The Nation Newspaper

Tag: expert

  • Over 40% Nigerians are hungry, says expert

    Efforts by successive governments at addressing food security in the country are yet to provide the desired result as over 40 percent of Nigerians do not have sufficient food on daily bases, a University teacher, Professor Babatope Alabadan, has disclosed.

    He also said that globally, over 800 million people, including 300 million children, go to bed hungry daily due to food insecurity.

    Alabadan who made these assertions yesterday while delivering the 25th inaugural lecture of the Federal University of Technology, Minna, titled, ”Housing and Food Security: Now and in the Future- Lessons from the Termites”, said  the three tiers of government in the country must go beyond paying lip service to food security by ensuring that the people have physcial, economic and social access to food, if Vision 20:2020 is to be accomplished.

    The professor of agricultural engineering blamed the food shortages in the country on huge food losses due to inadequate storage facilities, a development which he said has continued to affect the country’s economy and possess a threat to her national security.

    To this end he said the three tiers of government in the country should embark on mass construction of capacity Silos, especially for small scale farmers in order to reduce food losses and increase local supplies.

    He lamented that despite the favorable natural condition for food production in the country, food is still being imported into the country to meet up demand because of huge food losses at the expense of the economy of the country.

    Enumerating the dangers of food losses to the nation and the world at large, Alabadan stressed that food losses represent a significant cost to the economy and greatly impacts on the nation’s ability to feed the world, emphasizing that losses affect food quality and safety, economic development and the environment.

    He then urged the federal government to establish agricultural estates and farmsteads in every state and local governments pointing out that in addition to increasing food production, it will create jobs and reduce poverty which will be in line with the attainment of the transformation agenda and Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

  • Expert seeks fund for disaster victims

    Expert seeks fund for disaster victims

    he President, Risk Surveyors Association of Nigeria (RISAN) Mr Jacob Adeosun has advocated the establishment of a National Catastrophic Fund.

    He said the fund should be used to assist victims of disasters to overcome the effects of catastrophies, such as the floods that ravaged over half of the nation last year.

    He said such disaster may reoccur, urging the government to establish the fund. He noted that it exists in other countries.

    Adeosun, who is also Executive Director, Industrial Risk Protection Consultants (IRPC), told The Nation that though it is good for the government to compensate victims of diasater, the right thing would have been to establish the fund from where such disasters could be managed.

    He said: “If it is a natural disaster, the government has a duty to empathise and sympathise and take action aimed at helping, but the real help comes from insurance.”

    Adeosun, a professional risk engineer and surveyor, explained that the fund is managed by insurance professionals, like the commercial insurance fund, saying the difference is that this one is reserved only for catastrophies.

    He said because there is no such fund in place, most of the losses caused by the disaster last year would not be paid for.

    “If such a fund was in place and managed by insurance experts, they would have taken the appropriate steps to identify who owned what asset, and who suffered what losses with to determine what each should get to indemnify them.

    ‘’As it stands, several months after the flood, most of the victims have not and may never get any benefit from the huge amount set aside by the government because it is not handled by insurance experts who would have known what to do to determine who gets what.

    “We have just moved into a new year and in the next few months, the rains may start coming and no one knows what may follow this time, thus the urgent need for the government to set up such a fund to mitigate losses arising from catastrophic occurrences,” he said.

    The insurance expert said the function of the fund he is advocating is different from what the National EmergencyManagement Authority (NEMA) and the Red Cross are doing. These bodies give first aid. The remedy for victims can only be handled by insurance.

    Adeosun urged Nigerians to embrace insurance, saying: “Insurance accepts little premium in return for a huge compensation in the event that the insured event occurs as per the contract terms. If the insured loss event does not occur, you don’t get a refund. You have had the peace of the mind, while someone else in the large pool of insured has made a claim. It may be your turn tomorrow or several years to come”.

    Adeosun denied allegations that insurance firms don’t pay claims. “If they don’t, several blue chip companies that are hooked to their services would have abandoned them.Individuals also make claims. But those who receive claims will not make any noise about it. It is their entitlement. As it is in every other aspects of life, cases of failure and challenges attract more attention,” he said.

    He explained that there are several reasons an insurance claim may not be paid.

    When such a case arises, the National Insurance Commission, the regulatory authority on insurance, the Nigerian Insurers Association (NIA) and the Nigerian Council of Registered Insurance Brokers (NCRIB) will attend to cases of aggrieved customers on claims disputes, he said.

    Whoever is buying insurance cover should ensure that it is properly done and claims will be paid on insured losses, Adeosun added.

  • Why we have bad roads, by expert

    Why we have bad roads, by expert

    A geo-scientist at the University of Lagos and past winner of the NLNG Science Prize, Dr. Ebenezer Meshida has identified lack of understanding the soil nature by the contractors, faulty designs by government engineers and high level corruption in contract award as major factors responsible for poor roads across the country. He spoke with LEKE SALAUDEEN. Excerpts:

    What is responsible for bad roads?

    The answer is very simple. Roads construction in Nigeria is carried out in a peculiar way that is alien to the world of science or engineering. It is difficult to explain this situation because our engineers were properly trained even by world standard. But it appears they (engineers) have found themselves in a very objectionable and professionally dangerous operational system over which they have no control.

    Roads are meant to be designed in accordance with results of comprehensive engineering tests and constructed with long established methodology. In the Nigerian set up, the so-called tests are hardly carried out and the construction methodology is usually a mutilation of the acceptable standard. This is why inappropriate soil types are used with impunity by contractors to support our flexible pavements. Most of our soil layers are clay of different composition, which we erroneously called laterite.

    In order to correct this mistake, the soils along every road alignment must be assessed for their index mineral composition and their possible geo-chemical reaction with water. All the so-called laterite soils are nothing but clay soil. During the dry season, they are hard with excellent bearing capacity. This has facilitated our engineers and contractors to rush into road construction without adequate geo-technical assessment.

    Are there remedies for the deficiencies in the soil particles before constructions are carried out?

    When clays are assessed to have objectionable engineering properties for road works, the solution is to stabilise them with some known and effective soil stabilisers. Unfortunately, the developed countries have stabilisers to develop their own soils, which they market to us. We are known in the world as buyers of commodities, right or wrong. We are not known as practical scientific people who can solve their problems by themselves. So, they make money by selling to us irrelevance once our political leaders are carefully cajoled into agreement.

    President Jonathan has ordered the ministry of works to effect repairs on federal highways before Christmas. Is it feasible?

    The presidential order on rehabilitation of roads before Christmas is a huge joke that has nothing to do with science or engineering.

    But most of the roads in the country are constructed by foreign contractors who are rated above local contractors in terms of technical know-how.

    Development in Nigeria does not signify the construction of infrastructures by foreign people. No foreigner will come here to construct roads that will not go bad or pass the test of time. They are not interested in that. They are contractors, they want to make money. You want them to construct roads for you that will last 20 years without maintenance? They won’t do that. They know quite alright that there are flaws in what has been designed for them and are happy to construct such things and wait for a few days on the order of government to go back and start repairing the same road constructed not long ago.

  • Expert explains high cost of IVF treatment

    A medical practitioner in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Dr. Preye Fiebia, has blamed the high cost of providing Invitro-fertilization (IVF), services in Nigeria on government’s failure to reduce the cost of doing business in the country.

    Dr. Fiebia, in a brief chat with The Nation at a free monthly infertility health workshop organised by the Bridge Clinic in Port Harcourt, yesterday also attributed high rate of brain drain in the country to the same problem.

    The University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital (UPTH) gynaecologist decried the situation where citizens pay taxes and still provide social amenities for themselves.

     

  • How Electoral College decides who rules America, by expert

    How Electoral College decides who rules America, by expert

    Thomas Neale, a specialist in American national government at Congressional Research Service, the Library of Congress, in this interaction with reporters at the Foreign Press Centre in Washington, speaks on the role of the Electoral College in deciding America’s president. Excerpts:   

     

    Why does America have the Electoral College? The first question that may come to your mind is: Why do we have an Electoral College?  Remember, the United States Constitution is the oldest written constitution in the world.  It was drafted in the 18th century.  And as a result, it has perhaps fewer of the mass democratic features that you would expect from a constitution that derived, after – say, after the French Revolution or in the 20th century.

    What our Constitutional Convention was trying to get was a system that guaranteed the separation of powers, and checks and balances that kept the presidency free from undue influence, particularly with respect to its elections, from Congress, and three, gave the states a role in the presidential election.  To this day, Americans vote for president in two capacities: as U.S. citizens, and to a certain extent, as citizens of the states in which they reside, because that is how the electoral votes are put together, and that is how you win a majority in the Electoral College.

    The Constitution – the Constitutional Convention decided this was the best compromise because it included these principles.  It did not initially include any provision that the people would vote in a presidential election.  The electors would vote, and it was left to the states how they would choose their electors.  This power is retained by the states today, but all the states delegate that power to the citizens.  So your – when Americans go to the polls on election day, they are voting for, actually, electors for president and vice president.

    Who are these electors?

    Well, they can be anybody, except a person who is a member of Congress or any person who is – holds an office of – in trust or profit under the United States.  So Ms. Rider and I cannot serve as presidential electors, but almost anybody else could.  In practice, they tend to be party officials, state governors, prominent party people holding – that do not hold positions in the federal government.  How are they chosen?  Each party in each state nominates a slate of electors.  You never see their – in very few exceptions do you ever see their names on the ballot.  When Americans go to the polls, it says, “Electors for Barack Obama and Joseph Biden,” or “Electors for George Romney and Paul Ryan.”  But they are – so they are, in fact, voting for these electors.

    How many electors and how are they allocated?

    The formula is each state receives a total number of electoral votes equal to the combined total of its House and Senate delegations.  Now, the reason we have the Senate delegations included is because one of those compromises from the Constitutional Convention to give the states – the less populous states a modest advantage compared to the more populous states.  So today you have – the range runs from California, obviously our most populous state, which has 55 electoral votes because it has 53 representatives and two senators, to a number of states like Wyoming, Alaska, Delaware, Vermont, Montana, the Dakotas, that have three electoral votes.  They have one because they have one member in the House of Representatives, and the additional two for Congress.

    And these electoral votes are awarded in most states on what we call the winner-take-all or general ticket basis.  That is, the voters vote for the whole slate of candidates.  And this causes some distortions.  For instance, in California in recent years, the Republicans can reliably take anywhere from 40 to 45 percent of the popular vote, but they get no electoral votes because the Democrats have a strong grip on California, and a number of other states, too.  I picked California simply because it’s the most populous state.

    There are two exceptions to that rule, and that is called the district system, which is practised in Maine and Nebraska.  Now this harkens back to the fact that the states actually have a lot of independent authority about how they do – they delegate their electoral votes.  It’s a little complicated, but in these states that have the district plan, the voters go to the polls, one vote for president and vice president, but the votes are counted in two different ways.  They are counted statewide, and the statewide winner wins those two electoral votes that reflect their senators.  And then the votes are counted in each congressional district, and the winner in each congressional district gets an electoral vote.

    Why has this system endured as long as it has?

    Well, first of all, it’s worked pretty well.  More than 50 presidential elections that we’ve had, particularly since the ratification of the 12th Amendment in 1804, which I won’t go into unless you ask me to, we’ve had a pretty good record, 47 of 51.  This should make it 48 of 52 if everything works out, which is not bad in the greater scheme of things.  It’s not perfect.  Secondly, and perhaps equally important, if not more important, the Constitution of the United States is not easily amended.  In order to have an amendment, the most widely used of the two methods is that you must have an amendment proposed and approved by a two-thirds majority of the members of our two houses of Congress, and then – that is not sufficient in and of itself – then the amendment is sent forward to the states, and the states must – three-fourths of the states, and that’s 38 of the current number of states – I don’t think we’re going to be adding any anytime soon – must ratify it.

    If the Electoral College is so important and the voters don’t know who are the electors, is it an obstacle to transparency in the electoral system?

    From a very, very early time in this country, electors have been seen not to be independent agents, which is what the Founding Fathers thought they would be.  You see, there was no political community in the United States in 1787.  We had 13 colonies scattered up.  It took two months to travel by land from Boston to Georgia.  And they felt that – and there was no national press – they felt that the people themselves, the voters, would probably not have the sophistication to be able to discern national issues or national characters.  So, they would vote for the electors, who would be the landholders, the best and the brightest, the merchants, the bankers, and these people would make a disinterested selection.

    Well, it broke down almost immediately because even at that point in 1787 there was a drive towards democratisation, the frontier drive in America, as you will, and people said I don’t – and very early, in the early 19th century, one elector – can’t remember the name of the state or the elector or the person who said this, but an elector voted against instructions, and he said, “I don’t choose them to think; I choose them to act.”  So it is our tradition and has been for two centuries that the electors are the agents of the people, and they do the people’s will.

     

     

  • How to curb disasters, by expert

    How to curb disasters, by expert

    The Director, National Center for Remote Sensing (NCRS), Efron Gajere, has said the proper use of the environment would help curb flooding and other disasters.

    Gajere spoke in Jos yesterday as part of the activities marking the world space week.

    He said: “The Nigerian population is completely ignorance on the best way to make use of our environments, we are using the environment negatively and the consequence is heavy on Nigerians and the Federal Government.

    “If the society is adequately informed and enlightened on best practices of managing our environments, we will not have natural disaster like flooding and desertification.

    “All the disaster we called natural disasters are man-made and this is largely due to our ignorance of how to use this free gift from God.

    “So, flooding and desertification can be prevented if we are equipped with adequate knowledge of usage of our environment and this is where the Ministry of Environment should come in and put up serious public enlightenment, educate our children in schools so that we can all together have a better use of our environment.

    “We owe it to our children a befitting environment, if we destroy it now what are they going to inherit tomorrow.

    The director NCRS advised Nigerians living on water ways to vacate before the rain set in next year, those living by drainage channels should clear them as this is the only way to avoid another flooding in the next rainy season.

    “Our negative attitude against the environment should change so that we can enjoy this environment.”

  • How to salvage NITEL, by expert

    Why do you think several attempts by the government to sell NITEL were unsuccessful?

    My suspicion is that the assets of the company are lower than the liability. When the liability is huge, nobody wants to buy. NITEL equipments are obsolete. The workforce are not updated in technical skills because they don’t have opportunities in attending trainings, nobody want to inherit such a workforce. Meanwhile, NITEL has shrunk to a fraction of its worth as new private sector entrants have taken over the large chunk of the market and deployed new technology while its equipment have deteriorated due to disuse and poor maintenance.

    Beside, government wants to make money from the sale of the telecommunications firm and this has continued to drag the fortunes of the company behind. The bid price of NITEL is extremely high. It’s also too large for one telecoms player to buy.

    Again, the previous attempts were unsuccessful because of the time lag before the government contact reserved bidder. When contacted, the reserve bidders were not allowed to review the bid they already quoted several months ago, during which assets of NITEL would have also deteriorated. To be specific such delay cannot be blamed on the BPE but on the Presidential Committee that the BPE reports to.

    National Assembly has stopped Bureau of Public Enterprise from liquidating NITEL assets. What do you think is the best approach?

    The more the sale of NITEL is delayed’ the more worthless its assets become. Its assets have been seriously eroded. NITEL’s submarine cable, the South Atlantic Terminal (SAT-3), perhaps its most valuable asset, is no longer the sole undersea cable in Nigeria. Bette-r maintained and higher capacity undersea cables have been laid by Main One and Globacom. MTN’s cable may be operative in Nigeria by next January.

    But the Senate is contemplating contracting out NITEL’s management through concession. What’s your view?

    We have tried the concession formula before. It is not a new concept to NITEL. It has been tried and failed. I do n’t know what we stand to gain from that. Remember, the Federal government under President Olusegun Obasanjo appointed Pentascope of Netherlands as management contractor, charged with revamping the company for the privatisation process. The Pentascope experiment was a failure. The Dutch firm left NITEL worse than it met it. The truth is that NITEL has lost monopoly of telecommunications market and its equipment are obsolete to compete effectively with the private sector that have financial muscle and modern equipment that have changed the face of the industry.

    Guided liquidation assumes that an investor exists somewhere that is willing to invest in repairing and upgrading NITEL’s facility and take a bet on successfully competing for customers with the four entrenched mobile telephone operators. The ultimate objectives of privatising infrastructure companies ought to be reducing government’s financial burden and improving the capacity of the enterprises to provide critical services that will make Nigerians more economically active and productive.

    Do you think NITEL can be attractive to buyers in its present form given the state of its facility?

    NITEL as an entity is not attractive because of the obsolete equipment and excruciating debts. But there are some infrastructures like spectrum which is a valuable asset that may attract investors. But the BPE must be transparent in selling the facility. BPE must separate the hidden liabilities from assets. It should advertise the assets to be sold so that a prospective buyer would know the total value what he wants to buy.

    Are there lessons to be learnt from the unsuccessful attempts to privatise NITEL?

    Government’s desire to sell NITEL at a high value is counterproductive. Selling to reputable and experienced companies at a seemingly low price appears more reasonable than having high bids from unknown entities that cannot finance the purchase. This option ensures access to companies who can invest in providing services and generating employment.

    There has also been an often mistaken desire to sell infrastructure companies to Nigerians. What the country needs are buyers who can invest and efficiently run NITEL and create jobs. Part of the problems of NITEL is influential Nigerians that hurriedly cobbled together companies which submitted grossly overvalued bids that they eventually fail to see through.