By Jide Ojo

On January 9, 2024, President Bola Tinubu announced the reduction of his cost of travel by 60 per cent. The Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Ajuri Ngelale, revealed this while briefing State House correspondents at the Presidential Villa, Abuja. Ngelale said the directive applied to the offices of the President, Vice President, First Lady, wife of the Vice President and all ministries, departments and agencies.

Ngelale was quoted as saying, “President Bola Tinubu has approved that anywhere he travels within this country he will no longer accept or allow huge security delegations to be following him from Abuja, which attracts massive bills with respect to estacode and duty allowances from now on.  He has approved a massive cost-cutting exercise that will cut across the entire Federal Government of Nigeria and the Offices of the President himself, the Vice President and the Office of the First Lady. It will be conducted in the following fashion. On international trips, the President has directed that no more than 20 individuals be allowed to travel with him. That number will be cut down to five in the case of the First Lady. Additionally, the number in the entourage on official international trips for the Vice President will be cut to five. The number that will be placed as a limit on the wife of the Vice President is also five.”

I have joined millions of Nigerians in lauding the president on this initiative. However, successive administrations have done similar things with little or no effect on the economy. There is no gainsaying that there is a need to cut down travel cost but that is not far-reaching. Before I propose my recommendations, there is a need to discuss further the profligate nature of Nigeria’s political leadership.

The PUNCH of January 15, 2024, reported that Tinubu has spent not less than N3.4bn on local and foreign travel within six months of assuming office. The figure is 36 per cent more than the N2.49bn earmarked for the President’s travel expenditure in the 2023 budget. Though Tinubu inherited the budget halfway, he spent more than what was apportioned for the whole year between June and December 2023. The President also approved the sum of N3bn for the purchase of three bulletproof Mercedes Benz S-class 580 and the supply of other vehicles to the State House.

This profligacy is not limited to the Federal Government. Again. The PUNCH of yesterday, January 16, reported that, “Despite spending at least N21.04bn on foreign trips in the last three years, 14 state governments have failed to attract any form of foreign investments into their domains. The states in question are Bauchi, Bayelsa, Benue, Borno, Cross River, Ebonyi, Edo, Gombe, Imo, Jigawa, Nasarawa, Taraba, Yobe, and Zamfara. Between 2021 and the third quarter of 2023, these states failed to attract any of the $14.85bn that foreign investors channelled into Nigeria.”

The report went further that, “Between 2021 and 2023, Bauchi spent N3.81bn on foreign trips without having anything to show for it. Bayelsa spent N1.99bn, Benue spent N1.33bn, Borno spent N1.73bn, Cross River spent N663.16m, Ebonyi spent N1.01bn, Edo spent N1.77bn, Gombe spent N32.09m, Imo spent N541.23m, Jigawa spent N1.10bn, Nasarawa spent N541.26m, Taraba spent N2.52bn, Yobe spent N1.24bn, and Zamfara spent N2.77bn. The figures for foreign trips were extracted from state budget performance reports sourced from Open Nigerian States.”

The PUNCH editorial of January 15 said inter alia that, “The Tinubu administration has not inspired confidence with its large cabinet, ostentatious convoys, and sickening luxury at public expense amid an inflation rate of 28.20 per cent, job losses and factory closures. There is also the ruinous forex crisis in which the currency is exchanging for over N1,000 to $1. Multidimensional poverty saw about 10 million more Nigerians sliding into penury since May 2023’s petrol subsidy removal, according to World Bank estimates.” The editorial therefore proposed among other things that, “The President should reduce the Presidential Air Fleet and sell the N5 billion-yacht embedded in the 2023 supplementary budget. The gains from the cost-cutting should be directed to the provision of social and health services and infrastructure.”

I fully endorse the recommendation of this newspaper. However, for there to be a significant reduction in the cost of governance, a number of administrative cum legal steps need to take place. First is the imperative of structural reforms, including altering the constitution to reduce the number of ministers, federal and state lawmakers. For instance, the President relied on the second paragraph of Section 147 (3) of the 1999 Constitution to appoint 48 ministers. This section needs to be amended to peg the number of ministers to a maximum of 18 (three ministers to represent each of the six geo-political zones). The constitution should also be altered to either scrap the Senate as Senegal did in 2012 and Mauritania did in 2017, or reduce the National Assembly and state Houses of Assembly members by one-third as done in Italy. Recall that in October 2019, Italy’s parliament voted to cut the number of representatives in both houses by more than a third. The lower house approved a law to reduce members of parliament from 630 to 400 and senators from 315 to 200.

If these three aforementioned countries can do what they did, nothing prevents Nigeria, a heavily indebted country, from structurally cutting down the cost of governance. I also suggest another look at the Steve Oronsaye report which former President Muhammadu Buhari promised to implement but failed to do so. Recall that in 2011, the then President Goodluck Jonathan set up the Presidential Committee on Restructuring and Rationalisation of Federal Government Parastatals, Commissions and Agencies, under the Chairmanship of former Head of Service, Mr Steve Oronsaye. It came up with far-reaching recommendations aimed at reducing the cost of governance. Despite the white paper being out, the immediate past administration did not implement the report. Tinubu should be able to take up the gauntlet and implement this report. Nigeria, in my estimation, does not need over 1,000 ministries, departments and agencies, many of whom have duplicate mandates.

There is also the need to block all revenue leakages, particularly from the government-owned enterprises that collect revenue for the Federal Government. It is a notorious fact that some of them under-declare and do not remit the actual amount that they should pay into the federation account. Similarly, the issue of oil theft and illegal mining of Nigeria’s solid minerals needs to be tackled headlong. Corrupt practices in ministries, departments and agencies need to be exterminated. That is why the alleged embezzlement of public funds in the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation needs to be thoroughly investigated as ordered by the President and all those found culpable prosecuted in a court of law. Lastly, the aforementioned cost-saving measures should cut across the three tiers and three arms of the government. Nigerians deserve good governance and a better life!

X: @jideojong

Jide Ojo

By Farooq Kperogi

In the last few weeks, kidnapping in Nigeria has escalated into such a terrifyingly contagious national epidemic that it’s now difficult to keep up with its spread and malignancy. When I decided to dedicate this week’s column to this phenomenon, I kept a record of the abductions that had been reported in the news media. I noted their similarities, differences, levels of severity, and drew parallels with the historical data at my disposal.

I gave up. It was not just simply overwhelming; it kept expanding beyond the bounds of normality. What has become apparent to me is that kidnapping has replaced armed robbery as the crime of choice by outlaws.

News stories of armed robberies are now few and far between. Criminals have found gold in kidnapping. It’s a relatively low-risk, minimal-effort, but high-reward crime.

Even the Federal Capital Territory, hitherto the oasis of safety in a national desert of insecurity, is now the theater of some of the most frighteningly lethal abductions.

Kidnapping isn’t new, of course. It has been with us since independence. And, although Abuja had been a sanctuary, it hadn’t been entirely immune from the plague of kidnappings. In September 2019, for example, the daughter of Dr. Umar Ardo, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar’s cousin and special adviser, was kidnapped in the heart of Abuja and was released only after a $15 million ransom was paid in bitcoin, according to PM News.

In the same month, a Nigerian-American professor of political science who retired from a university in Mississippi and relocated to Abuja was kidnapped in downtown Abuja and wasn’t released until he paid an N8.5 million ransom. There had been several other unacknowledged abductions in Abuja before now.

But the scale, frequency, and magnitude of abductions we have been seeing lately are unprecedented, and this poses significant challenges to Nigeria’s security, economy, and societal fabric. The complexity of the kidnapping syndicates, the vastness of the Nigerian terrain, and the often-sophisticated methods employed by these criminals necessitate an innovative approach to combating this menace—if the government is truly interested in containing it, that is.

Fortunately, it appears the government is interested in finding solutions to this troubling challenge to peace and national stability, especially because it’s now getting uncomfortably close to the seat of power.

Defense Minister Mohammed Badaru told Arise TV that abductions have skyrocketed in the FCT because kidnappers from the adjoining states of Niger and Kaduna are fleeing the scorched-earth policy of security agents against them, but that “the president has given us the marching forward [sic] and all the support that the security agencies need to end this thing.”

Badaru was saying, in other words, that security forces in Kaduna and Niger aren’t stopping bandits; they are merely scaring them away from their snug hideouts to the FCT. That is not reassuring. Well, if the government truly wants to confront and reverse the menace of kidnapping, there are at least two low-hanging fruits they can pluck.

One of the most promising technologies to tackle kidnapping is geotagging. Geotagging refers to the process of adding geographical identification metadata to various media. It can be used to locate the phones used for ransom negotiations.

Unfortunately, Dr. Isa Ali Pantami, Nigeria’s former minister of communication who bills himself as a cybersecurity expert and who should lead efforts to use technology to locate kidnappers, chose to lead crowdfunding efforts for ransom payment for some victims of kidnapping. While I appreciate the compassion that drives the effort, how many more people can we crowdfund for to pay ransoms?

True cyber security experts tell us that each time a kidnapper uses a phone to communicate, the device connects to nearby cell towers, which leaves a digital footprint. Modern smartphones, often used by kidnappers, have built-in GPS capabilities, which further enhances the accuracy of location tracking. Geotagging utilizes this data to pinpoint the location of the phone.

Many countries have used this method to locate, apprehend, and eliminate kidnapping rings. For example, in Colombia, a country once notorious for kidnappings, security agencies have successfully employed geotagging. In one notable case, Colombian authorities tracked the mobile phone of a kidnapper using geotagging, leading them directly to the hideout and facilitating a successful rescue operation.

Mexico’s adoption of advanced geotagging techniques in collaboration with the United States has led to several high-profile successes. The technology was pivotal in dismantling a notorious kidnapping ring in Mexico City. This shows the potential of cross-border technological cooperation, and Nigeria can replicate that with its neighbors.

For course, for Nigeria to effectively employ geotagging, there is a need for significant investment in technological infrastructure. This includes the upgrading of cell tower networks for better coverage and accuracy, and the integration of advanced software for real-time tracking.

Security agencies must be trained in the nuances of geotagging technology. This includes understanding the legal and ethical implications of tracking and developing the technical expertise to analyze and act upon the data gathered.

Collaboration with international agencies experienced in dealing with kidnappings can provide Nigerian authorities with the necessary technological and strategic support. Sharing of best practices and intelligence can enhance the effectiveness of the geotagging approach.

The use of geotagging in combating kidnapping in Nigeria offers a ray of hope in a seemingly relentless struggle. While technological solutions like geotagging are not panaceas, they are critical tools in the arsenal against kidnapping. The successful implementation of geotagging, complemented by infrastructural improvements, capacity building, international collaboration, and legal safeguards, can significantly bolster Nigeria’s fight against this scourge. As kidnapping continues to evolve, so must the strategies.

Another low-hanging fruit in the fight against kidnapping is to trace the trail of the ransom given to kidnappers. A security analyst by the name of Kabir Adamu told the TVC recently that most ransom payments aren’t executed through cash, and that banks are complicit in lubricating the “business” of abductions.

“I will shock you today to tell you that, in almost all the cases we investigated, the ransoms paid to bandits are through our banks,” Adamu said. “I say this with all sense of responsibility. In almost all, it’s very few that cash is collected and taken to these guys. They are so brazen and bold that they provide account numbers. And two banks are guilty; I’m not going to mention the names of the banks. But of course, if the security agencies are interested, I will be happy and willing to provide it to them. And that is if they don’t already know.”

This is not new news to me. In an October 23, 2021, column titled “Sponsors of Nigeria’s Terrorist Bandits,” I called attention to Daily Trust’s July 28, 2021, story titled “Kidnappers in FCT Begin Collection of Ransom Through Banks” where we read of a Mrs. Aminat Adewuyi who was kidnapped in Niger State and paid money to an account the kidnappers provided.

“The ransom payment slip, a copy of which was obtained by Daily Trust showed that Adewuyi’s husband paid N500,000 into an Access Bank account with number 1403762272 and the name Badawi Abba Enterprise,” the paper reported.

The column went viral, but nothing was done about the identity of Badawi Abba Enterprise to this day. It’s one of several examples. Was it incompetence or complicity on the part of the Buhari government that it knew the identity of kidnappers but refused to do anything about it? Will the Tinubu government be different this time?

*Kperogi is a Professor of Journalism and Emerging Media at Kennesaw State University, Georgia, United States, and a notable columnist. He can be reached on X, formerly known as Twitter, via: @farooqkperogi

By Ikechukwu Amaechi

Since the Supreme Court reversed the Appeal Court judgements that sacked Kano State Governor, Kabiru Yusuf; Caleb Mutfwang of Plateau State; and Zamfara’s Lawal Dauda, many Nigerians, characteristically, have been ululating about how the judiciary has redeemed itself. Those wishing to cut the apex court a bigger slack talk about how the Supreme Court has redeemed the image of the judiciary.

Some have even stretched the inane adulation by claiming, rather ludicrously, that the verdicts are a veritable proof of President Bola Tinubu’s democratic credentials because it must take the non-interference of the president for the judiciary, a supposedly independent arm of government, to do the needful.

So, the independence of the judiciary is no longer guaranteed by the Constitution but the disposition of whoever is the president. Those who hold this view are right, though. But the truth which they refuse to also admit is that Tinubu refused to interfere not because he is a democrat who cares so much about the integrity of judicial pronouncements but because he is acutely aware that when dealing with those three states, the political risk of any judicial hanky-panky far outweighs the gain. The victory from any deliberate judicial miscue, if any, will be pyrrhic.

So, the president stepped back to save his own political skin and on Friday, January 12, a five-member Supreme Court panel ruled that the Appeal Court verdicts on Kano, Plateau and Zamfara governorship polls were perverse, flying in the face of not only the law but judicial precedents.

Justice Helen Ogunwumiju berated the Appeal Court judges for going into the issue of nomination and sponsorship despite several decisions of the apex court to the effect that a political party cannot challenge the primary election of another. So embarrassed, or so it seemed, was Justice Emmanuel Agim that he warned the legal profession to wake up or risk rendering itself irrelevant to the society. Justice John Okoro lamented that “a lot of people have suffered” because of the wrongful judgements of the appellate court which had sacked several legislators who won elections under the platform of the PDP in Plateau State.

Justice Okoro’s lamentation bears repeating because as you read this, two Plateau State PDP senators and five members of the House of Representatives freely elected by the people are idling away at home, while seven APC impostors elected by Justices Oluwayemisi Williams-Dawodu, Abdulaziz Waziri and Okon Abang, none of whom is from Plateau State, not to talk of casting a ballot in the February 25, 2023 National Assembly election, are in Abuja representing themselves and the principalities who made their ascension possible. In the 25-member Plateau State House of Assembly, the self-same panel sacked 16 members elected on the PDP platform, and willfully handed their seats to the APC.

The tongue-lashing of the Appeal Court judges was so loud that Mike Ozekhome, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, SAN, likened it to the whipping of errant children. “The Supreme Court spared no words, they used legal and judicial Koboko (cane) to flog the Court of Appeal for what they termed miscarriage of justice, perverse judgements,” Ozekhome said while speaking on Saturday, January 13, in an interview with Arise TV.

But it is not enough for the Supreme Court to publicly chastise the lower court judges for their shameful judicial gymnastics and validation of purloined mandates, what happens to the victims of the “wrongful judgements of the appellate court?”

Should the beneficiaries of electoral shenanigans be allowed to keep their loot? Besides this public chastisement, should the judges who enabled these heists be allowed to get away with the crime? No! Allowing the Plateau travesty to stand is tantamount to rewarding judicial perfidy and political banditry. The politicians and their collaborators in the judiciary orchestrating these absurdities are worse than the bandits terrorising Nigerians.

That said, will it be correct to say that the Supreme Court has redeemed the judiciary simply because it called out erring lower court judges? I dare say that will amount to stretching logic.

In restoring the mandates of Kano, Plateau and Zamfara governors, the Supreme Court simply dodged a bullet. Enlightened self-interest rather than aversion to perfidious judgements informed the decision because the apex court has given, perhaps, more perverse judgements than the Appeal Court.

For instance, no judgement can be more perverse than the January 14, 2020 Supreme Court ruling that nullified the election of Emeka Ihedioha as the governor of Imo State and declared Hope Uzodimma the winner of the March 9, 2019 governorship election.

Criticising his colleagues who delivered the perverse judgement, Justice Centus Nweze of blessed memory said it was “preposterous” for the apex court to award the “electoral victory” to Uzodimma who had contended that the March 9, 2019 election was invalid.

When his colleagues ignored him, he, like Pontius Pilate, washed his hands off the perfidy with this profound statement: “The decision of the Supreme Court in the instant matter will continue to haunt our electoral jurisprudence for a long time to come.”

Many of the Appeal Court judges drew inspiration from that 2020 illogical ruling by the Supreme Court in handing down their 2023 perverse judgements.

Again, the January 20, 2023 Supreme Court judgement that affirmed Godswill Akpabio as the valid candidate of the APC for the Akwa Ibom North-West Senatorial District, and another ruling on February 6, 2023 that declared former Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, as the authentic APC candidate for the Yobe North Senatorial District, were as perverse as the Appeal Court judgements sacking Yusuf, Muftwang and Dauda.

The Supreme Court ruling on the February 25, 2023 presidential election left a sour taste in the mouth of not a few. So, Nigerians should not be deceived. The Supreme Court does not stand on any moral high ground when it comes to perverse judgements and judicial hanky-panky.

On Wednesday, January 17, Aloy Ejimakor, special counsel to the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, Nnamdi Kanu, decried the failure of the Supreme Court to release the certified true copies, CTC, of its judgement made last year.

Ejimakor wrote: “Today makes it Thirty-Three (33) days after Supreme Court delivered the final judgement in the case of Federal Republic of Nigeria versus Mazi Nnamdi Kanu.

“Following the delivery of said judgement on 15th December 2023, applications were filed for the release of Certified True Copies, CTC, of the Judgement and the enrolled Order. But to this day, the Supreme Court is yet to comply.

“This failure to release the said CTC is a flagrant violation of the Constitution that entitles Nnamdi Kanu to be issued copies of the judgement within seven days of the delivery of the judgement on 15th December 2023. It is a fundamental right and thus enforceable.

“Section 36 (7) of the Constitution provides that: ‘When any person is tried for any criminal offence, the court or tribunal shall keep a record of the proceedings and the accused person or any persons authorised by him in that behalf shall be entitled to obtain copies of the judgement in the case within seven days of the conclusion of the case.’

“It will be recalled that the Supreme Court had, in the said judgement, ordered that the case be remitted to the Federal High Court for consideration of  a trial.

“To be sure, the Federal High Court cannot proceed with consideration of any trial without the certified judgement and enrolled order. Similarly, Kanu’s lawyers cannot proceed with his defense without the CTC of the said judgement and the order.”

This is the Supreme Court, not the lower courts. Truth be told, no level is holier than the other. If only politicians, even those who won their cases and have praised the judiciary as the last hope of the common man could tell their experiences and the role money played, Nigerians will begin to appreciate how deep the rot runs.

So, the restoration of the mandates of Yusuf, Muftwang and Lawal, though heart gladdening, is not an act of judicial altruism. No! The Supreme Court simply dodged a bullet, knowing full well that there would be dire consequences if it did otherwise unlike Imo State where the Justices knew there will be no consequences for their judicial malevolence and went ahead to do the unthinkable.