Tag: Magnus Onyibe

On What Issues Are 2023 Presidency Front-liners Running? – By Magnus Onyibe

The 2023 general election in Nigeria promises to be a referendum of sorts. That is simply because each of the frontrunners of the three main parties, All Progressives Progress, APC, People Democratic Party, PDP and Labor Party, LP that are likely to produce the next president of Nigeria next year have assets or liabilities by virtue of having been in public eyes through public service records that are being scrutinized.

And it is from those prisms that the assessment of the capacities and abilities of the potential next president of Nigeria in 2023 is being carried out.

But even as the February 25 date when the first ballots are expected to be cast is barely four(4) months away,internal schisms are still wracking the main political parties-ruling All Progressives Party,APC,main opposition,Peoples Democratic Party,PDP and a new contender,Labor Party,LP.

The wrangling in the two traditional rival parties is so rife that while the APC could not form its campaign council or produce its manifesto until last Friday October 21,which is nearly one month after the lndependent National Electoral Commission,lNEC,lifted the ban on campaigns last September 28,the PDP which had launched its campaign and manifesto on October 10 which is barely twelve (12)days after the ban was lifted.

Even,the PDP is yet to ramp up its campaign in ernest owing to hiccups bothering on wether or not it is pausing to accommodate the rebellious gang of governors led by Rivers state governor,Nyesom Wike with three (3) or four(4) other governors,which is gaining traction and with a potential of crystallizing into a breakaway faction of the PDP.

I will in the course of this discuss dwell further on the internecine wars raging in the APC and PDP,but which is being quelled by the former,even as it is unfortunately consuming the latter.

In contrast to the crisis that has stricken the traditional parties,the Labor Party,LP that is coming in from the rear has been to some degrees rancor free.

Remarkably, LP had literally jumped the gone by commencing campaigns online and embarking on million man marches which are actually street processions staged by angry unemployed and out of school youths.Somehow, it that amounted to campaigning in disguise long before it was legitimate to do so.

And it boils down to bending the rule without breaking it since the nation’s elections regulatory organ INEC which had set the takeoff date for the campaigns for the 2023 elections for September 28 did not take cognizance of the power of the internet in political campaigns or could not phantom how to enforce ban on campaigning online.

Consequently,LP was able to seize the space to maximally market its self and its presidential candidate to the youths who are so called NETIZENS and mainly adult Nigerians mainly in the diaspora who are now in the forefront of the movement for the actualization of Obi presidency in 2023.

Having started late,since the LP unlike the PDP or APC had never been in power as a ruling party as such it is relatively unknown to the electorate and therefore understandable why the party has been in a hurry to spread its foot prints nationwide.

And,truth be told,it is a feat that it has achieved via its massive social media presence being powered by the same youths that staged #Endsars street protests against government in October,2020 and out of school students owing to ASUU eight (8) months long strike.

The LP has performed so commendably that both INEC and the traditional parties,APC and PDP have a lesson or two to learn from the new party that has shot itself into national reckoning via its captivating ability to harvest latent youth voter energy hitherto unharnessed.

The current unprecedented wave of youths participation in politics which has added about ten (10) million to the number of eligible voters for the 2023 contest has resulted in a paradigm shift in politics with politicking based on socioeconomic issues driven by our youths now being the new order.
That is as opposed to focusing on prebendal issues of religion and tribe which the old generation politicians are still dwelling on,hence progress and development of significance have been eluding our country.

So,what appears to be LP’s liability which is little or no clout or political pedigree prior to the current election season owing to its newness on the national platform compared to the two leading and traditional parties that had controlled power at the center,(PDP for sixteen years and APC for 8 years by May 29 next year) is turning out to also be its strength in light of the fact that it is not bogged down by the burden of a negative record of leadership at the centre like the ruling APC and main opposition,PDP.

Fortuitously,the LP had earlier on in the political journey to the 2023 general elections been faced with the challenges of internal schisms that are presently threatening to tear the traditional parties especially the PDP asunder.

That was when it’s current presidential candidate,Peter Obi,a former vice presidential candidate to Atiku Abubakar as presidential candidate on the PDP platform in 2019,seized the LP platform to pursue his presidential ambition when he realized that he had no chance in his original party,PDP where there were multiple major players or ‘big boys’ jostling to become the presidential flag bearer.

Before joining the PDP,Peter Obi had served as the governor of Anambra state in 2014 under the platform of All Progressive Grand Alliance,APGA,founded by lgbo war icon ,chief Chukwuemeka Odumegu Ojukwu of blessed memory.

So in pivoting to the LP,he figured out that he had no fighting chance in the PDP which was quite insightful given the epic battle still raging within the main opposition party arising from a very vicious contest for the presidential ticket last May.

Of course,taking over the LP as it’s presidential candidate was not a tea party. But Obi had the good fortune or foresight of escaping to the LP to avoid the fall outs of the demons of post party primaries wrangling that border on personality supremacy that the APC and PDP are currently wrestling with.

Perhaps,given the very contentious nature of labor unions,LP which had labor activists as its core foundation members,the party could not really move forward as it should.

It may be recalled that one of the foremost union leaders in Nigeria,Adams Oshiomole that later became APC chairman ventured into politics via the LP platform. But he later switched to APC after becoming governor of Edo state,owing to the complexity of the LP platform.

So,also did Olusegun Mimiko,who also left the LP – a platform under which he served as governor of Ondo state to join the PDP.

Even Dele Momodu,Ovation magazine publisher had once contested for the presidency of Nigeria on the LP platform before he joined the PDP and contested in the primaries for the 2023 presidential ticket.

I have gone this far into details about the antecedents of LP and it’s presidential candidate to put into context the fact that for Peter Obi to become the party’s presidential candidate he had daunting obstacles to surmount and they include hostile former leaders of the party that he successfully tackled within the party and in court of law and thus flushed them out.

The acrimony was not unexpected because it is an existential reality that it is such atmosphere and environment of high friction which is synonymous with trade unionism that compelled the aforementioned notables who had previously leveraged the LP platform to become governors in Edo and Ondo states as well as becoming a presidential flag bearer and caused them to flee from the party would afflict Peter Obi.

But whereas the political notables before Peter Obi failed to give wings to the LP to fly, it’s current presidential ticket holder has made it a prominent player in the politics of Nigeria such that it has from being a fringe party become both a national and an international sensation by leveraging the support of his somewhat fanatical supporters by the name,OBEDIENTs at home and abroad,that recently transformed into OBIDATTI movement-a tag that is forged out of the acronyms of the surnames of the presidential and vice presidential candidates,Peter Obi and Yussuf Datti,Baba-Ahmed.

It is phenomenal that in a space of just six(6) months after Peter Obi took over the reins of leadership,the LP has become a party of consequence in Nigeria’s 2023 general elections.

Invariably,the LP is basically running with the message that it would turn Nigeria from a consuming country to a producing one with a promise to correct everything that has gone wrong with our beloved country under the watch of APC, but without details about its rescue plan and how it would be implemented.

Is that enough to cut the ice with the Nigerian electorate that has been disappointed multiple times by politicians who campaign in poetry, govern a prose-a quote attributd to former New York state governor, Mario Cuomo?

At this juncture it is apropos that we shine the light on the jeopardy within the two main traditional parties- the APC and PDP which are increasingly looking as if they are sinking like elephants caught in quicksand(more so with the PDP and less with APC) while their distant rival,LP is galloping like a gazelle in the savannah through populist actions that the leaders are involving themselves in,such as the call for campaigns to be paused in honor of the over six hundred Nigerians that have died from the recent massive flooding in the low lying areas of the country.

It is germane to point out that the hiatus that was triggered in the two leading parties are self inflicted because they are a fall out of the poor management of the high wire politicking that took place during the party primaries between May and June this year.

With respect to the APC,its presidential candidate Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, BAT who was not the preferred candidate of the leadership of the party but who practically pulled a chestnut out of fire or in a hat trick was at loggerheads with the leadership of the party that presumably preferred Senate President Ahmed Lawan as the party’s presidential candidate until Tinubu in last minute horse trading rallied all the Yoruba and a couple of south-south presidential candidates to step down for him.

The routing of the other contenders for the presidential tickets including former transportation minister and ex Rivers state governor,Rotimi Amaechi and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo who came second and third respectively in the primaries contest left a bad taste in the mouth of the defeated candidates and their supporters.

As such,Tinubu’s victory that was aided by the suspected disdain of APC northern governors for senate president Lawan’s quest to scale up from number three to number one on the ladder or leadership hierarchy of our country was also the additional wind beneath Tinubu’s sail.

Had Lawan who had the Chairman of the party,Abdulahi Adamu as the propelling force succeeded,his presidency could have thwarted the chance of any of the current and immediate past APC governors that are angling or positioning to get a shot at the presidency after Tinubu’s tenure.

Their chances could have been zero simply because if Lawan were to become number one Aso Rock Villa occupant from 2023 for perhaps eight (8)years after which it would be the turn of the south to produce the next president,and there would be a likely wait for at least sixteen (16) years before the current northern governors and other top political actors could get a shot at the presidency.

Since they reckon that they would be out of relevance politically or even be too infirm or not be alive sixteen years from 2023, he was denied their support.

There is even a conspiracy theory that senate president Lawan’s inability to secure his ticket to return to the senate as his place holder allegedly reneged on their agreement to relinquish the ticket to him emanated from the camp of those that scuttled his presidential ambition who have also gone all the way to cancel him out of active participation in politics in the next dispensation.

With no love lost between those that Tinubu deem as internal foes and perhaps justifiably so,a list of campaign council members prepared by the party without his imprimatur had been rejected after being published in the social media by the party.

Being suspicious of the lack of altruism in the intentions of the party leadership that was initially not enthusiastic about his ambition,BAT had insisted on his input in the manifesto.
And tension had welled up and tempers flared up with the ensuing threat of a rift that could have gravely damaged the fabric of unity within the APC being palpable.

As fingers were crossed and breathe was being held over the final list of his campaign council and manifesto,last Friday (22,10,2022)BAT and the APC produced a harmonized list that was adopted by all sides of the divide and officially released.

In fact before last Friday,rumor was rife that with President Mohammadu Buhari’s name not being in the campaign council list,he may not be keen on campaigning for Tinubu,more so because it had appeared as if Tinubu was also distancing himself from president Buhari’s governance record, which no matter how spin doctors try to make Nigerians re-imagine it in positive light,still appears not to be appealing to most of them who are thumbing their noses at the claims being thrown into the public square.

It is doubtful if the veneer that the government and the ruling party tried to put on its governance record last week by trumpeting its claim of lofty accomplishments during its Ministerial Performance Review Retreat with all the ministers and heads of departments and agencies in attendance,yielded any significant change of mind by most Nigerians in any significant or elaborate manner.

That is because despite all the positive sound bites,Nigerians who are being crushed by extreme poverty and struggling to cope with the level of insecurity may not have been fooled.

Nevertheless,given the inherent potential benefits of pushing alternative reality(made popular by ex USA president Donald Trump)which has the capacity to cast doubts into the minds of those sitting on the fence on wether or not they are better off than they were before the APC mounted the throne in Aso Rock Villa in 2023,the image make- over stunt penultimate week might have given some members of the electorate reason to give the APC a second thought.

And to further make itself look better,the APC could also add that the hardships being experienced in Nigeria including insecurity of lives and properties are global and fall out of COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing Russian -Ukraine war as well as the global terrorism phenomenon that got magnified by 9/11 terror attacks in New York and Washington DC.

With the APC having made minor adjustments including adding president Mohammadu Buhari as chairman of the campaign council and the party chairman,Adamu Mohammed as deputy chairman of the campaign council,the aggrieved members of the party seem to have been reconciled and peace appears to be reigning in APC.

Little wonder president Buhari at the launch of the campaign council and manifesto in Aso Rock Villa last Friday vowed that he would be in the forefront of the campaign to make Tinubu president in 2023.

The APC presidential candidate,BAT who had also rejected the manifesto or socio-economic blue print which had been produced by his associates and had thanked the authors for their commitment to his cause while insisting that his plan is to produce a far reaching and robust plan to pull Nigeria back from the precipice, apparently did a good job given the rather practical and doable manifesto that was launched late Friday October 21,2022 which more or less is one month after INEC green-lighted 2023 campaigns.However,it is worth pointing out that the manifesto has been alleged to have been a plagiarized version of late MKO Abiola’s manifesto tagged Hope 1993.

So,from what is now in the public arena,the APC is running on consolidating Buhari’s accomplishments and Tinubu’s much vaunted superlative performance as governor of lagos state from 1999-2007.

Would that be enough for the electorate to put their fate in the current ruling party’s hands once again after what a critical mass of Nigerians generally regard as locust years inflicted by the outgoing APC government ?

While APC internal crisis that appeared to be very deep and not easily reconcilable seems to have been resolved,the conflict within the PDP which is also a fallout of the party primaries has taken on a life of its own as it is currently characterized or defined by the washing of the party’s dirty linen in the public arena.

It is an ugly situation that should not have arisen if the conventional wisdom: ‘A Stitch On Time Saves Nine’ was taken to heart by PDP leadership at that time.

The now resolved APC crisis could have degenerated into a similar dimension of House Of Commotion situation that the PDP appears to have assumed.

But since the conflict was not nipped in the bud as it should have in order to avoid the collateral damages that it has already inflicted on the main opposition party,it is presently severely jeopardized and handicapped.

There is an Arabic saying that goes thus: “If power is for sale, sell your mother to buy it.You can always buy her back again.”

It may be regarded as Machiavellian,so it is not a perfect philosophy to those who don’t share such sentiments based on the belief that supposing your mother is not available to be bought back after you grab power?

But some desperate situations require extraordinary responses which is why what has become a potential split up of the party reminiscent of what happened to it 2013/14 and the run up to the 2015 general elections should have been handled differently.

The incumbent Rivers state governor,Nyesom Wike can clearly be likened to a wounded bull that should have been handled with more care to avoid the collateral damage that he has now inflicted on the PDP that was initially ticking off all the right boxes with respect to its sure-footedness in her quest for its presidential candidate to return to Aso Rock Villa as the prime occupant,and for the party itself to soar one more time into Nigeria’s political orbit as the ruling party at the center,which is an Olympian height from which it fell in 2015 after that stunning failure in the election exercise now known as hurricane Buhari.

Although a lot of damage has been done by allowing what should have been a mere spat to degenerate into a feud,then a crisis that is threatening to have a cataclysmic effect on the party’s chances of producing the president of Nigeria in 2023,damage control can still be implemented to steer the ship off from its current trajectory that could result in its wreckage-defeat at the polls on February 25 next year.

It is unclear if the three man reconciliation committee comprising of former senate president,David Mark,and ex-governors of Delta and River states,James Ibori and Peter Odilli,respectively that was set up by PDP’s presidential standard bearer Atiku Abubakar to mend the broken fences between him and Wike’s group have made any progress.

If it succeeds,it would become the saving grace of the party from imminent failure to win back Aso Rock Villa if the drift is not arrested .

But pride may be killing the PDP which is having its best chance to retake control at the federal government in 2023 but in my view is about to blow it up on the alter of ego of its leaders that are leaving a lot of value on the table which is unfortunate.

My optimism about the bright chances of PDP catapulting itself back to Aso Rock Villa is driven by the high rate of despondency that has seized a critical mass of citizens who are yearning for change in government and political actors.

But it is worrying that the main opposition PDP seem to be lacking in the vigor and palpable determination required to upstage an incumbent.In fact l do not see the enthusiasm.
The party’s campaign council needs to go back to the archives to read what then opposition party APC was doing by this time in 2014 so that it would be guided.In fact they need to understudy Lai Mohamed, current minister of Information and then spokesman of the opposition party and his team.

PDP’s disappointing and somehow tepid campaign so far is derived from its lack of focus or not harping on the stunning levels of insecurity of lives and property nationwide owing to the reign of criminal elements such as terrorists in the name of religious rights agitations,bandits and outlaws disguised as cattle herdsmen on rampage all over the country,hunger and starvation wrecking lives due to lack of employment and inability of the folks in the hinterland to engage in farming or petty trading because the environment is highly unsafe given that those who defiled the order of the nefarious ambassadors recently had their throats slit in Sokoto state and environ.

Also,a combination of the current high rate of inflation at about 21% and outrageous naira/dollar exchange rate at about N750/$1 are a milieu of negative socio-economic factors existent in our economy and country that could warrant change of government.

And it is rather odd and striking that Nigeria is being wracked by all of the above listed malaise right now,but the main opposition party is not exhibiting the determination and zeal that it would take to dislodge the current ruling party that is largely responsible for the malady besetting our country resulting in mass migration of professionals seeking greener pastures overseas that is now popularly referred to as: ‘Jakpa’ syndrome.

That is perhaps because there are no specific issues that the PDP is running on.
If there are,the party and it’s presidential candidate are yet to define their message clearly,so that it would be crystal clear in the minds of the electorate.

The underlying reason for the less than dynamic performance of the PDP in its campaign partly stems from the internecine war within its fold.

And from experience,it often takes more than the failures of governance listed above for a ruling party not to win a general election especially in Africa and a country like Nigeria.

Events of catastrophic dimensions demonstrating or revealing incapacity of the ruling party to handle it have to manifest in the country for a change of government to happen at the polls. And such has not happened except the flooding in the low lying areas which hopefully would not get worse before government gets a good handle of it to avoid collate damage.

Thankfully,so far government has achieved a series of successes over reining in terrorists,bandits and other criminal elements that appeared to have been very menacing a couple of months ago.
Except for the current security alert on Abuja released by both the United States of America,USA and United Kingdom,UK missions in Nigeria,relative safety had returned to the cities,although huge swathes of the hinterland were still under the control of gangsters who are reportedly collecting levies from citizens in locations within Niger state which is a neighbor to the Federal Capital Territory,FCT,Abuja.

The alternative route to victory to the opposition party to unseat the incumbent is galvanization of opposition parties into a sort of coalition force to root out the ruling party at the polls which was the case when ACN,CPC,ANPP, a splinter of APGA and nPDP bounded together to defeat PDP as the ruling party at the center in 2015.

Right now,that efficacious and proven strategy has not been adopted by PDP.

As things stand today,while the APC that was caught up in a similar web appear to have untangled itself,PDP seems to be intent on self destructing by literally not diffusing the time bomb embedded in its bowels that is ticking rather loudly.

In fact,it is gutting and unfathomable to me that the PDP has remained in disarray four (4) months to February 25 that the first ballot will be cast by Nigerians to elect president,senators and members of the House of Representatives.

It is such an irony that rather than be on the cusp of scooping up about four or five of the other opposition parties on the ballot into its fold to make the PDP become more formidable, the risk of losing four or five governors of its fourteen governors stares it in the face.

What would it take for the party Chairman, Iyiorcha Ayu to step aside and allow peace to reign or for the National Working Committee,NWC to compel him to resign in the event that he refuses to make the sacrifice required to save the party?
To me what it takes to succeed are pragmatism and flexibility, not the rigidity that the PDP is currently exhibiting.

Are the events that caused the party to crash from Olympian heights in 2015 when the leadership of the party at that time failed to placate the aggrieved members leading to its being trounced at the polls is about to be reincarnated?

I am yet to figure out why l am manifesting a feeling of de ja vu about PDP that the demon that afflicted it when a significant number of its leaders,notably former Vice President Atiku Abubakar,senator Bukola Saraki,a handful of governors and a host of other heavy weights staged a walk out on the party leadership in the course of a meeting held at Yar’dua Centre,Abuja, is about to happen again.

The current alienation of four (4) or five (5)of its aggrieved governors led by Rivers state,Nyesom Wike including Okezie Ikpeazu of Abia State,Samuel Ortom of Benue state,Seyi Makinde of Oyo state and possibly Ifeanyi Ugwanyi of Enugu state is reminiscent of the walk out by some party stalwarts ftom a party event which signaled the demise of then ruling party,PDP. That is because the rebelling members walked into the waiting arms of the opposition APC that was a melting pot for all the opposition parties.

Viewed from that prism,Wike and the rest of the discontented PDP governors numbering three(3) or may be four (4) if Enugu state is added should have been recognized as a big threat since it is such a rebellion back in 2013/14 that resulted in the loss of the 2015 election by the PDP to APC.

Has the leadership of the PDP considered the fact that with Four(4) or five(5) governors of the fourteen (14) or so PDP governors resolving to encourage their supporters not to vote for PDP presidential candidate it would by all standards of measurement be a big deal?

Now,there are some party stalwarts that are against acceding to Wike’s team demands especially with respect to getting the current chairman of the party Iyiorcha Ayu to step aside for a southerner to occupy the office based on power balancing ethos of the party and to facilitate the healing of the party from its self inflicted injury constraining and causing it to punch below its weight.

The hawks anchor their argument on the belief that the Rebellious Governors do not have any other choice than to kowtow to the party’s dictates because it is too late or impracticable at this point in time to team up with any of the other two leading parties,APC and LP.

Based on the events leading to 2015 election that culminated into the demise of PDP after nPDP was formed on the verge of the 2015 elections by the political big wigs that created the splinter from the mother party,l do not see the reason history would not repeat itself.

There is an argument being made that Rotimi Amaechi,former Rivers state Governor and immediate past minister of transportation and APC 2023 presidential primaries contestant would prevent Wike from joining APC.

And l would argue that such line of thought is hogwash,simply because in politics there are no permanent friends or permanent enemies.
And a good example of that is that both current enemies (Amaechi-Wike) were best of friends when Amaechi was governor and Wike was his chief of staff less than a decade ago.

The earlier the PDP recognizes that the Discontented Five Governors are presently free agents,the better for their chances at winning back Aso Rock Villa.

So,what if in the next few days,weeks or in a couple months,Wike and members of his cohort go into a cahoot with APC or LP to discomfit the PDP? If it happened in 2013/14 why can it not happen again in 2022/23?

The truth is that it is foolhardy to underestimate what an aggrieved party man or members with capacity to hurt the party when pushed to the wall can do to get a pound of flesh.

For context,imagine the fury of a woman scorned.

In addition to dealing with its internal conflicts,the PDP and its presidential candidate are also having difficulties in their messaging as the 2023 general elections go into the home stretch.And without clear cut messaging,they seem to be loosing momentum.

The mis-speak of the party’s presidential candidate,Atiku Abubakar in kaduna during his meeting with Arewa Consultative group left a bad taste in the mouth.That is because rather than talk about what he is running on,he has been accused of literally trashing his Yoruba and lgbo candidates.

And not much has been done to correct the negative impression that he is playing identity politics which is obviously quite offensive to his Yoruba and lgbo base of supporters.

The recent video that trended in the social media with the presidential torch bearer of PDP hobnobbing in Paris,France with individuals that would rub-off negatively,rather than burnish the image of the potential president of Nigeria has also had a dampening effect on a party that should be glowing.

Turaki Atiku Abubakar can not afford to continue to stumble on such avoidable foibles.

In addition to public utterances,particularly in Kaduna that are being twisted and the unpresidential public conduct in Paris,France,the party and its candidate are also not contrasting in any significant manner their campaign promises with that of the APC.
For one,their manifestos are not really dissimilar.

And l don’t see why the PDP and it’s candidate are not capitalizing on the prevailing toxic sociopolitical environment by harping on the causes of Nigerian people’s anger and resentment arising from the socioeconomic hardships that they are currently contending with and vigorously telling them to hold incumbent government responsible.

As for LP and its presidential flag bearer Obi,they are positioning not only as a counterforce to the ruling APC but also espousing alternative plans, although fleetingly on specific policies of president Buhari policies which they are thrashing.

Although,the LP and mr Obi have not articulated in any convincing ways how they intend to achieve their fantastic plans,they are telling potential voters to do away with the baggage of the old political class that they are blaming for all the woes of the country since independence.

Their messaging is that with LP and Obi-Datti ascension to the presidency in 2023, there would be a clean up of the proverbial Augean stable.lt sounds familiar and appears to be an Eldorado of sorts.

But would the LP’s populist and positive sound bites equate capacity and ability to deliver on their promise ?
That is a discernment that the electorate has to make before they cast their votes.

Hopefully,that type of scrutiny would be facilitated by a series of public debates possibly between the presidential candidates from all the eighteen (18) parties on the ballot in 2023 and perhaps later between the four front runners-Tinubu of APC,Abubakar of PDP Obi of LP and Musa Kwakwanso of the fledgling NNPP.

Such an initiative would offer the electorate the opportunity to determine which of the front-liners has a feasible manifesto with actionable plans.

This time,it is my belief that Nigerians are not ready to be taken for a ride anymore by politicians selling them fantastic or dud promises without practical pathways to how the promises can be fulfilled as was the case in 2015 when they were told that naira to dollar exchange rate would be reduced to N1 to $1.

So the candidates for elective offices,particularly those gunning for the presidency must be ready for intensive scrutiny of their personalities and manifestos.lnfact it is at this point in time that civil society organizations such as BudgetIt with focus on finance and accounting and YIAGA Africa with specialization in promoting democracy echos should take the lead in enlightening Nigerians on the efficacy of the plans and programs of each of the political parties and their flag bearers to help them make the right choices.

Magnus Onyibe, an entrepreneur, public policy analyst,author,development strategist,alumnus of Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy,Tufts University, Massachusetts,USA and a former commissioner in Delta state government, sent this piece from lagos.

To continue with this conversation, please visit www.magnum.ng

October 26, 2022
2023 presidential front-liners on the firing line – By Magnus Onyibe

It all started with Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu,BAT who is the presidential candidate of the ruling party at the center,All Progressive Congress,APC who mis-spoke at an event in kaduna last week.

He was captured on video saying: “Rufai,we will not let you run away. Your vision,creativity,and resiliency in turning a rotten situation into a bad one is necessary at this critical time.”

To put things in context,Tinubu who was speaking to an audience of eminent northerners who were gathered in a business summit where they were rubbing minds on how kaduna state’s socioeconomic fortune can be improved, most probably committed the gaffe of using the inappropriate word ‘bad’ instead of ‘good’ which is the logical word that should have followed his sequence of thought in the earlier quoted sentence in the speech that he was making in commendation of Nasir El Rufai,kaduna state governor’s accomplishments.

Of course,it may be argued that no man is infallible or beyond goofs and gaffes, sometimes.

In that regard,it is understandable if the speaker recognizes the mistake immediately and corrects himself in the course of speaking.
However,that was not the case with Tinubu in the referenced instance.

Hence it has become a flaw and a sore
talking point,as critics have assumed that the Tinubu slip up was not a mere guffaw in kaduna.
That belief is underscored by the fact that he did not recognize his mistake which has been assumed to be as a result of lack presence of mind,hence he did not self correct.

Given that the APC presidential candidate’s health condition has been a subject of public scrutiny eliciting massive thumbs down from a critical mass of Nigerians who believe that he is suffering from major impairments health wise,critics are drilling down the slip up in his speech in kaduna and on other occasions as evidence of his poor state of mental health.

Tinubu’s misfortune,if l may characterize it as such,is made worse by the fact that he had previously exhibited similar traits of what critics have concluded is memory lapse when he proposed that 50 million Nigerians should be recruited into the security services to combat insecurity in Nigeria,whereas the nation’s workforce is barely more than 80 million people.

He is also reported to have once stated that Permanent Voters Card,PVC which enables citizens exercise their civic responsibility has an expiry date,which obviously is not the case,given that it is called Permanent Voters Card.

Furthermore,it does not help that incumbent president Mohammadu Buhari had in the run up to his becoming president of Nigeria in 2015 is believed to have betrayed such debility by reportedly mis-pronouncing his then running mate,Yemi Osinbajo’s name as Osinbade.

He was pilloried,but apparently it did not count against him in the polls,per see.

Also,soon after he won,then president-elect, or president-in-waiting exhibited another lack of presence of mind when in a parley organized in Washington DC,United States of America,USA for the meeting and greeting of Nigerians in the diaspora,he failed to comprehend a question put to him by a Nigerian about whether he would treat all Nigerians including the easterner’s who did not significantly vote for him,equally.
His response in which he mixed up 97 with 95 after he referred to lgbos as 5% also raised eye brows about his mental capacity as the Tinubu gaffe is currently eliciting.

When the Buhari flaws are juxtaposed or placed against the back drop of the current string of Tinubu speech mishaps,the striking similarities are indisputable.

And given the unpalatable outcome of Buhari’s stewardship which would be eight (8) years by may next year,and during which our country has become so blighted by hunger and starvation,that it is now tagged the poverty capital of the world;so riddled with violence arising from religious and ethnic intolerance as well as banditry and savagery that sorrow,tears and blood are now the regular trade mark of our country;and such that majority of Nigerians are currently so despondent,at a breaking point and on their wits end owing to leadership myopia that reigns supreme in Aso Rock Villa.
That is why they are wary of the health condition and are paying close attention to the physical and mental status of their potential next president.

It is therefore highly improbable that after such dismal leadership experience from a man suspected to suffer from similar debilities that bother on inability to display razor sharp mind which should be a necessary,if not required attribute that an astute leader should posses,the masses would not be justifiably apprehensive of the risk of electing another president who may not have full control of his mental faculty.

So much about the APC and it’s presidential standard bearer.

The situation in the main opposition party, Peoples Democratic Party,PDP is not dissimilar.

The party’s presidential flag holder,Turaki Atiku Abubakar has also stirred up a firestorm similar to the one currently charring BAT-the ruling party, APC’s presidential hopeful.

And co-incidentally,like the Tinubu faux pax,the miss-speak by Atiku Abubakar also occurred in kaduna during an interactive session with Arewa joint committee last Saturday.

“I have traversed the whole of this country
I know the whole of this country.I have built bridges across this country.I think what the average northerner needs is somebody who is from the north, and who also understands the other parts of Nigeria and who has been able to build bridges across the rest of the country.”

“This is what the northerner needs.He (northerner) doesn’t need a Yoruba candidate, or an Igbo candidate.This is what the northerner needs.I stand before you as a pan-Nigerian of northern origin.”

The above comment attributed to the presidential candidate of the PDP when he was addressing his fellow Arewa people last Saturday,15/10/2022 has been seized upon by the opposition politicians that have branded it a divisive comment.

And perhaps justifiably so,as the utterance has connotations of playing the ethnic card by the man who is aspiring to lead a multi ethnic country like Nigeria.

Perhaps what he meant to say is that Nigeria does not need a sectional or ethnic president,but one with a pan Nigeria world view.
And it is disappointing that what he meant to say,is not what he came off with,or what came across to the critical mass of Nigerians as what he was saying.

Against the backdrop of the fact that our beloved country has become so polarized along ethnic and religious fault lines in the past seven (7) years of the incumbent government,of which the number one (1) occupant of Aso Rock Villa who had been manifesting the characteristics of an ethnic jingoist prior to becoming president and the manifestation of such biases have patently been on parade in the governance of Nigeria,there is indeed a reason to be concerned,hence the ensuing hoopla.

Expectedly,the PDP’s presidential candidate’s camp has been scrambling to put the mis-speak captured in the video that has gone viral into context.

They are arguing that the audience was a gathering of his kit and kin and the location was kaduna,the unofficial headquarters of northern political intelligentsia (kaduna mafia) who he needed to pander to in order to extract their commitment to his quest for the presidency a sixth time.

Since the speech was captured on video,attempts to spin it by Paul lbe,his spokesman and Ehigie Uzamere,a member of the campaign council has been futile.

In my view,although the candidate may not have meant it in the manner it was conveyed in his speech,it is actually not too different from the infamous ‘emi lo kan’ (it is my turn) utterance made in Ogun state by no less a person than the APC presidential torch bearer,Bola Ahmed Tinubu when he was try to rally Yoruba support for a step down of other candidates pre-party primary elections.

Ideally,as humans,it is not uncommon or unusual for propositions that evoke ethnic sentiments to be leveraged when a politician is canvassing the buy-in of his group into his ambition.

But owing to its capacity to be used as a weapon against anyone found to be pandering to his narrow ethnic or group stock,especially since a northerner has been calling the shots in Aso Rock Villa in the past nearly eight(8) years,and to the consternation of a vast majority of southerners that another northerner is angling to succeed president Buhari,that line of thought should have been applied only during closed doors meetings.

Basically,it is tantamount to any of the candidates going to the mosques or churches to urge Muslims or Christians to vote only for members of their religious groups.
Although such moves are currently being made by all the three candidates,but they are nuanced.

The need to be more discreet and circumspect in the utterances of the presidential candidates of both the APC and PDP is accentuated by the fact that the impropriety or inappropriateness of the seeming bid to cancel out other tribes from the presidential race,can not be overemphasized,particularly the lgbos whose turn,(all things being equal) it could have been to produce the next president.

But owing to unforeseen circumstances that have altered the political equation,such as the belief that it is only a ruling party at the center that can afford to adhere to prior permutations like rotation of presidency between the north and south which ordinarily could have been a mere ritual in the manner that it happens in the private sector whereby the first Vice President of a union or group,for instance,a body of teachers or accountants,steps into the presidency, when the tenure of the incumbent expires.

But Atiku Abubakar and Bola Tinubu made the incendiary comments with ethnic bias openly and such moments of indiscretion have thus became their Achilles heels.

With respect to Tinubu whose gaffe ‘emi lo kan’ comment occurred before the party primaries,he was not negatively imparted because he triumphed by emerging the party’s flag bearer.
However,it remains to be seen whether the current Atiku Abubakar goof-“He (northerner) doesn’t need a Yoruba candidate,or an Igbo candidate” would inflict any significant damage on his chance at succeeding president Buhari next year,given the fact that he would be alienating his Yoruba and lgbo supporters if the notion is not effectively debunked and erased.

Although,the main beneficiary of the fall out of the resort to pandering to ethnicity by the presidential front liners,Atiku Abubakar and Bola Tinubu is Peter Obi, the Labor Party,LP candidate who has aggressively shot himself into reckoning as a front liner,his ethnic stock is not significant enough in number for him to fall back on them to help catapult him into Aso Rock Villa in 2023.

Hence he pivoted from All Progressive Grand Alliance,APGA which is a platform rooted in lgbo land that he leveraged to become two term governor of Anambra state,before literally porting to the PDP,a platform with which he started prosecuting his presidential ambition as vice presidential candidate to the PDP’s presidential candidate in 2019,Atiku Abubakar who is also flying the party’s flag for the presidency in 2023.

With a dim prospect of realizing his ambition with PDP political vehicle laden with heavy weights with deep pockets and more robust political pedigree,or star studded,Obi jumped into the LP boat with which he is currently making waves by leveraging the anger of our youths who have been expressing angst against incumbent government via #ndsars street protests in October 2020,driven by youths who had been brutalized by an arm of the police force that used to go by the name,SARS.

Given the reality of the dictum,the idle mind (hand) is the devil’s workshop,the ranks of Obi movement was further boosted by students that have been rendered idle by the eight (8) months long tertiary institutions lecturers strike that left higher institutions shut down,plus the burgeoning number of adult malcontents in the society locally and in the diaspora who are opposed to the blatant act of nepotism,extreme inequality and massive corruption that have engulfed our country.

Despite all the deft moves of Obi by giving the almost moribund LP party a shot in the arm and providing leadership to #Endsars gladiators that lacked a political platform and arrow head to flex their muscles;apart from the negative effect of the activities of overzealous youths who have been manipulating facts and sexing-up videos to suit their candidate’s ambition,as reflected by their doctoring of the video of PDP presidential campaign launch in Uyo,Akwa lbom state on October 10 where the party members were falsely claimed by fake news purveyors to be chanting in Efik dialect,Obi Kekerenke,which is loosely translated into English language means Obi is our choice;the association of LP and it’s presidential candidate with #EndSARS is currently haunting Obi’s quest for presidency of Nigeria in 2023.

In fact,right now,not condemning or taking specific actions to stop the mischief being
perpetrated by the NETIZENS, who are basically Obidients,is a test of Obi’s moral conscience.

Another veritable evidence of a fall out of Obi’s dalliance with our internet savvy youths who have the capacity to monitor developments in the polity is the appearance on the list of LP campaign council members,the name of retired army general John Enenche who had described the Lekki toll gate shooting of some of our youths to death during #Endsars protests two years ago as fake with the allegation that the video was ‘photoshopped’ by the youths.

When the outrage of our youths against Enenche is taken into consideration,then you can see how the ‘party on the roll’ as our youths would like to characterize the LP,also known as Obi-Datti movement,is not different from APC and PDP in terms of also boxing itself into a tight corner.

Little wonder credibility is the deficit which the Obi-Datti movement continues to suffer in the eyes of matured Nigerians who are skeptical about the capacity and ability of Labor Party and it’s presidential flag bearer,Peter Obi to deliver on their claim of being the divinely ordained rescue team for the nation.

Having been ferreted out by the youths as an enemy within or a two faced personality of the dimension of Jekyll and Hyde,the military general Enenche,who has been called out by the youths has been trying to salvage his benighted and wrecked reputation with the following response:
“Personally and professionally,I worked with the overriding interest of Nigerians at heart based on the oath of allegiance I swore on commission into the military service, which is sacrosanct.

“I sincerely shared in the pains of that breaking news through the social media as it were. On that note, I want to assure all that more efforts will be put in, so that all assertions can be cleared convincingly from appropriate sources.”

How Obi and his team respond to the demand of the youths to remove Enenche from the campaign council list to assuage them or whether he opt to retain Enenche,would impart on how the LP and its presidential torch bearer,Obi would be perceived by both the youths who constitute the bulk of the party’s main support base and the aggrieved adults at home and abroad,that are the party’s devotees who are passionate about change from the old political class to a new crop.

Hopefully,the LP would draw lessons from the PDP that has elected to at the cost of a monumental and colossal collateral damage,retain Iyiorcha Ayu as its party chairman despite all the odium and opprobrium being elicited by the deluge of allegations of financial impropriety being leveled against him,plus the challenge of his inability to keep to the promise that he is said to have committed to by agreeing that he would resign his position as chairman of the party,if the presidential flag bearer emerged from the north after the primary elections.

Putting all together,the campaign for the presidency of Nigeria in 2023 is getting off to a chaotic start.

And the victims of the chaos are the Nigerian electorate that are yet to be presented with the manifesto of the various political parties,except the PDP and its candidate,Atiku Abubakar that have launched their campaign and unfolded their plans and policies on the 10th of this month in Uyo,Akwa lbom state.

It beats me hollow that the good old policy of the handlers of Very Important Personalities,VIPs having a mock session with their principals before addressing an audience has not been applied in the management of both Bola Tinubu and Atiku Abubakar.

That is why instead of discussing the policy and programs of the candidates,Nigerians are mired in the unproductive chores of wallowing in the personal idiosyncrasies of our potential future president.

The net effect of denying Nigerians the benefit of scrutinizing the plans of the presidential candidates on how they intend to rescue Nigeria despite the fact that,ninety(90 )days instead of sixty (60) day has been provided in the new electoral act 2022,is that without the opportunity of having ample time to interrogate the policies and programs of the parties and their candidates,Nigerians may once again end up electing a president based on sentiments of ‘any other politicians than the old political class’ which was the case in 2015 when the slogan was ‘anybody else but Goodluck Jonathan’.

And we ended up not knowing very well then main opposition party,APC and it’s presidential candidate,Mohammadu Buhari’s policies and programs,which with the benefit of hindsight,they actually didn’t have,given the fact that it took the incumbent president Buhari six (6) months to form his first cabinet.

Why must Nigerians take political parties,except PDP that has laid out its plan,on the face value ?

I would argue wholeheartedly that the current down playing of the need to scrutinize the candidates based on their policy documents detailing their rescue plan is a recipe for further disaster as the common aphorism ‘failing to plan is planing to fail’, teaches us.

For now,(except the PDP)all the other frontline parties-APC and LP that are yet to submit their manifestos to Nigerians should be treated and handled in the manner that Caveat Emptor -Buyer Beware is placed on unverified entities or personalities.

All men and women of goodwill would agree with me that we can not afford to have another disastrous leadership in Aso Rock Villa from 2023,which not having a policy plan to serve as Road Map into the future, portends.

Magnus onyibe,an entrepreneur, public policy analyst,author,development strategist,alumnus of Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy,Tufts University, Massachusetts,USA and a former commissioner in Delta state government, sent this piece from lagos.
To continue with this conversation, please visit www.magnum.ng

October 20, 2022
ASUU strike, future of education and student loan – By Magnus Onyibe

The judiciary which is vested with the authority to interpret the laws of our country has spoken on the industrial action embarked upon by tertiary institutions lecturers in Nigeria since February 14 this year.

In it’s ruling on Wednesday, September 26,it was held that the striking lecturers must return to the class rooms. But that verdict had only helped to galvanize the resolve of the discontented lecturers to further dig in their heels.

So,the National Industrial Court of Nigeria (NICN) in Abuja which ordered ASUU members back to work in discontinuation of its industrial action might have done its job,but it is a no brainer for most people to realize that it is a case of barking without being able to bite.
It is therefore such a welcome relief that on Wednesday 5th October,2022, the Appeal court acted wisely by directing the parties to settle the feud out of court.

I have a hunch that the Appeal court judges might have hinged their decision to recommend out of court settlement as the best suited option for resolving the conflict based on the dictum that we are all familiar with :you can force the horse to the river,but you can not force it to drink. Which implies that getting teachers back to work should be by persuasion not coercion.

It makes one wonder why the Federal Government of Nigeria,FGN took the option of going to court in the first instance.

And somehow,in light of the wisdom not to try the case by the Appeal court judges, but urge the litigants to resolve their dispute amicably outside the court system,the judicial arm of government can be said to be more sensitive to the plight of our youths who have been out of school for over seven (7)months than the executive arm of government that has failed to settle their differences with the striking teachers hence our youths,the leaders of tomorrow have literally been left in the cold.

Having failed to succeed in trying to use the court system,the trick of divide and rule in conflict resolution,appears to be a tactic which the FGN seems to have decided to apply via the registration of labor associations formed by break away ASUU members who have decided to form their own unions.

Despite the treachery,the spirit of ASUU members appear to have remained upbeat as reflected by their decision not to back down despite the odds being stacked against them.

It is a development which all well meaning Nigerians should be concerned about because both sides of the feuding parties seem to be set for a fight to finish without giving serious consideration to the long term implications of the industrial action by the lecturers which may extend beyond the more or less six (6) months remaining life span of the incumbent administration.

And in a situation whereby the no-work- no-pay rule aimed at igniting the fear of hunger and starvation as a tool for getting the aggrieved lecturers back to the classrooms have failed to resolve the conflict,and the gambit of going to court to compel the lecturers to return to the classroom which is not an amicable solution by any stretch of imagination is also proving to be ineffective,how would the latest antic of sponsoring factions within ASUU to rebel and weaken it,be the panacea to the dispute ?

The underlying reason for the poser above is that having gone this far in the strike action,(7 months and counting)
the aggrieved lecturers must have adopted the strategy of no retreat ,no surrender in this strike that is turning out to be the epic battle of their professional lives.

So,l would argue that seeking an end to the crisis in the education sector via court judgement or sponsoring rebellion via fractionalization of ASUU (as politicians are wont to do) is detestable.

In fact ,the court judgement is turning out to be Pyrrhic victory for the FGN simply because the Appeal court has demurred from deliberating on the matter perhaps because it considers the court forum as inauspicious for the resolution of such a delicate dispute which has more moral content than legal ground.

Even if the judgement were to have been sustained at the Appeal court level ,we are all familiar with what would potentially be the output of an unmotivated workforce which the lecturers would be,if FGN has succeeded in using the courts to hound them back to the classrooms.

Personally,l am appalled that after it had seemed to me that government might have concluded that it is unwise to continue with the dog fight with lecturers, hence it rescinded its earlier decision to coerce the striking lecturers back to the classrooms via the memo from the National Universities Commission,NUC directing vice chancellors to re-open the institutions,the standoff has persisted.

And given the recent registration of rival associations in the academia,and the rhetorics from Labor minister,Chris Ngige, my initial thoughts seem to be too presumptuous.

Before the most recent development,it did not surprise me that ASUU president, professor Emmanuel Osodeke in a television interview after the court verdict ordering the lecturers back to the classrooms expressed the sentiment below:
“It’s a catastrophe. No country thinking about the future of its children, thinking about the health of its educational system, who believe in education and whose children are in those universities will try that.”

The ASUU president’s assessment of government’s action and the court verdict is quite scathing and damning,to say the least.

Worst still,there is even another angle to the strike action which is the likelihood that if the crisis is not resolved amicably, the discontented lecturers may seek greener pastures abroad where their services are highly needed due to the shortage of workers in the advanced countries in Europe and North America as a fall out of COVID 19 pandemic which led to forced closure of businesses that are now re-opening, but are facing a dearth of Human Resources supply .

Assuming our leaders prefer to easily forget the brain drain that happened in the healthcare sector which saw our best doctors and nurses migrating abroad where the pay is better and standard of living is higher,we the citizens that are bearing the brunt are frightened and can not afford to erase the memory of the exodus of our medical experts abroad, and fear that we may not survive a similar drain in the education sector,therefore we urge the authorities to thread with caution, so that our education sector which was top notch in not too distance past,but now in shambles,does not tip over.

To be clear,l am not absolving ASUU of blame,but only imploring FGN to place the issues squarely on the table for ASUU to appreciate the futility of hoping that the old ways of funding education are sustainable,and then propose a new pathway out of the quagmire in a manner
that ASUU members would have confidence, and even find ways to reason together with the FGN on the way forward.

After all, it was out of the ashes of ASUU strike that Education Trust Fund, TetFund- a critical source of funding support for higher education arose via creative thinking by the eggheads.

Before proceeding further,and to put the issues being contended in context,it is appropriate that we take a cursory look at the relief that the FGN went to seek in court.

Basically,FG prayed for the order of court for ASUU to call off its seven-month-old strike and it is further asking the court to determine the extent of ASUU’s demands by the government since the 2020 Memorandum of Action (MOA) that the union signed with the government.

These include the funding for revitalisation of public universities as per the 2009 agreement,Earned Academic Allowances (EAA) payments,state universities proliferation and constitution of visitation panels and release of white paper on the report of the visitation panels.

Also included are the reconstitution of the government renegotiation team for renegotiation of 2009 agreement, which was renegotiated 2013/2014, due for renegotiation 2018/2019 and the migration of ASUU members from IPPIS to its own UTAS, which is currently on test at NITDA.

The intention of the FGN appears to me as if it wants an order of the court for ASUU members to resume work in their various universities while the issues in dispute are being addressed by the NICN which is in consonance with the provisions of Section 18 (I) (b) of the TDA Cap T8. LFN 2004.

Now,that the FG has had its way,at least in the lower court,and as earlier stated,even if the Appeal court were to sustain the judgement and the Supreme Court also had affirmed it ,would the FGN be able to fulfill its part of the bargain which is basically about funding the education sector?
I think not,simply because the FGN is broke and can not afford to continue to bear the burden of high cost of university education .
As such,the earlier FGN admits that reality, the better for the distressed education sector in particular and the nation in general.

Even the blind can tell that our country is currently in financial dire straits and therefore anaemic as its life blood-crude oil is being illegal sapped from the pipelines by oil theft cartels. And it would not be lost on any discernible observer that the FGN is inclined to once again,as it had been doing since 2009, literally ‘kick the can down the Road’ as Americans like to describe postponing the evil day in the manner that the removal of petrol subsidy has also been postponed to June 2023, which is a couple of days after the end of the tenure of the incumbent regime.

Why not confront the demon hobbling the education sector in Nigeria right now,once and for all by facing the reality that the challenge can not be wished away or be eliminated by sheer intimidation of lecturers via weaponization of their welfare with the no-work,no-pay policy, procurement of court judgement against them and the deployment of divide and rule antics via sponsoring of rival labour unions such as Congress of Nigerian University Academics CONUA,and Nigerian Association of Medical and Dental Academics, NAMDA-both of which are newly registered trade associations in the academia?

At the risk of appearing to be holding brief for ASUU,but without being told,these are unwholesome and treacherous practices that would bode ill will for the education sector.

That is because although the strategy of splintering ASUU may appear to be efficacious in the short term,but in the long run,the authorities may inadvertently make the education sector become too unionized with grave consequences for the future of education.

With the latest action,it appears as if government would stop at nothing to compel the agitating academicians to go back to the classroom.

Arising from the above,it is not out of order to wonder if the option of FGN going to court and securing judgement in its favor fails to compel lecturers to go back to work,and the divide and rule tactic is also unable to yield the desired outcome,would the authority’s last resort be to arrest and jail the leaders of the strike,as it allegedly did with top members of the judiciary when they were not dancing to its tune?

We are all too familiar with how the executive arm of government apply such arm twisting and undemocratic approach to impose its desire on other arms.

Hopefully,the situation may not be allowed to degenerate to such a bizarre level again, particularly because the country is now in election mode which presupposes that the electorate is to be wooed via charm offensive unleashed by politicians,not being clobbered in the head by security agencies,as any attempt to arrest the striking lecturers and lock them up based on trumped up charges,would look like.

While I have no idea if the ruling party is imagining how devastating protest votes in the 2023 elections by aggrieved lecturers and students against the ruling party’s presidential candidate and seekers of other offices would be,l can see the APC paying dearly at the polls in February and March next year ,if the ASUU FGN and students impasse is allowed to degenerate beyond the current situation.

Dwelling further on the possibility of applying brute force to rein in the lecturers if they fail to comply with the court ruling, it may be recalled that a handful of members of the top echelon of the judiciary who were not compliant with the desire of government back in October 2016 were arrested in the middle of the night in gestapo style,even as some were taken away in their pajamas by security agents,ostensibly on corruption charges which were justified with the cache of cash in local and foreign currencies found in their homes when they were raided.

After that ugly incident,the judiciary became mired in the doghouse until a recent change in the leadership which was forced by a rare action of Supreme Court judges writing a vicious and scandalous petition to government against their colleague,then Chief Justice of Nigeria,CJN ,which was leaked to the media.

Of course the media seized upon it and created a firestorm in the society, particularly the judicial sector,via a media blitz that resulted in the change of guard in the leadership of the judiciary.

With the replacement of the embattled CJN with the current incumbent,in an uncanny way,the judiciary has started healing its self following the confirmation of justice Olukayode Ariwoola by the senate of the National Assembly,NASS on September 21, 2022 as the new CJN.

And it would not be out of order to expect a reset in that arm of government from being pliable and compromised to being impartial,so that it would remain the bastion of democracy and the proverbial last hope for the common man that it is meant to be.

By the same token,the aggrieved lecturers turned activists in the education sector may be treading a similar path or adopting a strategy akin to the one applied by the senior members of the judiciary with the hope that the authorities would (in American lingo) ‘wake up and smell the coffee’ by realizing that ASUU members have taken their destiny into their hands with the determination to make this strike the industrial action that would trigger a chain reaction that could turn the sector around for good.

Presumably,if adequate care is not taken,and the current malaise in the sector is allowed to persist by not implementing the robust and far reaching solutions encapsulated in 2009 agreement which have been put in abeyance till date ,the current afflictions of the education sector may attain a point of no return.
And it may very well be the final death knell to the future of higher education in Nigeria for our youths whose destiny destinies have invariably been put in the coffin via the 7 months old shut down of schools,and it is only waiting to be nailed.

It bears repeating that without a change in FGN approach to funding higher education,the coffin of ignorance and illiteracy with Nigerian youths as victims would be nailed via the ongoing skulduggery being perpetuated by the government that should be laser focused on putting the future of our children on even keel for a leap forward as Lee kuan Yew,the iconic leader of Singapore,did with his tiny island country which grew from third to first world in an unprecedented short period by implementing out-of-the box policies that seemed like they were impossibilities to lesser mortals,but which became manifest through the dexterity and astuteness of its illustrious leader with a can do spirit.

It is certainly not rocket science to figure out that our children who are by nature leaders of tomorrow,should be armed or equipped with the best education possible and cutting edge knowledge that is in tune with the 21st century developments in order for our country to be able to compete in the world that is increasingly becoming more knowledge based and less natural resources dependent.

For instance,it is universally acknowledged that in another two decades or so,most countries in the industrialized world would ban the use of fossil fuel to power their vehicles as they are intent on transiting to reliance solely on electric vehicles.

As a matter of fact,the state of California in the USA which is a major producer of crude oil intends to ban fossil fuel powered vehicles in the next ten (10) years.

The change from fossil fuel to electric powered vehicles,for instance would handicap our country whose main source of foreign exchange earnings (about 85%) is fossil fuel-crude oil.

To be ready for the future,ideally,we should by now be planning to harness our next biggest and best asset which is abundant human capital that our youths represent when they are facilitated to study in higher institutions of learning such as universities to enrich themselves with knowledge and skills that can be deployed all over the world where they are in demand.
India currently benefits from its highly educated workforce by virtue of their presence all over the world where they are engaged as leaders of top ten Fortune 500 corporations worldwide.

So,our youths being out of school for so long is a liability and burden on society of which we all as Nigerians would bear the dire consequences of breeding criminals instead of scientists,mathematicians, robotic engineers,medical doctors , nurses,lawyers etc which is in tandem with the wise crack -an idle mind is the devil’s workshop.

It is dismaying that instead of preparing our youths for future leadership
with sound education to stand our country in good stead in the comity of nations,the authorities in charge of education are hobbling the sector with vision less policies that are capable of incapacitating our youths and canceling out our country from the league of developed nations.

In the light of the danger posed to the future of our country by a protracted shut down of higher institutions,why not invest some of the income from the sale of fossil fuel towards the development of the next best asset in which our country has comparative advantage, which is Human Resources that are currently largely unharnessed ?
Leveraging the aphorism :make haste while the sun shines,it would be wise to seamlessly transit from oil wealth to human capital wealth if we train our youths to be become highly marketable by right -tooling them.

It is doubtless that with innovative and dynamic leadership,our abundant Human Resources could be converted into cutting edge human capital. And that is if we equip our youths with top notch education in order to be fit for the future or future ready.

It is heartbreaking that it would appear as if after engaging the aggrieved lecturers in an unnecessary dog fight in the past seven (7) months with our youths as the main victims,the scales are yet to fall from the eyes of the administrators in the education space about the folly of not being in a haste to end the end the stand-off

How long would Nigeria’s education sector remain in the doldrums before there is an adult in the room? Does the incumbent FGN not have limits to how low in the level of underdevelopment that it would blindly drag our beloved country into ?

The FGN must come to terms with the reality that even if the lecturers appear to be fighting for their welfare,they are equally engaging in the struggle to secure the future of our beloved nation by literally poking the authorities in the rib via a strike action with a view to waking her up from the deep slumber that it is in currently,so that it could hopefully see that our country’s education sector is headed for the precipice,could crash and the ship of education could get wrecked if the authorities do not change course and its bellicose and the devil may care attitude jettisoned,sooner than later.

Perhaps,after the filibustering by both sides,the cause of the lecturers who have been blackmailed,bullied and maligned would eventually be recognized and addressed by government that had been deaf and dump in the past (7) months that the industrial action has lasted.

And one would have thought that nerves are calming on government’s side of the divide due to the intervention by the speaker of the House of Representatives,Femi Gbajabiamila and his team who recently engaged with ASUU leadership and pleaded with it to await his consultation with the president when he returns from the recently concluded United Nations General Assembly,UNGA meeting in New York,USA.

But,contrary to my high expectations,those at the helm of affairs in the education sector and labor authorities seem to have been determined to continue be in a dog-in-the-manger mode.

And the signs that the ice between ASUU and education authorities might have been thawing reflected by the recent retraction of the order by government via Nigerian Universities Commission,NUC for lecturers to go back to the class room,have turned out to be mere mirage as FGN has maintained its hard stance which is akin to chasing a bull into a China shop with disastrous consequences.

It is disappointing that a real end to the fiasco in the education sector which one had thought is imminent due to NASS intervention may not happen after all as the report that has just been presented to president Buhari last Wednesday,would in all likelihood,be a mere palliative measure.
The assertion above is underscored by the belief that it may not deal with the fundamental challenges besetting the education sector in ways that the crises would not reoccur soon after.

To restore the lost glory in the education sector,more fundamental actions that go beyond the treatment of the symptoms rather than the disease,must be taken.

In my previous media intervention on the strike action titled “ASUU Strike:Lessons From Averted Train Workers Strike In USA” published in both social and traditional media platforms on September 20,2022,l made a case that government is over burdened and is obviously unable to sustain funding university education.
But FGN has continued to fail to tell itself the truth since 2009,when it entered into the contentious agreement with ASUU that it knows it would be unable to fulfill and which is one of the recurring bones of contention in the current seven (7) months old strike.

Recently,the chairman of the committee on finance in the red chamber,Senator Solomon Olamilekan affirmed the incapacity for government to sustain funding higher education when he made the enlightening revelation during the committee’s recent interactive session with revenue generating agencies of the federal government by lamenting that the university system generates between 15-16 billion naira annually which it spends,yet the federal government pays lecturers salaries and also provides funds for other recurrent and capital expenditures.

With a federal government’s budget deficit estimated to be in the region of eleven (11)trillion naira and a very high debt-to-GDP ratio of 20.6 percent as at March this year ,one needs not be a rocket scientist to figure out that the FG which is unable to pay civil servants without recourse to bank loans,would not be able to continue to carry the burden of paying salaries to lecturers.

One significant point in senator Olamilekan’s observation that struck me is that universities generate as much as N15-16b which they spend based on their whims and caprices. It suggests that the vice chancellors of universities and the governing councils may be complicit in the rot in the tertiary education sector.
And he emphasized that the FGN can no longer afford to take responsibility for the wages of university lecturers which is harmony with my proposition that students should be granted loan to pay their fees.
And I wonder if the FGN team involved in the process of resolving the labor crises in the education sector took notice of the revelation.

Why must the FGN continue to bear the burden of paying lecturers which is recurrent expenditure and also provide funding for capital projects in our universities?

Given the above scenario ,what role are vice chancellors playing in the alleged malfeasance in the higher education sector of our country?
That is one question that deserves urgent answer.

Clearly,the reality that is staring everybody in the face which the authorities in the higher education space has failed to admit is that funding of university education in Nigeria by the FGN is not feasible.

Even in advanced and industrialized countries like the United States of America ,USA universities are not funded by the federal government directly as we have been doing over here and which has become unsustainable.

While it is correct that states fund their universities,they do so in creative and imaginative ways.
Which is why there are ten (10) state owned universities in the state of California,USA which is the biggest and richest economy in that country.

They include University of California,UC Los Angeles,UC Berkely, UC San Diego,UC Riverside, UC Santa Barbara,UC Irvin, as well as UC Davis,UC Merced and UC Santa Cruz not forgetting UC San Francisco which is a for-graduates only university.

Most of the funding for the institutions are sourced from students fees just as other sources of fund are from revenue generating activities of the universities-like the town-meets-the-gown business collaborations,and the kindness of charitable organizations and individuals by way of endowments of chairs as well as the support of a robust alumni with a large membership of about two (2) million.

Why can we not adopt in Nigeria such a system that has worked very well in the USA ?

The bottomline is that in light of the dwindling revenue generation into the treasury arising from the degenerating capacity of the country’s ability to be productive which is due to the alarming rate of insecurity pervading the country, coupled with a bloated civil service that is inefficient in service delivery, it is question of time before the leakages would collectively drain the national treasury.
If you add that to the high cost of maintaining a full time legislature,it would be clear why Nigeria is insolvent right now.

Is it not not striking and at the same time damning that the bloated nature of the public service is a crippling malaise that had long ago been identified by ex- chief of staff to president Olusegun Obasanjo and former head of the civil,Mr Steve Oronsaye led commission that recommended the downsizing or rightsizing of the civil service?

Is it not mind boggling that a school of Arabic and Islamic studies has over 5,963 members of staff, paid N8.5b annually as salaries,and conducts only one exam annually?
Clearly, it is a symbol of the root cause of the decay in the education sector. And there is likely to be many more such institutions in the public service.

The discovery that a tertiary institution that generates an estimated N410m annually remitted only N30m to Federal government’s consolidated revenue account as noted by senator Abiodun Olujimi during the earlier referenced parley between senate committee on finance and revenue generating agencies,is a very disturbing malady afflicting the public service.

My suspicion is that the nearly 6,000 number of employees of that agency that conducts only one exam annually for over N380m is outrageous and there may also be ghost workers on the pay roll of which FGN sinks N8.5b annually as staff emoluments.

Using the mismanagement of funds in the referenced institution as a barometer or yardstick of the inefficiencies in the public sector,it is likely that other similar institutions in the education sector are also as wasteful because of lack of oversight by the education ministry and the ministry of finance which should ideally engage private accounting firms to audit Ministries,Departments and Agencies,MDAs from time to time for probity and accountability.

Typical of government,the Oronsaye proposal to streamline the public sector had been in abeyance for about a decade and half since it was first proposed,as it had been buried in the so called grave yard of Government White Papers,until the incumbent government recently resurrected it for possible action in light of the futility of hoping that it would be able to generate enough revenue to meet all the unrealistic expectations and demand of MDGs,including the massive funds budgeted for the sustenance of members of the National Assembly,NASS who most men and women of goodwill in Nigeria have long concluded constitute an unnecessary drain pipe on the already distressed treasury of our beleaguered nation.

As part of the popular call for a reduction in the cost of governance owing to huge over head expenditure of FGN,at worst,most Nigerians are yearning for the services of our parliamentarians to be on part time basis,as is the case with members of boards of corporations whose impact in their organizations remain robust despite their not being engaged on full time basis.
At best they are baying for a drastic reduction in the hefty emoluments and perks for the law makers.
In some Scandinavian countries,for instance ,teachers earn higher salaries than the legislators.But Nigerian legislators earn higher salaries than their counterparts in the USA.
Some would even argue that our legislators are the highest paid in the world.
Dear readers ,l urge you to not take my words as the godspell truth on the matter of salaries of teachers in Sweden and Denmark ,but check it out through a simply google search.

Obviously,in the referenced countries, teachers reward is not only in heaven as we believe in Nigeria,but priority is accorded teachers here on earth owing to their critical role in molding the young minds put in their care into champions equipped to take over leadership,hence they are very well remunerated.

Without heeding the call for less profligacy in government via scrapping of ministries, departments and agencies with overlapping functions and drastically reducing the humongous cost of sustaining the unwieldy National Assembly,NASS,it is a matter of time before our country becomes a basket case like Venezuelan suffering from oil curse which the N4 trillion naira petrol subsidy in 2022 budget portends and symbolizes in Nigeria.

It is rather appalling and heart wrenching that the hemorrhaging situation of the treasury of our country is being further worsened by the activities of international crude oil theft syndicates that are literarily draining the oil pipelines of products such that investors in the sector like Tony Elumelu, Chairman of HElRS holding recently raised alarm that perhaps up to 80% of the crude pumped into the pipeline don’t get to the final destination due to the rupturing of the pipeline and siphoning of the products by organized criminal elements in the oil/ gas sector.

Without a doubt,there is need for change of tack by the leaders of government who as a matter of urgency and in order for our country to survive,must pivot our country from a consuming to a producing one.
It is an existential reality whose time has come and which Labor Party,LP candidate,Peter Obi has appropriated and converted into his campaign slogan, but which all the presidential aspirants must make the fulcrum of their campaign.

Mr Godwin Emefiele,Central Bank of Nigeria,CBN governor recently revealed that about nine (9) trillion has been invested as intervention funds in various sectors of the economy and over four (4) trillion has been recovered with most of the balance not due for repayment.
There is therefore proof of concept that loans work and interventions in critical sectors by government can be efficacious.

Presumably,the nine (9) trillion naira is exclusive of the multi trillions applied as petrol subsidy in the past seven (7) years.

Is it not rather disappointing that one critically important sector that is yet to receive attention for financial intervention like other critical sectors such as farming and electricity generation amongst others is the education sector?

Unlike the humongous sum of N4 trillion
pumped into the oil/ gas sector to subsidize petrol pump price in budgets 2022 ,with a consequential negative effect on the economy,as it amounts to subsidizing consumption,intervention with funds in the form of student loan in the education sector would amount to subsidizing production which would in the long run be beneficial to the economy and the entire society.

Imagine the number of brilliant Nigerian youths whose parents can not afford to pay for their higher education and as such drop out of the production process.
Does that not amount to leaving a lot value on the table which is not optimal.
A return to student loan regime would automatically bring the indigent book smart Nigerians back into the production loop.

Indeed it is a malady or even a national tragedy that we have been putting up with by not adopting students loan policy which countries like the USA have been harnessing to the hilt and with huge beneficial outcomes.

On that note,l would once again like to implore president Muhamadu Buhari to direct the CBN to intervene in the education sector via provision of loans to students.

That would enable students pay the universities fees that are market rate,which they can apply in managing the institutions without recourse to government for lecturers salaries etc.
That is because the institutions would have obligations to the lecturers in terms of payment of salaries and emoluments and provision of conducive working environment for them,so that the students would get real value for their money and everybody would be happy.

Owing to lack of space and time,I would not indulge readers in the arithmetic of the process of introducing students loans which relevant authorities can easily seek out and learn from,especially since such a policy had been practiced in the past as detailed in a piece bymy good friend and brother,chief Lawson Omokhodion on the back-page of ThisdayNewspaper of September 23, 2022 titled: “Let’s Return Nigerian Students Loans Board”

In the referenced article he made a compelling case for the return of student loans,the positive values of which he recalled with gusto and nostalgia.

“As we speak, three previous laws are important in the attempts to provide a solution. In 1974, the federal military government of General Yakubu Gowon, promulgated the Nigerian Students’Loans Board decree to provide funding to Nigerian students based on loans repayable in 20 years after graduation.”According to Omokhodion who was the pro Chancellor and chairman of the governing board of Ambrose Alli university, “In decree No. 50 of 1993, the federal government promulgated another legislation to establish the Nigerian Education Bank. And in the year 2004, the University autonomy bill was passed which vested in the university governing councils the rights of employers of staff of universities. It is now time to activate the essential elements of the three legislations and solve these funding problems once and for all time as most countries have done”.

Omokhodion,who is obviously enamored by the concept of students loan program,concluded by stating that ”The 1974 legislation is the biggest example of these federal laws because it was actually put into effect and students benefited immensely from the funding relief that resulted from the implementation of the provisions of the law”

Given how the military government under general Yakubu Gowon rose to occasion in 1974 with a robust response to the yearnings of the public by establishing students loans board,is it not such a paradox and irony that Democratic regimes since 2009 have been deaf and dump to the cry for a change in the style and substance of management of the education sector in alignment with the present financial incapacity of government?

In my earlier referenced article titled: “ASUU Strike:Lessons From Averted Train Workers Strike In USA” published September 20,l had pleaded with president Buhari to make haste while the sun still shines on the administration by taking the required steps to introduce students loan,before he exits office on May 29,2023.

Hence l was delighted to read Omokhodion’s detailed narrative about how to rescue the ailing education sector which was once very vibrant by taking readers back to the good old days of student loans in Nigeria while highlighting the benefits.

Of course ,the authorities are yet to heed our persistent calls for change in tune with the dynamics of time between the good old days when our country was economically buoyant and now.

Nevertheless,without further ado,l would like to also once again plead with Education minister,Adamu Adamu,minister of state ,Education,Goodluck Nana Opiah, Labour minister Chris Ngige and minister of state,Labour my good friend,Festus keyamo,to give peace a chance,by being more conciliatory and less aggressive with the aggrieved lecturers as they currently appear to be doing.

As a win-win solution to the debilitating feud,they should give the concept of student loan the utmost consideration that it deserves by encouraging mr president,Mohammadu Buhari to direct Godwin Emefiele,CBN governor to plough some intervention funds into the education sector that would be made available to students in our higher institutions.

That in my considered opinion is the simplest and most realistic solution to the perennial ASUU strike and frequent shut down of our stifling education sector which is on the verge of being eclipsed by darkness with all Nigerians as victims,irrespective of whether the children of the rich and powerful are schooling overseas or the kids of the less privileged are stranded at home.

That is because willy nilly,our youths not privileged to enjoy education at home would make life in Nigeria look like hell on earth for all of us by taking to criminal activities such as banditry, kidnapping for ransom and ritual killing of fellow humans for money,vices that would make life unbearable for everybody residing in the country.

So,it is in the enlightened self interest of the authorities to do the needful which is -get our youths back into the classrooms in the higher institutions sooner than later .

It is doubtless that granting students loans to pay market rate school fees to higher institutions remains the best initiative that can burnish the legacy of the outgoing administration and l urge president Buhari not to leave that value on the table so that he can earn the accolades of Nigerians rather than face the ire of posterity.

Magnus onyibe,an entrepreneur, public policy analyst ,author,development strategist,alumnus of Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy,Tufts University, Massachusetts,USA and a former commissioner in Delta state government, sent this piece from lagos.

October 6, 2022
Presidency 2023: A Contest Between Three ‘Sinners’? – By Magnus Onyibe

The title of this piece is not exactly the terminology used by Adams Oshiomole,former labor leader, ex Edo state governor and immediate past chairman of the ruling party at the centre , APC. But he is the one that drew my attention to the fact that all the three presidential candidates with potentials to become President of Nigeria in 2023,are sinners.

Tagging them with such a negative epithet or appellation is most probably derived from the general belief amongst Nigerians that anyone that has served in public office must be regarded as a sinner.

And it is a fixed mindset amongst the masses basically because of the high level of corruption being perpetrated by public servants via fraud and the abysmal level of service delivery to the masses by
successive regimes arising from promises unkept which they approximate to sin

The lack of confidence in our political system and political class by the electorate is such that regardless of the political platforms that produce the leaders,Nigerians have learnt from experience,after multiple disappointments which have galvanized their belief, that their leaders hardly have their best interests in mind.

And the fact that despite all the endowments that abound in our country in terms of both human and natural resources,Nigeria is still in the bottom rung of the list of the world’s developed countries,even as she is right on top of the list of the worst countries to live ,which is a reality that is stomach churning to the average Nigerian,hence every known occupant of public office,to put it mildly,is deemed to be a sinner.

In order words,the masses deem their leaders that have occupied public offices as being responsible for the underdevelopment of the country,and therefore responsible for their plight,so they hold them in contempt.

It is from that general predisposition of Nigerians,especially the youths towards members of the old political class ,whom they blame for the misery being visited on them and which they intend to remedy via the 2023 general elections,that the energy currently justifying the notion of Nigerian politicians as sinners,is derived.

Taken from the prism highlighted above,it is difficult to deny that all the front runners contesting for the presidency of Nigeria are by and large sinners,as the three of them have served as two terms Vice President in the case of Atiku Abubakar , and governors respectively in the case of Bola Tinubu and Peter Obi.
Be that as it may, no human being is actually flawless.

Arising from the assertion above,l am urging the electorate to be very pragmatic by looking beyond the veneer by way of thoroughly scrutinizing the candidates to identify,based on past records,the one with the best capacity and ability to rescue our country as opposed to listening and gyrating to the high decibel music being played by new age and untested politicians with highfaluting as well as exalting messages emanating from the multifarious political rostrums.

At this juncture,to help the electorate in their choices of who becomes their president in 2023,it is appropriate that we take a cursory look at the unique selling points and Achilles heels of the candidates that are front runners in the presidential candidates of the leading political platforms,so that Nigerians and indeed the youths don’t end up throwing away the baby and the bathwater.

Remarkably,APC and it’s presidential candidate,Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu are brandishing his accomplishments as Lagos State governor (1999-2007) as opposed to the record of the party in nearly eight (8) years of holding the reins of government.
In addition to the party’s former chairman,Adams Oshiomole’s recent diatribe that candidate Tinubu should not be judged by the performance of APC.

He was more or less distancing Tinubu from president Buhari’s record which was reinforced by APC vice presidential candidate,Kashim Shettima’s presentation during Nigerian Bar Association,NBA recent conference.
That would be a hard sell.

But Tinubu who is known to be a maverick who has succeeded in keeping Nigerians guessing about his ancestry and educational antecedents would be asking very skeptical Nigerians to trust him with their future as lagosians did when he governed them for eight (8) years.

Would he pull the type of stunts that he successfully executed during the APC party’s primaries by clinching the ticket to the bewildered opponents ?

With Bola Tinubu as the ruling party’s presidential candidate,he could have been enjoying the benefits of the good legacy that the out going party would have left for the good people of Nigeria to cherish,if the incumbent government had lived up to expectations.

But unfortunately,the current administration is leaving a legacy of sorrow,tears and blood,to borrow a line from a hit song by the late Afro beat king and maestro,Fela Ransom Kuti.

Which is perhaps why,the former APC chairman,Adams Oshiomole has urged Nigerians not to judge Bola Tinubu based on president Mohammadu Buhari’s records which is sordid,no matter how Buharists try to spin it .

But would it not be uncharitable and disingenuous for Tinubu to distance himself from Buhari?

It is needless pointing out that the Tinubu/Shettima agenda for Nigeria would likely be different from the well known APC and Buhari’s agenda.
As such,they would definitely be walking a tight rope,especially if president Buhari is expected to join in the campaign for Tinubu as a candidate.

To contextualize the dilemma,Al Gore tried to detach himself from the administration that he was aiming to replace in the United States of America, US,when as Vice President to Bill Clinton,he was contesting to succeed his principal,but distanced himself from his boss owing to the scandal about Clinton’s alleged sexual escapade with Monica Lewinsky,a White House intern,which is an event that sullied Clinton’s reputation in the twilight days of his watch.

Of course Al Gore failed to become president.
Perhaps,not appropriating Clinton’s Sterling records was a contributing factor to his failure.

Therefore ,how Tinubu would fair with the strategy of distancing himself from Buhari’s regime,is a demon that he must deal with in the coming days and weeks.

PDP presidential flag bearer,Turaki Atiku Abubakar is leveraging what he accomplished as Vice President (1999-2007) in the area of telecoms revolution(GSM etc) and the liberalization of Nigerian economy,as well as his personal accomplishments as a successful entrepreneur.

He will also likely be asking Nigerians if they are better off where they are today than where they were in 2015,in terms of socioeconomic development.
The answer of which is obviously,no.

But would that reality spur Nigerians who are at their wits end to trust him to transform their lives as he did with the telecoms sector in Nigeria?

To succeed in becoming president ,it is the task the PDP presidential candidate must accomplish,now or never.

Given his successful change of PDP policy of rotation of presidency between the north and south,his ability to mobilize and galvanize voters drawing from his last contest against the incumbent for the office of the president in 2019,is being tested.

Would he prevail as he did during his party’s primary elections,despite the gaslighting of the party by Nyesom Wike, governor of Rivers state that has stirred up what looks like hornets nest within the PDP?
As a man known for his indomitable spirit,
Atiku Abubakar is clearly poised to succeed on his fifth contest for the presidency of Nigeria. So all eyes are on him, even as he is pulling out all the stops.

To the advantage of Turaki Atiku Abubakar,he was on the ballot running against the incumbent for the same office in 2019 which is less than 4 years ago.

Therefore,he is building up on the gains that he made in 2019.

Fortuitously,candidate Buhari that he contested against and who garnered about fifteen (15)million votes against Atiku Abubakar’s which was in excess of thirteen (13) million in 2019 will not be on the ballot in 2023.

That should give the former Vice President some heft and bounce.

Now,some videos have been trending online wherein allegations that under the watch of PDP presidential candidate as the Vice President to president Olusegun Obasanjo,privatization of government corporations was under his purview as chairman of the economic council.

But instead of acknowledging his critical role in the process of introducing GSM telephony that we are currently enjoying,and which was introduced by the council that he chaired,what is being held up against him is the process of privatizing the petroleum and electricity sectors which were not concluded before their time was up in 2007, hence Nigeria is still suffering from epileptic electricity power supply and the masses still struggle to purchase petrol,a drudgery that has remained perennial.

Nasir El rufai,present kaduna state governor and APC chieftain was the Director General ,DG of the agency that privatized the corporations which were not doing well.

In my reckoning,if Atiku Abubakar influenced him unduly in the privatization of government assets exercise,l assume that he would have carpeted him in his controversial book:”Accidental Public Servant”, especially since they are now in opposing political camps.

Evidently,Atiku Abubakar may not have selfishly influenced the sale of the public assets that were underperforming and therefore a drain on public treasury.
It is commendable that it has remained unproven that he owns any of the privatized firms despite continuous search for evidence,just as no known associate of his,has been established to also own any.
Yet,he is still being vilified for seeking government assets to himself and his cronies.

It would interest critics of Atiku Abubakar’s role as chairman of the privatization council to know that Ajaokuta steel complex which could have been,but was not privatized under president Olusegun Obasanjo’s regime is still there rotting away. If it were to be offered for sale today,it would be sold as scrap since it’s value has become much more worse than it was during Olusegun Obasanjo/. two decades ago.
Yet like all the other government assets sold for less , multi billion dollars was invested about four (4) decade ago in setting up Ajaokuta steel mill.

Despite the reality above ,the false narrative that the former Vice President sold public assets to himself and cronies which is a fallacy,has somehow,remained stuck on the PDP presidential flag bearer like a badge of dishonor.

How he scrubs himself off,of that blight or stigma is a mission that must be accomplished by laying bare for public assessment what he knows about the privatization exercise during his time as Vice President,with a view to convincing the electorate on how he plans to replicate the superlative turn-around of the telecommunications sector through privatization under his watch that is now under the firm control of the private sector and performing efficiently and effectively by helping create employment and boosting the Gross Domestic Product , GDP of our country which is in the best interests of Nigerians.

And Peter Obi,the Labor Party presidential standard bearer is similarly driving his campaign based on his accomplishments in Anambra state where he served as governor (2006-2014) as well as his personal achievements as an accomplished entrepreneur.

By constantly imploring the youths to replace the old political class with him based on his fantastic message of changing Nigeria from a consuming country to a producing one,he might have hit the bull’s eye. Or so it seems.

But would that popularity leadership be sustainable when the chips are down,and all the presidential candidates put their campaigns in full throttle as the campaign trains are fired from all the four cylinders?

Right now,Peter Obi,labor party presidential torch bearer has had a head start through his ingenious strategy of campaigning online ahead of other contenders due to the fact that INEC is yet to figure out how to effectively enforce the rules in the electoral act 2022 which has set September 28 as commencement date for campaigns,but the election regulatory body did not envisage that campaigns could be taken online as Obi-Dients have been doing without being sanctioned, particularly because the internet which they have maximally utilized to market Peter Obi is a largely ungoverned space.

That has enabled the LP candidate key into the anger of our youths against the incumbent government which they had earlier expressed via the #Endsars protests of October 2020 that threatened our country to its very foundation.

So,basically,Obi-dients,which is the monicker that the labor party candidate’s followers have tagged themselves,in my view,is ordinarily a movement and simply #Endsars 2.0.
In other words ,OBIDIENT movement is #Endsars encore with a smattering of adult buy-in.

And I earnestly believe that Obi’s leadership in popularity amongst the youths may be transitory because he has been the only one literarily on top of the roof telling Nigerians that he would move the country from consumption to a production economy,which sounds like music to the ears of the electorate , particularly the youths cadre who are largely unemployed and neglected by government for too long.

Because they have an axe to grind with the incumbent government,they seem to have been sucked into the notion of anyone else would be better in Aso Rock Villa than members of the old political class.

Right now,Obi is not telling anyone how he would create employment for the youths and boost the nation’s empty treasury,reduce galloping inflation,crash the dollar/naira exchange rate and lower petrol pump price and drastically rein in insecurity driven by religious fanaticism and ethnic nationalism triggered by the zero sum politics of the incumbent regime.
Hopefully,he would be sharing his plans with Nigerians during the campaign proper.

Before the end of October which would be about one month of being on the campaign trail by all the candidates,the true leadership in the polls would have been established when Nigerians judge the candidates by the content of their manifestos and their workability and not in the manner that they are bemoaning the misery visited upon them via uninspiring and unimaginative leadership.

And it is doubtful if Peter Obi would still be ahead of the pack,as it currently appears,when it comes to the brass tacts .

A further evidence of Obi’s campaign activities,are his fund raising and campaign stomps in Europe and North America which is raising the eyebrow of INEC and other relevant authorities that are keen to determine the impropriety or otherwise of Obi-Dients activities,
since it might be conferring undue advantage on the LP presidential candidate and as such it may imperil the chances of other candidates in the race.

It does not help Peter Obi that his supporters who have been very fiery,have been over selling him via deliberate misinformation by hair- brushing their claims about their candidate’s prowess,here and there.
There is even a cartoon that l have seen in the social media portraying him as Jesus with his photo ensconced in between Bola Tinubu and Atiku Abubakar with the caption : A rare picture of Jesus and the two thieves.
The perfidious act may be attributed to his followers,but it may be part of the negative vibe that may be rubbing off on candidate,Obi.

I have had cause in the past to caution the Obi campaign team against such antics in previous articles.

In light of the above,the inability of Obi-Dients to separate facts from fiction may be the Achilles heels of Peter Obi.
Worst still , the LP presidential candidate has not only been likened to Jesus, he has also been portrayed by Obi-Dients as Nigeria’s equivalent of Barack Obama of USA,Emmanuel Macron of France and even the president-elect of Kenya, William Ruto, whose emergence as presidents of their respective countries were against the run of play.

Would their dream materialize?

Willy nilly,all the three under listed leading contenders for the presidency highlighted above would from September 28 try to hoodwink the electorate with outright lies and bogus claims about their accomplishments and thereafter make irresistible promises to provide solutions to a litany of unfulfilled promises made in 2015, 2019 and even much earlier.

The question boggling the minds of anxious Nigerians this time around is: would our politicians,especially those contending for the office of the president in 2023 be promise breakers or promise keepers ?

It may be recalled that immediately after the current ruling party’s candidate , Mohammadu Buhari won the elections in 2015,APC disowned all the lofty promises that it made pre election. It’s excuse is that the phantasmagorical promises were not made by the party,but by supporters who did so without the party’s consent.

Why did the party not disclaim the promises pre -election and only did so post election ?
It is unlikely that Nigerians who are now more savvy and wary would fall for the
antics of politicians that over promise and under deliver.

In conclusion,as mr Adams Oshiomole,a former labor leader,one time governor of Edo state,and immediate past chairman of APC told me in the course of the ceremonies for Thisday newspaper and AriseTv chairman,Nduka Obaigbena mum’s funeral in Owa-Oyibu,a couple of weeks ago,Nigerians are faced with the choice of three ‘sinners’ vying for the post of president in 2023 general elections.

And as l have elucidated in this piece,he is on point essentially because all the three of the presidential front runners have occupied public offices.
That implies that they have all been like fishes swimming in transparent bowls like aquarium and all their skeletons and warts have been exposed having been closely scrutinized by politically conscious Nigerians, that might have adjudged them to be guilty as charged as sinners.

Having identified the baggages that they are now carrying and which have affirmed the verdict of being guilty that has been passed by Nigerians on them, and as such indicating that they are not saints,we can all agree that they are all sinners.

Nevertheless ,one of them would be given another chance to redeem or reverse that negative image when he returns to public office as president of Nigeria on May 29,next year.

Any of them pretending to be a Saint amongst the three ,would be unraveled by the highly discerning and critical masses in the cause of the campaigns which begins in ernest,later this month.

Taking all together,my hunch is that corruption would not be a hot button issue in the campaigns for 2023 general elections as it was in 2019, when campaigns in the election circle commences.
That is probably because conversations around corruption allegations against the three candidates might have been exhausted and focusing on such matters may amount to over flogging the issue.

Rather,l am predicting that fake news would be a potent weapon of mass deception,if it were to be deployed by unscrupulous politicians mainly because it had worked for them in 2015 and 2019 without repercussions.
Owing to the capacity of the so called alternative reality to pervert democracy,it is of critical concern to democracy advocates like me and as such it is the raison dete for my intervention via this piece urging Nigerians to stand up against fake news.

Fortuitously,the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC is lobbying NATIONAL ASSEMBLY,NASS for the establishment of a special court for reining in electoral laws defaulters.

The INEC initiative is welcome as it tallies with my intent for alerting Nigerians about the insidious effects of twisted information on outcomes of elections as evidenced by the horrendous experience that the masses have been coping with,signposted by the series of disappointments that they have suffered,owing to failed promises by desperate and deceptive politicians in 2015 and 2019.

The net effect of the let down is the manifestation of Nigeria as a country which is like hell on earth, where life is a-dime- a-dozen and fellow humans who happen to be alive are gnashing their teeth in lnternally Displaced Persons,IDP camps where they are languishing,and a reminder that even though we are not at war in a conventional way,our country is fast becoming like Ukraine which is an active war zone.

Now,as if dealing with fake news is not bad enough,a new political malaise that is very disconcerting to most Nigerians,which is the temperament of the spokesmen of the presidential front runners who have become not only footloose but also uncouth.
The culprits in this instance,the spokesmen for the ruling party,APC in the persons of Femi Fani-Kayode and PDP’s Dino Melaye have become so unhinged that instead of being image makers they are now news makers.

One was scandalized by the resort of the duo to the childish use of skits to denigrate one another like clowns thereby debasing their principals who are serious contenders for the presidency that deserve to be presented to Nigerians in more dignified manners,and also denigrating politics which is supposed to be a serious business,not comedy show, which is the low level that the aforementioned presidential reputation managers have reduced it.

And one can bet that the absurd mannerisms displayed by the pair of Fani-Kayode and Melaye in the trending videos that suggests that they may be laden with negative energies,would rub-off badly on their principals whose image they are supposed to be burnishing.

It is unedifying that at such a critical time that the exchange of ideas full of intellectual and practical perspectives in leadership between the candidates should be dominating the political atmosphere, the trading of barbs (focused on personal idiosyncrasies) rather than what’s ailing Nigerians and how to cure them,is the main thing occupying the minds of presidential image makers and with which they are fouling up the public space.

Does it not amount to double jeopardy that the presidential candidates would not only be trying to erase their reputation of sinners with which Nigerians have labeled them,but they would also have to contend with the consequences of the oversized egos of those responsible for doing the job of marketing them to the masses,but who happen to have worse image deficits than their principals?

I recall with nostalgia the days of Abba Daboh and Godwin Tarka-both of whom hail from Benue state and were political foes whose feud that started in the 1970s continued into the 1980s.
They were so famous that the anecdote: “lf you tarka me ,l will daboh you’- a creative conversion of their last names into curse words in 1974,became part of the political lexicon at that time.

Unlike the current Fani-Kayode and Melaye feud which appears to me as mere ego trips and of zero or rather nuisance value to Nigerians,Daboh’s attack on Tarka which bothered on integrity, compelled the latter to resign from office as communications minister.
And it represents one of the rarest shows of courage and dignity by a Nigerian public officer to resign from office when his ‘sins’ were exposed.

So,political quarrels which are intrinsic to politicking had substance and purpose in the days of yore ,and in the present times, Integrity and dignity seem to have been thrown to the dogs.

Nigerians deserve better than is presently being served them by the demagogues currently bestriding the political space. And it behoves of the media and civil society as well as democracy advocates to mobilize Nigerians politicians intent on engaging in state capture.

If the aphorism ‘the morning foretells the evening’ is to be taken to heart,then the political campaigns that would officially commence by September 28,unless measures are taking by the presidential candidates to rein in their propagandists , would be full of drama and infantile tirades,instead of debates on ideas, policies and programs of the candidates seeking to rule over Nigeria from 2023

I would like to end this dialogue with the aphorism made popular by the politician Anthony Weldon.
“Fool me once,shame on you,fool me twice shame on me”.

It is a witty way to say that you should learn from someone’s tricks on you. If you don’t, you’re the only one to blame.

And that is a principle by which l am recommending that Nigerians should be guided in choosing who would lead them politically.

The question now is : would the electorate allow some despicable (not the patriotic and conscientious) politicians that have fooled them before ,fool them once again in 2023 ?

In the event that the unthinkable happens, then the Steven king modification of the aforementioned wise crack that would aptly describe the yoke around the neck of Nigerians would be in order:
“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times, shame on both of us.”

Would it not be such a pity party for Nigeria and Nigerians if at the end of the 2023 election circle, we bow our heads in shame, if the later rather than the former once again becomes our lot?

Magnus onyibe,an entrepreneur, public policy analyst ,author,development strategist,alumnus of Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy,Tufts University, Massachusetts,USA and a former commissioner in Delta state government, sent this piece from lagos.
To continue with this conversation, please visit www.magnum.ng

September 14, 2022
Understanding Nigerian Political Trick Of Fake It Till You Make It – By Magnus Onyibe

Unscrupulous politicians are on the March again with the intention to pull- the -wool over the eyes of the electorate,as the 2023 general elections rapidly approaches.

It may be recalled that in the run up to the 2015 elections in which the All Progressive Congress,APC upstaged then ruling party at the center,People Democratic Party, PDP,the expectations of Nigerians were raised,based on the fake promises made, even though the pledge givers knew that they could not be redeemed.

Hapless Nigerians were informed by politicians that Nigeria would be an Eldorado of sorts if their candidates and political party were given the mandate. And they had their way. But nearly eight (8) years after taking possession of the control of the levers of power in Aso Rock Villa and most of the governors mansions across the thirty six (36) states of the federation, if there is anything like hell on earth,that would be Nigeria.

The main culprits for the perfidious act of delivering far short of promises are members of the current ruling party,All Progressive Congress,APC, which is a convergence of multiple opposition parties-ACN, CPC, ANPP, and a faction of APGA and PDP that melted into one,in order to forge a common and formidable front to upstage then ruling party,PDP.

To achieve its mission,it may be recalled that the strategy of regaling Nigerians with lofty promises that are solutions to the malaise wracking the society at that point in time and which were attributed to then incumbent government,were promoted and marketed vigorously knowing that they would resonate with the masses.

And they did so by making up quotes and ascribing them to leaders of thought in our society such as the noble laureate professor Wole Soyinka and erudite scholar and pseudo politician,Professor Pat Utomi,to mention just two leading lights in Nigeria.

With a deluge of such false claims already filling up the media space lately ,the duo of Utomi and Soyinka have been issuing rebuttals as politicians ramp up activities towards 2023 general elections which commences with the election of the president and National Assembly members in February next year.

Before the confutation of what was attributed to the duo of Utomi and Soyinka, the emir of Kano and sultan of Sokoto, two highly respected monarchs have also had their names dragged into the political arena by desperate politicians that are by hook and crook trying to take undue advantage of the positive spinoffs from the good names of some credible Royalties via name dropping which amounts to using the name of our royal fathers to deceive the electorate.

There is also an international dimension to the ‘fake it till you make political trick’ that had become part of the political game since 2015, and gained currency in 2019,before its current threat of becoming entrenched in Nigeria’s political system,if measures are not taken to stymy it.

Christian Amanpour,A CNN anchor woman and Elon Musk,the founder of Tesla automobile brand have also had cause to disown bogus endorsements of candidate Peter Obi,ascribed to both of them.

While Elon Musk’s video got patched up to a voice extolling Obi and promising to do business with Nigeria if he wins,a fake interview appointment for Peter Obi With Amampour had also been circulated.

Although,APC was most guilty of ‘the fake it till you make it trick’ in 2015 and 2019, in the current dispensation,Peter Obi’s campaign, a.k.a OBIDIENT movement has so far been the main culprit.

That is probably because they seem to have commenced campaign online and are also engaging in fund raising internationally, ahead of the pack.
The numerous million man matches for Peter Obi that have been afoot across Nigeria ,ahead of all the other parties seems to me like campaign for the LP candidate.

Therefore ,the purpose of intervening via this article is for the electorate to understand the imminent mind games that is about to be unleashed on them by cunning demagogues with a view to bending the minds of voters to do their bidding in order to win the elections knowing fully well that the promises they were making would not be fulfilled as they have planned,ab initio to deny the promises after winning.

Hopefully,by revealing the tricks and sensitizing the electorate so that the unwary voters would identify such misinformation as scam and political trick, and at the same time nudge our law makers to incorporate ways to mitigate and sanction offenders in the proposed electoral offenses court or tribunal,is the goal of this essay.

And to be fair ,the Obi-Dients,which is a term that the very boisterous supporters of LP presidential candidate have branded themselves, are not the originators of ‘fake it till you make it’ political subterfuge.
Nevertheless,they are the leading offenders in the current dispensation.

Back in 2015, fantastic promises such as reducing naira/dollar exchange rate drastically to $1-N1, and a reversal of then prevailing high petrol pump price which was a major concern of majority of Nigerians as well as eliminating terrorism which was still at infancy,were at the core of the campaigns.
Owing to to the timeliness and aptness of the promises,they resonated with Nigerians.

Equally enchanting to Nigerians,was the promise to put an end to the epidemic of corruption in our country ,which was being waved as a red flag and the bane of our beloved Nigeria at that point in time.
And it was canvassed vigorously that graft would be drastically reduced,if not eliminated by candidate Mohammadu Buhari,if he was elected president and APC took over the reins of leadership at the centre.

It is needless pointing out that hapless Nigerian masses seeking rescue from the misery that had taken hold of them at that time,had no choice than to consider then main opposition party,APC as the rescue team in the manner that a messiah was divinely assigned to rescue lsrealites from their bondage in Egypt, as we have learnt from the narrative contained in the holy Bible.

And APC presidential candidate,Buhari was easily seen as the proverbial knight in a shining armor on a mission to save Nigeria.

With then candidate,now president Buhari’s unassailable reputation at that time ,as a no nonsense retired Army General who had zero tolerance for corruption,it was forgone conclusion that graft would be drastically reduced if not eliminated in our country under Buhari’s watch.

But contrary to the high expectations, after nearly 8 years of APC being Incharge of affairs in our beleaguered country, corruption of monumental proportions has assumed the dimension of an epidemic threatening to bankrupt our beloved country in the manner that Haiti,Venezuelan,Sri Lanka have been run aground and their economies are currently comatose

Nothing illustrates how sunken Nigerian economy has become more than the fact that the Central Bank of Nigeria,CBN is struggling to retain enough funds in the treasury to sustain three months of import,even as government can hardly pay salaries of civil servants,except it borrows from banks.

Worst still,there is so much scarcity of foreign exchange now that it is being rationed, ostensibly with a view to screening out abusers from genuine users as demand has far outstripped supply,implying that our foreign exchange earning capacity as a country is in jeopardy.

With manufacturing being hobbled owing to inability of factory owners to source foreign exchange to import raw materials and other items required for producing essential commodities,shortages of basic necessities may be imminent.
To me, the current misery being endured by the masses echoes the ignoble period of rationing of essential commodities such as rice ,bread,milk sugar etc which was the hallmark of 1983-85.

God forbids that our country returns to that morbid past.

Relying on his training as a military general that had previously reined in religious fanatics during the reign of president Shehu Shagari from 1979-1983,candidate Buhari was also marketed to Nigerians as possessing the antidote to the threat of insecurity driven by terrorists that had sprung up in the north leveraging the populism of religion that has degenerated into fanaticism before metastasizing into insurgency.

The level of insecurity in our country now is so dire that it suggests that our security architecture has been overwhelmed and therefore collapsed with rule of the mob, rather than rule of law reigning supreme, especially in the hinterlands.

The situation of insecurity is so severe and horrendous that most Nigerian roads can no longer be plied without the consequence of death of road users in the hands of the multiple gangs of outlaws that are slowly making out country look like gangster paradise.

Even the newly resuscitated railways could not serve as alternative means of transportation to the roads as patrons are also being kidnapped for ransom by the nefarious ambassadors who have now made criminality a very lucrative industry.

How about the pump price of petrol which was in 2015 selling at N87 when the incumbent government took over the affairs of our country,but the critically important commodity currently sells at N165 per liter which is a double fold increase.

Also the petrol subsidy that gulped about N650 billion naira in 2015,is today draining the treasury in excess of N4 trillion based on the estimate made by the defunct PAPPRA- petroleum import and sales agency and provisions made in 2022 national budget.

Also not immune to the litany of disappointing outcomes of promises made to Nigerians who were desperate for change is the naira to dollar exchange rate which is currently spiraling out of control.
In 2015 it was hovering between N160-200/$1.
But,after all the abracadabra by Godwin Emefiele led Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN,including the banning of 41 items from being imported via funds sourced from the CBN , plus the prolonged shutting down of Nigerian borders with neighboring countries ,coupled with multiple financial interventions in various economic sectors running into trillions of naira, the value of the Naira has been drastically devalued in a period of less than eight (8) years, to the extent that Nigerian currency currently exchanges for a rate in the neighborhood of N700-705 to $1 in the parallel market compared to less than $1-N200 which the prevailing rate in 2015.

The situation has become so outrageously and ludicrously embarrassing and painful that the process of obtaining Basic Travel Allowance, BTA and Personal Travel Allowance from commercial banks and the CBN is so cumbersome now that countless Nigerians are getting stranded abroad for lack of ability to pay for services with their Nigerian credit or debit cards.

International airlines had threatened to shut down services to Nigeria because their funds had been trapped as they were unable to repatriate their sales proceeds until the central took some actions to remedy the highly embarrassing situation.

With a huge chunk of their funds still unreleased to the airlines,nervousness has taken hold of most Nigerians who are traveling abroad not knowing if they would be stranded over there,if the airlines eventually carry out their threat of shutting down services.

All the doom and gloom that are bedeviling Nigeria and Nigerians have been catalogued above, so that the consequences of voting based on emotions rather than on verifiable facts would be stark to the electorates, and prompt or compel them to become more vigilant.

In our checkered political history, I can not recall Nigerians being in such economic dire straights, except during the 1967-70 civil war.

And the mess highlighted above have befallen Nigerians simply because when in 2015 the APC hired former USA president Barack Obama’s campaign strategist, Dan Axerold to dress up then candidate Buhari in borrowed robes which presented his presidency as the panacea to our country’s socioeconomic malaise ,literally and practically, we swallowed the bait, hook-line and-sinker.

The masses were so hoodwinked by the fantasy that they failed to check out what is beneath the veneer by interrogating the ability and capacity of candidate Buhari to deliver democracy dividends such as alleviating poverty via provision of jobs,social and economic infrastructures such as schools,housing,water, electricity,roads,hospitals etc .
Although, it might not have been deliberate, as Buhari might have been overwhelmed by the existential realities that have hindered him from performing optimally, but it is our indiscretion and lack of due diligence in order to figure out the candidate that poses the skill set required to rescue our country and also patriotic enough to lift the critical mass of Nigerians out of the moras of poverty ,that has placed our country in the current sorry state that it finds itself in.

It is unacceptable to me,and l presume people of good conscience that by and large,the gullibility of Nigerians that was exploited in 2015, by politicians hell bent on state capture,is still being exploited via fantastic campaign promises made by unscrupulous politicians who are currently gearing up to literally rape the electorate one more time.

And l am urging Nigerian voters to make conscious efforts to peel off the veneer in the fantastic propositions in order to decipher the truth from the lies in the contents being bandied around so that they can see through the subterfuge.

The proposition above is critically important as our cherished country prepares for another circle of political party elections towards a change of guards in Aso Rock Villa seat of presidential power, and most of the thirty six (36) government mansions in Nigeria, including the National Assembly, NASS as well as the thirty six (36) state houses of assembly nation wide.

It is worrying to me that it appears as if the circumstances that were prevailing in 2015 are prevailing once again,and Nigerians are about to be taken for a ride one more time unless they learn to be more circumspect .

Put succinctly,I am encouraging Nigerians to ‘shine their eyes’ this time around and that translates to:Caveat Emptor or Buyer Beware in legalese.

Clearly,l am by and large warning Nigerians to beware of the Ides of March by not getting emotional in their choice of new leaders as they did when they kicked out Goodluck Jonathan’s regime based on the irrational slogan: anybody else than Goodluck Jonathan .
Evidently,that warped mind set that was shaped by misinformation l,has as they say it in local parlance, moved Nigeria from ‘frying pan to fire.’

As readers may be aware,the ides of March is a warning to watch out for betrayal or misfortune.

For readers that are unfamiliar with the term Ides Of March, let us be guided by dictionary .com which states that the term: ides of March,(which is March 15) is the day on which Roman Emperor Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 b.c.e. For this reason, it has become associated with bad omens, betrayal, and misfortune.

This means that as activities towards the actualization of the general elections in 2023 get into top gear and INEC is poised to blow the whistle for the campaigns to officially commence on September 28 for the February 25 presidential and National Assembly,NASS elections,fantastic promises are being made by unscrupulous politicians to confuse the electorate into yielding up their votes for the most artful schemers.

At this point, it is appropriate that we highlight some of the unique selling points of the candidates that are front runners in the presidential candidates and political platforms.

Remarkably,APC and it’s presidential candidate,Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu are brandishing his accomplishments as Lagos State governor (1999-2007) as opposed to the record of the party in nearly eight (8) years of holding the reins of government. In addition to the party’s former chairman,Adams Oshiomole’s recent diatribe that candidate Tinubu should not be judged by the performance of APC, distancing Tinubu from president Buhari’s record which was reinforced by APC vice presidential candidate, Kashim
Shettima’s presentation during Nigerian Bar Association, NBA recent conference, would be a hard sell.
But Tinubu who is known to be a maverick would be asking very skeptical Nigerians to trust him with their future as lagosians did when he governed them for eight (8) years.
Would he pull the type of stunts that he successfully executed during the APC party’s primaries by clinching the ticket to the bewildered opponents ?

Likewise,PDP presidential flag bearer,Turaki Atiku Abubakar who is leveraging what he accomplished as Vice President (1999-2007) in the area of telecoms revolution(GSM etc) and the liberalization of Nigerian economy, as well as his personal accomplishments as a successful entrepreneur.
He will also likely be asking Nigerians if they are better off where they are today than where they were in 2015, in terms of socioeconomic development.
The answer of which is obviously,no.

But would that reality spur Nigerians who are at their wits end to trust him to transform their lives as he did with the telecoms sector in Nigeria?
That is the task the the PDP presidential candidate must accomplish, now or never .
Given his successful change of PDP policy of rotation of presidency of between the north and south,his ability to mobilize and galvanize voters drawing from his last contest against the incumbent for the office of the president in 2019, is being tested.

And Peter Obi,the Labor Party presidential standard bearer is similarly driving his campaign based on his accomplishments in Anambra state where he served as governor (2006-2014) as well as his personal achievements as an accomplished entrepreneur.
By constantly inciting the youths to replace the old political class with him based on his fantastic message of changing Nigeria from a consuming country to a producing one, he might have hit the bull’s eye.
But is it sustainable when the chips are down ?

Willy nilly,all the three under listed leading contenders for the presidency highlighted above will from September 28 try to hoodwink the electorate with outright lies and bogus claims about their accomplishments and thereafter make irresistible promises to provide solutions to a litany of unfulfilled promises made in 2015, 2019 and even in the past.

It may be recalled that immediately after the current ruling party’s candidate , Mohammadu Buhari won the elections in 2015,APC disowned all the lofty promises that it made pre election. It’s excuse is that the phantasmagorical promises were not made by the party, but by supporters who did so without the party’s consent . How convenient.
Why did the party not disclaim the promises pre -election and only did so post election ?

It is a classical example trick of Fake It Till You It which lam seeking to make Nigerians understand in this article.

Right now,Peter Obi, labor party presidential torch bearer has had a head start through his ingenious strategy of campaigning online ahead of other contenders due to the fact that INEC is yet to figure out how to effectively enforce the rules in the electoral act 2022 which has set September 28 as commencement date for campaigns,but election regulatory body did not envisage that campaigns could be taken online as Obi-Dients have been doing without being sanctioned, particularly because the internet which they have maximally utilized to market Peter Obi is a largely ungoverned space.

That has enabled the LP candidate key into the anger of our youths against the incumbent government which they had earlier expressed via the #Endsars protests of October 2020 that threatened our country to its very foundation.

So,basically,Obi-dients,which is the monicker that the labor party candidate’s followers have tagged themselves,in my view, is basically a movement and simply #Endsars 2.0.
In other words ,OBIDIENT movement is #Endsars encore with a smattering of adult buy-in.

And I earnestly believe that Obi’s leadership in popularity amongst the youths is transitory because he is the only one literarily on top of the roof telling Nigerians that he would move the country from consumption to a production economy,which sounds like music to the ears of the electorate , particularly the youths cadre who are largely unemployed and neglected. Because they an axe to grind with government, they seem to have been sucked into the notion of anyone else would be better in Aso Rock Villa than the old politicians.

Right now, Obi is not telling anyone how he would create employment for the youths and boost the empty treasury,reduce galloping inflation,crash the dollar/naira exchange rate and lower petrol pump price and drastically rein in insecurity driven by religious fanaticism and ethnic nationalism triggered by the zero sum politics of the incumbent regime.

Before the end of October which would be about one month of being on the campaign trail by all the candidates,the true leadership in the polls would have been established, and it is doubtful if Peter Obi would still be ahead of the pack as it currently appears,presumably because he has been the only one campaigning since June and therefore enjoys first movers advantage.

A further evidence of Obi’s campaign activities are his ongoing fund raising and campaign stomps in Europe and North America which is raising the eyebrow of INEC and other relevant authorities that are keen to determine the impropriety or otherwise of Obi-Dients activities
since it might be conferring under advantage on the LP presidential candidate as it may imperil the chances of other candidates in the race.

It does not help Peter Obi that his supporters who have been very fiery,have been over selling him via deliberate misinformation and hair- brushing their claims about their candidate’s prowess,here and there.

I have had cause in the past to caution the Obi campaign team against such antics in the past. APC’s Bola Tinubu has also raised objection to tissues of lies allegedly being spread about him by the same suspects,and so also had Rabiu Musa Kwakwanso,the NNPP presidential candidate pushed back on claims made by Obi-dients about the party’s relationship with Obi.

In light of the above, the inability of Obi-Dients to separate facts from fiction may be the Achilles heels of Peter Obi.
But he has been likened by Obi-Dients to Barack Obama, of USA , Emmanuel Macron of France and even the president-elect of Kenya, William Ruto whose elections were against the run of play.
Would their dream materialize?

On the part of Bola Tinubu,as the ruling party’s presidential candidate,he could have been enjoying the benefits of the good legacy that the out going party would have left for the good people of Nigeria to cherish.But unfortunately, the current government in power is leaving a legacy of sorrow, tears and blood ,to borrow a line from a hit song by the late Afro beat king and maestro,Fela Ransom Kuti.
It is one that no right thinking candidate would like to appropriate.

So , lo former APC chairman,Adams Oshiomole has urged Nigerians not to judge Bola Tinubu based on president Mohammadu Buhari’s records which is sordid,no matter how Buharists try to spin it .

But would it not be uncharitable and disingenuous for Tinubu to distance himself from Buhari?

It is telling that Kashim Shettima’s presentation on behalf of his principal,Bola Tinubu at the just concluded Nigerian Bar Association,NBA conference was focused on Tinubu’s accomplishments as lagos state governor and not on APC’s success or lack of it in the governance of Nigeria.

So their agenda would likely be different from the well known APC and Buhari’s agenda.
As such, Tinubu would definitely be walking a tight rope,especially if president Buhari is expected to join in the campaign for Tinubu as a candidate.

How can a presidential candidate of the ruling party distance himself from the outgoing president? That is the proverbial Gordian knot that has to be untied by candidate Tinubu.

To contextualize the dilemma, Al Gore tried to detach himself from the administration that he was aiming to replace in the United States of America, USA,when as Vice President to Bill Clinton, he was contesting to succeed his principal,but distanced himself from his boss owing to the scandal about Clinton’s alleged sexual escapade with Monica Lewinsky,a White House intern, which is an invent that sullied Clinton’s reputation in the twilight days of his watch.
Of course Al Gore failed to become president. Perhaps, not appropriating Clinton’s Sterling records was a contributing factor to his failure.

So how Tinubu would fair with that strategy is demon that he must deal with.

With respect to Turaki Atiku Abubakar, PDP’s standard bearer, he was on the ballot running against the incumbent for the same office in 2019 which is less than 4 years ago.

Therefore, he is building up on the gains that he made in 2019.
Fortuitously,candidate Buhari that he ran against and who garnered about fifteen (15)million votes against Atiku Abubakar’s which was in excess of thirteen (13) million in 2019 will not be on the ballot in 2023.

That should give the former Vice President some heft.

Now,some videos have been trending online wherein allegations that under the watch of PDP presidential candidate as the Vice President to president Olusegun Obasanjo, privatization of government corporations was under his purview.

But instead of acknowledging his critical role in the process of introducing GSM telephony that we are currently enjoying that was introduced by the council that he chaired,what is being held against him is the process of privatizing the petroleum and electricity sectors which were not concluded before their time was up in 2007, hence Nigeria is still suffering from epileptic electricity power supply and the masses struggle to purchase petrol,has remained perennial.

Nasir El rufai,present kaduna state governor and APC chieftain was the Director General , DG of the agency that privatized the corporations which were not doing well. In my reckoning , if Atiku Abubakar influenced him unduly in the privatization exercise, l assume that he would have stated so very clearly in his book:Accidental Public Servant especially since they are now in opposing political camps.

Evidently,Atiku Abubakar may not have influenced the sale of the public assets that were underperforming and a drain on public treasury, and he owns non,just as no known associate of his, has been established to own any. Yet he is still being vilified.

It might interest critics to know that Ajaokuta steel complex which was not privatized is still there rotting away. If it were to be offered for sale today,it would be sold as scrap.
Yet multi billion dollars was invested to setting it up.

Despite that reality, the narrative that the former Vice President sold public assets to himself and cronies which is a fallacy,has some how, remained stuck on the PDP presidential flag bearer like a badge of dishonor.
How he scrubs himself of that blight is a mission he that must accomplish by laying bare for public assessment what he knows about the privatization exercise during his time as Vice President and convince the electorate on how he plans to replicate the superlative turn around of the telecommunications sector now under the firm control of the private sector.

In conclusion, as mr Adams Oshiomole, a former labor leader, one time governor of Edo state, and immediate past chairman of APC told me during the reception at Nduka Obaigbena mum’s funeral in Owa-Oyibu , a couple of weeks ago, Nigerians are faced with the choice of three ‘sinners’ vying for the post of president in 2023 general elections.
He is on point essentially because all the three of the front runner l have held public offices.
That implies that they have all been like fishes swimming in transparent bowls such as an aquarium.

And l have identified the baggages that they are now carrying which indicate that they have been adjudged by Nigerians not to be saints.

Any one pretending to be a Saint amongst them,would be unraveled by the highly discerning and critical masses in the cause of the campaigns which begins in ernest, later this month.

My hunch is that corruption would not be a hot button issue when 2022/23 campaign commences.

And l am predicting that fake news would be a potent weapon of mass deception if the masses to be deployed by unscrupulous politicians mainly because it had worked for them in 2015 and 2019 without repercussions.

Which is why l am alerting Nigerians about the insidious and visceral effects of twisted information on election outcomes as evidenced by their horrendous experience signposted by the series of disappointments arising from failed promises by desperate and deceptive politicians.

I would like to end this dialogue with the aphorism:
“Fool me once,shame on you,fool me twice shame on me” a principle by which l recommend that Nigerians should be guided.
The origin of the expression is from the book “The Court and Character of King James,” written by Anthony Weldon in 1651, where it appears as follows. “The Italians having a Proverb, ‘He that deceives me once, it’s his fault; but if twice,it’s my fault. ‘

The question now is : would the electorate allow despicable politicians that have fooled them before ,fool them once again in 2023 ?
I hope not,because l believe Nigerians have become more politically savvy, therefore they can not afford to be fooled continuously.

Magnus onyibe,an entrepreneur, public policy analyst ,author,development strategist,alumnus of Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy,Tufts University, Massachusetts,USA and a former commissioner in Delta state government, sent this piece from lagos.
To continue with this conversation, please visit www.magnum.ng

September 7, 2022
Wike And The Audacity Of Intransigence – By Magnus Onyibe

As the tortoise is always at the heart of the story in typical African folklores, Nyesom Wike, incumbent governor of Rivers state and ex presidential aspirant of the main opposition party, Peoples Democratic Party, PDP is the tortoise in the story of 2023 general elections.

Although,he had lost the presidential primaries to former Vice President Turaki Atiku Abubakar in the keenly contested presidential primaries held on May 27 in Abuja,Federal Capital Territory, FCT, Wike has managed to hold Nigerians spell bound continuously for a whopping four months since he lost the primaries in a contest that he polled 237 against the winner’s 371 votes, out of a total of 767 votes cast.

Commendably,Wike lost the primaries by a margin of only 134 votes.

And it is presumed that the winning votes came from sokoto state Governor,-Aminu Tambuwal’s camp who through last minute political brinksmanship on the part of the former Vice President,was persuaded to yield his votes to him thus facilitating his win over the Rivers state governor,Wike.

But,even if Wike lost in the primaries,he has actually been winning ,as he has become a beautiful bride being wooed by both his party,PDP, the ruling party at the center, APC and even the wave making LP.

The wooing is so intense that in the past one week,Wike and his allies have been holding court in London.

First,he and his team of three other governors were meeting with Bola Tinubu, the presidential candidate of the APC. Then it was followed by a session with Peter Obi,LP presidential flag bearer,for whom former president Olusegun Obasanjo is reportedly seeking Wike’s hand in a political wedlock.

What really stands out for me with Obasanjo in the mix is how the ex president,who presumably had become apolitical,was in London reportedly trying to sway Wike and his cahoot of governors, including Samuel Ortom of Benue state,Okezie Ikpeazu of Abia state and Seyi Makinde of Oyo state,to the side of Peter Obi.

Just as we thought we had seen it all,PDP presidential candidate,Atiku Abubakar, who against the advise of BOT chairman of PDP, Walid Jibrin,had been reticent about meeting Wike in his Portharcourt home base to assuage his anger,also showed up in London for dinner with Wike to iron out their differences.

That was amazing and stunning!

I will return to how Wike is winning after he lost in the presidential primaries,but first let us dwell a bit on how he narrowly lost to the winner of the contest,former Vice President,Turaki Atiku Abubakar.

Now,it is in the public domain,how the yielding of the votes of governor Aminu Tambuwal of Sokoto state to Turaki Atiku Abubakar during the primaries,turned the table against Wike,resulting in his loss in the contest.

And that action which Wike views as betrayal of the highest order is the driving force for his anger which he is expressing by flirting with all manners of political suitors.

But the shenanigans at the party primaries and Wike’s seeming availability to the highest bidder are part of the political game of alignments and re-alignments of forces which are the stuff that horse trading in politics is made of.

Ordinarily,having lost the primaries,Wike should have recoiled into his shell to leak his wounds,as most of the other fellow contestants in the primaries of both parties have done.

To put things in perspective,allow me share my personal experience which will help drive my point home.

At a dinner table with friends recently,l posed a question: who emerged second in the primaries contest conducted by the APC?

It was unsurprising to me that none of my fellow dinners could easily recall that it is Rotimi Amaechi,ex transport minister that came second to Bola Tinubu.

Has anyone heard from Amaechi lately?

Obviously,he has gone into hibernation.

Also,a former senate president,Bukola Saraki and the current Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo,who worked assiduously and were also hopeful of clinching the presidential tickets of their respective parties,PDP and APC lost out by coming third in the contests conducted by their respective parties.

After the political hurly burly,Saraki has has gone under the radar and he has stayed low key as he has not been seen at public events lately, just as Osinbajo,soon after the primaries,checked himself into hospital for surgery on his foot and in the process took time to exhale.

Some Nigerians are contending that a similar attitude or approach should have been adopted by Wike.
But as all fingers are not equal,all things are also not always equal.

So,it would appear as if the current Rivers state governor is being bellicose about his loss,hence he has refused to take things lying low.

A bit of background will throw more light on the origin of the intrigues.

Before,the 2023 primaries which held at about the end May of this year ,Wike and Tambuwal were strong allies who in the 2019 presidential primaries were in the same camp against Atiku Abubakar, Bukola Saraki, lbrahim Dankwambo etc.

Wike who hosted the 2019 primaries in Portharcourt was determined to sway the contest in favor of his then ally,Tambuwal, but for the intervention of the northern establishment,a.k.a Kaduna mafia that sent their representative to physically attend the primaries and convey to Wike their preference of Turaki Atiku Abubakar as PDP presidential candidate.

It is such an irony that there has been a role reversal as Tambuwal,the erstwhile Wike ally is now a political foe,and worse still,the one that dealt him a mortal blow during the primaries for the impending 2023 presidential elections by collapsing his votes into that of Turaki Abubakar to secure victory for the former Vice President.

It reminds me of the narrative in the famous literature book, Macbeth where Brutus ,Julius Ceasar’s best friend whom he ran to for protection from being assassinated by members of his cabinet ,turns out to be the one that dealt his best friend Ceasar,the fatal blow via a vicious stab that finished him off.

According to the fable captured in that iconic literature book,Macbeth,Ceasar was so surprised that his best friend Brutus became so fiendish,that he let out the famous cry ‘et tu brute’.

So,l can imagine Wike exclaiming ‘et tu Tambuwal’ when he discovered that it was his erstwhile ally’s votes that finished him off politically in his quest to be the number one occupant of Aso Rock Villa in 2023.

Of course ,Tambuwal has his reasons for backing Atiku Abubakar, for which the chairman of PDP,lyorchia Ayu hailed him as the hero of democracy.

And just as that accolade for Tambuwal by Ayu appear like pouring gasoline into a burning fire,Wike appears hell bent on getting his pound of flesh from the party, and particularly,the chairman,Ayu who he is determined to force to resign.

Consequently,instead of allowing Atiku Abubakar to savor his victory after emerging as the PDP presidential candidate since end of May,which is roughly four (4) months ago,Wike has been like a dog in the manger.

Thus,he has literally been grinding Atiku Abubakar’s nose on the stone by not allowing him to get on with moving the party forward in its quest to be the next ruling party at the centre and himself as the prime occupant of Aso Rock Villa seat of presidential power in 2023.

As governor Wike and former Vice President,Abubakar have finally crossed the proverbial rubicon by meeting in London,not Portharcourt or Abuja,the question on everyone’s lips now is: what next?

While the outcome of Atiku Abubakar and Nyesom Wike London parley appears to be cheery,as both sides were seen coming out of the dinner meeting wearing broad smiles,but with Wike being like Houdini-the famous magician who can easily pull a rabbit out of a hat,if his demands are not met,who next would Wike romance in order to make Atiku Abubakar green with envy and act like a lover whose aggrieved bride is on the verge of breaking up their engagement by openly flirting with his rivals?

Would Atiku Abubakar meet the Wike conditionalities (of which l won’t speculate since they are nebulous) but which are believed to be as stringent as the lMF loan?

And does Wike have any more Cupid arrows in his quivers to fire should the Wike/Abubakar presumed agreement collapse?

Guess what,history has a way of repeating itself as Atiku Abubakar has travelled on a similar lane before.

To put things in context,allow me cast our minds back to 2003 to draw a parallel between Vice President Atiku Abubakar and president Olusegun Obasanjo presidential primaries imbroglio when OBJ was seeking the hands of his party for re-election mandate,and the present situation whereby Atiku is seeking to become president and Nyesom Wike is constituting a stumbling block in a bid to settle scores or be a major stakeholder in the next government .

The circumstances may not be exactly the same,but the intrigues are strikingly similar.

It may be recalled that in 2003,as former president Olusegun Obasanjo was concluding his first term in office,some governors within then ruling PDP resolved not to lend their support to Obasanjo for a second term bid for the office president of Nigeria.

Instead of Obasanjo,they were poised to channel their support to then Vice President Atiku Abubakar who they believe had the wherewithal,since they were unhappy with Obasanjo OBJ’s dictatorial tendencies in the manner that he was administering the country in somewhat draconian ways,perhaps owing to his military background.

After then chairman of PDP,chief Audu Ogbe made OBJ aware of the stance of the revolting governors that he was “unmarketable and unelectable” as such, he would not be given the mandate for a second term,high wire politicking,such as what is currently being witnessed between Wike and Atiku was triggered.

The rest they say is history,as it was reported in the grapevine that OBJ went on his knees or genuflected to beseech then Vice President Atiku Abubakar to reason with him in his quest for a second term and help persuade the renegade governors as it were,to have mercy on him by allowing him enjoy the privilege of a second term.

In other words,OBJ stooped to conquer.

After the initial bluster,he had his way by getting re-elected for a second term.

But thereafter,it would appear that for daring to constitute a threat to his second term bid,there has been,and continues to be very dire consequences for then Vice President,Atiku Abubakar and others who he deems to have conspired against him.

As if on a revenge mission,OBJ succeeded in stopping Atiku Abubakar from succeeding him in 2007.

Subsequently,he has written very vile things about the man who served as Vice President under him in his book: My Watch which would ordinarily make Nigerians not touch the former Vice President with a barge pole or make the electorate dine with him with a long spoon. But the electorate seem to have figured out that it is a matter of personal vendetta by the former president against his vice.

In spite of that potential damage ,Atiku Abubakar garnered about 13 million votes in 2019 presidential race against the incumbent president’s 15 million votes. And the PDP presidential flag bearer intends to build upon that 13 million votes in the coming election and hopefully in light of the expanded voters base as the youths are now taking politics seriously by registering massive to vote in the 2023 elections,an additional 3 -5 million more votes would propel him into Aso Rock villa in 2023.

Astonishingly,Atiku Abubakar’s spectacular showing at the 2019 presidential polls which is remarkable has not deterred former president Obasanjo from continuing to savage the former Vice President’s image by stating in multiple media interviews that God won’t forgive him,if he supports the former Vice President,Atiku Abubakar’s quest to become president of Nigeria.

So,it is in that context that OBJ’s showing up in London to broker a deal between Wike and Peter Obi,the LP presidential candidate with a view to undermining Atiku Abubakar’s quest for the presidency should be situated.
It suggests or implies that the former president has remained unrelenting about quashing the former Vice President’s presidential ambition,one more time in 2023.

But would he succeed this time around ?

As the wise crack goes: revenge is sweet when served cold and OBJ seems resolute in his quest to take his pound of flesh from those that he deems to have been a clog in his wheel of political progress in 2003.

And that explains why the former president has obviously remained on a war path about twenty (20) years after he survived what he might have considered to be treachery against him.

Hence ,shortly after returning to office for a second term ,he visited then PDP Chairman,Audu Ogbe in his house where he shared a meal of pounded yam with him.

Thereafter,for daring to be the purveyor of the bad news from the governors who initially resisted his second term,the sack of then PDP chairman,Audu Ogbe was announced the very next day after they shared the meal.

Subsequently,OBJ who is largely adjudged by those who have crossed swords with him as being very unforgiving,took on all the other suspects or culprits in the attempt to upstage him in 2003, one by one.

And many watchers of politics in Nigeria ascribe the travails and political witch hunt of former Delta State governor, chief James lbori to his prime role in the attempt to stop OBJ from having a second term in 2003.

Given the well documented litany of misfortunes that befell those that tried to scuttle OBJ’s bid for re-election in 2003,should Wike and the three governors ,supporting his intransigence,as it were,not be careful or more circumspect about the war that they are fighting today, so that it may not turn around to hurt them tomorrow ?

It is not only with Atiku Abubakar,but Wike has been in dalliance with Bola Tinubu,Peter Obi and Musa Kwankwanso.

Can his decision be fair to all of them at the same time ?

For sure ,Wike is certainly enjoying his new popularity or is it notoriety?

With three (3) of the twelve (12) PDP governors of states in the trenches with him,Wike packs a significant punch in terms of ability to bring voters to the table.

That is what is magnetizing suitors to him as bees are attracted to nectar.

But, wait a minute!

Is the magic sustainable and is he not burning too many bridges and courting too many enemies?
To be specific, would he survive when he exits the office of the governor of Rivers state in May 29, 2023?

Fortunately, Atiku Abubakar is believed to not be vindictive.

Magnus onyibe,an entrepreneur, public policy analyst ,author,development strategist,alumnus of Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy,Tufts University, Massachusetts,USA and a former commissioner in Delta state government, sent this piece from lagos.
To continue with this conversation, please visit www.magnum.ng

August 30, 2022
Facts And Fiction About Nollywood’s Incursion Into 2023 Gubernatorial Elections

There is a general belief universally that perception often times can become reality. And better still,the notion that movies can mimic life and vice versa is also not a rarity across the world.

The notion above would likely come to pass in Nigeria when the trio of Funke Akindele, in lagos,Tonto Dike in Portharcourt and Caroline (Hutchins) Danjuma in Akwa lbom,who are movie actors, become deputy governors in their respective states in the manner that Volosdymyr Zelensky,a reality television show actor, who acted as president in a Ukrainian situation comedy ,truly became the president of Ukraine in reality in 2019.

Before Zelensky,Ronald Reagan,a movie star, had become the 40th president of the United States of America,USA in 1981.
So also did Arnold Swarzenegger-a body builder turned movie star end up as the 38th governor of the state of California in the same USA,in 2003.

Most recently,Donald Trump,the 45th president of the USA (2017-2021) was the host of a popular reality tv show – The Apprentice after which he ran for the office of the president and thus played the role of undisputed leader of the world for four years.

Prior to the present situation in Nigeria, the drama in politics in our clime was confined to colorful and melodramatic goofs or gaffes like the one credited to the likes of Kingsley Ozumba Mbadiwe (Ambassador Plenipotentiary) who is known for his bombastic grammar such as : man of timber and caliber,Iroko and Obeche-the last two words being names of tree types that he added to ignite humor.

Another source of political humor back in the days ,is the speech attributed to Barkin Zuwo-one time governor of Kano state who in response to a reporter’s question on the type of mineral resources that can be found in his state,he reportedly listed Coca-Cola and Fanta which is a gaffe as the reporter was actually making enquiries about solid natural mineral resources.
That made him a butt of jokes in both the political circles and the larger society.
On why there is student unrest,(crisis like riots by students) the same Barkin Zuwo is said to have responded thus: “how can student rest when they are sent to school to read and not rest?“

How can we forget sir Adegoke Adelabu,the strong man of lbadan politics,nicknamed PENKELEMESl?
He became the butt of jokes after he was believed to have mis-pronounced peculiar mess as:PENKELEMESI.

Remarkably and evidently,humor arose from the goofs and gaffes made by politicians from all the three major tribes-lgbo,Yoruba and Hausa/Fulani.

While the humor offered comic relief which is a necessary ingredient for reducing the tension associated with politicking,whether the attributions are correct or figments of imagination of fertile minds is a different kettle of fish.

Not until the commencement of the 2022/2023 political season,little or no real political drama had been witnessed since the return of multi party democracy in Nigeria in 1999.

Except of course,the political musical chairs that happened between 2013-14 when a coalition of opposition political parties-CPC,ACN,ANPP, splinters of APGA and nPDP coalesced into one party,APC with the sole objective of ousting then ruling party at the center,PDP.

Nearly eight (8) years after that massive cross carpeting phenomenon that created a political ruckus ,the next evolution appears to be the unfolding incursion of Nollywood into the political milieu as our country count down to 2023 general elections.

And the potentiality of blending Nollywood into politics is signposted by the emergence of Funke Akindele,as the deputy governorship candidate for the main opposition party,PDP in Lagos state.
Of course,the Nollywood actress needs no introduction in the world of entertainment.
But in politics,she is yet to,and only about to cut her teeth.

Just as l was trying to come to terms with that reality,having been informed by reliable sources that it is not a practical joke,l learnt that another nollywood thespian ,Caroline (Hutchins) Danjuma has thrown her hat into the ring as the deputy governorship candidate for African Action Congress,AAC in Akwa lbom state.

And before l could regain my consciousness or wrap my head around the stunning revelation,another giddying news came from Rivers state. And it is to the effect that Tonto Dikeh,the nollywood ‘enfant terrible’ has also become the deputy governorship candidate of African Democratic Congress Party,ADC in that state.

While,the emergence of Ms Danjuma and Ms Dike as running mates to the governorship flag bearers in Akwa Ibom and Rivers states respectively was digestible,(simply because the parties that are featuring them are fringe and it can be assumed that those parties are just fulfilling all righteousness) fielding Ms Akindele by the PDP -the former ruling party at the center and currently the main opposition party in Nigeria,beats my imagination.

That is simply because it defies established political calculations that lagos which is the political base of APC presidential candidate,Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu would be surrendered to his total dominance, rather than working towards splitting the votes in favor of the flag bearer of the main opposition party,PDP Turaki Atiku Abubakar.

Relying on basic instincts,pushing candidates that have the capacity to win the votes of lagosians in other to erode or weaken Bola Tinubu’s and strengthen Atiku Abubakar’s chances in lagos would have been the prime goal of PDP strategists.
Had that been the case,rather than being experimental by fielding two new comers in politics,tried and tested candidates could have been put on the ballot to square off with the incumbent governor.

That is simply because Political wisdom dictates that PDP’s Turaki Atiku Abubakar needed to make sure that his party literally puts forward its best foot,so that some voters in lagos can be swung to the side of PDP ,especially if it leverages on the strategy of consolidating the previous gains made by it’s candidates in lagos state .

That line of thought is underscored and validated by the fact that the former Vice President who was PDP’s candidate in 2019 is being allowed to take another shot at the presidency in 2023 with the hope that he would capitalize on the gains (about 13m votes) which he had garnered when he contested for the presidency in 2019.

So why the 2019 governorship and deputy governorship candidates of PDP in lagos state are not offered a similar opportunity,do not add up,for an election watcher like me.

Also,the new data from Independent National Election Commission,lNEC which reveals that,of the over twelve (12)million voters recently registered country wide in the current wave of voter registration,
which suggests keen interest by Nigerians in the political process via massive acquisition of Permanent Voters Card, PVC, lagos state is home to a lion share of newly registered voters.

As an aside,while the new voting reality of a new class of voters who are mainly youths represents a threat to Tinubu’s continued supremacy in lagos state politics,it is an opportunity for Peter Obi and his Labor Party,LP that is enjoying magnetic attraction to youths,and to some extent,also useful to Atiku Abubakar who also enjoys youth followers-ship.

In fact,based on statistics from INEC,lagos and kano states where the bulk of the new registrants reside,constitute the key voting blocs in Nigeria as they are home to the largest number of both old and new registered voters in our country.

Incidentally,they are also both APC controlled states where PDP and other parties are patently weak.

So,for the reason of pragmatism,the PDP ought to have paid more attention to who becomes the gubernatorial and deputy gubernatorial candidates in the state by ensuring that they pack the political power or posses the clout to make significant impact in a state considered to be APC power base in the past 23 years which is since the return of multi party democracy in Nigeria.

For context,can you imagine the APC in Delta state fielding Great Ogboru ,a notable politician as governorship candidate and the show biz impresario, Ali Baba whose real name is Atunyota Alleluya Akpobeme as deputy governorship candidate,on account of the fact that Ali Baba has huge social media following,so PDP has the capacity of winning delta state governorship contest ?
Keeping in mind that just as lagos state has been in the grips of APC since 1999, delta state is equally lock-stock-and-barrel, a PDP enclave,how can untested hands defeat the incumbents that are entrenched?

In my estimation,the scenario described above makes the gambit of fielding two inexperienced candidates for the gubernatorial elections in lagos state an extraordinarily calamitously flawed predilection and evidence of the vaulting ambition of PDP in APC home base.

On the other hand,it may be argued that the PDP did it’s due diligence,as such it knows what we the skeptics probably can not see from afar.
And that is that no matter who is fielded,the PDP has no chance in APC controlled state.

Hence it dumped its gubernatorial candidate in the past two election circles,(2015 and 2019) Mr Jimi Agbaje for Dr Olajide Adeniran better known as ‘Jandor’.who is the convener of the popular Lagos4Lagos Movement and currently trading barbs with lagos state governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu.

Like two pugilists that are already in a ring and about to engage in a boxing duel, both the incumbent and the PDP challenger are looking like two bulldogs snarling before tearing at each other’s jugular.

The replacement of the former candidates with the new pair could also be that the PDP believes that the new team could literally pull a rabbit out of the hat by surprising skeptics like us.
But whatever the case may be , pundits are averring that the opposition in lagos state is not formidable enough to rattle the incumbent governor,my good friend Sanwo-Olu, who is having a double wammy of good fortune.

The first good fortune is that by God’s grace he has been deemed as worthy of a second term(in a state where it has become an anathema) by his principal,APC presidential candidate,Bola Tinubu.

Secondly,he also has the good luck of facing an apparently weak challenge from the PDP whose gubernatorial candidate and running mate are not tried and tested in the politics of lagos state,having not won any political party elections from the wards,local government councilorship,and chairmanship as well as state house of assembly levels,how much more governorship.

The probable reason that the aforementioned movie actors are being fielded for those high offices is attributable to the notion that politics in Nigeria seem to have pivoted from analogue to digital realms.

That is reflected by the seizure of Nigerian political space by Gen Z(youth generation) also known as netizens who are railing against old generation politicians with a view to outwit them in the political game of 2023 general elections.

The dramatic development is evidential of the fact that our democracy is undergoing a significant political revolution,which is courtesy of the changes wrought on the system by the electoral act 2022- transparency and fidelity-which have been conferred on the process of recruiting politicians in Nigeria.

Impliedly and fortuitously,the confidence that going forward,votes would count in political parties elections,has given fillip and wings to the desire of former skeptics that were giving a wide berth to party politics ,due to its erstwhile murky and opaque nature,to jump into the fray.
And it is also emblematic of the fact that the world of make-believe is gradually morphing into the existential reality of life in Nigeria.

It is particularly jarring to me that the leadership of our beloved country has descended so low to the extent that Nigeria can now be likened to a comedy show such as “Fuji House Of Commotion” which is a local television show that featured ace comedian,Kunle Bamtefa,where the fictional family is constantly embroiled in commotions.
That such riotous and rancorous atmosphere is the current reality rather than the exception in the leadership of our beloved country, is gut wrenching.

As such,no matter how odd,any group of Nigerians that are patriotic enough to harbor the ambition of helping to salvage our country is,it should be welcome.

That is the prism from which the incursion of Nollywood into politics is being processed by me and l presume other open minded Nigerians.

God forbid that Nigeria finds herself in a situation whereby it is fighting a war with a comedian such as my good friend Ali Baba,or Okey Bakasi,Mr Macaroni and even Mr Ibu as the Commander-In-Chief of the Armed Forces in the manner that Zelensky is leading his country,Ukraine in the war being waged against it by Russia.

In such an unlikely event whereby fantasy becomes reality,l would be damned,if the aforementioned comedians do not do as well as Ukrainian President (former comedian),Zelensky is doing as Commander-ln-Chief, C-In-C of the Armed Forces of his country.

By all accounts,Zelensky,the comedian turned president has effectively managed to turn the war between his country and Russian into a narrative of the biblical David and Goliath contest with Ukraine as the David and with a humungous Supper Powers support to booth.

Given the success so far recorded by Zelensky,perhaps if we had one of our comedians in Aso Rock Villa seat of presidential power,Nigeria might not have been experiencing the current atrocious rate of insecurity of lives and properties rapidly dragging the country to the ignoble conflict and misery levels comparable to the atmosphere of brute obtainable in Afghanistan; neither would there exist the overwhelming pang of hunger and starvation presently ravaging our compatriots owing to the inability of our leaders to steer the ship of state away from the rapids which it is heading dangerously towards.

After all,it is generally believed that solutions to complex issues can sometimes be found in ordinary people and in simple or odd places.

As we are all aware ,our country is presently literally being held on tenterhooks,and if the requisite action is not taken to stop the ship of state from heading towards the precipice, there could be a ship wreck of catastrophic proportions.

With respect to the phenomenon or as the case may be ,the phantom of politics in Nigeria transiting into the orbit/virtual realm as being contended by its purveyors,it is such a striking development that the number of followers of an individual on social media handles is now being used to determine the electability of political office seekers.

That is as opposed to the traditional and erstwhile system of physically wooing the electorates via good deeds- perceived or real- and knocking on the doors of potential voters by those seeking elective public offices.

Anyway,when 2022/23 electioneering campaign season officially commences in September,we would know for real whether politicking virtually is real politick or mere ‘politricks’

In spite of opinions to the contrary,those who have made it possible for the movie actors to become deputy gubernatorial candidates believe,wrongly or otherwise that there has been a paradigm shift in Nigerian politics such that the platform has been transferred from normal space to the virtual world.

That is likely why the social media follower-ship of the three thespians under reference which run into millions are the criteria for choosing running mates to the gubernatorial candidates in Lagos,
Rivers and Akwa Ibom states as opposed to real life political capacity based on antecedents.

Take for instance the data below concocted to create the warped impression that social media follower-ship can be translated into political strength for political office candidates and with which they intend to win the election in 2023.
(A)Mrs Funke Akindele – 15.5m followers
(B)Ms Tonto Dikeh-7.5m
(C)Asiwaju Bola Tinubu-103,000
(D)Mr Peter Obi-168,000
(E)Turaki Atiku Abubakar-434,000
(F)Mr Babajide Sanwo-Olu-600,000

Going by the figures above,if Funke Akindele’s 15.5m followers is matched against Bola Tinubu’s 103,000 and Atiku Abubakar’s 434,000,and Peter Obi’s 168,000,she would win the 2023 elections. And if she were to decide to contest for the presidency against the APC,PDP and LP presidential front runners,Tinubu, Abubakar and Obi respectively,she would be the president of Nigeria in 2023.

Off course ,such permutations have no bearing with reality basically because online follower-ship of celebrities by Nigerians can not be equated with real life follower-ship of politicians that translates into votes following the conduct of elections by the lndependent National Electoral Commission,INEC.

Anyway,in fairness to the movie stars who l commend for their confidence and boldness in putting themselves forward for public office contest,and perhaps taking the lead from other climes,particularly the USA where a plethora of those in the entertainment industry have transformed into politicians; also due to their patriotic zeal of desiring to serve our country,it could be argued in favor of Nollywood actors that the world of politicians,even in Nigeria has really never been too distinctive from what obtains in moviedom.

That is simply because the activities of politicians all over the world,in most cases,are make-believe.

The assertion above is underscored by the fact that it is often alleged that when they are campaigning to win over the electorates,politicians pretend to be the angels that they are not in order to gain the confidence and possibly love of voters.

That is also what movie actors do when they are manifesting their roles to keep their audience enthralled and captivated into seeing them as who they are really not .

Arising from the above ,it is safe to conclude that both political actors and movie actors are often deliberately presenting images of who they really are not in order to capture and retain the imagination of their audiences in the real world and in moviedom.

And the underlining reason for such assessment is that just as political actors regale the electorates with fantastic promises that they plan not to fulfill,the movie actors thrill their audiences with the false prowess that make them look like super humans.

It is a mindset or belief amongst members of the public about politicians that is reinforced by the aphorism: “campaign in poetry and govern in prose” and which is a phraseology that was first used by one time governor of the state New York,Mario Cuomo to illustrate the failure of some politicians to keep campaign promises.

Relatedly,some movie actors often assume the characters that they play in the flicks in which they act,and more often than not,they fail or forget to return to reality.
Take for instance,late Bruce Lee,Jackie Chan,Sylvester Stallone etc.

Put differently,political actors and movie actors are pretenders to who they are not.
So they can be said to be different sides of the same coin and it is the reason that most Nigerians may not be able to continue to separate one from the other.

Today,our country appears to be on the cusp of witnessing the world of political actors and movie actors blending into the same in the firmaments of politics.

Arising from the above scenarios ,could the three referenced thespians that are aspiring to become deputy governors in Lagos,Rivers and Akwa Ibom states be victims of exaggerated self importance arising from their social media following or they are filing a void that they have genuinely identified in the political space and feel they should step up to the plate?

Until the elections are held and called next year,we may not know for sure what is the driving force or the motivation for the three damsels from moviedom,jumping into the murky water of politics.

Could their adventurous move from show biz into demagoguery be backed with a realistic assessment of the prevailing political environment in our country buoyed by the electoral act 2022 which has conferred fidelity on the electoral system and sparked the interest of more Nigerian youths,or it is just a whimsical feeling ?

After all said and done,and in tandem with the wise crack “the more the merrier”,the incursion of Nollywood into politics is welcome,especially since it is associated with glamor which would spur more Nigerians, especially Gen-Z or our youths of voting age,into getting involved in exercising their civic responsibilities of choosing their preferred leaders via the ballot box.

And l can not wait to see the outcome of the PDP experiment in lagos state which in my view would be a litmus test for Nollywood incursion into politics in Nigeria.
So,I am holding my breathe!

Magnus onyibe,an entrepreneur, public policy analyst ,author,development strategist,alumnus of Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy,Tufts University, Massachusetts,USA and a former commissioner in Delta state government, sent this piece from lagos.
To continue with this conversation, please visit www.magnum.ng

August 25, 2022
Presidency 2023, Obi-Dients and Weaponization Of Christianity – By Magnus Onyibe

One thing for sure is that with the active participation of our youths in the 2022/23 general elections,politics in Nigeria will take a new dimension and never be the same again.

One of the first impact or change being foisted by Gen-Z is that politics has currently been pivoted from real life to virtual reality where our youths rule the roost.

However,the game of politics will change when political campaigns commence next month (September) after Independent National Electoral Commission,INEC,based on its election timetable,green lights campaigns.
By that time,action would shift from online to real life,where the so called old generation politicians,would reign supreme with mega campaign rallies coupled with the efforts of the foot soldiers-governors,legislators,ministers and a galaxy of other government appointees that would be embarking on door-to-door consultations with the electorate.

That is when there will be a test of the will of the bulging youth population in Nigeria that has unprecedentedly seized the political momentum by registering massively and obtaining their Permanent Voters Card,PVC with which they are planning to vote in 2023 in order to retire those that they refer to as old politicians who they accuse of preventing them from benefiting from their common patrimony in the period that they have been at the helm of affairs.

As a pragmatist,l have pointed out to our youths in the past that the so called old generation politicians that they intend to displace are like old foxes that can hardly be outsmarted. So they should focus on graduated take over with a possibility of achieving their goal in 2027

That is because it would take more than the first cut which is said to be the deepest, to dislodge the current political class from the political stage.
And l would like to assure our youths that some of the political grandees are willing to exit the stage.
At least Turaki Atiku Abubakar, presidential flag bearer of the PDP has alluded to that in his recent public comments.

And,l am also obliged to intimate the youths that the elders that are currently bestriding the political space would prefer a proper succession plan which l would like to admonish our youths to work towards negotiating with them,as opposed to planning to maliciously or malevolently kicking them out as they appear to be planning.

Also,since members of Gen-Z appear to be so fixated on joining the new fangled Obe-dient movement of which the name of God is being invoked in vain as mr Peter Obi’s emergence as Labor Party,LP 2023 Presidential candidate is being touted (in my view falsely) as a phenomenon endorsed by God; and a chapter in the Bible -Ephesians 6:5 where the word obedient is mentioned is being used to justify the call for Christian’s to vote for Obi: l would like to stick to the trending ‘God’ narrative by leveraging data from Christendom in an analogy to drive home the point about the handicap that the Obi-dients face in their vaulting quest to catapult Obi into Aso Rock Villa in 2023.

According to a study published by the Vatican and also corroborated by Pew report,the population of Catholics all over the world is in the neighborhood of 17-18% of the world population estimated to be 8 billion.
“The Catholic churches form a denomination within Christianity and,with around 1.3 billion believers worldwide, are the largest Christian grouping”.

For the sake of this analogy,the old generation politicians in Nigeria can be likened to members of the traditional religion like Catholics that have been around for over 2000 years and the oldest institution in the Western world.

Conversely,Pentecostals represent
about “8.3 percent of the world population. That means that one in twelve persons today is a pentecostal or charismatic Christian.”

The statistics above is drawn from the World Christian Encyclopedia,3rd edition (2020) which states that there are currently “644 million Pentecostals/Charismatics worldwide,including all the members of Pentecostalism’s 19,300 denominations and fellowships as well as all charismatic Christians whose primary affiliation is with other churches.”
And l would like for the purpose of this analogy to designate our youths or so called Obi-dients as the Pentecostals that have been around for 50 years compared to the institution of Catholicism that is at least 2000 years old.

When 1.3 billion Catholics which l have likened to old generation politicians is matched against 644 million Pentecostals,that l have tagged as our youths or Obi-dients,the old generation politicians more than double the number of Obi-dients.
The conclusion to be drawn from the analogy above and what readers should ponder is: can the Obi-dients out number,out maneuver or over take the old politicians in Nigeria,just like that ?

I think not !

Simply put,although in recent years,the number of Pentecostals in Nigeria has grown in leaps and bounds,it can not eclipse the Catholics over night.
So also would Gen-Z not defeat at the snap of the finger the old school politicians that have become entrenched.

That is the prism from which l am interrogating the Peter Obi quest to become the next number one Aso Rock Villa occupant in 2023.

As l have brought to the attention of youths in my previous interventions on the same issue,our youths should remember the dictum ‘old soldier never dies’

In my reckoning ,therein lies the dilemma after the conduct of a reality check on the feasibility of Peter Obi’s presidency in 2023 is made,and a question which our youths must ponder.

Of course l am not by any stretch of imagination proposing that the youth phenomenon and Peter Obi effect on the 2023 general elections would not be significant.

In fact,the high impact is evidenced by the prevailing political evolution triggered by the injection of youths and Nollywood into the 2023 political milieu.

That by itself is likely to compel a run-off in the presidential election to be held in February next year as no single political party may be able to win 2/3rd majority votes outrightly as demanded by the 1999 constitution of the federal republic of Nigeria which stipulates that for a party to be empowered and single handedly be entitled to be the ruling party at the center,2/3rd majority of votes must be won with across the country spread.

If that is the only difference that Gen-Z and Obi-dients would have wrought on Nigerian politics,when the hurly burly is done and after the electioneering process is over,then they would have convincingly earned themselves the title of the heroes of democracy in 2023.

It may be recalled that before Nigeria’s independence from British colonial rule in 1960,general elections were held in 1959,but they were inconclusive as none of the political parties was able to secure enough votes to meet the 2/3rd majority threshold which is a constitutional requirement.

According to records,NPC garnered 142 ,while NCNC had 89 and Action Group,AG won 73 seats. The numbers were not enough for each of the parties to form government alone.

Consequently,a coalition government had to be formed between NPC,as the senior partner with sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa from Bauchi state as the prime minister, and Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe from Anambra state ,as President, representing NCNC which was the junior partner.

My crystal ball tells me that a similar situation to what obtained in 1959/60 may arise after the much anticipated 2023 general elections.

Should the above permutation materialize,history would not only be repeating itself,but there would be a fortuitous reset for our beloved country,politically.

That assumption is underpinned by the fact that it would compel politicians to share power equitably as opposed to the present situation whereby the president from the platform of a ruling party that is not partnering with other parties have total control,such that he could solely determine who gets what.

If he is a clannish and religiously bigoted president,he would assign all the critical positions to members of his ethnic group and religious leaning.
That is incidentally the justification for the unnerving agitation for power shift and presidency rotation as well as restructuring of the political system currently wracking our dear country

While not being unmindful of the fallout of Muslim-Muslim presidency ticket by the ruling APC and the riling up of Christians who feel that they are about to be erased from Aso Rock Villa if APC is voted back with Muslim president and Vice President,l worry about the consequences of weaponizing Christianity by Obi and his supporters who have been visiting churches-Dr Paul Enenche’s Dunamis church in Abuja and Pa Enoch Adeboye’s Redeem Christian Church of God Camp in lagos -where men and women of God have been giving him rousing welcome, even as some online video footages of pastors where they are quoting Bible verses to validate their support for the LP candidate have been trending.

Thus wittingly and unwittingly,the church is being dragged into the arena of politics in Nigeria which in my view bodes no good to the body of Christ as it might amount to desecrating the house of God and it could even set Christians and Muslims on a collision path. More so as it has the tendency to exacerbate the negative energy which the APC standard bearer Bola Ahmed Tinubu and his running mate,Kashim Shettima, Muslim-Muslim ticket is already eliciting.

Contrast mr Obi’s cavorting with men and women of God in their sanctuaries alongside their congregation to the presidential candidates of the three other political parties-Bola Ahmed Tinubu,Atiku Abubakar and Musa Rabiu Kwakwanso that are front runners and Muslims,but are not directly or indirectly campaigning in mosques.
Not even Peter Obi’s running mate senator Datti Ahmed,also a Muslim is openly visiting mosques to lobby fellow Muslims,directly or indirectly.

I recognize and commend mr Obi’s determination to appear detribalized by making his quest for the presidency a pan-Nigeria initiative,hence he has resisted attempts to make his campaign an lgbo agenda by distancing himself from Ohaneze Ndigbo,Indigenous People of Biafra,IPoB and other lgbo-centric agendas,which is good.

Nevertheless ,l would like to respectfully advise mr Peter Obi’s camp to borrow a leaf or two from the 44th president of the United States of America,USA,Barack Obama who avoided being cocooned into becoming or being cast as a black candidate during his run for the office of president in 2008 by dissociating himself from rhetorical comments about his race by the pastor of the church in Chicago where he worships.

The deployment of that strategy helped
in many ways to bolster Obama’s ‘there is no such thing as Black ,Brown or White America’ element in his famous speech to the Democratic Party convention as he was commencing his race to the White House which he won in 2009.

Also,does the LP flag bearer’s romance with the churches not vitiate his strategy of detaching himself from the lgbos,and could it not pitch Christians who are showing open preference for him against Muslims who may be wary and therefore cast their votes against Obi’s run for the presidency even when one of their own is Obi’s running mate?

Without a doubt,the presidential candidates of the other political parties who are Muslims are consulting and courting members of their faith,but in more nuanced ways.
Is there nothing in the approach of other presidential flag bearers to guide Obi’s camp? Can ‘Obi-Dients’ be less noisome and more strategically subtle?

If Obi comes across to Nigerians as solely enjoying the confidence of Christians,how about lfeanyi Okowa,governor of Delta state and vice presidential candidate of the PDP who is also a Christian?
Would Christians ditch him?

Now,if per adventure Obi fails to win the presidency in 2023,would there not be a backlash of credibility issues in Christendom since some pastors have been openly prophesying that God has ordained Obi to be president ?

How can we avert a repeat of the negative fall outs of the infamous Reverend Father Mbaka prophecy about the 2015 and 2019 Mohammadu Buhari victorious run for the presidency and the saga of the charismatic priest thumping down Peter Obi ,on account of his alleged tight handedness,when he worshipped with him in Adoration Centre as the running mate of Atiku Abubakar for the presidency of Nigeria in 2019?

With all sense of humility,l urge the Christian Association of Nigerian,CAN to please take note.

Magnus onyibe,an entrepreneur, public policy analyst ,author,development strategist,alumnus of Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy,Tufts University, Massachusetts,USA and a former commissioner in Delta state government, sent this piece from lagos.
To continue with this conversation, please visit www.magnum.ng

August 17, 2022
Nigeria, Going, Going…? – By Magnus Onyibe

Imagine a man standing at the edge of a cliff and a demon is standing behind him wielding a bazooka firearm menacingly, with the intent to blow the man off the cliff, or simply just give him a kick from behind so that he would fall to his death.

That in my estimation,(and l believe in the assessment of most Nigerians)is the dire situation in which our country and indeed our compatriots are currently trapped.

No matter, how government spin doctors try, they can no longer pull the wool over our eyes with the false claim that since Boko Haram is no more holding swathes of Nigeria’s territory in the north which was the case before 2015, terrorism has not only been highly degraded, but it is in the throes of death and technically defeated.

In my view,Boko Haram and ISWAP are no longer interested in holding territories where they could be engaged in conventional warfare with Nigerian army that has superior fire power with which it could be defeated in direct confrontations or conventional war.

Rather,they seem to be more interested in what used to be referred to as guerrilla warfare,now known as asymmetric warfare whereby they come out of the shadows,make deadly strikes and run back into hiding.

And it is a warfare in which Nigerian military seem to be flat footed simply because it lacks the required tools like drones and other sophisticated weaponry to successfully prosecute it as the USA and Uk armies have been doing to terrorists.Even then,terrorists have only been prevented from striking in the USA and Uk territories and not in the Middle East or Africa.

In light of the recent violence that they unleashed in Abuja,it is my considered opinion that our men and women in the theater of war need re-training in asymmetric warfare,so as to be able to live up to expectations.

As l have stated in the past,it is the patent lies by government spokesmen that bandits have been defeated that is perhaps infuriating the outlaws to the extent that they have now become furious and more deadly in their onslaughts against government and what symbolizes it.

That is evidenced by their recent dare-devil attacks on president Mohammadu Buhari a fortnight ago,when his advance party to Daura,katsina state which is his homestead was brazenly ambushed by the elements that have taken up arms against government.

Just in case anyone failed to notice how emboldened the criminal elements had become,after the Abuja-Kaduna bound train attack with multiple casualties and kidnap of victims for ransom,the subsequent commando style invasion of kuje prison facility in the heart of Abuja to release their members that were being held in captivity,must have left no further doubt that Abuja is no longer impregnable to the bandits intent on not only rattling,but also unhinging the process of governance at the centre .

As if adding salt to injury,the nefarious ambassadors boasted in a trending video footage featuring some of the bandits freed from Kuje prison that they would kidnap the president and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Nigeria,C-In-C,general Mohammadu Buhari and Kaduna state governor,Mallam Nasir El-Rufai with a view to ‘arraigning’ them in their own ‘court’ deep in the forest where they are operating their parallel government.

As comical as the threat appears to be,it should not to be taken with levity in view of the fact that the outlaws had made good their past threats to invade Abuja via the recent invasion of Kuje prison in the heart of Abuja and a follow up with another ambush attack on the military that resulted in the killing of some members of the elite presidential guards brigade who had responded to calls for help in the Bwari and Zuma Rock axis,in the outskirts of Abuja.
These proposed and executed threats are clear testimonies to how emboldened the armed malcontents have become.

It may be recalled that the clear and imminent danger to the security of lives and properties in Abuja compelled the authorities of Nigerian law school located in Bwari-the scene of the presidential guard and bandits bloody shoot out-to shift its annual ceremonies for the induction of fresh lawyers into the bar,to the International Conference Center, instead of the Law school auditorium.

But despite the precautionary measures of shutting down schools in around the Federal Capital Territory,FCT to avert further calamity,the tepid response by the minister of information Lai Mohamed to the threatening rants by the outlaws which should ordinarily have been deemed as heresy of some sorts,to the chagrin of most Nigerians,the minister seem to have deemed the threat as a bluff by dismissing it with a wave of the hand.

Thankfully,the military,which has my sympathy because they are fighting a war whose method they are unfamiliar with,is taking the threat more seriously.

Hence the national security council meeting called by mr president last week(July 28) has resulted in the recent reshuffling of the military high command with practically all the General Officers Commanding,GOCs being deployed to desk jobs in the military headquarters with the exception of one two that got swapped.

But is that measure,which appears to be cosmetic,drastic enough to mitigate or stymy the new aggression from the felons ?

Given the puerile outcome of the change of military service chiefs a couple of years ago when Nigerians vigorously clamored for it,would the current exercise of shuffling G. O. Cs not be tantamount to treating leprosy with medicine meant for eczema?

On the strength of the above narrative, and in the event that the new measures towards improving our internal security architecture prove to be inadequate,would a continued downward slope of the security situation not be indicative of the fact that Nigeria is going,going ….?

It goes without saying that insecurity and poverty are bedfellows as they co-mingle, with the former feeding into the latter or vice versa.
Hence they are both acknowledged to be mutually reinforcing malaise.

And they are elements that astute leaders of countries constantly strive to prevent from taking hold under their watch.

But dismayingly,that is the combination of destructive factors that have become entrenched and are on the verge of strangulating our country.

The above assertion is underscored by the fact that,apart from the threat of insecurity wracking the polity,the pang of hunger is wreaking its own type of havoc on the critical mass of Nigerians as earlier illustrated in the opening paragraph with the man on the tip of a cliff about to be kicked off into the abyss.

The metaphorical presentation of the man standing at the edge of a cliff and the demon that is anxious to knock him of the face of Mother Earth is a mental illustration of how precarious the life of an average Nigerian has become ,and which is a damning testimony that our country men and women are under siege and there seem to be no respite or breathing space for them.

Could a word or two of encouragement and assurance from the president and commander-in-chief,C in C of the armed forces of Nigeria not have boosted the morale of Abuja dwellers,in particular and Nigerians as a whole,in this present time ?

As things currently stand,life in Nigeria is such that if one is fortunate not to die in the hands of the merchants of death now ruling the roost by manifesting in many guises-Boko Haram,ISWAP,Herdsmen militia,Bandits,known and unknown gunmen and kidnappers as well as money ritualist-then hunger and starvation may finally do the job of killing the masses,if the current monsters that have converted our country into a killing field and strangulating are economy are not neutralized,literally and otherwise.

The absurdity of the atmosphere of strife in our polity that has rendered her comatose or turned it belly-up is even made worse when one remembers that our beloved country that was so rich that it once loaned money to Saudi Arabia several decades ago,has become such a pauper that it is currently the poverty headquarters of the world by the sheer number of the populace living below poverty line.

What a classical case of a drop from Olympian heights!

While the natural disasters which Haiti in North America regularly experiences is the reason that it is the poorest country in that region,Nigeria is the new poverty capital of the world,due to poor management of ethno-religious relationships and its natural resources.

Now,it is estimated in some circles that about nineteen(19.9) billion United States dollars had so far been expended by Nigerian authorities in prosecuting the war against insecurity in our beloved country.

If that mind blowing figure is correct,(and l have no reason to doubt that it is) then apart from the loss of limbs and lives by innocent Nigerians and our gallant men and women in uniform prosecuting the war,the battle against insecurity is undoubtedly a major drain pipe and therefore a vicarious cause of the financial hemorrhaging of our scarce financial resources going on in the Central Bank of Nigeria,CBN epitomized by the galloping rate of inflation and free fall of the naira.

Put succinctly,battling insecurity is one of the main demons sucking the financial blood of our country,hence it is now anaemic,having been drained of most of its resources and the reason the naira is currently like a yo-yo,and basic commodities-food and medicine – are now beyond the reach of a critical mass of Nigerians.

The other epidemic ravaging Nigeria is the amount of money that is believed to have been lost by our leaders via their unbridled commitment to funding petrol subsidy with a whooping four (4) trillion naira,just in 2022 budget,which is unsustainable.

In my view,pouring such humongous amount into subsidizing petrol is actually a loss simply because it is like pouring water into a basket.
Obviously,petrol subsidy gambit is an investment in consumption with negative effect on the economy,as opposed to subsidizing production that could have boosted the Gross Domestic Product,GDP via students loan,skills acquisition and other youths empowerment initiatives including supporting private sector investments in strategic sectors that would attract Foreign Direct Investment ,FDIs and boost employment that would lead to improved standard of living.

In the light of the above,subsidizing petrol pump price is also a culprit in the collapse of the naira and the descent of our country into an Intensive Care Unit,ICU where majority of our hampless country men and women are currently not only facing the scourge of insecurity that has consigned so many to their early graves, and those lucky to be alive,are detained in Internally Displaced Persons,IDPs camps.

Hitherto,it was assumed that it is only the unprecedented and monumental volumes of funds dedicated to petrol subsidy that had mainly been responsible for the financial dire straights that our country has been forced into.

Now,it is known to all of us that apart from Petrol Subsidy the other culprit is the obscene amount that government has been ploughing into trying to quell,with military force,internal ethno-religious violent conflicts fueling the crisis of insecurity,which has all the trappings of a civil war,but it can not be referred to as a full scare war,since it is asymmetric,rather than conventional.

The assertion above is underscored by the fact that,costs estimated to be up to nineteen ($19.9) billion dollars are believed to have so far been applied in funding the armed forces to end with brutal force,the internal war being waged against our country by multiple anti government gangs and sects.
If the trend of committing such huge financial resources into purchasing military hardware continues,the future of Nigeria and Nigerians maybe doomed unless,there is a paradigm shift or rethinking by our leaders.

In my considered opinion,one of the triggers for the calamity that has befallen Nigeria is the decision to apply only military force in the attempt to eliminate insecurity that is being driven by- Boko Haram,ISWAP,bandits and herdsmen Militia in the north,and environment rights agitators/militants in the Niger delta,as well as the so called known and unknown gunmen in the south-east,including money ritualist and kidnappers springing up in the south-west.

Due to the militarization of Nigeria via the policy of responding to violence with violence by government and which is being driven by the military that has received nearly twenty (20) billion dollars in funding,with no end in sight: it is disappointing that very little funding is going to the police force which is constitutionally entrusted with handling internal security.

It seems to me that there would not be any viable pathway out of the insecurity imbroglio in our country unless we resort to the traditional ways of maintaining internal security,which is by the police force- of the hue of community and state.

A justification for the assertion above is the fact that in Nigeria of today,it is basically the south west region that is relatively free of insecurity issues.
And that is largely owed to the work of AMOTEKUN- a south west region funded vigilante group that operates at community level.
With the exception of the dastardly Owo church massacre allegedly by herdsmens militia,and skirmishes around Oyo and Ekiti states forests,Yoruba land has not been be-spoiled by the marauders.

Of course,local policing which AMOTEKUN is all about also requires funding,and it makes combating security a drain pipe on the region’s resources which could have been channeled into improving on the provision of infrastructure such as education and other social services whose foundation was laid by the late sage Obafemi Awolowo,renown for his adeptness in human and material resource management.

But as long as insecurity remains the reason for the arrested development of Nigeria,in the absence of state/community police which the federal government and National Assembly,NASS have failed to introduce or endorse,relying on pseudo state police such as vigilante groups as fall back position,becomes magnified as a viable option,especially owing to its success in the south west.

Make no mistake about it,It is the twin policies of dealing with violence with violence instead of combining it with good old policing; and the continuous subsidizing of petrol pump price which amounts to subsidizing consumption,as opposed to subsidizing production activities like education,facilitating the use of alternative power sources like solar and wind energy,that are like two stones tied on the neck of Nigeria,after which it is pushed into the ocean of life in which it is expected to swim or sink.

Unsurprisingly,instead of swimming,our country is sinking to the bottom of the sea due to the burden or consequences of the wrong headed policies of its leaders.

So that we can all see and appreciate the gargantuan financial burden weighing our country down ,allow me make it more stark with the statistics below:
A breakdown of figures released by National Economic Summit Group,NESG, indicates that the cost of petrol subsidy annually rose from N307 billion in 2015 to N1.77 trillion last year and for 2022,there is a provision of N4 trillion,which is more than a quadrupling of last year’s N1.77 trillion last year.

By the same token our country reportedly increased its military spending by a massive 56 per cent in 2021, to $4.5 billion.
That means that from 2016 to 2022, Nigeria spent over $19.9 billion which is approximately eight (8)trillion naira in total on security alone.

Which third world country can sustain such profligacy without going down ?

According to Finance minister Mrs Zainab Ahmed,the ECA -Excess Crude Account-that was in excess of $3 billion in 2016 shortly after the current regime took over the reins of government is currently down to a little over $300 million.

Its depletion has been attributed to the deployment of the funds into purchasing arms and ammunitions for the military with a view to eliminating insecurity – a monster that has its knees on the neck of our beloved Nigeria such that it is literally on the verge of asphyxiating it,in spite of the massive financial commitments so far made by the authorities.

Imagine what difference $3 billion could do in boosting the development of infrastructures like more railway lines and Spaghetti like network of road bridges recently showcased by our fellow African country in Accra,Ghana.
Would the colossal twenty (20) billion dollars sunk into combating insecurity not be enough to construct the type of spaghetti like bridges in Nigerian metropolis such as Abuja,Lagos, Portharcourt and Kano?
Such construction work could also create employment as opposed to exporting scarce funds abroad to acquire arms and ammunition?

Earlier,the apparently overwhelmed finance minister had also informed bewildered Nigerians at the beginning of the year,that the 2022 appropriations bill with about N400b provision for petrol subsidy was being reviewed upwards to a colossal sum of N4 trillion.

A back of the envelope calculation would reveal that when that monumental amount estimated to be nineteen billion dollars or eight (8) trillion naira invested in fighting insecurity is added to the four (4) trillion naira budgeted for petrol subsidy in budget 2022 alone,(without factoring in the allocations for petrol subsidy in the previous budget circles)the trouble with Nigeria would come into greater relief.

That is because it would dawn on all of us that if the amount spent on insecurity and petrol subsidy are added up,at least N12 trillion might have been misapplied and therefore gone down the drain due to policy failures in the past seven (7) years or so with respect to managing our natural resources and ethnic and religious diversities.

In the light of the fact that no where is safe and farming which is the main source of employment for Nigerians can no longer be practiced freely,just as other existential aspects of life such as attending school in the northern parts has become an anomaly,(as the shut down of educational institutions in north west and north east is currently being extended to some parts of north central particularly the FCT) our country can no longer be said to just be on the way to becoming like Afghanistan, Yemen,Libya,Venezuela and Sri Lanka, where life is brutish with violent non state actors contesting the control of the country with legitimately elected leaders of government.

If the truth must be told,life in our beloved Nigeria has already become what it is like in all of the countries above listed hellish countries.
That is simply because Nigeria is exhibiting all the characteristics inherent in the aforementioned failed states.

And it is embarrassing and jarring to know that our dear country is in the doldrums owing to leadership miasma as reflected by the diversion of critical resources of the state into subsidizing petrol and combating insecurity which are avoidable, since there are alternative pathways to solving the seemingly intractable challenges ,if our leaders were to think out of the box.

Without a doubt,leadership and management of resources,require dexterity and astuteness,which are not rocket science.
And it has been proven in the days of parliamentarianism by our leaders of yore such as chief Obafemi Awolowo in then western region,sir Ahmadu Bello in Northern region and Micheal Okpara in eastern region,who effectively and efficiently led their compatriots in their respective regions to attain higher standards of living that we are always romanticizing .

Why are the leadership excellence exhibited by our past leaders no longer attainable in in Nigeria?
Where did we go wrong? Is there anything in the archives that can guide us on how,when and why ,as a nation,we have derailed,and with a view to retracing our steps?

Why is it that the celebrated leader,Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore was able to move his multiple islands country from third to first world,and our quest to move Nigeria forward has remained a mirage after over sixty two (62) years of independence ?

Surely,it is not that that God did not bless Nigeria with natural resources enough to make it a part of the first world.
But the country has lately been unlucky to be bereft of patriotic leaders.

Instead,the truth is that Nigeria is less fortunate than Singapore,which is why it has been inflicted with a disease known as leadership myopia.

It needs being emphasized that,the humongous amount of financial resources being channeled into buffeting an unsustainable petrol subsidy regime and tackling insecurity by investing massively in the acquisitions and deployment of highly expensive military hardware ,(take for instance the $500m super Tucson helicopters purchased from the United States of America,USA) are self inflicted consumption oriented activities,that could have been saved in human and physical.

From development economics point of view,petrol subsidy and acquisition of military hardwares are avoidable wastages,if our leaders were more dexterous in the management of the challenges of nation building by being more proactive by thinking out of the box in the way they deal with the multi ethnic and multi religion nature of our country and extracting as well as deploying our God given resources .

And it is doubtless that Nigeria has the potential to be in the first world.

The composition of our country comprising of three major ethic nationalities-Hausa/Fulani,Yoruba and lgbo is not too dissimilar to the combination of the English,Welsh, Scottish and Irish nationalities that make up the United Kingdom,Uk.
Yet,the people of Uk are religion and tribe neutral,simply because each region has autonomy.
That basically means that the laws that are used in governing each of the autonomous areas reflect their peculiarities in terms of culture,religion and environment.

That is also possible in Nigeria with parliamentarianism which is the system the Uk bequeathed to our forbears as our last colonizer.But after practicing it for only six (6) 1960-66,it was jettisoned in preference for a presidential system of government. Is that not a point at which we derailed as a nation?

Obviously,all the major ethnic nationalities in Nigeria prefer their autonomy as reflected by the struggle by the Hausa/Fulani promoters of Boko Haram and ISWAP,who fighting for governance via sharia legal system,and the lgbos via IPoB who are seeking autonomy to do their thing in their preferred way of republicanism, as well as the Yorubas who are agitating for their autonomy to operate their own system,perhaps in the manner of Oyomesi political leadership system practiced back in the days of Oyo Empire,even as we remain one country.

Being held together in a federal government,without practicing true federalism,yet insisting that the unity of Nigeria is not negotiable is obviously what is causing the friction and hullabaloo in Nigeria.

Like Christianity and Islam which are dominant religions in Nigeria,the Uk also has multiple religions -Anglican and the Church of England.
And they have developed the wisdom to give to Caesar what is Ceasar’s and to God,what is God’s.
Why we are mixing religion with politics in our country still boggles my mind.

Think about the United Arab Emirates, UAE.
It is a country formed out of the unification of seven (7) Emirates including Abu Dhabi, Dubai and five others. The UAE is Islamic and progressive.

Why can Nigeria not learn from the countries profiled above ?

Why do our leaders have such dog-in-a -manger type of attitude of unwieldy and visionless approach to governance that has imperiled a nation blessed with massive human and material resources, yet it is wallowing in abject poverty?

In the sixteen (16) years of the twenty three (23) years that the practice of multi party democracy has returned to our country since 1999 till date,two (2) former military heads of state-general Olusegun Obasanjo and Mohammadu Buhari have been at the helm of affairs in the governance of our country via democracy.

As a matter of orientation,the first instinct of a man with military orientation is to return fire-for-fire.

That explains why our country has become so militarized as we have been trying to achieve peace through the barrels of the gun without success.

To appreciate the palpable difference in the reign of our leaders with military orientation,we only need to compare the period of stewardship of Obasanjo and Buhari to the other two past presidents of Nigeria who are civilians with no military background.
Take for example ,the reign of Umaru Yar’adua(2007-10) and Goodluck Jonathan (2010-15).
They both introduced amnesty program that was offered to Niger delta militants and the erstwhile insecurity in the Niger delta area which is the treasure trove of our country got drastically reduced.

And it is a no brainer to realize that it is the USA’s resort to using extreme violence to manage conflicts in their society that is responsible for Americans becoming very angry and violent people.

Do Nigerian leaders have to wait to get afflicted by the epidemic of gun violence rocking the USA to realize that our country is on the nihilistic path to perdition due to the militarization of our society by deploying mainly military force in conflict resolution?

In conclusion,allow me remind you,dear readers of a concept commonly known as the ‘law of instrument’
It goes thus:
“If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.”
This is a famous quote by Abraham Maslow which refers to an over-reliance on a familiar or favourite tool.

Our current president who is an ex soldier, may unbeknownst to him be succumbing to the unconscious bias of his military instincts,as propounded in the ‘law of instrument’.
Hence it appears as if it is the policy of the government of Nigeria that the insecurity being experienced in the country,without exception,is a nail that must be hit with a hammer.

In other words,it is that mindset that is probably driving the tunnel vision of our government that appears to be determined to only apply military force as the solution to an obviously complex matter of religious fanaticism and ethnic supremacy?
Are our leaders not aware that insecurity in our country can not simply be settled through the barrels of the gun,because it has to do with ideology and religion which run deep?

As Karl Marx-German philosopher and political theorist famously stated: religion is the opium of the people.
That implies that it is ingrained and can be intoxicating,therefore it can not be eliminated by sheer force.

Hopefully,our leaders would soon come to the realization,perhaps the hard way,that religious Insurgency and ethnic nationalism wracking our country require winning the hearts and minds of the disgruntled and misguided by bringing them to a negotiating table.

That is because the notion that we can blast all outlaws out of Nigerian cities and forests is clearly unrealistic.

In the light of the above,it is time for our leaders to try to imbibe the virtue and philosophy of non violent settlement of conflicts as expounded by Marthin Luther King in the USA,Mahatma Grandi of India and Nelson Mandela of South Africa.

In the absence of the required paradigm shift in the management of the ethnic,cultural and religious diversity of our country,the conflicts would persist and
our leaders may continue to be distracted.
As a result,the management of our economy could continue to suffer,even as the issue of consumption would persist and assume a worse crisis dimension with scotch earth poverty becoming the lot of Nigerians in the manner that it has happened in Sudan and Somalia .

It needs not be repeated that,were it not for the mundane issues of ethnic and religious fundamentalism that are arresting the attention of our leaders,our unbridled consumption attitude could have by now been replaced with productivity generating initiatives such as construction of roads,railways,sea and airports,hospitals,educational institutions and homes that would boost the Gross Domestic Product,GDP of our country.

And as a result,a critical mass of Nigerians would have been lifted out of poverty via the huge employment opportunities intrinsic in a production rather than a consumption based economy.

In any which way we look at the current insecurity in our country and the economic imbroglio that have literally brought it to its knees,the tragedies of the naira currently being on a free fall,while our country is on a slippery slope into the control of outlaws could have been averted,if our leaders were to think more strategically and act less impulsively.

So,the unfolding sordid situation is a fall out of the failure of imagination and the inability,perhaps even incapacity to act by our elected leaders.

Evidently,the scenario described above is a justification for the title of the article: “Nigeria,Going,Going …?”

For those who have not already figured it out,the title is symbolic the pronouncement that follows while awaiting a raised gavel to land signifying a finality, either by a judge in a court of law,or an auctioneer in an auction exercise,

Before going into recess,the National Assembly, NASS issued president Buhari a notice of impeachment as a consequence of his inability to safeguard the lives and properties of Nigerians.

In six (6) weeks time when the notice expires,the NASS would likely do nothing,but propose another vote of more money for security purposes.

It may recommend that the funds should this time around,be invested in the police force which is better trained to handle internal security.

By and large,that may not really be a bad idea.

But NASS may not recognize the role of our the traditional rulers and faith based institutions like churches and mosques,in conflict resolution.

It may not also be interested in studying how the Uk resolved it’s challenge with the Irish Republican Army,IRA whose violent activities at a point in time had a crippling effect on Uk government; and the measures and actions that Brazil took in ending a similar state of insecurity in that country ,may not be of interest to NASS,with a view to adopting some of the strategies.

And l would not be surprised.

Nevertheless,my fervent wish,desire and prayer is that the ‘Gone’ that is missing in the title of this piece: Nigeria Going, Going …? will remain a question mark and not a manifestation .

Clearly,l loathe to endorse the title of the controversial book by the late literary giant: Chinua Achebe:There Was A Country.
A tome in which he lamented the degeneration of our beloved country,Nigeria into a shadow of its old self and predicted a scattering.

As readers may already be aware,media columnists/public intellectuals,who are members of the fourth (4th) realm of the estate,engage in the thankless and risky job of calling out people in authority,when they are aberrant in the discharge of the responsibilities which they swore an oat of office to uphold.

Invariably,public intellectuals (unlike members of the three other realms -executive,legislative and judiciary,who do not get paid with public funds) assist in the onerous task of governance by apprising public office holders of the feelings of the proletariat with whom they are in touch regularly by virtue of which they are the voice of the voiceless.

It is the lack of real connections between our political leaders and the followers that could have provided the nuggets of wisdom from the masses to their leaders through the coterie of apparatchiks in the bureaucracy,that is the barrier to good governance.
Without the grassroots intelligence that is supposed to be distilled and applied in formulating public policy,the malady of policy failures ensues,and it is the bane of our country.

To get out of the current bind in which the nation finds itself,l would like to propose that it is time to dialogue with the aggrieved members of our society.
Normally,after the shooting battle,conflicts are always resolved with the protagonists and antagonists seating around tables.

And I think that time has come.

Otherwise,our beloved country could go into blazes or oblivion, either as a result of religious and ethnic supremacy conflicts as is the case in Sudan,Libya and Somalia or due to complications arising from financial insolvency,like Sri Lanka.

Magnus onyibe,an entrepreneur, public policy analyst ,author, development strategist, alumnus of Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, Massachusetts, USA and a former commissioner in Delta state government, sent this piece from lagos.
To continue with this conversation, pls visit www.magnum.ng

August 4, 2022
NNPC Limited and echoes of 2007 – By Magnus onyibe

Before ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo exited Aso Rock Villa presidential seat of power in 2007, as part of his privatization program, he unbundled a significant portion of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC.

And the key components of that exercise were the sale of the refineries and other downstream operations assets such as the petroleum marketing companies that it had owned Jointly with International Oil Corporations, IOCs.

These include,AGlP, which was renamed Oando by the Mr Wale Tinubu’s consortium that bought it; African Petroleum,AP,also bought by Chrismatel group,owned by Mr Peter Okocha who won the bid,and operated it for a while,before offloading it later to Mr Femi Otedola who also recently sold it to the new owner that has renamed it, Ardova Plc.

There was also National Oil,which is now renamed Conoil after Chief Mike Adenuga successfully pitched for and won the bid to purchase it.Conoil operates six (6) oil blocks in the niger delta and Adenuga is Africa’s third richest man.

At the time of liberalizing the oil/gas sector,the four (4) refineries owned by government(currently under refurbishment) were somehow still viable and they were also unbundled .
One of them was sold to Dangote group,owned by Alhaji Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest man,who is currently on track to completing the setting up one of the world’s biggest petroleum refineries, in lagos, Nigeria.

The sale of the refinery took place in the twilight days of the Obasanjo’s reign,just as the reformation and transition of NNPC from a corporation into a limited liability company is taking place barely ten(10) months to the end of the presidency of the incumbent, Mohammadu Buhari.

It is worthy of note that the reform in NNPC that took place as the sun was setting on Obasanjo’s regime,became one of the first casualties of his successor, president Umar Yar’adua of blessed memory,who upon assumption of office as president in 2007,reversed or repudiated the sale and purchase of the refineries.

That is one of the reasons that the current NNPC transition from a public corporation into a public limited liability company,PLC echoes the events of 2007, as it is once again being reformed into a commercialized entity as the current occupants of Aso Rock Villa seat of Presidential power are about to exit.

Commencing with the commercialization of its services and in the wake of the unveiling of NNPC Ltd by president Mohammadu Buhari in Aso Rock Villa on Tuesday 19th July,and a likely sale of some of its assets and subsidiaries scheduled to be put up for sale in the course of time,the journey for NNPC to be like Saudi Aramco and Petrobrass which are its equivalent in Saudi Arabia and Brazil respectively,has begun and the sun may be rising on Nigeria’s oil/gas sector.

In the event that all things remain consistent and in the likeness of the swan song that the drivers of the initiative are singing to Nigerians,it would be in the manner that another utility behemoth of Nigerian government,Nigerian Telecommunications,NITEL was unbundled for private sector participation, and which was quite successful.

But the successful privatization of NITEL has been attributed to the fact that the exercise was carried out by Obasanjo’s regime from the beginning to the end.

And there appear to be credibility in the belief that the reason the privatization of the oil/gas sector by the same Obasanjo regime did not see the light of day in the manner that a similar exercise in the telecommunications sector received accolades and applause both locally and internationally,was because Obasanjo exited office before the oil/gas sector transaction could be consummated in the manner that the current exercise is still in the pipeline,and at best in puberty and would not attain maturity,before the curtain falls on Buhari’s tenure.

The fear of atrophy is palpable because it is barely ten(10) months to the end of president Buhari’s watch over Nigeria,and in a country where there are no guarantees that even wives would continue with their husbands projects after they exit office and hand over the reins of power to them,there is real concern about the retention of,and sustenance of the policy/initiative by president Buhari’s successor.

As such,the question on the lips of most stake holders now is: would the reform initiative die,if it is not embraced by the next regime commencing 29th May next year?

Put succinctly,would history be repeating itself, if the ongoing reforms in NNPC limited suffers a similar fate that it experienced in 2007 when Obasanjo transferred the responsibility for completing the implementation of the divestment initiative to Umaru Yar’Adua,his successor, that was not enamored by the prospect of selling off NNPC assets which he considered critical national assets?

In any case,this is not the first time that the entity charged with managing Nigeria’s oil wealth is being reformed, refocused or rebranded.

From its early beginning in the 1970s as Nigerian National Oil Company, NNOC,
in 1977,it evolved into Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation,NNPC,before ending up as NNPC Limited in 2022 which it has become by virtue of its commercialization via the enactment of Petroleum Industry Act,2021.

Would this current exercise be different?

Right now,there are three front runners for the office of the president of Nigeria in 2023-Asiwaju,Bola Tinubu,Turaki,Atiku Abubakar,and mr,Peter Obi,the flag bearers of the ruling party at the centre, APC,main opposition party,PDP and Labor Party,currently creating a stir in the polity, but may end up being a storm in the tea cup after the votes have been cast and counted on 25 February next year.

The good thing is that the trio are literate in economics,so the concept and need for privatization of the NNPC are not gibberish to them.

But of the three,it is the PDP candidate, Atiku Abubakar that in my estimation is certain to take the oil/gas sector to the next level.

The assertion above is underscored by the fact that it is he that campaigned for the presidency in 2019 based on plans to liberalize the oil/gas sector in the manner that he,as Vice President of Nigeria, 1999-2007 played a key role in the reformation of the telecommunications sector which was directly under his purview.
As it may be recalled,he was assigned the responsibility by his then principal,President Olusegun Obasanjo.

Incidentally,mallam Nasir El-Rufai,the current governor of Kaduna state,a former minister of the Federal Capital Territory, FCT and ex Director General,DG of Bureau for Public Enterprise,BPE was Atiku Abubakar’s linchpin in the unbundling of public enterprises for private sector participation.
That is by virtue of the fact that BPE was, and still is the agency in charge of privatization of public enterprises,had a direct reporting line to the office of the Vice President .

So,at least we know,who amongst the three most likely Aso Rock Villa occupants in 2023 would certainly carry on with the reformation drive in the oil/gas sector.
Without waiting to unveil it in his manifesto which he would likely release before September when politicians are allowed to commence campaigning in ernest,the position of Atiku Abubakar on current NNPC reform that has seen it transform from a corporation to a commercialized entity has been made manifest in his response to the kick-off ceremony of NNPC’s new status as a commercialized entity in Aso Rock Villa on Tuesday 19th July.

Said he: “I had in 2018 made public my plans to reform the NNPC to make it more profitable, transparent and efficient. The APC led government denigrated me for my patriotic vision.

“But today, I am happy to note that the same government has taken a tentative step along the lines of the suggestions that I had made.

“It is a step in the right direction, but we are still far from what I had envisaged. “I hope I’ll have the opportunity to complete the process of turning the NNPC into a genuinely world class company in the mould of NLNG, Aramco of Saudi Arabia and Petrobras of Brazil, where Nigerians and institutions will invest in”.

Incidentally, APC’s Bola Tinubu was once the treasurer of EXXON Mobil, so he may be favorably disposed to the ongoing reforms in the oil/gas sector and may even have his own template; just as Labor Party’s candidate, Peter Obi, whose campaign team is forcefully telling everyone that he is the only messiah that can rescue Nigeria like a knight in shining armor, would also be inclined towards consolidating the ongoing oil sector reforms which is in tune with his mantra of turning Nigeria from a consuming to a producing country.

Meanwhile,the reform is taking place when Nigeria is unable to meet its OPEC production quota of 1.8m barrels daily and instead she is delivering a little above one million (1.3m) barrels per day.That is half a million less than the volume that our country is supposed to be pumping into the market that could have generated income that would have enabled our country survive the current cash crunch that has compelled borrowing from banks to workers salaries and emoluments.

And the causes of the shortfall are mainly due to divestments by the IOCs that commenced back in 2006,got ramped up in 2010 and became worse in 2012 owing to aging infrastructure,massive crude oil theft and insecurity of lives and property in Nigeria.

Broadly speaking,the delay in the implementation of the Petroleum Industry Act,PIA is a major culprit for the flight of IOCs out of Nigeria.
That is owed to the fact that they were in quandary about the future of the sector, as it took the better part of two (2) decades of the reform bill lying comatose in the National Assembly,NASS before it finally got passed into PIA,under the present regime which is currently driving the reforms.

Since nature abhors vacuum,in the intervening period of foot dragging by our law makers,investments that were meant to boost the business in Nigeria got diverted elsewhere, perhaps to Angola,Equatorial Guinea,even Ghana.

Hence,even as crude oil price has shot up to the region of $100 per barrel in the international market,Nigeria is suffering a double jeopardy of inability to meets its quota by nearly 50%,and also continues to import finished petroleum products (since it basically has zero refining capacity) and the price of diesel,Jet-A1 and Premium Motor Spirit,PMS, kerosine and cooking gas has skyrocketed,putting it beyond the reach of most Nigerians.

It needs also to be highlighted that the reform in NNPC is being implemented at the time that fossil fuel is being phased out globally.
Especially in the industrialized and advanced countries,most of which aim to have in the next decade replaced petrol engine cars with Electric Vehicles,EVs pioneered by the world’s richest man,Elon Musk,the owner of Tesla brand of electric vehicles.
So,all things being the same,the demand for fossil fuel would soon be slowed down radically as the market shrinks across the industrialized world.

Even then,Nigeria is hobbled by the militancy being wagged by those fighting for environmental rights in the oil/gas rich Niger delta.
And worse of all,theft of crude oil from the pipelines by those who should be protecting the product.
Mr Austin Avuru,ex Managing Director of Seplat an oil production company and founder of AAH Holdings estimates that up to 80% of crude oil is stolen daily in Nigeria by organized oil theft syndicates.
Likewise,Mr Tony Elumelu,Chairman of HEIRS Holdings,the multi faceted conglomerate that recently purchased an oil production asset from Shell,Total, Eni.
He reckons that about 95% is siphoned off the pipeline daily by criminal elements that are deep in the oil/ gas system that about to plunge our county into insolvency crisis.

This is part of the reason Nigeria’s debt servicing obligations in June exceeded its income by over N310b by some estimates and which has the capacity to drag our country into a black hole in the order of Venezuela and Sri Lanka,

In the light of the doom and gloom besetting our country highlighted above,could the transition of NNPC to a limited liability concern with profit making as its philosophy,be a case of too little,too late,or just-in-time?

It can only be just-in-time if the new NNPC limited helps turn things around for the distressed masses who may not be paid salaries and pensions in their jobs at federal and tstate government levels, unless government borrows from the banks,since NNPC limited has actually stoped making remittances into the federation account which was the erstwhile major source of income for government to meet those obligations.

It is remarkable that the Minister of state Petroleum,Mr Timipre Sylva does not regard the exit of IOCs as a threat,but an opportunity.
That is evidenced by the fact that he is encouraging local investors to fill the void as it would be in their best interest just as it would serve our country better.

Which is a great and commendable attitude.

Especially if Nigerians have the financial muscle and expertise to,as it were,to step up to the plate.

And it is also commendable that it is during his tenure that PIB eventually got passed into an act of parliament and the implementation of the lofty contents are also afoot.
The commercialization of NNPC would go down well as a great accomplishment for both the minister of state and president Mohammadu Buhari who doubles as the substantive minister of petroleum resources.

By the reckoning of most Nigerians,the passage of PIA and its implementation,(not the construction of a new bridge across Niger River or resuscitation of railway lines) is the flagship of this regime’s accomplishments.

So,Mr Timipre Sylva,not Babatunde Fashola,works Minister or Rotimi Amaechi, minister of transportation) is the star-boy of Buhari’s government.

The former GMD,now CEO of the new NNPC limited,Mr Melee Kyari has regaled Nigerians during the unveiling of the new entity with talks about how he aims to make the new firm a Fortune 500 company; and his plan to quickly scale up the two hundred billion naira capitalized firm, into top 50 in ranking,in a couple of years.

But he did not elaborate on how he plans to execute his obviously fantastic plan.
As a pragmatist,l find it difficult to wrap my head around how the feat of transforming a dinosaur trapped in a time warp of which NNPC is emblematic,into a lion that can roar like Saudi Aramco and Petrobras of Brazil,that Melee Kyari has modeled it after.

One of the nagging questions is: like Saudi Aramco,does Mr kyari have plans to invest in renewable energy such as solar and wind energy that are abundant in the northern part of our country to complement the oil/gas in the niger delta in order to boost Nigeria’s energy mix and help mitigate the frequent embarrassing electricity power outages that presently defines our country ?

What are the mechanisms,if the answer is in the affirmative ?

In my considered opinion,it is a tall order to attain the standard of Saudi Aramco and achieve stellar performance with the same crop of personnel in NNPC that are rooted in corruption and ineptitude.
Therefore,it might just be too much of an ambitious target.

Echoes of gross acts of nepotism and corruption,are still reverberating as the NNPC is home to the children of the high and mighty that are working there,not based on merit,but on connection and a conclave of corrupt elements where predators like hyenas and jackals hibernate.

One of such grafts is the multi billion dollars fraud that is continuously being perpetrated in the corporation,including the petroleum subsidy regime involving oil retailing companies that were investigated for misappropriation of over N158 billion naira of the N2.19 trillion that was paid as subsidy for import of petrol between 2011 to 2012.
That is according to then finance minister,Ngozi Okonjo-lweala.

It may be recalled that a government panel under the chairmanship of Aigboje Aig-Imuokode,former GMD of Acess Bank Group,was mandated to investigate the NNPC which had become a cesspit of corruption.

Apart from that probe there was another investigation triggered by the National Assembly,NASS that alleged that NNPC misappropriated over N10 trillion from 2006-2016.

I personally had a sordid experience with NNPC Retail,which is the petrol retail arm of the behemoth.
It may be recalled that following the perennial petroleum products shortages that have been wreaking havoc on Nigerians,the regime of general lbrahim Babangida authorized the establishment of retail petrol stations by NNPC across Nigeria.

The contract was awarded to the construction giant,Julius Berger NNPC mega petrol stations were planted nationwide.

But as well equipped and sophisticated as they were,the mega stations were not optimally utilized and most of them became decrepit.

When another wave of shortage arose reared it’s ugly head and government once again felt that the independent marketers were taking it for a ride,another wave of mega petrol stations were built by NNPC in all the state capitals.

And the years,l had been thinking of how repair/maintenance of vehicles businesses can be raised to international standards.
So,l sought and obtained the franchise of Bosch Car Service,BCS which is a division of Bosch Automotive of Germany engaged in cars quick service/maintenance in Europe,North America and some parts of South and North Africa .

Having identified the opportunity intrinsic in the establishment of NNPC mega stations which were well appointed with elaborate space that was under utilized,we felt we could partner with NNPC Retail by leveraging their nationwide outlets for our automobile quick repair/ maintenance services,so we approached NNPC Retail with our proposal.
Arising from the high turnover of CEOs,l found myself making proposals to a series of Managing Directors,MDs of NNPC Retail beginning about twenty (20) years ago with Mr Eromosele,all the way to Mrs Esther Nnamdi-Ogbue and continuously to Mr Adeyemi Adetunji,who bought into it.
But Adetunji could not implement the plan because he was soon after reassigned as executive director in the mother corporation.
And finally,on his prodding,Sir Billy Okoye who took over from him as the CEO at the time accepted to move our transaction forward.lt was under his watch that the perfidy was perpetuated.
l understand that Mrs Esther Aliyuda is currently at the helm of affairs in NNPC Retail.

Nigeria being a business or political environment where continuity is not a strong virtue,and because there was no grand strategy with regards to private businesses or rolling plans in the case of government or public institutions,most leaders charted their own paths different from that of their predecessors,each time they found themselves at the helms of affairs.

Such an attitude or philosophy does not augur well for business .

To attract or generate more foot falls into the expansive mega petrol station facilities spread around the country,l pressed on with the proposal that my firm,Inspire Auto Services ltd,a franchise holder of Bosch Automotive After-Sales of Germany,which is the only automotive parts manufacturer quoted on New York stock exchange,be granted the concession to manage the auto repair bays in the mega petrol stations as well as create other activities to make them mini local business hubs.

To cut the long story short,after presenting our proposal on how to optimally utilize the facilities,we proposed that a quick service restaurant,neighborhood grocery store and car wash should be located in the mega petrol stations to make it local mini business hubs.
The management liked it,in fact lapped it up and directed us to use four(4) stations located in Abuja,lagos,Kano and Port harcourt as the pilot for the project.

Then my expatriate team and l embarked on trips to the locations and we had a ready to be implemented Action Plan in two weeks,complete with drawings, diagrams and graphs illustrating what we wanted to do,and underscored our business plan with facts and figures from feasibility studies and surveys to justify the viability of our proposal.

After our presentation,the management invited us to a meeting and informed us that it was an open bidding project,and they had invited another party to bid.

We were aghast because it was our
initiative which had consistently tried to get the NNPC Retail to buy into for about two decades spanning about give (5) managing directors.
We figured out that the team we were working with was up to no good when they insisted that a concept that was introduced by us was open to other bidders after we did the spade work because that caveat was not made known to us ab initio,but only introduced in their bid to bring in another firm to reap where it did not sow.

So we excused ourselves.

They have since activated our plan,of which we gave them the blue print and the concept has been unfurled in Abuja,NNPC mega station in Central Business District,CBD and lagos NNPC mega station on kingsway road,lkoyi.

Now,l can imagine that some readers would be shocked to know that a division of my business concern lnspire Group imports and distributes automobile spare parts like batteries,spark plugs,oil and filters as well as brake pads, wiper blades etc and also engages in automobile maintenance and repair services.

I would not be surprised,if the thought of me as an automobile mechanic,makes some readers literally jump out of their skin.

But yes,Inspire Auto Services ltd has a state of the art mechanic workshop located at Lapal House showroom in Igbosere,lagos island,fully equipped with cutting edge tools and manned by craftsman trained by Bosch of Germany who are our partners.

Dear readers,do not ask me what a public intellectual is doing operating a mechanic workshop,because l would simply plead with you to indulge me by allowing it to be a topic of discussion another day.
For now,it is enough to know that not all of us can be in the crowded ‘oily’ business, telecom,fintech and financial services space,where the big boys dominate.

Assuming the sordid past of NNPC has been consigned to the past as it transitions into NNPC limited,what is the new entity offering Nigerians?

Would the pump price of petrol return to the rate of N87 per liter in December,2015?
Can diesel price be affordable to the critical mass of Nigerians so that businesses can thrive and homes running with diesel generators can be homely again?
How about the cost of cooking gas that has gone over the roof ?
Could the astronomical cost compelling people to go for fire wood that would negatively impact our ecology and ultimately aggravate climate change challenges be reversed?

It is only when the answers to any or all of the posers above is in the affirmative that the common man can be said to have gained from the new NNPC limited.

For now,the realization of such an ideal appears to be dim and utopian.

So,for the common man,and l dare add the average man or woman in lagos,Abuja,Portharcourt,Kano and Enugu or llorin,Warri and lbadan etc,that glam unveiling of new NNPC limited event in Aso Rock Villa is mere hoopla.

That is simply because,it conjures up images that reminds them of the fantastic optics of imposing rice pyramid that lured them into thinking that the essential commodity was going to be available in abundance only for it to turn out to be a pipe dream and the vision became just an illusion or mirage as rice in the pots of most Nigerians has become more elusive, post presentation of the Abuja rice pyramids last year.

For now,Nigeria Liquified Natural Gas, NLNG model commends itself for emulation by NNPC limited because it has been relatively successful since it’s founding .
It is a joint venture between the federal government of Nigeria and IOCs.
Unlike the other Joint Ventures,JVs where government is the senior partner by virtue of having higher equity share,in NLNG arrangement,the equity ratio is : 51/49 with the lOCs having the lion share.

And the majority shareholding of the company by the IOCs is the secret of its success,because it is professionally run without external interference.

Is that type of model not beckoning or ripe for adoption by NNPC limited ?

But by virtue of it’s ownership,hook-line-and sinker by Nigerian government, although refocused and to be driven and under guarded by private sector ethos which may make it not susceptible to the meddlesome inclinations of Nigerian political actors,NNPC limited may appear to be a good idea.

And l do not see it’s horizon in its current composition going beyond the level of commercialization that has been attained by Bank of industry,Bol which is similarly owned 100% by the federal government.

According to reports,it’s four (4) moribund refineries posted N154 billion loss last year.

Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative,NEITI,reports that as at 2020, NNPC was also spending N212 billion naira on its staff strength of 6,621 employees nationwide.

And it is estimated that roughly 30% of the workforce are engaged in the four (4) moribund refineries currently undergoing refurbishment.

It is also worth pointing out that of the forty (40) members of the senior management team,24 are northerners and 16 southerners.
That is according to a recent reporting by International Centre For Investigative Journalism, lCIJ.

Is that a worthy aspiration of the initiators of the commercialization of NNPC?
I hope not !

That is why I have been pondering and l am inclined to not believe that the operations of NNPC limited can be scaled up to the high standards obtainable in Nigerian Sovereign Wealth Funds,that is owned wholly by federal government of Nigeria and managed by Uche Orji.
Rather,it would just be like the scandal ridden Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria,AMCON,also fully owned by the federal government,that had Mustapha Chike-Obi as its pioneer chief executive officer,and currently being led by Ahmed Kuru?

Another point to ponder is that of the four (4)presidents of Nigeria since the founding of NNPC in 1977,two (2) have tried to take control of it by playing the role of minister of petroleum resources and president at the same time.
These are,ex president Olusegun Obasanjo and incumbent,president Mohammadu Buhari.

The ball is now in the court of who becomes president of Nigeria 2023 to score the goal by ending the debilitating petrol subsidy that has been constricting Nigeria as if it is in the grip of the vicious reptile, boa constrictor that crushes it’s victims to death by wrapping its body around it ;or sustain the dribbling of Nigerians by making them continue to suffer the avoidable hardship of literally paying for petroleum products through their nose,when they succeed in their endless search for the commodity,that God in His infinite mercy has abundantly endowed Nigeria with,but is sadly fast becoming a scourge instead of blessing.

Magnus onyibe, an entrepreneur, public policy analyst ,author, development strategist, alumnus of Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, Massachusetts, USA and a former commissioner in Delta state government, sent this piece from lagos.
To continue with this conversation, pls visit www.magnum.ng.

July 26, 2022