Category: Editorial

The controversy over the proposal from the office of the minister of transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, for a security surveillance system for the railway infrastructure in the country, especially the railway line between Abuja and Kaduna, has highlighted the deficiencies in the way the Federal Government has been working under the Muhammadu Buhari administration.

If hoodlums did not attack the train on March 28, with at least eight persons dead, many injured and over a hundred persons abducted, we might not have known that the minister had proposed a system to secure the railways and the Federal Executive Council (FEC) shot it down for the minister to review and re-present.

But we know more now. We know, from a redacted reporting of the FEC minutes in the media, that the minister pushed the urgency of the proposal but that there were vocalised weaknesses in the document.

It was on the September 24, 2021 FEC meeting presided over by the vice president, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, and the minutes were marked EC (2021) 236. The president, Muhammadu Buhari, was attending the United Nations General Assembly in New York, United States. The name of the company was Mogjan Nigeria Limited, and the sum total of the project was N3.7bn. The firm, incorporated by Prince Godwin Momoh, Chioma Momoh and George Momoh, claimed to have a technology that the FEC found untested and consequently too much of an adventure for such a national security emergency.

The reports in circulation only revealed parts of the full discussion and inserted quotes from an unidentified person in the presidency.

But certain points are clear. That the minister stated that the proposal had gone through the meticulous eyes of the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) and the statutory body had, after its review, given the contract a certificate of no objection.

The report said some members of the FEC were not convinced about the rigour of the proposal. Vice President Osinbajo therefore ruled that the minister go over the project again, since it lacked a known technology and tested brand name.

Minutes generally do not give blow-by-blow accounts of proceedings, and that means only highlights survive for perusal.

It is important to raise a few questions. One, did the BPP actually go through the proposal, and if it did, was there a certificate of no objection? Or was it that the minister merely told the FEC that the BPP had studied his material and accepted his submission in good faith? If the BPP actually saw the proposal and appended its signature to a certificate of no objection, then it is curious that the BPP had not provided answers to the questions propounded on the document of proposal.

A matter of whether a technology is good or bad is not in the province of politicians who populate a FEC. The BPP is supposed to be filled with technocrats and experts and they ought to have the facts, rigour and depth for such a matter.

The minutes, as reported, did not say the FEC questioned the BPP for such a proposal apparently filled with gaps, contradictions and lack of finesse.

If the minister presented such a matter from the BPP, he ought to have checked for answers before presenting them to the FEC. And the FEC, bustling with politicians and statesmen, ought to also have called the BPP to account as well as they have rejected the minister’s proposal.

Again, we do not know what the technology is, and we cannot say if it was good or bad. We would, however, want to know how a BPP could arrive at such a conclusion if the technology was below standard and could endanger the lives of Nigerians. Was it turned down by the FEC because it was made by a Nigerian firm or because it was substandard? The BPP’s angle to these issues is important.

The minister was asked to go through it. That presumes that it was not a BPP work but an impulse from the office of the minister of transportation. If that was the case, did they ask him to take it to the BPP?

If they did, what happened between September 24, 2021 and March 28, 2022 when the catastrophe hit the nation on the rail track? Did the minister present it again? After that FEC meeting, several FEC meetings have held, did the matter not come up for review? If it did, what was the conclusion?

The way the story has been projected, it seems the matter was never tabled again after minister Amaechi’s proposal was spurned. Did he not re-present it? If he did not re-present it, was that not an act of official defiance? If it was, why did the president not raise the issue again or take an action against his cabinet member? If the president did not, why did the vice president who presided not remind the cabinet? If they did, what was the action taken?

It seems from what those who leaked the memo and the words of the minister himself that the matter faded into obscurity? It is capital tragedy, a scandal in governance. How could such a case of critical national importance pass into silence when across the country, especially in the north, compatriots are falling from the shrapnel of foolish men who see nothing sacred in human life.

So, meeting after meeting, in a theatre of impotence, they sat and did not visit the matter while intelligence reports inundated the government that the Abuja-Kaduna railway was a soft target. There had been a few near misses, and warnings in the public domain. Yet it did not seem urgent enough for the Federal Government to treat the security issue with urgency.

It is not sufficient for the minister to think he had done his job if the FEC did not, but we are not informed if a sense of disdain accompanied the presentation. Even at that, it was the minister’s duty to ensure that he rang it to the ears of the FEC that something had to be done.

If the minister was not up to the task, there was nothing sacrosanct about taking the matter from his hands. The task of securing the country is in the head of the country, and if a lieutenant failed, the head failed.

What we witnessed in the railway disaster is the failure of the minister to convince his peers, but it is, at bottom, a collective failure of the Federal Government. The full story may not yet have been told, but we know that when the government had an opportunity to secure its citizens, it dilly-dallied, temporised and was absent-minded.

We sometimes as a people fail to note that securing the railways was not only about surveillance. By many accounts, the Federal Government knows the perpetrators of these acts. They know their names, and even the cleric, Sheikh Abubakar Gumi, has trekked as an emissary into their lair to negotiate with them. A news report recently had it that a woman ferried her daughter and other young girls as comfort women for the hoodlums in the bushes. The trails are hot, we just do not follow them.

It is this frustration that has made the Kaduna State governor Nasir El-Rufai to call for mercenaries. It is his vote of no confidence in his Federal Government, the army, the air force, the intelligence agencies and his political party leadership.

The surveillance snafu is only just one tale of a string of failures in tackling a matter whose difficulty to solve is exaggerated by official failure than by its elusiveness. We seem to be playing a dance of death. People are dying, and the FEC is trading blames. We do not need memos, memories or oral recalls. We need a government to save its citizens. So long as that is not happening, the nation lies prostrate, and solemn declarations of intent and documents of action cannot pass for salvation.

 

In the third year of the Ninth National Assembly, and the seventh year of the Muhammadu Buhari administration, 44 bills have been passed by the federal legislature towards amending the 1999 Constitution. As the bills are being transmitted to the states Houses of Assembly, it is expected that many confusing sections that have affected the practice of federalism and constitutionalism in the country would be made clearer.

Although it is not the first time that the constitution would be amended, it is the first time that such a wide range of sections would be considered. When the final votes were to be taken, 48 bills were presented, out of which 44 were passed. All amendments introduced to empower the women were thrown away by the male- dominated chambers of the National Assembly. One introduced to make it possible for at least one woman to represent each state of the federation was rejected on the ground that it would amount to discrimination against men if a senatorial zone is reserved for women.

Another was to expand women participation in running the political parties. Those who proposed the amendment and pushed it through the public hearing stages explained that unless women were made to bring to bear on the political scene their knowledge and competence, the country would be losing. It was pointed out that the existing system is skewed in favour of men who have always been in charge of the political structure. Women, under the colonial authority, were not accorded the right to vote at the same time as men. Besides, there have been cultural inhibitions against the female gender in Africa over the centuries. These ought to have been abrogated in the past six decades of independence.

It is good that the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, is passionate about reintroducing the bills. Even the Bills to open the space for parity between men in terms of citizenship and indigeneship was rejected by the men. While foreign men married to Nigerian women are legally entitled to citizenship, foreign women married to Nigerian men are not granted the privilege. The women have since been protesting the hindrances.

Other critical provisions passed by the previous assembly, including autonomy for the local government councils, state legislatures and the Judiciary are part of the reintroduced sections. When the provisions of the constitution were last altered by the eighth assembly, autonomy was granted them, but, at the instigation of state governors, they were shot down by the state lawmakers who were expected to be the major beneficiaries. Not much has changed since then as an attempt by President Muhammadu Buhari to achieve the same purpose through Executive Order 10 met with stiff opposition from the governors who received the backing of the Supreme Court that the President acted ultra vires, as only the legislative arm could make or amend laws.

Whereas Nigeria is presented as a Federal Republic, the current constitution does not allow for practice of true federalism. Much power is concentrated at the centre as is characteristic of the unitary system of government. Policing, security, railway, electricity, among other things, are on the exclusive legislative list that bars the states from operating them, thus affecting the running of the sub-national governments adversely. The constitution addresses state governors as chief security officers while granting full control of the relevant agencies to the Federal Government. This is an anomaly that this amendment seeks to correct. The proposed amendment, however, did not go far enough as command and control of the security levers are still in the firm grip of the President, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. This should be reopened expeditiously.

All those involved in the amendment process in line with section 9 of the constitution should ensure that the amendments are effected immediately, in view of the 2023 general election that is fast approaching.

It was bound to happen sooner than later: phone lines whose users are yet to have their Subscriber Identification Module (SIM) cards linked with their unique National Identification Number (NIN) have been partially tossed. The partial deactivation of the lines took effect last Monday to implement a policy unveiled by government in December 2000.

In a joint statement, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and the  National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) announced that subscribers who had not complied with the NIN-SIM linkage policy as of April 4 were being barred from outgoing calls and must do the needful before telecom operators could lift the restriction on their lines. It was not categorically stated, but the implication of the partial deactivation was that concerned subscribers yet had a leeway to receive calls, use short message services and access online platforms for the time being. According to the regulatory bodies, since December 2020 when the policy was rolled out, holders of over 125million SIMs have submitted their NIN for linkage, verification and authentication. “Similarly, (NIMC) has issued over 78million unique NINs till date,” their joint statement added. The NCC had in February published data showing that there were some 303.6million mobile lines connected in the country, out of which about 197.77 were active. With subscribers of 125million active lines having submitted their NIN for linkage to SIM cards, there were about 72.7million lines affected by Monday’s partial deactivation.

The Federal Government had initiated the NIN-SIM linkage policy as part of measures to bolster security and logistical planning. “The implementation impacts on government’s strategic planning, particularly in the areas of security and socio-economic projections,” the joint statement said. The regulatory bodies noted, however, that deadlines for policy implementation had been serially extended by government to allow Nigerians to freely comply, based on appeals by telecoms operators, civil society organisations and professional bodies, among others. Monday’s partial deactivation of non-compliant lines marked the exhaustion of the grace period and government’s limit of patience.

There is no question that the NIN-SIM linkage policy is warranted, considering the acute insecurity hobbling the country. It is also an attitudinal challenge in the polity that Nigerians dally on compliance with policy measures until the last hours of grace period when there is typically a massive rush that imposes undue pressure on the processes of an implementing agency, like the NIMC. For NIN registration by Nigerian citizens and legal residents, the NIMC hasn’t been spared this avoidable pressure; but it is worrying also that the agency has not responded to pressure with capacity enhancement as it should. At best, the processes of the NIMC have been wonky and there are a good number Nigerians out there who have made genuine efforts to secure NIN but have been frustrated from doing so by the agency’s operational hurdles, especially as NIN has become a criterion for accessing services by telcos, banks, the Passport Office, the drivers licensing office and several other government services. For instance, the least that is expected in view of pressured turnout by prospective NIN registrants is that NIMC’s customer interface channels would be active and easily accessible to the public for prompt redress of complaints. As we speak, those channels advertised on NIMC website are inactive and the agency is hardly accessible to the public.

There is as well the challenge of backend integration between the data agency and telcos. Following the recent deadly attack by terrorists on an Abuja-Kaduna rail service, the Nigerian Railway Corporation has said no fewer than 60 phone lines indicated on the passenger manifest were found to be non-existent, while terrorists manage to reach the relations of their hostages on other lines. Besides, some subscribers duly submitted their NIN to telcos for linkage to their SIM, but were yet partially deactivated last Monday because linkage failed to occur. These are lapses to be tidied up if government would be taken serious on this policy.

Reports that some 20 hoodlums attacked the Dangote Refinery in Lekki Free Trade Zone, Lagos, must have come as a rude shock to many Nigerians who are eagerly awaiting the commissioning of the facility due to the promises it holds, both for the Nigerian government and Nigerians as a whole.  Lagos State Police Command’s Public Relations Officer, Benjamin Hundeyin, said the refinery was attacked on March 28.

According to him, “Armed hoodlums numbering about 20 who gained access to the refinery through the lagoon side were repelled while attempting to cart away already-installed armoured cables in the refinery.” He said the hoodlums fled when they sighted the policemen but one of them was hit in the ensuing gun duel and he died on the way to the hospital.

We commend the police for foiling the robbery attempt at the refinery. The hoodlums apparently must have mistaken the refinery for the public ones that they steal and vandalise the facilities without consequences. This is in spite of the monumental loss the country suffers as a result of such nefarious activities by criminals.

Indeed, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) stated that Nigeria lost about N159billion to oil theft and pipeline vandalisation in 2019. Its 2019 financial report indicated that crude oil and petroleum products losses valued at N32 billion were recorded in the year, while pipeline repairs and management costs gulped N127 billion. That was for just one year. And it’s been like that over the years.

But vandalism is not limited to oil facilities alone. The power sector is also a victim of the activities of people who steal copper wire, including underground cables that they in turn either resell to power sector firms or other private persons in need of them. As a matter of fact, whole transformers had been stolen in some cases.

What these thieves do not realise or simply gloss over is that for as long as they do not desist from their evil ways, the nation would continue to suffer. This means more darkness and discomfort for the people; as well as unnecessary increase in the cost of production, as most industries and workplaces resort to private power supply to run their plants. For the energy sector, it is government’s revenue that suffers, with dire consequences for Nigerians.

We are not oblivious of the fact that there is massive unemployment in the country. But stealing or vandalising pipelines and other equipment of the few private and public concerns that are still giving jobs to a sizeable number of Nigerians is not the solution. As a matter of fact, such acts tend to worsen the unemployment situation.

In the first place, where the establishments do not close down as a result of the persistent threats to their operations, they pass the increased cost of production to consumers. This, in turn, means less purchasing power, more goods in stock as a result of lower demand for their products, job cuts. etc. and the vicious cycle continues.

Second, stealing of such essential assets scares prospective investors, thus further shrinking the capacity for job creation.

Dangote Refinery, with the capacity for 10.4 million tonnes of gasoline, 4.6 MT of diesel and four MT of jet fuel is not just the biggest of its kind in Africa, it is a landmark industrial hub for Nigeria. The hoodlums tampering with its facilities are therefore not going after Dangote alone, but also against a project with the capacity to take hundreds of people off the unemployment queues. If people keep attacking such facility, how do we create more jobs?

We are happy that the police are on the matter with a view to apprehending the remaining 19 suspects. It is also gladdening that the state commissioner of police, Abiodun Alabi, said security has been fortified at the refinery.

It had better be.

When in March, last year, a Nigerian Air Force (NAF) fighter Alpha Jet went missing in an operation against Boko Haram insurgents in Borno State, the real facts about why and how the aircraft went off the radar were uncertain. Understandably, the Boko Haram terrorists waxed triumphalist about the crash as a video footage they posted on social media featured a masked man standing on top of what was supposed to be the wreckage and said in Hausa, “As you can see, this is the pilot of your aircraft, whom you sent to harm the servant of God. This is what God did to him. He fell from the sky, and if you do not repent this will be your reward”.

Two mutilated corpses in military fatigues were shown in the footage, which were presumably those of the crew. This, of course, confirmed once again the perverse mindset of the terrorists who believe they are indeed carrying out God’s will by destroying fellow human beings.

Admitting that the aircraft went off the radar, the spokesman of the NAF said in a statement that “Intelligence report gathered by the Nigerian Air Force indicates that the Alpha Jet Aircraft (NAF 475) that went off the radar with two crew members on board on 31 March, 2021, might have crashed”. The NAF, however, debunked the attempt by the terrorists to claim credit for what was clearly an air accident, pointing out that Boko Haram sought to boost its image by creating the impression that it brought down the jet and was still a potent fighting force at a time its operational efficacy had been significantly degraded by the Nigerian Armed Forces.

It is a most welcome development that the wreckage of the plane has been recovered about a year after the crash. A statement by the military last week announced that troops of Operation Desert Sanity on clearance patrol in Sambisa Forest, Borno State, uncovered the fragmented parts of the jet. At least this confirms that the plane actually crashed and shows where this happened.

This discovery will enable experts to examine the wreckage, with a view to ascertaining as accurately as possible, the cause of the crash and whether there are any pertinent lessons. However, the time lag between when the crash occurred and the discovery of the wreckage may be an indication of the difficulty that the military faces in effectively monitoring the forests and tracking the movement of the terrorists. For, if it took over a year to discover a plane wreckage, we can imagine how much more elusive constantly moving human targets will be.

The length of time it took to discover the wreckage also implies that the bodies of the two crew members involved in the crash are unlikely to be discovered. Everything should thus be done to continuously enhance the capacity of the military to respond more promptly and efficiently to emergencies like air disasters, both to recover wreckage of machines or bodies of victims in reasonable time.

Incidents such as the crash of this aircraft remind us once again of the seriousness of the war the country has been waging against the Boko Haram terrorists in the North East for the last decade and indeed the gallantry of the armed forces, putting their lives on the line to safeguard the unity and stability of the country under very challenging circumstances.

In this regard, the President Muhammadu Buhari administration has commendably improved on the funding and acquisition of appropriate weaponry such as the Tucano jets, among others, for the military.

We encourage it to continue to do more while the military authorities should also ensure judicious use of resources