The Nation Newspaper

Category: Editorial

  • Boko Haram ‘ceasefire’

    Boko Haram ‘ceasefire’

    Chinua Achebe quipped in one of his novels, quoting an Igbo proverb: when a bully sees someone he can beat up, he becomes hungry for a fight. The attitude that drives bullies is cowardice. So, the converse to that Igbo proverb is when a bully sees someone that can beat him up, he scurries away like a rat.

    That explains Boko Haram, the terrorist group’s sudden unilateral declaration of ceasefire. When it was busy running rings round Goodluck Jonathan’s security apparatuses, Imam Abubakar Shekau and his group were waxing bloodily lyrical as to how they would finish with the North and go on to Islamise the whole of Nigeria. They even told Jonathan to convert to Islam as a prelude to any peace talk! Shekau even rhapsodised on some exclusive divine charter from ‘Allah’, to kill his enemies – as if God, that created Man, needed any man to fight His battles.

    But now that the French are pacifying the Mali base of the cowardly Boko Haram leaders, they are scurrying home and panting “ceasefire”; in a fond hope to turn looming defeat into a victory of sorts – not unlike the dead Osama Bin Laden that hid in the dubious safety of rocks, but told brain-washed suicide bombers to go kill themselves and thousands of innocent others for a false cause.

    But make no mistake. Boko Haram and its mass murder serve as wake-up call from the iniquity of running this country. President Jonathan is not the strongest president in Nigerian history. But his glaring weakness in confronting the Boko Haram crisis goes beyond his perceived weakness or strength. And the collateral damage, in lost lives, hacked limbs and shattered psyches, desecrated worship places, is glaring but tragic comeuppance for a nation ever willing to be hustled and bustled into systemic injustices.

    Jonathan’s road to the presidency was clearly controversial, if not outright iniquitous; given the brazen abrogation of his party’s zoning principle. When this debate raged, Nigerians almost as a consensus, hee-hawed; when they should have spoken out on principle.

    So when the first Boko Haram mass slaughter hit the polity, Jonathan, perhaps smitten by his own conscience, felt obliged to appease. But the more he did that, the more contemptuous his traducers – angry victims of an unfair power deal – appeared to become. We must note that his olive branch was tentative and gloatingly hypocritical. Hence, the lexicon: “political Boko Haram”, made a tragic entry into the polity. For a society that readily acquiesces to injustice, the Boko Haram mass destruction was a tragic consequence. We hope everyone has learnt their lessons.

    That brings the question to Boko Haram and its demands, in exchange for some “amnesty”, which in real terms sound more like amnesia. But amnesia is the costliest commodity this polity can afford right now, if it is not to sink in a messier bog in the immediate future.

    Interestingly, some “Northern elders” under the auspices of the Northern Development Focus Initiative (NDFI) are already pushing for “amnesty” in a surface link with the Niger Delta amnesty package, which curbed the swamp terrorism in the South.

    Many might even wax poetic by this poser: if the late Umaru Yar’Adua, a “northern” president could fix the Niger Delta crisis, why shouldn’t President Jonathan, a “southern” president, draw the curtains on Boko Haram’s urban warfare?

    There is no reason why not. To start with, terrorism is terrorism. It did not matter if Niger Delta militants were attacking oil installations; and the Boko Haram lunatics are bombing innocent citizens in the streets, many of them luckless Christians in their churches, muslims in mosques, merchandisers in the open markets and vulnerable police officers who never had any quarrel with Boko Haram; or demystifying the Nigerian state by facing down and “vanquishing” the Police, prime symbol of power and authority of the Nigerian state.

    So, if you could do a deal with Niger Delta militants and later set many of them up with juicy federal contracts, why not also pat Boko Haram leaders in the back and hand them their own golden handshakes? Amnesia is amnesia. If you can, for “peace”, forget the havoc of militants, so can you for the havoc of Boko Haram murderers!

    Beyond sarcasm, however, there are at least two definitive differences in the end game of the two crises: the Niger Delta militants were close to defeat; and the amnesty deal was some face-saving device. In the present case, Boko Haram is far from defeat. So, those crowing amnesty must know that, as things stand, should the French go back to Paris, Boko Haram can restart where it left off.

    But more fundamentally, the Niger Delta amnesty was basically a deal for agents of the Nigerian state to have more access to oil and its endless gravy. In the case of Boko Haram, there is no such consensus based on strategic greed.

    All Boko Haram has left in its trail is a smouldering North: troubled politics, prostrate economy, ruptured society, especially along religious and sectarian lines, and a shattered psyche. In other words, if indeed there is anything like “political Boko Haram” as alleged, all it has done is cut the North’s nose to spite its face; while hoping to put Jonathan’s nose out of joint. So those “northern elders” who push for amnesty based on amnesia should think twice: an un-decapitated Boko Haram may yet wreak more havoc for that region, its luckless people and the Federal Republic.

    While the Jonathan presidency must make some compromises for peace, such compromises must not be at the expense of justice – for there can be no peace without justice. That is why it must rigorously examine Boko Haram demands and only grant those that are reasonable.

    If Boko Haram, for instance, asks for their mosques to be rebuilt, that demand is reasonable, equitable, just and fair. If the state knows its Basic Law guarantees freedom of worship and still recklessly goes ahead to destroy places of worship, it must pay for its constitutional crime. If that would come in rebuilding mosques and paying compensation, so be it.

    But the Boko Haram request that its detained members should be released is patently absurd. How can the state release willful and murderous criminals? If there is any soft-landing at all, it should be for the brainwashed canon fodders. To serve as deterrent, the Boko Haram ring leaders must be made to pay for their crime, though in the spirit of compromise, the severity of the penalty could be tempered.

    Beyond reasonable and unreasonable demands, however, the Nigerian state should evolve an economic recovery and rehabilitation template for post-Boko Haram North to wipe out the poverty that has served as convenient nursery for Abubakar Shekau and his doctrinal anarchists to thrive.

    It is time the North – and the country – made a fresh start. But that should be under the template of a reworked and productive federal system.

     

  • Capital Oil versus Access Bank

    Capital Oil versus Access Bank

    Is it right for a Nigerian court to stop anyone free access to justice in England?

    There was a startling twist in the legal tangle between Capital Oil and Gas Limited and its Managing Director, Mr Ifeanyi Ubah, and Access Bank Plc and Coscharis Motors, over a disputed N10 billion loan the bank claimed to have granted the company.

    A Federal High Court in Lagos ordered the bank to discontinue a suit it filed against the other party at a London High Court of Justice in relation to issues pending before the Nigerian court. According to the ruling by Justice Okon Abang, the bank has 48 hours to comply, and is expected to produce the “notice of discontinuance of all processes before the English court” at the next hearing date on February 4.

    Furthermore, he restrained the bank from enforcing the English court’s order against Ubah; and added, rather superfluously, that Ubah and his company could “seek leave of the court to commence contempt proceedings” against the bank, and demand damages. While the ruling is open to appeal, it is not clear yet what steps the bank might take in reaction to it.

    Ubah and his company had challenged a worldwide order (mareva injunction) by the English court on November 9 last year, freezing assets worth $133.5 million belonging to the party in England and Wales. This order was said to be contrary to Abang’s, reportedly issued on the same day, restraining the other party from “interfering with the applicants’ properties and/or business interest, pending the final determination of this suit.” In the suit in question, Ubah is seeking, among other things, a declaration that there was no “privity or contract and/or direct customer/banker relationship between him along with his company, and Access Bank.” On the other hand, the bank had alleged in its London suit that the defendants fraudulently diverted the petroleum products it financed under the joint venture agreement between Capital Oil and Coscharis Motors.

    Justice Abang concurred with Ubah’s counsel, Chief Wole Olanipekun (SAN), who reportedly argued that, in seeking the English court’s freezing order in respect of a matter that happened in Nigeria, the bank “ridiculed the Nigerian judiciary” and demonstrated disrespect for the restraining order issued by the Nigerian court. Olanipekun further described the bank’s London suit as “an attempt to undermine the judicial process in Nigeria.”

    With all due respect, the arguments of the learned counsel, upheld by the judge, just do not add up. To begin with, it is certainly not unusual that the bank took its case to an English court, even though this implied that the party apparently had greater confidence in the English legal system. Neither is it unreasonable, considering well-founded criticisms of the local judicial process of alleged tardiness and questionable verdicts.

    In addition, speaking comparatively, the Nigerian judicial system is, regrettably, perceived as perhaps more liable to distorted justice. A case in point is the widely-publicised UK conviction and long-term imprisonment of the Nigerian ex-governor of Delta State, James Onanefe Ibori, for corruption and money laundering. It is generally believed that he escaped justice in Nigeria because of his connections in high places.

    It is significant that there is no fundamental dispute over the jurisdiction of the English court, which, indeed, makes Justice Abang’s far-reaching pronouncements even more bewildering. At stake is someone’s fundamental right, which is a free access to justice. A local court should not frustrate a universal quest for truth and justice. If the bank took its case to a court with jurisdiction, even if abroad, can it be said, then, to have erred in its quest for justice? This is a question that has to be answered and it would be interesting to see how the judicial knot will be untied.

  • Brazil’s dark Sunday

    Brazil’s dark Sunday

    • The fire disaster in the south American country is a wake-up call here in Nigeria

    January 27 would for long be a day to remember in Brazil’s annals. That was the day that about 245 Brazilians lost their lives in a nightclub in the southern city of Santa Maria, after a band’s pyrotechnics show set the building ablaze. Most of the victims died of asphyxiation or were trampled upon by others in a stampede. The club was filled beyond capacity when the fire broke out at about 2:30 a.m.

    The disaster, one of the worst such in the world in about a decade, saw Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff cut short a visit to Chile, to attend to the emergency. A similar incident happened in 2003 when fire broke out at a nightclub in West Warwick, Rhode Island, killing 100. Another occurred in a Buenos Aires nightclub, Argentina, in 2004 that killed nearly 200. As in the recent disaster, the other incidents occurred when a band or members of the audience set the stage alight.

    For a country preparing to host next year’s World Cup soccer tournament and the 2016 Summer Olympics, this incident must naturally bring its safety standards and emergency response capabilities under scrutiny. We sympathise with the government and people of Brazil over this tragic incident and wish the survivors speedy recovery.

    Even as we empathise with the Brazilians, the incident should bring into sharp focus our own emergency procedures, especially as we have been caught napping on many occasions. As we have always said, tragedies will always happen even with the best of precautionary measures; but the ability to respond adequately and on time can make the difference between life and death.

    From reports, it was clear a lot went wrong with the Brazilian nightclub. One, it was operating illegally as at the time of the incident. Its licence expired last August and was yet to be renewed because the nightclub has only one emergency exit. But how many nightclubs and other relaxation spots have valid licences in Nigeria? The Brazilians appear to be better off; at least they are able to capture the Kiss nightclub in their record. They even refused to renew its licence because it was yet to meet safety standards. Essentially, therefore, the problem there is lack of enforcement of the law, a thing we are also familiar with in Nigeria.

    Here, we place more emphasis on revenue; once the club is able to pay the relevant fees, it could be in business, with or without emergency door or no door at all, if that is ever possible! It was clear many of the revelers in the nightclub would have escaped if there were functional emergency doors, and clearly so marked. About 50 of them died in toilets because they mistook the doors to the toilets for emergency exits.

    From reports, too, it was clear the fire extinguishers in the nightclub were for decoration as they were useless when it mattered most. Again, how many homes or institutions have functional fire extinguishers in Nigeria? Even some high-rise buildings here regard such basic facility as luxury; yet, no one cares about such terrible nonchalance until something tragic happens.

    In addition, most of our Fire Brigade stations do not have the basic tools to contain any serious fire. When they do not respond late to distress calls, they come to the scene only to join other spectators because they do not have water. Our problems are compounded by power surge and incompetent artisans whose activities had led to many disasters one way or the other in the past.

    We are more prone to disasters; and this is not something to be proud of. The Brazil nightclub fire should be a wake-up call to our authorities to get serious and address, in practical terms, the challenges that have made them experts in graveside orations arising from avoidable or badly managed disasters.

  • Locked into your phone

    Locked into your phone

    Cellphone users know that when they sign a contract with a mobile phone company, they’re locked into that network for the duration of the deal. What they may not know is that their phone is digitally locked to that network forever. And as of this week, they may no longer have the legal right to unlock it, even after the contract has expired. It’s just the latest example of how companies have stretched copyright law to deter competition and innovation, not protect the creators of copyrighted works.

    At issue is Section 1201 of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which bars people from circumventing a “technological measure” — e.g., a digital lock — that restricts access to a copyrighted work. Recognizing how sweeping the prohibition was, Congress instructed the Librarian of Congress to grant exemptions every three years for circumventions that enabled non-infringing uses of locked works. The government granted exemptions for mobile phone unlocking in 2006 and 2010 but not last year, ruling that consumers who wanted an unlocked phone could buy a new one or seek permission from their phone company.

    The industry’s trade association contends that the locks help prevent people from taking heavily subsidized phones to rival networks before they’ve fulfilled their contracts and (presumably) repaid the subsidies. It also argues that the locks help stop middlemen from buying prepaid phones in bulk, unlocking them and then reselling them overseas. But mobile phone companies already charge hefty early termination fees for users who break their contracts, and they sell prepaid phones with considerably lower subsidies, if any. For example, Verizon gives away the HTC Rhyme smartphone with a two-year contract, but it charges $440 for a Rhyme without one.

    More fundamentally, it’s hard to see the connection between the locks and the software creators that copyright law were supposed to protect. Consumers were allowed to unlock phones before the smartphone market exploded, and yet Apple went on to develop the iPhone and Google developed the rival Android software. Clearly, the point of the locks isn’t to protect Apple, Google and other creators of copyrighted phone software; it’s to protect the phone companies’ revenue streams.

    That’s not what copyright law is for. Yet that’s how companies have repeatedly tried to use it in the digital era, when so many services and devices can claim copyright protection based on the software they rely on. The courts have turned back some of the more egregious efforts, such as the attempt by a printer manufacturer to use the anti-circumvention law to block a rival supplier of ink cartridges. But the government’s flub on the cellphone issue shows that it’s time for Congress to clarify that companies will have to find a more appropriate tool than copyright law to enforce their business models.

    – Los Angeles Times

  • Below scratch

    Below scratch

    •The performance of President Jonathan in the CNN Amanpour interview left much to be desired

    On January 23 in Davos, Switzerland, President Goodluck Jonathan briefly fielded questions from CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on her Amanpour programme, in a satellite-relayed interview.

    The president’s responses were unbefitting of a country that has produced a Nobel Laureate in Wole Soyinka, a globally acclaimed writer in Chinua Achebe, and an extremely articulate international civil servant in Emeka Anyaoku, among many other illustrious Nigerians. Briefly put, the Jonathan pedestrian performance was sad. But it was also a fearfully vivid metaphor of leadership lagging behind the people, the bane of governance in Nigeria.

    The president’s responses failed almost on all counts: substance, style, depth, class and even basic logic. It also suffered from basic untruths: the president’s claim that Nigerians were “pleased” at the level of power supply in the country was too sweeping to be true. Another flat promise (without any proof) was that at the end of 2013, Nigeria would be a power El Dorado. The president was spot on, however, when he contradicted the earlier assertion by saying that if Nigeria had all the money and political will, fixing the power problem would still take some time.

    But it was on the issue of Boko Haram that he showed a scandalous lack of grasp of the situation, though he projected himself, to a squirming global audience, as one of those providing a solution to the problem by getting involved in rooting out terrorism in Mali. Still, he rightly reasoned that rooting out the alleged Boko Haram nursery in Mali was crucial to curbing the menace in northern Nigeria– a menace that has consumed thousands of innocent lives.

    Ironically however, beyond the derring-do of a Nigerian strong man come to solve Mali’s terrorism challenges en route to checkmating Boko Haram, the president was at sea at the basic trigger of the terrorist group. When Ms Amanpour suggested that it was basic misrule, poverty and corruption that gave Boko Haram its initial boost – which were true – President Jonathan combatively demurred and denied that self-evident fact, to the utter embarrassment of his viewers.

    However, President Jonathan committed the gaffe of the day when he cautioned the US State Department – and others who believed that Nigerian security agencies widely abused citizens’ rights in the name of fighting Boko Haram – not to play politics with the terrorist group! Is the American foreign ministry then part of Nigeria’s local politics? Such un-presidential naivety!

    Failing in basic analysis of the problem, the president latched on to an embarrassing illogic of a combined appeal to pity and clambering on the global train to fight and defeat terror, rather than demonstrating his own understanding of the dire situation for his country. Pray, if a president does not even understand a problem, how does he go about solving it?

    On umpteenth theft of Nigerian crude, President Jonathan was no less flat. His riposte to Ms Amanpour’s quote of a figure by Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nigeria’s finance minister and coordinating minister for the economy, that 400,000 barrels of crude was daily stolen, was not how to stem the financial bleeding. It was rather an annoying counter-blackmail to the “international community” who nevertheless accept to refine the crude, knowing it had been stolen! So, traders in international crude, licit or illicit, should do Jonathan’s job for him?

    Even on the power question, Ms Amanpour, who was relatively soft by her own hard standard in this satellite-relayed interview, virtually drew rings around the president when she made a joke that she was at a loss at what to tell Nigerians who said they hoped they would have electricity to even watch the interview on which the president was being featured!

    Whoever dragged Jonathan to CNN, without adequately preparing him for the chore, had done the country a lot of ill. The president also did himself no credit by his below-par performance. In future, it is either the president prepares and excels; or perpetually keeps his peace. Enough of this image of a drooling president that does neither himself nor his country any good.

     

  • Outrageous!

    Outrageous!

    •Justice Mohammed Talba’s sentence causes national uproar for its absurdity

    Corruption pays and the higher the magnitude of the malfeasance, the better for the perpetrator. This seems to be the maxim Justice Talba of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) High Court sought to propound last Monday in a ruling that has stirred indignation nationwide.

    In sentencing Mr. John Yakubu Yusuf, the deputy director in the Police Pension Office who was found guilty of colluding with others to steal over N27 billion, Justice Talba chose the most lenient of options. He sentenced Yusuf to two years imprisonment with an option of N750,000.00 fine. He is also to forfeit 32 houses in the FCT and Gombe as well as N325million that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) said were proceeds from the crime. The convict, according to newspaper reports, briskly paid the fine from the booth of his car and went home a free man.

    Apparently discomfited by the public outrage that trailed what is clearly judicial impunity, the culprit was re-arrested by the EFCC. According to the agency, he is being arraigned over non-declaration of all his assets and liability, particularly his negligence to note his interest in a company known as SY-A Global Services Limited.

    The perfidy of the light sentence handed to Yusuf by Justice Talba was brought to the fore by a similar sentencing the following day (Tuesday) at the Oyo State High Court where Justice Mashood Abass sentenced the Provost of the Federal Co-operative College, Ibadan, Mrs. Ruth Aweto and the bursar, Mr. Adekanye Komolafe to four years imprisonment each, without the option of fine.

    Their offence: they were found guilty of deceiving the Federal Government by presenting 41 casual staff as permanent staff of the college, with annual emolument of about N7million instead of N3.6million. In essence, they made a dubious gain of only N3.4 million over one year.

    Justice Talba’s action must have set a precedent, albeit a pernicious one, in the annals of convictions in Nigeria’s pension scam. Understandably, sentencing is at the discretion of the judge but the rule of the thumb is to match a sentence against the gravity of an offence. It is therefore, a sheer parody of justice to ask a convict who has admitted to stealing billions of naira to pay just a token fine and go home. It is particularly worrisome when the stolen money is the life-time savings and toil of workers who are denied the enjoyment of such savings in their old age.

    It is common knowledge that in recent years, many aged and ailing pensioners die on verification queues across the country in the bid to get their pensions while many go for years without any pay. It is because of unscrupulous people like Yusuf who would rather covet the pooled funds that the pension system has been dysfunctional and murky. One would expect the justice to have handed down a punishment almost commensurate with the offence of the felon to serve as a deterrent to others. To have allowed Yusuf to go home almost unscathed, Justice Talba leaves all right-thinking people suspicious that there must be much more to the judgment.

    How come Justice Talba gave no thought to the import of his pronouncement on the society? His sentencing endorses corruption at its most bizarre level. His message: steal big enough, get light sentence. It is salutary that the EFCC has re-arraigned this callous felon; we hope that he would get his just dessert at the end of the day. The Nigeria Judicial Council (NJC) should immediately review the ruling to save the face of Nigeria’s judiciary.

     

  • Egypt needs a political consensus

    Egypt needs a political consensus

    Much more of this chaos and the army will be back

    President Mohamed Morsi’s declaration of a month-long state of emergency in three Suez Canal cities after a weekend of lethal violence is a depressing way to mark the second anniversary of the Tahrir Square revolution.

    While it is not intrinsic evidence of involution, after 30 years of emergency rule by Hosni Mubarak, the toppled former president, and amid authoritarian reflexes by Mr Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood- led government, it is an alarming index of a downward spiral into chaos that could tempt the army back on to the political stage.

    Quite simply, there is no sign of the stability Egypt needs to revive investment and create jobs. Nor is it clear who rules Egypt. There are still three power centres: a presidency that acts as an extension of the Brotherhood; the generals; and a fragmented secular opposition of small parties and street activists. A controversially dissolved parliament awaits new elections. Vital institutions such as the police and the judiciary need to be reformed.

    The worst violence at the weekend followed death sentences handed down to Port Said football hooligans convicted in the deaths of dozens of rivals in February. That attack was widely seen as a police-facilitated reprisal against the Cairo al-Ahli team’s “ultras”, whose street-fighting skills helped topple the Mubarak regime. Such incidents proliferate amid the chaos and the lack of a consensus to confront it. Mr Morsi and the Brotherhood, through their naked power grabs and secretive decision-making, seem to regard Egypt’s institutions as their own. The opposition fails to articulate an alternative, riding the backlash against Islamist over-reach.

    As this sterile political struggle rages, the economy is on its knees. A long negotiated IMF loan is not yet in place. It would require a socially explosive rationalisation of subsidies that eat up a quarter of the budget. Food and fuel-price inflation is high, and the currency is under strain. Egypt is kept afloat by transfers from Qatar, protecting its investment in the Brotherhood – not quite the “dignity revolution” Egyptians envisaged.

    Some of this turmoil was unavoidable; Egypt is trying to emerge from a desert of despotism. But Mr Morsi does not have much time left to prove mainstream Islamists can govern – and for all Egyptians. The opposition, some of whose leaders applauded the constitutional court’s dissolution last year of an elected parliament, should not crow either. If both camps cannot build a workable consensus, they will both go down together.

     

    – Financial Times

  • Justice for Odah

    Justice for Odah

    •Court ruling is a wake-up call for labour to live up to its ideals

    For John Odah, victory could not have been sweeter after nearly two years of battle to return to his plum job as scribe of Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC). Last week, the National Industrial Court, Abuja, ordered the NLC to withdraw its letter of May 24, 2011 terminating his appointment. It further directed his reinstatement as general secretary of the congress with full rights, benefits, and privileges appertaining to it from June, 2011.

    The ruling was explicit: “the Claimant (Odah) is deemed to have maintained unbroken record of service with the 1st Defendant (NLC) since his employment in 1987 until his ultimate disengagement as hereinafter provided.

    There is however a caveat: Odah will upon resumption of office serve a three-month notice of his voluntary retirement and “on the same day proceed or deemed to have proceeded on retirement leave” with his salaries and emolument as well as terminal benefits paid up to, and including the last day of his pre-retirement notice. The NLC was directed to arrange a befitting and widely publicised sen- forth party for him, in appreciation of his services while he, in turn, is expected to hand over the affairs of the office and any property of the congress.

    For a case that threatened to split the labour movement down the middle, it is both a timely and well-reasoned judgment.

    No doubt, the development had a tinge of irony while it lasted. The first part is that the NLC had to be dragged to court over an alleged violation of the same principles of fair and equitable treatment over which it had dared other employers in the past. The second part is that an activist and veteran of such pitched battles would be its direct victim.

    The main thrust of the judgment is its affirmation of the sanctity of the claimant’s employment contract and the rights pertaining to it; the other leg is its recognition of the prerogative of the employer to dispense with the services of an employee, but then only in a manner consistent with the rules of natural justice.

    Great credit must go to Justice B.A. Adejumo, the president of the court, for encouraging the parties to resolve the dispute amicably. Both the NLC and Odah also deserve commendation for demonstrating good faith and large-heartedness in fashioning out the terms of settlement. That the matter had to be taken to court at all is unfortunate; but the bitterness it engendered among the rank and file of the labour movement would seem far worse. What the judgment has done is steer the parties from a losing course to a win-win one.

    What are the lessons? First is the need for employers to scrupulously respect the rights of the individual whenever it becomes necessary to determine his/her employment. In other words, just as there can be no such thing as short-circuiting the rule of due process, there is also no room for a party in contract to willfully extinguish the rights of the other party. Although belatedly, the NLC appears to have appreciated this important point, hence its amenability to the settlement.

    The judgment is a wake-up call for the NLC to put its house in order. For a movement that earned a reputation for the defence of the weak and the powerless, its cause is ill-served by such unfortunate distractions. It is as needless as it is avoidable.

     

  • Bumpy ride

    Bumpy ride

    •The Fed. Govt must intervene to ensure speedy completion of the East-West Road

    What a bumpy ride it has been so far, concerning the dualisation of the East-West Road, described as “the flagship project” of the Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs (MNDA)! The ambitious 338 kilometres dual carriageway scheme (making it 676 kilometres) stretching from Warri, Delta State, to Oron, Akwa Ibom State, and traversing four states of the Niger Delta region, continues to make the headlines for, sadly, unimpressive reasons. It is split into segments, comprising Warri–Kaiama (87km), Port Harcourt-Ahoada (47Km), Ahoada-Kaiama (54Km), Port Harcourt- Eket (99Km) and Eket-Oron (51Km).

    This project recently came into sharp focus, as Rivers State Governor, Rotimi Amaechi, and MNDA Minister, Godsday Orubebe, had a slanging match over whether the South-South governors should take over the construction of the road since the Federal Government had underperformed. In Orubebe’s estimation, which seemed an overreaction, Amaechi’s idea amounted to disrespect for President Goodluck Jonathan because, according to him, the President is committed to completing the project.

    In truth, whether the minister, in defence of the President, merely made a politically correct statement or not, the East-West Road should be a priority of the Federal Government; yet it has dragged on for too long, to the detriment of the people. Originally conceived by the then Mid-West and Rivers State government, the project was taken over by the Federal Government in 1974/75. It went comatose under the Federal Ministry of Works, until its resuscitation in 2006, before its eventual transfer to the MNDA in 2008.

    It goes without saying that the setbacks have had cost implications for the scheme, which was put at N204 billion in 2006 but is currently estimated at N348 billion. The MNDA says it “has paid N134 billion out of the total contract sum,” and “moved the average percentage completion to 52 percent.”

    Evidently, this project has guzzled an enormous amount of public funds over the years, with a disproportionate result. The official excuses for the snail speed of work, including terrain difficulties, troublesome host communities, contract inadequacies and inattention by successive administrations, pale into insignificance when compared with the socio-economic gains expected to accompany the project’s completion. When finished, the road will, among other advantages, transform the region’s landscape, enhance vehicular and human traffic, integrate the communities and open them to greater levels of social and economic growth.

    The likely multi-dimensional impact of this road, which is certain to open up new vistas, when completed, should not be underestimated. Indeed, the 1998 Niger Delta Environmental Survey listed it among development priorities for the oil-rich but under-developed region.And its strategic importance was a key issue at the 2001 international Conference on the Niger Delta Region held in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, under the aegis of Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), which reached the conclusion that no meaningful development would likely take place in the region without the road.

    With nearly 50 percent of the work left undone, it remains to be seen whether the new date of 2014 for the completion of the East-West Road is realistic, or just a deceptively optimistic target, considering that the MNDA’s requirement of N214 billion is by no means guaranteed, and the minister keeps complaining of financial constraints. Furthermore, contrary to the ministry’s payment claims, the minister reportedly said the three contractors are being owed N20 billion, and the contract for the extension of the road from Oron to Calabar would be signed in the next one or two months, following directives from the Presidency. All these undermine the credibility of the 2014 target.

    As a matter of urgency, the Federal Government should launch a full-scale investigation into the conditions hampering the completion of the road, and promptly address the impediments.

     

  • Netanyahu should look to centre for coalition partners

    Israel’s first elections since the Arab uprisings have sprung a surprise. Enough Israeli voters have shifted to the centre of the political spectrum to halt the seemingly irresistible rise of the hardening right – good news for the country and, perhaps, for the region.

    Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, confidently called the poll early, fusing his nationalist Likud party with Yisrael Beiteinu, a far-right settler party. The merger has proved less than the sum of its parts.

    The Likud-Beiteinu combination came top, but lost a quarter of the seats they had held, while the rightwing and religious bloc garnered only 60 of 120 Knesset seats. Mr Netanyahu will therefore have to horse-trade for a new majority, and look leftward for coalition partners.

    Opinion polls had forecast a rightward shift. But voters made centrist Yair Lapid, a popular former television anchorman, Israel’s new kingmaker. Mr Lapid not only channelled the frustrations of Israel’s squeezed middle, whose younger cohorts took over the country’s public squares in 2011 to denounce the elitist arrogance of the political class. His Yesh Atid party (meaning There is a Future) also tapped into Israelis’ optimism rather than playing on their fears – the staple discourse of Mr Netanyahu and his allies.

    The prime minister has lots of circles to square. Mr Lapid, for example, insists ultra-orthodox Jews cannot be exempt from military service – anathema to Shas, a religious party in the outgoing coalition. If Mr Netanyahu wants to bring in the even further right Jewish Home party, it would have to abjure calls to annex 60 per cent of the West Bank. This would be resisted by the centre.

    Many mainstream Israeli voters are turning towards issues such as affordable housing, education and taxes. However, they may also be alarmed by growing impatience internationally with Mr Netanyahu’s confrontational style over how to deal with Iran’s nuclear ambitions and defiant expansion of Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land.

    Mr Netanyahu demands unrealistic “red lines” from the US on Iran, which would make any negotiated solution impossible. It is time President Barack Obama and his European allies insisted with equal vehemence that Israel decides where its “green line” is. Until it draws a frontier that allows Palestinians to build a viable state, Israel will struggle to win full and legitimate recognition in a fast-changing Middle East.

     

    – Financial Times