The Nation Newspaper

Category: Editorial

  • Bad news

    • A dip in oil and gas calls for urgent diversification of the economy

    Two reports, from New York Times and Reuters, should raise, by a bar, the adrenalin levels of the managers of the beleaguered Nigerian economy.

    The first, from New York Times, is that the American oil major, Chevron,  is planning to axe 7,000 jobs, in addition to the 8,000 it announced earlier in the year.

    Reuters, on its part, also reported that the Anglo-Dutch oil firm, Shell, also seeks to shed a massive 1,000 jobs globally – a figure said to be different from the 6,500 it earlier pencilled to be laid off in July.

    That the global oil industry as a whole currently faces an uncertain future can only pass for an understatement. Indeed, not with the trio of Chevron, Shell and Eni reported as collectively posting $12 billion losses in three months: Chevron, $3.6 billion; Shell, $7.4 billion and Eni, the Italian major, $1 billion.

    In the circumstance, the future of the oil economy – as indeed the fortunes of international oil companies (IOCs) – can only be described as bleak.

    At this time, the number of our compatriots to be affected by the massive job cuts is not exactly known. However, given the vastness of the nation’s industry and the scale of the trio’s operations in Nigeria in particular, it is not hard to imagine that a sizeable number of our nationals would be affected by the planned shakedown.

    For the economy, in which unemployment is at a record high; and the individual families and their hordes of dependants, that cannot be anything but bad news.

    What makes the situation particularly regrettable is that the economy at this time has neither the capacity to absorb those to be laid off, nor can it boast of alternative outlets through which their specialized skills could be productively deployed.  It is unfortunate that Nigeria is again forced to bemoan a situation, not only predictable but actually predicted.

    For years, the nation’s leadership hugged the enclave economy of oil and with it, its restrictive, narrow and opaque ways. They went on wild, unproductive expenditures, not caring about the future.

    But with the reality now firmly set, it seems hard to imagine we have lost the whole of a decade to lay a solid foundation for a truly diversified economy.  What is more?  We had enough time to put in place world class infrastructure; and to enact policies very friendly to business.  All of these could have gone a long way to mitigate the impact of the negative developments on the economy and the individual.

    The pathway out of the quagmire, of course, remains that path not taken:  diversification, in its broadest sense, to expand the nation’s productive base.

    As always, we believe that the pathway is massive investment in the critical infrastructures of power and transportation to drive down the cost of doing business. We may well add that small and medium scale businesses remain key; as they are best placed to create jobs.  Hence, they deserve special incentives: access to cheap, long-term funds and allied business-supporting policies.

    Finally, for far too long, the Federal Government has neglected to heed the imperative to harness and optimise the linkages inherent in the hydro-carbon value chain – despite our vast endowment in this area.

    That explains why the nation is currently a net importer of every conceivable foreign manufacture, not the least petroleum products, which it imports at a premium, after exporting crude oil it now has in quantum, on the cheap.

    Therefore, massive investment in petrochemicals and allied industries seems to us as the surest path: not only to cut down on the nation’s huge import bill, but also to create jobs on a massive scale.

  • Time to conquer TB

    Nigeria must re-strategize in its fight against this infection

    Nigeria’s successful conquest of the Ebola Viral Disease (EVD) has apparently had the paradoxical effect of blinding it to the importance of addressing other ailments, even more deadly when reckoned in terms of lost human lives.

    While the depredations of malaria are well-known, it appears that tuberculosis (TB) poses similarly crucial health challenges for the country.

    Nigeria was ranked third-highest in the world’s TB-prevalent countries in 2014, and the most heavily-infected in Africa. Some four million cases are expected to develop between 2015 and 2020, with a quarter of them co-occurring with Human Immuno-Deficiency Virus (HIV).

    A significant proportion of TB cases are of the version called Multi-Drug Resistant Tuberculosis (MDR-TB), which is harder to treat. About 170,000 of the current 570,000 TB cases occurring in the country are fatal.  That fatality is slightly more than one in every four cases.

    That would be a dire harvest in needless deaths, were Nigeria to get right the environment to prevent the disease; and the right medicare to treat and eventually cure it.  With the present parlous position, that appears a daunting challenge.  But it is not impossible to scale.

    The prevalence of TB in the country is due to several complementary factors: poor public sanitation, low levels of personal hygiene, overcrowding and poor immune systems.

    These factors become even more significant in the wake of the widespread social disruption caused by the Boko Haram insurgency, and communal clashes which occur across the country.

    If Nigeria is to properly come to grips with the TB challenge, it will first have to understand that it is facing a medical crisis that is as urgent as the one it encountered with EVD. Indeed, in some respects, the TB epidemic is far more serious.

    Ebola claimed eight lives, compared to TB which accounts for 0.17 million annually. Tuberculosis is far more insidious, and can manifest as the symptom-free latent TB that silently infects others. It can serve to accelerate the spread of HIV, and in its MDR-TB form, it can complicate treatment regimens and exponentially increase the cost of treatment.

    Besides, when HIV morphs into AIDS (but it need not, if the right counseling procedure and treatment regime are taken), TB is one of those virulent opportunistic infections that tears away at the patient’s body.  That explains why latter-day integrated HIV-AIDS preventive campaigns include TB and malaria.  It is dubbed HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (ATM) prevention campaigns.

    A viable anti-TB campaign, therefore, requires a comprehensively integrated approach, which incorporates extensive immunisation, improved reporting systems and better nutrition, as well as education and enlightenment programmes, and, of course, better treatment.

    Since adolescents and children are disproportionately affected by TB in Nigeria, they should be given correspondingly greater priority. The country’s health system must return to its stress on primary health care, with emphasis on child immunization, that it enjoyed during the tenure of the late Professor Olikoye Ransome-Kuti as Minister of Health.

    Greater attention should also  be paid to school-feeding programmes to enable children obtain at least one nutritionally-balanced meal a day, thereby improving their immune systems. That means, even if to roll back TB alone, the Buhari presidency should urgently implement the nationwide schools feeding programme.

    Slum redevelopment and urban renewal are crucial to tackling the overcrowding and insanitary conditions that prevail in far too many of the country’s urban areas.

    Comprehensive enlightenment programmes must also be developed to show the citizenry how to avoid contracting the disease; and how to recognize its symptoms.

    The country’s healthcare facilities must give the anti-TB fight the same prominence that they currently devote to malaria. TB treatment should be heavily subsidised, if not completely free; drugs and therapies must be made widely available, especially in public health institutions. It is particularly important that patients be aware of the vital need to complete treatment regimes so as to avoid Multi-Drug Resistant TB.

    But none of these control measures will succeed without adequate funding. According to the WHO, the country’s national TB programme budget is put at US $228 million, of which 13 per cent is locally funded, 16 per cent internationally funded, while 68 per cent is unfunded.

    This a huge gap.  If over two-thirds of the anti-TB budget is not financed, very little progress can be made in combatting it. The Buhari administration must, therefore, ensure that the anti-TB campaign gets the money it needs in order to be effective.

    The battle against disease is a never-ending one. Nigeria’s globally-hailed victories over EVD and polio demonstrate that it has the capacity to win the current war against tuberculosis.  So, it’s time to attack and vanquished TB.  With determination and resolve, it can be done.

  • Policing Lagos

    Policing Lagos

    •Security is one key area Lagos must enjoy a special status as a former federal capital

    It is not surprising that the question of security was a major focus at the just concluded retreat organised for members of the Lagos State Executive Council, Permanent Secretaries and some Heads of Parastatals of the mega city’s public service.

    This is because of the persistence of a high rate of crimes such as armed robbery in neighbourhoods as well as in heavy traffic, kidnapping, rape and communal gangsterism in several parts of the country’s economic and commercial nerve centre.

    Of course, no city in the world is entirely crime-free. However, much more can be done to drastically reduce the incidence of crime in Lagos and other parts of the country. This can, however, only be the function of an effective, efficient, dynamic, flexible and creative security system.

    Speaking during the closing session of the retreat, which understandably had in attendance the Lagos State Commissioner of Police, Mr Fatai Owoseni, Lagos State Governor, Mr Akinwunmi Ambode, drew attention to key dimensions of the security conundrum in the state; and his remarks are relevant to the country as a whole.

    In his words, “We’re not yet where we want to be. We have only 33,000 policemen in Lagos for a population of over 20 million. Again, we don’t have control over these police officers…We need to see some things change. There has to be some sort of paradigm shift; we want to see our police officers patrol in convoy between 12 midnight and 4am. That’s why on our part, we have gone out of our budget limits, using our resources from the Security Trust Fund to say that, yes, it might not be within our budget, but we would spend money to support the police…”.

    First, is the grossly inadequate number of police men relative to the population. But this is only a reflection of a national dilemma. There are only 371, 800 sworn officers in the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) to provide security for a population of 174.2 million people.

    The police authorities are working towards addressing this problem through the planned recruitment of 280,000 new officers to increase the size of the force to 650,000. This initiative, however, can only marginally enhance the efficacy of the police across the country.

    A second pertinent issue Mr Ambode raised is the control and command structure of the police. The kind of unitary police system currently in place is incapable of effectively meeting the security challenges of a complex federal polity like Nigeria. A situation in which state governments are constitutionally empowered to make laws within their jurisdictions but legally incapacitated to enforce such legislations because police outfits are outside their control, is incompatible with the principles of federalism.

    We thus believe that there is ultimately no alternative to the legalization of state police to take into account the cultural and environmental peculiarities of the component states of the federation. But this will be without prejudice to the existence of a well-funded, equipped and motivated federal police force.

    A third issue implicit in Mr Ambode’s remarks is the need to redress the current dysfunctional fiscal federal structure, which is heavily skewed in favour of the centre to the disadvantage of the other levels of government. Thus, a state like Lagos has to divert scarce resources to funding the centrally controlled police even when it also has to face the arduous infrastructural, environmental and other challenges arising from its dense and ever increasing population, as well as its role as the country’s economic hub.

    We urge Mr. Ambode to intensify the advocacy for special funding for Lagos, given the huge revenues derived from the state, which go into the national coffers.

    Besides, Lagos is a former federal capital, and still extant commercial hub, which deserves a special status.  While the governor should, therefore, also step up advocacy for Lagos to get its due, it is by nomeans his task alone. It is a Nigerian responsibility. Lagos is Nigeria’s special home, and a mirror and pulse of the federation. It is time to make good President Muhammadu Buhari’s  pledge on the hustings, as All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, to focus on Lagos.

  • Best of the best

    Best of the best

    •Adichie’s Half of A Yellow Sun trumps the rest

    To go by her latest adornment, which reinforced her radiance as a writer, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has entered elite space in an elitist enterprise.

    Her second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, winner of the 2007 Orange Prize for Fiction, emphatically won the Best of the Best award among the winners of Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction in the last decade. To mark the 20th anniversary of the prestigious prize, now branded by Bailey’s since 2014, the chairs of judges of the past 10 years picked their “best of the best” winner from the last 10 years.

    In a striking tribute, Muriel Gray, who chaired the judging panel when Chimamanda won the award at the age of 29, was quoted as saying: “For an author, so young at the time of writing, to have been able to tell a tale of such enormous scale in terms of human suffering and the consequences of hatred and division, whilst also gripping the reader with wholly convincing characters and spellbinding plot, is an astonishing feat. Chimamanda’s achievement makes Half of a Yellow Sun not just a worthy winner of this most special of prizes, but a benchmark for excellence in fiction writing.”

    The novel was also named as Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour listeners’ Best of the Best in a vote held on the programme’s website, a significant endorsement of the judges’ selection by members of the public.

    The novel, set before and during the 1960s Nigerian Civil War, got its title from the flag of Biafra, the name given to the break-away territory that fought unsuccessfully for sovereignty. It is noteworthy that Half of a Yellow Sun also won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and has been adapted into a film of the same title released in 2014.

    Chimamanda’s achievement is particularly remarkable, considering the strength of her challengers. Her novel was rated above nine others, including  Ali Smith’s How to Be Both, Téa Obreht’s The Tiger’s Wife, Marilynne Robinson’s Home,  Zadie Smith’s On Beauty and  Eimear McBride’s A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing.   

    She said: “This is a prize I have a lot of respect and admiration for – over the years it’s brought wonderful literature to a wide readership that might not have found many of the books. I feel I am in very good company. To be selected as ‘Best of the Best’ of the past decade is such an honour. I’m very grateful and very happy.”

    It is a point to ponder that Half of a Yellow Sun came out on top for its evocation of a tragic history. In an important sense, it is fiction teaching lessons about conflict and its consequences.  The import of the novel should not be lost on Chimamanda’s compatriots as the country continues to grapple with centrifugal forces in various theatres.

    For a country famished for promotion and publicity opportunities, Chimamanda represents a brilliant ambassador, not only for Nigerian writing, but also for the country’s arts and culture sphere generally.  Hers is a generational voice that speaks of promise beyond the exclusive space of writers and writing.

    It is worth mentioning that the annual 30, 000 pounds Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction is open to any woman writing in English, irrespective of nationality, country of residence, age or subject matter.

    It is a testimony to Chimamanda’s literary quality that her 2013 work, Americannah, which won the United States National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and The Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize for Fiction, was also shortlisted for the 2014 Baileys Women’s Prize and it’s being turned into a film.  Her first novel, Purple Hibiscus (2003), shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2004, was awarded the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book in 2005.

    Chimamanda symbolises what women can achieve in a patriarchal environment, and her successes have the potential to inspire girl-children across the country.

  • NIMC and the discontent within

    NIMC and the discontent within

    SIR: National Identity Management Commission [NIMC] was established to own, operate, maintain and manage the National Identity Database in Nigeria; it is charged with assigning a Unique National Identification Number (NIN) and the issuance of General Multi-Purpose Cards (GMPC) to those registered individuals, and to harmonize and integrate existing identification databases in Nigeria. Simply, NIMC is to provide an assured identity system in Nigeria through the concept of enrol once and be identified for life; hence its importance for the overall development, progress and security of the nation.

    For this task to be done successfully, workers of the commission ought to be accorded highest and utmost welfare package and better conditions of service. Unfortunately, under the watch of the current Director General, Chris Onyemenam, NIMC is going from bad to worse.

    The workers do not have stable monthly salaries; it is deduction upon deduction; half-pay without genuine reason and nobody knows what the deduction is used for.

    Recently, Federal Government instructed all its agencies to pay all outstanding money owed by workers, instead of the DG to pay the workers all their outstanding entitlements , he told the general public that his agency was not owing anybody kobo – a lie.

    The recruitment into the commission besides flouting Federal Character Commission rule, saw many of the newly appointed staff being given double to triple salary scale above their supposedly grade level. Meanwhile, the existing personnel suffer from non-promotion, non-payment of overtime; in fact, there is discrimination among staff, depending on how and who recommended the individual for employment into the commission.

    The network service provision for uploading data is non-existent across majority of rural local governments in the country; where there is, it is either modem services or 2G services that are too slow to perform optimally. In some local government areas, the offices have to rely on the gesture of local government chairmen for data services or other running cost; even some states offices have no constant power supply.

    The problems affecting NIMC are endless, as such, if the Buhari administration is very serious about the issue data management in the country, a probe into the recent activities of the commission has become necessary.

    NIMC is critical to Nigeria; it should not be left in the hand of those who want to destroy it.

     

    • Oluwafemi Abayomi,

    Awolowo Road, Lagos.

  • United Nations

    United Nations

    •A toast at 70 but also time for far-reaching reforms

    The guns of World War II were still booming when representatives of 22 nations, contemplating the carnage and devastation the conflict had wrought across the globe, gathered in San Francisco to set up the United Nations, with a primary goal of “saving succeeding generations from the scourge of war.”  It had been three years in the making.

    Today, 70 years later, the global landscape is still scarred by armed conflict, insurgency and terrorism, situated largely within countries or across regions.  But here has been no World War III, and in this era of globalization, such a war is almost inconceivable.

    The UN has succeeded largely in restraining the impulse to war, served as a platform for mediation and conciliation, and helped keep the peace in strife-torn parts of the world. It is to its credit that, though much criticized, its abolition has never been seriously canvassed.

    Unlike its doomed predecessor, the League of Nations, it has declined to lend its authority to the revanchism which  was the defining attribute of the Treaty of Versailles that formally ended World War I. Hitler would later seize upon the monumental inequities of that instrument to rearm Nazi Germany and seek to conquer the world.

    The UN also successfully resisted attempt to wring from it an imprimatur for the invasion and destruction of Iraq to rid that country of “weapons of mass destruction” it did not possess – an invasion that the best authorities now accept was a mistake, if not illegal outright.

    The UN’s specialized agencies have made the world a better place.  The Geneva-based World Health Organization has taken the lead in mobilizing resources to containing diseases like HIV-AIDS and Ebola fever, which threatened the entire global community.  Recently, it announced that polio, a disease that cripples its victims, has virtually been eradicated.

    The New York- based children’s fund UNICEF has catered with great success to the development and well-being of children all over the world, just as the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization has been promoting best farming practices and global food sufficiency.  The Paris-based UNESCO has with much success advanced literacy, education, science, and media pluralism while helping to preserve the world’s cultural heritage.

    The UN’s environmental agency UNEP, based in Nairobi, Kenya, monitors threats to the environment and promotes programmes and policies to safeguard an increasingly fragile ecology.

    More than a dozen UN Commissions or agencies dealing with such subjects as atomic energy, the weather, human rights, refugees, forests, population, statistics, and the elimination of discrimination against women, have made the UN a beneficent force in human affairs.

    But after 70 years, it is time to review and redesign its architecture to reflect more accurately the balance of needs, power and influence in the world.  It is inherently inequitable to assign permanent seats, with the right of veto, to only five of more than150 member-countries.

    It is time, therefore, to democratize the Council by assigning permanent membership to countries outside the league of the superpowers.  India, Japan, Germany, Brazil, South Africa, and Nigeria, have been suggested as candidates for permanent membership.  It is time to move the issue to substantive discussion.

    The UN’s work has often been constrained by its unstable finances.  Some of the most affluent member-countries think nothing of being in default  for as long as possible and rushing in with their dues only when they want to use the UN to prosecute their private agenda.

    A  UN that enjoys financial stability will be able to pursue its global agenda more effectively, for the benefit of all humankind.

  • Afenifere, the end?

    Afenifere, the end?

    •The foremost Yoruba socio-cultural organisation courts self-destruction for straying from own path

    The news came like a shattering bomb: Pa Reuben Fasoranti, the Afenifere Leader, announcing his resignation for alleged undermining of his authority.

    That, in itself, was novelty.  Never in the chequered and rich political history of Afenifere, socio-cultural soul of the Yoruba and proud holder of its political franchise, had its leader resigned.  Its leadership is like royalty: and among the Yoruba, while a king still lives, another one dares not mount the throne.

    The late Senator Abraham Adesanya succeeded Pa Adekunle Ajasin, former Ondo governor, who with distinction, led Afenifere during the tempestuous battle to revalidate the annulled June 12, 1993 presidential mandate that the late MKO Abiola won.  Even when Senator Adesanya himself became infirm, the organisation, following his own hallowed convention, still could not appoint a replacement, but only a regent, so to speak.

    That regency, not by any means unanimous, threw up Pa Fasoranti; since another faction thrust forward Pa Ayo Fasanmi.  That was when the rot set in; and even the Afenifere Renewal Group (ARG), an offshoot, has said it pulled out of the main body because even a peace parley, at Ibadan, Oyo State, could not settle the differences.

    But if the novelty of Pa Fasoranti’s resignation is bad enough by Afenifere’s convention, the ill-advised argument by  one of the organisation’s top members that the old man resigned because of old age, since neither Pa Ajasin nor Pa Adesanya ever lived up to 89, was an epitome of ringing bad faith.  Might gerontocrats, within Afenifere, be mocking old age, just because of fleeting disputes?  That really is a big disappointment; for it jars against Yoruba culture, which Afenifere crows is its forte.

    However, all these manifestations of rot are clear symptoms that over the years, the once formidable and highly revered Afenifere had mercilessly chiselled at its own essence, so much so that not a few can now see through the rather hollow inside.

    Since its glorious birth in 1951, as the local Yoruba moniker for the Awolowo Action Group,  Afenifere through thick and thin, had earned the trust of its people.  So, when the June 12 crisis came, it was a natural vehicle; for all its existence, it had benchmarked itself as an unfazed champion of justice, fairness and equity, even outside the Yoruba territory, in a federal Nigeria.

    The political Yoruba had been more fractious than unanimous.  But the Awolowo progressive mainstream had, over the years, earned the faith of the majority.  That could be well because it discharged itself so well that the people trusted it.  But it was more because Afenifere made the people’s pulse its leash, so much so that it was led by it.

    But by the 2015 general election, Afenifere had permitted itself the fatal hubris it could impose its will on the people; and enter into alliances on a non-existent mandate it gifted itself.

    That explained its rather reckless support for the  Goodluck Jonathan presidency, despite ample signs that that administration would face electoral doom.  It not only forged such toady alliances that reeked of thick impropriety, it was arrogant and loud about it.  It therefore earned the scorn of not a few neutral people, that nevertheless wanted to throw off the Jonathan yoke.  This putative but dramatic unravelling is a logical consequence.

    The ARG has virtually thrown Afenifere to the dogs, and claimed it still harboured that pristine Awo-driven ideology that, over the years, made Afenifere the Yoruba political lord of the manor.  It could well be.

    But the Afenifere stumble, if not outright fall, should teach every pressure group it needs an ultra-sharp antenna to promptly pick the people’s bidding.  Much more: it must have the humility to be at absolute service to these yearnings.  If Afenifere goes down, failure to latterly observe that rule would be its gravest hubris.

    From the collective to the personal, however: what would the Afenifere elders tell Awo they made of the heritage handed over to them, the day they meet their maker?  Perhaps that haunting thought may yet force some common sense and save  the doddering old club!

     

  • PMB; time for real action

    PMB; time for real action

    SIR: During the last electioneering campaigns, the APC and its candidate, Muhammadu Buhari did well to let Nigerians know the depth of their plans to move the country forward. Nearly six months after, all that we are witnessing are mere talks, oversees travels, photo sessions and no real action.

    The question here is how long would it take for the implementation to begin? My main area of concern is that of youth involvement in governance, which is the current trend in all developed and developing nations, as the youth population of any country serves as the backbone of growth and development.  They supply new ideas, strategies, vigour and enthusiasm to move that country forward.

    But in Nigeria, the reverse is the case.  Our youth population are being continuously sidelined, ignored and marginalised, while the people of yesteryears are being regurgitated and recycled to handle the affairs of the country and even those that exclusively have to do with the youth.

    The question here is – what went wrong? The President is well aware of the unhealthy rate of youth unemployment in the country and its adverse effects on all aspects of our life as a nation, be it economic, security etc. Yet since his assumption to office, there’s little or no hope that the trend is coming to an end. The question here is, what is the government doing to address this issue?

    Another dangerous trend that is creeping up with the new government is the issue of late payments of civil servants salaries.  Despite the fact that majority of the ministries and parastatals are already on the electronic payment system otherwise known as the IPPIS, October’s salary is yet to be paid nearly a week into November. This has been the trend for the past six months. The civil servants are already beginning to get frustrated, furious, impatient and agitated with this development. The question here is how long will this go on?

    The most worrying issue of insecurity all over the country is still yet to be properly addressed and the promise of bringing an end to the insurgency in the north-east by December is far from being actualized. The question here is what measures are in place to ensure the realization of the December deadline?

    Lastly, the President’s penchant for overseas travel should be at least limited to the most vital outings that are meant to foster the actualization of the new Nigerian dream as outlined in the APC’s manifesto, because no matter how lean the presidential entourage is, considerable amount of state resources is being utilized to finance such outings. Why not invite other world leaders here in order to showcase Nigeria’s potential to them?

    I still have enormous confidence in the ability of President Muhammadu Buhari to steer the wheel of this country to the promise land.  However, now is the best time to stop talking and start

    working as there’s a huge mountain of expectations for you to climb.

     

    • Usman Mohammed

    IBB University, Lapai-Niger State

  • The Emir and subsidy

    The Emir and subsidy

    •The issue is not subsidy but local refining of crude

    The call for the removal of petroleum subsidy, just got a boost, from the Emir of Kano, Muhammad Sanusi II. The former Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) made the call while receiving a Life Time Achievement Award at the All Africa Business Leaders Award, in Lagos.

    Hear him: “Does it make sense at this time for government to continue paying petroleum subsidies? It does not! When you are not earning because oil prices are down, you have to shut down those expense lines that had been known historically to be the site of rent-seeking.”

    There has, however, been very stringent criticisms against the call. Senator Shehu Sani, said: “Decades of adoption of such capitalist strategies by many countries in the developing world especially Africa led those nation to economic quagmire and paralysis”.

    He further admonished: “The poor must not continue to pay the price for the corruption and mismanagement perpetrated by past governments”.

    In his reaction, the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) President, Comrade Ayuba Wabba, said: “There is no doubt that the former CBN Governor is no more connected with the people”. He referred to his call as “the language of the capitalists, the marketers and those who want to milk the country dry”.

    The cacophony of the voices represents the myriad of challenges facing the government of President Muhammadu Buhari over what to the do with the petroleum subsidy conundrum. For us, mindboggling corruption, is at the root of this national embarrassment. Indeed, it sounds like fiction, that Nigeria would shamelessly export crude oil, with all the employment opportunities and by-products, that local refining would gift us, only to import refined petroleum products, at inflated costs and huge arbitrage.

    The quagmire facing the present government is how to pass on to the citizens, the glaring costs of incompetence of the past governments.  They chose to neglect our refineries; and created, deliberately or inadvertently, a corps of parasites, choosing subsidy to bleed their country to death.

    With nearly all the old refineries almost derelict, and with regulation of the sector making it unattractive for private sector investment, the government which has limited resources to invest in new refineries, is therefore at a crossroads: can it dare the people and the likely inflation nightmare, if the subsidy is removed? Only if it can guarantee an improvement in the life of the ordinary Nigerians.

    But the Buhari government must quickly take a jump. It must choose to either source for funds to build new refineries, to support the aging ones in Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna, and save the people from suffering and the government from embarrassment; or it would dare the consequences, and remove the subsidy, and encourage private equity participation in the development of new refineries.

    In taking a decision, the government must weigh its capacity to rein in the criminal elements in the oil industry, who under the previous governments, have been in criminal collaboration with the government officials.

    This government must also appreciate the enormous sacrifices already made by the people, who have been taken on a long deceitful ride, each time there had been an adjustment of the price of fuel, with a promise to use the proceeds to renew the infrastructure.

    The government must indeed start by removing the corrupt component of the subsidy regime and pass the benefits to the people. For many, if they cannot trust the Government to block the leakages, how can they trust it, to use the gains from the removal well?

     

  • Naked and vulnerable

    Naked and vulnerable

    •That 120 million Nigerians are  not covered by any social security put the
    poverty challenge in bold relief

    The plight of over 123 Nigerians, who live below poverty line, has been worsened by their inability to get social insurance coverage, as practiced in several developed countries of the world.

    According to the Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITA), “only those working in the public and organized private sectors are benefitting from the Contributing Pension Scheme, Employee Compensation Scheme and the National Health Insurance Scheme.

    On this ground, the NSITF’s General Manager for Social Security, Mr. Ismail Agoka, while speaking at Abuja about one and a half weeks ago, said that “Statistics from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed that 71 per cent of Nigerians were living below the poverty level”. What is more, “all of them are located in the informal sector”.

    According to him, the Employee Compensation Act as being implemented; as well as NSIFT , were designed for the public sector and the organized private sector, shutting out the unemployed and the poor because “the fund could not operate outside government programmes”.

    This means that only the formal employees mostly enjoy social security programmes while there is an International Labour Organisation’s  (ILO’s) declaration which aims at extending social security benefits to all by the year 2020.

    He lamented the situation where NBS data of 2012 claimed that 71 per cent of Nigerians live below poverty level, meaning that about 120 out of 160 million of the citizens are very poor, which translates to about $1.20 per day for these very poor Nigerian citizens!

    Mr. Agaka contended that not only should this figure give government great concern, “it should give it a more compelling reason to drive social security to the real poor, largely located within the informal sector”.

    He urged the government to “harmonise data generated by the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), and National Communication Commission (NCC) to midwife an all inclusive national social security programme to Nigerians”.

    He also stressed the need to “harmonise and coordinate” various social security programmes being executed by government ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs); as he believes Nigeria does not, as of now, have a “structured” social security.

    No doubt: there is nothing like social security in Nigeria. This is unfortunate for a country with the largest economy in Africa. We notice that NSITF only deals with social insurance for workers while an overwhelming number of workers are not captured.

    This means that the NSITF coverage is very poor. In fact, the Trust Fund has pointed out that about 120 million Nigerians, and 71 per cent of them living below poverty level, are not covered by any scheme. We, therefore, suggest that the government should look at the laws again and find out how they can be enforced or amended so that more workers can be captured in order to reduce general exposure to deep poverty.

    Aside from the isolated cases of Lagos with free health programmes for children and the aged, Osun with its free school meals (O’meal), Ekiti under Dr. Fayemi with its stipends of ¦ 5,000 to vulnerable and old people and a few other states, social security is indeed a remote dream.

    Yet, in places like Britain and America, social insurance and social security are taken seriously. The aged are cared for on social welfare (known as doles), subsidized houses, free transportation and free medicare. The idea is to see that nobody suffers, even at old age. It is unfortunate that the amount of money stolen and kept in private accounts in and outside this country is probably more than what could be used to take care of children and old people, especially for their sustenance including medicare.

    Still, that 71 per cent of Nigerians live below poverty level should drive the Nigerian  government to urgently put in place some social security systems to cushion and protect the very vulnerable in our society. That is why the Buhari presidency should expedite action on its campaign promise of  unemployment benefit (allowance) and one meal per day for school children.

    Everything should be done to reduce the Nigerian poverty level, as the present high level of poverty in Nigeria is absolutely unacceptable and unwarranted.