Category: Editorial

• CBN has to be up and doing to prevent any bank from going under

THE sour experience regarding collapse of banks in the nation’s history demands vigilance at any time issues concerning the welfare of the banking sector come up. Indeed, this was what aroused our curiosity when Allan Gray Group, Africa’s largest privately-owned investment management company, in its recent report titled ‘Gray Issue: The sentiment pendulum’, arrived at an eerie conclusion concerning our banks. The group stated that Nigerian banks lenders’ performance as at the end of March 2015 had ebbed. The unsavoury consequence, as predicted, is that by year 2016, most serious investors would have lost interest in the viability of the banks. The panacea: the affected banks need recapitalisation; to avoid going under.

The outfit, in its precise words stated that this development creates a situation where “sentiment towards Nigerian banks has gone from positive to outright fear. The fear is not without reason given the falling oil price, likely spike in bad debts, political uncertainty and Boko Haram insurgency. It is indeed likely that there will be a lot of distress in the next year, but it is important to remember that what a company earns in a particular year generally has little bearing on the intrinsic value of the business; what counts is the level of normal earning through the cycle and the ability to grow those earnings. Financial companies are a little different in this regard as they may go bankrupt before achieving normal earnings. A few Nigerian banks may go bust or raise capital, but luckily the share prices are discounting this probability.”

The above indeed calls for concern in view of its dire consequences on the economy, and more importantly, bank customers. The latter had suffered immeasurable hardships in the past when banks failed, which means that a recurrence is better forestalled. We cannot pretend not to be aware that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has taken some regulatory measures in this regard. We must quickly add though that the apex bank has been found wanting in the effective discharge of its supervisory duty over the commercial banks, over time.

We also know that some of the banking regulatory measures put in place to stabilise the economy, that have provided succour to customers, including reductions in commission on turnover and fee element, in addition to strict foreign exchange control measures, could make it difficult for the banks to make higher profit. Notwithstanding, the banks can still do better if they are more disciplined in granting loans and  arresting the trend of non-performing loans, the interest on which could have fetched them good income, amongst other measures. In our view, it is by doing this satisfactorily that their cost structure can be brought down considerably.

So, the CBN should quickly do the needful by devising ways that would put banks that are in dire mess of non-performing loans (NPLs) on their toes. Where necessary, severe sanctions should be meted out on negligent or erring banks with absurdly high NPLs. The routine but detrimentally systemic practice of re-financing of debts should be discouraged or stopped forthwith. This bad trend of robbing Peter to pay Paul is not healthy for the sector. Bank debtors that enjoy making debts burdensome rather than deploying such to create wealth should be made to face the full weight of the law.

It should not be lost on us that the last bailout of distressed banks by the CBN cost the nation N620billion. We cannot afford such costly spending because of an avoidable banking problem, especially at this period when infrastructural development should be accorded priority.

•Whoever did must be caught and sanctioned

That yet-to-be-known gunmen bombed the premises of Tao FM, Okene, Kogi State, leaving a casualty figure of no less than four dead, is atrocious. It is wanton waste of human life and material asset.

Those involved, either as direct perpetrators or masterminds, should be caught, tried and punished, according to the laws of the land.

In a land that suffers high unemployment, it is doubly sad that some felons, for whatever reasons, would destroy others’ means of livelihood: the station owners’ investments; and the employees’ opportunity to earn a living.

Besides, bombing a facility, when it is not a war situation, is cold, premeditated terrorism. That must be visited with the harshest punishment possible under the law. The pathos, of craving for peace, security and serenity, could be gauged from lamentation of a local who relocated from Borno State, no thanks to Boko Haram terrorism, only to witness the Tao FM bombing. “Here I am in my own town where I thought I would find peace,” he told The Guardian, “the same fear of the heavy sound of bombs is tormenting me again.”!

But even as the attack is condemnable, the reported tardy response of the police is no less so. A news report claimed that as the invading gunmen arrived the premises, the station’s head of news reportedly rushed to alert the police, at the neighbouring Kuroko Police Station. However, the policemen on duty allegedly spurned the complaint, reportedly telling the complainant to route his distress to the Kogi State Commissioner of Police, some 65 kilometres away in Lokoja!

Now, what was this — intra-police dissonance? Sabotage of constituted authority, causing avoidable fatality and grief? Police-invaders’ conspiracy? Or plain culpable negligence?

Whichever it is, the Kogi police authorities must investigate the police officers on duty when that complaint was lodged and, if found culpable, deal with them accordingly. It is travesty of unimaginable proportions for a policeman to turn his back on the call of distressed citizens — the sole reason the police are in business — which resulted in deaths that could, maybe with prompt intervention, have been averted.

But why was Tao FM bombed? From news reports, the station had not been deficit in its professional responsibilities, as the National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC), Nigeria’s broadcast regulators, a week after the 2015 elections, wrote it a letter of commendation, for its fair coverage of the polls. This is a feat most government media, federal and state, could not achieve. Neither could some more popular but tragically misguided private broadcast houses.

But even if Tao FM had been deficit in professionalism, the punishment is certainly not a recourse to self-help. This is because one criminality does not just cancel out another. It rather builds the stock of criminality, endangering the law-abiding majority. If not confronted and defeated, it portends nothing but looming anarchy. In anarchy, everyone — perpetrator and victim — loses.

But beyond self-help and due process, attacking a media house, with the motive of knocking off its operation, is a cavalier attack on the Constitution. The Constitution has guaranteed media practice, just as some agencies of state are set up to regulate the media. This is the civil way to bring any erring media house to book.

So, while media houses themselves must keep strictly to their professional oath and code of practice, nobody, no matter the level of provocation, has the right to bomb a media house, the way Tao FM was. However, in these times of escalating insecurity, media houses too should become more security conscious. But the first step to security is being fair to all.

It is a pity Tao FM, reported to be a good corporate citizen that has impacted well on its community, had to be bombed. We empathise with the host community, now temporarily denied of the station’s laudable efforts. But it is not the end of the world. The community, backed by the Kogi State government, should do everything to resuscitate the station and restore its glory.

That is the surest and sweetest way to defeat criminality and terrorism.

•The call on inmates of Kirikiri Maximum Prisons to pay for transportation to courts is obnoxious and should be reversed immediately

Reports that inmates of the Kirikiri Maximum Security Prison awaiting trial in courts in Lagos are being made to pay the cost of transporting them whenever their cases come up for mention shows how callous the system has become. The inmates, already deprived of their freedom sometimes for years, are not only dehumanised and traumatised, but treated as if they were already convicts. Authorities of the prisons see the inmates as criminals and fail to admit the legal maxim that any accused remains a mere suspect until proven guilty by a court of law, and should be accorded the respect due every citizen.

Wide-ranging prison reforms are due if the unlucky ones remanded there are to be seen as mere suspects and even those convicted treated as people being made to undergo rehabilitation. As it is today, by the policy of inflicting more punishment on those being tried, justice is being denied them. They are cut off from their means of livelihood and yet made to make payments. Where are they expected to raise the money in an unfriendly economy? Many of the inmates have been abandoned by friends, associates and families. The trauma is enough to make them lose their minds; and then this iniquitous policy.

The inhuman treatment being meted to these inmates is responsible for the growing incidence of jailbreak. In 2014 alone, prisoners and prison inmates broke loose in Lokoja, Ado-Ekiti and Kirikiri, Lagos, among others. The reasons could not be far from the poor welfare and sanitation systems in the prisons. In Lagos, the awaiting trial cells are always bursting at the seams, yet the Federal Government saddled with the responsibility of maintaining the prisons and caring for inmates has been doing nothing. In some cases, female prisoners are known to have been impregnated while in custody and infants are in other cases found with their mothers in the very unfriendly prison environment.

We find it unacceptable that innocent persons sent to prison pending when the overcrowded courts would be able to accommodate them are being turned to hardened criminals by the same state expected to administer justice. We, therefore, call on the in-coming Buhari administration to accord a special place to a reform of the entire justice system. It is a system that remands people in prison custody sometimes for more than five years before taking them to court. Some die in the process and the prerogative of mercy exercised by governors and chief judges have proved grossly inadequate in ensuring that justice is dispensed, the guilty duly punished and the innocent freed.

It is a hallowed maxim that ‘justice delayed is justice denied’. The new policy can only prolong the time cases spend before overworked judges. And, rather than resolve such delayed cases in favour of the accused in accordance with the philosophy that the innocent must be protected at all times, they are presumed guilty until proven innocent, and the burden is stacked against them by legal procedures and technicalities.

We suggest that the state be made to pay good compensation to accused wrongly remanded in prison as a way of reducing the abuse being suffered by citizens.

SIR: If the comments credited to Solomon Arase, the newly appointed acting Inspector General of Police, (IGP) is worth its weight in gold, Nigerians can begin to sing Hosanna. However, there is the need to reappraise previous promises or grandstanding of former police henchmen who shouted “Police Reform” and deafened themselves unto the bargain thereafter.

The Acting Inspector General of Police, Solomon Arase, has been quoted as saying that police road blocks breed corruption. He warned that any police personnel caught mounting road blocks anywhere in the country would be made to face the law.

Arase went further to say that Commissioners of Police, Area Commanders and Divisional Police Officers in whose jurisdiction illegal road blocks are detected will be personally held liable and strict disciplinary actions will be initiated against them.

The Nigeria Police Force, over time has earned incredible appellation as the most untrained, dirtiest, underfunded, brutal and reprehensible force across the globe. They have, at the snap of the fingers dispatched lawful citizens into early grave without provocation.

If policing in Nigeria is what those who preside over its management is what they said it is, then we will, as a people have reasons to applaud the force for living up to expectation. Because we are aware of what they are and do exactly opposite of what they claim they are, they can’t escape the people’s outright rejection or denunciation.

From Louis Edet as IGP, 1964–1966, Kam Salem 1966–1975, Muhammadu Dikko Yusufu 1975–1979, Adamu Suleiman 1979 –1981, Sunday Adewusi 1981–1983, Etim Inyang 1985–1986, Muhammadu Gambo-Jimeta 1986–1990, Aliyu Atta 1990–1993, Ibrahim Coomassie 1993–1999, Musiliu Smith 1999–2002, Mustafa Adebayo Balogun 2002–2005, Sunday Ehindero 2005–2007, Mike Mbama Okiro 2007–2009, Ogbonna Okechukwu Onovo 2009-2010, Hafiz Ringim 2010 – Jan 2012, Mohammed D Abubakar 2012 -2014, Suleiman Abba 2014 – 2015, till now, the Nigerian Police have remained a brutal force and still visiting gruesome terror on the people.

Today, the Nigeria Police still parade streets and highway with guns without uniform like armed robbers! No wonder these officers easily find their way to highways and mount road blocks against the instructions as a survival strategy since salaries are in arrears of several months.

Imagine Police officers who supervised the 2015 general elections being required to pay N2,000 for a worthless tag they used in supervising elections? Is it not the duty of Police to print and pay for election tags? If this is not corruption I wonder what else it is.

Mr Arase needs to also seek a way of resolving the Nigeria Police Pension Fund in the larger interests of the force. For now, we can only but wish him a successful tenure.

• Erasmus Ikhide,

Lagos

• We need a special rehabilitation for the mothers and the expected offspring to avoid new seeds of terror

Lamentably, there seems to be no end to the crises spawned by the Boko Haram insurgency. The latest was captured in a statement issued on behalf of Borno State Governor Kashim Shettima concerning 687 children, girls and women recently rescued by the military from the clutches of Islamist terrorists in Sambisa Forest. Shettma said: “I do not have any official information yet regarding these issues, but I have read from some online media houses that many girls were rescued with visible pregnancy and some with newly born babies.”

According to Shettima, “Boko Haram insurgents deliberately raped women with the intention of getting them pregnant so they would give birth to future insurgents as successors of their violent struggles, hence the need for a special programme to break the chain anticipated by the insurgents.”

Beyond such genetic speculation by the insurrectionists, there are real reasons for concern over the sex crime. Shettima’s insight is worthy of note. He said: “I am seriously worried at the fact that most women tend to hate and abandon children they deliver from rape. Now, the problem is that these children could go to the streets unattended to; they then lack access to food, healthcare and education. The result is that they could indeed inherit their fathers’ traits somehow.”

It is relevant to observe that too many vulnerable children are already victims of the  insurgency that was ranked as the fourth deadliest conflict in the world in 2014 and said to be responsible for an estimated 11, 529 deaths. The human suffering resulting from the destructive imagination and vision of the terrorists includes “dramatic rates of acute malnutrition” among the displaced children and a recent survey around Maiduguri, the Borno State capital, showed that over 35 percent of them were malnourished.

Against this background, it is instructive to note the unveiling of the European Union N325 million planned support for about 45,000 children and adolescents displaced by the activities of the terror champions in Borno State.  ”The project is expected to contribute to mitigating the negative psychosocial implications of the humanitarian crisis that currently plagues Borno State, which has largely disrupted education and health services, including immunisation activities,” the Minister for National Planning, Dr. Abubakar Sulaiman, said at a ceremony to formalise the financing agreement concerning the 11th European Development Fund support. The project is expected to be implemented in 300 communities across 11 local government areas in the state for a period of 36 months.

The addition of products of rape to this mix will likely complicate the chain of crises. It is worth stressing that these are innocent victims of circumstances and deserve to be treated as such. This approach is not just correct on moral grounds; it is the path to follow based on enlightened self-interest. Supporting the sexually abused mothers and the contextual offspring must be seen as crucial to the social well-being; and the work of rehabilitation must involve all the tiers of governance.

There is no doubt that managing this issue will require multi-disciplinary expertise, involving medical,  psychosocial and child welfare specialists, apart from decisive political will and governance skills. As Shettima accurately highlighted, the resolution of the crisis would involve “documenting these kids without getting them stigmatised, monitoring and working towards raising these kids to become educated future leaders without the slightest ideologies of their fathers in order for us to cut the cycle being envisaged.”

The Boko Haram insurgency that has terrorised the country since 2009, particularly the Northeast states of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe, continues to reflect a darkness of spirit that needs illumination. How the society tackles the negatives arising from the group’s terroristic activities is a critical element of the anti-terror war.

•Nigeria continues to grapple with modern-day slavery

As ever-increasing numbers of Nigerians leave the country to illegally migrate to other nations, the country must begin to seriously investigate the rise in the horrifying phenomenon of sex slavery that has now become rampant.

A particularly disturbing manifestation of the trend can be seen in the story of Precious Ugochi Okoro, a 15-year-old secondary school student who was trafficked to Libya to engage in coerced prostitution. She claims that she was kidnapped by a cousin of her mother and handed over to traffickers who took her to Libya. She was then forced to work as a prostitute and eventually sold to a woman who helped her to secure her freedom.

Her distraught family did not know of her disappearance until her school contacted them three weeks after she was supposed to have resumed. The traffickers even had the temerity to demand ransom from the family for a victim who had already been taken out of the country. Fortunately for Miss Okoro, the Lagos State Command of the Nigeria Police was able to track down the kidnappers and effect her repatriation from Libya.

This sorry tale has all the elements that have combined to make sex trafficking the social cancer that it has become: persistent economic depression, youth unemployment, parental indifference, crass materialism and criminal impunity.

Nigeria’s economic difficulties have been most apparent in the high proportion of youth unemployment that has left millions of young citizens jobless, destitute and desperate. Given the apparent hopelessness that seems to surround them at home, the ostensible attractions of other nations take on added significance. Thus, Nigerian youths continue to risk their lives to reach other countries, in spite of the well-documented tragedies that assail illegal migrants.

The main culprit in the sex-slave saga is Miss Okoro’s cousin who agreed to sell her to the traffickers for just N10,000. No matter how difficult his economic circumstances may have been, it is incredible that he could be so heartless as to betray a close relation for such a relatively small amount of money. When such greed is combined with the ubiquity of criminal gangs specialising in sex trafficking, it can be understood how a young girl can disappear from her own country so easily.

Not least is the seeming lack of parental concern which characterised the response of Miss Okoro’s parents to her disappearance. It is very strange that they permitted a 15-year-old girl to embark on an interstate journey alone, did not bother to check to see if she had arrived at her school safely, only becoming aware of their daughter’s plight when the school contacted them three weeks later. Such lax monitoring only facilitates the nefarious activities of sex-traffickers by providing them with an extended window of opportunity.

Nigeria must begin to properly address the sex-trafficking epidemic that is confronting it. All strategies to this end must aim at making it less easy for citizens to be abducted and transported across state and national borders. The long-delayed national identification system must be made functional without delay. Security procedures should be overhauled to accommodate particularly vulnerable groups like school children, migrant workers and the homeless. Known smuggling routes must be properly policed, and corruption and incompetence within the immigration service should be harshly dealt with.

The country must also embark on a comprehensive effort to repatriate its citizens who are living illegally in other countries. Instead of simply waiting for host countries to expel Nigerians, the Federal Government must work with them to ensure that they are sent home with as little fuss as possible. The greatest anti-trafficking strategy, however, remains the creation of an economically-vibrant nation whose benefits are freely available to all of its citizens.