Tinubu’s math class, undersea cables and Meta’s promise

On Thursday evening, President Bola Tinubu stood among senators to deliver his first Math lecture as President.

Although the setting neither looked nor felt like a learning environment, the President felt the lessons would stick better with food in the students’ mouths.

So, at the break of the Ramadan fast that evening, he stole the moment to scratch a lingering itch: the budget padding allegation levelled against his government by Senator Abdul Ningi.

You see, Ningi, a ranking senator representing Bauchi Central on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party poked the hornets’ nest with a short stick weeks ago when he accused the Federal Government of implementing a budget other than the one Tinubu signed on January 1, 2024.

As the Chairman of the Northern Senators Forum and Senate Committee on Population, the lawmaker argued in a BBC Hausa Service interview that the red chamber debated and passed an N25tn budget, not the N28.7tn that was currently being implemented. Therefore, N3.7tn could not be accounted for in the 2024 budget.

The ensuing uproar was akin to that of the days of former Central Bank of Nigeria governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, who told a group of dumbfounded senators that $20bn could not be accounted for in the national coffers. However, the context was different this time.

Anyone familiar with Nigeria’s history understands that the political economy of numbers has occupied a special seat since independence. The much-debated population census of May 1962 comes to mind. As it appears, citizens tend to unleash their full arithmetic know-how when it comes to the economy, census, and elections.

Although the Presidency had since denied any knowledge of a parallel budget, it was the first time President Tinubu spoke publicly on the matter.

In the thick of the controversy, the Presidency stated, “We want to state categorically that the only 2024 budget that is being implemented is the N28.7tn budget passed by the National Assembly and signed by the President…He did not present a budget of N25tn…We don’t expect a ranking senator not to pay due attention to details before making wild claims.”

At its plenary session two days later, the Senate suspended Ningi for three months. That meant missing Tinubu’s arithmetic class last Thursday.

Brandishing his accounting pen before the lawmakers, the President said, “I know the arithmetic of the budget and the numbers that I brought to the National Assembly, and I know what numbers came back.

“Those who are talking about malicious embellishment in the budget; did not understand the arithmetic and did not refer to the baseline of what I brought. But your integrity is intact. I appreciate all of you for the expeditious handling of the budget.”

I could imagine some senators nodding in agreement and screaming in their thoughts, “Oh, baseline! I’ve got to look that up on Investopedia.”

Given his admitted proficiency in arithmetic, will the President now hold tutorials for the likes of Ningi at the Villa? Will lawmakers be made to undergo a refresher course in arithmetic every budget cycle? And will Ningi have to present a certificate from a three-month course on ‘Budgeting and Financial Analysis’ before he is readmitted to the Senate? We don’t know for sure. But to bank on the President’s grasp of numbers should not be too risky.

Leading Africa’s digital technology from space?

Earlier that Thursday, President Tinubu played host to a delegation from Meta Platforms Incorporated, led by former UK Deputy Prime Minister and Meta’s President of Global Affairs, Sir Nick Clegg, at the State House.

A statement by the official spokesperson to the President revealed that Tinubu assured Sir Clegg that Nigeria would be Africa’s guiding star of information and communications technology.

To do this, Tinubu said the Federal Government was sustaining investments in digital technology to enhance the sustainability of small businesses and expand opportunities across sectors. His administration is opening up channels of opportunities in information and communications technology, deepening capacity, and fostering partnerships, Tinubu added.

As he has done in various fora, the President emphasised that Nigerian youths are the most critical asset in Nigeria’s arsenal. Thus, his government is moving to achieve digital economic expansion through its 3MTT programme, which is training three million Nigerian youths in digital technology and essential skills before deploying them in innovation hubs nationwide.

I felt proud to be a youth when I read those lines. You’ll understand my joy when you remember that another President flew thousands of kilometres to London on taxpayers’ money to paint the youth as lazy.

Okay, back to the gist. When I read Tinubu’s ambitious declaration to lead Africa’s digital transformation, I recalled the March 14 incident where millions of Nigerian Internet users were thrown into darkness as Internet services failed.

In the ensuing days, it was announced that undersea cables supplying critical communications lines to Africa had been compromised. Now, I won’t join the wild party of speculations about the cause of the cable snaps. That’s not my calling. What’s not up for debate is that repairs would take anywhere from weeks to months to complete.

It once again revealed the underbelly of our digital infrastructure, much like COVID-19 did for fragile healthcare systems worldwide. If we aim to lead Africa’s ICT revolution, a part of me believes we must be immune from black swans, such as undersea cable cuts. This will take advanced forms of evolution.

Father of evolution by natural selection, Charles Darwin, puts it this way, “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”

While most living organisms evolve towards survival, those who last evolve for the sake of innovation – a deeply rooted notion that things (and ways of doing things) can be better no matter how efficient they currently seem. A phased upgrade from cables to satellite communications might be an excellent place to start.

In the meantime, Nigeria’s teeming youths in the content creation space have reasons to rejoice as Sir Clegg announced that, come June 2024, Meta would introduce a feature on its Instagram app to allow Nigerian creators to monetise their content to enable them to earn a living using the app.