The Nation Newspaper

Category: Editorial

  • Crude theft

    Crude theft

    •NNPC can do beyond telling us the figures

    THE Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) seems to be shifting from its hitherto conservative posture to suspiciously becoming a beacon of transparency, with its curiously damning public disclosure on crude oil theft in the country. The corporation, through Ms. Tumini Green, its acting group general manager, public affairs division, said Nigeria in the first quarter of this year lost N191billion ($1.23billion) to crude oil theft and vandalism.

    This figure could be an understatement when juxtaposed with figures from other credible sources. Just last year, the International Energy Agency published a report indicating that Nigeria loses about $7billion annually to oil theft. Also, recently, the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) through Babatunde Ogun, its president, disclosed that the country loses $6billion annually to crude oil theft, and that Nigeria has also lost N105billion to theft of refined products.

    The theft of crude and even refined products has become intractable because of systemic conspiracy and corruption. Indeed, its negative impact is daily being felt. For example, Shell has shut down the Nembe Creek Trunk line due to stealing of an estimated 60,000 barrels of its produced crude per day. Even the NNPC reveals that there are 53 discovered break points along the 97-kilometre Nembe Creek Trunk line, yet, nobody has so far been held responsible for this criminal act.

    Agip has also suspended production in Bayelsa State because 60 per cent of its crude oil production of about 90 barrels is stolen daily. The NNPC/Shell Petroleum Development Company Joint Venture has also reportedly declared a force majeure on Bonny Crude due to incessant crude oil theft, and resulting in the loss of 150,000bpd of crude oil being produced through the venture.

    The recent damage to pipelines and stealing of refined petroleum products in Arepo, Ogun State, is just one example of so many like that across the country. This kind of vandalism, especially of major oil pipelines within the Niger Delta, is largely responsible for the drop in the nation’s oil production. Regrettably, the situation looks irredeemable due largely to systemic corruption. In practical terms, this nefarious act has led to a reported fluctuation of daily crude oil production in the first quarter to between 2.1 million and 2.3 million barrels per day – a sharp drop from the projected estimate of 2.48mbpd. Expectedly, the government has reportedly lost $1.23billion (N191billion) that ought to have accrued to the Federation Account.

    It is sad that despite the existence of a law that provides life imprisonment for anyone engaging in stealing of crude oil/refined petroleum products and damaging of pipelines, no person has been apprehended or prosecuted. The NNPC cannot exculpate itself from the rotten state of affairs in the oil industry. Does the corporation expect us to clap for it for reeling out doubtful figures of oil theft when nothing concrete has so far been done to stem the injurious tide?

    We consider NNPC’s revelations as appalling. The corporation is established to work and not to complain. It easily tells the public how much was stolen. But it finds it difficult to tell Nigerians the actual amount of crude that Nigeria produces per day or even open its books for scrutiny. In this regard, NNPC had failed several legislative/public scrutiny tests in the past.

    No doubt this degree of oil theft is unsustainable. One other thing we have to look at is the way oil wells are allocated in the country. There is so much impunity in the manner of allocation; this has to be addressed to make the process fair and equitable. Also, the present security system in the country is very weak and incapable of tackling the challenge of oil theft. All said, a paradigm shift is inevitable in the oil industry if these absurdities are to be checked.

  • Only acting now can stop chemical arms disaster

    Only acting now can stop chemical arms disaster

    Mounting evidence that Bashar al-Assad’s desperate and ruthless regime has started tentatively to use chemical weapons against rebels fighting to overthrow his regime demands an urgent and robust international response.

    There is as yet no firm proof that loyalist forces have been firing nerve gas shells at their advancing opponents – as Britain, France and now Israel are claiming – not least because the Assad regime is denying entry to the UN team investigating these allegations. But if, as close observers of the Syrian conflict believe, the claims are true, then only concerted action now can hope to prevent atrocities in the future such as that of Halabja, where in 1988 the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq gassed to death 5,000 of its rebellious Kurdish citizens.

    The Syrian regime has been getting away with murder for decades. If it gets away with using nerve gas, this will certainly embolden the Assad clan to use these monstrous weapons more.

    Barack Obama, US president, has been warning Syriasince last year that using chemical weapons would be a “red line” that would change his calculus on intervening in a conflict from which he has shied away. Last month he reiterated that it would be a “game changer”. Were those to prove yet more empty words, it would send a terrible signal to the world about the US and its allies as guardians of a rules-based international system. The west, it should not be forgotten, was at best cynical, at worst, relaxed about Saddam’s use of chemical warheads – the ingredients for which were largely supplied by western companies – against Iranian troops during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. That surely lowered the barrier to his genocidal attack on the Kurds.

    So far, the Assads appear to be testing the resolve of not just the US but the whole international community. They should be in no doubt that if they continue on this path all means will be used against them. The UN Security Council has been impotent on Syria. Russia, in particular, has stood by the dictatorship while it has used everything from ballistic missiles to cluster bombs against its own people. But there is no room for equivocation or power politics if the Assads make the leap to chemical weapons. The risks –for Syria, the Middle East and internationally – are too potentially devastating.

    This is a gangster regime prepared to bring down Syria if it cannot possess it, and to scatter the debris all over its regional neighbours. It has to be stopped.

    – Financial Times

  • Baga inferno

    Baga inferno

    In view of claims and counter claims, Federal Government should probe the incident

    From frightening media reports, it looked somewhat like a present day replication of Dante’s Inferno, a 14th century epic poem by Italian Dante Aligheri – the sheer hell of Baga, a North-East Nigerian border town, in which a Nigerian-led multinational military force and Boko Haram anarchists clashed.

    A reported 185 lost their lives in gory circumstances; another estimated 10, 000 lost their homes en route to the whole town being reportedly levelled; not to talk of luckless refugees fleeing across the border into Cameroun, Chad and Niger. Baga is in Kukawa Local Government of Borno State. The border town lies some 180 kilometres north of Maiduguri, the state capital.

    A local, quoted by Daily Trust, could not have put the tragedy more chillingly: “We have joined the comity of the disenfranchised … our wealth is gone, our people massacred and our merchandise burnt. In fact, we have little hope for a prosperous future again.”

    For an insurrection powered basically by poverty and hopelessness, it is no comfort that Baga may have birthed another band of the hopeless and bitter, primed perhaps to join the Boko Haram anarchy.

    Baga was an unmitigated human tragedy and grave humanitarian crisis which must be condemned in the strongest terms possible. Any country that sits over regular spilling of blood, as it has been since the Boko Haram insurrection started – Baga being only the latest but not likely the last – must re-think its essence. It is a most intolerable situation.

    Yet, there appears to be no easy way out of the quagmire right now.

    A wave of opinion is rising: that the Nigerian military, with its Chadian and Nigerien collaborators in the Multinational Joint Task Force (MJTF), commanded by Brig. Gen. Austin Edokpaye , was responsible for the massacre. Indeed, many natives were reported to have sworn they saw soldiers chase Baga locals out of their houses and set their homes on fire, aside from allegedly firing and mowing down fleeing civilians.

    To the extent that the Nigerian military, in crisis situations, sometimes morph into uniformed outlaws, they probably had it coming being blamed for this one. Each time army personnel had some trouble with some civilians, or even weaker security agencies like the police, the soldiers just remobilise and flatten out the area of urban combat. It happened in Ojuelegba, Lagos, not too long ago, when soldiers sacked the local police station with the adjoining police barracks – and heavens didn’t fall.

    In the Baga case, however, despite the intolerable human toll, the military would appear a victim of their own name (pitched against phantom Boko Haram insurgents) and bad reputation. Boko Haram has logged a fearsome record for irrational killing, bordering on the insane. Yet, hardly anyone is mentioning the sect’s part in the tragic stand-off.

    It is true, the army personnel involved in the dastardly operation should strictly stick to their terms of engagement. And indeed, the tragedy should be probed; and anyone found culpable on this score should be punished – and publicly and resoundingly so. This is important since the military has denied that the casuality figure was exaggerated.

    Still, in Boko Haram cases, the army deserves some sensitivity, if not understanding.

    Let us review the “facts” as reported. The crisis started when some Boko Haram insurgents shot at and killed an officer on patrol, as a result of a tip-off. The base of initial conflict was a local mosque in which, intelligence said, Boko Haram operatives were holed up. From the military’s account, it was from this mosque, and in any case its environs, that the Boko Haram fighters launched their rocket-propelled grenades, the reported retaliation to which caused all the mayhem. Many of the victims reportedly died as Boko Haram’s enforced human shields.

    But even before the first shot was fired, there had been a total collapse of the concept of citizenship and civic duties and responsibilities. The people that lived in the vicinity of the mosque: did they know of the Boko Haram activities around it? If they did, who did they inform? Of course, a valid point could be made that torn between the devil of Boko Haram and the deep blue sea of a toothless Nigerian state, they had little choice but to hold their peace. That is not unreasonable.

    However, keeping mum made the people themselves somewhat complicit in the disaster that later befell the town. Perhaps if there had been earlier whistle-blowing, the Boko Haram threat would have been punctured; and the Baga tragedy averted. So entrenched, indeed was Boko Haram, according to a media report, that the insurgents even wrote a taunting letter threatening to dislodge the military from the locale!

    But in the vociferous military blame game to follow, nobody even remembers this civic anomaly. Northern elders (as would be expected of elders of any place involved in such massacres) trenchantly blame the military. The media too has come down heavily on the army. Partisan voices have also slipped, one on the fumbling and bungling President Goodluck Jonathan, showing that many a partisan foe would not mind playing to the partisan gallery on security matters – and a dire one at that.

    Still, for this problem to be solved, a national consensus is required – a consensus that must start from the Northern elders themselves. The surest point against Boko Haram – and even mail-fisted military reaction – is intelligence. But how do you ferret intelligence from a populace that fears Boko Haram and hates the Federal Government? Layers of authority in the North must therefore abandon what looks like closet sympathy for Boko Haram, totally renounce its dubious cause and somehow persuade and embolden the people to give useful information to rein in the sect’s murderous activities.

    Thereafter, everyone must key into collectively solving a menacing national crisis that threatens to make bestiality and eternal slaughter a sickening national ethos. It is a period of national emergency; and everyone must come together to save the grave security situation.

     

  • Crisis in Rivers

    Crisis in Rivers

    PDP should not drag the judiciary down with it

     

    The turmoil in Rivers State chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) where there are two parallel executive committees is unhealthy for the judiciary and the polity. The verdict by Justice Ishaq Bello of the Federal Capital Territory High Court declaring the congress that produced Chief Godspower Ake as state chairman last year invalid has provoked angry reactions from the governor of the state, Mr. Rotimi Amaechi, and those sympathetic to him.

    Indeed, the state government has argued that Governor Amaechi was the target in the move, which had all the trappings of high-wire politics. Ake enjoys the support of the governor, while the minister of state for education, Mr. Nyesom Wike, leads another faction believed to be working with President Goodluck Jonathan and the national secretariat of the party, in a bid to cut the governor, who is also the chairman of the Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF), to size. This is not the first time that President Jonathan would be flexing such muscles; he did the same thing to remove the former governor of his state, Bayelsa, Timipre Sylva, using legal and extra-legal means in the process. We seem to be in an era where vendetta has been elevated to national credo.

    Prior to the Justice Bello ruling, there had been power tussles involving the president and the governor, with a surprise move early in the year to whittle down the influence of the NGF chairman through the establishment of a rival PDP Governors’ Forum, with a fellow Niger Delta governor, Chief Godswill Akpabio, as chairman.

    In all this, truth is the casualty and the polity is getting unnecessarily overheated. Governor Amaechi’s supporters insist that the Abuja judgment could be compared to the one delivered by Justice Bassey Ikpeme in Abuja in 1993 on the famous June 12 elections. Ikpeme, who was moved to the Federal Capital Territory just about one week before the matter to scuttle the presidential election was filed by the Chief Arthur Nzeribe-led Association for a Better Nigeria, ruled in favour of the unknown association without due regard for processes.

    In like manner, Governor Amaechi’s men also contend that the matter ought not to have gone to an FCT court when it involved the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), a federal agency. More appropriately, they have argued, it ought to have been filed before a Federal High Court, thus raising queries about the motive and conduct of the judge who strangely assumed jurisdiction in such a matter.

    We are bothered that, almost 53 years after independence, we are still confronted with situations that query the commitment of our elected officials to the rule of law and due process. Leaders have failed to make a distinction between personal and public interest. Now, there are two executive committees in the state. While Ake has the backing of most of the local government chapters of the party and government structures in Port-Harcourt and the local councils, the Felix Obuah executive derives its power from the centre. It is seen by many in the state as an imposed leadership which may have to rely on the police to function. The stage thus appears set for conflict. The state police command seems to have realised this and has said it is duty bound to enforce the contentious Abuja court order.

    The judicial absurdity was further compounded by the ruling of a high court in Port Harcourt which purportedly reversed the judgment of the Abuja high court, with which it has co-efficient jurisdiction.

    This is our worry. If politicians want to go down, they should do that alone; they do not have to drag the judiciary into their political mud because when all else fails, it is to the judiciary that we would turn. We do not understand why a matter that should be tried in Port Harcourt would now be filed in a high court in Abuja. In like manner, we cannot understand the basis of a court nullifying the judgment of another court with co-efficient jurisdiction. A stage is being set for judicial anarchy, which is dangerous.

    We urge the National Judicial Council (NJC) to step into the matter before the Rivers crisis escalates and brings the roof down on our heads.

  • Prison kids

    Prison kids

    •This is shameful; government must address it immediately

    Prison is one hellhole that no one would wish to experience. It is primarily a place of punishment for crime. This reality makes it absurd and horrifying to learn that there is a high population of kids who committed no crimes and are languishing in the country’s prisons. Even if they did commit crimes, minors are, by law, exempted from imprisonment. The appalling news is from a report by the African Union (AU) on the rights and welfare of the Nigerian child. An estimated 6,000 children reportedly live in prisons and detention centres across the country, many of whom were born there.

    The 2012 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices recently released by the United States’ Department of State painted a picture of the deplorable circumstances of children in the country’s prisons. According to the document, “Authorities sometimes held female and male prisoners together, especially in rural areas, and prisons had no facilities to care for pregnant women or nursing mothers. Infants born to inmate mothers usually remained with the mother until weaned. Juvenile suspects were often held with adult prisoners.”

    Since the law clearly forbids the imprisonment of children, this situation of caged kids opens the prison authorities to the charge of lawlessness. This irony in which the custodians of law breakers have themselves shown disrespect for the law is made even more pronounced by a piece of information in the US report. “Despite a government order to identify and release such children and their mothers, authorities had not done so by year’s end,” said the report.

    It is pathetic to visualise such children behind bars, both literally and metaphorically. It goes without saying that they are likely to suffer arrested development in various aspects, including growth, education, and socialisation. The country’s prison environment, as described in the report, is certainly not a place to raise any child. The document said, “Most of the country’s 234 prisons, built 70 to 80 years earlier, lacked basic facilities. Lack of potable water, inadequate sewage facilities, and severe overcrowding resulted in dangerous and unsanitary conditions.” Furthermore, it said, “Disease remained pervasive in cramped, poorly ventilated prison facilities, which had chronic shortages of medical supplies. Inadequate medical treatment caused many prisoners to die from treatable illnesses.”

    Even if children in this context are lucky to survive the harsh conditions, it can only be imagined the degree of damage that would have been done to their psyche. Hardened, as they would surely be, by the tough terms of existence in prison, can they possibly grow into socially well-adjusted adults? In a regrettable sense, they just might be embryonic criminals. This scenario should prick society’s conscience. It must be acknowledged that through no fault of theirs, but by birth and environment, these unfortunate children have found themselves exposed to negative influences that would likely shape their future. This is as unsettling as it is unacceptable.

    It is immensely disappointing that the activities of prison monitors in the country have had little or no positive effect on this state of affairs. Both the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), which compiles an annual prison audit, and the Federal Ministry of Justice, which executes the Federal Government Prison Decongestion Programme sadly fall short of public expectation in this matter. These bodies should not only be aware of the improper circumstances of the prison kids, they also ought to take urgent steps to correct the anomaly.

    It is worrying that the US report highlighted the failure of prison authorities to carry out the government’s directive on the identification and release of prison kids and their mothers. The government should promptly address this apparent disobedience of authority. The continued existence of children in jails does the country a disservice.

  • PDP’s dream

    PDP’s dream

    •An unwanted ruling party wants more states  

    As if oblivious of the fact that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is daily losing credibility among Nigerians, President Goodluck Jonathan has directed the party to add nine more states to the 23 that it presently controls, in the 2015 elections. While the PDP chairman, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, said that the directive is doable through “hard work”, the chairman, board of trustees of the party, Chief Tony Anenih, added a frightening dimension that the party “will do what we know how to do best”.

    For a party that is fast losing control of itself and that of many of its members nationwide, the “hard work” to “capture” at least 32 states, in spite of the general disillusionment of the electorate with the party’s woeful performance for 14 years, must be rigging of the election. The PDP has done this consistently over the years such that Anenih’s statement is easy to understand.

    Expectedly, the party has been under severe criticism since the presidential directive was made public. The national publicity secretary of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), Chief Emma Eneukwu, said “Nigerians are not fools who can be deceived by mere boast by a party that had plunged the country into terrible darkness. The day of reckoning is approaching”. The Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) simply advised PDP to stop its empty boast and stop day-dreaming, considering the condition on ground.

    The party’s spokesman in Lagos State, Joe Igbokwe, said “No reasonable person could even think of PDP’s chances in 2015 after wrecking havoc on Nigeria for 14 years.” “You don’t capture with votes but with arms and ammunition,” said Jide Awe, ACN chairman in Ekiti State. For Lai Mohammed, ACN’s national publicity secretary, “I don’t think that the word “capture” is a lexicon that should be used in a democracy. That belongs to the military era and that is the mindset of the PDP”.

    Sensing that the PDP’s threat was the result of fear of the victory for the All Progressive Congress (APC) in 2015, the Chairman of the Conference of Nigerian Political Parties (CNPP), Alhaji Balarabe Musa, advised President Jonathan “to prepare his hand-over note as the era of rigging was over because what happened in 2011 election will never happen again”.

    These and other criticisms for Jonathan and the PDP have exposed the party exactly as the late Bola Ige called it: “a party with leprous hands” that nobody wants to shake. The widespread disillusionment with the PDP government has become so widespread: Under the party, Nigeria has been plunged into darkness as a result of lack of electricity supply; millions of Nigerians lack access to potable water; billions of pensioners’ funds have been stolen while the beneficiaries have died and are still dying, of criminal neglect by the pension ‘house of horror’.

    These are not all; there is near collapse of education and medical care; infrastructure; dirty environments in rural and urban areas, disease and squalor and the now frightening phenomenon of general insecurity that has made life in Nigeria totally unpredictable. Yet, the PDP hopes to add nine more states to its present 23!

    On what spectacular performance did the party base its boast of capturing nine more states? Where, precisely, will the PDP get the 32 states in 2015? Well, PDP has the right to engage itself in self-delusion or day dreaming, but we should warn that it is extremely dangerous for a non-performing party to boast of winning 32 out of 36 states in a country where general awareness of the situation in the country by the electorate is very high.

    We also advise that the PDP should stop beating the drum of war through its use of military terms and its politics of “do or die” in a country where the electorate may have made up their minds about the kind of government they need and want, come the 2015 general elections.

     

  • Worrisome body-snatching

    Worrisome body-snatching

    •Three abductions in Lagos in one week is sure to make stakeholders wary

    First, it was Mr. Kehinde Bamigbetan, chairman of Ejigbo Local Council Development Area, Lagos, that was abducted Monday last week and released five days later, after his family had reportedly paid a ransom of N15 million. Last Tuesday, a 16-year-old pupil of American International School, Lagos, was reportedly kidnapped on his way to school. There was no clue as to his whereabouts up till the end of last week and no demand was yet made. The third case was a lady by the name of Nnena Edu said to have been kidnapped in front of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, Sabo, Yaba, Lagos Mainland, Sunday, last week. She was released three days later.

    It is not that there had not been cases of kidnapping in Lagos State, but they were few and far between. Witnessing three successive and, shall we say, successful cases in one week in different parts of the city portends a sad augury. All stake-holders – from the government, security agencies, corporate bodies and Lagosians generally – must be wary of this monster creeping, so to speak, into their city.

    Kidnapping for ransom has been a Nigerian scourge for well over a decade now, ravaging the south-south and then the South-east parts of Nigeria. Emanating as part of the Niger Delta youth uprising and militancy when expatriates, especially in the oil sector were abducted routinely to press home their point, kidnapping soon spread to adjoining states and regions because it turned out quite ‘lucrative.’ It soon became the rave in the south-east zone, as unemployed youths and tertiary institutions’ students found in it, a relatively easy and risk-free means of getting rich quick.

    As we have canvassed on this page several times, the syndrome of kidnapping for ransom is merely symptomatic of the malaise in the polity. Ineffectual leadership, flailing economy and massive corruption have left a multitude of youths jobless and untended. There is hardly a modicum of governance or economy in most of the 774 local government areas (LGAs) across the country. This is a vast swathe of the country left unharnessed and unproductive. While a few city centres seem to thrive, the LGAs have become comatose, if not moribund. Huge commercial activities that ought to take place in the LGAs in a proper three three-tier structure are non-existent.

    By the same token, the security agencies, especially the police, have become overwhelmed and incapacitated by the much daunting environment they operate in. Over the years, they have become poorly trained and ill-equipped to be able to contain the kidnapping scourge. What therefore started in the Niger-Delta as a symbol of protest has metamorphosed into a huge criminal enterprise and spreading into nearly every part of the country. Virtually no day passes without a case of kidnapping in states like Anambra, Imo, Edo, Delta and now, in the south-west states.

    Though cases of abductions have been reported recently in states like Ekiti, Ondo and Osun, the recent manifestations in Lagos would leave not a few residents worried. The mega-city, with her more-than-capable governor has long been considered as the model state in terms of maintaining order, peace and security. With a well-oiled security fund managed by a well-appointed committee, the Babatunde Fashola administration has managed to keep the city under control within tolerable limits. Vice and criminal activities had hitherto been within bearable levels.

    But this seems to be changing recently. Armed robbery gangs have threatened to overwhelm the state and violent street gangs have been on the increase, causing deaths and much unease in many neighbourhoods. And now it is abductions. Lagos has represented a model city state for the rest of the country in the last few years; it has been an exemplar of how governments should be organised in nearly all ramifications as it created templates that have been widely copied across the country.

    We urge the state government to run critical reviews in some of its systems, especially the laudable security model which had functioned considerably well. We refer particularly to the incipient surge in body snatching and suggest a holistic approach and an entirely new template in order to nip it in the bud.

     

  • Boston bomb blasts

    Boston bomb blasts

    •Nigeria has many lessons to learn from its handling

    A marathon event in the city of Boston in the United States of America, turned tragic as two bombs exploded, killing three persons and injuring about 170 others, last week. Following the incident, many are wondering whether the anti-terrorism instincts of the United States’ security agencies are on the decline. For, in the aftermath of 9/11 in 2001, homeland security became of utmost importance to the US; while it also spread its tentacles across the world, to tame the enemy far away from its homeland. Unfortunately, the Boston tragedy reconfirms that the world is still very unsafe for all, including the United States.

    But the US’ reaction to the incident has been true to character. Within a matter of days, the security agencies were able to narrow the possible culprits. Also, there are daily briefs about the efforts being made to apprehend those responsible for the bombing. The American President, Barack Obama, in an address, boasted that the perpetrators of the crime would be found and punished. He called it “a heinous and cowardly act”, and while acknowledging that they do not know whether it was planned and executed by a terrorist organisation, he emphasised that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was investigating it as an act of terrorism.

    From developments, the country is making a steady progress on the matter, with the arraignment Monday, of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the suspects. His suspected accomplice, Tamerlan, who was also his elder brother, was killed during a firefight with the police. Naturally, many Nigerians would wish that their government exhibit similar speed, each time the country is attacked. The Nigerian situation is even more pathetic, considering the more severe security challenges facing the country. Unlike in Nigeria, after the attack, the American political and security agencies immediately seized the media space to assure their citizens of the intervention of the state to provide succour for the victims and punishment for the culprits.

    There has also been a noticeable cooperation between the agencies of government. Interestingly, in America, there are the federal, state and community police, yet they are working in harmony. There have not been any clashes between the FBI, the preeminent federal police authority in the country and other agencies; neither are there conflicting reports as to who is doing what, and the results that are achieved. It is this cooperation that has paid off, leading to significant inroads in unravelling the suspects.

    Comparatively, in Nigeria, we see the Nigerian Police, and the State Security Service, constantly contending for space, and achieving clearly conflicting results, while investigating the same matter.

    Another interesting development noticeable from the Boston tragedy is the reaction of the citizenry following the attack. Even before the fire service and security agencies came to the scene of the blasts, the citizens had mobilised. As if primed for such emergencies, the cameras caught many running in to help the injured, immediately the bombs went off. Unfortunately again in our country, scenes of tragedy sometimes are invaded by an unhelpful crowd and those who are more interested in what they can steal from the victims. No doubt, Nigerians are not effectively mobilised or trained to helpfully react to tragedies.

    It is also important to observe that anti-Americanism in significant parts of the world is not in retreat despite the military capacity and preeminence the country currently enjoys. Many would think that with the killing of the Al-Qaeda leader, Osama bin Ladin, the Libyan strongman, Muammar Ghaddafi, and the Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, terrorism against the United States would end. Unfortunately, the recent killing of the American Ambassador to Libya and this Boston bomb attack, confirm that the crises continue to mutate.

    As Nigerians, we join in the grief of the United States, and hope that our agencies would learn lessons from the terror attack, in dealing with our own security challenges.

  • Father of many children

    Father of many children

    • Robert Edwards, test-tube baby pioneer, passes on

    The death, on April 10, of Professor Sir Robert Edwards, whose pioneering research into in-vitro fertilisation brought joy to millions of families around the world, marks the end of a significant phase of path-breaking scientific research.

    Working in an era when long-standing ethical and religious values had begun to clash with several aspects of cutting-edge science, Sir Edwards displayed the courage and understanding that were vital to getting others to buy into his vision. While he respected the objections of religious and other conservative groups, he repeatedly pointed out the unimpeachable motive which inspired him, namely the desire to ensure that couples that were childless could get offspring of their own.

    Today, the vision of Edwards and his co-pioneer, Dr. Patrick Steptoe has become magnificently manifest, as over four million children have been born as a result of their innovativeness and persistence. This is clearly a positive demonstration of the ways in which committed science can be of use to the advancement of society. In contrast to weapons research, for instance, in-vitro fertilisation seeks to provide hope instead of despair, and to bring life rather than death.

    It is gratifying to note that Edwards’ dogged commitment was ultimately rewarding to him on a personal level as well. In 2010, some four decades after stunning the world with his achievement, the Nobel Prize for Medicine was bestowed upon him. One year later, he was given a knighthood.

    There can be no doubt that the connection between science and society is a symbiotic one. At its most useful, science addresses itself to the solving of social problems in such a way that the overall quality of life is improved. However, in achieving this laudable goal, researchers often venture into uncharted waters, thereby sometimes arousing the opposition of society’s more conservative elements. This has certainly been the case in areas of medicine like stem-cell research, euthanasia and cloning, where strong disagreement has arisen on both the ethics and the likely consequences of such research.

    Differences of opinion cannot be avoided on these issues, but what is required is the civilised exchange of views in order to arrive at a workable consensus. Just as it would be wrong for the scientists to disparage disagreement with their research aims, so would it be inappropriate for such research to be denigrated out of hand. History has shown that a great deal of opposition to scientific advance was misinformed, and that society has largely been better off as a result of such advances, especially those in medicine. Yet, given the rapid pace of scientific research and the significance it poses for the very foundations of society, it is unwise to disregard those who harbour genuine fears about the ethical and other consequences of such enquiry.

    As a member of the global community, Nigeria has been a beneficiary of the latest advances in scientific research. In-vitro fertilisation, which used to be undertaken abroad in conditions of secrecy, is now available in the country as a relatively routine procedure. There also appears to be increasing utilisation of cosmetic surgery, organ transplants and other operations which were also initially controversial.

    In the light of these developments, Nigeria must begin to engage with medical research issues in a much more considered way. An impending ban on human cloning by the Senate, for example, ought to have been taken only after exhaustive public discussion and expert commentary. It makes no sense to act in knee-jerk fashion, only to have to backtrack in the future. Indeed, given the penchant for the country’s politicians to rush overseas for medical treatment, it would have been expected that they should have seen the imperative of ensuring that Nigeria is properly positioned at the cutting-edge of medical research.

     

  • Billionaire debtors again!

    Billionaire debtors again!

    •The lenders should be named and shamed as part of ways to clean the Augean stables

    There are several ways to view the report that billionaire debtors earlier blacklisted by the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON) are back in warm embrace of the nation’s lenders. The first is to underscore the farce in the high drama of naming and shaming them; the other is indicative of the extent to which the culture of impunity in the sector has not only endured but metastasised; the third merely acknowledges how far the nation is down the ladder of global best practices.

    Last September, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) had rolled out the names of individuals and corporate bodies barred from further accessing credit from the financial system. The companies were 113 in number, with additional names of 419 directors/shareholders. The apex bank had explained at the time, that it was forced to wield the big stick because of the reluctance of the debtors to meet their obligations to AMCON, after the latter purchased the debts.

    Today, both the CBN and AMCON have enough stories to tell about the toxic loans that were products of bad credit decisions by the lenders oftentimes acting in collusion with unscrupulous borrowers. Indeed, a good number were no more than avenues to steal depositors’ funds – with no considerations about paying back. Aside the fact that the loans were huge, most were granted in grave violation of relevant credit guidelines, and in almost all cases, poorly documented.

    Which was why the idea of shutting the culprits out of credit until they had purged themselves of their pathology was considered a just and fitting penalty.

    We understand that in the shifting terrain of business and the economy, there can be no such thing as a sacrosanct list of debtors. This is at least as far as those who took the loans are willing to engage their creditors for amicable settlement on mutually agreed terms. Asides – we find no merit in criminalising the debts, so long as the debtors are willing to engage.

    There are in fact, indications that some of the debtors on the original list have either made good on their obligations or had their debts restructured. This is where regular, periodic update of the debtors’ list by the CBN would have made eminent sense if only to avail the nation of information on the progress being made, given the publicity that greeted the publication of the list.

    Now to the issue of pathological debtors said to have found ways round the CBN regulation barring them from the financial system despite neglecting to meet their debt obligations. What the development indicates is that nothing has changed – that decisions about credit are still hardly about issues of credit-worthiness of borrowers but other extraneous considerations. It is also indicative of how far the CBN’s message of diligence in credit administration is yet to sink among banks. For an industry that expended a whopping N3 trillion to clear its Augean stables of toxic debts, the development must come as deeply troubling, a test of the apex bank’s resolve to punish bad behaviour.

    Those who gave fresh loans to the class of delinquent borrowers obviously have a case to answer; it seems also about time the apex bank extended the tactic of ‘naming and shaming’ to negligent and delinquent bank directors who approved them.

    This newspaper has long made a song of the need for a credit bureau. The latest development is precisely why the bureau – a veritable instrument for making credit decisions – can no longer wait.