Confronting The Curse Of Oil by Reuben Abati

The monthly Federation Accounts Allocation Committee, FAAC, meeting was held the other day in Abuja, with the representatives of state governments again cap in hand, asking for their share of federal revenue - read: oil revenue, or better still, national cake, or our money.  A paragraph in the report by the online newspaper, Premium Times, caught my attention and here it is: "But at the Federation Accounts Allocation Committee, FAAC, meeting, representatives of the 36 state governments went home SAD (emphasis mine), as they were handed parlous shares from a total N299.75 billion statutory allocation for the month, the lowest allocations in more than five years." For the month of March 2016, the states shared N55.34 billion, compared to N64.52 billion in February 2016. I have deliberately emphasized the wordsad, because the day may well come when after the sharing of national revenue, we may be told that some Commissioners of Finance left the meeting crying, or wailing.

The President as Chief Diplomat by Reuben Abati

I read an interesting article recently in which the author, objecting to President Muhammadu Buhari's frequent travels abroad pointed out that Presidential spokespersons since 1999, including this writer, have always justified such trips using essentially the same arguments. The fellow quoted copiously and derisively from my State House press statements and an article by me titled "The Gains of Jonathan's Diplomacy".

Those who object to Presidential travels abroad do so for a number of reasons: (a) the cost on the grounds of frequency and size of estacode-collecting delegation, with multiple officers performing the same function tagging along on every trip, (b) the need to make better use of diplomats in foreign missions and Foreign Ministry officials who can act in delegated capacity; (c) the failure to see the immediate and long-term gains of Presidential junket, thus creating the impression of a jamboree or mindless tourism, and (d) the conviction that the President needs to stay at home to address urgent domestic challenges, rather than live out of a suitcase, in the air. While these reasons may seem understandable, arising as they are from anxieties about reducing wastage and increasing governmental efficiency for the people's benefit, I still insist that Presidential trips are important, and that by travelling abroad, the President is performing a perfectly normal function.

A Country In Search of a Miracle by Reuben Abati

"You look tired"

"Ha, my brother. Thanks for being observant. I have been trekking."

"Trekking?"

"I went to buy fuel at that fuel station by the Estate gate. I had to abandon the car there. On my way back home, I could not find okada or any other form of transportation."

"No wonder you are sweating."

"All the tricyclists and the okada people claim they have no fuel."

"It is good for you big men to have a taste of what poor people go through. This fuel scarcity is an effective leveler. It is no respecter of persons."

"I can't wait for April 7 to come."

"What's special about April 7?"

"That's the day we are told this scarcity will end, and there will be no more scarcity of petroleum products."

It's time to put Nigeria first by Reuben Abati

Long queue in a Nigeria filling station

This commentary is inspired by Olusegun Adeniyi's "Of wailers, counterwailers and Buharideens" (ThisDay, March 31). In that piece, the ace journalist and public affairs commentator successfully defines the tri-polarities governing public responses to the Muhammadu Buhari administration.  The take-away is that the biggest challenge that Nigeria faces at the moment is political partisanship, which has divided the country into the camps of rights and wrongs and a fierce and bitter contestation over who is right or wrong.

       One year after the last Presidential election that led to the exit of the People's Democratic Party (PDP), after 16 years in office and power (sorry, the 60 years project failed) and the exit also, of the Goodluck Jonathan administration, there is now a bitter fight out there on the streets over whether or not Nigerians took the right decision by voting for change, the All Progressives Congress (APC) and President Muhammadu Buhari. President Goodluck Jonathan's over 12.8 million supporters have proven to be loyal and indeed that they exist as a serious, organized political force.

Rev. King, The Law And King’s Supporters by Reuben Abati

Rev King

In the case of the State and Rev. Chukwuemeka Kingsley Ezeugo, the Supreme Court a few days ago, upheld the rulings of the lower courts and ruled that the bearded, self-styled "little god", "Jesus Christ of our time", and founder of the Lagos-based Christian Praying Assembly (CPA), deserves to be hanged, for enacting a form of horror movie which resulted in the death in 2006 of Ms Ann Uzoh.  The simple import of that ruling is that no man is a king before the law, and that the law is no respecter of persons including those who describe themselves as anointed men of God, and who on that account use religion to commit atrocities. 

       But the most bizarre development since that ruling last Friday has been the intervention of a group called the Ndigbo Cultural Society of Nigeria (NCSN).  The group says Nigeria has nothing to gain by shedding Rev. King's blood and that President Muhammadu Buhari should grant the convicted murderer state pardon because "he is still a spiritual leader to many Nigerians." The Ndigbo Society is indirectly saying that Rev King's life should be spared because he is Igbo, and a religious leader. This is nothing but arrant nonsense. It makes us wonder what happens to people's heads once they are in the grips of the disease of ethnicism. Has anyone told the Ndigbo Cultural Society that Rev. King's victim, Ann Uzoh, was also Igbo? Or is Emeka Ezeugo's Igbo life more important than that of Ann Uzoh? Or the lives of the others: Jessica Nwene, Kosiso Ezenwankwo, Chiejina Olisa, Chizoba Onuora, Vivian and Uche?

The Made in Nigeria Campaign by Reuben Abati

Nigeria National Assembly

There has been renewed talk lately about the need for Nigerians to patronize locally made goods, (someone should have added… and services!). Championed by Senator Ben Murray Bruce, and supported by the Senate President Bukola Saraki, the Minister of State for Industry, Trade and Investment, Hajia Aisha Abubakar and a large crowd of online campaigners, so much ink, saliva, and emotions have been invested in this old, and perhaps boring story.

     Senator Bruce, who goes by the moniker "the Commonsense Senator" even introduced a hashtag #BuyNaijaToGrowtheNaira. He hasn't quite explained the connection, but with the exchange rate melting down and the Naira yo-yoing, everyone including our neighbourhood electrician, and his friend, the battery charger, have both become experts on the fortunes of the national currency.  Senator Saraki has promised that the Public Procurement Act will be amended by the 8^th National Assembly to make it mandatory for the government to patronize locally made goods. Minister Aisha Abubakar has proposed a "Patronise Naija Products Campaign."

El-Zakzaky, Religion and the Nigerian State by Reuben Abati

SO much has been said about the December 12 confrontation between the Nigerian Army and members of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria led by Sheik Ibraheem El-Zakzaky, the leader of the Shia in Nigeria. I guess the point has been well-made that there are faults on both sides.  There seems to be a consensus, however, that the followers of Ali, better known as Shiites or the Shia, seem to enjoy confrontations with the state and seem determined to disregard dominant authority – Islamic and secular.
By the same token, the Nigerian security establishment has since the 1980s showed an equal determination to put El Zakzaky in his place. But in no way does this justify the extra-judicial killing of members of the Islamic Movement, or the use of the word, "Prisoners of War" (POW) to describe its detained members. The Nigerian Government since the '80s has set up a series of panels of inquiry and produced tomes on the subject of forging peaceful relations between the state and religion, and yet religion remains a key threat to amalgamation and the sanctity of the Nigerian state.
What we are dealing with is something deeper — it is the outflow of a deep schism within the Islamic faith on the questions of authenticity and legitimacy, in terms of what constitutes rules, doctrines, interpretations and values. This old battle for doctrinal supremacy is what has been responsible for the divisions within the faith since the First Fitna. It is the drama being played out in the Middle East.  It is the story and politics of ISIS and ISIL. This is why it will be wrong to describe the Islamic Movement in Nigeria's constant conflict with the Nigerian state as a confrontation between Nigerian Muslims and the state, to the extent that ISIS or ISIL does not speak for all Muslims just as the ISMIN does not speak for all Nigerian Muslims.

Super Ministers and Other Stories by Reuben Abati

President Buhari and the new Ministers

Super Ministers and other stories

By Reuben Abati

HAVE you congratulated our new Ministers?"
"I am still thinking about it, actually. I don't know whether to congratulate them or to commiserate or to pity some of them. They have merged Ministries that need not be merged. Some Perm Secs are now floating. Six months and this is it?"
"What kind of talk is that? You have come again oh".
"I wonder too. At least you can see that round pegs have been put in round holes, and shame on all you doubting Thomases, our government is good to go."
""Who is talking politics? Can we discuss Nigeria and leave politics out of it? And please, leave that thing about pegs. Some pegs are neither round nor square, they are misshaped."
"Everything is political."

Biafra, O’odua, and the 7th lesson, by Reuben Abati

Democracy does not necessarily translate into the disappearance of crises and dilemmas, (even trilemmas, quadrilemmas or more) in a country, either developed, developing or perhaps evolutionary. Built into the fabric of the right to choose is also the right to make mistakes and so, across Africa at this moment, in Nigeria, Tanzania, Cote d’Ivoire, Burundi, Guinea Conakry, Rwanda, the lessons are being driven home, as elections are being held or have been held or will be held, that even as democracy spreads within the continent, the tension between stabilization and consolidation, trade offs and efficiency, pessimism and optimism, ethnocentrism and nationalism, remains a major concern.      Whatever the challenges may be however, both local and international authorities have a duty to ensure that the people learn from their mistakes, build on those mistakes positively, and prevent a relapse to either militarism or militarized democracy disguised either as benevolent democracy or charismatic autocracy, or ethnic revanchism as an option for national movement.  The people’s right to make mistakes, oxymoronic as it may seem, is part of the democratic challenge. In Nigeria, our biggest mistake lies in the strange assumption that our problems will disappear simply through intra-elite displacement or the symbolism of grand gestures.  And so, we end up with a boringly repetitive national life cycle.

Clark, the father, Jonathan, the son

Chief Edwin Clark

I HAVE tried delaying the writing of this piece in the honest expectation that someone probably misquoted Chief E.K. Clark, when he reportedly publicly disowned former President Goodluck Jonathan.
I had hoped that our dear father, E.K. Clark, would issue a counter statement and say the usual things politicians say: “they quoted me out of context!”  “Jonathan is my son”. That has not happened; rather, some other Ijaw voices, including one Joseph Evah, have come to the defence of the old man, to join hands in rubbishing a man they once defended to the hilt and used as a bargaining chip for the Ijaw interest in the larger Nigerian geo-politics.
If President Jonathan had returned to power on May 29, 2015, these same persons would have remained in the corridors of power, displaying all forms of ethnic triumphalism. It is the reason in case they do not realize it, why the existent power blocs that consider themselves most fit to rule, continue to believe that those whose ancestors never ran empires can never be trusted with power, hence they can only be admitted as other people’s agents or as merchants of their own interests which may even be defined for them as is deemed convenient. Mercantilism may bring profit, but in power politics, it destroys integrity and compromises otherwise sacred values.