The Nation Newspaper

Category: Editorial

  • Step aside, Suntai

    Step aside, Suntai

    • Taraba State governor should resign his office to allow him pay adequate attention to his health

    Following the return of ailing Taraba State Governor Danbaba Suntai to the state capital, Jalingo, a vicious power struggle has ensued again between his supporters and those loyal to his deputy who is acting in his stead. Both factions of the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) would do anything to get hold of the levers of power ahead of the governorship and state legislative elections coming up next February.

    The ding dong on the state political scene has led to undue tension, anxiety and apprehension for two years since he was involved in that grisly air crash in 2012. The crisis has taken various dimensions. The state has been split along ethnic and religious lines, thus threatening its peace in the run-up to the elections.

    While politicians and ethnic jingoists cannot be stopped from playing their games and plying their trades, the attempt to turn the state to a battle ground is unacceptable and reprehensible. The divide was visible as a coterie of friends, including Senator Emmanuel Bwacha, Minister of Niger Delta, Isiaku Darius and a former deputy governor, Alhaji Uba Maigari, were at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, to receive the returning governor after another 10 months of receiving treatment at London’s Wellington Hospital. He was immediately moved to the Asokoro residence of a power broker in the state, General Theophilus Danjuma.

    It was in Danjuma’s residence that he had a very brief chat with journalists who were told he had regained his vitality and was ready to resume duties.

    What has transpired since the return last week is a mere replay of the drama last year when he was similarly prematurely brought to the country to resume duties. It was clear then that he was a mere pawn in a devious power game. He was neither physically nor mentally prepared for the onerous task of governing a complex state like Taraba. After making a motion of showing that the governor ought to simply roll into office, the party chieftains around him said he had been given a clean bill of health. Some of those who chose to speak on his behalf include former governor Jolly Nyame and Kwara State politician, John Dara. The same people who insisted he was strong enough for the task at hand are hovering around him again and repeating the lines.

    At the carefully arranged press conference addressed by the ailing governor, all he could say to prove his alertness was, “I just arrived in Nigeria after my treatment abroad at Whalton Hospital in London. I thank God l am getting better, l am happy to be back home and you all are here to receive me. Thank you all for your prayer sand support.’’

    This is not all that the Taraba people want or deserve. They want robust leadership; they want evidence that their governor could actually stay on top of the situation; they want a governor who could do more than recognise some faces and utter some words put in his mouth. Nigerians, too, do not want a replay of the drama that attended the ill-health, treatment and eventual death of former President Musa Yar’Adua.

    We are appalled that politicians would seize on anything to advance personal causes. It is obvious that two years after the unfortunate incident, the chapter ought to be closed now. Governor Suntai is not fit to resume office and enough of the dithering that has marked governance in the state. There should be no sentiments in applying the words and spirit of the Constitution. The executive council of the state under Acting Governor Garba Umar has already set in motion the plan to activate the constitutional procedure of getting the Speaker to constitute a medical board to professionally ascertain the governor’s state of health. This should be done dispassionately and scrupulously in accordance with section 89 of the Constitution.

    We sympathise with the governor on the accident, but he should do himself and the state a favour by voluntarily stepping aside, giving glory to God for saving his lifes.

  • Leaders, not Jonathan, failed the North

    Leaders, not Jonathan, failed the North

    SIR: In this centennial season of blame game over everything that has gone wrong with Nigeria since 1914, it is not surprising that President Goodluck Jonathan has become the whipping boy.  But while it is justifiable to criticise the President fairly for what he does or does not do, that does not confer on any person or group of persons the right to distort facts, misinform the people and accuse him of  offences, which even a day-old baby can exonerate him from.  It is in this category that the wicked accusations of Alhaji Ibrahim Coomasie and his Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) fall.  According to the ACF, President Jonathan has not only failed the North but also hates our people from the North.

    To face the issues raised by Coomasies’s ACF, it is not true that President Jonathan has failed in protecting the North.  If anything, it is some northern leaders like Coomasie that have failed the region. Although many scholars and strategists have given many reasons for the emergence of the deadly insurgence in the North, an eclectic position is that bad leadership that manifestly impoverished the people of the area of a long period of time is one certain factor.

    For many years, northern elite wielded power and did absolutely nothing to improve the access and quality of education in the region. And neither did they build a culture of enterprise and industry there. Instead, what they promoted was personal wealth at the expense of the people, rural and mass poverty that Boko Haram is feeding off for its recruitment.

    If Coomasie is weeping that the North has become divided politically today, how is that the problem of President Jonathan?  The concept of the monolithic North has always been problematic.  The high-handedness of people like Coomasie who hid under the banner of “one North” to promote a certain ethnic group while subjugating the others in a well-orchestrated internal colonialism policy has found them out.  The logic of democracy and the freedom that it inheres are responsible for the boldness that the hitherto subjugated peoples and groups in the North are displaying against an oligarchy that is slow in coming to terms with the reality of the modern Nigeria.

    Those who are nostalgic about the “unity” of the North are perhaps jittery to explain in whose interest this unity had been in the past.  If the monolithic North is disintegrating, it has nothing to do with the President. If anything, those now pointing fingers at different directions need to re-examine the power relations in the North and how much power had been put in the service of the ordinary people all these years.  If it takes an Ijaw man from Otuoke to improve the life chances of the ordinary citizens in the North who have borne the brunt of prebendal use of power by their own elite for many decades, who cares about the selfish moaning of Coomasie and his ACF?

    • Hamisu Abubakar,

    Kaduna

  • Big for nothing

    Big for nothing

    •Nigeria should not repeat last year’s UN General Assembly jamboree

    If it were not such a shocking shame, the honest observation that the country’s delegation to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) is usually wastefully bloated would qualify as just another evidence of laughable political administration.  What makes it even more depressingly worthy of attention is the source of the information, which would appear to be authoritative and unbiased.

    It is creditable that the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Bashir Wali, rose above considerations of political loyalty and non-professional sentiments during the inter-ministerial meeting in Abuja to adopt the country’s working documents ahead of this year’s 69th UNGA Sessionin New York. His candour while addressing heads of government ministries, departments and agencies reflected his understandable discomfiture, which was underlined by his declaration that he was seeking the approval of President Goodluck Jonathan to limit the number of delegates this year.

    Wali said: “The size of Nigeria’s delegation to the United Nations General Assembly last year was 567; that is something that is certainly unacceptable. On that basis I asked that they send me the list of three countries, Germany, South Africa and Egypt to compare with what we in Nigeria have. None of them is up to one third of our delegation.”   He reasoned: “So, you can see that there is certainly need to really take a second look and see that those of our delegates that go to the UN General Assembly do have value. It is not a question of having a jamboree; but indeed, it is more like a jamboree.”

    Significantly, the minister pointed out that his argument was informed by facts derived from experience. He said: “I happen to have observed for four years as Nigeria’s ambassador to the UN, the delegation of Nigeria to the UN General Assembly. So, I know and if we are going to be honest to ourselves, I know 80 percent of the delegates that go from Nigeria do not add value to our team to the UN.” In other words, apart from what amounts to a trivialisation of forum and function, it is like being big for nothing.

    Against this background, it is worth considering how such an unjustifiably high number of officials get on the train, which is to say that the business of representing the country at the UNGA may have become equivalent to riding on a gravy train with the implication that the delegates enjoy rich monetary advantages unmatched by the value they bring to their work.

    Sadly,  it is no secret that the country’s shambolic public administration system has over the years encouraged government workers to scramble for foreign official assignments in order to collect substantial travel allowances known as “estacode”. A logical but ultimately senseless consequence of such state of affairs is that many of the beneficiaries reportedly indulge in shopping trips, visit relations and attend to other personal matters while neglecting the official business that took them abroad.

    Wali’s observation, which goes to show the extent of the rot, should prompt a critical examination of this freeloading culture and a proper intervention to bring it to an end. It is instructive that he said at the meeting: “Certainly, something has to be done to put a stop to this embarrassment.” Indeed, the absurdity exposes the country to avoidable international ridicule, especially because   the sheer numerical strength of such delegations has little to do with qualitative impact.

    It is indefensible that in this framework, accountability and responsibility are relegated to insignificance, and the powers that be seem unbothered by the squandering of public funds as well as the unproductiveness of human resources. This is no way to make progress and earn international respect.

  • Not yet good news

    Not yet good news

    • We hope the discovery of oil in Lagos will be a blessing

    From all indications, Lagos State is set to join the league of oil-producing states in Nigeria next year. The  Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) had reportedly approved, early this year, the Field Development Plan (FDP) for the take-off the project. On this basis, the Final Investment Decision (FIT) is expected to be taken anytime from now, with first production scheduled for the end of 2015.

    The area where oil has been proven to exist in commercially viable quantities is the Aje Oil Field located in OML 113, approximately 24km offshore in Badagry, Lagos. The joint venture partners involved in the project – Yinka Folawiyo Petroleum, Jacka Resources, New Age, First Hydrocarbons Nigeria, Energy Equity Resources and Panoro Egypt are understandably excited about the prospects of the business.

    They anticipate an initial field production rate of approximately 10,000 barrels of oil per day, using solution gas as fuel. And the Cenomanian variety of crude available in the Aje Field is light, sweet under-saturated oil with a gas-oil ratio of 375-480 standard cubic feet per barrel. A spokesman of the joint venture partners thus enthused that although “No crude sales agreements have yet been entered into for the project, but as the Cenomanian oil is light crude and the project is located on major shipping routes to and from Nigeria’s main oil-producing areas, sales and access to transport is not expected to be a problem”.

    Ordinarily, this development ought to be good news both for the economy of Lagos and Nigeria as a whole. But we are hesitant to come to any such conclusion because of the sordid realities of the country’s petroleum sector.

    Yes, petroleum has generated humongous revenues for Nigeria over the last five decades. But this has not translated into development for the country or better living standards for the majority of her people. For one, oil revenue has spawned reckless corruption that has enriched a small minority while impoverishing the larger populace. Again, a critical sector of the economy that blossomed before the discovery of oil, namely agriculture, has been neglected because of oil, with the country becoming dependent on food imports.

    Moreover, oil has perverted the structure of our federalism with the component parts of the country failing to develop their natural potential, including solid minerals because of access to easy oil money. Indeed, oil has become a veritable ‘resource curse’ to those states where the commodity is found, leading to massive pollution of their environment with negative consequences for their health and sources of livelihood.

    The country’s petroleum industry is plagued by so much criminal malfeasance, illegality and self-inflicted inefficiency that the discovery of new sources of oil can have no positive impact without drastic reforms in the sector. Yet, the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) designed to achieve this objective has remained stalled at the National Assembly for years now. It remains a mystery, for instance, why the country has for decades been unable to refine crude oil locally.

    The existing government-owned refineries have perennially operated substantially below capacity despite billions purportedly spent on their Turn-Around-Maintenance (TAM). To compound matters, the country has been unable to attract the necessary private investment to eliminate or drastically reduce her dependency on imported refined petroleum products. The implication is an intricate and massive fraud network built around purported subsidies on imported petroleum products.

    Lagos has over the years been able to build a robust internally generated revenue base that has significantly reduced her dependence on oil revenues from the centre. We hope that the prospects of oil revenues will not lull the state into complacency and the abandonment of the virtues of fiscal innovation, discipline and self-reliance.

  • Adekunle: Hero Nigeria did not deserve

    Adekunle: Hero Nigeria did not deserve

    SIR: The death of Brigadier General Benjamin Adekunle (rtd) provides a stark contrast between the great potentials of the past and the bleak future of the present. His death provides a timeline that shows two pictures: that Nigeria is not progressing due to its inability to preserve and replicate patriotism and that its life is ebbing away with every death of past heroes announced.

    Nigeria faced in 1967 the same internal threat to corporate existence it faced today, with few differences in semantics and prevailing circumstances. Then the threat was termed “secession” from down South but now it is called “insurgency” from up North. Then, Nigeria was neither as rich as it is today nor prepared for such high level combat, having only few trained personnel. Today, the country commands enormous resources and has a reputably strong army, as could be seen in its peacekeeping efforts.

    Yet, this insurgency has not only lasted more than the civil war, from all indications, it is getting stronger, while the army sinks deeper into controversies ranging from mutiny to protests. Adekunle’s death therefore begs the “why” question and it forces a conclusion that the labour of past heroes is being laid to waste, instead of being built upon.

    Adekunle’s heroism could be summed up by one saying that where there is a will, there will be a way. He took over an army command largely made up of volunteers who had no prior military training and turned them, within months, into brave soldiers with the most humane records. His attention to details could be seen when he renamed his command, officially called “Third Infantry Division”, to the “Third Marine Commando.”

    As a good manager of men and resources Adekunle threw his soul, knowledge and body to the prosecution of the civil war, leading the 3rd Marine Commando through the sea to rapidly capture the city of Port-Harcourt and the total liberation of the parts of eastern Nigeria that are now known as Rivers, Cross Rivers and Akwa-Ibom states respectively.

    It is on record that Adekunle’s feat came with minimal loss of human lives, a testimony to his deft tactics. Many of those captured by his command were either absorbed into the Nigerian army or rehabilitated to take up other dignifying jobs. So, while the “Black Scorpion,” as he was fondly called, gave a tough posture in the media as someone who wants to kill all “enemies,” he was quietly rehabilitating them and winning them over, as revealed in recently published accounts of the civil war.

    If casualties recorded by his command’s onslaughts are compared with especially the one led by late General Murtala Mohammed, Adekunle instantly comes across as a thoroughbred officer and gentleman, a Nigerian military nationalist and a Yoruba illustrious son, who gave the art of modern warfare in Africa a unique place in the history of humanity.

    His exploits in the Nigerian civil war put him in the elite class of military commanders who led from the front; legends such as General George S. Patton of the US Army in World War II, Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, the “Desert Fox” and the exceptional General (Later Field Marshall Viscount) William Joseph Slim, commander of the British Army in Burma in World War II. Audacious and unpretentious, Adekunle was a commander’s commander in the best sense.

    We will continue to miss him, as long as we are unable to produce men like him. It is in this regard that we commiserate with the entire family, the Soun Of Ogbomoso Oba Oladuni Oyewumi, the Oyo State Governor, Senator Abiola Ajimobi, the good people of Oyo State and Nigerians in general on the loss of this illustrious son of Oduduwa and a national patriot of the highest order. He is gone, but his life is still with us as a lesson, as a fountain from which we can drink forever.

    Adieu! “The Black Scorpion”

    • Kunle Famoriyo & Segun Balogun

    Afenifere Renewal Group (ARG), Gbagada, Lagos.

     

  • Ajaokuta as waste

    Ajaokuta as waste

    •A white elephant crouches in impotence with all its potential to industrialise Nigeria

    Although there may be a myriad of other challenges militating against Nigeria’s rapid industrialisation, the country’s shoddy handling of its steel sector, in spite of the promise it holds for industrialisation, is a major hindrance. The clue of policy apathy and corruption regarding the Ajaokuta Steel Complex, ASC, in Kogi State, which can be gleaned from the declaration of Alhaji Kola Belgore, Chairman, Assets Management Company of Nigeria, AMCON, tells the story better.

    As a guest lecturer at a function organised by Alhaji Jani Ibrahim, the immediate past president of the Alumni Association of National Institute (AANI), for newly promoted members of Nigeria Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS) that are of Kwara State origin, Belgore reportedly declared: “There are 2,500 engines mounted and 6,000 employees, and we are paying them N3.4billion as salaries. That is what we are paying them for doing nothing monthly.”

    The Ajaokuta Steel project has avoidably remained the cesspit of corruption in over 30 years of its inauguration by former President Shehu Shagari and successive governments have pumped public money into it without bothering about getting the desired result. Yet, despite the leadership-inflicted odds afflicting it, the company remains the country’s biggest iron and steel facility. If its present comatose state can be overcome, it has the potential of boosting the technological dream and industrial drive of the nation. The mill further stands to aid acquisition of technical expertise, enhance technological growth and provide a template for inputs for infrastructural development in the country.

    President Olusegun Obasanjo in the bid to privatise the company in 2003 reached a failed agreement with Solgas. And in 2004 too, the administration concessioned the Ajaokuta Steel plant to an Indian firm, Global Infrastructure Holdings Limited (GIHL). The latter company’s management signed a concession agreement with government in 2007 but defaulted, which led to its cancellation by late President Umaru Yar’Adua. The ensuing court case is reportedly pending in a London court, thereby constituting a seeming cog in the wheel of moving forward on it.

    We wonder why despite its huge potential and massive public expenditure it has gulped, Ajaokuta Steel Rolling Mill still avoidably remains unproductive. For this obvious reason, we call on government to do something urgent, especially on the reported current local finished steel production level of the country put at less than 1Mtpa with negligible export figures for the finished steel products. The fact that AMCON has reportedly helped to boost the company’s asset which has a current standing of N6 trillion means that the project still commands tremendous value with lots of juicy returns to offer the country’s economic development.

    There is no doubt that the time has come for the government to quickly decide whether it still wants the steel mill or not so as to put a screeching stoppage to wasting of the country’s hard earned money in the face of millions that are living below the poverty line. However, one thing in our view is certain: The Nigeria Industrial Revolution Plan (NIRP), an initiative put in place by the government of President Goodluck Jonathan, can only be meaningful if projects such as the Ajaokuta Steel Rolling Mill bounce back to reckoning.

    Despite the revelations of Belgore on the waste going on around the Ajaokuta Steel Mill Company, we strongly believe that candid official efforts must be deployed now so that the dream by past nationalist leaders at the nation’s independence, of making Nigeria a steel producing country, would not die.

  • Chibok schoolgirls twist

    Chibok schoolgirls twist

    •Human rights activist Shehu Sani should name the powerful Nigerians he claimed to be working against freedom of the abducted students.

    Many Nigerians looking forward to the release of the more than 200 Chibok school girls abducted by Boko Haram insurgents since April must have been frightened by the allegation by Shehu Sani, a human rights activist, that some powerful Nigerians are working against the release of the girls. Sani, who had been involved in at least three botched attempts to free the girls and had on previous occasions blamed the failure of the moves on the insincerity of the Federal Government, now believes that the government is getting closer to getting a deal that would get the hapless secondary school students released to their parents.

    The latest twist in the tale has further befuddled the issues and sent the alarm bells ringing on what the government may be planning. Activities on the political scene suggest that President Goodluck Jonathan would soon formally declare his bid for a second term in office and it is obvious that the abduction of the girls could be a hindrance to the ambition. Therefore, it seems that there are three options open to the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. First, he could order a full-scale war by the military, backed by foreign allies. Second, he could decide to trade the girls’ freedom for amnesty for arrested insurgents and, third, he could pin the kidnap on opposition politicians or imaginary foes.

    This is why we are worried by Sani’s claim. It corresponds with the position held by key officials of the Federal Government and the voluble spokesperson for the Department of State Services (DSS), Ms. Marilyn Ogar, who have made attempts to pin the failure to get the girls released on leaders of the main opposition party in the country, the All Progressives Congress (APC).

    Given his antecedents, Sani’s contention could not be easily dismissed. He had been a victim of state repression under previous government and obviously has contacts with the agents of terror apparently in a bid to resolve the logjam threatening the corporate existence of the country. When the Federal Government named him earlier as a member of a committee to negotiate a peaceful resolution of the conflict, he declined because he could not see the genuineness in the government effort. On another occasion, he had embarked on a private move with former President Obasanjo to stave off the crisis.

    But, the suggestion that some powerful individuals or forces could be working against the release of the Chibok schoolgirls without naming the powerful Nigerians calls for caution. We call on Sani to name the individuals to prevent innocent people from being tagged. As a Nigerian, he ought to make such information available to the security forces even if he does not want to directly put it in the public square. It must be realised that no single individual or individuals could be more powerful than the Nigerian state. The national interest supersedes any other and the day must never come when anyone would be made to believe that he or she is greater than the country. At a time when the entire world is fighting terrorism, no one should be encouraged to shield the identity of sponsors of such a deadly crime.

    We are constrained to warn that any attempt by the Federal Government to use such information as basis for a clampdown on imaginary enemies without full disclosure on the identities, veracity and source of the information would be counter- productive and further compound the woes of a nation humbled by a group that started as a ragtag band of malcontents.

     

  • Strange company

    Strange company

    •Jonathan and Modu-Sheriff 

    The picture of President Goodluck Jonathan sitting aside Senator Ali Modu-Sheriff, former Governor of Borno State, at a meeting with the Chadian President Idris Deby, in Ndjamena, Chad, last week, surely rankled most Nigerians. The president, according to his media aide, Reuben Abati, had gone to Chad to discuss how to combat the Boko Haram insurgency, which has heightened recently.

    Also, according to the Department of State Services (DSS) the president’s companion in the pictures, Ali Modu-Sheriff, who has been questioned twice over his alleged sponsorship of the militant group, is due for another round of questioning by the security agency. A similar allegation of complicity against the former governor was made last week, by an Australian hostage negotiator, Stephen Davis. There is also an adverse security report against him, pending since 2011.

    Like most Nigerians, we are shocked that despite these grievous allegations, bordering on national security against Mr. Modu-Sheriff, the president still finds comfort in his company. To make matters worse, President Jonathan chose the company of the alleged sponsor of the same group that he had journeyed all the way to Ndjamena, to discuss ways of curtailing their atrocities against his home land. While Mr. Modu-Sheriff should be deemed innocent until his guilt is proven, we doubt whether the picture of his closeness with the Commander-in-Chief of the national security agency that has invited him for questioning, will not totally derail the investigation.

    With President Jonathan’s exhibition of comfort with Mr. Modu-Sheriff while he is a subject of investigation, just as he did with the former Minister of Aviation, Stella Oduah, at the height of her investigations over the purchase of bullet-proof vehicles; we ask, does it mean that President Jonathan does not appreciate the moral authority of the office of the President?

    In our view, the person of the president should represent that which is most noble and patriotic. He or she must, with all diligence, avoid the company of those who have weighty moral questions hanging on their necks. Indeed, to associate with such persons publicly becomes a double jeopardy when the issue is one that borders on the well-being of the very nation that the president presides over.

    As we said in an earlier editorial, the allegations made against Senator Modu-Sheriff and the former Chief of Army Staff, General Azubuike Ihejirika, by the Australian negotiator Davis, deserve to be investigated. We had thought that the president would quickly take steps in that direction, more so when we recall that President Jonathan had claimed that the sponsors of the Boko Haram insurgency were in his government. So, an investigation will ordinarily enable our country fish out those collaborating with the hideous murderers who have brought war to our country. We hope that the president’s body language will not dissuade the security agencies from dispassionately taking this very important step.

    We also urge President Jonathan to take steps to assuage the feelings of Nigerians over his attitude to corruptly exposed persons. His penchant for giving the impression that he does not care about public opinion over his moral conduct must stop. If restating it will help, President Jonathan must always realise that he is the president of the country, and that his words, actions and inactions represent the country’s mirror. If he does not give a damn about how he is seen, we have no doubt that most Nigerians care about their national integrity.

    Regardless of the choices made by the president, we urge the security agencies to remember that ultimately, they owe their allegiance to the corporate well-being of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and not to any individual. They should therefore be thorough in their investigation of Mr Modu-Sheriff.

     

  • Soaring sub-standard products

    Soaring sub-standard products

    •It is unacceptable that our markets swarm with them

    The scandalous scale of substandard products in the country is not only detrimental to economic growth but also constitutes a serious threat to healthy living. The rise in the manufacturing, distribution, importation and consumption of substandard products in the country deserves stern measures, far above the current tepid stance that has yielded very little result.

    A report by the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) under the leadership of Dr. Joseph Odumodu disclosed that substandard products in the country as at 2012 accounted for between 80 and 85 per cent of total products in the marketplace. The organisation’s claim that this has since dropped to 50 percent in the last two years because of its ‘Zero Tolerance’ campaign remains to be felt because Nigerian markets are still replete with substandard/expired products. A corroboration of this position is the revelation that certified domestic products improved to negligible 13 per cent from the less than 10 per cent obtained in 2011. In sharp but better contrast, less endowed countries like Egypt and Kenya have 40 per cent and South Africa, 30 per cent of substandard products in their markets.

    The other government agencies saddled with the responsibilities of regulating standards and protecting the interest of consumers, apart from SON, include the National Agency for Food, Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) and Consumer Protection Council (CPC). And, except for NAFDAC under the late Professor Dora Akunyili’s leadership that reportedly succeeded in reducing substandard products by 60 percent, the current rating of these bodies could be described as below average.

    The CPC, in particular, has done very little to protect consumers’ interests. The body that began operation in 1999 after having been established by Act No. 66 of 1992 under the supervision of the Federal Ministry of Trade and Investment has done very little to take manufacturers of fake products to task. Yet, it has the mandate to eliminate all hazardous products from our markets; ensure provision and initiation of the process of getting swift redress by aggrieved consumers and to undertake awareness campaigns in the public domain. How effective has the CPC and others performed these important tasks?

    We find it quite confusing why it has always been easy for substandard items to have unfettered access into the country despite the presence of these statutory agencies and other security outfits at the nation’s border posts. Does it mean that these institutions of state have compromised their mandates to the detriment of the nation’s interests? David Parradang, Comptroller-General of the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) reportedly gave some startling statistics of illegal routes in the country. He revealed that there are over 1, 400 illegal routes into Nigeria that has an approved 84 border controls covering 4,047 kilometres. This is a clear scandalous difference of 1,316 illegal routes. Two states: Ogun and Adamawa reportedly have an alarming highest number of illegal routes of 83 and 80, respectively, in the land.

    Under the prevailing low motivation of Immigration officials, with equipment deficiency, it is quite apparent why the country has very porous borders spurring thriving illegal routes. This compromised situation gives impetus to substandard and expired product importers who travel to China and other industrialised countries to induce manufacturers to produce fake/substandard products to be imported and sold solely in the country. This nefarious trend, within and outside the country by local manufacturers/importers, cannot continue if the government indeed loves its citizens.

    We call for serious enforcement strategies and a quick restructuring of existing seeming compromised agencies of state if the country truly desires to conquer the war against substandard/fake products.

     

  • Cause for alarm?

    Cause for alarm?

    •Result of CBN’s liquidity stress test on banks is not encouraging

    Nigerians have every reason to be worried at the outcome of the recent liquidity stress test conducted by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on 21 deposit money banks and 14 foreign subsidiaries, published in the CBN Financial Stability Report released last week.

    Based on findings from a 30-day shock test to assess banks’ resilience to liquidity and funding shocks, the report summarises, to wit: three banks – two of them large – recorded negative liquidity ratio; most banks’ liquidity ratio was found to be below 30 percent threshold based on the same parameters. Overall, the finding was of an industry “resilient to liquidity stress although the test results indicated deterioration in the banks’ resilience compared with the position in the preceding period”.

    As usual, the report would acknowledge the twin challenges of corporate governance and risk management practices as subsisting.

    No doubt, the result says a lot about the vast ground still left to be covered before the banking sector can claim to have achieved a reasonable measure of stability. But, as a whole, the findings raise the larger question of whether therapies applied in the last 10 years can be said to have delivered the expected outcome in terms of financial sector stability, given the energy and resources pumped into it.

    We say this because the challenges facing the sector have remained largely the same as it was when the nation began the restructuring odyssey 10 years ago. We recall that in July 2004, the then Central Bank Governor Chukwuma Soludo had described the Nigerian banking system as “fragile” and “marginal”. He had specifically diagnosed the sector as suffering persistent illiquidity, weak corporate governance, poor assets quality, insider abuses, weak capital base, and over-dependency on public sector funds, etc. If his 18-month long recapitalisation therapy under which 84 deposit money banks were collapsed to 25 by the end of December 2005 was meant to address these multifarious problems, the fact that variants of the same malignancies requiring even more drastic therapies would manifest barely three years after, obviously says a lot about its efficacy.

    We refer here to the free-for-all era of banking which followed the consolidation exercise during which operators simply went on to plunder the system. To clean the Augean stable, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, Soludo’s successor would sack a generation of top bankers in what is now famously described as sanitisation. Even at that, the challenge has remained one of delivering a banking system that is sound and stable.

    What the latest findings suggest is that the nation is a long way from that. However, while the suggestion that the sector is far from being out of the woods would seem troubling enough, the grim possibility of the sector being plunged into another round of crisis in the face of continuing deterioration in asset quality and in the atmosphere of weak corporate governance must be seen as portending grave danger for the Nigerian economy.

    We expect the CBN to treat the report as a wakeup call, and with all the seriousness that it deserves. It goes without saying that the apex bank’s authorities must put necessary strategies in place to avert a systemic distress that the nation can ill-afford; not at this time or even in some distant future.

    Moreover, if it’s not too late in the day to ask: what has happened to the so-called proactive, risk-based regulatory framework the CBN claimed to have put in place – the early warning signs which it claims to place so much store in? Perhaps the time to activate that is now.