West African leaders said they would deploy a standby force of troops to potentially intervene to restore democracy in Niger, where the president was deposed in a July 26 coup.

The announcement came on Thursday at an emergency meeting of the Economic Community of West African States in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, after Niger’s ruling military junta ignored the regional bloc’s deadline to reinstate President Mohamed Bazoum.

“No option is taken off the table, including the use of force as a last resort. If we don’t do it, no one else will do it for us,” said Nigerian President Bola Tinubu, who currently chairs ECOWAS. “I hope that through our collective efforts we can bring about a peaceful resolution as a roadmap to restoring stability and democracy in Niger. All is not lost yet.”

It wasn’t immediately clear how the ECOWAS Standby Force will be deployed. Any intervention would have to be led by Nigeria, the region’s most populous and influential country and its biggest military. But Tinubu has already faced pushback from politicians in Nigeria’s north, which shares a more than 1,000-mile border and cultural ties with Niger.

The bloc, which pledged to enforce asset freezes and travel bans on those hindering the return to democracy, said it would continue to prioritize diplomacy in Niger. It’s the region’s sixth coup in the last three years and has also brought condemnation from Western countries including France and the US, which together have thousands of troops stationed in the country. Niger is a key international ally in the global fight against jihadists in the region.

Bazoum was overthrown last month by a group of soldiers led by General Abdourahamane Tiani. The junta failed to meet a deadline set by regional leaders to relinquish power by Aug. 6.

Junta members told US Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, who visited Niger this week, that they would kill Bazoum if there was any regional military intervention to restore his rule, the Associated Press cited two unidentified Western officials as saying.

Bazoum is being deprived of food, water and electricity at an army camp where he’s been held captive for the past two weeks, according to people familiar with the matter. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres issued a statement voicing concern over the “deplorable living conditions” being imposed on the president and his family. ECOWAS said it would hold the junta “fully and solely responsible” for Bazoum’s safety and security.

On Thursday, the junta announced the appointment of a 21-member cabinet, naming military officers to the key posts of defense, security and interior ministers. Ali Lamine Zeine, who was appointed as prime minister earlier this week, was also given the finance portfolio.

If it is ultimately successful, the coup will create a belt of military-run countries from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea, most of which are friendlier with Russia than with the West.

Bloomberg

Niger’s junta told a top U.S. diplomat that they would kill deposed President Mohamed Bazoum if neighboring countries attempted any military intervention to restore his rule, two Western officials told The Associated Press.

They spoke to the AP shortly before the West African bloc ECOWAS said it had directed the deployment of a “standby force” to restore democracy in Niger, after its deadline of Sunday to reinstate Bazoum expired.

The threat to the deposed president raises the stakes both for ECOWAS and for the junta, which has shown its willingness to escalate its actions since it seized power on July 26.

Niger was seen as the last country in the Sahel region south of the Sahara Desert that Western nations could partner with to counter jihadi violencelinked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group that has killed thousands and displaced millions of people. The international community is scrambling to find a peaceful solution to the country’s leadership crisis.

Representatives of the junta told U.S. Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland of the threat to Bazoum during her visit to the country this week, a Western military official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.

A U.S. official confirmed that account, also speaking on condition of anonymity, because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

The threats from both sides escalate tensions but hopefully nudge them closer to actually talking, said Aneliese Bernard, a former U.S. State Department official who specialized in African affairs and is now director of Strategic Stabilization Advisors, a risk advisory group.

“Still, this junta has escalated its moves so quickly that it’s possible they do something more extreme, as that has been their approach so far,” she cautioned.

Nine leaders from the 15-member West African bloc met Thursday in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, to discuss their next steps.

Speaking after the talks, ECOWAS commission president Omar Alieu Touray said he could only reaffirm the decisions by “the military authorities in the subregion to deploy a standby force of the community.”

Financing had been discussed and "appropriate measures have been taken,” he said.

He blamed the junta for any hardship caused by the sanctions imposed on Niger and said further actions by the bloc would be taken jointly.

“It is not one country against another country. The community has instruments to which all members have subscribed to,” he said.

A former British Army official who has worked in Nigeria told The Associated Press the ECOWAS statement could be seen as the green light to begin assembling their forces with the ultimate aim of restoring constitutional order.

With regards to the use of force, the official, who was not authorized to speak to the media, said there was currently nothing in place other than Nigerian forces. Without enablers and the support of other regional armies, it’s unlikely they’d enter, the official said.

ECOWAS has imposed harsh economic and travel sanctions on Niger, but analysts say it may be running out of options as support fades for intervention. The bloc has failed to stem past coups in the region: Niger is the fourth of its member states to undergo a coup in the last three years.

Nnamdi Obasi, a senior adviser with the Crisis Group think tank, said ECOWAS should further explore diplomacy in Niger.

“The use of force could lead to unintended and catastrophic consequences with unpredictable outcomes,” he said, warning that a military intervention could also trigger a “major regional conflict” between democratic governments and an alliance of military regimes.

The wider African Union has yet to weigh in on this crisis.

“The AU Peace and Security Council could well overrule this ECOWAS decision if it felt that wider peace and security on the continent was threatened by an intervention,” said Cameron Hudson, a former official for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

“Any coup that has succeeded beyond 24 hours has come to stay. So, as it is, they are speaking from the point of strength and advantage,” said Oladeinde Ariyo, a security analyst in Nigeria. “So, negotiating with them will have to be on their terms.”

The junta has cut ties with France and exploited popular grievances toward its former colonial ruler. It also has asked for help from the Russian mercenary group Wagner, which operates in a handful of African countries and has been accused of committing human rights abuses.

Moscow is using Wagner and other channels of influence to discredit Western nations, asserted Lou Osborn , an investigator with All Eyes on Wagner, a project focusing on the group.

Tactics include using social media to spread rumors, mobilize demonstrations and spread false narratives, Osborn said.

She pointed to a Telegram post on Wednesday by an alleged Wagner operative, Alexander Ivanov, asserting that France had begun the “mass removal of children” likely to be used for slave labor and sexual exploitation.

Neither Russia's government nor Wagner responded to questions.

Meanwhile, Niger's approximately 25 million people are feeling the impact of the sanctions.

Some neighborhoods in the capital, Niamey have little access to electricity and there are frequent power cuts across the city. The country gets up to 90% of its power from Nigeria, which has cut off some of the supply.

Since the coup, Hamidou Albade, 48, said he's been unable to run his shop on the outskirts of Niamey because there's been no electricity. He also works as a taxi driver but lost business because a lot of his foreign clients have left.

“It's very difficult, I just sit at home doing nothing,” he said. Still, he supports the junta. “We’re suffering now, but I know the junta will find a solution to get out of the crisis,” he said.

Bloomberg

A former Director, Civil Society of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Presidential Campaign Council (PCC), Najatu Muhammed, has said the declaration of war on Niger Republic by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) led by President Bola Tinubu is a ploy to distract Nigerians from the proceedings of the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT). 

Najatu, in a statement yesterday, called on Nigerians to stand united in calling the ECOWAS leaders to order by denouncing violence and addressing the devastating consequences of war on human lives and societies. 

She said, “Such despicable action in the name of democracy is not only condemnable, but also unacceptable. Today in Nigeria, we have Tinubu being supported by France after the most controversial election declaration in the history of our country. 

“If Nigeria is at war, Tinubu can declare a state of emergency or a martial law that will allow him remain in power indefinitely, putting aside any tribunal or judicial process challenging his eligibility to even contest the election. 

“With the backing of France and other colonial powers, he will deploy security forces to quell any form of protest to his undemocratic and unconstitutional machinations. 

“Tinubu is aware that he is not eligible to contest. The Tribunal judges know this, APC as a political party also knows this. So, why is Tinubu so eager to go to war on behalf of France and with the backing of France in the name of democracy?” 

But speaking during the 12th National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting of the APC on Thursday last week in Abuja, Tinubu described the 2023 presidential election as the most credible in the history of Nigeria.

Daily Trust

The naira fell to an all-time low of N950 to a dollar at the parallel market on Thursday afternoon.

The figure represents a N53 or 5.9 percent depreciation compared to the N897 it traded earlier this week.

Bureaux De Change (BDC) operators in Lagos who spoke to our correspondent said that there is high demand for foreign currency in the street market.

The street traders, popularly known as ‘abokis’ put the buying price of the dollar at N935 and the selling price at N950, leaving a profit margin of N15.

Meanwhile, currency traders in the Agbara area of Ogun state said they are currently buying the local currency at N920/$ and selling it for N940 per dollar.

“Dollar is scarce now. The rate keeps going up and I don’t even know why. Despite that, people are still coming to buy the little they can get,” Aliyu, A BDC operator in the market, told TheCable.

At the investors and exporters (I&E) window, the local currency depreciated by 3.28 percent against the dollar to close at N782.38/$ on Wednesday, according to FMDQ OTC Securities Exchange, a platform that oversees foreign-exchange trading in Nigeria.

An exchange rate of N800 to the dollar was the highest rate recorded within the day’s trading before it settled at N782.38.

The total value of trades recorded at the I&E window on Wednesday was $60.26 million.

In mid-June, the CBN introduced major reforms that disrupted the foreign exchange market scope.

Prominent among the policies include the unification of all segments of the forex exchange (FX) market ( allowing the local currency to freely float) and the re-introduction of the “willing buyer, willing seller” model at the I&E window.

Since the government unified the exchange rate windows, the naira has consistently experienced fluctuations at the official window and a surge in depreciation at the black market.

Last month, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), an arm of The Economist of London, predicted that the Nigerian government would go back to a system where they have more control over the exchange rate.

The UK-based platform said the move would be taken to try and stop the naira from losing its value much further.

The Cable

The national and state house of assembly elections petition tribunal in Kano has sacked Muktar Yarima, candidate of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), as a member representing Tarauni federal constituency.

In a judgement delivered on Thursday, the three-member tribunal ruled that the primary school certificate submitted by Yarima to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to support his qualifications, was forged.

Yarima was declared the winner of the Tarauni federal constituency poll after scoring 26,273 votes to defeat Hafizu Kawu of the All Progressives Congress (APC), who scored 15,931 votes.

But Kawu, a one-time member of the House of Representatives, seeking re-election, lodged a petition challenging Yarima’s victory on the grounds of certificate forgery.

In his petition, Kawu also submitted that irregularities, including over-voting and non-compliance with the electoral act, marred the election.

The tribunal in the judgment ruled that the NNPP candidate was guilty of certificate forgery.

The court also said that the political party did not have a candidate in the election, adding that all votes cast for Yerima were invalid.

Consequently, the tribunal ordered INEC to withdraw the certificate of return given to Yarima.

The Cable

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Russian missile hits hotel used by UN in Zaporizhzhia -officials

A Russian missile struck a hotel in the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia on Thursday evening, leaving one dead and 16 injured, Ukrainian officials said.

National police said an Iskander missile hit the city at 7:20 p.m. (1620 GMT).

"Zaporizhzhia. The city suffers daily from Russian shelling. A fire broke out in a civilian building after the occupiers hit it with a missile," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said.

Zaporizhzhia Governor Yuriy Malashko said the 16 injured included four children.

Pictures and video shared by officials showed a big crater, wrecked cars and a badly damaged four-storey building with a hotel sign.

Local media reported the damaged building is Reikartz Hotel in the city centre on the bank of the Dnipro River.

The United Nations staff used the hotel when they worked in the town, said Denise Brown, the humanitarian coordinator for Ukraine, in an emailed statement.

"I am appalled by the news that a hotel frequently used by United Nations personnel and our colleagues from NGOs supporting people affected by the war has been hit by a Russian strike in Zaporizhzhia shortly ago," she said. "I have stayed in this hotel every single time I visited Zaporizhzhia."

It was the second strike on Zaporizhzhia in as many days. Two young women and a man were killed and nine other people were wounded in a Russian missile attack on Wednesday.

** Ukraine announces 'humanitarian corridor' for ships stuck in Black Sea ports

Ukraine announced a "humanitarian corridor" in the Black Sea on Thursday to release cargo ships trapped in its ports since the outbreak of war, a new test of Russia's de facto blockade since Moscow abandoned a deal last month to let Kyiv export grain.

At least initially, the corridor would apply to vessels such as container ships that have been stuck in Ukrainian ports since the February 2022 invasion, and were not covered by the deal that opened the ports for grain shipments last year.

But it could be a major test of Ukraine's ability to reopen sea lanes at a time when Russia is trying to reimpose its de-facto blockade, having abandoned the grain deal last month. Shipping and insurance sources expressed concerns about safety.

In a statement, the Ukrainian navy said the routes had already been proposed by Ukraine directly to the International Maritime Organization (IMO).

The routes would "primarily be used for civilian ships which have been in the Ukrainian ports of Chornomorsk, Odesa, and Pivdenny since the beginning of the full-scale invasion by Russia on February 24, 2022."

"Vessels whose owners/captains officially confirm that they are ready to sail in the current conditions will be allowed to pass through the routes," the statement said, adding that risks remained from mines and the military threat from Russia.

Oleh Chalyk, a spokesperson for Ukraine's navy, told Reuters: "The corridor will be very transparent, we will put cameras on the ships and there will be a broadcast to show that this is purely a humanitarian mission and has no military purpose."

There was no immediate response to requests for comment from Moscow.

Deputy U.N. spokesperson Farhan Haq said: "Safe navigation for merchant shipping was one of the benefits of the Black Sea Initiative, which we hope can resume."

"The obligations of International Humanitarian Law on land and sea must be upheld."

Shipping and insurance sources familiar with Ukraine said they were not informed about the new corridor and there were questions over its viability. It was unlikely most ships would agree to sail at the moment, they said.

"Insurers and their backing banks will have to agree and they may say we do not like the risks," one insurance source said.

"The possibility of multiple seafarer deaths (in the event of a ship being hit) has not been addressed, so this is another major question," a shipping industry source said.

STUCK IN PORTS

Around 60 commercial ships have been stuck in the Ukrainian ports since Russia's invasion, their fates unresolved by the deal that allowed grain exports to resume in July last year.

Many of the ships' crews have been evacuated, leaving locally hired Ukrainian staff to help look after the vessels.

Since abandoning the grain deal, Russia has said it will treat any ships approaching Ukrainian ports as potential military vessels, and their flag countries as combatants on the Ukrainian side. Kyiv has responded with a similar threat to ships approaching Russian or Russian-held Ukrainian ports.

The United Nations has said Russia's decision to quit the deal risks worsening a global food crisis, hurting poor countries the worst, by keeping grain from one of the world's biggest exporters off the market.

Moscow says it will return to the grain deal only if it receives better terms for its own exports of food and fertiliser. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, co-sponsor of the grain deal alongside the U.N., says he hopes to persuade Russian President Vladimir Putin to rejoin it at talks this month.

"I think it will not be an exaggeration to say that President Erdogan is probably the only man in the world who can convince President Putin to return to the Black Sea Grain Initiative," Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitro Kuleba told Reuters in an interview on Thursday.

A German grain trader told Reuters: "People want more details about the Ukrainian temporary shipping channel announced today as it cannot work unless Russia gives a concrete commitment not to attack the ships."

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Poland admits Ukraine’s counteroffensive won’t succeed

Polish President Andrzej Duda, one of Kiev’s most ardent foreign backers, has predicted that Ukraine’s counteroffensive against Russian forces will likely fail. Duda, like his counterpart in Kiev, claimed that even more Western weapons were the answer.

“Does Ukraine have enough weapons to change the balance of the war and get the upper hand?” Duda asked the newspaper in an interview published on Thursday, before answering, “Probably, no.” 

“We know this by the fact that they’re not currently able to carry out a very decisive counteroffensive against the Russian military,” he continued. “To make a long story short, they need more assistance.”

Ukraine launched its long-awaited counteroffensive against Russian forces in early June, assaulting multiple points along the frontline from Zaporozhye to Donetsk Regions. However, the Russian military had spent several months preparing a dense and multi-layered network of minefields, trenches, and fortifications, which the Ukrainian side has thus far failed to overcome

Advancing through minefields without air support, Ukraine’s Western-trained and NATO-equipped units have suffered horrendous casualties, losing 43,000 troops and 4,900 pieces of heavy weaponry in just over two months, according to the most recent figures from the Russian Defense Ministry.

Recent media reports suggest that Kiev’s Western backers knew that Ukraine wasn’t ready to go on the offensive, but encouraged the operation nonetheless. Duda was among those cheerleading the counteroffensive, declaring in early June that the operation would lead to “the ousting of Russian military forces from all occupied territories.”

Like Duda, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky now blames his forces’ lack of success on the West, claiming that Ukraine did not receive enough munitions, weaponry, or training to succeed. Zelensky and his senior officials have repeatedly asked the US and its allies for F-16 fighter jets, long-range missiles, and anti-aircraft weaponry, claiming that this equipment will reverse Ukraine’s losing streak on the battlefield.

Moscow has repeatedly urged the West to stop “pumping” weapons into Ukraine, warning that continued military aid will only prolong the conflict and inflict more destruction upon Ukraine, without changing the final outcome.

** Zelensky will never negotiate with Putin – Ukrainian FM

If and when Kiev decides to negotiate with Moscow, it will not do so with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba said in an interview with the Italian outlet Corriere della Sera, published on Thursday.

Putin “has committed too many very serious crimes,” Kuleba, who is recovering from Covid-19, told the outlet over the telephone. “It is clear to us that we will never be able to see Putin and [Ukrainian President Vladimir] Zelensky sitting at the same table.”

“We can negotiate with Russia after the withdrawal of their troops from our territories, but not with Putin,” Kuleba insisted.

Asked if this would mean an escalation of the conflict, Kuleba argued that “the worst has already happened, nothing can surprise us anymore,” and that the war had been total from the beginning. 

“The counter-offensive will soon give us victories and we will continue to fight, we have no alternatives,” he added.

“It’s not easy for our soldiers to advance. But, eventually, we will,” Kuleba said of the offensive, which he described as “progressing slowly but steadily.” He maintained that time was on Ukraine’s side “for the simple fact that our military capabilities are growing, while Russia’s are decreasing,” and that Kiev is “counting on the fact that the war will end in our favor at some point.”

Kuleba made sure to thank Italy for the weapons and supplies it had delivered to Ukraine, noting that nothing would be enough “until we have won this war.” He also asked for even more artillery, ammunition, and anti-aircraft systems.

NATO-trained Ukrainian brigades, equipped with Western tanks and armored vehicles, have not been able to get past the Russian outposts on the southern front since early June, at a cost of an estimated 43,000 dead. Meanwhile, Russian troops have advanced in the north, threatening the Ukrainian hold on the key city of Kupiansk.

In October 2022, Zelensky banned any Ukrainian from negotiating with Putin. The following month, he proposed a “peace platform” that demanded unconditional Russian withdrawal from territories Kiev claims as its own, including Crimea. Kiev has insisted on that as the only acceptable framework for talks ever since. Russia has rejected it as a delusional ultimatum, adding that Ukraine recognizing reality is a prerequisite for any peace talks.

Reuters/RT

If President Bola Tinubu hit the ground running, it was because problems chased him into office. Yet, it wasn’t long before he tripped on a matter in which his genius has been acknowledged: forming his cabinet. 

One of his credentials for eight years as governor of Lagos, and even outside public office for 16 years, has been his gift for spotting talents and putting them to work. 

He campaigned on this record in the last election. You can therefore imagine the disappointment in some circles when he not only waited 60 days, nearly exhausting the time allowed by law, but then went on to release in two instalments, lists that have been widely criticised as an appeasement to the “old brigade.”

There are, of course, bright spots with a few professionals and proven hands. But a cabinet which features nine former governors, a number of who had lost elections or had been ministers before, gives the impression that Tinubu’s genius for talent hunting may have been captured by vested interests on the national stage. Has Abuja, the graveyard of good intentions, done its worst? Is Tinubu undone by pressure? Or are there forces in his inner circle taking advantage of the chaos to grab power?

Reality is more nuanced. We’ve been here before, over 20 years ago. Tinubu was not in charge at the centre then. He was governor in Lagos, a complex place to govern no doubt, but far less so than the “beast” called the Federal Republic of Nigeria. 

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo was also faced with choices similar to those that Tinubu wrestled for 60 days. It’s easy to forget now, but Obasanjo’s choice of ministers in his first term, much like those of Shehu Shagari in 1979, gives an idea of what potentially confronts a new president, especially one that is a product of a fragile and fraught political transition. 

In hindsight, Obasanjo is applauded for assembling perhaps what has, so far, been the best collection of ministers in the last nearly four decades.

But it was not so when he first got into office. For those who despise politicians intensely, sometimes with reasons, it might be useful to remember that Obasanjo’s first collection of ministers was a shambles of strange bedfellows. It was spiced with Second Republic politicians retrieved from the museums, and former military governors and army generals who ran the country before the #EndSARS generation was born.

I’m not kidding. Obasanjo’s first list of ministers contained such names as General David Jemibewon; General TY Danjuma; Tony Anenih; Col. Mohamed Bello Kaliel (rtd); Adamu Ciroma; Iyorchia Ayu, Dapo Sarumi; Alabo Graham-Douglas; Bola Ige; Sunday Afolabi; Hassan Adamu; and Haliru Bello.

Even Ojo Maduekwe, one of the masterminds of Daniel Kanu’s two-million-man march who threatened to go on exile if General Sani Abacha did not run for office, also made Obasanjo’s ministerial list. It was that unwieldy.

If the team were a flight crew, not many would have been comfortable to fly. Obasanjo knew that but had his reasons for choosing them. The country was just transiting from decades of military rule. He needed politicians who understood the country, and also military-politicians who could help him stabilise things and keep soldiers at bay, while he launched a shuttle diplomacy to rebuild the country’s battered image.

But trust Obasanjo, the old fox. Once he got his footing and at least part-paid his political IOUs, he shuffled his cabinet within months, followed by another shuffle in his second year, in which he weeded out a number of the worst performers. 

By his second term in 2003, the cub in him had become a tiger drawing in some of the best talents, but also making mince-meat of a good number, including his deputy, Atiku Abubakar. It’s a story triumphantly told in three volumes of Obasanjo’s book, My Watch.

It’s fair to feel disappointed by a few nominees in Tinubu’s lists who make the legend of Robin Hood look like a child’s play. Some have also expressed concern about the role of Chief of Staff, Femi Gbajabiamila, who has obviously set a new record as the country’s most expensive bespoke delivery service for political nominees’ list. 

Not a few curious eyebrows were raised when LEADERSHIP 

reported exclusively, for example, that against the ethics of international courier service, and in the midst of the screening, the integrity of the nominee lists was nearly undermined by allegations of “package tampering!”

I was genuinely concerned that the controversial news reports from the office of the Chief of Staff could make Mike Oghiadomhe, former Chief of Staff to President Goodluck Jonathan, look like an amateur. I’m not sure any Chief of Staff since 1999 has assumed and executed with a comparable degree of passion the task of dispatching nominees' lists the way Gbajabiamila has done so far.  

Those who know him well, famously called Gbaja-philes in Villa-pedia, however insist that his performance is out of the goodness of his heart; and so, I won’t let anyone put words into my mouth or ideas in my head about his sterling qualities. 

Since the Chief of Staff has taken over the function of the Senior Special Assistant (SSA) Liaison to the National Assembly as his own contribution to a leaner government, it is my humble submission that the positions of the two SSAs should be scrapped forthwith, at least to appease Labour. 

It is concerning, however, that at a time when Tinubu needs a strong inner circle to get things done, reports of a civil war, with his Chief of Staff at the heart of it, continue to engulf his government. From the election of presiding and principal officers in the 10th National Assembly to the nomination of ministers and God-knows-what-else, the story has been one of near complete Gbaja-nisation!

Yet, Tinubu’s job is cut out for him. He cannot blame anyone for what becomes of his presidency. If choosing the right team helped him get a lot done when he was much younger and stronger, then he needs that gift even more desperately in the midst of the present chaos. 

The tough, but necessary decisions he has taken already mean that if he has his eye on legacy, never mind a second term, then there’s very little time to settle IOUs or indulge internal strife. 

That’s not all. It also means that while Tinubu would hardly get any credit if the suspects in his cabinet perform, he would be blamed squarely if they fail and he alone would bear the brunt of the difference between expediency and necessity.

All said, when our obsession with Abuja has faded, perhaps in a week or two after the ministers have been assigned portfolios, we must quickly turn our attention to the states, a number of which offer the premium version of the atrocities we saw on the national stage in the last one week. 

** Ishiekwene is Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP

On Monday, August 7, the Senate confirmed 45 of the 48 ministerial nominees sent to it by President Bola Tinubu. Surprisingly, it deferred the confirmation of three nominees – former governor of Kaduna State, Nasir el-Rufai; a former senator from Taraba, Sani Danladi; and a nominee from Delta State, Stella Okotete – because of undisclosed security concerns.

Tinubu transmitted the names of the 48 nominees in three separate correspondences to the Senate on July 28, August 3 and August 4, the last list containing the names of Festus Keyamo, former Minister of State for Labour and Employment from Delta State and Mariya Mahmoud, a replacement for Maryam Shetty, whose nomination was withdrawn. Many Nigerians are perplexed at the development because nominees ought to have scaled the security hurdle before coming to the Senate. Does it mean that the Department of State Services, DSS, and other security agencies did not do due diligence?

I doubt! So, there must be something the powers-that-be are not telling Nigerians. But whatever that is, I will be pleasantly surprised if the three, particularly El-Rufai, is not cleared. If Tinubu wants him in his cabinet, then in his cabinet El-Rufai will be. After all, the senators have been rewarded handsomely for letting the nominees, including Bello Muhammad from Sokoto State, who got admission into the university with only two credits, off the hook lightly as disclosed by the “Uncommon Senate President” on Monday.

“In order to enable all of us enjoy our holidays, a token has been sent to our various accounts by the Clerk of the National Assembly,” Akpabio, grandmaster in the art of procuring loyalty, enthused before the adjournment motion was moved to the embarrassment of his colleagues, who knew that he was on hot mic. Apparently, the excitable and high-strung Senate president was carried away.

When the video started trending on Wednesday, a colleague of mine and fellow Chevening scholar from Kaduna State sent me a text message: “This guy (Akpabio) is not fit to lead the Senate. I was shocked when I heard him live.” My response was straightforward: “I am shocked that you were shocked that Akpabio said that.” To be fair, what is happening on Akpabio’s watch has been the norm since 1999. Perhaps, the only difference is that given his pedigree, he will take the art a notch higher than his predecessors. The money paid into their accounts to enjoy their holidays was a back rub from an appreciative presidency for a job well done. As Shehu Sani noted on Wednesday, “crediting the legislators accounts are done under mute button, the Uncommon Senate President mistakenly pressed the alarm”.

Nevertheless, I am knocked for six that some Nigerians are yet to come to the realisation that whatever we thought were the shortcomings of the Ahmad Lawan-led ninth Senate, the tenth Senate will be far worse. Akpabio will not only jump whenever Tinubu wishes, he will ask how high. But that is a matter for another day. Back to Tinubu’s 48-member cabinet. First, it is too bloated for a country on the edge of bankruptcy and in dire need of cutting down the cost of governance. But the second and most important issue which Tinubu’s cabinet has raised is his contempt for the Southeast.

With the highly skewed nominations, the president simply intensified his war of attrition against a region whose only crime is that one of their own, Peter Obi, had the guts to run for the presidency of his country. In assembling his 48-member cabinet, Tinubu willfully shortchanged the region and violated the Federal Character principle by refusing to accede them a zonal representation as he did to others. This shabby, in-your-face treatment for a zone with equal stake like others in the Nigeria project is condemnable.

The 1999 Constitution stipulates that there must be one minister from each of the 36 states of the federation. Presidents have also used their discretion to add six more ministers, one from each of the six geo-political zones in what is now known as zonal representation to bring the number to 42. Tinubu added 12 more ministers to the list, thus bringing the number to 48. But an analysis of the ministerial spread shows that the Southeast is the only region without a zonal representation under Tinubu’s cynical watch. Ordinarily, the Southeast as the only zone with five states is grossly shortchanged in terms of political representation. In the Senate, they have only 15 senators while four other zones with six states each – Southwest, Southsouth, Northeast, Northcentral – have 18 senators and Northwest with seven states has 21 senators.

Not only that, by virtue of the inequity in the number of states, all the other five zones are already ahead of the Southeast in the constitutionally mandatory allocation of ministers – Northwest (7), Northeast, Northcentral, Southwest, Southsouth with six ministers each while Southeast has only five. If fairness and equity were to be the lightening rod of governance in Nigeria, the Southeast is the zone where the president should use his discretionary power to give extra slot(s). But anyone who expects Tinubu to do that neither knows the man nor his politics.

In his distribution of the extra ministerial slots, he gave additional three ministers each to Northwest and Southwest, making it a total of 10 and nine ministers respectively for the zones; Northeast, Northcentral and Southsouth got two extra ministers, a total of eight for each of the zones. Thus, in the 48-member cabinet, Southeast has an insignificant 10.4 per cent representation. This exclusionary absurdity is unconscionable. The implication is that rather than rejecting, Tinubu is doubling down on Buhari’s politics of exclusion playbook as enunciated at the U.S. Institute of Peace in July 2015.

For those who may have forgotten, here is Buhari’s doctrine. Tasked by Pauline Baker, President Emeritus of The Fund for Peace, on inclusive government, Buhari retorted: “I hope you have a copy of the election results. The constituents, for example, gave me 97 percent (of the vote) cannot in all honesty be treated on some issues with constituencies that gave me five per cent.”

Tinubu is on the same trajectory. But isn’t that view harebrained, grossly mistaken and mischievous? Right now, Tinubu’s party, the All Progressives Congress, APC, holds sway in two of the five Southeast states – Imo and Ebonyi. The three other dominant political parties – Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, is in power in Enugu, the All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA, dominates Anambra politics and Labour Party calls the shot in Abia. So, APC controls 40 per cent of the states in the Southeast.

Granted, Tinubu did not win any of the Southeast states in the presidential election, but even in the Southsouth, without the electoral antics of former Rivers governor, Nyesom Wike, which gave him the State, he did not win anywhere else in the region. Labour Party carried the day in Edo, Cross River and Delta states while PDP took Akwa Ibom and Bayelsa. Even in the Southwest, PDP won in Osun State while Labour took Lagos. So, why is Tinubu singling out the Southeast for reprisals? 

As if that was not bad enough, the president ensured that the Southeast got what is unarguably the worst quality of representation since the return of democracy in 1999. He clearly sidelined the region’s first eleven and went for people who will be beholden to interests that are adversarial to the region. The only reason why anyone would appoint Uju Kennedy-Ohanenye, Nkeruika Onyejeocha, Uche Nnaji and Doris Uzoka as ministers from Southeast is to rub insult into the injury of under-representation. Tinubu’s war against Southeast cannot be more brazen but he will fail just like his predecessor failed.

In October 2022, New York City officials unveiled a new bike lane on Schermerhorn street, one of the most dangerous and heavily trafficked streets in downtown Brooklyn and somewhere I had always avoided on my bike. Unless I was a religious reader of transportation department press releases (I’m not), I would have no way of knowing the lane existed – except that very same morning, my Apple Maps app sent me on the new Schermerhorn bike lane, instead of hurtling down Dean Street. By the time I was taking my return route, it was busy with cyclists.

For Apple to know the lane was open, it had to have updates from the Adams’s administration, as well as, presumably, hundreds of other city governments around the world. How was the company pulling it off? And it’s not just cycling: it also knows the placement of the trees in Central Park, when the bus is coming, and whether a dive bar takes contactless payments or is cash only.

“It’s a huge effort,” says Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice-president of services and the man with the responsibility for Maps alongside services such as iCloud, Apple TV+ and Apple Music. “You say something like we’re going to introduce cycling – how big of a deal is it? Well, if you want to do it really well, it turns out, it’s a big deal. Because you got bike lanes, you don’t want to put people in a more difficult position, so we let them choose if you stay away from heavy traffic roads. So there’s a lot of a lot of effort and detail that goes into creating a great cycling map.”

Apple Maps’ offering might surprise people who remember its disastrous launch in 2012, which the Guardian described as the company’s “first significant failure in years”. Users were more than furious – they were lost, sometimes dangerously so. In Australia, police had to rescue tourists from the huge Murray-Sunset national park, after Maps placed the city of Mildura in the wrong place by more than 40 miles. Some of the motorists located by police had been stranded for 24 hours without food or water. In Ireland, ministers had to complain directly to Apple after a cafe and gardens called “Airfield” was designated by the service as an actual airport.

But mostly the map was just glitchy and unhelpful, its directions always a little off kilter. Users revolted and Apple made a rare retreat, allowing Google Maps to be used as the default on many iPhone apps and apologizing for the product.

But since then it has spent an inordinate amount of money and time improving maps. It has sent out teams worldwide, not just in vans with cameras but on bikes and on foot, walking in places where aerial mapping technology can’t provide enough information.

Over the past month, I’ve spoken with engineers at Apple about how Maps started to get good. They told me that as well as data from city officials, including digital dashboards that update maps automatically, they also monitor changes from riders themselves. They can see if there is an unusually large number of people riding bikes in a particular location and then send someone with a backpack or a car to see if there’s a new bike path in that area. Sometimes they get this information before it’s been officially recorded by the government.

These kinds of techniques mean that while Apple has become more competitive with Waze and Google Maps on driving instructions, it’s on cycling and public transit that Apple Maps has built perhaps the most impressive resource yet available – with incredibly detailed instructions than can open up a city even for a nervous cyclist (Eddy Cue, unsurprisingly, describes it as the best cycling map in the world).

Cycling is one of the only silver bullets in the fight against climate change. It’s cheaper, healthier and often faster than driving – and crucially, a person who choses a bike over a car just once a day reduces their carbon emissions from transportation by about 67%. But many people are rightly terrified of getting on a bike. Accidents remain high, and although cities including London, Paris and New York have done a lot to improve cycle lanes in the past decade, it’s very difficult to make sure you’re always cycling the safest route without an incredibly detailed knowledge of a city’s streets. Often governments close streets to cars, or build protected cycle lanes, but then it takes months before cyclists actually discover them.

But with one earbud in and Siri activated, you can have a friendly voice guide you through a foreign city, drifting you towards cycle lanes and safer routes and navigating often complex one-way systems.

It’s not perfect; in New York, the cycling instructions don’t seem to know what times bus lanes are active, so on weekends the app will send you down congested streets instead of nearby cycle paths. In my hometown of London, where a lot of cycling routes are pathways in woods or through reservoirs, it has a habit of sending you down these dark and sometimes dangerous paths at night when the streets are much quicker and mostly empty. Engineers at Apple told me that routes were designated through a points-based algorithm in which points are tied to factors such as speed, traffic, distances and hills and then the routes with the highest points are offered to the user – so in theory, the points system can be refined over time to take in more factors.

Those kinds of algorithms are something mapmakers of even 30 years ago could not have imagined, and they are starting to have an effect on our real world.

In the post-apocalyptic, post-internet world in HBO’s The Last Of Us, there’s a scene in which the main character Joel, having spent weeks traversing an icy wasteland, happens upon a small cottage inhabited by an old couple. He holds them hostage at gunpoint to make a single demand: not food or shelter, but to know where he is on his map.

Joel’s desperation is familiar to the lost and weary of the last millennium, when the vast majority of maps were drawn the same way: an aerial view of streets, the reader left to work out their location using street names or landmarks. That’s normally OK in the throng of a city, but once you move to woods, parks or beaches (or an apocalyptic zombie world), such a map could quickly become useless.

That all changed with the arrival of the little blue dot – the constantly updated “you are here!” on our smartphones, one of the most fundamental shifts in our view of the world and our space within it. The ability to see not just our surroundings but our position in relation to them has made the world infinitely more navigable. Maps now transform in relation to us; north can be on the bottom or to the side; the world spins around us. Hiking maps like AllTrails have taken things further, drawing a line wherever the walker goes, so they can see how far they have veered from the path and in difficult situations, retrace their steps back home – a map being made in real time.

It feels like these tools have been around for ever, but Google Maps only launched a mobile app in 2007, and it only began offering turn-by-turn navigation for cars in 2009. Although satnavs had been available for longer, the ability of every person with a smartphone to know exactly where they were revolutionised how we saw our world and came close to ending one of the most common states of being for the previous millennia – being lost.

Now, of course, we have the opposite problem: we’ve become so reliant on our maps that our sense of direction has been shot to pieces. Some research says the brain’s hippocampus is actually smaller for people who rely on GPS. But there are many things the blue dot can’t tell you. Is your short walk to work actually a strenuous hill climb? Is it OK go jogging through the woods on your summer vacation, or are you encroaching on private property? Is a bike lane protected from traffic or a bumpy track? That’s the next frontier of digital maps and the implications could be even bigger than the dot.

“Most people think of maps as driving, but they play a much bigger role than that,” Cue says. “Maps play a big role in dining, in cycling, in air travel … where we now have detailed maps of restaurants and bathrooms inside terminals. It’s a huge part of what an iPhone is.”

In some cities, Apple Maps now has detailed drawings of landmarks and multi-city transit instructions that work across systems and even across countries.

These changes in maps also change our behavior and our environment. There are hundreds of stories of Waze destroying quiet neighborhoods by revealing once secret shortcuts to every driver. They can also transform the fortunes of businesses that show prominently on the maps, and push millions to take public transit options they might not know were available.

But for some in the cartography community, lack of transparency in such systems creates serious issues. Google has a secret algorithm selecting the businesses and landmarks that appear prominently, leaving many small businesses wondering why they’re not showing up.

As Cue himself recognises, “there are really only two mapmakers left in the world, in ourselves and Google” – and that monopoly of information, says Clancy Wilmott, a professor specialising in digital cartographies at Berkley, has consequences.

Wilmott worries that these maps, now dominant, lack information that more traditional maps like Britain’s Ordnance Survey (OS) still have: “An OS map shows you where a stile is for horses; I’m not sure Google Maps even knows what a stile is. When you’re surveying a space, you find that information but geo AI doesn’t have that information. I’m from Australia – you can look at a space where Google Maps might tell you to walk a route through tall long grass, but if you’re from a place you know: there will be snakes in there. Most of this kind of mapping, because it was developed out of urban maps, privileges urban information, not rural information.”

Willmott is a strong advocate for publicly owned mapping services but recognises that no government body has the kind of infrastructure that Apple does. For their part, the Apple Maps engineers I spoke with acknowledged that they were more reliant on AI, aerial photography and existing data in rural settings and were focusing on expanding to more cities. But they are also experimenting with new ways of reaching non-urban areas that don’t have such obvious landmarks and street names. Right now, the app will tell you to “turn right at the stop sign”, or “at the lights, go straight over”, but they want to expand the kinds of objects included. Maps engineers hope that in countries where street names are often unclear, the app might be able to route you based on landmarks alone.

“If I was giving you instructions to my house, besides giving you the address, I wouldn’t just tell you to turn left, turn right. I’d say: ‘Once you’re on my street and you see the brick column, that driveway right after is mine.’ We’ve been working hard on that as well,” Cue says, adding that the future might be Siri telling you to “make a left at the yellow house”.

Even so, he acknowledges that unlike many of their other products, Apple Maps will never really be finished.

“Things are changing constantly over the world,” says Cue. “The cool thing is, there’s always more to do. It’s truly a lifetime’s work.”

The Guardian UK