RANDOM MUSINGS:
NIGERIA AND THE INDEX OF GOVERNANCE, TINUBU’s MINISTERIAL SHAKE UP, AND ONE OTHER THING.
with
Ben C. Abraham.
THE IBRAHIM INDEX OF AFRICAN GOVERNANCE
Few days ago the Mo Ibrahim Foundation launched the 2024 Ibrahim Index of African Governance (IIAG) Report. The report covering the decade 2014 – 2023 shows that Africa’s overall governance progress came to a halt in 2022 following four years of almost complete stagnation. Additionally, the report which covered 54 African countries had four main categories of Security and Rule of law; Participation, Rights and Inclusion; Foundations for Economic Opportunity; and Human Development. Well the news, not unexpectedly though, is that Nigeria was ranked among the 11 countries in Africa with the highest level of deterioration in governance in the last 10 years. Going further, the report saw Nigeria slump three places from 30th to 33rd, making it one of the worst-ruled states since 2014. Published since 2007, the IIAG assesses the public governance performance of 54 African countries every two years. Overall, Nigeria scored 45.7%; with 39% on security and rule of law, 47% on accountability and transparency, 28.9% on anti-corruption and 47% on inclusion. On equality it scored 43%, 59% on women equality, 48.6% on economic opportunity, 41% on infrastructure, 44.6% on health, 51% on education, 44% on social protection and 45% on sustainable environment. While 33 countries made progress in governance during the last decade, 21 countries including Nigeria became worse in 2023 than they were in 2014. Nigeria was grouped with Sudan, Senegal, Tunisia, Uganda, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Eswatini, Guinea and others. The Report has, amongst many others, yet again confirmed Nigeria’s poverty in the midst of plenty, with the real aspect of this poverty seen in leadership. Yes, poor leadership has been the bane of Nigeria, nay Africa. With each election cycle every four years, the worst of us are thrown up and handed the reins of power and decision making. The 10 years that the IIAG covered largely fall into the period Muhammadu Buhari superintended as president; a period referred to as the locust years when the retired infantry General and one-time military head of state completely abdicated his responsibility despite vying for leadership on three occasions before he eventually took the saddle. Just before he left office, he spoke of regretting taking power, and openly complained how difficult it was governing Nigeria desiring to retire to his native rustic Daura. Bola Tinubu has taken over and we can easily say, it is déjà vu.
TINUBU AND THE CABINET SHAKE UP;
President Tinubu’s return from his annual leave that saw him land in UK and later fly across the English Channel to France was followed with heightened anxiety. A lot of talk had followed Tinubu to his annual leave; much of it being around the then-imminent shake up of his cabinet. News swirled around official and not-so-official corridors that ministers had all but abandoned state duties to pull relevant power levers to retain their jobs. Hadiza Bala Usman, ex NPA Head and now SA to president Tinubu was assigned the unenviable role of turning up a performance assessment report on every minister. The lobbying didn’t spare her. Well, after the anxious wait, on Wednesday 23rd October president Tinubu announced the shakeup of his cabinet. The details of the sack and new appointments left granite in the mouths of many people. Why would 5 ministers be relieved and 7 be appointed (despite the merger of some ministries) by a Government asking the governed to tighten their belts as an act of sacrifice in the journey to Eldorado country, many Nigerians queried? As far as they are concerned Tinubu traded paperweight ministers for the ineffective but politically powerful members of his cabinet. It was all cosmetic. It was all politics; all motion and no movement. That is vintage Tinubu, classic Tinubu, the Jagaban of Borgu. Anyways, not all Nigerians see through the false veneer of statesmanship being put up by Tinubu. While one group ignorantly holds onto the hope of a miracle from the man who built Lagos, cheering his every move no matter how faltering it is, the other group is made up of Government paid trumpeters and analysts who occupy every available space in the media analyzing and postulating. They are quick to bandy about statistics ‘showing’ how much the economy is improving and what impact this Government’s interventions have achieved even when it is obvious, to even the unschooled, that the economy is tanking. But for those who understand, Tinubu is strategizing for 2027. He wants the assurance of another 4-year uninterrupted tenure and so he is ready to jettison governance, which should rightly secure him another ticket, and concentrate on who gets what in exchange for regional and state support come next elections; pure politics at the expense of good governance. What the new ministers will bring to the table, we don’t know but the much we know is that the ministers and officials in charge of the economy, defence, power and petroleum resources need to quit; that is if the president wants to face things as they are. Unfortunately, he will not and he did not. Removing these key officials is tantamount to removing himself; he is the minister of petroleum resources. The rest, as they say, is history. And to douse complaints, a day after the appointments he announced a cut in the number of cars and security men attached to ministers and Federal appointees. Whaoo! So much for response to overbearing costs of governance.
……AND ONE OTHER THING:
LIKE RIVERS, LIKE KANO;
Kano and Rivers States share nothing more than a fleeting relationship being states in the Federation called Nigeria. They are in different regional spaces, have different languages, landmass and cultures. But something is rapidly working to join the two states beyond what they share, and that thing is politics; the APC brand of politics. The Kano state independent electoral commission (KANSIEC) announced that LG elections would hold in the state on Saturday 26th October and in preparation called for political parties and candidates who had interest to come forward. While KANSIEC was busy preparing for the elections, some other people were also busy preparing to torpedo the elections. And in the Rivers state fashion, a plaintiff approached a federal high court in Kano and sought several orders, one of which was for the court to stop the LG elections. The court presided over by Amobeda J, gave him all that he asked for and even more. The court went on to declare that Sani Malumfashi and his colleagues at KANSIEC had been stripped of their positions because there was evidence that they belonged to a political party and therefore lacked the necessary impartiality to head such a body. Haba! The court also asked the Police not to take part in the elections et al. Well until this time, I didn’t know that it was not only in Nollywood that scripts were ‘borrowed’ during filmmaking. Anyways, now I know. So the Rivers state script written and casted by Nyesom Wike in the ‘film’ between him and Sim Fubara was adopted by Wike’s counterparts in Kano. We already know that the state governed by the NNPP is at daggers drawn with the APC where their national chairman hails from. It is a kind of political taboo for the national chairman of a ruling party not to win his state. And since then it has been one crisis or the other. Up till now, Kano has two emirs; one appointed by the state Government and the other retained by the Federal high court with the active support of the APC-led Federal Government. For the LG elections just like Rivers state, a Kano state high court also granted orders asking KANSIEC to go on with the elections. It is time real elders waded into this downslide in our polity. Democracy is not same with interference in the institutions of state; whether electoral bodies, the judiciary, etc. Meanwhile results released by KANSIEC over the weekend show that NNPP won every seat in the election. Whether the election is truly over we can’t say. The days ahead are quite ominous.
On Tuesday 15th October, the grim reaper, that vile creature who struts about, decided to visit Majiya town in Taura Local Government Area of Jigawa State. In the aftermath of that visit, more than 180 residents of the town were sent to the great beyond in the goriest way possible; they were incinerated beyond recognition and had to be mass-buried. The story is that a tanker laden with petrol departed Kano en route to one of the towns in Jigawa state when it fell and disemboweled its inflammable contents. Nigerians, a rambunctious specie of the human family, and never missing any opportunity to douse their sufferings, quickly rushed to scoop the petrol and either sell for money or personal use. Well, while one may rationalize that the poor Taura villagers were not the first to scoop fuel from fallen trucks, the converse is equally true which is that they were not also the first victims of a tragic explosion when scooping fuel. And that is what happened on the fateful day. While the villagers were at it in their numbers, the tanker and its spilled content exploded and incinerated everyone around. Many others are still hospitalized as we write. Nigerians have died in their thousands scooping petrol from a burst pipeline or an overturned truck. What should ordinarily be a blessing to a people has become a curse leading to death. While not holding brief for the poor souls, the level of poverty in Nigeria cannot be totally overlooked in all of this. Nigerians have continued to wallow in excruciating and grinding insufficiency that they don’t even value their lives anymore. To many of them, it is better to die while trying to escape poverty. Indeed, in the midst of hopelessness reason takes flight. The Governor visited the village and offered talk of hope and empathy. President Tinubu also sent his sympathies. One of the survivors told BBC that he lost about 50 of his relations in that inferno. People are hurting and the solution is not in sight. God help Nigeria.