Strictly Personal
How we lost Buhari by Emmanuel Aziken
Published
3 years agoon
In his first press interaction with the Lagos press in 2015, just after he was inaugurated minister of information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, in an off-the-record conversation with correspondent disclosed that President Muhammadu Buhari was looking for his first appointee to use as a scapegoat for his anti-corruption war.
Mohammed said so against the background of the fact that anti-corruption was one of three major planks on which the Buhari government campaigned for office.
The other planks were economy and security. With the administration’s record in those two sectors fantastically below average at best, the remaining leg left of the tripod to hold on to the Buhari personae had been his vaunted phobia for corruption.
However, in the last week, that personae quickly evaporated after two landmark actions that took place under the president’s nose.
The first was the pardon granted former Governors Joshua Dariye and Jolly Nyame which transformed them from convicted felons to saints. That whitewash followed the conviction of both men by appropriate courts on charges of corruption while in office as governors.
The prosecution of the two men also followed years of diligent investigation that consumed a substantial amount of taxpayers’ resources. That was also followed by resources expended in the course of their trial.
While many are lamenting the time and money wasted in the process, others are also looking at the more emotional cost on the part of the prosecution agencies. The scorn and mockery that the anti-corruption agencies and their officers have been subjected to in the nullification of their efforts must be considerate.
In other lands such diligent investigation and prosecution would ordinarily have earned the anti-corruption officials laurels and commendations, perhaps to run for political office. However, under the stroke of President Buhari’s pardon, they have been turned into objects of mockery.
Even more, the lesson from Buhari’s cohabitation with these former felons is that it would encourage other governors enmeshed in corruption to believe that one can easily wriggle out if convicted. Indeed, rather than deter corruption, President Buhari has by his action encouraged the corrupt to be more wanton in their deeds.
Alas, seven years after Lai Mohammed promised that Buhari was looking for the first official to make a scapegoat, the reverse is the case. Indeed, the once famed Buhari is now in cahoots with the corrupt in setting the agenda of the polity.
One of the former felons now pardoned by Buhari, it was gathered, is set to contest a Senate seat to position himself as a lawmaker. Indeed, a lawbreaker turned lawmaker who would sooner than later be called Distinguished Senator. He may even be appointed to chair the committees supervising the anti-graft agencies.
The second development that melted the Buhari personae was the decision to impose a N100 million levy on the purchase of forms by presidential candidates of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC.
The decision by the APC inevitably puts it that only the super rich could afford to purchase the forms. Your correspondent is seeking to know the Nigerian who worked and laboured hard for N100 million that would throw that to purchase a form that may not take him or her anywhere.
Already, critical stakeholders including the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP which is not even much better having placed its own form at N40 million, have lampooned the APC.
Of course many of the pretentious aspirants would come out to purchase the forms through groups as a way of distancing themselves from such ignominious expenditure.
It is, however, contradictory to the principle of egalitarian democracy for any section of the electorate to be fenced out on the basis of money as the APC has so blatantly done.
An examination of the requirements for running for public office in the United States for example, does not prescribe such high level of financial investment on forms. Emphasis is rather put more on the ability of the office seeker to mobilise signatures from a proportion of the constituency to file papers to run.
By imposing such a high levy on the forms, Buhari’s APC has made it possible that only treasury looters who are pardoned or yet to be convicted, armed robbers, kidnappers and terrorist sympathisers are able to purchase the forms.
It is a pity that Buhari sat over the proceedings where the NEC of the party rolled out these criteria to the extent that even the House of Assembly, the lowest entry point has a N2m peg.
With such atrocious policies enunciated under the supervision of Buhari, genuine stakeholders who once looked to the president and believed his words that “if we don’t kill corruption, that corruption will kill Nigeria,” are now looking askance. They are asking what happened to Buhari?
We have lost him.
You may like
-
African Union must ensure Sudan civilians are protected, By Joyce Banda
-
Economic policies must be local, By Lekan Sote
-
Dangote Refinery: A timely win for industrialisation, By Abiodun Alade
-
Mpox crisis: We need an equity-driven pandemic treaty, By Magda Robalo
-
Olympics had free lessons for African leaders, By Tee Nugugi
-
Athletes bring gold, economists bring debts, botched projects, By Joachim Buwembo
Strictly Personal
African Union must ensure Sudan civilians are protected, By Joyce Banda
Published
4 days agoon
October 25, 2024The war in Sudan presents the world – and Africa – with a test. This far, we have scored miserably. The international community has failed the people of Sudan. Collectively, we have chosen to systematically ignore and sacrifice the Sudanese people’s suffering in preference of our interests.
For 18 months, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) have fought a pitiless conflict that has killed thousands, displaced millions, and triggered the world’s largest hunger crisis.
Crimes against humanity and war crimes have been committed by both parties to the conflict. Sexual and gender-based violence are at epidemic levels. The RSF has perpetrated a wave of ethnically motivated violence in Darfur. Starvation has been used as a weapon of war: The SAF has carried out airstrikes that deliberately target civilians and civilian infrastructure.
The plight of children is of deep concern to me. They have been killed, maimed, and forced to serve as soldiers. More than 14 million have been displaced, the world’s largest displacement of children. Millions more haven’t gone to school since the fighting broke out. Girls are at the highest risk of child marriage and gender-based violence. We are looking at a child protection crisis of frightful proportions.
In many of my international engagements, the women of Sudan have raised their concerns about the world’s non-commitment to bring about peace in Sudan.
I write with a simple message. We cannot delay any longer. The suffering cannot be allowed to continue or to become a secondary concern to the frustrating search for a political solution between the belligerents. The international community must come together and adopt urgent measures to protect Sudanese civilians.
Last month, the UN’s Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for Sudan released a report that described a horrific range of crimes committed by the RSF and SAF. The report makes for chilling reading. The UN investigators concluded that the gravity of its findings required a concerted plan to safeguard the lives of Sudanese people in the line of fire.
“Given the failure of the warring parties to spare civilians, an independent and impartial force with a mandate to safeguard civilians must be deployed without delay,” said Mohamed Chande Othman, chair of the Fact-Finding Mission and former Chief Justice of Tanzania.
We must respond to this call with urgency.
A special responsibility resides with the African Union, in particular the AU Commission, which received a request on June 21 from the AU Peace and Security Council (PSC) “to investigate and make recommendations to the PSC on practical measures to be undertaken for the protection of civilians.”
So far, we have heard nothing.
The time is now for the AU to act boldly and swiftly, even in the absence of a ceasefire, to advance robust civilian protection measures.
A physical protective presence, even one with a limited mandate, must be proposed, in line with the recommendation of the UN Fact-Finding Mission. The AU should press the parties to the conflict, particularly the Sudanese government, to invite the protective mission to enter Sudan to do its work free from interference.
The AU can recommend that the protection mission adopt targeted strategies operations, demarcated safe zones, and humanitarian corridors – to protect civilians and ensure safe, unhindered, and adequate access to humanitarian aid.
The protection mission mandate can include data gathering, monitoring, and early warning systems. It can play a role in ending the telecom blackout that has been a troubling feature of the war. The mission can support community-led efforts for self-protection, working closely with Sudan’s inspiring mutual-aid network of Emergency Response Rooms. It can engage and support localised peace efforts, contributing to community-level ceasefire and peacebuilding work.
I do not pretend that establishing a protection mission in Sudan will be easy. But the scale of Sudan’s crisis, the intransigence of the warring parties, and the clear and consistent demands from Sudanese civilians and civil society demand that we take action.
Many will be dismissive. It is true that numerous bureaucratic, institutional, and political obstacles stand in our way. But we must not be deterred.
Will we stand by as Sudan suffers mass atrocities, disease, famine, rape, mass displacement, and societal disintegration? Will we watch as the crisis in Africa’s third largest country spills outside of its borders and sets back the entire region?
Africa and the world have been given a test. I pray that we pass it.
Dr Joyce Banda is a former president of the Republic of Malawi.
Strictly Personal
Economic policies must be local, By Lekan Sote
Published
5 days agoon
October 24, 2024With 32.70 per cent headline inflation, 40.20 per cent food inflation, and bread inflation of 45 per cent, all caused by the removal of subsidies from petrol and electricity, and the government’s policy of allowing market forces to determine the value of the Naira, Nigerians are reeling under high cost of living.
The observation by Obi Alfred Achebe of Onitsha, that “The wellbeing of the people has declined more steeply in the last months,” leads to doubts about the “Renewed Hope” slogan of President Bola Tinubu’s government that is perceived as extravagant, whilst asking Nigerians to be patient and wait for its unfolding economic policies to mature.
It doesn’t look as if it will abate soon, Adebayo Adelabu, Minister of Power, who seems ready to hike electricity tariffs again, recently argued that the N225 per kilowatt hour of electricity that Discos charge Band A premium customers is lower than the N750 and N950 respective costs of running privately-owned petrol or diesel generators.
While noting that 129 million, or 56 per cent of Nigerians are trapped below poverty line, the World Bank revealed that real per capita Gross Domestic Product, which disregards the service industry component, is yet to recover from the pre-2016 economic depression under the government of Muhammadu Buhari.
This has led many to begin to doubt the government’s World Bank and International Monetary Fund-inspired neo-liberal economic policies that seem to have further impoverished poor Nigerians, practically eliminated the middle class, and is making the rich also cry.
Yet the World Bank, which is not letting up, recently pontificated that “previous domestic policy missteps (based mainly on its own advice) are compounding the shocks of rising inflation (that is) eroding the purchasing power of the people… and this policy is pushing many (citizens) into poverty.”
It zeroes in by asking Nigeria to stay the gruelling course, which Ibukun Omole thinks “is nothing more than a manifesto for exploitation… a blatant attempt to continue the cycle of exploitation… a tool of imperialism, promoting the same policies that have kept Nigeria under the thumb of… neocolonial agenda for decades.”
When Indermilt Gill, Senior Vice President of the World Bank, told the 30th Summit of Nigeria’s Economic Summit Group, in Abuja, Federal Capital Territory, that Nigerians may have to endure the harrowing economic conditions for another 10 to 15 years, attendees murmured but didn’t walk out on him because of Nigerian’s tradition of politeness to guests.
Governor Bala Muhammed of Bauchi State, who agrees with the World Bank that “purchasing power has dwindled,” also thinks that “these (World Bank-inspired) policies, usually handed down by arm-twisting compulsions, are not working.”
What seems to be trending now is the suggestion that because these neo-liberal policies do not seem to be helping the economy and the citizens of Nigeria, at least in the short term, it would be better to think up homegrown solutions to Nigeria’s economic problems.
Late Speaker of America’s House of Representatives, Tip O’Neill, is quoted to have quipped that, at the end of the day, “All politics is local.” He may have come to that conclusion after observing that it takes the locals in a community to know what is best for them.
This aphorism must apply to economics, a field of study that is derived from sociology, which is the study of the way of life of a people. Proof of this is in “The Wealth of Nations,” written by Adam Smith, who is regarded as the first scholar of economics.
In his Introduction to the Penguin Classics edition of “The Wealth of Nations,” Andrew Skinner observes: “Adam Smith was undoubtedly the remarkable product of a remarkable age and one whose writing clearly reflects the intellectual, social and economic conditions of the period.”
To drive the point home that Smith’s book was written for his people and his time, Skinner reiterated that “the general ‘philosophy,’ which it contained was so thoroughly in accord with the aspirations and circumstances of his age.”
In a Freudian slip of the Darwinist realities of the Industrial Revolution that birthed individualism, capitalism, and global trade, Smith averred that “How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principle in his nature which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasures of seeing it.”
And, he let it slip that capitalism is for the advantage of Europe when he confessed that “Europe, by not leaving things at perfect liberty (the so-called Invisible Hand), occasions… inequities,” by “restraining the competition in some trades to a smaller number… increasing it in others beyond what it naturally would be… and… free circulation of labour (or expertise) and stocks (goods) both from employment to employment and from place to place!”
Policymakers, who think Bretton Woods institutions will advise policies to replicate the success of the Euro-American economy in Nigeria must be daydreaming. After advising elimination of subsidy, as global best practices that reflect market forces, they failed to suggest that Nigeria’s N70,000 monthly minimum wage, neither reflects the realities of the global marketplace, nor Section 16(2,d) of Nigeria’s Constitution, which suggests a “reasonable national minimum living wage… for all citizens.”
After Alex Sienart, World Bank’s lead economist in Nigeria, pointed out that the wage increase will directly affect the lives of only 4.1 per cent of Nigerians, he suggested that Nigeria needed more productive jobs to reduce poverty. But he neither explained “productive jobs,” nor suggested how to create them.
In admitting past wrong economic policies that the World Bank recommended for Nigeria, its former President, Jim Yong Kim, confessed, “I think the World Bank has to take responsibility for having emphasized hard infrastructure –roads, rails, energy– for a long time…
“There is still the bias that says we will invest in hard infrastructure, and then we grow rich, (and) we will have enough money to invest in health and education. (But) we are now saying that’s the wrong approach, that you’ve got to start investing in your people.”
Kim is a Korean-American physician, health expert, and anthropologist, whose Harvard University and Brown University Ivy League background shapes his decidedly “Pax American” worldview of America’s dominance of the world economy.
Despite his do-gooder posturing, his diagnoses and prescriptions still did not quite address the root cause of Nigeria’s economic woes, nor provide any solutions. They were mere diversions that stopped short of the way forward.
He should have advocated for the massive accumulation of capital and investments in the local production of manufacturing machinery, industrial spare parts, and raw materials—items that are currently imported, weakening Nigeria’s trade balance.
He should have pushed for the completion of Ajaokuta Steel Mill and helped to line up investors with managerial, technical, and financial competence to salvage Nigeria’s electricity sector, whose poor run has been described by Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, President of Africa Development Bank, as “killing Nigerian industries.”
He could have assembled consultants to accelerate the conversion of Nigeria’s commuter vehicles to Compressed Natural Gas and get banks of the metropolitan economies, that hold Nigeria’s foreign reserves in their vaults, to invest their low-interest funds into Nigeria’s agriculture— so that Nigeria will no longer import foodstuffs.
Nigerians need homegrown solutions to their economic woes.
EDITOR’S PICK
Ghana considers imports from Nigeria’s Dangote oil refinery
The head of Ghana’s oil regulator stated on Monday that once Nigeria’s Dangote Oil Refinery was fully operational, Ghana might...
Zambia mourns as seven footballers die in bus crash
The Zambian football community has been thrown into mourning following a ghastly accident on Saturday that claimed the lives of...
Ghana: Ahead of elections, US imposes visa restrictions on those ‘undermining democracy’
Ahead of Ghana’s December presidential and legislative elections, the United States, on Monday, unveiled a policy restricting visas for those...
Why we can’t deploy UN force in Sudan despite grave situation— Guterres
Antonio Guterres, the secretary-general of the United Nations, made a plea to the Security Council on Monday to support efforts...
Morocco budgets $36m Rabat Game City
The Moroccan government has announced plans to invest $36 million dedicated to establishing a specialised gaming zone in Rabat, its...
Nigeria’s fintech Moniepoint achieves ‘Unicorn’ status after raising $110m from Google, others
Nigerian fintech, Moniepoint, has achieved a “Unicorn” status after securing $110m in funding from investors, including Google and London-based private...
Zambia: Police seals off PF secretariat ahead of planned media briefing by ex-President Lungu
The lingering face-off between the Zambian government and former President Edgar Lungu has taken a new dimension after the police...
Teenage Pregnancy: 15% of Nigerian girls aged 15-19 affected— Report
A new report released by the Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS) 2023-24 has revealed that approximately 15 per cent...
Nigeria’s socio-economic progress hampered by debt servicing— IMF
According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Nigeria devotes the majority of its income to paying off its debt, leaving...
President Masisi seeks 2nd- term as Diamond-rich Botswana set to vote
On Wednesday, Botswana, a diamond-rich southern African state, will hold a general election in which President Mokgweetsi Masisi will face...
Trending
-
VenturesNow1 day ago
South Africa’s Pick n Pay leaves Nigeria
-
Tech1 day ago
Kenya’s e-bus startup BasiGo raises $41.5m to scale transport electrification across Africa
-
Metro1 day ago
Zambia: PF faction to hold separate memorial service for late President Sata
-
Politics1 day ago
President Masisi seeks 2nd- term as Diamond-rich Botswana set to vote