The Nation Newspaper

Tag: sin

  • Sin no more

    Sin no more

    •Dr. Ibe Kachikwu’s apology on the unending fuel scarcity in the country is welcome, but he has to do better than a magician to end fuel scarcity, especially by the deadline he has set for himself 

    Many must have received the news that the excruciating pain caused them by scarcity of the Premium  Motor Spirit (PMS), commonly called petrol, will soon end with a sigh of relief. Coming from the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, it suggests that the government is concerned about the plight of Nigerians.

    The minister who had earlier received flaks for suggesting that the scarcity would linger for about two more months told  our federal lawmakers that it would take, indeed, less than two weeks. He explained that vessels bringing in the product in sufficient quantity were already on the high seas.

    We find the humility of the minister in apologising for talking down to his compatriots a welcome departure from the haughty disposition of senior government officials. The barrage of criticisms he received following the unguarded comment which he later claimed was expressed in the lighter mood was deserved. Our public officials must develop a thick skin to criticisms.

    While commending Dr. Kachikwu for quickly retracting the statement, we hope he has not boxed himself to a corner by categorically promising that the scarcity would end this week. Already, another statement from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) is giving the impression that it might take a little longer than the minister’s deadline. It does not appear that all issues related to importation of the product and the supply chain have been addressed.

    Is the NNPC now in a position to solely tackle the problem? Or are the independent marketers who are needed to shore up NNPC’s capacity now in position to overcome the difficulties involved in accessing foreign exchange? It would have been better appreciated if the minister came forth with steps taken to support his deadline.

    Public servants should realise that they are elected or appointed to resolve crisis such as we have in the petroleum sector. Dr. Kachikwu, in particular, came to office well recommended; he must learn to take criticisms in good faith. If he has to be a magician to render the needed service, he ought to quickly learn on the job. Otherwise, he must realise that snapping at newsmen and the public is not an option.

    His apology which is rare in this clime, is taken for now, but a repeat could be sad tale. He has a duty cut out for him and he is doing no one a favour by performing the task he swore to undertake.

    Any suggestion that fuel scarcity has become a permanent feature of our national life is unacceptable. When the All Progressives Congress sought the support of voters to unseat the Goodluck Jonathan administration, it promised change. And, one of the critical sectors it promised to revamp is the oil sector. It is too late in the day to change the story. Anything short of delivering on the campaign promise would amount to a betrayal of trust.

    Ensuring that new refineries are built either by the government or the private sector should not be too difficult for a government that was swept into office by an avalanche of support. It is too early in the day to throw away the goodwill by lackadaisical attitude to handling issues. If smaller countries could ensure steady supply of fuel to homes and individuals, Nigeria should, without the usual excuses.

     

  • The artful forgers

    If things had gone well, the process should not have generated acrimony. But long before the June 9 inauguration of the Senate, its members were already divided. The division was and still is over the filling of its top  positions, especially the Senate presidency. As the majority party, which is expected, to produce the presiding officers, the All Progressives Congress (APC) settled for Senators Ahmed Lawan and George Akume as Senate president and deputy Senate president (DSP).

    The party’s choice did not go down well with a group of senators rooting for Senator Bukola Saraki. The battle line was thus drawn between the Like Minds comprising Saraki’s loyalists and the Unity Forum, to which Lawan and Akume belong. It became a game of wheeler dealing and the sort ahead of the June 9 inauguration. On the inauguration day, the Unity Forum members were not in the Senate chamber, making it easy for Saraki to emerge Senate president unopposed with the support of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) whose senators were there in full force. PDP through Senator Ike Ekweremadu got the DSP to the bargain.

    Since then, the Senate has not known peace. The Lawan group has refused to recognise Saraki’s leadership, insisting that  he came to office through a ‘’forged Senate Rules’’, which stipulate how the Senate president should be elected. The Saraki group counters that the Rules were not forged. According to the Like Minds, the Rules were amended by the last Senate before it wound up last June 4. The question that arises from the group’s submission is : can outgoing senators set rules for incoming senators, many of who will be coming to the Senate for the first time?

    Assuming that all the old senators will be returning to the Senate does it make sense for them to set rules for a Senate, which life had not yet begun? The matter eventually landed in court. Rather than address the matter, the court resolved to play the ostrich by burying its head in the sand. The court said it could not look into the matter because it is an internal affair of the Senate, which could be addressed by its Ethic and Privileges Committee.

    It is not debatable that the Senate is an arm of government which has its own regulations. But under the doctrine of  Separation of Power, the judiciary can look into whatever the executive and legislature do to ensure that it is within the purview of the law.  The judiciary cannot shirk this responsibility under the guise that it would amount to ‘’undue interference” in either the executive’s or legislature’s ‘’internal affairs’’. What the court cannot do, in my lay man understanding, is to undo what has been properly done by these institutions. But where they appear to have done  wrong, it is the judiciary’s duty to whip them back  into line.

    Not to do so will amount to condoning illegality and enthroning lawlessness. If the court cannot look into an allegation of forgery because it happened on the floor of the Senate isn’t that saying any offence can be committed there and the suspect will go scot free because he is a lawmaker? As powerful as the Senate is, it cannot try criminal cases; only the courts can. The question then arises, is forgery a crime?

    According to the ninth edition of Black’s Law Dictionary, forgery is a crime. It states : In essence, the crime of forgery involves the making, altering, or completing of an instrument by someone other than the ostensible maker or drawer or an agent of the ostensible maker or drawer. It added: Though forgery was a misdemeanour at common law, modern statutes typically make it a felony.

    Thus, the courts cannot and should not close their eyes to certain developments in the legislature under the pretence of non-interference. If they do, they will be paving the way for our lawmakers to get away with anything, including murder.  What did the court make of the police report that the Senate Rules were forged? Nothing, it dismissed offhand the  report, which should have aided it in reaching a considered decision on the matter.

    The court missed the opportunity to pronounce on the matter judiciously and judicially when it threw away the baby with the bath water. But the police are not keeping quiet; they are fighting back. In a preliminary objection to a case filed by Senator Gilbert Nnaji, they are insisting on their right to investigate the forgery allegation and bring the perpetrators to justice. The police, in a counter affidavit, notes that the forgery allegation borders on ‘’issue of criminality, and not simply an issue on the floor of the Senate”. Investigating the allegation, the police claim, cannot be undue interference in the Senate’s affair. To the police, every Nigerian can be investigated for crime. How true and one only hopes that the police will live up to this averment always.

    The police made valid claims in their deposition. This case is of public interest because it involves the second arm of government, which is charged with making laws for the country. But when lawmakers become lawbreakers,  the law should be applied against them like any other person caught in a compromised position.

    Since senators occupy an exalted position, they should not do anything unbecoming of their office, which could bring them to public ridicule. But if they do, they should be ready to pay the price. The law, they say, is no respecter of persons. So. these artful forgers should be brought to book.

     Their leaders’ sins

    On Monday, the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) released the May/June 2015 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) results. Those who passed have been rejoicing, but not so those with poor results. But what do you say of those whose fate is hanging in the balance?  They do not know whether they passed or failed because their results were not released. Their results were withheld for no fault of theirs. They were not involved in examination malpractice; no they were not.  Their results were withheld because their states are owing WAEC.

    To avoid this kind of embarrassment, WAEC warned before it released the results that it would withhold those of candidates from the 13 debtor-states if the debts were not defrayed. The states probably thought that WAEC was joking as they pretended not to hear the warning,  even after they had been written to pay up. Must these pupils be made to suffer for the sins of their leaders whose children may not be schooling in the country. How much is the WAEC fee compared to the millions of dollars they pay on their own children abroad? It will be unfortunate if these pupils miss entering the university this year because of this problem. If these pupils were their children, will they abandon them like this? May God touch the hearts of the chief executives of these debtor-states to do what is necessary and needful before it is too late.

  • Nigeria: Wages of sin

    The wages of sin is death”, says the Great Book. Empirically, we know that death is always preceded by some sort of weakness. Sin sets on a process of progressive weakening which ultimately ends in death.

    All of nature and all of history, as they concern us Nigerians, combined to give us a country that was meant and endowed to be prosperous and great in the world. Though the human agents, the British, who carved out that country and gave it initial structure, were manipulative, crooked and wicked in much of what they did, our country, as it sprang into tentative being at independence was nevertheless a potentially mighty entity eager and rearing to fulfill its awesome destiny among the countries of the earth. But then the power of sin set in – the power of unrestrained human will, the urge and resolve of some in the house to grab and engross what belongs to the whole household and to deprive the rest. As in all cases where sin strikes out to act, the urge to grab and engross and deprive others was needless. Sharing in order and mutual respect, our chances of prospering together were huge. But by thus setting in motion a process of orgiastic scrambling and wrangling, we have bruised every member of the household, generated a barbarous culture, and mindlessly pushed our country onto the path of sickness and death. Today, the sickness has advanced so far that the question uppermost on most of our minds is whether it is possible at all for our country to exist much longer.

    These days, we are all living in horror as we watch our country going through the dance of death – with every single index of national strength pulverized and decaying.  Greed, avarice and graft rule supreme over all institutions, all duty performances, and all inter-personal dealings. Hardly any Nigerian public official, high or low, offers any service to the public these days without first demanding bribes. Nigeria teaches and acculturates its citizens to despise truly productive enterprise, and to give their intellect and passion to hustling for shares from the bounties stolen from the national wealth.

    Security is the first benefit of citizenship of a country, but in the Nigeria of greed and graft, security has disappeared. The average Nigerian, if criminally abused or robbed, can no longer be sure whether it is safe to seek help from the police and the legal system. If the miscreant bribes the police and court officials enough (as is now the norm), the victim who seeks help from the law-enforcement agencies will only get himself into bigger trouble – and may need a lot of money to dig himself out.

    We are constantly hearing stories of military officers stealing weapons from the nation’s armouries for sale to criminals and terrorists, of funds meant for running military operations being criminally shared by military commanders, and of high military officers building or buying multi-billion naira estates. In the circumstance, the Nigerian military has lost all professionalism and all efficiency, with the result that we Nigerians feel helpless before the rampages of a rag-tag hoodlum gang like Boko Haram. From reports and experience, most Nigerians know that Nigeria’s secret service is a beehive of corruption within which even the most junior officers can quickly amass fortunes – from their contacts with public resources and with members of the public. This past week, each of these agencies of public safety (the police, the military and the secret service) scored a first in degradation and corruption in the history of human governance. Each of them, operating as if they are private entities by themselves and for themselves, and not publicly owned agencies, wrote letters to the nation’s electoral servants to say that they will not be available to give Nigerians security in the nationally scheduled, and all-important, act of voting to elect a new government – letters that, in a proper country, should qualify for charges of treason.

    The electoral commission, ludicrously called “Independent National Electoral Commission”, is well known and deeply despised by all Nigerians for what it is – a stink-pot of corruption and betrayal, an ever ready tool of bandits in power for distorting and stultifying the will of Nigerians at elections. This past week, some eminent Nigerians led by a former Vice-President of Nigeria (Alex Ekweme) hauled staggering accusations against INEC, to the effect that INEC has been engaged in a huge plot to rig the forth-coming presidential election. And, as of the time that these allegations were being aired, certain incredible materials were also circulating in Nigeria and abroad alleging a plot by some highly placed public officials and law-enforcement commanders to rig a recent election in one Nigerian state. Of course, given the sordid history of the electoral commission since independence, no Nigerian is seriously surprised or bothered by these allegations. These are the sorts of things that INEC has always done. Of course too, no authority in Nigeria (presidency, or Attorney General, or police) is expected to step forward to investigate these horrendously criminal allegations. For Nigeria, governance belongs in the mud pond of corruption and crimes.

    Finally, over this massive mud pond of corruption and crimes reigns the official whom we “elect” as president of our country. He is commander-in-chief, patron and rewarder of all processes of the corruption. That is the way the mess was designed and nurtured – constitutionally, politically and morally. In all essence, it is not fair to blame any particular president for these ills. I once said in this column that I agree with President Jonathan’s statement that he is not the source or cause of Nigeria’s mess. But it is fair to say that he came, he saw the mess, and he revelled in it – revelled in it more than any president before him. Of course, I would agree with the overwhelming majority of Nigerians at home and abroad that President Jonathan does not deserve to have one more term as our president, but I would not saddle him with the historic responsibility of plunging our country into the mud in which it is now gasping for breath.

    This sad story of Nigeria has a powerful lesson: If you belong to a household, don’t proceed to break down the moral fence protecting it – no matter your incentives and possible gains for feeling like doing so. The people who started at independence to disrupt and distort the fragile balance of Nigeria’s politics could never have imagined that the consequences of what they were starting then would ever be as bad as today. Today, nobody, no group, is benefiting from the horrors that have been concocted. All of us Nigerians, as individuals and nationalities, are losers –losers in prospect, losers in hope, and losers in image among the peoples of the earth. If Nigeria does finally drown in the mess which we have created, we Nigerians of the generations since 1960 to now will go down in the annals of human history as the incompetents and moral dwarfs who were handed a country with all the possibilities of greatness and who made only a mess of it. It is not a good load to bear in history.

     

  • A court official’s ‘sin’ cannot be visited on a litigant

    This is an appeal against the judgment  of the National Industrial Court, Ikoyi Lagos refusing to relist the Appellant’s suit struck out for non-appearance of all the parties in the suit. The facts of the case are as follows:

    The Appellant filed an action at the National Industrial Court Lagos on 20/4/11. His Claim in the action essentially related to non-confirmation of his employment despite satisfactory compliance with the requirements for his confirmation as contained in his letter of employment. The suit was on the Court’s cause list scheduled for hearing on 13/10/11 before the scheduled date, the Appellant’s counsel on 5/10/11 wrote and delivered to the Court through its Registrar a letter indicating that the Appellant’s Counsel would be unable to attend Court on that 13/10/11 on grounds of bereavement. From the Court’s records, that was the first time the Appellant’s Counsel would be absent from Court. A copy of the letter was acknowledged as received by both the Registrar of the Lower Court and Counsel to the Respondents in the suit. Consequently, the parties and their counsel were all absent when the case was called up on 13/10/11.

    The Registrar of the Court failed to call the attention of the court to the Appellant counsel’s letter. The Court then struck out the Appellant’s suit from the cause list in its Ruling for non-appearance of all parties pursuant to Order 19 Rule 1 of the National Industrial Court Rules 2007. Upon discovering that the suit had been struck out, the Appellant promptly filed an application on 19/10/11 to re-list the Suit pursuant to Order 19 Rule 6 of the National Industrial Court Rules 2007.  The Respondent did not file any counter-affidavit in opposition and on 29/11/11 when the application to re-list the Suit came up for hearing, the Respondents’ Counsel informed the Court that he had no objection to the Application. Notwithstanding the lack of opposition from Respondent’s counsel, the learned trial Judge refused to re-list the suit. The Appellant being dissatisfied with the refusal appealed against the ruling by a Notice of Appeal filed at the Court of Appeal. The Appellants formulated three issues out of the three grounds of appeal viz:

    1. Considering the facts and circumstances of this case, did the Lower Court exercise its discretion judicially and judiciously in refusing the Appellant’s Motion to Re-list?

    2. Whether the Lower Court was right to have made conjecture of facts not placed before it suo motu as reason for refusing the Appellant’s Application for re-listing without giving Counsel the opportunity to address it on the point so raised thereby violating the Appellant’s right to fair hearing guaranteed under Section 36 of the Chapter IV of the 1999 Constitution?

    3. Was the Lower Court right to have neglected and or failed to act on the unchallenged affidavit evidence attached to the Appellants Motion dated 19th October, 2011 which the Respondents’ Counsel expressly stated that they were not opposing? This issue is distilled from Ground 1 of the Notice of Appeal.

    The Respondents did not file any brief of argument. Learned counsel for the Respondent informed the Court that it filed a notice of intention not to contest the appeal. The Court stated that it was satisfied that the discretionary power of the lower Court to relist the suit was not exercised judicially and judiciously.

    The Court stated that it is trite law as submitted by learned counsel for the Appellant that when a Court is exercising its discretion, it must be exercised judicially and judiciously. See University of Lagos v Aigoro (1985) NWLR (Pt.1) 143. The Court stated further that an Appeal Court may interfere with the exercise of judicial discretion if it is shown that there has been a wrongful exercise of the discretion such as where the tribunal acted under misconception of law or unproved matters or it omitted to take into account matters that are relevant or where it exercised or failed to exercise the discretion on wrong or inadequate materials and in all other cases where it in the interest of justice to interfere: See Enekebe v. Enkebe (1964) 1 All NLR 102 at 106, Demuren v. Asuni (1967) 1 All NLR 94 at 101. The Court held that a Court must balance its discretionary power to grant or refuse an adjournment with its duty to endeavour to give an Appellant the opportunity of obtaining substantial justice and where the Court errs in its balancing exercise an Appeal Court is at liberty to interfere. See University of Lagos v Aigoro 1985 NWLR pt.1 p.143.

    The Court stated that the learned counsel was right that the Appellant placed sufficient materials before the lower Court to guide it in reaching a just and fair decision. Five clear days before the suit was to come up for hearing, the Appellant’s Counsel had written to the Court of the inability of Counsel who was seized of all the facts in the suit to appear in Court on the next adjourned date. It was referred to the appropriate Court Official to take the necessary action. The letter was never brought to the attention of the Court as acknowledged by the Court in its ruling. Despite all the facts put forward before the lower Court and the Respondents’ Counsel’s unwillingness to oppose the application to relist the suit, the lower Court refused to re-list the suit. The Court noted that the lower Court was apparently more concerned with the fact that there were other counsel in the chambers who should have appeared, but this on its own the Court held cannot be a ground for denial of adjournment as it was also the first time an adjournment was sought in the case and on grounds of bereavement, a very compelling reason.

    The Court held that the learned counsel for the Appellant was again right that the Court shut its eyes to the obvious satisfaction of all the condition precedents as prescribed by the Rules and case-laws and this occasioned miscarriage of justice to the Appellant. The Court further held that allowing the lower Court’s decision refusing to relist the Appellant’s suit to stay would amount to visiting and blaming the inadequacy or inadvertence of Court’s official on the litigant which is contrary to the established principle of law that the sin of the Court or its official or that of his counsel cannot be visited on the litigant. The Court noted that the Appellant placed sufficient materials before the lower Court to enable it exercise its discretion in favour of the Appellant and by failing to re-list the suit, the learned trial Judge did not exercise his discretion judicially and judiciously.

    On the whole, the Court held that the appeal was bound to succeed and it was thereby allowed. The decision of the Lower Court refusing to relist the suit was set aside. In its place it was ordered that suit no. NIC/LA/24/11 be relisted on the cause list of the National Industrial Court for hearing.

     

    •Edited by LawPavilion

    LawPavilion Citation: (2014) LPELR-23742(CA)

     

  • ‘Go, sin no more’

    The Lagos Chief Judge, Justice Ayotunde Phillips, yesterday released 119 ‘awaiting trial’ inmates from the Maximum and Medium Security Prison, Kirikiri, Lagos.

    Ninety-nine inmates were released from the medium prison, while 20 regained freedom from the maximum prison. They included two brothers, Dare and Dada Egbebunmi.

    Those released were said to have been awaiting trials for as long as 13 years.

    The exercise, aimed at decongesting the prisons, was in exercise of the Chief Judge’s powers under Section 1 (1) of the Criminal Justice Release from Custody Special Provision Act CAP C40, 2007, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria.

    Justice Phillips released 279 inmates from the Kirikiri Maximum and Medium Security Prisons and Ikoyi prisons last year.

    The Chief Judge, who was accompanied by senior members of the judiciary, admonished the freed inmates to be of good behaviour, adding: “I release all of you today from custody pursuant to the powers conferred on me and admonish you to go and sin no more. We don’t expect to see you here again. It is painful when we release you and we come again and you are here. So, I admonish you to do what is right and don’t put us into shame for releasing you. Go and say bye-bye to prison.”

    Justice Phillips, who noted that the number of inmates awaiting trials in the two prisons continues to grow despite her repeated visits, said that the inmates’ case and congestion of prisons were very close to her heart.

    She said that she would not be tired of visiting the prisons in the state to ensure that nobody is kept there unnecessarily.

    Prior to the release of the inmates, the medium prison built for 825 prisoners had 2,555 inmates with 2,457 awaiting trials and 98 convicts.

    The maximum prison, with 748 inmates comprised 546 ‘awaiting trials’, 76 convicts and 126 condemned prisoners.

    The Comptroller of Prisons for Lagos State, Mrs Catherine Ononye, lamented the high presence of ‘awaiting trials’ in the prisons, thus leading to the over-crowding of the facilities.

  • NHIS: Fed Govt may introduce ‘sin’ tax

    •Scheme registers over 1.9m 

    The Acting Executive Secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), Dr. Abdulrahman Sambo, has said that the Federal Government might introduce ‘sin’ tax to provide mass health care, especially for the poor and the vulnerable.

    The NHIS has registered over 1.9million enrollees in the formal and private sector in the last eight years.

    Sambo said the figure excludes the families of the enrollees, who are also benefiting from the programme.

    The NHIS Executive Secretary, who spoke with reporters in Abuja, said only five of the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) have subscribed to the NHIS scheme.

    Said he: “We have identified other sources of funding. We have looked at ‘sin’ tax, such as taxes on alcohol and cigarettes; and we have looked at tax on air travel.

    “We have also looked at tax on telephone usage, tagged: ‘One Kobo Per Minute Initiative.’ The idea is that for each minute that you talk, you are charged an additional kobo that will be collected centrally. Part of it will be remitted to the NHIS to provide health insurance for the vulnerable people.

    “It’s a sort of tax on those making calls and not on the telecoms companies. The concept has been forwarded to the government by the NHIS. We consulted the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and forwarded a proposal. When we told the President, he was enthusiastic about it.

    “When the Health Bill is signed, 1 per cent of the consolidated revenue fund will be given to the NHIS for the provision of healthcare to Nigerians. But it will be inadequate to use to cover for all Nigerians. So we are thinking that we can use it for the vulnerable group.”

    NHIS enrollees are over 1.9million because the scheme is “optional.”

    Sambo added: “In the formal sector, we have about 900,000 and in the organised private sector, we have over a million, excluding their families. If you add that the number will be higher.

    “Participation in the NHIS scheme is optional and there is no country that attains universal coverage with an insurance system that is optional.

    “For any country to attain universal coverage, social health insurance in that country must be compulsory, and that country must set aside a subsidy fund that will address the health needs of the poor, the elderly, the physically-challenged or no matter how you define the vulnerable group.

    “What has been our success eight years after beginning the formal sector? We have registered enrollees at the federal level. Those that have been paid for by the government have been registered and they are accessing health care.

    “We have designed programmes that will enable the NHIS implement the strategies to achieve universal coverage once the issue of contribution is sorted out.”

    Responding to a question, Dr. Sambo said that NHIS is seeking alternative sources of funding the health insurance scheme is not peculiar to Nigeria.

    He added: “Yes, most countries earmark funds to finance universal health coverage. In Ghana, it is a portion of the Value Added Tax and individual-employee’s contributions in the private and public sectors.

    “We have identified the sources of funding in Nigeria and it has been factored into the proposed amendment of the NHIS Act.”