Clay Richie

Nigeria’s descent to a now virtually inevitable recession has long been foretold by this columnist so no serious-minded person will be surprised at the news that the Nigerian economy contracted by 0.36 percent in the first quarter of 2016. Economic historians say this is the first quarterly negative since 2004 and on an annual basis since 1992, twelve and twenty-four years ago respectively!

It is a year since President Muhammadu Buhari assumed office.  And within this time frame, he has visited countries in Africa, Asia, Middle East, Europe and North America. About a week back, he returned from London on yet another foreign visit. It is to be recalled that in fact, President Buhari started his first week in office with trips to Niger, Chad and Germany. The travelling President, some may rant.

By this time last year, it was wild jubilation, triumph and historic as Nigerians witnessed the triumphant ascension of Muhammadu Buhari to the presidency.

Introit: On May 29, 2016, I found it expedient to buy a VIP ticket and watch two unfortunate extremities struggle to overreach, over-exert, and out-shout each other to exhaustion. On the one hand were the inconsolable losers of a bygone corrupt and derelict era for whom the idea that there is anything, anything at all, that you might have gotten right in one year is sacrilege. I will return to their matter presently. On the other hand is the swelling rank of your fundamentalist supporters, a dangerous breed of personality cultists who present a clear and present danger to our democracy insofar as they criminalize as high treason the slightest entertainment of the thought that there are things, plenty of things, that you got wrong in the first year of your presidency. For this category, to even say that there are things you could have done better is a crime deserving of capital punishment.

If the Senators or House Reps were not sponsoring the world’s most bizarre bills, they’ll be stirring up the hornet’s net to further divide and polarized the already balkanized nation. The Sharia bill introduced in the House of Representatives will increase the powers and jurisdiction of Sharia law in Nigeria. The bill seeks to amend Sections 262 and 277 of the 1979 Constitution of Nigeria.

On every May 29th when Nigerians sit down to evaluate the performances of governments over the past year ,there are usually three score sheets. One by the die-hard supporters of the leader, another by the opposition and then the one by the governed which in most cases is a mixture of both because the ordinary Nigerian has the rare privilege of being unbiased. I am neither PDP nor APC.

There are two jobs on which every Nigerian is an expert.  The first: the Super Eagles, the nation’s full national soccer team. The other: politics, specifically, presidential politics.  This week—the first anniversary of the “change” government of the All Progressives Congress (APC)—Nigeria’s ruling party will learn this fact first-hand.

One must really sympathise with President Muhammadu Buhari at this moment. Faced with an incredible level of expectations from Nigerians but with dwindling resources, it must be a daunting task for him to deliver on the promises he made while campaigning last year. It is, however, fair to say that he led himself into such a situation. Having sought to lead the country three times, it is excruciatingly painful watching Buhari in the last one year leading as though he is doing us a favour or that we do not deserve to be informed regularly of what he is doing to take us to the Promised Land. His has also been a slow government, till date many boards dissolved last year have also not been reconstituted.

They were called the unsmiling duo. In his first incarnation as Nigerian leader, the then Major General Muhammadu Buhari was paired with another top brass military officer, Babatunde Idiagbon, who was the number two man. Smile was alien to their lips, laughter a total stranger. They had a job to do, which was to rid the country of corruption, crime and indiscipline, and anybody who didn’t fall in line was liable to being dealt with. And summarily too. Laughter was, therefore, a distraction.

It is one year today since our administration came into office. It has been a year of triumph, consolidation, pains and achievements.

A few days to the inauguration of President Muhammadu Buhari last year, a lady went to buy fuel at her neighbour’s station. In the commotion of a queue and lengthy frustration, the neighbour allowed her to jump the line based on their personal relationship. A riot almost broke out. One motorist yelled: “All this nonsense will stop on May 29 when Baba is sworn in as president. You people should continue to do whatever you like for now.” Instinctively, the motorcyclists started chanting: “Sai Baba! Sai Baba! Sai Baba!” The excitement was childlike. Change was hanging in the air like Christmas lights. Expectations went through the skies like a rocket.

Fellow Nigerians, I’m back this week to continue where I stopped last week. If you missed the first part, let me summarise quickly. The piece was largely historical as I took the readers on a tour de force of how we arrived at President Muhammadu Buhari, a stone repeatedly rejected but has now become the cornerstone. I concluded that the second coming of President Buhari was a miracle and that the high expectations would naturally place a heavy burden on him.

One of the major news items in circulation has been the scarcity of tomato. Incidentally, Nigeria is (was) the 14th largest producer of tomato in the world and the second largest producer in Africa, after Egypt, but our country hardly produces enough to meet the local demand of about 2.3 million tonnes, and lacks the capacity to ensure an effective storage or value chain processing of what is produced. Out of the 1.8 million tonnes that the country produces annually, 900, 000 tonnes are left to rot and waste. Meanwhile, tomato-processing companies in the country operate below capacity and many of them have had to shut down.

Having worked twice at the Nigerian Presidential villa and once at the British Parliament, if there is anything I have learnt, it is that it is impossible to over inform a leader. You can under inform him, but no matter how much information you give a leader, you cannot give him too much information.

Twelve months ago, President Muhammadu Buhari was sworn in as the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. He came to power following the decisive victory of his party, the All Progressives Congress, APC over the ruling People’s Democratic Party, PDP and its candidate, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan.  The victory ended the 16-year reign of the PDP.

Nigeria became a butt of international jokes when she banned importation of 41 items, one of which is tooth pick, considered non essential to warrant allocation of hard earned foreign exchange, fx from the Central Bank Of Nigeria, CBN for its importation.

I once shared a story with readers of an incident that took place at the height of the Buhari/Osinbajo campaign last year. Candidate Muhammadu Buhari and his running mate, Yemi Osinbajo, had visited the traditional ruler in Gusau. They stayed longer than they had planned – far into the night – and were hoping that the crowd would have dispersed by the time the visit was over.

The issue of trust has been brought into public discourse to justify the #OccupyNigeria movement of 2012 following the removal of fuel subsidy by the government of Goodluck Jonathan. While the concept of ‘trust’ is a valid one in the engagement between government and citizens, it remains a hazy concept that is often guided by obscure standards and can be easily manipulated for or against government as was the case with the government of Goodluck Jonathan.

A man had just concluded his transaction at a market in Abuja, paid for the consumables he bought at scandalously high prices and was expecting his change. Sensing that the seller who collected his money was not paying attention, he repeated: “I said you should give me my change.”

The above quotation was the title of a press release I issued as the spokesperson of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) on June 25, 2009 after the completion of our assignment in setting up Internally Displaced Person’s (IDPs) camp in Gbaramatu Kingdom, Warri South West, Delta State.

These are definitely not the best of times for the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). The event of Saturday, 21 May 2016 only confirms the predictions that some of us have made about the party in the past. The party obviously is not prepared for its new role as an opposition party. Except one is either ridiculously optimistic or simply mischievous, the crisis some of us have predicted in the past months since the PDP was defeated in March 2015 came to light on Saturday.

It is important to remember always that Nigeria was born in diversity: the 1914 amalgamation brought together a potpourri of ethnic nationalities hitherto constituted as independent geopolitical as well as sociocultural entities. Diversity is therefore our historical reality. This ageless diversity question is founded on ethnic, political, economic, social, cultural, geographical and religious or faith platforms. No wonder therefore that pretty early in the life of Nigeria’s nationhood, in an argument about governance by two nationalist leaders, Sir Ahmadu, Bello the Sardauna of Sokoto in retorting to an appeal by Sir Nnamdi Azikiwe that they should forget their differences, is quoted as saying “let us not forget our differences, let us understand our differences and in so doing build unity in our country.”

Rotimi Amaechi Begs Nigerians to be Patient" - Premium Times Unlike some of the arrogant spokespersons of the administration who talk at the people instead of talking to them, Amaechi's recent plea is actually humble and persuasive.

“You have stoned nobody, that is why we are stealing…” – Rotimi Amaechi Recently, the story of a victim of hunger graced the pages of SaharaReporters. Nasiru Lukman, a teacher at Saint Luke’s Grammar School, Molete, Ibadan, Oyo State, slumped while teaching in the classroom. The Vice-Principal of the same school, Emmanuel Olajide reportedly died as a result of hunger “apparently due to non-payment of four months salary by the state government.” The 37-year old teacher of Accounting bled profusely as a result of injury sustained on his head. He was rushed to Molete Health Center for treatment.

A new champion of the Niger Delta has hatched out of its polluted creeks. It is armed to the teeth with assault rifles, bombs and ocean-wide expectations of becoming the next militant-multimillionaires through government pay-offs to ensure peaceful oil and gas production. But more important, it is also armed with barrel-fulls of recycled but legitimate grievances of the Delta’s boiling marshes. It calls itself the Niger Delta Avengers, NDA, mockingly echoing the acronym of the Nigeria Defence Academy. Its ancestry can be traced directly to the training camps of the Niger Delta Peoples Volunteer Force of self-acclaimed Mujahedeen Asari Dokubo, Egbesu (which, in solidarity, has sired the Red Egbesu Water Lions), and the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta. MEND which commandeered the Niger Delta cause from 2006 to 2009 — as virtually all the old, bourgeois-ified avengers of the oil creeks — has dissociated itself from a seemingly unlovable baby, making of NDA an orphan i

President Muhammadu Buhari’s face can sometimes be deadpan and inscrutable. As an ex soldier, he is supposed to be stern,so wearing a straight face that leaves no clue is not unexpected.

1) He does not have the resources of Lagos. It is not fair to ridicule his dane guns vis-a-vis Ambode's sophisticated weaponry in Lagos. If a man is going to heaven and puts on his shoes, it is no longer fair to say that his feet are not yet off the ground.

Femi Adesina opens his latest interview with Punch Newspaper with these words: “It is mendacious to say that in the last one year, what Nigerians have been experiencing is suffering. It is not true.” Something can be said in favour of Femi Adesina: he is consistent; he is not a hypocrite; he has never strayed from his conviction that haughty arrogance and unbridled contempt for the Nigerian people are the fundamental requirements of his job. You may accuse him of many failures, but you cannot accuse him of having failed once in the last one year to live by the code of arrogance and contempt for the people.

If you didn’t know that Nigeria was a land of oddities, this piece of news is an education you might appreciate: A Nigerian professor was caught, three weeks ago, helping herself with examination malpractice at the University of Jos, the same school where she teaches.

Whether they called it “subsidy removal,” at first and later “price modulation” and now “downstream liberalisation,” one fact stands out that the announcement by the federal government on the fuel issue represented a form of deregulation of the petroleum products procurement and distribution sub-sector of the nation’s downstream.

We are disturbed by the latest falsehood published in The Nation newspaper of Monday, 16 May, 2016, and the theatre of the absurd currently playing out in the Federal Information and Culture Ministry, following the recent leak of a letter requesting a loan of N13.2 million from the National Broadcasting Commission to facilitate Alhaji Lai Mohammed’s travel to China.

In February 2015, I received an unusual invitation to meet with the erstwhile President, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan. Some of the president’s backers had arranged a ‘Townhall with Nigerian Youths’.

The recent outburst credited to retired General Olusegun Obasanjo on the occasion of a lecture he is said to have delivered    at Covenant University Otta (Ogun State) on May 14th 2016 regarding the competence or lack of competence of President Muhammadu Buhari in the areas of economic policy and foreign affairs visibly represents a gross indiscretion that deserves to be strongly condemned by all right-thinking citizens of Nigeria.

So the fuel price hike strike flopped? Well, President Muhammadu Buhari may have just received a blank cheque from Nigerians to go on with this major surgery on the economy. This is the first time in my life that I have witnessed a fuel price increase that did not lead to popular resistance. I can’t really explain it. Is this a sign that Nigerians trust Buhari more than their previous leaders? If so, let me then add that it is a golden opportunity for him to finally do the needful. And I hasten to tell Buhari: That which thou doest, do it quickly. He must go ahead to reform the petroleum industry, open up the economy and attract the much-needed investments.

Niger Delta Avengers is the name of a new group of militants in the Niger Delta who claim to be different from the former agitators and militants who operated between 2006 and 2009, largely under the umbrella of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND). The title of this group may well serve as the thematic and definitive umbrella for the resurgence of low-level insurgency in the Niger Delta, for in the last month alone, more groups have joined the NDA to wage war against oil installations, the Buhari government, and the Nigerian state. These include the Isoko Liberation Movement and the Red Egbesu Water Lions. The groups are working in concert with the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) led by detained Nnamdi Kanu.

The Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu, said recently that the Nigerian government plans to restore history to the secondary school curriculum. For inexplicable reasons, history was excised from the curriculum several years ago. The government’s decision is commendable but they should get started on its implementation because historical illiteracy and amnesia is slowly killing the country. We are a country afflicted by an epidemic of forgetting and "moving forward." We move forward without understanding and resolving our past only to realize at great cost that our unfinished businesses are holding us captive and stalling our forward mobility.

Dear Comrade Shehu Sani It is been a while since we last communicated. I just have a piece of advice for you. Just one.

Fellow Nigerians, let me start today’s epistle by saying time flies indeed. Over a year ago, the dream of Major General Muhammadu Buhari to return to power, after being toppled in a military coup by Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida and company, was eventually realised after a record fourth attempt. History would record this monumental feat as one of the biggest miracles of our time. It was a testimony to the power of resilience and tenacity.

This thing called democracy, particularly the Nigerian brand, never ceases to throw up new and intriguing lessons about the relationship between government and the people, and the larger, complex socio-political environment. I had gone to Lagos on an assignment in the last two days of the year 2011, when around midnight I received a phone call from someone close to the corridors of power, informing me that a meeting had just been concluded in Abuja where a decision had been taken to deregulate the downstream petroleum sector, and thus, in effect remove the subsidy on Premium Motor Spirit (Petrol).  

Right from the beginning of civilization, when the human society began to merge into organized communities, one of the most unique attributes to have is the ability to predict the future, to be able to tell what might become of a person, a community, a village, a kingdom or an empire. Indeed, during the biblical times, when the organized society began evolve into a sophisticated formations, where religion was formed to crystallize the society into a state of order, that involve the reception of the scriptural text, in the context of its teachings which decree the mode of worship, constitutional management of the nation-state and the guiding pronouncement of how leaders could be just, fair, honest, accountable and responsible to the citizens who allowed them rule over their domicile.

There is a lot of public discussion around what has changed since President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration assumed office. In the media and on the streets the debate continues. When during the acute fuel scarcity recently attendants at a petrol station refused to sell fuel into jerrycans, a customer who had been waiting for a long time exploded in frustration, “This na change, hey? No light, no fuel for generators.” Another customer rejoined, mockingly, “Na change be dat.” A third customer said, “I voted for change but not like dis.”

As far as timing goes, the rescue on Tuesday of one of the Chibok girls by a detachment of the civilian Joint Task Force (JTF) and the rescue, yesterday, of another Chibok girl by the Nigerian Army, is luck intervening to compel national uplift in a season of nationwide depression.

Now that President Muhammadu Buhari’s government has earned his political party, the All Progressives Congress, the sobriquet, All Promises Cancelled, the next question is whether, over the coming months, the government will be able to do something about its battered image, or whether it’s going to take more chances and finish so poorly.

Since the swearing in of President Buhari on May 29, 2015, there has not been shortage in the blaming of the previous administration by the president and his officials. We have heard in not less than many cases where the President always shifting the blame and his administration’s incompetency of on the previous administration. Some members of his kitchen cabinet, themselves failures in their several job tasks have used his victory during the 2015 election as a vendetta against persons like Okonjo-Iweala, the immediate past minister of finance. How long will we continue like this?

By the time President Muhammadu Buhari took over power on May 29 last year, it was glaring to the discerning that the economy was tottering and that urgent decisions needed to be taken on two critical fundamentals: subsidy payments for PMS and the exchange rate of the Naira. What particularly made decisions on the two issues compelling was that they both have such economic and political implications that if nothing was done, the matter could be forced out of the hands of the federal government.

Even the most ardent of his supporters would have felt ashamed at Comrade Ayuba Wabba's lame showing in Abuja this week. A moment that should have been seized to showcase personal gumption and a good reading of the national mood was alas squashed on the altar of petty ego and delusion. The consequence was the humiliating blow the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) suffered Wednesday, the opening day of the "grandmother of all strikes" the nation was told to await, in response to last week's increment of petrol price from N86.50 to N145. Other than a sparse procession Wabba and like minds led through some deserted Abuja streets and a whimper at a few isolated locations across the country, the strike was a huge failure.

Some months ago, President Muhammadu Buhari travelled to Saudi Arabia to convince the kingdom to cut production in order to stabilize the price of oil – this was one of his reasons for going to Saudi Arabia, as reported by his media aide. I’m surprised that he didn’t know that what he was asking the Saudis to do would soon be done by his country. Didn’t the President get some security reports, or intelligence briefings, before these Avenger guys started causing havoc?

Having spent a whole week in Germany travelling through villages in Lusatia, Brandenburg and attending lectures in Berlin studying the German Energy Mix for the purpose of understanding lessons Nigeria could learn, today’s article was meant to start a conversation on that but one would be missing an opportunity to address the most pressing issue of the day: the petrol price hike. The conversation on the energy mix can happen at a later date.

Nigeria is today at a very difficult time. The  nation is witnessing the most severe crisis of multidimensional nature. A Severe economic crisis is coming on the heels of unrelenting terrorist attack. The present administration is challenged on two fronts: defeating terrorists and imprisoning corrupt leaders. Nigerians believe that their country is much more corrupt than the Transparency International Index may suggest. Corruption has become the dominant mode of public and social interaction. Going by the allegations and recent revelations, the words of Time Magazine writer that Nigeria’s leaders are not distinguishable from its criminals and corruption is not an aberration but a normal mode of governance are not totally off-the-mark. Corruption and incompetence in government have worsened poverty and trapped politics in stasis. This is the context to understand Mr. Chido Onumah’s new collection of essays: “We are all Biafrans.”

I don’t even know how I missed this one in all the recent back and forth but I have only just heard with one ear that the Senator Representing Bukola Saraki in the Senate, His Excellency Otunba Distinguished Senator Dino Melaye, is calling for protest and offering to lead it.