The Nation Newspaper

Category: Letters

  • Women and Abuja’s stoves

    SIR: Recently, the Federal Executive Council approved the purchase and distribution of 750,000 units of clean cooking stoves and 18,000 wonder bags worth N9.2bn for rural women under the National Clean Cooking Scheme. Whether the contract for the stoves awarded to Messrs Integra Renewable Energy Services Limited is an election campaign strategy or not, its timing and necessity is most critical at this time when the world is experiencing massive energy shift and adverse effect of climate change. According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA) database, Nigeria’s energy mix for cooking and lightening is still dominated by the traditional use of charcoal, firewood, and kerosene. This is explained by the fact that over 51% of the population lack access to electricity supply and for those that are connected to the national electricity grid, inconsistent supply has been the norm. This has led to over 70% of those with access to power depending on generator sets to augment inconsistent public power supply.

    According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) report, “Fuel for Life: Household Energy & Health”; more than three billion people still burn wood, dung, coal and other traditional fuels inside their homes. According to the same report, breathing kerosene fumes is the equivalent of smoking two packets of cigarettes a day and two-thirds of adult females with lung cancer in developing nations are non-smokers, but cooking mothers. From the report, such resulting indoor air pollution is responsible for more than 1.5 million deaths a year mostly of young children and their mothers; inducing acute respiratory infection, influenza and pneumonia.

    If these traditional energy consumption pattern continues, not only is it going to lead to more respiratory diseases which most hospitals cannot handle given the inadequate skills and health facilities, it would also encourage massive cutting of trees and deforestation for firewood, making worse the effects of global warming; desertification, erosion, and flood. A multiplier effect; visibly observed in the rising food shortages; poor agricultural yield, inflation, excess heat, extinction of animals and unexplained diseases.

    From international health standards, reducing indoor air pollution from burning firewood, fume emitting kerosene stoves and coal will reduce child morbidity and mortality. Protecting the developing embryo from indoor air pollution can help avert stillbirth, perinatal mortality and low birth weight. Getting rid of open fires and kerosene wick lamps in the home can prevent infants and toddlers being burned and scalded.

    It is within these health and environmental reasons that such Federal Executive efforts to reduce the dependency and use of these traditional energy pollutants are commendable, especially when the substituting provision is established on the clean renewable energy sources. While many may fear that such effort may not be sustainable or expanded upon, there is need to urge the Federal Executive Council, Ministries of Environment and Power to take serious its obligations to invest in renewable energy. It should seek to implement to the letter all the contracts meant for investing in renewable energy such as the recently pledged support bid for renewable energy grant of $200million (N33.6billion) by the German Development Bank (KFW) and the signed MoU with Motir Seaspire, an American based renewable energy investor for a $4billion 1200MW solar power plant.

    While the Federal Government’s funding of the National Clean Cooking Scheme is commendable, it would have been an excellent idea if the N9.2billion was invested in a facility that will produce the stoves back here in Nigeria. This would have made the intervention sustainable as it will grow local productive capacity, create jobs, provide new revenue in corporate income tax to government and reduce the pressure on the naira considering that the stoves under the extant scheme will be paid for in foreign currency. If we adopt this recommended approach, we would have had access to the stoves while at the same time deriving other benefits.

    Climate change is now an undeniable reality. Cutting carbon emission and keeping the earth and her population safe is an obligation responsible governments and nations are signing up to. Clean renewable energy sources have become the key tool in doing this, as the breakthrough in clean technology have become viral. Nigeria cannot be an exception to the global renewable energy trend. Nigeria is richly blessed with the desired renewable inputs; sunlight, wind, hydro, biomass, and most especially the rich manpower.

     

    • Donald Ikenna Ofoegbu

    Centre for Social Justice, Abuja

  • State of Kano’s tertiary health institutions

    SIR: The efforts of Kano State government in establishing new schools/colleges that will add value to the socio-economic status of the state is commendable. I refer to the coming of the School of Nursing, Madobi; School of Health Technology, Bebeji; School of Midwifery, Dambatta, and others.

    However, what is obtainable in the School of Nursing, School of Hygiene, and School of Health Technology, all in Kano in the area of human resources and laboratory equipment leaves much to be desired. It can only result in the production of half-baked graduates.

    The School of Nursing, Kano has few qualified and competent academic staff majority of which are diploma holders, which fall below the minimum requirement for teaching. Graduates’ lecturers are an insignificant few. Laboratory and other instructional media are also lacking. Where they exist, they are obsolete or dilapidated, hence the need for new and modern ones.

    The School of Health Technology shares the same fate. Indeed, the actually lost its accreditation to run community health for some years. As for School of Hygiene, though there are many graduates lecturers, majority specialise in physical  and health education or general health education which cannot satisfy the different specializations in environmental health, which the school is running. Besides, many new courses like ‘Diploma in Epidemiology’ and others were introduced even when there were no competent lecturers to handle it, thus jeopardizing the future of students who could not get the best in their chosen course. In fact, the school still lacks a well-equipped laboratory.

    For these schools to remain relevant, the state government should as a matter of urgency dig into the activities of the schools and do the proper things by overhauling the management.  In an age of globalisation, our health institutions should not be in the hands of those who cannot see beyond their noses. Let the proper things be done by getting the best hands to run the institutions. I am sure, Governor Kwankwaso is more than committed to leaving worthy legacies for the state.

     

    • Musa Zubair,

    Kano

  • Why Jonathan should be impeached

    SIR: The annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election by General Ibrahim Babangida’s government shocked many Nigerians, since the election was adjudged to be free and fair. The conclusion was that it was annulled because it was won by a southerner, Moshood Kashimawo Abiola. The northern mafia that controlled Nigeria since the Civil War ended in 1970 was suspected to be behind that dastardly action and many peace-loving Nigerians throughout the country condemned it. The annulment accentuated a feeling of southern marginalization, and the resolve of the northern mafia to dominate Nigeria perpetually.

    The foregoing explains why some respectable elders from all over Nigeria met and decided in 1999, that the presidency should rotate south-north, starting with the Southwest where the winner of the annulled 1993 election hailed from. Among the elders that met were Pa (Senator) Abraham Adesanya, Chief Bola Ige, Dr Alex Ekwueme, Pa Sunday Awoniyi, Mallam Adamu Ciroma, et al.

    There is no doubt, however, that rotational presidency was agreed upon by the elders across board, because all the major political parties chose their presidential flag bearers from the South-west in 1999 and from the northwest in 2007. Any political party that did not do so was not major, meaning that it had no large followership. Incidentally, when the rotational decision was made, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo was still in prison. The military landlords of Nigeria freed him and decided that he was the only person from the South-west to whom they could handover power as the President.

    He became Nigeria’s civilian President, 1999-2007. He tried to upstage Nigeria’s constitution to perpetuate himself in power, but for well-meaning Nigerians who collaborated with the legislature to thwart his machinations. His successor, President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, sadly, died only about two years in office. His deputy, Vice-President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan (GEJ) spent the remaining two years as the President.

    That means the south spent 10 years, and the north only two years, in the period 1999-2011. Why then should Jonathan upstage the north if he is peace-loving? Why should Nigerians support him, if they didn’t want national chaos? President Jonathan cannot win a war of attrition, and he has been obstructing dialogue. Impeach him, and re-instate rotational presidency, please!

    • Pius Oyeniran Abioje, PhD,

    University of Ilorin.

  • Intelligence deficit in war against terror

    SIR: Not quite a few perceptible observers were stunned when the raid of All Progressives Congress (APC), an opposition party’s data base facility by the Department of State Security (DSS) was reported in the media. The DSS had claimed that it raided the facility because it received intelligence report that the opposition party was using it to clone the INEC permanent voters card (PVC) and hack into the data base of the electoral umpire. Many days and even weeks into raid and after a second raid, the DSS has yet to process the ‘intelligence’ to prove the party culpable of the alleged infraction and possibly prepare for prosecution.

    However, the lightening speed with which the opposition party was pounced on is exactly what has been lacking in the prosecution of a more heinous crime committed in the broad day light and on a sustainable basis by a terror group that wantonly sows death, destruction and agony across the country but more devastatingly in the North-east where the federal authorities have implemented state of emergency.

    It befuddles common sense and assaults sensibilities of any observer that six years into the brutal war being waged by blood-sucking terrorists, there seems to be no intelligence trail into their activities. The Boko Haram terrorists who started their campaign with a string of motorcycles and even walk bare- footed’ now travel in a convoy of Hilux trucks, departing from a base or bases within, Nigeria or in the neighborhoods and returning to the same without a trail, because they operate from the same base or bases to another day of their bloody mayhem.

    How and where the terrorists procure the Hilux trucks and constantly fuel it for their murderous operations’ wouldn’t have eluded an intelligence service that is worth of its name and even modestly alive to its responsibility.

    A group that is under the trail of a competent intelligence service could not have in the past few years grown from a ragtag, wandering under-nourished and illiterate band of bigoted extremists to a sophisticated and highly mobile strike force. In the past few years, the state security services have announced the capture of high valued terrorist commanders, including the allegedly propaganda chief of the group, “Abu Qaqa”, yet none of these high valued commanders have provided any useful insight into the operations of the group. The key to decisive victory in a war and even more strategic, in asymmetric guerrilla war fare is cutting the supply line of the insurgents or the enemy. Only by securing the supply lines of the insurgents or the conventional enemy, would it possible to squeeze them to surrender or subject them to the siege of hunger. The Boko Haram fighters who kill women, children and the elderly they come in contact with, are not revolutionary guerilla fighters who depend on a friendly civilian population for supplies of essential needs.

    For the avoidance of doubt, the Nigerian intelligence service community have a clear responsibility to track and find how the terrorists procure the Hilux trucks they drive in a convoy, where and how they fuel it, procure sophisticated gadgets and explosives which they now use to deadly effect as in the Kano mosque attack. Where are their foot soldiers that captured towns in Adamawa State and made spirited efforts to capture Damaturu Government House, recruited and trained?

    Is it not time, that the intelligence community put forth their personnel to be “recruited” by Boko Haram? How could Boko Haram recruit fighters without the intelligence service offering its covert operatives to be recruited? How would the DSS have such generous supplies of hooded covert operatives for elections, especially in opposition strongholds like in Osun State, but evidently demonstrated cold-feet in infiltrating the bigoted band of Boko Haram extremists? The unintelligent strategy of encircling Abuja with army barricades that traps hundred of motorists who work in the city especially from the Keffi-Nyanya axis in a deluge of traffic jam must end. It does not take any special insight to appreciate that gathering thousands of motorists and other commuters in a single place in the name of security check would in the long run prove an attractive choice for the blood thirsty mass murderers.

     

    • Charles Onunaiju

    Abuja

     

  • Nigeria’s democracy and its future

    SIR: Democracy has been regarded as an ideal form of government in which people are governed by their own elected representatives. It is a government of the people, for the people and by the people. It is a people’s government in which the voice of the people is supreme and where the laws are fashioned according to their wishes.

    One wonders what the future really holds for our dear motherland. Tolerance is the essence of democracy. Judiciary is its backbone. While the leaders claim to have faith in the unity of the nation, the common man finds these very leaders, with knives of different sizes and shapes putting deep scars on the face of motherland.

    There is a gap between promise and performance. We enjoy every right in theory, but not in practice. Real democracy will come only when the masses are awakened to take part in the economic and political life of the country. Nigeria today is a rich man’s democracy. Our democracy is a democracy of the rich, for the rich and by the rich. The implementation of laws is almost nil in most of the parts of the country. If they are honestly implemented, Nigeria would have been a dream land for other nations, but the reverse is the case. National and state assemblies enact laws and pass them to the administration, not for their execution but for their non-execution.

    Our leaders introduced adult franchise with one stroke of pen when 85% of our people were still illiterate. It was a fool-proof experiment to start with. Universal basic education should precede adult franchise. Election is always a costly affair and the lure of money works wonders especially among illiterate ones.

    Violence has taken a serious turn in our country. Strikes, misuse of legislative privileges do not augur well for democracy. Defection from one party to the other on selfish and flimsy grounds has added to the instability of the government in our country. It is bad on both moral and political grounds. There is no sphere of national life which can be described to be free from corruption. At the political level, everyone – ministers, legislators, and party officials suffer from it. Our democracy has miserably failed on different fronts: agriculture, home, foreign etc.

    Here the rich exploit the poor who have no voice or share in the democratic structure. Democracy is on its trial now. Democracy has not failed. It is the citizens that have failed. If we develop democratic spirit, temper, and character and become Nigerians in true sense, it can become a success. The future of democracy will be bright only when our people possess national character, consciousness and responsibility. Intellectuals should come forward and create better society with a true democratic spirit prepared to march further in a democratic way. It is still in the childhood, yet the hope for the future is bright.

     

    • Comrade Ahmed Omeiza Lukman, Kieve, Ukraine.

     

     

  • Achieving an HIV/AIDS-free generation

    SIR: In 1988, the World Health Organization (WHO) institutes December 1 every year as World AIDS Day. The objective is to provide a platform for the world to unite in the fight against HIV /AIDS. Part of the aim is also to ensure that governments and policy makers meet the HIV targets set, stand by the commitments they made and mobilize the necessary resources for a world where people do not die of AIDS related ailments. The 2014 theme for World AIDS Day is “Focus, Partner and Achieve an AIDS-Free Generation”.

    The progress and success stories in some countries notwithstanding, HIV and AIDS have, and are still having, a widespread impact in many parts of the world especially in the sub-Saharan Africa.  The main focus of fight against HIV globally today is now on how to achieve zero new infection with more emphasis on Prevention of Mother–To-Child Transmission of HIV (PMTCT). In 2012, an estimated 1.5 million pregnant women in low- and middle-income countries were living with HIV. Over 70 per cent of these women are concentrated in 10 sub-Saharan African countries: Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi, Ethiopia and Zambia.

    In Nigeria, HIV prevalence is relatively low (3.1 percent). However, because of our large population this equates to around 3.4 million people living with HIV putting it only second behind South Africa in terms of absolute numbers.A latest United Nations’ report has revealed that Nigeria has the highest number of children contracting the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, HIV, in the world. Also, a United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) statistic shows that, 10 per cent of all HIV infections in Nigeria are caused by mother-to-child transmission.

    In term of prevalence rate, Benue state has the highest percent of 10.6 followed by Nasarawa which has 10.0 percent while Ekiti and Osun states have the lowest at 1.0 and 1.2 percent respectively. Lagos has prevalence rate of 5.1 percent. The state is one of the 12 states, which accounts for 70 per cent of the Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV burden in Nigeria.

    While awareness about HIV/AIDS has gradually increased among the Nigerian population, misconceptions about transmission are still high. Many communities are still underserved with health facilities and care. It was even estimated that just 10 per cent of HIV-infected women and men were receiving anti-retro viral therapy and only 7 per cent of women were receiving treatment to reduce the risk of mother-to-child transmission of HIV.

    Ultimately, Nigeria requires more resources and political will to take ownership of the effort to conquer the disease. The donor agencies may not continue to assist us for life. There are also more fundamental barriers to overcome, particularly HIV-related stigma and discrimination, the issue of gender inequality and hostile health professionals. Women going for antenatal/delivery are not finding attitude of hospitals staff palatable talk less of people living with HIV/AIDS.  Removing such barriers would encourage more people to get tested and seek out treatment, reducing the burden of HIV across the nation. This is no short cut to breaking the barriers as without access to public services for prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT), which provides antiretroviral (ARV) to both mothers and babies to prevent HIV infection, HIV free generation might be a pipe-dream.

    • Rasak Musbau

     Ministry of Information and Strategy, Ikeja-Lagos

     

  • When President Jonathan came to OAU

    SIR: The protest of the Great Ife students upon the visit of President Goodluck Jonathan to Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife has been tagged political by some political opportunists and partisans. Some even claimed that many of the anger-whelmed students were bribed or sent on errand of thuggery by APC and some arch-foes of the presidency. My conclusion is that if those students who displayed their angst against the President and his entourage are pro-APC, those who cooking up the fallacy that the students are APC’s megaphone must be Lasaruses feeding on crumbs falling off the table of PDP.

    By what intellectual measure can Great Ife protest be seen as ‘political’? Is it their carrying of placards at Oduduwa Hall denouncing Ayo Fayose and the likes? How about the deliberate paralysis of school activities by the President and his fiendish cohort of megalomaniacs? Shouldn’t the students protest against the denial of entrance to buses for students coming for their exams on campus?

    If the revolutionary struggle to save the Nigerian education from the jawbone of clueless and selfish government is tagged political, then those fanning the ember of political bigotry and sentiment should be seen as traitors, proverbial sirens and purveyors of intellectual idiocy.

    The angst of the aggrieved students was a protest against the hegemony of tyranny that has clad on the garment of arrogance in the country. Today, education has been consigned to the fringes; meanwhile, the President in his calculation of good leadership has not been able to come up with a response either pragmatic or intellectual to the free-fall in the educational sector under his watch.

    We should not forget that the Presidency is yet to fish out the masterminds of the February massacre of 60 boarding school students in Federal Government College, Buni Yadi.  While the ghosts of these students still haunt, the President has remained unconcerned about

    the security of Nigerian students and education in general. All what is paramount to him is how his 2015 presidential dream will come to reality.

    Had the President been alive to his constitutional duties, no student would have come out with songs of protest let alone stones to welcome their leader. The protest at Great Ife is a cry for common sense; a battle against the beast of ineptitude that has found its way into the political bloodstream of the nation.

     

    • Rahaman Abiola Toheeb,

    Ile-Ife.

     

  • Nigerians and S/Africa’s gun violence

    SIR: South Africa has become the Mecca and the place of refuge for Nigerian economic migrants. But, daily, we are regaled with tales of how some Nigerians were killed in gun fight in South-Africa, the rain-bow nation. Those killed were alleged to be involved in illicit and illegal drug trafficking.

    Like America, South Africa has a gun culture that permits people to own guns. So, some people in these countries do use their mercanhdise of death to dispatch their friends and relatives to the great beyond when they’re emotionally troubled. And, armed robbers, terrorists, and kidnappers carry out their operations with guns, too.

    Lucky Dube, the great cultural ambassador of South Africa, was shot dead in Rosettenville, Johannesburg, South Africa, as he dropped off his daughter and son. Reeva Steenkamp, the beautiful model and lawyer, was another victim of the reprehensible gun violence in South Africa. Oscar Pistorious, the paralympian champion, who overcame physical disabilities, to achieve global fame shot and killed Ms SteenKamp, on Valentine’s Day in 2013. He was convicted of culpable homicide by Judge Thokozile Masipa.

    Again, Senzo Meyiwa, the South African football captain, was killed while staying in his girlfriend’s house. The killing of Meyiwa sparked off outrage in South Africa. Zanokhule Mbatha, who was suspected of killing him, was arrested after a nation-wide manhunt.

    The government of South Africa should enact laws to curtail the possession of guns by its citizens. And, those that violate the country’s gun laws should be punished by the existing gun laws in the country. Nigerians who are living in that country should abide by the laws governing South Africa. They should desist from engaging in criminal activities, which can attract unpalatable repercussions to them.

     

    • Chiedu Uche Okoye,

    Uruowulu-Obosi, Anambra State

  • Tribute to Saadatu Mohammed Fawu

    The news of the demise of Saadatu Moham-med Fawu, a reporter with the Voice of America (VOA) Hausa Service, came to many listeners as a rude shock.

    The late Saadatu Fawu who covered her beat in Jos, Bauchi and Gombe was a listener’s delight while performing her duties. Many Hausa listeners would not forget her velvet voice and the in-depth report to her teeming listeners throughout the Hausa speaking world.

    She would be remembered for the risk she took in going to areas of conflict in interviewing the parties involved.

    She has left an indelible mark in history of media coverage for the teeming Hausa listeners, who have come to admire her dedication to duty in bringing news and entertainment to listeners of VOA all over the world.

    The various interviews she granted during her lifetime would remain ever green in the mind of her listeners. Her death has left a very big vacuum in the VOA Service.

    We, however, take solace in Allah’s injunction that to Him we come and to Him we shall return.

    May Allah grant her soul eternal rest and give the entire family the fortitude to bear this loss.

    By Bala Nayashi

    Lokoja, Kogi State.

  • Barata and the craftiness of a desperate politician

    It is an open secret that with his poor and dismal performance in the All

    Progressive Congress (APC) primaries for the 11 October 2014 gubernatorial election in Adamawa State that it was a matter of time he would dump the party.

    This writer and many others were not surprised with the action of Senator Ahmed Barata in dumping the APC. Basically, the politics in Adamawa State is of “stomach infrastructure” and most of the so-called politicians are in for what they may get and not the interest of the people.

    Looking at the political sojourn of Senator Barata, he always banked on the goodwill of certain political office holders to ascend political positions. In 1999, he banked on the goodwill of former Governor Boni Haruna to be elected member of the House of Representatives twice.

    When Admiral Murtala Nyako became the governor of the state, he aligned himself with the governor and became one of his confidant and became a whale to the political aspiration of Senator Grace Bent, inspite of her superlative performances for the Adamawa Southern Senatorial Zone, where the then Governor Nyako paved the way for his emergence as the candidate for the PDP for the senatorial zone where the party’s primaries was openly skewed in his favour.

    He defected from the PDP to the APC when former Governor Nyako defected to the party so as to be in the good books of the governor for his second bid for the Senate.

    With the impeachment of Governor Nyako, Senator Barata switched his allegiance to the former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, who became the APC leader in the state so as to support him to clinch the ticket of the party for the gubernatorial election. But as a democrat, the former Vice-President Abubakar publicly said that he would allow a level playing field for the aspirants under the APC to test their popularity among the delegates. At the last count, Senator Barata came fourth and that is his grouse for dumping the party.

    Having realised that he can never win election without banking on the goodwill of high ranking political office holders  and with his ambition to make a bid for a second term to the Senate, he now dumped the APC for the PDP so that he can be given the ticket of the party.

    Senator Barata needs to realise the fact that day in day out the people are getting wiser politically. Once given the chance and you do not deliver, the people are quite ready to make a meaningful change through the ballot box.

    –  Usman Santuraki,

    Jambutu Ward, Jimeta, Yola,

    Adamawa State.