Strictly Personal

Before Nigeria’s 18 March elections, By Reuben Abati

Published

2 years ago

March 15, 2023

After the 25 February presidential and National Assembly elections, now heavily disputed, Nigeria goes to the polls again on 18 March to elect governors and members of state legislatures in 28 out of 36 states of the Federation. There would be no state elections in Kogi, Anambra, Ondo, Imo, Edo, Osun, Bayelsa and Ekiti which are in the off-cycle election belt. However, this weekend’s elections were meant to hold last Saturday, March 11, but the polls had to be rescheduled on account of the disputes that arose from the 25 February Presidential election and the orders given by the Court of Appeal acting as the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal. Three political parties – the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the Labour Party (LP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC), acting in self-defence in its case, had gone to court to seek permission to be allowed to inspect the materials used for the election by the Independent National Election Commission (INEC) which announced the Presidential candidate of the All Progressives’ Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu as winner of the election with 8. 974, 726 million of total votes cast. The Presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubaar, and Mr. Peter Obi of the Labour Party had challenged the results as declared by INEC. The court ruled in their favour on Friday, 3 March. By Tuesday, March 7, the ruling APC and its candidate, now president-elect, also sought the leave of court to have access to the election materials. INEC also approached the court requesting that it should vary the order it gave earlier permitting PDP, LP, to inspect election materials, by granting it leave to reconfigure the Bi-Modal Verification Accreditation System (BVAS) ahead of the Gubernatorial and State legislature elections scheduled for 11 March.

Counsel to INEC had told the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal that their client would need a minimum of five days to reconfigure the BVAS. As it turned out, the two other matters were determined on Wednesday, 8 March. The court granted INEC’s request to reconfigure the BVAS, but it did not rule that this should have any effect on the March 11 date. The Court granted APC its prayers. But in yet another matter, it refused to grant the Labour Party its request to inspect the INEC data base, and oversee the reconfiguration of the BVAS. On its own, after a review of the Court’s ruling, INEC announced that “it was far too late” for the reconfiguration of BVAS to be concluded within two days in over 170, 000 polling units nationwide. Consequently, the Commission rescheduled the Gubernatorial and state Assembly elections till March 18. INEC promised that it would obey the orders of court: grant the petitioners access to inspect election materials, and also upload data to its back-end server and make Certified True Copies of same available to all parties in the matter.

It is now election week again, as Nigerians are expected to troop out this Saturday to participate in state elections. They would be doing so against the background of the drama generated by the elections of 25 February. As various international observers have pointed out: Chatham House, Ambassador Mark Green, Ambassador Johnnie Carson, the US Observer Mission, Financial Times, Bloomberg, New York Times, South Africa’s Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), Reuters, YIAGA Africa, The Guardian UK, BBC, Chinese News Agency, Washington Post, Nigeria Civil Society Situation Room, the African Union Election Observation Mission to Nigeria, ECOWAS, EU, UN, and the West African Elders Forum (WAEF) among others, the emergent consensus was that whereas the people of Nigeria showed much zeal and determination towards the polls, the entire exercise fell short of the people’s expectations. In other words, INEC disappointed the people. I have already offered a catalogue of the sheer incompetence and poor performance put up by INEC in an earlier commentary (see “Nigeria: 25 February and the Aftermath,” Tuesday, 7 March). Things have gone so bad that in fact the People’s Democratic Party led by its Presidential candidate and other party leaders had to stage a protest from the party’s headquarters to the Headquarters of INEC, on Monday, 6 March. They asked for a cancellation of the election, and submitted a protest letter. A week later, the Labour Party in a statement issued by its Chief Spokesperson, Dr Yunusa Tanko, is also threatening to call out its supporters on a peaceful protest to challenge INEC’s refusal to obey the order of Court to allow the party to inspect election materials. Tanko insists that the court order was duly served on INEC and a reminder was also sent to it. But whereas INEC is busy reconfiguring the BVAS, it has ignored other court orders. It has failed to keep its promise. Other political parties are aggrieved. It must be noted that on three previous occasions since 1999 that elections were postponed, Nigeria usually cited either security or logistics reasons: 2011, 2015, 2019, but in 2023, INEC’s excuse is that it has to reconfigure its equipment!

The biggest calamity in Nigeria’s democratic process this time around is the embarrassing conduct of the electoral umpire. The people have lost trust in INEC. The institution suffers a credibility crisis. The worst thing that can happen to any public institution is to end up in the eyes of the same people it is established to serve as a fibbing, clumsy, unreliable institution. Between 25 February and now, INEC has broken virtually all the promises it made to the people of Nigeria, including the ones its Chairman rolled out for effect on the floor of Chatham House in London! INEC’s much-trumpeted confidence in the deployment of technology as enabled by the law and its own guidelines has been shown to be nothing more than an exercise in hypocrisy. On 25 February, results from polling units were transmitted to the INEC portal called iREV, but not Presidential election results from the same polling units. More than a week after the elections, INEC could not fully load results unto its portals. Many voters could not get their Permanent Voter’s Cards, the same cards that have been sighted in bushes, forests, in the hands of foreigners and shadowy apartments across the country. INEC could not distribute its own PVCs! The Court of Justice Obiora Egwuatu has now ruled, 9 March, in favour of two persons: Kofoworola Olusegun and Wilson Allwell that they should be allowed to vote with their Temporary Voter’s Cards (TVCs), but although the ruling is in personam, the matter having not been filed in a representative capacity, INEC says it will appeal the Federal High Court ruling. Since the return to democratic rule in 1999, no other electoral process has been this confusing and uncertain.

Those who are familiar with the subject argue that the postponement of the state elections alone comes with “staggering economic loss.” It could also harm voter enthusiasm and voter turn-out rates. The perception that the elections could be rigged at will is a major issue. Galaxy Backbone, Nigeria’s ICT services provider owned by the Federal Government, has confirmed that it had to fend off over 200 cyberattacks during the Presidential and National Assembly elections. Perception is important in any electoral process. Even IT experts believe that INEC is lying when it says it wants to reconfigure BVAS – the same INEC that cannot figure out whatever “technical glitches” that sabotaged its operations more than two weeks after the fact.

Every aggrieved party has been advised to go to the courts, and seek redress through legal and constitutional means. President Muhammadu Buhari has also expressly declared that there is no plan to annul the Presidential election – that is impossible, we are in a democracy – not under military rule. What anyone can hold on to is the general admonition that INEC should by now have carried out a thorough review of the elections of 25 February, to understand what worked, what did not, what went amiss, and to learn the relevant lessons and ensure that these are used to deliver a much better process on 18 March. But do we ever learn in Nigeria – a country where amnesia is a national malady and rascality seems at once genetic and contagious? INEC is expected to rebuild the people’s confidence. It is in the best interest of everyone that INEC succeeds on Saturday, 18 March. The errors of 25 February have pushed the people to a corner where they are poised for war in various parts of the country. The people are determined more than before to defend their votes. Gubernatorial and state legislature elections are mainly local elections, and understandably, they are invested with a higher dosage of emotionalism. The tension in the country is at an all-time high. The thugs who snatched ballot boxes two weeks ago may find that it won’t be easy to do so this week. The battle will be tough and fierce in some of the states: Edo, Delta, Enugu, Abia, Rivers, Kaduna, Kogi, Oyo, and especially Lagos.

As was the case in the 25 February elections, ethnicity, religion, power and territory would be big issues. Against all odds, after the vote count in that process, Labour Party which was accused of not having a party structure ended up with more than 25% of the votes in 12 states including the Federal Capital Territory, with six winners in the Senate, and 34 in the House of Representatives, coming third in the Presidential Election, which the party says was rigged against it. The Labour Party would seek to consolidate on its 25 February election victories this week. Delta, Enugu, Abia, Rivers, Kaduna, Benue would be major battle grounds for the party. And Lagos in particular, where the Labour Party won majority votes and would want to repeat the feat. The President-elect was Governor of Lagos for two terms. He is the Godfather of the ruling APC in Lagos. To beat him and his party’s incumbent Governor in Lagos is not impossible as the Labour Party has shown, but to do so twice will be quite a feat. And that is why there has been so much desperation in the campaigns in Lagos in the lead up to 18 March. The APC has played the ethnic card against the candidate of the Labour Party in a most vicious manner. His offence is that his mother is Igbo. He is also married to an Igbo woman. His grandmother is also said to be Igbo. And he bears Patrick. He bears Chinedu. He speaks Igbo. The ethnic irridentists of Lagos politics have been swearing that Lagos belongs to the Yoruba, it is not a no-man’s-land, and anyone with a small drop of Igbo blood would not be allowed to become Governor. They forget that the Rhodes-Vivour family has been a Yoruba family in Lagos for more than five generations. And those who voted for the Labour Party in Lagos State on 25 February were not necessarily Igbos. They cut across all ethnic groups, and they were probably mostly Yorubas. Those who are targeting Igbos must desist from doing so. They must remember Rwanda, where the politics of ethic hate resulted in a massive blow-out. If they don’t know where Rwanda is, let them remember how ethnic politics catalyzed Nigeria’s civil war.

And for the benefit of those who think Igbo votes would be frustrated by burning markets dominated by Igbos in Lagos, I draw their attention to the Lagos Area Council election of 1950. As reported in the Daily Times of Wednesday, 18 October, 1950 to wit: “ELECTION RESULTS: Demo-Labour Alliance Wins: 18 Seats Against Area Council’s 6”. The Demo-Labour Market Alliance won 18 out of the 24 seats in the new Lagos Town Council. Out of these, there were non-Yoruba winners: Nduka Eze in Ward C, Mbonu Ojike in Ward D, Anyiam F. and Gogo, C.N in Ward F. Before then, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, an Igbo man represented Lagos between 1947 and 1951 in the Legislative Council of Nigeria. It was in this same area called Lagos that Emmanuel Ebubedike from Ozubulu in present-day Anambra State won election in the First Republic to represent Ajeromi-Badagry-Ifelodun in the Western Region House of Assembly. Each time I cite this example, I am reminded that it was Ebubedike who first snatched the Mace in the Western House on May 22, 1962 and turned it into a weapon of assault. He didn’t grab the mace because he was Igbo. Everyone had literally lost their head in the Western Region on that occasion.

In more recent times, a certain Oghene Emma Egho represented Amuwo-Odofin Federal Constituency in the House of Representatives on the platform of the PDP in 2015. The truth is that Lagos is a cosmopolitan melting pot of cultures, tropes and influences and its diversity and accommodative, liberal temper is part of the city’s mystique and essence. It has been reported that some acclaimed Lagos “omo oniles” – the self-styled land-owning families of Lagos are beginning to revoke lease agreements to remind non-Lagosians that Lagos belongs to its indigenous people! It has also been reported that some traditional rulers in Ibeju-Lekki are withdrawing traditional titles that they had conferred on some Igbos in their quarters. All of this just because a Yoruba son whose mother happens to be Igbo wants to be Governor? Absolutely ridiculous. There are no illegitimate children in Africa! It is a good thing that Governor Babajide Sanwoolu, the incumbent Lagos Governor has publicly decried ethnic politics. Other stakeholders in Lagos politics should do the same. The President-elect, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, should step forward also to let everyone know that the people of Lagos, both indigenes and non-indigenes have the right to vote for the leaders of their choice.

The security agencies have their work cut out for them. They were conspicuously ineffectual on 25 February. The police have been given money and equipment and the necessary support they asked for from President Muhammadu Buhari. The stakes may have been high on 25 February. They would be higher on 18 March. It goes without saying that the international community is watching. Nigeria’s success is critical for the stability of neighbouring countries and the larger project of democracy, good governance and accountability in African states. INEC and other agencies involved in #NigeriaDecides2023 should not turn Nigeria into the laughing stock of Africa.

Reuben Abati, a former presidential spokesperson, writes from Lagos.

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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.