Deflated Federal Egos, Food Cargos, and Fleet Embargos
Tricky terrorists in trenches, more than tough teachers in tertiary institutions, have deflated the egos of state officials, Garba Shehu, The Media Aide to President Muhammadu Buhari, has finally admitted.
The Media Aide to President Muhammadu Buhari, Garba Shehu, during an interview with BBC Hausa, admitted that terrorists had fooled the Nigerian Government by not keeping to their promise of releasing hostages kidnapped during the Abuja-Kaduna train attack in March.
The Daily Nigeria's narrative of Mr Shehu’s explanation has it thus:
“The terrorist leader demanded we release his pregnant wife. The government took her to the hospital and made sure she was properly taken care of.
“And she gave birth to twins. We showed him the pictures of his wife and the twins. After that, we handed them over to his parents,” Mr Shehu said.
“After releasing his wife and children, he made a fresh demand that we release some children who were detained in Adamawa.
“The government sent a plane in the middle of the night and brought the children. We were hoping that after they were released, they would also honour their promise, but unfortunately, they didn’t.
“Instead, what followed was a fresh demand requesting a ransom. So, it’s wrong to say the government is not doing enough,” the presidential spokesman lamented.”
The SBM intelligence report showed that 3,379 people were kidnapped and 474 people killed within 12 months spanning July 2021 and June 2022. The estimated ransom paid amounted to N1.65 billion (N1,647,100,000).
Previously, just about two years ago, Mr Shehu boasted that “Boko Haram is defeated now” in an interview with the BBC. Now, he is forced to finally admit to the BBC that the leader of the serial murder gang has the upper hand over the government under his principal, Mr Buhari, despite all the concessions Mr Buhari made to the leader of the terrorists.
The terrorists that bombed the Kaduna-bound train in March killed 9 persons and still held 27 people hostage after the others were freed upon paying a huge ransom.
In a worrisome development, The Cable reported that Tukur Mamu, media consultant to Ahmad Gumi, the popular Islamic cleric, says a top bandit commander has planned to marry one of the abducted victims of the Kaduna train attack:
“This is to alert the federal government and especially the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) that I can confirm through credible information at my disposal that if urgent action is not taken to immediately secure the release of the youngest victim of the train attack, a 21-year-old Azurfa Lois John, the abductors as they have done in the case of Leah Sharibu, are planning to marry her any moment from now,” Mamu said.
Surprisingly, in the same Kaduna terrain, Samuel Aruwan, the Kaduna State Commissioner of Internal Security, said ground troops exterminated scores of bandits with support from the Air Force in an operation called Operation Forest Sanity at Galbi, Chikun Local Government Area of Kaduna State.
He said security operatives in an ongoing operation in Kaduna have recorded enormous success in the fight against terrorism and confirmed the recovery of 2 General Purpose Machine Guns (GPMGs), 3 AK47 rifles and 7 motorcycles from neutralised bandits.
However, the Inspector-General of Police, IGP Usman Alkali Baba, has ordered the sudden deployment of gallant troops to deliver airtight security on all critical national infrastructures, schools, and hospitals across the country.
Yet, specifically in the country’s capital, a USAID report on insecurity in Abuja for July showed that the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) experienced 55 incidents, including kidnapping, robbery and civil disorder across the 6 area councils. The increasing level of insecurity in the nation’s seat of power has been traced to the successful jailbreak of July 6.
Tough Teachers
While slippery terrorists have humbled the federal government by gaining all and giving none in its negotiations with the State, the Buhari-led government appears to have decided not to lose again in its negotiations with the Academic Staff of Nigerian Universities (ASUU) or allow the academic union to hold it to ransom further.
Unwilling to let ASUU have the final say, the government has been widely reported to be considering the only option to subdue ASUU in this contest - to proscribe the union.
The meeting between the leadership of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and the federal government of Nigeria under President Muhammadu Buhari has again ended in deadlock.
The 3-hour meeting ended without reaching an agreement as the Professor Nimi Briggs-led Committee did not bring anything new to the table. Instead, they proceeded to plea bargain, with promises that ASUU’s concerns would be included in the 2023 budget.
Alhaji Ibrahim Gambari, the Chief of Staff to President Buhari, representing his principal at the maiden Special Convocation Ceremony in the University of Maiduguri, disclosed that negotiations had gone far and for ASUU to continue this industrial action under this development is counterproductive. He noted that with the prolonged interruption of education, the nation's growth in human capacity had been undermined.
Besides, several Nigerians on social media have descended on Emmanuel Osodeke, President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), condemning his call that leaders who have allowed ASUU strike to loiter should be voted out of power come 2023.
Mr Osodeke, who recently appeared on AIT, decried that Buhari’s administration is insensate towards the predicament of Nigerian students, parents and the entire university system.
He urged Nigerians to vote out everyone who, in one way or the other, contributed actively to the prolonged ASUU strike, which has lasted close to 6 months (that is, since February 14).
Although the ASUU President did not mention a name or political party, several Nigerians have presumed that his lamentation is directed at the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC. This has made them accuse the union of being political in its industrial action.
Inflation and Deflated Food Cargos
The cost of locally produced and imported food items has soared beyond proportions. This inflation has been attributed to the decline in local food production, as farmers are displaced and farms are abandoned due to worsening insecurity in the country.
Altogether, increasing scarcity of local farm produce, increasing costs of agricultural inputs such as transport, electricity for storage, and wages for farm workers has led to higher prices of food.
Similarly, international conflicts, especially the Russia-Ukraine conflict, have created a scarcity of essential food imports that the country hitherto depends on Russia and Ukraine for.
Worse still, the depreciating value of the Naira for forex transactions increases the country’s import-push inflation.
In short, the scarce quantity of dollars chasing scarce foreign food items creates scarcity of food imports and causes reduced quantities of imported food at higher import prices.
A report from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) Consumer Price Index (CPI) has revealed that Nigeria's inflation rate has increased from 18.60% in June to 19.64% in July 2022, making it the highest since September 2005, just about 17 years now.
The report also revealed that food inflation rose to 22.02% in July, a drastic increase compared to June when it was still 20.60%. The price increases in foodstuffs like potato, meat, fish, yam and other tubers, oil and fat, bread and cereals caused the rise in the food index.
Jigawa (16.62%), Kaduna (17.04%) and Borno State (18.04%) were recorded to have had the slowest rise in inflation, while Akwa Ibom (22.88%), Ebonyi (22.51) and Kogi (22.08%) witnessed the highest price hikes.
Besides the insecurity problem, the country’s food production and supply potential is also plagued by insufficient funds.
Besides Insecure Farms, there is a challenge of Insufficient Funds
Dataphyte’s latest research has revealed that very few agricultural investors own bankable agricultural assets. These assets serve as collateral when accessing loans.
The report titled “From Farm to Future: Thoughts on Food Security, Farmers’ Prosperity and Fiscal Stability in Nigeria” identified the lack of bankable assets as a challenge to farmers securing loans from banks. It noted that the Nigerian government’s intervention in the agricultural sector had yielded little or no effect.
Beyond agric, to intervene in the widespread paucity of funds in the country, the National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Abdullahi Adamu, has echoed that the Buhari-led government “can borrow from here to eternity”, as opposed to many Nigerians who have criticised the President for borrowing to execute projects across the country.
Adamu explained that countries like US and UK borrow funds from international financial institutions to meet their needs. So, Nigeria is no exception.
In a similar troubling statement, officials of the Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF) told the Nigerian Senate that termites had consumed documents containing expenditures worth N17.1 billion.
The NSITF management gave this excuse for being unable to justify the spending of the money when it appeared before the panel of the Senate Public Accounts Committee (SPAC) on Friday.
The office of the Auditor General of the Federation (OAuGF) queried the agency for spending such an amount of money without appropriate supporting documents.
According to the OAuGF, the N17.158 billion represented the total amount transferred by NSITF from its Sky Bank and First Bank accounts into various untraceable accounts belonging to individuals and companies between January and December 2013.
The report also issued 50 different queries for alleged misappropriation of funds against the agency.
Conflated Fleet Embargos
After the Nigerian Aviation Authorities (NCAA) banned the operations of the entire Dana Air fleet early August, it was reported that only 38 out of 90 aeroplanes remained active. Besides, the operating airlines like Air Peace, Arik, Azman all struggled at 38.8% fleet capacity.
The Director-General of the NCAA, Capt. Musa Nuhu said, “The decision is the outcome of a financial and economic health audit carried out on the airline by the authority, and the findings of an investigation conducted on the airline’s flight operations recently, which revealed that Dana Air is no longer in a position to meet its financial obligations and to conduct safe flight operations.
However, there is a new mix of bans in Nigeria’s aviation sector. The embargoes on commercial air fleets are now being issued from Nigerian officials as well as foreign airlines.
The same financial and economic health issues that forced the NCAA to shut down Dana, has led foreign airlines operating in Nigeria to self-regulate themselves by placing an embargo on their dealings with Nigeria.
The Saturday Tribune reported that foreign airlines operating into Nigeria have concluded plans to blacklist the country should the Federal Government fail to remit their over $600 million trapped in the Central Bank of Nigeria.
This indication followed announcement earlier made by Emirates airlines to stop its operations into Nigeria effective September 1st, 2022 to protest its accrued revenue amounting to $85 million stuck in Nigeria.
The paper warned that “the pull out of Emirates may be the beginning of the total collapse of the country’s international air transport, as majority of the airlines have given the government up till December to release their trapped funds or have them withdraw their services from Nigeria.
This Day recalled that it was non-remittance of foreign airlines’ earnings that forced the United Airlines and Iberia to leave Nigeria in 2016.
The paper warned that, in 2014, many foreign airlines withdrew services to Venezuela over the country’s inability to remit airlines revenue and the economy is still battling with the consequences.
Such withdrawal also has a significant effect on domestic airlines because they will find it difficult to source spares, seek technical support and will eventually deplete their operating aircraft.
Aviation crisis linked to Nigeria’s Fiscal and Monetary indiscretion
Dataphyte observed that while the aviation industry’s contribution to the National GDP is very small, the sector contributes a lot towards ensuring the smooth flow of foreign direct investment (FDI) into Nigeria.
According to Mr Olumide Ohunayo, the Director at the Zenith Travels and a member of Aviation Round Table (ART), the current aviation crisis conflates three major issues, such that “the concurrent increase in the price of aviation fuel, Jet A1, the fallen value of the Naira, and the withholding of the foreign airlines money by the CBN have all come together to make the fares out of Nigeria higher than normal.
In these 3 issues, the country’s fiscal and monetary indiscretions become manifest.
For instance, following details of the MTEF document release by the Budget office of Nigeria, only N1,231 trillion (39.4%) of the country’s Oil revenue target was met between January to April, 2022 as against the targeted sum of N3.123 trillion Oil revenue. N348 billion was recorded as deductions leaving the Net revenue to be estimated at N883 billion.
Nevertheless, the federal government of Nigeria, through its Federal Ministry of Finance, Budgets and National Planning (FMFBNP) has proposed N19.76 trillion as aggregate expenditure in its 2023 budget.
A leaked document from the Budget office has revealed that President Muhammadu Buhari, on February 22, 2022, approved the release of N1,145 billion for the purchase of 10 Toyota Land Cruisers V8 vehicles to the Federal Republic of Niger.
This particular gesture of President Buhari has raised a lot of concerns, thereby generating multiple controversies in Nigeria despite the fact that the Nigerian government had on January 20, 2022 requested logistics support from Nigeria in a letter with Ref. No. 000104/PRN/DIRCAB.
There appears to be no way to redeem Nigeria’s aviation sector from its impending failure without a complete rehabilitation of Nigeria’s fiscal and monetary behaviour.