The Nation Newspaper

Tag: society

  • Can there be a society without lawbreakers?

    Can there be a society without lawbreakers?

    A society without law, can you?” is the much-touted slogan of students studying Law at the Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto (UDUS). Based on the experience I have gathered since my stay on the campus, I begin to wonder if members of the Law Students Association of Nigeria (LAWSAN) are truly loyal to the motto of the association.

    Over the years, lawlessness has been the order of the day, not only amongst the executive members of the association but the students in the university. Talking about numerous careless and intentional breach of simple school rules and regulations, there have been commotion at the school park where the students defy the orderliness as enshrined in students’ handbook given to us because they want to be transported at all cost.

    Of course, we can duly apportion some blame to the management for not properly carrying out its function to checkmate the activities of the school cleaners but the students have shown that they lack proper home training in cleanliness. All the toilet facilities built with lecture rooms have been so unkempt because students use them leaving them clean after use.

    As the lectures go on, pungent odour of urine always wafts from the toilets to the lecture halls. Majority of the cleaners are don’t resume early to clean the toilets; they always come late, thereby asking students and lecturers to allow them to do their job while the lecture is on.

    However, not to lose focus of this discourse, it is very embarrassing seeing Law students violating school rules, when, in fact, they should have been the ones keeping faith with the law. Even the university dress codes, which were formulated to ensure law and order on the campus, some Law students violate it. If the military, police, fire fighters and so on can rightly observe the dress code of their profession, why not Law students?

    Law students of other universities across Nigeria observe the dress code for law profession, but in UDUS, students violate it flagrantly. I still wonder why the management can’t enforce the codes. To say the truth, the prestige of law students can only be made known not by speaking big grammars and legal maxims to impress, but by obeying the law which we have chosen to study.

    The dress code law is a directive of the Nigerian Council of Legal Education, which mandates students of Law both in the universities and law schools to dress in white and black materials, being the colours of justice that signifies the truth in its absolute sense and nullifies anything in between.

    Following an awareness campaign on the dress code by the UDUS Dean of Faculty of Law, Prof M.L. Ahmadu, last February, the LAWSAN president placed a notice for all students of the faculty mandating them to observe the dress code from Mondays to Thursdays. Some students are complying while others are not. Nevertheless, most lectures have mandated it on students to either obey the law or be absent from lectures.

    Meanwhile, some students and lecturers are of the opinion that the dress codes give room for female students to violate their religion’s dress codes, which may lead to chaos. Disproving this view, Prof Ahmadu, in an interview with campus journalists, urged people to be careful in causing religious arguments, which were baseless, saying the faculty was only trying to entrench decency and discourage indecent dressing. He also stated the faculty’s intention was to use persuasion rather than issuing sanctions in enforcing the codes.

    The foregoing shows that for every good intention anyone is trying to make in the society, some people will still dismiss and act to disparage the good Idea. If a law is to promote decency and orderliness, why should we go against such law? Well, I am still dreaming of a Nigeria without lawless citizens.

     

    Halimah, 200-Level Law, UDU Sokoto

  • ‘Media’s responsibility to society is awesome’

    ‘Media’s responsibility to society is awesome’

    The Executive Secretary of the National Institute for Cultural Orientation (NICO), Dr. Barclays Ayakoroma, has identified the nation’s multi-ethnic and religious composition as a challenge to national development. He said it was disheartening that after five decades of independence, most Nigerians still have fastidious attachment to their ethnic origins to the detriment of national unity.

    “Rather than celebrate our unique cultural identities, emphases are still placed on our ethnic and cultural differences,” he said.

    Ayakoroma spoke in Lagos last Thursday at the quarterly media workshop organised by the institute for art editors and writers.

    The theme of the workshop was Culture as a panacea in the peaceful co-existence of a multi-ethnic nation: The role of the media.

    He said: “It is the contention of peace and development experts that the present ethnic, political and religious intolerance in Nigeria can best be addressed if the media is encouraged to play a vital role in educating the citizenry on the immense benefits of embracing peaceful co-existence.

    “The media can help promote and project our rich cultural values of honesty, hard work, sanctity of human life, respect for elders and constituted authorities, unity in diversity and love for our dear country.”

    Prof Femi Osofisan, who chaired the occasion, noted that the objectivity and partisanship of a journalist can be influenced by the ownership of the media organisation where such journalist works. He wondered if culture means the protection of the ruling elite or is it the survival of common people in a given society.

    “How do you define culture in a multi-ethnic community? Can the journalist promote a melting pot of all cultures? If we recognise heterogeneity, how do we promote unity? And if competition is normal, what then happened to different cultures? He asked.

    In her paper, Nigeria’s Season of Anomie: Fashioning a cultural media tool-kit, Prof Foluke Ogunleye observed that the role of the media and its responsibility are awesome and huge. According to her, the media should go beyond reflecting and mirroring the society to affecting the society.

    “When the media fails to do this, it has disappointed the people,” she added.

    On how the media shapes or changes the cultural identity of a people, she said cultural groups think, feel and act differently but that there is no scientific standard for considering one group as intrinsically superior or inferior to another.

    Prof Ogunleye stressed that getting to know activities which focus on similarities rather than differences can reduce barriers between people of different cultures.

    “Mass media has a political and a persuasive power over us. Radio, TV, the press and film can manipulate the whole societies. Political propaganda, advertising and the so-called ‘mind bending’ power of the media are long-standing causes of debate and concern,” she added.

    Former Editor, The Guardian On Sunday, Mr. Jahman Oladejo Anikulapo, spoke on how ownership of media organisation affects the performance of the practitioners who are culture writers. He noted that in a country where there is no operational cultural policy, culture writers would be handicapped as there would be no policy guidelines to pursue in their reports.

    He lamented the dearth of critical reporting among culture writers, which he blamed on the corrupt tendencies in the larger society.

    “But, above all, I worry for the emerging threat from ethnic papers from different zones of the country. In fact, most newsrooms in the country today are divided along the various ethnic militias. We now have partisans rather than patriots running media organisations,” he noted.

    Associate Editor, The Sun newspaper, Mr. Alvan Ewuzie, said the media should bring to public attention the efficacy of deploying cultural events in fostering unity amongst the multi-ethnic groups with the same potency of football. He stressed that Nigerians must not let the political authorities denigrate and look down on cultural events, as they have tended to do.

    “Take the example of the annual National Festival of Arts (NAFEST). Since 1990, no President or Head of State has attended the opening ceremony, a pointer to their rating of the event. Sometimes, governors whose states are hosting the event would leave the town and delegate deputies and other officials to attend. Yet, such governors would fly across continents to watch football matches involving national teams or boxing events,” he lamented.

    Ewuzie stated that unity should not be taken for granted. “We have to work at it and know that peaceful co-existence come through deliberate actions that foster togetherness and tolerance. Culture provides a vital key and panacea to peaceful coexistence. The media ought to take its rightful place in deploying culture as an instrument in making it happen,” he added.

     

     

  • ‘Society has not been fair to the Judiciary’

    ‘Society has not been fair to the Judiciary’

    What do you mean by the idea of law Pavilion?

    Law Pavilion, the way we understand it, is a mixture of law orientation and technology. Law Pavilion is a dream, it is a passion, it is a vision to speed up the administration of justice in Nigeria. It is our contribution, in our own little way saying we would like to see improvement in the speed in the administration of justice in the country. And for us, it is not an issue of sitting back and watch things. For us it is an issue of making contributions to the development of the legal industry. So we thought of developing solutions that would work well and work well in Nigeria.     Without being philosophycal, we thought of developing software for the legal industry. We started with Law Reporting, gradually we move on to  case management and justice management and we strongly believe that it is a major contribution to democracy in Nigeria.

    Given your background as an engineer, how did you get into the system?

    As I said, I have a lot of lawyer friends while on campus and I knew that over the years, they always go to the library to look for one case or authority or the other. My elder brother is also a lawyer. This is why I have interest in law books. Even when I watch television programmes, I always look out for the one that has law issues in it. I just enjoy looking at the courts, looking at how lawyers argue, how they argue applications, cross examinations and so on and so forth. So it has always been of interest to me. So on personal interest, watching lawyers have always been a second nature to me. So that is why I did technology engineering. My own reason of going into engineering was because I want to find solution to real life issues and that is what informed my idea of coming into engineering.  With engineering. You can dream, you can create  things on your own and my idea is that by creating things, you can solve human problems.

    Most law documentation have been in the printed form and you are now putting it into electronic form. To what extent would this help theindustry ?

    I strongly believe that we are just complementing each other. There can’t be one school of thought. There will always be several  schools of thought. There will be those who would prefer their law books and there would be those, maybe young generations  who would say we do not want mobility. We want freedom, speed, efficiency, to do things more quickly, we would rather go with something more lighter. We want to have access to more information within record time. I was reading an article recently that in the UK, grand parents  are already complaining that their grandchildren are no longer asking questions, that on the average these days , a grandchild would rather consult google . The truth of the matter is that the printed copy can only hold a little of what is available but electronically, you can have a lot of information compressed into a very tiny chip.

    Law profession as we all know has been very conservative. Do you think the system is prepared to this innovation that you are introducing?

    On the issue of the profession being conservative, the issue is that they are just been cautious. The issue is that a single mistake can cost the life of someone. So, the question is in order to protect the human dignity, they have to be very very cautious. They have to look at issues critically from all sides before they can come to decision. What the profession is really after is that if I am going this way, let it be the truth. So what we have tried to do is to make sure that we worked. Very well on the quality of what we are doing. Yes, there are challenges here and there but we are consistently and continuously improving on what we have so that as many of them lawyers that  are moving into electronic platform, they are sure that they are taking the right decision and they can be guaranteed of the quality of what they are using. So far we have recorded very good progressive success. We have quite a lot of judges, even at the Appeal Court and Supreme Court who rely and fallback on our platform. Incidentally, the current CJN has been very emphatic on the need to integrate   Information Technology in the administration of justice because the moment it becomes obvious to everybody that to move the judiciary forward, move the legal industry forward and for it to be at par with current trend worldwide, they have to embrace IT. So it is no longer difficult to convince them because they have been conservative. They are conservative but are just been cautious. And with everything put in place we have been able to allay their fears. And convince them that information technology is the way forward.

    Often times, a subscriber is not able to access websites owing to one problem or the other. What measures have you taken to prevent this?

    One thing we have been working on is to ensure real package and we  always advise organisations to have backups and that cannot be over emphasised. In every aspect of public life, you always have backups. For example the kind of backup for us is also an online version. So even if your computer crashes or there is something you don’t have access to immediately, you can still have them if you are online to our server. Every system has its own challenges and the major thing is to overcome those challenges and make sure you block all the loop holes.

    How has it been documenting law reports in electronic form?

    Very challenging. Not discouraging but fulfilling because I have had very many instances where judges called me and say, ‘Ope, thank you. Now I feel very well. I no longer spend all the time looking for authority. Another told me that there was this law position that he thought was right until he got onto Law Pavilion and saw several other authorities that diffuse what he had thought was the right thing. I remember this particular judge that handled a particular matter. As he saw several authorities on it, he said, ‘Oh my God, oh my God. I have made a mistake’. He had delivered judgement on it only to discover that there are several authorities that actually say otherwise. So those are things that give me joy, not necessarily the monetary gain. It is the feeling that you are adding something of value to the industry, you are adding to development and is being acknowledged in the industry.

    Would you agree to the belief that Nigerians are losing confidence in the judiciary in view of recent developments?

    Nigerians don’t so much believe in the judiciary but I would rather say that the society has been very unfair to the judiciary. I have related well with a number of judges in the judiciary. I have seen their plight and I have seen several side of parastatals. As far as I am concerned, the judiciary still remains one of the most beautiful set up in Nigeria. Yes, everybody wants the judiciary to be almost like God. Everybody wants the highest level of performance from the judiciary but we still have the judiciary today that is still begging for funding, that is still going cap in hand to the executive to ask for fund allocated to them. So these are some of the challenges and those forget that the judiciary act as an umpire between to so many warring factions, but who takes care of the judiciary as it should? A number of times, there are several challenges, I do not want to go into several aspect of them here. But the judiciary is due for growth, is due for improvement but I think it deserves better support from the executive and legislature at the federal and state levels. They(judges)  just feel neglected, they don’t seem to have a life so to say, they can’t be seen to have so much social life like other people would do, they are not easily seen on the streets. They live that kind of extremely conservative and secluded life style and then they are not given the basic things that would make them to perform their duties. And the society would expect them to perform miracle. It is not done.

    What then can be done?

    What we can do is to come up with things, provisions that can make them do their work much better, much more efficiently and be better for it. Your company is behind the launching of a book, “The Attorney General”. What is the concept behind the book ?

    The concept is to celebrate the office of the Attorney General and of recent there has been a lot of arguments on what the office should look like. So, it is a compilation of several opinions on the office of the Attorney General and very importantly, the book chronicles all the past AG’s of the federation, who they are, what they have achieved in office and to serve as reference for future Attorney Generals for them to know what has happened previously and then plan for the future. It is also in honour of Prince Bola Ajibola, the longest serving Attorney General Nigeria has ever produced.

    Why the focus on him?

    Well, he is the longest serving and contributed to the development of law in Nigeria. Apart from that, he was a member of the judges of the world Court in Hague. That is a rare combination. So we believe in celebrating our own, we believe in celebrating success. If we in Nigeria, excellence is not celebrated, mediocrity is the order of the day; we just want to bring back who Prince Bola Ajibola is.

    You are involved in activities that are far from your calling. You are into e-law publishing  and now book publishing. What are the motivations?

    The society. The passion to build a better Nigeria. I am not the type that likes passing the bucks. So the little way, no matter how minute, that we can contribute our quota is through this book publishing.

     

  • Society donates N8.5m microscopes to Ekiti hospitals

    The Society for Family Health (SFH) has donated microscopes and ancillary components valued at N8.5 million to 17 health facilities in Ekiti State.

    The items were given out at an event held in Ado-Ekiti, the state capital, attended by the Commissioner for Health, Prof. Sola Fasubaa, represented by the Permanent Secretary, Mrs. Folake Olomojobi.

    Also present were the Director of the Hospital Management Board, Kolawole Aina; the Director of Planning, Research and Statistics, Ministry of Health, Mrs. Mercy Arogundade and other directors in the ministry.

    The Global Fund Malaria Coordinator for SFH in Akure Region, Mrs. Bolaji Oladejo, said Global Fund was implementing Phase 2 of the malaria eradication project in the states.

    She said the project started in August, 2011 and would end next year.

    Mrs. Oladejo hailed the Ekiti State Government for its efforts to reduce child and maternal mortality.

    She said the Global Fund, through SFH, made the donation to ensure proper malaria diagnosis through the appropriate use of microscopes.

    Mrs. Oladejo said: “As part of efforts to reduce malaria and on the premise that diagnosis should precede treatment, SFH is donating microscopes to secondary health facilities and one tertiary health facility in Ekiti.

    “The items include microscopes, methanol, microscope slide and necessary accessories.”

    Fasubaa said malaria exists in over 100 countries of the world and kills nearly 300,000 people annually.

    He said: “Availability of new tools, such as parate-based rapid diagnostic kits, which complement the standard microscopy, will make it possible to estimate accurately and provide treatment.”

  • ‘Jobless politicians, problem to society’

    ANAMBRA State Deputy Governor, Emeka Sibeudu, has charged political office seekers to find first means of livelihood before venturing into politics, describing a jobless politician as a problem to the society

    Addressing reporters yesterday in Umunze to mark his third year in office as Governor Peter Obi’s deputy, Sibeudo appealled to politicians in the state to shun unnecessary criticism and diversionary acts capable of retarding the pace of development in Anambra.

    He however, enjoined them, to join hands with the administration of Governor Obi in building a better Anambra for the children yet unborn

    He assured that “the remaining one year will record more people-oriented projects as well as more democracy dividends aimed at improving the living conditions of the people.”

     

  • Society and its obsession with paper qualification (2)

    For a well educated citizenry is of great advantage to any nation particularly a developing one like ours. Besides the skills acquired, formal education broadens the mind, opening it to a world full of new possibilities and vistas. It also emboldens, as it gives one the confidence to face life boldly and the ability to cope with the challenges of a modern world. Perhaps it’s for all these reasons that there’s the saying, ‘An educated mind is difficult to enslave’.

    But the reality is that not every one can have a university degree. And this has nothing to do with class or elitism but the issue of ability. Academic work is for serious minds with the intellectual and mental capacity to cope with the rigors of academia. Not everyone has that capacity and it’s not because they are not intelligent. Perhaps, their talent lie in other areas, such as in creating things with their hands or inventing stuff that can be of benefit to society. Bill Gates, one of the richest men in the world was a university drop out. He left Harvard to pursue his dream of making computers that would have a profound impact on the world in the field of info tech and communication.

    What his story shows is that a degree is not the only road to success in life. There are other routes to achieving something with one’s allotted time on earth. But in our society, most people have been brainwashed to believe that the only way to a successful life is by getting a degree from a higher institution. It doesn’t matter how you acquire the degree; just get it and your way through life will be paved with gold.

    That is why many do all sorts including cheating, buying exam questions, paying invigilators to look the other way and all kinds of exam malpractices and scams to get admission into the university. Sadly, some misguided parents even aid their children in this cheating game. The JAMB exams is a case in point. Yearly, we hear of candidates who scored very high marks in the exam but fail woefully in the post-UME that some universities organise to as a lecturer friend put it, ‘separate the wheat from the chaff.’ Despite that, some academically deficient candidates still manage to smuggle their way in and the result of this is that our campuses all over the country are filled with all sorts of students, many of whom have no business being there in the first place. Unable to cope with tough academic work, they pay their way through school by settling some crooked lecturers in ‘cash or kind’.

    And by the time they graduate and enter the real world, it’s the society that now bears the brunt of this mess. Most are largely unemployable and barely literate like the ‘graduate’ of Electrical Engineering posted to a bakery for his primary assignment for the NYSC programme. And there are many like him out there. What this means is that the piece of paper that the degree is written on is worthless if it cannot be defended by whoever owns it. It’s what is in the brain that matters, not some paper.

    Many observers have thrown up their hands in frustration, stating that the situation, like many things that have gone wrong in our society, is beyond redemption. I still believe that something can be done. First, this fixation or obsession with degree acquisition needs to change. Those without university qualifications shouldn’t be made to feel inferior or lesser human beings, that there’s something wrong with them or they are not good enough. Every child came into this world with a skill or talent which can be nurtured in different ways and not by the four walls of a Uni alone. That is why there used be technical or vocational and skills training centres in the past. But many of these are no longer functioning because everyone now wants to be a university graduate even if they have to ‘buy’ the degree and cannot defend it if called upon to do so.

    Our educational policy needs an overhaul with less emphasis placed on paper qualification and more on skills acquisition.

    And in the long run, is it not better to acquire a skill that will be useful to one throughout his life time rather than ‘getting’ a degree through dubious means that one can’t even use to get a job? There are so many unemployed and unemployable graduates these days some of whom have spent as long as ten years or more seeking non-existent jobs. Some, out of frustration and to meet up with their peers take to criminal activities like armed robbery, kidnapping, drug trafficking and others.

    Perhaps, it might be late for those who have already graduated with their dubious degrees but for the young ones still at the foundation school level and the future generations, something can still be done so we don’t keep producing too many deficient ‘graduates’ with degrees that are useless to them and the society at large.

    •Concluded

     

  • Society and it’s obsession with paper qualifications(1)

    What kind of English is this, you might wonder after reading my intro above. Well, it was written by a Nigerian university graduate from one of the higher institutions in the country. Sounds unbelievable? Well, it’s true. According to some reports, the said graduate of Electrical/Electronics and a few others had been rejected by their areas of primary assignment for the NYSC programme due to lack of competence and intelligence level expected of genuine degree holders.

    The story goes that the said graduate who was posted to Niger state, was rejected by a nursery/primary school in the state because of his inability to read and write.

    Having been rejected by two other employers, he had to be reposted by the state NYSC to a bakery, pending the final determination of his case by the NYSC national headquarters.

    That many products of our universities these days fall into the category above is no longer news. For years, the general complaint has been that many of the nation’s higher institutions, churn out half-baked graduates. That was in the past. Today, a high percentage of them are not even baked at all. Maybe, that is the reason they are now being sent to bakeries for their primary assignments so they can get fully baked!

    Anyway, employers of labour, who are mostly the ‘end users’ of these products have cried out for years over this issue, that something needs to be done to rectify the embarrassing situation. For how could someone, who supposedly spent an average of four or more years in a higher institution be unable to teach in a nursery/primary school or write the type of English above? Well, some might say, English is not our mother tongue so it’s no big deal if he can’t write or speak it well. That would have been fine if he was a farmer in the village with no formal education who only needs good farming skills to survive. It’s a different ball game for a graduate who supposedly spent four years or so in a higher institution of learning in the country.

    English might be a foreign language but by accident of history due to colonialism, it’s now our official language, generally used widely nearly everywhere be it homes, schools or offices. It’s the language of instruction right from the foundation stage of the educational system- nursery, primary, secondary. Resultantly, for a student to have passed through all these stages and up to the university level and still unable to communicate effectively in this medium shows something has gone wrong somewhere.

    It has thrown up the ugly underbelly of all that has gone seriously wrong in our educational system. While this piece is not about the blame game or pointing accusing fingers at all those who have contributed in making a mess of our once proud educational system, which was one of the best on the continent, there’s one salient point I want to point out. And that is society’s obsession with paper qualification or becoming a graduate by all means possible. In an ideal world, it would have been wonderful if every one can be a university graduate.

     

    To be continued

     

     

     

     

     

  • Tokunbo computers harmful to health, says society

    The Nigerian Computer Society (NCS) has raised the alarm over importation of used computers , warning of its potential threat to health, safety and environment. The importation, it added is a disincentive to the growth of the local computer industry.

    Its President, Sir Demola Aladekomo, said whle the body is working with the Federal Government to address the issue, some Nigerians care bringing the products into the country illegally.

    “We are worried about the importation of used computers and want the Federal Government to discourage it. Computers are becoming cheaper; they are being assembled in Nigeria. I see no reason why it is not affordable to the local people. The more we patronise our local producers, the better for us. So, we are working with the Federal Government in this respect but unfortunately, you have grey imports and you have unscrupulous importers that bring in these computers,” he said.

    On the quality of computers assembled locally, he said they are at par with the ones from China, Taiwan and even the United States of America (USA) as the components were sourced from the same source.

    “I do not think that the locally assembled computers are substandard. It may be a case of just wanting to give a dog a bad name in order to hang it. The computers that are assembled in Nigeria are not inferior to the ones assembled in China, Taiwan and the US. They are all assembled, the components come from the same manufacturers, the OS (operating system) come from the same sources. So, I do not see anything that makes computers assembled in Nigeria inferior,” Aladekomo said.

    The NCS boss said he would have been worried if the silicon tubes were manufactured in the country, adding that all the international players in the industry also import silicon tubes from the same source Nigerians import theirs.

    “If you are doing the silicon tube in Nigeria, I will be worried. It’s just like Dell, HP, IBW, all import their silicon chips. The number of companies doing chips in the world are few, so they all import from the same source. It is the same OS, whether it is from Microsoft, Linux or Apple. They come from the same source. So, I do not see why Nigerian computers should be labelled inferior. That is not correct,” he said.

    According to experts, computer monitors that contain cathode ray tubes is one of the electronic items that constitute dangers to HSE because they contian over 1,000 different chemical substances found in their waste, many of which are toxic. Metals, such as lead and tin, copper, cadmium, mercury, brominated flame retardants, barium, antimony, and beryllium, are said to be contained the wastes arising from the use of computers and other electronic products.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Society to build HIV/AIDS control warehouse

    THE Ogun State government is to create an enabling environment for partners working on HIV/AIDS.

    It has also provided a 7,500 square metre land in Ota for the building of a central warehouse by one of the partners, the Society for Family Health (SFH).

    Its Commissioner for Health, Dr. Olaokun Soyinka, said the government was committed to the reduction of the prevalence rate of HIV.

    He spoke while conducting the officials of SFH round the land.

    He said the ministry has added new six Prevention of Mother-to-Child-Transmission (PMTCT) sites to the 18 existing ones and activated six Anti-Retroviral Therapy sites in addition to the 12.

    Soyinka said the ministry had also established 77 HIV and AIDS Testing and counselling service delivery points.

    He said the warehouse would enhance the socio-economic status of the area as it would create employment for residents, promising that other requests made by SFH would be forwarded to the State Governor, for his consideration.

    Director Ogun State Agency for the Control of AIDS (OGSACA), Dr. Kehinde Fatungase, said the warehouse would boost the preventive efforts of his agency.

    The Managing Director of SFH, Sir Bright Ekweremadu, thanked the government for the gesture, revealing that the facility would be used for the storage of condoms and other consumables relating to HIV/AIDS prevention.

    Ekweremadu said the warehouse would create employment opportunities for about 400 people, adding that when completed, more taxes would also be paid into coffers of the State.

     

  • Great Piece, ‘The decent society’

    SIR: I read Sam Omatseye’s weekly In Touch column of November 12, titled The Decent Society. It is brilliant, dispassionate and incisive.

    It is advocacy for “ground rules” to underpin the reconstruction of a decent society aligns with what I called the “agreement of a New Normal” in a recent speech for the 2012 Akintola Williams Annual Lecture. May your ink never dry.

    Blessings always,

     

    • Oby Ezekwesili

    Former Minister for Education