Clay Richie

Nigeria is not a democratic country. Although generally described as a democracy, Nigeria is, in reality, an anocracy. An anocracy is a system of government that is half democratic, half autocratic. In true democracies, authority progresses upwards from the people to a dependent centre. In true autocracies, authority flows downwards from an independent centre to the masses. An anocracy combines the authoritative ideology of autocracy with the institutional processes of democracy. In short, this system uses the negative aspects of one to cancel the positives of the other.

I was shocked by the trenchant reaction to my piece on the July 15 attempted coup in Turkey from at least two persons. The piece titled “Nigerians and the Failed Coup in Turkey” (The Guardian, Sunday, July 17) had fetched a mail and direct messages from a concerned Nigerian who objected to my description of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as a bad guy- an intolerant, arrogant, temperamental dictator who after July 15 could become even more authoritarian.  The fellow praised Erdogan and spoke glowingly about how well the Turkish economy has fared under his watch. I also got a list of current economic indicators on Turkey sent to me.

"A stitch in time saves nine" Ancient Proverb Even before the lowering of the Union Jack on 1st October 1960,certain  forces have asked pertinent questions bordering the 1914 political solemnization of Northern and Southern protectorates by representative of the Crown Lord Legard.The colonial master's amalgamation hatched a federal entity that its experience can't be found in any pre-existing federal structures in developed and less developed worlds.More to that, reasons that instigates units and constituents to hem a federal political setting are totally absent in Nigeria experience.

The worst kept secret before the 2015 elections was that Nigeria’s economy was heading for a rough weather. Following a sharp drop in oil price, the 2015 budget was based on a benchmark of $65 per barrel, compared to $77.50 for 2014. Oil was selling for $115 in June 2014, but was down to $58 on December 17, 2014 when Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, then finance minister, presented President Goodluck Jonathan’s last budget to the National Assembly. Despite the prevailing price of $58, we still fixed the benchmark at $65 — on the expectation that oil would rise to between $65 and $70 in 2015. In medical language, that budget was brought in dead (BID).

Recently , the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) acknowledged in their twitter handle that the level of toxicity that pervades our political discussions, “has reached the level where bridges are being burnt, personal relationships are being strained and an unnecessary tension fills what should ordinarily be patriotic and enlightening conversations on how to move the nation forward.” I agree with PDP. The time to stop the toxicity, hating and ridiculing was due on May 29th, 2016.

President Buhari recently ordered (if that is the right word) the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) to intensify its search for hydrocarbons in the Nigerian sector of the Chad basin (North-Eastern Nigeria).

President Muhammadu Buhari’s inaugural address was too drab for such a momentous occasion. But it had a singular line that mercifully redeemed the entire speech: ‘’I belong to everybody and I belong to nobody’’.

Fellow Africans, exactly twenty-one years ago, on July 25, 1995, I set forth at dawn. My destination was exile. I needed to dialogue with my feet and escape in a jiffy from my dear beloved country without any prior notice. Nigeria was under a most brutal and brutish military dictatorship. Once you were considered a dissident, you were a target for incarceration or extermination. I still don’t know how my name crawled into the evil register but I was accused of knowing about a pirate radio station, first known as Freedom Radio and later changed to Radio Kudirat.

During a visit to Ghana recently, I asked my Ghanaian host, who was taking me through some fascinating places I had missed on my previous visits to the country, why the streets were clearly free of menacing security gates and guards and why most of the buildings were constructed without extra designs consciously made against robbers and burglars.

Around mid-June, one of Africa’s most decorated table tennis players, Segun Toriola, raised the alarm. He said Rio 2016 could be the country’s most disastrous in recent times and no one should wonder why: the athletes have been left on their own to look after themselves.

I wrote a piece recently, a tribute to the late veteran actress Bukky Ajayi and the multi-instrumentalist OJB Jezreel, in which I raised a number of issues, including how in Nollywood today, there is an obsession with the whitening of skin, an anti-Negritude yellowing, what I referred to as “the bleaching, chameleon crowd of Nollywood beauties.” The various reactions to the piece conveniently ignored this subject; two young ladies who felt that I was probing an unpopular theme drew my attention to this. I was reminded that being light-skinned is now the in-thing, indeed the socially acceptable norm, because there is now a universalization of the concept of beauty and self-esteem.

“…I found out that some officers were spending money. I asked, ‘Where did they get the money from?’ They said it was from the Military Intelligence fund… Later, I learnt that General Aliyu Gusau who was in charge of intelligence took import licence from the Ministry of Commerce, which was in charge of supplies, and gave it to Alhaji Mai Deribe. It was worth N100,000, a lot of money then. When I discovered this, I confronted them and took the case (to) the army council… I said if I didn’t punish Aliyu Gusau, it will create a problem for us… So I said General Aliyu Gusau had to go. He was the chief of intelligence. That was why Babangida got some officers to remove me.”

Veteran conservative politician Adamu Ciroma played the role of a party elder very well the other day in a meeting with the Board of Trustees of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). When Ciroma talks politicians should listen regardless of party affiliations. This is because as they say, the elder statesman has seen it all. As a founder of the party that is now out of power, Ciroma expectedly berated the All Progressives Congress (APC) government at the centre as being “ill-equipped for good governance.”

Nigeria is not worth dying for. Why? Because the country does not give a damn; whether you live or die, it does not care. Whether you live or die, it is not bothered. Whether you eat, it cares less. Whether you go hungry, it does not matter to her at all. In Nigeria, everybody is O.Y.O: On Your Own – every man for himself, God for us all. Don’t expect anything from government, because government does not exist. Don’t think anybody cares about you because you simply do not exist.

I just heard with one ear, via Sahara Reporters, that former President Goodluck Jonathan was shocked when his ex-Minister of Aviation, Senator Stella Oduah, met him and claimed she had lost his number.

“What will economic policy look like once the global financial crisis is finally over? Will it resume the pre-crisis consensus, or will it be forced to contend with a post-crisis ‘new normal’? Have we made progress in addressing these issues, or does confusion remain? In April of 2015, the International Monetary Fund gathered leading economists, both academics and policymakers, to address the shape of future macroeconomic policy. This book is the result, with prominent figures—including Ben Bernanke, Lawrence Summers, and Paul Volcker—offering essays that address topics that range from the measurement of systemic risk to foreign exchange intervention.

Growing agitations for self-determination are ringing like church bells across the country. The campaigners have raised questions about the effectiveness of the amalgamation of disparate ethnic nationalities that constitute the geographical entity known as Nigeria. They have questioned the fragile unity that exists in an atmosphere in which various minorities feel they have been marginalized.

Judging by his appointments alone, President Buhari has hardly exuded the “change” slogan of his party, for most government agencies are still manned by members of the old brigade to which he himself belongs. When, therefore, he named a 40-year-old woman, Ms Hadiza Bala Usman, as the new managing director of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), penultimate week, he deserved kudos at least from those clamouring for “generational change”. He was denied this accolade, I guess, by the noise over his lopsided appointments in favour of the north-east.

Following the gruesome murder of Preacher Eunice Olawale by Muslim youths in Kubwa, Abuja over a week ago, the question agitating the minds of a majority of Nigerians is: Who is responsible for protecting Nigerians?

Junaid Mohammed may be the closest thing Nigerians have to a bipartisan gadfly, an equal opportunity traducer of the country’s rulers. A legislator in the Second Republic, Junaid was a frequent thorn on the side of former President Goodluck Jonathan. He once declared that, even if Mr. Jonathan’s father were given the task of evaluating his son’s presidency, the verdict would still come back as a failure.

The Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun has finally confessed that the Nigerian economy is in recession even though I had argued that the economy was already in recession in my article titled "Nigeria's economy is finally in recession" and which was published by an online newspaper on 16 March 2015. ‎Although the Minister of Finance, Mrs Kemi Adeosun immediately allayed the fears of Nigerians saying that we are soon going to get out of the recession.

On December 18, 2013, the Chairman of the House Representative Committee on Finance, Mr. Abdulmumin Jibrin, hired me to come up with some 50 questions the House Committee on Finance wanted to slam on the then Coordinating Minister of the Economy and the Minister of Finance, Ms Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala to prove to the world that she has been mismanaging the country’s economy.

I would like to commence this intervention with the very cryptic statement by president muhamadu Buhari at the opening ceremony of the 55th Annual General Conference of the Nigerian Bar Association, NBA on August 21,2015 where mr president urged the judiciary to support his war against corruption while noting that , “Ability to manipulate and frustrate the legal system is the crowning glory of the corrupt and, as may be expected, this has left many legal practitioners and law courts tainted in an ugly way.”

It is a disturbing irony that Nigerian lawmakers, besides their knack for sponsoring anti-people bills, have gained considerable notoriety for lawless conduct and outright rascality. This conduct, which has attracted untold opprobrium and significantly bastardized the Nigerian identity, is a skewed image of responsible lawmakers.

Sentiment towards the Nigerian economy received a painful blow in July following the shocking reports that the nation had slipped into a technical recession. Africa’s largest economy has been heavily pressured by falling commodity prices, while external global uncertainties continue to expose the nation to noticeable downside risks.

The judiciary in any democracy represents one of the three realms of the government. As a matter of fact, the judiciary is the stabilizer in any democracy basically because if there is any misunderstanding between the executive and legislature, it is always the judiciary that resolves it. It is in this sense that the judiciary plays its role as an impartial arbiter in the affairs of the State. The judiciary’s impartial adjudication in such matters has led to the pedestrian cliché that the judiciary is the last hope of the common man.

It is now clear that President Muhammadu Buhari’s war on corruption has more enemies within the All Progressives Congress (APC) than outside. This is the more reason why the party should get its acts together and reposition for better governance. The farce ongoing at the House of Representatives is another cause for worry and it confirms what some commentators said when the story of budget padding broke early this year that its denouement was far. And that’s why we should encourage the gladiators to talk the more and hopefully commit class suicide in the process.

To understand why President Muhammadu Buhari has been silent over the Fulani herdsmen bloodbath across the country, we have to recount some of his administration’s action so far. This will not only give us a glimpse into the mind of the president, but also that of the herdsmen.

The Esan say it not the illness that kills the sick one; it is the relapse. Relapse, that is negative history repeating itself, is what the All Progressives Congress (APC) must be careful of.

It is no longer news that corruption have increased astronomically in recent years in Nigeria. A skeletal scan through the pages of several newspapers now depict cases of persons fraudulently diverting public funds, former public holders standing trials in different courts for one case of  economic crime or the other. Some suspected persons are allegedly said to be returning part of the looted funds back to the coffers on the government. Assuming, this is true, I’d give kudos to the government for the laudable efforts, which is also giving a signal to the international community that it isn't business as usual anymore.

Last week, the Central Bank of Nigeria confirmed what has been obvious to millions of us: that these are difficult times in Nigeria. To be clear, it is hard to say there was ever an easy time for Nigerians. Yes, there were times—particularly between the late 60s and early 80s—when an educated minority had it good. Yes, for the political class, it is always good to be Nigerian. But, for the majority of citizens, it has never been easy. The story of Nigeria, for the vast majority of us—the unemployed,

If you were a lover of reggae music in the 1970s, you would certainly know “Time Hard”, a hit song by The Pioneers, the Jamaican three-man band. “Everyday,” they sang, sonorously, “things are getting worse.” That song was released in 1972. At the time, Nigeria was producing two million barrels of crude oil per day and selling at an average price of $1.8 per barrel. We were not yet oil-dependent, so the revenue was basically a bonus. By 1974, oil was selling for $11, six times the 1972 price, and our stomach ballooned. We became helplessly hooked on petrodollars. The only song Nigerians could be singing was: “Things are getting better.” The Pioneers would not sell.

When President Muhammadu Buhari first appointed Dr. Ibe Kachikwu as the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), after headhunting the first class Harvard University graduate from the American oil giant, ExxonMobil, he received accolades from different quarters because the appointment was seen as simply putting a round peg in a round hole. Many more such appointments were however expected of the president, who had made it clear that he was going to be his own man.

In October 2010 or thereabouts, Sonala Olumhense, Moses Ochonu, Farooq Kperogi, yours truly, and other members of the NVS Editorial Board interviewed many of the candidates running for President in 2011.

Fellow Nigerians, let me start by saying nothing worries me more than the intractable problems of our dearly beloved country. There are times I wish I could just mind my own business but it seems I’m addicted to the issues and problems of Nigeria.

For those who have followed my writings, it is not news to them that I have no iota of confidence in President Mohammadu Buhari either as a candidate or as President of Nigeria. It is not news that it has been difficult for me to believe that anything good could come out of Buhari’s Nazareth. My convictions are based on his trajectory on the political landscape of Nigeria. A trajectory of corruption, incompetence, deceit, nepotism and a genre of noxious tribalism are the contaminating clouds characterizing his contoured career.

In Nigeria, it seems to excite the governed when the political space is opportune to have a politician with humility. Reason is that Nigeria is one country where a lowly council chairman, when accorded the bigman status, becomes proud, to the disdain of the people he was elected to serve. This is why former President Goodluck Jonathan’s shoeless narrative during the 2011 campaign garnered such mass appeal, and one way how in recent time the Abia State Governor, Okezie Ikpeazu, has managed to maintain good public image since assuming office more than a year ago in May 29, 2015.

It was Thomas Jefferson who said if it were left to him to choose a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, he would not hesitate to choose the latter. I don't think he meant this to suggest that he preferred anarchy to order. Not a man who had seen death and destruction brought on by the American War of Independence. Or one who made this famous remark in Paris, barely two years before the French Revolution.

Nigerians love events and ceremonies.  The engine of governance in fact runs on this special fuel, which in many ways has become an occasional excuse for waste and idleness. I have in the course of work attended and compered many of such events; one thing that I find curious is the obsession with acknowledgements. If you are the compere at any typical Nigerian event, the organizers are bound to give you what they call a protocol list, usually a long list of persons whose presence must be acknowledged. You are also expected to recognize persons, especially if they are government officials, according to an established ranking order.

Some of us have literally been at president Muhammadu Buhari’s ‘throat’ over what we deem to be economically, socially and politically rough and nasty methods and procedures that mr president has been adopting in combating corruption in Nigerian polity and the catastrophic effects on the nation.

In ancient Rome, there was a popular sharp practice among unscrupulous antique dealers and builders where flaws were covered up with wax to create a sense of perfection. Over the years as this practice grew stronger, concerned professionals devised a way to separate their works from those of the charlatans, hence they came up with a tag on their products called ‘sine cera’ which means ‘without wax’.  These two words later formed ‘sincerity’ in our modern English language.

Charity they say begins at home but it seems this saying does not apply to the Nigerian president, Muhammadu Buhari, a man who won the election using the Mantra “Change”, one begins to wonder the meaning of change and if this is what the APC meant when they convinced the non suspecting voters to vote in a Man who ironically seemed set in his ways and may likely not change.

I rented an apartment about a week ago and the compound had a big generator house—that was part of the building plan—where tenants kept their generators. The owner of the compound had already done the generator connections for every flat, so all I had to do was to search the generator house for my wire and plug it to my generator. At first I found this to be a good initiative and thought it to be stress free, then about two days into my stay, I realised that we had adapted our lives to not having power. We had recalibrated our lives to seeing not having power in our homes as normal. We had subtly stopped giving the government the stick and as such we do not even care what happens to the billions that will be budgeted, or was budgeted to provide power that we never saw and might never see. We had become immune, deaf, blind, and dumb to the uselessness of our government. Just like power, we now provide our own security and it is no longer out of place to see communities and private...

Please put me in your prayers… I will soon be going for eye surgery… The situation is getting out of hand… For more than two months now… Anytime I look inside my wallet… I hardly see anything again. —A distressed Nigerian

Last Wednesday, the ‘vexing’ issue of taxation in our country was again brought to the front burner of public discourse when the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism (WSCIJ) held the 8th edition of the Wole Soyinka Media Lectures Series in Lagos. The theme was: “Tax education, national development and the seminal role of the media.”

The killing of the street evangelist, Mrs Eunice Elisha, two weekends ago in Kubwa, Abuja was the final point that made me conclude that something strange and inexplicable has happened to the Yoruba in the past one year.

Yesterday, the Central Bank governor told the Senate that the economy was stagnating, at the same time experiencing a high inflation. Interestingly, he still tried to press the reassurance button. Mr. Godwin Emefiele refrained from calling a spade a spade. Actually, Nigeria is experiencing a stagflation, a word the governor must have tried as much as possible not to use. One country to have experienced a full-fledged stagflation, in recent times, is Zimbabwe.

History will record: That, once upon a time, a kingdom named Nigeria was mired in crises and desperately needed focused and visionary leadership. Instead, according to the scrolls of history, the emperor and the coterie at his court decided that handling ordinary people’s headaches was beneath them. They were sublime agents of change, fine artists in the league of Homer, Virgil and Sophocles, they protested, not houseboys and nannies. So, as their subjects groaned and moaned, these grand artists of power retreated to their studies and produced splendid circus plays. One they called, “You Lost Your Job? Then Jump in Joy, For EFCC Has Arrested Another Dasuki-an!” Another: “Your Children Have No Food? Rejoice, For Obanikoro’s Wife, Daughter Are In Hot Soup!” Another they named, “Who The Hell Needs a Salary When Sarakus Has Just Been Slammed With More Charges?” But their epic production was titled “A Tale of Dino, Tinubs and Senatorial Dogs and Impregnators”.

President Buhari sometime ago stated that “if we don’t kill corruption, corruption will kill Nigeria.” This reminds me of Professor Achebe’s book, the trouble with Nigeria where he also made a similar statement that, ” corruption in Nigeria has passed the alarming and entered the fatal stage; and Nigeria will die if we keep pretending that she is only slightly indisposed.”

One of the signs of a weak democratic state is the absence of real political parties and this is so true of Nigeria’s experience from 1999 till date. We have only had pseudo political parties clobbered together by politicians solely to capture power. Sadly, the situation has not changed for the better. The All Political Congress (APC) has shown us how not to be in power because from all intent and purposes it does not know what to do with power or how to exercise it via a political party.