The Nation Newspaper

Category: Editorial

  • The economy

    • Time not only to stop the bleeding but also to rebuild

    A staggering debt portfolio estimated at $60 billion; a threatening insolvency – the consequence of unbridled profligacy and graft; an industrial scale theft under which 20 percent oil production continues to be lost or unaccounted for on daily basis. An oil price gone bust with nigh prospects of imminent recovery; an environment of rising expectations of infrastructure renewal, particularly of power and transportation, job creation, poverty reduction and security of lives and property.

    Add these to a virtually collapsed power sector; a downstream petroleum industry sector in crisis; suffocating industrial environment defined by infrastructure deficit, high interest rates and other inclement policies of government; unprecedented youth unemployment reckoned in staggering 50 percent; the horizon would seem entirely, bleak.

    As if the challenges are not daunting enough, nearly two-thirds of the states of the federation currently owe their workers backlog of salaries.

    These – and many more – are the realities that the incoming Muhammadu Buhari administration would have to grapple with as it settles into office in the coming days. The situation, if anything, calls for creative strategies as against a resort to quick-fixes. At the risk of sounding draconian, the current situation calls for drastic measures.

    A good way to start is to cause an immediate stoppage to the bleeding of the national treasury. Nigerians are, by now, familiar with the sources of the haemorrhage: the service-wide heist under which several billions are stolen annually; and the industrial scale theft of the nation’s crude known to be responsible for some 20 percent daily loss in the nation’s output of crude, and the mindless importation of refined petroleum products, sadly for a major oil-producing country.

    The administration must find the way and means to extirpate them. This of course means instituting effective controls and equipping the military to effectively police the nation’s exclusive economic zones. Much as we agree that the time has come for the Federal Government to end the current regime of fuel importation, we believe that the starting point is to review the current regime of subsidy as a first step to getting private domestic refineries on board.

    Giving the rather lean finances it is inheriting, it may well be necessary for the administration to consider putting new projects on hold – except those considered absolutely essential– until such a time it is able to put a handle on the financial situation. An inventory of all on-going projects against their scheduled delivery dates,  especially those for which huge monies have been paid would seem in the circumstance, an imperative. And if it becomes necessary to make examples of those who have over time treated public funds as their share of the proverbial national cake, so be it.

    In the short term, we expect the new administration to move swiftly to get the nation back to work. Part of the tragedy of a nation that claims to generate an abysmal 6,000Mw of electricity is that barely 1,000Mw is actually available for distribution.  The issue of power stabilisation must be considered an urgent priority if the administration is truly desirous of turning the tide in quick time. This is to the extent that our hordes of small and medium scale industries continue to close shop not so much for lack of market but from problems associated with access to electricity. And these are businesses that could have helped in no small way to absorb a good number of our idle youths.

    Moreover, for far too long, Nigerians have been treated to varied excuses ranging from lack of gas to inability to evacuate and distribute generated power. Even then, we are constantly reminded that the nation not only has gas in abundance but that the Federal Government has undertaken quantum investments to address these challenges and even more so in the last decade. We expect the new administration to do all that is necessary to ensure that power is stabilised. That way, our industries can roar back to life, boost their outputs and create jobs for the teeming youth.

    Talking about youth unemployment, we think it is about time the Federal Government brought back the idea of road gangs to undertake routine maintenance of our highways. While the youths so engaged would be delivering value by helping to mitigate the deplorable state of the roads, they also get to imbibe the value of honest labour. The same with agriculture – there is a lot the administration can do to make it attractive to the youths.

    In the same vein, the government must find the will to address the issue of access and costs of funds. Here, the point bears repeating that the existing interest rate regime hovering within the 20-22 percent band is not only a disincentive to business; it is the root of the lack of competitiveness of the local enterprise. The Buhari administration must see it as a challenge that needs to be dealt with.

  • Retirees as endangered species

    SIR: I only heard about the miserable lives or avoidable deaths of many of retirees from government service until I had the first time experience of the last days of my uncle, Samuel Ademola Ojo. He worked as a teacher in many primary schools in Oyo and rose to become a headmaster before he retired in 2011. He was about 60 years old when he retired. By then, he had two children in the university, one in NCE and one in secondary school. He waited for his gratuity for almost five years to no avail. However, his pension was paid skeletally.

    Whenever I called him to enquire about his wellbeing, it was always lamentation about government’s inability to pay his gratuity. There is no doubt that somebody with no source of sustenance will be miserable, particularly when one could not provide for the needs of his family. I heard that he later developed hypertension and later a partial stroke. He died on Friday, May 17.

    He served his fatherland for a whooping 35years, but corrupt and inhuman system denied him the fruits of his labour! How many retirees have died unsung? With the miserable end of many of our retirees, how can we curb corruption amongst our civil servants? As a matter of fact, Nigeria is still fortunate to find people who still join her civil service; this is because no one will like to work for the nation when one considers the miserable condition and avoidable deaths of many senior but unfortunate citizens.

    I appeal to the governor of Oyo State, Senator Abiola Ajimobi to please find other means to ameliorate the effect of hard times on our retirees. He has made his marks in Oyo State; I think putting smile on the face of our retirees will enable them to enjoy their old ages and fruits of their labour. A situation where those who have access to the corridors of power find it easy to collect their gratuity while many in my uncle’s shoes, who have nobody, found it difficult to get theirs, years after retirement, is not only inhuman but a crime against humanity. A mechanism ought to be evolved which would make verification, accreditation and payment of gratuity and pension easier and less cumbersome. The agonies they are subjected to during accreditation often led to avoidable deaths. These are senior citizens who should be accorded respect due to their status, but unfortunately Nigeria is a country where Hobbesian state of nature is still in vogue.

     

    • Adewuyi Adegbite

    Apake, Ogbomoso.  

  • Agenda for Buhari (3): Social infrastructure

    Agenda for Buhari (3): Social infrastructure

    • The Buhari regime should note that education and health care form the basis of human progress

    Like most other sectors, the Goodluck Jonathan administration is leaving the education and health sectors worse than it met them. The Muhammadu Buhari administration therefore has the onerous duty of reversing the decay in the two vital sectors. Like Siamese twins, both are inseparable: while education has to do with the development of the mind, health has to do with that of the body.

    But first the education sector. The sector has not been spared by the general decay that has eaten deep into the fabrics of the society. Thus, we have a crisis of standards, from the primary school to the tertiary level of education. Poor funding is a major challenge. This reflects in the facilities in the schools. There are no functional libraries in many schools, including the universities, many of which still have on their shelves outdated books and journals; that is, where they have at all. Furthermore, the system is bogged down by frequent strikes by both the academic and non-academic staff unions. Matters are not helped by students and in some cases parents who cheat the system in order to secure placements in the schools, including the unity schools.

    The incoming administration should federalise education. Local governments should be in charge of the primary schools while states take responsibility for the secondary schools and the Federal Government should concentrate on tertiary education, particularly universities. Although the outgoing administration created an additional six federal universities to reduce the number of Nigerians seeking university education abroad, these are still inadequate, even as the standards are suspect. This is why, in spite of the establishment of more tertiary institutions in the country, the number of Nigerians seeking the Golden Fleece abroad keeps rising.

    Unfortunately, this does not come cheap. Mind-boggling billions of Naira is expended by these Nigerians seeking qualitative education in foreign countries. A Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) figure estimated that the country spent about N1billion on the 71,000 Nigerian students studying in Ghana in 2012. When we add these to the ones in other parts of the world – South Africa, United Kingdom, United States of America, and countries of the former Soviet Union, Canada – some have estimated we could be spending about a trillion naira annually on such students.  This has a lot of implications for our economy, particularly now that crude prices are crashing.

    We need a substantial part of these funds to grow the country’s economy. So, the Buhari administration must be ready to fund the education sector adequately because a lot of the problems in the sector has to do with funding. With adequate monitoring and a sustained anti-corruption effort, the money would go a long way in providing the much needed facilities in the institutions. Staff welfare will be better addressed, thereby reducing the frequency of strikes that disrupt academic calendars in the schools. This strategic investment in education is necessary because its benefits are everlasting.

    The Buhari administration has to qualitatively and quantitatively address the challenges in the education sector. It is not just by building more schools but by ensuring that the environment is conducive for both teaching and learning.

    Almost everything that has been said of the education sector is also true of the health sector. Just as some of our universities were reckoned with globally in decades past, some of our hospitals too enjoyed similar status decades ago. It was the neglect by successive regimes that led to their present decay. Unfortunately, those who should turn things around in the health sector prefer going abroad for treatment of the commonest ailments in what is now commonly referred to as medical tourism.

    The incoming government must see it as a national shame that common diseases like cholera, diarrhea are still killing people in Nigeria. We must revive the primary healthcare and the responsibility for this should revert to the local governments. Then, state governments and the Federal Government must be ready to invest in the necessary equipment that would lift our general hospitals and other centres of medical excellence so that they can deliver some of the services that take many rich Nigerians  abroad for medical attention.

    Without doubt, governments alone cannot provide the much-needed facilities in our schools and hospitals. But they should provide an enabling environment for people to invest in both sectors. When our hospitals and schools are adequately funded and the welfare of doctors, teachers and other ancillary care providers in the sectors is enhanced, many of the medical personnel who left our shores for greener pasture abroad are likely to return and we can also stop many Nigerians from travelling abroad for higher education and medical tourism, thereby saving the much-needed foreign exchange for development.

    Nigeria is blessed with skilled healthcare professionals as well as good teachers. What we lack is the infrastructure/technology and the will on the part of the government. And this is perhaps where the Buhari government has to bring its impact to bear.

    ‘When our hospitals and schools are adequately funded and the welfare of doctors, teachers and other ancillary care providers in the sectors is enhanced … we can also stop many Nigerians from travelling abroad for higher education and medical tourism’

  • Honourary hit woman

    Honourary hit woman

    •Yale University’s odd recognition of Okonjo-Iweala

    The award of a honourary doctorate degree in Humane Letters to the outgoing Minister of Finance and Co-ordinating Minister for the Economy, Dr. (Mrs.) Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, is a stark demonstration of the willful blindness that can affect even the most enlightened of Western institutions.

    Okonjo-Iweala becomes the second Nigerian to receive such an honour in the university’s 314-year history, after Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, who was awarded a honourary Doctor of Letters degree in 1980.

    In his remarks, the President of Yale, Prof. Peter Salovey, described Okonjo-Iweala as “a brilliant reformer and dedicated civil servant” who “has spearheaded efforts to stabilise and grow Nigeria’s economy, battling widespread government corruption and creating greater fiscal transparency and discipline.”

    There is no doubt that the minister is blessed with a larger-than-life reputation, not least because of her global prominence as a senior executive at the World Bank and her first tenure as Minister of Finance which was distinguished by major fiscal and economic reforms, most notably the debt write-off negotiated with the Paris Club of creditors in 2005.

    However, if Okonjo-Iweala is to be assessed on the basis of her current performance as opposed to her past achievements, it is hard to see how Yale can rationally justify its award. If she has received worldwide renown for the things that she did well, she cannot avoid censure for what she did badly. As coordinating minister for the economy, she bears a great deal of responsibility for turning a nation that was once flush with cash to one that is now struggling to pay salaries.

    There is no shortage of evidence that the minister has fallen far short of expectations. A particularly obvious example lies in the fact that, while she was being feted in New Haven, her fellow Nigerian citizens were caught in the throes of the most devastating fuel crisis ever to occur under the Jonathan administration.

    The scarcity, which is entering its fourth week, is the culmination of the minister’s signal failure to deal with the nagging fuel-subsidy issue competently and honestly. In the wake of the protests which convulsed Nigeria after the Jonathan administration attempted to remove subsidies on fuel in 2012, government made a three-pronged promise: to comprehensively investigate the glaring discrepancies in the payment of subsidies; to create a programme aimed at ameliorating the effects of increased petroleum prices; to strengthen local refining capacity in order to reduce the nation’s ludicrous dependence on imported fuel products.

    None of these promises was fully met. The investigation of the fuel subsidy scam has been bogged down in the courts; not one person has been sentenced. Refineries are still operating below optimum capacity, and private investors have largely declined to take up the slack.

    Nigeria’s overall economic performance has not been that good, either. Although the country became Africa’s largest economy under Okonjo-Iweala’s watch, its new pre-eminence only appears to have underlined the structural deficits which still bedevil the nation.

    Worse still, the Jonathan administration has been plagued by misappropriation scandals mainly revolving around the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), ironically aggravated by government’s clumsy attempts to dismiss them. The incoming Buhari administration is widely perceived as inheriting the worst economy in the nation’s history.

    In essence, there is a surfeit of hard facts and concrete figures to show that Okonjo-Iweala has superintended a national economic system riddled with incompetence, shambolic policy implementation and bare-faced corruption. All the honourary doctorates in the world cannot change that. Yale University is too serious an institution to lend its accolades to mediocrity as it has done to Okonjo-Iweala.

     ‘There is a surfeit of hard facts and concrete figures to show that Okonjo-Iweala has superintended a national economic system riddled with incompetence, shambolic policy implementation and bare-faced corruption. All the honourary doctorates in the world cannot change that. Yale University is too serious an institution to lend its accolades to mediocrity as it has done to Okonjo-Iweala’

  • Fixing security 

    Fixing security 

    • Under Jonathan, Nigeria got as close to state failure as it could ever be. Buhari must banish all that  

    Security is the hallmark of a state. It is all a throw-back to the Social Contract theory, under which the people surrender part of their rights to a sovereign in exchange for security.

    But under President Goodluck Jonathan, Nigerians experienced a reverse: the Nigerian state literally cowered before blatant insecurity; and there was no Leviathan to the rescue. Under massive and relentless threat from Boko Haram terror and sundry violent crimes, Nigeria, since independence in 1960, came closest to state failure.

    Worse: the outgoing government’s feeble response was to negotiate down its monopoly of coercion. Examples abound in the oil pipeline protection contracts it signed with firms floated by former Niger Delta militants and the Oodu’a People’s Congress (OPC) cadres. Even the brave Civilian Joint Task Force (Civilian JTF) in the North, which though is playing an admirable role in current efforts to curtail Boko Haram, if not well managed, could be a source of serious future security crises.

    When the government, as the Jonathan Presidency has done, starts ceding part of its coercive powers to groups of citizens, the alarms should start clanging. That is why all that must stop under the Muhammadu Buhari government. What is called for is a new, more efficient and more effective security architecture.

    But the Buhari Presidency cannot do that unless and until it appreciates the roots of the crisis. Over the years, there has, trust-wise, developed a gulf between the central primal security agencies like the Police; so much so that local communities tend to view the Police with suspicion, if not outright hatred. Also, grinding poverty of the majority had steadily alienated the Nigerian state from a big chunk of its own citizens, so much so that state security organs were only the hated faces of the hated state.

    That singular factor drove militancy in the Niger Delta. It also aided the initial growth of Boko Haram, when budding terrorists on motor-bikes attacked police personnel and torched police facilities.

    So, if Nigeria’s centralised primal security agencies appear too far to be trusted by Nigerian local people and communities, the first thing to do is to federalise those forces and agencies. What that means is that the Buhari Presidency must urgently work towards amending laws to legalise state police.

    But since that would require constitutional amendments that could take some time, the incoming government could adopt a deliberate policy of community recruitment of intelligence personnel, both for the police and even the military, and, as much as possible, make those recruits work within their communities.

    That would score two goals: avert crimes before they are committed; and eventually bolster mutual trust between communities nationwide and the security forces. Gradually, therefore, total state authority would be restored, without even appearing authoritarian.

    Beyond federalisation, however, the incoming government must ensure the Police Force is adequately funded; and its budget weaned of the cankerworm of corruption, now widespread. It might also want to consider public-private collaboration, as Lagos State, under Babatunde Fashola, SAN, had gloriously pioneered.

    Federalisation, however, can only apply to the civil security agencies like the Police, Department of State Security (DSS), the National Security and Civil Defence Corps.

    For the military, the Buhari Presidency should opt for a clear revamping. From their clear feebleness against the Boko Haram onslaught, the Jonathan years have left the Army, Navy and Air Force in a shambles, jaded and disoriented.

    So, the new government should re-arm the military, fix the morale of its personnel and make recruitment more transparent. More so, it should further professionalise the military. Since the weeding out of “political soldiers” at the advent of the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidency, it would appear Jonathan’s crass politicisation of state institutions has brought the once great military very close perdition. That must not be tolerated.

    Since there are hardly bad soldiers but bad officers, the Buhari Presidency should take a very close look at its officers’ corps and weed out everyone found to have compromised their military essence and betrayed their service oath. That done, military budget too must be sacrosanct. That is the only way fresh investments in ordinance and even training would restore the military’s pride.

    Still, after all said and done, the greatest security of security is a good economy. A sound economy greatly reduces mass poverty; therefore removing the nursery from whence tension breeds.

  • Making the rich pay

    Making the rich pay

    •New FG regulations will charge private jet owners and priority air travellers

    In view of the prevailing financial crisis owing, first, to the mismanagement of the nation’s economy, and, second, to the slump in crude oil prices, the Federal Government has woken up to its responsibility of making wealthy  Nigerians pay taxes for the luxury they enjoy. Under the new dispensation meant to generate money, the Federal Government is expected to earn about N37.9bn annually from luxury tax to be imposed on private jet owners. This measure is also extended to air travellers in first class and business class passengers of aircraft.

    In order to increase its revenue profile, the Federal Government had, in April, 2015 announced, through its minister of finance, that all local owners of foreign and private jets in the country would pay a surcharge of N3,200 per kilogramme on the weight of each aircraft annually. From the increasing foreign travels by Nigerians, all first class and business class passengers would pay a flat rate of N15, 000 each as surcharge for overseas trip.

    This means that on the Lagos-London route, economy tickets sell currently for between N220,000 as the summer approaches; business class tickets sell for between N850,000 and N1.2m, and first class tickets sell for between N2.5m and N3.5m depending on the airline. On private jets, it is estimated that all private jet owners in the country will pay an approximate of N7.9bn on luxury tax annually, while overseas passengers travelling in first class and business cabins will pay about  N30bn as travel surcharge adding up to N37.9bn (approximately N38bn) from air travel sub sector. According to available statistics from the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority, there are over 190 local and foreign private jets in the country as of today.

    This is a good, even if belated move by the Federal Government. In many countries, wealthy people pay, sometimes through their nose, for the luxury they enjoy. With the country’s economy in dire straits, and about $60bn debt left for the incoming Muhammadu Buhari administration, the government surely needs a lot of money now. In this regard, we expect the Federal Government to be more creative in getting money from wealthy Nigerians who hardly pay correct taxes on their investment on landed properties, especially luxury buildings that dot our major cities. We should not forget individuals who own yachts, speedboats, polo grounds, golf fields and similar luxury items. They too should pay something into government’s coffers.

    Be all these as they may, we warn that no amount of taxes generated from oil and tax on all luxury items will solve our financial problem unless the Federal Government has the political will to block all the leakages that lend themselves to corruption. We all know that the country has made a lot of money from excess crude oil earnings over the years, yet the country is broke as a result of corruption.

    The bottom line, therefore, is for the Federal Government to tame corruption in all areas of our economy, bring more people who presently evade tax into the tax net because tax is an important revenue generation platform. Above all, the government must be ready to pay more than lip service to diversification of sources of revenue generation, apart from crude oil.

     

  • Nigerians need real change

    SIR: The PDP government has failed Nigeria in the past decade and half. Nigerians do not need tinkering on the margins. We need real change in orientation from decadence to real growth with equity, employment and inclusion.

    Interconnections must be established among economic, social and environmental dimensions of development. Nigeria needs to invest in agriculture and agro-processing enterprises. Rampant corruption, sectarianism, cronyism and gross mismanagement of public funds must face a frontal attack, not arresting one individual for public consumption but all who have stolen the nation’s wealth must face the full wrath of the law. Dismissing or suspending a few police officers does not mean restoration of human rights and fundamental freedoms, there must be total reform in the Nigerian Police. We voted for change and change we must see after May 29.

    PDP government has failed. Controlling inflation, important as it is, is not enough. Measuring progress in economic growth and per capita income terms is necessary but not sufficient condition for improving living standards of all. Launching a new vision without providing a roadmap about its implementation, monitoring and evaluation isn’t helpful. For that reason 2020 vision died on the very day it was launched in part because the then president hadn’t seen the final version, it was a rushed plan. The drafters of the vision never provided the methodology and indeed it was planned to fail.

    Overemphasis on export in agricultural produce including foodstuffs has damaged the environment through de-vegetation and chemical pollution, overfishing and deforestation and reduction of food supplies in the domestic market contributing to severe under-nutrition. Poorly fed women produce underweight children with permanent physical and mental disabilities, children develop smaller brain size than normal and constrain their ability to learn and underfed adults don’t have the energy to perform optimally.

    Exchange rate adjustment in favor of exports has made the price of imports very expensive for consumers and investors. Keeping inflation so low has reduced money in circulation and drove interest rates so high that few investors are able to borrow and invest. Consequently economic growth has declined considerably following exhaustion of excess capacity. Nigeria’s economy needs to grow at an average rate of 10 percent to meet the Millennium Development Goals by 2020.

    Nigeria is well endowed in human, natural and financial resources. The problem is poor leadership. What General Muhammadu Buhari needs is a government of all stakeholders to sort out the mess that has accumulated since 1999. Those who have helped cripple the economy of the nation must not be allowed to serve again, no matter the party they belong. Nigerians can’t afford another failed four years under Buhari.

    Gen. Buhari must avoid the mistake of rushing to choose his cabinet ministers without knowing who they are. We should not have criminals in government again. Nigerians are hopeful that our children unborn will see why we voted out the PDP government and be grateful for the future opportunity that will be provided to them by the Buhari regime.

     

    • Comrade Ahmed Omeiza Lukman,

    Kiev Ukraine.

  • Power and infrastructure: a roadmap

    The greatest paradox of the administration of out-going President Goodluck Jonathan is that it seems to have been flying without wings these past five years. Though there is a much-vaunted Transformation Agenda, it turned out to be merely an empty slogan with neither substance nor intent by Jonathan and his team to effect change. The result is that the rot in the system only deepened in Jonathan’s time as signposted by the state of power and infrastructure in Nigeria today.

    With less than one week to the end of the Jonathan era, the nation seems to be about to unravel. Electricity generation has fallen to an all-time low and the nation has been assailed by near blackout for a few weeks now, with its attendant deleterious effects on other sectors of the economy. Key physical infrastructure like road and rail systems have remained largely dilapidated and unsustainable for driving a modern economy.

    The Muhammadu Buhari administration must therefore critically revisit the power and infrastructure templates with a view to totally revamping them and retooling them along the path of a twenty-first century economy. Nigeria’s power situation which indeed has become a conundrum seems to have stumped all the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) administrations for the past 16 years. The chief reason is that it has been mired in corruption and the more the billions of dollars being thrown at it, the more hopeless the situation is.

    With an estimated $25 billion supposedly spent since the administration of President Olusegun Obasanjo to date, power output at this moment sub 2,000 megawatts even though the potential capacity is said to be about 10,000megawatts. But consider the folly of building gas-fired generating plants – about 10 of them over the last 10 years – without the composite gas facilities to power them. Today, most of the new plants cannot be switched on and rolled into the national grid because the gas component was not factored into the plan ab initio.

    Several of the supporting power facilities like sub-stations, initiated over the last 10 years in far-flung areas of the country were largely abandoned after huge contract sums had been paid and in some cases, twice over.

    Though most of the generating and distribution arms of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) were unbundled and privatised over a year ago, the impact has been insignificant. The divestment process was froth with fraud as cronies and party men that had no financial and technical capacities to run power firms were favoured.

    But 18 months down the line, neither generation nor distribution has improved. Such basic matter as installing of metres to forestall arbitrary billings has not been carried out by the distribution companies (Discos). Instead, they have seemingly been content with creaming of the old, decadent order while corralling the government to approve scarce public resources for them as long-term loans. They have also enjoyed tariff hikes even when hardly any value has been added.

    The transmission arm of the sector which has remained under the control of the Federal Government has been blighted by inertia as the new management firm, the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), is embroiled in management tussle since it was set up. Not much improvement has been made on the old facilities and hardly any new one added. The result is that TCN has no capacity to take up to 5,000 megawatts of power if such quantity is generated anytime soon.

    Like power, road and rail infrastructure remain very weak and undeveloped. The major road arteries like the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, the Lagos-Benin Expressway, the Enugu-Aba Expressway and the East-West road spanning from Benin to Port-Harcourt need to be upgraded and built to modern day standards. Same for some of the major highways in the north like Kano to Maiduguri and Abuja to Kaduna.

    Time is now too to set machinery in motion for modern rail lines in Nigeria. This is a vast country and the roads would always face rapid dilapidation if they are not supported by vast rail network. Massive and quality development will always elude this country if government does not see modern rail system as sine qua non to her modernity.

    It is the same with air transport. The plan to make Nigeria the hub of air transport in Africa must be pursued by the continued development of her existing airports – both passenger and cargo facilities. For maritime transport too, the lock-down witnessed in Nigeria’s prime ports in Lagos in the last one month makes the argument for immediate revamp valid. The rail line in Nigeria’s number one port at Apapa needs to be revamped and modernised urgently so that trucks would never have to impede activities there any longer.

    The Buhari administration must understand that power and transport infrastructure are the twin engines on which a modern state is run. Therefore, it must adopt a bold new approach – it needs international long-term financial grants but more important, minders who are brimming with integrity, professionalism and patriotism.

  • Statistical scandal

    Statistical scandal

    NBS chief’s claim that only 4.6m Nigerians are unemployed is far from the truth

    Last week, the nation’s chief statistician and chief executive officer of Nigeria Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Dr Yemi Kale, threw at the millions of unemployed Nigerians, what many would call a statistical fraud. According to the bureau chief, only 4.6 million Nigerians are unemployed. That number amounts to 6.4 percent of the labour force, which his bureau gave as 72, 931, 608. He also claimed that using a 40-hour benchmark, fully employed Nigerians stand at 55, 206, 940 while those unemployed using 20-39 hours, stand at 13, 052, 219; but using 1-19 hours benchmark, the number is 3,145, 383. Finally, he gave the category of Nigerians who are doing nothing, as mere 1,527,067.

    Understandably, Dr. Kale is coming from the same barn that overnight rebased the Nigerian economy, and catapulted it to the biggest economy in Africa. For us and many other Nigerians, the numbers do not add. Not when unemployment has been rightly described as a time-bomb that could derail the peace and security of Nigeria. Even without resort to cooked figures, the number of unemployed youths in a megacity like Lagos, where most young Nigerians across the country migrate to, in search of jobs, is more than the number thrown up by the bureau.

    Interestingly, at the 2015 World Economic Summit in Davos, youth unemployment was a big issue. According to one of the panellists, youth unemployment in Nigeria is about 50 percent. Strangely, according to NBS in 2014, referring to the National Population Commission estimates, the Nigerian population estimate was 167 million in 2012, of which half are young people, aged between 15 and 34. So what has changed dramatically between 2012 and 2015, if not the cooking of figures? In his contribution on youth unemployment at the Davos summit, Aliko Dangote was quoted to having said, “Our entire society is in danger of destruction”, unless urgent attention is paid to this dangerous trend.

    Part of the challenge of un-employment is that technology is trumping employment opportunities across the world, so we appreciate that the problem is not a Nigerian problem alone. But the Nigerian situation is aggravated by corrupt governments, which breed inefficiency in the provision of necessary infrastructure, to drive the economy. Therefore, those employed to provide the statistical data to aide our governments in planning must be ready to provide the grim figures. It would not help the system for our statisticians and bureaucrats to be fixated on cooking up favourable data that will not change the stubborn reality on ground

    If NBS wants a realistic data, it should conduct one across the mega cities, particularly during the working hours, as Nigerians reject that cooked-up statistics, and urge the in-coming administration to disregard it. The glaring scenario of grave unemployment bears out in big metropolis like Lagos, Kano, Aba, Kaduna, Port Harcourt, Onitsha, Ibadan and many others. Across all these cities, the share waste of human capital is alarming, as youths roam about, playing games, when they should be at work.

    Probably what the eye can see, statistics cannot capture.

  • NGF: the futility of impunity

    NGF: the futility of impunity

    The governors should never allow wrong impulses to destroy a worthy organisation

    The several months of rigmarole that stagnated the affairs of Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) have given way to reason as the People’s Democratic Party’s (PDP) governors behind the pointless altercation have finally embraced peace. At its meeting attended by the sullen PDP governors, the forum, across political divide, belatedly adopted Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State as its authentic chairman, duly elected from its May 24, 2013 election. An unnamed governor reportedly moved the motion that the forum should agree that Amaechi won the 2013 election and this was unanimously adopted.

    At the election held in May 2013, 35 governors, with one absentee, voted to elect the first among equals. Amaechi scored 19 votes to defeat Governor Jonah Jang of Plateau State who scored 16. But, in a condescending move in mockery of democratic values, the 16 PDP governors rejected the election result and subsequently formed a parallel PDP Governors Forum (PDPGF), with Jang becoming factional chairman. If indeed politics is a game of numbers, we reasonably concluded then in our editorial that arithmetically, 19 is more than 16 and that the PDP-16 were wrong in their dishonourable rejection of that free and fair NGF election.

     Our position that justice shall prevail in the NGF wrangling, no matter how long, came to pass with the mixed attendance across party divides, of the warring factions. The small but impressive attendance at the meeting validated the decision for Amaechi’s adoption. Amaechi attended the meeting alongside Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State; Rauf Aregbesola (Osun) and Abdul-Aziz Yari of Zamfara State. Other members of his group in attendance were: Kashim Shettima (Borno); Abiola Ajumobi (Oyo); Umar Ganduje, current deputy governor and now governor-elect of Kano State, and the deputy governor of Nasarawa State who represented Governor Umaru Al-Makura.

    The Jang group in attendance included Godswill Akpabio of Akwa Ibom State and also chairman of the now defunct PDPGF. Others were Isa Yuguda (Bauchi); Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan (Delta); Babangida Aliyu (Niger); Ramalan Yero (Kaduna); Usman Dakingari (Kebbi); Gabriel Suswam (Benue) and the deputy governor of Kogi State who represented his governor.

    It is gratifying that the NGF crisis is now finally over, even if in the twilight of this administration. However, such disgraceful conduct put up by the PDP governors, obviously with the mammoth support of President Goodluck Jonathan, really soiled the reputation of the factional PDPGF since they were perceived as democrats and believed to be democratically elected. It is good that new sense of reason has definitely put their contempt for representative values in context at the appropriate time.

    Despite subsequent media denials by Jang of his not adopting Amaechi at the recent meeting, which we considered to be an after-thought because he reportedly sent in an apology for his inability to attend the meeting, the truth remains that the Jang group at the meeting led by Akpabio actually did the needful, even though belatedly, meaning that they realised that what they did then was done out of malice and self-centredness, and not motivated by any principle.

    The NGF crisis marked, a long time ago, the beginning of the end of the PDP government at the centre and in most of the states lost by the party in the just-concluded general elections. The outgoing ruling party also lost it a long while ago in the court of public opinion, with its members’ random impunity and haughty disposition in power.

    If not for the warped federal structure that makes the component states in the country to rely on the central government for survival, the kind of unwarranted impunity in the NGF, a legitimate pressure group peopled by governors, would not have occurred. This is because President Jonathan recklessly deployed federal might to subvert NGF’s internal democracy and by extension, its general affairs. Now that the matter seems to have been resolved, we can only hope that such disruptive tendencies will not recur in the coming dispensation because it is not worthy of emulation. It is an object for the incoming regime if it truly intends to take the nation to the next level.

    We are happy that mathematics in Nigerian politics, through this warring NGF PDP members’ recant, has now regained its integrity. Jang should stop his delusion of grandeur that made him erroneously embark on spiritual hallucination when he went to church to do thanksgiving over an election that he lost but would not publicly admit. His group members’ capitulating presence at the meeting and their adoption of Amaechi as winner of that election shows the futility of impunity. What a lesson!