By Sylvester Udemezue

Although the higher courts in Nigeria have settled the issue of NBA membership vis-a-vis the freedom of association provisions of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999, some lawyers argue that we should have more than one umbrella association of lawyers’ in Nigeria, “as we have in the UK”. Proponents of this redundant view care less about the fact that, unlike in Nigeria, there’re two different professions within the legal profession in the United Kingdom; (a) the Barristers’ profession and the Solicitors’ profession. So, notwithstanding that it really makes a lot of sense that the UK has two umbrella bodies of lawyers, some lawyers in Nigeria are more comfortable with comparing Nigeria to the UK; they want things done as they’re done in the UK. Well, it is their right. No one begrudges anyone of one’s right to freedom of speech and expression. However, it’s important we take a look at some of the things happening in the UK, but not happening in Nigeria, so that the advocates of “let’s copy the UK” could see there are far more important, beneficial things for Nigerians to copy in the UK, than mere multiplicity of lawyers associations.

1️⃣Your president, Vice president, and political office holders’ hospitals are domiciled in the UK, not in Nigeria. Yet, no citizen of the UK, not even a mad man in the UK, thinks of coming to Nigeria for medical tourism. Nigeria, to them, is good for nothing other than corruption.

2️⃣. UK has steady, uninterrupted public power supply. Nigeria has no public power supply at all, or has an epileptic supply. Hence Nigeria is, by Nigerians, baptized, a “Generator Republic” meaning a country living in darkness.

3️⃣. In the UK, almost all lawsuits filed in court in 2022 – 2023 have been determined/decided in the courts of first instance, and many have gone on appeal, and even determined. In Nigeria, 90 percent of all cases filed in courts of first instance within the last 10 to 15 years are still pending in the courts of first instance, and no hope of conclusion. In Nigeria, a lawsuit could stay in court for up to 20-40 years. And this is not exceptional, unlike in the UK wherein cases are decided within 01-02 years.

4️⃣. Nigerians are japaing (escaping from Nigeria) to the UK in droves, as a result of hunger, starvation, frustration, joblessness, bad governance and insecurity in Nigeria. No UK citizen is interested in coming to Nigeria since Nigeria is a no-go area and UK is a stable economy, safe and conducive for business and living.

5️⃣. There is low insecurity in the UK. There is high, worsening insecurity in Nigeria. Nigeria is currently rated the 3rd most terrorised country in the world; life has lost its value; citizens are being killed daily, with the killers operating with impunity.

6️⃣. There’s good governance in the UK, unlike Nigeria where bad governance is the order.

7️⃣. UK’s electoral system is effective, ensuring the people’s choices are returned during elections, unlike in Nigeria where the election system is so, corrupted, hollow and manipulable that democracy has become a government of a few by the few for the few, to the exclusion of the people. Under Nigeria’s democracy, leaders are selected, not elected. Power belongs in reality, to the leaders, not to the people.

8️⃣. In the UK, an Indian is the prime minister, while some of the Ministers are not of UK origin but accepted for leadership in the UK. In Nigeria, on the other hand, citizens from certain segments are barred or forbidden, by some unwritten rules, from national leadership; some fellow Nigerians foolishly tagged “Dot in a Circle,” are, by some unwritten rules, excluded from national leadership, from becoming president, and from occupying certain public offices.

9️⃣. In Nigeria, ethnicity jingoism, tribalism, religious bigotry, party/sectional affiliation, and clannishness, guide public appointments and formulation and implementation of government policies, leading to disastrous consequences. In the UK, capacity and merit largely determines who gets what in the public and private space.

🔟. In Nigeria, the education system is devastated, debased and devalued because neglected. In the UK, priority is on education of citizens; hence even Nigerians are running to the UK for quality education.

1️⃣1️⃣. Only lawyers undertake criminal prosecution in UK courts. Over 95 percent of all criminal prosecutions in Nigerian courts is undertaken by quack, non-qualified, non-lawyer policemen, while lawyers roam the streets in search of non-available jobs

1️⃣2️⃣. In the UK, no non-lawyers would ever dare to steal, or do, a lawyer’s job. In Nigeria, many of the lawyer’s jobs have been stolen and are being done by outsiders while lawyers look on helplessly.

1️⃣3️⃣. In the UK, lawyer’s fees, professional charges and remuneration are so inpregnably standardized that it’s near impossible for any outsider to take away lawyer’s fees or for any client to shortchange a lawyer. In Nigeria, in more than 80 percent of all cases/jobs, lawyers are underpaid, shortchanged and they do absolutely nothing about it.

1️⃣4️⃣. There’s hardy any thing like police brutalization of lawyers in the UK, unlike Nigeria where police brutality is the inthing, and lawyers are completely clueless about it.

1️⃣5️⃣. In the UK, as of February 2024, there are six major oil refineries in the UK, supplying up to 85% of the country’s inland market requirements. As of February 2024, there’s no single operational/functional oil refinery in Nigeria. Nigeria, the world’s 6th largest exporter of crude oil, depends 100℅ on import for its inland market requirements.

1️⃣6️⃣. About 130 million Nigerians live below the poverty line — wallowing in extreme poverty — in Nigeria, unlike in the UK

1️⃣7️⃣. Unemployment Rate in the United Kingdom is 3.80 percent as of January 2024. In Nigeria, “Nigeria Unemployment Rate Rises to 33%, Second Highest on Global List” (According to bloomberg.com)

1️⃣8️⃣.The economy of the United Kingdom is a highly developed social market economy. It is the sixth-largest national economy in the world while Nigeria is the 26th largest economy in the world.

1️⃣9️⃣.
(A). SALARY OF A PROFESSOR IN THE UK: The average salary for Professor is £83,259 (₦166.5 Million) per year in the United Kingdom. The average additional cash compensation for a Professor in the United Kingdom is £4,866 (₦9.7 million). Total: ₦176.2 million per annum
(B). SALARY OF A PROFESSOR IN NIGERIA: Maximum of ₦6 million per annum.
➖➖
(A)BASE SALARY OF A POLICEMAN IN THE UK:▪Between £29,137 (58,274,000) and @£40,000 (₦80,000,000: eigthy million naira) per annum

(B). BASE SALARY OF A POLICEMAN IN NIGERIA: Police Constable Grade Level 03:▪ ₦43, 294 per month.▪₦520,000 (five hundred and twenty thousand naira) per annum

2️⃣0️⃣. The list is endless,of those things that place the UK over 100 years ahead of Nigeria. Yet, campaign to pull NBA down is what is at the back of the minds of some lawyers in Nigeria. Please, dear colleagues, let’s first copy all these things, mentioned above, and have them in place, as they’re in the UK, and our country will be fine and making progress. Retaining NBA as the umbrella association of all lawyers in Nigeria, is not among the problems of Nigeria. Let’s stop chasing after shadows, leaving substance! My humble opinion, please.
◾To be continued, please🙏
Respectfully,
Sylvester Udemezue (udems)
08109024556.
[email protected].
(19 February 2024)

By Charles Okeibunor

Subsidy Gone!

Gone to where?

Float Naira, let it compete.

Compete on the basis of which balance of trade?

But under pressure to impress or prove a point you create the scorpion effect.

We now have more scorpions in town.

The queues are back.

Dollar traded at N1900 yesterday in the parallel market.

So, to renew my coaching license next month, it will cost my colleagues and I about N465,000

Here is the irony, even though I am paying more to the International Coaching Federation to stay licensed, I am working for clients who can’t pay me more than they can afford. So coaches are renewing their license in dollars but earning in Naira😊.

PZ Cussons has recorded a net asset position for the first time in 125years, the company went from half year 7.6billion naira profit to 74billion naira loss by year end.

Nigerian Breweries on the other hand has recorded its worst loss since they came into Nigeria in 1946. N143. 5 billion in pre-tax loss.

My take to Mr. President, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu is that when you do not have sufficient information to make a decision, it is best to maintain status quo.

Emilokan.

Charles Okeibunor is a lawyer & founder of IRMP (Identification, Resolution, Management, and Prevention)

By Nkereuwem Udofia Akpan

Just one year ago Yoruba folks who are APC members were attacking Igbos and others for not supporting APC and Tinubu. Shops were razed down, market women were beaten and harassed as the popular rant was Emi lokan.

Barely a year into the APC led government , the Yorubas occupy about every sensitive position in Tinubu’s government and all the juicy ministerial slots. All appointments and MDAs appointments were skewed in favour of the South West.

Ironically it’s the same Yorubas who have taken up arms and mobilized to protest against a government which they clearly dominate.

Curiously the Igbos who massively supported Peter Obi and Labour Party are the ones throwing their weight behind Tinubu’s government stating that there’s no need for protest and that “Tinubu is doing well.” Truly bizarre.

Snatch it, take it and run away with it might have ensured electoral victory whether by hook or crook but clearly it’s one thing to acquire power. Sustaining same is Herculean.

Why are the Igbos and the rest of the minorities refusing to join the planned protests against the Federal government which the Yorubas who clearly dominate have themselves admitted has failed woefully in every department?

The answer is obvious. We are tired of being used as scapegoats in the East and South South

If the protests had happened in the south East by now soldiers would have moved in and perhaps a State of Emergency would have been declared.

In the words of my Comrade and friend Charles Oputa aka Charly Boy: “OUR MUMU DON DO.”

Nkereuwem Udofia Akpan
Constitutional Lawyer and Human Rights Activist ,writes from Abuja

By Sam Omatseye
The Emir of Kano was playing to a feudal gallery. Aminu Ado Bayero was not speaking to the First Lady, Senator Oluremi Tinubu, when he asked her to tell her husband, the president, that hunger is in the land.
The monarch was in a mood of vanity. He exhibited himself to the Kano street as their advocate. A few days later, the EFCC unveiled a crooked plot under his watch. About 10 warehouses advocating hunger in Kano became news. They were hoarding food. The paradox is inescapable. So, too, the hypocrisy. I would love to hear the emir say a thing or two about the saboteurs in his enclave, the vermin in Kano blood. Maybe he should telegraph a message to the first lady, and nuance his position by saying, yes, there is hunger in the land. But some people he watches over as spiritual leader are also responsible for the pains. That means, he, too, by default, is failing in his duties to his people.

He forgot that the president, just as he has done to other states, has put his governor in custody of billions of Naira in the past eight months, more than any Kano governor has ever received. He should also address the question to his governor who just swept to victory in a flush of court victory. Last year when his neighbour was president, he did not convey similar message when no one could access a naira and food rotted in the market. The beloved monarch was speaking to the first lady without looking at his blindside.

Emir Bayero is not alone in that orchestra. The emir reflects a distorted sense of the state of the country. There is a barrage of messages, a good deal of them deliberately staged online, to make the president a harbinger of poverty.

This sort of storytelling imperils efforts to separate suffering from lies. But because many are unhappy in the land, those who know the whys and wherefores of the problem and the virtues of the president’s actions have joined the fray for one reason: to pull down the presidency. It is cynicism clothed in love of the masses.

There have been a few writers, pundits on television and politicians who have found foul traction in harping a tale of woes. First, we must know that most of these folks did not like the president before day one. Hatred did not turn instant love for him. Some of them prophesied in their secular pulpits that he would not win the primaries. He did. That he could not win the elections, and he did. That he would not be sworn in, and he was. His victories intoxicated their fury.

Two, we know that a majority of the voters, combining both Atiku and Obi in the ballot, beat Tinubu by about six million votes. But the election was about who had the most votes and it was one man. They don’t like that man. So, he ascended the throne with headwinds of malice. When those same people set free volleys of vitriol, it is not exactly because they love this country more and hate Tinubu less. Rather, they are gloating at the challenges of the hour by posing righteous angst. They are pretenders of love of the people. What they are will in due time be known. For now, they are, like the emir, playing to the gallery. They are not nuanced. They either do not understand economics or are unwilling to learn.
Now they pretend they are against subsidy and the exchange rates as though their candidates did not append the policies. There have been spinoffs of the actions. One, the rot in the CBN. What have they written or commented on the efforts to detoxify the top bank.

During the campaigns, many of them accepted the logic of subsidy removal and collapsing of exchange rates? What of the revelations about the stage after stage of rapine of our collective cash vault? Have they tried to analyse the consequences for the nation?. We heard of billions of dollars taken away by gangsters in suits and clever heads. It reminds one of Leo Tolstoy’s line that “all unhappiness arises not from privation but from superfluity.” In our case, superfluity of peacock moguls.

There have been revelations about the commercial banks hugging bales of dollars. What have the epistles of voice and pen done to relate the malaise of the banking elite with the naira as a sick baby? Have they shown how it is easy to destroy, and that it takes time to repair? Do they know this? Yes, unless they lie to themselves.

Have they come up with any alternative solutions to the efforts of the president? Those who are congenitally afraid of IMF and throw darts at the institution with all its imperfections are still hostage to the caskets of Marx and Lenin. But, for most, it is hypocrisy.

Many of them were on the take during the elections from the other parties and are writing and gesticulating as saints scented and sent from heaven.

If they want to say there is inflation, I will agree. It is serious? I will say yes. It is urgent? I will nod. But they should back their umbrage with new solutions. As Antonio Machado wrote, “new roads are made by walking.” They are standing still and pointing fingers at muddy stains in the walker’s coat. Some have parroted palliatives is not a solution. The government never said palliatives is a solution. It is to ease the burden until the fruits of policies come. I will agree that Betta Edu stalemated the humanitarian ministry. I suggest that the presidential committee streamlines the register speedily and set the palliatives back on course. Yet, last December, a lawmaker announced that bags of rice were handed lawmakers to distribute to their constituents for the holiday. All the same noisemakers read it. Why did they not hold our lawmakers to account? No one contradicted the legislator, so I believe him. Why did anyone not ask their constituents to protest on the streets against them? We should not make an era out of malice or cause out of grudge. Agbaero and company can protest now but when their candidate supported naira design and the poverty that resulted, they did not howl on the streets.

How many of them have asked the governors, like Kano, to account for all that the president has handed them since May last year? The tendency is to hold the president responsible. President Tinubu would not shy from it. But he has 36 governors in charge of the people. I know a few that are in sync, like Delta State Governor Sheriff Oborevwori with the distribution of grains to farmers. The BOS of Lagos, Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu has released money to traders. Ogun State’s Dapo Abiodun just announced N5 billion for that purpose. The President asked the governors to “spend the money,” not “spend the people.”

The epistle mongers remind me of Moliere’s play, The Imaginary Invalid, about a man who keeps imagining he is sick and piling up a series of sicknesses he does not have.

The afflictions of today are enough. Let those so-called wise men with grandiloquent pens and purple rhetoric not add new ones. As Fashola noted in his new book, Nigerian Public Discourse, “anger is not a strategy.” This is a time for succour, not sour grapes.

This article was first published in 2019 but the questions here have not been answered. Amidst hunger, privation and extreme suffering in today’s Nigeria, Nigerians have yet the see or understand what the former President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration did with N77 trillion it amassed in debts. Then there is this questionable N23 trillion that was spent in yet to be fathomed “ways and means” that the same administration borrowed from the Central Bank of Nigeria without the National Assembly’s prior approval. Despite all these, $26b Diaspora remittances remain unaccounted for.

By Chief Anthony Ani

The above question was posed in an article in The PUNCH newspaper edition of September 9, 2019, by columnist Henry Boyo.

I have been a daily reader of The PUNCH for the past 10 years and I have not yet, read any comments from anyone on this question.

There is a need to discuss this issue, as it appears that there is massive foreign exchange laundering going on in our banks.

As the architect of the Diaspora remittances in 1996, I am naturally concerned at the abuses disclosed by Boyo.

When in 1995, we at the Ministry of Finance reviewed the country’s sources of foreign revenues, we found out that nothing was coming in from Nigerians in the Diaspora, whereas India and Jamaica were living on foreign exchange from their citizens abroad.

When I enquired why Western Union and MoneyGram could not receive money from Nigerians abroad, I was told that it was due to our tax laws.

As a Chartered Accountant student in 1962, I studied Comparative Commonwealth Taxation in Nigeria, Jamaica and the UK, and I found out that the tax laws of these countries had the same wordings on imposition of tax (“tax is imposed on income accruing in, derived from or brought into”).

The question then to me was why income “brought into” India was not taxed in India? On enquiry, I found that India had modified its tax laws to accommodate its citizens living abroad who wanted to send money in foreign exchange to India.

In 1996, I had proposed (and it was accepted by the Federal Executive Council) in a new law, regarding Nigerians repatriating remuneration from abroad, Nigerians repatriating dividends, royalties, fees, commissions from foreign countries receipts by authors, sportsmen/women, musicians, play writers, artist, etc.

Such income repatriated into Nigeria in foreign currency was 100 per cent exempted from tax, provided the foreign currency was repatriated through a domiciliary account with a Nigerian bank!

With the promulgation of this law, First Bank Nigeria Ltd brought in Western Union in August 1996 while the USA brought in MoneyGram a few weeks later.

In 1996, Nigerians abroad repatriated about $4.5bn (about 50 per cent of our gross revenue from oil) and we ensured that these amounts were brought into Nigeria, intact, in foreign exchange.

The receipts increased exponentially in 1997 and 1998 and we also made sure that they were received in Nigeria, in foreign currency.

The receipts helped to stabilise our exchange rate mechanism at N82 to a dollar, throughout my tenure as the Minister of Finance, to the extent that the naira was internally convertible currency.

Some years ago, on my visit to London, I went to Western Union office, at Marble Arch, to test by remitting £500 to my son in Nigeria.

I first had to convert the money to dollars and to my surprise, Western Union gave me a quote in naira to be claimed by my son.

I refused their naira equivalent and insisted that my son must be paid in dollars.

It was obvious to me that there was an arrangement between our Nigerian banks and Western Union/MoneyGram, whereby the former pays from their excess naira liquidity while the later retains the dollars abroad.

In other words, the dollar remittance is retained abroad and is laundered by the Nigerian banks. This is definitely against the law which provides that all remittances must be brought into Nigeria in foreign currency via domiciliary account.

If by chance, as in my case, the dollar is remitted into Nigeria, the Central Bank of Nigeria on August 14, 2014, introduced the Outward Money Transfer Service and authorised the same MoneyGram and Western Union to re-export, in tranches of $5,000 per transaction, to Nigerians abroad, on payment of the naira equivalent at the CBN rate of exchange.

Thus, Nigeria is the only country in the world re-exporting its remittances.

It is relevant to note that the naira is not a convertible currency but remittances which are meant to stabilise our exchange rates are re-exported!

There is something wrong at our Central Bank.

It could be that we have imported the mentality of commercial banking into the CBN. We now need real central bankers to govern our Central Bank.

We have central bankers amongst those in the CBN, and we also have central bankers amongst the members of the Nigerian Economic Society or, alternatively, indeed, we can even go outside Nigeria to employ central bankers.

The fact is that the Diaspora remittances are not retained in Nigeria and there is a collaboration between the CBN, Nigerian banks and Western Union/MoneyGram; in such an event, government must investigate the infraction, punish the money launders, and recover all past Diaspora remittances retained abroad!

The Outbound Money Transfer Services must be stopped and all our remittances retained for naira stability and the nation’s development.

Etubom Ani is a former Minister of Finance 1993-1998