Despite persistent calls by authentic advocates of good governance for a conducive atmosphere for a thriving democracy and freedom in Nigeria, the reactionary wing of the ruling class and its agents are not giving any chance for that to happen. The more they are caught red-handed—with self-incriminating evidence—and exposed in the very act of a crime, the more they grow the liver to deflect and seek revenge.

Abdullahi Ganduje, the 72-year-old governor of Kano State, occupies the top rung of state officials who seem hellbent on punishing journalists for doing nothing other than acting in accordance with the demands of their profession. Recall that sometime in October 2018, Jaafar Jaafar, journalist and publisher of Daily Nigerian, published a roughly two-minute video showing Ganduje hastily shoving bales of dollars said to be totalling $230,000 in his kaftan as part of a $5millon bribe deal offered by contractors. That was one rare piece of investigative work with a telling impact.

The scandalous video reverberated across the country, drawing intensely cynical comments about the ruling All Progressives Congress government and its much-hyped fight against corruption. Obviously deeply flustered, Ganduje tapped Muhammad Garba, the state’s commissioner for information, to deny the genuineness of the video. Garba then released a statement saying there was no “iota of truth” in the entire package and describing the video as “cloned.” He said the governor would go to court to seek redress.

As the pall of embarrassment the video had generated thickened and widened, the Presidency’s reaction was to promise a thorough investigation after President Muhammadu Buhari had reportedly seen the video. Of course, everyone knows Ganduje is a favoured ally of President Buhari. And as all persons lucky enough to be in the good books or enjoy the privileges of that exclusive corridor of influence, the outcome of that promised investigation was easily predictable.

Suffice to say, however, that at the time of writing this piece not a single presidential panel was known to have been set up to investigate the video, much less release any report in that regard. Nor has there been any official statement from the Presidency beyond the claim to investigate. In fact, Buhari himself in one instance was to say that he marvelled at the technology behind the production of the video. So much for his vaunted fight against corruption.

But the Kano State House Assembly took a step that could be described as meaningful, even if conspicuously half-hearted in view of the well-known servile attitude of lawmakers to governors in this clime. The Assembly set up a seven-man committee to unravel the validity of the video and invited Jaafar, who appeared and stood his ground that the video was for real. That was a golden opportunity for Ganduje to also show up at the hearing and counter the journalist with his own facts. He was nowhere in sight. And as expected, the committee has submitted no known report till date.

Since publishing the video, Jafaar has not known peace. Threats upon threats, and intimidation from known and unknown quarters have been piling up to make life difficult for him. Ganduje went to court as he vowed, but as can be seen, not to ask for justice but to conscript and deploy the court as a tool for intimidating and hushing up journalists like Jaafar and active citizens who are exposing wrongdoing and demanding accountability from leaders.

By going to court, Ganduje and others like him make it seem as though they are following due process. But it’s all pretense. What they are in fact engaged in is called Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, SLAPP for short. It’s a euphemism for an abuse of the law to shut down vital public interest oversight and public access to information. Often, these powerful wrongdoers who have been found out by the press and exposed in public know they have no case, yet they have continued to hire big lawyers and go to court ostensibly for redress, in most cases fishing around for pliant judges that will do their bidding, which is nothing but to exact revenge through heavy fines and muzzle the press thereby.

That’s exactly what Ganduje is doing to Jaafar, who has since fled the country following mounting threats to his life. Barely a month after the publication of the video, the governor sued him and Daily Nigerian for defamation at the Kano High Court and demanded N3billion as damages. Somehow, there was no progress on the matter and suddenly, in June this year, the governor withdrew the matter from court with no reasons. Daily Trust reported that the court fined him N800,000 for the action.

Many people thought with the withdrawal of the matter from court some relief had come to Jaafar. They were wrong. Ganduje travelled all the way from Kano to Abuja to turn the screw harder at an FCT High Court, this time asking for N5billion as damages for an alleged defamation. No citizen deserves this kind of orchestrated persecution, least of all a journalist who was simply doing his work.

Thankfully, Amnesty International (AI) and Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), as they would always do in matters like this, have called on Ganduje and the Nigerian government to ensure that neither Jaafar nor his family suffers any retaliation because of his journalism. If there is anything the journalist deserves, it is commendation for performing his constitutional obligation of holding power to account as enjoined by his profession, and for his patriotic act of embracing this government’s call for citizens to help fight corruption by reporting corrupt practices and other kinds of wrongdoing whenever they see one.

To that extent, Ganduje will do well to free Jaafar and his family from the prolonged trauma to which they have been subjected for about three years now. The fresh court case the governor has instituted in Abuja is totally unnecessary and should be withdrawn immediately so that the journalist can return to practise the profession that has been the only source of livelihood for him and his family.

This is also the time to appeal to lawyers to always support freedom of the press as enshrined in Section 22 of the 1999 constitution. Everything should not be about money. Lawyers should show an acute sense of discrimination in the briefs they collect. Journalists are not criminals; therefore, they should be supported to do their work in an atmosphere of freedom. Lawyers should learn to say NO to briefs seeking to intimidate journalists and wittingly gag the press or aiming to further harass or threaten citizens (whistleblowers), among whom you would count Jaafar, who have demonstrated the courage to report crime.

•Onyeacholem coordinates the whistleblowing project, Corruption Anonymous, at the African Centre for Media and Information Literacy (AFRICMIL).

This year’s Eid-el-Kabir came at a time Nigerians, especially those living in the North, were at their wits’ end over incessant kidnappings. Less than ten-year-old Islamiya pupils from Tegina in Niger State are still with their bandit abductors, College of Forestry Students from Kaduna, too. These are more known because they are students. Hundreds are in the hands of kidnappers all over the North minus a few states. It is amid this national malaise that Muslims celebrated Sallah.

Kidnappers negotiate openly with relations, and friends of victims, collecting ransoms before their release. Sometimes, couriers of ransom get detained and fresh negotiations open. In other instances, females abducted get married off to their abductors. Sometimes abductors request airtime, foodstuff, and motorcycles before releasing abductees. People are concerned as day after day it becomes glaring that the hoodlums are running rings around our police.

It is amid this that the Emir of Muri in Taraba State, Alhaji Abbas Tafida, took the bull by the horns and threw down the gauntlet. He threatened bandits, seen majorly as the foreign Fulani Bororo, with death if they did not leave his forests in 30 days. Immediately after the Sallah prayer, he took the microphone and said: “Our brothers, the nomadic herdsmen (Bororo) from neighbouring countries, you came to us to allow you to stay in our forest. We allowed you because you are our brothers. When you came, we welcomed you. We regarded you as fellow Muslims. But the question you must answer is, are you Muslims?

“This is a question we are waiting for you to answer. We deserve to know if you are Muslims. If you are one of us (Muslims) and you decide to stay in the forest, only to kidnap us one by one for ransom, stop it because your attitude is not acceptable to Allah. But if you are not Muslims, I want to tell you, like we fought the infidels before, we are ready to fight you with all our strength. So I have given you (Bororo) 30 days to leave my emirate. If we see any of you after the expiration of my ultimatum, we will kill him.

“I am calling on my subjects to know that and be ready to fight or else I will draw the line. We kill him without asking him what he came to do or ask his name or where he comes from. If we are going to be all killed, let it be. If we will all die, let it be. We will not allow bastards to come and kidnap our wives, take them to the forest and rape them or commit adultery with them. In one village, we have the report of a District Head who is conniving with these criminals. The police arrested and granted him bail and the people are watching him. I think such a leader is not supposed to be living among us. Are you crazy to allow such a person to continue to live among you? Listen to me, henceforth any person who is found to be conniving with these criminals, we will kill his mother, and other siblings.

“For the police, we expect you to do your duty. If you arrest any kidnapper and set him free, we will not accept that. We will direct our armed youths to go after the kidnappers. There is no way we cannot be free in our homes; and worse, we cannot sleep with our two eyes closed. I am calling on Ardos (leaders of Fulani) to stop these barbaric acts in my emirate because you all know who is carrying out these criminal activities. I want to reiterate that any kidnapper that is set free by the security will not be spared. All those responsible for maintaining peace in my domain should come together to end the menace or we know what to do. Peace be upon you.”

The emirate of Muri is known for its gallantry, having been founded in 1817 as a Fulbe Jihad state. It was briefly a de facto French protectorate between 1892 and 1893, under Governor Louis Mizon. It wound up as a province of the British Protectorate in 1901. Muri has produced emirs that do not mince words; they spoke their minds without fear. This trait was a subject of national discourse when, on August 12, 1986, Alhaji Umaru Abba Tukur, its powerful emir, was dethroned by Colonel Yohanna Madaki, the military governor of Gongola State. He became too strong for the Colonel to handle.

Ultimately, this thought of the emir is what may inform the actions of Nigerians as more public influencers think of mobilising the people to take their fate into their hands.

Talking about security issues and the police makes me sad over the travails of Deputy Commissioner of Police Abba Kyari. The man has posted significant achievements, cracking high-profile cases and bringing notorious criminals to justice. It is a pity if such a personality crashes ignominiously at the zenith of his career. He was flying beyond the skies with a future twinkling brightly, like the stars far above the sky.

Looking deeply and beyond Kyari, is there a reason a police officer trained and paid to arrest criminals will hobnob with them instead of remaining their nemesis? One may say lack of motivation, lack of proper training or absence of the weaponry/equipment or a result of being overstretched because of inadequate numbers.

In an interview with the Weekly Trust of 16 October 2010, a former Inspector General of Police, the late Gambo Jimeta said: “I think I’m qualified to talk about the development of the police force since independence because these are the exact years I have been in the force. The police force I joined fifty years ago was a highly trained and motivated one. We were very proud of our profession and we had a lot of support from the public who felt that we were there for them, to help them.

“We were well equipped; we had vehicles, laboratory equipment and we had everything that it took to run a modern police force. Unfortunately, since independence, we have been put along the line of what they call competing demands from other services in Nigeria. This has downgraded us and has brought us to where we are today, almost at a standstill.”

While we expect the police to risk their lives for us, yet they lack enough weapons and many criminals are better armed than them. Most police officers are treated shabbily, earning peanut salaries and can barely afford to feed themselves, not to talk of taking care of their dependents. A good number are homeless, with many squatting in slums. In such situations, the faint-hearted will cheaply compromise.

Even though 10,000 constables are to be recruited, the population of the Nigeria Police is less than 400,000. The United Nations (UN) standard for the police-to-population ratio is one police officer for every four hundred and fifty citizens. With the ever-growing population of over two hundred million Nigerians, according to the worldometer and about three hundred and seventy-one thousand, eight hundred (371,800) police officers, according to the Nigeria Police Force, the present police-to-population ratio in Nigeria is one police officer to five hundred and forty (540) citizens. Perhaps that’s why in 2017, the former Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, said that Nigeria needs to recruit 30,000 police personnel annually for five years to meet UN recommendations.

Even at that, the Police Service Commission in a report published by The Guardian stated that as of 2018, over 150,000 police officers were attached to VIPs and unauthorised persons in the country. Translated differently, every police officer attached to one VIP is denying at least 450 Nigerians access to police security and, by extension, the safety of lives and property across the country. This may be a conservative figure as despite the alarming rate of robberies, kidnappings, insurgencies, a then Assistant Inspector-General of Police (AIG), Zone 5 in Benin, Rasheed Akintunde said that over 80% of police officers are attached to either private business owners, multinational companies, corporate organisations and government officials while the remaining 20% are attached to their actual civic duties.

However, the number may not be the issue as the late IGP Jimeta, in that interview, said that: “A more equipped and civilised environment will require fewer police officers than the sort of situation we have now. The vast unplanned country and poverty-stricken and ill-motivated police force we have cannot do much. A well-equipped police officer will do a job that ten cops would do. One police horse for crowd control will do the job of fifty police officers. You see what I mean. So, the strength of the force is irrelevant to its capacity to perform its duty. It is not about the number, it is about skills and equipment available.”

According to some sources, the average amount paid per police officer attached to a VIP monthly is N75,000 with an initial documentation fee paid to the commission ranging between N250,000 and N1,000,000.

That means N11.25 billion is potentially generated every month from attaching 150,000 police officers to VIPs. In a year, at least N135 billion would have accrued to the Nigeria Police Force, which is about thirty-seven percent of the total budget allocation to the Force in 2019.

This amount, according to some experts, could pay the annual salary of over 132,000 new police constables, at an average salary of N85,000 per month. It can buy for the police 885 Robinson R44 Raven II helicopters, meaning that each of the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory can own at least 24 helicopters each.

That money can buy over six thousand Toyota Hilux 2018, providing at least 165 police Hilux vehicles for each of the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory. It can also buy over one million, four hundred and seventy-five thousand (1,475,409) police bulletproof vests at N91,500 each.

But where is this money?

If you have lived long enough, you know of the relationship; Capacity = Productivity – λ or some similar equation or definition variant. If you have not thought about it quantitatively, you have lived it out literally because it is a fact. 

Capacity is the measure of containment, the amount that can be held. Many times, we like to envision capacity with the largesse of infinity. But the truth is that capacity is always finite, it can absorb your gift and skills, your time and assets but remain finite. The secret weapon of capacity is its ability to regenerate. Regeneration allows something new to come out of what was. It can create headroom for so much more, it can change the trajectory of capacity as it retrieves the abilities of the inputs positioning them for desired outcomes.

Leveraged Capacity!

Proverbs 18:16 says a gift opens the way and ushers the giver into the presence of the great. If we look at this scripture from the perspective of a physical gift, it will literally mean that your gift (a part of your capacity /input) has created an influence (effect of catalysation of the input) that brings you access (outcome). By the way, a friend AHG, pointed this interpretation out to me weeks ago, ironically clear as day, I had missed it. Now to be clear, Proverbs 18:16 is a Living Word and has many living manifestations! 

To illustrate further, I remember when candidates would declare for a big elective office, if you could organise a fundraising that could bring in good donors, you would immediately go from obscurity to someone the campaign would call back and engage with and in many cases, gain access to a would-be president right in your living room! Your gift literally ushered you to the front of the line with all the potential that such access holds! 

In the example, above, the gift had the effect of amplifying some outcome considered as desirable to the great. That is leverage!  

Leveraging is the ability to use an asset, far beyond it’s known or calculated value. It is the application of strategic advantage. For example, in leveraged capital, we use debt (a borrowed asset) to amplify (multiply) returns from an investment!

Now let us walk through the basics to eventually get to the end.

Your capacity defines what you are able to hold or contain within your purview! For example, there are several people who are multidisciplined.  One person is a speaker, leader investor, teacher, researcher, employee, employer, parent, spouse, caregiver etc. That person’s personal capacity allows all these, done well simultaneously, concurrently or in whatever process format works. 

Your capacity can as such be measured as the maximum value you represent or can produce. Capacity and productivity go hand in hand but are not equivalent

Productivity defines what you put out, your measurable output or outcomes. For example, a technical writer generates 10 publications a month (capacity might be 12), an entrepreneur has built 2 businesses (capacity might be 3), a leader started 5 viable teams in 2021 (capacity might be 12), an engineer developed 3 new products (capacity might be 4), a CEO grew capital from X to Y (capacity might be 1.2Y). These are specific, measurable outcomes! We see a trend where outcomes/productivity suggest, unexhausted capacity. 

The first law of thermodynamics says that energy is always conserved, basically energy is neither created nor destroyed only changed, the equation gives a clearer illustration  ΔU = Q − W.

ΔU – Change in internal Energy of the system, W – work done by the system, Q – Net Heat transferred into the system

The point here is that the total internal energy of the system does not equal the work done by the system, there is heat present that cannot be captured as work done. It is noteworthy that the ability to do work is 100% dependent on energy, to that point the more energy you can convert to work done, the higher the throughput!

In a Pareto optimal scenario also known as the zero sum; all input resources translate to an output or outcome. 

Noting the universal first law of thermodynamics, is a Pareto optimal scenario possible? A better question is how do we improve efficiency significantly enough that your input resources approach the outcome. How can capacity tend to or approach productivity?

Here’s how!

Capacity Factors (CF):

Capacity Factors are factors of capacity that can be catalyzed to achieve Productivity. Below is a list.

Education (acquired degree or knowledge), skills (know-how, tangible), contacts (accessible networks), assets (money, equity, tangible and intangible), characteristics (habits, image, creativity, giftings, character etc.), opportunities (access, fortuity, favor) etc.

Capacity Factors can be placed into two broad groups, objective Capacity Factors (CFo) and subjective Capacity Factors (CFs) 

The objective Capacity Factors have been studied by major researchers and come in many variants. Some research combine both objective and subjective attributes, for example John Maxwell teaches on the five success factors that combine both objective and subjective attributes. 

Our work concluded that identifying them in the two main groups have been most applicable to broad spectrums of people. 

The objective Capacity Factor can be further placed into three verticals

Objective Capacity Factors (CFo)

The objective Capacity Factors can be placed in three verticals of Talents, Training and Tools (CFo)

Talents – know how and skills, practical knowledge, converted knowledge, must be practicable (eg build a table, write software code)

Training – education, role, job (engineer, doctor, artist, COO, builder, seller)

Tools – what / who you can engage, leverage or access, the opportunities available to you (capital, decision makers, networks, media) 

With our broad list of Capacity Factors subsequently bucketized into three verticals; what we have clearly identified are the objective factors! What happens to the subjective factors? Let us look at them more under wider lenses.

Subjective Capacity Factors (CFs)

The subjective Capacity Factors account for attributes that are mainly intangible and particular but not necessarily unique to the individual. They are typically inherent but can be manipulated and modulated albeit with a great deal of will power and discipline. Subjective Capacity Factors can be dependent on circumstance, or environment and be influenced by the dominant ecosystem. They also can be honed and transformed to skills. They are represented by Characteristics such as habits, charisma, personal image, creativity, giftings, character etc. they are for the most part subjective and capture this categorization. Others include integrity, teamwork, resilience, patience, drive, will power, ambition, courage, luck etc.

So now that we have reviewed the subjective Capacity Factors, then what? This is the classic hard skills, soft skills dilemma, assessing the tangible versus the mostly intangible factors. 

Are the contributions of subjective Capacity Factors too diminutive to count? On the contrary, they are extremely important and account for the delta that determines either a convergence towards or divergence away from Productivity! The sum of the objective and subjective Capacity Factors make up the resultant Capacity Factor.  

Basically, this very simple equation illustrates the relationship, 

CFr (Resultant CF) = CFo (Objective CF) + CFs (Subjective CF)

The λ (lambda) Effect

What is notable is that the objective Capacity Factors because of their tangibility are more fixed terms somewhat analogous to hard skills for a job. You can acquire them through specific steps. So, you either have them or not at each given point in time.

The subjective Capacity Factors are far more ambiguous because some can be biological, inherent, acquired, influenced etc. They are mostly intangible and hard to decipher except via outcome or some action.

Remember our capacity equation

Capacity = Productivity – λ. λ accounts for the gap between Capacity (what is possible) and Productivity (what is outputted). 

If we can reduce λ using efficiency techniques, then Capacity will be almost equal to Productivity. In contrast if the converse is true, then Productivity will be divergent away from Capacity. 

By the way this relationship in some variant is a standard used by every global manufacturing, production, or economic development sector to capture progress, monitor efficiency and to measure the impacts of improvements. It directly relates to profitability, a key currency of success!

λ is the inverse of the resultant Capacity Factor, λ = 1/ CFr, or λ = 1/ (CFo + CFs). 

Reducing λ. Improving Productivity

To decrease λ and allow capacity trend closer to productivity; the λ equation above shows us that it is very straightforward to do. To reiterate, while λ is the quantity that separates the capacity from productivity, it is measured as the inverse of the resultant Capacity Factor or 1/CFr, this means that λ = 1/(CFo + CFs) will decrease every time the Capacity Factors increase! So the higher the resultant capacity factor, the smaller λ gets and the closer Capacity approaches Productivity!

Now we noted that the objective Capacity Factors are tangible and more fixed, take more time, have more tie dependence and are typically more expensive. For example if a role calls for Blockchain development expertise. It would be an imperative to know how to program a ledger, know the tools like truffle Hyperledger fabric and learn solidity to write smart contracts. These will take time and possibly money and the interactions with different entities. There is no escaping it. The subjective are more fluid, If you want to get your Capacity so optimized that it approaches Production, adjusting the subjective Capacity Factors will be the most efficient and most impactful way to do so. For example adjusting attitudes toward a team, creating better working environment, being more attentive to remove roadblocks and inefficienciesin a production line could drastically improve outputs without much outside intervention!

A simple illustration of the Leveraged Capacity:

Just like each of us have the ability to self-govern, Kanayo is CEO of Kanayo Inc. How can Kanayo effectively improve her Capacity to Productivity relationship. While Kanayo might be unable to make drastic adjustments to her objective Capacity Factors, assuming she holds a PhD in “Kanayomics” and has worked several years in this personal field, honed every skill, attended many trainings and has a well-oiled network that is slightly overused; with nothing much to do in short order on her objective factors, Kanayo can drastically improve her emotional quotient. She can connect more wholistically to herself. More effectively manage her temprament; she can leverage her charisma more situationally. She can make integrity central to the way she leads her team. Make fairness, equality and openness more the hallmark of her engagements. As CEO of Kanayo Inc she would through these subjective acts drastically improve her personal economy by many folds. More would listen, engage and be influenced by her!

The Leveraged Capacity is Capacity that is powered to approach Productivity, where the equation between the two terms have a very low value λ. It is one that uses its Capacity Factor assets far beyond their known or calculated value. It is the application of strategic advantage to supercharge the contributions needed for a desired outcome. 

You can do the same every day, for your personally economy, your workplace, your business, your life, the world you desire to live in. Reduce the λ! Power your Capacity to high Productivity! Make the adjustment, it’s in your purview! Now you know, go do it!

Please note that terms like Capacity Factors and other terms used in this writing are all part of research done by Miranet LLC Inc and used to develop a series of commercial evaluation tools including the Economic Capacity Calculator a product of the Economic Posterity Series.

About Ngozi Bell

Inspiration, Hard Work, Innovation. These three foundational elements anchor Ngozi’s core belief that manifesting the extraordinary is always within reach. Inspired by her mother A.C.Obikwere, a scientist and author, she learned the privilege of living at the edge of important encounters and dedicating herself to robust and perpetual learning. Ngozi’s background is a combination of Physics, Engineering, Venture Capital/Private Equity, regulations, and business where she has managed over $1B in cumulative revenue. Ngozi is a speaker, storyteller, and writer on a diverse set of topics including AI, iDLT, ML, Signal Processing, iOT, women, entrepreneurship and more. She contributes regularly to VOA, has been a TEDx speaker and is published on tech and non-tech platforms. She is a champion of STEM, women, youth, art and the Africa we must engage. Ngozi is an adjunct professor of Physics and management with work experience in Asia, Europe, Africa, Middle East, and North America. She is a founder of a number of a number of enterprises and host of the podcast Stem, Stocks and Stews (https://anchor.fm/stemstocksstews-podcast).Https://www.LinkedIn.com/in/ngozibell/

Credit: This article was originally published by Sundiata Post