The Nation Newspaper

Category: Commentaries

  • Whistle blowing: A lesson to learn

    It is a common saying in America that “A man gotta do what a man gotta do”; in other words, a man does what he must, in spite of personal difficulties, dangers or obstacles. This is what I believe is the basis of all human moralities.

    In his column in The Nation of Monday, February 24, Sam Omatseye commenced his article by quoting a former U.S. Congresswoman – Barbara Jordan as having said that “If the society today allows wrongs to go unchallenged, the impression is created that those wrongs have the approval of the majority.

    This article, however, is not an advocate for any partisan cause, for the issues between President Goodluck Jonathan and the just suspended CBN Governor – Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi are fundamental and reach quite beyond the realm of partisan considerations. They must be resolved on the highest plane of national interest if our cause is to prove sound and our future protected. I trust, therefore, that the National Assembly and the judiciary in whose domain the issues have been placed will do the justice of receiving that which I have to say here as solely expressing the considered viewpoint of a fellow Nigerian.

    The issue at stake in this country which we all claimed to be political disorderliness/insecurity, corruption and abject poverty pervading the society, are becoming more of national embarrassment and so interlocked that to consider the problems of one sector oblivious to those of another is but to court disaster for the whole.

    While NNPC is commonly referred to as the economic lifeline to the Central Bank of Nigeria, it is no less true that the CBN is the financial gateway to economy, and the broad influence of the one cannot fail to have its impact upon the other.

    Reconciling a nationalist’s right to dissent with his employer’s demand for loyalty is not easy. Sanusi is a genuine and patriotic Nigeria nationalist who was the governor of an autonomous Nigerian institution– the Central Bank of Nigeria which is a non-democratic institution, is under no compulsion to tolerate what they may consider to be recalcitrant behaviour of federal government officials elected or appointed in the matter of assets/financial management. The erstwhile CBN governor disagreed with illegal, dangerous and corrupt practices going unabated at the NNPC. Many otherwise faithful servants may decide that the price for keeping silent is too high. Keeping silent versus speaking out is usually a no win situation. Certainly, by speaking out on the corrupt practices in the NNPC, Sanusi himself knows he risks reprisal. As a nationalist, if he keeps silent, he may be judged later by himself or others as irresponsible. Of course, he always has the option to quit his job. But interrupting a satisfying career in the hope that he will find another equally beneficial job opportunity is not easy.

    No doubt, Sanusi’s whistle-blowing seemed to have courted the anger of the PDP controlled government in Abuja which it saw as being very disruptive. It puts the spotlights on information that other members of the institution have disregarded, suppressed or falsified. Calling attention to this information invariably causes tension and embarrassment and triggers a defensive reaction from the Presidency. This, the federal government’s reaction was exceedingly harsh because the whistle-blower singles out suspected offenders and let the general public second-guess their motives.

    A typical whistle-blower is often quick to personalize the issue. Thus, his personality becomes part of the problem because in executive management view, only an eccentric or maverick would risk alienating his colleagues or compatriots in other government institutions. Even if a whistle-blower does not actually fit this category, the power that be might still portray him as such to divert attention from the disclosure.

    Employees possess several characteristics that can hamper their causes in potential whistle-blowing situations. They tend to regard disputes as being either technical or personal in nature. An employee engaged in a conflict with his immediate boss or with upper management in trying to turn the issue into a personal matter. In reality, both technical and personal elements are usually combined in such an organization or institutional conflict, and both must be dealt with in the appropriate manner.

    Another potential failing of employees arise when they must deal with information concerning environmental quality or educational institution corruption. Most of these issues require an assessment of risk-which often involves political considerations as well as scientific ones.

    Thus, such issues call for subjective judgments as well as objective analyses. Employees often have difficulty distinguishing between the two approaches and tend to shy away from political considerations when they are faced with them. The whistle-blower eventually has to prove his case by accumulating documentary evidence and lining up witnesses. The problem here is that the whistle-blower rarely has the legal training to understand problems of legal evidence. An engineer or accountant may understandably confuse proof in the technical sense with proof in the legal sense. While the detailed problems of proof should be entrusted to someone trained in law, the would-be whistle-blower must become somewhat versed in the necessary legalism if he hopes to produce a solid case.

    Perhaps, the ultimate surprise to an employee comes when a particular litigation is decided on a procedure – how the whistle was blown – rather than on his merits of his claims. To guide against this, logic must prevail over emotion in following the prescribed procedures for whistle –blowing. Most experts advise that an employee seeks legal advice before going too far with his protest.

    Another subtle distinction that escapes the typical employee is the difference between proving that he was fired in reprisal. In a legal challenge to retaliatory action, the issue is not whether the original disclosure was correct, but whether the challenged action was motivated in whole or substantial part by the disclosure. More so, evidence of the correctness, propriety, or truth of the disclosure may be excluded altogether on grounds of irrelevancy.

    It is very unfortunate that Sanusi is currently going through persecution for daring President Jonathan to remove him from office in the consequence of his blowing the whistle on the alleged fraud in the petroleum industry. If the civil rights community and the Nigerian labour organisation failed in this course of rallying round Sanusi at this moment of his travesty of justice, we might as well forget about any rule of law adherence by this federal government whose administration thrives on corruption and impunity of the highest order.

    National ideologies play little part in Nigeria’s masses thinking and are little understood. What the people strive for is the opportunity for a little more food in their stomachs, a little better clothing on their backs, roof over their heads, and the realization of a normal nationalist urge for political freedom. These political-social conditions have but an indirect bearing upon our own national security, but they form a backdrop to contemporary planning which must be thoughtfully considered if we are to avoid the pitfalls of unrealism.

     

    • Engr. Shoyebo, an author/publisher writes from Mushin, Lagos.

  • Abacha children cry

    The children of Gen. Sani Abacha cry. But can they deny their father was a thief?

    William Shakespeare (WS), the famous bard, declared in the play, Julius Caesar: “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.”

    But Goodluck Jonathan’s so-called centenary award to Gen. Abacha, despite his unmitigated evil, twisted everything: “The good that men do lives after them; the evil is often interred with their bones.”!

    That, of course, was good music to the ears of the Abacha clan: with all the rhapsody about how Abacha fixed the economy and sacked inflation. But if a robber-king secures the public treasure — for his sole pleasure — how does that benefit his cheated subjects? So, his brigand ways are forgotten?

    Wole Soyinka, Nobel Laureate and our own WS, would stand for no such cant — and flatly refused to be “honoured” with an ace thief, a kleptomaniac, a mass murderer and a whore-monger. Even if whore-mongering was his personal morality, it was as rotten as his public morality as a blood-thirsty killer and tyrant.

    That piece of grim truth turned two Abacha siblings into cry babies, defending the honour of their honour-deficient paterfamilias. Gumsu, a female, wailed: “Someone [should] tell Soyinka I liked his books when I was younger but that is where it ends. Today, I reject his stupid, foolish, insignificant statement.” But it was Abacha, her father, who history has pronounced “stupid, foolish and insignificant”, for his humongous appetite for sleaze and his unconscionable craze for others’ destruction.

    Gumsu, by the way, made a cameo appearance in Soyinka’s You Must Set Forth at Dawn, when both met at a public function abroad, in the heat of the NADECO and NALICON campaign, when Gumsu’s murderous father was after the scalp of the celebrated writer.

    Sodiq Abacha, a male, was much more abusive. To him, Soyinka was an eternal critic who never had the brains to enter government and right things. Besides, Soyinka allegedly fiddled with funds during his stint at the Federal Roads Safety Commission (FRSC) as chairman. It was satanic sarcasm, coming from the Abacha clan.

    Well, with a kleptomaniac father, Sodiq cannot know the value of a good name. So, it is quite easy for him to injure another person’s name. Besides, abuse is cheap.

    But as Sodiq was vomiting his trash, the news hit the wire that the United States had just frozen $ 458 million Abacha loot. Any further evidence this man was an unrepentant thief?

    The problem with Nigeria is moral federalism. As we speak, monuments in some parts of the country are named after the late Abacha who terrorised and raped his country, aside from Jonathan’s centenary award. But that is grand assault on the sensibility of right-thinking Nigerians.

    So, the Abacha clan had better shut up. Their father is doomed to infamy by his own bad choices. It is burden they are fated to carry as long as they live. So, they should seek God’s forgiveness for their father’s many evils, rather than throwing insane tantrums at Nigerians, grand and angry victims of their father’s reckless pillage.

  • Sanusi’s suspension and allied matters

    SIR: The manner of the suspension of Sanusi Lamido Sanusi as the Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria contravenes due process. And the reasons adumbrated by the Presidency are disjointed. The avalanche of diverse legal and political arguments for and against the appropriateness of the suspension is neither here nor there. What is germane is the President’s pronouncement in his recent media chat that he has absolute power to suspend the CBN Governor or anybody! Was it not in this democracy that the former President Obasanjo unilaterally suspended his deputy, Atiku.

    How was it possible for President Jonathan to usurp the powers of the judiciary in approving an absurd suspension of a President of Court of Appeal and the judiciary itself could no longer reinstate the PCA when it deemed it necessary? Aren’t there supposed to be separation of powers, and checks and balances between the executive, National Assembly (NASS) and judiciary?

    Are the NASS and Judiciary ever able to have any influence or control over the executive? Is the Federal Executive Council not equal to the President? Which minister or any other cabinet member can tell the President home truths? Even the VP dares not look at his boss in the eye and tell him what he doesn’t want to hear! Can’t the President decide not to have a cabinet for as long as it suits him?

    Nigerian President is simply too powerful to share governmental power with anybody! Please blame not the President but the constitution! No country has perfect constitution but ours is full of fundamental flaws, lacunae, loopholes, anomalies, inconsistencies and ambiguities. These fatal weaknesses subject the constitution to gross subjective manipulations and blatant misinterpretations. The situation where the President alone appoints people or recommends people for appointment as heads of all government Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) is out of sync with our socio-cultural and political orientation.

    It is worrying that a particular qualified and competent professor can’t become a Vice Chancellor of a Federal University if the President doesn’t like their face – it doesn’t matter if the professor is the choice of the university. Likewise, a particular qualified and competent candidate can’t become the rector of a state polytechnic if the governor has their own preferred candidate – it won’t matter if the candidate is the best for the position. Like Sam Omatseye opined “The governor in Nigeria is like a monarch, just as the president is like an emperor”. Lord Acton quipped “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. “Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it”, said William Pitt the Elder.

    A piece of information: In the case of Atiku versus Obasanjo, the Federal High Court, the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court ruled that the President can’t suspend a public officer he has no power to sack. Now that the President has said he has absolute power to fire anybody, does it mean he can unilaterally suspend the chairman of Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) without recourse to the Senate, during a general election or when the chairman is about to announce election results? While the constitution is an albatross around the country’s neck, the presidential system of government is the bane of the polity. Hence the adoption of a brand new constitution and a Nigerianised parliamentary democracy are vitally important for the country sooner rather than later.

    • Engr Yomi Akinola,

    Osun State College of Technology, Esa-Oke

  • Expectations from the National Conference

    SIR: I have always been an advocate of a Sovereign National Conference which our governments have always been opposed until President Jonathan now seems to have had a rethink.

    I still have my doubts as to whether the President will go the whole length. However, whatever his motives were, I believe we can hijack it to our advantage! I am particularly delighted at the calibre of nominees as delegates!

    One area I appeal to these delegates to address is the area of the obscene pays that attach to being in government at whatever level. There are projections that each delegate will go home with N12 million naira. I appeal to the delegates to fix a pay for themselves that will reflect the economic situation of the country! They can then go on from there to fix salaries that will attach to various offices inthe land, from the President to the Councillor. Anyone who feels that pay is too low for him should stay away and allow those who are only out to serve to come forward.

    They should recommend the scrapping of RMAFC,which has been recommending the outrageous pays that are paid to people in government,which pays make getting into office a do or die affair.

    The other day the erstwhile CBN Governor alleged that our legislators consumed 25% of the country’s recurrent expenditure which they denied vehemently. Senator Enyinaya,the Senate spokesperson later claimed it was only three percent.

    Granted that it is three percent, what that means is  that, even if we generously grant that there are about 5000 of them, it means they are consuming the entitlement of about five million people because that is what three percent of 170 million, Nigeria’s population comes to.

    Another area is that not less than 70% of our annual budget should be for capital expenditure. Anyway the trimming down of the compensations for public officers will take care of that.

    If this is all the conference will achieve, it will be quite an achievement as it will sanitize the polity.

    •Abiodun Sopitan

    masopitan@yahoo.com

  • Bank of Agriculture should look into our case

    SIR: I write in respect of the N150,000 loan taken from the Bank of Agriculture (BOA) in 2007. The loan was obtained at eight percent interest rate to plant cassava. The cassava project was unsuccessful

    due to late planting and low price at harvest. My creditor-the BOA branch at Ikare Akoko has taken me and others in my shoe to court with our indebtedness calculated at 17% interest rate. The branch claims it has power to vary/increare interest rate.

    Now, some of us want to pay back the loan but the bank is making this impossible by putting heavy load on our heads in insisting that repayment must not exceed 12 months with interest rate at 17% per year. I have emailed and called the BOA headquarters many times without response.

    As a poverty alleviation agency financed and regulated by the federal goverment, BOA should make loan repayment fair to poor Nigerians. The BOA Headqtarters should speak out so that Nigerians can know its loan repayment policy.

    • Osesanmi Tobi,

    Ikare Akoko, Ondo State.

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  • Sir Manuwa deserves centenary honour

    I feel I would be failing the entire community of physicians of Nigerian and indeed African origin world wide if I fail to speak up on the omission of Sir Samuel Manuwa from the list of persons honoured for their contributions to various fields of endeavor in Nigeria’s first 100 years. I don’t know what the criteria were that were used to select people for the list. But looking at the category headlined Pioneering Professionals, and which included Fredrick Rotimi Williams, Akintola Williams Esq; as well as a few other pioneering professionals, I was surprised I did not see Sir Samuel Manuwa’s name on the final list. As to why I believe his inclusion is very appropriate for this Centenary Celebration, I will proceed to explain the reason.

    He was the first surgeon in Africa of Native African Origin. He rose from humble roots as  the son of a clergyman from Itebu Waterside in present day Ondo State. Born in 1903, after a brilliant scholastic career through the Church Missionary School and Kings College Lagos, he proceeded to the University of Edinburgh Medical School where he qualified as a Doctor in 1926. At the time, the fashion was to get a basic professional qualification in whatever field you studied and return home. Later he trained in the Art of Surgery at the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. Postgraduate training in Medicine overseas is no easy task, even to his day, especially for a man of colour. It involves keeping your focus amidst racial bias, as a trainee apprentice, keeping your ability to smile in the face of unpleasant racial jokes and oftentimes insults.

    In 1934 he sat, passed and was called to join the Royal College of Surgeons as a Certified Surgeon and Fellow. With the full authority to carry the letters FRCS (Ed) after his name. He returned to Nigeria and re- joined the Government Health Department of West Africa as a Surgeon in the proper sense of the word. Being African, it was a feat that was unprecedented in the history of colonial Africa. He was sent to work all over Nigeria – East, West and North saving lives and inspiring many young high school students into the medical profession. He even designed a special surgical knife to improve and advance the frontiers of his profession for treating dreaded tropical ulcers. Indeed his professional excellence set a standard for medical care that made it possible for Africans in Nigeria and indeed West Africa to enjoy medical care at the frontiers of medicine as practiced internationally. He operated on tens of thousands of people in the span of his 18-year career as a pioneering surgeon. After 18 years practicing surgery, he could no longer resist administrative responsibilities. He was appointed Deputy Director of Medical Services. Later, he rose to become the first Nigerian Director of Medical Services for West Africa and later became the first Chief Medical Adviser to the Government of Nigeria.

    Among other things, in 1952 he saw to it that the entire African Hospital (General Hospital) floors in Lagos, were properly redone in Italian terrazzo just as the colonialists had done in their European Hospital (later named Creek Hospital now Military Hospital Onikan). Prior to that you were lucky if you didn’t catch hook worms from the floor if you didn’t wear shoes as an in-patient, especially in the patient bathrooms. He saw to it that all resources were made available to fight Tuberculosis which was then an African epidemic  neglected by the colonialists. Films were made that showed how to prevent and identify tuberculosis in Africans that cinema goers were shown in all cinema theatres in Nigeria before the feature films. Sir Samuel’s support and leadership won Nigeria the fight against tuberculosis in the 50’s and early 60’s. As the leader in the medical community of West Africa, he ensured that meritocracy and excellence became the yardstick for every thing that had to do with the medical practice and profession. It is safe to say that people respected him and held him in very high esteem so much so that her Royal Highness Queen Elizabeth II honored him with a knighthood in 1956 for his professional excellence and services to West Africa in the field of medicine. Among his accomplishments were the closing down of the Old Yaba Medical College and the setting up of the Ibadan University College Medical School and the University College Hospital (UCH) Ibadan. UCH was his brainchild and its  realization was his handwork.

    After a distinguished tenure as a medical administrator, he handed the baton of leadership to capable associates. Seeing that the nation still needed his wealth of unique experience, he was appointed as the first Nigerian Commissioner on the Federal Civil Service by the colonial government. He later humbly served as the deputy chief under Alhaji Sule Katagum after Nigeria became independent, despite being the first Nigerian Commissioner on the commission.

    He served as the Pro-chancellor and chairman of the university council of the University of Ibadan for very many years and was a guiding hand in developing UCH to  the centre of excellence it became from its inception to what I will refer to as the “Golden era of Nigerian Medicine” in the 60’s and 70’s when members of the Saudi Royal Family came to seek regular specialist care at the University College Hospital on Queen Elizabeth Road.

    In July 1975, Nigeria went through a sudden transition. General Yakubu Gowon was removed and Murtala Mohammed became Nigeria’s third head of state. At the time, Sir Manuwa was living in his official residence on Alexander Avenue in Old Ikoyi, a place he had lived since the 1950’s at least, with his devoted wife Lady Bella Manuwa. As the government announced sweeping reforms in the Federal Civil service, “he was retired with immediate effect”. This signaled the beginning of a massive retirement excercise. To worsen the humiliation, he was ordered to vacate his government residence “with immediate effect”. All pleas not to treat this distinguished Nigerian this way fell on deaf ears. For such a distinguished man, the shocking ill-treatment was unprecedented and undeserved, but he complied and moved to a place in Surulere. He fell sick soon after and died of coronary artery disease not unrelated to his humiliating treatment. This was a pioneering professional who was never involved in any financial malfeasance or impropriety of any kind what so ever.

    His death instilled a sense of insecurity among the medical community working in the government and university hospitals which exists to this day.

    It is just befitting that Sir Manuwa be honoured at this time of Nigeria’s centenary celebration. We saw lists that had his name online, only to find his name was not on the official list to the utter surprise of many people in the medical community. If a special award is given to him, it will be most welcome and it will be on record that a grave injustice done in 1975/76 is being corrected. It will not be the first time for such an occasion, after all, Akintola Williams Esq;  the doyen of the accounting profession was knighted for his services as pioneering accountant and philanthrophist responsible for the establishment of the MUSON Centre Onikan Lagos by Queen Elizabeth II. It was only after his international honour as the only Nigerian knighted by the Queen since 1963 that the federal government bestowed on him the appropriate national honour after he had refused to accept a lesser honour from the same federal government. Prof Wole Soyinka was on the “security watch list” of the military authorities when he won the Nobel Prize in Literature. The military quickly bestowed a national honour on “Kongi” at a special ceremony. Sir Samuel Manuwa deserves no less. He needs to be honoured as part of he centenary celebrations. If his family refuses like Felas family, that is for them to decide. For us physicians in the Nigerian medical community worldwide, he remains the “primus inter pares of Nigerian Medical Doctors”. His accomplishments will never be approached let alone equaled. He brought us to something we need back “the Golden era of Nigerian Medicine”.

     

    •Mabayoje jr M.D, writes from United States

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  • Wike’s lasting burden

    Even a child in the primary school should not be told about who the Supervising Minister for Education, Nyesom Wike, is. The Nigerian populace knows him better as the arrow head of the crises that have been rocking Rivers State, than as the Minister for Education he was supposed to be. Supposedly, he is better known as a rabble-rouser than a diplomat.

    His incessant showcasing of affront in the politics of Rivers offends every sensibility. His recent remarks that Governor Chibuike Amaechi of Rivers State would go to jail in the event that President Goodluck Jonathan wins in the 2015 presidential elections put Wike’s reputation in question.

    Conversely, this statement shows that Wike has exhausted all the avenues he knew to remove Amaechi from office. Wike had leaned on the cases that Amaechi had with some opposition members concerning the 2007 and 2011 gubernatorial elections in the state to make his boast of removing Amaechi, but when he has seen that that did not work, he prolonged his boast to 2015; a tactic he has been using to hoodwink his unsuspecting marooned followership in some local government areas of the state.

    It is left for those who still take Wike seriously to continue to follow him. But the in-thing is that if there is anybody who may be heading to the gulag before or after 2015 for impropriation of office, that person is invariably not Amaechi, but Wike. No matter what Wike thinks, the government of Amaechi has been in the full swing of administration since its inception. But just a fraction of the Nigerian institutions, such as the Ministry for Education that Wike was appointed to man, has been in total ramshackle and the minister was busy chasing after grasshopper round Amaechi’s building, hoping to hear when Amaechi would say stop.

    Wike’s swagger that the Port Harcourt International Airport and all the land and sea boarders in Rivers State would be shut down immediately the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) announces the victory of President Jonathan in 2015 to prevent Governor Amaechi from escaping, is a vacant show-off. Nevertheless, the statement shows that the second term of Mr. President would have more to vendetta than work to alleviate the plight of the hundreds of millions of Nigerians the unenthusiastic brag such as Wike’s, has jeopardised their future.

    The issue is that Wike, instead of accepting with courage that he is afraid of the political sagacity and dexterity of Amaechi, is making statements to the contrary. Wike continues to expose himself to public ridicule by saying that Rivers State is PDP, instead of accepting the fact that the party he belongs to has been slammed into being an opposition.

    Against all odds, Wike least expected that he would be in the opposition political party in Rivers State, therefore he is making every unprintable comment against Amaechi, so that his ill-fated followership will continue to be misled. What Wike does not realise before sending Amaechi to his prison in 2015 is that the state apparatuses are not complaining; they are of the statement that Amaechi has been accounting for every bit of his stewardship, consequently he has no reason to be afraid of any probe.

    It is understandable that Wike has no account to render on his own education stewardship other than how he has been fighting hard in making sure that Amaechi was removed and sent direct to prison without any forms of trial by a court of competent jurisdiction.

    Education in Nigeria has really suffered under Wike’s watch the same way he wants Rivers State to suffer because he wants to be controlling the power in the state from Abuja. Results today are that Wike does not make coherent statements, except those of war, kill and bury.

    Aside being the LGA chairman, Wike fervently became noticed when he was appointed as the Chief of Staff to the governor and subsequently minister; the latter being the position he has turned to his guerrilla base, from where he takes off to bomb Amaechi with unedited words and hopeless political strategies aimed at ousting Amaechi.

     

    Odimegwu Onwumere,

    Port Harcourt, Rivers State.

     

  • Celebrating centenary without Lokoja

    The present government of President Goodluck Jonathan’s decision to celebrate the one hundred years of amalgamation of both southern and northern parts of this country has been received by many a Nigerian with mixed feelings, hence the fragile foundation the country is now facing.

    Although the life of any nation to attain such period of years of existence called for celebration by any government and its people, the committee set up to organise the said centenary celebration has done a lot towards giving the country a befitting celebration, that would be remembered for a very long time to come in the anal of this country’s history.

    But the committee has failed to bring in some areas that played a significant role in the amalgamation of this country.

    The case of in point is Lokoja the headquarters of Kogi State which was neglected by the centenary celebration committee in ensuring the town played a greater role in the celebration.

    The people of Lokoja were not aware of any centenary celebration taking place, what we saw is just the beautification of some historical monuments by the state government. The state-owned radio station dished out some jingles to enlighten the populace, but how many people do listen to the radio station to have firsthand knowledge of what is happening?

    Lokoja town being the first state capital of Nigeria, where Lord Lugard settled and administered the country, it’s the same Lokoja, the confluence town, that led to the idea of unification of this country.

    Lokoja was opportune to play greater role of witnessing the lowering of Royal Niger Company and the hoisting of the Union Jack flag.

     

    Bala Nayashi

    Lokoja, Kogi State.