The 2023 Election Season will be a long one

 I am both surprised and also not surprised that I haven't posted here in more than 3 years. A recurring theme on this blog has been my acknowledgement that what I write here doesn't change anything in the real world, so there isn't really a concrete "reason" to keep writing.

That said, we Nigerians find ourselves, as we've often done since the 1950s, facing a federal election in which the three leading candidates hail from the three legs of the so-called tripod. As is usual with our polls, the supporters of each candidate are saying unrealistic about their favourite candidates, preparing for their future role in defending him (if he wins) against the inevitable criticism that he is not doing any of the things his supporters claimed he would do.

Maybe we should talk about the Fourth Republic in its entirety so far, since all three major candidates have been part of the political class that has ruled (not governed) the federal republic, the states and the local governments for more than twenty-three years.

Maybe we should ask if Nigeria's issues can be resolved through elections, or whether we need something altogether more fundamentally and substantively different than the 1999 Constitution, the present political class, and any likely replacement constitution this political class would come up with .... because as much as I agree that our constitution is problematic (as is the fact that we still don't have a mutually agreed-upon social contract or compact), the main reason we keep having problematic constitutions is our constitutions continue to be written by problematic politicians and militicians .... and when people suggest we ditch the 1999 Constitution for a new one, they invariably (when you get past their rhetoric flourishes) intend for the new constitution to be written by the same types of person who were in charge of writing every other problematic constitution.

 Which would take us back to square one. And in a way, the launch of each of our civilian-led "Republics" and the start of each of our military-led "Republics" has been a square-one moment that could notionally have lead to the necessary reforms, restructuring and transformation, but which always lead in practice to more of the same style of (mis)governance, except with a bit more atomization of the states and local governments .... and in the case of the Fourth Republic, a gigantic amount of debt .... and insecurity.

Picking up the blogging baton and running again

I started this blog in the second half of Olusegun Obasanjo's third term as president. Yes, I said "third term". The first was between 1976 and 1979. In total, he was the federal head of government for 11 years, which is currently the record ... ahead of Yakubu Gowon (9 years), the late Abubakar Tafawa Balewa (almost 9 years), Goodluck Jonathan (8 years) and Ibrahim Babangida (almost 8 years). If current-President Buhari completes his 3rd term overall (his second of the Fourth Republic) in 2023, he would leapfrog Babangida, Jonathan, Tafawa Balewa and Gowon to become the second-longest occupier of the top seat in the federal cabinet.

I am obviously counting the 3 years (1957-1960) of the Balewa-led federal administration prior to de jure independence. If we assume the current President completes his term in 2023, then 6 men would have led Nigeria's federal government for almost 55 of the 66 years between 1957 and 2023. A person could write a separate volumes of books on separate topic areas related to this fact ....

.... but that isn't what this post is about.

As I was saying, I started this blog towards the end of Obasanjo's third term. There have been periods when I have consistently written essays and commentaries, and periods when the blog has sort of lain fallow and just a little forgotten.

I am going to try to start writing consistently again .... since I have time on my hands.

As I've said from the beginning, I do not support any Nigerian (or foreign) politicians. You could say I am somewhat hostile to all of them. From the start in the 1950s, Nigeria's politics has never really been fit for purpose. Possibly the greatest problem with political discussion and political action in Nigeria is the belief that all debates, discussions, agreements and resolutions must take place within the still-existing framework of the politics we've practiced (under civilians and soldiers alike) since the 1950s. Then there are the thick, and thickly-problematic layers of danger and difficulty presented by African continental politics and global geopolitics, two paradigms designed and intended from the start to be functionally and consistently harmful to African (and hence Nigerian) strategic interests.

As always, there is a lot to talk about.

Talking About So-Called Defectors

In the late 1990s, at the start of the Fourth Republic, certain politicians affiliated to what you might call the pro-Abiola faction of Nigerian politics withdrew from a nascent political organization because, they said, it was allowing politicians from the pro-Abacha faction to join. The pro-Abiola politicians went on to form the Alliance for Democracy (AD), while the All Nigerian Peoples Party (ANPP) became the banner of many, maybe most, but definitely not all of the pro-Abacha politicians.

Success and failure in Nigerian politics has little or nothing to do with proving that you are better at solving our problems than your rivals. It is about making mutually beneficial deals with godfathers, "stakeholders", "illustrious sons", basically people with the (perceived or actual) power to "deliver" discrete geographical blocs to the support column of the politicians and political parties. A person's ability to trade and subsequently "deliver" their village, town, local government area, senatorial zone, state or "geopolitical zone" is, of itself, subject to the same sort of deal-making. The credible threat of violence, and the actual use of violence, were part of the Fourth Republic's deal-making; arguably, the subsequent public security disasters of the Fourth Republic gestated in large part from this early use of "communal violence" and assassination as tools of politicking.

Anyway ...

It became clear the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), acting with ruthless venality, had corralled an juggernaut alliance of these backroom deal-makers, their political godsons and acolytes. Then came news that the AD, who had said they would never work with "Abacha Politicians" (i.e. the ANPP), had formed an anti-PDP electoral alliance with the ANPP (i.e. the Abacha Politicians). At the time, senior AD politicians said terrible things about Olusegun Obasanjo, the PDP presidential candidate....

.... which made it interesting when they flip-flopped four years later, and became incumbent President Obasanjo's most strident defenders and promoters ahead of the 2003 elections. They more or less said they would question the continued existence of Nigeria if Obasanjo didn't win.

I don't mean to pick on the AD/AC/ACN, though the faction, controlled since 2003 by former Lagos govenor Bola Tinubu, continues to switch political alliances every four years.

I could as easily have talked about incumbent Imo Governor Rochas Okorocha, who in the last 20 years has variously been a member of the PDP, the ANPP, the Action Alliance (AA), the Peoples Progressive Alliance (PPA), the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), and the APC. Okorocha joined and left the PDP two or three times, and is now, as a member of the APC, theoretically an ally of Bola Tinubu. This lip-service alliance has served the disparate purposes of both men for now, but is almost definitely semi-temporary. Yes, "semi-temporary". There is no basis to the alliance beyond two political sole proprietors' short-term calculation that the alliance works in the short-term for their short-term interests. It could be they continue to think the alliance works for them, and it could be they change their minds tomorrow. So let us call their alliance semi-temporary.


Nigerian politicians, inclusive of those who call themselves "progressive", have formed and broken a succession of ad-hoc alliances through the life of the Fourth Republic. It has been consistently funny to hear the APC blame Nigeria's problems on 16 years of the PDP, when every prominent member of the APC was either a member of the PDP, or a part of one of the other parties that governed Nigeria's three tiers during those 16 years. If the 1999-2015 period was the 16-year failure the APC says it was, then the defector-filled APC is as much to blame for it as the remnant PDP.

How can people like Nasir El-Rufai and Rotimi Amaechi keep straight faces when blaming the PDP for 16 years of bad government? Has Bola Tinubu forgotten that the AD/AC/ACN played a decisive role in reelecting Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan? And how can President Buhari claim the defectors (reverse-defectors?) are corrupt people who are leaving APC because they are afraid of his nonexistent anti-corruption war? Does he think anyone believes the remaining members of APC are all angels of purity?

There are people who think German Chancellor Angela Merkel is the most powerful woman in the world. Oddly enough, President Buhari was standing right next to her when he dismissed his wife's opinions, because (in his words) she belonged in the kitchen, the parlour and "the other room". I do not know what he meant by "the other room", because I am innocent ...

.... but I am going to borrow his metaphor, and say Nigerian politics in the Fourth Republic is like a house. And the political parties are like rooms in a single house. The politicians are like housemates, who are free to choose their roommates, but who never actually leave the house they all share. The halls of this house are always full of housemates carrying their mattresses from one room to another, but solidarity to the house remains strong. They are in it together. They are housemates.


We should probably stop treating the Big Two, the PDP and the APC, as though they were cohesive entities. Yes, every political party on Earth is a tense alliance of competing interests, but the Nigerian mega-parties are not even minimally coherent. Hopping back and forth between the two parties is not really a "defection", but is more like an actor moving back and forth between the original television series and the spinoff series.

The things politicians say

I am not naive; I know politics all over the world is a game of information manipulation and outright deception. Still, I've always been intrigued by the degree to which politicians, political parties, and the mass media are able to convince millions of people to be emotional, unquestioning supporters of one or another politician or political faction.

The fundamental dishonesty of politics is not a problem for those countries whose citizens inherit the benefits and privileges their ancestors created for them via 500 years of unrelenting, globe-spanning violence that reshaped Planet Earth's political and economic functioning. Their countries consume an epically outsize share of the planet's resources regardless of who wins their elections.

But we in Africa, and in Nigeria specifically, need to have serious conversations about serious issues ... including issues that really should have been resolved back in the 1950s before the event officially referred to as "Independence". We are materially harmed by politics perennially free of anything that could be considered "substance", suffused with outright lies and factually insupportable assertions, with promises that are not intended to be delivered, and promises that are contextually undeliverable.

Speaking of undeliverable promises, why do our governments (all of them) like to set and pompously declare totally random "deadlines" for the accomplishment of things? It will be done by the end of the year, they insist, their faces determined and serious in the glare of the cameras. Meanwhile, a rational person can see the thing in question could only be accomplished over a 10-year period of consistent policy superintended by a succession of competent governments.

Sometimes the issue is something inherently unpredictable like the insurgency, yet our governments will set deadlines for "victory". According to Buhari, the deadline for victory was December of 2015 -- he was going to win the war within half a year of taking office.

Then there was that 3-year deadline (1999-2002) set for the unification of all non-CFA currencies in West Africa. This was back when Charles Soludo was Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria. The 2002 deadline got stretched to 2005, then 2009. As of today, the new deadline is 2020, some 21 years after the initial 3-year deadline was set in 1999. And at an ECOWAS conference held this year, some participants vocalized their rational expectation that the 2020 deadline will also be missed.

Our leaders think these "deadlines" make them sound competent and serious, but in reality they just end up sounding like they don't understand the topics they are talking about. In fact, they sound like they fought so hard to become the government (by "election" or coup) without ever having given a single thought to any of the problems they would have to resolve once they became the government.

I am starting to digress, as I tend to do.

This post was intended to briefly talk about a member of the National Assembly I watched launching a "constituency project" on Channels TV . He told the people gathered for the event that they should vote for (here he mentioned his political party and its definite presidential candidate) because that was the only way they would continue to get "constituency projects".

Legislators all over the world use their control over the government treasury money to buy popularity in their home constituencies. Even in legislatures where political rivalries are heated, the legislators are always able to set their differences aside long enough to collectively renew their self-given right to use public money as a reelection tool. In some places it is called "pork barrel" spending, and it doesn't make that much fiscal difference in countries that benefit from the way the planet has been designed to function over the last 500 years' violence.

I am not fond of fiscal waste. And it is democratically unfair for aspirant candidates to have to face incumbent politicians who are allowed to use government money as the de facto reelection campaign funds. I find it particularly crass the way Nigerian politicians behave as though they are using their personal money to give their constituents a personal gift out of their personal kindness. The schedule for these "launchings" always includes a moment where selected people are lined up to deliver, one after another, sychophantic remarks extolling the saviour-like magnificence of the politician.

Unbeknownst to these citizens, they will pay a heavy fiscal price in the near- to medium-term future. There is little thought to the fiscal or operational sustainability of these projects, or to whether it is or isn't the best possible way to permanently solve whatever the core problem is. When the federal and state debts start to bite, there will be fiscal cuts to many areas, including maintenance of the projects and salaries/pensions (which will not be cut per se, but just won't be paid).

But I am digressing again.

This legislator on Channels TV lied to his constituents, telling them there would be no "constituency projects" if they didn't vote for his party and its presidential candidate.

The truth is, regardless of who they vote for, and whichever party wins, the winner will join with his (or her) legislative colleagues to reauthorize spending on "constituency projects". There is little or no discussion in Fourth Republic politics about fiscal responsibility, and I am beginning to think we will remember the Fourth Republic as the most fiscally reckless period of our history. Every candidate in Nigeria with a realistic chance of "winning" a legislative election, is by definition a candidate who will not act to block wasteful, but reelection-enhancing, spending by legislators.

The legislators will not stop themselves from spending in this way, and they won't stop the executives either, especially the 36 state governors. Our state legislatures function as little more than expensively assembled rubber stamps.

The building where "Nigeria" was "born"

I am not sure how to feel about the picture below.

On the one hand, it is the place where violent foreign invaders finalized the process of their conquest and domination of our peoples.

On the other hand, it is also the place where the "Federal Republic of Nigeria" more or less came into existence.

But whether you look at the place as a negative memory, or as a piece of the foundational story of "Nigeria", surely the place shouldn't look the way it looks? Shouldn't it be a place we visit to either remind ourselves of a bad thing we must strive to avoid (i.e. foreign dominance), or to remind ourselves of a good thing like Nigerian unity (it is a good thing, isn't it?).

Maybe the way the building looks is best understood as a metaphor for "Nigeria".

Whatever their propaganda might say, the British/European intervention in "Nigeria" was intended purely to benefit the British/Europeans at our expense. Nevertheless, they accidentally created a political platform from which we the people, peoples and nations of "Nigeria" could defend ourselves and our interests in a world designed to be hostile to our interests.

Except, that "Nigeria" has not, is not, and (if nothing changes) will not do for its citizens the things that it is supposed to do for its citizens. Take for example the issues involving "African" migrants facing danger and death in order to make it to supposedly better lives outside the continent. Notice that once the foreign news organizations started to give saturation coverage to the deaths of more than 20 Nigerians and the "slave market" in Libya, our federal government started making noises about doing things they would already have done years ago if they actually gave a damn about our citizens. Note I say "federal government" and not the name of any specific Fourth Republic president, as the "migrant" problem has existed for many years -- as has governmental disinterest in the fate of the "migrants".

Yeah, the state of the building where Nigeria was "born" is a metaphor for the Federal Republic that was "born" there. If "Nigeria" functioned the way it is supposed to function, the building where it was "born" would look a lot different.

This is the building Premium Times identified as being the place in Zungeru, Niger State where Mr. Frederick Lugard signed the documents that created "Nigeria" by Amalgamation.

Subtracting 90 from 310 International Organizations

A month ago, Kemi Adeosun, the Minister of Finance, announced Nigeria would withdraw from 90 of the 310 "international organizations" we are presently part of. We apparently owe payments of one kind or another, payments we cannot afford, to a number of these organizations. Unsurprisingly, there is uncertainty as to how much we are owing; a "committee" said the arrears were $120 million, but the Ministry of Finance (and other ministries) believe we owe a lot more than that.

The Minister gave no indication as to which organizations we would be withdrawing from. Its been a month, and there is still no guidance .... not just as to which specific organizations, but also as to what particular types of organizations they consider to be superfluous.

The number "90" is very specific. Did they already identify the 90, or did they just randomly decided to fix our number of memberships at 220 and withdrawals at 90 just to have specific numbers to report?

If it is the former, they could at least give us some sense as to what sorts of organizations are on the list; it is a very significant thing the government is planning to do, and they did not mention any of this in their 2015 campaign, so it would be nice if they didn't act like we gave them a mandate to do such things secretly without telling anyone what they are doing.

On the other hand, if it is the latter, and they just randomly fixed the two numbers at 220 and 90 without actually first deciding on a criteria for withdrawals, then they may find that when they do develop a criteria, the organizations that meet or fail to meet the criteria will not fit neatly into the nice round numbers of 220 and 90.

Don't misunderstand me. I support the reduction in the number of international organizations Nigeria is a part of; I just want to know what it is they are doing.

If it was up to me, frankly, the magnitude of the reduction would be greater. However, I wouldn't make a move without first discussing it with the public. Or rather starting a public discourse on what Nigeria's strategic interests are, how the rest of the continent/planet impacts upon these interests, what would be the best path towards protecting our interests .... and then we would have to talk about whether or not any international organization that currently exists helps, hinders or is irrelevant to the protection of our citizens' interests.

Because to be honest, it really shouldn't be about the money. We shouldn't join or leave organizations based on whether we are owing, or whether we can afford to pay. Even if we can afford to pay to be in 220 organizations, we shouldn't be in any of them that is irrelevant or harmful to Nigeria, and if we cannot afford to pay to be in 310, but there is something about the 310 that is practically useful to Nigeria, then we should find the money somehow (perhaps by selling Governor Okorocha's Zuma statue to wealthy foreign collectors of curios and oddities).

I've got to be honest with you. I don't really think any of the international organizations do anything that is useful to Nigerian or African progress. The hype surrounding these organizations is that they step in to fund insufficient "aid" programmes for refugees of a politically-created disasters. What we need to be doing is dealing with the issues that make these politically-create disasters predictably incessant, and as to whether international organizations help, hinder or are irrelevant to that ... well, we can argue about that in another blog post.

Elections Without Purpose

There are certain people who keep saying we all must vote, and who keep insisting that anyone who doesn't vote will by definition lose the right to criticize the governments (all three tiers) after the vote.

But what are you supposed to do when the political system is designed to present you with different versions of the same thing you do NOT want as a citizen?  Different versions of the same future disappointment? Are you supposed to keep wasting your time "voting"? By padding the turnout numbers, are you not merely granting the toga of credibility to the very thing you do not want? By picking one of the bad options presented, are you not empowering the bad option to claim that the things he does are done with your permission and approval?

In fact, why do we complain about "rigging" (and even about coups) when we are still going to be forced to stomach a type of government we do not want, even if there is a "free and fair" vote? It is not just that the same type of person will occupy political, bureaucratic and technocratic positions, but very often is is literally the same people.

Please, don't do that thing we sometimes do in Nigeria of looking at the name of the person speaking, and then interpreting everything he or she subsequently says from an ethnic or regional prism. Yes, I am Igbo, but the structure and fundamental nature of Nigerian politics has never made sense to me.

The first political thought I recall having was as a child during the Second Republic. The election was coming up, and I was excited by the pageantry of it all. But then I realized that underneath the facade, the election boiled down to little more Igbos vote NPP, Yorubas vote UPN, and Hausas/Fulanis vote NPN. The regional/ethnic chess game did not stop with the three legs of the so-called "tripod", but as a little child, and as an Igbo, it didn't make sense to me that I was expected to support a party (and the politicians within it) simply because I was Igbo. I wouldn't have been able to properly articulate it at the time, it just seemed to me that it was a stupid way to choose leaders of the country. I would later learn about the 1950s, the First Republic, the Civil War .... and all I could think of was how different it all could have, and should have been. All I could see were the errors and mistakes of people who were, and still are, surprisingly popular considering their decisions set us on a path to the kind of politics we still practices .... and the kind of violence our federal republic is still plagued by.

If we are honest with ourselves, we would admit our method of choosing leaders has not progressed much since the Second Republic, and political figures are wildly popular in specific regions for reasons that have nothing to do with whether they actually understand what our problems are, first of all, before we even ask if they understand the solutions. Actually, and more depressingly, not a lot has changed in our politics since the 1950s. In fact, if there is a so-called "national question" then it is comprised of several dozen questions (plural) that should have been answered in the 1950s, but have not been answered up till now, and do not look like they will be answered any time soon.

It is interesting that we are still being treated to the sights and sounds of people trying to break up the federal republic. There are those who advocate this openly, those who hide their real intent behind euphemisms, and those who aim to create enclaves within the country where the laws of the country do not apply. The biggest problem in Nigerian politics since the 1950s has been the absence of a basic understanding of the strategic interests of the various ethnic nations within the Nigerian federal republic. We would have interacted with ourselves differently, approached our continent differently, and (especially) approached the rest of the planet ... much differently. As it stands, it is 2017, and people are still talking about destroying the best platform from which we can protect ourselves and advance ourselves on this planet that has been designed to function with hostility to our interests.


Anyway, all of this is just rhetoric. Let me say something practical.


The All Progressives Congress (APC) goes on and on about how the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) ruined Nigeria over the first 16 years of the Fourth Republic. But have you noticed something about the APC? The APC is comprised almost entirely of the people who ruled Nigeria in the first 16 years of the Fourth Republic. Some of them were PDP, some were AD/AC/ACN, some were ANPP/CPC, and some were APGA/PPA, but all of them, in one way or another, held significant power at the federal and state levels between 1999 and 2015. When they describe the first 16 years of the Fourth Republic as a time of failure, they are indicting themselves as well as their rivals who are still in the PDP for the time being (pending their eventual decamping to the APC. If they couldn't fix Nigeria's problems of Nigeria under their previous incarnations, why are we supposed to believe they will do so as old wine in a new bottle? In fact, is anyone surprised that they are not doing so?

By the way, President Buhari himself may not have held power in the Fourth Republic prior to 2015, but he has served at the highest levels of the Nigerian federal government since the early 1970s, in a variety of powerful portfolios, including that of military Head of State. There are a lot of things his supporters say he can and will do, but he has had more than 47 years in "politics" to do these things, and not only did he not do these things, but realistically he never showed the signs that he could.

Again, I am not an ethnicist and this is not about President Buhari's region of origin. I began this essay by asking whether there was any point to "voting" when there is never anyone on the ballot worth voting for. My critique of Buhari is applicable to all of his predecessors, to all of his would-be predecessors, and to his would-be successors. I started this blog during the Obasanjo Administration, and if you read my posts from the beginning, through the Goodluck Jonathan Administration, up till today, you will find my views are consistent, and are consistently applied to everyone. There may not have been an Igbo president during the Fourth Republic, but figures like Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and Charles Soludo (among others) have had strong influence on the direction of Fourth Republic (and on its predictable economic woes), and I have never hesitated in objectively critiquing anyone.

Okay, now that I am done with the unfortunately necessary disclaimers ....

Our politics have always been disconnected from our practical problems. Our politics follow an internally consistent logic that produces recurrent outcomes to "elections" and "coups". The thing is, the internal logic of our politics was never about ascertaining the source of the country's problems, deducing solutions to the country's problems, or vetting potential candidates according to how well they fit into the framework of problem-definition and problem-solution. If anything, your success in Nigerian politics is dependent on convincing "stakeholders" that you have no intention (perhaps no ability) to fundamentally change anything in a way that will put Nigeria on the path to having an economy like that of Germany or Japan.

But in 2019, we will be told we have to vote.

Why? For who? For what?

I'd like to say that before we hold another pointless "vote", our federal republic first needs to have a conversation about .... our federal republic. But in the real world, there would be no point to such a conversation, as it would be dominated by the same personages and voices that we would need to do away with if we are going to have any chance of having a meaningful discourse.

Something has to change.

An Investigative Report on Exam Malpractice

In places where law enforcement and judicial system are perceived (rightly or wrongly) to have some degree of effectiveness, people do break the law in blunt and undisguised ways ... but a much larger number of people (and corporations) contrive of ways to break the spirit and intent of the law, while positioning themselves to be able to argue that their actions could reasonably be construed as falling within the "letter" of the law. The wealthier you are, as an individual or corporation, the more capable you are of organizing your "law-breaking" and eventual legal defence in such a way as to avoid a conviction, or at the very least to ensure that you are convicted of a lesser or even minor offence (often following a plea deal). The poorer you are, the less access you have to these particular tools of "law-breaking".

In Nigeria, the police do arrest people, and the courts do convict people, but Nigeria's people, polity, economy and society operate in a context where the quality of law enforcement and the judiciary is presumed to alternate between involuntarily ineffectual, deliberately dysfunctional and consensually corrupt.

I do not think we Nigerians as a people are "worse" than anyone else when it comes to crime, however, there are certain kinds of crime that are committed bluntly and openly in Nigeria, whereas in other places anyone who wanted to commit the crime (and trust me, many do) would have to be more "sophisticated" in their criminality, or would have to dream wistfully of what they would have done if the risks of getting caught didn't outweigh the possible gain.

There is also the issue of compensation. In certain countries, officialdom are frankly overpaid. Yes, they are paid far more than would be economically feasible if the world's economy was normal. In this context, it is easier to uphold certain standards that are perceived to be beneficial to the society at large.

In Nigeria, where civil servants and pensioners can be owed more than a year's arrears of salary, it can be .... difficult for people with rent due at the end of the month to listen to their conscience. I am not making excuses for their behaviour, but it has long depressed me that Nigerian policy-making does not take into account basic economics. Our governments, at all three tiers, keep coming up with macro-level policies that they claim will lead to particular outcomes, while leaving in place all of the economic realities that effectively force people at the micro level to make decisions that in aggregate will negate whatever it is the macro so-called policy claims it is going to achieve.

Anyway, all this is a set up to get you to read this investigative article from The Punch newspaper. The stats at the bottom of the page indicate only about 450 or so people have read the electronic version of the article, which I think is unfortunate. This is exactly the sort of investigative reporting we all want (or say we want). Yes, I know most Nigerians still get their newspaper news from actual "paper" newspapers, but those get replaced each day and anyone who didn't read it on the day (a year ago) it was published on paper will have missed the news anyway.

A reporter went undercover to expose blatant, unashamed, criminal examination malpractices. I am not one of those people who assumed "everyone" in Nigeria is a criminal (I am a Nigerian, and I am not a criminal), but the exam malpractice problem clearly extends far beyond the single centre the reporter exposed.

And yes, it is a long article in a time when the internet has shortened people's attentions spans, and yes, I know "data" costs in Nigeria. Still, isn't it better to read the facts of a thing that we all know is happening, rather than basing our "knowledge" about it on the usual rumours that are never actually true, even if they are based on (and hint at) things that are true?

 PS: Is it the proper etiquette to say I was directed toward the article by the journalist Kadaria Ahmed? She posted a link.

A Return To Discourse

It has been a couple of years since I posted regularly on this blog. You know how it is with life. A lot has happened, and I have been busy.

There is a new president, but the issues remain the same.

I hope to restart regular commentary.

There is much to talk about.

I am embedding Sunny Okosuns 1980s hit "Which Way Nigeria". It is interesting that he references mistakes make during the 1970s Oil Boom, considering the mistakes we made during the 2000s Oil Boom.

It is also interesting that President Buhari is back for a second stint as Nigeria's Head of State. His first tenure, beginning in 1983, was separated from President Obasanjo's first tenure by a 4-year administration led by a lifelong civilian who took office as the 1970s Oil Boom ended and the emerging global economic environment of the 1980s turned problematic for Nigeria. Decades later, their respective second tenures in the Fourth Republic were separated 8 years, and two lifelong civilians who took over from Obasanjo just as the 2000s Oil Boom ended and the global environment of the 2010s turned problematic for Nigeria.

Many things have changed in our economy, notably telephony and the internet, but fundamentally nothing of real significance has changed.

Add to this a political system that never answered any of the questions raised in the 1950s, opting instead to recycle the same questions tediously without solution.  Back then, they worried about which Region was to produce the Prime Minister. Today, the argument is over which "geopolitical zone" should produce the presidents (and which senatorial zone is to produce the governor), with little or no discussion of anything that can be termed an issue of importance or substance. Let us be honest with ourselves; everyone who has served as president in the Fourth Republic did so based on "geopolitical zone" calculations, and not because they ever did or said anything that would lead anyone to think that they understood our problems much less had deduced a solution to any of the problems.

Anyway, enjoy the late Sunny Okosuns (RIP) singing "Which Way Nigeria".

Both the Economy and the Violence are growing

When I started this blog, my intention was to build up to the centenary of Amalgamation, which was this year, 1st January, 2014.

A lot of things happened in the interim, in my life and in the life of the Federal Republic, and as you may have noticed there was no blog post commemorating the date. In fact, I have not posted anything since last year.

And it is difficult to restart.

What does one say? Even in times when things are more predictable (for lack of a better term), it is always difficult to sum up the Federal Republic of Nigeria, in whole or in part, using something so simplistic as words or sentences. What do you say? If only it were possible to telepathically transmit the sense of something, but even then, how to make sense of Nigeria, Africa or even of the Earth?

Nigeria's GDP-rebasing project, which looked like it would never end, finally concluded and Nigeria leap-frogged South Africa to be recognized as the biggest aggregate economy (measured by GDP) on the African continent.  There are even suggestions (see video courtesy CCTV-Africa below) that the rebased figures still underestimate the size of Nigeria's economy:



On the other hand, I have frequently said on this forum that the Fourth Republic (1999-date) is the second-most violent period of our history behind only the years 1966-1970.  Think about that for a second.  The only period of our history more violent than the present one, is a 4-year stretch during which there was an ultra-violent coup, an ultra-violent counter-coup, widespread mass killings, and ultimately a two-and-half year Civil War.

What is particularly concerning is the violence of the Fourth Republic has been on an upward trajectory. With each passing year since 1999, it has gotten worse. What is happening now is just the worst part of a trend that has shown no sign of abating. It is all nice and good to blame Goodluck Jonathan, and I certainly think he has a big share of the blame, but this all started long before his "lucky" ascent to the Presidency, and to be quite blunt, every arm of all three tiers of the Fourth Republic administration share in the blame. Nor is the blame restricted only to those who govern; the so-called "opposition" are as much a part of the problem.

From time to time on this blog, I point out that I warned about this in an essay I wrote 11 years ago in 2003 -- even then it was already clear that the ever-rising violence was going to get out of hand, and that the various private armies and militia groups were getting dangerously well-armed and acquiring ever greater capacity for violence relative to the official security institutions.

The two-facedness of the politicians was also clear then -- they refused, and still refuse to deal with vulnerabilities and weaknesses of the security space, because they themselves maintain illegal militia and private armies (not to mention alliances with private armies on contract around election time ).  One of the great problems with law enforcement reform in Nigeria is the people constitutionally responsible for reforming law enforcement are people who would be in jail if our law enforcement worked. The same is true in the public security space writ large -- it is like asking a fox to make sure the henhouse is secure.

This isn't really a problem unique to Nigeria. Many, probably most global and national institutions are run by individuals and interest-groups whose individual and group "strategic interests" ensure that the institution in practice facilitates whatever it is that it was theoretically set up to prevent.

But let me not digress to far off the point of this my "return" post.

The good news is good news because if we ever get around to the process of decreasing the amount of bad news, we are going to need to stand on the strong platform provided by the good news.  And there is no stronger leg to stand on than the leg of a large and growing economy.  That is the thing about the Federal Republic of Nigeria .... even in our darker moments, you cannot but notice that the potential good things are so extensive that if harnessed properly they would swamp the bad things.

But there is much to talk about, and hopefully I will speak more frequently.