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Tag: President Buhari

  • President Buhari approves funds for All African Games-Yakmut

    President Buhari approves funds for All African Games-Yakmut

    President Muhammadu Buhari has surprised those who think his administration will not accord sports priority by approving funds to ensure timely and adequate preparations ahead of the 2015 the All African Games.

    The Director General of the National Sports Commission (NSC), Alhassan Yakmut, told Prompt News on Monday morning at the Indoor Hall of the National Stadium, Abuja, after addressing the athletes that were training.

    The All African Games is holding in Congo Brazzaville from September 4 to 19, 2015. This is a clear departure from the usual practice of releasing funds two weeks to a major international event.

    An excited Yakmut promised to release the approved figure to the public in line with ‘Change Agenda’ which promotes transparency in governance.

    “Mr. President has just approved the funds for the All African Games and I understand we shall be formally informed on Tuesday (today).

    “So, as soon as we get the information about the exact figure approved from the budget we submitted, we will make it open to the public because we intend to run a very transparent administration.

    ” And I think by the time we finish computing all what we have done in the last three months, we are going to say how much has been spent on each item of the projects that we have executed including the Federations.

    “And I’m sure that you have noticed that the Federations are beginning to feel the public funding scheme especially the ones regarding the All African Games,” Yakmut told Prompt News.

    According to him, apart from the 19 sports that Nigeria will participate in, two other sports namely swimming and gymnastics have been placed on standby in the event that there would be athletes that are exceptionally good to represent the country in the two sports.

    To ensure that athletes have the best preparations, Yakmut said that the Federations that have requested for foreign technical support would have them.

    The Director General spoke further on this, “We are taking part in 19 events and two other events that are actually on standby. If we have pockets of athletes that are exceptionally good like in gymnastic and swimming, we will carry the on their merit.

    “Regarding technical aid, in fact, we are in global technical business and we cannot reduce ourselves to a situation that no matter how bad our coaches are, we must sustain and retain them.

    “What we have done is to support the four Federations that have requested that they will need technical back-ups from foreign countries.

    “So, wrestling has requested for two back-ups either from Europe, the United States or Canada. Table tennis has also requested fat technical support from Sweden, China or Japan.

    “Already, South Korea is supporting us on taekwondo and basketball has already recruited transparently.

    “All these we are doing to make sure that we don’t leave technical opportunities unattended to,” Mr. Yakmut assured.

  • Beyond ‘bailout’ for states (1)

    Beyond ‘bailout’ for states (1)

    President Buhari and his advisers—economic and political—need to pay attention to the root-cause of the crisis that he has been able to solve patriotically within the first two months of his regime.

    Quibbling about the proper definition of recent special grants to states to enable them meet their primary obligations to citizens in their employment is not as significant as coming to terms with how to move away from the political philosophy and federal governance model that made it irresistible in the first instance for states to run to the central government for special assistance. It is therefore unnecessary to join hair-splitting arguments about whether the special grant passed from President Buhari’s central government to the 36 states last week falls, in the fashion of strict constructionism, into the category of bailout.

    This is the first time that so many states were unable to pay workers’ salaries for months. Not being a common occurrence suggests that most of the states must have been under unexpected revenue pressure. It should not matter if the immediate cause of the failure of states to meet their contractual obligations to workers is traceable to decline in the price of oil and resultant decline in allocations to states from the federation account. What matters most is that both the central and state governments had shortfalls in their revenue and thus had to take loans. The federal government would have been as guilty as the states if it was not for the central government’s bigger access to loans in relation to the access of states to loan facilities—domestic or foreign.

    There are many matters that should arise from the patriotic response of the federal government on this matter. While acknowledging the speed of response of President Buhari to this crisis, it is important for citizens to start looking at remote causes of failure of states to pay their workers, simply because those buying the country’s major foreign exchange earner, petroleum, are compelled to respond to the dynamic of supply and demand. Just as the coming to power of President Buhari and a progressive party encourages us to ask for changes, so should the decline in revenue from petroleum urge us to look beyond rushing funds to states to avoid the worst crisis in modern polities and societies: workers’ revolt. It is instructive to bring into focus a Yoruba proverb that says the problem of a physically handicapped person to carry his luggage dexterously stems from his physique.

    The problem of the states in the last months with respect to salary arrears and to diverting pension funds to pay salary of workers in service may not be all traceable to mismanagement by individual state governors. This is not to say that poor judgment may not be a part of the crisis. What appears to be the most important cause of the crisis is the character of the country’s political and economic management. President Buhari and his advisers—economic and political—need to pay attention to the root-cause of the crisis that he has been able to solve patriotically within the first two months of his regime. He needs to find out if he will always be in a position to give bailout to states if the culture of running a Manna Economy, such as has characterised governance in this country for decades continues. He also needs to ask himself if it is rational to grant whole scale bailout without ascertaining the impact of corruption on each state. More importantly, he needs to ask himself if all the assumptions that produced a system that was thrown into turbulence by a fall in oil price are right for managing a federal system that has over the years become a quasi-federal system that has been sustained by federal allocations.

    One school of thought about how to prevent states from experiencing similar embarrassment again is to adopt the suggestion at the 2015 Jonathan National Dialogue that the central government take just 42% of revenue (as opposed to the current 52% the federal government takes) while states and local governments receive about 56%. This mindset is still beholden to the mistakes of the past. The real problem is the structural imbalance in the re-design of the federal system inherited at independence in 1960. Just as retired Colonel Kangiwa Umar said recently, the military dictatorships of the past made egregious mistakes in the balkanisation of the country into unviable mini-states.

    Before 1966, each of the four regions had more powers of raising and spending revenues. A related question is why the federal government would need up to 42%. Should the federal government face fewer functions such as defence, foreign relations, currency, rather than saddling itself with all functions imaginable, it should not need more than 20% while the remaining 80% should go to states and local governments to carry out most of the functions on the concurrent list. But this is not the big problem; the big problem is that we need to move away from the model that encourages states to rely on allocations from the federation account.

    Under the military regimes of Manna Economy, during which the dominant mantra was “money was not the problem of Nigeria but how to spend it,” it was discouraging for political managers to look ahead and imagine negative scenarios such as we have today, and towards a time that oil might not bring as much easy flow of foreign exchange into the country. Even President Buhari has acknowledged the inevitability of the Manna Economy by saying that states should look for more IGR to supplement allocations from the centre. What happens in all other federal systems is that states, provinces, lander, use transfers from the central to supplement what they generate on their own. In other words, states in other federations across the globe are positioned by size, population, and natural endowments to leverage on their huge potentials to self-finance. Our federal system has been starkly different from what obtains in Australia, Canada, Germany, Mexico, United States of America, and United Arab Emirate, to name a few federal examples.

    The legacy left by military dictators to the civilians that took over from them is one in which even automobile (vehicle registration and drivers’ licence) taxes are taken away from states and put in the hands of some federal agency. All customs, excise, port charges, and consumption taxes are, under the current system fashioned by military rulers, collected into the central pool for sharing among federal, state, and local governments, a commitment to make subnational governments to accept the centre/periphery relations imposed by military re-design of the Nigerian state between 1966 and 1999 in particular. Even civilian rulers do not seem capable of thinking outside the box. If they were, no delegates at the last national dialogue would have mentioned creation of more states, let alone recommend moving the number of states from 36 to 55. Otherwise, it would have occurred to delegates that increasing the number of states to 55 and increasing allocations to states and local governments from 42 to 56 would not change the fortunes of subnational governments in any noticeable way.

    Giving bailout to states at times of financial emergencies is about the small picture. The big picture is thinking about and planning towards changing states and local governments from centres of consumption to sites of production. At both the corporate and personal levels, the country has gotten inured to a political and economic system that encourages laziness and fear of self-exertion to produce values. Just about every level of government has come to see as given a system of sharing funds from rents, rather than one of sharing responsibilities. In the short-term, preventing states from going into bankruptcy is a good gesture by President Buhari, who workers in Yoruba states now refer to as Aboki (friend) because of his immediate intervention in the financial crisis of states.

    The long-term solution to the problem at all levels of government having to borrow to even pay government workers may lie in new thinking that includes asking why a country of this size needs 36 states and 774 local governments. Such thinking should also ask if the obsession with unity is justifiable if states have to be guzzlers of funds from rent collection. Just as Colonel Umar also observed, President Buhari needs to start thinking about whether the present 36 state systems with 36 bureaucracies and legislatures are sustainable in the long-run, even after we start mining another set of non-renewable minerals.

    There is no better time for the country to come to terms with mistakes of the past. No federal system can survive, let alone thrive, on the strength of handouts from one level of government to other levels.

    • To be continued

  • Our Girls;  Educare Trust@21; President Buhari: We need a ‘Youth Centre’ in every ward, Pls

    Our Girls are still missing since April 15 2014. We pray for their safe return.

    A lesson from recent history about Educare Trust@21. From the late 70s my family was a member of The Group, a social association of 30 families bringing up a generation of children in Ibadan spearheaded by the vision and uniting strands of Dr Funso Onafowokan and Dr Dele Fawole. Back in 1994, we smarted under the terrorism and coming darkness of the then one week old Abacha Regime- ‘a change’. The exodus abroad which had started under Babangida as an economic refugee tide had become a flood with the addition of security refugees. The Abacha change motivated some additional members of the Group to get together in my sitting room every evening for six weeks. There we X-rayed the economic, agricultural, health and other problems associated with a maximum military regime. Having brainstormed on the low quality of everything including education in Nigeria under the military, we offered a raft of solutions. We wrote down nothing and remembered everything as we went ‘underground’ to implement various strategies for the survival of the citizens. In education it was decided to ‘do something’ to ‘change’ education. An NGO was needed as ‘Change Agent’ and Dr Toyosi, a distinguished private medical practitioner, agreed to be chairman only if I agreed to become the secretary. So 21 years ago, in 1994, a number of people held the inaugural meeting of the founding members and Educare Trust was born at the Department of Agricultural Biology, University of Ibadan on Thursday October 20, 1994. At that meeting, Professor Ayo Banjo generously pointed us in the right direction by saying that we should deal more with the foundation level of education than the tertiary education. Others at the first meeting included Dr Bayo Banjo, Engineer Palmer, Dr Mike Aken’Ova, Dr Dele Fawole and myself and Dr Raymond Zard who has remained the major pillar of support.

    Educare Trust’s first project was fixing the leaking roof of a primary school, Salvation Army Primary School, Yemetu, Ibadan at N360. Since then, the Trust has spent over N60m of its members’ funds and countless hours playing both grassroots on-hands and leadership roles in uplifting members of society showing that much can be achieved with little provided the will is strong.  

    After a couple of years of visiting schools for programmes and projects, the absence of a youth-friendly, edutainment (ET) centre in Nigeria was obvious as was the need to help fill the ‘ignorance gap’ about non-school subject material.  At the time the National Museum at Alalubosa, Ibadan dealt only with the ancient and the ET centre was to complement it by being both Ancient and Modern -a change agent.

    In 1997, the members set up The Educare Trust Youth Exhibition Centre (EYTC). It was in a space in Brick House, Bodija and the year’s rent was paid by Engineer Niran Fafowora.  Diana Johnson recruited our first employee, a bright young man Daniel Henshaw. On the principle that ‘a picture is worth 1,000 words’, the centre was equipped using material sourced from The Smithsonian and Welcome museums and exhibitions in the USA and UK; Thus a poster and wall chart exhibition was setup with education wall charts, display picture cards, Native American craft pieces, display boards, two aquaria and the first computer available to the youth in Ibadan and donated by Tunji Adepeju, brother of the late Kunle Adepeju killed by a stray bullet in front of Queens Hall UI back in 1971 when I was in UI.  The ETYC targeted children, young adults, teachers and parents. It was to challenge their minds to learn and exchange ideas and ‘eliminate ignorance’. The exhibition centre is multi-focal, multi-disciplinary and multi-ethnic to expose children and adults to their surroundings as well as the universe.

    Since it was opened, the Educare Trust Exhibition Centre has been an ignored and neglected TEMPLATE begging for individual, groups, communities, government, YOU and corporate bodies to use the huge available resources and, especially in CSR, to replicate in every ward, in Nigeria in different sizes. This will keep youth occupied and educated in non-text book subjects and life-skills. So far, most of the millions of Nigerians visiting or aware of Educare Trust and YOU have not taken up the ‘Challenge To Change The Educational Opportunities’ and spread the word and so millions are suffering ignorance and become prone to youth restiveness.

    On January 2nd, 1999 the centre was relocated to space in Goshen Building run by Mrs Toyin Marinho, Coca-Cola, Ibadan. After 10 years it moved to Our Lady of Apostles Secondary School Odo-Ona in 2010 for two years. Then Educare Trust was offered a Youth Centre built by PZ Cussons Foundation at N10.5m and we had to find the land which we eventually got from the Akala Government and the C of O followed under the Ajimobi Government.

    As Buhari, governors and other stakeholders ponder on solutions to youth restiveness and crime and plan for the changes in education, we offer a suggestion that ‘The Time of the Youth Centre’ as a powerful tool to change and empower the youth nationwide is NOW. All Nigeria’s 16,400 wards must have a Youth Centre, small or big, built by collective effort. You want a Youth Centre in your neighbourhood, don’t you? Replicate the success of Educare Trust@21.

    ‘As Buhari, governors and other stakeholders ponder on solutions to youth restiveness and crime and plan for the changes in education, we offer a suggestion that ‘The Time of the Youth Centre’ as a powerful tool to change and empower the youth nationwide is NOW. All Nigeria’s 16,400 wards must have a Youth Centre, small or big, built by collective effort’

    •  To be continued

  • To President Buhari

    Good day, Your Excellency.

    I’m sorry, I have to dispense with long protocols in opening greetings.  But Mr. President, it is not for lack of respect.  It is rather due to the urgency of the situation.

    Besides, it is only the unthinking, in today’s Nigeria, that would not respect you.  In the midst of seeming paralysis, you appear the near-sole moral palladium, by whose name anyone can swear.  That is no mean feat, in the mass turpitude of contemporary Nigeria.

    Moral authority helps when in the midst of teeming amoral Lilliputians.  That comes handy to keep everyone in check.  But it hardly guarantees you a great presidency.

    So, allow me to ask: do you want to be a great president?  If you want to, please take your mind from the distracting drama swirling around you, especially from the National Assembly front.  Instead, x-ray your presidential predecessors, all fortunately members of the National Council of State (NCS).

    I mean no disrespect, Your Excellency.  Neither do I intend any malice towards any of the ex-leaders, now proud NCS members.  But if you must achieve change, the electoral mantra that romped you into power, against all establishment odds, you must make a clean break from how they ran affairs in their time.  Otherwise, Mr. President, you would end up like them: personages barely tolerated by their people but nevertheless propped up by the establishment.

    Take former President Olusegun Obasanjo, incidentally the closest of the lot, to your power trajectory.  Mr. President, only you and Chief Obasanjo have the distinction of ruling Nigeria, both as military heads of state and elected presidents.  Indeed, the Murtala-Obasanjo government, you will recall, was the one you traced your power DNA to, at your first coming on 31 December 1983.  But inasmuch as Gen. Obasanjo promised change, he delivered little of that.

    Proof?  Gen. Obasanjo attained distinction as the first African military strongman to hand over to an elected president as promised.  But what all that achieved was the collapse of the Shehu Shagari Presidency after only four years and three months, logging at its exit an egregiously rigged 1983 general elections.  You took over back then to, in your own very words, “clear the Augean stable”

    President Obasanjo’s second coming hardly fared better, though after his two-term, eight-year presidency, the present 4th Republic is hitting its 17th year, the longest democratic season in Nigeria’s history.  But that is about all the high point.

    The 2007 election, the transitional one from Obasanjo’s presidency to the late Umaru Yar’Adua’s, was even more soullessly rigged than 2003’s.  So, the cumulative crisis of illegitimacy, a combination of phoney elections and soulless governance, would produce Goodluck Jonathan, under whom the Nigerian state, from cumulative decay, was collapsing fast.

    But again, as it was in 1983, it is now your hard luck to clear the debris: the collapsed economy that has led most states to fail in their salary commitments; and even a more collapsed value system, with the Leviathan, Corruption, in your own words, set to “kill us, if we don’t kill it first”.

    Indeed, it is your pledge of David, to slay Corruption the Goliath, that rekindled the masses’ hope; and romped you into power on March 28.

    The other former helmsmen contributed their respective quotas to Nigeria’s woes.  Gen. Yakubu Gowon belonged to the military age of innocence.  Though he was a gentleman of gentlemen, his youthful mistakes continue to plague the country.

    Gen. Ibrahim Babangida’s power waywardness cost Nigeria dear.  Apart from the mass corruption his tenure enthroned, his unprecedented annulment of a free election almost torpedoed the country.

    Chief Ernest Shonekan is dear to his family and relations.  But in Nigeria’s power matrix, he continues to symbolise provocative subversion, of both the democratic principle and of fairness and equity, by accepting to head the so-called Interim National Government (ING) — which a court declared illegal — to wilfully subvert Abiola’s presidential mandate.

    Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar would probably bear on his conscience, to his grave, Chief Moshood Abiola’s sudden death in detention.  But he saved the military from further humiliation by, post-haste, leading them back to the barracks; and handing power to an elected presidency in 1999.

    As a unit then, this is an undistinguished group of leaders, even if, as individuals, they may be distinguished Nigerians.

    So, Mr. President: do you, at the end of your tenure, want to join this undistinguished group, barely tolerated by a longsuffering people? Or you really want to make a difference, as the Nigerian leader that finally made the long awaited change?

    From your exertions during electioneering, you would appear to want to make a difference.  If so, then you should, post-haste, jettison how they did things.  If they had acted right, you probably, at 72, would be enjoying sweet retirement and not worrying yourself about Nigeria’s eternal problems.  But now that you are out there, it would be double jeopardy indeed, should you fail — God forbid!

    That is why, Your Excellency, you should seize the moment.  Many are already saying you are slow.  I don’t buy that tale.  It is nothing but the Nigerian penchant for speed, even if it is brainless, rash and ultimately counter-productive.  Still, I just hope your so-called “slowness” is methodical — the hallmark of wisdom,  which abhors rashness.

    The mention of wisdom brings to mind the unsavoury drama playing out at the National Assembly, since the seeming rupture in your ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), since the election of the Senate president and House Speaker.

    Ostensibly to stanch the crisis, you have been swarmed by all sorts: former leaders desperately seeking relevance, professional sympathisers, eternal do-gooders and even mischief makers.  Phew, the din of the market must be ear-shattering!

    Still, after all the din, you have a government to run, a government that promised change; and a people impatiently waiting for that difference.  Failure is, therefore, not an option.

    That is why, Mr. President, you must maintain a clear head.  No matter what happens, you must not surrender your presidency to anyone.  You should also not allow anyone to come between you and your vice president.

    Despite the excitement in the Senate and House of Representatives, a united presidency, with the president seeing to politics; and the vice president bossing policy and getting his hands real dirty with bolts and nuts, may well be the key to your success.

    Please, please Mr. President, don’t let anyone give you the business-as-usual fable that the veepee is only a spare tyre. Everyone on your ticket must add value — and your veepee is nothing but solid gold.  So, mine it!

    If you succeed, Mr. President, you would have imprinted yourself in the hearts of Nigerians.  Not only that: you would have ennobled NCS as a true Areopagus: a heroic chamber of genuine Nigerian heroes, not a barely tolerated group of establishment drafts.

    May God gift you the wisdom and temperament to act right, Mr. President.

  • Time for Buhari to inspire and set the tone

    Time for Buhari to inspire and set the tone

    While addressing Nigerians in South Africa during his last African Union (AU) trip, President Buhari wondered why Nigerians were so anxious to see him appoint his ministers. He would do so eventually, he promised, without making mistakes. He attributed the slow pace of appointing ministers to the Goodluck Jonathan’s transition committee’s non-cooperation with his own transition committee. President Buhari appears unable to understand Nigerians who worry about his pace. While they may be wrong to stampede his government, they are not wrong to want some inspiration and tone-setting from him after more than a decade of appalling governance by the PDP.

    Apart from learning to listen to his countrymen, President Buhari must also find efficient ways to address their fears. They may sometimes be wrong; but they know the president won’t always be right. More importantly, given the antecedents of the president himself, and what the country knows of him, they know he is not infallible and is advanced in age. They knew who he was and what he was capable of doing before they voted him into office. It is pointless of him to excuse his weaknesses, such as his age, or justify his pace on account of extenuating circumstances. What in fact he should worry about is living up to the image which his supporters and admirers have of him. They see him as firm, courageous, intolerant of slothfulness and corruption, and patriotic.

    So far, however, while he may have embarked on a methodical approach to tackling the crises bequeathed him by the last government, the people are yet to see the Buhari they knew more than three decades ago, and the Buhari who had stuck stubbornly to the principles that have ennobled his life and politics. They want him to begin to set the tone for change in every area of national life, starting from any part of the decayed national system. They know he does not even need to appoint ministers before he sets the needed tone. If only he will bark, they reason.

    If his supporters are worried, it is because they fear they may be seeing a president who appears petrified by the constitution. They need him to respect the constitution and the laws of the land, and not be tempted to indulge in the self-help and impetuousness of many decades ago. But they more keenly want him, within the ambits of that same constitution, to thunder through the land almost like a lawgiver, the palladium of moral, political and judicial rectitude. If they feel nothing significant has changed since he assumed office, he must understand their perspectives and fears, and give them the substantial change they ask for and deserve. All they ask of him is that while he is assembling the first-rate team he promised, let him set a mighty, incontrovertible and magnificent tone for how Nigeria should be ordered, governed and viewed.

  • Buhari to attend AU summit in S/Africa

    Buhari to attend AU summit in S/Africa

    President Muhammadu Buhari is set to depart Abuja for South Africa on Saturday, June 13, to attend the 25th African Union Summit in Johannesburg.

    A statement by Femi Adesina Special Adviser to the President on media and publicity, said President Buhari is scheduled to undertake his first continental assignment since taking office by chairing a meeting of the Peace and Security Committee of the African Union during the summit.

    The President is also expected to hold bilateral talks with other African leaders on the sidelines of the summit to consolidate his ongoing drive to secure Nigeria and neighbouring countries from Boko Haram.

    President Buhari is due back in Abuja on Tuesday at the conclusion of the summit which will focus mainly on continental peace and security.

  • President Buhari and NASS elections

    President Buhari and NASS elections

    SIR: How can a president who promised the populace change, stay non-aligned in the workings of the National Assembly? Having the National Assembly as partner would ensure that the goals of his administration are met, and not frustrated. Is non-alignment a good strategy?

    Recent elections for leadership positions in the house revealed the usual attitude of “what’s in it for me?” instead of “how may I genuinely serve?” Was the change mantra we were promised an empty bubble?

    Personal ambition still seems to be the driving force behind most of our politicians. If their goals aren’t met in one party, they cross the floor to another. It’s evident that there exists a deplorable lack of philosophical purpose rooted in true service beyond self-interest.

    How else can you explain away a situation where a crucial election in the Senate was held in the absence of sizeable numbers of members? How can party principles be discarded for personal principles? Isn’t it odd to have two northern candidates lead both houses of the federal parliament? The APC certainly has chosen to follow the path that led to the implosion of the PDP. Don’t you agree?

    It is easy to see that our politicians do not support the ethos of zoning and rotation for equity any more. No one can convince me that they do. If they do, how come Senator Ahmed Lawan and Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila were side-lined despite being the party-preferred choices?

    Please do not tell me that caucuses and party principles don’t exist anymore. I am left to wonder how Lateef Jakande would have succeeded in Lagos as governor if he had not followed his parties’ cardinal points.

    The buck stops at the desk of this president. To avert failure, he needs to keep a worm’s-eye view as well as a bird’s-eye view of the workings of the parliament. Years ago, the late Kenule Saro-Wiwa said that, “Nigeria is on the brink of disaster” and, today, the nation is still struggling with continued existence.

    Unlike great nation-states where leaders give citizens hope, ours engage in swapping denunciations that detract from the tough tasks of nation-building.

    It behoves the Eighth National Assembly to work together for development. It would be detrimental to our democracy if the light beamed on political affairs continues to flicker and if we refuse to take cognizance of our country’s place in the world. We are a backward country and need to get over our lassitude if we truly have an interest in the well-being of future generations.

     

    • Simon Abah

    Port-Harcourt

  • NASS seeks removal of fuel subsidy

    NASS seeks removal of fuel subsidy

    Members of the National Assembly on Wednesday urged President Muhammadu Buhari to prioritize the removal of fuel subsidy as a first step in the fight against corruption and sanitization of the economy.

    The members, under the auspices of the National Assembly Anti-Money Laundering and Cyber Security Coalition, spoke during its valedictory session in Abuja.

    The Chairman of the Coalition, Senator Aloysius Etok, in his address, said fuel subsidy as presently operated, only benefits a few rich persons at the detriment of the poor masses.

    Etok noted that the country has so far lost over N2trillion to indiscriminate tax waivers, tax evasion and cyber crimes.

    He commended Buhari for making the fight against cybercrime top priority of his administration.

    He added that fighting tax evasion in the country is no longer a “choice” but a “necessity.”

    Etok said, “With President Buhari’s administration which was inaugurated few days ago, it is generally believed that corruption and related crimes would be frontally tackled.

    “We would expect, among other issues, the present government, to remove fuel subsidy which is seemingly a conduit-pipe for corruption.

    “Setting up of corruption court for speedy trials of corrupt officials and tax evaders and overhauling of expatriate quota policy.

    “Repositioning of the Free Trade Zones by giving specific tenure of not more than 10 years to enterprises to revert to normal company just like Singapore, Malaysia and other countries of the world.”

    He lamented that the operation of FTZ in perpetuity without payment of taxes has resulted in revenue loss and poor infrastructure “which in most cases makes the government to become a tenant instead of a landlord.”

    He said: “As Chairman of this body, I am aware of the dangers of tax evasion and indiscriminate tax waivers present to our economy.

  • Our season of forgiveness?

    Our season of forgiveness?

    “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” — John 1:9
    “Allah pardon you! Why did you excuse them until it was clear to you which of them were telling the truth and until you knew the liars?” – Surat At-Tawba, 43
    “But if anyone repents after his wrongdoing and puts things right, Allah will turn towards him” – Surat Al-Maida, 39

    If a politically literate person were visiting Nigeria for the first time in the last three or more weeks, he or she would have thought that the country was under the decree of a Truth and Reconciliation commission. In truth, what has been going since General Buhari (now President Buhari won the 2015 presidential election) is that many of the country’s political office holders from the president down to governors have been asking for forgiveness from fellow Nigerians for whatever they did or did not do while in office. And the calls for forgiveness were made without anyone plucking the courage to identify anything that each of them believed he had done wrong.

    From their pedigrees, each of those calling for forgiveness for themselves or groups they identify with emotionally appears to be Muslim or Christian. As the quotations overleaf indicate, each of the two major globe-wide religions insists that truth about mistakes made must precede plea for forgiveness. In Catholicism in particular, nobody asks for forgiveness until he or she has given full disclosure in a confession ritual of what he or she had done wrong. The worry about the avalanche of calls for forgiveness by departing political office holders is that none of them has been able to put a finger on what wrong decisions must have been made. Some of the political leaders in their valedictory ceremonies even felt emboldened to leave blueprints to be implemented for those succeeding them, regardless of the fact that their regime was replaced on account of its governance style.

    The trail of demand for forgiveness was blazed by the outgoing President himself. He and his wife pleaded with Nigerians to pardon them for whatever they must have done in the discharge of their official duties to offend anyone. As if it was not good enough that President Jonathan had graciously accepted electoral defeat and, in the process, according to General Buhari changed the course of Nigeria’s history, the outgoing president expressed fear of being ‘persecuted’ along with his aides and pleaded that should anyone desire to probe his administration, that person should not forget such other leaders as Yakubu Gowon, ShehuShagari, Ibrahim Babangida, Ernest Shonekan, AbdusalamAbubakar, and Olusegun Obasanjo. This was an indirect way of saying that if all these former leaders had been forgiven so far for whatever they did or failed to do, his plea for forgiveness has no reason to fall on deaf ears, as opening the Pandora box would be too risky for the country’s stability.

    Even the outgoing Vice President,Namadi Sambo, did not want to be left out of the ceremony of asking for forgiveness from citizens. He and his wife also spoke passionately about how they believed that they must have offended some people in the way they performed their duties. Similarly at the state level, many governors do not want to be left out of the ritual of calling for forgiveness. For example, the outgoing governor of Benue State is the most vocal of such governors. In his own case, Gabriel Suswan was specific about those whose forgiveness he needs. It is his civil servants and the lapse he has acknowledged is his inability to pay the state’s civil servants their salaries for months. And his reason for this is the nation-wide economic challenges facing Nigeria as a whole. Despite this challenge, he was able to donate some vehicles for his successor, to ease transportation during the period of transition. Some would wonder why Suswan would need to apologize for problems beyond his control. But Governor EmmanuelUduaghan of Delta State is the most specific about who needs to forgive him. He is calling on the accountant-general of his state not to abandon him on the eve of his departure from office and not to fail to tell him whatever lapse he (Uduaghan) might have made, a more subtle way to ask for forgiveness.

    While in the context of Nigeria, calls by outgoing political office holders for forgiveness and understanding at the end of their tenure is not totally unexpected. It should be expected that those looking forward to come back to power in 2019 would need to be in good terms with most of their supporters on their way to what they see as going on sabbatical from political office. Correspondingly, those who do not share the optimism of their party leaders about 2019 may need to talk right while they wait for the next job or contract. It is the call for forgiveness for Boko Haram by senior political, cultural, judicial, and military leaders that sounds rather unusual.

    Many powerful leaders from the North and a few from the Southwest who attended a conference organized by Professor Ibrahim Gambari’s Savannah Centre for Diplomacy, Democracy, and Development (SCDDD) rose from a conference in Abuja with a communique that called on the new President to grant general amnesty to the men who had killed thousands of innocent Nigerians in churches, mosques, markets, and motor parks. It is hard to miss the voices at the conference: the country’s leading international diplomat, Gambari, former Chief Justice of the federation, Mohammed Uwais, one-time secretary to the federal government under President UmaruYar’Adua, BabaganaKingibe, the outgoing National Security Adviser, Colonel Sambo Dasuki, retired MajorGeneral Ishola Williams, and many other individuals with name recognition in the country.

    All of these are known patriots. It is thus hard to ignore whatever they say in respect of an organization that had almost torn the country apart. No doubt, the call of these gentlemen for forgiveness is different from those of those vacating power in that the call from SCDDD sounds altruistic. However, it is amazing that such calls are coming at a time when nobody seems to be sure what the motive and agenda of the faces behind Boko Haram are. It is also not clear how much study or research those pleading for immediate amnesty for Boko Haram members have conducted on the terrorist group and its activities. Most Nigerians need to know if Boko Haram members have qualified in their killing and maiming of innocent Nigerians for the status of political criminals.

    There was a time President Jonathan used to harp on the fact that Boko Haram was designed to make him fail as president by making the country ungovernable for him. Not many people believed him. Many thought he was looking for excuses for not wanting to leave office. Others countered by saying that Boko Haram came about because of decades of underdevelopment in the North. Is Boko Haram now being considered by the SCDDD as being similar to Niger Delta militants who carried guns in order to press home their demands for economic justice or what they call their own share of petroleum money? Is the Savannah Centre convinced that underdevelopment in the North had created a sufficient condition for what Dr. Junaid Mohammed rightly called crime against humanity? Is it not a little hasty to ask the new president to grant wholesale pardon to an organization that had pushed Nigeria into hiring mercenaries from South Africa and begging other countries to fund neighboring countries to assist Nigeria to fight? Is a terrorist group that has publicly affiliated with ISIS one to be given unsolicited amnesty?

    Just like departing political office holders asking for personal forgiveness, so would organizations like the Savannah Centre need to engage in truth finding before pleading for acts of forgiveness. It is always better when full disclosure necessitates or justifies forgiveness than when pardon is offered before the causes and effects of wrongdoing are identified.