Cashless Nigeria: Why Emefiele May Lose the War – Femi Kusa …Musings on Buhari, Tinubu, Peter Obi, CBN

Following the bedlam that accompanied measures by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to enforce its cashless policy after redesigning of Naira notes, the questions out there are:

What Manner of Man is Godwin Emefiele? With security forces in tow, can Emefiele wage war on the Nigerian foreign currency black market as he is waging war on the Commercial Banks? With the Supreme Court becoming a battleground for his cashless war in which he and the Federal Government are on one side and some state governments, and the Nigerian people are on the other, where is the nation heading?

Will Emefiele upscale Peter Obi?

Will Buhari positively rub off on Tinubu?

Will intervention by the National Council of State ease nationwide tension and prevent possible ‘End Cashless’ protests?

One of Nigeria’s topmost media chiefs, Mr. Femi Kusa, appraises the situation, contending that the CBN governor, Godwin Emefiele might be fighting yet another losing battle.

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By Femi Kusa

johnolufemikusa@gmail.com

Many people no longer know what to make of GODWIN EMEFIELE, Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). Irrespective of the academic sophistry of his presentation to the House of Representatives committee on finance, which I believe is all wallpapering or water colouring, he has slowed commerce and industry, wasted many precious social and business hours, made many people hungry and angry and cause unnecessary deaths. Someone in Ilorin sent me some money by electronic transfer from his telephone on Wednesday night (1/2/2023), but the money did not enter my bank account in Lagos until about 96 hours later. Even then, I have not been able to withdraw it as of today because of the system collapse in major banks. I have been made cashless and angry. If I go to have dinner at Sheraton Hotel in Lagos and I must pay online, but the network hooks up, will I spend the night and the next day at the hotel while the network sorts itself out? 

There are reports that some persons slumped and died while waiting in long, crowded ATM queues or that some hospital patients returned home only to die a short while later because account staff refused to receive old currency from them. Nationwide, POS operators were selling money, charging between N1,000 and N1,500 on every N5,000 withdrawn or on outgoing currency exchange for new currency. If Emefiele has his ears close to the ground and he can hear the walls of his house and offices speak to him, he would know by now that the biggest talk in town today is not whether cashless Nigeria is right or wrong. The International Monetary Fund has already told Nigeria that the speed at which Emefiele’s CASHLESS NIGERIA is cruising is dangerous and unreasonable.

The danger which has become the talk of the town is the legal battle at the Supreme Court involving the President of Nigeria, the Nigerian Federal Government, and Emefiele on one side and some state governments and Nigerians people on the other side.

The serious questions many Nigerians are asking at home, in offices, aboard buses, in marketplaces, and in beer parlours, for example, are (a) why the rush? (b)Is Emefiele on a political vendetta? (c) Is President Buhari sucked into a succession quagmire? (d) why has the DSS been unable to question Emefiele on its claimed allegation of terrorism financing? (e) Is the allegations a political fluke to stop Emefiele from pursuing his CASHLESS NIGERIA PROJECT and prevent President Buhari from backing him? (f) Where is the nation heading under this political and legal inferno with elections barely two weeks away? (g) Will the election be postponed? (h) Does Emefiele have a preferred candidate? (I) Does the President have one? (j) Is the APC cracking up? (k) Why are Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi not speaking and only Bola Tinubu has spoken? (l) Are all these questions indirect fall-out from the new crude oil finds in the North?

Godwin Emefiele says he did not cause these problems. He blames the commercial banks for that. He has a point, here. For if the bank meticulously fellow his directives, there would be no snarls and hitches. But does a good manager of men forget, while dealing with men, that men are not machines? Does a good, well-intentioned Nigerian manager not always remember that the human landscape in this country overflows with corruption and that corruption begets more corruption? 

When Godwin Emefiele gave about 200 million Nigerian adults one month to exchange their old currency notes for new ones and then place daily limits on how much individuals and businesses can pull out, was he not placing the nation under undue pressure? I do not know if he read chemistry in secondary school. “O” LEVEL chemistry taught my generation GAY LUSSAC’s LAW.  Gay Lussac says that if you stop or cork a rigid mass and increase the temperature or the pressure of the gas within it, the gas will become more agitated within the container. If the pressure is more than the container, say a bottle, can withstand, there would be an explosion. That is what has happened in Godwin Emefiele’s monetary policy on cashless Nigeria.

Some people say Godwin Emefiele sold the idea of the currency exchange at this crucial time to President Buhari. Some people say President Buhari force it on Emefiele. I do not say how anyone can successfully press this charge against the President. Ever a soldier, Buhari is ever a militarist. Emefiele is a financial expert, otherwise, he should not have been CBN Governor. He knows that these things are not done with militarisation in the civilized world, as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has just told the Nigerian Government. If Buhari tells Emefiele to drink boiling water, will he drink it?  If Buhari asks Emefiele, unprotected, to hold live electricity wires in his hands, will he hold them? If the problem came from Buhari, Emefiele should have honorably resigned and saved the nation this unprecedented financial and monetary agony. Having done not that, he lays himself bare to the charge of culpability.

The question Emefiele should then be asked is what his mission is.  Is he politicizing the Central Bank on a personal political vendetta against a political foe, or is he paving the way for a preferred Presidential election candidate? Buhari probably didn’t envisage his instigation of or backing for Emefiele will end the riotous way it is going. Happily, the National Council of State has granted him and Emefiele an escape window… They should go and print more new currency abroad, since Nigeria does not have the capacity for it, and allow the old currency to remain legal tender for a long time to come.

Thus, heated up by Emefiele’s CBN, Nigeria’s corruption industry flared up. Bank managers kept new currency notes from the public and reserved them for their prime customers… Politicians, business people, and the currency black market. Can you blame them? If you are a bank manager, and you have customers who have accounts of about 3 hundred to five hundred million or more with you, and you are asked to treat them and market women and shoes makers who have no account with you on an equality basis in the banking hall, to whom would you give priority attention? Who knows if the terrorists and bandits profited as well?

Except for the currency black market, a pain in the neck of Nigeria’s economy, these were the forces Godwin Emefiele’s CBN sought to fight when he launched a campaign of calumny against the commercial banks. In retrospect, I wonder why he did not deploy the security forces, as he has done now, against the foreign currency black market. Would we not all be jubilant if we woke one fine morning to learn that the police, the DSS, the EFCC, the ICPC, and the military at zero hours raided all street hawkers of foreign currency in all the hooks and crannies of Nigeria where the foreign currency black market was operating? Wouldn’t that have been a better CBN preoccupation at this time than the present bottling of the nation into a rigid one-month of currency exchange terribly close to general elections and amid one of the worst fuel scarcities in Nigeria?

As many people argue in favour or against Godwin Emefiele’s cashless policy, I have no difficulty placing him where I think he rightly belongs. For me, five words sum up his behavior so far: HE IS A RIGID MAN. Rigidity is inflexibility and begets MAKE OR BREAK RELATIONS with another person. Behind or within inflexibility, we can find geniuses or treasury. Rigidity is, besides, aggressive, unfeeling, insensitive, and, above all, UN-NATURAL. Unnaturalness is FALSEHOOD. And, as I once said in respect of BUKOLA SARAKI taking the Senate Presidency through the back door in 2015, ALL THAT IS FALSE WILL INEVITABLY COLLAPSE!

That is that.

PETER OBI

My worry for PETER OBI, Presidential candidate of the LABOUR PARTY, is that

1. He comes from the Southeast region

2. Godwin Emefiele comes from the Southeast region

3. Many indigenes of the Southeast region on radio, television, newspapers, and elsewhere are backing Emefiele, in the belief that his action will favour Peter Obi to win the Presidential election

4. Where commentary from the North and the Southwest differs from that in the Southeast, does this suggest that

a. If EMEFIELE and Obi are from the Southeast, and if Obi will not criticize EMEFIELE, are the South East, Emefiele, and Obi speaking the same policy language discussed and agreed upon at village meetings? Many South-easterners in Lagos whose businesses are visibly suffering are prepared to stomach their losses in the belief that Emefiele’s CBN policy will handcuff Bola Tinubu at the polls.

b. Do we have a Southeast agenda on our hands into which President Muhammadu Buhari had innocently or deliberately been sucked? and

c. Will a Peter Obi Presidency be any different from an EMEFIELE tenure at the Central Bank…rigid, aggressive, unfeeling, garrulous, etc.? ASUU members will tell you they think so, citing their experiences with labour Minister Chris Ngige, from Anambra State, Southeast!

BUHARI

But can anyone reasonably blame EMEFIELE? He was a Presidential aspirant in his All Progressive Congress (APC). He pulled out of the Primaries which Bola Tinubu massively won. All sorts of long knives came out of that primary to stop Tinubu. Some observers speculated Tinubu was not President Buhari’s preferred candidate. I do not know who that person was. So, some people have been suggesting the President’s campaign support for Tinubu was half-hearted and that the chicken may, indeed, come to roast in the nest of Atiku Abubakar, of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). Lately, Atiku has refrained from personal attacks on Buhari’s performance. He devoted his energy early in the campaigns to attempts to devalue the person and health of Tinubu for the Presidency. With the polity discouraging personal attacks, to which he had lured Obi, Atiku has moved to the realms of shallow promises.  It must be to him, that former President Olusegun Obasanjo in Port Harcourt on Thursday 26 January 2023 directed his speech at the Dr. OBI WALI International Conference. Instructively, President Buhari made a similar speech on corruption over dinner with the Governor of his home state, Katsina, confusing  Buhari watchers over his assumed facilitation of a Fulani-Fulani succession. He made his critics more confused when, recently in Sokoto, Buhari categorically announced Tinubu was his preferred candidate.

I would like to quickly detour to Obi. During his campaign in Kastina, his convoy of cars was stoned by young people he claimed to be fighting to become President. Obi was quick to describe the attack as politically motivated. He probably did not remember that, in the same state, the advance party of the President’s Entourage was attacked last year by young persons. And only on 26th January, Buhari’s convoy came under another attack by young persons.

Is this not telling us that young persons who have suddenly become beautiful brides of several Presidential candidates are alienated from them?

Bola Tinubu, courageously, has belled the cat in respect of Emefiele’s rigidity on currency exchange. Why is Peter Obi not talking about it since he claims to have the clearest understanding of the economy?

BUHARI, AGAIN

The President’s Body Language is not helping matters. What I find intriguing is his appeals to voters at campaign rallies that they follow their conscience. Voting for a candidate is following the conscience, any away.  Asking the voter to vote according to his or her conscience is an apolitical setup and not wholeheartedly supportive of one’s own party candidate. But this is not today’s campaign style. He said the same in respect of himself in 2019 in Abeokuta at the Moshood Abiola stadium. Daggers had been drawn between outgoing Governor Ibikunle Amosun, a member of Buhari’s Federating unit in the APC amalgamation, and APC Governorship aspirant, Omo Oba Dapo Abiodun. Amosun’s candidate for Governor lost to party primary nominee Abiodun, and then move to another party from where Amosun, still in the APC, encouraged him to confront Abiodun. President Buhari did not wish to ditch his ally, Amosun. So, he followed the line of least resistance by asking voters to follow their conscience, with his party’s flag bearer right beside him! Is that what we are witnessing with Bola Tinubu today? Vice-president Prof Yemi Osinbajo, third place loser in the APC Presidential Primary, has not shown up at rallies as have not some ministers, including Dr. Chris Ngige who says all the candidates are his friends and he cannot favour anyone with his presence!

The APC has done damage control by saying the President asked all ministers and the Vice-President to face State duties! That is not a bad idea. But what can be said of the obvious tacit support for Emefiele? The President says he would like to bequeath strong State institutions to Nigeria. Everywhere he goes in Africa, he is asking fellow Presidents to act likewise. Yet, back home, the DSS accused Emefiele of ” terrorism financing” after many years of the government saying it knows who terrorist financiers are but failing to name them. The DSS would like to arrest Emefiele for questioning. Emefiele went to court to ask that the DSS be stopped from arresting him. The court agreed. Before you could call Jack Robinson, Emefiele travelled abroad with the President on a mission related to the environment. He stayed behind on medical grounds, while, back home, the Central Bank was running on auto mode. The National Assembly waited for Emefiele’s return. He did, but parried another National Assembly invitation, saying he was too busy in the office. Yet the National Assembly comprises Representatives of the Nigerian people.  Before you could call Jack Robinson again, Emefiele was off with the President on a trip to Dakar on agriculture. Was he the agriculture minister? Did he not bypass the Finance Minister to obtain the President’s consent on currency exchange?  Is it not even possible that the project was the President’s which he kept away from everyone but Emefiele?

BOLA TINUBU

This, and more, is the thorny forest in which Tinubu has found himself as an APC Presidential candidate. He is not a draft politician. He would not think the President would automatically stand by him simply because he helped him to power with his political structure and resources. So, wisely, he has refrained from distancing himself from the President and his public policies which may have backfired or are doing so. If Tinubu distances himself from Buhari’s policy, Buhari and his followers may become politically lukewarm towards him. By not doing so, he risked losing support from Buhari’s haters. The U.S. Vice President Al Gore was at a similar crossroads over whether his principal, outgoing President Bill Clinton, should campaign for him in his presidential bid. Al Gore kept Clinton at arm’s length because of Monica Lewinsky’s sex scandal which involved 49 years old President Clinton and Monica aged 22. Al Gore missed the Polish and the nurture of Clinton’s oration… and lost the election. In my view, Tinubu’s intention in his case is to hold the APC political machinery together and then promise voters that he would ennoble Buhari’s policies and do more as President. In other words, this is like saying persons are different from persons and from their political parties.

In every case, hasn’t it been said that, in this election, we are going to vote for persons and not parties?  If the person of Tinubu wasn’t selling, would his party men not have stopped him at the primary which he massively won? Some people believe Emefiele is trying to settle a political score and his designs suit Buhari for other reasons. The President is pulled hither and thither by two powerful forces in the North…Fulani and Kanuri. His father is Fulani, and his mother is Kanuri. The Kanuri people wholeheartedly want Tinubu. The Fulani are divided between him and Atiku. Obi is relying on Southeastern votes in the North. Whatever it is, I do not believe Peter Obi will be a robust beneficiary. Nor would it be Kwankwaso.  Tinubu may have spoken in Abeokuta against the background of the Bauchi rally which went not as expected because of electricity failure most of the time. Certainly, the organizers were Nigerians. They knew that, even for small events such as one-year birthdays and school class meetings, private generators must be on standby. Why would anyone not write off the failure in Bauchi as Sabotage?

Thus, in Abeokuta, a home front of Tinubu, he had to announce he was suspecting sabotage of his victory efforts in the petrol, higher fuel, and commodity prices, human fatigue on fuel queues, and in the currency exchange crisis. Soon after, the Central Bank fired another salvo announcing the launch of the Nigerian MASTER CARD, details of which are yet unclear. On top of them, is the discovery of crude oil in the Gombe and Bauchi border areas and in Nasarawa State in which the 19 Northern government invested $1.5 billion USD through the Northern Nigerians Development Company Limited (NNDCL)! This is a whopping new development in the Nigerian Federation which the traditional and social media have underplayed. In a Northern layman’s thinking, Who is that Nigerian President but Atiku Abubakar who would handle in favour of Northern Nigeria the new firestorm and snowball configuration in the Nigerian crude oil industry? The North will not trust Obi with their fate and future. They may tolerate Tinubu because he comes from a more tolerant, less aggressive, open, accommodating, and generous region of the country. They may fear him, though, if Nyesom Wike pitches his tent in the APC. Kwankwaso is a more virulent North- for-North Politician but, unfortunately, he does not have a national spread good enough for this project. To worsen his case, many of the candidates of his New Nigerian People’s Party (NNPP), the prime of his party in the forthcoming elections, have migrated to the PDP of Atiku Abubakar. Are they smelling a rat? Kwankwaso has pressed the electoral body INEC to accept replacements for them, but the request appears unanswered yet. Thus, if they win on the NNPP platform but are in PDP, what will happen?

In this thorny jungle of events, Tinubu has still managed to not directly bring the President to the “war front” The PDP and the Labour Party have sought to drum it to the President’s ears that Tinubu is blaming him for the fuel queues, rising prices, currency crisis and lots more. But Tinubu has crafty replied that they, the Opposition parties, were the causes of these problems and were working with fifth columnists in the APC to make the party unpopular among the voters at this crucial time in the countdown to the Polls. He said he was only trying to invite the President’s attention to these developments. If the President accepts this advice, he may take more direct charge of his government. If he does, the impact on Emefiele may negatively rub off on Peter Obi. The President as of 8 February 2023 was still solidly behind Emefiele. Tinubu was becoming more popular among people who believed he was being unjustly maltreated by some of his party men and that Emefiele was playing politics with the trust of his office as CBN Governor.

If Buhari succumbs to pressure from world leaders to allow a longer time for currency exchange, Emefiele and the CBN may become deflated and demystified, a psychological and electoral bonus for Tinubu.  Kaduna, Gombe, and Zamfara states had sued the Federal Government at the Supreme Court and obtained an interim injunction for an extension of the currency exchange beyond February 10. Hours after the injunction was granted, the Federal Government, too, went to the Supreme Court to say the Court had no constitutional right to hear the suit filed by the states. The snowball is spreading. Rivers State and Ondo State have joined the three states. Other rebellious states may join the rebellion against the Central Bank and the Federal Government.

Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which has a high stake in Nigeria’s economy because of the country’s huge foreign debts, has said nowhere else is a currency change over done in one month and that the Nigerian experiment is unreasonable. Meanwhile, also, a cash shortage has hit the nation. About 60% of Nigerians have no bank account. They live from hand to mouth every day. They go to work on empty stomachs. Their income in the morning buys them lunch. Afternoon income gives them and their families dinner. Forcing them to take their small earnings to the bank and draw peanuts from them for their livelihood is causing tension throughout the country.  Customers have invaded some banks and the staff have escaped through the bank fences. Some women stripped to their bras and briefs to underscore their anger. In one bank the IT staff reportedly downed stools, creating network failure. No one has yet known where the unfolding drama will lead, if, in the long run, many poor people with no cash in their hands cannot go to work and do not have money to feed themselves and their families. I wonder if prophecies of the WORLD JUDGEMENT are upon the Land! What else can one say, if men are becoming rigid, unnatural, unreasonable, and unfeeling to say the least?  It would appear an in-house drama in the APC is leading to a war between the government and the people because one man is trying to stop one man at the polls in favour of one man.

Already, many rats are smelling on the way to the Polls.  If the President and Emefiele do not shift ground and make money available for citizens to spend, and if the petrol queues do not disappear and fuel becomes cheaper, Tinubu may be lucky, the voters may feel sorry for him and vote for him. Such voters would be those who would ask:  Is this the way to treat a person who helped the President to Power two straight times?

I have never doubted the President’s respect and support for his friends. He doesn’t abandon his friends.  Despite the furore over KEMI ADEOSUN, the Finance Minister in his first tenure who allegedly foraged her NYSC certificate to join the cabinet from the stable of his loyalist, Ibikunle Amosun, the President agreed to her exist only when she said she was ready to go. In his wildest imagination, President Buhari declined to see his friend and mentor, Gen. Sanni  Abacha (Rtd), as a financial crook and thief as he was known at home and worldwide. Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, Chief of Army Staff when Gen. Buhari was Military Head of State, overthrow Buhari. Gen. Sanni Abacha, one of Babangida’s successors, rehabilitated Buhari with a rural development job which, arguably, was the second biggest spender in Nigeria after the Federal Government. Thus, Buhari had a soft spot for Abacha even when his government was receiving Abacha’s loot from abroad.  He forgave Gen. Ibrahim Babangida (Rtd) for overthrowing him. So, it is not surprising to me that the Presidency has nailed all speculations by saying the President is still solidly behind the presidential aspirations of Bola Tinubu. Recently, Buhari took Tinubu to Katsina, his home state, on a campaign. The cynics may say it is a question of … MA JO LO, MO N BO L’EHIN E (dance on, I am coming right behind you).

CASHLESS

A cashless society is a beautiful society. But even in cashless countries, Rome was not built in one day. Even then, what is good for one nation is not necessarily good for another. Anyone who wears a winter jacket in sun-drenched Maiduguri must be a depressed or insane person. So is an African who dresses as an African in a terrible Russian winter. I have not seen a sane Architect who designs a multi-story building on solid laterite soil and insists that, without a raft foundation, the same design be constructed on swampy soil. 

Our country was colonized and, after independence, neo-colonized, that is, made a slave of Euro-Americans. In neo-colonization, they make us poorer and turn around to warn us about 25 million of us will go hungry this year. But anyone who is familiar with the knowledge that all human beings are endowed with FREE WILL, INTUITION, and INTELLECT, knows that no one can force us into a situation we do not like if we stand against it. But we go under when we swallow Euro- American designs, such as CASHLESS NIGERIA, line, hook, and sinker. Is what is good for them good for us?

JOBS

GSM telephone created millions of indoor and outdoor jobs in our country. On almost every street nationwide, the umbrellas of recharge card sellers flustered above their colourful tables behind which they sat from dawn to dusk, in rain or sunshine, selling recharge cards and keeping their minds so busy that the devil had no workshop in them. Chief Obafemi Awolowo knew the value of young people to society as a defense against evil. He said that, rather than see them unemployed, he will pay them to dig trenches in the morning and fill them in the evenings.  But CASHLESS NIGERIA had taken those jobs away and handed them over to machines in the banks. CASHLESS NIGERIA empowered the banks to destroy those jobs when the banks began to sell recharge cards.

In addition, the banks overbill their recharge card customers. That is, they financially dehydrate their customers. In addition, CASHLESS NIGERIA brought ATM machinery. With that, the banks fired some of their staff. That means, machines took over bank jobs, and the ATM machines financially dehydrated their customers. The banks were making more money, spending less on labour, and did not provide their shareholders with more meaningful returns. We now pay for electricity using machines. That took away the job of the meter reader and cashiers. The unemployment queues keep growing. Europe and America insult us that we cannot create jobs for our people. They do not tell us the machines and spare parts we are buying from them are creating jobs in their own countries and increasing their foreign currency earnings from us. Some of the banks which use these machines are fraudulent. I do not use an ATM card.  But Access Bank bills me regularly for ATM services. I have gone to several branches to complain, but the managers say there is nothing they can do, that the bank must maintain its machines.

You can see how young people are losing jobs to CASHLESS NIGERIA and Presidential candidates are not addressing the problem. Even young people who earn about N30,000 every month from P.O.S. operators are losing jobs right now.

As young Nigerians lose their bread line jobs, CASHLESS NIGERIA fuel foreign exchange flows out of Nigeria to Europe and America for the purchase of ATM and POS machines, growing their economies and dehydrating ours of foreign cash, as their appendages, the slaves who may never grow bigger than the overlord who dictates the way and the pace all the time. Add to the fact that CASHLESS NIGERIA requires that every serious player in the economy purchase an Android phone. Isn’t this another drainpipe?

BITCOIN

Add to the foregoing, another clamp down on young people by Emefiele’s CBN. When income began to shrink in Nigeria, young Nigerians joined their age kindred globally in international businesses which rewarded their investments in BITCOIN. Even the semi-literate boy who repairs my generator at home invested in it and was earning well. That kept robbery from our society. Suddenly, Emefiele’s CBN ordered Nigerian banks out of BITCOIN business. Cautioning vices such as that of Vice President Yemi Osinbajo got drowned in CBN arguments that the bank would discourage Kidnapping and that it would come up with a better alternative, the e- NARIA which came dead on arrival, as they say.

Now we have a MILITARY-STYLE enforcement of CASHLESS NIGERIA on our hands. Nigerians do not quarrel with the gradual March to modernism which should be driven by a citizen or country-friendly RE-ORIENTATION and inducements. You may say Nigeria is at war, and rapid-fire is the only way to win the war. But didn’t Kidnapping and banditry survive BVN, SIM REGISTRATION, and other rapid fires? It is POLITICAL WILL that wins wars. The Armed Forces are doing their best. Nigeria has lacked the political will to name financiers of banditry, kidnapping, and terrorism. Recently, the DSS, Nigeria’s Secret Service, invited Emefiele for questioning over claims that he was financing terrorism. Rather than debunk these claims as flukes, Emefiele asked a court to prevent his arrest for questioning, and the President seems to not back the DSS. In the future, will DSS not “siddon look”? Isn’t the present currency exchange not another form of terrorism?

In conclusion, the natural processes of which man is a part operate based on the law of gradualism. The day does not suddenly break. Nightfall does not suddenly happen, either. No child is born today who becomes a university graduate in 12 months. Breakneck speed is, therefore, unnatural and everything unnatural is falsehood and will inevitably collapse.

FEMI KUSA was at various times Editor; Director of Publication/ Editor-in-Chief of THE GUARDIAN NEWSPAPER; Editorial Director/ Editor-in-Chief of THE COMET NEWSPAPER. Currently, he keeps a Thursday Column on Alternative Medicine in the NATION NEWSPAPER.

Some of his health columns may be found on www.olufemikusa.com and in MIDIUM a digital platform for writers. He is active also on Facebook @ John OLUFEMI KUSA.