The Nation Newspaper

Tag: needless

  • Needless fuss about the Daniel of our time

    My six-year-old daughter returned from school the other day with the excitement of one that had just won a jackpot. As I was wondering what could be responsible for her gay and spritely mood, she announced with glee that she would be going to London.

    “London?” I wondered aloud. As a Lagos resident, she was yet to visit any of the landmarks in the city. She knew not the direction of the University of Lagos or the Lagos State University. She had not been to the National Stadium or the Teslim Balogun Stadium. She was yet to visit Lekki, Badagry or Bar Beach and did not know the way to the Iduganran Palace of the Oba of Lagos. Why then would her first exposure to the world outside her home and school be London?

    The natural questions to ask were her mission to London and how she intended to get there. To these, she beamed a cheerful smile and declared that she was going with her classmates and I had three days to raise N350,000 for the trip! Poor girl, I said to myself. If she knew how strenuous it was to raise her school fees, she would realise the futility of dreaming a trip to London on my own account. A Yoruba adage says it makes no sense to a child when his father says there is famine.

    I knew it was dangerous to tell her immediately that the proposed flight to London was impossible. She was in cloud nine and it made no sense draw her back to earth so abruptly. I waited till dinner to tell her the truth: a summer excursion to London was financially unrealistic and she was too young for that kind of exposure. Happily, she understood.

    Or so I thought until she returned from school the following day and told me that she had found an answer to my poor pocket. Her teacher said she could go to Ghana, if London was too expensive. For this, her teacher said she should bring “shikinni money.” And how much is the shikinni money? I asked. “Only N150,000,” she said. I told her, to her utter disappointment, that even the so-called shikinni money was a luxury I could not afford.

    Our perception of good education has changed dramatically over the years, particularly at the foundation level. The days are gone when the emphasis was on sound knowledge of Mathematics, English and other critical subjects. Now, it is more about how much exposure the child can gain to the culture of the western world. Our children are made to speak English from the womb.

    Childhood is vanishing if it has not already vanished. At age two, a toddler is garbed in oversize shirt and shorts that reach down to his ankles and make him to look like one poised for sack race. Then he is laden with a bag as he totters to school at an age that some of us were still busy sucking our mothers’ breasts. From that tender age, they begin to stock his head with foreign ideas. They eat foreign delicacies, wear foreign clothes, watch foreign movies and are generally orientated in the ways of the West until they become Europeans in black skins.

    Of course, exposure is good. There is a general belief that it is organically linked with knowledge. But there appears an urge among the handlers of our children’s education to over-expose them, with the consequence that we now ape the West to a fault. It is increasingly becoming a capital offence to pronounce an English word with African accent. You must bend your mouth and twist your tongue in a way that leaves an observer fearing that you might lose some teeth. These leave the average African child with the impression that our cultures and ways of life are inferior to those of the West and make him long for life in Europe or America.

    That is the context from which the botched ambition of 13-year-old Daniel Ihekina to travel in the tyre hole of an aircraft from Nigeria to America should be understood. After repeatedly watching the exploits of Sylvester Stallone, Roger Moore and Ian Fleming in such films as First Blood, The Expendables, Live and Let Die, Moonraker, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and From Russia With Love, the poor lad decided to put that which he had watched into practice by flying to America in the oddest of ways for a first-hand experience of the purported rosy life in “God’s Own Country”. But the expedition turned out an anti-climax. To his utter disgust, the Arik aircraft he thought was taking him to America only took him from the serene ambience of his Benin home to the rowdy and riotous setting of Lagos, a move, like they say, from frying pan to fire.

    But in spite of the disappointment the innocent lad might suffer, he should thank his star for becoming the only Nigerian to have survived the dangerous adventure. There were reports of a similar attempt by one Emeka Okechukwu Okeke to smuggle himself to the United States from Lagos in the tyre compartment of a plane belonging to Delta Airlines in 2010, but he was discovered dead on arrival in New York. The dead body of a young Nigerian was also said to have been found in the undercarriage department of a domestic airline’s plane on arrival from South Africa sometime last year.

    If the biblical Daniel is revered for emerging from the lion’s den without losing a limb, this Daniel of our time should be saluted for travelling in the tyre compartment of an aircraft from Benin to Lagos with his swathe shirt, rosary and black bag intact. We have strived so desperately and invested so heavily in making James Bonds of our children. Why then should anyone raise the alarm if a five-year-old boy hangs on to the tail of an aircraft from Lagos to Tokyo? We should be happy and contented that our efforts are yielding the results we desire.

    More importantly, Daniel’s botched trip to America has alerted Nigerians and the rest of the world to the porous nature of security at our airports at a time the Boko Haram sect is cashing in on every available opportunity to kill and maim as many Nigerians as possible with bombs. Most Nigerians have shuddered at the possibility of the sect gaining similar access into an aircraft.

  • Needless debate on President’s tenure

    Needless debate on President’s tenure

    Since the news filtered out a few days ago that the Senate is angling for a six-year single term tenure for the nation’s President in the new constitution expected to emerge later in the year, the nation has been polarised into two camps of those who cherish the idea and those who oppose it. Actually, the idea is not one for which the upper legislative chamber deserves credit. It is a mere modification of the seven-year single term tenure President Goodluck Jonathan proposed to the National Assembly a few months after he assumed office in 2011.

    In justifying the proposal, the President had argued that it was impelled by the need for an incumbent President to focus maximum attention on the execution of his developmental programmes rather than exert vital energy on re-election issues. “President Jonathan is concerned about the acrimony which the issue of re-election, every four years, generates both at the federal and state levels,” presidential spokesman, Dr, Reuben Abayi, said in a statement. “The nation is still smarting from the unrest, the desperation for power and the overheating of the polity that has attended each general election. The fallout of all this is the unending inter and intra-party squabbles which have affected the growth of party democracy in the country and have further undermined the country’s developmental aspirations. In addition, the costs of conducting party primaries and the general elections have become too high for the economy to accommodate every four years. The proposed amendment Bill is necessary to consolidate our democracy and allow elected executives to concentrate on governance and service delivery for their full term, instead of running governments with re-election as their primary focus.”

    Other proponents of the idea believe that it will reduce acrimony in politics and create a level play field for all candidates during elections. But as would be expected in a country where the people are perpetually at war with their leaders’ desperation to cling to power, the President’s proposal was discounted as a subtle move to perpetuate himself in office. The opposition parties, the Transition Monitoring Group, civil society groups, socio-political organisations like the Afenifere and Arewa Consultative Forum, and even the House of Representatives all believe that the proposal is nothing but a ploy by the President and sitting governors to add more years to their tenures through a back-door arrangement.

    The idea of breaking the President’s tenure into two terms of four years each emanated from the need to give the electorate an opportunity to assess the President’s performance in the first four years and use that as a yardstick to determine his continued suitability or otherwise. He would be voted out, if he is deemed not to have lived up to expectation or voted in to continue his good works, if he is deemed fit and able. The arrangement imposes on an elected President the responsibility to hit the ground running in order to merit a second term. On the other hand, the President elected for a single term of six years is a fait accompli. The people have no choice, but to endure him for the period, no matter how patently incapable.

    However, both arrangements are premised on the presumption that the votes count and the power to elect resides with the people. Unfortunately, that is hardly the case with us. Hence I have a feeling that the debate on the President’s tenure amounts to putting the cart before the horse. Our most pressing political need at the moment is not how long the president stays in office, but the ability of the people to get the kind of leaders they desire. Of course, it is obvious that the nation has not profited from the present arrangement. But there is also no guarantee that shortening the maximum tenure of the President from two four-year terms to a single term of six years would guarantee the dividends of democracy the people have so wistfully longed for. The constitutional innovation that would help the nation at the moment is one that guarantees that every vote counts so that the electorate can choose trusted individuals to lead them.

    This is important because the success of any administration is a function of how much trust the people repose in it. Once the people believe that they are being led by individuals in whom they repose a lot of confidence, their trust in the administration is boosted and this results in maximum cooperation between the leader and the led. In June 1993, for instance, prices of food items in Lagos markets and elsewhere began to crumble as soon as the news filtered out that the late Bashorun MKO Abiola had won the presidential election. This was without any prompting from any official quarters. It was believed that many traders started bringing out the food items they had hoarded because they believed that an Abiola presidency would flood the economy with them.

    Two years ago, traders in Sango-Ota who had narrowed the streets and obstructed traffic with their makeshift shops began to demolish them on their own as soon as they learnt that Ibikunle Amosun of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) had won the governorship of Ogun State. Conversely, not a few people believe that the Boko Haram and other forms of crises the Jonathan administration is witnessing are direct consequences of diminishing trust in the government.

    There is no doubt that what is uppermost in the mind of the average Nigerian now is the chance to elect a President that would run a responsible and responsive government. Given the disappointments they have suffered from successive governments since the nation returned to democracy in 1999, Nigerians would tolerate a President that guarantees adequate security, good roads, regular electricity and potable water longer than Libyans tolerated Ghadaffi.

    Rather than waste time and energy persuading Nigerians to accept a single six or seven-year tenure, President Jonathan should revisit the recommendations of Justice Mohammed Uwais Committee on Electoral Reforms and adopt them without any exception. That, to me, is the most auspicious way to begin our search for a fruitful democratic system.

     

  • Needless debate on President’s tenure

    Needless debate on President’s tenure

    Since the news filtered out a few days ago that the Senate is angling for a six-year single term tenure for the nation’s President in the new constitution expected to emerge later in the year, the nation has been polarised into two camps of those who cherish the idea and those who oppose it. Actually, the idea is not one for which the upper legislative chamber deserves credit. It is a mere modification of the seven-year single term tenure President Goodluck Jonathan proposed to the National Assembly a few months after he assumed office in 2011.

    In justifying the proposal, the President had argued that it was impelled by the need for an incumbent President to focus maximum attention on the execution of his developmental programmes rather than exert vital energy on re-election issues. “President Jonathan is concerned about the acrimony which the issue of re-election, every four years, generates both at the federal and state levels,” presidential spokesman, Dr, Reuben Abayi, said in a statement. “The nation is still smarting from the unrest, the desperation for power and the overheating of the polity that has attended each general election. The fallout of all this is the unending inter and intra-party squabbles which have affected the growth of party democracy in the country and have further undermined the country’s developmental aspirations. In addition, the costs of conducting party primaries and the general elections have become too high for the economy to accommodate every four years. The proposed amendment Bill is necessary to consolidate our democracy and allow elected executives to concentrate on governance and service delivery for their full term, instead of running governments with re-election as their primary focus.”

    Other proponents of the idea believe that it will reduce acrimony in politics and create a level play field for all candidates during elections. But as would be expected in a country where the people are perpetually at war with their leaders’ desperation to cling to power, the President’s proposal was discounted as a subtle move to perpetuate himself in office. The opposition parties, the Transition Monitoring Group, civil society groups, socio-political organisations like the Afenifere and Arewa Consultative Forum, and even the House of Representatives all believe that the proposal is nothing but a ploy by the President and sitting governors to add more years to their tenures through a back-door arrangement.

    The idea of breaking the President’s tenure into two terms of four years each emanated from the need to give the electorate an opportunity to assess the President’s performance in the first four years and use that as a yardstick to determine his continued suitability or otherwise. He would be voted out, if he is deemed not to have lived up to expectation or voted in to continue his good works, if he is deemed fit and able. The arrangement imposes on an elected President the responsibility to hit the ground running in order to merit a second term. On the other hand, the President elected for a single term of six years is a fait accompli. The people have no choice, but to endure him for the period, no matter how patently incapable.

    However, both arrangements are premised on the presumption that the votes count and the power to elect resides with the people. Unfortunately, that is hardly the case with us. Hence I have a feeling that the debate on the President’s tenure amounts to putting the cart before the horse. Our most pressing political need at the moment is not how long the president stays in office, but the ability of the people to get the kind of leaders they desire. Of course, it is obvious that the nation has not profited from the present arrangement. But there is also no guarantee that shortening the maximum tenure of the President from two four-year terms to a single term of six years would guarantee the dividends of democracy the people have so wistfully longed for. The constitutional innovation that would help the nation at the moment is one that guarantees that every vote counts so that the electorate can choose trusted individuals to lead them.

    This is important because the success of any administration is a function of how much trust the people repose in it. Once the people believe that they are being led by individuals in whom they repose a lot of confidence, their trust in the administration is boosted and this results in maximum cooperation between the leader and the led. In June 1993, for instance, prices of food items in Lagos markets and elsewhere began to crumble as soon as the news filtered out that the late Bashorun MKO Abiola had won the presidential election. This was without any prompting from any official quarters. It was believed that many traders started bringing out the food items they had hoarded because they believed that an Abiola presidency would flood the economy with them.

    Two years ago, traders in Sango-Ota who had narrowed the streets and obstructed traffic with their makeshift shops began to demolish them on their own as soon as they learnt that Ibikunle Amosun of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) had won the governorship of Ogun State. Conversely, not a few people believe that the Boko Haram and other forms of crises the Jonathan administration is witnessing are direct consequences of diminishing trust in the government.

    There is no doubt that what is uppermost in the mind of the average Nigerian now is the chance to elect a President that would run a responsible and responsive government. Given the disappointments they have suffered from successive governments since the nation returned to democracy in 1999, Nigerians would tolerate a President that guarantees adequate security, good roads, regular electricity and potable water longer than Libyans tolerated Ghadaffi.

    Rather than waste time and energy persuading Nigerians to accept a single six or seven-year tenure, President Jonathan should revisit the recommendations of Justice Mohammed Uwais Committee on Electoral Reforms and adopt them without any exception. That, to me, is the most auspicious way to begin our search for a fruitful democratic system.

     

  • The needless debate on 2013 budget benchmark

    The needless debate on 2013 budget benchmark

    President Goodluck Jonathan recently presented N4.92trillion Appropriation Bill to a Joint Session of the National Assembly (NASS), in Abuja, Nigeria’s Federal Capital Territory. Indeed, as the Executive arm of Government, which is constitutionally saddled with the ultimate responsibility of implementing the fundamental deliverables of a national budget and taking responsibility for same at the end of a fiscal year, the ensuing outburst over the proprietary or otherwise of the $75 oil benchmark in the budget is quite unnecessary.

    Earlier in his presentation of the budget tagged: “Fiscal Consolidation with Inclusive Growth”, before the Federal legislators, President Jonathan had informed them that next year’s budget actually accords priority to “our concerns for security, infrastructure, food, security, and human development sectors” of Nigeria’s economy. Describing it as one with series of innovative features, the President and Commander-in-Chief stated that the budget is a “push in the right direction borne out of our well thought-out and articulated developmental policies.” The upcoming financial plan is said to be a deliberate attempt by the Government to continue with the medium-term theme and interventions that are consistent with the objectives of the Transformation Agenda of the Jonathan Administration.

    He equally explained to the NASS members the basic principle behind the 2013 Appropriation Bill. The President related the core mandate of his Administration, saying “the task of transforming these opportunities into real, tangible outcomes which all our people can experience and call their own.”

    While appreciating the meaningful contributions, cooperation and oversight functions of the National Assembly members in discharging the Government collective responsibility to build a virile and improved Nigerian economy of our dream, he took the opportunity to remind the lawmakers of the need for their continued collaboration on the assignment of growing the economy, creating jobs for the generality of Nigerians, delivering the much-expected dividends of democracy, and improving the people’s standard of living.

    Conversely, just days after the presentation of the 2013 Appropriation Bill to NASS, the Presidency’s recommended crude oil price benchmark has sparked another disagreement between the Legislature and Executive. Of course, the Presidency previously, had broached to the Federal legislators, that though the $75 per barrel oil benchmark quoted in the budget is less than what currently obtains in the international oil market, the former certainly has provided a veritable background to and rationale for its proposal of $75 benchmark in next year’s budget.

    According to Presidency, such background information that apparently informed the benchmark, as it is the oil-price based fiscal rule, especially as contained in the Fiscal Responsibility Act 2007. It further argued that this instrument informed its choice of “a prudent oil benchmark price of $75/barrel for the 2013 period”. More so, since the beginning of 2008 when the global economic downturn started manifesting and dislocating many an economy across the globe, world oil prices have been largely unstable ever since then. Thus, based on moving averages of the global oil prices and government’s simulations allowing for possible uncertainty in world oil price movements, it really adopted the contentious benchmark as “a standard technique commonly used by commodity-dependent countries to protect them against the volatilities of oil.”Incidentally, the bulk of Nigeria’s wealth is derived from the same floundering oil earnings.

    There were supposedly considerable, previous consultations with various stakeholders, including state governors and the National Assembly, where the $75 benchmark was purportedly agreed that “the benchmark price should be further rounded up to $75/barrel to meet pressing needs and prevent delays in the budget process.”

    Despite the Presidency’ resolve that the $75/barrel price, of course, represents an upper limit from its model towards the country’s attainment and sustenance of a stable macroeconomic environment for next year, since the beginning of their considerations of the Appropriation Bill, the Senate is holding out for $78 per barrel. Whereas the House of Representatives, which is the Lower House of NASS, also has constantly maintained that the oil benchmark should be $80 per barrel.

    Characteristically, it is by and large appreciated by all when the National Assembly critically examines and possibly makes meaningful and useful inputs into a budget before final approval in a fiscal year. However, it is now a matter of concern to well-meaning Nigerians that the debate on the $75 oil benchmark in the 2013 Budget has depreciated to a point of resorting to name-calling cum abusive language between the NASS leadership and some of President Jonathan’s aides. This needs not be so.

    The NASS members should realise that if any unrealistic expectations are suggested and ratified in respect of the oil benchmark, the aggregate of which will fund the budget, an overly high benchmark price may lead to higher inflation, decline in the value of the Naira, lower savings, and reduced investment in the face of troubled worldwide economic outlook.

    The Government, again, has informed Nigerians that based upon current economic realities of the time, either $78 or $80 benchmark would lead to an increase in liquidity, leading to an increase in money supply chasing few goods and services. In other words, any sudden snap in oil prices will be detrimental for many of the Government’s macroeconomic forecasts.

    Besides, the current Administration has said the exchange rate would come under intense pressure, leading to a depreciation of the Naira. High inflation would result in higher interest rates. Certainly, a combination of high inflation, interest rate and an unstable exchange rate is not beneficial to proper economic planning, both for the government and private business managers.

    It should equally be realised that the current world oil price is really not based on certifiable economic fundamentals. Rather, uncertainties, e.g. conflict in the Middle East are said to be responsible for the seemingly enticing high prices of crude oil in the world oil market. The question then is, can Nigeria truly base its economic plan on the expected misfortunes of such crisis-ridden regions and enclaves around the world and still achieve enduring transformation in key aspects of its national life?

    In spite of its latest recommendation that the Excess Crude Account (ECA) be scrapped forthwith, while not minding its cushioning effects on the survival of the nation’s economy in recent years, the increased savings in ECA are yet consequential in mitigating adverse economic impact on Nigeria, in case of a sudden global economic shock, or an unanticipated slump in world’s oil prices.

    Consequently, instead of insisting on varying oil benchmarks outside of the Presidency’s $75 benchmark recommendation in the 2013 Appropriation Bill before it, the NASS rather should reach a consensus with the Federal Government in coming up with realistic estimates that will enable it to focus on cutting recurrent expenditure to sustainable levels. This could be accomplished through reduction of waste, corruption and duplication in the functions of government agencies.

    The Federal lawmakers ought to realise that even while discharging its constitutional mandate of examining the components of the budget, it is yet far better to allow the Government Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) to come forward and freely defend their various budgets, as contained in the 2013 Appropriation Bill, based on the recommended $75 oil benchmark.

    In fact, any undue, excessive inputs into the estimates from the NASS members may trigger yet another round of impractical budget leading to poor implementation. It is much better to allow the Executive to take responsibility for the estimates it believes can work for the well-desired turnaround in the economy. After all, Nigerians will not turn around to blame the National Assembly for poor budget execution if any unrealistic projections are included in the Appropriation Act emanating from the Legislature at the end of the day.

    • Rotimi Smith is an Estate Surveyor in Ibadan.