The Nation Newspaper

Category: Femi Orebe

  • Slavery in commercial banks in nigeria: CBN must intervene

    Slavery in commercial banks in nigeria: CBN must intervene

    We knew nothing of the pressures young bankers are today put through chasing deposits, mostly proceeds of corruption, in billions,  which their crafty  directors end up fraudulently converting to their own

    The title of this article does not belong to me. Rather, it belongs to a highly introspective senior citizen, a retired public servant who has seen more than eight decades on terra firma. He is, incidentally, a trained economist who, therefore, knows the critical role banks play in the economic development of nations. And as I recently wrote on these pages, unlike the young, who looks forward when he falls, the old does the reverse, that is, looks backwards, eager to know exactly where the fault lies. Chief Deji Fasuan, MON, JP and, by His grace,  84 next September, has been doing just that about what tragedy has befallen the banking industry in Nigeria, at least, in one particular respect.

     More about that later.

     My first ever job on graduating from Christ’s School, Ado-Ekiti, December ’63,  was as a banker at the prestigious Bank of West Africa, now First Bank, starting out at its headquarters in  Marina,  from where I would later be transferred to its Ebute Meta branch, Apapa Road, opposite the Fire Brigade office. Those were the days of 500-page ledgers, and bi-monthly balancing – 15th and last day of every month – when you were sure to sleep in the office if you could not balance those assigned to you.  For instance, some of us, Tayo Orukotan, our most proficient ‘balancer’, inclusive, said our Happy New Year hurrays, right there in the office, on Saturday, 31st December, 1966.  There were, of course, much more interesting things about banking in the 60s than having to spend your New Year eve in the office.  For instance, I was guaranteed, as gift, the topmost five of whichever denomination the ever fashionably turned out Papa J M Johnson, then Minister of Labour in the Tafawa Balewa federal government, was paid any time he came to the bank. Just like I knew I was loaded whenever the wealthy business magnate, Papa Aduroja, breezed in all the way from Ilesha. And, of course, those unforgettable  bankers’ picnics that saw many of us, friends , among them Leke Owolabi and dear departed Arthur Medeiros, and bankers  from  Barclays Bank, African Continental Bank, Bank of West Africa, etc  with Victor Abiodun of  the Central Bank coordinating, heading to Pension Smith, Agege, at every festive period. We used to charter the popular LMTS bus. We knew nothing of the pressures young bankers are today put through chasing deposits, mostly proceeds of corruption, in billions,  which their crafty  directors end up fraudulently converting to their own.  We are told the ladies among them are now, in fact, encouraged to do whatever, as long as deposits roll in. How many of these young Nigerians are now on medication for hypertension we would never know.  Right from our desks, in our various banks, we ordered the best of Van Heusen shirts, all the way from England, which enabled the likes of Bayo Famotibe, Funmi Banjo, Femi Turton, Mike Okonkwo – yes the Bishop – and, of course, yours truly, turn out smelling like a thousand roses week in, week out. Indeed, after leaving our almost every month-end parties at Railway Recreation Club around 6 am on Sunday, the Bishop, rather than sleep, was sure to drive Papa and Mama to the early morning Mass. Such was the ease under which we lived as young bankers, envied by our contemporaries in the community. Today, smart Alecs have so changed it that the first thing even a chronic unemployed tells you is that he/she does not want a marketing job. While fraud was not completely unheard of – I won’t ever forget Orukotan, a cashier, bursting a local unemployed boy who was being used by a colleague of ours to withdraw from dormant savings accounts- they were a far cry from what now obtains as billions now get stolen annually. Indeed, NDIC has just reported an increase of 182.8 per cent in bank frauds for 2014.  Deposits, in our days, were voluntarily brought in by individuals like the Oke Arin traders, cooperative societies, churches etc unlike now when banks daily deploy armadas of young persons in search of deposits.

    And this, precisely, is what here engages the attention of a concerned Chief Fasuan who is calling on the Central Bank to urgently address the issue.

     Happy reading.’

    I am not exactly sure of the origin of commercial banking in Nigeria. All I grew to know in the late 40s and early 50s is that there were BBWA (Bank of British West Africa), Agbonmagbe Bank, African Continental Bank, New Nigeria Bank, National Bank of Nigeria Limited and Barclays Bank. These banks served the needs of market men and women around whom they were located. Very little was known of their staff outside the banking circle. They were either headed by expatriates or highly skilled Nigerian professionals. And all you hear were ‘manager’, ‘accountant’ and ‘clerk’; certainly none of today’s plethora of hierarchies and titles. The economy was compact and banking customers were few. Customers took their cash physically to their banks for deposit either at the current or savings level. The customer was given a document in which the transactions (deposit and withdrawal) and liquidity position were clearly stated. However, banking in Nigeria has changed dramatically within the last two decades. For example, it’s no longer necessary to carry bank documents (Savings Book for example) to and fro, each time you want to pay or withdraw although you still write cheques to collect money from your current account. The practice now is that bright, educated and spritely young men and women are hired by commercial banks, designated ‘marketing officers,’ and thrown out to the world to look for customers. Desperately, these young ones invade homes, offices, entertainment centres, etc to look for depositors and other customers. You will think they are newly recruited salesmen and women for goods and articles manufactured by local industries. They hardly have a seat at their branch office.

    One can see the level of desperation and anxiety to keep their jobs in the faces of these young Nigerians. When you tell them you have no money to invest in their bank, they will try to persuade you to transfer your money from your present bank to theirs, even if for only one month. This is to show their bosses back in the office that they are working. Some, indeed, travel out with their bosses at weekends to retain their volatile jobs!

    Without a doubt, the banking industry in Nigeria has been infiltrated with negative practices that were originally unknown to commercial banking – an otherwise elegant and elitist profession. The question now is what is the role of the Central Bank as a regulator of the banking industry in Nigeria? Also, are the labour unions within the banking industry unaware of the treatment meted to these young people, which border on slavery and exploitation?

    Some may ask how banks would get customers if these young men and women are not sent the harm’s way. Simple. Advertisement in the media, all media, is the answer. Vigorous advertisement on radio, television, the social media and billboards can ensure the competiveness of banks and how attractive their products are will then be the deciding factor. It is absolute obscenity to send our girls to the streets in adolescent age to canvass for business for the big man up there.

    The Central Bank of Nigeria should not be seen to be concerned only with the safety of the depositors’ funds or returns on investment. The regulatory body should also look into the ethics of the profession especially between the mighty managers and the vulnerable ‘marketing’ officers. Some level of security of job and the sanctity of the human dignity are necessary in banking operations as we see it in other climes. While each member of the industry should continue to have freedom to organise its operations within the extant regulations– the CBN must ensure a level of decency and comportment by the banks.

    Also, Labour, as a defender of the dignity of labour, has a responsibility not to allow a sector of the workforce be treated as slaves and be assigned derogatory, even dangerous and hazardous roles in the work place.

  • The unnecessary hoopla about Buhari’s non appointment of ministers

    The unnecessary hoopla about Buhari’s non appointment of ministers

    Now, are Nigerians, by our hoopla, eager to have President Buhari bring into positions of responsibility all manner and shape of characters to do same or worse or,  rather allow him to get a grip of the Augean stable he inherited and appoint Nigerians he believes will share his vision of a corruption-free government?

    “Woe unto you, O land, when your king is a child, and your princes feast in the morning!” –Ecclesiastes 10:16

    Forgetting that when an old man falls he looks backwards to reflect on  the cause of his fall, much has been the hue and cry over President Muhammadu Buhari’s non appointment of ministers, even in a mere one month. The noise has become so loud you begin to wonder if this is not a carryover of the military’s era of ‘with immediate effect and alacrity’; when appointees first heard about their appointments, as well as dismissals, on the airwaves. Little, I guess, are Nigerians aware that a man of the president’s age, experience and overall exposure, cannot be expected to be driven by undue enthusiasm to jump into those same excitements that have so poorly served Nigeria.  I recall that at his second coming,  one of President Olusegun Obasanjo’s most harrowing regrets about governance in Nigeria was the fact that literally every modicum of infrastructure and institutions he left behind to drive a  developing economy, among them, the Nigerian Airways and the National Shipping Line, had been vaporised  by his successors beginning from Alhaji Shehu Shagari, through IBB and the murderous General Abacha, terminating with Abubakar,  none of who failed to appoint ministers  with alacrity. Nor did the soporific, pitiable Jonathan government delay in appointing ministers. But what did we see of those ministers of a directionless government whose overarching concern was to maintain a policy of appeasement towards every Tom, Dick and Harry President Goodluck Jonathan believed would be useful in his re-election scheme which had commenced as soon as he was sworn in on 29, May 2011.

    These ministers were active in condoning oil thefts running into 400, 000 barrels per day even where they had gifted their cousins multi-billion dollar oil pipeline protection contracts just as they were complicit in the heist of the tiny cabal that smoked us all up through the oil subsidy scam. When finally the president and minister thought of doing anything to ameliorate the economically crippling situation, Nigerians woke up on the very first day of January, 2012, to hear that every kobo of ‘subsidy’ had been removed, in a case of blaming, and punishing the victim.

    Nor was that all with these selfsame ministers. Edo State Governor, Comrade Oshiomhole, recently alleged that the Finance Minister granted multi-billion waivers, the total of which, I know Mrs Okonjo –Iweala never really told the nation. In Oshiomhole’s words: ‘The Federal Government (obviously on the advice of the coordinating minister) illegally granted waivers to various organisations, running into hundreds of billions of naira that ought to flow to the federation account’. The governor equally informed that this was further compounded by the fact that both the Ministry of Finance and Petroleum Resources, working together, simply refused to transfer to the federation account a lot of the money that ought to have accrued. According to him “over the past four to five years, the NLNG had every year made huge payment -between $1.5 to $2 billion – which ought to go to the federation account. This money was never transferred to the federation account but was unilaterally expended by the Federal Government.”

    Now, are Nigerians, by our hoopla, eager to have President Buhari bring into positions of responsibility all manner and shape of characters to do same or worse or,  rather allow him to get a grip of the Augean stable he inherited and appoint Nigerians he believes will share his vision of a corruption-free government? I think we should ponder these things before we get consumed with the jeremiads of some people whose business projections in a continuing PDP government have been dramatically altered.

    I will be the first to concede that some who argue for early appointments are truly concerned. For instance, I saw the purity of heart in Dele Momodu’s letter to the president which, for me, was advisory, unlike the adversarial types that have emanated from some partisans, especially to respected professional bodies who are surreptitiously being encouraged to up the ante of public discontent.  For instance, after denigrating some of those working quietly with the president as  gerontocrats, some of  those who are  keen on business as usual, have  also quarrelled with his not making earthshaking  economic policy pronouncements even when they were themselves key to helping the Jonathan government pulverise the country’s economy.

    Those who quarrel with the president for preferring to see the entire picture of the akudiaya –wobbling  – economy handed over to him on May 29, 2015, in the words  of one of the key exponents contend as follows:

    a)           The way the Federal Government works is that absolutely nothing happens in any ministry in the absence of a minister.

    b)    To even consummate commercial transactions  between one company and another in the oil sector, the minister has to approve it.

     c)    It’s the minister that signs certificates of occupancy for land deals in Abuja.

    d)   It’s the minister that approves payments to vendors, contractors, etc and concludes by         saying that the system grinds to a halt when the minister is not there.

     These have largely been dismissed by those who should know.  For instance, a retired federal Permanent Secretary posited as follows, in rebuttal:

     “Statement No. 1. is false. Statement 2 may be right for some matters like filling station licence etc, which may require the approval of minister but as regards procurement, the Permanent Secretary handles the implementation. The minister is not involved except for information only. This is in accordance with the provisions of Public Procurement Act of 2007. Involvement of ministers in procurement matters is a violation of the Act. Statement No. 4 is absolutely incorrect; again, all procurement matters stop at the table of the Permanent Secretary (PS) including approval of payments

     to vendors and contractors. The Act only provides that the minister should be informed by the Permanent Secretary for information only so that the minister is aware that the aspect of the annual budget is implemented. Therefore, to say that activities in the Federal Ministries, Departments and  Agencies will be at a standstill in the absence of the minister is not correct, though, some matters that will require the minister’s approval under the law or Civil Service Procedure like Citizenship matters in the Ministry of Interior may wait for the minister’s approval.  Once the annual budget is passed into law as Appropriation Act, the implementation is that of Permanent Secretary as the minister has no approving authority on procurements.”

    In further  canvassing patience, those who argue on the side of the president’s measured pace, given that the ‘ancien regime’ was very hesitant in giving him facts and figures, have further posited as follows: “If a minister is being assigned to a ministry, he/she should know what to go there for in order to have  the promised change. Detailed problems are currently being discreetly sorted out in the various ministries and MDAs by the Permanent Secretaries and Chief Executive Officers currently functioning as Acting Heads. Ministers, they contend, are politicians who would need to be put through on their assumption of office. If hurriedly appointed, there could be the tendency for some to go there to create wrong pictures or even cry wolves where there are none.”

    For me nothing demonstrates the wrongheadedness of un-reflected appointments – appointments with immediate effect and alacrity, especially at the topmost levels of our past governments, more than the present parlous state of the economy and, indeed, the wholesale paralysis currently engulfing every aspect of our national life. As you read this, fuel scarcity has again hit the filling stations, Power Holding Company, at its various discos, are eagerly dispensing darkness just as 23 out of 36 states of the federation are grappling with unpaid workers salaries resulting largely from very powerful ministers shortchanging the federation account from where the states largely fund their sustenance.

  • Ekiti: God is not mocked

    Ekiti: God is not mocked

    Recent disclosures of DSS hyperactivity in that election, together with that of elements within the Nigerian Army, can only go to further confirm that Fayose must currently be supplicating God for forgiveness

    “7 Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. 8 Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life”  – GALATIANS 6:  7-8.

    According to newspaper reports, Governor Ayo Fayose was in church this past week to celebrate and thank God for his ‘victory’ at the state’s governorship election of 21 June, 2014. The governor certainly knows better and, as a Christian, should be well aware that God cannot be mocked. Recent disclosures of DSS hyperactivity in that election, together with that of elements within the Nigerian Army, can only go to further confirm that Fayose must currently be supplicating God for forgiveness.

    However, that’s for another day.

    We would rather talk today about governance. We cannot forget that he has had a million demons to fight for survival and was, therefore, obviously distracted.  This interrogation will, therefore, not be about how secure  the state  is, with its tens  of kidnappings, not  on how the elders, whose welfare package he  had, like Thatcher the milk Snatcher, yanked off  their  reach nor, indeed,  about how those  investors  who, encouraged by the relative peace  of the Fayemi  era,  sank  billions on  first rate  hotels, are now getting by, if at all.  Focus would therefore be on the governor’s failure to pay the state’s work force and pensioners.  This becomes germane in the light of the federal government’s release of the list of which states it owes; a list on which Ekiti State did not appear. For the moment, therefore, we are taking that list as fact until the Ekiti State government can prove to the contrary beyond doubt.

    Commenting on the subject on Ekitipanupo this past week, a member wrote: “Remember Fayose denied ever collecting N2b from the Ecological Fund for a long time. On the state radio and television, he turned payment from the Ecological Fund to theatrics, saying: “Whether ecological fund, meteorological fund , biological fund or Ekitilogical fund o, I don’t know anything about it. I have not collected any kobo.” He kept denying this until APC, armed with the FOI law, was about to obtain facts of the payment from the Fund. Officials in the office leaked our initiative to him and before you know it, Fayose got his media aide to admit collection of the money. A week later, he announced the award of contracts for ecological projects worth exactly N2b. When the projects were advertised, and where sited, remain unknown to anybody. He equally denied collecting N22b in refunds on federal projects executed by the state government. Meanwhile, ex. Minister Dayo Adeyeye exposed Fayose inadvertently during President Jonathan’s campaign in Ekiti State. Intending to shore up GEJ’s profile, he announced that the president had refunded money spent on federal projects but that slip reportedly put him in trouble with Fayose.

    Contributing to the same topic, I wrote, inter alia: “I think that the correct emphasis on the Ekiti situation should be the following:

    1. Governor Fayose got paid over N10b – that should now read N22b – outstanding indebtedness plus another N2b ecological fund.  2. He has been paid monthly federal allocations to date – including the one for which he did not pay salaries in September (?). 3. He requested and got a six-month moratorium on bond repayments on which Fayemi never once defaulted. 4. He cancelled the welfare fund for the elders, which was gulping a minimum N100m per month under Fayemi.  5. He has not paid subventions to Ekiti State University and the College of Education for at least four months.

    6. He unilaterally reduced Obas’ salaries, and among other things, abrogated some state agencies with hundreds of workers. If he is not paying salaries because of debts allegedly incurred by his predecessors, as he continues to claim, without proof, shouldn’t he reschedule the repayments as he did with the bond?”

    Now, if we were operating in the realm of conjecture when those comments were written, what about now that the federal government has affirmed it is not owing the state a kobo? Incidentally, I have read some rebuttals from supporters of the government. But how would they rebut the  live video recording which captured Dayo Adeyeye  at a presidential campaign at which both Fayose and the ex-president, among others, were present and, in which, Adeyeye praised Goodluck Jonathan for  giving Ekiti a university, as if from his own purse,  as well as for paying all the federal government’s indebtedness to the state. In a situation where a whole state, its royalty, the gentry as well as its hoi polloi, have been  comprehensively silenced, it would be greatly appreciated if Governor Fayose would let the world know the truth about his failure to pay workers and pensioners up to date. It would not help pointing fingers at other defaulting states, as circumstances differ. He should let us know if, as claimed by one of the few remaining Ekiti elders still with a voice, himself quoting one Omot Omenge, he is paying for some pre-election commitments.

    Enough of this charade – shagari did not work with npn majority in the senate

    I believe Nigerians must be sick and tired of the charade following the Saraki/Dogara sell-out in the National Assembly. The show of shame in the House this past Thursday, and with Saraki arrogantly rejecting the party’s choices, the time has come for the APC to firmly  establish  party supremacy over these nauseating, overarching individual ambitions. The party must go for broke and Saraki and his co- conspirators could very well head back straight to the PDP to meet their corrupt, alleged instigators and financiers whether from within or outside the National Assembly.

    He could, in fact, visit Otuoke, post haste.

    With the NPN having 36 of 95 Senate seats, and 165 of 443 in the House of Representatives in the Second Republic, President Shehu Shagari did not have a majority in any of the chambers of the National Assembly; yet filled the offices with its  party members and, poignantly, with Bukola Saraki’s father as Senate leader. The leadership were the party’s choices, not of some individuals who think the world of themselves.  Nor has President Obama’s party a majority in both senate and congress. If by their own hands, these prodigals end up where Nigerians thought we had exited in 1999, they are the ones who have cockroaches in their wardrobes and, therefore, risk jail terms or worse, for economically despoiling the country. This I guess, should indeed, be their just comeuppance, rather than their present life of obscene opulence and arrogance. I have no doubt that Nigerians would file right behind the APC and President Buhari in the government’s fight against corrupt gangs who intend to coyly continue their 16-year stranglehold on the country.

     

    Still on the Saraki-APC Fiasco

    E-mail from a reader about last week’s article: As I expected, your description of what transpired in the NASS leadership election as a fiasco is spot on. On the 9th of June, I got several calls of lamentation from well-meaning Nigerians who, like me, are severely weather-beaten by PDP’s sixteen inglorious years, wondering if all hopes of redemption are now in vain. Nearly all were tearfully emotional, showing Nigerians’ high hopes on the president, his party and his yet to be team.  Is President Buhari aware that what endears him to an ordinary Nigerian is his honesty, discipline, and the penchant for law and order, all of which vamoosed in the manner Bukola Saraki was elected Senate President?  The manner and the characters behind his emergence smack of nothing but treachery and back stabbing, both of his party, and the Nigerian people. While the process in the House was transparent, this cannot be said of the charade in the senate.  I was, therefore, not surprised to see Mimiko, Akpabio and company, celebrating. How come the clerk of the senate who displayed such disrespect for the president has not been sanctioned till now? Wike has just invaded the home of Ibim Semenitari, a former Rivers State commissioner, with thugs and policemen, destroying both her, and her husband’s, properties. This, in an APC-controlled federal government?  Are our people asleep?

    Or they just don’t know what to do with power?

  • The Saraki-APC fiasco and its implications for Buhari’s anti-corruption war

    The Saraki-APC fiasco and its implications for Buhari’s anti-corruption war

     Not only  are these allowances probably much higher today, with Saraki as Senate President, President Buhari is guaranteed a monstrous fight to reduce this highest pay to political representatives anywhere in the world, Britain and the U .S inclusive

    “Government is determined to secure the country, manage the economy, create employment and fight corruption. Some articulate writers have said if we do not kill corruption, corruption will kill Nigeria. This APC administration intends to kill corruption in Nigeria. We will do our best, I assure you. We are getting the facts and logistic requirements together” –President Muhammadu Buhari to Nigerians living in South Africa.

    A fiasco is defined as a humiliating failure; some effort that went quite wrong or a wine bottle in a straw jacket. For me, this is precisely what the shebang at the National Assembly represents for the APC.  Truth be told, my initial reaction to Bukola Saraki emerging the Senate President was: Yes, if a Tambuwal, why not a Saraki? Nor was that a flight of fancy because I believe, and still do, that he was as qualified as any member to be the Senate President considering his contribution to the emergence of the party. It should not be difficult to remember who heads the political camp to which Abubakar Kawu Baraje, who led the walk-out from the PDP Abuja mini-congress on Saturday, August 31, 2013 belongs, nor the fact that Senator Saraki brought a whole state with him into the party.  However, all these thoughts were shredded when it became known that, out of desperation, he permitted his coronation to be, not only instigated, but funded, by a gang of PDP treasury looters and their cousins, the oil subsidy rogues, all of who are eager to hamstring the anti-corruption war President Buhari promised Nigerians so they can again escape justice through the machinations of the now totally rudderless EFCC.  They have since been on a celebration binge. It is galling, if not puke-inducing, that in his political alchemy, Saraki thought nothing of selling his party cheap by accommodating Ike Ekweremadu, a PDP senator, as Deputy Senate President.

    The Saraki shenanigan becomes more nauseating the more when we come to learn of the horrendous corruption of the Jonathan administration. For instance, President Buhari is expected to meet the leading global watchdog on corruption, the Oslo-based, Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), very soon to see how billions of dollars in the Nigerian oil revenue leakage can be curbed. According to Zainab Ahmed, the Executive Secretary of its Nigerian arm, over $7.5 billion is yet to be recovered from oil and gas companies since 1999, while the agency’s audits show that $11.6 billion of dividends between 1999 and 2012 from the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) company were not remitted by the NNPC whose oil swap deals have been discovered to be more of scams.

    And that is only in the oil sector.

    As you read this, millions of Nigerian workers, in at least 23 of Nigeria’s 36 states, have not been paid their salaries for over six months. It therefore becomes extremely agonising that Bukola Saraki, a leading light of a party elected almost solely on its promise to fight corruption could, out of overaching ambition, go into an unholy alliance with these mandarins of corruption. Nigerians must now brace up for all manner of opposition from the National Assembly to the Buhari government’s efforts to kill corruption, a demonstration of which we may soon see during the president’s attempt to re-energise EFCC. Saraki, of course, knows that something must give but if he thinks he would succeed in thwarting the hopes of Nigerians, then I have news for him. It’s even nice that he showed his hands, and what manner of National Assembly he intends to lead, early.

    In the article: ‘It Is Time We Storm This Bastille’, (Sunday,12th June, 2011), I wrote as follows on then immediate past Bankole-led House of Representatives: “When in the past week the EFCC finally caught up with the erstwhile Speaker of the House, Nigerians came to know that the Speaker, together with the House leadership, had been borrowing illegally for un-appropriated purposes. In their defence we came to learn that the following new allowances were approved at an executive session on March 30, 2010: Speaker N100m, Deputy Speaker N80m, House Leader N60m, Deputy House Leader N57.5m, Chief Whip N55m, Deputy Chief Whip N54.5m, Minority Leader N54.5m, Minority Whip N50m, Deputy Minority Leader N50m, Deputy Minority Whip N50m’.  For what job you would you say!  They also agreed payment of outstanding allowances dating way back to 1999 – 2007; all from un-authorised funds.”

     Not only  are these allowances probably much higher today, with Saraki as Senate President, President Buhari is guaranteed a monstrous fight to reduce this highest pay to political representatives anywhere in the world, Britain and the U .S inclusive. I then concluded by saying that we, the people, must storm the National Assembly and chase them back to their villages or to gaol. Already, even before the ink on the signatures of members  of the 8th Assembly could dry, they are  now expecting alerts from their banks announcing their respective share of a humongous N8.4 Billion ward robe allowance as if they have been going naked all their lives.

    How unconscionable can they get?

    No wonder a highly perceptive Dr David Kuranga, of Kuranga and Associates, has suggested that “if President Buhari is going to have any success in unravelling the complex and heavily entrenched corrupt interests in Nigeria, he is going to have to successfully tackle and overcome far more difficult opponents than the Saraki allies who just bested his party in the National Assembly.” This is very true because their ambition to eat Nigeria raw is collective and party blind.  Therefore, for President Buhari to succeed, and for Nigerians to be free from these predators – the Deputy House Speaker, Lasun Yusuff, is already quoted as defending their utterly callous N150 billion budget in a dying economy – Kuranga concludes that President Buhari, and of course, the party, should treat the senate leadership as a political insurgency until they surrender and resign from their positions and that Nigerians just must say no to a political class riding roughshod on their well-being.

    Otherwise, it will be a promise of change deferred.

    It’s a new dawn in the housing industry in Nigeria –the Nigerite story

    I seize this opportunity to congratulate the Board, Management and staff of  Nigerite Ltd, Nigeria’s leading  manufacturer in the roofing, ceiling and flooring  sub sector, which, this past week,  formally commissioned its multi billion naira Kalsi project, thus opening a new vista, and opportunity to providing fresh solutions to the Nigerian  housing industry

    I hasten to appreciate, and commend the strategic thinking of both the Board of Odua Investment Ltd,  then under the Chairmanship of  Alhaji Sharafadeen Alli, Dr Bayo Jimoh as Group Managing Director, his successor, Wale Raji  and the Etex Group, Nigerite’s Belgian partners which, with its over a hundred years experience in the field, and presence, in more than 40 countries in Europe, Africa, Asia and South America, had the presence of mind to know that for Nigerite to retain its  premier position in  the Nigerian roofing, flooring and ceiling sub-sector, it must step up to becoming a total housing solutions company. Hence the strategic entry into the Dry Construction technology phase, which means, among other things, that a 4-bed room bungalow can now be fully delivered in 2-3 weeks, anywhere in the country.

    It gladdens the heart too  that one’s name, as Board chairman, and those of my worthy colleagues on the Nigerite Board when the project was approved, can never be missing when the history of this golden era of Nigerite, is being written. It is with a heavy heart that I recall the  extremely valuable contributions of our two elderly colleagues, Otunba Olu Adebanjo and Chief Sunny Oyekunle, the long serving Company Secretary, who were recently called to higher service. May their gentle souls rest in perfect peace.  Immense congratulations to the successive Managing Directors, especially, Monsieur Frank Le Bris, and his management colleagues who saw it to completion. I warmly congratulate the entire staff who should see this as a further guarantee of their jobs and means of livelihood.

    Manufactured from cement, quartz sand, cellulose, natural calcium silicate, and water, Kalsi boards are processed by autoclave (drying process under high pressure and temperature) for durability and dimensional stability, and have massive advantages over the traditional building methods.

  • The U.S 2016 presidential election –A cursory look

    The U.S 2016 presidential election –A cursory look

    The United States presidential election of 2016 will hold on Tuesday, November 8, 2016, meaning that, unlike in Nigeria, no OPC-like groups or some other anti-democratic conspirators will be in a position to have it postponed by a day, not to talk of  weeks

    With political events  cascading  rapidly back  home, all  poignantly demonstrating what a  rainbow coalition APC,  the ruling party, is, I am  reminded  that  my vacationing in Scotland, June  2011, enabled  me  reflect on the implications of the then recently concluded  Scottish election, especially  what I considered  are  its implications for Nigeria.  In the article: The Scottish Election and its relevance to Nigeria, I observed  that the election of May 5, 2011 was the equivalent of a political tsunami, giving the Scottish National Party (SNP) an unprecedented landslide victory and dominance in the Scottish parliament. That was, in fact,  long before the 2015 general election at which the SNP literally wiped out the Labour Party in Scotland. What underpinned the 2011 result, like the last, I must add, are cultural identity and shared history, economic self-management, promotion of enterprise, and a desire to end local imperialism. I concluded from the above that a honest restructuring of Nigeria would  result in a fiscal federalism in which each constituent part will develop at its own pace,  plan  its  economic development as suits it best, and, among other things,  pay  salaries and wages based on its  ability to pay rather than the present,  head-masterly arrangement in which the federal government railroads compensation with  states like Kogi, Ekiti, Ebonyi and Osun having to pay their workers the same salary as Akwa Ibom, Rivers, Lagos or Kano. The last has become particularly germane given the rash of unpaid workers.

    Unfortunately, when in 2014 the opportunity came to put things right, the effort was completely politicised, conceived, primarily, as a stunt to gift the incumbent president two additional years in office. For that reason, the membership was so skewed the government coyly nominated most members by including organisations whose representatives it nominated whilst its  Afenifere  midwives even had the audacity to tamper with the list of nominees submitted by  some state governors.  Today, the best that could reasonably happen to its report is to make it a working paper, amongst others, at a genuine attempt at restructuring Nigeria.

    I digress.

    Matters appertaining to the 2016 U.S Presidential election predominate the airwaves where I currently find myself. I therefore think it is an opportune time to take a cursory look at what is going on. First, some irreducible facts about the U.S Presidential elections: The United States presidential election of 2016 will hold on Tuesday, November 8, 2016, meaning that, unlike in Nigeria, no OPC-like groups or some other anti-democratic conspirators will be in a position to have it postponed by a day, not to talk of  weeks.  It will be the 58th quadrennial U.S Presidential election. Voters in the election will select presidential electors who, in turn, will elect a new president and vice president of the United States. The incumbent president, Barrack Obama, is ineligible to be elected a third term due to term limits in the twenty-second amendment to the United States Constitution and, unlike some African Heads of State, would not be manipulating to have his country’s constitution amended to enable him serve longer.  Article Two of the U.S Constitution provides that for a person to be elected and serve as president of the United States, the individual must be a natural-born citizen of the United States, at least 35 years old, and a resident of the United States for a period of no less than 14 years. Candidates for the presidency typically seek the nomination of one of the various political parties.  Each party devises a method (such as a primary election) to choose the candidate the party deems best suited to run for the position. The party’s delegates then officially nominate a candidate to run on the party’s behalf. The above is very much in tandem with what obtains in Nigeria – of course, we copied the presidential system from the U.S – though it must be stated that our own bribe-suffused part of it is a creation of Nigerian politicians.  Additional requirements  before formally declaring as a candidate include filing with the Federal Election Commission, getting  listed in five or more major independent nationwide polls and  having held office as the head of a cabinet-level department, be a member of the U.S Senate, or a member of the House Leadership, governor, former or incumbent vice-president, or incumbent president.

    Both the Democratic and the Republican parties already parade a galaxy of names, some of them with high name-recognition. Those already in the field for the Democratic Party are: Lincoln Chafee, Governor of Rhode Island, 2011–2015, former First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, Secretary of State, 2009–2013; U.S and Senator, 2001–2009. Others are Martin O’Malley, Governor of Maryland, 2007–2015 and Bernie Sanders, U.S. Senator since 2007. An exponential, and yet increasing number of candidates have shown up on the Republican side of the divide most probably  as a result of a feeling the GOP thinks it could build on the 2014 Midterm election momentum to put its candidate in the Oval Office. There are, at the last count, about 10 of them, amongst them Ben Carson, a professor of neurosurgery, oncology, plastic surgery, and paediatric medicine and the first surgeon to successfully separate conjoined twins joined at the head.  Others include former and serving governors  Jeb Bush, George Pataki, Mike Huckabee,  Chris Christie, Scott Walker and Rick Perry and Senators Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Lindsey Graham –who says he has never sent an e-mail; Rick Santorium, Bernie Sanders  and,  Carly Fiorina, former Chief Executive Officer of Hewlett Packard,  who believes that her work as tech adviser to agencies like NASA, CIA etc eminently qualify her. The list must remind the reader of a typical Anambra governorship election.

    Each of these candidates brings different experience and expertise to the table but what will be the key campaign issues at the 2016 U.S election?  As is usual, domestic issues, especially the economy, will dominate the campaigns.  A recent Gallup poll showed that eighty-six percent of Americans say the economy will be extremely important to their vote next year, a significantly higher percentage than for any other issue. The economy has historically retained this importance at both presidential and midterm elections, irrespective of whether the economy is weak, as in 2008 or strong as in 2000. Immigration and race issues, in particular, are attracting more traction than hitherto and the decibel will be quite high between candidates, like Hillary Clinton, who support granting immigrants within the U.S  a pathway to citizenship, and those like Marco Rubio, who once supported it  and was one of the four Republican senators who joined in drafting a  comprehensive, bi-partisan reform bill, but  now not only opposes extending it to citizenship but wants legal immigration drastically cut down. The GOP has upped the ante on the recruitment of Hispanic voters which the Koch political empire is aggressively pushing but the Dems are not just standing by. Indeed, congressional Republicans have done enough damage to their cause to make Hillary Clinton the favourite Latino candidate.

    On the international front, Russia, China and ISIS will take the cake. Putin’s swagger and arms twisting tactics, specifically, his annexation of Crimea and continuing war in the Ukraine and Obama’s response, which the Republicans consider tepid, will be on the top burner. Ditto, China’s increasing belligerence, staking claims to  international waters  just like the bestiality of the  Islamic State  of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is of such importance both parties only last week had a bipartisan vote authorising President Obama to arm and train Syrian rebels. Equally important will be the never-ending war on terrorism which has now spread ferociously into Africa through the likes of Al Shabab in Kenya and Boko Haram within our own borders in Nigeria.

    Next year’s U.S election promises to be quite an engaging one. The much awaited Supreme Court judgment on Obamacare, President Obama’s all important  law, with a distinct possibility of being his greatest legacy, could  very soon come spinning off with over six million Americans losing their health insurance and what better place to start the fireworks, should that occur.

  • Putting an end to the Ekiti conundrum

    Putting an end to the Ekiti conundrum

     But he should need no telling now that President Muhammadu Buhari is no Goodluck Jonathan nor can the police and the security services, who were his real bulwark,  any longer play deaf and dumb to his illegalities

    Now that the possibility of the G19 impeaching Governor Ayo Fayose has receded into history, despite his serial illegalities, it should be time to revisit my article of April 19, 2015.  Titled: ‘Ayo Fayose –Before it is too late’ – it was the culmination of an introspection into the decade plus political crisis that has engulfed the state and made nonsense of its development. The result is that Ekiti has regressed even more than some parts of the country where guns had been booming for years. We have had an emergency administration declared, had a one day governor, just as there had been murders and attempted murders, linked to politics. On the positive side, we have had citizens, and others from outside the state who, in the relatively saner intervals, invested billions, especially in the hotels and tourism sub-sector. Today, they must be ruing the day they decided to invest in Ekiti as clients have drained out as a result of the rolling crisis. When I wrote the article, there was no way I could have thought things would get so bad ten individuals could be kidnapped in Ekiti in years, not to talk of within a space of two weeks, as we saw recently.

    I did not stop at just writing the article  but went ahead to contact, not less than 15 highly regarded Ekiti  leaders  and distinguished  individuals , whose names I need not mention here, to help in facilitating peace between the warring parties for the sake of  our people, and the development of the state.  One direct result of these contacts was the joint meeting, called by Chief Deji Fasuan, of the Ekiti Elders Committee and the rump of the Committee for the creation of Ekiti state. Aare Afe Babalola who I did not contact, later called another Elders meeting which, unfortunately  got stalemated.  From that point on, the pugilists were left to their own devices but with the swearing in of the new PDP controlled House of Assembly this past week, impeaching Ayo Fayose by the G19 has now become an obvious impossibility.

    But it will be the very height of illusion to think that our problems are over. In the article under reference, I reminded Governor Ayo Fayose of the fate that became President Taylor of Liberia and went on to say that given the Supreme Court decision, I will candidly advise that a consensus be reached that governor Fayose should run his term. I suggested  he should, in turn, climb down from his high horse and apologise  to Ekiti people for his serial illegalities and, henceforth,  rule Ekiti in a civilized manner. I said he should do everything to return peace to Ekiti and that on the other hand, the G.19 should drop the impeachment process in the full knowledge that four years is not a life time. I went on to say, among other things, that for genuine peace, the governor should pay the G19’s outstanding salaries and allowances, ensure that normalcy promptly returns to the state House of Assembly as well as pay the outstanding salaries of the officials of the previous administration. I then concluded by saying that the governor should not make the mistake of seeing himself as a sole administrator but should rather, let Ekiti take centre stage in all he does. I did not fail to add that though I have been his constant critic, the time has come, to put a closure to all that for the sake of Ekiti. It is time for the two parties to sheath their swords, I pleaded.

    We are now at an opportune time for Fayose to seek the path of peace since any  fear of his impeachment has evaporated. Both now, and at his first coming, one of his biggest mistakes, which led to disastrous consequences at his first coming, was his undue reliance on federal authorities, especially Presidents who were themselves, masters of impunity. With that umbilical cord, he perpetrated, and got away with too many things. But he should need no telling now that President Muhammadu Buhari is no Goodluck Jonathan nor can the police and the security services, who were his real bulwark,  any longer play deaf and dumb to his illegalities. He now has to play by the rules and should constantly remember that it was a PDP controlled House of Assembly that impeached him at his first coming. He  must now, willy nilly, play according to the dictates of the Nigerian constitution. Governor Fayose must now begin genuine governance which has been in total abeyance since he became governor. And in this, he already has his job cut out.

    He must set out, post haste, to cashier his teeming thugs,  local as well as the alleged elements of the Niger Delta Volunteer Force, retrieve all the guns he generously gave them, and turn into the gutters the drums of concentrated acid with which they were armed. He must ensure that these characters are fully paid, lest he creates another version of Boko Haram that will make life unbearable for both state and country as we have seen in the North Eastern part of the country. He must handle this task with maximum dispatch if we want to rid Ekiti of kidnapping and armed robbery which the present circumstances have birthed and encouraged. Ekiti can ill afford any of these crimes. He must equally turn attention to his army of adulating young men/women for whom he must now provide productive jobs as  the devil finds jobs for idle hands.

    He must fully realise that the hard task of governance beckons. If he has any developmental blue print for the state, this will be the time to bring it out as the  omnibus ‘stomach infrastructure’ camouflage, for which he created a directorate, will  suffice only for festivities but certainly not sufficient to answer the critical questions of development or of  a decent daily survival.  He cannot leave our elderly to their own devices,  forever claiming there is no money. We all knew that his predecessor, out of the same paucity of funds, was paying N5, 000 monthly stipend to about 20, 000 elderly citizens which he cancelled on assumption of office. There must be something to replace this welfare scheme just as development must be seen in other sectors of the state economy – education, health, agriculture, etc.

    For the APC, it is time for us  to also sit back, and clinically interrogate, our problems with a view to arriving at  a rapprochement. It is not strange having two or more competing groups within the same party. Though dysfunctional, as we  have seen , time and again,  in  the  Lagos PDP,  the  key thing is we must not relate like enemies. The more popular group will always emerge victorious at state congresses and that should, ideally, settle the matter. Political contestation, inter as well as intra party, is a constant feature of democracy. I have said it before, and it can still bear a repetition: APC’s problems in Ekiti are only skin deep and will be resolved to everybody’s satisfaction.

    Our politicians, across board, should in view of what Ekiti has lost and suffered, honestly moderate their antagonistic relationships. If truly the interest of Ekiti is our focus, there is no reason our personal interests should predominate and I do not think any of us can  claim to love Ekiti more than the other.

    In conclusion, for all round  peace and harmony to endure in Ekiti, our elders must tread the narrow path, be  always objective and not be timid or afraid to talk truth to power.  Failure to do these has been our nemesis. They must be peace facilitators, not partisans. This they can do by ensuring that those in authority are not allowed to become demi gods just as the opposition should be kept on a leach to ensure that their activities are kept strictly within democratic limits. That we need peace in Ekiti, after a decade of self-inflicted crises, is self evident. Let us all work towards it.

  • Buhari: Bold agenda for the next four years (A view from abroad)

    Buhari: Bold agenda for the next four years (A view from abroad)

     In this way, the government can increase available electricity to something around 6000 megawatts; that is, double what is currently available in the country

    The columnist is currently on holidays in Houston, Texas, and yields the column this Sunday to Segun Badipe, a Nuclear Medical Scientist, and great Nigerian patriot, who has been tortured to no end by PDP’S indescribable 16 years of utter cluelessness.
    Happy reading.

    With the election now over, it is imperative that the president- elect should embark on a bold and persistent agenda. It has been sixteen years in the making since our people have been waiting to see true dividends of democracy. PDP’s sixteen years of colossal failure has shown that politics is not an end in itself. With this lesson in mind, the president- elect must move with all deliberate speed in implementing those political and economic programs that saw his party to victory in the just concluded elections. Because no one is certain which program would deliver the most in the shortest time, his agenda must be properly interrogated by the party. This article will attempt some pointers.

    On the political front, he must go after all the treasury looters.  This is sure to enjoy tremendous political support from Nigerians since they understand the connection between the excesses of the PDP and the political problems currently facing the country.  It is unfortunate that the judiciary has been thoroughly bastardised.  And here, one is easily reminded of the Ibori case. Here was a governor, exonerated by the courts in Nigeria only to be convicted and jailed by a London court. The interesting thing is that both courts were presented with the same facts. While in office, it  became public knowledge that he was unfit to hold public office because of his past criminal record while living in London and the EFCC  took him to court on various other corruption charges which case the Nigerian court dismissed in its entirety. The Nigerian judiciary thus allowed a felon to go scot free with catastrophic financial consequences for his Delta state people until a saner jurisdiction did justice to the people by jailing him for his merciless looting of the state  treasury. I mention this to demonstrate the urgency of cleaning up the judiciary. The President-elect must use covert operations to flush out corrupt judges as it would otherwise be difficult to get convictions against corrupt politicians and their associates.

     On the economic front, there is a lot that can be done to give people hope. Nigeria is about the only country I know where politicians don’t feel any remorse for not delivering on their campaign promises. There are obviously no quick fixes for the power problem but  I would  suggest  that the government proceeds rapidly with rehabilitation of moribund or uncompleted projects that can increase deliverables in the short run.  In this way, the government can increase available electricity to something around 6000 megawatts; that is, double what is currently available in the country. With respect to the plants suffering from irregular supply of natural gas owing largely to sabotage,  plants could be built closer to  gas sources or they are  abandoned rather than remain waste pipes. The president must, leveraging on our extant laws,  vigorously go  after  the merchants of darkness.  It needs no gainsaying that there is, today,  a cabal in our country which profits from darkness and does everything to sabotage improvements in both generation and distribution of power. Among them are some  generator merchants, diesel companies and corrupt NEPA officials who all conspire to keep Nigeria in darkness. This cabal must be put out of business. If we learnt anything from the revolution in the telecommunications industry, it is that services are better delivered when excessive   bureaucracy is bye-passed.  Our experience with big bureaucracy has been rather ugly. NITEL is now a relic of its past.  No thanks to mobile telephony that has made it irrelevant. The Buhari administration should be able to bring the same revolutionary change into the power industry. The president elect can also embark on alternative energy sources to break the stranglehold of this cabal. Tax incentives could be offered to small and medium size businesses to purchase solar, wind or inverters for the purposes of operating their business.   And for large manufacturing businesses, government could experiment with clusters of businesses in specific industrial zones and help lower their overhead costs with tax incentives and subsidies.

     Without a doubt, one of  the greatest problems facing the country today is that of insecurity as exemplified by the Boko Haram menace. I have no hesitation, whatever, in holding that solving the Boko Haram problem will help, to a great extent,  lay the foundation for genuine progress in the country. If we do not get the Boko Haram problem under control, nothing else will matter because life is key. Some have myopically, and naively, suggested that government should negotiate with them. Terrorists, by their nature, do not play the give and take game; for them, it is all or nothing.  Therefore, no responsible government should ever negotiate with a terrorist group. Rather, we must move with all deliberate speed to  put them out of circulation, whatever it  will take, and if any Nigerian leader can  do this , it is the President-elect, with a hands-on experience on such matters. President Jonathan should have confronted Boko Haram with resolute determination but he dithered, for re-election purposes, and failed miserably. Unlike him, the President-elect must motivate our  otherwise well trained fighting forces who were, unfortunately, rendered hors de combat by a listless President  Jonathan who it  took eighteen agonizing days to react to the seizure of over 200 of our prized girls. The army must be provided with all it requires to  rout the Boko Haram menace. With enough men and resources our army will be able to deploy resources to gathering  critical human intelligence, absence of which has hugely hampered the army’s ability to deal decisively with the terrorists that government had to bring in South African mercenaries.

    Then, and finally, the monster of it all – corruption, for which the President-elect must device    novel instruments to deal with. Using agencies like the EFCC or ICPC   is  no more than asking  the ruling class to prosecute members of its own class and which  is therefore guaranteed limited success, will never be enough answer to the corruption menace.  The government must, therefore, necessarily have to think-out-of-the-box, and do something truly revolutionary. The new administration could come up with an amnesty program whereby those who willingly confess their acts of corruption could, after making full restitution, be allowed to keep some of the recovered loot strictly  for purposes of  basic sustenance. This low cost technique of recovering public loot could be made available in the first 12 months of the new administration, after which it becomes unavailable. The next step should be a whistle blower program. It is also a low cost technique, the essence of which is for persons who are intimately familiar with details of some corrupt acts to squeal on the perpetrators with a fraction of the recovered loot going to them as compensation. All they need is a legal pathway of uncovering the corrupt act. The whistle blower must help law enforcement recover the proceeds while such fraudsters are made to reap the full weight of their malfeasance. The whistle blower must have immunity from prosecution and be protected from any conceivable reprisals. All these can be accomplished through anonymous techniques. Corruption rarely happens with only one individual. Rather, it is usually through a web of co-conspirators. bank officials, contractors and corrupt civil servants who  all collude to foster an atmosphere of shady deals and inflated contracts. Government only needs to  offer incentives to that one disgruntled participant who is willing to flip and report all the co-conspirators.

     It is time for this novel technique, and I am willing to offer my services to fatherland in this area.  It is extremely sickening, watching generations of our kids growing up with little or nothing to hope for in life.

    Finally, we all want the president elect to succeed and to do so, he must neither be timid nor reckless. He must be guided by the timeless values of justice, fairness and hard work. Now more than ever before, Nigeria needs a statesman who is willing to work across ethnic and geographical divides and bring the best ideas to the table in order to build a great country we can all be proud of.

  • Still about the outgoing PDP government

    Still about the outgoing PDP government

    It is imperative for the incoming administration to do something revolutionary in the area of Energy which successive PDP governments has turned to a sink hole, with billions of dollars sunk with only monumental failure to show

    It is no longer news that the campaigns were thoroughly engaging.  Long before the  Peoples  Democratic  Party , out  of  unremitting  pressure from the APC ,  worsened by the Bauchi  intra-party stoning of a Presidential rally, graduated into  a festival of hate  , with the First Lady – she actually turned a neuroscientist,  pronouncing on  the status of  opponents’  brains – and Femi Fani-Kayode leading the pack, this column had taken its  position very early: stay  ramrod  with the APC  budding  campaign, avuncularly propagating  those sterling qualities  that made the President-elect  stand out so distinctly  one  was n’t ashamed  to  suggest  he should be adopted as  the  consensus  presidential candidate because,  defeating and sending PDP  into  political oblivion had become  a moral obligation for  any truly patriotic Nigerian.  Just as well, as the APC  Presidential primaries would later come to see the erstwhile governor of Ekiti state, Dr Kayode Fayemi, lead his colleagues of the election committee gave the world, unarguably, Nigeria’s best presidential primary election of all time, far from the shambolic one coordinated by a one time Foreign Affairs Minister for the Peoples Democratic Party. The party’s  ruination of  Nigeria, snippets of which  we  are beginning to see with Dr Okonjo-Iweala’s , unarguably, first ever  candid  statement about the Nigerian economy -that the Federal Government now borrows to pay salaries -,  has  become so complete that another four years of a Jonathan administration would have meant  disaster on an industrial scale.

    One of my most engaging readers who wrote in from tel. no.080745729—sent in the following highly nuanced reaction to last week’s article: In An Era Of Change, Nigerians Expect To See Credible and Measurable Changes.

    Happy reading.

     Sir, you were very right in your analysis today but may I add that there is a great need for the incoming administration to do a painstaking audit of the liabilities it is inheriting and it must let the public know its findings as a matter of urgency. The Director-General  of BPE, Mr Dikki, said what most of us who refused to be fooled by this government’s economic team  knew all along. And it is interesting to see the President’s appointees sing a new song now. Where was  Dikki all these daysk when  they were telling us  tales about ‘’rebasing the economy’’, ‘’double digit economic growth’’, ‘’double digit foreign direct investment’’ etc, whereas the reverse is the case for the economy. Unlike the rest of them, the National office of statistics,  all through the years has been releasing figures that portray the correct  position of our economy without minding the harassment from the vindictive PDP Federal government. In fact, Prof Soludo quoted profusely from the  data received from that  office in his  confrontation with the Finance and Co-ordinating Minister, Dr Okonjo-Iweala.

    Despite the  suffocating pleas to  the President-elect to be magnanimous in victory, it is of utmost importance that he deals away with the heads of most of the para-statals and commissions under this present administration in order to  bring in fresh and  untainted hands who can deliver the Change the APC has promised Nigerians. Nigeria has an agency or commission  for virtually every matter under the sun, but, what have we got? The National orientation commission has been turned into a PDP  propaganda mouthpiece at a time there has been no greater need for a new rebirth, and  a new discuss on what our values were, and should be. There is  the Nigerian communications commission  which is meant to regulate telecoms and digital communication, but all we get is a non-existent regulator. I can go on and on, but my point is that we cannot afford not to  completely overhaul these agencies  just because General Buhari is being enjoined to be magnanimous in victory.

    It is imperative for the incoming administration to do something revolutionary in the area of Energy which successive PDP governments has turned to a sink hole, with billions of dollars sunk with only monumental failure to show. The Buhari administration will score a big plus if it is able to do something cogent and visible in the power sector. One of the reasons for  President Jonathan’s massive defeat in the last election is, without doubt, the incessant lies being told Nigerians about the exact situation of the power sector in the country.  The incoming government must  ensure that Nigerians  know, at all times, what  the problems are,  and how soon they intend to get them rectified. There is also an  urgent need for a complete, and radical,  reassessment of our economic policies to bring down the exchange rate as well as guarantee food on the table of the common man. Nigerians  are aware of the booby traps being laid for the incoming government by the outgoing one but  President Buhari, once  sworn  in,  must  not shy away from UPROOTING the traps,   no matter whose ox is gored.

     It is man’s inhumanity to man for the Petroleum Minister to claim that  there is a subsidy on kerosene.  She should check out the dispensing prices everywhere, to see that it has never been less than N100 per litre. And this has been so for the past six years, that is, through the entire Jonathan administration. I am overwhelmed by the enormity of the problems confronting the incoming  President but  he has reached a point of no return. Did you, for instance, see  how these PDP people shared our common heritage  running into over 2 trillion naira to prosecute an election in which they were thoroughly bought low?

    That is God at work.

     Another evidence of the government’s  totally amoral way of doing things  came from a totally unexpected quarters during the past week. A N155 million-election largess is allegedly at the center of a fierce legal battle between two members of the President’s Ijaw ethnic group. The plaintiff  is asking to be paid a whopping sum of  N155 million for political services rendered the defendant in relation to the President’s re-election bid for which the latter is alleged to have been paid about N20Billion. The case, filed at an Abuja High Court, is now scheduled for hearing on Thursday May 28, 2015.

    But so what? Didn’t ‘Cry Baby’, and his ‘Auto Mogul’ brother fight dirty over a bank loan running into billions?  The case, simpli cita, is therefore of little or no interest to this columnist. Rather, what interests me, and should worry Nigerians, now that we are  heading into austerity times, is  how symptomatic  it could very well be about  the manner in which the outgoing presidency gifted  friends  and cronies sweet heart  deals. What should, therefore,  bother us are the following disclosures accusing  the  respondent  of abandoning numerous contracts  awarded him by the presidency.  The following contracts  were cited as examples:  Sand-filling of the Bayelsa State Cargo Airport worth N10 billion, the Maitama extension (infrastructure) worth N150 billion; the supply of engineering materials at N67 billion; the Waterfront Shore protection at Otuoke and Ayakoromo at a cost of N5 billion; the reclamation project at Akipilai community at the cost of N5 billion; the internal road networks at Otuoke at N4 billion; Construction of 2000 hostel rooms at the Federal University, Otuoke at a cost of N4 billion; and the construction of the Opume/Okoroba seven mile road at the cost of N10 billion. What is worse is the allegation that the gentleman has since changed the name of his company.

    Since impunity confronts  one  whichever direction you turn your gaze, I do not think the in –coming  government needs  any further  evidence  to put in place a Failed Contracts Committee to investigate  such failed contracts which must  run into thousands in  PDP’s  16 years  of the locust.  This will have the added advantage of enabling persons so accused  to clear themselves, failing which every penny must be recouped, with interest. They should, in addition, be blacklisted by both the Federal and state governments throughout the country. It would be a big shame, if it  turns out true that somebody allegedly  so close to the President, continues to be patronized   by federal agencies  even after he had severally  abandoned multi-billion  contracts awarded him by the same Federal Government. The least the President can do is to have this matter of contract abandonment, not the bit in court,  by somebody described as his close ally to be thoroughly investigated  and appropriate steps taken.This story does not in any way elevate the presidency at all.

  • In an era of change, Nigerians expect to see credible, measurable changes

    In an era of change, Nigerians expect to see credible, measurable changes

    It is obviously not worth her oily concern that the Nigerian poor, who literally never get to see kerosene, are still made to part with N150 for a subsidised product expected to sell at N50 per litre

    The Nigerian economy has continued to experience declining growth, increasing unemployment, galloping inflation, high incidence of poverty, worsening balance of payments, debilitating debt burden and increasing unsustainable fiscal deficits” – Benjamin Dikki, Director-General, Bureau of Public Enterprises, BPE, speaking on the theme, The Nigerian Reforms & Privatisation Policy, Processes, Gains, Challenges and Prospects, to members of the IBB International Golf and Country Club, Abuja.  If there should be any official of the Goodluck Jonathan administration who could tell the world a more robust view of the state of the Nigerian economy, it should be none other than Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the Minister of Finance & Coordinating Minister of the Economy. But what do we have? Unfortunately, Okonjo-Iweala would rather tell Nigerians such platitudes as: “We now have a Nigeria, which is the largest economy on the continent. … I also feel that with this strong base that we have, if we just keep steady, we will be able to exit, and the value of the naira will strengthen, because we have got the different sectors etc.” And you ask: keep steady at what?

    With Dikki’s  down-to-earth views on the Nigerian economy, no time can be more opportune than the imminent  inauguration of the Buhari administration to blow off the lies and stunts Nigerians have been fed with these past 16 years; especially in this current regime, be it in its lodestar Ministry of  Agriculture, whether in its glamourised ‘transformation’ in the railways which was hardly anything more than repainting old wagons or whether in a promised forensic audit into the NNPC cesspit which turned out to be a none audit.

    Any keen observer of the Nigerian economy, especially in the 16 years of a now haemorrhaging PDP, must have seen that it is  nothing more than a kalokalo, generator economy, underpinned by a gripping renteer-sm  that kept  that largest ‘rally’ in Africa going.

    One such keen observer has been former U.S Ambassador to Nigeria, John Campbell, who, in his: Nigeria: Dancing on the Brink explored the country’s post colonial history, offering a nuanced explanation of the events and conditions that have severally propelled it to the edge. Central to his analysis are oil wealth, endemic corruption, and elite competition, all of which have combined to undermine her nascent democratic institutions as well as alienated its increasingly impoverished people. That last bit, the alienation, no, pauperisation, of the Nigerian people, more than anything, accounted for the ouster of President Jonathan whose tenure had been largely corruption-ridden and effete.

    As a result of the president’s listless approach to governance, all manner of crass opportunists carved out empires from which they rummaged on the Nigerian economy. Ex-militants, who most probably browbeat the president, became proud owners of multi-billion naira oil pipeline security contracts which recently saw total illiterates in professional arms-handling, like the Odua Peoples Congress (OPC) emerge one such beneficiary. The direct result of that was the unfortunate, fatal shooting of a young pregnant lawyer, Mrs Adebimpe Fajana, at Arepo, near Lagos, only this past week. However, none of these ‘empires’ would compare with the NNPC where all manner of cabals mushroomed, literally economically killing off Nigeria.  On the first day of January, 2012,  an ill-thought through removal of subsidy on petroleum products had led to  an unprecedented mass protest which on being probed further, led to the exposure of  a multi-billion dollar cabal oil subsidy fraudsters who were paid billions of dollars for petroleum products that were never delivered. Quite unsurprisingly, children of two former PDP Chairmen were named among them.

    But the mother of PDP’s inhumanity to the Nigerian poor, planned and executed under the watchful eyes of a complicit Goodluck Jonathan government, is the fleecing of poor, helpless Nigerians through the kerosene subsidy. This ungodly scam, responsibility for which must go directly to the Minister of Petroleum Resources, Diezani Madueke, is a double jeopardy because just as it defrauds the Nigerian poor, who hardly ever gets kerosene to buy even at between N120 – 150, so does it cream off a monthly $100 Million from the Federation Account. The former Central Bank Governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, testifying at the resumed Senate Investigative Public Hearing on un-remitted oil revenue in Abuja,had told the panel that the $20 billion  spent on subsidising kerosene, belonged to the Federation Account. Relying on data from the National Bureau of Statistics which confirmed that kerosene was not a subsidised product he also produced evidence to the effect that former President Yar’Adua, indeed, issued a presidential directive eliminating subsidy on kerosene, effective from July 2009.

    Speaking on the same issue at another occasion, Dakuku Peterside, Chairman, House Committee on Petroleum (Downstream), said: “In 2010, we spent N110, 068,533,988 to subsidise kerosene. In 2011, the government spent N324, 089,961,319 and N200bn in 2012. So, in three years, we spent a total of N634bn, subsidising kerosene. This is a third of what we spend in a year on capital budget.”

    In a statement that would be extremely difficult to surpass in its outright vacuousness, Diezani Alison-Madueke, Minister of Petroleum Resources, claimed before a Senate Committee hearing, that the Jonathan government could not implement President Yar Adua’s order to remove subsidy from kerosene because, hear the kind mum: “it would be inflicting hardship on the citizens,” as if she did anything else in all her yeas in public service. As you read this, Nigerians are buying a litre of petrol, fixed by government at N87, at more than N150. It is obviously not worth her oily concern that the Nigerian poor, who literally never get to see kerosene, are still made to part with N150 for a subsidised product expected to sell at N50 per litre. In case it could still be of any help to Mrs Madueke on her way out, let me quote her the words of Beatrice Kelvin, a restaurateur: ‘‘the last time I bought kerosene, it was as if the commodity was going to be sold for the last time in Nigeria that day. Every space in the filling station was occupied by intending buyers. It was indeed a sight. Many people buy kerosene at a rate higher than N50 and I know that it is not also available.’’

    President-elect, General Muhammadu Buhari, must see the above as only the tip of the ice-berg in the economic ruination President Jonathan would be handing over to him on May 29th. The entire Nigerian space is crawling with evidences of despoliation by a PDP that survived almost solely on corruption. Reacting to one of my articles recently, a reader from tel. no 080523631- – wrote: “My theory about the PDP being a criminal organisation is proven now. It is one thing for a party to harbour criminal elements, quite another for the party itself to be criminal like those mafias in Southern Europe. For better, for worse, it seems good now that that organisation has been dislodged from Abuja. In a society where nation building is taken seriously, it ought to be legally disbanded, criminalised and banned like the Nazi party.”

    That, Mr President-elect, is the picture of the ruined country you will be confronted with on May 29, 2015. Nigerians are eagerly waiting to see decisive and measurable changes from that date. And you can, the very minute President Jonathan bows out, promptly stop this scam which was put in place for the presidency’s ‘weeping boys’ and its other cronies, some of who practically owned the NNDC.

  • War against indiscipline (?): Some areas to interrogate (2)

    War against indiscipline (?): Some areas to interrogate (2)

    If you discover someone on phone lying about his location: shout change #

    It his first coming as head of state in ‘84, with his stern-faced deputy, General Tunde Idiagbon, standing ramrod by his unsmiling self, General Muhammadu Buhari launched what one now hopes would be only the first phase of his War Against Indiscipline (WAI1). If  WAI was in 1984 conceived  as a crusade,  essentially against general indiscipline, and targeted, essentially, at the problem of  idleness in the  work place by public servants and to address  some social laxity amongst the citizenry at large; which then resulted in Nigerians queuing up at bus stops,  a Second Phase War Against Indiscipline, in the year of our Lord  2015, when Nigeria has turned  full scale, a Sodom and Gomorrah –no thanks to PDP’s  congenital profligacy spanning 16 years – must be much deeper, more encompassing and  must interrogate far more areas than it did in its first coming. It must enlist all, and every Nigerian, and have no go areas even if it appeared to dovetail into the functions of some other agencies of government.

    In the article: ‘Nigerians Talking About The Change We Need’ (Sunday 12 April, 2015), I showcased those things that could be regarded as WAI’s underpinning fundaments and they can very well be repeated here; though there are much more as we shall see shortly:

    CHANGE STARTS WITH US:

    When somebody in the car ahead of you throws wastes on the road, drive next to him, roll down your window and shout, “change!” ,#ChangeNigeria.

    When you are on a queue and someone tries to force his/her way in front of you, scream “change!!”. #ChangeNigeria.

    At the point of entry, either at an air or sea port, or at a border with our neighbours, a custom or immigration official shows up asking for bribe, shout Change. # Change Nigeria.

    If you see display of fake products in a supermarket or drug store or spare parts shop: shout Change. #Change Nigeria.

    To any lecturer that is hell bent on collecting bribe, in cash or in kind:  harass him with Change. # Change Nigeria.

    To any public/private servant stealing from our national heritage, shout Change! # Change Nigeria#

    When a police officer stops your car and says “Oga, anything for the boys?” tell him, “change!” #ChangeNigeria

    When you walk past any Nigerian who throws paper or banana peel on the floor, stop him and tell him, “change!” #ChangeNigeria.

    If the church opposite your house is using a loud speaker to disturb the neighbourhood, visit the pastor & say, “change sir!” #ChangeNigeria

    If you are in a bus and the driver is driving like mad, shout “change!” #ChangeNigeria.

    If the mosque opposite your house is using a loud speaker to disturb the neighbourhood, visit the Imam & say, “change sir!” #ChangeNigeria.

    When somebody is trying to jump a queue either at the bank, fuel station or at an ATM stand: shout Change. #Change Nigeria #

    When an electricity official cuts your light unjustly, trying to extract a bribe: shout Change. # Change Nigeria#.

    If you discover someone on phone lying about his location: shout change #

    If you discover a man or a woman cheating on the spouse: whisper CHANGE!

    When a fuel attendant wants to under dispense fuel into your vehicle, remind him about “Change” #Change Nigeria#

     Nigerians, in all spheres of life, must be ready to talk, even shout, when we observe any acts of indiscipline and, in particular, when agencies of government, are seen to be under-performing or their chief executives are committing serial acts of illegality as I have personally done in the past concerning some agencies and would also do in this piece about another high profile agency.

    In the article:  ‘Defending  Bigotry  And  Cant  At  INEC  And FCC’ ,  (September 16, 2012 ), I took  the  two commissions  to task over  a series  of  issues relating to membership of committees in INEC.  Though it must be stated early that Professor Atahiru  Jega reacted  very quickly to the issues raised  by immediately re-jigging the committees, the culpability of the latter commission remains  till date because, as I shall show  below, other agencies of government are still neck deep in nepotism – which was, of course, not the problem with INEC. In the article under reference, I had written as follows: ‘ … INEC and the Federal Character Commission have to do more to convince Nigerians that they have no ulterior motives. Nothing can be more indicative of the synergy between the Independent National Electoral Commission and the Federal Character Commission in their determined bid to protect inequity at INEC than the fact that while Prof Jega had caused Kayode Idowu, his Chief Press Secretary, to do a lengthy defence of INEC’s indefensible management composition, Prof Oba has, himself, resorted to granting newspaper interviews to achieve the same result. But only the unwary can be deceived by either of these two professors who head very vital, indeed strategic, national institutions’.

    I expect  that when I cite another public agency, allegedly  committing, and has committed, massive irregularities in its employment  system, the Executive Chairman of the Federal Character Commission would have a different explanation from what he said in the INEC case. Said Professor Abdulraheem Oba then: “the Federal Character Commission is essentially focused on the public service recruitment at the entry point only. That is when we ensure equity of opportunity of all persons to be able to enter into an establishment by drawing the benchmark for merit.” Speaking further, he said: “at the management level, we encourage all establishments that when it comes to management positions, there must be a practice of equity of distribution of offices among the various interest groups in Nigeria. Our circulars say that that for all establishments, all management positions must be advertised and made public.”

    If the above position is true, then he must be ready to explain to Nigerians something about the veracity, or otherwise, of the following information which has gone viral on the internet as it concerns the National Communications Commission (NCC). Readers should please not rush to the conclusion that I am affirming what, as at now, is only an allegation. And, if of a fact, the named Chief Executives committed those out rightly illegal acts, they will, in my view, not be more guilty than those in charge of the Federal Character Commission for permitting such impunity as none was known to have been reprimanded or punished during their tenure. It should therefore be appreciated if the named, former and serving NCC Chief Executives, and the Federal Character Commission, would respect Nigerians, and take time out of  whatever it is they now do, to  react to the following  allegations contained in an e-mail captioned:  ‘The Shocking  Roll Call Of  Nigeria Communications  Commission’s  (NCC) Executive  Vice Chairman’s/CEO’s’.

    1. Engr. C. IROMANTU(1993 to 1999)-6 yrs from S/EAST..he employed 168 new staffers..149 from S/EAST

    2. Engr Emmanuel NNMA(1999 to 2000) 6months; from S/EAST..he employed 79…66 from S/EAST.

    3. Engr Earnest NDIKWE(2000 to 2010)10 yrs; from S/EAST..he employed 310 …288 from S/EAST

    4. Dr. Eugene JUWA (2010 to date)5 yrs; from S/SOUTH..he employed 188..110 from S/SOUTH, 60 frm S/EAST!

    5. From 1993 to date ALL major Contractors, Consultants, Contracts & Interventional Capital Projects are 90% tilted in favour of S/EAST & S/SOUTH

    Let me quickly say that whoever knows where Chief Executives from other parts of the country have done, or are doing the same thing, he/she should kindly, very quickly, inform the columnist so we could also advertise their iniquitous and  shameless behaviour. It is also my sincere hope that this unfair treatment meted out to Nigerians from other parts, and perpetrated by individuals from sections of the country at the helm of affairs in not less than 70 percent of regulatory agencies in President Jonathan’s  Nigeria, is not symptomatic of what is happening in  the other agencies.

    It is also hoped that in the new spirit of CHANGE, this write-up will not be subjected to the usual scurrility which the likes of Sam Omatseye, Chairman, Editorial Board of this newspaper, and, lately Ambassador Bade Afuye (Retd), and Remi Oyeyemi were subjected to by Igbo readers for doing no more than express their opinions on matters that concern us all.