The Nation Newspaper

Category: Comments

What $2 billion can do for Nigeria’s poor
All the billions flying here and there can truly make anyone dizzy. Perhaps the rented crowd lining up behind thieves are themselves so dizzy that they are not able to exactly tell what this is really about. We are talking about billions of dollars, trillions of naira allegedly made away, stolen, diverted to fund phantom and fictitious contracts in less than three years, and some are wailing and whining, alleging witch-hunt.

For some reason, the media has been playing up the $2.2 billion component of the heist that you might think that is all that this is about. I had fallen for that that too, as this exercise started out as one to consider to a few things we could have done with $2 billion to improve the quality of life of our people. Then I decided to check up the figures. So far, total extra budgetary interventions as collated by the committee which probed the Jonathan-era arms purchase was found to be N643.8 billion, while the foreign currency component was $2.2 billion. In other words, we are talking of over N1 trillion. There is a report of 53 failed contracts valued at $2.3 billion and N13 billion; phantom contracts worth N2.2 billion, $1.6 billion and 9.9 million Euros; and $132 million dollars and 9 million Euros transferred out of the country under instructions for purposes not ascertained.

So, in all, what are we talking about?

If you are not feeling dizzy at this point, I give you kudos. As I can see, we have before us at least a trillion naira that could have been put into good use. The painful bit about this is the impression often given that our problem is that lack of resources, when we all know that is the least of our problems. It is even more annoying that once the talk shifts to doing just a little for the poor, all kinds of pretence-economists come, daggers-drawn, to tell us how unsustainable such a policy is. They have been lining up to shout down the plan to make payment of N5,000 to the most vulnerable among us. Where will the money come from? Giving handout does not make any sense. What can be done with five thousand naira?

One of the challenges we have today is not simply that of policy makers being too far away from the people, opinion moulders are sometimes too distant to be able to feel the pulse of the people. Now that some of our columnists write from the cosy corners of private jets and privileged tables of the high and mighty, it is understandable that they are no longer able to tell what N5,000 will do for the people at the lowest end of the pool in the informal sector.

Nigeria is definitely not Finland, but it cannot be completely unknown to economics, as often led to believe, that a society will seek to put a bit of cushion at the back of its most vulnerable, as it is being contemplated here, if even today, Finland’s government is drawing up plans to give every one of its citizens a basic monthly income of 800 euros. Some commentators miss the point when they argue that government has no business making that token payment that it is better for it to concentrate on creating an enabling environment for job and wealth creation. Are we saying the two cannot be done together? Where were the commentators when government bailed out banks and other sectors with trillions of naira from our commonwealth? What is wrong with bailing out the poor? We have not talked about the impact such direct payment will do for the economy of the poor. We have not even considered the sense in the conditional cash transfer that links payment to maternal and child healthcare.

How much does it cost to give children in public schools a meal a day? How much is N5,000 for the most vulnerable 20 million Nigerians compared to what has been made away by a few Nigerians, over the few years? I will rather Nigeria, for once, risks putting a little into the hands of the poor. Let us take $2 billion from what was alleged to have been made away with. At N200 a dollar, that is N400 billion. Now with only N400 billion, we can procure basic health insurance premium from private Health Management Organisations (HMOs) at N20,000 per head for 20 million Nigerians. That way, we would have pulled additional 20 million Nigerians into the health insurance net, assuring them of immediate, regular access to health care, which will make great and immediate impact on quality of life and productivity in the country.

Can you imagine what N400 billion pumped into the health sector will do to grow that sector? Can you imagine how many thousands of jobs that will be created, how that will put money in the hands of health care workers, hospitals, insurance companies and even the banks, not to talk of its overall effect on the economy? Needless to say that in tackling our social problems, there are a myriad of economic opportunities that can help drive an all-round, inclusive development of the economy.

With N400 billion, we can guarantee 20 million Nigerian children, at N20,000 per head (estimated market price for 2 shots), rotavirus vaccination to protect them against diarrhoea. Now, consider the fact that the vaccine is being administered to children in India for $1 and the opportunities and cost savings that will come as we bulk-purchase on the generic drugs being administered in India, it means we will be able to go beyond rotavirus. We can administer vaccines such as Pneumococcal conjugate, MMR, Meningococcal conjugate, Chicken-pox and others on millions of Nigerian children, who, at the moment, are not immunised against many of these childhood killer diseases, as these vaccines are excluded from the NPI immunisation list.

Unfortunately, too many people are lost to their party, ethnic and religious affiliations to be able to think clearly. Billions of dollars frittered away mean little to them. N2.1 billion from the commonwealth in the hands of one man, in pretence of running a “multi-media campaign” for a political party is nothing. They are too lost to get it. They cannot see the link between the mismanagement and corruption of yesterday and the exchange rate of today. Perhaps when we begin to ask questions from those who claimed to have coordinated the economy only yesterday, we will begin to get somewhere.

Some ask us why we write. We do because we understand how corruption adversely affects us all. We write because it affects us, if not directly, it does indirectly affect us. Soldiers who might have been alive today, looking forward to Christmas died, unnecessarily. Children, who need not die, are dying, due to lack of access to basic healthcare. Yet some are lining up behind those whose actions and inaction led us to where we are. They think that because they can afford the luxuries of life for themselves and their immediate families, all is well. Myopia only takes the fool so far. The children denied the best start in life, simply because your heroes stole the country blind, will not forget, when tomorrow comes, how their tomorrow was stolen yesterday. Those snoring in their cosy corners today, might be the first victims of a tomorrow, not moulded into shape by the hands in control, today. A token N500 billion voted for social investment in 2016 is only an urgent, tiny first step in the direction of pulling up those at the bottom of the pyramid.
- Olorunfemi works for a Nigerian Communications Consultancy firm.
December 22, 2015
Ikpeazu: Combining physical and stomach infrastructure

Governor Okezie Ikpeazu of Abia State may have drawn from recent history to drive the two concepts of physical infrastructure and stomach infrastructure simultaneously. He is running on the two lanes; building the badly dilapidated roads of Abia and particularly renewing the city of Aba and at the same time building human capacity by attending to the people’s immediate needs. Two of his pet projects – the Friends of Abia Schools Adoption Initiative (FASAI) and Feeding of School Pupils obviously fall in the line of stomach infrastructure.

Indeed, until Governor Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti State popularized the concept of stomach infrastructure and drove on that plank to oust an incumbent governor out of power, Nigerians never knew the dangers of ignoring the concept and the inherent power and goodwill derivable from the practice for a leader. It is today a proven theory that upholding the practice of stomach infrastructure must be an essential character of a political leader and political leadership in Nigeria of today. It has since entered into our political books that the victory of Fayose over the incumbent Governor Kayode Fayemi in the June 21, 2014, was the vindication of the wisdom in stomach infrastructure.

The lesson that emerged thereafter from the Ekiti scenario was that, for effective and impactful political leadership, both physical and stomach infrastructure must be given due consideration by any leader who wants to remain a legend in the hearts of the citizenry. The two are meaningful goals of democracy and therefore none must be emphasized above the other. The two must run concurrently. Okezie Ikpeazu got this message, loud and clear.

What then is physical infrastructure as against stomach infrastructure? Physical infrastructure relates to the building of physical projects – roads, bridges, hospitals, schools, monumental buildings, etc. Today, Ikpeazu is constructing 45 roads and two bridges in Abia and these cut across the three geopolitical zones of the state. It is no more news, also, that he is constructing four roads in Aba with cement technology or what experts call, rigid pavement technology thereby blazing a trail as far as this technology is concerned in Nigeria. This is because apart from the airport tarmacs and factory platforms where big engines and machines are installed, cement technology is not yet a common experience in Nigeria, especially in road construction. He is daring the nationwide economic crunch to execute this high cost intensive project at this straightened time.

On the contrary, stomach infrastructure looks down to the people’s immediate needs: empowerment programme for unemployed youths and widows; maintenance assistance to the aged; health foundation to assist the poor; agric facilities for the rural poor farmers; skill acquizition centres for poor unskilled men and women; loan grants to enable them take off in little measure; direct food relief to the poorest of the poor; borehole in rural communities to solve water scarcity problems; establishment of small-scale cottage industries in the villages where the rural community can work and also acquire experience on how to produce minor things and many more.

Indeed, it is from this perspective that the governor has launched his pet project of Feeding School Pupils in 170 primary schools in the state, three times a week. Under the Universal Basic Education provisions, the governor is driving a pilot arrangement of feeding primary school pupils three in 10 schools in the 17 local councils of the state. The pupils are to be fed on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. This action will have to be executed in schools in the rural areas with high indigent population. The target public is the poorest of the poor, pupils from indigent homes who study under very unhealthy situations. The governor wants to create an enabling environment for them and share his little milk of human kindness.

Also, as part of his 51st birthday celebration, the governor also launched the school adoption initiative and invited the friends of Abia to come and rediscover their roots and give back to the communities that made them by adopting indigent pupils and volunteering to renovate the dilapidated structures of the schools. This project is a novel idea which is a bit different from government tradition of renovating and equipping primary schools in rural, urban and semi-urban areas. The approach is to identify the worst primary schools in each of the local councils and give them a facelift with the hope that when the worst of these schools are upgraded, the effect on the entire primary school system will be enormous.

The governor regretted that the primary schools which form the base of the entire school system have long been neglectted for long due to a number of factors, which include lack of Old Boys Association, Parents Teachers Association etc. He noted that pupils in these schools are exposed to extreme weather conditions including sitting on bare floors. Thus, the aim is to use the project to turn around the poorest primary schools across the state. The project is designed to give hope to pupils from poor schools by getting well-to-do individuals within and outside the state to adopt such schools and in the process enhance their fortunes and by extension the intellectual horizon of the benefiting pupils. Most of the influential members of the public are products of these schools which in their heydays were glorious institutions. Ikpeazu’s motive in this project is to provide an opportunity for these notable citizens to give back to the society, in this case, the schools that produced them.

In the same vein, the governor also announced a N20,000 monthly stipend for the first 125 intakes of the newly commissioned Skill Acquizition Centre built by the National Directorate of Employment (NDE) at Otueke in Ugwunagbo Local Council of the state. His wife is also running another pet project, Vicar Hope Foundation, through which she is attending to the immediate needs of widows, the handicapped and the less privileged in the society.

Stomach infrastructure, indeed is a moral suasion which is about giving governance a human face. It is about understanding the bottom-top, gradual approaches in developmental strides. It is about carrying everybody along, everyone in his own pace. By identifying the need for a convergence between physical and stomach infrastructure in Abia State, Governor Ikpeazu is interspersing power with remorse. Remember Shakespeare? “The abuse of greatness is when it disjoins remorse from power.”

Adindu is Chief Press Secretary to Abia governor.

December 21, 2015
Building new civil society mindset for advocacy

The STAR – System for Transformation and Result – methodology of measuring impact is a change process and a tool suite that seeks to promote sustainable organizational development. It also seeks to address elements of the complex environments in which Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) do their work. It is a programme developed by Root Change. Judging from lessons learnt from two decades of how CSOs do their work, the programme is what SACE – Strengthening Advocacy and Civic Engagement – project uses to assess the impact of NGOs and CSOs in bringing about transparency, accountability and good governance. Central to achieving transparency and good governance is the question of the ability of CSOs to interrogate policy makers and ask hard but sensible questions. Are civil society groups better equipped now to deal with the civilian government now than they were in the days of the military? If not what then seems to be the impediment in constructively engaging our civilian government and what impedes their ability to help with formulating policies that are people-friendly? Why is it that civil society groups seem to be working at cross purposes with the media and the civilian government? How should CSOs build capacity, network and form alliances that put them at the front burner of national discourse. Are CSOs sharing their knowledge, or are they tiny clusters of islands with ideas that are marooned in a sea of opportunity? Twenty years from whence CSOs began to be the 5th Estate of the realm in Nigerian politics, what impact have they really made?

These were some of the questions that were to engage the minds of a distinguished audience put together at the Barcelona Hotel, Abuja on December 14. Under the Strengthening Advocacy and Civil Engagement, SACE, a project being implemented for the USAID by Chemonics, participants at an evening of discussion and conversation were to listen to three civil society icons well established in the fine art of civil engagement and advocacy: Clement Nwankwo, founding member of the Civil Liberties Organisation CLO, now executive director of Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre, PLAC, Hajia Saudatu Mahdi of Women’s’ Rights Advancement and Protection Alternative, WRAPA, and Hon Igariwey Enwo, lawyer and politician and civil society advocate.

That evening, Clement Nwankwo told us that the CLO of 1987 was set up with only one motive – to drive the military from power, and install a civilian government. The tactics and the ground rules favoured the use of linguistics and brashness of trench warfare: ‘they’ were there at the other side and we were here on this other side. We threw verbal bombs at them and they replied and charged at us like rhinoceroses, picked up and jailed our leaders. At the extreme, they would have killed our leaders just the same way General Abacha did Ogoni leader Kenule Saro-Wiwa and thereby provoke an international outrage. At that time as well, those at the forefront of the call for the military to leave were lawyers. Their argument then was that leadership as proffered by the military was antediluvian and an anathema to the concept of transparency and good governance. It’s a merry crowd now, and the merriment is apparent with the crowd of CSOs in the fray. But soon after the military were out of the system, several issues began to crop up. Corruption became rife – rifer than what we had with the military. Some of us wonder if indeed some of the monies said to be stolen actually exist. In a Citizens Score Card report published by the Africa Network for Environment and Economic Justice, ANEEJ and Leadership Initiative for Transformation and Empowerment, LITE-Africa a few days ago in Benin City, more than 84 projects that were supposed to have been executed by the Niger Delta Institutions – DESOPADEC, EDSOGPADEC, Niger Delta Development Commission, the Ministry of the Niger Delta, OSOPADEC have been abandoned. Even the anti-corruption agencies set up to fight the massive cases of graft and corruption have been taken hostage by judicial, the executive and legislative shenanigans. Under the civilian governments from 1999, impunity, gross human rights abuses, poverty and underdevelopment have been institutionalized. And the questions were: what is to be the mode of engagement and advocacy for transparency and good governance in the Niger Delta in particular and Nigeria in general? Should CLOs continue as if we are still under the gulag of the military irrespective of the flowing agbadas and babanrigas?

The one person who seemed to have developed an effective advocacy strategy and tactics in that hall that evening was Hajia Saudatu Mahdi coordinator, Women’s Rights Advancement and Protection Alternative, (WRAPA). Mahdi has helped to develop a national law on violence against women – the legislative Advocacy Coalition on Violence against Women, passed in 2015. To achieve this, Mahdi said she developed her own set of rules. The first thing she did was understand the context of what she was fighting for – a fight on behalf of very vulnerable persons – teenagers being married off to very wealthy senators and politicians. Two she interacted with, and formed a strong alliance with three key stakeholders – the media, the policy makers and took in the counsel of very knowledgeable persons. She carried everybody along, not minding if it was a big NGO or a small one. ‘I had a woman problem but the key persons who helped in the fight were men’, she said. Mahdi also spent some money to ‘make noise’ – underscoring the fact that if you have courage and conviction, you were not to consider the policy makers as enemies. You would see them together with the media, as partners in progress.

But it was Otiveh Igbuzoh, executive director of African Centre for Leadership who nailed it at the end. He said that many CSOs still carry the mindset that the military is still in power. In trying to promote transparency, accountability, many CSOs are still in the trenches, hurling bombs and grenades at the civilian government. To strengthen the supply and demand chain, forge partnerships, sustain the dialogue, Otiveh believes that CSOs must collaborate with government as frenemies instead of seeing them as enemies.

Coming from the standpoint that we cannot still be doing things the same old-fashioned way, I had an axe to grind with the WRAPA coordinator. In today’s world, we no longer talk of gender empowerment. People are talking of gender mainstreaming – a situation where you fight for the rights of both sexes instead of focusing on feminine issues. Focusing only on fighting for the girl child or fighting women issues effectively checkmates whatever chances that the boy-child – the Almajiri or the boy-child in eastern Nigeria would ever have in a dynamic country like Nigeria. I also believe that had Clement Nwankwo known that the civilians who would take over from the military would be this less than accountable and transparent, perhaps we would not be where we are today.

Etemiku is of Africa Network for Environment and Economic Justice, Benin City

December 21, 2015
Reforming the Nigerian Civil Service: My struggles, my pain, my triumphs (VI)
When I entered the Nigerian Civil Service in the eighties, it was clearly a decade plus after the administrative pioneers left, but the bureaucratic culture had fully taken hold; the civil service system was already in a free fall. John Galbraith, the famous US economist, was right when he noted that ‘It’s much easier to point out the problem than it is to say just how it should be solved.’ We can also adapt this by saying that it is easier to lament the predicament of the civil service system than to get into the trench of fabricating the solution to it. Euclid, the Greek mathematician once remarked that “there is no “royal road” to geometry.’ There is equally no such royal road to reforming the civil service system in Nigeria. The decision to commit to administrative reform did not come easy; the rot and decline had been there before I even made the decision to go to school. But my curiosity got the best of me, and I wondered: What led to the present situation of a civil service that was adjudged one of the best in the Commonwealth in the late 60s and the early 70s?

When I eventually decided on researching the civil service in Nigeria, I knew that I was not just an intellectual motivated by an abstract situation; I was also a practitioner. Thus, as a civil servant-intellectual, I had the unique opportunity to confront theory with troubled practice. Hence, there was no way I could be an idealist with his eyes in the starry sky. I had my feet on the trembling ground of bureaucratic malfunction. My research focus was therefore motivated by a statement of Marie Curie, the French physicist: ‘One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done.’

So, seeing that the civil service system in Nigeria has become what it has become, what is to be done? This is one of the most difficult questions in the whole of history? V. I. Lenin seemed to be the first to ask the question in relation to the Russian Revolution he led in the 19th century. Within the context of administrative reform in Nigeria, this question cuts into two complementary questions-Where is the civil service headed? How can it get to where it is headed? One of the commendable contributions of the last three Nigerian governments to reform thinking in Nigeria is the formulation of the National Strategy on Public Service Reform (NSPSR), a reformulation of the public service reform strategy put together in 2003. I consider this document an irreducible reform blueprint for a simple reason: it has the weight of historical reform hindsight behind it. The vision behind the NSPSR’s framework of reform is beautifully simple: A world-class public service delivering government policies and programmes with professionalism, excellence and passion.

I have been too long in the civil service not to however understand that this vision misses out on an antecedent but fundamental goal-the urgent need for a sustainable paradigm shift in productivity. The challenge of productivity in Nigeria brings to the fore the glaring absence of a national productivity paradigm around which Nigeria’s governance trajectory can be computed as a strategy for mitigating a nascent culture of institutionalised waste in human resource management. Good governance should really be premised on the capacity of the Nigerian state to efficiently and effectively provide adequate goods and services that will constitute the dividends of democracy for Nigerians. But then the task of governance itself has a subtle way of undermining the possibility of an effectively calibrated national productivity framework that affects governance.

What are the challenges of national productivity that Nigeria faces? Let us outline just three indicators: a) the challenge that Nigeria faces as a resource dependent mono-cultural economy is one of harnessing resource efficiency to accelerate growth in the economy; b) the average output of the Nigerian workforce reflects, unarguably, low marginal productivity of labour even as national productivity is much more than just labour productivity; and c) given the relationship between productivity, performance and service delivery on the one hand, and the fact that government consumes considerable tax resources as perhaps the single largest employer of labour and provider of services in the economy on the other, Nigeria will hardly advance beyond the capability and productivity of its public service.

The summary of the predicament is that the cost of governance undermines the efficiency of national productivity. And this unbridled cost automatically generates institutional waste of such enormity that it multiplies and invades every aspect of the Nigerian administrative institutions and processes. If the vision of a world class public service is necessarily subordinated to that of instigating a national productivity paradigm shift, then the next question jumps at us: How can the civil service system be reformed to achieve such a critical national goal? Twenty seven years in the civil service is too long for me not to generate an understanding of what the trajectory of reform should look like. For Theobald Smith, ‘Research is fundamentally a state of mind involving continual re-examination of the doctrines and axioms upon which current thought and action are based. It is, therefore, critical of existing practices.’ Thus, my first research conviction is that the reform of the civil service system cannot be backward looking; it cannot be directed towards regaining the status of the service in the 60s and the 70s.

On the contrary, the civil service system must be reformed to becoming a new public service characterised as (a) fast moving, intelligent, professional, information-rich, flexible, adaptable and entrepreneurial; (b) less employee-focused and rule-driven, deliver quality service; (c) performance-focused, accountable and inspired to uphold the vision of a transformed Nigeria; (d) capable of creating the policy climate that will unlock the energy of the private sector and other sectors and to install a new productivity paradigm in the national economy; and (e) operated by multidisciplinary team of new generation public managers and project teams. The new Nigerian public service would be backstopped by a four-point reform agenda.

The first is the urgent assemblage of a new generation of public managers dedicated to the agenda of a new productivity paradigm. This becomes important because the new public service requires those who understands what it means and can strategically drive it to excellence and efficiency. The ‘new professionals’ therefore must be leaders, rather than mere administrators, with all the emotional, intellectual and cultural capital required by such a complex system as the Nigerian public service. The new public managers would not work in the capacity of transactional leadership which is essentially a problem-solver; thermostat for regulating the administrative temperature, especially when standards are not met. Rather, the leadership would be based on a shared transformative capacity which is necessary within the governance network that the 21st century reform must conform to.

The second point on the reform agenda is even more critical. It involves reengineering the MDAs management system into performance-oriented, technology-enabled and social compact or accountable business model. This becomes the institutional model that the new public service professional must work with to deliver on the productivity objective. This implies that there is a need to rethink the ways and manners in which government business is carried out if the MDAs are to become more strategic and less bureaucratic in service delivery. As they are presently, we made the point earlier in part five that the MDAs are operating simultaneously under two contradictory business models, the Weberian and the neoliberal. The challenge is to streamline the business model into a neo-Weberian framework that creatively takes the best of the new managerialism and the old Weberian models.

The third point of reform involves reorienting the public service into a rebranded and ethically-focused profession. At the heart of this rebranded public service are ethical standards like integrity, honesty, accountability, transparency, and the sense of responsibility that ensures that there is a readiness to explain how decisions are made. This could be achieved by taking serious the imperative of re-professionalization. This implies a change in the culture of doing things which cannot occur simply by changing regulations, structures, processes and technology, but by changing the orientation of public servants through a robust competency-driven, competitive, people-centred re-professionalization scheme. This re-professionalization process constitutes a prominent dimension of the performance management system. This process involves, for instance, the need to evolve a new career management system leading to the acquisition of officers with capacities and skills in specialised fields of knowledge.

The final point requires, as a specific performance issue, strengthening and leveraging Public-Private Partnership to facilitate and deepen effective and efficient service delivery. This is predicated on the fact that (a) government does not have the capacity to do everything that will make the citizens’ lives worth living; and (b) government cannot afford to achieve the little it could by being rule-bound, unresponsive and inefficient; it requires a fundamental change that will make it lean, decentralised, effective, creative and responsive; and there are little resources available to government to do anything. The way out is to explore the possibility of a functional division of labour that brings the private sector into the development agenda of the government.

Every serious agenda deserves attention, and a reform agenda all the more so because reforming the civil service system in Nigeria is the first condition for national development. Nigeria has had three governments since the inauguration of the democratic dispensation in 1999. The PMB administration is the fourth, and is more suitably positioned, and more favoured by administrative history, to oversee the required overhauling of the Nigerian public service. the change agenda of the new administration has the specifics of its tasks and responsibilities cut out for it.
- Dr. Olaopa is a retired Federal Permanent Secretary
tolaopa2003@gmail.com

tolaopa2003@yahoo.com

www.tunjiolaopa.com

Abuja
December 20, 2015
Biafra: The gulf between Igbo leaders and masses
The wide gulf between the Igbo masses and the political class is about to be widened dangerously.

The mindless strategy of using the blood, tears and sorrows of frustrated Igbo youths who have lost faith in Nigeria, to curry jobs and favour from President Muhammadu Buhari could create a huge chasm between the leaders and the led in Igbo land.

The meeting of a section of Igbo leaders in Lagos, Friday, who claimed that the pro-Biafra agitators were angry at the obvious exclusion of Ndigbo by General Buhari’s government, is purely designed to use the blood and pains of these youths to merely achieve access to Buhari (which has been denied them) and also curry attention, patronages and relevance.

They know they were lying. They are dangerously threading on a path that could turn the youth against them.

The truth is that the humiliation Ndigbo are made to endure for 45 years, the unjust political structure, the number of states, local governments and political representatives, coupled with the refusal to implement the 2005 political reform conference decision that approved additional state for the South East are at the root of the agitation by millions of Igbo youths for a separate nation.

The political structure that makes it impossible for Igbo land to grow economically, the structure that makes it difficult for marooned and frustrated youths to be accommodated fairly in their father’s land, the structure that encourages external forces to impose leaders on Ndigbo, leaders who in turn owe allegiance to those forces than to their own people – Carpet-Beggary that has been lifted up to the level of a religion.

All these are at the root of the frustrations of Ndigbo and these leaders know that.

Appointment into Buhari’s government is not the reason for the agitation for Biafra. Those trying to use these unfortunate bloodletting to get themselves accommodated into Buhari’s dinner table while remaining silent on the real issues of structural imbalance are only giving the public the impression that they entered a deal with the federal government to try and stop the protests for personal rewards to their cabal.

The world knows that while they were drinking champagne with Jonathan, these boys stormed Enugu Radio Station to declare Biafra Republic in June 2014. While these Igbo leaders were having a good time with the last administration, these same boys stormed Enugu Government House and hung the Biafra flag. Buhari was not President then.

The hopelessness of a future in this political prison, as represented by this unitary structure, frightens them so much that they can only see a bleak future before them. These leaders, who are asking Buhari to decorate the prison, replace the mat in the prison with a mattress and allow them tomatoes stew on Sundays in the prison, should know that these boys want the prison wall to come down flat through restructuring and not making the prison more comfortable.

Elders should not engage in acts that would seal the fate of their progeny just for pecuniary gains that would only be postponing the day of reckoning.

Everybody knows that for 16 years they have been growing in their number, crying for restructuring and level playing field in Nigeria.

Their agitation has nothing to do with appointment of more Ndigbo into Buhari’s government. Granting Ndigbo 20 ministerial slots will not stop the agitation; the youths want a level playing field for all Nigerians. Those packaging this falsehood of appointing more Ndigbo into Buhari’s government will only incur the wrath of the youths. The truth is that the structure of Nigeria is clearly unacceptable to them.
- Uko is the founder of Igbo Youth Movement (IYM) and leader of South East Democratic Coalition
December 20, 2015
Ugwuanyi and burden of governance
It is axiomatic that a leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way. But most times, the encumberances and challenges associated with leadership often derail leaders. But the ability to overcome such challenges, differentiate a leader from others.

Mounting the saddle as governor of Enugu State, Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi was faced with several challenges enough to weigh any leader down. But he has not allowed the challenges to derail his administration as he has tackled them headlong. This has manifested in his leadership style. Before his emergence as governor, Ugwuanyi, had shown leadership in his various fields of endeavour including in the House of Representatives where he was a member for 12 years. His choice as the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) consensus governorship candidate by the state party stakeholders received overwhelming support and endorsements from the people. Ugwuanyi’s victory in the poll was in the circumstance, not a surprise to many, considering that all indices ahead of the poll were in his favour.

On assumption of office, many had wanted or expected Ugwuanyi to commence political fight with his predecessor, Sullivan Chime, and other political opponents. But that is not in Ugwuanyi’s character. Indeed, during the electioneering campaigns, he neither engaged anybody in war of words nor cast aspersion against any.

Since mounting the saddle, Ugwuanyi’s administration has been carrying everybody in the state along, irrespective of the party affiliations. His government policies and decisions have been altruistic, humane and eclectic. His open door policy has taken his government to the people at the grassroots. In Enugu today, residents and people do not only see their governor on television or read government policies on newspapers, they are being consulted and dialogued with before government policies and programmes are formulated and pronounced.

In the areas of human empowerment, workers’ welfare and infrastructural developments, Ugwuanyi’s government has made several remarkable and laudable strides, despite the dwindling revenues in the country. Before the award of any contract or initiation of policy, Ugwuanyi takes out time to visit the nooks and crannies of the state to understudy the true situation of infrastructural challenges and other problems. Determined to fulfill his promise to provide equitable distribution of dividends of democracy in the state and constitute a broad-based committee for developing the entire zones of the state, he constituted a committee on Enugu State Urban Renewal with Architect Chris Offor as its chairman. It was after this that the state government awarded contract for the construction of several roads across the state. Such roads currently undergoing construction include the ever busy but dilapidated Ninth mile Corner Ngwo road, Abakpa Nike and Nike Lake Roads, Opi-Nsukka dual carriage way, Amankwo-Ameke-Amah brewing junction, 9th Mile by-pass, Ohom Oba junction-Imilike Ani-Ezimo Agu- Imilike- Ogbodu Aba- Obollo Etiti- Amalla-Obollo –Afor- Udenu Ring roads.

Others are Enugu Road-Nsukka- Junction Umuezebi Road, post office -Roundabout- Odenigbo Roundabout, Ogurugu road–Ikenga Hotels Junction and Obechara Road Junction-Umuakashi-mechanic village-Ikenga Hotels Junction. Unlike in the past, the road contracts were awarded to reputable companies.

Governor Ugwuanyi has since commissioned 15km Inter-Town- Connection (ITC) 2.5MVA Injection Sub-Station at Ezi-Nze in Udi Local Government Area that will provide electricity to communities across Udi, Uzo-Uwani and Igbo-Etiti Local Government Areas of the state. His government has also procured vehicles for security agencies; completed the impassable Ogbete Main Market entrance road project, continued the rehabilitation work at Airport Roundabout/ Orie Emene/ St. Patrick’s College/Eke-Obinagu road project.

Also the government has rehabilitated roads in New Haven Mbanefo II, constructed drains, culverts, earthworks, asphalt wearing course at Ugwogo Nike Ikem Road. The governor has laid foundation stone for a 200-bed Ultra Modern Specialist Hospital at Amalla, Orba in Udenu Local Government Area; site and services of Trinity Housing Estate by Enugu State Housing Development Corporation (ENHDC), located along old Airport Road, Enugu.

Also not left out in the scheme of things are the workers in the state. On assumption of office, Governor Ugwuanyi cleared backlog of salaries owed workers. Since then his government has not relented in ensuring that workers’ welfare are being taken care of as at when due. He has consistently engaged them in dialogue in a bid to carry them along as partners in progress. That was why when some demystified politicians in the state recently tried to pitch the workers against his government through misrepresentation of facts, the workers quickly resisted the plot to disappointment of those behind it.

Ugwuanyi’s leadership style is an indication that there are better days ahead for the people of the state. It is also a true manifestation of his readiness to provide good leadership and governance, virtues that seem to be scare in the country, especially at this critical point of the country’s economic challenges. It takes more than prudence in leadership, especially now for a governor to have achieved these milestones within a short period in office. But for Ugwuanyi, that is not an issue because as a financial guru, prudence is part and parcel of his life.
- Alamu, an undergraduate wrote from Agbani road, Enugu State.
December 16, 2015
Government unusual in Kaduna
Mallam Nasir el Rufai’s towering pedigree as a seasoned administrator and technocrat all too easily marked him out as one who must succeed as he mounted the saddle as the Governor of Kaduna State in May. Coincidentally, on assumption of office, the new governor had his job cut out for him. El Rufai inherited dubiously depleted state treasury, decayed infrastructure, ethnic and religious tension and hoards of hungry, angry and disillusioned citizenry. He was confronted with a people and a state desperately yearning for change and renewal. The consensus among the citizenry was (and remains) that failure by whatever guise could never be an option. Mercifully, six months down the road, the trust and confidence reposed in Mallam Nasir El Rufai by millions of voters in Kaduna State are beginning to bear juicy fruits even much earlier than expected.

Poised to speedily rework Kaduna and restore the dignity and honour of its long-suffering people, Mallam El Rufai went to work barely minutes after taking the oath of office. With less than a month in office, he became the first governor elected in 2015 to submit the names of his nominees for positions of commissioners and special advisers to the state House of Assembly for confirmation. While at it, Mallam El Rufai also became the first governor in Nigeria to attach portfolios of his commissioner-nominees to the state House of Assembly.Expectedly this novel move aided the speedy ratification of the nominees.

Considering that the governor inherited a near-empty treasury and given also the nation’s dwindling economic fortunes, the governor and his equally hard-working deputy, Bala Barnabas Bantex, have since taken 50 per cent cuts in their salaries and allowances while commissioners and the aides of the governor and his deputy have also taken massive cuts in their salaries and allowances. Indeed by June, just one month after taking office, the El Rufai administration had slashed overheads by a whooping 60 per cent. In the bid to plug leakages in the system, the administration among other things, prohibited the collection of cash revenues by Ministries, Departments and Agencies and promptly adopted the Treasury Single Account (TSA).

Even more profound is El Rufai’s deliberate and tenacious efforts to bring government closer to the people with a view to having the citizenry participate fully in the formulation of crucial policies and taking decisions on how they should be governed. In Kaduna State today, a few elites no longer sit in cozy offices or hotel rooms to determine the fate of millions of other people. Governor El Rufai has introduced monthly town hall meetings across the state. At these town hall meetings, the governor and members of his team report back to the people on programmes and policies of the government and then take feedbacks from them. The feedbacks and other inputs from the citizenry at these town hall meetings have been shaping the policies and programmes of the administration.

The governor however upped the ante on Saturday November 28 when he convened a town hall meeting on the 2016 budget at the General Hassan Katsina Government House. The event was another first – it was the first time a governor in Nigeria would be subjecting a state budget estimate to the scrutiny of the entire electorate before presenting it to the House of Assembly for approval and ratification.

The 2016 budget for Kaduna State, which was aptly named “Budget of Sacrifice, Restoration and Change”, is anchored on the commitments outlined in the Restoration Programme, the manifesto platform on which the Kaduna State APC campaigned. The governor was clear and unambiguous about the thrust and philosophy underling the 2016 budget, which is”to make Kaduna State great again by reversing the neglect that the public interest has suffered, to restore hope in our people and foster the sort of harmony in our communities that is conducive to peace and security”.

In the budget, Governor El Rufai underscored the determination of his administration to deepen the capacity of the people to make the best choices for themselves, if they are properly educated, given decent healthcare, and jobs in a secure environment. On this score he prioritized job creation, health, education and security

With the budget, Governor ElRufai is also seeking to put to an end the gory era when government seemed to exist only for those who lead it or work for it. In the past, once the political elites and public servants had taken care of themselves, they usually leave too little resources for the people. For example, the previous administration in Kaduna spent a minimum of 80% of available resources on itself. Sometimes the proportion was higher. “How can the political elite justify spending public resources mainly on an influential minority? Is it fair or justifiable that the voters should be without stake in a system that draws its legitimacy from their mandate?”, Governor El Rufai queried at the town hall meeting.

The governor noted that year after year, only the recurrent part of budgets in the state attained perfect performance. Capital investments repeatedly suffered, sometimes reaching only one percent in some sectors or 17% performance overall. Previous Kaduna State governments had reduced budgeting into a “fictographic art, with scarcely any relationship to reality.” On assumption of office, the new administration observed that previously huge annual budgets were approved without being implemented, leaving a legacy of abandoned projects. In the 2016 fiscal year, the Kaduna State Government intends to entrench the policy and culture of putting the people first. Governor El Rufai believes that democracy construes the people as the masters.

The 2016 revenue and expenditure estimates, as eventually presented to the Kaduna State House of Assembly by Governor Nasir el Rufai add up to N171.7 billion, comprising N109.3bn (64%) capital and N62.4 (36%) recurrent components. These fiscal assumptions are based on a conservative benchmark crude oil price, at about US $39.50 per barrel.

A major highlight of the 2016 budget for Kaduna State is that it moves away from funding government to providing infrastructure and services to citizens. It restores the 60:40 ratio in favour of capital expenditure. This is in keeping with the agenda of Governor El Rufai to expand access to Education, Healthcare, Jobs and Security. The administration’s pro-poor programmes, including interventions in school feeding, planting of economic trees, and waste collection, are expected to create 200,000 jobs. These investments in infrastructure and human capital are calculated to help the state grow at a rate that significantly surpasses the national average.

Capital investments captured in the 2016 budget include: renovation and construction of schools; school feeding; uniforms and tablets for secondary school students; school furniture; establishment and construction of 255 primary health care centres (one per ward), modernized, equipped with items like ultrasound scans and other tools that can assist safe deliveries; the Kaduna Geographic Information Services will develop and manage a centralized, electronic land registry to provide marketable titles for all land owners, including our farmers; a rapid rail system for Kaduna metropolis; township roads, street lighting, a new Facilities Management Agency to professionalise the maintenance of government assets; rural feeder roads; revamping of the Zaria Water works, waterworks rehabilitation projects in Kafanchan, Kaduna, Saminaka, Manchok, Kwoi and Zonkwa.

To boost agriculture, the Kaduna State Government in the 2016 fiscal year intends to put in place a price support system to guarantee minimum prices for farmers at the beginning of the farming season for grains and other produce. The administration also intends to make available low-interest loans for the state’s farmers generally so as to increase rice production, commercial agriculture and support the introduction of a private sector driven statewide tractor hiring scheme.

It is truly a dawn of a new and glorious era in Kaduna State as Mallam Nasir el Rufai begins the arduous task of fixing a state that was left desolate and traumatised by past inept and insensitive administrations. Mallam el Rufai and members of his team need the prayers and full cooperation of the entire people of Kaduna State. Typical of all agents of change, the governor will necessarily face stiff opposition from persons who are bent on retaining the status quo. These opponents of change would, predictably, seek at all times, to distract and even malign him. Our admonition is for the public to ignore them and judge Nasir el Rufai by his actions. We are confident that Kaduna State is at the verge of regaining its place as the pride of Nigeria.
- Mallam Sani is the Special Adviser, Political Matters, to Governor Nasir El Rufai
December 15, 2015
Emmanuel’s promising start
The greater part of the first 100 days spent by Akwa Ibom State Governor, Udom Emmanuel in office was spent on erecting structures that would support his industrialisation drive. That certainly is a bold move and naturally the next step after the infrastructural revolution that the previous government wrought in the state. The groundbreaking ceremonies that the Emmanuel administration has performed for an automobile plant in Itu, for the manufacture of luxury buses and armoured security vehicles; a lead factory at Itam; Shoprite stores in Uyo and a broadcast facility of DAAR Communications at Abak are testimonies of the administration’s eventful outings.

These projects show that the governor is committed to the development and growth of the state’s economy as well as its people. It is an indication that he came into office to meet the aspirations of his people and is committed to fulfilling the promises he made to the people of Akwa Ibom during electioneering.

Besides, during the current administration, the state has secured approval from the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission for the upgrade of Ibom Power Plant from the current 191 megawatts to 670 megawatts.

It is also noteworthy that the state government is currently shopping for funds from outside the country to finance construction of the Ibaka Deep Seaport that will be the pivot of the state’s industrialisation programme. Also, the youth empowerment programme of the Emmanuel administration targets training of 1,000 Akwa Ibom youths for Oracle certification in information communication technology.

This figure will add to the pool of about 350,000 Oracle certificated professionals around the world who are in high demand in oil and gas, banking, manufacturing, security, agro-allied companies, construction, among others.

This is in addition to the 100 youths that have been sent to Israel for agricultural training, to prepare them for roles in the implementation of the state’s agricultural programme that targets micro, medium and small scale enterprises in such areas as sea food, soap and detergent production, edible oil production, fruit juice bottling.

These projects are indications of the governor’s commitment to youth empowerment and building the right capacity for tomorrow’s leaders.

The governor reinforced his developmental direction by announcing a plan for a N5 billion industrial development fund, to be facilitated by the Bank of Industry. The people of Akwa Ibom State have seen in his first 100 days that he means well for the state. They have seen in the critical appointments that he has made and in the programmes that he has so far put in place, that the focus of his administration will be the creation of a virile private sector that will drive economic development in the state.

Emmanuel’s first 100 days show his effort to keep his promises. The people of Akwa Ibom cannot remember Emmanuel making any promise he has demonstrated inability to fulfill.

But some people, for no just cause, are bent on playing down the governor’s high- level performance. For instance, a casual reading of the advertorial titled, Akwa Ibom State: 100 Days of Udom Emmanuel Deception, published on pages 10 and 11 in one of the national dailies on Friday, November 20, would convey to the reader the impression that the over N3 trillion (according to the advertorial) that accrued to Akwa Ibom State from the Federation Account during the eight-year tenure of the former governor, Godswill Akpabio, ended up in private pockets, with nothing to show for it.

The advertorial questioned Emmanuel’s achievements in his first 100 days in office, and deliberately ascribed to the governor uncompleted projects his predecessor started, while ignoring the programmes he has initiated during the period.

In the preamble to the advertorial that was actually targeted at Governor Emmanuel as the writer listed projects initiated by the Akpabio administration, which have yet to be completed, but which, in the consideration of his party, were failed projects, and wondered what the former governor did with all the money the state got during his tenure, with pictures to support his claim.

The writer failed to publish pictures of the projects that were executed by the same administration, especially the infrastructural transformation for which the previous government received accolades from home and abroad.

Governor Emmanuel’s achievements in his first 100 days show that he is driven by the needs of his people and is committed to ensuring that Akwa Ibom State becomes a reference point in development and meeting people’s aspiration for good governance and accountability.

His sterling performance has left no one in doubt about his deep appreciation of the problems that confront the state, and what is expected to be done to revive state’s infrastructure and economic bases as well as empower the people. The governor is seizing the rare opportunity presented by Providence to revolutionise the state’s economic base and create sustainable jobs for the people. Emmanuel represents the positive change that only a new order can guarantee for Akwa Ibom people.

His outstanding private sector experience, which saw him rise to the position of executive director in one of Nigeria’s biggest banks, Zenith Bank Plc, is one of those positive credentials that have defined his performance in the last 100 days and more. A meteoric rise up the corporate ladder saw Emmanuel in the hierarchy of Zenith Bank as executive director, as well as a director of the bank’s subsidiaries outside the country, after a stint with Price Waterhouse Coopers, the international accounting giant. It is no surprise that the state’s economy, specifically, industrialisation, is the focus of his administration.

Today, the experience has prepared him for the task of reinventing the wheel of progress in Akwa Ibom in a manner only someone with a good grasp of the workings of the private sector and its strategic importance in economic development can do. With little to worry about in the area of infrastructure, he has channeled his energy into building the structures that would launch the state on the path of industrial revolution.

The governor has proved beyond doubt that his effortless switch from the private sector, where he proved his mettle, to the public sector, and his eventual emergence as governor, was not happenstance. It takes one that is steeped in excellence and a leader with vision and clearly defined goals to show the kind of direction he has shown in so short a time.
- Okpon, a lawyer, wrote in from Abuja
December 15, 2015
Minimum Wage and wages of incompetence
The news is still well out there that a disproportionately high number of governors in Nigeria are tired of paying the N18,000 minimum wage to their workers. In a communiqué issued by its chairman, Governor Abdulaziz Yari of Zamfara State, the Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF) at the endof its meeting recently at the Old Banquet Hall of the Presidential Villa, Abuja, said a cut in the minimum wage was inescapable. The NGF in that boondoggle advanced all manners of reasons to justify its decision. Where the reasons outlined are not laughable, they are, to put it charitably, bizarre! Of course the principal raison d’etre is the worsening economic situation in the country.

But what the governors in that circus display failed to say directly is that they are at their wits’ end and so are unworthy of their positions. But as usual, they are people who do not like monkey but still refuse to let go of its tail! The Chichidodo they are, they detest faeces but lovingly enjoy the maggots produced therefrom!

First, let it be noted that it is callous and unforgivable for the governors concerned to assault workers with the claptrap that they can no longer pay the N18,000 minimum wage after they have punished the same people with backlogs of unpaid salaries and continue to decimate their lives with irregular and fragmentary payments! How long will the already financially gelded Nigerian workers be stranded in the woods of needless and preventable economic misery?

If the governors involved carry the day with respect to reduction in the minimum wage rather than ensure an upward review as agreed about five years ago, then the Nigerian workers must indeed be custom made for suffering. I mean, if the governors succeed in either reducing the take-home (which has never taken the workers half way home) or renege on the agreement to jack up the pay, then no one should weep for the body of workers in the country. They probably derive some joy from the punishment. Strange, at times, are the ways of humankind.

The workers in Nigeria must put forth a formidable front and a united voice. Let the Nigerian workers draw sense and strength from the abolitionist, Frederick Douglas, who himself fought hard to wrench freedom from his heartless slavers. To all those enslaved in whatever form, Douglas’ voice of encouragement rings out thus: ‘Those who will be free must themselves strike the first blow’. They must also drink from Soyinka’s well of helpful thought: ‘When dealing with hardened recidivists, justice is best served through pitiless rigours and remorseless pursuit’. The minimum wage-cutting governors are not normal human beings to be engaged with weak punches or vacillating deportment. The workers will need the unrelenting ferocity of a lion in their fight against these common foes.

To wrestle the demons of pain and punishment that are the governors, the workers through their leading voices must not sip or quaff from the bottle containing the liquid of hurting compromise or blind betrayal. The representatives of the workers must not be carried away by the sumptuous gastronomies that often adorn the tables of the enemies they are warring against during negotiations. Any member of the workers’ negotiating committee with gastronomic lunacy must be excused from the group.

The workers must remember that they have compromised too much. They must remember that the N54,000 they proposed five years ago as the minimum wage was brutally slashed to the present amount that is being viciously threatened with a violent decimation. They accepted the pittance back then on the condition that after five years, the minimum wage would be reviewed upward, not lacerated. Surely, the workers have compromised too much to now settle for another offensive rationalisation from the problem-generating governors. Let the workers arm themselves to the teeth with all the weapons of logic and uncompromising incorrigibility – they must manfully duel and effectively slay the dragons of their sorrow and pain.

Happily, some governors – yes from the same overly cossetted group of governors under the NGF – have dissociated themselves from the asphyxiating voices of incompetence and Schadenfreude. Governors like Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State have said it was possible to pay the minimum wage. This in itself is a ringing rebuke to the wage-cutting group of governors. There is another encouragement for the workers; they must stand pat on their decision to refuse the cut in the minimum wage. If some states can still afford to pay this wage in spite of the harsh economic downturn that a majority of the governors have now erected as a pillar of excuse to afflict workers and their families, absolutely others are inexcusable.

That governors are poised to cut the minimum wage is an eloquent testimony to the fact that political leaders in Nigeria barely think of leadership positions as problem-solving platforms. We are enormously blessed with leaders who are expert at gaining control of the levers of power but are as ignorant of the end to which to put power. Yes, the decline in oil receipts and reduction in the strange federal allocation to states make them insolvent. But what should never be overlooked or trivialised is the acute lack of financial managerial competence on the part of a large number of the governors.

The wages of incompetence in Nigeria are the oceanic and crippling poverty, the huge deficit in infrastructural development, the painfully increasing erosion of the dignity of the human person, the pervasive and suffocating youth unemployment, the daily summary termination of many an otherwise active mind.

The wages of incompetence are the hefty bailout packages given to the poor managers of resources. When you bail out wastrels, you empower them to up the ante of reckless spending, misplacement of priority and unprofitable projects. You do not bail out states run by profligates who when confronted with their abhorrent habits often pass the buck. Spendthrifts do not take responsibility for their objectionable actions. To come to their aid with bailout funds is tantamount to encouraging them to continue to cavort in their pools of wastefulness

If the governors cannot think soothing solution to the problem of shortfall in revenue, if they cannot be creative and reorder their individual state’s accounts, if they cannot cut their coats according to their cloths, and if they cannot ingeniously rise to fulfil their statutory responsibilities, in addition to doing away with bogus and barren projects, let them relinquish their posts. If for the reason of the severe losses in revenues they cannot upwardly review the minimum wage, they must not cut it and they must cultivate the habit of paying it regularly. Otherwise, the workers and their dependants need a clean break from the taxing wages of incompetence that the downward review of the minimum wage is a part of.
- Ademola writes from Bodija, Ibadan, Oyo State.
December 15, 2015
Bayelsa gangsters and leaders

No question about it: what transpired during the Bayelsa State governorship election penultimate weekend was a show of shame and failure of leadership. The poll witnessed a brazen display of the reprehensible mentality in Nigerian politics that electoral outcomes shouldn’t simply be left to informed and intelligent voters to freely decide, but should rather be modulated by political actors who test one another’s will in superior use of force as well as intimidation of opposing voters and, indeed, the election management body. And that is not counting the generous dose of all other imaginable manners of subterfuge thrown in the mix. For a state that is relatively less expansive in administrative scale, considering that it has just eight local government areas (Kano has 44) – although many of the communities are riverine and estuarine, hence very difficult to access, it was shameful that the governorship election ended up inconclusive largely because of the impunity of the political leaders and their supporters alike.

Militancy is not alien to the south-south zone where Bayelsa State is located, and so, no reasonable person foreclosed the likelihood that there would be some measure violence in the course of the election. But what played out penultimate weekend overshot all reasonable projections. Sheer violence and other electoral malpractices, including ballot box snatching, intimidation of voters and polling officials, characterised the December 5 election in many of the local government areas, especially the riverine terrains. At the Southern Ijaw council area, election officials were barricaded in by militants at the council office and prevented from deploying for the election, compelling the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to reschedule the poll in that area to Sunday, December 6. But when the election eventually held, the brigandage was fiercer; it was so bad that militant supporters were reported to have held polling officials hostage. The electoral commission subsequently cancelled the poll in the entire local government area, thereby making the governorship election inconclusive.

Violence and poll cancellation: those were the hallmarks of the Bayelsa election – just like it has been in many other areas across this country. The two leading political parties – the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) – were the major culprits in Bayelsa, as they maximally exerted their capacity for mutual intimidation during the poll. If one may play the devil’s advocate, the high level of desperation by these parties was, perhaps, not too far fetched: Bayelsa is the home state of former President Goodluck Jonathan, who lost power in the 2015 general election as PDP’s candidate, and it would seem a matter of existential pride for the party to hold on to the state and avert the ultimate humiliation by the APC. For the APC, on the other hand, winning Bayelsa State would rank next to taking over power at the presidency in conclusively proving the party’s supremacy over the PDP.

Contestation for political supremacy is fine if it is done within the universal bounds of civility and the voter’s indivisible right to exercise free choice – which is the essence of democracy. And that free choice ought to be informed and guided by the voter’s keen awareness of the policies and programmes being put on offer by the political parties and their candidates. In Bayelsa however, as has been typical of the Nigerian political space, the parties and their candidates did anything but engage in a decent contest of ideas and programmes to convince the voters. The comportment of the political actors was more of seeking to compel an outcome through the use of force and other malpractices. The two major parties, in particular, exerted themselves in a mutual test of capacity for intimidation and taking umbrage. Even though the governorship candidates signed a peace accord before the election, there was little evidence that they took the accord seriously, and they evidently did very little to rein in those militants – their supporters – who disrupted the balloting in some areas.

The PDP candidate, Seriake Dickson, who is seeking re-election as Governor, stood out as using his official position to mobilise mob sentiment at different stages of the balloting process. It was ironic seeing the chief security officer of a state carry on with the gung-ho of a lynch mob leader. The tendency, however, is not peculiar to Dickson: there have been other state governors who, in the thick of past elections, resorted to verbal lynching of the electoral commission, their political opponents and other stakeholders in election administration such as the security agencies, just to gain whatever advantage they thought was possible in the process. In Bayelsa State, there were mutual calls by the political parties for the candidate of the other party to be disqualified by the electoral commission. But such advocates need to know that the provisions of the law – for instance, Section 31 (1) of the Electoral Act 2010 as amended – do not give the commission the muscle to act as canvassed. By the way, it was for the same reason that INEC could do nothing about the unwilling candidature of James Faleke when the APC nominated him as Deputy to Mohammed Bello for the recent Kogi State supplementary election.

I have always wondered why political emotions are so raw and unbridled in our own electoral jurisdiction. Electoral contests in many other climes do not entail the level of desperation and bile that we see in this country. I know this because I have had the privilege to observe elections in a good number of other countries that space would not allow me to elaborate upon here. It’s not as if all the ills of the Bayelsa election were from the political class alone. Many observers reported that polling units opened late in many areas, and INEC has the blame for the disfunctionality of its deployment system. But I also happen to know that there is a sense in which even this challenge is connected with the uncivil temperament of the political actors. For, instance, the electoral commission typically cascades its deployment of personnel and materials from the state headquarters to the polling units for any election, with security agents providing protection all the way. Where security agents were not promptly available to provide that protection, deployment would have to stall because risks could not be taken in view of the impunity that characterised the electoral environment. Bayelsa is also peculiar because of the predominantly riverine terrain, much of which is not easily accessible. But let’s be clear: none of these frees INEC from blame for the disfunctionality of its logistics.

Observers also reported deviations from regulations for accreditation in a few polling units, such that some polling officials allowed voters whose Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) were not authenticated by the Smart Card Readers to proceed with the balloting process contrary to the commission’s process design. And there were reports that security agents looked the other way in some places where militant supporters disrupted the voting process. For a singular operation executed by tens of thousands of hands, it is a tough call to expect the electoral commission to guarantee full compliance with the regulations by every single staff. In ideal situations, political parties would assist the electoral commission with field oversight of the voting process if they weren’t so given to impunity.

December 14, 2015