The Nation Newspaper

Tag: ghost

  • Ghost of NEPA?

    •It is reckless corporate practice for a private power company to black out an entire community because of dispute over metering

    The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) should immediately investigate the allegation that the Eko Distribution Company (EKDC), one of the two electricity distribution companies (DisCos) servicing the Lagos market, has cut off the entire Ilasamaja community, in the Mushin Local Government Area of Lagos State.

    From newspaper reports, EKDC, from August 23, has allegedly disconnected that community, including the relatively few consumers that have pre-paid meters, over an alleged refusal of some of the residents to pay their bills, until they are metered.

    The dispute that snowballed into this crisis had been brewing since January 2016. It has its roots in the controversial estimated billing that has been causing endless DisCo-customer uproar nationwide. Again, according to newspaper reports, from that date, the bill that was hitherto N3, 000 a month, leapt to between N15, 000 and N20, 000. There are even extreme cases, which claimed the new bills hit N30, 000. Yet, service has remained haphazard and shambolic.

    That has led to consumer resistance: the reported refusal to pay any bill until adequate metering — a harsh, even if understandable, reaction in the rather provocative circumstance.

    But this protest only reportedly elicited a cavalier reaction: disconnection, mass and complete, of a whole community — a throwback, as it were, to the National Electric Power Authority (NEPA), the old power utility-monopoly, that backed by law, could do and undo. That is rather a foolish path to tread for a private concern, hoping to sustain its business.

    Indeed, such knee-jerk mass disconnection is a tripod of impunity, outlawry and extreme provocation, which can never endear EKDC to its embattled customers.

    But beyond these three basic charges, EKDC stands fairly accused of injustice, crass insensitivity and actionable breach of contract, to the few customers with pre-paid meters (who paid in expectation of power that never came); and even others with analogue meters, who though have paid the punitive fraud that the estimated billings have become, yet are punished with the consumers who have refused to pay. It is a most reckless, reprehensible and irresponsible way to run a business.

    Which is why NERC should probe the matter and, if indeed it is true, apply instant sanctions on EKDC. The Consumer Protection Council (CPC) should also be interested in this case, and others that could be suffering similar fate nationwide, to ensure justice is done to everyone, particularly the powerless and the most vulnerable, on the electricity question.

    But back to the immediate Ilasamaja crisis. EKDC should, as a mark of good faith, restore power to the community, if not for the sake of the protesters, then to fulfillits obligation to those not in default. The community itself should re-establish dialogue on the metering question. Such a forum would shore up mutual confidence building. That way, EKDC could convince the community on its metering plans, in exchange, of course, for less “crazy bills”.

    EKDC must realise it is in no position to play NEPA, if it is not to willfully toy with its own investment and jeopardise the jobs of its staff. On the policy side, the Federal Government should fast-track its DisCo review plans, soon as these current licencees’ tenures lapse.

    While performing DisCos should have the right of first refusal, those who are out of their depth should be shown the door. Working so hard to drive up power generation and yet having some insensitive DisCos sit to sabotage the chain doesn’t cut it at all.

  • OBJ, PMB and ghost of first republic

    OBJ, PMB and ghost of first republic

    Obasanjo tried to justify the inauguration of his new movement last week by reminding us of the need “to rethink and retool since the instruments we have used so far in our nation-building and governance since independence have not served us well”. He says his new movement “will mobilise our population for unity, cooperation, development, rule of law, employment, law and order, justice, integration, peace, security, stability, welfare and well-being”. He also says the movement is not the third force or a political party but a means to an end and the end is “Nigeria, unshackled, united, dynamic, strong, secure, cohesive, stable, and prosperous”. For him and his group, it is “My Nigeria, your Nigeria and our Nigeria with enchanting present and secure and glorious future.”  He however says in the event the movement decides to transit into a political party, he will cease to be a member.

    The first observation is that as indicated on these pages last week, Dr. Obasanjo who hijacked and destroyed PDP along with opposition AD and ANPP in 2003, seems to underestimate the value of political parties in a democracy. Yet no modern state is known to have developed since the 18th century without political parties serving as modernization agents.  Obasanjo unfortunately shares this fallacy with  his other military adventurers including  Babangida who tried to decree parties and Abacha , who in the guise of unipartysm, hilariously decreed what the late Bola Ige described as ‘ five fingers of a leprous hand’. Finally, Obasanjo was silent on why the old system failed and why for the nation, it has been motion without movement since 1966. We will address that shortly.

    But with Col Amhadu Ali (rtd), former PDP chairman and under whose chairmanship of Petroleum Products Prices Regulatory Agency (PPPRA), house probe confirmed the theft of N1.6trillion by PDP stalwarts and their siblings under the fuel subsidy scam, and Olagunsoye Oyinlola who  as governor of Osun State was sacked by the courts for electoral fraud, as the movement chief drivers, it is not difficult to predict the outcome of his proposal which  in itself is a recipe for a rule of mob by ill-equipped men as we have witnessed since 1966. Since people cannot give what they don’t have, what his movement will produce will not be different  from what is generally regarded as military social engineering efforts such as NYSC, unity schools, quota admission to universities and civil service, all aimed at symptoms rather than the fundamental problem of crisis of nation-building which Obasanjo claims is his concern.

    Secondly, we cannot climb the palm tree from the top as Edmund Burke reminded us a long while ago. “My Nigeria, your Nigeria and our Nigeria with enchanting present and secure and glorious future…” has no meaning when we share no common culture, values or world outlook. No ethnic group, whether dominant or minority, can impose its culture on others without resistance. The best route to national cohesion as advised by the UN is to encourage nationalities to promote their own cultures and values. Uniformity is the language of Nigerian military and their fronts that stand to gain economically or politically from the chaos that has come to define our nation since 1962.

    There was no evidence that southern youths who read architecture and other courses in ABU in early sixties were superior to their northern counterparts. Those who came to read medicine and other courses in University of Ibadan came on merit and were never considered inferior to their southern colleagues. Unfortunately, since the death of Ahmadu Bello in 1966, except for the ongoing effort of El- Rufai of Kaduna State to address the fundamental causes of low standard of education in the north, the obsession of successive northern leaders at both national and local level was to drag the rest of the country down to their level through quota system of admission to federal institutions which were taken over from the states. While the architect of forceful seizure of institutions from their state owners has not told us how his proposed rule of the mob will contribute to nation-building, we have seen without having to reinvent the wheel, how nations like Germany, France Italy and the rest of Europe after two devastating world wars came to grips with their crisis of nation-building. We also have examples of Brazil and India, a more heterogeneous society to learn from.

    But the question many may ask is why weep over the collapse of all our parties since 1979, if democracy that cannot survive without it, like Obasanjo’s proposal will only lead to the rule of a majoritarian mob? The simple answer is that unlike other institutions of democracy viz vibrant civil society, free press, free and fair elections, independent judiciary, and independent legislature, political parties help in recruiting and training gifted and astute individuals capable of managing the majoritarian mob.

    We can now address the question of why our system failed.  It failed in the first republic and under Obasanjo because those recruited by political parties to manage majoritarian mob had limited vision.

    With the control the of state security apparatus in the hands of the north as we have it today, Fulani agenda replaced the Nigerian agenda. Coercion was freely applied as response to restiveness among the Tivs, the Ijaw and was to be used to pacify the Yoruba before the coup of 1966. In fact, anarchy reigned in the land especially in the Yoruba country when the military came in 1966.

    Although Dr. Obasanjo calls himself ‘Mr. Nigeria’, available facts do not confirm he has a vision beyond self. He has publicly admitted he manipulated the system in 1979, just as he did in 2007 when, following his third term fiasco, he imposed terminally ill Umaru Yar’Adua and an untested and incompetent Goodluck Jonathan in 2011. Before then, he had, during the aborted third republic in 1993 said MKO Abiola, the astute politician produced by Babangida’s decreed parties, was not the messiah Nigerians were waiting for. He voted for an interim contraption to be headed by an Ernest Shonekan. As it turned out, he became the greatest beneficiary of MKO Abiola’s tragedy.

    As for President Buhari, his ‘extraordinary strength of character seems to be marred by his stiffness and bigotry’. He doesn’t appear to have the capacity to build consensus, an important ingredient for democracy’ and this perhaps accounts for his inability to manage even his own ANPP and CPC until Bola Ahmed Tinubu worked along with others to put the APC together. He and he alone is to be held responsible for the failure of APC.

    In a piece titled ‘what Nigerians expect of Buhari and Tinubu, published on these pages on January 11 2013, I had advised Buhari and Tinubu to see APC inauguration as that “of a modernising party in line with what obtained in the first republic and elsewhere in the developed democracies…to replace the current political parties moulded in the military image, with garrison commanders as party leaders”. Tragically, what Oyegun and the president succeeded in doing since riding into power on the back of APC is striving to make it a carbon copy of PDP.

    With President Buhari’s apparent opposition to restructuring,  with Myyetti Allah leaders who justified mindless killings by Fulani herdsmen and threatened to unleash more violence still walking free, with video probably sponsored by Buhari detractors promising pacification of Nigeria with help from other West African Fulani making the rounds while those in charge of the state security apparatus keep blaming victims of herdsmen violence, it appears we are once again being haunted by ghost of collapsed First Republic.

     

  • Ghost of the year

    Ghost of the year

    The year never ends until we chronicle its kingpins of comedy, those who unveil its underbellies of humour. The real humourists, though, are not persons who go out of their ways to crack our ribs. They make us laugh just by being themselves in the routine glories of their days. And they could even be genuinely appalled at our amusements. They are not I go dye O, or that tribe of humanity who write out skits or jokes with a view to the punch line. Anything they do is a kaboom of laughter. They take themselves seriously while we keel over. But we never cheer them on, and they hate us if we do. The stages are not artificial. There are no paid audiences, or advertisement jingles to invite us to their acts. Ironically, they are funny because they are sad. The best comedies, whether it is Shakespeare’s AS You Like it or Soyinka’s Jero Plays, hint at the visceral pain inside us. Through them, we mock ourselves.

     

    Ghost of the Year

    The winner is Ben Murray Bruce. This was a year we neither heard from him nor saw him. He was like Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man. When he became senator, we did not hear enough of the oyibo media mogul. His debut act was the Silver Birds Awards in Eko Hotel. He decorated himself as the common-sense commoner. He would disinfect Nigerian politics and governance of its grand follies. He had come that we may have senses and have them more abundantly.

    In line with his cult of common sense, he would pooh-pooh first class flights, forgo the fancy craze of luxury hotels, patronise the local humility of Innoson-made cars. In a flourish of the lowly, an Innoson car sat without proclaiming itself in the hall in a parody of a dealership. He sported a face of mock gravity that hardly concealed his cheerful vanity, as a revolutionary recruit of the Nigerian political elite.

    But he had a giddy fall from his common-sense horse when AMCON revealed that his Silver Birds had been one of Nigeria’s whited sepulchres, a phony, slivery shine over a cadaver of debt, other people’s money. So, the bluster about injecting sanity in a body politic adrift was all a lie. At the Silver Birds Award night, then Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan of Delta State saw perfidy in his claims and wondered if Murray-Bruce would muster the guts to make such a bluster half-way through his tenure. Uduaghan did not even know that the man would be a ghost. Silence, they say, is golden. His is ghostly.

     

    Artist of the year

    He is an orator with a supernova smile, but the man beat any contender as the artist of choice. With his statue of another comedian from another part of the world, Rochas Okorocha, sometimes described as Owelle, is our artist of the year. He gave us a statue of Jacob Zuma, the dancing ecstasy of a politician and parody of a leader of South Africa. Okorocha’s imagination tucked away the bust of the Madiba or locals like Achebe, or Azikiwe or Ojukwu because the Imo State governor wanted to amuse us. No ribs would stir at sculptural tributes to those men. He made his point, and the headlines bustled across the country. No less inspired was this from the bowel of Sigmund Freud: “Zuma’s erection, Okorocha’s pains.” If the Freudian power is hard to miss about a man who wanted his people to be so happy, he appointed his sister to promote its ministry.

     

    Worshippers of the year

    During the Middle Ages, a cleric and intellectual Peter Abelard asked the question, “when did God become man?” You only had to watch the video of celebrants when our dear president Muhammadu Buhari emerged after months away to take care of his health. The streets in some parts of the country erupted in raptures with adorers for his return in good health. The videos were unmistakable in their pious adoration. Men and women were flailing in worshipful reverie. On a roadside, a woman fell to her knees in rhapsodies. Not just that, she bowed many times with her forehead pasted with dust from its trip up and down the ground. Another person poured water on the ground and drank it. It did not matter if a person had defecated or urinated there before, or any other sort of impurity.

    This was worship that trumped any in the church or mosque in the whole year. They were answering Abelard’s question over 500 years later. They were saying that in 2017 God became man in their president.

     

    Dancer of the year

    A tragedy foreshadowed it. His feet must have wobbled and collapsed when his brother, the charismatic Isiaka Adeleke, passed on.  But he was asked to fill his brother’s shoes in the Senate. To do that, he found his dancing shoes. On soap boxes, his dance moves prophesied the thrills to come. But polls were serious, and he had to win first. Win he did. And the dance floor was never the same again. From the victory stage in Osun State to the church in Atlanta, Demola Adeleke, the roundish, pot-bellied happy senator was at it. He stole the show anytime and every time, and he found many times to dance. He made law-making into choreography. His heavy frame yielded to the nimble flow of his rhythms, sometimes led by his paunch, or head or even feet, his face lit up as the crowd allowed him room to roam. As a metaphor for his colleagues, he had no rhythms in ideas on the Senate floor, where even his waist did not spin. His nephew, the well-known singer Davido, waded in and described the thespian senator as Nigeria’s Michael Jackson. He probably has a point because the senator’s middle name is Jackson.

     

    General of the year

    Nnamdi Kanu had his secret service. He had his soldiers. Earlier in the year, he declared that he was going to war. No compromise to Nigeria that he described as a zoo. He was an Igbo general, he told himself, although he wore a cap that was a phony version of a man he would not brook: Obafemi Awolowo. Maybe because he envied him since Awo also went behind bars for treasonable felony. Kanu was that megalomaniac. He also had a sort of spectacle that had the rims that mimicked the Ikenne sage – sort of. But no matter. Kanu was pictured mounting a guard of honour. He played host to some mighty men of the east, and he began to see himself brushing shoulders with Buhari, his gaoler, in short order. Not until Buhari ordered the routing of his men, who had no resistance or a whimper of a prayer or even a war plan. The worst of it was the disappearance of Kanu. No one knows where he went, or how. The general even has no troops to remind us he once swayed in the east. What a war commander!

     

    Banker of the year

    He did not need a licence. He had no banking hall. He had no interest rates. Neither did he have a staff nor attend weekly meeting with other banks. Neither the CBN nor the President nor finance minister knew about him. Yet he had enough to float many a start-up, inspire a school project or even change a town in Nigeria. The bank had no name. Unlike others, the bank did not welcome anybody except the owner. It was perhaps the first secret bank known in Nigerian history. Under the control of Ayo Oke, and his wife, it had $43.4 million, 27 thousand pounds, and N23.2 million. It makes Ayo Oke, the former DG of the National Intelligence Agency, the banker of the year. It makes where the money was domiciled the apartment of the year. That is apartment 7b of Osborne Towers, Ikoyi. It was so important that a governor accused a minister of stealing the state’s money. No evidence. But it was good theatre.

  • Why ‘ghost’ houses exist, by don

    Why ‘ghost’ houses exist, by don

    What are ‘’ghost houses’’? This issue caused a major stir in Abuja during the maiden Nigeria Housing Finance Conference, with the theme: Financing affordable housing: realities, necessities and possibilities.

    The guest speaker, Prof Oyebanji Oyeyinka, started it all when he spoke of what he called ‘’ghost houses’’ in Abuja, Ikoyi and Victoria Island.

    According to him, these are empty houses built with looted funds. He said nobody would build choice properties with his hard earned money and allow them to lie fallow.

    Oyeyinka urged the government to tax “big houses’’ in Abuja, whether occupied or not, as another way of raising money for affordable housing.

    “I call them ghost houses because they are empty; they’re based on awuf economy. If you use your hard earned money to build a house, even if you have to half the rent, you will do it just to pay back your mortgage or loan.

    ‘’But when someone leaves a house of eight-bedroom empty for three to 10 years, then something is wrong.

    “On the one hand, we are in a democratic government, so you can’t just go and seize someone’s house but there are creative ways government can put some sort of levy on these houses.

    ‘’I know some people would not like this but I have to say; in a country where majority of the people don’t have shelter, it’s a problem. In most of the countries, they put some tax and even levy them by space, say per square metre.

    “Of course, government is doing a lot on anti-corruption, but there is something wrong for empty houses to be everywhere in Abuja, Ikoyi, among others,” Oyeyinka said.

    He suggested the use of about 30 per cent of pension fund for affordable housing as done in many countries.

  • Kogi battles ghost workers

    Kogi battles ghost workers

    Kogi State has uncovered over 25,000 ghost workers, and vows to fish out more, reports JOSEPH JIBUEZE

    Over 25,000 ghost workers in Kogi State have met their tether’s end. Some of these dubious elements were said to have been defrauding the state for as long as 10 years. Now the state, in an ambitious move, has ensured that they no longer drain the resources of the state.

    The ghost-worker menace is a nationwide malaise, which President Muhammadu Buhari wants the Continuous Audit Team to tackle, alongside overpayment of allowances and outright embezzlement.

    In June, the team found discrepancies in the payroll of ministries, departments and agencies, which cost the Federal Government about N5.7billion monthly.

    Its head, Mohammed Dikwa, said the team has helped save about N50billion, adding that over 43,000 ghost workers have been struck off the payroll.

    Most states are also affected. For instance, Plateau uncovered 5,000 ghost workers recently, while Sokoto uncovered 12,915 two weeks ago. With resources getting leaner and federal allocations dwindling, resulting in inability to pay salaries, more states are embarking on staff audit to eliminate fraudulent salary earners.

    On assumption of office, Governor Yahaya Bello, in line with his civil service reform policy, set up the Staff Verification and Screening Committee on February 22.

    Its mandate was to ascertain the true position of the state and local government workforce with a view to optimising Kogi’s human and financial resources for development.

    The committee’s leadership was later reshuffled following reports that it was sabotaging the exercise. A backup committee was further set up on May 24 and tasked with supporting the main committee to restore discipline, integrity and transparency to the screening exercise. On June 22, the committee submitted its report to the governor.

    It uncovered 25,103 ghost workers, as well as cases of impersonation of dead workers by staff who earned the deceased’s salaries.

    The report, presented to Governor Bello by the Auditor-General, Alhaji Usman Yusuf Okala, says those on the state’s payroll have been reduced following the exercise.

     

    The findings

    According to the report, as at February 22, the state had 88, 973 staff on its nominal payroll, with a monthly wage bill of N5,809,578,703. At the conclusion of the exercise on July 24, the cleared and validated workforce was 63,870.

    The 25,103 staff included unintended beneficiaries who had been drawing salaries fraudulently from the state and Local Government finances. “The estimated current monthly wage bills of cleared and validated workforce after the conclusion of our report was N4,443,070,644,” Okala said.

    According to him, the state lost over N213billion in the last 13 years to ghost workers but would save over N1.4billion on a monthly basis, which would have gone to ghost workers, thanks to the verification.  “These savings will amount to N16,387,296,713.88 per annum,” he added.

    On cases of impersonation, the report says: “These are set of dubious and notorious people who are claiming the employment benefits (salary & allowances) of some deceased civil servants of the state and Local Governments for as far back as 10 years.

    “Unfortunately, no single civil servant has raised alarm to put a stop to this practice, hence aiding and abetting the financial crime. A case in point is that of Joseph Inikpi, an employee of Dekina Local Government who we confirmed to be dead. Our findings further revealed that upon the death of Joseph Inikpi, a woman inherited her identity and began to enjoy her entitlements.

    “This first woman subsequently transferred the benefit of late Inikpi to another woman who is currently again enjoying the benefits of late Inikpi. The first woman (now in Abuja) who inherited late Inikpi identity is the one with her passport photograph on the Employee Biodata Form whereas the second woman (now in Dekina) currently enjoying the benefits of late Inikpi is the one whose phone number is on the Employee Biodata Form.”

    The screening committee also discovered double and multiple employments. The report says: “These are wicked people and officers within the state who draw salaries in multiple from either both state, local and Federal Government as well as private companies.

    “The numbers of employees in the employment of State & Local Governments in this category are 114. This discovery was revealed through interfacing with NIBSS where the BVN of the individuals concerns revealed they were earning salaries from more than one source.”

    It was also observed that the Local Government Education Authority (LGEA) had an over-bloated workforce, with several redundant senior officers ranging from GL12 to GL 17 who had left classroom for offices, thereby leaving the school without experienced teachers.

    The officers, the report says, were employed as professional class teachers but decided to abandon their teaching profession to LGEA offices where there was no work to do.

    The committee found a case where some were employment before the Kogi was created, contrary to what is contained in their employment letters.

    The reports says: “This people were employed by State Universal Basic Education Board SUBEB in 1986 as teachers in Ofu LGA. Please note that Kogi State was created in August 27, 1991. The letterhead paper used for their employment between 1983 to 1991 was that of Kogi State Government, Lokoja. How this was possible is still a mystery.”

    There were also age discrepancies. A worker was said to have been employed on July 9, 2008 by Ankpa LGEA whereas she was born on May 7, 1996. By implication, she was employed at the age of 12.

    “She has no primary school certificate, finished SSCE in June 2014 by her records available with us,” the report found.

    Also discovered were diaspora workers. The report says: “These are set of people who claimed to be in the employment of Kogi State Government, being paid salaries but are residing outside Kogi and even outside the country.

    “We described these categories of people as diaspora workers because almost all withdrawals of the proceeds of their illegal salaries are made in locations outside Kogi State for several years.”

     

    Verification challenges

    According to Okala, the field work was extensive and thorough; the integrity of data tested very high, but not without challenges.

    “The second aspect of the Committee’s work, which is desk review, was marred with substantial fraud and high level of irregularities. It appears that these irregularities were deliberate effort by some enemies of the state who may have infiltrated the screening committee to manipulate and embarrass the state government and, by extension, the state governor for their selfish interest,” he said.

    The report says the cleared list is not 100 percent clean as “it might still harbour some potential illegal and fraudulent salary earners.”

    Okala said some state and Local Government staff verification forms were deliberately muddled up.

    “The only plausible explanation for this action could have been to cause apprehension among the civil servants across the state. In this category, a total of 1,016 Employee Biodata forms were found to be mixed-up and muddled up in MDAs different from where the civil servant is currently working.

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Re: The Biafran Ghost

    SIR: As I read last week’s article with the above title by Sam Omatseye, my heart bled and my thoughts ran rings of frustration. The write-up was a grand and veritable riposte to a betrayed, raped and vilified country I call my own.  Like a novel I read years ago by Dorren Wayne with the apt title “Love Is A Well-raped Word”, Nigeria has been serially abused, tormented and brutalized since Independence by its elite – political, economic and military – sans boundaries.  Meaning that when it comes to exploiting and despoiling Nigeria, our elite have no qualms about religion or ethnic configuration; they gang up in unified subversion of our common good.  I submit that the average Nigerian had no problems with his Nupe, Urhobo, Fulani or Yoruba compatriots until the politicians (Khaki or Agbada) came along with their incendiary and combustible rhetoric of religion and ethnic jingoisms.

    From the first military coup till date, our various rulers (no leaders, please) have perpetually played the ostrich game without shame or remorse. As he pointed out in that article, we, as a people have  imbibed a culture of lying through our problems while refusing to confront the usual demons that come with pragmatic nation-building. Beginning with the botched Nzeogwu coup to Aguiyi-Ironsi’s naïve alchemy in political engineering, culminating in his blunt refusal to try the January 1966 coup plotters, the beneficiaries of his policies saw nothing wrong with his agenda as it affected the sensibilities of other Nigerians.

    This, however, does not justify the horrendous massacre of southerners in their hundreds in the northern part of the country, majority of who were Igbo between May and September 1966. In a cynical play of role reversal, the “Swagger of the Igbo” in early 1966 gave way to the “Triumphalism of the North” later that same year.  The elites on both sides winked and connived at these despicable acts that were to be the harbinger to the civil war from 1967 – 1970.

    As a young man growing up in the then Eastern Region, I was a witness to the bloody orgy of mindless massacre and dehumanization of the Igbo. However, whether secession from Nigeria was the final solution remains debatable.

    Unfortunately, the aftermath of the post-civil war was not effectively handled as Nigeria suffered a deficit of quality leadership in the ruling military and its subservient and colluding civilian wing. I suspect that till today we are still caught up in an infernal contradiction between the “Igbo Swagger” and the “Northern Triumphalism”. Throw in the mix a burgeoning restive Niger Delta with their avowed Sense of Entitlement, and you have Shakespeare’s Macbeth’s “Cauldron of the Witches”. And as Omatseye pointed out, we are still to live down the “Biafran Ghost”.

    There is no doubt that a society, or nation makes no significant progress in the face of grave centripetal tendencies such as we have in ourpolity, no matter how well-meaning the intentions of its leadership. The time to sit back, reflect and chart a new course for our beloved nation is NOW.

    For a start, we, leaders and followers, must hearken to the rebuke of former U.S. President Bill Clinton to immediately begin the process of building strong institutions and jettison the jaded and anachronistic culture of entrenching the “African Big Man”. Nations are founded on institutions and not primordial values of religion, ethnicism and cronyism.

     

    • Victor H. Ikikhueme, 

    idiakevictor@yahoo.com

  • The Biafran ghost

    The Biafran ghost

    Like Banquo’s ghost, the past haunts us today, again. Forty nine years after the civil war, we are still fighting the war. Some think the war is over. They are wrong. The war is with us because we are a nation of self-deceit. We lie to and at ourselves. We say peace whereas tribulation lurks and detonates everywhere.

    That is why Boko Haram harangues us in the North. It explains the resurgence of the IPOB and MASSOB and the rumblings of the Niger Delta Avengers and the barbarous entitlement of herdsmen. Even before the past few years, when bombs were literally quiet, tongues exploded between tribes. Rhetoric rattled rhetoric. Tribes and tongues differed by saying tribes and tongues differed. The June 12 excitement was a rebirth of the divisions of the 1960’s.

    We did not solve the problem when it confronted us. When Gowon exploited his name as an acronym of unity, GO ON WITH ONE NIGERIA turned out to be an empty epithet, a feel-good delusion from a victor. Nothing concrete was resolved other than fell the enemy in battle.

    Did we resolve the issue of abandoned properties? Leading up to the war, pogrom lit up the North in incandescent murders. Not only Igbo were killed as many tendentious literature say. Even Adichie’s Half Of The Yellow Sun, for all its strengths, portrayed the single story that the author has campaigned against. The slaughter up North targeted anyone who was not Yoruba, and that included the sweep of minorities in the today’s Niger Delta. Urhobo, Itsekiri, Edo, Efik, Ogoni, etc were mincemeat in the cauldron of death.

    Now, did we have any enquiries into that sanguinary chapter? The northern elite, including political, feudal and military leaders, reportedly encouraged the barbarities. Has anyone been punished or even been officially reprimanded? We have not even officially investigated. We know too that Nzeogwu’s coup was seen as tendentious, and it inspired some Igbo to provoke northerners with their proprietary swagger, boasting that they had taken over the country. Have we looked at that, too? If the swagger was bad, the killings were never justified. But even at that, have we addressed them as a people? Ironsi enacted Decree 34, and some analysts said it was naïve because he did not intend to introduce a unitary system to impose Igbo hegemony. If that act was naïve, what of the second act? He did not want to try the coup plotters. That, according to critics, gave him away as an Igbo jingoist.

    Have we revisited the Aburi meeting, and its aftermath, and how that confab either ossified or laid bare the fissures of our inter-ethnic relations? Were there blames? Where there acts of overreach on both sides? Was the war avoidable? Did the pogrom make war inevitable? How come a region that knew it was tactically and materially inferior to its opponent take the plunge into war?

    So, we also had the war atrocities. We saw what Ojukwu’s army did in the Midwest when Biafra invaded, and the resentment overshadows conversation up till today. We know of the killings of the Igbo in Asaba and how Murtala’s Second Division teased out trusting locals to welcome them and killed them like animals. Gowon, who could not rein in his generals, only had an apology over 40 years after. The apology, however heartfelt, never brought closure.

    So, when hostilities ended, Gowon declared that there was no victor and no vanquished. We know that was as vacuous as GOWON. We just wanted to move on, like a child who walks into a party from a bathroom without cleaning up. The smell and mess linger.

    The ghost has followed us ever since. In education, over whether we should have catchment areas or not. In the Orkar coup. In Saro Wiwa’s murder. In the Matatsine imbroglio. In the meltdown of Fulani and indigenes relations in the plateau. In the June 12 logjam. In the choice of Jonathan as president. In the choice of Buhari as counter president. The list is endless.

    So, when many, including the self-serving Atiku, called for restructuring, it was because the civil war and ghosts of the many dead are still with us, walking the Nigeria earth, apologies to Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Developed nations understand the merits of closure. Last week, Britain unveiled the Chilcot report and picked to pieces all the facts of that ignoble chapter of the Iraq War. Tony Blair was exposed, as well as some of the intelligence community and the parliament. The nation looked itself in the mirror, and mea culpa replaced a sense of righteousness.

    On the Iraq war, the New York Times issued a lengthy apology for allowing the emotion of the day sway its professional duties. Next time, both England and United States will think deeper before throwing innocents at the teeth of battle. The crisis of the Balkans is still lapping up its culprits today. Enquiries have dredged up the bad guys and they are subjected to the rule of law. The Hutus and Tutsis have also had theirs and those who inflamed the land to butchery have been exposed and punished. Apartheid in South Africa had its Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

    The Second World War could not be concluded without a clear resolution through the Nuremberg trials. The First World War was concluded without such an enquiry. The victors simply punished Germany and isolated it. The result: a resurgent Germany with the Hitler of hate.

    A people must always learn not to take its injustice for granted. During the Peloponnesian War, Athens fell because it merely slaughtered its best generals who did not pick up its dead at sea as was the custom. The parliament did not reason. The absence of its best brood of soldiers allowed Sparta to crush it.

    So, when Buhari stands accused as nepotist and regionalist in his appointments, it is because he has not transcended the hubris of the civil war. He invokes GOWON but he denies it when his pen signs an appointment. When does a chief of staff to a president become a board member of Nigeria’s choicest corporation? How do we call a truce with the Avengers when the NNPC board is lopsided and has only one name from the oil producing areas?

    The civil war haunts because the hostilities have never really ended. Unnerved on his throne, Macbeth could not exorcise Banquo’s ghost. He said, “Avaunt and quit my sight. Let the earth hide thee, thy bone is marrowless and thy blood is cold.”

    The Biafran ghost still spills cold blood. We may deny it and say our nation is not negotiable, but the past keeps growling and badgering. The more we claim we are together, the more apart we get.

  • Govt removes 23,846 ghost workers from payroll

    Govt removes 23,846 ghost workers from payroll

    Security to take over probe

    N2.293b now saved monthly

    No fewer than 23,846 non-existent workers’ names have been removed from the Federal Government payroll as a result of which the wage bill has reduced by N2.293 billion monthly, the Federal Ministry of Finance said yesterday.

    This is as a result of the BVN process which was carried out.

    A Federal Ministry of Finance statement said: “this figure represents a percentage of the number of non-existent workers who had hitherto been receiving salary from various ministries, departments and agencies”.

    The BVN audit has also reduced the list of military pensioners by 19,203. “The Military Pension Board has revised the amount payable for its due pension contributions on a monthly basis by N575million, following its annual verification exercise for military retirees.

    “This reduced the number of pensioners by 19,203 as a result of deaths since the last verification exercise in 2012,” the statement by Festus Akanbi, the spokesman for Finance Minister Mrs Kemi Adeosun, said.

    The statement added that further investigation of other suspected cases will continue in conjunction with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

    The removal of non- existent workers from federal payroll and the attendant savings on salaries was made possible “because of the ongoing BVN-based staff audit and enrolment to the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS)”, the statement added

    The Federal Government is also making efforts to recover “salary balances in bank accounts as well as any pension contributions in respect of the deleted workers. This involves active collaboration with the concerned banks and the National Pension Commission (Pencom).”

    The Federal Government, the ministry said, is determined to continue the verification programme on a regular periodic basis in its efforts to reduce personnel cost.

    Since personnel costs represent over 40 per cent of total government expenditure, the Federal Government has vowed to continue to strengthen its payroll controls.

    “It plans to undertake periodic checks and to utilise Computer Assisted Audit Techniques under its new Continuous Audit Programme. This will ensure that all payments are accurate and valid. Requirements for new entrants joining the Federal Civil Service have also been enhanced to prevent the introduction  of fictitious employees in future” the statement said.

    Reacting to recent calls by the leadership of the Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria (ASCSN) that the panel members investigating the cases of indicted civil servants be drawn from both government and labour, the Ministry explained that “the request could not be acceded to, as the investigations were of a criminal nature and would therefore be handled by the appropriate  investigative agencies”.

    The ongoing exercise, which is part of the cost-saving and anti-corruption agenda of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration, is key to funding the deficit in the 2016 budget, as savings made will ultimately reduce the amount to be borrowed.

    The strategy of using BVNs, rather than requiring the physical presence of each member of staff for biometric capture at the initial stage of verification, the finance ministry said, has significantly simplified and accelerated the progress of the payroll audit process and reduced the cost of implementation.

    With the adoption of the BVN platform to audit and sanitise the salary payment system, the Ministry has so far checked the details of about 312,000 civil servants currently enrolled on IPPIS.

    In some instances, the exercise showed that the names of some civil servants whose salaries are being processed are not consistent with the names linked to the accounts into which their salaries are paid.

    Individuals in this category are therefore either receiving salary payments from multiple sources (which could be different parastatals for example), or they are non-existent workers.

  • 23,000 ghost workers: Minister summons bank MD, PENCOM DG

    23,000 ghost workers: Minister summons bank MD, PENCOM DG

    •Releases evidence to ACSN leaders

    Finance Minister Kemi Adeosun yesterday summoned the Managing Director of a first generation bank on alleged complicity of the bank in the payment of salaries to 23,000 ghost workers on the payroll of the Federal Government.

    Also summoned by the minister is the Director General of the Pension Commission (PENCOM), Ms Chinelo Anohu-Amazu, who is expected to answer questions from a probe panel in her ministry on how Pension Funds Administrators (PFAs) allegedly generated fake PFA numbers for the “ghost workers”.

    All suspects in the ghost workers saga may be handed over to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

    The minister has already stopped the salary of the ghost workers and pledged to conduct the ongoing probe in a manner that innocent workers will not suffer.

    Sources said that the affected bank was used by civil servants to perpetrate the crime. “The managing director of a first generation bank was summoned to Abuja today (yesterday) Friday in connection with the salary scam,” one source said.

    Details of the discussion with officials of the Ministry of Finance were not made public.

    However, sources said the MD pledged to cooperate with the probe panel on the salary scam.

    The source added: ”Some of the startling discoveries so far indicate that salary accounts were opened for non-existing workers in some ministries where curious payments were made.

    “The ghost workers syndicate is virtually in all ministries.”

    Ms Anohu-Amazu was  at the Finance Ministry on Thursday following a summon by the minister, it was gathered yesterday.

    The summon was a result of the alleged involvement of Pension Funds Administrators (PFAs) in generating fake pension remittance numbers for the ghost workers.

    A top source added: “The DG of PENCOM was invited by the minister  to  a meeting with the probe panel where she was shown proof that some pension fund administrators may have colluded with some civil servants to perpetrate the crime.

    “The PFAs allegedly generated fake PFA numbers for the ‘ghost workers’. The DG promised to launch a high-powered probe into the activities of PFAs and bring to book those found wanting.”

    It was also gathered that the minister on Thursday gave an insight into salary fraud when the representatives of the Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria (ASCSN) visited her.

    At the session, the minister made some documents from the salary probe panel available to the union leaders.

    The documents included letters written to some ministries and parastatals for information on personnel cost.

    One source said: “The revelations generated by these letters are mind-boggling, as evidence showed that most of the names of some individuals which featured on government’s payroll on a monthly basis do not exist in the nominal register of those ministries and departments.

    “For instance, out of 24 of such workers being investigated in the Federal Ministry of Works, whose names appeared on the payroll, only the name of one staff corresponded with file and nominal roll. The names of 11 other staff are not on the nominal roll but are on the ministry’s payroll, while the names of 12 staff are on the ministry’s payroll and on nominal roll with file numbers not corresponding with their names. This is an indication that the other 23 workers are either ghost workers or have incomplete Bank Verification Number registration.

    “A similar exercise was carried out in the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation where seven staff were investigated. According to the report forwarded to the Minister of Finance, only one of those investigated has his name both in the nominal roll and pay roll. The other six have their names on the pay roll but the names are not in the nominal roll.”

    The Secretary of the Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria, Mr Isaac Ojemhenke, who led the union delegation, praised the minister for the painstaking effort to ensure fairness in the ongoing purge.

    He said if previous administrations had been sensitive to consult the labour unions before any fundamental issues like the current one were tackled, the nation wouldn’t have suffered untold economic problems as in the past.

    Ojemhenke said the union would not in any way make case for any workers proved to have been involved in the fraud.

    He, however, appealed to the minister to ensure that modalities for the planned dismissal of indicted staff be made available to the workers’ union.

    However, his plea that the names of such staff be forwarded to Labour was turned down by the minister.

    She said it would be “unfair to expose them, especially since they haven’t been found guilty yet”.

    On the fate of the innocent workers, the top source said the “Minister told the labour that a careful arrangement to ensure that innocent ones among those being investigated are not unjustly punished has been put in place.

    “The minister said the first step being taken is to stop the salary of those in this category. She promised to dispatch letters to the various agencies to explain why salary will be stopped. She said arrangements have been made to clear any of the affected workers who is able to come up with relevant documents including letters of their last promotion, details of their Retirement Savings Account (RSA) and BVN, among others within a period of 30 days.

    “She told us the exercise would be done in batches. The minister said arrangements have been made to allow the affected staff defend themselves at the Federal Pay Office in their respective states.”

    Contacted, the Special Adviser to the Minister of Finance on Media Matters, Mr Festus Akanbi, said investigations on the potential 23,000 ghost workers in the federal civil service is ongoing.

    He said some investigative agencies, including the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) had been briefed on the matter.

    He declined to speak on the outcome of the meeting with Labour and the status of the ongoing probe.

    During a budget defence session with the Senate Committee on Finance last week, the minister said the Bank Verification Number (BVN), and Integrated Payroll Personnel Information System had led to the discovery of 23,000 ghost workers in the civil service.

    She said: “As we speak now, we have about 23,000 that we need to investigate. Those whom either the BVN is linked to multiple payments or the name on the BVN account are not consistent with the name on our own payroll.

    “If we are able to get everybody onto the BVN platform, we will be able to save a considerable amount of personnel cost.

    “My job is to get them off our payroll, what happens from there on goes to the investigative agencies; we will pass our files onto them and they will take a decision as to what sanctions they will take.

    “Not only will we remove those people from our payroll, but we will also be going after the banks involved to collect our money.”

  • Ekiti: ghost that won’t just go

    Ekiti: ghost that won’t just go

    Sordid tales about how an election was rigged

    With the disclosure by the former Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Ekiti State, Dr Tope Aluko, about how the June 21, 2014 governorship election was rigged in favour of the incumbent governor, Ayodele Fayose, there appears to be no doubt that the election was a mere formality; the powers-that-be had already concluded plans to install their own as governor long before the election. One other thing that is not in doubt is the heavy monetisation of the process, obviously from the public till. Aluko is not only the former state PDP scribe, he was also said to be a close ally of Governor Fayose when the going was good. So, he is in a position to know; forget the motive.

    The question now is: could it be that those who unleashed soldiers and thugs on the state then were not sure they could defeat the incumbent Governor Kayode Fayemi, hence, the recourse to strong arm tactics to the ridiculous extent that they went? This was despite the shortcomings, real or perceived, of the then governor. Or, could it be that they just wanted to bare their fangs as a sign of things to come in the (then coming) 2015 General Elections?

    When Colonel Sagir Koli first disclosed that such things happened in Ekiti State, the then President Goodluck Jonathan denied.  “There was no formal petition before them, but because of the general interest, they wanted to have him (Koli) interviewed to know where this was coming from. If someone comes up with a spurious allegation that has no substance and the person disappears, of course, what do you want me to do? Definitely, anytime we get him, he’ll have to substantiate his allegations. There is a lot of false stories being circulated and it is very sad”, the former president had said. Now, could the former president be telling lies or was it just that people merely took advantage of his weakness, ignorance and naivety (or all of the above) to commit blue murder on his behalf?

    Just like Jonathan, Governor Fayose had dismissed the weighty allegations as the ranting of a man disgruntled by his refusal to make him chief of staff and that it is all part of the grand plan of the All Progressive Congress (APC) to get through the back door the governorship that it failed to get through due process. Fayose was not forthcoming as to whether what Aluko said actually took place or not. One wonders how far this nation can go with such off-hand dismissal as a figment of some people’s imagination events that really took place. But that is one of the values that we parade in the country: people who cannot be faithful over little things we elevate to even higher responsibilities. We are already paying for such indiscretion and we will pay even higher price in future if we do not sanction those culpable in such matters.

    It is gratifying though that the military has sanctioned its own implicated in the inglorious affair. But, would the military have punished its men implicated in the rigging plot if the story was some tales by moonlight or scenes from some Hollywood films? The revelations have named, but apart from the military’s, no other culprit has been shamed. Yet, people must be shamed if we are to make progress in our electoral process. One of the main problems with us is our failure to punish big criminals. Some people will tell you that the country has more than enough laws to deal with any situation but that we hardly punish people in spite of the existence of these laws. I agree. If the Muhammadu Buhari presidency is able to successfully prosecute and get some of the big thieves who had dipped their hands into our national treasury illegally jailed, it would be the first time we would be sending the appropriate signal that this country will no longer be a haven for thieves, whoever they might be and irrespective of where they come from or their creed.

    The country has an Electoral Law that prescribes sanctions for people who pervert the democratic process as we witnessed in Ekiti. Unfortunately, we hardly prosecute them. Before the Ekiti incident, we have had many similar instances of people committing electoral heist without being sanctioned. This is even when such incidents were recorded and we could identify them either running away with snatched ballot boxes or intimidating voters or members of the opposition parties at the polling booths. We just read those things in the newspapers or watch them live on television, cry foul; and that is all. If we had been punishing people for electoral crimes, those who blatantly engaged in the Ekiti show of shame could have thought twice before allowing themselves to be used for such illegal purposes.

    We must go beyond the entertainment provided by the narrations of what happened during that election by getting all those involved arrested and prosecuted. In like manner, whatever inspired Dr Aluko to say it all is immaterial. Whether it was guilty conscience, or because of Fayose’s refusal to honour his alleged pact to make him (Aluko) his chief of staff should not carry any weight now. It is not even important if he did to curry the favour of the Buhari administration. The issue is that, by his (Aluko’s) action, and given the fact that he had earlier testified before the election petition tribunal that looked into the conduct of the election that it was free and fair, what he is now saying is contrary to that. To that extent therefore, his case is different from Colonel Koli’s who fled after revealing the secret plot even when President Jonathan was still in power. No one should therefore be surprised that the Fayose government has dragged him to court which has ordered his arrest and prosecution for alleged perjury.

    A lesson from all these is that people joined together by treachery will also be put asunder by treachery. If the actors had been told that what they had regarded as top secret then would end up being subject of discussion in the public space, they would have disagreed. Now, we are being treated to a movie that we did not pay for.

    With the Ekiti case, the law has once again been proven to be an ass indeed. Otherwise, with all these stunning revelations, first by Colonel Koli, and now, Dr Aluko, there appears to be sufficient grounds to revisit that election, at least from the layman’s point of view. Unfortunately, Governor Fayose’s governorship has been signed, sealed, delivered and confirmed even by the highest court in the land, the Supreme Court. In a sense therefore, nothing untoward happened, at least in the eye of the law.

    But can that be the case in the face of these damning revelations? Even if the incumbent would still have won in a truly free and fair election, could the circumstances surrounding that election have guaranteed a level-playing field for all the candidates? Food for thought!