The Nation Newspaper

Category: Letters

  • For Fayose, it’s back to wild ways

    SIR: The report during the past week of how seven lawmakers and three non-members acting under Police cover and implicit support of Governor Ayodele Fayose sacked the leadership of the Ekiti State House of Assembly of 26 members is still a source of worry to the generality of Nigerians. Only a little less than a month in office and with his now famous inaugural speech of a readiness to work with all irrespective of political affiliation to move the state forward and readiness to forgive all those who had wronged him in the past as if his impeachment in 2006 was faulty, there are already regrets, sadness and gloom in the state post June 21.

    The governor’s uncultured style and strong arm tactics can only lead to a predicable end. Leading the state is different from leading the mob and the earlier Fayose settles to the act of governing the better for him. It shouldn’t be too much of a big deal for him to protect life and property as well as providing the enabling template for economic activities and social services to flourish. The task of governance requires that he maintains a cool mien to enable him carry out the affairs of state as humanely as possible. Strong tactics and violence on societal institutions will not forever endure nor can be sustained.

    Obviously, winning an election is a different ball game from governance. He has silenced the judiciary, attacked the legislature and will soon turn his gaze to other sectors of the society; perhaps the academics will receive their fair share from him before long. It is nothing new about him or his style. From 2003 to 2006 when he was unceremoniously removed for peace and sanity to return to the state, those were his tactics.

    In retrospect the return of Fayose will give us in Ekiti an opportunity like never before to benchmark what we had been between 2010 and 2014 and the road not taken. The question the people will answer before long is whether the rule of the mob is preferable to humane and predicable governance.  Before long, we shall on the plains of Ekiti land to answer if manipulative, offensive and a leadership that openly said it shall supply liquor in the 21st century for the people every weekend is deserving a place in the land of honour. We shall answer if duplicity is a virtue. We shall look back and long for orderliness and transparent leadership. We shall compare methodology with impulsiveness.

    For certain, we shall look back in Ekiti and ask questions. I know for certain that we shall ask questions for we are by providence so wired. As for the moment, cry not my beloved Ekitiland for the horror shall not last for an eternity.

    • Rotimi Opeyeoluwa,

    Ado Ekiti

  • Still on trouble with Nigeria

    SIR: Nigeria is a land of milk and honey.Yet, we suffer like those in dry land. We produce and export oil, yet we are faced with acute fuel scarcity. We queue for petrol, kerosene, diesel and even for water!

    Nigeria is Africa’s largest oil producer. Its 37.2 billion barrels of proven oil put the country’s reserve second place on the continent to Libya. Yet, in spite of its impressive potential, she is the only member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries that imports refined fuel and still experiencing scarcity.

    Our problem here is spelt in 10 letters: C-O-R-R-U-P-T-I-O-N. Yes, corruption everywhere; in offices, workplaces, schools, even in religious houses! In fact,it is more disheartening that it even thrives in police stations and in courts. You hear of nepotism, favoritism, partiality, injustice and of course, abuse of state pardon and prerogative of mercy shown to somebody that should have been allowed to rot in prison! No wonder,we come after Bangladesh and Haiti in corruption rating.

    Not too many years ago, Malaysia took her first palm seedlings from Nigeria. Now,she realizes more on palm oil than Nigeria does on petroleum! Or will you say the US$20 billion she realizes annually on palm oil is the same thing as the US$12 billion Nigeria realizes on crude oil? And, that’s the mainstay of the nation’s economy. We were once recognized as one of the leading producers of agricultural produce in the world. What do we see now? Nigeria imports rice and beans! It would have been better if we stopped at that, but we still import irrelevances.Or, how do you see the importation of matches, toothpastes, toothpicks, toilet soaps, spoons and, insane enough, packaged water!

    Black out today, power failure tomorrow! That’s the Nigerian scene. No salary today, minimum wage crisis tomorrow. In fact, workers do not get paid until the 37th of the month! To where will this lead us? High cost of living, low standard of living.We are still developing, lagging behind with all we are endowed with.In fact, those that regard Nigeria as a developing country are, to my mind, hypocritical. Nigeria is an under-developed country! Ours is a country which has seen over two score years and which is still unable to stand upright, let alone walk, much less run!

    All these notwithstanding, we never discontinue fooling ourselves by regarding the country as ‘’the Giant of Africa’’. What an ignominious misnomer!

    Swaziland is a very tiny sovereign entity having no other resources than sugarcane, yet, it has developed to a reasonable extent. Nigeria on the other hand is blessed with so many human and natural resources.Throw a stone in any part of the country and you are most likely to pelt a doctor, professor, lawyer or an engineer. Despite these, there is nothing to show for the generous endowment. Now, tell me, why is Nigeria underdeveloped? It’s a question for all and sundry.

    • Kazeem Olalekan Israel,

    Ibadan,Oyo State.

     

  • Let DSS produce copies of cloned cards

    SIR: We challenge the Directorate of State Security (DSS) to produce and show Nigerians the copies of the cards it claimed that APC is cloning in its Data Office in Lagos. The laughable explanation of the DSS spokesperson that the centre was being used to clone permanent voters card is not only cheap but only confirms the hatchet role the DSS has assumed on PDP’s dirty ways to retain power at all costs, even with Nigerians clearly fed up with its misrule. We believe that such allegation must be followed up with hard facts and which hard facts could be more convincing than the DSS presenting to Nigerians copies of the cloned cards, directly linked to the APC data.

    For the avoidance of doubt, the APC Data Centre is a legitimate operation by a legitimate Nigerian political party responsible for the digitalization of the membership of the APC and had carried out its lawful operations in adherence to the laws of the country. That the DSS has become a purveyor to the lies and dirty intrigues of the PDP cannot change this fact and we see what happens as far more serious than the Watergate Scandal that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon in the United States.

    We are really baffled at how critical security agencies of the state have been muddled and clearly diverted to partisan influences. It is a monumental shame that the DSS has become such a rampaging attack dog for the PDP when it should be working to enhance the security of the nation. It is baffling how President Jonathan and the PDP have turned a critical security outfit into the raging attack dogs of the PDP. Is it any wonder that they have left Nigerians to their fate as insecurity threatens to overrun the entire country while doing the dirty missions of the PDP?

    We expect the DSS to immediately display the cloned cards it alleged the APC was manufacturing in its Data Centre and we use this medium to tell Nigerians that the APC will neither flag nor be intimidated in its resolve and desire to end PDP’s reign of corruption, ineptitude, division, impunity and lawlessness.

    • Joe Igbokwe,

    Publicity Secretary, Lagos APC.

     

  • Breaking the silence on open defecation

    SIR: “I am moved by the fact that a child dies every two and a half minutes from diseases linked to open defecation. Those are silent deaths – not reported on in the media, not the subject of public debate. Let’s not remain silent any longer”. The above quotation from the UN Deputy Secretary-General, Jan Eliasson, is a clear reflection on the danger of open defecation which has been a common practice in many nations, towns and villages for centuries. Sadly, this practice is still prevalent in Nigeria.

    Out of about one billion people that practice open defecation worldwide, about 49 million are Nigerians while 600 million reside in India.  It is however estimated that around 68 million Nigerians are likely to be added between now and 2025, if concerted efforts were not made to arrest the problem. According to Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (2011), Ekiti State contributes highest to open defecation practice with 60.8 percent followed by Plateau and Oyo states with 56.2 and 54.0 percent respectively. Abia has the lowest rate followed by Lagos at 1.2 and 2.0 percent respectively. Kano State has 4.0 percent while Zamfara, Benue and Kwara have 9.8, 52.5 and 50.5 respectively.

    Open defecation as one of the fundamental aspects of sanitation mirrors our underdevelopment as a nation. It is a terrible practice with various consequences on human health, dignity and security, the environment, and social and economic development. The profoundly damaging health and developmental consequences of this menace has often been overshadowed by other aspects of our socio-economic life that is also in decay.

    Many people seem not to understand that the quality of our lives as human beings is substantially a reflection of the quality of the environment which we inhabit. The spread of numerous gastrointestinal and diarrheal diseases is associated with it, whether through direct contact with fecal matter or via tainted food and water.  According to World Health Organization, 88 percent of diarrhea cases are attributable to poor excreta management. Diarrhea is the second largest killer of children below five years, only next to pneumonia yet open defecation practice is commonplace in our great country.

    There is, therefore, an urgent need to join Jan Eliasson, in the campaign to break the silence on open defecation and give sanitation the priority attention it deserve in our national life. Content of the recently developed national road map for the elimination of open defecation should be followed to the letter. It is heartwarming that states such as Lagos, Ogun, Osun, Ondo, Ekiti, Edo and Delta have developed their respective road maps.

    As problems related to open defecation gain greater attention, the importance of broader WASH (water, sanitation, and hygiene) issues, such as access to clean drinking water, must gain traction as well.  One of the ways to trigger this is for all states in the federation to have functional rural water and sanitation agency that is well positioned to ensure that 2025 target of elimination of open defecation is maintained. Every Nigerians must elect to live a dignified life through toilet revolution.

    • Rasak Musbau

    Lagos State Ministry of Information and Strategy, Alausa, Ikeja.

     

  • Why Salvation Rally must be sustained

    SIR: A Yoruba adage says when a baby’s head is wrongly positioned in the market; it is the duty of any old person to put the situation right. It is in this context that I viewed the rally embarked upon the opposition APC in Abuja on Wednesday, November 20. By and large, all the demands of the eminent people that led the rally were genuine. The President and the ruling PDP should not feel threatened by the marchers’ demand. After all, the nation belongs to all, and the well-being of the tree is the well-being of the bird so says an adage. End to insurgency and killings, end to impunity and massive corruption and poverty, free and fair elections next year are all legitimate demands for the betterment of this nation and its citizenry.

    What actually piqued me were the ages of the leaders of the rally. Most of them as shown by the newspapers were over 70 years of age. The question that comes to mind is where are our youths? Don’t they feel concerned about the state of the nation particularly as touching the grievances mentioned above and their own future? This is a testimonial to the elders in this nation that their inactions in the past have produced a docile and collaborative youths. This is why our youths see nothing bad in what is going on. Even our once proactive and militant “Greatest Nigerian Students” have been crippled by chop-I-chop politics that our ‘lucky elites’ foisted on the nation. Nevertheless, one appreciates the concern of the opposition party that organized the rally; it has been able to send a signal to the PDP that Nigeria would no longer condone maladministration.

    Nigerians are advised to imbibe or develop the culture of questioning our leaders at all levels. Those who have the opportunities to speak out should not shirk their responsibility. After all, Nigeria belongs to all of us and our leaders are just overseers of the commonwealth and there is nothing bad in giving a piece of advice or letting them know when they are off the track. As Prof. Jide Osuntokun noted recently: “if we keep quiet in the face of tyranny and bad government, we would have died many times before our death.” Our history is replete with the exploits of nationalists in the pre-independence period and that of pro-democracy and of civil rights groups during military era etc. However, once their grievances were seemingly addressed, they went to sleep. This habit has been condemned by former Consular General of the United States to Nigeria, writer and columnist, Brian Browne when he said, “he who quickly sleeps after attaining the prize will lose more in brief slumber than he gained through years of strife and toil”. This is the correct assessment of our civil movements and pro-democracy groups. If not, 15 years after attainment of democratic rule, septuagenarians would not be marching on the streets of Abuja demanding free and fair elections of all grievances. This is why this rally must be sustained.

    • Adewuyi Adegbite

    Apake, Ogbomoso

  • Police, Tambuwal and the rest of us

    Police, Tambuwal and the rest of us

    SIR: The Nigerian police have taken a lot of flak for their humiliation of House of Representatives Speaker Aminu Waziri Tambuwal. A consensus of outrage has formed around that National Assembly siege. The spread of angst was caused by the real time transmission of that violation, with all the horrendous details. Absent the transparency, the particulars of that vandalism would have suffered the doomed fate of controversy. That incident would have been reconstructed, in conjecture and fiction, and the kernel of its veracity would have gone extinct with conflicted telling and remembering.

    So we participated as a live audience. But the excitation of our common temper had less to do with our reading of the section of the constitution that pertains to cross carpeting. Also, it had little bearing with love for the victim. Instead, the widespread solidarity arose largely from narcissism.

    Tambuwal’s humiliation reflected our own vulnerability to police aggression. That instance of brutality projected the similitude of our everyday experience. It effectively tallied all the episodes of our vexed police encounters and flung them onto a vast attention-grabbing canvas.

    The police treated Speaker Tambuwal like us. Except that this turned into a scandal because the police dared to use the (yard)stick meant for us on Tambuwal, the number four citizen. We picked offence because what was tolerable for us could not be good for him.

    The policemen stationed at the gate were indifferent to Speaker Tambuwal. They did not answer him when he called out to them. When he introduced himself, they ignored him; just like they are wont to ignore nobodies. They tear-gassed Speaker Tambuwal the selfsame way they make responsible football fans choke each time they have to access the stadium to watch the Super Eagles play.  The police lied that Tambuwal had tried to invade the National Assembly with a band of miscreants; the same way they casually hatch frame-ups and make scapegoats.

    The police was persuaded that Tambuwal, by the virtue of his defection, had forfeited his number four position in the gratuitous citizen ranking. They believed that the switch had automatically downgraded him. He had slumped to the pool of anonymous folk, unworthy of courtesy because they have yet to earn the state’s elitist citizen number.

    Obviously, the policemen who attacked him had a clear brief: to update the blissfully ignorant Tambuwal, in the most practical terms, that his entitlement to politeness and dignity had expired. It was some sort of baptism into the humdrum susceptibility of the low caste.

    In a manner of speaking, the police were on a Red Cross charity-grade mission to give the butterfly who fancied himself a bird a beneficial reality check. Tambuwal missed sighting this barely concealed good intention. It could well be that smelling teargas made him less discerning.

    To be clear, the Nigerian police gave Tambuwal the normal treatment. The only real surprise in this case is that we permitted ourselves the leisure of pretending that that harassment was alien to their character. But we know better. Very few of us can boast of having accumulated a preponderance of positive romance with the Nigerian police. If you venture to check, you will harvest an overwhelming population scarred by a police that they have now come to dread.

    The average Nigerian policeman tends to be perennially angry and belligerent. It is often suggested that most of them labour under very poor job conditions. But that is no justification for taking out your frustration on your countrymen, many of who are in no better station in life. The fact that the policeman and the average citizen are actively negotiating survival with the same harsh environment should transform into a kindred bond. The policeman who discovers that the condition under which he is compelled to function prohibits decency need not progress as a bitter officer. He may opt for another legitimate means of livelihood instead of pushing a career in vengefulness and extortion.

    We could go on swimming in the partisan politics that created the ugly Tambuwal scenario. But that would cost us a wonderful opportunity to interrogate the relationship between the Nigerian police and the Nigerian citizen. Instead of establishing discriminatory standards, we should rather pivot to demanding a police that respects every citizen; a well resourced police that knows its place; a professional police that is not amenable to the abuse of a vendetta errand.

    • Emmanuel Uchenna Ugwu,

    emmanuelugwu2002@yahoo.com.

     

  • Tambuwal at the beautiful gate

    Tambuwal at the beautiful gate

    SIR: There is something tellingly uncanny about the fact that President Goodluck Jonathan exposed his personal capacity for malevolence on his birthday.  The onslaught he authorized against Speaker Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, on November 20, represents, at least, nudist display of predation. And one must concede that it fulfilled its purpose: it showed the otherwise concealed private side of the President and it flattered the infinite reach of a tiny fraction of his omnipotence.

    To be sure, President Jonathan violated the dignity of Tambuwal and others, through the agency of the police. There was absolutely no justification for shutting out mandated representatives of the Nigerian people from their workplace and overwhelming them with a thick cloud of teargas.

    To answer those who may readily absolve Jonathan and point at the Inspector General of Police, the police did not embark on that treasonable adventure on their own volition. The attack required the unambiguous nod of the head of state.  Except we have a derelict presidency, such flirtation with anarchy could not have happened without Goodluck Jonathan’s express say-so.

    Nigerians have a spacious accommodation for outrage. We are gracious and forgiving because we recognize the similitude of our own weakness in the flaws of our leaders. But there is a vestigial character benchmark in our indulgent leniency, though it is low and barely discernible. We excuse corruption and stealing but we feel entitled to expect our head of state to embody some nobility. President Jonathan breached this standard. He acted below the minimum decorum required of his office. He projected pettiness and paranoia. He would have emerged better off if he had baptized himself in mire.

    Foremost, it is quite shocking that the arena was the National Assembly. That show of shame would have been no less despicable if it had happened elsewhere. In these days when Boko Haram is annexing large swathes of land, at a point estimated to be the equivalent of three states, it would seem that we can boast of some sacred grounds. But the chaos that sprang up from the premises of our parliament indicates that we have lost even the moral ground.

    Apparently, Nigeria has now converted to terrorism. The Presidency, seeing that the renaissance of terror is increasingly magnifying her ineptitude, has elected to assert its muscles by transferring frustration to the citizen. This is a sufferer of terror, notoriously incapable of answering the expanding dent on her territorial integrity, overcompensating by picking a high profile target and inflicting harm on him.

    This might well be Boko Haram’s ultimate victory: the Nigerian government so envies the terrorists now that it has turned to plagiarism, mimicking the terrorists’ cowardly strategy of using arms to express their rightness. The civility that should characterize the state’s relationship with (her number four) citizen has vanished.

    That spectacle did not dehumanize Tambuwal; it diminished his bully. One instantly recognized the adversary’ contempt for honour in the desperation to strip Tambuwal of public value. The humiliation failed to establish the notion that the victim had earned the embarrassment. Instead, it shamed his oppressor and created a martyr.

    The fiasco confirms the establishment’s power to admit and exclude. Their weapon of control is the discriminatory screens that welcome those who belong and bar others. Theirs is a parallel closeted universe that does yields access only to personal recognition.

    Speaker Tambuwal was surprised that he now needed to introduce himself to the gate of the National Assembly. While he maintained the right affiliation, his open sesame invocation was effectual for every conceivable gate in Nigeria and he probably took that privilege for granted. Now out of the ruling party’s favour, he is discovering that he had belonged to a cult; that even mundane breathing constitutes difficulty for outlaws. He did not know that the price for not belonging is begging at the beautiful gate. But that is where millions of us live.

    • Emmanuel Uchenna Ugwu,

    immaugwu@gmail.com

  • On the unending crisis in health sector

    SIR: Our tertiary hospitals have been paralysed again because a group of people embarked on a nationwide strike. Yesterday it was the doctors; today it is the non-doctors in the health sector. What is really wrong with our tertiary hospitals? Patients are dying in their numbers while this crisis subsists.

    How many patients are required to die before this crisis will be nipped in the bud? We are still recovering from  the effects of the last Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) nationwide strike. There is no way that this crisis will be solved if government continues its present pattern of resolving the crisis. The government can never please the two warring parties (the doctors and the non-doctors). It has come to a point that the government chooses one party and wield the big stick against the other party. Wielding the big stick can come in different ways like privatising all paramedical services in our tertiary health institutions. Employment of the services of locum paramedical workers while JOHESU national strike lasts. The governor of Lagos State, Babatunde Fashola, did it to doctors in the state. You may also ask Barrister Sullivan Chime how he brought to an end the incessant unrest in the Enugu State civil service headed by trade unionist, Osmond Ugwu.

    What is really the bone of contention in the health sector? Non-doctors in the health sector discovered that medical doctors were ubiquitous and that there was little or no area of the hospital where doctors were not found hence any industrial action embarked upon by any individual profession in the health sector, the doctors there would make it uneventful. Owing to this, a group of devious professionals sat down and planned how to form a coalition union comprising all non-doctors in the health sector such that they would be using their ‘mass effect’ to shut down the health sector anytime they went on strike.

    Simply put, JOHESU was formed to fight medical doctors in our health institutions.

    What are the demands of JOHESU members? They want to become chief medical directors of tertiary hospitals. Their hackneyed platitude is – ‘international best practices’. The law that established our tertiary hospitals made it compulsory that only fellows of either the National or West African  Postgraduate Medical College and whose certificates are registrable with Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria (MDCN) can occupy the posts of Chief Medical Directors but now these JOHESU members do not want to obey the rule again hence they want the goalpost to be changed at the middle of the game.

    Will it not be an act of utter folly if medical doctors start struggling to head a drug manufacturing firm/plant? Can a professor of paralegal studies head the ministry of justice or our law courts no matter the many years of practising experience? If the answer is no, how then is it morally justifiable for paramedical professionals to come and head our tertiary hospitals? How can we then allow  people that are trained to assist the doctors to now become the head of our tertiary health institutions?

    Peace, they say, is not absence of war but presence of justice. Will pharmacists ever allow pharmacy technicians to head our pharmacy units in the hospital? Also, can the Bsc nurses allow the Registered Nurse (RN) or the auxiliary nurses to head their units? I am very sure that the medical laboratory scientists will never allow either the medical laboratory technicians or  science laboratory technicians to head their units.

    • Dr Paul John

    Port Harcourt, Rivers state.

  • The impunity at National Assembly

    SIR: Security operatives are not in any way supposed to be partisan in carrying out their duties. It is unfortunate that security operatives are now effective tools to carry out unlawful and unconstitutional acts against public officers and even the citizens at large.
    The siege laid at the National Assembly is condemnable. The scenario at the National Assembly was a direct and dedicated act to impeach the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Rt; Hon Aminu Tambuwal or else why would the deputy speaker drive into the assembly premises comfortably with no form of harassment and the Speaker his boss held at the gate and even had to be teargased like a common criminal?
    Only a while ago, security operatives were also used to lay siege at the Rivers State House of Assembly; during the governorship election in Osun State, it was the story of masked security operatives laying siege on the people – arresting party leaders, members and various stakeholders in breach of their constitutional rights.
    I watched the scenario that played out at the National Assembly and I saw masked men! Why masked men? Security operatives should be easily identifiable in case the need arises to call them to account.
    Nigeria leaders should come together and call the Presidency to order; it is regrettable that the laws of the land are being disrespected at every turn. Few months ago, security operatives intercepted newspapers across the country. Are we gradually moving back to the dark days of dictatorship?
    The laws of the land should be respected and any society that continuously disobeys its own laws would self-destruct.

    • Folawiyo Kareem Olajoku
    Osogbo, State of Osun

  • Too many ID cards

    SIR: On one of those mornings my regular newspaper vendor could not deliver the morning papers at my home, I went to an alternate newsstand. But the vendor had not shown up. So, I decided to wait a bit. While waiting, I noticed a canopy with a banner not far away, and decided to see what went on. As I got closer, l could see written on the banner: “Do your National ID card. Pre-registration here.”

    Unlike the crowd around venues for collection of permanent voter cards, the place was desolate. Nigerians must be wearied, I figured. The young man who sat there had a forlorn look. I asked him what the process was. He said I needed to pay N300 to fill a form, and after that I would go to a local government to collect the card.

    I had a sneak peek at the many forms he had on his table. This National Identification Card promises other features, including that I could use it as an ATM card. I paused for a while. Then, he asked me if I was ready. I gave him a wry smile. My hands were now in my pockets. The feel of my ATM card in my left pocket gave me a canny feeling. I also caressed my work ID card on my right pocket, and the naira bills co-habiting with it. I thought of my voter card, my driving licence, my travelling passport, my Lagos State Residents Registration Agency ID, my old rejected national ID card, my bank verification number, other ID cards of one association or the other, and with SIM registration, maybe, soon my phone will also be added to the mix.

    And just then, the vendor showed up. As I made to meet the vendor, the young man asked, “Oga, are you not doing again?” Know what I told him? “Not now, Sunny, I have got an ‘idgraine’ headache!”

     

    • Dr Cosmas Odoemena,