Category: Editorial

•From Christian Chukwu, a clarion call

The call to save National Stadium, Lagos, could not have come at a better time, from a better person

To Christian Chukwu, Enugu Rangers great and former captain of the Nigerian national football team, National Stadium, Lagos, was a throw-back to glory days for club and country.

When Rangers, in 1975, reached the final of the African Cup of Champion Clubs (now known as African Champions League), National Stadium was the theatre of that dream match-up. Though Rangers lost that final second-leg match to Hafia of Guinea, the club of the magical Kamaras, it was a historical milestone.

For Chukwu, who the late ace commentator, Ernest Okoronkwo, would dub “Chairman”, just as he dubbed Nigeria team mates Segun Odegbami “Mathematical” and Adokiye Amiesimeka, “Chief Justice”, better memories would come with the Green Eagles’ African Nations Cup triumph in Lagos in 1980.

After close shaves at the title, starting with the Dire Darwa campaign in Ethiopia (1976) and Ghana (1978), which both fetched the rising African football power a third place finish, 1980 was when Nigeria emerged African Nations Cup champions for the first time.  Again, that theatre of glory was National Stadium, Surulere, Lagos.

On that edifice, the first comprehensive sports facility by Nigeria’s central government, opened to host the 2nd All Africa Games in 1973, many a sports commentator and analyst had waxed lyrical.  The late Esbee, the incomparable Babatunde Osuntolu, of the defunct Daily Times, had dubbed the stadium, Sports City, the Mecca of sports to all.

And true, aside from football classics to which fans jumped down buses from the Alaka end of Surulere; and sprinted to the facility to gain the stands before hostilities began, National Stadium, Surulere, boasts so many pleasant memories: ping-pong, in which the likes “Queen Mother”, Ethel Jacks, Olawunmi Majekodunmi, a former African female champion, Kasali Lasisi, Sunday Eboh and Atanda Musa, all former male African champions, honed their skills.

Its swimming pool, now long abandoned, hosted the likes of champion swimmer John Ebito; its tennis courts, since abandoned too, also played host to the likes of Lawrence Onabokun, “King” David Imonitie and Nduka Odizor, who later made a glorious appearance at Wimbledon.  They all tussled there, for the Nigerian Tennis Open. Its sport hall also hosted boxing, professional and amateur, such as iconic bouts featuring the likes of Hogan Jimoh, Kazeem Armah, Obisia Nwakpa, Dele Jonathan, Joe Lasisi, Davidson Andeh and Jerry Okorodudu, to mention just a few.

It is this edifice of history and glory that has fallen into bad times, triggering Chukwu’s clarion call.

What ails Sports City?  Whatever it is, it is no different from the general Nigerian malaise, a federation run like a unitary state, that wastes rather than create. Because governments in Nigeria are so wasteful, and the Federal Government especially distracted since its responsibilities are as wide as its attention span is sparse, public facility management takes the vicious knock.

That is the main problem with National Stadium, Lagos — and even its newer and younger Abuja cousin. Because there is hardly any rigorous template to run these facilities, most of them fall into disuse, thus wasting the billions of public money spent to build them.

That is why an urgent call for a radically different paradigm is called for. Stadia could be public facilities. But it is only when they are run like public investments that they can enjoy sustainable maintenance and even expansion. Perhaps the best way to ensure this is to ensure whoever manage those facilities are paid from their earnings, and not from some grant that probably never comes. That is the sad story of Sports City.

That is why the Federal Government must borrow a leaf from the host Lagos government, which has somewhat evolved a successful template in private-public-participation (PPP) management, under which a good number of its facilities are firmed out to skilled private-sector experts, under mutually beneficial terms.

If National Stadium Lagos must reclaim its old glory, such facility management arrangement is imperative.

•We have to devise a way out of this moral and unpatriotic mess

It appears only death could do the pipeline vandals in the country part with their illicit trade. Otherwise, all would have been quiet on the Arepo front, given the number of casualties that had gone with illegal scooping of fuel which has become a pastime of the daredevil criminals for years. Just last Sunday, the vandals were at it again. A video recording shows the suspected vandals scooping petrol which was gushing out of a ruptured pipe at Akimbo Village in Atlas Cove, and Arepo, Ogun State.

Arepo, a sleepy community in Obafemi-Owode Local Government Area of Ogun State, would hardly have been known but for the activities of pipeline vandals who ensure that the klieg lights are almost always beamed on it, with their nefarious and suicidal activities. Perhaps the community would have been as peaceful as most other communities in the area, but for the fact that it plays host to a number of oil pipelines belonging to the Nigerian National Petroleum Cooperation (NNPC) which the vandals have made a point of duty to vandalise whenever they need cash. The pipelines in Arepo are used to transport refined petroleum products from the Atlas Cove Jetty in Lagos to the Western states and Kwara State. But the vandals would hardly allow for smooth transition of the commodity.

The Group Managing Director of the NNPC, Andrew Yakubu, brought the point vividly home when he told participants at the Third Triennial Delegates Conference of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association (PENGASSAN), in Abuja that: “We had over 774 break points within three months between August and October 2012 from Atlas Cove to Ilorin depot. Between Atlas Cove and Mosimi depot, we recorded 181 break points, from Mosimi to Ibadan, we had 421 ruptured points and from Mosimi to Ore, we recorded 50 vandalised points. Also between Ibadan and Ilorin we had a total of 122 break points.’ This tells us that the vandals are economic saboteurs who do not care a hoot about how their activities affect the country’s economic wellbeing

The audacity of the vandals seems to confirm the saying that it is in the mouth of the lion that money is. In other words, whoever wants to have it must be prepared for the worst. This can only be the motivation given the number of casualties that scooping of fuel in Arepo and other places had recorded. The list is endless: there were at least two explosions in Arepo alone in 2013, with the NNPC claiming it lost about N3.6billion to the vandalism of its System 2B Pipeline there.

The worst pipeline explosion in the country occurred on October 18, 1998, in Jesse Community of Ethiope-West Local Council of Delta State. Although its cause was controversial, with the Federal Government blaming it on scavengers who intentionally ruptured the pipeline, other reports blamed the explosion on poorly maintained pipelines. What was incontrovertible was the fact that more than 1,000 people were killed as a result of it.

Apart from these and the attendant fuel scarcity caused by the vandals, the local community too is never at peace as the people live in the fear of not knowing when next the vandals would strike.

The question now is, with the Sunday incident, what becomes of the billion naira contracts awarded to local militants by the President Goodluck Jonathan administration to secure the pipelines? Continual rupturing of the pipelines in spite of the contracts is a reflection of the lack of rigorous thinking in government. The incoming administration has to take a second look at the contracts with a view to returning the responsibility to the security agencies which the government must arm and give the necessary tools to properly secure the pipelines. The current arrangement whereby we not only lose our money but also our fuel has outlived its usefulness.

• The horrendous number of kids who die in accidents should force us to rethink the transportation system

If the maxim that ‘children are leaders of tomorrow’ is correct, then the world must be losing quite a substantial number of potential leaders today, given the grim statistics that about186,000 children are killed globally in road accidents every year. The Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) Zonal Commanding Officer, FRSC 2, Ojodu, Lagos, Assistant Corps Marshal Charles Akpabio, disclosed this at an event with the theme “Children and Road Safety”, organised to mark the 2015 United Nations Global Road Safety Week. In other words, about 500 children are killed through road accidents on a daily basis. “Annually, 186,300 children die from road accidents. This translates to 500 children every day. In order to reduce this trend, the UN brought up safety factors to implement on our roads”, Akpabio said at the event.

We cannot but commend the United Nations for being thoughtful of this vulnerable segment of our population. Although the figures for Nigeria were not given, to give us an insight into how many Nigerian children are lost daily to road accidents, we have every reason to believe that it would be quite significant. In the first place, whatever is provided as the official figure must have been underestimated given our lack of capacity to fully document them. As Akpabio noted, “We have a huge children population and it is this category that is most vulnerable to road crashes. So, there is the need to make them safe at all times”.

The Nigerian government itself seemed to realise this fact; this is the least we could deduce from its joining the programme conceived by the UN General Assembly in 2011 to cut down the deaths of children by avoidable road crashes. Children have to be protected against road accidents, just as they should be against other dangers and harms that they are vulnerable to.

In this regard, the government, parents and society at large have their roles to play. Many roads in the country are death traps, with big potholes in some of them where many crashes had occurred as drivers tried to avoid the potholes. Many roads in the country lack adequate road signs and thus deny road users the opportunity of knowing what lies ahead. Moreover, there are too many people out there behind the wheels who know next-to-nothing about Highway Code. These are themselves accidents waiting to happen. Add these to the cases of parents who allow their children that are less than 18 years to drive, “out of love”. Apart from this being against the law, as the FRSC chief noted, the ‘love’ is misplaced. Those who prescribe 18 years as minimum age for driving had a reason for doing so.

Still on parents endangering their children “out of love”, some women in particular allow their under-aged children to sit in the front of their cars, which is forbidden under the law, and we have had instances where some of these children got thrown out of the cars during emergencies. In pursuit of daily livelihood, many parents also abandon their underage children to the care of others. Many of these children had got knocked down by careless drivers.

So, as the government is enhancing road infrastructure, parents must also imbibe the habit of restraining their children in vehicles. When we control speed, reduce drinking and driving, use helmets while on motorcycles as well as cultivate other good habits that make motoring safe and pleasurable, we would have significantly reduced the risks of getting children killed on the roads.

It is heartwarming that Nigeria had keyed into the UN programme to cut down the deaths of children by avoidable road accidents, but that is not enough. The government will do well to ensure that the prescriptions in the programme are faithfully implemented in the country. This is the only way to preserve the bundles of joy that children are supposed to be to that future when they are to take over the mantle of leadership.

SIR: The mood in the nation is refreshing like the air in spring.  It is budding with hope.  The success of the recent general election has ushered a glimmer of a brighter future.  The people have been wasting their life for a long stretch of time from leadership drought.  The vision of embracing the virtues of democracy is yielding the seed of liberation.  The nation is breathing happier like a farmer who after going through years of depressive productivity, unexpectedly witnesses rainfall in due season.

The sense of optimism in the country is like a quiet stream cascading the nooks and corners of a parched terrain bringing vegetation to a breed nearing extinction.  The land is nourished with the scent of the momentary blossom.  The ordinary Nigerian does not ask for much from the government.  In many pastoral villages, good folks subsist with the favourable harvest nature provided to them.  They pray for the fair weather to bring sunshine and rain so that their life will prosper.

The ability to impress upon the force of government has given the people a fresh outlook.  It has become evident that Nigerians are measurably ethnic blind as they are excitingly embracing the outcome of the 2015 presidential election.  Some may have been unwilling to be politically swayed in one direction or the other on the tribal swing, but when the wind of change blew, the momentum sounds like a chorus.  Even if it is for shifting the intractable wheel of change in government, the people have succeeded in uplifting their chances.

Nigerians know what is good.  This is not to say that this trait is peculiar to them.  Only that they have been dragged through the mud for so long, they started living like pigs in a pigsty.  To the extent that many have adopted that lifestyle and habited the existence as unchangeable, it is a misnomer.  When the sweet breeze blows in the wind, flowers shake in jubilation.  It is that river of nirvana that is bathing the people with a swelling water of fantasy.  The people are capable of change when inspired by a righteous cause.

I loiter in this sunshine of a better future.  The expression that nature endowed Nigeria with abundance of good fortune is beginning to sound like a cliché.  Take a walk in any direction, you will find in each region enough natural resources to sustain the nation.  From groundnut in the North, oil in the South, palm oil in the East, cocoa in the West to numerous other resources amongst, the nation is brimming with amazing wealth.

Nigerians must step into this well of utopia without fear of being drowned.  I believe that there is no way to go but up.  The sky is bright and the elements are lining up to position the country in a good light.  The confidence of young people to assert their civic right in the past general election promises of a new Nigeria where politics of squalor will not be allowed room to fester.

Let the people renew their spirit in the romanticism of a wonderful nation.  Nigeria could become paradise on earth if citizens welcome the rain of decency to wash away the filth of the land.  Too long it is bad, it will be good; the people spoke with a loud voice.

• Pius Okaneme,

Umuoji, Anambra State.

•How come the Fed Govt has borrowed N473bn in first quarter?

TUESDAY last week, finance minister and coordinator of the economy Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, gave an overview of the 2015 budget earlier passed into law by the National Assembly. Among other highlights, she disclosed that the outgoing administration has already borrowed N473 billion to fund parts of the 2015 budget. According to the minister, the 50 per cent cut in revenue owing to drop in oil prices, the low revenue receipts from non-oil sources and the fact that  most companies had yet to file in their tax returns in the first quarter of the year made it imperative for the Federal Government to resort to borrowing.

She would add that much as the government had tried to reduce the level of borrowing, such could not be achieved this year due to cash flow problems. She provided the summary thus: “In all, the government expects to borrow N882bn. Out of this, N380bn is expected from external sources; the rest – N502 billion would come from domestic borrowing. By way of comparison, the government borrowed N570 billion to fund the 2014 budget”.

Ordinarily, the borrowing plan would seem a pragmatic step given the sustained dip in prices and more so, in the environment of weakening demand for the nation’s crude. If we expected fresh thinking or even a paradigm shift which the current crisis in our public finance dictates, the Jonathan administration, true to its character, has merely opted to plod along the old, easy but short-term route of digging fresh pits to fill extant holes.

What options currently exist given the dire financial situation? Should we be looking for loans to pay wages and emoluments of public servants? Shouldn’t we be thinking of how to eliminate the innumerable drain pipes to save billions of public revenues routinely frittered away – funds that could go a long way to settle staff liabilities? Wouldn’t that have been a far more sensible thing to do in the circumstance? Why the rush to borrow considering that the 2015 budget itself has not been signed into law?

Borrowing – if we may put things bluntly – is not the problem. Indeed, when properly deployed, it can help alleviate both short and long-term funding gaps. However, in the hand of a spendthrift administration, it becomes a substitute to good thinking, an avenue for corrupt enrichment by unscrupulous officials, a handy quick-fix for an administration ever so eager to kick fundamental problems down the road.

Far more than the cash crunch which the nation currently grapples with is the more fundamental problem of fiscal irresponsibility across the board. It explains the Jonathan administration’s humongous appetite for loans even when oil prices kept at steady highs; it offers explanation for the current situation in which a departing administration would, under four months and in a transition year, spend more than 50 percent of the entire loan sum proposed for the entire budget cycle. In some way, it would partly explain what we saw as the rather thin boundary between the public till and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Federal Government’s war-chest during the last elections.

For an administration known to routinely harangue state governments on fiscal responsibility, going as far as blocking those among them that have sought bank credit to ameliorate the current crisis, its preachment on fiscal responsibility must now be seen for what it is – hollow.

The in-coming administration might want to review some of the existing loans to ensure that they deliver value to Nigerians. As for the challenge of bridging the revenue gaps, one of the more immediate options is to ensure that all revenue-earning agencies and parastatals pay their operating surpluses into the federation account. We have seen too many of them operate outside of the law for far too long. Aligning their operations with the demands of constitutionalism would not only be a step in the right direction, we see it as offering immense promises in terms of boosting the federation account.

SIR: I have no doubt that the President-elect, General Muhammadu Buhari will perform better than his predecessors if Nigerians give him full co-operation and support. What it takes to succeed as a leader in a multi-cultural and ethnic society like ours is honesty and commitment from the part of a leader and support and cooperation from followers.

We should understand that Buhari is eager to fix Nigeria for the betterment of all of us. We should understand that a lot of damage has been done to socio-economic life of Nigeria.

I know that expectations are very high on the president-elect to lift the country from her present status. Leadership is not an easy thing especially for those like the President-elect, who wants to be remembered as rescuer of the poor masses. Buhari has made of a lot of promises during the period of electioneering hence we expect him live up to expectations. This requires commitment on his part; on our part as followers, we need patience, co-operation and prayers.

We should bear in mind that a lot of things have gone wrong which require fixing. The issue is that there are simply no quick-fixes to a number of the problems. In other words, the results of some of the measures that would be undertaken by his government may not be felt immediately.

One of these critical expectations is for the Chibok girls to be brought back alive to reunite with their families. These unfortunate girls have been in the captivity of Boko Haram for more than a year now. As it is, we do not know if they are still alive although the outgoing government of President Goodluck Jonathan believes that the girls are still alive.

Our education sector is also in shambles and needs to be fixed. We have not talked about the high rate of poverty and unemployment. All these are critical to our country’s socio-economic being and development. We should give him time as he takes over. We can even pray for his success because those are some of things he needs to bring changes that we are clamouring for.

• Fatima Musa Badeggi

IBB University, Lapai-Niger State