The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

  • Planned amnesty for Boko Haram

    Planned amnesty for Boko Haram

    If all goes well, President Goodluck Jonathan will shortly grant the Boko Haram insurgents a general amnesty. That is the gist of press speculation on the insurgents in recent weeks. The federal authorities have neither denied nor confirmed these press reports. The Federal Government was even reported as setting up a technical committee to work out the legal modalities for the planned amnesty, and that it expected that within weeks an agreement on amnesty could be reached with the Boko Haram insurgents. But there are still some hurdles to clear before any amnesty can be granted the insurgents. President Jonathan will need to be satisfied that this is not a hoax, and that the insurgents are serious this time about laying down their arms after nearly ten years of a bloody insurgency that has led to heavy civilian casualties on both sides of the conflict

    It should not come as a surprise that the Federal Government is considering a general amnesty for the insurgents. Such a possibility was never ruled out in the first place by President Jonathan. The Federal Government had always made it clear that it was ready to engage the Boko Haram leaders in a dialogue to end the bloody violence in some parts of the North that has claimed hundreds of lives. Some contacts were in fact made last year with the leaders of the sect, but these preliminary talks to end the conflict were abruptly cut off by the insurgents which may have broken into factions. If, collectively, they are now willing to embrace dialogue with the federal authorities and stop the bloody conflict, then there is a compelling need for the Federal Government to seriously consider this alternative to a military option that has simply not worked. Though battered and mostly on the run, the insurgents have stood their ground and have continued to maim and kill innocent civilians, including women and children in the North. Most of these casualties are Christians who are increasingly being prevented from going to their churches.

    A broad consensus in support of a possible peaceful option to the lingering conflict through dialogue between the insurgents and the federal authorities has been building up ever since the Sultan of Sokoto, the leader of the Moslem community in Nigeria, called on the Federal Government to consider a general amnesty for the insurgents. Virtually all Northern leaders, including the Northern Governors’ Forum and the Arewa Consultative Assembly, have joined the Sultan in calling for a general amnesty for the insurgents. It is believed that the National Security Adviser recently advised President Jonathan that a military solution to the conflict is no longer feasible. The insurgency has hurt the North very badly. It has more or less paralysed economic activities in the major commercial centres of Kano and Kaduna. No new investments can be expected in the North for some time on account of the ongoing conflict there. Northern leaders acknowledge this and want an end to the bloody conflict. There is also some concern among Southern leaders about the insurgency. Recently, the leader of the ACN, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, lent his voice in support of the call for a general amnesty for the insurgents if they agree to lay down their arms.

    For the Christian community in Nigeria, the call for amnesty must be painful as the majority of victims of the Boko Haram terror are Christians for whom the state is not able to provide any security. The state is supposed to protect religious freedom, the right to practice one’s religion freely. But that is no longer the case in most parts of the North where churches are frequently attacked by Boko Haram insurgents. Majority of Christians in the country will find it difficult to understand or accept the planned amnesty for the insurgents. But some Christian leaders, including the head of the Catholic Church in Nigeria, Cardinal Onayeikan, say they are willing to support the planned amnesty under suitable conditions. The President of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Oritsejafor, has expressed some reservations about the planned amnesty, insisting that the insurgents who have unleashed such terror and death on Christians in the North should not go unpunished. His views more accurately reflect the anger and dismay felt by the Christian community in Nigeria about the violence in the North targeted largely at Christians. These people do not understand or accept the immunity for the insurgents implied in the planned amnesty.

    The fact of the matter which President Jonathan has to consider is that the military option adopted to tackle the insurgency has simply not worked. The insurgency is getting stronger and better organised. It has free access to funds and weapons, and its adherents are becoming increasingly fanatical and unbending. If the security forces were winning the war, an amnesty for the insurgents would be uncalled for. Despite their brave and best efforts, the security agencies have had little or no success in tackling the terror being unleashed in Northern Nigeria by the insurgents. There is some evidence that these insurgents are getting substantial assistance, including funds and weapons, from Al Qaeda, among other foreign collaborators. They have some local support as well.

    Altogether, it is a conflict that our security forces cannot win as the enemy is evasive and illusive. It is difficult to defeat an invisible enemy that is constantly on the move. There must be a lot of frustration in our security forces that they are unable to really defeat the insurgents. But we cannot allow the carnage to continue without seeking an alternative to the use of force as a means of solving the problem. This is the cruel dilemma that President Jonathan has to face.

    In taking a decision whether or not to engage the insurgents President Jonathan will be guided by the thought of what effect an amnesty will have on his electoral chances in 2015. He needs the support of the North if he is going to get the PDP nomination and win the presidential elections. Even without the problem of Boko Haram he is by no means certain that he can clear the hurdle of northern opposition to his re-election in 2015. This is why an amnesty, being demanded by Northern leaders, is of critical importance to the political equation and President Jonathan’s bid for re-election in 2015. The problem is that the talks with Boko Haram may break down and scuttle the whole idea of an amnesty. Boko Haram has become factional and there is no guarantee that, collectively, it will agree to lay down its arms and end the conflict in the North. An amnesty for the group should not be granted unless there is reasonable assurance that it will bring the conflict to an end. Northern and Christian leaders must be brought into the dialogue with Boko Haram. Northern leaders should be made to provide reasonable guarantees that Boko Haram will honour the terms of the amnesty. The leaders of Boko Haram must be identified and should be made to offer guarantees that the insurgency by Boko Haram will not be resumed after the amnesty.

    On the part of the victims of the Boko Haram violence, it is necessary that they be offered some form of compensation by the state for its failure to offer them any protection. It is the least the state can do to show its concern and sympathy for the victims of the mindless violence being inflicted on the country. But the medium to long term solution to the religious violence in the North is for the state and federal governments to invest more in the enlightenment and education of the youths in Northern Nigeria. They must be given skills that will enable them to be gainfully employed.

  • Decree 4 by other name

    Decree 4 by other name

    In his lifetime, the late Dr Tai Solarin was a thorn in the flesh of the military junta. Just like the late Chief Gani Fawehinmi (SAN), he stood up to the military whenever he thought it was overreaching itself. Then something happened in 1992 or thereabout. There was this rumour that the American Ebony Magazine carried a story about some millions of dollars stashed abroad by the late Mrs Mariam Babangida..

    The rumour was so rife that everywhere you turned to you were hit by it. Expectedly, the security agencies were interested in getting to the root of the matter. How did the rumour emanate? Is it true that Mrs Babangida kept such mind-boggling amount abroad? The security operatives invited some people, including the late Solarin for questioning. Instead of a discreet investigation, they went public, at a stage, with the probe all in their quest to put the late Solarin in his place.

    Those who watched the crude grilling of the late Solarin on air by a faceless inquisitor will not forget the bitter enterprise in a hurry. To the faceless man’s questions, the late Solarin kept saying that he heard people discussing the issue inside the bus and decided to call on the government to do something about it. The interrogator was not satisfied. The only thing he was interested in was to discredit the late Solarin in the eyes of viewers. His intention, which was obvious, was to prove that the late Solarin was a liar and rumour purveyor. In all this, the press was not caught on the wrong foot because it knew where to draw the line between rumour and what to publish as news.

    The faceless voice was unsparing in his attack on the late Solarin : ‘’A man of your calibre…your education; you heard such rumour in the bus and you are spreading it…’’ Whenever the late Solarin tried to respond, the inquisitor did not allow him because his brief was to rubbish the renowned educationist and humanist before the public. He failed woefully in his mission because in such matters, the highly perceptive public knows who or who not to believe.

    Despite its might, the military did not try to regulate rumour mongering because of the Ebony incident. Twenty-one years down the line, some people are trying to mystify rumour mongering and confer it with the status it does not deserve. Their action is directed against the press which needling in recent times the Bayelsan government and its overlord in Abuja have not been comfortable with. There is more to the plan of the Bayelsa State government to outlaw rumour mongering than meets the eye. I don’t know what the government intends to achieve with the law in a state where poverty walks on four legs. Is this the law the people need? The answer is NO.

    The best that Governor Seriake Dickson can do for his people is to come up with laws that will lead to the improvement of their lot. Laws that will make it easy for the poor man’s child to access good education, potable water and state-of-the-art health facilities. What does he want to do with an anti-rumour law, which main target are journalists? Before he thinks he has ingeniously come up with a law that will deter journalists from plying their trade, let me quickly remind him that journalism does not thrive on rumours. It is the larger society that engages in such past time. And with due respect, His Excellency too is no exception. Can he swear that he never engaged in dem say, dem say before, to borrow his words.

    Dickson is, however, not the original owner of the words, dem say, dem say, I no see I talk. This is a catch phrase among the populace whenever they suspect that someone likes gossiping a lot. If you ever watched the Village Headmaster those days, you will get what I am talking about. Amebo, a character in the series, is a good example of dem say, dem say. In our society, we have many people like that. They tell you stories which are hard to believe, but then you are at liberty to ignore them and go your own way. With Dickson’s proposed law, the governor is saying we should no longer ignore such people, but send them to jail. I hope he has enough prisons to keep the dem sayers when the time comes. As I mentioned earlier, journalists do not engage in rumour-mongering. We speculate. But since there is a thin line between rumour and speculation I fear that many of us may run foul of the Dickson law when it comes into effect.

    Rumour is like gossip or hearsay which is passed from hand to hand and may not be true. Speculation involves speculating and guesswork. Journalists worldwide write speculative reports even when they are sure of their facts in order to protect the source of their story. This is the gamut of the matter and therein lies the threat in the planned Dickson law. When the Buhari/Idiagbon regime promulgated Decree 4 in 1984, its intention was clear – to gag the press. Even when the press published the truth, it still went in for it. Tunde Thompson and Nduka Irabor, the two bruised faces of the draconian law, were imprisoned by the late Justice Olalere Ayinde for publishing a true but speculative report about ambassadorial postings.

    The truth of the report did not avail them in the circumstance. The judge saw what the reporters wrote as rumour because the postings had not been announced before the story was reported. If the press has to wait on the government before doing its work, then it will be left with carrying only press releases from the office of its spokesman. The press cannot afford to do that if it wishes to remain relevant and continue to serve the people. Does Dickson think he can succeed where the military failed? Why is he so much interested in this dem say law rather than thinking of how to improve the lot of his poverty-stricken people. Hear him at the inauguration of the Public Information Management Committee in Yenagoa on March 21 :

    ‘’A bill seeking to make malicious rumour mongering and misinformation of the public a punishable offence has become imperative in view of the ever-increasing rate of rumour-mongering and its attendant consequences on individuals and the state in general…of course, we are aware that the existing laws provide for offences such as criminal defamation of character and so on. But we are going to come up with a legislation to punish dem say, dem say people’’. May God help him. But before he derails, may we advise him not to embark on this unfruitful venture because it will rub off on him in a way that he may not like at the end of the day.

    Yes, people may be goading

    him to go on with the law

    because as they may tell him, ‘it will be the best thing to happen since the creation of the state’, but they will not take the flak with him when the heat comes. Such people have started already. For instance, the committee chairman, Chief Spero Boma-Jack, has pinpointed the dem sayers. In response to Dickson’s speech, he said : ‘’People who do so (dem sayers) are those who have the opportunity to hear from the horse’s mouth but choose to make insinuations that contradict government’s good intentions and policies’’. Whether you do good or bad, people will always talk, but does that make what they say an offence punishable under this proposed law?

    There is no benefit to be derived from this planned law and the earlier Dickson realises this, the better for him and his administration. There is no need wasting tax payers’ funds on a legislation that will not put food on their tables. What Bayelsans need is succour from their years of suffering, shattered dreams and dashed hopes, not a law which will not serve any useful purpose.

    Isn’t it an irony that Dickson wants to militarise our democracy when generals who used the same trick yesterday but failed are today champions of democratic tenets? It is not too late for him to retrace his step before he finds himself on the wrong side of history. It is unfortunate that some of our colleagues even see anything good in this mischievous proposal. It will soon dawn on them that they are being used to justify the need for this bad and offensive legislation.

  • Nigeria’s descent into Hobbesian state

    Nigeria’s descent into Hobbesian state

    Economics and government are like two sides of a coin. The former, whether couched in flowery epithet as ‘law of demand and supply’, capitalism or globalization, is nothing but a label for the first law of the jungle, concerned in the main, with the survival of the fittest at the expense of the weak. The later as an impartial arbiter, strives to check the recklessness and greed of man by moving society away ‘from the jungle also known as the ‘state of liberty and license, of enmity and destruction’, to that of peace and safety’ where the privileged who have taken more than their disproportionate share of the national resources and the less privileged can jointly live in harmony. Whenever there is disharmony and anarchy in any society, such as we have had in the US, Europe, Argentina, and Brazil in recent years, it is often as a result of the failure of government.

    Our current descent into anarchy characterized by law of the jungle is the result of failure of our successive government and their economic policies dating back to the Babangida era.

    Babangida and his economic wizards -Kalu Idika Kalu, Olu Falae imposed the Structural Adjustment Program {SAP} which we were then told had no alternative. Its effects which include the collapse of our manufacturing sector and massive devaluation of our naira from about one naira to one pound in 1981 to today’s N260 to one pound sterling have been duly documented elsewhere to warrant repeating here. The common link between Obasanjo, his Okonjo-Iweala/Chukwuma Soludo team and President Goodluck Jonathan and his Okonjo-Iweala/Sanusi Lamido Sanusi.team is their disdain for contrary views and their insistence that our only pathway to economic growth and development is wholesale adoption of economic laws long discarded in most western countries where every government adopts a mixture of capitalism and socialism as an ideological orientation?

    Many well informed Nigerians as well as newspapers through editorials campaigned vigorously for a place for small banks in an economy many others insisted mega banks were no answer to inefficiency and corruption. Every contrary view to Soludo’s selective perception was treated with disdain. As Sanusi, Soludo’s successor has now pointed out, mega banks were avenue for mega corruption by players in the economy who obtained non performing loans and bank owners who fraudulently used depositor’s money to acquire private jets and properties all over the world.

    Sanusi, the new government economic wizard on his path expended N620b tax payers’ money to bail out the mismanaged banks. A few months later, the banks were sold at give away prices to those who were alleged to have contributed to the misfortune of the banks. Three years on Nigerians, are yet to be told by government the impartial arbiter how much of the tax payers’ N620 billion bailout had been paid back by the affected banks. And as part of the nation’s serial jeopardy, Sanusi’s policy led to the loss of close to 50% of the work force in the banking sector

    But elsewhere such as Europe and especially in the US where banks and manufacturing industries attracted government bail outs, they were in fact designed to enable people keep their jobs. And unlike here where our rulers have refused to talk about the status of the taxpayers money, it is common knowledge that some beneficiaries of bailout in the US including the City Group have paid back, while those that have started making profit are buying back government shares at a profit.

    Similarly, unlike in the US where automobile industries that benefited from government bailout are not only making giants steps in terms of growth but also in reducing unemployment, we chose to ignore our automobile support companies like Michelin and Dunlop that have today joined the importation train bringing tyres from China and South Africa. We are today the world biggest importer of used and substandard tyres. Our market is so big that it has been said used tyres manufactured as far back as 2004, are shipped into Nigeria from Ghana and South Africa. While the nation imports products of labour from other nations, our university trained engineers roam the streets.

    As part of our nations’ serial jeopardy, Sanusi’s policy of high interest rate in order to control inflation has driven the banks to embark on a mad rush for revenue mobilization. Our 19 and 20-year old girls are sent to the streets by the banks and directed to raise N200m monthly to keep their jobs. Scandalized by the callous act by the banks, David Mark the Senate President not too long ago called our attention the possible psychological, and emotional trauma these innocent young girls are subjected to so early in life.

    N200m deposit can only come as products of corruption from government agencies. The strategy therefore is that the young girls are let loose on government revenue agencies that have been alleged to sit on collected revenues for few months before transferring such funds to the Federation Account. The government in the interim is faced with cash flow problems. The House late last year raised queries as to why budgets were not being implemented despite the evidence that showed revenues in excess of the budget were raked in by government monthly.

    As part of our serial jeopardy, even when the banks got the deposit, the mobilized funds are still not given as loans to the manufacturing sector that are in a position to create jobs. They are instead diverted by the banks to buy government bonds at next to nothing interest rate. Of course this is a natural response to government policy of controlling inflation by keeping interest high.

    But except perhaps government economic wizards, who does not know that the main source of inflation is the more than 50% of the nation’s resources the federal government that lacks the capacity to fight its known corrupt PDP members controls? Of course we can add as source of inflation the governors’ security votes, the lawmakers out-of-this-world earnings, the unearned five percent allocation to traditional rulers who lose the moral right to checkmate the local council officials who share their councils’ allocations.

    An analysis of the current year budget will show at a glance, the bizarre appropriations to various bodies with duplicated functions. Why is it impossible for instance to insist that the EFCC survive on 20% of funds collected from indicted governors, bankers, oil fraudsters and PDP stalwarts?

    A government whose leading members share our national patrimony has been rendered impotent when the governed engaged themselves in a war of attrition – kidnapping, armed robbery, importation of fake products including drugs all in pursuit of of individual needs and greed. And these of course include such needs as security, electricity, water, comfort and a secured future for our children to protect them from being assaulted and debased by predators that abound in the jungle. In the absence of government that can act as impartial arbiter or as in our own case where President Jonathan’s PDP administration is in acquiescence with privileged few who do not give a damn about Nigeria, the law of the jungle reigns supreme.

  • Cutting MDAs; UNESCO’s 26%; ‘Amnesty’ for amputees? FRSC: the new police?

    Cutting MDAs; UNESCO’s 26%; ‘Amnesty’ for amputees? FRSC: the new police?

    Streamlining Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDAs) is welcome if money saved improves infrastructure in education, health, security and power. To free its citizens from the financial demon of electricity power insufficiency and failure, Nigeria urgently needs 100,000Mw. We should meet UNESCO’s 26% of budget invested in education infrastructure. The MDA cuts needs similar cuts in obscene political ‘Salaries and Perks’ which are ‘SAPping’ Nigeria dry. How about part-time legislators?

    Amnesty is not just amnesty pay-outs to retired bombers. How about ‘Amnesty for Amputees’ with pay-outs for all bomb victims? Amnesty strategies should go with compensation and care for amputees and other victims.

    The North under-developed the South through federal manipulation and forgot to develop itself to catch up with the stunted South. Where is that money? If Ibori and Alams had billions what did other governors have? There are few saints, military or civilian, North or South of the Rivers Niger and Benue. Happily the North embraces the train after killing it for 30 years of road transport. Kano announced a 4-year Chinese construction of intra-city monorail. This will be a near-replica of Lagos State’s ‘Jakande-rail’ truncated by Buhari/Babangida at a cost of $183m for breach of contract 30 years ago. Forgive me if I do not clap for ‘progressive’ Kano. Better get Buhari’s permission. But perhaps being Kano, you do not need it, abi?

    Congratulations to government for the Ore-Benin road. Friends said they ‘did the road in an hour instead of the 5-24 hours last year’. Diezani Alison-Madueke, former Minister of Works, can take off her orange overalls and stop weeping on NTA. However with good roads come responsibility to drive safely, conscious of one’s cargo, passengers and other road users. The loss of between 45-80 precious Nigerian lives is a blood-stained testimony to the need for less haste and more speed control. Unmindful of tyres, obstacles or state of mind of the driver, high speed kills worldwide and inflammable cargo like petrol is begging to ignite. I have always dreaded passing through Ogere during those endless stand-till go-slows. How many of the thousands of us stuck there would be burnt in a holocaust if 1 or 1000 of those tankers had caught fire or been maliciously ignited to cover-up a petrol theft? Such a conflagration, funeral pyre, would have been seen by the cosmonauts in space just as the Ogere go-slow is a talking-point for pilots on the Lagos-Abuja and Lagos-London air route! The FRSC struggled for 30 years with Ogere before December. Can NISER calculate the cost of ‘Ogere Traffic Mismanagement’ in financial losses and the trillions of man-hours? It is only when, in two minutes, you drive through a nightmare like Ogere or a deadly pothole, where you spent countless hours of misery during 30 years, that you look back in anger at those who refused to make the road passable for 30 years. So as we clap today, we remember the suffering and death we have endured due to government and MDA maximum incompetence and a lack of love for Nigeria.

    Potholed roads injure Nigerians including Great Achebe and claim lives but so do smooth new roads. But at a point we blame the drivers not the road. Tanker and trailer drivers seem above the law with ‘might is right’, wrong lane driving, poor parking and overloaded axles. For the commercial vehicles driven with a death wish, NURTW has been more efficient at providing the fifth column army for violent party politicking than queuing, driving within speed limits and obeying the Highway Code. Infringements are more often ‘bribed’ and it seems ‘FRSC stop and search’ has crept into the vacuum left by cancelling the police checkpoint. The FRSC must reverse this public perception to further justify the recent award from NASS and international outreach plans.

    In Ibadan, just before the Secretariat junction coming from UCH, there is a daily 7am FRSC ‘Road Marshals checkpoint’. Perhaps they have the highest moral goals. But if I was a commercial driver, I would feel annoyed and destabilised at the delay of a methodical ‘particulars and vehicle inspection’. At that time ‘FRSC operation Keep Moving’ is better than FRSC ‘Go Slow’ particulars check. Are they authorised? The authorisation should be withdrawn as it is giving FRSC a bad name. I have been flagged down on the expressway for ‘particulars check’ on 10 occasions to fill ‘a quota of arrests’. Once, unsolved murdered late Uncle Bola Ige was my only passenger. As a foundation FRSC Road Marshal, I believe this is a misapplication of powers and responsibility of FRSC. FRSC cannot become the new police checkpoint and FRSC should not allow its staff, from boredom, lack of supervision, seeking financial gain, wickedness or ‘quota catching’ to take up checkpoint duty cancelled by IGP Abubakar! If they do that near Secretariat what happens in the hinterland? Keeping FRSC’s reputation clean is a glorious accolade for FRSC management. So far the NSCDC seems, in public perception, the cleanest organisation. There is room for more ‘My oga[s] at the top’ of the honesty tree. Forgive that man. At least he is honest. As roads improve, educating tanker, trailer and NURTW drivers, enforcing right hand driving, speed limits, parking off the road, axle weights, and holding waking/services for the dead road users in the motor park where the NURTW vehicle originated, will become more important than ‘particulars checks’ for cutting deaths!

     

  • NECO? Wait a minute!

    NECO? Wait a minute!

    It came like a bolt from the blue. That is how best I could describe the news of the Federal Government’s apparent resolve to scrap some of its agencies, which made headlines last week. The government is believed to have made up its mind to scrap the agencies in line with the white paper submitted by a committee set up last year to study the recommendations of the Stephen Oronsaye-led Presidential Committee on the Rationalisation and Restructuring of Federal Government Parastatals, Commissions and Agencies.

    In April 2011, the Oronsaye-led committee had recommended the abolition of 38 agencies, the merger of 52 and the reversion of 14 departments in the ministries, from which they were initially carved out. This move, the committee suggested, would save the nation more than N862 billion between 2012 and 2015. In addition, the committee said the recommendations were aimed at helping the government to effect a drastic reduction in the size of its bloated bureaucracy, eliminate duplication of functions and lower the cost of governance.

    Among the agencies which have now been placed under the government’s potential sledgehammer are the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), National Examination Council (NECO), Public Complaints Commission, National Poverty Eradication Programme (NAPEP) and Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission, among others. Nigerians seem to be focusing more attention on the fate that awaits NECO and UTME.

    It is expected that with the scrapping of the UTME, individual universities in the country would henceforth conduct their own admission examinations and admit students. The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, will only set standards and ensure compliance as it will now act as a mere clearing house. In the same vein, the West African Examination Council (WAEC) is expected to take over the functions and vast infrastructure of NECO. This means that WAEC would now conduct two external examinations in a year with one holding in January while the second would be conducted in November of every year.

    Expectedly, the move to tamper with NECO and UTME has attracted controversy across the land. While some people have applauded the government for attempting to tinker with the two bodies, others have vehemently kicked against the move. For instance, while some say the scrapping of NECO will check duplication of examination by secondary school leavers, others maintained that allowing the examination body to exist side by side with WAEC has broken the monopoly hitherto enjoyed by WAEC as well as provide an alternative for students. Their argument is that while WAEC is a regional examination body, NECO is a wholly indigenous and national body that is well positioned to assess students in Nigeria. Nigeria picks 54% of the bill for running WAEC.

    Some people have also been quick to go into history. Their argument is that NECO was established in April 1999 when Nigerian students were suffering untold hardship in the hands of WAEC. The establishment, they argue, was in line with decisions reached at the 49th meeting of the National Council of Education. The establishment of the Council at that time, they noted, was in response to the outcry of Nigerian students over the problems they were encountering with the examinations being conducted by WAEC in the country, especially the Senior Secondary Certificate Examination and the General Certificate Examinations.

    With its massive infrastructure and permanent site located on the outskirts of Minna, the Niger State capital, NECO has recorded many successes. But like every other successful venture, the body also had its own teething problems at inception. It was initially confronted with several daunting challenges that sought to undermine its examinations. Most of these challenges have been surmounted. Unfortunately, in the last few years, Nigerian students have successively recorded woeful results, especially in English Language and Mathematics in both WAEC and NECO examinations.

    These results have attracted a lot of public reaction and discourse. Commentators seem to agree that the results reflect the current state of Nigeria’s educational system and that something urgent needs to be done. Public discourse has also been engendered at various seminars, workshops, and conferences on how to proffer solutions to the inadequacies that affect students, teachers, educational administrators and policy makers in the country.

    However, the problem of mass failure in school certificate examinations, though not limited to NECO, is believed to have arisen because due diligence may not have been carried out at the marking venue by the examiners marking the examination papers. There’s no doubt that the provision of a valid and reliable assessment of students’ performance is the only way to ensure that stakeholders in education could begin to see examinations as a means of restructuring and reviving the moribund educational system in the country. This will ensure the credibility of examinations taken by candidates in Nigeria, as well as engender global trust in results issued on them.

    The idea that one examination body is better or preferable in Nigeria has been there all along. But what I think should engage the attention of our policy makers is the increasing number of candidates who could not obtain the mandatory pass marks in both English and Mathematics – a prerequisite for admission into the university – in the last few years. Many of the candidates could not also secure the mandatory credit-level pass mark in five subjects needed for admission into tertiary institutions. This has created a big problem in the education sector.

    In my opinion, it is the standard of education that has fallen to unimaginable level and not the standard of the examination bodies. In that case, NECO cannot simply be scrapped because WAEC is there standing by. If at all the government has identified any problem with NECO, it should put necessary mechanisms in place to strengthen it rather than scrap it. Like the Yoruba say, “Ori bibe ko ni ogun ori fifo”, literally translated to: “Cutting off the head is not a cure for headache”.

    Besides, it is clear that with the infrastructure it has put in place in the country, NECO seems to be better positioned to conduct final examination for Nigerian candidates than WAEC. Now, how do you ask a Tilapia to attempt to swallow a whale? Absolutely impossible. With about 37 offices located in the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, it is obvious that WAEC has no capacity to take over and manage the assets and or liability of NECO.

    Besides, about 5,000 people are said to be employed by the body. In a country where unemployment has soared to high heavens, how will government manage the high unemployment figure that may arise from scrapping NECO? This is because there is no way WAEC can immediately absorb even a quarter of that number. This will surely increase the number of unemployed Nigerians roaming the streets and who would likely be easy prey to criminal activities and criminality which the security agents are already suffused with.

    At any rate, rather than take hasty actions that will further compound the problems in the education sector, it is imperative to overhaul the country’s educational system through appropriate and dynamic learning skills for pupils and effective teaching methods for the teachers. We should properly monitor the students from the kindergarten through the primary school, the junior secondary school and the senior secondary school levels. This way, any fundamental error in their growth process could be quickly redressed.

    Above all, there is the need to make sure that we have qualified teachers to teach such compulsory subjects as English Language and Mathematics. The current situation where a whole school with SSS1 and SSS3 student population of about 1500 students may just have only one teacher tutoring students in the subjects does not augur well for good education standard. It all boils down to channeling adequate funds to education through provision of necessary infrastructure and teaching aids as well as constant training and retraining of the teachers.

    The government may tinker with NECO for the purpose of enhancing productivity and efficiency but certainly, there is no justifiable reason to scrap it. So let it be!

  • Amnesty for Boko Haram: between Gumi and Kukah (I)

    Amnesty for Boko Haram: between Gumi and Kukah (I)

    Predictably, last month’s call for amnesty for Boko Haram by the Sultan of Sokoto and nominal head of Nigerian Muslims, Alhaji Muhammadu Sa’ad Abubakar, and its initial outright rejection by President Goodluck Jonathan have provoked strong avowals and disavowals. Of all these avowals and disavowals, three have stood out because of the prominence of the religious leaders that have made them and the way they seem to have traded places in their disparate positions.

    First was Sheikh Ahmad Gumi, son of the renowned late Sheikh Abubakar Gumi, and himself a leading light of the Izala sect founded by the father. In its lead story of three Wednesdays ago, the up and coming Abuja based Blueprint newspaper exclusively reported him to have dismissed the Sultan’s call as “hypocritical.” This was clearly against the grain of the apparent widespread support in the North and among Muslims for the Sultan’s call.

    Boko Haram, said Sheikh Gumi, is an ideology that respects no law, “not even the Qur’an or Hadith or scholarly fatwa.” There is, he said, therefore no basis for dialogue with its adherents, much less granting them any amnesty. “It is,” he avowed, “a creed that must be crushed.”

    Two weekends ago, Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah, the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, issued an Easter message that couldn’t have disagreed more with Sheikh Gumi’s position. To reject amnesty for the sect, he said, was to operate at the same (disagreeable) level with its adherents. The offer itself, he said, may not solve all our problems, “but it will bring us closer to a new dawn.” Those who have rejected the amnesty, he also said, have focused more on how the issues involved “fit the survivalist instinct of the president and his ruling party.”

    The same weekend, Bishop Kukah’s highly respected senior in the Catholic hierarchy, Cardinal John Onaiyekan, the Catholic Archbishop of Abuja, spoke in the same vein in his own Easter message. “The call for amnesty,” he said, “would seem to me quite appropriate and even necessary.” Useful and necessary as the security response has been, he said, it has obviously not been enough on its own.

    Overall, the cardinal’s Easter message was more measured and more cautious than the bishop’s but it was the latter’s that received wider media publicity.

    This position of the two senior Catholic clergy is obviously at variance with that of the leadership of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) under Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, and possibly with that of the majority of Nigerian Christians. CAN, as we all know, has been vehemently opposed to any form of accommodation with Boko Haram which it has accused of committing genocide against Christians in the North, with at least tacit support of the country’s Muslim leadership.

    The position of the cardinal and the bishop, though consistent with the religious doctrine of forgiveness, clearly exposes them to a charge of appeasement. However, from the consistent manner they have stuck to that position in spite of the fact that the Catholic Church, probably more than any other, has borne the brunt of the alleged Boko Haram mass killings of Christians – alleged, because Boko Haram has apparently since become a franchise used by criminals and possibly rogue elements in the security services alike for their own ends – it is obvious that this is a cross that the two are prepared to bear.

    In his dissention from the popular Muslim and Northern support for the Sultan’s call for amnesty for Boko Haram, Sheikh Gumi seems to be in total agreement with the country’s authorities. For example, speaking at a seminar in Lagos last Tuesday on “Enhancing Military-Media Relations towards Improved Security” in support of his Commander-in-Chief’s initial rejection of the Sultan’s call, the rather bellicose army chief, Lt. General Azubuike Ihejirika, said in effect that force must remain the principal, if not the only, weapon for fighting Boko Haram.

    “There is no country where terrorism has been curbed,” he said, “that force was not applied. There is none in history…I talk so much about force because that is my own line of business. I am to destroy the terrorists, if I am able to find them.” (National Mirror, April 3).

    Sheikh Gumi and the authorities may agree on what they believe is the need to crush Boko Haram, but General Ihejirika’s position clearly defines the limit of that agreement. For, whereas both the general and his boss obviously believe they can destroy the sect militarily, the sheikh believes they simply can’t. Their government, he said, lacks the competence and, by killing and terrorising more people than Boko Haram through its Joint Task Force Operations, it also lacks the moral strength to succeed.

    His own solution? “A select Muslim high ranking officer, good intelligence, special strike squads (and) genuine cooperation of the civilian population,” he said.

    Of the four elements of the sheikh’s formula for the defeat of Boko Haram, most people, I guess, would agree with him on the last three, in so far as they are simple common sense. By the same token, however, hardly would anyone agree with him that “a select Muslim high ranking officer” is necessary for success in the war against Boko Haram.

    On the contrary, it is more likely to further divide an already divided military along religious lines and weaken it even more. Indeed with good intelligence and cooperation from the civilian population, it matters little, if at all, what the religious or ethnic affiliation of the field commander – and even of the commander-in-chief – is, so long as both are men of good faith.

    The fundamental problem with government’s apparent over-reliance on the use of force in tackling Boko Haram is that it cannot win hearts and minds. General Ihejirika may, as he has said, be in the business of using brute force to solve problems but as he has also acknowledged, albeit with little conviction apparently, brute force alone, or even as the principal weapon, has never solved anybody’s problems. If it did, all terrorists would have since been wiped off the face of the earth given the overwhelming force governments the world over – especially that of America, the world’s self-appointed global police and its only super-power – have deployed, and continue to deploy, against terror organisations.

    Every problem requires good intelligence and the cooperation of all and sundry for a viable solution. Above all, every problem requires good faith on the part of all parties involved, but especially on the part of those in authority. None of these three requirements can be secured by relying on brute force only or in the main, especially of the kind deployed in Borno and Yobe states since 2009, following the extrajudicial killings of several leaders, and even many more suspected members, of Boko Haram.

    This brute force was similar, perhaps even worse, than that used in the Delta against the region’s militants before they were granted amnesty in June 2009, more specifically the kind of brute force former president, General Olusegun Obasanjo, inflicted on the Odi community in Bayelsa State, President Jonathan’s home state, about 12 years ago; a brute force which Justice Lambo Akanbi strongly condemned in his judgment last month and for which he awarded the community N37.6 billion against the Federal Government as compensation.

    There may well have been some politics behind the size of compensation the court’s compensation. But politics or no, it is still legitimate to ask, as The Guardian did in its editorial of March 11 about the judgment, “Why would a government unleash violence on its defenceless citizens in the name of maintaining law and order? Why would such a horrendous havoc be wrecked on a community because of a few bad elements as though there is no single innocent and law abiding citizen in the community who deserves government’s protection?”

     

     

    Breath of fresh air indeed!

    When President Goodluck Jonathan promised during his campaign for the 2011 election that his administration would usher in a “breath of fresh air” into the country, I thought it was no more than one of those empty sloganeering politicians over-indulge in during campaigns. Nothing the administration has done – or not done – since then has proved my scepticism wrong. On the contrary, the degree of insecurity from arbitrary use of power by the authorities and the scale of corruption in the land alone have enveloped the land with so much stink you can barely breathe.

    Two days ago, the administration enhanced its reputation for doublespeak when it picked on Leadership newspaper over its exclusive story last week about an alleged presidential directive to its operatives to use all means, fair or foul, to frustrate the emergence of All Progressives Congress as a formidable opposition to the ruling Peoples Democratic Party.

    After four of the newspaper’s staff honoured a police invitation for questioning, it released two of them in the night but detained the other two reportedly with instructions from “the oga at the top” to keep them incommunicado until they reveal the source of their story and of the documentary proof which they published to back their story.

    This is outright Gestapo style out of the book of Hitler’s Germany. Some “breath of fresh air” indeed! The other two were released yesterday night.

     

  • Religion and politics in Osun

    Religion and politics in Osun

    Earlier in the administration of Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola in the State of Osun, the state chapter of the Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN, felt decidedly miffed to proceed to court in defense of the governor. It was alleged that the administration planned to Islamize the state. CAN, at that point, was a friend of the administration.

    Now, flip the pages. In March 2013, the religious body has sauntered into public space with tones of generally incredible and particularly mundane allegations of islamization against the governor it earlier poignantly defended. In Osun, it is barely a year to gubernatorial election in which the governor would be seeking re-election. In our clime where elections are nothing else but a make or mar affair, old bonds of friendship are often too tenuous to stand the slightest exertions. It is time for friend to abandon friend.

    In reality, the Aregbesola administration is not a stranger in the dingy surgical theatre of spin doctors. This latest onslaught against the administration presents the imprimatur of an earlier lurid one about secession of the state allegedly plotted by the governor single-handedly without other states in the South -west in the picture. Several months after, how the masterminds or this ill-fated idle engagement expected anyone to believe them still beats logic. In quick succession came opposition PDP-backed campaign about non-constitution of the cabinet culminating in the patently devilish question mark on the state of health of the governor in which the Osun helmsman was alleged to have collapsed at every public function extending beyond two hours. Bristling with misapplied ingenuity, they manufactured the now famous but fake cancer tale against Ogbeni.

    It is, however, instructive to know that these baseless allegations came after a bigger grand plot to impeach the governor fell flat on its face. Less than a month in office of Ogbeni in 2010, the trio of Vice President Namadi Sambo, Senate President David Mark and Senator Iyiola Omisore sponsored PDP state assembly members to Abuja where the incendiary plot was hatched.

    By its sheer antecedent, ascribed and enunciated objectives, the issues put forward by a religious body of the status of CAN ought to provoke interest and sympathy. This one, however, is a little off- side. Every issue raised by the Osun CAN – from allegation of fixing state events for Sunday morning to the visit of the Sultan of Sokoto – oozes so much partisanship that the official opposition to the ACN government of the State of Osun could not have done a better job.

    Among others, CAN allege that the governor changed “the state official brand point from “the state of living spring” to the state of the virtuous” to spite the Christians who refer to Jesus Christ as living spring. By simple extension of the underpinning logic, this assertion by CAN presupposes that the state, despite its secularity in the face of its multi – religious character, has officially been packaged as a Christian enclave all along. Besides, is Omoluabi – to which “the virtuous” translates – not more elegant and edifying to a people who are outstandingly moralistic?

    The visit of the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Saad Abubakar ,to the state was also lampooned by CAN. The nationally respected traditional ruler was accused of being in the state, of course at the instance of Ogbeni, to prepare the ground for a Jihad “following the Sultan’s request for amnesty for Boko Haram members. It will utterly be difficult for any sensible mind to ascribe to Osun CAN any iota of nationalism with this lousy claim.

    The derelict state of most infrastructures in public schools, whether in the state of Osun or elsewhere, is well known to everyone. The obvious transformative agenda of the governor in demolishing and replacing these archaic relics is the butt of vitriolic attack by CAN in the state. In the self-righteous view of the religious group, this government gesture is a prelude to changing the schools into madrasas or fortress of Islamic evangelism. Instead, the collapsing buildings – complete with all their health hazards and aesthetic debasement – should have been left in memory of the lofty legacies of alien missionaries of yesteryears.

    The plot of this drama of the absurd in Osun similarly incorporated other scenes including allegation of imposition of hijab dress code on female students in the state as well as declaration of a strange holiday which the government termed Hijra holiday to mark the commencement of Islamic calendar. It does not matter to this set of CAN leadership in the state of Osun that the now globally accepted Gregorian calendar is Christianity – based without anyone raising a divisive hell in a country that is populated by Christians, Muslims and traditionalists in almost equal proportion.

    The prodigious reality of the hijab brouhaha must have breathtakingly been lost on CAN. Otherwise the organization should have come to terms with the presumptuousness of its endeavor considering the fact that it is the Muslims themselves in the state who, incidentally, dragged Ogbeni administration to court, seeking enforcement of their fundamental human rights to wear hijab .The case is still pending in the state high court of justice. A particularly interesting aspect of CAN’s problem with Ogbeni consists in the allegation that he, in the heat of the campaign for the 2007 election in Iwo, distributed hijab to students in the town. What really is the worth of a serious politician who, confronted with the grim task of soliciting for vote in a catholic enclave, fails to seize the moment to distributed rosaries and images of Virgin Mary! Indeed, fathoming partisanship in all these is not rocket science. For one, the inglorious exercise is nothing more than an attempt to put the whammy on the salient life – changing strides being wrought by Ogbeni administration.

    Landmark economic and infrastructural transformation is alien to the state until Aregbesola came along. In one fell swoop 20, 000 youths got employed. Close to 400 roads spread across the state are getting face-lift. The elderly, the young and the invalid have never had it so good. Educational rebirth, espoused through capacity building of teachers, infrastructural renewal and reclassification of educational segments sits pretty well with the people of the state.

    As the Christian religious body in the state launched its attack on the governor over alleged islamization on one hand, it, on the other, accused the Ogbeni administration of promoting traditional religion “bothering on idolatry and sorcery “. In the account of CAN, the state government refused to officially inaugurate the state chapter of National Inter Religious Council (NIREC) because of the refusal of both Muslims and Christian’s leaders to incorporate traditional religionists into the membership of the body.

    Pray what manner of Islamization would promote traditional religion? Not a few people would attest to the fact that Osun of the Aregbesola era is about the only state in the country where traditional religionists are officially recognized at public functions where they have their prayer slot like the Muslims and the Christians. It is imperative therefore to implore CAN to take steps to promote the subsisting religious harmony in the state rather than stoke embers of faith-based conflagration. The nation already has its hands full.

    • Lawal is Publicity Secretary, Action Congress of Nigeria, Ogun State.

  • Bayelsa’s rumour epidemic: A propagandist at work

    Bayelsa’s rumour epidemic: A propagandist at work

    Following my column for this newspaper (“Beware, rumour monger,” March 26, 2013) on the firm resolve of the authorities to break the stranglehold of rumour on the governance of Bayelsa State once and for all, I expected a full-court rejoinder, couched in the reader-unfriendly lingo of bureaucracy and bearing the intimidating signature of a senior official of Governor Seriake Dickson’s administration, possibly the Secretary to the Government.

    It must be that I have been gone too long and have lost touch with the way such things used to be done, for I least expected that the rejoinder would issue from someone who identifies himself not merely as a journalist, but as chair of the Bayelsa State chapter of the Nigeria Union of Journalists.

    Even in this era of unsophisticated careerism, many Nigerians must still find it unsettling that a journalist – the chair of the Bayelsa State chapter of the NUJ, who could one day become its national president – would enter a robust defence for a law designed ostensibly to curb the transmission of rumour – or “dem say, dem say” communication in Dickson’s felicitous coinage, but is sure in operation to constrict freedom of speech and of the press.

    My analysis of the subject, says Torinyo Akono (“Understanding Bayelsa’s anti-rumor law,” The NATION, April 1, 2013) is “fundamentally misplaced in conception” and “an outright oversimplification.” Nor, he adds, is there any “draconian tendency” to the proposed law.

    “We disagree with his position,” Akono wrote with reference to my column.

    I have it on the authority of my editor, by the way, that despite the publication date of April 1, Akono’s piece was no April Fools caper.

    Notice the collective pronoun he employs, which can with justice be deconstructed as the royal pronoun as well, given the hauteur, the overweening presumption that perfuses his rejoinder. It is not clear whether he is employing that inflated mode of speech by virtue of his being NUJ chair in Bayelsa, or because he is a member of the state’s anti-rumour squad that bears the Orwellian title of “State Public Information Management Committee.”

    One thing is clear however: Akono is not an official of the Bayelsa State Government and has no mandate to speak for it.

    But hear him:

    “The intention of the state government is to have in place functional structures where information can be easily accessed by members of the public as well as quickly disseminating information on current issues of public concern to the people, detailing what is true or false, thereby nipping in the bud such dangerous information capable of causing disaffection and indeed reducing the incidence of blatant misinformation among the people.”

    This is the language of bureaucracy, not journalism. But Akono is not done yet.

    “The idea,” he submits in the same vein, “is to avoid the bureaucracy in the ministries but have many centres so localised that you can easily find out the truth about anything relating to the government and the public. Here, people can contact or meet officials for quick response to whatever may be their concern or interest on the flow of information, including any rumour that may also affect the interest of an individual or organisation in the state. This is important because of the pervasive nature of rumour-mongering among the people with inherent social crisis if not curtailed or addressed so frontally.”

    And then, with the smug condescension of the all-knowing insider, he adds:

    “What Dare failed to note is the peculiar nature of the society where such falsehood is politically motivated to create pure mischief and blackmail which could be dangerous to proper functioning of the government and socio-economic activities in the state.”

    In the face of such clear and imminent dangers, Akono declares, “Government must respond by spelling out what constitutes a decent citizenship and why it is not a right to engage in conscious actions to create social crisis and looking at the strategic position of Bayelsa State in the Niger Delta, then taking legal means to have stability is a legitimate action of any serious government.”

    That is precisely what the state government has done, Akono states. For the benefit of those who might think that the anti-rumour project is another ill-considered scheme that will soon run out of steam, he makes it clear that the state government “will continue to impress it on the people to be law-abiding and responsible stakeholders in the current mission of restoring Bayesla to its deserved glory in leadership and development.”

    When the law comes into force, he hints darkly, people will find it “unprofitable” to wake up one day and begin spreading the rumour that the state government had been sacked by a court in Port Harcourt, in the process causing panic and among the teeming population “lamenting the future” of the restoration of the programme of the Dickson administration.”

    This is boosterism of the most unsubtle kind

    And thus has Akono sought to imbue Bayelsa’s proposed anti-rumour law with the context and nuance he said my analysis lacked. Neither the chief press secretary to Governor Dickson, nor for that matter the secretary to the Bayelsa State Government, could have entered a more robust justification of the proposed law.

    No one should make light of the pervasiveness and perversity of the rumour industry in Bayelsa. It was something Dickson’s predecessor, the defenestrated Timipre Sylva, had to contend with all the time, to the point that he actually appointed to the senior ranks of his administration a Special Assistant or Senior Special Assistant on Rumour-mongering.

    It is not clear whether that official’s remit was to squelch the “rumours” the authorities did not like or to plant the government’s own “rumours” in the public sphere. In whatever case,the epidemic refused to lift

    That is why a high-powered committee comprising, according to Akono, “eminent journalists chosen for their integrity and credibility not only in their individual and professional lives but also to give credence to the good intentions of the state government” has now been set up to perform a task previously assigned to an aide of the former governor — a governor whose tenure he calls “the locust years, in contradistinction, it must be supposed, to the present era of super-abundance in Bayelsa.

    All this has been done, says Akono, in keeping with the time-tested wisdom that “peculiar circumstances in any political or social formation will invariably demand some clear-headed answers but to the extent that such ameliorating mechanisms conform to the basic ethics of leadership and constitutionalism.”

    There you have it.

    On one issue, namely, the content of the “rumours” that had driven Bayelsa to contemplate such drastic measures, Akono has been less forthcoming.

    “We can boldly say,” he asserts, “that not only are the contents of such rumours spurious and ill-informed, they constitute nuisance to the sanity of the society. They are inimical to peace and progress and must be checked forthwith.”

    Deconstruction: “Those rumours are too vile to be repeated. Take my word for it.”

    I am gratefully the wiser and more enlightened for Akono’s pellucid clarification of the real purpose of Bayelsa’s anti-rumour law in the making. I believe the public is, too.

    With a state chairman of the NUJ like Akono, the Bayelsa State Government needs no official propagandist.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Good riddance to NECO?

    Good riddance to NECO?

    If feelers from Abuja last week are to be believed then the National Examination Council (NECO) the rival examination body to the West African Examination Council (WAEC) could be scrapped soon by the Federal Government paving the way for WAEC to reclaim it monopoly of Senior Secondary School Certificate examination in the country.

    The Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) being conducted by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) for students seeking admission into tertiary institutions in the country is also to be scrapped, leaving the institutions free to conduct their entrance examinations, but with JAMB serving as the clearing house.

    The decisions as contained in the white paper on the Steve Oransanye committee on the streamlining of government agencies, if eventually implemented would not only profoundly affect the face of secondary and higher education in Nigeria in the foreseeable future, but also the quality of the trained and educated workforce that would come out of our universities, polytechnics and colleges of education.

    Prior to the setting up of NECO, WAEC was largely solely in charge of the organisation and conduct of secondary school final examination in English West Africa, leading to the award of the then West African School Certificate (WASC) ordinary and advance levels. It was also in charge of he General Certificate of Education (GCE) ordinary and advance levels for external students.

    But like all monopolies, WAEC became too powerful and sadly inefficient leading to wide spread criticism of its performance, one of which was alleged frustration of the higher education ambition of hundreds of thousand of students who sat for its examination and who either failed even after so many ‘retakes’ or had their results withheld permanently.

    Even those who passed with six credits or more at either one or two sittings waited for years before they got their certificates ( for the few lucky ones), while many others had no school certificate to show (apart from notification of result) even up till now, more than two/three decades after they sat for and passed WAEC. Meanwhile several fake results were in circulation bearing the logo and ‘signature’ of WAEC. Many had secured university/polytechnic/college of education admission or even employment using these fake results at the expense of the truly qualified ones and to the detriment of the system. These and many other problems posed to our educational system must have prompted the then Federal Government to consider setting up a truly Nigerian secondary school examination body to not only rival WAEC but also meet the yearnings of out teeming youths for access to higher education, but operating in accordance to international standard.

    But can we say in truth and fairness that NECO has been living up to expectation since it was formed? Regrettably,the answer is neither yes or no. And that sums up what is called NECO today.

    From the outset the body was inadvertently made to look inferior to WAEC in the minds of both parents and students, admission authorities at the various higher institutions of learning and even employers of labour. This could be attributed to the initial seeming alarming rate of success recorded by students in contrast to WAEC’s examination. And with confidence in NECO waning, even students were not attaching much value to NECO’s certificate and that has dodged the examination body up till now.

    But as another window of opportunity to students NECO can be said to have lived up to expectation and has in a way made WAEC to sit up and improve its service delivery to it customers. But should that be the only thing about NECO? Certainly not. Couldn’t something be done to improve it and make it live up to expectation instead of scrapping it? I think so.

    If one considers the problems and shortcomings of NECO since inception, one would be tempted to say scrap it, but then would a return to WAEC’s monopoly solve the problem it was created to solve? I don’t think so.

    Compelling or encouraging WAEC to increase the frequency of its examinations to create more windows of opportunity for student is good, but that is not enough to think there is no need for NECO again. I thought so initially, but considering the fact that WAEC is a West African body, who would Nigeria convince other countries in the project to also buy-in to this new thinking? How much of influence does Nigeria have in WAEC to think she can sway others in the examination body to refocus to suit our own needs? Would that not be better done with NECO?

    Instead of scrapping NECO, government should investigate why it is not performing as designed and device a way of improving it. Apart from the job losses that a scrapping or absorption by WAEC would cause, there is no guarantee that WAEC could be relied upon, after all it has failed us before. NECO could still be made to do the same thing we want WAEC to do and be compelled to even do it better. This will in turn also improve WAEC and ultimately to the advantage of the students and the betterment of our education system and delivery. The more examination bodies and window of opportunities for the students the better. After all, even in spite of WAEC and NECO, Nigerians still write Cambridge and other foreign secondary school certificate (O&A levels) examinations here at home for admissions into foreign universities. Let the choice be many, but government must set and maintain the standards comparable with what obtains elsewhere in the world where we have top rate education standard.

    This brings to mind the UTME which is also set for the axe. There is not much to say about that joint entrance examination other than its a failure. JAMB started very well with its exams but as the population of university admission seekers expanded the ability to cope dwindled such that instead of the body serving as a facilitator for the attainment/ fulfillment of the higher education yearnings of the students, it became more of an impediment. With fewer university places available to the hundreds of thousands of secondary school graduates every year, JAMB began compounding the problem with its arbitrary cut off and educationally disadvantaged states policy in which for instance a student with a lower score gains admission to the same university at the expense of somebody with a higher score just because the former comes from an ‘educationally disadvantaged’ state. How do you sustain merit and encourage hard work in this kind of a setting? And to compound JAMB’s problem, polytechnics and colleges of education entrance examinations were added, and that’s one of the reasons we found ourselves where we are today.

    As with most public examinations in Nigeria, the higher institutions have lost faith in JAMB and have gone ahead to conduct heir own post-JAMB screening exams to determine the suitability and capabilities of those who passed JAMB and offered admission by the body. Many who passed JAMB have been found to have failed the universities’ post-JAMB exams even where the questions were similar. So, the question is, how did they pass JAMB in the first place? Well, your guess is as good as mine.

    So, a return to the past when each university was conducting its own separate admission examination for prospective students will be a welcome development. It will not only engender competition, but also ensure that only the best from our secondary schools proceed to university, polytechnic or college of education. This will ultimately raise standard in our higher institutions and make their product to be once again competitive in the international arena. It is no longer secret that our graduates find it difficult to secure post graduate admission into foreign universities again due to the low regard the international community have for our university graduates. It wasn’t like this in the past. What a shame.

    I am not saying this is the main or only reason for this low recognition of our graduates and their certificates, the problems are numerous, but hey are not insurmountable, scrapping the UTME could be one of the solutions.

     

  • Groping along the long, dark tunnel

    Groping along the long, dark tunnel

    Thanks to Vanguard newspaper’s April 2 edition for reminding us, yet again, of the confounding arithmetic of the power sector. According to the newspaper, Nigeria from 1999 till date poured some N5 trillion ($31.45 billion) into the sector. Hopefully, by December when the new power plants under the National Integrated Power Projects (NIPP) come on stream, output in power generation is expected to hit 10,000mw – barring unforeseen developments.

    For the power-starved citizens, it remains a matter of watching and praying to see whether this dream would materialize. Just like 2005 when the nation first caught the bug of power sector activism, a lot of action is supposedly going on in the sector to stoke excitement. Never mind that the activism of the last 14 years and which has gulped $31.45 billion now promises to deliver a mere 5,500mw net addition to the grid.

    By comparison, South Africa’s $37 billion expenditure spread over a 10-year period is programmed to treble its current 45,000mw capacity. Now, if that is supposed to be a measure of how confounding the nation’s power econometrics is, that comparison merely seeks to temper citizen’s expectations as the magical date of abundant-power-for-all draws close.

    If I may repeat the familiar cliché, it is certainly not yet uhuru. The signs of bad faith and incompetence are more than evident. Call it the Nigerian nightmare; we have seen lots of talks but very little progress in terms of things that count. If it is not failed contractors stalling the projects, it is gas pricing and investment issues bogging down the process. While these go on, the turbines cannot be put into action. Most recently, we have had personnel issues – issues of severance package to be paid to disengaging PHCN staff thrown into the mix. If anything, they merely remind that the Nigerian jinx is alive and well.

    I have looked at the Power Sector Reform Act 2005. Honestly, I find nothing that can be described as unworkable in the instrument. I have also taken time to look at the roadmap for the sector’s reforms – a beautiful document by any standard. Those two instruments are no doubt milestones at least as far as laying the foundations for the much touted liberalization of the sector goes. Unfortunately, this is Nigeria where achievements are better delivered – on paper.

    In other words, real progress is a different matter. True, the structural reforms have gone fairly well. One can safely say at this time that the reforms have turned the corner – irreversible. Save for the lingering personnel issues, the sale of the unbundled distribution entities are as good as sealed. And, after months of dithering, the transmission company has also been handed over to the new managers – Manitoba Hydro Electric of Canada. For once, it seems that the regulator can claim to be on top of its game. Taken together with the frenzied pace to deliver the NIPP plants on their target date, and the various initiatives to deliver gas to fire them, the nation can claim to be closer to the dream of steady electric power supply.

    The issue unfortunately is hardly whether progress has, or is being, made. The debate has gone beyond the need for structural changes. They have in fact been accepted as inevitable. The real problem is the attempt to see the changes as an end as against being a means to an end. For instance, the process that led to the sale of PHCN entities cannot by any stretch of imagination substitute for the truly liberalised power sector that the nation craves. Sure, parceling the behemoth among different operators is a far cry from the picture of post reform power sector once bandied. I mean the picture of foreign investors falling over themselves to have a piece of the action in the deregulated power environment.

    The issue, in summary, is about doubling, trebling or even quadrupling investment and output of electricity in the years to come. Isn’t that the whole idea behind the institutional redesign?

    This is where I consider the entire process somewhat disappointing.

    With due respect to the new owners of the distribution companies, what comes as striking is the absence of players of substance – global leaders – among them. Of course, in some established cases, some of the power plants were sold on non-competitive basis. Taken together, these issues raise the question of whether something isn’t fundamentally missing in the post-reform legislative and institutional architecture.

    I wish I could state that the prognosis in the near term is anything but bad. Unfortunately, it’s hard to see the inefficiencies which hobbled the operations of the PHCN disappear because it carries a new name; as for competition; there will be none.

    Of course, no one needs to worry about the long term because by then, we’ll all be dead!

     

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    Re-Oteh/Reps duel

    Your write up on the Oteh/Reps duel is very informative. The Reps vengeance has blinded them to the extent that they denied SEC workers 2013 appropriation. It is tyrannical overreach and unconstitutional. Chuma Mbaise, Imo State

    The two chambers reps/senate is one of the calamities that befell Nigeria. Their salaries/benefits are never and will never be known. Their next target will be the judiciary. Were they that articulate, they would have issued a query, asking the Senate to explain why Oteh was confirmed. They always have exaggerated impression of themselves/limitations. They are a disaster. Akinlayo A, Osun

    I am fascinated by your write up on Oteh/Reps duel. It is indeed sad that the so-called representatives of the people have decided to play to the gallery on this Oteh saga. What these honourable members should tell Nigerians is: what was the state of our stock market before Arunma Oteh took over as DG and the present state since her leadership of the market. I believe the powerful “thieves” who ran the stock market aground during the tenure of the Prof Ndidi Okereke-led stock market with the active collaboration of the CBN then, are hell bent on frustrating this woman who has worked tirelessly to reposition the market. She sure stepped on toes when she revealed the rot in NSE/SEC perpetrated by her predecessors with the active connivance of the Board. It is pathetic that those who are sincerely ready to work for the benefit of all Nigerians are usually frustrated. What a pity! +234 8158836388

    Sanya, I didn’t know we still have knowledgeable and bold Nigerians in the country’s enduring hopelessness and rudderlessnes. Thanks for your piece on Oteh/Reps duel. When will those reps stop behaving like street urchins in legislative quarters? Sincerely, we must find a way to end the madness. Rev Dr A Ezimah.