The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • NC and the return to the basics

    NC and the return to the basics

    You see that Benz sitting at the rich’s end?
    Ha! That motoka is a motoka
    It belongs to the Minister for Fairness
    Who yesterday was loaded with a doctorate
    At Makerere with whiskey and I don’t know what
    Plus I hear the literate thighs of an undergraduate — Theo Luzuka, “The Motoka”

    All of a sudden, the National Conference (NC) buzzes with a fervour of patriotism and Nigerianness, that you doubt if the whole exercise was not a wilful waste of time, energy and resources.

    If Nigeria were such a model country, and its citizens proud and sated patriots, why then the eternal agonising over its possible failure, that has forced a consistent clamour for a Sovereign National Conference (SNC), in response to which the Goodluck Jonathan National Conference (NC) has been called, with all its perceived booby traps?

    Of course, such cheap patriotic grandstanding, in the face of nation-threatening fundamental problems, is no different from vainglorious personal emptiness aptly demonstrated in the Ugandan Theo Luzuka’s poem, “The Motoka” (which opening lines are quoted to begin this piece); and in Nigerian Nkem Nwankwo’s novel, My Mercedes is Bigger than Yours.

    All too sudden, our NC conferees have become excellent citizens of an excellent country. Yet, resource-parched Nigerians, whose longsuffering youth gain death for fighting the pain of joblessness, are being forced to cough out N7 billion to purportedly fix their eternally sick country!

    It is indeed, a rhapsody of patriotism! Some happily declared themselves ethnic vacuums, and that, their formidable ammo to fix Nigeria.

    Others said, rather glumly, they wouldn’t clamber on board if they weren’t sure Nigeria was on the right track.

    Yet others solemnly swore “Nigerian unity” — that comic-tragic fixation that often begs the question, and may yet end in costly disillusionment — was beyond question. And all of these from “elder statesmen” who had earlier contributed more than a fair quota to the Nigerian fiasco!

    But before our esteemed delegates get too carried away by their own illusory poetry, it is high time someone jolted them back to the stark reality.

    Every Nigerian indeed dreams of a great Nigeria, a country that would compete with the best in the world, and deliver prosperity to its citizens. But right now, Nigeria is starkly opposite what it should be. That is why it needs urgent fixing.

    A good example of the Nigeria dissonance is the NC legal status. Right now, there is no legal plank on which the NC stands. But that is no accident. It is because, even as Lugard’s contraption shows signs of acute, if not terminal distress, there is no pan-Nigeria consensus on how to save it.

    That is no country deserving of glum patriotic gushing. It is a country in acute trauma; and the earlier the NC delegates see themselves as life-saving emergency medics, the better for everyone.

    Then, take the dysfunctional presidency. Even before President Jonathan, the presidency — democratic or military — has been a terrible breed. The “military presidency” of Ibrahim Babangida annulled Nigeria’s freest election; and nearly plunged the country into needless war and avoidable destruction. Under another Khaki presidency, Sani Abacha stole the country blind, so much so that his thick odour of infamy still oozes from his grave.

    Olusegun Obasanjo, even as elected president, suborned the Nigerian economic bluebloods to fund a personal project, thus grossly abusing his high office. The other day, President Jonathan himself declared, in the heat of the Sanusi Lamido Sanusi saga, that he had “absolute powers”! Absolute powers, in a democracy, with supposed institutional checks and balances?

    That, to be sure, was an un-presidential Freudian slip. But that is what the Nigerian Presidency has been all about: rakishly insensitive, bordering on the tyrannical — and parasitical to boot!

    That is no prime organ to crow about, in a model state, that by its performance should earn the love and affection of its citizens. Nigeria is no such model state. That is why it needs urgent fixing.

    But the Jonathan presidential temper is a grand irony, given that a cabal of the Umaru Yar’Adua presidency nearly made a Jonathan presidency a still-birth. At the height of that presidential criminality — in the name of a gentle but dying president, who did not know what was going on — brutal realpolitik trounced constitutional legality, which should, as routine, be supreme. Until the Senate came with its “doctrine of necessity”, the almighty state was at the mercy of the rogue few.

    A country that relies on realpolitik, rather than manifest justness and the routine triumph of its laws, is terribly ill. A people given to cutting ugly compromises, rather than an uncompromising national ethos of justice, equity and fair play, are endangered.

    Nigeria is such a country. Nigerians are such a people. Both need urgent fixing.

    But even as the Senate’s legal contraption dislodged the Yar’Adua power cabal, the Jonathan presidential emergence has implanted another future power bomb.

    Jonathan’s 2011 presidential candidacy issued from a toxic fountain of lies and damn lies, against the zoning formula of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), which ironically fetched Jonathan the vice-presidency under Yar’Adua.

    Jonathan’s 2011 presidential win issued from a near-hysterical South-Middle Belt Vs North emotive electoral sentiments, even with Jonathan’s so-called pan-Nigeria mandate, loudly touted by his Neighbour-to-Neighbour campaign lobby.

    Now, all Jonathan craves is an encore, when he knows all he has done is earn himself a massive electoral shellacking, even if he wins PDP nomination.

    But even if he gets his desire, that future danger still looms. A wounded North would feel no obligation to follow any future political arrangement, strictly outside the Constitution. More noxious: there is this abiding centrist mindset among the northern political elite, which tends to long for central power as it is, despite the clamour for federalism and restructuring.

    Now, if the North does get power back as it is, and political zoning is out, what happens? The North can try power in perpetuity — which it can ill sustain — claiming it has the population to do it. But other parts of the country too will be up in arms against such, but they have lost any pro-zoning argument by their 2011 anti-zoning conspiracy.

    That would be a recipe for disaster.

    That is why NC delegates must suspend their showy patriotism and alter the present format for good. A future time bomb ticks. But only restructuring can defuse it.

    That would turn Nigeria into a productive federation, pare down the presidency, drain the centre of excess cash and change the revenue relationship from revenue allocation (by the centre to states) to revenue contribution (from regions/states to the centre).

    That is how Nigeria can emerge the country of our collective dream; and have a fair chance to scale its second century, after the fiasco of the first.

     

     

  • Bugaje’s curious theory

    Bugaje’s curious theory

    Dr. Usman Bugaje’s curious theory, that the North on the basis of its land mass, “owns” the oil in the Niger Delta, is manifestly illogical. Besides, it is brazenly provocative and unconscionable. Worst of all, it is vacuously supremacist.

    All these are bad enough in themselves. But issuing from a citizen of a country that has groped for 100 years in search of a national community, it is culpable lack of patriotism, which borders on combative recklessness.

    Still, the greater shock is not that Dr. Bugaje made that statement, for such northern supremacist mindset has been around for long. It is rather that it met with a thunderous applause, which meant it touched a rapturous chord among the rabidly converted.

    Might power supremacy still dwell in the northern elite’s heart, after the untold catastrophe such a mindset has brought on the northern people — and Nigerians in general?

    Still, that idea is not new.

    At the height of the northern power hubris, Alhaji Maitama Sule, the Kano-born senior citizen and brilliant orator, propounded the theory that different segments of Nigeria had their divine missions. The North’s especial talent, he reasoned, was to rule.

    So, shouldn’t the country, he seemed to suggest, do a grand division of labour, where the North would concentrate on its core talent of ruling, while the other parts of the country concentrated on trade and commerce, diplomacy and the civil service, to the glory of motherland?

    Kano Governor, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, also shows some schizophrenic policy streak, when the stake is northern nationalism. On one hand, he authors policies with the progressive temper of radically developing Kano’s human resource, to enhance the state’s competitiveness in the Nigerian social-economic community. That is very laudable.

    But, when the issue is oil, its ownership and derivation, he reclines into the conservative laager, with the same impatient radicalism, with which he is sworn to developing his Kano people.

    Is it then not something of a split personality: a governor sworn to remaking his people to use their mind — and create their own wealth — is the same that appears fixated with oil, hundreds of kilometres away in the Niger Delta?

    It is a similar oil-fixated mindset that drove Dr. Bugaje’s fantastic latest theory.

    Even, among the “new North” — smart technocrats, bureaucrats and sundry professionals who can hold their own anywhere in the world — there appears this central thinking, to which oil is pivotal.

    For all his brilliance, efficiency and modernity, Nasir el-Rufai comes across from his book, The Accidental Public Servant, as not necessarily bothered by a restructured polity, so long as Nigeria’s resources are well harnessed.

    That is by no means a bad thing. But as long as Nigeria remains a resource omnibus, with oil as its core and with nary attempt at every section of the country developing its own resource niche, there would be unholy fixation with oil. That would continue to spur the sort of statement Bugaje just made.

    Another northern star, Nuhu Ribadu, the former anti-sleaze fiery angel, can also hold his own anywhere. Still, it is doubtful if has given much thought to a truly federalist Nigeria, where every segment of the union would proudly fend for itself.

    Yet, these are the brains sorely needed for the fresh thinking to wean the North from its sickly crush on oil, and the resultant ultra-dependency syndrome.

    That of course brings the matter right back to Dr. Bugaje’s claim — that the North occupies 72 per cent of Nigeria’s landmass; so it anchors the Niger Delta, and ensures its claim to the oil in adjoining sea!

    So, to that extent, the North can lay some claim to the oil, even it is far away! If there was an extra-ordinary piece of soulless sophistry, this was it!

    Still, some analysis of Dr. Bugaje’s claim. If indeed the North has 72 per cent of Nigeria’s land mass, that would be some form of asset, wouldn’t it? Put another way, that could mean 72 per cent of Nigeria’s land asset?

    But pray, in contrast, what percentage of Nigeria’s liability does the North log, even with its rich land asset? No sarcasm intended here, but that could be gleaned from the perennial southward drift of its cheap labour, the virtual collapse of its community with the advent of the Boko Haram crisis and its empty swagger, which thinly veils its mortal fear of losing out on the oil revenue front.

    Besides, the mindless violence that has seized the region, like some Armageddon, could be explained away to religious or ethnic tension. But really, it is an economic pull, a logical tragedy for an economically parched people, falling upon themselves in sheer economic madness.

    Yet, even with its challenges, the North boasts the brains to turn around its parlous human development index, if ruinous mindsets, like Bugaje’s, would not keep popping up.

    Such mindsets dream of easy money from oil — knowing full well that region is insulated from the environment-blighting oil bearing Niger Delta communities face — and not particularly caring about fair compensation in derivation, for that acute environmental pain.

    But perhaps the chicken would soon come home to roost, if oil is eventually struck in the Lake Chad basin. It is then the region would realise derivation is not just excess payout, but money earned from local economic value; and for acute pains from environmental destruction.

    So, as Nigeria urgently needs a restructuring of its polity, the North — at least that segment of it that could applaud Dr. Bugaje’s sophistry — needs a radical restructuring of the mind. Its socio-economic salvation would come not from oil dole from the Niger Delta or even from Lake Chad basin, but from wealth driven by its own people the hard way.

    That is how the North, like other parts of the country, can develop its economic niche, and therefore positively compete in a Nigerian commonwealth, where economically prosperous regions deliver mass development and prosperity for Nigerian citizens.

    But the Bugaje theory could not have come at a better time; and the National Conference that kicked off yesterday must take especial notice.

    Even if the Jonathan powers-that-be are bent on playing games as being alleged by many, the delegates cannot afford such dangerous games.

    Nigeria will not survive on a supremacist mindset that makes empty claims, based on vacuous logic and culpable sophistry; and powered by a reckless penchant to be insensitive, unfair and unjust.

    The Bugajes, the el-Rufais, the Ribadus and the Kwankwasos are bright minds that owe their region the bounden duty to radically alter its thinking; and turn the North into an economic dynamo that can compete with the best the rest of Nigeria can offer.

    That is the only way to the Nigerian dream. Any other way is an expressway to perdition; the sort that, for 100 years now, has left a political amalgam in a virtual cul-de-sac, on its unending journey to nationhood.

  • Whence cometh the angry generation?

    Whence cometh the angry generation?

    I first got the hint of weekend’s ill-fated immigration test when a cousin of mine called from Lokoja, the Kogi State capital to inquire if I had any information on the impending recruitment test. After telling him that I had no such information, he would call moments later not only to confirm that the test was indeed taking place but also to notify me of his receipt of the test eligibility slip. You guessed right; that was his way of duly serving the notice on the need to start tapping on my contacts in earnest – the only way round the impossible statistical odd of less than a chance in a hundred!

    You can bet that by Saturday when the news of the multiple harvests of deaths and broken limbs across the test centres hit the wires, the impossible statistics was far from my mind. Rather, the only thing on my mind was whether the young man made it out of the crowded venue in one piece. The extent of the national tragedy would hit home much later when the body count hit a score. The soulless, inhuman, and utterly incompetent Nigerian Immigration Service bureaucratic machine had delivered!

    Clearly, the story of unimaginable orgy of brutalisation and dehumanisation of the battalions of youths desperately in need of a job has only begun to unfold. Merely from the bits and parts – from Benin to Lagos, Minna to Kano, Port Harcourt to Makurdi, Enugu to Gombe – the revelation is about of a group of antediluvian officials being saddled with an assignment beyond their ken, individuals so terribly out of depth with elementary dictates of modern governance that leaves hanging the question of their qualifications for their high offices.

    If anyone ever doubted the extent to which the NIS’ has perfected its strange methodology of substitution by elimination, one only needs to recall that the service also despatched 17 promising Nigerians to the great beyond in similar circumstances in 2008. That year, the route was via strenuous physical exercise – without the due care to inquire into the applicants’ state of the fitness.

    This time around, the service simply herded thousands into closets designed to ensure that only the fittest make it alive. The result across the board was predictable: One score dead; more than three scores seriously injured.

    In Minna, Niger State, for instance, 11,000 were reported to have showed up at the Women Day Secondary School venue of the exercise. The crowd of applicants were said to have lined up stretching up to some two kilometres from the test venue leaving security agents to what they do best in the circumstance: brutalise the hapless applicants. At the end of the stampede which they helped to create, three lay dead. Next door Abuja was no better: the stampede inside the 60, 000 capacity stadium where the exercise took place ensured the loss of seven precious lives.

    Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital would share the same fate. An estimated 35,000 applicants had descended on the stadium as early 7 a.m. To quell the crowd that had become restive in the scorching heat, tear gas were freely used and in the ensuing stampede, five lay dead – among whom was a pregnant woman.

    Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital was a tad better; there security officials freely deployed horsewhips keep the thousands of youths gathered at the Mudashiru Lawal Stadium, Asero, Abeokuta, venue of the exercise in line. Never mind that the exercise slated for 9 a.m did not commence till around 3:30 p.m, by which time a large number of the applicants, frustrated, had already left for home.

    Let us look at the statistics behind the doomed venture to appreciate why the dunderheads in the NIS should be herded to the gulag. At the conservative figure of 520,000 said to have applied for vacant slots said to be anything between 3,500 to 5,000, they ought to have appreciated why an exercise which guaranteed a less than one percent success outcome would create the kind of ugly scenario such as we saw. As it now turns out, our grave mistake was to assume that the fat, analogue heads at the NIS – although clever enough to appreciate the need to extort N1,000 from each of the applicants – ought to know a thing or two about basic management, or the notion of problem-solving – the ability to anticipate problems before they occur?

    Perhaps, having gotten away with murder the last time, the hierarchs of the NIS have come to believe that they could do it as often as it pleased them without being called to account. That was why a so-called minister of the republic – Abba Moro or what’s his name would dare to pronounce a verdict of guilt on the victims for – wait for it – impatience!

    I do not believe that the citizens have fully grasped the import of the criminal negligence that the NIS and its principal, the federal government, perpetrated at the weekend. Imagine a different scenario – involving say an Asian company, in which the dead was numbered in 10s. Imagine further, the company chief executive showing up on prime time television to put the blame on the victims even when the facts are only still trickling in.

    And – imagine the federal government, carrying on as if nothing happened.

    No doubt, the tragic events of the weekend say a lot about who we are. Taken together with other developments in the polity, it says a lot about our regression into the jungle where life is not just brutish but short.

    Let me say that the outpouring of outrage is understandable. Perhaps, it is the kind of therapy citizens need to assuage their collective guilt in the face of their failure to galvanise collective action to demand the kind of change that they want. Good as outrage is, the point is that they are never nearly sufficient. I have seen too many Nigerian youths put up with just about anything in the misguided believe that they would chance upon some future fortune. I have seen innumerable others take solace in false dogma which demand unreason while outsourcing personal responsibility .

    I don’t think Nigerian youths, mighty as the army has become, are nearly as angry as they should be.

  • Abia guber 2015 and the gender issue

    In an environment dominated by a tyranny of obsessed masculinity; it is often erroneously viewed as preposterous for women to dare to lock horns with men, in a competitive contest. But that thinking is retrogressive. Even from biblical and classical historical standpoints, women had been proven as change agents and pace-setters of moral reformation. It is therefore an aberration of monumental proportion, sometimes bordering on obnoxious cultural practices, to discriminate against women on issues that they have the inherent capacity and natural endowments to accomplish.

    Right from the era of Mother Theresa who exemplified a moral force through her charitable works to the thousands of sick and dispossessed persons in Calcutta, the India’s second biggest city; to the recent case of Malala Yousafzai- a Pakistan schoolgirl who defied Taliban threats to campaign for women’s right to education, women have continued to play noble and awesome roles in the making of a better society.

    During the 2013 inauguration speech for a second term in office, President Barack Obama of United States noted that “it is our generation’s task to carry out what those pioneers began, for our journey is not complete until our wives, our mothers and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts”. In essence, a democracy that discriminates against women is a contradiction in terms. That is why Kofi Annan, the former Secretary General of United Nations emphasized that families are better fed when women participate actively in developmental affairs and political decisions.

    The story of Sally Ride, the first American woman and the youngest American astronaut to go into space is illustrative here. For decades, she had mounted spirited pressure to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), an agency of United States government that is responsible for the nation’s civilian space programme and for aeronauts and aerospace research. NASA had feared biological concerns for women experiencing long periods of weightlessness in space. Apart from having two successful flights into space, when she was eventually permitted, she moved ahead to become a professor of physics and co-authored seven science books for children. Indeed, Americans have long recognized the strength, in galvanizing the talents and skills of their women in development activities, including governance and public administration.

    Take for examples, the countries of India and Afghanistan where women’s aspiration to get to the top are fraught with disdain, ridicule and cultural abuse. The only female athlete that represented Afghanistan in the last London Olympics, the 23 year-old Tahmina Kohistani showed what women could do and what future generations should fight for. Though she finished last in the second round in 14 minutes, 42 seconds; she is hoping to feature in the forthcoming Brazilian Olympics, and that outing had ‘revolutionalized’ the deep-seated thought pattern against women’s quest to attain excellence in open competitive events.

    Certainly, the likes of Ms Tawakkol Karman a journalist from Yemen-the backwater of Arab world, would not have become the first Arab woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011 if she did not mobilize university students to organize a sit-in at Yemen Change Square. That is the power of a woman, in a turbulent country, with a government that is intolerant to dissenting views.

    In Africa, where corruption and bad leadership have combined to make the continent a giant toddler, the first female president of Malawi, Joyce Banda who succeeded the late President Bingu wa Mutharika is breaking new grounds. Her policy choices and statements have turned in accolades and global acclaim. Her rare guts and motherly resolve to leapfrog her country from the shackles of corruption, abuse of office and high cost of governance, in the face of debilitating poverty and lack, is awesome. Apart from slashing her statutory earnings by 30% and selling off 35 Mercedes Benz cars used by the cabinet, she also resolved to sell the new presidential jet, purchased by her predecessor, to enable her tackle chronic food shortages affecting millions of poor people in Malawi. That is the passion with which a woman pushes any course she believes in.

    Back home in Nigeria, Dora Akunyili, the former Director General (DG) of National Agency for Food and Drug Administration & Control (NAFDAC), at a considerable risk to her personal safety, waged relentless onslaught against the distribution and sales of counterfeit drugs and unsafe food. Her courage in battling the monster and its syndicate attracted harvests of laurels both locally and internationally. Her record has remained a benchmark for successive Dgs in the agency.

    With all these trajectory of female icons, why then should gender be an issue in the hot race towards Governor T.A. Orji’s successor in Abia State in 2015? Already, the quest for a first female governor of Abia State is boosted by President Goodluck Jonathan administration’s avowed readiness to meet the Beijing conference declaration, which advocates 35 percent affirmative action. Barring the weak propaganda against womanhood in our clime, Senator Nkechi Nwaogu, an astute parliamentarian has left no one in doubt that she is equal to the task of governing Abia State. She has a mark of destiny on her as a trailblazer. She emerged the first elected female legislator to the House of Representatives from Abia State when nobody gave her a chance between 2003 and 2007 and performed outstandingly. In 2007, she was rewarded by her people with elevation to the Senate to represent Abia Central Senatorial District, this time in the PDP. And she consolidated the feat by being re-elected in 2011.

    In the Senate, she chaired sensitive committees made up of eminent men who had spotted her managerial prowess and heart for the people. Senator Nwaogu dispassionately dissects public policies and initiates options to promote good governance. As a Senate Committee Chairman of Banking, Insurance and other Financial Institutions, made up of 11 male Senators, Senator Nwaogu introduced critical motions in the floor of the Senate that brought about some fundamental changes in the operations of the Central Bank of Nigeria. One of the gains of such legislative interventions is what is called Budget and Assumption Exercise or Cherry Picking which entails that a customer in a bank that has a problem and is acquired by another automatically belongs to the new bank with his assets and liabilities. This has immensely removed the hassles Nigerians go through in accessing their funds when a bank is acquired by a sister bank.

    Presently, Nwaogu is the chairman of the Committee on Gas. She had canvassed for a comprehensive review of the nation’s gas master-plan with a view to making Nigeria an indisputable regional hub of gas-related industries in no distant future. The committee is currently collaborating with the Ministry of Petroleum Resources to fine-tune the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) for passage into law.  She had also used her mercurial personality and national reach to attract numerous constituency projects across the LGAs in her Senatorial Zone.

    Indeed, Senator Nwaogu is like J.P. Clark’s good driver, who arrives the market again and again, with fresh vegetables. Her entrance to gubernatorial contest in Abia is to contribute her quota, from the driver’s seat, in moving Abia to greater heights. Her wealth of experience, uncommon courage, strength of character, love for her people, amiable personality and above all, virtue, are the exceptional qualities that the state should leverage on, to consolidate the air of freedom witnessed under Governor Orji. Let her therefore, be judged by her abilities and not on gender.

    •Madu contributed this piece from Umuahia, Abia State.

  • That Immigration job tragedy

    The death of no fewer than 19 job seekers at the last nationwide job recruitment exercise of the Nigeria Immigration Service was a sad reminder of how bad things have gone in this country.

    If over 700,000 applied for just 4,560 vacancies then it goes without saying that the unemployment situation in the country is far worse than we thought. And the unemployed are not just the ones without formal or informal jobs they include some in paid employment whose take home cannot take them home so to speak.

    The situation is further compounded by employment/job placement agencies that have contracts to recruit or supply workers for some blue chip companies. The job seekers get the job no doubt, but they are forced to share their salary with the agency that recruited them.

    I didn’t know about this until a nephew got a job with one of the third generation banks. She had been at home for two years after her National Youth Service and was desperate to get a job. She was invited for what I would call ‘blind’ interview because they weren’t told which company wanted to hire them. Lucky to scale the first hurdle, she was invited along with a few others for the second interview after which she was offered provisional employment. The bank offered about N130, 000 as monthly salary but the agency to which their employment was contracted wanted half of the money or no job for them.

    For obvious reasons, she rejected the offer but a lot of her colleagues couldn’t because they just needed to get somewhere to go in the morning and return in the evening under the guise of working even if the salary could barely cover their transport fare. They cannot continue to stay at home any longer. The frustration of joblessness had driven them almost to the point of insanity, so any job would do.

    I thought this was rubbish and was going to fight it until a friend told me it was not a new thing and spoke of a relation who is into that kind of slavery employment with this same third generation bank.

    You can now imagine why over 700,000 applied for 4,560 jobs. The NIS being a Federal government agency guarantees job security and is relatively well paying. Nobody shares your salary with you except your family and relations. And all things being equal you can expect to work till your retirement and earn a hefty gratuity and good pension thereafter.

    These are some of the attractions of government jobs whether federal, state or local, and they probably explain why those 700,000 Nigerians wanted to work with the NIS. It would not be out of place to say that not all of them are unemployed. A few just wanted to change jobs and thought being an Immigration Officer is a better option.

    If job security and perhaps better pay are some of the attractions to Federal Government jobs, why can’t other employers offer same for their workers? The situation is worse in the private sector where most employers hire casual labour in their workforce primarily to reduce cost and also free themselves from all obligations under permanent employment.

    Salaries are often not paid as and when due and the workers for fear of being sacked keep quiet hoping that tomorrow would be better. And when they remember the number of years they spent at home before getting the job, they would rather hang on than challenge their employers or resign; half bread they say is better than none, you hear them say.

    Some parents had invested so much in the education and training of their children with the lawful expectation that the children would get a good job after graduation to be able to take care of them in their old age. Unfortunately things have not turned out that way for most of them. Some in their old ages are still sustaining their adult children; it is this bad.

    I am sure most of those 700,000 Nigerians that turned out at designated centres across the federation last Saturday for the 4, 560 NIS jobs took all these into consideration before they applied for and headed for the interview. But what did they get? Tears, sorrows and blood.

    The choice of the National Stadium in Abuja and other similar facilities across the federation for the interview showed that the NIS anticipated a large turnout of applicants, so, what or how did they prepare for them? In Abuja where no fewer than seven persons died, little or nothing was provided for the almost 70,000 that turned up for the interview in terms of medical service. Under normal circumstances, a venue that can accommodate 70,000 people at once must as of necessity and rule be provided with basic medical facilities in case of emergency. Was any provided by NIS at the stadium last Saturday?

    The Minister of Interior Abba Moro, under whose control the NIS falls, in an unguarded statement blamed some of the applicants for being unruly and accused some of turning up even when they did not apply for the job. What a stupid talk? Even if they were not invited, which I doubt, the NIS and by extension the Ministry of Interior should have made adequate preparation for crowd control in cases of emergencies like last Saturday’s. More so, NIS being a paramilitary organization should have trained its officers and men in effective and safe crowd control. If this had been done, there would have been no need to use the military to control the surging crowd.

    There are so many gates leading into and out of the main bowl of the Abuja National Stadium, why was it that only one of them was opened to let the applicants in? Was this the NIS way of controlling the crowd?

    We often wonder why Nigeria doesn’t get the nod to host international events like South Africa by the international organizing bodies; this is one of the reasons. You can imagine if last Saturday’s job interview was an international event and what an embarrassment it would have been for our country internationally?

    I remember one Challenge Cup semi of final match at the Surulere, Lagos National Stadium sometime in the late 70s played under floodlight. The match ended in favour of the less fancied team and somebody somewhere in the Stadium Management decided to put off the floodlight immediately after the match apparently as punishment for the winning team and its supporters. In pitch darkness, the spectators started filling out only to see all the gates but one locked. The stampede was exactly like last Saturday’s and many souls were lost.

    We didn’t learn anything from that experience. In 2008 people also died during job recruitment exercise by the same NIS and its counterpart in the Nigeria Prison Service. It doesn’t seem we learnt anything from that experience either. Only if don’t fail to learn from their mistakes and they are condemned to repeating it. Are we fools in this country?

    This is no time to point accusing fingers at anyone as all of us are guilty of not planning well or not being faithful to our plans. This is one of our national problems and the earlier we tackle it together with our other problems the better. But then, some people must be punished for the death of this Nigerians, let’s start with Comrade Abba Moro and his team including the NIS leadership.

    Over to you President Goodluck Jonathan.

     

     

  • Our much-abused jobseekers, again

    Our much-abused jobseekers, again

    Looking for work,” I wrote on this page more than five years ago, “has become one of the most dangerous occupations in Nigeria – a risky venture that is likely to cause harm or injury, even death.”

    In that piece (August 19, 2008), I had employed term “occupation” not in a flippant or cynical sense, but to reflect what had become the painful reality for millions of our young men and women for whom looking for a job had become a full-time occupation in itself

    As they pounded the streets and scoured the corporate offices and factories and farms and construction sites in search of work, I remarked, they were more likely to be swindled, mugged, kidnapped, sexually assaulted or exploited and abused in every conceivable manner by persons masquerading as prospective employers or their agents.

    I was reacting to reports in the July 14, 2008, editions of the national newspapers that dozens had died the preceding weekend at various centres across Nigeria in recruitment exercises conducted by the Immigration Service and the Prisons Department.

    Desperate applicants in various conditions of unfitness, many of whom probably had not eaten that day, were required to complete a 2.5 km race in 18 minutes (men) and 20 minutes (women). The recruiters had given no thought to setting up the emergency medical services that are routinely provided even in situations involving those whose physical fitness can be taken for granted.

    For 43 of the 195, 000 applicants jostling for 3,000 vacancies, the race proved a fatal regimen, a journey of no return. A good many of them were trampled underfoot in the frenzied rush to gain a vantage position at the start; others died from sheer exhaustion. Hundreds sought hospital treatment for the injuries they suffered during the race.

    This grisly scenario, slightly modified, was reenacted last week, again by the Immigration Service, at various locations across the country where it was scheduled to administer written tests to some 520, 000 applicants chasing 4, 556 openings..

    The 2008 fitness test of a 2.5 km run was replaced with an obstacle requiring thousands of applicants who had converged on various locations several hours ahead of schedule to muscle, squeeze, elbow, and claw or otherwise find their way to the event through a single entrance.

    They are still counting, but at least 19 persons, four of them pregnant women, were killed in the resulting stampedes. Hundreds suffered injuries. The luckier ones were horse-whipped (Calabar), tear-gassed (Port Harcourt), or sent into wild panic when Immigration officials and police shot into the air, they claimed, to control the surging crowds (Asaba and Abeokuta).

    In some of the centres where they managed to administer the written test, the whole thing was a sham. The main bowl of the National Stadium, Surulere, in Lagos, was reportedly crammed to the rafters, with hardly any elbow room; there were no desks, and many had to sit on the bare floor to take the test, though each candidate had paid a fee of N1, 000 for the privilege. So chaotic was the atmosphere that the outcome cannot pass for a true measure of any candidate’s ability.

    One has got to be practically unconscious not to have anticipated the bedlam that would claim so many innocent lives, or supinely indifferent to the pain and distress of others not to have thought of devising appropriate measures to avert it.

    In a sane society, the responsible political official would have handed in his resignation even if the fiasco had not been compounded by so wanton a grim harvest. Elementary decency demands nothing less.

    But ours is a society in which nothing succeeds like impunity, Abba Moro, the Minister of the Interior, who has the Immigration Service under his portfolio, is an authentic product thereof. So, instead of taking responsibility, or even showing empathy, he blamed the victims.

    In one breath, he says this is not an occasion for apportioning blame. In the very next, he says the tragedy was all the fault of those who attempted to break into the stadium premises forcefully when they had not even applied for the advertised positions.

    “Several unauthorised persons came in here, especially pregnant women,” he said. Then, as if for emphasis, he added: “I am surprised that pregnant women would want to come and partake in this exercise that involves physical exercises.”

    It is almost as if a licence to talk without thought comes with being a political official in Nigeria. Still, Abba Moro’s statement has got to rank among the most unfeeling and indecent ever uttered by such a figure, on a par with Bauchi State Governor Isa Yuguda’s remark that the murder of 20 Youth Corpers doing election duties in state in 2011 was in keeping with their destiny.

    Compounding indecency with obtuseness, Moro presumes to set up a committee to investigate the tragedy and recommend to him measures that will help “ameliorate the situation.” It does not occur to him that he is not a fit and proper person to authorise that kind of investigation, and that he cannot even stay in his present office or any public office while an inquiry lasts.

    President Goodluck Jonathan must seize this moment to break the cycle of impunity that has been the hallmark of a good many of his Administration’s officials by dismissing Abba Moro and the head of the Immigration Service forthwith.

    Far too many Nigerians who have every right to the protection of the state have died needless deaths on account of the incompetence, negligence and fecklessness of officials who have learned no lessons because no lessons were taught.

    It is also time for the Administration to move beyond empty slogans to address unemployment forthrightly. It is nothing if not scandalous that an Administration which has made job creation a top priority for the past few years has not even made a dent on employment. Government officials don’t even have the true measure of the problem. Their estimates range between 35 and 50 percent of persons qualified, able and willing to work.

    Every so often, a cabinet minister or state governor calls a news conference to announce that thousands of job openings had been filled in some unspecified establishment, or that a policy that had just been approved would create hundreds of thousands of jobs in the very near future, if not immediately.

    Some officials who have spent all their adult lives in cushy government jobs think nothing of admonishing the teeming armies of the unemployed not to look to the government for work but to seek their fortunes in the private sector or self- employment.

    Such stunts must stop, and so must the ritual sloganeering. It is a grand illusion to think that transformation of any kind can occur in a situation of mass unemployment.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Preface to the National Conference

    Preface to the National Conference

    Dr Goodluck Jonathan’s National Conference may yet re-shape Nigeria and define Nigerian-ness in ways that not even the most fervent protagonists of restructuring could have contemplated. But on the strength of how the conveners have gone about recruiting delegates, there is much cause to doubt whether it will change the existing order in any significant way.

    Advertised as a forum for addressing the National Question, the Conference was not going to be a desultory parody, the type staged by Sani Abacha, of frightful memory, to bury “June 12” and buy legitimacy for his murderous regime, and by former President Olusegun Obasanjo, who was widely believed to have confected it as a back-door route to a third term prohibited by the Constitution.

    Instead, the gathering was going to discuss, if not re-negotiate, the fundamental basis of Nigeria’s political existence, the sharing of power and management of national resources in terms of access, control, and distribution.

    Where the motley assemblies convened by Abacha and Obasanjo could only tiptoe around those issues on which discussion was not entirely foreclosed, representatives of Nigeria’s federating units, would at the Jonathan Conference engage in a wise, robust and uninhibited discussion to resolve, once and for all, the National Question.

    That, at any rate, was how Dr Jonathan sold the idea to the public.

    The pitch was a volte face for which nothing had prepared the public, and it was rendered all the more suspect by the timing. How do you convene a National Conference on the eve, literally, of a General Election, with the ruling party in disarray, in the face of an insurgency that has made a vast stretch of Northeastern Nigeria ungovernable, and an economy in which more growth has been translating into greater popular misery?

    Was the whole thing not a distraction? Could a new arrangement be designed in three months?

    Many thoughtful persons across the country who had for decades been demanding a National Conference embraced the proposal enthusiastically. To them, here was a chance, at last, to fix Nigeria and nudge it firmly and irreversibly into the place for which nature has so richly endowed it.

    There were also the usual careerists who saw the whole thing as an opportunity to bask in the glow of the Conference and more importantly pick up a good slice of the N7 billion voted for Helpful as always in such matters, the news media quickly figured it out that each delegate stood to take home some N4 million. That opened the floodgates for lobbying and influence-peddling.

    The list of delegates released last week represents both groups —those genuinely seeking significant if not radical change, and those with an eye on the main chance, plus more than a sprinkling of candidates handpicked by the Federal Government using a formula that is nothing less than a perversion of a “gathering of the tribes” demanded by protagonists of the National Conference and promised by Dr Jonathan.

    Learned societies like the Nigeria Academy of Science and professional bodies like the Nigeria Union of Journalists have suddenly been conferred with the status of “federating units.” Nor is it always clear how the delegates for many of the constituencies identified on the list were chosen.

    Take, an example, the two individuals who have been named to represent expatriate Nigerians in the United States, among whom I have counted myself for the past 16 years. I do not know them, and if any meeting was held at which they were voted to represent us, I was given no notification.

    I have inquired from fellow expatriate Nigerians living in the continental United States, from the Atlantic Northeast to the Pacific Northwest, and from the Florida panhandle to Sacramento, and their story is the same. They do not know the individuals, and had played no part in their selection.

    The very idea of designating some persons to represent expatriate Nigerians in America or Europe or Asia or Australia is grounded on the misapprehension that they are organised into a body that can speak and act for them. There are no such bodies. The authorities in Abuja know that but still went ahead with their accustomed fudging to pick “delegates” for them.

    The bodies that are best placed to address the National Question are the accredited delegates representing the 36 states and Abuja FCT, the so-called geopolitical zones, ethnic nationalities and socio cultural organisations, traditional institutions, and of various faiths.

    But in an effort to create the illusion of democratic participation, delegate selection has been fragmented in ways that have no bearing on the National Question, the main issue before the National Conference.

    As far as I know, the National Question has never been a central concern of the International Federation of Women Lawyers. Yet it has been assigned two delegates – the same number as the recognised political parties with millions of card-carrying members.

    Former legislators and governors and chairmen of local government councils could easily have been accommodated as delegates of zones, ethnic nationalities, geopolitical zones, or political parties. But they have been assigned separate quotas of delegates, as have retired senior military, police, and national security officials.

    The 17 “statesmen” handpicked by the Federal Government to serve as delegates could also have been selected by their ethnic nationalities, states, or zones. And you have to wonder how they arrived at a quota of six delegates to represent people living with disabilities, and how the six were selected, to say nothing about whether they have a position on the National Question.

    This fragmentation, plus the packing of the Conference with handpicked delegates supposedly representing interests that are hardly critical to fruitful discussion of the National Question, can only constrain the room for the consensus that should, according to the Conference’s rules of procedure, undergird decision-making.

    In the absence of consensus, the rules stipulate that decisions taken by the Conference must be backed by 75 percent of the 492 delegates. It so happens that there are more than enough handpicked delegates answering to the Presidency or to no coherent constituency who can be counted upon to supply the 25 percent of votes required to block resolutions.

    Is this the product of design or just pure coincidence?

    A good many of the handpicked delegates and those going in on quotas assigned to all kinds of fringe associations have been around for so long in public life and contributed in measures large and small to our present grief. To them, the system is not broken. It has served them well. So, why fix it?

    Given this arrangement, one can hardly blame those in the attentive audience – or stakeholders, to employ the stultifying Nigerian locution – who believe tenaciously that at the end of the National Conference, the National Question will remain largely unresolved.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Scrapping a toxic presidency

    Scrapping a toxic presidency

    Can a toxic presidency produce a wholesome president? That is one fundament players across the political divide have refused to grasp.

    That appears responsible for the conceptual fog that continues to plague the National Conference, billed to take off on March 17.

    On the virtual eve of a supposedly make-or-mar confab, partisan temper appears coalesced on the ruinous centrism that has beggared Nigeria for decades now — and seems set to see its eventual unravelling.

    The trajectory of the Nigerian ruling court, since the colonial times, appears clear enough. Lord Fredrick Lugard headed a colonial regime sold to total local exploitation for its Metropole.

    At independence, foreign domination gave way to local domination. The collapse into military rule, shortly after, further formalised the notion of power without responsibility.

    Even with the current democracy, little has changed. From Olusegun Obasanjo to Goodluck Jonathan, the ruling ethos appears clearly on the side of an unquestionable Leviathan, even with the mouthing of “democracy” and “federalism”.

    At the root of this subversion of democracy and good governance is idle funds in the central till, that gives each succeeding president the Dutch courage that it could do and undo — so long as it has enough cash to fund its rascality. And all the talk about the unity of Nigeria being a “no go” area is all scarecrow stuff: to divert attention from the real dangers; and keep the central Leviathan intact.

    Even in the build-up to the confab, you could tell from the body language of the Jonathan Presidency that it is anxious that those idle funds are never drained off, so that it could retain the instrument to wield humongous mischief, powered by idle money.

    What is more? Though one should always give the extant government the benefit of the doubt, that its intentions are noble and its motive pure, the N7 billion budget for the confab, with the anticipated N4 million allowance for each delegate, looks like some grand but cynical bribe to lure who is who into some bazaar, from which they can’t possibly pull out until it is too late.

    Yet, if this conference fails to fix Nigeria for good, other dynamics would fix Nigeria for ill.

    But not only the government side is fixated with centrist tendencies. The opposition too is not entirely cured of that ailment.

    To be sure, the newly released All Progressives Congress (APC) road map appears exciting. But it is still based on the centralist tenet of an all-powerful and all-rich federal government; that would nevertheless spend its excess money more responsibly than the reckless and spendthrift Jonathan Presidency.

    If the APC federal government is pledged to creating two jobs for every one job a state creates, the simple logical conclusion is that the central government is an economic Leviathan, far richer than the states it is supporting.

    No doubt, creating jobs that way is not unwelcome. Indeed, it would be hailed by all — the distressed youths and their ever-stressed parents and guardians. But it hardly changes the current folly of building an economy top-down, instead of down-up. That is the bane of Nigeria’s pseudo-federalism, and the root of the country’s perennial under-development.

    Where then are the sharp federalist alternatives, that should mark APC out as leading the push from sickly centrism to vibrant federalism, in the best tradition of “Change”, its political war cry?

    Still, APC may well be a victim of its grand coalition. Aside from the South West that has a radical federalist agenda, the attitude of others appears somewhat ambivalent, even if it is the fashion these days to mouth “true federalism”.

    The North is basically centrist at heart, which is understandable. That region has most benefited from Nigeria’s skewed federalism — and power nepotism. But it also has paid the stiffest price of its dysfunction. With its parlous development index, it is a region purging from the sweet poison of its “good” fortune.

    The South East is torn between growing and managing its landlocked homeland — which, with its talent it is perfectly capable of doing — and the fate of its far-flung Ndigbo in the “Nigerian Diaspora”. Its ambivalence on the federal cause is perhaps understandable.

    The South-South, on the other hand, screams federalism and resource control to have more of its oil wealth — hardly illegitimate. But if Jonathan can nick the good luck of four more years, it would appear quite open to a central bazaar’s last hurrah.

    These might therefore be the cross-current APC had been navigating before coming up with its road map, which is anything but federal, save for its proposal to vest minerals and mining in local interests, as against the present joke of making it a central affair, and its consequent paralysis.

    After the failed hope of five decades, therefore, it is sheer folly to entrust the fortune of Nigerians to a good man or woman, without radically restructuring the bad system. That is more or less what the APC roadmap offers. The APC good men and women are welcome. But even more welcome is a good system!

    The system to do the job is robust federalism, with even more robust checks and balances, between a pared down centre and much more energised federating units. That should ensure the real economy is in the constituent parts, with the federal government doing positive facilitation and coordination.

    Former President Obasanjo and incumbent President Jonathan are a pole apart as any can be: the one, a gruff, irredeemable old soldier whose default temper is dictatorship; the other a harmless-looking, ever-smiling bloke with a supposed liberal temper.

    But see the difference in their presidencies: six and half-a-dozen, when the issue is unconscionable domination and wielding power without responsibility!

    The one suborned the local economy for an illicit presidential library complex; and is living happily ever after with his trophy. The other cannot account for an allegedly missing US$ 20 billion oil money. Yet he is flushed, not with regret, but with a sickening sense of divine entitlement for second term!

    Obasanjo and Jonathan are both products of a toxic presidency. Any wonder they have not emerged non-toxic presidents?

    So, the first task before the National Conference, if they really want Nigeria’s survival, is to detoxify the Presidency flush with toxic money, and channel such to development, where it is needed.

    Two eminent Nigerians are pointing at the way out.

    Chief Emeka Anyaoku, former Commonwealth secretary-general, is voting for a restructured federation, based on federating regions of states.

    Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar, who shares in the notoriety of the military and its central command complex that has left Nigeria winded, warns at the mutual desperation between his native North (ogling central power as it is) and the South-South — read opportunistic Jonathan (not in a hurry to spew out, to use Achebe-speak, the palm kernel thrust in its mouth by benevolent spirits!).

    The National Conference must rid Nigeria of its misery — a toxic presidency that fattens while the people in its charge waste. It is the arrogant face of mindless centrism that has underdeveloped Nigeria for too long.

    But should it preserve this hideous Leviathan, it would have paved Nigeria’s way to Golgotha.

  • A leap of faith

    A leap of faith

    If it seems any measure of the hunger in the land for talks – the Jonathan National Conference must have surprised itself at the roll call of delegates. For a conference without a guarantee of a definitive outcome, it has, surprisingly, thus far, managed to surpass expectations in terms of membership. As it appears, initial scepticisms about what the enfeebled body could achieve appear to have worn off; it seems that not even the contrarians in the South-west could resist the pressure to send their first eleven. At last, Nigerians have a platform to address some of the nagging questions about our statehood. Here, at last is our Eureka moment!

    Issues about the conference of course remain, starting with the question of what the conference seeks to achieve. For not only is the so-called Nigerian malaise over-diagnosed, the issue really has never been one of shortage of prescriptions to get the Leviathan working. This is where the coming days should be exciting as the delegates meet to chart their idea of the way forward.

    I do not think anyone disputes that a sizeable chunk of the problems facing the nation are of a constitutional nature. Indeed, majority of Nigerians would appear to have resolved that the present constitution, as amended, is federal only in name. This extends to the structure of relations between the constituent units in the Nigerian federation. At least, majority of citizens would seem agreed that the bizarre fiscal architecture that it has spawned –under which rent is rewarded while mutually assured poverty is guaranteed – is a prescription for disaster.

    The same goes for the awesome power of the Nigerian presidency in the face of retreating state institutions – something that makes the Nigerian presidency near absolutist – possibly the most powerful in the whole wide world. Add all of these to the humongous cost of governance that leaves paltry little for development, the incipient micro nationalism tearing at the heart of the nation’s unity in the atmosphere of increasing diminution of effectiveness of state power and authority could only be the end game.

    The point therefore cannot be over-made about the need to re-examine the structure of the union to guarantee its future survival. After 100 years of forced cohabitation, the signs of stress to the union are too palpable; they have grown to such extent that we can only ignore the symptoms only to our collective peril. Even without the now palpable weakened capacity of the Nigerian state to secure lives and property in the face of the renewed scourge of the Boko Haram and the unrelenting militancy in the Niger Delta that has seen oil production plummet by nearly one-filth in the last one year, the reality on the main street –by this I mean youth unemployment, rising poverty and the harsh reality of de-industrialisation – leaves little room for denials. These days, all we hear are claims of “progress” on all fronts; the truth however is that Nigeria is in far deeper trouble than anyone would care to admit. Nigeria sits precariously on the edge.

    Where does the National Conference idea fit in the survival mix? That is the tough question. Not even the convener, the federal government, pretends to have the answers. Nigerians don’t either. It is simply taken that the journey would lead somewhere –a leap into the abyss of faith – minus work.

    With due respect to the eminent body of 492 wise men and women many of them distinguished by any measure, I personally suffer no illusions about what their efforts would come to. My problem with the charade is the lie that the Jonathan National Conference, an extra-constitutional body, would dare to tread where the National Assembly– a body that enjoys constitutional legitimacy – dread. Whether the issue is the fundamental alterations of the structures of government described as devolution of powers, or routine matters of governance, I do not see the conference, short of staging a coup d’etat, imagining at any point that it could supplant the National Assembly. Which of course makes the suggestion that the conference could proffer binding resolutions wishful. Even at that, the requirement that resolutions could only be carried by consensus or majority 75 percent vote renders the prospects of any agreements not just potentially problematic but nigh impossibility. Not only are cleavages too deep, there are far too few areas that the contending groups in the polity have found agreement.

    How about the more practical approach, the less fractious and potentially far more productive route of the on-going amendment with additional focus on revamping our institutions to curb the brazen outlawry dispensed by the PDP in the name of governance?

    As attractive as it appears, that prospect offers possibilities that are unlikely to be far-reaching enough. Can you think of the national parliament that has had nearly the whole of 15 years to tinker with the awesome fiscal powers of the federal leviathan but did nothing suddenly finding the good sense in taming own unbridled appetite and that of the executive? Think it would ever happen? Not now – or in the foreseeable future. So how does the Jonathan conference propose to surmount the hurdle?

    Is the National Conference therefore entirely useless? Not really. The conference would no doubt help to foster some degree of understanding among the disparate groups on a number of contending issues. Indeed, some of the resolutions may well come handy in the amendment process since, again, it is the National Assembly that has the final say on the outcome of the process. The important point is – this is hardly the time to dwell on the lie that the National Conference can offer Nigerians something that it is not in a position to do.

    I don’t want to go into the question of whether the outlay of N7 billion voted for the conference is money well spent. To me, it is a matter of opinion. If you ask me, what is N7 billion in the self-help republic where officials routinely help themselves to billions of naira from the public till with no adverse consequences; a republic which lately reported a lone official allegedly chalking up N10 billion in air charters?

    Where is the way forward? I wish I, or anyone for that matter, know. Not when the Nigerian thief has stolen more than the owner can pretend not to notice. As it appears, the myth about Nigerians’ infinite capacity to bear pain has some substance after all.

     

     

  • Return of fuel queues

    Return of fuel queues

    When most Nigerians had thought that the days of motorists spending the night at filling stations in a seemingly endless wait for fuel had long gone, the devil appeared again in Lagos, Abuja and most of our major towns and cities last week crippling economic activities. And as usual, the government is blaming saboteurs for the scarcity.

    For most of last week, many people could not leave their homes either because they couldn’t get fuel for their vehicles (cars) or couldn’t afford the astronomical fare hike imposed by commercial transporters. While the pumps at filling stations could not dispense petrol as their tanks were dry, the mobile filling stations operated by touts along busy roads and highways were in full operation selling a litre of petrol for as high as N500 and in some cases N1,000 depending on how desperate the situation of the intending buyer was.

    From one filling station to another, motorists wore long faces in frustration as their vehicles gather dust after several days on the queue with no hope of getting fuel. At the stations they were told there were no supplies from the marketers, yet they heard on their radio and television government officials insisting that fuel was available and was being hoarded by God knows who.

    From the comfort of their homes and offices the Minister of Petroleum and her officials at the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) could see millions of litres of fuel out there being diverted and the people were asking; by who and to where? If truly the fuel was there and being taken elsewhere, whose duty is it to apprehend those diverting the commodity? Is it not the government? When the queue first appeared the usual response was to blame it on panic buying. Each time one hears this one gets annoyed. Why would anybody rush to buy fuel if it is there at the filling stations in abundance? Why would anybody buy the commodity if he doesn’t need it? With people’s disposable income fast depleting, nobody would want to buy more that the quantity of fuel he requires at a time, but if somebody would need like 60 litres over a period of two/three days he would look for money to buy the 60 litres at once if he suspects that he might not get the commodity to buy again the next day or the day after at the official price due to one reason or another. Is this what they call panic buying? I think it’s just common sense; preparing ahead of time. If the Minister of Petroleum, Madam Deziani Allison-Madueke and her officials had been planning ahead, no amount of fuel diversion by whoever would be enough to cause petrol scarcity. But we all know that they don’t plan ahead; we know that this government has no plan beyond today. If they do, why is it that there is no strategic reserve from where petrol can be pumped into the market in times of emergencies or shortage like we’ve just had?

    One is not even sure the NNPC or its subsidiary in charge of fuel supply could say the exact litres of fuel Nigerians consume daily, because if this is known, then it would be easier to foresee shortage before it arrives any time there was likely to be disruption in supply. Oil business is essentially a futures business. Supplies (whether crude oil or refined products) are ordered and paid for months ahead and contingencies are made ahead of time for any disruption or delay in supply by wise buyers. The spot market is there to take care of any emergency order. Of course this comes at a higher price but at least the problem of disruption would have been solved.

    We all know the problem facing our refineries and even if the problems are no longer there and they are operating at installed capacity, their entire production would not be enough to satisfy the Nigerian market so we would still need to import. For a very long time now, we have had to rely on fuel import either directly or through marketers and this must be paid for. Did we order and pay for enough fuel?

    The major marketers always complain about government owing them for fuel import and each time Nigerians hear this they fear that scarcity was around the corner. And from experience this had always been the case each time there was fuel shortage. So why was the government owing these people? If somebody is helping you to discharge your responsibility to your people the least you can do is to pay that person promptly. If the government through its appropriate agency had made sure our refineries are working and have enough capacity to satisfy the market, there would have been no need for fuel import, therefore no need to rely on marketers. In fact, the marketers would be buying from the refineries here for sale at their various filling stations scattered across the country. So why can’t we fix the refineries?

    This is a million Naira question that only the government could answer. We have been told several times that Port Harcourt and Warri refineries are about coming back to life. Even if and when they are back, how far can they ameliorate the problem? Kaduna refinery? Don’t even talk about that.

    I think it is about time we decide on what to do with these refineries; should government own and operate them or sell them to core investors? The modern trend tend to support privatizing the refineries but then if the experience of the recently privatized Power Holding Corporation of Nigeria (PHCN) is anything to go by, Nigerians wouldn’t want the refineries to be sold.

    Since the private investors in the power sector assumed control of the electricity companies, not much has been felt by Nigerians in terms of improved power supply. What we have been having in the last couple of months is darkness, sprinkled with few hours of light. So if the refineries go to private hands, Nigerians are afraid of a similar treatment. But then they are also worried that the government has not shown any capacity to do the job better. So what do we do? Most people, especially would argue that the solution lies in privatizing the existing refineries and encourage private businesses to build more refineries to increase local capacity to refine our crude oil into petrol, diesel and other petroleum products not just for internal use but also for export.

    I do not know the extent of damage the last fuel scarcity has done to the battered image of the Jonathan administration, but I do know that if the trend should continue it would spell doom for the President and his party in the 2015 general elections.

    A word is enough for the wise.