The Nation Newspaper

Category: Editorial

  • To health minister, a memo

    To health minister, a memo

    • Treble blips of a serious public health emergency

    The statistics are dire: cancer, high blood pressure (HBP) and diphtheria could pose a treble threat, climax in a public health emergency, claiming avoidable millions in deaths and infirmities; and billions of Naira in economic costs.

    However, two of the three health risks — HBP and diphtheria — can be effectively neutered by a robust primary health system: the very base of a strong health system.  

    Besides, Prof. Muhammad Ali Pate, the new health and social welfare minister, is Coordinating Minister for Social Welfare (read: the health segment of social capital).  

    A coordinating ministry assumes a ready frame for an integrated public health care policy that should not only boost general health across income demographics, but also drive up citizens’ wellness, across Nigeria’s wide geographical swathes.  

    Still, a frame is something.  Putting that frame to good use is another.  That is why the minister — and Dr. Tunji Alausa, the health and social welfare minister of state —should tackle these potent challenges before they turn avoidable crises.

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    According to the Association of Radiation and Clinical Oncologists of Nigeria (ARCON), 78, 000 Nigerians yearly die from cancer-related illnesses. These deaths are from 125, 000 yearly reported cases, translating to 62.4 % of deaths from reported cases.  

    That number might be higher, if you add undocumented deaths from non-reported cases, though how much higher, we wouldn’t know. But this we know — at least from ARCON statistics: Nigeria records the highest yearly global deaths from breast cancer, even if cancer itself is a global burden, from which practically no country in the world, rich or poor, is immune.  

    Yet, Dr. Amaka Lasebikan, ARCON president, enthuses: “… cancer is curable, but it has to be presented early.” Late presentation is a clear function of many factors that, again, ARCON has itemised: inadequate medical infrastructure (for early tests, accurate cancer diagnoses and treatment).  

    Access to this limited infrastructure, by the way, varies so widely among Nigeria’s six geo-political zones, that ARCON is alarmed at that basic skewness.  To address that challenge, it coined, as theme for its 2023 yearly medical conference: “Equity in Oncology: Policy, Practice and Patients”.

    The Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare should partner with ARCON, so that the government can formulate policies, and design accelerative programmes, to make cancer diagnoses and treatment much more accessible and effective.  

    The ministry should also pay no less attention to the brain drain among medical professionals, that fast depletes the local stock of care givers.  Urgent investments in latest equipment and in medics’ welfare, in good salary packages and less tasking work environment, can help to address that challenge.

    But beyond manpower and hospital work challenges, the ministry should campaign against cultural and religious beliefs — but sensitively so — which ingrained fatalism often encourages costly denials that propel late treatment and avoidable deaths.  

    A persistent blitz, all season-round, should help to change such costly behaviours. Integrated into this campaign should be deliberate efforts to discourage stigmatising cancer patients, and tone down scary messages.  It was beautifully done for HIV/AIDS.  It can also be done for cancer.

    Such publicity drives should also incorporate reckless dietary habits and lifestyles, and how they trigger cancer: processed foods leaning more towards western diets, smoking, excessive alcohol intakes, multiple starchy foods, without a healthy balance of vegetables and fruits.

    Nevertheless, cancer denials are often caused by a lean pocket, which often craves magical or miraculous cures in religious houses, foreign or native — the treatment for cancer isn’t cheap!  

    So, the government should work harder at a general and comprehensive health insurance for citizens.  That way, more should be able to access the right treatment at the right time.

    HBP and diphtheria are no less scary.  But both, complex problems if allowed to get out of hand, can easily be averted by a strong primary health system, in the best tradition of prevention being better than cure.

    Like cancer, HBP is a global pandemic. Hypertension, HBP’s full manifestation, affects one in every three adults worldwide.  At its worst, hypertension could cause stroke, heart attack, heart failure and kidney damage, with their huge medical bills.

    In Nigeria, four out of every five hypertensive patients are not adequately treated.  Perhaps that partly explains the World Health Organization (WHO) alarming numbers that people living with hypertension, between 1990 and 2019, doubled from 650 million to 1.3 billion.  

    This dangerous flare is also easily explained by urban stress: imagine some Lagos folks, for instance, leaving home for work as early as 5 am, returning no earlier than 10 pm, grabbing very late dinner and having barely five hours of sleep, five days-a-week!  

    Beyond a medical response, bucking such deadly daily cycles requires significant investments in better transport infrastructure — rail, bigger and less-clogged roads, safe and fast water transportation, where available — for instance.

    One thing is clear though — and again, the source is WHO: sorting out hypertension “could prevent 76 million deaths, 120 million strokes, 79 million heart attacks, 17 million cases of heart failure, between now and 2050.”  Yes, this is a global projection.  But for Nigeria, the virtual “open sesame”, to avert all these human catastrophes, is a sound and robust primary health system!

    Again, a sound anti-hypertension programme should include public enlightenment that stresses prevention.  Citizens should stay off avoidable triggers: a high-salt intake (which many Nigerian cultures encourage), physical inactivity (inadequate regular exercises, for instance), high consumption of alcohol, and smoking.

    Diphtheria is a childhood/teenage disease that again falls within the purview of primary health care, with established regimes of free childhood vaccines.  Yet, diphtheria has latterly wreaked a sick harvest of lives, because some parents have not availed their infants and tots the available vaccine advantages at the right time.

    Combined statistics from the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) and the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDCP), reveal that as at September 25,  7, 202 cases of diphtheria had been confirmed, from 11, 587 suspected cases; 453 deaths had also been recorded.

    Affected states, in their order of severity, are Kano (6, 185), Yobe (640), Katsina (213), Borno (95), Kaduna (16), Jigawa (14), Bauchi (eight), Lagos (eight), FCT (five), Osun and Sokoto (three each), Niger (two), Cross River, Enugu and Imo, Nasarawa and Zamfara (one each).

    The North West and North East geo-political zones are the most impacted.  That should prompt an aggressive enlightenment, in those areas, calling parents out to vaccinate their children.  But the government must closely watch too other driving factors: poverty, manifested in folks living in crowded homes, with poor sanitation.

    Such huddled homes also condemn the children to direct contact with infected people, expose them to droplets from coughing or sneezing, and also make them have contact with contaminated clothing and objects.  Tackling poverty is beyond the purview of the Federal Ministry of Health but public campaigns against poor sanitation is not.

    A diphtheria vaccination gap has also been established: only 42% (less than half) of Nigerian children between one and 14 years have been fully vaccinated; whereas there is free and ready vaccination: the Pentavalent (for children between six weeks and four years) and the Tetanus-diphtheria (Td) for children between four years and 14 years.  

    As immediate response, the government should rally parents to get their children full vaccination, by involving everyone: particularly the traditional communications and institutions, to sell the message.  The special task force to rein in diphtheria spread should also rally the affected states and collaborate with them.

    But stats from both HBP and diphtheria show a common feature: Nigeria’s primary health system is not top-notch yet.  So, the minister should immediately revamp NPHCDA for better service delivery.  But the Federal Ministry of Health must work closely with the states, to achieve prime results.

    A solid primary health system holds the simple key to solving Nigeria’s complex public health problem.  Now — not tomorrow — is the time to build such a system.  Millions of lives depend on it.

  • Changing ‘public’ in public services and implications for reforms in Nigeria

    Changing ‘public’ in public services and implications for reforms in Nigeria

    • Tunji Olaopa

    The public service has been at the core of the theories and practice of public administration for centuries. And this is because it is key to defining the successes or failures of any state or government. Indeed, and most specifically in contemporary times, the critical transformations that have attended the idea of governance has led to further iterations of what the public service could mean in any contexts. What is called the “new governance paradigm” emerged within the historical context of the fall of the former USSR and the simultaneous rise of the neoliberal orthodoxy that decreed the redefinition of the role of the state in the economy and in governance. With the neoliberal insistence that the state must be a minimal one, the governance space became enlarged in ways that dislodge the hegemony of the state in governance. In other words, once the space of governance is expanded, two significant developments became possible. One, government’s role in governance became essentially regulatory, and this enables the possibility of delivering non-core functions through the exploration of alternative models of service delivery, as well as a mx of corporatization, privatization, lease contracting, agencification and commercialization. Two, the expansion of the governance space brings in nonstate and nongovernmental actors to complement government’s capacities and capabilities.

    From this historical and theoretical perspectives, it becomes immediately clear why the idea of the public service has equally gone through a similar rethinking such that it becomes also possible for service delivery by the public service to be undertaken by independent, voluntary and non-profit organizations and agencies. This begins to affect our understanding of what is “public” if the essential services that are meant to be delivered by the public service have now been either transferred to nonstate or private sector, or they are delivered through a public-private partnership (PPP) contract. Unfortunately, the understanding of the idea of the public service that operates in states like Nigeria derive from an almost fossilized version enshrined in critical legal instruments like the constitution and the public service rules and other legal instruments that govern the operational and administrative logic of the institution.

    This therefore not only raises the prospect of a disjuncture between theoretical, administrative and practical concerns in the way the meaning of the public service has evolved. Put in other words, if the government fails to take notice of the changing connotation of what we call the public service, there is the probability that its understanding of its nature will always be lacking. This is because transforming the meaning and nature of the public service through the imperative of institutional and modernizing reforms are meant to make the public service more flexible and hence more efficient in the task of service delivery to the citizens.  

    This reflection then inevitably leads us to raising fundamental questions that no government can afford to smoothen over in the rush of political and developmental exigencies. These questions include: What is the “public” in the public service? What makes the “public” public? Are the public service and the public sector synonymous? What is the relationship between what is public and what is private? These are crucial questions that could assist a government in situating the fundamental significance of the public service, within the changing parameters for doing public administration across the world, and thus in adequately outlining the requisite reform frameworks that will greatly improve the capability readiness of the system to deliver goods and service.

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    The usual ways the public service is designated is functionally, through what we perceive the public service to be doing. And this includes (a) the public functions of government like the public healthcare, law enforcement, security, etc.; and (b) activities that are specifically performed to benefit the public, like education, road maintenance, and other infrastructural services. This descriptive assessment of what a public service does seems straightforward. But it does not do enough for our understanding of how the public service can become the engine room for transforming the citizens’ lives. One reason for this is that these activities that are ascribed to the government are not often in the domain of the government. Some of them can pass off as commercial activities provided by individuals or private organizations.

    But more important is the argument that the public service should be denoted normatively—we understand the public service by what it should be doing, and what its structures, procedures and organizational modalities ought to be. What makes a public service speaks to a value judgment about what activities it should perform. For example, is the railway necessarily a public service even though it serves the public? Pharmacies serve the public, but should they not be a public service?  This immediately tells us that what we call the public services do not necessarily fall within the purview of the government, even though the public sector is solely controlled by the government. Universities usually fall under the public sector, but are also usually provided by private independent actors and agencies.

    So, the first thing to note is that what we call the public services are defined as essentially provisions for the public. It is secondary whether those services are provided by the government or private agencies. Of course, the government has a grip on what is provided by the government; the point is that these activities are not entirely confined to the government. The provision of these services straddles the government and nonstate organizations. The second point is that the publicness of the public service stems from the fact that they derive from carefully calibrated public policy—from critical stakeholders in the governance space—that objectify the intentions of the government for the citizens. The other side of the coin is that the “service” the public service provides are meant for the citizens—the public service provides services that are critical for improving welfare and well-being. The literature has also identified the idea of the redistributive nature of the public service: there is a difference between those who pay for the services and those who benefits from it. And the last critical point: government, even though not solely, holds the responsibility of trust for providing these services.

    What then are the necessary lessons to draw from these definitional issues around what makes the public service “public” and a ‘service”? Let us recall that we began this piece by situating the public service within the context of the new governance paradigm. This implies that institutional reform must factor in the government and the public sector on the one hand, and the nonstate actors on the other.                 For the government, the challenge is to deepen the institutional reform of the public service. Essentially, the most significant involve instituting competency-based HR, installing performance management and accountability culture, deepening project management praxis, transforming the wage and incentive structure, enabling talent management system, and establishing the senior executive service (SES) as the core of beefing up the system’s IQ. This systematically leads to the second level of reform which has to do with structurally articulating and enhancing the professional environment to enable a public private sector integrated governance model according to a globally adapted practice. This demand building up the managerial and institutional capacities of the public service to achieve efficient service delivery; and second, enhance and solidify its collaborative capacities for partnerships and networking. These partnerships require shared learning platforms that make for coherent frameworks that align corporate and public governance structures.

    The second dimension of the institutional reform targeted at the public sector, and specifically the public service, is that there is a need to re-professionalize the public service and the public manager in ways to fit into the new partnership imperatives demanded by the new governance paradigm. This will require that the manager’s capacity for understanding and adapting to systems thinking, deploy big data for policy intelligence, create foresight techniques for generating scenarios that strengthen the policy design dynamics to be resilient is deepened sufficiently. The new public manager also needs composite competences to, one, be able to first manage third party service providers (through service contracts, grants to non-profit organizations, social impact bonds, and other contractual obligations which require a range of commercial, legal, and regulatory skills), and then learn to design contracts that embed performance indicators and deliverables which help in tracking values for investment; two, be better at smartly managing citizens engagement by leveraging the benefits of the social media, opinion research, user-data analytics, crowdsourcing, etc.; and finally be trained adequately in acquiring the skills needed in effectively managing the change management programs that facilitate proper implementation trajectories.

    The other side of the reform expectation involves the participation of the nonstate and nongovernmental agencies and private sector professionals in the governance space. Given the difficulty that has been experience in the relational pattern between the public servants and private sector professionals, especially those we regard as cross-over professionals, there is the urgent need for the nonstate agencies and professionals to recognize the structural imperatives of the public service as a profession in its own right with its own unique code of practice and ethics. Secondly, reforms must be targeted at developing and enhancing collaborative parameters and structures that enable technocrats, professionals and bureaucrats to work productively together.

    The public service is the fulcrum that services the social contract between the government and the citizens. If a government must be developmental and democratic, the public service system must be the focus of ensuring that infrastructural development and public services are distributed effectively and efficiently to facilitate the well-being of the citizens.

  • Honour for Achebe

    Honour for Achebe

    • Soludo’s renaming of Anambra airport after icon is honour long due and commendable

    Anambra State Governor, Professor Charles Soludo, as part of this year’s 63rd Independence  anniversary reflected class and a sense of place for renaming the Anambra International Airport, Umuleri, the Chinua Achebe International Passenger and Cargo Airport. Chinua Achebe, the African literary icon, was born in Ogidi, a village in Anambra State, on November 16th, 1930 and he died on March 21st, 2013. This honour comes ten years after the passing of the novelist, popular for his first novel, Things Fall Apart, that has been widely read and translated into more than fifty  languages and made into films.

    While making the announcement, the governor told his audience that the decision to rename the airport after Achebe was arrived at consensually after wide consultations with stakeholders in the state. He recalled that despite the global image of the late literary icon, he had never really been honored in a remarkable way in his home state and renaming the airport after him was apposite.

    The governor made reference to the two occasions in 2004 and 2011 when the legendary Achebe rejected the Commander of the Federal Republic (CFR) award and gave his reasons.  At one time, he rejected the national honour because in his words, “I have watched particularly the chaos in my own state of Anambra where a small clique of renegades, openly boasting its connections in high places, seems determined to turn my homeland into a bankrupt and lawless fiefdom. I am appalled by the brazenness of this clique and the silence, if not connivance, of the Presidency.”

    We recall however that the literary icon had before been honored in 1979 with Nigerian National Honor of Merit and Order of the Federal Republic (OFR). He also received the Nigerian Trophy for Literature. He won the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade.  He won the International Man Booker Prize in 2007, the St. Louis Literary Award and the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize in 2010. The author, poet and social critic Achebe had received many chieftaincy titles and University Honorary Doctorate awards from more than thirty colleges and universities across the globe.

    Achebe won immortality with his literary works, and wrote chapters in the hearts of his many students. It is, therefore, commendable that the Anambra State government decided to rename the airport after the iconic author who stamped the name of Nigeria, nay Africa, on the global literary map  with his writing prowess.

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    We commend the government as this gesture is a step away from the usual official philistinism. This is a recognition of talent, a true reward for patriotism and for an intellectual and cultural ambassador. The value of world literature and the arts cannot be over-emphasized given their roles in our world. Achebe detested the western views about Africa and took a stand, told the story of the pre and post-colonial Igbo culture as an African. He didn’t stop at the story-telling, he wrote political satires and socially critical books like, A Man of the People, The Trouble With Nigeria, Arrow of God, There Was a Country, amongst others.

    This honor is laudable because it will continue to tell the story of  the artist that Achebe was.  He continues even in death to be a rallying point for national and global discourse. An honor to him or any other artist is an affirmation of the value of art. Sadly, contemporary value system of the society has for long highlighted only politicians or some money bags whose life story do not tell much about service or social relevance. 

    However, while commending the Anambra State government for rightly giving honour to whom honour is due, we want to caution that being a global icon, Achebe and the airport named after him must befit each other. Despite global economic strife, facilities at the airport must be upgraded to befit the stature of an Arts and Culture ambassador like Achebe. While the nation awaits a national monument that would earn the name of Achebe like in other countries with icons like Shakespeare, Beethoven, Piccaso, Charles Dickens , Mandela, Bob Marley, Brenda Fassie  and the like, we urge the government to put requisite infrastructure at the airport that would befit Achebe.

    The airport would henceforth attract the kind of attention that monuments  like the Shakespeare Theatre attracts in London. It might not be an art house or a theater but it has to be one of the best, if Achebe is in any way associated with it. Being a strong cultural man, we believe that if he rejected two national honors from two Nigerian Presidents, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan because he was dissatisfied with the way democracy was not benefitting the Anambra people and the nation at large, his spirit might not rest if in death his name is attached to an airport not matching his global image.

    Achebe always tried to excel while carrying the people’s culture, hopes and aspirations through his writings. Being a cultural enthusiast, he believed in the Igbo cosmology that honors the spirit of the dead because the dead cannot speak for themselves but in the same way, the unappeased spirit can be very vindictively destructive. The governor being ‘nwa afo’ (son of the soil) Anambrarian must remember the cultural ethos of Ndigbo. Only the best is good enough, especially for the dead that has no choice in what their name is associated with.

    While we commend state administrations dating back to the conception and execution of the airport project that was commissioned in 2021 by former  Governor Willy Obiano with state resources, we believe that the Federal Government must in some way contribute to standardizing the passenger and cargo airport for strategic socio-economic value in a region known for its commercial impact on the national economy. We equally suggest that the government reach out to the indigenes, both at home and in the diaspora, for functional partnerships that can make the airport a regional hub. 

    We are hoping that this gesture will signpost the recognition of excellence in fields that are not political or through money-induced praise singing that seem to be common these days. We commend Governor Soludo for the great gesture. It is very encouraging to the younger ones who can now see that excellence can earn honors. We hope more people can be as diligent and patriotic enough to earn the honors that Achebe garnered in life and in death.

    “Achebe had won immortality with his literary works, and had written chapters in the hearts of his many students. It is, therefore, commendable that the Anambra State government decided to rename the airport after the iconic author.”

  • Adieu, Professor Shehu

    Adieu, Professor Shehu

    • Pity that his academic success soared while his home state descended into Boko Haram agony

    He traversed the branches of the medical field as a house physician, an academic, a researcher, an administrator. Above all, Professor Umaru Shehu, who passed recently at the age of 92, was a role model as trail blazer. He was our first professor emeritus.

    Professor Shehu was noted for his work in virology, but many will remember him as an exemplary university administrator and health activist. He was the vice chancellor of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. This is potent today when the appointment to that high academic perch has assumed an ethno-religious colour across the country. His report card was stellar. He, a Borno State indigene, was also the chairman of the board of management at the University College Hospital, Ibadan. He also served as the chairman of the Board of Directors of the Institute of Human Virology in Nigeria, a position he held until he passed on.

    To reflect the geographic breadth of his work, he became pro-chancellor and chairman of the governing council at the Bayero University, Kano as well as at the University of Lagos. He served as a Trustee for the National Foundation on Vesicovaginal Fistula, a scourge in the country, especially in the north. He also chaired the boards of the National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA) and STOPAIDS. He was patron of such bodies as Nigerian Medical Forum of Great Britain and Ireland, The Nigerian Institute of Stress, the Guild of Medical Directors and the Nationwide Network of Health.

    He extended his forays to the written word. He was a member of the editorial board for the West African Medical Journal and was appointed as consulting editor for the Nigerian publication, the Medical Practitioner. He was also an editorial adviser for the Nigerian post-graduate Medical Journal and joint editor-in-chief of the British Medical Journal, West Africa edition. He was also trustee of the National Foundation on Vesicovaginal Fistula (VVF) and a member of the Nigerian Tuberculosis and Leprosy Association.

    His activities transcended the country. He was the President of Medical Schools in Africa.

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    One of his prominent areas of service was at the World Health Organisation (WHO). It started in Geneva, Switzerland where he served as a short-term consultant for the working group on Health Services and Manpower Development Mechanism.  He also worked with WHO as temporary adviser and later as consultant for Technical Discussions at its 24th WHO Regional Committee for Africa.

    He became National WHO Programme Coordinator/Representative in Nigeria, in which role he implemented WHO programmes in Nigeria. He later became the director of WHO Sub-Regional Health Development Office III, after which he became WHO Representative to Ethiopia. In West Africa, he served as the external examiner at the University of Ghana Medical School.

    In 2000, he was appointed a professor emeritus by the University of Maiduguri in his home state where played a significant role as provost of its College of Medicine and assumed the role of Sole Administrator.

    Experienced as he was in administration, he shunned bureaucracy, hence he turned down an offer to serve as the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Health and Chief Medical Officer in the North Eastern State. Rather, he took up an appointment in academics as reader and acting head of the Department of Community Medicine as its first ever head at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. It was there he became a professor of community medicine, during which period he was deputy dean of the Faculty of Medicine and director of Institute of Health in the same university. He also rose to become deputy vice-chancellor and pro-chancellor.

    It all began when he attended primary school in Maiduguri and moved to Kaduna College in Zaria and proceeded to the University College, Ibadan. He later obtained his medical degree at the University of London.

    Prof Shehu’s irony was that his intellectual eminence was never publicly galvanized to proselytize enlightenment for this generation of Boko Haram and its cycle of violence and mental decay.

  • Drug bomb

    Drug bomb

    • We must redouble efforts to stem the tide

    Nigeria is apparently sitting on a keg of gunpowder if the rate of drug addiction in the country is as high as the 14.3 per cent released by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). This disclosure made by the body’s project officer, Dr. Akanidomo Ibanga, means that one out of every seven Nigerians do dangerous drugs.

    Ibanga made this known  during a capacity building training for operatives of Kaduna Bureau of Substance Abuse, Prevention and Treatment (KADBUSA) in Kaduna, Kaduna State. According to him, “Now, that is three times more the global average. We have a serious drugs problem on our hands.”

    This is indeed a very serious problem, especially with the lack of adequate treatment facilities to handle the issues of people that have drugs disorder. As Ibanga noted, when we realise that the figures under reference were 2018 figures, we can imagine how dire the situation is.

     ”This date is even 2018 data. From that time till date, the number of people using drugs has probably increased. From projections from the World Health Organisation (WHO) and UNODC is that there would be 40 per cent increase in drug use by 2030 in Africa, and Nigeria, being the most populous country in Africa, is likely to have most of the number.”

    KADBUSA’s Director- General Joseph Ike said the training was in alignment with Governor Uba Sani administration’s agenda.

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    We cannot ignore UNODC. As a global leader in the fight against illicit drugs and international crime, in addition to being responsible for implementing the United Nations lead programme on terrorism, it should know.  We must rise to the occasion.

    “So, we are saying that we are sitting on a time bomb because come 2030, we are talking of about 20 per cent prevalence. That is, one in every five people you meet on the street.”

    This is a time bomb indeed. We must arrest the trend.

    We need an aggressive public enlightenment blitz to enable people; particularly the youths, know the dangers in some of their habits. They must be sufficiently aware of the triggers: peer pressure, home dislocation, parental detachment (dysfunctional families), etc. In this wise, faith and normative agencies (churches, mosques, etc) should do more to help curb the drug crisis.

    All of these can be added to UNODC’s models that can be run by both national and state governments.

    For instance, it is better to counsel  people with drug disorders that can still be redeemed rather than send them to prison, a thing which sometimes bring them in contact with hardened criminals and compound their problem.

    There is no doubt that the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) is trying a lot, especially in recent times, but it should do more to curtail this growing menace, both in arrests and prosecution, and in mass advocacy for better drug conduct.

    We commend Governor Sani for the initiative which is apparently a reaction to the challenge of drug abuse in Kaduna State that he governs. Drug abuse is actually a pandemic in the state, with about 10.9 per cent of people in the state being involved in drug abuse. As a matter of fact, this is believed to be the fuel for the violence that has characterised the state in recent times.

    We also urge more collaboration with stakeholders in the drug war so they can exchange ideas and thus better and more efficiently handle their onerous assignments.

  • Redemption

    Redemption

    • Niger government’s part-payment to NECO shows it is a matter of prioritisation

    Niger State Government is making efforts to redeem its image as a chronic debtor of the secondary education examination bodies. The government, this week, said it had paid N120million of N500million debt to the National Examinations Council (NECO). This should hopefully allow for the release of examination results of students from the state which NECO had withheld, along with some other states, over indebtedness to the examination body.

    State Commissioner for Information and Strategy Binta Mamman said on Monday that the present administration of Governor Umaru Bago inherited the N500million owed NECO as examination fees for the state’s Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination (SSCE) candidates by the previous administration. But in its prioritization of education, among other sectors, the Bago administration has not only paid off N120million but has also given a standing order for N30million monthly payment to the examination body. She said the governor was not comfortable with inability of students to access their results after writing examinations because their results were seized due to government debt owed, adding that the administration would ensure the state no longer owe the examination body after it clears the outstanding. Niger is among six states that NECO withheld their candidates’ results over three-year examination fee indebtedness.

    In the past, NECO Registrar and Chief Executive, Professor Dantani Wushishi, had occasion to complain that eight northern states were owing the body to the tune of N1.8billion. The debt, according to him, accrued from the governments promising to pay candidates’ examination fees but failing to make good. “State governments offer to pay examination fees for candidates from their states, but when it comes to actual payment they don’t do it, and that has strapped NECO. Zamfara, Adamawa, Kano, Gombe, Borno and Niger state governments are owing the examination body N1.8billion debt for the students they registered in 2019,” he had said. Late last year, Wushishi announced that NECO was withholding results of all candidates from Niger, which incidentally is the body’s host state, because of N500million outstanding from the state government. “Jigawa cleared off its debts and paid for the registration of all its students this year. Kano has one of the largest numbers of registered students. The state owed close to N1billion but this year, they paid for the registration of all the candidates in the state and paid more than 70 percent of the backlog it owed,” he said.

    NECO isn’t the only examination body owed by state governments, including Niger. The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) withheld results of students from eight states who took the 2023 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) due to respective governments’ indebtedness to the council. Former Head of National Office, Mr. Patrick Areghan, at a press conference in August, did not name all the debtor-states or the amounts respectively owed, but he called out Zamfara and Niger as the top debtors. He said inter alia: “Zamfara and Niger states are the highest debtors. Again, Zamfara did not present any candidate for this year’s WASSCE.”… I need to restate that the results of candidates sponsored by states indebted to the council will not be released now until they pay up.”

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    Indications of Niger’s level of indebtedness could, however, be gleaned from the displeasure of members of the state House of Assembly, sometime last year, when they summoned then Commissioner for Education, Hannatu Salihu, to explain the N295million being owed to WAEC. They lamented that the indebtedness had resulted in results of Niger students being withheld by the council; with the lawmaker who moved the motion for debate by the assembly, Mohammed Haruna (APC-Bida II), saying the development would impede the education of students intending to seek admission into higher institutions using their WAEC results. “The tradition has been that government pays WAEC and NECO examination fees for final year students of secondary schools, but recently this has not been the case. Unless we as representatives of the people rise and rescue these students who are future leaders, their dreams of getting education may be a mirage,” Haruna said.

    We can’t agree more with the foregoing argument. Education is being grossly jeopardized for candidates who sit for examinations but can’t access their results because governments of their sates are owing the examination bodies. Many have missed admission opportunities as they couldn’t present School Certificate results in support of their application. And it is sheer irresponsibility on the part of affected state governments that things got to such head. The move by the Bago administration in Niger, modest as it is, showed that where there is a will, there is always a way. We can’t afford to sacrifice the future of young ones, who are Nigeria’s future, on the altar of philistinic attitude of today’s leaders. All debtor-states must pay up now!

  • Now, a reprieve

    Now, a reprieve

    • It’s time for Labour movement and government to review their role relation

    Since the advent of the Fourth Republic, the Labour movement has been playing the role of an adversary to governments at the federal and sub-national levels. Perhaps it is a spillover mentality from the military years when the men in khaki used coercion to get everyone in the country into line. Civil society groups were at odds with that culture and forged alliance with Labour, the media, the academia and students movements.

    More than two decades on, Labour has allowed that mentality to define its relationship with the various governments since then. At every point when Labour felt that the public was feeling uneasy at implementation of policies, it “rolled out the tanks,” threatening to apply maximum pressure to control and direct public policy in whatever direction it preferred. The October 3 “indefinite and total strike” that failed to take off was one example. A united Labour movement said it had mobilised all its members, including those in essential services including aviation, power, petroleum upstream, among others to “shut down” the economy. Why the workers thought that to be the solution to the hardship in the country is not clear. It is good, however, that good sense eventually prevailed.

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    The Federal Government that is constitutionally saddled with industrial relations, too, must realise that workers are important to the production process and running the affairs of the nation. It should not wait until strike actions are declared before securing the understanding of workers’ representatives.

    Governments in Nigeria since the Cost of Living Allowance strike of 1945 have failed to regard the Labour movement as a partner in progress. Labour, understandably at the time, as well saw itself as a partner of the burgeoning radical arm of the nationalist movement and was still learning to understand the transition from the colonial to the independent era when the military swept away the elected post-colonial government. The longer the military held the reins of government, the more it grew disdainful of democratic forces. At some point, it even legislated against discussing national affairs in the public space. It was in that context that Labour kicked and fought. As was the case for other sectors and institutions, the military government had no time for “tantrums” by Labour leaders who were seen and treated like irritants.

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    But the circumstance has changed, it is no longer the same setting. If at the inception of this Republic, Labour could not easily forge new strategies and tactics for its primary role of seeking better living standards for its members, it has the blame for still living in them beyond nearly a quarter of a century into the new dispensation.

    In under four months of the Bola Tinubu presidency, Labour has moved from the threat of a strike that was averted by court injunction on the eve of breaching industrial peace, to a warning strike that recorded partial success, and then to the October 3 aborted strike. When that tool is overused, it loses its cutting edge. So, Labour should device means of engaging with government in its bid to protect workers’ interests and project the national interest, as it understands, above all else.

    Labour, civil society, the academic community as well as the organised private sector should push for inclusive governance that would protect their interests from within the system. Nigerian political parties are diverse and broad enough to represent all segments of the society, and many of those in the current ruling party had themselves been activists in the past. They should be used by both camps as links. The Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) and Trade Union Congress (TUC) should realise that the government does not exist for workers in the public service alone. Most times that they mobilise all workers, and sometimes a wing of the civil society to bare their fangs, they only come up with demands for more wages that only push up the inflationary trend. Nigeria is currently faced with multifaceted challenges that require all hands on deck of a ship sailing at sea and being tossed by storm.

    All must be ready to make sacrifices, but national leaders have to work hard at earning citizens’ confidence. The Tinubu administration inherited much of the baggage it is carrying and should be given time to sort things out. But, the government should start showing its difference from its predecessors by faithfully implementing every agreement with Labour and others. It starts with fidelity to the famous social contract.

  • Thirty and more

    Thirty and more

    • In spite of airstrikes on illegal refineries, it requires communal effort

    It was good news that the Nigerian Airforce recently knocked out about 30 illegal refineries in the Niger Delta in the Cawthorne Channel and Bille in the Degema Local Government Area of Rivers State.

    According to the Nigeria Armed Forces, those two areas mark the majority of illegal activities in the state. The operation that the NAF reported signify the use of aerial operations, and that indicates a new approach to those who bleed our patrimony with impunity.

    We encourage the intensification of air attacks because it is more clinical and boasts one of the time-honoured strategies of military assaults: surprise. It happened against the backdrop of a visit to the area by the National Security Adviser Mallam Nuhu Ribadu.

    The attacks revealed that what we have in the Niger Delta is a methodical and organized thievery that goes beyond refineries involving persons who show no respect for the law or the prosperity of the country. They are propelled only their own greed.

    The illegal refineries were propped with storage tanks, reservoirs and Cotonou boats. The boats siphon oil from the flow stations. All these were destroyed in the aerial strikes.

    “These efforts will be sustained in these locations and others until oil thieves and their accomplices desist from their illegal activities,” the NAF statement said.

    Oil strikes are not the only strategy, great as they are. They provide quick surgical operations while also utilizing land and marine components.

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    We expect this in all the other states where these illegal activities thrive, including in Delta, Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa and Imo states. Three terminals are known targets, and they are Bonny, Forcados and Brass.

    While the Tinubu administration has stepped up the search and destruction of these illegal refiners, the previous administration of Muhammadu Buhari also played a role in confronting the menace. The Defence department reported that 5,480 such refineries were discovered in eight years and their elimination led to savings of $158 billion. This encompassed over six million barrels of crude oil, 1.2 billion litres of Automotive Dual Purpose Kerosene and three million litres of petrol seized.

    Figures are difficult to determine, but getting accurate numbers is part of the fight for integrity in the oil industry. For instance, a Woods Mackenzie report in 2021 said we lost 200,000 barrels a day. When Ribadu visited the region, he put it at 400,000. Such discrepancies lead us to examine the position of the Nigeria Extractives Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) that recently warned about lack of statistical honesty in handling our most valued resource.

    NEITI suggested some measures. One, the use of advanced technologies, especially imagery and sophisticated ICT tools. The purpose is to enable the country to monitor real-time how the activities in the various centres of operation.

    It also suggested a cooperation between oil firms and the Federal Government to ensure all the tools are utilized in fulfilling the Petroleum Industry Act. This will help communal stake and ownership in the region. NEITI attributed 2021 losses to measurement errors, theft and sabotage.

    This shows that, while the illegal refiners are a major source of theft, it involves other areas including pipeline vandalism, vessels arrests, illegal connections, wooden boats arrests, vehicle-related arrests and oil spills.

    The Buhari administration had its National Security Adviser Babagana Monguno set up a special investigative panel on oil theft/losses and Major-General Barry Ndiomu. We expect that Ribadu and his team would examine that report and make it public and show us its grand plan to tackle oil theft in the country.

    If we lose so much a day, it shows that it is not the armed forces alone that will solve it. It is a communal effort.

  • Laudable, but…

    Laudable, but…

    • Reps’ bid to enroll 14m out-of-school children needs more careful planning

    It’s no news that Nigeria has one of the highest numbers of out-of-school children, estimated at about 20 million. This number might have grown with recent school kidnappings, as most parents especially in the North have either withdrawn their children or have refused to enroll them for fear of their being abducted. They would rather have illiterate children who are alive than sending them to school to be kidnapped. Economic hardship arising from the general socio-economic turn of events is yet another problem as most schools have increased their tuition and other bills due to the removal of fuel subsidy.

    It therefore sounds like music to the ears that the House of Representatives, through the Committee on Alternative Education chaired by Hon. Almustapha Aliyu (APC, Sokoto), intends to enroll 14 million of the out-of-school children to be trained in several relevant skills to become productive members of the society through a programme tagged “Nigeria Mass Reduction of Out-of-School Children and Youth Project (NIMPROP). The lawmakers claim the project would last for four years and is is expected to drastically reduce the number of out-of-school children by availing them non-formal accelerated education system and other alternative schooling programmes.

    The programme, according to the House, is in line with the aspirations of the United Nations Sustainable Goals (SDGs-4) on qualitative and inclusive education for all. The lawmakers intend to liaise with relevant government agencies like the National Commission on Almajiri and Out-of-School Children, the National Commission for Mass literacy, Adult  and Non-Formal Education, and the National Commission for Nomadic Education. The Reps committee also intends to lift about 16 million Nigerians out of poverty to aide parents to send their children to school.

    We commend the initiative of the House of Representatives. However, the whole thing sounds  too utopian to be achievable just because the intentions are good. We are worried that this sounds like the usual rhetoric by politicians in both the executive and legislative arms of government. In other words, the whole thing sounds like wishful thinking. The functions of the legislature do not include execution of projects on the scale the House Committee on Alternative Education seems to be articulating.

    Education of any kind needs thorough planning. Where are the infrastructure the lawmakers intend to use? Where are the funds and manpower going to come from? Seeing that the plans and agencies might be focused on the Northern region, what logistical support would the committee rely on? How far have agencies of government like the National Commission on Almajiri and Nomadic Education gone since their establishment? What infrastructure have they been working with? How are the teachers going to be recruited?

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    The insecurity in the Northern region has affected severely the lives and economic well-being of people in that region. What is the committee going to do to have a secure environment for whatever form of education programme it intends to embark on? We can notice the emphasis on non-formal education, but while we support skill acquisition, we wonder what type of skills young children who possibly have never acquired any literacy level could be trained in. We expect that the House should first plan better on how to achieve this very laudable objective before going public with their intentions.

    The 21st Century and the future belong to those with structured education. There must be basic foundational education before the skills acquisition lessons. There is no skill that does not need some form of literacy to start with. We expect the committee to go back to the drawing board to plan better with other committees to make laws that can help the region first. Failure to plan properly for this would replicate other failed projects like the Almajiri / nomadic education project.  Nigeria cannot afford to take the road that leads to a dead end. There must be proper and detailed planning to avoid having another ‘elephant education project’ that would sooner than later fall flat on its face, even before it starts.

    Education is the panacea for development. It cannot work well with spontaneous actions that sound politically correct but lacking in proper planning and execution. While we understand the urgency of the need to educate the children and youths, there must be proper and solid planning for both infrastructure and manpower. Good intentions cannot educate children and the youths, solid and pragmatic planning alone can. We hope the right things get done.

  • Sacrifice needed

    Sacrifice needed

    • Fat pension for ex-govs in new political jobs is incongruous with state of economy

    Revenue Mobilization, Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) Chairman Mohammed Shehu lately revisited the practice whereby former state governors who take up fresh appointment as senators or ministers yet draw huge pensions from their states. He said houses of assembly should amend respective pension law to suspend such pensions, especially to ex-governors who find immediate employment in political offices where they draw full salaries and allowances.

    In an interview with Sunday Vanguard, the revenue commission boss said: “A person who has served as governor either for four or eight years as the case may be, then goes on to become senator or minister shouldn’t be earning double from public coffers. Many states have laws that provide generous pensions for former governors and these same people become senators or ministers and still collect salaries and other benefits in their new roles, this shouldn’t be the case.”

    Many of the 36 states nationwide have enacted laws giving fat pensions to their ex-helmsmen and deputies. From the Public Office Holder (Payment of Pension) Law, 2007, of Lagos State that is among the earliest, other states have joined the train. The laws typically prescribe huge sums in allowances, mansions in Abuja and respective state, vehicle fleets and exotic furniture renewable at short intervals, besides paid medical expenses and vacations abroad for the former governors and their family members. These are in addition to provision for support staff like cooks and drivers. Many of these laws are in states that can ill-afford to pay workers’ salaries with regularity, much less pensions of retired workforce. Among them also are states that have been unable to implement the national minimum wage of N30,000.

    Some states in recent history pushed for even more outlandish benefits. In the Enugu Gubernatorial Pension Bill, 2021 that scaled first reading in the state assembly before it was suspended amidst public uproar, there was provision for post-humous expenses of an ex-governor / deputy, including financial responsibility for their burial and “a condolence allowance of a sum equivalent to the annual basic salary of the incumbent to the next of kin.” And in Benue State, the house of assembly mid-last year passed an executive bill proposed by the administration of former Governor Samuel Ortom to provide bogus life pension for ex-governors and deputies. The catch is, the bill was passed after the assembly temporarily called off suspension of their constitutional functions owing to huge salary arrears owed them by the Ortom administration, but which the administration managed to partly defray. Not that it was a worthwhile deal, though, because then incoming Governor Hyacinth Alia indicated disinterest in implementing the law.

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    In his Vanguard interview, Shehu said it was a disservice to states for ex-helmsmen in other political jobs to be drawing fat pensions and it would contribute to economic well-being of the states, even if marginally, to suspend such benefits. Besides, both the legality and morality of the arrangement are questionable. It can be argued that pension is a legitimate due of every worker and there’s no law barring ex-governors or deputies from earning such due after leaving office. But RMAFC is the body constitutionally empowered to fix remunerations for political office holders, and it provides only for payment of 300 percent basic salary as severance allowances. While there is not much the commission can do about state pensions laws because they were statutorily enacted, the  laws are blatantly self-servicing and in many cases at dire odds with economic health of affected states.

    The morality of the pension laws is far more contestable. In conventional wisdom, you are either pensioned or you are working, you cannot be both a pensioner and an active worker simultaneously – which is what the ex-governors effectively are. Even if they make do with 300 percent of basic salary severance pay that RMAFC approves, a 2019 Court of Appeal judgment declared payment of severance allowances to elected or appointed public office holders morally wrong. The court, in a verdict on an appeal filed by the Kogi State Government, said the fact that elected public office holders and political appointees were paid huge sums as monthly salaries and other allowances while in office made it morally wrong for them to demand gratuity or severance allowance for holding such office for only few years, whereas career civil servants who served their country / states / local governments all their lives were subjected to contributory pension schemes by which they contribute part of their meagre monthly salaries that are always paid in arrears while in service, to be able to earn pension and gratuity upon retirement.

    In 2020, Lagos Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu moved to abolish the state’s pension law, but the state assembly only agreed to cutting the allowances by 50 per cent and expunging the provision for houses in the law. Recently, former Ogun State Governor and now Senator, Gbenga Daniel, volunteered that his pension from the state be suspended. These are examples that other states and individuals concerned can borrow a leaf from. After all, ongoing reforms by the Bola Tinubu presidency have forced hard sacrifices on most Nigerians. Ex-governors who are part of the administration as ministers or senators  should lead in making sacrifices.