Category: Editorial

• Incredible! N1.3bn not enough for ‘chop chop’ in Aso Rock

EMMANUEL Ogbile, State House, Aso-Rock Villa Permanent Secretary must have jolted the nation with his argument before the Senate Committee on Federal Character and Inter-Governmental Affairs when he said that the N1,305, 292, 050 allocated for the Presidency in the 2013 budget for refreshments, meals and other miscellaneous expenses was insufficient. This is in a country where millions live on less than a dollar per day. The revelation was the fallout of his defence of the 2013 Presidency budget of N14.7 billion.

Ogbile was adamant in his laughable justification: “I have taken pains to explain that this money is not just to fund the residence of the President and the Vice President…The experience I have had is that this fund is grossly insufficient. It’s not enough… The Federal Executive Council (FEC) holds every Wednesday and we take care of them through this budget.”

He erroneously believes that his inclusion of the National Economic Council (NEC) meetings, presidential retreats, National Merit Award, hosting of dignitaries, Council of State meetings, among others in the menu list, would sway uncontrolled outrage. But it is a good thing that Senator Dahiru Kuta, committee chairman, corrected his claim that the Merit Award ceremony is a beneficiary as he pointedly told him that the award has its own separate budget. Obviously, some of the other headings might be a ruse too!

The Presidency budget also has few horrendous proposals, including the N107, 412,768 for honorarium and sitting allowance. We ask: To be paid to whom? Then there is N37, 277, 825 for publicity and advertisement; N50, 308,546 medical expenses in a country that lacks basic medical facilities for the people; N32,910,730 for sporting activities when there is a National Sports Commission in place; N4,589,793 for subscription to professional bodies; N144, 788,555 for National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), IT, LOCUM, houseman-ship and contract staff allowances. Overtime is also to cost N250, 455,589 just as animals feeding and supplements for the veterinary clinic will cost N30, 584,144.

The financial impiety of the government is becoming legendary. The lesson from President Jose Mujica of Uruguay who has maintained a Spartan life as current leader of his country might be instructive. This former guerrilla soldier and political prisoner spent 14 years in jail under harsh conditions before his election into office in 2009. Despite this, he does not vent his spleen on the system by emptying the public till to make up for his past sufferings, whether in the prison, with wife or as a member of Tupamaros, the radical Uruguayan leftist militia guerrilla group.

Mujica, 77, shunned the splendour of his Presidential Palace in the capital city of Montevideo to live an ascetic life on his wife’s half-dilapidated farmhouse where he fetches water from a well in a yard overgrown with weeds and hangs out his clothes on a line to dry in the open. Mujica, a vegetarian, drives a 1987 VW Beetle. He takes home $775 a month since he donates 90 percent of his monthly salary of $12,000 to the poor and small entrepreneurs. In his 2010 mandatory wealth declaration, his entire possession was $1,800 plus the realisable value of his old VW Beetle. Contrast this with what happens in Nigeria? Unbelievable!

Nigeria is indeed a power debauched country with avaricious leaders. Mujica’s message to them all: “I’m called ‘the poorest president’, but I don’t feel poor. Poor people are those who only work to try to keep an expensive lifestyle, and always want more and more….This is a matter of freedom. If you don’t have many possessions then you don’t need to work all your life like a slave to sustain them…..”

We cannot agree more that our leaders’ profligacy has enslaved them to power. They have lost their freedom to insatiable urge to retain power at all cost. What an absurdity!

IT must be a symptom of a decadent institution and a failing state when a citizen is pushed to the point where he has no other recourse than to wish for death. Such is the case of 53-year-old Olubiyi Odunaro and 14,000 other former banker colleagues who were yanked off their bank jobs about seven years ago for no fault of theirs, and without requisite severance benefit. Frustrated that nothing was being done by the relevant authorities to pay him and his colleagues their dues, Odunaro embarked on an indefinite hunger strike on November 12, to press home their collective grievances.

Uncannily, two weeks after he made his home on a lawn along the busy Mobolaji Bank-Anthony Way, Ikeja, Lagos, none of the three concerned entities that ought to act – the Federal Government, the Federal Ministry of Finance or the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), did as much as notice Odunaro lying waste out there in the open. If they did, they never showed it.

Notably, Odunaro had made direct and indirect appeal to the Presidency to look into his plight but with nary a word from Aso Rock. He had made a bold banner which he hung over his mattress by the roadside where he put up for two weeks. The inscription on the banner reads: “I am on hunger strike to press home (the) request of 14,000 ex-staff of non-consolidated banks for their terminal benefits. President Goodluck Jonathan, please show you care for the welfare of all Nigerians…”

Not a wink from Abuja. It took the intervention of the Lagos State Public Advice Centre to reach him, to mediate and to seek to lift him from his prostrate, debilitating and sub-human state. A perspicacious Lagos State Government has managed to rescue Odunaro from self-starvation and possible death, but the reason for the action remains.

During the era of banking consolidation and recapitalisation when the CBN had drastically reduced the number of banks in the country from about 100 to 25, many banks which could not merge had been hastily de-licensed and wound down. In that exercise, most workers of the defunct banks had been left in the lurch. For many of those banks that could not recapitalise or merge, it was convenient for their sponsors to allow them go through the process of mercy killing because they were mere hollow shells. Most of the sponsors, directors and top management had become more affluent than the banks anyway. It was the workers and depositors who suffered in that hastily executed banking reform policy.

Up till now, the CBN never resolved the issues of disengaged workers and the depositors. While thousands of staff lost their jobs without terminal benefits, most depositors whose funds were trapped never recovered them. All their entreaties to the CBN, the Federal Government and even their recourse to the courts ended up in utter frustration.

Apparently, it is because the CBN is culpable, that is why it would watch Odunaro go on hunger strike for two weeks and it maintained a callous silence. Perhaps the CBN wished that Odunaro would pass on so that the matter would be forgotten for good. But we do not think that is going to happen. The CBN would have to show Nigerians how it resolved issues arising from its consolidation and recapitalisation policy of 2005.

Apart from the fact that some of the reform policies of that era are being reversed today, and again with attendant casualties, we urge the CBN to endeavour to initiate a concrete policy about the status of bank staff as it goes about its endless experimentation in the name of reform. The CBN must revisit the matter of depositors and bank staff who were casualties of that whirlwind reform. They must be met some way.

It amounted to a daring statement of defiance and reflected a somewhat morbid sense of humour when the terrorist Boko Haram Islamist sect carried out twin suicide bombings at the St. Andrew Military Protestant Church located inside Jaji Military Cantonment in Kaduna State, killing no fewer than 30, according to reports. Only two days earlier, the Joint Task Force, Operation ‘Restore Order’, Maiduguri, had declared 19 alleged senior members of the extremist group wanted, and offered a reward for information leading to their capture.

The N250million bounty on the heads of the sect leaders affected the five-member Shurra Committee, which is its highest decision-making organ, with N25million on each head; the overall leader, Abubakar Shekau, with N50million on his head; and various “commanders” with N10million on their heads.

If the government’s intention was to indicate that it was taking the Boko Haram insurgency more seriously, the sect’s calculated response suggested that it was not intimidated. This time, its choice of target was unmistakably strategic. The attack on Jaji represented an assault on the psyche of the military, being the home of the prestigious Command and Staff College, revered as the base of military intellectualism, where officers of the Nigerian Armed Forces receive training. It is a telling irony that Jaji also reportedly houses a counter-terrorism facility, which made the attack all the more demystifying.

The murderous strike not only took the battle to the military, it exposed a vulnerable underbelly. It is a matter of conjecture how the security of the high-profile military cantonment fell to the bombers, even when it was expected that the activities of Boko Haram should have prompted a red alert situation in the volatile circumstances. After all, this is a rebellion that has grown in intensity since it began in 2009, with more than 640 people killed so far this year, in attacks blamed on the group.

It is disturbing that the group scored another bull’s eye this time, right under the nose of the military. The apparent ease with which it carried out such an otherwise high-risk operation highlighted a lamentable failure of intelligence, about four years down the line; it was expected that by now, the state intelligence gathering capacity should be able to rise to the occasion. It is a scary possibility that the sect has infiltrated the military, and there might be insiders working for the interest of the group. At least this much was implied by President Goodluck Jonathan’s famous quote sometime ago, to the effect that the extremists have probably penetrated even the institutions of government, thereby introducing complications into the anti-terrorism campaign. With the latest audacious attack, obviously, no one can be sure where the next hit might be as the sect seems not to have ‘no-go’ areas.

It is noteworthy that following on the heels of the Jaji bombing was the early morning attack on the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) in the Federal Capital Territory by unidentified gunmen, which has prompted a 24-hour security alert nationwide. The gunmen killed two policemen and freed more than 30 suspects, although the police said they caught two of the attackers and rearrested 25 of the fleeing detainees. Regrettably, this seems to be a season of ironic security breaches.

Surely, it is a measure of the security crisis that some embassies, especially the United Kingdom, consequently issued travel advice to their citizens in the wake of the Jaji bomb explosions and the attack on SARS. The import of this development is that there is an urgent need to give priority to tight security nationwide.

We hope the panel of inquiry set up by the military authorities would come up with far-reaching recommendations that would be useful in checking a recurrence of such serious security breaches.

•Lagos enhances its potential via the National Sports Festival

In the wake of Nigeria’s disastrous outing at the London Olympics, it became clear to all that new paradigms for sports development had to be found. While some have opted for sports retreats and other forms of brainstorming, the Lagos State Government sought to take the issue a step further by embarking on a comprehensive sports development policy, starting from the grassroots and ending at the highest level of elite competition.

The 18th National Sports Festival currently taking place in Lagos State is both a cause and a consequence of this far-sighted policy. It marks the extent of the Fashola administration’s determination to enhance grassroots sports development, create high-quality facilities, acquire top-level coaches, and provide fair but keen competition.

Tagged Eko 2012, the three-week sporting fiesta will showcase those elements that have made Lagos Nigeria’s unquestionable ‘Centre of Excellence’. After months of meticulous planning, sporting venues, residential accommodation, media accreditation, logistics and other aspects of the competition have been fine-tuned, test-run and put into operation.

Making full use of the wealth of sports facilities which have been established across Lagos over the years, and utilising the state’s comprehensive road network, Eko 2012 has been designed as a fully-interactive competition that will enable athletes, officials, fans and visitors to enjoy the state’s many attractions to the fullest.

This guiding philosophy is further enhanced by the presence of large numbers of trained volunteers whose duty it is to ensure that participants in the games are not unduly inconvenienced and have a good time. All of the pre-competition arrangements came into glorious fruition with the awe-inspiring opening ceremonies in which the rich culture of the state was celebrated.

It is symbolic that the Teslim Balogun Stadium, which is Eko 2012’s main venue, is just across the road from the dilapidated National Stadium. Standing almost side-by-side, the once-great Sportscity and its fast-rising successor are symbolic of widely-divergent approaches to the development of sports in Nigeria. The Federal Government’s arguably fickle approach to issues of sports can be seen in its steadfast inability to rehabilitate the National Stadium and return it to its past glory. Even the new National Stadium in Abuja is beginning to show tell-tale signs of neglect.

On the other hand, the Teslim Balogun Stadium has become the nation’s sports venue of choice, and regularly plays host to major football and other sporting tournaments.

It is clear that the nation’s sports potential will not be developed through the dubious expedient of throwing money at sports. Nor will it be achieved by the win-at-all-costs mentality which has so tainted past sports festivals and other tournaments. As the Lagos State Government has consistently argued, the state’s perception of a successful hosting is one in which world-class talent is identified and nurtured, rather than its presence at the top of the medals table.

That is not to say that Lagos is not determined to win; it has certainly spared no effort to achieve this aim through fair means. The state hired six foreign coaches for athletes in track and field, swimming, weightlifting, boxing and rowing as part of its preparations. It has ensured that grants and other payments to athletes and coaches are paid when they fall due. It has also made extensive efforts to see that the sports festival is comprehensively publicised and marketed in a manner worthy of an international tournament.

As athletes and fans savour the joy of victory and the pain of defeat, and as the various states anxiously track their progress on the medals table, it is to be hoped that Lagos continues along its commendable path of sustainable sports development. There is little doubt that the state will begin to reap the fruits of its wisdom and foresight sooner than later.

The EU budget is such an unholy messthat the inability of European leaders to agree one this week would almost be a source of satisfaction – were it not for clear signs that a deal will ultimately be struck by sacrificing the bits of spending that the EU does best.

One consolation was the lack of political melodrama, unlike the clash that accompanied the UK’s wielding a veto of the fiscal compact last year. Many feared that the scene of a solitarily obstructive British prime minister would repeat itself in the budget negotiations. David Cameron was under strong pressure to take an unrealistically hard line from both his own EU-bashing backbenchers and an opportunistic Labour opposition in Westminster. Yet the inconclusiveness was of the workmanlike kind: all parties needed more time to overcome their differences.

Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, had already indicated she was in no hurry to agree. She was right: within limits, it is better for a club to take its time to decide how a trillion euros of common funds should be spent from 2014 until the turn of the decade.

This does not, however, excuse the disappointing constellation of interests that pits net contributors to the budget against those defending their particular sacred cash cows. Those who care about the overall size of the budget fight less over how that total is spent; those who care where the funds go – especially that they go to them –have no interest in shrinking the pie. The result is that the most worthwhile projects lose out to compromises between general cost-cutting and specific boondoggles. Thus the last draft proposed by Herman Van Rompuy, European Council president, took money away from cross-border infrastructure and research spending to prop up farm subsidies.

The principles that would govern EU budget allocations in an ideal world are straightforward. First, restrain the growth of the total pot. Inflating EU-level spending while insisting on belt-tightening in national budgets is at best hypocritical, at worst politically incendiary. The UK’s insistence on budget discipline, backed by Sweden and Germany, won important gains in the acceptance of the broad need for restraint.

Second, apply that general principle specifically to EU staff spending. National public sector workers are bearing the brunt of austerity policies across the union. Even if administrative costs make up a tiny fraction of the EU budget, it is foolish to add insult to injury.

Third, protect genuine European public goods, including research and development, and cross-border infrastructure – especially when national capital investment is being slashed. Both were raided in Mr Van Rompuy’s last compromise attempt. He must insist on more common sense when talks resume.

– The Financial Times