It Smells Like Christmas But Not in Chibok

“Wow! It smells like Christmas.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that this season reminds me of Christmas.”

“But it is Christmas.”

“Really?”

“Yea man, there’s Christmas in the air, that’s what you are smelling.”

“I see.”

“You are smelling the dry weather and dusty roads. You know what I always say about this season?”

“What’s that?”

“‘O, what fun it is to throw banger on a dusty harmattan night’.”

“Well…”

“Well what? Be merry man, be merry. This is December for crying out loud.”

“Oh, stop that your ‘crying out loud’ nonsense.”

“What’s eating you bro?”

“‘Crying out loud, crying out loud’, some people have been crying out loud for about 260 days now and nobody gives a damn about their cries.”

“Who? For wia be dat?”

“Please, please, please get serious man. Everywhere across the land. And have you never heard of Chibok girls?”

“Oh, that? I never knew you were part of the #BringBackOurGirls…”

“Oh shut up man! That’s usually the problem with some of you in this country.#BringBackOurGirls is not an association or club, it’s a movement. And I don’t have to be from Chibok to identify with the girls.”

“I know, Bro. Just that sometimes, we are too preoccupied with so many different issues in this country that we tend to forget about the Chibok girls.”

“Truly, I don’t know what this country is doing to rescue the girls, assuming they are all still alive and safe at all.”

“I pray they are. God will not let any harm come upon them.”

“So typical…you just mentioned God now, right? God has endowed us with common sense to act.”

“I guess we are trying.”

“‘Trying’? That’s what we ever do and nothing but try.”

“What would you rather we did then?”

“Results…that’s all we want. The world is not interested in excuses but in results.”

“Hmm…”

“Truly, I don’t know how our government officials sleep soundly every night since the girls were abducted. It must be either their conscience is in slumber or outright dead.”

“I think I get your point there.”

“I wonder what Chibok is like this very moment.”

“I can’t imagine it myself.”

“There would be dust in the air no doubt, maybe cold nights too but the setting must be eerie and funereal. For them, the smell in the air would not evoke Christmas or love. It would be the continued reminder of the forced absence of their sources of joy, the very girls who last year sang carols in the town are still unaccounted for. So, how would they know it’s Christmas?”

“Sad, very sad, Bro. It’s a shame!”

“And it’s not only the Chibok community. This Christmas-lessness affects many others who suffered preventable losses during the year. All the people bombed to death across the country through acts of insurgence yet nobody is made to account. And what about the scores of young people killed in the Abba Moro supervised-Nigeria Immigration Service job recruitment scam?”

“I almost forgot that too. And the minister and other officials in that ministry are going to celebrate elaborately this Christmas.”

“I can bet you; hampers, rice, chicken etc have been exchanged several times by all these inept officials to celebrate their year of grand failure. And they do so because they don’t give a damn.”

http://blogs.premiumtimesng.com/?p=166404

http://www.punchng.com/opinion/its-christmas-but-not-in-chibok/

Is the oil party over yet?

Back in the 1970s, in the height of our oil boom, our then Head of State, Gen. Yakubu Gowon, was alleged to have boasted that Nigeria’s problem was not how to make money but how to spend it. That was a perfect description of how giddy we strode with swagger as an oil-rich country. Soon, our appetite for consuming what we needed and what we didn’t need became our hallmark. We abandoned agriculture and settled for the new deal in town: oil. Or maybe we should say here that we were intoxicated by the substance.

Truth be told, oil did us well, especially in the famed days of oil boom before the oil doom. We built several infrastructure across the land – roads, railways, schools, hospitals, airports, seaports, stadia etc. We hosted several international events and competitions and established our voice internationally as an authentic African voice. Oh, and we played the big brother to many other countries, even picking up some of their mundane bills like salaries. Who never knew of Nigeria? Well, those who lived in outer space maybe.

Yet it seemed that the oil was also our undoing. Apart from driving up our tastes to a point of inordinacy, it made us lazy about other sources of income generation such as agriculture, tourism and even tax collection. Why bother about any ‘hard work’ when we had the substance which turned to wealth, almost instantaneously. The interesting part was that we didn’t need to know the process of harvesting the substance from the soil. Those who needed it more than us were willing to come and apply their ingenuity to drill it out, tell us how much they had drilled and pay us what we agreed on. Many said the process allowed us to be cheated by the ‘driller-marketer’ which our technologically-advanced partners are. But we never bother because in this romance called ‘joint venture’ we are in; we the rent-collectors are guaranteed our rents, no matter the quantum.

The very rent gave us smart toys, squeaky clean designer clothes and perfumes that attracted friends and foes alike to recognise our place in the firmament of oil-rich countries. But then, it also created our club of local oil sheikhs and our nouveaux riche who became the new overlords over fellow citizens who were banished to a life of poverty, to eat from the hands of the oily men and women. The latter’s only ‘pedigree’ was usually connection to state power. And the state? That became synonymous with waste and ineptitude.

The state played yoyo with the oil. And because we still rely largely on imports of the refined products (petrol etc) of what we sell in raw form (crude oil), the cost of the refined product stayed high whenever the international oil price was high. And when the oil price dips, we still suffer because, being an oil-producer, it means our income flow is reduced, with attendant negative effect on the ordinary citizens. In a sense, therefore, it is, ‘heads they (government) win, tails we (the citizens) lose’. Such hanky-panky by government always brought out the anger in the people with some praying that they wished the country never had the magic substance after all.

Every run comes to an end after all. And so many of us saw this coming, while many pretended it would never happen. Even now that it has happened upon us, many have still not heard or have refused to hear. But as the saying goes, if it feels like it, it probably is. The party is over, or isn’t it? The party of swimming in the ocean of oil money (read ‘oyel money’, for good effect). In the last few weeks, our petrodollars have refused to come tumbling in as we often assume and expect. We need to wake up and smell the coffee, or is it the stench of burnt oil? Whatever it is, we are in trouble and the earlier the country and its citizens realised that, the better.

We need to not only diversify our economy to bring in more money from the abundance of sources, but perhaps, more importantly, we need to curb our penchant for excessive consumption and wastage at the personal and corporate levels. Many of us have campaigned for smaller government in terms of the number of political offices. The time to implement that is now. It is equally important to cut the official and unofficial perks of such offices, including the costs for running illegal offices such as those of first ladies or wives of government officials at any level. We need to tell ourselves the hard truth that the oil party is over!

- See more at: http://www.thenicheng.com/oil-party-yet/#sthash.qYDqy8L5.dpuf

GEJ v GMB rematch 2015

As you read this, we have just 62 days to the February 14 general election in Nigeria. Once again, the election will square up incumbent President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan (GEJ) against General Muhammadu Buhari (GMB). This much emerged last Wednesday and Thursday at the national conventions of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC). Both men were the top finishers in the 2011 elections, a contest which left in its aftermath, sorrow, death and blood, following days of post-election violence across the land. Should the planned rematch raise worries?

The worries stem from the post-2011 election incidents. This is because both men have been anything but friendly towards each other, post-2011. There have been overt and subtle allegations of either promoting violence or incompetence in handling incidents of violence. Even if both men do not openly deride each other, their followers and supporters tend to exacerbate the gulf between. The effect of this on the political space has been enormous.

Interestingly, the processes that threw both men up as candidates in 2011 seem to have played out again this year, but in a reverse manner. In 2011, President Jonathan fought for a presidential election ticket from his party against formidable oppositions and still got through. Buhari on the other hand got the ticket of his then party, Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), on a platter, even as he ‘owned’ that party.

Today, conversely, Jonathan got the PDP ticket with little stress, even as the party blatantly refused to allow other interested party members a fair chance to give it a shot. The signpost of what a party’s internal democracy should be was on Wednesday and Thursday when the APC held what could be described as the best party primary in recent times. Interestingly, the main legacy parties that formed APC – namely the ANPP, CPC and the ACN, including its progenitor, Alliance for Democracy (AD) – had reputations for non-democratic decision-making. They were in the habit of pressuring aspirants to abandon their ambitions and allow the preferred candidate of the ruling class to prevail. All that became history last week. All the five aspirants in the APC stood election and wooed about 7,000 delegates with Buhari emerging the clear winner.

As both men go into the race, one hopes they would focus on the real issues besetting the country such as corruption, the collapsing economy, insurgency, poor state of roads and other infrastructure and provision of social services such as health and education. Just as the country begins to groan under the effect of austerity, we want to know how the aspirants plan to get us out of this economic mess through sound policies which must necessarily include cutting down frivolous costs associated with governance.

And while they consider the above, we should remind them to cut off the sophistry and tell us their real blueprints for addressing those issues. We should remind both men and their managers not to further divide the country into the fragments of ethno-religious identities. Those identities, after all, do not define honesty, integrity, competence and commitments. They only appeal to our base instincts which are not sustainable. As the Chinese saying goes, ‘it doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice’.

It is time for GEJ and GMB to commit to issues-based campaign and rein in their supporters from doing anything that could lead to violence before, during and after the elections. And for the blind supporters out there who see the elections as ‘do-or-die’, we should also remind them that we have a country to protect and defend. After all, if we lose our country after the general elections, it would not matter who won the elections.

http://www.thenicheng.com/gej-v-gmb-rematch-2015/ 

The big man and his entourage

After my initial fits and starts attempt at reading Michaela Wrong’s book, It’s Our Time to Eat, I have recently got into the groove of it. The book tells the story of John Kithongo, a principled activist who was hired by the Kenyan government to head its anti-corruption agency, the Kenyan Anti-Corruption Commission (KACC).

Kithongo’s story reflects much of what we see across Africa. It tells the story of the multi-facetted nature of corruption in seeping through the building blocks of society. There are several lessons to learn from the book. One is that the fight against corruption is herculean and the commitment of governments often suspect. Page after page, I keep seeing Nigeria’s local context in Wrong’s book. Just take a look at the following quote, for instance:

“Reporting Africa, I’ve always been puzzled by the readiness otherwise intelligent diplomats, businessmen and technocrats show in embracing the ‘Blame the Entourage’ line of argument. The Old Man himself is OK’ runs this refrain echoed at various times from Guinea to Cote d’Ivoire, Zaire to Gabon, Tanzania to Zambia. 
“Deeply principled, a devout Muslim/Protestant/Catholic, he observes, in his own life, a strict moral code. It’s his aides/wife/sons who are the problem. They’re like leeches. If only he’d realise what they are doing in his name and put a stop to it. But of course he adores them. It’s his one weakness. Such a shame.”

The argument has always struck me as a form of naivety so extreme it verges on intellectual dishonesty. In countries where presidents have done their best to centralise power, altering constitutions, winning over the army and emasculating the judiciary, the notion that key decisions can be taken without their approval is laughable. If a leader is surrounded by shifty, money-grabbing aides and family members, it’s because he likes it that way. These are the people he feels at ease with, whose working methods he respects. Far from being an aberration, the entourage is a faithful expression of the autocrat’s own proclivities.”

How convenient it is for people to avoid talking truth to power but flip-flop to blame the excesses and, yes, corruption of such leaders on their entourage. We hear that a lot in Nigeria at different levels. The apologists of the incumbents ascribe every achievement recorded on such officials, yet for every failure, they find a way of blaming it on their aides. And truth is, our government officials are often very smart and smooth enough in their corruption as to claim ignorance of what is going on under them. That explains why every leader is often described as having ‘tried his/her best’.

That also explains why, whenever someone is ever jailed for corruption and abuse, it is never the top dog but at best, many of the numerous aides. The exception to this was the conviction of former Delta State governor, James Ibori. But then, such conviction was only achieved outside Nigeria after years of legal rigmarole at home.

For those who try to extricate the chief executives from the actions of their subordinates, they forget that the chief executive, in a winner-takes-all political system as ours, hires and fires his aides, not the other way. As such, the buck, as they say, stops at the big man’s table because he made the choices. They should take full responsibilities for the team’s excesses, just as they do with the successes.

So, where the police boss goofs, the president should take the can if he fails to call him to order. When a minister misappropriates funds, the president should not claim ignorance. And when a commissioner is found out to be living under the shadows of a forged certificate or fraudulent academic claims and still retains his exalted office two years after, it stops being just his problem, but a big question mark on the integrity of his boss, the governor.

Perhaps our problem flows from the workings of our traditional societies where the king can do no wrong or is at best excused of his excesses. But then, we operate a different political system in the name of presidential democracy where the standards are different. So, let our big men take responsibility for themselves and the actions of their entourage.

See more at: http://www.thenicheng.com/big-man-entourage/#sthash.lfXpMP9k.dpuf

Austerity? Cut governance cost

So, now, it is confirmed that we are officially in ‘austerity’. The last time we had that was sometime in 1982 under the Shehu Shagari administration. A few weeks ago, Finance Minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, announced stiffer economic policies following dwindling prices of oil, the country’s mega bucks spinner. Although she avoided referring to it as austerity, the indicators are all too obvious. These include the devaluation of the national currency (the naira), increase in lending rates and higher taxes on certain luxury goods. That our economy was not on solid ground has always been known and appreciated by many Nigerians, even when the government kept pretending. The good thing is that our government has now accepted the reality and has shown interest in confronting the challenge.

  

While not claiming to be a better expert on the economy than the finance minister who also goes by the superfluous title of ‘Coordinating Minister for the Economy’, I have a few suggestions on how to manage our economy better than we do currently. While the focus would be mainly on the federal government, the issues apply equally, if not more, with state and even local governments.

  

One major step to take is to cut down on the cost of governance. The starting point is the number of cabinet members in the government. Averagely, we find a crowd of 40 or more cabinet ministers. I appreciate that the constitution requires the president to appoint as many ministers as there are states in Nigeria. That translates to at least 36, or 37 if we treat the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, as a state. Until that provision of the constitution is changed, could we at least ask the president to be prudent as to limit his ministers’ list to 37?

  

It is also important to prune the number of the president’s aides. In June 2011, President Goodluck Jonathan sought and obtained the approval of Senate to appoint 20 advisers, but at a particular time and in apparent breach of the number of aides approved for him, he had at least 24. Notice that some of these adviser positions are irrelevant and superfluous to exist with ministers and ministers of state for related areas of government. Added to this is the fact that these motley crowd of ministers and advisers carry along their own list of advisers and assistants, complete with salaries, allowances and other perks of office, thus further bloating up the cost of governance.

  

Yet another contentious addition to the cost of governance are the huge costs run up in the name of governance by the wife of the president and wives of state governors and even wives of local government councils chairmen. Those positions, not recognised by the constitution, have since been illegally elevated to offices for spending public funds which are hardly accounted for.

  

Another waste point in public expenditure that needs to be addressed is the number of aircraft in the presidential fleet. It seems we end up buying a new aircraft every other year such that, at the last count, we had about 10 aircraft in the presidential fleet. This is scandalous for a country that has no official airline. Pray, what do we need all that number of aircraft for, given the high cost of maintenance?

  

Even more nauseating in the list of wastages in governance is the fact that every government – federal, state and local – criminally subsidises the political party in power at each level. This they do through several ways, including hosting of political party meetings in government houses, using public funds to foot the costs of meals, even when they do not pay for the cost of venues. In other instances, government officials use public funds to attend purely partisan functions that have no bearing on their official duties. See, for instance, the number of cabinet members, including the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), who keep attending the rallies of the political support group for President Jonathan, ahead of the presidential elections. Related to this is the fact that most governors do not just sit down in their states to govern. Rather they spend more time travelling to and virtually living in Abuja, running up unnecessary costs, in pursuit of political advantages.

  

And need we remind government again that pilgrimages, being religious exercises, are purely personal concerns of individuals, and as such government has no business spending money on anyone to attend them? The time is ripe for government to stop this spending, more so when the funds are usually splashed on privileged citizens who can afford such luxuries.   It is apparent from the above that it doesn’t take so much thinking to cut down cost of governance after all. What is needed is the political will to do so.

See more at: http://www.thenicheng.com/austerity-cut-governance-cost/#sthash.86fUFryL.dpuf

EVERYTHING DEPENDS ON THE BOSS

"Reporting Africa, I've always been puzzled by the readiness otherwise intelligent diplomats, businessmen and technocrats show in embracing the 'Blame the Entourage' line of argument. 'The Old Man himself is OK', runs this refrain, echoed at various times from Guinea to Ivory Coast, Zaire to Gabon, Tanzania to Zambia. 
'Deeply principled, a devout Muslim/Protestant/Catholic, he observes, in his own life, a strict moral code. It's his aides/wife/sons who are the problem. They're like leeches. If only he'd realise what they are doing in his name and put a stop to it. But of course he adores them. It's his one weakness. Such a shame.' 
The argument has always struck me as a form of naievity so extreme it verges on intellectual dishonesty. In countries where presidents have done their best to centralise power, altering constitutions, winning over the army and emasculating the judiciary, the notion that key decisions can be taken without their approval is laughable. If a leader is surrounded by shifty, money-grabbing aides and family members, it's because he likes it that way. These are the people he feels at ease with, whose working methods he respects. Far from being an aberration, the entourage is a faithful expression of the autocrat's own proclivities."
(Michela Wrong, 'It's Our Time to Eat', p. 181.)

Lest we lose the nail of democracy

For the want of a nail the shoe was lost

For the want of a shoe the horse was lost

For the want of a horse the rider was lost

For the want of a rider the battle was lost

For the want of a battle the kingdom was lost

And all for the want of a horseshoe nail

(Benjamin Franklin)

The above rhyme frighteningly sums up what has been happening to Nigeria’s hard-won democracy as it is being desecrated by a band of politicians whose guiding principle is self, driving force is power and inspiration is lucre.  As we travel towards another era of political war and the sharing of the spoils thereof, the politicians are again at each other’s jugular as they jostle to grab every opportunities.

In the quests for individual diadems, they brook no obstacle. In fact, in the altar of politics, nothing is too sacrosanct to be sacrificed. That much has been in display of late in Nigeria. Governance has since taken a back seat, where they ever existed. It is now politics, dirty, grimy, soulless politics.

See the mess they have made of political party’s internal elections. See the shenanigans all over the land, in many state houses of assembly such as Rivers, Edo and lately, Ekiti and Ebonyi. At another level, the police, under the control and authority of the Executive arm are being used to lay siege on the National Assembly through the attempt to frustrate and stampede out the Speaker of the House of Representatives.

The event of last Thursday, where the speaker and other legislators were denied free access to their offices and later tear-gassed by the police, remains the greatest assault on democracy. Every time I train or talk to people about democracy, I stress the fact that the existence of the legislature as an independent arm of government is what defines democracy. This is as opposed to the era of the military where the other two arms of government – Executive and the Judiciary existed. Thus, the Legislature is the engine room of democracy. An attack on this therefore is a clear attack at the very foundation of democracy.

It insults the sensibilities of Nigerians for the police to do what they did and the president’s spokesperson, Doyin Okupe, claims the presidency has no hands in it but that the police are doing their legitimate duty. Nigerians have had a harrowing experience watching acrobatic displays by desperate lawmakers who had to scale fences to gain access into the National Assembly. We watched as news reporters struggled to report the news in tear gassed environment, coughing and choking in front of television cameras. We saw legislators panting, clothes torn and some close to fainting for the same reason. And I kept wondering, what if someone had dropped dead as it happened in 2007 with Dr Aminu Safana in the House after one of the fighting sessions?

Someone asked why Speaker Aminu Tambuwal and the other fence-scaling representatives did not just turn back home rather than put on such ‘un-parliamentary’ displays. Truth is if they had been unwise enough to do so, they would have been done with. Later when the House sat, I saw a few of the PDP bigwigs like Deputy Speaker Emeka Ihedioha and Leo Ogor in the chambers. Who knows if they would have done the abracadabra of leading a few legislators to claim to remove the speaker had he and his supporters not forced themselves in there? And that is what just happened in Ekiti state where seven members claimed to have removed the speaker in a 26-member House and the state governor now recognises the criminal leadership of the House.

And while all these happen, there are many loose cannons in government circles mouthing political obscenities and sounding drums of war. The latest is Governor Ibrahim Shema of Katsina State shown in a trending online video, describing the opposition to his political party in the state as ‘cockroaches’! Yes, you read that correctly. It was the same description of hate used in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide. And just like in Rwanda, the man in Katsina was in the video urging his supporters to squash the ‘cockroaches’.

Pray these politicians don’t destroy this democracy by first losing the nail.

Political sinfulness and governance miracles

Nigeria is an interesting country and its people are even more confounding. Our love for and belief in miracles is unparalleled.  The word, ‘paradox’ finds expression here too. Here you find students who do everything but study; yet they look forward to fantastic results at the end of examinations. They may even run after some prayer contractors who promise them miraculous success in such examinations, rather than sit down to study. Process isn’t one of our strong points. So no matter what someone is doing or is not doing, it is still okay if he/she comes out reeking of sudden, huge wealth. ‘He/she has arrived’, many would say or ‘he/she is blessed’. I have heard of a so-called ‘miracle money’ wherein some religious adherents are promised sudden monetary windfall or payment into their bank account for doing absolutely nothing. It is a new wave of religiosity that beats the imagination of many right-thinking people.

It is not only in the realm of religion that we see this contradiction. It is all over the place. One area is in politics. Although politics here is full of sharp practices, fraudulent behaviours, lies and violence, it beats me when citizens expect to see good governance emanating from the cesspit that our politics is. This has led many of us to conclude that the country is not honestly ready for real democracy, the type that brings about the famed ‘dividends of democracy’. And the reasons are many. Here are a few ways we do the wrong thing and expect a good result by way of miracles.

Where in the world do we hear of citizens paying a fee to their political party to qualify to seek nomination as standard bearer? And even if that exists, are the sums paid so embarrassingly high as here? Pray, how much is the official and legitimate earnings of the president of Nigeria that the two major political parties would demand N27m and N22m respectively for aspirants seeking to be the parties’ presidential candidates? And the citizens, ever passionate believers in miracles expect the aspirants in this process to come into office and devote their lives to giving everyone a brighter future. That must be some great expectation to think that the aspirants will not first recoup and seek profit for their investments.

We breed a class of politicians who do not believe in democracy. This is because while democracy is hinged on the freedom of choice by citizens on who should lead or represent them, today’s politicians abhor the promotion of such freedom to choose. Instead, they try to foist ‘consensus’ candidates on the populace. Someone said recently that whenever a Nigerian (man) says ‘that is our culture’, then watch it, a woman’s right is about to be breached. Similarly, when politicians talk about ‘consensus’ candidacy, watch it, for someone’s right and privilege to aspire for a political position may be at the risk of a breach.

And for all the teeming contractors and professional praise singers who supposedly brought their hard-earned incomes to purchase forms for politicians even more privileged than them, did they really believe many citizens were fooled by such lies? And assuming the facts were as they claimed, what is in it for them by way of payback? A free and fair contract awarding system is certainly not a natural outcome of such but a miraculous expectation.

What about social, cultural and religious affiliates of persons in government who put much pressure and make so many demands from these persons to bring in illicit funds and patronage to the group? Yet they expect good governance and prudence in state finances. That again is political miracle or great expectation. And the delegates at party primaries who for a few bundles of money (sometimes laundered) and some other material items like cars, plasma television would readily give their votes to the highest bidder, they should kiss goodbye to any miracle of good governance four years hence.

Whether or not democracy and good governance thrive in Nigeria is not going to be dependent only on the politicians, but the citizens themselves who know what is right but sit on the fence, suck up to the wrong doers or claim weakness to act in the face of tyranny.

Why PDP senators must get back to work

It turned out last week that senators of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, many of whom were outsmarted by their state governors in the party’s congress held the previous weekend, decided to carry out what may be termed a “work to rule” in Nigeria’s labour lexicon. They were angry with their party but they exacted their anger on the country, claiming instead to be directing it at President Goodluck Jonathan. In Nigeria’s peculiar democracy, the line separating a political party from the government it leads is almost non-existent. The result is that the elected President of the country becomes a maximum ruler, using state apparatuses and resources to unfairly control his party at all levels. This humunguous power is replicated at a lower level by the state governors, even as the President still serves as a “headmaster” to them all.

But the state governors have since pooled their powers and resources together to give the President a run for his money, never mind the pun. This has resulted into a rub-my-back-I-rub-yours or quid pro quo arrangement between President Jonathan and the governors, where they call the shots in our politics. This alliance is what has left our senators on the wrong side of the political grabbing. While the PDP has almost certainly reserved the presidential standard-bearer slot to incumbent President Jonathan, the governors have unwittingly negotiated what they call “a right of first refusal” for the party’s ticket to contest the senate seat, since most of them are completing the maximum term to remain as state governor. It is this greedy position grab that has set them on a collision course with the senators, many of whose seats are being poached by the powerful governors. And the senators are now fighting back, using a wrong approach.

The mere thought of senators refusing to carry out their constitutional duties on account of their selfish political contestation within their party portrays them as callous and unpatriotic. For one, they will keep their pay, allowances and other perks of office for the period they did not work. Two days without sitting in plenary out of a possible three days of sitting in a week means that legislative work is set back severely. And there are very urgent legislative assignments begging to be addressed at this time, with just about six weeks left of the year and at a time the legislators are torn between their duties and party primaries. So, every single day counts. By threatening not to carry out legislative duties, more particularly any executive bill and requests, the senators are saying they will not consider and pass the budget for instance.

About a month ago, the Executive presented the Medium Term Expenditure Framework to the National Assembly and that has yet to be passed, a pre-condition to the submission of the proposed budget 2015. At this rate, there is absolutely no way the appropriation bill would be passed into law before the end of this year, unless the legislature plans to do a shoddy job and fail to scrutinise the draft well enough. And that would be a grave disservice to the Nigerian people.

Yet another critical piece of legislative work the senators overlooked in their selfish action last week is the amendment of the Electoral Act. It is bad enough that they delayed this work until this time, three months to the next general elections, even as the amendment will have far-reaching consequences on the elections. As a fact, the Independent National Electoral Commission has been unable to update its voter education information document, pending the passage of the amendment so as not to produce a document that would become useless after the amendment. Therefore, while we would be quick to condemn INEC for its looming failure next year, we shouldn’t fail to stress the part played by senators in that failure, as far as legislative duties are concerned.

If the PDP senators feel so angry about their fortunes in their party, they should channel their grouse to the Wadata Plaza headquarters of their party and not reduce our National Assembly to a freedom square for their protests.

http://www.punchng.com/opinion/letters/why-pdp-senators-must-get-back-to-work/ 

• Obo Effanga, Governance manager, ActionAid International, Abuja

Of tin god governors and sulking senators

“First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me”.

The above popular quote of Pastor Martin Niemoller came home this past week as senators from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) cried foul at the outcome of the ward congresses conducted last weekend by their party. The point must be made straightaway that none of the political parties in Nigeria, not the least, the PDP, has a reputation for free and fair democratic process. So really expecting the outcome of the party’s congress to be without complaint was asking for the impossible.

But then, Senators in Nigeria see themselves as a highly privileged lot, and they are. In fact they are over-pampered by a society very weak on standards and accountability. So our senators often find themselves riding high horses. To rub it in, they cannot do with merely being called senators, so they embellish their title and massage their egos with the epithet, ‘distinguished’, thus creating the superbly hollow title of ‘distinguished senator’ or simply, ‘distinguished’.

In another breath, being in the ‘ruling’ party, just like being of the ‘ruling house’ in some traditional chieftaincy traditions means that you can ride roughshod over others and even get away with blue murder sometimes, still because of our weak standards and system of accountability as a society.

Now, imagine that someone is not only a ‘distinguished’ senator but also member of the ruling party, PDP in Nigeria. That is a combo of privileges too awesome to imagine. Such people would literally be walking on air, not just riding on high horses. But for anyone who knows a thing about high horses, a time comes when their riders get down, either of their own volition or forcefully. When that happens, they realise how things feel everyday for those who cannot afford horses like them.

That is what happened to some PDP senators after the ward congress which indicated that the may be on their ways down their high horses. It turned out that those who did them in were their state governors, who, having amassed much larger electioneering war chests than the senators, hijacked the typically skewed and inherently undemocratic process in their parties. As many of the senators seek fresh terms in the senate, the governors; being on the homeward coast of their maximum two terms of four years each, have taken it upon themselves to demand a ‘right of first refusal’ as senatorial candidates.

It is all too laughable but that is Nigeria for you. First, the governors, just like the president and/or their supporters claimed that doing a second term in office is a given ‘right’, once they are sworn in the first time. Now, the governors have decided to push their luck farther by suggesting that after eight years as governor, they must be crowned with the senate seats as part of a retirement package. That is where the interests of the tin gods called state governors and those of the senators have collided and as is often the case with our politics, the interest of the persons with the deeper pockets (never mind the source) prevails, unless upturned by another interest with a much higher war chest, in this case the president. And that explains why the sulking senators were pushing him. And not wanting to upturn the applecart, he reportedly agreed on a ‘sharing’ formula whereby the governors get a senate seat they want and allow two senate seats for sitting senators. And the people? Who says they matter in political party equations here?

Many citizens have suffered in the hands of these tin gods in the states and the senators did nothing because they were not at the receiving ends. Often they dined and wined with their governors. So why are the senators sulking now simply because they have been outfoxed by smarter foxes? Oh please, these senators should let us be? All along when they were on chummy-chummy basis with their governors, sucking up to them and getting sundry benefits and support from their state coffers at the detriment of the citizens, we never heard of it. So now that they are suffering there are few people to speak up for them. As politicians, these same senators have helped create the very unfair and undemocratic cabal headed by governors. Interestingly some of these sulking senators are themselves former governors who wielded similar powers upon which they made themselves senators.

The sad fact about all this bickering is that the people and their interests do not matter at all. State governors and senators are fighting for elective positions between themselves and none is talking about wooing the people to vote them in. That sadly is how they play politics here and it is called ‘democracy’, their kind of democracy. Until they allow true democracy prevail, they will continue to suffer like this.

http://blogs.premiumtimesng.com/?p=166026 

How I met Stranger on the Shore, on a Bridge

I grew up listening to and picking up some good music, the type often said to be for mature minds. Well, I couldn’t possibly have got used to anything else but such music as I was my grandfather’s pet and whenever I was at his place, it was good jazz for the asking. I literally sat down at my maternal grandfather’s feet listening to music from his gramophone. As young as I was then (that was even before I started school) I still remember what ‘Papa’ or ‘Ete’ looked like – a tall, elderly man in white hair who regularly smoked ‘Bicycle’ cigarette. His love for tea drinking was unbeatable and I became his disciple in that lifestyle. He had a pump pot for brewing the stuff and even though I was but a toddler, dragging along my big belly-button about, I knew the tea time or could read the tell-tale signs and often arrived timeously with my cup in hand for my share.  Another remembrance of him was that whenever we the grand children visited him the visit often ended with gifts, including a packet of good old cabin biscuit.

I may no longer live up to the name ‘Ete Tea’, a designation I got from my late older cousin; but one thing my closeness to my grandpa has kept running in me is the taste for jazz music. So as I grew older I kept remembering some of my grandpa’s collections of jazz music whose names and artistes I never knew. I found myself humming to the tunes, yet no knowing how to search for them, even with technology because I didn’t know their titles or artistes.

Fast-forward to 2004 or thereabouts, somewhere in Lagos, some 27 years after the passage of grandpa, on my way to my office one afternoon. I saw on a pedestrian bridge, a young man displaying and selling some music CDs. I stopped and picked two volumes of The Jazz Album 2003. I got into the office that afternoon and decided to savour good jazz music. Track after track, I enjoyed; some familiar and some not so familiar. Then, just then, the track came on...one of my grandfather’s favourite jazz music and I SCREEEEEEAAAAAMED!  Oh my God, that was it. So what was it called again, I quickly checked – yea...it was ‘Stranger on the Shore’ by Acker Bilk! Boy, I had to search out this Acker Bilk guy online and savour his other songs. His artistry on the clarinet was awesome.

But why this long discussion about a Stranger on the Shore whom I ‘met’ at my grandpa’s feet and re-established contact with on the bridge, more than 30 years after? It is because, like we expect of every life, it comes to an end some day. And so, on Sunday November 2, 2014, Acker Bilk, whose real name was Bernard Stanley Bilk died at 85. He was a vocalist and clarinettist. His Stranger on the Shore lasted more than 50 weeks on the UK music chart for 1962, peaking at number two. It was also the first number one single in the US by a British artist. Many of us will surely miss him. 

Tambuwal’s defection and police’ ominous reaction

“In view of the recent defection by the Right Honourable Aminu Waziri Tanbuwal, CFR, the Speaker of the House of Representatives of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, from the People Democratic Party (PDP) to the All Progressive Congress (APC), and having regard to the clear provision of section 68(1)(g) of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as amended, the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) has redeployed its personnel attached to his office.”

The above is how the Nigeria Police Force justified the decision of the Inspector General of Police (IGP) to order the withdrawal of security personnel attached to Mr Tambuwal, the Speaker of the House of Representatives.

While the Nigerian Constitution frowns upon defection by legislators and specifies they must lose their seats, it gives exception for such defection in certain circumstances. Politicians have since the first legislature of the current democratic rule, always tried to rely on that exception as justification for their defections. Until a court of competent jurisdiction decides whether any particular defection should receive the punishment, all other positions on the issue are mere academic and at best, legal opinions. On that score, Tambuwal cannot be seen as having lost his seat as member of the House of Representatives.

Assuming, but not admitting that the IGP is right to the interpretation above, the same constitutional section has also stated in subsection 2, how a defecting member can lose his/her seat in parliament. It gives power to the Speaker of the House to “give effect to the provisions of subsection (1) of this section, so however that the...Speaker of the House of Representatives or a member shall first present evidence satisfactory to the House concerned that any of the provisions of that subsection has become applicable in respect of that member. Clearly, the decision not to recognise a person as member of the House lies within the House.

Yet another argument raised by those not happy with Tambuwal’s defection is that since he no longer belongs to the majority party in the House, he cannot remain the Speaker. That again is mere wishful thinking and opinion, not the law and not the intendment of the Constitution. By Section 50(1)(b) of the Constitution, there shall be  a Speaker of the House of Representatives, “who shall be elected by the members of that House from among themselves”. Nowhere in the Constitution is there any requirement that the Speaker must belong to the party with a majority in the House or that the person must be nominated or sponsored to the position by a political party. Interestingly, Tambuwal’s emergence as Speaker ran contrary to the wishes of his party then, the PDP, which actually proposed another member for the position. Tambuwal however won the position on his own merit, owing to the trust he had with majority of the representatives.

That said, the only lawful means to remove a speaker of the House is as provided by the Constitution under Section 50(2)(c). And to do so, they require the votes of “not less than two-thirds majority of the members of that House”, which is 241 members for the 360-member House of Representatives. Therefore, even if, for the purpose of argument, it can be proved that the right to lead the House is reserved for members of the party in majority or that Tambuwal no longer commands the support of at least 241 members of the House, the only way to prove and effect that is at a duly-constituted session of the House.  

For the police IGP to therefore purport not to recognise Tambuwal as Speaker and proceed to withdraw security aides attached to his office is an abuse of power and must be condemned. It is indeed a sad day and season for our country. Sad, because the IGP has not only usurped the interpretative powers of the court over the Constitution, but more because even in the interpretation, he is clearly confusing the law with his opinion. The last time we saw such happen was under Obasanjo when he and his cohorts created for themselves, the power to interpret the Supreme Court judgment asking the Federal Government to release funds meant for the local governments in Lagos State.

It is sad because the IGP is the chief custodian of law and order but he seems to have moved too fast to take a position which questions the neutrality of the organisation he sits atop. It is sad because the IGP, either intentionally or unintentionally has descended into the political playing field. And trust our politicos; they will attack him on all sides. The APC will accuse him of working for PDP and if he tries to reverse himself, he will be attacked by the PDP. And when that happens he will have no one but himself to blame.

It is a sad day and season because the IGP’s action is a sad reminder of the era of IGP Sunday Adewusi (1981 to 1983), where the police were accused of working in cahoots with the then ruling National Party of Nigeria (NPN) in the 1983 general elections. Such unholy alliance was part of what brought the Second Republic of Nigeria to its disastrous end. Another general election season is here, with elections expected in 2015 and here we are dancing to a similar ominous dance. Is anyone thinking?

See also at: http://www.thenicheng.com/tambuwals-defection-polices-ominous-reaction/#sthash.MymYxqNQ.dpbs

THE POWERFUL EFFECT OF A little MISTAKE

Today (October 31, 2014) has been a handful for me, actually for my phone. It started sometime after 9am when I got a call from a fellow who said he was interested in the job of a 'house help' as requested by me. House help? What house help? I told him he must have called a wrong number. Soon after we ended that call, another person called from Onitsha for the same purpose, saying a certain 'madam' needed house help and they were calling the number, my number to speak with the woman.
It was obvious to me that there was a mistake, but just to be sure, I called my OMATT (oh, don't be a learner, that means 'oga madam at the top') to ask if by any chance she sent out request to hire a 'house help' and forgot to inform me. The answer was negative.
So what was this about? some joke or what? Just then a woman called and this time spoke in Igbo, which language I don't understand (hey, don't just go there because I know where your mind is heading). Many more calls came in and several buzz (flash in our Nigerian parlance) of my line. Some even sent me 'call me back' messages.
I became curious and started asking later callers where they got the message from. I was told it was on a live radio programme in Anambra. That was when I knew it would be a long day of a troubled phone line, so help my battery God.
I searched for any such radio with a name like Radio Satianta (which is what I thought I heard one of the callers say when I asked him) with a view to asking them to correct their message but to no avail. So now it's been about 12 hours and whenever my phone rings and I can't tell who the caller is, I wonder if that is one of my potential 'house helps'.
And to think that all these troubles happened because someone made one 'little' mistake with a singe digit in the telephone number given on air. So, while some poor woman in need of a 'house help' is out there in Anambra wondering why nobody has shown interest by calling her, an innocent man here in Abuja is having his phone battery drained by misinformed prospects.
That, my friends, is the power of a LITTLE mistake.

And Nigeria conquered Ebola

This past week, Nigeria had its moment in the sun as the World Health Organisation (WHO) officially declared it ‘Ebola-free’. It was a journey that took us three months to complete. It also set us back financially. But more importantly and most painfully, we lost some of our wonderful citizens and health professionals. No need to brood over the fact that the virus was not autochthonous to Nigeria, but came from you-know-where and who. Let’s just allow ebola-gones be ebola-gones.

Let’s look at all the sides of that unfortunate incident and the nearly three-month long stress and fear we collectively went through as a country. It even led to panic measures such as the laughable bitter kola and the salt water therapies which also caused us international embarrassment. Of course, many people also made a tidy treasure of the situation in the sale of personal hygiene products at exorbitant prices.

On a brighter side, though, the situation brought us changed and more hygienic lifestyles. We learned not to take chances about a lot of things. Hand-washing became central to every gathering and hand sanitisers became new-found partners to many people. I observe that those little bottles of hand sanitisers have increasingly pushed out the bottles of ‘anointing oil’ often carried by some people like amulets.

Our victory over Ebola did not come easy. We even shut down our schools until we were properly prepared to handle students. Today in many schools, there are preventive measures taken against Ebola and other infections. And our children, whom we worried about more, are gradually becoming hygiene ambassadors, reminding others to wash their hands and use sanitisers regularly. I even hear there is an Ebola awareness anthem in one of the states. That’s the power of a campaign that targets everyone.

But we must recall the initial panic, where, as usual, we thought the solution necessarily lay outside Nigeria. I remember the desperation with which we went begging the United States for the use of a trial drug it kept close to its chest. And when we were denied, many citizens thought we were on the road to more suffering, while accusing the U.S. of double standards.

Talking about not just the U.S. but the Western world, the outbreak of Ebola also helped to unravel a few things about them. When the Ebola virus broke out in Nigeria, many citizens opined that we should stop flights from countries with high incidence of the virus or even close our borders to them. But a particular advisory supposedly from the Center for Diseases Control (CDC) of the U.S., quoted by some U.S. agencies, said it was unnecessary to do so as infection of co-passengers was very slim.

Fast forward to October (just three months after), with infections recorded in U.S. and a few Western countries, the attitude seems to have changed. Now flights from the ‘country’ they call Africa are held in suspicion. During the week, I had to call attention of online respondents on a U.S. news website that there are 54 countries in Africa and that even if three countries therein had cases of Ebola, it was no reason to stigmatise people from the entire continent. Apparently, the attitude of the West stemmed from more than double standards, but more about ignorance of geography. After all, didn’t the renowned Cable News Network (CNN) publish a West African map designating Nigeria where Niger is?

Well, it’s good to know that Ebola is out of the way now. We all deserve to share in the pride, just as we were together in the fear, panic and even stigmatisation while it lasted. The point must be made again that our sense of hygiene and attention to health issues has been the better for it after the dark cloud.

But we shouldn’t forget the sacrifices of our compatriots who went down with Ebola for the rest of us to stay safe. Neither should we forget the lessons and new lifestyle we imbibed during that sad period. We should sustain the tempo and remain alert. One fact we must acknowledge and work on is that if we came together to defeat Ebola, there are lots of other things we can come together to also fight and conquer. How about corruption? How about terrorism?

http://www.thenicheng.com/nigeria-conquered-ebola/#sthash.J4wnDWQR.dpbs 

Deepening culture of official extortion

With the introduction of access fees for prospective corps members under the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), we can safely say that Nigeria has turned full circle in its culture of official extortion. Under the arrangement, fresh graduates, who are meant to undergo compulsory one year of service to fatherland, are now required to access their letter of mobilisation online; to do so, they are forced to pay N4,000 as access fee.

Before you think someone is just making that up to discredit the NYSC, listen to the ‘justification’ coming from the Director General of NYSC, Brig. Gen. Johnson Olawumi: “Benefits associated with the full computerisation of the mobilisation process are unquantifiable when lives of prospective corps members that would be saved from road accidents are taken into account.”

Wow! That must go down in record as one of the most imaginative official explanations for official extortion. In order words, for NYSC so loved the youth that it forced them to pay N4,000; that whosoever of them has to go for youth service shall not be exposed to road accident but be blessed virtually.

It is totally unacceptable to charge prospective corps members a fee for being called upon to serve their country, more so when the service is specified and made compulsory by law. Even if many see the service as a form of employment and therefore financially beneficial to the participants, it is still unconscionable to extort these youths on their way to working for the country or earning their potentially first income.

This bizarre way of doing things didn’t start with the NYSC though. Seven months ago, it was a shocked nation that found out that the Ministry of Interior was extorting N1,000 from each hapless youth desperate to be recruited into the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS). At the end of the day, the recruitment was so badly bungled, leading to scores of citizens being trampled to death in various locations across the country. And as it has become standard practice here, nobody was reprimanded, let alone punished, for either the extortion or the deaths of citizens. The dead simply died in vain and a certain Abba Moro, under whose watch the disaster happened, still struts on as minister.

It is even more worrisome to know that fees are also charged for applications into the military forces in Nigeria. In May this year, the Nigerian Army put a fee of N2,500 to access its recruitment application portal.

It would be important for NYSC and other fee-for-employment agencies to tell us which consultancy firms are behind these internet extortions on behalf of the organisations and where the proceeds from these are paid into and accounted for. Do these agencies pay these sums to the coffers of government? Do the sums form part of the revenues of government which, by the provisions of the constitution, must go into the consolidated revenue fund?

As straight-forward a fraud as these extortions seem, many citizens would still not get it that it is the responsibility of the person who wishes to hire someone to serve it to foot the bill for such hiring. But in Nigeria, we have perfected the art of working in reverse order, such that the ridiculous becomes the norm.

But even if some citizens do not appreciate the illegality in this or are weak to resist it, one expects the government, especially the legislature, to know better and put a stop to this.

The truth, though, is that the legislature has made very lame efforts in the past to curb this, but failed to ensure compliance. For instance, in October 2013, the House of Representatives joint committee on Public Service Matters, Employment, Labour and Productivity as well as those of Anti-corruption, National Ethics and Values directed the NIS to refund the illegal amount it charged applicants.

Apparently, the directive was ignored. Even when the disaster with the recruitment occurred five months later, nothing still happened to enforce the directive. The question then is: where is that committee in all these?

http://www.thenicheng.com/deepening-culture-extortion/#sthash.9upbHrI7.4WUYitUD.dpbs