The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tunji Adegboyega

  • Sanwo-Olu, ise ya (2)

    The new governor has to hit the ground running

    Indeed, what I would expect the new government to do is to look at the areas where the Lagos-Abeokuta Expressway, for example, needs reworking. One is talking of places like the Ikeja Bus Stop, Iyana Ipaja Bus Stop, Pleasure Bus Stop and Ile-Epo axis which are too narrow and motorists therefore experience hold-ups there on a daily basis. This should not be happening on what is supposed to be an expressway. So, the Sanwo-Olu government may have to invite experts to advise it on what should be done to make traffic flow in these areas. It must be ready to do the needful, no matter what it would take. Even if some buildings may still have to give way; so be it. What I would plead with the state government to do is to generously compensate the owners of such structures so that they would not regret releasing their inheritance for the public good.  Definitely, the road cannot remain as it is now if the money spent on it is to yield fruits, and to make the road an expressway properly so-called.

    Indeed, those uncompleted projects: Airport Road, the Pen Cinema flyover and the BRT corridor on the Lagos-Abeokuta Expressway should be completed before the government starts any new projects, to worm its way into the hearts of Lagosians living in that axis and those who may have cause to pass through those roads; and they are quite many. As I said before, there was no reason why those roads could not have been done in phases. Even if the government was in a haste to lift that axis; it should have been gradual; first complete one and then flag off the next, possibly the same day. There are no escape routes for the multitude living in that axis, with the simultaneous construction in those three places. Once you are stranded, you have no choice but stay put where you are as the alternatives routes you might want to use are also under construction. Matters are worsened whenever it rains, leaving commuters stranded at bus stops and transport fares skyrocketing, in some cases by as much as 300%. Cash-strapped Lagosians (like other rational human beings) who have to part with so much for transportation when their income is fixed cannot understand the ‘parable of the tribal marks’ by Lagos Traffic Radio in this situation.

    One needs to be this explicit on roads so as to guard the incoming administration so it does not repeat the same mistake. A government might have the best of intentions, but execution and even timing may end up messing up the otherwise good idea.

    Still on the roads, the traffic lights in many places are no longer working. Again, let me use the ones on Fatai Atere Way as example. The ones at the Cappa end are so faint that motorists may not even notice whether they are working or not. Yet, there are many traffic wardens, Lagos State Traffic Management Authority (LASTMA) personnel, etc. at the junction, waiting to pounce on motorists who ignore the traffic lights or could not see whether they have passed them to go or stay. The traffic lights at the Alfa Nla end of Old Ipaja Road in Agege have almost the same problem. There are many all over the place. The police and other state government officials should be able to pass appropriate messages on the state of these lights and other road infrastructure to the appropriate authorities for immediate action instead of being ever eager to arrest people for disobeying them. The condition of the Old Ipaja Road/Alfa Nla junction is even appalling as only a few motorists can go whenever the traffic lights give the go-ahead because of the bad state of that place. In many places, the amber lights no longer work; with the implication that motorists get trapped between the red and green lights. The Sanwo-Olu government must be able to address these little details that matter. This is one problem with Nigeria, and Lagos, as a mega city should show good example. We have always said that maintenance culture is the bane of public administration in the country; it is sadly so in Lagos as well, particularly in recent times.

    The state government should not forget to fix the inner roads that were damaged in the course of construction, particularly on the Lagos-Abeokuta Expressway axis. These include Ajiboye Crescent, for instance, where the drainage, particularly towards the Arigbanla Junction, needs total reconstruction. Dit to the culvert in the place which appears to be amateurish the way it is right now; as well as the Solabomi Williams Crescent linking the estate with the expressway. Its other end beside the NNPC petrol station after Pleasure Bus Stop also needs rehabilitation. These roads and others, including even the Old Ota Road were subjected to intense pressure by motorists looking for alternative routes due to the construction works on the expressway. It is by fixing these roads that the residents there can feel well compensated for the troubles they went through in the course of the construction.

    There are many other roads that need urgent attention. Here, one is talking of the major road that links Ten Acres with the main road from Jakande Estate in Isolo. I do not know why successive state governments have not deemed it fit to touch this road, despite the fact that the place, though a new development site, is fast growing, and despite the fact that the government has been tending to various inner roads over the years. May be this is because of the heavy investment the government made on the dual carriageway from Jakande Estate to the Ikotun end which traverses the area. There is also Legacy Road which does not reflect its name because the only legacy there is the fact that it is not motorable. Its residents have abandoned it for other alternative routes in the area, which are only a shade better.

    There is also the security question. Lagos has been relatively safe due to security measures put in place, and heavily supported by the state’s security trust fund, a good initiative of the Fashola administration. This should be well supported by the government, even as the private sector should continue to invest in it as part of their corporate social responsibility. It is in their own interest and in the interest of the larger society because businesses can only thrive in an atmosphere of peace and security. But there is one area of security that should interest the new administration. This is the influx of youths, particularly from a particular part of the country, into the state. The government should be worried because most of these people have no visible means of livelihood. Many of them just jump on commercial motorcycles as soon as they arrive the city. I had argued in my column about two weeks ago that southwest states have to be watchful of the activities of these youths, especially with reports that they are being transported down south in droves. We have our own security challenges that we are battling, so no one should compound them for us in the name of one Nigeria. The kind of trouble that these youths are capable of is beyond our ken in this part of the country. So, governors of the southwest have to work in concert to address this new challenge. They should not delude themselves because even the elite that fertilised the eggs that bred these hapless youths can no longer contain them. It is a case of the chicken coming home to roost.

    Then, about two years ago or so, the state government conceived of the idea of having an independent (?) power scheme (I think) with the  pilot project at Alimosho. What has happened to the project? I was at the forum where the matter was discussed about three years ago and almost everyone present was upbeat about it. The icing on the cake is that there would be power supply 24/7, except that it would be slightly more expensive than what the electricity distribution companies (DisCos) charge. Artisans were well represented at the forum and they all expressed their desire to see the scheme take off despite the higher cost. They know how much they spend to fuel their generators. Those who presented the idea to the forum appeared to know their onions because they broke down their explanations such that even the illiterates among the lot understood what the idea was all about.

    Without prejudice to whatever the DisCos are doing or might say, the point is that we are not yet  there when power supply is the issue and I think we need to break some of these monopolies if we must get there. The idea is not necessarily to kill any DisCo but to let them have competitors that will put them on their toes. If we can achieve this, the better for all, including the DisCos too. Lagos cannot remain a mega city with epileptic power supply. Its place as economic destination of choice cannot be guaranteed without uninterrupted power supply. The Sanwo-Olu administration might have to dust the files on this project and see what the problems are with a view to solving them in the interest of Lagosians.

    Governor Sanwo-Olu should not underestimate what party faithful can do so it does not experience any banana peel. But that is not to say he should throw the state treasury open to the indolent who want to get money without doing anything. But those willing to earn a living should be compensated for their efforts and when given jobs, they must execute them satisfactorily.

    The  Sanwo-Olu government should bear in mind that Lagosians, like many other Nigerians generally, are minimalists. Their expectations from government are not many. Give them good roads; power to run their businesses; let them have access to fairly good life, etc. and they begin to clap for you. Indeed, any government that Nigerians would not clap for cannot be clapped for in any other part of the world.

    Of course one cannot exhaust what needs to be done in Lagos  in any single article.Other people are also going to make their suggestions to help the government chart the way forward.

    May the Sanwo-Olu administration live to the billing of His Excellency’s name. I wish the government a successful tenure.                                                                       (CONCLUDED). 

  • Sanwo-Olu, ise ya (1)

    The governor-elect has to hit the ground running

    Come May 29, Mr Babajide Sanwo-Olu, the Governor-elect of Lagos State will assume duty, after the incumbent Governor Akinwunmi Ambode would have bowed out, upon completion of his four-year term. I do not envy the incoming governor. There is a lot to do. Therefore, he has to hit the ground running. Governance has taken the back seat in the state recently, apparently as a result of the frosty relationship between the outgoing governor and his party, which led to his losing the privilege of running for second term. Yes, privilege because it has now become clear that second term is not automatic; not even in Lagos which has been in the hands of the progressives since the return to civil rule on May 29, 1999, and where second term had until now been taken for granted, so to say. Party dynamics have rewritten the narrative and incumbents can be checkmated right at the party level, even before general elections. That was probably where Ambode missed it. I guessed that was why he said he had learnt his lesson. He thought the votes were on the streets; but he forgot that the party must first push you forward before the votes on the streets can be yours for the asking.

    Anyway, that is now history.

    Even in normal situations, an elected official becomes lame duck a few months to the end of his tenure. With Ambode being the first governor in the state not to have that privilege of second term since 1999, the lame duck era set in pretty earlier. So many things have gone haywire since the party primaries last year. Nothing seems to be working again, with many people, particularly commercial motorcycle riders, plying any route of their choice, in flagrant disregard of the law banning their operations on some roads in the state. What is more? They ride against traffic with impunity these days even as they have appropriated the BRT corridors newly constructed to themselves.

    Street lights are no longer functioning in many places. And where they are, they are only partially so. Let me use the ones on Fatai Atere Way, Matori, Lagos, as example. I make bold to say that those lights worked last about two years ago. As a matter of fact, I ran a campaign on this page for weeks in 2017, trying to draw attention of the state government and officials in charge to the problem. It was like no one in government was reading the newspaper; or that they just could not be bothered that that was enough a problem to lose sleep over. Indeed, I drew the attention of two of the commissioners to the problem, alongside the state of Fatai Atere Road which never knew the kind of neglect it suffered in the last eight to nine years. It was after a long time that the road was only partially and reluctantly fixed. Even then, the quality of the repair was such that several portions were bad again shortly after the so-called repairs, even before the next cycle of rains. As at Friday when this piece was being concluded, only about 10 or so street lights on Fatai Atere Way were on. This is even an improvement as many of them had been bad for months.

    Yet, I remember that the state government launched the Light Up Lagos project with fanfare.  Part of the aim was to make the state unsafe for marauders who take advantage of darkness to perpetrate evil, and there is enough proof that their activities have been significantly curtailed, even in a place like Oshodi which was notorious for all kinds of crimes before the advent of the street lights. The other reason for initiating the project was to beautify the streets. Fatai Atere is only used as metaphor for this problem. There are several other places where the street lights need attention. I remember the state government even gave some helplines for Lagosians to call in case any there is problem with any of the lights. What I am trying to say is that maintenance culture that is lacking generally in the country is also a problem in Lagos. It should not be.

    The Sanwo-Olu government also has to pay particular attention to the several manholes that are death traps on Lagos roads. You cannot drive with your two eyes closed on many Lagos roads as a result of these manholes. Again, let me start with the one on Fatai Atere Way, where this newspaper is situated, after all, “charity”, they say, “begins at home”. This one on Fatai Atere by Ladipo Junction has been there, as they say, ‘since time immemorial’! There is another one at Mulero Bus Stop on the old Ipaja Road, inward Agege that has been partially blocked with garbage by some concerned citizens. There is also another one at one of the major junctions between Atan Cemetery and Herbert Macaulay Way in Yaba, Lagos mainland. I bumped into this particular one in December, last year, and had a burst tyre instantly despite the fact I was not speeding. The hole on the road had some sharp wires that punctured my tyre. It was there right in the middle of the road. There are countless others that I cannot mention, including the ones on Lagos-Abeokuta Expressway at the Airport road junction which is sometimes closed and sometimes open. I guess it is because we have not cultivated the habit of dragging government to court for negligence that we have these many manholes all over the place. Some of them are life-threatening. So, the incoming administration has to take care of all these little details that matter in governance.

    There is also this question that has been agitating my mind and I have had cause to discuss it with some of the state’s officials. And that is the question of inner roads. Without doubt, successive administrations in the state have made it a point of duty to list the inner roads they intend to repair or construct and they have remained relatively faithful in this regard. But then, given the sheer number of such roads in the state, it would appear the number selected for repair or construction is hardly enough in any given year. So, the impression has always been that not much is happening in this regard. I have therefore had cause to ask some of the state government’s officials if it is not possible just to grade some of these roads if there aren’t enough resources to tar all of them, and provide good drainage to allow for free flow of water. This would at least save motorists and even pedestrians some trauma of dancing ‘Palongo’ on these roads. It would also relieve residents of agonising whenever they want to go out or whenever they are returning from outing.

    Moreover, if resources are limited because of the contending forces for them due to the huge population of the state, would it not have been better for the Ambode administration, for instance, to face just two of the three major projects it concentrated in one axis of the state, and spend the money on the third on inner roads? I had asked one of the state government officials as soon as it was announced that the state government was going to create BRT corridor on the Lagos-Abeokuta Expressway; construct flyover at Pen Cinema as well as expand the Airport Road if they ever had an executive session where the implications of the simultaneous construction works were thrashed out because I knew it would come with a lot of pains that even those that were meant to enjoy the projects would not find amusing.

    I cannot remember what the response of the official was. But my fear soon turned out to be prophetic when Lagosians began to reject the usual answer that Lagos Traffic Radio (I sympathise with my colleagues in the station who were always on the defensive during those moments, trying to defend their employer) was giving to those who were asking if Lagosians must ‘die before they live’ (to paraphrase one caller on a Saturday night that I too would not forget because I spent more than four hours from my place in Agege to the office, a distance of about 15 kilometres). The presenter said tribal marks are incised in pains but they become objects of beauty when they heal. In other words, Lagosians should bear with the government because they would have cause to smile after the pains! That was a palliative many listeners were not happy to hear on this particular night. Anyway, it is hoped that the Sanwo-Olu administration would quickly complete these projects that are yet to be completed before people start wondering what the hell is happening again. Some are even saying the new government may not want to complete them; especially if they are not part of its own agenda for Lagosians. This would be suicidal. But I do not see this happening because it just would not make sense.

    (TO BE CONTINUED).

  • Ikeja NERC Forum

    One of the commendable things that the Muhammadu Buhari administration has done is trying to find workable answers to the intractable question of indiscriminate billing of electricity customers by the electricity distribution companies (DisCos). Without doubt, these companies inherited some of these debts (otherwise known as ‘crazy bills’)  from their parent company, the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN). But then, it is only people who were living in outer space that would say they never knew this problem was there before. Unfortunately, the DisCos have been behaving as if they were in outer space all through that period, with their insistence on customers paying these cooked-up bills.

    Of course some electricity customers may be owing the amounts on their bills. But then, countless others have been contesting these debts, over which most of the DisCos are punishing electricity customers who insist they would not pay the rather bogus debts, by cutting them off the national grid.

    I am one of such victims. Having tried unsuccessfully at some private/official levels to get justice, I decided to approach the Ikeja NERC Forum around December 18, last year, in line with the Federal Government’s directive, about two months after I had been supplying my own electricity. I was told it would take about two to three months to get to my turn. My petition, with reference number IFO/2956/2018, was necessitated by my inability to vend (recharge my electricity card after exhausting the initial 100 units that came with my prepaid meter). That was precisely on October 29, last year.

    I was invited for hearing on April 11. Ikeja Electric’s (IE) representatives were also at the Forum and, when my case was called, the three-man panel ruled that Ikeja Electric must make it possible for me to vend ‘with immediate effect’ after the DisCos’s representative said they were yet to reconcile my account ( four months after submitting my petition!). I saw this was fair enough and therefore did not want to waste time since the ‘substantive suit’ was yet to be heard.

    However, when Ikeja Electric representative told the panel that it was late for me to be connected on that day (April 11) because it was almost past their official closing time, it was resolved that this be done the next day. Knowing the DisCo I was dealing with, I did not go to their office the next day to ask that I be allowed to vend, in line with the NERC Forum’s ruling. I went to their office at Akowonjo, Lagos, on April 15, and I must say I was not disappointed. They asked me for a copy of the ruling, which I think was superfluous since their representative was at the Forum hearing. An institution with a sense of fairness ought to have a mechanism to relay such message appropriately. But, because their operations are steeped in bad faith, they feigned ignorance of that ruling. The question I asked the lady who asked for the ruling was whether they would wait for a copy of the ruling if they had been asked to immediately disconnect a customer? That is where I have problem with Ikeja NERC Forum. It should have known the kind of DisCos we have and should have given me something to present at the IE office. Moreover, it should have a way of monitoring whether its rulings are complied with, and promptly too, especially like my own case where the Forum said I should be allowed to vend immediately and that has not come to be five weeks later, despite my mail to the Forum to this effect. All cannot be said to be well when I have a ruling that is useless to me five weeks after. If one spent four years to learn how to get mad, then how many years will he have to demonstrate insanity?

    *One other thing I observed in the course of my dealings with the Forum is that it hardly replies mails. Interestingly, this is one of the things it is supposed to sanction DisCos for once customers are able to provide satisfactory evidence that they had contacted the DisCo before making the Forum a last resort. At least I witnessed two or three cases on April 11; where some customers claimed they wrote letters to IE without having any reply. The evidence the Forum asked for was the written letters or emails to that effect.  I don’t know why the forum does not reply mails, but my guess is that it is probably not well funded or short-staffed. I apologise if I am wrong; but this is the kind of conclusion one is at liberty to draw when one made about 10 calls within three days (Wednesday to Friday, last week) to such a critical body without being dignified with a response. As a matter of fact, I decided to send email again to the Forum on Thursday when I started suspecting that my calls were being deliberately avoided.

    If you ask me, I do not think two NERC Forum branches are enough for Lagos; the state has the largest concentration of electricity consumers who also know their rights and would want to defend them. Perhaps one more can be added to facilitate justice delivery. Justice seems to be coming too slow from the axis because of the huge number of complaints the panel has to decide. My petition was in the cooler for about four months before it was heard!

    The power, works and housing minister, Mr Babatunde Fashola, and the Buhari government generally deserve commendation for setting up NERC Forum. It is about one of the very first genuine attempts by any government in the country to address the vexed issue of crazy bills that signposted the power sector for decades. Indeed, one has to give the credit to the government for the various steps it has taken to deal with this issue, the latest being the capping of the bills that DisCos can give in the absence of prepaid meters, which took effect this month. Before now, successive governments and the power sector players seemed to be rubbing each other’s back. Remember the humungous amount the sector, which said it did not have money to procure meters (one of its most basic tools) gave the Goodluck Jonathan administration for electioneering in 2014/15. I recall also the encomium that the then President Olusegun Obasanjo showered on the then National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) when it said it had successfully raised its monthly revenue from about N2billion to N6billion around 2003. This was at a time power supply was very low. What one would have expected a truly democratically elected president to do was to ask NEPA’s chief executive the magic he did to make that kind of money which was not matched by any improvement in power supply. That is the fraud that the power sector has been for years. It had been a kind of ‘dog carried it and thief took it’ (aja gbe ole gba) relationship between successive federal governments and the players in the inept and corrupt sector.

    But nothing in this piece should be taken to mean that Ikeja NERC Forum is ineffectual. May be I am just one of the few persons that are not able to enjoy the fruits of government’s expectation in setting up the body. I have always tried to restrain myself from using this medium to vent my frustrations with IE. But then, it is about six months ago that I did something like that on this page. Six months after; it is still all motion, no movement. I tried to follow the process laid down by government and indeed allowed it to run its full course. But, characteristically Nigerian, it seems people steeped in their old iniquitous ways would just not want to change.

    So. I had to use this medium again. After all IE too has been using what it has to keep me off the national grid for over seven months. But the company must know it has invited the wrong person into the ring. I have supplied my own electricity for seven months without a hitch; at least I have been having electricity when I need it; no power failure, not for one day. I had been told it would be a long, tortuous journey by the time I was starting the battle and I kitted myself well for it.

    However, if funding is NERC Forum’s problem, it is important the government addressed the issue if the purpose of its establishment is not to be defeated. Otherwise, there is need to monitor the activities of the bodies nationwide. It is one thing for the government to desire something; it is another for those in charge of implementation to buy into the idea. I do not want to give any verdict yet on Ikeja NERC Forum, but if I could get a ruling asking IE to let me vend, at least pending the resolution of my matter with the company that is before the Forum, and that is yet to happen, five weeks after, something is wrong. If this can happen to someone like me who has a voice; I can only imagine what millions of voiceless Nigerians are going through in the hands of shylock DisCos that are hell bent on reaping where they did not sow. That is the essence of ‘cap’.

     

  • My worries

    FAR back as the mid-1980s, some of us at The Punch then had been saying the northern region of this country would someday reap the whirlwind of the socio-cultural lifestyle that has been in existence in that part for years. I did my national youth service in Yola, then Gongola State capital. I remember vividly how young boys would ‘invade’ our cafeteria in the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) camp and cart away remnants of food, or even attempted to seize the plates of food in the full glare of the corps members eating, if they got distracted for any reason for just a minute. It was that bad. Yet, that was only shortly after Alhaji Umaru Dikko, a chieftain of the corrupt and inept National Party of Nigeria (NPN) administration which was in power in Nigeria at that time reportedly said things were not that bad yet in the country because Nigerians had not started to eat from dustbins! Dikko was at the time the transport minister as well as head of the presidential task force on rice. At the time of my youth service in 1984/85, many youths in Yola were already scavenging the dustbins for food.

    I do not expect this piece to be welcome by the northern elite hat have unleashed on themselves and, the rest of us by vicarious liability, the consequences of their corrupt handling of the affairs of that region, especially in the last six decades or so.

    I have nothing against one Nigeria. But then, I am beginning to see the sense in the demand of those calling for a sovereign national conference to enable us iron out the basis for our continued co-existence. We need to talk. Definitely, things cannot continue the way they are. Nigeria, as we have been running it since the amalgamation of 1914 is not working. Although it was not designed to work ab initio, but we have compounded the problem by ourselves.

    Here in the southwest, parents are ready to sacrifice all they have, probably going naked if they must, just to ensure their children are educated. I remember the expression used by one of my seniors in the university when paying tributes to his parents for their sacrifice to see him through school. He eulogised his parents ‘who gladly embraced poverty to see him through school’. It is not so in the north where illiteracy reigns supreme; hence the millions of children who should be in school are out on the streets begging for alms. They call them almajiris. In the southwest, it is not that we do not have beggars; but it is not seen as part of the people’s culture. As a matter of fact, it is more an abomination for people to beg in this part of the country. As they say, ‘it is condition that made crayfish to bend ‘. But for the bad governance that Nigerians had been subjected to for decades, especially since the military coup of the 1960s that replaced the federal system that was working with the present shapeless structure which is neither unitary nor federal, the number of people begging for alms in this part of the country would have been significantly minimal because, as I said, it is not part of the people’s culture.

    How then can we co-exist with these kinds of peculiarities without sitting down to talk about how to manage our differences? It is generally believed that there is strength in numbers and that our huge population should count for something. But that is not automatic because there is a fundamental fault in the saying that ‘two heads are better than one’. It is only two good heads that can be better than one. One good head is by far better than one million bad heads. When we talk of huge population, we should be mindful of the quality of that population and not just huge population for the sake of it.

    In the early 2000 when Sharia was about becoming a major issue in the country, we wrote an editorial in one of the major newspapers about how Sharia convicts would hop into the next available train from the north, heading straight down south, particularly to Lagos, after their hands had been chopped off for one crime or the other. But it would appear Sharia is for the poor..A former president once characteristically reportedly asked a governor (from the north) that he believed was pilfering public funds how come he (governor) still had his two hands intact! I do not know how many people’s hands had been cut off under Sharia law. But only last week, the media carried the story of some 10 other convicts whose hands are to be cut off. I am neither against Shariah nor its convicts’ free choice to submit themselves to its tenets. My worry is that after cutting off these people’s hands, they either transport them to Lagos or they force themselves into the next available train only to come and constitute social menace down here. For God’s sake, why can’t they remain where they were turned into invalid?

    Now, Kano State House of Assembly has just approved pension for its speaker and his deputy. The pension is equal to the emoluments of a serving speaker and deputy speaker, among other nauseating provisions. The bill, if signed by the governor, will also provide for foreign medical trips and new vehicles every four years for the duo. According to the bill: “There shall be provided for the Speaker and the Deputy Speaker medical expenses either home or abroad, depending on the nature of the illness.” Kano State is not alone in this, though. Bayelsa State governor has just rejected the same self-serving pension for the state’s lawmakers. Even the National Assembly lawmakers attempted the same idea but were stopped by the people. But Kano State’s case is a peculiar mess because the state is home to the highest number of out-of-school-children in the country, about three million of them! This type of feudal mindset is what has turned the north into what it is today.

    The northern states, like other states in the country, have been getting their own share of allocation from the Federation Account. But the bulk of the money has been appropriated by a few elite who believe that it is their birthright to sit atop such money while the talakawa (the poor) must cringe to have the crumbs falling off from the table. Up till 1999 when Nigeria returned to civil rule, the country’s leadership was dominated by people of northern extraction. So, why would their case be this negatively different or peculiar? Why is the north this underdeveloped?

    Why the region is home to many terrorists is not hard to decipher: when you have youths that are not educated and are therefore unskilled, the devil will end up finding jobs for them because they cannot be useful to the society through any other means. I was flabbergasted when on Wednesday newspaper report quoted some northern elders under the aegis of the Northern Elders Forum (NEF) as saying that insecurity in the north was worse now than under the Goodluck Jonathan era. But, as we say in Yoruba land, Ajala ta’n no o?  (who is responsible?)

    In the southwest, we believe that a child that was not trained (educated) will be the one to sell off the house that was built (omo ta o ko lo ma gbe ile ti a ko ta). See the havoc that Boko Haram has done? National resources that should have been used for developmental purposes all over the country have to be spent rebuilding the places devastated by these terrorists. Whereas this could have been avoided if the leaders had got their children educated. One has to be this frank because if one’s neighbour is eating an insect that will end up not making one to sleep at night, and you do not warn him, it is the two of you that will end up not sleeping.

    One should naturally be worried when you see a horde of uneducated youths coming in to the south, particularly from the north to a place like Lagos, not for any meaningful jobs but to ride commercial motorcycles. Danger looms (to paraphrase one of my senior colleagues). When these youths who only understand ‘go’ dominate your environment, you will sleep with your two eyes closed at your own peril. Let the northern elite who are the architects of this misfortune have a family meeting now and resolve to right the wrongs to save themselves and the rest of us suffering vicarious liabilities from our calamities.

    Routine commission of crimes is bad enough, when you now add terrorism, the matter becomes even more grievous.

  • Living proof

    For Zainab Aliyu, the Nigerian student who has just escaped the hangman’s noose in Saudi Arabia, for allegedly travelling into the country with a banned substance, Tramadol, the saying that there is only a step between life and death, strictly adheres. Aliyu, a student of Maitama Sule University, Kano, travelled for Lesser Hajj in December 2018. Her mother Maryam, and sister Hajara, were on the same flight with her, but it was in her own luggage that the banned substance was allegedly found. She was consequently detained by the Saudi Arabian authorities. Although she had not been arraigned before help came her way, her ordeal in a Saudi prison for about four months was enough to psychologically knock her out.

    Aliyu’s story raised many fundamental questions. First of which is, where is our humanity? Many of the true life stories we read in the newspapers today, or watch on television would have passed for ‘Oddities’ or ‘This odd world’ a few years ago. This past week, the papers were awash with all manner of curious headlines: ‘Why I joined mum to beat dad to death’; ‘Son sells mum, 60, for N7million’; ‘Lady sells six-hour baby for N850,000, buys mobile phone’; ‘Man, 30, arrested for attempting to sell own children in Calabar’. These were only some of the attention-grabbing headlines in the papers, apart from the mind-boggling stories of adults and very old men having sexual intercourse with minors, in some cases babies or toddlers, a crime that is fast becoming the order of the day in the country!

    How come we have so cheaply lost our soul and morality as a nation? We are daily regaled with stories of ‘Yahoo-Yahoo’ boys using all manner of ‘juju’ to get rich quick. Until a few months ago, ‘Badoo boys’ who specialised in hitting the heads of their victims with stone before draining the blood from the injury for whatever satanic purpose they intended to use it, reigned in Ikorodu and parts of Lagos. All kinds of ritualists are on the prowl. We are not even talking of armed robbery or its twin-sister, kidnapping, which has now become a thriving industry. Female pants are no longer safe on the lines. Things that we took for granted in those days, like helping persons looking for certain addresses trace their way have now become taboo. These days, you can only do that at your own risk. Even people who claim not to believe in the efficacy of such ‘juju’ would be the first to tell such visitors they have never heard of the addresses they are looking for before; no matter how close the places are to them! So, where exactly are we going?

    Imagine the case of Clinton Kanu, 56, who regained his freedom on April 5, courtesy of the Supreme Court which found him innocent of the crime of armed robbery that he was framed in. It took Kanu 27 years to be freed for a crime he never committed but nonetheless could have been condemned for. The miscarriage of justice would have been irreversible if Kanu had been hanged. Without doubt, this is another case of man’s inhumanity to man. Those who cooked up the robbery story, according to Kanu, did so because of a land matter in which they thought he was going to support one party against the other.

    Now, criminals have become so ingenious to devise a new trick of putting banned substances in the luggage of innocent international travellers, in their own bid to get rich quick, without sparing a thought for the innocent victim who, if caught at the country where the substance was meant for, might bag the capital punishment. This was what Aliyu was set up for. It was only God that made her case different by revealing the identities of the cartel that specialised in the ungodly practice.

    Zainab Aliyu is living proof that it is not over until it is over. She is living proof of one who had walked in the valley of the shadow of death; living proof of one who had been to the gates of heaven only to be sent back by the gateman because it was not yet her time. Her adrenalin must have shot up when she was accused of being the owner of the luggage in which Tramadol was found; knowing full well the wages of such criminal infraction in Saudi Arabia. Even at the terrestrial level, Zainab is living proof of the possibilities when man or institution works efficiently and conscientiously. We can only imagine what could have been her fate if Mrs Abike Dabiri-Erewa, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Foreign Affairs and Diaspora had not brought her matter up for President Muhammadu Buhari’s attention. Many people had undeservedly got the reward of death that Aliyu nearly reaped due to incompetence or sloppiness of public officials, like the one that almost attended Aliyu’s case and fate.

    Indeed, her type of experience is another strong point for those seeking the abolition of the death sentence; that once the person has been killed; it is impossible to bring him or her back to life even when fresh, incontrovertible evidence proves that he or she is innocent of the crime for which he or she was executed. Amnesty International, which has been campaigning against the death sentence because of its finality or irreversibility said this much in her case: “Saudi Arabian authorities must free Zainab Habibu Aliyu. Her ordeal shows everything wrong with death penalty. Let us raise our voices, until Zainab is free. No one knows who can be the next victim of such injustice. #FreeZainab #Nigeria #ZainabIsInnocent.” The Kanu’s case mentioned above is another example.

    It is gratifying that some of the members of the cartel that planted the Tramadol in Aliyu’s luggage have been arrested. They should be well grilled because anyone can fall victim to their nefarious activities. The country must get to the root of this.

    But we as Nigerians must be careful the way we run to conclusions when some serious countries find our compatriots on the wrong side of their law. We have formed this terrible habit of crying foul when these countries get serious in implementing their laws to the letter, especially against foreigners (particularly Nigerians) who want to mess up the host country the same way they messed up their own country; the reason they are now seeking better life in those saner places. Even the scripture says the ‘wages of sin is death’. So, if people know the wages of whatever crime they commit in another country, why should they break the law? Do they expect that every other country would be like Nigeria where shameless senior lawyers would connive with corrupt judges to amend the law in their elite rogue-clients’ favour?

    Instead of asking our own governments to make our country conducive, we start asking other people to lower their standards to accommodate us.Would this issue have arisen if there were CCTV at the relevant places at our airports or if there had been other measures to forestall such incidents?  Should we now blame Saudi Arabia for our own government’s failure? So, another lesson is that our governments have to do the rightful at all times, especially when we have the resources to do so. That Aliyu was the person involved in this case was just happenstance; it could have been anybody, anybody – a governor or even the president’s son or daughter. Can we imagine the hot cake the story would be for the children of any of these VIPs to be in Aliyu’s shoes? Food for thought.

    But we should thank God for the favour that Aliyu received because, but for that, there is no question about it; she would be awaiting the hangman in the foreign land where she was arrested. Her relations would have suffered vicariously for the negligence of our government and its agencies.

    However, the Ministry of External Affairs should be interrogated for the lax matter it allegedly treated this issue. Appropriate lessons must be taught and learnt.

  • Struggle to the rescue

    Prof Olusegun Osoba has once again brought into the front burner of national discourse the critical issue of what Nigeria needs to shake off the shackles of perpetual potential greatness that she has found itself with, perhaps even before the country’s independence in 1960. Osoba, a member of the 1976 Constitution Drafting Committee (CDC) spoke on Tuesday at the public presentation of the Minority Report and Draft Constitution for the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1976, which he co-authored with the late Dr Bala Usman. The event, which took place at the University of Lagos,  Akoka, Lagos, was organised by the Centre for Democratic Development  Research and Training, Zaria. He said at the occasion that “The minimum agenda for change cannot be brought about automatically; it cannot be wished into existence; the people have to struggle. The classes of people that are short-changed by the present regime have to find a way of developing a common strategy and it can only be done, if the truth must be said, by overthrowing the existing order. There is no other way.”

    In other words, the country can only make progress when Nigerians are ready to take their destiny in their own hands. Prof Osoba’s position contradicts the general belief, particularly in the southwestern part of the country, that restructuring or federalism (the one we call ‘true federalism’ in this part of the world) can make the country great.

    While there may not be unanimity of opinion on the way forward for the country, there has not been any question about it, that there is something basically wrong somewhere with Nigeria, which has stunted its growth and development.  There is no debate about whether Nigeria is where it is supposed to be today. Virtually everybody agrees that Nigeria is sick; there cannot be any question about a nation that has been known to be potentially great in the last six or more decades but has been geometrically  relapsing into obscurity in the comity of progressive and great nations. The thing that beats my imagination is the rhetorical statement that we all make about ‘how the country found itself in the current mess’.  Did the country suddenly find itself in the current mess or the actions and or inactions of some of our leaders brought us to this sorry pass?

    Anyway, they say a problem identified is half solved. But this has not been true of the Nigerian situation. Indeed, we have since coined another term to explain this problematic away; we call it the ‘Nigerian factor’! Much as we all seem to agree that there is something wrong with the country, we have not been able to agree on the way out. Even those clamouring for restructuring or federalism (true or false federalism) appear to be seeing it from different perspectives. Hence, restructuring to some simply connotes dismemberment of the country.

    Yet, some people see the country’s challenges as the result of leadership crisis; that is our inability to throw up leaders to galvanise the people towards those things that can turn our potential greatness to true greatness. One of these was Chinua Achebe (of blessed memory). As far as he was concerned, the country’s problem is basically leadership. “The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership. There is nothing basically wrong with the Nigerian character. There is nothing wrong with the Nigerian land or climate or water or air or anything else. The Nigerian problem is unwillingness or inability of its leaders to rise to the responsibility, to the challenge of personal example which is the hallmark of true leadership. Nigeria can change today if she discovers leaders who have the will, the ability and the vision…” Achebe said.

    When we consider the giant strides that some other back-bencher nations that were in the same category with Nigeria, as recently as the 1970s have made, one would agree with Achebe that we have a huge leadership deficit. Indeed, Prof Osoba seems to agree with the dearth of leadership school of thought when he said at the book launch that:  “All nations of the world … have at one point or the other in their history removed the hands of looters from their treasury and put themselves in the hands of reliable and working honest people. So,” he added, “there is no ambiguity about it: a continuous struggle is the only solution to our problems, not restructuring.”

    For instance, if corruption festers in Nigeria, it is because it is structurally designed to be so and not because Nigerians are more corrupt than other people anywhere under the sun. Corruption is heavily punished in other countries that have made significant progress but is not here. ENRON boss was known to have committed suicide over corruption charges. Heads of state are known to have killed themselves instead of being subjected to the indignities of trials that will expose them for who and what they were. Here, such big people will procure the services of corrupt senior lawyers who alongside their corrupt ilk on the bench would stand the law on its head to free the corrupt elite of corrupt charges on technical grounds; not on the grounds of whether they committed the crime or not.

    Apparently, Osoba’s prognosis is not popular, especially among the political elite. If he had been one of them, or if he had said something that is sweet music to their ears, perhaps they would have latched onto his reminder to take the rest of the country back to the debate about restructuring or federalism. Again, perhaps it was the same way Osoba’s diagnosis in the minority report he presented alongside the late Usman was not pleasant to the General Olusegun Obasanjo regime which was presented the CDC report, following the death of the then Head of State, General Murtala Muhammed (retd), in the February 13, 1976 coup detat.

    But it is not only the political elite that detest the word ‘revolution’ or anything that suggests a violent, bloody or radical departure from the status quo. I remember some years ago, while I was on a committee that was set up to draft a programme for our society’s anniversary in the church, and we included ‘prayer warfare’; one of the senior members of the society said we needed not have used the word ‘warfare’; that prayer session would do. But, we know as Christians, that the battle we are facing is not carnal but against powers and principalities. Pray, will prayer sessions be enough to move (not to talk of shake) those powers and principalities?

    Although Prof Osoba did not specifically mention the kind of ‘struggle’ he has in mind, I want to believe that this is another word our political elite do not want to hear, especially coming from someone with the professor’s left-wing antecedent. Whether in the Labour parlance where it means to protest over something until it is achieved; or in the simple meaning that the word connotes, it is associated with “violence” or “great effort”, so, the word struggle is not one that the political class would want to hear. Yet, students of history among them know that the country cannot continue along this ruinous path without something giving way someday.

    We are already reaping the result of such governmental incompetence and corruption in the northeastern part of the country where Boko Haram insurgents and other bandits are making life difficult for the people, killing, raping and maiming them at will. Even here in Lagos, all manner of cult groups are wreaking havoc. In peace times, they pounce on rival cultists while in crisis situations they vent their frustration on innocent passersby. The problem with these miscreants sometimes is that they do not know who the real enemy is; they forget or choose to be ignorant of the fact that even you that they see in a car is as much a victim of what they are suffering too, given the dues you must have paid to get to where you are, whether in school or while marking time in the office. It is only a matter of degree. Seeing you in a car, perhaps with the air conditioner on, is all the proof that they need that you are part of the people responsible for their miserable plight and who should not be spared whenever the opportunity for vengeance presents itself. Interestingly, when they see their real ‘oppressors’, they hail them after those ones have thrown some crisp naira notes at them, over which they scramble and struggle, sometimes killing themselves in the process.

    If Prof Osoba is talking about the docility of Nigerians, then he has a very strong point. In fact, this docility is one of the things that the ruling elite, whether military or civilian, progressive or conservative, has been exploiting over the decades to keep the people and the country perpetually down. In my own view, leadership is vital to whatever system we adopt to make Nigeria great. It is leaders that drove the processes in other countries that we once shared the back bench with but have now abandoned us to our fate. We had Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore; as well as other leaders in other Asian countries. But leadership alone cannot do the magic. We also need restructuring to allow everybody develop at their own pace; just as we need an active population that is ready to put government officials on their toes in all they do.

    Perhaps the question is: which of these comes first? Again, the answer, if I may respond, is any of them. It is best for the leader to drive the process. Where this fails, however, the people take over. But first, they must know who their real enemies are and turn the heat on them instead of fighting blindly to save the corrupt elite from their region or religion who turns to them only in times of trouble, cleaving precariously to ethnic or religious sentiments to escape justice.

    Perhaps things would have been different if the minorityreport had been considered for whatever it was. But the ruling class still has a golden opportunity to redeem itself. Where it fails, then John F. Kennedy’s words onmarble come handy: “Those who make peaceful revolution (struggle) impossible will make violent revolution (struggle) inevitable.”

  • Notre Dame

    Global reactions to the fire that engulfed the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, France, on April 15, brought back nostalgic memories of my Higher School Certificate (HSC) days at the Federal School of Arts and Science, Ondo; the one we proudly refer to as FSASON. It was there I began to get attracted to France as a country, when studying European History. My most fascinating aspect of the history of France was the French Revolution of 1789, the one that Peacock describes as “one of the greatest events in human history.” For sure, Nigeria, nay Africa, was not in Peacock’s reckoning when he made that assertion. I remember how I was always attempting to put myself in the picture as if I was there during the revolution when reading Peacock. I must confess though, that Peacock was my favourite author when the issue was the French revolution. The other textbook, Europe since Napoleon by Thompson which also treated the topic extensively, was my distant second textbook.

    But that is not where I am going today.

    I have always known France for its fashion splendour. Indeed, in those days we were told that ‘an old style in Paris is a new style in London’; to drive home the point that France is noted for fashion, whether in dress terms, or architectural designs. France is also home to choice exotic wines; I picture it in my mind as a place of plenty enjoyment. Wikipedia seems to corroborate all of these thus: “France, in Western Europe, encompasses medieval cities, alpine villages and Mediterranean beaches. Paris, its capital, is famed for its fashion houses, classical art museums including the Louvre and monuments like the Eiffel Tower. The country is also renowned for its wines and sophisticated cuisine. Lascaux’s ancient cave drawings, Lyon’s Roman theater and the vast Palace of Versailles attest to its rich history.”

    But, in spite of all these, the country still found time to build an architectural masterpiece that Notre Dame is, a structure that has become an institution in its own right, such that the world cannot but notice and indeed be involved in restoring the burnt Cathedral beyond its pre-April 15 state.  Indeed, from news flying around, the fire, in confirmation of a proverb in the western part of this country, ‘ile oba to jo, ewa lo bu si’ (a king’s palace that got burnt can only give room to a better edifice) is going to get even better by the time reconstruction is completed. This, if French President Emmanuel Macron’s wish is anything to go by, will be in about five year’s time.

    The fact that France, which is not poor by any standard, makes a lot of money from tourists to the cathedral is something that Nigeria can learn from. Imagine what about 12-14 million tourists would translate to in monetary terms for France? Ours is a country that relies on a monocultural commodity, the price of which depends on the vagaries of the volatile international oil market. Yet, we have many tourist attractions that can spin a lot of foreign exchange for the country, but we either fail to maximise the potential or simply look the other way while such tourist sites get overgrown with weeds and are occupied by reptiles or other animals. At best, government officials make pious statements of commitment to diversifying the economy, using tourism as example.

    Moreover, so far, no one has made any attempt to politicise the issue. In our clime, all manner of insinuations and even unsubstantiated claims would have been made about the involvement of some political enemies being responsible for the inferno.

    Above all, however, the global reaction to Notre Dame fire incident has demonstrated that indeed, there could be one world where creed or colour would count for nothing. Indeed, Nigeria has a lot to learn from this common humanity. The fire incident, which occurred on the second day of the Passion Week (Holy Week as it is now commonly called), that is the week preceding Easter, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, has united the world in such a confounding manner. Will there ever come such a time when Nigeria can be so united, without attempts to differentiate on religious, political or ethnic grounds? I would be glad to witness that in my lifetime.

    Maybe the world has reacted to the Notre Dame incident because they felt the same way I always felt in my HSC days whenever it was time for French history; particularly the aspect dealing with the French Revolution. May be not. But for us to have a sense of all that the Notre Dame is associated with – religion, religious, political, historical and socio-cultural values, we must not allow an individual to get away with the kind of blue murder that President Olusegun Obasanjo committed by banning history. We need an astute sense of history to appreciate such inestimable values.

    Even if we regard the inferno as Afghastanism ( something happening far away), we cannot lose sight of its proximity to us and the unity it has fostered around the globe, especially in a world that has become a global village.

     

    A tale of two ghosts

    It is not all the time that I have the opportunity of sharing messages on the social platform. But, I found this not only hilarious but one from which we can pick one or two lessons.

     

    Ghost 1: Hey

    Ghost 2: Hey

     

    Ghost 1:

    How did you die? ?

     

    Ghost 2:

    I was mistakenly locked up in a refrigerator. At first, I was chilling, then, I started freezing, and then, I couldn’t breathe again… I died of suffocation.

     

    Ghost 1:

    Wow…. what a sad way to die.

     

    Ghost 2:

    Yeah. And you, how did you die?

     

    Ghost 1:

    I died of heart attack.

     

    Ghost 2:

    What happened? How?

     

    Ghost 1:

    My wife cheated on me. I came back home and saw a man’s pair of shoes. Then, I rushed to the bedroom and met only my wife there. She was naked. I knew there was a man in the house because my neighbour told me. And the man was still in the house as my wife was undressed and scared. So, I started running and searching the whole house. I searched in the kid’s room, kitchen, toilet, bathroom, wardrobe and dinning. I couldn’t find him and I was very tired of running, so I got a heart attack.

     

    Ghost 2:

    IDIOT!!!! If only you had checked the refrigerator we would both be alive by now!

     

    Have a wonderful Easter Sunday

     

  • Beyond lamentations

    Last week, when I wrote my piece setting an agenda for the Governor-elect of Lagos State, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, on refuse disposal, I knew I could not do that in one piece. Yet, I deliberately avoided numbering the write-up even though I knew I would not be able to exhaust all I had to say in only one piece. I now realise the wisdom in taking that decision. If I had not taken the road I took, it would have been impossible for me to suspend action on that aspect; in which case, I would not have been able to give today’s topic the urgent attention that it required.

    I had hitherto thought it is too early to begin to chart an agenda for President Muhammadu Buhari, and that that should wait until he is about starting his second term; that is all things being equal. But things seem to be getting out of hands, particularly on the security plain. Indeed, one good reason one should begin to set an agenda for the president is because he is no longer the action man that many of us thought he was. Some have even said it was his second-in-command when he was military head of state, the Late General Tunde Idiagbon (retd), that was behind what seemed were the government’s tough stance on issues then. The president has not confirmed this though; but he has confessed that age is no longer on his side. We saw an example of this on how long it took him to appoint his cabinet after the 2015 elections. So, it can never be too early to begin to advise a president who does not appreciate that time waits for no one. About 47 months ago, when he was sworn in as president; the president had probably thought four years was eternity. In the next six weeks or so, his first four years in power will be over.

    Lest we forget, I had said in one of my write-ups shortly before the elections that we first have to drive away the thief before returning to tell the owner of the stolen property that he too did not keep his property well. Meaning what? Meaning that  we should first support President Buhari to defeat the then Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP) presidential candidate in the election, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, not necessarily because of any superlative performance but because the opposition party did not take its eyes to the market while shopping for Buhari’s successor. If it did, it would have come up with a more formidable challenger. But the opposition party knew what it was doing: it knew Atiku was the only person in the party who so much believed the party could win and was therefore ready to literally burn billions in search of the elusive presidency. I still stand by my statement.

    But there is one issue bothering Nigerians today; and that is security or insecurity, whichever way you choose to look at it. Honestly, President Buhari must do something fundamental and heart-shaking on the security question. I do not know what the president has up his sleeves; but whatever it is; he does not have to wait till he begins his second term, if only to ensure that more innocent lives are not lost to blood-sucking demons that are now prowling like hungry lions, ravaging parts of the country.

    The statistics are grim; too grim to ignore. From Kaduna to Benue, to Zamfara and other parts of the country, the challenge is the same: insecurity. There is nowhere that can be declared safe in the country today; not even the south west, although there is relative calm in the region. Killer herdsmen are still committing havoc daily; terrorists remain defiant even though the government and the military believe they have been degraded. Nigerians see the use of the word ‘degraded’ as pun; given the ferocious manner these killers keep snuffing life out of innocent Nigerians.

    We know that the PDP messed us all up big time; but much as we were ready to listen to this excuse in the last four years, it may no longer sell by the time Buhari returns for a second term, again, ceteris paribus.

    The Minister of Defence, Mansur Dan Ali added a new dimension to the issue, when he alleged that some top traditional rulers were behind the orgy of violence in the northern part of the country. Dan Ali disclosed this in a statement, on Tuesday. According to him, intelligence revealed that high-profile traditional leaders were culpable in the violence, which has claimed scores of lives in the region.”Recently, the government acted on the advice of the Ministry of Defence to suspend all mining activities in Zamfara State and environs following intelligence report that suggested close collaboration between the activities of the bandits and illegal miners.

    “However, in spite of the concerted efforts of the armed forces and other security agencies, some unpatriotic persons, including highly placed traditional rulers in the areas, were identified as helping the bandits with intelligence to perpetuate their nefarious actions or to compromise military operations”, the minister said.

    One would have expected that if the defence ministry had such intelligence, and it believed it to be credible, it ought to have gone after the culprits instead of warning them to desist. At worst, such traditional rulers should have been named and shamed. Nigerians are not interested in government or its officials raising the alarm where criminals are involved; they are interested in result from the action against the criminals.

    The president touched on a sore aspect of the security nightmare when he regretted that bandits have informants within some communities and that certain communities have signed protection deals with bandits at the expense of other communities, thereby creating complications and frustrating government’s intervention. It is the height of frustration and desperation that would make citizens abandon their government only to sign protection deals with bandits. It shows an apparent lack of faith in the capacity of the state to protect them. Yet, security of lives and property is the very first duty of any government properly so-called.

    President Buhari has said he was sad about these mindless killings. But that is not enough. He also said he meets with his security chiefs often, in order to understand their problems and needs. Again, this is not enough. If he is sure the government has done the rightful by way of provision of arms and ammunition as well as other needs of the security personnel, then he should know what to do if there are no noticeable improvements after all said and done. Nigerians are tired of waking up to gory sights of innocent children, men and women being slaughtered like cows for no just cause. They will not continue to have graveside orations and mere assurances of ensuring security of lives and property. The president should live up to his promise of  doing whatever it takes to ensure the country’s security system confronts these public enemies with merciless determination.

    President Buhari has to listen to the cries of Nigerians on this issue and do something. Almost all the sections of the country are crying loud, these cries are too strident to be ignored. As a matter of fact,  the president can only ignore them at his own peril.

     

  • Garbage: Agenda for Sanwo-Olu

    Long before the garbage question became a serious issue in Lagos State last year, I have had reservations about the effectiveness of some of the Private Sector Participation (PSP) operators in the state, borne essentially out of personal experience. But one had to suspend commenting on the matter then so that the arguments would not be lost in the labyrinthine political claims and counter-claims making the rounds then. There were hiccups in the waste disposal system long before the matter became a public nuisance. The PSP system would appear a very good way of dealing with the problem of waste disposal in cosmopolitan Lagos. But, somehow, due to lack of adequate supervision, it was unable to deliver to the satisfaction of many Lagosians. I will use our experience in my area, Solabomi Williams Crescent (formerly Olusegun Oshikanlu Estate) area of Agege as example.

    Residents of the estate would readily tell anyone who cared to listen that the (then) private sector operator in the estate was more of an absentee waste disposal agent. He was full of excuses; it was either their vehicles had broken down and it took them days to fix, or they could not discharge the waste at the then dumpsite at Olusosun for days. At a point, the Orile Agege Local Council Development Area (LCDA) took over the unjust cause of the PSP operator in the area, when it pasted a seal-up notice on almost all the gates in the place. We immediately dispatched a petition titled ‘RE:SEAL UP OF OUR PREMISES NOTICE OVER WASTE MANAGEMENT DEBT’ to the Head of Department, Environmental Services, Orile-Agege LCDA, Abekoko Street, from where we understood the seal-up notice emanated in June 2017, shortly after the notices were pasted on our gates.

    Let me crave your indulgence to reproduce the letter, in part:

    “I write in respect of the above notice which was posted on our gate on Friday, June 9, 2017. I appreciate the laudable efforts of the Lagos State Government which introduced the Private Sector Participation (PSP) into waste management in the state. However, I feel compelled to state that, much as my property is indebtedness to the waste service provider, at least to some extent, the N96,000 stated in the March-April 2017 bill is dubious and doubtful. It is a carryover from previous years, when, as many people on my street would testify, the service provider did not turn up regularly for their job.

    “It was not that they had been particularly regular, even in 2015; but the lapse could be pardoned for that year. However, the irregularity of their visit to the state last year (2016) was something else. As far as I know, they did not come to the estate up to 10 times throughout last year, including the about three times when they came frequently towards the end of the year. They were always forthcoming with all manner of excuses: It was either they spent three to four days to discharge at Olusosun Dump site, or their vehicles broke down. Sometimes they apologised. Sometimes they argued over what was patently clear. Meanwhile, the bills did not exclude the period they did not show up.

    “Waste management, as any other service, should be on pay as you go. Where, due to one reason or the other the operators are unable to come, they should not be paid for such days/number of times. There should be a way to work this out.

    “It would be unfair and ungodly to Lagosians for the government – state or local – to assist service providers who are not diligent at their duty, to collect money for service not rendered. This is tantamount to rip-off and the government at any level should not be seen to be aiding and abetting such practice. Nigerians are still struggling to free themselves from the same practice by electricity companies. This is the PSP version of crazy bill. If the government must collect money for the PSP operators, then it should also have a strong and credible monitoring mechanism to ensure that they play according to the rules …” The letter ended with “…It is unfair for the local government to threaten my premises with seal-up based on the complaint by an interested party.”

    We eventually met with the head of environmental services in the local government, a lady. I remember engaging in a shouting match with the owner of the PSP serving our estate, an elderly man, when the lady gave me the phone to discuss the debt issue with him, with a view to arriving at an amicable solution. But nothing of sort could happen because the man, rather than listen to me as his customer, kept on insisting that his men were always in the estate to pack the garbage. And I asked him the basis for his response and confidence. He had none beyond saying he was sure they were. I told him that was the report his boys were feeding him with which was at variance with reality. The conversation ended abruptly when I discovered the man was only interested in listening to himself.

    For instance, when I asked him if his boys never missed coming to the estate at any time during the year (because they brought the bill covering the entire period, without missing any date), even if only once, he had no answer. I did not expect him to have any because he knew that could easily be punctured, not with vehicle breakdowns and congestion making it impossible for them to discharge their waste at the dumpsite for days.  So, if they had missed some of those days, how come this was not reflected in their bills? How come they did not subtract the times they could not make it from the entire bill before sending them to the customers? This was another sore point that we disagreed over when the lady in charge said that since we were generating waste and disposing of same somehow, it was still the state waste management authority (LAWMA) that was packing the waste wherever we might have dumped it; we should therefore seek amicable settlement on the  disputed bill.

    For sure, not all the PSP operators were this incompetent or inefficient. Some of them were doing relatively well in the areas they were serving. I recall some of my friends praising their own PSP operators when we were complaining about the epileptic nature of the service rendered by the one serving our own area. This should not be surprising. Among every 12 disciples, there will always be a Judas Iscariot. This was where the Ambode government ought to have applied tact in dealing with those of them who lacked the capacity to handle the job well, rather than uprooting everything and throwing the baby away with the bath water.

    The government should have reversed itself when it discovered that Visionscape, its preferred alternative, was indeed no alternative because it also could not solve the garbage problem. If one cannot move forward, he should be able to retrace his steps. This was the Akinwunmi Ambode government’s undoing on the garbage question.

    However, what would appear to be the good news now is that, as I was putting this piece together on Friday, I put a call through to the chairman of our residents association who told me that the state government has reshuffled the PSP operators. It was such a big relief that the one serving our estate has been taking elsewhere. It is indeed good riddance. Since character is like smoke which cannot be hidden, I know he would soon show his true colours wherever he is posted to. I only pity those he is serving now. In fairness to the new one, he appears to be up and doing so far, coming every Friday. But it is still too early to jump to conclusions.

    In an essential service such as waste disposal, monitoring is key if whatever system put in place is to succeed. It would appear the various monitoring authorities went to bed at some point in the outgoing dispensation. This should be checked. The supervisory authorities should pay surprise visits to select areas randomly to inquire about how the PSP providers are faring. There should also be means of ensuring that everyone benefiting from the service pays for it.

    In about eight weeks from now, the Babajide Sanwo-Olu administration will take over from the Akinwunmi Ambode government in Lagos State. Since the governorship election went without hitches , the incoming administration has no reason not to hit the ground running. No litigations over election result; no challenge whatsoever from any quarter. Nonetheless, nothing should be left to chance. Having a long period of peace after election, we must have found out, is not necessarily a prerequisite for understanding the need to hit the ground running. Every minute counts, once the government takes off.

    One had to go this far to show that all is not well with the waste management system in the state and Lagos it too big to handle its waste disposal carelessly. It was only by sheer luck that we did not record any epidemic when Lagos was literally subsumed by refuse.

    There is nothing wrong in giving pork to political faithful; after all people eat where they work. After performing one role or the other for their political party, it is only fit and proper for the party to find some ways to compensate them.  But that should not be at the expense of the public. In other words, they should earn their pay by getting paid only for services rendered. That is the only way to truly make Lagos excel.

     

  • Exam integrity

    So much has been said and written about Prof Ishaq Oloyede’s financial reengineering at the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB). This has made it possible for the board to remit billions of naira into the government’s coffers, a thing unheard of since the board was established 41 years ago. JAMB has been remitting on the average about N7billion since the advent of Oloyede’s tenure in 2016. Although there have been controversies that the board was not set up to remit money to the Federal Government,  Oloyede’s predecessors have explanations to make on what happened to the money that they made in their time. At least Nigerians deserve to know what happened to the billions. Even if it was swallowed by snakes, we should know.

    It is not enough to tell us that the board was not set up as a money-making venture. But it is interesting to know that even after reducing application fees, billions still went back to the government’s coffers from the same institution which for about 40 years remitted a paltry N52million to the government. Without doubt, Oloyede’s predecessors must be busy in their rooms praying to whatever god they are serving for President Muhammadu Buhari not to open the book of remembrance on their tenures, since the government promised to beam the searchlight into the board’s past, to see where the billions that Oloyede is now remitting, ended up.

    For Oloyede, the current registrar and chief executive of JAMB, the reforms continue. For instance, he has moved to involve other stakeholders in the conduct and monitoring of UTME. In his effort not to become a sole administrator, he has expanded the decision-making committee to give room for cross-fertilisation of ideas so as to be able to give the Minister of Education the ingredients with which to take informed decisions on JAMB matters, to justify the confidence reposed in him by the minister.

    Having substantially sanitised the board’s finances and reduced waste and pilfering, JAMB has moved on to the next level of sanitising its core mandate, the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME). The board is a clearing house of sort, for candidates seeking admission into the country’s higher institutions – the polytechnics, monotechnics, colleges of education and the universities. The vehicle through which the admissions are made is the (UTME), which, according to Wikipedia, is “a computer-based standardised examination for prospective undergraduates in Nigeria. It is designed to assess problem solving, critical thinking, knowledge of scientific concepts and principles significance of each subject taken.”

    Like most other examinations in Nigeria and other climes, UTME was riddled with malpractices before the advent of Oloyede in JAMB. But, just as he is sanitising the board’s finances, he is equally paying attention to the core mandate of ensuring high standard for its examination.

    But, nothing here suggests that examination malpractice is peculiar to Nigeria. It is a global challenge. As a matter of fact, I remember some students (I think in Thailand) protested sometime in the late 80s or early 90s when the university authorities rejected their request for “friends to help friends” in examination halls. I wrote a satirical piece in my column on the issue at The Punch. If I can remember, the topic then was ‘Let friends help friends’. Obviously, that was a satanic request which no school authority would embrace. In Ireland, figures from the examinations body show a leap from 55 penalties from examination malpractice in 2014 to 115 in 2018, with mobile phones accounting for more than a third of all incidents of malpractice in that year. In that country, mere entering the examination hall with a mobile telephone attracts punishment, even if it is not used. Perhaps it was the tough stance on examination cheats that has salutary effect on the number of students entering examinations which dropped by more than 72,000.

    Prof Oloyede told stakeholders at JAMB’s 2019 Critical Stakeholders’ Meeting held at the Ladi Kwali Hall, Sheraton Hotel, Abuja, on March 18, the steps so far taken to arrest the scourge of examination malpractice that has been with us for long. Indeed, it is another form of corruption that has been plaguing the country for decades. On the basis of the malpractice, many examinations, especially those conducted by external bodies, have had to be cancelled; the results of many candidates have been withheld, sometimes permanently. It has come in various shapes; sometimes with external candidates helping others to sit for their examinations, often for mouth-watering fees. Sometimes, it is rich parents that look frantically for questions ahead of examinations for their wards, which they are prepared to pay through their nose for.

    One major point to note in this year’s UTME is the no-discretion on biometric policy, which is good for the system.  This is one area that examination cheats had exploited in the past. But JAMB has found out that it is only two out of about 250 cases fail the biometric test whereas about 50 of every 250 usually reported that they could not get through with the biometric. JAMB has somewhat debunked this, with only 24 candidates coming to Abuja in respect of biometric challenges and the board paid their air fares and other costs. Such candidates are now to write their examination in Abuja only.

    Moreover, the board has procured many of the devices usually used to cheat in examinations. Many would expect the board to have bought anti-cheating devices. But Oloyede said it was better to buy the real things and give to those knowledgeable in their applications to deploy for the board’s benefit. The idea is to be ahead of the cheats. As a matter of fact, and to demonstrate the board’s zero-tolerance for cheating in its examination, it held an International Strategic Roundtable in Lagos in December, 2017, with a view to identifying the various technology devices used for examination malpractices and the measures to proactively address them. The board has held two follow-up retreats in Dakar, Senegal, in November, 2018, and Transcorp, Abuja, in February, 2019, to let fraudsters know that the heat is on them. As a Yoruba proverb says, “a child who says his mother will not sleep will himself not know sleep.”

    As usual, pen/biro, phones or similar devices, calculators or similar devices, USB, CD, hand discs and similar storage devices, books or any reading/writing materials, cameras, recorders. microphones, ear pieces, ink/pen readers, smart lenses, smart rings/jewelleries, smart buttons, and blue tooth devices remain banned from all UTME centres during examinations. ATM cards, erasers, and key holders have similarly joined the long list, while spy reading glasses and watches are now to be scrutinised.

    Indeed, JAMB is now partnering security operatives and relevant agencies on cyber crimes, engaging their machineries and sponsoring them in order to tap from their fountain of knowledge. It has also moved some services to the registration portal in order to prevent extortion of candidates.

    But, in all of these, Nigerians have President Buhari to thank for the giant and bold steps Oloyede has been able to take in bringing sanity to the operations of JAMB so far. The other pillar of support, as Oloyede revealed at the meeting, is the board’s chairman, Emmanuel Ndukwe. Without doubt, no one who wants to fight corruption in a country like ours (where the cankerworm has become the main menu of especially our corrupt elite who ‘wash’ same down after a heavy dose  with exotic wines), can do so standing on shifting sands. The JAMB registrar could not hide his debt of gratitude to both men as he told this writer who had asked him at the forum what happens if as a result of all these efforts to bring JAMB to par with its counterparts in the civilised world he is suddenly moved to the ‘next level’ (promoted into Siberia/oblivion) out of the board. You don’t do such reforms without stepping on the toes of powerful people (who, like an old woman that never feels at ease when dry bones are mentioned in a proverb), can never like what is happening in JAMB, and would always fight back to return the board to the ancien regime. Oloyede’s answer? Your guess is as good as mine.

    It is impossible to capture Oloyede’s presentation at the ceremony which lasted about two hours in a single write-up. But then, it is not possible to miss the priority given to efforts to bring to naught the efforts of fraudsters hell bent on compromising the integrity of the board’s examination. Given Oloyede’s antecedents as JAMB’s helmsman, some things are as good as certain about 2019 UTME. One, the chaos that used to characterise UTME before his appointment as JAMB registrar has gone for good. It is just that in our kind of country, people forget so soon. Before now, parents and candidates would have been apprehensive of what shape the examination would take. It is no longer so. Two, Oloyede would not allow friends to help friends. Once you are in the examination centre, you are on your own. As one church programme puts it, it is you and your God. Then third, the JAMB boss has made a solemn promise that the exercise will be conclusive.

    So help him, God.