Category: Letters

SIR: For the past few years, it has been difficult to understand the stand and body language of the Revenue Mobilization Allocation and Fiscal Commission, Abuja in respect of the fulfillment of its constitutional obligations to Nigerians. While its mandate is clear and unambiguous, the outcome and effect of its operations on the country are not so clear. Apart from ensuring that the total Revenue of the country is paid into the Federation Account, the most important assignment of this organ of the constitution is to present and recommend a sharing formula of the country’s resources among the three tiers of government.

This of course should be done after appropriate research, data collection, information gathering in the country at large must have been conducted. After all these processing, a document would emerge which would be presented to the National Assembly via the president. The president is of course obliged ordinarily to forward the recommended formula to the National Assembly.

There are certain extreme occasions when the president, by fiat, may refuse to take action on the document and instead arbitrarily allocate figures among the three tiers of government. The circumstances must be extreme indeed and it is difficult to find a precedent when this ‘abnormal’ step would be taken twice.

As far as I can remember, the Commission has produced recommendations to this effect at least twice in the last decade, and this was done after extensive tours involving millions of naira and contacts made with important institutions and personalities of this great country. Quite unfortunately, nothing came out of these exercises. As of today, it is doubtful whether Nigeria has an operating legal system used in distributing its wealth and resources among the various governments that constitute our constitutional order.

The result is that more resources are available to the Federal Governments than necessary. The States and Local Governments which constitute the centre of development are unnecessarily starved of desirable funds. The billions that disappear literarily everyday is a direct result of too much money available to the Federal Government. If the proper things had been done for example, and every fist is tight, there would be more prudence in the use of public funds. There is evidence to show that the National Assembly is waiting to receive and consider and pass a new revenue sharing formula.

There is perhaps the argument that the Revenue Commission does not have the resources to conduct a nation-wide survey. This argument cannot hold. There are documents and data in the records and archives of the Commission which it could update, using acceptable data and methods. Moreover, Commissioners need not travel to every village and hamlet in Nigeria to be able to update the figures and datas available to the Revenue Commission.

This nation is suffering. The state are grieving with debts, it is time all institutions and organs of government take a plunge, a reasonable plunge to arrest the decay in our national life. The Revenue Commission should be bold and conduct its affairs fearlessly. The stability of our country depends, among others on its readiness to perform its constitutional duties. The National Assembly, with all its structural defects, is waiting to perform its own duties.

• Deji Fasuan (JP) is a retired Permanent Secretary

SIR: Dr. Kayode Fayemi, the Governor of Ekiti state deserves commendation for his laudable developmental giant strides in the state. He is a man who works quietly while positively impacting on the lives of his people.

Before he came on board, many people in the state had looked on with gloom concerning the state of affairs in that land. Indeed, people were not happy at all with the administrations of his predecessors in office.

However, all that have changed now. The people of the state are once more proud to associate themselves with the affairs of the state. Every weekend, people troupe into Ado Ekiti from different parts of the country to spend the weekend.

Fayemi has made it possible for the capital to wear a beautiful look, such that people feel at home to unwind and discuss matters amicably. Until now, it was not like that. So, let the governor and his able team continue to push on; continue to provide for the people. Let Ekiti people continue to feel the impact of a gifted leader ready to serve without recourse to rancour or undue attention to himself.

Ado is now a wonderful place to be. The roads are motorable and the people themselves wear cheerful looks on their faces now. Things have begun to look up once more for all of us in the state. This is more kudos to Fayemi and his people.

• Serifat Oye,

Ikare, Ekiti State.

SIR: The nation’s budget for year 2012 is largely dependent on oil to the tune of about N5 trillion despite the fact that India is expecting, for the same period, $70 billion (N10.5 trillion) from software exports alone.

Perhaps we need to remind ourselves of where both India and Nigeria are coming from. In the 1980s, when the Delta Steel Company (DSC) was being built by a consortium of foreign companies, Mecon of India was

serving as consultants to DSC. Mecon seconded many of its experienced engineers to DSC, helping to groom their Nigerian counterparts.

While these highly experienced expatriate Indians were chauffeur-driven in brand new, air-conditioned, official Peugeot cars, people in DSC were usually surprised to hear of how some of them were receiving letters from their home office, informing them of the approval of their motorcycle loans!

This was at a time fresh Nigerian graduates looked forward to buying new cars after just a few years of working. This was before our present addiction to“tokunbo” products. But India has since transformed into one of the sensational economies including Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) while Nigeria is retrogressing deeper into poverty, which according to figures from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), has worsened from 54.7 in 2004 to 61.9 in 2011.

Our state governors are busy bickering over statutory allocations, while their counterparts across the world are aggressively harvesting the infinite

opportunities created by globalization. While we remain on revenue allocation, the world is moving in the direction of technological creativity.

The real tragedy is that even with the pitiable state of our nation, our

entrenched interests are still fighting viciously to ensure that nothing changed. More tragic is the fact that they are using the rest of us, to bring down anybody that tries to change things! We are helping our entrenched interests to ensure that nothing changes, and to deal with each officeholder that refuses to toe their line.

The Goldman Sachs’ research report for 2007 listed Nigeria among its ‘Next 11’ group of countries expected to catch up to the fastest developing BRIC economies.

That reform might even have been most providential, considering what could have become of the Nigerian economy if the global meltdown that soon followed had met us with a financial sector driven by fragile, under-capitalised banks!

Similarly, the all-important Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB), which had clearly forgotten the destination of the 12-year journey it started since 2000 with President Olusegun Obasanjo’s “Oil & Gas Reform Implementation Committee” (OGIC), is now suddenly contemplating reality!

This means that all those years of regulatory uncertainty, blocking billions of dollars of oil-sector investments, are coming to an end. Again, for the first time in our petroleum history, we now have a “Nigerian Content Development Act”, which has transformed the capacity for local participation in the sector.

•Gabriel Zowam,

Reform & Process Improvement expert, Abuja.

SIR: The ripple in the polity is heightening as a result of the latest parley offer by the dreaded Boko Haram Islamic group to the federal government. The group said it preferred dialogue to hold in Saudi Arabia and not in Nigeria. According to Abu Mohammed Ibn Abdulaziz, who claimed to be a leader of the group, “five of our members have been mandated buy our leader, Imam Abubakar Shekau, to handle the dialogue with some prominent people in the country including the former military leader, General Mohammadu Buhari”. It also picked Dr. Shettima Ali Monguno, Ambassador Gaji Galtimari, Mrs Aisha Alkali Wakil, and her husband, Alkali Wakil and former Yobe State Governor, Senator Abba Bukar Ibrahim as mediators.

Despite misgivings, the Federal Government has indicated its desire to commence discussing with the sect as well as considering compensating members of the violent Islamic sect, especially, those alleged to have suffered from the violence and “were seen to have been killed unjustly”.

Boko Haram has never hidden its desperation in advancing the course of its brand of Islam in the country through violence and unbridled terrorism and wanton destruction of lives and property, which Islamic scholars have said is antithetical to the tenets of the religion.

While apologists of the group have continually attributed Boko Haram’s mindless acts of terrorism to poverty, unemployment and bad governance, the group itself has held fast to its stated mission of foisting its variant of the Islamic governance on the northern parts of the country, making it complex and difficult to truly understand its real mission.

To worsen matters, the group already has international recognition as is reputed to be collaborating with two of the world’s most vicious and notorious terrorist groups.

It is hoped that the much-sought dialogue is not going to be an invitation to more security troubles for the nation. Already, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) has threatened “serious consequences” if the government accedes to demands made by the group without releasing its leader, Henry Okah. Okah is currently standing trial in South Africa for terrorism over his alleged involvement in the 2010 Independence Day anniversary bombings in Abuja.

It is saddening that government has displayed poor political will and bad intelligence in fighting the insurgence. This appears to be encouraging criminal groups to canvass for official recognition, dialogue, compensation and amnesty.

As a way out, the Federal Government should consult widely by taking into consideration, the security implication of its decision before going for the parley. The government needs to go the extra length by carefully examining the genuineness of the group making the demands before engaging in any dialogue.

Again, why should the talk be held in Saudi Arabia? Is the nation at war? The federal government should avoid conveying the impression that the nation is tending towards a failed state.

• Adewale Kupoluyi

Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta.

SIR: Our dear President, I choose to write you publicly as all avenue’s to address our matter has been exhausted because those charged with such responsibilities are not sensitive to our plight.

As a listening President with conscience, you had given approval in July this year for the release of the sum of N34 billion to pay the outstanding severance benefits of those that were laid-off in 2007 as a result of the public service reform exercise.

It may interest you to know, sir, that up till now the Bureau for Public Service Reform (BPSR) and the office of the Accountant General of the federation (AGF) are still sitting on the money for no cause. All efforts to get them pay our benefits have yielded no result as they are buck passing while some are feeding fat on our sufferings.

In this case, the BPSR is the major problem: These are Nigerians who have served the country in the past diligently, who still have school feed for children to pay, medical bills to pay, etc still they are held-up by same Nigerians as a result of corruption.

Sir, only your untiring efforts can bring succor to us, the dying and suffering laid-off reformed workers nation-wide.

• Danfulani Ahmed Shika,

ABU, Zaria.