The Nation Newspaper

Tag: PUBLIC

  • Lagos to implement public service reforms

    The Lagos State government will continue to develop institutional framework and implement reforms to enhance the capacity of its public service, Director-General, Lagos State Public Service Staff Development Centre (PSSDC), Mrs. Olubunmi Fabamwo, has said.

    This, she said, is to deliver quality service through effective people management and synergy at the state and local government levels.

    She spoke last weekend at a sensitisation forum aimed at deepening the understanding of human resource reforms in the public service for human resource officers and council clerks, on the Centre’s premises.

    Fabamwo reiterated the primacy of deepening the human resource capabilities of practitioners in the promotion of public service excellence and in broadening the capacity of government to satisfy the yearnings and expectations of citizens.

    She told participants, from the 20 local governments and 37 Local Council Development Areas of the state, that as leaders in the third tier of government, their understanding and commitment to the human resource management reform agenda would go a long way to promote service delivery, which will ensure uniformity in people management across the board.

    Also speaking, the Director-General, State Office of Transformation Creativity and Innovation (OTCI), Mr. Toba Otusanya, said the human resource reform would boost governance by building a professional public service managed by professional human resource managers.

  • Ooni appears in public as rites begin

    Ooni appears in public as rites begin

    •Markets shut for royal homecoming

    Three days after his appointment as Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi will today appear in public for the first time.

    He is expected in Ife to the warm embrace of his subjects.

    Ahead of his historic home coming, the two local governments in the ancient town – Ife East and Ife Central – yesterday ordered the closure of all major markets in his honour.

    The councils also ordered that vehicles should not be parked on the roads leading to the Ooni’s Palace. Those abandoned should be removed before the Ooni’s arrival.

    On arrival, the Ooni will go to the Giesi Ruling House to be installed as the Sooko because tradition demands that he must first be the Sooko of his family before he mounts the stool.

    After his installation as Sooko, the Ooni will head to the Obalufe Palace to perform some rites at the Orunto River inside the palace. From there, he will move to a forest on Ilesa road for another round of rituals.

    A source said: “The Ooni will also go into seclusion in Ilofi for a minimum of 21 days for series of rites and initiations. Though the rites could last 30 days in some circumstances but 21 days may be sufficient. And finally, he would meet an old woman in spirit to receive the power left by Oduduwa. The old woman will give him all the power over the Yoruba race. Then after all these, he will be installed as the Ooni.”

    Oba Olajide Ifaloba, the Obadio of Ife and Head of Isoro cult, to which the Ooni must belong, has confirmed that he will arrive in Ife today.

    Speaking with reporters in Ife last night, he said the arrangements  had been concluded to receive Ogunwusi.

    According to him, the Ooni will be received at Ife end of Ife/ Ibadan expressway and will subsequently begin installation rites as demanded by tradition.

    Ifaloba said tradition demands that Ooni must enter Ile Ife in the day time after his name had been announced

    It was also learnt yesterday that some rites to herald Ooni’s entry into Ife have been concluded.

    It was also gathered that the Lowa Eredumi of Ile Ife, Oba Eluyele Olawenu,  according to tradition, will officiate at the installation rites.

    Ife was calm yesterday and the residents in high spirits as they await the Ooni’s arrival. Strategic areas of the ancient town are being heavily policed.

    In a broadcast on  an Ife-based private radio station, Crown FM,  the palace urged all residents to dress gorgeously to receive Oba Ogunwusi.

    The announcement directed markets and shops to remain closed during the period as a mark of honour for the monarch.

    President Muhammadu Buhari, Oba Rilwan Akiolu, among others yesterday congratulated Ogunwusi on his appointment as Ooni.

    The All Progressives Congress in Osun State congratulated the people of Ile Ife, Osun State and the Yoruba nation on Ogunwusi’s appointment.

    In its  congratulatory message, APC Director of Publicity, Research and Strategy, Kunle Oyatomi, said a new era has begun with Ogunwusi as Ooni.

    According to the party: “The spectacular antecedent of the new Ooni in the corporate community of Nigeria’s business institution, the Yoruba nation and indeed Nigeria as a whole expect the new Ooni to take off from where the late Oba Sijuwade ended his glorious reign.

    “We expect the Ooni to drive the traditional institution with similar if not stronger zest and panache that Oba Sijuwade deployed to promote culture, especially that of the Yoruba nation throughout the world.

    “We have no doubt in our mind that the choice of Ogunwusi as the new Ooni must have been based on his pedigree and antecedent and exalted achievements he has attained that would be of significant value to his reign as the paramount ruler in Yorubaland.

    “It is, therefore, with great expectation that we all look forward to the eventful reign of the new Ooni, His Royal Majesty, Oba Babatunde Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi, the Ojaja II.”

    In his congratulatory message,Senator Babajide Omoworare prayed for good health and long life for Ogunwusi.

    Omoworare also prayed that Ife would thrive and enjoy peace during Ogunwusi’s reign.

  • Group seeks public holiday for Hijrah

    The Kosofe Muslim Community (KMC) has called on the Lagos State Government to declare Hijrah (the Islamic New Year) a public holiday.

    Speaking at a Hijrah Awareness celebration, the Chairman of Kosofe Muslim Community, Alhaji Sherifdeen Idris, said it would show that Muslims have a history behind everything they do.

    He said: “We are not waiting for the government which is why we are holding an event such as this in order to sensitise the people to it. We just want the government to give it recognition as they do the New Year by declaring it a holiday.”

    He said Hijrah symbolises a transition from bad to good. He urged all Muslims to accommodate everybody and be good ambassadors of Islam.

    The chairman on the occasion, who is also the former KMC chairman, Alhaji Shamsudeen Ashubiaro urged Muslims to practise Islam the way it was practised during the time of the Prophet Mohammed.

    “You can see that anything evil is against nature and we should move against it. Everyone knows what is good and what is bad and we should be able to move away from bad deeds to good,” he said.

    KMC Deputy Chief Missioner, Alhaji Marufdeen Olawale said: “The meaning of Hijrah is abandoning the wrongs and accepting the rights. When you are in a position where you are not performing well, you should move forward to make amends and adjust to the desired norms so that you would be able to perform well. It is a moment where one can sit back and reflect on what he or she has been contributing to the Islamic world.”

    He also urged government to recognise the day as a public holiday so that it would create more awareness to the people.

     

  • Public pension funding ratios still well below pre-recession levels

    The median funded status for U.S. public pension funds was 71.5 per cent at the end of fiscal year 2014, relatively unchanged from 2013, and only slightly above its 2012 post-recession low of 68.9 per cent, said a new report from Fitch Ratings.

    “Several years of strong market gains through 2014 offset remaining market declines and steadily rising liabilities, thus lifting reported funded ratios slightly, but they remain well below pre-recession highs,” Fitch said in the report. The median funded status in 2007 was 84.7 per cent.

    Strengthened mortality assumptions, the falling ratio of active employees to retirees and their beneficiaries, and changing discount rate calculations are helping drive states’ liabilities upward, Fitch added.

    Looking at individual state’s pension burdens, Illinois ranked the worst. Illinois’ roughly $119 billion in unfunded pension liabilities amounts to 19.4 per cent of personal income compared to a median 3.7 per cent for all states. Kentucky, with $27 billion in unfunded liabilities, followed at 16.2 per cent and Connecticut, with $33 billion in unfunded liabilities, came in third at 14.2 per cent.

    At the other end, Wisconsin’s $605 million in unfunded liabilities amounted to only 0.2 per cent of personal income.

    However, states’ contribution practices are improving, the report noted.

    In fiscal year 2014, 53 per cent of major state-wide retirement systems received at least 100 per cent of their actuarially calculated contribution, up from 42 per cent from post-recessionary fiscal year 2011 when budget struggles reduced pension funding.

    • Culled from Pensions & Investments

     

  • VC seeks more public varsities

    Vice Chancellor, Federal University, Wukari, Prof Geoffrey Okogbaa, has called on the Federal Government to create more universities to cater for the growing population of admission seekers.

    Okogbaa, who spoke while receiving a coalition of civil society organisations under the aegis of Joint Action Coalition of Civil Society Groups, said the creation of additional public universities by the past administration had gone a long way to reduce the psychological trauma of rejection by qualified candidates who were not admitted.

    “One thing you cannot take away from the Jonathan administration is the fact that he gave education priority attention. The universities he established in all six geopolitical zones has gone a long way to reduce the psychological trauma, rejection and destruction of dreams being faced by many helpless Nigerians in the past. No number of universities is too much for our ever growing population,” he said.

    Okogbaa, however, implored the government to adequately fund the existing ones.

    The Joint Action Coalition of Civil Society Groups honoured Okogbaa with the “Man of the Year 2015” award, which the leader, Isaac Ikpa, said was “due to his sterling performance” at the university.

    He added that the university was adjudged the “fastest growing school in Nigeria” because of the tenacity with which the Vice Chancellor pursued infrastructural development, accreditation of courses, recruitment of workers, and others.

    While receiving the award, the Vice Chancellor said as a public servant, he gave “service back to the people” and not in search of recognition.

     

  • Pay cut for public officers

    All things being equal, a new salary and allowances structure for public officers in the country will come into effect in a matter of weeks now. The new regime which will see to the downward review of the current takings of national assembly members and sundry public officers is dictated by the desire to align them to the nation’s subsisting economic and political realities.

    The Chairman of the Revenue, Mobilization, Allocation and Fiscal Commission RMAFC, Mr. Elias Mbam said last week after meeting President Buhari that the new slashed pay structure would be released in September. According to him, “we are presently reviewing the subsisting remuneration package and it is going to reflect the socio-economic realities of today. We expect that before the end of next month it will be ready”

    The disclosure by the RMFAC boss should not come as a surprise. Before now, especially since the coming on stream of the current administration, agitations have been rife for the slashing of the salaries and allowances earned by our law makers. The widely held belief has been that their pay packages were out of tune with subsisting economic realities. And with the slide in the price of oil in the face of the increasing inability of state governments to pay workers’ salaries and allowances, it became obvious that something had to give way.

    There was also this rush to cut salaries by some governors both for themselves and their political appointees. The pressure became such that the commission had little option than to set up a committee for the same purpose which outcome is the reduced salary structure that is expected to be unfolded soon.

    Against this background, there is everything to expect that the new pay structure is a foregone reality. What is still left to conjecture is the percentage of the previous pay that will be affected by the cut. For now, there seems little anybody can do since the commission is constitutionally charged with the fixing of such remunerations. So it is not an issue the national assembly or other public officers have a choice over.

    But beyond the powers of the RMFAC to fix wages, its rationale in arriving at the previous wage structure cannot pass without some scathing remarks. This is because, the very reasons it is offering for the cut have always been there. What had been lacking was a proper understanding of the situation when the previous bloated regime was being approved. Fluctuations in oil price are nothing new as our governments have had to contend with them overtime. Also the changes in patterns of oil production and serious efforts of some advanced countries to find alternatives have never ceased.  So at the time the previous structure was being worked out, such realities should not have escaped a serious regulatory body. After all, in each of our yearly budgets, such changes are usually anticipated and provided for in terms of lower benchmarks. In other words, it is not enough for the commission to raise its hands up with the impression that the fluctuations in oil prices were beyond it when it was fixing the previous regime. If it failed to anticipate such changes, it has itself to blame.

    That such remunerations are being reviewed now is an admission that something was not got right by the commission in its previous undertaking. The current downturn of the economy consequent upon the fall of oil in the international market could be a factor. Persistent outcry from the larger public on what is generally regarded as the outlandish pay of law makers when considered against the living conditions of our people is cited as another reason.

    There is also the body language of the current administration that appears not to admit of financial wastages as another possible reason why the commission had to hasten action in this regard so as not to incur the wrath of the powers that be. All these may have combined in facilitating the new pay regime. The rationale is that the monies that would be saved from the cut would be meaningfully deployed to other sectors of the economy to catalyze development. You cannot fault such an argument, it would seem.

    It is one thing to come out with a reduced pay package for public officers but a different kettle of fish for whatever savings that will accrue from it to make substantial difference in the total funds available to the government. You may well find out that such cuts will have the net effect of further impoverishing the lawmakers and thereby laying them susceptible to dipping their hands into public funds. It is better you are not exposed to good living than after being exposed to good life, the source of sustaining it is suddenly cut off. That may turn out as the unintended outcome of the coming reduction. That is the main issue to watch.

    But then, the salaries and allowances of the lawmakers and other public officers are not the real sources of the wealth some of them are known to be parading about. Much of the illegal monies they make come from unseen sources. And from those unseen sources, a lot of monies do change hands. A lot of smart stealing has been going on in the exercise of oversight functions and may continue unless adequate measures are taken to police such areas. That is in part why you hear of the scramble for juicy committee positions and other strategic assignments. There is nothing juicy about any position except the high prospects they offer for stealing. So we may be arming the legislators to resort to self- help if we come out with a regime of remunerations that they can barely survive on.

    With the wage reduction and plugging of all loopholes for stealing public funds, we may have gone to great lengths to chart a new course for probity and accountability in public offices. But that is not all. We are yet to find answers to the huge security votes at the beckon and call of presidents and governors. Much of the drain in our public coffers is recorded in this area. It is not surprising the high number of former governors that are facing serious charges of financial impropriety. Armed with immunity, they line their insatiable pockets until they are full to the brim. The kind of funds associated with former governors in and out of office has become a serious scandal. Something urgent must be done about the way governors use security votes.

    These are the real issues to worry about. So what difference does any cut in the salaries and allowances of a governor make when he can from under his table spend billions of Naira without a hoot. There may have been some cogent reasons for providing for such votes. But in our own circumstance, such reasons are often exploited for very self-serving ends.

    More importantly, something must be done about the prohibitive cost of running elections in this country. The financial demands on politicians during elections have to be checked. So if we succeed in making the lawmakers live within their means, something must be done to exorcise the idea of demanding money from them by the electorate before exercising their civic obligations. There has to be an overall attitudinal change for the new pay regime to serve its desired purpose.

  • Three women docked for ‘public fighting’

    A Chief Magistrate’s Court in Ebute Meta, Lagos, yesterday, ordered three women to be remanded in Kirikiri Prison for allegedly fighting in public until they meet their bail conditions.

    Magistrate M.O. Olajuwon granted the accused: Adeshola Lawal, 28, Abiodun Onwuneme, 23 and Fadiat Ayinde, 19, bail in the sum of N50,000 each.

    She said the bail was with one surety each who must be blood relations.

    The three are facing charge of fighting in public to which they pleaded not guilty.

    Prosecuting Sergeant Emmanuel Ajayi, said the offence was committed at Atitebi Street, Ebute Meta on August 17.

    He said that the accused fought in public over a trivial issue.

    “Ayinde accosted Onwuneme who is pregnant and started making mockery of her. She called her a prostitute that was carrying a fatherless child. Ayinde said Onwuneme was wayward hence was pregnant and sent out of home.

    “Lawal, who is a close friend of Onwuneme, didn’t like the insults. She joined to fight Ayinde,’’ Ajayi said.

    The offence, according to the prosecutor, contravened Section 54 of the Criminal Law.

    The case was adjourned till September 9 for mention.

  • Nigeria: Public corruption is king!

    Greed, corruption, self-serving criminal conduct – all these and more are part of human life in every nation or society. They are part of what all known religions among men would classify as “man’s sin nature”. In every known polity in the long history of man, there have always been some leading men and women who use their offices to serve their personal purposes in obviously criminal ways. Public corruption is part of the experience of governance everywhere.

    As I write these words, I have open before me many lists from the United States governance and leadership experience. I limit my search to lists of public officials convicted of corruption or other crimes in the past decade. Each list runs to many many pages – lists of “Federal Officials Convicted of Corruption”, “Federal Officials Convicted of Crimes”, “Federal Officials under Sex and other Scandals”, “State and Local Officials Convicted of Corruption”, “State and Local Officials Convicted of Crimes”. Most of the officials on these lists were arrested while in office, and tried, convicted and jailed. The lists contain the names of state governors, federal ministers, federal and state senators and representatives, mayors, members of county governments, military officers, police officers, assistants working for these high-placed public officials, etc. As of this moment, there are tens of these former public officials serving jail terms in prisons across the United States. In short, no members of any nation are more, or less, prone to corruption and criminal conduct than the rest of humanity.

    But, at that point, we come to the differences.  In some countries, the degree of tolerance of public corruption is very low. In America, the degree of tolerance of corruption and criminal behavior in public office is so low that if any public official, no matter how high, engages in corruption or crime, he is very likely to get caught and to end up in jail. Very many things in America’s group life contribute to that picture. In general, Americans love their country so much, and cherish their laws and traditions so passionately, that if a public official engages in corruption or wrong doing, someone in his office, or someone close to him, is likely to step out some day to tell it. A person who speaks out like that (known as the ‘whistle blower’) is protected by the law – so that he does not have to fear persecution by his superiors. The news media play a very mighty role in this too. Once the news breaks that some public official is suspected of wrong doing, American journalists don’t seem ever to be able to give up the case as long as there remains any unresolved part of it.

    Much more importantly, America’s law enforcement officials are exceptionally dedicated to their tasks. No American public official is so high that the American police and secret service would not keep an eye on him. If any suspicion of wrong-doing arises against any official of the Federal Government, the Federal Attorney General (though a member of the party in power) would rev up his office (the Department of Justice) to investigate. If the wrong-doing is big, he may choose to appoint a Special Investigator from outside to handle the investigation. And if any wrong doing is found, his lawyers would start prosecution against the offender. If it is the President, he would hand him over the Congress for impeachment processes. A president was so investigated and impeached in the 1970s. Another was so investigated but narrowly managed to avoid impeachment in the 1980s. Recently, federal detectives got hint that a governor was demanding material rewards for doing official favours. They bugged his phones, recorded the criminal conversations -arrested him and landed him in court. He is in jail. Many years back, a popular politician, after serving as governor of his state, became Vice-President of America. Law enforcement officials in his state discovered that he had evaded taxes during the years when he had served as governor. They raised up criminal charges against him. He confessed in order to get a smaller punishment and not go to jail (Americans call it “making a plea bargain”). As his smaller punishment, he was ordered to resign from his position as Vice-President. He resigned in disgrace. While investigating a president for some suspicion of wrong-doing, law enforcement officials wanted to take some blood from his arm as evidence. Some secret service officers went to the White House and told the president what they had come for. The president rolled up his shirt sleeve, and the secret service officers brought out their needle and syringe and drew the blood they wanted and went their way. Yes, that is the way it is. America takes serious steps to protect itself from possible rampages by wrong doers. America is a land of law.

    In comparison with America, Nigeria is just one crooked and lawless jungle,  a land of the powerful and the influential, a land over which the whims and caprices of the powerful and influential reign. Corruption is therefore king in Nigeria – king unrestrained and impossible to restrain. And the reasons are quite easy to see. Altogether, it often seems as if Nigeria is a country without citizens. Everybody (including the journalist and the law enforcement functionary) is so consumed with trying to benefit from whatever is going on (no matter how terribly dishonest and corrupt) that nobody ever does anything to protect Nigeria against wrong doers. In Nigeria, the man occupying the position of the Attorney General is, unashamedly, a lawyer for the party in power. He himself would readily take part in criminal acts, if such acts benefit his party.  No powerful evil doer needs to fear him – except, occasionally, members of opposition parties who are foolish enough to refuse decamp to the party in power when they come under investigation by law enforcement. For public officials at federal, state and local government levels, if they belong to the party in control of the Federal Government, the freedom to steal public resources, to corrupt their offices, to distort the governmental system, and to commit crimes, is limitless. The police, the secret service and, now, the military would, as errand boys of the Nigerian president, readily flout Nigerian laws. Essentially, Nigeria is a country without any kind of law enforcement.

    An important feature of this awful picture is the nationality factor. Every Nigerian president tends to surround himself with appointees from his own nationality. And, cocooned in that inner circle, he and they can do any evil without any fear of consequences. For them to steal enormous amounts of public wealth is, to them, a fair share for their nationality. To some nationalities, in fact, public corruption is justified by the teachings of religion.

    It is day-dreaming to think that these aberrations can be eliminated substantially and abidingly in Nigeria. Conceivably, a major dose of power decentralization can help. But there are some nationalities to whom strong centralization is gospel and decentralization is anathema – and who would start a war to prevent decentralization. Those who advocate that Nigeria should split up into smaller and ethnically less diverse countries make a lot of sense.

  • Juwah as model public servant

    Telecommunications has become the chief enabler of any economy. It is a sector that does not only directly contribute to the economy but it impacts other sectors, providing for them the conveyor belt to take businesses from small scale enterprises to mega-corporations. This is why the advanced nations and strongly emerging economies of Asia have taken the matter of telecoms very seriously. Whether it is the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) of the United States or the Office of Communications (OfCom) of the UK, governments from across the globe have always insisted on the observance of best practices from their respective telecom regulators.

    In Nigeria, the statutory telecom regulator, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has borne the burden of midwifing the nation’s telecom sector, right from the days of the military when the commission was created by the Ibrahim Babangida regime via Decree 75 of 1992. But the commission never really flourished until the advent of democracy. Specifically, its impact began to be felt among the people in 2001 when the first set of Global System for Mobile (GSM) communications operators rolled out services. It marked a defining moment in the sector that has since 1886 when the first cable communication was established with England from the colony of Lagos.

    Before the GSM operators rolled out service in 2001, aggregate telephone throughput in Nigeria had hovered between 400,000 and 500,000 lines made up largely of analogue lines. The state-run telco, NITEL, was a monumental failure, made inept by public sector lethargy. Attempt to integrate the Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) genre of telephony was at the very best, fitful. Investment in the sector barely grossed over $50 million. New jobs were not created because growth and profitability were stunted. Government interference in the running of the sector did not help matters, either. And so, a sector that was supposed to enable other sectors attain efficiency and profitability was itself needing help.

    Today, however, the Nigeria telecom narrative has changed. The regulator, NCC, has proved beyond doubt that privatisation and deregulation are the best therapies for ailing public corporations and sectors once held bound by government inertia. Two iconic characters, both of them engineers, stand out in this journey from telecom backwaters to a nirvana where Nigeria is mentioned and qualified with beautiful superlatives in the global telecom canvas. Whereas Ernest Ndukwe (he succeeded the late Emmanuel Nnama) started what is commonly called the ‘telecom revolution’, his successor, Dr. Eugene Juwah, has not only sustained the revolution, he has indeed upped the ante, growing the telephone throughput from 88 million lines upon his assumption of office in July 2010 to over 130 million lines.

    Under Juwah, Nigeria’s profile in the global telecom arena has shot up to the acclamation of both the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation (CTO) and the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the telecom arm of the United Nations.

    It is little surprise that he was honoured recently as The Sun newspaper Public Servant of the Year 2014. Juwah, the man commonly referred to as Nigeria’s Broadband Evangelist, was at his engineering and administrative best last year. It was the year that investments in the Nigeria telecoms sector grossed over a hefty $32 billion, it was the year that aggregate telephone lines in Nigeria crossed a record 130 million lines (in fact total subscriber base was at a time 132,186,840 lines) in a country of about 170 million people, thus pushing tele-density to as high as 94.84 percent.

    In 2014, total number of internet subscribers for GSM mobile galloped to over 70 million. But beyond numbers and statistics, 2014 marked the highest elevation of Nigeria telecom in the global circuit as Juwah was appointed the Chairman of the Council and Executive Committee of the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation (CTO) during the CTO Annual Council Meeting held in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Besides, it was the year the commission mopped multiple awards to justify its rating as Africa’s model telecom regulator.

    It was therefore most fitting that Juwah was honoured for his outstanding performance at the NCC and much more for his stellar achievements last year. Juwah’s success at NCC has stood Nigeria out at the ITU community. Nigerians who travel the world would easily recall the harrowing experiences they go through at most airports on account of the country’s poor reputation. Those who attend international seminars and conferences need not be reminded of how the global audience had sneered and sniggered at the mention of Nigeria at such meets. But not so with telecom! Juwah and his troop at NCC have given Nigeria a sweetly flavoured name among global investors and telecom techies including regulators from across the globe.

    Year after year, telecom regulators from other nations jet into Nigeria to understudy the NCC with the singular intent of deploying the Nigerian telecom regulatory template to foster regulatory excellence within their respective jurisdictions.

    Since the rollout of GSM services in 2001, issues such as quality of service and cost of service have dogged every discourse. Juwah never shied away from them. Step by step, without grinding the businesses of investors, he has rallied the operators to invest more as a way of ramping up the technical integrity of their networks. Even much so, Juwah was not oppressive of the telecom consumer. He has consistently advocated regulation with a human face. The review of interconnect rate, slashing of the cost of short message service (SMS) among others were carefully thought through interventions meant to help the consumer while also ensuring that the operators stay in business.

    At a time many thought that the nation’s telecom sector has hit saturation point in voice telephony, Juwah brought a fresh breath to the menu. The intensity of his Broadband evangelism has not only created more jobs in the sector, it has also positively impacted other sectors and by extension the larger economy.  The Nigerian public sector would need to copy from the leadership book of Juwah so that the revolution that has galvanised telecom in Nigeria would be replicated in other areas of the national socio-economic ecosystem. Meantime, let’s toast to Nigeria’s Public Servant of the Year 2014, the Delta-born Eugene Juwah.

    • Olanrewaju, an  ICT consultant, writes from Lagos.

  • ‘Over N74.4tr stolen by public officials in 25 years’

    Nigerian public officials have stolen more than N74.4tr in the last 25 years, the Co-Chairman, Nigeria Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing National Risk Assessment Secretariat, Sam Onyeka, has disclosed.

    Onyeka said until 1990, issues of money laundering were associated principally with drug trafficking.

    He said although efforts were ongoing to recover parts of the stolen funds, much of the money was stashed in different bank accounts abroad.

    He spoke during a briefing on his book titled: Anti-Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism in Nigeria, organised yesterday in Abuja.