The Nation Newspaper

Tag: impunity

  • Holy impunity

    The jury is out. For a long time, the content of the Justice Umoekoyo Essang report on the December 2016 Uyo church tragedy in which thirty people died was unknown. Earlier in the week, snippets of the report submitted to the state government on June 22, last year came out. One key fact emerged: Pastor Akan Weeks, the founder of the church, Reigners Bible Church incurred the wrath of the panel. The government White Paper did not spare him either.

    The report accused Weeks of “undue interference” in the construction of the church building.

    “His (Mr Weeks’) adamant posture of unbridled impunity as the Founder/ General Overseer of Reigners Bible Church led to the unfortunate incident of 10 December, 2016,” the commission added in the report.

    That was not all. The report said the church did not get government permit for the building construction and that the construction work was rushed with impunity.

    The White Paper said the professionals ought to execute due care and skill in the discharge of their duties or resign where they are not allowed to do so.

    It all began like a joke that day. There was music in the air.  Banters were thrown. Hands were plumped. It promised to be a glorious day. The founder of the church was to have his ordination as a bishop. He is not a small fry. So, the church was jam-packed. Akwa Ibom State Governor Udom Emmanuel came with some of his commissioners and aides. Some of the commissioners were new in the State Executive Council. They were sworn in on December 1, 2016.

    Thirty minutes into the governor’s arrival hell literally came down. No thanks to human error, the church’s iron pillars gave way and the blue roofs came thumping down. Of course on people! An account even said someone was cut into two by the iron pillars. A policeman who reportedly saved the governor is now six feet below. And some others broke their necks, their limbs and their back. The founder of the church, Pastor Akan Weeks, had his leg broken. The contractor fled after doing a job the Nigerian Society of Engineers (NSE) described as shoddy.

    Till now, we know not the identities of the victims. Thirty people died.  Joseph Effiom is the face of a tragedy in a place where fear should have been the last thing on anyone’s mind. Effiom could not cheat death when it came calling.  This polytechnic student, a friend said, “was one of the first three brilliant chaps in my class”. Thanks to Effiom’s classmates who revealed her identity, she would have died anonymously!

    Those who sustained all kinds of injuries and received treatment in hospitals were given as 168. Out patients were 50. Hospitals, such as the University of Uyo Teaching Hospital (UUTH), Ibom Specialist Hospital Uyo, Sifon Clinic, Life Care Clinic, Premiers Clinic, St Luke’s Hospital, Gateway Medical Centre, Uwah Mfon Clinic, First Line Clinic and Alma Clinic and Surgery had hectic time attending to survivors.

    Emmanuel’s men who crawled out of death’s hole had scary tales to share. Chief Press Secretary Ekerette Udoh miraculously escaped an iron rod cutting his neck, but it eventually hit him on the back. The cap of his left knee was broken.

    Commissioner for Information Charles Udoh was on his way out of the church to catch a flight when tragedy struck. He would have been out but protocol demanded that he told the governor before vanishing from the church hall. It was this protocol-induced task he was accomplishing when death almost took him away like Effiom and the others whose names we may never know. He had to run here and there to prevent the iron pillars from turning him to a candidate for the mortuary.

    Nollywood actor Ekere Nkanga, who had acted almost all roles imaginable, had to wade through bodies to safety. He hid under some people. As he tried to get up, the body of a man cut into two fell on him. There were bodies around him. He managed not to have a direct impact with falling rods, but he later discovered his neck was broken. He had to wear a neck collar for weeks and was under observation in the hospital.

    In the wake of the tragedy, Pastor Weeks had likened the incident to the devil fighting back and he urged Christians to unite and fight it. I beg to disagree. Some people did not do what they were expected to do. Now, I am glad government is set to bring them to book.

    On July 7, last year, while receiving the probe report from Justice Umoekoyo Essang, who chaired the panel, the governor said: “I want to thank you for this great job that you have done and to assure you once again that the recommendations of this report would be taken seriously. We would do everything to implement and prevent future occurrence of this tragedy. May this affliction never occur the second time.”

    Speaking with reporters in Uyo on Tuesday following rumours that the government was planning to shield Pastors Weeks, the Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice Uwemedimo Nwoko said although the state government would not prosecute anyone based on the report of the commission of enquiry as it was set up to allow parties involved to testify freely, government would ensure that any found culpable would feel the full weight of the law.

    He promised to liaise with police authority to ensure a thorough investigation of those indicted by the report of the commission to ensure that justice was done in line with due process.

    Nwoko said: “All those who have been indicted by the report will be subjected to a thorough investigation by the police and any found culpable will be charged to court and made to face the full weight of the law.

    “No one has been exonerated, but we have to carry out proper investigation, you cannot just jail anyone, we must follow due process, but trust that justice must be done at the end of the day.”

    My final take: If it is true that Pastor Weeks piled pressure on the professionals to do what they were not supposed to do, he should not go scot-free. Even the professionals also should pay the price for allowing a layman to tell them what to do.  The blood of Effiom and others should not be shed in vain. Anything short of this is encouraging what I called holy impunity.

  • Mantu and culture of impunity

    The recurring ugly decimal of rigging of elections in Nigeria is one salient reason behind the emergence of the people’s enemies into the country’s most sensitive plum political positions. Given the high cost of accessing power, the do-or-die battle to win elections, the obscenely high and attractive pay package, one is not surprised about the recent confessions of the former Deputy Senate President, Ibrahim Mantu that he rigged election for the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP.

    Mantu, a member of the Board of Trustees of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), had in a television chat with Channels TV on March 30, openly admitted to have rigged elections for the party through bribing electoral officials, security agencies and party agents. Though the confession came like a bolt out of the blues to millions of Nigerians, it did not to others who have known the truth all along.

    The pain in it all is that after all the hue and cry, Mantu’s issue will suffer the Doppler Effect and he will still walk our streets as a free man! Truth be said, he belongs to the untouchables. Like several allegedly corrupt former governors and politicians, even if the case goes to court, it would be subjected to a long-winding judicial process that at the end of the day would amount to nothing!

    What do you expect in a country where we are not equal before the law of the land? Where the very reprehensible idea of amnesty for the blood-sucking Boko Haram extremists is even given flicker of thought in the high corridors of power! Where court orders are disregarded even by those who swore allegiance to the oath of office to protect the ethos of our statutory books.  That is Nigeria for you. And, sad to say, that of course, is the self-decimating culture of impunity that some of us have repeatedly decried over the years.

    As expected, the PDP in a statement issued by its National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan in Abuja said Mantu’s claim has nothing to do with the party. He said the PDP had never directed any of its members to rig election on its behalf at any point since its formation. Said he: “Individuals run their elections on the platform of political parties once they emerge as candidates. In the PDP, candidates are issued with the party’s Code of Conduct containing the basic rules of electioneering engagements. There is nowhere in these rules of engagement where candidates or party members are directed to rig elections on behalf of the party”.

    Well said, one would say. Or, some other critics would tell him to tell that to the marines.

    As expected, going for the jugular, the All Progressives Congress, APC, is trying to make a political capital out of it. But truth be said, election rigging has no political colours. Not because one Doyin Okupe said so but the electoral crime has become the rule rather than the exception. So, who is to blame?

    What about the compelling centripetal attraction of well-paying political offices, with all the apparatchik of office attached? This has contributed in no small measure to all manner of electoral malfeasance here in Nigeria. It would however, be foolhardy for the nation-state with a vision to right the many wrongs of the past to continue to harbour, tolerate or outright, encourage what has brought the country to this sorry political pass. Something has to be done and speedily too.

    That feeling prompted me to make a similar post on Facebook, decrying the odious fact that Mantu is still a free man. This triggered the instant responses from concerned Nigerians. Dipo Olayokun, an analyst has this to say: “Mr. Ayo Baje, if Mantu is picked up today, they would say that Buhari has continued with the persecution of PDP members. And is Mantu telling us anything new?

    Not done he went down memory lane: “A member of BOT of PDP, Chris Uba under Obasanjo addressed a world press conference in Enugu where he told the world that he rigged the 2003 election for Ngige. Let me quote him:” When I was bribing INEC officials and security agents to rig elections for him to become the governor of Anambra State, where was he? Did he know how I did it?”

    Furthermore, Olayokun added the clincher: “Instead of Obasanjo arresting Chris Uba, he was made a member of the BOT. And now you want security agents to arrest Mantu. And they will start telling the world that Buhari is a dictator who wants to kill opposition”. That is food for thought.

    On his part, one Adebayo added this view: “Same for Miyetti Allah, the association of Fulani herdsmen. They claimed responsibility for genocide without anything happening under Buhari!”.

    While Hamza Jatto said: “That‘s our country for you, a young, talented writer added with a note of sadness: “Our country is a joke, Sir!”

    On my part, one cannot but join voice with an Abuja-based human rights lawyer, Ajibola Jimoh, who has called on relevant authorities to immediately begin the prosecution of a Mantu, after he confessed to election rigging. Jimoh said that under Section 28 of the Evidence Act, 2011, voluntary confessional statements were the best form of evidence to arrive at a conviction.

    Citing the Act, he said: “A confession is an admission made at any time by a person charged with a crime, stating or suggesting the inference that he committed that crime.” What more does the law state?

    In line with the Electoral Act, 2010, rigging is an offence under. It is therefore, the duty of INEC and the professional duty of lawyers as conferred by Rule 1 of the Rules of Professional Conduct for Legal Practitioners, 2007 to weigh on to the matter.

    The lawyer said private legal practitioners could also apply for fiat from the Attorney General of the Federation to conduct the prosecution according to the provisions of sections 109 (e) and 268 (1) of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA), 2015.

    Should nothing be done about this critical issue of national importance, which compromises our electoral integrity and bring us crooks and criminals as our ‘heroes, it would mean that we are under Mantu’s mantra or a binding spell. We are waiting and watching!

     

    • Baje, a public affairs analyst, writes from Lagos.
  • Youth and defence of impunity

    Youth and defence of impunity

    There is no doubt that we live in a country where youths tolerate impunity with sympathy. Apart from the obvious fact that ours is also a clime where money equates success; it is also a place where the misuse of power is better appreciated by the youth even when actions taken are not in conformity with their will and pride. It is very possible to enthrone a king; it is not possible to reign for the king.

    The reign of a king in his palace has reduced the palace to a mere edifice and not a kingdom in spirit. This is evident by the impunity that has been swaggered into what they tagged as the ‘change governance’ in Nigeria.

    ‘Terrible’ is the situation at hand, treachery is what Nigerians in some part of the country have been forced to go through, but more terrible is what the youths have done to themselves. When our youths know better, they would do better in things that favour them only. I have come across youths, who took pride in the recent body language of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration on the lingering issue of the massive killing of Nigerians in Benue State by the herdsmen. The state governor had made it known that 1,878 persons were killed between 2013 and 2016. In the same period, 750 were maimed, 200 missing and 99,427 households were affected with property worth billions destroyed. Over hundred persons had been killed in wake of recent attack in Benue State. To make the situation worse, similar killings are being perpetrated in other parts of the country.

    The Miyetti Allah Cattle Association is a new phenomenon in the rise of ethnic chauvinism that has no regards for the law. The killings orchestrated by the herdsmen showed they are well trained, well paid, well organised and well armed to stand as army of invasion and wage war against a nation. As grievous as the herdsmen attacks on farmers were, it seems to be nothing to the government a mere clash that poses no security threat to security. What a leadership! This is truly a ‘change government’ indeed.

    President Buhari has failed woefully to stand up in defense of Nigerians by not declaring the group a terrorist organisation nor proscribe it. The action of the president is not only treacherous but cantankerous. The president, from a detailed news research, had only deemed it fit to talk about the menace of the herdsmen as just a mere clash between herders and farmers. At another occasion, the president trivialised his stance by saying that the perpetrators were not Nigerians but armed foreigners from Mali and Libya who have infiltrated the local herdsmen community.

    To worsen the matter at hand, just barely 48 hours after the mass burial for the 73 victims of the recent herdsmen attack, the Vice President of the Miyetti Allah Cattle Association threatened more bloodshed if, according to him, the Benue State government did not scrap their Anti-Grazing Law. This is nothing but impunity. A group threatening bloodshed publicly and the government is smiling at such impunity. Well, it is no coincidence that the president is Fulani. The murderous herdsmen may have been emboldened by this and thought they have all the rights to kill and get away with murder. What stops the president from ordering the immediate arrest of the leaders of the herdsmen threatening the peace and security of our country?

    The activities of the herdsmen have attracted widespread condemnation by various organisations yet the group is being pampered by the government. By implication, it shows a tacit official approval of organised killings. The National Assembly also showed great concern. The legislative arm had given a resolution that every state in Nigeria has the right to enact their anti-grazing law. This law, if enacted, would curb excesses of the herdsmen. I am aware Buhari had instructed the Inspector-General of Police to tactically relocate to Benue and Zamfara states. This step does not guarantee that the evils perpetrated in Benue and other affected states would stop anytime soon. The president would have done more good by declaring the group has a terrorist group which is obvious from their actions.

    I know it does not cost the government anything to wage full war against the herdsmen. The leadership of this nation is not just bad but excruciatingly bad, especially as far as this herdsmen issue is concerned. The annoying part of this is that the youths are not lending their voices to force the government to do the needful. One could rarely see the major social media influencers talk about the issue. This is bad. It goes to show that most of the vibrant youths on social media are beneficiaries of the present government and as thus, they prefer to remain silent. They have failed to use their media power to ensure or compel the government to do the needful.

    I remember vividly that it was the uproar of youths on social media that made the Inspector General of Police to make effort in ending the various shed of brutality perpetrated by men of SARS nationwide. They were lots of condemnation by the youth and this influenced the restructuring of the unit.

    If the so-called influencers can put the government on its toes on issues affecting them directly, why not do same on issues affecting their constituencies. I guess their assignment is only to abuse and trend facts that are meant to unseat leaders of the past which they achieved.

    It is time for the social media influencers to embrace the fate of the dark hour and ensure they put the president on his toes as they did to the immediate past president. It is high time they stopped giving defense to the impunity created by the herdsmen by not advocating against the silence of the president. Funny enough, we know the social media influencers and their individual roles. History will judge their actions if they fail to lift their constituency for good.

     

     

  • When today’s greed rapes our future with impunity

    When today’s greed rapes our future with impunity

    I have often pondered over how Nigerians keep trudging on with either smiles or in difference amidst the unending self-inflicted calamities that confront their nation daily. For a country that bleeds from all pores, it is amazing that its people wreathe themselves in an ambience of happiness in spite of the agonizing realities of daily frustrations. We are, indeed, a rare breed to the point that horror doesn’t even shock many again going by the way we recklessly abuse the use of the social media platforms. Some would say it is part of our weird sense of humour. But I disagree.

    On the contrary, those things are emblematic of the warped and disjointed systemic failures that define us to the outside world. We are the perception we make others to see in us. Take, for example, the gory pictures of accident victims that were spread on the walls of some persons on Facebook with dispassionate stupidity last week. Aside the errant disrespect for the charred remains of the said accident victims on the Minna-Bida road in Niger State; it was heart-wrenching that only few persons drew the attention of the sharers of the pictures to their benumbing, inhumane and atrocious banalities. It was shocking that otherwise enlightened citizens had publicly come out to justify the post, arguing that it was an indictment on a governance system with little or nothing on ground to prevent such calamities or reduce the impact of the disaster. And, I ask, couldn’t they have passed the same message without insulting our sensibilities with those pictures? But then, I digress.

    In the past few days, I have fruitlessly searched for the reason why our political elites continue to mortgage the nation’s future with their insatiable appetite for personal aggrandizement as they watch millions of hapless citizens barely eking out a living. It is not just about the warped and hopelessly inane incongruities in our budgetary process. For me, it has more to do with how we are regaled with tales of how people with no known vocation or means of livelihood suddenly happen into humongous wealth in local and hard currencies. We may not know how low we have sunk until such a time when we begin to take more than a passing glance at the figures that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission allegedly traced to the coffers of some of these personalities. The question is: how many more shocks will they inflict on the Nigerian economy before it starts caving in to the many years of endless abuse and callous rape? I ask this question against the backdrop of the news of fresh discoveries of the looting bazaar that was perpetuated by the last administration and the rumours of mindless economic carnage being wrought under the present government. Let me also state that I am not unaware of the fact that nothing concrete has emerged to justify the allegations against this administration. However, that does not mean that we shouldn’t be concerned with the way it dispenses funds as the dates fixed for the next general elections in 2019 draw near.

    Do you want to know how funds meant for projects that would impact lives in budgets get into the hands of the shameless pilferers in the system? The answer, according to findings by a civic technology non-profit organisation with a focus on the Nigerian budgeting process, BudgIT, can be gleaned from the vexatious ‘one-liner’ sub-heads which “gives room for financial indiscretion and the potential abuse of funds.” The process is also said to be “antithetical to what the government continually professes to stand for.” In a nut shell, what BudgIT is saying is that this government, regardless of its public posturing on accountability and due process, will continue to fight a lost battle against corruption as long as it provides the avenues for the rape of the system. It appears that the government has done little to plug the loopholes through which these privileged economic fat cats feast on our collective patrimony. This, I belief, is how humongous funds get diverted into the private accounts of characters like the ones the EFCC is now chasing from pillars to post to retrieve bits and pieces of stolen wealth and probably prosecute.

    How does this happen, you ask. Well, this is how BudgIT puts it: “Approximately N744.48bn or 42.9% of the N2.65tn capital allocation proposed by the Federal Government would go into administrative items like procurement of cars, retrofitting of government offices, trainings, consultancies, purchase of furniture and computers and so on. Our scope of developmental capital projects as urgently needed should include the acquisition, upgrading, construction and maintaining of physical assets such as hospital, schools, roads, railways, power plants, street lights, and boreholes among others. In contrast, administrative capital items are projects that cannot be easily accessed by the general public and have very little or no developmental impact on the population.” You see why we have been perennially in motion without movement?

    When you break it down, what BudgIT is saying is that we need to reframe the nation’s budgetary architecture in such a way that it would be people and developmentally driven. For now, it is structured to pander to the salacious taste of the men in power and their cronies. That is how we fritter our future away. We have a legislature whose appropriations remain shrouded in secrecy with an added burden of allocating billions of naira annually to buy cars, junket across the globe and line their pockets with questionable funds with dubious allowances. Unfortunately, the executive is not any better in the bazaar with Aso Rock leading the pack with humongous figures captured either to buy all manners of wonders-on-the-wheel or buy cutleries to feed the lucky few being invited to dine with the President.

    It is not surprising either that millions of naira would also be needed to pack the waste in sewages and feed the rare collection of animals in the presidential zoo while Aso Rock Clinic hardly stock its pharmacy with commonly prescribed medications. This yearly ritual has bled us dry!

    And here is the screaming irony. In this same economy with sickening developmental figure and growing tribe of the abjectly poor, the citizens get fed daily with annoyingly irritating discoveries of billions of naira and millions of dollars in the private homes of those they entrust their future wellbeing with. Sometimes, it is that bad that wives of the high and mighty would shamelessly be competing for the prestigious prize of who emerges as the bigger thief in the family! And when you question the source of the wealth, you would be told that the office they once held in trust for the people conferred on them the right to be ‘stinkingly’ rich. Oh blimey!

    In all this, the unfortunate thing is that nothing points to the fact that things are being done differently under the Buhari administration if figures in the 2018 breakdown are anything to believe. As highlighted by BudgIT, the 2018 expenditure projection is laden with too many buckets of ‘suspicious items’ including a N5.5bn allocation in the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development for “support for infrastructure, projects and coordination services”, N4bn for “building maintenance works for other MDAs in Abuja” in the Ministry of Power, Works and Housing; the N2.21bn for “Social Media Mining Suite” in the Directorate of State Security Service; the N1.14bn for “cleaning and fumigation services” in the office of the National Security Adviser; the N19.3bn “export expansion grant” domiciled in the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment; and, wait for it, the N4.9bn for ‘annual routine maintenance of mechanical/electrical installations of the Villa in the State House Headquarters!

    For those who don’t know. It is this kind of one liner subheads that the smart alecs and the not-so-smart crooks dip their crooked hands into and, in due course, they become billionaires and multi-billionaires with no question asked. Hundreds of these gaping holes, we are told, are being exploited to ruin our present and future realities. Will things change as these incongruities are being brought to the fore? Well, no one is sure as BudgIT insists that the eggheads at the Ministry of Finance have shown utter ‘disdain for accountability”, thereby frustrating all efforts to make them tread the straight and narrow path to economic wisdom. One thing is sure though; the greatest tragedy that could befall this administration would be for it to be accused of some sort of mindless larceny ever witnessed in our looting history months after its key actors would have left office. Surely, that cannot be the legacy that a government that makes a song and dance of its endless battle against corruption would want to be remembered for. Or is it?

  • Impunity unlimited

    It may be patently unfair to blame President Muhammadu Buhari for all the ills in the land but the unbridled impunity that is rendering services inaccessible in many of the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) spread all over the country is hardly excusable. It appears rules and regulations have gone to sleep in the absence of any strong administration in place.

    At the inception of this administration, many watchers of the civil service were expecting a clean break with the past with replacement of the headships of these establishments with new hands. Unfortunately, nothing of such happened. Not only were the Directors-General loyal to the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan allowed to stay, some of them had since elongated their stay and subverted the real essence of their appointment. This must have led to the issuance of the latest circular by the Office of the Head of Service of the Federation on the sit-tight public office holders.

    There may be many of them.

    The Administrative Staff College (ASCON), established in 1973 and the Centre for Management Development (CMD), Abuja established in 1973 were Chief Olusegun Obasanjo’s ingenious answer to the problem of indigenous poor management capacity following the enactment of the Indigenisation Decree of 1972. Those were heydays when things worked. Round holes were found for round pegs. For many years, the two institutions along with the Industrial Training Fund (ITF) located at Jos were the nation’s pride in human resource development.

    Unfortunately, the story is different today.

    ASCON floundered for many years under the yoke of a few incompetent Directors-General who almost wrecked the institution until the emergence of Ajibade Peters, who rescued the institution and put it back on the path of rectitude and steady growth. Thankfully enough, wise counsel prevailed and Peters has since been succeeded by an insider, Mrs. Cecilia Gaya, who is likely to maintain the track record of her predecessor. ASCON under the supervision of the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation (HoCSF), is calmly pursuing her mandate as a Management Development Institution operating the CONRAISS salary structure and allowing professional staff to retire at age 65 years specified in the SAUTHRAI agreement with the government.

    The same cannot be said of the Centre for Management Development, a sister institution established to perform similar functions as ASCON. In 2010, the then CMD Director-General, Dr. Joseph Maiyaki, was removed unceremoniously and forced to hand over to Dr. Kabir Kabo Usman, who then was serving as a Personal Assistant to Dr. Shamshudeen Usman, the one-time Honourable Minister of National Planning Commission. Kabir Usman’s qualifications for the job were a doctoral degree in chemistry, a 25-year stint in the United Kingdom as a tutor and a few months as personal assistant to the Minister of National Planning Commission. The first move of Dr. Usman was to preemptively relocate the corporate headquarters of the CMD to Abuja, a step regarded by many people as wasteful and unnecessary. This was followed by his attempt to sell the properties left behind in Lagos until the office of the vice president stopped him following the intervention of former Directors-General of CMD.

    Usman has spent eight years in the saddle and the things that can be seen on ground are litany of failures arising from impunity, highhandedness and financial mismanagement. The Honourable Minister of Budget and National Planning, Senator Udoma Udo Udoma, SAN and Senator (Dr.) Rabiu Kwankwaso, the Senate Chairman of Committee on National planning visited the centre in the course of the year and they did not have any kind words for him.

    As his eight year tenure ends January 10, it has been rumored that Usman, when his plan to extend his tenure failed, has stepped up another plan to impose his own candidate to continue with the carnage in the institution.

    In order to pave way for his candidate, he, earlier in the year, obtained through HoCSF, a letter to indicate that the CMD is no longer a research and allied institution and so the rule of retiring at 65 years of age must be reversed. As a result, more than seven directors and deputy-directors have been summarily sent on premature retirement. This is in spite of six letters earlier written by the same Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation which had classified the CMD as a Management Development Institution in the same hue with ASCON capable of earning the CONRAISS salary structure as well as retirement at age 65. It is sad that the Office of the Head of Service of the Federation is by this double standard, confirming that it has indeed become a marketplace for all kinds of manipulations reminiscent of the Maina’s scandalous reinstatement.

    The CMD’s case may not be anything strange in the country. After all, the same Usman flagrantly disregarded a directive from the office of the vice president and treated with utter disdain, a valid judgment of the National Industrial Court that was aimed at reinstating five staff of the CMD whose services were deemed to have been wrongly terminated. Usman and his ilk may get away with their impunity and highhandedness but it is not a good commentary for a government everyone is looking up to salvage the mess it inherited and usher in a salutary era of meaningful change.

    Meaningful change will not come merely from rabid political sloganeering or posturing of some self-serving and unconscionable hirelings. It begins with the establishment and maintenance of strong institutions, impartial application of the rule of law and effectively holding public office holders accountable for their actions and inactions. The case of the CMD is an unfortunate one. As at today, the Lagos office of CMD has been sealed up by the Lagos State Waste Management Agency for debts owed it while the South West Zonal office of the centre has been under lock and key for seven months as a result of debts owed the Oyo State Housing Corporation. It is incredible that within a period of eight years, a once thriving national institution could be rendered prostrate and totally incapable of carrying out her constitutional mandate.

     

    • Adeaga writes from Lagos.
  • It’s an act of impunity, says firm

    It’s an act of impunity, says firm

    The management of BUA International Ltd has described the clampdown on Obu mine and arrest of two of its workers by Edo State government as an act impunity.

    It said in a statement last night: “We have been made aware that today, Governor Godwin Obaseki, in company of security operatives, visited one of our mining sites in Obu-Okpella, to effect a gestapo-style forceful shutdown of that mine despite a subsisting court pronouncement that the mine be allowed to operate.

    “Upon reaching that mining site and not meeting any personnel or equipment, two BUA Cement employees were invited to the mining site to receive the governor. We later learnt that these employees were arrested upon arrival on the orders of the governor and taken away for no just reason.

    “As it stands, we do not know why they were arrested, but have requested our lawyers to secure their unconditional release, as these employees are innocent and have no knowledge of why they were arrested.

    “Now that one of our mining sites has been forcefully closed down by the governor without regard to the court’s pronouncement on maintaining status quo at that particular site (and without any formal communication from the Edo State government), BUA as a responsible corporate entity has instructed its lawyers to report back to the courts on this latest development and pursue all legal channels to enforce its rights.

    “While the governor based the legitimacy of his actions on a purported stop-work order from the Ministry of Mines, BUA wishes to reiterate that there is a pronouncement of the Federal High Court in Benin on December 5, 2017, which declared the stop-work order issued by the ministry as a contravention of the court’s directives to maintain status quo and thus deemed it illegal. The same court also threatened to arrest the minister who is the first defendant in the case if the stop work order continues to be pursued.

    “We once again ask all parties to await the conclusion of judicial process, as this matter is already before a court of competent jurisdiction.”

  • Impunity, immunity and leadership problems

    There is a growing harvest of street fights by members of the security forces lately.  The sights are as ugly as they are national embarrassment; hoping that we are not arming hooligans to maintain law and order. It has gone from inter-agency to intra-agency brawls all the way; members of the armed forces against the Nigeria Police, the Federal Road Safety Corps against the Police, EFCC against the DSS.  It has reached a crescendo where members of the Nigeria Police Force now turn their guns against one another and drag themselves on the street because they are attached as security details to politicians in opposing camps.  It is simply nauseating and sickening.  Impunity has become the signature tune of government officials and members of the security forces and even the paramilitary.  It takes just to be on uniform of any kind, even Boys Scout to preside of the ordinary citizen like a lord and abuse the law flagrantly.  This is how far impunity has gone and it beats ones imagination how we got to this point.

    Wherever we get the mentality that service in any capacity in government places one above the law is a grave concern.  I am not aware that the office anybody occupies makes him an outlaw or above the rule of law.  There is a growing trend in the abuse of power amongst the ruling elite that when they are out of government they still employ the coercive power of the state for personal aggrandizement and trample on the law of the land.  We even rationalize their lawlessness and abuse of office by saying that having served in a particular capacity in government, the law does not apply in equal force to them; this is nonsense!

    Our political leaders and head of government institutions and agencies have because of the office they once held, placed themselves above the law by using sheer force to ward off invitation and lawful arrest to answer for alleged malfeasance while in the office. One wonders if we are operating a democracy that is based on the rule of law or rule of might and strongmen.  If Nigeria is to overcome the problems of corruption and bad leadership, there should be equal subjection to the rule of law irrespective of office occupied.  The law should not be respecter of any person where we have viable state institutions.   Bracton, the Philosopher once held that, “The world was governed by law, human or divine, and held that the king himself ought not to be subject to man but subject to God and to Law because the law makes him King”.

    I watched with disappointment the confrontation between agents of the EFCC and the Departments of State Services when the former, armed with a search and arrest warrants on the former directors of the DSS and the National Intelligence Agency were prevented from carrying out their lawful duty.  It turned into a street brawl as between rival gangs than agency of government that should enjoy some synergy and cohesion.  Incidents of this nature are becoming so rampant with this administration that one wonders if anyone is actually in charge.  Recall a few weeks back, the convoys of the minister of transport and that of the governor of Rivers State engaged themselves in a free for all fights leaving trails of blood and tears.

    Government officials are taking impunity to another level that if care is not taken, could lead to a spontaneous revolution as in Tunisia where the mistreatment of a fruit and vegetable seller sparked off the Arab Spring.  Convoys of government officials have scant regards to other road users and indeed, they drive so recklessly as if they have appointment with death.

    The former directors of the DSS and NIA do not enjoy constitutional immunity by any means.  Assuming they do by an unwritten rule or laws which I am not aware of, having left office, they are subject to the law just like anyone else.  That is how a society and a democratic society should be run.  The former Chief of Defence Staff Air Marshal Barde, some former service chiefs and generals have had their days with the EFCC and the heavens did not fall; why not the former directors of DSS and NIA?

    The rivalry between the DSS and EFCC in particular appears to be more of personal clash between the heads of the two agencies than inter-agency rivalry.  Ibrahim Magu may be brash and not very cosmopolitan, but he is enthusiastic in carrying out his job and indeed enough irritant to the corrupt politicians.  The fight against corruption should be seen as a work in progress and we should not allow our resentment to an individual because of his method to kill the momentum.  The competition between the two agencies is uncalled for and to be seen to be working at cross purposes when they are both under the presidency is an eloquent testimony of the president’s inability to coordinate and control his appointees.  It is a clash one too many to be tolerated and I am not sure the two agencies are adding value and good public relation to the presidency in the way they are carrying out their duties.  If as claimed, the operatives of the DSS were acting on instructions from above, it would be a height of executive recklessness for anyone to use his official position to stop the agency of the same government you are serving from doing their job.

    Heads of agencies and government officials are not clothed with constitutional immunity; only the president, vice president, governor and deputy governors are so clothed.  Even at that, Section 308 of the 1999 Constitution that confers immunity on the mentioned officials did not make it a life time conferment.  They can be proceeded against whenever they ceased to occupy the offices so described.  It was therefore impunity taken to the extreme for the past heads of DSS and NIA to employ the force of arm to enjoy the status not conferred on them by law and prevent the EFCC from arresting them for questioning.  The world is watching President Buhari to act fast on these two agencies and he does not have all the time in the world.

    Our leaders appear to be suffering from ego neurosis; believing that they are beyond the ordinary citizens and supposed to be worshiped because they occupy government offices; and out of office, they should be revered even when there are obvious cases of abuse of office against them.  We have leaders whose examples are responsible for the socio-economic and political problems we are facing today; corruption, nepotism, poor attitude to work and other official engagement. There is no Nigerian official who will honour official function without going late to that occasion.  The constitution did not confer life immunity on any leader or head of government agencies; this impunity must stop.

  • Reign of impunity

    Each time I see Governor Akinwunwi Ambode dutifully attending a state function in Badagry, Epe or Ikorodu –  the far flung parts of the state of excellence, Lagos, which he governs with vigour, my heart goes out to him. At such moments, I wonder in contemplation how he gets to those functions, despite the chaos of traffic orchestrated and ricocheted by articulated tankers, trailers and trucks, running a dubious ring around a state Ambode is doing everything humanely possible to change for better. While at it, I momentarily forget the daily torment, faced by residents as a result of traffic menace.

    Considering the enormity of the responsibility on Ambode’s shoulders, to personally attend to numerous issues of state across the metropolis, I wonder how he gets through the gruelling traffic around Apapa, Old Ojo Road, Mile Two, Ijora and now Western Avenue. Of course, the Alpha Governor, if I may borrow from Sam Omatseye, does not move around the state in obtrusive convey of siren blaring black limousines, even though he presides over the fifth largest economy in Africa.

    So, when I saw him through the media commissioning projects in Badagry last week, I kept prevaricating privately how the governor got to the venue. Did he fly a chopper? Or did he set out around 4am to beat the traffic? Perhaps he went through the waterways my mind redounded? After all, he governs the state of aquatic pleasure. But my mind remonstrated that he is still developing the needed infrastructure to have a seamless water transport.

    So how did he get there, considering the chaos caused by tankers and trailers snarling on Oshodi-Apapa expressway, especially around Mile Two, or further down Old Ojo Road, at Alakija through which he may have passed?

    Still in thought, I remembered that he could have passed through Iyana-Ipaja-Okowonjo axis, and I shuddered at the menace of Okada riders. Those daredevils who crisscross the road with reckless abandon. Without siren, would Okada riders harass his motorcade, as they do to other motorists? Despite rising through the ranks, and exhibiting great humility since he was popularly elected the governor of Lagos, I know for sure that his security apparatchik will not allow him ride an Okada, as the ordinary folks ironically do, to beat the cruel traffic?

    Penultimate Monday, I was in a court at Apapa. The magistrate got to court by 11am, even though he left Badagry where he lives since 4am. As he apologised and told how he was frustrated by the traffic, I sat in quiet contemplation wondering how the man has been able to sit at 9am, on the previous occasions I was in his court. The next day, I was at Ikeja High Court, and the Judge sat around 11.30am. While lawyers and litigants sat in indignant wait, I shared the previous day’s experience as told by the magistrate with a colleague sitting next to me.

    To ply the Ikorodu Road, through the Western Avenue to Lagos, a commuter would have to factor in the chance that hundreds of articulated trucks usually park on the road starting from Apapa Wharf, all the way on those high flyovers towards National Stadium. So, a journey that should take 30 minutes from Anthony to Lagos, with normal traffic build up in a mega city, could take several hours as tankers, trucks and trailers block the highway. Of course, it will be unthinkable to go to Apapa on that route unless the commuter is on sightseeing that will last days.

    Last week, the media reported that the overstretched Minister for Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, promised that the park designed for less than 400 trailers and trucks, started many years ago, would soon be ready. The park opposite the Tin Can Wharf has been under construction forever. It is the substitute for the parks within the Wharf, which the previous government auctioned off, without thinking. Unfortunately, with the expressway that passed Tin-Can now craters, big enough to swallow trailers, the road to the new park, when it is commissioned, will be within the Apapa G.R.A; roads trailers and trucks are already destroying.

    Despite the promises by the minister, all appears quiet about the much advertised agreement between the federal government and the Dangote Group to rebuild the dilapidated roads from Apapa through Tin Can, and Apapa to Ijora. While Dangote group is formidable in its area of core competence, like manufacturing, I doubt their capacity to rebuild those destroyed roads. The matter is made worse with the confusion over terms and conditions for the private intervention.

    Some weeks ago, I was relaying to my colleagues on this newspaper’s editorial board, the sad experience of owning a business outfit in Apapa. While I suffer the indignity of commuting to my office in Apapa, my heart bleeds each time I see that many of the new businesses which sprang up following the rebuilding of Apapa Business District roads by Lagos State government have closed. The roads rebuilt with solid asphalt and walkways, gave Apapa a new lease of life.

    All those have become inconsequential, as tankers and trailers take over the roads, walkways and open spaces. As I argued, as their businesses close, owners of the businesses, accounting/approving officers, and the banks that gave the budding entrepreneur the loans with which the businesses were likely established, are all on the way to financial and health crisis. In fact, those commuting on these roads daily lose part of their life span, to these gridlocks. Of course, all the permutations and business plans, as Lagos State rebuilt the infrastructure in Apapa area, have been negated by the impunity of drivers of the tankers and trailers.

    As cars meander in-between the trailers and trucks parked for days on the bridges and flyovers, I ponder how much longer those expensive bridges and flyovers would stand as it carries permanently the dead weight of the trucks and trailers. Even though I am not an engineer, I know for certain that the flyovers and bridges were not designed to carry those dead weights continuously. Merely driving on them, one will notice they are built on springs. So how much longer will the springs bear the weights before they give way?

    Invariably, before long, most of those flyovers and bridges will become weak, and if not re-calibrated, will begin to give way one after the other. Of course, with the nation’s resources depleting even as our needs keep rising, would it be far-fetched if those from saner clime consider us a crazy people for allowing tankers, trailers and trucks to destroy valued national assets which we do not have the resources to replace? Unless there is a conspiracy to punish Lagos residents, federal agencies should support Lagos State government to end the reign of impunity on Lagos roads. More so, with oil boom gone forever, those bridges and flyovers are irreplaceable.

  • Opacity plus impunity

    The Senate is way out of line for claiming it cannot tell Nigerians what its members earn

    Aliyu Abdullahi, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Media and Public Affairs, was all empty paternalism, when he declared, on public television, that the Senate could not release its members’ earnings to the public.

    Perhaps it was a bit of senatorial hubris too! Here was Senator Abdullahi, an elected public servant. Here was Senator Abdullahi, Chair of the Senate Committee on Media and Public Affairs, whose committee, by the Senate’s own rule, is charged with telling the public whatever it wants to know, so long as it is legal and legitimate. But here is the same Senator Abdullahi, shirking his duty, on both accounts, and acting smug about it all! What monumental irony!

    That the irony escaped the senator, in his provocative paternalism, proves a condemnable institutional hubris which the public, the ultimate democratic masters, must not take lying low. To do otherwise is accept opacity has a place in the public space, particularly when the issue is public money. Of course, opacity is the handmaiden of impunity; and the ultimate result is egregious sleaze, which has been the bane of this polity.

    Speaking on “Politics Today” on Channels TV, the senator declared it infra dig to be asked what senators earned.

    “You don’t expect me to come out on national television to say this is what I earn. It is not done. I cannot ask you as a journalist how much you earn. It is not done,” he fired back at his interviewer.

    He then added a bit of procedural sophistry: “If anybody is interested in how much we are getting paid, you know where to get the information. The documents are available. If Nigerians won’t believe that, is it what I will say that they will believe?”

    In fairness to the senator, he named the legal protocol, which he located in a law passed on Top Salary Scale (TOPSA), which he claimed typified what salary scale, categories in the political bureaucracy belonged.  He even said Prof. Itse Sagay, whose intervention on the alleged criminal payout to National Assembly members provoked this latest controversy, should have located his own salary grade on TOPSA.

    “The institutions that are responsible for providing this information are there,” he declared. “A law was promulgated on Top Salary Scale also known as TOPSA and it is based on this scale that everyone who holds one political office or the other gets paid.”

    Despite this claim, however, the polity has always been rife with obscene figures our lawmakers allegedly cart away, in the midst of paralysing poverty. If these allegations are true, the lawmakers provocatively cut the image of the proverbial cleric, fattening on the sweat of gaunt congregants.

    Indeed, former President Olusegun Obasanjo dismissed the lawmakers as “unarmed robbers”, a hyperbole to capture their alleged humongous appetite for unearned public funds.  From Obasanjo’s testimony, that sickening convention had built up from 1999 — and it appears to be worsening by the day.

    Indications have it that each senator pockets N14 million every month, while their House of Representatives counterparts gross N8 million — and this in a country that struggles to pay the minimum wage of N18, 000 a month.

    But Prof. Sagay, SAN, no flippant person and Chairman, Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption (PACAC) raised the ante, by tabling a set of insane salaries and allowances the legislators allegedly gross.

    “From the information I have gathered,” he disclosed, “a Nigerian senator earns about N29 million a month, and over N3 billion a year.”

    Breakdown, of Prof. Sagay’s claim?  “Basic salary N2,484,245.50; hardship allowance, N1,242, 122.70; constituency allowance N4, 968, 509.00; furniture allowance N7, 452, 736.50; newspaper allowance N1, 242, 122.70.

    “Wardrobe allowance N621,061.37; recess allowance N248, 424.55; accommodation N4,968,509.00; utilities N828,081.83; domestic staff N1,863,184.12; entertainment N828,081.83; personal assistant N621,061.37; vehicle maintenance allowance N1,863,184.12; leave allowance N248,424.55; severance gratuity N7, 425,736.50; and motor vehicle allowance N9, 936,982.00.”

    These are damning figures, indeed, if true. Yet, the Senate, nay the whole of the National Assembly, have not been shocked or shamed into divulging the details of their earnings. All they have done is grandstand, with empty conceit founded on scandalous opacity. Do they truly have some smelly and rotten skeletons to hide?

    This is a battle the Senate cannot win. If anything, they would create collateral damage for a chain of future legislators. Though a future set of legislators could somewhat be more patriotic, less greedy and more sober, their predecessors could well, by this shameless behaviour, have totally roasted them in the public pyre, so much so the public would not give them the benefit of the doubt. That would further undermine the legislative arm of government, the most fundamental arm — the first estate of the realm — in a democracy.

    That is why Senator Abdullahi and his ilk would do well to get smart and come clean. The time of bluff and bluster is gone. Now is the time to spill it. We can’t have senators and other legislators glorying as parasites on the common purse and crowing about it. Legislators’ obscene pay must stop.

  • PDP’s impunity is gone, says Kwara chair

    PDP’s impunity is gone, says Kwara chair

    The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has said that its past impunity and cleavages are gone for good.

    The Kwara state Caretaker Committee Chairman, Chief Tunde Akindehin, told reporters in Ilorin, the state capital, that PDP “is a changed party.”

    Said he: “We have formally resumed today September 5, 2017. Some other members of the committee led by the secretary resumed yesterday.

    “PDP is a changed party. We have come with a big bang with a lot of activities, innovations, re-engineering and impunity of the past is gone for good. So Nigerians should have confidence in ability to now bring a robust, civilized political activity to the state.

    “We will also appeal to the press not to at anytime hesitate to either get to any principal officer of the party at the state level or myself to clarify anything that is not clear on the activities of the party.

    “We can assure you we have come here to bridge all the misgivings of the past to ensure that peace, unity is returned permanently to the party.”

    Akindehin added: “No more cleavages, the cleavages of the past would be a thing of the past. We will ensure that everybody is carried along in the decision making of the party and that recruitment of members is transparent.

    “We don’t know how the Nigerian ship is being wrecked. And for those who are conscious of the future of our children, we must wake up from our slumber to enthrone good governance and democracy. PDP will not be short of that. We promise you. By the time we address to you tomorrow, we will roll out our plans for the party in the state.”