The degeneration of the African National Congress (ANC), Africa’s oldest and most prominent freedom-fighting organisation and political party has continued apace. Earlier in the year, South Africa’s former head of intelligence, Authur Fraser, revealed that president Ramaphosa failed to report the theft of about $4 million in cash, in his farmhouse in northern Limpopo province. Ramaphosa was said to have stashed the money in his couch and under a mattress – and when the theft was discovered, he tried to cover up the crime and pay off the criminals. Ramaphosa did not deny the theft but said the money was…
Author: Christopher Akor
These days, when President Buhari and members of his administration talk about their achievements, they talk in very broad terms and generally do not cite figures. Last year, President Buhari, in Paris, at the Nigeria International Partnership Forum (NIPF) boasted that he’s revitalized Nigeria’s economy, built massive infrastructure, lifted millions of Nigerians out of poverty and improved the living standards of Nigerians. As usual, he provided no proof of this bold assertion or indices to measure the progress he claimed to have made. But how can the administration be making such bold claims without evidence? How can you understand or…
I am not the least surprised that the 2023 election is fast descending into ethnic bickering with at least two of the three frontline presidential candidates explicitly deploying the ethnic dog whistle to rally their co-ethnics to their causes. All the talk about policies, the economy, inflation, human rights abuses, and holding those who facilitated or looked the other way as protesting youth were being massacred at the Lekki toll gate have now been forgotten. All one hears and sees as the election draws closer is the great saliency of ethnicity and ethnic coalitions in determining who becomes the next…
For me, it was not the fact that young Nigerians were massacred at the Lekki toll gate on October 20, 2020. Nigerians die daily in the hands of murderous security agencies and they don’t even make the news. It was the chilling deliberateness and planning of the massacre that bothered me. The government took great care to plan for the massacre of its own people. First, it ensured that the otherwise visible cameras at the tollgate were disabled, internet access to the area cut off, lights switched off and a curfew imposed to boot. Then came the massacres, the mopping…
In 2015, when Muhammadu Buhari was campaigning for the presidency, he promised that he was a converted liberal democrat and that he would ensure that the country will continue to operate a free market economy. However, shortly after he won the election, his actions and dispositions quickly changed to an anti-business and pro-state-led economy disposition. From the retention of subsidy on petrol, the refusal to approve the privatization of the nation’s dilapidated and perpetually non-functional refineries, the mopping up of funds from banks and their concentration in the Central Bank even when the economy needs a revamp, to the talk…
Protocols. I thank you sincerely for inviting me to speak on the contribution of the Nigerian Diaspora to economic development in Nigeria. This topic is crucial and timely seeing that the number of Nigerian diaspora keeps increasing by the day and just like in the 80s, there is now a ‘japa’ movement in Nigeria where economic and social conditions have so deteriorated that the brightest of Nigerian youth and professionals identify success both academically and professionally with leaving the country. There is huge controversy over the population of Nigerians in the diaspora. While the United Nations Department of Economic and…
Africa has made progress in democratic governance over the last 30 years. Most countries in the continent now hold fairly regular elections and have, at least on paper, most institutions of democracy – a parliament, judiciary, press and civil society. In fact, in 1990, almost no country in Africa had set a constitutional term limit for leaders. However, by the turn of the century following the wave of democratization, over 30 have inserted term limits in their constitutions. But as we are coming to realize, inserting term limits in the constitution is one thing; getting the leaders to honour it…
A fortnight ago, I wrote about Putin and the danger of personalist rule. I argued that personalist rule/cult of personality is inherently dangerous for two reasons. The first is that the quality and flow of critical information to the leader is severely disrupted and coloured by the coterie of yes-men and sycophants around the ruler. Second, institutions of “collective governance”, deliberation, debate, and consensus have been turned into echo chambers of the leader’s wishes and are virtually useless. All of these make the personalist ruler more susceptible to making disastrous policy mistakes. I showed how all these played out in…
Last year, I wrote about how Haiti’s institutions were completely hollowed out by the inflow of aid after the 2010 earthquake that killed an estimated 230, 000 people, injured another 300, 000, displaced more than 1.5 million people, and virtually destroyed the country’s infrastructure. In response to the earthquake, states, multilateral and humanitarian organisations flooded Haiti with various forms of aid and assistance to help the country cope with the devastation of the earthquake. Over $13.5 billion of aid was donated in 11 years. However, due to the way aid is administered, the massive injections robbed the Haitian government of…
Three weeks ago, in ending a two-part series on fixing the leadership deficit in Africa, I posited that empirical evidence point to two factors as largely responsible for the failure of governance, political decay and, in the case of Africa, poverty of the African state. These are weakness or failure of institutions, and second – the cause of the first – extreme personalization of power. While the institutional design of a well-functioning democracy provides for the smooth functioning of strong state institutions that depersonalizes power and puts adequate checks and balances on the activities of all elected and appointed leaders…
Every society and individual needs heroes. They help us survive through our worst times and to thrive. They symbolise for us the kinds of qualities we would like to possess (usually of courage, honour, justice, and human excellence) and all the ambitions we would like to satisfy. Therefore, societies select the best among themselves to serve as the embodiment of their values and a guide and aspiration to the members of that society. Like all societies, Nigeria too has elevated some of its members to hero status. Mostly, these are our nationalist/independence leaders, soldier state-men, and those who have risen…
In my reflections on institutions in Nigeria, I have maintained the position that Nigeria suffers from isomorphic mimicry – a situation where institutions are created and made to act in ways to make themselves “look like institutions in other places that are perceived as legitimate,” but which in reality are not. We have created various institutions of governance that are supposed to work like institutions in western countries – with elaborate laws and provisions providing for their supposed independence. However, our presidential system ensures that regardless of the laws establishing these institutions, they ultimately operate at the whim and caprice…
Since the days of the Babangida regime and the IMF Structural Adjustment Programme debates, Nigerians have come to see a strong local currency as an attribute of a strong economy. However, low oil prices and the insistence of the IMF on devaluation has seen the Naira gradually devalued from its high of 90 kobo to a dollar in 1985 to N17 to $1 when IBB stepped aside in 1993. On seizing power, the dark googled dictator, General Sani Abachi decreed that the exchange rate be fixed at N22 to the dollar. That remained the exchange rate for the entire duration…
In late December 2021, with six months of validity remaining on our passports, my family and I decided to apply for the renewal of our Nigerian passports at the Nigerian consulate in Atlanta, Georgia. We filled out the forms, paid the required fees online, and were given a number to call to schedule an appointment for our biometric capture at the consulate. We called the number for two days non-stop, and no one picked up the calls. We asked around and were told that is the usual practice at Nigerian consulates and embassy in the United States. They deliberately refused…
On July 8, José Eduardo do Santos, Angola’s strongman who ruled the country for 38 years, died in self-exile in a hospital in Barcelona, reportedly of cardiac arrest. His death has come at a trying time for his country, Angola, and the party he dedicated his life to and led for almost four decades – the Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). Angola’s economy had been in decline for five years starting in 2015 and was compounded by the Covid-19 pandemic that saw a record GDP decline in 2020 of 9.9 percent. Although the economy is recovering, it is…
Quietly and surprisingly, a movement is ongoing in Nigeria that is threatening the dominant political arrangement in the country. Existing theories and practices support dominant political parties with established structures all over the country winning the presidency. With this knowledge and with the provision for few delegates picking the candidates of the main parties, money bags have hijacked the dominant political parties and now buy off delegates to emerge as the parties’ candidates for elections. Unlike in other places where political leaders and party candidates reflect the wishes of their base and by extension the wider society, in Nigeria, the…
Since the fiasco of the 2007 elections in Nigeria, we have progressively witnessed lower voter turnouts in subsequent elections. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) figures show that in 1999, voter turnout for the presidential election was 52.3 percent. In 2003, turnout increased to a whopping 69.1 percent. In 2007, it declined again to 57.49 percent. After the embarrassment of the open rigging – and especially in Anambra state where INEC in Abuja rushed to announce the result of an election that was still ongoing and allocated more votes than the total number of registered voters in the state to…
The primary elections are over and despite the spirited attempts by President Muhammadu Buhari, his inner circle and some spoilers such as vice president Yemi Osinbajo, to steal the All Progressives Congress ticket from Bola Ahmed Tinubu, he still prevailed easily. Even before the convention where the primary election took place, there were credible reports of delegates being offered huge amounts of dollars. This is in addition to settling their leaders, various power official and traditional brokers from all parts of the country. Contestants who were not willing or able to match the generalissimo of Lagos dollar to dollar, like…
“… what king would go to war against another king without first sitting down with his counselors to discuss whether his army of 10,000 could defeat the 20,000 soldiers marching against him? And if he can’t, he will send a delegation to discuss terms of peace while the enemy is still far away (Luke 14:31-32). In hindsight, Yemi Osinbajo’s bid to secure the ticket of the All Progressives Congress (APC) was based on a mere hope that president Buhari will endorse him, impose him on the party, or get the governors and delegates to rally around him. Absent the endorsement…
In normal democracies, the unemployment rate determines the fate of elected officials. In 2019 Donald Trump was so sure of being re-elected. But a Gross Domestic Product decline of 32 percent in 2020 and an unemployment rate of 6.7 percent (a tripling of the rate from the year before) virtually derailed his chances and he lost the election emphatically to Joe Biden. Although many other factors may have contributed to his loss, the election results follow the socio-tropic theory of economic voting that supposes “strong effects of macro-economic conditions on the electoral fortunes of incumbents.” Even in an ultra-partisan and…
There is a reason Nigeria is not working. Many Nigerians believe it’s due to corruption. In fact, that was the main reason Muhammadu Buhari was elected president. He promised to fight corruption and insecurity. But since his coming to power, Nigeria’s corruption perception index ranking has only continued to plunge further. What is more, Nigeria is not only dealing with the Boko Haram insurgency now, it has added armed banditry in all of the Northwest, killings and massacres by marauding cattle herders in the Northcentral, a brewing secessionist uprising in the Southeast, and kidnappings and armed robbery all over the…
In Nigeria, observance of the law by the political class, even in clear-cut cases, is tenuous at best. Take for instance the constitutional provision that prevents ex-convicts from contesting for or holding public office for ten years. It has never been observed and no court has been able to enforce it. In 2018, Lawali Dogonkade, a lawmaker representing Kaura-Namoda in Zamfara state was convicted by a Gusau High Court of receiving a bribe of N4.5 million in a contract involving the sum of N31.2 million. He was sentenced to four years in prison with the option of a fine of…
April 2007, on the eve of the Presidential election, President Olusegun Obasanjo was interviewed by the Financial Times. The interviewee asked a question about concerns that Obasanjo never really wanted to quit and wanted “to remain present behind the scenes, anchoring the new government and influencing it.” Obasanjo answered in his characteristic manner drawing on local wisdom. “In my part of the world we have a saying that the kingmaker is the first that the king kills. But it is only an unwise kingmaker that will allow the king he has made to kill him. Because if you have made…
For Yemi Osinbajo – the dovish but chameleonic Vice President of Nigeria – it is now or never. The time for pretence is over. For seven years, the amiable law professor and church pastor has carefully tiptoed through the treacherous waters of Nigerian politics and played his cards quite well. He apparently has learned invaluable lessons from at least two of his predecessors in office. To his boss and the hawkish members of his inner circle, he is careful to present himself as a loyal and supportive deputy. To his godfather who brought him from obscurity to the limelight and…
It turns out Nigeria’s most famous, most celebrated, most decorated and super cop is a common criminal after all, worse than the criminals he was supposedly going after. And for years, the signs were all there for us to see. But, desperate for heroes, we bluntly refused to “see no evil, speak no evil” as evidence of the malfeasance of our celebrated super cop and his carefully assembled team – the Inspector General of Police Intelligence Response Team (IRT) – keeps mounting. But we ignored them all. He was the archetypal Nigerian hero, who must be celebrated! And trust us,…
The Lagos airwaves are agog with the news of the impending completion of the Lekki seaport. The Lagos state government sees it as the ultimate solution to the perpetual Apapa gridlock. Similarly, the 650, 000 barrel per day Dangote refinery located in the same Lekki is said to be on track to be operational later this year. Also, the Buhari administration and the Central Bank of Nigeria is desperately waiting for this to happen as they see it as the entire solution to Nigeria’s fuel importation and foreign exchange problems. Another important point to note is that the refinery –…
It appears the Lagos state government was spooked by the report by the International Centre for Investigative Report (ICIR) that the Lagos chapter of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) alone generates over N123.08 billion annually in illegal taxes on buses, motorcycles and tricycles. This amount is over a quarter of the tax revenues generated by the state government. Although the union has had a pact with the Lagos state government to collect such illegal taxes and levies in return for political support and ready supply of thugs, the state government doesn’t seem to be aware of the…
The Nigerian constitution does not allow for independent candidates. So, anyone running for public office must do so on the vehicle of a political party. It also gives the independent electoral commission of Nigeria (INEC) powers to register political parties in accordance with the provisions of the constitution and an Act of the National Assembly. Pursuant of those powers, INEC, beginning in 1999, set very tough requirements to meet to be registered as a political party. Many aspiring parties were unable to meet the requirements. Many at the time thought the guidelines set by INEC were so restrictive only money…
Nigeria news As is typical in Nigeria, the jostling ahead of 2023 elections is overshadowing real governance. That is fine. Also widespread is the belief that the All Progressives Congress (APC) has failed to keep virtually all its promises to the electorate and the country is gradually drifting into a failed state where life is nasty, brutish and short. Motivated by this failure – and just like in 2019 when President Buhari failed spectacularly and still ran for re-election and over 78 presidential candidates lined up to challenge him – all sorts of characters are again posturing as presidential candidates…
Towards the end of last year, the world lost one of its last remaining moral compasses in the person of Desmond Tutu, emeritus Archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa, at the ripe age of 90. Expectedly, tributes have been pouring in for the “iconic spiritual leader, anti-apartheid activist and global human rights campaigner” from all parts of the world even from those who derided him as he campaigned for and advocated for a peaceful end to the evil system of apartheid. As the leader of South African Council of Churches and later, Archbishop of Cape Town, Tutu led the church…
