Clay Richie

Nigeria has a frightening history of precariously balancing herself on the cliff’s edge from time to time. And each moment usually comes with a fair amount of anxiety and numbing terror, such that it is only through the intervention of some supernatural force that the country has not gone the way of some chinaware smashed on a concrete floor.

There was much excitement among youngsters in Nigeria last week when both Senate and House of Representatives passed the “not too young to run” constitutional amendment bill, which reduced the age limit at which a citizen can seek high elective office. Senate passed the bill on Wednesday last week when 86 Senators voted for the bill, 10 voted against it while one senator abstained. The House of Representatives also passed the bill on Thursday with 261 votes for, 23 votes against while 2 members abstained.

Nothing proves Nigeria’s status as an oil alcoholic like the 50 dead bodies of the NNPC oil exploration team to Maiduguri. The scent of oil had us staggering into the killing field, with our eyes open; hence, the slaughter at the tryst of the country’s thirst for oil and Boko Haram’s blood thirst.

One of the characteristics of those of us living in Nigeria is the fact that our shockability index is very low. Quite low, indeed. When you think there cannot be anything worse than what you’ve seen, you’re confronted with something else that forces you to revise your earlier opinion or merely shrug your shoulder, and move on.

Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai,who was in Nigeria this week, has launched a new product that could change video streaming in Nigeria forever: the YouTube Go.

The rains are here and in torrents, we are indeed at the peak period of the season. There is now widespread flooding across many states. This newspaper on Monday, July 24, 2017, published pictures of flooding in states like Rivers, Delta, Lagos, and Ogun. In Niger State, about 25 persons were reported dead as a result of flooding. A young man, whose name was given simply as Izuchukwu purportedly died in a flood at West End Road area of  Owerri  last Saturday  while a  member of the All Progressives Congress, Alhaji Lateef Ajikanle, was also allegedly  electrocuted when he mistakenly touched live electricity wire while trying to clear debris from the flood in his compound  on Bolaji Omupo Street, Somolu, Lagos State, also last Saturday.

It’s about time we admitted that we’ve lost the Boko Haram war. The battle that started eight years ago is ending in victory for the terrorists. Has Nigeria not become a failed state?

The current economic crisis and recession in Nigerian has brought to the fore what is already known that the extant Nigerian national economy is not organised for internal self-propulsion and autonomous economic and business activities. The Nigerian economy since independence has been operated by the maintenance of the neo-colonial system of development incapacitation, primary commodity export, dependency and poverty generation. Its basic and long-standing focus has been on the expanded production and export of primary commodities such as agricultural products like palm oil, groundnut, cotton, cocoa, rubber in the 1960s and 1970s and subsequently crude oil since the1970s. But as raw material export depend on external demand, it does not activate autonomous and secure economic activity. Therefore the Nigerian economy has no internal capacity for mass production and self-propulsion. It is a large, unfree, dependent and unviable economy.

President Muhammadu Buhari’s determination to boost the nation’s economy does not seem to click with the tenets of globalization of trade as enunciated by the Western world. This is because the West, including the neo-liberalist and the Brettingwood philosophers, see the peculiar nature of the approach as theoretical.

It’s the magical moment- when grown up adults and children become akin; it comes with the access that comes with electricity. Perhaps, the emotions flow for different reasons; for the child, it’s the thought or prospect of being able to indulge in more activity; which could be the access to technology, while for the adult, it’s the thought of the monies saved from less fuel consumption by the generators which power several businesses. Sometimes, the reasons are not essentially complex: It’s simply the joys that staying in a lit up environment brings. This is the story in most parts of Sub-Saharan Africa. Access to electricity is opportunity. It is an opportunity that could benefit not just individuals, but economies as well.

Nigeria has had a rather chequered history with democracy. Since 1999, Nigeria has had an uninterrupted democratic experiment which has been largely successful. INEC has continuously improved its handling of elections where the votes of the people are increasingly being reflected in the results subsequently announced by INEC. Under former President Jonathan and continued under the Buhari/Osinbajo Presidency, elections in Nigeria have shown both parties win and lose elections. Surprise results, such as the senatorial result in Osun state, have at times gone against the party in power. Northerners have acquitted themselves very well when they have been in charge of INEC.

Fellow Nigerians, this has been a week of feverish action and frenetic activity between Nigeria and Great Britain. I assume that all Nigerians know that our dear beloved President is currently a resident of the beautiful city of London, not by choice but of necessity. Twice, in quick succession, Nigeria has been bogged down by the ill-health of its leaders and by some strange coincidence both are from Katsina State.

STOP PRESS: This column was being put to bed when the news broke that Nigeria’s dysfunctional Senate just voted against the constitutional amendment recommendation of devolution of powers. Not quite surprising but in the fullness of time, the Senators would learn that history moves with iron necessity-hence the title above

Scandinavia, Britain, France, Netherlands, India, China, the US – everyone is in a scramble to announce the end of fuel-powered cars by 2040 and so on. Everyone is announcing that every car on their roads will be green by 2040. Only electric cars. No more petrol and diesel cars.

One of life’s salient realities is that of man’s mortality. He’s controlled by and easily susceptible to the vagaries that tilt life. Though we find it hard to accept, the indispensability of man to life’s uncontrollable situations cannot be denied. Man is limited, man is vulnerable; and that’s as far as nature’s forces are concerned. Yes, indeed he can die, just as more easily he can be indisposed.

One of the intractable challenges that Nigeria has to deal with is that we often do not properly define the scope and scale of our problems before attempting to come up with solutions. Then, when our “solutions” fall flat, we wonder why they did not produce the intended result. Rather than learn from our mistakes, we rinse, repeat.

The issue of ‘reflecting the Federal Character’ is a recurring decimal in our political discourses. Many people have their own notion of what the concept means or ought to mean. Some blame the frequent cries of ‘marginalization’ by different sections of the country to the failure to properly implement the ‘Federal Character’ principle.

I woke up today, to the news of the test running of e-voting gadgets at the upper chambers of Nigeria’s National Assembly, wow this is tantalizing for some of us who are techie in nature  because it’s a great and exciting news showing that our country is now advancing in the use of technology for the conduct of legislative businesses.

Those tempted to view corruption only in materialist terms, overlooking the abstract subversion of norms and values, will perhaps be forced to have a rethink by simply following the farcical drama currently unfolding at the National Health Insurance Scheme.

Acting, according to Wkipedia, which is what most Nigerians rely on these days, “is an activity in which a story is told by means of its enactment by an actor or actress who adopts a character” while an “actor (often actress for female) is a person who portrays a character in a performance.” Again, according to Wikipedia, Acting can also mean “temporarily doing the duties of another person” and some of the examples cited are: Substitute, reserve, fill-in, stand-in, caretaker, surrogate, stopgap, transitional etc.

Those interested in the dustbin of Nigeria’s history will one day find APC inside the rubble, among the putrefaction, just beside PDP, and bring out her carcas for examination. Such students of the dustbin of history will likely conclude that APC’s signature contribution to the Nigerian tragedy is not in the empirical failure to deliver on measurable electoral promises in virtually all areas of national life but in the deadening of the Nigerian mind.

A popular saying admonishes us not to eat with ten fingers. Thisaxiomis not a homily about table manners. It is a metaphor about the virtue of living prudently. A more prosaic rendering will go like this: save a portion of your earnings for the possibility of emergencies in the here and now, and for the uncertainties of the future. Or put differently, always save for the proverbial rainy day. But both poetry and prose seem to elude us. Our country has made a habit of not only eating with its ten fingers, but also, in periods of plenty, throwing its ten toes into the mix.

The deteriorating health of the President and consequential medical pilgrimage to the United Kingdom, which has repeatedly kept him away from the country has been a source of serious debates in recent times. While some have argued that his absence has not created any vacuum, having transmitted the requisite notice to the National Assembly before his departure, and the Vice President validly acting in such capacity, others argue that somehow, the President’s continued absence has affected the smooth sail of government, since certain categories of executive functions cannot be validly delegated. The latter school has gone further to posit that should the President be absent for a continuous period of ninety days, he stands removable.

It seems that the spokesman of the Nigerian president must have significant abuse value. You must have a facility for name-calling. Or you must be a normal man that is willing to cast aside your manners and dispense insults on the chief’s behalf.

President Buhari has been out of the country for over two months. We are told he is ill, probably with oxygen passed to his nose while lying on a bed somewhere in London plugged to a series of monitors-hanging on to dear life. With doctors walking in and out muttering unintelligibly about his health status.

Nigeria’s House of Representatives is presently considering what perhaps qualifies as the most dangerous piece of legislation to come before the National Assembly since the return of civilian rule in 1999. It is the NGO Regulation Bill sponsored by the Deputy Majority Leader of the House, Hon. Umar Buba Jibril. The Bill is stunning in its audacity, far reaching in its scope and a danger to elective government in Nigeria. It should not be allowed to pass.

In 2007, the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua was desperate to solve a conundrum that was nearly as old as Nigeria’s independence. It was an especially recalcitrant problem. Ibrahim Babangida, former Military President, also attempted to solve it in the late 80s but he failed. Upon return to democracy, Olusegun Obasanjo, then President, gave it a shot too, in the early 2000s; and although he made significant progress, there were constitutional loopholes that the hawks were always going to exploit. It seemed to defy logic that Nigeria had near-empty savings to show for decades of crude oil exportation, and it’s even more baffling that no president found a solution, however hard they tried.

“What’s gwan inna wa cwantry?” “What language is that?” “English of course.” “Sounds like Creole to me. Why don’t you just talk straight?”

I am pleased to hear the former Delta State Governor, Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan respond to my comments on the poor state of finances in Delta State. To my mind, it is the direction of engagement that I hope will raise the quality of public discussions and move our democracy towards better serving the people. I therefore feel obligated to respond to the issues raised and to set the records straight for the benefit of the general public.

Sequel to the 2015 general election that saw APC defeat the “behemoth” PDP at the centre, it was clear that the latter was primed for some interesting changes. The National Chairman of the party, Adamu Muazu took an honourable exit and resigned his exalted position. This created space that was temporarily filled by Prince Uche Secondus, the Deputy National Chairman of the party.

His name: Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria’s President-Elect.  The man who, in one week, would take control of the Africa’s most bewildering country.  He was a much-feared man, with a certain reputation for character, a man who had fought for the presidency for years claiming he would rid Nigeria of corruption.

Bukola Saraki has been marked for ‘destruction’ by the ‘Hawks’ in the ruling All Progressives Party (APC). They want him out at any cost. This is the group that Saraki  recently described as “government within government.” He is probably restrained in the use of radical words like ‘Cabal,’ ‘Mafia,’ due to the integrity of the office he occupies as the President of the Senate and as a result of his continuous search for political solution. But as we have seen, and regardless of the onslaught and the pains he has suffered, it appears Saraki’s preference for political diplomacy is still preferred by him to the ‘unknown’ cost of confrontation – option B. His latest comment “I remain loyal to the APC,” and the re-allocation of ‘juicy’ committees to Senators opposed to his emergence, could also be interpreted in the political framework of his option A – diplomacy.

Nigeria today is trapped in the cusps of protests and agitations, sometimes violent and sometimes peaceful. It is arguable that, perhaps except in the heyday of Abacha’s brutal military dictatorship, Nigeria has never faced this degree of militant opposition against it by its citizens and citizens groups. Different social and political groups are challenging the legitimacy and utility of the Nigerian state.

On that day, I was tempted to commit my first murder at one of the banks. On the counter, I was next to a young boy – a boy no more than 17 years old – who went to withdraw N17million cash. He was politely invited to the back of the counter, but that did not stop me from being an eyewitness to the transaction.

What is federalism? To use the simplest definition at my disposal, federalism is a political system in which powers are shared between two “equal” levels of government: namely national and sub-national governments. Nigeria and Brazil have a third tier — local or municipal government. These powers are fundamentally to make laws. The powers held by each tier of government are determined from country to country. That is it why it is impossible to find two countries practising federalism exactly the same way. Every country has its own peculiar formation, politics, evolution, experience, culture and circumstances.

I have said it repeatedly that Nigeria will NOT make progress as long as we continue to elevate visionless people, viz. plunderers, profiteers, gangsters with their manifest tendencies into positions of authority and leadership. Unfortunately, we idolise these good-for-nothing leaders as gods; people who are totally bereft of progressive ideas and lack the wherewithal to lift society up the scale of human progress and whose only claim to power is their manifest lack of qualification for public office. They ordinarily should be on the fringes of society but who through a combination of regression of social values, sheer indiscipline, corruption of the sacred calling of leadership, godfatherism and the amount of violence they could boast of, have seized the mantle of leadership and then proceed to do incalculable damage to not just the psyche of the people, but demonstrably, the physical progress of their states and country. They fritter huge resources at their disposal away on munda

Last Thursday, Jack Ma, chairman of e-commerce behemoth Alibaba and Asia’s richest man, in company of 38 Chinese billionaires, started a two-day visit to Kenya and Rwanda, searching for deals and partnerships with governments and local businesses.

Now that a world-acclaimed Professor of Law is running the show in the land, you'd expect him to use this window to inject some strange notions into the system. Strange notions such as actions and consequences, especially legal consequences a.k.a the sort of legal consequences that can land you in jail after due process.

Fellow Nigerians, I didn’t know whether to cry or laugh when I got a call early this week from Ambassador Dayo Israel, one of the brightest youths I had mentored in my own modest way some years ago. It was a plaintive cry for help after the debacle of a failed local government chairmanship aspiration bid and the death knell of the campaign for youth emancipation in the Senate.

Nigerians love mantras – statements or slogans repeated frequently enough that they begin to sound like established facts or self-evident truths. Recently in this column (on June 22, 2017), I interrogated the mantra of ‘generation shift’, which was renewed with vigour following the victory of Emmanuel Macron, 39, in the recent French presidential elections. In that article, entitled “The New ‘Generation Shift’ Mantra” I tried to show that contrary to what the purveyors of the mantra will have us believe – namely that the problem with the country is because the ‘old brigade’ have refused to hand over to younger elements – it is actually the young who have been the ones calling the shot since independence. This means, following their logic, that the over-60s can rightly claim to have been ‘marginalized’ in leadership and therefore may have some right to start a campaign for ‘generation shift’. For open disclosure, I am not in that age bracket.

Alignments have started, friends are turning foes, brothers are turning enemies and life-long friendships are being thrown aside for power. The games concerning several thrones are about to begin and by the end of the current year, politicians across the entire nation will be at each other’s throat for positions they hope to occupy by May 29 2019.

All things being equal, Nigerians should expect a massive exodus of politicians from their current political parties into the Peoples Democratic Party soon.

The statement on Sunday by a group led by human rights lawyer, Femi Falana (SAN), about “unrealistic” recommendations contained in the 2014 National Conference report must be turning heads in political circles.

For thousands of young people who have been advocating for the passage of the #NotTooYoungToRun bill, news that the proposed amendment was not included in the final report that was considered and adopted by the lawmakers at the joint retreat on constitution review held in Lagos last weekend came as huge blow.

The MC of goofs, gaffs and a lotta mumbo-jumbo Alhaji Lai Mohammed in one of his numerous jokes, probably scripted this time by Tony Okoroji, announced that the federal government is set to stop production of Nigerian movies and music videos abroad. This revelation was made recently on Saturday,  July 15, 2017, at the headquarters of the copyright society of Nigeria (COSON).

It is quite human for Ahmed Markafi and co to quickly imagine the worst storm is over following the legal life-line from the Supreme Court last week and therefore relapse to the iniquities and debauchery of the past. But unless the dominant faction of the beleaguered Peoples Democratic Party now has the sobriety to decode the hidden lessons in the adversity suffered in the past fifteen months, they may realize sooner than later their ululation was premature.

Nobody needed any telling that he was angry as he made his presentation. “Nigeria is a failed state”, Dr Abubakar Othman, who teaches African Poetry and Creative Writing at the University of Maiduguri, repeatedly declared before launching into a song, or more appropriately, a chant, rendered in a “strange” language. Even when he provided no interpretation, he nonetheless offered an explanation: “That is the anthem of the hunters who have been battling Boko Haram in my town. I don’t sing the Nigerian anthem anymore. It means nothing to me.”

The Biafran project is once again widening in scope with charismatic figures, such as Nnamdi Kanu, Asiri Dokubo, and Femi Fani-Kayode as its echo chambers. The beef, however, remains the unspeakable bad governance in Nigeria and the seemingly unending marginalization of the Eastern states.

Nearly all Nigerians agree that travelling on our roads is a suicide mission. From terrible roads to crazy drivers, armed robbers to kidnappers, and extortionists claiming to be security agents, it is no wonder that we shout for joy whenever we get to our destinations safely.

Last Saturday, the Minister for Information, Lai Mohammed, put his foot in his mouth. Not an irregular occurrence by any stretch, but this time, the reaction was visceral. Yesterday, he attempted to walk it off. What I found interesting, was the following: According to Mohammed, 20 people, each investing $50,000, are expected to help to make up the required amount.