Category: Emeka Omeihe

By Emeka Omeihe

What could have prompted a professor and specialist in infectious and non-infectious diseases to conceal vital information on a corona virus disease COVID-19 patient he brought for treated at the University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital (UITH)?

Can he reasonably plead ignorance of the manifest symptoms of the disease with the travel history of the patient and when he had previously advised him to self-isolate? Or, was his action intended to cover up possible stigmatization in view of his family link with the patient?

These are some of the questions miserably and inevitably thrown up by the death of a COVID-19 patient, Muhideen Obanimomo at UITH last week. The nagging posers are further reinforced by the circumstance in which the professor, AK Salami personally brought the patient to the accident and emergency unit of the hospital, caused him to be admitted and treated for abdominal disorder with the corpse released to him for burial upon his death.

But for frantic calls from anonymous people volunteering information on the patient, the hospital would not have known his travel history, the fact of his isolation and that the signs of the ailment were clearly manifest but concealed by Salami for very inexplicable reasons. Sadly, the information came too late. The corpse had already been released to him for burial according to Islamic rites before the authorities came to terms with the reality of the situation.

Reports from the UITH management indicated that after the corpse was released to him, he immediately proceeded with arrangements to him buried with relations, Imams and sympathizers in attendance. The burial arrangements had already been completed before the hospital authorities became aware of the fact of the patient’s travel history, his self-isolation for 12 days and the complications for which he was eventually rushed to the hospital.

Having successfully concealed vital information on the patient and coupled with the high position Salami occupies in the hospital, many of his colleagues especially the junior doctors he supervised, clustered around him in an attempt to save the life of his relation by all possible means. A simulated scenario would be one in which nurses and junior doctors will be running over each other, trying to impress their boss by the way they responded to issues surrounding the patient’s treatment. I can imagine a good crowd of medical professionals trying to lend a helping hand in the firm belief that they had the confidence of their senior colleague.

But all that turned out awry. Salami had a well crafted script intended to deceive his colleagues. It was all make-beliefs and tissues of lies. The reality was that the patient was a clear COVID-19 case and had in fact manifested all symptoms of the disease before he brought him to the hospital. As information was further to reveal, he had even asked the patient to self-isolate for 14 days on his return from the foreign trip. And after 12 days in isolation, serious complications arose prompting him to rush him to UITH.

There is therefore no shred of doubt that Salami was fully aware that his relation was afflicted by the disease for which he died few hours after he was brought to the hospital. Why he trod that dangerous path knowing the full implications of his action is as curious as it is confounding. This is more so with the larger implications of his action on the safety of his colleagues at the accident and emergency unit, those at the mortuary section and others that gathered for the funeral rites of the deceased.

Perhaps, a measure of the mortal harm that unethical and irresponsible conduct inflicted on the society is the fact that 28 health workers in that hospital who had contact with the deceased have been sent into isolation. Seventy-five other persons who had contact with the deceased either by way of participating in the burial or visiting on condolence have also been netted by the Kwara State government and quarantined. Offa town, the ancestral home of the deceased has been placed on total lockdown for fear of escalation of community spread.

The town is under intense fear and trepidation especially given the very rapid manner the corona virus disease spreads. The predicament of the town was captured very succinctly by the traditional ruler of Offa when he decried the stigmatization of people of his community by neighboring communities. He painted a pathetic picture of how every Offa indigene is currently being avoided like a plague for fear of contracting the virus. That is how bad the situation is. It mirrors most vividly the extent the conduct of one individual who is supposed to show the light for others to follow can put an entire population in harms’ way because of contrived misdemeanor.

That is the burden the Offa community and the entire people of Kwara State have to contend with-a very costly and unethical conduct that could send many innocent ones to their early graves. It is good a thing that the state government has activated the services of the relevant agencies to track down all those that had contact with the deceased or his widow that was reported to have tested positive to the disease.

Contact tracing must be pursued with renewed vigour to stave off the prospects of escalated community spread. The danger posed by the incident is not just limited to Offa or Kwara State but the entire country given what we know of COVID-19. That is what makes that error of omission or commission a very costly one.

It is good a thing Salami has been suspended by the management of the university even as serious investigation is underway to unravel all circumstances of that scandal. But without prejudice to whatever finding the institution may come up with, it is obvious Salami has become an unmitigated liability to the health care delivery system. He can no longer be trusted to remain in practice.

Unless new findings deviate from what is now in the public domain, (we do not see that possibility), Salami has no business remaining in that institution a day longer. Apart from relieving him of his current position, he must be made to face the full weight of the laws of the land. Nothing can be more irresponsible and callous as deliberately exposing innocent citizens to mortal harm at a time the nation is battling with a pandemic that is threatening to wipe the human race from the face of the earth.

Given the increasing vulnerability of health workers to the disease, it is a sad commentary that one of theirs for reasons best known to him could contemplate actions that would further compound their lot. The Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) has been reeling out figures on the number of health workers currently on self-isolation because of the contacts they were suspected to have had while attending to patients. We have also been treated with the poor safety conditions in which they work- absence of the necessary safety gears and poor working environment that predisposes them to the danger of the virus infection.

There is also the challenge of lack of full disclosure and vital information concealment by patients which combine to make health workers most vulnerable to the virus affliction. All these are enough challenges to health workers. To add the type of story that emanated from UITH to these debilitating challenges is akin to adding salt to injury. That is why Salami’s act of indiscretion must be treated with all the seriousness it deserves to act as a deterrent to others.

This case is indeed very peculiar. It throws up more questions than answers. That is why the public deserves to know the full details of all the explanations the suspect would make in the course of the investigations. A psychiatric investigation must form part of the overall inquisition.

Emeka OMEIHE

 

Penultimate Sunday’s national broadcast by President Muhammadu Buhari seemed to have put to rest raging controversy over his silence while the COVID-19 pandemic ravaged the country. Though somewhat belated, it is nonetheless good a thing the president eventually spoke to the nation.

Before then and while responding to criticisms, Information Minister Lai Mohammed had said it was not yet the appropriate time for the president to address the nation on the matter. Toeing the same predictable line, the special adviser to the president on media, Femi Adesina rationalized the inability of his boss to address the nation as a matter of style.

He seemed to have come out more clearly when he said the style the president has adopted is to set up a presidential taskforce committee headed by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation SGF to handle matters arising from the pandemic. By extrapolation, he was implying that having set up the taskforce such a broadcast may no longer be necessary. He is entitled to his opinion.

But as fate would have it, the president eventually addressed the nation in a manner reminiscent of what his counterparts across the world had been doing. The fact of this has put to serious question the issue of style as a credible reason for his inability or reluctance to address the nation all this while.

And if the president’s style differed from those of other world leaders, how then do we place his recent nationwide broadcast? It would seem the reason adduced for the president’s inability to touch base with his constituents at the peak of the pandemic lack public appeal.

The matter has neither anything to do with style nor the setting up of the taskforce. These excuses pale into insignificance and zero impact in the face of the direct intervention of the man with the mandate of the populace to superintend over the affairs of the country. The buck stops at his table.

Maybe the excuse offered by Mohammed that it was not yet the appropriate time for the president to address the nation makes better sense. But then, the appropriateness of the time the president spoke is another contentious matter altogether.

It took about five weeks from the time the first incident case was reported in the country and three months since the pandemic emerged in the world scene for the president to speak. How appropriate that timing was and its efficacy will be borne out by some of the measures rolled out in his broadcast.

In that much expected broadcast, the president had among others indicated that right from the time COVID-19 was turning into an epidemic; his government started planning preventive, containment and curative measures in the event the disease hits Nigeria.

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He said the first confirmed case of the disease in the country was on February 27, and by the time he spoke on March 29, it had risen to 97 cases. What this explanation was intended to serve is that his government was on top of the situation all this while.

The situation in his calculations had not gotten that bad for him to speak despite the fact that corona virus had long been declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization WHO. He is entitled to that view. But given what we know of the fast spreading nature of the virus, the pitiable state of our health facilities and the ravaging poverty in the country, the nation needed quick therapeutic responses and assurances from the highest quarters that necessary efforts were on top gear to contain the pandemic.

It was imperative to secure assurances that the president was really in charge especially given speculations all this while about a cabal in the presidency that has become a cog in the wheel of the nation’s progress.

Only the president’s address could have provided the soothing tonic direly needed at that period of serious national emergency. Even then, the fact that the number of those infected doubled a few days after the president’s speech and has been on a steady rise corroborates the view that the president’s intervention should have come somewhat earlier. Perhaps also, this point will become clearer when some other measures in the broadcast to contain the pandemic are subjected to critical appraisal.

Among the tough and desperate measure announced by the president were the cessation of all movements in Lagos, the Federal Capital Territory and Ogun State for an initial period of 14 days. All citizens are to stay at home while travel to and from other states have been put on hold. All businesses and offices within these locations are also to be shut within the period.

The period in the view of the president will be used to identify, trace and isolate all individuals that have come into contact with confirmed cases and also restrict further spread to other states. He also banned the movement of all passenger aircraft, both commercial and private jets while special permits will be issued as the need arose.

Before then, our borders had been shut down and international flights banned except for emergency services that will be allowed on special permission. But criticisms have trailed the president’s order banning movements in Lagos, Ogun and the FCT.

Those who took up the president on this, contend that we run a constitutional democracy and it is illegal for the president to take over the affairs of states without the express consent of the people of that state through their elected representatives.

They are of the further view that it is only the governor of a state through the House of Assembly of the state that can make such declarations. The fear is that if such infractions are allowed, they could lead to abuse of powers by the executive.

There is merit in this position. But we are in very dire times. And the circumstances of the times may not permit strict compliance with such constitutional issues. The nature of the pandemic does not even allow either the national or the state assemblies to sit in deliberation of such matters.

Even then, the action of the president is largely in the public interest; to safeguard the lives of citizens put at grave risk by the pandemic. To that extent, we have to live with the measures.

If the president were to wait for the national or state assemblies to sit before the action, things would have got out of hands. But that also brings to mind the excuse offered by the information minister that it was not yet the appropriate time for the president to speak.

Had he been very proactive on the matter, the needed synergy would have long been built before we get to the point where the president will take resort to actions that are seen to infringe on constitutional governance. This is the issue to contend with.

These issues would have been properly harmonized had the president squared up to the challenge of engaging the nation before the pandemic got to the point of limiting public gathering. Then, it would have been possible for the National Assembly to play its role.

But that opportunity has been sadly foreclosed by our response time. The point is that some of the measures enunciated by the president should have come much earlier especially given the mode of transmission of the virus.

Had we promptly shut our borders and halted international and local flights when returnees were importing the virus into the country, perhaps the rising incidence of the disease with heightened fears of community spread would have been nipped at the bud.

The case of 127 returnees from Côte d’Ivoire who returned to Osun State with a good number of them testing positive bears this out most poignantly. Had they arrived at the Ogun State land border before some of these measures were rolled out, we would have been worse for it.

Even now, our land borders are still porous. Herdsmen from neighboring countries still have a field day straying into the country. If nothing urgent and serious is done to halt check movement, efforts to halt the scourge may come to naught. We shudder at such prospects.

 

 

By Emeka Omeihe

Those privy to a recent letter by the Chief of Staff (COS) to President Buhari, Alhaji Abba Kyari directing legislators who just returned to the country to report to the nearest office of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) for screening, would be surprised at the news that he (Kyari) tested positive to the lethal virus a few days after.

In the letter to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Olufemi Gbajabiamila reference number SH/COS/TP/03 dated March 21, Kyari had justified the directive against the backdrop of reports to the office of the Minister of Health that federal lawmakers refused to submit themselves for the mandatory coronavirus screening upon arrival at the airports. He deprecated the attitude of those of them who refused screening on arrival as they posed a great threat to the health of others. He said it all.

Ironically, as the nation was still contending with the reality of our legislators’ non-compliance with screening regulations and other safety measures at our entry ports, the sad new filtered that the very man who moved to halt this ruinous attitude has tested positive to the lethal virus. The reality of the situation got further complicated with the disclosure that he also recently returned to the country after an official foreign trip to Germany.

Expectedly, this has raised questions as to whether the Chief of Staff was also guilty of the same malfeasance he accused some legislators of that prompted his letter to Gbajabiamila?  Did Kyari really submit himself for the compulsory screening at the airport on arrival from the foreign trip or is he also guilty of non-compliance just as the legislators he sought to rein in?

The flurry of official engagements he was involved in soon after his return did not indicate either strict compliance with the mandatory screening at the point of arrival or the requirement to self-isolate for a period of 14 days. The impression one gets is that he may have also ignored those health procedures given his office. And that has turned out a grave error. Had he adhered to those health regulations, his health conditions could have been detected and necessary precaution taken to avert further spread of the deadly disease. But this did not happen and we are left with the current embarrassing situation.

From available records, the COS travelled out of the country on Saturday March7, and returned on March 14. But he was in Kogi State on March 17, three days after his return to commiserate with governor, Yahaya Bello over the death of his mother. He also attended both the National Executive Council meeting as well as that of the Federal Executive Council a few days after his return.

It is very clear from these activities that he did not self-isolate for the 14- day mandatory period. He could not have done so having travelled to Kogi State three days after his arrival into the country. Not also since he worked in his office on his return. The fact that three members of his staff have also tested positive to the lethal virus gives further fillip to the fact that he went into full official activities soon after his return. It is not surprising that governors and ministers who attended some of these functions and had close contacts with him have since been isolating and testing themselves for the virus.

As unfortunate as the situation is, it would appear we are really contending with contradictions of sort. Events are opening our eyes to the stark realities of official disposition to the fight against the corona virus pandemic. And that speaks volumes on the kind of leadership we have in this country. Governor Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti State captured this contradiction very succinctly when he urged 35 of his colleagues to self-isolate and get tested, after he self-isolated and with Governor Bala Mohammed testing positive to the virus.

The same feelings of official tardiness in the control of the ravaging pandemic were evoked by the altercations between Bauchi State governor, Bala Mohammed and Mohammed Atiku Abubakar, son of former vice president, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar. Both tested positive to the virus.

But the Bauchi State governor alleged that he contacted the virus from Mohammed Atiku whom he met in an Aero Contractors’ flight from Lagos to Abuja. According to the governor’s media aides, their boss met Mohammed and shook hands with him while on board the aircraft. They see the handshake as the source of the virus the governor contacted.

Atiku’s son has repudiated the allegation claiming nothing of such happened. He said the seat where he and his wife sat in the aircraft was not very close to where the governor sat and therefore he could not have been the source of the virus that afflicted the governor. We are not in a position to offer definite opinion on the issues traded by the duo given their complexity.

But available facts seem to indicate that the altercation was as avoidable as it was superfluous. Why do we say so? Indicators on the ground vividly show that both travelled outside the shores of the country and arrived almost around the same period. The countries they visited were also those at the epicentre of the Coronavirus pandemic. It is thus, difficult to say with degree of precision the source of their infection or which of them infected the other.

The safest assumption is that they contacted the disease from the countries they visited. That is how far we can go on this. Why the Bauchi State governor did not factor his country of visit as the possible source of his ailment despite the contacts he would have been exposed to in the course of his travel is still curious.

Sadly, the altercation between the two has again elevated to the fore the vexatious question as to whether they complied with the safety regulations requiring all returnees to submit themselves for screening test and self-isolate for 14 days. From all indications, they observed those safety rules in their breach. It is little surprising that a very close friend of Governor Mohammed has since tested positive to the virus. Even as one sympathizes with him in his current predicament, it would appear cheap blackmail singling out Atiku’s son as the purveyor of the virus while concealing the fact of his foreign trip.

More fundamentally, the predicaments of Kyari and Mohammed have brought to the fore the lethargic attitude of our leaders to the COVID-19 pandemic – an attitude that is largely responsible for the current spread and possible escalation of the pandemic in the country. The same attitude accounted for the tardiness in rolling out preventive measures in the face of the spread and the challenges faced by countries where the pandemic was most prevalent. We refused to learn from their experiences.

We trudged on and behaved in a manner suggesting that we are immune to its ravaging lethality. Even with the arrival of the indent case in February and the reality that the virus is being imported by returnees, we neither found it expedient to shut down our porous borders nor restrict flights into our international airports. By the time the nation’s leadership acted, it had become rather late. Fears are now that if the staccato of measures rolled out by both the federal and state governments do not quickly achieve desired result, we run the risk of an exponential explosion in the virus spread.

We shudder at such prospects. The consequences would be too grave for a nation grappling with decrepit medical facilities, debilitating poverty and a burgeoning population. It is hoped that Thomas Malthus’ postulation on the inverse relationship between food production and population growth is not about to be set in motion by the coronavirus disease. Malthus had said that food production was growing in an arithmetic progression while population was growing in a geometric progression.

He then postulated that unless nations take deliberate steps to stem the rate of population growth through a variety of measures, wars, pestilence or disease will put a natural stop to population explosion. We hope the coronavirus disease is not about to activate that process through the actions and inactions of our leaders.

By Emeka OMEIHE

 

This article is perhaps, one of the most tasking to put together. The reason for this is neither that the necessary materials are hard to access nor the subject matter really difficult to handle.

The challenge relates to the regularly evolving nature of official disclosures on the rate of infection of the subject matter, corona virus (COVID-19) in the country.

The situation has been so dynamic that figures relating to the rate of infection and measures to contain it change hourly.

There is therefore everything to expect that before this article is published, official figures on the infected and related responses would have overshot those captured here. These may impose constraints on some of our conclusions.

Before Tuesday last week, the official figure on those infected was put at three. But by the following day’s afternoon, it went up to eight with the discovery of additional five infected victims. And by Thursday, the figure had gone up to 12.

The figures increase as more samples are subjected to laboratory tests. Given the disclosure that about 1,300 people who flew in the same planes with the victims of COVID-19 or had contacts with them after disembarkation are still being traced, the figures are bound to escalate.

And as these people are traced, there are further fears they may have had further contacts with other people wherever they may be.

The implication is that we may be actually contending with a higher number of the infected than is readily available to official sources. The porosity of our land borders does not leave any one in comfort that the army of those regularly crossing through unmanned bush paths have not put the nation in further harm’s way.

It is to obviate the inherent dangers of unchecked influx of foreigner given the raging pandemic that the Senate called on President Buhari to immediately address the nation on the challenge and close all the international airports in the country except those of Lagos and Abuja.

This has now been done. Apparently, the exclusion of Lagos and Abuja international airports was informed by the thinking that they have facilities for screening travelers.

Similar calls for the closure of our land borders have come from some other quarters. Those who made such calls are mindful of the reality that the country may not be able to cope with the challenges of a sudden exponential rise in Covid-19 infections given the decrepit state of our health facilities and tepid handling of the few cases before us.

By the time the index case was reported, the nation was not prepared to handle the case despite what we knew of the pandemic and the fast manner it was spreading across the world.

The same lack of preparedness was manifest in the handling of the case of the woman who returned from the UK and admitted at the Enugu State University Teaching Hospital ESUTH-TH on suspicion of the virus infection.

Though the woman eventually tested negative, she unfortunately lost her life in circumstance her family is blaming on the negligent way she was treated by hospital staff.

They claimed she was abandoned and stigmatized and this contributed to her death. But the hospital said in its defense that nothing of such happened.

They claimed before the woman was brought to them, she had been rejected by the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital UNTH and that they withheld information that she just returned from the UK after their previous encounter.

The intention is not to delve into the veracity or otherwise of the allegations, but one issue that seemed to have emerged from the altercation is the unpreparedness of our health institutions for the challenge of the corona virus.

Lack of capacity to handle the disease is the reason for the abandonment and stigmatization of victims even when their status is yet to be confirmed. That appears to be the point the family of the woman that died in Enugu made especially since she had no such virus.

As countries that had early contact with the disease rolled out measures to contain its spread, our leaders trudged on as if we are immune to it even when its mode of transmission should forewarn that proactive measures be taken to contain any eventuality. Of late, we are beginning to come to terms with that reality.

It is increasingly dawning on us that we may have more case of the infection than official sources have admitted.

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In the absence of the tracing of the large number of those who had contacts with the recorded victims, there is everything to expect that the number would be much higher. We have also heard of the difficulty in tracing some of these persons due to wrong addresses and phone numbers supplied.

These are avenues for further complications. Who knows how many of such untraced contacts would have contacted the virus and how many new people at their paces of residence or work would have come into further contact with the disease?

The Federal government has come out with measures including placing 15 countries where the pandemic is most prevalent on travel ban. It also banned officials from travelling to countries prone to the ailment. Though steps in the right direction but they came belatedly. There was no point waiting for the affected to infiltrate our shores before the ban.

All those who tested positive to the virus came from abroad, some of them foreign nationals. Perhaps, a more proactive handling of the matter would have insulated the country from the current panic arising from the speed with which the virus is infiltrating our shores.

The World Health Organization (WHO) painted a sordid picture of the scourge when it revealed last Thursday that 17 deaths arising from the virus were recorded in Africa within 24 hours. This disclosure is frightening given that Africa trailed last in the list of continents to report cases of the virus.

It is however, heart-warming that many state governments have now embarked on measures to check the spread. Apart from the closure of schools in the north-west, Kwara, Anambra, Lagos and some other states, limits have also been imposed on gatherings both for religious and other purposes.

In both Lagos and Ogun states where a majority of the cases have been reported, religious gathering has been limited to 50 persons.

Health advisory on how to contain the scourge should be stepped up in schools, markets, parks, work places and other avenues of public contact. But we have not seen commensurate steps to set up specialized health centers around the country in anticipation of a rise in infections.

Though the minister of health, Dr. Osagie Ehanire tried to reassure on the existence of facilities to contain any sudden rise in the number of those afflicted, the facilities listed appear insufficient given the burgeoning population of the country.

He said the Lagos Infectious Diseases Hospital has 100 standard bed spaces with provision for expansion and that the Abuja Teaching Hospital has 12 bed spaces. These appear grossly inadequate.

We have also heard that there are fall back provisions even as some teaching and general hospitals have been told to make beds available at short notices and train doctors and nurses for the purpose.

It serves no useful purpose talking in such general and vague terms. What Nigerians expect of their leaders at this crucial moment is a comprehensive list of health facilities available around them that they should report suspected cases of the virus.

We should go beyond putting some health workers on alert to procuring the attendant facilities that will lead to effective management of cases.

This will reduce the confusion arising from lack of information on where to take patients and the attendant stigmatization and possible death as patients run from one hospital to another in search of expert treatment. Governments must take the pandemic very seriously as its reality is here with us.

The way we handle the matter has serious repercussions for our people especially given the ever growing population, debilitating poverty and the inability of a majority of our people to access the basic needs of life.

It will be interesting to see how a very dependent country will live in isolation in the days ahead. There may be lessons to learn.

 

 

By Emeka Omeihe

Why do our leaders float ideas that regularly portray us as an unserious lot? Why do we elevate to the front burner, issues that should ordinarily come last in our list of priorities? And is it not increasingly getting obvious that those elected to superintend over the affairs of this country are incapable of coming to terms with the existential realities of our people?

These are some of the posers thrown up by the recent bill at the senate seeking to ban the importation of generators into this country. This is especially so, given the curious manner the bill scaled its first reading at the floor of the senate. The way things stand; it appears the senate is bent on passing the bill unless its attention is drawn to the many limitations and inherent contradictions in that piece of proposed legislation.

Introduced by the Senator representing Niger south district, Bima Enagi, the bill seeks to “prohibit/ban the importation of generating sets to curb the menace of environmental (air) pollution and to facilitate the development of the power sector.” In the main, it seeks to stop the use in this country of all categories of electricity generating sets which run on diesel/petrol or kerosene with immediate effect. Those in essential services such as medical institutions, airports, railway stations, elevators and research institutions are to be excluded from the ban even as it prescribed imprisonment of 10 years for any person who knowingly sells generating sets.

Ostensibly, the intention of the bill is to reduce the menace of environmental air pollution and accelerate the pace of development of the power sector. In that wise, the sponsor of the bill recognizes the dangers to our environment of pollution caused by our excessive reliance on generating sets and the inhibiting effects they have had on the development of the power sector. His is seemingly a therapeutic response that will achieve two objectives- check environmental pollution and accelerate the pace of development of the power sector.

Conceived this way, there is the temptation to view the new bill as stemming from patriotic fervor. But a critical appraisal easily exposes the hollowness and unrealistic nature of that piece of proposed legislation. Not only is it an impracticable proposition, it is an obvious invitation to crisis of unimaginable dimension. Enagi seemed to have envisaged this crisis when he sought to exclude essential services from the proposed ban. Ironically, the same reasons that lent the ban unworkable for people in essential services form the basis for its anticipated failure. For now, the necessary and sufficient conditions for the anticipated law to achieve the touted objectives do not exist.

The subsisting reality is that but for the alternative source of energy provided by these generators,  the country would have come to a sudden halt in the face of epileptic and very unreliable supplies from the public power sector. Generators came into prominence because of our inability or failure to generate enough energy despite the huge investments in that sector. This is so even in the face of our huge natural endowments in oil, gas, hydro and solar resources with an estimated potential to generate 12.522megawtts of electricity power from existing plants.

On the average, it is estimated that we are only able to generate about 4,000 megawatts which are grossly insufficient to serve the nation. That is why supplies from official sources have remained very appalling contributing to the collapse of many of our industries as they run on generators for most of the time.

Many of these industries were forced to relocate to neighboring countries where they found the investment climate favorable. Those still in business are trudging on courtesy of the generating sets. Curiously also, the bill did not factor these industries among the list of services to be excluded from the proposed ban. The bill neither envisaged the deadly effect of such a ban on marginally operating industries nor the loss of jobs it was bound to engender. By glossing over these critical realities, the ban will only end up destroying whatever productive engagements that managed to survive the harsh business climate in the country.

Yes, we have the challenge of environmental pollution from the fumes of the generating sets. There is also a school of thought that believes that our power sector has not been able to develop because of a cartel that benefit from the sale of generators. But that is not sufficient justification for the ban. Even then, the generators are by no means the only source of air pollution. There are thousand and one vehicles out there that pollute our environment daily. We can as well ban them.

More seriously, banning the use and importation of generating sets is akin to tackling a problem from the effect rather than the source. Generators came on handy because of our serial failure to squarely address the problems of the power sector. Being a consequence of that failure, it remains to be conjectured how it can be a solution. Unfortunately, there is little to show for the huge investments past leaders ploughed into the power sector including the $16 billion contracts and payment made by the Obasanjo regime to revive the power sector. It was estimated that through these investments, the country would be able to generate 40, 000 megawatts of power by the year 2020. We are at that magic year with our power output still hovering around 4,000 mw.

The issue is to muster the necessary political will to address all the challenges that have over the years stood against efficiency in the power sector. And among these are the cankerworm of official corruption, insecurity and inadequate investments in increasing generating and transmission capacities.

These are the realities we must come to terms with. Once we find solutions to the challenges of inadequate generation and supplies, once there are regular power supplies for industrial, official and domestic consumption, the demand for generators will fizzle out unilaterally. There will neither be the need to ban their importation nor any ground to send our suffering people to prison for the serial failure of our leaders to provide efficiently, public goods and services that constitute the basis of their legitimacy.

A senate that is alive to its responsibilities, one that has proper reading and appreciation of extant realities in the country, will be the last to pass that obnoxious bill into law. Rather, it should direct its energies to investigate how the humongous sums of money invested into the power sector over the years were incapable of even scratching the surface of the challenges of that sector. It would be a cheering development if the senate could burst the riddle in power sector that brought about this pass.

Even then, the sponsor of the bill admitted its inherent limitations by seeking to exempt those he categorized as essential services from the ban. Implicit in that is the reality that we can only dispense with generators at a huge consequence to the country. It is an idea whose time will take a very long time to come. That public power supply now comes after generators in the power supply matrix mirrors very vividly the inherent absurdity of the proposed ban.

There is also the incongruity in seeking to deprive private persons the liberty to make live comfortable for themselves through the use of generators. Many of such people may have died in the last few weeks when the heat wave became very unbearable but for the help of the generators.

We will be eager to see the use of generators quickly dispensed with. The huge foreign exchange depleted annually in the importation of that product will be saved and deployed to other productive engagements. This will no doubt speed up the pace of industrial development. But we must get our priorities right. The things that should come last must not be positioned first.

The proposed ban is anti-people and therefore a worthless piece of legislation that should not be allowed to see the light of the day. It will end up creating more problems than it is intended to solve.

By Emeka Omeihe

 

Those calling for the head of Smart Adeyemi, the senator representing Kogi West district for expressing preference for military rule as against the current form of democracy in Nigeria are just being hypocritical.

In their indecent haste to seemingly protect the institution of democracy (whatever that means) they completely glossed over the fundamental issues elevated to the fore by Adeyemi’s presentation.

The impression one got from the reactions of the senators to his contribution to the debate on the Bill for the Establishment of a National Electoral Offences Commission is that he prefers military rule to democracy in its pristine form. That is not the correct interpretation of what Adeyemi actually said.

And what did he really say that should warrant the indecent attempt to stop him from expressing his views on a crucial issue before the senate? He said he preferred military rule to the way democracy is being practiced in Nigeria, particularly the electoral process which is nothing but a charade.

Hear him, “there cannot be democracy in any nation where we do not have free and fair elections. There will be a misrepresentation, bad governance, misappropriation of funds and all the shortcomings we have witnessed over the years of our democratic rule. As a result people of questionable characters find their ways to elective positions”.

A critical appraisal clearly shows Adeyemi neither passed a vote of no confidence on democracy in its pure form nor endorsed military dictatorship.

His was a comparison of democracy in the way it currently operates in the country with military rule as we had in the past. It is a case study on democracy using Nigeria as an example.

And in his conclusion: if what goes on in the name of democracy in Nigeria represents all that that governance framework can offer, it has no substantial allure over military rule. He has said it all and he is entitled to his opinion.

But what can be gleaned from this is obvious frustration with our inability or refusal to imbibe and put into effect those attitudinal and supportive dispositions that mark out representative democracy as the most preferred form of governance framework. His is a disappointment with what goes on in the name of democracy in this country.

That is the context he spoke and it will be difficult to fault. That is what he meant by “I have said over the years that military government is the worst but the situation is even worse now when you have people that are forcing themselves on the people”.

These are statements of frustrations indicating our collective failure in upholding those attitudes and dispositions that provide the fertile ground for democracy to germinate and flourish. The key issue is how people force themselves on others.

Adeyemi provided the answer in his opening statement when he said democracy is impaired in a milieu where there is absence of free and fair elections.

He itemized the negative effects of manipulated elections to include subversion of the collective will of the electorate, bad governance, misappropriation of public funds and all the ills we have witnessed since our return to democracy.

It is these systemic dysfunctions antithetical to democratic ethos that led him to contend that democracy in the form it has been practiced here does not show much promise over and above military authoritarianism.

Who can fault the reality that many of those who occupy elective offices today did not get there through popular mandate?  Who wants to pretend that the will of the electorate as expressly expressed at the ballot box did not seriously count in the victories some of our elected officials are currently savouring? What of the militarization of the electoral process and its reduction to a verity of military warfare as were obviously evident from past elections including those of Rivers, Bayelsa and Kogi state where incidentally, Adeyemi comes from?

What is there to pretend about in the assertion that the faulty and militarized electoral process been responsible for the bad leadership the nation has been contending with? What of the concomitant corruption it accentuates as those who bought their ways through, devise devious strategies to recover monies they spent during elections? What of the primaries of the political parties that are supposed to throw up popular candidates for elective offices? To what extent can we say they conform to democratic principles and practices of allowing popular choice unfettered access?

These are the issues in contextualizing Adeyem’s statements. And if the truth must be told, there is nothing democratic in the processes that throw up candidates from the primaries of the political parties. What we see very often is selection rather than election.

This is evident from the rancorous primaries that threaten to and in most cases factionalize the parties after such engagements.

Many of such parties are still nursing the wounds inflicted on them as a result of highly disputed, rancorous and undemocratic party primaries. How these conform to democratic rules is at the heart of the frustrations of the likes of Adeyemi.

Read Also: Lawan stops Adeyemi’s comparison of civil rule with military’s

 

The situation is even worse when it comes to general elections. Killings and maiming, snatching of ballot boxes and electoral materials, rewriting of results and incapacitation of the card readers so as to rig elections and the unwholesome activities of some electoral officials all combine to cast serious slur on the manner of democracy we practice in this country.

Rather than promote popular participation and popular choice, we are left with manipulated results and the subsequent imposition of candidates in a manner reminiscent of the system of military administrators of the military era.

Adeyemi was only implying that the collective mandate of voters must be a determining factor for ascendancy to elective political offices.

And where that is not the case, then what we practice is democracy in its most aberrant form. Aberrant democracy is another name for dictatorship either of the military or civilian class.

He seemed to be contending that the establishment of a national electoral offences commission may not achieve much if there is no positive change of attitude from all tiers of government to allow democracy flourish in its perfect form.

I understand him to be canvassing for the executive, the legislature and the judiciary to take up key roles in ensuring that the form of democracy we currently practice is retrieved from the observed imperfections and unwholesome tendencies that impede the capacity of our ballot process to approximate the collective will of the electorate as expressed at the ballot box.

That is what makes the difference between democracy and other forms of governance framework. That is what should stand out democracy from our sordid experiences with the past when military administrators were appointed for states without any input from the people.

Yes, the days of that order are gone with democracy in place. But such memories are easily evoked each time our electoral process throws up people through manipulated and questionable circumstances with other arms of the government seemingly complicit.

What Adeyemi did was to interrogate our electoral process; its capacity to approximate the collective will of the electorate as expresses at the ballot box.

It is an interrogation of the democratic process in the aberrant form it functions on this clime. The aim is to seek improvement in that process.

Those who quarrel with his comparative views on the issue, are perhaps, being misled by the bountiful opportunities thrown open by the democratic engagement that put humongous sums of money into their pockets. They are afraid that something untoward may happen if this view gains traction.

But, they should be challenged by the increasing loss of confidence in the electoral process through acts of omission or commission by the executive and the judiciary.

A situation where those rejected at the polls were eventually imposed on the people in very questionable circumstances because the verdict of the Supreme Court is final will continue to accentuate the frustrations of the likes of Adeyemi. If that is what democracy entails, then it offers little hope.

By Emeka Omeihe

Protests in Sagamu, Ogun State over the death of Remo Stars footballer, Kazeem Tiyamiu are clear indications of the level of anger of the people with the circumstance of that incident. But the protests were also poorly managed resulting to further deaths that exposed the inadequacies of our security agencies to professionally manage civil unrest.

Even as claims on the number of those who died during the demonstrations vary, it remains a fact that many others were injured. It is a curious irony that in trying to control the emotions arising from the death of the footballer, we ended up losing more lives. That says something about us as a people. More so, those entrusted with the onerous responsibility of protecting lives and property. It is also a vivid measure of the overall value we place on human lives.

And what is the cause of all this? Kazeem and his friend had stopped over at Sagamu to buy engine oil for his car. But while he was away, some policemen of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad approached the car and on seeing the lone passenger asked for the owner of the car. They were told that he went to buy something. On his return, the SARS operatives began to interrogate Kazeem and his friend, took their phones and bundled the former into their waiting vehicle while another policeman drove his car carrying the latter.

But somewhere along the expressway, something strange happened. The police claimed Kazeem jumped out of their vehicle and in a bid to escape arrest was crushed by an oncoming vehicle. His friend coming behind had a different story to tell. According to him, the police pushed him out of their vehicle only for him to be crushed by an oncoming vehicle. Such is the story of how the poor lad ended his life very abruptly and in very agonizing circumstance. How Kazeem, arrested with his friend and his car, could attempt to escape in the manner claimed by the police remains a mystery.

The account of how he was rushed to the hospital is somehow cloudy. But the impression one gets is that he was put into his car by the police and driven to the hospital as the police vehicle somewhere along the line vamoosed into the thin air. This dimension of the story is corroborated by the reported attempt by the policeman that drove his car to the hospital to flee on seeing that his colleagues were nowhere to be found. There was a video footage of some sympathizers including the hospital staff holding him as he attempted to flee the scene.

That was just the account of the incident; a chilling story of how such a prospective young man was sent to his early grave through acts of omission or commission by those paid to protect him. It is not clear what offence the SARS operatives arrested him for that warranted bundling him the way they did.

But from their conduct including seizure of their phones, it is probable they were screening them for cybercrime. In local parlance, they may have suspected them as ‘Yahoo boys’ especially given their ages, dressing and the brand of car they were driving. If that is the case, how does that fit into the mandate of the SARS operatives? From what we are made to understand especially given the designation of that outfit, they are specially trained to apprehend and smoke out armed robbers from their hiding places. As I write, the information filtering indicate that they are also to stamp out kidnapping.

If that is the case, we need to be educated on the correlation between armed robbery and cybercrimes. This differentiation is germane for us to determine the propriety or otherwise of the mission of the SARS operatives in Sagamu on that fateful day. If the mandate of SARS as seems very obvious, does not include cybercrimes, then the motivation of the police officers must be for personal gains. We are also faced with the danger of profiling upcoming young men as yahoo boys. This must stop. The police must invent more scientific ways of tracking cyber fraud rather than this fixation with young men.

Deputy Inspector General of Police, Peter Ogunyonwo who represented the IG at a condolence visit to the family of the deceased shocked the nation when he disclosed that the police officers were on an illegal duty and did not obtain clearance from the police formation in Sagamu before the operation.

It was for this reason that the IG ordered the disbandment of the zonal intervention squad in Ogun State and handed over their office to the state police command. The force also ordered the sacking of the inspector who led that ill-fated outing. As good as these measures are, they inevitably expose some of the dysfunctions of the current structure and organization of the police institution in the country.

What seems obvious from the disbanding of the zonal squad and its handover to the state police command is the exposure of the abuse such creations lend themselves to on account of lack of synergy with the states’ police commands. That is the message we get from the Sagamu episode.

But it remains an ad hoc measure accentuated by the exigencies of the abuse that led to the footballers’ death. There is everything to expect that the zonal intervention squad is not just a creation peculiar to Ogun State. The police authorities should speak up on the fate of other zonal intervention squads. Are they also going to be disbanded or allowed to stay on? This poser is germane given that the Sagamu incident may just be a tip of the iceberg on the monumental corruption, abuse and excesses of such outfits across the country.

That calls for reforms in the current structure and organization of the police force. Apart from reforms, training and re-training which the police force needs, it is imperative to urgently align their operations to global practices. But our police operatives need constant monitoring. It is obvious from the extant incident that many of our police officers embark on illegal duties to satisfy the lure of their stomach. When they are not mounting illegal checkpoints to collect tolls, they are seen conducting themselves in manners that diminish the very offices they occupy.

But for the way the Sagamu incident turned out, Kazeem could have been framed for a criminal offence if he failed to grease the pockets of his traducers or dispensed with. This is not something strange. Early this year, we had the unfortunate case of a Port Harcourt based mechanic, Chima Ikwunado whose curious death in police cell elicited wide demonstrations that the police had to fight hard to disband. The unfortunate story of Chima and four of his colleagues was that they drove against the traffic and apprehended by police operatives who allegedly asked for settlement which they could not afford. They were then taken to the police station and forced under torture to confess they robbed the cars they were driving from their owners.

The refusal by Chima to confess to what he knew nothing about and the pains of the torture to force him confess led to his death. The rest of what transpired at the police station, the efforts of those entrusted with our lives to cover up their sordid tracks, left a sour taste in our mouths. But that is the situation we are contending with. That is the source of the mistrust between the police and the general public. That is the dissonance evoked each time the police authorities mount publicity campaigns to portray the police as friends of the public. That is the contradictory message we get when we read posters around police stations that bail is free when actually the reverse is the case.

These call for serious training, re-training and re-orientation of police personnel. It is not enough to reel out the number of riffles, armored personnel carriers, drones and personnel needed by the force to perform as they did during their recent interface with the national assembly. As relevant as these are, disoriented personnel, one propelled by criminal intention to label innocent citizens as criminals, one that turns the rules of engagement upside down, is an unmitigated danger to the society. If the deaths of Kazeem and Chima lead to a better police force, then they would not have died in vain. But will they?