The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Lingering

  • Akwa Ibom APC resolves lingering dispute

    THE Secretary of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Electoral Panel, Alhaji Balarabe Abdullahi, has praised the decision of members of the Akwa Ibom State chapter to resolve their differences ahead of last Saturday’s ward congresses of the party.

    In a press statement from the APC secretariat in Uyo, the Akwa Ibom State, made available to The Nation, Abdullahi said it was the peace deal that made their job of conducting the party’s ward congresses in the state easier. The lingering dispute had been resolved prior to the exercise.

    The Managing Director of Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), Mr. Nsima Ekere, said the peace agreement was reached after series of meetings for three days. He said: “As leaders of the party, we have come together to acknowledge that what is paramount is the interest of the party,” he said. “We are committed to building a strong and formidable APC.”

    Ekere said Akwa Ibom APC leaders were determined to ensure that President Muhammadu Buhari wins the state in next year’s presidential election, as well as other elections in the state in 2019.

    A former Minister of State for the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, Senator John Udoedehe, said all parties buried their differences in the interest of peace. He said: “We have collapsed all our interests. We want a viable APC in Akwa Ibom. All our rancour is over.”

    The Senior Special Assistant to the President on National Assembly (Senate) Affairs, Senator Ita Enang, who spearheaded the peace move, said the agreement satisfied all interests in the party.

    His words: “All interests have been collapsed into one interest. Together, we will be able to win the PDP and claim Akwa Ibom Governor’s Lodge.”

    The Managing Director of the Oil and Gas Free Zones Authority, Mr. Umana Umana, said with the resolution of the dispute, all leaders of the party were committed to build a very strong party.

    He said: “We will work as one united family to ensure that the interests of Nigeria, Akwa Ibom State and our party prevail over personal interests. I congratulate all our leaders.”

    The Akwa Ibom State APC Caucus Chairman, Atuekong Don Etiebet, said he was overwhelmed with joy at the resolution of the dispute.

    His words: “Today is my happiest day as a veteran politician among all of us. The action you witnessed today is a manifestation of the maturity of the APC leaders in Akwa Ibom State. By this action, you can see that we have shamed the devil.”

    The Senator representing Akwa Ibom South Senatorial District, Senator Nelson Efiong, hailed APC stakeholders in the state, particularly Ekere, Udoedehe and Umana, for ensuring the resolution of the dispute. Efiong added that he felt justified defecting to the APC last year.

    He said: “My decision to declare for APC in January 2017 was a good decision and what has happened today has justified that decision.”

    A former Military Administrator of Ogun and Rivers States, Group Captain Sam Ewang (rtd), also expressed joy at the resolution of the dispute.

    He said: “Today is my happiest day. It is an indication that Akwa Ibom State is ready for APC.”

    The APC Southsouth Zonal Women Leader, Mrs. Rachel Akpabio, said she was excited that the peace she had been yearning for in the last three years was finally achieved.

    Hear her: “My heart is red. This is what I have been yearning for in the last three years. With this decision, the sky is our limit. I want the women to know that peace has returned to Akwa Ibom State APC.”

  • Still on Buhari’s lingering ‘demons’

    •Hazards of cult worship of a struggling President

    There is an epiphany of morality in President Muhammadu Buhari, a vision of hope and romanticised ‘Change’ that the severely exploited and hapless citizenry would die for. Buhari rode to power chanting change and promising a radical, progressive departure from the pilfering and profligacy that characterised public office before his emergence.

    Buhari’s emergence however, complicates our perverse dynamics of corruption. His immediate past predecessor was no revolutionary – Goodluck Jonathan was no hero and he never pretended to be one. He was not interested in upsetting the status quo or ridding the country of sleaze. He understood that Nigeria throve on vice thus he simply played the role of passive leader and enabler. His infamous ‘Stealing is not corruption’ declaration accentuated imagery of his leadership as a moral and intellectual aberration.

    Enter Muhammadu Buhari, the redeemed dictator, self-proclaimed martyr and moral crusader. Buhari’s publicised distaste for corruption incites the separation and tension between moral and amoral personae. The attendant backlash from profiteers from the corrupt order, further accentuates the thrill of seduction and revolt against the incumbent president’s  anti-corruption campaign.

    In the ensuing melee, hard choices have to be made and unpopular decisions taken, often to the detriment of the nation’s longsuffering citizenry. Although there are estimated benefits in the long run, very few Nigerians are ready to accept that the obnoxious hike in pump price of Premium Methylated Spirit (PMS) from N87 to N145 for instance, was a necessary evil amid the country’s bordello of chaos and institutionalised corruption. And a fewer number of Nigerians, including Camp Buhari, are willing to accept a further hike in fuel price.

    Many more have lost patience with Buhari’s apparent incapacities at steering the nation to safe waters from its current abyss of strife and corruption.

    Notwithstanding his seeming incapacities, you can’t help but admire Buhari’s his valour and resolve to recoup the country’s looted funds from public officers that served in former President Goodluck Jonathan’s highly corrupt and disgraceful administration.

    But like I averred in recent past, President Buhari’s touted anti-corruption fight should only be taken seriously when culprits get sent to jail to serve sentences that befit their crimes. Nigerians should neither accept nor entertain any attempt at granting looters of public fund the luxury of ‘plea bargain.’

    If Buhari grants them such right, then he would be legitimising their corrupt acts and he would by default, have supported and applauded the mass murders and impoverishment committed by every public officer and their associates caught with the country’s looted funds. President Buhari ought to realise that looters of public fund are mass murderers.

    For instance, money that could have been used to arm the military to crush terrorism, repair damaged roads and fund the country’s ailing health sector have been embezzled by miscreants in power. Consequently, thousands of lives have been lost to terrorist attacks, ghastly accidents on bad roads, poor health facilities.

    The deaths of these hapless souls brutally hacked down in their prime by terrorists, bad roads and health sector, are blamable on the men and women that conspired to divert fund initially earmarked to resolve these problems.

    There is no gainsaying Nigeria is still afflicted by political profiteers comprising the ruling class and various segments of the poor, struggling masses. In the ensuing degeneracy of politics and cultural ethos, the hero we know today may morph into a dreadful monster. Given that power is the brandy of the turncoat, there is need to persistently scrutinize President Buhari uncompromisingly.

    For instance, his touted anti-corruption fight remains noise-making at the moment. When the ‘corrupt’ get prosecuted and sent to jail for their misdemeanor, Nigerians will believe him. And despite his touted reduction of his salary and that of his deputy, President Buhari is not working pro bono. He is being paid for the work he does. And it’s an open secret that his cozy allowances among other frills of being President and living in Aso Rock are the stuff the finest fantasies are made of.

    Buhari has been cuddled enough, by the media and his most ardent supporters. Nigeria needs him to work now. And no matter the floweriness and duplicity of spin accorded his performance so far, very little has changed since he became President. It is sad to note that the steadier electricity supply oft cited by his diehard apologists as a dividend of his leadership has since petered out. Electricity supply has become worse and despite the increase in electricity tariff, Nigeria currently runs the risk of a total blackout according to the Minister of Works, Power and Housing, Babatunde Fashola.

    And even though he vowed to crush Boko Haram by December 2015, it is clear that President Buhari didn’t achieve any such feat hence he should learn to be more tactful and modest in making future pledges. The military and police’s recent fiasco with the Shiite Muslim sect elicits greater apprehension among the citizenry – many are worried that President Buhari and his re-invigorated military might have sown the seeds of another bloody, villainous insurgent group masquerading as Muslims.

    While we acknowledge that his touted honesty and integrity exerts reasonable pressure on corrupt individuals and institutions to do a cartwheel away from corruption, it need be reiterated that his anti-corruption stance and ‘government with a human face’ propaganda will continually resonate as a desperate, corny lie, until the judiciary begins to sentence looters of public fund to severe jail terms.

    Buhari needs to divorce himself from sycophancy, vanities of power and decadent luxury emblematic of Aso Villa if truly he possesses the morality and Spartan discipline frequently ascribed to him. And contrary to claims that he has a great team to work with, he doesn’t.

    He has characters that have been embroiled in scandalous cases of corruption and administrative ineptitude in the past. Nigerians accepted him (Buhari) and his team not because they are the best that we could ever produce but because they represent that excusable part of our cancerous bulk that could pass our body.

    The citizenry see the ruling class as a primitive tribe of predators grossly inured in corruption. On the other hand, some love to see Buhari as our saviour. Contemporary boondocks legend paint a portrait of him as a warrior in wolf-skin vest, brandishing a shield of steeled morality and a stone-axe forged to hack down monuments that the corrupt ruling class built to entrench corruption.

    There is no gainsaying his emergence as President via the March 28 elections was a welcome development. But besides his bid to recoup looted funds from corrupt officers of the last administration, how does he fare as an administrator?

    Buhari’s touted morality was ennobled by widespread admiration and cult worship of him. The cult worship is gradually petering out. Nigerians, just like this writer warned, had set him up for failure. More sections of the press and the citizenry have stopped cuddling him. The truth dawns like eternal damnation; Buhari is not doing too well at the moment. His performance is below par.

  • Nigeria’s lingering but avoidable problems

    Sir: Every Nigerian now has to bear the brunt of a mismanaged economy courtesy of the Jonathan mal-administration. If only we knew we would not be better off now than we were four years ago, perhaps the story will be different. We are on the verge of making another choice as regards who will lead the country for another four years. It’s a choice between continuity, which President Jonathan represents, and change, which General Muhammadu Buhari (rtd) promises to bring to bear if elected. Many Nigerians are torn between these two choices, which the New York Times editorial referred to as miserable.

    Regardless of this, we have to weigh our options. Dr. Okonjo-Iweala’s recent allusion to the lack of institutions, systems and process as the reason for persistent corruption and the current state of the Nigerian economy is an afterthought. Though institutions, systems and processes are needed but what has been done under the coordinating minister of the economy to address this problem and avoid this economic mess? Nobody has come out to tell Nigerians that the economy is in recession. Worst still, what the economic management team told us is that we need to start diversifying the economy in order to be able to cope with the current fall in oil prices. Nigeria’s economy is finally in recession.

    Former CBN Governor, Professor Chukwuma Soludo in his much criticised article titled: ‘Buhari versus Jonathan: Beyond 2015’, which was published in most newspapers stated that ‘’at a time of oil boom, Nigeria again went on a consumption spree such that the budgets of the last five years can be best described as consumption budget with new borrowing by the federal government exceeding the actual expenditure on critical infrastructure. Not one penny was added to the stock of foreign reserves at a period Nigeria earned hundreds of billions from oil.’’

    Professor Soludo continued; ‘’President Obasanjo met about $5 billion in foreign reserves and the average monthly oil price for the 72 months he was in office was $38 and yet he left $43 billion in foreign reserves after paying $12 billion to write-off Nigeria’s external debt. In the last five years, the average monthly oil price has been over $100 and the quantity also higher but our foreign reserves have been declining and exchange rate depreciating.’’

    The CBN’s further devaluation of the naira after that of 2014 and Dr. Okonjo-Iweala’s warning that tough times await Nigerians are all pointers to the challenges ahead. All the indices for measuring government performance on the economy have been poor for Nigeria according to reputable statistical organisations. This has been the case for many years now and past administrations have done little to improve these indices so as to be able to improve the standard of living of Nigerians. The reasons for these are quite obvious. Leaders of government and politicians have failed to address the fundamental problems. They have refused to reduce the cost of governance as well as the salaries and emoluments of public office holders. Besides, the citizens have not tried to compel their representatives at the National and State Assemblies to work on cutting down government spending by at least 50 per cent.

    Countries that do not have as much natural resources like we do are managing their economy in such a way that the citizens are not made to suffer untoward hardship. Besides our over-reliance on crude oil as the major source of revenue has resulted in undermining the agricultural and mining sectors which are capable of solving most of our economic problems. Now, the current economic management team is looking at diversifying the economy as a result of the fall in oil prices but this should have been done a long time ago.

    However, we must see the present challenges as an opportunity to fundamentally restructure Nigeria’s political economy including its fiscal federalism and mineral rights. The current system guarantees cycles of consumption and one cannot see sustainable long term prosperity without major systemic overhaul.

     

    • Liman Abdullahi Isah

     Ibb University, Lapai.

  • The lingering ASUP strike

    SIR: The lingering strike of the Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics (ASUP) has taken an unnecessarily long period. When the Academic Staff of Union of Universities (ASUU) was on strike, it was as though the whole of Nigerian students or parents would not sleep. Religious leaders, groups and individuals of influence had a lot to say about it as they pleaded with the government and ASUU to resolve their differences. It is not same with ASUP strike. Isn’t it because we place more emphasis on universities than their polytechnic counterparts?

    In Nigeria, education, especially tertiary education, has ceased to be a right long ago; it is a privilege. To be a university or polytechnic student is a thing of chance. There are those who are in not in any and there are many too who pursued university admission fervently but who ended up in polytechnics especially in a Nigeria where we fight for nearly everything. The preference for university graduate as against their polytechnic mates by employers does not help matters either. The dichotomy between a university and polytechnic graduate is an issue the government has not done enough to resolve.

    On the current elongated strike embarked upon by polytechnic teachers, it is regrettable just as it is totally unthinkable for tertiary institutions to be closed down for eight months due to an industrial action linked to government’s neglect.

    The most affected group in any industrial action affecting tertiary education institutions in Nigeria remains the students. Nigerian students (who are of the voting age) do not however know that there is a lot of power in their hands – particularly in their thumbs. The power they possess goes beyond taking to the streets to protest against unjust government actions and inactions. It goes beyond carrying placards on the street of Lagos or in a remote campus in any part of Nigeria.

    The population of the Nigerian youth is staggering and when it comes to election, they have a big role to play. The youth of today can decide who should be their head through the power of their vote. It is left for them and their parents to decide who leads them come 2015.

    The ASUP strike and the unnecessary dichotomy between the Bachelor of Science and the Higher National Diploma degrees need to be attended to. The employers of labour need to come to the full understanding that in getting the work done, delivery on the job and not paper qualification is what matters. There is hardly anybody who has not had enough of this unnecessary neglect of duties by the government. We need a change.

    • Anani Sunday,

    Lagos.

  • Lingering crises at Nigercem

    Lingering crises at Nigercem

    SIR: Well meaning Igbos have watched with sadness and dismay at what is going on at Nigercem Nkalagu. Nigercem is one of the earliest cement companies to be built in Nigeria, but while those built around the time it was established and the ones built much later are still waxing strong, generating employment in thousands, developing the economy of the areas they are domiciled and contributing significantly to the internally generated revenue of the host states, Nigercem has become moribund and cannibalized.

    During the regime of President Olusegun Obasanjo, the federal government formulated a policy of gradual ly phasing out of cement importation. Consequent upon this, licenses were granted for greenfield plants while moribund cement plants were sold to investors that would redevelop them. In this vein, Bua Cement bought over Edo Cement Company Okpila, Eastern Bulkcem took over Nigercem Nkalagu while while Dangote group bought Benue Cement Company Gboko. Regrettably, while Bua and Dangote group where able to turn around Edo Cement and BCC Gboko respectively, the same could not be said of Eastern Bulkcem. It later became apparent that Eastern Bulkcem does not have the resources and capacity to revitalise Nigercem. Dangote went ahead to develop two other green field plants at Obajana in Kogi State and Ibeshe in Ogun State as well as in other African countries like Zambia, Senegal etc. Curiously, Dangote avoided the South-east in the siting of his plants.

    As a geologist, I know that limestone is a major raw material in the production of cement and most major plants are situated close to limestone deposits to facilitate production and save cost. Based on this, well meaning Igbos were disappointed that no investor would deem it fit to establish cement plant in the South-east, despite the preponderance of huge limestone deposits located in the region, especially at Nkalagu in Ebonyi State and Arochukwu in Abia State among others. So it came as a welcome development when Ibeto group bought over the shares of Eastern Bulkcem with intent on revitalising Nigercem, but the ovation had hardly died down when discordant tunes began to emanate from Ebonyi State between the core investor and the state government. Surprisingly, it became obvious that Ebonyi State government led by Governor Martin Elechi was not excited about Ibeto Group’s take over of Nigercem and appears bent on frustrating them. This is shocking because multitudes of Igbo youths are moving out en mass to other regions in search of jobs and worse still, majority of Ebonyi youths in particular are all over the major cities of the federation engaging in all sorts of strenuous and demeaning jobs.

    A well functioning Nigercem has the potential to provide thousands of direct and indirect jobs, boost the state’s internally generated revenue, improve the economy and lead to the establishment of other allied industries and services.

    It is worrisome and appalling that while all other regions of Nigeria has at least one cement factory, it is only the South-east that has none.It is enough cause for concern that a move to change this appalling situation is being frustrated by those that ought to encourage it. From what can be gleaned in the ongoing media war involving the Ebonyi State government and Ibeto Group, it seems that the debacle is becoming intractable with each passing day, considering the politicization of the issue and polarization of the state’s federal lawmakers as well as the dethronement of traditional rulers in the host communities.

    One hopes that the Ohanaeze ndi Igbo, South-east governors and other stakeholders will wade in with a view to resolving this crises and for the governor, Chief Martin Elechi, as an elder statesman to see the bigger picture and encourage Ibeto Group for posterity and overall interest of his state and its people.

    • Nwankwo Tochukwu,

    Aba, Abia State.