The Nation Newspaper

Category: Hardball

  • Anti-poor coalition?  

    Anti-poor coalition?  

    By Hardball

    What ails the critics of the Federal Government’s schools feeding programme, even after the minister in charge has explained the modalities of that novel scheme, in the novel COVID-19 season?

    Learned silk, Chief Afe Babalola, SAN, wanted the scheme cancelled and its funding vired, into procuring testing machines for public universities — probably to fasten the resumption of the university calendar?

    Not an illegitimate opinion, except that feeding elementary school pupils and equipping universities for COVID-19 challenges should really not be competing.  Both should enjoy prime state investment, for they deal with crucial human capital development.

    So, what really is the wisdom of junking that duty at the basic level, and transferring its funding to the tertiary level?  Do you build an edifice from the roof top?

    The African Democratic Congress (ADC), former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s “third force” Trojan horse, in the 2019 presidential election, has also weighed in.

    By its own democratic wisdom, from the sagely mouth of Yemi Kolapo, it’s national publicity secretary, the FG should, to quote The Nation’s reportage of his take, shift attention to “containing the spread of COVID-19 and mitigating the economic impact of both the pandemic and the fall in international oil prices.”

    But how can feeding vulnerable school kids, by tracing their parents and giving them rations in raw foodstuffs, be inimical to mitigating the economic impact of COVID-19-19? Because the voiceless and the most vulnerable families are the beneficiaries?

    Many an agitated media commentator has also jumped into fray, screaming that schools are closed, you can’t possibly feed school pupils out of school, and hinting at the ultimate blackmail: “they”, meaning those driving the programme, just want to “chop” the money!

    Don’t even try engaging this bristling, all-knowing type because it’s simply a dialogue with the deaf.  But suffice it to put a few posers?  Are pupils registered without addresses?  Do these children belong to ghost families, that can’t be traced?

    True, the logistics may be challenging — but challenging hardly equates impossibility.  By all means critique public policy, particularly direct-citizen investment, novel to the Nigerian clime.

    But never ever dismiss the hard thinking of others, simply because of the wilful self-limitation of your own thinking.  That way you help to refine, instead of summarily shut down what you don’t really understand.

    So, is there a brewing coalition against the poor and the vulnerable?  Yet, this same lobby would bleat, when it pleases them: “there is mass hunger in the land!”

    Hajiya Sadiya Umar-Farouk, the minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management, should ignore the nay orchestra and faithfully implement the pro-poor policies and programmes under her care.

    The poor have as much right to government care, as the howling and hustling elite.  It’s a question of bounden and solemn government-to-citizen duty, not some subversive or cynical elite charity, driven by contemptuous pity.

  • Madagascar’s invoice

    Madagascar’s invoice

    Hardball

    The island nation of Madagascar recently shared its touted remedy for Covid-19, named Covid-Organics, with Nigeria. But if you thought it was a gesture of African brotherly benefaction, perish the thought. There is an asking price of €170,000 (N78, 200,000) attached.

    Nigeria’s allocation of the drug was brought in tow penultimate weekend by Guinea Bissau President Umaro Sissoco Embalo, who came calling on President Muhammadu Buhari in Abuja. Although the exact quantity of the consignment is not known, it apparently wasn’t beyond the oversight of his visiting excellency. Good enough, Nigeria did not rush into dispensing the drug. President Buhari made clear the Madagascar remedy wasn’t like a magic wand Nigeria was waiting for in its battle against coronavirus. He said the solution would be run through local verification and validation processes before being dispensed to Covid-19 patients.

    Now we know ‘there is no free lunch even in Freetown,’ as they say. A source told The Nation last weekend: “For our consignments in Guinea Bissau, Madagascar has asked Nigeria to pay over €170,000 (N78, 200,000). We have received the invoice because the African country has made us to realise that the drugs are not being given out free. We are being asked to pay for the drugs yet to be validated. Since the AU (African Union) directed the supply of the drugs to African countries, we may have no choice than to pay for it.”

    Hardball says: ‘No, sir! We have a choice.’ Covid-Organics is a herbal solution invented by the Malagasy Institute of Applied Research and touted as effective for both prevention and cure of Covid-19. But it is neither accredited by the World Health Organisation (WHO) nor yet validated by Nigeria’s own regulatory institutions. The greatest testimonial for the remedy to date is the personal marketing undertaken by Madagascar President Andry Rajoelina, who accused the international community of dithering on adopting his country’s invention only because it came from Africa.

    Well, aggressive marketing has no doubt helped the visibility of Covid-Organics, but that isn’t sufficient for the drug to exact such princely costs. This is more so as Madagascar last weekend reported Covid-19-related death of a 57-year-old medical worker – suggesting the herbal tonic isn’t after all impregnable. Besides, whereas the country disclosed the extract’s source as being Artemisia, a bitterroot used in malaria drugs, it patented it in exclusivity by withholding info on other ingredients.

    The asking price can considerably help the work of Nigerian inventors rather than be thrown on a product patented in exclusivity by its foreign inventor. By all means, we have a choice: we can return the product to sender and rather concentrate on funding the work of local researchers.

     

  • Security cake

    Security cake

    By Hardball

    Paradoxically, security votes in Nigeria are usually not for security purposes. News that a former governor of Abia State from 2007 to 2015, Senator Theodore Orji, told the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) how he spent N38.8b security votes in eight years for other purposes shows that security votes do not mean what they should mean.

    The former governor was reported to have said he received N370million monthly as security vote in 2007 and N410million monthly from 2008 to 2015.

    Orji, who is representing Abia Central Senatorial District in the National Assembly, “said he shared much of the N38billion with members of the state House of Assembly, his security informants and traditional rulers.” He “claimed to have also given part of the money to military units, the police, the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) and security agencies as what he called statutory allocations.”

    In a breakdown of who got what, the former governor “said he gave successive members of the State House of Assembly N5. 760billion, at N60million per month, in the eight years,” and “also claimed to have paid N75million monthly to security informants in 15 of the 17 local government areas of the state within the same period.”

    The report added: “The yet-to-be identified informants allegedly pocketed a total of N7.200billion between 2007 and 2015. Some of the security agencies, according to him, received N2million per month.” But he could not provide “a comprehensive list of all the beneficiaries of the largesse,” the report said.  It is unclear how Orji determined those qualified for a share of the cake, and how those who got a share were useful for security purposes.  It looks like the former governor found the money useful for buying the loyalty of the beneficiaries, and not for security purposes as such.

    Orji’s account suggests that he never benefitted personally from the security votes, which is another matter. Last year, a prominent civil society organisation, Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP), had drawn public attention to the abuse of security votes, saying, “Available evidence would seem to suggest that many of the tiers of government in Nigeria have used security votes as a conduit for grand corruption.” It criticised “massive political use, mismanagement or stealing of security votes by many governments.”

    Indeed, the organisation had quoted a former governor of Kano State, Musa Kwankwaso, who it said “once described security votes as ‘another way of stealing public funds’.”

    The investigation of Orji’s alleged “financial recklessness” as governor is an eye-opener. He is a metaphor for irresponsible power.

  • IE and COVID-19 hunger

    IE and COVID-19 hunger

    By Hardball

    Femi Gbajabiamila, Speaker of the House of Representatives, must hear this: Ikeja Electric (IE) appears down with a most vicious strain of COVID-19 hunger.  So it’s, with venom, blitzing its “estimated billing” customers!

    But whatever happened to Speaker Gbajabiamila’s COVID-19 season emergency power proposed rebates?  Or, for that matter, to the then immediate pre-COVID-19 season Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) “repeal” of “estimated billing”?

    Indeed, NERC had announced, effective February 20, it was repealing “estimated billing” for unmetered electricity consumers, partly to save a section of the market from being billed a premium, for a supply of premium darkness; and partly to galvanize electricity distribution companies (DisCos) into providing their customers pre-paid meters.

    Shortly after, COVID-19 emergency dawned, and there came the Gbajabiamila legislative lullaby, of a possible two-month power bill relief, during the earliest days of the Abuja-Lagos-Ogun lockdown.

    Whatever happened to all those, IE would appear unimpressed as it, with a vengeance, appears dishing out its estimated bills with a vengeance befitting acute COVID-19 corporate starvation, with little or no regard for the actual power supplied.

    Take the case of this customer, with Account Number 0100218678.  For the month of April, IE awarded a bill of N18, 279. 30.  In a billing temper that spoke of a reckless and ruthless billing bazaar, it chalked up total indebtedness to N40, 513. 09, adding N18, 279. 30, disputed bills, for past supplies of premium darkness, it keeps on pushing forward in its books.

    Still, flashback to the IE bill for March 2020.  Customer 0100218678 got billed for 12, 654. 90.  So, between March and April 2020, the bill jumped by N5, 624. 40.  Yet, no upsurge in power supply.  At best, it was the normal level of supply.  At worst, there was a slight drop, caused by days of shambolic supplies, for which IE gave no concrete or logical reasons.

    What is more?  During that same corresponding period, the customer, no thanks to COVID-19, took a 50 per cent pay cut.  But from this pay cut, he must fund IE’s 44 per  cent hike in power bill!  Talk if COVID-19 corporate hunger and customer anger!

    Yeah, IE is starving and is hungry.  But its corporate hunger, coupled  with customary greed and reckless billing techniques, could well lead to vicious social anger, that could well endanger its business environment.

    Which is why the Federal Government should rein in these reckless DisCos. They are not only corporates that by their bad behaviour, glory as social scums — or how else could you explain corporates, whose business growth strategy is nothing but in-your-face cheating, and threatening customers with disconnections because they refuse to pay for darkness in lieu of electricity? — but also economic saboteurs, in a most trying period of Nigeria’s COVID-19 challenge.

    NERC should call IE to order.  It can’t continue to rip off its customers using a repealed billing method.  If it continues, it would constitute  clear and present danger to a peaceful business environment.  That would be a lose-lose!

  • Rule of ambush

    Rule of ambush

    Hardball

    If Kogi State Governor Yahaya Bello had knowingly set a trap for officials of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) in his domain last week, those officials walked smack into it. They gifted the governor a handle to turn the table on them in his government’s war of attrition with their agency, but not flawlessly so.

    The NCDC officials aborted their mission to Kogi after Governor Bello ordered them to go into 14-day quarantine at the state’s isolation facility and then get tested for coronavirus infection, which averagely takes another 48 hours turnaround time for results, before the team could get down to work. This order resulted from team leader, Dr. Andrew Noah, having made bodily contact with a Kogi official in course of his team being introduced to the state government.

    Some reports said Noah shook hands with the state Director of Protocol while exchanging microphones after he had spoken to introduce his four-member team; others said the bodily contact was with state Health Commissioner as Noah was handing over his team’s letter of accreditation. Whichever, Mr. Governor seized on this happenstance to order the team into quarantine. When the officials refused, they were hounded of the state. But the Kogi government, in furtherance of its war of attrition, broadcasted that they fled to avoid taking the Covid-19 test.

    Kogi and Cross Rivers are only states in the entire federation yet to report any case of coronavirus infection. Federal authorities, through the Presidential Task Force on Covid-19 and the NCDC, have repeatedly said the status was bogus because the states aren’t doing enough testing of samples to ascertain the true situation. Kogi, for instance, has conducted only two tests so far. But Governor Bello has been fighting bare-knuckled against this charge, saying he would not cite phantom cases just so to make up NCDC figures.

    It was unfortunate that the NCDC officials in Lokoja were so unguarded as to engage in casual bodily contact in violation of their agency’s advocacy on social distancing. Governor Bello insisted last week that his objective was to make the agency comply with its own protocols. He cited the Chinese experts who came to help Nigeria with containing the pandemic, and who went into quarantine before getting down to their mission. On the surface, that logic seemed right. But it showed up as spurious when the governor did not also order Kogi officials present with the NCDC agents to go into isolation and likewise get tested.

    The trouble identified all along with Kogi was the government not testing residents for the virus. Governor Bello did not shift an inch on that failing with his ambuscade against NCDC.

     

  • Money talks

    Money talks

    By Hardball

    By withdrawing the policemen protecting the Chairman, Five Star Group, Emeka Okonkwo aka E-Money, Inspector-General of Police (IG) Mohammed Adamu drew public attention to a perennial problem. Who should have police escort?  A top police officer was quoted as saying:  ”We received a signal from the Force headquarters…that the police detail of music executive, E-Money, be immediately withdrawn and an investigation into the man be launched.

    “The IG was surprised that policemen were attached to him in the first place and were being used like domestic servants, carrying umbrellas, opening doors, and doing menial jobs for him.”

    Who approved E-Money’s police escort? What were the considerations?  What were the conditions?  E-Money’s flaunted affluence suggests that those involved in the security arrangement must have been well paid.

    There is no doubt that money talks, which is why E-Money’s police protectors allegedly went beyond providing protection. It is understandable that the IG was embarrassed.  It’s a long story. In March 2018, the then IG Ibrahim Idris had ordered immediate withdrawal of all police orderlies attached to private individuals and companies. His order was not new.  His predecessors had given similar orders.

    A report presented the repetitive sequence:  ”In 2009, Ogbonna Onovo, IGP from 2009-2010, ordered immediate withdrawal of all orderlies attached to private individuals. However, soon after the directive was issued, state commissioners began identifying some private individuals that would be exempted from the policy.

    “In October 2010, about a month after succeeding Mr. Onovo, Inspector-General Hafiz Ringim called for immediate removal of personnel attached to private individuals, an order that failed to hold water.

    “In February 2012, Mr. Ringim’s successor, Mohammed Abubakar, also issued his own directive, saying it was time to bring professionalism, efficiency and integrity to police operations.”

    The report continued: “Mr. Idris’ immediate predecessor, Solomon Arase, also ordered the withdrawal of all officers from private individuals a few weeks before he left office. Like his predecessors, Mr. Arase also complained that the police could not afford to attach officers to private individuals when there are more pressing security challenges across the country.

    “The demand for officers to be withdrawn from private use has come from successive inspectors-general almost as often as the directive for officers to stop mounting roadblocks in the country.”

    E-Money is not alone in using money to get police protection, and allegedly using his police protectors “like domestic servants.”  The police need to get their act together.

  • What ails Wike?

    What ails Wike?

    By Hardball

    In the Rivers front, COVID-19 appears to have birthed a severe strain of another gubernatorial virus.  So, it’s politic to ask: what ails Rivers Governor, Nyesom Wike?  This question is imperative because, whatever the strain, it appears getting worse, each passing day.

    Well, maybe it’s patriotism — of the most virulent paternalistic hue?  Well, patriotism might be the last bastion of the scoundrel.  But when it’s infused with the deepest, most consuming and most doting hue of paternalistic love?  What you get is an explosive cocktail!

    No sooner had COVID-19 broken, and everyone started closing their “borders”, than “Father” Wike — damned if he would not, at all cost, protect his “children!” — exploded into action with fearsome ire.

    His first grouse, that merited a full gubernatorial growl, loud and harsh, was with the Federal Government.  Because it had aided Lagos, national COVID-19 epicentre with a grant of N10 billion, even after Lagos had gone ahead to fight a national menace, with own cash, without asking FG for a kobo, Wike declared his Rivers children federal orphans.  But he assured that as he, their father lived, they would be okay.

    Then Wike pounced on a helicopter service company, harshly rounding up on it, for allegedly breaking the Rivers lockdown, to airlift aliens into Rivers, putative COVID-19-positive aliens, that could infect his darling Rivers children.  He swore, rippling with rare and engaging paternal love, that would happen over his dead body!

    It took a shouting bout between the governor and the federal aviation authorities to settle that face-off, for Wike’s accused persons were no more than oil workers, to keep the oil sector purring, while the rest of the economy were on lockdown.

    Oil workers!  Those were the next Wike target, except that now the battle front had moved from the air strip to the road from neighbouring Akwa Ibom.  From that sector, came a Coaster mini-bus, with oil workers, in transit from Akwa Ibom, inward Rivers.  But Wike, doting father, won’t have such nonsense!

    Pronto, he ordered their “arrest”, and virtually frog-jumped them into the nearest isolation centre.  When that push came to a shove, PENGASSAN, the senior oil workers union, threatened a strike.  But with eyeball riveted on eyeball, the governor ate crow and backed off.  But he had tried to protect his lovely children, as a responsible father would, see?

    Each time the battle moved to different sectors, “Father” Wike rushed into a state broadcast.  The beloved Rivers “children” must be informed!  So far, “Hell is other people”, a famous quip from French philosopher, Jean Paul Sartre’s 1944 play, No Exit, would appear sweet music in the Rivers ear.  Ironically, “not entry, no exit” rings true of the current temper of Wike’s Rivers!

    But in his latest activism — destructive, not a few swear — hell isn’t other people at all, as the governor just supervised the pulling down of two hotels, whose owners allegedly flouted Rivers COVID-19 hotel regulation order.

    Patrons were alleged to have partied all-night at the two hotels, COVID-19 social distancing be damned!  That cropped Wike’s terrible gubernatorial ire and the hotels became mere rubbles, the demolition of one of them, under the direct supervision of the governor himself!

    Now, one of the hotel owners, one of the beloved Wike “children”, is lamenting  he should have built his hotel in Lagos, and not in his home state, Rivers!

    Now, what ails Wike?  Is the doting father hitting on his own darling “children”?  Is the Rivers COVID-19 revolution of love consuming its own children?  What ails Wike?

     

     

  • ‘Fugitives’ from care

    ‘Fugitives’ from care

    Hardball

    In the ongoing struggle to stop coronavirus in its tracks in Nigeria, some persons reported to have tested positive are willfully shunning care. Patients ordinarily seek care and eagerly make the best of every provision available towards their being restored to wholeness. What we see, however, are purported patients rebuffing healthcare despite the reputation of this viral disease for fatality. This is queer.

    The instance that read

    ‘Fugitives’ from care‘Fugitives’ from carely comes to mind is the alleged index case in Benue State. Health authorities say Susan Okpe tested positive to Covid-19, but she insists she isn’t infected by the virus and is only being held in forceful custody 40 days on for care she doesn’t need. Susan claims she hasn’t accepted any Covid-19 medication since she was taken into isolation and she is fighting tooth and nail to get her point across. From her agility in a viral video she lately issued, it is germane to ask if there is such impregnable natural resistance against the virus that an alleged sufferer could appear so totally asymptomatic long after she was reported to have tested positive. From indications, Susan’s case will ultimately be resolved before the courts rather than within confines of health facilities.

    Meanwhile, there are other cases not as controversial but nonetheless significant. In Yobe State, a legislator suspected to have tested positive to Covid-19 was last week reported having refused going into isolation. The state lawmaker was said to have been taken for medical attention to General Sani Abacha Specialist Hospital and was admitted at the amenity ward. But when his sample was taken, he was found positive to Covid-19; yet he refused being relocated from the amenity ward into isolation at the same hospital, necessitating the evacuation of other patients from that ward while health workers not on Covid-19 duties avoided the place. Even an intervention by the state Covid-19 committee didn’t do much to elicit instant cooperation from the patient.

    You would think a lawmaker knows better than another patient said to have fled care in Delta State, only to be intercepted in Enugu State and returned to isolation in Delta. Enugu Health Commissioner Ikechukwu Obi was reported confirming the case, which evoked memories of Kano State in the early days of its Covid-19 experience when three patients went underground immediately they got wind of their having tested positive to the virus.

    Hardball thinks these responses are linked with underlying motives ranging from irrational fear of the virus to largely subconscious defensiveness against stigma perceived to be associated with contracting it. It is the responsibility of public health authorities to intensify enlightenment towards assuaging these motivations, so to get better cooperation from persons who tested positive to the virus and need care.

     

     

  • The police should be wiser

    The police should be wiser

    Hardball

    It is unbelievable that Lagos State Commissioner of Police (CP) Hakeem Odumosu allegedly downplayed the essentiality of media services at a time like this, contrary to the wisdom of the state government and the federal government.

    Reported Lagos cases of police misinterpretation of the nationwide coronavirus curfew as being applicable to media workers show that the CP does not understand the role of the media and how the media operates.

    ”On the first day of the 8pm to 6am curfew imposed by President Muhamadu Buhari,” a report said, “the police chief personally mounted a road block on Gbagada Expressway, Mainland Lagos, from around 8:30pm.”

    According to the report, “He declined for a long time to allow passage for people on essential duty including journalists…He declared that essential workers are not allowed movement during curfew.”

    At various places in Lagos, the police gave journalists a hard time on their way home from work. Those affected included staff of The Nation, The Punch and Channels Television.

    It was reported that “A senior editorial member of staff of The Nation was delayed at Gbagada for about five hours before being allowed to go after the intervention of a top government official. From 8:30pm, he did not leave the place till about 1am.”

    Also, “a senior editorial member of The Nation” was quoted as saying:  ”Policemen stopped me twice at Ikorodu around midnight on my way home from office… I showed them my ID card. They refused to allow me go.

    “I had to approach the most senior among them. While the juniors said no, the senior one saw reason but he warned that I should tell my organisation to get a pass from the CP on subsequent days if I must pass through the place.”

    If the policemen were simply carrying out the CP’s orders, it means the CP’s orders were wrong-headed. It is reassuring that Minister of Information and Culture Alhaji Lai Mohammed, reacting to the development, said: “I will take up the matter of the commissioner of police in Lagos… by my understanding, anybody that is a journalist with identification is allowed to move about.”

    Evidently, the Lagos police boss is doing his work based on a warped understanding. He should not infect the policemen under his control with his own nonsensical perspective. Now that the authorities have clarified the essentiality of media services, the police should be wiser.

  • From ‘constituted authority’ to ‘prescribed authority’

    From ‘constituted authority’ to ‘prescribed authority’

    Hardball

    Move over, “constituted authority”.  Welcome, “prescribed authority”, in all its haughty and swashbuckling majesty!  But mark you: you might have, on your hands, a royal rumble, with not so royal temper!

    That is the troubling brew from the Akure North local government of Ondo State, where the Deji of Akure, Oba Aladetoyinbo Aladelusi, is accused of over-reaching his legal and legitimate authority, by installing allegedly questionable minor chiefs and “Olus”, in adjunct and satellite communities, bordering Akure.

    Such communities include Oba-Ile, Iju, Ita-Ogbolu, Ayede-Ogbese, Osi, Eleyowo, Isinigbo, Owode and others.

    A trio of royal fathers are jousting with the Akure monarch on the issue, insisting the Deji should limit his chieftaincies to Akure itself.  They are the Okiti of Iju, Oba Amos Farunkanmi, Oloba of Oba-Ile, Oba Joseph Agunbiade and the Ogbolu of Ita-Ogbolu, Oba Idowu Faborode.

    They accused the Deji of Akure of installing controversial chiefs in Igboba, Eleyowo, Isinigbo, Ajebandele Tedibomi and Igbatoro.

    But the Akure monarch, prime if not paramount ruler in the whole of the area, came blazing from hips, locating his authority in some claimed judicial instrument, to which the protesting monarchs poured nothing by ice-cold water.

    “The recognized Chiefs or Obas in Akure North have instituted action against the Deji, for his provocative and unconstitutional incursions into Akure North to brew crises and make illegal appointments of “Olus” and “Baales”.  The case is still pending before the Ondo State High Court 6, Akure.  Hearing has not been concluded, not to talk of judgment.”

    “Oba Aladelusi,” they claimed, “has been deceiving the people that the court has declared him the prescribed and consenting authority over the entire communities in Akure North, though consenting authority had been abolished since 1981.  This,” they declared, “is patently false.  If the Deji has such judgment,” they challenged, “let him go to court and enforce it …”

    But the Deji responded to the charges with a recourse to history.  ”Prior to the installation of recognized kings in Iju, Ita-Ogbolu and Ogbese, all in Akure North,” he reminded the railing monarchs, “the Deji was the consenting authority over the appointment and installation of minor chieftaincies in these communities …”

    Hardball thinks both sides of the royal divide should wait for the court to pronounce judgment on the matter in dispute, rather than recourse to threats and counter-threats, which border on self-help.  Before that, however, the Ondo government should do the needful by reining in both sides.

    A royal rumpus over “prescribed” or “consenting” authority should not heat up blue blood, not to talk of boiling over to spill the hoi-polloi’s red blood, should things spiral out of control!

    That is why the Ondo government must move in, and maintain calm on the restive Akure North front.