The Nation Newspaper

Category: Wednesday

  • Our Girls; Killings; Cup; Fayemi

    It is four years+ since our Chibok girls were kidnapped on April 15, 2014. We await the release of the remaining Chibok girls. Inexplicably our Dapchi girl-child, 15 year old, Leah Sharibu is not released. Why have we not extricated this one single girl from the terrifying clutches of Boko Haram?

    How is it possible for the Boko Haram to again, just last week, dent Nigeria’s territorial integrity and our security apparatus by raising a terrorist, foreign flag over Nigerian territory? However, as proud Nigerians, we cannot understand why the armed forces appear only after the murderous event. This is in no way to disregard the supreme sacrifice made by so many, largely unsung, gallant officers and men and women, with 23 now Missing In Action (MIA). Because of that sacrifice that we cannot afford to lose another life military or civilian. The armed forces were well-funded during the military era and also judging from the billions stolen by generals and admirals and buried in soak-aways in the civilian era. Can the armed forces be pro-active to prevent ‘take over events’, village massacres, and fake or genuine terrorist activity?

    But Boko Haram is not the only battle front in Nigeria.

    There is another equally vicious enemy, masquerading as fellow Nigerians! Government and President Buhari must prevent themselves from being seen as Nero ‘Fiddling while Rome Burns’ while people scream in anguish as they die, rot and roast in villages torched by fires, holocausts, set by the vicious herder militias!!

    What manner of cumulative evil is one death per day, 10 deaths per day, 20 deaths, 30,40,50, 60, 100, 200  up to and even beyond 300 murders in any single day or night of attacks by Nigerians on Nigerians? The president’s claim that the perpetrators are Gadhafi spawn rings hollow from all reports of survivors. True or false, it should make him spring into action to protect the territorial imperative and is no excuse for allowing the farm destroyers to run amok, unchallenged by our mighty armed forces nationwide which deny complicity. Close all barracks, cancel all leave, and redeploy them to the village war front, garrison the villages to eliminate this scourge.

    In Ghana this incursion has been nipped in the bud. And if they really are Gadhafi spawn, are they invincible, invisible or merely being wrongly reported to Buhari by his intelligence? Does that presidential ‘ID’ not instantly make them instant invading terrorists and mercenaries? Government and National Assembly (NASS) warn of fire and brimstone against South Africa when one single unfortunate Nigerian is killed. But strangely, they have collective inertia and incoherent plans when Nigerian villagers are wiped out. No one is brought to justice. We appear to be at war with a fake or ghost enemy. This calls for commando type units to protect Nigeria’s rural populations before the farms become deserts and Nigeria has a serious famine. We will be forced to give up eating cows reducing their value to zero except to be used for bride price! It is an unbelievable propaganda paradox for the Ministry of Agriculture to ‘rightly’ claim a triumph about rice production, which is good, while ignoring the huge threat to Nigeria’s food supplies of the bloody onslaught of herders. Government must be aware that forced peace without justice and seizing one side’s weapons of self-defense is no peace.

    We cannot bring back the dead. Their ancestral line is destroyed. Child survivors will never know their history or even their name. The Buhari government’s failure to save life is a Human Rights failure to meet SDG 8,9,10,16 to protect. It prompts suggestions of complicity about the mounting murderous death toll on and around the Plateau and will have election 2019 consequences as too many voters have first-hand trauma knowledge. Bermuda has its ‘Bermuda Triangle’ of mystery and strange accidents, disappearances of boats, ships and planes and people. The herder-instigated farmer killings create a deadly Plateau Triangle including Benue, Nassarawa states and spilling into Benue, Adamawa and Bauchi and now Sokoto and nationwide. Certainly NASS is impotent. Government must stop the matter today instead of offering alternatives including abandoning one’s ancestral property to the terrorist invaders. And yet we all still shed cow blood for meat provided by the blood shed of thousands. Have we no shame? When is enough blood enough bloodshed?

    As we mourn, we congratulate France’s multi-ethnic team for lifting the World Cup in a good clean game. Give opportunity to the youth and witness their Mbappe after Brazil’s teenage Pele. Meanwhile Nigeria’s Footbal Federation members rather risk expulsion /suspension of Nigeria from FIFA than obey FIFA rules thus biting the hand that feeds them and the game of football in Nigeria with millions of often untraceable dollars. Football administrators should be above ‘winning’ or viciously destroying the game.

    So even more congratulations to ex-governor and ex-Minister Fayemi for re-winning the Ekiti elections. Educated Ekiti, have witnessed the horrors of anti-judiciary thuggery, Shakespearian Macbethian medical theatrics and a tragic stream of unsolved political murders. Can Fayemi put any demons of his past performance aside and bind all the people of all political parties in a spectacular service manner? Nigeria sorely needs a new breed of leader-Obama, Mandela? You choose. Ekiti’s development cannot afford to lose a minute of one day in the next four years.

    • Uncover ‘I LOVE NIGERIA’ KNOWLEDGEABLE CANDIDATES for 2019 -SDG 16.

  • Buhari, APC and the CUPP challenge

    With the formation this week of the Coalition of United Political Parties (CUPP) – a loose alliance between the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and 30 other political parties – the battle for 2019 has been well and truly joined.

    Rumoured as political realignments picked up pace a few days earlier when certain elements of the ruling party moved to factionalise it with the formation of the so-called Reformed All Progressives Congress (R-APC).

    The group has quickly made common cause with the new PDP-led alliance while, continuing to trouble it erstwhile base by petitioning the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) over perceived sins at the last national convention. It has also instituted a case in court seeking to the recognized as the authentic APC.

    This should not confused as a bid by R-APC leader Buba Galadima and others to battle for the soul of the ruling party, but simply another way to unsettle it and provide evidence of factionalisation, as a cover for its members who are soon expected to execute dramatic defections in the National Assembly.

    By signing the CUPP Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) which aims to defeat President Muhammadu Buhari’s APC at the center, the states, and in the legislature, the parting of ways is settled.

    The resort of the PDP to sponsoring the new grouping simply confirms a settled fact in Nigeria politics – that there are a really only two major tendencies and the fringe elements.

    In 1998 that thinking, that those two tendencies were the military and civilian politicians, drove the bid to create a massive political party that would bring most of the key players together under one roof – irrespective of their supposed ideological positions. While the ambitions of certain individuals made it difficult to pull it off, the PDP was the closest they got in terms of spread.

    Those who demurred soon found themselves boxed into the then All Peoples Party (APP) and Alliance for Democracy (AD) which had their strengths in the regional redoubts and could not on their own challenge for the presidency.

    That realization was what led to a last-minute alliance between APP and AD that produced Chief Olu Falae as presidential candidate and the late Umaru Shinkafi as running mate.

    In the ensuing contest in February 1999, they were well trounced by the PDP’s Olusegun Obasanjo/Atiku Abubakar ticket which received 62.78% of the vote compared to 37.22% for the Falae/Shinkafi partnership.

    Among the key challenges faced by the APP/AD alliance was the lateness of its coming and hurried nature of its assembling. It lacked so much in cohesion and conviction – compared to the PDP which appeared to be in its element as the latest incarnation of the Second Republic’s National Party of Nigeria (NPN).

    It was the natural home for politicians of the conservative and centrist persuasions. They were comfortable in their skin and made no pretense about what they were.

    The same could not be said for the APP/AD alliance. For while the likes of Falae could project themselves as progressives – though some would dispute that tag for the brainbox of Ibrahim Babangida’s Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP); Shinkafi could not by any stretch of the imagination be described as a leftist. Truth be told, the natural home of this ex-NPN member would have been the PDP.

    At best, the APP-AD alliance was a poorly-assembled, ill-timed special purpose vehicle (SPV) to contest the 1999 presidential election. In theory the partners were to field candidates for state and legislative elections where they had advantage. The results of the federal legislative polls in February 1999 with the APP winning 20 out of 109 Senate seats and 68 out of 360 seats in the House of Representatives, was a signpost that even with the returns of AD in the Southwest, it had very little chance of capturing the presidency.

    But the fact that the APP-AD alliance failed to deliver doesn’t necessarily mean other such efforts are fated to meet the same end. We have the example of the emergence of APC to give us pause. Many felt its formation so close to the last general elections was a problem.

    Perhaps what made the APC a more formidable proposition is the fact that rather than an alliance of the half-hearted, it agreed a merger of all its legacy parts to create something akin to the then ruling behemoth. That very decision took care of the problems of commitment, cohesion and national spread.

    The circumstances of 2018 are a world removed from what prevailed in 2014. The PDP which once boasted it was Africa’s largest political party has been reduced to a shell by its catastrophic loss of power in 2015, and the opportunistic defections that followed thereafter.

    Today, it understands that it is not strong enough to oust an incumbent party with better spread and control of state organs. It has to rally the opposition to muster additional strength. Unfortunately for it, much of those it now trumpets as members of a potentially all-conquering CUPP alliance, have little or no electoral value.

    Compare and contrast where APC was at formation. Together, the then Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) and the Rochas Okorocha rump of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), had a little over a dozen governors and scores they would could call on in the National Assembly.

    CUPP, on the other hand, has the PDP and the R-APC as its leading lights. The Galadima group for now is mainly the aggrieved members of the ruling party in the National Assembly ostensibly backed by Senate President Bukola Saraki and House of Representatives Speaker, Yakubu Dogara. Sokoto State Governor, Aminu Tambuwal, is identified with the group and we are told that there are other ‘sleeper’ governors who will manifest at the right time. Until they do so, we must reckon with CUPP as it stands today.

    Shorn of the PDP and the Saraki-Dogara-Tambuwal axis, the new coalition is just an anonymous congregation of 30-odd names lacking electoral heft.

    You could argue that on account of what happened to Goodluck Jonathan and the PDP in 2015, incumbency is not all that it is made out to be. I would make the counter point that the Jonathan debacle was an aberration rather than the norm. In Nigeria, executive incumbency remains a major advantage for anyone who is not damaged beyond repair politically.

    Tellingly, such is the weakness of today’s PDP that none of its current partners is willing to dissolve into it. Some have even audaciously demanded that the erstwhile ruling party agree to change its name as a condition for cooperation. All of these, again, raise questions about commitment and cohesion.

    Still, I stop short of making predictions about 2019. Seers have had their fingers burnt making political projections; seasoned analysts and pollsters blundered badly with Donald Trump and Brexit. Given the Buhari administration’s challenges with herdsmen killings and the economy, the opposition would clearly fancy their chances. Their clear thought would be: if coming together worked for APC, why wouldn’t it work for us?

     

     

     

  • Our Girls; Powerless; Professional paralysis

    We discuss power, professional failures. It is four years+ since our Chibok Girls were kidnapped on April 15, 2014. We await the release of the remaining Chibok Girls. Inexplicably, our Dapchi girl-child, 15-year old, Leah Sharibu is not released. Why have we not extricated one single girl from the terrifying clutches of Boko Haram?

    Why does Nigeria allow expressway repairs by Julius Berger to cause such heavy traffic jams?

    The power grid has collapsed three times this year but it is a powerless collapsed grid, period. This is testimony to a myopic insensitive amoral governance structure obviously failing the citizenry since around 1978 when blackouts first became ‘normal’ and the first generators sprang into life, circumventing the political failure to provide power but unfortunately signifying the death of the power grid forever because others recognized a business opportunity in 1,000,000 generators with fuel needs ad infinitum. Unbelievably, serial governments since 1966 were so callous as not to add just 1,000Mw/ year to the grid- a fundamental to any rolling development plan as Nigeria requires 150,000Mw at UN recommendation of 1,000Mw / 1 million population. Is this not, therefore, a glaring example of the urgent need to ‘at last and at least’ decentralise the electricity governance system more radically to overcome our CINS of Corruption Incompetence, Negligence and Selfishness to which we should add Irresponsibility in management skills stunting our past rulers’ ability to supply the human right of modern electric power- SDGs  7,8,9,11,12? Inhumanly we are still struggling with the monster of ‘illegal billing by guesstimate’ only because it is a crime-ridden corruption cash-cow for DISCOs. All this in spite of trillions thrown at power since 1999-most of it ‘disappeared’?

    Since the 70s, the federal government has been morally and manpower-wise a failure in the provision of power to the country. Under restructuring and decentralization, power should be the problem of the individual states which are smaller manageable units more easily held responsible for the provision of power needs of their own people. Remember that each state in Nigeria is larger than some countries which because they are bona fide countries power their people. For how long will homes and offices burn trillions of naira in substitution for the grid with fuel and generator fumes when if the grid was working we would all save at least 90% of our current expenditure on electricity supply? Where is the $1-5b CBN Solar Loan Facility to be repaid at single digit interest rates, to allow Nigerians to buy solar equipment and get off the grid? Such solar loan facilities are widely available in many EU countries and the UK where the sunshine is only 10% of our sunshine. Nigerians must be assisted to harness this gift of God –the sun.

    Excuse me, the media has got it all wrong. It may be politically correct to use the terminology farmers/herders clash but is not factually or morally correct. The farmers are the ones murdered, their produce destroyed and lands razed and seized. It is a herders/ farmers clash which clearly shows for posterity that the farmers are not the aggressors but the victims. It also seems to be politically correct to use the more generic job description ‘herders’ and drop the ‘Fulani herders’ which is specific as all Nigerians have known who they are traditionally and that they are actually the perpetrators or culprits. This war started long before the Gadhafi boys announced by President Buhari. Remember that President Buhari was Grand Patron of Fulani herders when Lam Adesina was governor in Oyo State during a Fulani herders/farmers clash. The ethnicity is merely part of the job description.

    There is a plethora of new names in the mix with the old in the run-up to the coming elections at all levels. Worldwide, the perceived ‘’unknown’ has repeatedly unseated the known hands. Can and will this happen in Nigeria so prone to stomach infrastructure in exchange for voting allegiance?  It is a pity that the traditional names are being raised for the presidential race. There are many new candidates but will the voters go and vote ‘old’ or vote ‘b-old and new’?

    Once again, just like Jesse of old when 1000 people lost their lives, pipeline fire and destruction of property rears its head, even in the markets where fires are routine. Are there no engineers maintaining the integrity of such lines to raise alarms? Of course engineers do not even fill the potholes threatening and sometimes ending the lives of their family members on the expressways so why should they fix pipelines before they burst? We suffer from a ‘professional ethic paralysis’ or ‘professional castration’ caused by a politics which ignores professionals as it is preoccupied with self-aggrandisement while the country ‘burns’ in reality and figuratively. Politicians would rather buy N37-50m jeeps than order N50m cancer care equipment. Can we start a social media ‘Expressway Pothole Watch’ to force an unembarrass-able government into sending its road engineers to fill 10-year old potholes now while waiting for politicians to fund the expressway by 2025 or whenever?

    We always provide medicine after death – after pipelines and petrol tankers burst into flames, after potholed roads killed a senator or minister, or after a herders’ attack when they have ‘mysteriously’ disappeared. Nigeria, who will save you from these burning in these flames?

    Uncover ‘I LOVE NIGERIA’ KNOWLEDGEABLE CANDIDATES for 2019 -SDG 16.

  • Our Girls; Mismanaged NHIS $1b

    Our girls are still missing since April 15, 2014. Inexplicably Our Dapchi girl-child, 15-year old, Leah Sharibu is not released. Shout and scream until government gets all our girls back.

    As Nigeria faces daily rampaging marauders, the mounting death toll from the herders murderous and callous invasion of the Nigerian farm space will almost certainly cost President Buhari any moral high ground he thought he had. Death cannot be wiped from memory with a few ‘good deeds’. Too many dead have had too much bloodshed to be swept under the carpet of party loyalty by the 2019 electorate. Everyone is well enough travelled due to business, educational, NYSC or ethnicity to know someone displaced or murdered or is familiar with the murder village or LGA. The souls of the innocent will not die, but cry out to Buhari for justice. How much longer before we are all consumed?

    The disgraceful revelations of the forensic audit into the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) up to 2015, or more obviously NHIScam,  is yet another nail in the coffin of the citizens of Nigeria yearning for adequate healthcare. The sums manipulated are enormous but ‘billions’ are common among the thieving class of Nigeria. The NHIS is exposed to have misplaced, mismanaged or directly used with criminal intent, the sum of $1,000,000,000, $1billion or N135,000,000,000, N135b using the exchange rate of the time. We are used to hearing probably true stories of organisations being solicited or volunteering to ‘roll over’ funds for anything from days to several months thus delaying the ‘as and when due’ salary and pension payments, payment of debts for services rendered like contract medical bill payments. We have heard of ‘finder’s fees’ being paid anyone from CEO to accountants who deposit public and private money in banks. Periodically our workers and retirees have to resort to strikes to get their monthly benefits while the officials laugh all the way to the bank ‘for their percentage’.

    Is this NHIS scam any different from the previous and obviously ongoing scams, from electricity to road to education, tearing us apart? Be aware that the NHIS’s reputation has been rubbish, almost a cesspool, since inception. I was not impressed in my personal professional relationship with it. It is plagued by opaque accounting, arrogance in its relations with partners, preferring to give orders and instructions without negotiation, deliberate delays in payment of legitimate bills for services rendered by primary and secondary care providers, suspicion of corruption and discrimination in the payment and non-payment and refusal to pay bills and insisting on paying bills in bulk and stopping payments of the bills of 99 patients if one patient’s bill has a question mark from the NHIS.

    The forensic audit is a picture of a  plague ravaging the NHIS. In contrast, its template the UK NHS celebrates 70 years of service to many including ‘former’ Nigerians. The forensic audit has exposed a great lack of projects to grow the NHIS. It demonstrates a great amount of small minded decisions like bank stuffing. Follow the paper trail to those who benefited from kickbacks, finder’s fees, and delayed bill payments of millions of participants. Prosecute  and when found guilty, have their assets stripped and imprison them. The money appeared in NHIS accounts in and around 2012, presumably to boost medical services. Or was it a carefully orchestrated scam with $1b between $8 and $12/person.

    In a normal society, we would have expected a 2012 conference or NHIS task force to accept memoranda and proposals from stakeholders in medicine to discuss the A-Z relevant to standard National Health Services worldwide and to the Nigerian context which is statistically altered by high family numbers, multiple partners, numerous children, infrequent salary payments and an untested home address system. From ambulance services to Zika virus, defective health service should have been put on the table, dissected and sewn back together with the problem exposed – all to better allocate the funds. The NHIS research team, if it existed should have been doing a good computer-based Research and Development, R&D job by collating medical journal papers and hospital vital medical statistics to produce data on the commonest diseases, medications, surgeries and failures of the medical system. We have severe problems in malaria, maternal and infant mortality and cancer care with too few centres offering any semblance of cancer diagnosis and care at state level.

    We have too little good quality equipment spread too thinly. Every single General Hospital should be as good as a Federal Medical Centre or very good State Hospital. Medical practitioners cannot afford the 25-30% interest on loans for already exorbitantly priced medical equipment. Medical equipment is more expensive in Africa than in the UK or Middle East but Africa charges a low price for using the equipment and cannot recover the cost. Similarly for medical drugs.

    Instead of investing in banks for the profit of a few, an intelligent caring NHIS could have partnered with medical equipment suppliers, pharmaceutical companies, and various training bodies to produce those  trained in the needed skills and equipment use and recovered the money over time by deducting the money from investigation fees et cetera. If the $1b which is not worth $0.5b can be recovered, the NHIS must empower medical services nationwide and not banks to better impact Nigeria’s poor health indices.

    Uncover ‘I LOVE NIGERIA’ KNOWLEDGEABLE CANDIDATES for 2019 -SDG 16.

     

  • Plateau killings and executive helplessness

    Too much is often made of how powerful the office of the Nigerian president is. With the stroke of the pen he can make a raft of appointments and sign off on multi-billion dollar contracts. He is the commander-in-chief of all manner of forces – those visible in public as well as those whose domain is the clandestine.

    But nowhere is the limitation of the power of this grand office more apparent than when extreme security challenges arise. While we expect that the president would with an executive magical wand cause the troubles to cease, all he can deliver at those critical points are mere platitudes and promises of deliverance.

    He may issue commands but they only produce effect where there is proper execution in theatre of conflict and where the people and local communities buy into whatever solutions he is proffering.

    We saw this play out repeatedly in the run-up to the 2015 general elections. As Boko Haram ramped up its attacks in major northern cities and seized many local government areas in the Northeast, the security gave the impression that they were running around like headless chickens.

    Every new attack only produced hollow-sounding ‘tough’ from the beleaguered presidency. While then President Goodluck Jonathan gave the impression that he was doing his absolute best to deal with a nightmare that was threatening to unseat him, there was ample evidence that many of those who were supposed to be carrying out his orders on the frontlines were demotivated from fighting the energised and emboldened insurgents. The upshot was that the occupant of such a powerful position simply came across as spineless and clueless.

    His inability to deal with the Boko Haram security crisis was a God-sent campaign gift to the opposition who were then able to sell General Muhammadu Buhari as a credible alternative whose military background supposedly put him in better shape to deal with the insurgency.

    While Buhari has achieved a fair amount of success in containing the insurgents in the Northeast, under him the security challenge has mutated. The horrific herdsmen-farmer clashes across the Middle-Belt and in some southern states should definitely terrify leading lights of the administration.

    Again, as was the case with the previous administration dealings with Boko Haram, we see the same measure of executive helplessness. Every new attack is followed by the same standard words of condemnation and empathy. Senior government officials, and in this instance in Plateau the president calls to share in the grief of the people.

    Each time we hear of vows to bring the perpetrators to justice but we are hardly able to hold up a long list of those who have hung from the gallows because of the atrocities.

    The crisis of the current killings is even more depressing because of the confusion and contradictions obvious in the highest levels of government. On the one hand you have people like the Minister of Defence, Dan Ali, insisting that the problem would not abate unless anti-open grazing legislation in places like Benue State are repealed, at other times you hear the president blaming political actors who are determined to unseat him.

    Ali’s position suggests that herdsmen aggrieved over the loss of cattle are complicit in the conflict. Benue State Governor Samuel Ortom has never hidden the fact that he holds elements of the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association responsible.

    Beyond these two suspects, I have not heard of any other force being accused of promoting the killings. Although, we may add the so-called herders who were supposedly militants armed during the Libyan national war who have now found other nefarious work devastating unarmed communities in the heart of Nigeria.

    So, clearly, the suspects can be isolated. What Nigerians find so frustrating is that given the resources of the supposedly all-powerful presidency, none of these groups has been brought to heel.

    President Buhari misses it when he wastes time trying to absolve himself personally. What people are expecting is that he would deploy the extraordinary resources of his office to deal with the situation in a way his predecessor failed to do with Boko Haram.

    If herdsmen are the problem, what credible solution that has the buy-in of all parties is on the table? Cattle colonies and other ideas will not immediately curtail the savage killings that are going on.

    If politicians are driving the murders in order to discredit his administration why haven’t there been any arrests or prosecutions to back up his accusations and deter other such criminals in agbada?

    Now, we have the promise that the president wants to reorganise the security agencies to prevent a recurrence of last weekend’s killings in Plateau. Buhari obviously has to take some sort of action to contain what is spiralling dangerously into an unprecedented sectarian and ethnic conflict. All patriots should support that effort.

    However, any new security arrangement that doesn’t deal with root causes of this problem would only be dealing with the symptoms – bringing it back to square one.

  • Oshiomhole, PDP and the unfinished business

    Finally, the eagle has landed with the emergence of former governor of Edo state, Comrade Adams Aliyu Oshiomhole, as the national chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC). By that strategic political orchestration and stratagem, the APC, under the leadership of President Muhammadu Buhari, has sounded the ultimate nunc dimittis for the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). The opposition must be wishing that this had not happened.  Oshiomhole’s chairmanship of the governing APC is masterstroke in the contemplation of a revitalized winning machine ahead of the crucial 2019 presidential election in which Buhari, as the expected candidate, continues to be PDP’s nemesis and waterloo.

    It is a platitudinous fact that the PDP never wanted the APC to remain cohesive in the hope that it could profit from its internal squabbles and divisions in the build-up to next year’s general election. That was the reason it had continued with its negative profiling of the APC and its jejune antics of taunting the APC as incapable of holding congresses and national convention to elect its national executive committee (NEC).  That narrative had, sardonically, become a platform on which the battered opposition strove to draw political relevance. Unfortunately, its rash of criticisms had only portrayed it as dimwitted. And generally, the PDP has now outlandishly reduced opposition politics to petty tittle-tattle and confabulation, poking around in the APC’s internal affairs when issues that directly affect the welfare, security and wellbeing of the nation and her citizenry are blowing in the wind.

    Therefore, the manner in which the PDP and its noxious frolics could not escape essential stigmatization with regard to its unimaginative interference in APC’s internal affairs is the same manner in which its so-called quick responses to APC’s governance issues cannot escape indictment as products of frustration birthed by the historic and sensational termination of its megalomania in the 2015 presidential election. Its rodomontade that it would rule Nigeria for the next 60 years had suffered a short circuit. Its 60-year rule dream got terminated in its sixteenth year in power. The decision by Nigerians to sign a social contract with the APC is at the bottom of PDP’s histrionics. Unable to absorb the shock and in a frenzied bid to stage a come-back to power to continue the robin hood road show, it has resorted to ridiculous and lugubrious act of propaganda and blackmail.

    But one thing has been very evident in the corpus of criticisms that the PDP has hurled at the APC and Buhari’s administration since inception: the criticisms are all sheer bunkum and gobbledygook oozing out of the belly of damaged and compromised party machine whose leaders lack the moral high ground to pontificate about corruption. But surprisingly, the PDP through its publicists has been laboring hard to skew the corruption narrative against the APC and Buhari, whose moral magnitude has received national and international approbation; a leader who typifies the moral conscience of the administration and the moving force of the anti-corruption war.

    It is in the context of the sheer preposterousness of PDP’s antics that the sensibilities of Nigerians who have become seized of the facts of monumental corruption and mindless looting that charaterised the sixteen years of the PDP government get daily assaulted and ghastly bruised. For God’s sake, the fact that the PDP has the gumption to sermonize about propriety in official conduct questions and ridicules our sense of morality. The opposition party has sunk so deep into the corruption morass for it to be able to challenge the APC. Its records of malfeasance and sleaze are sordid. Its integrity capital has been greatly discounted. There is no iota of positivity in its kitty to show to a manically bewildered citizenry.

    The PDP cannot come to equity because it does not have clean hands. The totality of the political machine is soiled. The party’s unconscionable and wicked strategy to charge the APC-led federal administration with the mundane issues and primordial sentiments of religion and ethnicity in order to diminish the single-minded effort by Buhari to confront and dismantle the odious legacies of corruption, insecurity and mismanaged economy inherited from it, are reprehensible. Herein is the fallacy of PDP’s oppositional politics. It is obviously luxuriating in the aqua of hocus-pocus, thinking that Nigerians have forgotten so soon how its government mindlessly plundered the nation’s patrimony.

    There is no doubt that the leading opposition party has nothing new to offer. It has thus become a compulsive irritant, knowing full well that it cannot electorally rebound due to Buhari’s writ-large credentials and characters of financial prudence and integrity. In addition, the prospects of a much more unified party under the chairmanship of a hard-hitting Oshiomhole have raised the bar far higher than the PDP had expected. Until June 23, the PDP had been indulged by the party’s NEC under the urbane and unassuming leadership of Chief John Odigie-Oyegun. That political indulgence had served as an oxygen mask for the prostrate PDP which, at the time, should have been put where it rightly belongs through precise and sustained narratives by the APC.

    Had Oshiomhole been the chairman at that period when the nation was daily regaled by revelations of corrupt acts perpetrated by the PDP and officials of its government particularly from 2011 to 2015, he would have robustly deployed the platform of his office to further deconstruct the nature of the plundering administration and the characters that superintended it. Today, Oshiomhole has stepped in as national chairman to the discomfiture of the opposition: all gloves are off for bare-knuckled fights with the floundering opposition. It is too late for the PDP to stop the macabre dance. Regardless, Oshiomhole will take the wind of its sail, deploying his huge capacity for wits and grits.

    Viva Nigeria! Viva APC! Viva Buhari! Viva Oshiomhole! Welcome to a new  era in political party administration. The combination of Buhari and Oshiomhole would produce robust government-party leaderships that would be complementary in their vast flourish. Oshiomhole is not ready to take prisoners.  He is in the mood to completely decimate the opposition.  He has the intellectual magnitude, the oratorical clout and the sheer fecundity to deploy the power of logic in the articulation and elucidation of party and government manifestoes and programmes. He is very efficient and utilitarian.  He will consistently and persistently intervene in very coherent defence of policy decisions and choices by the federal government.

    Indeed, the almost four years of tolerating the irritability of the PDP are over for good. The opposition is advised not to joke with Oshiomhole. Enough of political sarcasms and innuendoes that had been thrown as barbs at the APC and Buhari for a period of aeon. PDP’s characteristic criticisms that had bordered essentially on ad hominem; that had been highly tendentious most times and, at other times, vitriolic and incendiary should be moderated if the opposition must enjoy little peace. In fact, the PDP is now in between the devil and the deep blue sea. Whether it becomes irresponsible or not, it should know that it has Oshiomhole to contend with per time.

    The role of the opposition is not, as it were, to cry wolf where there is none or to become irresponsible in raising the alarm before international organisations without verifiable factual bases nor is it to play on our centrifugal proclivities at the expense of our centripetal and agglutinating fulcrum. The PDP and Oshiomhole’s opposite side- Prince Uche Secondus- will come under the sledge hammer if they continue with these odious tactics. Clarifications: the APC-led administration is not averse to criticisms, but the criticisms must be constructive.

    • Honourabe Obahiagbon, a former member of the House of Representatives, writes from Benin.

  • Buhari’s budget blues

    In his military days, President Muhammadu Buhari had the reputation of being unbending and unyielding. But since swapping his khaki for voluminous babanrigas, he is showing increasing flexibility – even on matters he clearly disapproves of.

    A case in point is his admission mid-week that he signed the 2018 national budget reluctantly, as withholding assent would slow down the economic recovery process.

    His anger over alterations made by the National Assembly to the proposals submitted by the executive have been well covered. Reporting the legislators to the Nigerian public, he said: “The National Assembly made cuts amounting to N347 billion in the allocations to 4,700 projects submitted to them for consideration and introduced 6,403 projects of their own amounting to N578 billion.

    “Many of the projects cut are critical and may be difficult, if not impossible, to implement with the reduced allocation.”

    In specific terms, significant cuts were made in allocations to key infrastructural projects like the Mambilla Power Plant, Second Niger Bridge, East-West Road, Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, Itakpe-Ajaokuta Rail and Enugu Airport, to name a few.

    Buhari’s complaints have become part of an annual ritual. In June last year, then Acting President Yemi Osinbanjo, grumbled about the legislators not having the power to distort the proposals sent to them by the executive branch. Despite his displeasure at the modifications, he still signed the ‘deformed’ appropriations bill into law.

    Expectedly, the legislators have retorted that the constitution didn’t direct them to rubberstamp budget proposals from the executive.

    Indeed, the United States’ constitution from which the Nigerian one is largely fashioned, originally gave the ‘power of the purse’ to the legislature. In the course of their political evolution some powers in the process were ceded to the executive branch – allowing it to initiate proposals to be treated by congress.

    The 1999 Nigerian constitution requires the president to play that agenda-setting role by submitting a budget proposal to the National Assembly which cannot become law until it is passed by both houses and signed.

    Submitting those proposals to the assembly presupposes more than a perfunctory role in the process for the lawmakers. The budget is just like any other bill the executive might initiate and send to the legislature. It could end up as something radically different from what was sent in.

    One of the earliest bills proposed to the assembly by former President Olusegun Obasanjo when he just assumed office, was an anti-graft legislation fashioned after a similarly stern legislation in Singapore. By the time the bill had passed through the prescribed readings, it was clear to that class of legislators that were they to pass it as proposed, a whole bunch of then would shortly become inmates in Kirikiri or Kuje prisons.

    They then approved a watered-down version which Obasanjo gladly signed – knowing there was nothing of the sort on our books at that point in time.

    It is illogical to think that the appropriations bill which originates from the executive is such a unique legislation that it should make its way through the legislature – untouched – just for ceremony. At least the constitution doesn’t say so.

    If it is not to be tampered with then there’s really no point in going through the whole rigmarole of the president leading an entourage to lay the document before the assembly.

    Across the world there is no uniform template that prescribes how the process should run. Each country determines what works for it. The South African constitution, for instance, gives parliament powers to hold hearings and call government officials and other experts to give evidence. But the legislature and its committees do not presently have the right to suggest changes to the budget.

    However, many countries with the parliamentary system allow amendment powers. In Australia and the UK, changes have been made – although they are not very significant.

    That said, it would be very naïve to think that such a powerful document that directly impacts the wellbeing of the people, can be insulated from the political calculations and realities of present day Nigeria. It doesn’t happen in the real world.

    In the US, the budget is often a political football that sometimes results in the government shutting down when the opposing sides are unwilling to compromise.

    While the Presidency would like to believe its proposals should be untouched, its position is undercut by a March 2016 ruling by the Justice Gabriel Kolawole of the Federal High Court, Abuja in a case instituted by Femi Falana, SAN.

    The court ruled that the National Assembly has powers to add, reduce and review budget estimates laid before it by the executive.

    Obviously, this would not be the final word until the Supreme Court weighs in with its opinion. Until that happens, Abuja’s game of political hostage-taking and ransom payment would continue.

    Buhari and his advisers have to realise that however good their budget intentions may be, they would never become reality if they fail to acknowledge that their power over the process is limited. Indeed, the advantage is skewed in the direction of the legislature.

    Politics is a game of interests. The executive is interested in ensuring that its proposals return largely unscathed. How can it ensure that this happens without what appear to be arbitrary additions and subtractions?

    The key clearly lies in robust consultations between the arms. In each budget cycle we are greeted with headlines about legislators threatening ministers and heads of agencies to appear to defend their estimates.

    In this last process, Buhari at some point had to order his officials to honour the invitations, while one or two ministers were engaged in a very public war of words with those supposed to approve their budgets.

    This being Nigeria, we understand this process of consultation and engagement has been abused in the past as a means of extorting money from ministers and heads of agency for passing their budget. Lobbying simply became a dirty word that signified carting about millions in Ghana-Must-Go bags in exchange for passing the budget.

    Elsewhere, lobbying isn’t necessarily about bribing lawmakers or other top officials with cash. It is about groups, companies, industries – even countries, trying to influence government policies and actions to protect their interests. Lobbying has become a multi-billion dollar industry across the world and is often properly regulated to guard against political corruption.

    If your interests are important to you, then you have to lobby those who have the power to further those goals or frustrate them. In the US and elsewhere this process of give and take often involves the executive accommodating the interests of influential lawmakers by providing projects for the legislator’s constituency – in what is referred to as pork-barrel legislation. The truth is lawmakers are also politicians who fave voters from time to time, and need to impress them with what they have accomplished on their behalf.

    The bastardised form of that arrangement is what is now referred to as ‘constituency projects.’

    Until a creative way of harmonizing executive and legislative interests is worked out, the National Assembly would continue to find ways of stuffing the budget with projects the Presidency never ordered – and there’s not much Buhari or any other president can do about it.

     

  • Our Girls; ‘Opening The June 12 Closet’

    It is four years + since our Chibok Girls were kidnapped on April 15, 2014. We await the release of the remaining Chibok Girls. Inexplicably our Dapchi girl-child, 15 year old Leah Sharibu is not released.

    The Buhari annulment of the Babangida annulment of June 12 amounts to Nigeria’s Kim Jong-Un – Trump meeting. President Buhari, you have not stopped the herders’ arrogant terrorist assault on the farming community. Your uniformed appointees fail Nigeria, maybe causing you to fail at Election 2019. Do not underestimate the horror of Nigerians.  Stop this herders’ onslaught against Nigeria –a terror.

    I found a rejected article of mine from Comet of June 28 titled:  ‘June 12 – 1st Year Memorial’ and an advert paid for by 98 of us in June 1994. The 2018 June 12 Earthquake make it politically correct for today:

    Part of it reads:

    ‘Just 365 days ago we stepped further into darkness wasting a potential to be the greatest African nation. It is time to call a halt. Long live a Nigeria where we will all be faithful, loyal and honest.’ The advert had a receipt for N18,872. A couple of the 98 became ministers.

    Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela’s trial speech: “I have dedicated myself to the struggle. I have cherished ..a democratic and free society… with equal opportunities… It is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

    ‘Today we remember, with millions of Nigerians, 1993, just last year when we voted in the freest and fairest election witnessed. [No doubt some sordid political plot will attempt to discredit the election]. June 12 made us finally proud to be Nigerians. But the infamous annulment made Nigeria a laughing stock.’

    ‘We know that politicians and soldiers are not the answer to our huge problems in education, health, transport, water and electricity management. [Still around in 2018!!] Nationalists are! Democracy is the first step, then probity, good governance and faith. Good or bad, give us June 12….. Peace at any price is failure. We want a just peace addressing revenue distribution, government waste, patronage and demonstrating faithfulness, loyalty and honesty unselectively.’

    We should not forget the difficulties of those times. Remember the black arm bands and clandestine memorial service held for executed Ken Saro Wiwa. And the defacing of the ‘Abacha Forever’ poster. And the emergency trip for a senior political figure [Chief Bola Ige driven to Lagos by yours truly] to meet with the Number Two Rear Admiral at Queens Drive shortly before Chief Abiola’s expected release and unexpected death in a tea cup??? The vehicle was waved down by the irritating FRSC fellow who almost had a heart attack seeing the distinguished passenger who told him that ‘We did not set up the FRSC to harass the citizenry for bribes but to save lives on the road’. What has changed?

    Historical political protest minutia is to remind us all that the struggle is authentic and started long ago, had many participants and not all skirmishes will be recorded in the Great Book of Democracy-a record of the dead, deprived, tortured and scared living. We deserve democracy monuments to the indestructible will of the people including late Comrade Ola Oni and more. Most leaders are consumed by their pomposity. The media must divert writing from politicians’ stupid antics towards reporting on citizens’ needs and needed policies.

    Everyone should answer ‘What did you do in the Democracy War?’ We must record the resistance, the support we found for families of the incarcerated and struggles of the victims’ wives, widows and children. It took me 43 minutes to walk to work, boycotting offered rides from the few moving vehicles. The few creative monuments to democracy, to Abiola and others say little of the terrible cost. The ministers and commissioners of education should initiate democracy monument walls in schools and democracy struggle exhibitions in state museums. June 12 great expectations must live. June 12 victims’ blood has fertilised the revolution.

    Make election 2019 harvest time. Our level of underdevelopment remind us that we still have too many politicians and far too few statesmen. We must use democracy education among the 18-22 year olds to get true statesmanship out of a selfish political class. We need a well-researched book ‘The June 12 Resistance Movement’. It is not yet Uhuru. Now, by calculated politics or conscience that Buhari has opened the June 12 closet, people should come out of ‘The June 12 Closet’ to make the documentaries, exhibits required in museums and public spaces. Investigators can research June 12 actors and actions as ‘June 12’ is no longer anathema in government security and political circles. Teach the full negative effect of June 12. The suppressed and private history hidden in the June 12 closet can finally be openly studied and analysed in political/ social science courses.

    World Cup: Nigeria two down. What investment has been in sports by politicians? Unbelievable sports headline news that Jo Bonfrere [meaning Goodfellow] visits Amuwo Odofin, Lagos ‘in search of talent’. Should it require a visitor to Nigeria to teach a worldwide fundamental technique of grassroots sports development – a sports pyramid. Shame!! Our coaches and talent scouts must be empowered to do this, 3-6 monthly, to catch, encourage and monitor achievers in every sport to ‘catch and nurture them young’ just like for politics.

    PS Reward Professor Humphrey Nwosu!!!

     

    • Uncover ‘I LOVE NIGERIA’ KNOWLEDGEABLE CANDIDATES for 2019 -SDG 16. 

     

  • Our Girls; Farmers: ‘Too Young To Die’

    It is now four years+ since our Chibok Girls were viciously kidnapped on April 15, 2014. However we await the release of the remaining Chibok girls and the Dapchi girl-child, 15 year-old, Leah Sharibu.

    Mr President, the truckloads of Nigerian needless dead should pass Aso Rock en route burial during the conviviality of the weekly Federal Executive Council meetings so as to get full government attention.  Even in the face of the wicked and wanton murder of three Special Anti Robbery Squad (SARS) men and officers along with evil killing of nine farmers they were supposed to protect, we are suspiciously dumfounded by the inactivity of the combined uniformed services. Our Inspector General of Police (IGP) was on television declaring that the response would be taken against in two whole bloody weeks ignoring the word ‘Rapid’.

    What happened to the ‘First 24-48 hours’ in crime detection? And will the herder terrorists not kill and destroy more according to the timetable and go on break in two weeks? Sadly when the security council met, the only solution articulated by the Minister of Defence was that Nigeria should ‘abandon the Anti-Grazing Bill, AGB’. Was it a truly national meeting – fair to the victims? Was any victim there to speak? Who wrote the security reports considered? But sadly and dangerously for Nigeria the defence minister demonstrated a failure in the basic ‘Logic of Problem Solving’. The problem was the wanton rampaging murder of thousands and destruction of thousands of farms and occupation of villages and farmlands with absent significant impact of the federal government. The solution creatively created out of victimization by the victims is the AGB, a reaction to disarming of potential victim communities by the authorities leaving then sitting ducks.

    So how can withdrawing the well-thought out solution, AGB, solve the problem? Rather it will explode murderously. The minister is advised that the AntiGrazing Bill must remain. My personal solutions include a boycott of beef as I cannot eat ‘blood beef’ provided by the murder of anyone – farmer, his family or herder. Other solutions available are forcing the cow owners to pay for cow and herders’ food and drink en route the market just like other produce owners, fattening the cows on ranches of the owner’s states and shipping them by trailer or maybe trains in one or two days nationwide. This is a needless war that should never have happened in Nigeria, compounding suspicions of territorial ambitions.

    President Buhari, we, the living Nigerians nationwide, are mostly happy at the Not Too Young To Run Act. But Nigeria has already lost thousands of potential young political office holders cut down in the herders/ Gadhafi-spawned terrorist war. Therefore even more urgent than this law is a new bill you urgently need to introduce – the ‘Too Young To Die’ stating that all Nigerians are ‘Too Young To Die’ at the hands of terrorist herders, their cohorts, mercenary foreign bandits and in 2019 election wars. Buhari beyond the monetary imperative to be Mr Clean, there is the moral imperative to the president’s commitment to ‘make all Nigerians safe and secure’ for every group and profession including farmers.

    Our democratic heartbeat is out of control. Our democracy is on very expensive life support not giving value for money. It is not vibrant, life-giving, hope-raising but facing cardiac arrest, with an exorbitant cost for little returns. It is in urgent need of self or imposed restructuring from top to bottom. Can it cut away the greed and fat?  Starting with the National Assembly (NASS) and state assemblies, they need urgent surgery to cut 70% of personnel salaries and perks, introduce part-time sitting allowances, and even payments of salaries by the states which politicians represent. Is this overbloated re-numeration scheme why NASS acts like a despicable bullying military unitary outfit? It makes a sordid political case study for political science students of contemporary politics as NASS shamelessly disregards public opinion or good leadership by ‘witch-hunting so-called dissident NASS members’ and any who question their ‘word’ or authority. Aruma Oteh of Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) responding to the haranguing by NASS spearheaded in the sordid ‘Hembe Affair’ has long confirmed Jega’s assertion that most CEOs dread NASS visitation panels because of their interpretation of ‘oversight’. ‘Money for hand, back for ground’ is a phrase used in certain professions beginning with P. Why does NASS relish discrediting and vilifying its members with different or opposing opinions especially if articulated publicly? Where is its democracy, accommodation of different views: party, partisan and personal? Why are NASS ‘Minority Reports’ a declaration of war, considered anti-NASS and fit only for punishment of the ‘dissident perpetrators’. Is NASS an unregistered political party that it should present itself as a united front, its membership up in arms in self-protection and seemingly against the wishes of Nigerians to have a cheaper more effective single house parliament?

    A country that cannot complete its National Library since 2006 to be built in 22 months with a contract awarded to RCC at N8+billion, now an immoral N78b, says it all about political priorities in education.

    One announcement says Second Niger Bridge is 44% complete and another says some Bureau is hindering finishing the bridge. Who is lying?

    Mr President: Cholera in 2018? Nigeria loses 440 citizens to cholera. Every LGA gets N1b a year –but still no sanitation in schools, markets and motor parks!!

     

    • Uncover ‘I LOVE NIGERIA’ KNOWLEDGEABLE CANDIDATES for 2019 -SDG 16.

  • Our Girls: Killers, Drugs and Potholes

    It is now four years + since our Chibok Girls were viciously kidnapped on April 15, 2014. However we await the release of the remaining Chibok girls and the Dapchi girl-child, 15 year old, Leah Sharibu. Is President Buhari’s team stopping the killings? No!!! In Adamawa, 12 people killed and 15 killed in a Zamfara village and life goes on. If Buhari will not take adequate containment measures, how can it end? Buhari should immediately empty the country’s barracks and transfer all soldiers to the state battlefronts to save the indigenous farming communities across Benue, Taraba, Plateau, Nassarawa States and 21 other attacked states. Soldiers have no right to be in officers and NCO messes and barracks when their C-in-C has informed the country that the herders’ attacks have sinister links with Ghaddafi terrorists confirming that we are at war by an infiltrating army in collaboration with known violent herders. This killing must stop before elections. President Buhari, this killing will stop your re-election. Far too many Nigerian voters have been traumatized directly and been attacked or forced to evacuate their ancestral lands by Fulani herder terrorists. Nobody will forget by 2019 election.  Unless Buhari creates a miracle, his ‘I am MR Clean’ will not cleanse him or his government of the ongoing tragedy of the herders’ terrorism and he will lose the election on ‘security’. Nowadays we talk of ‘security architecture’ so Buhari should review the ‘security architecture’ in every state and hamlet!

    The drug epidemic among the youth has finally hit the media and is highlighted by the outcry against Codeine containing cough mixtures and Tramadol. The vulnerable youth are educated and not educated, wealthy and poor. They mix these drugs with hemp, power drinks and other medications in an unregulated, unmeasured dangerous ‘Champaign Cocktail’ and drink ‘innocently’ from a soft drink bottle. Why? The usual suspects in every country – boredom, joblessness, availability of funds through stealing or scams or family money, and fads of peer pressure. Add medical treatment gone wrong, especially the misuse of painkillers, sometimes in collusion with medical staff. It is difficult to measure pain as it is a subjective personal perception prone to be exaggerated. There are too many important prevention steps that Nigerian leaders at every level have refused to institutionalize, thus forcing the whole country to abandon our responsibility to provide prevention to the youth, the physically and mentally challenged and the elderly. Already Ebola rears its head again. However it was expected that the Ministry of Education would involve the Ministries of Health, Transport, Sports, Youth and other ministries to come up with a ‘Life Skill’ Course Textbook teaching about the above topics. State and Federal Level must take such important educational information from co-curricular to curricular mainstream and include the subject ‘Life Skill Education’ as an examination tested subject.

    For many of our youth such prevention measures are too late. We failed them! Our ineptitude is now causing a serious drug use epidemic among our youth and young adults. This has arisen partly from stupid adventurism of youth and also for a lack of being taught the Dangers of Drugs’ as a classroom subject all added to a backfired culture cultivated by Corporate Nigeria creating ‘Instant Millionairism’ with no work done. Since 1994, 24 years ago, Educare Trust was probably the first youth NGO to pioneer an education programme in communities, schools and universities aimed at avoiding youth hazards captured in an Educare Trust acronym called  the SAD Syndrome= Smoking & Sex & Sickle Cell, AIDS & Alcohol & Abortion & Addiction, Drugs & Dangerous Driving and recommended to our Youth to be GLAD –Good Lungs, Abstinence, Diligent Driving and Democracy-Voting at 18. All this was done as a ‘Life Skill Project’ under co-curricular activities with willing schools numbering in the thousands and cooperative teaching staff and also on NTA, BCOS and elsewhere to reach a wider target audience comprising many millions.

    Certainly the time has come for not just NGOs but government Health and education ministry joint serious consistent drug surveillance and quarterly reports from such surveillance in student facilities, hostels and boarding houses. Governments must learn that government achievement is not just measured in statistics like financial figures on inflation and job rates. Students must be treated like athletes and have urine drug testing in and out of examination time.

    I want to ask us what type of evil animal are we that we have approximately 1000 major life-threatening craters and big potholes, some dug up every night, every night to criminally promote ‘go-slow’ and sellers’ business or actual vehicle crashes and robbery, on old sections of the Lagos Ibadan Road. They are begging to kill us and we are begging that ‘Road Surveillance and Repair’, denied us ever since the misleading hype of the 400 road engineers in 1999, be implemented by road crews filling temporarily such potholes and craters until contractor corporation or ministry of Works, deem it fit ‘to save lives today’ by filling these craters and bad patches, while waiting for the big bucks denied the road by an apparently greedy, selfish NASS. We do not even put Highway Code recommended ‘Warning Signs’ before major potholes but ‘FRoadSafetyC’ and Police checkpoints gather nearby. What work do they actually do?

     

    • NB: Uncover ‘I LOVE NIGERIA’ KNOWLEDGEABLE CANDIDATES for 2019 -SDG 16.