Category: Editorial

•The repletion of mayhem compounds our quest for peace

Unfortunately, the recent rating by an international agency that Nigeria’s condition is akin to a state of civil war may not be far from the truth. Otherwise, how can one explain the perennial killings going on, in Plateau State, not to talk of the North-eastern region of the country that is operating under a state of emergency? On November 26, there was a report that gunmen killed 45 persons in four villages, namely Tatu, Rawuru, Bok, and Dorang, all in the Fan district of Barkinladi local council of Plateau State. The attack could not be prevented, even when the governor of the state, claimed to have raised an alarm of an imminent attack.

In the report, one of the victims, Jok Chollom mourned, ‘our village was under siege for more than one hour, with no help from any security agencies in the area’. Another villager, Daylop Shom, from Rawuru, said, ‘We have to run away now. We thought we lived with Special Task Force and are protected. But these attacks prove contrary. I have no hope in security agencies, I have to go and take refuge wherever my safety and that of my children are guaranteed.’ The Special Task Force (STF) on Jos Crisis has since confirmed the attacks and the deaths of at least 37 persons, while their media officer claimed that ‘on receiving the report, STF personnel moved to the scene to bring the situation under control, but the gun men fled on sighting the troops’.

Preceding the attack on Barkinladi; there was also an attack on November 22, in which four persons were killed, while 200 houses were burnt, in Kuka village of Shendam local council, in the same Plateau State. In the two incidents under reference, the attackers successfully completed the well coordinated attacks, and escaped before the arrival of the security agencies. Yet, classically, the nation-state possesses the prerogative over organised violence, with which it puts such incidence as witnessed in Plateau in check. Likely, it is these incessant successful attacks on civilians, which is a challenge to the Nigerian state that may have led the foreign agency to infer that Nigeria is in a state of civil war.

These attacks should worry all cadres of government; particularly the Federal Government that has the monopoly of the management of security agencies in the country, for the successful attacks can only be interpreted as a failure of governance. The attacks should also seriously worry the state government; after all, it is the people and resources of the state that have suffered terribly in the attacks. Tragically in the recent attacks, the alleged suspects were armed Fulani herdsmen or mercenaries. According to the local people, religion and ethnicity are seen as the motives for these gruesome attacks. This descent is dangerous, and Governor Jonah Jang must work to stop it.

So, while the Federal Government must rise up to end the widespread security challenges across the country, the Plateau State government has the primary responsibility to find a solution to this particular crisis, since it is locally brewed, and not an attack by a foreign power. From the records of previous attacks, it seems the people of Plateau, whether the so-called settlers or the indigenes, need to sit down and come to terms on how to accommodate one another. It is also important that those who have taken up arms to push their claims must realise that such conducts are crimes against the country and the international community.

Above all, we know there are many reports and recommendations on previous clashes in the state, what has happened to them?.

FOR how long will the outlaw Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) continue to mock Nigerians with its stubborn refusal to yield to legitimate entreaties to come clean on its activities to its numerous stakeholders? Not too long ago, the corporation earned the unflattering sobriquet from an international body – the Berne Declaration – as the most opaque national oil corporation on earth. Since then, it has carried on with the same arrogant air of defiance, impervious to reason, as if it does not matter.

We recall too that the corporation has also turned the monthly meetings of the Federation Account Allocations Committee into a theatre of discord; more than twice, the meetings of the body could not hold amidst allegations of under-remittance by the corporation into the federation account, with a staggering amount involved said to be in excess of N150 billion. The governors body, the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) has in recent time, not only lampooned the corporation over the bizarre accounting that runs foul of commonsense, but also for its continuing intransigence over demands to lay bare the basis of its computation of revenue accruals into the federation account.

Now, another storm appears to be brewing over alleged discrepancies between the value of oil sales and actual remittances to the federation account. The House of Representatives has ordered a fresh inquiry into the operations of the corporation over the same set of issues. That was after a member, Haruna Manu, intimated the House of an alleged discrepancy of $13.9bn representing the difference between the $20.9bn said to have been realised from oil sales between January and August, as against the $7bn actually remitted into the federation account during the period. Now, the investigation, to be conducted by an ad hoc committee of the House is to determine the “volume and value of crude oil sales and remittances” by the corporation from January to date, and is expected to last four weeks.

Given its legendary tradition of obduracy, the natural question is whether the latest probe will amount to anything, or if indeed, it would reveal anything about the outlawry of the corporation that is not already revealed in one form or the other by either the Auditor-General of the Federation, AGF, the Public Accounts Committees, PAC, of the two chambers of the National Assembly, or even the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, NEITI.

Nonetheless, we consider the probe important for several reasons. The first is to insist on the obligation of the corporation to render the records of its operations to its stakeholders, in a satisfactory manner. Nigerians of course expect the reconciliation of the conflicting figures if only to lay the on-going controversies to rest. We want to know how many barrels of crude oil are sold daily and for how much. The time has come to end the corporation’s tradition of muddling things up.

We also expect the probe to shed light on why the corporation, aided by the petroleum ministry, has been so powerful to the extent that it can routinely defy oversight bodies like the National Assembly’s Public Accounts Committee and the office of the AGF.

We want to know: does the NNPC or its officials enjoy immunity from scrutiny from the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related Offences Commission?

Nigerians eagerly expect the outcome of this latest round of probe. The surprise though will be when the probe finally meets their expectations.

THE bill seeking to allow public officers operate foreign bank accounts, now before the House of Representatives is, expectedly, generating public curiosity. The bill, which has passed the second reading, if eventually passed into law, seeks to amend the extant Code of Conduct Bureau and Tribunal Act, 2004. The Act makes it a criminal offence for a public officer to operate foreign bank account.

Proponents of the bill have argued that because no public officer has been successfully sanctioned for breaching the Act, then the law is weak and ineffective. They therefore want public officers to operate foreign accounts with a proviso that the leave of the bureau must, ab initio, be obtained. To them, formal disclosure of such accounts would remove ‘secrecy’ that usually surrounds the operation of foreign accounts by infracting public officers. But those opposed to the bill amongst them simply believe that to allow such amendment is to legalise corruption through stashing of ill-gotten wealth in foreign banks.

Whatever the merits and demerits of the arguments, the over-riding question is: of what benefit is the operation of foreign accounts by public officers to the country? At a time that the nation is battling corruption and capital flight, it is contradictory for any of its lawmakers to be promoting this bill with high proclivity for serious abuse. Whose interest are the proponents of the bill pursuing? Is it that of the generality of Nigerians that are groaning under excruciating bad governance, or a select few in power and their cronies in government’s agencies? The position of the law as at today is that no public officer should operate foreign account and, to us, this is sacrosanct.

The fact that the law has not been fully tested does not mean that it should be arbitrarily changed. At any rate, is it not the duty of government to enforce the law? Is it then right to suggest that the law has not been strictly enforced so as to give room for this kind of selfish agenda that our House of Representatives members are now contemplating?

The Act in question, after all, does not forbid public officers from running domiciliary accounts with domestic banks. What then is the compelling reason why this class of people should be edging to operate foreign accounts when in the end the same purpose could be served through the domiciliary accounts? With the introduction of new banking technology which has interconnected the world, transactions can be conducted internationally with just a punch of button or a slip of credit card in cash-points around the globe. The banks and the economy generally benefit from this process.

By contemplating this bill at all, the lawmakers have shown crass insensitivity to policy decisions taken around them when they are expected to conduct lawmaking business from an informed position. By allowing the bill to scale the second reading, it means they are oblivious of the recent Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) order giving unwavering priority to the nation’s currency. The CBN has mandated banks not to pay money sent through Western Union in foreign currency again. Why then should our lawmakers be seen to be promoting a bill that would encourage capital flight?

In our view, this bill is capable of undermining the local economy. There is a cliché that a man’s heart is where his money is. If public officers, including lawmakers, could be promoting this kind of bill, it shows they have lost confidence in the Nigerian economy and are ready to transfer their commitments to foreign countries where they could stockpile their money.

This is against the oath of allegiance they swore to. We object to this bill because it would not foster transparency and accountability. It amounts to nothing but an attempt to legitimise money laundering in the country.

A FEW WEEKS ago, in his first visit to Egypt since the military removed President Mohamed Morsi, Secretary of State John F. Kerry urged the nation’s leaders to stay on track for a return to democracy. He said they should stick to their “road map,” a plan for a referendum on changes to the constitution and for parliamentary and presidential elections by next year. “The road map is being carried out to the best of our perception,” the secretary declared.

There wasn’t much evidence of a democratic transition when Mr. Kerry said those words, and in recent days the road map has gotten still more tattered. A state of emergency imposed by the military-led government expired but is being replaced by other repressive measures. On Sunday, the interim president, Adly Mansour, issued a law that could sharply restrict public demonstrations such as those that have roiled the country in the past two years.

The new law effectively bans any public gathering of more than 10 people without government approval, requires those holding a protest to notify the government three days in advance and bans all demonstrations at places of worship. Many demonstrations and marches in the past two years have originated at Friday prayers at mosques. The law gives the authorities the right to prohibit any protest on extremely vague grounds of a public security threat and empowers the police to forcibly disperse protesters who do anything to “violate the peaceful nature of expressing opinions.” The new law is an ominous invitation to continue repression of the Muslim Brotherhood, which supported Mr. Morsi, and others opposing the government.

In another setback for democracy, the 50-member committee writing amendments to the constitution approved an article allowing military trials of civilians in certain cases. The article would give the regime yet another bludgeon over any opposition, threatening to bring them into military courts.

On Tuesday, a group of demonstrators took to the streets to protest the new law and the constitutional article on military trials. Apparently acting under the new assembly law, police dispersed them with water cannons and made arrests. On Wednesday, authorities followed up by issuing arrest warrants for two of the most prominent secular liberal leaders of the 2011 revolution against the regime of Hosni Mubarak, Ahmed Maher and Alaa Abdel Fattah.

All this adds up to a government in Egypt steering toward autocracy rather than democracy. Mr. Kerry said in Cairo that events were “moving down the road map in the direction that everybody has been hoping for and concerned about.” In fact, they are not. As a State Department spokeswoman noted Monday, the new law on public assembly “does not meet international standards and will not move Egypt’s democratic transition forward.” The Obama administration has been eager to show support for Egypt’s leadership, but it is long past time to be honest about its behavior.

•Washington Post

FROM two North West states of Kaduna and Sokoto have come two contrasting voices about state-sponsored mass weddings for the poor and socially vulnerable.

While Kaduna has declared that it had no intention of organising mass weddings for its socially vulnerable as some other northern states are now wont to do, Sokoto has announced a N30 million package to sponsor the mass wedding of 12 couples, to hold between the last week of November and the first week of December.

The two governments are right – or wrong – in their own peculiar ways. If Kaduna says it is not interested in mass weddings, and that weddings are the business of individual families, not the state’s, it is right. On that stance, it follows the principle of “don’t give them fish but teach them how to fish”.

That is a simple yet profound developmental credo: for whoever has the skill to fish need not bother others with his or her problems. That, in development-speak, is empowerment to cut away dependency. That is the ultimate of any society that plans to develop.

Even then, Sokoto too is not wrong – at least in the short run – on its mass wedding programme, even if some development purists would cringe at the idea. As Kaduna held, weddings are the business of families. But what if the families are too poor to carry the cost of such weddings, and there are clear negative implications for society (prostitution, destitution, angst and general hopelessness)?

That is why the Sokoto proposal sounds somewhat understandable, if not outright reasonable; faced with the current socio-economic scenario of mass poverty, low education and lack of skills for the girl-child.

Indeed, the Sokoto mass wedding would appear a social welfare package. According to Alhaji Zubairu Yaro Goronyo, the commissioner for youth and social welfare, the weddings’ final screening would produce 240 Sokoto citizens: 120 male, 120 female.

Each couple would enjoy a budget of N20, 000 for the bride price and another N20, 000 paid to the groom as take-off money for the new family, aside from gifts of bedding materials, a set of furniture and two wrappers for the bride and 10 yards of brocade for the groom.

The commissioner said should the initial wedding prove a success, a repeat would be staged every quarter to give succour to Sokoto marriageable couples who nevertheless have no cash to back up their conjugal aspirations.

Still, while mass weddings on the bill of the state makes short-term sense, the hint at perpetuating the exercise is the worry. While the Sokoto State government should be praised for its social sensitivity, it should cut through the symptoms and go for the root of the problem: poverty and social dislocation.

Viewed from this perspective, it should launch a long-term campaign against causes that make state-sponsored mass weddings now inevitable, such that some 10, 15 or 20 years from now, it would have become absolutely unnecessary.

So, the state government should crank up the education of the girl-child and, without necessarily alienating religious and cultural sensitivity, discourage child marriage, which often militates against the girl-child acquiring the requisite trade skill or education to economically empower her to face the challenges of life.

Aside, the government also needs to launch a deliberate and sustained enlightenment campaign against noxious cultural-religious practices that impede the full development of human potential in the community. It is such impediments that have necessitated state-sponsored mass weddings.

Coming in the wake of scandals in the Nigeria aviation sector where the Minister of Aviation, Mrs. Stella Oduah, is under probe for alleged financial scam in which some key members of the sector are involved was the “breaking news” that a former member of the troubled sector, Dr. Babatunde Aliu, has been elected President of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO). The jubilation that followed Dr Aliu’s election as the first black man to be elected to this position at the 38th assembly of the organisation, was expected. The stakeholders aptly described the election as “a rare feat for Nigeria”.

We congratulate the newly elected ICAO president. If we are to critically look at this appointment, especially at this dark period of our aviation sector, with all its scandals and a series of aircraft disasters that have occurred in Nigeria in such an astonishing rapidity, not to talk of a series of probes that are still going on in the sector, we can only say that it is Dr. Aliu’s personal antecedents that must have contributed to his election.

Not only that he is the current vice-president of the body; he has been in that position for more than seven years. Obviously the election would not have been possible if we were to judge by the crises in our aviation sector in recent years. As a matter of fact, even if Nigerians were to have been the voters at that election, they would not have voted for most of our aviation chiefs. This is the strong point that must be made, if only to show that the election which the Federal Government has joined in hailing, for obvious reasons, is of no interest to Nigerians who already know the rot in the country’s aviation sector – a rot that is roaring like waves at home and abroad.

Even Ms Oduah who should by now be hiding somewhere, unseen and unheard, broke all rules of morality and integrity by saying that the election was “a recognition of the transformation efforts of the Jonathan administration”. This is nothing but her usual game of survival by praising her “mentor”, a thing she would do to no end as long as she is protected by President Goodluck Jonathan.

Instead of feasting on Dr Aliu’s election, it should be a period for sober reflection on the state of our aviation sector. In spite of the obvious lapses that have continued to be the lot of our airports, including a basic thing as leaking roofs, even at the Murtala Muhammed Airport in cosmopolitan Lagos, Ms Oduah and other aviation chiefs under her watch have been celebrating their so-called achievements in the ministry. Such unnecessary celebrations often lead to undue praise-singing when in actual fact what is on ground points to the contrary.

The ICAO council, by virtue of the Convention on International Civil Aviation otherwise known as Chicago Convention, adopts standards and recommended practices concerning air navigation, its infrastructure, flight inspection, prevention of unlawful interference, and facilitation of border-crossing procedures for international civil aviation. It also defines the protocols for air accident investigation followed by transport safety authorities in countries that are signatories to the convention.

We urge Dr Aliu to do everything within his powers, even if only by way of persuasion, to get the Federal Government to adhere to these standards. The country’s aviation sector would be the better for it. s