The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Rethinking

  • Rethinking public education in Oyo State

    Today, I offer my two cents on the ongoing dialogue on public education in the pace-setting state of Oyo. I recognise the agony of the Number One citizen of the state, Governor Abiola Ajimobi, on the unacceptable condition of the state’s public institutions and the future of the children that they produce. On this basis, the governor has presented a proposal on the management of schools to education stakeholders. Titled “Participatory Management of Public Schools in Oyo State”, the governor made it clear that it is “still an initiative, not yet a policy.” It is incumbent on every responsible citizen to contribute to the shaping of a progressive educational policy out of the initiative or to suggest alternative initiatives.

    There are two different issues that demand our attention. The first is the matter of form. Then, there is the question of substance. By form, I mean the process or the means of approach to the initiative. Is it democratic or dictatorial? Is it imposed without discussion or is it adopted as a consensus after dialogue? Substance refers to the content of the initiative. What are the key provisions of the initiative? One may find an initiative commendable with respect to form but condemnable with regard to substance. The converse is also true. One may commend the substance and reject the form. I would like to speak to both of these issues.

    We cannot overemphasise the importance of education as an indispensable factor in the development of nations and individuals. Beside the fact that education is a leveller and equaliser, it is also true that the nations that have excelled in development have been the ones that invest heavily in the education of citizens young and old. Examples abound in the East Asian countries that achieved independence at the same time that Nigeria did.

    By the same token, it stands to reason that if a nation is to maximise the full benefits of citizen education, it must deploy ALL its resources and mobilise all its forces—human, material and mental—toward the development and implementation of an optimum education policy. Deploying all forces and mobilising all resources mean engaging all stakeholders in productive dialogue and affording them the opportunity of contributing to the emergence of a policy and program of action which they can all buy into.

    Democracy, which we proudly affirm, functions properly and productively if and when no individual or group is left out of the market place of ideas, and if and when no one approaches that same place with a mentality of “my way or no way.” Democracy rewards open dialogue with near-perfect policy ideas which procure benefits for the greatest number of people.

    However, some entity has to initiate the dialogue. Proposals have to be placed on the table by someone. In a democracy, the entity that is entrusted with the responsibility to direct the affairs of the nation or state is also expected to initiate and lead the dialogue about which direction to go in the matter of the education of citizens. Should it be public or private? Or should we have a combination of both? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each?

    To initiate the dialogue with some ideas placed on the table of ideas does not mean that those ideas are sacrosanct. They are merely the starting point for discussion and other well-reasoned ideas are to be entertained. Between any government and citizens as groups, organisations, special interests, and individuals, this should be an article of faith, a mutually understood procedural template.

    This is precisely my understanding of what Governor Ajimobi tried to do with his administration’s new initiative on the management of public secondary schools in Oyo State. Inviting the public to debate the pros and cons of the initiative is an excellent example of respect for participatory democracy and it is a commendable approach.

    We must acknowledge the interests of segments of the state populations in the matter: parents, teachers, labor, religious groups, and whole communities. A sound education is the means to future happiness of each of these groups and its members. In particular, labor has a stake as parents and workers. Hence the invitation extended to these groups for dialogue.

    It is disturbing that organized labor allegedly decided not to take advantage of the opportunity for dialogue to present a reasoned opposition to the initiative but instead chose to disrupt the stakeholders’ meeting to which it was invited. It is alright to reject a proposal based on any ground of reasoning. But reason also requires that it be done in an atmosphere devoid of intimidation and physical abuse. Going that route is very unfortunate for several reasons, top of which is that it does not bode well for the moral education of the children on behalf of whom we claim to act. For it’s unclear the ways in which the uncontrolled violent aggression of adulthood is better than the temper tantrum of childhood.

    Now to the substance of the governor’s initiative, which I interpret as the force of reality over idealism. The present situation is unacceptable. The state does not have the resources to singly educate her children. Therefore, since it takes a village, she needs partners in the halls of public institutions. But realistically, these partners cannot be expected to act like CARITAS. They need to be incentivized. If they are going to put their resources into funding public education as government partners, there must be some return.

    Children in such collaboratively managed schools may have to pay some fees for their education that will not apply to children in pure public schools. And for many citizens, this doesn’t go well with their idealistic view of free education of all children by the state. Of course, there are still going to be purely private schools, including, ironically, the one established by the National Union of Teachers (NUT). Surprisingly, no one has sensed any contradiction in that venture.

    I find myself torn in this matter. I have an abiding belief in the responsibility of the nation to provide good education for its children. But the state has to have the resources to discharge this responsibility. Where the resources are unavailable, we must ask serious questions regarding why? And there are multiple culprits including limited tax base; tax fraud by businesses and individuals; inability of states to tax personal and business properties; proliferation of public institutions with avoidable running costs; low workforce productivity, etc.

    The fact is that there has always been a combination of school models even prior to the beginning of the first republic. When free education was introduced in the former Western Nigeria, there were public institutions, private schools, and grants-in-aid mission schools, including, Baptist, Catholic, Methodist, Anglican, Christ Apostolic, African Church, Ansar-Ud-Deen, Ahmadiyya, Nawar-Ud-Deen, etc.

    These schools charged fees and received grants from the government which moderated the amount of tuition they charged. When such schools, including the purely private-for-profit schools, were taken over in 1975 by the federal government, many objected that it was a wrong step since the mission schools were doing a great service at moderate cost to the state and parents. Indeed, those grants-in-aid institutions were quasi-public institutions.

    In response, therefore, to the governor’s clarion call for input, my humble suggestion in the face of the reality that the state is faced with is this. The five models of collaborative partnership enunciated in the initiative document need to be packaged into one model. If it is going to be structured more like the grants-in-aid institutions of old, then it needs more tweaking and cropping.

    On the other hand, however, it makes sense to start small by inviting the former proprietors of grants-in-aid institutions to negotiate a new partnership arrangement. Those missions and communities that are so interested in the education of children may be requested to provide infrastructure and facilities management, while the state is responsible for the training, recruitment and payment of teachers. Those schools still bear the names of their various founders. It is time for the progenitors to shoulder some responsibility for the maintenance and upkeep of their adorable babies.

  • Rethinking heroism and Nigerian civil service

    Unarguably, the dominant perspective about heroism in Nigeria today is that of a land where that species is endangered. Aside the political exploits of the Obafemi Awolowos, Nnamdi Azikiwes, Ahmadu Bellos, on the economic spheres, the Da Rochas, Aminu Dantatas, Louis Phillip Odumegwu Ojukwu; public service, the Babatunde Ajoses; literature, Amos Tutuolas, Chinua Achebes; education, Adekunle Ajasins, Chike Obis; the musical turf, the Hubert Ogundes, Dan Maraya of Jos, Rex Lawsons etc., whose unifying thread of heroism in their works was patriotism and excellence, the pantheon of that class and creed is becoming an anachronism in Nigeria today. This has been attributed basically to the maximal character and texture of capital in the Nigerian society, the abandonment of societal values of communalism for individualism, leading to survival-of-the-fittest and its subsequent derivative of elimination-of-the-weakest and ultimately, an erosion of values. The latter was effectively prosecuted by a combine of successive governments and the abetment of that vice by even the governed themselves.

    At an analytic level, if you could find ten of that rare breed of nature’s creation per thousand of surveyed Nigerians in the 1960’s, even up to the 1970’s, you could barely encounter one per thousand of that same sum in the Nigeria of today. Indeed, it is running against the mill to be heroic in Nigeria of today. While basic components of living were relatively easy to access in the former times, securing them is war today. Jealous and seeking to curtail rivals in its vicinity, heroism does not approve of friendship with Nigerians’ current maximalist search for capital. In other words, it is almost impossible that heroes could be found in the same trenches where people are pursuing wealth and survival.

    Some people have posited that it was easy to discover heroes in the 60’s and 70’s Nigeria because the environment was conducive to heroism. Broken into basics, they said that the Awolowos, the Azikiwes, Bellos could pursue societal good because their personal and individual good was a given. It is more complex for emerging youth and children of today. The environment is hostile to heroism.

    So when Tunji Olaopa, holder of a doctorate in public administration, consummate civil servant and prolific writer, posits that there are heroes in Nigeria and seeks to intellectualize their process of heroism, his proffer cannot but be likened to a Copernican theory in geography, and an against-method of Paul Karl Feyerabend, an Austrian-born philosopher, which are basically revolutionary. Olaopa had, in a previous engagement, in a book he authored on a renowned scholar kinsman of his, confirmed the theory of the dearth of heroes in the land. Ojetunde Aboyade, close companion of and a fellow “ecumenical spirit” of Professor Wole Soyinka, former Vice Chancellor of the University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University, former lecturer at the University of Ibadan, and a multiple-tested economic adviser to successive Federal Governments in the 70’s into the 90s, was Olaopa’s subject in the biography. In the biography of the late professor entitled A Prophet is with Honour – The Life and times of Ojetunji Aboyade, Olaopa had literally acknowledged that heroes, who belong to a rare and special class, are unusual to come by. His position was corroborated by the renowned professor of political science, Claude Ake, who wrote in a foreword to the book that “The country has no heroes, acknowledges none, and it devalues and derails those who could be…The project of nation-building and development which Nigerians espouse is a journey without maps, undertaken in moral anarchy towards an uncertain destination.”

    Recently, Olaopa seems to have submitted that that same rare species is witnessing an explosion. In a recently authored book entitled The Labour of Our Heroes published by Ibadan-based Bookcraft, Olaopa painstakingly, in an eleven-chaptered book, outlined paths to the Nigerian project, the national question, education and the human capital dynamics, the Nigerian predicament, Nigeria’s position in the continent, civil society and national integration, civil servants and entrepreneurs, among other classifications.

    In the same vein, Olaopa churned out of his intellectual smithy another book, published by same Bookcraft, which he entitled Civil Service and the Imperative of Nation Building which, on the whole, places a telescope to the Nigerian civil service of the past and the present, looking into the dark contours of its dysfunctions, failings, successes, progress and future possibilities, from theoretical and practical perspectives. He submits that the Nigerian civil service “stands at the critical nexus between grand infrastructural and service delivery efficiency and effectiveness and the trans-ethnic and trans-religious loyalty which is necessary to promote and sustain the civic bond of unity that will truly transform Nigeria into a nation.” Coming from a man reputed to be one of the most fecund-minded civil servants in recent times, this proffer would definitely need to be taken seriously by a Nigeria seeking ways out of the bind of drudgery and lethargy that are associated with the civil service.

    Two Nigerians whose intellect could be likened to a description of French philosopher, Voltaire as one of the most agile brains to have ever inhabited a human skull – the renowned bard and gubernatorial aspirant in Edo State, Odia Ofeimun, and emeritus professor of Geography, Akin Mabogunje – did a critique of the books in the form of foreword. Ofeimun sees Olaopa’s effort in The Labour of Our Heroes as an attempt at “memorializing  (the) feats, up-raising the heroic status of (such Nigerians)”

    Using the old theory of charismatic political leadership, he said, “Quite heartily (it) engages a Pan Nigerian landscape in which religious and political leaders, academics and intellectuals,  entrepreneurs,  philosophers, physicians,  scientists and creative writers, actors and filmmakers, musicians and community leaders,  are placed in the same force-field, as heroes.  Politics is not thereby downgraded or degraded but visualized, in context, as one of the theatres in which leadership may manifest within a contingent network of outstanding performers.”

    However, Ofeimun wondered why, in spite of the long heroic clientele that Olaopa gathered, the assemblage which he ascribed to the author’s “admirable gumption in letting objectivity and balance be his measurement through which he hewed out their outstanding display of honour and uncommon pedigree and elan”, Nigeria is still grappling with teething issues of development and is deemed a failed state in virtually all respects.

    In Civil Service and the Imperative of Nation Building, Mabogunje, who referred to the book as a “very opportune publication” said that the Nigerian Civil Service, especially at the Federal level, has had a very chequered history. His analysis was largely historical, pontificating on the certainty for a rosier future for the civil service if it collapses the virtues of the past with the challenges of today, an amalgam he opined would ooze out a promising future.

    “Coming with the confidence to advise on policy decisions and the secured tenure of the Colonial Civil Service in the early years of our political independence, the Service was soon forced to confront the profound national crisis that led to the military intervention in the administration of our nation in 1966.  Those years of crisis and military rule leading to the Civil War of 1967-70 saw the Civil Service virtually operating effectively at both the political and the bureaucratic levels of governance.  A subsequent military regime re-acted against this conflation of responsibilities and almost literally “decapitated” the top echelon of the Service by forced retirements, leaving the Service bruised, disorientated and no longer possessed of its earlier confidence and sense of security,” Magobunje said.

    He concurred with the author on the need to stress the fact that democratic progress all over the world responds more to the consistent reformulation of the operational dynamics of the Civil Service System which is the recognized engine room of national development and progress.  “The Civil Service is especially a sine qua non for national integration in a country like Nigeria racked by pangs of post-colonial ethnic, religious and cultural agitations for identity, a sense of belonging and social inclusiveness.  Indeed, the Civil Service stands at the critical nexus between grand infrastructural and service delivery efficiency and effectiveness and the trans-ethnic and trans-religious loyalty which is necessary to promote and sustain the civic bond of unity that will truly transform Nigeria into a nation,” he said.

    On the whole Mabogunje recommended the book to President Muhammadu Buhari and his administration as a writ to be used in undertaking “the unfinished nature of the reforms of the Federal Civil Service and be decisive in re-focusing its operational processes and procedures towards the goal of efficient and effective service delivery and national integration.”

    • Dr. Adedayo is on the editorial board of the Tribune.
  • Subsidy: Rethinking a N7 trillion caper

    Subsidy: Rethinking a N7 trillion caper

    •It’s time now to rethink this aberration

    We must admit upfront that we have been a long term canvasser for some subsidy in the sale of petroleum products in Nigeria. Our main ground has been that, first, Nigeria being one of the largest oil producing countries in the world but with a largely poor population should never turn her people over to the vagaries of market forces. In other words, Nigerians should never pay the same price for refined petroleum products as consumers in non-oil producing countries.

    Based on the fore-going premise, we had argued that subsidy could only be withdrawn consequent upon the establishment of viable refineries and petrochemical complexes. This means that the country would have eliminated the importation of most petroleum products. Recall that we were rather vehement on these positions during the January 2012 ‘fuel subsidy’ protests. Recall also that crucial to the terms of ‘settlement’ of that crisis was the promise by the government of President Goodluck Jonathan to build four green field refineries before the end of its tenure.

    Today, three years gone by, no sod was turned anywhere in the land for the construction of any of the refineries. Nigeria, therefore, missed the opportunity to set up crucial infrastructure in the oil sector at a period when the price of crude oil was over $100 per barrel and she earned huge revenues from oil sales.

    Price has crashed to below $40 per barrel today; Nigeria’s foreign exchange earning has crashed with it yet she still depends largely on imported petroleum products. She is therefore caught up in a double jeopardy of not earning enough foreign exchange for massive imports of petroleum products yet stuck with subsidising the products.

    We therefore think that the time must be now to rethink the entire subsidy regime with a view to either scrapping it in phases or in one swoop. It must be noted that the costs of the subsidy has become too enormous that government’s continued bearing of it is untenable and indeed, would amount to sheer fool-hardy.

    We also hold this position in the light of the recently released World Bank Economic Report on Nigeria which states that the Federal Government has spent about N6.9 trillion on petroleum products subsidy in the last five years. As had been noted on this page in the past, the ills of Nigeria’s petrol subsidy regimes are as numerous as they are injurious to the economy. Besides, the common people may have long ceased to enjoy the benefits supposedly accruing from the subsidy.

    According to the World Bank: “The $35 billion cost of fuel subsidy during the 2010 – 2014 was a primary reason why Nigeria was unable to accumulate a fiscal reserve in the Excess Crude Account that could have protected the country from the recent oil price shock. Fuel subsidy obligations are expected to reach 18 per cent of all government oil revenues in 2015, and, if the current regulated prices are maintained, this is projected to increase to more than 30 per cent by 2018.”

    This is a scary projection. It is also noteworthy that in the years in review, the Federal Government had continually spent about one quarter of her total annual budget on funding subsidy at the cost of massive infrastructural development, including in the petroleum sector.

    Finally, the crash in crude oil prices would have naturally instigated a downward slide in the prices of refined products and perhaps an eventual elimination of subsidy. But this has not happened because of the free fall of the naira against the dollar; added to other costs of long haul importation, the story of subsidy remains the same with no respite either for the people or the government.

    We urge the government to take a combination of actions quickly. It must drastically eliminate the debilitating corruption in the oil sector; catalyse an aggressive construction of refineries and petrochemical complexes while at the same time, reviewing the subsidy regime with a view to eliminating it. This is the way forward.

     

  • Rethinking Buhari and Osinbajo’s pitiful life-boat

    How many hearts filled with grief will balance an offshore account? How many homes – cold, poverty-stricken, scam-activated, shall balance ill-acquired “executive estacode” and “constituency allowance?” How do we measure progress on the watch of men given to scams and plunder?

    Despite the misery doled unto us, piecemeal…savagely and in large chunks, we are yet to affect appropriate rage and displeasure. We have evolved from the people that made the hare-brained determiners of our life course to become the decadents whose fortunes hang askew because we have learnt to enjoy our tragedies as sport; like the mother who gets off by watching the father sodomise the son.

    President Muhammadu Buhari, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and company, represent our only hope even as you read; yet the purportedly Spartan President and Vice President frantically radiate desultory sparks of moonshine and call it the great sun beams of a prosperous future.

    How can Buhari and Osibajo’s purported frugality and uprightness compensate for the scary, conniving, creepy characters we have in the nation’s upper and lower legislative chambers? How will their much hyped and oft exaggerated morality dull the misery inflicted on us by a corrupt judiciary and civil service?

    How can these two men quell the inferno of greed and inclinations to pilfer burning through the souls of our executive governors, local government chairmen and so on? They are just two men after all; there is too little Buhari and Osinbajo can do to assuage our pains and institute a truly humane leadership and citizenship in the country.

    Buhari and Osinbajo are mere humans; they are no deities nor are they vicegerents of our Supreme Creator hence it will be foolhardy to expect too much from them. Both men irrespective of whatever innate yearnings they profess to fight corruption and foster a prosperous future for Nigeria, ultimately constitute their own handicaps. The frills and thrills of high office have apparently dulled their consciousness to the actual miseries plaguing the citizenry. Ensconced in their high offices, President Buhari and Vice President Osinbajo are immune to the ravages of infrastructural lack, declining naira, power outage, insecurity, unemployment and endemic poverty snuffing lives out in the suburbs and backwaters, gradually.

    That is why they can persistently harp on their determination to live up to their campaign promise by paying N5, 000 monthly to impoverished families in the country.

    Speaking on the initiative in the run-up to the March 28 presidential polls, Osinbajo stated that the initiative is meant to support 25 million of 119 million extremely poor Nigerians who earn less than N200 a day to take care of their families. The vice president added that the fast way of dealing with that is the N5,000 monthly Conditional Cash Transfer Programme.

    “We will give N5, 000 to the poorest 25 million over a phased period, if their children are enrolled in school and participate in immunization…So we are actually doing two things; we are giving stipends to the very poorest and ensuring that in order to earn that stipend they certify two conditions,” he said.

    Osinbajo  said that the party decided on the 25 million figure because that is what they can deal with in the first phase, adding that “we are looking at phasing it over a period because it will cost about N1.35 trillion to do so if we do all 25 million at once.”

    He said the N1.35 trillion they are proposing for the Conditional Cash Transfer Programme’ is not so much compared to the AMCON bailout of “persons who are in debt, many businesses and businessmen and it cost N5.7 trillion to do and that is a bailout of the relatively wealthy.”

    Recently, Vice President Osinbajo has been responding to criticisms by opposition party goons that the initiative is unrealistic. According to him the government will make good its pledge. While the initiative may be in tandem with similar practices around the world,  one wonders how the APC would run the programme at the backdrop of unreliable national statistics; how will the APC identify those that are actually in need of the palliative without turning the scheme into a scam and cesspit for political discrimination and patronage? How cost-effective and realistic is the venture in the face of systemic corruption and at a period that the country grapples with depressive economy?

    At this point, it is important to stress that such spurious palliative introduced by the duo was not booed during their campaign for the presidency lest the witless PDP misappropriates it as weaponry in its arsenal of vitriol and inarticulate drivel en route the recently concluded presidential elections.

    Nigerians do not need the much hyped N5, 000 alms rather the citizenry needs Mr. President and his deputy to man-up and take pragmatic steps to correct the persistent social and economic ills plaguing the country. Of course, the country suffers no dearth of corrective and progressive ideas, what had always been lacking is a courageous leadership, daring enough to tackle the countries monstrosities head-on and conquer them, for the benefit of the citizenry and successive generations.

    The incumbent leadership should know better than assault our hearing with far-fetched narratives of monuments they will establish in our interest. They seem to forget that greatness is basically achieved by the productive effort of a man’s heart in the pursuit of clearly defined, visible and rational goals. Nigerians will no longer be taken by their ornamentally couched life-boat palliatives and hastily conceived monuments they desperately put up.

    It’s about time President Buhari and Vice President Osinbajo understood that Nigerians have become more wary of the public officer bearing gifts and promises of bliss. We know he is usually the one seeking to win our hearts that he might get to break it, for the umpteenth time.

    We shall no longer be deceived by the appalling recklessness with which they campaign and project “government with a human face. Oftentimes, the hallmark of such “humanitarian” campaign is the advocacy of some limitless grand scale public goal or initiative, without regard to context, costs or means of achieving it.

    Nigerians would like to see Buhari and Osinbajo validate their promises, touted ethics and projections by the best of dependable philosophies and deeds of human existence –the citizenry need a great deal more than “life-boat” solutions like the N5, 000 stipend. We do not live for the mercy of “lifeboats,” such base and patronising palliative is hardly fertile earth in which to sow and harvest our fruits of hope, ‘Change’ and metaphysics.

    Nigerians need them to resolve the conflicting characteristics of our tribal mentality even as they validate and attain a worthy equilibrium between, say, the expediency of wiping off our slums vis-à-vis the desirability and affordability of beautifully planned cities and suburbs.

    Buhari and Osinbajo should be done evaluating and projecting our given concretes by their abstract principles, it is time to gauge the most probable if not practicable outcomes of their promises, in the throes of ruthlessly objective and rational processes of thought.

    We need the incumbent leadership to actualise its blueprint for the provision and sustenance of good roads and electricity, standard health care and security, stable economy and quality education among others; we are done lusting and living for their life-boat and oft futile palliatives. The N5, 000 monthly is certainly one such venture. Buhari and Osinbajo need to get more creative and humane.

  • Rethinking the dollar squeeze

    Rethinking the dollar squeeze

    •Yes, Nigeria must protect her currency but it must be a phased, methodical process

    Surely, no serious government would watch her currency being debased; not with the importation of products that can easily be produced locally; or for which there are local substitutes. By the same token, government’s economic policies are not often taken by a sudden turn of action like a swish of the sword. They are usually carefully designed and executed often in phases. If only for the reason that the world family is interconnected and one major, favorable economic policy adjustment in one part of the globe, is likely to result in a negative economic turn in another part.

    It is for this basic reason that the move by Nigeria’s new government of President Muhammadu Buhari to boost her ailing economy through import control has been raising storms both in the country and beyond.

    In view of the fall in the prices of crude oil, Nigeria’s major export product, and the attendant shortfall in revenues, the Federal Government had to take a few drastic measures upon assuming office last May. Among them were the curtailment of frivolous importations; the shoring up of Nigeria’s currency against free-fall in the face of shrunken dollar earnings and putting a tighter screw on foreign currency transactions, among others.

    These measures, salutary as they are, have exacted various tolls on different aspects of the economy and raised eyebrows in various quarters. Even certain foreign interests that desire that Nigeria’s government should not protect her currency but allow it to float with market forces have been applying pressure.

    Global financial institutions like J.P Morgan and Barclays Bank have recently delisted the country from their dollar-denominated indices claiming that Nigeria is illiquid in dollar terms. Of course, this will make Nigeria’s dollar bond holders to withdraw and perhaps put their funds in other sovereign bonds that can be tracked through global indices.

    Business men and manufacturers groups in Nigeria have also cried out about this currency policy. While traders have been devising unofficial and in some cases, devious ways of sourcing and moving foreign currencies for their businesses in the short run, the highly regarded Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) has also weighed in recently. It urged government to review the list of 41 items barred from accessing foreign exchange noting that some of the items constituted major raw material inputs for some manufacturers. LCCI insists that this singular policy has hampered the operations of many companies.

    The Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), the apex real sector organ, has also noted that the foreign exchange restriction on 41 items has a negative spiral effect on about 600 items in total. But the latest revelation about the far-reaching effects of government’s policy comes from the financial sector. According to reports emanating from the banking sector, it has been revealed that Nigerian banks owe their foreign counterparts about $4 billion arising from the restriction of importation of some items.

    Key Nigerian banks had guaranteed some of the credit lines opened for importers. Today, many of the importers find it difficult to pay as a result of the strictures on foreign currency; since they can no longer raise dollars through the official Central Bank of Nigeria window to pay their local lender banks, these banks can also not offset the credits granted by foreign banks.

    We urge the Federal Government to revisit this currency policy. As we have noted, while it is the right thing to do, it must be phased over a medium to long-term period. Nigeria cannot switch from being an import-dependent nation to an export power-house overnight. There is certainly need for at least a two-year period of planning and building requisite infrastructure. For instance, while Nigeria strives for self-sufficiency in rice and wheat production in two years as recently proclaimed, such a change would not be wrought on an empty stomach; there must be imports in the interim.

    It is the same situation for most other products in which Nigeria seeks self-sufficiency. Yes, we must guard our economy but we must also tread softly – if only for the reason that factories are not built overnight!

  • Rethinking Boko Haram

    Rethinking Boko Haram

    • The killing of pupils in Yobe State shows the state of emergency is unravelling in the northeast

    The trademark Hobbesian state of anarchy of the Boko Haram was let loose on pupils of the Federal Government College, Buni Yadi, Yobe State, on Tuesday. Not less than 43 pupils were slaughtered like goats by the insurgents. The religious rebels reportedly bearing rifles and other instruments of violence stormed the school and left gory tales which Nigerians are still talking about. Adamu Garba, a teacher who escaped the gory attacks puts it succinctly to the Associated Press: “Students that were trying to climb out of the windows were slaughtered like sheep by the terrorists who slit their throats while others who ran were gunned down.” In a sadly well-orchestrated plot, the attacks came in the wee hours when pupils were sleeping. The wicked sect members left after setting ablaze the school’s administrative block and 39 other buildings within the premises.

    Captain Eli Lazarus, a military spokesman, confirmed that the gory spectre is the fourth on schools in Yobe State even though countless other schools have been affected in other northeast states of neighbouring Borno, Bauchi, Gombe and Adamawa. More scandalous are revelations that Boko Haram attacks this year alone have claimed 300 lives of civilians with countless others not captured by official records. These deaths do not even include military casualties that were kept away from public glare.

    Yobe is one of three north eastern states alongside Borno and Adamawa that have been put under emergency rule since last May by President Goodluck Jonathan as the military battles to quell the insurgency in the areas. We found quite disturbing the fact that these unscrupulous elements reportedly arrived at the scene of the incident by 2am and did not leave until very early in the morning. And we wonder how a state under an emergency rule could witness such horrendous attacks without any iota of security response from the standing joint military task force reportedly patrolling the state round the clock? Again, how could the sect’s members have invaded Buni Yadi, some 70 kilometres from Yobe State capital of Damaturu in several Toyota Hilux trucks and other categories of vehicles without raising suspicion within intelligence circles?

    Expectedly, the barbaric act has garnered global indignation through the United Nations’(UN) Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon who sturdily condemned the sadistic killings by expressing the world body’s  deep apprehension over “…the increasing frequency and brutality of attacks against educational institutions’’ in the northern part of the country which he believes “no objective can justify. What this newspaper and most of the citizenry are demanding from the president is for him to come up with effective solutions to the nearly five years of massive killings and destruction by the Boko Haram Islamic sect.

    It is important to ask what has happened to the billions of naira expended on security by the presidency. During the era of late Lieutenant-General Patrick Owoeye Azazi as Chief Security Office to the president, we recollect that close to N50billion was released for the purchase of security equipment to combat the recurring Boko Haram onslaught. But till date, no report was ever made about their arrival in the country and even if they did, the impact of such important equipment have not been felt in major territories where the devious sect has posed serious threats to lives and property. We consider it shameful that such a monstrous sect could have survived for so long simply because affordable satellite technology have either failed to work or are not deployed. Yet, the satellite equipment when effectively deployed would anticipate the activities for the dedicated hoodlums, unravel their locations and thereby facilitate their routing wherever they might be hiding.

    Since the declaration of emergency, the president has changed the structure of the military, implanting a division, for a focused work on the problem. He also has changed service chiefs. Yet, the problem has remained intractable. While the president has provided emergency as his last card, it has been a febrile failure indeed.

    The nation cannot continue to groan under the senseless attack of Boko Haram when the impact of scarce public funds expended on the Joint Military Task Force is not effectively felt. Could this be a consequence of institutional corruption of the military hierarchy that is prolonging this violence or the fact that some people are sabotaging the system from the civilian public? The president reportedly had to change service chiefs because they were at each other’s throat over control of the booty released to fight the Boko Haram cankerworm. This says a lot about the fragile commitment of the military institution to the battle against these religious miscreants. More shameful is the fact that the sect’s members during one of its criminal incursions in Maiduguri, Borno State capital, caused a major national embarrassment when it grounded the military fleet at the airport. The irony lies in the fact that intelligence anticipated the attack. Yet the sect members operated as though by surprise. At the moment, it is curious to realise that the sect’s tempo of attacks picked up in coincidence with the chief of defence staff’s declaration of April as deadline to finally eliminate the scourge.

    President Jonathan needs to change his body language to reflect the sober mood of the nation by displaying unwavering commitment to the onerous task of eliminating the Boko Haram’s injurious activities rather than his needless stepping up of unpresidential visits to churches and traditional rulers. Borno State governor’s statement that the sect is better armed than the nation’s military should not be waved aside because there is need for change in official approach to the Boko Haram quagmire since the current approach seems to have failed. The president should realise by now that throwing money into an endless pit of highly placed military and government officials that see the Boko Haram problem as a business venture will aggravate the challenges at hand.