Opinion
Retrogressive Politics Of Value Added Tax In Nigeria
Published
2 years agoon

By
Salihu Moh. Lukman
The controversy around whether Value Added Tax (VAT) should be centrally collected by the federal government or decentralised so that state governments are the ones to collect, beyond anything, is a test about the type of democracy Nigerians want. Is it going to prioritise the development of the nation’s productive capacity? Or will it simply be about consuming the resources that are currently available? Once the priority is about consuming currently available resources, commitment of political leaders to mobilise investment to develop the nation’s productive sectors will be weak. This is not to dismiss issues of access to existing resources by those who produce them. However, access may not necessarily translate into commitment to utilise the resources in ways that strengthened the commitment of political leaders to invest in the development of Nigeria’s productive sector. The important challenge therefore is to ensure that access to resources also comes with increased commitment by political leaders towards developing Nigeria’s productive sector.
With this background, it is important that Nigerians are also reminded that since 1999, public debate about increased access to resources by state governments, otherwise known as resource control, was limited to revenue from petroleum. Largely, promoted by the oil producing states, mainly the South-South geopolitical zone of the country, the debate was about allowing those states to control all the revenue from oil and perhaps pay a percentage as royalty to federal government. The royalty will be expected to support both the federal government and other non-oil producing states in the country. In all the debates around resource control, tax revenue was never recognised as a significant factor worthy of consideration. Partly, on account of both combination of weak institutional capacity and corruption in the public sector, the belief was that the most important source of government revenue for Nigeria is petroleum.
That Nigerians are debating whether it is states or federal government that should collect VAT signifies some progress, which has to do with the fact that there is an increase in what is being generated from VAT. For instance, in 2015, the total amount collected was N759.43 billion. Between 2016 to 2020, there was consistent increase in the amount collected respectively to N777.51 billion, N972.35 billion, N1.11 trillion, N1.17 trillion and N1.531 trillion. Everything considered, under the APC-led federal government of President Muhammadu Buhari, VAT collection increased from N759.43 billion in 2015 to N1.531 trillion in 2020, an increase of more than hundred percent.
READ ALSO: Southern Governors Meet, Insist On VAT Collection, Anti-open Grazing Law, Others
Nigerians can conveniently dismiss the role of the APC-led federal government in making it possible for the remarkable improvement in VAT collection in the country such that today, it has become an attractive variable in the struggle for resource control by state governments. The reality however is that credit must go to the APC-led federal government of President Buhari. Whether it would have been possible if PDP is still in control of the federal government can only be a wishful thought. If that were to be the case, why wasn’t it the case at any point between 1999 and 2015? No matter what anyone wants to say, the reality is that the significant increase in VAT in the country between 2015 and 2020 confirmed improved efficiency and reduced corruption in the process of collection and management of Nigeria’s public finances.
Interestingly, in terms of the politics of the debate, improved efficiency and management of Nigeria’s public finances are not the focus of the debate. In some ways, even those who are supposed to recognise this fact and promote the achievements of the APC and its federal government, instead have become so defensive, may be because the public noise in the country is all about demonstrating how the APC-led federal government of President Buhari is the driver of inequality, injustice and unfair practices against state governments. Sponsored by Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers States, the argument is that monies belonging to state governments are collected by the federal government and shared to states. According to Governor Wike, state money is taken by ‘Abuja people’, based on which he expressed ‘surprise at the level of injustice in the country’, arguing that ‘Rivers State generated about N15 billion as VAT in June 2021 but received only N4.7 billion, Lagos State generated over N46 billion as VAT in June, but got just over N9 billion, whereas Kano State generated N2.8 billion and also got N2.8 billion as allocation.’
Governor Wike can audaciously and shamelessly talk about VAT today because, its value has significantly increased which made it attractive for a rich state like Rivers to be interested in controlling it. If Governor Wike has any morality, he should look back and acknowledge how small Rivers must have received as its VAT share before 2015. Being a leading member of PDP, what was responsible for the low VAT records in the country between 1999 and 2015? And since, according to him and almost every leader of PDP, Nigerians are looking up to the PDP to rescue the nation from ‘bad governance’ in the hands of APC, does PDP’s brand of good governance come with low capacity to manage the nation’s public finances?
READ ALSO: Southern Governors Take Stand On National Issues At Enugu Meeting
As members of APC, it is important that Governor Wike is reminded that the current increased record of VAT collection in the country is made possible only because the PDP is no longer in power. If PDP were to be in power the fact of inefficiency and corruption in the process of collection and management of VAT would have continued and the amount collected would have remained relatively low. It is not by accident that VAT collection in the country significantly increased under the APC- led federal government. This is because one of the specific commitments of APC since 2015 as outlined in the section of the party’s manifesto Funding a New Nigeria was that ‘APC government will set about the urgent task of getting Nigeria’s public finances in order, by tackling the massive waste, duplication and corruption in the system, diversifying the economy and expanding our tax base to increase non-oil revenues, and reprioritising public spending away from bureaucracy towards investment in infrastructure and improved frontline services.’
Both in terms of ‘getting Nigeria’s public finances in order’ and ‘investment in infrastructure’, the APC -led Federal Government is implementing the provisions of the APC manifesto to the letter. Nigerian’s especially PDP leaders can conveniently dismiss all the work being done to develop Nigeria’s dilapidated and abandoned infrastructure, but the question of ‘expanding our tax base to increase non-oil revenue’ cannot be disputed. One strong evidence of that is the debate about states collecting VAT. It is very easy to play very cheap politics with these issues, partially because also, as a party, APC is not taking ownership of its achievements. Instead, its achievements are now being interpreted to justify some rebellious politics against the APC-led federal government.
Somehow, the VAT debate in Nigeria recalls the warning by Amartya Sen in the book, The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity, when he cautioned that ‘One of the penalties of the increased focus on religious and communal identities, which has recently gone hand in hand with the deliberate fostering of sectarian politics …, is a weakening of the pursuit of egalitarian commitments, which requires a more integrated focus on the interests and freedoms of deprived groups taken together (related to economic, social and gender-based stratifications). While political organisations that unite all the lower castes can – and often do – help the underdogs in general, that end is not served by the divisive politics of rivalry between different lower-caste groups …, or by religious sectarianism …. The newly erected communal boundary lines are not only divisive in themselves, they also add to the social and political difficulties in removing the old barriers of hardened inequality.”
So far, the VAT debate is more about perceived injustice on account of Nigeria’s divisive politics of ethnicity. Substantive issues of desirability or otherwise of VAT, including all the administrative challenges bordering on implications of methods of collection and why it is a crucially determining factor for any democracy are ignored. Part of the challenge of debating policy issues in Nigeria is that public noise, largely influenced by subjective anger of citizens becomes the guiding consideration. The subjective anger of citizens is mainly about the blind politics of dismissing whatever is associated with the Federal Government as biasedly in favour of a section of the country, however it is defined. With or without justification, many Nigerians who dominate the media space accuse the Federal Government of injustice. In several respects, ethnicised campaigns are further entrenching divisive politics, thereby increasing social and political inequality. As things are, Nigerian politics is blind to ‘egalitarian commitments’ of promoting national integration.
With respect to the specific issue of VAT, if the federal government can record increase of more than hundred percent between 2015 and 2020, is the current figure representative of the total expected collection from VAT? Simple reading of all the federal government revenue projections as contained in every year’s budget estimate will indicate a wide gap in expectation. Although there is a remarkable increase in collection, it should be recognised that a lot more can be done to generate more revenue from VAT. Can transferring collection to state governments achieve that? May be and maybe not. But beyond the question of what is collected and what states get, what is even the economic implications of VAT?
READ ALSO: You Can’t Collect VAT Revenues Yet, Appeal Court Tells Rivers, Lagos
Generally, debate around tax is about how governments can use it to influence economic development. As a fiscal policy tool, it is basically about controlling the amount of money individuals should have for consumption. Will government tax policy seek to support low-income groups, i.e., ensure that the higher income groups pay more tax? Or will government tax policy disfavour the lower income group. The first test of whether any government can make any claim to being progressive will be reflected in the orientation of its tax policy. A progressive government will generally be associated with a progressive tax policy, which means it will seek to tax the rich more. A conservative government will tax the rich less. Beyond who is taxed more, taxing the poor less is proven economically to be a strong incentive to increase demands for goods and services. If government wants to ensure increased production of goods and services in the country, increasing the amount of money available to low-income groups is an attraction. Therefore, in addition to a progressive tax policy being in favour of low-income group, given that low-income group are in the majority, any government that wants to be popular with citizens would lean towards a progressive tax policy.
Given that VAT is basically a sales tax, which is regressive because both the rich and the poor pay the same rates, and to that extent therefore makes it disadvantageous in terms of using it as a fiscal policy instrument to stimulate demand, ideally the politics of debating it should distinguish conservative and progressive politicians. Somehow, the public noise in Nigeria has pulled our dear Lagos State government into teaming up with Rivers in the legal battle to ensure that states win the right of collecting VAT and not federal government.
Something must have just gone wrong for Lagos State to disregard its longstanding historical commitment to progressive governance and embrace what in the long run will be a disadvantage to the majority of Lagosians.
Mr. Simon Kolawole, the publisher of The Cable online newspaper has excellently demonstrated why in the long run VAT collection by states governments may be disadvantageous to both Rivers and Lagos States. According to Mr. Kolawole, in ‘2020, Nigeria earned N1.531tr from VAT. While local VAT was N763bn, foreign VAT — collected by FG — was N768bn. Therefore, rather than take just 15% (N230bn) from the N1.531trn, FG may now pocket the entire N768bn from foreign VAT since it does not go into federation account and may not be subject to the regular sharing formula. That would deprive the states, Rivers and Lagos inclusive, of about half of the total VAT revenue. This is HUGE. The FCT may also win as it generated N202bn in VAT last year but got only N34.6bn as its share.’
The desire to access more resource is perhaps the main driving factor in the battle to get state governments to collect VAT in the country. Wouldn’t it be possible to work with federal government and manage all the challenges, including ensuring that businesses are not necessarily encumbered by having to deal with multiple points of collection? There is no need to go into the details about how decentralised collection can impact on prices of products and services. Also, no need to go into the potential conflicts that would emerge between branch offices of companies and state governments in the country. All these are issues that would be instigated because VAT collected at the point of sales by a branch of company is expected to be remitted to the host state government where the head office is located. If state governments want to control what is generated in their states therefore, the administrative framework of how it is remitted to government and which government will be a major issue.
Nigerian democracy and politics must functionally rise above sentiment. Instead of debating how to consume the little resources so far available, Nigerian political leaders should be debating how to increase available resources. Even within the limit of the debate about increased available resources, the question of what governments need to do, policy measures required, including issues of tax, its administration and orientation in terms of whether it should favour the low or high-income groups should not be issues that would be blindly considered. In the same way Rivers and Lagos imagined that they would have more revenue if they were allowed to collect VAT and therefore control everything, they collected without sharing with the federal government and other states, states like Osun, Ekiti, Bayelsa, Ebonyi, Abia, would lose. On the other hand, Oyo, Ogun, Kano, Kaduna and Enugu, may be the surprise actual gainers.
Overall, APC leaders, must take advantage of the current VAT debate to take ownership of its achievements, which the fact of improved VAT collections in the country represents. In doing so, APC leaders must go beyond the narrow debate about access to what is currently available. If at all APC leaders and members are to make any claim to progressive political credentials, generating large-scale financial resources at both federal and state levels, which should be deployed to expand the productive base of the nation’s economy, should be the aspiration. There is no reason why any state in the country, including Zamfara, Yobe, Osun, Ekiti, Abia, Ebonye, should not aspire to generate at least N10 – 15 billion monthly as Internally Generated Revenue. To be caught in the backward debate about whether they should have the little they currently receive from the federation account is retrogressive. As a nation, our politics and democracy must be refocused towards nurturing the productive potentials of every state.
READ ALSO: Lagos Signs VAT Bill Into Law
The commitment to develop capacity to mobilise large-scale financial resources to develop productive potential of all Nigerian states should be the minimum requirement for all APC leaders. Already, since the time of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, as Governor of Lagos State between 1999 and 2007, Lagos State has emerged to be the leader in mobilising large-scale financial resources in the country, which is why it is the only state with about one trillion Naira annual budget. Justifiably, Lagos was able to undertake large-scale public investment commensurate with its resource base. It’s not by accident therefore, it is the leader in the country with a model transport infrastructure. If the Lagos vision is limited to sharing available resources, it wouldn’t have been the leader it is.
The VAT debate in the country also poses a significant challenge to political parties in terms of developing capacity to coordinate policy debate within the structures of parties as well as ensuring that policies of governments produced by the party reflect any emerging consensus. Somehow, the current VAT debate in the country is completely removed from the structures of the main political parties – PDP and APC. If the debate is to take place within the structures of PDP, for instance, even the sectarian outburst of Governor Wike will be moderated. On the other hand, if the debate is to take place in any of the organs of APC, the question of the role of APC federal government in achieving improved collections will be well emphasised. In addition, the potential to mobilise more revenue from VAT and the expected role of state governments cannot be avoided.
The need to develop Nigerian democracy so that political parties in the country can initiate pro-people and pro-poor public policies, and not cheap sentiments that can be disadvantageous to citizens, especially the poor, is an urgent imperative. Important as the debate around increased access to resources by state governments, so long as political leaders are not commitment to initiatives that can develop the productive capacity of the country, the amount of revenue generated will remain low. The other issue is that all APC leaders must be appealed to jealously guard the achievements of APC and all its governments. Why should APC leaders allow a situation whereby any PDP leader, including Governor Wike, can make claims of any injustice on a matter that demonstrated in practical terms the failure of PDP? If VAT is an important source of revenue for government, why did PDP fail to record any significant collection throughout their sixteen years as a ruling party?
Every opportunity to remind Nigerians about the failure of PDP should be amplified. Similarly, all evidence of success of APC and its governments should be affirmed. APC leaders must take ownership of all the achievements of APC governments at all levels. On no account should APC leaders allow opportunistic rebellious politics of PDP and its leaders to distract them from the task of providing the needed progressive leadership to develop the nation’s productive potential. As a nation, the question of fighting poverty and reducing inequality both among citizens and across all the 36 states of the country should be the egalitarian commitment of all progressive political leaders in the country. If Nigerians are to be united, it must be based on equitable productive resource endowment across every part of the country!
Dr.Lukman is the Director-General of the Progressive Governors Forum, Abuja. This position does not represent the view of any APC governor or the Progressive Governors Forum.
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Opinion
Overcoming Policy Execution Trap As Nigeria’s Development Challenge
Published
21 hours agoon
March 21, 2023
By Tunji Olaopa
If I am asked to give a succinct and apt summary of the entire challenge faced by the Nigerian state in terms of her policy architecture and development management, in spite of contestation in the development literature, I will not hesitate in stating clearly and unambiguously that it is the challenge of policy implementation; the whole dynamics of getting things done. By elimination, the implication is that the challenge cannot be located as that of the dearth of development ideas, insights, models and paradigms. Right from her independence, Nigeria has been inundated with several ideas, both local and global, about development policy and frameworks. And yet, policy outcomes keep getting bogged down in the murky waters of political shenanigans. This means that the new administration of Bola Ahmed Tinubu has its challenge mapped out, in red, for it.
There is no shying away from this postcolonial predicament that has limited and kept limiting Nigeria’s capacity to honour the terms of her social contract with Nigerians. Hence, the Tinubu government will soon be inundated with the impatient agitations of Nigerians for a quick and tangible fix that will address their sufferings. And they are justified since they have not been given any real deal for the past sixty-three years of sovereign independence. And the new administration is obligated because that is the reason for seeking office in the first place.
Prof. Olaopa’s new book on public policy and development challenges
How then can we begin to understand this policy execution challenge? It is simple: how can an administration in Nigeria transition from governance vision and policy intention to policy outcomes that elevate and transform the quality of life of its citizens? Failure to understand and give critical and political attention to this question lies at the heart of the governance failures of successive Nigerian administrations. The new Tinubu administration cannot afford such a glaring mistake. And so, a fundamental case must be made out of the question of how policy intentions get circumscribed in the dynamics of policy execution that occasions policy failures in past administrations.
Modern states all across the world are distinguished by the traditional four functions they discharge as part of their administrative responsibilities—security i.e. securing the sovereign territory against lawlessness, policy formulation and implementation, governance regulation and service delivery.The capacity to perform each and all of these functions very well within an integrated framework in the governance context is what delivers the dividends of democratic governance to the citizens, and it enhances the state’s competitive and human development rating in global reckoning. With these functions, we have the metrics to differentiate between high-performing states like China, India, the United States,Botswana, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirate, Germany, Rwanda and the Asian Tigers (Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea), and low- or even under-performing countries like Nigeria that is still cluelessly stuck within a dysfunctional vicious cycle within her arrested development.
From the perspective of governance, there must be something these states are getting right in the connection between leadership, politics, and policy articulation. For instance, there is a trajectory of relationship that links elite bargains to development bargains. In other words, development is a
function of elite nationalism and the extent to which the political class of a state can commit elite suicide and gamble on development on behalf of the people they are leading. In Nigeria, low
manifestation of elite nationalism has made it really difficult for the political class to set aside their personal and egoistic class interests in ways that enable them to clearly and ideologically discern and navigate the deadly developmental landmines strewn all over our governance landscape by the
neoliberal implication of ideological apparatuses and frameworks to which Nigeria is beholden. And here, the factor of development gamble of the Asian Tigers’ elites comes into bold relief. From within the ideological ambit of the developmental state, the leadership of the Asian Tigers were able to define a policy space that consciously and critically weighed the benefits and shortfalls of external influences, especially the type that came from the World Bank, IMF and the other cohorts of the neoliberal policy dynamics. Their developmental circumspection paid off!
Since we cannot argue that Nigeria has been stumped by the lack of vision documents, development plans and blueprints, or even policy expertise, the locus of the new administration’s focus must be directed at the possibility of mustering the political will to undermine the mystified Nigerian Factor, and face the global neoliberal consensus in order to begin the crafting of an enabling policy architecture to drive development. And to achieve this translates to creating the delicate balance between ‘doing the right things’ (a function of decision making quotient) and ‘doing it right’(project and change management effectiveness), and overcoming the various political, cultural, structural and systemic constraints that trapped past well-meaning policies and intentions of Nigerian leaders in the dynamics of implementation.
There is first the conspiracy of elitist interest that ensures there is a poor resource allocation that focuses on elite bargain than development calculations and taking care of the national interest. Other constraints follow: (a) the disconnect between policy design and implementation due to weak implementation planning, risk assessment and incompetent change management strategies; (b) unstable and poorly managed macroeconomic policies; (c) policy and project discontinuity; (d) public service low capability readiness; (e) political interference; and finally (f) deep-seated political and bureaucratic corruption. In essence, development has failed not because Nigeria lacks the blueprint or paradigms to make it happen, but due to the dynamics of the politics that the political elite plays with Nigeria’s development potential.
Let me outline what we can regard as the “politics of policy implementation” that Nigeria has played for many years, a politics the new administration must take into serious consideration if it
does not want to fall into the category of failed administration right before it commences. This politics throws Nigeria’s development and policy non-performance right into the frame of the 2005 World Bank review findings about policy and development projects in Africa. According to the finding, 29% of development projects ever get completed, 45% of on-going projects are rated as satisfactory, while 26% of such projects invariably get cancelled. Such a review can never backstop a solid development project of a developmental state.
The politics of policy implementation in
Nigeria is founded on the following assumptions and practices. One: there is that dangerous presumption, that the new administration must resist, that once policies and development plan are designed, they are automatically implemented by the public service. And such a presumption is against the background of a scant investment in implementation analysis and planning, as well as the failure to facilitate the capability review, determine public
administration system’s capability readiness, and strengthening of the MDAs as the powerhouse of government administrative functionality. The MDAs, that is, are not working according to any
specific theories or praxis of change that can guide the functional integration of blueprints or paradigms. This kind of policy inattention draws attention to the policy contradiction: launching a
national development plan and strategy that are not implementation- ready in terms of adequate capability review of the MDAs integral to ensuring implementation success. Two: this
presumption is compounded by the uncritical reliance of past governments on policy experts and consulting firms who are tasked with designing high-end policies that are then dumped on MDAs whose capability reviews and implementation readiness have been neglected in the first place. The
extroversion of the policy design is then compromised by poor functional integration. The truth is that most of these consulting firms lack the appropriate deep content and solution frameworks that are in tandem with the context of policy dysfunction they are supposed to work with. Three: governance policy or project are hardly subjected to feasibility test determined in terms of scope and expectation that are captured by their framework of time, cost and risk assessments before
they are pushed into implementation. This makes it very difficult to benchmark funding projections for these policies and projects against revenue estimations, as well as facilitating in-built flexibilities that enable the policies and projects to adjust to volatilities and contingencies.
All the issues raised above constitute binding constraint that will undermine any governance possibilities the new administration requires to make a success of democratic governance. Undermining the binding constraints demands returning to the fundamentals. The first and most significant is that the new administration needs to interrogate the framework of how government business is currently being conducted. Governance successes are necessarily a function of how government business engages the complexities of the policy design and execution processes within a results-oriented frame. And that entails undermining the structural gaps between policy objectives, development strategies and policy outcomes. This demands second, setting the public service on a performance curve with the institution of a performance management system. This means that the public service must, for example, unfailingly now deploy KPI-based metrics to replace the cumbersome annual performance evaluation report (APER). And at the backend, it becomes imperative to have a monitoring and evaluation system supported by databases that enable staff and program continuous assessment, human resource development rooted in iterativep performance gap identification, supervisors-staff dialogue and multisource feedback mechanismsf for overall national development policy tracking and reporting.
The governance mantra must be on getting the balance between doing the right things and doing it right. And this cannot be achieved through the wanton multiplication or even duplication of
governance plans, programs and blueprints. What is needed is sequencing the blueprints into a coherent and feasible implementation programme, with the right amount of political will behind it. This gives the success of democratic governance a 95% chance of succeeding. The new administration needs that fighting chance!
. Olaopa, a retired Federal Permanent Secretary, and Professor of Public Administration .
tolaopa2003@gmail.com
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Opinion
Rigged Elections And The Moral Burden Of Illegitimacy
Published
2 days agoon
March 20, 2023
By Hope O’Rukevbe Eghagha
Adamu: A man who rigs his way to power carries a moral burden!
Orezime: A moral what?
Adamu: You heard me, didn’t you?
Orezime: I’m not sure I heard you right. Moral what you said?
Adamu: A moral burden, I said!
Orezime: Hahahahahahaha! You make me laugh! Are you from the moon?
Gani: Or Mars?
Emeka: In which country? In Nigeria? That principle does not apply in Nigeria! There is no moral burden on anybody in this country! The election which produced Bubu in 2015 was rigged. Where are the two million voters from Kano State who voted in 2015? Was an INEC official not burnt alive after that election? The one which brought Obj to power was also rigged by the forces which wanted him to ease the tension of the Abiola tragedy on the Yoruba people. Yet those men had the temerity to preach against corruption!
Orezime: The international community winked at the whole exercise.
Gani: Yes! That’s why those two could only preach; they couldn’t really act decisively. A moral burden? They spoke from both sides of their mouths on the issue of corruption. The late President Yar Adua confessed that the election which produced him was compromised. An honest man, he didn’t live long enough to right the wrong of the period!
Orezime: That’s why I laughed when Adamu talked about a moral burden arising from rigged elections.
Bankole: In the ideal world, any power that is stolen and acquired through a dubious means imposes a moral burden on the power holder. No matter what the person does, that power remains stained.
Orezime: What does that amount to in our country? Even the brigands who shot their way to power in the notorious days of military misadventure in Nigeria soon became legitimate.
Emeka: You are going too far in our history. See what happened in Lagos State in the governorship elections of March 18. Ethnic jingoists went about preaching hatred against Igbo people and warned them against coming out to exercise their constitutional rights. Security officials looked the other way when ballot boxes were snatched in broad daylight in places where the opposition was leading.
Gani: A serving state governor personally went about snatching ballot boxes and threatened to shoot whoever got in his way. The same governor declared somebody wanted without recourse to the Inspector General of Police! He worked against the party on which platform he won the seat to spite the party hierarchy!
Adamu: And to think that this is the President-elect’s state. He kept mute through the horrendous attacks on Igbo people in Lagos State just the way the incumbent president has looked the other way when herdsmen went on the loose!
Bankole: Rigged elections are so familiar yet notorious in our land. It was the main trigger to the crisis in the Western Region in the First Republic because the people reacted when they saw a rape of their rights and wishes! It soon snowballed into a conflagration that consumed the nation in the late 1960s. Already, the youths are talking about a protest in the ENDSARSNOW# manner. I hope it doesn’t result in disaster. We have lost too many lives already!
Orezime: What I fear is the rise of ethnic profiling in a supposedly democratic society. To be sure, Governor Sanwo-Olu and the party hierarchy did not single out any ethnic group for verbal attacks. They even courted them. Yet they didn’t caution their followers to stop the degeneration into ethnic hatred. It is a dangerous curve what is happening in Lagos. I don’t subscribe to the Lagos is no man’s land nonsense which some misguided fellows are spewing, but threatening anybody not to vote their candidate is a new low! Can a Sanwo-Olu victory be said to be legitimate if a significant percentage of the electorate is disenfranchised?
Emeka: Good question. They did not stop there. They rolled out the culturally dreaded Oro rituals on election night. Come on! Who is fooling who? The Oro festival was designed to drive fear into non-Yoruba in Lagos. In the 21st Century?
Gani: I am sure the reports from election observers will be damning.
Bankole: I don’t care about those biased observers.
Adamu: Where are we headed in this country?
Orezime: We are on the road to Kigali!
Bankole: May we not travel that route!
Orezime: It’s a good prayer. But what are we doing to avoid the descent into anarchy? Nothing. Those monkeys are simply interested in acquiring power.
Gani: The Obedient Movement seems to have lost steam once it was misbranded as an ethnic agenda to grab power at the national level. Peter Obi needs to tread carefully so he doesn’t become another June 12! Some people are egging him on to challenge INEC through protests.
Orezime: If he decides to lead a protest, it would be within his constitutional right to do so, especially as INEC is stalling on the issue of inspecting elections materials despite an order from the courts. Peaceful protests are guaranteed by the Constitution.
Adamu: No one can be sure whether a peaceful protest will remain peaceful after it starts. That’s the experience the ENDSARS people had.
Gani: It’s not enough to stop people from taking to the streets. Protests are fundamental to democracy.
Adamu: We do not want dead heroes! Mark my words.
Bankole: That’s ominous!
Emeka: It means nothing. Nigeria must change. We cannot go on like this forever! Things are just going down. No cash. No fuel. No power supply. No security. No nothing. Peter Obi gave a glimmer of hope. Now that has been dashed to the ground.
Adamu: Rigging will remain a moral burden each time our President-elect travels outside the country, each time he meets foreign observers, especially those ones who have a dossier on him. History will also judge him and assess how he came to power. This applies to all the states as well where some politicians have turned themselves into demigods and have compromised poor INEC officials with mouthwatering sums. This is not how to build a democracy. The votes must be counted and must count. Seventeen people have their lives during the governorship and House of Assembly elections. We are supposed to count ballot papers, not bodies. Sad!
Bankole: The moral burden of rigged elections is on all of us. Without our connivance there would be no rigging. We can only hope that this will end some day!
Emeka: Tough luck!
Related

By Tony Afejuku
On Thursday, 2 March, 2023, the Financial Times based in London, England published a blistering editorial on the February 25, 2023 Presidential election which up to now is the talk of everywhere beyond our shores. The said Financial Times editorial was entitled “Nigerians badly flawed election fails to set an example.” Indeed, it was a positively blistering presentation as any positively blistering presentation can be. Professor Olu Obafemi FNAL; NNOM drew the attention of the literati to the editorial that argued succinctly that “If Tinubu’s victory is challenged the courts should take a hard` look.” In his summation of the editorial Professor Olu Obafemi, who headed the debating literati, said he had nothing to add to the efficacious editorial but he would be happy – by my inference – to have the viewpoints of others. Thereafter the debate began. The arguments and counter-arguments began. Whose will was INEC propagating: Was it its will or the will of the cabal in the presidency or the will of the Nigerian people?
By the way, be it noted here and now that the Financial Times, though headquartered in London as already indicated, is owned by Japanese, by Nikkei, a Japanese holding company with “core editorial offices across Britain, the United States and continental Europe.” Why this point is necessary here will reveal itself in the debate I hereby tender to fit my creative and journalistic purpose. But you will notice that there is a shift in focus from the substance of the editorial to the question of anti-black or anti-African Western propaganda.
This is how Professor Ademola Da Sylva, FNAL puts it:
“The Western media are so powerful that they have their ways of turning non-Western genuine patriots and revolutionaries to look like some nameless demons all because they failed to toe servile line as underdogs! Idi Amin, for example, might not get it right in his choice of modus operandi, but he knew what he wanted for his Uganda people. His successful ejection of the British Asians was one of his policies that did not go down well with the hegemons because it devastated the British economy. So the Western media descended on him and painted him as a blood-sucking Dracula! Of course, there were Uganda compradors and cronies of multinationals from within who tried to undermine Amin’s revolution, too. Dedan Kimathi was also considered a “terrorist and a bandit” by the British imperialists; they got him arrested and hanged him, but we know he wasn’t a demon they tried to make us believe he was! Furthermore, no matter what we may think of Mugabe, the immediate past Zimbabwe President, he meant well for his country, he revoked the licences of large parcels of fertile lands, and also a large chunk of the lands from the White occupants and re-distributed the lands among the black peasants. That was ordinarily unthinkable in Africa by an African leader who wanted justice and equity for his people, but he did it and called the bluff of the West. Again, the Western media took over from there, painted a devil of him, and many Africans uncritically swallowed the gambit, too! The first accusation of the West against these patriotic leaders has always been that they were antidemocrats! Democracy is anti-African governance principles. It is the primary reasons why we never get it right, but it has always paid the West because it keeps Africa underdeveloped to the advantage of the West. The truth is: Why would you want to change a leadership that is up and doing, responsible and responsive, and doing very well, why? That principle foregrounds our sense of monarchy. A king remains on the throne for as long as his reign brings progress and security. Where a king fails, as in the cases of the indigenous Yoruba Obas, he is made to commit a voluntary suicide, and another Oba replaces him. Anyway, let me pause here.”
Professor Ibrahim Bello-Kano’s stroke goes thus: “My view is that if humans have (or bear) an original sin, according to Christian eschatology, and if humans need to pray and carry out religious duties to be worthy of divine grace, and if secular education requires progressive edification of humans, and if humans are brutes unless they are inserted into a humane culture complete in all its sides (as Matthew Arnold has argued), and if the classical calculators looked forward not to human nature, with its brutal immersion in self-interest and wars and strife, and if humans have repeatedly to struggle to rise above their petty narrowness, then how can their voting behaviour or action be perfect, pristine or excellent? Those who expect a perfect electoral behaviour or outcome in a country brutalized by a savage economic policy and an insensitive and thieving cast of state officials, and the electors riven by religious and ethnic divisions are expecting a miracle. Yet at the local level, the electors did succeed in electing a new set of people to represent them. The problem with macro analysis is that it is positivism at its worst. At the micro level, the elections were expressive of the will of the people. In Kano State, for example, the newly formed NNPP swept the board with more than 18 out of the available 22 seats for the House of Reps and 2 out of the 3 Senate seats. Thousands turned out to vote. Finally, why should we believe anything the Western press says about us? Look at their reporting of the war in Ukraine. They keep saying, against the evidence and the facts, that Ukraine is winning the war with Russia, despite the former being slaughtered on the battlefield and having lost a staggering number of soldiers.
“Humour comes from the ridiculous and the ridiculous from the comical. Here is an example of a statement that is hilarious because it is ridiculous and ridiculous because it is comical: “Ladies and gentlemen, meet the newly elected President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Reverend Mullah Professor Mr. Mallam IBK of Madagascar!”
Do I have any doubt that our readers will find it hard and uneasy to follow the mind patterns and strokes of the debaters who are trying in their peculiar ways to say something tangibly tangible about our will as voters and INEC’s will as electoral umpire? Not at all!
To be continued.
Afejuku can be reached via 08055213059.
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