The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tony Marinho

  • Nation 2019 May 29  Beyond flyovers; ‘ Anti-Corruption ABCDEFGG’

    A Nigerians are affected by ‘Traumatic Stress Disorder’ caused by our undeclared war with thousands killed and kidnapped and 2-4m IDPs and Leah Sharibu@16 from Dapchi.

    Family security is uppermost for Nigerians this inaugural day for the 2019-2023 political cycle. There was the needless brutal murder of Dr Kelvin Izevbekhai, Chemistry lecturer, shot at the Okada junction. I actually escaped by God’s grace an attack on March 17th 2018 at 3pm at Km 41 on the Ibadan Lagos Road. The insecurity has murdered sleep. Trust is gone. USAID estimates that Nigeria has lost $13b or N4.6trillion to Herders clashes with farmers but no costing for lost loved ones. What is the cost of the okada invasion, a political policy disaster?

    It is shameful that governors and others will today swear an Oath OF Office  they intend to immediately break. Many of their predecessor leaders at federal and state level did not pay salaries and pension, or promote staff as and when due. They sacked at will, destroying the dignity of labour and the security employment and causing a cancer of corruption-driven activities to replace lost income. This plunged extended families and also market commercial activities into financial insecurity leading to this cycle of bribery, corruption, violence and kidnapping.  The wealthy and secure also steal.

    From their podiums our governors survey needy suffering citizens who are filled with suspicions and fears. While we blame ISIS, Boko Haram and herders and marauders, we must blame the political failure to obey the Oath of Office. This has resulted in underpowering, underbudgeting and corruption – all self-inflicted wounds destroying Nigeria. We have 5,000MW but require 150,000Mw. We have the Apapa gridlock costing N5 trillion/year. Neighbouring countries import our goods. We have no shame, just gain and naira/dollar rain. 

    Beyond flyovers, in 2019-2023, Governors should provide better transport and travel in different developmental directions. No ‘launching’ flyovers. Nigeria requires better projects. Some states have enough IGR to become first world countries but corruption prevents them.

    Beyond selfishness, citizens want interstate, interagency and federal/state cooperation for more useful projects like the Lagos Lekki bridge. Governors must capture ‘Internally Generated Ideas’, IGIs, and identify and strategise ministries to work with neighbouring states and institutions, NGOs and CSOs. Beyond Governance guest houses and weekly parties, a state should ensure its citizens benefit from expertise.

    Beyond a ‘Pothole Filling Department’, governors should build bridges and roads in a completely new direction in every state area annually.  Re-taring a road for 50 years is necessary, but not development.

    Beyond the state capital, governors must rotate State Executive Council meetings around the state to bring government to the people.

    Beyond personal arrogance, governors must be civil.

    Beyond personal agenda, governors must resurrect abandoned development plans made by selfless citizens and organisations and incorporate UN SDGs, Federal Government’s ERP and the South West DAWN project and Summits.

    Beyond selfishness Governors must embrace citizen empowering innovation through linkages with intellectual tertiary institutions -state, federal, private- for research and strategies needing little funding to empower citizens. State media must look beyond IGR to ‘Empowering Enlightenment Messaging’ promoting good practices, individuals and activities’ and breakthroughs. For example Ibadan has CRIN, FRIN, IITA, several others and UI which has 75 + department, 400+ professors and an army of research students. The state can also take its problems to the resident University for solution.  

    Beyond the corruption and politics of Abandoned Projects, Governors must complete them to be productive and useful.  

    Beyond headline clips, governors should read newspapers for honest evaluation and ideas for a brighter tomorrow.

    Increasingly traditional rulers are in the firing line of marauders. Why disarm the citizens only to have them slaughtered that very night? Post attack shows of force are meaningless in this our undeclared war. Our constitutional ‘No Go Areas’ are complemented by geographical NGAs, with orphans with no name or language growing up with no memory of homes now claimed by marauding herders. Unfortunately all Nigerians are traumatised at home, work or in transit or in government Ministry, Agency and Department, MAD. Who is clean from gateman to GM? Remember ‘clean’ is also transparency in choices, policy, performance, reporting. It used to be said that corruption is what you refuse to talk about on NTA!

    Governments must suppress the ‘need for greed’, corruption and bad policies causing government’s failure to provide regular livable wage salaries, single digit housing, transport loans, guaranteed pensions, quality healthcare, quality education and housing, a conducive trading/business environment, convert demands for 1 or 2 years rent in advance for lodging into monthly rent payments and combat DISCOdarkness -aka NEPAlessness. These force us all to become our own LGA and pension provider. Most pension offices and education ministries greedily and corruptly feed off the aged and the children– a sin. Yes, Nigerian police and troops have paid the supreme price with little compensation. Nigerians have also died in custody of compromised security agents with no justice or compensation.

    As government offices replace yesterday’s governor’s picture with today’s governor, will things change?

    Developmental progress is as simple as ABCDEFGG=Avoid Bribery & Corruption Daily Everywhere For Good Governance. Here Immediately! Each Nigerian in the Presidency, NASS, Judiciary, and state from President to you can stop our ‘B&C’ immediately from this 2019-2023 inaugural day 29/5/2019 . It is merely takes making the ‘Avoid Bribery & Corruption Decision’ – personal, collective, corporate and government. What will 2019-2013 bring? We cannot survive more corruption.

  • Leah, Oyediran@80, North/South governors

    Today we also look at ministers; Missing persons register; Okada register; Fine for non-voting; Cut JAMB fees please; Super Falcons win; Abuja’s war on women; Petty traders register; traders strangling Oja Oba and Okadas strangling Mokola Roundabout!!

    Ministers, thank you! New faces please!

    As victims of our undeclared war, we remember thousands killed and kidnapped and Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and especially Leah Sharibu@16 from Dapchi. The great Femi Falana, SAN, recommends Missing Persons Registers obviously at federal and for governors at state, LGA and ward levels.  This register should complement a Herbalist Register to prevent and detect ritual murder. We need Okada and Traders Registers …see below.

    About 22 countries have compulsory voting, including Australia where 10 million voted and which has a fine of $20-50 for non-voting. Perhaps Nigeria should raise election funds like this. 55+million non-voters in 2019 translate to N100b-N300b at a fine of N2,000 -5,000/non-voter, for INEC.

    Warm congratulations to Professor Olukayode Oyediran@80, a multitalented iconic role model who has touched many as a family and religious person, and in the international space as a doctor, in medicine and tertiary education, as an apex administrator including Chief Medical Director, UCH and vice chancellor, University of Ibadan, as an international administration figure in postgraduate regulatory bodies including the National and West African Postgraduate Medical and Physicians Colleges, and as a dedicated environmentalist founding the Nigeria Network for Awareness and Action for Environmental  Health.

    We also know him as a dedicated supporter of many good causes including Educare Trust to which he generously donated a full medical skeleton attracting many into medicine. Please note that the mere holding of high office, private or government, is usually always applauded without question, but is not always a stellar achievement on scrutiny. Far too often, the attainment is self-serving for perks with little genuine service intended and it may be undeserved, bought at a moral price or achieved through means, including bribery and corruption that cannot be proudly told one’s grandchildren or NTA or Channels TV news. In addition, conduct in office often brings the office and the holder into disrepute. We live steeped in the quagmire of pervading crass politics and a corruption-driven political and governance system often celebrating failure even in high office. Today ‘distinguished’, ‘excellency’ and ‘honourable’ are mostly unearned and meaningless to the users, signifying the opposite to listeners. When Nigeria is fortunately presented with an uncontaminated real, true, honest, heroic individual of marked untainted distinction and carriage, we as students and promoters of good practices, should be discerning enough to honour and offer a resounding ovation and a genuine ‘Happy 80th Birthday, Sir’.

    On Internally Generated Revenue, IGR, JAMB under Professor Oloyede took N4,700/candidate yielded N8.8billion from 1.88m candidates. With running costs of N3.8b, JAMB has honestly returned the excess to government. Wrong! That N5b or N2,648/candidate should be returned to candidates.  Certainly in 2020 the JAMB fee should be cut again, to N4,700 -2,648 = N2,162/candidate. It is noted that N2b of the N5b or N1059/candidate was returned to JAMB for ‘development’ costs as JAMB got zero budget in 2018/9. However N3b or N1,588/candidate is still an immoral ‘profit’ from a unemployed section of the community- youth. If N2b is to be returned to JAMB in 2020, then the recommended 2020 JAMB fee is N4,700- 1,588= N3,222/candidate. Averagely the 2019 JAMB fee should be N2,500 yielding N4.7b with N3.8-4b for running costs and N0.7b-N1b for development. Only a greedy corrupted unprincipled government would ‘profit’ from its children!

    Congratulations Super Falcons for the WAFU Cup win. Please don’t celebrate by clubbing or walking around Abuja in football gear to avoid victimization by misled or mischievous unsupervised authorities on a ‘war on women’ without female supervision. Google anti-rape activist Dorothy Njemanze and her lawyer, Azubueze Okocha who took Nigeria to the ECOWAS Court for violating women’s rights and won!

    Northern Governors Meeting, NGM, attempt to stem terrorism, kidnapping and insecurity and also improve financial integration. Great! Action at last. Nigeria requires an immediate complementary Southern Governors Meeting to plan with the NGM to encircle and capture the terrorists or they will merely continue to bring terror southward having fled the over-advertised military heat in the North. If not, issues like the okada ban in many northern states will lead a serious insecurity threat in the South from an invasion of even more okada into the South.

    One important measure that must be undertaken is a ward and LGA Okada Register and government limitations of okadas/road position to ten. The unregulated nationwide Okada Epidemic with riders blatantly contravening every road rules and riding in all lanes at all speeds is hospitalizing tens of thousands and burying thousands and orphaning hundreds of thousands from okada crashes. The Okada Epidemic resists traffic controllers and slows down and even strangling transportation movement to a single lane crawl at for example the formerly famous Mokola Roundabout, Ibadan and at junctions nationwide. Undisciplined ‘Okada Swarms’ gather like wasps or bees at okada crashes to protect their own and also swarm in an unruly manner at junctions. These ‘Okada Swarms’ are superior to or feared by traffic authorities.

    Similar  indiscriminate parking of wheelbarrow vegetable traders at OjaOba, Mapo Ibadan is paralyzing transport around the Olubadan’s palace as does new unregulated street traders selling vegetables and cooked meat all over the city.

  • Ministers! Herbalist register; LASPARK aquarium

    All ministers out! Political Pensions no! JAMB jams results; LGA autonomy; power and security as presidential priorities, NSITF-which scam next and CBN’s Emefiele.

    President Buhari: Congratulate and change all your ministers, please. Comfortable ministers are not the same thing as competent ministers. Nigerians are frustratingly used to old recycled failed ministerial and political faces in power.  We thrive on change which brings new expectations, new faces and renewed desire, we hope to serve. Let the ministerial jobs go around intra-state.

    More political pension abuse. When will politicians realise that Nigeria is fast changing. We are no longer silent. We have no gratitude for politicians who have failed us. Look at the budget approval delay and other shadowy activities characteristic of the Nigerian political class. If they do not change, Nigerians will have to change them until we get it right. Life pension is wrong, especially right now with so many unemployed. Even soldiers and police who risk their lives daily do not have that luxury.

    More ritual killings. I am yet to hear of any serious effort to initiate preventive measures in ritual killings. We always react but rarely prevent ritual killings. Why? Nigeria, particular LGAs and states Houses of Assembly must initiate laws making ‘Annual Herbalist Registration’ and ‘Herbalist Monthly Monitoring by LGA’ compulsory. Nigerians must be protected from professional killers hiding under the masquerade of herbalist.

    JAMB jams 34,120 UTME results. JAMB should be protected from fraudulent students by taking each and every fraud case to court. It is a jail-able crime. After all, the names and IDs are available. Is it possible that we still have this much cheating or are the results withheld for other reasons?

    The Lagos State Parks and Gardens Agency (LASPARK) is increasing the number of activities in Lagos State parks. Gardens and Parks, aka GAP are mostly empty of knowledge. Are you not surprised that Nigeria with 700 miles of coastline has no single aquarium? Why not have LAPSARK aquarium or science museums of educational posters of famous people and events and happenings in these parks? Please involve students and lecturers and tertiary departments in UNILAG, LASU, Yaba College of Technology, Oceanography School, Nigerian Medical Research Council and the various professional bodies to insert science and technology, engineering and mathematical and other subjects games and quiz questions and posters in LAPARK inspirational exhibition centres and museums to fill these ‘empty’ fun spaces to in turn help fill the ‘empty’ brains of our youth with serious science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and other knowledge. For years I have seen this GAP in youth knowledge and asked for this to be done. Nothing so far and now see the problem the youth have and are to others. See how they occupy their time.

    States ‘mismanage’ LGAs of N15.6trillion in 12 years. This was done by the elected politicians legalizing illegality through joint accounts. LGAs are corrupt enough without adding governor-driven illegally legal laws guaranteeing them access to the LGA accounts. Of course even when they were independent, did LGAs perform? Will independence be any different? Serious EFCC and ICPC and community monitoring is required.

    Like Ibadan like Kano when it comes to beaded crowns and creating new emirates like it was in the past?

    Mr. President, Nigerians were cheated by ECN and then PHCN and now DISCOs over estimated billing. Mr. President, give Nigeria prepaid meters and Mr. President give Nigerians the electricity they deserve -24/7 like at Aso Rock. Mr. President, make the supply of electric power to all Nigerians as priority one along with the elimination of the nationwide security threat of herder and bandit terrorism.

    Nigerians are often forced by law to contribute hard earned funds to organisations like ETF, only to find their funds disappear down these conduits of legalised illegality and political and fiscal rascality. We are legally forced to fund NSITF, NHIS, ETF, Police and other security funds or especially pension funds. All have failed us as funds are squandered, stolen or syphoned away in these scam schemes with disappearance of mind-bogging 10 or 11 figure amounts. Knowing the high risk of such nefarious thefts, why not monitor such organisations pre-emptively with bank alarm bells and monthly forensic audits to nip fraud in the bud? EFCC and ICPC ignore such organisations but they must be forced to perform common sense annual General Orders-compliant internal auditing, external auditing and normal thief-catching accounting procedure. The NSITF scam is said to involve cataclysmic corruption involving N42b out of N62b taken/stolen from all Nigeria’s employers between 2012 and 2015. The Nigerian business community deserves and unreserved apology from the supervising ministry and government for this loss of funds due to supervisory incompetence or neglect.

    What is NSITF’s financial position between 2015 and 2019? At least another N62,000,000,000, nearly N800/adult Nigerian. Is the fight to be on the board a fight to serve? Why do these things happen in every single case? Why?  Worse is that no effort is made by government to even make such bodies barely honest or accountable. It is only after multiple billions have been syphoned that one or two heads may roll. Every public organization requires alarm systems to detect when the first one million disappears. Which organisation is next?

    President Buhari has renewed the tenure of Emefiele CBN governor to signal stability, a slow improvement in naira value, and more riches for ‘treasury bill banks’ for no lending work done. Banking is good ‘bad’ business O!

  • Ex-ministers! ‘Druggage’; Niger Bridge

    President Buhari, welcome. Issue ‘All change’ to ministers -good or bad- go, while EFCC must initiate forensic investigations for the corrupt Judases. Nothing personal, just a common sense ‘change’ presidential anticorruption strategy. We have good new people- new minister materials to serve Nigeria 2019-2023. No one is indispensable.

    Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) are suffering too much abuse, rape, deprivation, uncertainty, financial and infrastructural menaces. Government wake up, serve your people.  You could be a refugee tomorrow.

    Nigerian security services work -when they want to. But they react, not prevent. Zainab Aliyu could have been executed. Her release indicts us all, informers and security. Abroad, the ‘Internal Affairs Department’ in security outfits prevents and detects internal crime with pre-emptive intelligence reports, investigation, punishment, prosecution on staff offenders.

    Did ICPC, EFCC not hear of this crime years ago? Today we are deaf to rumoured government pension office scam cartels extorting from pensioners. Are there not preventive measures like luggage counts? These people destroy electronic monitoring equipment.  Are other airports involved? How many other passengers have been traumatized by being wrongly caught, prosecuted, incarcerated and even executed? If Zainab had been executed, they would have loudly clicked their teeth watched the Breaking News and warned listeners not to carry drugs o! In the office they would have lamented loudly ‘Is that not the girl who passed through my duty post? And we did not suspect her o!!!!!’ Of course, they would have known what their failure has cost the drug provider and planned to plant drugged luggage or ‘Druggage’ on a new courier!  This crime should earn the guilty life incarceration. Zianab could have been executed! The media must have structured public awareness projects on such risks.

    International deaths in the Northern Castle, 15 soldiers killed Magumeri Borno, base overrun, weapons seized, kidnapping of Daura leader, UBEC chairman and 100s of serious incidents including murders of police scream impunity pointing to an army of sophisticated informed terrorists. Ore-Benin and Lagos Ibadan road are used to being terrorised and people were abandoned to extortionist police. Add Abuja-Kaduna Road! Remember the government then hardly ever cut the elephant grass to prevent rocks being thrown at vehicle windows. Now the problem is strangling the North by social media enlightened disgruntled talakawa implementing a rebellion or imported Fulani and ISIS militia. This is war. How many personnel and civilians must die? Our goal in any war should be the capture and surrender of the enemy which is not afraid of the police, armed forces or death. Why is there no attempt to limit the influx of terrorists across our border? We merely drive the enemy out from one place to another only for them to regroup, when we withdraw at night, for another counterattack!

    In this war, why do the police and the army go public with secret plans and announce to Boko Haram and marauding herder and road terrorists their python and scorpion operations in advance? Nigeria’s terrorists are not stupid. This is not a confrontational war. It is a hit and run, guerrilla, war. The first laws of war are deception, surprise and concealment of real plans. Does the armed forces want the bandit to flee to other states and come back when the army announces the operation’s end?

    We never see encircling activities to prevent an exit strategy which would capture the enemy. Instead we hear of confrontation allowing the terrorists a clear unmined exit route with no ambush. The terrorists just go away to terrorise another day. Amateur military historians of Alexander, Artemisia, Boudica, Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan, Joan of Arc, Hannibal, Napoleon, Saladin, Queen Amina, Queen Mother Yaa Ashantewaa, Chaka Zulu know that security means S7 =SSSSSSS -Strategise, Surveillance, Scenarios, Surround, Surprise, Subdue, Subjugate! We are at war. Use ‘The Media Rules of War’. Value our courageous Nigerian armed personnel and do not put them in harm’s way. The media should act in a war mode. Their reports must not feed the enemy with intelligence. News items that endanger our soldiers endangers us all. No more warnings before the armed forces strike.  The terrorists also read the news media, have spies and witness troop movements.

    An innocent white Australian lady, Justine Damond, reported a crime, was shot dead for her trouble by police in Minneapolis, USA. Her family was awarded $20m, no substitute for life. Perhaps such punitive damages will reduce police violence. Who teaches them ‘shoot to kill’ like soldier vs soldier and not ‘shoot to maim’ like police vs civilian? What is awarded to the many ‘wrongful death’ African-American families? If we can pay politicians high pay and pension, Nigeria must raise the value of Nigerian life, and award its murdered victims’ families realistic punitive damages.

    Strangely our Supreme Court awarded a single contractor N132,000,000,000, at N360:1$ that is $366,666,666 and approves fines of billions of dollars for contraventions of regulations against wayward banks and conniving cellphone companies for financial impropriety. Murder perpetrated by security forces is a financial cyber, physical and mechanical, bullet attack terminating a corporate [bodily] person’s financial potential -a financial loss demanding compensatory awards for the surviving families.

    Hurray. The ghost is dead. The Second Niger Bridge, a concrete reality, no longer a mirage, is rising from the Niger River of ghost stories retold at each ‘election promise’and, 9th Assembly disruption aside, opening in 2023 according to vice president.

  • President; ex-ministers? Political pensions

    The terrifying deaths of nine Boy’s Brigade youths in Gombe is a devilish premeditated road rage and murder by a Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) member-recently armed by government, murdered in turn by an outraged mob. We demand that Nigeria’s uniformed personnel must, like in other countries have regular psychological lectures and assessments annually by employing 1,000s of Nigerian psychologists in the armed forces, police, customs and immigration, FRSC, LASTMA, and banks. The uniform makes them mad, power drunk, uncontrollable, murderers!

    President’s legacy:  Our president is entitled to leave even if he is the most senior employee of the ‘Nigerian government and people’. Let the president go and rest, be repaired or rejuvenated. No one is indispensable or irreplaceable but we are all exhaustible. Come back with good governance ideas and change almost all or all ministers. Nigerians want ‘change’. Four years is enough. Look at Ngige spouting that our poor doctor – patient ratio is okay! There are enough good Nigerians to provide new ministers. Even exceptional ministers can be ex-ministers as new breed exceptional ones will be found. The president should evaluate the tri-Ministry of Power, Works and Housing set up for quick policy-practice transition times and reduction in inter-ministerial friction. Did the Oronsaye model work? Should we go back to three cooperating, not competing, ministries? And now Nigeria through AMCON may owe one single contractor, a benefactor of government, N132b, $500,000+ following a Supreme Court judgement which, unlike Lord Denning’s, failed to order compensation for victims of all contract failures, the downtrodden citizen. Tax breaks for example, for the years of disappointment, development failure no matter who is responsible -Ministry or Man!!

    This is presidential legacy time. Enough of political pandering and plodding along!! It would have been nice to have medical check-up in a Nigerian hospital but remember the corruption even in the Aso Rock House Clinic??

    The pinnacle of Nigeria’s political greed is the blatant indifference to poverty. The politicians pass by Nigeria’s numerous rubbish dumps then dare to allocate inflammatory pensions and greed-driven retirement perks? Are they mad? The politicians see adults and even Nigeria’s children, bent, barefoot, no gloves or goggles inhaling the dangerous chemical fumes and stink of Nigeria’s waste to pick sellable bits and food remains – almost a death sentence. Fellow Nigerians, no one was born to eat scraps and half eaten akara while politicians and others misallocate or even steal the billions given by God to feed, employ and empowerNigerians! No true Nigerian would drive past such widespread despair and debasement only to recklessly create self-serving pension schemes.  The Revenue Mobilisation and Fiscal Commission is empowered to fix these figures taking mass poverty and the pension pattern in politics worldwide into account. To misquote English language aficionados; are they not bombastic egocentric kleptomaniacs who should be incarcerated in the darkest recesses of our penal gulags for abuse of public trust and assault on the treasury?

    Is this not a betrayal of trust when pensions and salaries are owed millions? Do they not see Nigerians living abroad and dying in abysmal climate conditions as illegal migrants due to neglect of governance at home? Is this any different from the teacher raping the student he is supposed to protect? Or the ‘uniform’ killing the Boys Brigade children or Dele Giwa or the Apo 6 or 9? All these complicating intimidation from annoyance, drunkenness or ‘deliberately on purpose’ through ‘accidentally on purpose’ discharge.

    So now the pensions are official even if morally corrupt and illegally legal. Yet they put the girl ‘Success’ and 10million like her in rubbish schools to somehow get educated. Shame. Politics is the highest paid, 419, gig in Nigeria, so much spent with so little positive return, compounded by a pension for life and houses and cars for 4 years of some for sometimes disservice to Nigeria. Look at the budget delays and trivial, low intellect contributions to debates utterances and questionable performance, including dance steps and character flaws of many politicians.

    Is this a political pension scheme or a Ponzi scheme or a yahoo-yahoo scheme as the rules are being changed every day? Meanwhile in contrast what is the actual pay-out for Nigeria’s real heroes -our soldiers dying in the undeclared war against Boko Haram and the police dying as escorts to kidnap victims and at bank robberies and the fellow Nigerians murdered by herders, Boko Haram or uniforms every single day? Add to that Nigeria at 5-7,000Mw is still the darkest country in the continent of Africa having been failed by a greed-driven politics and systematic sabotage of our oil refineries now supposedly needing $900m. While we the voters sleep in darkness, the politician commands 24hours power from burning our money in our generators in their houses. Politics appears to be a self-serving anti-development curse, an expensive unproductive, ugly curse and a blight on Nigeria forbidding progress on the world stage and even at the ward and LGA level. The current politics is kleptomaniacbehaviour exemplified by the ‘Political Pension Scam’. Yes, there are pensions for politicians worldwide but no houses, cars, servants, medical expenses abroad. Nigeria has a long history of this care of seniors particularly in the North -Perm Secs, Generals and equivalent in other arms, judges. The legislators must know their own secret payment schedules continue to insult our intelligence. We see it as theft from Nigeria. Will 2019-2023 politicians be different and seriously anticorruption???

  •  ‘Our Girls; Agenda 2019-2023

    Our Chibok girls were kidnapped on April 15, 2014, five years ago and 112 are still unaccounted for. Leah Sharibu, kidnapped on Feb 19, 2018, in Dapchi was the only one held back.

    Another murderous attack in Benue on Good Friday – community clash or marauders?

    Once again Nigeria is at a crossroads, but the people’s agenda remains ‘Development for all’. We have been at a lot of crossroads. Our past leadership and cabals almost always took the wrong turn. When they took the right turn, like refineries, they reverse quickly but pontificate about the solutions knowing they are responsible for the country failing us while denying any personal fault.

    Perhaps they wished they had got electricity power right, by adding 1,000 -2,000Mw annually for 40 years? Add 10,000Mw to the grid, as emergency power supply with generator ships.

    Would they wish they had got railways right by moving earlier to standard gauge and reversing 40 years of railway rustiness and abandonment resulting in millions of road crashes? Add new ‘fast train’ lines in new directions. Would they have wished they had funded larger incorruptible budget for education and a better teacher elite and scholarships and better schools to get education right? Increase education budgets; attach failing final year students to NYSC and specialist teachers to get better performance immediately. Make all schools great again.

    Would they wish they had funded health more sincerely to get health right? Would they wish they had worked better to save the naira and bring down interest rates to single figures to get the economy right? Would they wish that they had built 10,000 bridges across the Niger and 10,000 rivers and streams to shorten travel time, improve business and reduce their travel misery and chaos to get travel right away from overcrowded colonial-installed road arteries build to evacuate goods seized, bought cheap or even stolen from Nigeria?

    Would they wish they had seriously invested in building support for the private sector to eliminate the 17 million housing deficit and get housing for all right? Would they wish they had protected the pension schemes for millions of pensioners and extended families and get pension schemes right? Install bank alarm systems; multiple signatures and monthly accounting for public funds.

    We have had leaders pursuing no agenda or agendas which resulted in stagnation and retrogression. For example there was cancellation of practical aspects of arts, science like chemistry experiments with litmus paper, sports and entire school subjects taught in every other country in Africa and the world including civics, history, and general science. This cancellation, so education money could be stolen and misdirected, has led to a generation of deliberately educationally disadvantaged young adults with no experience or interest in sports except clapping and instant millionairism, no knowledge of the world and little scientific knowledge even personal body knowledge, and few morals and no civic sense of responsibility. Leaders without agendas or with evil agendas have led us to refineries never fully working. Even ‘good policies’ fail.

    Governments have banned gas flaring and fined the companies burning our commonwealth every year for 40 years. A joke! They said it again yesterday!! What country with 75% illiteracy and 70% poverty flares its gas wealth, polluting the atmosphere of three states and leaves the rest of us to burn our salaried incomes in imported fuel fires for generators? Is that a 21st century thought process just to please the insatiable greed of already billionaire importers of fuel? What country allows its refineries to rot in the power play of billionaires deliberately made rich by government’s organised failure?

    We should all be manning the mighty battleship MV Nigeria, our leaders on the bridge, head on at top speed into the 21st century to achieve the SDGs and a place at the world table. Unfortunately we are either a big rudderless ship going nowhere or in a boat paddled in many different directions or we in a tugboat towing a crippled MV Nigeria.

    At the beginning of every new election phase, even a re-elected regime, we point these truths out, hoping to stimulate a serious patriotic development debate, and divert politicians from traditional looting to laying the foundation of a truly great Nigeria within four years. Recovery has to start now in 2019, not two weeks to the next election in 2023. Government must stop ‘The Rape of the State’.

    It is good for 15 people to be tried by JAMB for N8b fraud but JAMB fraud is stealing from the children- no greater crime before God. As revealed by Professor Oloyede, JAMB lost N7b/year.

    We are tired of state treasuries being looted. We demand development, not stealing. States have enough to be great. Lagos and the 13% derivation states should have developed 100 times more than they have if not for corruption.  ‘Stop Stealing, Use everything for Development’ to make a great nation.

    President Buhari: 1] Find 200 Professor Oloyedes to head Nigeria’s Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs)

    2] Teach them crash anti-corruption courses

    3] Put EFCC everywhere as pre-emptive strike

    4] Suspend boards or shut down MDAs without audited accounts up to 2017

    5] Act on audited account reports.

    6] Catch fraudsters young! No more mega-billion fraud.

    For governors ‘Finish the jobs of your predecessor’ executed with the people’s money. Abandoned project are as much a failure of succeeding government as a failure of past governments. No more abandoned projects.

  • ‘Our Girls; Politicians and World Bank

    Our Chibok girls were kidnapped on April 15, 2014, five years ago on Monday and 112 are still missing. Leah Sharibu, kidnapped on Feb 19, 2018, one plus years ago, in Dapchi was the only one held back after a mass release of over 100, excluding five who died directly as a result of the terrorist ordeal. It is said Leah refused to convert from Christianity. During these years, over 25,000 other Nigerians have been murdered and approximately 3-4million internally displaced Nigerians, registered in underserviced IDP camps or unregistered, seeking employment countrywide.

    Unfortunately we in Nigeria are the architect of our ‘failure to thrive’. In Nigeria we must overthrow the retrogressive feudal ideology of master-servant, the deliberate under-educating ofcitizens. We must not fail to change our politicians’ mindset. Instead of Sustainable Development Goals’ strategies, they repeat the scheming about NASS officers, usually an automatic event based on party numbers. Some do not see the national political failure largely because of their own personal good fortune. Good fortune may be through hard work but professionals have been forced to give bribes, or inflate government contracts or give ‘thank you kickbacks’.

    Why can we not change the narrative that ‘No bribe=no work’ or no payment on a contract? It is difficult to imagine that many highly regarded professionals and ‘icons’ have low morals or compromised their principles to survive. Add poor supervision and zero consequence for failure and we are programmed by our own politicians to fail?

    A new president, David Malpass, appointed by the US president in keeping with tradition, is to run the US-led and mainly US funded World Bank. There will be Trump-ic, America First changes. He does have a lot of experience in development and is critical of the World Bank and IMF. So am I. For example while Ghana, to stimulate growth, is reducing and cancelling VAT in huge areas of business and consumption, Nigeria is being pushed by the IMF and perhaps the World Bank to widen the VAT pool and increase VAT, ‘remove fuel subsidy’ and weaken the value of the naira-again. The previous times we did these we were plunged further into poverty by making more poor people. This will certainly cancel the effect of any minimum wage increase.

    In Africa it appears we for the most part cannot help ourselves. We seem to be great as individuals, but collectively lack a successful forward development drive. We have great artists, scientists, professionals at home and abroad but collectively our hospitals, universities, schools and highways are collapsing. We cannot even fill potholes at level crossing consistently.  Ask the girl ‘Success’ to show you round her school – a pigsty unfortunately called after late murdered Minister of Finance the flamboyant Okotie-Eboh. His children are still in court over his assets!

    There is the perpetual African epidemic of poorly performing self-serving politicians who ‘purchased’ their posts at an unsustainably enormous cost of production through overpriced elections. Unfortunately, with too few good exceptions, politicians have placed themselves high above the people forgetting their sworn oath to serve the people. Politicians repeatedly failed to deliver timely budgets and honest accounting to deliver the full economic and societal growth potential of democracy. Rwanda stands out with its recent developmental strides under its focused leader and high female politician ratios but at the cost of 800,000 lives. We in Nigeria have a belligerent new generation born after 1970 when we also ended a civil war which cost more than one million lives. Our developmental strides should not require another civil war. But politicians do not easily change their spots. In Nigeria we must reduce our financial demands on delusional politicians.

    We need help against the apparent corrupt politicians’ agenda. I wish the World Bank and IMF, the UN, the EU,  and even Brexit-ed Great Britain refuse to negotiate any deals, give any loans, agree any diplomatic protocols, provide any contract funds with Nigeria in particular and Africa in general until Africa’s political class demonstrate and introduce a less flamboyant, cheaper, transparent, morally, ethically and economically responsible remuneration structure for themselves and better development budgets for the citizenry. The worst culprit is the shamelessly greedy NASS and now the governors further bleeding their states by insultingly high severance and pension packages. Politicians must be forced, by local and international pressure, to demonstrate a much higher sensitivity to the poor citizenry. In Nigeria all efforts have failed to get the politicians to fully disclose and cut their Salaries and Perks- SAP, which are SAPing Nigeria dry with their irresponsibly high and ‘legally illegal’ total take home pay and allowances.  Many of the countries with high poverty levels also have directly related high corruption levels. Remember many politicians come from a background which still believes in a ‘Keep citizens poor, uneducated and sheepish’ policy. No international assistance will work until that policy and mindset is changed.

    The World Bank can demand a higher personal political fiscal morality. Corruption causes poverty and poverty breeds corruption. Fighting extreme poverty, a World Bank goal, is only achievable if it neutralises an evil, demonstrably greedy elected entrenched political elite which withholds and steals its nation’s ‘responsible’ budget funding for essential development projects like improved maternal and infant mortality rates, education, training and business environment funding.  Africa’s and Nigeria’s politicians, preoccupied by selfish greed abandon their responsibility, leaving it to the World Bank and other agencies. Who is more mumu? Shame.

  • ‘Our Girls; IDPs; CBN; Power

    Our Chibok Girls were kidnapped on April 15, 2014, five years ago on Monday, and over 100 are still unaccounted for. Leah Sharibu, kidnapped on Feb 19, 2018, one plus years ago, in Dapchi was the only one held back after a mass release of over 100, excluding five who died.

    SECURITY: Both events are extreme terrorist murderous outings taken in proportional perspective to thousands killed and millions displaced with no names or places. Last week another 50 dead; murderers masquerading as Zamfara miners; stabbing of new doctor and kidnap of Lagos fire chief and suicide bombs females perhaps forced to kill JTF heroes compound the problems.

    Are we breeding humans for slaughter? The Presidency laments as ‘Operation Puff Adder’ kicks in. Why advertise? Perhaps to inform marauders to relocate before action is taken? The cycle of attack- mayhem-murder-kidnap- show of force visit- bold political statement of never again- withdrawal and another attack is familiar. And now the armed forces, usually reactionary, want more of our budget.

    Are checks and balances in place to ensure that multi-billion naira financial inflows, meant for armed forces service delivery across all defense services do not follow the pre-2015 path of being expropriated and buried in soak-aways, by armed forces top brass and the alleged purchase of jets and the stupendous wealth of many military children? Fear always wins where security is concerned. The armed forces will get their money but how much good will it do the suffering citizen and armed forces units in the fighting field or the Abuja-Kaduna Road requiring more accurate and faster intelligence, instant communication and quicker response time?

    Are there now checks and balances to prevent this profligacy during this government?  Across the spectrum, the ugly head of massive corruption has stained the process of delivery of democracy and distorted the outcomes in all segments from business, electricity, health, education, roads and even the care of IDPs.

    CBN: Stop discriminating against Nigerians!! The minor cut, not slash, in Monetary Policy Rate to 13.5% did not end the world. Cut more. Yes, give single digit loans to music, films and media, cocoa, palm oil etc. But those businesses will still die if the citizens are not empowered to buy their products. CBN still forces citizens to borrow at 30% including 14% MPR. Cut MPR and make single digit loans for every Nigerian citizen. Banks and oil companies are still reporting crazy profits.

    POWER: The nation remains severely underpowered in spite of powerful statements claiming we now have 8,000Mw but can only use 6,000Mws or so and that the problem is evacuation of created power. Well, fix it. That is your job. Who creates a product but does not take it to market, but still boasts about one’s failure?? Only government!!!

    Talk to the South Africans and especially the Japanese who got 10,000Mw of emergency power from emergency power companies [Google them] within three months during a shutdown of Fukushima power plant. South Africa has 51,309Mw for its 58 million population. UN recommends 1,000Mw for every one million citizens. The ministry should wake us up when it has achieved 150,000Mw for its approx. 150 million people. We are not 198 million-a fake fictional figure of politically manipulated grandiose delusions! First the beneficiaries of the power failures must be educated on the benefits of 24/7 grid power. Then get someone or the Chinese who put in 30,000Mw annually in China to extend and revamp our grid to 120,000Mw in four years.

    IDPs: This government wants $8b in loans and donations to rehabilitate/rebuild Nigeria’s IDPs. We must not only pray but we must work to ensure that that money, if realized, actually reaches the IDPs and does not disappear into the pockets of out of state, non IDP workers, contractors, building materials, accountants, bank accounts of  administrators – the very things that diluted the effects of other interventions in the past. Over-administration and excessive bureaucracy increase costs with no added benefit to improved results. This last one is particularly painful because this government should have prevented anything adverse happening to the IDPs. Have they not suffered and are they not suffering enough? Prevention of scandals -sexual and moral, fraud and funding are paramount responsibilities of the government.

    ELECTIONS:  Those thinking that the Buhari government has succeeded in the anti-corruption drive meet the harsh reality that the recent elections demonstrated huge expenditures of money [from where?] by all the major three or four parties- perhaps corruption fighting back but such expenditure was always cross-party for survival. This political financial flood including expenses for crazy mega-billboards, thugs-by-the-dozen, a billion posters and stomach-infrastructure gifts for millions of electorate effectively buying votes by foul or fair means but not for development suggests that political election corruption is alive and will be illegally recovered as ‘first line deductions with massive interest’ from the federal and state budgets. Losers will go the sympathetic states and get fake contracts to replenish their investment in the 2019 election- all crippling the ever-losing Nigerian citizen.

    Meanwhile the real winners of any election, corrupt or not, are the legal ‘luminaries’ lined up on either side of the political divide seeking changes in the results for various reasons and the victorious media houses drunk with the inflows of sacks of political cash for campaigns strategies and material like mega posters, flyers, etc. They have been laughing to the bank for many years-every four years, like clockwork.

     

  • Cut NASS salaries; no VAT hike

    What do Senator Ahmed Lawan and Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila, who seek to lead the senate and House of Representatives think about the insultingly high and mostly secret salaries and perks and constituency projects? Will they seek the slashing of same and bring salaries into the salary scale of the federal government e.g. Level 18,19,1 up to 25? This unbridled and nearly blank paycheck is the main embarrassment of our politics in the international community and a serious insult inflicted on the electorate and citizenry by a greed-polluted political class.

    New National Assembly (NASS) members are being shown around. We hope they too are planning less salary and perks? This should be a key plan of this government.

    Some governors are moving around their finishing projects. But is it an avenue for stealing?  If not, it is a pleasant surprise and a credible alternative to the former widespread practice of raiding their treasuries and shutting down business including the business of paying salaries so as to accumulate ‘take away funds’.

    It is always strange when elephants talk to each other, move menacingly, rub tusks or even struggle with each other especially by prox. Last month, it was an ex-president and an incumbent president seeking re-election. This week it is a proxy war. Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS)’s BabatundeFowler, promoted from working for one elephant to working at a higher plain for another, who proclaimed that national salvation lies in more taxation and in particular more VAT and its immoral distribution across states which did not pay it. He spoke on behalf of a rejuvenated re-elected government’s interest in yielding to the taxman’s suggestion that VAT should be ‘way up there’ – a misquote! Buhari’s is the bigger elephant and may not like to be advised by two people for the same Southwest to go in two directions.  Is this struggle over the spoils of war, the ruins left by war against the people or in the genuine interest of the people? I believe it is about sharing the future income of the hardest workers with others with less opportunity to work or with less inclination to work or those seeking to benefit from where they did not sow from religious inclination. The sharing formula for VAT has always been an acrimonious unsatisfactory event. The situation will only get worse with increasing VAT.

    I have never been a fan of what I consider to be often draconian tax level introduced in Lagos under Tinubu when he was governor and consolidated by Fashola and taken enthusiastically to an outrageous edge by Ambode before he was reined in by the courts after mass protest. This is because it takes no notice of the Nigerian factors in daily life – substituting for power, transport and health failures, extended family costs and the constant fall in naira value all decimating incomes and the value of that income. Yes, an undisclosed fraction of the tax income was used, mostly without permission of those it was extracted from, outside the state nationwide. For this I believe Lagosians who contributed deserve a rebate, not an increase in VAT! However, Lagos has severely underperformed compared to its multi-billion portfolio of income streams. I have always objected to the huge wasteful cost of reducing the overcrowded three-lane Ikorodu Road to a two-lane road, a bad move, with a multibillion concrete lane divider. And too few buses. Even the federal government has made a similar costly error on the Lagos-Ibadan so-called expressway where the concrete median is duplicated more than doubling the cement costs. Instead that money should have tarred many alternative roads or completed the tarring of the expressway.

    Nobody except Nigeria stimulates an economy or manufacturing sector by increasing taxes. Even the Nigerian government offers tax breaks to foreign investors and even single digit loans. Charity, tax charity, should begin at home. Nigerians are very resourceful substituting for a collapse of infrastructure – power, transport, water and security.  And they have created many jobs not on the tax list – middle man, motor tout, car parking boys, road-way sellers in traffic they sometimes create by digging potholes, the army of okada drivers, shopping-bag carriers in addition to the yahoo-yahoo etc. I agree that VAT should not be increased, more people should be brought on board, and some taxes should be lowered to stimulate growth in the economy. At last the MPR, Monetary Policy Rate, has been reduced to 13.5%. Nigerians have suffered for too long under this CBN/Government punishingly high ‘add-on’ to any loan Nigerians take. This is a shameful and evil burden especially in the light of the huge amounts in multi-billions maliciously stolen by almost anybody willing to steal in and out of government and even legally – illegally by NASS members under the guise of as stupendous salaries and perks and constituency projects, SAPing Nigeria dry. Add to this the late and therefore underperformance of the budget and you have a lot of unaccounted funds. Why add to this more tax funds through an increase in VAT?

    Presumably the 9th Senate will guarantee efficiency and re-institute a January -December budget from January 1, 2020. Hopefully it will cut NASS salaries and perks to upper civil service scale and revert constituency projects to relevant ministries. Only then will Nigerians be convinced that NASS has been rebranded in the national interest and we NASS and Nigeria have a future together.

  • Our Girls; Success – a girl failed by governors

    Our Chibok girls were kidnapped on April 15, 2014. Leah Sharibu and others are not yet released.

    Study the total votes in Kano, Plateau, Benue and Rivers; where are the voters? They do not exist. Our population is probably around 130-150m as we had under 30million voters. INEC is blameless, not responsible for violence during elections – political parties are. Face the parties, not INEC!

    The Success Adegor story is about a delightful Delta State articulate girl-child sent home for not paying what government quickly labelled an ‘illegal exam levy’.  Her parents, out of penury or protest or pride or ignorance or arrogance or anti-corruption, did not pay.

    Do your research before apportioning blame. Is the acting headteacher an honest soul struggling to educate children with no government grants for running costs? Governments rarely give running cost grants beyond salaries. Parents and governments always misinterpret the slogan ‘free education’ for ‘total free education’. Unfortunately they then refuse to substitute for a negligent government which under-provides equipment and learning environment and is also guilty of lying about its policy desire or ability to provide total education.  This leaves the pupil at an educational disadvantage when compared to pupils in liberal schools and private schools. In the latter, parents are encouraged to add value through donations of funds, magazines, books, sports and other needed equipment, buildings and payment for excursions.

    No school or university anywhere in the world has enough despite fees and good education budgets. It a painful paradox that only Nigerian ‘free education’ schools are not allowed to admit that they need help. Nonsense! Not allowing teachers to request, under supervision, for support is stifling initiative and the quality of education delivery. Allowing them to ask is not an admission of failure of free education policy but a reality check and a required supplement. No budget is ever enough, especially in education. Do not deny parents and PTA their primary responsibility for their children’s education. And stop deceiving teachers. Rather give awards to the best-supporting parents and PTAs and Old Students Associations and corporate bodies. Is the corrupt teacher extorting?

    While we castigate our teachers as the education funds are repeatedly stolen, one Kenyan maths and science teacher Peter Tabichi in a religious brother’s habit has won the Global Teacher Prize of $1m by the Varkey Foundation in Dubai for turning around the fortunes of a similarly neglected school as the one that Success goes to. We saw on TV the accursed pigsty quality of the school facilities making it more dangerous than the private Lagos collapsed school building because it is a government entity, protected from inspection and closure.

    No government has closed its own schools, yet across the country, there are thousands of government schools like the Success school- pigsties. The Delta State school is not ‘Child and Teacher Friendly Learning Environment’. It is a shameful pigsty in a state which is has the 4th highest per capita income in the country and receives 13% derivation and exposes a flaw in governance, repeated nationwide. Shamefully, every state has 500-1000+ such neglected schools. The teacher said the levy was for photocopying etc. The travail of the girl Success is a failure of political and education services.  Free education is often ‘Rubbish Under-funded Education’ with little help beyond delayed salaries provided by government especially at the primary level where there are not even Old Students Associations to help out.

    We all conduct or have participated in exams and know what they take in terms of material and logistics from time-table to question papers. If government does not give exam grant, do we expect no exam or the teachers to take funds from their tiny salaries for the purpose? I can bet you there is no grant from the Ministry of Education for anything including examinations and sports and co-curricular activities. The abysmal and selfishly myopic or ignorant or misguided refusal of Nigerian parents to provide the missing support to the abysmal free education efforts of governments coupled with the rejection of support from willing parents and the absence of primary school  Old Students Associations and the non-accessing the UBEC counterpart funding and of course the refusal of states to give needed grants to schools for running costs culminate in killing the potential of millions of children like Success and the denting and dampening the dedication of any wonderful Nigerian teacher/education leader.

    Saraki’s and senate’s N30,000 minimum wage is a Greek Gift -the Trojan Horse- and a poisoned chalice and is classic Saraki like the forced 1+ year calamitous delay forced on Nigerians by the slashing and diversion of a budgeted N15b Lagos-Ibadan expressway budget to untraceable corruption-driven National Assembly (NASS) constituency projects. It is a parting present which is a financial burden to his enemies currently in power. Who will face dwindling capital budgets from this rising recurrent wage bill above the N27,000 recommended by the federal government. Governors always manage, like Saraki, to forget that their own huge salaries overburden the budget. The extra money will come from huge funds of governance that would otherwise have been stolen. It is a desired parting gift dangled before workers but undeliverable. Now Saraki is in a win-win situation. He will retire laughing as Buhari may not sign it into law. Saraki will be long gone by the 30 days senate needs to override the president as senate seeks to keep their own fat-fat salaries and constituency projects.