Last week the campaign for Britain to stay or leave the European Union hot up as the leaders of the groups took time off to participate in a live televised Sky TV debate. Although it was not a face to face debate, it was very engaging and also offered the two camps opportunities to reach out to their audiences and also win the undecided voters.

The fall in oil prices alone is enough for the blind to see that Nigeria is financially down. President Buhari must therefore tighten government’s belt and block all leakages. In so doing, he has to have in his sub-consciousness that the Nigeria ghost is special. Thus, the term “ghosts” as used in this article is more than a non-existent entity that functions as though it is alive when in reality it is not. The Nigerian ghost is in various forms and shapes just as it presents itself in several dimensions. Its history easily reveals a rather large figure that is disturbingly high enough to make anyone wonder if there are not more ghosts than the ordinary workers in our public sector. As far back as April 2001, the then Accountant General of the Federation Chief Joseph Naiyeju revealed that there were 40,000 ‘ghost workers’ in the Nigerian government service. Two years later, 24,000 ghosts were identified in the pension’s unit of the Ministry of Defence alone. The Information Ministry allegedly had 40% under-qualified staff and 20 percent ghost workers. The Federal Civil Service Commission authenticated the revelation with a report that over 30 percent of the workers on its payroll were phantom staff.

For instance, there is no way Nigeria’s economy could have been successfully diversified just after three hundred and sixty-five days in office. This is because, assuming that the federal government puts in place appropriate policies that, if implemented, would lead to increased output from the manufacturing sector or guarantee more efficient and profitable exploitation of solid minerals and other viable sources of foreign exchange, several years of consistent and determined efforts are required before positive results would begin to manifest in these sectors. And, concerning the campaign promises to achieve parity with the dollar and increase Nigeria’s share in the international oil market, it is clear to anyone with a simulacrum of knowledge about the determinants of global currency regime and uncertainties in the demand and supply equation of oil that none of these promises can be realised in this dispensation. Having said all this, I am sure that President Buhari and the sycophants around him are aware, as already pointed out, that one year is indeed enough for well-informed Nigerians to reach a reasonable judgement on the overall direction his government is headed regarding the key sectors of our national life.

Frustrated by the magnitude of the miracles attending Jesus’ ministry, the chief priests and religious elders of the Jews challenged him in the temple. They demanded to know by what authority he was doing the things he was doing and who it was who gave him the authority.

This is second longest series since this column first appeared in 1994. The record holder is till the series on Petroleum Technology Development Fund, PTDF, detailing how Obasanjo allegedly mis-appropriated over N100 billion in PTDF money during his eight years in office. (See Chapter 6 of my book, PDP: CORRUPTION INCORPORATED.) Fair-minded observers would understand how Obasanjo established the template for corruption and why any selective probe of the Jonathan administration, without touching OBJ is itself promotion of corruption. An estimated N8 trillion was missing by 2007 – when Obasanjo left office.