Tag: Hassan Gimba

  • Tinubu, get your own men, by Hassan Gimba

    Tinubu, get your own men, by Hassan Gimba

    Recently, there have been people saying they regret not voting for President Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu. To them, he has performed beyond expectations. In just three weeks? This is quite unprecedented because what we used to have were people either jumping off from a rudderless boat or dropping down from a driverless bus.

    Many people who despaired yesterday are hopeful today. The nation’s confidence in the presidency is replacing the gloom that was there three weeks ago. There is a feeling of assurance that tomorrow will be better. That is good; for after the last eight years, surely, it cannot get worse.

    Those who regretted not voting for the president waited to see the familiar “to hell with your feelings” kind of leadership we pray Nigeria never has to be saddled with again. And this is because it is the same party and assumedly a continuation, but that feeling of déjà vu has been dispelled in less than a month. This tells us that it is all about leadership and that change begins with the leader, except if we want to be hypocritical.

    If certain people who were being promoted as potential appointees to certain offices had been appointed, Nigerians would have said “We know”. And we would have said “Yeah” had he continued to drag the baggage of the day before yesterday and of yesterday along with him.

    Among those pieces of baggage, there is no doubt the erstwhile Central Bank governor, Godwin Emefiele, is one. It is on record that former President Muhammadu Buhari had accused him of giving out billions of dollars based on notes written on “ordinary paper” or “bread paper”, meaning he did not follow due process in what he did before 2015 and that he was part of the locust years before Buhari was elected based on his perceived integrity and honesty. Yet he retained him on the job, a move that came to characterise his leadership style for eight years – keeping terrible managers in sensitive positions.

    Another baggage is AbdulRasheed Bawa, suspended chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). From the word go, everything around him was mired in controversy. It was claimed that a highly influential member of the last regime facilitated his appointment for reasons other than national interest.

    What Nigerians are waiting for before finally giving in, now the president is courting us, is the appointment of his cabinet members. Come to think of it, Nigerians, a patient lot, waited six long months in 2015 for cabinet appointments. They waited, assuming the delay was because the best of the best were being scouted for such appointments. Lo-and-behold, what were they presented with? Many of the appointees carried dirty baggage into an administration, everyone, well, almost everyone, clothed with a cloak of integrity.

    Unsurprisingly, almost all of them performed poorly, and yet they continued in their positions, with some, especially in the security sector, even hindering the growth of those under them.

    Yet many of these people who made the last regime infamous now want to return as if God created Nigeria for them; as if out of 200 million people, they are the only anointed of God, the salt of the earth, without whom Nigeria would not thrive.

    Many of them are engaging the media to inundate us with their capacity and infallibility. That’s like taking us for fools. We may be a people with selective amnesia, but that does not mean we do not know those who betrayed our trust yesterday, pilfered our collective commonwealth and left us at the mercy of political, security and economic predators.

    The honeymoon with the president may be over quicker than expected if any of them return through the backdoor. The best treatment for them is an inquisition, and the place for them is the gulag. Surely, for any of those active participants of the inglorious recent past, there are thousands of Nigerians who will perform better – and are more trustworthy. President Tinubu should know this truth.

    Just yesterday, someone was deriding the people and asking, “Where is the power?” because a past regime had spent $16 billion to provide electricity that was not there. Based on the accusation of Engineer Abdullahi A. Sule, the governor of Nasarawa State, that the over $19 billion spent by Alhaji Aliko Dangote to build his refinery was spent by the last government on moribund refineries, it is pertinent for President Tinubu to ask, “Where are the refineries?”

    However, there should be caution in the way the president treats some people and some issues. Politically, the last president assigned some people to do some jobs for him, but unfortunately, he threw them under the bus.

    Take, for instance, the so-called naira re-design. Even the then minister of finance, Hajiya Zainab Shamsuna Ahmed, told the Senate she was not aware of it. Malam Garba Shehu quickly responded on behalf of the presidency, affirming that the president had Emefiele’s back.

    However, because in reality, the re-design was not because of all the lofty reasons given, but for something else that at the last minute the president chickened out of, Emefiele should not be held solely responsible.

    In the political terrain, the same thing happened to many others. The former president assigned them to do some hatchet jobs against some political bigwigs. The same thing happened with some security operatives.

    President Bola Ahmed Tinubu should, therefore, do well by shunning the actors of yesterday who dashed our hopes that he now wants to renew. He should do what we know him for: appointing competent people.

    He should also be magnanimous in victory and forgive who the cowards of yesterday used against him, so he doesn’t come across as pursuing a personal vendetta with his high office. However, he should not show mercy to those who worked against the nation. Those, he must punish.

    Hassan Gimba is the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Neptune Prime.

  • Rivers Must Not Overflow, Mr President!

    Rivers Must Not Overflow, Mr President!

    Rivers, a state so rich because God blessed it with an abundance of crude oil and gas, is named after the many rivers that border its territory. Forty per cent of Nigeria’s output of crude oil is produced in the state. It also has deposits of silica sand, glass sand and clay.

    According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), ₦1.93 trillion was raked in, in 2022 as Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) across the 36 states in Nigeria, including the Federal Capital Territory. Out of this, Rivers State generated ₦172.89 billion, second only to Lagos, with ₦651.15 billion.

    And despite a 12 per cent decline in the overall allocation in the second quarter of this year, Rivers State was third with N69.73 billion. For December 2022, shared in January this year, for instance, the state received ₦13,700,878,221.58 (N13.7billion).

    Despite its vast resources and strategic positioning as the nation’s goose that lays the golden eggs, Rivers State, created in 1967 with the splitting of the South Eastern State, had always been a calm state with level-headed people as its governors.

    Apart from military administrators and governors, seven democratically elected governors have led the state since 1979. Among them is its first civilian governor, Melford Okilo, who governed for four years and 91 days, from 1 October 1979 to 31 December 1983.

    Rufus Ada George was next and was in office for one year and 320 days, i.e. from January 1992 to 17 November, 1993. Peter Odili was governor between 29 May 1999 and 29 May 2007, or eight years, and was the state’s first civilian governor in the current Republic.

    The state started its journey to its current ‘ignominious’ status with the ascendancy to governance by Celestine Omehia, who was there for just 150 days, between 29 May 2007 and 26 October of that year.

    Omehia, on the platform of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP), won the governorship election but Rotimi Amaechi, also of the same party, went to court claiming to be the candidate of the party and so his name ought to have been on the ballot paper.

    Amaechi, the speaker of the state House of Assembly, was duly elected at the party’s primaries as its gubernatorial flag bearer. The PDP leadership substituted him “in error” in the state on the orders of the former president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo. The substitution was done without the due process of informing the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

    And so the Supreme Court removed Omehia from office in October 2007 after he had been in office for five months. It ruled that he had usurped Amaechi’s ticket for the election, and accordingly handed Amaechi the top job. In any case, the principle is that the party owned the votes and not the candidate, and so even though Amaechi was not on the ballot, he inherited the votes cast for the party as its valid candidate.

    From that event when the court gave the Rivers people their governor, a seamless transition vacated the state.

    Nyesom Ezenwo Wike, who also served for eight years from 29 May 2015 to 29 May 2023, grabbed the ticket from Amaechi’s hand with the help of the sitting president, Goodluck Ebere Jonathan, and his wife.

    But that is not the case with Siminalayi Fubara as he was handpicked and bankrolled to the office of the governor by Wike.

    Of course, Wike did not do that out of altruism, but for him to have a firm hold on the government of the rich state.

    Now, barely 200-odd days into office, his anointed Fubara wants to be allowed to breathe. Sources have it that almost all appointees of the governor came from his godfather. All major contracts are being approved and dispensed by Wike and any transaction above ₦50 million must have his seal of approval. According to Dele Momodu, a chieftain of the PDP, Wike usually screamed at Fubara in front of subordinates.

    Fubara’s determination to escape Wike’s influence has led to a fierce battle between supporters on both sides, who are fighting to keep their leaders relevant in the political landscape.

    This has drawn up issues, many of which are testing the elasticity and resilience of our constitution, even threatening the spirit of that constitution.

    Some 27 members of the State Assembly loyal to Wike left the party, on whose platform they were elected, for the All Progressives Congress (APC), the party ruling at the centre. This made Fubara, his loyalists and the PDP, struggling to regain its foothold in the state, declare their seats vacant.

    Unfortunately for both gladiators, their party, the PDP, made toothless by no other than Wike with expressed support from his erstwhile minions like Fubara and others, could not help.

    Perhaps concerned with the happenings in Rivers, and worried that what seemed like political pugilism for dominance may overflow and spill over to God knows where, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu called a meeting of the key actors and sought a détente.

    Coming out of that gathering, a truce was reached, and an agreement signed, with the 27 members of the state House of Assembly back and calling the shots as bona fide legislators.

    But this is where the problem is. Some stakeholders have already started calling on the president to approach the matter differently.

    For instance, Robert Clarke, an elder and Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), has said the president had no constitutional right to intervene in the Rivers State crisis. He suggested that if the situation in Rivers State escalated, the president should not intervene but consider declaring a constitutional crisis, pointing out that the only historical instance where the federal government intervened in a state’s affairs was during the 1st Republic when a state of emergency was declared in the West.

    On his part, Ben Murray-Bruce, the commonsense senator, has commended the president and the national security adviser (NSA), Malam Nuhu Ribadu “for bringing peace in Rivers State.”

    According to him, their intervention was timely, prudent and statesmanly, adding that it behoves on the disputing parties to abide by the resolution.

    Others, however, see it differently.

    Six elders from the state have dragged President Bola Tinubu to the Federal High Court in Abuja, for allegedly “compelling Governor Siminilaya Fubara into an unconstitutional agreement.”

    Led by a member of the Rivers State House of Assembly representing Bonny State Constituency, the other five are Victor Jumbo, Senator Bennett Birabi, Senator Andrew Uchendu, Rear Admiral O. P. Fingesi, Ann Kio Briggs and Emmanuel Deinma.

    To them, the agreement, which was signed on December 18, was not only “illegal but amounted to an usurpation, a nullification, and undermining of the extant/binding relevant provisions of the 1999 Constitution, as amended.”

    They prayed the court to determine whether President Tinubu, Governor Fubara, and the Rivers State Assembly had the right to enter into any agreement that had the effect of nullifying or undermining the constitutional/legal potency of Section 109(I)(g) and (2) of the 1999 Constitution, as amended.

    Wherever one finds himself on this divide, this Rivers crisis is one that all sensible Nigerians who love our democracy will want to see resolved according to the letters and spirit of the Nigerian Constitution that the president, Fubara and Wike (who at some points) have all sworn to uphold and protect without fear, favour or ill will.

    Nigerians, and possibly others, are waiting and watching.

  • Why a President should not be a Minister, by Hassan Gimba

    Why a President should not be a Minister, by Hassan Gimba

    An Igbo adage says that when an anomaly persists for one year, it becomes the norm. So slowly, steadily but surely, it is becoming a norm, an accepted aberration, for a president in Nigeria to appoint himself as a minister. It is like saying in a country of 200 million-plus, there is no one good or capable enough to hold that particular office except the man entrusted with the running of the nation.

    It was President Olusegun Obasanjo that started it. Nicknamed the “Trinity President” in some quarters, for six out of his eight years in office, i.e., from 1999 to 2005, Obasanjo was president, petroleum minister and minister of state for petroleum.

    It was only in 2003, the last year of his first term that he appointed Edmund Daukoru, the current traditional ruler of Nembe Kingdom in Bayelsa State, as special adviser on petroleum and energy and then minister of state in 2007.

    I think Muhammadu Buhari got so fascinated by this “Trinity” arrangement that he saw Obasanjo run that he too made himself the Czar of Nigeria’s petroleum sector by appointing himself into the same offices.

    One curious observation is that they both chose to head the petroleum ministry despite their shallow knowledge of the sector. Both presidents were soldiers who rose to become generals. Nigerians would expect them, especially Buhari, to head the defence ministry if they must be ministers. But the Ministry of Petroleum holds an enticing attraction to them. Can it be because Nigeria’s crude oil is called “sweet”?

    Addressing some select reporters at a Global Leaders’ Summit on Countering ISIL and Violent Extremism, in London, President Buhari said: “I will remain minister of petroleum. I will appoint a minister of state for petroleum.”

    And that was even before he had taken the names of his prospective ministers to the Senate. Unlike Obasanjo, he had once served as oil minister and, unlike him again, he appointed a minister of state earlier.

    When the news broke that he was going to announce himself as petroleum minister, Vanguard newspaper published an editorial advising against such a move.

    “The nation is still at sea over how former President Olusegun Obasanjo handled the same job for six years from 1999 when he assumed power. Several turnaround maintenance projects were undertaken and billions of naira sunk and yet the refineries remained comatose,” the article read.

    But how did Nigeria’s oil sector with its “sweet crude” fare under the two former generals-turned-civilian presidents?

    Reports have it that Obasanjo’s leadership at the petroleum ministry was characterised by lots of opacity and breach of due process. The seeds of the controversial Malabu oil deal were planted in that period.

    The Guardian, on January 13, 2008, wrote, “Under Obasanjo, the government was not run based on budget and he did not consider himself bound by the budget. He was the budget. He provided figures and allocations and spent money as he liked without any evidential accountability to the National Assembly. Nobody knew what the revenue was. The National Assembly didn’t know; he was not revealing anything. How much came into the government coffers from the oil sales? Nobody knew except himself. He was the sole minister of petroleum.”

    And because of this, in December 2007, seven months after he handed over power to Umar Yar’Adua, the Conference of Nigerian Political Parties (CNPP) petitioned the anti-graft agency he set up, the EFCC, demanding that Obasanjo be probed as he no longer enjoyed constitutional immunity.

    The petition read in part: “Let us start by stating that Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, during his tenure, illegally appointed himself the minister of petroleum resources, contrary to section 147 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

    “Secondly, his activities in the oil industry were shrouded in secrecy, as he never rendered proper accounts of the oil revenue to relevant agencies like the Revenue Mobilisation, Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC).

    “Thirdly, it is also on record that neither the Federal Executive Council nor the National Assembly was ever presented memoranda or budgets of the oil industry.”

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    Buhari’s case was almost similar. Probably no other leader in Nigeria’s history has had the swell of goodwill to tap into as him when he took over in 2015, but he sadly turned such enthusiasm into grave disappointment, his regime falling from what many, rightly or wrongly, had high hopes on, to one that the nation couldn’t wait to see the back of.

    According to Buhari, the reason he wanted to be the minister was to right the wrongs in the oil industry, which was plagued by corruption, massive fraud, and crude oil theft.

    But in his “determination to sanitise Nigeria’s oil industry and free it from corruption and shady deals,” he spent over N11 trillion on “subsidies” and over $19 billion on the maintenance of refineries that did not refine even a single litre of petrol throughout his eight years.

    The Constitution of Nigeria that authorised the president to appoint ministers also gave the power of their vetting and confirmation to the Senate of the Federal Republic. Specifically, section 147 of the Nigerian constitution provides that: “(1) There shall be such offices of Ministers of the Government of the Federation as may be established by the President. (2) Any appointment to the office of Minister of the Government of the Federation shall, if the nomination of any person to such office is confirmed by the Senate, be made by the President.

    Neither of the presidents presented himself to the Senate for vetting and clearance as enshrined in the Constitution. And all of them shunned defence, their field and what needed professional supervision for sweet crude. This made some people think that if Emefiele became president as he wanted, he may also make himself minister of petroleum as well as CBN governor.

    But when this trend first reared its ugly head, some conscientious Nigerians did not take it lying down. A group called the Niger Delta Democratic Union went to a Federal High Court, asking it to issue “an order directing President Obasanjo to appoint a Minister of Petroleum Resources under the mandatory provisions of the Petroleum Act Cap 350 Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 1990 as amended.”

    Filed by Austin Ayowe and Dafe Chuks on behalf of the NDDU, the plaintiffs also sought “an order restraining President Obasanjo and the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Authority (PPRA) from further exercising any function or powers of a minister of petroleum resources.”

    Even though the suit was struck out on 15 September 2004 by Stephen Adah, the presiding judge, who held that the applicants had no locus standi to file the suit, perhaps that case forced Obasanjo to appoint Daukoru as minister of state the next year.

    However, in November 2018, a Federal High Court in Abuja declared that President Muhammadu Buhari cannot legally double as the minister of petroleum resources.

    The court made the declaration while giving judgment in a suit filed in 2017 by the former president of the Nigerian Bar Association, Dr Olisa Agbakoba, SAN, who urged it to restrain Buhari from continuing to hold the office of the minister of petroleum resources, contending that Section 138 of the 1999 Constitution forbids the president from “holding any other executive office or paid employment.”

    We are quick to shout that Nigeria borrowed its system of governance from America, but tell me which American president was a secretary (minister) at the same time.

    Unfortunately for our nation, our leaders pick and choose according to what suits their purpose from the American system. The United States enacted the 1967 Anti-Nepotism law which forbids federal officials from employing family members into certain governmental positions and the cabinet. Can anyone mention that to recent Nigerian public officeholders? We have recently been regaled by stories of how even in the temple of justice, some senior judiciary figures make way for their children, wives and mistresses to become judges. It is the same in practically every segment of public service.

    We still have a long, long way to go before we can get it right. But the worrying question is: are we even willing to try?