Category: Editorial

Lagos State government is showing the way again in rewarding excellence in the educational sector. The government has rewarded students from various schools in the state for outstanding performance in external examinations and competitions. Quite instructive is the award of university scholarships to the best students in the 2020 West African Senior School Certificate Examinations (WASSCE). In a country where things that are not as important as education are celebrated, the state government deserves commendation for the step taken to elevate educational pursuit to a position of honour.

In recent times, entertainment has been accorded priority over such sectors as education and health that can lift the country and her citizens. Education, in particular, contributes so much to the knowledge economy that has commanded attention in developed countries. This is only paid lip service to in Nigeria. It is the more commendable that the government is paying due attention to secondary education. Two students of Vetland Senior Grammar School, Agege, Favour Abiodun and Taiwo Solana, who out-performed their peers in the 2020 WASSCE by scoring distinction in all the subjects they entered for were awarded scholarship for university education. This, we hope, will encourage the students to bring out their best in the higher level.

It should also encourage other students, thus bringing out the spirit of competition that could only help promote excellence in the state and the country. It has always been explained that one reason why patriotism is lacking among the youth is because they cannot point to government contribution to their lives. It is instructive that the school that produced the best students is a public institution. It is an indication that the government could reap more if it invests much more in public education. Many are forced to send their children to private schools where they pay through the nose even when they do not earn commensurate returns. If the public schools are upgraded and parents see that excellence is not limited to the private schools, they will be encouraged to patronise the existing public facilities, thus freeing resources for other things and productive ventures.

At a point when little attention is paid to technical education in the country, it is good that the state also looked in the direction of a student of the State Technical College, Agidingbi, Oladipupo Abiodun, who was adjudged the Best Critical Thinker at the 2021 African Leadership Academy competition. He and Olamide Marvelous represented the state at the competition. In another category, Ebere Divine and Olajide Akorede of Vetland, as well as Seidu Samuel of Brainfield College who represented the state at a Physics competition organised by the National Institute of Physics and took the first position were also honoured. Samuel was also second at the Oluwole Awokoya Chemistry competition.

The step taken by the state government is consistent with its commitment to promoting excellence at the tertiary education level. At the 24th convocation of the Lagos State University, the best graduating student, Oladimeji Shotunde, who had the distinction of having a cumulative grade point average of 4.95 was given a cash prize of N5 million and a post-graduate scholarship up to doctorate level. We urge other state governments and the private sector to emulate the example. This would help the country assume a position of eminence in the comity of nations.

This year’s gubernatorial election in Anambra State has come and gone, but the singular good deed of Mrs Ngozi Onuegbusi lingers. And it is likely to linger for some time because of its unique nature. Mrs Onuegbusi did what was a rarity in our kind of clime: she proved that, contrary to the popular belief that everyone has a price, her vote was not for sale. A native of Ukwulu in Dunukofia Local Government of Anambra State, Onuegbusi rejected a N5,000 bribe she was offered to sell her conscience during the election, by voting for the party whose agent offered her the bribe. She roundly rejected the offer and opted, instead, to vote according to her conscience.

This is something to cheer, especially in a country that is ravaged by poverty and ignorance. Five thousand naira is a lot of money anywhere in rural Nigeria. As a matter of fact, that is what some state governments offer as stipend to their elder citizens monthly and it is highly appreciated. Even in the big towns and cities, people sell their conscience at election times for far less than N5,000. Indeed, many voters had been enticed with tokens tucked in loaves of bread. Some have had their minds made up for them at the polling booths for as little as five or 10 kilograms of rice, etc. The mindset of such voters is that election time is the only opportunity they have to get something from political aspirants; and that once they get elected, all they go there to do is to steal, with nary a consideration for the voters on whose back they rode to power.

So, for someone like Mrs Onuegbusi to have rejected N5,000 inducement to sway her from voting according to her conscience is something significant, even akin to performing a feat in our kind of permissive and corrupt environment. What makes her story the more fascinating is that she did not turn down the satanic offer because she did not need the money. Rather, she turned it down because it was not in tandem with the dictates of her conscience. She had said, while turning down the offer: “I am poor; I don’t have any money in my pocket, but I won’t take N5,000″.

This is indeed soul-lifting. And that explains the encomiums and financial gifts she had received after the rare display of her principled nature. Justice Chinwe Iyizoba, a retired judge of the Court of Appeal described the woman as a pride to womanhood. We would have taken her up for the feminist dimension in describing Mrs Onuegbusi but for where she (Iyizoba) is coming from. She is the founder of African Women Forum for Good Governance, an advocacy and women empowerment group dedicated to good governance  and socio-economic development of Africa.

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Even the traditional ruler of her community in Ukwulu, Igwe Peter Uyanwa, who had also honoured her described her as a pride to the town.

Likewise the beneficiary of Mrs Onuegbusi’s principled stance, Prof. Charles Soludo, the candidate of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) who won the election; Soludo confined her good deed to the state:  ”…I summarise the action of the woman of Ukwulu, who rejected N5,000 to influence her voting, as a metaphor for the spirit of Anambra.” He added: “That is the spirit of Anambra and her action is the resilience of the Anambra spirit.”

We can understand why everyone wants to identify with her: we all love good things; what Mrs Onuegbusi did is akin to success, which has many fathers. Only failure is an orphan. We dare say, however, that in spite of the pervading lack of conscience in the land, we still have highly principled people like Mrs. Onuegbusi in all parts of the country.

This taken, perhaps Governor Willie Obiano of Anambra State who gave her N1m for this exemplary conduct was the one who captured the situation succinctly.  ”Madam Eunice knew that though money could buy her temporary relief, but (sic) Anambra would be a better place if she voted according to her conscience.” This is the point that most of those who sell their votes, often for a pot of porridge, forget. Having received bribe-for-votes, such voters have mortgaged their conscience and are no longer in a position to demand good governance, as of right.

Yet, this is what should be the desire or goal of every voter. Justice Iyizoba said this much and urged politicians to learn that the only way to make progress in politics is by providing voters good governance by providing the necessary social amenities, such as good roads, good schools, a conducive atmosphere for job creation, quality health care, among others, to make for comfortable living.

We join many other prominent individuals in saluting Mrs Onuegbusi for taking a principled stance where many would have faltered. We greet her for keeping her head where many others would have lost theirs. We commend her exemplary conduct not just to women in Anambra State but to all Nigerians, irrespective of gender, creed or political affiliation. It is through a strict adherence to such principle that our politicians can accept the fact that the only thing that can bring them into political office and sustain them is good governance. Ultimately, that is the only way to extract the dividend of democracy from them.

We hope Prof Soludo won’t disappoint such voters when he eventually assumes office.

If only the dead could talk, House of Representatives reporter for Vanguard newspapers, late Tordue Salem would have been the one reporting what led to his death. But the dead remains eternally mute. On the other hand, fellow journalists, his family and employers had been looking for him since October 13, this year. Sadly, it took almost a month for the riddle surrounding the disappearance of the journalist to be unravelled in part. This is because he is no longer a missing person. Reports from the Nigerian Police Force indicate his corpse has been found in a morgue in the Federal Capital, Abuja.

We commiserate with the family, employer and professional colleagues of the late journalist who got missing on his way from work that fateful day. We however found it curious that the police had to be prodded by the peaceful protests by Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ) and the FCT council to the police headquarters, and for a resolution to be passed by both arms of the National Assembly mandating the security agencies in the country to unravel the circumstances surrounding Salem’s disappearance. He had been missing for 30 whole days.

The sad announcement by the Force Public Relations Officer, (FPRO), Mr. Frank Mba, that one Itoro Clement, a 29-year-old taxi driver was the hit-and-run driver that killed the journalist had astounded all those that have been worried about his disappearance in the last one month.  His immediate constituency at the National Assembly, the House of Representatives Press Corps, (HoRPC) had petitioned the NUJ to institute an independent enquiry to carry out an autopsy to determine the cause and date of his death.

While the country and the whole world await further investigations, we must point out a failure of due diligence on the part of the police. To have taken some institutional prompting to spur them into action is not good enough for the image of both the force and the country. It was alleged that the hit-and-run driver had knocked down the journalist and moved to some policemen at a checkpoint to tell them that he had hit someone and the police allegedly directed him to go and report himself at a police station.

This sounds very bizarre and incredible. The normal cause of action ought to have been to arrest the driver, take him to the scene and continue further investigations while remanding the suspect till he is taken to a court to either be granted bail by a judge or refused same, depending on the legal processes.

If the police had acted with dispatch, the poor journalist might have been rushed to the hospital and possibly been resuscitated or officially declared dead by a doctor.  All these post-death narrative by the police sound very disturbing in a country where the trust in the police is almost at its lowest ebb.  To have wasted almost a month to come out with the narrative to reporters does not do the Nigerian police or citizens any good.

We are equally surprised that the Federal Capital Territory of Nigeria is neither well policed nor well lit for crimes such as this to be detected immediately.  Why are there no functional CCTV cameras that could have helped in investigations in a 21st century Abuja? Who were the policemen that were derelict in their duties to just dismiss a suspect that told them he had hit a human being to go report himself to the next police station? That is more than a slap on the wrist. Mr. Salem was a citizen deserving of the full protection of the police.

While we expect the police authorities to do a more thorough job in this circumstance, we appeal to them to be more protective of citizens in ways that the lost trust in their ability to serve and protect, given the long drawn battle with the #EndSARS protesting youths can be restored. There must be a full investigation of what went wrong with the life of Mr. Salem, not just as a journalist, but as a citizen who needed to be protected . All the culprits must face justice.

Talk of another instance of the elite’s malaise of shopping abroad for services that could be sourced locally. Abdul Muhammed, Rector of Kwara State Polytechnic, Ilorin, Kwara State, at a press conference last Tuesday, must have shocked his listeners when he announced that his institution now prints its credentials abroad. The briefing was to herald the polytechnic’s 27th combined convocation.

He told his audience: “In furtherance of the management’s efforts to sanitise the system and further enhance the integrity of the institution and its certificate, the polytechnic’s certificate is now being printed abroad by reputable printing outfit.

“It contains at least eight hidden security features to protect its integrity and make it forge-proof.

“This will assist in providing a lasting solution to the issue of certificate racketeering in the polytechnic by fraudulent elements”, he stated.

According to the rector, the first set of the certificates was issued to 2019/2020 set of graduates.

It is hard to see a more bizarre, self-serving justification of an egregious act by a head of a tertiary institution. If we may ask, what is so special in a polytechnic certificate, or any institution’s certificate for that matter, that the nation’s apex security printing outfit – the National Security Printing and Minting Corporation (NSPMC) as indeed the nearly dozen other entities offering such specialised services cannot be tasked with?

And how pervasive is the practice being referred to? Talk of a deliberate, if not entirely opportunistic, misdiagnosis of a problem. Who says that off-shore printing will stop the racketeering?

So much for the institution’s misplaced priorities; why not invest more in the overhaul of the exams and records unit to ease the process of obtaining the academic transcripts which more often than not is akin to passing through the proverbial eye of the needle? How about investing more to streamline records that are poorly kept and in some cases lost? Why settle for the convenient?

In short, why conflate the more pressing imperative – the need for cleansing and overhaul of the exams and records system with the rather superficial craving for a super, tamper-proof paper document?

Here, the institution’s management might need to be reminded that the world has in fact shifted digital; that the old notion of ‘certificate’ is increasingly anachronistic in a world in which school records are in digital formats and so could be sought and accessed at the touch of a button.

It is perhaps no coincidence that the rector was not forthcoming on how much of the taxpayers’ money went into the noxious venture. But now that the matter is before the public, he needs to go a step further to tell Nigerians how much it costs the institution. Surely, Nigerians would also be interested to know if other institutions are involved and whether the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) actually approved the foreign exchange for them.

And to think that the polytechnic is not alone in the practice that not only undermines the national economy but injures the nation’s pride makes it sad. A notable example in this regards is the nation’s primary identity document –international passports – which are still being printed abroad more than two years after the Federal Government signed an agreement with a local firm to begin domestic production.

We ask: how will the country acquire the capacity when jobs are still being shipped off-shore? And who benefits if not the hordes of middlemen and commission agents?

The situation is as much a challenge for the NSPMC as it is for the indigenous players in the print sector. Now that the apex bank is ramping up credit to all sectors of the economy, we expect to see them take advantage of the opportunity to boost their capacity, if only to discourage our institutions from taking their printing jobs abroad.

The CBN should ensure that such services are made ineligible for foreign exchange forthwith.

It is a bill whose time came a long ago. But it is one that could ruffle feathers. It is not against the rich, especially the super-rich alone. It is against riches beyond the reaches of decency.

This point was made by Senator Ali Ndume when he urged President Muhammadu Buhari to pass the Unexplained Wealth Order bill into law. He sees it fittingly as a campaign, a sort of righteous assignment.

“Our crusade against this monster (corruption) should start from politicians, top public servants, civil servants down to local governments’ staff.

“For the perpetrators, it is not difficult to identify the tendencies exhibited by these officers; acquiring landed property in and outside the country, having fat bank deposits, buying expensive cars, or marrying so many wives”, he said.

Nigeria has morphed into a society in which to be wealthy is more important than to be decent. This is especially so among public office holders. The tendency is to see government appointment as a godsend, a divine appointment with pilfering. The social contract between the government and the civil society has changed to a cynical affair.

The society, in its perversity, has come to accept that contract, and what we have is a society that scoffs at those who do not understand this poor view of public service. And it means, “go and steal.”

When they return to society, they want to see the fruits of their pecuniary crime. They can even pass as philanthropists. They pay school fees. They sponsor weddings. They build boreholes and renovate schools. They sponsor education at home and abroad. They become not thieves in the eyes of the people. They turn into society models.

It is a scum of society turning into glamour. They are the flavours of corruption. Some of them throw big parties and shut down communities whether for weddings, birthdays or burials. They spray money in obscene ways, and the law does not catch up with them. It is this extravagance that led to the display in the newspapers during the tenure of Central Bank Governor Lamido Sanusi, when top bank executives were held to account for becoming encouragers and conduits of ill-gotten wealth in Nigeria.

They brought to the fore the role of the banking industry in making corruption a mainstay of the elite class. The political elite and their business counterparts turned the banks into a chess board of loans and profiteering. They fattened on other people’s money and perspirations, and became the toast of society.

Big-name managing directors who were role models suddenly became accursed specimens of society. They were prosecuted and fired. The society thought the banking industry, as the fulcrum of full crimes and moral excrescence, would lead to a rejuvenation of the dynamics of relations between banks and society.

But today, we see that in spite of the policy of ensuring that technology stymied the flow of money without accountability, the system is not immune to wholesale crime of fraud in Nigeria.

It is to be noted that the fraud of public funds is not a one-man affair. It tends to be a network of subterfuge and collaboration. The man on record for fraud often is at the head of a network, and he alone is not the criminal. But when he goes to court, it is he who bells the cat.

That is unfortunate. During the Nuhu Ribadu years as chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), he often tracked the criminals from society magazines where the suddenly rich flaunted their gains. Investigations unearthed their cans of worms.

The unexplained wealth order also goes to criminals outside government who do businesses that fall foul of the law. This includes even the young often called yahoo boys, drug barons, robbers, kidnappers, etc.

A note of warning though: it should not be an excuse to ram down political enemies as we have seen with the EFCC in the country. That will be using a crime to track a crime, a moral contradiction.

The proposal by the Senate to create six more campuses of the Nigerian Law School, ostensibly to make it more accessible for graduates from various parts of the country would have been supported if the existing ones were well funded. After all, the closer a campus is to the university law graduate, the lesser the cost to be incurred. Indeed, but for fear that standards may be compromised, we would have advocated that every university integrate the law school curricula in its programme before graduation.

No doubt, law students travelling long distances to attend the compulsory one year law school programme suffer the extra costs associated with getting accommodation, transportation and adjusting to the new environment. In cases where the law students have no relations in their new academic environment, they suffer the discomfort of travelling back to their homes each time there is a break, or the need to stay away from the campus.

But the public hearing organised by the Senate, on the Legal Education (Consolidated etc, Amendment) Bill 2021, has exposed the grave challenges establishing more campuses would pose, considering the meagre resources allocated to the law school. If the resources available to fund the present six campuses of the Nigerian Law School, in addition to the seventh one already built by Rivers State government, are grossly inadequate, it is unreasonable to increase the burden to 12 campuses.

In opposing the bill, the chairman of the Council for Legal Education, Chief Emeka Ngige, SAN, said: “For instance, the deplorable condition in which students at the Yenagoa law campus are studying is worse than what prisoners in Ikoyi Prison are experiencing.” On his part, the President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Olumide Akpata, argued: “With required infrastructure, the existing law schools across the country are enough to accommodate thousands of law students graduating from the various universities.”

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The duo also contended that it is the Council for Legal Education that is statutorily empowered by law to determine the need and push for new campuses of law school. For Mr Akpata: “The Council for Legal Education is the institution empowered by law to set up a new campus on the basis of need assessment and not political considerations driving the move for establishment of additional six across the six geo – political zones.”

On his part, Chief Ngige argued: “The move by the Senate through this bill is more or less subtle usurpation of the functions of the Council for Legal Education.” He continued: “Any need for establishment of a new law school campus, are by law, to be routed through the Council for Legal Education as exemplified by the Rivers model.” With the calibre of those opposed to the bill, and the arguments from the senators who opposed same, we support that the bill be dropped.

There is no need to establish more campuses of the law school when the existing ones are grossly under-funded. There have also been claims that the quality of education in the law school campuses has been affected by the decentralisation, with the allegations of leakage of question papers on some campuses. What should therefore be of paramount interest to the law makers, is to enhance the budget to upgrade the law school campuses to best standards.

That point was made by Mr Akpata, who said: “What is required from the Senate and by extension the National Assembly, is to, by way of appropriation, team up with the executive for adequate funding of the existing law schools.” On its part, the Council for Legal Education must ensure that standards are maintained across the present campuses. The harm a poorly trained lawyer can cause the society is better imagined.

Nigerians who had hoped that direct injection of public funds into the country’s beleaguered power sector would be significantly reduced after the privatisation of the sector on November 1, 2013 must be disturbed by the report that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) pumped a whopping N2trn into the sector in the last eight years.

A circular signed by the CBN’s Director of Banking Supervision, Hassan Bello, said government intervened financially in the sector based on recommendations of the Power Sector Coordination Working Group, to improve payment discipline in the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry (NESI).

Indeed, the last eight years have seen the Federal Government giving all kinds of lifelines to keep the sector afloat. These included about N300bn for the Power and Aviation Intervention Fund (PAIF), the N213bn Nigerian Electricity Market Stabilisation Facility (NEMSF), N140bn Solar Connection Intervention Facility, over N600bn tariff shortfall intervention and the recent provision of about N120bn for mass metering.

Others included N600bn to enable key stakeholders in the sector bridge shortfalls in the payment of invoices. There was also a N701bn CBN facility deployed as Power Assurance Guarantee.

Without doubt, this is a lot of money, especially in a cash-strapped country where so many otherwise important needs are competing for the few available cash.

But the question is whether the Federal Government had an alternative in the circumstance. We do not think so. The truth of the matter is that the privatisation process that ushered in the present players in the sector was flawed ab initio. Most of the privatised entities went into wrong hands, with people having neither the technical expertise nor the financial muscle, taking charge. The result of the corruption of the process was the noticeable lack of progress in the sector for the first few years of the privatisation. Power supply was as unsteady as it ever was. To rub salt on injury, Nigerians not only ended up being perpetually power-starved, they also became victims of crazy bills, under which dispensation electricity consumers were billed based on rule of the thumb rather than for actual power consumed. They therefore groaned so loud such that the government could not ignore their pains.

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Not only that, steady power supply is pivotal to development, employment generation and the attendant reduction in crime, aside the social comfort that Nigerians derive from electrical appliances, which count for a lot, especially in a typical tropical climate like ours.

With both power generation and distribution in the hands of private entities, the Federal Government is still responsible for power transmission. But then, power supply is a function of the synergy among the three components. The sector cannot be healthy if one of the components is ailing. So, while both generation and distribution are not living up to expectation, even power transmission that is in the hands of government also has its peculiar challenges. For instance, whereas the country has capacity to generate about 12,522 MW of electricity, it is only able to dispatch about 4,000 MW, which is grossly inadequate for a country of Nigeria’s size.

However, the good news is that, according to the CBN, the interventions are paying off.

It is heartwarming that, apart from bridging the metering gap, the interventions, according to the CBN, have equally led to the recovery of power generation capacity of about 1,200 megawatts and allowed DisCos to carry out projected capex through issuance of letters of credit (LCs) for the purchase of over 704,928 meters; rehabilitation of over 332 kilometres (km) of 11 kilovolt (kV) lines and 130km of 0.45KV lines; purchase and installation of 511 transformers and construction of 56 new distribution substations, as well as acquisition of a mobile injection substation.

On paper, this is something to cheer. But, what is of more concern to Nigerians is that the expenses translate to steadier power supply. This is the only way they would know that the funds have not gone down the drain as usual. No doubt, there is a noticeable improvement in power supply in some parts of the country. This needs to be sustained and expanded. Here, a strong regulator for the power sector is critical because the regulator has both the administrative and technical expertise to ensure effective service delivery as well as prudent management of resources.

As a former Chairman of the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), Sam Amadi, noted, “It is the regulator who should be speaking about funding for the sector because it has the capacity to regulate expenditure and ensure it goes to what is relevant and prudent.”