Opinion
Further thoughts on being sick and tired about Nigeria – Farooq Kperogi

Further thoughts on being sick and tired about Nigeria – Farooq Kperogi
When I wrote my column last week about being sick and tired of being sick and tired, I had not the slightest inkling that it would resonate with such vast and varied strata of the Nigerian public sphere. I merely wanted to ventilate the pent-up disillusionment that had welled up in me over time and expected most people to ignore my self-absorbed rumination.
Columnism is, after all, self-expression before it is public commentary. In fact, all forms of writing are conscious and unconscious self-portraitures. As Nobel-Prize-winning South African author John Maxwell Coetzee noted in his 1994 book titled Doubling the Point, “All writing is autobiography; everything that you write, including criticism and fiction, writes you as you write it.”
That was why I was overcome with pleasant disbelief by the unexpectedly overwhelming profusion of identification with the sentiments I expressed in my column, by the cornucopia of pleas to me to not stop writing, and by the careful, flattering chronicling by readers of the impact that my writing has had and continues to have in Nigerian politics and policies.
Let me make this clear: I won’t stop writing, haven’t given up on Nigeria, and have resolved to resist the disempowering but tempting tyranny of cynicism and surrender. I was merely giving vent to my disillusion at our prolonged infancy as a country, and it was therapeutic. I am glad that it also helped provide conscious language for others to articulate their bottled-up mental and emotional exhaustion. I hope that our passions will be rejuvenated after we vent because giving up is not an option.
One of the scores of emails I received over the past few days in response to the column humorously pointed to my rather unusually caustic spat with the Supreme Court in February 2023. It noted that of the thousands of people who routinely criticize the Supreme Court, I was the first and so far the only person in Nigeria’s history (I haven’t fact-checked this claim) whom the Supreme Court considered worthy of an individual response, even if the response was an apoplectic and threatening one. “If that isn’t making a difference, I don’t know what is,” she wrote.
Others called my attention to the Nigerian Labor Congress borrowing the perspective and language of the column I wrote on the economic apartheid in socially stratifying electricity consumption into “bands,” among scores of examples they identified as solid evidence of the seepage and utility of my thoughts in arenas that matter.
READ ALSO:
- Appeal Court upholds Nollywood actor Baba Ijesha’s five-year jail term
- N25.7 billion fraud: Supreme court upholds Francis Atuche’s conviction
- Minister arrested over alleged witchcraft
Well, I am probably guilty of what I choose to call a vulgar uniformization of markers of success of endeavors, by which I mean the tendency to use the same yardstick to measure the impact of all actions. In today’s Nigeria, for instance, conspicuous consumption—big cars, glitzy houses, expensive phones, sartorial extravagance, lavish gastronomic indulgence, etc.—has been uniformized as the only legitimate marker of success.
Even immensely accomplished, well-regarded, and far-famed professionals whose contributions to their fields will outlast them consider themselves—or are made to consider themselves—as “failures” if they are not “rich,” if they can’t flaunt vain indicators of prosperity, if they are just merely modestly comfortable. This crude uniformization of pointers of success is the main driver of the rat race for wealth by any means.
Maybe, I was guilty of uniformizing how impact is measured. Expectation of immediate, drastic, and dramatic change in policies and practices in response to sustained critical interventions is unrealistic, even quixotic. Persuasion takes time and work. Even at its best, it is often a gradual process consisting of small, incremental changes at a time.
That’s why revolutions take time to gestate and incubate before they burst forth. All revolutions start out as disparate resentments that coalesce into mass resistance, often at the rhetorical level. Mass resistance then blossoms into spontaneous, leaderless protests. If the frenzy and rage of the protests are sustained by the conditions that inspired them, they culminate in a rebellion.
If the rebellion has a self-aware, transcendent, ideologically situated vanguard, it can achieve the status of a revolution. And it can start with something as seemingly inconsequential and belaboring as writing.
Well, as I pointed out last week, this isn’t the first time I’ve questioned the efficacy of my popular interventions and (temporarily) divested my emotions from the home of my birth (where my heart always is) in frustration.
About this time last year, I chose to impose on myself a moratorium on active Nigerian political commentary and social media intervention, which was occasioned yet again by my temporary loss of hope in the capacity of Nigeria to reform.
After self-reflection, I concluded that the passions, energies, commitments, hopes, and aspirations that I had invested in Nigeria through my commentaries and engagements were wasted efforts because they made no difference. I concluded that I was merely wailing in the wilderness and that no one of consequence heard me.
READ ALSO:
- Tenure of FCT council chairmen expires in 2026, INEC clarifies
- I lost over N10m to Abuja market fire, trader laments
- Tale of woes in Abuja market after fire outbreak
Even when I thought I was heard, I didn’t think I made any impact. The vitriol and threats to my life that my engagements invited, particularly during Muhammadu Buhari’s presidency, would be worth it, I thought, if I made a difference, if I galvanized enough people to set aside their primordial differences and demand good governance from whoever was in power. After more than two decades of doing the same thing with the same result, I thought I was done.
Then, out of the blues, I became aware that the legendary Professor Toyin Falola—author of nearly 200 books with some of the world’s most prestigious presses, one of the world’s most cited living scholars, and an endowed Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin and Extraordinary Professor of Political Science at University of Pretoria— had written a book titled “Citizenship and the Diaspora in the Digital Age: Farooq Kperogi and the Virtual Community” that chronicles, analyzes, evaluates, and engages with the social, political, and cultural commentaries in my columns and social media platforms.
On June 15, 2023, an academic conference was also organized by the University of Pretoria’s African Centre for the Study of the United States with the theme “Farooq Kperogi, The Digital Age and US-African Diaspora Diplomacy,” at the behest of Professor Falola, where scholars from around the world discussed and analyzed my scholarship, newspaper columns, and online dialogic engagements.
I felt at once honored, flattered, and appreciated in ways I hadn’t before. I asked myself: so, someone of Professor Falola’s heft and gravitas notices my writing enough to find it worthy not just of his time but of his scholarly engagement in a book form? Had I been underrating the value of what I did?
As I said in my remarks during the conference, it was indescribably humbling when a vastly accomplished, larger-than-life, widely respected scholar like Professor Falola about whom books have been written, in whose honor annual transnational scholarly conferences are held, who is the most famous African scholar in the United States, and from whom I derive inspiration and guidance in my scholarly pursuits found me worthy to write an entire book about even when I consider yourself a mere mid-career academic who is still building his work. It’s an honor I truly believe I am wholly unworthy of but that I nonetheless embrace and cherish.
In moments of emotional weakness, which is natural when you’re the citizen of a country like Nigeria whose leaders serially violate even the most modest expectations of good governance, I will always remember the encouragement I received from esteemed intellectual patriarchs like Professor Falola, the hundreds of readers who wrote to me and left comments on my social media pages, and my heightened self-awareness that the impact of writing is often osmotic and almost imperceptive but significant nonetheless.
I have also come away with another insight: Passionate criticism of governance is often evidence of deep devotion to the progress of the country. Its absence can be a signal of the loss of hope in the redemptive capacity of critical engagement with the state. That’s not a state any state should want its citizens to be in.
On Thursday, I read Nyesom Wike railing against government critics like Senator Shehu Sani by saying, “The fact that many of you are activists does not mean you will do well if you were in our position. We have activists who have failed woefully in office. We have seen activists that were given appointments and yet they didn’t perform.”
Well, we don’t criticize because we think we would do a better job than the people we criticize. An English proverb that I like to quote in response to these sorts of pushback from people in government, says the onlookers, not the participants, see most of the game.
Coaches and technical advisers are needed in games not because the coaches and technical advisers are better than the players (several coaches and technical advisers, in fact, don’t have half the talent of players), but because the coaches and technical advisers have the benefit of technical knowledge and, most importantly, critical detachment from the field of play, which enables them to see the blind spots that players don’t and can’t see.
Further thoughts on being sick and tired about Nigeria – Farooq Kperogi
Farooq Kperogi is a renowned newspaper columnist and a United States-based Professor of Journalism.
Opinion
Playing Scrabble with the murderous king of Orile-Ifo

Playing Scrabble with the murderous king of Orile-Ifo
Tunde Odesola
(Published in The PUNCH, on Friday, February 7, 2025)
Despite being jobless during the decade-long Great Depression that ravaged the industrialised West, American architect, Alfred Mosher Butts, never turned his mind into the devil’s workshop nor allowed idleness to find employment for his hands.
Butts reckoned Americans needed an indoor game to ease the stress of the biting depression, so he invented the trademark crossword game called Scrabble in 1938. The word ‘scrabble’, according to the Cambridge Dictionary, means ‘to use your fingers to quickly find something that you cannot see’.
Ever since I learned to play Scrabble in the 80s, and going ahead to become champion at the University of Lagos and Abia State University respectively, wordplay has luxuriated in my heart.
Everywhere I go, I unscramble the words on vehicles, billboards, number plates, packs, etc moulding letters into words to test and increase my word-power, and sharpen my word recall skill. Everywhere I go, I carry a pen, jotter and dictionary with me, writing down words and reading the dictionary from páálí to páálí.
Scrabble is psychedelic: a stimulant when you win; a depressant when you lose.
Though we lived two houses apart on Omotoye Estate, Orile Agege, Lagos, Uncle Paul Bassey – FIFA and CAF instructor – was already a national sports oracle when my homeboys and I were fledgling undergraduates in the second half of the 1980s. Good Lord, Uncle Paul loves Scrabble! Though he was our idol, we didn’t have the chance to know him intimately until one day when I set a trap for him.
READ ALSO:
- Gunmen kidnap poly student, stray bullet kills woman in Delta
- FG asks NCE to scrap JSS, SS education system
- MAN warns against further hike in electricity tariff
That day, as I opened the gate to our house while seeing a friend off, I saw Uncle Paul, aka PB, walking up the road. I put my hand through an opening in the gate and intentionally delayed the locking of the gate from outside while I waited for him to come within earshot.
When he was within range, I greeted him and stepped onto the road, alongside my friend, and I suddenly began, “Yesterday, I played five premiums in a game. I beat Lanre so badly, I felt pity for him.” My friend looked nonplussed, wondering how Scrabble crept into the little talk we were having before we got to the gate.
But the arrow of my message had hit the bull’s eye. Uncle Paul stopped and looked back, “You play Scrabble?” he asked. “Yes, sir,” I said, a laughter of accomplishment welling up inside me. “Can you meet me in my flat at PUNCH Quarters by 10 tonight?” he said. That was the moment I knew my rascality na follow come. We met at 10 pm, played four games and began a lifelong journey of mentorship, love, trust and integrity.
This was how I opened the door of Uncle Paul’s home to my scrabble-playing buddies on the estate and beyond. Here comes our line up: Niyi Adebayo (Poovy), Tayo Odusina (Scrappy), Seyi George, Adeyemi Adebayo aka Kisko (deceased); Leslie, Segun Adeyina (OB), Charles Onyeshidi (Charlo), Dele Taiwo; Duke Orusara (Ikéràbà), Lai Ibidunni (Oòshà), Kola Dada (Ògo), Biodun Oyegunle (Longman), Rashidi Odurinde (Ayétótó), among others. This is the first time ever I’m divulging the secret of how I ambushed PB and lured him to be my friend.
Every Saturday morning, we would gather at PB’s flat, play Scrabble late into night, sleep in his flat while some would go home. We would wake up to Scrabble early Sunday morning and continue till late into the night, with food and drinks provided by PB, whose wife, Aunty, and all-male children were always happy to see us.
Oh, Aunty! May her sweet soul continue to rest in peace. She was particularly pleased to welcome us because we kept her husband company at home during weekends. With many family members living under his roof, Uncle Paul’s house was a beehive. PB, who is currently the Chairman, Akwa United FC, was a former sports editor of PUNCH Newspaper, deputy General Manager, Champion Newspapers, before establishing Today Sports, a national sports newspaper which has been rested.
READ ALSO:
- Hajj: Lagos extends payment of fare to Feb 10
- US citizens, others rushing to Nigeria for kidney transplant – Shettima
- Romance Scam: Nigerian man arrested for defrauding American citizen of $597,000
To play Scrabble, you dip your hand into a small sack containing 100 tiles of calibrated English alphabets and scrabble for seven letters which you put on a rack, unscrambling them to form English words that you place on a tile board to earn a score. If you play all seven letters at once, bingo! – that’s a premium. A premium score gives you 50 additional marks to your original score.
In a video which went viral for its evilness, 73 years old Pa Areola Abraham was first shown kneeling and later prostrating on the floor as a nearby voice, which investigation said belonged to Ogunjobi, rained curses and death threats on him, his wife and children while physical assault lasted.
By his heartless conduct, the suspended king of Orile-Ifo, Òlórí-Òfo Abdulsemiu Ogunjobi, is likely not lettered enough to play the beautiful game called Scrabble. I’ll play some Scrabble with the letters of his village, O-R-I-L-E I-F-O, to x-ray the character of the bloodthirsty beast called king. Unscrambling the eight letters of the hamlet will give you many six, five, four, three and two-letter English anagrams.
However, I’m only going to dwell on the words that describe Ogunjobi, the misfit monarch, retired ruffian and serving scoundrel on the throne. O-R-I-L-E I-F-O will give you F-O-O-L. No be so? Na so. It will also give you F-O-O-L-E-R, F-O-I-L-E-R, O-I-L-E-R and O-R-I-O-L-E.
Are you following me, dear readers? Everyone knows who a fool is, except a fool. The F-O-O-L who calls himself a monarch feels that inasmuch as his face isn’t in the depressing video, he stands absolved. That assumption shows the shallow thinking of the low-cadre officials of the Nigeria Police. In the main, it’s this cadre of officers, with their sawdust thinking, that investigate, prosecute and mess criminal cases up in court.
A F-O-O-L-E-R is someone or a thing that fools, tricks or deceives someone. Ogunjobi has been living in a fool’s paradise, thinking himself a king when he’s worse than a slave. For years, he has masked his barbarity with braggadocio that indigenes of Orile-Ifo fearfully took his butterfly for an eagle, and he soared to perch on the sun…burnt he tumbled down broad daylight ashes.
A F-O-I-L-E-R is a person who frustrates, foils or defeats. As a retired police inspector, Ogunjobi should be a foiler of crime but his attack on the Ile Oluji-born Pa Abraham showed he must have been a foiler of innocent members of the public. Rather than be a legit F-O-I-L-E-R, he must have been an illegal bunkerer, an O-I-L-E-R in the corrupt Nigerian system. I need no ‘Ga’nu si’ alfa or a miracle-inventing pastor or fake babalawo to tell me that Ogunjobi never collected huge bribes while in the police. When you see the mouth of the grasscutter, you will know it can eat foliage.
READ ALSO:
- Reps panel: Ibadan, Warri, Lagoon among 31 proposed new states
- Liverpool thrash Tottenham 4-0 to reach League Cup final
- Decomposing body of kidnapped Anambra Lawmaker found near 2nd Niger bridge
Still scrabbling. When you shuffle the tiles O-R-I-L-E I-F-O, you will get O-R-I-O-L-E. An Oriole is a beautiful, vibrant songbird resplendent in its yellow and black or orange and black plumage. It is found in Europe and North America. Yellow and black colours are good on an oriole. Black and Orange colours are good on an oriole. But they are not good on Ogunjobi, whose skin typifies the mishmash Yellow Fever in Fela Anikulapo-Kuti’s 1976 monster hit.
A Yoruba anagram of O-R-I-L-E I-F-O is O-F-O. O-F-O means a misfortune or empty barrel. I thought Ogunjobi had the Ogun State Governor, Prince Dapo Abiodun; the Inspector General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun; and Aso Rock in his pocket when he boasted of being the owner of Nigeria, the police and that he could kill Abraham without repercussions. But as the empty barrel that he is, Ogunjobi couldn’t meet his bail conditions and has yet to be released from prison days after he was charged to court. I had thought he owned the Central Bank.
The police shouldn’t treat Ogunjobi with the gloves of camaraderie. He should be treated like a criminal suspect because Abraham said in the press conference facilitated by the Committee for the Defence of Human Rights that Ogunjobi had been involved in numerous murders in Orile-Ifo.
The score is now 2-2 between Osun and Ogun states. Osun scored the first goal with its Canadian jailbird king, who belches hemp smoke like a locomotive train. Also in Osun, we have a warmongering king in the Isokan Local Government Area, who called for mayhem in favour of the Peoples Democratic Party. In 2022, Ogun State scored its first goal when the Onifojege of Fojege, Nureni Oduwaye, blinded a chef for dancing with his queen. Ogunjobi has now equalised for Ogun State: 2-2.
The person who stole palm oil from the attic is less guilty than the one who collected the oil from the thief on the ladder and put it down. Yoruba traditional rulers dancing the dance of shame are less guilty than the politicians who enthrone them. During elections, politicians need hoodlums to kill, maim and snatch ballot boxes. After elections, some of the killers turn up to be rewarded with traditional stools. One of such hoodlums has Oshodi in his vice grip and he’s scheming to be rewarded with a crown.
I wonder what would have happened to the septuagenarian if Ogunjobi and his mob had met him on a lonely road at night. Governor Abiodun has taken a commendable step. He should prove he’s got the balls by going further to do what ex-Governor Olusegun Mimiko, did to a Deji of Akure, who publicly fought his wife.
Governor Abiodun, please, do the needful.
Email: [email protected]
Facebook: @Tunde Odesola
X: @Tunde_Odesola
Playing Scrabble with the murderous king of Orile-Ifo
Opinion
As foes and friends unite against Tinubu, by Farooq Kperogi

As foes and friends unite against Tinubu, by Farooq Kperogi
Although 2025 has only just begun, the Machiavellian maneuvers and the increasingly tensile, high-decibel political shrieks being emitted by politicians about the 2027 election might lead one to believe that the election will take place next year.
Of all the political realignments that are forming preparatory to the 2027 election, it’s the unity in political adversity between former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and former Governor Nasir El-Rufai that strikes me as the most intriguing.
El-Rufai feels understandably betrayed by his humiliating exclusion from the Bola Tinubu administration whose ascent to power he helped to facilitate with uncommon vim and vigor. Nonetheless, he is protesting his betrayal by making common cause with Atiku Abubakar whom he had serially stabbed in the back more treacherously than Tinubu has thrown him under the bus.
It is akin, in a way, to a soldier who, after leading a fierce battle to enthrone a king, finds himself cast out of the palace. Wounded and seething, he seeks refuge in the camp of an old mentor and ally whom he once betrayed in the heat of war, hoping that their shared resentment for the new ruler will be enough to overlook past treacheries.
Recall that El-Rufai consistently disclaimed any debt to Atiku Abubakar in his political rise even when leaked US Embassy cables quoted him as telling US Embassy officials that Atiku is the single most important reason he made an “accidental” detour to public service. Worse still, he was the lynchpin in President Olusegun Obasanjo’s all-out, no-holds-barred, scorched-earth decimation of Atiku’s presidential aspirations.
As I pointed out in my August 12, 2023, column titled “El-Rufai’s Betrayal and Akpabio’s Buffoonery,” it was El-Rufai who carried Obasanjo’s messages to Western embassies saying Atiku must never be allowed to be president.
READ ALSO:
- Study finds half of men worry over sex organ size
- Steps to report loan apps harassment on consumer protection website
- Land dispute: Court orders arrest of Bayelsa police commissioner
“On September 21, 2006, for instance, El-Rufai (allegedly)”met with the U.S. ambassador to Nigeria and the UK High Commissioner ‘under instruction’ from President Obasanjo to inform them of and seek their blessing to deny Atiku Abubakar the chance to succeed Obasanjo,” I wrote and characterized El-Rufai’s volte face as “a wild change of loyalties.”
Of course, it’s a banal fact of Third World life that betrayal is the lifeblood of partisan politics. So, there’s nothing out of the ordinary about El-Rufai’s duplicity. In any case, El-Rufai had also ridiculed Muhammadu Buhari as a bigot who was “serially unelectable” but later embraced him and even became the single most important reason why Buhari decided to run for president again, according to Buhari himself.
Yet, although Atiku must have developed a thick skin to perfidy (I am sure he, too, has stabbed quite a few people in the back in the course of his political career), I can’t help but wonder what goes on in his mind when he strategizes with El-Rufai toward the political containment of their common foe now.
Does he see El-Rufai as a repentant traitor seeking redemption, or merely as a desperate, scorned man whose newfound friendship is actuated by opportunistic political self-preservation rather than conviction?
Atiku will probably watch his hands closely and weigh his every word, knowing that today’s ally could easily be tomorrow’s betrayer.
Nevertheless, in the ruthless calculus of politics, perhaps Atiku understands that some alliances, however uneasy, are dictated not by trust, but by the urgency of a common enemy.
This sentiment underpins the rumored subterranean rapprochement between Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso.
A Tinubu-Kwankwaso alliance is projected to be a formidable checkmate for the emerging Atiku-El-Rufai coalition.
However, in all the alliances and re-alliances that are being formed and reformed and the boundaries of friendship and betrayal that are being negotiated and renegotiated, one thing has been remarkably missing: how to reverse the progressively worsening plight of common people.
The condition of poor people who are vulnerable to the whirlingly blinding vagaries of market forces is the cornerstone of my public intellection. This sprouts from my own experiential brushes with poverty growing up. Although I have escaped my past condition, I have not lost, and won’t ever lose, my empathy for the poor.
None of the people strategizing about taking over or retaining power in 2027 spares a thought for the seemingly irreversible death spiral that cruel neoliberal economics has visited on the masses of economically disinherited Nigerians. That worries me deeply.
READ ALSO:
- Lagos task force arrests 30 hoodlums at Ketu-Alapere, Oshodi
- Rivers: Gunshots fired as Fubara, Wike supporters clash at PDP secretariat
- Military happy about A/Court ruling on IPOB, says it’ll motivate to crush them
It is obvious that even so-called opposition politicians don’t have an alternative template for husbanding the economy. That’s why their criticism of the present torment has been muted at best. They all believe the state should be rolled back from the quotidian life of everyday folk and that governments have no responsibility to assist citizens to live decent, dignified lives.
This style of government frees people in power from the responsibility to be accountable to the people and the license to jettison the unwritten social contract they signed with the people.
They all want a country where, as I pointed out in the past, the economy will “grow” even if that causes the people to growl. “After the economy has ‘grown’ but the people still groan, where is the growth?” I wrote in my June 24, 2023.
That is precisely what is happening in Argentina, which is pursuing similar inhumane market-centric policies as Tinubu. Argentina’s populist rightwing president is getting plaudits for “growing” the economy while the people are growling in anguish.
He is being celebrated for achieving a budget surplus at the expense of deep deficits in people’s quality of life, at the cost of a recessionary economy that has plunged more than half of the country into extreme poverty. The Western press is also praising Tinubu’s “reforms.”
No politician, to my knowledge, is talking about a more compassionate, people-centered approach to managing the economy. Unfortunately, the people don’t seem to care. Maybe that’s why the politicians don’t care, either.
Or perhaps it’s the other way around: the politicians stopped caring first, numbing the people into apathy through years of airy promises and performative concern. When hardship becomes routine and disappointment a certainty, cynicism replaces hope, and survival takes precedence over ideals.
In such a climate, politics becomes a spectacle rather than a means of change, and the people, resigned to their fate, watch passively, expecting nothing and receiving exactly that.
Betrand Russell could very well be describing Nigeria’s situation when he wrote 1923 that “A very large percentage of English-speaking people really believe that the ills from which they suffer would be cured if a certain political party were in power. That is a reason for the swing of the pendulum.
“A man votes for one party and remains miserable; he concludes that it was the other party that was to bring the millennium. By the time he is disenchanted with all parties, he is an old man on the verge of death; his sons retain the belief of his youth, and the see-saw goes on.”
As foes and friends unite against Tinubu, by Farooq Kperogi
Farooq Kperegi is a renowned Nigerian columnist and United States-based Professor of Journalism.
Opinion
Farooq Kperogi: Why does Nigeria buy official cars every budget year?

Farooq Kperogi: Why does Nigeria buy official cars every budget year?
Ever since I started consciously monitoring the business of the government, I have always wondered why Nigeria’s yearly budgets unfailingly allocate astronomical amounts of money to buy the same items—cars, cutlery, furniture, etc.— that should last for years before needing replacement.
What happens to the items that are replaced every year? Who keeps them? And what necessitates the ritual of replacing items in perfect condition every year, especially for a country that says allocating money for subsidies to make life a little easier for people is too much of a burden?
I never wrote about this because I had assumed that there must be some arcane justification that I failed to grasp for this profligate annual budgetary ritual.
Not wanting to be an ultracrepidarian (as people who comment authoritatively on subjects they have little or no knowledge of are called), I had chosen to simply wonder in silence— or perhaps ask people in government why they expend scarce resources to change items in excellent conditions, something everyday folks never do.
However, House of Representatives member Bello El-Rufai, who represents Kaduna North Federal Constituency and whose privileged position as the son of a former minister and governor should give him an insider perspective on why this practice happens, piqued my curiosity when he questioned it during a parliamentary debate in December last year.
He quipped that since his boyhood every year’s budget has featured new computers, cars, utensils, and furniture even when these items don’t expire in a year.
“We need to cut down on costs.,” he said. “The recurrent expenditure issue exists in every budget. Even as a young person like myself, I see that we budget for vehicles every year, utensils every year. To open more revenue streams or block loopholes, we need to scrutinise these ministries’ budgets. If they bought vehicles last year, they should hold off because vehicles do not expire.”
The speech went viral because it resonated with vast swaths of Nigerians who had been caught up in what we call a “spiral of silence” in communication theory, which occurs when people suppress their opinions about an issue because they (often incorrectly) assume that their opinions are in the minority and therefore unwelcome.
READ ALSO:
- Four passengers, two crew members seriously injured in Lagos-US flight emergency landing
- NSCIA explains support for Qur’an festival
- Telecoms tariff will be reviewed periodically — Edun
That someone who is deeply inserted into the inner sanctum of power by reason of both birth and positional privilege has articulated a thought that had been hibernating in the minds of millions of Nigerians was liberating. It reassured many people that their gnawing doubts about the moral propriety of Nigeria’s ritualized budgetary prodigality are not ill-informed or out of line.
I thought the speech would ignite a soul-searching national conversation about Nigeria’s wasteful budgeting practices. However, it seems it didn’t. If it did, I must have missed it.
But let’s face it. There are not many regular people on the face of this earth who change their cars, computers, utensils, etc. every year. Even wealthy people use these items for a few years before changing them.
Why does a country whose governments routinely proclaim that they are too poor to be able to afford subsidizing the energy consumption of its struggling population spend stratospheric amounts of money to replenish one-year-old items for people in government every single year?
Each time I write about the immorality of visiting avoidable anguish on the Nigerian population through the withdrawal subsidies, the standard retort I get from neoliberal apologists who care more about the happiness of the “markets” than they do about the health and vitality of the people is, “where do you want the government to get the money to pay for subsidies?”
Well, how about from the same place where it gets the funds to change year-old items every year for government officials at the cost of billions of naira?
Just because Bello El-Rufai raised this issue and his fellow politicians didn’t shoot him down, at least to my knowledge, I got curious and researched what happens in other countries.
It turns out most wealthy nations of the world (who, by the way, extend various kinds of subsidies to their vulnerable populations) don’t replace cars, computers, and utensils every year as a matter of course.
In the United States, the official vehicles of the president and the vice president are not replaced every year. In fact, “The Beast,” as the presidential limousines of U.S. presidents have been called since 2001, “have largely been on eight-year cycles for the past 30 years,” according to Autoweek.com.
The most recent model of the presidential limousine was introduced in 2018. It replaced the previous version, which debuted in 2009 during President Barack Obama’s administration. So, President Donald Trump doesn’t have a brand new car.
READ ALSO:
- Ekiti govt speaks on reported establishment of state sharia court
- Only 6,000 medical consultants left in Nigeria – MDCAN
- FG approves disbursement of N4bn to extremely poor Nigerians
Although the official vehicles for the president and the vice president have an eight-year replacement cycle, they undergo periodic upgrades to incorporate the latest security features, including communications, armor, and defensive capabilities. That’s more economical than buying brand new cars every year just for the sake of it.
Members of the U.S. Congress (that is, members of the House of Representatives and the Senate) don’t have funds specifically allocated to them for the purchase of official or personal cars. They only receive allowances and benefits that may cover travel-related expenses.
Most members of Congress don’t buy cars. They instead opt to lease cars using their congressional office budget called “Representational Allowance” for House members and “Senate office funds” for Senators), and lease terms typically range from 2 to 4 years. That means they may switch vehicles periodically based on lease expiration.
Only high-ranking Congressional officials (such as the Speaker and the Senate Majority Leader) or those facing security threats use government-provided vehicles for official duties.
I also found that the replacement cycle for vehicles used by U.S. government agencies ranges from 3 to 5 years.
The guidelines established by the General Services Administration (GSA), which manages the federal fleet, say sedans and light-duty vehicles should be changed every 3 to 5 years or after or after they rack up 60,000 to 75,000 miles, whichever comes first.
Vans and trucks are changed every 5 to 7 years or 100,000 to 150,000 miles, whichever comes first.
Law enforcement and emergency vehicles are replaced every 3 to 6 years or after recording between 50,000 to 80,000 miles, with replacements based on performance, reliability, and safety concerns.
What happens to government vehicles that get replaced? According to the General Services Administration (GSA), most government vehicles, once they reach the end of their service life, are sold to the public through GSA Auctions, which is the federal government’s online auction platform.
Auctions are open to individuals, businesses, and local governments. But the vehicles can also be transferred to other government agencies or donated through programs like the Federal Surplus Personal Property Donation Program, which provides assets to eligible non-profits, educational institutions, and local governments.
Similarly, the replacement frequency of official vehicles for the UK Prime Minister and cabinet members is not yearly, as it is in Nigeria.
Although change of cars for UK government officials is not governed by a fixed schedule as it is in the U.S., the Government Car Service (GCS), an executive agency of the Department for Transport, manages the fleet of vehicles assigned to cabinet ministers and other officials and determines when they need to be changed.
In sum, most wealthy nations of the world don’t allocate funds every year for the replacement of non-perishable items used by government officials. It’s a wasteful practice that should have no place in a struggling country like Nigeria.
The funds allocated for the yearly needless replacement of cars, computers, utensils, etc. should instead be invested in programs and policies that bring relief to the people.
I hope Bello El-Rufai will move beyond rhetoric and galvanize support for legislation that will enshrine a 5-year replacement cycle for items that are currently replaced every year in Nigerian budgets. He would write his name in gold if he did that.
Farooq Kperogi is a renowned Nigerian columnist and United States-based Professor of journalism.
Farooq Kperogi: Why does Nigeria buy official cars every budget year?
-
Uncategorized2 days ago
UNIZIK expels female student who assaulted lecturer
-
metro2 days ago
Obasa: Real reasons behind his removal, beyond gov ambition
-
metro3 days ago
Betty Akeredolu blames spiritualists for husband’s death, says prayers don’t cure cancer
-
International2 days ago
How USAID funded Boko Haram – Scott Perry, US lawmaker
-
Business3 days ago
MTN apologises, says 200% data price increase a mistake
-
metro2 days ago
Afenifere leader Ayo Adebanjo dies at 96
-
Entertainment3 days ago
Tuface’s mother begs Natasha to let her son go (Video)
-
metro2 days ago
Morayo Afolabi-Brown attacks Natasha for dating Tuface