Category: Hardball

Detained leader of the secessionist group Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) Nnamdi Kanu, who is facing trial at the Federal High Court, Abuja, should not be treated in a way that makes his prosecution seem like persecution.

Kanu’s trial is scheduled to continue on January 18, 2022. Justice Binta Nyako had ordered on December 2 that he should not be discriminated against in detention. She had also ordered that Kanu be given maximum comfort possible in detention, be allowed a change of clothing, be allowed free practice of his Jewish faith including access to his Jewish religious materials, allowed to receive any visitor of his choice, and allowed to mingle freely with others in the custody of the Department of State Services (DSS).

His lawyer, Ifeanyi Ejiofor, in a statement, said the DSS had “unrepentantly continued to treat the orders of the court with greatest disdain.” The statement was an update on Kanu’s situation following his legal team’s visit to him at DSS headquarters, Abuja, on December 6.

Ejiofor said Kanu had informed them that “none of the pronouncements made by the court on the 2nd of December 2021 has been obeyed by the lawless DSS.”  He also said Kanu “further informed us that he had not eaten anything since Sunday, apparently being punished because we dared to complain to the court about the harsh condition under which he is being held in custody.”

Does the statement mean that Kanu did not have any meal on the mentioned Sunday and up till his legal team’s visit on Monday?  Then the DSS has a lot of explaining to do.   Even convicts are entitled to their meals. And, importantly, Kanu has not been convicted.

Kanu, 54, was rearrested in Kenya and brought back to Nigeria in controversial circumstances in June.  He was initially arrested in 2017 for leading a campaign for secession of the South-East from Nigeria. He jumped bail in June 2018, and fled to the UK where he continued his anti-Nigeria activities.

After his rearrest, his trial for terrorism-related charges has continued to generate intense public interest. There are moves to get a political solution, but there is no clarity on that yet.

Kanu remains in detention, but he should not be treated in a way that shows disrespect for the law. Predictably, his legal team said it would immediately let Justice Nyako know about the alleged flouting of her orders by the detaining authority.  If it is true, it is inexcusable and condemnable.

There’s something sloppy about efforts by the Kaduna State government to ensure quality control in its education system by tracking the competency of teachers. Rather than beef up standards, those efforts seem to simply recycle alleged incompetence among the teachers.

The state government on Thursday, last week, announced plans to dismiss 233 teachers said to have filed fake certificates for employment. Kaduna State Universal Basic Education Board (KADSUBEB) Chairman, Alhaji Tijjani Abdullahi, said as part of its mandate to ensure that all teachers truly had the credentials they claimed, the board initiated a certificate verification drive last April. Out of 451 certificates the board verified by contacting institutions said to have awarded them, of which 13 institutions responded, 233 teachers representing 51 percent of the sample size were found to have submitted fake certificates. “The board will dismiss the 233 teachers who presented these fake certificates, while their files will be forwarded to the Ministry of Justice to initiate prosecution for forgery,” Abdullahi stated, adding that the board would continue to vet the integrity of certificates presented by teachers to ensure the strategic profession isn’t destroyed by impostors.

Notice that the 233 teachers said to have filed fake certificates are from only a sample size of which they constitute more than half. Going by that pattern, more than half of the entire workforce running into thousands may well have issues with their certification. The SUBEB chief said the board would shortly be conducting fresh competency test for teachers, but the teachers’ union has made clear its members would not be submitting to testing by the board because only the Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN) has the statutory mandate to test and certify a professional teacher and not any state government agency. “We will not go for any test. If the Kaduna SUBEB wants to assess the performance of our members, it should follow them to the class and assess them while they are teaching pupils,” Kaduna State chairman of the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT) chapter, Ibrahim Dalhatu, was reported saying. His position echoed that of the NUT National Executive Council which had on 18th November directed its members in Kaduna State not to participate in any competency test organised by the state government. Dalhatu, however, indicated that the union was in support of the state government’s decision to sack teachers found to have been working with fake certificates, saying: “As far as NUT is concerned, we will not defend them if the allegation of tendering fake certificates is true.”

But it was only in 2017 the state government conducted a competency test for teachers, following which it sacked thousands said to have failed and recruited 25,000 new teachers. That such a huge percentage is now said to be parading fake certification raises a big question about the government’s own competence in ensuring quality control. Perhaps, the competency testing should start from there.

How did the country get to the point where there are at least 67 illegal universities operating within its space? This question demands answers from not only education authorities but also political authorities.

Are education authorities sufficiently empowered to deal with the absurdity of illegal universities? Do political authorities recognise the need to discourage the founding of illegal universities?

The Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission (NUC), Prof. Abubakar Adamu Rasheed, drew attention to the astounding number of illegal universities in the country at the 11th convocation ceremony of Al-Hikmah University, Ilorin, Kwara State, on December 4.

Rasheed said: “The issue now is the menace of illegal universities, satellite campuses and centres, which at the last count, stood at 67 in number. To worsen the matter, they all award certificates.

“The commission is taking steps through inter-agencies collaboration to tackle the untoward development headlong, especially by mass sensitisation of unsuspecting patrons through the periodic publication of a list of such degree mills.”

It is unclear how the NUC is going about the battle but the agency doesn’t seem to be winning. In a recent article titled “Addressing the menace of fake universities in Nigeria,” Aare Afe Babalola (SAN) observed that “Many of the names published as far back as 2012 are still being repeated in 2021, with other names now added to this budding list of illegality.”  He is the founder of Afe Babalola University, a highly respected private university located in Ado-Ekiti, Ekiti State.

According to him, “Back in 2016, the number of fake universities was 36.”  He also noted that the NUC had earlier “released a list of 58 illegal universities operating in the country.”

This shows that the number of illegal universities is growing. This is unacceptable. Why does the NUC appear powerless to stop the growth? The situation suggests that the number is likely to increase beyond the 67 stated by the NUC boss if the authorities fail to take action to close the existing illegal universities and prevent the establishment of new ones.

The problem is clear enough. Babalola proposed a solution that bears repeating.  He said: “The answer is that government should urgently and immediately amend the NUC law and give the commission sufficient powers of immediate and outright closure of illegal universities with further powers of severe sanctions including forfeiture of the university’s properties to the government while the promoters, founders, councils and teachers of such illegality should face life imprisonment.”

The point is that education authorities and political authorities need to urgently deal with this problem before illegal universities become so numerous that they appear normal.

A report last week by ThePunch newspaper illustrated just how groups that operate on mob mentality tend to exert supremacy of brigandage to the detriment of societal decency and humanness.  When such incidents occur, society hacks back to the Hobbesian jungle where life is nasty, brutish and short and only the fittest is permitted to survive. But such incidents also raise questions about the effectiveness of organs of law maintenance in preserving society’s sanity.

The report said a leader of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) in Lagos State named Kunle Ajibade was gunned down by suspected hoodlums who trailed him to a hospital in Ijeshatedo, Surulere area where he had gone for medicare over machete wounds earlier inflicted on him at his house by the same gang. His brother, named Kehinde, said he died on the way while being rushed thereafter to the Lagos University Teaching Hospital.

The circumstances surrounding Kunle’s death started at a party in Ijeshatedo where he was vice-chairman of the NURTW unit. Members of two rival gangs reportedly attended same party and were having fun until a member of one of the gangs got too much of liquor and started misbehaving at about 10p.m. The conduct of the drunk gangster angered members of the other gang, leading to a burst-up between the two groups. There was a third group allegedly led by another mobster named Alaka, which pitched in with one of the scuffling sides and when Kunle tried mediating the rift, he got into confrontation with Alaka that resulted in his being assaulted by Alaka’s gang. According to the account, even though some calm was restored as the party shut down, the gangsters stormed Kunle’s house at about midnight and further attacked him with sundry weapons including machetes. Kehinde reported that upon responding to distress call about his brother’s experience, he found out he had been taken to a private hospital for care, and while heading to that hospital, he came across Kunle’s friends who reported that Alaka subsequently led his boys to the medical facility and shot the victim. “They shot him in the hand, back and thigh,” Kehinde alleged, adding: “After the attack at the hospital, my brother’s friends rushed him to (a hospital) in Ijesha. My mum and I went to meet him there and decided to rush him to LUTH because the injuries were serious. We hired a tricycle, but he died on the way.”

Expectedly, there were counter-claims as to who to blame for Kunle’s death. But there was no question about the incident occurring, as the newspaper reported sighting a video clip showing Kunle’s lifeless and mutilated body in a tricycle. It also reported guarded responses by Lagos State Police Public Relations Officer, CSP Adekunle Ajisebutu, and state NURTW Chairman Musiliu Akinsanya, aka MC Oluomo, over the incident. Not that the culture of supremacy of brigandage is anything new to members of the transport union, and relevant authority centres have the responsibility of re-acculturation. Meanwhile, one can’t help wondering that while these series of confrontations raged, starting from the party, where were the police?

Interestingly, the Chairman of the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), Prof. Bolaji Owasanoye, has given a revealing insight into how the country is shortchanged through the annual federal budget process.

The alarming revelations at the 3rd National Summit on Diminishing Corruption in Public Sector, in Abuja, show how budget padding by some government establishments contribute to the high cost of governance.

The ICPC chief said the agency “found that 257 projects amounting to N20.138b were duplicated in the 2021 budget.”  This discovery prompted “an advisory to the Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning which promptly acted on it to prevent abuse.”

It is unclear whether those behind the fraudulent duplication of projects were identified and punished.  The intervention of the Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning to “prevent abuse” was only one of the necessary actions that should have been taken in dealing with the issue. If the perpetrators were not identified and sanctioned, the authorities failed to do what was necessary to discourage such improprieties.

Owasanoye also said the agency had “so far initiated enforcement actions against 67 contractors and forced them back to site and ensured completion of 966 projects worth N310b some of which were hitherto abandoned.”

The information about the scale of the projects that needed the agency’s intervention for completion, and their value, says a lot about why the country is progressing at a snail’s pace, and also exposes some of the agents of underdevelopment.  The situation calls for more rigorous project monitoring as well as greater effort to ensure that contractors perform as expected.

The ICPC boss listed “poor needs assessment that disconnects projects from beneficiaries, false certification of uncompleted contracts as completed and deliberate underperformance of contracts”  among the “maladies”  that hinder the country’s development. According to him, “the same malady of corruption” escalates the cost of governance and denies Nigeria value for money.

This is a familiar malady. It is a long-term malady that has defied treatment. But it is a treatable malady. It certainly requires a focused and determined approach.

Corruption thrives because there is room for it to thrive. It thrives because it is allowed to do so. The truth is that to defeat corruption needs more than paying lip service to the anti-corruption fight.

The corruption-related findings based on the ICPC’s review of the 2021 budget should guide gatekeepers regarding the 2022 federal budget proposal.  That’s how to fight corruption.

Celebrities are default role models by reason of their visibility in society, and they are expected to be guided by the responsibility of moral torch-bearing attached to that privileged position. That is why when they do well, it gets loudly applauded as they are held up as exemplars of society’s morality; and when they misbehave, they should be roundly condemned lest they pose a comely example for impressionable members of society.

When multi-award winning superstar David Adeleke, popularly known as Davido, announced last week that he was topping up the N200million he garnered from an unwitting fundraiser for his 29th birthday with an extra N50million of his own and donating all to orphanages across Nigeria, he was celebrated to high heavens – and rightly so – for his generosity and rare concern for the underprivileged. His gesture not only exemplified the positive potential of this nation’s youthful population, it also challenged the decadent morality of the self-indulgent rich amongst us.

Read Also: Davido’s 250m gift to orphans: Arewa seeks transparency

And Davido, by all means, deserved those accolades. But one person who didn’t seem to think so was veteran singer, Baba Fryo, who insinuated hypocritical motives on the part of the younger artiste and called him out for allegedly ignoring him (Fryo) in his time of need. In a post on his Instagram page, Baba Fryo questioned why Davido gave such huge amount to ‘unknown’ beneficiaries whereas he ignored him, a known face, in his trying times. He said in part: “There is something that I have been seeing on social media that someone gifted orphanages N250m. To me, the thing is funny. I remember when I was depressed, they tagged many of my colleagues; they tagged Davido, Tuface and others, but none of them responded. It was people that have never seen me in this life, people that do not know me that responded. This N200m that I am hearing about and seeing on social media is surprising to me. If someone like me who is popular and well known was not helped, it is people in orphanages that no one knows that are being helped; they are being given N250m, it is so funny.” Excoriated on social media for extreme sense of entitlement and self-centredness, Baba Fryo returned shortly after with another video to walk back his criticism of Davido, saying he was misunderstood as he had only preached that entertainers should let love reign among them. “People misunderstood my words in my previous post about Davido (and) my ‘frenemies’ took advantage of it,” he said.

But Fryo’s initial post denigrating the value of gifting orphanages whose inhabitants are unknown rankled, because it affronted the very essence and beauty of Davido’s gesture. It also highlighted the mindset that is the bane of our nationhood experience, namely selfish rapacity. Thumbs down for this mindset! We need the likes of Davido, not Baba Fryo to make Nigeria better.