Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) says plans by the federal government to increase electricity tariff by 40 percent from July 1, 2023, is “insensitive and callous”.

On Monday, the federal government hinted at removing the N50 billion monthly electricity subsidy in the sector owing to the revenue shortfall.

The development is coming a few weeks after the removal of petrol subsidy which now has petrol retail prices skyrocketing.

Reacting to this in a statement issued on Thursday, Joe Ajaero, NLC president, condemned the intentions of the federal government, saying it reflected an organised indifference to the wellbeing of consumers.

“The massive increase is explained away as a response to the over 100 percent increase in the pump price of premium motor spirit. Details reveal a movement in inflation from 16.9 percent to 22.41 percent (threatening to needle 30), and a shift in the exchange rate from N441 to N750,” the statement reads.

“We believe not even these figures are a justification for this reckless proposed tariff increase. The issue of capacity to pay and quality of service delivery are not only germane but superior to any rationalisation by market logic. The service providers, in spite of sundry support, have not been able to meet the threshold of 5,000 megawatts.

“Coupled with this, there have been surreptitious increases without notice in violation of statutes. The inherent risk in the new regime of tariff is that there is no control, implying that by August, consumers will pay new rates.

“The other risk is that by the time other products or service-rendering entities come up with their new prices or rates, the ordinary person would have been compacted into dust. We would want to advise apostles of the market who have called NLC all sorts of names to check their conscience.

“The rate at which they are going is highly combative and combustible. With the contemplation of payment of school fees in tertiary institutions and increases in privately-owned ones in addition to other costs/tariffs on the way, life in Nigeria could truly be Hobbesian.

“The market economies which the market fundamentalists seek to emulate, have in place socio-economic safeguards which we do not have. In light of this, our advice is that this proposed tariff hike should be shelved for our collective safety.”

The Cable

About 80 per cent of Small and Medium Enterprises fail before their fifth anniversary due to harsh economic environments, lack of access to capital, and poor business practices, which have stunted growth and transition of micro-businesses, a new report has said.

According to the report titled “Perception Study: Efficiency and Impact of Regulatory Activities of Standard Organisation of Nigeria on  SMEs”, numerous variables currently influence Nigeria’s economic climate and as a result, it is unfavourable and risky for foreign investments.

It further stated that there were obstacles in the Nigerian business environment that act as constraints to the survival of business in the nation, despite the economic expansion and the possibility for economic prospects.

It identified multiple taxations as a major constraint that has negatively impacted many businesses in the country.

The report read in part, “MAN (Manufacturers Association of Nigeria) has spoken out loudly that the Nigerian business environment is now under the oppressive weight of several taxes, which have the potential to bankrupt companies. In a recent survey, MAN discovered that only 39 of the 119 taxes and levies that were authorised under the taxes and levies (Approved list of collection) Act 1998 were really being levied by various levels of government across the three states.

“80 per cent of SMEs fail before their fifth anniversary due to harsh economic environments, lack of access to capital, and poor business practices, which have stunted the growth and transition of micro-businesses, according to the Small and Medium Scale Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria in Nigeria.”

The report listed additional difficulties such as the cost of accessing adequate technology, the lack of facilities for research and development, the decline in demand for locally produced products and the increase in demand for imported goods.

“Low formal educational and technical competency of SME owners and staff as well as weak organisational framework, product/service marketing, low information technology utilisation, people management issues, insufficient accounting records, among others, are some significant challenges facing SMEs in Nigeria,” the report read further.

Punch

A witness for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, has told the Presidential Election Petition Court in Abuja that results on all 110 BVAS machines he inspected were deleted.

The Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) machine is an electronic device distributed across the over 176,000 polling units in the country by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for the accreditation of voters during the 2023 general elections.

The device was also designed to promptly upload photographic copies of result sheets to the INEC Results View (IReV) portal after result documentation at the polling units.

Atiku disputed the results of the presidential election declared by INEC. He also rejected the results because of INEC’s failure to promptly upload the polling unit results of the election to IReV.

In his petition that he filed at the Presidential Election Petition Court to challenge President Bola Tinubu’s victory, Atiku prayed that he be declared the winner instead. But he alternatively asked for an outright cancellation of the poll for a fresh one to be conducted.

Hitler Nwala, who was subpoenaed to testify as an expert witness for the petitioners, said he inspected and analysed 110 BVAS machines used for the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) election.

The witness, led in evidence by the petitioner’s lead counsel, Chris Uche, described himself as a Digital Forensic Analyst.

He said his analysis of the BVAS showed that their results were deleted but that he didn’t know when the deletion was done.

Cross-examination

Under cross-examination by INEC’s lawyer, Abubakar Mahmoud, the witness said that he attached a standard exercise device to the machine to arrive at his conclusion.

When asked if he had the authority of the commission to attach an external device to the BVAS machines, the witness answered in the affirmative.

Mahmoud further asked the witness if he was aware that inspecting only 110 machines out of 3,163 that were deployed in the FCT amounted to only 3.4 per cent of the total number of BVAS deployed in the FCT and 0.06 per cent of BVAS deployed nationwide.

The witness told the court that he only compiled the report and didn’t take time to calculate the percentages.

The INEC counsel attempted to give a BVAS machine to the witness to check if the results on them were deleted, as he had said in his report.

The witness, however, said that it would be against the ethics of his profession to collect the BVAS machine in open court to check it.

“It is professionally wrong to access a device that will be used as evidence in a court of competent jurisdiction because it will tamper with the evidence.

“We cannot access the device directly; what we do is extract the evidence and take it for analysis,” he said.

Moreover, the witness told the court that since all the devices had the same model and looked the same on the outside, he couldn’t tell by merely looking at it if it was one of those he inspected.

On his part, counsel for the All Progressives Congress (APC), Lateef Fagbemi, told the witness that neither he nor his team members signed the six-volume forensic report.

The witness, however, insisted that he signed the report and the certificate of compliance.

On his part, counsel for Tinubu, Wole Olanipekun, confronted the witness with a portion of his report where he said that from his inspection of the machines, “nothing was intrinsically wrong with them”.

“Were you in Abuja on the day of the presidential election? If you were not in Abuja, how can you know that there was nothing intrinsically wrong with the machines on the day of the election?” the senior lawyer asked.

The witness said he was not in Abuja, so he couldn’t have known if something went wrong with the machines on election day.

Exhibits tendered

After the witness was discharged, the petitioners went further to tender Forms EC8A series from 20 local government areas of Ogun State, 17 local government areas of Ondo State, 27 local government areas of Jigawa State, and 20 local government areas of Rivers State.

The five-member panel of the court led by Haruna Tsammani adjourned the hearing of the petition until Friday.

After the pre-hearing report, Atiku and the PDP are expected to close their case on Friday.

They had asked for three weeks to present their case, which elapsed on Tuesday, but because they had lost three days, one being the June 12 Democracy Day public holiday, the court extended their time by three days.

NAN

Labour Party and its presidential candidate, Peter Obi, on Thursday fielded more witnesses in aid of its petition at the Presidential Election Petition Court.

The petitioners are protesting the outcome of the last presidential elections wherein the Independent National Electoral Commission declared Bola Tinubu as the elected president.

Tinubu contested under the platform of the All Progressives Congress.

During the resumed hearing in the matter, Ugwuoke who was led in evidence by the petitioners’ counsel, Patrick Ikweato, insinuated that the Amazon Web Service could not have shut down as it was the responsibility of the service provider to be up and running.

The AWS was the web host of the INEC Results Viewing portal where the election results were to be uploaded.

Under cross-examination by counsel to the electoral commission, Abubakar Mahmoud, the witness averred that the AWS model has a shared responsibility model between the service provider and the clients.

He maintained that it is the responsibility of the company to guarantee the security of its customers.

Furthermore, Ugwuoke explained that there are three components of shared responsibility between the company and INEC – confidentiality, integrity, and availability.

The witness noted that “availability” remains the responsibility of AWS.

In his words, ”It means it will always be available. It won’t shut down. This is the responsibility of AWS. The cloud trail will explain the availability of AWS infrastructure.”

Under cross-examination by counsel for the APC, Lateef Fagbemi, the witness affirmed that there is a Service Level Agreement between the service provider (AWS) and clients (INEC).

He said the agreement contained details of security features.

The cyber security expert further informed the court that whereas election results ought to be domiciled on the INEC Results Viewing portal, what is seen in some uploads are “incorrect uploads such as a picture of a book rather than a result.”

He insisted that the chances of errors being detected after the deployment of an application are negligible.

However, he said such errors are more likely to be detected at the testing stage of an application.

Punch

Federation Account Allocation Committee says it shared N786.16bn among the three tiers of government for May 2023.

The figure represents an increase of N130.23bn compared to the N655.93bn shared in April 2023, and it is the highest this year and the first increase following a constant decline since January.

FAAC disclosed this in a communiqué issued at the end of its latest meeting in Abuja on Thursday.

The meeting was chaired by the new Accountant General of the Federation, Oluwatoyin Madein.

The total amount includes gross statutory revenue, Value Added Tax, Augmentations from Forex and Non-oil Mineral Revenue, and electronic money transfer levies.

The communique read, “The N786.16bn total distributable revenue comprised distributable statutory revenue of N519.55bn, distributable Value Added Tax revenue of N251.61bn, Electronic Money Transfer Levy of N14.37bn, and Exchange Difference revenue of N0.64 bn.”

Federal Government received N301.89bn, the states received N265.88bn, and local government councils got N195.54bn, while the oil-producing states received N22.86bn as derivation (13 per cent of mineral revenue).

A breakdown showed that “Gross statutory revenue of N701.79bn was received for the month of May 2023. This was higher than the N497.46bn received in the previous month by N204.324bn.”

It was noted that from the N519.55bn distributable statutory revenue, the Federal Government got N261.69bn, State Governments received N132.73bn, and Local Government Councils received N102.33bn. N22.8bn was shared to the relevant States as 13 per cent derivation revenue.

Also, “For May 2023, the gross revenue available from the Value Added Tax was N270.2bn. This was higher than the N217.74bn available in April 2023 by N52.45bn.

“The Federal Government received N37.74bn, the State Governments received N125.80bn and the Local Government Councils received N88.06bn from the N251.61bn distributable Value Added Tax revenue.

“The N14.37bn Electronic Money Transfer Levy was shared as follows: Federal Government received N2.16bn, State Governments received N7.189bn and Local Government Councils received N5.03bn.

“From the N0.64bn Exchange Difference revenue, Federal Government received N0.31bn, State Governments received N0.16bn, Local Government Councils received N0.12bn and N0.06bn was shared to the relevant States as 13 per cent mineral revenue.”

Punch

National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) says Indomie noodles manufactured in Nigeria is safe for human consumption. 

The agency said the noodles do not contain ethylene oxide.

Health officials in Malaysia and Taiwan said they had detected ethylene oxide in Indomie’s special chicken flavour noodles.

Ethylene oxide is a colourless and odourless gas that is used to sterilise medical equipment and plastics. It is said to be a cancer-causing chemical.

Mojisola Adeyeye, NAFDAC director-general, said the agency would begin random sample tests of the noodles from May 2.

Speaking with journalists on Thursday, the director-general said during the probe, samples of chicken flavoured instant noodles of various brands and the seasonings were drawn from the production facilities across the country.

She said the exercise was to ensure that the investigation was robust and cover other instant noodles brands manufactured in Nigeria, besides Indomie.

She said the agency also visited markets and retail outlets in the major cities of Lagos, Abuja, and Kano and drew samples of instant noodles for laboratory analysis.

“The market visits served as surveillance for the presence of the Taiwan and Malaysian special chicken noodles in the Nigerian market,” she said.

“The samples drawn from production facilities and trade were properly packaged and delivered in good condition to our central laboratory, Oshodi, Lagos, where analytical activities commenced immediately in accordance with international standards and methods of analysis.

“The technique using gas chromatography with mass spectrometry detector was deployed.

“A total of 114 samples of instant noodles and the seasonings were received.

“We did not only analyze for ethylene oxide and its derivative 2-chloroethanol in the noodles and seasonings; we also analysed for other contaminants such as mycotoxins and heavy metals in the samples.

“Ethylene oxide or its derivative was not found in any of the instant noodles produced in Nigeria and their seasonings.

“The level of mycotoxin and the heavy metals were within the internationally acceptable limit. Therefore, the noodles made in Nigeria are very safe to eat.”

The Cable

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Ukraine hits bridge linking Crimea to mainland in blow to Russian supply route

Ukrainian missiles on Thursday struck one of the few bridges linking the Crimea Peninsula with the Ukrainian mainland, Russian-appointed officials said, cutting one of the main supply routes for Russian occupation forces in southern Ukraine.

Meanwhile on the eastern front, Ukrainian forces were containing Russian troops and have not allowed "a single metre" of Russian advances, Ukraine's Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar said on the Telegram app on Thursday.

She added Ukrainian forces on the southern front, where several villages were retaken last week, were "gradually moving forward. We have had partial success. We are pushing back the enemy and levelling the front line".

Ukraine is attacking Russian supply lines to disrupt Moscow's defence of occupied territory in the south, where Kyiv is in the early stages of its most ambitious counteroffensive of the 16-month-old war.

Kyiv says it has recaptured eight villages so far, but it has yet to commit the bulk of its forces to the fight and its troops have yet to reach the main Russian defensive lines.

Vladimir Saldo, head of the Russian-installed administration in occupied Kherson province, released video of himself on the Chonhar road bridge, where craters were blasted through the asphalt.

"Another meaningless act perpetrated by the Kyiv regime on orders from London. It solves nothing as far as the special military operation is concerned," he said, vowing to repair the bridge and restore traffic. Ukraine did not claim responsibility for the bridge attack.

The bridge is one of a handful of access roads to Crimea, which a narrow isthmus links to the Ukrainian mainland.

Alternative routes require hours-long detours over roads in poor condition. Russia's RIA new agency quoted Russian-installed transport officials as saying repairing the bridge could take weeks.

The bridge is beyond range of the battlefield rockets Ukraine has used for a year, but within reach of newly deployed weapons such as British and French air-launched cruise missiles, allowing Kyiv to hit logistics routes Russia had deemed safe just weeks ago.

'PSYCHOLOGICAL IMPACT'

The strike was "a blow to the military logistics of the occupiers", said Yuriy Sobolevsky, a Ukrainian official on the governing body for the Kherson region.

"There is no place on the territory of Kherson region where they can feel safe," he said.

Russian investigators said four missiles were fired by Ukrainian forces at the bridge, the RIA news agency reported. It quoted a spokesman for military investigators as saying markings on one missile suggested it was made in France.

Ukraine's Maliar said fighting in the Lyman sector, in the north of Donetsk region, was "the most difficult".

In the south, Ukrainian forces continued their offensive aimed at moving towards the city of Melitopol in the Zaporizhzhia region and the port of Berdiansk on the Sea of Azov, she said.

Russia says it has fended off the Ukrainian counterattack and inflicted heavy casualties, which Ukraine denies.

Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin accused the leaders of the Russian military of lying to President Vladimir Putin and the Russian people about the extent of Russian losses and setbacks in Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has acknowledged that progress has been slow so far, but says his troops are advancing cautiously into heavily mined and well-defended areas to minimise losses.

Zelenskiy on Thursday accused Russia of planning a terrorist attack on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe's largest, which is in Russian-held territory near the front line. Moscow denied any such plan.

In a video statement on Telegram, the Ukrainian president said Moscow had prepared an attack that would release radiation from the plant but did not provide evidence.

Zelenskiy also claimed in his nightly video address that Russia had formed teams to collect and hide bodies of people killed in the Kakhovka dam collapse this month in southern Ukraine. Ukraine and Russia have accused each other of being behind the dam breach.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called out Russia on Thursday for killing 136 children in Ukraine in 2022, adding its armed forces to a global list of offenders, according to a report to the U.N. Security Council seen by Reuters on children and armed conflict.

Russia has denied targeting civilians since it invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.

In London, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said he was certain Ukraine will have received the $6.5 billion it needs this year for its rapid reconstruction from pledges made at a conference that closed on Thursday.

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Kiev regime’s losses indicate West intends to fight Russia until last Ukrainian — Putin

The West can supply additional military equipment to Ukraine but it does not have an endless amount of manpower to work with, meaning Western countries intend to fight Russia until the last Ukrainian, Russian President Vladimir Putin pointed out at a briefing with permanent Security Council members.

"I realize that this is preliminary information because it is impossible to get a complete picture of the battlefield but overall it is clear. One can conclude that, of course, it is possible to supply additional hardware but the mobilization reserve is not infinite," the Russian head of state said commenting on the data on Ukrainian equipment and personnel losses provided by Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu and Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev.

"It seems that Ukraine’s Western allies have indeed decided to fight Russia until the last Ukrainian," the president stressed.

During the meeting, Putin listened to Shoigu’s report on Ukrainian losses and then compared that information with the data obtained by Patrushev via other channels. "Nikolay Platonovich, I asked you to maintain interaction with your colleagues from various agencies in order for us to have an objective picture of what is going on," he explained, asking for an account of "how it looks from the point of view of various agencies participating in the special military operation." "It is clear that the main responsibility rests with the Defense Ministry but nevertheless, other agencies also accumulate information," the Russian president added.

According to the Defense Ministry and Security Council, Ukrainian personnel losses have surpassed 13,000 people. Putin was also interested in how the Defense Ministry assessed the prospects of new supplies of Western military hardware.

Having listened to the reports, the president emphasized that Ukrainian army reserves had not been exhausted and Russian commanders should be practical when planning combat operations. "One has to proceed from the premise that the adversary’s advance potential has not been exhausted; a number of strategic reserves have not yet been engaged and I am asking to keep this in mind when planning combat operations. It is necessary to proceed from the real situation," Putin concluded.

** Current counteroffensive ‘not decisive’ – Kiev

Ukraine is already planning for its next ‘counter-offensive’ using the US-made Abrams tanks, Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba told state broadcaster Suspilne on Thursday.

Washington promised Kiev about 30 Abrams tanks back in January. Asked whether they might arrive in time for the current operation, Kuleba said Ukrainians should look to the future instead.

“There is hope, but one should not think only in terms of this counter-offensive,” he said. “You should not look at this counteroffensive as the last and decisive one. There will be so many counteroffensives, as many as is needed to expel Russia from our territory.”

The Abrams is a “much more complex design” than the German-made Leopards that Ukraine was provided in the spring, Kuleba added. 

Kiev launched its long-heralded attack on June 4, deploying several brigades armed with American Bradley infantry fighting vehicles and German-made Leopards against Russian defenses in Zaporozhye and southern Donetsk. 

President Vladimir Zelensky acknowledged on Wednesday that the advance had been “slower than desired.” Anonymous Western officials told CNN on Thursday that the attack was “not meeting expectations on any front.” 

According to the Russian military, Ukrainian troops were stopped cold on the screening line, losing up to 13,000 casualties and 800 armored vehicles. Briefing President Vladimir Putin on Thursday, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu and National Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev spoke of 13 Western-made tanks being destroyed in the 16 days of fighting.

Ukrainian losses reportedly include 246 tanks, 152 infantry fighting vehicles – including 59 Western-made ones – 443 armored vehicles, 279 field artillery pieces and mortars, 42 multiple rocket launchers, ten fighter jets, four helicopters and 264 drones, according to the briefing.

Several Russian regions and organizations have offered bounties for the destruction or capture of any Leopard, Abrams or UK-made Challenger tanks provided to Ukraine. The first million-ruble prize for killing a Leopard was paid out to a Russian serviceman earlier this week. 

** NATO ‘out of the question’ for Ukraine right now – Scholz

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has argued that NATO should use its upcoming summit to marshall more military aid for Ukraine rather than pushing for the country to join the bloc. The US-led alliance is divided on the speed of Ukraine’s accession, with Britain demanding a fast-tracked process.

“We have to take a sober look at the current situation,” Scholz told parliament in Berlin on Thursday. Scholz added that Ukrainian officials have admitted “that joining NATO is out of the question” for as long as the conflict with Russia is raging, and the Western bloc should focus on other means of “support” for Kiev.

"Therefore, I suggest we focus on the top priority in Vilnius, namely strengthening the combat power of Ukraine," he argued, referring to the July summit in the Lithuanian capital.

"Our goal is… a sustainable military support of Ukraine, including with modern Western weapons,” he said, adding that EU and G7 nations could work out “security guarantees” for Ukraine in the absence of full NATO membership.

NATO’s official position on Ukrainian membership remains unchanged since 2008, when it declared that Ukraine “will become a member” at an unspecified point in the future. As long as the conflict with Russia is ongoing, this will be unlikely to shift, as Ukraine joining NATO would place the bloc at war with Russia. Prospective members can only join with the unanimous consent of all existing members.

Nevertheless, the European Parliament wants NATO leaders to use the Vilnius summit to extend a membership invitation to Ukraine, as do Polish, Lithuanian, and Ukrainian lawmakers. The UK backs these calls for urgency, with Foreign Secretary James Cleverly stating earlier on Thursday that London “would be very, very supportive” of NATO expediting Ukraine’s accession to the bloc.

“The Ukrainians have demonstrated their commitment to military reform required for NATO membership through their actions on the battlefield, and I think all NATO allies recognise that,” Cleverly added, without explicitly saying whether NATO should wait for the conflict with Russia to be resolved first.

For the time being, the US remains opposed to any fast-track process. Last week, US President Joe Biden stated that Ukraine would have to meet the same standards as everyone else and that “we are not going to make it easy.” 

Reuters/Tass/RT

South Kordofan residents flee as new front in Sudan war develops

Residents of the city of Kadugli in southwest Sudan began fleeing the city on Thursday as tensions escalated between the army and a powerful rebel group, threatening to open another area of conflict in the country's ongoing war, witnesses said.

Mobilisation around Kadugli, capital of South Kordofan state, and an escalation of fighting in Darfur come after nearly 10 weeks of fighting focused in the capital, Khartoum, between Sudan's army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

The United States and Saudi Arabia adjourned talks they had been facilitating in Jeddah, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Molly Phee said at a congressional hearing in Washington.

"The format is not succeeding in the way that we want," she said, after a series of violated ceasefire agreements.

Since mid-April the war has uprooted more than 2.5 million people from their homes and threatened to destabilise neighbouring countries suffering from a combination of conflict, poverty and economic pressures.

In the fighting between the army and the RSF, army air strikes on Thursday morning hit areas of southern Khartoum and Omdurman, and the RSF responded with anti-aircraft weaponry, residents said.

ESCALATION IN THE WEST

The army on Wednesday accused the SPLM-N rebel group led by Abdelaziz al-Hilu, which controls parts of South Kordofan state, of breaking a long-standing ceasefire agreement and attacking an army unit in the city.

The army said it had fought back the incursion but sustained losses.

South Kordofan has Sudan's main oil fields and borders West Darfur State as well as South Sudan.

The SPLM-N, which has strong ties to South Sudan, also attacked the army in the South Kordofan city of al-Dalanj on Wednesday, as did the RSF, residents said.

Residents of Kadugli said the army had redeployed forces to protect its positions in the city on Thursday, while the SPLM-N was gathering in areas on the outskirts.

There were electricity and communications outages as well as dwindling food and medical supplies, they said.

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The war has also brought an eruption of violence in Darfur, with the West Darfur city of El Geneina worst hit.

In Al Fashir, capital of North Darfur, the army and the RSF clashed violently, including around the main market, witnesses said after having deployed across the city on Thursday, witnesses said.

Nyala, capital of South Darfur and one of Sudan's largest cities, has also seen clashes between the army and RSF in recent days, amid electricity and communications blackouts. Both cities had been relatively calm after locally negotiated truces.

Reuters

Those familiar with road travel before fancy luxury buses and jeeps displaced wooden-back Bedford light trucks, famously called mammy wagons, might remember this ubiquitous message in cursive, bright colours scrawled on the rear and sometimes on the sides of trucks plying highways in Nigeria’s Southeast: “No condition is permanent.”

I’m not quite sure what the motivation was. My guess is that it was a message of comfort to the despairing and a warning to those who take life too seriously: No condition is permanent. 

True in life as in politics, that message rang again this week with wide-sweeping changes announced by President Bola Tinubu that could affect top appointees in up to 567 parastatals, government departments and agencies. 

You would be forgiven to think it was not a transition from one All Progressives Congress (APC) government to another. The scope, speed and extent of the changes from Tinubu’s inauguration on May 29, make it look like a hostile takeover, the sort of thing one might have expected if the opposition had won the presidential election.

No one is exactly sure of the number of persons that may have been affected by the changes announced this week. But even if allowance is made for a few parastatals whose CEOs may remain in place and will now report directly to the President, instead of the boards which have now been dissolved, we may be looking at over 3,000. That is, assuming that each of the roughly 570 affected establishments has a board of at least six members. Often, the figure is higher.

Regardless, every job loss is different in its own way, both in how it affects those directly 

involved and those who depend on them. Each political appointee has a personal story not conveyed in the usual press headlines of how many have been beheaded, politically, and how many more heads may roll. Like sharks, the press loves the smell of blood, as long as it is not their own.

It doesn’t matter how prepared those fired may be, they never seem prepared enough when the hammer eventually falls. It’s human nature. And those who take their place never fully learn the lesson of the message on the back of those Southeast bound trucks until they, too, become victims. 

Imagine, for example, the response of former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Babachir Lawal, when six years ago he was told of a statement by the Presidency announcing that he had been removed as he emerged from a meeting in the Presidential Villa.

“Who is the Presidency?”, Lawal asked State House reporters in a voice full of blessed self-assurance.

Well, that was his last question as SGF. He found, to his shock and surprise, that no condition is permanent. He had indeed been removed “with immediate effect,” with barely enough time to gather his files.

He should have learned from the public encounter of the great Nnamdi Azikiwe with Ukpabi Asika, who had been seconded by the military from the University of Ibadan to be civilian administrator of the Eastcentral State. Azikiwe had criticised Asika’s administration and the administrator didn’t like it at all. 

He replied mocking Azikiwe as “ex-this, ex-that, and ex-everything else,” adding that Azikiwe was just a politician craving relevance. 

Azikiwe, who had the gift of asking his adversaries to go to hell and still make them look forward to the trip, replied Asika that one day, he too, would be ex-administrator of the Eastcentral State, as Asika’s father had also become ex-post master general of the post office in Onitsha, his hometown. The message on the back of the mammy wagon, he told Asika, is the inevitable story of every appointee: No condition is permanent.

Leader of the APC and former governor of Osun State, Bisi Akande, among the lucky few who lived to tell his own story recalled in My Participations, how in 1984 after General Muhammadu Buhari’s military coup, “fallen big men of yesterday wept like babies” when soldiers descended on them as was often the case during military rule. 

In the last 24 years of civilian rule, the experience of political appointees has been somewhat different. Perhaps former President Olusegun Obasanjo holds the record of the highest number of federal firings, especially after he retired scores of military officers who had been “politically exposed”, and followed up with public sector reforms that left even scores more out of jobs.

Perhaps because Obasanjo’s successors between 2007 and 2015 were also from his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and also because of his longevity in office, no other PDP president after him retired or sacked as many political appointees as he did. 

Sixteen years after Obasanjo left office, Tinubu, a president from a rival party, appears ready to upend a record that once again reminds the public of the message on the back of the mammy wagon. 

Even Buhari, who took over the reins of power as president from the opposition and matched Obasanjo’s two-term four-year tenure, did not seem to have the amount of appetite for table-shaking that Tinubu has shown in less than one month in office. 

Apart from retaining the service chiefs he inherited from former President Goodluck Jonathan for nearly three months, for example, Buhari also retained the suspended Central Bank Governor, Godwin Emefiele, and a number of heads of MDAs, first appointed by Jonathan.

Of course, Buhari made some changes. But with a few exceptions, he seemed to make changes only at gunpoint. Which was neither necessarily strategic nor carefully thought out. 

There were cases where as a result of poor record-keeping, for example, appointees whose tenures were due escaped removal or where the president yielded to political pressure to extend the tenures of persons who had no business staying on. 

Buhari’s 30-year absence from power, his nearly zero rigorous public activity after office, his narrow, clerically-biased social circle, and his introverted style were major handicaps after his election as president. 

His poor health in his first term did not help matters also. Yet, not a few close to him said once he made appointments, he had a tendency to abdicate rather than delegate responsibilities, often letting some of his appointees run amok.

That is partly why Tinubu’s actions in the last few weeks, especially the sackings this week, are looking like a hostile takeover. 

But they are not. A number of the decisions taken by Tinubu since he assumed office, particularly the removal of petrol subsidy and unification of the exchange rate, were long overdue. Buhari ignored calls to act, even from a few inside his inner circle, choosing instead to bury his head in chaos under a rubble of debt. 

As for the dissolution of the boards and the removal of service chiefs, it’s a ritual of every new government. The problem, in Buhari’s case, was a frighteningly bizarre absentmindedness or perhaps indifference, that left vital positions, especially in the Judiciary, unfilled; and overdue retirements unattended or indulged by unwarranted extensions.

On the whole, under Buhari, it seemed, once appointments were made, “all conditions were permanent!”

To be fair, accusations of nepotism against him during his first term were not entirely justified, at least up to December 2018. The data which I obtained from the Presidency at the time showed a distribution of 278 to 289 in the appointments of heads of parastatals and Federal agencies between the South and the North, as a whole. 

Contrary to the trope of nepotism at the time, the Northcentral and Southwest had 102 and 101 respectively. The story changed in Buhari’s second term. And now, the public is watching to see how Tinubu, who has started the difficult task of correcting the outrageous lopsidedness in Buhari’s second term, manages the process.

Announcement of new policies and personnel changes, however crucial they may be, are only a form of signalling. The more difficult part would be what follows next, especially the institutional changes required to make public offices more responsive, less amenable to the whims of appointees and accountable and service-driven.

For now, I recommend the message on the back of the mammy wagon to both the incoming and outgoing appointees: No condition is permanent.

** Ishiekwene is Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP

This time eight years ago, Nigerians still basking in the euphoria of having a martinet president began to ascribe all kinds of wonderful happenstances to his body language. So excited were the supporters of former President Muhammadu Buhari about the country’s potential under him that they attributed some magicality to otherwise routine happenings. Civil servants resume work at 8 am as expected of them? It was Buhari’s body language that motivated them to their newfound sense of responsibility. Did the electricity company supply power for 18 hours a day instead of their habitual six hours? Yes, that must be Buhari’s body language generating more megawatts. You somehow managed to drive through Lagos without your entire day expended in the soul-crushing traffic? Thanks to Buhari’s body language, hallelujah!

While it lasted, Buhari’s body was like the shadow of Apostle Paul in the Bible. It cured the sick! So great was the illusion that a president’s mere body language can change the norms of a beleaguered nation that some clowns even campaigned that Buhari should be allowed to suspend the constitution just so that the constraints of democratic principles would not incommode his supposed quest to give Nigeria the much-needed moral renewal. Looking back at the abuse of power that characterised his tenure, one cannot but be grateful to those who never mortgaged their common sense to give Buhari any freer hand to operate. Imagine yielding to the shoddy thinking that reduced the creativity of leadership to the mystique of body language instead of the rational processes of policymaking, outcomes assessments, and regular revisions.

Bringing up this recent past is to remind us that, at the inaugural phase of a leadership era, people generally get frenzied on their expectations of a new beginning that every whiff of air that passes under their nostrils is taken as a fresh breath. For instance, it is only three weeks into a new era. Nobody has yet seen any material impact of his policies on anyone’s lives, but some brown nosers are already declaring Bola Tinubu to be the best president Nigeria has ever had. Like Buhari’s body language, another leader whose aura will solve problems is being deified.

It is also troubling how, due to the same euphoria, some economic decisions are being cheered on as necessary pain. They are passing off hard decisions as a matter of “suffer now, enjoy later” without considering enough that one must survive before enjoying Eldorado.

To an extent, there is a basis for the heightened expectations. Tinubu has managed to pull off certain economic decisions like the fuel subsidy removal that his predecessors could not push through. Previous governments, composed of unreconstructed welfarists and miseducated socialists, insisted on those policies even as they enervated the economy. The fuel subsidies not only failed to benefit people as promised, but also subjected them to emotional blackmail. Every failure of the government was blamed on the insistence of the already impoverished to consume cheap petrol. Tinubu took advantage of the transition phase of the government to make some of these changes.

Within the same block of time, they have also announced the removal of the subsidies on electricity tariff and their plans to introduce VAT on diesel. All these supposed harsh measures are coming in the wake of Nigerians’ survival of Buhari’s nightmarish years, including a misconceived naira redesign policy that declined their purchasing power. Tinubu also signed the Student Loan Bill, an indication that the cost of post-secondary education will shoot up. And who knows what is next. Is it that the government considers the patience of the impoverished infinitely elastic, or is there a deliberate tactic to push people off the edge?

Perhaps they do not know what it means to be poor. Last week, I wrote on how the provision of the Student Loan Bill demonstrates that the government’s indices for calibrating poverty are incoherent and faulty. They expect a person (or their family) to live on a paltry <N42,000 monthly to be considered poor enough for the loan. Yet, such a person is still expected to provide at least two guarantors “each of whom must either be a civil servant of at least level 12, a lawyer with at least 10 years post-call experience, or a judicial officer, or a justice of peace.” If you are that poor, it is also improbable you will have ready access to those people who will sign off your loans. The ideas being expressed through policies so far betray an inchoate understanding of what constitutes poverty in Nigeria. At the rate people are being stretched, they will be crushed before their poverty is cured.

We heard versions of “suffer now, enjoy later” under Buhari too. We truly suffered, yes, but did anyone eventually enjoy the promised benefits? Some of the Buhari policies we were told to quietly swallow so that everything good could come were ultimately reversed when they failed their mission. Those ideas that were vociferously defended by supposed analysts who insisted we have had it too good for so long had to be eventually dissolved without achieving much. We should not have to go through that all over again and within the same period too. Nigerians like to talk so much about how we do not learn from our history because the history curriculum has been withdrawn from schools. Yet, we have customarily repeated the same history that unfolded before their very eyes.

We should be savvier this time round. Instead of merely praising a government for making decisions that have yet to translate into a better life, we should be asking why we should suffer any more than we have done. The whole idea of “suffer now and enjoy later” has been the story of our Nigerian lives. Suffer is, in fact, what we have been doing all our Nigerian lives. That is why our religious houses are always full of people begging God—who has grown indifferent—to alleviate our suffering. There is hardly anyone of us whose Nigerian lives is not wrapped up in suffering and expectations of when it finally ends. Yet, hardly anything good ever comes from suffering. It does not always get better; people just get used to the conditions. Some even assume they are privy to some higher truth because they are in pain. Prolonged suffering could become the reality of life to the point that any slight deviation is attributed to some magical force. That is why those who refrigerators saw 18-hour electricity under Buhari quickly attributed it to the miracle of his body language.

People should not be cajoled into accepting suffering based on the expectation that some bright future has been lit at the end of the tunnel. What if one dies inside the tunnel? If there will be a positive end to this, we will have to demand it. The government should be made to communicate where this is leading. To what end is all the suffering? Interestingly, there has been more analysis of the effects of Tinubu’s policies done by social media influencers than communication from government strategists. There should be an idea of where all of these are going, the government’s own share of the sacrifices, and how to cushion the effects of its policies. By that, I do not mean sending the vice president to go and distribute another ten thousand naira per person in the marketplaces.

Even when all kinds of subsidies were in place, Nigeria was not altogether a pleasant experience. The country takes and takes from you, leaving you drained of all virtue. Taking subsidies away based on the myth of some future enjoyment is a tacit indictment that you—rather than a government that lacks imagination—are why the country is so dysfunctional.

Punch