TIME TO MOVE ON

It is good to see that the PDP have licked their wounds and are now strategizing. They are silent, very silent as we witness the preparation work that the new government is beginning to put in place, to get us to the destination that we Nigerians all desire. It is very worrying though that all hope is pinned on just one man, President Buhari. It is clear that we have no faith in the national assembly and to buttress my point, the allowances that they have just approved for themselves, show how insensitive they are to the plight of the average civil servant, some of whom have not been paid their paltry salaries in the last 7 months. Our leaders all believe that they are oligarchs and once they get to the mantle of leadership are there to clean up. It is their turn now. Unless there is a change is this psyche, then we are doomed.

The infighting in APC over the leadership is like a merger or takeover on Wall Street, where companies with very different market philosophies and approaches to profitability come together to become the newest giant. It might initially be greeted with pessimism, grudges and even anger by staff and stakeholders, but in the end if they are to survive, they must meet themselves halfway to move the company forward. The question we need to ask is if this takeover has been occasioned to asset strip or whether a true partnership has been formed to take the company to the next level.

Do you remember Standard Trust bank? It introduced instant cash transfer into the Nigerian financial market. It was a highly innovative bank patronized by the upwardly mobile. When a larger but less innovative UBA opened talks for a possible merger, it was because UBA was interested in Standard Trust’s innovation and energy, while the latter could do with UBA’s reach. Today, UBA is one of the biggest banks in Nigeria.  The APC is pretty much formed on a similar principle.

They should remember why they decided to come together. They should remember how they all made sacrifices, so that united they would all be able to overcome a common enemy. In fact, if Bola Tinubu, Atiku Abubakar, Bukola Saraki, Aminu Tambuwal, Rotimi Amaechi and the rest want to be honest, they did not feel at the beginning that they would be able to defeat the Goodluck Jonathan-led government in 2015. The G-7 governors who began the PDP rebellion reduced to G-5 because Babangida Aliyu and Sule Lamido of Niger and Jigawa states respectively doubted the cause. The party should remember that it rode on the goodwill of the people to power. Its political officeholders should also not forget that the Nigerian electorate is more politically aware now than ever before. If they don’t show maturity and sort out their differences, they will be perceived as the same old PDP and we will sweep them out.

Division is a disaster, it is a home wrecker, all you do is assist you enemies or your detractors with your own misguided energy. Basically, you are helping them to destroy you. There is a job of work to do and the earlier the APC rolls up its sleeves and gets to work in unison, the better its future chances of winning our hearts.  Boko Haram needs serious attention, the stinking petroleum sector needs to be flushed and scrubbed clean. The power sector, transportation both needs serious attention!  The incompetence of the last six years simply means that this government has more to do in less time, so we need to get cracking.

We should remember that a partnership is about give and take. Ideas and personalities will always clash. Relations will not always be rosy. There are flaws in character and there are checks and controls that must be put in place to ensure discipline and strict adherence to the ideology of the entity. It is very important that the APC remember always why ACN, CPC, APGA and the New PDP members decided to come together in the first place. Remember!

As for President Muhammadu Buhari, he is just an individual but he is part and parcel of this party. He cannot remain detached and must put energy into molding it into the image that we all have of his character. The responsibility of the success or failure of this government lies squarely on his shoulders and the foot soldiers that he engages with him to steer us to the Promised Land will have everything to do with his tenures success. Any discipline he needs to mete out should be based an empowered judiciary, such that interpretation and breaches of the law are justly and expeditiously dealt with. We are holding our breath.

The National Assembly Show…

“I am for everybody and for nobody” – President Muhammadu Buhari, in his inauguration speech on May 29, 2015.

There is a Yoruba proverb which roughly translates thus: The younger wife, who rejoices at the assault on the older wife by their husband, fails to understand the transiency of her position. Four years ago, when Aminu Tambuwal rebelled against his ruling party’s high-handedness and authoritarian tendencies to emerge the “democratically” elected speaker of the House of Representatives, it was hailed by the then opposition as a victory for democracy. In fact, it was the opposition which helped him smoothen the rebellious operation.

Now, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Party (APC) have switched role; the latter now the ruling party, when another Tambuwal/ Saraki rebellion was re-enacted earlier this week, guess who was crying foul…the new ruling party!     

The word ‘nascent’ is overused in our polity, this underscores the fact that we are building a democracy, and in a democracy, what has just played out at the National Assembly is a step in the right direction. Although many might argue that a politician’s first commitment is to the people, and their first loyalty to their party, the polity should at all times be ready and willing to challenge dogmatic status quos without violating the law. 

In Company Law, there is something called "lifting the corporate veil". This is the investigative means exposing those who run or own a company, so that in the event that there is a challenge, shareholders or affected parties are not disenfranchised and can seek justice. People who follow politics closely may be aware of what happened last Tuesday, but for the layman, I think it is important to break it down.

The APC is made up of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), Congress for Political Change (CPC), a faction of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) and NPDP, a break-off faction of the Peoples Democratic Party. President Buhari, riding on the sheer political goodwill of the masses, had over 12 million votes during the 2011 presidential election. He constituted huge political currency because he was regarded as an outstanding, truly patriotic fellow.

     

The ACN, under the command of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, saw an opportunity. The cracks on the PDP walls were getting wider and wider, so much so that they became a den for various species of worm. At the party’s congress in Abuja in 2014, the walls finally gave way when the New PDP (or NPDP), led by Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, held a parallel congress at the Shehu Musa Yar’Adua Centre. Having divided the once powerful Governors’ Forum.

It was this rainbow coalition that constituted the APC that worked to defeat former president Goodluck Jonathan and his warped PDP.    

Tinubu’s antecedence is not a secret. His quest for power has seriously stalled the aspirations of many on a merit basis as he has demanded loyalty to the Jagaban. The man has power and wealth, and, until Tuesday, an uncanny kind of cult loyalty. Tuesday’s event was a break from godfatherism but highlights to all of us what strange bedfellows the APC are. There are clearly various blocks with their individual aspirations. The President's very delicate job is to now ensure that what their unity has brought to pass will not now fall apart in sharing the spoils.

As it is, the leaderships of the National Assembly, Governors’ Forum, Presidency and even some states in his South West power base, are longer under the control of the ACN block. Groomed by the politically savvy late “Oloye”, his father, Bukola Saraki has succeeded in outfoxing the Jagaban himself. He has demonstrated that it is not business as usual and the party cannot just present a consensus or consensus candidates. I will not address any moral issues that may arise in this discussion. What is clear however is that democracy has won. Bukola Saraki clearly won the election and it seems to me that even if the missing APC senators were in that chamber, Saraki would still have won. After all, the party preferred candidates in the House of Representatives also lost.

It is great to have an independent legislature, which will not just do the bidding of the executive or the party. What is clear, from the perspective of a citizen, is that these guys are all co-conspirators.

The straw poll that the APC pretended to have and the fact that they called a meeting on the morning of the inauguration is very suspect of foul play. The comments of the president are very mature but he needs to understand that this is politics and he must call his “troops” to order if he is going to deliver on the promises he has made to us. I do not envy him.

OIL AND POWER

Immediate-past President Goodluck Jonathan said during the valedictory Federal Executive Council session, last Wednesday that the record protests and strikes witnessed during his tenure as president was politically motivated! This clearly shows that the man truly did not understand the pain and frustrations that his administration was visiting on us.  Quite honestly, the past six years’ experience is what no Nigerian should ever have to experience again. His comments about not being singled out for probe as it would amount to a witch-hunt, is in itself, well, self-indicting!

      

Let us not dwell on corruption itself, as enough has been said about this ill already. What we have to do now is to start putting those checks and balances in place. We should start with our current petrol crisis. The scarcity which all but shut down the entire nation last week has shown that the petroleum industry is by far the most critical factor that is stifling our development. In 2011, Jonathan promised the overhaul of the industry. He promised us massive infrastructural development and availability of petroleum products; all we had to do was agree to his plan to remove subsidy and the development of our gas resources to boost our energy needs would be a priority. Erratic power supply would thereby become a thing of the past. SURE-P became a policy mantra upon which they sold us lies. Four years after the removal of subsidy (and even when oil prices crashed on the international market) we are still paying billions of naira to petrol importers who, wielding their powers and influence, are able to bring us to our knees in a matter of days. Yet, Jonathan’s thunderous silence offers us no answers. “We are on our own!”

  

We have never experienced a situation whereby there was a vacuum in governance simply because the incumbent’s tenure was winding down. Jonathan was simply not interested in being president until the expiration of his term on the morning of May 29. He had been on hibernation and plunged the nation into further degeneration either as a punishment for not returning him or as the height of the incompetence and impunity that marked his six-year reign. It is almost as if all the ills that have been perpetrated, all the issues that have been neglected, all the corners that have been cut, are eventually now coming to the fore and there are too many holes to stop the many leaks. What happened under Jonathan’s watch should be treated as a warning to the incoming government as to how vulnerable we are as a nation. Until we take what belongs to us from a few powerful overlords.

For fear of sounding like a broken record, I will repeat again what the subsidy means to me. Importing finished petroleum product is akin to having a natural mango orchard and what we do is only harvest the fruit. Without adding any value, we export the natural God-given bounty where foreigners process it. They squeeze and package it and import it back here to Nigeria as a finished product. Packaged mango juice! This process is what is now supposedly too expensive for we the nationals to consume, so the government pays the importer a further fee, so that we can afford it! This has to be more than ridiculous! We give all the refining capacity to foreign states creating employment and profit for them, whilst we deal with pipeline vandalism, armed militancy, a lack of education and development and erratic supply here. We also create the oligarchs who strangle the lifeblood of the nation.

Our lives revolve around petroleum. Provision of water, electricity and other social services simply diminish drastically due to the unavailability of oil. The importation of generators is licensed to a monopoly. And, evidently, it is the same cabal who has made sure that despite spending $35b on improving our power generation has ensured that we are down to less than 2500mw in the whole country. At the peak of the shortage last week, Kano got 2mw of electricity from the national grid. This is less than what powers one celebrity’s house in Beverly Hills! What is the knock-on effect? Everything shuts down, we suffer then people like Mr. Uba of the Capital Oil fame can become our local champion and decide to have pity on us as we scramble to buy what charity he magnanimously decides to allow us?

Our vulnerability as a nation is rooted in the impunity going on in this sector. We cannot create jobs, alleviate poverty, generate electricity or boost the economy without attending to the challenges at the NNPC Towers. Creating an enabling environment for the welfare and security of Nigerians depends strongly on committing to genuinely reforming the energy sector.

 Welcome President Buhari, we await these sweeping changes and pray for God’s guidance.