The Nation Newspaper

Tag: revolutionary

  • Executive Order 007: A revolutionary move

    SIR: While the nation bickers over the Walter Onnoghen’s saga, it appears not to have noticed the appearance of a phenomenally dazzling silver lining in the horizon of road infrastructure in our polity. It is called Executive Order 007. By this Order, the president is authorised to grant exemption from corporate taxation, for certain companies or groups of companies, who are willing to deploy their working capitals to fund road projects, by way of issuance of tax credits.

    In simple terms, what this means is that companies can go into funding road constructions directly from their taxable incomes in exchange for exemption from payment of their corporate tax equivalent to the amount that is required for the funding of the road infrastructure.

    This will translate to companies fixing those road networks around their operation areas and addressing thereby, the injustice suffered by companies who, after paying their taxes still suffer the infrastructural deficit of deplorable road conditions for which the taxes are meant to fix.

    If well implemented, Executive 007 will also help to address the perennial conflicts between companies and their respective host communities particularly, in respect of accusations and counter-accusations over social responsibility, where, for instance, in the riverine communities of the Niger Delta, host communities constantly accuse oil companies in the region of neglecting their corporate social responsibilities to the communities while the companies will always demur at the government for shirking its own responsibilities of providing the required social amenities to the communities even after collecting the taxes, and asserting thereon their justification. Companies now have the opportunity of killing two birds with one stone: being able to provide a bit of their own social capitals (roads) for ease of their operations while contemporaneously fulfilling their corporate social responsibility in the same breath.

    There is a dire need for more executive orders in similar direction to address deficits in such other areas the government has obligations to meet the infrastructural needs of the citizenry particularly in the areas of power, healthcare, housing etc, on one hand and another executive order to also address inter-governmental switch of statutory obligations under a mutually agreed terms and conditions between the tiers of governments involved, to address critical areas of needs, as Executive Order 007 appears to be the knight in shiny amour required to usher in the needed systemic revolution in the intractable infrastructural challenge in road construction and maintenance, for now.

     

    • Chris Edache Agbiti, Esq.,

    Abuja.

  • Revolutionary rascals

    The gecko thinks if it quits the roof to live in the forest long enough, it will become an alligator. Will practice make the cat roar like a lion? I have seen all sorts of revolutionary marches and I’ve come to the conclusion that the Nigerian revolutionary is an incurable sissy. It doesn’t make a darn bit of difference what his causes are. It’s worse if he’s in his youth – because then he fully immerses into the backwardness into which he has been born, evolving quite brazenly like a barbarian, badgering onto the stage for acclaim, through the trap-door.

    The incumbent ruling class will glory in its delusions of power and grandeur, until the Nigerian youth muster sufficient courage to remove it. Perhaps. Until then, we will get the quality of leadership that we deserve.

    How can the youth take over? How can government be made to reflect the wishes and soul of the citizenry? The preexisting political structure and party regime is no doubt an albatross to the emergence of a greater Nigeria. This is because the nations’ politics as it is so constituted, is structured to serve the whim and wiles of the predatory ruling class holding the country hostage even as you read.

    There is need to evolve a credible opposition party structure particularly as the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) fades out from the political space to resurge as a hydra-headed monster in the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). This requires the active participation of the nation’s youth. There is need for the nation’s youth to come together to evolve a credible alternative to the existing political platforms that we have in the country.

    But before the youth can embark on such purposeful exploit, this segment of the citizenry needs to come to grasp with certain bitter truths about its incapacities. The conscientious and the just, the honorable, gracious and humane; the unselfish and the intelligent may begin a movement—but soon it slips from their grasp turning them from leaders of the revolution into victims of the revolt thus their seemingly desperate inclinations to distance themselves from every revolutionary march.

    No revolution can be successful if the human elements serving as its force of change are wholly incapacitated to see to the fruitful end, the ideals of the insurrection; which brings me to the quality of youth mooting the revolt.

    Revolution is never the rebellion against a pre-existing order, but the setting-up of a new order contradictory to the traditional one. How different could an order anchored by the current crop of Nigerian youth be?

    In the daily lives of our youth, fear plays a greater part than hope: they are more filled with the thoughts of possessions they may acquire and that others may take from them. Russell would say “It is not so that life should be lived” but the Nigerian youth could not be bothered even if they knew that much.

    Many whose lives ought to be fruitful to them, to their friends, and to the world in entirety are hardly inspired by hope and sustained by joy; they seek in imagination the vanities that might be and the way in which they are to be brought into existence.

    Ultimately they choose the path of decadence. In their private relations they are pre-occupied with the inane lest they should lose such affection and respect as they receive; they are engaged in giving affection and respect at a price and the reward often comes by their desperate quests.

    In their work they are haunted by jealousy of competitors, and are least concerned with the actual task that has to be done.

    In politics, they spend time and passion defending unjust privileges of their benefactors, godfathers, class or ethnicity, even as they make their world less happy, less compassionate, less peaceful, more full of greed and compatriots whose growth is perpetually dwarfed and stunted by oppression.

    A spectre is haunting the Nigerian youth. Knowingly and unabashedly, they have entered an unholy alliance with the ruling class. They do not constitute formidable opposition to keep the ruling class on its toes neither do they offer invaluable support to keep our leaders on track.

    Their approach to politics complicates the class antagonisms. Society as a whole is splitting up more and more into two great hostile camps, the ruling class and the working class; the proverbial middle class got lost somewhere at the crossroads where the bourgeoisie swallows up the proletariat.

    Though youth does not really have the means to stop the economy, the ruling class dreads the youth, as was discernible when a wave of panic seized the Nigerian government by the jugular in the wake of the defunct Occupy Nigeria protests. What do they fear? It’s without doubt the frequency and the potentials of youth mobilizations. Massive youth mobilizations were taking place across the globe and with often grievous and far-reaching consequences in the affected nations; the Nigerian leadership no doubt dreaded a Nigerian manifestation of the Arab Spring.

    The fear of the Nigerian leadership was however hardly far-fetched given the radicalism of the Occupy Nigeria movement.

    In a violent society that has no future to offer them, the Nigerian youth have very little to lose thus their lack of hesitancy in confronting the State. The wish to abolish status quo was widespread among the nation’s youth as they romanticized the idea of a revolution as the protests dragged.

    In spite of the youth’s passionate struggle against the incumbent leadership’s utter insensitivity and cluelessness, the eventual result was basically, an opportunistic contract between the exploiters (the government) and a part of the exploited (labour leadership), at the expense of the rest of the exploited (you, me and everyone) – something Noel Ignatin would call “the original sweetheart agreement.”

    This revealed a lot about the Nigerian youth’s revolutionary potential. Eventually, the nation’s youth were written off and their grievances dismissed as the crazed rant of a pathetic mass of revolutionary impostors. The youth were eventually dismissed as essentially hopeless and misdirected.

    Most of the time, youth mobilizations and revolutionary movements attract sympathy from the workers and the population, as if the youth were saying loudly what the majority couldn’t afford to say. Thus, in many instances, youth mobilizations restore to the social camp the confidence in the masses’ ability to resist; and in some cases other working sectors engage in mobilization, following the youth. The Nigerian youth however, presents a contradiction to the benefits of such relationship of trust.

    He is accustomed to keep his head down like one eternally doomed to be adept in all the arts of the beggar. He even presumes a little upon the possession of talents which, as he ought to know, can never compete with cringing mediocrity; in the long run he comes to recognize the inferiority of those who are placed over his head, and when they inflict greater hurt upon him, he becomes refractory and shy, turning round to crawl into the wall when he is backed against it. This is hardly the way to get on in the world but very few Nigerian youths are conversant with the words of Voltaire: “We have only two days to live; it is not worth our while to spend them in cringing to contemptible rascals.” But what if “contemptible rascals” also qualifies a greater percentage of the nation’s youth?

  • 2016 Budget: Evolutionary or revolutionary?

    Now that President Muhammadu Buhari has talked the talk, now is time to walk the walk.  The budgets of Nigeria and national development plans since independence have always been exemplary and enough to whet ones appetite.  It is always in the implementation after years of ineffective monitoring and evaluation that they fail to deliver with their lofty promises. The President has acknowledged such sentiments of, “I have heard this before” , several times, over many decades one has lost count of.

    In light of this, the budget would be explored covering both the positive sound bites, the potential pit-holes to avoid and room(s) for significant improvement.

    One cannot fail to notice the first palpitation which is the rather optimistic projection of oil prices at US$38.  Considering oil market vagaries at the moment, Iran and Libya coming on board soon enough, Saudi Arabia ready to maintain oil production up to US$10 per barrel, major buyers looking for alternatives like there is no tomorrow, it is enough cause to raise eyebrows.  Twenty-five dollars would have been recommended but then it is all speculation.  In any case, it is expected to yield only N820 billion with N1.45 trillion and N1.51 trillion coming in from non-oil revenues and independent sources respectively.  This probably allows us space to breathe easy since oil is just over a quarter of projected revenue. To put a positive spin on it, it also puts in place the mechanism to practically diversify the country’s revenue sources rather than just talking and writing about it.

    That leaves borrowing and taxes as the major funding sources for the budget. The planned budget outlay is put at N6.08 trillion with a revenue projection of N3.86 trillion leaving a deficit of N2.22 trillion. Our GDP of 560 billion dollars (x N197 equals N110.3 trillion) makes the deficit according to the budget reading about 2.16% of our Naira GDP. This would be fiscally within nationally tolerable limits. Borrowing to finance this deficit would cost us N1.84 trillion including both domestic and foreign borrowing. On paper, this does not quicken one’s heart pulse. A high-level implementation ratio is however what we shall hopefully await.

    Non-oil revenues comprising of Company Income Tax (CIT), Value Added Tax (VAT) and Customs and Excise (C&E) duties, and Federation Account levies are meant to contribute N1.45 trillion.  This precludes a sizable chunk of the budget based on tax collection.  The companies paying tax in the formal sector, apart from the governmental establishments, are mostly in the banking, telecoms, aviation, petroleum and the lowly monitored informal sector and are majorly based in Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt.  This taxation expansionist dragnet revolves around an import-based economic paradigm poorly engaged with the productive activities or Gross National Product (GNP) of its citizens. The picture being painted is a push towards expansion of the tax net as opposed to a productivity-driven increase in tax revenue.   In an environment still characterised by relatively low level of productivity as is typical of ours, the cost of tax collection tends to be on the high side whereas a highly productive economy would invariably offset and thereby provide a tax revenue base with a relatively low level of tax administration cost. In the event that we succeed in expanding our tax net, does that necessarily translate into a proportional increase in our national productive capacity especially outside the major cities?

    Continuing this tax collection drive – are the plans being mooted to increase VAT in any way connected to the support being targeted towards small businesses – how would this work in a country with a very low productivity base in relation to its population?  Outside of Lagos and Port Harcourt, how many states can really boast of small to medium industrial or agro-commercial activities able to make a meaningful contribution to their states or the country for that matter? No need to add power challenges for now, that is a whole seminar paper in itself. Is increase on VAT the priority or getting productivity up and then there is something being produced or service being rendered to put VAT on? Something first has to generate or increase productivity by and for the nation’s citizens before it is taxed.

    Customs and Excise also falls under this category of the increase in tax drive as a major funding source for the budget. The irony is that the current operational framework under which the C&E performs its duties ensures that most of the taxes it collects are on an importation driven platform.  Considering our import-export container ratio is running at 92% to 8% respectively, most of its activities are more of a hindrance to economic development than the amount it purports to collect for the nation annually.  Whatever the C&E declares that it collects for the nation is from the 90% import-driven platform of which we export a paltry amount in comparison.  Any measures implemented to support in increasing our export ratio to the 45% to 55% mark would be a welcome development. For now, it means the C&E is just about collecting one-quarter to one-fifth of the nation’s revenue capacity.  If this is what forms a significant bulk of our tax drive, then we still need to reorient the C&E platform to provide all forms of support for our export drive as was recently intoned by its current head, Col Hameed Ali (Rtd.)

    Education in this budget seems to be on an upward swing. The budget makes a revolutionary statement of intent in its recognition of the role of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) over the pen and paper pushing professions – BLAMES – Business, Law, Arts, Management, Environment and Social Sciences. Hopefully, the implementation of the STEM agenda and the criteria for recruiting the 500,000 teachers would be towards the original intent and not diverted towards funding the courses and curriculum producing more BLAMES graduates.  Most of the policy makers in the ministry and institutions are from the BLAMES background, implementation again is the watchword.  Remember our lessons from the 6-3-3-4 drive to explore the technical-vocational channel. We invested in and produced more BLAMES than STEMS resulting in over-abundance of educated or mis-educated youths with the current high level of graduates unemployed, underemployed or mis-employed. Investment in technical-vocational sector would yield returns faster on the nation and employ more proactive agro cum rural industrial entrepreneurs than the traditional reactive-oriented white-collar jobs only of use in mostly Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt and the state capitals.

    Allocation of 30% to capital expenditure is revolutionary in itself considering past budgets and the paucity of allocation to capital expenditure in relation to recurrent expenditure. A little bit of caution here though while reflecting on the prominent role given to power, works and housing.  The priority still persists with the construction of houses and roads with a roads’ building network predisposed towards transporting of imported goods inland. The people being transported to work are in the commercial sector in Lagos, the political machinery in Abuja and the petroleum sector in Port Harcourt who are significantly primed well enough to support this import-driven engine.

     

    • Owolowo can be reached on owolowo.dele@gmail.com
  • A revolutionary condemned to live through anti-revolutionary times: for Eskor Toyo (1929-2015)

    A revolutionary condemned to live through anti-revolutionary times: for Eskor Toyo (1929-2015)

    The fact that people endure a situation does not mean that they like or accept it. A revolution is an extremely difficult and risky affair. It is for this reason that pre-capitalist slavery lasted for many centuries and so did feudalism. In history, oppressive regimes are very seldom overthrown by the underlings. The continuation of electo-plutocracy is far from being an evidence of its validity.
    Eskor Toyo, “The Question of Democracy in a Development Economy”

    Nigerians have been traumatised to no end, listening to the unbelievable revelations emanating from the $2.1billion Armsgate. No thanks to an outrageously weak President Goodluck Jonathan who, believing that his re-election superseded everything else, failed miserably to exhibit the expected level of responsibility over his six-year rule even though nobody has said he profited a penny. The former president certainly sinned against God, and humanity when, knowing how he had allowed a complete misapplication of funds meant for properly kitting the soldiers, he still permitted the trial, and sentencing to death, of 54 soldiers who, without  requisite  arms, were sent to recapture Delwa, Bulabulin and Damboa from Boko Haram. Without a doubt, their commander, Lt.-Col. Opurum, would most probably have led them to a certain death; a death they finally escaped because the redoubtable Femi Falana SAN, agreed to represent them at the General Court Martial to which they were hounded even when the military high command knew that PDP bigwigs had shared the money meant for arms and ammunition. It is equally unforgivable that, for exposing this evil, then President Goodluck Jonathan masterminded the impeachment of Governor Murtala Nyako of Adamawa State and caused that unfortunate state untold political upheavals which, however, happily saw to the unmasking of the true progressive credentials of a once highly regarded Nuhu Ribadu.

    Many of those named in this murderous Armsgate have since been hauled before the courts but missing from the charges is their core crime: that of mass murder of Nigerian soldiers and others, young and old. The onus to prove otherwise must now be placed squarely in their hands. From the depth of their deprivations, Nigerians are beginning to talk on this and a cocktail of other issues, particularly  via the social media; the same medium which rankles our senators so much they would rather banish or criminalise it.

    Here are samples of what Nigerians are talking about.

     CORRUPTION

    “Like I did say, you don’t need rocket science to fight corruption. What we need is political will. There is a saying that a tree does not make a forest. But if you remove some trees from the forest, the forest will feel it. I have said it times without number that we don’t need to treat the issue of corruption with kid gloves. Nigerian elite are very funny. Nigerian elite love their freedom. When you accuse him of corruption, if he is actually corrupt, he will play one of two cards. He will play ethnic or religious card: ‘O! I’m being persecuted because I’m this. Oh! I’m being persecuted because of my religion. Oh! I’m being persecuted because I don’t belong to the ruling party.’ But there is one thing Nigerian elite fear, they don’t want to die. If you get two or three public officers punished by tying them to the stake before shooting, I can assure you that corruption will stop. We have had that experience in this country. When two or three people were shot for drug pushing, throughout the 18-month period of General Buhari, no single case of drug pushing was reported in Nigeria again. People who are stealing us blind are not up to one per cent of the population. We can afford to do away with them. We can afford to lose them. What you need is a state of honest people”-Niyi Akintola SAN.

    “It is only the very naive that holds the opinion of corruption hanging its hands by the sides when its existence is being threatened. To the corrupt, nothing matters, not human lives or anything whatever besides money and power. It is not important how many millions of Nigerians are lost to Boko Haram. Nor do the tens of hundreds that are lost due to bad roads. Agents of corruption do not care about the shameful high maternal mortality and childhood mortality rates in Nigeria. The decline in our Health Care Delivery System is of no concern to them. After all, at tax payers’ expense, they and their families have access to high quality health care anywhere in the world.

    “Our education is in shambles. It continues its downward slide year after year. Agents of corruption are not interested in the least. Their children and wards have high quality education, paid for with proceeds of corruption. The war on corruption is a war that must be won. No one should be above the law. Anyone who acquires wealth through dubious means or by abusing people’s trust must be made to pay back and be punished. It is irrelevant how powerful they think they are. Nigeria is greater than all of us. It is a shame that these rogue politicians and their collaborators are allowed to continue to exploit our docility” -Mama (Dr) Adebimpe Okunade -Retired university teacher.

    We have to thank God for little mercies. But for his love for Nigeria that made a regime change possible, despite all the road blocks, these revelations would not have seen the light of day and we would have been no wiser. While innocent civilians together with hundreds of our hapless soldiers in the North East were ‘sharing blood’ (apologies Madam P.) under imminent strangulation by Boko Haram, the PDP people were busy SHARING the bounty:  money meant to defend them.  Honestly, l struggle to take in some of these things -wondering how people appointed to serve could, together with their crooked allies, descend to this level of debauchery! Someone should by DEED POLL change PDP name to Peoples Sharing Party of Nigeria.

    Rawlings on my mind! – Dr Biodun Adu, Consultant, O& G.

     

    ON THE KOGI ELECTION CONUNDRUM

    “The conclusion which I have reached is not that I have, by any stretch of the construction of any of the provisions of the laws cited by counsel, affirm the correctness of the decision of the first defendant (INEC) to declare the election as inconclusive and, or affirm the validity of the supplementary election scheduled for 5 December, 2015” – Mr Justice Gabriel Kolawole.

    ON THE ANTI PEOPLE SOCIAL MEDIA BILL

    “Because ISIS is recruiting massively through the internet, Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump, two of the aspirants in the forthcoming U.S Presidential election, want some parts of the internet shut down for security reasons. Our senators here in Nigeria, for outlandishly selfish reasons, are clamouring for the same thing just so they can prevent the disclosure of their wayward ways, among them their incredibly huge quarterly allowances. Even with oil prices now below $40.  However, despite the security-related reasons driving the suggestion in the U.S, it is still a non starter. Conversely, our senators, with a once-upon a one-time activist, Dino Melaye, as its chief  motivator,  even if as a bag man, are insisting on passing a law to criminalise the Social Media in Nigeria. We pray they go ahead (for) it will turn out to be their very nemesis.

    The link below provides an insight into the US proposal.

    http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/12/10/technology/shut-down-internet-donald-trump-hillary-clinton.html?emc=edit_ct_20151210

    &nl=personaltech&nlid=55524476&referer=

    We are getting to year end, and, just so I don’t burden my readers with all these truly depressing post- Goodluck Jonathan revelations and thereby spoil their weekend, please come with me as I serve you this wisecrack from the distinguished Professor Michael Omolewa: scholar, diplomat and education historian who served, between September 2003 and October 2005, as the 32nd President of the General Conference of the  UNESCO, Paris.

    Mike -as friends call him – regaled me with it at a marriage engagement at which we were both guests at the weekend.

    A monkey, he said, observing people dancing and spraying money at a party offered to give one of the merry makers N50, 000. She refused everybody until it was the turn of a Nigerian university professor. There was a caveat though. The would-be beneficiary would have to answer two questions and ask the monkey one.

     

    Dialogue:

    Monkey: What is your name?

    Professor: XYZ (omitting to mention Professor)

    Monkey, all smiles, agrees to give him the N50, 000.

    Everybody claps, congratulating the Professor.

    Second Round of Questions

    Monkey: What do you do?

    Professor: I am a Nigerian university Professor

    Monkey starts to weep

    Third Round of Questions and the Professor’s turn

    Professor: Would you join us in the university?

    Monkey: Weeping bucketfuls now, monkey, holding tight to her money, fled back into the bush.

    I am still laughing.