The Nation Newspaper

Category: Editorial

  • Something to cheer

    Something to cheer

    •Nigerian-American girl, Chiney Ogwumike, is best American women college basketball player

    Though this Nigerian dream is subsumed under the American, it remains Nigerian all the same and it is remarkable in its power and glory. Nigerian-American, Miss Chinenye (Chiney) Ogwumike, is the top overall draft in 2014 for the Women National Basket Association (WNBA). What this means is that she is the best college player graduating to the huge and lucrative National Basketball Association (NBA) professional league. She was picked by the Connecticut Sun team. This feat is the second in the Ogwumike family in what seems like a genetic trait; just two years ago, her sister, Nneka, was also the overall top WNBA draft (2012).

    The 22- year- old schooled at Cypress Fairbanks High School in Cypress, Texas from where she started her exploits in the ball game. She was named a WBCA and McDonald’s All-American. She participated in the High School All-America Game, where she scored 24 points and earned the Most Valuable Player (MVP) honours for her team.

    Excelling both in academics and sports, she chose Stanford University over Connecticut and Notre Dame to join up with her sister. Many Stanford basketball records fell under the sheer power and prowess of the 6 foot 3 inches power forward. As at January 2014, Cheney (as she is known in America) holds the record for most rebounds in the history Stanford women Basketball. She was in the USA Basketball Under-18 team that participated in the 2010 FIBA Americas U18 Championship for Women. She started in all five games and as leading scorer and leading rebounder, she helped the USA team capture the gold medal.

    Players would naturally progress from the Under-18 to Under-19 but Chiney bucked that trend. She played so well as a U-18 that she was promoted to the US World University Games team for the 2011 World University Games held in Shenzhen, China. She was in the US team with her sister, Nneka. Chiney led her team in shooting percentage and helped it win all six games and earn the gold medal at the tournament.

    Between 2011 and 2014, Chiney has won over a dozen awards including Freshman Player of the Year, 2011; Player of the Year, 2013 and 2014. She was also in the ESPNW First All-American Team of the Year, 2014 and the USBW All-American Team, 2014 and the prestigious John R. Wooden Award, 2014. Now that she has joined the elite league of top-rated basketball players in America, the NBA at the top, it is hope that she would continue with her winning streak and dominate at the highest level too.

    Chiney and her sister Nneka before her are clear testimonies that Nigerians are full of potentials waiting to explode. Though the conduct and practice of the game is at best haphazard, like most other things, yet Nigerians exfoliate and excel whenever the condition and environment are right. Recall Akeem Olajuwon in the 80s and 90s who dominated the NBA and numerous other less prominent players in that pre-eminent American pastime. In the just ended collegiate season, two other Nigerian girls were in line for drafting.

    The exploits of Nigerians in all spheres of human endeavour across the world is a reminder of what might have been and of course what would be should we show a bit of dexterity and commonsense in managing our affairs. With a modicum of good leadership and a revamp of our institutions, Nigeria is like a latent volcano of human potentials waiting to erupt and reverberate across the world. Can the feat of the Ogwumike sisters trigger our revival?

  • U.S. sanctions on Russia over Ukraine would buy negotiating power

    U.S. sanctions on Russia over Ukraine would buy negotiating power

    RUSSIA AND the United States have pursued dramatically different strategies on Ukraine in the 10 days preceding a diplomatic meeting Thursday in Geneva. While loudly denouncing what it has described as direct Russian intervention in eastern Ukraine and threatening tough sanctions, the Obama administration elected not to take any concrete action in the hope that the meeting, which also includes the foreign ministers of Ukraine and the European Union, will produce positive results. The administration also has refused Ukraine’s desperate requests for non-lethal aid for its military as it attempts to turn back the quasi-covert offensive.

    Russian President Vladi­mir Putin, in contrast, clearly is unconcerned about provoking the other side. Russian operatives, who apparently have infiltrated military forces, have been steadily stepping up their attacks on Ukrainian government installations in a dozen or more cities and towns. On Wednesday these forces and their Ukrainian followers managed to turn back a weak effort by the Ukrainian government to retake some of the installations, in one case disarming a column of government soldiers and confiscating their armored personnel carriers.

    Consequently, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will arrive in Geneva with considerable leverage. With eastern Ukraine in Russian-induced chaos, Moscow is ready not to negotiate but to dictate terms. “Ukraine,” said Mr. Lavrov on Wednesday, “must be forced to start genuine rather than cosmetic constitutional reform.” By that he means Ukraine should be forced to dismember itself into autonomous regions that the Kremlin could manipulate and ultimately control.

    What chips do the United States and European Union have to counter Moscow’s bald aggression? Little more than vague threats. “We are actively looking at our options,” said White House spokesman Jay Carney on Tuesday. Officials privately say they are working with the Europeans on a modest expansion of last month’s sanctions against Mr. Putin’s inner circle — while holding off on the far-more-potent “sectoral sanctions” that Mr. Kerry said were “on the table” last week.

    The Obama administration is not wrong to pursue a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine crisis. But diplomacy can’t succeed when the underlying balance of forces is lopsidedly in favor of a U.S. adversary — and the administration declines to take actions that might create incentives for compromise. That’s as true of Mr. Putin’s Russia as it is of Bashar al-Assad’s Syria, which dismissed the last U.S. effort to broker an accord in Geneva after Mr. Obama elected not to provide significant support for Syrian rebels.

    Administration advocates of inaction argue that Washington should move only in concert with European governments, which have much larger economic interests in Russia and consequently are more reluctant. But as it demonstrated with Iran, the United States has the power to take potent action on its own, especially in the financial sector — and such steps can induce other countries to join in. By waiting for Europe, the Obama administration essentially hands a veto over its response to what it describes as unacceptable transgressions to states such as Cyprus and Malta.

    The Obama administration’s attempt to smooth the way for a diplomatic solution has virtually ensured that the Geneva meeting will fail. Once it does, the president should take action that will give Mr. Putin tangible cause to pull back.

    – Washington Post

  • Two strikes

    Two strikes

    •The blast in Abuja and kidnap of 100 school girls reinforce need for a new thinking in handling the insurgency

    Even as Nigerians were still busy counting their losses from the bomb blasts that rocked a bus station in Nyanya, near the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) on Monday, insurgents suspected to be Boko Haram members abducted 100 girls at the Girls Senior Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State, on Tuesday. The relative successes recorded by the insurgents in both incidents would suggest that we are still a long way from winning the terrorism war. Yet this is a war on which we have spent billions of naira; a war in which we have had to declare a state of emergency in three states for close to a year.

    The Abuja incident occurred between 6.30 a.m. and 6.55 a.m., when workers, traders, artisans and others were setting out for work. An account had it that the blast came from a Golf car XQ 2291 SD that was parked near the buses in the park where commuters had converged. A top security source said: “Report indicated that five insurgents came out of the car pretending to be waiting to join a bus. But these insurgents had barely alighted when the remote-controlled bomb went off”. By the time the dust settled, no fewer than 150 persons were killed and about 164 others injured, many critically. Official death toll however stood at 72. The sight was too gory to behold, with human parts littering the scene apart from the heavy losses incurred by vehicle owners whose buses were burnt beyond recognition. “I saw a woman lying face down without limbs. One who was surrounded by the children, struggled for life and gave up in their arms”, an eyewitness recounted.

    The abduction of the secondary school girls may not be as bloody, but it also leaves sour taste in the mouth that as many as 100 students could be abducted at once without anyone being able to abort the plan before it was executed. And this in a state under emergency! Armed men were said to have stormed the town in the night of Monday, burning and shooting. They killed the soldier and the policeman on guard. The girls were said to be preparing for their Senior Secondary Certificate Examination (SSCE) when they were forcibly taken by the gunmen.

    It is intriguing that the president could not even take time to rue the Abuja incident as he visited Kano and Ibadan on Tuesday. He was in Kano for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Unity Rally to receive former Governor Ibrahim Shekarau to the party; and Ibadan to rejoice with the Olubadan of Ibadan, Oba Samuel Odulana, who was celebrating his centenary birthday. Did the president think the few hours between when the Abuja blasts occurred and the time of the rally was enough to grieve with the aggrieved? Could the rally not have been rescheduled? However, whether this insensitivity is becoming a pattern on the part of the president is not the issue here. Suffice it to say that the Abuja blast and abduction of the students have exposed the nation’s underbellies once again in several areas.

    For example, what has happened to the N76billion National Security Communications System Close-Circuit Television (CCTV) cameras that were reportedly installed in strategic areas of the FCT? Some FCT residents want the government to justify the money spent on the project by providing the video footage of those who perpetrated the crime. Would one be wrong to smell corruption here? With specific reference to the park incident, cameras ought to have been installed in every garage, given that this is not the first such attack on garages.

    In the same vein, it should not have been easy for the insurgents to take away 100 students the way they did if government had ensured adequate security in schools after the attack on the Federal Government College, Buni Yadi, near Damaturu, the Yobe State capital in February, during which they either burnt or shot to death 59 students. All the school’s buildings were burnt and the Federal Government responded by closing down five schools in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states. It also asked students writing public examinations to relocate to other schools. The February 24 attack on FGC Buni Yadi was the fourth recorded attack on schools in Yobe State since the insurgency commenced, as Government Secondary School, Damaturu, Government Secondary School Mamudo and College of Agriculture, Gujba had all been attacked last year.

    We may ask for a summit on security, but a pertinent question in all these is the place of inside intelligence. It is unfathomable that 100 students could be taken away unnoticed in a state under emergency where every school should be under surveillance. Could there be collusion on the part of some security agents with the insurgents? There are also complaints that, in spite of our experience on the insurgency, our response to such tragedies remains slow. Some eyewitnesses said it took rescue teams some time before arriving the scene of the Abuja tragedy and that some of the victims who could have been saved had there been prompt emergency response during the critical moments died after losing much blood.

    Given the frequency of the attacks by the insurgents and their ferocious nature, it would seem we lack the capacity to adequately address the scourge. This is a war that we have spent billions to prosecute without much result. We may need more foreign assistance than we presently have. But even then, intelligence is key to the success of the outsiders with the requisite knowledge and experience in anti-terrorism matters that we may invite. If the government feels otherwise, fine; but it must have realised by now that there is need to restrategise in the battle to defeat the insurgents. One thing is sure however, and that is the fact that the matter has gone beyond the usual presidential assurance that “… we will get over it” that we are now so familiar with whenever the evil ones have done their worst.

    Yes, we will get over it; but we have to be alive to get over it. And if we are to get over it, the president must lead the way; he should show genuine leadership. He cannot be junketing about to social functions and political rallies and expect the Boko Haram challenge to disappear into thin air. That is tantamount to Nero playing the fiddle while Rome burned. To wish Boko Haram away is the height of incurable optimism on President Jonathan’s part. We cannot subscribe to that.

  • Standing up to Russia

    Standing up to Russia

    • If Moscow continues to threaten Ukraine, the U.S. and Europe should impose tougher sanctions.

    Perhaps Russia can be induced to pull its troops back from the border with Ukraine and to abandon efforts to destabilize what is left of that country after its illegal annexation of Crimea. It’s not a sign of weakness for the United States and other nations to pursue those objectives through negotiations.

    But the U.S. and its European allies simultaneously need to make it clear that if Russia continues to threaten and intimidate Ukraine, new economic sanctions will be imposed not only on individual high-ranking Russian officials but also on entire sectors of the Russian economy. That would admittedly be a more painful policy for European countries than for the United States, given Europe’s dependence on Russian energy.

    On Sunday, in a debate that recalled Cold War confrontations between the U.S. and the old Soviet Union, U.S. envoy Samantha Power accused Russia of orchestrating the “synchronized surgical seizure of buildings” in eastern Ukraine by pro-Russia separatists.

    Power didn’t provide a smoking gun comparable to the reconnaissance photos brandished by her predecessor Adlai Stevenson in 1962, when he accused the Soviets of installing nuclear missiles in Cuba. But she referred to “videos of professional military shepherding thugs into a building in Kramatorsk” and “the photographs showing the so-called concerned citizens taking over Slavyansk equipped exactly like the elite troops that took Crimea.” (Pro-Russia forces continued to occupy government buildings Monday, as Ukraine’s president called for the deployment of a United Nations peacekeeping force — an operation that Russia could block by exercising its veto on the U.N. Security Council.)

    Unlike in Crimea, Russian President Vladimir Putin may not intend to annex the regions in eastern Ukraine where armed separatists have challenged the government in Kiev. His objective may instead be to undermine the authority of Ukraine’s current leaders and pressure them into granting greater autonomy to pro-Russia regions. But that sort of “slow-motion invasion” is also an intolerable violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty.

    Ukraine isn’t a member of NATO and the alliance isn’t bound to defend it. Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain’s suggestion that the United States supply Ukraine with “light weapons” (which would be useless against the Russian army) is more of a primal scream than a policy prescription. But the U.S. and its allies can take measures short of military action to punish Putin for his adventurism and disregard for international law. After the invasion of Crimea, German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned that Russia would face “massive” political and economic damage if it didn’t change course. That can’t become a hollow threat.

    – Los Angeles Times

     

     

  • Questioning Diezani

    Questioning Diezani

    •It is bad enough that she has touched off a scandal; it is even more outrageous that she should defy a probe

    Separation of powers, a time-honoured principle in decent political systems, may count for little or nothing among major players in the country’s central administration, and the evidence is increasingly evident.  The chartered jets’ scandal involving the Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke, and the related defiance of the legislature by specific officials connected with the affair, must rank among contemptuous violations of this rational political arrangement that is ultimately intended as a check on absolutism.

    News that Alison-Madueke and others are apparently frustrating investigation of the controversial issue by the House of Representatives Committee on Public Accounts is a sad commentary on the understanding of members of the executive arm of government in respect of their limits in the context of political checks and balances. The decision of the lawmakers to probe the allegation that Alison-Madueke blew N10billion in the last three years  flying in a chartered Challenger 850 in her official capacity was decidedly proper; and subsequent findings that she allegedly chartered other jets, including a Global Express XRS, validated putting the spotlight on insensitive wastefulness in the country’s oil and gas sector.

    It is lamentable that the committee, which has three weeks to conclude its investigation and submit a report to the House, is bogged down by alleged intransigence, particularly by Alison-Madueke and the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Mr. Andrew Yakubu, who have been requested, without success, to provide information on the funding of the minister’s mode of air transport as well as possible enabling regulation. Not a word has been received from these individuals in response to the committee’s enquiries, which represents an unacceptable negative statement on their perception and perspective.

    Even worse and equally condemnable is the report that the committee has had to deal with external pressure aimed at getting it to soft-pedal the scandal.  Indeed, it is disturbing that what appears to be accommodation by the Presidency, which has refrained from a serious examination of the damning allegations, may send wrong signals to government functionaries, if not society in general, about the elasticity of the administration on official misconduct.

    Interestingly, it is noteworthy that this jet scandal is reminiscent of the long-drawn-out controversy over the involvement of Princess Stella Oduah, a former Minister of Aviation, in the outrageous purchase of two bulletproof cars for N255 million, which eventually led to her face-saving exit from office. It should not become a trend for the government to act belatedly and inadequately to address wrongful conduct by public servants.

    The worrying report of efforts by the pro-Alison-Madueke camp to botch the committee’s work by questioning the powers of the legislature under Section (1) (2) of the 1999 Constitution and seeking judicial interpretation of the law demonstrates puzzling desperation. However, if her supporters in the end pursue that course of action, it may unintentionally prove helpful in the long term; for it is high time the courts resolved the contentious issue of the extent of the National Assembly’s oversight functions.

    Nevertheless, it is impressive that the committee has remained on course, and has summoned relevant agencies to a public inquiry concerning the jet scandal scheduled to begin on April 29. It is hoped that these agencies, NNPC, the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) and the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) will cooperate with the lawmakers in the larger interest of the country.

    However, it must be emphasised that no individual or body should be encouraged to have the illusion of being above the law.  Alison-Madueke and Yakubu in particular should be compelled by lawful means to supply the requested information; and to appear before the committee, if necessary. It goes without saying that when those who should otherwise be accountable to the people project an unreal sense of unquestionability, society should exercise its fundamental sovereignty.

     

  • NHRC on ‘Apo eight’

    NHRC on ‘Apo eight’

    •Security forces should pay fine or appeal verdict

    National Human Rights Commission’s (NHRC) indictment of the security agents who carried out an operation that led to the death of eight squatters in the Apo district of Abuja in 2013, is a serious matter; it should not be swept under the carpet. We have had too many cases of extra-judicial killings in the country and it is high time we started punishing the culprits.

    The eight persons were killed in an uncompleted building in the Apo district on September 20, last year, when security agents, comprising operatives of the State Security Service (SSS) and the army stormed the place, ostensibly to arrest an alleged Boko Haram leader, Suleiman R-Kelly, said to have buried arms in the Apo Cemetery. The SSS was later to say that the eight were killed when suspected Boko Haram members in the building opened fire on the troops, who had no choice than to retaliate in self-defence.

    The NHRC however decided to conduct a public hearing into the matter when members of the National Association of Commercial Tricycle and Motorcycle Owners and Riders Association (NATOMORAS) said the slain men were its members and that the attack was unprovoked. A panel of the NHRC, including the chairman of its governing council, Prof. Chidi Odinkalu, and the executive secretary, Prof. Bem Angwe, took submissions from parties involved in the matter, including the SSS, the army and NATOMORAS members.

    The panel rejected the submission of the security agents that the eight men were killed in self-defence., “They were, therefore, protected, civilian non-combatants, the NHRC said.” It added that “Taking account of all the circumstances in this case, the application of lethal force was disproportionate and the killings of the eight deceased as well as injuries to the eleven survivors were unlawful.”

    It is gratifying that the commission was able to see the case to a logical conclusion. There have been too many cases of summary executions by almost all segments of our military personnel as well as the police that never went beyond being reported in the media and we moved on as if such was the norm rather than the exception. Many of such incidents involving especially the police had been attributed to accidental discharge. We cannot continue to condone such wanton killings of innocent Nigerians, especially by those paid to protect them.

    For sure, the era of the ‘unknown soldier’ is gone; those who released the shots that killed the Apo eight’ must be fished out. The killings fell short of our expectations from our military, especially in a democratic dispensation. It is therefore not enough to order the Federal Government to pay N135m as compensation to the victims – including N10m for each of the deceased persons, as well as N5m to each of 11 injured survivors; as the commission recommended; the individuals involved must be identified and stripped of their institutional garb. They must be made to account for their actions.

    We commend the NHRC for rising to the occasion by conducting a public hearing into the matter in line with its constitutional mandate. We also commend it for making it known that the security agents did not have the right to banish the other squatters who were arrested during the operation, and ‘banished’ from the Federal Capital Territory. “There is no basis in law for confining detainees freed by the respondents to internal banishment,” the commission said. The point must be made that no one, including our military, has the right to kill extra-judicially or be trigger-happy. As things stand, the security agencies should appeal the decision or pay the fines and release the culprits for necessary trials in our law courts.

  • Crude oil swap

    Crude oil swap

    •It’s time to lift the veil on transactions

    Time again for our lawmakers to go after ringworms when a more malignant disease of leprosy is indicated: At a time no discernable pathway to resolution of the alleged missing $20 billion is anywhere in sight, the House of Representatives, last week, gave approval for a $1.56 billion loan for the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).

    We consider it bad enough that the details of the loan curiously described as “forward sale agreement” are at this time known only to both the NNPC and the joint committees of the House on Petroleum Resources (Upstream)/Petroleum Resources (Downstream), Loans and Debts/Justice. But worse is that the House opted to put the cart before the horse when it first handed the NNPC the carte blanche to burden Nigerians with the odious debts before requiring it to “develop the roadmap for offsetting its indebtedness”.

    More tragic of course is that the House, which professes to share in the public indignation over the pervasive rot in the corporation, appears to have in equal measure, passed off the consideration of another simmering scandal – the controversial crude-oil-for refined products swap under which a huge chunk of the 445,000 barrels of crude meant for local consumption is exchanged for refined products in circumstances that lack transparency as they are baffling.

    Last week, the Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Finance, Abdulmumin Jibrin, actually dismissed calls for the investigation of the Crude Oil Swap insisting that “the House can’t waste its precious time for another round of exercise”.

    His words: “Our House committee has been neck deep in querying and investigating NNPC, Department of Petroleum Resources, Accountant-General of the Federation and the Federal Inland Revenue Service on a frequent basis about several transactions that impact on the oil revenues paid into the Federation Account”.

    He would claim rather dismissively that “a lot of information out there on the swap template is over-exaggerated”.

    We do not agree. Indeed, the House, in failing to undertake an inquiry may actually be guilty of abdicating its responsibility.

    The issues behind the call are hardly new. At the heart of the scandal is the national oil corporation whose four refineries with combined capacity to refine 445,000 barrels of crude per day, but which in more than a decade have operated only at a fraction of capacity, yet received and perhaps continues to receive, crude volumes equal to the said total capacity only to sell the latter at substantial discount, at humongous costs to the treasury.

    The Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) had in its audit report submitted to the National Assembly, accused four oil companies of under-delivering products worth $8 billion in 2011 under the crude-for-refined products swap. The companies are Trafigura (173,786,600 litres); Vitol (654,440.7 litres); Taleveras (152,308,878 litres); Aiteo Nigeria Limited (193,046,590 litres) and Ontario Oil and Gas (180,278,732 litres).

    Today, two of them, Taleveras and Aiteo – with absolutely no previous experience in running producing oil assets – have since emerged as owners of Shell Nigeria’s oil blocks – Oil Mining Lease (OML 29) with its 97-kilometre Nembe Creek oil pipeline sequel to their posting of the highest and unmatched bid of $2.85 billion for the assets.

    Unlike the House, we do not find anything strange in the request to beam the searchlight on the oil-swap deal – something that is easily the engine room of the opaque economy of oil. The same goes for the demand to know about the operations of the two unknown quantities, given their past but troubling ties to the NNPC. That the House cannot appreciate this elementary demand for transparency is not only disappointing but tragic.

  • Pension Reform Bill

    Pension Reform Bill

    •A welcome law, but we hope it will be enforced when finally assented to

    OVER the years, pensioners have suffered untold hardship and neglect, while many of them have died prematurely as a result of non-payment of their gratuities, pensions and arrears for years. Even the Senate President, David Mark, had at one time expressed concern over the horrible plight of pensioners when he not only lamented but pronounced a curse on pension thieves.

    The ‘pension house’ has turned out to be a gold mine for pension officials from grade level 4 and above. The scam became so rampant that a certain Alhaji Abdulrasheed Maina, Director of Pensions, was caught with over N21billion allegedly kept in his personal account and the account of one of his relatives. The scam became a celebrated one that led to an investigation and subsequent arrest. Unfortunately, the Federal Government failed to do anything about it until the culprit fled.

    Against this pitiful background, it is heartwarming that, at last, the Senate, on April 8 passed the pension reform bill which, if concurred to by the House of Representatives and assented to by President Goodluck Jonathan, would punish anyone who misappropriates pension funds with a 10-year jail term. This is apart from refunding three times the amount embezzled. The bill also goes further to stipulate that anybody who attempts to misappropriate pension funds would, on conviction, be liable to the same punishment. In addition, a pension thief would forfeit any property, assets or money with interest on the stolen money, to the Federal Government.

    Perhaps, the Senate ought to have included in the law a proviso that money owed to pensioners in form of arrears should equally attract accrued interests to the beneficiaries, as the stolen money fraudulently put in fixed accounts by the pension thieves belong to the pensioners.

    There are other penalties, ranging from the 10-year imprisonment to a fine of N500,000 to be paid daily by any agency which fails to give proper information about actual or attempted stealing of pension funds.

    It may be argued that this bill is rather late in coming, because hundreds of pensioners have died as a result of the greed and wickedness of some pension officials. However, it is better late than never. But then, one cannot but wonder why the need for this special legislation against corruption in the ‘pension house’ when there are existing laws against corrupt practices in Nigeria.

    It would appear however, that the new law is meant to revise the existing ones, particularly as the extant laws are out of tune with modern realities. But the problem of corruption in Nigeria is not about laws or legislations, which have always been there. Rather, it is the lack of political will to enforce these laws. Alhaji Maina, for instance, would not have got the opportunity to run away with over N21billion of pensioners’ funds if the extant law (in spite of its inadequacies) had been applied as appropriate. This is true of many other cases of embezzlement of public funds which are either being investigated or have been abandoned. This is an area where the prosecutors and the judiciary have failed the nation.

    It is now left for the judiciary and other relevant organs to revise all the existing laws that are outdated and therefore not in tune with the alarming rate of criminal activities in the country today. However, the bottom line, as we pointed out, is not about the lack of laws but lack of the political will to enforce them, irrespective of the status or ‘connection’ of the offenders.

     

  • Rebasing rhetoric

    Rebasing rhetoric

    Rebasing rhetoric

    TWENTY-three years after, Nigeria has finally revised its Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the total value of its goods and services. The results have been startling: the country’s GDP nearly doubled, rising 89 per cent from U.S. $283 billion to $510 billion, making it Africa’s largest economy and 26th largest in the world.
    For a country that has long touted itself as the “Giant of Africa”, rebasing appears to confirm its self-perception and justify its sense of its place in the world. Virtually overnight, Nigeria has put itself at the vanguard of the exciting new developments that characterise the world’s emerging economies. Economic sectors like telecommunications, information technology and entertainment have been incorporated into GDP, showing that the economy is in fact far more diversified than had hitherto been acknowledged.
    The jump in nominal GDP brings with it an improvement in significant credit ratios, such as that of debt-to-GDP and interest payments to GDP, both of which are well within positive parameters. The country’s GDP per capita has risen to $2,689, higher than that of the Philippines and close to that of Morocco.
    In spite of the good news Nigeria’s GDP rebasing appears to have brought, it does seem that it raises more questions than answers. There is the issue of why a five-yearly exercise took more than 20 years to carry out. Given the Jonathan administration’s growing desperation to present a picture of economic growth ahead of the 2015 general elections, it is to be wondered whether the timing of the rebasing is more than mere coincidence. The current Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, was finance minister between 2003 and 2006; why did she not make a case for GDP rebasing then?
    There is also the point that GDP rebasing does not alter fundamental economic facts. Nigeria may now be Africa’s largest economy, but it still contends with an enormous infrastructural deficit, especially in the areas of power, roads, health and education. At about the same time that Nigeria’s new economic standing was announced, the World Bank declared that Nigeria, India and China had the greatest number of poor people in the world; the proportion for Nigeria is greater, given that the other two nations each have populations in excess of one billion people.
    Rebasing has, in some cases, negatively affected important indicators of economic well-being: fiscal revenues relative to GDP have fallen from 25 per cent to 14 per cent, on a par with Bangladesh and Guatemala; foreign exchange reserves relative to GDP are now much smaller. The ratio of interest payments to revenues remains unchanged, as is government’s revenue-generation capacity.
    Nor does the GDP revision do anything to improve the negative attitudes that are the bane of the country. Far from lessening corruption and greed, it actually conveys the impression that the so-called national cake is even bigger than hitherto imagined, and therefore that there is more to share: this appears to be the thinking of the House of Representatives which last week demanded that the quarterly allowance of each member be increased to N45 million from the current N27 million. The country is still grappling with a host of corruption scandals in oil subsidies, pensions, duty waivers, employment recruitment and revenue remittances.
    The best way to approach the rebasing of Nigeria’s GDP is to see it as an opportunity to embark on a new beginning. It does not only demonstrate how big the country actually is, but how great its potential is, and it offers indications of the ways in which that potential can be transformed into reality. If Nigeria can become a half-trillion dollar economy with all the infrastructural challenges it is facing, how much more would it achieve if the most pressing issues were properly dealt with? That is what government and the citizenry should focus upon.
  • Abuse of position

    Abuse of position

    It has increasingly become difficult to sieve between right and wrong and even the good and bad in this unhallowed age. In this era of the parvenu, just anything goes, it seems. This would explain why the wife of the president, Dame Patience Jonathan, would openly admit that she endorses and supports a political aspirant. If only she understands the deeper import of her action?

    Recently, some news reports had speculated that she planned to ‘install’ governors in three states of the federation in the coming election; the states being Bayelsa, Bauchi and Rivers. In a statement by her media assistant, she put out a vehement denial branding the report a figment of the imagination of the writers and noting that she does not meddle in the selection process of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

    But in another breath, the same rebuttal says: “In the case of Rivers State, the First Lady wishes to state categorically that the supervising Minister of Education, Chief Nyesom Wike, is the leader of the PDP in Rivers State and he enjoys the followership of the people of the state. The First Lady is solidly behind Chief Wike.

    “The people of Rivers State are also solidly behind Chief Wike and are prepared to follow him. It is therefore mischievous to insinuate that Mrs. Jonathan is working to ensure that the governorship candidate comes from one of the riverine areas of Rivers State which may not be where the people are going. Mrs. Jonathan has not withdrawn her support for Chief Wike at any time …”

    Let it be noted that the wife of the president is entitled to her right to support whomsoever she wishes in an election and it would be a wonder if she did not align herself to Wike’s aspirations in Rivers State, considering that the minister has been the unhidden proxy in the feud between the first family and the incumbent governor of the state, Mr. Rotimi Amaechi. Indeed, the first lady and not the president, has been touted to be the aggressor and arrowhead in that intractable fight for the soul of Rivers State. Her activities in the state she visits ever so frequently and her body language leave no one in doubt about her proprietary right in a place she calls her ancestral home. In the last one year, she has established a vainglorious habit of shutting down Port Harcourt, the state capital, each time she visits.

    We wish to admonish that no matter the lure to support and push her surrogate son to Government House, Port Harcourt, in 2015, her position as the wife of the president imposes on her, that enormous duty of utmost constraint and decorum. Neither in her utterances nor action must she be seen to be perverting the electoral system. It is trite to note that her open declaration of support for any candidate would impinge on the election process both at the party level and among the electorate. It would therefore be perverse and a subversion of the process for her to openly declare support for an aspirant even before the race has begun. And if we may remind, Chief Wike whom she roots for oversees a ministry in which teachers of polytechnics have been on strike for nearly 10 months with no solution in sight.

    A first lady making the aspiration of a candidate a fait accompli is impunity raised to the level of thoughtlessness. It is most reprehensible if not irresponsible when we blatantly deny the people the opportunity to choose; we do damage to our democratic institutions and subvert our electoral processes with indiscretions such as this. We hope the president would call his wife to order.