The stories we ignore

I don't talk too much on this blog about the recurrent incidents of violence in our federal republic. Violence in Nigeria is a complex, complicated, exasperating, saddening and depressing issue that cannot fully be discussed in the confines of an e-blog.

Every once in a while I try to write what I always hope would be an abbreviated essay on the problem, but even while unfinished and still growing in length, these "abbreviated" essays eventually resemble short books. And even these "short books" are insufficient to truly discuss the issue.

What I want to do in this week of bloody attacks and bloody reprisal attacks is to remind us of the stories we tend to ignore. But even so, I have had to rewrite and edit down this introduction portion, because it grew to 14 pages! I am just going to get straight to the article and leave out any commentary. There are enough people commenting on the violence. One gets the impression that the way we talk about the issue reinforces the problem rather than solves it, that we sometimes miss the forest for the trees. In any case, there are enough people talking about it.

But first the introduction.

A month ago, Tadaferua Ujorha of Daily Trust gathered reports of courageous citizens who, at risk to their own lives, did what we all wish we were brave enough to do.

I normally prefer to post a link to the source sites for news articles, or at most block-quote a relevant excerpt. It is important for Nigerian news organizations to receive the "clicks", and associated revenues accruing. They invested resources on news-gathering, and will stop doing so if they are not making money. At least one of Ujorha's collected stories came from financially-struggling NEXT, which has had to massively reduce its investment in investigative journalism.

But in this rare case, I think the article is important enough that I will post the whole thing on this blog. Not many people (if anyone at all) read my blog, and I don't if any of you who do read take the time to click on the links (many of the older links are now non-functioning anyway). I want to make sure anyone who reads this blog post will also read the article.

Of course, you may not consider it to be as important as I do, but there is a way that we have come to think of each other as Nigerians. Our perceptions of each other have been, are now, and will be quite a stumbling block on the path of doing anything of positive impact ... in security issues as much as anywhere else.

Tadaferua Ujorha's collection of reports highlights two aspects of us as Nigerians, the heroic few who risk their lives to save their fellow citizens, and also the majority of us who lock ourselves away in our homes or run to the relative safety of the nearest police or army barracks, hoping against hope that the violence does not hit us or our families. We are together in this -- believe it or not, we are all at risk, and until we realize this we are not going to get anywhere.

Read the article, and if you like it, you might want to click the link anyway. I do not know how the whole revenue-from-clicks thing works, but if you want this type of reporting, you've got to help them pay for it:

‘I will never forget you’

Written by Tadaferua Ujorha who was in Kaduna, Kano & Niger
Tuesday, 29 November 2011 05:00

He has the courage of a Lion.

Adamu Bologi, a Muslim, is not likely to forget April 2011 in a hurry. It was the month when post-election violence broke out in Niger State, as well as in other parts of northern Nigeria. Bologi left for work early that morning, as he is wont to do.

He is a Librarian at Newsline, the Niger state government-owned newspaper. Later, he left to return home to give his wife some money. Home is Tunga, a part of Minna, and Tunga is a multicultural setting, accommodating a diversity of ethnic groups. Here are bad roads, open gutters and numerous dwellings, some large, some small. Too close to each other, some would say. It was while he was heading home that rioting broke out. There was thunder in Tunga on that day, and smoke from a burning Church filled part of the sky. The ‘Corpers Lodge’ was also torched. Fear and anxiety filled the hearts of many. All of a sudden a dark cloud fell upon the area. People fled their homes and headed for the nearby police barracks, the usual point of convergence at such moments. There was pandemonium on the streets. Men, women and children fled. The nearby Conqueror’s House Church, on Bay Clinic road,was burnt. According to Bologi ‘I saw some fifty persons holding cutlasses, sticks, and knives. They were saying if you are a Muslim go inside,we are looking for Christians. There is one compound near mine. Everyone living there is a Christian. The rioters focused on that house, and all the occupants instantly fled with their children’. He says that at risk of losing his life, he ferried all of them to the nearby barracks. He did all this alone. He adds ‘There was no other Muslim with me when I was going round.They just stayed by their doors,and looked from their windows’. While returning from the barracks he met the group of rioters who were upset with him and said so. His words ‘They heard that I am the one who took people to the barracks. So they warned me’. Here he was putting his life and properties at risk. After this he met a woman weeping as she walked along the road. His words ‘When returning from the barracks I met a woman who was crying, and she had two children by her side. I asked her what was wrong, but all she could utter was ‘my husband, my husband’. I took her to my room together with the two children. I gave her water to drink, and asked my wife to look after her. I then went out to look for her husband’. It was while he was outside looking for her husband that he came across another woman, being harassed by a mob.His words ‘They beat the woman and she fell down. The woman kept running and falling down, with her child too. She stood up, ran, but was felled again. I told them to stop beating her. But they didn’t stop. She was shouting. I then put her in the mosque of my house. I asked her to remove her slippers, before entering, because we don’t enter the mosque with slippers on’. After ferrying her into the mosque, he then went outside again, to see if he could locate her husband, whom she continually referred to, amidst tears. He walked to the nearby police barracks to see if he could seek him out, and on his way back he saw a man wearing a trouser and a vest, who turned out to be her husband. He hurried with him to his house, and now reunited husband and wife.

Not a drop of blood fell

Pastor Jeremy Omachi, bold and outspoken with a commanding voice, is the man he saved.He is Igala from Kogi State, and tells Daily Trust a moving story of his experiences in the following words ‘On 18 April 2011, a day after the Presidential elections,at about 11:00am I suddenly heard people chanting. I ran out to find out what was happening. I saw groups of people coming towards our house. I locked the door, and put my wife behind me,and asked ‘why are you people after us?’ They said ‘since you people refused to vote for Buhari, and you voted for Goodluck, we have come to kill you and to burn the Church’. In the ensuing exchange he signaled to his wife to flee from the house, and she did. Then the mob proceded to attack him with matchets and sticks. Then an amazing thing happened. According to him ‘Seven times they hit my head with their matchets, but the matchet did not draw blood. So all of us were shocked, and I thought it was not real again… But you could hear the sound of the matchet as it made contact with my head. It was as though it was iron hitting iron .Somebody even asked me why my head seems to be immune to cuts from a matchet.Then I fell unconscious.’ Later, he escaped from his house and headed in the direction of the police barracks. On his way there he had an encounter with Bologi. His words ‘Bologi ran after me. He asked me to stop,and asked if I am the Pastor. Then he took me to his house. Life came into my wife, when she saw me. She had already cried and believed that I was dead’.Later in the interview with Daily Trust, Pastor Omachi says of the events ‘I see Bologi as someone who has the kind of passion that I have.May the Almighty raise up more of such in our generation.’ The duo met for the first time after the events of April, when this reporter visited Minna in September this year while investigating this story. During the meeting Bologi says that if events were to repeat themselves he would behave in a similar fashion and save many more people. His words ‘I will behave in the same way. I will do much more than I did.This is a rented house.I am paying rent. If it were my personal house, I would have done much more than I did’. Bologi’s moving story has also been captured by Next.

Hayab helps a youth

In Kaduna, Reverend Joshua Hayab, Special Adviser to the Kaduna State Governor on Christian Matters, receives a phone call a day after the presidential elections. It was from the house of Mai Ungwar Gbagyi, which is in the Television area of Kaduna, a predominantly Christian community. The call was to the effect that a Muslim youth was about to be killed at the house. In fact the mob was prepared to burn down the house,if the boy won’t be released to them. There was tension in the area. Groups there were reacting to outbreaks of violence relating to the April Presidential elections. Reverend Hayab hurries to the location, and finds a mob gathered around the house of Mai Ungwar Gbagyi. He pleads with the restive youths ,and is finally allowed to leave the house with the much troubled youth. His words ‘I pleaded with them, and I convinced them why they must not kill this boy. I put him in the car and asked the driver to lock the car. I stood outside and spoke to them some more,and then they became calm. But before I knew what was happening another mob had come. I jumped into the car and we quickly drove away’. As they drove along, they came across another mob which also wanted to despatch the muslim youth in the Reverends car. His words ‘I came out of the car,and instructed the driver to lock the car from the inside. They now said ‘this bearded man in front of your car is a muslim, and we would not allow him to pass’. They later smashed both windscreens of the car. The youth was still inside the car when this happened. Upon instruction from the Reverend, the driver sped off and escaped the mob who were lined up all over the road.The Reverend who was still with the mob, was rescued shortly thereafter by soldiers from the nearby Command Secondary School. The driver had escaped there, and alerted the soldiers on duty about what was happening. Reverend Hayab says ‘It was akin to Divine intervention.In less than five minutes ,a military car just appeared from nowhere.’.

‘I won’t forget’

Dr Garba Shehu Matazu,a former Member of the House of Representatives, and now Senior Special Adviser on Higher Education to the Katsina State Governor, tells an interesting story of events in Kaduna, on the same day Reverend Hayab was rescuing the Muslim youth. In fact both men were within minutes of each other on that day. His words ‘I got to the Abuja junction with my driver. We saw people blocking the road, putting tyres and coming out with dangerous weapons, shouting and stopping vehicles. I told my driver, lets quickly get out of Kaduna. Unfortunately,on getting to the Abuja road, we actually met our brothers, both male and female Christians, also blocking the road. There was no way we could proceed,and there was no way we could return to the town… I asked the driver to reverse.While he was doing so,the crowd began to pursue us with dangerous weapons. We got to the junction by Command Secondary School. We could not go right where we were pursued, and we could not go left to Sabon Tasha. Hundreds of them had blocked the road with dangerous weapons.I then asked my driver to enter the Command Secondary School. I met both Christians and Muslims there.Infact by entering there you had become a refugee’. Outside the school were hundreds of armed and angry youths. Paradoxically, it was a Christian soldier who took Dr Matazu to the house of the Commandant of the institution. Another paradox lies in the fact that here is a former Chair of the House Committee on Education, who by an interesting turn of events so eloquently fashioned by nature, found solace in a secondary school at a time of crises. It was within the Command Secondary School that he met Reverend Hayab, who arranged for a number of cars to be brought from Government House Kaduna. These were used to convey both the Muslim youth, earlier saved by the Reverend, Dr Matazu, as well as many others made up of both Muslims and Christians, out of the Command Secondary School, to their homes in Kaduna. Reverend Hayab says ‘I put a call across to the ADC Government House. I said look my car has been damaged. I can’t even drive the car again. I can’t even leave the Command Secondary School. I told him that I am together with Hon Matazu and a few others. Can you send a team to rescue us? As we were standing there we could see young people outside the school with daggers. They certainly wont allow anyone to pass. Then help came in the form of armed security men and a convoy of cars from Government House’. But leaving the premises of the school was a bit difficult.According to Dr Matazu ‘When we were coming out of the entrance of the school, the youths blocked us. Despite the mobile police men, the well armed SSS,who were shooting in the air, they were adamant’. On getting close to his home, he turned to Reverend Hayab, saying ‘Thank you…Thank you... I will never forget you’.The youth whom he saved was taken to Government House Kaduna, and later returned to Rigasa where he lives. Reverend Hayab says that he does not know the name of the boy whom he saved from the mob. His words ‘I don’t know his name. I saw him as a brother from another family, and I wanted to save him. Somehow in a crisis situation we can still demonstrate a good heart towards one another, because the Almighty created us to live together’. He asks rhetorically ‘In my wife’s family, her mother is the only Christian, all others in the family are Muslims, and we are all of the same Jaba tribe. Now, do you want me to look at a Muslim as an enemy, when my inlaw comes from a family that is predominantly Muslim?’

Binta’s Hijab

In Kano, a woman’s Hijab worked wonders during the April crises. Soft spoken Binta Adamu is a Nurse resident in the city. In April this year she was very close to scenes of rioting in the city. There were two Christian classmates of hers with her at that time. What to do to save their lives? Swift thinking was required. Her woman’s intuition rose to the fore. She quickly reached for two extra Hijabs and gave the Lady’s to wear. Of course, the Lady’s were more than willing to accept them in the circumstances. That is how she saved their lives, because they kept on passing mobs who looked at them through the glass of the car they were in, and concluded that the three Lady’s within, wearing Hijabs, were all Muslims. None would have thought otherwise. With the trio was Hamman Ibrahim Rassan, another classmate and a Christian from Adamawa state. He led the Lady’s to a point very close to their homes, when they parted with Hajiya Binta.

The Suleiman’s of Tudun Wada

A households previous good deeds in Kano, helped to turn their residence into a small camp for the displaced. It is human nature to always remember the kind and good inhabitants of a town. Alhaji Mohammed Suleiman also lives in Kano. In 1981, he retired from the Murtala Mohammed Hospital as Chief Nursing Officer. During the post-election violence in Kano, his residence in Tudun Wada became a Mecca for non indigenes and other distressed persons. He has lived in Tudun Wada for more than forty years, and his family is known for its good works in the community. It is as though he has been nursing or played a healing role in the community all these years. No wonder a great crowd gathered during the crises. According to Alhaji Suleiman ‘Many people rushed here,and we harboured them.Many people from around this area came. In this area our family is respected a lot. My wife,in particular, has been very kind to everybody here. That’s why a huge crowd came seeking refuge here’. Hajiya Hadiza Usman, who also hails from Kano, is Alhaji Suleiman’s neighbour in Tudun Wada, Kano. Her comments on events in Tudun Wada shortly after the elections ‘We saw people running,and so we peeped out from the doorways. We soon heard people screaming outside,and people said it was because of the election results. My neighbour came earlier that morning ,and told me that if anything happened her children were in her house, and that I should take care of them’. Thus when the crises began, Hajiya Hadiza went and brought her neighbours children to the safety of her own house. A woman from Edo State, as well as an Idoma Lady found refuge in her house ,as well.

Kind Kamuru

Something remarkable happened in Kamuru in April this year ,where the Hausa community is ‘almost as old as the community itself’, one contact says. Kamuru is located in Southern Kaduna. When rioting broke out, community leaders took steps to protect the Muslim members of the community. It is a Christian community and there is a significant Hausa presence there. However, in the dead of night, houses belonging to Muslims were burnt down. Allahmagani Yohanna tells Daily Trust about what happened next. His words ‘A group of the elite of Kamuru came together and said they should put money and materials together and visit the area ,to talk to the Hausa-Fulani victims, and to appeal to them to remain calm and to come back. The idea was to make them feel at home, and for us to put together whatever materials we could, to make life a little better for them’. He says that some of the Hausas who lost their homes eventually became refugees in houses in neighbouring Ikulu villages. ‘They took in the Hausa-Fulani, those that had been displaced. They did everything possible to make them comfortable. He says his father is the District Head of Dutsen Bako, and adds that their house was turned into a refugee camp. His words ‘We literally turned our house into a refugee camp, and encouraged all those that have been displaced to come and stay there. Those that stayed at our house were up to four hundred’. The elite of Kamuru provided foodstuff, clothes, as well as accommodation for the displaced Hausas of Kamuru. Bishop Matthew Kukah of the Sokoto Diocese hails from Kamuru. Allahmagani Yohanna adds ‘Bishop Kukah’s house did the same, by ensuring that all that were displaced were kept there. They were fed, clothed, and some of them stayed there for weeks, until it became possible for them to go back home. ‘Finally, Allahmagani Yohanna comments on the changes in society which have occurred over time. His words ‘We have differences, but we have to live with these differences. It wasn’t like this before. During my secondary school days, I hardly remembered that somebody was a Muslim,or someone was a Christian, or that someone is Hausa-Fulani. We grew up living in peace. We are Christians in our house,but during the crises we were providing the Muslims with materials they need to pray.Irrespective of our differences we are still one’.

‘Pastor, hurry into my house, hurry’

Alhaji Usman Idris is a businessman, and dwells in Ungwar Rimi,a part of Kaduna town. There’s a COCIN Church in front of his house.Over the years he has developed good relations with the Church community, such that whenever he travels, he leaves the keys of his house at the Church for safekeeping. During the April crises a mob came around ,intent on destroying the Church, and killing its Pastor. Alhaji Idris says ‘Immediately we realised that these boys would not listen to what we were going to tell them, we had to tell the Reverend to hurry inside my house, together with his family. We called the police, who eventually came, and some of the rioters were arrested. We were able to save the Pastor himself, and he has now relocated to another part of the town.But he comes to the Church daily.’ Policemen still guard the Church during the regular Hours of Worship that hold on Sundays. However, the musical instruments belonging to the church were destroyed during the attack. Alhaji Idris speaks of a fire that occurred not too long ago very close to his house.It was women from the Church who brought buckets of water out of the Church, to put out the fire at a house which belongs to a Muslim.’ Alhaji Usman Idris,who hails from Zaria, speaks of growing up and associating with the former District Head of Zangon-Kataf. His words ‘When I was a boy in secondary school,the former District Head of Zangon-Kataf who died, was a bosom friend of my father. Whenever he comes to Zaria, I leave my apartment for him. He’s a Christian, and I go to his family to spend my holidays’.

Reverend John Davun, the Pastor who found refuge in Alhaji Idris’ house, tells Daily Trust ‘If a Muslim Brother would save me because of my Faith, I would give him kudos for that. As a Christian I would embrace him. Afterall, Christianity is all about peace.’

An Imam patrols

Aminu Abdullahi Yusuf is an Imam of the Misbahul –Islam Foundation Mosque, Unguwar Rimi, Kaduna. During the crises his efforts saved more than three Churches from being burnt to the ground. This is because he organized patrols through the area. No wonder he still retains a slim athletic build. His words ‘I was at home when I received a phone call that trouble had started in Tudun Wada. I went out and saw a ball of smoke, and I went straight to the District Police Officer. The DPO was happy to see me. I asked him to give me two policemen, because when trouble started in the past I would take two policemen inside my car,and we would go street by street, line by line to see how we could keep the peace. What I did was to tell everybody coming out to go back inside. So we would be able to control the situation by this method.If any crises ever occurs I had the habit of instantly calling the Pastor of the neighbouring Church, or he would call me. We coordinate very well.’ April 2011 was very similar to previous occasions when he did his patrols. According to him ‘Unguwar Rimi was already occupied by hooligans. We went street by street ,and we patrolled around all the houses, and we were able to prevent the loss of lives or properties. The policemen were given the order to shoot at sight. I asked them not to shoot anybody, as this would escalate the crises.’ He says that he and the DPO were regularly communicating throughout the period, by means of their mobile phones.’ This went on for two days, from morning till night. It was hectic. We saved three Churches by this effort. Usually, when there is a crises in Unguwar Rimi, we make special efforts to protect the Churches. So,this time the Churches in Bakin Kasuwa, and also the one at Low Cost were all protected.’

Debt Mismanagement

In 2000, perhaps as a sign of "international community" support for the year-old Fourth Republic, the Federal Republic of Nigeria and the International Monetary Fund reached a debt-rescheduling agreement. Our annual payments to bilateral (Paris Club) creditors were reduced from $2.3billion to $1billion, while annual payments to multilateral agencies (IMF, World Bank) and foreign private (London Club) lenders were cut from $1billion to $700million.

Combined payments to all foreign creditors was in effect reduced to $1.7billion-a-year. Payments to domestic (i.e. Nigerian corporate and institutional) creditors averaged $1.2billion a year, so total annual spending on debt servicing was about $2.9billion. The $1.6billion balance cut from our annual payments may have been subject to annual capitalization. I am not sure of this, but were it to have been the case, it would not substantively change the conclusions of this post.

Read this Vanguard article on Finance Minister Ngozi Okojo-Iweala and our burgeoning federal debts. Pay attention to these paragraphs:

Looking back at Nigeria debt’s profile and services in the last five years for which data are available, $2.335billion was spent by the Federal Government to service both internal and external debt in 2009. This amounted to about 50 per cent drop in the amount used for debt service in year 2008 which stood at $4.055billion. Before the debt relief of 2006, Nigeria spent $8.0429billion to service debt in 2006 and $10.1072billion in 2005.

Figures released by the Debt Management showed that in 2005 Nigeria used $8.940 billion to service its external debt paying only $1.1662billion to residents in Nigeria as domestic debt service. Nigeria’s obligation to foreign creditors in terms of debt service dropped slightly in 2006 to $6.729billion while what it used to settle due domestic debt and interest on outstanding loans inched up to $1.3137billion. With debt relief in 2006 its obligations to foreign creditors in terms of debt service nose dived southward with the payment of only $1.022billion as external debt service and $2.1629billion as domestic debt service.

I do not know if the interpretation of the numbers as expressed in those paragraph belongs to the writer of the article or to the DMO. The language conveys the impression that Nigeria lowered its annual debt service payments from a whopping $10 billion in 2005 to just $2.3 billion in 2009.

But there are crucial explanatory facts that have been omitted from the paragraphs.

Under the terms of Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala's debt cancellation deal, Nigeria had to pay $12billion to the Paris Club in order to receive the $18billion write-off. That $12billion payment was made in two (or three) tranches in 2005 and 2006; the DMO numbers for debt service payments in 2005 ($10billion) and 2006 ($8billion) in the quoted paragraphs above are comprised of that $12billion, as well as the regular debt service payments that would have been made for those two years. Breaking down the $18billion in total debt service paid in 2005 and 2006 combined gives:
(a) $12billion, the fee for the debt cancellation; and
(b) $5.8billion (at $2.9 billion-per-year) in regular payments to the Paris Club, multilateral agencies, London Club (private foreign creditors) and domestic creditors.

It would have been more appropriate for the DMO or the article's author to have said that our annual debt service payments had gone down from $2.9 billion in 2005 to $2.3 billion in 2009. This is obviously much less impressive-sounding, particularly in light of the fact that we paid $12billion for the privilege.

The counter-argument would be that $600million/annum would add up to $12 billion over 20 years. Add to this any avoided capitalization of the reduced portion of our payments per the initial agreement in 2000 with the IMF and other creditors.

This isn't a good counter-argument. If you held $12billion in potential investment funds, you wouldn't give it all away in exchange for $600million-a-year in money that will be eaten up by recurrent expenditure.

At the time of the debt deal, we were told we would save $1 billion/annum or (as they frequently said) "$20billion over 20 years", and that these funds would be allocated to the Millennium Development Goals. At that time, I wrote an essay questioning this on the following bases:
(a) You could earn the same amount of money over 20 years from compounded interest by simply investing the $12billion, while maintaining your principal;
(b) $12 billion properly invested and leveraged could have a multiplier effect on the GDP in excess of $1billion-a-year;
(c) The savings were being over-estimated because Nigeria would definitely start borrowing again, which would mean debt service payments to foreign creditors would rise again from the alleged "$0" to a new number that would cut into the so-called $1billion/annum savings; and
(d) $1billion/annum would not make much of a difference in the Nigerian federal budget, or to the Millennium Development Goals, and as such was not worth the loss of $12 billion in potential investment funds.

These are the DMO's figures on the federal government's ballooning domestic debt:

2005 = $11.83billion

2006 = $13.81billion

2007 = $18.58billion

2008 = $17.69billion

2009 = $21.87billion

2010 = $32.5billion

2011 = $40billion

Somehow, the federal government has racked up at least $28 billion in new debt in just 6 years (2005-2011)!.

The upward spike in domestic debt between the end of 2009 and the end of 2011 may have been linked to the global financial and economic crises, but may also have been driven by the effect of the approaching 2011 Elections. The only clearly identified case of election-year largesse was revealed by the junior minister in the Finance Ministry to the Senate; he said the 2011 budget included funding for only two months of the "fuel subsidy" (i.e. up till February), but the government had decided to continue paying the subsidy past February for fear of losing the 2011 Elections (held in April).

There were likely other expenditures directly and/or indirectly driven by politics. On a related note, the $4.055billion in debt service paid in 2008 (as opposed to the normal $2.3 billion) may have been linked to late payments from 2007 delayed due to spending spikes associated with the 2007 Elections.

As our public debt-load continues to rise, annual debt service payments will have to rise too. Eventually, we will return to payment levels extant before the 2005 "cancellation" deal, and shortly thereafter to payment levels from before the 2000 IMF deal. And for this, we paid over $12billion in savings.

And what has happened to our savings anyway? In the last six years we have:

(a) Spent $12 billion in reserves on the debt cancellation deal;
(b) Spent $20-$30 billion in reserves defending an artificial Naira/Dollar exchange rate;
(c) Spent $10 billion of our reserves to bail out banks caught in a "toxic asset" problem of their own creation.
(d) Spent an unknown (by me) total amount on other industrial interventions.

This adds up to $42 billion at least, but is definitely more than that. The first three were not what you might call "productive" investments; I hope someone studies the impacts of the fourth. This is where our external reserves went.

For the record, I advocated a firm and direct intervention in the banking and financial sector to fix the "toxic asset" problem. From the start I have said I do not like it, but it was (and is) economically necessary. But it is still an avoidable waste. The USA and Canada are deeply integrated economies, but Canada's banking industry fared better than its southern neighbour's when the global crises hit because they were better-regulated.

Nigeria would always have been affected in some way by the global financial crises, but our "toxic asset" problem was self-created, driven by the action of our banking industry and the inaction of our regulators. And our all-too-obvious stock market bubble was bound to "pop" even if there had never been a global crisis. Our banking/financial industry, regulatory agencies, government, and political parties (especially the PDP) bear the blame for our problems.

Personally, I think the banks should be made to repay the Nigerian public the full cost of the bailout. They don't have to do it this year, or even next year. We can wait until they are back to full health. But we should make them repay our money , though that is a different argument for another day.

With little debate or discourse, public debt is becoming a serious problem, and not just at the federal level. The states are wallowing ever deeper in debt; incoming governors always blame their predecessors for leaving behind a fiscal mess, but then work very hard during their terms to expand the mess, before finally leaving office to be accused by their successors of leaving behind a fiscal mess.

We are told that it isn't a problem, because our economy is bigger and the ratio of debt to GDP is smaller. But this isn't an excuse for racking up unproductive debts.

Brief comments

Mustapha Chike-Obi, the head of AMCON told the Senate Committee on Banking, Insurance and other Financial Institutions that the 8 banks which received =N=620 billion in emergency bailout funds in 2009 have repaid the full amount to the government

What he did not say is the banks were able to make this repayment because AMCON paid over =N=1.2 trillion for the banks' toxic assets. When you blow away the fog, the Government/CBN/AMCON more or less gave the banks =N=600 billion in bailout funds, wrote off the bailout money, and then gave the banks an additional =N=600 billion for their toxic assets, on top of extra money poured into the nationalized banks to recapitalize them.

The bailout is not something I like, but I have always said that it was necessary. With that said, it would be good for Nigerians to understand how much the whole thing will cost us when all is said and done. Because we cannot go back to the days of letting the banks and the regulators get away with knowingly doing the wrong things; when they do that, we end up left with a choice of either coughing up billions we don't have to fix the industry, or watching the industry falter with problematic effects on the wider economy (which, by the way, is still growing).

In other news, the Code of Conduct Tribunal has decided it does not have jurisdiction to try Lagos State Supreme Godfather Bola Ahmed Tinubu for corruption.

Note, they did not say he was innocent. They said they were not the arena for him to be properly charged. Long story short, the Federal Government and the Peoples Democratic Party have made their point, letting Tinubu know that he is free to do what he does so long as he limits what he is doing to the constituencies they have allowed him to have.

By the way, last weekend the PDP somewhat controversially won the Kogi State gubernatorial elections over an ACN candidate backed by Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Am I being too cynical in pondering whether Tinubu got the intended message?

Events in Health Care

I have posted substantively in a while.

The University of Benin Teaching Hospital performed the first stem cell transplant in Nigeria. The patient was a 7-year old with sickle cell anaemia, and the donor was his 14-year-old brother.

This is wonderful news, and I wish the child a full and complete recovery.

The cost of the surgery seems rather prohibitive for most Nigerian families. I like the underlying idea behind the newish the National Health Insurance Scheme, though it comes with the usual problems with government bureaucracy and the usual unclear policy direction. It is not likely to have the resources to support even a basic level of healthcare for the majority of Nigerians, but it is a platform from which a this level of care for the majority of Nigerian citizens.

Lagos State has its own public Health Insurance scheme. It began with a pilot project back in 2008 which has been since been expanded . The Lagos State government nevertheless admits the reach of the scheme will be far from universal, given that the majority of the state's population is in low-income, "informal" employment not covered by the scheme

Having said that, we have to think carefully about how to advance these programmes and in what direction. I am not being cynical. Let me explain myself.

There is this thing we do in Nigeria and in Africa. If we see that Europe is rich and has a European Union, we rename our non-functioning continental organization "African Union". If Europeans create a single currency called "euro", we start advocating a single African currency called "afro". If Europe switches from three continental club championships (Champions Cup, Cup Winners Cup and UEFA Cup) to two continental club championships, we follow suit, and we copy the names they use.

Rather than think about what works for us, we have become shallow mimics of what we see other people doing, creating an endless series of facades designed to look like something without actually being that thing -- and I say this without delving into the question of whether the things we are mimicking are relevant to Nigeria/Africa in the first place.

Coming closer to home, the USA has an FBI, so Nigeria creates an FIIB. The USA has an FDA, so Nigeria creates a NAFDAC. Ex-dictator Ibrahim Babangida named his two artificial political parties the Social Democratic Party and National Republican Convention, which were alleged to lean a little to the left and right respectively, like the USA's Democratic and Republican parties.

So here is my problem. Changing the name of the "Organization of African Unity" to "African Union" and mimicking all the unnecessary institutional structures of the European Unions has not in any way, shape or form advanced the continent's strategic interests. I could say the same thing for the other mimicries.

I get the impression that the inspiration behind our relatively new National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) was the United Kingdom's NHS. I worry that an official or politician, desiring to seem like he was doing something about the issue, just created a new agency/bureaucracy with a name that he or she is familiar with from his or her days as a student in the UK.

This is not to say that it cannot be made to be successful, but that I am not aware of any national debate on what our public health insurance scheme should be, who should or shouldn't be covered by it, what should or shouldn't be covered by it, should it be state-based or federal or both (and if both, who handles what), and most importantly of all, how we should fund it long-term.

I do not think a Nigerian "NHIS" would succeed in the short-, medium- or long-term if it is designed to be a simulacrum of the British "NHS", but that is a conversation/argument to have if and when our country actually gets around to deciding properly how to handle it.

To be honest, those countries that have generous welfare states have never really been able to afford it, regardless of what their politicians have told them over the decades. The conditions that allowed them to act uneconomically are coming to an end and will probably never return.

This something no one really thinks about. When Imo State Governor Rochas Okorocha announced a scheme to begin making stipend payments to schoolchildren in Imo State, he was roundly praised. I am too lazy right now to find the links, but I do believe Okorocha has either implemented or is planning to implement free healthcare and free education up to secondary school.

These popular and populist measures always earn politicians praise as "achievers" and "action governors" who have "pro-people" policies. Nobody pays much attention to the fact that the state's public debt starts to sharply rise, that spending on other vital areas (like roads, particularly in the Southeast) get squeezed or wiped out, or that projects begin with great fanfare but are then abandoned because funds run out.

Understand me. I am not saying this is a bad thing per se. Brazil's Bolsa Familia has not only raised living standards, but has kept a lot of children in school who would otherwise have dropped out (something Imo State has to worry about). But on the other hand, Brazil is a subcontinental country with the world's 10th largest GDP and is fast rising higher up the GDP list (it will overtake the United Kingdom in the near future). Where Brazil's richest state, Sao Paolo, has a bigger GDP than all of Nigeria, Imo State is not even Nigeria's richest state....

.... and most of our 36 states are already committing a problematic proportion of their revenues to servicing ever-growing (and unmonitored) debts.

Improving social welfare in Nigeria will be a complex task that involves balancing what we want to do against what we can do.

Unfortunately, there is not much debate about this in our federal republic. I keep coming back to my disappointment with the fact that the 2011 Presidential Election was deciding based on nothing more complex than whether you thought it was (vote Buhari) or was not (vote Jonathan) still the North's turn in the North/South Rotational Presidency system. Ours is a three-tier federal system, so this was neither the only electoral race nor the only "issue" at stake at the polls, but it is a good indicator of the level of the "debate" surrounding the election.

And no, I am not suggesting that we Nigerians are not interested in the important, substantive issues. Quite the contrary. Start a conversation with a group of Nigerians on the substantively important issues, and you will get a myriad of very serious opinions on the way forward. You will not agree with all of the opinions, but that is (supposed to be) the nature of democratic politics.

What annoys and flabbergasts me is the fact that our politics has NEVER reflected our debates and discussions on the vital issues facing the federal republic ... and the the fact that we the people are actually quick to drop our concerns to rally behind the divisive laagers the politicians stoke.

Another from Asuquo EB

Culled from BusinessDay

On the Economy

THE GOOD

The Nigerian middle-class is growing demographically, expanding to make up 23% of the population according to Business Day. It is also getting wealthier, incomes rising in tune with the growth in the GDP.

Some of you, particularly those who live "abroad" may have done the Naira-to-Dollar conversion on Business Day's figures, and might be thinking this is not a lot of money we are talking about. But you would be missing the point if you did that. Let me put it this way, read the millions of articles praising places like Brazil, China and India for cutting poverty and growing their middle-class, and you will find that these are exactly the income numbers they used to make the optimistic case for the improvement in social welfare in those economies.

We Nigerians are an entrepreneurial people. As we say in pidgin, e go betta.

THE INTERESTING

Read this interview of Alhaji Sani Aminu Dutsinma, published by Daily Trust. He discusses non-interest banking, avoiding the sensationalism surrounding Sanusi Lamido Sanusi's move to establish guidelines for the establishment of non-interest banking institutions, and providing real information about what exactly is being proposed.

THE WORRYING

There is a difference between capitalism and the sort of the sort of thing that happens when business moguls and politicians collaborate to transfer publicly-owned de facto monopolies into private hands.

Why is the Securities and Exchange Commission in such a rush to "demutualize" (euphemism for "privatize") the Nigerian Stock Exchange? If ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo was still in office, I would have predicted they would "sell" it to Transcorp.

As near as I can tell, the current "Mutual" structure does not mean it is owned by government, rather that it is "owned" (sort of) by the members of the Stock Exchange (i.e. by anyone with trading rights on the Exchange).

I suppose the SEC would justify their move by pointing to the fact that many of the world's biggest stock exchanges demutualized in the last 20 years. We Africans like copying whatever we see other people doing, even if it is not relevant to our situation.

But more importantly, the demutualization of the world's major stock markets was one of several key parts of the process that led to the Great Recession, the global economic crisis of the last four years. It is not a good idea, no matter what doctrinaire ideologues might tell you.

THE UNCLEAR

It is probably the fault of the journalist who wrote this article, or maybe of the editor who published it. But you can make up your own mind after you read this report of a press conference held by Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala at the conclusion of the IMF and World Bank Annual Meetings.

To me, it seems to say a lot without saying anything. If she was quoted properly, she does seem to be laying all our problems at the door of the IMF, IFC and World Bank (and China), seemingly in the (unrealistic) hope that they will solve the problems for us. On the other hand, she was being asked about the IMF and World Bank Annual Meetings, so maybe she was just focusing on what those multilateral bodies could do for us. And on the third hand, she is career World Bank bureaucrat, who probably thinks that the road to Promised Land runs through the Bretton Woods.

Good news on the banking front

It appears the long-running banking industry bailout and restructuring programmes are on the road to success. And the good news seems to have lifted the stock market.

Troubling data from our prisons

‘74% of prison inmates un-convicted’

About 35,000 (representing about 74 per cent) of the over 48,000 inmates languishing in Nigerian prisoners are un-convicted while majority had spent years in jail before their trial commenced, a rights group has said.

The Legal Officer, African Program of Open Society Justice Initiative Professor Chidi Odinkalu made the remarks yesterday at a press conference organized by the Rights Enforcement and Public Law Centre (REPLACE) in Abuja.

I wonder if these statistics are true. I do not trust the government's numbers, but I am just as dubious of numbers introduced by NGOs and multilateral agencies. It is quite unfortunate because accurate statistics are vital for economic planning.

It would not be so bad if the government were using real statistics in its internal planning while feeding we the people rosy-but-fake statistics. Unfortunately, I fear our government deceives itself every bit as much as it deceives us.

As for the NGOs and multilateral agencies, lets just say that I am continuously amazed at their ability to project population (and health, education, etc) figures for Nigeria when we have never had a fully credible census at any point in our history.

Nonetheless, this NGO, the Rights Enforcement and Public Law Centre, makes a very important point. It doesn't matter if the "real" percentage is 74 or 54 or 94, the truth is the majority of citizens languishing in our prisons have not been convicted of anything. And many of them, who might actually be innocent, end up serving more time awaiting trial than they would have been sentenced to if they had been found guilty.

Inland Waterways to become Inland Superhighways

Dredging of the River Niger from Baro to the coast is mostly complete. The Federal Government has insisted from time to time since July that there are plans to dredge the River Benue as well. It is apparently part of the Ministry of Transportations "Nigerian Transportation Masterplan"

The dredging of the two major rivers is part of a drive to use the inland waterways as commercial corridors, as shown in the map below (click to enlarge):

[Disclosure: I got the map from the Nigeria pages of SkyscraperCity, though I can't recall which specific thread I got it from]

Business Day's Asuquo EB on recurring crises in Jos

Culled from the excellent publication Business Day 15th September 2011.

Scapegoating "non-indigenes"

Governor Theodore Orji of Abia has just been criticized for "disengaging" (i.i. sacking) non-indigenes in the Abia State Civil Service.

Governor Fashola of Lagos State "deported" (as though they were citizens of a foreign country) 3,029 non-indigene "beggars" to their "states of origin". (If you don't trust The Nation, here is a link from NEXT).

This sort of thing has happened frequently over the decades, in every state. For the most part, you cannot predict when a state governor will whip out the "scapegoat non-indigenes" card, except when new states are created from old states; the tendency is for the old state to sack all indigenes of the new state who remain in what had until recently been a shared state bureaucracy.

I complain rather frequently that not much discourse or debate occurs before policy is implemented in Nigeria. But it is not just a before-the-fact problem, it is an after-the-fact problem too. We go around in circles on issues (for example electricity) not simply because not much thought went into the policy in the first place, but because after the policy has failed nobody really gives much thought to why it failed. The popular thing is to classify the failure as being the result of "corruption" or "the Nigerian factor" or blame whichever region/ethnicity/religion of the country we do not belong to, blah, blah, blah.

Then a few months or years pass, and we do the same thing again, with the usual fanfare (and lack of discourse and debate), only be be shocked, shocked I tell you, when the thing doesn't work as well as promised.

Let me ask a question.

What was the effect on important statistics (e.g. unemployment, poverty, crime rate, etc) of sacking non-indigenes from your state civil service or deporting "non-indigene" beggars to their states of origin?

I don't just mean in the present instance (Orji and Fashola) but historically. Our states have done things like this so many times that we have (or should have) built up more than enough data to make an empirical, peer-reviewable set of findings on the efficacy of scapegoating non-indigenes in the name of serving indigenes.

Do you know of any studies of said effects?

I don't.

Yet our states keep doing it.

I am not going to pretend that I have the hard data. Nobody does, because far too many people don't care, and the few of us who do (me, for example) can have no access to the data because none of our state (or federal or local) governments keeps any such data. If you ask them, they will insist that the programme had fantastic and wonderful effects ... but then our governments lie to us so unabashedly that it has actually become counterproductive for them, in the sense that nobody in Nigeria really believes the government even when the government is telling the truth (assuming they ever do).

So no, I won't pretend to have the data.

But using my ordinary human powers of observation, it occurs to me that scapegoating non-indigenes has NO EFFECT WHATSOEVER on the welfare of indigenes. It is not that it makes their lives worse or makes their lives better, it is that IT HAS NO EFFECT.

It is cruelty for cruelty's sake.

The political/economic powers-that-be and leaders of thought, rather than admit they have no idea how to improve their state, distract and misdirect people by labeling non-indigenes as the source of the state's problems. Getting rid of the "foreigners" (their Nigerian citizenship counting for nothing) is portrayed as the only solution available to the "Action Governor", who duly take action.

In the warped world of our public discourse, this actually garners them popularity from a section of their state's population; lets face it, human beings in general are rather prone to this type of argument. Indeed, the saddest part of the saga is that those sacked or deported are the lucky ones; the unlucky ones become the targets of violent mobs of unemployed, unemployable, destitute youths who see what possessions the non-indigenes have as having been taken at the expense of "sons of the soil" like themselves.

On a different but similar note ....

Former FCT Minister Nasir El-Rufai rendered as many as (or more than) 800,000 people homeless by bulldozing their dwellings in and around Abuja. According to him, "Abuja is not for everyone," by which he meant the Capital City of the Federal Republic was not meant for the poor. It was not built for poor economic migrants, people El-Rufai thought should go back to their states of origin instead of messing up his shiny-shiny Abuja with their dishevelled presence. The people who should have questioned El-Rufai, be they legislators or the Nigerian commentariat, were full of praise for him for trying to reimpose the outdated, obsolete, unrealistic-from-day-one Abuja "masterplan".

But seriously, does anyone think that any amount of bulldozing will stop poor people from migrating to Abuja? And does anyone think the high cost of accommodation in the city won't inspire the creation of "informal" settlements?

If you don't masterplan for poor people showing up, that won't stop poor people from showing up. Why was there no debate and no discussion of replacing the unrealistic masterplan with a new one that took REALITY into consideration?

I just don't understand how and why it is politically and socially acceptable to try to deport Nigerians from Abuja or any other state in which they live. Because that is all they are doing ... trying.

Eventually, the people return, and in bigger numbers.

You can adapt your development planning model (assuming any exists) to reflect rational and realistic expectations in terms of the influx of economic migrants, or you can continue trying to deceive people that you are doing something by harassing, discriminating against and or deporting non-indigenes.

Central Bank

You've probably heard by now that the Central Bank of Nigeria, the National Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Asset Management Company have "nationalized" four banks.

I've been an advocate of forthrightly and determinedly fixing the mess in our banking industry ... but I hope someone, somewhere is keeping a tally of the cost. We've spent billions so far, and it looks like we will spend billions more.

I am on record, on this blog, as saying the Federal Republic could probably afford to spend $10 billion (=N=1.5 trillion). At the time, this seems the most trustworthy estimate for the amount of "toxic assets" on our banks' books. This being Nigeria, I am not sure what we have spent so far; I would like to know if we have breached the $10 billion barrier -- because if we have, my opinion on the continued bailout will change.

In other Central Bank news, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, the Central Bank Governor, wants =N=2 trillion in pension funding unlocked so it can be used as capital to finance infrastructure projects.

Let me choose my words correctly.

The thing about Sanusi is he is a politicians masquerading as a Central Banker. Wait, wait, before you get the wrong idea, I mean it in the best way possible.

When he was first appointed to head the CBN, I was happy about the appointment.

Most public figures in Nigeria are "blank"; as a citizen, you have no idea what is in their mind. We shouldn't be surprised, because most of them don't have anything in their mind beyond the acquisition of money, power, women or some combination of the aforementioned. I am frequently dismayed by the realization that people in positions of economic and political power do not seem to have spent so much as one second thinking deeply about the issues.

When they are forced to express an opinion, they just regurgitate, as though it were fact, one of several colloquial assumptions that float around in Nigerian public discourse. The decisions we make, and actions we take, based on these assumptions have generally led us down the wrong path. Yet, no one ever truly interrogates these assumptions, or subjects them to empirical analysis.

Sanusi, on the other hand, was someone for whom I could say I had some idea of what his thought-out opinions were on the issues. I had been reading his essays and transcribed speeches for years before his CBN appointment. Sometimes I agreed with him, sometimes I did not, but you could always tell that he was thinking and not simply regurgitating.

He always sounded like a politician (hence my comment above, which was meant, as I say, in the best possible sense). He never, too my knowledge, wrote about the intricacies of the banking system or of national/continental/global finance. It was mostly sociopolitical and sociocultural commentary, and his comments on economic issues were less the data projections of a banker and more the talk of a politician advocating a development agenda.

Thus, I am not surprised that Sanusi has been using his CBN position to interject himself in economic policy areas that lie outside the constitutional remit of a Central Bank governor.

He has intervened in the Agricultural industry. He has intervened in the Electricity industry. And he is intervening in Infrastructure. And while I am still for the most part supportive of his interventions in the Banking/Insurance/Finance sector, I will be honest and tell you that I think some of his actions should have been policy decisions of the federal executive and legislature in tandem ... and not the decision of a single man.

I'd like to say that Central Bank governors are not elected, and that certain kinds of decisions are appropriately left to branches of the government that are elected ... but it is a difficult argument to make when those branches of government are intellectually moribund. Whatever is "constitutionally" proper, the unfortunate "practical" reality is if Sanusi waits for the Aso Rock and the Assembly to generate/initiate and legislate/approve strategically necessary initiatives, he (and we the people) will be waiting forever.

But this, ironically, is my problem with Sanusi's desire to unlock the pension funds for the purpose of infrastructure investment.

Entities like the IMF and World Bank are wrong when they say we should make the investment environment suitable for "foreign investors".

Our strategic priority is, was, and will always be making the investment environment suitable for domestic investment. Nigeria will not be saved or transformed by outside investors; if anything those foreign investors will only arrive in bulk to join in chopping after we Nigerians have already done all of the heavy lifting of economic transformation.

As such, it would of major benefit if we could unlock pension funds for investment in capital infrastructure.

The problem is Nigeria's political, constitutional, legal and policy framework are ... problematic. The way we handle major infrastructural projects, even in supposed showcase states like Lagos, is ... problematic. Our regulatory framework is ... problematic. Our law (and contract) enforcement is .... problematic. Our system of documentation and data-gathering has produced a country that thinks all of its football players are over-aged, and that doubts every Census that has ever been held.

In fact, Sanusi knows the environment is problematic. If he didn't, he wouldn't be trying so hard, and so often to bypass the Federal Government and essentially dictate Nigerian development policy from his perch at the Central Bank. Everything that Sanusi does is a loud announcement of his lack of confidence not only in the executive and legislature, but in the judiciary too. Heck, Sanusi has become the judge, jury and .... the man who sacks errant bank bosses who should probably be behind bars.

Do we really want to pour our PENSION funds into such an environment?

George W. Bush, the ex-president of the United States, suggested investing his country's pension assets in the stock market. Had his plan succeeded, the US social security fund would have taken a massive hit. Yes, this is a simplification of what Bush planned, I know, but you get why I am concerned.

We shouldn't put the cart before the horse.

Reforms first. Investment later. Without the reforms, the investment will likely be wasted.

Sanusi should have run for President. And he and his allies should have built a multi-ethnic political faction to fill enough Assembly seats and state governor's mansions to put a reform agenda squarely in practice ... as a prelude to subsequent massive investment in infrastructure.

PS: It has not escaped my attention that the =N=2 trillion that Sanusi is seeking to unlock for Infrastructure is roughly equivalent (when converted) to the $12 billion that Nigeria gifted the Paris Club in exchange for what was called debt cancellation. I have argued (in less detail on this blog; in greater detail elsewhere) that Nigeria would have been better off spending that money on Infrastructure, using it to leverage even more investment than the $12 billion corpus. Alas, in Nigerian "democracy" there is no real debate about issues; things just happen without anybody inquiring empirically as to whether there is a better thing we could have done with the resources. Say to anyone, "but this is a waste", and they will say to you "Well, if they didn't spend it on XYZ, it just would have been stolen anyway." Which says a lot. All said and done, Nigeria borrowed something like $19 billion from the Paris Club, but paid the Paris Club something between $55 billion and $60 billion -- this being Nigeria, the exact numbers are unclear.

Asuquo E.B.

This image is culled from BUSINESS DAY.

I am a daily reader of the excellent newspaper Business Day. For the record, they have paid me nothing for the "endorsement".

Nor have I received anything for telling you this: "Asuquo E.B.", their resident editorial cartoonist, is quite good at his craft. His jabs are pithy and well-directed 98% of the time.

Per the other 2%, well, he did something I don't think anyone in his position should do -- he took sides during the 2011 Presidential Election. He is a citizen, fully entitled to cast his vote for the candidate of his choice, but there is a difference between a satirist and a political propagandist, and Asuquo's election-season bias affected his work.

Still, no two people agree on everything all the time.

I look forward to enjoying Asuquo E.B.'s work for years to come.

And just in case anyone is wondering, I am NOT opposed to interest-free banking (a.k.a. "Islamic Banking"). We should do whatever it takes to bring the majority of Nigerians into the banking system. Indeed, we should forget about what other countries do or do not do and stop trying to mimic Europe, North America or West Asia (a.k.a. the "Middle East"). A proper banking system suited to the environment of Nigeria would be a mix of forms that are otherwise considered "formal", "informal", and "traditional". Somehow, we have to draw it all together into a larger, stronger whole. And if the introduction of interest-free banking will spur on a deepening of the capital market in parts of the country that are currently "under-banked", then I am all for it.

Explain it to me

Someone I know accused one of our state governors of staging a robbery. State funds meant to pay off workers in a sector disadvantaged by state government policy were taken from the ministry building by "armed robbers".

Someone else I know got angry about what he felt was a baseless accusation.

They began to argue.

I kept quiet and observed.

I find that when I express my views on Nigerian issues amongst my fellow citizens, I am always the statistically negligible minority viewpoint. Let me put it like this, if we were in the First Republic, the only way to unify the supporters of the NPC, AG, NCNC, UMBC, COR and NEPU would be to ask me to speak on the issues facing the First Republic -- instantaneously, they would all gang up to shout me down. And so we would march toward Civil War.

But I digress.

I won't say the governor's name, because this blog post is not about the governor. It is about we the people, we the citizens of the federal republic, as exemplified by these two arguing acquaintances.

The first guy stuck to his guns, insisting Governor XYZ was a crook who obviously staged the robbery so he could pocket the funds, and then issue new funds for the payoff.

You would think the second guy would restrict his argument to telling the first guy that he had no proof and was merely contributing to the ever-growing stack of rumours inundating Nigeria. This would actually be a conclusive, indisputable point.

But no, that is not what he did.

The second guy, instead, said to the first guy "Governor XYZ would not stoop so low" as to stage a robbery.

This baffled me. No, I should say I was flabbergasted. It was without a doubt the stupidest thing I had ever heard.

Let me explain. Governor XYZ won the 2011 gubernatorial elections after a lot of violence, vice and avarice. The "vice and avarice" were camouflaged, but the violence was not. The capital city of the state witnessed, in broad daylight, a running battle between thugs loyal to the Governor and thugs loyal to the Governor's former godfather. They set buildings and vehicles on fire, among other things.

And this is the man that the second guy says "would not stoop so low" as to carry out petty theft?

So let me get this straight.

Governor XYZ will gladly involve himself in mindless, thuggish violence, endangering the security of the citizens of his state, and promoting communal violence .... but is too good for petty theft?

That doesn't make a shred of sense. And he is not alone. It is bad enough that so many of my countrymen doggedly defend their favoured politicians, but what I don not understand is how they bring themselves to believe certain things about those politicians when we can all clearly see by their in broad daylight actions that they are nothing like what their supporters profess to believe them to be.

People will see a politician who has been corruptly looting his entire political career, and tell you they expect him to lead the fight against corruption. That doesn't make sense.

People see a politician who is part of the reason armed militia and communal violence are so pervasive, and tell you they expect him to improve public security. That makes no sense.

People see a politician who would be in prison if our police force, prosecution services and judiciary were efficient, and tell you he is the man to reform all those institutions. Why would you think that?

He wouldn't stoop so low? This from a man who saw the same thing I saw? The same thing everybody saw? My brother, he has already in your full view stooped lower.

Politics, Politicking and Politicians

[NOTE: This post should have gone up last weekend]

Weekly Trust just published an interview with new Imo State Governor Rochas Okorocha. It is your usual, standard, run-of-the-mill political interview, with the usual question and the usual answers, except for one thing -- the first question:

In the past twelve years you have changed political parties like eight times. Does that mean we’ll see you ditching APGA anytime soon?

Governor Okorocha's response was ... what you would expect him to say. But the things our politicians do in search of power bespeaks the ultimate question of what they really stand for. There is pragmatism, and then there is blowing anywhere the wind is blowing as opposed to building an institutional structure that keeps people safe. The wind tends to blow powerfully in the wrong direction, and part of the reason people create government is to protect them against the wind.

As a side note, Daily Times reports Reuben Abati will take over as President Jonathan's official spokesman.

If you don't know, Mr. Abati is on the editorial and management staff of the Guardian and is a long-time, influential columnist on the paper. Sometimes his columns make sense and sometimes they don't (a bit like my blog, some of you might say).

On a serious note the Nigerian media industry suffers because of its financial dependence. The federal- and state-owned media are controlled by the governments, which limits their editorial freedom. Alas, the privately-owned media are bankrolled by powerful plutocrats and politicians, which limits their editorial freedom too. The politicians and the plutocrats have similar interests, so while the private press have a longer leash than their government-owned counterparts, there is only so far they can go in criticizing the status quo -- and there are specific individuals they are not free to criticize.

One of the private newspapers has vociferously criticized everything CBN Governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi has done. At first I couldn't figure out why they were so opposed even to relatively uncontroversial things ... until I discovered the newspaper was owned by the brother of one of the banking chiefs Sanusi threw out. The woman had stolen from her bank and essentially bankrupted it, but that didn't matter to her brother's paper, which is still on a mission of vengeance.

The political preferences of the paper owners also explains why some politicians are praised despite doing awful things, while other politicians have their dirty laundry washed in public. That, and "brown paper bag" journalism.

In any case, one of the most cynically amusing aspects of politics all over the world (and it does happen all over the world) is when a person gets a lucrative government job and starts defending the very things they criticized when they were outside government. As soon as he settles in, Mr. Abati will start intelligently explaining to us all why everything he used to claim was bad is in fact really quite good.

Diezani's dodgy deals

You should read this investigative report from NEXT.

I suppose everyone is innocent until proven guilty, but I am cynically amused that Femi Falana has been retained to defend the interests of the beneficiaries of this reportedly dodgy deal. There is a reason most Nigerians don't take the protestations of "progressives" seriously ....

Former minister of petroleum, Diezani Allison-Madueke, (L) shakes hands with then acting President Goodluck Jonathan after taking the oath of office during the swearing-in ceremony of new ministers in Abuja, April 6, 2010.
Photo Credit: NEXT

Soba back on seat

Back in March of 2011, I wrote this blog post titled "Convivial Form, Violent Substance". At the top of the post is a picture of bruised and battered Hajiya Halima Aminu Tijjani, a female politician from Kaduna State who was brutally beaten up by party political thugs on the orders of Barrister Musa Soba, Kaduna State Chairman of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN).

Nothing happened to Barrister Soba. The police did not arrest or investigate him. His party did not sanction him. Society did not ostracize him.

Part of me wants to be angry with we the citizens of Nigeria, because it seems like we do not care about important things like this. On the other hand, part of me realizes that things like this are NORMAL in our federal republic. For most citizens, getting upset at this is like getting upset at the sunrise, the sunset and the change of seasons. It is part of the natural order, and frankly the only thing that would have surprised people would have been if Barrister Soba did not behave the way he did.

I bring him up again because the Kaduna State ACN suspended Barrister Soba last month, not for his criminality, but because the party didn't do well in the State. It is bad enough that this is the only reason they would suspend him ...

... but what makes it worse is the national ACN (a euphemism for ex-Governor Bola Ahmed Tinubu of Lagos) "nullified the suspension", as reported by the newspaper NEXT.

So, Barrister Soba is back in charge of the Kaduna State ACN.

Sorry, Hajiya Halima Aminu Tijjani. It seems nobody but me gives a damn about you.

Famous Names

Did you know that one country alone accounts for 67% of all the electricity generated in Sub-Saharan Africa? Did you know that country has a population of 50 million, and is facing a crisis because it does not generate sufficient electricity for its people and its economy?

Think about that. Two-thirds of the electricity produced in Africa is not enough for a country of 50 million people to achieve its full economic potential.

Doesn't it make you wonder how we in the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa manage with the 33% share we generate, doesn't it? Makes you think of those night-time pictures taken from space where Africa is the only continent that is totally dark (aside from a bright strip along the Mediterranean coast, and a few dots in South Africa, the 67% country).

Now, you are probably wondering why I am dragging up these old, boring statistics.

Simple reason.

An acquaintance of mine, who happens to be a big fan and supporter of the existing political order in Nigeria, decided to let me know that the world approved of our political system by listing the foreign leaders who attended the recent presidential inauguration.

He was quite proud of this list he sent me, even though 86% of his mostly African dignitaries list was made up of some of Africa's brutal dictators, thieving kleptocrats and the administratively clueless.

The man sent me a list of the sort of leaders that keep Sub-Saharan African in the dark -- literally, figuratively and metaphorically -- and he was so proud that their presence legitimized our inauguration!

There is a fear I have sometimes that things are a certain way in Africa because we the people actively support the things (and people) that guarantee that things will be that way.

Not an eloquent statement of my fear, but you get the point.

Working on something

I haven't posted on this blog in 3 weeks. Much has happened since the elections. Enough time has passed for us to see whether trends are likely to change, whether there have been any paradigm shifts or watersheds crossed.

I am working on something that will hopefully get disseminated beyond the limited confines of this blog. After that, I will be back to commentary.

Predictable and Inevitable

A month ago, I wrote this post about violence in the build-up to the election. It was a blog post. Blog posts are of necessity brief. To fully and exhaustively discuss violence in the 2011 Elections would require a volume of books; a thorough examination of the place of violence in Nigerian politics historically would require a library of books.

One of the things I pointed out (perhaps not as clearly as I would have wanted) is the connection and (oddly enough) disconnection between political VIPs and the armies of thugs that wreak violence in the name of politics.

The violence in Akwa Ibom was ostensibly "PDP" against "ACN", but (as noted in the post) it had little or nothing to do with Goodluck Jonathan (PDP President), Nuhu Ribadu (ACN Presidential candidate) or Bola Tinubu (ACN Supremo). It was a turf war between local warlords, ex-Governor Victor Attah and current Governor Godswill Akpabio. Attah may cloak himself in ACN colours but he does not take orders from Tinubu; and it is politically weak Jonathan who needed governors like Akpabio to "deliver" states like Akwa Ibom for him and not the other way around.

That blog post referenced incidents of violence ostensibly involving all the major parties, PDP, ACN, ANPP, CPC and APGA. I say "ostensibly" because each violent outcome was the product of local and individual specifics, local and individual quarrels, local and individual VIPs, local and individual Big Men, local and individual political, economic and social dynamics.

Atop this post was the picture of a bruised and battered woman. Her name is Hajiya Halima Aminu Tijjani. She is a Kaduna State politician who was viciously beaten up by thugs on the orders of Barrister Musa Soba, the Kaduna State Chairman of the ACN. I do not like Bola Tinubu. I do not like Nuhu Ribadu. Actually, I do not like any Nigerian politicians. But the honest truth is neither Tinubu nor Ribadu had anything to do with Musa Soba's decision to beat, batter and bruise Hajiya Tijjani. None of the national ACN leaders asked him to have her beaten. What he did to her was "normal" politics in Nigeria. Go to that blog post and click on the link to the Daily Trust article on the story -- there are examples of other such "muscular" political acts (and bear in mind, most political thuggery doesn't get reported by the media; read this blog by journalist China Acheru about journalists being intimidated into silence in 2007).

But, while the respective VIPs of the different parties do not necessarily give the orders authorizing the violence of their underlings .... they do not publicly or privately condemn those underlings, nor do they lift a finger to try to stop them or their armies of thugs. What they do instead is criticize the violent underlings of all the other parties, while pretending not to notice the violent underlings of their own party. In my prior blog post on this issue, I included links to pre-election articles quoting President Jonathan condemning violent CPC thugs, and candidate General Buhari (rtd) condemning violent PDP thugs. Neither man mentioned or acknowledged the thugs from their own parties. I don't recall Shekarau saying anything about ANPP thugs; Tinubu was silent on ACN thugs; and Peter Obi barely acknowledged that a world existed beyond the borders of the electoral constituency he was trying to manipulate in favour of Dora Akunyili (in part by using thugs of his own).

These "grassroots" political machines go by different colloquial names in Nigerian discourse; a news media pundit or beer parlour discussant, for example, make talk about Chief/Alhaji XYZ's "structures on the ground", when discussing his electoral chances. The local warlords, comparatively low-level bosses who run these "grassroots" machines, are more often than not the direct or indirect employers of the various armies of political thugs who are used for the purposes of intimidation, protection, "manipulation" (i.e. rigging) ... and violence.

Each national government on Earth encompasses so much more than its army, but near-every government on Earth feels it strategically necessary to have an army to defend its domain against encroachment by other national governments.

It works the same way with these "grassroots" machines or "structures on the ground". They are much more than just their violent thug branch, and do much more than rote violence. Nevertheless, each machine or "structure" feels it necessary to hire a gang of thugs lest they become the victims of violent encroachment (or takeover) by a rival machine's thug army.

By the way, the preceding paragraph does more (so much more) to explain 12 years of violence in the Niger-Delta than the unfortunately unexamined claims that the "militants" are fighting to stop the exploitation of the Delta's peoples. Each of the so-called "militant" groups started as the violent branch of a local politician's "structures on the ground"; they fought against each other and terrorized the civilian population in order to secure territory for their respective political sponsors. In between elections, when money from politicians dried up, these "militants" would turn to the financially more lucrative work of blowing up pipelines in order to siphon vast amounts of crude oil for sale in illicit international markets. When election season returns, they go back to working for the politicians who kept the Police and Army from disturbing their oil bunkering operations.

Yes, I know the army struck against specific, particular bunkerers, but it was one of those Ribadu-type things, where a single person who has fallen out of political favour is targeted while the numerous people who are still in favour are allowed to continue business-as-usual. Of course they protected their once-and-future allies. Be serious. This is a "Human" political phenomenon that is not restricted to Nigeria.

In any country in the world, be it a democracy or a dictatorship, people in power are indebted to whoever put them in power and go through a great deal of effort to keep those "constituencies" happy so as to assure their continued support; if the army put you in office, you spend a disproportionate amount of the budget on the army; if unions put you in office, you pass laws that allow union bosses take something to their members when it is time for the next election for union leadership; if corporate money put you in power, you cut taxes for corporations.

The key to understanding why these "grassroots" political machines act with criminal impunity lies in this musing from my prior blog post:

Would the bosses of "grassroots" political machines wield such power without the patronage and protection of the Big Men? Or is it the Big Men who would not wield the power they control without the backing of the machine bosses? Either way, the two groups work hand in hand to dictate political outcomes.

In Nigeria, these "structures on the ground" are the decisive chess pieces wielded by the VIPs and Big Men. Unlike checkers (a.k.a. "draught"), chess is not decided by who has no pieces at the end; you can checkmate an opponent, even if he has "structures" still in play. However, as with chess, you can look at the "structures" available to each candidate, study how those "structures" are arrayed on the board, and come to a conclusion as to who has the higher probability of check and mate.

Insofar as the ACN "structures" are controlled by Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the electoral fortunes of ACN candidate Nuhu Ribadu were entirely in Tinubu's hands; had Tinubu sold his candidature to the CPC per the long-running negotiations, that would have been the end of Ribadu as a presidential candidate (and even now, pundits are speculating that Tinubu cut a last-minute deal with Goodluck Jonathan, by way of explaining why ACN-dominated states went en masse for the incumbent rather than the ACN candidate).

But I digress.

Political VIPs and Big Men rely on these local warlords to "deliver" communities, LGAs, senatorial zones, states and regions on election day. They know what these warlords do. They know what will happen when the warlords go to work. The VIPs and Big Men know what the short-term, medium-term and long-term effects of this type of politics are. Unfortunately for the Federal Republic, the Big Men and VIPs perceive the likelihood of their directly benefiting in the short-term to be sufficient enough to warrant blithely consigning the country to seriously negative medium- and long-term effects.

This is the complicated back-story to the outbreak of violence in the North of the Federal Republic in the aftermath of the Presidential election.

Supporters of Goodluck Jonathan, blame second-place finisher General Mohammedu Buhari (rtd) for the violence. My opinion of Buhari is the same as my opinion of every Nigerian politician, Jonathan inclusive -- I am NOT a fan or supporter. However, the accusers seem to imply that Buhari ordered his supporters to kill their fellow citizens and spread anarchy across a handful of northern cities. This is most certainly a lie. Buhari gave no such order. If anything, Buhari has as much (or should I say as little) control over the thuggish wing of his "structures" as Jonathan has over Akpabio's violent "structures" in Akwa Ibom, or Bola Tinubu over Attah's "structures" in the same state.

On the other hand, they are right to criticize Buhari for his hesitation to fully and properly criticize the violence. With that said, they are quite hypocritical in doing so, because they too hesitate to criticize the violence of their structures too.

Aside from his failure to enforce the criminal laws against violent pro-PDP "structures", I have not forgotten the unseemly quickness with which President Goodluck Jonathan exonerated MEND from culpability in the Abuja bomb blasts before there had been even a cursory examination of the evidence, much less a full and conclusive investigation. Unsurprisingly, "militant" leaders in the Niger-Delta have pledged their unflinching support for him and (ominously) warned against any plot to undermine his government. Look at the list of those making the pledge: Chief Government Ekpemupolo (a.k.a. Gen. Tompolo), Chief Ateke Tom, Alhaji Asari Dokubo, Chief Bibopre Ajube (a.k.a. Shoot At Sight), General Ezekiel Akpasibewei, Farah Dagogo, Africa Ukparasia, Paul Ezizi (a.k.a.Comdr. Ogunbos), Pastor Reuben Wilson, Joshua Macaiver, Ferdinand Amaibi (a.k.a. Busta Rhymes, Tamunegiyeifori Proby (a.k.a. Egbele), Kenneth Opusinji (kula Community), Kile Selky Torughedi (a.k.a. Gen. Young Shall Grow) Bonny Gawei, Aboy Muturu, and Hendrick Opukeme. This is a list of men who should be in prison for VIOLENT crimes committed against Nigerian citizens, Nigerian infrastructure, and against institutions of the Federal Republic like the Army and Police. Yet, here they are, as free as free can be, making veiled threats, while our jails are full of innocent citizens who "await trial" for years on charges for which there is no evidence (like the 13-year-old boy arrested and accused of "attempted murder" by way of throwing a sachet of pure water at the car of the Imo State governor).

There is a point I am trying to make.

You see, I understand the way we have been taught to think. There is a 9 in 10 chance that any Nigerian who has read this blog post up to this point is about to accuse me of being an apologist for the extremists who wreaked violence in the North after the election or of being an opponent of Jonathan (or supporter of Buhari) who is trying to tar Jonathan with the same brush as Buhari.

That is how we have been taught to think.

And that is one of many roots of the problem ... but I will not digress from what I am trying to say.

You see, this is NOT about Jonathan as an individual, NOR is is it about Buhari as an individual. Attacking either one of them as an individual is POINTLESS.

This is about the POLITICAL SYSTEM AS A WHOLE.

The Federal Republic of Nigeria is now, and has seemingly always been, governed by a political process in which violence is a NECESSARY part of the system's functioning. If your body is alive, your lungs are going to breathe; if the Nigerian political system continues to exist as it does today (and always has), there will be violence.

All the finger-pointing at this individual or that individual, at this ethnic group or that ethnic group, at this region or that region, at this religion or that religion .... is entirely besides the point.

Somalia is violent despite being a country of uniform ethnicity and religion. Rwanda has been violent for decades despite being mostly Roman Catholic. Cote d'Ivoire has been a semi-disaster for 20 years despite once being known as a West African miracle. Point being, if you do the things that make violence inevitable, then violence will be inevitable

Be honest with yourself. You know, and I know, that if the Independent National Electoral Commission had declared anybody other than Jonathan the winner of the election, the Niger-Delta "militants" listed above would immediately have started blowing up oil pipelines again. Violence is inherent in our system.

As if this isn't bad enough, the VIPs and Big Men are not as much in control of their respective "structures" as they like to pretend. They don't want to reform, restructure and transform the Police and security agencies. They don't want to reform, restructure and transform our political system. And they don't want to destroy their "structures" in case they may need them. And so, when local warlords go on the warpath, the response of a sequence of governments has been noticeably limp. They first wait to see if the violence will subside on its own, and if it doesn't they send in the Army to frighten the thugs into a ceasefire by means of blasting everything in sight. A few token thugs are taken into custody (though I have never heard of any of them being convicted) .... and life goes on exactly as it did before, with the GUARANTEE of a repeat of the violence in a few weeks or months depending on the circumstances. In fact, one of the most annoying things about government in Nigeria is the fact that everyone in the country has a firm grasp of where/when/why communal violence will break out, yet there is never any sign of the government/police/SSS/etc doing anything to pre-emptively or pro-actively responding to forestall repetitive crises.

Keeping with my earlier metaphor, forestalling violence for them is like you or me trying to hold our breath. We might be able to do it for a while, but eventually we are forced to gulp down huge mouthfuls of air. The same is true for our political system; when the violence gets out of hand, they use the Army to put a stop to it, but ultimately they are all utterly reliant on a brand of politics that makes violence a predictable and inevitable result ... so they open the door, and allow it to happen because they see benefits for themselves in the short-term.