The Nation Newspaper

Category: Editorial

  • Sacred cow

    Sacred cow

    •Corruption is Jonathan’s presidential sacred cow. You will move against it at your peril. But all that must change this year.

    The tragedy of the Goodluck Jonathan presidency is not only that it has shown almost no appetite to fight and defeat corruption; it gets tetchy when told to do so. That must change this year.

    The President’s irritable irritability is so apparent from his latest spat with Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor, for alleged whistle blowing, over alleged “missing” US $49.8 billion from the Federation Account. The “missing” money has been reconciled down to US $10.8 billion; and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), even without giving specific details, has declared it spent the money on its operations!

    What could have moved the President to attempt an illegal sack of the CBN governor, knowing only two-thirds of the Senate could carry out such? That Mallam Sanusi leaked the letter to former President Olusegun Obasanjo as alleged? Or that the CBN governor wrote the letter-alert at all?

    From the President’s usual grumpiness when corruption charges are levied against his administration, that Sanusi blew the whistle would appear more likely. That tallies with the charge that the President’s body language hugs corruption as some long-lost friend, while it should shun it as a leper.

    This allegation could, of course, be false, as the President has always maintained. But Oduahgate, the outrageous scandal of buying two BMW bullet-proof limousines for N255 million involving Stella Oduah, Minister of Aviation, does the President’s anti-corruption claims no credit. Apart from stonewalling the House of Representatives’ recommendation that the minister be fired, the President is also sitting on the recommendations of his own probe panel, which not a few think was superfluous, constituted only to buy time.

    Still, the Jonathan-Oduah seeming umbilical cord — corruption charges be damned! — amply suggests the fount of every corruption is political. Why wouldn’t the President move against Ms Oduah: is it because she ran his Neighbour-to-Neighbour (N2N) campaign platform in 2011?

    True, N2N is not under any formal probe for sleaze. But is the President staking the honour of his office, and even his own political future, on Ms Oduah because she has a mandate to garner funds for 2015? Whatever the reasons, it is curious that the President is shielding a clear liability, when common sense dictates he sacks her; for her conduct in the whole scandal is well and truly reprehensible.

    Then, the cavalier arrogance of the NNPC, when the subject is transparency in matters of the public trove, is intolerable. NNPC virtually declared it had spent US $10.8 billion public money as it pleased — on behalf of the Jonathan Presidency — and whoever did not like it could go drown in the Atlantic!

    Yet, mum has been the word from the Presidency. Mum has been the word from Diezani Alison-Madueke, petroleum minister and another presidential untouchable, alleged to have blown another N2 billion on air charter. Mum too has been the word from Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Jonathan’s bean-counting finance minister and coordinating minister for the economy!

    And the President wants to fight the charge that his body language is not corruption-tolerant!

    The likes of NNPC and Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) have over the years developed seedy reputations as some courier for political sleaze. But never has NNPC become this brazen as it is under the Jonathan Presidency!

    So, let Oduah’s head roll; and let Jonathan, at least, put in place checks and balances to curtail NNPC’s opacity; and reassure Nigerians that the nation’s coffer, under him, is not a sink hole.

    But the structural answer to corruption is simple: restructure so that the central government is rid of its excess funds, in favour of the states, which are closer to the people. Fortunately, a national conference is afoot; and restructuring to defeat corruption can be pushed.

    If the President cannot show good examples, the anti-corruption agencies are losing steam and credibility, and the President would not essay restructuring to rid the central coffers of excess cash that fuels corruption, then the future is bleak.

    The President must change tack — or the nation sinks!

  • ASUP strike

    ASUP strike

    With the strike by the Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics (ASUP) now over seven months old, it is difficult for the Federal Government to disprove the notion that it does not care about polytechnic education. ASUP had gone on strike on April 17, 2013, more than two months before the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) began its strike. It suspended the strike on July 17, 2013.

    The strike was to press home a 12-point demand, but the four major ones include: (1) that government should inject N20.8billion, for a start, into polytechnic education; (2) bridge the gap between the university graduates and those from the polytechnics; (3) constitute a need assessment committee for polytechnic education and (4) address the poor state of state-owned polytechnics

    Government’s nonchalant attitude to the strike is reflected in its silence on it, in the hope, perhaps, that the polytechnic lecturers will return to classes when they become strike-weary. ASUP national president, Chibuzo Asomuhga, is pained, and rightly so, that “while the government intervened in other sectors that went on strike or threatened to go on strike, it had ignored the nation’s call for an end to the ongoing strike”.

    While government should not pander to the wishes of just anybody who downs tools for whatever reasons, it should treat every case on its merit. There is no doubt that our polytechnics, just like the universities as well as other levels of education in the country are in crisis. ASUU, which has just ended a six-month-old strike also did not have it easy with the government. It took a lot of pressuring from the public to get the government to agree to give the universities some money.

    Yet, Nigerians see public officials, particularly politicians, living in affluence while the government keeps saying there is no money to fund the major sectors, including the educational sector. It is bad faith for the government to agree to give ASUP N20.8billion to improve the state of polytechnics only to renege, months after the agreement. ASUP should however realise that the government is not doing this to it alone; ASUU suffered the same fate in the hands of successive administrations. But the Federal Government will do well to fulfill that aspect of the bargain.

    However, some of the other issues on this matter, like the disparity of staff and graduates of polytechnics cannot be resolved in the media. The Federal Government should set up a committee on why lecturers in polytechnics and colleges of education cannot go beyond senior lecturers while only in the universities can senior lecturers move to Readers/Associate Professors and finally to Professors. On this important issue, some questions need to be raised and answered. Do the differences in qualities and standards, the mode of appointments and promotion suggest the difference in the qualities of academic staff in the universities and polytechnics and the award of university degrees and polytechnic diplomas? Eventually the matter may be resolved by the requirements for admission (some polytechnics admit candidates with three credits), etc.

    The Federal Government cannot afford to be partial in matters of educational policy. It should define the roles of each educational institution in Nigeria. Let the government also state the minimum qualifications for teaching in each of these institutions, and the level of research and development associated with these requirements. This will solve the problem of parity or disparity in the higher institutions as anybody will be free to move from one institution to another according to his/her qualifications and need, research potentials and expected contributions to national development.

    All said, for a country that is thirsty for technological development, we cannot afford to ignore the polytechnics.

  • Congress should let diplomacy on Iran nuclear program play out

    Congress should let diplomacy on Iran nuclear program play out

    NUCLEAR NEGOTIATIONS with Iran are proving as difficult as skeptics expected following a preliminary agreement in November. Though President Obama announced the accord in a national television address on Nov. 23, only this weekend was a plan for implementing the interim agreement finalized. In the meantime, Iranian negotiators staged one walkout, continued to stonewall a U.N. investigation of past work on nuclear weapons and polished designs for new centrifuges. Israeli warnings that the deal could cause remaining sanctions to crumble look worryingly prescient: Russia is reportedly negotiating a major oil-for-goods deal, and French business owners are booking trips to Tehran.

    Implementation of the interim agreement should stop Iran’s highest-level enrichment of uranium, reduce its stockpiles of that material by half and prevent the installation of additional centrifuges and the start up of a new reactor capable of producing plutonium. However, as Iran’s chief negotiator put it Monday in describing the terms of the deal, “No facility will be closed; enrichment will continue, and qualitative and nuclear research will be expanded.” Even if the sanctions regime remains intact, Iran will benefit from a relaxation the Obama administration says is worth about $7 billion.

    Pursuing negotiations on these terms, though risky, is preferable to unrestrained Iranian enrichment and a slide toward war. Still, it’s understandable that many in Congress are worried that Iran will escape from the economic corner that sanctions have put it in without meaningfully reducing its nuclear infrastructure or its potential to build a bomb. Those concerns have prompted 59 senators, including 16 Democrats, to back a bill sponsored by Sen. Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) and Republican Mark Kirk (Ill.) that would mandate sweeping new sanctions if no final accord is reached or if Tehran violates the existing deal.

    In a commentary in The Post last week, Mr. Menendez called his bill a “diplomatic insurance policy” that by “spell[ing] out precisely the consequences should agreement fail” should “motivate Iranians to negotiate honestly and seriously.” There is an obvious logic to this: After all, it was tough sanctions passed by Congress in 2010, resisted by the Obama administration, that helped bring about Iran’s recent change of government and its leaders’ willingness to negotiate.

    The White House’s strident opposition to the bill continues a distasteful practice — also seen in the debate over Syria — of accusing all who disagree with its strategy of favoring war. That’s an insult to serious legislators such as Sens. Benjamin Cardin (D-Md.) and Mark Warner (D-Va.), both of whom reasonably seek to hedge against failed negotiations.

    Nevertheless, the senators already may have accomplished the maximum good by proposing the bill, thereby raising the pressure on the administration and Iran. Passing it — which probably would require overcoming a presidential veto — would be problematic. Among other things, the bill inserts Congress into the negotiations by spelling out provisions that must be included in a final deal and linking the new sanctions to terrorism, Iran’s missile tests and a nuclear settlement.

    This diplomacy has been President Obama’s initiative, and he should be allowed to carry it through to success or failure. Congress then would have a mandate to act, either in lifting sanctions or in redoubling them.

    – Washington Post

     

  • Infrastructure

    Infrastructure

    It is certainly no exaggeration to assert that the quality of public infrastructure is as crucial to the virility, sustenance and growth of any economy as air is essential to the existence of human beings. The state of physical and social infrastructure – power, water, public transportation, telecommunication, roads, schools and medical facilities – in a country is a measure, not just of the health of the economy but also the well-being of the vast majority of her people.

    In Nigeria, public infrastructure in virtually all sectors was allowed to decay abysmally, particularly during the years of predatory military rule. Yet, it is unfortunate that about 15 years after the democratic restoration of 1999, the infrastructure deficit has only gone wider. Even if many of the state governments are also remiss in this respect, the larger blame lies with the Federal Government, which is allocated more than half of the country’s national revenues but has little or nothing to show for it.

    With the next presidential election coming up in the first quarter of 2015, there is a tendency at all levels for partisan politicking to shove any meaningful governance aside. But President Goodluck Jonathan in particular has a duty to face his oft-repeated determination to transform Nigeria. Right now, the effects of the ‘Transformation Agenda’ are hardly felt in any sector of the economy. This is particularly so in the all-important provision of physical and social infrastructure, which is so vital to Nigeria’s development.

    Given the lethargic implementation of past budgets, it is only natural for Nigerians to be sceptical about the rosy promises in the 2014 budgetary proposals. Tagged ‘Budget of Job Creation and Growth’, the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who presented the budget to the National Assembly on behalf of the President, enthused later to journalists that “The budget is going to support the push in agriculture; it would kick-start the housing sector where it can create more jobs; it is designed to support manufacturing because jobs could be created there. Industries will also be created in solid minerals … Job creation is the key to really solve the problems of the Nigerian economy”.

    We agree that this is good talk from the Minister of Finance. However, we have had so much of promises in the past but nothing has changed; the living standard of the majority has rather steadily deteriorated. This newspaper has little confidence that the 2014 budgetary estimates will have any positive impact on our current deplorable infrastructure. For instance, recurrent expenditure still gets the highest allocation of N2.43 trillion relative to capital expenditure which was allocated only N1.1 trillion. Yet, experts point out that there is a correlation between capital spending and job creation. Capital spending is the key to the expansion and modernisation of physical and social infrastructure.

    It is so sad that while humongous amounts are allocated to various sectors on an annual basis, social services remain anaemic and physical infrastructure abysmal. The question therefore is, where does the money go? The finance minister said during the budget presentation to the National Assembly that “Thus far, about 48.1% of the capital expenditure has been released but unutilised as at 30th September 2012”. It is incredible that a country like Nigeria in dire need of massive investment into the provision of physical and social infrastructure could still have surplus, unutilised funds in the various ministries and agencies. Something is definitely amiss somewhere.

    We urge Dr Jonathan to personally and decisively look into this issue. After all, the buck stops at his table. The President should pay attention to the problems of public physical and social infrastructure this year and personally drive the effort to transform Nigeria into a habitable space that is secure, peaceful, efficient and attractive for investment.

  • Jonathan vs. Sanusi

    Jonathan vs. Sanusi

    Section 11 (2) 9F of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Act is clear enough on how the apex bank boss can be removed: “A person shall not remain a Governor or Deputy Governor or Director of the Bank if he is removed by the President – provided that the removal of the Governor shall be supported by two-thirds majority of the Senate praying that he be so removed”.

    If it is this explicit, where then did President Goodluck Jonathan get the idea that he could just wake up on a bad day and ask Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, the incumbent governor of the CBN, or any CBN governor for that matter, to resign?

    According to report, President Jonathan on phone ordered Mallam Sanusi to resign, for leaking a letter he (Sanusi) wrote to him on the unremitted $49.8 billion oil revenue to the Federation Account, to former President Olusegun Obasanjo. The misguided order, coming from the seat of power calls into question the quality of advice the President gets; as well as the place of due process in his administration. In short, it is emblematic of the President’s leadership style and pettiness, both of which belittle his office.

    We wonder the President’s obsession with leaving the substance in pursuit of the shadow. Even if what was not remitted was $10.8billion, it was still huge. Unfortunately, the President is not talking about that or asking the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) how such an amount could pass for its imprest account, as the corporation later made us to understand. Rather, he wants to punish someone suspected of leaking a letter.

    No doubt, Mallam Sanusi goofed in raising an alarm that $49.8billion was not remitted to the Federation Account when the actual amount was $10.8billion, a thing for which he should be censured, given the likely backlash in view of the source from which the figures came. But then, it is not a good reason for the President to lose his cool and want to assume powers that he does not have. Perhaps it would have been a different thing if the anger was coming from a President reputed for his no-nonsense style of governance or zero tolerance for sloppiness.

    This is why we wonder why the President was hasty in ‘punishing’ Mallam Sanusi. This is a man billed to step down as CBN governor in June, and was only three months away from his three-month terminal leave. Why would the same President Jonathan who has been pussyfooting in fighting corruption suddenly wake up from his deep slumber to ask Mallam Sanusi to resign over a letter he could not even prove Mallam Sanusi leaked, given that the said letter is already with some other agencies of government?

    The futility of the illegal presidential order lies in the fact that Mallam Sanusi has not resigned; and there seems to be nothing the President can do to force him out, unless he wants to compound his serial illegalities. President Jonathan ought to have learnt some lessons on the limits of his powers. Those who inserted the clause requiring two-thirds majority of the Senate to remove the CBN governor had people like him in mind; no economy can make progress when a President wakes up from the wrong side of the bed to pronounce the apex bank’s governor sacked. The office is too important to allow politicians turn into a musical chair.

    If President Jonathan was advised to toe the path that has led him once again into disrepute, he ought to have made some people pay for this, even as he should be reviewing the status of some of his other advisers. Alternatively, it is time for the President to begin to listen to good advice if he led himself into the misadventure. It is not presidential to want to use Mallam Sanusi to fight a proxy war.

  • How to poison the Iran talks

    How to poison the Iran talks

    Over the weekend, diplomats from Iran and six major world powers finalized the details of an interim agreement designed to stop progress on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program while negotiations proceed on a permanent deal to deprive Iran of nuclear weapons. But a bipartisan group of U.S. senators continues to press recklessly for new sanctions legislation.

    Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), a cosponsor of the Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act of 2013, has called the legislation an “insurance policy” in case negotiations fail. A better description is “poison pill.”

    Not only would the legislation authorize new sanctions at a time when the world has decided to offer Iran relief from some previous penalties as an inducement to forswear nuclear weapons; it also ties sanctions relief to conduct by Iran that has nothing to do with nuclear power, and it expresses the “sense of Congress” that the United States should “stand with Israel” if that nation launches a military attack on Iran.

    Menendez and other supporters of the legislation profess to be trying to help to President Obama as he and the leaders of the so-called P5-plus-1 — the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and Germany — strive to reach a comprehensive agreement with Tehran. They note that the new sanctions, including measures designed to drastically reduce Iran’s oil exports, wouldn’t take effect unless Iran breached commitments it already has made and refused to negotiate in good faith.

    But the best judge of whether enactment of such an “insurance policy” would undermine negotiations is not Congress but the branch of government that is actually engaged in those talks. In opposing the legislation, the State Department has cited an intelligence assessment that new sanctions “would undermine the prospects for a successful comprehensive nuclear agreement with Iran.” Enactment of the legislation also could fracture the international united front that has put pressure on Iran.

    Obama has threatened to veto the legislation if it reaches his desk, but even if his veto were sustained — not a foregone conclusion — Congress’ kibitzing needlessly complicates already delicate negotiations.

    As the administration has acknowledged, an agreement in which Iran agrees to the purely peaceful use of nuclear power will be difficult to achieve. But the interim agreement, which admittedly came to pass only thanks to the pressure of U.S. and international sanctions, at least creates the possibility of such a breakthrough. If the current negotiations fail or Iran reneges on its commitments, there will be ample time for Congress to enact new sanctions. Meanwhile, the best congressional insurance policy for preventing a nuclear-armed Iran is patience.

     

    – Los Angeles Times

     

  • The polity

    The polity

    •The President must take the lead in ensuring that the polity is not set ablaze as stakeholders plan for the next general elections

    The year before general elections has always been one to determine how things go. As the clouds gather before it rains, so do telltale signs appear just before the electorate exercise their rights to elect their leaders.

    2015 is the major election year, but this is the year for Nigerians to join states where the sovereign will of the people prevails. It is a year when the government and the institutions saddled with the task of ensuring that the people decide the way forward will prove whether they can deliver without fear or favour.

    Two major elections are to be conducted within the year – in Ekiti and Osun states in the South West. Besides, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) will have another opportunity to prove it has no hidden agenda. It will be compiling and presenting another voter register. Would the biometric features on the cards be activated? Would the commission get the logistics right after the fiasco in Delta Central and Anambra, in 2013?

    There are also the security agents that are usually brought into the fray to harass voters. How professional would they be in the Ekiti and Osun polls? Has anything changed since they were last deployed for electoral duties? Then, how mature are the political parties in selecting their candidates and generally conducting their affairs before and after polling?

    It is to be noted that the government has much say in deciding the direction things go. If by the body language of the President the country is told that only free and fair elections would be acceptable, the heat in the polity would go down and the institutions encouraged to perform their tasks creditably. But, where the institutions of state are used as appendages of the ruling party; other contenders are told to find other means of contesting for power. In that wise, violence erupts and storms threaten the national health.

    So far, President Goodluck Jonathan is yet to deny a bid to continue his hold on power. This may be his constitutional right but it has become a source of friction on the political scene. He has demonstrated a tendency to allow the politician in him override his duty as a statesman and father of the nation. In this wise, the general quest for peace, progress and development is defeated and the prediction that national unity could be undermined is once again brought to the fore.

    One method the President has consistently used in recent times is silence in the face of crises. Whether there is a raging storm in Rivers State, he says nothing to douse tension and call those known to take orders from him to order. In his party, when key actors are at war, he pretends to be neutral when he is believed to be located at the centre of the strife. This has not helped matters. It is not presidential. A President should rise to the occasion and lead the search for solutions to problems.

    We call on President Jonathan to change his tactics. We urge him to be more decisive in acting in the interest of this country and begin to see things less from the parochial and partisan prism. How he handles the political crises rocking the country this year and reacts to preparations for 2015 may well decide his place in history.

    We also call on the major opposition parties to handle the realignment of forces with maturity. They should not aim merely at coming up with a contraption hurriedly assembled with a view to winning elections. What the people want is an alternative to the ruling party. In character, programme and operations, the opposition parties should carefully convince the electorate that they represent a movement to rescue the country.

    The people, too, should not present themselves as helpless. At and before the polls, they have to be more active and tell politicians what they want.

     

     

  • Perilous times

    Perilous times

    •Unbridled impunity in Rivers, by criminalising state organs, is a danger to democracy

    A very democratic administration in Nigeria has had its own security man Friday, those overzealous policemen, whose fierce interpretation of their briefs often alarmed the polity.

    Second Republic President, Alhaji Shehu Shagari, had his Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Mr. Sunday Adewusi. Mr. Adewusi had garnered due fame as the no-nonsense crime buster, whose many exploits made Alagbon Close, Ikoyi, so famous as Nigeria’s crime-busting capital. Yet as IGP, the mobile arm of the Police under him earned the unenviable moniker of Kill-and-Go: especially when the matter was partisan strong arm tactics in favour of the ruling party.

    President Olusegun Obasanjo too had his own IGP Tafa Balogun. During both the Chris Ngige gubernatorial abduction saga and the death, through alleged tear-gassing, of Chuba Okadigbo, colourful politician and former president of the Nigerian Senate, IGP Balogun was there to rationalise, in the grey areas between duty and criminality.

    So, President Goodluck Jonathan, with the unending “federal might” in Rivers State could well take these previous examples as some cold comfort, in his continued toleration of the execrable conduct of Mbu Joseph Mbu, who has continued to desecrate his office so much that he could pass as an outlaw in police uniform.

    Still, it is doubtful if anyone has before brought the Police more odium than this Mbu. What has he not done? He has conspired to aid and abet illegal sitting of the Rivers State legislature, leading to comical claim to Speakership by one of the partisans. He has, in the media, called Governor Rotimi Amaechi names, as an opposing partisan (not a police officer loyal to the Constitution) would, even if to be fair, the governor himself has returned the favour.

    He has barred the governor from entering the Government House in the state, even as his men have fired teargas into the place. He has illicitly delayed a chartered aircraft bearing the governor to Abuja, though he did not have the guts to carry out a search in the aircraft as the governor had offered. In short, he has serially levied war against the Rivers State Government, as lawfully constituted, and jeopardised the security and well being of citizens there, in criminal contravention of his terms of service as a police officer.

    Yet, unlike Messrs Adewusi and Balogun, Mr. Mbu is only a CP!

    But what is more annoying: Mbu’s outlawry or the conspiratorial silence by the authorities?

    President Jonathan, his commander-in-chief, has been hiding behind a finger, denying he has no hand in Mbu’s brazen lawlessness. So has his IGP, Mustapha Dahiru Abubakar, who sees no evil, hears no evil, on Mbu in Rivers, even if we had had cause to challenge him in one of our earlier editorials.

    Even from the Senate, whose member is the latest victim of Mbu’s brutality on innocent citizens, has come a tepid response. A statement released by Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe, the Senate spokesperson, calls on IGP Abubakar to probe the disturbance and ensure such does not recur, but nary any sense of outrage.

    Abaribe wrote as if he had been away in space all this while. It is doubtful if the matter is now not beyond IGP Abubakar. He appeared powerless in Mbu past partisan forays. It is doubtful if he would regain his powers in this one!

    Which brings the matter back to President Jonathan. Those stoking trouble in Rivers State do so in his name, and in the name of his wife, Dame Patience Jonathan. We have no business with Mrs Jonathan because she is no official of state. But we have serious business with the President, because he is accountable to us, the people, and he has bounden duty not to desecrate the high office of President, by letting his name be linked to high constitutional crimes.

    If the President knows nothing about the Rivers serial illegality, he should speak and decry it in clear terms. If he doesn’t, we would have no choice but to call on institutions of state, which have oversight over him on behalf of the Nigerian people, to call him to order by doing the needful.

    This constant rape on the Constitution under the Jonathan Presidency must stop.

     

  • Doctors strike

    Doctors strike

    •The two sides must move fast to resolve the issues before February 7

    In what appears a New Year’s gesture of goodwill, doctors under the aegis of their union, the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA), and the Federal Government have struck a deal to keep negotiations alive to resolve whatever issues between them. The NMA would reappraise the situation on February 7 and decide whether or not to end the suspended strike. For this gesture, both sides have earned Nigerians’ plaudits.

    The Goodluck Jonathan presidency deserves praise for rising to the occasion. That it promptly engaged the NMA, during the warning strike that lasted from December 18-22, 2013, is uncharacteristically refreshing. The Federal Government should keep up this new spirit. It is a welcome departure from the usual practice of allowing things to get out of hand before being roused into action.

    The NMA, on the other hand, is praise-worthy for its patience, its patriotism and its compassion, given that the December 2013 warning strike came at the expiration of its fourth extended 21-day ultimatum to the Federal Government.

    “This [suspension of strike] to us is a very great sacrifice that has been made by our members,” Dr. Osahon Enabulele, NMA president, declared. “In taking this decision, … we had to take into cognisance certain items in the MOU [memorandum of understanding]. By February 7, we would be able to address the public.”

    By February 7, therefore, it is incumbent on both parties to have substantially resolved all of the issues. Nigerians don’t want to hear of any further strike. Rather, they want to be told the strike is off. Not only that: with the newfound entente, they want to be told that strikes, by all medical staff, would happen less and less.

    But this ideal can be worked towards only if the two sides are open, frank and understanding. The NMA claims President Goodluck Jonathan has committed his government to appointing a Surgeon-General of the Federation, the professional to take direct charge, solve glaring health sector problems and make the sector internationally competitive such that less Nigerians would go abroad on health tourism. The NMA also insisted health funding must improve, citing the training of resident doctors which budgetary allocation for 2014, it states, is less than 0.6 per cent in the 2013 federal budget.

    Both sides should, within the framework of the MOU, do their best to tackle these challenges, such that the Nigerian health sector could command the respect of Nigerians. But while NMA negotiates with the Federal Government, it must factor in the federal principle. That way, it should also engage the states, and ensure the health sector gets the maximum it could possibly get from federal and state budgets. That way, programmes would be synergised and gains maximised.

    But while calling on the Federal Government to be dutiful in the negotiations, we must also appeal to the doctors to realise that a tree does not make a forest. There is no doubt about doctors’ vital role in the country’s health sector. But it is also clear that doctors are only part of a whole. If the sector must be efficient and effective therefore, every part of the chain must work together and must be given its professional respect.

    So, as doctors negotiate their own welfare, they should be sensitive to other professionals — and even supporting non-professionals — in the health sector. If the chain is as strong as its weakest link, then doctors and others must be carried along in a harmonious and efficient health sector.

    That is the health sector of Nigerians’ dream. The government and health sector practitioners have a bounden duty to actualise that dream.

  • The economy

    The economy

    • In spite of grim prospects, window of rescue beckons

    Just as it is natural for citizens to entertain illusions about the coming of a new year and its promises of a new beginning, it is understandable that Nigerians are expectant about the 2014 economic outlook. Beyond the atmosphere of expectations, the natural question is whether the Jonathan administration can claim to have put in place the fundamental structures for hope in the current year.

    Of course, Nigerians know what the indications are. Nothing in the economic firmament projects any cheery outlook. Rather, what is presented as cold comfort is the bizarre rate of growth said to have averaged 7.5 percent over a decade; and if it comes to anything, part of the scorecard of the administration is supposed to be the off-shore investment of $1 billion in the Sovereign Wealth Fund. Lost, perhaps, on the government is the paradox of increasing impoverishment of Nigerians and the criminal under-investment in infrastructure and other critical enablers of development at a time of sustained oil earnings.

    The above is merely the background. The outlook would seem worse. The budget instrument of course remains a statement of grand intentions – which going by experience, may not be implemented. Like those before it, the recurrent trump the capital estimates in Budget 2014 by a ratio of 72.71 to 27.29 percent. If that is any threat to the well-being of the citizenry, it comes nowhere close to the menace of oil theft. Last year, the menace reached industrial scale, leading to an unprecedented shut-in of some 400,000 barrels of daily crude output. While it seems utterly unimaginable that the administration would surrender the artery of the economy to a cabal said to be responsible for denying the federation account of 20 percent of its revenue, worse is that the administration is even now unable to convince anyone of its readiness to do battle with the cabal.

    The Main Street is of course where the depressing reality is firmly etched. Presently, unemployment stands at a frightening level of 23.9 per cent, with youth unemployment put at 50 per cent. With poverty rate also standing tall at 67 per cent, the situation is akin to a time-bomb waiting to explode.

    Against the background, if we had expectation for 2014, it is for the Jonathan administration to lay out an ambitious programme to confront the terrible monster of non-inclusive growth –the phenomenon of growth without jobs. With the limited employment-generating potential of the enclave economy of oil now obvious to all, the challenge is to promote aggressively, rapid industrialisation and modernisation of agriculture, both to deliver value to Nigerians and to create jobs for the army of the unemployed.

    We expect the Federal Government to focus on the medium and small scale industries sector not just for the reason of their proven potential to deliver on jobs, but also as a strategy to curb the humongous import bill. The same applies to agriculture. It is time to unlock the proven potential of the two sectors for national development.

    Key to the realisation of the objective is massive investment in infrastructure to narrow the existing deficit; this is even more urgent in the energy, transportation and logistics sectors.  We also expect renewed focus on the problem of cost and access to funds which continues to pose stifling challenge to the small and medium scale business, rendering the prospects of competitiveness a daunting one. Rather than the current obsession with foreign portfolio investors, the Federal Government would do a far better job of paying attention to these issues which, aside offering far brighter prospects for the diversification of the economy, would go a long way to reduce the risk of its vulnerability.