Some labour leaders say there is a need for all stakeholders in the sector, including the government, to analyse the issue of fuel subsidy removal mentioned by the new President, Bola Tinubu, in his inaugural speech.

Tinubu, on taking office on Monday, said that the budget in place before his coming on board

made no provision for fuel subsidy, and so it was gone.

The President commended the decision of the Buhari administration in phasing out the petrol subsidy regime, saying it had increasingly favoured the rich more than the poor.

“Subsidy can no longer justify its ever-increasing costs in the wake of drying resources.

“We shall instead re-channel the funds into better investment in public infrastructure, education, health care and jobs that will materially improve the lives of millions,” he said.

Labour leaders told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Monday in Lagos that the issue needed a holistic approach.

Nigeria Labour Congress on Monday said TInubu decision on fuel subsidy removal was not a well thought move.

National President, NLC, Joe Ajaero who spoke in an interview with one of our correspondents in Abuja said the announcement would also draw the economy of the country backward by 50 percent.

“The comment on fuel subsidy removal is not well thought out, coming as an inaugural speech. It is going to draw the economy of the country backward by over 50 percent within the next 48 hours.  Nigerians will speak in one accord at the appropriate moment,” he said.

National Deputy President, Trade Union Congress of Nigeria (TUC), Tommy Okon, said that there had to be stakeholder engagements in which organised labour was one.

“So, we cannot just comment on it until we are engaged, but we have made our position known in our charter of demand to remove fuel subsidies.

“So, it will not be a one-off response because organised labour is partner in progress; they need to sit down and discuss and agree before that is done to avoid industrial unrest,“ Okon said.

Also, Lumumba Okugbawa, the Secretary-General, Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria, said stakeholders would sit to analyse the situation and proffer the way forward for the betterment of the country.

“We need to analyse the situation, sit with stakeholders including the government, and see the way forward.

“This is pending when our local refineries, which has been our major point, that once we produce locally, all these issues about subsidy removal will not be there.

“Once we produce locally, not that the price will not be there, but at least, it will be reduced,” Okugbawa said.

On his part, Secretary-General of TUC, Nuhu Toho, said the union would issue a statement in reaction to some of the issues raised in the president’s inaugural speech.

NAN/Punch

Former President Muhammadu Buhari has handed over the reins of power to fellow party man Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC), leaving charge with a legacy very different to the one voters had hoped for when they elected him eight years ago.

His 2015 victory over Goodluck Jonathan, the first defeat of an incumbent president in Nigerian history, was his second time in power after an August 1985 palace coup ended his 18-month stint as military ruler.

Success at the polls came after three consecutive failed attempts by Buhari to return to the presidency as the electorate turned to a man from its past out of frustration with Jonathan, a meek leader who critics said was better suited to his previous life as a zoology lecturer than as president of Africa’s largest democracy.

Buhari’s winning campaign had emphasised three key promises: to tackle insecurity, stem corruption and fix economic troubles. But as he leaves office after two terms, not many rate his scorecard as being better than the man he succeeded despite embarking on a vast infrastructure drive.

Under Buhari, Nigeria became the world’s poverty capital – 133 million of his compatriots now live in abject poverty.

When his staunch ally, outgoing Kano Governor Umar Ganduje was seen stuffing dollar notes believed to be contract kickbacks into his robe in a viral video, Buhari defended him, claiming the videos were doctored.

This year, even Tinubu, credited as the strategist behind APC’s 2015 victory, criticised the government and distanced himself from Buhari’s achievements, or lack of them, on the campaign trail.

“It is only a person who is deaf and dumb that will say Nigeria is doing well … and it is disappointing that the president is not seeing it the way we are seeing it,” said Frank Kokori, an APC leader, in August 2022. “People were ready to die for Buhari in 2014 to 2015, but unfortunately, Buhari has squandered all his goodwill.”

‘Baba Go Slow’

The first indication that the Buhari presidency would be an exhaustive exercise in long-suffering was his failure to announce a cabinet until five months in office. That delay earned him the moniker “Baba Go Slow”, a cheeky reference to the signature traffic jams in Nigeria’s commercial capital, Lagos.

The cabinet list was a roll call of has-beens and geriatric party stalwarts, including one minister who returned to office three decades after he was first appointed.

“Some of his appointments were not ideal, and he may have not appointed competent individuals for key roles in government,” Ayodeji Dawodu, a director at the London-based investment group BancTrust & Co, told Al Jazeera. “In addition to this, he may have been ill-advised in some of his own decision-making.”

In Buhari’s eight years in office, he also appointed at least six deceased people to boards of federal agencies. A series of similar missteps and inaction throttled the economy, leading to two recessions in five years, analysts said. As Buhari leaves office, the naira has lost 70 percent of its value to the dollar compared with 2015, and inflation is at an 18-year high.

According to data from Nigeria’s Debt Management Office, debt is at a record of about $150bn. This has forced Africa’s largest economy to use 96 percent of its revenue to service these ballooning obligations.

In October, the central bank announced a redesign of the 200, 500 and 1,000 naira notes to mop up excess cash in circulation and rein in inflation ahead of the election. The Buhari-backed move led to a cash shortage. Seven months later, the policy was suspended.

In 2019, he ordered the closure of land borders to restrict imports, end smuggling and boost local production. Instead, inflation spiked as food costs soared, and relations with neighbouring and dependent economies  – like Benin, Ghana and Niger – were strained.

The economy never recovered from that, according to Wilson Erumebor, senior economist at the Nigerian Economic Summit Group and a doctoral researcher at SOAS University of London.

“Since the border closure, quarterly trade data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed that the value of non-oil exports has never attained its peak of 1.08 trillion naira ($2.34bn) in the third quarter of 2019 over three years after the border closure was introduced,” he said.

The move also undermined Nigeria’s commitment to the African Continental Free Trade Agreement, the continent-wide free trade area, and freedom of movement in the 15-nation Economic Community of West Africa States (ECOWAS).

“It was not in tandem with Nigeria’s foreign policy … [so] ECOWAS were not too happy,” Remi Ajibewa, director of political affairs at the ECOWAS Commission at the time, told Al Jazeera. “Why would the big brother who calls himself the giant of Africa be closing its border against them, given the fact that there is a large market in Nigeria and they see Nigeria as one of the countries they could rely on?”

The administration seemed to lack a coherent foreign policy and failed to act swiftly on matters concerning Nigerians abroad. The government was slow to evacuate its nationals in South Africa during xenophobic attacks there in 2019 as well as when conflict broke out in Ukraine in 2022 and Sudan in April.

Over time, Nigeria’s international standing dwindled.

“I can see countries don’t respect us much given the fact that they see that we have not been able to be dynamic and strong enough,” Ajibewa said.

‘Uniquely selfish’

Local daily Punch estimated that the president spent 225 days on medical leave, including a three-and-half-month stretch in 2017. Another absence spurred a conspiracy theory that he had died in London and was replaced in Abuja by a body double from Sudan.

Even when he was healthy and in Abuja, Buhari was widely seen as uncaring because of the presidency’s slow response – or none at all – to nationwide tragedies. Some insiders in the presidency suggested he was “uniquely selfish” and showed an inability to keep up with the times.

“The president does not delegate responsibilities – he abdicates responsibilities,” the governor of a northern state and close ally to the president lamented to his advisers once, as one of them told Al Jazeera on the condition of anonymity.

When Buhari’s chief of staff died of Covid-19 in April 2020, things fell apart even more for the presidency. Tensions between cabinet members and heads of government agencies routinely spilled into the public domain, sometimes including accusations of graft and misuse of office.

Buhari’s seeming aloofness to all the crises around him inspired viral memes. After his office posted a photo on social media showing him sitting barefoot in the presidential palace while using a toothpick, a meme replaced the palace background in the picture with the scene of a mass killing.

That perception of nonchalance extended to matters of security too.

Buhari came to power on the promise of reversing armed group Boko Haram’s gains in the northeast, relying on his experience as a civil war veteran and general in the Nigerian army, long respected for its strength in peacekeeping operations across Africa.

Soon after he was sworn in, he issued a deadline of December 31, 2015, for defeating the rebels. When the deadline expired, information minister Lai Mohammed infamously declared that the group had been “technically defeated” even though it was still carrying out attacks.

“There was a false sense of success [this] administration basked in instead of building on the success the previous administration had led,” Malik Samuel, an Abuja-based researcher at the Institute of Security Studies, told Al Jazeera, referring to the Jonathan government’s last-minute successes in recapturing some areas controlled by Boko Haram before leaving office.

Nigeria’s overburdened security agencies are now battling multiple armed groups across the country, including Boko Haram factions like the Islamic State West Africa Province.

There are also violent secessionist groups in the southeast and ransom-hungry armed bandits kidnapping and killing in parts of northern and central Nigeria.

According to the Nigeria Security Tracker, a project of the Council of Foreign Relations, 98,083 people have been killed in documented cases of violence by armed state and non-state actors in Nigeria since the count began in May 2011. Two-thirds of those fatalities happened during Buhari’s eight years as president.

“With the experiences people have had from when he came into office to date, I will say we have not progressed with regards to dealing with the threat, which was one of the reasons behind his success at the polls,” Samuel said.

Human rights

In his first stint in power in the 1980s, Buhari pushed through laws that introduced the death penalty for drug trafficking and empowered law enforcement agencies to clamp down on the media for reports considered detrimental to the government. They also applied retroactively.

Ahead of the 2015 vote, he was marketed as a democrat who had shed his past authoritarianism. Even Nobel literature laureate Wole Soyinka branded him as a ‘reformed dictator’.

But the administration went on to perpetuate a litany of human rights abuses, ignoring court orders as routinely as it targeted journalists and dissidents.

The National Broadcasting Commission frequently punished television and radio stations for any views deemed critical of the government with fines and suspensions of licenses. Twitter too was not spared. After the platform removed one of Buhari’s tweets, it was banned for seven months.

Security agencies carried out multiple extrajudicial killings, including the 2015 deaths of more than 300 Shia Muslims in the northwestern state of Kaduna. Three years later, the army opened fire on Shia protesters in Abuja, justifying it with a video of US President Donald Trump suggesting that American soldiers could respond with force to migrants at the country’s southern border who throw rocks at the military.

There were also multiple reports of murders of civilians in areas where the military was ordered to contain communal violence.

“His body language has given encouragement to security agents, which has resulted in massive human rights violations that we continue to see on a daily basis,” Samuel said. Had Buhari held officers in key positions responsible for their actions, he said, “I don’t think we will [be] talking too much about these issues.”

In October 2020, at least 10 people were killed, according to Amnesty International, during a week of peaceful protests by young people against police brutality. There was a “lack of adequate measures for accountability for security forces abuses,” Anietie Ewang, Nigeria researcher at Human Rights Watch, told Al Jazeera. “These are very emblematic cases that show how [the] Buhari administration rolled [back] some of the fundamental rights that we had been able to almost consolidate.”

Calling card infrastructure

Still, Buhari supporters say no other president has focused on infrastructure as much as he did – there was a construction spree of rail lines and crucial bridges and dozens of interstate highways.

They also point to social protection programmes targeting low-income households. One such programme, the conditional cash transfer programme, doled out a monthly stipend of 5,000 naira ($13.83) to more than 784,000 of the country’s most vulnerable people.

But even those achievements have drawn scrutiny for their poor implementation.

The Abuja metro, commissioned with fanfare in 2018 after construction with Chinese-funded loans, is barely used today. Other rail projects have dragged on for years.

Despite the launch of several power plants and signing of agreements for more, the national grid has crashed more than 100 times in eight years, repeatedly throwing the country into darkness.

For some Nigerians, a new era cannot come soon enough. For others, Buhari’s failures have only reinforced their scepticism.

“At this point,” 57-year-old bus driver Olusegun Badmus told Al Jazeera, ” I have my faith in God and not politicians.”

Al Jazeera

Raymond Dokpesi, the founder of DAAR Communications, died on Monday after a fall while using a treadmill machine, a statement by DAAR Communications has said.

The statement, issued on Monday and signed by the Group Managing Director of DAAR Communications, Tony Akiotu, stated that Dokpesi was recovering from an undisclosed illness and had to do routine exercises as part of recuperation.

Akiotu stated that the media mogul was ill for some weeks before the fall that claimed his life adding that Dokpesi was using the machine to exercise before the tragic event happened.

“The board and management of DAAR Communications PLC wishes to inform the general public of the death of our founder, Raymond Aleogho Dokpesi, of, which the sad event occurred today 29th May 2023.

“He had been ill in the last few weeks but was on his way to full recovery. He had a fall off his treadmill during a routine gym exercise.

“Further announcement as regards the burial arrangement will be made by the family,” the statement reads.

The deceased, 71, was a veteran media entrepreneur who owned television and radio stations.

PT

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Ukrainian airfields hit by Russian strikes – Moscow

Russian forces launched multiple high-accuracy strikes on Ukrainian military airfields overnight from Sunday to Monday, the Defense Ministry in Moscow has said.

The attacks hit Ukrainian command posts, radar stations, and aircraft, as well as weapons and ammunition storage depots, the ministry claimed. The exact targets or the extent of the damage was not disclosed.

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky said on Sunday evening that Russia had launched one of its largest drone attacks to date. Ukrainian media reported explosions across the country, although Kiev claimed that almost all of the drones had been shot down.

Officials in Ukraine’s western Khmelnitsky Region said on Monday that a military target had been hit in a Russian attack. The authorities described the site as a “facility” rather than an airfield, but said at least five aircraft had been “disabled,”adding that a runaway required repairs as a result of the strike. They also said other “objects” in the area had been hit.

The Russian Defense Ministry confirmed that several major Ukrainian ammunition depots and military equipment storage sites had been struck close to the frontlines in the Lugansk and Donetsk People’s Republics, as well as Kherson Region.

Over the past 24 hours, Russian forces have also intercepted three ‘Storm Shadow’ cruise missiles supplied to Kiev by the UK and 13 HIMARS projectiles, the ministry said.

Russia increased its missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian military and energy infrastructure after the bombing of the Crimean Bridge in October 2022. The latest series of strikes followed a Ukrainian cross-border raid into Belgorod Region earlier this month, which resulted in at least one civilian death and left several people injured.

** Putin signs law governing elections in new Russia’s regions

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a law amending existing legislation on the conduct of elections in the country’s new regions as well as election procedures, according to the document published on Monday.

The new regions of the Russian Federation, the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), Lugansk People’s Republics (LPR), Zaporozhye Region and Kherson Region, have now been delegated the right to independently determine certain provisions of the federal election law, starting from a single voting day this September. In particular, residents of the new regions are now eligible to cast votes at polling stations located outside of their home regions and may also use not only their Russian internal passports for personal identification purposes but also other documents with equivalent legal force.

Elections under martial law

The document also establishes the procedure for holding elections under martial law, stipulating that referendums and elections may be held on those territories where martial law has been declared following relevant consultations by Russia’s Central Election Commission (CEC) with the Russian Defense Ministry and the Federal Security Service (FSB). Under the bill, elections and referendums may be held, provided that all relevant bodies approve it, across the entire territory where martial law has been declared or in a specific part of such territory.

If holding an election or a referendum on the territory of one of the four regions would pose a threat to the lives or well-being of the citizenry, voting may be postponed by decision of the CEC, which must immediately inform the president of any such postponement. Once the relevant danger is eliminated, the CEC will determine when to resume the electoral process.

Electoral commissions for detainees

The law also provides for the possibility to form precinct election commissions in places of detention of suspected and accused persons, and defines the procedure for forming such commissions, their powers and the basis of their activities.

The document also contains provisions on the refusal of voting with absentee ballots and the prohibition of election campaigns on websites blocked by Russia's mass media and telecommunications watchdog (Roskomnadzor).

The law comes into force from the day of its official publication.

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Ukraine air defences battle fresh wave of Russian attacks

Russia launched another wave of attacks on Kyiv in the early hours of Tuesday and the city's air defence systems were shooting down incoming missiles, while air raid sirens blared in several other regions.

"A massive attack!" Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on the Telegram messaging app. "Do not leave shelters."

Falling debris hit several districts of the capital including the historic Podil and Pecherskyi neighbourhoods, and a 27-year-old woman was injured in southwestern Holosiivskyi district, officials said.

Russia has repeatedly attacked the Ukrainian capital in May using a combination of drones and missiles, mostly at night, in an apparent attempt to undermine Ukrainians' will to fight after more than 15 months of war.

Tuesday's strikes were Russia's 17th air assault on the capital this month and came after the city was attacked twice on Monday, including an unusual daytime strike.

In a rare acknowledgement of damage to a military "target", Ukraine said a runway was damaged and five aircraft were taken out of service on Monday in western Khmelnitskiy region.

Russian state-owned news agency RIA cited the defence ministry as saying more than one air base had been hit. There was no confirmation from Ukraine of damage to other air bases.

Ukrainian officials said most of the drones and missiles fired on Sunday and Monday had been shot down and President Volodymyr Zelenskiy praised U.S.-supplied Patriot anti-missile defences.

"When Patriots in the hands of Ukrainians ensure a 100% interception rate of any Russian missile, terror will be defeated," Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address on Monday.

PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE

The air attacks come as Ukraine prepares a counter-offensive backed with Western weapons to try to drive Russian occupiers out of territory seized since Moscow launched what it calls its "special military operation" in February 2022.

"With these constant attacks, the enemy seeks to keep the civilian population in deep psychological tension," said Serhiy Popko, the head of Kyiv's military administration.

On the eastern frontlines, Russian paratroops and motorised units were replacing Wagner mercenary units in the eastern city of Bakhmut, according to Serhiy Cherevatyi, a spokesperson for the eastern group of Ukrainian Forces.

Wagner began handing over positions to regular troops this week after declaring full control of Bakhmut following the longest and bloodiest battle of the war.

Moscow said it invaded Ukraine to "denazify" its neighbour and protect Russian speakers. Western opponents say the invasion is an imperialist land grab in which tens of thousands have been killed, millions uprooted and cities reduced to ruins.

Russia says it is open to resuming stalled peace talks with Kyiv and has welcomed mediation efforts from Brazil and China.

But a top aide to Zelenskiy said Kyiv's peace plan, envisaging the full withdrawal of Russian troops, was the only way to end the war.

"There cannot be a Brazilian peace plan, a Chinese peace plan, a South African peace plan when you are talking about the war in Ukraine," chief diplomatic adviser Ihor Zhovkva told Reuters in an interview late on Friday.

CALL FOR A DMZ

Another Zelenskiy aide, Mykhailo Podolyak, wrote on Twitter that any post-war settlement should include a demilitarised zone of 100-120 km (62-75 miles) inside Russia along the border.

The European Union's top diplomat, Josep Borrell, said he believed Russia would not want to negotiate while it was still trying to win the war.

Ukraine's military said an attack on Odesa port had caused a fire and damaged infrastructure but did not specify whether the damage threatened grain exports.

Ukraine is an key global grain supplier and the port is vital for shipping. It is also one of three countries in a U.N.-brokered deal on the safe export of grain via the Black Sea.

Russia said on Monday the grain deal would no longer be operational unless a U.N. agreement with Moscow to overcome obstacles to Russian grain and fertiliser exports was fulfilled.

This month, Moscow reluctantly agreed to extend the grain deal until July 17.

RT/Tass/Reuters

Sudan factions agree to extend ceasefire deal amid clashes

Sudan's warring military factions agreed on Monday to a five-day extension of a ceasefire agreement, after renewed heavy clashes and air strikes in the capital threw fresh doubts on the effectiveness of a truce designed to ease a humanitarian crisis.

Saudi Arabia and the United States, which brokered a week-long ceasefire deal and have been monitoring it remotely, announced shortly before it was due to expire on Monday evening the parties had agreed to extend it.

Although the ceasefire had been imperfectly observed, it had allowed the delivery of aid to an estimated two million people, the two countries said in a joint statement.

"The extension will provide time for further humanitarian assistance, restoration of essential services, and discussion of a potential longer-term extension," the statement said.

The U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) said starting on Saturday it had been able to make its first food distributions in Khartoum since the beginning of the conflict.

Sources with knowledge of the new deal said discussions on amendments to make the truce more effective were continuing.

Hours before it was signed, residents reported battles in all three of the adjoining cities that make up Sudan's greater capital around the confluence of the Nile - Khartoum, Omdurman and Bahri. The intensity of the fighting was greater than over the past three days, they said.

Sudan's army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have been lockedin a power struggle that erupted into conflict on April 15, killing hundreds and driving nearly 1.4 million people from their homes.

Air strikes, which the army has been using to target RSF forces embedded in neighbourhoods across the capital, could be heard in Omdurman on Monday afternoon, residents said.

"Since yesterday evening there has been bombardment with all types of weapons between the army and the Rapid Support," Hassan Othman, a 55-year-old resident of Omdurman, told Reuters by phone. "We're in a state of great fear. Where's the truce?"

On past days, the truce deal had brought some respite from heavy fighting, though sporadic clashes and air strikes have continued.

Saudi Arabia and the United States have previously said both sides had committed various violations of the truce, as well as impeding humanitarian access and restoration of essential services.

ORPHANAGE DEATHS

Sudan's health ministry has said more than 700 people have died as a result of the fighting, though the true figure is likely much higher because of the difficulty health and aid workers have had in accessing conflict zones.

The government has separately recorded up to 510 deaths in El Geneina, one of the main cities in Darfur, a western region already scarred by conflict and displacement.

In Khartoum, factories, offices, homes and banks have been looted or destroyed. Power, water and telecommunications are often cut, there are acute shortages of medicines and medical equipment, and food supplies have been running low.

At Sudan's largest orphanage, Reuters reported how dozens of babies have died since the start of the conflict, which one Khartoum State official attributed mainly to staff shortages and recurrent power outages caused by the fighting.

The United Nations and aid groups say that despite the truce, they have struggled to get bureaucratic approvals and security guarantees to transport aid and staff to Khartoum and other places of need.

The WFP said it had begun three days of distributions in the capital on Saturday and had reached more than 12,000 people in Omdurman in areas controlled by the army as well as the RSF. It said it plans to reach at least 500,000 people in Khartoum.

The WFP expects up to 2.5 million people in Sudan to slip into hunger in the coming months, raising the number of people affected by acute food security to more than 19 million, or 40% of the population.

The head of the U.N. refugee agency told Reuters that a projection that one million people could flee Sudan by October may prove a conservative estimate.

More than 350,000 people have already fled into neighbouring countries, with most heading to Egypt, Chad and South Sudan.

Reuters

It is no more news that the 8 years tenure of PMB is ended! A new government has come in after a lot of torturous experience for the fowl and the rope whereon it chose to rest. It is a new dawn that may mean a downward trend for some and an upward move for some. I have chosen it would be for my good!

Whoever is taking a new role has more at stake than the person who is signing off. The one exiting already has his name written on the marble or sand and whatever he says or does at the last minute would not carry as much weight as the first few statements of the one taking over the baton.  

If leading is simple, families will not be in disarray and there would be no case of divorce anywhere. Mortal men are however the most difficult to lead and so whoever is coming to a position of leadership in a multi-ethnic and multi-language nation like Nigeria should know that rulership can’t be as it was before the language of man was divided severally to compel them to spread abroad and jettison the inordinate ambition of building a tower that would reach the palace of God.

While the aggrieved may continue seeking redress in courts as a mark of their civil right, the ones coming on board should begin to park. Yes, they must park in from their personal residences into their Aso Rocks. But as they physically move in, it is wise to mentally begin to move out with glory that is higher than the ones they brought in. They should have the end in mind. When one is celebrated at the beginning and one is booed at the end of an event, it is a tragedy.

No one sets out to have a tragic end but a tragic or glorious end commences from the moment of setting out. A pilot who refuses to confirm that his compass and other equipment are functioning well before taking off has planned to crash, even if inadvertently. While many may keep having reservations and even fighting the process that brought the governors, legislators, president etc, into power, once they are sworn in, they have become our “leaders”. If all we desire is a better life and better governance, distracting them with curses and cases may be like the lice that think feasting on a living dog is a way of killing it not realising that when the dog dies, it would also be affected as the blood of goats is not its delicacy.

I have read posts and watched videos sent to deride pastors who have been tagged fake or liars because their prophecies didn’t come to pass. In my view, this is an unnecessary distraction. One of the greatest prophets in the Old Testament was Samuel. He was told to anoint the tallest in Israel and he poured the oil on king Saul in full obedience to divine leading. Was Saul the choice of God or the choice of men? Israel demanded for a king to rule them like other nations, God gave them Saul. The same Saul went against God’s commandment and God changed His mind and rejected him. Instead of Saul, He led Samuel to the house of Jesse to anoint another man. Samuel carried the jar of oil and was almost pouring it on Eliab when God instructed him to stop. The oil eventually came not on the tallest this time around but the young shepherd boy called David!

If your candidates won the elections and are on the throne, congratulations. If yours didn’t win or some won and some lost, this needs not to lead to unnecessary agony. If your preferred candidate wasn’t the one favoured to occupy the seat you desired for him, cursing whoever is there is pointless. An elder wrote, “The land that you curse CANNOT yield for you her increase”. The government you curse cannot bring you joy!

If the reason why you preferred your candidate is for you to have a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence, then heed the bid of Paul in 1 Tim 2:1,2.

Therefore I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, 2 for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence.

In order to prove that Israel did wrong in asking for a king, Samuel called for thunder and rain which brought sobriety to the people. But in verse 23 of 1 Samuel 12, he mentioned something significant.

"Moreover, as for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the LORD in ceasing to pray for you; but I will teach you the good and the right way”.

He admitted that it would be a sin for him not to pray for the people. likewise, it would be a sin for us not to pray for our leaders. If we curse them or wish them evil, we should not blame them when the devil capitalises on such and make us victims of leadership errors. If you think there is nothing positive to say about Nigeria today, please accept the responsibility that it is the inadequacy of your prayers or positive actions/contributions in the past.

We are already in the boat. If you think Captain BAT is not taking us to the right destination, first pray for a safe landing in the wrong destination rather than curse the ship or wish it capsizes. You need not commit suicide with your confession. Speak well about the nation.

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: "Pray for Jerusalem’s peace! Prosperity to all you Jerusalem-lovers!" Psa 122:6,7 Msg Bible.

We have started a new journey in our history. Park with wisdom. Don’t forget your lamp. The wise will carry extra oil along and in readiness for the journey into the unknown. If your source of illumination is blocked, the lamp will guide your step in the right direction. God bless you.

Future historians may well mark the second half of March 2023 as the moment when the era of artificial intelligence truly began. In the space of just two weeks, the world witnessed the launch of GPT-4, Bard, Claude, Midjourney V5, Security Copilot, and many other AI tools that have surpassed almost everyone’s expectations. These new AI models’ apparent sophistication has beaten most experts’ predictions by a decade.

For centuries, breakthrough innovations – from the invention of the printing press and the steam engine to the rise of air travel and the internet – have propelled economic development, expanded access to information, and vastly improved health care and other essential services. But such transformative developments have also had negative implications, and the rapid deployment of AI tools will be no different.

AI can perform tasks that individuals are loathe to do. It can also deliver education and health care to millions of people who are neglected under existing frameworks. And it can greatly enhance research and development, potentially ushering in a new golden age of innovation. But it also can supercharge the production and dissemination of fake news; displace human labor on a large scale; and create dangerous, disruptive tools that are potentially inimical to our very existence.

Specifically, many believe that the arrival of artificial general intelligence (AGI) – an AI that can teach itself to perform any cognitive task that humans can do – will pose an existential threat to humanity. A carelessly designed AGI (or one governed by unknown “black box” processes) could carry out its tasks in ways that compromise fundamental elements of our humanity. After that, what it means to be human could come to be mediated by AGI.

Clearly, AI and other emerging technologies call for better governance, especially at the global level. But diplomats and international policymakers have historically treated technology as a “sectoral” matter best left to energy, finance, or defense ministries – a myopic perspective that is reminiscent of how, until recently, climate governance was viewed as the exclusive preserve of scientific and technical experts. Now, with climate debates commanding center stage, climate governance is seen as a superordinate domain that comprises many others, including foreign policy. Accordingly, today’s governance architecture aims to reflect the global nature of the issue, with all its nuances and complexities.

As discussions at the G7’s recent summit in Hiroshima suggest, technological governance will require a similar approach. After all, AI and other emerging technologies will dramatically change the sources, distribution, and projection of power around the world. They will allow for novel offensive and defensive capabilities, and create entirely new domains for collision, contest, and conflict – including in cyberspace and outer space. And they will determine what we consume, inevitably concentrating the returns from economic growth in some regions, industries, and firms, while depriving others of similar opportunities and capabilities.

Importantly, technologies such as AI will have a substantial impact on fundamental rights and freedoms, our relationships, the issues we care about, and even our most dearly held beliefs. With its feedback loops and reliance on our own data, AI models will exacerbate existing biases and strain many countries’ already tenuous social contracts.

That means our response must include numerous international accords. For example, ideally we would forge new agreements (at the level of the United Nations) to limit the use of certain technologies on the battlefield. A treaty banning lethal autonomous weapons outright would be a good start; agreements to regulate cyberspace – especially offensive actions conducted by autonomous bots – will also be necessary.

New trade regulations are also imperative. Unfettered exports of certain technologies can give governments powerful tools to suppress dissent and radically augment their military capabilities. Moreover, we still need to do a much better job of ensuring a level playing field in the digital economy, including through appropriate taxation of such activities.

As G7 leaders already seem to recognize, with the stability of open societies possibly at stake, it is in democratic countries’ interest to develop a common approach to AI regulation. Governments are now acquiring unprecedented abilities to manufacture consent and manipulate opinion. When combined with massive surveillance systems, the analytical power of advanced AI tools can create technological leviathans: all-knowing states and corporations with the power to shape citizen behavior and repress it, if necessary, within and across borders. It is important not only to support UNESCO’s efforts to create a global framework for AI ethics, but also to push for a global Charter of Digital Rights.

The thematic focus of tech diplomacy implies the need for new strategies of engagement with emerging powers. For example, how Western economies approach their partnerships with the world’s largest democracy, India, could make or break the success of such diplomacy. India’s economy will probably be the world’s third largest (after the United States and China) by 2028. Its growth has been extraordinary, much of it reflecting prowess in information technology and the digital economy. More to the point, India’s views on emerging technologies matter immensely. How it regulates and supports advances in AI will determine how billions of people use it.

Engaging with India is a priority for both the US and the European Union, as evidenced by the recent US-India Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology (iCET) and the EU-India Trade and Technology Council, which met in Brussels this month. But ensuring that these efforts succeed will require a reasonable accommodation of cultural and economic contexts and interests. Appreciating such nuances will help us achieve a prosperous and secure digital future. The alternative is an AI-generated free for all.

Project Syndicate

It’s a magical time for clean energy production. Methods like wind and solar power are leading the way, but they may soon have competition because — similar to a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat — scientists in Australia have found a way to pull electricity out of thin air. 

The magicians in this story are Rhys Grinter, Ph.D. student Ashleigh Kropp, and Chris Greening from the Monash University Biomedicine Discovery Institute in Melbourne, Australia. The scientific journal, Nature, published their findings.

But this is no children’s magic trick. These scientists produced and analyzed a hydrogen-consuming enzyme from a common soil bacterium. The enzyme, called Huc, pulls hydrogen from the atmosphere and converts it into electricity. 

Finding alternative power sources is crucial as we work to move away from dirty energy. Mining, drilling, and burning dirty energy sources like coal, crude oil, and natural gas create numerous problems for our health and the planet. 

Burning these dirty energy sources leads to the production of the gases that are the main contributors to overheating our planet — while mining and drilling for those resources leads to water and air pollution that endangers our health and the health of plants and animals. Not to mention, the dangerous extraction methodsare detrimental to the health of the people directly involved.

Finding a natural source of electricity that is clean and renewable is exciting news and a big step in the direction away from dirty energy — and toward a cleaner, cooler planet. 

The Australian researchers extracted the Huc enzyme from a bacterium called Mycobacterium smegmatis. It turns out that many bacteria can utilize hydrogen from the atmosphere as an energy source, even in nutrient-poor environments. 

“We’ve known for some time that bacteria can use the trace hydrogen in the air as a source of energy to help them grow and survive, including in Antarctic soils, volcanic craters, and the deep ocean,” Greening said. “But we didn’t know how they did this until now.”

Not only can Huc turn trace amounts of hydrogen into electric currents, but Kropp’s work shows that purified Huc can be stored for long periods of time. 

“It is astonishingly stable. It is possible to freeze the enzyme or heat it to 80 degrees Celsius [176 degrees Fahrenheit], and it retains its power to generate energy,” Kropp said. “This reflects that this enzyme helps bacteria to survive in the most extreme environments.”

The magical story of Huc keeps getting better, as the bacteria that produce the enzyme can be grown in large quantities, making it a very sustainable resource — like pulling an endless amount of rabbits out of a hat. 

While it’s early in the research process, this discovery could be a significant breakthrough in clean energy. The next step is producing Huc on a large scale, and at that point, as Grinter put it, “the sky is quite literally the limit for using it to produce clean energy.”

The Cool Down

Bola Tinubu will be sworn in as Nigeria's president on today under the cloud of a disputed election and pressure to quickly improve economic and security conditions, which many complain worsened under his predecessor Muhammadu Buhari.

Two of Tinubu's main opponents in the February election are challenging his victory on the basis of fraud claims, and a tribunal will on Tuesday start hearing their main arguments. A ruling is not expected before September.

Buhari, a taciturn former military ruler, leaves Africa's biggest economy and most populous nation deeply divided.

The election had galvanised young voters hoping for a break from the two parties that have dominated Nigerian politics since military rule ended in 1999. But what authorities promised would be the country's freest and fairest election yet ended in frustration for many.

Tinubu, a member of Buhari's All Progressives Congress who has long exerted influence from behind the scenes, won with 37% of the vote, the lowest share since 1999.

BUHARI'S RECORD

He inherits a struggling economy with record debt, shortages of foreign exchange and fuel, a weak naira currency, near two-decades-high inflation, skeletal power supplies and falling oil production due to crude theft and underinvestment. A raft of protectionist economic policies and foreign currency interventions have also spooked investors.

Buhari defends his record, saying new infrastructure such as roads, bridges and airports, and the protectionist policies have laid the foundations for future growth.

He has also touted successes in a 13-year fight against Islamist insurgents in the northeast, where his government ramped up military spending.

But insecurity has spread, leaving many Nigerians feeling more unsafe. Killings and kidnappings for ransom are rampant in the northwest. Separatist and gang violence plague the southeast, and clashes between farmers and herders persist in hinterland states known as Nigeria's Middle Belt.

A former Lagos state governor, Tinubu has promised to be a better steward of the economy.

Opponents are sceptical: They see him as part of an old guard that held back Nigeria and an entitled political "godfather" who said last year that it was his turn to lead after backing Buhari for the top job in 2015.

Reuters

MAJOR GENERAL Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) bows out today as the fourth Executive President of Nigeria’s Fourth Republic, and the fifth in its history, and across the country and its far-flung diaspora, a loud, collective sigh of relief can be heard. It has by a wide consensus been eight locust years of privation, insecurity, division, shortages of essential food and energy and of despair. Buhari misgoverned Nigeria, deepened its political and social fault lines, enthroned sectionalism, and nepotism, oversaw two economic recessions and undermined democracy and the rule of law. Most Nigerians are happy to see him go.

Some did not survive to see this day as thousands died in the rage of the insecurity on his watch, others were displaced from their homes, many more have slipped unto poverty, and millions are unemployed. Hunger stalks millions; farmers in various parts of the country are distressed by a poor operating environment exacerbated by Fulani herders’ and bandits’ despoliation. Businesses face turbulence and millions of small ones have crashed.

Rising to power on a wave of popular discontent against 16 years of corrupt misgovernance, he met a country in trouble. He postured as a driver of change: an anti-corruption crusader, tough on crime and insecurity, a unifier in a fractured polity. Though he had projected an image of moral rectitude, in office, Buhari ended up adding only little value across the board – economic, political, and social – but ratcheted up many minuses.

A considerable proportion of the population view him as Nigeria’s worst leader since independence. But in the midst of despairing criticism, Buhari has a retort: “I have done my best.” For Nigerians, however, his best was simply not good enough.

Posterity will eventually settle the argument. For now, however, stakeholders have found him wanting. Buhari and his supporters, including regime officials, appointees and members of his party, family, and kinsmen, insist he has done well, citing policies and projects to support this. The Presidency’s ‘Factsheet’ provides a long list of such achievements and his ministers do too. Unarguably, the capital projects he undertook, though too little to reverse the country’s gaping infrastructure deficit, went further than his predecessors.’

But as he steps aside, it is necessary to take broad views of the national condition in June 2015 and in May 2023; examine Buhari’s own promised agenda, and how he delivered or failed to do so. The main themes are national cohesion and inclusion, the viability of the Nigerian state, leadership style, restructuring and elections.

Buhari’s inaugural speech on May 29, 2015, set out declarations of intent and raised hopes. Had he faithfully followed through, Nigeria should be marching from a solid pedestal unto greatness.

Buhari famously declared: “I belong to everybody, and I belong to nobody.” This resonated widely and taken together with pledges to work for the unity of the country and instil fairness and equity, it inspired hopes of inclusion.

But such hopes were promptly dispelled. Buhari thoroughly mismanaged Nigeria’s diversity. Never in the country’s history, thundered Junaid Mohammed (now deceased), a former federal lawmaker, had any national leader exhibited such brazen sectionalism, nepotism, and exclusionary tendencies in appointments to national offices. Unapologetically, he favoured his ethnic nationality, his northern base, his Islamic faith, family, associates, and narrow political interests in appointments and policies.

He followed through his declaration in a CNN interview to treat those who gave him “95 percent” vote more favourably than those who gave him “five percent.”

With him in office, the Fulani herders, gunmen and militants, joined by tens of thousands of others converged from all over West Africa, unleashing violence across the northern states. They spread their pillaging, massacres, and ethnic cleansing to other parts of the country. By late 2015, the Global Terrorism Index had ranked them as the world’s fourth deadliest terrorist group. They killed 847 persons in five states that year.

Emboldened by a partisan presidency and security forces, the Fulani marauding has become genocidal in Benue, Plateau, Southern Kaduna, and Taraba states. GTI reported that the number of attacks in the first half of 2016 almost equalled the number of attacks recorded throughout 2015. By 2018, Nigeria had moved to the third most terrorised country propelled by Fulani extremism that was responsible for 72 percent of all terrorism-related deaths in Nigeria that year.

Buhari kept making excuses for Fulani herdsmen and their irrational insistence in sustaining the outdated open grazing system; he canvassed their right to non-existent grazing routes and grazing reserves. In succession, he promoted the creation of cattle colonies, federally funded cattle settlements and appeared to blame the victims for standing in the way of the marauders! The Fulani sense of entitlement has grown to gigantic proportions.

He exhibited naked sectionalism in appointing heads of the military, paramilitary and other security agencies, the ministries, departments, and agencies. With the exclusion of other ethnic nationalities, regions and his politicisation of insecurity, Nigeria’s fissures widened. Separatist groups grew, and the clamour for restructuring rebounded with greater vigour. One spin-off from the Indigenous People of Biafra has taken to violence.

Today, the country is on edge. It was ranked 14th on the 2015 Fragile State Index run by The Fund for Peace, a position it retained in 2019, and was ranked 15th most fragile country in 2023 as Buhari leaves.

The country’s divisions manifest in everything. The wars on insecurity, corruption and poverty are hobbled. The 2023 national elections widened the wedge between some nationalities and geopolitical zones. Mutual suspicion between the roughly equally split Christian and Muslim population, simmering for decades, is close to conflict situation. A former Defence Minister, Theophilus Danjuma, has repeatedly warned that few countries ever survive a sectarian civil war.

In times of crisis, leaders take charge. Buhari’s leadership style was exclusionary, unfeeling, and detached. He took charge of nothing, save to tend to his own health, with frequent travels abroad, and attending international engagements while parts of Nigeria burnt, massacres and disasters occurred, or bandits/terrorists undertook their industrial scale kidnapping of schoolchildren.

Among many others, he made very few visits to communities in distress. He tarried in Daura where he was holidaying, just two hours away from Kankara, Katsina State, when 300 schoolboys were kidnapped there.

By failing to take charge, he could not crush corruption, insurgency, and criminality, or revive the economy. With an inattentive leader, appointees and private individuals close to him usurped power. The heads of some key security agencies shamelessly took their infighting to the public space. Security chiefs engaged in corruption and impunity. Effectively, the regime’s key programmes were subverted from within because there was neither coordination, firmness nor consequences for failure, incompetence or disobedience of the law or presidential orders. One Inspector-General of Police famously ignored his order to relocate to Benue after yet another Fulani herders’ genocidal attack and all Buhari did was to whine in public; the IG served out his term.

His distraction manifested in the 2023 elections: he released money to the umpire, gave orders to the security agencies and insisted on his neutrality; but he turned his back thereafter, allowing desperados in his own party and the opposition to manifest their criminality.

While he and his party, the All Progressives Congress had promised to support the restructuring of the country during the 2015 campaigns, Buhari promptly reneged on assuming office. Bowing to public clamour, the APC set up a Committee on True Federalism headed by Nasir el-Rufai, the immediate past governor of Kaduna State, in 2018 that made 10 recommendations to devolve more power to the states and retool Nigeria into a proper federal polity.

Buhari ignored the report. Rather, he has opposed the clamour, arrogantly saying the restructuring agitators had not explained what they meant, as if Nigerians owed him explanation for wanting to exercise their fundamental right to determine their own future.

In the twilight of his tenure, March 2023, he signed 16 of the 35 constitution amendment bills transmitted to him in January by the National Assembly that made minimal federalising impact, and entrenching absurdities such as renaming LGs, an aberration in a federal constitution. Essential adjustments such as state policing and resource control were ignored.

Lee Kuan Yew took charge, ran a merit-based administration and waged war against corruption, economic saboteurs, and insecurity without favouritism. He built modern Singapore, whose economy is ranked the most open and the joint least-corrupt country in the world on the Corruption Perception Index. Rwanda’s Paul Kagame is demonstrating how purposeful, visionary leadership can help a poor traumatised country rise from civil war, genocide, and privation to deliver robust growth, stability, and inclusion. Ukraine is resisting the full military might of a nuclear-armed superpower inspired by a president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, demonstrating courageous, hands-on leadership.

Exhibiting his military instincts, the Buhari regime rode roughshod over the rule of law and disobeyed court orders it found inconvenient. In 2019, in response, The PUNCH titles resolved to henceforth prefix his name in referring to him with his last rank in the Nigerian Army, Major General, until he purged himself of his martial disposition. He never did.

In the end, Buhari was a divisive, polarising president. Contrary to his inaugural speech promise, he belonged to his favoured ethnic nationality, his region, his religion, and his family; not to everybody. He alienated many sections of the diverse polity of over 250 ethnic nationalities, and faiths.

Buhari failed the leadership test, leaving in many places, what the late legendary musician, Fela Kuti, called “sorrow, tears and blood,” a divided population, battered economy, rowdy elections and a wobbly natural federation run like a unitary state, and hurtling towards state failure. He will not be missed.