Clay Richie

“We are moving towards a (complex) global economy. One way of approaching that is to pull the covers over your head. Another is to say: It may be more complicated- but that’s the world I am going to live in, I might as well be good at it.” — Phil Condit

It was amusing seeing the pictures of Governor Olusegun Mimiko at the Presidential Villa last Friday. Not that he does not have the right to visit the president; he does, particularly with our warped federal structure wherein states are more of appendages than federating units. But his reason for the visit was funny, to say the least. The visit was like pounding on anvil that gave off no sparks, especially with his request that the president intervenes in the raging fire in Ondo State.

Today in northern Nigeria, we live in critically challenging times, with our cultural harmony rapidly disappearing and our political unity fast disintegrating, leaving social and political vacuums that are now hotly contested by two mutually-rejecting, nihilistic tendencies, each equally vicious and destructive. One does not require a Mensa IQ to conclude that our society is dangerously tethering on the edge of the precipice, heading inexorably towards a disaster. Our culture, our history, and our civilization are under threat. The way we handle those existential challenges, today determines how posterity will treat us tomorrow.

Old time newspaper readers must have chuckled yesterday when several newspapers reported President Muhammadu Buhari as saying that he is in charge of his government and had not abandoned his constitutional powers to his nephew, Malam Mamman Daura. The president spoke to the online medium The Osasu Show. He said, “I don’t know where [those making the allegation] get their news from. I stood for the election. I visited every local government in Nigeria. I travelled by road, by air and so on and we had one of the most credible election. So whoever feels he has lost somehow is his own problem. I have no problem.”

TRAINING FOR CHANGE After Econet Wireless Nigeria got their GSM License and before they launched services, they decided to educate the market through the most popular means at that time, the newspapers. The regulators and the companies who bid for the GSM license knew what the technology was for and how it operated. Those who had travelled abroad and used cell phones knew. The wealthy and fortunate people also had CDMA cell phones provided by MTEL at that time, but hardly anyone in the mass market understood anything about GSM technology or its applications. People didn’t even realize how transformative it was going to become in their everyday lives.

Democracy is, indeed, “the worst form of government except for all the others”. If the current regime in Nigeria were a military one, some jackboots would have simply agreed to borrow $30billion during a Federal Executive Council, and that’s all. That’s how destructive military regimes accumulated over $30billion within 16 years until 2000.

To understand why there seems to be a Northern domination of the Nigerian polity (as against Hausa or Fulani domination which is a myth), one has to read and understand the principle of unity found in Genesis 11:6 which reads:

Sometime ago — I don’t know the exact date and time — the Nigerian political elite (some call it “elites”, but I’m more comfortable using the good old “elite”) held a two-day convention at an undisclosed location. After intense discussion, negotiation and feasting, they adopted a two-word vision statement: “Destroy Nigeria”. To actualise the vision, they also wrote a short mission statement: “To use our positions as elected or appointed political leaders to mismanage Nigeria, take excessive care of our personal needs, appropriate all possible resources to ourselves, cronies and associates, and ultimately under-develop Nigeria”.

Another petrol price hike is coming. It’s not a matter of “if”; it’s a matter of “when.” So either brace yourself for it or get ready to fight it. Of course, I’d be the happiest person to be wrong about this.

Dr. Rahman Abayomi Olusegun Mimiko, the incumbent and out-going Governor of Ondo state, is the first governor in the history of the state to enjoy full two uninterrupted terms in office. He got this because he allegedly fooled the civil servants (through the various unions) and the generality of the people by doing some populist programs and projects at the tail-end of his first term. They erroneously thought he was going to continue with the populist agenda if voted in for 2nd term. Unfortunately, they got it all wrong!

As actors in a crisis-ridden political environment, Presidents Goodluck Jonathan and Muhammadu Buhari are not solely responsible for our present national problems. The PDP, the APC, or the two together, also do not bear exclusive blame for everything wrong with Nigeria today. They have their real and imagined shortcomings, of course, but they are also victims of generations of leaders and followers brought up on impunity, consumption and arbitrary use of state power.

Fellow Nigerians, let me say that nothing worries me more than the lack of jobs for our teeming youths. I have lost count of how many requests I get daily from unemployed graduates and non-graduates seeking any kind of job. Some have been out of jobs forever and they’ve been out of school for so long that they’ve almost forgotten whatever they learnt. Many consider you wicked and insensitive when you give them the bad news that you can’t be of any help. They are of the opinion that because they see you with the movers and shakers of society you can just pick your phone and get whatever you want at the snap of a finger.

First, a note about government spending. Government spending dynamics are similar to the way individuals and businesses spend money. They could spend money on different things. We typically think of government spending in relation to the effect it has on the economy. For example, if an individual chooses to spend money on a new pair of shoes, the impact on that individual is likely to be different compared to if he or she chose to spend the money on a health check-up. Similarly, if a business distributes its profits to shareholders, the impact is likely to be different than if the business reinvested its profits in new technology.

Nigeria—or the Department of State Security (DSS), to be precise—starts an ostensible war against corruption in the judicial and said war quickly degenerates into an absurd exercise.

Whether or not you like governor Rauf Aregbesola, you can hardly ignore his honesty and candor. When he spoke last Friday on the economics of change at The POINT magazine’s first anniversary, he did not pretend that the topic was chosen to flatter his party, the All Progressives Congress.

The true measure of a society or a civilization, goes an aphorism, lies in how she treats her weakest members. Between France, the United States, and Canada, I have lived continuously now for nearly 20 years in imperfect civilizations and cultures that are obsessed with the weak, the poor, the minority, and the excluded. Every waking day in such civilizations, human consciousness is haunted by the question: what is our society doing to be more responsive to the condition of the weak?

A new pipeline is in the offing, from Port Harcourt to Kano. Then three new power plants. One in Kano, one in Kaduna, one in Abuja. This comes as more resources are being devoted to the search for oil in the North-East, then there’s that 3% of VAT thing, that somehow Kano got itself involved in, despite a) not being in the North-East, and b) not exactly being victims of Boko Haram’s festivities.

Nigeria has recently embarked on something which its leadership describes as a war against corruption. I do not know whether it is by design or by mere happenstance but the series of events which government and its agents fly as posters for the success of combating corruption are unworthy of what a people, having any hope for an enduring change in ethos, would give more than a token of credit to.

Overtime, the Nigeria political and elitist communities have found fulfillment in squandering the limited resources, some to their private purses while most who claim to be “saints” splash the resources on issues of banalities yet come out to their ever-believing Nigeria people through the media

I will like to thank the management of Right Dev Limited for the kind invitation to the public presentation of their publication, The Point, and first annual independence lecture on the economy.

As long as corrupt people are being bundled into jail and made to face the law and serve their punishment, it doesn’t matter if they are from the opposition. When the opposition gets to power, they too should fight the previous ones, right?

Confidence towards the Nigerian economy received a welcome boost following reports of the country reclaiming its position as the largest economy in Africa. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Nigeria’s GDP currently stood around $415.08 billion in October while South Africa at $280.36 billion sparking discussions of the nation standing firm against the storm.

The Buhari administration came into being riding on the crest of a wave of public confidence that it would tackle corruption, make the nation secure and run the economy better. There were immense expectations of positive changes embodied in this platform on which the election campaign of President Muhammadu Buhari was based.

In over a decade of operations since the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) was set up by former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration, how many Nigerians has the EFCC impressed for its stellar and outstanding performance so far? How many high-profile corrupt politicians and individuals has it successfully prosecuted and brought to justice to the admiration and commendation of the Nigerian people?

Corruption is as Nigerian as Nigerians are to the practice of religious beliefs and ritual observance of faith. A casual survey of the political and corporate landscape in recent months provides a troubling reminder that corruption is endemic to our way of life.

Conventional morality is absolute: a thief is a thief, and an outlaw to boot. There are very few mitigating circumstances to make a thief into a hero, as in the mould of British folklore legend, Robin Hood, who robbed the rich aggressively just to provide for the needy poor. If a thief is duly proven to be one, he justifiably becomes the butt of society’s rage and opprobrium. He stands condemned and consigned to the thresher of societal amorality.

While serving as director general of the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA), Bolaji Akinyemi who was to become the foreign minister, argued that a major weakness of African politics is the stubborn refusal by African leaders to admit they had ever erred, let alone apologise for it. The only exception, noted Akinyemi, was Julius Nyerere of Tanzania who admitted that the nationalisation of farms as part of the socialist Ujamaa ideology was in error because it resulted in acute food shortages. Nelson Mandela was to become another exception when he apologised to victims of the anti-apartheid armed struggle in South Africa. Yakubu Gowon joined the list of African leaders who have pleaded mea culpa (“I am sorry”) when he apologised to victims of the Nigerian civil war of 1967-70.

Enugu state governor, Mr. Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, has enjoyed a rather impressive portrayal in the media since he assumed office. I have seen several articles parroting his “marvelous achievements” and some of the articles have even found their way to my email box for publication on my blog – which I published even though they were sent by a totally unfamiliar name. Although, after the horrendous tragedy perpetrated in Nimbo in Uzo-Uwani by murderous herdsmen, pictures of Mr. Ugwuanyi in flowing ‘agbada’ grinning from to ear to ear while shaking hands with President Muhammadu Buhari (who had done nothing to avert the callous slaughter of innocent villagers) had deeply shocked many people who had expected to see him in a mourning mood, the Enugu governor has managed to pass himself off as a public officer trying his best to impress his people.

There has been a cloud of ambivalence around current discussions on the need to use debt financing to exit Nigeria from economic recession to recovery.  The controversy can be resolved from two broad perspectives: one is the lesson from the historical and ongoing experiences of advanced and well-knowledged economies, in response to the threats of deflation and recession; the other is an examination of the dictates of the peculiarities of the prevailing Nigerian condition.

From May 29th last year, the incumbent administration had 16 quarters within which to redress the fortunes of the economy. Any which way this task was contemplated then, it was always going to be a long shot.

Governor Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti State is in the news again. That might not be entirely correct, as he has always been. If not attempting to ‘rescue’ a friend’s wife and her baby from the EFCC clutches, he might be ‘coordinating’ or ‘supervising’ a judge being manhandled and that was even when judges have not been demonized as they are presently. The voluble governor has also been very busy buying condiments from market sellers, usually women, all of which I hope usually end up in someone’s pot of soup, at least if not the Government House kitchen. By the way, I hope he does not forget iru Ado or iru Ikere locust beans from two major towns in the state.

Reading Dr Abati’s treatise on the above initially made me laugh. Especially when one came across the lines where he wrote ‘male officials at the villa had a sense of losing something below their waists and how many Madams in the house had to consult diddlo or whatever to help their husbands’.

Few articles in print can be as troubling as “The Spiritual Side of Aso Villa,” published by former Nigeria presidential adviser Reuben Abati on October 14.

There is a confession I’ve been longing to make: I never expected Candidate Muhammadu Buhari to win the 2015 presidential election. Although I have never hidden my soft spot for him for decades, I somehow expected President Goodluck Jonathan to be returned by any means. I had my reason: I thought no sitting president could be defeated in Nigeria. He has CBN, NNPC, INEC, police, military and even FRSC at his beck and call. How would he lose? We all saw the ridiculous results that returned President Olusegun Obasanjo to office in 2003. That made me conclude that it was impossible to defeat an incumbent president. I was sensationally wrong.

Let me begin with two clarifications. Aso Villa is not my home; I am just passing through. Even this world is nobody's home; we are just birds of passage. So, let nobody turn up his nose in derision, and say; "he's writing to the landlord of Aso Villa, defending a place where's he's just a tenant."

Recently, the social media suddenly caught flame with stories screaming about how the Governor of Anambra State, Chief Willie Obiano is a failure. In what looks like a massively funded smear campaign; pay-per-tweet mercenaries and scores of social media trolls who are mere puppets dancing to drums from Nnewi had risen like a soulless mass of trumpeters to shout at the top of their voices that Willie Obiano is a failure. Nawa o!

President Muhammadu Buhari rode on the crest of an anti-corruption crusader to cause the greatest electoral upset in Nigeria’s history last year. The mind boggling corruption allegations of the badly discredited Goodluck Jonathan administration made the retired General sell himself as a viable alternative.

In a philanthropy psychology class, it will not be unlikely to ask what people like Tony Elumelu want with their devotion to philanthropy. Some universities now run courses or degree programmes in philanthropic studies or philanthropic psychology. So what does Tony Elumelu want?

I read a piece of good news in the newspapers recently that the Kaduna State Governor, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, had finally made good his promise to enrol his children in public schools. His three-year-old son, Abubakar Al Saiddique, has just started his academic journey through life at Islamiyya Play/Early School. It is a step that may not amount to much in the eyes of many, but I tell you, it’s one small step towards saving public schools in this country.

The book ‘Muhammadu Buhari- The Challenges of Leadership in Nigeria’ by Professor John Paden is not only an intellectually lazy work, it is also a fallacious document hastily put together to paint the protagonist in the borrowed garb of an effective leader who is cleaning the Augean Stable of misrule and corruption in Nigeria, but my question is this-how can you fight corruption with lies?

At first, like every sane Nigerian, I took President Muhammadu Buhari’s response to his wife’s criticism of his government as a joke. And even agreed with Malam Garba Shehu’s description of it as as such on Twitter, that “(President Buhari) was obviously throwing a banter.” But the President’s unnecessary restatement of that misogynistic caricaturing of his wife in a subsequent interview, clarifying that indeed “she belongs in my kitchen, my living room and the other”, was devastating. And this was done as guest of Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, a woman that manages a country more prosperous than his and ranks higher than him in the global political equation. Yet that wasn’t a clue to keep his patriarchy to himself.

Just as Nigerians were being regaled  with former presidential spokesman, Rueben Abati’s thriller titled “Spiritual Side Of Nigeria’s Villa” which is a tale about ‘demons’ and ‘ghosts’  in Aso Rock villa, Nigeria’s seat of power, a current Aso Rock occupant, First Lady, Aisha Buhari has presented the world with the UNSPIRITUAL SIDE OF NIGERIA’S SEAT OF POWER by humanizing the machinations that swirl around mr president in the seat of power.

 The APC chairman has proven to be a most unique man.  John Oyegun’s reply to what we have revealed about his malfeasant handling of the Ondo primaries shows but one thing: he has decided that he is better served by continuing his romance with misdirection and falsehood.While these slick tools may be useful to Oyegun’s ulterior designs, they ill suit the interests of the APC and of the electorate which the party is meant to serve.

Today is the 30th anniversary of the assassination of Dele Giwa, the unapologetically brash journalist, the founding editor of Newswatch magazine. Every October 19 Nigerians are forced to lock their eyes on screaming newspaper headlines: “Who Killed Dele Giwa?”

The President of Nigeria Mr. Muhammadu Buhari should have been much more diplomatic upon hearing his wife’s outburst about how he runs the country and the people he chose to help him. Men are wont to show a lot of bravado when talking about their wives. In olden times the worst fear a man had was to be labelled in vulgar language a “woman wrapper.” In order to avoid the label men have been known to show that no woman has wrapped them up. But that was then but not now. PMB’s statement that his wife belongs to his kitchen, or living room or the other room is very, very unfortunate. For several reasons:

Among many other things, the recently launched authorised biography of President Muhammadu Buhari, entitled, “The Challenges of Leadership in Nigeria,” strives to humanise its subject and make him look too good for Nigeria. But that is not all it is to effective leadership. In line with that strategy, the book refreshes our memory about Buhari’s ouster as head of state in 1985 although it is not the first time the story would be told.

I woke up last Friday to find on my handset messages with strange questions: Is it true that people bath with blood in Aso Rock? Are there demons in Aso Rock that make leaders take decisions that are not in the public interest? Did you ever notice anybody walking head to the ground at the villa? Is strange death a common phenomenon for people who work in Aso Rock? Can you still perform your bedroom functions as a husband? The questions, which I considered rather weird and ridiculous, kept coming in torrents; and even when a few made allusion to Dr. Reuben Abati, I honestly didn’t understand what the whole hoopla was all about. That was until I got a mail from my friend, Wale Adebanwi, an associate professor at the University of California, Davis, United States.

The Igbo expression “nwayo, nwayoo” means slowly or gradually. My late uncle in order to make the English expression sound like the Igbo version preferred to translate the expression as “gradual by gradually.” That was as much as his 2nd grade education had allowed. Nigeria is getting to disintegrating gradual by gradually.

“If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their evil ways, then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.” 2 Chronicles 7:14. There’s no question about it. There seems to be no end to controversies in Nigeria. Recent events in the last few days again prove this fact. But more importantly is the fact that our country needs serious divine healing and intervention with the way things are going in the system whether we believe it or it.

Senator Shehu Sani, who obviously knows more than many of us about the negotiation leading to the return of the abducted Chibok girls, has urged caution in handling the matter. There is a lot of sense in the senator’s position because with the return of the 21 of the girls last week there are high prospects that 83 more of the girls may soon regain freedom from the Boko Haram captivity.