The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sanya Oni

  • What’s in emergency?

    What’s in emergency?

    Before the proclamation of state of emergency in the three states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa by President Goodluck Jonathan Tuesday May 14, the insurgents may have imagined that by scaling up their terror machine, the typically weak-kneed Jonathan administration would literally be on its knees begging them to come to table for discussions. Going by developments in the past week, they may have tragically misfired. Not only does it seem unlikely that things would go their way in the near term, even more unlikely is the prospect of gaining an upper hand – ever.

    Recently on this page – that is, shortly after the so-called Baga massacre of April 16, I had predicted an escalation of the crisis. My simple reason was that the insurgents would most certainly misread the outrage over what was generally perceived to be the military Joint Task Force’s excessive use of force to upscale their offensive. Of course, with the military left to rue the aftermath of the unfortunate situation, the opportunity to cash upon the condemnations provoked by that military action would seem too good a chance to miss – by the insurgents and their sympathisers – to further pin the JTF’s back to the wall. Don’t forget that the amnesty committee had also started work on the purpose-made amnesty for the mass murderers days before; for the group, the strategy became one of coming to table only on terms that they find agreeable.

    That was the premise of my prognosis of possible heightened hostilities. Well, it turned out a bull’s eye four weeks later. On May 7, the insurgents staged another high profile assault in Bama that left 55 people, mostly soldiers and policemen dead. Since then, it has been regular tales of unrelenting skirmishes.

    I have followed the various shades of the argument either to justify or declaim the emergency. I can only say that we would not be the complex people that we are said to be without the typical hair-splitting debates over nothing of substance really. So what – that the federal government is finally standing up to its duty of routing the band of savages?

    And the arguments? Some say that the emergency is unwarranted. They cite the fact that the affected states are already heavily militarised which makes the proclamation superfluous. Should that be a problem?

    Others on the other side of the continuum insist that the emergency did not go far enough, that the democratic structures should not have been left intact. So, how about drawing an iron curtain around the three states for effect?

    Admittedly, those in the category of the former are a negligible minority; however, that alone does not necessarily make them wrong. What makes their prescriptions far off the mark is the understatement of the nature of the problem, a lack of appreciation of how far deep the roots of the insurgency lies buried in the communities North-east, and, if I may add, the denial that any prospects of resolving the security challenges stands a no-hoper without a strong, deterrent force firmly on the ground.

    As for the latter group, I do not think that anyone should be in doubt about what an emergency is supposed to achieve. The main idea is to restore normalcy to the states affected by the insurgency. Aside the requirement of the need to restore law and order, hence the authority of the government, nothing in the 1999 Constitution (as amended) even remotely suggest the supplanting of the democratic order by any other arrangement. In any case, removing the elected functionaries in the circumstance would have pronounced them complicit in the crisis – and this unfortunately so in a situation where they have no control of the police and other security agencies all of which are under the direction of the federal government.

    Now, just by the carnage unleashed by the terrorists in Borno and Yobe in the last few months, Tuesday’s action by the President would appear several months late in coming. The exception would be the inclusion of Adamawa – a relatively peaceful state among the states under emergency rule. Even then, the government has since clarified that the latter’s proximity to Cameroon and the need for the military to have a wide area of coverage justified its inclusion.

    The issue of course is that the nation is at war. Those preferring to live in denial are free to choose whatever to believe. What cannot be denied is that the war is being fought on land and in the skies; and we are told that both sides have the most lethal arsenal available for modern warfare. As for the prospects of a negotiated peace, this will certainly come – but only after a decisive tilt in the scale of battle.

    Now, my sympathy goes to those dreamy-eyed Nigerians who still nurse the dream that the nation would at some point be able to tap into the inherent goodness of mass murderers. Or that the Boko Haram would one day be amenable to reason without unleashing the awesome power of the federal government as we have seen in the past week. Unlike them, I suffer no blind faith that the terrorists who freely lob bombs into places of worship, those deranged fellows who have been unrestrained in the use of weapons of mass destruction, would overnight become purveyors of peace. I have argued elsewhere, it won’t happen. It has to be made to happen.

    To me, the whole point about the emergency is to make the cost of the insurgency so unbearable to the elements of the Boko Haram as to make the option of peace desirable. Now, with the JTF boots firmly on the ground, the citizens of the communities – yes, the innocent victims – have one good chance to demonstrate good faith: to assist the JTF to rid their territory of the brigands. It seems to me the only way to shorten their own pains too. That is what citizenship demands. Any other suggestion is bunkum.

     

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    Re; Madam Rufai’s other children

    Dear Mr Oni, do you know that there is a department of Business Administration in each of our tertiary educational institutions? What businesses are these army of graduates to administer? Short-term: enhance artisanship and convert the hordes of educated unemployed to artisans. If you have reliable SUREP links, there are credible trainers with fast track programmes.

    Medium to long-term: overhaul the NUC for a planning-driven platform. Femi Fadairo

    Your position on Madam Rufai’s lamentation as regards inadequate tertiary institutions to absorb candidates is timely and commendable. I am not surprised however because lamentation is the beacon of Jonathan’s administration. We should truly go back to the vocational trainings of yore. Government should ensure that discrimination against HND vis avis degree certificates should be discouraged. Let us de-emphasise paper qualification because it leads to all manners of malpractices. Agaba Okpe

  • Madam Rufa’i’s unlucky babies

    Madam Rufa’i’s unlucky babies

    Nigerians are by now, only too familiar with the spectacle of highly placed public officers helplessly wringing their hands in feigned supplication to an absentee god when confronted with the problems they were hired to fix. Last month, Nigerians were treated to another spectacle by the number one steward in the education ministry – Prof. Ruqayyatu Rufai. She told journalists after monitoring the conduct of the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) only 520,000 candidates stood the chance of gaining admission into any tertiary institution out of the 1.7 milion candidates who sat for the examination.

    Here is what the media quoted her to have said: “The major challenge is a country like Nigeria having 1.7 million sitting for examination. The space we have is 520,000 for federal, states, private universities, polytechnics and colleges of education. If one million passed, what are we going to do with the rest 500,000? We will not expand the carrying capacity without expanding the facilities”.

    Not done, she asked: “What are we going to do with the large number of students out there? I feel the pain. Mr. President is very much concerned. If you have students that have passed examination and they cannot have access, you can imagine their thought in the long run.”

    If the ministerial prerogative to lapse into lamentation over problems, which is ordinarily deemed to be within the capacity of the administration she represents to solve is accepted, to present the problem as something of a fresh challenge is however a different call – a tough one to accept. The problems are of course hardly new. What they require are fresh and imaginative thinking the likes of which the minister and the top guns in her ministry seems ever so unwilling – or rather ill-equipped – to undertake.

    The administration obviously believes in the centrality of “carrying capacity” to the resolution of the problem. A measure of this line of thought is the dramatic step of opening nine new universities even when the older federally owned universities could do with better funding. It may partly explain the minister’s call for opening of more access – through perhaps the establishment of more private tertiary institutions.

    Is the issue really one of “carrying capacity”? Or put in another way, is the crisis simply one of numbers that can be solved merely by doubling or quadrupling the existing carrying capacity of our tertiary institutions?

    I have no doubts in my mind that the current capacity needs to be expanded to ease the problem of admissions. I am aware that there are those who will argue that even a mere thousand taken out the vicious cycle of despair is worth the consideration. It is however a different matter to suggest that the boosting of the combined investments of federal, states and indeed the private sector would at some point satisfy the demand for tertiary education without a fundamental shift in our educational paradigm and a corresponding shift in national values and priorities.

    My position is of course that our concerns with tertiary education has become somewhat misplaced. Now, the quest for a university or polytechnic is certainly legitimate. The reality however is that not everyone that desires it would get one. This is true of developed as well as developing countries. What the developed countries have done is find a balance between the quest for learning – which is life-long, with the need to fit into the labour market.

    Today, part of the problem is what tertiary education is supposed to offer its recipient. Thirty years ago, such issues was regarded as irrelevant. Access to higher education what somewhat given and indeed, came close to a ‘right’ just as the debate about what it is supposed to offer would have been academic. Today, I will wager that anyone would argue that tertiary education, as against basic education, is a ‘right’ under current realities. Secondly, only a few entertain any illusions that their quest for tertiary education is driven by any other factor aside availing opportunities to corner available jobs.

    That, obviously has great implications for the educational sector as a whole; now, this is not only in the context of the state of youth unemployment, but also in the light of the emerging skills gap.

    The issue is – and this is generally accepted that three out of possibly five eligible youths are unemployed. A sizeable proportion of these are holders of college degrees and diplomas. The other component of the troubling equation is their lack of relevant skills and by this I do not mean the meaningless jibe about our graduates being unemployable, but the absence of identifiable, competitive skills needed in the services and the industrial sector. The big irony is that the existence of this large “unemployable pool” has rather than diminish the appetite for higher education seems to have fuelled it.

    The issue clearly isn’t just about expanding the opportunities for tertiary education but to expand and upgrade alternative opportunities available to youths to develop themselves. Part of the consequences of the deplorable state of things is situation where you find the Togolese and other ECOWAS nationals as artisans and technicians taking over our services sector, while their Nigerian counterpart, ever so ill-equipped hang out in search of a job.

    Time it seems to get back the craft schools – the veritable institutions for training artisans and craftsmen. Time to go back to the era where our artisans are not only graded but are paid wages commensurate to their certification. We need to return to the basics of dignity in labour and due reward for honest work.

    Now, I get amused at the suggestion that the fundamentals of the current crisis can be remedied by the introduction of the so-called entrepreneurial studies at our higher institutions. I certainly agree that a good knowledge of entrepreneurship principles will do no harm in the circumstances. But then, they represent mere placebos as against the cure drugs. The key is to make the vocational training option accessible, attractive and to align it with the demands of industry. This is what like Lagos, Ekiti and perhaps Kano are doing by collaborating with some world-class companies to ensure transfer of skills to their youths. What I have in mind is for the educational ministry to champion the effort.

  • Appeasing the unappeasable

    Appeasing the unappeasable

    With weekend abduction of the 92-year old Dr. Shettima Ali Monguno by elements suspected to be Boko Haram, the nature of the atavistic force unleashed by the Boko Haram should by now be clear to everyone. The signs, clearly, are that the group is neither ready nor willing to engage anyone; if ever it will, it will most certainly be on its own terms. Considering that the military Joint Task Force – rather than the Boko Haram – has understandably been on the spot in the aftermath of the so-called Baga massacre, the prognosis must be seen as truly, chilling. Aside the obvious psychological advantage which the group has since claimed, it seems highly unlikely that those behind the group will let off in their morbid push to wrest unimaginable concessions from the typically timid and rather unimaginative federal government.

    In the circumstance, a heightened offensive by the group isn’t just a possibility, but one that is predictable. The idea of course is to weary the federal government.

    Now, the ordeal of the elder statesman is certainly regrettable. The good news is that his abductors have decided to let him go. Even then, the kidnap saga must be seen as nothing more than a footnote in the bloody entrails of the group just as mercy release of the elder statesman does little to alter the group’s bloody records or its contempt both for humanity and the orderly society.

    The point remains that this would not be the first time that the group will so defiantly throw dart at the very of the highly revered structure of authority in the North. Earlier in January this year, the group had picked on the convoy of the Emir of Kano, Alhaji Dr. Ado Bayero. The attack, during which the monarch was wounded, left his driver, orderly and a traditional guard who tried to protect him dead. Two of his sons also in the convoy were wounded. The attack coincidentally came three months after Major General Mamman Shuwa, rtd, one of the nation’s outstanding civil war heroes, was murdered in his Gwange Ward residence in Maiduguri metropolis as he prepared for the Friday congregational prayers.

    To put things in some perspective, there is something in the latest abduction that stretches the typically malevolent symptoms of the current anomie to new limits. Call it – if you like – the final rite of internment for whatever pretensions about the group being amenable to reasoned dialogue. For a group that started off by taking on the security services, the group has since added style to its brutal methods from decapitations to the most heinous forms of bestiality. Whereas churches and other places of worship once presented as fair game for its squad of bombers, today, just about everything represented by humanity is considered legitimate target with perhaps the only restraints being those imposed by the JTF. Pregnant women are not spared; children – including those one writing examinations are not excluded. And as the latest abduction has shown, not even the aged are exempted. Of course, there is no such thing as consideration for race and colour just as the methods have since become a study in human regression on the evolutionary ladder – a throwback to the age of savagery.

    Remember the story of the North Korean medics deployed to minister to the health needs of the people said to have been decapitated in the presence of their loved ones? I am not here referring to the hostages felled in the course of rescue attempt by security forces but the three medics butchered as their spouses watched.

    This is the foe that Nigerians are up against – the enemy stuff that conventional armies dread. What to do with the group is of course the billion naira question.

    Let me state quite clearly that I find no useful distinction between the so-called political Boko Haram and those other mutant derivatives. It must be said that those making the distinction have since failed to persuade of the validity of their distinction, since after all, a tree is said to be known by its fruits. The nation has obviously gone past the attempt to draw distinctions between mass killers and the merchants of terror.

    Let’s look at the option of appeasement possible at this time. Understandably, nearly everyone is looking in the direction of the all-purpose therapy called general amnesty. That seems fine except that it seems another instance in which the word will lose its meaning in application. Now, the problem isn’t so about the amnesty per se but in the failure to appreciate that amnesty is actually an act of a sovereign. Here, the leadership of the sect would seem miles ahead of most Nigerians hence its rejection of the proposed deal off-hand. And why should it when it has nearly one-score local government out of 774 in the country under its rule – that is more than the population of Tonga, a tiny country in the South Pacific? Now, the reports about those local government councils being under the iron rule of the Nigerian Taliban are yet to be disputed, which in the circumstance, leaves the federal government the only option of exploring either a framework of co-existence or citizen swap as between two sovereigns! Even at that, the prospects, given the declared territorial ambitions of the Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), should ordinarily be frightening.

    So what to do? It seems to me that a certified paedophilia has a higher chance of transmuting to a baby nurse than the Nigerian terrorist would overnight become a model citizen. Now, talk is good, and as they say – cheap. But then, the idea of talk assumes that two parties are in agreement and that there is a minimum basis of understanding. The truth of course is that we are still a long way from the Grand Bargain moment, nowhere near the point where the Nigerian terrorist will be amenable to talks.

    Let me make the point simple. Today, everyone talks about the relative peace in the Niger Delta and how the visits to the creeks and the backroom deals eventuated in the amnesty. Very few remember the Battle of Gbaramatu which forced the militants to the table. The point here is that those who hunger for omelette haven’t yet told us how to make one without breaking an egg. Either the nation finds the resolve to battle the terrorists or it should get ready to travel the path of slow and systematic disintegration.

  • Baga: A postscript

    Baga: A postscript

    Just when the appeasement template described as amnesty for the Boko Haram seems given, the nation woke up to a dramatic escalation of hostilities in Baga, a fishing border town in the North-east between the men of the military Joint Task Force and the Boko Haram. At the end of the confrontation, the casualties were numbered in multiple scores depending on who did the counting. The military high command put out its own figures of the dead at 36. The leaders of the community also gave their version as between 185 and 200.

    But then, it is not only the number of casualties that is in dispute, even the day the hostilities broke out and the series of events that led to the skirmishes have since been contested. While most accounts gave the weekend of April 19 as the day the hostilities broke out, some accounts actually point at an earlier date of April 16. As if to further compound the puzzle, the military couldn’t be sure – days after – whether it was the multinational troops in the JTF that engaged the insurgents or exclusively Nigerian troops.

    Of course, the only area of broad agreement is that civilian lives were involved. The JTF said six civilians were killed – the rest 30 were alleged to be members of the Boko Haram.

    And as for those to be held responsible for the mayhem, again, it is a matter of who to believe. Whereas the commander of the multinational force, Brigadier General Austin Edokpaye, puts the blame squarely on the door-steps of the Boko Haram who he accused of using civilians as human shield while firing on soldiers, what the locals saw was the heavy hand of soldiers in the mission to avenge the death of one of their men. Some accounts actually blamed the extensive destruction which followed on the house-to-house search embarked on by the soldiers after which the residents were chased out and their abodes set on fire.

    It doesn’t help that attention has since deflected from the murderous activities of the Boko Haram sect to the role of the guardians drafted to keep the peace. Today, the military is the one on the spot – accused of deploying excessive force against the insurgents thereby causing heavy collateral damages. It seems a case of the military providing fresh ammunitions for those who see them as the problem and hence are pressing for the withdrawal of troops from the North-east.

    No doubt, the point cannot be sufficiently made that the death of one innocent soul to the raging insurgency is one too many. Whether it is one lone service man mauled in the course of national duty or the dozens of innocents caught in the middle of the raging fire between the security forces and the Boko Haram. However, just as the use of excessive force by the military must be deplored, and hence the need for thorough investigations to establish and bring to book those individuals found in breaches of relevant services rules, part of the problem isn’t just the tendency to jump into conclusions before the full facts are established but to see the servicemen as expendables.

    How many people died? We do not even know at this point. The one that we know for certain is that an officer of the JTF died. But then, does the number really matter? Are these fellows not Nigerians with dreams and aspirations? The point is that every life must be seen to count; whether we are dealing with one life or dozens, the difference must be seen only in terms of the multiples of avoidable tragedy.

    In all of these however, the greater tragedy must be the predictable, knee-jerk response to a foreseeable outcome. Most predictably, the response has been superficial – the same standard blame game: the military must be blamed for the multi-layered problem they didn’t create. I struggle to find the required due sensitivity accorded the task force in the rather difficult operating environment and the sacrifices they are called to make, more so in an environment where the next individual standing by may well be a terrorist waiting to lob yet another IED. I find none. More palpable also is the lack of resolve to confront a common threat by those who should assume the role of drum majors for peace.

    At this point, I do not want to delve into the argument as to whether or not the military by its well known record of brutality against unarmed civilians is not wholly responsible for the way the ordinary citizen perceives them. Neither do I want to venture into the debate as to whether the nation can afford to defang the military simply because a few serving personnel exceeded their brief. In the same vein, no one questions the right of citizens to demand acceptable standards of conduct from our servicemen whether in combat zones or among the civil populace.

    The issue is whether we are not looking in the wrong direction for solution to a general malaise. First, I do not think that anyone should misunderstand the job that the military is called to do; theirs is to find and fix the insurgents wherever they may be found using all available instruments including force. Secondly, I do not also think that anyone should suffer the illusion that the military is anything but a facilitator in the search for peace. Just as it seems inevitable that mistakes would be made in the course of duty, it is precisely the job of the civil society to call them to account. I do not think that the civil society has failed in this duty – whether it is Odi, Zaki Biam and now in Baga.

    The problem is the attempt to amplify the failings of the JTF, and to present it as the problem. They were not the problem in the Niger Delta any more than they will be the problem in Borno and Yobe. In both situations, they were drafted in to deal with the specific problem.

    Does anyone imagine that the only reason anyone is talking of amnesty today is because the Boko Haram has not succeeded in overrunning the vast territories of the North? How about imagining the North-east without the JTF in the current circumstances? Surely, the federal government does not seem to have exclusive monopoly of bad faith!

    I conclude by re-affirming an earlier thesis that there can be no such thing as an imposed solution to the Boko Haram problem. The problem is fundamentally for local authorities – working with the federal authorities – to solve. Even if the federal government succeeds in smashing the infrastructure of the insurgency, the issue of the fundamentalist ideology behind it would still have to be addressed. That, for me, is the only ground on which the proposed amnesty can stand – or make sense!

  • Something for Abubakar boys?

    Something for Abubakar boys?

    Last week, the directive by the Inspector General of Police, M.D Abubakar on the use of vehicles with tinted glasses claimed its first casualty. A magistrate Hajiya Rabi Bashir, sitting in Gusau, Zamfara State, reportedly sentenced one Aliyu Abubakar, 30, of Talata Mafara town for driving a car with tinted glass without permit. The accused, arrested on April 11 was said to have pleaded guilty to the charge of driving his tinted Golf salon car along Sani Abacha Way, Gusau.

    He was however given the option of either spending one month in jail or a fine of N1, 000.

    The Punch which reported the summary trial unfortunately did not provide any details of the circumstance of the particular arrest – a case of summary trial and sentencing from all accounts.

    Be that as it may, there is enough to suggest that the last is yet to be heard on the Motor Vehicles (Prohibition of Tinted Glass) Act, CAP M21 Laws of the Federation of Nigeria (formerly Decree No. 6 of 1991). While it seems trite to state that millions of Nigerians are already caught in its web, the indications are that the law would be in for some hard testing in the months ahead.

    To be clear, the issue isn’t so much about the validity of the law. It is whether in our peculiar circumstances, the law can be said to be a realistic piece of legislation. I say this mindful of the fact that there are just as many good laws as there are bad ones. To start with, I do not see how anyone will argue that a law which purports to render almost every nthvehicle owner a potential lawbreaker can be anything but an incurably bad law. Moreover, the fact is that the law makes no pretence about providing the law-abiding citizen a leeway – rendering him a victim of circumstances far beyond his control while predisposing him to other lesser crimes.

    Clearly, the best argument that the Police High Command has made for resurrecting the dead law is that the security situation in the country has made it so. According to the Force Public Relation Officer, CSP Frank Mba, “statistics at our disposal show that 90 per cent of these crimes were committed with the aid of vehicles with tinted glasses. We must stop this in the interest of the nation.”

    Surely, Mba must know that his inference of relationship between tinted glasses and terrorism, is not only specious but bizarre.

    Of course, he argues rather persuasively that “Nigerians using vehicles with tinted glasses must look beyond the inconvenience of obeying and removing such glasses and act for the good of all”.

    In the first place, we know how bad the security situation in the country is without the additional scare-mongering about some tinted-glass-induced crimes. I suspect that most owners of cars with tinted glasses would readily surrender their prized toys given iron-cast assurances that it would end the menace of terrorism and kidnapping.

    It seems to me as yet another case of a government in pursuit of symptoms instead of treating the disease. Indeed, tinted glasses are merely the symptoms of the free for all environment under which vehicle importation trade is conducted. Of course, a better job would have been to outlaw the importation of cars with tinted glasses instead of the present course which amounts to chasing the violators on the highways.

    At this point in time, the more pertinent question is what to do with the millions of cars with tinted-glasses already in the country. Our man, Mba has an interesting answer. He cites the so-called Section 3 of the law which states that “a buyer, a donee or an importer of a vehicle with tinted glasses has a grace period of 14 days to either get a permit or remove the tint”.

    Simple isn’t it? Not so fast. To start with, the law is explicit on the exercise of discretion as to the conditions under which the permission to use tinted glasses could be granted. My last check shows that the twin conditions prescribed are “health” and “security” both of which in our peculiar circumstances would seem ordinarily lax or permissive enough. Even at that, it still leaves the question of how the millions of cars on our roads with tinted glasses could justifiably claim exemptions on the two grounds. I say this because the exemptions mean no more than a trip to Force Headquarters, in Abuja for a permit at the payment of between N25- N30,000 or in the alternative, risk the daily ordeal of extortion in the hands of Abubakar’s men.

    And, we do know those who qualify under the security and health considerations; these are our masters in Abuja!

    I agree in toto with Mba that it is not the business of the police to abrogate the Motor Vehicles (Prohibition of Tinted Glass) Act, CAP M21 Laws of the Federation of Nigeria); the job belongs to the National Assembly. It needs be stated also that the police has no business resurrecting a law that is as good as interred. To leave the law on our statute books is to supply the police with a sword of Damocles to be dangled at will over the heads of the citizens.

    Now, I must make the point that M.D. Abubakar as IGP has done such a good job of dismantling the infrastructure of extortion – the ubiquitous check-points on the highways. Sure, he still has a long way to go to build an effective, people-friendly crime fighting institution. Superintending over the erection of another infrastructure of sleaze comes nowhere near the job at hand; clearly, that is not the way to go.

    For the many Nigerians caught in the web, the easiest solution is to ask them to proceed to Abuja to obtain Abubakar’s permit. That would obviously boost the coffers of the Nigeria Police. But then, that itself throws up the question of the legality of the act – particularly as the institution is not known to be a revenue collecting agency.

     

  • Groping along the long, dark tunnel

    Groping along the long, dark tunnel

    Thanks to Vanguard newspaper’s April 2 edition for reminding us, yet again, of the confounding arithmetic of the power sector. According to the newspaper, Nigeria from 1999 till date poured some N5 trillion ($31.45 billion) into the sector. Hopefully, by December when the new power plants under the National Integrated Power Projects (NIPP) come on stream, output in power generation is expected to hit 10,000mw – barring unforeseen developments.

    For the power-starved citizens, it remains a matter of watching and praying to see whether this dream would materialize. Just like 2005 when the nation first caught the bug of power sector activism, a lot of action is supposedly going on in the sector to stoke excitement. Never mind that the activism of the last 14 years and which has gulped $31.45 billion now promises to deliver a mere 5,500mw net addition to the grid.

    By comparison, South Africa’s $37 billion expenditure spread over a 10-year period is programmed to treble its current 45,000mw capacity. Now, if that is supposed to be a measure of how confounding the nation’s power econometrics is, that comparison merely seeks to temper citizen’s expectations as the magical date of abundant-power-for-all draws close.

    If I may repeat the familiar cliché, it is certainly not yet uhuru. The signs of bad faith and incompetence are more than evident. Call it the Nigerian nightmare; we have seen lots of talks but very little progress in terms of things that count. If it is not failed contractors stalling the projects, it is gas pricing and investment issues bogging down the process. While these go on, the turbines cannot be put into action. Most recently, we have had personnel issues – issues of severance package to be paid to disengaging PHCN staff thrown into the mix. If anything, they merely remind that the Nigerian jinx is alive and well.

    I have looked at the Power Sector Reform Act 2005. Honestly, I find nothing that can be described as unworkable in the instrument. I have also taken time to look at the roadmap for the sector’s reforms – a beautiful document by any standard. Those two instruments are no doubt milestones at least as far as laying the foundations for the much touted liberalization of the sector goes. Unfortunately, this is Nigeria where achievements are better delivered – on paper.

    In other words, real progress is a different matter. True, the structural reforms have gone fairly well. One can safely say at this time that the reforms have turned the corner – irreversible. Save for the lingering personnel issues, the sale of the unbundled distribution entities are as good as sealed. And, after months of dithering, the transmission company has also been handed over to the new managers – Manitoba Hydro Electric of Canada. For once, it seems that the regulator can claim to be on top of its game. Taken together with the frenzied pace to deliver the NIPP plants on their target date, and the various initiatives to deliver gas to fire them, the nation can claim to be closer to the dream of steady electric power supply.

    The issue unfortunately is hardly whether progress has, or is being, made. The debate has gone beyond the need for structural changes. They have in fact been accepted as inevitable. The real problem is the attempt to see the changes as an end as against being a means to an end. For instance, the process that led to the sale of PHCN entities cannot by any stretch of imagination substitute for the truly liberalised power sector that the nation craves. Sure, parceling the behemoth among different operators is a far cry from the picture of post reform power sector once bandied. I mean the picture of foreign investors falling over themselves to have a piece of the action in the deregulated power environment.

    The issue, in summary, is about doubling, trebling or even quadrupling investment and output of electricity in the years to come. Isn’t that the whole idea behind the institutional redesign?

    This is where I consider the entire process somewhat disappointing.

    With due respect to the new owners of the distribution companies, what comes as striking is the absence of players of substance – global leaders – among them. Of course, in some established cases, some of the power plants were sold on non-competitive basis. Taken together, these issues raise the question of whether something isn’t fundamentally missing in the post-reform legislative and institutional architecture.

    I wish I could state that the prognosis in the near term is anything but bad. Unfortunately, it’s hard to see the inefficiencies which hobbled the operations of the PHCN disappear because it carries a new name; as for competition; there will be none.

    Of course, no one needs to worry about the long term because by then, we’ll all be dead!

     

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    Re-Oteh/Reps duel

    Your write up on the Oteh/Reps duel is very informative. The Reps vengeance has blinded them to the extent that they denied SEC workers 2013 appropriation. It is tyrannical overreach and unconstitutional. Chuma Mbaise, Imo State

    The two chambers reps/senate is one of the calamities that befell Nigeria. Their salaries/benefits are never and will never be known. Their next target will be the judiciary. Were they that articulate, they would have issued a query, asking the Senate to explain why Oteh was confirmed. They always have exaggerated impression of themselves/limitations. They are a disaster. Akinlayo A, Osun

    I am fascinated by your write up on Oteh/Reps duel. It is indeed sad that the so-called representatives of the people have decided to play to the gallery on this Oteh saga. What these honourable members should tell Nigerians is: what was the state of our stock market before Arunma Oteh took over as DG and the present state since her leadership of the market. I believe the powerful “thieves” who ran the stock market aground during the tenure of the Prof Ndidi Okereke-led stock market with the active collaboration of the CBN then, are hell bent on frustrating this woman who has worked tirelessly to reposition the market. She sure stepped on toes when she revealed the rot in NSE/SEC perpetrated by her predecessors with the active connivance of the Board. It is pathetic that those who are sincerely ready to work for the benefit of all Nigerians are usually frustrated. What a pity! +234 8158836388

    Sanya, I didn’t know we still have knowledgeable and bold Nigerians in the country’s enduring hopelessness and rudderlessnes. Thanks for your piece on Oteh/Reps duel. When will those reps stop behaving like street urchins in legislative quarters? Sincerely, we must find a way to end the madness. Rev Dr A Ezimah.

     

     

     

  • Oteh/Reps duel

    Oteh/Reps duel

    Last week, the House of Representatives renewed their bid to oust Arunma Oteh, Director General of the Security and Exchange Commision (SEC) with a third resolution calling on President Goodluck Jonathan to sack her. It followed it with a letter dated March 27 to the Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala drawing atttention to the 2013 Appropriation Act, Item 9, Part E, Clause 10 which expressely stated that “All revenue however described including all fees received, fines, grants, budgetary provisions and all internally and externally generated revenue shall not be spent by the Security and Exchange Commission for recurrent or capital purposes or for any other matters, nor liabilities thereon incurred except with prior appropriation and approval by the National Assembly”.

    It advised SEC “ to refrain from making any expenditure until a budget has been approved by the National Assembly for that purpose.’’ It also warned: “You may also not source and spend any monies whatsoever as this will be a clear infringement of the constitution of the a federal Republic of Nigeria and shall be viewed as such.”

    Nigerians must wonder at how a probe meant to unearth the shady practices that led to the collapse of the capital market in 2009 became not just an inquisition for an individual appointed in 2010 to salvage the situation, but has since transmuted into an instrument for the decapitation of the capital market institution itself.

    Nigerians will recall that the Oteh saga began March 13, 2012 when the House of Representatives Committee on Capital Markets and other Institutions commenced a public hearing “to identify the manifest causes of the markets’s near collapse with a view to finding lasting solutions.”

    A bit of the background seems necesary at this point if only to illustrate the extent of the legislative overeach that threatens to undermine the basis of separation of powers between the executive and the legislature.

    The capital market had plunged from an all time high of N13.5 trillion in capitalisation in March 2008 to less than N4.6 trillion by the second week of January 2009. Same for the All-Share Index which also plummeted from about 66000 basis points to less than 22000 points during the same period. In the atmosphere of wide-ranging allegations of infractions against operators and regulators at the time, an inevitable consequence was the forced exit of the Director General under whose watch the market ran into storm. Hence the exit of Musa Al Faki in April 2009. In January 2010 – some eight months after, Arunma Oteh was drafted by the late President Umaru Yar’Adua to spearhead the capital market restoration. Barely two years after, the historic probe by the House to “to identify the manifest causes of the markets’ near collapse” (which predated Oteh’s appointment) became an exercise in wild chase after the wind.

    This background is necessarily for principally two reasons. First, the facts of the issue appears to have either been lost or deliberately muddled up in the controversies that have generated much heat but very little light. The second reason is to remove any pretensions that the House is driven by altruism and to underline what is clearly its vengeful mission to cut Oteh to size.

    No doubt, a lot of water has passed under the bridge since the March 2012 public hearing when Oteh accused the chair of the House Committee on Capital Market, Herman Hembe of demanding a N39 million bribe from SEC for the hearing. She had equally accused Hembe of demanding N5million from the commission to enable him travel to the Dominican Republic to attend an emerging market conference without embarking on the journey. That was after the committee accused her of mismanaging the affairs of the commission in her barely two years in office.

    Of course, her accusers had in turn alleged that she spent N61.1 million to rent an official apartment after blowing N30 million in hotel accommodation at Transcorp Hilton in eight months (seven months more than she was entitled). Another N850,000 was said to have been spent on meals for a team of experts in one day (a figure hotly disputed with proof to show that only N84,300 was spent). Yet another N42.5 million was said to have been spent to procure three Toyota vehicles without a tender’s board meeting in breach of the Public Procurement Act 2007. And then, there was the matter of two consultants brought in by Oteh from Access Bank. It is noteworthy that none of the charges relate to the committee’s terms of reference.

    Coincidentally, by June 2012, Oteh’s House of SEC was literally on fire. This time, the issue centred on an alleged misappropriation of N3 billion on SEC Project 50 put up to commemorate the golden jubilee of the capital market. She was slammed with a compulsory leave by the Board of SEC to pave the way for unfettered investigation by an independent audit body. A month after, that is on July 17, 2012, the federal government, on the strength of the auditors’ findings, gave her a clean bill of health on the corruption allegations although the report found her wanting for administrative lapses. She was thereafter recalled her to her desk.

    Thereafter, the Hon. Ibrahim El Sudi ad hoc committee which took over from the Hembe-led committee took over proceedings. Miffed that the Presidency recalled the embattled SEC DG without the committee’s clearance, it insisted that the federal government ought to have waited for it to conclude investigations.

    From then on, the two sides simply dug in. Whereas the executive opted to carry on, the committee went for broke: it found that the appointment of Oteh violated sections of the Investment and Security Act 2007. In its opinion, the embattled DG did not have 15 years experience in the Nigerian capital market hence the recommendation of her ouster. The House didn’t bother to explain how her appointment scaled through the eagle eye of the confirming authority – the Senate. That is a matter for another day!

    The danger of legislative overreach is real; more troubling however is that it is becoming the rule rather than exception. We saw it in the case of NCAA boss Harold Demuren. It also played out in the case of Abdulrasheed Maina, the erstwhile boss of the presidential task force on police pensions. In both cases, the lawmakers literally held the gun to the head of the executive as it dared it to risk not carrying out its orders! In Oteh’s case, the lawmakers have long resolved that it is either she goes or they will bring down the roof on everyone’s head!

    And where does it lead? Nowhere but the highway of tyranny. Withholding the appropriation of SEC is worse than abuse, it is tyrannical. And who says legislative arbitrariness is more tolerable than executive? It is doubtful that the House has endeared itself to Nigerians on the matter. The opposite seems more likely. And that is sad.

     

  • Bad maths or bad faith?

    Bad maths or bad faith?

    After last week’s intimation of another cycle of subsidy removal by President Goodluck Jonathan, Nigerians ought to be forgiven for daring to invoke divine judgment on those determined to afflict them a second time. After the lockdown of the economy in January 2012 during which the polity was rocked to its foundations, it would seem a bit too much that government would seek to re-open the fuel subsidy matter so soon – at least not with the wounds still fresh.

    But here we are – some fourteen months after – with the President making a fresh bid to take out the “remaining” subsidy. Of course, it didn’t come with new or compelling arguments being advanced; rather it was a case of being stuck with the same old lines of unreason and obduracy. The presidential edict was unambiguously declarative: “we cannot continue to waste resources meant for a greater number of Nigerians to subsidise the affluent middle class, who are the main beneficiaries of fuel subsidy”.

    I suppose it is late in the day to embark on the task of re-educating the administration on its fixation with the so-called subsidy on petrol. Or to the fact that it has barely thought through an agreeable solution to the fuel subsidy conundrum in the whole of the last 14 months. Or even to remind it of its failure to deliver basic services to the Nigerian people all of which have rendered the ordinary citizen endangered.

    I guess it’s alright for the overfed, corrupt and the utterly inept governing elite to pick on the vanishing middle class as practice target after laundering billions of naira among its friends in the subsidy scam. Fair game isn’t it?

    What this goes to show however is that the nation still has a long way to go to resolve the fuel-supply riddle. If it seems any indication, Nigeria Labour Congress’ rejection of the planned hike in petrol price and government’s insistence on being tragically beholden to the subsidy removal idea would seem to point at the battle ahead.

    I need to be clear in my views about the subsidy. It is bad for the economy; I verily believe it is – in the long run. But the long run is not here, yet! I will argue that the pump price of petrol, to the extent that it is not cost-reflective, is ultimately injurious to the economy. I must say that one of the difficult tasks I have had is convincing my friends that the current price of N97 per litre is actually below cost price – using the Petroleum Products Prices Regulatory Agency (PPPRA)’s reference landing cost of N131.10. And this cost is even exclusive of the distribution costs. Such has been the touchy nature of the subsidy mathematics that not many would even agree with the figures despite their being verifiable. I have since given up attempting to convince anyone on how perverse the current regime of subsidy is.

    But then, the point about the subsidy regime is that it is the effect, not the cause of the problem. It is the by-product of the political economy of abdication, the strange political economy under which an oil producing nation would export raw crude while importing its refined products wholesale. As for the sustainability of the annual payout drawn from the treasury – nearly a trillion naira by current estimates – I am yet to see anyone contest the fact that the expenditure is wasteful, barely supportable but definitely outrageous. That is one leg of the equation that Labour and other stakeholder groups should chew upon before they set out to the bargaining table.

    However, the obverse side of the fuel import mathematics is worse –treasonable! Has anyone taken stock of the amount of foreign exchange expended on the annual bazaar of wholesale fuel importation? I mean the direct cost of procuring forex; the innumerable indirect charges to the exchequer as well as the countless unrealisable benefits along the value chain?

    What about the pressures on the forex market and its direct impact on the macro-economy? Do the latter, reckoned in billions of dollars, not exceed the annual computation on subsidy? And what makes the latter any more ‘sustainable’ than the former?

    It must be said that the government’s partial but bad mathematics (and economics) is only a part; its bad faith has become increasingly apparent. As must be obvious now, the federal government does not seem to be interested in building any refineries now or in the near future. What the reports about lack of activities at the sites of the three proposed Greenfield Refineries suggest is that the federal government merely sold the nation a dummy on the issue of the refineries. At this time, it seems more concerned with cornering more of the gravy from subsidy as against addressing fundamental problems.

    Don’t ask me whether the billions earmarked for the Turn Around Maintenance (TAM) of the four refineries will turn around anything; only the fortunes of the contractors at the corridors of power gets turned around in these parts!

    I have heard some say that it will be foolhardy for the Jonathan administration to tinker with fuel price at this time. They cite the insecurity situation: the scourge of kidnapping in the South; the resurgence of internecine conflicts in the Plateau; the terror of the Boko Haram in the North-east and parts of the North-central. Of course, there is the youth unemployment said to be hitting record high levels of 50 percent.

    Such fears obviously say little of the administration’s capacity to do mischief.

    Will President Jonathan do it? I don’t think the issue is ‘if’ but ‘when’. Sure, the nation will have enough of SURE-P and other extra-constitutional contraptions to douse public anger whenever it happens – minus the refineries – the surest and next best thing to fixing the problem. And if it seems improbable that an outsized government will need another bureaucracy to deliver on the services that other agencies already undertake, you can put it to the citizens hunger for action. It’s all part of the tragedy of the unpatriotic governing elite, mired in the cesspit of its own greed, and too blind to see beyond its nose.

  • Our new reality

    Our new reality

    With two well-timed knockouts on the nation’s anti-corruption pretence all within one week, the hapless citizens of this country may have finally been let into the innards of the goodluck seduction. Of course, you know what I’m talking about; the sensational pardon granted Messrs Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, Shettima Bulama and Chichi Ashwe by the President Goodluck Jonathan.

    To cap it all was the icing on the presidential infamy; weekend’s N6 billion cash haul at fund raising event of Jonathan’s church in Lagos.

    To imagine that it was not nearly a month that I wrote on this page about winning as both addictive and intoxicating, and how this President, once coy mistress of power has since mastered the intricate game of decoy. Today, those who doubted the President’s resolve to cart all the trophies home, or his determination to carve the field of play in his own image only needs to to look at the streams of trophies rolling in. Unfortunately, it seems that the nation has a lot less to worry about the president’s trophies now as his infinite capacity to bruise the nation’s psyche, something that must be seen as doubly troubling.

    Troubling because the nation is being reminded yet again, that those invested with the authority of state have very little appreciation of right and wrong, and the notion of office as public trust.

    To start with, it is doubtful that anyone was fooled by the federal character appearance of the pardon largesse. As we have since seen, not only was the Presidency less than elegant in bunching of “goats” with “sheep”, its officials have since given the game away: its all about the the self-styled Governor-General of the Ijaw nation! And it may well be connected to the politics of 2015! To make things beautiful and plausible, the issue has been reduced to the novel arithmetic of crude: the net difference between 700,000 and 2.4 million barrels of crude daily more than equal a DSP pardon!

    It seems to me however that this particular pardon undermines the very basis of the punishment. This is the the point missed by those who maintain the legality of the president’s action. Yes, Alams and company have paid for their crimes. Assets said to be proceeds of their crimes have been forfeited to the state. So what? The question is what lessons are we sending to potential, albeit privileged criminals, if not that a presidential pardon can undo all things?

    Now, I move on to the presidential fund-raiser for the St Stephen’s Anglican Deanery and Youth Development Centre, Otuoke, the President’s home town, held at the high brow Civic Centre, Victoria Island Lagos at the weekend. It was a classic in presidential extortion – and that is to put things mildly.

    What is a deanery and youth development centre that would attract N6 billion cash haul in a single fund-raiser? That obviously sets a new limit in financial obscenity, a new low in public morality. No doubt, the President was merely following a trail earlier blazed by former President Olusegun Obasanjo when he coralled the nation’s captains of industry to donate into his Presidential Library Project.

    Just like the Obasanjo donor, it was the list of familiar faces: assortment of friends of those in power, the league of government contractors, the club of influence pedlers and their likes.

    Prince Arthur Eze alone is said to have donated N1.8 billion. How much did the business tycoon pay as income tax in the last three years? The Board of Inland Revenue should be interested in finding out.

    Jonathan’s Man Friday, Godswill Akpabio would not be overshadowed; he doled out N230 million on behalf of the PDP governors forum. Liyel Imoke, who only recently came back from medical vacation also chipped in N100 million also on behalf of his South-south governors.

    Whose money? Tax payers money in the service of the president’s private project. And all of this in a moment of executive impunity.

    While I don’t claim to know what a church in a village stands to benefit from a N6 billion youth centre, a village which the President himself conceded that his children may not even live, it seems to me that the project speaks only to the vanity of the presidential office. Here, it does not even make things better that God’s name is being dragged into an exercise that speaks both of the vanity of men and the pervasive stench of corruption in the land.

    Again, the president may have done no wrong; indeed, it seems inevitable that we are going to be regaled with the defence of the shameful fundraiser. We are sure going to be told of how God loves a cheerful giver, how the amount donated are for worthy causes.

    It does not matter. The hapless Otuoke folks would have something of a memoriam for their beloved son’s sojourn in presidential office, however, it takes nothing from the immorality of it all.

    Of course, the nation has a lot to worry about. Today, hunger stalks in the land, the Boko Haram is on rampage in the North-east and the North-central; the power situation has since relapsed.

    While those in the corridors of power celebrate shadows, the ordinary folks in the street lives with the reality of denial. But these come nowhere the daily assault to what they know as public morality, their sense of right and wrong.

    That, courtesy of GEJ, is the new reality we have to live with.

     

  • Jonathan and Borno elders

    Jonathan and Borno elders

    Whoever advised on the visit by President Goodluck Jonathan to the troubled North-east states of Yobe and Borno last week ought to have realised by now that the visit did neither the administration nor the states any good. Merely on account of its advertised objectives, the visit was an unmitigated disaster – a public relations fiasco for the visitor as much as for the hosts.

    Whereas no one expected that the chasm between the federal government and the stakeholders in the two states would be bridged on mere account of a presidential visit; it was certainly not expected that disagreements would blow open as it did both in Damaturu and Maiduguri. In both places, the two sides not only blew the chance to advance the cause of peace, the outcome lent little optimism to any prospects of peace in the foreseeable future.

    Of course, it is disappointing that the visiting leader had nothing of soothing words for the people. For the hapless throng that have endured the affliction of the Boko Haram, the president neither saw need to offer his words of comfort nor did he find it necessary to express solidarity.

    His hosts on the other hand seemed utterly ill-prepared for what was supposed to be a long anticipated visit. As it turned out, neither side offered practical suggestions or roadmaps on the way forward. Representatives of stakeholders in the two states in fact stopped short of declaring the insurgency as more tolerable than the operations of the military Joint Task Force (JTF), recycling as it were, their age-long request for the JTF to be removed from the streets without telling the government what plans they had in place to secure the peace – a demand the President wisely rejected.

    As it is, there will be no shortage of finger-pointing as to who to hold responsible for the bungled visit. The natural tendency for most Nigerians is to revert to their default settings in heaping all the blames on the federal government. However, the event of the past week has not only borne out my contention that the leaders in the region have not been entirely helpful, the signs are that they are no less complicit in the crime of abdication than the federal government that they are wont to accuse.

    Let’s look at what the leaders suggested as the way forward out of the crisis. Like the militants in the Niger Delta, the leaders want amnesty for the terrorists. Now, I must say here that I’m open to the debate on the shape of amnesty to be granted to mass murderers. The debate might as well begin, even now. However, my questions are – suppose the government proclaims amnesty, how about the fundamentalist ideology which feeds the insurgency? Would it also be the responsibility of the federal government to extirpate it?

    Now to another equally contentious issue – the demand for the withdrawal of the JTF. I recognise the deliberate misplacement of ‘effect’ for ‘cause’, an elite problem designed to obfuscate issues. So the JTF is the problem because a handful of service personnel violate the rules of engagement? And that to constitute the ground to demand for the withdrawal of the personnel on internal security duties? What happens after? Turn out the vast territories to the Boko Haram or their cousins the AQIM?

    It is hard to imagine that the elders actually believe that the JTF is the problem. No doubt, internal security operations are by their nature, fraught with unique challenges. While these are not deniable, the challenge is for the elders to highlight them so that they could be dealt with. What should not be missed is the larger picture: these men were drafted in to deal with a problem that went out of control. I shudder to imagine what the situation will be without the men of the JTF. Or would the elders have preferred that Boko Haram overrun the region with the federal government left to negotiate the status of the region after?

    Finally, on this point, has anyone bothered to ask the primary targets of those terror attacks what they think of the JTF? I mean the churches and other so-called symbols of western civilisation which the sect finds to offensive? Are these institutions not entitled to the protection of the law also?

    Here is a word for those who look up to Abuja for solution to the problem. Abuja is a wrong place to look for solutions. First, the fat cats in the territory have no ideas to give; not with so much security funds to gobble! Secondly, the problems are by their very nature, local!

    At best, what Abuja can do is give federal muscle to local initiatives. No matter what anyone thinks, Abuja is in the least position to take on the fundamentalist ideology driving the insurgency. Community and opinion leaders will do a far better job of that. The same is true of the search for peace; it cannot be imposed from Abuja. The people have to be willing to assist security agencies to do their job. Ditto for development. The people just have to be willing to give it a shot.

    Last week, I heard Borno Governor Kashim Shettima talk about a Marshall Plan for the North-east. That is at least good thinking. I hope he’s not referring to a plan crafted in Abuja for the people of Borno – a plan that can only help feed the fat boys in Abuja. He should get to work to produce a roadmap for development for his dear state. When all is said and done, he will find that good ideas have a way of attracting cash. Ask the people of Niger Delta where cash seems to be looking for good ideas. Dare to ask if the people have seen development with trillions of federal money poured into the region post amnesty. I assume of course that the North-east would not succumb to the template of appeasement made for the Niger Delta.

    Now, what do I think of the role of the revered elders? Simple: they need to get back to the drawing board. Asking Jonathan to impose peace on their region is tantamount to abdication – worse than death. The same way that their request on the President to surrender the law enforcement option is unhelpful and counterproductive. Surely, some things must be better than politics. Beyond politics, what the leaders need at this time are courage and openness. After all, the fire is right at their door-steps.