The Nation Newspaper

Category: Letters

  • As Nigeria marks Children’s Day

    SIR: The Community Defence Law Foundation, CDLF, felicitates with all Nigerian Children on the celebration of Children’s Day. This is a yearly event that is worldly celebrated because children are special beings hence, the special attention attached.

    We pray and wish that as they join children in other parts of the world in the celebration of this year’s Children’s Day, they would have a joyous and fun-filled celebration. We remind the authorities to enhance their implementation of the two international documents (the UN and OAU charter) supporting, the Rights and Welfare of the Child, which was adopted by the Nigerian government.

    CDLF enjoins local, state and federal government, to strengthen the institutions, laws protecting the Nigerian children from abuse and neglect. Recent reports have shown that the abuse and trafficking of children has risen and, we call on the government, its agencies, to double their efforts at ensuring that the children in Nigeria are keenly protected from criminally minded individuals and groups.

    The children are the hope of the future, they deserve necessary protection and assistance, to enable them develop within the society in the spirit of peace, love, dignity, tolerance and equity. The education of the children is a critical area that the government must begin to take seriously. We must ensure that for no reason must any child’s education suffer a setback, same with their health, shelter, food, development, etc.

    CDLF challenge parents, guardians, to give quality time to the upbringing of their children and wards so as to make them responsible leaders of tomorrow. It is not right for parents, society or state to ignore children’s welfare, no nation progresses in that direction.

    • Uzodinma Nwaogbe

    CDLF, Abuja

  • Like Baga, like Biafra

    SIR: I’d quickly like to get our national consciousness back from selective amnesia. While a mountain is being made out of a molehill, in one case, a genuine mountain has been reduced to a molehill in another.

    While I truly sympathise with the people of Baga for being caught in the cross – fire between the JTF and the Boko Haram nuisance, they truly cannot lay hold to the claim of “genocide” a word was made most famous by Ojukwu during the war waged by Nigeria against the Igbo people.

    If people are inviting the International Criminal Court ICC to come and investigate what happened in Baga, not minding the emergency relief and compensation effort being put by the federal government, then it behooves on Ndi-Igbo to take Nigeria to court, both locally and internationally and demand the same justice and compensation being given to Baga, Zaki-Biam and Odi.

    In the Baga issue, it is clear that it was the Boko-Haram that opened fire on the JTF first, killing a military officer setting their mosque on fire. The said mosque was where they hid to manufacture their bombs, which has killed over 5,000 people and counting.

    While the opposition parties, media and Boko-Haram politicians can seek to make political capital out of Baga, they should equally recognize that they offend the sensibilities and memories of the victims, relations friends and colleagues of those that have been butchered by these criminals, known as Boko Haram.

    If these same people can put in the same amount of effort they are putting in condemning the Nigerian Army and other security agencies, into condemning the Boko-Haram members and their sponsors, we would have gone a long way in tackling the activities of these cold-blooded murderers.

    The media should be more careful in ensuring that they do not continue to paint Boko-Haram, their sponsors and supporters as the victims, while painting the military as the hostile institution. They should remember that it is these brave military men and women that stand between us and being run – over by jihadist forces.

    Meanwhile, I believe the Igbo people should start going to court to demand compensation and justice because what is good for the goose is equally good for the gander. If for the death of 38 or 178 people, Nigeria will spend billion to compensate them, then surely for the death of millions, more should be done.

    • Azubike Nwokedi,

    Onitsha, Anambra State.

  • Emergency rule and northern leaders

    SIR: Almost four decades ago, Martin Luther King Jnr spoke the minds of many people when he said, “The shape of the world today does not permit us the luxury of soft-mindedness”. One cannot but concur with the declaration of emergency rule in parts of Northern Nigeria which has since been reduced to slaughter slab. It is on record that the President has tried all known peaceful approaches in crisis resolution to end the orgy of violence. Yet perpetrators of violence deliberately refuse to submit to peace process and still carry out their nefarious trade with great determination. The terrorists continue to invade places of worship, private and public institutions with heavy materials of war to kill and destroy. Shortly after the President announced the amnesty approach as a step to end the causeless violence in the north, a man who at best could be described as a monstrous coward appeared in a video only to reject the amnesty offer claiming that his gang of killers are the one to grant amnesty to Nigeria and indeed Nigerians.

    If not for anything else, I urge Nigerians to support the emergency rule so that those who hide under the mask to commit evil will come to understand that simplicity is not weakness. I do not intend to join issues with a few men who call themselves northern elders but I understand that they claim that the President is unfair to them in view of the ongoing emergency rule. These men who arrogate to themselves the title elders could not offer other workable alternative to peace and they forgot so easily that the President has also taken all known non-violence approaches which seem to have failed. They want the President to lie low when our sovereignty is being challenged by group of men whose heart belongs to the devil. Since government has a duty to defend its territorial integrity and people, the military action taken remains noble and suitable at this time.

    Under the very watchful eyes of the elders, these characterless fellows brought down the Nigerian flag and hoisted a foreign flag. This singular act amounts to a declaration of war. Therefore military action becomes inevitable to respond to such declaration of war by terrorists. I expect the northern elders to expose those agents of doom to our security forces. The fight against terror should not be left to the government alone. They should call on the sect to lay down their arms and embrace the amnesty approach.

    • Ehi G.O.

    Benin City.

  • Hope of divine solution not lost in Nigeria

    Hope of divine solution not lost in Nigeria

    Despite the current challenges Nigeria is facing, like threats to security, social injustice, youth unemployment, political killings, labour-unrest, bombing, among others, there is hope and Nigerians should not lose hope of divine solution.

    Nigerians-at-large should pray to God to redeem and deliver our country, for, only God could redeem the nation from the present fear of insecurity and poverty in the land. Only God could heal our wounds, so that that could be peace.

    Prophetically, I want to assure Nigerians, that, with the prayers of the saints, at the soonest, all-will-be-well, as God is ready to intervene and heal our land, if we humble ourselves and fear God.

    With the potentials available in the country, if we repent our sins and do the will of God, from the leaders to the followers, there is hope for Nigeria and Nigerians in all spheres. There is also greater tomorrow for Nigeria, if we pray fervently and put all hands on deck, to move the nation forward.

    Nigeria had faced many difficult situations in the past, but God had always proved to be faithful. As the problems facing Nigeria currently are big, God will come to our rescue once, we keep relying on Him.

    The current security challenges in the nation could be attributed to high level of corruption and bad governance on the part of the leaders. Since government is not to trust again, the people had lost the trust in those holding offices in government, while poverty, unemployment, insecurity, among others, is on the rise.

    Nigeria now desire, political leaders that will turn our bad situations to better, and whose primary concerns are to build institutions and empower the people.

    By Oladipupo Funmilade-Joel

    General Overseer,

    The Way of Reconciliation Evangelistic Ministries

     

  • Drawing the curtain on Nigeria…

    Drawing the curtain on Nigeria…

    In the last few weeks, I have personally looked of our nation, I have carefully x-rayed thoughts, opinions, listened carefully to comments, and with deep analytical mind I share the following admonition.

    A group in the US said based on hypothesis xyz, the nation’s terminal date is 2015. We had been sick even before the report, we are still sick but are we ready for war, disintegration, division—my answer comes from an unusual source with the following caveats I have added.

    Chief Edwin Clark in an open letter to the Speaker of House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal, stated, “I repeat, there will be no crisis, if President Jonathan is defeated at the presidential election in 2015, but he has a right to contest the election if he so wishes.”

    The curtain will fall when intelligent Nigerians and sane minds stop to bother about a certain Alhaji Dokubo-Asari or a docile Northern Elders Forum that have taken turns to make threats…on innocent Nigerians.

    We remain a country fighting development and violent extremism in the face of under-development, marginalisation and weak governance which have created a breeding ground for militancy, cultism and all sorts of deviant behaviour at a very high rate. But the curtain will not fall because we importantly need to find a synergy in our democracy that caters for development and our diversity and I irrevocably believe we are capable.

    Never like before is there a combination of bad governance, poverty, insecurity, poor political and resource governance, a growing disgruntled segmentation of society, exclusion, entrenched corruption, abusive security forces, strife between the disaffected sections of the nation, widening regional economic disparity, unemployment and socioeconomic deprivation, several external factors and add weak public institutions and people’s and government’s loyalty to tribe and clan rather than the nation state and you think the curtain will definitely fall—No, it won’t fall.

    The curtain will not fall, if you count the number of security personal killed in one week and leave it at a conservative 100, break that down to the number of widows, orphans, parents and relatives that are grieving. You will appreciate with pain that this nation is one that after surviving a civil war has a structure almost unknown in contemporary times.

    The curtain has not fallen with almost 40million young person’s not sure of tomorrow, yet the economy is growing, champagne-drinking is on the rise, almost two million write an exam that only a quarter have assurances of further education and half that figure fail.

    The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) has stated that it discovered 67 universities illegally operating in the nation and we have over a 100 legal ones and the curtain has not fallen.

    The curtain will only fall come 2015 if stealing governors, politicians and leaders are moved to bedimmed, broken-down, colourless, dark, darkish, dilapidated, dim, dirty, discoloured, drab, dreary, dull, dusky, faded, gloomy, grimy, muddy, murky, obscure, run-down, seedy, shabby, smirched, sombre, sullied, tarnished, threadbare, tired—DINGY jails away from the dingy comfort of their homes.

    I implore my readers, look at your kids, your siblings and ask, apart from the rituals of ramadan and lent…can they go hungry for three days, trek kilometres when ‘there will be no Nigeria’.? When we are prepared for this maybe the curtain will fall…

    How will Nigeria disintegrate, a nation where $15m cash was received by officers of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) from an undisclosed agent of a former governor in 2007.?

    The money was meant as bribe to compromise an investigation by the then Mallam Nuhu Ribadu-led anti-graft agency.

    Enter Olalekan Bayode, an artisan, who repairs fridges, air conditioners and other things and lives in Alagbado, Lagos who prays a court to appoint him as the sole agent to be in custody of the money indefinitely for “proper management” following the dispute on the ownership of the fund by the federal and Delta State governments.

    Come 2015, it will be Jonathan, I declare, or any other dude, but trust me, I am no prophet—but nothing will go wrong. Maybe a riot here and killings there and the courts will be busy but Nigeria won’t collapse, no it won’t.

    We need practical federalism, those idlers that make laws need to up the ante, politicians need to take a look at the electorates the widening disconnect requires a filling.

    The curtain is not near falling, until we are prepared, if a cult group, militia in a village can kill scores of police and security personnel, how many militia groups will a 160 million people nation produce with the police claiming there millions of small arms in circulation?.

    Are we are not citizens of a nation where recently out of the 5,000 police officers assessed for intelligence gathering, only 266 qualified?

     

    Prince Charles Dickson

  • Ambassador Fafowora’s Lest I forget

    SIR: As a young kid, the image of Dr. Dapo Fafowora etched on my mind was that of a rare breed; an individual I aspired to grow up to be like. I was too young to know his exploits as a thorough-bred diplomat, but I remember that he ably managed the Nigerian Manufacturers Association (MAN) when he was at the helm of that organisation. I saw his brilliance at many of the public fora where he delivered lectures, or discussed issues of national concern. It was him that informed my decision to go into academia.

    I think God had other bigger things for him when he was crudely taken out of the Foreign Service. He touched many more lives including mine, after his stint at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. For that I want to use this medium to say a big “thank you sir” to him.

    Wishing him more healthy years ahead.

    • Olugbenga Ayeni.

    Lagos

  • Opon Imo yet to be launched

    SIR: After reading through the article written by one Ayo Aluko-Olokun in The Punch of Thursday May 16, titled ‘Osun: Why Launch Opon Imo in Lagos?’, I came to the sad conclusion that the writer does not have the slightest clue of what `Opon Imo’ is all about. I got more disappointed when I discovered that the writer is a journalist and a public affairs analyst.

    The ‘Opon Imo’ has never been launched anywhere under the sun; not in Lagos and not even in Osogbo. What has been held so far has been series of press briefings, including the one in Lagos, on the conception and progress on the project. There was a pilot study last year when the device was given to a few students in Osogbo for test running and collected from them after a few weeks. The device will be launched on June 3, at Ilesa.

    The writer needs to be tutored on the advantages this learning tablet has over physical textbooks. Which textbook in the world can ever have up to 63 subjects in it?

    Furthermore, this precious gem in the hands of these students is equipped with solar chargers and does not rely only on electricity to function. It contains a lot more than textbooks. It is compact, and the students cannot visit any other site on it apart from the purpose for which it was made for. It is loaded with all the learning aid the students need on the senior secondary school level to make good grades in senior secondary school examinations. At a time when even JAMB is trying to make students write examinations on the computer, how will they learn to use computers if they are not introduced to it while in school? All over the world people now gather information on the internet. In developed world, big bookshops are folding up by the day.

    It takes more than sitting in an armchair in Lagos to write about this bundle of knowledge initiated by the government of Osun State. The writer needs come down to see for himself.

    I also wish to correct the claim that there are demonstrations and strikes everywhere in Osun. The government of the state of Osun is a responsive government that does not joke with the well being of its citizens and workforce. The lecturers that are on strike have already called it off. Other workers in the state are at work and are doing well.

    The article was characterized by biases and condemnation throughout. The writer appears to have made up his mind not to acknowledge the good work the present administration is doing in Osun. He is so confused about what the present administration has achieved within the short period they took over from the previous administration. Be that as it may, my advice to him is to always get his facts right before heading to the press.

     

     

    • Titi Ajayi, (Mrs),

    Ilesa, Osun State

     

  • On Yoruba marginalisation

    SIR: The on-going debate on the marginalisation of the Yorubas in the present socio-political set up in Nigeria does not hold water for us third generation of Yorubas. In fact I feel that the first and second generation Yorubas are more of our problems compared with other tribes in Nigeria.

    The first generation are the pre-independence leaders, led by Chief Awolowo, who failed to see that the Yorubas should have been a nation on its own without the drawback syndrome that the other tribes exhibited and are still exhibiting. Their longing for power at a bigger centre blinded them to the open fact that their co-sojourners in the contraption called Nigeria are not compatible with their progressive ideas. While one major group saw education as a continuity of the colonial and religious oppression, the other did not see how it will add to their profit in their line of business. Thus the first generation sold a bright future of an entire people and bedded with incompatible bedfellows.

    The second generation led by Chief Obasanjo, are completely bereft of ideas on how local politics are played. They pretended to be more Catholic than the Pope. It is Nigeria first before the Yorubas while the others think of their own people first before Nigeria. The Obasanjo group did everything to please the other tribes while their own people wallowed in abject neglect and humiliation. But for the so called federal character, the Yorubas would not be holding one single reasonable position in the federal set up today.

    Chief Obasanjo spent eight years as President but failed to complete the expressway going to his farm and town not to talk of completing the Lagos-Ibadan/Ibadan–Ilorin roads that were awarded by his predecessor, a non-Yoruba. Under him, his Minister of Works, Tony Anenih constructed a bypass to decongest Benin City traffic while Mukhtari Shagari – his Minister of Agriculture/Water Resources littered the North-west with boreholes.

    Recently, the Minister of Aviation sacked all the directors in FAAN – six of them Yorubas and replaced them with her own people. The last Minister of Power, Prof Nnaji promoted and placed a lot of PHCN staff during his short stay in office. Over 70% of the beneficiaries are his kinsmen. Take a census of all the key officers in key positions in the PHCN successor companies and one will be amazed at how the Yorubas have lost out.

    Once upon a time, the so called Awolowo disciples are respected and when they spoke others listened. But as soon as they won the battle to install a Yoruba man as President after Chief MKO Abiola’s humiliation, they went to sleep. They thought they have won the entire battle for the Yorubas. What followed was the selling of the South-west to the anti-progressive elements and another four years of set-back for the Yorubas.

    The only Yoruba leader that attracts some grudging respect from the other tribes in Nigeria today is Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, but he too must stop acting as if he has done everything for the Yorubas in re-taking the South West from the anti-progressive groups. He should start fighting for positions and better share of the national cake for his own people at the federal level.

    The attitude of the Yorubas in key positions at the national level must change to reflect the Nigerian realities and politics. Our political attitude and decisions must be reciprocal and we must stop the ‘holier than thou’ strategies that benefit other tribes at the expense of our own people. If not, our children will become third class citizens in this country.

    • Chief Omolade Olanihun

    Ala Quarters, Akure

  • FRSC, this is unfair

    SIR: On Saturday March 30, at about 1.pm, I was stopped by an official of Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) immediately after Jibowu bus stop, near the bridge head towards Yaba, Lagos.

    All the documents demanded were supplied. The official asked for fire extinguisher, C-caution etc. while I duly showed him one after the other. Until he finally asked me to step on the brake pedal when he then discovered the right side of the brake light was not showing. This was as a result of the bulb getting burnt (which could happen at any time). For this, the officer decided to book me for two thousand naira (N2000) when the bulb costs only twenty naira (N20). I think this rather unfair.

    Sir, I have the following observation to present: FRSC officials on duty should imbibe the culture of human/public relations since they are the mirror society uses to see the commission. This particular officer was very boastful, arrogant and pompous. An offence that has nothing to do with mechanical/electrical fault does not deserve any booking. A burnt bulb does not deserve any penalty.

    There is no doubting the fact that the commission has the onerous duty of sanitizing our numerous road users, we can only pray you continue in this regard.

    • Ajao, Shobalaje Lukman,

    Lagos.

     

  • ‘Federating’ tertiary institutions’ admissions

    SIR: As someone, who in the last one dozen years has had great joy and pride to have advised some 180 students for their undergraduate theses, I read with great consternation and a heightened sense of chagrin Prof. Rukkayat Alkali’s almost patrician, patronizing finality that about 1.4 million candidates who sat for the University Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) would not get placement into institutions of their choices; this figure of “absolutely certain “rejectees” is out of a total of 1.7 million candidates. Oh dear!

    Why UTME, then? Lately, Nigerians have been all too chirpy in the rumour mill about the 8.5 billion naira raked in by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) as internally-generated revenue (IGR) to have these candidates sit for the examination in the first place.

    It would be a good sign, indeed, if all candidates who sincerely desire to study at higher institutions are duly given placement slots; no, of course not, this is not mawkish utopianism! The minister’s stance smacks of an all-powerful central command structure with respect to how Nigerians wish to study at the post-secondary stage. The argument that facilities are “over-stretched already” at all existing federal, state, and private institutions of higher learning does not impress me much because I have come to the conclusion that what rickety facilities that are there are not even optimally utilized.

    At my department, so the grapevine says, there are crates of laboratory equipment from the 1980s that have not been broken open till now: yet I have single-handedly counseled some 180 students for their undergraduate theses: most of these student have integrated seamlessly into society and are doing jolly good in their chosen careers at home and abroad; those who have dared to pursue graduate studies (at home and abroad) have not disappointed one bit. Actually, in the year 2006, I had the honour to teach a final-year class of 250 students; I am very impressed by the number from that class who are currently pursuing interest in their PhDs. Yet, according to the grapevine, there are crates of lab equipment from the 1980s that have not been broken open till now. Classic case of appropriate equipment glut, eh?

    Methinks individual institutions of higher learning across Nigeria, with no arm-twisting from the “federated” National University Commission NUC, could still make do with expanded student intakes in order to act an “academic sponge” to “soak up” all those “excess-above-requirement” who may not get admission placements come the 2013/2014 academic session.

    What could be done is to prop the crop of academia, mentally and materially, to embrace the challenge of increased student body. Presently, the corps of academia is one dormant baby-producing institution. I should know this. Naturally.

     

    • Sunday Jonah

    Federal University of Technology,

    Minna, Niger State