The Nation Newspaper

Tag: change

  • The burden of change

    The burden of change

    Call it two lethal blows to the solar plexus – it must have been a hard time for an administration that swept into office on the chariot of change to watch everything it has labored so hard for vaporize at the speed of light.

    On Monday, February 19, Nigerians woke up to the terrible news of the abduction of 110 Dapchi schoolgirls by suspected Boko Haram militants. The insurgents, said to be dressed in military camouflage reportedly stormed the Government Girls Science Technical College (GGSTC), Dapchi, Yobe State in two 4-wheel drive vehicles painted in military colour. Firing into the air to create an atmosphere of bedlam, the hapless girls, most of who, ran into different directions for safety, were said to have run into the Boko Haram militants posing as helpers. In the siege said to have lasted for two hours, 110 schoolgirls were ferried into the unknown.

    And so here we are being forced to relive the horror of Chibok some two months into the fourth anniversary of an abduction that shook the entire world. Of course, that five and half score schoolgirls could vanish without trace has only showed how very little has changed in any real sense as far as the insurgency war raging in the northeast goes. Not only has the myth of the invincibility of the fortress occupied by the Boko Haram despite the military’s claims to the contrary persisted; the possibility of our dear country, Nigeria, still harbouring vast, ungoverned spaces, far beyond the reach of the military has again been reinforced.

    If anything, that knowledge ought to provide citizens something to chew upon for a long time.

    So also are nearly half-a-dozen uncomfortable truths. Of course, the governor, Ibrahim Geidam, has since apologised for misleading Nigerians about the occurrence. While that is pardonable considering that the governor could only have echoed the information supplied him by his aides, but then, his attempt at finger-pointing merely exposes the age-long hypocrisy of his ilk.

    His words: “I blame the whole attack on Dapchi on the military and the defence headquarters who withdrew troops from Dapchi. The attack occurred barely a week after the military withdrew the soldiers from there… Before then, Dapchi has been peaceful, there was never such incident. But just a week after they withdrew the troops, Boko Haram came to attack the town”.

    Well said.

    The governor unfortunately has, up till now, not told us why no lessons appears to have been learnt by his government – nearly 10 years into the battle that has engulfed a huge chunk of the territory under his watch. None of basic structures of intelligence appears to have been in place not to talk of security architecture to match for a region that has been volatile all this while. Nothing of the synergy between the local authorities and the security and intelligence communities as one would expect given the peculiar security challenges facing the state as indeed the entire northeast. Yet, the governor could talk of the billions of naira spent to assist the military.

    The point certainly bears stating: Had basic structures of intelligence been in place and so appropriately nourished over time, it would seem inconceivable that the chief security officer of the state would be in the dark for the whole of the two hours that the siege was said to have lasted. One can only therefore presume that the huge sum said to have been spent precluded investment in critical intelligence.

    If the truth must be told, the situation, more tellingly, speaks to the calibre of men occupying our various government houses, their understanding of the rationale of governance and their fitness for the office.

    Which takes us to the role of the military in the entire saga. Expectedly, the military has since denied that there were any soldiers stationed in Dapchi before the attack. The closest military outpost, according to Defence Spokesman, John Agim, a brigadier-general, is about 30 kilometres away. Now, even if we take the statement by the military on its face value, and if we agree that the military cannot be everywhere at the same time, it still does not excuse the slow response time, the inability to track the movement of the terrorists several days after, and its appalling overall intelligence.

    Finally, the only point that needs to be added is that, the Buhari administration, in announcing that the Boko Haram has been vanquished, apparently rejoiced too soon. Far from being over, the war has merely revealed how far the armed forces have to go to modernise itself as a fighting force, particularly one suitable for these difficult times.

  • UNEP chief seeks action on climate change

    UNEP chief seeks action on climate change

    The language of environmentalists are boring and uninspiring; people cannot be bored into action, only excitement and inspiration can create action and change people’s behaviour, Executive Director of United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), says Erik Solheim, has said.

    People are hungry for news about the risks of climate change but experts are alienating them with boring, technical jargon, the United Nations top environment official said.

    Erik Solheim, executive director of the (UNEP), said one of the most searched terms on the Internet this year was “Hurricane Irma”, a powerful storm that devastated parts of the Caribbean.

    “It shows people want to know about these things but when it comes to explaining why it’s happening and what can be done to stop it, we’re not speaking in language that everyone understands,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

    “The language of environmentalists has been boring, so uninspiring … If we just speak a technical language, with many acronyms and politically-correct phrases, no one will listen,” he said in an interview during a conference on landscapes in Bonn.

    “You cannot bore people into action. They need to be excited and inspired to take action and change their behaviour.”

    As public attention is focused on big disasters that make the headlines, important issues like loss of forests and land degradation risk being left behind, the former Norwegian international development and environment minister said.

    More than 1.3 billion people live on agricultural land that is deteriorating and face worsening hunger, water shortages and poverty.

  • Change begins with education

    Welcome Address delivered at the Presidential Retreat on Education for Ministers held on November 13, 2017 at Old Banquet Hall, State House, Abuja

    It is with great respect and gratitude that I welcome His Excellency, President Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR, to this important Presidential Retreat on Education for Ministers. Your Excellency, your presence at this important and historic event is a demonstration of leadership and your personal commitment to education and the passion and commitment of this administration to revitalize our education sector and develop the nation’s human capital.

    The education family respectfully welcomes you to this retreat; and, with your permission, I would also like to welcome His Excellency Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, Distinguished Senators and Honourable Members of the National Assembly, Ministers of the Federal Republic and other invited personalities who have graced this occasion.

    Permit me, Your Excellency, to also specially thank the Vice President for the initial directive, for his interest and continuing support. I would like to also thank all my colleagues in the Federal Executive Council (FEC) for the robust discussion at the FEC meeting of June 25, 2017 that has now culminated in this Retreat. I thank you all and I hope that at the end of the Retreat, we will all come to better appreciate, and place even higher premium on, the necessity to rejuvenate and overhaul education provisioning in the country.

    As we all know, no nation can rise above the standard of its education, because it is education that serves as the springboard for every kind of development. If education is weak or dysfunctional, society and its development will also be weak and dysfunctional. And all change – including our very Change Agenda – begins with education; because it is education that shapes, corrects and restores society.

    But to be able to restore order to society, education has to be made a national priority. This truism is valid for every society and is of particular relevance for our own society which, we all agree, is confronted with a litany of challenges and deficits. Education offers us the knowledge, tools, skills and attitudes with which to address and surmount these challenges, to correct and overcome inhibiting deficits, and to put our country on the path of accelerated development and sustainable change.

    Your Excellency, permit me to share a story I read about the Chinese. In their determination to build, and live in, a peaceful society, they built the Great Wall believing that it would keep invaders at bay; because they thought it was impossible for anyone to scale it, given its insurmountable height. However, within the first century of the construction of the wall, the Chinese were invaded three times. Every time the invaders came, they had no need to climb over the wall; because each time they came, they were able to bribe the guards on duty at the gate, and the gate was opened 2 | P a g e  for them. The Chinese took pains to build the wall but they forgot to build the character of the guards who were supposed to secure the walls. The great lesson of this story is that character-building precedes wall-building.

    And character is everything: as one of the Orientalists once said: “If you want to destroy the civilization of a nation, there are three ways of doing so: 1) destroy the family structure 2) destroy education and 3) lower role models”.

    In order to destroy the family, all you need to do is to undermine the role of the Mother. To destroy education, you should give no importance to the Teacher so that the students despise him. Then, to demean role models, you should undermine the scholars, cast doubt on them until no one listens to them or follows their teachings. For, when a conscious mother disappears, and when a dedicated teacher cannot be found, and when role models are ignored, who is there to teach the younger ones values?

    If the foregoing story indicates anything, it is the strong message that the entirety of civilization is at risk and in great peril when access to proper and quality education is denied the majority of its citizens. Such a denial can lead to a number of undesirable consequences, the most pernicious of which are value erosion and character failure among the youths who are supposed to become leaders of the society.

    The signs of such value erosion and character failure in our young population are already there for us to see. The rise in the incidence of corruption, moral decadence, juvenile delinquency, examination malpractices, cultism and drug abuse among our youth is symptomatic of this malaise, and indicative of such value erosion. This is enough warning that indeed for our nation, the enemy is already at the city gate. The advancement of this enemy must be checked now.

    Education alone offers us the tool to confront this enemy, to defeat its armies and bring about and institutionalize change. Yes, education offers us the way out of our current vicious circle, and to the emergence of an equitable and stable society characterized by inclusive development and driven by positive values. Education is our collective responsibility and its failure can well be taken as the failure of the entire country. We are all involved in education because it affects us all.

    But from what has happened to our education since independence, it is clear that our educational system has failed our people, and has been unable to prepare our children for life as responsible and creative citizens of the twenty first century. Our recent poor performance in meeting our commitments to the Millennium Development Goals adequately illustrates the extent of such a failure. In short, our education is not achieving the desired results and there is a need for urgent action.

    Your Excellency, it is trite to bore you with the challenges that face education in Nigeria. We all know them: and they are there at all levels – basic, secondary and tertiary. Basic education constitutes the foundation and it has to be given all the attention it deserves. We need to ask questions on what we teach and who does the teaching. As it happened to the Chinese, our national security itself may be in grave danger unless we give priority to education in our national 3 | P a g e  reckoning. At the same time, we must also create the enabling conditions that would enable tertiary institutions to play crucial roles as the engines that drive national thinking and lead the application of research and development to all facets of national development.

    It is also high time we paid attention to teachers and to teaching as a profession. Mass literacy, adult education, distance learning, nomadic education and the rest are all important; but we cannot deliver them without giving respectability and renewed stature to the teacher. We must learn to make education attractive to the best brains, make its study free, its outcome lucrative – and accord it the respect it deserves. That is why we must attract and retain the best brains in to the classroom as it is done in many other nations of the world.

    In Germany and Finland, for example, the highest paid professionals are teachers. They are better paid than judges, doctors, engineers, accountants, and so on. When Chancellor Angela Markel, was asked by the engineers, doctors and judges to pay them the same salary as teachers, she told them, “How can I compare you to those who taught you?” This is the logical perception and attitude that Nigeria’s leadership should have of education. I am strongly persuaded that if we offer automatic scholarship to students who take education, and automatic employment and a preferential compensation package to those who take to teaching as a profession, our system will improve tremendously. If we give regulatory agencies the teeth to bite and do their work, mediocre teachers will soon disappear from our classrooms. If we insist on professionalism with appropriate deadlines set for those who teach, the situation will improve phenomenally. We can minimize and in due course eliminate mediocrity in the education sector.

    There is need to harmonize the learning and teaching that transpire in our tertiary institutions as well as re-define our national goals periodically. Since independence and up to the time Your Excellency was military head of state, this nation had had National Development Plan and we must return to development planning if this nation is to develop; or else, it will remain one vast landscape of unconnected contracts, and disconnected researchers unable to connect their work with national development policies and vision.

    Already, the Federal Ministry of Education has commenced work in all three areas with the publication of our Ministerial Strategic Plan on education, which anticipated, and is therefore in line with, the recently approved Economic Recovery and Growth Plan.

    Our education should drive our national development objectives and we need to carry the universities and other tertiary institutions along. We have to revive our vocational training centres and give our technical schools adequate and requisite attention.

    Mr. President, to achieve the desired change that education needs, there is need for improved funding and a measure of political will in national governance. Such is the weight of the problems that beset our education and the deleterious effect it has had on our national development efforts that I believe that this Retreat should end with a declaration of a state of emergency in education so that we can face the challenges frontally and squarely. 4 | P a g e.

    These challenges are not insurmountable: what is needed is vastly improved funding accompanied by a strong political will. The strong political will needed to do all this is present in this government. What this government must now do is to make the funds available.

    You Excellency, nobody has the moral and resource capacity to intervene promptly, substantially and sustainably in all areas of education provisioning better than the government. Unfortunately, from 1999 to date, the annual budgetary allocation to education has always been between four per cent and ten per cent. None of the E9 or D8 countries, other than Nigeria, allocates less than 20% of its annual budget to education. Indeed even among sub-Saharan Africa countries, we are trailing far behind smaller and less endowed nations in terms of our investment in education. There is therefore need for a major investment in education in the national interest. A clear guide, Your Excellency, is the costing of the APC campaign promises in education which shows that a minimum of one trillion Naira per annum, over four years, would be required to fulfil your thirteen promises.

    Mr. President, Honourable Ministers, I want to once again welcome you all to this Retreat and I thank you for coming to be part of it. I earnestly hope that by the end of this Retreat, we will have arrived at actionable strategies and, hopefully, the declaration of an emergency – that will change the fortunes of education in Nigeria. All change must begin with education, because, if we get education right, other areas of our national life will be right and they will fall in line.

    Finally, I also want to appreciate the team of experts that worked strenuously on planning this Retreat. The Team is chaired by His Excellency, Prof. Michael Omolewa, with an array of distinguished stakeholders in the education sector as members. I have not seen more intimidating CVs than theirs – in education or in any other disciplines. We feel dwarfed by their mere presence, and we were all too pleased that they accepted to help. In preparing this Retreat, they have considered the recommendations of every report ever written on education in Nigeria; because they or their students have written them. And if there is a last ditch effort to rescue education, this is it.

    Your Excellency, I do not want to be a barrier between you and what they have to say. I will therefore promptly sit down. Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you for your attention and I wish us all successful deliberations.

     

    • Adamu Adamu is the Minister of Education, Federal Republic of Nigeria

  • The change we need

    A great majority of Nigerians of commonplace roots live through each day without ever contemplating or criticizing their living conditions. They find themselves born into dehumanizing squalor or somewhat indecent circumstances and they accept such unpleasantness as their fate. Thus they exhibit no conscious effort to better their lot beyond what their immediate circumstances dictate.

    Almost as impulsively as the beasts of the wild, they seek the satisfaction of the needs of the moment, without much forethought and consideration that by sufficient endeavor, they just might improve their living conditions.

    However, a certain percentage, constituted by men and women of higher status among the nation’s working class, guided by personal ambition, consciously strive in thought and will to attain more privileged status that remains the exclusive preserve of more fortunate members of the society.

    Very few among the latter are inspired to secure for all, the advantages which they seek for themselves. This explains the number of self-centred, treacherous human rights activists, women’s rights activists, journalists and columnists parading our streets.

    Very few men are indeed capable of that kind of love that drives martyrs to persistently rebel against glaring social evils in the interest of less fortunate members of the society. But there exists a few however, that are truly bothered by the impoverishment of their fellow citizens occupying the lower rung of the societal ladder regardless of any risk or  discomfort it might attract to them personally.

    These few, driven by compassion tirelessly seek, first in thought and then in action, for some way of escape; some new system of society by which life may become richer, more joyful and devoid of avertable evils that mars the present. But surprisingly, such men oftentimes, fail to curry the support of the very victims of the injustices they wish to remedy.

    More unfortunate sections of the Nigerian population are hopelessly ignorant, apathetic from excess of toil and disillusionment, apprehensive through the imminent danger of instantaneous chastisement by the holders of power, and morally defective owing to the loss of self-respect resulting from their degradation.

    To excite among such classes any conscious, deliberate effort in pursuit of general improvement of the status quo proves basically a hopeless task, as antecedents of such efforts have proven.

    Thus despite our claims to modernity, higher education, sophistication and relative rise in the standard of comfort among wage-earners in the country, the Nigerian society or working class to be precise, have failed woefully to achieve better living conditions and a better society even in the throes of rising demand for more radical intervention and reconstruction of the social order.

    It is no surprise however that the Nigerian working class has persistently proved a dismal failure. And the reasons are hardly far-fetched: Nigerians have a problem with differentiating between appropriate and inappropriate political behavior.  That is why the nation’s democratic experiment like any other system of governance practicable by us was doomed from the start.

    What exactly has democracy offered? A 4-1-9 progressive plan that booms circumspectly like it had been doctored as part of a cold-war era propagandist scheme? But despite our self-righteousness and persistent cynicism with the current order, we really cannot explore a more worthy alternative than what we have now.

    The average Nigerian can’t bear to be led by a truly honest, visionary and accountable leadership. It’s the way we are programmed to live. I’d say we possess an overwhelming and oft-convincing inclination to self-destruct thus our lack of a coherent and defensible political ideology essential to the evolution of a progressive leadership and state.

    The average Nigerian is no more electable than the leadership he endures yet he loves to speak truth to power, even as he functions simultaneously to smother his own voice in the riotous gabble of his exultation of the same ruling class. No matter who is elected, the demographic and economic realities of Nigeria will persist, and there is a very limited range of politically-viable solutions for dealing with them.

    No man, be he a distinguished columnist, lawyer, soldier, or public officer in any office can command the tides of history. The few that appear to have done so–the Napoleon’s, Caesar’s, Hitler’s–were really nothing more than the most capable at making it appear that they command the tides, when in fact they were simply skimming along with them.

    Thus the need for the Nigerian working class to consciously evolve in thought and will in pursuit of a more balanced social order. Such conscious evolution can only be achieved by a re-orientation in scholarship and purification of thought and action.

    The foundations of scholarship and knowledge must be tirelessly reconstructed to guarantee more progressive responses to internal problems of social advance — problems of work and wages, of families and homes, of morals and the true value of life. This informs a greater need for study and thought and an appeal to the rich experience of past and current mistakes in the journey towards the avoidance and reduction to the barest minimum of future mistakes.

    The answer to Nigeria’s widening income and social gap – which has so far manifested in preventable crises and persistent state of insecurity – is to found an educational process geared to steer successfully, the commonplace trains of thought away from the dilettante and the fool stereotype.

    It’s about time poor, struggling members of the nation’s working class learned to scorn the maxim that holds that if their stomachs be full, it matters little about their brains; the paths to stable peace and security winds between honest toil and dignified manhood. That proverbial better society that we seek calls for the guidance of skilled thinkers, the loving, reverent comradeship between the low income earners and ambitious middle class emancipated by training and culture.

    Such human elements would no doubt be conscious of the fact that not even the sustenance of oil subsidy, higher wages and a fairer economic system could protect its members from the usual handicaps and monstrosity constituted by the incumbent and predatory ruling class.

    Hence they would be able to understand that such social enterprise and gesture towards change must be mooted and achieved by the working class itself in further substantiation of the working class’ capacities to assimilate the culture and common sense of modern civilization, and to pass it on, to some extent at least, to posterity.

     

    • Piece inspired by timeless works of WEB Dubois

  • Labour, civil society seek change in governance

    The organised labour and members of civil societies have advocated change, peaceful revolutions and governance overhaul.

    According to the groups, which cut across human rights activists, community-based organisations, students, academics, doctors, internationalists and artisans, these would provide solution to Nigeria’s problems.

    They noted that the wrong use of the country’s resources had inflicted hardship on the masses, adding that 57 years after independence, there were no good roads, healthcare structures, electricity, employment, and security. They stated that the country was ridden with economic crises.

    Speaking at the National Discourse titled: “Economic crises and ethnic secession, restructuring or system change,” organised by the Joint Front Action (JFA), at the NLC Lagos secretariat in Yaba, Lagos, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) Lagos State University (LASU) Chairman Isaac Oyewumi said labour needed to be prepared if it was truly in need of change.

    He said: “We need to sit down and ask ourselves questions and determine way forward on how to solve our problems. What we need is continuous non-violence agitation until we achieve our dream.

    ”In terms of mismanagement of our resources, it is the common man that suffers the hardship. The ordinary man on the street, workers, community members, artisans, among others, need to feel the impact of the government. Today, there is no steady electricity supply in the country and many other problems; so, I believe it is time for us to take our destiny in our hands.”

    Mr. Ikechukwu Ikeji of the Constitutional Right and Peoples Development Advocacy Initiative (CRAI) said what Nigerians needed was change and not restructuring, lamenting that because there were no healthcare structures, political leaders travelled abroad for medication.

    He called for a new code of conduct for elected officials, where they would be compelled to patronise local services and public utilities, such as medical and educational facilities, among others, instead of going abroad.

    “We call for a new law to make it compulsory for every public officer, elected or appointed, to use hospitals in Nigeria for all ailments and to send their children and wards to only Nigerian schools.”

    Ikeji noted that there was high level corruption in Nigeria among the so-called cabals, who have been sharing, the collective patrimony and commonwealth among themselves.

    “We therefore, insist on equitable distribution of same among Nigerians,” he said.

    Ikeji stated that the 1999 Constitution, even as amended, was fraught with irregularities.

    “We insist that any genuine change in Nigeria will have to start from correcting the fraud inherent in the constitution, such as not being autochthonous and lacking the imprimatur of the people it seems to constitute. We call for a pure and adulterated people constitution that will be subject to a genuine process of referendum”, he said.

  • Climate change: Why no one is safe

    SIR: Even with the greatest attempts to deny the reality of climate change quandary, one area we cannot fail to see climate change negatively impacting society is in the adverse health effects on communities. The direct effects span vector-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue fever. Others include West Nile virus, cholera, Lyme disease and asthma resulting from air pollution. Even Ebola is not left out of this conversation. According to Kris Murray, senior research scientist at EcoHealth Alliance, an organization that researches and educates about the relationships between wildlife, ecosystems and human health, climate change has strong potential to play a role in increasing the risk for Ebola. Meningitis too, famous for its epidemic in the earlier part of this year had its outbreak peaked by extremely low humidity and severe heat waves in the northern part of Nigeria.

    The major public health organizations of the world have said that climate change is a critical public health problem. Climate change makes many existing diseases and conditions worse, but it may also help introduce new pests and pathogens into new regions or communities. Dengue fever for instance infects about 400 million people each year, and is one of the primary causes of illness and death in the tropics and subtropics.

    Only a few weeks back, we witnessed the sad incident of flooding in Makurdi, an occurrence that was reported by the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) to have claimed several lives and put 110, 000 people at the risk of contracting diseases. There is also the mental effect of climate disaster displacements. Stress resulting from it jeopardizes immune systems, and it is difficult to maintain food hygiene in disaster zones.

    The health industry in Nigeria clearly has little or insufficient knowledge of climate change, and needs some irradiation to enable them grasp the connection it has with health and quantify the specific effects climate change has on the overall disease burden and on opportunities and effectiveness in the public health. This will help them better mitigate their adverse effects.

    The health sector can also use climate information effectively in epidemic early warning systems as useful indicators to support early detection of disease outbreaks and prepare ahead of time for epidemics that are likely to occur. This synergy should importantly include the emergency response agencies to enable them also be prepared for these disasters and obliterate the rate of climate-related illnesses.

    Essentially, climate change is not a game of hide and seek where one can play into the safe zones and eclipse their corner of the world from its balefully warm hands. The health effects of climate change are enormous, and we must first understand and accept that in order to prepare ourselves for solutions. We must also be reminded, however subtly, that with each activity we do to hurt the environment, we hurt our health, individually and collectively.

     

    • Caleb Adebayo,

    <calebadebayoc@gmail.com>

  • Climate change and health impacts

    In recent times, human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels have released sufficient quantities of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to trap additional heat in the lower atmosphere thereby affecting the climate. This inevitably results in rise in sea levels, change in rainfall pattern and melting of glaciers. Although, global warming has some positives such as fewer winter deaths in temperate climates and increased food production in certain areas, the overall health effects of a changing climate are likely to be overwhelmingly negative.

    Climate change affects almost every area of life especially the social and environmental determinants of health; clean air, safe drinking water, sufficient food and secure shelter. High atmospheric temperatures contribute directly to deaths resulting from cardio-vascular and respiratory diseases particularly among elderly people. Extreme temperatures also raise the levels of ozone and other pollutants in the air that exacerbate these diseases. Aeroallergen levels are also higher in extreme heat giving rise to asthma, which affects around 300 million people globally. These on-going temperature increases are expected to increase this burden, hence, the need for check and balances of the global climate.

    Globally, the number of reported weather-related natural disasters has more than tripled since the 1970s. Every year, these disasters result in over 60,000 deaths, with majority occurring in developing countries such as Nigeria. With more than half of the world’s population living within 70 km of the sea, people may be forced to move, when the sea level increases. Incidence such as these heightens the risk of a range of health effects, from mental disorders to communicable diseases. Increasingly variable rainfall patterns are also likely to affect the supply of fresh water. A lack of safe water can compromise hygiene and increase the risk of diarrhoea and cholera, which kills over 500,000 children aged under five years, annually. In extreme cases, water scarcity leads to drought and famine. A World Health Organization report states that by the late 21st century, climate change is likely to increase the frequency and intensity of drought at regional and global scale.

    The rate of recurrence of floods is also on the increase, and the frequency and intensity of extreme precipitation is also not left out. This has been visible in the Nigeria suburb with the latest in Makurdi, Benue State and others occurrences in Lagos and Ogun states among others. Floods contaminate freshwater supplies, increase the risk of water-borne diseases, and create breeding grounds for disease-carrying insects such as mosquitoes. They also cause drowning and physical injuries, damage homes and disrupt the supply of medical and health services. Rising temperatures and variable precipitation are also likely to decrease the production of staple foods in many of the poorest regions. This will increase the prevalence of malnutrition and starvation, which leads to reduced productivity and inevitably death.

    Climatic conditions strongly affect water-borne diseases and diseases transmitted through insects, snails or other cold blooded animals. Changes in climate are likely to lengthen the transmission seasons of important vector-borne diseases and also alter their geographic range. For example, malaria is strongly influenced by climate; transmitted by Anopheles mosquitoes, malaria kills over 400,000 people every year mainly African children under five years old. The aedes mosquito vector of dengue is also highly sensitive to climate conditions, and studies suggest that climate change is likely to continue to increase exposure to dengue.

    Measuring the health effects from climate change can only be very approximate. Nonetheless, an assessment by WHO, taking into account only a subset of the possible health impacts, and assuming continued economic growth and health progress, climate change is expected to cause approximately 250,000 additional deaths per year between 2030 and 2050; 38,000 due to heat exposure in elderly people, 48,000 due to diarrhoea, 60,000 due to malaria, and 95,000 due to childhood starvation.

    All populations will be affected by climate change, but some are more vulnerable than others. People living in small island developing states and other coastal regions such as Lagos, mega-cities, and mountainous and polar regions are particularly vulnerable. Children in particular, are among the most vulnerable to the resulting health risks and will be exposed longer to the health consequences. The health effects are also expected to be more severe for elderly people and people with infirmities or pre-existing medical conditions.

    Regions with poor health infrastructure will be the least able to cope without assistance to prepare and respond. Many policies and individual choices have the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and produce major health co-benefits. For example, cleaner energy systems, and promoting the safe use of public transportation and active movement  such as cycling or walking as alternatives to using private vehicles could reduce carbon emissions, and cut the burden of household air pollution, which causes some 4.3 million deaths per year, and ambient air pollution, which causes about 3 million deaths every year.

    Nigeria has a wide range of variety in energy production. The sunshine in the northern region is one that can kick out the use of fossil fuels if put into use. Hydro power is an indispensable tool that can also aid in bringing a halt to this ‘wolf in sheep clothing’ (crude oil). The Kainji Dam at New Bussa has proved beyond doubts that Nigeria has what it takes to foster on renewable energy and discard fossil fuels. Sadly, health challenges have also been on the increase in some parts of Nigeria due to oil pollution and gas flaring. For example, Ogoni has been regarded as a write-off as oil spilling has rendered farmlands, water, aquatic habitat, infrastructures and other viable resources useless. This fossil fuel has shown to be a nail-in-the-tooth and unreliable, which is an indicator for the urgent need to embrace renewable energy.

    There is a vivid uprising in the need for energy as the population is on a geometric increase, which is a loud call for policy makers to take a close look at the need to embrace renewable energy. Life and properties are being lost every day due to the constant depletion of the ozone; this and more would continually be a daily bread if our climate is not well protected.

     

    • Joshua, an environment activist, writes from Lagos.

  • Inspiring change

    Principal Consultant, Ideation Consult Limited, Tomisin Ajiboye, is leading a campaign to help small businesses formulate solutions that will change lives and foster impactful and sustainable growth .

    Principal Consultant, Man agement Consulting/ Training, Ideation Consult Limited,Tomisin Ajiboye, is empowering youths to develop entrepreneurial and business skills. He had seen many youths spent many years in the employment market.

    His motivation for the campaign started while he was in school. He was both a strong leader and change maker. After graduation, he is at the forefront of an impressive social enterprise, which is investing in future of others.

    But how did he come about this idea? He said: “I have always wanted to be an idea management consultant and a trainer right from my university days. I organised few events back in school and there was a certain one called Creative Reasoning & Art for Zenith Experience (C.R.A.Z.E.TIVITY). After the event and all its activities, I was very sure I wanted to manage the ideas of others for growth and global participation. Since I was IT inclined, it was much easier for me to quickly put a shape to my business idea. After school, it was a tough call to be an entrepreneur. I had no knowledge, no experience, no clients, no hope and no money. I had to get a job as a business development manager and was on it for eight months before I finally moved to Lagos to pursue my career.”

    He has been in the business  that he started with nothing for six years.

    Ajiboye said: “I started with almost no amount. All I had was a roof over my head, a help from two assistants (without payment), my laptop, internet, social media followers and a blackberry phone. Let’s say I started with N1, 500 internet subscriptions.”

    Despite their qualifications, he noticed many job seekers were unequipped for job opportunities.

    He has seen young intelligent Nigerians with degrees, but no knowledge about how to get jobs.

    To help them take  opportunities, he is educating them on business skills and employability.

    He trains people to perfect their interview skills, write compelling CVs and market their skills.

    He also prepares mid-level professionals who want to augment their skills.

    Today, the business is worth millions of naira.

    But he had challenges when he started. “We had a major failure with registering our business name. The original name was Idea Factory Consulting (without registration), when we started landing big clients, we were faced with demands of registering the company with Corporate Affairs Commission. But, alas, the name Idea Factory was already taken and every effort to show that we should be the authentic beneficiary of this name proved abortive. Then, the company lawyer finally let out our fears, and changed the company’s name.

    ‘’That would mean a full rebranding and we still had to do it in such a way that we still maintain the values and objectives of the company. It took us months and sacrifice but we recovered and gained new grounds. The company’s name is now Ideation Consult Limited.”

    “I had problems with managing cash inflows until I got help from a mentor. I had problems because of my ignorance but, fortunately, I learned how to use my ignorance to solve problems in a new way. And this has helped us become a specialist in workplace innovation management in the country. We have helped many organisations become more productive and profitable, led organisations through a productive brainstorming exercises with little budget and effort.“

    For him, being in business is more than making money, though making a living is important.

    It is a way of life that makes him happy while earning him a living, he said.

  • Enforcing the ‘Change’ agenda through public service reform

    Enforcing the ‘Change’ agenda through public service reform

    The present administration promotes “Change” as the lead slogan of its electioneering, aimed at zero tolerance for corruption, effective service delivery, discipline and good attitude to work, among other values.

    Mrs. Winifred Oyo-Ita, the Head of Civil Service of the Federation, has observed that to make the “Change” mantra efficient, the civil service must be reformed accordingly.

    In a lecture entitled: “The Role of civil service in a change environment: The change is now,’’ she said part of her reform plan and strategy was to make public servants efficient, productive and incorruptible.

    Mrs. Oyo-Ita, therefore, pledged to adopt innovative approach in civil service operations to promote efficient service delivery.

    She said: “Nigeria is blessed with a government that wants to do things differently, focusing on core needs of the country and citizenry.

    “There is no better time than now in this new challenging environment to change the service for the better by leveraging on the support and political will of the present government.

    “This is an opportunity to restore hope and dignity to the service by reversing the current perceived reputation for inefficiency, low productivity, corruption and insensitivity to the needs of the public.’’

    She explained that the public expectations of government had reached an all-time high due to an increasingly connected society, urbanisation and sophistication of citizens leveraged by the fast-evolving technology and social media.

    “The federal public service needs to change its narrative when interacting with Nigerians who are demanding more accountability at all levels of government as regards the quality of public service delivery.

    “The service will reinvent itself by rising to the occasion as demanded; the challenge of socio-economic and infrastructural development in Nigeria has required fresh ideas to tackle’’, she said.

    According to her, development of entrepreneurial culture, commercial orientation, the improvement of welfare and benefit packages for civil servants is paramount in the government’s scheme of things.

    The Head of Service said she recently signed an agreement with the Africa Initiative for Governance, a non-governmental organisation, established with the aim of inspiring public sector transformation in Africa, to enhance service delivery.

    She said the agreement would create a platform that would allow consultants to come on board and train civil servants to be efficient in the course of their jobs to grow the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

    Mrs. Oyo-Ita explained that the partnership with the organisation would help the service actualise the various reforms embedded in its plans over the years by engaging in capacity building programme for public service.

    She said: “This is the time of intellect, many developed nations don’t have oil and they depend on knowledge for their economic growth and we are ready to partner with the private sector to achieve growth.

    “There is a mysterious connection between how well the public service performs and the GDP of a nation and if we don’t get it right, we will continue to suffer as a poor nation.

    “Funds constraint has made civil servants of these days to be unexposed and not up to date with global standards but this partnership would address all these challenges.’’

    Commending the effort, Mr. Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede, Founder, Africa Initiative for Governance, said the agreement would enhance service delivery in the country.

    He explained that the organisation would also sponsor world class consultants in capacity building programme for public servants.

    Aig-Imoukhuede said that inability to pay international consultants was a major factor contributing to the underdevelopment of Africa.

    He observed that the Head of Service had developed a 2017 -2019 strategic plan aimed at revolutionising the civil service of the federation across different areas.

    He said: “The power of knowledge that exists in the private sector is tremendous and the government has not recognised this for it to harness the knowledge.

    “We want to ensure we remove the constraints between the public sector and private sector by this agreement and make sure Nigeria succeeds.’’

    To achieve effective Changed Agenda in public service reform, the Service Compact with all Nigerians (SERVICOM) has reiterated its commitment to promote an effective citizen- focused service delivery in ministries departments and agencies.

    Mrs. Nnenna Akajemeli, the National Coordinator of SERVICOM, said the service would also address the challenges of service failure in the public sector.

    She said the agency would embark on evaluation of services in the ministries departments and agencies to collect adequate report of service delivery and provide solutions to failures.

    Mrs. Akajemeli said: “We want to provide awareness on the side of service providers and service takers engaging them meaningfully so that they can challenge themselves to get the service providers to do what they are employed to do.

    “We will deploy our troops for the mystery shopping experience, where we go and evaluate quality of services and we will then work out strategies for improvement.”

    She said SERVICOM was collaborating with the Nigeria Educational Research Development Council (NERDC) to ensure the inclusion of SERVICOM programmes in the school curriculum.

    The Bureau of Public Service Reforms, promised to track the process of obtaining Driver’s Licence, International Passport and the certificates of National Agency for Food and Drug Control (NAFDAC) to curb corruption.

    Dr. Joe Abbah, Director-General of the organisation, said the tracking would ensure efficient and effective service delivery.

    He added that citizens would also be enlightened on how to follow the due process in acquiring their licences to ensure that officers would not take undue advantage of ignorant Nigerians.

    Abbah announced that the official price for renewing a three year Driver’s Licence was N6, 350 while that of five years was N10, 450.

    “We have been working with the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC), Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) the National Management Identity Management Commission, NAFDAC and other agencies, to track their licensing processes.

    “We are now having the actual prices of the Driver’s Licence put on at all licence processing centres. It is also available on the website of the FRSC and the duration for acquiring a licence will not be more than two months.

    “We are also doing some work with the International Passport process; the cost of a 32-page passport is N15, 000 and a 64-page passport is N20, 000.

    “We want to make it difficult for officers to abuse the system and that is by using technology and bypassing human interaction,’’ he said.

    Observers believe that the identified measures, if harnessed and implemented, will restore sanity and decorum to public service delivery system.

     

    By Kate Obande-Okewu is of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN)

  • Ibadan chieftaincy and imperatives of change

    Change, as the only constant in life, has become a universal aphorism. Nonetheless, humans are evolutionarily predisposed to resist change because of the inherent uncertainties. Organizations and people that don’t embrace change are bound to lose ground and stagnate. In the words of a late British Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, ‘He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery.’

    The hoopla that greeted the move by the Oyo State governor, Senator Abiola Ajimobi, to carry out a wholesale review of the existing Olubadan Chieftaincy Declaration and other related chieftaincies in Ibadanland because of its touted uniqueness, is nothing short of clinging to primordial sentiments. Nothing captures the hasty criticism from familiar quarters better than the words of John F. Kennedy, who once said that ‘Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.’

    The governor had on Friday, May 19, constituted a seven-member judicial commission of inquiry headed by a retired High Court judge, Justice Akintunde Boade, to review the 1957 Declaration of Olubadan on Ibadanland, which, he said, was no longer in tune with the current realities and modern trend in Yorubaland.

    The commission was saddled with the responsibility of reviewing the existing requirements and qualification for ascendancy to the throne of Olubadan, as well as to review the selection process from the two qualifying lines of Otun and Balogun.

    It was also mandated to look into the possibilities of having more beaded crown Obas in Ibadanland, taking into consideration the present size and population of the city.

    Ajimobi had made it clear that the review was long overdue. The governor said the primary purpose of the review was to facilitate the development, modernisation and effectiveness of the traditional chieftaincy system in the ancient city in particular and across the state in general.

    To disabuse the minds of cynics, he stressed that similar exercises were in the offing across the state, in order to create an enabling environment for active contributions of the traditional institution to the socio-economic development of the state.

    The move by the governor had attracted criticisms. A former governor of the state, Senator Rashidi Ladoja, was the first to raise dust. He was soon to be joined by others.

    Ladoja, the Osi Olubadan of Ibadanland and chieftain of the Accord Party, anchored his vituperation on the same old belief that the tradition of selecting the Olubadan had become long-established and rancour-free and should not be tinkered with.

    To Ladoja, who contested the governorship elections with Ajimobi in 2011 and 2015 and lost, the governor had left ‘other important issues’ unattended to, only to be focusing on the Ibadan chieftaincy.

    Section 26(1), (2), (3), (4) and (5) Cap. 28, Vol. 1, Laws of Oyo State of Nigeria empowers the governor to approve or review Chieftaincy Declaration of any chieftaincy in the state. To this extent, Ajimobi has not gone outside his mandate as far as the proposed review is concerned. With its vast population and cosmopolitan status, I dare to say that Ajimobi’s Ibadan, nay Oyo State, will not cling to antiquated customs no matter whose ox may be gored.

    The germane questions are: Shouldn’t a declaration made exactly 60 years ago be modified, especially if the need arises? Was the declaration not made by a particular government in 1957? Does the fact that no government had attempted to carry out the review mean that it should be left perpetually unattended to? Shouldn’t there be room for dynamism? Is the law so sacred to the extent that no reasonable mortal must dare touch it? Was the Ibadan of 1957 when the declaration was made still the same as we have today? Shouldn’t the status quo, therefore, be challenged to accommodate the changing face of the ancient city?

    It is sheer bunkum to whip up salary arrears sentiment to attempt to blackmail the governor into a state of helplessness over the governance of the state. It beggars belief that supposedly informed people will join the chorus of those suggesting that the governor should abdicate other responsibilities on the account of the four-month salaries arrears. With the ongoing spirited efforts by the governor, the state’s workforce will soon begin to sing a new song to the shame of the traducers of the Ajimobi-led administration.

    It may interest such people to know that Ajimobi is not a lone voice in his call for a review of the Olubadan chieftaincy. Those that have openly expressed similar views were a former governor of Oyo State, Dr. Omololu Olunloyo; renowned historian, Prof. Bolanle Awe; and a former Editor of Daily Times, Chief Areoye Oyebola. They bared their minds at a symposium organised by the state government as part of the activities for the funeral of the late Olubadan of Ibadanland, Oba Samuel Odulana Odugade I, held at the University of Ibadan on February 9, 2016.

    These eminent personalities and illustrious indigenes of Ibadan were unanimous in their opinion that the Ibadan chieftaincy declaration needed urgent review ‘to encourage younger, educated and influential men’ to ascend the exalted Olubadan stool.

    In a position paper on the theme of the event, “Issues in Ibadan Traditional Chieftaincy System,” Oyebola noted that the Olubadan chieftaincy system was fraught with complexities. This, he said, had made it impossible for any Olubadan to reign for long. He said it was not in the best interest of modern Ibadan city for a prospective Olubadan to wait for more than 35 years after becoming a Mogaji before becoming an Olubadan; since they must cross 22 or 23 promotional hurdles.

    Contributing to the discourse, Olunloyo said that the Olubadan chieftaincy tradition, Chiefs Law and Subsidiary Laws were replete with contradictions and obstacles that needed urgent review in order to make ascendancy to the Olubadan throne problem-free. Dismissing the age-old mantra about the Olubadan chieftaincy promotion, he said that the process was not without rancour as widely believed. The erudite scholar cited examples of the contention by the Seriki family and Iyalode chieftaincy lines to be accorded due recognition as examples of unresolved issues in the chieftaincy.

    Olunloyo said: “There are six obstacles in the way of an Olubadan. Some of these obstacles are in the Chiefs Laws and some are in the Subsidiary Law. The system is semi-promotional. There was this Akinyo crisis when the late Oba Akinyele wanted to become Olubadan. In fact, what the law even says is that the Olubadan-in-council can choose from the four most senior chiefs in any line to become the next Kabiyesi, not necessarily the most senior. Something must be done to reduce the lines and the rung of the ladder. We also need to remove all obstacles in the Chiefs Law.”

    Corroborating this stance, Awe said that in spite of its touted uniqueness, the Olubadan traditional chieftaincy needed to be rejigged to encourage younger men to become Olubadan. What more can one say?

    It is on record that the late Oba Odugade waited for 42 years after becoming Mogaji before he was installed as the Olubadan at the age of 93. The reigning Olubadan, Oba Saliu Adetunji, mounted the throne at the age of 87 after staying on the queue for 40 years, just to cite the most recent examples.

    The need for more beaded crown-wearing obas aside the Olubadan, is also hinged on the need for the paramount ruler to be assisted in the traditional administration of the city. This will further strengthen the position of the Olubadan as the paramount ruler and imperial majesty in Ibadanland as applicable in Ogun, Osun and Ekiti states.

    Rather than crucifying Ajimobi for taking this bold step, he should be commended and encouraged to extend the exercise to other towns and cities in the state whose chieftaincy laws need similar review. And for genuine and constructive critics, they will have the opportunity of making their submissions in written form before the judicial commission of inquiry when it begins public hearing. For now, let the naysayers sheathe their swords.

     

    • Sadeeq is Senior Special Assistant on Media (Print) to the Governor of Oyo State.