The Nation Newspaper

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  • In memory of Festus Iyayi

    Forget the trauma university education in Nigeria is currently going through, no thanks to the ongoing strike action by academic staff and Federal Government’s reluctance to meet the lecturers’ demands fully.

    Pocket your anger, if you have any, towards the Academic Staff Union of Nigerian University (ASUU) and Abuja for the near five months forced stay-at-home they have jointly imposed of the hapless students.

    Look instead at the contributions of ASUU over the years to Nigeria’s development and the calibre of its leaders and you’ll appreciate what a tragic loss the death of one time ASUU president Professor Festus Iyayi is to the nation.

    Death as the saying goes is a necessary end and will come when it will. But while no one can say exactly where and when he/she would take his/her exit from this world, it is always painful when the death is self-inflicted or avoidable/preventable so to speak.

    In the case of Professor Iyayi, he did not invite death on to himself but death was visited on him by a driver in the unnecessary long and reckless convoy of Kogi State Governor, Captain Idris Wada Tuesday last week along the notorious Lokoja-Abuja Highway. He was on a mission along with his ASUU colleagues to Kano for the union’s NEC meeting to see how the crisis bedevilling Nigeria’s university system can be resolved and bring the students back to school.

    One of the best known ASUU leaders of his generation, Iyayi together with the likes of current Chairman, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Professor Attahiru Jega perhaps best epitomised the struggle for a better university education in Nigeria that ASUU is known for. Even if not a few Nigerians would raise questions over ASUU of today, (Federal Government’s sometimes irresponsible action notwithstanding) the contributions of the likes of Iyayi and the direction he took the ASUU of his era should serve as a guide to those presently at the helm at the Academic Staff Union of Nigerian Universities.

    His death, though painful, should bring all concerned in the protracted negotiation between ASUU and the Federal Government to their senses and act in the best interest of the nation. No meaningful negotiation is achieved if the parties stuck to their guns; the game is called give and take. That’s why it is called negotiation. I think we have gone beyond the level of apportioning blame; both parties would definitely have something to say to justify their different positions. But if the two parties truly have the interest of the nation at heart it shouldn’t be difficult to reach an implementable agreement and remaining faithful to it.

    Iyayi would have died in vain if this strike should continue beyond this moment or happens again in the near future over the same issue of funding of our university system and remunerations for the academic staff. Those involved on both sides should act responsibly now.

    And for Professor Iyayi to sleep well, those who caused his death should be punished. But I doubt if the driver of the convoy car that recklessly overtook the rest of the vehicles in the governor’s convoy and caused the crash involving the bus in which Iyayi and other ASUU officials were travelling would be punished. He is the driver to a ‘big’ man so to speak, and people like him are rarely punished for any offence committed while on duty. This is Nigeria where impunity like this happens.

    But if we are in the same country and operating under the same law, then nobody should be above that law. I hasten to bring to your notice the story of one citizen Sulaiman Awwal from Kogi State that appeared in this newspaper last week and the kind of ‘justice’ the system meted out to him to justify the call for the punishment of the government driver that killed Iyayi.

    Awwal, a fire prevention consultant was released from Agodi prison in Ibadan last week after 11 months awaiting trial in jail for the offence of manslaughter. How did he find himself at this notorious jail? Well, according to Awwal, he was driving from Saki in Oyo State to Ibadan the state capital on January 7, this year when an aged woman ran across the road around Moniya on the outskirt of the city and he knocked her down with his vehicle.

    The villagers came out and mobbed him as he tried to rescue the woman and they handed him over to the police. Death came for the woman as she was being taken to hospital. Three days later Awwal was charged to court for manslaughter and remanded at Agodi prison by the Magistrate. He was there until Monday last week when the family of the deceased applied to the court to discontinue the case and the Magistrate duly struck out the case.

    Don’t ask about his experience in prison, it was horrible. The concern here is what took him to prison? The vehicle he was driving had an accident and one person was killed by him in the process, the same way one of the drivers in Governor Wada’s convoy drove recklessly causing the death of Professor Iyayi. Shouldn’t that Wada’s driver be charged with manslaughter?

    Well, if the Attorney-General and chief law officer of Kogi State would act in accordance with the demands of that office, yes the driver should be so charged. But would he? Let’s wait and see.

    The death of Professor Iyayi in the hands of Governor Wada’s driver should finally draw Federal Government’s attention to the recklessness and lawlessness of drivers of government vehicles especially those who drive dignitaries including State governors, ministers, police and military chiefs and even local government chairmen.

    When these drivers are on the road, especially when they are driving their bosses, often in a long convoy, they drive as if they are on a mission to commit suicide and any motorists unfortunate to stand in their way albeit legitimately, often have sad stories to tell. They drive without regard for traffic rules and regulations. Most times they drive above the normal speed limit and officers and men of the Federal Road Safety Corps are often helpless to act.

    It is about time they are told and shown that they are not above the law and making an example out of the Kogi State governor’s driver would go a long way in letting them know that the immunity from prosecution extended to their bosses (governors) by the constitution does not cover them.

    Beyond this however, the mentality of our public officers especially the political leaders that they are superior to the rest of us has to change. They enter the road blowing sirens to scare the rest of us out of their way; and woe betides that person that stands in their way. Many have gone the way of Professor Iyayi in the process and nothing happened to either the offending driver or his boss. This is part of the culture of impunity that we carried over into this political dispensation from the military era of the past. We have to purge ourselves of all the evils of the military era and embrace the rule of law and accept equality of all Nigerians for this nation to move forward. This is the only thing that can atone for the killing of Professor Festus Iyayi who died in the struggle to make our country especially university education in this country better.

    May his soul rest in perfect peace. Amen.

     

  • Reality or perception?

    That was our President Goodluck Jonathan speaking at the fifth edition of the Presidential media chat late September. As if you didn’t know already, the kernel of his submission was that corruption, among the many ills afflicting the Nigerian polity, is simply exaggerated. For proof, he referred Nigerians to the operative word “perception” in the annual rating exercise by Transparency International of which Nigeria ranks pretty among the top rung of the most corrupt nations on earth.

    Far from accepting that the unrestrained self-help that goes on in Abuja and the 36 state capitals in the name of governance is a major problem, the President chose to locate our problems in the hype that normally attends every reported incident of heist by highly placed officials!

    Just when the deliberate misdiagnosis of the problem expectedly rankled to no end, the President would, days later, further expound his treatise by insisting that Nigerians – not his administration that has made an open show of harbouring tainted officials in its ranks – were the main culprits in fostering the environment of corruption.

    I don’t think anyone should lose sleep over the specious dissection of the national pathology by a leader under whose watch the industry of graft has grown to monstrous proportions. Situated in the context of its appalling helplessness in combating the monster, the statement provides a window into why the fight against graft under the Jonathan presidency not only went tepid but ineffectual.

    Of course, a lot has happened since those statements were uttered. We have had Stellagate – a scam which not only threatened to rip the innards of the Jonathan presidency open, but has since unleashed a burst of adrenalin across the land the result of which the administration is presently utterly breathless. And now, with a related event in Ghana in which a cabinet minister got the boot from her plum cabinet position merely for dreaming about cornering some future gravy, the welter of media commentaries and the not-so-subtle prodding that the President off-load his own “damaged good” has simply reached the heavens.

    As it is, the surest evidence of how far apart the President and Nigerians are on the subject would be the deliberate stone-walling over the Stellagate affair. This is even when the evidence in the public domain has exposed several layers of graft for serious administration to act upon. Is it a case of someone being convinced that the dust would blow away sooner than later? For this, we must grant that this President should know a thing or two things about perception as a subject and its links with the messy business of corruption that the whole world is yet to know.

    To be sure, we must be clear about the President’s diagnosis of the problem particularly his rather effusive distinction between the popular perception about the cancer and the reality he sought to paint, I guess, almost entirely in his own colours. Just as the president believes that the two are miles apart, the question must arise as to whether those accusing his administration of either fuelling the cancer or is at least indifferent to it are not entirely uncharitable. Conversely too, for a menace that has not only persisted, but has earned the nation notoriety as the global capital of graft, Nigerians would also be right to wonder about the President’s line of thought which appears to suggest that negative perceptions are at least tolerable in so far as the facts are beyond establishing! The truth of course is that perceptions, no matter how exaggerated or distorted they may seem, oftentimes have more than a whiff of reality. We must also acknowledge that the business of separating facts from fantasies in a clime riddled with corrupt practices is certainly not helped by the sheer scale of impunity that borders on schizophrenia. Whether it is the latest issue infamously described as Stellagate, in which a serving minister reportedly directed a parastatal head “to do the needful” as in the purchase of two fancy cars for a whopping N255 million; or the well-reported extravaganza of another cabinet member said to have ratcheted a bill of nearly N2billion to hire private jets, the point is that the scale of impunity in these parts simply beggars belief! And the President, as the leader of the team has done pretty little to dispel the image of his administration as one that condones impunity.

    Again, it goes to the fundamental point about what facts say. Beyond deniability, I think the issue is well established that corruption is not just real but has under this presidency become the driver of governance processes. Didn’t subsidy payments balloon from N300 billion under the Umaru Yar’Adua presidency to an unprecedented N2.5 trillion under this presidency? Yes, we are talking of one product line, petrol – jumping in multiples of eight under 18 months – the sheer stuff of fairy tales happening right under our very eyes!

    How about that for perception? Today, the subsidy figure is in the neighbourhood of N1.2 trillion. Has anyone been called to account for the deviation? Now, thanks to the Swiss non-governmental advocacy group, the Berne Declaration, the nation has just begun to find confirmation of how the triumvirate of NNPC, Vitol and Trafigura –two Switzerland-based oil traders, and their local minions numbering seven, used their offshore ‘letterbox companies’ to defraud the country of over $6.8bn in subsidy payments between 2009 and 2011.

    Are the documented findings of the Swiss body also in the realm of perception? What about the jumbo loans at a time of record oil earnings? At least, to its credit, the administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, converted the benefits of the bumper oil earning to exit from the creditor-cartels of London and Paris Clubs. Today, not only is the nation back on the ruinous path of debt peonage even when the promise of infrastructural renewal remains undelivered.

    Former United States Ambassador Walter Carrington recently framed the issue rather succinctly when he quipped: “The question must now be asked, why is Africa’s most endowed country which earn $57billion a year in oil revenue not yet able to solve its persistent problems of electric power and infrastructure?”

    Well, the President has supplied the 10-letter answer: Perception.

    Surely, there must be something in the Villa that inures its occupants to the putrefaction.

     

  • Gettysburg address: Lessons for Nigerian leaders

    One Hundred and Fifty years ago on November 19, 1863, a wiry US President delivered an oration to dedicate a cemetery in honor of soldiers slain at the Battle of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania during the American civil war (1861-1865). He jotted down notes for the speech on the back of an envelope while on a train ride from Washington DC to Pennsylvania the previous day. Later in the evening, the American President retired to his room to put the finishing touches on his speech.

    The following afternoon, President Abraham Lincoln, surrounded by coffins of fallen soldiers and wounded fighters and thousands of onlookers including relations of the dead, made the presentation of what has come to be known as The Gettysburg Address. He was meant to give “dedicatory remarks” secondary to those of the main speaker Professor Edward Everett, the national orator of formidable credentials.

    Indeed Everett spoke earlier, offering a two-hour speech, followed by Lincoln whose dirge-272 words (about a third or quarter of this article) – lasted nearly three minutes. The crowd appeared not to appreciate their president’s delivery, for they gave him what a historian has described as “perfunctory applause”.

    But a humble Professor Everett did. He told Lincoln: “My speech will soon be forgotten; yours will never be. How gladly would I exchange my hundred pages for your twenty lines”.

    It has turned out prophetically true. For through the ages down to our day, what started as a mere community speech has since broken the barriers of time, colour, culture and language to become a timeless and gargantuan prose better appreciated for its nobility elegance and poetry.

    Greater respect is compelled when we realize that Lincoln gave the address from a grieving soul to even more grieving souls. How could living words that would later survive the ravages of the ages come from the depth of death? There was the stark reality of sorrow inflicted by war. And in this case the battle of Gettysburg was recorded to have been one of the bloodiest of the US civil war with 7000 killed and 44000 wounded or missing. Historians claim that Gettysburg was the turning point indeed of the war.

    Somehow, Lincoln, a man forged out of a cauldron of serial defeats, disappointments and rejection, drew appropriate lessons from the seeming desolation around him. He recognized for instance that man can only manage calamity (or what seems so) not by pandering to it or evoking and reproducing more vision of such dreary conditions.

    It wasn’t a time for a long sermonizing speech. Nor was it a moment to shun talk altogether. He needed to face the locals and comfort the bereaved families of Gettysburg and turn individual and collective losses into first a national hope and secondly a universal legacy.

    The Gettysburg Address achieved precisely these objectives. How did Lincoln succeed? The literary technique combining with his stoical discipline performed the main magic. He avoided overtly lugubrious epithets. He never interjected the speech with any personal connections. Where he came to it the speaker adopted the use of the majestic “we”, “us” or “our”.

    He won the hearts of the bereaved and the nation when he cautioned that although he and the others had gathered to honour the dead, “in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we can not consecrate, we cannot hallow, this ground.”

    Lincoln added: “The brave men living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus nobly advanced.”

    Great noble thoughts and vision captured in equally sublime prose! Lincoln ended the day a fulfilled leader: he had used powerful language and personal discipline to soothe the souls of bruised, disconsolate citizens. He had also proved that when a nation is passing through tormenting moments such as Nigeria is witnessing now, it can be succored by leaders who take the time to make statements that inspire the citizens and transform the situation into a vision of hope.

    Only leaders and statesmen of Spartan disposition unencumbered by a craving for material wealth, inordinate power and women-mongering would possess the rigour, discipline and conviction so amply displayed in the Gettysburg Address.

    The appropriate lesson for Nigeria and her leaders to learn from Gettysburg is that we must appreciate the fact that it is the “brave (toiling) men, and (women) living and dead, who struggled… (Who) have really sustained the polity thus far and that it is “far above (the) poor power” of the politicians to “add or detract” from their contribution.

    The key that unlocked the patriotic treasure box of the people and the benevolence history is according Lincoln and his address was Lincoln’s respect for the role of the downtrodden, the deprived, in nation-building. He celebrated them in exalted poetic prose that reflected a life long commitment to the dignity of labour. Only a humble leader, dedicated to selfless service and given to purpose and vision, can bring himself (herself) to generate ideas that inspire.

    Where the leader lacks these gems of integrity his/her homilies and perorations will be nothing but stuff nursing mothers apply to put infants to sleep!

     

    • Obafemi and Ojewale are promoters of Leadership Search Initiative, Lagos.

  • Between Tai Solarin and Aregbesola

    The other day I was reminded of the great and implacable educationist Tai Solarin (1922-1994) when I saw pictures of Osun Governor, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola kitted in school uniform with a cap to match sitting in midst of students. From the wide grin on his goateed face, you would conclude correctly that the governor relished the moment and probably wished it was not a fleeting experience!

    It was no less excitable for the students.

    Perhaps the message Aregbesola sought to pass in posing with youngsters dressed like them is that when a leader is passionate about a policy, he must follow it up (beef it up?) with some outward tokenism. It is the equivalent of saying that examples are better than precepts.

    It is Tai Solarin all over again! Not satisfied with breaking new grounds in the education sector and in fighting the mighty establishment of his era in a crusade to secure education for the Nigerian child, Solarin would renounce society’s sartorial formality. He would not for instance wear trousers nor would he put on his native Yoruba attire. He resorted to khaki shorts and khaki or white short-sleeved shirts, all in protest against the neglect of the Nigerian child by the state.

    But for his age, he wouldn’t be an odd man on the grounds of Mayflower College, the school he set up in Ikenne, Ogun State in rebellion against the order of the day. He said the khaki attire was meant to kick against the non-delivery of free and compulsory state education to the children of the poor. He stuck to his position to honour the Nigerian child and was easily noticed at the numerous public gatherings he was asked to grace by hundreds of his loyal admirers and government functionaries.

    When military President Ibrahim Babangida invited Tai Solarin to chair the board of Peoples Bank, the social critic only accepted the offer because it was for him “an opportunity to serve the deprived folk”. Later the media would run rare photographs of Tai Solarin in flowing agbada with the imprint of Peoples Bank logo. Again to honour the people, he briefly abandoned the khaki. He wouldn’t take government job that didn’t give him room to serve the hoi-polloi.

    Setting up Mayflower saw the iconoclast in full flight of rebellion. He left the financial comfort of Molusi College, Ijebu Igbo, Ogun State where he was principal to found Mayflower in 1956. Nobody gave him a chance to succeed. Professor C.O Taiwo, upon noticing what Solarin and his wife Sheila were attempting to do, told Tai: “You are carrying a dead baby!”  At a point when the “baby” was to die following the refusal of the authorities to allow Mayflower students to take their WASCE exams, Solarin did the unthinkable: He took the youngsters to far away Ghana where they did the work! Such passion to serve humanity! Today, Mayflower is 57, outlasting those who derided its founder and predicted it would die at birth.

    A journalist wrote of the school: “Mayflower School has become a veritable centre of excellence, a fitting tribute to a man who believes that Nigeria’s salvation lies only in free and qualitative education at all levels for her citizens.”

    Are we not already seeing the Tai Solarin in Rauf Aregbesola who is also declaring that he is ready to give all it takes to offer all-round and qualitative education to the Osun child? Aregbesola is taking on the colossal opposition in the state to implement his policy. Like the illustrious Solarin, the governor is adopting unorthodox but legitimate means to achieve his goals. And the elite few are trying to run him down, pooh-poohing the steps he is taking. They say he can’t succeed on account of the massive deconstruction of the old order that he must undertake. The myopic critics of Tai Solarin’s day said the same thing when the man started his great crusade. But he succeeded.

    Nigeria is where it is (a sorry state) today because in the past we did not take the courageous step to halt the decay at its start and while in progress. Now it is a monster in our time. But it can only take an equally monstrous approach to kill a monster. Not to do so would amount to enfeebling the present and passing the death sentence on the future. Aregbesola is doing the right thing to abort this fatal trajectory. He is also conditioning the project with the appropriate passion.

    Discerning observers such as Senator Uche Chukwumerije have submitted agreeable comments on Aregbesola’s mission. He declared in 2012 when he visited the State of Osun: “The state and the country owe Governor Rauf Aregbesola a lot of gratitude for promptly laying a formidable foundation for education in the state. I will like to use this opportunity to advise other states, irrespective of your political affiliation: You must drop your ego and learn from the people-oriented projects and programmes of Governor Aregbesola.

    Classical German philosopher Wilhelm Hegel (1770-1831) said somewhere in his numerous works that great personalities in history appear twice, as it were. Later, Karl Marx (1818-1883), his compatriot of a more radical persuasion, ran a cynic’s post-script. Marx said Hegel forgot to add that when history so resonates, the first apparition is a tragedy and the second a farce.

    Tai Solarin was not a tragedy; nor Rauf Aregbesola a farce!

     

    • Ojewale is a writer in Ota, Ogun State.

  • Golden Eaglets; Books and budgets; Soyinka; Potholes, Politics and Lekki Bridge

    Congratulations to the Golden Eaglets who politicians feel have given us temporary unity. Nigerians are united in suffering from power failure and potholes and no books or sports equipment in schools.  We await true unity from the national conference.

    If you want children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want children to be more intelligent read them more fairy tales – Albert Einstein. There is a new giant library in Birmingham, UK. Is there a new non-Presidential library in Nigeria? Unlikely! Our schools are designed for failure. I had a delightful experience at the privately run Zaccheus Onumba Dibiaezue Memorial Library on Awolowo Road Ikoyi Lagos run by Mrs. Ifeoma Esiri and her wonderful team. I discussed and read from my book The Laterite Road to SS2 students who had also read the book. The President will be presenting his budget this month for 2014. Is there a meaningful budget for books in schools?

    Next year we will go wild celebrating Professor Wole Soyinka@80 and his Nobel Laurels. Would it not be a fitting tribute if every Nigerian student in school had a copy of at least one Soyinka book? In fact why does every Nigerian single school not have a collection of selected Soyinka books available in their library? Probably because there are so few libraries and there is no budget for library books in most Nigerian education budgets. Even if we do not value books for our children, let us at least value our Nobel Laureate. The shame of the Nigerian government knows no shame. It now relies of corporate bodies to give books to its children, a secret responsibility of good governance while delighting in giving out exercise books with no knowledge content in them.

    Every room, home, office, taxi, danfo, bus space should be discussing their topic the Sovereign National Conference. It is a non-political topic. This is a non-political journey hijacked by politicians. The journey is not about politics, though it has a political component which has been overblown to take the lion’s share of the discussion. It is about life itself and the happiness and wellbeing of its citizens.

    It is only in Nigeria that bridges flood and it costs more manpower to make a hole in the bridge to drain the rainwater than exists in the coffers or the craniums of the collective engineering genius of FERMA.

    FERMA should face questions of ineptitude and threats of disbandment for forcing the additional and needless suffering of travellers.  In civilised countries, engineering teams mark and fill immediately all the major potholes. Here, only in reaction to extreme public pressure and blood on the roads we are finally marking potholes. It will still take months to fill them. Which part of ‘EMERGENCY MARK-AND-FILL POTHOLES’ does the multibillion organisation like FERMA and construction companies like Julius Berger and RCC not understand? The very idea that roads should be repaired only because holidays are approaching or a president is visiting is repugnant. Is going on holiday at Xmas/New year more important than getting to work for the rest of the year? How can government allow a government agency like FERMA to pretend to be Father Christmas, delivering a birthday present of pothole filled roads only for the same roads to be abandoned immediately after the festive period? Shame! Worldwide, work is made easy by providing mass transport, good roads. Holidays are a by-product but the main thing.   If this is the mind-set of FERMA and even the FRSC which works mainly during ‘EMBER Months’ then no wonder we remain the slowest moving nation on wheels, five to six hours to travel 127kilometers and with the East-West Road still a mirage. Heads should roll for neglecting their work during nine months of the year only to wake up when the outcry becomes thunderous or when ‘Jesus comes’ annually at Christmas. ‘The Nigerian Pothole’ should be enshrined in the forthcoming constitution as an eliminable goal. No Nigerian pothole should be given the freedom to grow for nine months or nine years in Nigeria before it is filled for a presidential visit or at one Ember Month or one Christmas or the other. Care and concern for citizens welfare is and must be a daily government concern. Governments which perform just before elections are failures even if they succeed in returning to power by any means necessary. We must install meaning to our lives and governments must realise that more selfishness by it and its agencies will destroy Nigeria.

    The newly created and carefully timed federal government –Lagos State stand-off over the new Lekki-Ikoyi Bridge is an interesting example of how little government at the centre is concerned with the suffering of the citizens in the states. Rules are more important to evil governments than people even when the rules are relics of colonial oppression and control. Is government supposed to be oppressive? The bridge is good, the waterways are local. Federal government would be wise to zero in on building a second and third Niger Bridge and completing the East-West road rumoured to be 65% complete, instead of disturbing a perfectly executed bridge project. Could it be that the current federal government is jealous of the success of the cooperative effort the government of late Yar’Adua and Lagos State? Or is this a disguised political petty attempt to discredit the Lagos government’s contribution to traffic control?

  • The Pension Reform Bill 2013

    An African adage aptly captures the essence of a viable pension scheme when it states that the firewood one fetches during the dry season helps him or her to keep warm during the rainy season. Therefore, pension has remained a key governance issue as governments around the world seek better ways to cater for the welfare of workers who have retired due to old age, attainment of mandatory years of service, downsize of workforce, injury or sickness.

    Whereas Nigeria’s pension system worked for a while, soaring pension bills, corruption, and maladministration in the old pension system resulted in irregular and, in many cases, non-payment of pensions. This in turn brought untold hardship on pensioners, as the awful state of pensioners became a perennial national embarrassment.

    It was for this reason that the Federal Government undertook a thorough overhaul of the pension system, resulting in the Pension Reform Act 2004.

    However, much as the reforms literally transformed the nation’s pension system, especially as it concerns Federal Government employees and the organised private sector, the operation of the Pension Reform Act 2004 in the last nine years has also exposed several loopholes and concerns, which must be addressed. It was for this reason that the Jonathan administration must be commended for proposing the Pension Reform Bill 2013 to the National Assembly.

    The cardinal objectives of the Pension Reform Bill, which has reached advanced stage at the federal legislature, are to enhance the powers of the National Pension Commission (PENCOM) in its regulatory and enforcement activities to protect pension funds and assets, and unlock the opportunities for the utilization of pension assets for national development. Others are to review the sanctions regime to reflect current realities, provide for the participation of the informal sector and also provide the framework for the adoption of the Contributory Pension Scheme by states and local governments.

    Importantly, the Bill provides for the proper establishment of the Pension Transition Arrangement Departments (PTADs) to take over the remittance of benefits to pensioners. It will ensure greater efficiency and accountability in the administration and payment of pensions under the Defined Benefits Scheme, as pensioners under the old scheme will now receive their pensions directly rather than through third parties. This will bring the era of impunity and corruption in the various Pension Departments to an end and enhance the regulatory authority and efficiency of PENCOM to reposition and provide greater oversight on the PTADs.

    Other major highlights of the proposed law include the reduction of the waiting period for accessing benefits in the event of loss of job from six months to four months, creation of new offences and provisions for stiffer penalties that will serve as deterrence against the mismanagement or diversion of pension funds and assets under any guise or the infractions on pension law. It also addresses challenges and ambiguities relating to Death Benefits.

    Very importantly, the Bill seeks amendment to allow for the payment of additional benefits, other than the accruals from the Contributory Pension, to workers upon retirement or cessation of employment through collective bargaining with their employers. This will further cushion the effects of non-payment of gratuity under the current pension regime.

    It further seeks to raise pension contribution from 15 per cent where both employer and employee make an economically disproportional contribution of 7.5 percent each to 20 percent contribution with a more proportional minimum of 12 percent contribution by employer and eight percent by the employee. This translates to more savings for the workers.

    The Bill also seeks to emphasize competence instead of the current requirement of a minimum of 20 years cognate experience to qualify for appointment as the Director-General of PENCOM. There has been preponderance of view among critical stakeholders, including the labour, the Association of University Pensioners, the Nigeria Stock Exchange, the Pension Departments, the National Association of Nigerian Students, the Customs Immigration and Prisons Pension Office, that the 20 years experience requirement is out of sync with realities and best practices in financial regulatory institutions both locally and globally. For instance, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), which is the apex financial regulatory institution and economic powerhouse of the nation does not demand any years of experience for appointment as the Governor or Deputy Governor of the CBN. The same applies to headship of the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Company and the Federal Inland Revenue Service. Furthermore, the extant laws establishing the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the National Insurance Commission (NAICOM), and the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) require between 10 to 15 years experience only for membership or headship of the institutions, as the case may be. The laws rather talks about competence.

    Stakeholders at the Public Hearing on the Pension Bill were also quick to point out that were lengthy years of experience that important, those standing trial over alleged monumental corruption in the various Pension Departments would not have been populated by highly placed civil servants of over 20 years experience. They insist that removing such draconian years of experience would make way for persons with substantial cognate experience, integrity, competence, and energy to pilot the affairs of PENCOM and pensioners.

    Indeed, when all is considered, the Pension Reform Bill 2013 stands out as a courageous and well-informed step on the part of the present administration to address the challenges facing the nation’s pension system. The National Assembly also deserves commendation for its commitment and zeal to this cause, especially given the enormity and thoroughness of work invested by its Joint Committee on Pension Reform Bill into the Report on the Bill recently laid before both chambers of the apex legislature. Nigerians therefore expect the federal lawmakers to give the bill a speedy final push and to also be guided by patriotism, national interest, and global best practices in doing so. This is a national imperative.

     

    • Anichukwu, a Public Affairs Analyst, writes from Abuja.

  • The Chimes’ controversy

    Wonders will never cease! Every other day, Nigerians are treated to different dimensions of news emanating from virtually everywhere – in the polity, on the economic sphere, in religious circles, market environment, beer parlours and other innocuous places. The government houses scattered all over the 36 states of the federation, where the almighty governors hold sway, are also not immune to shocking revelations. Usually, the items of news coming from these government houses are stories about extravaganzas, arbitrary use of power and other forms of recklessness.

    Today, there is a novel dimension to the news oozing out from the Government House in Enugu, South-east of Nigeria. Here, the news borders on man’s inhumanity to a woman. And the dramatis personae in this melodrama are no other persons than the Number One citizen of the state, Sullivan Chime, and Clara, his wife of five years. Since the news broke out about a fortnight ago, it has continued to spread like a festering sore.

    The kernel of the story, which is now in public domain, is the call by Chime’s wife to be rescued from detention right inside the Government House, Enugu. The wife had, through a petition to the National Human Rights Commission, NHRC, cried out to be saved from her husband. She accused the governor of an abusive relationship that has led to her suffering from depression. The governor, she added, has locked her up in a room and denied her access to her four-year-old son and visitors. In the same vein, Femi Falana, her lawyer, also sent a letter to the Inspector General of Police, demanding the immediate release of Mrs. Chime from unlawful custody.

    According to the petitions, the governor’s wife said though she had been married for five years, “it has been a somewhat tempestuous relationship, which has virtually irretrievably broken down in the past couple of years”. She said, “We do not have a relationship anymore and the situation inevitably led to my nervous breakdown. I have been diagnosed with severe depression and at some point, was quite suicidal. The strategy of my estranged husband is to subject me to the most horrific and intolerable of conditions to cause my demise but my strength and will to live has kept me alive”.

    The governor’s wife went on to enumerate the major issues as follows: “Not had sexual relationship with my husband for four years; deprived of all my responsibilities as a wife; prevented from bonding with my four-year-old son; barred me from receiving visitors, whether family or friends; in the last three weeks, a lady friend who visited me was stopped from seeing me and the result is now complete incarceration from the outside world; in effect, I am locked up in my bedroom, without access to anybody; I am only allowed food but no access to fresh air; I have been locked up because I demanded to leave, even without my son; Governor Chime recently revoked my land allocation; the governor is doing everything possible to break my will”.

    Furthermore, the estranged woman said: “All I want and demand is to be allowed to leave; if I have committed any crime, I request that due process should be followed; I am falsely being imprisoned; all my rights are being violated; I have tried to leave and was pushed back by the security agents; and it is clear I am unable to do so except through other intermediaries; my passionate plea is to be allowed to leave peacefully as I no more wish to exist under this prevailing state. In the event that I die, please note that this must have been brought about by my husband. I wish to make it categorically clear that I have no intention of taking my own life. I have completely lost trust in my estranged husband; the possibility of the doctor injecting me with a lethal substance must never be underestimated; I am begging you to help facilitate my release and bring my suffering and ordeal to an end.”

    She claimed that even President Goodluck Jonathan and his wife, Patience, have intervened in the matter without convincing her husband to make life easier for her. She continued: “My father is late, my mom and few of my siblings are confused and have done all kinds of prayers they know of; three of my siblings prefer me dead than to see me leave the Government House.  He treats my mom and my siblings bad.”

    In his own reaction, an unperturbed Chime has vowed to continue to protect the integrity of his wife. According to him, “well, my wife has some medical challenges and it would be very unkind for me to talk about her condition on the pages of newspapers. I have done everything to protect her integrity and I am not now going to expose her to ridicule because some people want to exploit her situation to drag me into a needless war of words”.

    The controversy between Chime and his wife seems to have become an open-ended war between the couple on the one hand, Chime and Falana on the other hand, as well as, Chime’s wife and the NHRC. While Chime, who is also a lawyer, is contesting that his wife never contacted Falana for help, Falana has maintained that he has the woman’s brief to act on her behalf. Also, Chime’s wife has kicked against a recent report which was attributed to the NHRC to the effect that she was indeed suffering from “depression and hallucination”. This has prompted the human rights body to dissociate itself from the report at the last minute although the body did not refute the story when it first broke out.

    All indications point to the fact that there is more to this story than meets the eye. It is clear that Chime’s wife has been passing through unpleasant moments in her chequered relationship with her governor-husband. She has bared it all. What I think the husband has been trying to do is to embark on frenetic damage control to save his battered public image. For one, assuming the wife is actually depressed or having some psychological nightmares, the best place to treat a patient, whether of malaria or any other illness, is the hospital purposely built for such, and not the Government House. And the fact that some doctors allegedly connived with the governor to put the woman in ‘detention’ in the Government House smacks of suspicion and other ulterior motives.

    From the little information I was able to piece together from Enugu, the governor may have been economical with the truth. His lifestyle, which is said to be less than honourable and perhaps, unbecoming of a person occupying such a sensitive position, may have, in one way or another, contributed to his wife’s state of the mind. The governor is rumoured to have an insatiable appetite for frolicking with women and drinking in hotels in the coal city. He is said to be gifted with excellent dancing steps so much that, on a good day, he provides enough fun whenever he takes to the floor doing yahooze, azonto or skelewu dancing steps. This, they say, he relishes doing sometimes with six, eight or more girls in tow.

    If this is true, what follows each session of wining, erotic dance steps with women and all that, is a matter of conjecture. And the wife could easily be turned into a punching bag thereafter.  Here lies the crux of the matter. Therefore, there is the urgent need to get to the root of this problem. The talk about divorcing the woman, which is now uppermost in the mind of Chime and his collaborators, cannot provide a safety valve to wriggle out of this embarrassment. At any rate, Chime should not only toe the path of honour by taking his wife to any good hospital for adequate treatment, he should also do a comprehensive self-appraisal to see if there are some of his actions that may have caused the woman severe depression. This remains a shameful and condemnable act!

  • Fashola: Lessons in leadership

    Sitting with friends last weekend and discussing our dear country, two of them, a top tier government official and the other, a businessman and retired public servant, particularly, took me to task. I was accused of being consumed with the spirit of criticism and that I had never written anything positive about government or government officials. Perhaps correctly, they admonished me to continue criticising by all means but also publicly offer commendation where deserving.

    If I am to single out one public officer for commendation, it will be Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola of Lagos State. My admiration for him will not primarily be based on the popular yardstick of visible infrastructural development, mass transit or indeed the beautification of Lagos. Of course these matters, but what appeals to me the most is the fact that, in governing he has first learned to govern himself. With all the temptations, sycophancy and weak controlling factors inherent in the Nigerian political structure, it takes a man of character and strong personal convictions to resist the lure of governing like a master and instead correctly practice a governing style that is characterized by the management of governance structures like the serious business it is supposed to be. It is trite that the foundation for good service delivery to the governed has to be the creation of a knowledgeable purpose driven governance vehicle. I believe that is the essence of governance, the kind that is geared towards personal sacrifice and service to the people. Indeed I often wonder how correct, albeit unwittingly used, the term ‘ruling party’ is, as opposed to ‘governing party’ which will unfortunately be an unmerited nomenclature in most instances.

    Frighteningly for our country, we have reached abysmal depths of bad governance, that even the holding of regular state executive council meetings as the decision-making vehicle of government is worthy of commendation! Many states are governed from the governors’ sitting rooms and the commissioners and advisers are largely ceremonial. Yet governance as envisaged in our constitution is designed to be a collective effort of an executive committee with the governor as its head

    A dear friend, a few months ago telephoned me excitedly early in the morning. All he had to tell me was that at about midnight, a neighbour in their Lekki Estate Street had awoken him to rush out to the street to see ‘something’. He went out and there was Governor Fashola, walking down their street alone, evidently on an inspection. The road had been recently fixed and this after only a letter by the residents to the governor complaining about the poor state of that road. The governor exchanged pleasantries with the few who had come out to see him, politely refused their offer of a drink only because he had other places to inspect.

    I had my own story to tell my friend. Dolphin Estate had suffered flooding for several years and indeed the main gate area was perpetually under water and we had installed a machine to pump out water to make the area passable. The cost of a permanent solution was too much for the estate association to even contemplate. So with no choice and only forlorn hope, the estate association wrote to the governor. The letter was duly acknowledged within a couple of days and by one week, a team had been sent and stationed there preparatory to commencement of what turned out to be a massive channelization/deflooding effort. Suffice to say that the gate area and indeed Dolphin Estate now knows the difference between dry and rainy season!

    I also told him a story my wife relayed a couple of years ago. Her friend’s brother was arrested and his car impounded by officials of Lagos State Traffic Management Authority (LASTMA) My wife’s friend had stored the advertised telephone numbers of various Lagos State government officials and in her anger and desperation decided to ‘try her luck’ with one of the numbers. She called the governor’s special adviser, no answer, she then sent a text message and when there was no immediate response she wrote it all off as a ruse. A few hours later, the special adviser telephoned her, apologised profusely for not reverting immediately and listened patiently to what had happened. He promised to take remedial action and within the hour the car was released. More surprising to her was that he called again to find out whether her brother had returned with the car. After receiving a positive answer, he apologised on behalf of the government and offered insights into challenges being experienced with that agency and ongoing efforts at its sanitization.

    Another personal experience was a debriefing exercise where some foreign company officials relayed their experience of a meeting with some Lagos State government officials headed by the governor regarding a collaborative project. At the start of the meeting, the head of the foreign delegation started with the usual ‘Excellency this Excellency that’ whereas Fashola cut him short, requested he should go straight to his presentation and not waste precious time on ‘protocol’. He finished his presentation and was very impressed with the high quality of the discussion and the technical soundness of the governor and his team. The foreigners were excited as this was different from what they had been told to expect in Nigeria. I warned them that Lagos was exceptional. They had another state to visit, and three days later I was anxiously awaiting their comparative report. They had waited for two days for their ‘confirmed’ appointment but were not able to see that governor! And the other state officials informed them that the governor had not instructed them to hold any discussions in his absence but advised them to fix another appointment. That these guys came all the way from Hong Kong was completely immaterial.

    There are numerous examples of incidents of good governance in Lagos State but I have restricted myself to a few personal examples. The essence being that whatever success has been recorded in Lagos is borne out of a disciplined and professional minded adherence to building governance structures and leading by personal example. When other officials see their head putting in long hours in the service of the people, they will follow suit. There is a sense of direction and pride in being able to deliver quality governance. Building a team of real advisers as opposed to sycophants is perhaps what has made the critical difference. Lagos is by no means immune from security challenges, but with the intimidating number of unemployed youths daily arriving the state, there must be a reason why it is one of the safest states in Nigeria when it should clearly be the reverse. For the head of governance team in Lagos, my humble advice, there is work to be done but you are doing well!

     

    •Ukpong is a Legal Practitioner

     

  • Fascism ala Jonathan?

    There is a myth that the Nigerian president is the most powerful of his kind in the world. That could be true. But only if the president wilfully breaks the law, and hopes he can get away with it.

    That is because for every power the president has, there is a check: in the best tradition of the doctrine of separation of power, on which the presidential system of government is built.

    What has been happening, since the Olusegun Obasanjo presidency (1999-2007), is that the president would essay a constitutional infraction, but flex his presidential muscles to dare anyone to challenge him, since democratic institutions are still rather weak.

    That worked ruinously during Obasanjo’s presidential monarchy, so much so that it gave birth to that myth: the Nigerian president is all-conquering and all-powerful; that it could even challenge the law that gave it life to a wrestling bout – and prevail!

    But isn’t that constitutional harakiri tantamount to the folly of the Achebe wrestler, quoting Igbo folklore, who figured he was so powerful he could challenge his chi (personal god)?

    Indeed, presidential conceit Nigerian style, and its concomitant reckless power play, contrasts the poetic conceit of John Donne (1572-1631), the English metaphysical poet in “The Sun Rising”, one of his famous sonnets, a fragment of which is quoted, prelude to this piece.

    In “The Sun Rising”, the protagonist, one of two lovers, lampooned the early morning sun for its intrusiveness, on the lovers’ nest. The “Busy old fool, unruly sun,” the angry lover fumed, could well make the difference between night and day; between sleeping and waking hours.

    But with a mere wink, he insisted, a man could shut it and its all-mighty rays from sight!

    From the rarefied world of poetry to the brick-and-mortar plain of politics, this translates to the fact that a citizen, relying on the law, could easily damn the most menacing of governments. So long for the myth of the all-mighty powers of the Nigerian Presidency!

    That leads to the delicate mix of power, authority, legitimacy and influence. Power is the most visible but the least potent. Influence is the least visible but the most potent. Authority, in a democracy, is delegated electors’ power to the elected. Legitimacy is the electors’ retentive power to periodically choose, thus guaranteeing regular elections.

    Trouble starts in a democracy when the elected project power as if it were absolute. But every student of Politics 101 knows that once power is challenged, even by the weakest and most abject in the polity, it is defeated. That is why smart governments never rely on brute force, but on legitimacy and influence.

    That is the tragic undoing of the Goodluck Jonathan Presidency and its creeping fascism. It must be checked right now; or the democratic republic will live to rue such tardiness.

    President Jonathan put the wrong foot forward when he assumed the conceit that he, because he was president, could dictate who would or who would not become the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) chair.

    Rivers Governor, Chibuike Amaechi, defied the president as meddlesome interloper in NGF matters. He needed no especial courage to do so. All he needed was to insist on his right under the law, like the lover in Donne’s poem, winking to shut out the sun.

    A similar piece of power illogic caused the split in the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Instead of sensitivity to democratic dissent in the federal ruling party, the president and his advisers reached for a fist of mail.

    Again, all the dissenting lobby, led by the G-7 Governors, needed was to stand their grounds, and take their chances against the all-mighty presidential machine. Again, that machine unravelled. But even if it had crushed the “rebels”, that they had defied the president and his awesome powers would have been enough victory – for the myth would have vanished.

    Still, instead of the Jonathan presidency taking the cue and beating a tactical retreat, it has embarked on an ill-advised, if not outright unthinking attack, which has further compromised the authority of the president and the dignity of the presidency.

    Indeed, it is from this attack that putative fascism would appear to be creeping in. An irate president appears on the offensive to politicise, if not personalise, crucial state agencies and apparatuses.

    The sheer misuse of the Police in Rivers, under the command of CP Mbu Joseph Mbu, is well and truly reprehensible. It is the unflattering paradox of an outlaw police! First, Mr. Mbu fancies himself some Abuja-anointed viceroy, contending every inch of space with Governor Amaechi. This is a constitutional infraction deserving of the harshest censure.

    Then, the police under Mbu’s command are so partisan, a bloc of governors has dubbed them the PDP armed wing – and they sound very credible! Indeed, the police ought to be so embarrassed at their own gross misconduct. They would manufacture the most absurd of reasons to push back the governor’s supporters. They would manufacture even more absurd reasons to aid presidential sympathisers, in their war against political enemies.

    Do these corps of misguided officers realise their sympathy is to the Constitution and not to any individual no matter how powerful they feel he is? But the futility of such impunity was borne out of the Amaechi march with his supporters to welcome his All Progressives Congress (APC) guests.

    The sheer dignity of the gubernatorial office reduced Mbu’s men to a contemptible rabble, lobbing tear gas canisters at a trek they could not abort! So, so disgraceful!

    But the most alarming sign of putative fascism is the crude attempt to stop the G-7 governors at all costs: now threatening to demolish buildings associated with them, then violently abridging their constitutional rights as citizens and as governors. Imagine a lowly divisional police officer (DPO) arresting governors, constitutionally immune from arrests!

    Obasanjo, during his imperial presidency, viciously manipulated state legislatures to criminalise their governors, on the suspect motive of fighting corruption, and sending the EFCC after them.

    But never in his imperial conceit did he dare to threaten governors with summary arrest – no matter how rabidly convicted they were in the media!

    But the Jonathan Presidency – or whatever “powers from above” gave that DPO of Asokoro the instruction to bound into the meeting of governors in the Kano State Governor’s Lodge and threaten them with arrest – is already crossing that Rubicon.

    All that remains, it appears, is for the threatened arrest to be effected. Fancy an almighty DPO, lobbing tear gas canisters, and sitting governors running helter-skelter to avoid arrest? It just might not be too far off!

    But then, it would be welcome, fascism!

    This polity would not triumph over vicious military rule, only to succumb to civilian fascism. But what audacity, for a common columnist to warn the almighty powers-that-be!

    Again, like Donne and his intrusive sun: it does not take any especial courage – just an insistence on the law. The rule of law is the straight and narrow path to nurture our democracy.

  • Descent into fascism?

    Not a few Nigerians are worried at the way governance is drifting in our country under the guise of politics. Even more are annoyed that President Goodluck Jonathan seems unperturbed by this descent and may in fact be enjoying it. And unfortunately at the centre of this fall is the Nigeria Police.

    Penultimate Sunday seven state governors from the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) were meeting at the Kano State Governor’s Lodge in Abuja when midway or thereabout into their deliberations, the Divisional Police Officer (DPO) of Asokoro Police Station, Chief Superintendent of Police (CSP) Nnanna Amah barged in and ordered them to stop and disperse immediately claiming he had orders from above not to allow the meeting.

    Understandably the governors, members of a breakaway faction of the party called new PDP were shocked. This was how Kano State governor, Rabiu Kwankwaso, the host, described the event: “We were discussing in my sitting room when the DPO came in and asked us to disband. We were discussing how to approach Mr. President and come up with a stand when invited, but this meeting was disrupted by a DPO. We didn’t offend anybody, but like criminals, a DPO was sent to disrupt our meeting.” Kwankwaso went on to say that not even when Nigeria was under military rule did anything like this happen.

    The DPO did not disclose who it was ‘above’ that gave him that order, but in the Nigerian situation it is safe to assume that the order came from the Presidency via the Inspector-General of Police Mohammed Abubakar.

    The rabidly pro Jonathan camp will vehemently deny this and even call anybody that suggests this was the situation names. But whatever they chose to say would not remove the fact that the Nigeria Police under IGP Abubakar has been used more as agents of oppression and suppression of any view(s) and action(s) that are not in tandem with the second term project of Dr Jonathan.

    How do you explain the situation in Rivers State where the Commissioner of Police Mbu Joseph Mbu enforces the law the way it suits his political paymasters? He is in open confrontation with the State governor, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, one of the G-7 governors and opposes virtually everything the government is doing or wants to do that involves the people gathering. He has banned every political rally or gathering of the sort, disrupting such where the governor and state government are involved yet allowing the Grassroots Democratic Initiative (GDI) of Amaechi’s main opponent and Coordinating Minister of Education, Nyesom Wike to meet freely and canvass for support. But anything gathering for Amaechi must be prevented or disrupted even if violently. This has been going on a long time and both the president and the Inspector-General are conspiring to remain silent fuelling belief that they are solidly behind CP Mbu.

    Just last week the IGP announced a ban on rallies and gatherings around and at airports nationwide. The announcement came on the back on the police preventing Amaechi’s supporters from going to Port Harcourt international Airport at Omagwa to welcome visiting leaders of the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) who were in Rivers State to woo the governor and his supporters into APC. Meanwhile the First Lady Dame Patience Jonathan who goes about with almost a battalion of policemen each time she visited home (Port Harcourt) and her supporters have free access to the airport.

    The Abuja police action against the G-7 was not the first time. The police had, not too long ago, similarly gone to the Sokoto Governor’s Lodge in Abuja to stop a gathering of the governors, but were not so lucky, as the governors fixed that venue as a decoy and actually met at a secret location. Known members, supporters and sympathisers of the new PDP are being similarly harassed routinely by the police in Abuja and the Ministry of Federal Capital Territory. The FCT authorities have threatened to demolish properties being used by the new PDP either as party secretariat or for meetings. In Bayelsa, Gombe and a couple of other states, nPDP leaders and supporters are being hounded by the police.

    All these are happening under the president’s watch and the Commander-In-Chief and his Inspector-General of Police are seeing nothing wrong here and saying nothing. PDP elders and the Bamanga Tukur faction are enjoying it. As long as the shoe is on the other foot no problem; but there is a problem here. Our democracy is under threat. Freedom of association, freedom to dissent, freedom of choice et al are being trampled upon by Jonathan’s police just to drive fear into the opposition and make Nigerians submissive to the president’s 2015 ambition.

    Nigeria is gradually being turned into a police state where opponents of government are either haunted into submission or punished for cooked up offence(s) using the apparatus and agents of state. This is the way of fascists. Although this looks like stretching the argument too far, the signs are there that President Goodluck Jonathan could lead us down that road if he is not called to order. And the only body that can do that is the National Assembly. But can this Assembly do it? Yes, if the will is there.

    But I have my doubt if this will ever happen. This National Assembly is sharply divided. While the House of Representatives might be willing to call the president and his IGP to order, the Senate often acts with too much restraint at times bordering on total submission to the will of the president. Not a few Nigerians believe that this Senate, when the chips are down, will always side with President Jonathan even at the risk of this democracy.

    But for how long can and should the senate continue to shield the president and tolerate his excesses? At what point would the Senators act and stop this culture of impunity that is the hallmark of Jonathan’s presidency. Make no mistake about it, the president is a gentleman, as all have acknowledged, but he is grossly incompetent. Doing the routine things alone would not make Jonathan a great leader neither also would he’s being nice. Taking major political decisions in the interest of the state, even if such hurt personally would put him up there as one of our finest; and he can start by calling the IGP and his boys to order, or rather allow the police to work without political interference. He should also rein in the excesses of his supporters especially his Ijaw kinsmen; and not forgetting Madam, the First Lady.

    A good place to start would be in Rivers State where a combination of his wife’s interest, the inordinate ambition of the Coordinating Minister of Education Nyesom Wike, his own second term interest and the uncompromising stance of state governor, Rotimi Amaechi are threatening the peace and security not only of the state but also the wellbeing of Nigeria’s democracy. In between put in a partisan police commissioner and you get the picture of what is going on in Rivers State.

    Some of these the president acknowledged in his speech at the centenary celebration of Port Harcourt last week, but he should not just stop at the talking, he should walk his talk and do the needful and douse the tension, not just in Rivers state but also nationwide. He should be mindful of how he uses the police lest we fall into fascism. State governors are not ordinary Nigerians to be harassed by the police just because they disagree with the president. Enough of this, Mr President.