The Nation Newspaper

Category: Hardball

  • Flip-flopping on food

    Flip-flopping on food

    As biting food inflation continues across the country, Akwa Ibom State Governor Umo Eno has moved from one response to another, giving the impression that he does not appreciate the urgent need to deal with the issue without delay. 

    Last week, he announced a free food programme for the vulnerable people in the state, apparently to replace a food subsidy scheme he had announced earlier in the same month, which did not take off.  He said the “Akwa Ibom new deal” was “aimed at mitigating and bringing down the high cost of staple food items, starting with garri, rice and beans that today seems to be beyond the reach of the vulnerable people.”

    Under the new arrangement, the state government will give out 5kg of either rice, beans or garri. Eno explained: “We will give food vouchers to people whose names are in the social register, and then they will go to any market and redeem the voucher. The agent at the redemption centres will collate the vouchers, take them to the Bulk Purchase Agency, and they will be paid their money within 72 hours.”

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    Under the old scheme that did not take off, the Bulk Purchase Agency established by the state government was to sell 10kg bags of rice, beans and garri once a month to the vulnerable people in the state social register at subsidised prices. The governor had said the agency would “do a direct intervention in the market and get food to our people at a reduced price.”  Under the scheme, the state government selected the accredited market agents that would sell the staple food items to the beneficiaries, who were to pay 70 per cent while the government subsidised 30 per cent, including a provision of five per cent as service charge (interest) to the market agents.

    Whether the state government wants a free food programme that limits beneficiaries to one of three staple food items, or a food subsidy scheme that allows them to buy any of three foodstuffs at special prices, it should ensure that its intervention goes beyond making announcements. 

    At the time he introduced the first scheme that did not take off, the governor had observed, “We all know that there is real hunger in the land. Our people need food,” saying that was the reason for the intervention.

    The so-called Akwa Ibom new deal should take off without delay, and shouldn’t be like the old scheme that didn’t happen after all. This will show that the state government is serious.

  • In these harsh times

    In these harsh times

    President Bola Tinubu’s striking plea to state governors, towards softening the prevailing hard living conditions in the country, made the headlines.

    At the launch of the Food Security and Agricultural Mechanization Programme in Niger State, he was reported saying, “We need to relieve our people of hunger. Let all the sub-nationals start paying wage awards, pending when the minimum wage is increased. I am not giving an order; I am only appealing.”

    The Federal Government had approved N35,000 as wage award for its workers with effect from September, last year. The state governments were expected to follow the example of the federal authorities, and implement the same wage award to cushion the harsh socio-economic effects of the controversial removal of fuel subsidy by the Federal Government in May.

    The Tinubu presidency had reached an agreement with the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and Trade Union Congress of Nigeria (TUC) in October, following the dispute arising from withdrawal of subsidy on the price of premium motor spirit (PMS), and the threat of a nationwide strike by the unions. Based on the agreement, the Tinubu administration approved the payment of a wage award of N35,000 monthly, for six months, to all federal government workers, starting from September, and “pending when a new national minimum wage is expected to have been signed into law.”

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    The Federal Government is reported to have paid the provisional wage award for five months. But in many states, state government workers are still hoping for some succour. According to an investigative report published last November, out of the 36 states of the federation, 34 made excuses for their non-implementation of the N35,000 wage award.  State government officials were quoted as saying they were still considering the financial implication of the wage award, or they were waiting to “see what obtains in other states,” or they were in the process of arriving at the appropriate support for workers within the available means of their states. The governments of Oyo and Enugu states were reported to have negotiated the payment of N25,000 as wage award to their workers.

    It is unclear what the situation is today, how many states are paying wage awards to their workers, and how much they are paying. Notably, the states have received more money from the federation account as a result of the removal of petrol subsidy. “Whereas, the amount shared to the tiers of government averaged between N650 billion and N850 billion before the withdrawal of petrol subsidy, the average now is N1.1trillion,” a report said.  So, it is inexcusable that many states are not paying any wage award.

     Evidently, not only workers in the country’s public sector deserve wage awards. Private-sector workers are also affected by the current harsh living conditions, and they need succour too. 

  • Baltimore bridge collapse

    Baltimore bridge collapse

    Baltimore bridge collapse  Francis Scott Key Bridge, in Baltimore, USA, early on March 26, went crashing: after the “Bali”, a container ship flying a Singapore flag, rammed into it.  The time was 1:30 am local time (5:30 am GMT). 

    The crash happened close to the harbour of the Port of Balitimore, the biggest US port handling specialized cargo.  It’s a very busy port.

    Many cars are reported to have sunk in the Patapsco River below.  Search and rescue workers, mainly divers, were despatched into the river, hoping to find and rescue no less than seven persons, feared trapped in the frigid waters, gauged at sub-one degree centigrade.

    Immediate post-crash account, garnered from from The Washington Post, suggested a ship in distress that veered off its straight course from the harbour, and rammed pat into the bridge, immediately taking out an entire section.

    Hardball wishes the search-and-rescue — now well into search-and-recovery — crew the very best.  Our hearts are with the families and loved ones of those impacted, in high trauma.

    Still, imagine if that accident had happened here in Nigeria?  Meta, X, and sundry social media platforms would have been on fire with avid, livid, fire-spitting blame games, with curses and lunatic abuse to boot.

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    The president could have been deemed the worst dim wit that ever occupied any high office in the world.  Were it in Lagos, Nigeria’s busiest port city, the governor would be bristling under insults — insults he dare not reply, lest being charged with crass insensitivity.

    Besides, we would have been reminded about how Nigeria was — and would remain — the worst country in the world; and scowls about “only in Nigeria!” blasted the ear drum.  Yet, here we are!  It happened in the United States, a country that indeed “works”.

    The truth is: accidents do happen.  Indeed, accidents are basic parts of life, especially in a world of designed machines that make movement faster and more comfortable.

    So, that accidents happen is no excuse to lose our humanity, politicizing disasters to coral cheap political points, making fantastic — mostly brazen and senseless — claims in the ardour of the moment.

    Still, as Hardball decries such unpatriotic reactions, the US authorities’ response  — mayoral, state and federal — has been a study in disaster management, with multi-governmental, cross-agency collaboration, moving in seamless symphony.  That’s how it should be.

    While the government should do everything to avert disasters, it should, even more, prime disaster workers as if it anticipates disasters to happen at the very next second.

    That’s what CNN has beamed since the dawn of that bridge disaster — a people and community united in tragedy but soaring above it all as dignified folks, buoyed by their collective humanity.

  • Japa symphony

    Japa symphony

    No fewer than 15,000 to 16,000 doctors left Nigeria for ‘greener pastures’ in the last five years, the Federal Government recently confirmed. But it said it was making efforts to expand the training scheme for the medics and motivate those who choose to stay back and serve their country.

    Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Professor Ali Pate, lamented during an appearance on a Channels Television programme that the country has witnessed a generation of young doctors, health workers, tech entrepreneurs and other professionals in the medical sector abandoning the country for better opportunities abroad. He said: “In the last five years, the country lost about 15,000 to 16,000 doctors to the Japa syndrome, while about 17,000 were transferred. There are about 300,000 health professionals working in Nigeria today in all cadres. I am talking about doctors, nurses, midwives, pharmacists, laboratory scientists, and others. We did an assessment and discovered we have 85,000 to 90,000 registered Nigerian doctors. Not all of them are in the country though. Some are in the diaspora, especially in the US and UK. But there are 55,000 licensed doctors in the country.”

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    According to the minister, the bane of the health system in Nigeria isn’t just the low number of personnel, but also their distribution across the country. “The issue overall, in terms of health professionals, is that they are not enough. They are insufficient in terms of the skill mix. Can you believe most of the highly skilled professional doctors are in Lagos, Abuja and a few urban centres? There is a huge distribution issue,” he said, as he acknowledged that the doctor-to-patient ratio in the country was both inadequate and disproportionate. “The population of doctors overall is about 7,600 in Lagos and 4,700 or thereabouts in Abuja… There are huge distributional issues and there are, of course, opportunities even for some of those who have been trained to get into the market,” he added.

    Pate’s appraisal was more factual about the Nigerian situation compared with the bluster by a trained medical doctor and former Labour and Employment Minister, Dr. Chris Ngige, who once said Nigeria had a surplus of doctors and those among them desiring to relocate were encouraged to so do. But Pate too stressed the pull-factor more than he acknowledged the push factor. He said the ‘japa’ syndrome was a global phenomenon not restricted to Nigeria. “Other countries don’t have enough, they’re asking to take more. It is not only in Nigeria. It is happening in India, the Philippines and other parts of Africa,” he stated.

    That may be largely true. But what is peculiar to Nigeria are poor working conditions that force medics to seek opportunities anywhere else but stay in the country. That is an issue government needs to address. 

  • Where are the captors?

    Where are the captors?

    It was good news that the Kuriga abductees were free. The schoolchildren, who were abducted from LEA Primary School and Government Secondary School, Kuriga, Kaduna State, on March 7, spent 16 days in captivity.

    Initially, 287 schoolchildren were said to have been taken away by kidnappers.  But the General Officer Commanding (GOC) 1 Division of the Nigerian Army, Maj. Gen. Mayirenso Saraso, who handed the freed children over to Kaduna State Governor Uba Sani, on March 25, said “there were 137 children and one staff member, making 138 persons altogether that were abducted from the co-located schools.” According to him, the abducted schoolchildren were 76 females and 61 males, “making the total of 137.” Sadly, he said the kidnapped teacher died in captivity.

    He also said the abducted Kuriga schoolchildren were “safely rescued,” adding that “it was through the sustained and coordinated application of both kinetic and non-kinetic efforts by the security agencies under the strategic guidance of…President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, through the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA).”

     To say they were “rescued” suggests that they were taken from their abductors. If that was the case, what happened to the abductors?  A rescue suggests physical action on the part of the rescuers.  If the abductors released the captives, possibly after the payment of ransom, that can’t be described as a rescue.

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    Governor Sani was reported saying, “What is more important today is that our children are back home. Most of those permutations are not necessary. If your child is kidnapped, will you be sitting down and talking about how he was released? For me, what is more important is that those children are back home.”

    But it is also important to clarify how the Kuriga abductees became free.  The Federal Government is opposed to ransom payment, and insisted that ransom was not paid in this case. 

     The Minister of Information, Mohammed Idris, asserted that the official position was that “ransom will not be tolerated. Ransom will not be encouraged; ransom will not be paid by the government.” He said the country’s security agencies would not reveal “their modus operandi,” adding that they were “evolving new strategies of getting out these criminal elements and ensuring that our children or anybody who is kidnapped for that matter, is brought back safely.”

    It is curious that the authorities celebrated the freedom of the abducted Kuriga schoolchildren, said to have been rescued in Zamfara State, but were silent about their abductors who are still at large. If the captors are not captured, they may well strike again.  

  • Pity for Atiku

    Pity for Atiku

    Abubakar Atiku is a wise man, so wise he cannot distinguish between a noun and adjective; and between lies and truth. The man who could not identify his name in his certificate said this newspaper, _The Nation_ lied about his move to leave the PDP. This newspaper did not say he left the PDP. The newspaper only reported that he was holding meetings of a coalition to fight the APC in 2027.

    If the coalition bore fruit, what would result? Of course, another party. Atiku loves Tinubu so much, he wants to ape him. As a writer wrote, imitation is the best form of flattery. He wants to copy Tinubu’s APC script to fight him. He wants to deny that he admires the man who discomfited him in 2023.  He does not want to admit it. That would be double humiliation. The man bested you, and now you are borrowing from his idea. The man put together the best coalition in the nation’s history and the result was APC that has made him small two times, under two different candidates.

    Rather than stay humble, he is staying angry, and lying to garnish it. So he says it is mischief when _The Nation_ reports what he has done. He described _The Nation_ as “Tinubu’s ragtag.” That’s an adjective. He used it as a noun. Sometimes adjectives are used as nouns with creative audacity, not the way this man has abused it. But Hardball won’t teach him how it is done. Maybe his media team also needs a little seminar in tenses. They are probably too tense to learn.

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    In pursuing this agenda, his lapdogs scurried to Facebook. This is a man who admitted in his own words what this newspaper wrote. Hear him: “I admit my unwavering loyalty to PDP while advocating the swift merger of opposition parties. The urgency of this consolidation cannot be overstated.” So, there.

    Hardball has always regarded the Adamawa chieftain as a political prostitute, a wayfarer who only knows one destination because who knows he will have another destination. Moving from destination to destination is his destiny. He is a political rolling stone. He gathers no moss of victory or ideas. Those on the street accuse him of “Jumpology.” This same newspaper he is calling “ragtag” was his darling once when he was running for president, an adventure that is now part of his peripatetic biography.

    It’s a pity that Mark Zukerberg’s Facebook would yield to any query without due investigation. But Hardball is undaunted that an Atiku and his Facebook lickspittles will not cancel the truth, which Shakespeare says you cannot sink forever.

    The man Atiku is still bitter. He does not know how to be a loser.

  • Landslide Putin

    Landslide Putin

    Russian President Vladimir Putin won a record landslide in his country’s election early last week, cementing his already tight grip on power in a poll that was more a message to his external foes than an internal exercise in democracy. He polled more than 87 percent of the votes to win a fifth term that will make him the longest serving Russian leader since the monarchies of the 18th century.

    At 71 years, the strongman will be ruling his country for more than 30 years by the time he concludes his fresh term – a record that will see him overtake Josef Stalin to become Russia’s longest-serving leader for more than 200 years. But his victory was never in doubt before the poll. He stood against token opposition, while formidable challengers were either in exile or in prison. Russia’s Central Election Commission reported that nearly 76 million voters cast their ballots for Putin in a record voter-turnout of 74.22 percent out of the country’s 114 million voters.

    Putin has been at loggerheads with the West since he despatched Russian troops into Ukraine two years ago. This included his being warranted for arrest by the International Criminal Court. But he is hugely popular with his countryfolk, and made clear in his post-poll victory address that the result should send a message to the West that its leaders will have to reckon with an emboldened Russia, whether in war or peace, for many more years to come. “We have many tasks ahead. But when we are consolidated – no matter who wants to intimidate us, suppress us – nobody has ever succeeded in history, they have not succeeded now and they will not succeed ever in the future,” the Russian leader told supporters who chanted “Putin, Putin, Putin” when he appeared on stage, and “Russia, Russia, Russia” after he had delivered his speech.

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    Not that there was no dissenting voice. Supporters of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died in an Arctic prison last month, protested against Putin at polling stations inside Russia and its embassies abroad. But the Russian leader told reporters he regarded the poll as democratic, and that the Navalny-inspired protest had no effect on the poll outcome. Asked by a United States Tv network whether his re-election was democratic, Putin lambasted U.S. political and judicial systems, saying: “The whole world is laughing at what is happening (in the U.S.). This is a disaster, not a democracy” He added in apparent reference to Republican candidate Donald Trump: “Is it democratic to use administrative resources to attack one of the candidates for the presidency, using the judiciary among other things?”

    Western powers have been in overdrive to rule out the Russian poll as incorrigibly flawed. But they have the reality of Putin’s victory to live with, because the poll was a national survival project for Russians and they treated it no less.

  • A governor and eggs

    A governor and eggs

    How much does Akwa Ibom State Governor Umo Eno know about the poor and how they live?  He recently gave the impression that he knows what they eat and what they don’t eat. But it wasn’t clear if he knew what they should eat. 

    His administration has established a Bulk Purchasing Agency in response to biting food inflation. The agency will buy food items in bulk and sell to the vulnerable people in the state at subsidised prices.

    Under the law establishing the agency, it will sell 10kg bags of rice, beans and garri once a month to the vulnerable people in the state social register. During an enlarged State Executive Council meeting where the governor signed the bill establishing the agency into law, an attendee made a striking observation that made the governor display his knowledge of the diet of the poor. The ceremony was live-streamed on Facebook.

    The curious attendee had wondered how the state government selected the three food items to be sold by the agency, arguing that beans was the only protein in the list while rice and garri were carbohydrates. He, therefore, suggested the inclusion of eggs, another protein source.

    Governor Eno said no to the idea. “Poor people don’t eat eggs,” he replied authoritatively.  “Let’s look at staple foods… We all know that there is real hunger in the land. Our people need food, so as a government, we proposed that we intervene in the high cost of food in our state.

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    “The only way we can do that is to set up an agency that will do a direct intervention in the market and get food to our people at a reduced price – that is what the agency seeks to address.”

    Under the scheme, the state government selected the accredited market agents that will sell the staple food items to the beneficiaries, who are to pay 70 per cent while the government subsidizes 30 per cent, including a provision of five per cent as service charge (interest) to the market agents.

    It is unclear whether Governor Eno’s assertion that the poor do not eat eggs is limited to the poor in Akwa Ibom State, and whether it is a result of their poverty.  It is also unclear if he had conducted a study on the diet of the poor in the state before arriving at such a conclusion.

    Eggs are considered nutritious, and have proven health benefits. Governor Eno should be concerned if the poor in his state don’t eat eggs.

  • Kanu recant?

    Kanu recant?

    It’s not quite like the Fela-Justice Gregory Okoro-Idogu case — “e don beg me” — in which Fela, the inimitable Afro Beat icon, claimed Justice Okoro-Idogu, who tried and sent Fela to jail on a controversial currency rap, had recanted on the judgment and since apologised — “e don beg me”!

    But the trial justice denied it all — counter-claiming he only learnt Fela was in a ward at a hospital he was visiting, as official duty, and only visited Fela to extend courtesies.

    God knows which version was true; and no one knows how the grandiloquent Emma Powerful, the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) spokesperson, would spin this one.  But it appears Nnamdi Kanu is set, stylishly using his release as a bargaining chip, for a spectacular recant.  E don beg dem?

    First, the Freudian slip, laced with insane boast, but not unwelcome anti-violence bluster: “Anybody involved in any form of violence in the East in the name of IPOB is a goner and they know it,” he thundered.  “Let me come out of this mess,” he pleaded, “only two minutes, there will be peace in the South East.”  Open sesame?

    So, the ever-thunderous, ever garrulous, never-apologizing Kanu now admits he’s “in this mess”?  Awesome!  That, however, is contrary to the IPOB heady strategy of never admitting anything; steeped in boastful no-retreat-no-surrender.

    From Emma Powerful’s propaganda note book, that strategy is simple, if amusing: deny any form of violence traced to IPOB, roar with a fearful decibel in the fond hope that insane din would free you from raising your logic.  Hug the romantic spin; and make out Kanu as some saint more sinned against than sinning.

    But IPOB activists — plus closet supporters in Igboland, including top politicians — forget a life was involved: a life that craves freedom and liberty as any other. 

    Kanu knows where the shoe pinches and his latest comments might just be the first gingerly steps toward a spectacular recant — if not of the IPOB philosophy itself, then of the romantic violence and bullying of law-abiding Igbo folks, who just want to eke out their living but were — or still are? — bottled inside their homes on account of sit-at-home protests.

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    Surely, the South East must be bothered about Kanu’s crass and indelicate language? “They know if Nnamdi Kanu is outside, in two minutes, this nonsense will stop.  Who” he boomed, “is the ‘bagger’ or idiot that will speak when I’m talking? That, I will give an order in the South East, who is the idiot that will counter it?  Nobody can.  I am Nmandi Kanu.  Rubbish!”

    Even if you can excuse the hyperbole, the megalomania of this statement is indeed bewildering.  Is Nnamdi Kanu — no elected governor with legitimate coercion under his belt — now some non-state Leviathan: the one that snaps his mighty fingers and everyone runs helter-skelter?  What’s the implication of that for that region?

    Indeed, the South East should be worried at such trash talks on its behalf.  But much more urgent: everyone should be worried about Kanu’s mental health, however his trial, now to be accelerated, peters out.

  • Inmates without casefiles

    Inmates without casefiles

    Prisons, now euphemistically designated as custodial centres, ideally should be a place for holding people who have been found in violation of the laws of the land. But Nigerian prisons are a habitat of ‘the good, the bad and the ugly,’ with ‘good’ inmates – ‘good’ because they are not yet found in violation of any law – being in clear and confirmed preponderance over ‘bad’ (i.e. convicted) ones.

    It was only last December that Nigeria Correctional Service (NCoS) Controller-General Haliru Nababa said there were 81,358 inmates nationwide, out of which 53,362 were awaiting trial – meaning they were yet to be found guilty of any offence. Meanwhile, all inmates are on a daily feed ration of N750 in the 2024 budget that was defended by Nababa before the National Assembly, whereas prison security dogs are on a higher budget of N800 daily feed ration.

    Now we know that the phenomenon of awaiting trial inmates isn’t the worst to be seen about Nigerian custodial centres. There are inmates with nothing to try them for, and yet have been in custody for countless years with all the abusive experiences. That was the discovery made by the Solicitors Scheme Advisory Committee raised by Police Inspector-General Kayode Egbetokun to probe cases of human rights violations of people with criminal and civil matters being held in the centres.

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    The panel in Kano State, headed by State Police Commissioner Muhammad-Hussaini Gumel, recently found that there were some inmates supposedly awaiting trial for many years at Kurmawa Custodial Center, but with a good number having no case diary or any criminal record before they were taken into custody. At a briefing of journalists by the panel as part of its unscheduled visits to custodial centres, police formations and juvenile homes, an official of the Kurmawa facility also said some inmates had no particular courts they could be charged to, and no records of their cases, yet had been in custody for many years. Others, according to him, are abandoned in prison because they couldn’t afford legal representation.

    Reports from that briefing cited an inmate, Ibrahim Dala, saying he was accused of culpable homicide but had not been taken to court since his incarceration in 2009. Another inmate, Yahya Usman, said the last time he was taken to court was in 2017, and the case is yet pending. Gumel, who said the committee’s task was to identify such cases, document them and forward them to relevant authorities for appropriate action, promised that affected inmates would get justice soon.

    The Nigerian justice system is one cesspit of abuses that needs cleaning up, and relevant authorities must spare no effort to urgently do the laundry work.