Clay Richie

Still on Nigeria’s nineteenth century universities operating rigidly in the twenty first century, here is another depressing instance of how the system’s inflexibility is hurting their financial bottomline, defeating the purpose for which they exist, and shortchanging students and potential students. An interlocutor, a stakeholder in the higher education sector, sent me a long, disturbing analysis of how rotten the university system is. Below is a tear-inducing excerpt from his long indictment. Simply put, the NUC is useless as a regulatory agency. It is just another government agency run by a party hack.

Nigerians are all talking about restructuring. Now, that is funny. There are two types of Nigerians: those in government and those awaiting their turn in government. Forget all the talk about the size and potential of Nigeria’s economy. Forget all the talk about business, entrepreneurship, innovation, and the rise of a vibrant new demographic of creators defying the odds to crystallize into a 21st-century transnational elite. That is all puff and powder for there is really only one business in Nigeria and it is called government. Everybody is just really waiting for and on government.

With his latest fulminations, it would appear the transformation of the self-styled military president from an "annullist" to a federalist has turned full cycle. The kind of epiphany we read of biblical Saul morphing to Paul on the road to Damascus.

It’s often said that one person with a belief and courage is a social power equal to ninety-nine who have only interests. Nigeria would seem to have produced such person when president Muhammadu Buhari assumed office on Friday, 29 May 2015, at least judging by his perceived anti-corruption credentials during his stint as a military head of state in the mid-80s.

It’s quite interesting how, despite several months of disappointing domestic data and ongoing recessionary woes, Nigeria remains resilient, with the nation on a mission to stabilize by the end of 2017.

When the Presidency decided that it would not make any statement about President Muhammadu Buhari’s health status on his second medical trip to the UK where he has now spent half of the year, it opened the door for rumours to thrive and fester.

A United Nations (UN) population estimate released last week reaffirmed earlier projection that Nigeria is set to overtake the United States in population by 2050. Titled, “2017 Revision of World Population Prospects”, the UN report added rather ominously that the concentration of population growth in the poorest countries will pose a challenge of improving healthcare, education and equality to end poverty and hunger in most of the developing world.

Last week, Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo met with governors at the Presidential Banquet in Abuja. Obviously, the recent three-month ultimatum by northern youths to Igbo to vacate the north and IPOB’s Kanu renewed agitation for Biafra were on his mind. Osinbajo advised the governors to protect lives and properties of all citizens in their respective states, saying “Nigeria is indissoluble.”

Whoever coined the slogan of “The Big Heart” for Delta State deserves an award, though he failed to add that the big heart functions better in selfishness and criminality. Is it not curious that we now have self-styled militants who buy pages of newspapers begging the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to compel their state governor to sit down and negotiate with them?

On Thursday, June 22nd, 2017, major headlines such as “NHIS: FG Wants Health Management Organisations Scrapped Over Mismanagement of N351bn – Daily Times; “Health Insurance: FG Wants To Scrap HMOs For Mismanaging N351bn – Independent Newspaper and “Health Insurance: FG may scrap HMOs over N351bn fraud – Authority Newspaper hit the news stand.

Not a few tongues have wagged since a radical Northern youth group issued an ultimatum to Igbos to leave the North in three months. Not a few ‘patriots’ have risen to condemn that reckless demand and describe it for what it is: a thoughtless demand by ill-advised youths meant to cause further disaffection amongst the fractious entities that make up Nigeria. The ultimatum was reckless, as has often been restated, but then it is a reaction to another thoughtless, indeed mad, agitation by some more thoughtless and partisan Igbo youths since the 2015 electoral defeat of former President Goodluck Jonathan and the Peoples Democratic Party.

The reaction of some elements in the North to the events of the last few weeks in Nigeria revealed something very shocking - they missed the memo. Take as an example, the Kaduna declaration. Those who searched through their intellectual reservoir and all they could come up with was that declaration, either made a grave mistake in their understanding or simply did not read the memo.

Joe Igbokwe is an official bullhorn for Mr. Ahmed Bola Tinubu, whom he calls “my leader” and the Lagos APC, which apparently makes him partisan to any discussion concerning the Igbo in Nigeria today. Basically, he has taken his stance, and it is frequently a stance in opposition to a general Igbo position. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with this, because the Igbo, by their republican ethos, accept that all men must exercise their conscience, have their opinions, and be allowed to dissent with the general views. The Igbo have a saying, “let even the mad man have his say in the gathering of the kin and not stop him, for who knows, the spirits may relay truth through him.” Many of us have no problem with Joe Igbokwe taking an alternative stance, given that we know what we know as Ndi Igbo, that each man carries his own bag of truth: “truth is like the goatskin bag, and each man carries his own.” That would be both a saying and a parable at the same time, as the Igbo sages thems...

On February 1, 2017, after a series of deliberations with a friend of mine, who is a consultant with one of the largest consulting firms in the world, we decided we would draw up a solution to the Nigerian problem, however feeble our ideas would be.

“Baba just fall my hand! Ha, wetin.” “Which Baba?” “Baba Bubu, the President of all Nigeria.”

In his 1963 book titled ‘The Wretched Of The Earth’,  Franz Fanon wrote on colonialism and how countries could free themselves not just from the clutches of colonial rule, but break its yoke of dysfunctional development or underdevelopment, eradicate poverty and disease and emancipate themselves from the umbilical cord of their oppressors. He was specifically addressing Algerians in their struggle for independence from the French Colonialists in the 60’s. He advised against the path to independence taken by some countries in Latin America that seemed to have encouraged a transition from foreign oppressors to local oppressors, leaving the entire structure that supported colonialism intact.

This week — precisely from the 29th of June — Nigeria will start exporting yams to the UK and America. The government is targeting an annual income of $8 billion from this commodity. Actually, with the right policies there should be enough yams for local consumption and export. So far, many are still waiting for government’s strategy on yam development.

A few days ago, a friend asked me to explain my aversion to the idea of secession as championed by the neo-Biafra advocates of Southeast Nigeria. He had assumed it was the fear, as simplified in a certain series of propaganda, of the North's foreseen inability to sustain itself economically post-breakup.

In many ways, the elites (especially those who hold political office) in Nigeria are the country’s problem. They not only constitute the problem, on many occasions they add to it. Take for instance the current face-off between members of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB and an arrangement of Arewa Youths threatening to eject every Igbo resident in the north.

For the first time in many years, I’m hearing something positive coming from the hallowed chambers of the Nigerian Senate. In a resolution, penultimate week, the upper chamber of the legislature asked the federal executive to forward the report of the 2014 National Conference to it as an executive bill for urgent legislative action. It’s a relief. And anyone who loves Nigeria should support this move.

I want to begin this week’s instalment by responding to a challenge thrown at me by a reader. The reader said India’s relative national cohesion is a consequence of its monolingual character. That, of course, implies that Nigeria’s linguistic plurality is the reason for its tendency toward fissiparity.

The caption for this piece was originally meant to be "Strange Things In A Strange Country" but at the last minute I changed my mind and settled for the above. I decided otherwise because I believed Fayose's presidential ambition (as laughable as it seems) and Senator Melaye's recall conundrum presented more appeal and suitability. Governor Ayo Fayose of Ekiti state and Senator Dino Melaye are two (executive and legislative) reprobates this democracy has thrown up. Standing up to them, exposing their folly and refusing to buy their nauseating political brand remains a duty we owe to our embattled country in defense of her troubled democracy.

Something is wrong with anybody who says there is nothing wrong with Nigeria. We all seem to agree that something is not working. We all seem to concur that this is not the best Nigeria can be. We all seem to believe that something major needs to be done for us to make progress. What we lack is a consensus on what the actual problem is, and what the solution should be. The diagnoses are different and the prescriptions are inevitable different. Those who think the problem is Lord Lugard want disintegration. Those who think it is the law want a new constitution. Those who think it is religion want to set up a caliphate. Et cetera, et cetera.

I never thought I would live to see the day that Sahara Reporters would publish a story alleging, together with supporting documents, that a person reputed to be one of its benefactors, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, the under-performing Governor of Kaduna State, has been systematically engaging in acts of corruption by way of awarding over-invoices contracts to his fronts, family, friends and cronies, without passing these contracts through the due process of tendering and public advertising.

I am especially pleased and indeed privileged to share this special day with you the staff, graduands and proud family members of the graduands of Senior Course 39. We must give glory and thanks to the Almighty God by whose mercy and grace we are able to witness this celebration of achievement.

In the sweltering heat of a serial lynching and killing of Igbo citizens in Asia in 2013, I wrote an article entitled, ‘The Igbo fallacy’. In it, I appealed to the Igbo to de-emphasise the culture of profligacy, decadent opulence, debauchery and vanity which fuels the pursuit of crime by their own.

Fellow Nigerians, I’m sure you’ll agree with me that this is a season of acute paranoia and schizophrenia in our dear beloved country. But we must not give up. We have more to gain in an atmosphere of peace and unity and more to lose in a condition of war and lawlessness.

For quite some time now, there has been a clamour for the restructuring of Nigeria. Not a few people, I inclusive, believe that the solution to the heightening socio-political tension currently being experienced in Nigeria lies in making our federal system of government work better. Since the June 6, 2017 provocative Arewa youths quit order to Igbos to vacate the 19 northern states within three months, many observers had called on the federal government to dust up the 2014 National Conference report for implementation so that the brewing tension can be doused.

In Nigeria, heroism is an easy milestone. The rest of the sane world would laugh at us if they knew. In other parts of the world that we belong to, you cannot gain the heroic status unless you did something really noble and outstanding, and mostly in the service of humanity.

March 15th this year, Boko Haram staged a bloody attack on Magumeri village, Borno state. At least two policemen and several soldiers were killed. What was most worrisome about the attack was the fact that State Security Service, SSS, the Criminal Investigation Bureau of the Nigeria Police, as well as the Civilian-JTF informed an investigative panel that the Nigerian army was alerted of the impending attack and did not act.

At a time when you would think there are enough small fires in the country, the religious army has started yet another small fire in schools. For most of the time this week the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council had to whip out the hoses to douse the brush fire started by the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) over rumors that the Federal Ministry of Education had removed Christian Religious Knowledge from the secondary school curriculum.

So, per Saharareporters.com, Nasir el-Rufai, governor of Kaduna State, who is perhaps Nigeria’s most intolerant and autocratic state chief executive, has apparently been presiding over a contract bazaar for his family, aides, friends, and associates, adding yet another dimension to his growing list of egregiously offensive conduct and abuses of office that includes slyly justifying the genocide in Southern Kaduna, paying “compensation” to the perpetrators, recklessly inflaming the volatile ethno-religious situation in the state, detaining critics, and opportunistically insulting former and present political benefactors, including Obasanjo, Jonathan, Buhari, Atiku, and others.

What else shall we write? That was the title of a column written by Prof Olatunji Dare in the nineties. It attests to the fact that for every columnist, a moment comes when you look at practically all the issues dominating the news and you wonder what new things you have to say. I am in such a situation today. Take the 2017 Appropriation Bill recently passed by the National Assembly that is now raising a lot of dust. Last year, according to a Twitter post, the President of Nigeria was looking for a budget to sign but this year; it was actually the budget that was looking for a President to sign!

On the face of it, anti-corruption is a good thing. It is desirable; and therefore should be supported. It is very difficult to argue against this stance. What is rather much more convoluted is what corruption means and entails. It is neither straightforward nor narrow, as often presented.

For Melaye, Senator representing Kogi West senatorial district and the rambunctious alter ego of tainted Senate President, Bukola Saraki, these are not the best of times. Melaye, noted for his high octane parody. He is a famed comedian that seeks to reduce serious issues of state to spates of comedy. He is a self-fangled masker and reveler that would have made an A-grade listing in a hilarious comedy. But as it is now, he has no time for comedy. When last did you see Dino Melaye prancing in distasteful amusement on the national space as he was wont to do? Seemingly, Melaye has no time for jokes and pranks for now. He is afflicted by a nagging headache. The situation he has in his hands provides him an intractable  handful. He has been struck down by migraine. He has lost his reveling instinct. He no longer has time to loiter and lay about on social media, posting raunchy pictures of his questionable opulence, even when he had not been known to have any other profitable vocatio...

A throwback into history paints that dreadful picture of how past heroes across Africa sweated blood to make the continent autonomous—a celebrated achievement through which the dreams of their children were hoped to be fulfilled. The query as to whether the attained freedom is as of today, for the benefit of all however, is one stone that should rather be left unturned perhaps as a result of the economic recession our governments claim is over (of which the prices of pens and papers which recently went up still haven’t come down).

If the rest of Africa expect Nigeria and South Africa to chart a pathway and provide some sort of economic leadership, they would have to look elsewhere for the time being. Africa’s two biggest economies, with a combined Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of nearly $800 billion are both in recession at the same time, for the first time ever in the modern history of the continent.

After all is said and done, the biggest political blunder we the people of Kogi can possibly do is voting Governor Yahaya Bello (GYB) out in 2019. Our Pioneers were not so intelligent, the first political blunder was during the creation of Kogi, and when the creation of LGs came. They committed a blunder we’re suffering from today, let’s not repeat another blunder because we are simply angry. I’m not his fan, and I don’t agree with some of his methods of getting things done, but I like to look at things from different perspectives not by always condemning.

The number one problem plaguing Nigeria is not corruption or even the absence of regular power. The number one problem militating against the progress of Nigeria is her lack of unity. If we can fix this problem, Nigeria will herself be fixed.

I attended a meeting recently at the headquarters of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board in Bwari, Abuja: the post-2017 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination review meeting chaired by the JAMB registrar, Professor Ish-aq Oloyede. Participants included Professor Oloyede and his technical team, field officers and other staff, all the Chief External Examiners who supervised the 2017 UTME, across Nigeria, mostly Vice-Chancellors of universities, and provosts/rectors of polytechnics and colleges of education, in addition to major stakeholders from civil society.

“If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself.” ― Albert Einstein Everyone is talking and threatening, there is a new one...Rondel Region of Niger Delta. Infact they called theirs the Rondel Convenant. The South East Governors are speaking, El-Rufai has spoken, and even Tambuwal has said his bit. The not so tight Belt in the Middle has also served it's own course of the meal.

Let me start with the story of a poor man who married into a rich family. He didn’t have anything as a man but was loved all the same by the lady. Even though her family objected to her choice of a partner, they caved in due to her insistence. She married him and made him the centre point of her life. He became the coordinator of her affairs and remained answerable to her, with her family as the ultimate influencer. He barely took any decision without referring and deferring to her.‎ There was a time he took some decisions concerning her affairs which didn’t go down well with her family, they teamed up and harassed him, reminding him of whose son he is; the son of a nobody. As a result, he avoided taking any decision. In fact, he lost his confidence to think, let alone decide.

The Acting President made what, in my opinion, was a harmless remark when he observed that the National Assembly has no powers to introduce new projects in the budget. In the same statement, however, he admitted that NASS has the powers to allocate resources, as that is its core powers of appropriation. I consider his statement very objective. His tone wasn't confrontational, neither was his body language. Acting President Osinbajo had a day earlier signed the 2017 budget noting that there were grey areas, especially funds lifted from key projects, to introduce new projects by NASS.

How did we get here? I hear that question often when Nigerians discuss the state of the nation and the depth to which our values have sunk. In the 1950s and 1960s, Nigeria rose and its promise grew as it embraced agriculture and industry. Before and immediately after Independence, we had a social habit of effort-oriented ethics of labour, anchored on a growing production-based economy. The prestige of wealth was associated with effort, with sweat, honest labour and proven industry, which was vital to the secure and harmonious social fabric we had. With the extraction of oil, we lost the plot and grew accustomed to rent-seeking. We started changing the moment we commenced regarding labour in agriculture and industry as shameful, preferring the coziness of white collar jobs, contracting and brokerage.

Last week, the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) discharged and acquitted Bukola Saraki, the Senate President, of an 18-count charge of false assets declaration. Predictably, reactions to the judgment have been bifurcated to those who think it was a dent on the anti-corruption war of the Muhammadu Buhari government or whatever is left of that war; and the usual refrain of ‘corruption is fighting back’ the mantra of this government whenever it suffers a blow to its solar plexus in any of the cases it instituted.

By default, every Nigerian tends to be of one religious faith or the other. It is difficult to find a professed atheist in Nigeria. The God talk is everywhere and in public spaces – workplace, marketplace, government corridors, et cetera. It is convenient and fair to assume that there is no room for atheism in the country. But do Nigerians truly believe in God or pretend to do so? Is Godlessness the new religion in town?

“Nelson Mandela was an extra ordinary human being. He put a strong ‘truth and reconciliation’ committee together. He was not insulting everyone and anyone. It earned him global respect. Leadership matters when you want to heal a divided nation. Donald Trump hurls abusive speeches at every perceived opposition in sight and that has greatly damaged America.”

Some politicians calling for the implementation of the recommendation of the 2014 National Conference might not actually be clamoring for some of conference’s recommendations such as the creation of 18 more states, asking churches and mosques to pay taxes and that all members of the legislative arm should serve on a part-time basis.

In light of the strains imposed on our quest for national unity by the renewed agitation for Biafra and its reverberations across the country, some readers of this column requested that I republish a series I wrote in 2008 and 2012. Here is an edited and updated version of the series:

How does any honest person contemplate that Nigeria has any chance of moving forward and becoming great under the current circumstance?