The Nation Newspaper

Tag: rethink

  • Need for a rethink

    The land border ban on vehicle importation is too sudden and may be counterproductive

    As the Federal Government’s ban on the importation of vehicles through land borders took off on January 1, Nigeria is once again confronted with the consequences of a failure to properly think an important policy through.

    When the ban was first announced, its intentions were clear. Along with similar prohibitions on the importation of rice, it had a threefold aim: to curb smuggling, to route legitimate imports through local ports, and to shore up indigenous industry. These goals are all in line with the overarching economic policy of enhanced domestic participation, increased local production and improved tax receipts.

    The problem apparently lies in both the concept and implementation of the policy. The Buhari administration gave importers only 26 days’ notice before the policy took effect. There were no concessions, no provisos, and no exceptions. Given that this was a major alteration in existing policy, it cannot be said that enough preparatory time was given to people engaged in what was, after all, a legitimate business.

    The policy’s envisaged gains simply cannot justify the disruption it is causing. Thousands of vehicles have been trapped at Seme and other transit points. Many importers claim that they had conveyed vehicles into the neighbouring countries of Togo and Benin long before the ban was announced on December 5, last year, only to find them caught on the wrong side of the border. Re-shipping them to Nigerian ports in line with the new policy will increase costs which will inevitably be passed on to final buyers. Vehicle sales and services businesses in Nigeria have been adversely affected.

    Not enough consideration was given to the actual enforcement of the policy. The smuggling of vehicles has always been a criminal act, but that has not prevented thousands of vehicles from getting into the country illegally. Indeed, vehicle-smuggling has been so successfully done that the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) has often had to resort to the ludicrous stratagem of apprehending suspect vehicles within the country, hundreds of miles from national borders. There is no guarantee that the service will record greater success now that the profitability of smuggling vehicles in through land borders has arguably become even greater.

    Then there is the questionable capacity of Nigeria’s ports to handle the envisaged increase in vehicle imports in light of the new policy. The country’s ports have a notorious reputation for inefficiency and corruption which has defied a succession of reforms and costs about N1 trillion annually, according to a recent study.

    Duty-payment procedures and other processes at the ports are often opaque. Smooth operations are hindered by 14 different security and regulatory agencies with overlapping functions. Access roads are badly-maintained; the infamous Apapa-Oshodi Expressway comes to mind. Such difficulties are actually the main reason why the more efficient Togolese and Beninois ports are so heavily patronised by Nigerian importers in the first place.

    It would be wrong for the Federal Government to mistake stubbornness for principle and refuse to adjust a policy whose weaknesses are so plainly manifest. The vehicle land-importation ban must be re-examined with a view to minimising its weaknesses and enhancing its strengths.

    A suitable period of grace should be given to bona fide importers, during which vehicles currently in neighbouring countries will be allowed in upon payment of approved customs duties. Local ports must undergo a procedural and infrastructural overhaul in order to make them more efficient and better able to cope with increased patronage; the passing of the National Transport Commission Bill and the Nigerian Ports and Harbours Authority Bill are essential in this regard. Pressure could be taken off Lagos by increasing the capability of ports in other parts of the country.

    The sooner it is realised that a counterproductive policy cannot be a good policy, the better it will be for the Nigerian economy.

  • Association urges a rethink

    Association urges a rethink

    The Chairman of Osun State chapter of the All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN), Otunba Gabriel  Ogunsanya, has urged the Federal Government to have a blueprint on sustainable agricultural development that will reduce hunger and poverty and explore partnerships with the private sector.

    Ogunsanya, who is also the owner of the FEG Agro Farms Nigeria Limited, advised the government to retool its agriculture policy to include a greater focus on agribusiness as a critical driver of future developments; and  to give priority to expenditures on public goods that will boost infrastructure.

    He told our reporter that there is the need for investment in agriculture and rural development, adding that these are crucial to improve farmers’ lives and livelihoods.

    He canvassed the implementation of a blueprint that will combine investment in income earning opportunities with social safety nets to promote a better future for farmers.

    Assessing the contributions of the last administration to agric development, he said: “The last administration tried its best which was not enough, because, we are still importing everything. Because of this, the present administration should lay emphasis on the improvement of the agric sector by improving the system to become a major driver of Nigeria’s development.”

    With Chief Audu Ogbeh, a farmer, as minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Ogunsanya expressed the hope that things would  change for the better. “The Chief  Ogbeh that I know is a good farmer who operates in agro-business. He adds value to what he is producing. He makes sure that all his crops are processed to add value to them; he has been a committed and seasoned farmer.”

    He advised President Muham-madu Buhari to promote agricultural entrepreneurship through the development of sustainable commercial farming. This, he added, will help to provide employment.

    He stressed that there should be huge investments in irrigation, value addition, increased production, human resources, affordable inputs and appropriate loans, besides fertiliser projects and marketing. While emphasising the need for a stable supply of major agricultural produce, he called for coordinated development between urban and rural areas as well as between agriculture, manufacturing and the service sector in rural areas.

  • The Need For Yoruba To Rethink

    The Need For Yoruba To Rethink

    The events that have militated against  good governance and progress of corporate Nigeria has usually been triggered by my people, the Yoruba.

    When you flash back to the events since 1979, when we were poised to have a good president in Nigeria, Chief Awolowo, it was Chief Richard Akinjide (SAN) that came up with 12 2/3 formula.

    After the accord of non-violence signed on 14th January, 2015 by all presidential candidates, events unfolding have set the Yoruba against the candidate of change, General Muhammodu Buhari, under the close watch of President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, when one Col. Olaleye claimed that Buhari’s certificates are not with the military, after earlier confirmation they have the documents.

    Is he saying that all the courses attended and certificates obtained since 1961 until Buhari retired are not in the files or records of the military, which are higher than WASC?

    To crown it all, Ayo Fayose of Ekiti State placed an advert in The Punch and The Sun newspapers wishing Buhari dead and still remains unrepentant about it, while President Jonathan could not call him to order.

    The underlying factors in all these developments are avarice and love of money. In all the cases cited above, except Abiola’s denial by Obasanjo, the Yoruba are presented as mischief makers of Nigeria, always used when Nigeria is about to choose a good leader of our dream, at times jeopardizing the corporate existence of the nation.

    I hate the idea of Yoruba being used to do senseless things. Who can vouch for Fayose clocking 60 years before he dies?

    Let us be reminded that Buhari and Idiagbon fixed Nigeria when it was in a disastrous state between 1983 and 1985 before Babangida brought darkness again, which has not been corrected till date. The duo of Buhari and Osinbajo will do it again because we need them now more than ever.

    The press conference addressed by General Buhari on 21st January, 2015 has exposed both the military and the PDP as liars, who cannot be trusted with the governance of this country. Both are birds of a feather, who have been lying to us about Boko Haram and the nation’s affairs.

    Let the genuine  leaders of Yoruba and our monarchs rise up to the occasion and condemn the actions of Femi Fani-Kayode, Fayose, Olaleye and others like them, who have been behaving like bastards in our midst for a pot of porridge.

    If Buhari contested in 2003, 2007, 2011 for this same position and the issue of certificate did not arise then, why now when he is set to win the Presidency like Abraham Lincoln of USA?

     

  • Time to rethink Nigeria, I think

    Time to rethink Nigeria, I think

    There is a regular, beer-parlour joke about marriage and it goes thus. In marriage, the priest usually intones, ‘a man shall leave his mother and father and shall cling to his wife with whom he shall become one’. Yes, a much beleaguered man replies to his neighbour, the question is which one. True, when two people decide to come together in a marital union, it is all you can do to stop yourself from pulling one or the other aside and asking in consternation, have you quite thought this through? Listen, what you’re about to do will not only land you in hot soup, you will even have to cook it yourself. More importantly, in the history of the world, no perfect couple exists; indeed God is still looking for two people who agree on the brand of toothpaste to use.

    So, with two people not being able to manage a marriage, here we are asking a country of different nationalities to manage their contrived and greatly multiplied ménage of strange bedfellows. Ha! This is why chaos rules in this land, ok! In this country of the deaf, lame and blind, all kinds of ideologies have come to play. Just listen here.

    Currently, we have an ideology that says one for one, none for all. This enables every individual to get to positions of power and then use that position for himself, family and group against the interests of the overall majority. Then there is another ideology that says some for one, none for all. By this, every individual is constrained to defend his or her tribal kinsman against the interests of the national majority. Finally, there is the strangest of all the ideologies: all for one, yet none for all. This permits all individuals to worship another individual who has elevated himself to the national common hood of thievery at the great expense of the vast and silenced majority.

    In all of history, no rat, elephant or lion has ever been known to adopt any of these ideologies for its own survival. It is not just because they have no pockets to hide things in, nor is it because they cannot open bank accounts to hide money in; it is more because I think they have not been able to throw away the sense of decency that God wrote into their genes in the way some Nigerians have thrown theirs over the shoulder. This is why a lion might kill to eat, but would hardly kill for hoarding or sport; a rat might hoard one or two things but believe me, it only takes things people don’t need or miss.

    I am thinking about the leaders in Nigeria who manage to show the entire world how not to manage exalted public positions. Take the example of the most recent story-break in the land involving hundreds of billions of Naira. The story is so nauseating its worse than cholera. Indeed it’s an outbreak that makes you go, ‘Yuk, what kind of country is this where people do what even animals don’t condescend to do?’ What is an individual doing with hundreds of billions of Naira, feeding?

    When we heard the story of the fellow who was alleged to have pilfered over twenty billion from the police pension funds, I reported here that it had me whistling in astonishment. When I heard recently how a certain chieftain of the Pensions Reform Task force, Mr. Abdulrasheed Maina, was said to have made away with something between one hundred and ninety-five to four hundred billion naira, pension funds of a group of people, I could no longer whistle. My lips puckered but nothing came out, especially when we heard he had been allowed to escape from the country with his loot. I just kept thinking, where is Michael Jackson to sing ‘This is it!’? This has got to be it. Anything after this I think will make Nigerians leave Nigeria for this government. Well, it would have failed to arrest the slide into total abyss, would it not?

    Anyway, I think it is not a normal situation that a citizen would fail to appear before the legislature, no matter their character, in defiance of the national law; it is not a normal situation for a police chief to be asked and fail to arrest the said citizen in spite of the fact that he was within the country and enjoying the fresh air of the same country he so flagrantly betrayed; it is certainly not a normal situation for the police chief to not be able to arrest any citizen in the land. I remember writing something in the papers a few years ago that displeased the police and I assure you, they located me all right in the little corner of the little city I lived in then.

    You have to agree that the situation begs for both questions and answers; I think it actually begs for more questions than answers. Why is it possible for such gargantuan levels of fraud and stealing to continue to take place? And as we look on, before our very eyes, why are the figures rising? Why are we now so helpless, police and all, if indeed we are? Have we completely gone bereft of our senses? Are there not enough things to use such monies for so that generations to come can bless us: an efficient rail transport system for the nation, electricity in every village including mine, public water flowing through every pipe in the land, a co-ordinated waste evacuation system in all the cities … people, there is so much to do with money in the country that this is just not the time to go diverting it.

    The problem with this country from the start has been the strange set of ideologies adopted by leading individuals in the course of our history and across the land. With our lips, every one of us has paid homage to a ‘new Nigeria’ but we have all failed to go to work creating one. A new, indivisible Nigeria, with a ‘non-negotiable unity’ requires selflessness, an ideology that, apparently, none is ready to adopt.

    So, rethinking Nigeria for newness involves three simple steps. First, we must change our national ideology. The ideology of selfishness must be replaced by selflessness. This is where everyone brings into the national purse his/her talents and resources in order to add and construct, not to take and destroy. The habit of destroying, knowing that regional, ethnic and even religious group adhesions would readily give support to individuals in case of prosecution, remains one of the most serious poisons working against this country.

    Secondly, there must be a new set of ethos to replace the current one which appears to give nearly every Nigerian the droit de seigneur over other Nigerians in his/her post. People easily forget that they are working for the public and get too carried away by all the power in the office. The greatest abusers of traffic laws are the police drivers, and drivers of state functionaries, including governors, lawmakers and those from government house. As a member of a sadly small but still sane community in Nigeria, whenever I have seen a government vehicle on the roads, I have given them right of way. That way, I ensure I get back home.

    This complete disregard for the law will not profit anyone in the long run. For us to rethink Nigeria, there must be a new regard for the law and this can only happen when leaders retain objectivity. Allowing someone who has committed such a financially heinous crime to escape is tantamount to allowing expediencies to drive the government. Evil portends evil.