The Nation Newspaper

Category: Editorial

  • Leadership at last?

    Leadership at last?

    PRESIDENT Goodluck Jonathan has apparently belatedly woken up to the fact that under the presidential system of government which we practice, his office plays a pivotal leadership role in the executive arm and the buck stops at his table. He is at liberty to hire and fire his aides and the responsibility for the achievements or lapses of any department of his administration ultimately rests with him.

    Dr Jonathan gave an indication of this realisation when the leadership of the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) led by its President, Dr Osahon Enabulele, met him at the Presidential Villa last Tuesday. Speaking assertively, the President promised to end the on-going strike by both the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD). Exhibiting an uncharacteristic sense of urgency, the President said he would do everything possible to resolve all issues responsible for the industrial disputes.

    In Dr Jonathan’s words on the occasion, “I believe that we must manage both sectors in such a way that nobody engaged in them will think of going on strike again. We will continue to proactively evolve measures that will help us to permanently overcome the problems that lead to strikes by health and education professionals”. Belated as his gesture may be, the President’s new stance is at least a welcome departure from his unhelpful insinuation during his last Presidential media chat that the ASUU strike was politically motivated.

    Yet, it is inexcusable that Dr. Jonathan is seemingly waking up to his leadership responsibility in this respect after ASUU has been on strike and public universities paralysed for almost four months, and the NARD for over a week. A truly proactive, responsible and sensitive government would have acted decisively to prevent the grievances from degenerating to strike in the first place. This is clearly a case of unpardonable negligence and lethargy on the part of the responsible government departments and President Jonathan cannot absolve himself of ultimate blame for this deplorable situation.

    Matters are worsened by the fact that at the root of the industrial disputes is the failure of the Federal Government to honour agreements it freely entered into with the affected unions. ASUU’s grouse is the non-implementation of the agreement reached with the Federal Government since 2009 on diverse issues, including welfare of its members and the revitalisation of the country’s critically ailing tertiary institutions. According to the union, “The negotiations for the 2009 agreement took three years (2006-2009). As was agreed in 2012 evidenced by the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), the Federal Government promised to release N100 billion immediately in 2012 and N400 billion in 2013”. Only 20 per cent of these sums have reportedly been released till date.

    On its part, the NARD is demanding, among others, payment of the outstanding salaries and allowances of its members as well as the release and implementation of the stakeholders’ agreement on residency training programme reached on July 5 and 6, 2013. These are issues which a serious government would vigorously and meaningfully address to avoid the kind of industrial crises currently plaguing the country’s health and education sectors.

    We hope that President Jonathan lives up to his promise of providing the necessary leadership to end these strikes. But this will be possible only if he becomes more focussed on governance and less distracted by the politics of 2015. It is as a result of the President’s example and indulgence, for instance, that the former Minister of State for Education who is the current supervising minister of the ministry, Mr NyesomWike, is more preoccupied with his unhidden gubernatorial ambition in Rivers State than the onerous responsibilities of his office.

  • Paper Jam

    Paper Jam

    Parliament’s proposals for press regulation are dangerous and inhibit freedom of speech. A rival proposal by publishers is both robust and fair

    Almost a year has passed since Lord Justice Leveson delivered his four-volume, 2000 page report on press regulation. Anyone who suspected that just reading all of it was going to be the difficult part has turned out to be sadly mistaken.

    Yesterday a Privy Council sub-committee rejected a proposal for a Royal Charter, put forward by the newspaper industry, which would have established oversight for a new regulator of the press. These publishers, meanwhile, have already rejected a separate proposal for a different Royal Charter put forward by all three main political parties in collusion, remarkably enough, with the pressure group Hacked Off.

    Notably, or perhaps absurdly, depending upon your perspective, none of this is likely to prevent a new press regulator being established. Industry groups are working to create the Independent Press Standards Organisation, a voluntary body that would replace the Press Complaints Commission. Instead, the arguments concern the body that would oversee this regulator, which the charter would establish.

    All of this is a mess, and it is not surprising that David Cameron is widely believed to nurse a fervent wish that the whole business would simply go away. But it will not just go away, and he needs to realize that newspaper groups have good reasons their distaste of the parties’ proposals.

    The appeal of the publishers’ Royal Charter is clear and obvious. It allows some form of official recognition without making a free press subservient to Parliament. Yet this preferred version of the political parties strips this rationale away by inserting a clause allowing a two-thirds majority of both houses to rewrite the rules. If there is a fault in the oversight rules, it could take years and a parliamentary battle to rectify.

    There are also more immediate concerns. For a complaints procedure to be triggered by those not directly affected, the parties’ charter has a significantly on climate change or the Palestinian cause, could effectively harass newspapers into stifling free debate.

    Worse, the parties’ charter insists on a compulsory form of arbitration that, while seemingly attractive as a low-cost dispute mechanism, is likely to encourage ambulance-chasing lawyers to cash in when formerly a correction would have satisfied all parties. For local newspapers with tight budgets and grim financial futures, this could prove ruinous. Rather than launch into an all-embracing system in which the costs are unpredictable the outcome uncertain, the press sensibly proposed a pilot scheme.

    The version of a Royal Charter presented by the publishers is a sounder and more rational proposal than that of the three parties, for the uncomplicated reason that the latter was drawn up at 2am by exhausted politicians and presentatives of anti-press groups. The former is an honest attempt at a workable system by figures who understand the industry they seek to regulate. It is furthermore, with €1 million fines and an investigative arm, the toughest form of self-regulation in the free world.

    The political parties could get out of the impasse by reconsidering the press’s Royal Charter. Publishers have moved a great distance on regulation, and they cannot be expected to move farther. Sir Brian Leveson recommended that regulation should be voluntary. Yet the parties’ Royal Charter seeks to establish a regime that no sell-respecting newspaper is likely to join.

    Ted Heath found out between 1970 and 1974 that voluntary industrial policy did not work if the proposals were flawed and the volunteers did not volunteer. This is the mistake the political parties are making today. There is still time for them to find a solution, but they have just taken the better option off the table.

    – The Times

     

  • A broken country

    A broken country

    The failure of President Jonathan’s government to pay states  their money in the past months is paralysing the country

    We are, as a nation, in a peril. But it appears, from the grandstanding of the Federal Government henchmen, including the president, all is well.

    For at least three months now, the states have not received their constitutional financial allocations. And it has implications for governance. But when the president held his routine chat, which has turned into a charade for presidential defiance and bullying, he became defensive, and took the tack that Nigeria is not broke.

    If Nigeria is not broke, how come it cannot pay its bills? How come the state commissioners for finance all across the country, were unable to return to their states with the cheques due to their states from the national coffers?

    The first loud outcries in this regard came from two governors. The first was the governor of Ogun State, Ibikunle Amosun, who in a public forum sounded the ominous note that the state may not pay its bills if the Federal Government did not pay. Following that came the umbrage from the Rivers State governor, Rotimi Amaechi, who took on the finance minister over the discrepancy between what the Central Bank received from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and what the Federal Government claimed it received. The Federal Government said it received $700m while the CBN claimed it should be $2 billion.

    The consequence of this is deep. In a country where virtually all the states depend on the allocation from the centre for their well being, depriving them of their monthly allocations resembles forcing them outside the oxygen zone. Death pangs precede actual giving up the ghost.

    The Federal Government gave them some money, less about N150b. So the states rejected the cheques because of its shortfall, which was immense. It was disingenuous of the federal authorities not to explain to the states the full financial working of the NNPC, and expect the states to accept that the nation did not have enough money to pay them.

    This is irresponsible. A huge and criminal opacity clouds the finances of the NNPC, and neither the minister of petroleum nor the president has shown any visible concern over this obnoxious trend. The finance minister also acts as though it was a routine matter and the absence of money to pay the states did not mean a disruption in the system. The oil minister simply has shrouded herself in indifferent silence. On his part, the president says the country is not broke.

    This imposes a conundrum. If the country is not broke, we can say the president may be right because the price of oil in the international market is well above $100 per barrel while the bench mark set in the budget is far below that at $75 per barrel. That means that we are nowhere near the danger zone. Yet, the argument has been advanced that we have a high incidence of oil theft, which may have cast a damper on the enthusiasm of abundance. We have always had the high incidence of oil theft though, and there is no data to prove that the volume of theft today so outweighs previous ones as to cancel the advantage of the bench mark vis-à-vis the prevailing oil price.

    Put in balance, we should have enough money to pay the states their entitlements. So, why are we not paying them? One, the NNPC has morphed into a deity in the Nigerian system, an untouchable institution that feels that it is larger than the country that gave birth to it. We cannot understand why the president should allow a minister of petroleum, with her highhandedness fuelled by incompetence, to preside over a ministry that holds the jugular of our economy. Worse still, the president has planted a rampart of defence for this incompetence by explaining away, in terms of politics, the failure of his obligation to pay the states. He said the country is not broke. Mr. President, if the country is not broke, pay the bills!

    The states have a lot of obligations to the average Nigerian. The most important and urgent one is the payment of salaries. This threat also overhangs the federal ministries. The majority of our work force are government workers. President Jonathan should ensure that this dire peril is handled quickly and effectively.

    If the ministries stop receiving their salaries, we can be sure that we are moving gradually into a breakdown of the whole society. The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has grounded the universities for over three months across the country, and the Federal Government under President Jonathan has shown neither imagination nor resolution to resolve the crisis. Yet, another one looms, and if state after state downs tools and cripples essential services, we may be veering towards paralysis, if not anarchy.

    The other consequence is the inability of the states to execute projects. Whether it is infrastructure, hospitals, education or even power, the contractors will stop to pay their workers and the governments cannot deliver on their promises. Governor Amaechi made this point in his outcry less than a month ago.

    What we shall have is not just a broke but a broken country where nothing works. The United States shut down its government over a debacle between the Obama administration and the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives over debt ceiling and the president’s health care programme. A sense of urgency has pervaded the country, and a mere 10 days of shutdown has generated disquiet among workers, even as urgent entitlements have not been paid. Now sanity has returned to the political arena and negotiations have resumed to stave off a major financial meltdown, not only in the U.S but around the world.

    It is that sense of urgency we need, not some bluster by a defiant president or the vacuous rancour from a finance minister or a corrosive indifference from the petroleum minister. The nation is in bad enough shape as it is. Those in charge owe it to those who put them in power not to make it worse.

  • Oba Adebukola Alli

    Oba Adebukola Alli

    •The monarch’s acquittal for rape of NYSC girl is intriguing legal sophistry

    The judgment of Justice Jide Falola of Osun State High Court, that the the Alowa of Ilowa-ijesa, Oba Adebukola Alli is guilty of desecration of his royal stool, by having sex with a youth corps member under his care, but he is not guilty of raping the girl is one intriguing legal sophistry. According to the news report, the judge berated the Oba for bringing disgrace to his family and subjects by his disgraceful conduct, but held that in the absence of exhibits such as the used bed sheet, victim’s underpants and a medical report indicating a forcible penetration, the offence cannot be proved.

    We accept that under the criminal code, applicable in most states south of Nigeria, the proof of the offence of rape is scandalously technical. However, “the essential and most important ingredient of the offence of rape is penetration and unless penetration is proved, the prosecution must fail”. But in the instant case, that question was positively answered as the accused confessed and the court confirmed that the monarch had sex with the corps member. At that stage, what the court should be concerned with is whether the victim gave her consent, or whether it was obtained by force.

    So, in our humble view, the judge may have gone on a frolic when he claimed that the prosecution failed to prove penetration, when the accused had confessed that he actually had sex with the victim. Agreed that where the victim shows bruises on her private part or other parts of her body, that evidence may ground the use of force, but it is untenable to contend that those are essential ingredients of rape. Indeed, in the instant case, it was on record that the victim called her office to report that the accused was allegedly threatening to rape her, yet the judge seems not to have given much value to this evidence, by holding that there was no evidence that the accused attacked the ex-corps member.

    While we continue to ponder as to the soundness of the legal reasons offered by the judge, for his highly regrettable judgment; we urge the state to quickly take steps to appeal the judgment. Considering that the victim was on a national assignment, it is unfortunate that both the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) and the Nigerian state could not protect her. In the circumstance, it is a matter of urgency to take steps to mend the abused psyche of the poor victim.

    We also recall that the monarch had at the trial sought to intimidate the court by mobilising innocent children from his community school to protest at the court premises. A similar pattern was used when at the trial the accused mobilised his palace officials to appear in court to claim that the ex-corps member was the girlfriend to the accused person, despite her vehement denials. The witnesses chose to ignore the fact that the girl was involved in a project within the community, and preferred to interpret her visibility in the palace, to mean an amorous relationship with the accused. In making that assertion, it is obvious that the accused was bent on the use of subterfuge and diversionary measures to secure his acquittal.

    Regrettably, it appears that the judge fell for those tricks and decided to hand an acquittal to Oba Adebukola Alli. Now, it may be necessary for the state to ponder on the integrity of the monarch, while it takes steps to modernise its criminal law, particularly on rape. It may also be necessary for the NYSC to consider blacklisting the community until there is a change.

  • Marching against Nigeria?

    Marching against Nigeria?

    •President Jonathan should work more for the country placed under his charge than for self-perpetuation through a two million-man march

    The report in major national newspapers that the presidency and the ruling national political party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) have concluded plans to stage a series of solidarity rallies in all parts of the country is shocking. The report, linked to a memo from the office of the National Chairman of the PDP, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, indicates that plans have been concluded to hold a mega rally in Abuja and others at the zones and cities to “showcase the achievements of the Jonathan administration” and kick-start a campaign for a second term.

    We find it difficult to see the rational for such a move at a time that the country is confronted with serious challenges. It is a march to an inglorious past when military leaders, out to perpetuate their hold on government lever and consolidate their seizure of the national treasury chose to manipulate national opinion and confuse the international community with such rallies. We recall, in particular, the infamous five million-man march staged by the late General Sani Abacha in Abuja when he had concluded plans to transmute from a military dictator to a civilian ruler.

    The Jonathan/PDP plan is a sad reminder that all is not well with the country yet. Around the time that all Nigerians should be mobilised to reflect on the state of the country, the presidency is being linked to a plan that is, at best, a carnival lacking in sincerity and further draining the resources that should be used to fix infrastructure. It is difficult to reconcile with the logic informing this move at a time that murderers, kidnappers and armed robbers are striking at will in different parts of the country. Life in Nigeria today is akin to that described by Thomas Hobbes as “short and brutish”.

    We concede that the right to demonstrate support and stage protests is at the heart of democracy. It is inalienable. However, the precarious situation of things in the country dictates that the leaders roll up their sleeves and galvanise action to keep the ship of state afloat. The frightening rate of unemployment, the school dropout rate and the explosion of non-communicable diseases should attract more attention from the man at the head of affairs.

    A political party that has, by all standards failed the country has no right to be faking popular support. We are worried by the security implications of such a march. What would happen if the agents of death in the land decide to strike at such a time? Wouldn’t that further polarise the country?

    President Goodluck Jonathan should spend more time finding ways of leaving a legacy of service and honour. The shows of shame being staged by the PDP and the consequent embarrassment to the country call for more attention by the ruling party. Factions of the party are constantly at war, sometimes leading to desecration of institutions like the National Assembly that combatants in the party have turned to stages for boxing bouts. The tension created in the polity by the rancour in the party is not lost on any politically educated Nigerian. Yet, the party is said to be out to stage a rally demonstrating that it is united.

    It is, in any case, immoral for the Federal Government to be involved in plans to stage rallies when opposition parties and leaders are daily harassed and denied such a basic right. In the last lap of his six-year tenancy of the Aso Villa, President Jonathan should think more of the mandate handed him and work for a place in the hearts of Nigerians. No one is deceived by the denial by the official spokesman of the PDP. Nigeria deserves greater attention by those who have found themselves somewhat controlling the levers of power.

  • Malala’s light counters the Taliban’s darkness

    Malala’s light counters the Taliban’s darkness

    THE SAGA of Malala Yousafzai is one of inspiration forged from terrible personal sacrifice. One year ago, a Taliban gunman boarded a school bus she was riding in Pakistan’s Swat Valley, demanded to know, “Who is Malala?,” and shot her in the head, along with two of her classmates. She had defied the Taliban with her support of schooling for girls, and the triggerman hoped to silence her and her beliefs. He did not kill her, nor her convictions. She survived after being flown to the United Kingdom for treatment, and she has become a beacon of courage for millions of people.

    Her resilience and bravery stand in stark contrast to the behavior of her tormentors. The Post’s Tim Craig and Saleem Mehsud reported this week from Islamabad that a spokesman for the Taliban had threatened her anew. Shadidullah Shahid, the spokesman, offered the perverse logic that if Malala “stops the spread of secular negative propaganda against the Taliban and also stops following secular ideology, the Taliban will not harm her.” If she persists on her present course — raising the consciousness of the world to the idea of universal education — then, the spokesman said, “fighters will wait for a suitable opportunity to target Malala.”

    This statement speaks volumes about the Taliban’s perverse ideology. Its anti-modern interpretation of Islamic law was fully on display during the late 1990s, when it dominated Afghanistan and demanded the oppression of women, seeking to deny them education and forcing them to wear full-length burqas in public, among other things. When U.S. troops helped Afghans topple the Taliban in 2001, vistas for Afghan women opened that were unthinkable earlier. But the Taliban did not disappear, and it continued to pursue its medieval thinking. The Taliban has assassinated aid workers trying to vaccinate children against polio. Just this week, two people were killed and many injured after Taliban militants used a bomb to target workers delivering vaccination drops to children in northwest Pakistan . Freedom and equality for women, freedom from the deadly scourge of polio — these are modern ideas that the Taliban apparently still hopes to extinguish.

    In the last year, Malala Yousafzai’s recovery and renewed determination to speak have offered a potent counterweight to the regressive beliefs of her assailants. On July 12, her 16th birthday, she told the United Nations, “The terrorists thought that they would change my aims and stop my ambitions, but nothing changed in my life except this: Weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born.” This week, she is publishing a memoir, “I am Malala,” a defiant answer to the question posed on the bus.

    On Thursday, the European parliament awarded Ms. Yousafzai the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. She is a nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize, to be announced Friday. She is young, but in her outspoken response to the Taliban, she carries a torch for all those who would banish the dark forces of violence and repression.

    – Washington Post

  • Let Stella Oduah go!

    Let Stella Oduah go!

    We care, God heals”, yes, that is the motto of the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), Idi Araba, Lagos. But that presupposes that the doctors do their part as professionally as they could; it is only after that that they can bring God into the equation. For the Nigerian aviation sector, this does not apply because the average Nigerian knows that the sector is troubled. The problem is that we get jolted to this reality by disasters.

    It happened again on October 3, when an Embraer 120 aircraft with registration number 5N-BIT operated by Associated Airlines on a flight to Akure, Ondo State, crashed at the domestic wing of the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos, minutes after take-off. The aircraft, carrying the remains of the former Ondo State governor, Dr Olusegun Agagu, had 20 people, including its crew members, on board. At least 14 of the victims have so far died.

    This was a sobering experience which Nigerians were still trying to grapple with when aviation minister, Stella Oduah, fouled the air with her comment that the crash was an ‘inevitable act of God’. Minister Oduah seemed to forget that she is in charge of such a sensitive ministry to solve problems and not to pontificate; bringing God into a crash that she said its cause was yet to be ascertained: “Though, we do not speculate on the cause of accidents, until that happens, you cannot say this is the cause or that is not the cause”. Isn’t she speculating already? If truly it was an act of God, why bother to do any further investigation as to what could have caused the crash?

    Be that as it may, is it possible that the minister was caught unawares when she spoke to reporters? We do not think so. As aviation minister, she ought to have been prepared, knowing full well that her ministry was on the front burner of national discourse, considering the October 3 crash, and the averted one in Sokoto two days after.

    Perhaps the minister was carried away by the International Civil Aviation Organisation’s (ICAO) recent ranking of Nigeria airspace as the 12th most-safe aviation airspace globally. We do not know the basis of this ranking; but it is clear that it does not reflect the situation on ground. Just a few weeks ago, the media in the country were awash with the story of a 13 year-old stowaway who followed a plane from Benin to Lagos undetected, until the plane landed in Lagos.

    The fact is that the minister has been satisfied with renovation of structures to the detriment of safety in the sector. Yes, airports should be aesthetically pleasing, but safety first. That is the point many people have been emphasising but, rather than the minister accepting this criticism in good faith, she sees the critics as ignoramuses. Even the ‘white-washing’ of our airports is not that perfect. As recently as two weeks ago, the roofs in both the arrival and departure halls of the international airport in Lagos were leaking. Yet, this is the first point of contact the country has with the outside world. If we cannot fix a simple matter as leaking roofs even in cosmopolitan Lagos, how can we not vouvh that technical matters are not attended to in similar lackadaisical and incompetent manner?

    We do not have to waste more lives before realising that the aviation minister has outlived her stay in the ministry. What our aviation sector needs is an all-encompassing system where all the relevant agencies would be alive to their responsibilities. Planes may not be dropping as they were at a time in the country a few years back, but it is only a matter of time for us to relapse into that era if all that will continue in our aviation sector are the cosmetic changes that we have confounded the ICAO with. The country would have been mourning about 500 more people now, if the Sokoto disaster had not been averted.

    Let Stella Oduah go.

  • Good riddance?

    Good riddance?

    At an elaborate ceremony in Abuja on September 30, President Goodluck Jonathan formally handed over the share certificates and licenses to 14 new core owners of the successor companies of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN). For majority of Nigerians, the rite of transfer, which effectively signals the dissolution of PHCN, is good riddance, particularly as it is expected to bring to an end the nightmares associated with the firm.

    The truth however is that the transition is actually coming several years late. Indeed, the PHCN, which had come to acquire the sobriquet – Problem Has Changed Name – ought to have been gone, had the Federal Government kept to the letters of the Power Sector Reform Act 2005. The PHCN, a holding vehicle established to manage the assets of the defunct National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) pending privatisation should have lasted for months – not years! Now, it has been eight long years since the law came into being, a period during which the outfit not only exhibited the worst vices of its unsung predecessor, but would add its variant of malignancies.

    Nigerians will readily recall that the fortunes of the power sector actually took a further dip during the PHCN interregnum despite the Federal Government’s unprecedented injection of $16 billion into the sector during the period. One of the by-products of that unfortunate era is the situation in which Nigerians would completely lose faith in the ability of the firm to make a difference. As the power situation worsened, so grew the expectation that the government would fast-track the process of privatisation of the unbundled entities to save them from the trauma.

    None of the above would however render last week’s handover event any less historic. Indeed, the ceremony qualifies as a milestone, being the final home stretch of the privatisation programme – the point at which the reform package could truly be said to be irreversible. In a way, it was the moment Nigerians have been waiting for.

    Naturally, the development comes with expectations. In this, we must state that our understanding is that the journey towards an efficient power sector, driven by the dictates of the market with the rules of competition in play has in fact, only just begun. One thing is to be rid of the dysfunctional PHCN; the other is to ensure that the new players actually perform as expected.

    Given the quantum of investment already sunk into the sector, Nigerians have every reason to expect a steadily stabilised power sector in the near term just as it is only natural that there would be technical issues that would have to be managed in the interim as the new owners take over. Some of the initial challenges may warrant the immediate revamping and modernisation of archaic systems of the erstwhile PHCN, as well as the introduction of new equipment to stabilise the system. Nonetheless, the expectation of Nigerians is that the transition would be as seamless as possible.

    Nigerians understand that the journey towards the market-driven power sector as envisioned under the privatisation programme is a long haul. They understand that the destination is robust electricity that is market responsive and primed to deliver value at both ends of the value chain. To the extent that the objective depends on the quantum of investment undertaken by the new operators in the coming years, a lot will also depend on how far the regulator, the National Electricity Regulatory Commission, NERC, is able to match the pace in terms of proactive regulation to drive the sector.

    In the end, what counts isn’t necessarily the multiplicity of disparate actors but the ability of the operators to deliver uninterrupted power efficiently to homes and businesses.

  • Default is defeat for Republicans

    Default is defeat for Republicans

    What to do about the lemming wing of the Republican party? As the deadline for a US default inches closer, some hope the showdown will create a split that would convert the Tea Party into a southern rump – never to threaten US creditworthiness again. Others say Republicans could be snapped back to their senses by a stinging defeat in next year’s midterm election. A few even say a US default this month is the only catharsis that would work – if Washington is in a perennial game of Russian roulette, better the gun goes off now than later. All of which is instructive. But it does nothing to fix the dilemma facing John Boehner, the Republican Speaker, who has the power to end this crisis at any time. Yet he knows if he voted with the Democrats, it could cost him the speakership.

    There are two reasons for Mr Boehner to do the right thing even if it earns him the Tea Party’s hatred. First, he should not want to go down in history as the first speaker to permit a US sovereign default. Nor does he want to be the one who helped turn Republicans into pariahs. The occasional US government shutdown is one thing. It is irritating but not catastrophic. Failure to uphold America’s full faith and credit is quite another. Mr Boehner’s unwillingness to stop it would earn him history’s obloquy.

    If it comes to it – and it probably will – Mr Boehner should fall on his sword in defence of US national interest. There was a time when Republicans had a strong grasp of what that meant. One hopes Mr Boehner still does.

    Second, President Barack Obama rightly refuses to negotiate. The longer the shutdown continues, the greater the risk it fuses with the debt ceiling and ignites. Mr Boehner will get no more concessions from Mr Obama two weeks from now than today. There is no sense in waiting until the last minute to lift the ceiling. It is possible the US could enter technical default for a few days without the markets viewing it as such. Nobody knows.

    A 1,000 point drop in the Dow can solve most problems in Washington. In September 2008 a slightly smaller decline was enough to shake legislators from their refusal to approve the troubled asset relief programme. But it would be better for Mr Boehner not to find out. A key wing of his party is prepared to wreck America’s reputation as the bedrock of the global economy. They are Republicans in name only. For the sake of his party’s reputation, Mr Boehner should end the crisis now.

     

    – Financial Times

     

  • Lagos goes digital

    Lagos goes digital

    •Lagos Judiciary attains another landmark that could expedite litigation and ease judges’ burden

    Lagos State has continued its laudable court reforms, which started during the Bola Tinubu era, of easing judges’ load and speeding up the judicial process. The latest continuation of this reform is digitalising the judicial process in such a way that you can sit in your office, and with the touch of the computer, file an action.

    For the computer-literate, this would go a long way to lessen the tedium of filing cases, as well as saving costs – transport costs, for instance – as well as lessening routine physical exertion in hitherto going through such court processes. It is indeed a thing of cheer and other states will do well to follow this laudable step.

    As part of the processes of reform, judges have not only been provided with i-Pads, the computer tablet, a batch of no less than 22 judges has also received training by a Lagos software provider on the new digital operational status.

    The training, tailored to deepen Chief Judge Ayotunde Phillips’ vision of expedited justice in the state, with the aid of information and computer technology (ICT), included robust case/document management system, monitoring and viewing cause lists on the computer. The document management system includes the National Judicial Council (NJC) monthly report form for judges, through which they can, online, prepare and file their monthly performance returns to the council.

    The software on which the batch of judges trained would also help to monitor their performances online, aside from judges themselves monitoring their performance weekly or monthly. Also, peer review would be easier, with judges online exchanging ideas. Aside from judges, the government also plans, as part of the reforms, appropriate training for court registrars to bring them in sync with the new dispensation.

    The stress on training and retraining, on the new digital dispensation, is welcome. Indeed, adequate training holds the key to its success. It is imperative therefore that the government sustains training for all cadres of judicial workers. It must be noted: computerisation is not an end in itself. It is a means to an end – and that golden end is speedy but accurate dispensation of justice.

    Resources may be scarce. But money spent to strengthen the judiciary is a patriotic investment to deepen democracy. A robust judiciary is vital to democracy. Democracy itself is vital to development, which itself engenders prosperity. So, the Lagos State government should continue along this progressive line.

    As other states are advised to follow the Lagos example, the federal authorities should not tarry in releasing funds meant for the judiciary, charged through the Consolidated Fund. Just as investment in gadgetry is important, investment in judges’ welfare is even more important. If everyone does his or her job well, Nigeria’s judiciary can only be better for it.

    But even as all these reforms are going on, the judges themselves must commit themselves anew to delivering justice without fear or favour. A just nation is a healthy nation. So, the judicial health of the country, where truth and justice prevail, is in the hands of its judges. Judges in the Lagos judiciary should take up that patriotic challenge.

    Still ICT, like a car, is a good and pleasant servant. But it could be a hideous master. That is why every step should be taken to protect systems integrity in the new dispensation. Every ICT system of necessity should guard against hacking. It would be tragic indeed to digitalise the judicial system, only for it to fall victim to hackers.