The Nation Newspaper

Tag: example

  • A bad example

    A bad example

    • CCT boss Umar deserves to go, but the President and National Assembly should follow due process in removing him

    The sacked Chairman of the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT), Danladi Umar, turned a tragicomedy while in office, instead of being the nation’s conscience in corporate governance. Arguably, the laws establishing the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) and the CCT, are confusing.  While the CCB is listed in Section 153 of the constitution as an executive body, the CCT, on the other hand, is a judicial body, listed in Paragraph 15 of the Fifth Schedule to the 1999 Constitution.

    Since the two are treated interchangeably, the Chairman of the CCB, who is also the Chairman of the CCT, sits astride the executive and judicial arms of the government concurrently. Interestingly, despite being notorious, Mr Umar’s removal from the office, which he had allegedly serially abused, has sparked controversy on whether legal due process was followed by the President and the Senate.

    Every fair-minded person would agree that Mr Umar had become gangrene on the two key agencies he headed, but since we are in a democratic dispensation, due process must be followed to sack him. The confusion led the Senate to wrongly invoke section 157(1) of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) to sack Mr Umar as Chairman of the tribunal, which is a judicial body, when the section only mentioned CCB, which is an executive body.  The section provides that the Senate can remove a member of the bureau without recourse to the House of Representatives.

    Conversely, the chairman of the tribunal can only be removed under Paragraph 15(3) of the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution. By that provision, the President will act on “an address supported by two-thirds majority of each House of the National Assembly praying that he be so removed for inability to discharge the function of the office in question (whether arising from infirmity of mind or body) or for misconduct or contravention of this Code.”  Indeed, Mr Umar was a cat with two lives, and he exploited it.

    Even the President originally fell into that error when, by an executive fiat, he sought to appoint Abdullahi Usma Bello as the new chairman of the tribunal, an appointment changed to reflect him as the chairman of the bureau. Thankfully, the Senate and the House of Representatives are harmonising their position to effectively kill the infectious worm. Clearly, the allegations against Mr Umar are legion, and it showed, as 84 senators across party lines and regions, signed to remove him from office.

    Read Also: Tinubu swears in CCB Chairman Bello

    According to the Senate Leader, Bamidele Opeyemi: “The Code of Conduct Tribunal, as a statutory institution is expected to uphold virtues of integrity, probity, and accountability.” He added: “However, Mr. Yakubu Danladi Umar’s conduct has fallen short of these requisite standards for a public officer entrusted with such responsibilities.” Earlier in 2018, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, had filed a bribery and judicial racketeering case against Mr Umar, as Chairman of the CCT.

    The commission accused him of receiving N1.8 million out of an alleged N10 million he demanded from one Rasheed Taiwo, in 2012. To his credit, the then Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, SAN, withdrew the case for “lack of merit”, and Justice Yusuf Halilu of the Abuja High Court, subsequently struck out the case. In 2021, a video went viral, which showed Mr Umar assaulting a 22-year-old security guard, one Mr Clement Sargwak. The security man had tried to ensure that Mr Umar’s car was properly parked in a parking lot.

    While Mr Sargwak, through his lawyers, and non-governmental organisations wrote several petitions against Mr Umar, his office accused the security man of being rude to Mr Umar. The effort by the 9th Senate to hold Mr Umar to account yielded nothing. Despite several invitations, following petitions, Mr Umar appeared only once before the Senate Committee on Ethics, Privileges and Public Petition. Also in 2022, some staff of the CCT accused Mr Umar of fraud, corruption, nepotism and marginalisation.

    He was also accused of fraudulently awarding contracts without recourse to procedure and due process. The staff further accused him of blocking their annual training, amongst several other infractions. In the discharge of his duties, the sacked CCT chairman made very controversial decisions. The most controversial being the trial and conviction of former Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Walter Onnoghen, for alleged false assets declaration, instead of recourse to the National Judicial Commission (NJC). He ordered that Justice Onnoghen be removed by President Muhammadu Buhari, and his bank accounts frozen.

    It is a mark of our fractious democracy that Mr Umar survived these controversies this long. Yet, the CCT and CCB are two fundamental institutions that can deepen transparency and accountability in governance. With its enormous powers to oversight a wide range of public officers, including the legislators, the Presidency, the judiciary, the army, amongst others, the occupier of that office must be a person of unimpeachable character. Mr Danladi Umar fell short of that highest standard.

    We urge the National Assembly and the Presidency to make sure that due process is followed, to ensure a final interment of his scary ghost.

  • Dr. Obasanjo’s example

    Dr. Obasanjo’s example

    •A lesson for young and old alike

    After earning a doctorate in Christian Theology from the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) on December 15, former President Olusegun Obasanjo got the public wondering what he would do next.  He hit the headlines when in November 2006 he enrolled for a post-graduate diploma programme in Christian Theology at the university. This was a few months to the end of his eight-year period as President.  He graduated in January 2009.

    Remarkably, during NOUN’s fifth convocation in January 2016, the Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Vincent Tenebe, said:  “It is interesting to note that Obasanjo will be graduating with a Master’s Degree (MA-Christian Theology) having met the requirements for the award during this convocation. Having been given the admission to study MA/PhD in Christian Theology, Obasanjo will continue with his PhD fully. This is very unique, considering his age and commitments; he also made a very good cumulative grade point.’’

    Obasanjo, a retired general and former military head of state, successfully defended his 250-page PhD Thesis titled: “Resolving the Unfinished Agenda in Liberation Theology: Leadership, Poverty and Underdevelopment in North Eastern Nigeria.” His focus reflected an abiding patriotic interest in finding solutions to the country’s problems and projected his standing as an elder statesman. The defence before a six-man panel reportedly lasted almost three hours at the university’s Abeokuta Study Centre, Oke Mosan, Ogun State.

    According to a report, in reply to a question by the chairman of the panel, Dr. Samaila Mande(Dean, Postgraduate School,NOUN), on why he should be awarded a PhD, Obasanjo  “said he had put in “enough study” and “intellectual rigours” to produce his work.” He has been quoted as saying that he chose to study theology “to deepen his knowledge of God and serve Him better and not because he aspired to become a pastor.”

    It is interesting that when in May he presented his research proposal to the university’s Faculty of Arts as part of the requirements for the award of a doctorate, Obasanjo reportedly “urged the supervisor to thoroughly peruse his research work as the standard demands.” He was quoted as saying: “Don’t pass me if I didn’t do well. So, be hard and harsh because they will scrutinise it. If I didn’t do well and you passed me, the blame would be shared.”

    He also gave an insight into why he went back to school: “The purpose for me (of coming back to study) is to set an example; to show that learning is from cradle to grave. And as long as you are alive, you must learn. However, if you want to learn, you must subject yourself to a form of discipline: taking exams, making sure that you go through the rigours of learning and so on.”

    There is no doubt that Obasanjo’s educational achievement at the age of 80 is an appealing advertisement for the pursuit of knowledge. He attended Abeokuta Baptist High School; Mons Officers’ Cadet School, Aldershot, England; Royal College of Military Engineering, Chatham, England and School of Survey, Newbury, England. He also attended the British Royal Engineers’ Young Officers School, Shrivenham, England; Indian Defence Staff College; Indian Army School of Engineering and Royal College of Defence Studies, London.

    By studying at the National Open University, Obasanjo helped to boost the university’s status and provoked reflections on the state of the country’s university system.  He had observed:  “We have 153 universities with over 200 million population. They are not enough…That is why this university is very important. The Open and Distance Learning is the answer to that. There is no substitute for it.” It is noteworthy that the university, which was established in 1983 and stopped a year later by a military government, came back to life under the Obasanjo administration in 2001.

    Obasanjo’s example not only shows the importance of learning, it also bespeaks the beauty of pursuing a goal with determination and achieving it. He has demonstrated what is academically possible with a sense of purpose.  It is a lesson for young and old alike.

  • Bonnke urges parents to live by example

    Bonnke urges parents to live by example

    Renowned preacher, Evangelist Reinhard Bonnke, has urged parents to live by example.

    The cleric said whatever they do in life would either lead their children to heaven or hell.

    The preacher spoke yesterday at the just-concluded “Farewell crusade” opposite OPIC Plaza on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway.

    According to him, the world is full of prodigal parents who do nothing but lead their children astray.

    Citing the example of a man in Lesotho, who he described as a drunkard, Bonnke said the man’s little boy also took to drinking at a joint.

    He said when the man saw his son at the joint, he wondered how he got there.

    Bonnke said: “The father asked the boy how he got there and the boy said he followed the footsteps of his father.”

    The preacher said there would be peace in the family if parents allowed Jesus to come into their lives, adding that their children would follow suit.

    He added that the border to eternity is never ahead of man.

    Bonnke said: “The old must die as well as the young. That is why the scripture says ‘now is the day of salvation’. Now is the acceptable time. Today is the day of salvation.”

    The preacher said Nigeria would be saved, adding that God would break the yoke of suffering in the land.

  • Quality assurance in varsities: Umudike example

    The news that 28 professors at the Michael Okpara Federal University of Agriculture in Umudike were demoted came as shock and a surprise to me as a retired university professor. Things have definitely changed in the university system in Nigeria. This watering down of standards was recently underscored when JAMB lowered admission scores into universities to 120 out of a total of 400 marks. Thank God this ridiculous admission policy was roundly condemned by the universities themselves and by parents who felt standards should be higher in the interest of academic integrity of the universities. What apparently happened in Michael Okpara Federal University of Agriculture was that 28 people who were either promoted or appointed professors were deemed unqualified by a committee of joint Senate and Council and were therefore demoted to either Readers (Associate Professors) Senior lecturers or lecturers grade one! How could this have happened in a university that has been in existence for at least two decades or so? Was there no Appointments and Promotions Committee (APC) which meets to do a final approval of an assessment and interview process when presumably papers of potential professors would have been sent out to senior professors who are experts in the fields of candidates being considered for appointments or promotions? In the old days when the university system in Nigeria was small, papers were always sent to the IUC ( inter university council) which was an outfit of the Association of Commonwealth universities (ACU) for assistance in sending papers to experts located in several commonwealth universities. All universities in the commonwealth were members of the ACU. It was therefore axiomatic that a professor in one university, say Ibadan would be accepted as professor in any Commonwealth university either on sabbatical leave or for regular appointment. The hallmark of a good university was the international make up of its staff. All this has of course changed. We do not have the money to recruit international staff anymore because a British university professor for example earns £100,000 per year which is about N50 million. Recently, the British government issued a warning to British universities vice chancellors to defend their salaries of £150,000 per year and this is about N75 million. Vice chancellors in Nigerian universities earn N12 million per year while their professor colleagues earn lower than half of that. The point I am trying to make is that it appears that people are being made professors because of the salaries attached to the category or class of appointees and not as a mark of academic distinction and excellence.

    Having said this, it is still puzzling to me why somebody who is a lecturer grade one would be appointed a professor. An extremely brilliant person could be promoted from senior lecturer to professor, but even then, his papers would have to have been assessed by external assessors suggested by his head of department or Dean of his or her faculty or college to guide the vice chancellor who will make the final decision about the external assessor. In all this process, anonymity of the external assessor is the rule rather than the exception. In extremely rare and exceptional cases, the number of years as teacher may not be relevant in appointing a person a professor.

    In the case of Michael Okpara Federal University of Agriculture, the vice chancellor and the council stand condemned and indicted and should be removed immediately if they are still in office. I am sure this travesty of the system is not limited to the university alone; the practice pervades the entire university system especially the new federal universities and some of their state counterparts. It is also a reflection of the low academic calibre of some of these vice chancellors. In the rush to establish federal universities, assistant professors (lecturers) from some American universities and senior lecturers from existing Nigerian universities were appointed vice chancellors. These unqualified people’s first action as vice chancellors was to promote themselves as professors and after doing this, they had no moral right to deny promotion to their academic colleagues and friends. I personally know of a case of a former student of mine who moved from lecturer to professor the same year by tactically shopping around and moving from one university to the other until arriving at his destination of professorship. This has been made possible by the ballooning number of universities without corresponding planning for staffing them. I know of a case of a young lecturer in a hard area of computer science applying for a job of senior lecturer in another university. As soon as he got it and without even assuming the position, made a bid as in an auction or in a market for a higher post in another university and got appointed a professor. There are professors and there are professors of course! This academic title has become like chieftainship title in the usual bad tradition in Nigeria. Academic trade unionists also sometimes blackmail their vice chancellors to make them professors and many weak vice chancellors have surrendered to these people by manipulating the appointments process to bastardize the system. If we are to be honest with ourselves, there is a systemic problem in Nigerian universities. First of all the crowding of the university system by the new mushrooms of federal universities and their private counterparts has led to too many unqualified people masquerading as academics in our universities. Any professor who is neither known by colleagues here at home and abroad is not fit to parade himself as a professor unless of course he is a band leader of one our musical groups! The calibre of people being made vice chancellors should be looked into because academic leadership in a university can only be provided by a true academic who knows his onions. Respect for academic excellence can only emanate from a boss who has gone through the academic grill and not from an academic parvenu or upstart who came to his or her position through political jobbery. The council of any university is crucial to maintaining academic integrity. A situation where failed politicians or any politician at all are routinely appointed pro chancellors and chairmen of councils does not augur well for the future. These buccaneers do not belong to universities because to them public office is for material exploitation and self-aggrandizement. Governments at state and federal levels must find other ways of compensating their colleagues after elections. There are several knowledgeable retired academics who can bring their experience to bear on supervising the universities and maintaining oversight responsibility for the good of the universities. There should be a stop to further licensing of new universities by the NUC. The more universities are established, the downward spiral the universities will experience in its academic integrity.

    Most universities in the country have units of Quality Assurance charged with ensuring academic offering in terms of good teaching and laboratory supervision of students as well as ensuring that lecturers go to their classes to teach. The unit also ensures the integrity of examinations and fairness in assessments. All this is good but any academic who has to be monitored to do what is necessary by my own book does not belong in the university system. What this Quality Assurance should also do is check the academic claims and certificates of those who are teaching. It will surprise us what we would find. In 1979 when I was director of the NUC office in Washington D.C, we found two members of staff in the Department of Business Administration in University of Lagos who falsely claimed they had PhD. from an American university. On investigation we found out that the so-called university was only a certificate-issuing one room office in California. When confronted with this fact, one of the people involved disappeared into the thin air and we never heard from him again and the other begged to go back to a regular university. I do not know why this latter person got away with this lenient treatment on the grounds that his Masters’ degree was genuine why the doctorate degree was fake. He later returned to the university and several years later became professor and head of department!

    The situation in Michael Okpara University has exposed the soft underbelly of the Nigerian universities. The federal government can set up independent audit committees of retired professors to look into the appointment and promotion processes of these universities and try to streamline them. The state universities should do the same. The NUC which has spread the joy of university ownership to all and sundry should be empowered to do the same for all private universities. Their reports should be submitted to the various councils of these universities for their implementation. Quality assurance should spread to every aspect of the university system from staff to students in order to remove the stain of low quality staff as well as people holding unmerited positions of academic leadership in our universities. This is the only way to avoid everybody in the universities being tarred with the brush of academic fraud which sadly pervades the entire university system in Nigeria and casting doubt on the quality of academic degrees and certificates awarded by Nigerian universities.

  • NIMASA’s worthy example

    While government institutions should be about serving the people and not mainly for profit making, logic also says that such institutions should strive not to operate at a loss. However, over the recent years, many Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) in the country seem to have worn the toga of revenue drains.

    But recently, two agencies – Joint Admissions Matriculation Board (JAMB) and Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) – broke the evil jinx and actually made reasonable contributions to the federal purse.

    It’s easy to understand JAMB’s profitability. With Nigeria’s huge youth population, coupled with the hunger for education, it was expected to deliver more earning to the treasury as citizens embrace it. NIMASA of course, given its mandate and the virility of Nigeria’s maritime space, is also expected to make good revenue. But before this current dispensation, these two agencies were not profitable.

    And so when the Federal Government via the Ministry of Finance and the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation recently commended NIMASA for its revenue performance in the past one year, it came to many Nigerians as a pleasant surprise.

    While addressing a conference on compliance with the Fiscal Responsibility Act in Abuja, Finance Minister Kemi Adeosun, had singled out and commended NIMASA as one of the agencies doing well in terms of revenue generation and remittances to the federal government’s Treasury Single Account (TSA). Though she didn’t mention the figures then, NIMASA later declared that it remitted N9.975bn and $46.025 million in 2016 as against N4.955bn remitted in 2015.

    Truth is, Nigerians have always known many government institutions as mere conduits for corruption. That Adeosun made NIMASA the poster boy for the MDAs should not come as a surprise to industry watchers. And now, following this development, the federal government wants to probe the previous heads of both NIMASA and JAMB regarding their revenue drive.

    “Unlike NIMASA and the Joint Admission Matriculation Board (JAMB), some agencies and departments are operating in such a manner that returned minimal funds to government,” said Adeosun.

    “To this effect, a circular has been issued restricting allowable expenses in line with reforms occurring across government businesses, as compliance checks would be undertaken regularly to ensure that all agencies and departments adhere to the new requirements.”

    Mrs Adeosun also noted that the current management of NIMASA has introduced processes that blocked loopholes and thus increased revenue generation, subsequently improving its reputation and leading to confidence from stakeholders in the maritime sector.

    Tagging along with Adeosun’s position was the Accountant-General of the Federation (AGF), Ahmed Idris, who commended NIMASA.

    He said: “It was also the first time in recent years that NIMASA will remit huge revenue into the government coffers.”

    Idris also urged other MDAs to be more creative in their revenue generation drive so as to meet their targets and collectively earn revenue to fund the 2017 budget.

    If the transformation at NIMASA appears as magic, it may simply mean that the Director General, Dakuku Peterside, is a magician. But his magic of increased revenue generation most probably lies in identifying and blocking loopholes responsible for siphoning of government funds, thereby improving its reputation which ensures confidence from stakeholders in the maritime sector.

    Even though the current management reduced its operational cost, it generated more money at six months than it did in the past two years. What was different? This time, the major difference would appear to be infusion of new ideas by the Peterside-led management.

    Since the President appointed Peterside as NIMASA Director-General on March 10, 2016, Peterside had always reiterated that the maritime sector, if properly harnessed, can successfully fund a huge component of the total budgetary requirement of the country.  And aside being recognised for transforming NIMASA and increasing the agency’s contributions to Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF), Peterside has been recognised on other fronts.

    In April this year at the third conference of the Association of Africa Maritime Administrations, AAMA, in Abuja, Peterside was unanimously elected first President of AAMA at the end of the conference, putting Nigeria atop Africa’s maritime podium.

    And recently, Peterside informed stakeholders at a forum in Lagos that the agency has begun the automation of all its processes in order to allow for probity and accountability.

    He also disclosed that the agency had devolved more powers to its zonal offices to allow for early conclusion of transactions to ultimately plug revenue leakages and that NIMASA is now operating 24 hours in line with the Ease of Doing Business initiative of the federal government.

    NIMASA has also concluded plans to disburse $100 million Cabotage Vessel Financing Fund (CVFF) to indigenous ship owners at a single digit interest. Peterside disclosed this last month during a stakeholders’ session organised by the Nigerian Ship Finance Conference and Exhibition, NISFCOE. With the high interest in the country, this move will boost stakeholder confidence.

    “We would match the CVFF fund with some money coming from the financial institutions”, Peterside had said.

    “This will crash the rate of borrowing, and that is why we are passionate about disbursing CVFF to bring our own funds to come almost at the cost of nothing and match it with their own fund coming at the rate of 25 percent. The first thing that would happen is that the rate would crash from 25 percent to a one digit interest rate.”

    “CVFF is lying at the Central Bank of Nigeria under TSA arrangement, we are working hard to disburse it, and it is over a hundred million dollars. We are in talks with the Central Bank of Nigeria; we want to change the terms of trade from Free-on-board (FOB) to Cost-Insurance and Freights (CIF), but how many persons are prepared for this regime? If we get NNPC to change the terms of trade and we are getting the support of the Presidency, if we get it changed, how many of us are ready?”

    That Nigeria has potential and virile leaders to make her truly a great on the world platform is a fact. The way it stands now, parties profiting from the hitherto lackadaisical operation mode at NIMASA will not be happy at the change there. Those voices must not be considered as the agency is for not for the profiteering of cabals but for the good of all Nigerians. So far, Peterside’s strides at NIMASA have earned him commendations from both President Muhammadu Buhari and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo. NIMASA and the country need such people.

     

    • Odafe writes from Lagos.
  • Perewari Pere’s example

    Perewari Pere’s example

    As a nation, we must find a way to ensure funds for this kind of scholarship are set aside even before the students resume. The money should be kept in a special or dedicated account and should not be used for any other purpose other than footing their bills. Making the students go through the hassle of being harassed by school authorities over unpaid bills is capable of affecting their academic performance. Who knows may be there would have been more Peres if only the stress of being harassed for unpaid fees were not there.

    I cannot remember my first contact with the money-spinner called Niger Delta. It must be decades ago. Thanks to journalism, especially those early days and years when nowhere was too far to go in search of news capable of being rendered in good prose.

    Before my physical contact with the oil-rich region, I had met it in books, in articles, on television and on radio. I remember Ikot Ekpene, Bassey, Edet and those imageries of Akwa Ibom and Niger Delta in our literature text at Orile-Agege Primary School, Orile-Agege, Agege, a Lagos suburb.

    From those early contacts, the promise of the region was not lost on me. It was a region flowing with milk and honey, a region of great minds and a region meant to flourish and flower.

    Its key cities, such as Port Harcourt and Benin, are convergence for races— Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa, Kanuri, Ibibio and others.

    Some years back, the region, especially Port Harcourt, wore a new garment, the garment of fear.  Fear walked on all fours. That ended the era where oil giants made money and were not afraid. Now, their gates are manned by stern-looking soldiers or riot policemen. Their key figures are escorted everywhere by gun-toting security men. My last trip to Port Harcourt on the invitation of Eleme Petrochemical Company opened my eyes to the danger of being an expatriate in the Niger Delta. They live secluded lives and go out with heavily-armed security men ready to take on kidnappers and armed robbers.

    Politicians — out to show strength — have not helped the Niger Delta. They empower young and jobless youths with rifles and machine guns. Opponents are taken down with ease. When there are no political opponents to harass, the boys turn their guns against innocent citizens. Big boys now move around in bullet-proof vehicles. Many now take their kids far away to school.

    Shooting of guns or throwing of bombs is not strange in the region. Politicians outsource the punishment of their opponents through fatal deaths to cultists. Heads are freely broken. Necks are twisted with ease. Arms have hot leads pumped into them regularly. It is simply a tale of blood in many streets and creeks of the Niger Delta.

    It was in this region that in one fell swoop, nine persons, including a father, his two sons and daughter were killed. The Adube family members are still in tears and are seeking justice — which, I am afraid, may never come.

    Because of the madness in the region, many are now homeless. Many are now fatherless; many are widows; and many are on wheel chairs, with pellets of bullets lodged in their bones.  You can imagine the pains of walking around with legs that feel like wood. Dreams have died and aspirations doomed. It is a crazy world out there. Really crazy world.

    Welcome to this world where many a youth sees the easy way as the only way to make money. Here a sizeable population of youth prefer to roll on the lap of luxury, enjoy the extravagancies of women of easy virtues and turn champagne to hand-washing liquid. Thanks to easy cash in the hands of men with brawns and no brains.

    Don’t get me wrong; I am not saying the Niger Delta story is all gloom. Far from it. And that was why I was excited early in the week when the news broke that a Bayelsan, Perewari Victor Pere, bagged First Class Honours from Lincoln University, United States. He also emerged the Overall best and was named University’s Valedictorian.

    Bayelsa State Governor Henry Seriake Dickson expressed his delight over Pere’s feat, which was achieved in Mathematics/ Computer Science.

    I was doubly excited when I got to the part of the report which said Pere’s brilliance has caught the attention of foremost ICT giant Apple, which is considering having him on its payroll.

    Pere’s dream would have been aborted if the Lincoln authorities had not been lenient. At a point, his sponsor, the Bayelsa State government, which was also sponsoring 20 other students in the university, could not afford to pay their bills as and when due. The state government has only managed to cough out $500,000 of what it owes. Dickson says the balance will be paid.

    Beneficiaries of similar scholarship, sponsored by the Presidential Amnesty Programme, ran into stormy waters because of inability of the programme to meet their financial obligations to institutions. Many of them graduated recently and did exceptionally well.

    Not less than 2,000 students are abroad studying for one degree or the other on the bill of the Amnesty Programme, which was introduced during the regime of the late Umar Musa Yar’Adua, to bring peace to the Niger Delta. There are several others who have been trained as pilots, marine engineers, underwater welders and experts in various oil and gas fields. A motor assembly plant is planned for the Niger Delta and it will be run by ex-agitators trained at Innoson Academy by the Amnesty Office. These are the Peres of the Niger Delta and should be put to good use.

    My final take: As a nation, we must find a way to ensure funds for this kind of scholarship are set aside even before the students resume. The money should be kept in a special or dedicated account and should not be used for any other purpose other than footing their bills. Making the students go through the hassle of being harassed by school authorities over unpaid bills is capable of affecting their academic performance. Who knows may be there would have been more Peres if only the stress of being harassed for unpaid fees were not there.

    We should also find a way to ensure that those still on the streets of the Niger Delta instilling fears in others through kidnapping, armed robbery and all kinds of criminalities must be taken off and made to turn a new leave and if they are unwilling, they should be fished out, prosecuted and jailed.

    Niger Delta is a first class society and there should be no room for killer-politicians and youths out to make free cash to lavish on women, champagne and all manners of frivolities.

  • El-Rufai’s example

    El-Rufai’s example

    SIR: Governor Nasir El-Rufai has just set a good example by laying bare the financials of Kaduna State including the omnibus security votes collectively treated by the governors as personal allowance extraneous to public accounts.

    It is particularly gratifying, taking a cursory look at the details of the security vote, that El-Rufai found it expedient to include CCTV cameras in the security architecture of Kaduna State. This is an infrastructure not considered a priority by most state governors including those with Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) worth multiples of Kaduna’s.

    Needless to say that CCTV camera remains global basic security metrics for cosmopolitan administration yet many governors are being festooned with medals for constructing roads as if road construction is a template of modern governance. They purport to turn their states into construction sites without any plan for globally acceptable minimum security accessories. Most of the roads don’t have drainage and when the do, the drainages are channeled to nowhere; yet they’re called best governors.

    One other shocking revelation from El-Rufai’s disclosure is the stipendiary nature of governor’s basic salary. If a governor is made to earn less than N500,000 in basic salary and the same person is made steward over billions of naira through a very fluid, opaque and an untitled House of Assembly, it seems this a constitutional license for the governor to steal.

    Now that El-Rufai has taken the lead, the House of Representatives, through the Speaker, should also do likewise. Moreover, a National Assembly that is spending more than many states of the federation combined is superfluous for this austere dispensation and must be cut to size.

    Finally, any state governor that fails to follow the path blazed by El Rufai ought to be treated as enemy of the people not deserving of the position.

     

    • Bukola Ajisola,

    bukymany@yahoo.com

  • Buhari/Osinbajo: A towering example

    SIR: A lot has been said and a lot has happened too to our democracy and the rule of law since President Muhammadu Buhari assumed the mantle of leadership on 29th May, 2015. In truth, some of his policies and tactics especially in the fight against corruption have alarmed staunch believers in democracy and the rule of law, and this writer has been alarmed on several occasions.

    However, in spite of the many shadows that stalked the President during his vacation overseas until his return on 10th March, 2017, the vacation provided an unlikely window into the President‘s avowed transmogrification from a military man to a democrat at heart. It had to do with the fact that for the second time he was going on vacation, he transmitted his powers to his Vice President, Professor   Yemi Osibanjo, to hold the fort for him while he was away.

    President Buhari’s staunchest critics would easily say that he did nothing more than complying with a constitutional prescription which would pale in comparison with the myriad times the rule of law has been shoved aside under his watch. Yet, that act of transmitting a letter to the National Assembly shines brilliantly given the unsavoury experiences of many Nigerians. It betrays the fact that the two men enjoy mutual respect for each other and maintain a healthy working relationship. Now that the President is back, he has allowed the Vice President to continue to act for him citing his need and desire for more rest.

    Ordinarily, this should pale into insignificance in the face of the multitude of challenges confronting the country and the mostly unbridled zeal of the executive to whip the country into line, but in a country where rancour at worst, and mutual suspicion at best, usually defines the relationship between Presidents and their vice presidents, and governors and their deputies, Buhari and Osibanjo stand out in this regard.

    Former President Goodluck Jonathan undoubtedly enjoyed a good working relationship with his vice president, Namadi Sambo, a man of profound humility. But between Obasanjo and Atiku and more subtly between the late Yar’Adua and Gooodluck Jonathan, there was no love lost and ambitions played greatly disconcerting roles. In many states too,  the relationship between governors and  their deputies usually falls apart.

    In the service of the people, there should be no petty struggles over power capable of straining relationships irreparably. The Buhari/Osibanjo model provides a towering example.

     

    • Kenechukwu Obiezu,

    Abuja

  • Sultan’s worthy example

    •He has spoken well: killer herdsmen are criminals and should therefore be prosectued

    The President Muhammadu Buhari administration has received well deserved plaudits for the vigour, sense of purpose and effectiveness with which it has tackled and significantly curtailed the protracted Boko Haram insurgency that had laid large swathes of the North-East economically and socially prostrate. However, the menace of killer herdsmen attacking and destroying lives and property in communities across the country, purportedly in defence of their cattle from rustlers as well as to enforce the access of their animals to grazing land, has emerged as one of the most potent threats to Nigeria’s peace, cohesion and stability.

    Indeed, some have contended, and not without justification, that the atrocities of these herdsmen constitute a far more dangerous form of terrorism and pose a more potent threat to national unity than Boko Haram’s violent religious extremism. But for occasional and infrequent forays to other parts of the North such as the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, as well as Kano and Niger states, Boko Haram’s destructive operations have been largely confined to the North-East. On the other hand, violent incidents between rampaging herdsmen and host communities resulting in large scale death and destruction have been witnessed across the country’s geo-political zones encompassing such areas as Benue, Plateau, Oyo, Ondo, Ekiti, Edo, Enugu, Rivers, Kwara, Delta and Ebonyi states.

    It is not surprising that in a complex plural society like ours, the herdsmen challenge has taken on highly combustible ethno-religious colourations. Over time, cattle-rearing has been associated with the Fulani who are also predominantly Muslim. Yet, the peaceful herdsmen armed with sticks and daggers to guide and protect their animals have inexplicably morphed into the contemporary variant equipped with AK 47 assault rifles, which they flaunt openly without sanction, and utilise to wreak havoc on communities with which they once interacted harmoniously.

    Matters have not been helped by the perception that the audacity and impunity of the herdsmen have worsened under the present administration even though President Buhari, himself a Fulani and Muslim, has directed security agencies to deal decisively with the miscreants. Yet, the administration’s response to the killer herdsmen issue has often appeared tentative and tame. This contrasts sharply with the uncompromising resoluteness it has exhibited in dealing with the Boko Haram insurgency, Niger Delta militancy or pro-Biafra agitations.

    Indeed, the claim by some top members of the Buhari administration that the killer herdsmen are not Nigerians but foreign terrorists has come across as an attempt to rationalise the indefensible. If this position is true, how do these alien herdsmen know the grazing routes so well across the country? In any case, does this not suggest a gross dereliction of duty on the part of the security agencies that are meant to guard the country’s borders and protect the lives and property of her citizens?

    It is against this background that we commend the statesmanship of the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar III, who, while addressing a pan-Northern assembly in Kaduna recently, called on the Federal Government to treat killer herdsmen as the criminals that they are by ensuring they are prosecuted. In the Sultan’s words, “There are very terrible herdsmen who kill. But they are acting on their own, they are criminals and they must be treated as criminals. Therefore, the Federal Government should prosecute them. It is disheartening to hear when people say Fulani herdsmen want to Islamise Nigeria and that is why they are killing. Any Fulani herdsman who kills is not acting the script of the Fulani community in Nigeria neither is he working for the Muslim community”.

    As the foremost voice of the Hausa-Fulani and Muslim communities in Nigeria, the Sultan has spoken with courage, integrity and wisdom. His is a worthy example. We urge the Federal Government to heed this patriotic counsel.

  • Oba Tejuoso’s matrimonial example

    Oba Tejuoso’s matrimonial example

    For the typical African monarch who has taken more than one queen, maintaining order and harmony in the royal household often proves a herculean task. They often end up abandoning the home front to their squabbling queens while finding hollow succour in the mundane task of ruling their kingdoms.

    Not so the Osile of Oke Ona, Oba Adedapo Adewale Tejuoso, who has somehow managed to create an atmosphere of amity and camaraderie between his three queens, Olori Omolara, Olori Yetunde and Olori Olabisi, so much so that rather than being at one another’s throats, the three are often seen attending events together,attired in stylish outfits befitting the consorts of royalty and posing for group photographs.

    Recently, the second wife of the medical doctor-turned-monarch, Olori Yewande Olufunmilayo Tejuoso, turned 60, and a thanksgiving service was held at the Cathedral of Saint James African Church, Idi Ape, Ago Oko, Abeokuta, Ogun State, to mark the occasion. This was followed by a reception service during which Evangelist Ebenezer Obey and Demola Olota exhibited their musical prowess to the delight of the crowd.

    The grand reception, which held at the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library Marquee, Oke Mosan, had ace MC Tunde Adewale (Tee A) and Dr Smile as comperes. The two other Oloris were out in full force to support their fellow wife at event.