight on a tragic auto-pilot was born.

    The handful of ministers who burst into limelight did so by taking advantage of the missing central commanding voice. They seized advantage of the strategic importance of their portfolios to present themselves to the public as isolated islands of activity and performance. The rest, lost in the comfort of their own anonymity, were content with occupying cozy seats, enjoying copious perks and helping themselves to the honey pot of state power and unmerited privilege.

    Going forward and given his projected policy trajectory, there is a distinct category of ministers that Mr. Tinubu needs to avoid. This is the category of nakedly ambitious political rabble rousers and noise makers.

    The imperative of the hour is work and national recovery from eight years of abysmal leadership and atrocious governance. Tinubu does not need political trouble and noise makers. Nor does he need ministers who will compete for headlines with the president. Under the presidential system, the top political spot belongs to the president. Those who want to clamber onto the president’s mandate to chisel out their own political ambition should have no place in the imminent cabinet. As public parlance puts it, Tinubu only needs men and women who know “the road” of how to manage resources and people in the service of a nation in trouble.

    But from the chatter around him, there is a powerful lobby of ambitions politicians lining up in desperate hustle for ministerial jobs. Some of them have even pre-selected their portfolios.

    The most conspicuous embodiment of this category is Mr. Nyesom Wike, immediate past governor of Rivers State. This prime advocate of disruptive politics and bill board governance is said to be hell bent on making Tinubu’s cabinet list at all costs. After overturning the boat of his party, the PDP, Wike gatecrashed into reckoning in the winning APC through an electoral abracadabra that is still unfolding.

    The rumours say he wants to be minister of works, Niger Delta, police affairs or even defense! Mr. Wike is a Nigerian citizen and a politician at that. He is entitled to change his party affiliation or aspire to any position as a matter of right. But he comes with a baggage full of a wild pedigree of serial betrayals, disruptive behavior, uncouth manners, ostentation, exhibitionism and alleged serial abuse of sundry substances.

    Of course, what Wike eats may not give Mr. Tinubu indigestion. But his known political trajectory does matter. Tinubu as the employer of ministers is entitled to establish ground rules as to who qualifies for entry. Mr. Wike is well known to Tinubu. He serially betrayed Mr. Rotimi Amaechi, former Rivers governor, who dredged him from the political swamps and gave him prominence and a gateway to unprecedented visibility, wealth and influence. He revolted and humiliated his political associates in the Rivers State PDP, demolishing businesses, homes and wiping off livelihoods. He intimidated the leadership of the rival APC in the state, hounding most of its leading lights either into internal exile in the state or far away Abuja.

    He confronted, serially disrespected and betrayed Mr. Atiku Abubakar, presidential candidate of the party as well as Dr. Iyiorchia Ayu, immediate past chairman. He wanted the presidential ticket of the party and could not secure it. He was also turned down for the number two slot. In revolt, he splintered the party along north-south lines and seceded with a handful of PDP governors to emerge as leader of something called Group of Five. Mr. Wike has a reputation for heading to court against everyone whose actions conflict with his political interests. He is said to be lucky to enjoy the ‘friendship’, loyalty and sympathy of a significant number of judges at every level of the judicial hierarchy.

    Mr. Wike and his cohorts are free to join the APC or any other party of their choice. But Mr. Tinubu is too experienced in politics to ignore the antics of a ‘political visitor’ who is likely to disturb the peace of his political household. A man who has betrayed nearly all his significant political mentors and bosses is best kept busy in other ways.

    A possible minister with such an ‘impressive’ resume of disruptive behavior and political bad manners may be too dangerous and distracting from the sense of national purpose and focus that Mr. Tinubu has already outlined for his fledgling administration. Of course Mr. Wike is not alone in the fellowship of politics of bad manners. But he stands out in his rampaging national nuisance value and political toxicity to be ignored.

    At this hour, President Tinubu is the nation’s No.1 employer of labour in the political industry. He has thousands of jobs to offer to all those he may consider vital to his victory at the polls including Mr. Wike and others. In seeking to dispose of such difficult political wares, the President and his team should also be creative. Everyone does not need to become a minister. There are patronage slots in the rivate sector as well as strategic diplomatic posts. For instance, at a time like this, Nigeria probably needs a bold ambassador at the Kremlin. A Mr. Wike will nicely fit the bill of “Our man in Moscow”.

  • Tinubu’s road to somewhere – By Chidi Amuta

    Tinubu’s road to somewhere – By Chidi Amuta

    Within a fortnight in power, President Bola Tinubu may have set the tone and tempo for what promises to be a dizzying presidency. Right from the inauguration ground at Eagle Square, he could not suppress his anxiety to be in power and in control at the same time. Most classical concepts of power lament that it is hard to be in power and in control simultaneously.  Tinubu seems out to smash that conundrum from the outset. His immediate predecessor was in office, a bit in power but hardly ever in control.

    To be in office, in power and in absolute control may well be the feature that sets Tinubu apart among the pantheon of Nigeria’s elected leaders. In fact, the haste and immediacy in his tone and temper places him closer to the tradition  of our past military leadership. This the tradition popularized by the late General Murtala Mohammed (“with immediate effect!”). It is a haste to right the wrongs, to correct the path of national leadership and followership by restoring a path of sanity lost by recent deviations. This haste to reform, to correct and get the system to obey a leader’s deeply felt reformist zeal usually cuts both ways. It might end up as both the leader’s unique selling point as well as the source of the mistakes and errors that may make or mar his legacy in the fullness of time. For Tinubu, the clock has started ticking!

    In rapid succession, he has used an off-script proclamation right at inauguration ground to take off the controversial and longstanding subsidy on gasoline. This single policy measure has put the already troubled Nigerian economy into an initial  tailspin. Inflation has automatically jumped to the mid 22.4 % as gasoline prices have skyrocketed by 300% and more. Transportation costs have gone up  while food inflation and general  inflation have obeyed the laws of the market.

    Organised labour has flexed its familiar muscle by threatening a general strike that was quickly stopped by government through the courts. It is a measure of Tinubu’s luck with the Nigerian public that the resistance to gasoline price hikes has not yet produced a general social upheaval. Nigerians seem to understand the logic of the subsidy removal but are anxiously awaiting palliative measures to cushion the pain. The hope is that the proceeds of the subsidy removal will be ploughed into more social investment in education, health and infrastructure instead of being creamed off by thievish politicians and crafty bureaucrats.

    With commendable courage and fresh reformist zeal, Mr. Tinubu has also abolished the dubious multiple exchange rate regime. This was a convenient mechanism with which his predecessor bribed cohorts and indirectly powered grievous corruption through arbitrage and uncontrolled patronage. The over valued Naira has fallen in value overnight while the foreign exchange market has been further liberalized by opening up the market to multiple sources of supply ranging from the  banks to the bureaux de change. The anticipation is that a widened and liberalized foreign exchange market will encourage the freeing of foreign currency held by individual citizens, politicians, companies and others to eventually drive down the exchange rate to a more friendly territory. More importantly, this reform of the exchange market should, over time, encourage more external investment and foreign participation in the economy freed at last from lack of transparency and dubious manipulation by government. Over time, it is expected that a more reasonable and sustainable market driven exchange rate will emerge.

    Taken together, both the fuel subsidy removal and the unification of the exchange rate regime are clear indications of much needed reform of the Nigerian economy in the direction of a more sensible open market. The logic seems to be that you need a functioning market before you can decide on whether it is working or not. Enlightened economic policies will, over time, create a more elite friendly atmosphere in which perhaps the middle class can begin to return. It is expected that middle class creature benefits such as consumer credits, basic indicators of prosperity such as new homes, new cars , affordable holidays and the restoration of the swagger of the middle class. The expectation is normal that when the economy is working, the benefits will trickle down to the popular masses thus making the president a little more popular and acceptable across board. These benefits will of course require  some time to translate into perceivable benefits.

    In tandem, Mr. Tinubu has signed a Students Loan Bill that had been on the presidential in-tray. This should grant access to borrowed funding for indigent students in tertiary institutions  whose career goals may be threatened by lack of funds. This legislation in its present form may make it impossible for the target students to access any loans as the conditions are both stringent and unrealistic.

    Surely, a bit more thinking needs to go into the implementation of this loan scheme lest the expediency of policy be sacrificed at the altar of populist politics. But even with its defects, this bill indicates a concern for the welfare of youth in line with what he promised during the campaigns.

    The indirect political benefit of these economic and social reforms is to earn Mr. Tinubu both the elite consensus and popular acceptability which he needs  to consolidate his legitimacy and general acceptability. A president who came to power in a storm of still raging electoral disputations and with a little over 30% popular vote count cannot  rest on his oars when it comes to mining elite consensus and courting popular  support.

    In the direction of troubled institutional leadership, Mr. Tinubu has suspended the troublesome Central Bank of Nigeria Governor, Mr. Godwin Emefiele. He has allowed the secret police , the DSS, to cart the ambitious fellow into detention and possibly a series of lengthy interrogations. No one knows exactly what Mr. Emefiele is being grilled for but the public harbors a cocktail of grievances against Mr. Emefiele’s conduct as the custodian of our collective treasury. He scored a first in being the first Central Bank governor in Nigeria to sit in office while carrying a party card and expressing active interest in vying for the office of president. He is also one CBN governor to have openly canvassed a series of partisan policy preferences as against transparent objective economic policies.

    On his own, Emefiele is  a fertile source of multiple tales and scandals. Ranging from meddling with lucrative exchange rate deals and contracts to  floating opaque agricultural loan schemes to illiterate farmers who can no longer tell whether they got any loans or made any repayments to the Central Bank. He committed the less heinous crime of sometimes openly insulting state house reporters. Some less gracious beer parlor versions of the Emefiele saga accuse him of colluding with former president Muhammadu Buhari to confiscate the monies of Nigerians under the disastrous Naira redesign gambit.

    In the process, both men impoverished most Nigerians overnight while promising the redesigned Naira notes that hardly ever came. Unverified rumours, including those once canvassed in court by the DSS fingered the man in matters as dangerous and frightful as terrorist financing. All these are ahead of a formal charge and possible arraignment of the man before a competent court. The best service to the rule of law is to quickly complete interrogations and investigations and arraign the man to prove his presumed innocence in open court.

    As if that is not enough, Mr. Tinubu has also suspended and commenced investigation of the youthful but influential head of the anti-graft agency, the EFCC, Mr. Rasheed Bawa. Here again, a halo of conspiracies and scandals shroud the young man’s arrest and ongoing investigation. Immediate former governor of Zamfara state, Mr. Matawalle,  had a shouting match with Mr. Bwa at the exit door over alleged a $2 million gratification negotiations that did not quite go well. There have also been leaks of stratospheric  hotel expenses incurred by the youthful chairman somewhere as well as  unprofessional interests in assets seized from corruption related persons. Since Mr. Bawa himself assumed office under the smoke trail of a predecessor fingered for similar infractions, Nigeria’s anti corruption crusade may have come to ahead somehow. An agency set up to fight corruption  has itself become a cesspool of ranking corruption.

    Mr. Tinubu’s pace of reform is likely to earn him much needed political capital and international acceptability. Already, influential media opinion at home and abroad have already acknowledged his commendable pace and direction. At home, he has struck a decisive difference from his predecessor who needed many months after being elected to make even a single appointment let alone announce any policy initiative. It took Mr. Buhari more than six months to put a cabinet in place and even longer to fill other strategic federal positions.

    On the contrary, Mr. Tinubu has hit the ground running. He has taken most of these major reform measures and decisions even without having a cabinet or government in place. He has made a number of commendable appointments at the level of presidential advisers. It is expected that his cabinet nominations will follow the same track.

    For a president who campaigned on the basis of continuing with the legacy of Mr. Buhari, his fellow party man and political mentor, these developments and pace raise issues. They are bold drastic reversals of the Buhari style and spirit. As against Mr. Buhari who was known for most of his eight years in office as “Baba Go-Slow” at home and abroad, some international  media headlines have already dubbed Mr. Tinubu “Baba Go-Fast”. Nigerians have taken note and are watching. What Mr. Tinubu is doing and the pace of his actions do not quite look like those of a president who is likely to follow in the footsteps of his predecessor no matter the close personal relationship they may have.

    Clearly, by the strategic positions of those he has suspended  or fired and his sheer pace of policy decisions, Mr. Tinubu has struck a decisive difference from the lack lustre, slovenly and rather tepid Mr. Buhari. It is too early to fathom how the political camp of the vindictive Buhari will respond to Tinubu’s early breaking of ranks.  But there could be some kicks and backlash from the dead Buhari presidential horse

    At the level of real politick, Mr. Tinubu’s preferences have been reflected in the choice of leadership of the 10th National Assembly. Last Tuesday’s leadership contests in the National Assembly was a litmus test of Mr. Tinubu’s political sagacity. In the process of pushing his preferences in that contest, he may have empowered some political Czars that will either facilitate his clout with the National Assembly or return to haunt his own political path in the days ahead.

    It is noteworthy that soon after being chosen as Senate President, Mr. Akpabio paid homage to the home of immediate past Rivers State governor, Mr. Nyesom Wike. I hope Mr. Tinubu watched that footage closely. Tinubu may soon need to compare notes with Atiku Abubakar on Mr. Wike’s reliability as a political ally.

    Nonetheless, for good or for ill, Tinubu has a kindred spirit in the election of Mr. Godswill Akpabio, the free wheeling and dealing former governor of Akwa Ibom state and Minister of the Niger Delta and sole prefect of the NDDC as Senate President. The indication is that in the years ahead, there is more likely going to be a serious engagement between the executive and the legislature. But even then, there was noticeable disquiet both inside the ruling APC and among the opposition parties about the choices that were made on the NASS leadership.  It is an indication that we are not likely to have a rubber stamp legislature but one in which deal making and negotiations by hard headed political animals is likely to produce better legislative compromises.

    Nonetheless, Mr. Tinubu’s hurried reform pace and measures are not likely to go without some resistance or even political consequences. In the economic front, both the fuel subsidy regime and the multiple exchange rate regime were driven by deep seated business, political and bureaucratic mafias and their deep interests. The long standing fuel subsidy regime created and sustained an army of emergency billionaires and powerful oligarchs. Some of them had no other business than the massive subsidy heist with its dubious documentations and opaque accounting systems. When the oil subsidy regime was first exposed,  it was discovered that the accounts of even hair dressing salons in obscure locations were credited with huge subsidy deposits that embarrassed the real owners of the salons.

    The same was the case with the multiple exchange rate regime. Quite a number of ‘businessmen’ were people with high value political connections who made huge amounts from arbitrage and foreign exchange racketeering. All it took was to be allocated foreign exchange on paper by the Central Bank at the official exchange rate of N430 to the dollar which the beneficiary then sold off at the parallel market rate of N750 to the dollar or near that. The arbitrage recipient could make billions of Naira just by making a few phone calls to instruct his bankers accordingly without leaving the comfort of his/her bedroom.

    These interests are deep. Big business is involved. Big money is at stake. By last Friday, some analysts indicated that three leading Nigerian financial oligarchs may have lost close to $6 billion each in a single day from the merger of exchange rates. No one knows exactly how much major oil traders have lost in the last fortnight from the removal of subsidy on gasoline. The interests involved in these losses are a network of economic, political and bureaucratic special interests. The deep state is already rattled. Their fighting methods and capacities are often nasty and far reaching. Having become so used to huge easy money over the years, the probability that these interests will fight back politically is quite high.

    As the encomiums build up for Mr. Tinubu’s speedy reformist style, I see some major roads to somewhere for Mr. Tinubu. He could be speeding up Nigeria’s return to true development after the last eight horrible years. He may be driven by the need to catch up on Nigeria’s lost time in the direction of sensible development. It could also be a journey to reverse the tragic missteps of Mr. Buhari’s lost eight years  and thus salvage whatever is left of the integrity of the APC.

    Mr. Tinubu could also be openly inviting  a head on collusion with the forces of Nigerian business as usual whose interests are likely to be deeply hurt . Whichever road the Tinubu presidency travels from here, I  can only repeat the caution that formed the title of my column last week: Watch the thorns and “Mind the Gaps”, Mr. President!

  • Appointments: Beyond the stampede at the entrance – By Chidi Amuta

    Appointments: Beyond the stampede at the entrance – By Chidi Amuta

    This is political appointments season. It is also a season of migrations to Abuja and the various state capitals where there are new governors and overlords. It is the season of intense shoving and jostling for choice government positions. Predictably, there is a virtual stampede at the entrance door of the new administrations at federal and state levels.

    Most hotels in Abuja and some state capitals are fully occupied. Hotel lobbies are brimming with all manner of fringe politicians and their appendages. Smart lobbyists are also making a kill in fees and back pocket payments from desperate job seekers. All manner of resumes are flying around just as lobbyists are having a hard time. In a nation of gifted artists,  sifting plain idiots from the few who have anything to offer can be tough.

    It is mostly an elite game. The elite is literally on bended knees at the feet of new political deities and men of power. It is understandable. In Nigeria’s peculiar ecosystem , politics is almost the only industry with guaranteed funding and almost instant returns.

    As the hustling  rages, the common folk who trooped out to vote at the polls in February and March have since moved on. Their hope and expectation is that the new leadership will use good people to do good things for the people. There lies the importance of this appointments season in the unfolding culture of democratic succession and seasonal renewals. But we need to put the season of  stampede into context.

    Since 1999, democracy has delivered two predictable dividends in Nigeria. There is now a fairly predictable calendar of national democratic succession rituals. There is above all the rise and consolidation of a clear political industry complete with all the features of a real industrial complex in a free market.

    Imperfections and disfigurements notwithstanding, we now have a fair idea of what must happen in the political industry every election season of four- year cycles. The noisy campaigns. The festival of rallies and mob assemblies. The pageant of politicians in garish robes who address mobs of starving illiterates in English. The parade of aspiring messiahs and the reduction of our national hopes into party marketing slogans. There are of course the few good men and women driven by good intentions and lofty ideals. After the elections, the mournful processions of losers and their crashing ambitions drowned by the drums of triumphant winners heading towards immense power, wealth and glory.

    It is not just democracy as a desirable  imperative of nation being that is coming to stay. There is a more fundamental development. Like elsewhere in the ‘free’ world, the rituals of post election succession now taking place in Nigeria form part of the seasonal worship of something no one wants to call its real name. The deity in season is the goddess of the political industry. The season of appointments is the time for the selection of the managers and messengers who will preside over the state for at least another four years.

    There is perhaps nothing to be prudish about this.  It is only natural that those who worked for the electoral victory of the new overlords should expect compensation through this seasonal bazaar of appointments. But there is a logic to it all.  You cannot have a free, open liberal political system without its corresponding economic equivalent. The ethos of the open market economy dictates that the political order also partakes of the manners of the market place.  Or, better still, the political order must carry the imprints of its enabling economic environment. Open society, open market, free wheeling, dealing and stampede in appointments and trade in lucrative positions. Nothing out of the ordinary!

    So, our politics has become a full- fledged industrial sub sector, a gigantic trading floor. Votes and alliances are bought and sold freely. Even personal integrity has a price tag and is up for sale.  Political parties are run more like joint stock companies. In these parties, nomination forms for contests for high political offices attract gigantic ‘market determined’ price tags (N100 million for the last APC presidential ticket)! The prices are fixed by captains of the political industry and determined by the anticipated returns on the initial ‘investment ‘ recoverable in the form of pork and patronage when the ‘food’ of electoral victory ‘is ready’.

    Beyond this drama, the real dividend of democracy for the practitioners may be the emergence of a political industry that remains largely unregulated. Yet, politics and politicians regulate and direct every other aspect of our lives.  The political industry through its control of the mechanics of government is the ultimate allocator of wealth, opportunity and privilege. It owns and controls the public sector through the complex machinery of the administrative state. It also indirectly controls the private sector through regulatory institutions like the stock exchange and the Central Bank in addition to frequent legislative disruptions and interventions. The political industry has a monopoly of the awesome power of pork, patronage and elaborate rents.

    As the political enterprise has blossomed into an industry, a big question has arisen: who regulates the political industry? This question has become urgent and necessary as the nation reels under a prevalent and crippling deficit of competence, accountability and responsibility among key captains and operatives of the nation’s power and politics complex. The appointments will be made all right. All manner of miscreants and a few people of honour will be named and sworn into positions bearing fancy titles and lofty appellations. But the nation and its governing state will remain static.

    Appointments into our political industry are mostly not really about competence and efficiency. It is mostly about filling slots and extending patronage. This industry is an expansive all- dominating industry. It is a manpower dominant industry, employing a huge army of people with their own extended family of hangers on and subordinates. It is equally an influence driven industry. Most importantly, this is an industry that controls every other industry, regulating the environment in which others practice, thrive or wither.

    The political industry is a super ordinate behemoth, one that determines its own rules and regulations, sets its own entry requirements, procedures and performance standards. For the nation at large, the choice of who leads us is vested in the political parties which act as insular clearing houses for the political industry.

    We can only guess the precise size of this industry when we estimate the sheer number of elective and appointive offices and their correlates that have featured in the political cycles since 1999. There are at any given time, the President, Vice President, about 36-42 ministers, 30-100 presidential advisers (special, senior special, plenipotentiary etc),109 Senators, 360 House of Representative members (add at least 500 legislative aides), 36 Governors, 36 Deputy governors, about 540 commissioners, about 1,000 plus members of state houses of assembly, 776 Local government chairmen, 9,288 Councilors. There are probably more to count!

    Take the total emoluments, allowances, perquisites, paraphernalia and benefits of all political office holders at the various levels of government and you begin to imagine the expanse, size, capital and recurrent costs of the political industry. A recent industry market survey has determined that official Nigeria alone buys more Japanese SUVs every four years than all the desert safari companies of the Gulf Arab states put together!

    Most importantly, the captains of this army of political officialdom are responsible for determining the national, state and local government budgets. They allocate the resources, appropriate the funds and expend same on behalf of all of us!

    Yet somehow, politics manages to disguise its industrial scope and status by focusing public attention on the myth and ritual of democracy and ‘service to the people’. This is further decorated with the rhetoric of representative government and public service. Sometimes, politicians have focused attention on the gaming aspect of politics, playing it more like a vicious but unserious sport. A few honest political animals will come close to admitting their role as ‘players’ in an all -important industry devoted to serving  a nebulous client called ‘the people’.

    But we can temporarily forget the myth of service to the people and focus on the controlling powers of the political industry and its operators on the rest of society. As leaders and controllers of the mechanics of government, politicians as captains of their unique industry determine the basic outlines of our lives and livelihood as private and corporate citizens. They determine your access to basic services, how much you will pay as tax and what will be left for you and your family. They determine how much you will pay for darkness punctuated by electricity, the quality of teachers that your children will be saddled with, what your essential drug will cost, how many toll gates will dot your way to your village as well as the size of your retirement pension if any.

    Some people endlessly trumpet the relative independence and awesome powers of the private sector. The argument pretends as though the private sector is a self -driving machine of progress, a counterweight to an overbearing public political domain. That is false.

    It is the political industry and their control of the machinery of government that creates the legislative and general macro economic regulatory environment in which the private sector can even operate. Even the boldest and most massive private sector investment and initiative can be neutralized overnight by a casual regulatory twist by the political establishment.

    The political industry also happens to be the most attractive and profitable sector of the economy. It guarantees an out of this world return on investment. It  powers the creation of new social classes at a rate that would make any business entrepreneur blue with envy. It used to be the belief that education or entrepreneurship are the quickest routes out of poverty. Not anymore. The political industry is the only one in which a destitute can leapfrog into the billionaires club in less than four years. A local government councilor or chairman can transmute, in a very short time, from a miserable jobless pauper into an upper middle class poster boy cruising around in fancy cars, living it up in five star hotels and jetting around the globe.

    This is precisely because the main unofficial economic activity of the political industry is rent seeking and rent sharing. This is a complement to the allocation of pork as well as the privatization of constituency benefits. In Nigeria, political office holders tend to be state officials in the day and rent seekers and pork administrators at night. Due to the preoccupation with rents, a political city like Abuja is easily the most expensive piece of real estate anywhere on the African soil. Property prices and rentals as well as the general price levels for luxury goods tend to bear no relationship to the value of the item on sale.

    This is not peculiar to Abuja. It tends to apply to most political capitals in the world. In the United States for instance, of the ten most expensive neighborhoods nationwide, five are in Washington DC. In a rent seeking economy, the proceeds come from an invisible trade in favours, influences and connections up to the highest level.

    Like every other industry, our political industry has a monopoly of its own recruitment and entry requirements. The strengths and defects in the system are showcased by the performance of the leaders of today especially our imperious state governors.  In all fairness, the system has also thrown up a few good men and women.

    From this mixed bag of possibilities, the question that therefore arises is this: Are the captains of the political industry a special interest elite or just strange bed fellows? Are they recognizable by certain features beyond their garish costumes and humongous SUVs? Is there a unity of purpose, a solidarity of ways and means or some esprit de jouer among them as political players?

    Let us make no mistake about it. Politics everywhere is about the allocation of pork and portfolios of patronage among contending political elites. But in admitting this truism, there is an overarching  moral question. Where does enlightened self interest stop and the pursuit of the public good begin? The Nigerian collective mind is haunted by the imbalance between the instant prosperity of political office holders and the abject poverty of the general populace who vote at elections. Worse still, the poor quality of social service delivery to the public is a constant glaring indictment of the quality and competence of those who jostle for public offices in the country.

    For the political leadership of the country, therefore, there is a pressing burden in this appointment season. It is that of appointing ‘fit and proper’ persons to ensure the highest level of service delivery to the public in all spheres of government responsibility.

    Currently, our seasonal political appointments tend to replicate the same embarrassing incompetence that the public has come to associate with government presence in our lives. That has fuelled a tradition of public apathy and congenital cynicism about government among the populace.

    But there is a way out. Appointments to strategic government positions in areas that drive service delivery and the overall efficiency of the state must be guided by merit. Politicians should appease themselves with private sector support and patronage. The core of national trained manpower and technocracy should fill the positions that drive a functioning republic. This should be the guiding spirit of this season of mass appointments into key public offices. The current crowding of the entrances of the corridors of power in a mass quest for mostly unmerited government positions (‘jobs for the boys and girls’!) should be abandoned.

    Let the core machinery of the state be run by the best among us while politicians can reward themselves in other ways for enabling and sustaining a functioning republic.