Nigerians crossed over into the New Year with an eerie general outlook, resulting in messages of hope from government at all levels. For President Bola Tinubu, “tough times never last.” No hiding the fact: there are no easy solutions to the myriad stark economic and security challenges befuddling the country. The Nigeria Employers Consultative Association (NECA), in a recent statement hinted at a bumpy ride in the first six months of 2024, before the gains from policy initiatives will begin to trickle in.
While the focus is always on the government to turn things around, Nigerians often overlook the role of “we the people” in creating the ideal society of our dreams. It is beyond debate that despite the numerous gaping holes in governance, the country’s situation could not have been worse but for its army of citizens who have decided to live outside the framework of the law. Insurgents and their sympathisers, bandits, kidnappers, armed robbers, cultists, political thugs and smugglers of contraband and other rogue entrepreneurs create serious security and economy crises. These are Nigerians!
A society in which internet fraud, impersonation, forgery, business e-mail compromise scams and money laundering have become a subculture, especially for the youths, hauls itself into an abyss of anomie. Nigerian banks, as of mid-August 2023, lost a staggering N9.5 billion to electronic fraud. Messages from banks to their customers are ongoing, warning them to be cautious of the increasing waves of digital banking scams.
In May of the same year, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) arrested 255 internet fraudsters, otherwise known as Yahoo-Yahoo boys, recovered over 30 exotic cars and about N1 billion cash from them. And no fewer than 300 of these vermin were jailed, in three months to November, in Abuja, Lagos, Kano, Oyo, Anambra and Ogun states; Port Harcourt, Calabar, Maiduguri, Benin and Ilorin.
As economic predators, they have ruined many businesses, with foreign investors as some of their victims. As a result, the much-needed foreign capital inflow to stimulate the country’s economy is frozen. These misguided youths see Ramon Olorunwa Abbas, alias Hushpuppi, a notorious international kingpin of this evil enterprise, as their role model. Abbas was sentenced to an 11-year jail term in the US in November 2022, following his arrest in Dubai.
Let’s take the challenge of 2024 as the imperative for the youth to see the easy life and unearned wealth as obnoxious and a self-nihilistic path to be avoided. The society must abhor ill-gotten wealth and be critical when its ethos or moral standards are eroded. These youth-driven constraints to national development can be neutered with aggressive campaigns by youth organisations, government agencies and the EFCC’s tightening of its noose on culprits, with the unflinching enforcement of Section 1(3) of the Advanced Fee Fraud and other Fraud Related Offences Act 2006, which spells out the penal sanctions for financial crimes. There is no other route to progress or success in life except hard work, the embrace of education, and respect for the dignity of labour.
Nigeria has set the target of the production of 1.7 million barrels of oil per day in 2024, against the backdrop of 400,000 bpd lost to oil theft, which the National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu, affirmed last November. As of October, the daily crude oil output was about 1.3 million bpd, which deepened Nigeria’s forex crisis. This fiscal ogre is threatening the operations of foreign airlines in the country, while old multinationals are closing businesses because of its negative knock-on effects.
The foreign nationals involved in oil theft with their super tankers, cannot make any headway without local collaborators in our security agencies and civilians. We must buck this year for the Dangote Refinery, with a 650,000bpd capacity, and other refineries to optimise their production, and thus end the bleeding of the country’s FX reserve through the importation of refined petroleum products.
A former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Sanusi Lamido, hit the right chord at a public forum in December, when he fired the salvo, “Where are the dollars? Ask NNPC.” It is a perennial concern. The Sanusi inquest is an invitation to Nigerians to rise up to the challenge of holding the corrupt and most opaque state oil firm in the world to account. The country’s present fiscal hell-hole could not have existed if its billions of petro-dollars had not been brazenly stolen by public officials.
Unfortunately, no government, right from that of Olusegun Obasanjo, to the very disappointing Muhammadu Buhari regime, has been able to drain the oil sector swamp. The operations of the NNPC since 1999 dwarfs all pejoratives. As a result, citizens must charge Tinubu to alter this national self-destruction.
Voices of Nigerians should not be missing in shaping the trajectories of governance. This is often missed, either due to ignorance, aloofness or sheer indolence. Public spending should be interrogated for accountability and transparency to be entrenched as values in the public space; which invariably will bode well for development. Apart from the media, non-profit organisations such as Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Projects (SERAP) and Budget IT have excelled in this watchdog role through litigation and project monitoring and the reporting of contract scams. The country needs such groups in their critical mass for greater effect.
Public enquiry should spread across the entire spectrum of governance. A lot of abuse of public funds happens at the state government level. Local governments are practically non-existent, as their statutory financial shares from the Federal Account and Allocation Commission vanish into the thin air every month.
Even though the #ENDSARS protest of 2020 has not done much to change the extra-judicial killings and other forms of impunity ravaging the Nigeria Police Force, at least it succeeded in sending a strong message to the authorities in Abuja and elsewhere, to beware of public fulmination. Such public outrage at systemic dysfunction, devoid of the violence that went with it, is required to keep the three tiers of government on their toes. The five-point demand the protest threw up in 2020 was promptly accepted by the government, forcing the aloof Buhari to say, “Your voices have been heard loud and clear and we are responding.”
The right to peaceful protest is enshrined in Section 40 of the 1999 Constitution, as amended. It is a weapon for good governance. Nigerians should not shy away from exercising it. In countless other jurisdictions, this civic obligation has helped to effect positive changes. It was people power that ousted the dictator, Ferdinand Marcos from office in 1986. And in 2011, the corrupt and authoritarian Tunisian President, Zine al-bidine Ben Ali, was forced to resign and flee when public protest engulfed the country. In quick succession, the whirlwind spread to Egypt, Libya, Syria and Algeria.
Nigerians should query the opulence of the 469 members of the National Assembly, who jerked up the N197 billion originally provided to them to N344 billion in the 2024 budget. This was after they had splurged N160 million on Toyota SUVs for each member, shortly after the assembly was inaugurated in October, amid massive hunger, debilitating poverty and economic hardship in the land.
Ultimately, it takes two to tango. Nigerians have a big role to play in how 2024 will affect their lives. Egregious or wanton killings in Zamfara, Katsina, Plateau and Benue states, and other parts of the country, will stop when malevolent suppliers of illegal weapons are forced to desist from such business. The removal of guardrails at the newly constructed Second Niger Bridge at Onitsha, by rogue citizens, does not encourage infrastructural development.
The New Year message of a cleric, Sam Adeyemi, in a television programme to the elite in society is worth repeating here: “it will be in their self-interest to get Nigeria to work now because the young generation are getting enlightened and have access to more information.” He was referring to governors, lawmakers, business leaders and even his fellow clerics. They better heed this advice!
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