The Nation Newspaper

Tag: government

  • The government boxed itself into this corner

    In the meantime, let the governors curb their enthusiasm for victimising workers and reduce their personal excesses and expenses. Let them also stop taking themselves so seriously…

    Sometime in the week, a middle aged artisan who deals in tyres was said to have been killed with one other along a byroad in the city where I live. A vehicle had veered off its path suddenly and had gone to meet him as he plied his trade by the roadside. When I inspected the place later, reader, I found that the space between the tarred edge of the road and the rail behind him was literally no wider than one foot. I honestly wondered where and how on earth anyone could have put a vulcanising business there. I also wondered why those around him could not have told him to locate his business elsewhere other than right on a busy road. I found two reasons.

    The first is that the economy has turned so bad now that Nigerians have become desperate. This means that any undertaking that would fetch someone a daily subsistence earning is gaily embraced. It also means that where that undertaking is located is often not a strong consideration. Hence, it has become normal to see the fried yam, akara, fruit, engine oil, tomato, cement, tyre vulcaniser, meat dealers and sellers, etc., pick a spot right by the roadside to sell or display their tools, leaving them open to blind vehicles. The roadside in Nigeria is everyone’s shop. Who then is to tell another to take his trade elsewhere, no matter how reasonable the argument?

    The other reason I found is that there is a civil service official designated to cover that area from the local, state and federal governments and the police to make sure that people do not go out of the orbits of their common sense in matters such as locating businesses, displaying their wares or even in greeting relatives. Oh yes, it is possible to contravene the law when greeting relatives when you see the extent some people go. Anyway, the officials at all these levels obviously did not do their work; that was why these people died. And they are still not doing their work because people are still placing their businesses right beneath speeding tyres and stomping feet, and no one is telling them ‘NO SIR/MA, YOU CANNOT STAY THERE; IT IS TOO DANGEROUS’.

    Yet, the services of all these officers and officials are so sorely needed. We need them to beg us not to put our houses right on the river’s edge; to beg us not to take our baths in public; heck, to tell us not to do our private businesses in the open, if you know what I mean. I have been witness to a man ‘unloading’ in full view of all who cared to look. I cared to… look away. I bet you thought I was going to say something else – you! you!

    Unfortunately, our officials appear to be less than effective where service delivery is concerned. They are mostly people who have mixed business with pleasure and culture to tie their own hands behind their backs and are therefore unable to lay down the law for me and you.         A committee, said someone, is somewhere where good ideas are called and strangulated. Among all the service staff, the good ideas of laying down an orderly society gets systematically strangulated.

    What is more irksome is the fact that the staff at all these levels appear to have been really bloated to a strange degree. There are people in the service, I understand, who have no designated desks or chairs or functions. There are so many officers, so much to do, yet so little being done. A case of too many cooks, eh?

    Perhaps, Dr. Doyin Okupe was thinking of this when he called on state governments to solve their seemingly intractable salary-payment problems by reducing their civil service staff strength. He asked that governments should sack workers in order to survive; you know, like cutting off a leg in order to live. Naturally, people have been taking this piece of advice not lying low.

    To start with, people have said the doctor probably would not have made that call if his party had still been in power. And that he made the call so that the present government could be seen to have failed which would bring his own party’s ‘failures’ into less bolder relief. Perhaps, I don’t know. What I know is that at other times, the call might have made some sense, but not now, not just now.

    Listen, the Nigerian civil service did not grow overnight. It grew systematically and over a long period, right from the 1960s. The government boxed itself into this corner by deliberately enhancing the public sector at the expense of the private sector. I believe indeed it was one of the fallouts of the policy of the strong-centred government. The private sector bowed its lovely head.

    Unfortunately, the litany of bad economic policies of this strong centre followed one after another. The most notorious of this is the disgraceful import licence era when any crony of the government could bring in anything. Many did because the government found itself with many friends on its hands that it could not say no to. This meant of course that if the private sector was dead before, well, it became more dead. What we have today as the private sector is just a shadow of the old and powerful one which competed very vigorously to attract the best brains into its workforce. Let me illustrate with this story which you might say I probably have told you a power of times. Good, I’ll tell it again.

    Once, someone conceived a brilliant idea of manufacturing bicycles in Nigeria. This would not only bring the price down but it would give several thousands of people work opportunities, not to talk of the several thousands more of service providers to that company. Well, he needed some licence to import some raw materials until the company became strong enough to stand. What was his surprise when he found that a licence had been given some friend of the government to import bicycles in their entirety?!

    The government’s policies reduced the private sector to the pitiful level it is today. The government’s policies swelled the civil service to what we have today for its own reasons. So, the government must find a way of dealing with its problems. It should not make the people pay for its sins of having too many friends and putting the interests of these friends above those of the state.

    If workers are to be let go as suggested, where do they go? What will they eat? Where will they find succour? No responsible government simply throws its own people out in order to solve its own problems without providing a safe landing. For now, the public service jobs are the people’s welfare packages which cannot be taken away without an adequate replacement.

    There is no country in the world that survives without private enterprise providing the bulk of job opportunities as we do not have in Nigeria presently. Nigeria must join others by letting private enterprise take its rightful place so that the people can be given a choice.

    In the meantime, let the governors curb their enthusiasm for victimising workers and reduce their personal excesses and expenses. Let them also stop taking themselves so seriously and remember that the body that drinks champagne and the one that takes corn pap for breakfast will still become skeletons one day or another. Besides, let’s face it: we are only remembered in this world, not for the amount of champagne bottles we can afford to put away, but for the much good that we can do.

  • Government must let the markets work

    If there is any lesson the federal government must learn from the lingering petrol crises, in the unabated long queues at our petrol stations, it is that that a government cannot substitute itself for the market no matter the depth of its patriotic intentions.  From the management of the foreign exchange to petrol markets, we see an economic management paradigm that markets do not matter, that a government can take over the fundamental functions of markets from the supply of goods, to the determination of demand and the ultimate fixing of prices. Nothing illustrates the fallacy of this economic paradigm more than the current petrol crisis. When economic goods are mechanically and artificially priced below their true economic value, the effective and efficient functioning of markets are distorted, supply dries up and demand becomes over-bloated. This leads to secondary and parallel markets where economic goods will ultimately find prices closer to its true value. The few privileged elites who control supply benefit from unjustifiable rent, the market becomes inefficient and productivity and economic output ultimately decline. It will be useful to estimate the productivity loss and output decline occasioned by the current petrol crisis in all sectors of the economy including small business and the impact on the quality of life of Nigerian households.

    If the economic and output implications issues of a fixed pricing of foreign exchange are not as clear, it should be clearer with the petrol product crisis.  Essentially, the fixed price of petrol below its economic value created little incentive for the private sector to participate in the petrol market leaving virtually the NNPC as the sole supplier. Despite all patriotic intentions and the best of logistic management, the NNPC alone has been unable to cope and meet national demand. If any government must be open to market logic, it should be the one operating in a time of heavy fiscal constrains like the current administration. In the period of fiscal abundance, a government might have the resources to call the bluff of markets, even controversially so, but certainly not in the period of fiscal constraints where private sector resources need to be deliberately courted and mobilized to complement constrained fiscal supplies. From Venezuela to Nigeria, we see the same challenge of the anti-market economic policy and its negative effect on output and employment. A genuinely patriotic Hugo Chavez could call the bluff of markets when oil prices were high in his days in Venezuela but not the current Maduro government operating in period of low oil prices and heavily constrained fiscal state resources. Outputs have shrunk; inflation and unemployment have skyrocketed in Maduro’s Venezuela.  Shops are empty and there are typical long queues for basic essential groceries. Like Zimbabwe with the same unorthodox economic policies, we in Nigeria are now beginning to queue perpetually for fuel, queue for forex and queue for electricity.

    As it affects petrol and forex markets, the same issues affect the infrastructure and power markets. The Works and Power Minister has lamented  that while his ministry needs N2 trillion to complete just the road projects inherited from the previous administration, his ministry will at best have just about N400billion from the budget, which is expected to finance road construction, including investments required to radically upgrade our power infrastructure. It should be obvious that if we do not get our power markets to work with the right pricing of economic goods that provide sufficient incentives for private investments from home and abroad, we should say good-bye to serious improvement in our electricity situation. Babatunde Fashola despite his good track record may be potentially demystified by the current government economic policy.

    It is not that markets are always perfect and cannot fail. There are in fact critical instances where markets fail and their dysfunction necessitates the intervention of the state to protect the poor and the socially vulnerable. In the case of public goods like education and health, where the social benefits of investments are far bigger than private returns to capital, when private capital will not sufficiently invest in public goods, the state must intervene to correct market failure to ensure the protection of the socially vulnerable, the poor and the larger society.  The state will achieve this by driving public investments in social services including the provision of subsidies targeting the socially vulnerable.  Such public investments and social subsidies especially in a fiscally constrained state must be appropriately targeted to ensure that they are going to only those who deserve such subsidies, those who cannot afford to pay commercial prices.  Designing such social subsidy programme can be very challenging as we see in the petrol subsidy programme as well as in the current forex allocation programme, which is effectively a social subsidy programme to buy the dollar at prices below its true economic value. The true economic value or price of the dollar is the equilibrium price that balances demand and supply in the forex market. This price given parallel market rate today is clearly above the official fixed exchange rate.

    The distortion in the current forex subsidy programme is obvious. The subsidy programme is benefiting the rich and narrow elites more than the poor. The poor do not buy dollars. They do not process letter of credit nor buy dollars for capital investments in their companies and their subsidiaries abroad. They do not pay overseas school fees neither do they pay mortgages abroad using our dollar commonwealth. They do not travel overseas and certainly do not buy Personal Travel Allowances at official rates. And, there is certainly very little trickle-down effect of this heavy subsidizing of the dollar consumption of narrow elites as production inputs are priced at near parallel market rates, in the determination of market prices, even among businesses that are privileged to get the dollar at official rate.  The evidence of rising inflation confirms that the current non- market, fixed forex pricing policy, despite its good intentions has not delivered low prices of goods for the poor.

    The same distortion also happens in the petrol subsidy programme. The wealthy consumes more petrol with several fuel guzzling cars per household compared to the low income that uses mass-shared public transportation. The wealthy benefit from petroleum product subsidy more than the poor. The petrol product market will be more efficient if prices reflect their true economic value at equilibrium prices that balance demand and supply. At true economic prices, demand will reduce to match available supply. This will solve the lamentation of the petroleum minister that 30 percent of our fuel imports are ferried across the border to Cameroun and Chad where petroleum product prices are closer to their economic value.  In a market-driven pricing regime, the arbitrage margin between local price and cross-border price of petroleum product shrinks eliminating incentives to smuggle petrol across the border. Fuel imports and demand for dollar for fuel import will crash; the naira will appreciate with positive spiral effect on social welfare. Private sector supply of petroleum products will also increase at market prices, reducing the pressure on NNPC to supply and fulfil virtually most of national demand. We can then save resources from NNPC and plough them to fund social investments in infrastructure, public transportation, health and education.

    Our argument in essence is that a fiscally constrained government such as we have, cannot afford to distort markets in area where they are potentially efficient and create inefficiencies by its commission or omission. The social cost of such market distortions is high on society, the economy and general public welfare. While the anti-corruption stance of the Buhari government is commendable, it must embrace real economic pragmatism and allow markets to function if it will make a difference in reversing the economic downturn. There is very little evidence, even if nascent, that the anti-market economic policy orientation of the government is working. Growth rate is at its lowest in decades, unemployment and inflation are rising. It is now time for change. It is time for the government to let the markets work.

     

    • Akanmu writes on Strategy and Public Policy.
  • ‘Nigerians should be patient with government’

    ‘Nigerians should be patient with government’

    House of Representatives member Hon. Rotimi Agunsoye (Kosofe Constituency), in this interview with MUSA ODOSHIMOKHE, explains the controversy surrounding the budget, his constituency projects and contributions on the floor of the House.     

    What can you say about the acrimony between the National Assembly and the executive over the budget?

    The executive said the budget was padded. As a legislator, I can only tell you what happened to the budget during the committee meetings, because I attended the meetings. But, when segments were brought together in the House, I also attended the meetings. But, I can’t tell you much about the details of the budget; the appropriation committees of the two houses are in a position to explain it better.

    Don’t you think the delay in passing the budget is affecting government programmes?

    This is the first year of the APC government. We implemented the budget that we met on ground. Don’t forget that government has the power to spend within the limit of what it proposes in the budget. What has happened is for the good of the country. What has transpired between the executive and legislature is for good governance. So, what is going on is expected; even the situation that we are in the country is not entirely unexpected. We thank God for it, because every Nigerian is thinking of how to move the country forward. We now have our thinking cap on; in the past it was not so. The executive is always thinking of how to improve what is on the ground. Similarly, the legislature is always thinking of how to move the country forward.

    What is the position of the All Progressives Congress (APC) caucus at the National Assembly on the budget?

    What I will tell you is that everybody is working as one, to move the country forward on the budget.

    It appears that the controversy on the budget has further damaged the relationship between the executive and legislature…

    In a situation where you have the kind of leadership that we are talking about, I mean better relationship — not rubber stamp relationship — it has to go this way. There is time for everything under the sun. There is a time to be happy and a time for sombre reflection. This is our turn for sombre reflection on certain things, which have gone wrong in the past. For instance, you are contributing your quota, as per what you are doing right now, to let people know my position about the budget. The truth of the matter is that the executive as well might have erred in one way or the other, concerning the budget in the first instance. If the executive thinks that something is wrong in what we have sent to them, it has its reason. If it says the budget is padded, then it has to be reviewed to put things right. I don’t see anything wrong with that. That is my own humble opinion. What will move Nigeria forward is what I stand for and we should not in any way create a gap to move the country forward.

    What is affecting the budget has been attributed to the way the leadership of the National Assembly emerged…

    You are the one saying that. That is your opinion that it is the sour relationship between the legislature and the executive that created the scenario we are.

    How have you represented your constituency in the last one year?

    I see myself as a servant of my people and what I promised them is exactly what I am doing. I promised them quality representation and by the grace of God, He has given me the grace to let my people hear my voice there. As regards, my contributions or the motions I have moved there, I think I am on course. I am working on bills in areas of maintenance of public facilities. For instance, what killed former Minister of State for Labour, James Ocholi, was due to lack of maintenance. It was not just a mere accident. It was an accident that was caused by bad road. So, if our people can imbibe the culture of maintenance, things will be better. As we are constructing roads, there should be a system in place to maintain the roads. Some weeks ago, I assembled over 200 youths for employment. We have been working on these and have been sorting out challenges affecting our people. We have collaborated with National Directorate of Employment (NDE) for the training of youths. We have been giving them skills, so that they can be able to stand on their own. We have purchased ambulances to service the three local government areas under my constituency. If there is any emergency, the ambulances would be made available to the people. We have also distributed materials to some artisans, to alleviate poverty.

    You raised some objections concerning training of civil servants overseas…

    Somebody brought that on the floor of the House, that government is poised to train some civil servants abroad. Some people supported it, but I kicked against it, because of the present economic situation of the country. I said government should bring experts from abroad to train the civil servants here. For instance, if five or six of them are coming from the United Kingdom or China, to train about 100 or 200 people here, we would be able to save money for the country. If you are sending them abroad, you will pay for more tickets, accommodation and certainly they will get estacode. This will impact on the economy of the country they are travelling to. When I explained the implications to those who support the idea, they later kicked against it and supported my position.

    How will you assess Governor Akinwunmi Ambode’s first year?

    He is a fantastic governor; a man of little words, but large performance. He is an achiever. My position hasn’t changed, because that was my take before he became the governor. I told people that, look this man is somebody that I know very well. He is a performer; don’t forget that we worked together before. He does not talk much, he believes in performance. Show what you have and people will regard you for that. That is exactly what he is doing right now. He is turning Lagos around and I thank God for giving Lagosians this man.

    Government kept giving excuses on fuel problem, how can this be addressed?

    This present government has not given any excuse. The only reason, I went against the Minister of State Petroleum Resource, Ibe Kachukwu, who is a brilliant and knowledgeable man, is that he has to work on his public relations. He has to learn how to address people. He should thank God for the opportunity given him to serve the people. Does he know the number of people running helter skelter to take up his job? When he made that statement that he is not a magician, I was going to attack him on the floor of the House, but when he apologised I changed by position. You will know that he has the stuff to make things happen in the ministry. And don’t forget that what we are experiencing now about the fuel scarcity did not just emerge yesterday. What we should be telling our people is not to forget about what happened in the past. This cannot be solved in one day, but I can assure you that in the next six months, Nigeria will begin to enjoy steady supply.

  • ‘We don’t collect subvention from government’

    ‘We don’t collect subvention from government’

    The Managing Director of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), Habib Abdullahi, hosted a group of Business Editors. He spoke on many issues, such as performance, revenue and challenges faced by the authority in the light of the dip in oil prices and accompanying policies. Group Business Editor SIMEON EBULU was there.

    What are the challenges confronting ports administration?

    Any challenge I encountered when I came in is not new to me. There is change of government and with that, there is complete change of ideas. It is not like a similar government. It is a complete overall change of the system. There is challenge, not only in the maritime but in the overall economy. That has also made us to face some challenges. The sector is affected by the policies of the government and we are waiting for government to stabilise the system.

    How has the change impacted the policy direction of the maritime sector?

    Maritime is dependent on import and export of goods. There is less business now in the ports. That means less revenue to us. We are very much aware that there is challenge of foreign exchange. This is related to revenue of the whole nation. We are highly dependent on oil revenue which has dropped. The year has just started and it has not even started if you look at the fact that the budget has not been approved.

    … by what percentage compared to last year’s?

    If you look at the number of goods and services that we have, we are less by 10 per cent.  In ship tracking, the number of ocean going vessels has dropped to 5900, representing a decrease of 8.1per cent from 50000 in 2014. If you look at this tracking, you will see the effect on traffic.

    How are you trying to reverse the trend?

    We have to go with the government’s thinking, and that is diversification of the economy. What we are trying to do is to encourage export and be less dependent on oil. We have written to the Federal Ministry of agriculture and the Nigerian Export Promotion Council. There are quite a number of empty containers. If only we can encourage people to export, (people are exporting yam), and other resources. We can diversify into Agric. That is one of the areas I think we can diversify and complement the revenue we are losing.

    We have to work hand-in-hand with Concessionaires, at the same time, we are trying to work with the Customs. We are trying to see how to make Ikorodu an export terminal. This is just an example. We have the Ilaje Port in Ondo State. Quite a number of people are coming and showing interest.

    It would appear the Lagos port is always congested?

    A number of people don’t understand our operation and role in the maritime sector. I don’t tell people that when they are bringing goods that they must use Lagos ports. It depends on you the importer or exporter, not me. More especially now that all the ports are being concessioned. We are just landlord and we are only building infrastructure. We are doing that in all the ports. It’s left for government and concession-aires to encourage people to deal with them, but people just decided to use Lagos despite the traffic.

    Instead of people to use Calabar, (of course there are some problems there), but Onitsha is deeper than Lagos, and  we have Control Terminal there.

    The infrastructure – access road to Lagos port remains an issue. How are you dealing with that?

    I have to re-educate the public. It is not our responsibility to improve access roads to the Lagos port. I wish it were, but it is disturbing. Anything that happens it’s the NPA but access road is the responsibility of the Federal Ministry of Works and the Lagos State government, as well as the local government. Last year we spent about N500million in order to show our Corporate Social Responsibility. We did some emergency interventions to make life easier for port users, but it’s not our responsibility. The only thing we can do is within the port. We are trying to do similar works at Tin Can. Currently, the Federal Government is giving a contract for the Oshodi/Apapa road.

    Operators have expressed concern that the ports are nor served with railways. What is the position?

    That is our responsibility. Inter-modal transportation is one of the key issues. If the railway is working as it used to be, all these congestion will not be. You remember, the railway within the port, we did that and it is 93 percent completed. That of Port Harcourt is almost completed. We are developing that infrastructure. We are waiting for the Nigerian Railway Corporation to complete the rest outside the port. That is why the government is making it a priority.

    How are you reducing  cost of doing business?

    People say the cost of importing is high here but compare it to the rest of the world. Look at it and see it. The issue is not what a lot of people think. We have about five applications to set up port. Why are they applying if the port here is expensive! but it is not, it is because smuggling is going on?

    Shouldn’t NPA look for other ways of generating revenue rather than collecting rent?

    Who told you that it is easy to collect rent? Even to collect that rent is very difficult. It is not as easy as you think. Don’t forget, we have responsibility. We can’t go outside our mandate. It is not only rent collection that is the source of our revenue. We have cargo dues, shipment dues, pilot age dues, and we are trying through our own ways to see how we can expand and come up with few things. We have parastatals within the NPA. We need to have a reorientation.

    The Finance Minister said some revenue agencies are richer than the ministries but that they still wait for government’s subvention. Why?

    Let me correct this. We don’t collect subvention from the government. We are a self-sustaining agency and are expected to even give the government money. If you ask the  Minister of Finance, she will tell you that NPA is one of the agencies living up to its responsibility. It is not because we like to give the government money; it is because of Fiscal Responsibility Act. For the first time in 2012-2013, we remitted N15 billion to government. The highest that was ever remitted was N2 billion. I will give you the figures to see how much we have given to government.

    Are you exploring some dormant areas?

    People forget something. Seventy-five per cent of Customs collection is from the maritime sector, according to the Controller-General.Whatever we collect as well, is part of maritime. The revenue being collected taxes, somebody can sit down and see how much we are giving. People focus on very small aspect, but I agree with you we will do more. If you look at it from that end, Maritime sector is huge, but it cannot exist on its own. But the sector thrives on government policy, trade policy and transport policy, among others.

    Why is it difficult getting the rent from the concessionaires?

    First of all, business like this is continuous. Every month, every quarter, every year, we sit down and review and reconcile and collect the money. There are different kinds of revenues and funds you are suppose to collect from them. Now because of the challenges that we started with, the question of deposit at the initial stage of TSA, we had challenges; question of forex from those we have agreed to pay in forex, so there are all these challenges that we are trying to deal with. On the concession, some of these concessionaires when they took over have dual responsibilities. We have some responsibility and they have theirs. Part of our responsibility is port development which we have to do.

    For instance, some of them want their quay side which has been there for more than 60 years in Lagos, developed, some are even collapsing, but we can’t do everything at a go. But these guys feel why can’t they do it and when they do it, instead of them to wait but they will say, let’s do it and give us one-to-three years to collect back our money. And it’s because of that we write to the Ministry of Transport, the Federal Executive Council, to the NCP (National Council on Privatisation). So it is NCP that gave this exemption, based on our recommendation. They have to come and confirm, but in order for them to recoup their money, we had to extend their period to one, two to five years.

    Has the port concession arrangement paid off?

    Yes. Hitherto,people come in; they want to repair one thing or the other and it was not done as efficiently. That is the whole essence of port reform. By doing that, the government becomes more efficient. Your port of operation becomes more efficient. Yes, the problem has increased; people have to go out now to look for market, that is, the concessionaires. This increases the volume of business year-on-year. Even at this crucial time, what we collect is even much higher than what we collect before. To say that the concession is not a success I disagree with that, but we can do much better. I have written a letter for a review of all the concessions to address some of these challenges from our side and their side.

    The volume of containers that are still in the ports, we thought when the Inland Ports were established, it will reduce the volume, how effective is this?

    You remember the impact of the terminal port in Kano, Kaduna, Ibadan and Enugu. I could remember the impact of the port in the North because I grew up there.  Now that huge container terminal, it was the railway that was transporting the containers. Now, the place has been given out. People are building houses there. It is very unfortunate. Why? It’s because its responsibility is taken over by some agencies. It used to be under NPA that is the inland container. It’s no longer under us.

    Why?

    It’s the government’s decision. They said we are a technical regulator, that is what it is. The government has approved that. So, we are an economic regulator.

    What’s the relationship between the NPA and Private Jetties?

    There is a Presidential Committee on private jetties and NPA is a member of that Committee.

     

     

  • Government to ‘possibly’ stop funding polytechnics by 2018

    Director of Physical Planning and Development, National Board for Technical Education (NBTE), Mr Ekpeyong Ekpeyong has urged polytechnics to step up their internally generated revenue (IGR) so they can survive if government stops budgetary allocation to polytechnics in the next two years.

    He made this assertion while representing the Executive Secretary of the board at the 133rd regular meeting of the Council of Heads of Polytechnics in Nigeria and Colleges of Technology (COHEADS) at Yaba College of Technology (YABATECH).

    He said: “Funding is part of the problems limiting us from being independent. Look beyond the shores of this country and see how other polytechnics are fairing. Some of those who went to Israel recently discovered that their polytechnics sustain their host communities. The institutions become the factory for the community to produce things. With that, we won’t need to look to government for funding anymore. This is a challenge to us all because Nigerian government in the next two years may not be funding any of us.”

    Ekpeyong encouraged the rectors to embrace technology in their training and teaching to help the country compete globally.

    “The level of budgetary allocations to the polytechnics have dwindled drastically over the years and unless the institutions are proactive to look for alternative funding and use their resources, they may not be able to survive.”

    Meanwhile, in her welcome address, Yabatech Rector, Dr Margaret Ladipo, enjoined her colleagues to contribute to the nation’s technological growth.

    She said: “My fellow rectors, let us brace up to the challenge of making a meaningful impact on the nation’s drive towards technological growth and rapid industrialisation.”

  • Government is battling unemployment, says Senator Tinubu

    Government is battling unemployment, says Senator Tinubu

    Senator Oluremi Tinubu yesterday said the federal government was working hard to eradicate youth unemployment in the country.

    She urged well meaning Nigerians to support the project.

    Speaking during the flag off of the Lagos Central Senatorial District Skills Acquisition Training in collaboration with National Directorate of Employment (NDE) at Women Vocational Centre, Yaba, Lagos, Tinubu said government has outlined programmes that would solve unemployment.

    She said the major challenge facing the country was unemployment, noting that the country has more citizens belonging to this category.

    “There is no doubt that the major challenge facing the country today is the alarming rate of youth unemployment. Nigeria has more citizens belonging to the age bracket.

    “This is what formed our determination to provide job opportunities, skills training and guidance to our teeming youth.

    “This is in line with government change mantra and the need to secure the future of our youths.”

    The senator, who said over 50 youths covering five different trades would benefit from the gesture, noted that they would be assisted to be self-reliant in their various skills after training.

    She added the youths deserve the means of subsistence, stressing that well- meaning Nigerians in private and public life should rise up to the occasion.

    “In 2004, I made a statement to the effect that we owe society our best efforts at ensuring a brighter, better and safer future for the youth population.

    “Since then I have worked assiduously both with private and public sectors in furtherance of this objective.

    “I am pleased to say that this initiative is now a reality. This exercise will mark the commencement of a three month intensive training in barbing/hairdressing, catering and small chops, smoked fish business, photography, video recording and  handset/mobile phone repairs.”

    Also speaking, the Acting Director General of NDE, Mr. Kunle Abayan said the changing nature of unemployment had constrained the directorate to adjust its strategy to tackling mass unemployment.

    He charged beneficiaries to apply themselves to the training for others to equally tap from their skills.

  • Government versus government

    Government versus government

    I still don’t get it. It might take me a while to. Or at some point, I will just learn to live with this unchangeable fact. It is all about time. Time at times is not our friend. One moment it is all about you, the next moment you are out of reckoning. For this, I say time is wicked. If it were a man I would have said it is a bad man and a flirt ever swinging here and there. If it were a woman, I would have labelled it a prostitute jumping from one bed to the other. It is like a knife. Your fate depends on which side you are holding.

    High Chief Government Ekpemupolo must have realised this bad nature of time by now. Yesterday was his. Today is showing him the flipside of life. How time changes! Now, a god is about to be demystified. How cruel; how unfair.

    For God’s sake, this is Tompolo we are talking about. He has been named in a N34b scam at the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA). For this, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) invited him for a chat. He spurned the opportunity. The agency decided to go ahead with his arraignment alongside NIMASA ex-Director-General Patrick Akpobolokemi. The court ordered him to appear. He has not. Instead, he issued a statement justifying his refusal to honour EFCC’s invite and failure to keep a date in court.

    The tales he had to tell sounds like these: He is no signatory to any of the accounts of the companies involved in the scam. EFCC’s lawyer Festus Keyamo and ex-Bayelsa Governor Timpire Sylva are setting him up.

    Keyamo, he said, was after him because he refused to buy some property he introduced him to in Lagos and Abuja. Sylva, he claimed, was bitter because he refused to support his bid to become the Chairman of the Presidential Amnesty Programme.

    His hands, he vowed, were clean and as such Buhari should just get the EFCC to apply the break in his trial for alleged money laundering and corruption.

    The fact that Tompolo is even explaining himself is an insult to this man. Tompolo never had to convince anybody about his actions. He simply acted and moved on.

    Tompolo was favoured. He was some sort of god. He ran a government of his own. Like many so-called ex-militant leaders, Tompolo became an overnight billionaire. He claims he deserves it for his contributions to stopping the militancy that was raging in the Niger Delta. He graciously handed over his guns, got his lieutenants to hand in their arsenals too and the country was better for it. Some say he even did the great sacrifice of turning in his Izon charms too. He must have been expecting a national honour for his sacrifices until the table turned.

    I am still in shock that Tompolo, the big man who answers Government as his first name, is being tossed around like this by Ibrahim Magu, the man they call General at the EFCC. Who was Magu when Tompolo was the Government? How many bullets can Magu’s tiny frame take? If only the Izon charms were still at his service, this Magu go don hear wehn. How dare he challenge Government? This Magu get liver o!

    •Magu
    •Magu

    On the other hand, someone says Tompolo needs to be careful because the difference between Magu’s name and Magun is the letter ‘n’– suggesting that you do not toy with him. Magun is a charm in Yorubaland, which a suspicious husband laces his wife with and any man who ‘climbs’ her ascends the mortality cloud. Magun, when trasliterated, means ‘don’t climb’.

    On a more serious note, I will always remember an event which showed the influence Tompolo wielded under Jonathan. Reporters from various media organisations had gone in search of news somewhere in Ogidigben, Delta State. On their way back to Warri, the heartbeat of the state, they were seized.  For writing ‘nonsense’, they were detained. The men who arrested them claimed to have discovered guns or a gun in the boat that bore them. Our dear Shola O’Neil and Bolaji Ogundele were two of those held captive by the agents of this man of yesterday.

    They were after humiliation handed over to the Navy as criminals. Yet, the militants who handed over the reporters to the naval men for alleged gun-running were also bearing arms, which I doubt they had licences for. The navy could not query them on this; yet, it willingly detained men who had, over the years, contributed through their pens to the nation. This was a sign of the time. The leader of the illegally armed men was untouchable. The Navy dared not query him.

    This was in late 2014. The man in power at the centre was Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan. He lost re-election last May and a new sheriff named Muhammadu Buhari is in town. The men who seized the offending reporters were loyalists of Tompolo.

    Events of the last few weeks seem to suggest that this man, who sacrificed his guns for our oil to flow well, is being taken for granted by the men in power now who feel he has allowed his overnight wealth get into his head.

    A day or so after the court ordered Tompolo to appear before it to defend himself in the case against him, oil pipelines went up in flames in Delta State. Oil giant Chevron is in a deep pit as a result of the attacks. The country’s economy, which is in coma, is bound to feel the effect of these attacks. If they continue, the country is in trouble. No wonder, the security agencies are up and about to curb such attacks.

    Tompolo, I must add, has dissociated himself from the attacks. It would have amounted to a treasonable felony if he had said something else. He would have clearly declared a war against the Federal Government and we all can imagine what the new sheriff in town would have done.

    Some say the excuses given by this overnight billionaire for shunning the EFCC and refusing to obey the law are laughable. They are also damn right condescending, they say. Only in Nigeria, they also add, can a man whose claim to popularity is linked to taking arms against our economic well-being be walking freely after defying the law. But he sure will have his days in court, they insist.

    I have heard some people complain that Tompolo may be afraid of being arrested and detained indefinitely. Those who share this opinion point at the arrest and re-arrest of Akpobolokemi and Sambo Dasuki to buttress their point. Thank God they did not remind us that if not for the role of the like of Tompolo the Niger Delta will still be boiling and the dwindling oil cash would have dwindled further.

    My final take: While I will be the last person to support the government keeping an accused illegally after the court has given him bail and he has met the conditions, I will also be the last to support the nonsense Tompolo is doing. He is not greater than Nigeria and can only run but cannot hide. He will take his place in the dock soon. The Federal Government of Nigeria is sure bigger than this Government of militants.

  • Security, the essence of government

    •Never again should it be toyed with

    With the Boko Haram insurgents ravaging the north-east, kidnappers in the south-east and south-south and armed robberies and ritual killings here and there, President Muhammadu Buhari took over the country’s affairs at very difficult times. There was virtual state of insecurity in the land.

    So, we expect the Buhari administration to take the issue of security seriously. Provision of adequate security is the raison d’etre of any government properly so-called.  Where insecurity reigns, neither the government nor the governed can be at peace. Of course, insecurity is also a serious disincentive to foreign investment. Although some people believe that Nigeria has a huge, irresistible market for foreign investors, the fact also is that investors begin to rethink their business decisions concerning unsafe business environments.

    Our situation is more precarious when we realise that we have a harsh and un-conducive business environment that makes our products uncompetitive. We can only imagine the result when this is compounded by insecurity. We saw the effect of mere expectation that the last General Elections would make the country erupt on our stock market last year.

    However, the government appears to have started well, at least given the streaks of successes the armed forces have recorded against the Boko Haram insurgents. The change of baton at the federal level after last year’s elections has rekindled hope in the country’s foreign friends (that stayed aloof during the Jonathan years rather than help us fight Boko Haram) that Nigeria is now sincerely ready to confront its security challenges, particularly as it pertains to Boko Haram. We must not give them any reason to doubt that sincerity.

    The government must restructure the military and other arms of the security agencies for more efficiency. Almost all of them were compromised and or neglected in the immediate past, with soldiers participating actively in electoral irregularities; policemen too became largely politicised, not to mention the Department of State Security (DSS) which became an extension of the megaphone of the then ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Not only these, there was massive corruption in the procurement of arms for the security agencies, given the little that we know from the $2.1billion arms fund scandal.

    Investigations into the $2.1billion arms funds must continue and the culprits prosecuted. We need to make a statement that never again would the country tolerate a situation where people would feel comfortable sharing public funds.

    Even within the government’s lean resources, it must make reasonable provision for the security agencies. Never again must we hear of 50 police trainees sharing one fish head! If we violate our trainee police officers we should not be surprised if they turn out to be hungry lions after graduation, looking for hapless citizens to devour. Since it is now obvious that the Federal Government cannot handle the security question alone, other arms of government should also take more than a passing interest in security matters. Individual Nigerians must also be involved because those who breach security and other criminals live among us.

    More state governments should take a cue from Lagos State which has invested and keeps investing heavily in security. For example, the present administration in the state which is barely seven months has spent a whopping N4.8billion to equip the police and other security agencies to complement the efforts of the Federal Government.

    We must however warn that adequate security is not necessarily a function of the huge amount allocated to it, but how judiciously it is spent. Whatever is voted for security must be spent strictly on security; it must be spent to procure arms and ammunition, provide logistics for the security agencies as well as train and motivate them for maximum efficiency.

    “We will invest to safeguard lives and property”, President Buhari assured while presenting his budget to the joint session of the National Assembly adding that “we will devote a significant portion of our recurrent expenditure to institutions that provide critical government services. We will spend N369.6 billion in Education; N294.5 billion in Defence; N221.7 billion in Health and N145.3 billion in the Ministry of Interior. This will ensure our teachers, armed forces personnel; doctors, nurses, police men, fire fighters, prison service officers and many more critical service providers are paid competitively and on time”. So help him God.

  • Prayers and advice to government

    In 1983, the Nigerian military after a disastrous federal elections marred by flagrant rigging took over power and chose the then Major-General Muhammadu Buhari as head of state. He issued a quotable statement that we have no other country than Nigeria and that emigrating was not an option for young Nigerians and that we were going to stay in our country and solve our country’s problems together. History seems to be repeating itself bearing out George Santayana’s dictum that those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. The same Buhari is faced with how to get Nigeria out of its economic quagmire caused by mismanagement of national resources, stealing, squander mania and collapse of the international price of hydrocarbons on which Nigeria’s economy has unfortunately depended over these years. The first administration of Buhari ably supported by Major-General Tunde Idiagbon dealt harshly with those who were found guilty of financial roguery as any military regime would have done. Those who were accused were dealt with through the legal system and no special military tribunals were set up. Revisionist historians and commentators sometimes give the impression that the military government of that time operated without following the law. It was only in the case of drug smuggling that some two young men were made to face the death penalty by the wrong application of a decree that was made retroactive. The other dark spot of that regime was the law of sedition that made publication of government secrets punishable by imprisonment. His Attorney General, the Distinguished and reputable Onitsha lawyer, Chike  Offordile  ensured that necessary decrees were crafted to deal with terrible moral and financial turpitude of those days. Ganiyu  Fawehinmi who cannot be said to be a military apologist supported the steps taken by that regime to whip us Nigerians into path of discipline and rectitude.

    I am recalling those days to compare with today when the president seems to be taking his time to avoid repeating any mistake of those days. We of course do not have the luxury of time. We are a rather impatient country and rightly so. We have waited for good governance for too long and now that it seems we may have one we are rightly and justifiably in a hurry to see the dividends of good governance.

    The president himself told the BBC in a recent interview that when a fish is rotten from the head, it affects the entire body of the fish meaning that since he is not corrupt he would prevent others from being corrupt. It is not going to be like a previous regime that says stealing is not corruption implying that stealing is tolerable! This is the first time we are having a regime since independence that sees a nexus between underdevelopment and corruption. There is enough in this country to take care of our needs and not our wants and our greed. There is a commitment on the part of the executive for good governance and transparency. Perhaps its example will resonate with the legislative and the judicial branches of government across the country. Sometimes we neglect to focus on the corruption in the judiciary because  of the arcane nature of the institution. A corrupt judiciary is in fact more dangerous to the welfare of the state than corruption in the other two branches of government.  This is because of the finality of judicial pronouncement. After the Supreme Court has decided, there is no other body that can countermand that decision. This is why we say the courts are the final saviour and arbiter for the common man. If we can curb corruption in all the branches of government, then we can breathe a sigh of relief and hope for good things to come the way of our country.

    If there is minimal corruption then prudent management of national resources will automatically follow. Questions of misappropriation, misapplication and misuse of resources will be reduced to minimum. Funds meant for the military will not be given to politicians. Loans secured for railway modernization will not be diverted to politicians as happened in the last regime and any one caught doing the wrong thing will be dealt with according to law. Judges will not be bought to deliver judgement according to the illegal deposits in their banks and paid holidays for them and their families by criminals. There was a case of  corruption involving a former governor who was facing 40 allegations before a so called learned judge . He promptly threw out all the charges and pronounced the former governor innocent. This same governor was seized by INTERPOL at the request of Britain to face same charges in London. He was not only convicted, his lawyer, wife and two girl friends are serving term with him in Her Majesty’s prison. This reminds me what a friend told me in Lagos some years ago that if he had a case in court rather than hire lawyers, he would take the money for lawyers to purchase judgment in the judge’s chamber! While trying to uproot corruption from state institutions, we must not lose sight of the judiciary.

    The economic situation will present the greatest challenge to this regime. I sometimes get angry when I hear apparently educated people blaming this government for the falling value of the naira vis-à-vis foreign currencies. It is simple arithmetic. Crude oil on which we are hopelessly dependent has fallen from a high of 140 dollars a barrel to 36 dollars and it is still going down. This has led to a diminution of foreign money accruable into our foreign reserves with the consequence of more naira in hands than dollar reserves. To strengthen the naira, we have either to export more produce apart from hydrocarbons or drastically reduce imports. There is no magic in this. If you bring a professor of economics from Harvard or the World Bank, he or she would not perform any magic. So the way forward is to find other sources of revenue apart from oil. We can increase taxes and also the efficiency of tax collection. The easy one is to increase Value Added Tax which is tax on consumption which will largely fall on the elite. But everybody must be made to pay taxes no matter how small. This is the way to make the people feel they own the government. They will therefore be more vigilant in protecting government property and calling to order those who think government property belongs to nobody. All these measures are for home consumption. A strong government at home will be respected abroad. This is where in comes in the exploitation of our relations with the outside world.

    This government must use its contact through membership in OPEC to prevail on its Arab members not to flood the world oil market with overproduction of crude. It is not in anybody’s interest. Non OPEC countries like Mexico, Canada, Brazil, Russia and some of the countries in the Caucasus must be made to realize that the collapse of the oil economy globally will not be in the interest of all. If the world goes into another recession so soon after eight years of the last recession, we will all suffer. It will be a difficult sell but we should try by asking for an extra ordinary meeting of OPEC to discuss a coordinated rescue plan for the global oil market. But charity must begin at home. We should put all efforts to engender a disconnect from dependency on oil, find other sources of income from agriculture, light manufacturing, efficient tax regime and exploitation of solid minerals. We are not the worst hit of all OPEC countries. We can grow all we need to feed ourselves and to export. We therefore need not be desperate.

    These are difficult times. We need not deny it. Financing our budget through borrowing is not as strange as some economic illiterates who have been criticizing the government would make us believe. Japan has the highest rate of borrowing in the world at 356 percent of its GDP and nobody is wailing that the country would soon go under. The USA is a close second in the rate of borrowing. As long as borrowing is not for consumption, the country can grow its economy out of this short-term debt. Those who are shouting about deficit budget are the same people who brought us to our financial knees.

    Whatever government is going to do or is already doing cannot be achieved without hard work. Our people must be told that they have to work hard and there is no more free lunch anywhere anymore. They have to be carried along. Many toes would have to be stepped upon physically and figuratively. Because of this the enemies of Nigeria both at home and abroad would like to destabilize the country or even overthrow this government through fanning of the ember of religious and ethnic fanaticism and division. Eternal vigilance and survival is the first law of nature. While government must follow the rule of law generally, it must not lower its guard and allow its enemies to deal a mortal blow to it.

  • Gulliver’s Troubles

    Nigeria, unlike in recent years of plenty, is not ending the year 2015 with a bang but with a whimper.  Our economy is in doldrums not because of what the present government has done or not done but because of years of lack of planning and foresight. President Muhammad Buhari in this regard is twice unlucky. When he first came as head of state in 1983, the government before him had so mismanaged the economy that we were down to barter trade and extreme rationing of foreign exchange. The Shagari and Jonathan governments shared the unenviable records of rampant corruption, irresponsibility and squander-mania that one can say they were two sides of the same coin. If these two governments had not been changed and had been allowed to continue in their corrupt ways, there would have been a break down of law and order if not an outright revolution. The mind-boggling revelation of the corruption in the Jonathan government bears an uncanny similarity with that of the Shagari government that one will be pardoned if one were to say history has repeated itself. This raises in my mind a philosophical question whether people learn at all from history. This is why we say when history repeats itself it is a tragedy. Those found guilty during the first Buhari administration were dealt with severely only for Babangida to come and pardon them and returned their loot to them. Some of them are again involved in the present tragedy. The economy in the homeland has run aground and the international economic situation is not favourable to a quick fix unless a major war was to break out in the Middle East. May God forbid. We therefore must embark on quick restructuring of the economy. There is too much money being spent everywhere on administrative overhead. There are too many states, too many legislators at federal, state and the 774 local government levels. This is the time to begin to think of a unicameral federal legislature as well as part-time legislators at all levels of democratic representation. We have gotten used to eating fatted meat that it will be difficult cutting out the fat from the meat. But in our own interest and for our health, we must cut out the fat from our flabby institutions. This will not be easy and it will come with a lot of pain. Like necessary surgery we must do it to save ourselves. Anything that can be done to reverse the present situation at all levels of government where recurrent expenditure is double that of capital expenditure must be done. This will involve government stepping on the toes of vested interests. Government also has to ask all those who have embezzled state funds to disgorge and vomit them before being sent to jail. Any thing short of this will not send the right message and lesson. I have a feeling that this is our last chance in this country to get our trajectory right.

    Any government doing the right thing by the people will not be popular with entrenched interest of those who want to have wealth without sweat. The government must therefore secure itself from those who would want to violently change it.

    Survival is the first law of nature. Governments are instituted for the good of the people but there are evil men out there who want to continue ruining this country and we must not allow them. Some of these people will hide under religious movements of all types to destabilize the state. We have enough trouble with Boko Haram. Others will hide under the camouflage of ethnic associations agitating for one thing or the other. Others may come in form of trade unionism, whatever the hue and colour in which they may come they must be engaged in dialogue and persuasion. Any reasonable person in this country must know that the economic problem facing us is global. During the years of plenty, we neither saved nor prepared for a rainy and lean day and years. We ate our fruits with the seeds.

    But honestly speaking we are not in the worst situation in Africa or the world. Of course we are impatient as a people and giving to whining and complaining. Whatever we are facing right now is our collective fault and we must face the problem together and not give the people the feeling of a quick solution to a problem that has been festering for years. The solid minerals exploitation touted as a way out of our economic problem will take time. We have to find investors ready to participate in their exploitation. We also have to ensure there is market for them. Whatever solid minerals available must be commercially plentiful that they will last years and exploiting them must be environmentally sustainable. I believe that there is enough study done by our department of geological surveys to determine which of our solid minerals the world may want.

    I read what the Minister of Information and Culture was reported to have said about tourism sector replacing the dwindling fortune of gas and crude oil exports. I just laughed. I want to remind the Honourable Minister, Alhaji Lai Muhammad what Chief Obafemi Awolowo said while running for president in 1979 that if he won the first thing he would do will be to ban importation of used clothes, stork fish and close down the tourism board. He correctly stated that only a mad person will come as a tourist to Nigeria. It is not that we do not have things people will be curious about, but where is the infrastructure for tourism? No roads, no railways, no light, no water, no security! We need first to put in place necessary things first before inviting the whole world to come for a visit. I agree no country is perfect and our short-coming may be due to our size and huge population. As Chief Awolowo continued there may be people who have enjoyed themselves so much that they may want to experience suffering in Nigeria. We cannot bank on suffer-heads coming as tourists to Nigeria as a basis on which to build an enduring economy.

    All is not lost. We must all be ready to work harder and be patriotic asking not what our country can do for us but what we can do for our country remembering what J.F. Kennedy told his American compatriots in 1961. We must go back to agriculture, not the cutlass and hoe kind but mechanized agriculture. Government will have to buy ploughs and rent these out to farmers and encourage young people to go into farming. All textile mills in the country should be resuscitated. This will allow us to export textile products to the USA under the rubric of African Growth and Opportunities Act (AGOA) which other African countries have enjoyed while we were drunk on oil. The cotton for these textile mills must be home grown cotton. We must rehabilitate all tree crops like cocoa, rubber, palm oil, shea butter, and gum Arabic. We must also encourage massive growing of soya beans, groundnuts, maize, yams and cassava.  All schools like in my youthful years must have farms for practical agriculture.  We must not sink money into the bottomless hole of wheat production. We tried it during the Shagari and Babangida years with abject failure. We must go back to nature for sustenance. It is as simple as that. We must support animal husbandry through ranching and encouragement of our pastoralists to settle.

    There is so much to do that there is no time to waste. There are enough patriots all over this country that there is need to harness their ideas and efforts for purpose of production without being bogged down by innumerable meetings. We must get cracking so to say. In all these government must carry the people along including sensible members of the opposition who appreciate the predicament in which we find ourselves. Communication is very important. All ministers must give accounts of what they are doing through regular press conferences. The intelligentsia, that critical mass in the society must be carried along through periodic lectures by ministers in tertiary institutions. All Nigerians must pay taxes and they must be told what their taxes are going to be used for. In all these government must be accountable to the people. This is the only way we are going to get out of this quagmire. God will make a way where there seems to be no way. Happy New Year Nigeria.