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The cost of toying with insecurity.

by Leading Reporters
written by Leading Reporters

Security or the lack of it is a very serious issue. In Nigeria, neither the government nor the people are doing anything about the bourgeoning insecurity beyond the usual condemnation.

The National Assembly is making permutations for the next round of elections in 2023. Remi Tinubu for instance, is already seeing herself in the seat of the first lady of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Her desperate ambition would make her dismiss anyone who dares speak against the chaos in the land as a wailing opposition member. Her husband is no better either.

Tinubu of the ‘where are the cows’ fame sees the presidency as his legal right, and whatever hurdle in his way must be removed, even if it is the entire south west. If he has to rule over the ashes of a burned down Nigeria, so be it.

Muhammadu Buhari, the president of Nigeria is laid back. He watches as the conflagration continues to consume the country. One cannot tell whether he is incapable or unwilling to arrest the situation. He is just there, managed by abusive, ambitious and arrogant sycophants such as Femi Adesina and Garba Shehu. These two unprofessionally dish out statements that ought to be heard at peppersoup joints as ‘presidential’ position on sensitive issues of security.

The People’s Democratic Party,  Nigeria’s main opposition party is still trying to reconcile itself to the fact that it is not a non-government organisation but a political party whose major concern ought to be putting the monstrously chaotic APC on its toes. The PDP is still weeping from behind its secretary’s keypad, typing absolutely boring press statements that ordinary Nigerians are too hungry to read.

The people are more likely to be worse that all the political stakeholders mentioned above. They sit in the market, in the buses, in beer parlours, church fellowships, jumaat services and their village meetings talking in hushed tones about the unfolding carnage but none has the balls to join Sowore, Adeyanju and Aisha Yesufu in protesting.

So, we allow the marauders to go on rampage unabated. They kill, maim, rape, close down schools, destroy economies, scare people from the farms and do as they please. To make matters worse, the fear of the kidnappers and killers has caused schools to close down.

Recently, we heard that the horde of killers are converging on Abuja. And the army had taken steps to form a ring around the Villa, NNPC and the barracks. This sends only one signal to the vulnerable people: you are on your own. Veritas University and other schools around Abuja hurriedly closed down and students sent home.

No one is taking time to analyse the implications of these now until we appear in other countries after ten years from now and being to act like people from the stone age. The implications are too far reaching to be over emphasized. One of the results of this enchanted complacency and docility is that we are going to have to triple our efforts to catch up, if we ever will, with other countries in terms of technology and development, after Buhari’s reign of anachronism. Forget the joke about a certain Digital Economy. We know that we are opposite of being digital.

Microsoft and the Federal Government have decided to partner in the interest of the masses. According to reports, the partnership is to create thousands of direct jobs and hundreds of thousands of downline jobs. This is a very good initiative. It is quite commendable that the government is this thoughtful. But would Microsoft set up their office in a country where the president begs terrorists to release their victims? Would they endanger the lives of their staff to send them here only to be kidnapped? Would they take the most unreasonable risk of setting up an office with multimillion dollar equipment only to be bombed to ashes by a bad of pampered terrorists who would be arrested and rewarded?

Already, we have a very archaic educational system that churns out misfits for the evolving manpower demand. Then we are closing schools. In a decade from now, there would be a yawning human resources gap in Nigeria. We would have to import expertise and even mid level know how to man sensitive positions, leading to huge financial haemorrhage from an already pauperised economy.

Unless the next administration is manned by a learned, committed, patriotic and technocratic leader, the country is going to be so broke that citizens would migrate to hitherto poorer countries.

Another major consequence would be the already glaring famine. Given that bandits, herdsmen and Boko Haram have combined to kill farmers and farming in Nigeria, food supply has declined internally. Then the government has decided to block food importation. The only option left is to scramble for the little that’s within the country at very exorbitant prices. This is inflation. Now, the government is pronouncing itself broke. It is going to cut salaries but not that of the legislature and executive. Theirs is sacrosanct. The masses who form the bulk of everyday transactions are being rendered powerless. It can only mean one thing. Increased prices and inadequate purchasing power. A trader can’t sell below his cost price, and the buyer cannot buy at his new price. That’s a dilemma.

Another foreseeable problem is brain drain. We must not kid ourselves,  many people are running out of this country daily. Forget Lai Mohammed’s tantrums. The country is emptying its best into other countries. Doctors, engineers and other professionals are all running away from a collapsing Nigeria. After spending decades studying in Nigeria’s excruciating education climate, no one would wait for an unlettered member of a rag tag army of Boko Haram to waste him. The best is to run away.

The next president of Nigeria has a lot of work on his hands in an attempt to lift Nigeria out of the current abyss it has found itself in. And we all have a job on our hands before we begin to look up to Benin republic for regional leadership.

The time to salvage our country is now. We must all stand up to be counted.

To be continued.

Alex Agbo,

Writer, researcher and public policy analyst writes from Lagos.

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HeadlinesOpinion

It Is Time For Legislators To Extend Their Oversight visit To Sambisa

by Leading Reporters
written by Leading Reporters

Last Thursday, I was slightly amused listening to Senate President, Ahmed Lawan pouring encomiums on the service chiefs of Nigeria’s military.

When the report by the broadcast media on the event started playing, I had thought it was a valedictory session where some war veterans were taking a well-deserved bow. But when it became clearer that the day’s celebrants were the General Lucky Irabor led new service chiefs, I had to put off my initial doubt to watch more closely to find that the colorful reception by the Senate for the team was real and that it departed substantially from the old familiar song whose chorus was that no one knows into what use the military had put the huge resources appropriated and allegedly received by them.

It was as if the Senate had just discovered how well the funds had been meaningfully utilized. If so, what was the source of the new information? I mean was it credible evidence obtained from oversight function? I just hope the Senate’s position was not informed by the predictions of any of our vision-seeing members of the clergy!

Whatever the source, one thing which is certain, is that no one can blame a television viewer for being cynical; after all, the general narrative on ground has been one of despondence in which the public had been made to believe that funds meant for the military were usually diverted by the top hierarchy leaving nothing for the troops to prosecute the insurgency war.

Indeed, when the last service chiefs left office, there were reports of jubilation in military circles especially at the war front which tended to validate the rumour that military funds were truly misappropriated. Although there were official attempts to clarify the statement credited to the National Security Adviser NSA that weapons and equipment that should have been bought were not bought, the general feeling which subsisted was that the funds were missing. There was in fact the allegation by the International foundation against corruption that about N10.02 trillion spent on the security sector in Nigeria has had no audit report from 2015 till today.

So, why was the Senate President presenting a vote of thanks in favour of the military? Could it be that the legislature suddenly discovered that the military leaders were innocent of all charges against them and that the funds reportedly appropriated for the military never got to them? I found that slightly hard to believe because Zainab Ahmed, our Minister of finance, budget and national planning who should know, had confirmed two days earlier, that all the funds were released. The Minister spoke at an interactive session with members of the Senate Committee on the Army.

She also asserted that apart from funding the budget of the army almost 100 per cent, there had been a lot of instances where the security leaders went to the president, got special approvals and still got the funds. Interestingly, the Chairman of the same committee, Senator Alli Ndume had continuously complained that funds for the Army were not received by the Army. How then, can one understand our insurgency fight where the appropriation, delivery and receipt of the resources for the fight are turned into a story of several versions?

This confusion would not have arisen if oversight functions are implemented creditably in Nigeria. But painfully they are not. Elsewhere, what touches a nation most is the concern of all; in which case, Nigerians should have been mobilized by government to focus on our current major problem which incidentally concerns the security and welfare of the people. The legislature represented by her several committees on the military should have designed a monitoring framework covering when a request is made by the military, when it is approved, when it is dispatched, when it is received and how it is spent.

We ought not to have subjected our military to the distraction of spending much time pursuing approved funds. In other words, a team of legislators should have since been stationed in Sambisa by way of symbolically carrying supervision to the very point of assignment as they do, all the time, especially with lucrative agencies such as the NNPC. If that had been done, the new service chiefs would not have, on assumption of duty and indeed before settling in, be called to account for purchases made by their predecessors. Why was there no oversight at the appropriate time?

Honestly, oversight functions by the legislature have in the last one year dropped significantly. In August 2020, thirty-nine (39) Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) issued a joint statement accusing the National Assembly of not only a drop in her oversight functions but a general lack of commitment to duty. The CSOs arrived at this conclusion after a study of the performance of the lawmakers for the legislative year beginning from June 2019 to July 2020 in which they found that the legislators sat for only 149 days instead of the 181 days prescribed by the constitution. This may have been caused by the propensity of the legislators to enjoy several holidays and adjournments. For example, although all other public sector services had only two days declared as public holidays last month for Easter, the legislators were away for the same festivity for three weeks.

They have in the last three days already begun their own Sallah holidays, yet to be officially declared by government and they are not expected back till May 18th. We therefore agree with the CSOs that there ought not to be a drop in legislative activities by the National Assembly at a time when its role has become more critical than ever before, in joining the Executive to find solutions to the unprecedented challenges currently facing the country.

We also believe that our legislators should revive their mechanism for their constitutionally approved oversight functions provided, they remove from it, the tendency to commercialize the subject. The old order whereby legislators blackmailed some Ministries, Departments and Agencies into settling their travelling costs etc. must be halted. In addition, there is the need for the legislature to always get to the logical end of every investigation. Not many were pleased for instance, with how the allegations made publicly that NDDC contracts were cornered by legislators was swept under the carpet.

This attitude has always adversely affected public expectations whenever the legislature jumps into every matter as if nothing must go past them without their input. The posture no doubt has a fair share in the failure of Nigeria to have strong institutions. When for example, there is some emergency in any part of the country, and the very next day the legislature passes a resolution ‘directing’ NEMA to help the victims of the occurrence, it suggests that the entity has no capacity to independently face its mandate. It also removes from them, personal initiative and discretion. Such interventions are only rational in cases where the resolution was provoked by transparent lethargy on the part of the relevant societal institution.

It is worse when the legislature disrupts the schedule of duties of public bodies through incessant summoning of chief executives who are never allowed in what looks like ‘a show of ego’ to delegate their appearance. It is particularly offensive when it is done to the military that should be encouraged to completely face the nation’s current difficulty of incessant killings in several parts of the country.

By Tonnie Iredia

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Opinion

Nigeria’s perennial recession; a result of policy somersault.

by Leading Reporters
written by Leading Reporters

Nigeria will predictably be in recession for a long time. When you keep doing the same thing and expect different results, you will need to check yourself. It appears we are not in a hurry to live in the reality of the 21st century with others.

I sometimes wonder why we like to put the cart before the horse as a country. There  has never been a time when we did anything that was not opposite of what everyone else was doing. Fundamental economics teaches that before you stop importation, you need to have put in place import substitution strategy, and get them working properly before attempting any grandstanding.

Then again, timing is very important in making policy decisions. You cannot wake up from the wrong side of the bed and declare things banned. It is as insensitive as it is unconstructive.  People have often questioned the reasons for some government policies in Nigeria.

What is more heart breaking is where some ‘supporters’ get the kind of shameless illiteracy with which they defend retrogressive policies. Let us start with the Covid-19 decisions of the government.  As the pandemic was biting hard, incomes were shrinking. That was when we suddenly woke up to ban in a commando style,  a whopping 41 imported items, among which were foodstuff and other consumer goods critical to every day survival.

That is not all o. The people were losing jobs in droves. That means that purchasing power was falling rapidly and the country trapped itself in stagflation. Prices were skyrocketing and there was no purchasing power in the hands of the people. To my surprise, some people who I thought ‘know book’ were  just falling my hands in the halleluyah praise singing in honour of the courage with which the government was ‘tackling’ the economy. We would argue it until I had a headache. At some point I couldn’t tell if it was the argument that caused the headaches or the useless virus that trapped all of us in our homes.

Puerile arguments were advanced in support of the government. I took a look at my then none months old baby and asked her if at that age she could disgrace her father by saying such a meaningless thing. One of the headless statements was that China closed their borders and started agriculture. And boom! They became greater, the China you know today. I was torn between laughter and sorrow. 

The story that they did not verify is that China’s maximum ruler, chairman Mao Zedong, threaded the communist path. He closed the boarders and decided on a pilot execution of certain apocryphal economic policies. He closed the Chinese borders to neighbouring countries. And then starvation set in.

Chairman Mao’s decision led to one of the most catastrophic man made starvation in human history which left between 15 to 55 million people dead, and hundreds of people malnourished. That happened between 1959 and 1961. Zedong had no choice but to immediately take steps to reverse the policy.

But ridiculously, that policy was what Zedong called the Great Leap. By 1962, China having seen nwe, reversed themselves and opened their borders. They started an industrialization policy that embraced the domestication of technology. They started to produce for export.

It is the same as Nigeria’s great leap that happened in the midst of a world wide devastation. But wait, who exactly did Nigerians offend that is so unforgiving? Nigeria wanted to leap. Two things happened. She leaped in the darkness of a pandemic with its eyes wide shut! Where did we land? In a circle of inflationary pressures.

First, we ought to have had a solid import substitution plan before talking of shutting down importation. We do not have mechanised agriculture. We want to produce rice for a population of 200 million people with hoes and cutlasses on an unyielding soil. We have no reservoirs where we store excess grains for time of scarcity. What am I even saying, we do not even have enough. Where are we getting the excess from? We might as well be wasting money building silos.

Even the ones planted are being eaten by the holy cows. Private investors in agriculture have had their farms vandalised by cattle which roam across the country. The famine loving government has encouraged the increased devastation of the farms by failing to call the vandals and bandits to order.

People have abandoned the farms and run away to join the army of the hungry parading the streets in the cities to hustle for the little that’s available. That’s a double whammy. No money and the prices of food are high.

The north east and north west of Nigeria used to be the producer of grains and spices. But not anymore. Boko Haram has killed and maim many a farmer, destroyed promising Micro, Small and Medium Scale businesses like sales of rice, onions, fish etc that accompany farming. They have turned large swaths of thriving villages and towns into desolate, uninhabited lands. The best you get in such places in Borno, Yobe and environs are Internally Displaced People’s camps. Even when those at the camps Internally Displaced People’s camps. Even when those at the camps attempt to do little fishing here and farming there, they are traced to the camps and killed. The survivors have become dependent on the lean resources instead of the contributors that they used to be.

On all fronts, Nigeria is scoring abysmally low. In the midst of the confusion called policy, the youths decided to make themselves happy by trading in cryptocurrencies.  The government, like the proverbial village people, followed them there and blocked the channel.

Foreign exchange from that sector has been blocked. This is while the entire world is running towards digital currencies o. Big companies have started accepting Bitcoin as payment for their products, the risks not withstanding. Tesla is a major example. Nigeria nko? They banned it. This is digital currency. Then we have a Digital Economy ministry which knows next to nothing about how to rein in the volatility of digital currency. And some bishops, youths etc had the effrontery to carry placards under the hot Abuja sun to assault our collective intelligence that Pantami is doing well as the head of that ministry.

Nigeria will continue in this damnable trajectory unless things change from the anachronism it has adopted as a state policy to what the world has embraced. The worldview of the government is annoyingly too narrow.

May  Nigeria quickly realise that like the ostrich, it is burying its head in the sand while the entire body is outside. Very soon we will be forced to look inwards. The increase in prices are eroding profits and people are getting thrown out of jobs. The current unemployment rate in Nigeria is 33%. Nigeria is among the first three most terrorised country in the world. Nigeria took over from India as the poverty capital of the world in 2019, according to the Austria based World Poverty Clock and The World Bank in separate reports, with 1 person sliding into abject poverty every six minutes.

To be continued.

Alex Agbo is a writer and an economic researcher based in Lagos.

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Opinion

What kind of country is ours?

by Leading Reporters
written by Leading Reporters

I was commuting in a Bus Rapid Transit from the Lagos mainland to the Island on a busy Monday morning when I overheard two passengers discussing the antics of the Lagos State Transportation Management Authority or Agency ( LASTMA).

I normally mind my business when I am in a public transport because of my explosive anger at the mess Nigeria has become. But this particular discussion got to me. The conversation was between two apparently well to do individuals. They were lamenting the high handed behaviour of the officials of the agency. According to their gist, one of them had his car impounded and about N50,000 was extorted from him before his car was released to him.

The cause of the fine was that the traffic lights at his junction was malfunctioning. He crossed just when the light said red. The LASTMA officials were brought to control traffic but instead they would lie in wait to pounce on a supposed offender. It reminded me of the day I was driving with my cousin from Liverpool to Point road in Apapa. We had to take Randle through where the Amusement park used to be. Without warning, some hoodlums came out and barricaded the street. They started pronouncing us guilty. The road is a One-way drive, they said. But there was no sign to indicate that.

I was amazed. How can you punish someone for what you didn’t warn him of? This is done with the authority of the Lagos state government. The boys even threatened to take us to the psychiatric clinic at Ikorodu. I thought that’s barbaric. This is how many people get lost with no traces.

Some times they descend on the ‘lawbreakers’ and beat them black and blue, carting away valuable property. This is why so many people were rejoicing over the beating of LASTMA officials by some ratings of the Nigerian Navy in Lagos some weeks ago.

The same testimony abounds about our policemen. They wait for offences to be committed before pouncing on the offender to fleece them of their valuable property and money. Most times, Nigerians call a checkpoint an office.

The lawlessness and high handed behaviour of government officials trickle down from the government itself. For instance, how many LASTMA officials have been sacked for the hooliganism displayed on the roads? How many examples have been made of those who are found invading the privacy of law abiding people?

It appears to me that the barbaric acts are endorsed by higher authorities.  How can people do that kind of thing and no open sanctions are seen to be rightly meted out to them?

Anyways, a government that openly fleeced it’s people would not care a hoot when it’s people re treated like lower beings. Take a look at Kogi Stage, for instance. Are the citizens not treated worse than slaves of the 11th century? How can a man work for a whole 30 days and be paid 30% of his meagre salary? Who keeps the rest? Imagine you are earning N30,000 and your paid 30% of it. That’s N9,000. Oh God!

Yet we have a government and a state house of assembly that sits comfortably, watching disinterestedly. Is something wrong with our conscience as a people? This is why I got amazed when Nollywood actors and actresses started tripping to Lokoja. Even managers of clubs went too. But more shocking is the endorsement by Okocha and Kanu Nwankwo, two of Nigeria’s greatest sports experts. My question has been whether these guys haven’t heard what Bello is doing to the people of Kogi State. It is a reflection of how selfish we are as a peoole.

We need to start examining our personality.  Our avarice and lack of humanity as a people is becoming alarming. Nigeria can be better if we learned to be empathetic.

Alex Agbo is a writer and a researcher based in Lagos.

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Opinion

The truth that hurt Onoja

by Leading Reporters
written by Leading Reporters

Over the weekend, convener of #RevolutionNow movement and publisher of Sahara Reporters, Omoyele Sowore and the Deputy Governor of Kogi State, Edward Onoja, were involved in a social media war of words.

Edward’s daughter was recently admitted into the prestigious Nile University as a student. ( I have to put that student there to avoid Nigerians asking me whether she was admitted as a patient or a security agent).

An elated Edward Onoja took to his Twitter handle to wish his beloved daughter God speed ( whatever that means. You know in the Federal Religious Republic of Nigeria,  we can coin anything to make our religiosity appear top notch. It is almost another kind of sin to not be religious in my country.)

I don’t think Edward did anything wrong by taking his daughter to school, taking photographs with her and wishing her success. After all , success is what we all wish for our children. I was happy for him and the young lady, who was all smiles in the picture.

Omoyele Sowore also added a voice to the many congratulatory comments pouring in for the Onojas as a well wisher. In his prayers, he wished Edward’s daughter what a parent would naturally wish a beloved child.

But that obviously didn’t go down well with our darling deputy. He could not hold his emotions and consternation. What followed was a litany on invective. What is in Sowore’s prayer?

He prayed that the child;

  1. May graduate and get a job.
  2. May not be owed salaries when eventually employed.
  3. May not be denied her pension after retirement.

Personally, I do not see anything wrong with this prayer. I do not think that any Nigerian would find fault with it. After all,  Nigeria is the most religious in the world. The deputy governor himself goes to church. He has, on several occasions, demonstrated his sublime love for God by dedicating all his success to Him. So why the vituperation?

I would tell you why. Omoyele seemed to have touched the very truth through that cynical prayer.  He squarely addressed the problems of Kogi State. The first truth glaring at Edward in the face is the total neglect of education in Kogi State. From primary to university education in Kogi State, it is a tale of deprivation and neglect.

The Kogi state University is the worst, and is being referred to as a glorified secondary school by mockers. I personally spoke to a professor from the school. The erudite man complained of being owed salaries and even the current ones are paid at the discretion of the government. A lot of professors are abandoning the school for acolytes of the government.

The dream of the founder of the school, Prince Abubakar Audu , to be a world class institution and also affordable to the less privileged has been washed down the drain by a government in which Edward is a key player. The school now ranks 89th in Nigeria and 10477th in the world. A shameful reversal of fortune for a school which hasn’t lasted up to 30 years.

At the moment, the school fees have more than tripled for new and old students. For new students who are from the state, the school fees range between N57,000 and N68,000, while for those who are not from Kogi State it ranges from approximately N100,000 to N150,000.

Before you say it is still normal, please consider that in that state, many people are owed salaries. The said salaries are anything from N30,000 to N100,000, of which percentages are paid reluctantly by the government when they feel like.

These salaries are earned by only about less than 30% of Kogi’s 3.4 million strong population. The remaining over 70% are farmers, who struggle with the stubborn soil to eke out a living. These are men and women who believe that their children would one day put smiles on their faces when they are out of school.

The university education is being pushed out of their reach by means of the increased fees. Their parents, those who are lucky to work in government are not paid salaries and the school fees are not affordable.

We haven’t talked about primary and secondary education. The teachers are owed multiple salaries, and are forced back into the farms. They come to school when they are free. There is no government presence in the villages. The parent-teacher associations of most village and suburban schools have decided to find a way around the problem.

They have resorted to employing secondary school leavers and other volunteers to teach in those secondary and primary schools under the title of PTA teachers. Their responsibility is on the association which pays them anything from N2,000 to N10,000 monthly.

Pray, what kind of service would anyone expect from such a situation? The first problem is that they are not qualified to teach. So, they would end up churning out half baked students and continue a circle of mediocrity. When their products get to the university, they are behind their peers on many fronts.

Secondly, a man who is receiving that kind of wage is not happy. What can N10,000 buy in today’s Nigeria? They too would look for alternatives that would better their living standard.

The story of Kogi state is a litany of woes. Edward should have simply said Amen to Sowore’s prayer instead of trying to put up a face saving argument that didn’t even come close to address the subtle indictment.

He stated that Sowore should have kept family out of politics. I want to ask Edward a simple question. Is it not politics that made his family the second family in Kogi state? The children they employ as thugs in Kogi state to run their political races for them are also people’s children. 

They education system that has died in their hands are to breed good and responsible children. How can you destroy the future of other  people’s children and be angry that yours was mentioned? Are some children more children than others?

Lastly, the kinds of words and angry vituperation that oozed from his response to Sowore are totally unbecoming of a man of his class. They are so vitriolic and completely lacking in substance. It shows one thing. That the man and his boss do not brook any other opinion that does not serve their interests. They want to be praised, worshipped and called ‘Excelon..’, whatever that means.

What is good for the goose is good for the gender. That’s what Sowore has implied. Edward had better sit down and provide the answer. He should stop those use of grammar that say nothing to us.

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Opinion

SMS Banking Service Is A Criminal Scheme By Banks With CBN Collusion

by Leading Reporters
written by Leading Reporters

A Nigerian has narrated how his bank made it near-impossible when he applied for deactivation of the SMS service scheme.

Samson Akhigbe, who shared his experience on his Facebook page described the scheme as the most fraudulent one crafted by Banks with the banking of the Central Bank of Nigeria.

He advise Nigerians to deactivate their SMS service scheme, saying that with an active email address and a token, why pay for what only enriches bank.

“I stopped using SMS banking like five years ago. Even when I opened my last account, I deactivated SMS alert. Not only is it a useless method to receive banking information, it is a criminal scheme setup by Banks in collusion with CBN to milk Nigerians.

“I reasoned that, if I have a token, an active data and an email, why pay extra for SMS banking?

“While I was trying to deactivate it back then, they made it so difficult and I was wondering why. Na me get account, why insist I use SMS?

“At the end of the day, I filled forms, got a guarantor to sign indemnity. At last, I was free. But still, these banks looked for other means to scheme off my account.

“If you use GAPS on GTBank platform, you’ll see how bad these banks scheme off our account. N1 here, 50 kobo there. Every transaction is billed and at the end of the month, you’ll pay VAT and Account maintenance fee.

“Bear in mind that VAT is deducted for transactions as they occur. The people paying SMS charges are the worst hit.

“And then to hear that these banks owe TELCOS for the monies that they have collected from customers is the height of criminality. It is like saying ShopRite is owing vendors for goods already paid for by the customers.

“This is me saying to Nigerian Banks: UNA PAPA. MAY IT NOT BE WELL WITH YOU.

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Opinion

Code of Conduct in the Market-place

by Leading Reporters
written by Leading Reporters
Tonnie Iredia

The Chairman of Nigeria’s Code of Conduct Tribunal CCT, Danladi Umar was for wrong reasons in the news for much of last week. Interestingly, the issue at stake had nothing to do with his assignment of determining the level of adherence of public officers to the official code of conduct required of them.

Instead, the story was about his interaction in a market-place, with one Clement Sargwak, a security guard at the Banex Plaza in Abuja. Umar had gone there in his private capacity as a citizen to transact some business which ended up in a case of assault. Several analysts who have dwelt extensively on the story have placed sufficient focus on blame game, making it superfluous to further engage in a rehash of that line of thought. What is yet to be done, is to enumerate the effects of the story on our nation’s growth and development. This is precisely what this piece seeks to do today in the hope that some useful lessons can be learnt by us all.

The first and perhaps the most important issue which the story throws up is the inability of powerful Nigerians especially policy makers to comprehend and appreciate not just the power of the social media but the role it can play in reforming society. With increasing population and corresponding increases in societal activities, the under-equipped, under-staffed and under-remunerated conventional media can hardly cover a substantial portion of daily events. Much of what happens in the country is thus under-reported. In which case, were it not for the social media, not many would have had the privilege of knowing what transpired at Banex Plaza last week. What this suggests is that contrary to the belief of many highly placed individuals, especially some legislators who have been anxious to make laws against what they see as the evils of the social media, the platform has its own advantages.

For its interactivity, portability, speed of information dissemination and international context, Nigeria certainly needs the social media. Of what use is any medium of communication which covers only segments of a few events that the people may, as a result of many challenges, never get to know about? Yet, ours is a developing society that is in dire need of public enlightenment. Indeed, but for the social media which enabled the instantaneous dissemination of how the entire Banex Plaza incident happened, denials, claims and counter claims would have completely rendered the event incomprehensible. We can only hope therefore, that our leaders will begin to see the need to depart from the desire to kill the social media which in every other nation is employed as a veritable tool for development communication. This underscores this column’s earlier submission that replicating harsh regulations as well as increasing the powers of regulatory bodies can only impede information management, they can neither resolve nor alter the propensity for fake news.

The viewpoint that Nigeria’s current information management framework is probably not far above the stone age level is visibly represented by the press statement issued by the CCT to ‘inform’ Nigerians on the incident through a narration of the version of its boss. The statement left people to wonder about the briefing or induction course designed by the Ministry of Information for press officers assigned to government organizations. At what point are they to speak and what format is devised for the statements they issue about their organizations and their activities? There are two speculations provided by the statement issued by Ibraheem Al-Hassan, the Head of the Press and Public Relations Unit of the CCT. The first is that the press officer is probably not a professional. The second is that in line with what happens in many parts of our country, where everyone thinks that the job of information management is an all-comers’ game, the press officer was told what to write and in fact how to write it, without regards for the absurdity that such statements may convey.

Another interesting dimension of the story is the light which it has thrown on what Governor Bala Mohammed of Bauchi state, rightly decried the other day as ethnic profiling. Attributing the source of conflict to those the Umar side described as ‘Biafran boys’ clearly illuminates the dangers of condemning one ethnic group because of the actions of one or a sub-group of the relevant ethnic category. By resorting to profiling, the story-teller instinctively gave the impression that the disagreement was premeditated; and that the so-called Biafra boys knew the movement of the CCT boss and actually awaited his arrival to unleash an attack on him. If so, how often is such behaviour portrayed in that location and how many Umars have been so attacked to justify the generalisation? The truth in our considered opinion is that the incident was a petty conflict concerning the management of space in the crowded Plaza.

It has however served to remind us of the challenges of maintaining the Master Plan of Abuja. One of the factors which informed the decision to build a new federal capital was the intolerable congestion of Lagos – the old capital city. In the last few years, the fear that the congestion of Lagos can easily be surpassed has become a possibility that Abuja residents are imagining every day. Commercial businesses have sprung up so rapidly beyond what was planned for the spaces available. Banex Plaza and other locations now accommodate far more persons and activities than envisaged. What happened to the CCT chair was an everyday occurrence to virtually anyone visiting the place where traffic control is left in the hands of young persons who have little regard for anyone. In the circumstance, it is likely that Sargwak, the guard may have been annoyingly rude to a big man who thinks his status can be used to alter the established order of human and vehicular movement anywhere, Banex Plaza inclusive. Hence the incident in which one of the parties inflicted injury on the other.

On the issue of law enforcement, the narrative was that the guard who happened to be the injured party was the one arrested by the police and held until a bail was granted. Who reported the matter to the police and how was guilt established to warrant the detention of Sargwak? If no one is surprised at the turn of events, what light does it throw on Nigeria’s type of rule of law? Who was the agent provocateur? Who injured the other? Why was it only the guard and not the two parties that were summoned to the police station to write statements which can assist the police in its investigations? Answers to these questions are likely to confirm that the Banex Plaza incident is a typical true story of daily living in our clime in which there is hardly any room for accountability by the highly placed. To those who are unable to understand our type of democracy, the Banex Plaza incident is a sad reminder that the people who should be sovereign and ministered unto by those elected or appointed to serve them have remained for longer than makes sense, the object rather than the subject of democracy.

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Opinion

National Assembly should avoid distracting the military

by Leading Reporters
written by Leading Reporters
Tonnie Iredia

Section 89 of the 1999 Constitution, provides that the National Assembly can summon ANY person in Nigeria to give evidence before it over any matter that the Assembly can enact legislation.

Although what the provision on its face value confers on our legislators is huge power, a few knowledgeable persons in the polity have argued that there are people that cannot be summoned by the legislature. One of those cited to have such privilege is President Muhammadu Buhari.

According to Abubakar Malami, Attorney General and Minister of Justice, a plan by the National Assembly to summon the President over security issues was wrong because “the management and control of the security sector is exclusively vested in the President.” Those who didn’t agree with Malami had their points but what much can the legislature do to a President or indeed a state governor who can shun an invitation and get away with it by virtue of their constitutional immunity?

It was also canvassed that in certain cases, the National Assembly could not summon a Minister. A former Minister of Petroleum, Mrs. Diezani Allison Madueke, once told a court that both the Senate and the House of Representatives were required by law to first obtain the President’s consent before they could validly summon her.

To back her claim, she cited Sections 88 and 89 of the Nigerian Constitution 1999, as amended and Section 8 of the Legislatives Houses (Powers and Privileges) Act Cap. L12 Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 2010. Veteran constitutional lawyer, Itse Sagay had similarly opined that not being a civil servant or a member of any commission, he was outside the group that the legislature could summon.

The cases cited above were however never fully tested to ascertain the true position of the law as Sagay, Madueke and the President did not appear before the legislature. In fact, some other Nigerians successfully shunned summons from the legislature without repercussions.

But beyond legal arguments, it is rational to accord the legislature such powers to enable her gather ample data to make or amend laws; and to expose “corruption, inefficiency or waste in the execution or administration of laws or the disbursement of funds appropriated for it.” If so, what encourages some citizens to think they can ignore our National Assembly? The reasons are many but one of them has to do with the conduct of some of our legislators.

Such law-makers usually depicted much of ego chasing with their summons – a posture which tended to imply that the summons were deployed just to establish the superiority of the legislature over other bodies. Sadly the summons often disrupted organized schedules in other segments of government because the legislators would insist that office holders must put off whatever they were engaged with to personally answer any legislative summons. Who says such summons are more useful to society than the functions they forcibly disrupt?

The more unacceptable aspect of the rather combative summons is that which discountenances the usefulness of delegation of duties. Why would legislators insist that only the chief executive of an organization can appear before them? Is it offensive for a deputy to deputize for his boss who is unable to break-off from a prior commitment? Interestingly, on many occasions, we see principal officers of the National Assembly representing the Senate President or the Speaker of the House of Representatives at functions.

If that is allowable in the legislature, does it mean that the principle of delegation of duties is in order only when employed in the legislature? Of course, that is not true because the principle is permissible worldwide. Thus when applied to the Nigerian Army, it is not out of place for Major General Charles Ofoche, Commandant of the Nigerian Army War College, to represent the Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen, Ibrahim Attahiru at a crucial meeting. As a result, the anger expressed on national television the other day by the ad hoc committee auditing arms and ammunition procured by the military only because the Army Chief was represented by Ofoche was unnecessary.

Both the Legislature and the Military are partners in the task of national development- none should derogate from the other. Both have different strategies of doing their jobs and the nature of each ought to be appreciated by the other. While the job of legislators especially in Nigeria is laced with pleasure, that of our armed forces is lined with harsh conditions. That seems to explain why Nigerian legislators have the leisure of functioning as armchair censors.

Last week, they began a 3-week holiday to mark the Easter season while other public officers, are yet to begin their only two days’ break. Our military on the other hand, may find themselves paying the supreme sacrifice on Easter Sunday making even a one-minute break impossible. What this implies is that because the job schedule of the military is exceedingly tasking and markedly different from that of legislators, the latter ought to help the former by ensuring that nothing is done to disrupt their job strategies.

Asking General Attahiru to give priority to a chat with the legislature over and above his tactical schedule of understanding the state of affairs within the first few weeks of assuming duty is to our mind a distraction. This is more so, when the issue agitating the legislators was handled by former military leaders that the same law-makers had just given a clean bill of health through a fast clearance to become ambassadors.

Our premise is that if the relevant committee of the legislature had done an effective oversight through proper monitoring of the arms purchase business, what the nation is looking for now would have been easier to uncover before Attahiru took office. Instead, the immediate past service chiefs that the entire nation including legislators appeared dissatisfied with were hurriedly cleared without being tasked on accountability. Such attitude of ‘wisdom after event’ is to our mind shadow chasing.

At the beginning of the tenure of the current service chiefs, President Buhari gave them a tough order to end insurgency before the rainy season which was some 5 weeks away. The team led by the Chief of Defence Staff; Gen. Leo Irabor offered assurances that they would deliver. Many Nigerians particularly those in the North East were happy with the officers who had previously acquitted themselves creditably in their assignment in the fight to end insurgency.

With such commendable track record, admonishing them at a point when all their attention is focused on routing out the insurgents could be counter-productive. The expectation of the military from the rest of us is not a reproach but the provisioning of non- kinetic strategies that can push the war effort to success.

The National Assembly should therefore seek to boost the morale of our armed forces by mobilizing the entire nation to prioritize the fight against insurgency. It would be a different result, if as it is now, the nation’s political leadership remains more pre-occupied with the politics of 2023 such as organizing defections and compiling membership register by the ruling party and political engineering efforts by the main opposition party to regain power.

We must all learn to avoid distracting the military from the current All-important task of bringing peace back to Nigeria.

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HealthOpinion

Random musings about the Covid-19 vaccine

by Leading Reporters
written by Leading Reporters

From the time that Covid-19 hit Nigeria in 2020, conspiracy theories started flying around about its origins, impact and objectives. It was agreed in some quarters that the end of the world had come.

The proponents of the eschatological belief and its adherents strongly advocated the institution of end time measures like total abstinence from sex, alcohol and any other thing.

These people, however, did not consider rumour peddling as a not too welcome attribute of an end time candidate. As a corollary to their end time gist, the same people went down memory lane to quote Nostradamus. Even when the guy did not say anything about Covid-19,  they tried to force him to say it.

Then Huawei spoiled everything. That’s the time they saw to launch their antichrist 5G network! My scientific neighbours did not give me a moment of rest. How Satan was going to move through our systems via the 5G, how he was going to live on the 5G mast. Around Okota, in Lagos, a certain company was laying some underground cable, probably for some intra company communication . Come and see the hullabaloo. I thank God Obama was not the president in 2020! He was already branded by the Nigerian school of end time studies as the antichrist.

If he was the president, and the vaccine was mooted under him, there was no way we would have stopped our religious Nigerians from running into the caves to hide from the impending tribulation.

So, I went out to observe out of curiosity the administering of the vaccine. First I observed that the jab was not given on the right hand compulsorily. Wait. I was not drunk. I saw it. A guy stretched out his left arm and he was given one jab, and that’s it! It may be that I do not understand how the vaccine works.

On my way home I was thinking. Could it be that this Antichrist doesn’t know what he is doing? The people were supposed to be given that injection on their right hands. Then he allowed the doctors to give it on any random hand.

Or could it be that he is using tricks on our people such that after they have collected it, the vaccine flows to their right hands? Are there not six hundred and sixty six drops of the vaccine in each jab? Perhaps that’s why there are two doses. When the first 333 has formed the first chip on your right hand, the second does would form the second chip on your forehead.  I don’t trust those doctors. Just imagine. They think they can fool us.

While the antichrist scare raged on, our people still buried themselves in our regular vices. Police still ‘obtained’ the motorists, to enforce the lockdown, our security agents were killing the people even when Covid-19 was yet to kill a single soul in the country.

The people who clamour for the religious houses to be opened were the same people who did not want to go to their offices for fear of contracting Covid-19. The people who were ready to fight for their religions not to be attacked were the same people who raised the price of gari from N800 for a 4 litre paint container to N1500 in one fell swoop!

In the same country, crime rate rose beyond our imagination. 1 million boys went on rampage in Lagos. Armed robbery surged in northern Nigeria and its environs, stories went up about rituals and arsons.

It appears to me that our religion in Nigeria is good at fashioning conspiracies. Our prayers are placed with suspicions and conspiracies. If it is not a certain black tall woman that’s doing her neighbour’s son because of his brilliance, it is Britain stealing our oil. If it is not one boss in the office tormenting his staff using Otumokpor, it is America refusing to support Nigeria because of our potentials. That reminds me. I am old enough to call myself an elder states youth. How come Nigeria is perpetually potentially great?

Oh, I understand now. It is Britain. They are the one looking the money for our roads. They are the ones buying what they don’t need, using our commonwealth to buy houses in Dubai or Maryland. They are the one who share guns on election days. They imported bandits to take lands and turn it to an underdeveloped country.

We must continue our conspiracies o. At least our religions teach us not to argue with leaders. Docility is the greatest virtue in the happiest but poorest nation on earth.

Only when we wake up will good things start happening here. Until then, we await another conspiracy theory.

Alex Agbo

Writer and researcher based in Lagos.

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Opinion

Bello and his presidential ambition; a joke taken too far

by Leading Reporters
written by Leading Reporters

I woke up one morning to my Facebook news feed ridden with all kinds of write up about governor Yahaya Bello of Kogi State nursing an ambition to become the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

As usual, I thought it was one of the antics of the loafers who throng the government house to seek favour and in return write all kinds of junk. Yes, and I rightly thought. Long before then, about August 2020, a leaked WhatsApp chat circulated around social media in which Edward Onoja, Deputy governor of the state, was scolding one of their boys.

In the chat, Edward had told the boy to go and look for a decent job. This to me means a lot. Before I delve into why I called Bello ‘s ambition a joke, let me address Edward’s comment.

It appears they know that there is no future for their followers and praise singers. If following you is not a decent job, then why do you keep them? I though some youths learned from that exchange but alas I was wrong. As you read this, there are battalions of jobless layabouts singing the praises of the Bello-Onoja administration even though one of the key leaders of the administration doesn’t think it is a decent way of making money.

Secondly, by that statement, even Edward knows the Bello presidency, like an elephant, will not fly. It won’t even take off. He was so livid that he dismissed the boy’s service as ‘undelegated sycophancy’. Whatever that means.

It also means that to be an official sycophant, you have to be delegated. I believe that those delegated sycophants are those with a Tecno phone pad, a charger and N1,000 monthly data subscription to post edited pictures and write tragic English expressions such as ‘the people does not know’, ‘Kogi State is develops ‘ and other blunders.

The whole thing smacks of mediocrity. But that is beside the point. The point here is that for Bello, whose government is the most catastrophic in the new age home and abroad, to think of becoming the president of Nigeria,  we have seriously lowered the bar of governance in Nigeria.

A man whose state groans under yawning underdevelopment, the people are dying , civil servants are unpaid, health care is zero, education is comatose and roads have become death traps, should have quietly resigned, apologised and walked away in shame.

But no! Nigeria, whose political algorithm is so warped that it throws up only the mediocre to rule over the excellent, might end up throwing Bello up as the preferred candidate for the mobocratic APC.

Let me give you an instance. Before I travelled home in December 2020, I was warned to come with my drugs and first aid. That was an indication that no hospital was working. The so called hospitals are glorified halls where doctors and patients meet and probably exchange greetings. And like one popular joint at Ajaka, they just say ‘How body’?

On the day I was travelling, I got to Okene about 6 PM but between Okene and Ajaokuta, I spent an hour or more. The road was like a scene of a bombardment. It was full of craters, patches and potholes. Thank God there was no rain.

Getting to the river Niger, the entire bridge was in darkness. The street lights are all dead. Same goes for the Ganaja junction to Ganaja village roads. It is in a terrible state.

Let us talk about accountability and probity. Belloe and his deputy who have ruled Kogi State as their fiefdom have not been accountable to anyone. And the malleable State house has let them get away with it. A point in case is the opening of the Confluence University of Science and Technology. Of what use is it to a state as starved as Kogi State to have two state Universities?

Have the Kogi State University staff been well taken care of? Whatever happens to opening a school of engineering, science and technology in the school and upgrading it to a standard university instead of the poor state that it is left in?

My major concern is Bello has decided to take all of us for a ride. Forget about the photo ops. On ground, Kogi state is grossly mismanaged. We thank God for people like the Kano State governor, Umar Ganduje, a no nonsense man, who tore away the posters of the joke called Bello’s presidential campaign.

My only concern is that the lean state resources are expended on such a joke when there are shortages of infrastructure on all fronts. Who is even talking of infrastructure when the state workers haven’t been paid?

I urge everyone to call Bello and his social media hirelings to give a reasonable account of his stewardship over the years. They would resort to insults and bullying. No one would say anything that would be convincing.

If Kogi state still has elders, they must caution Bello from wasting the resources of the state in chasing a world goose. God bless Kogi State.

Alex Agbo
Public Affairs Analyst
Lagos.

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