The Nation Newspaper

Category: Editorial

  • Special border corps

    Special border corps

    •This is superfluous. Rather we should strengthen existing institutions

    We know that the nation’s borders have always been porous. We equally know that something drastic must be done to curb the trend. But what is doubtful is whether the Federal Government’s imminent move to create a special border corps to be responsible for protecting the nation’s borders against especially terrorists and illegal immigrants’ infiltration, will be the panacea.

    Emeka Obua, Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) Public Relations Officer reportedly confirmed the move: “The Minister of Interior, Abba Moro, has been working tirelessly with the Controller-General of Immigration (CGI), to ensure that the border corps is established by the Federal Government. The corps will be in charge of border protection and it will be fully equipped with the latest security equipment to stop terrorists and other irregular immigrants from breaching our borders; the formation of the corps would be announced in due course,” he said. David Parradang, the CGI has also submitted a proposal requesting for the approval of 5,000 recruits to that effect, to the government. This is aside from those that would be deployed from the immigration service to work with the proposed outfit.

    The border corps, to be costumed in camouflage, will be statutorily empowered to move around the borders in patrol vans round the clock and will reportedly have access to digital infrared cameras, hand scanners and other hi-tech security gadgets to detect illegal entry into the country through the borders.

    Unfortunately, it is debatable whether the promoters of this initiative can vouch for its effectiveness and sustainability. Rather than fashion out ways through which the NIS can be made more virile, it is sad that some government officials came up with such fantasy as policy. We are certain that it would, at best, be another drain on the public till; a shadow chasing plot, which obviously makes a mockery of existing structures and the touted move of the current administration to curb illegalities at the nation’s numerous border posts.

    If indeed the CGI has made a case to the presidency regarding the problem of inadequate staffing facing the Immigration service, how would the creation of a special border corps be solution to this? Assuming the government even succeeds in its move to establish this proposed, well-catered-for and better-equipped corps, would that not translate to breeding unhealthy rivalry with the staff of the NIS? It is wrong for the government to embark on this policy when it has not solved the myriad of problems facing the Immigration service.

    We agree that the nation needs to do something urgent concerning its borders at this time when terrorist activities pervade the land. The influx of agents of violence into Nigeria is a consequence of her long admitted permeable borders manned mostly by ill-motivated and corrupt officers. But to rectify this anomaly would not have been through the setting up of a parallel agency that might lead to avoidable rancour.

    We call on the government to fortify the Immigration service so that it can adequately respond to contemporary challenges. The service needs modern security gadgets; it needs sophisticated communication gadgets, strong patrol vehicles, bullet-proof vests and more importantly, a tested insurance scheme to cater for its staff in case of any accident. The budget being proposed for this special corps will readily serve this essence and also make the nation’s borders reasonably impervious to the antics of illegal immigrants that are mostly on a mission to foment bedlam in the land.

    The government should forget this grandiose idea of setting up a new special corps to reinforce the borders. As we have argued, strengthening the existing institutions will suffice.

     

  • Flawed Ondo verdict

    Flawed Ondo verdict

    •The Supreme Court did not sufficiently interrogate the basic questions of the appeal

    It did not seem to us that the Supreme Court of Nigeria which delivered its judgment on the disputed governorship election in Ondo State did justice to the matter. The Justices dismissed the appeals filed by the candidate of the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), Mr. Oluwarotimi Akeredolu (SAN), and also that of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Mr. Olusola Oke. In dismissing Mr. Akeredolu’s petition, the court held that he failed to prove his case beyond reasonable doubt, while in the other judgment it also held that Mr. Oki was not able to prove the alleged illegal insertion of over 100,000 voters into the voter register.

    The apex court was reported to further hold that both appellants could not prove their cases which they found to be substantially criminal in nature, beyond reasonable doubt. The court further held that the parties could not substantiate that the alleged unlawful injection of over 100,000 voters into the register affected the outcome of the election; considering that Governor Olusegun Mimiko of the Labour Party (LP) won the election by more than the disputed number of votes. In our view, the exertion of proof beyond reasonable doubt for election petitions and question of what effect the unlawful insertion had, are mere legal sophistry.

    Indeed, while the summations of the court may be tenable under our legal system, more so being the judgment of the apex court; we doubt if it satisfies the sociological requirement of law acting as a deterrent against impunity. For, if the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), as alleged, truly inserted as many as 100,000 unlawful voters into the register, then the election ought to have been voided, without any further ado. While the winner may have won with more than the disputed votes, the fact of that impunity and the debilitating effect it may have had on even potential voters before the election, should, in our view, be enough reason to call for a fresh election by lawful voters.

    Furthermore, the fact of whether unlawful voters were added on the list or not, should be one that a trial court could easily have found out, if the officials of the electoral body were put in the witness box. Unfortunately, the society is the loser for that, as the matter was muddled up in the foggy determination of whether that important question was a pre-election matter or not. Having been denied that opportunity, it is a double whammy for the appeal court to yet again hold that the appellant should be required to prove the allegation beyond reasonable doubt, failing which, it dismissed the appeal.

    With due respect to the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal, the loss of the opportunity to hold the electoral body accountable does not serve our electoral system better. We however appreciate that the appellate court acted to have the matter determined within the period provided by the electoral act. While we have argued for election petitions to be determined within a time frame to stop election losers serving out full term while the matter is litigated, it is also important that the tribunals are compelled to hear all cases on merit, including interlocutory applications, so as to avail the appellate court the opportunity to have all the facts and material evidence before it.

    As Governor Mimiko savours his judicial victory, he must ponder the averment of Charles Titiloye, counsel to Mr. Akeredolu that the judgment “is a tacit judicial endorsement of electoral fraud; that is the illegal injection of voters perpetuated by the electoral body.” That allegation, unfortunately, also puts a question mark on our electoral and judicial processes.

  • A super lender cometh?

    A super lender cometh?

    IF ever there is a solution that qualifies as a no-brainer, the Federal Government’s plan to establish a super lender to drive lower interest rates is it. During her recent visit to KAM Industries Nigeria Limited’s multi-billion naira cold steel rolling mill in Ilorin, the Kwara State capital, finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, had announced the coming of a finance institution that would lend funds to the foremost development banks in the country – the Bank of Industry and the Bank of Agriculture – as well as to commercial banks. This, according to the minister, was to ensure that interest rates were brought down to a sustainable level.

    She gave the timeline of the institution’s take-off for between 15 to 18 months.

    We perfectly understand the Federal Government’s concern with the current high interest rate regime that continues to hobble meaningful prospects of growth. Indeed, this newspaper shares in the burden of its frustration with the obdurate club of lenders and their usurious practices.

    The problem however is the therapy which the Federal Government proposes which, to us, and this with all due respect, appears to lack rigour. To start with, the proposed measure shies from addressing the problem of high interest rates in any fundamental sense. Before now, we heard the banks identify the factors behind the high interest rates; the short-term nature of loanable funds, the humongous costs of credit administration and the challenges posed by the absence of critical infrastructure like power, and of course, the monetary policies of the apex bank. How the planned measure will address the problems remains to be seen.

    What about the complicity of the bankers as an aspect of the same problem? Today, the banks pay between five to seven percent interest on term deposits; savings attract a paltry two percent; yet they are known to charge interest rate in excess of 20 percent. How does one explain the yawning spread? How does the new institution deal with the moral hazards of the lenders, considering that they will also benefit from the package? How does the measure square with the other problem: the arbitrage or commission paid by banks to officials on government deposits, another chief driver of unsustainable rates? How would the coming of the institution curb the practice?

    The road to hell is said to be paved with good intentions. If the idea is to enable the Federal Government pool funds together for development purposes, may we suggest a better way, which is for the government to hand it over to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) as it has always done, through the development banks.

    Why create a new institution with its own layers of procedures and bureaucracy only for the purpose of channelling funds to be re-lent to the commercial/development banks? Would this not further pad up the cost of lending? Just as there would always be room for improvement, it is hard to see the new institution doing better than the CBN is currently doing in this regard.

    Just as we cannot make the point enough that the real sector needs access to cheap credit to thrive, we must also make the other point that the government and the bankers committee have not done enough to address the problem holistically. A good part of the problem is failure of regulation; it explains why delinquent bankers are still able to prey on the system. Closely linked to this is corruption fuelled by the criminal collusion between the bankers and officials. These are not issues that the creation of multiplicity of layers of institutions can solve.

  • NEITI’s $2bn recovery

    NEITI’s $2bn recovery

    THE Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative’s (NEITI) laudable audit gambit has put it in positive public klieg light. The bold initiative has turned NEITI against, especially the Petroleum Product Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) that has publicly engaged it in a war of words. Yet, the initiative has admirably recovered $2billion into the public till after the implementation of its audit reports.

    NEITI’s track records, according to Zainab Ahmed, its executive secretary, speak volumes: from 1999-2004, its audit of oil and gas establishments led to the recovery of $1 billion; in 2005 it recovered about $515million while it also recovered $447million between 2006-2008. The total recoverable revenue emanating from the NEITI audits reportedly stands at $9.6billion.

    Despite these laudable recoveries, the PPPMC and most oil and gas companies have become uncomfortable with the body. Rather than see the initiative as a challenge to uphold probity and accountability in their establishments, they tend to see it more as an adversary outfit. For instance, the PPPMC has been trying to rubbish its audit report over a recommendation calling the agency to refund into the Federation Account an over-recovery of N4.423billion.

    We do not think that there should be any hullabaloo over this matter if there is no concealed animosity against the initiative’s audit moves that have obviously ruffled feathers in that important sector of the economy. This is aside the fact that NEITI was able to subsequently know that the disputed over-recovery of N4.423billion by the PPPRA was remitted to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) account. Over-recovery applies when the landing cost of products based on import parity principle is below the approved PPPRA ex-depot benchmark. Hence, marketers are required to pay over-recovery into Petroleum Subsidy Fund (PSF) account at the CBN.

    NEITI reportedly demanded during the audit for relevant documents but PPPRA tendered other documents that did not show that the money was remitted. It waited till after the release of the audit report that did not favour it before releasing those documents showing that the money was actually paid to a designated account in the CBN. The implication of this is that the PPPRA deliberately withheld some vital documents, ostensibly to embarrass NEITI. Otherwise, why were documents relating to this over-recovery withheld initially?

    We are not persuaded by Reginald Stanley, PPPRA executive secretary’s claim that the report was not signed off by the agency’s management. How can the agency sign off an audit that, ab initio, it wanted to frustrate? What the report did was to merely query the shortfall between what was paid and what government received and that ought not to have led to any bickering.  The truth is that the PPPRA and other aggrieved oil and gas concerns should take the NEITI audit in good faith.

    We are deeply concerned about the unabated institutional rot and gargantuan thefts that have become routine in the oil sector. The country needs more of such outfits like NEITI to restore reasonable sanity and accountability to the oil and gas industry. The PPPRA outburst is uncalled-for. After all, NEITI had indicted other big oil companies in the past. For example, its audit in 2008 indicted Mobil Oil for owing $83.28 million in Education Tax. But for NEITI’s whistle blowing, the Federal Government would not have so far recovered about $2 billion debt owed it by oil firms operating in the country.

    The battle for financial transparency in the oil sector is in the country’s interest. What NEITI is doing will go a long way in reducing money being lost to private pockets in that important sector.

  • Striking at Syria without a strategy

    Striking at Syria without a strategy

    For the past ten days the US, Britain and France have pressed ahead with plans for military action against the Assad regime in Syria. They are right to respond with concern at evidence of a major chemical weapons attack on civilians in Damascus last week. Use of these weapons is abhorrent. The attack risks normalising chemical warfare in future. A response from the world is urgently needed.

    That said, it has always been incumbent on the US and the UK – especially after the debacle over their invasion of Iraq ten years ago – to address three concerns ahead of any military action. They need to make every effort to establish evidence of last week’s attack and the Assad regime’s culpability. They must spell out the legal basis for military action. And they must explain what the strategic goal of a missile strike on Syria would be.

    UK intelligence chiefs believe it is “highly likely” that the Assad regime conducted last week’s attack. But this judgment still leaves room for questioning. Ed Miliband, Britain’s Labour leader, was therefore right to insist there could be no parliamentary vote to back military action until UN inspectors have completed their work in Damascus at the weekend. How Mr Miliband will emerge from this frenzied saga at Westminster is unclear. But after Iraq, it would have been a gross spectacle for British politicians to rush into conflict before UN inspectors had finished their work.

    On the legal issue, Britain’s arguments still lack detail. The UK says it can act outside the UN, citing the “doctrine of humanitarian intervention”. The UK should have cited the conventions on which it is invoking this contested doctrine of foreign policy.

    However, it is the strategic rationale for the impending strike that is most alarming. The west plans a 48-hour “short, sharp” bombardment. Military chiefs in the US and UK wonder what this is designed to achieve. The history of quick US strikes in the Middle East, from Lebanon to Libya and Iraq, is hardly reassuring. It might be futile against a battle-hardened regime. Conversely, it may trigger a wider war if Syria retaliates or the wrong targets are struck.

    The west is still casting around for a strategy on Syria. It would be more convincing if the impending missile strikes were designed to tip the Syrian battlefield towards the rebels, forcing the Assad regime into peace talks. Instead, we may be about to witness a “feel-good operation” that flirts with what military planners call the law of unintended consequences.

     

    – Financial Times

  • One great big war

    One great big war

    What’s the biggest threat to world peace right now? Despite the horror, it’s not chemical weapons in Syria. It’s not even, for the moment, an Iranian nuclear weapon. Instead, it’s the possibility of a wave of sectarian strife building across the Middle East.

    The Syrian civil conflict is both a proxy war and a combustion point for spreading waves of violence. This didn’t start out as a religious war. But both Sunni and Shiite power players are seizing on religious symbols and sowing sectarian passions that are rippling across the region. The Saudi and Iranian powers hover in the background fuelling each side.

    As the death toll in Syria rises to Rwanda-like proportions, images of mass killings draw holy warriors from countries near and far. The radical groups are the most effective fighters and control the tempo of events. The Syrian opposition groups are themselves split violently along sectarian lines so that the country seems to face a choice between anarchy and atrocity.

    Meanwhile, the strife appears to be spreading. Sunni-Shiite violence in Iraq is spiking upward. Reports in The Times and elsewhere have said that many Iraqis fear their country is sliding back to the worst of the chaos experienced in the last decade. Even Turkey, Pakistan, Bahrain and Kuwait could be infected. “It could become a regional religious war similar to that witnessed in Iraq 2006-2008, but far wider and without the moderating influence of American forces,” wrote Gary Grappo, a retired senior Foreign Service officer with long experience in the region.

    “It has become clear over the last year that the upheavals in the Islamic and Arab world have become a clash within a civilization rather than a clash between civilizations,” Anthony Cordesman of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies wrote recently. “The Sunni versus Alawite civil war in Syria is increasingly interacting with the Sunni versus Shiite tensions in the Gulf that are edging Iraq back toward civil war. They also interact with the Sunni-Shiite, Maronite and other confessional struggles in Lebanon.”

    Some experts even say that we are seeing the emergence of a single big conflict that could be part of a generation-long devolution, which could end up toppling regimes and redrawing the national borders that were established after World War I. The forces ripping people into polarised groups seem stronger than the forces bringing them together.

    It is pretty clear that the recent American strategy of light-footprint withdrawal and nation-building at home has not helped matters. The United States could have left more troops in Iraq and tamped down violence there. We could have intervened in Syria back when there was still something to be done and some reasonable opposition to mould.

    At this late hour, one question is whether the sectarian fire has grown so hot that it is beyond taming. The second question is whether the United States has any strategy to limit the conflagration.

    Right now, President Obama is focused on the imminent strike against the Assad regime, to establish American credibility when it sets red lines and reinforce the norm that poison gas is not acceptable.

    But the president does have the makings of a broader anti-sectarian strategy. He has at least three approaches on the table. The first is containment: trying to keep each nation’s civil strife contained within its own borders. The second is reconciliation: looking for diplomatic opportunities to bring the Sunni axis, led by the Saudis, toward some rapprochement with the Shiite axis, led by Iran. So far, there have been few diplomatic opportunities to do this.

    Finally, there is neutrality: the nations in the Sunni axis are continually asking the United States to simply throw in with them, to use the C.I.A. and other American capacities to help the Sunnis beat back their rivals. The administration has decided that taking sides so completely is not an effective long-term option.

    Going forward, there probably has to be a global education effort to reduce anti-Sunni and anti-Shiite passions. Iran could be asked to pay a higher price not only for its nuclear programme, but for its mischief-making around the region.

    But, at this point, it’s not clear whether American and other outside interference would help squash hatreds or inflame them. The legendary diplomat Ryan Crocker argues in a recent essay in YaleGlobal that major outside interventions might only make things worse. “The hard truth is that the fires in Syria will blaze for some time to come. Like a major forest fire, the most we can do is hope to contain it.”

    Poison gas in Syria is horrendous, but the real inferno is regional. When you look at all the policy options for dealing with the Syria situation, they are all terrible or too late. The job now is to try to wall off the situation to prevent something just as bad but much more sprawling.

    Culled from New York Times

  • Taraba constitutional crisis

    Taraba constitutional crisis

    Self-help on both sides of the divide may yet cause the state more harm than Suntai’s suspect health

    In Taraba State, it is crass constitutionalism versus crusading morality. But the snag is both sides are resorting to self-help that would eventually help no one.

    The return to the country on August 24, by Governor Danbaba Danfulani Suntai, whose self-piloted plane crash took him to Germany and the United States  on forced medical tourism for 10 months, has landed the state in a constitutional crisis.

    It sounds all so typically Nigerian, with the late Umaru Musa Yar’Adua affair, which the Senate mercifully resolved with an extra-constitutional instrument of “Doctrine of Necessity” to crown the then Vice-President, Goodluck Jonathan, as acting president, before the former president’s eventual death.

    A clearly delicate Governor Suntai, even after being helped out of his aircraft like some toddler, no sooner than he had landed, fired a letter to the Taraba legislature, claiming he was ready to “resume work”, as stipulated by Section 190 of the 1999 Constitution. The ink had hardly dried on the letter before the governor dissolved the state executive council (exco) and appointed a new secretary to the state government (SSG) and governor’s chief of staff, both positions needing no parliamentary stamp.

    The other side led by Haruna Tsokwa, Speaker of the Taraba legislature, kicked, alleging proxy forgery. A Taraba legislators’ visit to the governor, after the governor had spurned physically addressing the House, led to the sensational proclamation that the governor is still unfit to rule. Sixteen of the 24 Taraba legislators, including Speaker Tsokwa and Tanko Maikarfi, his deputy, signed the resolution for the governor to seek further medical help; and reaffirmed Garba Umar, the deputy governor, as acting governor still.  But the governor did a brief state broadcast, which sent his supporters capering with joy in the streets.

    Apparently issuing from the legislators’ declaration, a third front has opened, with the deputy governor (or “acting governor” in the eyes of the legislators) contesting the governor’s dissolution of his cabinet. In a few days therefore, Alhaji Umar has sensationally morphed from a deputy governor pledging loyalty, to a fiery “acting governor” contending with the governor all of the way!

    In all of these, what does the law say? Section 190 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) is clear – and we quote in full: “Whenever the Governor transmits to the Speaker of the House of Assembly a written declaration that he is proceeding on vacation or that he is otherwise unable to discharge the functions of his office, until he transmits to the Speaker of the House of Assembly a written declaration to the contrary such functions shall be discharged by the Deputy Governor or Acting Governor.”

    From the italicised segment of Section 190, it is clear the governor has fulfilled what is required of him to resume duty after a period of absence: transmit a letter to the legislature that the contrary is now the case.

    On the face of it therefore, the rally of Speaker Tsokwa and his 16 legislative braves would appear without basis in law. Section 189 (1) (a) empowers the exco, not a detachment of the legislature, to declare the governor or deputy governor incapable of discharging his duties. Even the interaction with the governor, and re-affirmation, on health grounds, of the Deputy Governor as Acting Governor, would appear without basis in law. This is because, by Section 189 (1) (b), only a medical board (Section 189 (4)), can do such assessment and give a verdict – not a detachment of the legislature. Though the Speaker appoints that five-person board, there is clear attempt at fairness and balance, as one of the five must be the subject’s personal physician.

    Also, Deputy Governor Umar has no basis to question his principal’s order of cabinet dissolution. In the eyes of the law, he is deputy governor; and there cannot be an “acting governor” when the governor is in town.

    But is the governor really “in town”?  That, regrettably, is not so certain. For one, Governor Suntai looks fragile, but we cannot say if his fragility is more apparent than real.

    For some, the dissolution of the Taraba cabinet is clear, cynical bad faith. If there is no executive council to declare the governor incapacitated, a health-challenged Governor Suntai could be there as front for the alleged cabal to run the state in his name, a la Yar’Adua. But he or the so-called cabal cannot run the state forever without an executive council.

    Some scenarios present themselves in this matter.

    One: the Taraba legislature could start an impeachment process against the governor. If it gets the processes through, it would have constitutionally removed the governor and ensured the state is in safe hands. But it has to brace itself for a stream of sympathy for the governor; and the possible political instability to follow, since Suntai’s supporters may embark on a sympathy overdrive. That would be potentially explosive indeed, given the delicate Christian-Muslim divide in the state.

    Two: the National Assembly, still pushing the “Doctrine of Necessity,” could temporarily take over the Taraba legislature’s duty, approve a new executive council for the governor and put pressure on the council to trigger Section 189 (1) and Section 189 (4).  If after the process, the governor emerges unscathed, he continues on his job. If his bad health is confirmed, he gives way to Alhaji Umar.  That would ostensibly free the Taraba legislature from charges of bias and preserve the deputy governor. But given the combustible skein of our politics, we cannot guarantee that such an intervention would not touch off a tempest.

    Some commentators doubt that Suntai is fit to rule. But that is not for us to say. He may have been propped up on the plane, and his elocution imperfect before camera klieglights, or he might have shown the lack of physical prowess associated with persons in such demanding positions. But they are technical issues that only a verified medical report can ascertain.

    We therefore, as a matter of honour, urge him to declare his medical records open in a public and indubitably transparent way. We want to know if he can, by the medical reports, rise up to the rigours of his exalted position. If he does not, he raises doubts, and he can draw the ire and suspicions even of those who love him.

    The state legislature could on that basis accuse him of gross misconduct, according to section 188 of the constitution, and begin impeachment proceedings. If the chief judge takes over fairly, its panel could investigate the health conditions. This could serve as a clever route to avoid setting up a medical panel since the impeachment panel can investigate wide range of matters under the subject of “gross misconduct.” Section 188 (11) gives the house the right to define the term. If the governor refuses to present his medical records and investigation shows he was hiding it, it could pass for gross misconduct. The governor and his handlers should approach this matter with honour and transparency in order to avoid the potentially messy scenario of an impeachment drama, especially in a state riven by religious and sectarian impulses.

    Whatever happens in Taraba, constitutional due process, not self-help, is the way out.  Following the law in this instance will help to strengthen institutions in Nigeria’s growing democracy.

  • Ozekhome’s kidnap

    Ozekhome’s kidnap

    Will we ever get out of this scourge?

    It sounded more like a scene straight out of a James Bond Hollywood thriller. We refer to the kidnap, last Friday, of frontline lawyer and human rights activist, Chief Mike Ozekhome (SAN), and his driver along the Benin-Asaba Road by the Ehor axis. Shedding light on the disturbing, even if now commonplace development in the country, the Edo State Commissioner of Police, Foluso Adebanjo, said operatives of the command, led by the Divisional Police Officer (DPO) of Ehor Division had responded swiftly to a distress call at about 3.30pm, that unspecified number of men had blocked the portion of road in question.

    On their way to contain the criminals, the police team was ambushed and four of them killed in the ensuing gun duel with the kidnappers. In addition to getting away with gunshot wounds, the criminals also seized the prominent lawyer and his driver.

    This incident demonstrates, once again, that life, in large swathes of the country, has become reminiscent of the Hobbesian state of nature – nasty, solitary, brutish and short. The Nigerian state has evidently lost the capacity to effectively undertake its most crucial responsibility, which is provision of security for the citizenry. Cases of kidnappings, assassinations and other crimes have become so rampant they hardly make news anymore.

    We can recall, for instance, that in May, the wife of a Supreme Court judge, Mrs Adedoyin Rhodes-Vivour as well as her daughter and driver, were kidnapped and held for 18 days before they were released. And in Lagos, the Chairman of Ejigbo Local Development Area, Kehinde Bamigbetan, was abducted for a number of days before his captives set him free. Luckily, in both instances, the alleged perpetrators of the crime were apprehended and paraded before the public in Benin City and Lagos, respectively, and we can only hope that they will be speedily tried and brought to book, if found guilty.

    Predictably, the Inspector-General of Police, Mr. M.D. Abubakar, has since directed the Edo State Police Command to commence an immediate and vigorous manhunt for the hoodlums as well as rescue the victims. Many people will take this with a pinch of salt because the prevalent public perception, rightly or wrongly, is that most victims are released only after their families had paid outrageous sums as ransoms, due to the inefficacy of police response.

    A failure of intelligence on the part of the police and other security agencies is clearly a factor in the escalation of the abduction of prominent members of the public for the purpose of extorting money from their loved ones.

    It should be possible by now for the police to map out those areas of the country most notorious for kidnapping as well as armed robbery and to work more closely with those communities to check the menace by collecting useful intelligence. Through effective intelligence, for instance, it should be possible for the police to locate the operational bases of various criminal gangs and thus act proactively to apprehend them before they strike.

    A related disturbing development was the shooting and wounding, last Sunday, of the Rivers State Commissioner for Sports, Fred Igwe, at Akaijo Eleme near Port Harcourt in Eleme Local Government Area by unknown gunmen. This kind of news reinforces the impression of widespread insecurity in the country, especially with the continued violence in parts of the North. It is also very dangerous, given the protracted political crisis in Rivers and the perceived partisanship of the police commissioner, Mbu Joseph Mbu.

    Above all, the various levels of government must act more decisively to contain the widespread poverty, unemployment and inequality largely responsible for the criminal proclivities of a large number of our youths across the land. We identify with the family of Mr Ozekhome and pray that they will soon be reunited with their bread winner.

  • Hospitals and gunshot victims

    Hospitals and gunshot victims

    •They don’t have to reject them; but they must inform the police immediately about such cases

    Again, for the wrong reasons, the police are in the news. On Wednesday, August 21, the ancient town of Ikorodu, in Lagos State, was plunged into chaos and confusion, when a policeman attached to the Ikorodu Division shot dead an ‘Okada’ (commercial motorcycle) operator. The man was killed while trying to prevent the policeman from impounding his ‘Okada’. His ‘crime’ was that he was riding on a road where ‘Okada’ is banned and he refused to ‘settle’ the policemen who demanded a fraction of the motorcyclist’s daily earning in exchange for their winking at the infraction.

    The fatal shot led to the grounding of social and commercial activities in the town as the colleagues of the deceased went on the rampage to protest his cold-blooded murder.

    Hardly had the nation recovered from this embarrassing situation when the police struck again; this time in Lagos.

    On Sunday, Adamson Bello, a 60-year old deejay, was killed by a stray bullet fired by a policeman attached to the Okokomaiko police division. According to the account of the incident by Bello’s widow, the deceased was sitting in front of a house when one of the policemen on guard duty at a nearby hotel fired a shot which hit Bello in the chest.

    As soon as the policemen realised what they had done, they fled the scene, leaving the dying deejay in a pool of blood.

    The widow’s hope of saving her husband was dashed, when the hospital she rushed him to refused to accept him, on the ground that she had no police report to explain the gunshot wound. To compound her agony, the policemen at the Okokomaiko station, the same station where the policeman who shot her husband was attached to, refused to give her a police report. In desperation to save her husband of 30 years, she decided to take him to a hospital in Badagry. She lamented: “My husband died when we got to the Badagry General Hospital.”

    It is unfortunate that the story of police brutality has become a recurring decimal in our nation. Although the police are supposed to be our friend and their slogan says so, many Nigerians would proclaim that with friends like the police, no one requires an enemy. There are reports that arrested suspects still die in police custody; that extra-judicial killings remain an article of faith with the police.

    The Boko Haram leader, Mohammed Yusuf, was captured alive by the army and handed over to the police, only for him to be killed. These two recent incidents of police brutality have again brought to the fore the urgent need to pursue aggressively a programme of reforming our police.

    For a start, the trigger-happy policemen who terminated the lives of the ‘Okadaman’ and the deejay must be made to face the full wrath of the law. The murders must not be swept under the carpet as that is one of the ways the police can attempt to regain public confidence.

    Secondly, the police must, as a matter of urgency, mount a public enlightenment campaign and write all hospitals in the country that their obnoxious and inhuman directive that gunshot victims should not be treated by hospitals without a police report has been withdrawn.

    Gunshot victims, like regular patients, should be treated promptly but a report must be made to the nearest police station immediately such persons are brought to the hospitals. Refusing to treat a gunshot victim on the flimsy suspicion that he could be an armed robber or that the police would frown at such, is a violation of doctors’ Hippocratic Oath.

    The Inspector-General of Police, Mohammed Abubakar, has sworn not to preside over a corrupt and bloodthirsty police force. How he handles these two cases will be a test of his commitment to his vision of the police of his dream.

  • 50 years after the March on Washington, President Obama pays tribute

    50 years after the March on Washington, President Obama pays tribute

    AT THE Lincoln Memorial on Wednesday, the country’s first black president, a living symbol of the progress of the past 50 years, stood before tens of thousands of people to offer a reverent remembrance of the men and women who made his path, and the nation’s, possible.

    “On a hot summer day, they assembled here, in our nation’s capital, under the shadow of the Great Emancipator, to offer testimony of injustice, to petition their government for redress and to awaken America’s long-slumbering conscience,” Mr. Obama said of the 1963 March on Washington.

    “That steady flame of conscience and courage,” the president continued, “would sustain them through the campaigns to come, through boycotts and voter registration drives and smaller marches, far from the spotlight, through the loss of four little girls in Birmingham, the carnage of Edmund Pettus Bridge and the agony of Dallas, California, Memphis. Through setbacks and heartbreaks and gnawing doubt, that flame of justice flickered and never died.”

    A history of hate, discrimination and struggle brought more than 200,000 Americans to the Mall 50 years ago. The words of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on that day, his poetry of conviction animated by a refusal to accept discrimination, injustice or violence, reflected universal values, a basic human longing for freedom and fair treatment among countrymen. As the president noted, King’s effort and example inspired and propelled all Americans, not only African Americans, who were struggling for and cherishing equality, as well as those beyond America, from behind the Iron Curtain to apartheid South Africa. Mr. Obama asked his audience to keep that example of unity and cooperation in mind as the nation faces unmet challenges in a world that continues to change rapidly.

    No oratory, though, could repay the debt all of us owe to people such as Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), who sacrificed — sometimes with their lives — and suffered and persevered through the civil rights movement. To those who say that not much has changed since 50 years ago, Mr. Lewis declared Wednesday, “For someone to grow up the way I grew up, in the cotton fields of Alabama, to now be serving in the United States Congress, makes me want to tell them, come and walk in my shoes. Come walk in the shoes of those who were attacked by police dogs, fire hoses and nightsticks; arrested; and taken to jail.”

    Mr. Lewis argued that fissures and injustices persist in America, that more hard work must be done with care, cooperation and wisdom. That’s surely true. Yet “to dismiss the magnitude of this progress,” Mr. Obama said of what Mr. Lewis’s generation accomplished, “that dishonors the courage and the sacrifice of those who paid the price to march in those years. Medgar Evers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, Martin Luther King Jr.: They did not die in vain. Their victory was great.”

    No complacency, but also no forgetting what has been achieved: That combination, from both Mr. Lewis and Mr. Obama, paid appropriate tribute to the importance of the day.

    • Washinton Post