By Oguwike Nwachuku (08053069019 – SMS Only)
Three activities, one within the country and two outside, are particularly of concern to Nigerians and have dominated discussion among them since Wednesday, April 18.
One of the three incidents was the embarrassing theft of the mace from the Senate chamber in the full glare of our distinguished senators while they were attending plenary by hired miscreants.
The second was the comment credited to President Muhammadu Buhari where he referred to Nigerian youth as lazy while the third was the allegation leveled by the Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II that government officials turned down invitation extended to them by Nigeria United States Embassy for a meeting on investment opportunities.
Let us start with the events that happened outside our shores.
Buhari was speaking at the Commonwealth Business Forum in London on Wednesday, April 18, in a keynote address on ‘Making Business Easier Between Commonwealth Countries.’ His presentation was followed by a discussion, question and answer session.
“More than 60 per cent of the population is below 30, a lot of them haven’t been to school and they are claiming that Nigeria is an oil producing country, therefore, they should sit and do nothing, and get housing, healthcare, education free,” Buhari said.
Forget that Buhari’s London comment had been subjected to different interpretations, depending on who is reporting what the president said and for whatever interest, but in summary he said Nigerian youth are lazy.
The fact that the Presidency, through the office of the Senior Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina offered a make good on what his principal really wanted to say reaffirms the recklessness in the gaffe by our president outside the country. We shall return to this shortly.
The Emir of Kano had expressed disappointment over what he described as the federal government’s poor attitude to the attraction of foreign investors/investment into the country.
At the United State-Nigeria Investment Summit 2018 which took place in Washington DC last week tagged ‘Nigeria is Open for Business’, Sanusi told anxious reporters that Nigerian ministers and top government officials who were expected to be in attendance failed to turn up, and thereby caused the country embarrassment.
The summit had in attendance, Secretary Wilbur Ross, United State Secretary of Commerce, Sergio Pimenta, IFC Regional Vice President (Middle East and Africa), Winslow Sargent SVP, ICSB, Makhtar Diop V.P for Afri, World Bank, C.D Glin, President and CEO, U.S. African Development Foundation ((USADF) among others.
The session on Private Equity and Financing, was chaired by Nigerian business mogul, Mohammed Indimi, Chairman/CEO Oriental Energy Resource.
According to Sanusi, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, Petroleum (Ibe Kwachukwu), Agriculture (Audu Ogbeh), Science and Technology (Ogbonnaya Onu), Information (Lai Mohammed), Solid Minerals Development (Kayode Fayemi) and Industry, Trade and Investment (Okechukwu Enelamah) were all billed to address the gathering. The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Godwin Emefiele was also to expected to attend.
But embarrassingly, none of the persons named showed up at lunch time when over 50 per cent of them ought to have spoken.
Sanusi said: “We had a meeting today with investors, we were supposed to start by 9am and we started at 10. When I came in they took me to the ambassadors office to sit down, when investors were waiting down there. We had a list of people who were to be there, vice president, minsters, some of them are in town, but they didn’t come. You invite top investors, your ministers are in Washington and they do not come to talk to the investors about Nigeria. That is not how you attract investors.
“We’ve got a large, vibrant population. We have a long history of industrialisation; we have agricultural land and oil. The main issue is understanding where the growth drivers are and looking at where the banking constraints are.
“So, I keep saying if you look at Nigeria growing at 7 percent year on year before the recession and this growth was coming with 4,000 – 5,000mw for electricity, imagine what it would be when you generate 40,000, 50,000mw. If you look at it, all the opportunities are not explored; for example, trade across the South with North Africa because we focused entirely on the coast.
“If you look at the diversification impact of getting a non-oil export that would protect this economy from the shocks. If you look at all the things being done by Dangote Refinery that would reduce our imports, particularly petroleum imports, and conserve our foreign exchange; then we talk about technology, if we have the mobile penetration etc. If these opportunities are to become reality, then we need to have the right policies.”
Adeosun and Emefiele had explained on Sunday, April 22 that the summit was not part of their schedule and that they were only informed about it when they arrived Washington.
On Monday, April 23 the federal government through the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, defended the ministers, saying most of them named by the Emir were either not invited or were somewhere else that made their attendance in Washington DC impossible.
For instance, he said neither Ogbeh, Fashola nor Fayemi received any invitation from the organisers, though they were also listed among those to attend.
“It is clear from the foregoing that no minister shunned the US-Investment Summit and that the reports being circulated in that regard are bereft of facts. Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Dr. Okechukwu Enelamah, though invited, could not attend as he was with President Muhammadu Buhari at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in London at the time of the summit,” Mohammed said.
Mohammed bought into the explanation given earlier by Adeosun that though she was in Washington DC, it was purposely for the 2018 Spring Meetings of the World Bank and IMF.
On why he was unable to attend, Mohammed said he notified the organisers in writing that he would not attend because of conflicting schedules.
It is curious reading from Adeosun and Emefiele who were in Washington that they never confirmed attendance at the summit because the meeting was not included in their schedule.
Adeosun said: “I attend the IMFC which is the highest decision-making body of the IMF. My primary role here as well as having the Nigerian hat on is to represent 23 African countries. So one of the things I have to do is to issue a statement on behalf of those 23 which includes most of the Anglophone countries: South Africa, Mozambique, Tanzania.
“There has been some controversy about the scheduling I wasn’t due at any event. I was here as a governor of the IMF and member of IMFC to represent those 23 African countries and that schedule is what I must adhere to.”
Emefiele’s explanation that a session of IMF finance ministers and Central Bank Governors was holding at the same time of the event, and that the meetings in the IMF as well as the meeting at the World Bank take pre-eminence over the investment summit was very confounding. And more confounding was his second reason that he was not consulted when the programme was organised.
Emefiele said: “Being the governor of the CBN, what takes preeminence is the meetings in the IMF as well as the meeting at the World Bank. I think it is important for me to say this, when I arrived in Washington, the officials of the embassy spoke with me that there was going to be a US-Nigeria summit and I said I will check my schedule because I wasn’t consulted when this summit was being organised.
“What one would have expected is that they would have checked my schedule and that of the finance minister if they thought that our presence at the summit was very necessary.
“The U.S. Nigeria summit was meant to hold between 2:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. whereas the World Bank development committee plenary session which is an assembly of ministers and governors of central banks was to hold between 2:15 p.m. and 5p.m. There was no way how the minister of finance and myself could have been at those meetings.
“We are not irresponsible people and please we apologise to those investors who had gathered at the Nigerian embassy for the summit. My apologies, but I know we also held some side meetings with some investors and there will always be lots of opportunities to meet with them.”
The event at the senate where the mace was kidnapped had led to the “arrest” of Senator Ovie Omo-Agege, representing Delta Central Senatorial District on the platform of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
Omo-Agege was recently suspended from plenary for 90 legislative days, after consideration of a report by the Senate Committee on Ethics, Privileges and Public Petitions.
He was strongly suspected to have masterminded the mace theft, but he denied it and was accordingly released by the police hours after he was whisked away from the National Assembly complex in what looked like protective arrest.
Those who watched the video or CCTV clip of the drama aired on some television stations on how the mace was removed from its traditional position in the senate chambers will, no doubt, agree that the police will have little problem establishing those culpable of the act if at all the police themselves are not collaborators in the theft. Pronto, the CCTV clip exposed the culpability or otherwise of Omo-Agege as a suspect by his colleagues.
For now, however, it will be ideal to allow the police and the Department of State Security Services to do their investigation professionally and tell Nigerians what really transpired on the mace saga, particularly as the police hinted on Thursday, barely 24 hours after the theft that they have recovered it.
Deputy Force Public Relations Officer, Aremu Adeniran, a Superintendent of Police (SP), who communicated to the public the circumstances surrounding the recovery of the mace said it was “recovered within the City Gate, after a passerby saw it, and alerted the police.”
Incidentally, the Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris and the DSS Director General, Lawal Daura have been summoned by the senate and we hope the invitation will goad them to further action, ensuring that what transpired on Wednesday does not repeat itself any more.
To be candid, the mace saga actually made a mess of so many things. It made a mess of that ornament called symbol of authority of the hallowed chambers. If you really watched the CCTV clip and saw how our distinguished senators appeared helpless, you would not but agree that the incident made a mess of their status and what they represent.
One thing that readily flashed on my mind was how none of the senators cared a hoot about confronting the hoodlums, either when they were entering the senate chambers as uninvited guests or after they made away with the mace in their presence. In the contrary, I saw senators bantering away, and others looking confused.
The usual cliché – “the democracy we suffered so much to have” suddenly got erased on their minds as they lacked the liver and boldness to defend the same hard earned democracy in the face of a challenge.
The take away, really, is that no senator wants to die for a cause they are doubtful about, talkless of their constituents because of ordinary mace as most of them may be thinking.
They are also mindful of the fact that once dead all the good things that come from answering distinguished senator will disappear into thin air, so it is better to be on the side of caution.
But what happened portends some lessons for the electorate who will always delude themselves thinking that their representatives, whether at the upper or lower chambers will die for their sake.
As the mace was messed up, so has Buhari been messed up in ways that could have been avoided outside the country.
What Buhari said in London last week was not the first time our president would be criticising Nigerian youth.
For instance, during a February 2016 interview with UK Telegraph, Buhari said some Nigerians in the United Kingdom, mostly youth, are disposed to criminality and should not be granted asylum there.
His comment was fiercely criticised, as many said it failed to convey the reality of Nigerian youth’s exploits.
Why would our president delight in making comments that are damaging to the image of the citizens outside our shores?
When he said before German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a woman, that his wife’s place is in the kitchen and the “war room” (other room) I hope he did not expect Merkel and the international community to laud him outside the venue of the event where the comment was made?
Also, when the president demonized all us as corrupt in the early days of his administration outside the country during a trip, did he expect his hosts to see him and his country as good for business partnership that will be sustainable?
Sanusi may have, out of genuine concern and interest in what will bolster the economy and development of the country decried the absence of top government officials and ministers who were expected to attend the summit but, does the man on the driving seat, Buhari think the way Sanusi does?
Ordinarily, the minister and the CBN Governor who were in Washington DC when the summit held should have bothered to show some kind of interest whether the IMF and World Bank schedules were conducive or not or whether they were appropriately invited or not. But this is Nigeria where nobody believes in the country and where eye service or sycophancy gets you to the top of leadership ladder.
Whatever happens to top government officials and ministers sending representatives to such gatherings is something meant for another day’s discussion. Methinks if there were representatives of the minister of Finance and the CBN Governor at the summit Sanusi would not have felt terribly bad and raised the alarm.
However, a bigger take away in the “failed” US/Nigeria Investment Summit lies in the quality of appointments made by Buhari.
It may be difficult to believe, but the Washington DC outing exposes further the selfishness, clannishness, myopia, sycophancy, and little-mindedness of those occupying high offices in the Buhari-led government, yet they are being venerated as the best thing to happen to all of us.
From every indication, the organisation of the event did not take so many things into consideration going by Lai Mohammed’s explanation that most of the ministers were not even invited as claimed.
And why would the summit meet the expectation of all when the man who is the face of the country as the U.S. Ambassador, Sylvanus Nsofor is an 82 year old man who ought to be observing a deserved rest in retirement after a successful career in the judiciary?
If you think only the mace was messed up you better think again because from what played out last week in London and U.S. where Nigeria has huge socio-economic, political and diplomatic interest, Buhari was also messed up.
In London the president personally messed himself up while in Washington DC, he was messed up by those working for him. And wait for this – even Omo-Agege is believed to be working for our dear president, hence he was linked to the messy mace.
