Strictly Personal

America’s evacuation of Abuja by Lasisi Olagunju

Published

2 years ago

October 31, 2022

Ancient Greek and Roman authors wrote about a lost city called Helike (Helice) which suffered utter destruction in 373 BC. I remembered reading about this capital city when the American government evacuated its officials from Abuja last week and the regime of denial in Abuja asked us to ignore the superpower. History has details of the deadly night in Helike when a terrible earthquake triggered a tsunami that concomitantly destroyed the city and all its people. The tragedy did not hit that city that night without a warning. Greek historian, Thucydides – some say Diodorus too – wrote a painstaking account of how human inhabitants of Helike watched and laughed as rats and dogs, even snakes and weasels, evacuated the city a few days before the catastrophe. Roman author and teacher of Rhetoric, Aelian (c175-235 CE) also wrote that five days before tragedy hit that city, “all the mice and martens and snakes and centipedes and beetles and every other creature of that kind in the town left in a body by the road that leads to Cerynea.” The people were amused and they laughed at whatever spirit of madness had entered the existing creatures. They remained so high on denial until night fell and the tsunami of darkness swept them away. History has no record of any human survivor. Everyone ignored the warning; everyone died.

There is a more recent incident which mirrored that Ancient Greek disaster. On 26 December, 2004, villagers of Bang Koey in Thailand woke up in the morning to notice that “a herd of buffalo grazing on the beach lifted their heads, pricked their ears and looked out to the sea, then turned and stampeded to the top of a nearby hill (Matt Kaplan: 2007).” Some minutes after the animals’ warning exit, a tsunami swept off the village. The few who lived after the attack were those who correctly read the animals and escaped with them to the hilltop. The Fulani have a proverb that can be useful here; they say: the one who wakes up early is safe from the sun. Where I come from, we know and say that rains have distinctive ways of tipping off both the blind and the deaf. If you can’t see, at least you would hear the rumblings in the skies; and if you can’t hear, the clouds are up there as your advisory.

I neither wish nor pray for any disaster to hit Abuja, but let us not dismiss the Americans and their allies. They see; we are willfully blind – in and out. Nigeria’s one-time minister of external affairs, Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, speaking on Arise Television last week, rang this warning bell. He said we should listen to what the Americans were saying and watch what they were doing; we should read their lips: “The security threat that has now been made public is increasing every day. The US started it, UK, India joined and Australia, Canada have joined, and I suspect that the number is going to be increasing. Don’t forget that intelligence that is available to embassies in Abuja are not collated from just the information gathered within Abuja or Nigeria. This information could have been picked up from any of the listening posts of the US anywhere in the world. We, Nigerians, don’t have that intelligence capability; therefore, don’t let us demonize the Americans or any of the embassies that are involved in this.”

Is ‘something’ truly about to happen in Abuja? Or is it generally in Nigeria? What is it? Our government is not saying anything of value beyond dropping dumb assurances. We are used to America and its allies issuing security alerts and travel advisories. We have been receiving such alerts and advisories as very routine since the very day Nigeria lost its virginity and became a destination of choice for terrorism and terrorists. But evacuation as a superpower response to threats on our soil is new, novel and very gross.

A history of US evacuations abroad and what followed the leaving should bother me. There was America’s ‘Operation Eastern Exit’ launched in Somalia in January 1991 which was a reaction to the escalation of violence in that unfortunate country. The US Defence Attaché went to the Italian embassy for a function but “took a couple of rounds when a Somali fired an AK-47 at his vehicle; a couple of the shells traveled between sheets of armored plate surrounding the car and cut across the car an inch from his backbone,” the then US Ambassador to Somalia, James K. Bishop, reminisced in November 1991. “Obviously, the situation was deteriorating by the minute. Non-Americans were beginning to come into the compound (the embassy) looking for protection; some diplomats sought refuge…the Nigerian Ambassador was sleeping on a couch outside of my room…,” he added, and concluded that “the situation presented a strong argument for leaving Somalia as soon as possible” On 1 January, 1991, Ambassador Bishop asked the Department of State to approve the evacuation of the embassy. He got the approval the following day and evacuated the Americans leaving the Somali employees behind. Somalia is more than still being in crisis. It is ruined.

The evacuations are martial proof that America does not throw its citizens to the dogs. Sixteen years before Somalia (between 29 and 30 April, 1975), America had ‘Operation Frequent Wind ‘in Vietnam – evacuating its interests in the very last days of the Vietnam War. Almost four years after Vietnam (January 30, 1979), the United States ordered its almost 1,000 citizens still in Iran to leave “at the earliest feasible time,” that is according to the Washington Post of January 31, 1979. On February 21, 1979, the US and its allies evacuated 440 persons from Iran. The Iranian military was crumbling and the Islamic revolution had happened ten days earlier which triggered that action. We know what followed it. America launched a month-long ‘Operation Shining Express’ on June 12, 2003 to rescue and evacuate US citizens and embassy workers trapped in Monrovia following a second civil war in Liberia. Just last year, August 2021, we watched on live television as America and its allies evacuated Kabul, the Afghan capital. We saw the bedlam at the airport and we know why the evacuation had to be done at that moment. On February 20, 2022, the US embassy in Russia told Americans to prepare for evacuation, citing the deepening Ukrainian crisis and the general air of insecurity the problem had engendered. On September 28, 2022, the embassy issued a security alert asking US citizens to leave Russia immediately while there were still options for departing the country. Each of these alerts and warnings was portentous and had specific reasons, and each was followed by unforgettable events. Is something horrendous about to happen in our capital city that is known only to our more endowed guests? What is it?

Whatever it is, the Nigerian government does not really care. Governance, to the men of power in Abuja, is an ego trip. What bothers the regime is not the damage which terror may inflict on Nigeria and Nigerians. The surly government is solely interested in retaining the sepulchral whiteness of its image. It insists: Nigeria is safe, Abuja is safe; no Abuja estate was raided with foreign assistance. A string of lethal lies continues to ornament the neck of our government. The regime without shame has been scrambling to attack the American alert and advisories; it is asking us to ignore the sighted guide of the American eagle and key into the blindness of its bat. But why is the government giving itself so much trouble with the American warning? The advisories were not directed at Nigerians; they were for nationals of the powers issuing them. But between the Americans and the wolves in Abuja, Nigerians know whom to trust with their lives. Besides, Nigerians do not really need an American warning to evacuate the country. The japa revolution is in full swing, a reluctant movement of sadness. Japa is a mass evacuation abroad of our best which exposes the criminal mismanagement of Nigeria and its promise. It exhibits the hopelessness of our country.

While the government is struggling to tell lies of safety in Abuja, innocent Nigerians are being attacked north to south. On the Lagos-Ibadan expressway (and almost inside Ibadan) on Friday, gunmen attacked travellers, killed some and abducted some others. One of the killed is a man who was reportedly shot in the presence of his wife and two children. The man got shot but escaped from the bandits. “He managed to continue driving…but was bleeding heavily. He started getting weak until he could no longer cope. He lost control and veered into the bush where the vehicle somersaulted,” a relation of the dead told the Nigerian Tribune on Saturday. Others had their share of Nigeria’s random death; their corpses were picked up here and there, at different times, in the bush as if that stretch of our space is a warfront. Indeed, we are at war on many fronts – from known and unknown bandits and from the government’s imbecility. For the dead, a simple journey between Lagos and Ibadan became a journey to eternity. For their families and friends, the trauma sticks forever. The abducted? One of them is a professor of professors, a clean man of value, Professor Adigun Agbaje. As I write this, all of us – beneficiaries of his large-hearted intellect – are looking unto God to deliver him from the snares of Nigeria.

Those who work with toothpicks and rocking chairs in Abuja, what have they to say to all this? They hate to hear the sobs of the bereaved and the cries of the abducted. Do we still have a country? Only those living in or eating the Villa will answer yes. We keep searching for a definition for Nigeria; what is its purpose? A country is not one if it keeps a government that protects neither its population nor its territory. It would appear that the disease gnawing at Nigeria’s gut is resistant to all known medicine. We’ve lost everything good, including the promise of the beginning. The United Kingdom-based Reuters News Agency published a very sober piece in October 1970 to mark the 10th independence anniversary of Nigeria. I pick a paragraph from what that news agency wrote: “Among the African states which gained independence after World War 2, none has had more problems than Nigeria in realising its potential. The potential is great, for this is a country destined to be rich and powerful not only by African but by world standards.” That was 52 years ago; what has happened to that destiny of greatness and the potential, the power and the richness? The Reuters statement remains valid as a verdict on Nigeria of today. If ‘potential’ is manifest anywhere, it is in the subversion of everything noble and ennobling.

Strictly Personal

Budgets, budgeting and budget financing, By Sheriffdeen A. Tella, Ph.D.

Published

2 days ago

November 20, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

The budget season is here again. It is an institutional and desirable annual ritual. Revenue collection and spending at the federal, State and local government levels must be authorised and guided by law. That is what budget is all about. A document containing the estimates of projected revenues from identified sources and the proposed expenditure for different sectors in the appropriate level of government. The last two weeks have seen the delivery of budget drafts to various Houses of Assembly and the promise that the federal government would present its draft budget to the National Assembly.

Do people still look forward to the budget presentation and the contents therein? I am not sure. Citizens have realised that these days, governments often spend money without reference to the approved budget. A governor can just wake up and direct that a police station be built in a location. With no allocation in the budget, the station will be completed in three months. The President can direct from his bathroom that 72 trailers of maize be distributed to the 36 states as palliatives. No budget provision, and no discussion by relevant committee or group.

We still operate with the military mentality. We operated too long under the military and of the five Presidents we have in this democracy, two of them were retired military Heads of State. Between them, they spent 16 years of 25 years of democratic governance. Hopefully, we are done with them physically but not mentally. Most present governors grew up largely under military regimes with the command system. That is why some see themselves as emperor and act accordingly. Their direct staff and commissioners are “Yes” men and women. There is need for disorientation.

The importance of budget in the art of governance cannot be overemphasized. It is one of the major functions of the legislature because without the consideration and authorisation of spending of funds by this arm of government, the executive has no power to start spending money. There is what we refer to as a budget cycle or stages. The budget drafting stage within the purview of the executive arm is the first stage and, followed by the authorisation stage where the legislature discusses, evaluates and tinkers with the draft for approval before presenting it to the President for his signature.

Thereafter, the budget enters the execution phase or cycle where programmes and projects are executed by the executive arm with the legislature carrying out oversight functions. Finally, we enter the auditing phase when the federal and State Auditors verify and report on the execution of the budgets. The report would normally be submitted to the Legislature. Many Auditor Generals have fallen victim at this stage for daring to query the executives on some aspects of the execution in their reports.

A new budget should contain the objectives and achievements of the preceding budget in the introduction as the foundation for the budget. More appropriately, a current budget derives its strength from a medium-term framework which also derives its strength from a national Development Plan or a State Plan. An approved National Plan does not exist currently, although the Plan launched by the Muhammadu Buhari administration is in the cooler. President Tinubu, who is acclaimed to be the architect of the Lagos State long-term Plan seems curiously, disillusioned with a national Plan.

Some States like Oyo and Kaduna, have long-term Plans that serve as the source of their annual budgets. Economists and policymakers see development plans as instruments of salvation for developing countries. Mike Obadan, the former Director General of the moribund Nigeria Centre for Economic and Management Administration, opined that a Plan in a developing country serves as an instrument to eradicate poverty, achieve high rates of economic growth and promote economic and social development.

The Nigerian development plans were on course until the adoption of the World Bank/IMF-inspired Structural Adjustment Programme in 1986 when the country and others that adopted the programme were forced to abandon such plan for short-term stabilisation policies in the name of a rolling plan. We have been rolling in the mud since that time. One is not surprised that the Tinubu administration is not looking at the Buhari Development Plan since the government is World Bank/IMF compliant. It was in the news last week that our President is an American asset and by extension, Nigeria’s policies must be defined by America which controls the Bretton Woods institutions.

A national Plan allows the citizens to monitor quantitatively, the projects and programmes being executed or to be executed by the government through the budgeting procedure. It is part of the definitive measures of transparency and accountability which most Nigerian governments do not cherish. So, you cannot pin your government down to anything.

Budgets these days hardly contain budget performance in terms of revenue, expenditure and other achievements like several schools, hospitals, small-scale enterprises, etc, that the government got involved in successfully and partially. These are the foundation for a new budget like items brought forward in accounting documents. The new budget should state the new reforms or transformations that would be taking place. Reforms like shifting from dominance of recurrent expenditure to capital expenditure; moving from the provision of basic needs programmes to industrialisation, and from reliance on foreign loans to dependence on domestic fund mobilisation for executing the budget.

That brings us to the issue of budget deficit and borrowing. When an economy is in recession, expansionary fiscal policy is recommended. That is, the government will need to spend more than it receives to pump prime the economy. If this is taken, Nigeria has always had a deficit budget, implying that we are always in economic recession. The fact is that even when we had a surplus in our balance of payment that made it possible to pay off our debts, we still had a deficit budget. We are so used to borrowing at the national level that stopping it will look like the collapse of the Nigerian state. The States have also followed the trend. Ordinarily, since States are largely dependent on the federal government for funds, they should promote balanced budget.

The States are like a schoolboy who depends on his parents for school fees and feeding allowance but goes about borrowing from classmates. Definitely, it is the parents that will surely pay the debt. The debt forgiveness mentality plays a major role in the process. Having enjoyed debt forgiveness in the past, the federal government is always in the credit market and does not caution the State governments in participating in the market. Our Presidents don’t feel ashamed when they are begging for debt forgiveness in international forum where issues on global development are being discussed. Not less than twice I have watched the countenance of some Presidents, even from Africa, while they looked at our president with disdain when issues of debt forgiveness for African countries was raised.

In most cases, the government, both at the federal and state cannot show the product of loans, except those lent by institutions like the World Bank or African Development Bank for specific projects which are monitored by the lending institutions. In other cases, the loans are stolen and transferred abroad while we are paying the loans. In some other cases, the loans are diverted to projects other than what the proposal stated. There was a case of loans obtained based on establishing an international car park in the border of the State but diverted to finance the election of a politician in the State. The politician eventually lost the election but the citizens of the State have to be taxed to pay the loan. Somebody as “Nigeria we hail thee”.

Transformation in budgeting should commence subsequently at the State and federal level. Now that local government will enjoy some financial autonomy and therefore budgeting process, they should be legally barred from contracting foreign loans. They have no business participating in the market. They should promote balanced budget where proposed expenditures must equal the expected revenues from federal and internal sources. The State government that cannot mobilise, from records, up to 40 percent of its total budget from IGR should not be supported to contract foreign loans. The States should engage in a balanced budget. The federal government budget should shift away from huge allocations to recurrent expenditure towards capital expenditure for capital formation and within the context of a welfarist state.

Sheriffdeen A. Tella, Ph.D.

Strictly Personal

African Union must ensure Sudan civilians are protected, By Joyce Banda

Published

4 weeks ago

October 25, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

The 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.