Category: Editorial

SOME six weeks after its launch by the Federal Government, Nigerians may have begun to see the devil in the details of the new automotive policy that they would love to hate: the prospect of higher prices for vehicles of all classes. By a memo issued on November 14 by finance minister and coordinating minister for the economy, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, to the Comptroller-General of Nigeria Customs, fully built cars will from January next year attract 35 per cent import duty, plus an additional levy of 35 per cent, to bring the cumulative charges to 70 percent. On the current 20 per cent duty rate, it comes to a quantum jump by 250 percent.

The policy also hikes the duty payable on buses from 10 per cent to 35 per cent, although without levy. Also, local auto manufacturers will, on its take-off, cease to pay duties or levies on their Completely Knocked Down (CKD) imported parts; semi-knocked down components for the production of vehicles locally, on their part, would attract only five per cent duty, without levy.

The measures, according to the minister, “are to create an environment to support existing assembly plants and attract other original equipment manufacturers who have expressed interest in Nigeria”.

This newspaper has no difficulties aligning with the broad goals of the policy, to wit; the promotion of local manufacture of automobiles, and the revival of the nation’s dormant assembly plants. The benefits in terms of the jobs to be created, both directly and in the ancillary industries; the development of critical pools in the long run, and the conservation of the annual outlay in foreign exchange expended on vehicle imports, are enormous.

However, the point of departure is not just on how best to achieve the goal, but how to ensure that its effects bring minimal pain to Nigerians.

This is where a number of things appear to us as wrong with the measure, particularly at this time. It starts with the very ludicrous and misconceived idea that the nation’s auto assembly plants can be made to come alive by the mere fiat of a single policy.  It also proceeds on the equally false premise that an unreasonably high tariff on imported automobiles –fairly used and new – would generate sufficient disincentive for them while boosting the patronage for the locally assembled vehicles which are, at the moment, virtually non-existent.

Furthermore, that the factors that led to the death of the assembly plants in the first place, no longer matter.  Among the factors are the unstable macro-economic environment, the unfavourable exchange rate regime sequel to the structural adjustment policies of the 1980s and the ‘90s, and the unprecedented erosion of the consumer purchasing power that became its by-product. All of these combined, were to sound the death knell for the assembly plants.

The issue of effectiveness of the duty hike to discourage automobile importation in the absence of complementary policies to engender competitiveness – both in quality and price – and to boost effective demand is certainly open to debate.

What seems clear however is that the new tariff and levy cannot be anything but counterproductive in the long run, at least to the extent that the demand for cheap, and in this case, fairly-used vehicles is not something that the government can wish away by the stroke of the pen. In the absence of cheap, efficient mass transportation, the demand seems unlikely to decrease anytime soon. That being the case, the best that the prohibitive levy will achieve is give fillip to what is already a thriving business of dealing in smuggled vehicles across the land borders, which denies the nation the benefit of the revenue.

It bears restating that we are for the goal; however, the task of ensuring that local auto assembly plants are enabled to stand and to become truly competitive goes beyond erecting artificial tariff walls. It calls for long-term planning and collaboration between the government and the assembly plants. Focusing on the incentives to drive the sector would seem a more enduring approach to the local automobile quest than seeking to curb imports via tariffs.

SEE no evil, speak no evil: that appears the winning formula of Mohammed Abubakar, the Inspector-General of Police (IGP), just as his men hurtle down the losing lane of subverting the 1999 Constitution, as amended.

The question is: how long will the IGP continue “winning”, when the democratic platform on which he has mandate to perform is being battered by the day?

For as long as he cared, IGP Abubakar has played blind, deaf and dumb to the provocative constitutional infractions of Mbu Joseph Mbu, his Commissioner of Police (CP) in Rivers State, as Mr. Mbu plays unfazed man Friday to partisan interests in that state, at the detriment of his security duties.

But as impunity would sooner than later overreach itself, IGP Abubakar got jolted from his sleep when Nnanna Amah, a lowly chief superintendent of Police (CSP) and divisional police officer (DPO) for Asokoro, Abuja, on November 3, bounded into the Kano State Governor’s Lodge, and summarily ordered that the seven governors meeting in there disband, flashing from his subversive pouch some “orders from above”.

The governors belong to the G-7 faction of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and where the order came, “from above”, would appear apparent, given the titanic struggle for the soul of that troubled party. Yet, dumbness was still the IGP’s answers to a summons by the House of Representatives.

Mr. Abubakar told the House: “The DPO was not sent by anybody to do what he did. I believe the DPO was merely there to provide safety and security for whatever is taking place.”

So, ordering governors, immune from arrest, to disperse or be arrested, in grave contravention of the Constitution, is part of a DPO’s “safety and security” routine brief? And if Mr. Amah was not sent by anyone, why hasn’t the IGP and his police high command censured him for his cheeky impudence, bordering on grave constitutional criminality? Or could the IGP have invested his officers and men with discretionary impunity, no matter the constitutional provisions?

Of course, the IGP’s sophistry to the House was no defence. He knew it. The House knew it. The public knew it. But why did the House fail to visit the IGP with the full weight of its powers, if only to impress him and his misguided men that law, not arbitrary power, rules in a democracy? Is the House too getting too cowered to do its duty by the law? That is fearful but absolutely unacceptable.

The Nigeria Police, under IGP Abubakar, has merrily queued behind partisan gladiators, to the detriment of its constitutional duty. When Mbu is not virtually levying war at the Rivers State government at the perceived behest of rogue forces in the Jonathan Presidency, Abubakar’s police is flexing muscles as pro-corruption vanguard: witness the police dispersal of participants at an anti-sleaze seminar which Dino Melaye, a former member of the House of Representatives organised. Even at the Anambra State gubernatorial electoral outrage, the list of infamy was incomplete without the alleged involvement of Abubakar’s police!

In the Second Republic, under President Shehu Shagari, there was IGP Sunday Adewusi who made the police under him the uncritical slave of the ruling politicians; to disastrous consequences for the polity. Yet, Adewusi was a crack police officer.

With his conspiracy of silence when officers and men under his charge make themselves happy slaves to present ruling politicians, IGP Abubakar is treading Adewusi’s tragic path, for Abubakar himself is a crack police officer.

It is high time Abubakar changed tack. Otherwise, he stands a great chance of destroying his police essence, on the altar of political appointment. And that would be tragic.

This week even Americans who weren’t alive on Nov. 22, 1963, are reading, writing and reflecting about the assassination of the 35th president 50 years ago. In the view of some critics, the fascination with both John F. Kennedy and his assassination is disproportionate and media-driven. We disagree. Despite political and personal weaknesses that were widely acknowledged within a few years of his death, Kennedy was a transformative figure, not just a charismatic celebrity. And his violent death rightly is remembered as a rupture in what had seemed an age of optimism and inexorable progress.

True, much of the adulation for Kennedy during his life and since originated in arguably superficial attributes: his youth, personal attractiveness and sophistication. But his election at age 43 to succeed the 70-year-old Dwight D. Eisenhower represented a generational shift in American leadership that was as much a source of popular excitement as Kennedy’s individual qualities. As he said in his inaugural address, “the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans — born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace.” Kennedy’s Roman Catholicism also made his election historic. Difficult as it may be for younger Americans to conceive, anti-Catholicism was endemic in American society half a century ago, and Kennedy’s election was nearly as dramatic a breakthrough in that era as the election of the first African American president was in this one.

Kennedy was also forward-looking in his policies. On June 11, 1963, the day on which National Guardsmen escorted two black students as they enrolled at the University of Alabama, Kennedy declared that equality for African Americans was a “moral issue. It is as old as the Scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution.” He announced that he was asking Congress to enact legislation to ensure equal access to public accommodations. It is true that the Civil Rights Act became law not during Kennedy’s term but during the administration of his less charismatic (but more politically adroit) successor, Lyndon B. Johnson. But Kennedy’s acknowledgment of the urgency of racial equality allowed supporters of the law to portray it as an homage to his memory.

Was Kennedy a great president? Probably not. He wasn’t even a good one, according to the JFK revisionists who constitute at least as much of an industry as those who mythologize “Camelot.” Yes, they concede, Kennedy deftly defused the Cuban missile crisis with a combination of public resolve and a private openness to compromise — but perhaps the Soviet Union wouldn’t have installed missiles in Cuba in the first place if Kennedy hadn’t approved the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion. It’s a reasonable point.

We also now know that the telegenic husband and father of young children was serially unfaithful to his wife. Yet despite scores of biographies and endless tell-alls, the revisionists never have been able to dispel the Kennedy mystique.

Any assassination of a president is wrenching for the nation, and some of the admiration of JFK is refracted through the trauma of Nov. 22, 1963. But there was a special poignancy to JFK’s passing because of his youth, his optimism and his ability to inspire. It’s neither surprising nor lamentable that he remains a compelling and beloved figure half a century later.

– Los Angeles Times