Category: Editorial

Death by instalment is the fate of residents of many oil exploration communities in the Niger Delta, as a result of the black sooth emanating from the illegal oil refineries operating freely in their communities. A detailed investigative report by this paper shows that security agencies and government officials are allegedly complicit in this business of death for the residents, and it is tragic that the Federal Government has not shown the will to end the nightmare.

By several accounts, it is alleged that the top echelons of the military, police, para-military, local vigilante, government officials, civil servants, traditional rulers and community leaders are all neck-deep in the unfolding tragedy. Until the recent tepid effort of Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State, the illegal refineries’ operators were operating without any fear in the open, sometimes with the security agencies providing security to their illegal activities.

The result is that the city of Port-Harcourt and some adjourning rural communities, which host the illegal refineries are perpetually covered with thick layers of black sooth, and the residents are dying from its effect. What is shocking is that President Muhammadu Buhari and the heads of the various agencies indicted in the operations of the illegal refineries are all keeping mum, as their subordinates use their uniforms and positions to aid the illegal activities they have been employed to prevent.

We urge the National Security Adviser to take charge on behalf of the president, and ensure that the various chiefs of the security services, the Inspector-General of Police, the National Commandant of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) are made to hold their subordinates to account, without further delay. Their men who are posted to the areas and who have soiled their hands should be made to account. It should be totally unacceptable that military and policemen sent to the riverine communities should allow or condone the activities of the illegal refinery operators.

The government of Rivers State must do more than it has done to end this madness. While the recent destruction of some illegal refineries by Governor Wike, which was covered by the media has focused the nation’s attention to the debilitating crisis, we urge him to sustain his efforts. Agreed that like every governor he is handicapped by the centralised police powers, he should continue to demand public accountability by the security agencies in the state.

He should also mobilise public opinion, both locally and internationally, to pressurise the Federal Government to hold the security agencies to account. The state government should also mobilise the host communities where these activities are taking place to understand that the activities of the illegal refineries will result in health challenges for them. They must be educated to understand that while there might be temporal financial rewards from the illegal activities, they would pay dearly down the line.

On their part, members of the communities affected by the dangerous activities of the illegal refineries should mobilise themselves to demand accountability from the local, state and federal governments. If the organs of the state are derelict over their responsibilities, they should agitate to wake them up. If they organise and push for an end to the activities, those in authority will take action. They can also petition relevant organs of the international community to hold the governments to account.

The Federal Government must also take necessary steps to make the business of illegal refinery unattractive. It is a crying shame that our refineries remain comatose, despite the huge resources expended in the past years to get them working. We demand an end to this criminal negligence by government officials.

During the presentation of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) Digital Transformation Framework in Abuja, Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Abdulrasheed Bawa, raised the issue of health facilities that reject patients who have been paid for under the health insurance scheme. He urged the NHIS to sanction healthcare facilities that refuse to treat such patients.

Such rejection was not envisaged under the NHIS, established by the Federal Government, which became operational in 2005 based on a public-private arrangement involving the NHIS, Health Maintenance Organisations (HMOs) and healthcare providers.  The NHIS accredits HMOs and healthcare facilities for the benefit of enrollees.

The NHIS is a social security programme driven by a pool of funds from contributions by stakeholders and guarantees the provision of healthcare to enrollees under a pre-payment system meant to reduce out-of-pocket payment.  This is why refusal to treat patients under the scheme is a violation of its essence.

The HMOs have been accused of “operating with impunity” by defaulting on payment to healthcare facilities, which has created distrust in the system and encouraged the rejection of patients under the scheme.

The NHIS, which is supposed to be the regulator, has been accused of regulatory failure, which makes it possible for the HMOs to allegedly operate with impunity.

”Delayed payment especially from HMOs, denial of some payments under the fee-for-service arrangement, powers of the governing council, review of capitation, all need to be addressed,” the medical director of a NHIS-accredited hospital in Lagos, Jimmy Adeyeye, was reported saying.

Reflecting the need to rethink the scheme, the National Assembly passed the National Health Insurance Act (Repeal and Re-enactment) Bill, 2021, in April 2020, and the Senate amended the bill in December 2021.  The new bill, which makes health insurance mandatory for all Nigerians towards achieving Universal Health Coverage (UHC) in the country, is expected to improve the implementation of health insurance.

The laudable goal of universal health coverage is to enable all people to have access to the health services they need, when and where they need them, without financial hardship.

Importantly, the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) has urged President Muhammadu Buhari to sign the bill into law without further delay, saying it would facilitate universal health coverage in the country.

The scheme was supposed to achieve universal health coverage within 10 years of its operation, which it has evidently failed to achieve. According to the 2018 Health Maintenance Organisations (HMOs) Industry Report by Agusto & Company, only about five to six million federal civil servants and their families, and a few private-sector employees, were covered by the scheme.  The country’s population was about 195 million at the time.

With Nigeria’s population in 2022 estimated to be about 214 million, it is doubtful if there has been significant increase in the percentage of those insured under the NHIS.

The introduction of the Digital Transformation Framework, also known as eNHIS, is a commendable move to improve the health insurance programme. NHIS Executive Secretary and Chief Executive Officer Prof. Mohammed Sambo stated that the health insurance regulator had hitherto depended on manual processes and rudimentary technology in the operation of health insurance, and critical data was hosted outside the country by a South African firm.

The eNHIS, which ensures automation of health insurance operations, is the fruit of collaboration between the NHIS and the Nigerian Communication Satellite (NIGCOMSAT). The benefits, according to Sambo, include connectivity among stakeholders, real-time service provision and resolution of complaints, data analytics and effective call management system.

Ultimately, however, the NHIS must firmly enforce compliance with the regulations, without which the scheme cannot succeed. The issue of healthcare facilities refusing to treat patients covered by health insurance must be addressed with a sense of urgency, and irregularities in the healthcare financing chain effectively tackled. Under the NHIS, the slogan, “the enrollee is king,” should be factual.

Soldiers shot into power early last week in Burkina Faso after steering a 36-hour uprising that toppled the third West African leader of government in eight months. They kicked out President Roch Marc Kaboré who came to power in 2015 and was re-elected to another five-year term in 2020.

An uprising, which began penultimate weekend as barracks mutiny by disgruntled soldiers, mutated into a full blown coup as uniformed men appeared on national television to announce they had taken over power and promising a “return to constitutional order” within “reasonable time.” A communiqué from coup leader Lieutenant-Col. Paul-Henri Damiba, read by a Captain flanked by colleagues in camouflage gear, said the country’s constitution had been suspended, the government and national assembly dissolved and all borders shut. The soldiers claimed they had executed the power grab without spilling blood, and confirmed holding Kaboré and other politicians in a safe place that “respects their dignity.” Visuals from the capital, Ouagadougou, however showed armoured vehicles reportedly used by the presidency, peppered with bullet holes and having blood stains abandoned in the street. Security sources said Kaboré and other top officials were being held at a barracks in the capital.

The coup in Burkina Faso came in the wake of similar power grabs in Mali that toppled President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita in August 2020, and a repeat coup by which a civilian-led interim government was flushed out in May 2021; a failed coup attempt in Niger Republic in March 2021; the extra-constitutional succession of former President Idriss Déby of Chad by his son and four-star General, Mahamat Idriss Déby, after he was killed by rebel fighters in April 2021; and a coup in Guinea that overthrew President Alpha Condé in September 2021. Outside of West Africa, the military upended a political transition in Sudan to seize power in October 2021. In all cases of successful coups, the affected military have been reluctant to return their respective country to constitutional rule by civilians. It was such reluctance that informed the sub-regional Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) slamming a tough slate of sanctions that included border closure, economic embargo and threat of military action against the Mali junta barely two weeks ago.

Read Also: ECOWAS summit holds on Burkina Faso, Mali coups

ECOWAS and other international entities like the African Union, United Nations, European Union, United States and France, which is Burkina Faso’s former colonial power, were swift in condemning the coup and calling out the Burkinabe soldiers as usurpers. In a statement, last week Monday, the 15-member ECOWAS said it was following with keen concern the emerging scenario in Burkina Faso, which it condemned as an “extremely grave act,” adding that it held the military responsible for the safety of Kaboré. Leaders of the bloc were also billed to meet virtually Friday on Burkina Faso. The catch, though, is: that Burkinabe soldiers had the guts to seize power so close after the sanctions imposed on Mali suggested the hard tackle hadn’t been a sufficient deterrence against prospective emulators as was intended, and – let’s be frank – much less will be the tough talk.

This calls for introspection on the leadership question as incentivises military restiveness. Noting can justify soldiers usurping power; but it is yet instructive that the coup in Burkina Faso came after hundreds of protesters had marched in the streets of Ouagadougou, demanding Kaboré’s resignation over perceived failure to give leadership to the fight against insurgency that has rendered much of the countryside ungovernable, killed more than 2,000 Burkinabes and displaced at least 1.4million people. Some misguided citizens also celebrated the takeover, renascent of what happened in Mali and Guinea. Democracy is a non-negotiable deal, but it mustn’t take societies for granted. Bad civilian leadership gives ambitious soldiers room to take advantage of, and accords them pseudo-legitimacy when affected populations momentarily hail them as deliverers whereas they are utterly illegitimate. ECOWAS must ensure effective peer review to promote good leadership in the sub-region.

It appeared the perfect scandal, which titillates the media and make them salivate for more: a state aircraft abandoned for nine years in a foreign hangar with absolutely no documentation, oozing a thick stench of sleaze.

But look more closely: you would see the gambit to rally public approval to spend €3 million, on at best, a controversial; at worst, a  dubious cause, despite the scarce resources of Rivers State.

That about captures the latest red herring from Wike’s Rivers, using the governor’s predecessor as battling ram to harvest public sympathy.  Yet, none of the three Rivers governments involved in this mess can mount any high moral ground.

Dr. Peter Odili, former Rivers governor (1999-2007), in 2003, bought an airplane now dubbed Legacy 600 jet. Chubuike Rotimi Amaechi, now transport minister but former Rivers governor (2007-2015), bought another, but shipped the old plane to Germany “for repairs and refurbishment; and then to be sold to generate revenue for critical projects in the state”, in the words of Tolofari George, Governor Amaechi’s transport commissioner.

Ezenwo Wike (governor from 2015 till now) just regained the plane; but alleged that before now, his government had no knowledge where the plane was.  But to keep the records straight: if Amaechi sent the plane to Germany in 2012, his government accounted for only three out of the nine years that the plane had been there.  The Wike government accounts for six years.

If Amaechi bought a new plane to replace Odili’s old one; and Wike now scrambles to recover the old plane, the three governments must find buying a plane a worthy asset. So, none of them can boast a high moral ground, which could issue from asserting that buying a state plane was wrong priority.

Still, why is the plane “Legacy”?  Was it the first to be rolled off the aircraft production lines of Rivers State?  Or the “Legacy” is because the Rivers governor presumes his personal comfort equates that of the grilling Rivers masses that voted him?  ”Legacy” here is clearly an emotive tag that means nothing to the Rivers masses, whose collective sweat funded the two aircraft.

Now, to the allegation of dumping the plane in Germany without documentation, as Governor Wike himself claimed.  George rejected that with own counter-claim that he included the plane, and where it was, in his handover note, as Amaechi’s transport commissioner, when they left office in 2015.

Read Also: Don’t blame Wike for our disunity, say Ogoni leaders

But Paul Nsirim, Wike’s information and communications commissioner, doubled down on the Wike claim. But instead of calling on his peer in the Rivers transport ministry to frontally deny or confirm George’s claim, Nsirim went on a binge of emotions: how Amaechi did not want to hand over to Wike, after the 2015 elections! Pray, what has that got to do with a yes or no answer to a specific claim?

Both sides, to be sure, are making claims and counter-claims.  Still, the George allegations of past bad faith, involving the Odili aircraft; and hoopla over the licensing of the one Amaechi bought, and how the Wike government had, on both, darkly hinted at possible theft of state assets, do not seem to strengthen the Wike claims, beyond the governor’s trademark hectoring.

As propaganda begets propaganda, someone, somewhere hit on the allegation that Wike badly wanted the second plane back because of campaigns for the 2023 elections. But the Rivers People’s Democratic Party (PDP) has poured cold water on such suppositions, speaking through Tambari Gbara, its publicity secretary.

Meanwhile, George claimed Governor Amaechi trotted the plane to Germany for repairs and after which “the plane was to be sold off because it was more economical to sell it off.”  What is the Wike government’s policy justification for spending €3 million on this plane — to sell it off too?  Or to maintain a two-plane fleet for the governor?  The public have a right to know.

Amaechi should tell the public why his government left a state asset in Germany for three years and never brought it back.  But Wike too should explain why he just cottoned on the plane after more than six years — beyond the allegation that it was undocumented. What the Wike government has pushed out are mere allegations.  It is trite in law that he who alleges must prove.

By the way, Governor Wike should justify this fresh €3 million expense to the Rivers people, in the face of dwindling revenue and competing needs.  Otherwise, this excitement would pass as red herring and a cynical abuse of the news process.

We are not entirely surprised that the Federal Government backtracked on its earlier plan to remove subsidy on petroleum products by June. It was perhaps predictable. Nonetheless, what must be jarring to most Nigerians at this time is how our officials have taken to worn platitudes to mitigate the shame.

To be sure, Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmad, must have surprised many, when, at the end of the meeting of top officials of the Federal Government last Monday, she admitted that the timing of the planned removal of fuel subsidy was ‘problematic,’ and that the measure will impose more difficulties on the citizens. We are referring to a meeting that had in attendance the Minister of State for Petroleum, Timipre Sylva; Group Managing Director, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Mele Kyari, and the leadership of the two branches of the National Assembly, during which the officials conceded that the government had not put ‘certain things in place’ for the subsidy to be removed.

The government team listed the measures needed to be in place to include finding an alternative to PMS, an enhanced local refining capacity programme, including the 650,000 bpd Dangote Refinery and rehabilitation of the four national refineries that have a combined capacity of 450,000bpd” among the measures it now realises as being necessary.

Backtracking of course meant kicking the problem down the road. Indeed, at the end of the Wednesday Federal Executive Council meeting, the government reminded Nigerians of the humongous cost of the road not taken –the NNPC, had sequel to the suspension of the policy, requested a total of N3 trillion from the Federal Government to fund fuel subsidy in 2022. Secondly, the newly passed Petroleum Industry Act will, for the time being, be held as inchoate – while awaiting amendment to bring it in alignment with the latest reality.

Many questions naturally arise. Did the Federal Government come to the awareness of these issues only after the organised labour led by the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress, (TUC) mounted a vociferous opposition to the measure which, were it to have passed, would have plunged more Nigerians into misery? Did the recognition come before or after Budget 2022 had kicked in, which perforce, had rendered the removal a fait accompli? Couldn’t these developments have been foreseen?

Read Also: Subsidy: triumph of reason

Ordinarily, the fear of the potential backlash that the measure would have attracted, and which the government might have found extremely difficult to control, ought to have counted for something before the government arrived at the decision. Already, we have seen familiar indices – unmistakeable pointers – to the difficulties that the measure would attract particularly, the negative forces that would be unleashed on an economy already in the throes of an unprecedented inflation and sluggish growth and the potential instability that could have been triggered therefrom. Had the government factored these into its decision-making processes, it would most likely have saved itself the ensuing embarrassment.

As for the subsidy itself, at issue are the old but the lingering concerns which the government has done little to douse – and on which Nigerians would be hard put to yield their ground. By this, we refer to the manifest failure of political will to address matters which they had long accepted as being inextricably linked to the subsidy conundrum: the bogey of fuel importation and the attenuating corruption that it has spawned.  It explains why the NNPC has been unable to put a figure on how much fuel the country consumes amidst the perennial whining over fuel smuggling. To this is the million dollar question of why the Buhari administration has, in the whole of the six years of being in the saddle, been unable to fix the nation’s four refineries.

For most Nigerians, theirs would seem not so much about lack of awareness of the costs of the subsidy to the national economy. For, far beyond the scare-mongering statistics about the hemorrhaging going on in the name of subsidy is, for the generality of the citizenry, the age-long puzzle remains why a major oil producing country which once boasted of four refineries is at the mercy of a cabal of fuel importers.

what we must accept is that there is no heroic streak in the decision. Rather it is a surrender to a creative failure and an acceptance that a huge sum of 3 trillion still eats away malignantly at our national innards. it is a quiet storm in side, and covering up with a policy summersault only exposes an unthinking leadership. The issues to tackle stare us like a peevish ghost.

It is understandably at the heart of why a dodgy manoeuvre in the circumstances that those substantive matters are left hanging and unaddressed could not have impressed most Nigerians who have become more discerning. That the government would even dare the policy now is either a measure of how deeply contemptuous it treats the concerns of the citizens on the subject or, a mirror of the degree to which it is out of touch with the feelings of the people. Either position obviously does the image of the Buhari administration no good; if anything, what it does is cast it in the mould of those previous do-nothing administrations before it.

Now that the government has admitted that the conditions for removing the subsidy do not yet exist; and that it needed to be relieved of the ‘unbearable’ N3 trillion subsidy burden – a matter which most Nigerians, contrary to what the government appears to believe, do not necessarily consider disagreeable; only by creating those wholesome conditions which it has mercifully identified – and urgently too – could government claim to have decisively put the ghost of subsidy to rest.

Over the last three decades since its establishment in 1989, the Nigerian Liquified Natural Gas (NLNG) Limited has gradually built a reputation as a reasonably well run company that has demonstrated a commitment to worthy public causes. In partnership with the Nigerian Academy of Letters and the Nigerian Academy of Science, respectively, for instance, the NLNG has since 2004 sponsored three of the most prestigious, credible and highly coveted academic prizes in the country, namely The Nigeria Prizes  for Literature, Literary Criticism and Science. In 2014, the NLNG undertook another major initiative when the company launched its University Support Programme (USP) designed to demonstrate its commitment to complementing government and other stakeholders’ efforts towards the development of education in the country.

Under the USP, the NLNG committed $12 million to building modern engineering laboratories and/or furnishing them with modern engineering equipment in six universities – University of Ibadan, University of Ilorin, University of Port Harcourt, University of Maiduguri, Ahmadu Bello University and University of Nigeria, Nsukka, – across the six geo-political zones of the country. The proposed projects had been completed and commissioned in all the designated universities by 2016 at a unit cost of $2 million per institution.

When the NLNG thus on January 24, 2022, flagged off its Hospital Support Programme (HSP) aimed at helping to improve facilities in hospitals across the country and signed a Memorandum-of-Understanding (MOU) with six Nigerian teaching hospitals in this respect, it has the credibility and track record to be taken seriously. Just like its USP implemented earlier, this project is wholly borne out of the company’s own voluntary desire to fulfill its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) to the society where it does business without waiting for the prompting of anyone.

The NLNG HSP will be actualised through the expenditure of $6 million to be invested in 12 teaching/tertiary institutions from the six geo-political zones at a cost not exceeding $500,000 per hospital.  While signing the MOU on behalf of the NLNG, the company’s managing director/chief executive officer, Dr Phillip Mshelbila, said that the initiative is a long-term response to needs identified in the medical sector in 2020 at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the surge in patients exposed the inability of the country’s health system to cope with health emergencies on such a large scale. Thus, beyond its immediate donation of medical equipment and consumables worth over N1.4 billion to a number of federal and state medical institutions and facilities located in its host communities to help fight the pandemic, the company conceived the HSP as a more fundamental and enduring intervention.

Read Also: Association lauds NLNG over LPG supply

In the first phase of the programme, the teaching hospitals to benefit are the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, (LUTH), Idi-Araba; University of Abuja Teaching Hospital, (UATH), Gwagwalada; Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital, (AKTH), Kano; University of Benin Teaching Hospital, (UBTH), Benin; University of Calabar Teaching Hospital, (UCTH), Calabar and Niger Delta University Teaching Hospital, (NDUTH), Yenagoa. It is significant that specific projects have been earmarked for each institution based on earlier National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS) assessment exercise. Thus, LUTH will be provided with a new obstetrics and gynaecology ward, UATH with a newly constructed and equipped modern maternity and child complex while an existing building will be remodelled and converted into a 15-bed intensive care unit (ICU) at the UBTH.

The NDUTH will be provided with a six-bed ICU and a four-bed renal dialysis unit connected  to its existing operating theatre while a neuro-surgical centre will be constructed for the UCTH. Institutions to benefit in the second phase of the programme are the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University Teaching Hospital, ATBTH, Bauchi; Jos University Teaching Hospital, (JUTH), Jos; Nnamdi Azikwe University Teaching Hospital (NAUTH), Nnewi; Federal Medical Centre, (FMC), Asaba; University of Uyo Teaching Hospital, (UUTH) and the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital (UPHTH), Rivers State. Findings of an ongoing NEEDS analyses at the various universities will determine which projects will be executed in the second phase. Projects in the first phase are planned to be completed this year while those in phase two are scheduled for completion in 2023.

Not only does the NLNG deserve commendation for its sense of obligation to give back to society, its scientific way of identifying beneficiary institutions as well as projects to be executed is laudable. We commend this noble example to other organisations in the private and public sectors of the economy.

The senate may mean well, but its proposal that landlords should not impose rents for two years or even a year, puts the cart before the horse.

Yet we must understand where the problem is coming from. The bill, which has passed first reading, was proposed by Senator Smart Adeyemi who represents Kogi West Senatorial District. The bill titled, “Advance rent for residential apartments, office spaces, etc, regulation bill 2022,” laments the suffering of the vast majority of renters, poor Nigerians and business persons who have to bleed their finances in order to secure a roof over their heads and commerce.

It is one of the many silent agonies of the average Nigerian, especially those living in urban areas. The landlords are aware of this, but they slam the fees. The irony is that if the rents were to be paid monthly, or even every other month, many Nigerians can afford them. But they cannot ferret out lump sums for the yearly or two-years rents that shylocks demand.

In most of the world, especially in advanced countries, no one asks for two-month rent, no less a year or two. Ironically, a few who are better endowed complicate matters for the poorer ones by encouraging the landlords. They do so by offering to pay three years in one swoop.

Senator Adeyemi may have been spurred by these stories of alienation. “It may not be an issue to quite a number of people but to many others, it is a great pain… Most Nigerians need the protection of the law to be able to meet their basic needs after paying rent,” explained Adeyemi.

He also asserted that some of the vampiric landlords are corrupt individuals who sucked the Nigerian system to afford their houses.

Read Also: Adeyemi: Nigeria not safe to conduct 2022 census

But compassion must yield to order. Given the Land Use Act, the land belongs to the states and not to the Federal Government. The senate should have encouraged state executives and legislators to pass those laws. It forgets that we operate a federal system, and that calls for the states to exercise certain prerogatives. The bill is a compassionate interloper.

Some states have started to intervene. One of them is Lagos. In 2011, it enacted a law that forbids such arbitrary acts by landlords. It is not as drastic as Adeyemi’s but it has started the dialogue. It says it is “unlawful for a landlord or his agent to demand or receive from a new or prospective tenant, rent in excess of one year in respect of any premises; it is also unlawful for the new or prospective tenant to offer or pay rent in excess of one year.”

The senate can set in motion by legislation a more egalitarian and encompassing mortgage system that will paralyse the shylocks. We have a mortgage system, but it seems to serve too few and even at that it still carries some of the elitist tendencies that a true and people-oriented system should not exercise.

Such a system also puts red tape over empathy. In the end, we shall propagate a system of inequality that falls into the landlords’ hands. A true system tends to be difficult in Nigeria because we run a primitive form of capitalism. A true mortgage system in a capitalist milieu serves the quiet accumulative instincts of the upper class. But our patrician elite do not even know how to oppress in peace. We abhor any oppression. So, we want a true mortgage arrangement.

The other point is for the senate to ensure the cost of building materials are not so high that landlords pass the burden to tenants.