The Nation Newspaper

Category: Special Report

  • Remembering failed 2009 Christmas Day bombing

    It will be 10 years On Wednesday that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the then 23-year-old Nigerian, tried to bomb a Detroit-bound plane. His trial was expected to be a long one. But Abdulmutallab pleaded guilty on the first day and ended his trial in 2012 abruptly. OLUKOREDE YISHAU recounts his journey to life imprisonment for the crime, which was committed 10 years ago.

     

    Not a few were shocked when the news broke on Christmas Day in 2009 that a Nigerian tried to bomb a plane filled with no less than 100 passengers. The shock assumed another mien when it emerged that the failed bomber is son of a very rich and influential Nigerian. Even his father thought something was wrong somewhere. But time soon cleared the fog. And Nigerians accepted the truth that one of them, Farouk Abdulmutallab, the son of Alhaji Umaru Abdul Mutallab, a former chairman of a first generation bank, had joined the league of international terrorists.

    Investigations and pre-trial stages took some three years. The trial was expected to witness a practical demonstration of how underwear bomb works. An expert witness was on stand-by for the demonstration. The prosecutors were also ready to play video recordings of three demonstrations conducted by an expert.

    Also planned was a video showing Abdulmutallab and others training in a desert camp, shooting weapons at targets, including the Jewish star and the British Union Jack. The tape also included a statement, justifying his actions against “the Jews and the Christians and their agents.”

    But Abdulmutallab was not ready for all those dramas. In October 2012, he pleaded guilty on  first day of the trial.  Abdulmutallab said: “I attempted to use an explosive device, which in the US law is a weapon of mass destruction, which I call a blessed weapon to save the lives of innocent Muslims, for US use of weapons of mass destruction on Muslim populations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and beyond.”

    After his sentencing, Abdulmutallab, detained at a federal prison in Milan, was moved to a federal super-maximum prison in Florence, Colorado, where other convicted terrorists are serving their time.

    His court-appointed lawyer, Anthony Chambers, had filed a document arguing that a mandatory life sentence for the Nigerian would be unfair for a crime that did not hurt any passenger on the Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines Flight 253.

    Chambers said the only passenger injured was Abdulmuttallab, who had his groin severely burnt before the fire ignited by the bomb in his underwear was put out by other passengers.

    Abdulmutallab planned his 23rd birthday to be his last. December 22, 2009 was his 23rd birthday. That day, he was in Accra, the Ghanaian capital. At other times, the graduate of Mechanical Engineering from the University College, London would have been with his siblings and parents for the birthday and the Yuletide. Rather than join other members of the family, Abdulmutallab was putting finishing touches to a suicide mission that could have killed more than 100 people, three days after turning 23.

    A day after what he thought was going to be his last birthday on earth, he returned to Nigeria via the Kotoka International Airport. He did not make contact with his parents, whom he had denounced some months earlier.

    His trip to Lagos was only on transit to Amsterdam. He had no plans to make the trip to Detroit, United States, the airline’s final destination. He planned to blow the plane up with an underwear explosive device mid-air. But, the explosive failed him. He was arrested and taken into custody.

    And on December 22, 2011, he clocked 25 inside the Federal Correctional Institution, Milan, Michigan.

    al-Qaeda’s Yemen-based arm claimed responsibility for the failed attack, which was also hailed by the late Osama bin Laden, just months before the al Qaeda’s leader was killed in a U.S. commando raid in Pakistan.

    He lent credence to his relationship with  acclaimed terrorists when during the pre-trial stage, he shouted: “Osama’s alive,”  as he entered the courtroom. At some point, he hollered ‘jihad’ and stared at the ceiling when Judge Nancy Edmunds told jurors about the alleged plot to blow up the plane with a bomb in his underwear. On another occasion, he hollered: “al-Awlaki is alive.” He made the remark about a week after al-Waki was killed.

    There are evidences Abdulmutallab was radicalised through the Internet and his meeting with al-Awlaki.

    Abdulmutallab’s plot to take advantage of the fact that his first statement was taken without his Miranda Rights read to him was aborted on September 18, 2011, when Judge Edmunds handed the President Barack Obama administration a major victory in its approach to Miranda Rights for terror suspects, endorsing the interpretation of the public safety exception.

    The judge said: “The agents limited their questioning to approximately 50 minutes, a period sufficient enough to get information to address the threat to public safety.”

    Edmunds said the agents handling the case were “mindful of defendant’s self-proclaimed association with al-Qaeda and knowing the group’s past history of large, coordinated plots and attacks and feared that there could be additional, imminent aircraft attacks in the United States and elsewhere in the world.”

    Details of his plot with Awlaki were released in 2012. They were contained in documents filed to back up request for his sentence to life imprisonment. The documents showed that  Abdulmutallab, after making contact with Awlaki, spent three days at the late  cleric’s house discussing martyrdom and “jihad”.

    al-Awlaki introduced him to a bomb maker for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, who made the bomb for him to attack an American airliner.

    “Prior to the defendant’s departure from Yemen, Awlaki’s last instructions to him were to wait until the airplane was over the United States and then take it down,” one of the filings said.

    To drive home the argument that he deserves to rot in jail, the U.S. government, in the document, noted:  “When the airplane was about to cross over the United States border, they said, he went to the restroom, washed his face, brushed his teeth, put on cologne, returned to his seat, said prayers, and then pushed the plunger on the device – but it failed to detonate.”

    One of the documents added that he told his interrogators that he interpreted the failure of the bomb to explode as evidence that “it was not his time to die”.

    Some days ago, his father, Alhaji Umaru Abdul Mutallab, who just clocked 80 years, told Daily Trust:  “When I heard about the incident, I never believed it was him. I thought someone stole his passport and tried to do that. But I discovered two days later that he was the one.”

  • ‘Loan Deposit Ratio welcome development’

    The Central Bank of Nigeria’s 65 per cent Loan-to-Deposit-ratio for Deposit Money Banks has been praised as a step in the right direction the potential to turn the economy around, reports Group Business Editor SIMEON EBULU.

    Deposit Money Banks (DMBs) are known as drivers of the economy through their traditional role as lenders to businesses. Usually because of this function, the real sector and the banking industry are intertwined, as though one cannot survive without the support of the other. That of course is the reality.

    As the Managing Director of JAIZ Bank, Hassan Usman put it at a media chat recently, “conventional banking is the business of taking money from surplus entities, transforming their maturity to those deficit entities using various kinds of pricing.”

    He said you take money from a salaried person, money that could be taken tomorrow or could be delayed for one year and transfer the maturity of that and give it out as loan.” He said most of the functions that banks undertake basically “require transforming this money that is short and make it long because overtime, you get to know that these people will not come all at once and take it.

    So you transform this short term money, keep some for those who will come tomorrow and give it for ninety days, one eighty days, or one year,” saying it is this long-term depositors’ funds that banks lend to the real sector and others that need it for various purposes and when obtained by manufacturers and other businesses, help to drive the economy.

    The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in its quest to make more credit available to the real sector and ramp up the growth of the economy through investments in the productive sectors of the economy, that it initiated the Loan-To-Deposit Ratio (LDR).

    The apex bank initially fixed the LDR at 60 per cent but later revised it upwards to 65 per cent. In its letter of July 3, 2019 entitled: ‘Regulatory Measures to Improve Lending to the Real Sector and the Nigerian Economy,’ the regulator said the objective of the policy is to encourage Small and Medium Enterprises, retail, mortgage and consumer lending in the banking system.

    To underscore its resolve to push through this measure, it warned that failure to meet the stipulated LDR shall result in a levy of additional Cash Reserve Requirement equal to 50 per cent of the lending shortfall of the target LDR. Any doubt as to the CBN’s resoluteness rein that banks in compliance and to wield the big stick on any bank(s) for non-compliance was erased in September when it pulled out over N499billuon from 12 banks deposits proportionately for falling short of the rule and in accordance with its correspondence of July 3, 2019.

    Implication

    Several things are already happening that will definitely have a huge impact on the economy in the coming months and years.

    In the light of the new measure and the determination of the CBN to see it through, banks are forced to actively start looking for good and banksble projects and businesses to finance. In essence, they are now spending the same energy they use in recruiting new customers in also looking for viable businesses to invest in. This is so because the more deposit they have, the more money they have to loan out in order to meet up with CBN Loan-to-deposit (LDR) ratio, said a financial expert.

    The new measure, he argued, has equally forced banks to restructuring their loans by increasing the loan term and decreasing the interest rate, so as to make their loan packages more attractive and also reduce the number of bad loans, They will rather, his opinion,  “receive much less than the 23 per cent interest they are used to, instead of losing the money entirely to CBN. This is another wonderful news for entrepreneurs, as they will now have more time to repay their debts and they will spend less money on servicing it, adding that if this policy is sustained, it has the potential to change the business landscape in Nigeria and positively impact on businesses across board.

    Outcome

    The CBN has aleady noted that the credit level in the banking sector since the lDR came into effect has grown by N829.4 billion  or 5.33 per cent at the end of May from N15.56 trillion to N16.39 trillion as of September 26, 2018 according to a letter by the Director  of Banking and Supervision, Bello Hassan to all banks.

    It said: “The Central Bank of Nigeria has noted the appreciable growth in the level of the industry growth credit, which increased by N829.4billion or 5.33 per cent from N15.56 trillion at end of May 2019 to N16.39 trillion as at September 26, 2019 following its pronouncement on the above initiative.

    “In order to sustain the momentum and in line with the provisions of our earlier letters,  the minimum Loan to Deposit Ratio target for all Deposit Money Banks is hereby reviewed upwards from 60 per cent to 65 per cent.

    “Consequently, all DMBs are required to attain a minimum LDR of 65 per cent by December 31, 2019 and this ratio shall be subject to quarterly review. To encourage Small and Medium Enterprises, retail mortgage and consumer lending, these sectors shall be assigned a weight of 150 per cent in computing the LDR for this purpose,” warning that failure to meet the above minimum LDR by the specified date shall result in a levy of additional Cash Reserve Requirement equal to 50 per cent of the lending shortfall implied by the target LDR.

    He said DMBs are required to continue to strengthen their risk arrangement practices particularly with regard to their lending operations. The CBN said it would continue to review developments in the market with a view to facilitating greater achievement in the real sector of the Nigerian economy, while providing a safe, sound and resilient financial system.

    Reactions

    The Managing Director, SunTrust Bank Limited,  Ayo Babatunde said  the CBN may have taken the action to ensure that banks did not report paper profits on Non Performing Loans (NPLs).

    Babatunde, who spoke at a seminar organised by the Money Market Workgroup of Financial Market Dealers Association (FMDA) in Lagos, highlighted the challenges banks are facing.

    He said the CBN policy, mandating banks to lend 60 per cent of their deposits by September 30, may push some of them to increase lending to high risk-borrowers with the potential of incurring heavy losses.

    The guideline, he said, directed banks to improve lending to the real sector and maintain a minimum loan to deposit ratio (LDR) of 60 per cent (compared to the sector’s LDR of 58.5 per cent as at May and regulatory maximum of 80 per cent), subject to quarterly review.

    To ensure lending to Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), retail, mortgage, and consumers, Babatunde said the CBN assigned a weight of 150 per cent to them in the computation of LDR.

    Babatunde said specific guidelines were required to clarify whether the LDR computation would  be based on gross or net loan position.

    Also to be clarified is whether earlier exposure to the preferred sectors can be aggregated for the LDR computation and likely forbearance to banks with high NPLs to the preferred sectors, such as SMEs, retail, mortgage and consumer lending.

    The economy, he said, grew by two per cent year-on-year in the first quarter, adding that the pace of growth was slower than the 2.4 per cent growth recorded in the fourth quarter of 2018.

    The CBN, Babatunde said, cut the Monetary Policy Rate (MPR) by 50 basis points to 13.50 per cent, highlighting concerns over output growth.

    On key developments in the money market, Babatunde said: “Drop in Open Market Operations (OMOs) and Nigerian Treasury Bills (NTBs) rate from 15 per cent to 13.2 per cent and 14.95 per cent to 12.8 per cent.

    “Relative stability in exchange rate to N359/$ in the parallel market, N360/$ at the Investors and Exporters (I&E) Foreign Exchange Window and N356/$ at the Secondary Market Intervention Sales Retail (SMIS). There is also improved accretion to foreign reserves by $1.31 billion to $44.7 billion.”

    He called for de-risking and improved perception of the banking industry and balancing mechanism to even out the demand for and supply of funds.

    The Nigeria Employers’ Consultative Association (NECA), on its part, has applauded the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) over its directive to the commercial banks to maintain a minimum Loan Deposit Ratio (LDR) of 65 per cent. The body said this will aid the growth of the real sector of the economy.

    In a chat with The Nation, Director-General of NECA, Mr. Timothy Olawale said considering that access to funding is a major challenge for the manufacturing sector in the country, the CBN directive is a welcome development as the real sector has over the years suffered due to stringent conditions to access needed capital.  Olawale said this attempt by the CBN is worthy of commendation considering that over N1.5 trillion additional money will be available as credit to the real sector of the economy from this policy.

    He is however concerned about improving the flow of the needed credit to the private sector to stimulate growth, including what he termed as “unorthodox methods” being deployed to achieve this objective if effective monitoring mechanism is not put in place.

    “Forcing the banks to lend under the current macro-economic situation will only result in a likely build-up of non-performing loans in the medium to long term, given the sluggish growth in the economy and the high risk in the operating environment. This could pose a risk to financial stability,” the NECA chief said.

    He said the interest rate charged by financial institutions is another source of worry for businesses. “With the volatility of the Nigerian economy and the unpredictable regulatory environment, the risk of a double digit interest rate could be too high for businesses, especially the Small and Medium Enterprises that are supposed to also be beneficiaries of the directive,” he said.

    Olawale, therefore, urged the CBN to do more than give directives but also ensure the effective implementation and monitoring of the directive, “ saying more deliberate efforts should be made to ensure a hospitable business environment that will make lending attractive and borrowing by the real sector even more attractive,” he said.

    Cheery news

    A financial analyst, urged businesse operators to take a look at the banks that fell into the CBN hammer on their failure to meet the initure LDR target.  “If you are already in business and have a business account with any of the most affected banks, then I will advise you to package your business proposal and meet with your account officer. Believe me, they are extremely motivated right now to listen to you.”

    However, the analyst who asked that his identity be veiled, warned that “this does not mean that they are going to give out loans recklessly, because this can equally lead to their downfall. So it is important that you prepare yourself very well.

    “I will advise you to do the following before approaching your bank: Make a good business plan, showing clearly your financial plan, break-even, etc.. These are the major indices they will be looking for.

    “Carefully calculate the cost of finance. Make sure you present a cost that will be favorable to your business, you don’t have to accept whatever cost the bank gives you anymore. You now have room to prepare a better financial cost for your business, so make sure you understand every hidden cost of finance.|

    The analyst urged customers and potential ones not to limit themselves to one bank only. He said: “Start with the banks  that are already in default, but do not ignore other great banks that are meeting up with their quota. These banks although smaller, are more SME focused and thus were able to meet up with the CBN directive. So pay some attention to them as well.”

  • Dangers of irrational use, abuse of herbal medicines

    As use of herbal medicines continues to gain ground, experts are worried that irrational use and abuse of natural medicinal products may put consumers at risk, reports Associate Editor ADEKUNLE YUSUF.

    Life in Erunkan, a slum area of Ketu in Lagos, offers a great study in many things. Olanle, popularly called Ijebu, is one of hundreds of commercial motorcyclists (popularly called okada riders) who regularly find a rendezvous in the area. Like his many colleagues, as busy as Ijebu seems to be in his okada-riding business, he never misses an opportunity to stop over in Erunkan to drink alcoholic herbal concoctions from sellers that abound the filthy neighbourhood.

    But if Ijebu and his counterparts only take alcoholic agbo (though there are herbal preparations that are non-alcoholic) during their several breaks in a day, there are numerous others who virtually spend their day in the houses and makeshift shops of herbal concoction sellers, drinking themselves to stupor. While investigations have shown that many rely on herbal medicines for managing health problems, there are also those without genuine reasons other than living their addiction by taking the alcoholic concoctions to get the feel-good factor.

    Irrational use of herbal medications is, however, not peculiar to Erunkan; it is a nationwide problem, as many Nigerians prefer to patronise herbal medicine sellers whenever health issues arise. From complaints such as malaria, to typhoid, fibroid, virtually all ailments that can afflict the young and old, herbal medicine practitioners are never short of remedies, making them increasingly popular among the people. These are both educated and non-educated, who sometimes combine traditional herbs with modern drugs. In various parts of the country, herbal medicines represent an array of therapies with proven benefits for the prevention and cure of different ailments.

    Experts say the phenomenal growth and popularity herbal medicine is enjoying is not peculiar to Nigeria. Around the world, there is increasing awareness and general recognition that traditional medicines, once derided as primitive and substandard, seem to be the mankind’s saving grace. Having undergone a great metamorphosis from ‘witches brew’ to major medicine in the past three decades, herbal therapy is enjoying a new lease of life in many parts of the world, with traditional medicine fast becoming a force to reckon with in terms of input into the world’s overall healthcare delivery system and economy.

    Studies have estimated that out of a global population of over 6.3 billion people, about 4 billion patronise herbal plants to meet their primary healthcare needs. In Nigeria, it has been discovered that approximately half those living in urban cities in various parts of 36 states regularly use natural medicine, with the figures far higher among the preponderant locals eking out their living in the rural areas.

    The World Health Organisation (WHO) also encourages, recommends and promotes the use of traditional and herbal remedies because they are easily available at low cost, comparatively safe and people have faith in them. According to the WHO, 75 per cent of the world’s population has therapeutic experience with herbal products.  It is also projected that more than 80 per cent of the population within developing countries relies on the use of herbal and other traditional medicines for their primary health care due to their lower cost and time tested nature.

    Professionals have traced the rising popularity of herbal remedies to increase in the cost of treatment with modern medicine, fear of side effects of modern drugs and appreciation of natural remedies, which represent the alternative healthcare movement.

    Irrational use of medicines explained

    Although it is an incontrovertible fact that traditional medicines have become an integral part of healthcare delivery, their consumption is also prone to abuse. According to pharmaceutical experts, what rational use of medicines – be they natural or orthodox – entails is very simple. It means the use of right medicine, in the right dosage, for the right ailment, for the right period of time and at the right price. In other words, rational use of medicines revolves around good prescribing and dispensing. Any deviation from these ground rules amounts to irrational use of drugs.

    Rational use of medicines requires that patients receive medications appropriate to their clinical needs, in doses that meet their own individual requirements, for an adequate period of time, and at the lowest cost to them and their community. It involves appropriate patient, indication, medicine, prescribing, dosage, dispensing, administration and duration. The concept of ‘rational use of medicines’ also applies to herbal substances and supplements that are used to try to treat or prevent a wide range of diseases. But this is not always so, especially in developing countries with weak or lack of regulatory mechanisms to protect the interest of ordinary masses.

    Around the world, irrational use of drugs is a huge problem governments in many countries are still battling to solve. The global health body, WHO, estimated that more than half of all medicines are prescribed, dispensed or sold inappropriately, and that half of all patients fail to take the medicines correctly. This is said to be more complicated in the field of herbal medicine. The situation is worse in natural medicine because of quacks, since many practitioners are not properly trained in herbal medicine and simply continue to practise without proper licensing, which breed other problems such as absence of standardisation and poor quality control mechanism.

    Hazards of abusing herbal medicines

    Irrational use of medicines, a major challenge facing many health systems across the world, has also given birth to practices that lead to poor health delivery, thus putting patients at risk and result in wastage of scarce resources that could have been used to tackle other pressing health needs. There are lingering issues about overuse, underuse or misuse of herbal medicines, resulting in wastage of scarce resources and widespread health hazards.

    Examples of irrational use of herbal medicines include use of too many herbal medicines per patient (poly-pharmacy); inappropriate use often in inadequate dosage for the wrong indications; over-use of herbal medicine when orthodox medicine would be more appropriate; failure to prescribe in accordance with clinical guidelines; inappropriate self-medication, non-adherence to dosing regimens, among others.

    Some side effects of herbal medicines, which may be worsened by irrational use, include bleeding, gastro intestinal disturbances, and hypertension. Many combinations of drugs and herbal remedies can cause interactions,  since herbal remedies can affect the way drugs act on the body, either blocking their action or increasing their potency.

    Factors fuelling irrational use of drugs are as many and varied as herbal products and their producers. Experts explained that the major forces affecting use of herbal medicines emanate from patients, prescribers, the workplace, and the loose supply system, including industry influences, regulation, drug information and misinformation. Patient demands/expectations, misleading beliefs, lack of appropriate health literacy, and ignorance towards health lead to non-compliance, which in turn can trigger irrational use.

    On the part of the prescriber, inadequate training, lack of updated information on herbs can also lead to irrational prescribing, which presents as under, over, incorrect, or multiple prescribing; while faulty dispensing can lead to irrational drug use by inaccurate counting, compounding or pouring, inadequate labeling, unsanitary procedures and poor-quality packaging materials.

    One profession, many voices

    At an interactive forum in Lagos, made possible by the Nigeria Natural Medicine Development Agency (NNMDA), which reports directly to the Federal Ministry of Science and Technology, herbal medicine practitioners showed why sanitising the industry may be a herculean task. Besides singing discordant tunes, herbal medicine experts are perpetually at daggers drawn with one another as various groups, blocs, interests and associations have continued to fight dirty over the years over who should be recognised as the real leaders and custodians of natural medicine knowledge.

    It is an open secret that there is a mini civil war brought about by supremacy tussle between groups such as the National Association of Nigeria Traditional Medicine Practitioners (NANTMP), Herbs Sellers Association of Nigeria and other groups. While some practitioners believe that it is professionally wrong to cook traditional medicine and sell by the road side or hawk, others see nothing wrong in this practice.

    At the interactive session, an angry Mrs. Modinat Onike, Financial Secretary of ‘Elewe Omo Herbs Sellers Association of Nigeria, strongly called on the government to ban street hawking of agbo (herbs),  saying unregistered herbs hawkers put the lives of users at risk by administering wrong dosage and usage  to buyers who patronise them. “We, the registered and known Elewe -Omo herb sellers, are more trained than the herbs hawkers. They are not supposed to hawk cooked herbs. It is a wrong practice according to the practice. We don’t cook the agbo (herbs), we rather give the raw herbs and roots to our clients with instructions on usage and preparation,” she said.

    How to promote rational use of herbal medicines

    The above reasons are why the body has never been able to rise in unison to press for its rights from the government, said Dr. Sam Etatuvie, Director-General of NNMDA. He is, however, optimistic that his efforts towards bringing all practitioners under one umbrella will yield positive result, saying he is currently engaging the warring interest groups to sheathe their sword in the interest of the profession.

    Like conventional medicines, he said licensed herbal medicines hold a product license based on safety, quality, and efficacy. “Hence, it is compulsory that they are accompanied by product leaflets that provide comprehensive information on indications, precautions, how to use the product, side effects, how to store the product and regulatory information for safe use,” NNMDA boss said.

    “Education, with its various approaches, has a significant role to play in nurturing the rational use of herbal medicines. Educational strategies for both healthcare practitioners and consumers are essential. There should be focus on the development of problem-based training in pharmacotherapy of herbal medicines.

    “Training should emphasise on rational prescribing and dispensing of herbal medicines. Public enlightenment through various media – print and electronic media – could help in creating awareness about rational use of herbal medicines. Guidelines on prescribing, dispensing and consumption of herbal medicines should be prepared and followed; all relevant stakeholders should collaborate to get the much needed guideline on the use of herbal medicines,” he said.

    The NNMDA boss, a pharmacist, said his agency has contributed towards promoting rational use of herbal medicines through various activities by training traditional medicine practitioners in the six geo-political zones of the country, printing books on medicinal, aromatic and pesticidal plants in Nigeria. “Adopting rational use of herbal medicines is a good way to reduce cases of unnecessary herbal drug interactions, adverse reactions, poly-pharmacy and wastage. It would also promote safety monitoring. It is, therefore, essential to furnish the public, including healthcare professionals, with adequate information to facilitate better understanding of the risks associated with the use of these products and ensure that all medicines are safe and of suitable quality,” Etatuvie said.

  • Back to clear-cut budget cycle

    Since the country returned to democratic rule, it has been difficult to have a budget cycle that runs from January to December. President Muhammadu Buhari and the National Assembly have been able to break the jinx, write ROBERT EGBE and TONY AKOWE.

    It started like a promise. And in a country were promises are easily broken, not a few felt it would not be fulfilled. President Muhammadu Buhari last year vowed that his administration was going to end the inability of the Federal Government to have a budget cycle, which begins in January and ends in December. He has delivered. He praised the National Assembly for ensuring detailed legislative review and passage of the 2020 Budget in two months.

    The country was used to the January-December budget cycle before the return to democracy in 1999. The legislative and executive arms of the government, which are involved in budget preparation and approval, distorted the process due to inadequacies. The delay, according to analysts, caused incalculable harm to infrastructure projects.

    Buhari, while signing the budget on Tuesday at the State House, Abuja lauded the lawmakers for the patriotic zeal they adopted in the passage of the bill, saying that it had restored the nation’s budget cycle to a predictable January to December fiscal year.

    He said: “I am very pleased that the National Assembly worked uncommonly long hours in the interest of our people and the national economy to ensure detailed legislative review and passage of the Budget within two months.

    “This patriotic zeal adopted by the Ninth National Assembly has restored our budget cycle to a predictable January to December fiscal year.

    “Furthermore, in the twenty years since the return to civilian democracy, this will be just the fourth time that the Federal Budget was passed before the end of the previous year, and this is the earliest.’’

    The President urged the National Assembly to pass the Finance Bill, arguing that if passed, it would support the funding and implementation of the 2020 Budget.

    “The passage of the Finance Bill, which I am told will be done in the coming days, will also be a landmark achievement worthy of recognition, being the first time this has been done in the past twenty years.

    “We look forward to receiving this bill shortly for Presidential Assent. Once passed into law, the Finance Bill will support the funding and implementation of the 2020 Budget. “We shall sustain this tradition by ensuring that subsequent budgets are also accompanied by a Finance Bill.

    “For these achievements I must, therefore, congratulate and thank the Distinguished Senate President, the Right Honourable Speaker, and indeed, all members of the Federal Legislature for their commitment and support.

    “Now we are well-positioned to effectively implement the budget and deliver our promises to Nigerians. Businesses will also benefit as they are now in a position to plan more effectively.

    “We have to sustain this harmonious working relationship. I expect that going forward, this will be the norm,’’ he said.

    Buhari hails Reps for patriotism

    Buhari yesterday thanked members of the House of Representatives for the patriotism they showed in passing the 2020 budget on time.

    Conveying the president’s appreciation to members at Wednesday’s plenary, Speaker Femi Gbajabiamila said Buhari was appreciative of the lawmakers’ commitment and diligence, which has returned the country’s fiscal year to January-December.

    Gbajabiamila told his colleagues that the President was proud of them for putting the country first in working on the budget, which was signed into law on Tuesday.

    “I want to convey the president’s appreciation to you all for working on the budget in record time.

    “The President thanked all the members for their commitment to returning the country’s budget cycle to January to December,” the Speaker said

    While personally thanking his colleagues for their diligence and hard work in the last six months, the Speaker wished them memorable festive season.

    “I want to use this opportunity to wish you all a very merry Christmas and happy New Year. I pray God in His infinite mercy will bring us back fresh and refreshed.”

    The Speaker also thanked all legislative and other support staff, pressmen, including their cameramen, among others for their commitment.

    APC governors excited

    Governors elected on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC) said the president has set a new record for budgeting process.

    In a statement by its Chairman and Governor of Kebbi State, Atiku Bagudu, the governors said the early passage of the budget was a reflection of the commitment of the leadership of the Senate and the House of Representatives to the APC Next Level Agenda.

    The statement reads: “On Tuesday December 17, 2019, Mr. President, His Excellency, Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR assented to the 2020 appropriation bill of N10.594 trillion, and by so doing setting a new record in Nigeria’s budgetary process.

    “This is the first time since the inauguration of democracy two decades ago that the federal budget is signed before the end of the previous year. The Progressive Governors Forum (PGF) commends Mr. President for this historic feat and restoring the natural budget cycle, thereby enthroning predictability and certainty in public financial management, macroeconomic projections and project execution.

    “It is on record that the 2020 Federal Government Budget proposals of N10.33 trillion tagged “Budget of Sustaining Growth and Job Creation” was presented before a joint sitting of the National Assembly on October 8, 2019, earlier than any President had done in the annals of our democracy. This is simply another Next Level accomplishment.

    “Even critics of the present administration cannot contradict the fact that this development was an important democratic milestone. It signposts a healthy synergy between the executive and legislative arms of government towards the attainment of good governance in Nigeria. Certainly, this is the Next Level our people are all looking forward to.

    “The PGF congratulates Mr. President for achieving this important milestone in our budgetary process. The PGF also commends the 9th National Assembly Leadership that received and passed the Appropriation Bill on a record time of less than two months.

    “This feat is a reflection of the commitment of the leadership of the Senate and the House of Representatives to the APC Next Level Agenda and the resolve to cooperate with the executive on critical matters that border on the national interest.

    “The Progressive Governors Forum would always support this harmonious relationship between both arms of government at the Federal level in carrying out their constitutional responsibilities in the interest of the Nigerian people.

    “We remain committed to a stable polity and economy, and we see this new dawn in our budgetary process will also have a positive bearing on the management of the budgets of state governments in terms of predictability of our financial projections and coordination of policies between the subnational entities and the central government.

    “Accordingly, the PGF, in addition to making input at the monthly National Economic Council meeting, would continue to collaborate with the Federal Government so as to stimulate positive public understanding and perception of the key issues and benefits in the budget which in itself is a milestone of transparency by APC led government in a bid to fulfill its campaign promises.

    “Through our engagements with the leadership of the National Assembly we would also continue to provide all needed support to enhance the already existing synergy between both the executive and legislative arms of government.

    “We will continue to draw lessons from President Muhammadu Buhari’s leadership and take all the necessary steps to replicate it in our respective states.

    “Once again, congratulations to President Muhammadu Buhari, Distinguished Senator Ahmed Lawan, Senate President, Rt. Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila, Speaker of the House of Representatives, members of the National Assembly as well as public servants for providing the leadership to achieve this important landmark in Nigeria’s economic and political management.”

    Expert, BMO speak

    For Momoh Aliyu, a financial expert, early passage and signing of the 2020 budget would project Nigeria in sound financial footings for the year.

    Aliyu, in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja yesterday,  said the N10.594 trillion 2020 Budget passed by the National Assembly was on Tuesday assented to by President Muhammadu Buhari, said: “Nigeria’s Fiscal year has been 12 calendar months from January to December, but for quite some years, Nigeria lost this financial integrity and compliance.

    “It has been practically hard for organisations globally to match their budgets to the Nigeria business units.

    “The private  sector in the country have been in the dark over the future of their businesses for every first quarter to second quarter in some instances.”

    Aliyu, who is also a Managing Director of Cyber1 Systems Network International, said the Medium Term Expenditure Frame-work (MTEF) put in place by the government would clear criterial for performance monitoring and a means for strategy where necessary.

    He said with a 12-month fiscal calendar budget, the government should create a medium term sector strategy to constantly review the mid-term expenditure framework.

    He said this would guarantee sustainability by ensuring early and consistent presentation of the country’s budget and passage.

    The Buhari Media Organisation (BMO) also hailed the quick passage and signing of the 2020 Budget.

    In a statement signed by its Chairman Niyi Akinsiju in Abuja on Tuesday, BMO said the passage was an indication of the progressive leadership evolving under the present administration.

    Akinsiju added that since the return to democratic governance in 1999, Nigeria’s budget cycle had remained problematic, disconnected and in most cases militated against the development of the country. The 2019 budget, he said, was passed in April.

    He said Buhari’s desire that Nigeria returns to the January-December budget cycle has spurred the National Assembly into action as members speedily passed the budget on schedule.

    “This positive development will bring about a lot of gains for the country, both within and outside, as even development partners will easily align their projects, plans and programmes with our new budget cycle.

    “The passage of N10.59 trillion recorded about N263.946 billion addition by the National Assembly. It is worthy of note also that based on the importance the Federal Government attaches to education, the education sector got the second largest allocation of N490 billion, after Defence.

    “The early passage of the budget did not happen by chance, but as a result of the cooperation currently existing between the Executive and the Legislature,” he said.

    The January-December cycle, Akinsiju said, would augur well for the much anticipated development across all socio-political sectors of the country as the unnecessary delays and politicking that characterised the system in the past have been eliminated.

    He added that in some aspects of the budget where there were additions or subtractions by the legislators, they were meant to add value and complement the work of the Executive with a view to achieving the intended objectives for the benefit of all Nigerians.

    “Suffice it to say that both arms of government are working in harmony towards delivering democracy dividends to Nigerians as quickly as possible,” Akinsiju said.

  • The tasks before Johnson, British Parliament

    Following Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party clear victory on December 12, watchers of British politics are now looking at how the government will achieve Brexit and heal the deep fractures within British politics.

    The House of Commons will be opened today. The Parliament will have to contend with Prime Minister Boris Johnson top priority: to get Brexit done. The 2019 general election last Thursday followed the predicaments faced by the Conservative Party, having failed to obtain a majority in the 2017 general election. The party had faced a prolonged parliamentary deadlock over Brexit while it governed in minority with the support of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).

    Johnson and the headache of Brexit

    Johnson was elected as the Conservatives’ leader in July 2019. He was then appointed as Prime Minister, after Theresa May’s resignation. Johnson could not get Parliament to approve a revised withdrawal agreement by the end of October and chose to call for a snap election. The House of Commons supported the Early Parliamentary General Election Act 2019 by 438-20, setting the election date for 12 December.

    Johnson needed to obtain an overall majority in the election in order to accomplish his main goal of taking the United Kingdom out of the European Union by the end of January 2020. Opinion polls up to polling day showed a firm lead for the Conservatives against Labour throughout the campaign.

    Conservatives’ win and Labour’s loss

    The election resulted in a Conservative win with a landslide majority of 80 seats (their largest majority since 1987), with the party making a net gain of 48 seats and winning 43.6% of the vote (the highest percentage by any party since 1979). The Labour Party performed poorly, making a net loss of 60 seats while winning 32.1% of the vote. The Scottish National Party (SNP) made a net gain of 13 seats and won 3.9% of the vote. The Liberal Democrats improved their vote share to 11.6% in the election but made a net loss of one seat. The election also saw both the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) and Alliance Party of Northern Ireland re-gain representation in the Commons.

    The result of the election saw the Conservatives strengthening their position on Brexit, with Johnson committing himself to ensure the UK’s departure from the European Union by 31 January 2020. However, 74 MPs who held seats at the end of the Parliament did not stand for re-election.

    The most diverse parliament

    In terms of gender, race and sexuality, the group of MPs elected last Thursday is the most diverse so far, although women still lag way behind men in terms of equal representation in the House of Commons. The proportion of MPs from ethnic minorities, although growing, is also lower than that of the UK’s population as a whole. There are 140 first-time MPs in the 2019 intake and 15 who are returning to the benches, having sat previously, although not in the last Parliament. Most of these are new Conservatives, but only the Greens and Plaid Cymru are returning without any new MPs.

    More women than ever before

    A total of 220 female MPs were elected last Thursday, 12 more than the previous record of 208 in the 2017 general election. For the first time, both the Liberal Democrats and Labour have more women MPs than men. Of Labour’s 202 MPs (excluding Speaker Lindsay Hoyle), 104 are women – and of the Liberal Democrats’ 11 MPs, seven are women.

    A record number of ethnic minority MPs

    One in ten of the 650 MPs elected this year are non-white. Ten years ago, just one in 40 MPs was non-white, according to research by the independent think tank British Future. There are 13 more non-white MPs than in the last Parliament, but all represent English seats. There are no black, Asian and minority ethnic MPs in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland.

    Despite losing MPs overall, Labour increased their representation of black and minority ethnic MPs. Half of the 26 new Labour MPs are from ethnic minority backgrounds. That figure includes Sarah Owen, Labour’s first British Chinese MP, and Kim Johnson, the first black MP in Liverpool. One in five Labour MPs is now black or minority ethnic, compared with 6% of Conservatives. The non-white population across the UK as a whole was 14%, according to the 2011 census.

    Labour leadership takes blame over the result

    Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell have, however, apologised over Labour’s “catastrophic” defeat in the election, which saw them lose 59 seats. Corbyn said he was “sorry that we came up short”, while Mr McDonnell told the BBC he “owns this disaster”. The leader and shadow chancellor said they would step down in the new year. The race for their replacements has already begun, with Wigan MP Lisa Nandy saying for the first time she was “seriously thinking about” running. Labour Party officials have suggested that Corbyn’s successor will be in place by the end of March.

    New and old faces

    Former Speaker of the House of Commons John Bercow, famous worldwide for his red-faced shouting of “Order!” over the noise of rowdy lawmakers, stepped down at the end of the last parliamentary session. All eyes will be on his replacement, former Labour MP Lindsay Hoyle, to see if he can live up to his predecessor’s reputation. The Speaker is in charge of running debates in the House of Commons.

    A disunited kingdom

    Following Johnson’s clear victory on December 12, sights are now set on how Johnson will achieve Brexit and how his government will attempt to heal the deep fractures within British politics.

    The Scottish National Party, which want Scotland to secede from the UK, saw a landslide last week, taking 48 out of 59 Scottish seats, while Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru returned four MPs. Additionally, seven Northern Irish nationalist MPs from the Sinn Fein party will refuse to take their seats as usual, in protest of being part of the UK.

    Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has also argued that the Scotland “cannot be imprisoned in the union against its will” by the UK government. She said the SNP’s success in the general election gives her the mandate to hold a new referendum on independence.

    However, UK ministers are opposed to such a move with Michael Gove saying the vote in 2014 should be “respected”. Ms Sturgeon told the BBC that if the UK was to continue as a union, “it can only be by consent”. She told The Andrew Marr Show that the UK government would be “completely wrong” to think saying no to a referendum would be the end of the matter, adding: “It’s a fundamental point of democracy – you can’t hold Scotland in the union against its will.” The SNP won a landslide of Scottish seats in the snap general election, making gains from the Conservatives and Labour and unseating Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson.

    There is a lot more to come regarding the terms and details of the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union, but the underlying political dynamic has changed irreversibly.

    Attitudes to Brexit will play a major role in determining the future of the opposition Labour Party.

    Relations between the UK government in London and Scotland’s devolved government in Edinburgh are likely to lead to a constitutional crisis over whether Scotland should have a fresh referendum on independence. The application of Brexit to Northern Ireland will require some very creative thinking and some very delicate treatment to ensure there is no disruption to the twenty-year-old peace process.

    In England and Wales, third parties and rebel groups within the two major parties had a significant impact on the 2019 election, but they are now left with little or no influence.

    The prime minister now has almost unfettered power, with little or no restraints from either the formal opposition parties or from within his own party. But he can be expected to come under heavy pressure from the European Union and the Irish government to do everything possible to ensure the maintenance of agreement and the preservation of an almost invisible border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic that is such a potent symbol of that agreement.

    EU parliament warns to Johnson

    European parliament chief Guy Verhofstadt yesterday threatened to withhold consent for Johnson’s Brexit deal unless problems with EU citizens’ rights are resolved. Even after succeeding in tackling the home-front, Johnson will have to contend with the EU and its Parliament. All eyes are on the Prime Minister as the Parliament opens today.

  • Nigeria’s blind spot for the blind

    In this report Gbenga Ogundare, takes a trip into the world of the blind and visually impaired and discovered that ineffective inclusive education policy, aggravated by widespread fraud and infrastructure dearth, has dealt a severe blow on this segment of the country’s population.

    A quick fact-check: Presenting the 2019 budget proposal to the State House of Assembly in November 2018, Akwa-Ibom State Governor, Mr Udom Emmanuel, announced that his administration had spent N646.649 billion on training and resettlement of 20 visually impaired persons (the blind) in different skills at the Nigerian Farm Craft Centre, Lagos and subsequent empowerment for them to start up their businesses in the development trade they learnt.

    Suppose the Governor did exactly as he had told the legislature, that would have been 20 persons lifted out of a life of penury and street begging for which Nigerians living with disabilities are known.

    Several SMS and WhatsApp messages sent to Charles Udoh, immediate past Akwa Ibom State Commissioner for Information, requesting for information on the details of the trainees and the amount of the budget invested on them did not receive a reply.

    To verify the governor’s claim, the reporter contacted the principal of the Nigeria Farm Craft Centre for the Blind [NFCB], Mohammed Shuaibu Afegbua, who made it known that no student attended the Centre in 2018, not even in 2017!

    “This school has neither admitted nor trained a single visually challenged person since 2016,” he stated, adding “the last set of students we admitted graduated in December 2016!”

    Also, it is not possible for a state to send twenty visually challenged persons to the NFCB at once in a given session, contrary to the governor’s. This is because the Centre is a federal institution that operates a quota system of admission.

    In essence, only three visually impaired candidates from each of the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), may be admitted in a given academic session, the principal further disclosed.

    “But as I speak, virtually all the states have candidates waiting on standby from six years back.”

    Conclusion: It is not true that Emmanuel spent part of the budget passed by the Akwa-Ibom State House of Assembly in 2018 to train 20 blind citizens of the state at the NFCB!

    In the throes of darkness

    The casualties of this kind of official deception are much more than those shortchanged by the governor. No less than a million persons living with blindness across the country are in dire need of some form of urgent rehabilitation to enable them live a productive and independent life.

    That is an estimate from an old study though. For over a decade now, just one national blindness and visual impairment survey has been carried out across the country.

    The survey, at the instance of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, shows that well over four million Nigerians are visually impaired.

    Visual impairment among those who cannot read and write, according to the survey, also stands at 5.8 percent nationwide. This is against 1.5 percent among those who can.

    Ahmed Pindiga is one of such sore statistics of unlettered blind analyzed in the now obsolete eye health survey. Every Friday afternoon, he joins a phalanx of itinerant street beggars who prime themselves around the Ikotun Central mosque, east of Alimosho Local Government in Lagos State.

    The beggars have not come to observe the customary Jumaat prayers. Rather they would wait patiently for the worship to end, and the scramble for the day’s Zakat, the Islamic form of religious alms-giving and show of benevolence to the needy, would begin.

    He was at the same spot on September 6 when the reporter had a chat with him. Suddenly, Ahmed’s right hand disappeared into his pocket and brought back an old mobile phone. Soon he began to fumble with the keypad on the device as the phone rang and vibrated endlessly to signal an incoming call.

    Unbeaten, he fiddled with the keypad again and again, glowering at the same time, until his restive finger finally found and hit the green button after several unsuccessful attempts.

    It’s not exactly unusual to see frustration written on his face and many like him each time they try to receive calls on their mobile phones, Babatunde Mohammed, a rehabilitation expert and Chairman of the Nigeria Association of the Blind in Lagos State, told the reporter.

    “It has to be so because the phone obviously is not designed to enable a visually impaired person receive calls or identify his callers,” he explained.

    That aside, it is also apparent he has not been through a functional rehabilitation programme necessary to enable him leverage assistive technology to be independent and enjoy his privacy as a blind.

    For an illiterate, non-speaker of the English Language who relies on a child guide to lead him around as he scrounges for a living amidst the bedlam of crazy traffic at the busy Ikotun intersection, functional rehabilitation, independence and privacy, as hinted by Mohammed, actually sound like some jargons from a Latin dictionary.

    “Ban jiba walahi,’ Ahmed responded in his native Hausa dialect to inform the reporter he didn’t understand what the rehabilitation expert meant by assistive technology.

    Ahmed is not alone in the dark about the option of rehabilitation and assistive technology available to enable him live an independent life. So is Isaac Olayinka, a blind clergyman at the Christ Apostolic Church, Ibadan who also relies on others every day to enable him navigate the crowded Ibadan roads and elsewhere he goes to preach.

    Like Ahmed, Isaac has never learnt how to use a Braille machine or computer-assisted devices to enhance his duties as a preacher. The best he has done, he told the reporter, was to perfect a cumbersome method to enable him recall chapters and verses of the holy bible.

    “For a long time, I have mastered how to cram the bible on a daily basis, after people must have read any particular portion to me,” he told the reporter.

    “I have never heard that computer and phone can help one read the bible or other Christian books on one’s own as a blind. You are the first to tell me so.”

    Ignorance everywhere

    That kind of widespread information poverty is not exactly unusual in the country. Eye health crises and the exact rehabilitation needs of those worse affected by visual impairment have been worsened by an apparent scarcity of public health education and accurate data.

    That is in addition to a combination of depressing geographical, financial, and personal hurdles which constantly stand between this vulnerable community and the rehabilitation they need to be independent.

    In other climes where inclusive education and rehabilitation are at the front burner of policy discourse, community-based rehabilitation initiatives are already eliminating those obstacles impeding the likes of Ahmed and Isaac.

    For one, the innovation is less cumbersome because it provides rehabilitation programmes to persons with visual disabilities right in the communities where they live.

    “So they don’t have to travel long distance from their communities to attend a rehabilitation school, or be huddled together in one outskirt of the town, as though disability is infectious,” Dr Sheu Bukola Adebayo, Chairman of the Joint National Association of Persons with Disabilities (JONAPWD) in Lagos, explained.

    “Unfortunately, Nigeria is yet to come to term with this social model of rehabilitation. And that’s why the traditional model of rehabilitating the visually impaired continues to fail us.”

    Blessing is a casualty of that failurethe inability of governments at all levels to launch a widespread and sustained public enlightenment campaigns about community-based rehabilitation options for the blind who scavenge for a living in street corners and those locked up in different homes by their families.

    Struck with a sudden blindness at age of three, Blessing was simply abandoned to rot away in her Delta State hometowndenied of any formal education. She is 19 years old already, she told the reporter, after a Lagos-based television personality found out about her plight and offered to reform her.

    Usman Ojo, now registered at Omoyeni Home School for the Blind in Ibadan, Oyo State, also suffered the same cruel fate as Blessing. Blind at birth, the boy spent the next 12 years of his life in a dinghy room with his mother, without nursery and primary education.

    The father, a tailor before coming to Lagos to work for a fashion outfit in Lekki, told the reporter he got to know about the possibility of a school for the blind late.

    “He was born blind, so I didn’t know anything could be done to get him an education. But by the time I heard about Pacelli School for the Blind in Lagos, they were not willing to take him again,’ he told the reporter.

    “When I tried again the following year, and I couldn’t meet up with the financial obligations, I became frustrated,” he lamented.

    Sad, but real, a vast bulk of visually challenged Nigerians may never learn to be productive or independent after all, worried Dr Adebayo, if government fails to systematically implement the National Policy on Inclusive Education currently gathering dust in the Federal Ministry of Education in Abuja.

    “We have a National Policy on Inclusive Education at the federal level, and about 15 states also have their own policies as well, but the problem has always been implementation,” the JONAPWD chairman lamented.

    Part of the implementation problems is the scanty number of rehabilitation centres for the blind, compared to the population of persons living with visual disabilities across the country, explained Nicholas Obot, Principal of the Vocational Training Centre for the Blind in Oshodi, Lagos, and National Secretary of the Braille Advancement Organization of Nigeria.

    Majority of these centres are mostly private initiatives and profit-driven too, the reporter discovered.

    Collapsed infrastructure

    Despite plunking down N25 million in 2017 to revalidate the National Policy on Rehabilitation of Persons with Disabilities, only a few things would appear as normal for anyone visiting the NFCB in Lagos for the first time.

    Established in 1967, according to its Principal, Muhammed Shuaibu Afegbua, the centre bears the responsibility of rehabilitating visually impaired persons from across the countrythrough developing their skills in mobility, Braille, computer/ICT and craft as well as farming.

    Not many blind Nigerians and their families are aware the NFCB exists however. This is because the centre is neither advertised in the media nor in public enlightenment and rural outreaches.

    At any rate, for two sessions back to back, the centre, with all of the hope it brings to the blind, was left to rot away.

    NFCB did not admit or train a single visually challenged citizen since 2016 until April 2019, the reporter who visited the centre in the guise of a blind person seeking rehabilitation found out.

    According to Afegbua, that is because of certain challenges he would not disclose to the reporter during their chat.

    But at the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs Headquarters in Abuja, sources told the reporter the disruption was due to funding and seething tussle between the federal ministries of Education and Women Affairs and Social development over which controls the NFCB.

    Corruption unlimited

    The years of redundancy at the NFCB, however, did not stop civil servants in the centre from earning their monthly salaries and leave bonuses.

    It also did not stop some corrupt officials at the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development, under which the NFCB is an agency, from creaming off a huge N40,000,000 from the 2017 approved budget, supposedly as upkeep for the trainees at the NFCB, even though no single person with visual disability was admitted into the Centre that year.

    The steady sleaze in the guise of rehabilitating the blind leaped through the 2018 budget as well, even though the gates of the NFCB remained shut to trainees. Another N150,000,000 was sneaked into the 2018 approved budget of the Women Affairs ministry, as “upkeep of the trainees and strengthening activities at the following social welfare, rehabilitation and other welfare centres.”

    The Rotary Club of Egbeda, trying to do good in marking its 15th anniversary, also visited the NFCB on March 31st, 2018. The visitors did not suspect the centre had neither admitted nor trained any blind person for two years. So, they donated clothings and other items, supposedly to keep the blind trainees comfortable.

    Double jeopardy

    Waiting endlessly on the queue is a torture any prospective blind must endure before he is considered for admission at the NFCB, the reporter found out.

    The centre can only admit three candidates from each of the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory in any particular session, according to the principal. And that is just 111 lucky few every year. The less than fortunate candidates are then made to wait on the lists until another year when the jostle for admission would begin again.

    “Admission is competitive here because your state must have to recommend you to us for admission in any particular year.  But as I speak, virtually all the states have candidates waiting on standby from six years back,”  Afegbua said.

    Assume that the population of blind Nigerians will remain at one million as indicated in the 1998 national eye health survey, and the NFCB will only admit 111 persons out of this cluster in any given year, it will invariably mean that Nigeria will need some 9,009 years to rehabilitate and make its blind citizens independent and productive again!

    But if the entire population of the blind and visually impaired, put at a little over four million in the survey, is to scramble for a space at the NFCB given the yearly admission benchmark, then Nigeria will require some 35,036 years or more before the entire visually challenged population would be fully rehabilitated.

    To make matters worse, unlike in the past when trainees used to enjoy tuition-free rehabilitation, stipends and boarding at the centre, a prospective student is now expected to pay a huge N120,000 upon admission.

    The conspiracy against the blind, the reporter found out, was reached at the 10th National Council on Women Affairs and Social Development held between August 5-10,  2019 in Lagos, with all Commissioners for Women Affairs from across the states in attendance.

    Those who are not fortunate to be sponsored by their states, explained Afegbua, may then have to attend the school as self-sponsored students.

    That financial burden is yielding a backlash already, the reporter found out.

    When the NFCB finally resumed academic session in April this year, only 48 visually challenged students from across 15 states were fortunate to take up their slots.

    Blessing didn’t get a sponsorship from her state, Delta, though, she is one of the two self-sponsored trainees from the state currently at the NFCB. And to be in class, a good Samaritan had to squeeze out the compulsory tuition fees of N120,000.

    Failed states

    The other 21 states, Afegbua said, simply would not invest N360,000 on three of their blind citizens at the cost of N120,000 each for the entire session “due to lack of funds”.

    Many of the defaulting states (Edo, Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Cross-Rivers, Taraba, Kano, Katsina, Bauchi, Borno, Adamawa, Sokoto, Kebbi, Zamfara, Plateau and the FCT) are in the Northern part of the country. This is followed by a few South eastern states and then two statesOyo and Ekitifrom the Southwest.

    Akande O.M. of the Social Welfare Department at the Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development in Oyo State revealed as much. The devil that sabotaged the efforts of candidates from the state in filling up their quotas at the NFCB this current session was a combination of bureaucracy and insensitivity, he told the reporter, who presented himself as a blind citizen seeking sponsorship from the state.

    “We got the letter informing us of the new tuition fee at the NFCB late, but even after treating the request and sending it out for approval, the file never came back again because the government in power then was more concerned about the elections than anything else.

    “Even as I speak, the file is yet to come back to the ministry. But I am optimistic something positive will happen next session, and you may be one of the lucky candidates to be selected, especially now that we have an Executive Assistant on Disability in the Governor’s Office.”

    The same reception of shock was awaited the reporter when he arrived at the Blind Centre in Ogbomoso, Oyo State, the following day. The school has no facility in place to teach computer skills, or the technology needed to make the blind navigate a computer independently, the instructors explained.

    “We can’t teach you what you want to learn here, because there is no facility for that in the school. But you can learn how to Braille and use the typewriter.

    “In fact, we don’t even admit older candidates like you, but because of the person that brought you, we may admit you into Primary 2, so you can learn any vocation that you like and still go ahead to do common entrance later,” the head teacher assured the reporter out of pity.

    The vocational trainings on offer at the school are as odd as the proposal made to the reporter. They include weaving, both of chairs and ropes for tethering livestock, as well as bead making.

    But they are not too offensive to dissuade Ibukun Ogundijo from getting registered at the Blind Centre after all.

    Ogundijo is one perfect example of the setback that inadequate infrastructure can cause in schools for the blind in Nigeria. Now 20, the young man lost his sight while preparing to graduate into the junior secondary school in 2008. In search of a panacea, his family rushed him to the Blind Centre in Ogbomoso, after an initial desperate move to have his sight restored in hospitals and spiritual homes failed.

    Another shocker was waiting for the blind lad instead.  Ibukun was made to start all over again from Primary 1. “But when the school began to notice my performance, they offered me double promotion twice,” he narrated to the reporter.

    All talk but slow inclusion in Lagos

    In spite of the disability friendly initiatives and inclusive education policy in Lagos State, blind students are not learning anything in those inclusive schools, Adebayo insists.

    He lamented, “Lagos is not implementing inclusive education yet, so I can’t score the government high. In fact, it will be unfair on PLWDs living in Lagos to score the government 40 percent for their effort so far.”

    “It is one thing to have an inclusive education policy; it is another thing entirely to make it work. And that’s why we continue to insist government must design an operational guide for implementing inclusive education in Nigeria, in addition to supporting schools with the teachers, instructional materials and equipment needed to make disabled students learn.”

    Those who lost their sight as adults are not learning anything in Lagos either. There are only just four rehabilitation centers that can provide training and assistive devices for the crowd of visually impaired in the state for instance, and all of these institutions are either private initiatives or run by civil society organizations.

    The only state-controlled institution, the Lagos State Vocational Rehabilitation Centre for Persons With Disabilities in Owutu, Ikorodu “is anything but a rehabilitation centre for persons with disabilities, if you compare it with international global best practice,” Adebayo said.

    He is right after all. The centre merely exists in structure and not in equipment and devices needed to effectively address the special needs of blind students especially, the reporter found out on his visit.

    Expensive alternative

    From the schools for the blind in Lagos to Ibadan, down to Ogbomoso and back to Ijebu-Igbo where the reporter presented himself as a prospective student, the blind have an option though: to shun the empty and dysfunctional state-controlled special schools and patronize private institutions. That’s if they will ever be able to afford the cost.

    According to Obot of the Vocational Training Centre for the Blind, “it costs nothing less than N750,000 [about $2,100] to take a visually impaired through complete rehabilitation, and that includes rehabilitation fee, laptop and JAWS, typewriter, stylus and guide cane.”

    The bargain is no less expensive at the Anglo-Nigerian Welfare Association for the Blind [ANWAB], another rehabilitation centre for the blind in Yaba, Lagos, the reporter discovered.

    According to Cajetan Duru, an instructor in the school, Job Access With Speech [JAWS], the software that enables a visually impaired navigate the computer and Internet, costs N300,000, while the market price of a new laptop computer varies between N180,000 and N250,000.

    “Other than that, you will need an android phone which can help you do the same thing a JAWS will enable you do on the laptop, and that will cost at least N50,000. However, we can allow you pay your rehabilitation fee in installments since the training is in three phases, beginning with mobility and typing training,” Duru explained.

    The rich and willing visually impaired also have an option of patronizing private home bound rehabilitation services, revealed Sunday Badejo, a visually challenged expert in education for the blind. At a more expensive charges, though.

    “The least I charge is N100,000 and that is for a professional who suddenly lost his sight and requires an accelerated rehabilitation to go back to work in just six weeks,” Badejo told the reporter, adding, “but my professional fee can be more than that, depending on a number of considerations such as location, distance and length of training required by the client.”

    He has travelled across several states in Nigeria, including in Kano, Niger and Jigawa, providing home-bound rehabilitation services to visually challenged persons who can pay his bill, but “it’s alright if the person wants to come and meet me in Lagos,” he said.

    “I can help negotiate accommodation and factor the logistics into my final charges. That’s why I told you initially it depends on location, duration and such other factors,” the graduate of Federal College of Education [Special] in Oyo explained.

    One scary consideration is the cost of the devices a visually impaired would have to procure to live a normal productive life again, he said. According to Badejo, aside from rehabilitation fees which can run into hundreds of thousand, students will be required to buy JAWS, Braille machine, Pearl scanner, typewriter, embosser, guide cane as well as stylus and mabourg.

    “Now, a JAWS software is around N500,000, Braille machine is N300,000, Pearl scanner is N469,000, typewriter is N10,000, the least cane is N15,000 while stylus and slate cost N7000. So you are looking at well over one million naira as cost of devices needed to give you independence as a visually impaired person, aside from my own professional fee as a private instructor.”

    For a disadvantaged community constantly frustrated by employment inequalities and other forms of negative stereotypes, raising no less than N1 million to enable them go through coordinated rehabilitation programmes has become a huge incentive for flushing on to the streets to beg for alms, lamented Mohammed.

    “You can call them names for causing a nuisance on the streets if you want,” Muhammed griped, “but the truth is that government institutions that should ordinarily rehabilitate them at little or no cost are dysfunctional, and that leaves them with no alternatives other than the few private rehabilitation centres which are expensive to attend already.”

    Gateway to inclusion, equality

    Inside the Enabling Technology Room at the Southwest Resource Centre in Abeokuta, Ogun State, a revolution similar to the community-based rehabilitation strategy recommended by the World Blind Union (WBU) and the World Health Organization (WHO) is taking a steady foothold.

    Sired in the twilight of the President Bill Clinton administration in 2004, the centre is an innovative ICT hub designed by Americans to accelerate the globalization process in Nigeria through building the capacity of citizens in Information Communication Technology, narrated Emmanuel Akinola.

    And, to give that intervention a fillip, similar centres were erected in other geopolitical zones, including Bauchi, Cross River, Enugu, Kaduna, Oggun and the FCT.

    “That was how we got the idea of including persons living with disabilities in the wider programme,” Akinola, also a blind lawyer, and Consultant instructor in Basic ICT Education for the blind, explained.

    Attendance is tuition-free for the blind here, the reporter found out after registering and attending classes as a blind in need of rehabilitation at the centre.

    “That’s why this room is called the Enabling Technology Room, because it’s meant for PLWDs generally. The reason why only persons with visual disabilities are here now is because others can still see and read printed matter, unlike the blind who requires special skills in ICT to navigate the computer and internet,” said Akinola.

    Again the crippling Nigerian factor

    That is some huge breather for inclusive education advocates like Adebayo and Mohammed really. But the excitement is not going to last long. For one, acceptance for blind trainees at the Southwest Resource Centre is difficult and low compared to the huge number of blind persons who need rehabilitation to enable them participate fully in public life again.

    Blame the sustained employment inequality and harsh economic condition that frustrate the bid of many of them who indeed registered their interest in the training but could not make it to Abeokuta in the end.

    The three weeks course is free written off by the Ogun State Government. But not transportation, logistics, accommodation and feeding!

    Governors of other Southwest states deserve much of the flak after all, groaned Akinola. “Even though the Southwest Resource Centre is designed to serve all the states in the region, these governors just carry on as if they are not concerned”, the blind lawyer and rehabilitation expert lamented.

    The low attendance could not have been otherwise then. More so that public enlightenment about the centre, and deliberate mobilization of blind persons, are not on the priority list of the governors. And that’s a violation of Article 26 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) to which Nigeria is a signatory.

    The law imposes obligation on state parties to take effective and appropriate measures to provide comprehensive habilitation and rehabilitation services and programmes, particularly in the areas of health, employment, education and social services for their citizens with disabilities.

    The blind have little or no choice here really. Not even in a stranded economy where more than half of the population survives on less than $2 a day.

    • This report was done with the support of Ford Foundation and International Centre for Investigative Reporting, ICIR

  • Gains, concerns as NEITI unveils owners of oil blocks today

    JOHN OFIKHENUA reports that the beneficial ownership register that the Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) is releasing to the public today is not to criminalize people.

     

    AS the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) makes public the beneficial ownership register of the oil and gas sector on December 12, 2019, it has become the great expectation of the common-run in the country.

    On the other hand, the plan has jolted the bourgeois who own stakes in the oil blocs and other interests in the industries. Whereas the underprivileged are jubilating that the manipulation of concealed ownership, which some lucky beneficiaries have presumably employed to rob them of the optimal benefits of their commonwealth is going to bring relief, it has unsettled the owners.

    The owners, according to feedbacks from the relevant agencies such as the NEITI and the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC), are jittery that unveiling the register will cause them some security challenges, incite the citizens against them and even impinge on the confidentiality of their businesses.

    To the owners, the move to unveil the list amounts to criminalising hard work in the eye of the common man. But the NEITI has always maintained that not all businesses are criminal in nature because the dubious ones are in the minority.

    The watchdog organisation of the extractive industries has insisted that it is not designed to open a battlefield for the owners and watchers of the industries. In order to break the cocoon of fear that has heralded the announcement and plan of the unveiling of the register, the NEITI has tried as much as possible to attempt the simplest definition of the term beneficial ownership. It has also explained to the world that the register will not compromise their security.

    In its policy brief, the organisation says “beneficial owners are the real, life and blood individuals who profit from and exercise control over companies (as opposed to legal owners and fronts usually filed in registration documents).

    “Having a public registry of beneficial owners of extractive companies will definitely limit abuses perpetrated through the use of anonymous covers. No such registry exists in Nigeria at the moment.”

    It is, however, worthy of note that the practice of cloaking the real owners of companies manifests in different forms in the extractive sector. This, according to the brief, ranges from chains of ownership (where many companies, including those registering tax havens and secret banking jurisdiction, end owning a particular company), nominee shareholding (where a shareholder holds stock on behalf of a third party), trusts (where a trustee acts for and in the interest of the beneficiary) and the use of fronts or stand-ins.

    Continuing, the document said in most oil resource-rich countries, anonymous ownership serves as a vehicle for concealing illicit wealth and conflict of interests by Politically Exposed Persons (PEP). It dropped the hint that when government officials and politically connected individuals seek to profit from a country’s mineral assets, they do so using fronts and ownership structures that do not provide sufficient information about the true identities of the natural person behind the title. But then the real problem is not just about anonymity. It is that the lack of transparency allows the influential officials to use their positions to extract maximum rent from a country’s mineral resources with maximum or no benefit to the citizens.

    Narrating how much toll corruption has taken on the oil and gas resources, NEITI recalled that in practical terms, billions of dollars are lost annually which politically-connected individuals appropriate to themselves using fronts and secret ownership arrangements.

    A particular example that the organisation cited is that of the controversy around OPL 245 where a former Minister of Petroleum, Dan Etete, awarded the oil license to Malabu Oil allegedly using a fictitious name and company address to conceal his identity and interest in the company. Similarly, according to the NEITI’s document, the granting of pioneer status in which the Nigerian government lost over $1.17 billion (from 2009-2014) to some upstream companies may not be unconnected with the influence of true beneficial owners behind the scene.

    In general, local and international oil companies operating in developing countries typically exhibit a complex structure of ownership that makes it difficult to identify the real individuals behind the companies or their connection to companies with whom they transact business.

    The watchdog organisation claims that “these relationships matter because the amount of tax which a company pays depends on the profit it declares to the tax authorities. But the size of the profit depends on the cost of operations. If a company finds a way to incur a huge cost for its operations, then it would declare little or no profit or even declare a loss.

    As a result, it pays little or no tax. If this scheme allows the same company to go back to its suppliers and service providers to get a refund after declaring little profit and paying little or no tax, then the shareholders keep almost everything and the society gets the short end of the stick. Cost paddling, a practice known as gold-plating in the extractive sector, is suspected to be widespread.”

    NEITI said with the above form of “transfer of pricing” it is difficult to detect where fuzzy relationships exist between companies transacting business with each other or where companies engaged in some (or different) transactions owned and/or controlled by the same individuals or entities, it is designed primarily by owners to evade tax.

    It insisted that fortunately, a reporting system which makes it possible for everyone else to know the identity of the owners or ultimate beneficiaries of both companies significantly lowers the incentive for businesses to cheat the government and society in this manner. In the policy brief, NEITI noted that the challenges of concealing ownership of firms are same with trade mispricing which allows companies to over-invoiced imports (inputs) or under-invoice exports (products) in order to increase cost, reduce profits, and ultimately pay little tax. From the view of the organisation, a well-designed beneficial ownership map can help flag these sorts of relationships between companies engaged in the extractive sector.

    The document recalled that the leaks from the Panama Papers show the biggest victims of these practices are developing countries, or generally countries with weak institutions of accountability and tax authorities. It is worse where these countries are reliant on the activities of large corporations to exploit their resources to generate revenue without which the government is unable to provide services to citizens. It observes that oil and gas companies in Nigeria operate within a typical corporate environment, complete with a complex web of commercial relationships and corporate identities, that require utmost regulatory vigilance by accountability institutions.

    In the oil and gas industry, there is always a commonplace reference to the $1 trillion scandals in the 2014 World Campaign report. It estimated that developing countries lose $1 trillion annually due to all kinds of shady businesses transactions. There is an assumption that since the losses are mostly in resource countries, Nigeria is the major loser as it accounts for a huge stake in the industry.

    Besides the NEITI’s explicit depiction of pitfalls of concealing beneficial ownership, other stakeholders have noted that unveiling the real owners of the oil and gas firms will bring respite to the nation’s economy.

    But exactly what does the nation benefit from unfolding the register of beneficial owners? Minister of Finance and Budget Mrs. Zainab Ahmed told The Nation at the Media Initiative for Transparency in Extractive Industries METEI Roundtable on Beneficial Ownership Register in Abuja, that without the register “we are losing the opportunities to be able to track revenues and track corrupt practices. Once we have this disclosure, the anti-corruption agencies will be better equipped to track all the corrupt practices.”

    Similarly, the NEITI policy brief pointed out that it is in the best interest of Nigeria and Nigerians as full ownership disclosure has practical implication for increasing government revenues, reassuring investors interested in partnering with local companies, reducing the incidence of corruption and money laundering and cutting off funding for drugs lords and terrorists.

    Insisting that there is need to reinforce the power of beneficial ownership disclosure, the NEITI’s policy brief called on President Muhammadu Buhari administration to prioritise this aspect of transparency and champion policy and legal framework for lifting the veil of secrecy on ownership disclosure will facilitate the present thrust of the Nigerian government to trace, recover and repatriate the country’s stolen assets in foreign jurisdiction.

    This is because the document has discovered that the problematic process of recovery of stolen assets in other jurisdictions is compounded by the absence of relevant information occasioned by secrecy and opaqueness of the real actors behind the transactions.

    Tracing the beginning of beneficial ownership policy in Nigeria, the document said in 2013, Nigeria volunteered, alongside 11 other NEITI -implementing countries, to pilot the reporting of Beneficial Ownership in the oil, gas and mining sectors. Hence, in the NEITI Oil and Gas Audit Report of 2012, which was released last year, ‘beneficial ownership’ information was published for 40 of the 42 companies covered by the oil and gas audit, and 32 of the 65 companies covered in the solid minerals audit.

    The ownership information is captured through templates filled out by companies and validated with records at the CAC and the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR). In the pilot, however, most of the ownership information was for the “legal owners” as opposed to the “beneficial owners.”

    Consequently, the decision to lift the veil off the faces of the owners of the oil and gas firm has now unsettled the real owners. From the analyses of watchers of the industry, no investor seems to have been cautious of any single obligor limit in the oil and gas industry. This is apparently accountable for the jitters that are now running down the spines of the stakeholders.

    At the Media Initiative for Transparency in Extractive Industries METEI Roundtable, the NEITI Executive Secretary, Dr. Waziri Adio noted that since the disclosure means putting people’s information in the public domain, the organisation is being careful so that it is mostly resorting to using the Bank Verification Numbers (BVN) or Tax Identification Number (TIN) of the individuals because everyone has it. Without applying the utmost precaution of the security of the stakeholders, it will hamper compliance and the integrity of the exercise.

    Mr. Peter Nyam, who represented the Acting Registrar-General Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC), Lady Azuka Azinge, expressed fears that stakeholders may misconstrue the idea of beneficial ownership disclosure.

    He said: “This identification will disclose a lot of things about directors. My fear is that we have a situation where people, rather than contributing to the economy, would rather wind up their companies. For the past three years, we have been having a series of companies being wind up. At times when you ask them, they will say it is the hardship in the environment. With this initiative, there is the issue of business rescue. There is also the need to engage members of the public to allay the fears that will emanate.”

    Adio recalled how he received some calls from players in the industries who related their fears to him. But he allayed the fears of the stakeholders stressing that “there is a way we (media) frame this as in the benefits the country is going to derive against the companies that have been cheating. I think we need a more inclusive frame for this. But everybody stands to gain from the disclosure. This is not a we-against-them game. It is a win-win game.”

    Although the NEITI has downplayed odious implications of the unveiling of beneficial ownership register, the reactions and feedback from the citizens in the next few weeks shall tell exactly how much it is loved and feared.

  • Johnson or Corbyn?

    Voters in the United Kingdom (UK) are going to the poll today amid Brexit controversies and a nonstop drumbeat of political chaos.

     

    FROM 7 a.m. local time today, Britons will go to the poll. It is a defining general election – the third in four years. The voters are facing a difficult choice, involving two unpopular leaders. But, seconds after the close of voting, the first big moment of the night – the exit poll, which predicts a usually-accurate picture of where the votes have gone – will become clearer.

    But yesterday was hectic for the key leaders in the election: it was the final day of campaigning. Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn started a campaign in Scotland, offering a “vote for hope” and attacking Tory “negativity”. Conservatives leader Boris Johnson started campaigning in West Yorkshire, insisting the Tories are the only party who can “get Brexit done”. Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson also touring seats, urging voters to back her candidates to stop Brexit. The SNP’s Nicola Sturgeon also made her final pitch to voters too.

     

    A low-tech vote

    British elections are notoriously low-tech. Voters mark an “X” on a sheet of paper with a stubby pencil and drop it into a box – so results take some time to come through. From about 11.00 p.m., the country will get the first figures, and counting will continue through the night.

     

    Brexit and UK’s traditional electoral map

    Brexit has thrown the UK’s traditional electoral map up in the air; Conservatives are targeting traditional Labour areas, which voted to leave the European Union (EU). Labour and the Liberal Democrats are hoping to capitalise on support in areas further south that had a large remain vote – meaning that results can still surprise poll watchers on who is heading to Downing Street.

    Nick Boles, a former Conservative MP, views the election as an “appalling choice” between a “compulsive liar” and a “totalitarian”.

    To Boles, Johnson is the “compulsive liar”. The “totalitarian” is Labour Party leader Corbyn.

    Amid stereotyping the leaders, voters want Brexit, the election, the nonstop drumbeat of political chaos to be over and done with.

     

    Johnson’s trust issue

    This is Johnson’s first chance to stand before the British voters as the nation’s prime minister. It’s an election he asked for, yet the campaign hasn’t been without its bumps in the road.

    Critics have raised doubts about his trustworthiness – an important question, given that Johnson is trying to assure voters that he can get the UK out of the European Union by the end of January and then follow that up with successful negotiation for a new trade relationship.

    They cite a string of broken promises or misleading statements, including on healthcare and his Brexit plan for Northern Ireland. He has also been criticised for refusing to discuss the number of children he has, an issue that was even picked up in the United States (U.S.) media.

    “The theme running through our questions is trust,” BBC broadcaster Andrew Neil said of an interview he had hoped to conduct with Johnson. “And why, so many times in his career in politics and journalism, critics and sometimes even those close to him have deemed him to be untrustworthy,” Neil added.

    Johnson refused to grant an election interview on Neil’s programme – the only candidate to do so in recent elections. He also failed to appear at a climate debate, and instead was represented by a melting block of ice.

    Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage said: “I’ve known Boris on and off for 25 years, and he is a likeable, entertaining personality, he said. “Would you absolutely trust him? No.”

    Perhaps most damaging to Johnson in the final days of the campaign was the publication on Monday of a photograph of an ill four-year-old boy, admitted to a Leeds hospital emergency room, lying on a pile of coats because there were no available cots.

    The image, which went viral on social media, has put the Conservatives on their heels, as they apologise for the child’s ordeal and defend themselves against charges that the incident was indicative of an underfunded health system.

    Johnson responded with a halting interview with an ITV reporter. He initially refused to look at a photo of the child on the reporter’s phone, taking the device away and putting it in his own pocket, saying he would “study it later”.

    His behaviour could reinforce the perception that the prime minister is not always well-equipped to handle criticism and sometimes struggles to display empathy.

    Corbyn pounced, saying the Conservatives have had “nine years in office, and whilst they now claim they are funding the NHS, they are not; they’re not even beginning to make up the shortfall it’s had over the past nine years.”

     

    Corbyn’s credibility and ideology

    The Labour Party leader is not free from criticisms. His mixed and contradictory messages on Brexit – refusing to make Labour an avowedly Remain party – have undermined his credibility.

    Given the party’s delicate position of trying to represent constituencies that voted strongly to Leave and others that were vehemently Remain, Corbyn has tried to straddle the line between the two sides – but seems to have angered some on both sides.

    However, following him in North Wales this week, he rarely brought up the subject, preferring to talk about his promise to invest in the health service. He has also been accused of inadequately addressing anti-Semitism with his party’s ranks, of pushing out moderate voices within the party and of previously harbouring sympathies for the IRA.

    Johnson was quick to bring this last point up in the final leader debate on Friday, as a means of deflecting Corbyn’s criticisms of Johnson’s proposed solution to the seemingly intractable problem of withdrawing the UK from the EU while keeping the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic seamless.

    The Labour manifesto reflects Corbyn’s socialist sympathies – and has opened him up to attack from moderates, as well. He has called for higher taxes, nationalisation of industries like mail, water and energy and a four-day workweek, among other proposals.

     

    A Brexit election

    Back from dissecting the two top leaders in the election, history books will probably remember this as the Brexit election.

    Johnson himself took over the top job earlier this year only after his predecessor, Theresa May, repeatedly failed in her efforts to pass a withdrawal deal. Because of this, the Conservatives are campaigning on a “Get Brexit Done” slogan – an effort to pry away dozens of longtime Labour constituencies that voted Leave.

    More than that, however, Johnson’s campaign is centred on his desire to win a working Conservative majority in Parliament for the first time since 2017. Everything, he says, hinges on that – Brexit, new trade deals with the EU and U.S., a tax cut and increased spending on the National Health Service and education. The election is coming as the UK economy suffered its worst three months for more than a decade after official figures revealed output failed to grow once again in October.

    Office for National Statistics (ONS) data showed the economy flatlined month-on-month in October, after two months of declines. It was the weakest three months since early 2009. The figures come ahead of a general election, with the main parties all promising to boost growth.

    Although the service sector expanded 0.2 per cent in the August-to-October period, that was offset by a 0.7 per cent contraction in manufacturing and 0.3 per cent fall in construction. The ONS said there had been “a notable drop in house building and infrastructure in October”.

    John Hawksworth, the chief economist at consultancy PwC, blamed Brexit-related uncertainty for the economy’s “loss of momentum”.

     

    Exploiting UK-U.S. relations

    U.S. President Donald Trump is largely unpopular in the UK. His feud with London Mayor Sadiq Khan, intemperate tweets about UK politics and vitriolic treatment of a British ambassador to the U.S. have helped make him persona non grata for many Britons. Corbyn and his Labour Party have sought to exploit Johnson’s perceived closeness to the U.S. president, suggesting that U.S. access to the British health system was “on the table” in trade talks.

    At the very least, this suggests that a U.S.-UK relationship with Corbyn in London and Trump still in Washington will be strained, at best.

     

    The other parties to watch

    There was some thought that the struggles of the two major parties and their leaders might leave room for some of the smaller parties – such as the Liberal Democrats, the Brexit Party, and the nationalist parties SNP in Scotland and Plaid Cymru in Wales, to gain traction.

    While the SNP appears poised to do well again in the seats they are contesting, the others are struggling, despite co-operative agreements and efforts to encourage tactical voting in marginal constituencies.

    Instead, in the majority of the nation, it will boil down to a fight between two parties, Labour and the Conservatives, and the two distinct personalities and political proclivities of their leaders.

    Johnson, often unkempt and unscripted, has pushed his side towards a conservative populism embodied in his full-throated support for Brexit. While direct comparisons with Trump in the U.S. often fall apart on closer inspection, Johnson – like his American counterpart – is a disrupter, who has shown himself willing to set aside norms and traditions in pursuit of his policy objectives.

    Corbyn, chosen to be his party’s leader in 2015, represents a decisive shift to the left for the Labour Party of recent decades. If there is an American parallel here, his rise is the equivalent of a Bernie Sanders-style figure taking control of the Democratic Party. Labour is a very different party now than the last time it held No 10 Downing Street, during the Tony Blair and Gordon Brown years of the early 2000s.

    Many UK voters, regardless of political affiliation, may also look at the events of the past decade and wonder if this is a very different United Kingdom, as well.

     

    On the precipice of yet another hung parliament

    Johnson went into the final full day of campaigning looking to win ‘every vote’ after a fresh poll suggested a hung parliament could still be on the cards. YouGov’s constituency-by-constituency poll predicts the Conservatives are on course for a 28 seat majority – but the margin of error and the unknown impact of tactical voting means a hung parliament is still a possibility. The pollsters, who have analysed more than 100,000 voter interviews over the past week, predicted the Tories will win 339 seats and Labour 231. A 28-seat majority would be the best Tory result since Margaret Thatcher’s showing in 1987 – but it is down from the sizeable 68-seat victory that the same YouGov-style poll had been predicting only two weeks ago. Chris Curtis, YouGov’s political research manager, said: ‘The margins are extremely tight and small swings in a small number of seats, perhaps from tactical voting and a continuation of Labour’s recent upward trend, means we can’t currently rule out a hung parliament.’

     

  • ICPC investigates N109m failed community project

    A water project financed by the Federal Government in a community in Adamawa State was apparently fully executed, but it had hardly supplied water to the community it was meant for. Regrettably, a completely different project came on stream, which itself failed. ICPC is now in the mix, seeking to make something out of the mess, writes ONIMISI ALAO.

    The Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission (ICPC) is investigating how a N109 million constituency water project in Shelleng, headquarters of Shelleng Local Government Area of Adamawa State has failed to supply water to residents as intended.

    The water project involves the construction of a borehole at Donge, a threshold community some three kilometres to Shelleng Township, and the piping of the water into Shelleng for use of residents.

    The Shelleng Water Project, initiated as a constituency project when Senator Ahmed Barata represented Adamawa South District in the Senate and  awarded under the 2016 Federal Appropriation, the project was designed for implementation in two phases at the total cost of N109,752,781.

    Three years down the line, the water scheme cuts the curious picture of a project that appears to have been completed at some time but which ceased to be complete not long afterwards.

    This was the strange finding when officials of the ICPC visited the project sites earlier in the month, precisely on December 4.

    Local sources said water was indeed piped from the borehole site in Donge to the distribution tank in Shelleng from where water got to the Shelleng residents, but that this lasted only a short while.

    The sources attributed the short period of water supply regime to the Kiri-Shelleng Road construction project, a project which involved the reconstruction of the road from Kiri, a community in the Shelleng Local Government Area to the LGA headquarters.

    Explaining how the Kiri-Shelleng road project endangered the Shelleng water project, the Village Head of Gindi Gamji in whose territory the borehole is located, Malam Audu Bello told the ICPC officials that it was the case of execution of one project hampering the life of another.

    He said: “The borehole was linked to Shelleng and the scheme functioned for three months. Then the pipes (laid in the ground and conveying the water to Shelleng) were removed to pave way for the construction of the road.”

    Also addressing the ICPC team on the ill-fated Shelleng Water Project, the Secretary of the Shelleng Local Government Transition Committee, Muhammed Musa, said the project was derailed after “some pipes conveying water to the overhead tank in Shelleng were tampered with” when construction labourers were working on the Kiri-Shelleng Road.

    The council scribe, like the Village Head of Gindi Gamji, said they heard about some items at both the borehole site in Donge and the distribution site at Shelleng were stolen by unidentified people after the water scheme came unstuck following the removal of the water pipes.

    This is about one-and-a-half years ago.

    Our correspondent observed that while the water pipes laid along the ground away from the line of the Kiri-Shelleng Road were intact, those lying by the new roadway were, indeed, pulled out as the road construction workers were excavating ground for the new road to take shape.

    Most of the excavated pipes were piled up and kept within the premises of the Shelleng LGA Secretariat, while a few which security agents used at a time to obstruct the road opposite the Secretariat for security checks, have remained on the road at least up to the December 4 visit of the ICPC to Shelleng.

    So, overall, the Shelleng Water Project as it stands is a story of a costly project requiring only little adjustments to bear fruit but which lies desolate because the little adjustments were not made, or have not been made.

    Consequently, the borehole points at Donge: two in number at the borehole site, gush out water daily throughout the month and since the years the project has suffered a setback.

    This has been because the setback was followed by pilfering, according to community sources. The equipment which controls the water movement malfunctioned or was stolen, resulting in the ceaseless flow of water from down the well of the borehole.

    “Water gushes out continually every day and it has been so for years, some source said.

    The borehole site has thus become a community river of sort to which residents, particularly those from the host Donge community, go to fetch water or wash their clothes or bath.

    However, the ground tank which was designed to receive the water from the borehole and pass it through the ground pipes into a receiver overhead tank in Shelleng, remains intact, except that over time, the solar panels installed to pump the water from the borehole into the tank, have suffered much rust and breakage and most probably dysfunctional.

    So, the Shelleng Water Project which comprises a borehole in Donge from which water was to run into an accompanying ground tank, from which water was to run through pipes along the ground some three kilometers to the receiver overhead tank in Gweila, Shelleng, and finally to homes in Shelleng Township, remains a mirage.

    To worsen the reality, the Kiri-Shelleng Road project, blamed for being chiefly responsible for the failure of the Shelleng Water Project (as a result of the excavation of the ground water pipes), has itself become a stalled project.

    The tarring of the road which comes some way through Kiri and towards Shelleng, stops abruptly at Donge, exactly at the point the road user veers off the road if going to the water project borehole site.

    The rest of the road into Shelleng and along the town remains a dusty patch, abandoned by the contractors for unascertained reason.

    Thus, Shelleng has no tarred road and no pipe water.

    There is yet another irony: The Shelleng town for which there is no treated water is only some seven kilometres from Kiri, a town where a dam exists to supply 70 per cent water needs of Adamawa State.

    The Kiri Dam, which resulted from the damming of the Gongola River at Kiri, is 1.2 kilometres long and 20 metres high, with a water reservoir having capacity of 615 million m3.

    Some source has observed that the initiator of the Shelleng Water Project would have done better by channeling water from the expansive Kiri Dam than creating the now comatose Shelleng Water Project with the borehole in Donge as the water source.

    Such is the story of the Shelleng Water Project, a story which leaves the ICPC with some work to do in its effort to get the project working again.

    The ICPC had observed the state of the Shelleng Water Project during a post-tracking visit that Wednesday, December 4, by a team which comprised a board member of the Commission, Hon Hannatu Mohammed.

    It was a follow-up visit after a body of trackers had earlier gone there at the beginning of ICPC’s constituency projects tracking exercise in 12 states across the country, including Adamawa.

    The ICPC had, in June, 2019 commenced constituency project tracking in the 12 states “to ensure quality project delivery to constituents by their elected representatives,’ as the ICPC hierarchy in Abuja had explained.

    The states for the exercise, under the Constituency Projects Tracking Group (CPTG), are Adamawa, Bauchi, Benue, Kogi, Sokoto, Kano, Imo, Enugu, Lagos, Osun, Akwa Ibom and Edo.

    The states were selected two each from the six geopolitical zones.

    Following the project tracking earlier in June, the ICPC did its December post-tracking visit to Adamawa State through the team which included an Assistant Commissioner, Mr. Jimoh Suleiman, who explained that the trackers who earlier inspected the Shelleng projecte noted that the project had not achieved its aim of providing water for Shelleng people.

    On what the ICPC will do regarding the project, Hon. Hanatu Mohammed said: “We will study its specifications. Whichever ministry or agency or department under which the project was carried out, we will start from there. We will get them to give their own account and then take it from there.”

    The ICPC team had maintained that what the Shelleng Water Project suffered was lack of community ownership.

    The team reiterated its findings that the community was not consulted when the project was initiated, and they were not in the picture when it ran aground.

    The Gindi Gamji Village Head Audu Bello had said: “I didn’t know about the project until it started. Then I went to see it like everyone else.”

    The Shelleng Transition Committee Secretary, Muhammed Musa, who said he was an administrative officer in the council when the project began, said the council was not contacted.

    He said the project initiator, Senator Ahmed Barata, went about it like most politicians do. “When politicians are bringing projects, they don’t want involvement of the local government. I guess they don’t want us to share the credit,” Musa said.

    So, the supposed benefiting community was sidelined. And they remained in the sideline, which the ICPC frowns at.

    ICPC’s Hannatu Mohammed said: “This is a project selected by somebody who represented this area as the Senator and was funded by the Federal Government, but it is for the people of this locality. The community should have ignored the politics of it and redeem it for themselves.

    “This is what ICPC is saying. We need to embrace ownership culture and begin to own projects that government gives us and protect and maintain them.”

    The Shelleng Water Project was executed by Chalim Associates Nigeria Limited, with Federal Ministry of Water Resources as supervising ministry.

  • Concerns over Fed Govt’s $30b loan request

    The recent $30 billion loan request forwarded to the National Assembly by President Muhammadu Buhari for consideration and approval, has continued to raise dust, writes SANNI ONOGU

    The Muhammadu Buhari administration may go down eventually as one with a very huge appetite for debts.

    Lately, it forwarded to the federal legislature, request to borrow another $30 billion loan, and has been going round to convince Nigerians that, as usual, the loan was needed to provide critical national infrastructure.

    But such arguments have refused to jell. Financial experts, labour unions, opposition political parties and international financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, have all described the growing debt as a death trap and queried the administration’s unquenchable thirst for more.

    They alleged that a higher percentage of these loans in the last four years ended up in private pockets. They insisted that any loan that is not strictly for the provision of infrastructure is not needed.

    Though details of the specific projects the loan is meant to finance are still sketchy, it is instructive that previous request, which was anchored on the 2016 – 2018 External Borrowing Plan of the Federal Government, was rejected by the Eighth National Assembly.

    In an attached memo, President Buhari had lamented that though the request was not approved in its entirety by the legislature, “the outstanding projects in the plan that were not approved by the legislature are critical to the delivery of the government’s programmes relating to power, mining, roads, agriculture, health, water and educational sectors.”

    The Debt Management Office (DMO) put Nigeria’s debt stock at $81.27 billion as at end of March 2019. The DMO’s website shows that as at the end of March 2015, two months before Buhari took over, on 29 May, the country owed a total of N12 trillion. At the end of June 2015, barely a month in power, the debt rose marginally by N12.1 trillion, which, is equivalent of $63.8 billion, at the old official exchange rate, of N196.95. The report added that by the end of June 2018, total public debt had almost doubled to N22.4 trillion. The increase, according to the DMO, comprised a $2.5 billion Eurobond issued by the Government in February 2018. This took Nigeria’s total debt to $73.2 billion, using the 2018 official exchange rate of N305 to the dollar. The nation’s total debt stock as at the end of March 2019, according to the DMO, stood at $81.27billion, in view of additional loans secured by the government.

    While experts have pointed out the unsustainable trajectory of the debt, the DMO, which coordinates the management of the nation’s debt stock, however, justified the borrowings in its 2017 report. “While Nigeria’s total public debt stock is relatively low vis-à-vis the country’s GDP, the increased funding requirements needed to sustain the economic recovery, address the huge infrastructural gaps, as well as meet budget financing requirements, would entail enormous funding resources, including borrowing,” the agency had stated.

    However, a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Daniel Bwala, threw his weight behind the Federal Government’s move for more loans. Bwala, a lawyer, who spoke as a guest on Sunday Politics on Channel’s Television, said telling a government not to borrow was easier said than done. “Intriguing enough, any government that comes to power; before coming to power, they will kick against borrowing. But when they come to power and they are faced with reality, they will have to face the issue. I am in support of borrowing because if you have infrastructure deficit; if you have the problem of managing between that revenue ratio and the borrowing, then you have a problem”, Bwala said. He further insisted that no economist would argue the fact that a country needs to borrow if it must tackle the problem of infrastructure.

    He nevertheless opined that the government needed to set up a task force, as a department in the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to monitor projects which the borrowed money was meant to execute.

    The Buhari Media Organisation (BMO) had also defended the President’s decision to represent the $30billion request to the National Assembly. The body averred that the request was in the interest of the country.

    The Chairman of the BMO, Niyi Akinsiju, in a statement in Abuja, said the funds were necessary in order for the country to bridge the nation’s infrastructure gaps. Akinsiju argued that if the request had been fully granted in 2016, Nigerians would have seen more projects at various stages of completion across the country.

    While acknowledging that government officials have over the years misappropriated both internal and external loans, the BMO chief said; “We make bold to say this President is different…just in case many are not aware, external borrowing is an integral part of the financial plan for the current budget. So as it stands, the country is committed to doing what is necessary to bridge the country’s infrastructural deficit.”

    However, a former governorship candidate of the Action Democratic Party (ADP) in Lagos State, Mr Babatunde Gbadamosi, urged the Federal Government to save the nation from sinking. Gbadamosi, who spoke on national television on Sunday, described those managing the nation’s economy as ‘amateur.’

    While reacting to the fresh request for the approval of the 2016-2018 External Borrowing Plan, he said: “Stop borrowing, open up the economy. Open the land borders, allow trade, remove forex restrictions; stop trying to micromanage the foreign exchange rates.”

    The Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria (ASCSN) has also opposed the planned borrowing presently on the table of the National Assembly. ASCSN’s President Comrade Bobboi Kaigama described the request as “both unfortunate and worrisome.” The ASCSN boss warned that there is the need for the government to access well-structured public loans that “will only be for projects of utmost national importance and for which expected revenues accruable from such projects will be able to repay the loans without saddling coming generations with repayment burden.” Kaigama rued the difficulty in meeting up with debt servicing obligations.

    The Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) has raised the red flag about Nigeria’s huge debt profile and its poor capacity to service the debts. The Director-General of LCCI, Mr Muda Yusuf is worried that whereas Nigeria’s capital budget in 2019 was N2.9trillion, its debt service provision was N2tn. “This implies that the debt service commitment is 70 per cent of the capital budget allocation,” Yusuf said.

    Continuing, the LCCI chief said, “The growing national debt is a cause for concern as the debt profile grew from N12.6tn in 2015 to N25tn in 2019 second quarter, an increase of 104 per cent. There is also a bigger worry about the capacity to service the debt. In the 2020 budget, debt service commitment and recurrent spending are beginning to crowd out capital expenditure. This trajectory is inconsistent with the administration’s to build infrastructure and make the economy competitive. Debt service of N2.45tn is more than the capital budget of N2.14tn in the 2020 budget. That is 114 per cent of the capital budget.” For him, pitched against the backdrop of the growing unserviceable debts, the new request for $30bn is troubling.

    Rising in opposition to further borrowing, the Director, African Centre for Peace and Development, Senator Shehu Sani, defended the decision of the Eighth National Assembly to reject Buhari’s $30billion loan request. Sani, who represented the Kaduna Central district in the last Senate, said the legislature did not want the country to sink into a trap of perpetual debt. Sani was then Chairman, Senate Committee on Local and Foreign Debts. He insisted that with the current upswing in borrowings, Nigerians will one day wake up to find that they are now tenants in their own houses.

    “We turned down the Federal Government loan request for $30 billion to save Nigeria from sinking into the dark gully of a perpetual debt trap. We don’t want our country to be re-colonised by creditor banks. Our external debt in 2015 was $10.32billion and it escalated to $22.08 in the second quarter this year, which is 114 per cent. If we had approved that loan request, our external debt would have catapulted to over $52 billion and that is not sustainable. With the current escalation in borrowing, we will be walking into debt slavery and move from landlords to tenants in our country. They will always tell you that even America is borrowing and I don’t know how rational is it to keep on borrowing because another country is borrowing. If we keep listening to bankers and contractors, we will keep borrowing and burying ourselves and leave behind for our children a legacy of the debt burden. Loans are not charities. Most of those encouraging more borrowing are parasitic consultants, commission agents, rent-seeking fronts and contractors. We must be cautious”, Sani declared.

    Former Vice-President, Atiku Abubakar, similarly lamented that the country under Buhari has obtained more loans in the last three years than it did in the 30-year period preceding 2016. Atiku said this position was revealed by a former Chief Executive Officer, Nigeria Economic Summit Group (NESG), Prof. Anya O. Anya. Atiku, who spoke while delivering a speech at the 14th Founders’ Day ceremony of the American University of Nigeria in Yola, the Adamawa State capital, said that it is troubling that the country recorded such a humongous increase in borrowings but with an unprecedented reduction in investments in education.

    To the Chairman Senate Committee on National Planning and Economic Affairs, Senator Olubunmi Adetunmbi, it is quite possible that if the country’s revenue mobilisation architecture is sufficiently safeguarded against leakages, Nigeria may not need to borrow as much as it is borrowing. Adetunmbi, who was answering questions from Senate correspondents, said in the absence of necessary blockages, the country should either scale down on its aspirations in terms of what it wants to do or look for alternative means of sourcing funds.

    He would rather want Nigerians to follow the money to make sure it is being judiciously utilised by the government rather seeking to know where the money is coming from. “That is the reality and there is no shying away from the fact. It is difficult to say that borrowing is not healthy for the economy because even in corporations, there is a difference between equity and loans. It is not everything you can do with your own resources and that is why lending institutions are there. I think Nigerians should begin to get more interested in following the money, rather than questioning where the money is coming from. I encourage Nigerians to follow the money, whether it is internally generated or borrowed. Let’s follow the money and make sure that it delivers value to the economy. I think that will be a useful way to spend our time whether borrowed money, personal money or national money. None of it deserves to be wasted. It is the duty of the media to ensure that they follow this money and ask questions appropriately,” Adetunmbi said.

    Regrettably, most Nigerians believe the ninth Assembly under its present leadership should return the document to Buhari without its approval stamp, regardless of the dire implications for the future of the very people they represent. The mad rush for debts, low-interest rates and a long moratorium on repayment notwithstanding, they argued will leave Nigeria and its unborn generations a charred and miserable future. Nigerians look up to the National Assembly. Will it rise up in their defence?