The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday Interview

  • ‘FERMA’s major challenge is availability of resources’

    ‘FERMA’s major challenge is availability of resources’

    Nuruddeen Abdurrahman Rafindadi, an engineer, is the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Roads Maintenance Agency (FERMA), an engineer,  and Fellow of the Nigerian Society of Engineers. He spoke with Olayinka Oyegbile, Deputy Editor.

    WHAT is your vision for FERMA?

    My vision would remain that FERMA should be the preeminent road maintenance agency in the country, with a commitment to efficiently administer  road maintenance and to keep all federal roads in good, safe and comfortable  condition with the best value in road transport. We want to have an agency that has the capacity in-house to carry out maintenance and at the same time the capacity to manage works that will be contracted out.  We want to have a FERMA that is in the leadership among the stakeholders on the federal roads across the country.  FERMA is not the only stake holder in the federal roads network. There are other important stakeholders; there are the Federal Ministry of Works (FMW), the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC), state governments (because they have their own state roads), local governments, other agencies such as the security agencies and road transport workers and the rest of them – they are joint stakeholders. We feel we want to strive to leadership from these because our job precisely is to maintain the roads and make sure they are in good condition. That is the mandate we have in FERMA. Let me emphasis for now the mandate of constructing, designing, planning, constructing federal roads is with the Ministry of Works that could change depending on the dynamics of the road sector reform activities which we know as we speak are ongoing now. We want to create a preeminent and efficient   operator in the maintenance of our federal road networks and in collaboration with the states road networks. So the bottom line is we want to have a healthy road networks across the nation.

    What about inter-agency collaborations, and collaboration with state governments, how do you ensure these are not at logger heads?

    It is important that we have that collaboration. It’s one of the most essential things if you want to have a healthy and efficient road network.  FERMA and Ministry of Works should collaborate in all phases of operation from top to down. Whenever we are planning our works, we should collaborate with them, when we are drawing our budgets we should collaborate with them, when we are planning procurements, and implementing the road maintenance works, the idea always is to ensure we maximize the use of resources. We shouldn’t have duplications, when we are planning they should know what we are talking about  and we should complement each other and not duplicate or compete; and when we are implementing we should know people that will harmonize our programmes and the collaboration should be top to down. That means, at this level the headquarters here and through me should maintain collaboration with the minister and directors at the federal level. Also, at the field level, there should be collaboration with their own field officers, state government because we have seen very useful instances of good collaboration with the state government when we come to the assistance of the state governments or they come to our assistance. I have seen such things happen in different states in recent times.  Beyond ministry of works and the state government we need to have collaboration with the FRSC when we are taking a tally of the critical road condition across the country. The Federal Road Safety Commission has very useful information about every bad spot across the country, we need to have that information therefore we need to have that collaboration at that level.   Beyond that when get to the field and we want to start our work we need to take care of the safety of road users and our own workers and the FRSC work to prevent damages on the roads and in doing that we need their cooperation. We need collaboration with the armed forces and all other security forces too. So this issue about collaboration with agencies is very important.

    Road maintenance is an expensive endeavour. How much did FERMA get or proposed in the 2018 budget and if you are given that money are you assuring Nigerians that they are going to get a better deal in road maintenance in 2018?

    When I assumed office in early October, we found FERMA as an organization with low activity, low morale and the principal reason for that is the low funding. Which is classically illustrated by the fact that the 2017 budget which is N25.4billion for capital budget for whole federation. There is another allocation about 14 or 15 for overhead works, but totally we have about N40billion and to give you an example, as we speak today, the only release we have for capital is N800million, which is just about few percent now. I have taken it upon myself in the last two months that every arm of government, Executive, Legislature, Federal Ministry of Works and so on to keep making this noise that we really can’t do anything without the capitals release. I have gotten tremendous supports and assurances. In fact, as I am talking to you there should be a release any moment from now. But as you can see this is December, for the recurrent we have had the release of seven months out of 12 months when I came in it was only five months, so there was a little release of the recurrent and we have gone ahead to plan to utilize this. Even that came sometime last week. So it is a big challenge, most of the things that I have been doing since I resumed, has been planning. We’ve planned the next nine months work programme for the rehabilitation of the federal roads. However, now we are running behind schedule. Anytime we have adequate fund we mobilize, even as I talk to you now, I have spoken to all our field officers, discussed our plans, we’ve activated it actually, they are out there on the field, getting ready to receive the funding and mobilize and as soon as we have the money we start the work. We are however, taking some basic, emergency and quick actions which is fixing bad spots, taking care of the most critical and obvious bridge failures, wash outs bad potholes and so on.  I project that once we start we will not stop again. From now, even during the raining season we will keep watch, keep coordinating, taking care of emergencies, failures and so on.

    Apart from funding what other challenges do you have as an agency? In addition to this, what is the level of the capacity of the staff?  Do we have enough or we are having a case of the staff who can do this but the problem of funding?

    Well it is a combination of all of these. I already told you that the major challenge is the resources. There are technical challenges. I want an agency that is able to do more and more. I must acknowledge that over the years government have been able to invest a lot on  plant and machinery for FERMA; that doesn’t mean we can do all the things ourselves.  At present, I guess that we do not more than 10, 15 % percent of all the road repair works. I would like that to increase over the years, and will also want to see an increase in the number of technical staff in proportion to overall number of staff. In other words, we want to see more field engineers, technicians, craftsmen and skilled artisans and so on.

    One of the other things I have done since I started is to review our plants and machineries; find out how many plants we have out there and what their conditions are. So, also our machinery, laboratory facilities, equipments, and road counts across the country. We want to know the condition of the road counts, the purpose of the road count is that they are out there on the field and we inspect every stretch of the federal road networks.  We have about 36,000 kilometres of federal road across the country.  We have many more in states, but those 36,000 at anytime probably we have 2,000-5,000 that under contract with the Ministry of Works and therefore the contractors are responsible for the roads.  As soon as the road is completed, construction or rehabilitation, there is a defect liability period over which the contractor is responsible for and after that there is formal hand over to FERMA to carry on with the maintenance. So we want to have every kilometre of those roads under our care to be under regular supervision that is what we use to plan our works so the capacity to be able to do that we have to improve on that.  We have to set up monitoring teams, in other words when we deploy resources to the field  to carryout repair and maintenance works  we want to have an effective monitoring framework to ensure that what is directed was what was actually executed. I would want to improve on that. And more important, we want to have independent monitoring so that it won’t be the same FERMA that will do the work and certify it themselves.  We would like to have independent verification from competent professionals. I am a professional consultant by background and I know the importance of having independent professionals to certify works that are done. It gives cover even to FERMA staff that what they did and what they claimed they did was adequately reported by independent professionals.  Not least important, we want to have effective media strategy. The work of FERMA is essentially directed to the public. I have seen the need for the agency to interface with the public for us to know what the public is feeling; we should have more engagement and knowledge about that. And that is why since I came, press and public relations unit is always a part of our programme so the public will know what we are doing. There are lots of areas when you go round the country where you will see road repairs that are actually being carried out by FERMA but you wouldn’t know because the synergies,  the signboards, notifications are not there to let them know. So you wouldn’t know if it was done by the Federal Ministry of Works, FERMA or state governments or the Federal Capital Development Authority (FCDA), in case of Abuja. So we will need to clearly mark our synergies and when we want to pass out information to the public, regarding routine maintenance, use of road during repair works, issues like vandalism of road infrastructure, bridge railings, defacing of our signposts, burning of tyres by the road sides, all these are done by the public. We will address this in our media strategies. We are adding social media strategies; we want to get to the point whereby we use social media to get feedback from the civil society and even for the monitoring of our works. We are telling our staff across the country that we will not only monitor you professionally, we will have people from the public monitoring you. We are all on the platform.  Since I came, we have established social media platforms in which I am an active participant. We can see what our field engineer does regardless of what he reports to us. We can ask him questions; keep him at alert to know if he is always diligent. We are tagging the Ministry of Works on our social media platform. We are tagging the Vice President, too. We are taking that risk because we are reporting ourselves, we believe that that engagement will be for the good of FERMA. Because at the end of the day, we are going back to the government for more resources and we believe that the resources we are getting now are not as adequate as we want. I know that FERMA can absorb four times the funding we are getting today on all our road repair activities across the country.

    In addition to what we get on regular budget, we want to be able to access funding and resources from the Ministry of Works for special assignments that they want to give to us. We also want to be able to approach donors – local and international – for things that FERMA is going to do.  For instance, we are looking at the area of green construction and sustainability, we want to look for research area of plastics instead of bitumen for doing road pavements, that is a very exciting area that we can use and we can get funding from international donors in that area.

    You mentioned the issue of road bumps; I was going to come to that. Now, who is in charge of building road bumps, why is there no standardization, what is the role of FERMA?

    Well, the role of FERMA as a major stakeholder is to again engage with the public. The public is putting these bumps, strictly speaking they are illegal, whatever you do on a federal highway, by the way not only on the federal highway, but on the right of way of the federal highway should be something that is permitted by the owner of the road; the owner of the road technically is controlling these checkpoints.  The custodianship of the federal highway networks lies with the Federal Ministry of Works that is the arrangement for now. And the Federal Ministry of Works cedes the control for the roads that are to be maintained by FERMA. So FERMA is also an important stakeholder but the communities where the road passes are also important stakeholders, we do have issues of safety and we have to approach these things in a systematic manner. There should be standard designs for bumps. One of the things that we are doing since I resumed is initiatives for the protection of school children across the country. There is an NGO that we are  collaborating with as major patrons and stakeholder that are dedicated to ensuring safety of children at road crossings near schools.  We just recently came up with standard design, we are designing pilot projects in FCT and that is to be spread across the country while we have standard bumps and their designed signboards warning motorists approaching areas where school children are crossing, and if possible stationing people there to ensure that there is a safe crossing of the children. I think these are initiatives you need even while addressing the bumps because the public is erecting the bumps because of their concerns for safety, I see our role (FERMA) as important stake holders to address that question of safety bring forth standard approaches, standard designs for the roads and then deploy them after that you can then enforce their rule for any other arrangement that is contrary to what arrangement you’re making.

    What is your agency doing to educate road users and especially truck drivers because they constitute, about 80 to 90 percent of the damage of federal roads, vehicle break down and burning of tyres of tarred roads. Do you have plan for truck drivers?

    Yes we do, and I think this is also one of those joint responsibility areas with the Ministry Of Works, FERMA, state governments, with the association of road transport owners, union of road transport workers and so on.  You are right, the trucks are some of the major factors contributing to the damage  of our roads, by overloading themselves, most of our highways are designed for 30 tonne trucks and some of these trucks are reaching 60, 70 and above. There are supposed to be weigh bridges strategically located on our highways, there used to be at the toll gates but the lack of their use is one of the contributing factors that led to their failure. Trailers also drop diesel on the road and I have seen a study where it was estimated that on the corridor between Abuja and Kano trucks drop about five to ten drums of diesel on our highways on a daily basis and these liquid gets on to the road and chemically dissolves the road surface and its eventually contributes to the deterioration of the roads.  We have to get into active engagement there has always been an engagement with the road transport owners and union of road transport workers we need to bring that back.  On the board of FERMA there is always a seat in membership from the association of road transport owners and then we should have regular forums engagement for the agency and ministry responsible for us and road transport owners.

    What about park areas for trucks? This was mooted some years back

    The issue of truck parking areas across the country, there is a project that was started by FERMA.  I understand now that it is to be taken over by the ministry, it can go both ways actually having a truck park that brings all the facilities for trucks to get there and park is actually in my mind a joint responsibility not only between FERMA and the Ministry of Works but it should also include the state governments that allocate and regulate the land use, planning the areas, it should include the transport unions and transport owners. The truck park could be there with all the facilities and the trucks would be there on the road parking.  You can’t really force them because there’s no stake holders’ agreement between them. The National Automotive Council, I am aware is also considering that as a project. I have seen state governments considering Truck Park as a project.  I believe that a successful project would be the one that put all these different stake holders together and by the way it’s going to be very highly commercially viable. Such facilities like workshops, spare part shops, resting places, restrooms, even hotels with the right combination of stakeholders should be business worthy, it can be very profitable and can take the trucks away from the major high ways into the truck parks without stress and with maximum convenience to the truck owners themselves and the trucks so we have a very tremendous potential for that. If you check most of the highways you will see at regular locations truck parking areas, they are already there designated what we need is the right means of funding and private sector enterprise and government’s policy support and the project will work. It is our intention at FERMA to see that we play our role to do that.

    This is a festive period particularly towards the south, there’s bound to be high density of external movements along our roads or corridors. Is your agency doing anything at all to maintain the roads at those high density areas to avoid accidents?

    Yes we are doing a lot but within the constraints of the resources that we have. One of the first things I did when I came here was to throw out a question to all the field road maintenance engineers across the country. We have offices in every state, we have federal road maintenance agency in every state. I asked our field officers to send five worst spots in their areas of operation. I also asked can you send us information on each of this spot? Precise location, nature of the problems, the solution and the pictures. Next, we took the total map of the highway networks and federal highways. With particular references to those corridors that are highly patronised. The ministry of works is doing a similar exercise on to identify what they call ‘eastern movement’.  That is the phenomenon at the end of the year. That means there will be high traffic of those that will be moving from north to east and also from the south west to east, so we have isolated those roads that are in this highly trafficked area. Then we now use the data of these bad locations, along these roads and identify those critical provisions where we need to do something. As a matter of urgency what we need to do depends on the resources deployed for immediate repairs. We have deployed our men to the field, we have actually been doing some within the constraints of what we have along some of the major roads. We are not just standing idle.

    We have people on the field who have excellent connections with suppliers of the construction materials with workers. If you notice, the end of the year is usually closure time for construction workers, we have vital plans on plants and machinery across the country we notify them to please hold on for us. We have deployed our men in positions in those areas,  if there are resources we move in to repair them. FERMA is working in many places across the country. And we want to improve on that so we buy the good will to let people understand when we are working and also understand when we are unable to work for whatever reasons.

    What is your message to road users on their responsibilities in using our roads?

    My message is that the roads are our common resource, it is owned by all.  If the roads are damaged it is to all our detriments. So I would want Nigerians to use the roads responsibly knowing it is an asset we have to access our communities, to access our work places and that when these are damaged everyone suffers. We should all know that using the road responsibly allows us free movements; we should use them patiently with consideration of others.  I appeal for cooperation with our workers, FRSC, workers of the state road agencies and so on.

  • ‘SARS is to fight armed robbery not to look for lost goats’

    ‘SARS is to fight armed robbery not to look for lost goats’

    Now in his eighties, Mr. Fulani Kwajafa, who worked for twenty six years at the Police CID, gently reminisces over countless tough encounters with armed robbers across the federation. Revisiting his experience as head of the Nigerian Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), he asserts that Nigeria is in big trouble already, saying that some form of drug is being consumed in virtually all towns and villages across the country. According to him, there is no state where black leg law enforcement agents are not involved in the consumption and distribution of hard drugs.
    As for the Police Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) which he was saddled with the responsibility to set up during the Buhari/Idiagbon military era, he thinks that societal corruption and politicians have facilitated its degeneration, adding that a deep reform is the only logical consideration for SARS to regain its steam. In 2004 his people in Biu, Borno State conferred him with the title Sarki Yaki Biu while former President Olusegun Obasanjo in 2005 honoured with the Order of the Federal Republic (OFR), in recognition of his service to the nation. He spoke with Assistant Editor, Jide Babalola in Abuja. Excerpts:

    SIR, you spent decades in the Nigeria Police Force, you started the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) and as a Commissioner of Police, you headed the Nigerian Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA). Now, how has life been in retirement?

    It has been quite challenging, full of funny things in the sense that when I retired in 1989, there was no politics. But gradually, politics has become the order of the day; what we never used to see in those days, we started seeing it during politics. Thankfully, since I am not involved in politics, I won’t say life has been much challenging because only those who got themselves involved in politics after retirement have certain problems. After retirement, if you don’t have money and you run into politics, you will be overwhelmed because politics in this country is a matter of money.

    Life in retirement is interesting and quite challenging but we thank God that we are still alive to be seeing what is happening now and make comparisons with our time in those days.

    You headed the NDLEA from March 1991 to October 1993; what has been achieved and what are the problems you see with curbing illegal drugs now?

    For NDLEA, in those days, drug fighting was not as tough as it is because not everyone knew about drugs and the scope for us to fight was very minimal but now, too many young men have now realized that it is a pot of money so, too many people are now involved in some aspect of drug dealing. Once the dealers are more, the consumers increase in number because people don’t buy to throw away, they buy to consume. People made so much fortune; amassed illegal wealth as drug traffickers who operate at a different level from the drug barons. The drug barons are the fathers, they operate underground, and they get the source of the drugs, import the drugs in big quantity and employ people to sell for them.

    When I took over the mantle of drug fighting, I had my network to identify drug barons and we identified quite a few whose ranks were growing. At that time, illegal drugs were not as prevalent as it is now; drug barons were very few but I was able to identify some of them. There was one called Ugochukwu, he was one of the big barons, he shuttled between Nigeria, Taiwan, Germany and other places and he had networks everywhere. Some of them even go to Colombia which was a major source of drugs like cocaine since the 90’s.

    At that time, Pablo Escobar was booming and later became a government unto himself because he was richer than the Colombian government. Gradually, Nigerians got into it as well and Gregory Odilibe was arrested (during the time of Fidelis Oyakhilome, a predecessor at NDLEA). When I took over, his vehicles were impounded.

    Odilibe had associates who ran global errands and took quantities of cocaine from Columbia to Nigeria, to America. Before I came in, two· of Gregory Odilibe’s suspected associates, Emeka Chukwuedo Emmanuel and Chike Onwuazor were nabbed, and detained.

    There was another Ugochukwu also, he was more or less like a house boy of Odilibe, running drug errands from Colombia to Nigeria but unfortunately, he was arrested as at the time that I was at NDLEA and put into custody. Later, he was released on bail and he took off !

    How complex is the challenge of fighting illegal drugs in Nigeria today?

    Drug fighting is very queer and peculiar. If you are not careful, they will kill you. Once they see you as a stumbling block to their business, then your days are numbered, except God is with you. We that fought here have only been fighting it on the surface; we never went deeply to uproot them!

    I can tell you that Indian hemp is now being grown in more than fifteen states. There are North Western states where Indian hemp is being grown en masse and the selling point is up North, with increasing consumers in the North and then they cross over to Niger, Chad and so on. Now, the consumption is spread all over Nigeria. Now, the pattern of consumption is such that there is almost no village in this country now where hemp or some other form of drugs are not being consumed. That is why violent crime is very rampant because drug influence is a motivator for violent crime.

    So, drug-fighting is very volatile. Unfortunately, after a while, we discovered that law enforcement agents were also being gradually involved in consumption of illegal drugs and as at now, there is no state where no law enforcement agent is involved in drug consumption. Some are now involved in consumption and distribution (of hard, illegal drugs). That is why there is wide spread of drugs all over states and all the violent crimes we hear about are offshoots of drug consumption. Once you are a criminal and you are consuming certain hard drugs, you don’t even see your family members as anything significant anymore.

    Exactly when did you start the Special Anti-Robbery Squad and how did it begin its operations?

    In the wake of the January 1983 coup that brought in General Muhammadu Buhari as Head of State, I had just been promoted to the position of Acting Commissioner of Police. At that time, just before Buhari and Idiagbon came in, robbery had become extremely rampant like common stealing, especially in Lagos which was Nigeria’s capital at the time. There was no day that we did not record several cases of robbery in Lagos  sometimes, up to ten or twenty in one day.

    Then, the late Inspector-General of Police, Etim Inyang who had Mohammed Gambo as his deputy, during one of the morning briefings of senior officers, from AIGs upwards which usually met to discuss the government and crime, brought serious message from the highest level of government. The IGP was a member of the Supreme Military Council and he attended their weekly meetings. IGP Inyang came back and said “I had a serious bashing today on the rampancy of robbery and violent crimes in the country, which is threatening the peace of the nation. So, unless we do something urgently, the military boys will throw the police leadership out of our jobs.”

    He said: “They warned me at Dodan Barracks to either sit up or bring the situation down or your job is on the line. Gentlemen, let’s do something; what can we do?” Then, one of the senior officers suggested that we must carve out a crack squad to deal with the situation and they said ‘whom do we get to take charge of this terrible situation’? There was a senior officer at the meeting who used to be a Commissioner of Police in Borno, my home state. There was a serious armed robbery in my state and they sent me from Lagos to go and investigate the robbery and I succeeded in arresting all the armed robbers involved. Some of them came from the South-South, South-East. Luckily for us, during the robbery operation in Borno State, one suspect was arrested and they asked me to go and handle the case. I went there and they handed over the suspect to me and gave me logistics – money, vehicle and so on. I swung into action and in two weeks, all the nine robbers who had scattered all over the South West and South East, I got them arrested and took them to Maiduguri. There was a fiat or judicial instruction of a time limit and when they were charged to court, the judge was given the instruction to seat from day to day till the case was disposed of and all of them were found guilty except one out of the nine and they were executed publicly.

    So, that former Commissioner of Police was a very senior officer and part of the conference at police headquarters and he said that as far as he was concerned, the officer that can deal with the situation is Officer Kwajafa. Then, they summoned me from our CID office at Alagbon Close.

    I met the IGP (Inyang) and he said: “With the situation we are in now, we are very uncomfortable with the crime spread in Lagos and the military are on my neck; unless we do something fast, the job of senior officers will be at stake and somebody suggested that you can begin and lead a crack squad that will not only shake Lagos but Nigeria and bring the spread of violent crimes to a minimum level.”

    He also said that : “Somebody was opposed to it and said that you are an illiterate and not educated, that you finished only Primary Four; so,  how can we assign this to you?” So I told Mr. Inyang: “Sir, if you want to give me an assignment, give it to me, there should be no condition attached to it, even though I am an illiterate, I rose from the rank of a constable in the CID over twenty-six years and today, I am a Commissioner of Police, I am no longer an illiterate; trust me with the assignment sir.”

    Your maximum academic qualification at the time was only Primary Four?

    Yes. But I improved my education in the service.

    So, Mr. Inyang said: Ok, the situation in Lagos is chaos, we want someone that will deal with the armed robbery incidents in Lagos decisively and someone suggested you.”

    Then I said to him that as for the area of me being an illiterate, how many armed robbers speak English? The language between armed robbers and the police is the gun; they carry guns, we carry guns and we meet at the middle, so the question of literacy or illiteracy does not arise. At least I had been in the CID for 26 years, I even investigated cases in my language and I prosecuted cases in English, so we set sentiments aside.

    So the IGP said, “Go and give me a list of your logistics requirement.”

    Thus, I went and listed the names of the gallant boys I had worked with before and I got the names of about 80 officers, spread all over the country. He gave me the mandate to choose officers from any state and we swapped them with officers in Lagos and we provided accommodation for them. Signals were sent out and they resumed in Lagos within seven days.

    I also gave him the list of thirty-one vehicles. At that time, the prices of vehicles ranged from two to forty thousand Naira for a brand new Land Rover. Then, Obalende (Police Hq) was littered with vehicles. I gave him the list that included lorries, Land Rovers, Peugeot station wagon cars and others required for surveillance tasks. In my presence he minuted on it, giving instructions to the Transport Officer to release the vehicles and transfer police drivers of equal number from all the states, including Lagos to report within seven days, they all reported and I went somewhere in Ikeja and trained them to my satisfaction. It was extremely rigorous and some even collapsed, they couldn’t endure because the training was too rigorous for them to withstand. We anticipated the rigours of SARS operation.

    IGP Inyang assured me of his full support and anytime I was lacking logistics, I go to him directly.

    Which countries did you get trainers or instructors from, to begin the SARS training?

    No thought was given to that. It was a Nigerian problem and nobody came from anywhere other than the Nigerians doing the training. Nigerians conducted the trainings, no foreigner. I was in the CID for about twenty-six years, I knew what was required, how to handle almost all sorts of cases.  I got some of the people whom we worked together in the CID transferred and I christened the squad, Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS). The day we resumed, I divided the personnel into four sections – Crack Squad Number One, two and three. Each was to work by covering at least eight hours – three shifts. The fourth squad was solely for investigations. We converted a building in Adeniji Adele and camped there.

    I gave very specific instructions that in the event that we go for operations against armed robbers and there is any incident that involves shooting, killing; don’t be too concerned about catching and bringing the armed robbers shooting at you to me; just finish them there and bring the dead bodies.

    We did this from two weeks to one month in an atmosphere that deeply frightened very notorious gangsters in Lagos so most of the robbers in their gangs ran away to other states. They said that a mad man has come who doesn’t want to see armed robbers alive, only dead. So, within one to two months, Lagos became quiet and so peaceful for law-abiding citizens who now felt freer to enjoy their lives in peace.

    Consequently, armed robbers fled and some other states in the federation were getting infested with armed robbers. So, occasionally, I will take a squad to go and cool down the situation in some particular states. Eventually, within six months, Lagos and some other states became as quiet as a wilderness. People were free to celebrate and even have night travels and parties without molestation by robbers. Before we started SARS, only God knew how many people the armed robbers had killed in Lagos alone but within the period of our first six months, only God knows how many armed robbers that we jailed or killed.

    SARS’ war against armed robbers was so intense that instead of being arrested or taken to Adeniji Adele where we had our office, some armed robbers will rather jump into the lagoon than come there. We kept that place hot for them; if not, the society would have succumbed to the evil minds of armed villains.

    A lot has changed over the years but between those who campaign for the scrapping of SARS and those on the opposite side, whom do you see as being right or justified?

    You can’t blame those who are calling for the scrapping of SARS, because of the situation they see; corruption is now prevalent in the entire society which includes every group, including SARS operatives and some people in power are using SARS just to achieve their selfish desires either for vengeance or to oppress and suppress other people.

    To protect Nigerian citizens from the illegal guns being wielded by armed robbers and kidnappers, we need a reformed SARS, an upgraded and highly improved SARS which cannot be manipulated or tempted from its sole duty of protecting citizens with their lives and firepower.

    In my time, I gave specific instructions: It was I that will assign people to go and see to complaints and write reports for operation. But nowadays, some people will go to SARS and frame allegations against one another, just to suppress them. I understood that long after I left, it became so bad that even domestic affairs were being judged by some SARS operatives who arrest people and harass them. It is terrible that when some people suspect someone of chasing their wives, they take the person to SARS and brand him as an armed robber. Such nonsense is not what SARS was meant for; SARS was meant to fight violent crime, especially armed robbery.

    In our time, kidnapping was not a pronounced issue at all. In those days, we knew it only by definition and the emergence of kidnapping is not more than ten years. It is a strange and sad thing against any citizen. SARS was established by me under the directive of the then IG, Mr. Inyang expressly to fight violent crimes such as armed robbery, kidnapping, anything violent. We never went for burglary cases, we didn’t go in for pick pocketing, market theft and such things, we don’t go there, it never belonged to us, local police stations are around, they handle that.

    It was only crimes that involved killing, maiming; that was what SARS was established to handle. SARS is being misused now; they are misused for selfish interests, especially by politicians, but anyone calling for the scrapping of SARS doesn’t want this country to be in peace because SARS wherever it is, is supposed to operate in ways that instil fear into those violent criminals that terrorize law-abiding Nigerians. So, I am surprised that people say that even if you go somewhere and steal someone’s goat, they will go and report you to SARS for the thief to confess, just because everyone knows that SARS is not a playground. SARS was not established for that, SARS is meant for countering violent crimes, armed robbery and now, kidnapping and murder.

    Sometimes we blame policemen, but we should ask ourselves and ask our government, whether enough is being done or provided to ensure an efficient and effective police force by global standards. When we established SARS, nobody was corrupt! When they give you information money N5,000, it is sufficient for one week. Petrol was N7 to fill a car’s tank so when you are going on operation and you are given N200, with three vehicles, it is sufficient. You get N300 for one week; you go on operation and come back with your independent mind. But the economic recession is forcing people to do all sorts, enabling some people to even buy the services of SARS, so the operation of SARS is misconstrued! People are taking undue advantage and black leg policemen sometimes submit themselves to carry out unlawful activities in the name of SARS.

  • How and why I started SARS, by Kwajafa

    How and why I started SARS, by Kwajafa

    Now in his eighties, Mr. Fulani Kwajafa, who worked for twenty six years at the Police CID, gently reminisces over countless tough encounters with armed robbers across the federation. Revisiting his experience as head of the Nigerian Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), he asserts that Nigeria is in big trouble already, saying that some form of drug is being consumed in virtually all towns and villages across the country. According to him, there is no state where black leg law enforcement agents are not involved in the consumption and distribution of hard drugs.
    As for the Police Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) which he was saddled with the responsibility to set up during the Buhari/Idiagbon military era, he thinks that societal corruption and politicians have facilitated its degeneration, adding that a deep reform is the only logical consideration for SARS to regain its steam. In 2004 his people in Biu, Borno State conferred him with the title Sarki Yaki Biu while former President Olusegun Obasanjo in 2005 honoured with the Order of the Federal Republic (OFR), in recognition of his service to the nation. He spoke with Assistant Editor, Jide Babalola in Abuja. Excerpts:

    SIR, you spent decades in the Nigeria Police Force, you started the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) and as a Commissioner of Police, you headed the Nigerian Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA). Now, how has life been in retirement?

    It has been quite challenging, full of funny things in the sense that when I retired in 1989, there was no politics. But gradually, politics has become the order of the day; what we never used to see in those days, we started seeing it during politics. Thankfully, since I am not involved in politics, I won’t say life has been much challenging because only those who got themselves involved in politics after retirement have certain problems. After retirement, if you don’t have money and you run into politics, you will be overwhelmed because politics in this country is a matter of money.

    Life in retirement is interesting and quite challenging but we thank God that we are still alive to be seeing what is happening now and make comparisons with our time in those days.

    You headed the NDLEA from March 1991 to October 1993; what has been achieved and what are the problems you see with curbing illegal drugs now?

    For NDLEA, in those days, drug fighting was not as tough as it is because not everyone knew about drugs and the scope for us to fight was very minimal but now, too many young men have now realized that it is a pot of money so, too many people are now involved in some aspect of drug dealing. Once the dealers are more, the consumers increase in number because people don’t buy to throw away, they buy to consume. People made so much fortune; amassed illegal wealth as drug traffickers who operate at a different level from the drug barons. The drug barons are the fathers, they operate underground, and they get the source of the drugs, import the drugs in big quantity and employ people to sell for them.

    When I took over the mantle of drug fighting, I had my network to identify drug barons and we identified quite a few whose ranks were growing. At that time, illegal drugs were not as prevalent as it is now; drug barons were very few but I was able to identify some of them. There was one called Ugochukwu, he was one of the big barons, he shuttled between Nigeria, Taiwan, Germany and other places and he had networks everywhere. Some of them even go to Colombia which was a major source of drugs like cocaine since the 90’s.

    At that time, Pablo Escobar was booming and later became a government unto himself because he was richer than the Colombian government. Gradually, Nigerians got into it as well and Gregory Odilibe was arrested (during the time of Fidelis Oyakhilome, a predecessor at NDLEA). When I took over, his vehicles were impounded.

    Odilibe had associates who ran global errands and took quantities of cocaine from Columbia to Nigeria, to America. Before I came in, two· of Gregory Odilibe’s suspected associates, Emeka Chukwuedo Emmanuel and Chike Onwuazor were nabbed, and detained.

    There was another Ugochukwu also, he was more or less like a house boy of Odilibe, running drug errands from Colombia to Nigeria but unfortunately, he was arrested as at the time that I was at NDLEA and put into custody. Later, he was released on bail and he took off !

    How complex is the challenge of fighting illegal drugs in Nigeria today?

    Drug fighting is very queer and peculiar. If you are not careful, they will kill you. Once they see you as a stumbling block to their business, then your days are numbered, except God is with you. We that fought here have only been fighting it on the surface; we never went deeply to uproot them!

    I can tell you that Indian hemp is now being grown in more than fifteen states. There are North Western states where Indian hemp is being grown en masse and the selling point is up North, with increasing consumers in the North and then they cross over to Niger, Chad and so on. Now, the consumption is spread all over Nigeria. Now, the pattern of consumption is such that there is almost no village in this country now where hemp or some other form of drugs are not being consumed. That is why violent crime is very rampant because drug influence is a motivator for violent crime.

    So, drug-fighting is very volatile. Unfortunately, after a while, we discovered that law enforcement agents were also being gradually involved in consumption of illegal drugs and as at now, there is no state where no law enforcement agent is involved in drug consumption. Some are now involved in consumption and distribution (of hard, illegal drugs). That is why there is wide spread of drugs all over states and all the violent crimes we hear about are offshoots of drug consumption. Once you are a criminal and you are consuming certain hard drugs, you don’t even see your family members as anything significant anymore.

    Exactly when did you start the Special Anti-Robbery Squad and how did it begin its operations?

    In the wake of the January 1983 coup that brought in General Muhammadu Buhari as Head of State, I had just been promoted to the position of Acting Commissioner of Police. At that time, just before Buhari and Idiagbon came in, robbery had become extremely rampant like common stealing, especially in Lagos which was Nigeria’s capital at the time. There was no day that we did not record several cases of robbery in Lagos  sometimes, up to ten or twenty in one day.

    Then, the late Inspector-General of Police, Etim Inyang who had Mohammed Gambo as his deputy, during one of the morning briefings of senior officers, from AIGs upwards which usually met to discuss the government and crime, brought serious message from the highest level of government. The IGP was a member of the Supreme Military Council and he attended their weekly meetings. IGP Inyang came back and said “I had a serious bashing today on the rampancy of robbery and violent crimes in the country, which is threatening the peace of the nation. So, unless we do something urgently, the military boys will throw the police leadership out of our jobs.”

    He said: “They warned me at Dodan Barracks to either sit up or bring the situation down or your job is on the line. Gentlemen, let’s do something; what can we do?” Then, one of the senior officers suggested that we must carve out a crack squad to deal with the situation and they said ‘whom do we get to take charge of this terrible situation’? There was a senior officer at the meeting who used to be a Commissioner of Police in Borno, my home state. There was a serious armed robbery in my state and they sent me from Lagos to go and investigate the robbery and I succeeded in arresting all the armed robbers involved. Some of them came from the South-South, South-East. Luckily for us, during the robbery operation in Borno State, one suspect was arrested and they asked me to go and handle the case. I went there and they handed over the suspect to me and gave me logistics – money, vehicle and so on. I swung into action and in two weeks, all the nine robbers who had scattered all over the South West and South East, I got them arrested and took them to Maiduguri. There was a fiat or judicial instruction of a time limit and when they were charged to court, the judge was given the instruction to seat from day to day till the case was disposed of and all of them were found guilty except one out of the nine and they were executed publicly.

    So, that former Commissioner of Police was a very senior officer and part of the conference at police headquarters and he said that as far as he was concerned, the officer that can deal with the situation is Officer Kwajafa. Then, they summoned me from our CID office at Alagbon Close.

    I met the IGP (Inyang) and he said: “With the situation we are in now, we are very uncomfortable with the crime spread in Lagos and the military are on my neck; unless we do something fast, the job of senior officers will be at stake and somebody suggested that you can begin and lead a crack squad that will not only shake Lagos but Nigeria and bring the spread of violent crimes to a minimum level.”

    He also said that : “Somebody was opposed to it and said that you are an illiterate and not educated, that you finished only Primary Four; so,  how can we assign this to you?” So I told Mr. Inyang: “Sir, if you want to give me an assignment, give it to me, there should be no condition attached to it, even though I am an illiterate, I rose from the rank of a constable in the CID over twenty-six years and today, I am a Commissioner of Police, I am no longer an illiterate; trust me with the assignment sir.”

    Your maximum academic qualification at the time was only Primary Four?

    Yes. But I improved my education in the service.

    So, Mr. Inyang said: Ok, the situation in Lagos is chaos, we want someone that will deal with the armed robbery incidents in Lagos decisively and someone suggested you.”

    Then I said to him that as for the area of me being an illiterate, how many armed robbers speak English? The language between armed robbers and the police is the gun; they carry guns, we carry guns and we meet at the middle, so the question of literacy or illiteracy does not arise. At least I had been in the CID for 26 years, I even investigated cases in my language and I prosecuted cases in English, so we set sentiments aside.

    So the IGP said, “Go and give me a list of your logistics requirement.”

    Thus, I went and listed the names of the gallant boys I had worked with before and I got the names of about 80 officers, spread all over the country. He gave me the mandate to choose officers from any state and we swapped them with officers in Lagos and we provided accommodation for them. Signals were sent out and they resumed in Lagos within seven days.

    I also gave him the list of thirty-one vehicles. At that time, the prices of vehicles ranged from two to forty thousand Naira for a brand new Land Rover. Then, Obalende (Police Hq) was littered with vehicles. I gave him the list that included lorries, Land Rovers, Peugeot station wagon cars and others required for surveillance tasks. In my presence he minuted on it, giving instructions to the Transport Officer to release the vehicles and transfer police drivers of equal number from all the states, including Lagos to report within seven days, they all reported and I went somewhere in Ikeja and trained them to my satisfaction. It was extremely rigorous and some even collapsed, they couldn’t endure because the training was too rigorous for them to withstand. We anticipated the rigours of SARS operation.

    IGP Inyang assured me of his full support and anytime I was lacking logistics, I go to him directly.

    Which countries did you get trainers or instructors from, to begin the SARS training?

    No thought was given to that. It was a Nigerian problem and nobody came from anywhere other than the Nigerians doing the training. Nigerians conducted the trainings, no foreigner. I was in the CID for about twenty-six years, I knew what was required, how to handle almost all sorts of cases.  I got some of the people whom we worked together in the CID transferred and I christened the squad, Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS). The day we resumed, I divided the personnel into four sections – Crack Squad Number One, two and three. Each was to work by covering at least eight hours – three shifts. The fourth squad was solely for investigations. We converted a building in Adeniji Adele and camped there.

    I gave very specific instructions that in the event that we go for operations against armed robbers and there is any incident that involves shooting, killing; don’t be too concerned about catching and bringing the armed robbers shooting at you to me; just finish them there and bring the dead bodies.

    We did this from two weeks to one month in an atmosphere that deeply frightened very notorious gangsters in Lagos so most of the robbers in their gangs ran away to other states. They said that a mad man has come who doesn’t want to see armed robbers alive, only dead. So, within one to two months, Lagos became quiet and so peaceful for law-abiding citizens who now felt freer to enjoy their lives in peace.

    Consequently, armed robbers fled and some other states in the federation were getting infested with armed robbers. So, occasionally, I will take a squad to go and cool down the situation in some particular states. Eventually, within six months, Lagos and some other states became as quiet as a wilderness. People were free to celebrate and even have night travels and parties without molestation by robbers. Before we started SARS, only God knew how many people the armed robbers had killed in Lagos alone but within the period of our first six months, only God knows how many armed robbers that we jailed or killed.

    SARS’ war against armed robbers was so intense that instead of being arrested or taken to Adeniji Adele where we had our office, some armed robbers will rather jump into the lagoon than come there. We kept that place hot for them; if not, the society would have succumbed to the evil minds of armed villains.

    A lot has changed over the years but between those who campaign for the scrapping of SARS and those on the opposite side, whom do you see as being right or justified?

    You can’t blame those who are calling for the scrapping of SARS, because of the situation they see; corruption is now prevalent in the entire society which includes every group, including SARS operatives and some people in power are using SARS just to achieve their selfish desires either for vengeance or to oppress and suppress other people.

    To protect Nigerian citizens from the illegal guns being wielded by armed robbers and kidnappers, we need a reformed SARS, an upgraded and highly improved SARS which cannot be manipulated or tempted from its sole duty of protecting citizens with their lives and firepower.

    In my time, I gave specific instructions: It was I that will assign people to go and see to complaints and write reports for operation. But nowadays, some people will go to SARS and frame allegations against one another, just to suppress them. I understood that long after I left, it became so bad that even domestic affairs were being judged by some SARS operatives who arrest people and harass them. It is terrible that when some people suspect someone of chasing their wives, they take the person to SARS and brand him as an armed robber. Such nonsense is not what SARS was meant for; SARS was meant to fight violent crime, especially armed robbery.

    In our time, kidnapping was not a pronounced issue at all. In those days, we knew it only by definition and the emergence of kidnapping is not more than ten years. It is a strange and sad thing against any citizen. SARS was established by me under the directive of the then IG, Mr. Inyang expressly to fight violent crimes such as armed robbery, kidnapping, anything violent. We never went for burglary cases, we didn’t go in for pick pocketing, market theft and such things, we don’t go there, it never belonged to us, local police stations are around, they handle that.

    It was only crimes that involved killing, maiming; that was what SARS was established to handle. SARS is being misused now; they are misused for selfish interests, especially by politicians, but anyone calling for the scrapping of SARS doesn’t want this country to be in peace because SARS wherever it is, is supposed to operate in ways that instil fear into those violent criminals that terrorize law-abiding Nigerians. So, I am surprised that people say that even if you go somewhere and steal someone’s goat, they will go and report you to SARS for the thief to confess, just because everyone knows that SARS is not a playground. SARS was not established for that, SARS is meant for countering violent crimes, armed robbery and now, kidnapping and murder.

    Sometimes we blame policemen, but we should ask ourselves and ask our government, whether enough is being done or provided to ensure an efficient and effective police force by global standards. When we established SARS, nobody was corrupt! When they give you information money N5,000, it is sufficient for one week. Petrol was N7 to fill a car’s tank so when you are going on operation and you are given N200, with three vehicles, it is sufficient. You get N300 for one week; you go on operation and come back with your independent mind. But the economic recession is forcing people to do all sorts, enabling some people to even buy the services of SARS, so the operation of SARS is misconstrued! People are taking undue advantage and black leg policemen sometimes submit themselves to carry out unlawful activities in the name of SARS.

  • ‘Nigerians are impatient because economy is recovering slowly’

    ‘Nigerians are impatient because economy is recovering slowly’

    Obadiah Mailafia, a former Deputy Governor, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and member, Board of Directors, Nigeria Breweries Plc, in this interview with Biodun-Thomas Davids, talks about 2018 budget and other issues. Excerpts:

    WHAT are the socio-economic circumstances that normally occasion economic recession?         An economic recession refers to the continuous fall in output or gross domestic product (GDP) for more than two consecutive quarters. Falling output forces firms to lay off employees; this leads to increased unemployment, which in turn leads to falling aggregate demand, which also reinforces the downward spiral. Before long, all sectors are affected. Economists often make a distinction between a recession and a stagflation. A stagflation is a scenario whereby falling output and slowing growth is accompanied by rising prices and high inflation. The situation as currently obtains in Nigeria has been more of a stagflation.

    There is no one single factor responsible for economic recessions. For commodity rentier economies such as ours, falling oil prices can trigger a recession. Dwindling foreign exchange leads to inability to import essential raw materials; this impacts negatively on manufacturing output. A slowdown in manufacturing orders due to changes in local or foreign markets, difficulty of importing raw materials due to foreign exchange constraints or other factors could trigger falling output and mass layoffs. These could in turn drive down incomes and, on their part, overall aggregate demand.

    High interest rates can also contribute to triggering a recession. When interest rates rise, they have a tendency to reduce liquidity in the economy, thereby limiting the quantum of funds available to invest. Central banks sometimes raise interest rates in the hope of protecting the value of the national currency. But this can lead to a liquidity crunch, which could then harm investment and long-term growth.

    Banking and financial crises are often major factors accounting for economic recessions. The American economist Hyman Minsky, with his famous Financial Instability Hypothesis, argued that instability is inherent to our global capitalist financial system itself. A stock market crash could trigger loss of confidence in the capital markets, leading to a recession. The ensuing bear market drives capital out of the economy, leading to recession. On the other hand, asset bubbles linked to over-optimism about share prices and property prices could also trigger massive speculation which has a way of increasing risks for investors. Once things begin to deteriorate, there will be a mass race to safety, thereby leading to a recession.

    There is also what one might term the contagion effect. We live in an increasingly integrated global economy. A crisis in one part of the world could send shockwaves to another. Although African countries — with their low level of participation in world trade and investments  are relatively insulated from the vagaries of global meltdowns, we are not entirely immune.

    In the case of Nigeria, what factors do you think led to the recession that the country is wading out from?

    I believe fraud and corruption were major causative factors. Economic recessions can be triggered by rent-seeking behaviour on the part of key economic actors, including bankers and financiers. The situation could be made worse by poor regulation and indeed corruption on the part of regulators who lack the drive and capacity to regulate banks and the financial sector as required. During the years 2011-2015, oil theft was costing our treasury more than US$1 billion on a monthly basis. It was also a case of bad luck, because falling oil prices in an atmosphere of grand corruption coincided with an electoral-political cycle that was exceptionally pregnant with tension and geopolitical uncertainty. This triggered a massive capital flight. The rich took cover by moving their assets into dollar domiciliary accounts. Massive dollarization of the economy imposed more pressures on the naira exchange rate. We were just waiting to implode.

    Does printing more money strengthen any legal tender during recession?

    During the years of the Great Recession in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, the US Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, Bank of Japan and, to a lesser extent, the European Central Bank (ECB) engaged in what has come to be known as Quantitative Easing (QE). It entailed the printing of dollars, sterling, yen and Euros on a gargantuan scale to purchase assets as a means of re-injecting liquidity and driving recovery and growth. It was an act of desperation. Quantitative Easing has entered the lexicon of high finance as one of the exceptional tools of monetary policy under extreme conditions. It actually worked. There were real fears that it would trigger hyperinflation. Such fears have proved to be groundless. We in Nigeria have also gone into our own binge of Quantitative Easing. Unfortunately, we have not been as transparent about the process as other more civilised central banks have been. I also do not get the impression that we have set a time-limit to the use of such instruments. The greatest danger is to deploy it for a much longer time than necessary. That would not only defeat the purpose, it could prolong the recovery process while triggering hyperinflation.

    From 1959, Nigerian legal tender face-value was changed about six times, what does such move portend for the economy and naira in Foreign Exchange Market?

    We need to clarify some confusion here. Some commentators used to comment that “the Naira has been devalued since 1960”. Well, the truth is, there was no naira in 1960. We had the Nigerian pound from 1960 until 1973 when the naira legal tender currency was introduced. Between 1960 and 1973 the Nigerian pound was pegged to the British pound sterling and exchanged on a one-to-one basis. Our currency was thus tied to the vagaries of sterling. The devaluation of pound sterling deriving from unprecedented balance of payments crisis had its negative repercussions on Commonwealth currencies that were pegged to sterling. It made sense that we detached ourselves from those colonial apron strings. The late Obafemi Awolowo, as Finance Minister, spearheaded the introduction of the new legal tender. He actually invented the very name Naira. We were emerging from the prosecution of a tragic war during the years of 1967-1970. The great Awolowo managed the economy so well that during that tragic civil war we did not borrow a dime from the international capital markets or the Bretton Woods institutions.  During the post-war years, we were becoming a more self-confident nation. Oil production was rising. Economic reconstruction was being pursued in earnest. It was the best of times and the worst of times, if I may echo the Victorian English novelist Charles Dickens. The sad part is that after Awolowo left the government and Gen Yakubu Gowon eventually fell from power we had poor economic managers who did not know their right hand from their left. The naira began to deteriorate from N1/US$2, to N4/US$1, reaching almost N500/US$1 before moderating to the current N367/US$1. How indeed are the mighty fallen!

    A devalued currency is, of course, not a good thing. I am all for a market-determined exchange rate. But that should be a genuine and transparent market-clearing exchange rate devoid of speculation and all sorts of iniquitous manipulations by the money-changers. A situation where we had up to half a dozen exchange rates only served to promote rent-seeking behaviour. And this, coupled with massive dollarization of the economy, weakened our legal tender currency. There are some improvements of late, but we are not yet where we ought to be. We need to restore confidence in the system. We must restore the glory and dignity of the naira not only as our legal tender but also as a symbol of our national honour.

    Will reverting to spending naira and kobo bring any change to Nigeria economy?

    I’m sorry, but I’m not exactly sure what you mean by this. If you mean reversing the current trends of dollarization, I would say a capital Yes. If you go to a country like South Africa, you cannot just walk into a shop and buy anything with dollars. The shop manager will advise you to go to the nearest bank and change your dollars into rand before you can do a purchase. It’s as simple as that. The South Africans are proud of their rand and they do not allow it to be overshadowed by any other currency. A banking magnate in Lagos recently built an expensive architectural edifice. Those who reviewed the piece of real estate not only praised its impressive qualities; they openly declared that it’s so good that the rent is to be collected only in dollars. It did not occur to anyone that this simple statement was in breach of the law. The CBN has passed a circular reaffirming that the naira is our legal tender currency and that all transactions within our jurisdiction must be in that currency. Perhaps the only exception would be the major oil companies, given the 1970s Kissinger-Nixon diktat that forced the whole world to trade oil only in dollars. Beyond this, let me tell you, a country of our size and potential must valorise our legal tender currency not only as a powerful tool of our financial and banking system, but also a veritable symbol of our national honour. If you are only good at bastardizing your country you will soon become a banana republic fit to occupy a place of dishonour in world economics and politics.

    What is your view on National Bureau of Statistics projection about economic recession status in Nigeria?

    The recent report by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) that growth during the last quarter stood at 0.55% was a welcome piece of news. It has meant that, technically, we are now out of recession. But I need to caution that we are only seeing the first green shoots of recovery. Economic history shows that recoveries from economic recessions are a delicate process. They are by no means guaranteed to be irreversible. They can indeed relapse by a combination of folly or intellectual laziness. Japan was in a state of suspended animation for a decade. And the lessons of the Euro land area are still fresh with us. What we need to build the momentum that will sustain the recovery by making the right mix of investment decisions; fiscal spending to stimulate growth; and restoring confidence.  The recent news that Brent crude is now hovering above US$60 per barrel on the wake of the Saudi anti-corruption crusade is a welcome development. This can only serve to consolidate the recovery of the Nigerian economy. But we would be the biggest fools to return to doing things in the old way. It would be like a dog returning to its own vomit. We must learn and imbibe the capital lessons of our recent economic tragedy. We need the mindset of the Biblical character Joseph who advised Pharaoh to save for the rainy day. We need to build a strong and resilient economy based on the foundations of prudence.

    Any economic risk factors in FG pumping S9.96bn in the economy in a bid to strengthen naira?

    Let me say that pumping US$9.96 billion into the economy was a good thing. According to some estimates, the infrastructure financing needs of this country amount to something of the order of US$30 billion per annum. As you know, the previous administration put in place an Integrated Infrastructure Master Plan covering the years 2014-2043. I have studied the document in all its minutiae. It is an ambitious plan, although rather vague on how it will be funded.  Our major failings in this country are that we have never modelled our infrastructure plans within the framework of population. Infrastructure projects take time to be executed. By the time you are planning to build a power-generating plant, the population would have increased algebraically. We therefore need to plan way ahead. By today, we should be building power plants for when our population would have virtually doubled to about 360 million within the span of a generation. So, we need massive infusion of capital. But there are risks. There is the real risk that it could fuel more inflation. The solution is to spend judiciously and in a manner that there will be sterilisation of some of the funds in order to avoid inflationary spirals.

    What will borrowing more money and taking from foreign reserves spell for the country at a time like this?

    I think you are asking two separate questions in one sentence.  You are asking about our borrowing and debt situation on the one hand, and on the other, the efficacy of deploying external reserves for intervention in the foreign exchange market. These are two separate issues.

    Yes, I am of the view that they are mutually related.

    With regard to borrowing, as you are aware, the administration recently presented to parliament a request to borrow an additional US$5.5 billion. I was a bit taken aback when the government said that the loan will be used to settle some domestic debts that are now due for settlement. The government argued that given low interest rates abroad it makes sense to borrow from abroad to settle local debts. We must view it askance.  I have only one criterion for borrowing from abroad: it must be for  and only for  projects that guarantee an economic and financial return in excess of capital. I definitely do not accept that we should ever borrow from the international financial markets for social or consumption programmes. When Awolowo did not borrow from abroad during our entire civil war, why are we engaging in such massive external borrowing just to prosecute the insurgency in the North East? It really means we are far from being careful executors of economic projects.

    The second part of your question relates to deploying some of our external reserves to shoring up the naira. You know, this also worries me. I am yet to be convinced that a lot of this money is really going into import of genuine raw materials and so on. Whilst it is true that external reserves are part of the war chest to defend a national currency, world markets know that you can only do it for so long. There reaches a limit where it backfires. By the time you start eating into the reserves beyond a certain threshold, speculators will call your bluff and before you know, you will be in tears. The problem we have here is one of a deficit of transparency, integrity and trust. Let’s address those behavioural-institutional issues and clean up our act. This is even more important than spending reserves in a so-called effort to defend our naira.

    What factors led to the recession in Nigeria?

    I’m not one of those who believe in condemning everything and everybody to score a personal advantage. No. If President Buhari had not won the elections and stemmed the tide of grand corruption, the Nigerian economy would have collapsed by now. No doubts about it. The Buhari factor has restored hope and confidence. Of course, Nigerians are impatient because recovery is coming too painfully slowly.  Some of us criticised the government for not having a sound economic policy framework. They not only came up with the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP); they invited some of us to participate in designing that new policy. It had a powerful signalling effect. The Anchor-Borrowers Programme has been hailed as a great boon for agriculture. The CBN is cleaning up some of its own act, although I believe far more work needs to be done than is actually being acknowledged or even understood. These things have helped the recovery process. But some would say what really turned the tide is the sheer luck of recovery of global oil prices.

    What measures can be put in place to forestall such recession?

    Well, I earlier said that economic recessions are a fact of life. They are inherent in the cyclical nature of our integrated global capitalist economy. What matters is to build resilient economies that withstand the storms when they come. This means, first, ensuring fiscal discipline in our public finances; building strong accountability systems; building up adequate financial buffers to insure against the bad times; making prudence a way of life in economic and political governance; and, ultimately, diversifying the economy away from dependence on oil. These days we pay a lot of lip service to economic diversification but nobody is really doing what it takes to achieve that. We need mass agriculture-based industrial revolution in this country. Anyone who loves our country and its people will preach this gospel of an industrial-technological revolution. We cannot achieve it without overcoming the binding constraints of energy, electricity, infrastructures and human capital. And without peace and stability, nothing of enduring value can be achieved.  Above all, we need to inculcate deeper mindfulness in economic policy; mindfulness about destiny and potential as a country; mindfulness about leadership and responsibility; and mindfulness about compassion for our suffering people and our desperate youth who have been robbed of an entire future. This, to my mind, is the task and vocation of leadership for the next 30 years.

    What is your reaction to the policy of refinancing Treasury Bills by the Ministry of Finance?

    There is nothing wrong with refinancing Treasury Bills per se. I have, however, two issues of concern. The first relates to the need to deepen our capital markets. We are still operating at shallow levels. We do not as yet have a robust secondary market, not to talk of a thriving derivatives industry. There is also the argument that we can borrow in dollars to refinance local debt on the ostensible logic that dollar interest rates are low. Consummate folly, if you ask me! Yes, interest rates are low today, but they will not continue to be so. With recovery in America and the OECD countries, advanced country central banks will soon begin to increase interest rates. This will simply translate to higher debt obligations for us in the future. If someone wanted to re-enslave and re-colonise our country, there could be no better way to do it than by this nonsense on stilts.

    Is using an oil benchmark of US$45 per barrel and N305 to the dollar for 2018 budget in order?

    In the light of recent happenstances, I would say yes.

    What will early submission and passage of 2018 budget offer the economy in the coming year?

    Well, from past experiences, I am not particularly optimistic. In our context, early submission of the budget proposals has never meant early conclusion and passing of the appropriation bill. We need to exorcise the same old demons of budget padding and playing politics with budget. I wish to God we could summon the wisdom and grace to pass the budget in December so that we begin the New Year with the budget. This is the first aspect of the problem. The other is the question of implementation. In a situation where we are able to implement the budget by a mere 50 percent by December is totally unacceptable. Even as we speak, I’m not sure we have implemented up to 50 percent of Budget 2017.  If we understood the enormity of the suffering of our people  the sheer desperation among our youths  we would face this task with an exceptional sense of urgency.  Nigerians deserve nothing less.

  • ‘With projected N21trillion tax income annually, borrowing isn’t necessary’

    ‘With projected N21trillion tax income annually, borrowing isn’t necessary’

    Omoba Olumuyiwa Sosanya, founding president of Association of National Accountants of Nigeria (ANAN) has seen it all. Regarded in some circles as a ‘General’ for his doggedness, he is cerebral with a patriotic fervour and desire to see things work. In this interview with Ibrahim Apekhade Yusuf, he picks holes in the existing tax reforms which he argues lacks the necessary bite. Excerpts:

    VIRTUALLY every state government today is paying a lot of attention to tax these days but it doesn’t seem as if they’re making headway judging by the growing level of apathy against tax from the citizenry. As someone who has done extensive work on taxation, what do you think is the way to go?

    Just like you rightly observed, everywhere in the world, taxation is the most hated system. Nobody wants to pay tax. And this is what brought about what we call tax havens. Even those who pay tax especially the wealthy people, they find a way of staking their monies where they don’t have to pay tax. But most developed countries have found an antidote to such attitude of tax avoidance. But unfortunately in this part of the world, the laxity is so much that even the tax officers in Africa will teach you how to evade tax. That’s the most unfortunate aspect. So it is now the responsibility of the government to enact or create institutions whereby you may try as much as possible to evade it, it may not be impossible to but it’ll be difficult to do it. I think that was the reason why the French came about the value added tax (VAT). But VAT by its definition is a consumption tax and there is no way you can evade VAT if you’re consuming. And that is why it’s chargeable on goods.

    In Nigeria, we have the same system which we came about in 1983. But unfortunately, I think we made a wrong start by restricting the administration of the VAT to the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS). If from the outset, the administration of VAT was decentralised, meaning that each of the state will administer it but there could be a pool at the federal where all these monies would pass through and then distributed on certain ratio. But unfortunately the existing law allows only the FIRS and that’s the reason why the revenue generated from the VAT, has been abysmally low and really ridiculous to the extent that, recently when the federation accounts published the VAT generated for that period, up till now, the total revenue being generated from VAT is not even up to N70 billion and Lagos state can generate that alone. But unfortunately, the FIRS that administers the VAT, I think they are generating fund from formal sector and corporate bodies. The informal sector which accounts about 85 per cent of our economy is out of VAT. If we must move forward and put revenue generation from oil as secondary if not the third sector, this is the right time for us if we are talking about diversification to allow each of the states to administer the VAT. And the starting point is that they would be able to register all businesses in their domain and they would administer and collect the VAT. And the VAT would be paid into a dedicated account. And my own suggestion is that if we really want to block the leakages in the VAT collection, all the registered persons that are chargeable to VAT will open a bank account along with their businesses and on daily basis, the VAT collected will be paid into that account. Everyday that money hits the central account, and it will be configured in such a way that the central will know what the states are generating and at the end of the month the money will be distributed based on the present ratio that each of the state is paid. And we did a research on VAT and discovered that if the federal government allows the state to generate or VAT is decentralised, what is actually expected to be generated on monthly basis is about N560 billion. If that is the position, the federal government and the states would improve from what they are collecting now from the federation account.  Take for instance, the federal government; at last count they got N9.4billion from VAT. But if the states are collecting it and they now have N560 billion the federal government will be having about N72 billion, which is an increment of over 62 per cent.

    Currently VAT is charged on luxury goods and all of that. Is that not enough…?

    When you talk of luxury goods, how many luxury goods do we have? Maybe vehicles, jewelleries,  and so on.  The question is what is the quantum of that? In Britain, even if you eat at a restaurant you’re paying VAT. If you go and cut your hair, you pay VAT.  On services you pay VAT there, the only way you don’t pay VAT is on pharmaceutical drugs. But all other services are chargeable to VAT. All manufactured goods are chargeable to VAT. These are the areas we want to expand on and this is why I brought in the informal sector. We are in Lagos for instance, go to Alaba International market for example and see the massive revenue being generated by the businesses there. Go to Balogun, Ereko, Oyingbo, Ikeja, may be about two per cent of those traders are registered under the VAT. By law, they should be compulsorily registered. But the FIRS cannot do it; they haven’t got the manpower but the state can do it because it’s within their domain. And this again is going to create employment. Each of the states’ internal revenue service has to employ more hands for registration, for compliance and I imagine that this is expected to employ about 5,000,000 graduates and youths.

    Lagos recently issued a notice to seal up companies that are defaulting in payments of taxes. Some people believe this is not the right approach.  Do you share similar sentiments?

    It’s not only Lagos that is trying to boost its revenue generation through taxes, even the federal too. But they can’t achieve that by beating around the bush. As far as I’m concerned, the simple way of doing it, we have VAT which is a very good tax but it’s not being properly administered. Those who are chargeable have not been brought to the tax net.  The only way you can bring them into the net is to register them for VAT, which the states will conveniently handle. In Lagos State I don’t think we have up to 500,000 registered businesses. And I’m sure we have over four to five million businesses in Lagos. Apart from companies, we have individual business names and others such as barbers, tailors, etc., they are chargeable to VAT because they are giving services. They’re supposed to register but the FIRS alone cannot do it, it’s an uphill task for the federal but the states can handle it. The states can even encourage the local government councils to assist them in the registration. I have been to places where I bought goods worth over one million naira and they didn’t charge VAT because they are not registered. You can imagine how many five per cent we can collect on such sales. Even professionals like lawyers, accountants, architects, estate surveyors, they don’t charge VAT. If you have some of them that do it, it may be about one per cent, and those are the big ones.  But even the big ones too in some cases if you insist that why should they charge you VAT, they will waive it. But that’s not the case in Ghana. I was in Ghana, and where we went to an eatery, after our meal, I collected receipt and that receipt was a product of Ghana Inland Revenue, not the company receipt. In that receipt the VAT was stated there and the national insurance was also stated there. It was such a little amount. But as they say, little drops of water make a mighty ocean. I can assure you that Ghana is generating more revenue than Nigeria and the businesses they have there is less than 10 per cent of Nigerian businesses. So the starting point instead of wasting our time on VAIDS is that we should explore our VAT framework.

    The points you raised about collecting VAT also brings to mind the issue of paucity of data. How can we generate revenue through taxes with the problem of poor record keeping?

    Well, we can solve it through VAT registration because once you make it compulsory for all businesses to register under VAT, they have to keep records. They are to give receipts, on the receipt the VAT is reflected there and the stamp of the state internal revenue. Of course, the state Inland Revenue will regularly go there to check their records and on monthly basis or quarterly, they have to make returns which again there will be audit from the state inland revenue to check their books. So that would assist businesses to keep records because right now some businesses are in majority, those who keep their sales are few. But with VAT you have to keep it because at the end of the month if you also pay VAT, you can deduct it from your returns but if you don’t keep records, they come on your sales and the VAT on your sales is what you have to pay to the government.

    How much does the country stand to generate from VAT annually?

    If we start generating revenue through the states, it will be over N8trillion.

    I thought you mentioned N21trillion in a recent statement?

    This is where the N21trillion comes from. It is for the federal government whereby the company income tax you can generate is N3.6trillion. For withholding tax, it’s N3.3trillion. Stamp duty is about N500billion. Pay as you Earn (PAYE) which is for the Armed Forces and other agencies which they don’t pay at all.  Now the VAT that will accrue to the federal government will be N1.6trillion out of the N8trillion that is being generated nationally. The independently generated revenue by the parastatals is about N8trillion. So that would give you N21trillion. So the government can budget N21 trillion without borrowing money. And our calculation now is as far back as 2013. So if we are talking about now we are talking about N24/25 trillion and the revenue from VAT will now be about N10/11trillion. So we don’t have any reason to borrow money if we put our tax system in order and my emphasis is decentralisation. It’s part of our restructuring. We have to reform taxation and start from VAT.

    As the founding father of the Association of National Accountants of Nigeria (ANAN) can you recount the battles you fought to get the association recognised as one of the professional accounting bodies in the country today?

    Well, in the beginning, the idea of ANAN came to me as far back as 1973 in London. The idea came to me at the firm of accountants where I was trained in the UK. Around 1971, the then president of ICAN, he used to be a former staff of the firm where I was working then. At the time it was the usual practice of all ICAN presidents, every year they will travel to UK, they will go back to their old offices to show their former colleagues that they have arrived and all that. So he came to our office and some of us who were Nigerians, we were about four in number, we now told him that passing ICAN examination in UK was very difficult. We wanted to know why it should be so difficult for Nigerians to pass the examinations. Because by then, we realised ICAN was chartered in 1965 and by 1971, they had only passed one student. So when we asked him, he said no, ICAN examination is not easy, it should be difficult so that we will know it’s a difficult thing to do, it’s not for all-comers. I was upset, I didn’t say anything. The second day after he left, there was one guy among us a Ghanaian and I said to him, you heard what your brother said, that we should make ICAN examination very difficult that it shouldn’t be an all-comers affairs. And I said well, by the grace of God I think I’m going to find out why. So when I came back to Nigeria in 1976, and I went round to find out what is happening, the first thing I learned in the event was that internal auditor of FIRS who belong to Association of International Accountants.

    In June 1978 I visited UK and I went to head office of the Association, where I met the president. Of course, he had lived in Nigeria and had worked in Kaduna and I was telling him about the discrimination that some accountants were facing in Nigeria and he just said to me that why can’t you form a national body? When I got back to Nigeria, I started preparing a programme for accounting body. So in October of that year, I invited two close friends of mine who are members of the International Association of Accountants to my house and I gave them my position papers. The next thing they asked me is if what we were about to do was achievable and I said, well if God is on our side, it would be achievable. There and then, we agreed on the name to have Association of National Accountants of Nigeria. And by January of the following year, we put up an advertorial in the Daily Times on two pages, where we announced the birth of ANAN. What actually inspired me and gave me the confidence that this thing is going to succeed was in March, 1979 when ICAN’s present secretariat was being opened on Victoria Island, where Akintola Williams was trying to ridicule us by asking their members if they have read a newspaper publication of some people who called themselves Association of National Accountant of Nigeria and he said never mind, it will die on the pages of newspaper. So this gave me courage that this is a strong idea. For it to have got such a strong opposition, then this must be a strong idea. And I told myself for this organisation to have a legal backing; we must register it under one of Nigerian laws. We were looking at the law that could be easily done, so we narrowed it down to the trusteeship, which is now part of company’s law. Although majorly, most of the organisations that are being registered under it are churches and all that but when I went through the law I discovered that educational body could be registered there so we chose that aspect. Four of us applied as the trustees. Then it was very difficult to get registered because you have to get police clearance. So we went to Lion Building, where we cleared and after that we filed the documents with Ministry of Internal Affairs. I wasn’t surprised to say that, to my amusement ICAN wrote objection to oppose the registration claiming that its body is the only body exclusively empowered to regulate the accounting profession, and no other body should be allowed to register. We were served the letter; the director of that ministry gave us copy of the objection and asked for our own response. We replied. So I prepared a profile, by then I had a friend who was a member of the National Assembly. So we gave him the profile and discussed with him and others, and from there we got the idea that we can bring it up as a Private Member Bill and we started working on it. Then we had five political parties namely: the UPN, NPN, GNPP, PRP and NPP. I was advised to meet the chairmen of these parties for their support and all that. The easiest one that I approached was the one in Lagos, Chief Obafemi Awolowo. So I got one of the trusted members of the party, through whom I sent a letter attached and a copy of the profile to Chief Awolowo that I will like to meet him, and he gave me an audience at his house in Apapa.

    When I met him, he asked me, young man, what’s this all about? What gave you the idea that you can have another accounting body? After listening to my explanation, he seems satisfied and there and then he gave me his nod but advised that I have to go to other party leaders. But as for him he will try to convince his members to support us on the idea. Like magic, we now started moving to the members of the National Assembly starting from Reps and the Senate. We were selling our idea through our profile and it worked. In fact, we didn’t even need chairmen of other political parties because we had been able to meet the leaders of the National Assembly and they bought the idea. So between January and April 1980 we got the National Assembly members to support us.

    After this they (ICAN) began to disparage our persons on the pages of newspapers, they said I didn’t go to school that the course I studied in the UK is not recognised and all that. They now got other professional bodies, engineers, doctors, most especially the lawyers to jointly issue a statement against us. The Law School started in 1963, by December 1978 over 3,000 lawyers had passed out of Law School, whereas ICAN in 1965 yet with little or no certified accountants. I won the argument.

    Fortunately in 1981, the bill in the House of Representatives was read the first time and passed to the Committee on Education who invited our own side and ICAN to a hearing. And they gave each of us two hours to defend ourselves. At the end of the day they recommended that the Association bill should be passed into law by the National Assembly, and there was a lot of hanky panky because ICAN now engaged some lawmakers in the National Assembly and their slogan was “kill” ANAN bill. For good one week the process was stalled by all manner of objections from different quarters. But fortunately for us our support base was growing in large numbers because some who were even against it initially began to have a change of heart and began to query the reason why we are not supporting this law? On the 8th of September 1981 they now passed the ANAN bill into law. And then hell was let loose as ICAN called their members to a meeting that they should raise funds in order to ensure that ANAN bill was killed at all cost.

    But as luck will have it, fortunately and unfortunately, by December 1983 there was a coup, Buhari/Idiagbon came in and that was the end of it. But what is interesting is that the very day that bill in the National Assembly was being referred to the committee, on that very moment the Certificate of the Incorporation was being sent by the minister. So the second day I was called to come and pick the certificate. That gave us authority that our body is a legal body, it can sue and be sued. So whatever we are doing we can do it legally. What is written in our certificate is that ANAN is a professional association with the mandate to train accountants. And one interesting thing there is that at that time, even the Nigerian Bar Association was not registered under any law because in 1984 the military government set up a tribunal to try politicians and the Nigerian Bar Association now issued caution, in fact, it was an order of their members that they should not appear before any tribunal. It was charged to court and the late Gani Fawehinmi being a radical lawyer challenged them to tell him where to go. Tribunal is like a court, so he took the Nigerian Bar Association to court that the order cannot stand and he lost. Why he lost was that the lawyer to Nigerian Bar Association raised a technical issue which is in the first place Nigerian Bar Association cannot be sued because it’s not a legal entity, it was not registered under the law, that it’s just a club. So at that time in 1984, ANAN was already a legal body while NBA was not a legal body. So we continued with our programmes, in 1983 the then Governor Solomon Lar (Plateau) gave us five hectares of land in Jos to build a college. In 1985 December August, Babangida came and we met him. In 1989, the Nigerian Law Reform Commission issued a publication requesting a memorandum for national bodies and individuals in order to reform the Nigerian law. I make bold to say that of all the professional bodies that sent memos, ANAN sent a memorandum that became 75 per cent of that law. We held several committee meetings and at the end of the day, they came up that ANAN and ICAN should be the auditors and that eventually became part of the law that was published in January 1990.

    As someone who grew up in Lagos back in the 60s, what was the city like back in the days and what fond memories do you have of the city of Lagos?

    When I was growing up, we had supermarkets all over Lagos namely: Kingsway, UTC, Leventis, Kewalrams, you name it. But before all of them it was Kingsway. Then you could just go there to buy whatever you want. I remember during my secondary school days, you wear tennis shoes and where you buy tennis shoes in those days was at Bata; they were all over Lagos then. Those companies were foreign companies, but then most of the top officers among them were Nigerians. Life was good.  Even when I passed out, my salary then was 15 pounds and I was saving eight pounds out of it. Rent was two pounds and there were telephones all over the place. The public transportation, the major one which starts from Tinubu and ends at Yaba, because beyond Yaba you are now in Western region, when you get to Jibowu there is welcome to Western region. When you go on the left, by the time you get to Alakara, Idi-Oro, you see ‘Welcome to Western Region’. So the only vehicle that passed through that area and stopped at Idi-Oro.

  • Government should concession Teaching Hospitals, -UCH CMD

    Government should concession Teaching Hospitals, -UCH CMD

    The University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan is 60 years old this month (November). In this interview with Bisi Oladele, the Chief Medical Director, Prof. Temitope Alonge, who is the seventh chief executive, shares the rich breakthroughs of the first teaching hospital in West Africa in research, training and healthcare services. 

    YOU joined the hospital as a student in the 70s and since that time you’ve been in the system. Can you compare the UCH of that time with the UCH of today?

    Quite frankly, I have not prided myself in having seen the good, the bad and the ugly but I can confidently say that with the university system in focus and the UCH in perspective, I have been privileged to see the good, the bad and the ugly. The good, when I came into the University of Ibadan in 1977-78, at Nnamdi Azikwe Hall, I met just one term of opulence. Our clothing were laundered for us and ironed, food was 50 kobo per day and we had free cola drinks and a lot of freebies. Wednesday afternoon was sports day in the University of Ibadan.

    What do you consider as the biggest problem in the health sector?

    I don’t think one can lay too much emphasis on one but I am going to break it down into three. The first is the governed; the second is the government and third is the system. The workers are the ones who are doing the job, the healthcare workers, those are the governed. The government is the institution that makes the policy and then the patients are in between us. They are actually sandwiched between those two big monsters or elephants, whichever way you want to call it. The patients are the reason why we are healthcare workers in the first place. The major preoccupation of all workers in the hospital must be centred on patients’ care. Whether you are an accountant, or auditor in the system, everything you do revolves around patients care not to talk about the core healthcare professionals. Now, because government’s policies do not address the fundamentals of how systems work outside this country, the healthcare workers are seeing themselves as purely civil servants without any doubt in their minds and those doubts should have arisen on the account of the fact that we are not making biscuits here neither are we manufacturing electricity. We are talking about human lives. We must get that right. I have no blames on anybody’s footsteps but as a stakeholder in the health sector, we need to plead for legislations that are geared towards improvements, not punitive legislations. Our legislators are so concerned with punitive legislations so much so that their emphasis is on punitive legislations. We need constructive legislations that will lift up all the sectors of governance in Nigeria. The central government in its own right must be very proactive and be firm in taking decisions. The judiciary must have laws and rules that will guide our practices again not in the area of punitive measure but in the area of constructive corrections that will make people do the right things.  That is the government. The governed are those of us who are actually healthcare professionals. We must see ourselves as members of a particular team and there is no weak link in a team that will not expose the team. Once you have one weak link in the team, that team is subject to defeat. But I believe all of these things revolve around what people call remunerations. All of them are important but you chose to pick up a field of interest and you must be remunerated for that. As long as we continue to see everybody as civil servants and there is no differential payments, because in England and America that we talk about often times, we have various classes of call duties. It’s only in Nigeria that everybody gets paid the same call duty whether you are in institute or internal medicine or paediatrics or ophthalmology, you get paid the same amount of money but you don’t do the same job and that starts from when you are resident doctors.

    Judging by their behaviours, don’t you think the labour organizations are playing a negative role in the efforts to appropriately handle the issue of remuneration?

    Sure! I agree with that, but you see, we talk a lot about other countries. Let me let you know that maybe 80 to 90 per cent of the hospitals are not managed by government; they are public-private partnered. In England where I trained, there are NHS Trust. In India, maybe 99 per cent hospitals visited by Nigerians are private hospitals, private in the sense that they have been privatized. If we carry on the way we are going and allow labour to destroy us and destroy the system, many Nigerians will die without anybody batting an eyelid, then we are going to be in big trouble and at the end of the day we may have to concession the hospitals and when we do that, there will be sanity because people are going to do their jobs as at when due and then there will be appropriate remunerations. In fact, doctors, pharmacists, physiotherapists may earn a lot more than they are earning at the moment because of the service they are going to deliver. I remember many years ago people earned more money in private hospitals than teaching hospitals. So, we had more people in private hospitals then. But when the money in teaching hospitals increased, they all migrated here. So it’s like economic migration as it were. But if today we concession these teaching hospitals and federal medical centres, I can bet you, some hospitals are going to pay their workers well.

    Are you recommending that?

    Well, if you ask my candid opinion, it’s not something you shouldn’t talk about. It should be on the table as well for discussion because at the end of the day, if you want to have proper first class healthcare delivery system, you must find out how they do it outside rather than just come here and we are making ourselves feel good by going on strike on a daily basis.

    UCH is 60 years old this month. Looking back has this hospital recorded any major breakthrough?

    The University College Hospital, Ibadan, has technically given birth to all teaching hospitals and medical centres in Nigeria by extension. There is no teaching hospital today or Federal Medical Centre where you have not had an Ibadan trained either as a medical student or as a resident doctor working there, meaning that the dream of 1952 has been fulfilled. So, we have managed to give birth to so many children but we want to stay alive as well because the challenges we have is with ageing.

    Do your products look back?

    Unfortunately, what these other institutions would love to do is to outdo their father and mother and many of them are positioned by virtue of political correctness and by the virtue of connections in trying to outdo UCH but unfortunately, they can’t. You know this Yoruba adage that says “no matter how many clothes a child has, he can’t have as many rags as the parents.” That is exactly why we are head and shoulders above anybody. We have the largest number of departments among hospitals in this country. Only UCH has a palliative care and auspices department. UCH is the first to have a nuclear medicine department. Only UCH in the whole of Africa has a geriatric centre, not a department, a whole fully fledged centre and we have so many departments that others don’t have, and we are top heavy. We have more professors than any other teaching hospital, we have more readers, more lecturers, more consultants, more resident doctors as well.

    We have many major breakthroughs in training. Virtually everybody wants to train in Ibadan, forget about what you hear outside. Everybody wants to come and train as resident doctor in Ibadan. Everybody wants to come to University of Ibadan as a medical student because they know that from there they can come here and get the best of hospital care and hospital training as a clinical student and the same thing with nursing.

    UCH is unique going by the history that you just narrated.  What model do you think will make the hospital stand out as you step into another 60 years of excellent service, training and research?

    When I assumed duty, I had a model called the three Bs. The first B is to build people and building people entails having people get to the maximum they could. In fact, it becomes an offence that you don’t attend conferences, whether local or international, it actually becomes an offence at the end of the year that you have no input in terms of elevating your own standard. When I came back, it was abysmal that some of my colleagues had never attended conferences in five years. Now, for UCH to grow, I instituted the first B which is building people. You have to identify various courses and training programmes in every professional grouping. I even gave them financial incentives that if you have a publication or a presentation in a conference, I was going to pay part of the conference fee and I did that from 2011 till date. That is to build capacity. So, people know that they have to be up on their toes. You must be able to stand up to your colleagues abroad and be able to present your papers. So for those who did that and who are still doing it, they know they will always get financial support. When you build people you build their capacity to the point that they will build systems. That’s the second B – to build systems and protocols. The whole world works on systems and the whole world works on protocols. When you board an aircraft, there is a system of operation before the aircraft moves. The pilot will come in there are various buttons he has to press and all of that, that is the system of operation. So it is the people that have been built up in terms of knowledge base that will now build the systems. They build protocols. So, when the patients come in- we are building an app now in UCH. It is called UCH app. There are so many protocols inside of it so you are not confused as to what to do. When the patient comes to the emergency department and has head injury, if you have forgotten, you just go through the UCH app and see the step-by-step analysis. So, these people that have been built up, like a pilot does its simulation before it flies, you have built these people up to the point that they can provide you systems and structures and protocols for you to do the job that you have been called here to do which is to look after patients. So, the man who has had an updated knowledge of neurosurgical, cardiothoracic, orthopaedic practice knows the modern trend of doing things, therefore he can apply that modern trend in the care of his patients. The world is a global village. No human being is different except for the melanin in your skin. Your heart is the same heart, the liver is still the same liver there and, therefore, we build people up and those people that you have built now build systems, structures and protocols for you. When that one is in place, then you build institutions. The institution’s name is actually going to be flagged all over the place when those people have been built up and the system has been built.

    What problem won’t go away at UCH? It has been there or they have been there and even in the future, some will still be there?

    Attitude! Attitude! Attitude! The attitude of the healthcare workers has been bastardized because they now have the mindset that they are civil servants and they are not healthcare providers. Until we desensitize them and remove some of the bad attitudes, things may not work as desired. Some say ‘we go to the same supermarket to go and buy food, so why should I not get N5 million a month?’ That is a poor attitude of a health worker because at the end of the day, after getting that N5 million and the patient is not well looked after by the virtue of the fact that you are incompetent or you have not done what you should do by not training yourself up, by not building yourself up, the N5 million is going to be counter-productive, even when you spend it. So, we need to change attitudes and change mindsets. So, attitudes and mindsets are the two things that must be addressed on the long term basis such that you don’t have to like me to work with me.

    UCH is a very big hospital. Yet the majority of Nigerians are poor. Are there ways UCH tries to help poor patients? Are there systems or programmes that philanthropists can respond to in empowering UCH to help poor patients?

    There are philanthropists in this country that are exemplary and on November 14, we are going to be inviting them and the beneficiaries of their philanthropy to a luncheon called “Meet the benefactors”. These are men and women who are quiet in their ways but they’ve done wonderful things. I begin with Chief Tony Anenih. He did not only fund the geriatric centre, he provides even what you called the most mundane things like clothing  sown and unsown, caps and they come in trucks to give to the needy elderly patients apart from his money which he gives to them. Part of the money we put in the bonds and when the returns on the bonds come, we give it to the centre. The second person is Basorun Kola Daisi. He instituted the Itunu Fund. Ninety per cent of the beneficiaries are children who come in with diseases that N5,000 can treat and we disburse the funds between N10,000 and N30,000. Daisi and the Foundation give us N500,000 every quarter. We don’t even ask before the next cheque comes in and we have a table every year for the beneficiaries. Three, we have Dr Sola Kolade and his family. There is a fund for patient in the Emergency Department that we are disbursing on their behalf to accident victims who come in and have nothing because nobody will go out and plan to have an accident. Sometimes they are unconscious but he has provided funds that we put part in a bond and we’ve taken the leftovers and begin to give the patients in a pack. We have the likes of Alhaji Oluwasola, who singlehandedly funded the construction and equipping of special diagnostic Centre for Molecular Pathology so that when diseases come, you are guided on what to do. Four is Sir Kessington Adebutu, who has given us a N100 million to build a geriatric rehabilitation centre for those patients who come to the Geriatric Centre who have acute illness. We have several others such as Otunba Subomi Balogun who endowed the Otunba Tuwase Emergency Ward for children who come in with emergencies. These are just few Nigerians who have volunteered without prompting to be part of the healthcare service delivery. There is also Aare Afe Babalola who donated the Nuclear Medicine building for us.

  • ‘Why we can’t produce vaccines locally’

    ‘Why we can’t produce vaccines locally’

    Professor Oyewale Tomori is a member, United States Academy of Medicine, President, Nigeria Academy of Science, Pioneer Vice-Chancellor, Redeemers University, (RUN) and Lassa Fever Committee Chairman. In this interview with Omolara Akintoye, the renowned Professor of Virology explains how government is using disease outbreaks as panic opportunity to generate funds. Excerpts

    AS the Lassa Fever Control Committee Chairman, what would you say is responsible for its recent re-occurrence?

    What we have is not strictly a recurrence. Lassa fever is endemic in Nigeria and we are seeing a higher number of cases over a longer period of time. We still have our dry season peaks. Some of the challenges that keep bringing back such disease outbreak could be government’s inability to handle and follow up on success, using disease outbreaks as panic opportunity to generate funds.

    What solutions could be proffered?

    I think we are seeing increased contact between rodents and man leading to the spread of the disease. With increasing movement of people into unplanned cities, coupled with our inability to keep our environment clean, sanitation has gone to the dogs and we are getting filthier and filthier by the day as our cities are turned to refuse dumps and garbage heaps.  Rodents love such environment, and now bold to even invade the office of our President. Some of these rodents will include members of the mastomys species, which are well known for their prodigious fecundity. These rodents with hairless tails, large ears,  small eyes, pointed snout and seven to 12 pairs of teats, mature sexually early in life. With a gestation period of 23 days, they can have 12 litters per year, that is, every month, with 9-13 baby mastomys per litter.  In real time figures, one mother mastomys can produce between 98 and 156 babies in one year, So in the friendly environment of filth created in our cities, these rodents can easily overrun our cities invading our kitchens, restaurants, offices and contaminating every space with their Lassa virus laden excreta. So we need to carry out a vigorous rodent control programme and keep our environment clean.

    Lack of vaccine is said to be a major cause of Lassa fever re-occurrence, why are we not producing vaccines locally?

    Lack of vaccine is actually not a major cause of Lassa fever recurrence. The major cause is as stated above. We are seeing more frequent rodent-man contact with increasing contamination of our environment with Lassa virus laden excreta. Yes, indeed there is currently no licensed vaccine against Lassa fever, but there are a few candidate vaccines which have not gone through human vaccine trials. Only the Veterinary Research Institute in Vom, Jos currently produces vaccines locally. The federal government has just signed a partnership agreement with May and Baker Company to produce vaccines locally. I am sure the vaccine against Lassa fever is not on the priority list of this new venture.

    Report says research centres in our tertiary institutions are lagging behind in this area, why?

    Why not? Of course they will continue to lag behind so long as we do not provide the resources for them to function and make use of the talents of available human resources. Each day we see clear evidence that we are not yet ready for progress and development- government is unable to fulfil its agreement with ASUU, so ASUU goes on indefinite strike action, NMA gives notice of strike, JAMB and/or universities fix the university admission cut off at 30%. And we want to produce vaccine? We are more likely to produce poisons!

    What does it take to produce vaccines?

    Vaccine production takes more than what we are currently prepared and willing to give or sacrifice. It takes cutting edge research. It takes a national commitment to consider health a security issue. It takes availability of basic amenities and infrastructures. It takes constant electricity. It takes transparency and accountability. More than that, it takes patriotism and national pride.

    As the elected International member of U.S National Academy of Medicine in recognition of your leadership role for establishing the African Regional Polio laboratory Network, how has it been?

    Gratitude to God and an appreciation of the contribution and opportunities offered by my country as I grew up and had the best education from primary through the university level. I am always proud to say that I am a Nigerian educated person, starting and completing ALL my studies in Nigeria. Yes, I took some time off on study leave and sabbaticals, but the cake was all baked in Nigeria. The overseas trips were mere and thin icing on the solid cake. My country offered me this unique opportunity at a time when we had more sense than oil, when leaders were accountable and cared for the citizens…..not now, not now.

    How can we improve the health sector?

    We have the right calibre of trained human resources; we have only refused to create a conducive environment to enable our human resources to function effectively. I remember in the early days of my career at the University of Ibadan, we produced most of the reagents and other resources we needed for disease diagnosis. We grew up in a country that produced in Yaba, Lagos, vaccines against three human diseases  small pox, yellow fever and rabies. The veterinary research laboratory in Vom, produced and exported nearly all vaccines against animal diseases. Then we had committed workers, caring leaders and an appreciative citizenry. Today, we have selfish and uncaring leaders, unpatriotic workforce, and a weary and disillusioned citizenry. To improve the Nigerian health or any other sector, we must first address and change our individual and collective attitude to our nation, we must be ready to live for our country, to make sacrifices. We must address our grievances, we must create an environment where each citizen is not rated a second class citizen, a country where there is equity, a country that belongs to us all and not to a few greedy and callous souls.

    Is the health sector problem that of poor policy or lack of facilities?

    Crafting great policy has never been a problem for Nigeria. The issue is our failure to correctly and fully implement our policies and recommendations. We have often succeeded in implementing policies that favour a section and not the whole of the country. Nigeria comes third to our tribe and second to our selfish greed.

    What is your take on Nigerians travelling abroad for treatment take President Muhammad Buhari for instance?

    The question is not should Nigerians travel abroad for treatment, but should Nigeria not provide quality health services for her citizens so they will not have to travel abroad to treat a headache? So long as our country fails to provide quality and equitable health services, so long as we run away from Universal Health Coverage, so long as those who have the means seek treatment abroad, and the poor die in agony. Unfortunately, majority of our people do not have the means for medical tourism. Therefore I wish to echo, in part, NMA’s welcome message to our President ….. “Provide for your citizens the quality of medical services you went overseas to enjoy”. Life should be sweet, as much as possible, for every citizen

    You recently accused National Universities Commission (N.U.C) of using outdated benchmark in its accreditation of university courses, what is the way out?

    The world of technology is changing so fast, knowledge is racing away from us; therefore we cannot afford to use the old archaic and time consuming process of updating benchmarks. We must be proactive and think far ahead of fitting our graduates for the world of tomorrow. NUC must accept that in accrediting our university courses, it cannot be the prosecution, the defence and the judge. The NUC sets the operating guidelines and benchmark for university courses, with input from the university staff, who teach the courses. The NUC oversees the university accreditation system and draws the accreditation team from staff of the universities being accredited. A more transparent accreditation system, not involving the NUC and university staff serving as judges and juries, but involving independent third parties should be introduced. In this way, it may be possible to change the poor public perception of our university system and products  unemployable graduates, poor quality of teaching, arising from pitiable quality of teachers, examination malpractices, etc.

    Parents are complaining against the procedures adopted by JAMB this year, as an educational administrator what is your take on JAMB’s current cut off mark of 120 for universities and 100 for polytechnics?

    It is true that we have now set admission cut off at the very high standard of 30%! Of course, this level is set for the discretion list of staff and vice chancellors. It is the gateway for legislators, chiefs, Obas, the big men and irresponsible parents in the society to get admission for a fee for their poor performing children, nieces and nephews, Thirty percent…unbelievable. Where are we heading for ….ignominious mediocrity! And we want high global ranking for our universities….we deceive ourselves, don’t we?

    What is the implication of this on the health sector?

    Not just the implication on the health sector, but for all sectors. In the near future, we will feel the crushing boom of this obnoxious target of 30% admission cut off. We might as well turn every secondary school into a university and offer each student who completes SS3, a first class! We are not just destroying the future of our children; we are slowly and softly killing our nation. We are uprooting the shallow foundation of excellence we currently have.

    What is the way out?

    Set a high standard of excellence, and make it applicable to all. Punish those who will not follow the path of accountability, reward those who are honest, committed and patriotic. Stop giving national honours to those who will eventually end up in EFCC net and incarcerated in prison. Avoid unfair and discriminatory targets for a section of the country. I have nothing against the doctrine of federal character in a federal system, but there has to be a time limit for the use of federal character in determining who gets what in this country. Federal character should not be a perpetual tool for the disadvantage of any section in the country. After all, are we saying a state once educationally backward will remain so FOREVER? I think the system was to allow disadvantaged sections of the country to “catch up”. Now some of them have taken not only their quota, but also the quota of other people. At the rate we are going, the “advantaged” are now becoming the “disadvantaged”, as a result of no END  to federal character system.

  • Government should concession Teaching Hospitals, -UCH CMD

    Government should concession Teaching Hospitals, -UCH CMD

    The University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan is 60 years old this month (November). In this interview with Bisi Oladele, the Chief Medical Director, Prof. Temitope Alonge, who is the seventh chief executive, shares the rich breakthroughs of the first teaching hospital in West Africa in research, training and healthcare services.

    YOU joined the hospital as a student in the 70s and since that time you’ve been in the system. Can you compare the UCH of that time with the UCH of today?

    Quite frankly, I have not prided myself in having seen the good, the bad and the ugly but I can confidently say that with the university system in focus and the UCH in perspective, I have been privileged to see the good, the bad and the ugly. The good, when I came into the University of Ibadan in 1977-78, at Nnamdi Azikwe Hall, I met just one term of opulence. Our clothing were laundered for us and ironed, food was 50 kobo per day and we had free cola drinks and a lot of freebies. Wednesday afternoon was sports day in the University of Ibadan.

    What do you consider as the biggest problem in the health sector?

    I don’t think one can lay too much emphasis on one but I am going to break it down into three. The first is the governed; the second is the government and third is the system. The workers are the ones who are doing the job, the healthcare workers, those are the governed. The government is the institution that makes the policy and then the patients are in between us. They are actually sandwiched between those two big monsters or elephants, whichever way you want to call it. The patients are the reason why we are healthcare workers in the first place. The major preoccupation of all workers in the hospital must be centred on patients’ care. Whether you are an accountant, or auditor in the system, everything you do revolves around patients care not to talk about the core healthcare professionals. Now, because government’s policies do not address the fundamentals of how systems work outside this country, the healthcare workers are seeing themselves as purely civil servants without any doubt in their minds and those doubts should have arisen on the account of the fact that we are not making biscuits here neither are we manufacturing electricity. We are talking about human lives. We must get that right. I have no blames on anybody’s footsteps but as a stakeholder in the health sector, we need to plead for legislations that are geared towards improvements, not punitive legislations. Our legislators are so concerned with punitive legislations so much so that their emphasis is on punitive legislations. We need constructive legislations that will lift up all the sectors of governance in Nigeria. The central government in its own right must be very proactive and be firm in taking decisions. The judiciary must have laws and rules that will guide our practices again not in the area of punitive measure but in the area of constructive corrections that will make people do the right things.  That is the government. The governed are those of us who are actually healthcare professionals. We must see ourselves as members of a particular team and there is no weak link in a team that will not expose the team. Once you have one weak link in the team, that team is subject to defeat. But I believe all of these things revolve around what people call remunerations. All of them are important but you chose to pick up a field of interest and you must be remunerated for that. As long as we continue to see everybody as civil servants and there is no differential payments, because in England and America that we talk about often times, we have various classes of call duties. It’s only in Nigeria that everybody gets paid the same call duty whether you are in institute or internal medicine or paediatrics or ophthalmology, you get paid the same amount of money but you don’t do the same job and that starts from when you are resident doctors.

    Judging by their behaviours, don’t you think the labour organizations are playing a negative role in the efforts to appropriately handle the issue of remuneration?

    Sure! I agree with that, but you see, we talk a lot about other countries. Let me let you know that maybe 80 to 90 per cent of the hospitals are not managed by government; they are public-private partnered. In England where I trained, there are NHS Trust. In India, maybe 99 per cent hospitals visited by Nigerians are private hospitals, private in the sense that they have been privatized. If we carry on the way we are going and allow labour to destroy us and destroy the system, many Nigerians will die without anybody batting an eyelid, then we are going to be in big trouble and at the end of the day we may have to concession the hospitals and when we do that, there will be sanity because people are going to do their jobs as at when due and then there will be appropriate remunerations. In fact, doctors, pharmacists, physiotherapists may earn a lot more than they are earning at the moment because of the service they are going to deliver. I remember many years ago people earned more money in private hospitals than teaching hospitals. So, we had more people in private hospitals then. But when the money in teaching hospitals increased, they all migrated here. So it’s like economic migration as it were. But if today we concession these teaching hospitals and federal medical centres, I can bet you, some hospitals are going to pay their workers well.

    Are you recommending that?

    Well, if you ask my candid opinion, it’s not something you shouldn’t talk about. It should be on the table as well for discussion because at the end of the day, if you want to have proper first class healthcare delivery system, you must find out how they do it outside rather than just come here and we are making ourselves feel good by going on strike on a daily basis.

    UCH is 60 years old this month. Looking back has this hospital recorded any major breakthrough?

    The University College Hospital, Ibadan, has technically given birth to all teaching hospitals and medical centres in Nigeria by extension. There is no teaching hospital today or Federal Medical Centre where you have not had an Ibadan trained either as a medical student or as a resident doctor working there, meaning that the dream of 1952 has been fulfilled. So, we have managed to give birth to so many children but we want to stay alive as well because the challenges we have is with ageing.

    Do your products look back?

    Unfortunately, what these other institutions would love to do is to outdo their father and mother and many of them are positioned by virtue of political correctness and by the virtue of connections in trying to outdo UCH but unfortunately, they can’t. You know this Yoruba adage that says “no matter how many clothes a child has, he can’t have as many rags as the parents.” That is exactly why we are head and shoulders above anybody. We have the largest number of departments among hospitals in this country. Only UCH has a palliative care and auspices department. UCH is the first to have a nuclear medicine department. Only UCH in the whole of Africa has a geriatric centre, not a department, a whole fully fledged centre and we have so many departments that others don’t have, and we are top heavy. We have more professors than any other teaching hospital, we have more readers, more lecturers, more consultants, more resident doctors as well.

    We have many major breakthroughs in training. Virtually everybody wants to train in Ibadan, forget about what you hear outside. Everybody wants to come and train as resident doctor in Ibadan. Everybody wants to come to University of Ibadan as a medical student because they know that from there they can come here and get the best of hospital care and hospital training as a clinical student and the same thing with nursing.

    UCH is unique going by the history that you just narrated.  What model do you think will make the hospital stand out as you step into another 60 years of excellent service, training and research?

    When I assumed duty, I had a model called the three Bs. The first B is to build people and building people entails having people get to the maximum they could. In fact, it becomes an offence that you don’t attend conferences, whether local or international, it actually becomes an offence at the end of the year that you have no input in terms of elevating your own standard. When I came back, it was abysmal that some of my colleagues had never attended conferences in five years. Now, for UCH to grow, I instituted the first B which is building people. You have to identify various courses and training programmes in every professional grouping. I even gave them financial incentives that if you have a publication or a presentation in a conference, I was going to pay part of the conference fee and I did that from 2011 till date. That is to build capacity. So, people know that they have to be up on their toes. You must be able to stand up to your colleagues abroad and be able to present your papers. So for those who did that and who are still doing it, they know they will always get financial support. When you build people you build their capacity to the point that they will build systems. That’s the second B – to build systems and protocols. The whole world works on systems and the whole world works on protocols. When you board an aircraft, there is a system of operation before the aircraft moves. The pilot will come in there are various buttons he has to press and all of that, that is the system of operation. So it is the people that have been built up in terms of knowledge base that will now build the systems. They build protocols. So, when the patients come in- we are building an app now in UCH. It is called UCH app. There are so many protocols inside of it so you are not confused as to what to do. When the patient comes to the emergency department and has head injury, if you have forgotten, you just go through the UCH app and see the step-by-step analysis. So, these people that have been built up, like a pilot does its simulation before it flies, you have built these people up to the point that they can provide you systems and structures and protocols for you to do the job that you have been called here to do which is to look after patients. So, the man who has had an updated knowledge of neurosurgical, cardiothoracic, orthopaedic practice knows the modern trend of doing things, therefore he can apply that modern trend in the care of his patients. The world is a global village. No human being is different except for the melanin in your skin. Your heart is the same heart, the liver is still the same liver there and, therefore, we build people up and those people that you have built now build systems, structures and protocols for you. When that one is in place, then you build institutions. The institution’s name is actually going to be flagged all over the place when those people have been built up and the system has been built.

    What problem won’t go away at UCH? It has been there or they have been there and even in the future, some will still be there?

    Attitude! Attitude! Attitude! The attitude of the healthcare workers has been bastardized because they now have the mindset that they are civil servants and they are not healthcare providers. Until we desensitize them and remove some of the bad attitudes, things may not work as desired. Some say ‘we go to the same supermarket to go and buy food, so why should I not get N5 million a month?’ That is a poor attitude of a health worker because at the end of the day, after getting that N5 million and the patient is not well looked after by the virtue of the fact that you are incompetent or you have not done what you should do by not training yourself up, by not building yourself up, the N5 million is going to be counter-productive, even when you spend it. So, we need to change attitudes and change mindsets. So, attitudes and mindsets are the two things that must be addressed on the long term basis such that you don’t have to like me to work with me.

    UCH is a very big hospital. Yet the majority of Nigerians are poor. Are there ways UCH tries to help poor patients? Are there systems or programmes that philanthropists can respond to in empowering UCH to help poor patients?

    There are philanthropists in this country that are exemplary and on November 14, we are going to be inviting them and the beneficiaries of their philanthropy to a luncheon called “Meet the benefactors”. These are men and women who are quiet in their ways but they’ve done wonderful things. I begin with Chief Tony Anenih. He did not only fund the geriatric centre, he provides even what you called the most mundane things like clothing  sown and unsown, caps and they come in trucks to give to the needy elderly patients apart from his money which he gives to them. Part of the money we put in the bonds and when the returns on the bonds come, we give it to the centre. The second person is Basorun Kola Daisi. He instituted the Itunu Fund. Ninety per cent of the beneficiaries are children who come in with diseases that N5,000 can treat and we disburse the funds between N10,000 and N30,000. Daisi and the Foundation give us N500,000 every quarter. We don’t even ask before the next cheque comes in and we have a table every year for the beneficiaries. Three, we have Dr Sola Kolade and his family. There is a fund for patient in the Emergency Department that we are disbursing on their behalf to accident victims who come in and have nothing because nobody will go out and plan to have an accident. Sometimes they are unconscious but he has provided funds that we put part in a bond and we’ve taken the leftovers and begin to give the patients in a pack. We have the likes of Alhaji Oluwasola, who singlehandedly funded the construction and equipping of special diagnostic Centre for Molecular Pathology so that when diseases come, you are guided on what to do. Four is Sir Kessington Adebutu, who has given us a N100 million to build a geriatric rehabilitation centre for those patients who come to the Geriatric Centre who have acute illness. We have several others such as Otunba Subomi Balogun who endowed the Otunba Tuwase Emergency Ward for children who come in with emergencies. These are just few Nigerians who have volunteered without prompting to be part of the healthcare service delivery. There is also Aare Afe Babalola who donated the Nuclear Medicine building for us.

  • ‘We are pursuing basic healthcare through PHCs’

    ‘We are pursuing basic healthcare through PHCs’

    The Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole, spoke with select reporters in Ibadan, and talks about how the ministry is pursuing a comprehensive health project to revamp a minimum of one Primary Health Centre in every political ward across the country. Bisi Oladele was there

    HEALTHCARE delivery looks poor in this country. What is your ministry doing to revamp, particularly about the Primary Healthcare Centres (PHCs)?

    I think we should start by saying upfront that primary health or primary care is not direct responsibility of federal government. But as I have said often and often, our job is to look at the entire healthcare architecture and make sure that we get it right. What we have today is a situation whereby the primary health care is dysfunctional and the secondary is begging for help. The only one that is actually doing good work is the tertiary. People now abandon primary and secondary and work straight to tertiary and this is why we have the problem we have on ground – a situation in which a large majority of our people visit tertiary care is not good. So, what we are trying to do, because we are in charge of policy, is to reverse this unfortunate and unacceptable trend by making sure that we reposition the healthcare system in a way that 85 per cent of our people would go to primary health care rather than going to a teaching hospital and that’s why we have taken the initiative to flag off the programme of revitalization of PHCs and it has become a cardinal programme of this administration.

    There was a time primary education was also in total crisis and the federal government came up with an idea that up till today, teachers were rescued. Is it not possible for the Federal Ministry of Health to also come up with that kind of idea that will rescue primary health care because that is the closet hospitals to the people?

    That is exactly the same reason that necessitated our focusing on PHCs. It has become the cardinal programme of Mr. President and he personally flagged off the Kuchingoro model PHC on January 10 to really demonstrate his commitment to revitalizing PHCs. PHC is the healthcare facility that is the closest to the people. And if you look at the All Progressives Congress’ (APC) manifesto, it identifies healthcare system that is affordable, accessible and of good quality and within 3-5 kilometres to the people and that is why we are focusing on PHCs. And we looked at what we have on ground. We have about 30, 000 PHCs for now but only about 20 per cent of them are working. So we said if we can make one in every political ward function, we would reach about 100 million people. Each political ward has about 10,000 people. So, if we have about 10,000 PHCs we would reach about 100 million people. The National Health Act passed in 2014 has given the Ministry of Health the authority to define what basic healthcare is all about. And for me, the basic healthcare package includes ante-natal care, delivery, treating malaria, checking blood pressure, giving vaccines to young ones and treating other basic problems, testing them for HIV and TB.

    You mentioned affordable healthcare as being part of the APC manifesto. But today, if we go to tertiary health institutions, because of shortage of funds, they look inward to generate additional revenue to plug short fall in their expenses and the implication is that they pass on a lot of expenses to poor patients. Don’t you think that this is contrary to the promise to offer affordable health?

    Well, let me assure you that good care and affordable care do not necessarily imply free care. There is nowhere in the manifesto of APC where we talked about free health care but what I can assure you is that when we say it is affordable, that means those who can afford will pay and then we pay for those who cannot. And that is why we are promoting health insurance, encouraging states to set up health or contributing scheme and we are also looking into setting up a National Health Insurance Commission that will make health insurance compulsory and universal in the country. When you have that, you will be able to put together resources to take care of health. Anywhere health is free, some people must be paying for it. In the United Kingdom (UK), the National Health Service depends on taxation. So what we are currently looking into in the context of Nigeria is how can we put resources together that will afford us the opportunity to take care of health? And one basic provision in the national health care is the prescription giving at least one per cent of the consolidated revenue fund to health to fund basic healthcare and that money will go straight to primary health care. For the first time the PHCs will get money direct from the federal. If we get that right, then this country has actually arrived at what we call a comfortable stage where we can deliver basic healthcare to our people. For now, we have not succeeded. We are talking to our colleagues in the Ministry of Budget and Planning and that of Finance and I have also approached Mr. President to ensure that we put the one per cent in it. We have assurances from the National Assembly that if the Executive contributes that one per cent, they will protect it. So we are quite optimistic that very soon we would have that one per cent. But pending the time that we would have the one per cent, we are doing what we call a scale-up project in three states: Abia, Niger and Osun where we would pilot basic healthcare provision fund, where money directly will flow from central to each of the PHCs. We would open account at the local facility and also engender ownership because the people must own it. We don’t want a situation where federal government will own the facility. It must belong to the people. We would then partner with the states to set up a state primary healthcare development board and a ward development committee so that the people can own the facility.

    The Chief medical Director (CMD) of University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, Prof. Temitope Alonge, recently suggested the idea that the federal government can make an arrangement for tertiary health institutions to adopt a number of PHCs within their locality to be able to mentor them since they have enough manpower and better facilities. Why can’t this happen?

    We are on the same page with the CMD. I have discussed with him how we can get this done. It is actually a two-phased process. The first thing is to partner with the state to also support their secondary facility. We have more than enough human resources in our teaching hospitals. For example, you get to Sokoto Teaching Hospital there are over 500 doctors there. But if you go to the state hospital, I am sure they have less than 100. Zamfara is a case in point with 122 doctors in the Federal Medical Centre in Gusau. But here are less than 24 doctors in the state hospitals. So, one of the things we are trying to build is a partnership between federal and the states so that they can oversee. In the example in Sokoto, the teaching hospital will also oversee the local government and if we do that, each of our teaching hospitals or medical centres will then supervise the PHCs and it will be good for them for training. It will be good in terms of supervision and we can ensure that the people get good healthcare. The federal system will also be strengthened because if a case cannot be managed at a PHC, that case will immediately leave the PHC. We expect that normal delivery should take place at PHC but if we have complications, hypertensions, convulsion, and baby lying across in the tummy, multiple pregnancy, baby coming by the buttock; those cases should moved to a higher level because we don’t want to risk the lives of women at that level.

    Sir, in medical practice generally or health sector generally, it is believed that prevention is actually better than cure. Do you think government is doing enough in running campaigns to help people embrace practices that prevent sickness?

    This is where we all got it wrong. Health is on the concurrent list. One of the things we want to do is change the perception that the federal government must do everything. That is where we got it wrong. Federal government took over everything; that was okay when we had enough resources. Now that we do not have enough resources we need to share the resources with the states. We are only in charge of policy. States must take care of the people in their states. We cannot have cholera in Kwara and say federal should come and look after them. No, that is the responsibility of Kwara State Government. Kwara must provide water for the citizens because water is what you need to prevent cholera and also ensure that we mange waste properly so that they will not defecate along streams that people will drink. What we are doing at the federal is to change the way and manner we allocate resources. Before we came on board, 80 per cent of the resources at federal level were into curative care. The first we have done now is to change the allocation to preventive care. If you look at the 2016/2017 budget, a large chunk of our capital allocation now is into preventive. We have also given approval for the National Centre for Disease Control that is out to work with states. The disease control centres have trained surveillance officers; these are disease detectives. We have posted them to all the states; we are working with the states so that if there is an outbreak we can quickly nip it in the bud.

    Before now we use to think that VVF is a thing that is restricted to the northern states but now we are talking of VVF in the Southwest and other places…

    There are many southerners who also share that wrong impression or perspective. When we flagged off the VVF repair at Wesley Hill Hospital Ilesa, Osun Sate, the Deputy Governor came and was shocked. In fact, I did not realize why she was asking for the name of the patient we operated on. In one week, we operated about 25 patients. And the Deputy Governor said what is your name? Where are you from? And they said Ikire, Lagos, Osogbo, she was shocked. She said I thought VVF was confined to the North and I said that VVF is all over Nigeria. But what we are doing now is to set up more VVF hospitals, train more people, increase awareness, actively campaign against child marriage and also promote ante-natal care and supervise delivery. Both must work together. If a girl of seven years old gets pregnant and is managed properly, that girl won’t develop VVF. So, we need to combine good care with advocacy and education.

    How would you rate the advocacy of VVF from your ministry so far?

    We are doing well and as I told you, we are not only working alone, we are working with states and we are being supported by the United States government. The USAID has a good programme to engender health working together to improve advocacy. We are working with the Ministry of Women Affairs to improve education of young girls, delay marriage and also make sure that where you get pregnant you go for ante-natal care and supervised delivery.

    As the Minister of Health, what is that one thing that will make you feel fulfilled if your ministry is able to push through today?

    The basic healthcare provision fund.

    What is it about?

    It is one per cent of the consolidated revenue funds going to PHCs because that is the only thing that will make the PHCs survive.

    What is your ministry doing to address this huge shortage of fund for tertiary health institutions?

    Well, I think we must look at the situation from two perspectives. The first thing is to move patients away from the tertiary and that’s why taking care of primary healthcare is good. When I trained in the UCH, you can’t just walk in to the UCH and say I have fever, cough. No. You must come with a referral. If you fail to come with a referral they will send you to the Out-patient Department where someone will see you and may send you back to state hospital or treat you there and say ‘Go away’ or ‘this is a complex case, go and see a consultant.’ When you do that, the consultants in UCH will have more time for those complex cases. There will be enough materials for them, and no one will complain. So that is why it is important to make sure the PHC and secondary healthcare are working. Secondly, we need to put more resources in the tertiary. No doubt about that. We need to upgrade the condition, make sure their water and electricity are efficient, upgrade their equipment and upgrade the skills of the health professionals working there. That is the only thing we can do correctly to stop people from going out and we can save a lot of money. We estimate that we can save up to $1 billion a year if we upgrade our tertiary care centres and government is committed to doing that. In our 2017 budget appropriation, we have money allocated for that strategic investment in tertiary hospitals. We are going to upgrade eight of our facilities – one in each geo-political zone, including the National Hospital, Abuja and LUTH.

  • ‘We are pursuing basic healthcare through PHCs’

    ‘We are pursuing basic healthcare through PHCs’

    The Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole, spoke with select reporters in Ibadan, and talks about how the ministry is pursuing a comprehensive health project to revamp a minimum of one Primary Health Centre in every political ward across the country. Bisi Oladele was there

    Healthcare delivery looks poor in this country. What is your ministry doing to revamp, particularly about the Primary Healthcare Centres (PHCs)?

    I think we should start by saying upfront that primary health or primary care is not direct responsibility of federal government. But as I have said often and often, our job is to look at the entire healthcare architecture and make sure that we get it right. What we have today is a situation whereby the primary health care is dysfunctional and the secondary is begging for help. The only one that is actually doing good work is the tertiary. People now abandon primary and secondary and work straight to tertiary and this is why we have the problem we have on ground – a situation in which a large majority of our people visit tertiary care is not good. So, what we are trying to do, because we are in charge of policy, is to reverse this unfortunate and unacceptable trend by making sure that we reposition the healthcare system in a way that 85 per cent of our people would go to primary health care rather than going to a teaching hospital and that’s why we have taken the initiative to flag off the programme of revitalization of PHCs and it has become a cardinal programme of this administration.

    There was a time primary education was also in total crisis and the federal government came up with an idea that up till today, teachers were rescued. Is it not possible for the Federal Ministry of Health to also come up with that kind of idea that will rescue primary health care because that is the closet hospitals to the people?

    That is exactly the same reason that necessitated our focusing on PHCs. It has become the cardinal programme of Mr. President and he personally flagged off the Kuchingoro model PHC on January 10 to really demonstrate his commitment to revitalizing PHCs. PHC is the healthcare facility that is the closest to the people. And if you look at the All Progressives Congress’ (APC) manifesto, it identifies healthcare system that is affordable, accessible and of good quality and within 3-5 kilometres to the people and that is why we are focusing on PHCs. And we looked at what we have on ground. We have about 30, 000 PHCs for now but only about 20 per cent of them are working. So we said if we can make one in every political ward function, we would reach about 100 million people. Each political ward has about 10,000 people. So, if we have about 10,000 PHCs we would reach about 100 million people. The National Health Act passed in 2014 has given the Ministry of Health the authority to define what basic healthcare is all about. And for me, the basic healthcare package includes ante-natal care, delivery, treating malaria, checking blood pressure, giving vaccines to young ones and treating other basic problems, testing them for HIV and TB.

    You mentioned affordable healthcare as being part of the APC manifesto. But today, if we go to tertiary health institutions, because of shortage of funds, they look inward to generate additional revenue to plug short fall in their expenses and the implication is that they pass on a lot of expenses to poor patients. Don’t you think that this is contrary to the promise to offer affordable health?

    Well, let me assure you that good care and affordable care do not necessarily imply free care. There is nowhere in the manifesto of APC where we talked about free health care but what I can assure you is that when we say it is affordable, that means those who can afford will pay and then we pay for those who cannot. And that is why we are promoting health insurance, encouraging states to set up health or contributing scheme and we are also looking into setting up a National Health Insurance Commission that will make health insurance compulsory and universal in the country. When you have that, you will be able to put together resources to take care of health. Anywhere health is free, some people must be paying for it. In the United Kingdom (UK), the National Health Service depends on taxation. So what we are currently looking into in the context of Nigeria is how can we put resources together that will afford us the opportunity to take care of health? And one basic provision in the national health care is the prescription giving at least one per cent of the consolidated revenue fund to health to fund basic healthcare and that money will go straight to primary health care. For the first time the PHCs will get money direct from the federal. If we get that right, then this country has actually arrived at what we call a comfortable stage where we can deliver basic healthcare to our people. For now, we have not succeeded. We are talking to our colleagues in the Ministry of Budget and Planning and that of Finance and I have also approached Mr. President to ensure that we put the one per cent in it. We have assurances from the National Assembly that if the Executive contributes that one per cent, they will protect it. So we are quite optimistic that very soon we would have that one per cent. But pending the time that we would have the one per cent, we are doing what we call a scale-up project in three states: Abia, Niger and Osun where we would pilot basic healthcare provision fund, where money directly will flow from central to each of the PHCs. We would open account at the local facility and also engender ownership because the people must own it. We don’t want a situation where federal government will own the facility. It must belong to the people. We would then partner with the states to set up a state primary healthcare development board and a ward development committee so that the people can own the facility.

    The Chief medical Director (CMD) of University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, Prof. Temitope Alonge, recently suggested the idea that the federal government can make an arrangement for tertiary health institutions to adopt a number of PHCs within their locality to be able to mentor them since they have enough manpower and better facilities. Why can’t this happen?

    We are on the same page with the CMD. I have discussed with him how we can get this done. It is actually a two-phased process. The first thing is to partner with the state to also support their secondary facility. We have more than enough human resources in our teaching hospitals. For example, you get to Sokoto Teaching Hospital there are over 500 doctors there. But if you go to the state hospital, I am sure they have less than 100. Zamfara is a case in point with 122 doctors in the Federal Medical Centre in Gusau. But here are less than 24 doctors in the state hospitals. So, one of the things we are trying to build is a partnership between federal and the states so that they can oversee. In the example in Sokoto, the teaching hospital will also oversee the local government and if we do that, each of our teaching hospitals or medical centres will then supervise the PHCs and it will be good for them for training. It will be good in terms of supervision and we can ensure that the people get good healthcare. The federal system will also be strengthened because if a case cannot be managed at a PHC, that case will immediately leave the PHC. We expect that normal delivery should take place at PHC but if we have complications, hypertensions, convulsion, and baby lying across in the tummy, multiple pregnancy, baby coming by the buttock; those cases should moved to a higher level because we don’t want to risk the lives of women at that level.

    Sir, in medical practice generally or health sector generally, it is believed that prevention is actually better than cure. Do you think government is doing enough in running campaigns to help people embrace practices that prevent sickness?

    This is where we all got it wrong. Health is on the concurrent list. One of the things we want to do is change the perception that the federal government must do everything. That is where we got it wrong. Federal government took over everything; that was okay when we had enough resources. Now that we do not have enough resources we need to share the resources with the states. We are only in charge of policy. States must take care of the people in their states. We cannot have cholera in Kwara and say federal should come and look after them. No, that is the responsibility of Kwara State Government. Kwara must provide water for the citizens because water is what you need to prevent cholera and also ensure that we mange waste properly so that they will not defecate along streams that people will drink. What we are doing at the federal is to change the way and manner we allocate resources. Before we came on board, 80 per cent of the resources at federal level were into curative care. The first we have done now is to change the allocation to preventive care. If you look at the 2016/2017 budget, a large chunk of our capital allocation now is into preventive. We have also given approval for the National Centre for Disease Control that is out to work with states. The disease control centres have trained surveillance officers; these are disease detectives. We have posted them to all the states; we are working with the states so that if there is an outbreak we can quickly nip it in the bud.

    Before now we use to think that VVF is a thing that is restricted to the northern states but now we are talking of VVF in the Southwest and other places…

    There are many southerners who also share that wrong impression or perspective. When we flagged off the VVF repair at Wesley Hill Hospital Ilesa, Osun Sate, the Deputy Governor came and was shocked. In fact, I did not realize why she was asking for the name of the patient we operated on. In one week, we operated about 25 patients. And the Deputy Governor said what is your name? Where are you from? And they said Ikire, Lagos, Osogbo, she was shocked. She said I thought VVF was confined to the North and I said that VVF is all over Nigeria. But what we are doing now is to set up more VVF hospitals, train more people, increase awareness, actively campaign against child marriage and also promote ante-natal care and supervise delivery. Both must work together. If a girl of seven years old gets pregnant and is managed properly, that girl won’t develop VVF. So, we need to combine good care with advocacy and education.

      How would you rate the advocacy of VVF from your ministry so far?

    We are doing well and as I told you, we are not only working alone, we are working with states and we are being supported by the United States government. The USAID has a good programme to engender health working together to improve advocacy. We are working with the Ministry of Women Affairs to improve education of young girls, delay marriage and also make sure that where you get pregnant you go for ante-natal care and supervised delivery.

    As the Minister of Health, what is that one thing that will make you feel fulfilled if your ministry is able to push through today?

    The basic healthcare provision fund.

    What is it about?

    It is one per cent of the consolidated revenue funds going to PHCs because that is the only thing that will make the PHCs survive.

    What is your ministry doing to address this huge shortage of fund for tertiary health institutions?

    Well, I think we must look at the situation from two perspectives. The first thing is to move patients away from the tertiary and that’s why taking care of primary healthcare is good. When I trained in the UCH, you can’t just walk in to the UCH and say I have fever, cough. No. You must come with a referral. If you fail to come with a referral they will send you to the Out-patient Department where someone will see you and may send you back to state hospital or treat you there and say ‘Go away’ or ‘this is a complex case, go and see a consultant.’ When you do that, the consultants in UCH will have more time for those complex cases. There will be enough materials for them, and no one will complain. So that is why it is important to make sure the PHC and secondary healthcare are working. Secondly, we need to put more resources in the tertiary. No doubt about that. We need to upgrade the condition, make sure their water and electricity are efficient, upgrade their equipment and upgrade the skills of the health professionals working there. That is the only thing we can do correctly to stop people from going out and we can save a lot of money. We estimate that we can save up to $1 billion a year if we upgrade our tertiary care centres and government is committed to doing that. In our 2017 budget appropriation, we have money allocated for that strategic investment in tertiary hospitals. We are going to upgrade eight of our facilities – one in each geo-political zone, including the National Hospital, Abuja and LUTH.