Who is afraid of Voluntary Organisations?

Does the Nigerian parliament really think of voluntary organisations as a major source of all the problems besetting our country today? And do the problems stem mainly from the fact that these voluntary organisations receive financial and other material gifts from outside Nigeria.  How else would one explain the reason behind the move by the House of Representatives to pass a law to restrict the activities of this group, albeit using covert means?

On Wednesday July 2, the House will hold a public hearing on the bill for an Act to: “regulate the acceptance and utilisation of financial/material contribution of donor agencies for voluntary organisations”.

Key provisions of the proposed law would lead to the conclusion that the whole proposal is unnecessary. The bill defines ‘voluntary organisation’ as ‘an association of individuals whether incorporated or not’ while ‘foreign financial contribution’ means ‘any financial donations or transfer made by a foreign source’. The immediate observation here is that this proposed law would regulate the financial transactions of virtually every group, including the ubiquitous ‘committee of friends’ set up to support friends at their wedding planning. It certainly covers organisations set up for defined interests such as cultural, economic, educational, religious and social programmes.

By the provision of the proposed section 2 of the bill, such organisations would be restricted from accepting any foreign financial and material contribution except with the permission of the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC). Thus, if our hypothetical committee of friends above must receive financial or ‘material’ support from a friend based in a foreign country, e.g. Togo, the committee must first get permission from the ICPC before it can receive such money. It would also have negative impact on foreign remittances by families to groups like town unions.

If this proposal becomes law, it would restrict religious groups from receiving any form of donations from individuals or groups outside the country. This would harm religious groups in two major ways. For those groups with headquarters in Nigeria it means that donations and contributions coming from their members or branches outside the country cannot be received unless the ICPC approves, just like religious groups cannot accept funds from their parent bodies or richer international partners for the advancement of their faith or even for the establishment or supporting of social causes like schools and homes for the less-privileged.

Similar restrictions would apply to international charities and philanthropic organisations such as the Lions Clubs and the Rotary Clubs, whose international foundations have been funding major intervention programmes in Nigeria. The Rotary for instance has been behind the polio eradication projects while the Lions have invested significant sums of money for the eradication of river blindness in Nigeria. All that major funding would be affected by the bottlenecks that would typically bedevil the ICPC process of people applying and waiting for months on end for the approval to come. And knowing that many of these interventions are usually emergencies, requiring prompt action to deploy finances this proposed law would bring more harm than good.

The proposed law attempts to create new duties and responsibilities on the ICPC, even where such duties have already been vested in other statutory bodies. For instance, the requirements about disclosure of sources of funds coming to an organisation from foreign sources are already covered under the Terrorism Prevention Act, the memorandum of understanding signed by the National Planning Commission with some of the voluntary organisations, the Companies and Allied Matters Act and the Banks and Other Financial Institutions Act. There already exist regulations making it mandatory for banks to report to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) certain payments made into individual or organisational accounts. It is clear that this additional and unnecessary legislation would only lead to more confusion.

But really, what is the reason for the proposal to enact a law as this? If it is about curbing crime, especially terrorism, the Terrorism Prevention Act already covers that. If it is to prevent money laundering, the Money Laundering Act is there. In fact if the above were the case then this bill would have been handled by parliamentary committees related to those issues. Curiously, this bill is being considered by the Committee on Civil Society and Donor Agencies. So we can safely say that this is targeted at curbing the activities of civil society groups. This is because the powers granted the ICPC to permit the receipt of foreign contribution is one that could be abused and used as instruments of control.

Furthermore, by proposing that the regulatory authority can prohibit a voluntary organisation from accepting foreign contribution if it is satisfied that such receipt is likely to affect the sovereignty and integrity of Nigeria, adverse diplomatic relation of any foreign country, cause religious disharmony, or lead to money laundering, the law would inadvertently create room for abuse. It might be similar to the recent overreaching attempt of the commissioner of police in the Federal Capital Territory who purported to ‘outlaw’ the civil actions of some citizens drawing attention to the abducted Chibok Girls.

This bill may be targeted at civil society groups but it would affect all voluntary organisations including churches and mosques. Go figure. So, really, who is afraid of the voluntary organisations, and why?

Every agency has its own crooks

So I set out on Friday afternoon to renew the papers for my car at the Vehicle Inspection Officer’s (VIO) office in Area 1, Abuja. I put a call through to a friend who works in that agency, but in another office location and she suggested which officer I should ask for when I get to the Area 1 office, someone I often meet for the same purpose though.

As I made to branch into the un-tarred part of the road to the VIO’s office, I noticed some of their personnel on the road, running checks on some vehicles to be sure they have their appropriate papers. And so this dude flagged me down, even as I had slowed down completely to negotiate the side road and avoid another car they had stopped. I told him, ‘gentleman I am actually on my way to renew my papers in your office’. He got into my car and asked to go along with me. He also pleads that I help pick up another man standing by there who was going with him to their office. As we moved, he asked to see my current papers and I gave to him, oblivious of the criminal intent of this VIO official.

We got to his office premises and he quickly came down and asked me to park properly and come after him. My fury button began to rise but I kept calm, parked the car and demand my papers from him. The VIO official, no let’s now call him the idiot (because he’d by then proved to be one) insists I must go with him to see his ‘oga’, with whom he expects me to discuss and renew the papers. I told him sternly that I came on my own freewill and I know where exactly I was heading and whom I was going to meet. The criminal-minded fellow would take none of that and says he wants to be ‘lenient’ with me. What on earth was that supposed to mean, I asked him, by which time he had walked into the portacabin housing his ‘oga’, who without even hearing me out had concluded (by her conduct) that her ‘dutiful’ staff had just apprehended an offender in the course of his duty for the day.

I allowed the criminal mind to state his case against me, which in his convoluted mind is that he stopped me and demanded to see my papers only for me to claim that I was actually heading to their office to renew my papers. I tried to correct him there that I was already turning into that side road with intention to go to their office when he approached me. And that was when his equally silly ‘oga’ cautioned me not to try to be ‘smart’.

What the cheek?! I blurted out and insisted I was there on a simple mission of renewing my papers and I did not understand the trash the two of them were talking about. While the man (see I have stopped calling him idiot because I am no longer angry about it) insisted he stopped me, I now told them the officer I was going to meet and the fact that I just spoke with another of their colleagues on phone before coming here.

Next, I asked the corrupt official that assuming his narrative is as he has stated, what is the offence he purports to have against me? You see, this ‘mumu’ of an officer, driven by one single interest: to extort money from a possible vulnerable motorist whose papers he thought were not updated, did not realise that my papers were yet to expire until next week. I then told him that the papers he was clutching on to as if his meals for the weekend depended on were still valid until next week. At that moment, he opened the papers and realised that he had made a fool of himself. His equally complicit superior seeing the shame they had brought on themselves in the full court of visitors and other motorists they may have harassed and squeezed some money from suddenly turned quiet. As a face saver, the man asked for my driver’s licence which I promptly produced and he shamelessly handed over my papers and disappeared while I storm out of the portacabin to transact the legitimate business I came for.

Ha, every agency has its own crooks. Chai! VIO, (pronounced around here as ‘fee-hai-oh’), una can cheat people o. All these lies you are telling, diaris God o!

LOOKING FOR GOOD CONSCIENCE IN PUBLIC SERVICE

Nigeria is a good reference point that good conscience cannot be legislated into existence in the conduct of public affairs. No matter how beautifully crafted a law is, there would always be lacunae. And once there is a lacuna, there would always be some smart (read crooked) operators and interpreters of the law to skew it to meet their ends. It is for this reason that I often say that the most dangerous crook is the one who wears a professional garb; be that person a lawyer, doctor, journalist, banker, engineer, clergy etc. They put their professional knowledge to crooked use to attain crooked results; they manipulate the system, justify the unjustifiable and defend the indefensible. Some apply this crooked means even in the exercise of public duties. And these scoundrels live among us.

We see these so often in the public space. For instance, in the course of law-making, many crooked things happen, including legislating to wealth. And so, for instance, a state legislature made up of persons who are largely helped into office or bought over by a state governor or are outright bootlickers to the governor, can in just one week pass any law proposed by that governor. And because the law, not wanting to unduly leash the legislature, never set any time for the passage of a law, the lawmakers can as well pass the law in a few hours. Even the budget law has been passed in less than two weeks in some states.

Take the case of the notorious passage of laws providing outrageous ‘retirement’ packages for state governors. Many of the laws were passed speedily with little opportunity given for debate or even citizens’ engagement. Public business therefore gets carried out as privately as possible or without any concern about public opinion or outcry.

Another area of abuse in public service is what many law officers of the state do. Let us start with the office of the attorney-general (AG). The constitution gives these officers the sole powers to institute, continue or discontinue any criminal prosecution. It did not give any guide as to when and why the AG could discontinue a case in court and so, in practice, the AG is a law unto him/herself.

There is however an expectation, which is often not met, that someone who holds such an important position would necessarily lift him/herself above the pedestrian level of thinking and the shenanigans that the partisan political class brings into governance. But what do we have instead? We see AGs who desecrate the temple of justice by working in cahoots with the executive arm or the politicos to abuse human rights of citizens and breach the clear positions of the constitution.

I recall how, under former President Olusegun Obasanjo, the federal government used crooked means to attempt to remove some state governors from office. In Anambra, Oyo and Plateau states, the minority members of the Houses of Assembly claimed to have suspended the leadership and majority of the members and further purported to have impeached the state governors. While the shenanigans lasted, the federal government favoured the renegades with justification coming from the office of the federal attorney general.

Increasingly, every state facility is being used as personal property of the chief executive and of the political party they belong. At the federal level, the presidential villa regularly hosts meetings (board of trustees and national working committees) of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), while state government houses also host similar meetings of the respective political parties where each governor belongs. Flags and insignias of political parties are hoisted in government houses, offices of government officials and official cars, thus suggesting that the state is a territory which the political parties capture in political warfare and those facilities are the spoils of war. And when the state governors switch parties, as many of them do, the paraphernalia of the new party of allegiance drape the same old public facilities.

But why do public officers act, not in the public good, but for private gains? Sometimes, it may be sheer ignorance, but it seems that in many instances, these officials never cared for what the public good is about in the first place. This is where the National Orientation Agency (NOA) is again expected to work to fulfil its mandate. It needs to design programmes that would emphasise appreciation of the huge responsibility upon public officials. Professional bodies need to exercise more of their disciplinary roles on members, including when they pervert their professions while carrying out public service. Monitoring bodies and officials, including auditors, should insist on separating private and public costs when reviewing spending. That way, we would see less and less of private expenditure being forced on the rest of us as a collective.

- See more at: http://www.thenicheng.com/looking-for-good-conscience-in-public-service/#sthash.DckwyDev.dpuf

Poor England the football capital

Poor England! The sacred headquarters of world football. Dotted with football cathedrals and sanctuaries. Poor England. Where great football is played each week. Yet when it matters most, England, poor England gets buried. Buried by the great footballers it gives space to play in its football arenas. As I type this, I look around the room, far away here in Nigeria. I see long faces of disappointed fans as England gets unravelled again. (Written, June 19, 2014).

#BringBackOurPoliticians

Okay now, let's start another campaign, #BringBackOurPoliticians (David Mark; Liyel Imoke; Ibrahim Shema; Bala Mohammed; Nyesome Wike; Edem Duke; Boni Haruna; Viola Onwuleri; Adamu Gumba; Godfrey Ali Gaiya and Tamuno Danagogo etc and their likes who went to Brazil for the World Cup all expenses paid by the Nigerian state).
Why do we always have to send such a huge number of sports tourists to games, running up bills and squandering our lean resources, even much more than we spend on the football team?
Why must these privileged citizens who can afford to foot their bills and have nothing to add to our preparation, efforts, performance and results at the World Cup, be pampered and lavished at public expense? And they are being paid allowances for holidaying!
Enough of this crap!
Yes, we love football but we cannot be fooled and robbed through it by government officials.

On Father’s Day, I cried

Yesterday I cried. It was Father’s Day. No I was not sad, but I cried because I was touched. I was touched by my two young daughters. Eme is 9 going to 10 and Ama is 8, super 8, I must add. They pulled me into my bedroom that evening and made me sit down on the bed while they the sat, flanking me.

My wife was in the kitchen, oblivious of the scene. The duo of angels poured out their hearts to me.

They acknowledged it was Father’s Day and they’d have loved to buy me a present. But they had no money then. And they thought mom didn’t have extra money either. But they just wanted to show me how much they love me still.

Both girls held my shoulders and my hands. They took turns to pray for me, that I be the best dad that can be; that God favours and blesses me. I found me crying as they prayed. It was so touching I couldn’t hold back tears. And then, the girls cried too. They were touched that they saw their father cry. But then fathers are also human. And the expression of love by daughters can bring out the humanity in us father. It was then I remembered how special I am to God, to be blessed and surrounded by women who love me so much.

Making the best of fatherhood

Yippee, it’s Father’s Day. And it is also the season of the FIFA World Cup. What a brilliant coincidence we have here this year. After all, football and fathers go together. The bad news is that many men, fathers inclusive, abandon fatherhood during football seasons as this and hang their passions and mood on the performance of their football teams. Strictly speaking then, some men are absentee fathers, not just physically but even more, psychologically at this time.

Many people (men, especially) see the football season as excuse from duties and responsibilities they owe to other members of the family. In the build up to the World Cup, just as it happened four years ago, there were several jokes going viral on the internet giving notices and warnings to wives, girlfriends and female family members about how they should conduct themselves so as not to get in the way of the men who are fanatical football fans. The rules of conduct include surrendering the TV remote control; not blocking the views of the men as they sit with eyes glued to the TV and not to ask ‘silly’ questions or make fun of the man’s temperament or team when they are not doing well.

The good news with this season however is that due to the time difference between Brazil and Nigeria, most of the matches would be played when it is night, sometimes very late at night in Nigeria. On that score, one expects the men to stay home to watch. This is more so as the security situation in the country does not support spending time at viewing centres for fear of terrorist attacks in some major cities. Staying at home to watch the games should effectively take care of the problem of fathers who often keep late nights.

I mention late nights and fatherhood because I have recently been involved in getting information from wives and young persons on what they love about their husbands and fathers and what they hope to see these men change about their lives. One of the key issues the women and youth focused on was presence or lack of it in their lives by their husbands and fathers. One particular respondent was not only worried that the husband stays out late but that he even fails to share information about his movements with the family, even in this time of insecurity.

Another area of concern for many respondents was the failure of fathers to befriend their family members enough. And this is a veritable point. Many fathers simply don’t know much about their children. They don’t know about their progress or lack of it in their academics or social life. They don’t know what interests their children, what gives them joy, excites them or even scares them. Apparently many fathers only see their roles as limited to the provision of finances to meet family needs. But education for instance goes beyond merely paying school fees. As fathers we need to find out how studious our children are. We must find time to play with the children and go through their school work including homework. We should talk more with them about their teachers and friends in school and know more about what is happening to them.

While it is good to work hard to provide for our children and the entire family, we cannot overlook the greater responsibility of fatherhood which requires physical and psychological presence in the upbringing of our children. That cannot be replaced by anything else. Our country needs role models in different areas of development. Men, as fathers must rise to the occasion and fill these needs through exemplary conduct in every field of endeavour, starting from the home. This will go a long way to rescue our future from the precipice that we seem to be perched upon currently.

If we don’t do so, we will be buttressing the oft quoted statement of Philip Whitmore Snr, that ‘any fool can be a father but it takes a real man to be a daddy’.

Happy Father’s Day and, yes, enjoy the World Cup, responsibly at home.

A LONG BOO FOR MBU

Police Commissioner of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Joseph Mbu, must really enjoy the limelight, no matter the reason. Or how else can one explain his totally unnecessary attempt at notoriety few days ago when he jumped on the wrong side of the #BringBackOurGirls campaign? Until he spoke, few remembered that he was the police boss in the nation’s capital.

By Monday evening, news filtered in that the man, who just returned from fighting a long-drawn out battle with the Rivers State Governor, Rotimi Amaechi, had ordered immediate end to all protests connected to the #BringBackOurGirls campaign in the FCT. He claimed to have ‘banned’ the ‘protest’ because it was becoming a source of security risk.

Not surprisingly, a few citizens who all along saw the BBOG campaigns as nothing but a political plot aimed at discrediting the Jonathan administration celebrated the action of Mbu. Some news reports actually said things like, “Government bans BringBackOurGirls protests in Abuja”. When did the action of one out of at least 37 commissioners of police become equated to the position of government? Anyway, the good news, though, is that Mbu was on his own; for hardly had the news died down than the office of the Inspector General of Police (IGP) issued a disclaimer. I truly wonder how Mbu felt when his boss took the wind out of his sail, more so when such put down was done on behalf of the IGP by an officer lower in rank to Mbu.

The rejection of Mbu’s seemingly abrasive bent to the maintenance of law and order is a welcome one. But while Mbu’s over-reaching order lasted, many were quick to point out, and I restate for the avoidance of a recurrence by Mbu or anyone else, that the constitution of Nigeria guarantees a right to peaceful assembly. This is a right and not some privilege to be bestowed on citizens or moderated at the whims of the state and its officials.

Demonstrations, protests, campaigns etc are necessary appurtenances to democracy; otherwise we create a nation of zombies. That much the IGP’s office recognised in the counter statement when it reiterated that the present Police High Command has “demonstrated a very strong sense of democratic policing”.

Perhaps the likes of Mbu need some lessons in this democratic policing to know that it does not lie in the mouth of a CP to describe citizen’s actions to deepen democracy, rule of law and strengthen security, as an act of ‘lawlessness’, as Mbu did.

Prior to Mbu’s attempt to clamp down on the peaceful protest (which is nothing more than a sit out event), some citizens had also criticised the protests. Some insinuated that the actions were inimical to efforts by government to secure the release of the abducted girls, who by the way have been in captivity for more than 50 days now. Someone even suggested that the citizens’ protests could lead to mistakes by the military due to ‘intense and unnecessary pressure’. My immediate response to such an unprofessional suggestion is that no military worth its salt could be so distracted by the actions of citizens sitting out in a public park and calling on the state to do something to bring back abducted children.

Just asking, where was Mbu in 2010 when citizens, tired of the shenanigans that surrounded the illness of President Umaru Yar’Adua and refusal of his kitchen cabinet to let go of power, went on the streets of Abuja to protest? We, the citizens, protested and demanded from whatever was left of the government at that time to do the needful and ensure the smooth transfer of presidential powers from the ailing president to his deputy, then Vice President Goodluck Jonathan, to become acting president. And so when some commentators and government apologists turn round today to get angry about protests by the same populace against government, be it for the mess in the petroleum sector and mismanagement of public finances or in the the failure to contend terrorism, some of us shudder at how soon we forget.

Truth is this; presidency was birthed in public demonstration and demands that enough was enough. It cannot possibly turn around to hate or try to clamp down on public protests. What Mbu did clearly deserves boo and that is what he got last week. May this be a long boo for Mbu and his likes!

http://www.thenicheng.com/a-long-boo-for-mbu/#sthash.3i1a97Qt.zUxacGNm.dpbs

Political economy of pilgrimage sponsorship

A few weeks ago, the Catholic Bishop of Ekiti Diocese, Felix Ajakaye, urged government to stop spending money to sponsor people for pilgrimages. This is a position I have consistently maintained over the years. And so, when I found a religious leader share the same view, I quickly aligned my views with his and agreed with his argument that religion is a personal and private matter for each citizen, and the state should stay away from it.

  

It is good that the Committee on Religion at the on-going national conference, co-chaired by Ajakaye and Nurudeen Lemu, has proposed government’s withdrawal from pilgrimage sponsorship. The committee’s report was up for debate this past week at the confab. Happily, the plenary of the confab accepted the recommendation. What I cannot understand, however, is the contention against the suggestion to scrap pilgrim welfare boards and commissions across the country, that being a natural consequence of government’s discontinuation of sponsorship. It was on that note the conference broke off last Tuesday and hopefully will consider it again in this new week and do the needful.  

Religion, no doubt, is a very passionate issue in Nigeria, and discussions around it often make adherents of concerned faiths go sentimental and giddy. I expect this proposition to bring that out in citizens. But truth be told, we cannot continue to spend public funds whimsically in funding usually privileged citizens or their cronies for what is at best ‘religious tourism’. All those talks about supporting pilgrims to go to ‘holy lands’ to pray for the peace and progress of the country are mere appeal to sentiments and take advantage of citizen’s, sometimes mistaken, passion about their faiths.  

What is pilgrimage all about anyway? It is a journey to certain places of importance to one’s faith and meant to strengthen such faith or belief. There is no compulsion to do them. In fact, there is no evidence that someone who has gone on pilgrimage becomes a better adherent, more pious, less corrupt or a better human being than those who have not. Even in the faiths that urge adherents to go on pilgrimage, they are only required to do so if they can afford it. Relying on government sponsorship, therefore, is enough to show that the person cannot afford and should stand disqualified.  

Clearly, this pilgrimage thing has become an elitist culture and status symbol. Little wonder, therefore, that Nigerians have coined for themselves titles and descriptions depicting their supposed exalted religiosity as a result of accomplishing a trip. So now we have so many ‘alhaji’ and ‘alhaja’ honorific among Nigerians than you have among citizens of countries with many more Muslims such as Malaysia and Indonesia. We also have a growing band of Christians who pride themselves with the suffix of ‘JP’ by which they mean ‘Jerusalem Pilgrim’ – and I often wonder why they don’t also have Rome Pilgrim (RP) and Athens Pilgrim (AP), since they also visit those places in the name of pilgrimage. With all these Nigerian-coined JPs, the universally-recognised description of JP (justice of the peace) is being diminished in Nigeria. I equally wonder why it doesn't prick the highly religious consciences of some of these people that their assumed statuses are products of stolen funds, abuse of public office or trust or are attained on account of corrupt appropriation, misappropriation or misuse of public funds.  

Yet the fact that the funds belong to ‘the public’ is enough attraction for many Nigerians to seek ways of benefiting from this freebie. This explains why citizens whose faith do not even demand or advice on pilgrimage as a cardinal act of faith still insist on making an event out of this, just to benefit from the freebies and thereby attain religious ‘equality’ too.   

With such a setting, those in the famed ‘corridors of power’ have also devised corrupt schemes for creaming off our common wealth to sustain this folly of state-sponsored pilgrimage. They also use it to oil their wheels of political patronage and even compromise some clerics and other opinion leaders.

  

Nigeria is a multi-cultural and multi-religious state. There is freedom of worship. That means, there is no limit to the number of religions that can be practised or adhered to by citizens. To be sure, Nigerians are free to choose widely and outside Christianity, Islam and what is often erroneously called ‘traditional religion’.  

 For the state to guarantee freedom of worship, it must not only allow citizens to freely exercise such freedoms. But it must not go to the extent of assisting some of them to exercise such freedoms. If the state is involved in Christian and Muslim pilgrimages, how does it justify failure to get involved in the pilgrimages of other religious groups? Even among the Christian and Muslim communities, some denominations and sects are involved in other or different pilgrimages to the birthplace or headquarters of their groups, even here in Nigeria, how come the state doesn't get involved in sponsoring or supporting pilgrims to those places?

http://www.thenicheng.com/political-economy-of-pilgrimage-sponsorship/#sthash.mj44Mwbu.47Gulpe2.dpbs