Clay Richie

Nigeria’s National Assembly, NASS, is one of the country’s most obscure and secretive institutions. There’s disconnect between the members of NASS and their constituents in matters of its finances and votes on important national issues. Nigerians hardly know what goes on in the National Assembly.

“Have you gone to visit your brother in Ekiti?” “Who is that? I have many brothers from Ekiti state” “The Governor. Osokomole himself, ekun oko oke, the dainty irunmole who eats jollof rice.” “No. I don’t go about visiting Governors.”

The following are excerpts from a presentation entitled, "Next Generation Nigeria: Youth, Opportunity and Governance for the Future," presented by Samson Itodo at the Chatham House, London on October 25, 2017.

The government of the future of Nigeria is a departure from the government of either the past or the present of Nigeria. I hope those who are part of the present government of Nigeria and those who are relevant to the future of Nigeria get to read through what I do have to pass on today. All of us as a people shall need to unwaveringly work out everything that is contained in this piece. If this does not happen and turn out, there will be no great future for Nigeria, our beloved country. For Nigeria to be relevant in the days to come there must be what I choose to call—a major shift in government and governance.

This piece is laden with unsolicited advice. It ordinarily should not have been written, but for recent evidence that the quality of advice available to President Muhammadu Buhari is questionable. Friends of people in power often speak in hushed tones about how the President never listens, about how difficult it is to approach him much less sell an argument to him once his mind his made up. However, anyone who watched Okoi Obono-Obla, Special Assistant to the President on Prosecution, on Channels TV on Monday will agree that we can’t leave Buhari to his advisers.

The consensus of opinion to my last week’s article (For Buhari, 2019 Began in 2015) on this page was that President Muhammadu Buhari lacks the capacity to be as strategic as my analysis attempted to locate him.

‘Corruption is fighting back’.That phrase has long assumed cliché status.As a lot of us have learnt,it is the easiest way to justify a hypocritical war on corruption. Corruption isn’t fighting back when Buhari sits on the SGF probe or refuses to look into how some states are still owing workers 8 months salaries despite bailouts and huge Paris Club refunds, it is winning.

Since the middle of 2014, when the price of crude oil fell dramatically, Nigeria’s finances became challenged. This is not hard to explain: we’ve historically depended on crude oil for as much as 70 per cent of government revenues, and 90 per cent of foreign exchange earnings. The outcome – pressure on government’s finances – was by no means unusual. A similar fate befell most oil-rich countries around the world.

President Muhammadu Buhari's trump card in 2019 presidential election wouldn't be signposted on the war against corruption. That's if he is strong enough to take a shot at the presidency for a second time. It would be something else, unknown to Nigerians. Because the anti-corruption plank upon which he stood to pull the rug off former President Goodluck Jonathan's foot is weakened and has lost its lustre. President Jonathan's corrupt dealings can now be properly said to be mere stealing, while under Mr. Buhar, corruption is the air the nation breathes.

The recent report that U.S.-backed forces declared victory in the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa is one of several examples proving the tides are turning against the notorious terrorist group. It also affirms the battle-tested notion that when the United States builds coalitions with other nations, even the most challenging of tasks can be accomplished.

For some Nigerians, who expected so much from this administration at its inception, this isn’t the best time to talk of 2019 elections. But 2019 is fast approaching and politicians think more of the next election than anything else.

To cut a long story short, Alhaji Abdulrasheed Abdullahi Maina came into national limelight in 2013 when, as chairman of the Presidential Task Force on Pension Reform, he was accused of perpetrating a fraud running into over N100 billion. The senate committee probing the matter invited him to testify but he refused — while regularly driving in and out of Aso Rock to demonstrate his closeness to President Goodluck Jonathan. Maina thought he was untouchable. The pressure mounted, senate issued a bench warrant and he soon ran out of the country, absconding from duty and getting dismissed from the civil service in return. The EFCC also declared him wanted.

Lt. General Samuel Victor Leonard Malu, CFR (1947-2017), who died in Cairo, Egypt recently will be more remembered for his role as the President of the Special Military Tribunal that tried Lt. General Oladipo Diya (73), the then number 2 man in the country and others in 1998, than his tenure, as Chief of Army Staff under President Olusegun Obasanjo. Those close to him maintained that he was a General who had courage.

There is a buzz about the internal strife that has recently been bedeviling Aso Rock villa like a ghost. It is based on the belief that there are numerous pockets of power in the presidency, which like a constellation of stars revolving around the moon seeking to overshadow one another, have in the process created chaos, serious enough to trigger the leadership cataclysm currently besetting Nigeria.

Fellow Nigerians, thanks for this special honour and privilege of inviting me to speak to you in Perth, Australia. This journey would not have been possible without the insistence and tenacity of one wonderful gentleman, Dr Dele Babalola. After leaving University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife) decades ago, we re-established contact via Twitter. He first contacted me in July 2015 but I apparently disappeared from his radar, shortly afterwards. We subsequently re-established contact on September 28, 2015. Dr Babalola had done the smart thing after all attempts to reach me had failed. He sent me a direct message on Twitter:

The Nigeria senate is impotent. So impotent that it engages in theatrical probes to conceal the absence of a legislative manhood.

For what it’s worth, Mr President, it is very likely that you were really not aware of the reinstatement of Maina. 2017 has not exactly been your best year of health. You have needed to leave the country twice for treatments and spent over 150 days in total. In your absence, we know that certain persons have run the affairs of state, carrying out their own agenda not necessarily at your prompting nor at the direction of the-then Acting President, Yemi Osinbajo. As much as some claim to protect you while others appear to worship, every single one of them is really only after their personal pockets, using your leadership as the covering for achieving their aims.

In October 2015, I wrote an article titled, ‘Okorocha Puts Imo in Chains.’ That piece was written as a direct response to Okorocha’s incompetence, maladministration, mismanagement of bailout funds, failure to pay workers’ salaries and pensioners’ entitlements, and the state’s poor infrastructure, particularly in Owerri. His government was riddled with corruption, outright thievery and official celebration of inanities as achievements. But the comic has shown an unrelenting inclination to betray the trust of the people by beating his own worst record of poor performance.

Nigerians are hurting. Perpetual presidential blunders have increased distress in homes across Nigeria. Sadly, Nigerians cannot make a distress call to President Muhammadu Buhari. He is a distant leader.

Nigeria’s Minister of Finance, Mrs Kemi Adeosun, earlier in October, stated that the nation needs to borrow more in the short term, so the Government can execute critical infrastructural projects. In her exact words, “We need to tolerate a little bit more debt in the short term to deliver roads, rail, and power. That, in itself, will generate economic activities and jobs, which will then generate revenue which will be used to pay back the loans”. Mrs Adeosun is correct when she said infrastructural projects will generate economic activities. Investing in infrastructure creates income opportunities and generates jobs, directly and indirectly. For example, the construction of a cargo rail line will create jobs and sales for, civil engineers, geologists, accountants, surveyors, artisans, craftsmen, cement manufacturers and distributors, restaurants, etc. The communities the railway pass through are likely to experience an increase in sales of their agricultural produces. According to ...

It’s one of the ironies of the times that those getting the worst deal from retirement savings are the most vulnerable, the people that the scheme is supposed to help. Stories about pensioners dying in long, waiting lines have moved from front pages to obscure spots, yet we’re often confronted with news of incredible stealing by public officials managing pension savings.

This week, the news of an alleged secret recruitment process by the Federal Inland Revenue Service broke out. According to the news, FIRS was sending text messages to some privileged individuals inviting them to a certain location for interview and possible appointment. Just as the news went viral, I came across an appeal by a concerned citizen on Twitter copying the handles of the organization in question, that of the Nigerian Senate, House of Representatives, the presidency and a host of others. Here was my thought and reply to the appeal; why petition people without whose open or silent approval such a thing can never happen or perhaps those whose candidates are most certainly the beneficiaries of this kind of recruitments, if not this same exercise in question.

While “The Godfather” remains the most successful novel of Mario Puzo, his second mafia epic, published almost three decades later, “The Last Don”, is equally engrossing as he takes the reader into the inner recesses of Hollywood where licentiousness seems to be the order of the day. Even when a lot of things may have changed, especially within the past two decades since the novel was published, that was still the world inhabited by Mr Harvey Weinstein until the bubble burst with the scandal that may also have changed the entire power dynamic in which women are expected to offer sexual gratification to advance their professional career.

On his inaugural ride in the cultural chariot as the Yoruba generalissimo, he perhaps will first have to contend with that eerie numbness – the odd feeling experienced when euphoria mixes with trepidation. Joy at attaining an epic height; anxiety about meeting very high public expectation that comes with it.

In the superlative piece of postcolonial literature called “Things Fall Apart,” late Chinua Achebe succinctly captured my burning reflection as I write on an issue that is so dear to my heart and so important to the continued existence of our greatly valued nation.

The maneuvering for the 2019 presidential race appears to have begun in earnest. Politicians particularly those in the ruling APC (All Progressive Congress) and the main opposition PDP (Peoples Democratic Party) have started their nocturnal meetings, working on different schemes and scams, crisscrossing the country on shuttle and not so shuttle diplomacy, and weighing the options (known and unknown) to determine where their self-interests would be best served. In a politics driven only by the ideology of grab-power-by-any-means-possible, and where the politician’s only idea of service is preying on public wealth, nothing is ever as it seems.

President Muhammadu Buhari has approved the payment of pensions to the last batch of 162 former Nigerian soldiers, policemen and paramilitary officers and 57 next of kin who sided with Biafrans during Nigeria’s bloody civil war.

Fellow Nigerians, I often wonder why an average Nigerian politician is so squeamish. They love and crave power but eventually prove too timid to do the needful. The comfort power provides seems to be what matters most to them, but, certainly not the pain it may attract. God bless all those who fought for the democracy we seem to be bastardising today. It is difficult to pick out the Obafemi Awolowos, the Sir Adesoji Aderemis, the Nnamdi Azikiwes, the Anthony Enahoros, the Funmilayo Ransome-Kutis, the Wole Soyinkas, the Aminu Kanos, Abubakar Rimis,  the Alfred Rewanes, the Waziri Ibrahims, the Fela Anikulapo-Kutis, Gani Fawehinmis, the Moshood Abiolas, the Kudirat Abiolas, the Abraham Adesanyas, the Alani Akinrinades, the Bola Tinubus,  the Bolaji Akinyemis, and such others in the crowd today. These were men and women who were not afraid of tyrants and tyranny.

No matter how the men and officers of the Nigerian Army spin it, our soldiers are facing a crisis in their reputation management. The army’s image has taken a battering in the last few weeks that, perhaps, only the dictatorial era of Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha compared to what ails  “the largest component of the Nigerian Armed Forces” as the army describes itself.

“I hear say our Sai Baba don return from Turkey” “Did you hope that he would stay there permanently? He went for the D-8 meeting, and he is bound to return.” “D-8 meeting. I have been thinking about it. We are supposed to be a secular country but internationally, we have continued to engage with Muslim countries. We belong to the Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC) and also the D-8. Internationally, we are effectively a Muslim country.”

Organisations come in different shapes and sizes. They are driven by different ethos and ideologies. They are, also, confronted by different issues and challenges. As a Business School professor, I have always been intrigued by these organisational differences and their manifestations. Having spent significant amount of time researching private sector firms, I have recently turned my attention to public sector organisations, especially in Africa.

Abdulrasheed Maina cannot hide forever. Neither he nor the people who helped him circumvent justice in 2013 gave this a thought when he escaped to Dubai. But as he must have found out already, retreating from justice is big damage to self rather than the law; and no matter the wealth of cash, power, connection and legal arsenal at anyone’s disposal, clean hands remain the only guarantee of freedom.

“I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding (debt) is but swindling futurity on a large scale” Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826).

I am honoured to have the privilege of addressing you at this important event. Let me start by commending President Joko Widodo and the government and the people of Indonesia for graciously hosting this conference, and for their remarkable hospitality since we arrived.

It was a giddy leap to sainthood for South African President Jacob Zuma in Nigeria penultimate weekend. His country is Nigeria’s power peer in sub-Sahara Africa, if presumptuous to rule in the entire continent. But Zuma came calling, not as a state guest of his Nigerian counterpart, but in quasi-private capacity on the fare of Imo State Governor Rochas Okorocha. He came unheralded on a visit that has since been duly explained was to sign a memorandum of understanding between his Zuma Foundation and Okorocha’s Rochas Foundation College for Africa.

Populist governments throughout history are the most intolerant, brutal and repressive. Remember the communist regimes before in Eastern Europe, Russia, China and even Venezuela today. They are constructed on a raison d’être of a self-acclaimed virtue in defense of the masses. This false premise imbues them with the notion of a divine mission which mandates them to crush any opposition. Speaking against them becomes taboo, and criticizing them an open invitation to unending reproach. Stalinist dictatorship sets in and deaths follow.

It is already 31 years since one of the fiercest, tenacious, patriotic journalist in Nigeria history, Sumonu Oladele Giwa was cut down by a parcel bomb. The death of Mr. Giwa was not only a loss to the profession, but a loss for Nigerians craving for people based investigative journalism. He blazed from all cylinders in an attempt to tame governments of his day. He was relentless even as pioneer editor-in-chief of Newswatch, a paper he founded. In the era of the Giwa’s, journalism was honorable, the institution was impregnable and practitioners were noble in the discharge of their social responsibility to educate, inform and entertain.

By accepting an Igbo running mate and granting pardon to Dim Chukwuemeka Ojukwu in 1981, former President Shehu Shagari showed commitment to Gowon’s 3R – reconciliation, rehabilitation and reintegration –which was announced after the civil war of 1967–1970. Unfortunately, Shagari’s government was truncated.

The greatest crime that man has inflicted on his fellow man in the last 50 years is the evil concept of unrestrained globalisation coupled with the incremental evolution, unacceptable espousal and wholehearted acceptance of the artificial, man-made, mongrel nation-state which is made up of ethnic and religious incompatibles.

As you read this, the news has just filtered in that herdsmen just killed another 27 Nigerian citizens in Plateau State. But do not worry, the Nigerian government is dealing with the terrorist Indigenous People of Biafra AKA IPOB!

I’ve known Dr Tony Elumelu, the Chairman of United Bank of Africa for about two decades. I first noticed his wizardry as the boss of Standard Trust Bank. There was something refreshingly different and elegant about the branches of the bank. I operated an account at their Allen Avenue Branch then and was hooked on their brilliant services. Behind that spectacular performance was a prodigiously gifted CEO who truly knew his onions. Like a true navigator, Elumelu charted his path and followed his course all the way. He faced challenges like all great people but he never looked back. Even when he was maligned regularly by those who hated his guts, he responded with more earth-shaking successes.

The architecture of AID, from foreign NGOs and a host of international donors, was intended to serve as a catalyst to boost life in Africa. This aid was designed to fill in the gaps where the then short arms of the government could not reach. Like subsidy to products, it was a short-term measure to save lives. For a long time, it had worked perfectly, but as usual, complacency set in and the recipients became static.

Let it be on record that the Governor of Lagos State, Akinwunmi Ambode, deserves kudos for the concerted efforts at changing the environment and landscape through public art pieces, murals, sculptures and radical redesign of under the bridges, etc.

When George Orwell’s widely acclaimed Animal Farm was published in 1945, Nigeria had existed as a nation for about three decades, still under British rule. Though Orwell’s muse was events prior to the Russian Revolution and Stalin’s Soviet Union, nothing in print till date describes the socioeconomic realities of today’s Nigeria more perfectly than this satirical novella.

Not too long ago, I had the rare privilege of being in the same room with six of Nigeria’s 36 state governors. Discussions mainly centered around the need to urgently restructure the country and let the constituent units have their say on the issues that affect them.

Nnamdi Kanu of Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) has been declared wanted for not showing up in court. That is normal. But if the truth is told, the main culprit for the Biafran crisis are the politicians—not Kanu. The authorities should be knocking at the doors of the seven Nigerian governors of Igbo extraction, namely: Nyesom Ezenwo Wike (Rivers); Ifeanyi Okowa (Delta); Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi (Enugu); Okezie Ikpeazu (Abia); Rochas Okorocha (Imo); Willie Obiano (Anambra); and David Umahi (Ebonyi). These governors, one after the other, openly inflamed and fueled the Biafran crisis to a sadistic state. Given that Nigerian governors are immune from prosecution, it is incumbent upon the masses to send them packing. 

On the condition that I were President Muhammadu Buhari, I would listen more to those who daily criticize me constructively and hold me accountable—out of their pledge to Nigeria and consciously keep far away from me (as East is far from the West) those who are vainly praising me because of both their bellies and pockets. They deceptively praised those who were before Mr. President, but today, they brand fools, those who they once praised to high heaven. When you are still calling the shots, they’d praise you, but immediately power slips out of your hand, you’d get to know who they truly are. They are not loyal to you; they are only loyal to what they can get through you while you are still in power.

Following the overwhelming reactions I got to my lecture titled, “If we stay here we die” (reproduced below) at the 2015 edition of Platform, I decided to document not only the complete story of my brother who wasted almost about four years in the futile bid to migrate to Europe but also to look at the whole concept of irregular migration. Although I started the book, tentatively titled, “FROM FRYING PAN TO FIRE: How Nigerian young men and women ruin their lives trying to cross to Europe” two years ago, it was not until early this year (after completing ‘Against The Run of Play’) that I resumed serious work.

I finally got a chance to read the text of the interview in which World Bank president Jim Yong Kim reported President Buhari as having told him to “shift our focus to the northern regions of Nigeria.” Rather strangely, both the president’s critics and his defenders are right. Here is what I mean.

God rest Gbenga Adeboye, the comedian-extraordinaire, who in his life employed comedy as a strong tool for correction and socio-political development. Adeboye once said: “If you call your king a mad man, you are only inviting strangers to call your race a wasted race”.