The Nation Newspaper

Category: Editorial

  • Britain needs Nigeria

    SIR: France and Britain colonised most countries in the world. For instance, at the apogee of her conquest spree, Britain reportedly controlled over one fifth of the world’s population. Among the major countries that Britain colonised include USA, India, Nigeria, Malaysia and South Africa. These countries currently boost of over 1.8 billion people.  France on her own colonised, among others, Cameroon, Senegal, Togo and Burkina Faso etc.

    The colonial masters notably, Britain, France, Portugal, Italy, Germany and Spain, had in an agreement in 1884 in a meeting called by German Rod Von Bismark shared Africa among themselves in response to a conflict between Britain and France about some parts of Nigeria. These two countries wanted to control the areas that have the largest population and resources in Africa. After the agreement, the two settled their differences and continued with their conquest.

    There are insinuations that France hates Nigeria. Some claimed that France is using her colonised countries to cause havoc in Nigeria. There are claims that France was among the greatest contributors to Biafra during the civil war. Also, Israel and the Vatican were believed to have strongly supported Biafra for different motives. For France, it was to divide Nigeria as that will be advantageous to France colonised countries in Africa. The Vatican motive was because of its notion that Christians were been killed.

    With the current insurgency in the North east, there are also reports that Israel and France are supporting it. Yet, the three countries bordering Borno state are Francophone countries. But if what the people are saying is true, why did Britain and USA maintain a neutral posture on this issue? MI 6 of Britain and CIA of US are among the most sophisticated secret services in the world and it will be wrong for the two powerful countries to pretend not to know what is happening? Ever since, Nigeria has been on Britain and US “special interest areas;” does it mean that they are no longer interested in Nigeria?

    It will be recalled that when there were problems in some Francophone countries like Mali, Burkina Faso, and CAR, it was France that settled it. Now the crisis in Nigeria – if any help is needed, Britain is expected to help even though France has reportedly sent troops to advice the Nigerian army. An international summit has been held in France and Niger republic – which is also a Francophone country, what is really happening? It will be cowardly of Britain and USA to forsake Nigeria and allow France to destroy it. If Britain is no longer interested in Nigeria, she should let us be.

     

    • Comrade Abdulbaqi Aliyu Jari

    Usmanu Danfodiyo University

    Sokoto State.

     

  • Open letter to NAFDAC-DG

    SIR: There is no gainsaying the fact that you have  recorded unparalleled achievements as the director-general of NAFDAC. The introduction of SMS confirmation of the authenticity of drugs is very commendable. Under the current leadership of NAFDAC, the use of law enforcement agents to chase producers and sellers of fake and substandard drugs has reduced. With the introduction of the SMS confirmation of authenticity of drugs, unscrupulous elements in our drug markets are gradually going into extinction.

    However, I have some observations which I will like NAFDAC to investigate and make corrections . First, I want to be properly enlightened on the criteria  for the issuance of NAFDAC registration numbers to herbal medications in Nigeria. To an average Nigerian, any product with NAFDAC registration number is safe for consumption. Having realised this, the producers and sellers of NAFDAC-approved herbal medications go a long way to convince their potential buyers with these NAFDAC registration numbers. They brandish their NAFDAC-approved medications while feeding the public with wrong medical information.

    Secondly, does NAFDAC while approving and issuing the registration numbers to the producers of herbal medications deem it necessary to regulate the dosage and duration of the medication for the treatment of a particular ailment? This is because the toxicity of some drugs become conspicuous with increased dosage and duration. It is not uncommon to hear the vendors of these NAFDAC-approved herbal medications  informing their patients/buyers to consume as much of the products as they can if they want their ailments to be cured very fast. It is now a marketing strategy that the more a marketer sells, the more the remuneration and the likelihood the promotion hence the marketer, who is ignorant of the pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic properties of drugs, will convince the potential buyer to buy a lot of the medications and continue the medications until the ailment is cured.

    Also,does your agency while approving and issuing the NAFDAC registration numbers research on the drug-drug interactions, indications and contra-indications of these herbal medications? It is common to see the leaflets of some NAFDAC-approved herbal medications claiming to cure all ailments known to man. Some producers in order to increase their market size will tell their consumers that anybody can take the medications including pregnant women and children. It is very disheartening when a clinician encounters a pregnant woman with intrauterine fetal death and no other aspect of the clinical history,physical examination or investigations will point to the possible cause of the intrauterine demise except that the expectant mother took one herbal medication in the course of her pregnancy. Some of the active agents in these herbal medications are not only embryotoxic but are also teratogenic.

    Apart from NAFDAC, do state ministries of health, information  and environment and the federal ministries of health, information  and environment have any regulatory functions on the  production and marketing of these herbal medications? Which agency of the government controls the medical information that these herbal medicine dealers disseminate to the members of the public?

    Finally, I want to state clearly that I do not doubt any approval that your agency gives to any particular product; my concern is whether the content of the sample of a product sent to your agency for approval truly reflects the  content of the same product that finally gets to the  consumers? Also, does your agency have any regulations on the information about the said product that will get to the final  consumers?

     

    • Dr Paul John

    Port Harcourt, Rivers State

     

  • Oh mine, Myles’ gone!

    He was only 60 last April but he could have been 600 years to peoples around the world who have followed him through these years and whom he had influenced and inspired in numerous positive ways. The world’s leading televangelist, preacher, motivational preacher, author and counsellor, Myles Munroe died along with his wife, Ruth Ann, daughter, Charisa and seven other passengers when his jet crashed near the Grand Bahama International Airport, last Sunday.

    Munroe was on his way to the Global Leadership Forum organised by him in his native Bahamas when his jet which was flying low over the Grand Bahama Shipyard hit a crane and exploded on impact. One of his major annual programmes, Nigeria’s billionaire oil magnate, Mrs. Folorunsho Alakija was also billed to speak at the event. Participants from all over the world, including pastor and devotees had converged in Grand Bahama in anticipation of the conference when the tragic news filtered in.

    Munroe who was born in Nassau, Bahamas was the president and founder of Bahamas Faith Ministries International (BFMI) and Myles Munroe International (MMI). These are Christian faith-based bodies involved in evangelism, Christian resource, leadership training, publishing, television network, radio and web communications among other activities. Munroe was also the chief executive officer and chairman of the Board of International Third World Leaders Association and president of the International Leadership Institute.

    He took a Bachelors Degree in Fine Arts, Education and Theology from the Oral Roberts University, United States in 1978 and a Masters in Administration from the University of Tulsa in 1980. The revered and multi-gifted public speaker was a teacher, a life coach, government consultant and leadership mentor. Munroe travelled to all parts of the world training leaders in business, governance, education, sports, media and religion.

    His sermon was always that every man must die empty having produced everything that God had birthed in him. He was advisor to numerous Fortune 500 companies’ chief executive officers, addressing critical issues that affect aspects of human, professional, leadership, social and spiritual development.

    An influential world figure and a shining star of his island country, Bahamas, Munroe represented his country as the youngest recipient of the Queen’s Birthday Honours of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) award in 1998, bestowed by Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth of England. This honour was for his social and spiritual development of the Bahamas. He was also honoured by the government of the Bahamas with the Silver Jubilee Award (SJA) for his 25 years outstanding service to his motherland in the categories of spiritual, social and religious development.

    Munroe was the senior pastor of Bahamas Faith Ministries International Fellowship and his wife Ruth Ann was the co-senior pastor. A prolific writer, he authored about 70 books, most notable among which are Spirit of Leadership, God’s Big Idea and Understanding your Potential.

    Eulogising him, Prime Minister Perry Christie of the Bahamas said he was, “Deeply saddened by the accident. It is impossible to measure the magnitude of Dr Munroe’s loss to the Bahamas and to the world.

    “He was indisputably one of the most globally recognisable religious figures our nation has ever produced. His fame as an ambassador of the Christian ministry preceded him wherever in the world he travelled, whether in the Caribbean, North America, Asia, Europe or Africa. He was a towering force who earned the respect and admiration, not only of Christian adherents but also of secular leaders both here at home and around the world.”

    Though Munroe grew up in a poor family of 11 children in underdeveloped Bahamean Islands, at death, he had proved that circumstance and place of birth are not barriers in life but that they could indeed be the required trajectories for reaching the highest heights a man aims for. It is not only sad that Myles met his tragic end at the peak of his life, his wife and child also passed on with him. We join his numerous followers in mourning him. We wish him a peaceful rest.

     

  • Education emergency

    The recent demand for the declaration of an education emergency in Nigeria was unique for the unified vision of those who made it. It was jointly made by the four foremost unions in the tertiary education sector – the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), the National Association of Academic Technologists (NAAT), the Non-Academic Staff Union of Universities and Associated Institutions (NASU), and the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU).

    Claiming that education in the country was riddled with poor funding, inadequate leadership, and infrastructural decay, the four unions said that a non-negotiable public good had been perverted by a socio-economic system in which the maximisation of profit and the primacy of personal interest had become dominant.

    The unions obviously have a point. Nigeria’s education sector, especially its tertiary component, has been badly hit by a multi-dimensional crisis of gargantuan proportions. The country has an adult literacy rate of only 51.1 per cent; the gross enrollment ratio of the population of tertiary school age is just 10 per cent; an average of 5.25 years is spent by Nigerians in school. About 10.5 million of its children are out of school, the highest number in the world. As if that is not bad enough, young Nigerians seeking education have been directly targeted by insurgent groups like Boko Haram, resulting in repeated atrocities, such as those of Buni Yadi and Potiskum, in which dozens of students have died or suffered severe injury.

    Well-intentioned though the demands of ASSU, NAAT, NASU and SSANU may be, however, there is the question of whether such an emergency will actually achieve anything substantial. Nigeria is no stranger to education summits of varying levels of depth and comprehensiveness. In 2006, former President Olusegun Obasanjo convened an education summit in Abuja, bringing together senior government officials, policy makers and other concerned stakeholders. In November 2012, the BRACED Commission comprising Bayelsa, Rivers, Akwa Ibom, Cross River, Edo and Delta states organised an education summit for the region. In May 2013, Lagos State held the third in its series of education summits.

    At all of these gatherings, many of the issues confronting the sector were identified and exhaustively analysed. Impassioned declarations were given. Targets were set. Promises were made. Timelines were drawn up. In the end, not much changed, as the main drivers for education reform actually came from the individual efforts of the states, especially Lagos, Rivers, Anambra, Akwa Ibom and Kano. In these states, successive administrations have taken it upon themselves to implement comprehensive rehabilitation and expansion of their educational systems, especially at the primary and secondary levels. New classrooms have been built, more teachers trained and recruited, and greater rewards and incentives provided.

    But they can only do so much. The education crisis is a national one, and must be addressed at that level. The declaration of an education emergency could provide the vital national scope which would help ensure that any reform is evenly spread across the country.

    However, if it is to work, it must be divorced from the political grandstanding that has disfigured similar strategies in the past. A viable education emergency cannot be an arena for point-scoring, propaganda, or blame games. It cannot be aimed at furthering the agenda of any one group, be it government, union or corporate, to the detriment of the others and the country as a whole.

    The issues have been identified, the action steps are ready, and the solutions are known. What is required is the strength of will and determination to follow through on the undertakings that will inevitably be made. Perhaps the best way of achieving this could be to distill the successes of specific states into a template for the nation as a whole; by focusing on what works, it will be that much easier to move from speech to action.

     

  • Haba!

    Haba!

    •IGP Abba’s confirmation was an endorsement of impunity

    So many Nigerians, the confirmation of the appointment of the former acting Inspector-General of Police, Mallam Suleiman Abba, at a time he was involved in a crisis of confidence arising from his embarrassing incompetence in handling Aminu Tambuwal’s case, was rather hasty. At the meeting of the Police Council headed by President Goodluck Jonathan at the Presidential Villa on November 5, Abba was confirmed as substantive Inspector-General of Police (IGP) and thereafter admitted into the Council of State. This was followed by the meeting of the council where the appointment was ratified.

    Briefing State House correspondents at the end of the meeting, Governor Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State, said Abba was confirmed after his curriculum vitae were reviewed by the council. According to him, “we reviewed his CV, his level of competence by those who have worked with him and the council was unanimous that the acting IGP be confirmed as a substantive IG and the president was accordingly advised and he accepted the advice and appointed Mallam Abba as the substantive IG of Police”.

    Here was an IGP who appeared completely ignorant of his constitutional role as a law enforcement officer and the man to supervise effective policing of Nigeria so that the protection of lives and properties could be guaranteed. But he appropriated to himself the constitutional role of the judiciary which he brazenly sidelined to single-handedly deliver his own “judgment” that Tambuwal had lost his position as Speaker in the House of Representatives as a result of his defection to the All Progressives Congress (APC) from the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), for which reason he withdrew his security details. The general outcry that greeted this act was such that his boss, President Jonathan, could not utter a word to defend an indefensible act.

    On the heavy criticisms that trailed the withdrawal of the Speaker’s security details and his alleged partisanship, Abba said, “Well, that is a matter before the court and it is prejudice for me to comment on it. I wouldn’t want to have any problem with the judiciary”.  Haba! Abba suddenly realised he would not want to have problem with the judiciary he had defiled by his impunity. This is medicine after death. But he has not acted alone. His impunity derived from the impunity of the president who, out of desperation, might have given orders to deal with Tambuwal who is legally and constitutionally the Speaker of the House of Representatives of the Federal Republic of Nigeria until the court pronounces otherwise, or is impeached by the people who elected him as Speaker.

    This is why one wonders why President Jonathan should have facilitated the confirmation of the appointment of someone whose act of impunity was still in court and therefore subjudice. This is another case of impunity and disregard for the rule of law. Why should the president not wait for the court’s verdict on the case against the AIG to know whether or not he deserved confirmation or recrimination that may lead to his non-confirmation as a substantive Inspector-General of Police? Even the Council of State did not help matters as it appeared to have danced to the tune of the president by merely rubber-stamping this suspicious confirmation. In this matter, the council may be charged with connivance and thereby guilty by association.

    While we congratulate Mallam Abba for his appointment as IG, we would like to remind him that he is the IGP of Nigeria and certainly not the IGP of the ruling PDP or President Jonathan’s. But we doubt if he, like many others before him, has the required guts and conscience to serve the nation rather than his benefactors. He should be reminded though that he has not started well and if he continues along the path of the impunity that earned him his confirmation, then he should know he has failed, ab initio.

     

     

  • New cement price regime

    New cement price regime

    •The fall of cement price is salutary but…

    The latest euphoria in the nation’s construction industry is understandable. Just recently, Dangote Cement Company, a major significant player in the sector reportedly crashed the price of cement in the country. Hitherto, a bag of cement was being sold for N1,800, but now reportedly goes for N1,000, courtesy of the latest Dangote Cement gesture.

    The initiative could not have come at a better time than now when buildings are collapsing due to inadequate deployment of required cement in concrete mixing for construction. This reality was underscored by the theme of the just-concluded conference of the Nigerian Institution of Structural Engineers (NIStructE): “The Effect of Cement Strength on Concrete Performance.” Indeed, we agree that cement plays a critical role in construction work anywhere in the world and Nigeria is not an exception, except that being a cement producing country, it had, until the reported announcement of the new price regime, one of the most expensive cement prices in the world.

    Going by this development, we are not surprised that stakeholders in the industry have been commending this initiative, describing it as a good omen for the industry and the country in general. For instance, Abdulsamad Rabiu, chairman of BUA Group, described the gesture as a ‘patriotic initiative’ on the part of Dangote Cement.

    Also, Dr. Samuel Ilugbekhai, National President (NIStructE), sees it as ‘an achievement which would benefit many, directly and indirectly.’ Kunle Awobodu, President, Building Collapse Prevention Guild and third vice president of Nigerian Institute of Building reportedly hailed the price reduction since it would reduce sharp practices because ‘cement is capable of causing building collapse due to its exorbitant price as builders may be tempted to cut corners.’ Ayo Adejumo, immediate past Secretary-General, Association of Town Planning Consultants of Nigeria (ATOPCON), equally describes the move as one that will ‘boost the overall economy and also lift the manufacturing sector.’ We see these experts/stakeholders as who should know the inner workings in the industry and we do hope that they have considered all variables before applauding the reported price reduction.

    However, despite the avalanche of panegyrics heaped on the initiative, which no doubt has a tinge of populism attached to it, we hope that other cement manufacturers in the country were carried along. We appreciate the fact that Dangote Cement has contributed so much in raising the stakes in the cement sector. We recollect that the backward integration policy in the cement industry that commenced barely 12 years ago is one huge investment drive that has not only consumed tens of billions of dollars in direct and indirect investments but has purportedly increased national productivity from a mere 2.2 million tonnes to over 30 million tonnes. The salient role of Dangote Cement in achieving this feat cannot be downplayed.

    But we have fears about the effect of the reported new price regime on other cement manufacturing companies. More importantly, we have been trying to find out under what rule it has become so easy for a single company to crash the price of that product, or any product for that matter. The implication is that the same manufacturer may also unilaterally raise the price whenever it feels. It is bad for an entire country to be in a situation where it has to catch cold simply because a manufacturer sneezes. If the price reduction can happen now, why did it not happen before? This is why we have been hammering on the need for an anti-trust law in the country. We would have been more comfortable with the latest development in the cement sector if it had happened in a situation where such law existed.

    Anyway, we can only hope that important production variables such as the price per bag of cement, cost of diesel and others had been duly put into consideration before the announcement of N1,000 per bag price of cement was made. Otherwise, this popular price reduction would just amount to an undue corporate power play that would ultimately make consumers the puns in the chessboard of cement companies.

     

  • Open up the space

    Open up the space

    •The excessive cost of obtaining party nomination forms should be reversed in the interest of democracy

    The election season in Nigeria is notorious for the mindless use to which money is put by political parties and politicians. A token is usually set aside to induce voters who then bear the brunt of the drain on the economy. This is being repeated in this season as the electoral commission has flagged off the race for the 2015 general elections.

    The first indication that money would be playing a major role in the electoral process again has emerged with the fees aspirants have to pay to pick up expression of interest and nomination forms by the major parties. In the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), an aspirant who wants to contest the presidential race is expected to cough up N22.5 million while those in the race for the party’s governorship ticket are charged N11.5million. The figures are even higher for the All Progressives Congress (APC), the Peoples Democratic Movement (PDM) and the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA).

    The PDM has imposed a fee of N25 million on its presidential nomination form, the APC’s fee is 27.5 million for the same purpose. APGA has no plan to field a candidate for the presidential election, but, whoever wants to pick its flag for the governorship election is expected to pay N12 million. Governorship aspirants intending to run for office on APC’s platform have to pay N12.5m.

    This is an indication that not much has changed in Nigerian politics. Aspirants are forced by the excessive demands of the political parties to seek sponsors who reel out conditions for such support. In most cases, as we saw in the Anambra State governorship election in 2003, the godfathers insisted on taking charge of the states’ treasuries if they were to invest their funds in the highly risky electoral venture.

    The high cost of obtaining the forms has the tendency of screening out decent, intelligent and well-meaning candidates who may not have such funds. This would further limit office seeking to moneybags and their wards. The Nigerian society, desirous of development now than ever before, should not be held down by this trend. Other countries have better ways of determining serious candidates. Debates are sometimes organised and the profiles of the aspirants are made known to others. This is what Nigerian parties and politicians should introduce in the 21st century.

    In sanitising the political space therefore, efforts must be made to reduce the influence of money on the electioneering process. It is bad enough that the campaign fund limit specified by the Electoral Act 2010 is high in a society ravaged by poverty and squalor, it is worse that the law is disregarded by candidates and political parties. Section 91 of the Act allows someone running for the Presidency to spend up to N1billion, a governorship candidate up to N200 million, N40 million for Senate, N20m for House of Representatives, N10 million for State House of Assembly and chairman of a local government, and N1 million for ward councillor.

    Anyone who has paid attention to the frenzy of rallies and television advertisements by some of the parties in the past two months would observe that some have already spent more than the limit imposed by law. Yet, electioneering proper has not started.

    We call on the electoral commission to scrutinise the books of the parties and monitor their finances as well as apply sanctions as envisaged by the laws. We also call on the political parties to immediately reduce the costs of obtaining the nomination forms and refund the excess to aspirants who have already paid. Public offices should not be for sale and all undue strictures should be removed.

     

     

  • PVC and INEC

    PVC and INEC

    •The abysmal handling of the distribution exercise is unacceptable, and all eligible voters must be satisfied

    It is amazing that barely four months to the next general elections, we are still grappling with the rudiments. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) under the leadership of Professor Attahiru Jega has grasped for answers why in a key state like Lagos, most potential voters cannot obtain their permanent voter cards. Last week, the state governor, Babatunde Raji Fashola,  observed that only 4.8 million registered voters appear on the electoral umpire’s voters’ list. Yet, he noted, in the 2011 elections, Lagos recorded about 6.2 million voters.

    It is ironic that in the most populous state in the federation, the number of voters should shrink, and it did not only shrink but by a shocking 1.4 million voters.  Consequently, the Lagos State governor gave INEC an opportunity to redeem itself by declaring   November 7 as public holiday to enable civil servants in the state collect their PVCs. In spite of this grace, INEC officials did not show up in most parts of the state. The following day, they turned up in a few areas, but most of the local governments had either scant operations or none at all. In fact, nine of the about 20 local government areas could not perform the exercise, by INEC’s own admission.

    This has led to uproar of criticisms from the opposition that the electoral umpire was playing mischief with the process and setting up the general elections for fraud in favour of the ruling party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). We are shocked that, in spite of the warning and admonitions that the INEC has received in the past four years, the commission has bungled the voters’ exercise. Most persons who visited designated centres to pick up their permanent voter cards discovered that when their names appeared on the list, they could not obtain the cards, and in other cases there were no names in the list that matched theirs.

    It was a colossal disgrace.

    In the first place, for a state like Lagos that records new residents almost by the day, INEC should still not be enmeshed with figures around 6.2 million of four years ago. Tragically, the numbers fell, and it presented the numbers almost as fait accompli until the opposition cried foul. It was then it advanced the argument of technical problems at the backend. It did not appear to be working on it, otherwise it would have articulated that problem as it released the 4.8 million figure.

    This is an INEC that has worked itself in the past four years through a number of elections as dress rehearsals for 2015 elections. Within that period, it has conducted elections on local government, senatorial and gubernatorial levels in Delta, Yobe, Ekiti, Ondo, Osun and Anambra states. There have been reports of sloppiness and even, as in the case of Anambra State, a tragic fait accompli signifying incompetence.

    But the case of Lagos State and others, including Rivers State, raises questions about the integrity of the electoral body. It is unacceptable for the INEC to continue to use inefficiency as an excuse to disenfranchise the majority of people in elections. The charge of partiality is the worst tar an electoral umpire expects to be tarred with.

    By its bungling, it is hard for the disadvantaged party not to feel a victim of some subterranean dealing. All eligible voters ought to get their PVCs, and there is no alternative to that. If it means the INEC has to overhaul its operations and tweak its style to accommodate them, it is worth it.

    Electoral chicaneries often start with the voter’s list, and once it is wrong there, it cannot end well. And once a party feels shortchanged, the consequence for the polity is often ominous.

     

  • Not the answer

    •Federal Government asking states to seek alternative sources of funds is cynical, to say the least

    For over four decades of the oil boom, Nigeria swam in plenty; revelling in the rent of unearned oil wealth and like prodigals, frittering away most of the petro-dollar earnings. Nigerians lived large and licentiously, developing taste for all the best things in the world and neglecting to lay even the most basic foundations for her development and growth.

    Agriculture, which was the mainstay of Nigeria’s economy before the discovery of oil in commercial quantity, was abandoned. Modern infrastructure, the fulcrum upon which great industrial assets are founded, was never developed. Thus, with the advent of the oil boom, Nigeria merely became the shopping complex of the world where exotic goods from all over the world were merchandised.

    More pathetic is that even the huge crude oil and gas deposit did not galvanise the establishment of refining and petrochemical complexes such that the country would stand out today as a global hub for petroleum products. On the contrary, through her years of boom up till this moment, she has been flaring most of her gas deposit and exporting her crude regardless of the myriads of inherent by-products. She also imports till today, all her petroleum products needs.

    Perhaps no other country has been more profligate with her natural endowments. Even when the international prices of petroleum products rose at exponential rates engendering heavy windfall of petro-dollars, the receipts were largely embezzled by a succession of highly corrupt and megalomaniac leaders. They neither invested in the sector nor expanded the base of the economy.

    Today, just as the price of crude oil rose, in like manner it has started to fall in the last few months, moving from a little over $100 per barrel to about $80. As has been predicted, it will continue to plunge because there is a glut in the world crude oil market, as many more countries have discovered fossil fuel. Secondly, viable, cheaper and more efficient alternatives like shale oil have been developed, especially by the United States of America, which is now poised to push her enormous petroleum reserve into the global market.

    The prospects are dim indeed for countries like Nigeria which rely on primitive and non-value-added shipment of crude oil. Has the chicken finally come home to roost? If that be the case, it may not yet be apparent to governments of the day, especially at the federal level; or shall we say there is nothing to suggest that people in positions of authority have been able to come to terms with the seemingly irreversible slide in oil earnings and the attendant recession.

    To buttress this point, at a recent meeting of the National Council on Development Planning (NCDP), the Minister of National Planning, Dr. Abubakar Suleiman, could only admonish the delegates who were state planning commissioners to lead the process of finding alternative sources of funding in their various states.

    According to Suleiman, while his ministry was collaborating with the Federal Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank of Nigeria, “The states are also advised to develop their strategic plans as well as the associated contingency plans to complement the effort of the Federal Government,” he said.

    We aver that Nigeria’s government, especially the Federal Government is still locked in its old lethargic mindset. This situation the country is faced with calls for a complete rethink and restructure of the current fiscal regime. First, the Federal Government must convene an economic summit for the purpose of re-drawing the country’s fiscal map in the face of this new reality. Second, it must free up the huge share of the federation funds it has arrogated to itself so that it could be re-distributed to the states and local councils where they are sorely needed. In addition, the central government must be ready to cooperate with the states in relaxing the laws barring them from exploiting their mineral resources.

    Suffice it to say that years of ineptitude have brought this looming calamity upon the country, but if the pains must be mitigated, governments at all levels must break out of the old mold and go back to the basics.

  • Underutilised cables

    •That $3bn submarine cables are ‘stranded’ in Nigeria despite the serious need for them leaves a sour taste in the mouth

    The report that a mere 10 per cent of the total capacity of the $3billion (N480billion) undersea cables in Nigeria is currently being utilised exemplifies the paradox of the rich but poor country that Nigeria is. Ever a nation of paradoxes – whereas Nigeria presently has a surfeit of capacity from the several submarine cables that have berthed in the country since 2010,  dearth of the matching investment in the infrastructure to carry the capacities from the cables at the shores to the hinterlands for last-mile connectivity has meant that the end-users do not presently enjoy them.

    In the situation, the South Atlantic 3 (SAT-3) ($600 million); the Glo 1 cable ($800 million); MainOne Cable, ( $250 million); West African Cable System (WACS) ( $650 million) and African Coast to Europe (ACE) ($700 million) – all of them with landing points on the nation’s coastline are said to be “stranded”.

    If Nigerians had high expectations in terms of being on the threshold of the broadband revolution after that record pooling of $3 billion investment in a little over three years, that hope must by now be fast turning into a mirage going by the rather modest pace of growth. The current rates of internet and broadband penetration of 32.9 per cent and 6.1 per cent, respectively, obviously says a lot about the grounds the sector needs to cover.

    The challenge, as it appears, seems as simple as driving the last-mile investment to bring broadband services to the doorsteps of every Nigerian and to ensure that the investments do not lie fallow for much longer. Of course, we have heard about the National Broadband Plan 2013-2018, driven by the Ministry of Communication Technology, “to achieve a five-fold broadband penetration in the country by the end of 2018”. So is the plan by the National Communications Commission (NCC) to licence seven Infrastructure Companies (InfraCos) each in the six geo-political zones, including Abuja – expected to “provide a national broadband network on a non-discriminatory, open access and price regulated basis to all service providers”.

    Either of the policies is in order – but only to the extent that they deliver expected outcomes. If only on account of undelivered promises from similar ones in the past, Nigerians have since learnt to be tempered in their optimism from such initiatives.

    For sure, those specific measures would appear positive indications of the Federal Government finally coming to terms with the need to fast-track the deployment of the infrastructure to grow that segment of the telecommunications market. However, given the central role reserved for the private sector, the concern is whether these initiatives can be said to have fully captured the complex factors behind the reluctance by last-line investors to bring in their money. Notably, we are talking about the factors of the operating environment and the various policies known to inhibit business.

    Beyond that however is also the issue of whether the government is prepared to do the needful in providing both the leadership and direction to forge ahead. We are talking of a framework of partnership and/or collaboration as the case may be, between the government and the private sector to deepen the market and to optimise the potentials of the sector in the near term. The reason would seem obvious: unlike the telephony segment reputed for its mass appeal, the broadband segment, despite its proven potentials to catalyse the economy, would seem relatively more restricted to be left to the devices of market forces. That is why government’s muscle is needed to push things through.