Electricity consumers who heed NERC’s advice not to pay for poles, transformers, wires, etc. do so at their own risk. They may be in darkness forever.

 

From the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) came the usual piece of advice to electricity consumers on December 8: don’t pay for meters, poles, wires, transformers, etc. Some power consumers, including state governments help in providing these items for DisCos and even bear the cost of repairs because they know that is the only thing that can facilitate their getting light.

NERC’s Commissioner-in-charge of Consumer Affairs, Aisha Mahmud, who gave the advice at a three-day NERC/Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC) Customer Complaints Resolution Meeting, missed the point when she gave the impression that a lot of consumers in Nigeria are not aware of their rights concerning the power sector. Hear her: “It is not the responsibility of the consumers to buy meters, poles or any assets for the DisCos (distribution companies) because we have already provided for that in the tariff of the utilities.

“But under any circumstance that you have to purchase these items and you cannot wait for the DisCos to make that investment, we have made provision for that under our ‘investment regulation”, Mahmud said.

She is right to some extent, though. Nigerians feed largely on ignorance. Ours is a country where all manner of things go. But it is not in all cases that Nigerians do not know what to do when faced by some of these challenges posed by those that should be providing certain services that consumers pay for. Let’s take our airlines for example. Many of them delay flights for hours or even cancel same outright without compensating passengers. Most air passengers, true, may not know they can take up the airlines for this. After all, some of them would have missed scheduled appointments as a result of the flight delays or cancellation. There is no doubt that some occasions that are beyond the control of the airlines could warrant such decisions because it is safety first. But when flight delays or cancellations become an airline’s emblem, then something is wrong.

I was at the Murtala Muhammed Airport in Lagos on November 13 to catch a flight to Abuja. Suddenly, the announcement came that a particular flight had to be delayed by three-and-a-half hours! I was so downcast because l almost missed my flight as I initially thought it was my flight that was so delayed. Don’t blame me; some of those people making the announcements at the airport are Nigerians, yet they speak through their nose such that you need to strain your ears to hear them, or ask fellow intending passengers about what they have just announced. I was relieved when I confirmed a few minutes later that it was not my flight. Nonetheless, the delay was by the same airline I was to travel in. I was relieved but I still felt for the delayed passengers.

The experience convinced me that the problem is not necessarily about many Nigerians not knowing their rights in such situation; it is more about the cumbersome and time-consuming process of seeking redress. Many of the passengers affected by the long delay complained aloud that the particular airline was notorious for such practices. Many hissed when some of us who tried to emphatise with them suggested they take up the matter officially with, say, the Consumer Protection Council (CPC). Many of them were aware of this platform but they thought of the time it would take to get justice, the hassles and all. Their conclusion is that it was not worth it. Of course, some air passengers had taken up such disappointments officially in the past and had been compensated.

Of course too, Mahmud’s advice that electricity consumers should not pay for electrical equipment was nothing new. It was more of  a reminder because NERC and even the DisCos too usually tell their customers the same thing. But Nigerians know better. Electricity consumers know too well that if they follow such advice, they may never get light. As some of my friends say, there are some pieces of advice that are good, but they are never to be heeded, at least not in our kind of country. This advice to electricity consumers is one such good piece of advice. At any rate, the consumers themselves know that meters, wires and transformers should not be paid for because they are the property of the DisCos. So, they have to be provided, maintained and even replaced by the owners. But they also know that this holds true only in sane countries. Our country, without necessarily sounding unpatriotic, is not yet a sane country. Unfortunately, it is even doubtful if we are looking in that direction or making any conscious efforts to attain that lofty heights.

I wish Mahmud was with us at my church where we discussed this issue last Sunday after service. The fact is, things are not as easy as she put it; that is the simple truth. Some of those who have had to pay for some of these materials, including even transformers, narrated their experiences. One spoke of a situation where they paid for their transformers twice, after discovering that the initial money they contributed had “been chopped”! Transformers don’t come cheap. You can them imagine how much the affected community would have stressed themselves to grease the palms of some unscrupulous and corrupt DisCo personnel, in order to have something they should have been provided free of charge by the DisCos.

Yet, this is something that occurs all the time and is not peculiar to any DisCo. They are all guilty as charged. What baffles me, and I guess many electricity consumers, is whether these DisCos are not merely pretending not to know that some of their personnel collect these illegal monies. No doubt the money cannot go into their official accounts because there can’t  be an appropriate heading under which to enter such collections. Any DisCo that says it is not aware of this corrupt practice is only deceiving itself. It is too prevalent not to be known to them.

But, how many of their officials who engage in such corrupt practices have been caught? How many of them have been tried and dismissed or even prosecuted because what they have done is not a mere offence, it is a crime? I know we cannot but have these experiences though, because, yes, the Discos have been privatised, the fact is that most of their officials were recruited from the decadent National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) and later the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN). Most of them are already too steeped in their evil ways. So, what we have is old wine in new bottles. They are like the leopard that cannot change their spot. It was not for nothing that officials of the power sector were identified some years back as the second most corrupt in the country, beaten only by the police force.

In fact, I was amazed when I visited the DisCo serving my area a few years ago when I had a serious issue with them and I was told that one of the former PHCN officials that has now joined the DisCo (that those of us he was serving as a marketer in his days at PHCN knew was very corrupt) was adjudged their ‘Best member of Staff’! I don’t know whether it was for the month or the year” but this character could not have been the best member of the staff in any establishment for even a minute. With such a character as the best member of staff, one does not need to know there was a serious character deficit in that establishment. I remember engaging him on several occasions when he was the marketer in my area. On one of the occasions, I asked him whether he ever reported to their office that the cables on some poles had dropped so low such that one could touch them with only a little effort. His response shocked me. He told me that was not his responsibility and that his job started and ended with his marketing duties which he was not even doing well. Even some of his colleagues were wondering how he could be the best member of the staff because this was a matter of character that is like smoke. No matter how much you try to hide it, it usually finds its way out. When I got back home and broke the news to the community, they merely said the guy must have been rewarded for doing his marketing duties in reverse; forcing electricity consumers to pay for power not consumed. As a matter of fact, he usually regaled us with the target that his employer gave him and that that was his only consideration. It was immaterial  if all consumers in the area swore that their light never blinked for a whole month, a thing which was a common occurrence then.

The long and short of it is that the ball at this juncture must revert to the NERC. As the regulator of the sector, the commission must stand firm and wield the big stick when necessary. As a beneficiary of the ruling of its NERC Forum, I cannot say the commission is not working. What I guess is that it is probably overwhelmed because even with the forum, it took more than three months for me to get justice when I had issues with my DisCo. Today, people are still reeling under unimaginable crazy bills. It is in their bid to escape such killer bills that many electricity consumers are now ready to pay for prepaid meters. But hardly can anyone get the meters at the official rate. I know what I am talking about. So, don’t let me open my mouth.

But it was the Federal Government that allowed both its free meters and those of the DisCos that are sold to be distributed simultaneously that made such creaming off of consumers possible. Again, such policy can only succeed in a sane country, not in our kind of society where corruption is endemic. I have no doubt that accounting for those free meters would be a Herculean task, and books may have to be cooked for the account to balance.

All said, rather than admonish electricity consumers not to pay for poles, transformers, etc., NERC can do better with some sting operations if the DisCos cannot do same; I bet the result would be confounding. The daylight robbery of power consumers by some unscrupulous DisCo officials happens daily and with such brazenness that the commission’s net would literally tear if it tries to catch some of these corrupt officials and ensure they are punished, to serve as deterrence to others. Where it is necessary for the commission to do regular enlightenment of the power consumers, let it do that on a sustainable basis. Many Nigerians know their rights where the power sector is concerned. The problem is that accessing such rights requires a lot of time, energy and perseverance. NERC  can work towards making the process less cumbersome. If it means strengthening the commission, let it be.

A shell-shocked civil society and a president’s annoying indifference

 

When on Tuesday, last week, I literally bought fuel with my blood at N320 per litre in cosmopolitan Lagos, it dawned on me that really, a people get the kind of leaders they deserve. I have always marked the filling station in Agege area for what I consider its owner’s greed. It usually has fuel but its price is ever ridiculous in times of scarcity. Even the attendants are something else, with their razor-sharp tongues. They talk down on their customers who have been robbed of their kingship crown by fuel scarcity induced by incompetent and clueless governments.

Actually, when I was going to work in the morning that day and saw only about four cars at the station, I assumed the fuel crisis was abating and that by the time I hit the city proper, things would be relatively easier. I did not know that there were few cars there because of the killer price that they were selling. I soon found out that the fuel scarcity was biting harder when I saw longer queues at the few filling stations that were dispensing fuel in the city proper.

However, when I was returning from work at night, I deliberately passed through this filling station and saw yet relatively fewer vehicles. This time, I joined the queue, after all I was now going home to rest; there was no point being in a hurry. Like many other motorists there, I just joined the queue without knowing exactly how much they were selling petrol. What I noticed was that some motorists as soon as they found out that it was N320 per litre, pulled out their vehicles from the queue and sped off. By the time it was my turn, I felt I had suffered on the queue enough and should therefore not leave the station as I came. So, I decided to buy about N4,000 worth of fuel, mainly to power my generator. In my area, we almost always suffer double jeopardy of both fuel scarcity and power supply in times like this. I had barely got home when I started to announce that we have to learn to ration the fuel for the generator. Very few Nigerians have money to power diesel generators these days. That is another new normal, courtesy of the Muhammadu Buhari administration.

Lest we forget, fuel was selling for N87 per litre in 2015. Today, the government is hiding behind a finger, pretending not to know what Nigerians are suffering as a result of its indiscretion. Mum has been the word from the seat of power since the harrowing experience began. All the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Ltd (NNPCL) that you cannot take its words with a pinch of salt has been saying is that it has enough stock. If it has enough, and there are no other encumbrances, why the scarcity? If we had a petroleum minister we would have asked him that question. However, since the president decided to double as petroleum minister, the buck stops at his desk for the gargantuan failure in that sector. So, he should answer the simple question.

Those of them in the Buhari government who have conscience would know that they have failed on the major parameters of governance. They know the kind of heat they put on the Goodluck Jonathan administration until they smoked it out of Aso Rock. They know the kind of propaganda they unleashed whenever that government threatened to deregulate the downstream sector of the petroleum industry. After being in power for over seven years, their own government too cannot make refineries work. It is still relying on the same template of importation of fuel despite our being a major crude oil producer and is now trying to deodourise deregulation as the solution to the perennial fuel crisis. The same stories that they propped the civil society to reject when the Jonathan administration was trying to sell them to Nigerians are what they too are now echoing. So, what has changed? Nothing. Not even change itself.

I think the government’s noise makers have suddenly gone quiet either due to guilty conscience or because they suddenly realise that they are on their way out. So power is transient, after all! Eight years is only about six months away. They too would, like their predecessors, be getting ready to bid goodbye to the fortress that has blinded them to reality these past years, and all its allures, the freebies and what have you.

It is the  hapless Nigerians that I pity. I salute their doggedness, their patience even in the face of extreme provocation (like the one we are needlessly going through with fuel scarcity). I hope however that those who are now tormenting the people would not take their luck too far, even though the Buhari government seems to be getting away with his silent killer fuel price so far. The government is not talking despite that we have been in the crisis for some weeks now. In the mean time, Nigerians appear hypnotised. Apparently no government ever thought of this noiseless system of fuel price hike until now. The Buhari administration deserves a round of applause for this negative innovation. The game plan seems clear enough: make fuel scarce by releasing what is in stock to marketers piecemeal. Create scarcity. So far, the plan seems to be working. It is the road to their own brand of deregulation. No one can say for sure now how much a litre of fuel is in the country, even at the filling stations, as they are selling at whatever price they like. Organised Labour and civil society seem too shell-shocked to react to the new system. That was what the government wanted. Hopefully, shell-shocked labour and civil society would wake up soon when fuel stabilises at N300 or more per litre. And they would begin to negotiate. In the end, they may settle for N200 – N250 or something, and they clap for the government. That, I guess, is the government’s plan. Forget its no more subsidy next year threat.

But, we Yorubas have this saying that people would never forget the king during whose reign they enjoyed peace and prosperity, just as they would also not forget the one who dispensed or liberalised poverty and hardship, like the incumbent Federal Government. We are already seated in this ‘one chance’, though. We should just pray to alight safely. This prayer is important because many of our compatriots that we ushered the Buhari presidency to power in 2015 together have died as a result of the government’s cluelessness on the major challenges that the country is going through. Only God knows how many would still join their ancestors prematurely for the same reason before the government leaves in May, next year. This is neither a curse nor a wish. Many Nigerians would have been alive today if the government had a good handle on the country’s problems, particularly the security aspect. Those government officials whose irresponsibility led people to such premature graves or unnecessary hardship would also pay for their sins someday. It is inevitable and inescapable. Just that when they start paying for the sins, people would start pitying them, not knowing that they are only paying for the pains they inflicted on others through their harsh and inhuman policies in government. The worst part of it all is that after ruining the people’s lives while they are in power, the so-called leaders still gift themselves mouth-watering retirement packages. May be they need such package because, without it, they cannot fit into the life of discomfort that they created themselves. This is aside the billions that some of them steal primitively in power as if stealing is going out of fashion. Even in countries where leaders lead well, they don’t have such rogue retirement payoffs. Actually they don’t need it in those places not only because their society would not permit them but also because, having led well, they can still return to their pre-public life without having any serious dislocations. Those of our people who entered government house in bathroom slippers today would want to come out tomorrow in Italian golden shoes which they want to wear till death do them part. Even those of them who claim to be disciples of the late sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, easily forget Awo’s admonition that they should never get used to what they cannot afford on their own while in government. It is because they merely profess Awo with their mouths without demonstrating the man’s core values that they keep losing elections in places that should naturally be theirs for the taking. If some people rigged elections in those places and people would not reject the imposition, it is because the difference is not clear. We know what happened in the 1960s and 1980s when the difference was clear. The electorate smoked out those election riggers.

The truth of the matter is that we have a dearth of compassionate leaders. Otherwise, people would not be defending subsidy withdrawal when we are a major crude producer. That they could be permanently deaf to the question of what business a major crude producer has importing fuel and are now imposing hardship on the people as a result shows that God is not in their calculation. And when God is missing in a people’s journey, that experience can never end well. I said that much a long time ago when I became convinced that this government cannot spring any surprise to improve its rating in the eyes and minds of Nigerians. It is only the government and its parrots that are giving themselves pass mark. And you don’t blame them; when a lizard falls from a wall and nobody commends it, it commends itself by nodding in appreciation of the ‘feat’ it has performed.

By the way, I don’t know how many Nigerians have noticed that the word ‘change’ is now an anathema in the country as none of the political parties wants to touch it, not even with a long spoon. Such is the nature of the lesson that the Buhari presidency has taught us. How can CHANGE suddenly become proscribed in an election period when the main reason people seek power is to change or improve on what is on ground? But such is life. Change was the in-thing in 2015 and even to some extent in 2019. It was what brought Buhari to power. Not any more; change cannot bring anybody to power in Nigeria again, at least not in the nearest future. It has now become poisoned chalice. You identify with, or even mention it at your own peril because there is something in a slogan. I am sure by now that if even a primary school pupil is asked the simple question of who banned the word ‘change’ from our political lexicon, he or she would not gaze into the ceiling before saying it is President Buhari. Such question is easy meat for today’s kids.

True, we voted for ‘change’ in 2015 and 2019. But the word is now so loathed in Nigeria such that I doubt if any Nigerian would want to collect change from the Buhari government when it is leaving next May. They would rather dash the government whatever change it is owing them, in order to give room for a clean clearing of the Augean stable. That is the kind of poisoned chalice that change has become here, courtesy of the President Buhari government. Change we wanted; change in reverse we got.

Changi! Changi!!

It was the Late Bashorun Moshood Kashimawo Abiola that some report quoted as saying that with friends like Babangida et al, he did not need any enemy. With what seems to be the official perception of why Nigerian doctors are leaving the country in droves in search of greener pastures in saner climes, there is no hope we will ever get out of this peculiar mess. Under the Muhammadu Buhari administration, we have had at least two ministers trying to justify or rationalise that there is nothing unusual about this development. Which is regrettable. More regrettable is that both of them are medical doctors.

It was the Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige, that started it all in 2019 when he said Nigeria has enough medical doctors, so there is nothing unusual if some of them seek employment outside the country. At least they would bring part of whatever they earn outside as foreign remittance, which can be of immense benefit to our economy. Ngige said  the problem is not in the number but in the uneven distribution of the medical doctors. According to the minister, we think we have a shortage of doctors because most of them want to work in the urban centres, leaving the rural areas largely uncovered.

Hear Ngige: “I am not worried about doctors leaving the country. We have surplus. If you have surplus, you export. It happened some years ago. I was taught Chemistry and Biology by Indian teachers in my secondary school days, they are surplus in their country. We have surplus in the medical profession in our country. I can tell you this. It is my area, we have excess,” he said.

That the Minister of Health, Dr Osagie Ehanire , would echo a similar sentiment in 2022 leaves a sour taste in the mouth. Perhaps we can even pardon Ngige. He has probably lost touch with the stethoscope. After training as medical doctor, he has joined politics which teaches many politicians not to lie but to  merely amend the truth. He had been governor and now minister. Whereas the minister claimed in 2019 that we had 350,000 medical doctors which was far more than the 260,000 which, according to him, the World Health Organisation (WHO) prescribes for the country, the President of the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA), Dr. Francis Adebayo Faduyile, revealed that Nigeria has 75,000 registered doctors, out of which only about 40,000 are practising in the country. There is no doubt that the figure would have further shrunk today, given the rate at which doctors are joining the Saudi and other wagons that are taking them to where their services are better appreciated.

But the health minister cannot be seen to be on the same page with Ngige because he is not just a medical doctor but also the minister in charge of the health ministry.

Hear Ehanire, too: “We have heard complaints of doctors who are now leaving the system but there are actually enough doctors in the system because we are producing up to 2,000 or 3,000 doctors every year in the country, and the number leaving is less than 1,000.”

Let us even assume that doctors are running away from the rural areas as Ngige claimed. Why is this so? This should be the next logical question that a good government should ask and look for ways to make rural posting or service attractive. After all, those in the rural areas deserve the dividend of democracy like their counterparts in the cities. One would think the Buhari government appreciated the need to make the rural areas more habitable when in 2020, on the occasion of the World Teachers Day the government rolled out some incentives for teachers posted to the rural areas. If people are running away from the rural areas, it is because of lack of modern amenities. Many Nigerians would prefer rural life to staying in congested cities with all the noise and general pollution that define the latter, if only some of these amenities can be extended to the rural areas. That the government has not kept to its promise to incentivise the teachers posted to rural areas two years down the line tells us how long the government is at talking but abysmally short in action.

If teachers abhor rural posting, despite their conformist posture and tradition, then any other professional would.

Be that as it may, Ehanire downplayed the mass exodus of doctors in the country by adding that  “The movement of doctors is not peculiar to Nigeria”. According to him, “Ghana has the same  experience. I spoke to the Minister of Health of Egypt, they have the same experience in mobility of doctors. And even in Europe, European doctors move to where the salaries are better”.

Like Ngige, he also believes Nigeria has surplus doctors since only about 1,000 of the 3,000 doctors he claims we produce in the country leave for greener pastures.

Ehanire said the government is only worried about the very experienced doctors. He at the same time said government was already working towards improving their condition of service.

The truth of the matter is that if you don’t see a situation where a third of the doctors produced in a perpetually developing country like Nigeria as injurious to the country’s medicare, whatever improvement you want to do can only be cosmetic. You must first admit that a situation is dire or critical before you can do something meaningful to reverse the trend. The situation is even worse in a country like ours where government reneges on promises at will. More worrisome is the fact that the Buhari government has told us several times that we will better appreciate its importance long after it has exited. And I can tell anyone that cares to listen that most Nigerians are ready to miss the government as early as yesterday. May 29, 2023 looks like eternity to them.

I would not want to dispute that doctors are leaving even Canada or other European countries as Ehanire said. That is probably normal. What the minister did not tell us is the percentage of the doctors that are leaving such countries in search of greener pastures. Our public officials have this penchant of comparing apple with orange, especially when they want to browbeat us into seeing their positions on issues as impeccable, as if the rest of us did not go to school. No such countries would feel comfortable producing about a third of their doctors for other countries to harvest, despite the fact that they have the surplus of doctors properly so called, as against our own doubtful and questionable surplus.

This tendency by Nigeria’s public officials to compare sleep with death did not start with the Buhari government though. It is the same nonsensical reasoning that drive arguments such as petrol is cheaper in Nigeria or there is no going back on subsidy removal. Such expressions can only come freely from the mouths of shameless public officials that fall among some of the most pampered in the world, but who have no idea of how to give value for the pampering that ordinary Nigerians are taxed to sustain. How can any government official with conscience be talking about subsidy or subsidy withdrawal in a country that is a major producer of crude oil but is still importing fuel?

The other day, the Minister of State for Petroleum, Timipre Sylva, told us we should be happy to be importing petrol from Niger Republic! As far as the minister and apparently the government he is serving are concerned, this is better than importing from some far-flung western countries! Where is the logic in this? Are we not going to pay that country with foreign exchange? Is it not even shameful enough that Niger can refine petrol while the self-styled ‘Giant of Africa’ (itself a major crude producer) cannot? Even if Niger is our neighbour, is it not said that because a farm belongs to father and child does not mean that such a farm will not be demarcated? We should love our neighbour only like ourselves, not more than ourselves. When you resign to fate and abandon your own refineries only to rely on your neighbour’s you are loving your neighbour more than yourself and there cannot be any just reward for you.

It is sad that the Buhari cabinet that took well over six months to put together (after swearing in and well over eight months since the former president conceded defeat) could only have come up with medical doctors that would not see the emergency in their professional colleagues leaving the country in droves. It is unimaginable that the same Buhari who in 1983 lamented that our hospitals had become mere consulting clinics would buy these ministers’  submissions that Nigeria has surplus doctors when it is clear to us that things have largely been getting worse in the country in terms of good governance. Then, at least we had doctors to consult in the hospitals. Today, the best are almost all gone.

Or that a Minister of State for Petroleum would, instead of arguing forcefully for local production of petrol, be telling his compatriots that they should be happy having their petrol imported from a neighbouring country. Where does his loyalty lie? Why then are we still groping in the dark that the government has not done better?

The World Health Organisation (WHO) prescribes one medical doctor to 600 patients.  Instead of looking for ways to even improve on that because that should be for developed countries where other things are equal, our labour minister, a medical practitioner, says we cannot meet such prescription. It would have been a different ballgame entirely if he had even tried to justify that on inadequate funds. His argument is depressing. Ngige said such prescription is not for us because we are not a “United Nations’ country”. And we can never strive to be a ‘United Nations country?’

With medical practitioners such as these in charge of our health care and advising the president, Nigerian doctors should know where their problem is. The present government has a surfeit of such men with the kind of mindset that can only make things worse and they are the ones whose activities are eclipsing the little achievements by the government that could have shone brighter, other things being equal. Forget that the president too has his own fault lines. He is parochial and all that. He could still do well with quality and up-to-date advice on issues rather than rely on reports presented by ministers with the wrong mindset.

Nigerians know that doctors and other professionals are exiting the country in large numbers because the governments here do not believe in paying people well. They simply don’t care. They don’t even have the temperament for taking criticisms in good faith. Our doctors, even with the best of training don’t have access to modern medical equipment. Most of the times successive governments here see themselves as messiah. Yet, they have almost always left us worse than they met us.

So, it is half-truth, at best, for anyone to compare why our doctors are leaving the country en masse with their Canadian, British, American, etc. counterparts. First, what is the percentage? Then, what are the reasons? It is like the proverbial matter of Adeyi and Adeyi, both with the same spelling but with different pronunciations. While one is crying of excessive heat, the other is complaining of excessive cold.

By my self-imposed standards, the topic I am writing on today is stale, having surfaced penultimate week. Precisely on October 7. I love commenting on issues when they are still fresh, that is issues that happened in the immediate past week. But I don’t know why, the more I tried to suppress the urge to write on it, the more unease I became. The matter just refused to disappear from my mind. When I thought I had successfully put it behind me, it crept back whenever I saw the picture of the unfortunate baby who is the subject-matter of the story, or something close to it.

“Father breaks eight-week-old son’s hand for disturbing his sleep”. This would initially seem like a tale by moonlight. An improbable fiction, sort of. The headline tells it all. How could someone be so annoyed with an eight-week-old baby to the point of flogging him with a plastic hanger until one of his hands was broken, just on account of the baby disturbing one’s sleep? The sequence of things that followed gave me the impression that this was not an accident but something premeditated.

Although it was not so expressly stated anywhere in the media reports, I want to believe this was not the first time the man, Confidence Amatobi, would be manifesting such sadistic tendency. I guess the wife had been enduring such wickedness before the October 7 incident. This was probably why she could not cry out to attract neighbours to the scene when the husband locked  her and the baby up. She probably feared for her life if she made any attempt to scream.

This is the most unfortunate part of it.

We have the Imo State Chapter of the Nigeria Association of Women Journalists (NAWOJ), and National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) to thank for bringing attention to this sad incident. According to the baby’s (Miracle) mother, Favour Chikwe, she left the child with his father on October 7, 2022, to use the convenience, when the incident happened. She said it was the baby’s chilling cry that made her rush back to the room only to discover that his right hand was swollen and his bone broken as a result of the severe beating he had received from his father.  The father reportedly confessed to beating the baby for disturbing his sleep. He then tried to fix the broken arm with rubber bands and sticks!

“Upon noticing that he has broken the baby’s hand, he used sticks and rubber bands to bind the broken bones together”, the mother said, adding that: “When l confronted him about what he did, he locked us in the room, to prevent me from telling people about his wicked deed or seek for help. He also collected my phone from me so that I will not call the neighbours.”

We do not know for how long mother and child were locked up. But it was sufficiently long to be late to fix the broken arm. Sufficient damage had been done to the arm by the time the mother was able to get out to go to the hospital. This made the hospitals she initially took the baby to to reject him. Only the Federal Medical Centre, Owerri, eventually agreed to treat him. Even then, the arm had begun to decay, making amputation the last option, to save other parts of the baby’s body from infection.

While both NAWOJ and NHRC have called on the police to wade into the matter, the baby’s mother has joined them in seeking justice for her child. Imo State chairperson of NAWOJ, Dr Dorothy Nnaji, who spoke to newsmen after visiting the amputated boy at the Federal Medical Centre was shocked that a father could go to such extent to assault his son. She described the act as the height of child abuse and demanded justice for Miracle because he could not speak for himself. Imo State Coordinator of NHRC, Mrs Ukachi Ukah, also condemned the brutality and insisted that justice must be allowed to take its course.

My heart pours out to Miracle because, for now, he is too young to understand what has happened. I mean he cannot understand the extent of the damage his supposed father has done to him. The problem will come when he grows up and discovers that his friends have two hands. He would discover that his own one arm is a misnomer and that that was not the way God designed it because he would see he is the odd child out among his peers. The mother has to brace up for the day the baby would grow to become a boy and ask her the question of what happened to his right arm?

That day may be some years from now; but I can imagine how it would be. I can imagine the mother narrating the unfortunate incident to him, both crying inconsolably. Even if the father had regretted his action and repented by then, that cannot completely repair the damage he has done. As they often say, ‘it is too late to cry when the head is off!’

Apart from the natural trauma of living with one arm, the poor boy has to start learning how to be a lefty, even if that was not his natural choice. At any rate, he has no choice but learn how to do things he naturally would have done with his right hand with the left because that is the only arm he has always known as a result of his father’s wickedness to him. This is the only aspect of his situation that is somewhat consoling. It would have been a different thing if what happened had happened to him as an adult who had been accustomed to using his right hand all the years but is now compelled by circumstances beyond his control to use the left. The transition would have been a different ball game altogether.

Painful as the situation is, the boy needs counselling on life generally. He needs to be encouraged so that his disability would not be a reason for him to think that he cannot live a meaningful life. Or that that is the end of the road for him. He needs to be encouraged that there is ability even in disability. There are many people with disabilities that are living perfect life today. Some of them have even excelled in their chosen careers or vocations. Some of them have done well academically and are still doing well. Yes, some friends would want to taunt him and make him feel inferior. That is normal. Miracle needs to be taught to focus more on the larger picture of becoming a success story in life despite his situation so that those who mock him at a point would later see the folly of their actions when he turns his situation around through a dint of hard work.

That would be living to his true name: Miracle.

But the mother too needs to be advised that the baby’s situation should not be a reason to start using him to beg for alms. She already has a miracle in her hands and what she does with it is also likely to determine what she profits from him in the future. Parents, particularly mothers do carry some cross before they can later in life sit back to wear the crown; that is reap the fruits of their labour. There is hardly a mother you would see today that has not endured one pain or the other in years past, especially to make their children become something in life. So, rather than keep lamenting, ‘why me, why me’, Miracle’s mother should face her situation with uncommon audacity. Even if she has a dozen more children, who knows if Miracle is the one that would announce the family’s name on the global hall of fame?

But all of these would be made even easier for the mother and child where the governments take a keen interest in matters like this. In a truly compassionate society, Miracle’s case would have attracted attention in very high places, or even among our money-bags. I have deliberately kept the father out of the picture so far because he should be fished out to face his comeuppance. That is the starting point for him. The only pity I may want to have on him is to ask that he be taken to a psychiatric hospital to determine his mental status because I do not think any father in his right senses would do what he has done to his two-month-old baby. It is even unimportant whether the baby is his blood or not. It beggars belief that someone would flog such a child until the child’s fragile arm gave way under such queer monstrosity.

That is not all.

After the flogging, the man still had the temerity to lock mother and child up in a room to prevent the mother from telling the world the inhuman treatment that the father that this paper appropriately referred to as ‘a father from hell’ meted to his two-month-old son. This was why the fractured arm decayed before they got to the hospital and the poor boy’s hand had to be amputated so it does not cause serious damage to other parts of his body.

This is a case of child abuse with a difference. Why? It was perpetrated by a father against his own son. Of course we are used to cases of domestic violence where some husbands thoroughly abuse their wives or vice versa. In some cases, lives had been lost, apparently when one of the parties could no longer take the excesses of the other. We are also used to stories, either of actual or surrogate mothers maltreating their children or wards. But  the story of a father flogging a two-month-old baby till he broke his arm would qualify for a new low in such abuses. It would look more like a story for ‘This odd world’ in those days.

I join NAWOJ, NHRC and Miracle’s mother in urging the police to fish out Miracle’s run-away father. He must be smoked out from hiding to face interrogation and prosecution. We need to hear him out. Why did he do it? Perhaps all of us may have one lesson or the other to learn from the unfortunate incident.

But whatever it is, Miracle must get justice for this lifetime depravity. That may not replace his arm; it would at least serve as caution to people who might want to emulate Confidence Amatobi who has exercised confidence in the most dysfunctional manner in this unfortunate incident.

For Lagos State students, it’s more meaningful bursary from 2022/23.

Various categories of students have their ‘seasons of pride’. In our secondary school days, the first week of resumption from the terminal holiday was what we called ‘ose igberaga’  (week of pride). Virtually every student had more than enough to eat and drink during the week because our parents would have loaded our trunk boxes with all manner of provisions before waving us bye to our respective schools. Hardly would you find anyone begging for food from his fellow students during that period. As a matter of fact, many of us in the boarding house snubbed the food served in our dining halls that week. How long the ‘ose igberaga’ lasted was a function of several variables: the size of the provisions made for each student, the rate and frequency of consumption of what was brought from home, the generosity or otherwise of the individual student, etc.

What ‘ose igberaga’ represented to secondary school students then (I guess that is the way it is even today, even if the economic downturn would have drastically shrunk the provisions), was what bursary awards meant to students in higher institutions in those days.

Indeed, for students in our tertiary institutions, bursary in those days represented a major source of joy. Although I never benefited from any bursary award even back then, it was by choice. I enjoyed the privilege of a caring father who made sure I did not lack the basics of life as a student. My dad was a manager in one of the first generation banks then. So, I really did not feel any serious need to apply for bursary.  Perhaps the other reason was because of what I considered the sometimes cumbersome processes to access the bursary. My kind of background, coupled with the fact that one’s needs were quite few, did not make scrambling for bursary, as it were in some cases, attractive to me.

Notwithstanding, I still remember how the campuses came alive whenever bursary was paid. Those were another ‘season of pride’. A period when the real definition of money as something that confers liquidity on its owner became not only visible but also palpable on our campuses. With money literally flowing on the campuses, the butteries bubbled. In the momentary season of pride, the high-class eateries on campuses hitherto reserved for the ‘big boys’ catered to the needs of the ‘nouveau riche’ as money was now not the problem of many students but how to spend it. Nearby boutiques also recorded boom in patronage. Even businesses near the campuses knew there was so much money in circulation. Electronic sales also received a boost as cash-awash students competed for all manner of sound systems with powerful loud speakers. Indeed, bursary time signalled a time not just to paint the campuses red, but the entire town, especially on campuses located in the not-too-urban centres.

But that was then. That was in the days when Nigerians still knew there was something called sanity. A time that rats cried like rats and birds cried like birds. Things have so plunged that not many students know the colour of bursary today.

As a matter of fact, I had also almost forgotten that something called bursary still exists anywhere in Nigeria until last week when the Lagos State government announced 100 per cent rise in bursary to students of the state origin in tertiary institutions. No one can blame me even if this gave me up as an ignoramus. This is Nigeria. There is hardly any safety nets for anybody in many parts of the country, particularly the very vulnerable segments of the population.

Of course I know that the Federal Government last year announced the reintroduction of bursary in universities and colleges of education. Education minister Adamu Adamu who disclosed this in his keynote address at the 2021 World Teachers Day in Abuja said N150,000 and N100,000 had been earmarked for each undergraduate and Nigeria Certificate in Education (NCE) student, respectively. But we know that this would still be in the realm of ‘earmark’ even though the government could now want to use the eight-month-long strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) as excuse for not implementing that policy. That could have been excusable but for the fact that the government has the usual habit of failing in its promises. Let’s not even talk of the ASUU issues, how much of the Federal Government’s promises to teachers during the 2020 World Teachers Day have been fulfilled? More than two years after, the teachers are still waiting.

So, when I said I am an ignoramus on matters of bursary, I am talking of bursary not only backed up by the ability to pay, but bursary that students actually received alerts for from their banks. Students of Economics must have noticed my deviation from the norm; for instance, talking about ‘effective’ demand as demand not just backed by the ability to pay but which is actually paid for. In Nigeria, that should be our own minimum standard. Why? Just last week Sunday, I had cause to lampoon the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) for failing to promptly settle its scholarship obligations to some 117 Nigerian students reading Marine Engineering and Transportation in The Philippines, resulting into the students spending 10 years for a four-year programme. Please, tell me; is the ability to pay the cause of these hapless students’ predicament? Definitely, no. So, it is beyond capacity to pay.

That is why I regard it as thoughtful of a government in Nigeria to think of cushioning the high level of inflation on its students. Indeed, it is immaterial whether the increase was the state government’s reaction to the appeal by the National Union of Lagos State Students (NULASS), for an upward review of the bursary or it was the government initiative. NULASS, the apex body of  indigenous Lagos State students, both in Nigeria and in diaspora, had in May urged the state government to increase their bursary awards. The union’s national president, Shasanya Akinola, had said in a statement then that “The high inflation rate, including the constant fluctuation in the economy, had resulted in a rapid increase in the prices of goods and services, and students are fully affected.” He added that “the 2007 reviewed amount for bursary, N25,000, can no longer be enough as it is unable to sustain students for a year with the recent economic realities.”

Abdur Rahaman Lekki, Executive Secretary of the Lagos State Scholarship Board, who dropped the hint of the 100 per cent bursary increase during a meeting with representatives of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS), Lagos State Chapter, and NULASS at the state secretariat, Alausa, Ikeja, last week, said that the new adjustment was basically to enable the students cope with the present economic reality across the country. The increase takes effect from the 2022/2023 academic session.

The point must be made though that bursary in years past could be seen as ego boosting for students; these days, it is more a means of survival.

It is also gladdening that Lagos State is not thinking only in terms of paying bursary, it is also strengthening its scholarship board for greater efficiency. The truth of the matter is that bursary and scholarship should go pari passu. As a matter of fact, some of those who are now blaming non-payment of bursary by governments on un-availability of funds enjoyed both. This is the sad part of it. More ironic is the fact that some of them are either partly or fully responsible for the country’s pathetic plight that has made scholarship and bursary awards to disappear through bad governance. Yet, rather than take full responsibility for the state of things, they put the blame largely on others. Imagine Senator Ibikunle Amosun, a former governor and senator of the Federal Republic blaming developed countries for granting Nigerian youths visa. What does he expect in a situation where youths bubbling with ideas see no opportunities in their country and have lost faith in same, and justifiably so? What is wrong in another country recognising talents and encouraging them to come over instead of having those talents interred with their bones in their home-countries in the name of patriotism, a value that even many of the political leaders largely do not possess? I benefited from the scholarship of a first generation bank in my secondary school days and I know what being on scholarship means.

Scholarships should not be available only for geniuses. It is good for the indigent students as well. Otherwise, not many people would benefit because the world cannot at any given time produce too many geniuses enough to address human challenges. Geniuses are so called because they are a rare breed. Yet, one does not have to be a genius or rare breed to impact the world. As a matter of fact, many of those who have impacted the world, especially these days, either did not pass through university education or complete their studies in the university. We are here talking of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Paul Allen, Mark Zuckerberg, etc.

Although the average N50,000 that students of Lagos State origin in higher  institutions would start smiling home with after receiving their alerts may appear small, it would go a long way in meeting some of the challenges faced by the students. The beneficiaries are quite huge. For example, about 8,419 students benefited from the scholarship and bursary schemes in 2017. The figure must have increased by now. Moreover, there are equally competing demands that the state must attend to. What the government should guard against, however, is a situation where it would take too long to review the bursary and scholarship, as in the present case where review was last done in 2007, as claimed by the NULASS president. It is better to have bursary that is lean, predictable and regular than having a bogus one that is honoured in the breach.

Other states that are using lack of funds as excuse not to pay bursary or grant scholarship to those deserving must turn a new leaf. I am particularly sorry for those states if they are in the southwest region of Nigeria. I remain unapologetic about it: that education is our own ‘industry’ in this part of the country. It has remained so since the Late Chief Obafemi Awolowo introduced free education in the region. We have seen what has happened in other parts of the country where their respective ‘industries’ have collapsed. I’m sure we don’t want that exported into the southwest. Political leaders in the region should therefore not encourage any anti-education policy like non-payment of bursary lest they be like the fowl that is excreting in a pot. We all know that such a fowl is only spoiling its final resting place. Anyone who appreciates the place of education in development would not toy with any effort to liberalise access to it.

By year-end, if you wish a Lagos State civil servant ‘a merry Christmas and happy new year in advance’, it would have meaning to him or her. Indeed, he or she is likely to respond with a genuine ‘same to you’, a thing that you too would not hesitate to claim, in the hope that the sudden fortune that has smiled on the Lagos State civil servants with the salary increase just announced by the state governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, would also be your portion. Coming at this point in time when things are tough for most state governments (as a matter of fact, many of them are barely struggling to pay the current minimum wage while others are in months of arrears), the salary increase is most salutary.

Normally, many Nigerians respond to such ‘merry Christmas and happy new year’ grudgingly because they know that usually there is nothing merry or happy in the physical things they see and experience, or even expect at such periods. If it is not a time to think about fuel subsidy withdrawal leading to fuel price increase or scarcity at Yuletide, thus compounding the woes of people travelling home to celebrate the season with their loved ones, it would be a time to be apprehensive about what the economy holds in stock for them in the new year. So, it is almost always about one having one’s heart in one’s mouth whenever the year is coming to an end. That is usually the Nigerian experience.

I guess this must have been the expectation even this year for civil servants in the state until Governor Sanwo-Olu announced his government’s intention to cushion the effects of the inclement national economy on the workers by reviewing their salaries upwards. I always talk of the national economy instead of the global economic downturn, unlike many commentators who allude to the Russia/Ukraine war when talking about the economic challenges we are witnessing because, for us, we had commenced national ‘fasting’ before the global ‘fasting’ started. This was my position when some people, particularly public officials were blaming our woes on the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19). We all know as a fact that neither COVID-19 nor Russia/Ukraine war could be held responsible for our pathetic situation. These are very recent developments. We have always been having economic crisis long before the advent of these unfortunate incidents. They only aggravated our own economic challenges. So, it is unfair to blame our plight solely on them.

But that was a necessary digression.

Governor Sanwo-Olu lifted the workers’ spirit on Tuesday, when he paid a working visit to the State Secretariat, Alausa, the seat of the state government. In a seemingly surprising move, the governor told the workers his government’s plan to increase their salaries.

In case the workers have forgotten, the governor reminded them that the state government is a trailblazer of sort in such matters:

“You were always the first, you would remember that at that time we were the first to start paying the minimum wage of N18,000, way back in 2010. You would remember during my time, we started the pension commission. It was the first in the whole country. Even at that time, we started the first enhanced training.” He proved that he was indeed one of them by the way he spoke glowingly about the over 100,000-strong public servants in the state. He told the workers what they wanted to hear. “I know there is inflation in the country, the cost of living is high. Last month, I instructed that we start work on how to increase the salary of the entire workforce. I want to assure you that we will do that. We won’t wait for Federal Government; we don’t want the union to come and hold us to ransom. We will work it out as soon as possible.”

This is quite thoughtful of the governor. I have always believed that we have been living a lie given what we pay as salaries in the country generally. It is only in a few cases that people get living wage, and this is usually in the private sector and select government establishments. The truth of the matter is that salaries paid many Nigerian workers can never take them home. That is one of the reasons some of them pilfer public funds if they have access to some. But what baffles me is that the politicians who usually hesitate to pay living minimum wage are the very ones who are unsparing when it comes to their own comfort.

Read Also: ‘Give Sanwo-Olu a second term’

Before regular readers of my column take me up on what seems support for salary increase in this case, whereas my position has always been that workers agitate for good governance, nothing has changed concerning that. The only thing is that I say that with respect to the central labour movement in its unending wars for wage increase. The Lagos situation is however a different ballgame. It involves a state government which is seeking a way of assuaging the sufferings of its workers in a milieu that is far beyond its control. The state government is not the one that created the economic crisis and it cannot solve it all alone. It has only done its best in the circumstance.

We must commend Sanwo-Olu for being proactive in prioritising workers’ welfare. The fact of the matter is that some other governors would have done things differently if in Sanwo-Olu’s shoes. So, it is not just a question of the money being available, it is also a question of priorities. The governor has through his announcement on Tuesday demonstrated that in truth, he is himself a product of the system and so, he knows where the shoes pinch. He has been an active participant in the politics of the state since 2003 when he served as special adviser on corporate matters to the then deputy governor, Femi Pedro. He later served as acting commissioner for economic planning and budget until 2007 when he was made commissioner for commerce and industry by the then Governor Bola Ahmed Tinubu. He  later became commissioner for establishments, training and pensions. This is aside his serving in some of the state’s agencies, including Lagos State Development and Property Corporation (LSDPC) where he was the managing director/chief executive officer. He was also the pioneer board chairman of the Lagos State Security Trust Fund. It was under his directives that LAGBUS System and the control and command centre in Alausa, Ikeja, were established. So, we can see that Sanwo-Olu has not only been in the system for long, he has remained an active participant. He is therefore qualified to know what the civil servants’ challenges are.

The fact of the matter is that a lot has happened, albeit in the negative sense, between 2015 that President Muhammadu Buhari became president and now. Inflation has been biting harder, with prices of virtually everything one can imagine hitting the rooftops. Nigerians literally pay with their blood for things, from basic food items to electronics, building materials, vehicles, etc. One or two examples of the inflationary trends since 2015 will do: rice, a staple in the country sold for about N11,000 in 2015. Today, it is about N37,000 per bag. In 2015, a bottle of palm oil or groundnut oil could be purchased for N200 each; today, it goes for between N800 and N1,000. The same applies to fuel, whether petrol or particularly diesel that is key to industrial production in the country because of epileptic power supply.

What this implies is that the so-called minimum wage of N30,000 is insufficient for an average family of six, especially in cosmopolitan Lagos, unless they find alternative means of making money. How can an average civil servant with his wife and at least four children pay rent, buy food, settle school fees, etc. with a paltry N30,000? The poor pay eventually tells on their productivity. Those of them who engage in other activities to make ends meet have no choice but do so even during official hours, marketing their wares to their colleagues.

And, if Sanwo-Olu is giving cars to certain categories of people, he is also doing that because he knows the state government would benefit in return. Cars have become gold in the country. Even Tokunbo (second-hand) cars are now expensive. The cost of brand new cars in 2015 will not buy some Tokunbo cars today. So, where will civil servants, even as directors, get cars without institutional support?

Some people may read political meaning into what the governor has done. For me, that is immaterial. Even if it had political undertone, what is the ultimate goal? If it is to better the lives of the people, that, for me counts for a lot. This is one of the things that politics should do. Politicians must constantly be on their toes if the society they are serving is ever to progress. Something must be nudging them to do more for such society to make progress.

But Lagos State can confidently announce salary increase at this time because of the way the state has been husbanding its resources. Indeed, the financial reengineering started by the Tinubu administration in 1999 is one of the things working for the state. That administration commenced the transformational reform of the state’s internal revenue process within the ambit of the law. In 1999 when he took over as governor, the state’s internally generated revenue (IGR) was a paltry N600 million monthly. As at December, last year, it had jumped to N45billion monthly, a 7,400 per cent leap, an indication that succeeding administrations have been building on the legacy. States may not be equally endowed, but some state governments can do better than they are currently doing in terms of IGR if only they are ready to put on their thinking caps rather than be satisfied with going to Abuja for money all the time.

Even the mischievous would readily admit that Lagos too has witnessed tremendous progress between 1999 and now; an indication that the resources are being deployed appropriately. Of course there is always room for improvement, we can see evidence of the continual rise in IGR in the state on provision of infrastructure and other essential services.

Where the achievements seem to be obscure,it is because the infrastructure are being overstretched. Lagos is harbouring about 25 million people since little or no governance is going on in many other parts of the country. If many governors spend their resources wisely, fewer people would be less desperate to come and settle in Lagos.

Once again, I commend the government for the salary increase. Although we do not know yet by what percentage this would be, I want to believe it would be worth it after all, with the initiative coming from the government itself. However, the state government has to work on the pension of its workers. Payment can still be fast- tracked to reduce the pains that retirees experience in the course of getting their pension. Its beauty is for the original owner to reap the fruits of his or her labour.

Sanwo-Olu’s largesse may not completely take away the pains of inflation, it will at least lessen it. The least one can say is advise the civil servants that to whom much is given, much is expected. They should reciprocate the gesture through improved service delivery.