Back again to the unending search

Edward Dickson calling! It is not unusual. We do call each other once in a while to speak Urhobo and Isoko. Okay, it is yet another season of beautiful wishes and normal to take inventory of old friends. And so, I didn’t hope for any deeper conversation outside the characteristic pleasantries that would be relayed by the caller in a blend of Isoko and Warri-patented English. Something like: oniovo mavo (brother how is it?) and where you come fade go since now pally? That came quite alright but it was only to massage the ground for the message. The hard working Managing Director of Tribune Newspapers, Mr. Edward Dickson, was calling to recall me from retirement after five and half years.

Like the Newsroom Marshall that he is, he was not seeking an opinion as such.  Every Editor talks and acts to meet his purpose. “My brother, you are joining us at the Tribune as one of our Back-page Columnists. Congratulations!” I tried to explain something but he wouldn’t let me. I actually wanted to say that having been off-range for about half a decade, waking up suddenly to duty might become real task. He laughed it off and even revealed that my retirement was premature and I must therefore return anyhow to the beat to finish the race.

I have resumed. But as feared, I am struggling to stay steady. The letter appointing me as a columnist also hopes that my contributions will “add value to the making of an egalitarian Nigerian Society…” The order is tall and I sincerely do not know how to scale it. For instance, since that conversation with the MD, I have been searching for what to write about the issues in Nigeria that has not been written and will be fresh and forceful enough to push the frontiers. Or for that matter, what to tell the Nigerian state that has not been told and will be so compulsive as to tear off the normative lethargy and move governance in a positive direction.

I had thought of writing on the poor state of public electricity in Nigeria but I then remembered that when Chief Olusegun Obasanjo re-entered in 1999, he purportedly did so much including embarking on an ambitious scheme of building new power stations in selected locations in the country to improve public electricity supply in Nigeria. I equally discovered that at his exit in 2007, estimates put the cost of his fruitless efforts at $16 billion at a time the naira had some honour and exchanged for about N150 to a US dollar. A seer said the trouble was in the name (star) and not in the style. And that NEPA, which could also stand for No Electricity Power Always, should be changed to bring a change. This touched off a series of rechristening that saw the baptismal name of National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) changing first to Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) and then to a triple-headed DISCOS, GENCOS and TRANSCO to heighten the identity crisis. From that original name have emerged three separate companies that handle electricity generation, its evacuation onto the grid system and its distribution into homes and offices.

All of that has amounted to very little because NEPA, like a snake, has only been changing skin without changing character. And so, in a country where 40,000 mega watts of electricity is required to stabilise public supply, even the installed capacity of 11,000 mega watts of the national grid can only bring on stream an unpardonable 5,000 mega watts in the best of times and 3,000 in the worst of times. It is like reinventing a physiology that can make a full-grown man or woman stay alive on 12.5 or 7.5 percent of his or her calories requirement.

Along the line, there have been further administrative and statutory gymnastics to come around the issue. In his last days, President Mohammadu Buhari had managed to gain some presence of mind to realise that keeping the provision of public electricity on the exclusive legislative list was one of the things making Nigeria look like a caricature of a true federal structure. The 2023 Electricity Act was therefore to unbundle the sector differently from the failed experiments of the DISCOS, GENCOS and TRANSCOs with a scheme where state governments can create their own statutory and policy frameworks as well as investments to take public electricity to homes and offices. So far and good, only Abia State appears strong on this score. Others have only been threatening to storm the stage.

As you can see, I have nothing to add to the discourse on non-availability of public electricity in Nigeria. It has been adequately exhausted and pushed to a point where government at all levels should act without further delay. I do not know what else the media can do to make government work even basically in Nigeria. It has done everything, including loss of men, material and money to make government function but government has simply refused to function. The media has suffered official high-handedness translating in extreme cases to forceful shut-downs and subsequent loss of investments but nothing has changed in Nigeria.

At the 20th Conference of the Nigerian Guild of Editors in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, last November, the keynote speaker, Dele Kevin Oye, spoke as if we be dey quarrel before! He was particularly hard on the editors for chasing after salacious themes like the then trending story of the Guinean super sex gymnast instead of facing the hard issues at home. He equated us with the Roman Emperors who were too involved at different times with seductive Queen Cleopatra of Egypt to give serious attention to the happenings in Rome.

Oye was passionately angry and I could understand why. He is the President of Nigerian Association of Chambers of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture (NACCIMA). This is the body that approximates private sector operations in the economy. Its members are dying like chicken under the Tinubu’s brand of economics and politics. The ones that came from elsewhere to live in Nigeria who do not want to stay and die in a foreign land are going back home. Mr. Oye is losing rapidly his constituency to factors that can be addressed by a purposeful political leadership.  He was made NACCIMA president to birth and grow businesses not to kill them. But in the New Deal under Tinubu, the man is looking more like an acclaimed funeral director that oversees the burial of death entities.

It wasn’t as if Oye had a beef with the body of editors. His role is being reversed by variables superior to his control but which could be held in place by government. He is drowning in spite of his swimming skills and looking for even a straw to cling to. He was only talking that way in Yenagoa to see if the Guild of Editors can write some more to activate Aso Rock from sleep to throw in a life line. I understand his worries. I am also at sea having crossed over from the news world to the business world since 2019. My new world is a strange world where factors don’t add up. It is an Orwellian setting where addition translates to deduction. I am talking of today’s Nigerian business environment, where N10,000 worth of energy, time and resources could be spent to earn N1,000. Nothing adds up. Results hardly justify efforts except in politics and crime. To just feel cool, people equate activities with achievements. In fact, the twin concept of entrepreneurship and wealth creation is being rudely redefined. Players fight to push back this cruel redefinition but the counter-forces are so overwhelming that many are choosing to die instead and have their peace.

Even at that, I am not convinced about the huge portion of blame allocated to the media by the keynote speaker. I can only sympathise with him in principle. In practice, the media in Nigeria has adequately discharged its duties against political and bureaucratic behemoths. Indeed when Baba Segun Osoba granted me the chance to speak to the keynote speaker, only one line was on mind. “Sir, is there any felony, misdemeanor, tort and so on, committed against the Nigerian people by the evil apparatuses of the state that has not been adequately articulated and ventilated in the media?” At first, there was silence, as if nobody anticipated that line of thinking and then croaking applause. I stepped back to wait for the speaker to speak. Some other points were raised and Keynote Speaker Oye took all in a stride. In the end, the ‘yes or no’ answer I had waited for got diffused in a maze of explanations.

Nothing spoil! Altogether, the take-home was not lost. The media has always finished its race and even overlaps in many instances to finish the race of others. The issue squarely is that the Nigerian State is persistently impervious. It has completely lost the capacity to listen and act appropriately in the interest of the people. And that flows from the way governments and political leaderships are created in Nigeria. Neither is powered by the people’s votes even in a democracy. There are more reliable ways outside the people’s votes through which power is grabbed and carted away in Nigeria. I want you to understand that the media is also a victim. In fact, a more pitiable victim that is burdened and compelled by duty to perform in an environment where the rules are in a free fall and nothing is held sacred.

I had also thought of writing on the endless legislative circus show since 1999. It is called Constitution Amendment. We are in the Ninth National Assembly and every assembly since 1999 when this new democratic journey started has been amending the same constitution without resultant visible amendments. What are they actually amending that cannot be finished in almost 26 years? Even a band of ill-trained cobblers, carpenters and tailors will do better with amendments than these national legislators. Like assembly of witches and wizards, these ones are too circumscribed in the reverse realities and negativity of their coven – the National Assembly complex – to add value in the real world.

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One estimate puts the cost of amending the 1999 Constitution at five billion naira per an amendment committee. Nine Assemblies means Nine Amendment Committees. The maths comes to N45 billion which is enough to build and equip, let me be conservative, two teaching hospitals. We can as well say that the National Assembly has used two teaching hospitals and 26 years to introduce just five alterations in the 1999 Constitution. It gets really annoying if a value is attached to these alterations. They are cosmetic applications that do not speak to the fundamental fault lines and therefore incapable of providing answers to the national questions. It has been an unbroken legislative merry-go-round to say the least.

Back to starting point. I have searched in vain for something new to write about. Maybe I have not searched hard enough but I must end here today. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Let me also add that where we are today in this country calls for the collaboration and cooperation of every stakeholder to move forward. President Tinubu has been saying this same thing more vigorously lately as if we, the people, have suddenly become inevitable in his calculations. I am also going to seek your cooperation in the search for something new to write about Nigeria. Please readers, help me to search for something new that has not been written before and which I can write to bring about good governance in Nigeria. That way, my recall from peaceful retirement by Oga Edward Dickson shall not be in vain.