Clay Richie

Thank you Mr. Bill Gates for that wonderful sermon delivered with the candour of those Old Testament prophets sent by God to deliver the word of truth. I hope our leaders whom you addressed at Aso Rock will hear, ponder and turn around to address the issues of great concern to you and to God. Not since Chinua Achebe’s divinely inspired essay Trouble With Nigeria have I heard anything like this, have I been touched. I have cut out your message and pasted it on my wall to be read every day. I hope our leaders will follow suit.

Fellow Nigerians, there is so much to write about today, but first, I must quickly apologise for my absence on this page last week. My itinerary has been very packed lately, and last week was particularly jammed. I had criss-crossed Africa, from West to East and East back to West. I travelled from Nigeria, to Rwanda and Nairobi and then back to Nigeria. I returned last week Friday, and I usually devote my Friday evenings to writing this column. I arrived in the early afternoon, because my flight from Kigali was slightly delayed and got caught up in some really bad traffic on the way to the Island. By the time I arrived at Eko Hotel, there was barely time for me to start getting ready for an important wedding that I had to attend; that of Fatima Dangote and Jamil Abubakar. Of course,

By now, most Nigerians would be familiar with Mr Bill Gates’ incisive perspective on Nigeria’s development because his speech to the National Economic Council last week has gone viral. So there is no need repeating the fact that he identified health and education as sectors that Nigerian policy makers have to rejig in the Economic Recovery Growth Plan, ERGP, to enable the full realization of our country’s potentials.

President Muhammadu Buhari is not a politician the mode we know them in Nigeria. He holds up no pretenses about that, which is why he has left the political side of the job to those who are better equipped for that role. Former Governor of Lagos State and leader of the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC) has stepped up to fill that position.

Five years ago, February 6 2013 to be precise, a strange realignment of political forces gave birth to a yahoo-yahoo contraption called the All Progressives Congress (APC). It was the first time an amalgam of existing parties in Nigeria had successfully fused into one big party. Amidst the challenge of different ideological leanings, and against considerable odds, the leaders managed to pull off one of the greatest and most dramatic accomplishments in the history of party politics: a realignment of a variety of interests, grouses and grudges, to form a party that eventually succeeded in wresting power from an incumbent party. That’s not a mean feat by any standard. We have to give them some credit.

If the message this week about the illegitimacy of the tenure elongation for the All Progressives Congress chairman, John Odigie-Oyegun, isn’t quite the end of Oyegun’s politics in APC, it is undoubtedly the beginning of the end. President Muhammadu Buhari, asserting his authority over the party this week, technically ended Oyegun’s tenure with a subtle notice to him to prepare the party’s national secretariat for a new landlord.

On 19th October 2001, nineteen soldiers were brutally hacked to death by suspected Tiv militia in Benue State. In a swift reprisal action, their colleagues from the 23rd Armoured Brigade invaded the villages of Vasae, Anyiin Iorja, Ugba, Sankera and Zaki-Biam, all located within two local government areas. By the time the rampaging soldiers were done, no fewer than a hundred villagers were shot dead with several buildings razed down. In the aftermath of that tragedy, there were strident calls for the resignation of the then Defence Minister, Lt. General Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma (rtd) who granted an explosive interview to TheNews magazine where he characterised the Tiv people in very negative light.

“I do not enjoy speaking to you this bluntly when you have been gracious enough to invite me here” – Bill Gates. Mr. Bill Gates, Microsoft founder, friend of Nigeria and one of the richest men in the world was in Nigeria recently, but he ended up violating the official interpretation of “table manners” in Nigeria’s corridors of power. When you are a guest in people’s home, you don’t count their nine toes one by one. It is an essential part of African tradition and culture that when people host you in their homes, treat you with courtesy, open their doors to you, even if the dinner they serve you is the worst you have ever had, you are still required to say nice words. Mr Gates’ recent visit to Nigeria was like a special treat.

Facebook is a very progressive platform for engagement and mobilisation. But in the hands of mindless people, it can be extremely dangerous. A grooming ground for fake news and hate speech. Recently, a gruesome photo of two pupils who were hacked to death went viral on Facebook and was attributed to the Fulani herdsmen violence in Benue State. People wrote long epistles condemning the President and the government but was later discovered that a mentally unstable man was responsible and the incident didn’t even happen in Benue.

On the scale of anti-heroes produced by Nigeria’s history of violent disruptions, Mr. Theophilus Danjuma, stands out in glowing notoriety. Endlessly rewarded by all regimes since after his 1966 bloody emergence as military supremo and poster coupist, he has also emerged as easily one of Nigeria’s wealthiest men, mostly for reasons other than his industry, corporate ingenuity or even plain hard work. On account of his long-standing presence in power circles, Danjuma has managed to anticipate some audience whenever Nigerians are pressed by bad governance to desperately seek an alarmist town crier. We are clearly at one such moment once again.

These days, when I read that Jeff Bezos is the world’s richest man, my mind still says “its a lie; William Henry Gates III, better known as Bill Gates, is the world’s richest man”. Why? Because he has been the richest man in the world for the most of my adult life, from 1995 – 2017, with the exception of only four years (2008, 2010, 2011, 2012). However, Bezos is the man with the kingsize paycheque today.

I was in Morocco recently, about 20 years after I last visited Timbuktu, Marrakech, Casablanca, Rabat and Laayoune. I was quite impressed to see how Morocco with its colour-coded cities remains very much an organized, efficient and a comparatively competitive country.  The trip this time began from the Lagos airport aboard the Royal Air Maroc, which now plies the Lagos-Casablanca route. Twenty years earlier, I had to go first to Paris, France, change from one airport to the other, before boarding another flight to Morocco.

Coming shortly after the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) was wound down, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is one among the cocktail of measures by the global community towards making the world a better place.  I am a strong advocate in Nigeria and Africa for exploring the synergy between SDGs and good governance and leveraging the goals to work for our people and our humanity at large.

He is still a soldier’s soldier even at nearly 80. He still knows when to strike at the enemy’s solar plexus thereby inflicting maximum damage. For someone who abandoned college to enroll in the army, it must have taken considerable efforts to criticize the institution that made him publicly.

History is replete with nations that fought wars, survived and came out stronger, but nations that are at war with themselves hardly survive or come out stronger. The so-called Nigerian civil war was rather an invasion of the Eastern Region. Every civil war, in fact all fought wars thereafter, go with lessons and a cause never to repeat itself. But it was not a civil war because there was no spread of ill experiences, except in the conquered enclave. While the people dwelling in rest of Nigeria were going about their normal live, banks and other utility institutions were actively functioning, age grades overlapped their delayed mates in the invasive eastern conquest.

Last week Forty-four (44) African countries signed on to the controversial African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). Nigeria, the continent’s biggest economy under the legitimate pressures of stakeholders notable Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and MAN (Manufacturers Association of Nigeria) commendably pulled out on Tuesday, 21st of March.

His Excellency, Chief Willie Maduaburochukwu Obiano, FCA, FCIB, Akpokuodike Aguleri, dances very well. In a recent piece in his column titled, “Lessons for Nigeria from Anambra” Mazi Sam Ohuabunwa, OFR, argued that one of the reasons Obiano trounced his opponents in the November 18, 2017 Governorship election, where he won in all the 21 local governments in the state, is his humility. Mazi Ohuabunwa noted that he demonstrated this by the fact that he, Obiano, dances to, and with, his people. Even though the jury is still out as to whether dancing speaks to humility, there is no denying the fact that humility, which is lacking in a lot of people, is critical in endearing leaders to their people.

The truth is — that every part of Nigeria suffers one form of neglect or the other but some are more unequally yoked than the others. A case in point are the Igbo people of Nigeria. I am a proud Nigerian but an unhappy one. As a Senator representing Anambra North, my first obligation is to the people of Anambra North, and then Anambra State and then the South East of Nigeria. My people are unenthusiastic about this Nation state, the mood in the region is at its worst since the civil war. I am not going to sit pretty in Abuja trying to be politically correct. The elite scoff at the demagogues but are unaware that their rise is only a proof of their own extinction.

Your Excellency Muhamadu Buhari, President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria; Professor Yemi Osinbajo, Vice President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria; Senator Bukola Saraki, Senate President; Honorable Yakubu Dogara, Speaker of the House;

When it rains, it pours. Recently, I wrote an article on the marathon of development-focused governance, which I described as a “relay race”. I used the performance of Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode, the governor of Lagos state, as the reference point. I said though there were issues “here and there”, he had done well in several areas in less than three years. At the time I wrote, the waste management issue in the state was just rearing its head. As if that was not enough trouble, Ambode approved an upward review in land use charge. I have also seen documents showing incredible increases in vehicle licensing fees as well as heart-rending taxes for sinking boreholes.

The issue of which election comes first in the 2019 general elections has dominated national discourse for some time now. While the National Assembly has passed a bill that put the National Assembly poll first and presidential election last and sent to President Muhammadu Buhari for his assent, the President has refused assenting to the bill citing among other reasons, conflict of laws.

This was the outcome we wanted, that the Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed, or even the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria would appear on national TV himself with the exciting news to Nigerians, that within a few days of their kidnapped, the 110 Dapchi girls had been found. Well, while we didn’t exactly get the President to deliver the breaking news with some explanation of sorts, hearing it from the mouth of the Honourable Minister, Lai Mohammed was equally as good. Scratch that! It was beyond good, because in the end it doesn’t even matter who or how the news was broken to us, the important thing is that the girls, most of them, are safe and sound with their families and would be sleeping at home in their own beds!

In the last couple of weeks, particularly in the last couple of days, I found myself asking the question: What is the value of human life in our dear country Nigeria? Anytime this question popped up in my mind, a part of me yelled out “nothing!” in righteous anger and frustration. But not surprisingly, this is the nagging question on the lips of many Nigerians. We are living in a frightening new reality where people’s lives mean nothing and can be taken at any time by another or others.

In the past stories on National Development Plans dominated the headlines especially in the early seventies. Professor Adebayo Adedeji (87) under General Yakubu Gowon was the founder and Chairman of the National Youth Service Scheme. He also the drafted the treaty of the ECOWAS which was established in May 1975 after over three years of arduous negotiations with sixteen governments and countries divided into Anglophone, Francophone and Lusophone spheres of influence.

The phrase, “human side”, was given a Nigerian tinge and notoriety by Femi Adesina, spokesman of the president. On December 24, 2017, Adesina announced that a 55-minute documentary entitled the ‘Human Side of Buhari’ would air the next day. This was at a time of chronic petrol drought, and when Nigerians became tenants of fuel stations.

In the expression of the virtue of gratitude, Most Reverend Matthew Kukah, by his own admission, is prone to the lapse of being superfluous. His funeral ovation at the burial of Joseph Danlami Bagobiri, Bishop of the Catholic Bishop of Kafanchan on Thursday, 15th March 2018 bears testimony and equally provided a heart wrenching insight into the ordeal of the Christian population of Southern Kaduna in Kaduna state. It is difficult to come terms with the revelations of institutional socio-political discrimination that holds the indigenous Christian population of the region in thrall and cast them as serially violated second class citizens. Lamenting the plight of the victim population, Kukah revealed

Following public outcry over provisions of the 2018 Land Use Charge (LUC) in Lagos State, Governor Akinwunmi Ambode last week announced a downward review of the charges. While it is good that the government would respond to public opinion and make concessions, there are also those who argue that the state needs to address several other concerns which may necessitate repealing the law in its entirety. Incidentally, I foresaw this problem about 17 years ago but it would appear that the current administration in the state has refused to learn any lessons from the past.

It’s like a tale from fish-wifery told by moonlight: how Boko Haram entered a Nigerian town as villains, kidnapped dozens of schoolgirls, and 32 days later returned them to the same town as heroes with flags waving and crowds cheering and not a single Nigerian soldier in sight.

President Muhammadu Buhari’s 12th hour decision to snub the African Union Extra-ordinary summit on the endorsement of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA), in Kigali, March 20 – 22 is a diplomatic blunder. The excuse that has been offered is not convincing, the management of the entire episode is untidy. Simple courtesies matter in diplomacy, unpredictability, surprise and ambush may be good tactics on the battlefield but they could be costly in the much finer arena of diplomacy. I want to assume that President Buhari was misadvised. Standards have fallen generally in our foreign policy management process, and they have done so much more rapidly in the last three years, for both seen and unseen reasons, but I did not imagine that we could descend this low as to begin to play pranks with some of the major planks of Nigeria’s foreign policy framework. President Buhari should have been in Kigali on March 21 to sign the AfCFTA document and participate in the deliberat...

The decision, correct decision in my view, by the National Assembly that the presidential election should always be held last is generating a lot of heat. It has not ended there. The President, Muhammadu Buhari, has vetoed the decision of the National Assembly. Now the sparks are flying.

…the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government… –Chapter II, Section 14 (2b) of the 1999 Constitution. Among other barometers, a review of public comments could possibly indicate if the Nigerian condition has changed remarkably in the last three years. One aspect of the condition in which the hope of change seems to have turned into despair is security. Not a few pundits would posit widespread insecurity as the issue of the moment. When comments made two years ago now sound as if they were made last night, a change cannot be said to be reflected in the national condition.

In leadership and nation-building, like begets like. The leaders determine the kind of citizens that a nation would have in her possession. If the leaders are lawless, it is impossible for the citizens to be law-abiding. It is hypocrisy for leaders to make the laws that they aren’t going to submit to. The law that binds that led should be able to chain the leaders. This is the only way serious nations are being built. Remember, a lion cannot give birth to a monkey and baboon cannot give birth to a chimpanzee. It is a law of reproduction and it is not allowed to be compromised in leadership and nation-building.

When 73 people were killed in Benue State in early January, the Minister of Defence, Mansur Dan-Ali, briefed State House correspondents, after a meeting of the security chiefs with President Muhammadu Buhari, and gave the government position on the reasons for the continuous attacks by the herdsmen.

Satish Kumar is one of my favourite people in the world. He is an Indian monk and editor, more famous as a pacifist. But it is his brave, original thinking that really gets to me, and his disinterest in the games of accolade and accomplishment that humans play, more focused on the things that truly matter.

Professor Wole Soyinka was keynote speaker at the maiden annual lecture of the Ripples Centre for Data and Investigative Journalism held in Lagos on March 15. Topic: “Rebuilding Trust in a Divided Nigeria: Can Nigeria be fixed?” The Nobel Laureate did not disappoint. His presentation titled “From Miyetti to Haiti: Notes from a Solidarity Visit” took us on a journey to Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago, the United States, Nigeria also, and other parts of the world, including the past and the present, raising questions along the line about the humanity of the average Nigerian – the leaders, the followers – his or her humanity or non-humanity, the possession of a sense of dignity, shame, decency, memory, common sense, or lack of it, in comparison with conditions elsewhere.

“I talked to my friend, Tinubu, we are very close. I told him that we need to develop the progressive party in Nigeria. He didn’t believe me, he preferred to go and link up with the most right wing group in the North. And that right wing group was headed by Buhari in the name of CPC… I have known Gen. Buhari when he was the military Head of State. I was a university lecturer then. I know the tyranny that was visited on this country. I warned Tinubu that he will regret bringing Buhari and imposing him on the party. I believe he is regretting silently without telling Nigerians. But more is to be expected. I am sorry to say that if Buhari is re-elected in 2019, it will not only consume Tinubu, it will consume so many other people. It may even lead to the disintegration of Nigeria.” — a statement made by Iyorchia Ayu, Third Republic Senate President, during an interview he granted The Sun newspaper.

For Dino Melaye, the voluble senator of Kogi West and an acolyte of the tainted Senate President, Bukola Saraki, the cup of recall which his people unleashed against him has stubbornly refused to pass him. The recall effort has trailed him like a stubborn shadow and try as he and his soulmates in the senate have done, the dangling threat sticks like a recalcitrant abiku in its thinly disguised intent to rusticate Dino from the senate where many feel, he has added more of jesting value than serve his Kogi people and Nigerians.

The news of the confirmation of the humungous amount of money collected every month by members of the Senate as running expenses hit Nigerians like a thunder bolt. In the past, there have been unsubstantiated rumours about the exact amount pocketed by members of the National Assembly. But this is the first time that a serving legislator will openly declare the precise sum they collect. Senator Shehu Sani told Nigerians that every senator takes home N13.5 million as running costs which is not part of the monthly salary and other allowances such as housing, transport,  assistants, etc.

At a Senate meeting some two weeks back, Senator Ahmed Ogembe, representing Kogi central alleged that his state governor, Yahaya Bello, sponsored thugs to disrupt an empowerment programme he organised for his constituents. In response, Ike Ekweremadu, the Deputy Senate President taking an overview of a number of undemocratic practices in the country reportedly opined that with the rapid way the country’s democracy was receding, it was not impossible for the military to consider taking over.

A huge number of Nigerians, from what I can see, will vote against President Muhammadu Buhari in 2019. Which is no news, really. All you need to do is read the newspapers, watch the TV, listen to the radio or browse the internet to come to that conclusion. Those who voted against him in 2015 will certainly do it again. But the crowd is expanding rapidly, from what I can glean, and this is what should actually worry Buhari, who has so far not hidden his intention to seek a second term in office. When your opponents rally against you, that is natural. But when your own supporters become openly critical of you, then you need to worry. Buhari needs to lose some sleep.

As the National Security Adviser, you have to be grossly incompetent to not know how the Fulani herdsmen (yes, they are herdsmen and they are Fulani) conduct their raids. If you knew and just refused to do something about it, anything that would stop these mindless, gory massacres of unarmed innocent Nigerians, then you are just asinine or unpatriotic or both. And if you have laid everything out for your boss, in this case, the President, and he does not have the political cojones to do what he is required by law to do – that is, the protection of the lives and properties of Nigerians, the President has failed. It must amaze and confound anybody with a scintilla of security awareness -

"Labelling the attackers as Fulani is wrong. Fulani people are peaceful and live in harmony with other ethnicities. To call the killer herdsmen Fulani is a misnomer. They are just criminals and not Fulani criminals"- Vice President Atiku Abubakar, 11 March 2018, Thisday Newspaper.

Lagos state has the most opaque finances in Nigeria because she has been run since 1999 by cosmopolitan minds who need a progressive veneer for crude and conspicuous consumption. Other personal slave plantations such as Kwara, Delta, and Imo, are less opaque because the Emperor has no burden of pretending to be a progressive.

“Re-building Trust”? That requires frankness. Absolute, even unpalatable frankness but – constructive. It requires self-examination, an unflinching look in the mirror – both individually and collectively. No self-deception. No palliatives. No distractions. In this nation especially, realistically recognized as divided, a nation where hypocrites abound, where spurious, ever recurrent opportunist Messiahs browbeat the gullible and cauterize their memories, there has to be a platform open to wide-ranging perspectives – both into the past and into the future.

In Metaphysics and Epistemology, solipsism is an interesting theory and position which views ‘self’ as all that exists. An adherent of solipsism is a self-absorbed, self-obsessed narcissist whose fixation is all about ‘me-myself-and-I’. A solipsist lives in the stratosphere and troposphere of egocentricity. From this worldview, they view themselves.  Nobody else matters or is considered important to the solipsist but self.

The sharp of exchange of words in Abuja between Gov. Nasir el-Rufai of Kaduna state and Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) made the news last week. The Governor reportedly lashed out at the organised labour claiming unions “destroyed the nation more than they have contributed to it”.

Mr. President, I salute you for making time to visit the capital cities of states hit by the recent spike in killings by those who trade in the blood of the innocent. You visited Jalingo, the Taraba state capital where the Mambilla plateau is located; you also visited Jos, the capital of Plateau state; two days ago you were at Makurdi, the Benue state capital and today you have gone to Damaturu the Yobe state capital.  In all the state capitals you held meetings with “stakeholders” as part of your efforts to find a lasting solution to the madness that seem to have taken hold of our collective sanity. 

Corruption and the fight against it are as old as man. Over the years, what might have changed are the methods of acquiring the ill-gotten wealth as well as our approach to the fight. With our burgeoning population and the explosion in the number of those who have been exposed to Western education, things could not remain the same. We have seen it all – the good, the bad and the ugly.

Elections in our country, according to the All Progressives Congress (APC) National Leader, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, in a remark made on 30th June 2014, have become a perverse form of modern coronation. “Instead of choosing public servants, elections in Nigeria have been basically to select a new aristocracy, an elected royalty,” he said in an apt summation that the desperation for power, at practically all levels in our country, is too often not to advance public good but rather in pursuit of private interest.

Between President Muhammadu Buhari and members of the National Assembly, the die is cast.  Or, so it seems. Although we had it coming all along, Buhari on Tuesday sounded what appeared to be the death knell on his relationship with the Nigerian legislature when he rejected the amendment made to the Electoral Act by the National Assembly.