The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tony Marinho

  • Burning desire; Ajayi O; ‘Yililo’; Checkpoint; Railway; Petrol well; Galaxy S4 Ad; Dangote Refinery

    Why is Nigeria’s political leadership, so devilishly nasty when there are simple solutions to the suffering and ‘belt tightening’? These solutions are available and demonstrated by a few credit-worthy leaders. The Nigerian citizen has received since independence ‘dividends of a desperate democracy and malicious military intervention’ amounting to N1 in every N100 available. This is why most of Nigeria is still in the 19th century in water, health et cetera.

    Where is the burning desire to serve? We know about the burning desire to steal Nigeria blind. But if the politicians, officials and civil servants had a burning desire to serve for just one year 2013-2014 as an ‘Amalgamation Centenary Gift’ would Nigeria’s naira be toilet paper? There is a saying that your funeral will not be judged by how many family and associates who attend but by how many strangers attend because you improved their lives. Where is the burning desire to serve? The good are too few to make a difference to the wretched lives of the nation’s citizens whose lives are further endangered through murder by police, note late murdered Ajayi Oladokun of Ikorodu.

    Have you heard of Mr Gregory Muonyililo reportedly ‘arrested’ for filming checkpoint police? Greg has the right, like tourists, to film on the open streets. It is only when all, tourist and citizen, brandish cell phones and record corruption and intimidation that the ‘uniform’ will respect human rights. Such secret recording can be called ‘To Greg it’ or to ‘yililo’ it. Mr Muonyililo has a burning desire to serve and deserves MON. Where is the burning desire to serve in you?

    To great national applause, IGP Abubakar banned checkpoints but they are back. Sadly nothing good lasts in Nigeria. Checkpoints are back with a vengeance including a near permanent checkpoint in Ibadan at Bodija SS Peter and Paul even on Sundays. Is this one legal?

    We sympathise with the Police for the death of four police during the Ozehkome Affair and others on active duty. No amount of money will bring the murdered police men back alive to their bereaved wives and children. We are all equal before God, escort and escorted! The killing of security and escorts is callous when we are not at war with each other.

    The NSCDC’s arrest of people with a petrol-contaminated well in their compound is odd as it is clear that the matter had been reported to both the police and the NNPC before the NSCDC intervened.  The man in charge, interviewed on Channels TV, who alleged reporter ‘bias’ needs to be disciplined. His comments should go viral like ‘the oga at the top’. NSCDC must, if found wrong, pay compensation for defamation and wrongful arrest. There is no landlord or tenant with children who will dig a well to bring petrol or live near a well highly with petrol. I expected NSCDC to be more worried about prevention of catastrophe, like the Jesse explosion, than ‘playing to the gallery’ arrests. A uniform and a few laws do not make one God but make one seek to serve better. Or did the NSCDC suspect the DPO and NNPC of collusion with the landlord? How long ago was the well dug? When was petrol first smelt or drawn? Has anyone been identified drawing water from the well and distilling the petrol for profit or use? The answers to these simple questions will confirm or exclude criminal intent.

    Attention: Advertising Commission. The Samsung Galaxy S4 advert humiliating an individual who stammers must be shut down as an insult. Stammering is not joke, but a socio-medical issue and should not be trivialised for public ridicule.

    So at last the Northern elite have approved railways for Nigeria. As those same elite destroyed the railways 40 years ago, and kept the railway suppressed in favour of trailers, tankers. Ask Buhari and Babangida about Jakande Rail if you have forgotten. For the trailer business to thrive nationwide, the Northern elite instituted a national policy that the railways had to die. In fact rather than develop Apapa Port already fed by railway into a giant international port, government decided to move the new development to Tin Can Island which was only to be fed by road and trailers and not by railways thus guaranteeing trailer livelihood and Nigerian transport downfall for 50 years. Anyone used to Apapa Tin Can Island road will know the 4-10 hours delays and havoc caused by trailers for 40 years. This is the legacy of the anti-railway policy of federal governments for 40 years. It is such a pity that the same people who destroyed the railways are now using rejuvenated railways as dividends of democracy for electioneering. Nigerians should know that Nigeria’s Lagos port faced de-listing from international ports for not having ‘Railway Evacuation of Containers’.

    Who will accept responsibility for the 40 years of suffering? We need 100kph trains.

    Dangote is setting up a refinery in Nigeria and needs 400,000bpd. Remember that all the other private refinery attempts died because Nigeria refused to guarantee them the required 20-100,00bpd/ refinery. Obviously Dangote has got his guarantee. Will most of the 100 fractionated products be exported or made available locally? Dangote’s track record in flour, cement had sugar have led to outrageous price increases overburdening the masses, so what hope have we for costs of fuel and by-products of the Dangote Refinery?

     

  • Anti-solar conspiracy; ‘Solar Generation’ must replace ‘Generator Generation’

    As there a conspiracy against solar energy – another energy conspiracy like the generator conspiracy? How else do we explain that Nigeria with 85-100% sun days has no solar farms while the UK with 20% pathetic sun days per annum has 157 solar farms and 229 awaiting approval not including roof-top millions of mini-solar plants? The UK expects solar enterprise to deliver 20GigaWatts of power by 2020. Africa has no such plans. A small physics lesson: 1,000watts =1Kilowatt; 1,000 kilowatts or 1,000,000 watts=1Megawatt; 1,000Mw=1Gigawatt=1,000,000,000watts or 1billion watts.  Nigeria@52+ makes 3- 4,200Mw.  Africa needs visionary ‘Mr. Solar President’ Leadership.

    Has any African engineer, politician or professor visited a solar farm in Spain, Israel, UAE, UK or USA? Why is this failure to commit to new technologies allowed when our electricity powerless Africa has a mega-sun stroking our land and Nigeria has epileptic 3-4,000Mw after billions of dollars? Why are Africa and Nigeria still holding ‘talk-shop’ conferences on ‘solar energy as a way forward’ but giving mega-contracts for imported turbines for 50 year-old power plants using non-renewable energy, instead of creating the long overdue ‘New African/Nigerian Solar Generation’ to replace us- the ‘Generator Generation’?

    Is our leadership blinded by the government-allocated perks of office – the 24-hour generator and vehicles with anti-sun tinted windows?  The leadership should recognise the technological and moral value of taking Africa and Nigeria solar before God relocates the sun to those who value it more? ‘God gives and takes away’. God can take away the sun if we misuse it as much as we have misused that other energy gift from God, petroleum. Imagine solar energy being provided to Africa by underground cable from the UK, Spain, Israel, UAE or USA. The sun shines on everyone. Why cannot we grasp the future? Nigeria gives citizens 12 watts of average power per person. South Africa gives 457, Zimbabwe 113, Zambia 61 and Ghana 29. Will Nigeria ever become ‘solar wise’? Since Africa is technologically challenged, why do we not turn to the gloriously powerful sun? Tell the AU, ECOWAS, governments and the private sector to get power from the sun, everyone!

    Solar energy is to electricity what the cell phone was to communications –a great leap forward, cutting out the PHCN men. It will not get better with the new power companies who will overcharge. The sun is being underutilised by Nigerians, individual, government and the private sector, who are victims of a conspiracy against the spread of solar energy. Are the conspirators forcing government to use high tariffs and taxes on solar imports? Are oil marketers afraid of losses from reducing patronage and generator companies for the same reason?

    Nigerian authorities are afraid of committing ‘big’ to the new technology which is not new at all and has been around since the dawn of time and has been largely ignored, to our loss, except for sun drying clothes and food items. Nigeria started with the sun and then went underground to coal and petroleum. Now we must come up to the surface again and harness the sun. It has already been done so there is no point Nigeria’s NUC giving ABU N10m to research solar energy as was done some years ago. It is on international record that the prices of solar panels and rechargeable batteries have fallen by over 80% making solar energy affordable. Why is cheap solar equipment not available in Africa? Conspiracy! Entire cities are run by solar abroad. Africa, wake up before they steal the sun and sell it back to your children in a bottle!

    The UK offers government subsidies to families and companies to purchase solar equipment. Such subsidies are not available in Nigeria and denied to Nigerian ‘Sun Energy Seekers’. CBN gives N10b to ABU and billions in rescue money to banks while the federal government gives $200m to Nollywood and billions to textile manufacturers. Few economists have calculated that a large chunk of this financial support will be spent on generators and fuel.  Every Nigerian and every economist knows that the mantra for survival in family, and business is ‘Get Electric Power Right And All Will Be Added’.

    It is not too late for government to target solar power by increasing grants, solar loan portfolios, reducing interest rates on loans, longer term loans to increase solar power use and reduce pressure on the new power grid roadmap. We do not want another talk shop, no actionless ‘Solar Energy Conference’.

    If the current government fails to take solar seriously will the new party? Will the APC, vaguely promising 40,000Mw in four or eight years, rethink and embrace a serious manifesto ‘Solar Power Roadmap’? The powerful people, rich with money obtained from the murky waters of Nigerian commerce and politics, want dependent citizens. Solar energy in the home frees the owner from the grid and solar farms can also supply the grid. Solar is a generator without pollution.

    There are a few African solar projects. Solar energy empowers and reduces poverty –not the goal of Africa’s powerful governments. It is the goal of the poor and their NGOs, seemingly powerless to change government ‘secret plans’. The world must get the poor vote to matter in politics. The voice of the people is the voice of God. We want solar energy today or will make it a 2015 election issue! Fight the ‘Anti-Solar Conspiracy’. Who is afraid of solar powering Africa and Nigeria?

  • Slash Political ‘SAP’ by 75%; ‘24 Hour Power’ in 3 months-Solar; Are checkpoints legal?

    Politicians are often selfish but are they ignorant also? Many are playing with fire, insulting the electorate in their lifestyle and speech and expecting praise. Did you not shudder at the Egypt’s political upheaval gunfire? Patience Jonathan’s expensive, traffic snarling ‘Peace Rally’ flies in the face of poverty, angers the nation and is not the answer! Better governance is the only answer! Politicians should see the effect of bad politics on the faces in Egypt and Borno, in Plateau states and the murderous fire fight on the North-South cattle corridor.

    Politicians would be enlightened if Nigerian newspapers kept a ‘Cumulative Death List’ and counted refugees. Blankets and buckets do not replace loved ones or livelihoods. Refugees deserve large cash handouts and business support. Politicians should learn about the killed and kidnapped. They also voted. The dead are not ‘only 25 died’ or mere numbers. They were living people with life ahead. Politicians should calculate the cost of violence inflicted by their decisions. The River’s State crisis mirrors the Oyo State violence four years ago. The peace in Oyo State today is ‘normal’ and credit to Governor Ajimobi’s strategy of saying “No” to thugs’. The NURTW needs re-education, ID cards, speed limit controls and registration.

    Politicians must be reminded that their exorbitant ‘Salaries and Perks’, SAP, scam since 1999, allowed them to ‘legally but immorally steal billions’, distort the economy and precipitate the current national wages crisis.

    As suggested by this column and by NUC, political SAP should be political issue for APC party and the 2015 elections. The citizens should only vote for politicians signing a ‘Personal 50-75% Salary and Perks Reduction Agreement’. Nigeria cannot afford the hundreds of billions of naira spent on politicians. This dividend of democracy, no Nigerians except the politicians want! Meanwhile government politicians have no money for ASUU bills.

    Never forget that since 1999 every single politician of all political parties, without moral exception, appears to have happily taken their allowances or fees for furniture, hotel, vehicle, sitting, standing-in, out-of-station, bush, travel, overnight, per diem, appearance, brown envelope and cash-under-hat as and when due. In fact we should be forcing a change in politics towards cheaper politics, a Parliamentary rather than a Presidential System or at least a ‘Part Time Parliament’ paid per diem.

    Politicians must accept that their Salary and Perks’ structure SAPed Nigeria dry, post Babangida’s SAP, and is the catalyst for nationwide unrest and inflation in rent and other prices. It has increased those in poverty by devaluing the naira and undermining anti-poverty strategies. SAP are the stick beating down the masses for politicians to earn a minimum of N12m/year rising to N30m while millions are on N15,000-18,000/month or N490-590/day.

    ‘Politics’ is just another subject with an examination every four years or so. ‘The Mass Failure’ of politicians cannot be swept aside by elections, bought and paid for by money largely stolen from the electorate and diverted from development. Politicians must know that nothing is secret. They should not be deceived by the Al Mustaphas or the thieves who stole the petroleum and electricity money and are now big philanthropists to cover their tracks.

    Nigeria is in need of ‘Emergency Measures’. Nigeria is populated by millions of hard working Nigerians trying to be self-sufficient who deserve the rights of 21st century human beings, including cheap grid electricity -100,000Mw. The hopeless power situation is not a game or a joke but a Nigerian yoke. Though this government has power it fails to give the citizens power. This government has held ‘Uninterrupted Political Power’ since 1999, and government was held by others before this government. Old or young, the leadership including every single president during the last 30 years is disgraced by this lack of power which has taken up to half of the earnings of many businesses. If Nigerians ran such businesses in a Nigeria with ’24-hour Power’ like in many African countries and worldwide, imagine the savings, profits, service delivery, silence, lack of noise and air pollution and how many Nigerians would be above the poverty line. In spite of this, government demands more taxes. Government complains about food imports but is silent on fuel and generator imports resulting from government’s power incompetence.

    The questions all Nigerians ask are: ‘How dare governments provide every electricity need for its political and civil servant members, using tax funds, to the exclusion of the people’s needs?’ and ‘Why is there no apology?’

    Nigeria’s government has no excuse not to get the USA, UK, Germany and Japan to provide the ‘Emergency Power Supply’. They are also leaders in new solar battery technology. The Japanese replaced the losses at Fujiyama within three months. It got emergency power because Japanese politicians know that the people’s needs today are more important than long term solutions bedevilled by corruption and never-executed contracts. Here Nigerian politicians ignore even God-sent solar power which needs no grid, gas contracts or distribution networks. Government should invite the Japanese as an emergency measure, now!

    The lesson from ‘The Festus Osugwor Extortion Case’ is ‘Always Turn on Phones’. With many Nigerians owning a phone, we can join the anti-corruption war as the FOP, ‘Fear of Phones’ should reduce corruption and save lives. Has the IGP reversed the law banning static police checkpoints? They are back with one nearly permanent checkpoint now on the Ibadan’s Bodija-Awolowo Road, near SSPeter and Paul.

    IGP, is it legal?

     

  • APC: Nigeria deserves new, not recycled leadership; Suffering: Nigeria is an Emergency

    APC, the new political party should not accept just anyone from other parties, particularly PDP which has ruled since 1999. Al Mustapha will be a huge negative for the APC. PDP’s political deadwood will not perform better in APC. A change of party will not change these people. The APC already has many forward looking politicians. Give them space and do not tie them up in ‘political favour’ knots. The new electorate is more discerning and desperate for good governance. Romancing with Babangida, Abdulsalami and players like Danjuma who is not a democrat though wealthy may empower APC with money but will that bring change to save Nigeria from destruction? Buhari’s and Tinubu’s reputation means they should take to the sidelines! No to recycled leadership. We need new leadership!

    Hurray, the FRSC has moved its Ogere checkpoint 100metres to where stopping a vehicle will not shut down a lane. Who authorises procedures, supervises, reviews situations and plans for eventualities in FRSC? Strangely, though such hawking is illegal, we see both hawkers and FRSC waving their arms frantically to attract you to stop. The FRSC should now carve out an FRSC area, free of hawking, for vehicles to be interrogated.

    One day the FRSC will remember its old ‘Observe Speed Limits’ and ‘Keep Right’ campaigns. Professor Soyinka will tell them that slowing down vehicles by speed limits and keeping slow traffic in the slow lane except when overtaking or avoiding dangerous road surfaces was the primary goal of the original FRSC. Such actions are more effective than randomly stopping vehicles for vehicle and driving licence ‘particulars and fire extinguisher’.

    On Saturday at 9.06am a brand new government issue Ibadan based yellow and deep red commercial vehicle overtook us, four kilometres outside Ibadan on the way to Lagos, at about 140-150kph.  That is our problem. Someone is driving at a speed that could kill us and we sit silently praying for a ‘Safe Journey’. That is a threat of GBH, ‘Grievous Bodily Harm’. We must inform the FRSC that commercial vehicles are driven, with impunity, by members of the NUTRW who make commercial vehicles into WMDs- a ‘Weapons of Mass Death’.

    What is FRSC waiting for? Mega deaths? The Highway Code shows road safety signs. Even potholes have no warning signs. The FRSC needs new strategies in order to tackle speed and as well as ’particulars and fire extinguisher’ enquiries. The new big multimillion naira billboards sponsored by an oil company, Exxon Mobil I think,  encouraging the speed limit are a small very expensive step. There are cheaper ways of enforcement. Passengers are often too intimidated by the NURTW reputation for violence to report ‘Endangering The Lives Of Passengers’.

    Who is there to report to, anyway?  FRSC should please add phone in and internet ‘Name and Shame Anti-Speed Campaigns’ where passengers are encouraged to report erring vehicle drivers by ‘Motor Park, Time, Date, Route’ for FRSC to place on their website and investigate. Speed can be controlled by convoys led by demarcated ‘FRSC Convoy Leader Cars’ driving at 100kph.

    I and tens of thousands of others suffered silently, but angrily, in yet another totally preventable nearly five hour massive traffic jam on the Ibadan-Lagos on Saturday. Apparently unknown to FRSC leadership, the FRSC was actually specially set up to deal with, and possibly prevent and then manage major traffic emergencies and rescue the citizenry from their misery through novel approaches to traffic control through short diversions, information dissemination, preventing overtaking on shoulders et cetera. But none of this happened. Nothing happened. The members of the FRSC could not be seen at any of the problem areas in over 30km of traffic. The FRSC made little or no effort beyond trying to arrest a few miscreants around ‘Redeem’.  There was no alarm raised by the FRSC.

    Did the FRSC members report up the chain of command and higher authorities to request assistance for the six vehicles and maybe 15 FRSC members we saw clustered around turnings and junctions? Was any order given to recall FRSC members from other areas and off-duty officials to help deal with the problem? Why were no FRSC members deployed automatically every few hundred metres along the 20km traffic jam to inform citizens and implement solutions to the massive problem and also keep order and keep vehicles from driving on the road shoulders?

    During this emergency, it was a serious if unrecognised emergency, the few FRSC who were seen were casual, disinterested and lackadaisical in attitude and showed no real concern to actually solve the traffic problem. They were not on their phones discussing with superiors and implementing any plan like the ‘FRSC 20KM Traffic Jam Plan’ at panic stations. FRSC knows that one of Nigerian drivers’ major problems is inability to follow the queue. Queue jumping is congenital among commercial and most other road users. Over 1,000 vehicles overtook us on the shoulders. If they had stayed in line we would have moved faster. If everyone was forced to stay in line on the two lane road the traffic problem would reduce dramatically. This can be done by placing some blocks every 20 metres on the shoulders which will allow parking but discourage driving on the shoulders. Perhaps the designers of the new expressway need to take this up. The suffering of Nigerians is preventable. Nigeria is an emergency waiting for treatment.

    PS : Give Nigerians emergency electric power NOW!

     

  • No ‘Resit’ for politicians who failed electric power exam; Berger: Emergency Repairs now pls!

    We sit in the national disgrace of darkness from a 30 years power grid failure, victims of PHCN’s TOS, ‘Temporarily Out of Service’ with the power switch in PHCN offices nationwide. We are deafened and stifled by the noxious, noisy generator polluting the atmosphere and draining our pockets. Many families and offices could easily afford a new car monthly; forget Tokunbo, with the money wasted on ‘power substitution. But let us not be too hasty to celebrate this or any government for any slight improvement. Government is making a poor showing at doing what it should have done throughout its tenure- provide power, emergency and long term and not just long term. During the last 30 years successive governments should have added 1,000Mw/year to the grid or gotten that needed emergency power from generator ships etcetera like the Fujiyama nuclear plant was substituted within three months. All our governments have done over the 30 years is to use and abuse government taxes and budgets, to selfishly substitute the government-induced power failure in their offices and homes. They have abandoned the 99.5% of the population which is non-government who have to substitute on their own.

    In fact do you know that governments and political leaders have subjects and examinations just like secondary school students? This power is a subject they tackle for four years. Electricity is a combined physics and commercial subject exam and all governments have failed. Of course they also failed almost all other subjects from environment, sanitation, health, agriculture et cetera. The one subject they think they passed is ‘Politics and Social Studies’ but they failed that too.

    So all past leaders failed woefully their leadership practical exams. Unfortunately some political parties are recruiting an army of failed political octogenarians, and some politicians of odoriferous history in an ‘Exam Resit’. Anenih@80, Bamanga Tukur and Umaru Dikko of the ‘crate’ infamy spring to mind. Imagine the national horror when our new governors are trying to offer old military political leaders like Babangida and Abdulsalami a ‘Resit Exam’ to launder their tattered image. Some images cannot be washed clean and some exams will always be failed by certain students. We shouted about the Benin-Ore road while the Lagos-Ibadan road decayed and collapsed under the weight of our trucks and poor maintenance while our trains were killed ‘on’ their tracks – all by government neglect too busy carting money from contractors for their multi-billion naira election war chests.

    We are on a slow coach to nowhere. It is a month of heavy suffering since the multi-billion dollar contracts for Lagos-Ibadan road were signed and there is still no Julius Berger, JB or RCC ‘Emergency Pothole and Road Edges Teams’ working on the worst potholes and stretches. Where is the love and the ‘Best Practices? The most atrocious sections of the road at Ibafo and Redeem cause 4-5 hour delays and 25-50km traffic jams. But who cares? FRSC cannot even save lives by controlling the speed of commercial vehicles or the side on which trailers drive. Giant contractors, Julius Berger and RCC, have new contracts with and for human beings –Nigerians- in need of saving from government neglect. Government signs on behalf of the citizens but the contracts save lives. JB, urgently fill these potholes! RCC, urgently make smooth our path, now, not in four years’ time! Government has failed, you must pass the exam!

    But who is government? People, not buildings, people not institutions. I am insulted when those seeking solutions to Nigeria’s myriad infrastructural and political problems have the naivety, short-sightedness and effrontery to visit Babangida and Abdulsalami, the midwives of our problems who helped deliver a nearly stillborn baby called ‘Nigeria’ bereft of any civilised infrastructural amenity for ‘miracle cure’. It is time to put these people in their place, in the retirement home, on the sidelines. It is too late for them to ‘Resit’. We have not heard them lamenting any action of theirs. Only the people lament their rule. Could their business empires, built during the time of Nigeria’s maximum corruption, destabilise Nigeria? Can they reverse what they did and failed to do for Nigeria? No, and would they undo their bad deeds if they could rewind the clock? I doubt it.  Power supply is not nuclear physics; the countries with power have good governance, not criminal politicians with two heads.

    Check the web for the Wikipedia list of countries by electricity consumption. You should know where Nigeria stands or stoops. Top countries with 500-1,700 watts per person include all G-8 countries, most EU and Middle and Far East countries. Top African countries include Libya 460, South Africa 457, India 90, Namibia 213, Egypt 147, Ghana 29, Cameroon 29, , Kenya 25, Senegal 16, Republic of Congo 14, Sudan 14, the Gambia 13,  , Lesotho 13, Nigeria has 12 watts /person boastfully above Malawi 11, Guinea 10, Democratic Republic of Congo 9, Burma 9, Mali 9, Benin 8 East Timor 7, Comoros 7, Uganda 6, Equatorial Guinea 6, Guinea –Bissau 5, Madagascar 5, Burkina Faso 5, Ethiopia 4, Niger 4, Haiti 4, Burundi 4, Eritrea 4, Central African Republic 4, Somalia 3, Rwanda 2, Afghanistan 1, Chad 1.

    It is a criminally culpable admission of government that 10,000Mw will have to wait till Dec 2014 to be achieved. Enough of power supply corruption. Emergency power substitution for the 100,000MW needed is the only way forward.

  • FRSC Ogere; Al Capone & Al Mustapha: Court Marshal? Electricity Power play

    A  response by Dapo A on lane mile costs in America came. Please note that a kilometre is 0.62miles. So the 132km former Lagos-Ibadan Expressway is just 78miles. In the USA, in urban areas, widening costs $2.4 –$6.9 million per lane-mile. In rural areas, $1.6 – $3.1 million per lane-mile. So draw your own conclusions about JuliusBerger/RCC costs and the 48 month contract for 78 miles.

    The now permanent FRSC Ogere roadblock actually breaks the law by narrowing the two lane federal highway to one lane. It is manned by officers standing in the expressway stopping vehicles. The FRSC man actually smashed the mirror of a vehicle dodging arrest, making the FRSC at Ogere a nuisance, a laughing stock and a cause of traffic jams. The FRSC team, as an obstruction at Ogere, has replaced the trailers moved to parks. Is there no one in FRSC with love of country and authority to dismantle this menace? Deliberate, unnecessary and malicious narrowing of the expressway which takes 60-100 cars a minute to one lane is a punishable and towable offence. Who will tow the FRSC? The possession of a uniform must not promote illegality.

    Let the FRSC re-learn the ‘Soyinka’ civilised ways of road safety and not ‘go slow’. FRSC should promote ‘Right lane driving’ and fight over-speeding. Most commercial vehicles take off from motor parks. FRSC/ NURTW joint motor park inspection, ‘particulars’ checks, load assessments, monitoring, registration and passenger manifests will improve the rights of citizens to a safe journey. Install an ‘FRSC Desk’ in every motor park. Who at FRSC is listening? As for the illegal vehicles, the ‘Stop’ method must be applied in a more ‘Keep Traffic Moving’ friendly manner. FRSC needs to get more success with ‘Preventive FRSC Road Safety Strategies’. Prevention is better than cure.

    Al Mustapha is still in the Nigerian Army. Is he a military role model? As Abacha’s Chief Security Officer, CSO, Al Mustapha’s tenure ‘witnessed’ many targeted, attacked and murdered citizens by ‘someone’ using the Army as ‘cover’. There are several explanations. Perhaps the CSO was innocent but incredibly irresponsible and stupid amounting to gross incompetence, negligence of duty and malicious military malfeasance. Perhaps Al Mustapha was the hands-on military leader of a devil team. Perhaps the victims did kill themselves as suggested by that government.

    Sometimes you do not catch criminals for what they do, but for what they do not do. Al Capone was not jailed for murder but for tax evasion. Is there a parallel between Al Mustapha and Al Capone? They both begin with ‘Al’. They ‘are’ both ‘smooth customers’, considered nasty pieces of work. Fifteen years on, the army must exonerate itself and tell of the Al Mustapha Days. Did he acquit himself as an officer and a gentleman? Should the army sit in judgement on the irrefutable, activities of Major Al Mustapha? The army could consider a Court Marshal for ‘Actions Unbecoming of a Nigerian Officer, let alone a gentleman’.

    There will be a flurry of intimidation, ‘let time heal all wounds’ and let ‘bygones be bygones’ as ‘the blood is dry’. Someone will play the ethnic card of North Vs South or even Kano vs. Katsina and the Yar’Adua connection or the Abubakar financial issues. Then there is the Abacha loot still in safe houses? Al Mustapha will have money, Governor of Kano State, Kakwanso has promised, as he seeks a successor. Even Hitler was never tried, but guilty as sin and won by democratic elections and then unleashed evil. Germany lost that war but has gained the same superpower status through peace. A strong lesson for war mongers seeking to write stupid memoirs to themselves. Thank God for Brig Gen Alabi-Isama for putting the records of Obasanjo’s forgetful ‘My Command’ straight! We must counter with money for prosecution. We must donate to a fund, ‘Abacha Victims Justice Fund’, to get justice – civil, military or moral- before the next generation of Al Mustaphas appear.

    The risk of silence in this matter will accelerate the choreographed ‘Rehabilitation of Al Mustapha’ and the dancing on the graves of ‘The Abacha Dead’. In addition Al Mustapha could be rehabilitated in the army and ‘God Forbid’, be given 15 years back-pay, honourable discharge or promotion. There are enough SANs, resting between political tribunal trials, to suggest that he may sue for ‘wrongful incarceration’ even though he was responsible for most of the court ‘adjournments’. If we are not attentive we may soon be facing Senator, Governor Al Mustapha of Kano State, Minster of Defence, Vice President and President Al Mustapha. After all, many did no less ‘Honourable and Distinguished’ things than Al Mustapha to get into nasty National Assembly, NASS.

    The Abacha Dead have families’ ruined financially and emotionally. What compensation does victims of government violence get when politicians crazily and serially award ‘Life Salaries and Allowances- SAP’- to already fat-cat principal NASS officers? NASS, is there a ‘Victims of Government Violence Compensation Act’ or even an artistic masterpiece monument to the ‘The Abacha Dead’ taller than evil, wider than devilry. For Nigeria’s children to live in peace, we adults, must face our suspected killers and their mentors or lose our children in our lifetime.

    Meanwhile, where is Nigeria’s needed 100,000Mw of electric power? Stolen or lost in Nigeria’ power play?

    Power supply is not nuclear physics; the countries with power have good governance, not criminal politicians with two heads.

  • JB/ RCC: ‘4 year Contracts of Urgent National Impotence Vs Emergency works; Ogere FRSC 

    Julius Berger (JB) and RCC have the ball squarely in their court over the former Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. The Jonathan Go-slow causing opening in Friday revealed that the contract will cost N167billion or $1,113,333,333 or $1.1billion for 127km ie N1,314,960,629 or N1.3b/ kilometre. In foreign exchange that is an amazing $8,766,404, $8.7million/kilometre. Wow!!! Talk about the streets of Nigeria being paved with gold for some people. At current crude oil prices at a guestimate of $100/barrel, the figures are also interesting. The total cost of the contract is 11,133,333 barrels of crude. That does not sound much to oil rich Nigeria -just 5+days of oil deliveries at two million barrels per day or, according to media bunkering outcry reports, just a month of bunkered oil.

    Someone with internet savvy should please compare and publish the price of a kilometre of road worldwide to see if we are getting a competitive price. We may respect JB as builders of fine roads and bridges and are forced by authorities to tolerate RCC. Can we blame RCC for the Ibadan-Ife Road? We have thousands of Nigerian engineers doing a lot of nothing due to lack of patronage and payment for past contractual projects by governments –the so-called internal debt calculated in trillions of naira. What is the terrain that will cost this amount of money? Widening the long bridge to six lanes?

    But even more importantly, why on earth should the job take four long years or 1460 days or 1252 working day excluding weekends? The Chinese are building the tallest building in the world in just six months. This contract has long since been a deadly laughing stock among Nigerians like the East West Road, the Second Niger Bridge and the ‘Power Failure Projects’ which have all rightly been called ‘Contracts of Urgent National Impotence’!

    With millions of lives affected by the Expressway daily, surely it should be an 18 months or even under a year ‘Contract of Urgent National Importance’. Why no urgency, day and night work, 24/7 work with 10 different teams doing 10km each on each side? There are millions unemployed ready to be recruited and trained. Even the army of NYSC professionals can be deployed to participate in the work.

    Enough is enough. Four years or not, the first assignment for the contractors should be ‘Emergency’, to quickly inspect the road and fill all potholes, of which there are about 1000 serious life-threatening ones  and fill in jagged road edges in over 500 spots. This palliative strategy is not a joke but life-saving and time saving and should be implemented now, this week and completed in seven days. Let the contract begin! There should be no more road deaths due to potholes and jagged road edges which cause vehicles to swerve and crash. Let no Nigerian die on the expressway from today. This burden we place on Julius Berger and RCC management, chief executives and shareholders. They have not get a contract with Nigeria but with Nigerian travellers –men, women and children who simply want to get from A to B, Lagos to Ibadan safely.  ‘JB/RCC, come over to Macedonia and save us.’

    Will the Federal Ministry of Works again be rightly or wrongly accused of devilish delays, diversions, placing greed over service to the nation, corruption and all manner of machinations to cause obstruction? We must remember that there was already an approved design and work on the third lane had successfully gone from Lagos to beyond the Redemption Camp before Obasanjo revoked the World Bank contract in order to concession it. And what a disaster that decision was for Nigerian travellers. Do Nigerians not deserve an apology for having been forced to suffer for so long and being so shoddily treated by those supposed to act in their greater interest-politicians and civil servants? How much was the World Bank contractor paid by Nigeria as compensation for that unnecessary termination of very good work-in-progress? Left alone the entire Expressway would have had three lanes on reach side more than four years ago, now we must wait for four more years. Note that General Gowon says the original plan was for three lanes. Who chopped the third lane- financially or politically thus condemning us to 30+ years of misery?  We should all pray that the Federal Ministry of Works behaves with the above-board moral rectitude and dispatch required in this urgent matter. Just recently on July 6, I witnessed a 9.00am four lane deep, 15km long, about 10,000 vehicles with maybe 100,000 citizens, at a standstill on the Lagos Ibadan side. And on July 21, there was a disastrous 25km four lane wide line of static traffic from Ibafo to well beyond ‘Redeem’. Simple maths tells us that 25km of four lane traffic, with a lane on either side of the two lane road should actually be a 50km two lane traffic jam. Is that not a disaster in evolution? While this disaster was unfolding all the FRSC could do was to stop me at the permanent Ogere FRSC check point for driving licence and fire extinguisher check for the sixth time in my short life.

    Coming back to Ibadan on July 7, there were two accidents and the unrepentant extortion of one FRSC vehicle with its officers endangering their lives and reducing the road lanes from two to one in order to randomly select victim vehicles.

    • To be continued

     

  • CBN and medical tourism; Kudirat Abiola and Rewane murders: Al Mustapha free?

    Apparently NHIS is recruiting Accenture to assist it in‘re-strategising’. NHIS should note that Accenture will be paid up-front and well, something the NHIS does not do with its partners. Accenture should ask why NHIS delays payment of bills from doctors by up to six months with the attendant opportunities for ‘I-beg-pay-me-now’ chop-chop corruption. Accenture should recommend that NHIS pays within one month of bill receipt. Accenture should recommend that even if there is a dispute on the bills of one or two patients then the rest of the bill should be paid immediately while the disputed bills are being sorted. Doctors, clinics and hospitals cannot survive if their money is ‘NHIS Withheld’ and getting finder’s fee bank interest for someone. Accenture should investigate the approved poor fees chargeable by the medical teams for services rendered. Good services cost good money. That is why NHIS has recruited Accenture. Accenture should recommend that NHIS extends the act and pays its medical [practitioners better.

    Back to the issue of medical tourism. To pay for a N4.8m medical machine we must divide by N1,500/patient = 3,200 patients, a few years work, at a scan charge of N1,500/patient without adding salaries, rent, generator, taxes or Nigeria’s ‘Anti-inflation’ interest rates of 21-25% per annum. The cost of a similar scan per patient in USA is $200 or N30,000 ie. 160 patients would cover the machine cost – a few weeks work. As 7Up says, ‘the difference is clear’-ly against us –Nigerian doctors and professionals. Not every doctor practices in Abuja, or Ikoyi/VI.

    How many times have soldiers used ‘hospitals are mere consulting clinics’ as an excuse for coup plots? Do you know what the sign ‘O/S’? It means ‘out of stock’ and it could mean suffering and death for the patient. How can a hospital not have oxygen at midnight when your child is gasping? The ‘happiest people’ in the world are also the ‘most foolish’- swallowing suffering so easily! Doctors did not create the scenario of medical tourism and doctors cannot solve it. They suffer mentally and are as much victims as the citizen who cannot afford to travel abroad for treatment and has inferior treatment from outofstockitis of the good quality drugs and equipment.

    Do you know the doctor’s pain of knowing what to do and knowing how to do it but being prevented from doing it by a lack of equipment? Even worse is to be told to ‘manage’ with obsolete facilities – a waste of skill. Doctors did not cause medical tourism but they know who did cause it and doctors can diagnose the problem and offer simple treatment. Listen to the professionals’ needs. Those who did cause medical tourism are the self-serving civil servants and politicians who cut and cancel medical budgets for Nigerian citizens and are themselves on frequent medical tourism trips abroad sometimes disguised as official government trips –someone has to pay! Those who cause medical tourism in Nigeria are sitting in CBN making base interbank interest rates –MPR- 12% and approving 21-25% interest rates for commercial banks. Doctors and other medical professionals are often trying their best and failing. Bankers ‘make it’ in Nigeria even as they refuse medical loans. Doctors need tools as the new 21st Century medicine is high-tech and machines are upgraded or changed every few years -except in Nigeria where second hand equipment is mostly our lot. Nigeria usually gets the leftovers, as usual! We do not even fund or carry out adequate research into malaria-our major killer.

    If only Sanusi had announced a new CBN ‘Anti-Medical Tourism Plan’ with special entrepreneurship ‘self-development/self-recognition’ loans and even medical practice development long term 4-5 year 2-5% interest loans to professionals across capital-intensive disciplines professions including Medicine. This would allow doctors in and out of government hospitals and other medical professionals to acquire the life-changing cutting-edge equipment needed to deliver high quality services. Only then will we face the medical and other tourism threats on equal footing– with quality equipment and services at home.

    Remember, every patient would travel if the opportunity arose. This confirms a lack of faith in the system- a systemic failure, not a doctor failure! The Nigerian professional is at an all-round disadvantage –financially, access to new equipment and even professionally as it takes money to travel abroad to train on new equipment –money that is not easily recovered from an NHIS which wants to pay minimally for services rendered and does not countenance or take full cognisance of the changing and rising cost involved in providing those medical services in the field. Add the necessary acquisition of second hand, often rubbish, equipment because medical establishments often cannot afford the newest and the best. This is the long established tokunbo-isation of medical equipment and medicine.

    So Al Mustapha is acquitted, free and riding high in Kano. Will Kudirat Abiola, Alfred Rewane and other Abacha-era victims also be freed and resurrect from their graves so their loved ones can also welcome them with parades, parties and prayers. Will they be reinstated in their own ‘armies? Will the Abacha-era death games begin again? Will the bloodshed during the Abacha regime ever be explained, avenged or apologised for? So who killed them or did they kill themselves? Those who think political murder is an acceptable ‘joke’ or legitimate game plan will pay some way, no matter how many millions have been secreted away.

  • Sanusi’s CBN ‘Medical Tourism’: Bigger medical budgets, Medical entrepreneurship

    Sanusi’s CBN ‘Medical Tourism’: Bigger medical budgets, Medical entrepreneurship

    Medical tourism’ complained about by CBN’ Governor Sanusi saves the lives of those who can afford it or have sufficient government-CBN connections for them to pay. For over 40 years, we doctors were strangled and made medically impotent by government-orchestrated limited budgets and obsolete equipment. For how long will Nigeria be satisfied with the cheapest medical equipment? We in medicine manage to cater for the ‘rest of us’ -100+million or are forced to go on strike to guarantee ‘minimum facilities’ and remuneration compared to the bullion raked in by politicians. Nigeria operates a ‘Minimum Medical Service’ when we can afford ‘optimum’ or ‘gold standard; services for our people. Medical tourism is about citizens’ rights to maximum medical services which we in Nigeria can easily afford by increasing medical budgets, eliminating corruption in the medical delivery system and providing 24/7 electricity.

    As I write, the Indians are coming with medical equipment bought with loans from Indian billionaires and banks at 3-4% to ‘take over’ medical services and ‘improve’ hospitals providing ‘superior service’. If Nigerians had cheap and easy medical loans, would we not have the best equipment also?  Many doctors, including me, seek N2-4.8m soft loans for the best ultrasound and other machines payable over 3-5years at 3-5% interest per annum –like for a car in the 1970s. Why should hard working professionals in Nigeria, who deliver services, be denied government perks and tax breaks that rice, cement, sugar, tobacco and oil marketers got in every military and political era that made Nigerians paupers and them billionaires? I too would like to be billionaire but I would prefer to serve my patients with better equipment! God knows we have worked hard. But life is worthless in Nigeria. Ask any teacher or patient.

    But even sartorially elegant and ‘wise’ Sanusi, his CBN and banks have got it wrong. It is simply a ‘lack of funds’ issue. The problem is not with the medical tourists’ right to obtain the best for themselves. In fact the medical tourists are as wise as Sanusi as they have the good sense to avoid contracting more diseases and even dying in dirty-walled and filthy ‘mattressed’ casualties in concentration camps called hospitals. Even if we refuse to get good equipment why is it impossible for Nigeria’s budgets to paint hospitals and clinics quarterly, annually, before they get filthy? Visit any government casualty room. You will be sick! The problem is with the money supply side. Nigeria constantly fails to provide funds for cleanliness and cutting edge medicine. The national and state budgets and the CBN fail to recognise government hospitals, let alone private medical practice among others, as genuine profession-driven entrepreneurship strategies. Yet private practice employs tens of thousands of Nigerians in hospitals and clinics. Is that not ‘Medical Entrepreneurship’?

    Many specialists still inside government facilities have personally acquired specialist skills which waste away without saving any Nigerians because the skills need cutting-edge equipment maliciously cut by politicians from the hospital budget. Though these hospitals are often named ‘specialist’ there is nothing specialist delivered to the patient-just mediocre medicine. Do you know what a radiologist, radiotherapist, neurosurgeon, laparoscopic surgeon, plastic surgeon, orthopaedic surgeon or a maxillofacial trauma surgeon or an obstetrician and gynaecologist need to deliver maximum service to Nigerians?

    Recent open heart surgery, kidney transplants, being bandied around as breakthroughs, are not new. They were performed 35 years ago in Nigeria by Nigerian doctors but the programmes died in an ‘agony of broken medical dreams’ from political budgetary neglect by idiotic governments when the title ‘Centres of Excellence’ was created to make a laughing stock of ‘Centres of Extreme Suffering’. From that time Nigerian medicine was dragged into disrepute and thousands of medical professionals wisely fled with their qualifications abroad to cater better for family and brain. Locally professionals were rendered redundant by the politics. Even in private practice the cost of cutting-edge medical equipment to replace obsolete machines is a huge obstacle to entrepreneurial development.

    Nigerian medicine requires petrodollars to be like medicine abroad. It demands cutting-edge equipment – the main ‘medical tourist attraction’. In Nigeria, cutting-edge equipment paradoxically costs more than in the UK. Decent medical loans are not available but N5million loans and N500,000 obituary pages are plentiful to bury the dead.

    Sanusi’s CBN should earmark N1billion for professionals in government and private practice for cheap, easy loans for ‘Professional Entrepreneurial Development’ in self-recognition, guaranteed by the NMA or their professional body.

    Even the ‘wise’ NMA has failed to negotiate such loans for its 30,000+ membership, though it has an annual budget of N2-300million of its members’ money. Can the NMA suspend most of its huge budget for administration, travel and five-star hotel accommodation and put N100m per annum for 20 years towards a powerful N1-2billion NMA Bank or NMA Coop Bank to guarantee its membership equipment and loans and get international grants? The NMA should also insist that state NMA should not beg governors for vehicles but save N1m/annum/state in a ‘Vehicle Fund’ to guarantee a new NMA vehicle every four years. Myopia!  If government refuses to improve medicine, the NMA should take up the challenge and lead in Medical Entrepreneurship promotion if CBN will refuse to recognise ‘Medical Entrepreneurship’ and prefers to merely criticise those who want the best medical care worldwide.

    To be continued.

     

    PS Please pray for those using delayed, damaged and ‘dead’ on the misnamed Lagos Ibadan Expressway.

     

  • NIPSS Politicians; Fashola: Builder; ‘Fasholaites’ Legacy Projects, not adverts; Bail; INEC; Solar

    NIPSS Politicians; Fashola: Builder; ‘Fasholaites’ Legacy Projects, not adverts; Bail; INEC; Solar

    How many billionaires in Nigeria are secretive billionaires and not on the Forbes rich list? Why? Corrupt money!

    NIPSS has at long last initiated a course for politicians. Education is a key to development. For years we have suggested that politicians, their aides and special advisors, instead of setting up the ‘Associations of Special Advisors to President and Governors and Ministers’ aka ‘ASATPAGAM’, should ‘get an education in delivering political agendas’ through 1-3 month diplomas in ‘Budgeting for beginners’, MDGs et cetera to reduce ‘delivery of democracy’ time.

    In Nigeria the more you look the less you see. Look at the billions put into ‘power failure’. We now know that the money went to terrorist activities against power supply. As someone said, one Japanese airport has 6,000Mw, more than Nigeria after trillions of naira ‘went up’ in ‘the darkness powered by PHCN’. Now see headlines like ‘Nigerian government to ban generators’. Ban whose generators- Government offices and employees’ homes? Or from the common man suffering no power after 1999-2013 i.e. 14 years of one-party rule? Is powerlessness a Nigerian ‘dividend of democracy’?

    Congratulations to Governor BRFashola@50 for showing that Nigeria is not bereft of good leaders and that with the right leadership a ‘Normal Nigeria’ is possible. He is a governor who has shown that governance is more than delivering the barest minimum and that delivering exercise books to school children is a child right and not a misguided dividend of democracy. In addition he has built bridges as his legacy!

    I hate birthday newspaper advertisements as a waste of millions in public and private funds, totally 10,000 adverts@ N500,000/ annual or N10,000,000,000 or N10b/annum for sucking up to the person in power –soon to be forgotten after a political power cut. Remember that each advert gives a finder’s fee of 10-20% totally N1-2b/year. Who listened to State of Osun’s Ogbeni and indeed Fashola’s own request that all adverts should instead be monetised for charities. However in the special case of Governor Fashola@50, I want, in spite of that massive advertorial ‘incumbency-only’ waste, to say how proud we Lagosians are of Governor Fashola. The 50 odd adverts in one paper would have been N25m in a Fashola Legacy Project. I would have preferred to see 50 or so N500,000 endowments for events, scholarships, competitions, prizes, a play in Fashola’s name in education, business, law and creative arts to raise the next generation of ‘Fasholaites’. It will take money –that advertising money would have been useful! You never hear of newspapers doing much CSR with their profits! I won a prize of a huge green Stedman’s Medical Dictionary in the USIS J. F. Kennedy Essay Competition from St Gregory’s College in 1965 or so. A Fashola Essay Prize for leadership among students or prefects is not too much to establish for a man who is so politically savvy and modest as not to name the Principals’ Cup and other major rejuvenated and new initiatives and events after his person. That takes guts, leadership, vision and a resistance to sycophants. As ‘Class Captain’ we hope he is spreading his philosophy among the Progressive Governors Forum. Nigeria has a sprinkling of visionary governors. There are a lot of ‘if only’ regrets in Nigeria. What if Obasanjo had ‘allowed’ Asiwaju Tinubu’s power dreams for Lagos in 1999 or had not withheld the N10b or if the civilian government had corrected the military induced 20 LGAs for Lagos versus the 77 for Kano State? Where would Lagos State be now without these anomalies?

    Celebrate ‘Fashola: The Builder’ or ‘Fashola: The Bridge Builder!’ I was on the beautiful architectural masterpiece Lekki-Ikoyi Suspension bridge. That is what government is about –executing the visionary solution and employing Nigerians. Government is supposed to pay attention to masterpieces beyond the ability of others. Jonathan agreed to allow the bridge but would Obasanjo or Buhari have? Why is there only that bridge when the Seine and the Thames have many bridges? Are the next bridges planned? Those still building the second and third Niger Bridge should be ashamed. The bridge is about shortening distances and the toll should be cheaper. Happy Birthday: Fashola the Builder’.

    A student who allegedly kidnapped, beat and raped an undergraduate was bailed with three sureties of N250,000 each. That is not a deterrent but an encouragement to violence against women.

    Readers of this column will know that it has promoted Addresses on State of the Nation, State, LGAs, Professional Bodies and Associations throughout Nigeria to highlight problems, encourage performance and development. Hurray, the Oyo State Governor Ajimobi gave a State of Oyo State Address just last week. So should the Presidency and NASS.

    Senate wants new recruitment into the military but how many of the senators will put their children and relations forward?

    So INEC says ‘no’ to e-voting, ‘No’ to Diaspora voting, perhaps ‘no’ to APC registration. What next? The CBN announced that N22b is repatriated home annually by the Diaspora Nigerian community. Does that not qualify them to vote?

    It is a pity that the Governors’ Forum does not have as a priority the prevention of further violence against farmers on the murderous North-South Cattle ‘Blood Meat’ corridor.

    So the World Bank supports a Nigerian university to produce solar panels. Who is afraid of a ‘Solar Powered Nigeria’? Government and its cronies in ‘Nigeria’s Great Petroleum Scam’? Meanwhile JAMB cut-off points cut off merit and youths lives.