The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • Okon avoids accidental discharge

    And still on the confrontation between modernity and tradition. Marshal Goering, the notorious NAZI sybarite, once famously observed that whenever he heard of culture, he usually reached for his gun. In a multi-national nation, one man’s culture is another man’s horror. For some time now, Okon has been making some denigrating remarks about the Yoruba tradition and its people.

    “Oga, how come all dem Yoruba people who dey dance kpalongo  round dem Buhari man dem come vamoose patapata? Abi agaracha don return home?”, the mad boy demanded from snooper.

    “Who told you bloody fool that?” snooper snarled.

    “Ha oga na hunger make dem Yoruba drummer waka go Sabo. But dis time he be like if say dem mala tira come scatter Yoruba juju”, the mad boy crowed before snooper chased him away.

    As the rumoured death of the great Yoruba monarch gained traction, snooper devised a plot to give the mad boy his terminal comeuppance.

    “Okon, you will go to my aunt in Ife and collect the herb known as ewe omugo”, snooper ordered with unsmiling sternness. The crazy boy eyed snooper with a mischief and genial malice.

    “Ha oga no be dat one dem they call accidental discharge?” Okon snorted with street savvy.

    “And what is accidental discharge about collecting herbs?” snooper demanded.

    “Ha oga accidental discharge na when police kill person and come say na accident. He get time like dis one when dem Oba don kaput and dem Yoruba people dey hunt other people, dem dey kill dem, dem dey cook dem and dem come dey whack dem. Oga, Okon dey for discharge but him no dey for accident”, the mad boy sneered and quickly disappeared to our chagrin.

  • Aging

    I hope to grow old too, if only to be able to oppress the young ‘uns with my white-haired wisdom. With toothless gums, I want to be able to say, ‘when something wuns, shomething elshe mush wun with it’, and leave them, and me, mystified

    I have come to the unsavoury conclusion that it is dangerous to become an aged person in this country. Don’t get me wrong. I want to become old, but I don’t want to suffer, not just from the known diseases of old people, but THE Nigerian disease of old people: abandonment, total abandonment. No one seems to mind old people anymore, so they have taken to begging, being passed from one impatient relative to another, or sitting out their days in the dark, waiting.

    Someone told a story not long ago that was a mixture of sadness and mirthless mirth. While out on an errand one dusky evening, a young man came upon an aged couple sitting quietly in front of their house. The evening grew dark but the couple sat on. While returning from his errand, the young man saw that the couple had not shifted even though it was very dark. What was the problem? There was no electricity. The couple had a beautiful house, complete with amenities including a power generating set; but they lived alone because the children all lived abroad and no one lived with them. Obviously, due to old age, they found it difficult turning on the generating set.

    The young man was now in a quandary, as the story went. If he turned on the generating set for the old couple, who would turn it off? If he left a candle burning, would they remember to snuff it out? He then did the next best thing. Oh no, he didn’t ask them to move in with him; he simply bought them a rechargeable lamp and showed them how to turn it on and off. He also silently prayed they would remember to switch it off.

    Are you laughing dear reader? Please don’t because this story is fast becoming the Nigerian story. Parents who have worked very hard to stow their children in foreign countries are now sitting in front of their houses on dark nights counting the costs. Yes, you’re right; there were good, cogent reasons that necessitated the stowing away in the first place. After all, are boats not being picked up north of Africa full of emigrants desiring to run to foreign countries all the time and all?

    So yes, all parents want to give their children the best education all the time, even if it means getting money by fair and foul means to send the poor little things out of the country for it. After all, it is not the children’s fault that children in Nigerian schools cannot speak English the way it should be spoken; well, because they were not taught. It is not the children’s fault that teachers speak very bad English themselves anyway because they really cannot spare the time for self-improvement. It is certainly not the children’s fault that the government does not pay its teachers as, at when, and what is due, leading to strikes (a la ASUU) or diversion of teachers’ attention to coke selling (a la school teachers). Between the two, who has time to teach English? One parent confessed that when he listened to the bad English of his child’s teacher, he promptly sent the child abroad.

    True, it was not only the bad English of teachers that drove many parents to this desperate measure. There is the pride too. And how is X child? ‘Oh’, the parent enthuses, giving a sigh of deep satisfaction, ‘he’s doing great. In fact, I have only just now spoken to him. He has just got a new job and house. In fact, I have pictures of my grandchildren here,’ making to open the bag before you beat a hasty retreat.

    I must admit though that even when parents have not sent their children to go and school and work abroad, many children all over the world appear to have been bitten by the wanderlust and have upped and taken off for parts unknown by themselves. Many years ago I read a report on how a husband and wife in Britain had problems managing their home and health issues and suffered from loneliness. What was the problem? Their adult children had earlier migrated, like birds, to Australia. I thought then that that could not happen to Nigerians. Later, I read another report on how successful adult Japanese children who were too busy to have time for their parents had resorted to paying firms to send flowers and messages to their parents on their behalf. I thought again that that could not happen in Nigeria. Why will children not have time for their parents in Nigeria? On both counts, I have been proved wrong.

    The truth is that as children continue to do well for themselves, gleefully climbing one ladder rung after the other, the previously proud parents have continued to grow more and more alone. Oh yes, what we are witnessing now is the direct result of our new and improved life style: living for oneself in one’s bungalow or mansion rather than in one large compound of cousins, aunties and uncles. I think it is called modernity or something.

    Have you noticed the number of people managing to make it past the government’s average life span is somehow increasing, against all expectations and aggravations? Oh, I would not say it’s because of any improvement in the average life style in Nigeria. Have you forgotten non-functioning hospitals, embezzling chief executives, blood pressure-raising missing funds, Nigeria’s cleverly designed road hazards, boko haram, kidnappers, … should I go on? In spite of them all, many find themselves in old age by some hook, crook or careful living.

    Yet, the government has sort of abandoned the care of the aged to their various larger families. Unfortunately, the family system is evolving into something confused and unrecognisable in Nigeria right now. Therefore, the larger family is not able to come in and take care of aged permanent secretaries, professors, directors, generals, business executives, etc., when they have aged beyond being useful to the community and now need care themselves. This means they have more freedom to spend many dark nights sitting in front of their houses.

    I tell you, this thing worries me o. First, I ask myself, will I get to become one of them old ‘uns? Honestly, I do; I hope to grow old too, if only to be able to oppress the young ‘uns with my white-haired wisdom. With toothless gums, I want to be able to say, ‘when something wuns, shomething elshe mush wun with it’, and leave them, and me, mystified.

    My son has assured me I should not worry. He will make sure I am not a nuisance to myself, the society or him. He will put me in an old people’s home. Now, all we have to do is find one. When I was growing up in Lagos, there used to be one. Instead of that one to multiply and give birth to more homes, the thing rather shrank in number from one. So now, old people’s homes are scattered all over Nigerian homes, only they are badly run, indifferently financed and give inmates too many nights sitting outside in the dark.

    I think there is a need for the government to step up. It needs to compel the building of more old people’s homes in each state, city and possibly local government. It is our collective responsibility to ensure that while bones and skins are still hanging on to their owners, they should be cared for, rather than being left alone to become beggars. In the meantime, the new old people must be prepared to combine homes or live near relatives, friends or children. This is easier said than done, I know, but it sure beats sitting outside in the dark waiting for providence.

  • Five irrefutable reasons against the privatization of the NNPC: an open letter to the Presidents of NLC and PENGASSAN

    Five irrefutable reasons against the privatization of the NNPC: an open letter to the Presidents of NLC and PENGASSAN

    Comrades and compatriots, greetings!

    Last week in this column, I addressed an open letter to the Governor of Kaduna State, H.E. Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai in which I took him up on his recent, widely reported call on President Buhari to privatize the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). I am addressing this letter to you, not because Governor El-Rufai has not responded to my open letter, but because I believe that you, as representatives of workers in the oil industry in particular and Nigerian workers in all sectors of the economy in general, ought to wade in on this all important debate on the proposed privatization of the NNPC. This reason for this is, I think, fairly obvious; at any rate, it shall become even more obvious in the course of my elaboration of the essential points of this open letter to you. But for now, permit me to simply say that your silence on this matter will speak volumes. I am of course aware that the General Secretary of PENGASSAN (The Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria) has already commented on El-Rufai’s devastating critique of the scale of corruption in NNPC. However, that response from the PENGASSAN General Secretary should, in my opinion, be regarded as only a first response in that it was far too defensive and it did not address the issue of the privatization of the national oil corporation. With these initial comments out of the way, permit me to now go directly to the FIVE weighty reasons against the privatization of NNPC.

    One

    NNPC is not The Daily Times, Transcorp or NEPA; it is NNPC

    Privatization of state-owned or public enterprises is not new in Nigeria. As a matter of fact, to the extent that there was any consistent ideological core in reign of the PDP in its sixteen years in power, it is the wholesale privatization of state-owned enterprises and utilities. Other than this, the erstwhile ruling party in particular and all ruling class parties in our country have no defining ideological and policy identities. This is why disputes, which are often extremely bitter and fractious between and within our political parties, are hardly ever about ideology, principle, or policy; they are nearly always about power sharing and the struggle for high and lucrative political offices. But with regard to the relentless and wholesale privatization of public enterprises, this is the bible of the PDP in particular and all our ruling class parties in general.

    However, while enterprises and utilities in all areas of the national economy have one by one fallen to the relentless axe of privatization, a line had hitherto been drawn around NNPC. That line is about to be erased, that is if El-Rufai and those who think like him in the APC have their way. NNPC is like no other enterprise or utility in our country in that, in a manner of speaking, it is the mother and father of all enterprises, public and private. This observation on the uniqueness of NNPC can be put in a quite simple language: the overwhelming bulk of the finances on which all the federal, state and local administrations in the country depend are handled at source by NNPC. But there is also a technical jargon for this uniqueness of our national oil corporation and it is this: Nigeria is, overwhelmingly a rentier state and NNPC is the single agency on which the rents that make the existence and viability of this sort of state possible at all depend. In other words, if Nigeria was not a rentier state, and if oil revenues constituted only an insignificant fraction of its operating finances, then NNPC would be like The Daily Times, NEPA, Transcorp or the moribund Nigerian Airways. But at least for the present period in the economic history of this country, NNPC is the lifeline on which the overwhelming bulk of the economic activities in both the private and public sectors depend.

    Comrades, the implications of this uniqueness, this singularity of NNPC for any plan to privatize it are fairly obvious and for this reason it cannot and should not be done without a full, widespread and nationwide debate has taken place. Indeed, if it does appear that the new ruling party is hell bent on this plan – and that is far from being clear or obvious at this point in time – nothing short of a referendum will be required. Your voices and the voices of the members of your unions should be loudest and clearest in the call for such a referendum – if El Rufai carries the President and the new ruling party with him on this crucial matter.

    Two

    Corruption and mediocre performance are afflictions of both private and public enterprises in Nigeria

    This factor is pretty unassailable. In many of the full blown capitalist countries of the world, the fundamental rationale for privatizing public enterprises has been the claim, the assertion that privately owned and run enterprises perform much better than state-owned or public enterprises. As the saying goes, the business of government is not business but governing. This claim is not, by the way, true or verifiable in all sectors of the national economies of the world. All the same, this claim has never been credibly or loudly made in our country, the simple reason for this being the fact that it would be quite laughable to make such a claim in Nigeria. When Daily Times was privatized, it became even worse than it had been before privatization. PHCN has performed more or less on the same level of satisfaction of consumers as the old ECN. Transcorp, the biggest multinational corporation ever started in our country, has been the laughing stock of multinational corporations all over the world; no sooner was it incorporated than it immediately began to flounder.

    The reason why both large scale private and public enterprises in our country are equally prone to corruption and poor performance is to be found in the fact that the wealthiest Nigerians make their wealth, not through profit-generating businesses but through primitive accumulation built on the appropriation or theft of public funds to “buy” state-owned enterprises that are then badly managed precisely because they were “bought” for nothing. There is absolutely no reason in the world to think or to hope that a privatized NNPC will depart from this historic norm of the Nigerian political economy under the rule of the PDP and before then the military autocrats.

    Three

    “Inland revenue” is different from “offshore revenue”; privatization of tax collection should not be a prequel to privatization of collection of rents from foreign-owned oil conglomerates.

    The privatization of tax collection and toll gate fees in Lagos State marked a decisive step in the privatization of state agencies and their money-generating functions in Nigeria. The connection between this and the call for the privatization of the NNPC has not yet been made, but we can be sure that it will in due course be made. The argument could or will be made that if the privatization of collection of taxes and toll gate fees was not only possible but seems apparently “successful”, why shouldn’t the same thing be successful if and when applied to the collection of revenues from the offshore activities of the big conglomerates in control of the extraction and exportation of crude oil from our country.

    This is a completely superficial and also false argument as there is little or no analogy that can be made between the two. Extractive industries constitute some of the biggest transnational economic enterprises of the world and of the modern economies of the planet in general. For this reason, comparing the simple collection of taxes and toll gate fees that require little or no investments, skills and a grasp of the finer and more arcane points of economic relations between the nations and regions of the planet to the work of NNPC is like comparing the activities of a street hawker or vendor in Lagos to the operations of the Dangote financial empire. Comrades and compatriots, please let us be ready for them if and when they make this analogy in justification of the drive to sell off the national oil corporation.

    Four

    The privatization of NNPC will set off ethnic and regional rivalries that will be nothing short of a civil war in the inner processes of the economic lifeline of the country.

    It is very naïve, or on the other hand, foolish and dangerous in the extreme to think that selling off NNPC will not raise bitter, divisive and nation-wrecking struggles over which zones, which “tribes” and which communities of “religionists” will get what percentage or share of the broken and parceled-out national oil corporation. The perennial controversies over the “principle of derivation” and “resource control” will resurface. In fact already, there are whispers and rumors that the privatization of NNPC is intended to once and for all “solve” the endless strife over “resource control”. The privatization of NNPC will not achieve this goal; as a matter of fact, it will exacerbate and raise to a new level the divisive struggles over the sharing of oil revenues between the different parts of the country.

    Five

    Recover the loot; end the corruption in private and public businesses; reorganize NNPC

    Comrades, I cannot end this open letter to you without relating all that I have written herein to the untold suffering and hardship that the monumental corruption in NNPC has caused and continues to cause to the overwhelming majority of our peoples throughout the length and the breadth of the country. This is the bottom line: the colossal dispossession of the Nigerian nation and peoples through corruption and abysmally poor performance of both governmental and non-governmental enterprises in our country.

    The new government and ruling party should be given a chance to get to grips with the gargantuan tasks that this entails. Already, Nigerians at home and abroad are getting jittery over the slow pace and poor starting actions of the new ruling party. Your voices and the voices of all patriotic organizations and individuals should rise now to ask the government to recover the hundreds of billions of dollars stolen from NNPC and other government coffers and give clear signs NOW that it will end the mind-boggling corruption that is ruining the country and the lives of our peoples. If there will be a nationwide debate and/or referendum on the privatization of NNPC, this should be the precondition for those national soul-searching processes. At this stage of our economic (mal)development, the essential thing is not private versus public businesses; it is regulated versus unregulated and unregulatable corruption and mediocrity in both the public and private sectors.

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • When Baba met Barack

    When Baba met Barack

    Fresh from his electoral triumph in 2011, former President Goodluck Jonathan travelled to Washington D. C. where he would briefly meet President Barack Obama before heading for New York to attend the United Nations General Assembly High Level Meeting on AIDS.

    At the event he shared a platform with former United States President Bill Clinton. After wishing him well, Clinton said to Jonathan who was turned out in his trademark caftan and black bowler hat: “I can tell you the Secretary of State (his wife Hillary) tells me your hats are always cool.” The diplomats and VIPs at the meeting cheered and laughed heartily.

    “And I envy your name,” Clinton added to more laughter. “If I’d had a name like Goodluck, I might still be in office!” Four years later not even his uniquely optimistic name could help him cling to power – leaving Obama to welcome a new Nigerian president in whom the world invests the tall hope to deliver what Jonathan couldn’t.

    No one would ever accuse Buhari of being a fashion plate, so it wasn’t his dress sense that his host went on about. He praised his character instead. In a continent where leaders have become notorious for graft, frivolity, fickleness and excess, it certainly was a plus that a Nigerian president was being celebrated as an example for Africa.

    Towards the tail end of Jonathan’s tenure, much of the goodwill which he initially had with the US had largely evaporated. While the Americans were critical of his administration’s abysmal record on corruption, the greatest source of strain had to do with tackling the insurgency.

    The much-hyped US offer to help Nigeria track down and rescue the Chibok girls collapsed in a cloud of controversy over how the armed forces handled the intelligence they received. Some say the body language of the local security leadership suggested they weren’t too keen on having American cowboys riding roughshod over them and taking all the glory.

    Little surprise therefore that before the foreign helpers could parachute into our territory, the former Chief of Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshall Alex Badeh declared authoritatively that his forces knew where the schoolgirls were being held. Who knows, the handover notes received by the new service chief might just contain this top secret.

    As the elections drew close, relations between Nigeria and the Americans grew decidedly chilly in the light of their pointed allegations of human rights abuses against our troops and refusal to sell us arms on those grounds. With his ratings tanking, a desperate Jonathan was forced to resort to unorthodox measures. The $15 million cash seizure debacle in Johannesburg was the outcome and the rest is history.

    The speed with which the Americans invited President Muhammadu Buhari over, and the special welcome laid out for him, underscores how keen they are to mend fences with a traditional ally on the African continent.

    In the course of his almost six-year stay in Aso Rock, Jonathan met with Obama three times but I don’t recall anything arresting that was said between both men beyond the anodyne diplomatese.  Contrast that with the US president’s effusive praise for Buhari’s integrity and vision.

    So at the level of symbolism, there was a sense that the visit went quite well for the president and his country. For the first time in a very long time, the narrative emanating from these parts was positive: a seamless transition from an incumbent government to the opposition and an anti-graft leader in a nation that has become notorious for corruption. Apparently something good can still come out of Nigeria.

    But not everyone is swayed by the positive spin that has been put on the visit. Those who would have us believe Nigerians made a historic mistake by voting Buhari in March have been nitpicking. They point at everything from the gender insensitivity that saw the president travelling without a single woman in his team and having his son along for the ride.

    But of greater significance is the claim that the four-day trip was a waste of money because it didn’t produce a promise to sell things like the potent Apache or Cobra helicopters for use against the insurgents in the North-East. That sense of dissatisfaction was enhanced by Buhari’s statement bemoaning the continued refusal of the Americans to sell us arms hiding behind the Leahy Law, which bars such transactions with nations whose forces are accused of grave human rights abuses.

    The best way to determine whether the visit was a success is to go back to what Buhari outlined as his objectives before setting out. He was going to discuss military and defence cooperation as well as measures to strengthen and intensify bilateral cooperation against terrorism in Nigeria and West Africa. The administration’s war against corruption, as well as fresh measures to boost Nigeria-US trade relations were also up for discussion.

    In all that was laid out before the trip, there was very little that was specific and nothing suggested that the delegation was going to force their hosts to sign on to sell us arms. Obviously, emerging from the visit with such a deal would have been a massive coup.

    That said, it would be churlish not to acknowledge that the swift thawing of relations between the traditional allies was important. In the course of the visit, the World Health Organization (WHO), representatives of the World Bank, committed to spend $300 million to fight malaria in Nigeria.

    In terms of numbers, that sum was dwarfed by the World Bank’s pledge to invest $ 2.1 billion for rebuilding the infrastructure devastated by the insurgency in the North-East.

    Buhari has repeatedly stated his determination to recover monies plundered from the nation’s coffers by government officials and others. His plans received a boost as the Americans offered to track illicit money from Nigeria in all their jurisdictions.

    Given what we now know about outrageous sums that found their way into private pockets in recent years, a nation that cannot pay its workers’ salaries should not sneer at any deal to recover monies running into billions of dollars. I suspect that such arrangements didn’t deliver much in the past because friends of Nigeria couldn’t find reliable and zealous partners in our political leadership to get the job done. In Buhari they sense they have a man they can do business with.

    In the face of an insurgency that has received second wind with a wave of suicide bombings, a showpiece arms sales agreement would have been the icing on the cake. It is disappointing that it didn’t happen. It would have been expecting too much to think the Americans – no matter their desire for a fresh start with Nigeria – would rush into such a commitment with a seven-week old administration which still has a lot to prove.

    For now it is convenient for them to hide behind the Leahy Law. Rather than waste energy griping and pointing out the hypocrisy of the Americans who have never allowed a little thing like human rights stand in the way when they want to sell arms to some of their ‘special allies,’ Nigeria should consider what her options are.

    If we’re so enamoured of the Apache and Cobra attack helicopters, then we can begin to work to get off the list of countries categorised as human rights abusers. Buhari has committed himself to probing allegations made against the military by Amnesty International and has also pledged that under his watch, such practices would not be permitted. I’m sure that the US would be looking to see what concrete action he takes in this regard. Author of the act, Senator Patrick Leahy has suggested as much in his biting reaction to Buhari’s criticism.

    The alternative is to take our cash into the market place. The US and UK are not the only countries that sell arms. France, Russia and China to name a few are big players in the global arms industry. All three are keen to extend their scope of influence in Africa and around the world.

    All said and done, even if all Buhari achieved in Washington was the restoration of an old friendship, he should be applauded. Given her challenges, Nigeria needs all help it can get from friends around the world. That is far better than the hulking, sulking embarrassment it was fast becoming in the recent past.

  • Beyond minimum wage

    Beyond minimum wage

    Labour is at it again! Our problem is more fundamental than just salary increase

    Organised labour missed the point on Thursday when the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) president, Ayuba Wabba, led other labour unionists to the Senate President, Bukola Saraki, to bare their minds on certain burning national issues, including the bogus pay our lawmakers earn, minimum wage review and sundry other matters. Although the labour leaders were right when they said that the lawmakers themselves constituted drain pipes, considering what they take home, but they failed to call the lawmakers’ pay the proper name it should be called, i.e. corruption, given the steady rise their allocation has been witnessing, from about N23.347billion in 2003 to its current N150billion; and in spite of the downturn in the country’s economy.  And, despite the fact that minimum wage in the country has remained at the paltry N18,000 per month since 2010! Can anything be more callous and ungodly?

    Anyway, I won’t waste too much time on that because a lot has been said on it and we should be awaiting the review of the National Assembly budget that Senator Saraki promised when the issue took the front burner of national discourse a few weeks ago. We will always return to that again in full force if mum continues to be the word from him, in the usual expectation that Nigerians would soon forget the issue.

    My concern today is Labour’s notice to the senate president to the effect that it would soon come with a new National Minimum Wage proposal which the congress wants the senate to quickly approve in view of the country’s present economic realities. The NLC seemingly has a point to want to push for an upward review of the present minimum wage because if salary is expected to take people home, it has since failed in that regard. A time there was when Fela sang that 20 kobo bean cake was too small (akara nko, 20 kobo for one; na janjala e be); these days, I doubt if there is anything like that, not even in the rural areas. Moreover, at the current exchange rate of N242 to the dollar, the average Nigerian worker earns about $75 in a month, just a little more than $2 a day. Pray, what can anyone do with this? Yet, we don’t want people to steal. Yet, we want people to put in their best. Are we not deceiving ourselves?

     I sympathise with Labour on this matter, especially given its unassailable reasons to justify its position. As a matter of fact, too, I do not expect any member of the National Assembly with conscience to raise issues even if Labour eventually comes up with a N50,000 monthly minimum wage proposal for approval. In the first place, this is a figure that workers had been clamouring for all these years. Moreover, that would only amount to N600,000 per annum, which is about N100,000 more than our National Assembly law makers spend on clothes alone per year!

    But, jokes apart, asking for a new minimum wage is not the answer to the question posed by the Nigerian economy. When the present N18,000 was secured in 2010, it was well celebrated. Then, it never occurred to anyone that our National Assembly law makers would get more than double that amount as wardrobe allowance in a month. Then, no one thought the naira would be so devalued that it would now be exchanging at N242 to a US dollar, up from the N140 it was in 2010 when the now moribund N18,000 minimum wage was implemented.

    A quick travel down the memory lane on minimum wage reviews in the country will suffice to buttress my point. By the 2000 National Minimum Wage (Amendment Act), minimum wage was pegged at N7,500 for Federal Government workers (and N5,500 for state government workers). This was raised to N18,000 in 2010. So, within a period of just 10 years, our minimum wage had more than tripled. And this has been the pattern since 1981 when the minimum wage was N125 per month; it rose to N250 as a result of the Minimum Wage Amendment Decree 1990. Ten years later, it had ballooned to N7,500. The implication is that between 1981 and 2015, minimum wage in the country had jumped from N125 to N18,000! I am yet to see any good country with that paradigm.

    For example, when National Minimum Wage was first introduced in Britain in 1999, it was pegged at 3.60 pounds per hour. Between 1999 and now, a period of 16 years, it has increased only by 3.30 pounds per hour. Indeed, when salaries are increased in many other places, it is not as ridiculous as ours and the workers are far better off. Not so in Nigeria. Without doubt, the situation here concerning the astronomical rise in minimum wage over the years tells us that the problem is not about asking for high wage. It is much more fundamental.

    This is what the NLC should be in the vanguard of unravelling (assuming it does not yet know why) and clamouring for its correction. What successive increases in wages has done is to enable the politicians (whether those in military uniform or their civilian counterparts) to keep deceiving Nigerians and giving them the impression that all is well because, as soon as the workers get the salary increase, they jubilate. But when they get to the market a few weeks or months later, they discover that the money has further lost its value. I still remember what I was able to do with my N96 monthly allowance as a youth corps member in 1985. Those on national service now cannot boast of same despite the fact that they earn by far more. Even for the brief period I worked with my School Certificate result, I know the things I was able to do with my salary of about N110 per month. Today’s graduates who are lucky to have jobs are groaning because the wads of naira notes in their pockets can hardly buy anything of substance. My fear is that, at the rate at which we are going, a time will come when we would have to carry money in Ghana-must-go bags to buy an average loaf of bread as is the case in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe which I guess must be brimming with trillionaires!

    Therefore, what Nigerians should be clamouring for is good governance. Without good governance, we are only going to be wasting our time moving in circles, irrespective of the frequency of periodic reviews of minimum wage, or the magnitude. If we had done the needful in this regard, especially in the immediate past, this country would not be where it is today. If we had been alive to our responsibilities as Nigerians, we would not have had the kind of corrupt government that brought our economy to its knees as the Goodluck Jonathan government did, without giving it any serious fight until the general elections.

    Perhaps Labour’s thinking by insisting on new minimum wage all the time is that this would mop up some of the surplus money that public officials steal. If that is the reasoning, we must have seen it has not worked. As a matter of fact, the public officials might grandstand and make negotiations for minimum wage tedious and laborious; they would be more worried the moment they see that the critical segments of the society are clamouring for good governance because that alone is the antidote to the massive looting of our treasury that has become our lot over the decades.

    My fear however is whether Labour itself is not complicit in the situation we find ourselves because if it had been doing what it should do to call the country’s leaders to order, things would not have been this bad. The other problem is the state of the labour union itself; recent revelations on its housing scheme, its transport scheme and NLC’s last election which almost reflected our national elections are enough cause for concern as to whether the congress can provide the desired leadership to take us out of the woods.

  • Beyond ‘bailout’ for states (2)

    Beyond ‘bailout’ for states (2)

    Given the level of critical thinking in a country with less than 75% literacy rate, leaving citizens at the mercy of the central government to guarantee prompt payment of salaries and pension benefits is capable of encouraging citizens to lose confidence in subnational governments and thus see the central government as the only level that is efficient and compassionate

    By the time the first part of this piece appeared in this column last week, the Nigeria Governors Forum had not given citizens their interpretation of the funds they got from the federal government about three weeks ago. At the end of a recent meeting of the country’s 36 governors, their chairman, Governor AbdulazziYari of Zamfara State, had the following to say: “What had been shared last time was monies from NLNG and FAAC. And as we have been saying, we have not been looking for bailout, instead, we have been looking for all monies that are in the coffers of the federation, most especially we are talking about some monies that are hung around the coffers of government to be brought together for the purpose of sharing… We are not taking any bailout from the federal government and the federal government did not give us any bailout yet…But we are talking on how best the intervention will happen within these days so we will be able to settle the issue of salaries and other operations in government in the country….”

    This column believes that the governors have not been reported accurately in a story titled “Nigerian governors backtrack, say they never asked Buhari for bailout.”  All that Governor Yari had said on behalf of his colleagues is that they have not received any bailout yet and are already on the way to doing so by “talking on how best the intervention will happen within these days so we will be able to settle the issue of salaries and other operations in government in the country.” But today’s column is not about the Governors Forum’s differentiation between bailout and intervention with respect to how to end the problem of insolvency of states. Our interest is about the dangers inherent in a federal system in which states have to be “looking for monies hanging around the coffers of the federation” to pay salaries of workers. It is salutary that the NGF has pledged “to work with Mr. President to ensure coherent policy actions that will create a clear policy direction for the country and stimulate domestic production.” Cultivating new policy directions is an appropriate step to take at this critical moment in the country’s economy.

    Should the current precarious situation in state finances continue, states are likely to be compelled to ask for bailout or its more euphemistic synonym, intervention, from the federal government. Should states become vulnerable again to the point of having to beg the central government for special assistance, by doing so, it may unintentionally be creating more distortions in the country’s quasi-federal system. In other words, there is a great danger of encouraging President Buhari to push the country further away from proper sharing of power and sovereignty that federalism represents.

    Without doubt, President Buhari is now a democrat and a ruler with clear mandate from citizens, but he was a major player decades back in the policies of military dictators who in the days of oil boom believed that the best way to keep Nigeria united was to create mini-states that were designed to depend largely on transfers from the Federation Account to states, most of which had no viability to sustain themselves without funds from the centre. There is a possibility that inability of states to pay workers or meet their statutory functions can tempt any president in a hurry to create a national economy that works to push for fewer functions for states in the name of making governance more rational and more cost-effective. In other words, governors themselves stand the risk of subverting the little autonomy they currently enjoy, should they run into another problem of paying their workers. The real problem may not be about what many pundits consider as the reason for failure of states to pay workers’ salaries: mismanagement or inordinate ambition. It seems to be about creating an enabling environment for each level of government in a federal system to raise most of the revenues it needs.

    It is equally risky for governors to do anything to give their constituents the impression that states are more likely to generate agony for them than being a source of citizen empowerment. Given the level of critical thinking in a country with less than 75% literacy rate, leaving citizens at the mercy of the central government to guarantee prompt payment of salaries and pension benefits is capable of encouraging citizens to lose confidence in subnational governments and thus see the central government as the only level that is efficient and compassionate. Once citizens are pushed to feel this way, the temptation for them to prefer a full-blown unitary model of government may increase.

    Now that the Governors Forum has committed to working with President Buhari in creating policy directions that can respond to the country’s precarious financial situation, each state governor also needs to involve his constituents in the process of creating new policy directions. This initiative should not be restricted to governors alone; citizens should be engaged to contribute via town-hall meetings to determine what should be the right relationship between central and subnational governments. It will even be proper for state governments to subject their own thinking on how to prevent states from being vassals of the central government to a referendum in each state. Involving citizens in providing ideas about federal-state relations in an ethos of sole dependence on exploitation of non-renewable  natural resources may serve the interest of all better than leaving such matters solely in the hands of the political and economic elite.

    Citizens who are generally at the receiving end of policies made by political leaders may be in a better position to take a long-term view of the country’s economic problems than governors and other holders of political appointments who are preoccupied with frantic efforts to prevent their states from going into bankruptcy. With proper political education of citizens, they are likely to avoid a quick-fix approach to the issue of resource and power sharing. One of such quick-fix solutions to this issue is the 2014 Jonathan national dialogue which a group of Yoruba opinion leaders are pushing as the best option for states to obtain the kind of autonomy they need if they are to be able to provide sustainable development.

    Governors, especially those in the Southwest, where the noise about the last national dialogue is loudest, need not buy into the design to turn the recommendations of the conference into an albatross around their necks and the necks of their constituents. That conference worked on a wrong premise when the inflow of funds from non-renewable fossil was considered by delegates to be adequate to sustain 55 states. Nothing can be more eye-opening than the steady fall in the price of petroleum since the end of the 2014 conference.

    Now that the belief that Nigeria with 37 bureaucracies can be sustained by revenue from non-renewable resource is being shattered, governors planning to provide policy directions for the Buhari government need to engage their citizens directly, rather than allowing themselves to be hobbled by the push by non-elected delegates to adopt recommendations of the Jonathan national dialogue. Presenting recommendations of the Jonathan conference as synonymous with demands of Nigerians’ from the Southwest on the imperative of re-federalising the Nigerian polity may be tantamount to giving the country an Abiku federalism that may not move the country substantially away from the current model of states as parasites on revenues that accrue largely from petroleum and other non-renewable resource.

    Selected delegates to the 2014 national dialogue have the right to push the outcome of three-months of deliberations by delegates for adoption and implementation by President Buhari. But individual delegates and association of delegates do not have the right to present recommendations of the conference as the wishes of citizens in the six Yoruba states. Delegates did not consult with citizens before and during the conference. However, governors in the region with vocal advocates for implementation of recommendations from the dialogue should be open to consider some of the recommendations for inclusion in the questions to be presented to citizens in Southwestern states in a referendum. Limiting efforts at re-federalisation of the country to outcomes of the 2014 conference has the potential to prevent federating units from proper sharing of power and sovereignty with the central government in a sustainable manner. No federal system has thrived under a system in which subnational units are made to depend on allocations from the centre, regardless of the generosity of such allocations.

  • Still on a successful Buhari anti-corruption war

    Still on a successful Buhari anti-corruption war

    If the National Assembly, expected to be the bulwark of the government, could be so easily compromised, God help us with a judiciary crawling with corrupt judges and where some very senior lawyers serve as conduit for bribes to sway court decisions

    The first part of this article indicated a few inescapable actions President Buhari must take if he wants to succeed in reining in corruption in the land.  Corruption has become so hydra-headed, even systemic in Nigeria that were it not going to fight back any war aimed at it, any attempt to stamp it out would still be a helluva duel. Those eating our country raw are so entrenched, and loaded,  that they have wasted no time in showing  what they are capable of  in the National Assembly the way they made minced meat of the  time honoured practice of  having members  of the majority party in parliament holding the principal  posts in both chambers, whether  at  home here in Nigeria,  or in  the U.S from where we borrowed the presidential system. If the National Assembly, expected to be the bulwark of the government, could be so easily compromised, God help us with a judiciary crawling with corrupt judges and where some very senior lawyers serve as conduit for bribes to sway court decisions.  Except President Buhari demonstrates unmistakable seriousness, early enough, by ensuring that every member of his party not only  respects party supremacy, but  acts in support of his government’s  policies,  which one is sure will be people friendly, there is enough stolen money out there to make nonsense of his  change mantra, the anti-corruption war, inclusive.

    Fortunately, as I was busy making suggestions on the subject here last Sunday, Itse Sagay, a distinguished legal scholar and Professor of Law, in concluding his article: ‘Politics, Public Service, Morality and Integrity in Nigeria’, (The Nation of the same date), was leveraging on his huge knowledge of the underlying weaknesses in our extant legal system to prescribe the following ways of strengthening current laws if the president is to successfully fight corruption. Wrote Professor Sagay:  “I wonder whether Nigeria has not gone too far down the depths of the abyss to be saved.  Recently, Professor Ben Nwabueze suggested that only a bloody revolution could save Nigeria.  I hope not.  What we absolutely and urgently need is a leader who can impose discipline and eliminate corruption.  There will be need to amend our laws to strengthen the state at the expense of individual liberty at least for a short while, if we are to get to redemption point.  All legal provisions permitting preliminary objections to prosecutions for corruption must be repealed from our laws.  The power of any court to issue an order of injunction against a trial for any crime, particularly corruption, should be repealed.  Interlocutory applications in cases concerning corruption should be banned.”

    I am not quite sure whether being a legal scholar, Professor Sagay could not bear to suggest, as I did in the first part of this article, that anybody facing corruption charges should be presumed guilty with the responsibility devolving on him to prove his innocence. Nigerians just have to appreciate the fact that corruption in our country has assumed the stature of a virulent cancer which demands nothing short of a drastic surgical intervention. Like President Buhari has been quoted as saying, if we do not kill corruption, corruption will kill Nigeria and “the house would have truly fallen”, to quote the German, Karl Maier. Over and above Professor  Sagay’s  prescriptions,  it is my view  that  a Special Court should be established to try corruption cases so as to avoid the shenanigans we see daily in our courts; shenanigans which  lawyers exploit to thwart justice, thereby ensuring that corruption remains alive and kicking, even emboldened.

    The Nation editor, Gbenga Omotoso, took us through some of these in his recent article: “An Anti-Graft War Advisory” –The Nation, Thursday, July 23, 2015 – from which we shall quote at some length.

    He wrote: “Here we go: Merely taking you before the court – if you fail to get a perpetual injunction against the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), its agents, privies, officers, operatives or whatsoever called – does not make you a prisoner. Be ready to shell out a fortune – obviously a small fraction of the cash they claim you have stolen – to get a damn good lawyer, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN). There are many of them in town nowadays. Your adversary, the tempestuous EFCC, cannot afford them. When you are remanded, don’t panic and give your traducers a chance to say: “Oh; he’s finished.” Remember, the offence, no matter how huge the cash involved, is bailable. In fact, the charges may be as long as the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. Never mind; as the case progresses, they may be withdrawn, amended or consolidated into one or two.

    Bail will come in very liberal terms

    When the case proper begins, your lawyer will tell the judge he has no jurisdiction to entertain the matter. The judge could be stubborn. He may fix a date to determine his jurisdiction and, in actual fact, rule that he is fit to hear the matter. Don’t fret. Your lawyer will simply head for the ever-busy Court of Appeal. This, no doubt, will take months to resolve. The appeal may be decided, most likely against you.

    Another judge will naturally take over the case. A plea is taken – “Are you guilty or not?” Be firm in replying: “Not guilty at all, my Lord.” Your SAN will then raise a preliminary objection, saying again that His Lordship has no jurisdiction to hear the matter. “The offence was not committed in Abuja,” he will tell the court, “and the money involved is, after all, not the federal government’s.” Besides, no prima facie case has been established against you, the lawyer will say confidently.”

    At this point, after many years in court, the accused most probably becomes a governor and for the next eight years, our man is untouchable – no thanks to immunity. And if he decided to become a senator, I ask Nigerians to guess what chances EFCC, which could not afford a SAN in the first place, would have against an individual legislator- for whose gluttony, immodesty and outright immorality, if not thievery –  Nigeria spends an estimated N290 Million annually to maintain in a country with more than 70 percent of its populace living below poverty line, who  could thereby easily afford to buy the entire system to escape justice.

    It is therefore crystal clear that President Buhari has his job cut out in his promised war against corruption. He has to present to the National Assembly a steely executive bill , with none of those debilitating clauses as in the present EFCC Law, which passed into law, will then  form the regulatory underpinning of a serious anti corruption war. Presidency officials must ensure that the National Assembly is not allowed to embed in the new law, any of those their usual shifty clauses which lawyers turn round to mindlessly exploit for money.

    Reactions

    I  present below, for lack of space, a few of my readers’ reactions to the first part.

    A brand new anti-graft agency will be great especially with a head like Gen. Ishola Williams (RTD) which is the only way we can be sure the fight will be certain and thorough  –  080338392. (The general’s name appeared in more reactions).

    May you continue to live long with the ink ever-flowing from the source of truth. An organisation like the current EFCC cannot be the institution President Buhari envisaged would salvage Nigeria from the present wreck -080536571..

    Thanks for your article on anti-corruption. One obstacle in the way of implementing your revolutionary idea is the role of lawyers. The legal profession is based on lying and immorality as lawyers are always concerned with making money even if it means defending Lucifer and ensuring he is declared a saint. So the role of lawyers and the legal profession must be examined and debated nationally with a view to finding how to neutralise their satanic role in the war against corruption -080338562..

    Femi, I am sure you must have forgotten that the legislature that makes the law is having Saraki as the president despite the issue of Trade Bank and that of his family. I have written you earlier on this. Why do you think he wants to be Senate President at all costs? Why are former governors all heading to the senate? This legislature will block all anti corruption moves by the executive. That is why Saraki and Dogara are there. I pray that the president reads your piece of yesterday. It is more than marvellous -080556794..

  • Re: The Army that lost its way

    Re: The Army that lost its way

    Last week ‘Snooping Around with Tatalo Alamu’ set the cat among the pigeons with the piece ‘The Army that lost its way.’ Today, some readers weigh in on the arguments in that article and manage to trigger an intellectual back and forth of their own

    From Goldoun

    Your assertion that “the Obasanjo post-military rule reform which saw to the prompt retirement of politically exposed officers was a brilliant exercise in de-militarization” was putting truth on its head. I daresay there is no brilliance in Obasanjo’s lopsided “demilitarization”. It was just a cunning move to prevent any meaningful challenge to his motives. Remember OPC happened along in the first hundred days of the tragedy that was O. O.’s misrule. More heinous crimes followed. We witnessed unprecedented and wide spread massacres on the Plateau and in Taraba as a result of heightened distrust among hitherto peaceful neighbors in the Middle Belt.

    One wonders at the much hyped “nationalist instincts” of O. O. especially in the face of the serial rape of all known and respected democratic tenets and of our common patrimony. As to the claim that O. O. “did not appoint a member of his own ethnic stock as army commander and neither did he unduly disrupt the chain of command”, I assume one needs look no farther than O. O.’s feeling of insecurity: he wouldn’t want a contender in his domain, would he? His tussle with the Jagaban was a fight for supremacy among the Yoruba.

    1. O. did not need to “disrupt the chain of command” in the military because he has already wrecked the institution as he has the nation.

    You succeeded in resurrecting the ghost of Mamman Vatsa. May Allah rest him, the usual bogey, while you white washed O. O.

     

    From Adejint

    Sir, today we have to take a contrarian view to certain points, which you explicated upon in this magnum opus on the military. First is the notion that “the military is the ultimate distillate of nation essence”

    If contemporary and comparative African history in general and Nigerian history in particular has taught us anything, it is that the military has the most fissiparous tendencies, inimical to what you call national essence, and to which we add coherent strategic ideological road map, to national redemption, salvation and prosperity. Being conservative by nature, they are always atavistic and obscurantist in their approach to national redemption and development. After all they as an institution acted as the catalyst that spurred us on to the road to national perdition, starting from precipitation of the civil war, cannibalizing a military institution Nigerian taxpayers spent an enormous amount of resources to build, through unending, atrocious and diabolical Machiavellian infantile coup-plotting decimating generations of the officer class.

    Comparatively, countries without a standing army or semi-standing army are usually prosperous, stable and free. The first example that comes to mind is Costa Rica in Central America. Since 1949, the national army had been abolished, and in Panama the national army had been abolished since 1990. These two countries are the most prosperous in Central America. Coming to Africa, Mauritius has no standing army, yet it is one of the most prosperous in Africa. More than three hundred years ago, Morocco contracted its military obligations to France.  When Germany and Japan used to have a formidable standing army, they constituted themselves into terrors against human civilization. But today after they had been reduced to having a semi-standing army, they have become oases of peace, freedom and prosperity. Arguing in this fashion does not signify in any way that we are advocating that the Nigerian military be disbanded; that is not an option in any ramification. Nigeria is a regional power so we must at all times have a formidable, professional, disciplined standing army. It is a geopolitical imperative that we always do so.

     

    From Mohammed Eibo

    Nigerian Army used to be the bedrock of discipline but diffusion in it has incapacitated it long time ago. Certain officers are not promoted for no reason but political expediency. Time to change is now or never. Will the new COAS right the wrongs?

    Truly the army has some discipline problems but little did we know that the politics is more dangerous than we can think of. Fine officers like U. M. Ibrahim are not promoted thereby killing the morale of performing officers. What should we expect the expectation from Gen. Tukur Buratai? The usual stories? Nigerian Army should brace up and live up to the expectation.

     

    From Wisdom ok

    When PMB retired 25 generals and appointed service chiefs on tribal lines he was deliberately dividing the military hierarchy on ethnicity. This is a departure from the professional army ethos. PMB is dividing and setting the country on gun powder.

     

    From Obinnna77

    Saint OBJ did precious little to repair the deliberate post-Orkar coup rot that brought the Nigerian Army to this pass. Let’s call a spade by its name, if we can bring ourselves to. And, let’s say knowledge of the Niger-arean military is not one of your strengths. The same ex -Executive Outcomes private contractors you cavil against, were the architects of victory in Sierria Leone and Liberia. Let’s do away with this deluded military chauvinism and use what works. If it takes mercenaries, so be it.

     

    From Adejint

    Fellow compatriot, Obinnna77, it behooves you not to bring a pedestrian pen knife to an intellectual gun fight. It will also behooves you to refrain from desecrating the hallowed memory of our valiant patriotic soldiers and journalists, who pay the supreme sacrifice for the glory of our fatherland and for securing a free, peaceful and prosperous future for their fellow African brothers and sisters and their children.

    Though they may be unsung heroes in our fatherland, but nevertheless they are heroes in brother African countries they are instrumental in helping to liberate – contrary to your denigrating and ill-informed opinion that Executive Outcomes, greedy bands of mercenaries they are, are architects of victory in Sierra Leone and Liberia.

    For your education, Executive Outcomes were never in the theater of war in Liberia, they were never there, and in Sierra Leone, they were there for only one year – from March 1995 to March 1996.

    And for you to aver that a regional power with almost 180 million vibrant population, because it is currently going through a rough patch must contract its military obligations and duty to a bunch of bloody blood sucking racist mercenaries, is the height of acute geopolitical myopia.

    As someone I assumed is very versed in defunct Republic of Biafra history you must be familiar with the names of the following repulsive individuals: Colonel Steiner; Major Taffy; Captain Paddy; Captain Armand; Captain Alec; Marc Goosens.

    They are all notorious mercenary commanders that were hired to fight for the defunct Republic of Biafra. What good came out of their services?

    If all the above is not adequate to convince you of the error of your ways then contemplate the following words from Niccolo Machiavelli on mercenaries.

    “Mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous; and if one holds his state based on these arms, he will stand neither firm nor safe; for they are disunited, ambitious and without discipline, unfaithful, valiant before friends, cowardly before enemies; they have neither the fear of God nor fidelity to men, and destruction is deferred only so long as the attack is; for in peace one is robbed by them, and in war by the enemy”

     

    From IskaCountryman to ADEJINT 

    And you think you won the Biafran War without mercenaries…

     

    From ADEJINT to IskaCountryman   

    If we did, please proffer the proof with photos and the names of the mercenaries, and please educate us as to circumstances that warranted this action, sans British cooperation in terms of arms supply which the Yankees refused to supply. We are ignorant of the facts, please educate us.

     

    From IskaCountryman to ADEJINT  

    Ask your new friend 77 about Egyptian pilots… I know he has a story to tell…

     

    From ADEJINT to IskaCountryman   

    Last time we checked, Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and Egyptian Wahabbi state and Wahabbi military don’t do mercenaries, they do suicide and carpet bombings. And the period in question was the 1967 Six-Day war during which Egyptian Air Force with its fighter jets were annihilated right in their hangers and on the tarmac. Following that was the debacle of 1973 Yom Kippur War and during all this epoch there was no credible Biafran Air force or fighter jets. So we wonder which plane or fighter jets the Egyptian pilots executed their nefarious mercenary contracts – maybe on a U.F.O. Chief Iska we are yearning to be educated, oblige us.

     

    From IskaCountryman to ADEJINT    

    Son… let’s leave the argument…

     

    From ADEJINT to IskaCountryman 

    Baba, I concur with your proposition. End of debate.

  • How not to get UNILAG’s admission

    How not to get UNILAG’s admission

    I really sympathise with parents and applicants who staged a peaceful protest last Wednesday at the University of Lagos over what they considered the outrageous higher cut off mark for the post Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination ( UTME)  by the institution.

    Following the earlier announcement by the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board ( JAMB)  that 180 was the general cut off mark for the post-UTME, the protesters must have been aggrieved that the University authorities and the examination board allegedly denied them the opportunity of competing for admission in the institution.

    I understand the shock that the hope of getting admitted into UNILAG, acclaimed to be the university of first choice by most admission seekers  was suddenly dashed based on a decision which they claimed they were not aware of.

    Notwithstanding their grievances, the protest was uncalled for given the history of admission in the university and other higher institutions in the country. Raising of the cut off marks  above the general one at various stages of admission is not new.

    Depending on the performance of candidates in university entrance examinations, JAMB had always fixed the general minimum cut off mark, while institutions set theirs based on what was scored by candidates who chose them as first choice.

    Having known the numbers of students they can accommodate, some institutions like UNILAG which normally have high number of applicants, usually limit the number of those who write the post UTME by setting higher cut off marks.

    If the general cut off mark was 180 and UNILAG decides to raise its own to 250 based on the performance of its applicants, so be it. As long as the cut off mark is applied to all the applicants who wrote the UTME examination, there should be not any need for any protest.

    Even with the 250 cut off mark, not all those who will write the post UTME will get admitted. The final admission list will still be based on the aggregate score of the UME and post UTME marks.

    There is no justification for universities to base their post-UTME test on low scores when even before writing the test, many will not scale through considering what they scored in the UTME.

    UNILAG and others who set higher cut off marks based on performance in UTME should be commended for not exploiting the applicants who have no chance of getting admitted since there are fees to be paid.

    According to UNILAG’s Registrar, Dr Taiwo Ipaye only 9,000 of the 32, 000 applicants were eligible for the post UTME screening. The institution will definitely make a lot of money if it decides to accommodate the protesting applicants whose chances of making the final list are very slim.

    The real problem with admission into UNILAG is not the cut off mark. It is the fact that as it claims, it is the university of first choice by applicants  for various reasons, including its location.

    While UNILAG and some top federal universities have too many applicants to select from, there are others who don’t have enough.

    Applicants who have been reassigned to other universities with lower number of candidates than their capacities based on a new decision by JAMB should be grateful instead of embarking on any futile protest.

    But for the new decision, what usually happens is that those who don’t get admission into their university of first choice, don’t have the opportunity of being considered for admission into other universities.

    Those reassigned to other universities have the option of rejecting the offers and can chose to wait for another year to try their luck in UNILAG and other institutions they prefer.

    My advice to admission seekers has always been that they should as much as possible, score very high. For those who score high marks, they can always be guaranteed admission no matter what cut off mark institutions set.

  • Here’s to all fathers

    Many unsuccessful fathers are today ruling the world, and only one deduction can come from that: it’s no wonder the world is in this sorry state

    My salute to all fathers today is a little belated, considering that Fathers’ Day was celebrated the third week of last month, but as I always say, better late than never. Besides, you know the kind of present that I value most? It’s the kind that comes unexpectedly, is late, and is very expensive. Ah! great is the quality of the surprise that one brings. Now, onto our story.

    To many children, fathers are the breadwinners of the family. He just seems to represent that part of the family tree where money seems to spring from. This is why it is difficult for children to believe that money does not grow on trees. It does; it grows on the father’s side of the family tree. Oh, I’ve said that, haven’t I? it is because when children need to buy a loaf of bread, ‘go ask daddy’; when they need to buy school uniforms, ‘go ask daddy’; when the family needs a car, ‘we’ll ask daddy’; when the family needs a jet, who else can we ask? Happily, the story is changing these days. Now, it is possible to ask mummy for money for bread too but we’ll talk about this some other day.

    Fathers also represent safety. Oh, there is no measuring the great amount of comfort a child gets when he/she knows daddy is near, particularly in a thunderstorm, or in the face of external threats, or in the face of internal threats such as mummy. You would not believe just how much children rely on those muscles. A father said he had to take his son to the hospital for one ailment or the other. When the doctors took the son over and started pricking and jabbing him, the son felt very let down that the father did not rescue him from the wicked doctors with those strong muscles of his.

    Sometimes, those muscles are used to instil discipline via the cane, and that is when things take unnatural turns and confusions set in. A father recounted how his child looked at him with horror when he had to apply corporal punishment. He said he might as well have brought out the knife.

    If we were to ask young children what their fathers represent to them, many of them would surprise us. They would talk about the words associated with their fathers, mannerisms they best remember about them, the names they call them, but more importantly, the image they represent in the house. I read in one book that a child said they called their father ‘Moses’ in their house because every morning, he called the family together and gave them the ten commandments for the day. So, when they saw him coming, they would go ‘Here comes Moses with the tablet of stone’, and he would go, ‘If I ever see you playing with my comb again …’ Another child said they called their father ‘General X, Supreme Commander’. He was fond of barking his commands at them: GET OUT OF THAT CHAIR! GET OUT OF MY ROOM! GO AND BUY ME AN ENVELOPE! All too often, the children quaked and shook uncontrollably at the sound of his voice. Another child said their father was God. He was too fond of saying, ‘Listen, I made you and I can unmake you. You came from inside my body and you can pretty well go back in there.’ Such sweet daddies, these, no?

    Truth is, fathers stand for many frightening things to their children, all too often because those fathers inherited the genes of fright from their own fathers who got them from their fathers who got them from their own fathers, ad infinitum. At the sound of a father’s voice, the child goes into throes of terror and the father goes away thinking ‘Yeah, that’s how to stay in control of the ship: tolerate no dissension from the ranks’. Want to know the truth? Most children tend to see their fathers as being capable of eating them up if they do not do as they are told. That voice is just too scaaaaaary!

    I best remember my father for many things: provisions, a bank account that just never seemed to flow too well in my direction, and THE LOOK. My father rarely applied the cane on us children but he generously applied THE LOOK. THE LOOK was the eye of steel which spelt only one thing: disapproval. Most times, that was all it took for us to want to sink beneath ground level and just disappear from the face of the earth. You took what did not belong to you, you got THE LOOK; you said what you were not supposed to say, you got THE LOOK; you did what you were not supposed to do such as failing your exams, you got that soul, spirit and body crushing LOOK that wordlessly said, ‘Consider yourself slapped and maimed for that thoughtless action’. That look, I must confess, has saved me from many a scrape and has kept me well towed and reigned in. True, I have got into other scrapes in spite of it, but who knows, there might have been more without it. Even now that he is dead and gone, THE LOOK lives on in my husband. Viva la LOOK!

    So, where would we be without our big, bad wolves, particularly since they rule the world?! Oh yes, your world, nations and states’ rulers are all fathers, I think. Let’s face it, some among them are not very successful fathers at home, since sometimes, children sort of develop immunity against the voices, muscles and looks, and just go their own merry ways. Sometimes, though, it’s the fathers who fail to apply the voice, muscle and look and choose to go their own merry way, preferring to give their talents to the nation or the world or drink or partying while the mother rules the home. When one woman and her daughter heard that the head of their home had been appointed into a government post, they both laughed. He had no clout to command at home. Many unsuccessful fathers are today ruling the world, and only one deduction can come from that: no wonder the world is in this sorry state.

    There are many homes which have no fathers for one reason or the other: death, divorce or desertion and it is clear in such instances that their places and shoes are empty. This is because nature has designed that they should be there. Where mothers are absent, their places and shoes would also be empty because nature has so designed that they also should be there. Natural creation of complementarities has stipulated roles for each divide. Fathers are the last bastion of discipline: ‘Junior, if you don’t drop that knife, your father will visit you this evening with the belt’ produces instant compliance. In the same way, mothers are the last bastion of love: ‘Junior, try and understand your daddy, he means well; now come and take a slice of bread’.

    No doubt, fathers mean well for us, in spite of their ways. That is the way nature designed them to be: furious, angry, whirlwinds; we would like to take them just as they are if they remember that homes are supposed to be havens not hotspots; wives are to be loved, not flung across the room like balls and children are to be assisted to grow up to be what they want to be, not forced into prepared jackets that fit the father’s ambition. All the world cannot be my red shoes. So, here’s a toast to all fathers: may your days be long, your cups be full, your voices stay strong and your LOOKS remain compelling. VIVA THATA LOOKA!