18042021 - Ex-Gov Aliyu Lied, not all northern govs worked against Jonathan in 2015

PAGE 14—SUNDAY VANGUARD, APRIL 18, 2021
Nigeria’s Economy: What is
the truth?
The immediate
implication of a
chasm which public
information management
in Nigeria has successfully
created between the
government and the people
is that the country now has
two major debating groups.
The first group is made up
of those who adversely
criticize whatever President
Muhammadu Buhari does
or fails to do, while the
second group consists of
those who see no wrong
whatsoever in the activities
of Buhari’s government.
The two groups have
something in common
which is that most
Nigerians do not
understand either of them.
Perhaps because both
groups are unaware of this
situation, they have
continued to seize every
opportunity to eloquently
disagree with one another
on every subject so as to
convince us that they have
good points either way. So,
when Edo state governor
Godwin Obaseki last week
painted a frightening
picture but which looks like
a true story of the
precarious Nigerian
economy, the resultant huge
war of words between the
pro and anti-Buhari
crusaders especially the
non-state actors could not
have surprised any analyst
who has followed street
debates in the country.
As if to sensitize people on
the state of the nation’s
economy, Obaseki had
raised an alarm that our
finances have gone so low
that last month,government
had to print more money
for states to share to meet
their obligations. This was
unacceptable to some
people who decided to react
to the allegation. First, was
an unsigned statement that
government was unaware of
any printing of money as
alleged. One comedian
immediately tweeted that
“the man didn’t say you
were aware, he said you
printed.”The second
reaction described the
governor’s alarm as a lie
while the third educated us
on the correct terminology
for what happened -
lending, not printing.
Painfully, what should be of
concern to us has been
buried by the controversy.
The fact that what was
shared was a form of loan
seems to establish that
there was not enough to
share. Whether the extra
that was borrowed was
printed or conjured by a
magician cannot
controvert the fact that
Nigeria is hugely broke. If
such truth must be told to
put our status in correct
perspective, then Obaseki’s
alarm can hardly be wished
away especially if his entire
statement and not just
theexcerpt on printing is
read in full.
Indeed, there are vital
parts of the statement that
have been ignored. For the
benefit of those who may
not have read Obaseki’s
statement, here is a crucial
aspect that ought not to be
d o w n p l a y e d o r
discountenanced.
According to the governor,
“everywhere else,
governments rely on the
people to produce taxes and
that is what they use to run
the local government, state
and the federation. But with
the way we run Nigeria, the
country can go to sleep. At
the end of the month, we just
go to Abuja, collect money
and we come back to spend.
We are in trouble, huge
financial trouble. The
current price of crude oil is
only a mirage. The major oil
companies who are the ones
producing are no longer
investing much in oil. Shell
is pulling out of Nigeria and
Chevron is now one of the
world’s largest investors in
alternative fuel, so in
another year or so, where
will we find this money that
we go to share in Abuja?”
This quotation is no doubt a
veritable wake-up call for us
all to rise to the occasion and
change our spending habit.
This is more so when the
governor also clearly stated
that it would be unfair for
Nigerians to expect one
man – Buhari, to be left
alone to face the enormous
problems. In other words,
the governor’s statement
created no room for claims
and counter claims
amongst politicians or
What displeases
Nigerians is not the
disclosure of the true
state of their nation’s
economy but the
transparent inequity
where at this critical
stage, some people still
enjoy wardrobe,
newspaper or other
forms of annoying
comfort while others
are dying
supporters.
It is also important to
make the point that this is
not the first time some of us
are getting confused about
the internal sources of
Nigeria’s colossal loans.
Last month, Mele Kyari,
Group Managing Director
of the Nigerian National
Petroleum Corporation
(NNPC) announced that his
corporation could no longer
bear the huge subsidy
payments of over N120
billion monthly subsidy for
Premium Motor Spirit
(PMS). The NNPC
according to Kyari has been
absorbing the cost
differential between the
actual and selling cost of the
product by recording it in its
financial books. Not many
understood the statement.
From which of its books does
NNPC get such huge sums
every month? If NNPC had
been paying all its funds into
the Federation Account as
legally expected what
magic does the Corporation
employ to accommodate
massive subsidy payments;
is it by merely writing the
amounts in its books?
Indeed, during the peak of
the Covid 19 pandemic,
there were certain expenses
which Nigeria was too broke
to accommodate and which
both the NNPC and the
Central Bank of Nigeria
(CBN), graciously accepted
to co-settle. Do these two
bodies have their own supply
of funds? Answers to a
question such as this may
illuminate the state of
Nigeria’s finances
Is Nigeria really in
financial trouble, if so, to
what extent? The latest
answer to this question was
given a few days ago by
Finance Minister Zainab
Ahmed who said “the
nation’s debt profile was still
within sustainable limit.”
The statement was quite
comforting on its face value
but the situation on ground
appears to counter it
because if we still have
capacity to borrow more,
why not go ahead and
resolve the numerous issues
waiting to be settled? From
basic economics we can
imagine that our current
inflation rate reflects a
decline in the purchasing
power of our naira which is
itself not available to many.
Only last week, the National
Bureau of Statistics
released her consumer price
index (CPI) for March 2021.
In
the report,inflation was
said to have risen to 18
percent in March
representing 0.82 percent
when compared to 17
percent recorded in
February. Similarly, food
inflation rose by 5.0 percent
to 23 percent in March from
22 percent in February. The
report is worth worrying
about especially as the
scarce funds available are
swallowed by personnel
costs across the nation. How
do we develop?
The body language of the
CBN governor, Godwin
Emefiele at the press
conference where he was
requested to react to
Obaseki’s comment,
showed he was visibly upset
that his sacrifices do not
appear appreciated. Of
course no responsible CBN
can watch her nation in
trouble without intervening.
Again, no one doubts that
our CBN has never been this
stressed in history. Governor
Emefiele must take solace in
the fact that he has been able
to withstand the vagaries of
the economic weather of
Nigeria in the last couple of
troublesome years. To say
that Nigeria is super broke
is not an indictment but
telling the truth about our
situation for general
enlightenment. One of the
advantages of educating
people on the true status of
our economy is that it can
have an effect on the
increasing demands by
different striking Nigerian
workers on all kinds of
expectations. What
displeases Nigerians is not
the disclosure of the true
state of their nation’s
economy but the
transparent inequity where
at this critical stage, some
people still enjoy wardrobe,
newspaper or other forms
of annoying comfort while
others are dying.
PhD,Department of
Philosophy,
Universityof Lagos
08116759758
opuruiche2000@gmail.com
On the alleged non-negotiability and
sacrosanctity of One Nigeria (4)
As I disclosed in our
discussion last Sunday,
Nigeria’s military
government and leaders of the
eastern region failed to make
inconvenient but necessary
concessions which probably
would have defused tensions
and prevented further
escalation. Unfortunately that
did not happen, and the
devastating avoidable civil
war was the end result of that
egregious failure.
Notwithstanding odious
attempts in certain quarters
to equalise blame for the
conflict or contrive a moral
equivalence between
Gowon’s chameleonic
attitude to the Aburi Accord
and Ojukwu’s single-minded
determination for its
undiluted implementation,
the heavier burden of
responsibility must be placed
at the feet of Gowon, his
hawkish advisers, and British
diplomats who always put
Britain’s strategic economic
interests above everything in
relating with Nigeria because
working in concert they
sabotaged the accord. No fairminded
person can fault the
insistence by Lt. Col.
Ojukwuthat “On Aburi we
stand.” In my opinion,
Gowon’s finagling and failure
to implement that agreement
is one of the greatest blunders
committed by a Nigerian
leader since the country was
created by British imperialists
in 1914.
Gong back a little bit into
history, it can be plausibly
argued that the fundamental
error by leading pioneer
southern politicians was their
misjudgement of the real
intentions of northern leaders
which prevented them from
considering seriously from the
very beginning when the
struggle for independence
gained traction the need for a
referendum across the regions
to determine whether Nigeria
should remain a single
country, reconfigured into a
confederation like Great
Britain or be divided into at
least four independent
nations. That costly oversight
was one of the reasons why
they missed the golden
opportunity of northern
procrastinations or
prevarications about self-rule
to compel Britain to partition
the country in a manner
similar to what happened in
India. Both Gowon and
Ojukwu believed in One
Nigeria but disagreed
seriously on the foundational
principles upon which the
country should be built. At the
Aburisummit Ojukwu had a
clear idea of how Nigeria
could be preserved as a single
political entity which he
formulated with following
propositions: “It better that we
move slightly apart and
survive. It is much worse that
we move closer and perish in
the collision.” On the other
handGowon was bereft of
clear ideas about how that
could be achieved, which
made him vulnerable to
Instead of endless
hair-splitting
arguments about
restructuring or
true federalism
focus should shift
to confederation
manipulation by northern
power mongers. Finally, it is
a serious mistake to think that
a stable nation can be built
on a foundation containing,
among other centrifugal
forces, nomadic migrant
muslim Fulani whose ruling
class believe that they are
ordained by Allah to rule,
together with the largely
republican acephalous Igbo
who are predominantly
christian and the Yoruba with
their unique blend of liberal
world outlook and monarchy.
The parliamentary system
inherited from Britain at
independence was fairly
successful in that the regions
enjoyed a considerable
degree of autonomy. But for
the fixation with One Nigeria
created by Britain,
regionalism should have
evolved or dovetailed into
confederation, the only single
political arrangement that
could beneficially sustain
Nigeria as a single political
entity while allowing the
confederating units to develop
to their full potentials
untrammelled. Now, as the
years inevitably roll by the
expressions “restructuring”
and “true federalism”
bandied about all over the
place by notorious wily
politicians and others have
become so misused and
distorted to the extent that
what they denote concretely
cannot be delineated
precisely. Consequently
instead of endless hairsplitting
arguments about
restructuring or true
federalism focus should shift
to confederation along the
lines of Great Britain since a
confederal arrangement,
aside from its obvious
advantages in a multiply
plural setting like Nigeria, is
more clearly definable and,
therefore, more actualisable.
At this point, some questions
should now be asked: must
there be a country called
Nigeria as created by Lugard
more than a century ago? Is it
really true that Nigeria’s unity
is non-negotiable and
sacrosanct? All things
considered, is Nigeria worth
preserving? Looked at
objectively, there is no good
reason why Nigeria should
continue to exist especially in
its present form. Knowing full
well the importance of
symbols in the political life of
human beings, it is
disappointing that since
independence Nigerian
leaders had not radically
modified the geopolitical
entity they inherited from
Britain in order to signal to
the world that they can chart
a new course positively
different from the one
bequeathed by the colonial
master. For instance retention
of the name ‘Nigeria’ shows
lack of historical imagination
and insight. In Africa names
matter a lot, which was why
leaders of former Gold Coast,
Northern Rhodesia, Southern
Rhodesia, Upper Volta and so
on changed the names they
inherited from European
colonisers to designations that
reflected their Africanness.
Additionally failure to think
beyond what British
colonialists envisaged for
Nigeria prevented leading
southern politicians from
realising the extreme
difficulty of creating a
cohesive and harmonious
nation with muslim
northerners whose dominant
worldview and values are so
different from what obtains in
the south as to leave very little
in common on which such a
nation can be founded. I have
made this point earlier, but it
bears repeating since the
ruling power blocks in
Nigeria and their lackeys are
still pretending that the
country is a united and
indivisible geopolitical
community. As long as
members of the northern
ruling elite who are
predominantly Fulani
muslims operating with the
hideous agenda of
Fulanisation and
Islamisation of the entire
country retain their
stranglehold on power
Nigeria will continue to lurch
from one ethno-religious and
political crisis to another. In
this connection the major
positive thing about Buhari’s
failing presidency is that his
unprecedented negative
triumphalist nepotism has
really opened peoples’ eyes by
exposing the colonialist
project of the Fulani militarycivilian
establishment. For
this group, southern Nigeria
must be subdued to pave way
for the establishment of
Nigeria as the homeland for
the Fulani in West Africa and
the Sahel, as explained by
Bala Mohammed, governor
of Bauchi State recently. The
differential policies on border
closure for the north and the
south; the bizarre visa-free
programme which has
allowed Fulani from other
countries to pour into Nigeria;
the absurd covert
encouragement of muslim
terrorists and bandits from the
north by the federal
government;taqiyyahimpregnated
handling of the
demand for restructuring by
the ruling party (APC); and
Buhari’s obdurate refusal to
address wisely agitations in
the south for selfdetermination
through
referendum – all this indicate
that the Fulani colonisation
programme of Alhaji
Ahmadu Bello has gained
momentum since Buhari
became president in 2015.
Extremely selfish and myopic
politicians, traditional rulers,
prominent businessmen and
professionals from the south
are either unaware of the
serious existential dangers
posed by Fulani colonialist
agenda unfolding before
their very eyes or are actively
helping Buhari and his foot
soldiers to entrench muslim
Fulani domination
nationwide. Sadly the Fulani
have no solid history of
creating an egalitarian
political system that could
beneficially serve as solid
foundation for its hegemonist
agenda in Nigeria. And
despite dominating political
leadership at the centre for
decades using decrees
andunitarist constitutions that
vested enormous powers and
resources on the federal
government, there is no
evidence that Fulani leaders
in general are astute
managers of human and
natural resources. It is tragic
that whenever a northern
Fulani muslim and a
southerner are available for
the highest political office, the
northerner with inferior
educational and intellectual
credentials
victorious.
Continues on
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Concluded
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