The Nation Newspaper

Tag: phobia

  • Phobia for used vehicles

    Phobia for used vehicles

    •Are we criminalising the poor?

    The National Automotive Council’s (NAC) order to prohibit the issuance of number plates by Federal Road Safety Commission(FRSC) and vehicle licenses by states registration offices, for used vehicles(commonly referred to as Tokunbo), is potentially controversial. We loathe smuggling in whatever form because of its negative implications for the economy. However, we find this order quite laughable.

    Luqman Mamudu, NAC’s Director of Policy and Planning reportedly said that: “Smuggled vehicles will sooner or later become unattractive because those who buy them will certainly no longer be able to obtain plate numbers from Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) nor Vehicle License from various state vehicle registration offices …”

    NAC’s position was in response to fears by Freight Forwarders Association of Nigeria that the new National Automotive Industry Development would not only promote smuggling but also lead to hike in prices of existing vehicles in Nigeria and the lay-off of its members. We believe that the country ought to have produced her first indigenous car. Thus, the haste with which the new policy was planned for introduction does not take into cognisance the fact that the existing feeble local automotive plants’ capacity, including the new additions, may fall short of demands.

    By sheer common economic sense and the general knowledge about our porous borders, the new high custom duty and levy may force importers of these used vehicles to neighbouring Benin Republic where the custom duty is more affordable. The plan will have perverse implications for the job of freight forwarders, yielding, in the process, considerable revenue to a foreign country. We believe that once a vehicle enters the nation’s territory, it is not the job of FRSC or any state licensing office to start determining whether it is smuggled or not by denying registration. The job is that of the Customs.

    We have no grudge against the National Automotive Industry Development Plan (NAIDP) but demand to know why the Original Equipment Manufacturing (OEM) would not, ab initio, invest in Nigeria before requesting for protection of their business interests. The government has said that used vehicles imported into the country will be valued as new ones and depreciated by 10 per cent annually for cars and 20 per cent annually for commercial vehicles. The residual value will be subjected to 35 per cent duty and 35 per cent levy.

    Both new and used vehicles will also reportedly continue to flow into Nigeria in the form of Semi Knocked Down (SKD) and Completely Knocked Down (CKD) with the freight forwarders still saddled with clearing them at entry points because the favoured new local vehicle assemblers will still import these ‘broken vehicle parts’ produced from abroad.

    Yet, this new automotive initiative dubiously allows the new vehicle assemblers to import New Fully Built Units (FBUs) vehicles at concessionary import duty rates while common Nigerians are slammed with prohibitive custom duty/levy when importing such vehicles. The right thing is to officially create a level-playing ground pending when the plants would be ready to service prospective car buyers. To us, this initiative is another avenue for creating undue advantage and opportunity for a few select businessmen to get richer under the erroneous guise of creating jobs for impoverished Nigerians.

  • School checks Maths phobia with contest

    THE Ambassadors School, Ota, Ogun State is hoping to reverse the phobia for mathematics through competition.

    Its proprietress, Mrs Victoria Olayemi Osewa said the contest, tagged: The Ultimate Mathematics Ambassador (TUMA) competition would soon spawn maths gurus who will no longer fear the all-important subject.

    She said the competition was targeted at Primary Five and Six pupils to stimulate their interest in the subject very early.

    “We cannot over-emphasise the fact that Mathematics is a key subject in the study of science. We have found out that students have a phobia for mathematics, thus leading to poor performances in science courses in primary, secondary and tertiary institutions.

    “In order to provide a lasting solution to this education malaise among pupils, we have taken the initiative of solving the problem from the grassroots by organising the TUMA competition, which we believe, will encourage the pupils to have interest in the subject,” she said.

    At the end of the competition which attracted over 120 entries from primary schools in Lagos and Ogun State, Stephen Aguwa, a Primary Five pupil of Life Crown Private School, Abeokuta, Ogun State, lifted TUMA trophy.

    Imo Amarachi of St Bernadette School, Ipaja, Lagos and Duke Miriam of Future Kids Nursery/ Primary School, Ikeja, Lagos came second and third.

    Stephen, a nine-year-old, went home with N100, 000, and a plaque, while his Maths teacher received N30, 000, some Maths textbooks, plaque, laptop and a printer on behalf of the school.

    Amarachi got N75, 000; her Maths teacher, N20, 000, and a plaque. Their school was presented with some Maths textbooks, a laptop computer, a plaque and a printer.

    Miriam got N50, 000, and a plaque. Her teacher went home with N5,000.00, a plaque, and Maths textbooks and printer for the school.

    Others winners between the fourth and 10th positions were presented with N10,000 each. Their teachers got half the amount in cash. All participants were given certificate of participation with consolations prizes,. Especially those who fell out of the first 10 winners.

    In her address, the guest speaker Mrs Ayotola Aremu from the Department of Mathematics Education, University of Ibadan advised the pupils to take Mathematics as a key subject because it links every other profession in life.

    “You can’t do without it (Mathematics). It is everyday and everywhere. Check your precious knowledge and work on your weakness,” she said.

     

  • Terrorism and tinted glass phobia

    Terrorism and tinted glass phobia

    Who says that Boko Haram has not changed the lifestyle of Nigerians? That person should ask car owners, not only those that look tense when they are on a bridge or Nigerian Christians that are afraid to go to church on Sundays and their liberal Islamic counterparts who are no longer enthusiastic about going to pray in public mosques on Fridays. Ask young graduates who are no eager to avoid the unemployment line by rushing into NYSC camps in the North where there is more need for such graduates? The latest group to ask this question is Nigerians who own new and used cars that manufacturers in other parts of the world created from innovative thinking and research. Such doubting Thomases should ask managers of the country’s security who do not want to be called losers by Boko Haram warriors and have thus unearthed a law created under military dictators to assist police in fighting Western Education is Sin terrorists.

    Terrorism is a major challenge for governments all over the world. It has led to creation of special agencies in some parts of the technologically advanced world. There was nothing like Homeland Security in the United States in the years before September 11, 2001. Air travelers and their non-travelling family members could go as far as the boarding gateuntil terrorists made it mandatory for security officers to create new policies to restrict non-passengers to the ticketing area of the airport. Hundreds of air travelers have learnt how to leave their belts at home when they need to go through security checks in all airports of the world. Even women obsessed with their femininity have had to live with small volume of face powder, small amount of perfume, and sometimes without toothpaste if they want to travel without hassles. It is therefore not strange that Nigeria’s security managers have gone into the archive of laws created during the era of military dictatorship in the country, in their search for what to do to assist them in frustrating Islamic terrorists, and unintentionally, the citizens whose cooperation they need direly.

    What is strange is that the archaeologists of military laws have not given citizens good reasons to believe that they are not just being capricious or arbitrary. No data have been provided to show any link between terrorist acts in the North and vehicles with tinted glass. Smokers did not have to complain about being prevented from carrying their matches or firelighters with them on the plane, after the experience of shoe bombers or the botched attempt of young Nigerian international terrorist to light the bomb under his underwear a few years ago. Air passengers all over the world who are lovers of peace and order have not complained about ordinances that forbid them to carry machetes, knives, and bows and arrows into aircrafts. The connection between these dangerous items and in-flight terrorism had been made clear to passengers and non-passengers.

    What has not been made clear to Nigerians is the connection between tinted glass on the two rear sides of cars and the killing of innocent people by Boko Haram bombing of the UN office in Abuja, churches, motor parks, and police stations. How many terrorists have been nabbed operating from vehicles with tinted glass? How many explosive devices have been recovered by police from cars with tinted glass? How many guns have been shot and how many bombs have been thrown from moving cars with tinted glass since the advent of Boko Haram? It is necessary for the police to use data obtained from such heinous crimes to enlist the support of innocent Nigerians that had taken loans to buy cars with tinted glass made by their manufacturers abroad.

    Reports have indicated that Islamic terrorists had thrown bombs from motor cycles while some had shot innocent citizens from moving bicycles. Is the change in our security protocols going to ban motorcycles and bicycles? Nigerians have been told that Boko Haram bombers have used empty houses and occupied houses to store explosive devices and powerful assault guns. What is the attitude of the Inspector-General of Police to thousands of such houses in the north and south of the country, board them up? Invoking an obsolete law in the books against owners of cars with tinted glass is reminiscent of erecting road blocks as a means of fighting crimes. It is obsolete and may be counterproductive.

    In a war that requires cooperation of civilian population, policymakers in the security sector need to know how to cultivate citizens. They should not create policies that anger or antagonize citizens unnecessarily. Asking car owners to obtain special permit for using cars that they had duly registered and for which they had paid duties to Customs is similar to punishing or blaming the victim. Anyone that drives an unregistered car in the country has committed a punishable crime. It should not be criminal for citizens who have paid customs on their vehicles and paid for registration with their local government or the Federal Road Safety Commission to use those vehicles. It should be safely assumed that Customs department, FRSC, and the NPF are interlinked and are agencies that share common interest in the country’s security. For the law retrieved from the archive to be fair to citizens, it must include reimbursement of customs duties and registration fees already paid by owners of cars with tinted glass.

    In the fight against Boko Haram, our rulers need to learn from best practices from other countries that have security challenges from Islamic terrorists or any other category of terrorists: Ensure that cars do not carry tinted glass that is in excess of what is allowed in other parts of the world and ensure that security officers are given gadgets that can see through tinted glass from a distance. It will be less expensive for the federal government to acquire such devices than to have to face litigations seeking refund of huge sums of money to citizens who own duly registered vehicles. It is instructive to know that when the law being excavated by the police was made, it was to give special protection to military governments without mandate to rule. Even in those days when civilians were prevented from buying cars with green and jet black colors, and owning cars with tinted glass, military rulers were exempted from the rule, an indication that the law was not to fight crime but to accentuate privileges of new class of rulers.

    Thomas Paine and David Thoreau at different times had warned makers of bad and oppressive laws about the danger in making such laws. They had argued that human beings have the capacity to resist or disobey unjust laws. The National Assembly should not engage in panel beating an unjust and unreasonable law inherited from decades of military dictatorship. What senators need to do is to jettison the law against the use of cars with tinted glass. It is absurd that, at a timethe president, governors, emirs, obas, obis, and obongs across the country are making a case for unsolicited amnesty for Boko Haram terrorists, the police is excavating laws to rattle citizens in all parts of the country or using vehicles duly registered with law enforcement agencies.

     

  • Tukur’s APC phobia

    Tukur’s APC phobia

    Even with the hurried congratulatory message by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the All Progressives Congress (APC), it is becoming clearer by the day that the PDP is very uncomfortable with the unprecedented and surprising fusion of these political parties. Though a shred of this discomfort was latent from its caution on the APC not to heat up the polity, there is now, every thing to indicate that the leadership of the ruling party is jittery at the success of the new party. Perhaps, this phobia stems from the disbelief that these parties could possibly agree to dissolve into one, more so with all of them commanding credible regional influences. It must have therefore taken the PDP by the storm to have woken up one morning only to learn that a new mega party is born.

    Or how else can we rationalize the indecent haste with which sundry PDP chieftains and characters have been predicting doom for the new party just a few days of its birth?

    Its national publicity secretary, Olisa Metu, former Oyo state governor Adebayo Alao-Akala and sundry leaders of the party have overnight turned into doomsday prophets. They are either predicting a collapse of the new party, asserting that the PDP will still win the 2015 elections or simulating imminent rancour in its leadership when it comes to the sharing of offices.

    But by far the most curious of these jittery statements was the one by Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, PDP national chairman. He had said last week that the APC is a collection of individuals driven by selfish ambition and not national interest and they will be torn apart when elections come.

    Asserting that the PDP is a national party that can hold the nation together, Tukur threw a challenge “Let the APC tell Nigerians their stand on issues of national unity. What is APC stand on the unity of the country? What is the manifesto of the APC on issues that bind us together?

    And that is where he runs into trouble. By raising these posers, the impression is being conveyed that the APC’s commitment to the unity of this country is cloudy. If he had no doubt on the commitment of the new party to this irreducible decimal of our federal order, his question would then have been absolutely unnecessary. Asking clarifications on this, presupposes that there might be some other things he knows of the new party that is not yet available to the public. And for someone of his stature, he would have done the nation well if he avails us the information that led him into this doubt. If he has none, then he must be a very big disappointment not only to the party he leads but the entire nation. We say so because it is inconceivable that a party seeking to lead the country is being taken to task on an issue of this nature. Moreover, all the parties to the amalgamation have been around for quite sometime now. There has been nothing either in their conduct or activities to suggest that they are against the unity of the country unless there is something Tukur knows that is not available to us.

    As a matter of fact, sacrificing their differences and unconditional resolve to float a mega party is a testament to their commitment to rescue this country from the rudderless drift into which it has been steered by the PDP. If any party should be taken to task on this singular issue, it is definitely the ruling PDP. Leaders of the APC have said time without number that their goal in collapsing into one party is to rescue the country from inevitable slide to the precipice. By this, they have in mind the worsening corruption that has reduced our citizens to hewers of wood and drawers of water in spite of the enormous resources available to this country. They have in mind the worsening security situation that has threatened the very foundation of this country. Ironically, the heightened insecurity that has raised parochial and centrifugal tendencies to an all time high has been linked to the last presidential primaries of Tukur’s PDP.

    If there is therefore any party that should be taken to task on the matter, it is definitely the PDP. Where is the evidence of the claim and pontification that PDP is the only party that can guarantee the unity of the country? Today, the PDP is largely, a fragmented party. This division derives in the main, from the anticipated ambition of President Jonathan come 2015 and those of other vested interests in that party.

    It is no longer a hidden matter that should Jonathan run in the 2015 elections, that party will be further polarized. This would have dire repercussions for the same unity which Tukur wants the APC to state its position on. The coming together of the parties under the canopy of APC is therefore to provide an alternative source of hope and choice for our people to take their common destiny in their hands. Nothing can be more nationalistic than this sacrifice.

    The question Tukur wants APC to answer is redundant given that that principle has been the driving force for the merger. They have said time without number that the merger is not about individuals, not about ambitions but the overall interest of the nation. That is why all discussions have been without any precondition from the coalescing leaders. That to me is a very big sacrifice that ought to attract the commendation of any well meaning Nigerian. It is an effort to deepen democracy in this country given the dangerous slide to a one-party state in the face of the festering culture of impunity, rigging and falsification of results that have before now, eroded people’s confidence in the ballot process. Those who wish this country well must be pleased by the enormous sacrifice that has been made by the parties in the merger. What they need at this time is encouragement not unnecessary scepticisms as to whether they will quarrel in the sharing of offices or when the elections draw nearer. Such negativism gives out PDP’s discomfort in seeing a credible opposition emerge in the nation’s political chess board.

    But then, these worries about the APC are even misplaced given that Tukur himself had a few months ago, predicted the emergence of a credible opposition if PDP fails to put its house in order. Inaugurating an eight-member reconciliation committee, he had raised alarm over what he called the depletion in the ranks of their members across the country. He then warned that “if members fail to resolve their differences across the country, it will lead to an onslaught of the opposition parties in 2015”.

    As I write, the differences in the PDP have taken a dangerous dimension with no prospects of abating. Is it not a self-fulfilling prophesy that APC emerged at this point in time? So those signs Tukur saw a couple of months back which led him into this visionary prediction have come to pass. Who says Tukur is not a political prophet? So, he has no cause grumbling since he saw it coming. Since he saw it coming and could not avert the looming danger, he should lick his wounds.