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OPINION: Adesina And Nigeria’s Fatal Abduction

Published

2 months ago

March 11, 2024

Editor

By Lasisi Olagunju

“What is the State?” Louis Blanc, politician and historian in 19th century France, asks himself.

He answers:

“The State, under democratic rule, is the power of all the people, served by their elect; it is the reign of liberty.

“The State, under monarchical rule, is the power of one man, the tyranny of a single individual.

“The State, under oligarchical rule, is the power of a small number of men, the tyranny of a few.

“The State, under aristocratic rule, is the power of a class, the tyranny of many.

“The State, under anarchical rule, is the power of the first comer who happens to be the most intelligent and the strongest; it is the tyranny of chaos.”

The lines above I took from Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s ‘The State: Its Nature, Object, and Destiny’ (1849). Nigeria is a fine combination of four of the five Louis Blanc’s definitions of the state. In case you pretend not knowing what the four are, this should be a guide: Last week, Finance Minister, Olawale Edun, frontally accused the defunct Muhammadu Buhari regime of criminal printing of about N23 trillion naira. Northern senators on Saturday alleged a criminal infusion of N3 trillion into the 2024 budget of Nigeria by powerful ghosts in Abuja. On Friday, in one northern state, a judge sentenced two kidnappers to death by hanging but quickly undermined himself with an advice to the felons to seek pardon from the executive “since no life was lost in the process of kidnapping.” On Thursday, bandits abducted 287 students in Kaduna. On Saturday, bandits invaded a Zamfara school and stole 15 students. Before the school abductions, senior brothers of the bandits, Boko Haram, had kidnapped over 400 displaced persons in Borno. In Benue and Plateau, a murderous campaign against helpless people is on without ceasing. From the desert to the coast, agonizing cries of existential woes rend the land. What we have is chaos pro-max.

Yet, we remain here. To whom or to where shall we turn? “We must make Nigeria a viable place for people to stay, and not a place to run away from.” I heard that counsel from African Development Bank Group’s president, Akinwumi Adesina, last week Wednesday in his lecture after receiving the Obafemi Awolowo Prize for Leadership in Lagos. I heard him and asked myself who would make Nigeria “a viable place for people to stay.” Those who print money and steal what they print? Those who serenade banditry with negotiation? Where are the leaders? Adesina in that same lecture looked deep into the past and declared that “Nigeria missed its best opportunity to be great under a ‘President’ Awolowo.” I heard that truth and whispered to myself that Nigeria is an expert at missing ways. Yoruba musician, Ayinla Omowura, sings about the one destined to eat hideous vulture, forbidden bird of carrion. Omowura sings that “the head that will eat vulture will not listen. If we give him chicken to eat, he will reject it.”

That is the nature of destiny – determinist philosophers say it is inevitable; people of religion agree but add that it is also inscrutable. Should it be Nigeria’s destiny to be a jungle forever? It looks like there is nothing we can do about it. Arab folklore character, Nasrudin, walks with utmost innocence along an alleyway. He is deep in thought and careful about not putting his feet where he may have them injured. But a man falls from a nearby roof and lands on Nasrudin’s neck. The fallen man is unhurt; innocent Nasrudin has a broken neck. He is asked what lessons he learnt from that experience. Nasrudin tells his disciples to note the place of fate in his fate. He asks them to note that the other man “fell — but my neck is broken!” At independence, Nigeria had all the chances to be great, but it soon had the ill-luck of falling into the mouths of big cats of the jungle. They’ve finished with the flesh, they are cracking the bones.

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Adesina’s lecture focused on what he called five critical areas that would save Nigeria and transform the people’s lives. He said the government should make rural economy work and provide food security. He said our rural areas “have become zones of economic misery.” He is right and correct. He said the city falters today because the village has been abandoned to faltering. The result is “the spread of anarchy, banditry, and terrorism” – what he called the “troika of social disruption” entrenching themselves to our collective sorrow. Adesina said our leaders should give health security for all, provide education for all, give affordable housing for all. He told us quoting data by UN-Habitat, that “in Nigeria, 49 percent of the population live in slums …That is a staggering 102 million people!” He exclaimed and told our leaders that what Nigerians needed “is decent housing and not upgrading of slums…There is nothing like a 5-star slum. A slum is a slum… ”

Then, Adesina reached the fifth of his points: Our leaders should be accountable: “If people pay taxes, governments must deliver services,” he said and quickly added that “taxation in the absence of a social contract between governments and citizens is simply fiscal extortion.” He stressed that Nigeria must enthrone fiscal decentralisation for a true federalism.: “To get out of the economic quagmire, there is a compelling need for the restructuring of Nigeria…Instead of a Federal Government of Nigeria, we could think of the United States of Nigeria.”

Those are great ideas. But in this country, the bush is the way – because the blind is the guide. Leadership will always make a difference. In a 2002 academic piece, psychologists Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzio and Annie Mckee speak on the imperative of societies enthroning leaders with positive emotions. They say the society achieves equilibrium when it is governed by leaders with a sense of accountability; leaders who know how to transform “the art of leadership to the science of results.” One writer said “the executive mind is impotent without power, power is dangerous without vision, and neither is lasting or significant in any human broad sense without the force of integrity.”

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No enduring structure can stand on a faulty foundation. American singer and songwriter, David Allan Coe, asked us not to look at the beauty of a building. He said “it is the construction of the foundation that will stand the test of time.” British architect, Stephen Gardiner, was more philosophical about the place of foundation in people’s affairs. He wrote that “good buildings come from good people, and all problems are solved by good design.” We cannot solve Nigeria’s problem by ignoring the fissures in its foundation.

We tell the knock-kneed that what he carries on his head threatens a fall, he asks us to stop looking at the top. “Look at the base!” He points at his impairment, the awkward gait of his lower limbs. Think about how every road taken has led to nowhere. Think about our propensity to leave the vaults of our destiny open and complain about theft later. The Monday, October 10, 1960 edition of TIME magazine contained a report with the title: ‘Nigeria: The Free Giant.’ It was supposed to be a celebration of Nigeria’s independence which happened ten days earlier. But the author of the piece nursed a fear about the future of the brand new country. He wrote that “backward African nations inevitably must suffer the chaos of a Congo when the blacks take over.” Congo got its independence from Belgium on June 30, 1960. It fell apart on July 5, 1960 – less than a week after independence. The TIME magazine described that Congo as “a panorama of disaster.” How do we describe our Nigeria since independence?

A dark prophecy of inevitable chaos was published for Nigeria ten days after independence. To “inevitably suffer the chaos of the Congo” was a strong statement. The dictionary meaning of ‘chaos’ is “complete disorder”. If you like you can replace the word with “mayhem” or “bedlam” or “a mess.” There are a million other words that share meanings of madness with the chaotic. ‘Inevitable’ means “certain to happen.” Its other synonyms are ‘unavoidable’; ‘inescapable’; ‘fated’. In Shakespeare’s Hamlet we hear the protagonist, Hamlet, King of Denmark, seeing “providence in the fall of a sparrow.” In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare says the love birds are “star-cross’d” – stuck with their tragic end, their fate. It was the destiny of the Congo to explode within a week of its freedom from foreign rule. It has been Nigeria’s destiny to hop from disaster to catastrophe. But why?

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If destiny will manifest itself in a disaster, it presages itself. It is not rain that falls without warning the blind and tapping the deaf. Thirty-eight years ago, Chief Awolowo himself spoke on the evils which dominated the hearts of Nigerians “at all levels and in all sectors of our political, business and governmental activities.” In his famous letter to the political bureau set up by the military in 1986, Chief Awolowo spoke about “the abominable filth that abounds in our society.” He said as long as Nigerians remained “what they are, nothing clean, principled, ethical, and idealistic can work with them.” He warned that unless we allowed our hearts to be impelled “to make drastic changes for the better,” Nigeria stood the chance of succumbing to what he described as “permanent social instability and chaos.”

The chaos is here. We feel it in the price of food and drugs and in the cost of life itself. It is overwhelming. Today’s government reacts by grumbling about the malfeasance of its predecessor. Yet, the past was a disaster that came dancing without a mask. After Muhammadu Buhari was declared reelected in 2019, the late Dr. Obadiah Mailafia said in his March 4, 2019 Nigerian Tribune column titled ‘A guide for the Perplexed’ that Nigeria faced “what amounts to a peace of the graveyard.” He said he saw “fear and alarm in the eyes of certified patriots.” He noted that “only Almajirai in tattered rags from the president’s home region are celebrating with daggers and bayonets spoiling for a fight that nobody is really interested in.” He called on “genuine statesmen to (come and) salvage our democracy from the jaws of catastrophe.” History should have guided the public intellectual. Mailafia should have read Chief Awolowo. Nigeria is not structured to have “genuine statesmen” as its managers. Vulture does not eat clean meat; its meal is carrion.

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Adesina declared that “Chief Awolowo was bigger than Nigeria. He said Awo “was the pacesetter and forerunner for development in Africa.” He spoke about Awolowo’s “intellectual capacity, vision, pragmatic social welfarism (which) helped him accomplish what was seemingly unimaginable at the time.” Adesina listed Awolowo’s firsts: “He built the first skyscraper in Africa — the Cocoa House. He built the first television station in Africa, WNTV. He built the Liberty Stadium, the first of its kind in Africa. He implemented a blueprint for development that focused on building human capacity through massive programs to educate the people, develop skills, lift people out of poverty, provide massive rural infrastructure, and develop institutions that turned farmers into wealthy entrepreneurs…Chief Awolowo implemented the sustainable development goals decades before the phrase was coined. He was an inspiration for Africa, far beyond the shores of Nigeria. His philosophy…helped shape programs and policies in other countries.”

Where I sat was some seats away from where Adesina stood and spoke from. Where he stood was a few seats away from where the government of Nigeria sat, expressionless. I heard Adesina; I turned and asked a colleague who sat beside me if he thought Nigeria could benefit from the wisdom of the bow-tied. I told my friend that Adesina’s first four points rested on the fifth. Nothing positive will happen unless Nigeria’s crooked structure is worked on by surgeons. But, where are the physicians? Even if the surgeon is found and present, Nigeria is as difficult and dangerous as danger could be. The country is that mental patient who hates his doctor because he hates being cured of his ailment. Nigeria kills its prophets.

Adesina’s five pills are capable of healing Nigeria. But Nigeria won’t listen to him. It did not listen to Awolowo. It doesn’t listen to the wise. It is a conundrum – an abductee of its crooked structure. In the 1999 Yoruba political film, Saworoide, we hear the old man Adebayo Faleti (Bàbá Òpálábá) chanting the praise name of his Jogbo Kingdom: “Jogbo bí orógbó, Jogbo bí orò (Jogbo, bitter as bitter kola; dangerous as oro cult). With two eyes, you can cope at the riverside; with two eyes, you will survive Kaduna; but you need twelve eyes to survive in Jogbo. With two mouths, you get by in Ibadan; with two mouths you get by in Lagos; but you need 18 mouths to survive in Jogbo…” Nigeria is that Jogbo – a sick, deformed, bitter country in need of a surgeon.

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Minimum Wage: Why We May Not Accept N100,000 – Organised Labour

Published

5 hours ago

May 20, 2024

Editor

The organised labour has told the government to perish any idea of offering N100,000 as the new minimum wage.

The labour has also told the government to be serious with the negotiations on the issue of workers wages, insisting that it used the lowest minimum in arriving at the N615,000 as new minimum wage.

Recall that the organised labour comprising the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC and the Trade Union Congress of Nigeria, TUC, pulled out of the negotiation meeting last week Wednesday when the government offered N48,000 as the new minimum wage.

However, Chairman of the Tripartite Committee on the National Minimum wage, Alhaji Bukar Goni in a letter to the organized labour for a meeting tomorrow indicated interest that the government will shift ground and asked the organised labour to also shift ground.

Speaking to Vanguard in Abuja, the NLC Head of Information and Public Affairs, Benson Upah, said that the organised labour would honour the invitation tomorrow but he advised the government to be serious.

He said, “Our expectations are that the government should be serious this time around. We expect them to take more seriously the issue of wages of workers.”

On whether labour would accept N100,000 as being insinuated, he said, “Well, it will not be fair and these are the reasons. The first reason is that when we demanded for N615,000, we broke that down. In fact, we used the barest minimum.

“For instance we put accommodation for N40,000, we also use for feeding N500, tell me where you are going to get food for N500 with a family of six. As I said, we used barest estimate but beyond that, government hiked electricity tariff by two hundred and fifty percent after we made our demand and that has introduced new cost and expenses. So if government is serious, it should not be thinking about a hundred thousand naira.

“You know that when you create poor citizens, you create a poorer county.” On his part, a member of the NLC delegation on the Tripartite Committee, Prof Theophilus Ndubuaku, said it would not be kind of the government to offer N100,000.

He said, “I don’t think one hundred thousand naira is a kind of thing we want because it’s far below expectation, we will accept something that can at least keep somebody alive. I don’t think a hundred thousand naira will keep a worker alive in this country a man with a family of six because our computation is based on the size of family.

“So, if they come up with that kind of amount, I don’t think we will appreciate it. In the private sector even artisans are not taking one hundred thousand a month. Whatever we accept we will look what is the income, what are they collecting, what is available to government because if government is collecting one trillion naira, we cannot ask them to pay two trillion.

“We are responsible people but the same government should know that people are suffering they will have to agree with us that there is crisis, that something needs to be done to create wealth, that something needs to be done for Nigeria to be a producing country and not a consuming nation.

“Something needs to be done to reduce the cost of governance. We are supposed to be partners in governance, after all we are the labourers.”

Asked to give reason why labour may not accept one hundred thousand, he said, “If we see that that hundred thousand is affordable, if we see that they can afford more, we will reject it. They have to tell us why they cannot pay N615,000, the onus is on them to tell us why, then we will sit down and say okay you don’t have the money but we will also know why you don’t have the money because Nigeria is a country that is naturally endowed but something is wrong, how do you make sure you get the money so that when we come again in two years time, you won’t tell us the same story?

“What are you doing to create wealth, how are you going to partner with us to create wealth instead of being wasteful, how are you going to partner with us to reduce cost of governance. If a father comes home and says the only money he has is one thousand naira and you know that the father is not wasting the money, you will manage but if it is when the father comes and he is eating food bought from the fast food joint and it cost N10,000 and he gives one thousand to the entire family to go and look for food and cook for themselves, he may be beaten up, the family may refuse it.

“The letter they wrote to us they said that both parties should shift ground, that means they will shift ground and they are expecting us to shift ground but the question is, what ground are they shifting, are they going to shift ground by two naira or two thousand naira to make it N50,000 or are they going to shift ground by N62,000 to make it N100,000 or by N150,000 or N200,000 to make it N300,000 plus.

“The point here is, this thing we are doing is not rocket science, the government should sit down and calculate how much it will cost, what is a befitting wage for an average Nigeria? They should breakdown what they are giving us because even in salaries, you break everything down. So when you break it down, they will tell us whether they are going to put one thousand naira per month for transport and two thousand naira per month for food.

“That N48,000 they are offering, they should have broken it down so if there are certain things they don’t want to make provision for, for instance health, if they say if any worker is sick they person should go and die or they don’t want to make provision for food, let them just put standard things.

“The problem here is that, you asked someone to tighten his belt, you said there is no money but you removed subsidy. Since they removed subsidy, FAAC has been collecting almost three times of what they were collecting before subsidy. That money you are collecting, what are you doing with it?

“You now said you want to build coastal highway when the existing roads to the same location are not passable, you are budgeting trillions of naira, you want to build Lagos-Sokoto brand new Highway, you want to put billions for hajj subsidy, you bought 200 vehicles for Customs and this is somebody that is complaining that naira is having issues but you now want to spend hundreds billions to import Toyota cars for Customs, why can’t you buy made-in Nigeria vehicles?

“This whole thing doesn’t make any meaning, we don’t even understand it. They are behaving as if they have money but they don’t know what to do with it like General Yakubu Gowon said in the 70s. You bought 200 Toyota Jeeps for Customs, it means you really do have the money but you don’t know what to do with it. But one thing you don’t want to do with the money is to feed Nigerians, feed your workers, make your workers comfortable.

“And as you can see, they are not even giving anybody hope. There is no programme for agriculture, government is not declaring emergency on power, food security, transportation.

“So what we are expecting is that, if they tell us they cannot pay N625,000, they should tell us why they cannot pay, this is negotiation. If we have told them to pay N615,000, what we expect government to calculate how many workers that are expected to receive this minimum wage.

“We did our research, you now say each state has this workforce, this is what they are now getting as revenue forget the fact that some of them are not doing anything to increase their IGR. Whatever they are getting now from the money coming from the federal revenue account, the federal government should say, this is the number of workers that we have, this is how much that you are asking, at the end of the day, this is how much we are expected to spend as salary and this is how much we have.

“So, NLC please look at it, we don’t want to spend this percent on salary, we will then sit down and ask, if you don’t want to spend it on salary, you want to spend it by importing vehicles for Customs when you have locally manufactured vehicles that won’t cost capital flight.”

He, however said that if the government comes out with something”relevant “, the organised labour will shift ground as asked.

“We must discuss with them that the figure presented is realistic and based on facts and statistics as the organised labour has done,” he said.

He said, “For provision of food for one person, we put N500 but there is a survey carried out by the National Bureau for Statistics covering all parts of the country, NBS is the custodian of statistics and it came out with that in today Nigeria, the average you can spend for a meal is N900.

“But we went low, we took the minimum. Their average is N900 but we took the minimum of N500, that is you cannot go below the N500. So you can see how realistic we are. So we will insist that government breakdown every item. Food, hospital, accommodation, transportation etc.

“We don’t want anyone to come and say that the NLC and the TUC presented arbitrary figure.”
VANGUARD

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BREAKING: CBN Withdraws Circular On Cyber Security Levy

Published

7 hours ago

May 19, 2024

Editor

The Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN has withdrawn the circular directing banks and other financial institutions to implement the 0.5 per cent cyber security levy.

The withdrawal of the circular was announced via a statement signed by Haruna Mustafa, Director, Financial Policy and Regulation, Department and Chibuzo Efobi, Director, Payment System Management Department.

The circular stated: “The Central Bank of Nigeria circular dated May 6, 2024 (Ref. PSMD/DIR/PUB/LAB/017/004) on the above subject refers. ‘

“Further to this, please be advised that the above referenced circular is hereby withdrawn.”

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JUST IN: Tinubu Appoints Spokesperson, Ngelale, As Special Envoy On Climate Action

Published

8 hours ago

May 19, 2024

Editor

President Bola Tinubu has appointed his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Mr. Ajuri Ngelale, as Nigeria’s Special Presidential Envoy on Climate Action.

This was as he established a 25-person committee to oversee the country’s green economic initiatives.

“Ngelale will serve in this role as part of a larger Presidential Committee, to be chaired by the President,” the office of the secretary to the government of the federation revealed in a statement signed Sunday by its Director of Information and Public Relations, Segun Imohiosen.

“Ngelale will retain his role as the Official Spokesperson of the President and Special Adviser to the President on Media & Publicity while serving on the committee,” it added.

The statement is titled, ‘President Tinubu establishes a committee to oversee green economic initiatives, appoints Chief Ajuri Ngelale as special envoy on climate action.’

Imohsien said the Presidential Committee on Climate Action and Green Economic Solutions will “coordinate and oversee all policies and programmes on climate action and green economic development.”

“This is to remove the constraints to coordination, foster a whole-of-government approach to climate-action programmes, provide an efficient governance architecture, and ensure that all relevant institutions in the sector are plugged into the President’s vision and are collectively implementing the Renewed Hope Agenda on climate action,” it further explained.

The new committee which has the President as its Chairman also includes the Minister of Environment, Mr. Balarabe Lawal as its Vice-Chairman, and Mr. Ajuri Ngelale as its Secretary/Special Presidential Envoy.

Members are the CEOs of, InfraCorp, Mr. Lazarus Angbazo; National Council on Climate Change, Mr. Salisu Dahiru; Infrastructure Council Regulatory Commission, Mr. Michael Ohiani, Nigeria Investment Promotion Council, Mrs. Aisha Rimi and National Social Investment Fund, Mr. Aminu Umar-Sadiq.

The committee also consists of the CEOs of the National Agency for the Great Green Wall, Mr Yusuf Maina-Bukar, Energy Commission of Nigeria, Mr Abdullahi Mustapha; Rural Electrification Agency, Abba Aliyu; CreditCorp, Uzoma Nwagba, the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure, Khalil Halilu Member, Solid Minerals Development Fund, Fatima Shinkafi; CBN Deputy Governor (Deputy Governor, Corporate Services Directorate) Mr Bala Bello; UN SE4ALL, Lolade Abiola; Member and an Adviser to the NCCC Adviser, Teni Majekodunmi.

Others are representatives of the Federal Ministries of FCT, Finance, Industry, Trade & Investment, Water Resources, and Agriculture & Food Security.

The committee also consists of representatives from the Federal Inland Revenue Service and the Nigeria Customs Service.

The OSGF outlined eight objectives of the Presidential Committee. They are to:

“Identify, develop, and implement innovative non-oil & non-gas climate action initiatives.

“Coordinate all activities of relevant federal institutions towards the attainment of all agreed climate action and green economic objectives and non-oil/non-gas ambitions of the federal government.

“Collaborate with all relevant government, subnational governments, non-government, and civil society entities towards the attainment of the climate action objectives and ambitions of the federal government.

“Collaborate with national governments and multilateral institutions towards the attainment of the climate action objectives and carbon market ambitions of the federal government.

“Monitor, evaluate, and guide the progress of all climate action and renewable energy projects and activities of the federal government.

“Track and guide the implementation of initiatives and developments conducted by the Energy Transition Working Group.

“Supervise the work of the Presidential Steering Committee on Project Evergreen and

“Prepare a half-yearly green ambitions update, covering all associated climate action achievements of the federal government.”