Servicom my foot!

Servicom my foot!
By Obo Effanga

You suddenly realise that the power outage in your residential area is localised.

Three days after, you receive a circular written by a resident in the neighbourhood stating that s/he made inquiries at the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) office and was told that the cable supplying power to the area was ‘vandalised’. The circular says the cost of the vandalised item is N150, 000.

In simple words, the ‘beneficiaries’, (not consumers or customers you suppose) of electricity in the area should be responsible for replacing the equipment, which the PHCN had ‘benevolently’, and ‘graciously’ provided before now.

It seems that the service provider, Power Holding, as the name suggests is not under any obligation to supply you electricity power, but to hold it. The circular further asks residents who may know someone in PHCN to please make use of their contacts to ‘help’.

Several questions run through your mind. How are power cables, which in Nigeria hang up there from pole to pole ‘vandalised’?

Why should you be expected to provide the equipment for your service provider when you pay for the service provided?

Would your children’s school be right to ask parents to compulsorily pay for the replacement of its school bus because the one they use and which service the parents pay for is broken down or stolen?

Or why don’t the GSM service providers ask customers to pay for the damaged or ‘vandalised’ equipment in their neighbourhood to guarantee continued service? If residents of the neighbourhood pay for the new cables, would they claim ownership or would the equipment continue to belong to PHCN?

In any event would the cable and equipment not be supplied from PHCN’s stores? So how would that be accounted for and be reflected in the budget of the company? Would PHCN issue receipts to the contributors?

You finally hit an idea and decide to explore it - Servicom to the rescue! Servicom is government’s effort to reform the public service and cleanse it of its notorious poor attitude to service provision.

And so you make inquiries and get the contact number of the Servicom officer in PHCN. You get the officer on line and you relate your problems to him, certain that you are speaking with a service-minded person. Alas, your wish remains that, a wish!

Your respondent tutors you on your duty as a beneficiary of PHCN’s magnanimity; that you and the other residents in the neighbourhood are expected to serve as monitors to PHCN equipment (day and night, rain or shine) to ensure that nothing untoward happens to the equipment.

He in fact tells you that those who ‘vandalised’ the equipment must come from among you and in your neighbourhood because it is not possible for an ‘outsider’ to come into your area and interfere with PHCN equipment.

You try as much as you can to remind the officer that you and your fellow victims in the locality are not security officials or PHCN personnel to dedicate your time to policing electricity facilities.

Besides, the so-called vandalism might have happened in the night, after all the outage was in the night. You also tell him that it is more in the interest of his organisation to get the cables replaced and power restored in order for them to continue generating revenue from power supply.

But your ‘benefactor’ on the line would take none of that. He tells you that you urgently need the power supply, and that is why you telephoned him. He is damn right you know. But he is also damn stupid to think that this situation therefore makes him a demigod of electricity supply.

In fact he warns you that there are many people like you out there who also need electricity supply.

So if your neighbourhood does not appreciate that fact or cannot be grateful enough to the god of electricity by protecting its equipment or replacing the ‘vandalised’ one, PHCN would gladly take the electricity from you and ‘donate’ to others!

Completely taken aback, you begin to wonder if you hadn’t called the wrong number instead of Servicom, but hello, this is Servicom.

In fairness, the ‘Servicom officers’ in the various public agencies are not ‘staff of Servicom’, but staff of the host offices that were simply trained as reformists.

It seems however that many of these persons, like the story of the pig, may have been taken out of the dirt, with a new orientation, but the dirt may not have been taken out of them. Some of the public institutions surely are still in dirt and the PHCN is one of them.

The Compliance Evaluation Report as posted on Servicom website scores PHCN’s performance as 1.0 on a scale of 4 and describes it as ‘shameful’.

And shameful indeed was the response you got from the officer who certainly knows nothing about customer care, one of the areas incidentally, that the evaluation report wants PHCN to consider.

Published in NEXT newspaper October 26, 2009. (http://234next.com/csp/cms/sites/Next/Home/5473915-146/Servicom_my_foot!___.csp)

A PATRIOT'S MISSILE

Why do I carry an international passport that describes me as a Nigerian, yet within Nigeria I could be described as a ‘non-indigene’, if I find myself in the wrong place at the right time or because I was born at the right time in the wrong place?

And why would the registration form in the National Hospital, Abuja insist on branding my children as Cross Riverians, when none of them has ever lived up to 20 cumulative days of their lives in that state?

And why should a poor girl on the street of my late father’s country home pay more school fees than my nephew to attend the state’s university in the very state she was born in 18 years ago and had never travelled out of?

Why should anybody refer to her as a non-indigene by saying that her parents, even though have lived there for the last 25 years, were previously born and bred in an ‘alien’ part of Nigeria? Yet, my daughters, who can hardly speak any language from Cross River State, are expected to stay here in Abuja and access scholarship from the state as...indigenes?

I laugh at it, and you laugh at it too, yet in the last 15 years or so, I have not paid any income or other direct tax to Cross River State; rather, Lagos and FCT have fed fat on my fat taxes.
And talking about my fat taxes, how come I pay so much to fuel the “consolidated lootable funds” operated by the governments who serve me darkness instead of electricity, after they threatened since 2007 to declare a state of emergency in the power sector but have failed to? I tell you what, by the time God touches their heart to declare this long-awaited emergency, even they would forget what the emergency was meant to be declared on. There, we laugh again.

For my fat taxes, I traverse potholed roads. For my fat taxes, I operate my own water corporation. For that same reason, I struggle to pay through the nose, that my children may have quality education provided by a money-bag private school proprietress; because the public school our parents attended, which we attended have been destroyed by our governments. Hey, and do you know that we even pay more taxes than some of our fat cows in government? Well, that is a story for another day.

Why do we declare two days of public holidays to mark religious events when other countries declare just a day? Is it just so that we tell the world we are highly-religious, yet we loot the national treasury daily? Why do we waste public funds in sponsoring cronies of those in governments to pilgrimages that have failed to rub off on our lifestyles? How come we have a high per-capita of religious places with a non-commensurate holiness?

And why do we declare one day in a month as sanitation day if all we do is sit at home to watch television or generate waste that the rains would help us wash back into the drains?

Or why do we waste resources on and fix certain days as election days when we would already have pronounced some people as ‘anointed’ or ‘consensus’ candidates and we already know the result before the election?

And why did we declare October 1 a national holiday to mark our Independence Day when all we ended up doing was stay at home and wonder about how we have failed as a nation and the lack of freedom we experience?

But why am I so critical of my nation as though I were a foreigner or a ‘non-indigene’? My answer is simple compatriots. I am a true Nigerian; proudly Nigerian; 100% Nigerian and more Nigerian than many of our leaders. After all, I have one and only one citizenship – Nigerian, like my parents before me, like all my siblings, like all my children. So when I criticise my country I do so with love and the selfish hope that it becomes better, that it may be well with me and my family. I do so knowing that if Nigeria fails, I stand to lose, much more than many in government who could easily flee to their alternate, if not primary countries, where their families live or where they spend vacations and go for medical checks, using public funds.

So my dear compatriots permit me to call my critical attacks a PATRIOT’S MISSLE. It is still preferable to a SYCOPHANT’S PRAISE.

· First read at Balcony Muse IV and published in NEXT newspaper on October 12, 2009

Rep. Chinyere Igwe's audacity of dishonour

Rep. Chinyere Igwe’s audacity of dishonour
By OBO EFFANGA

A certain Chinyere Emmanuel Igwe who happens to be a member of Nigeria’s House of Representatives reportedly slapped a security official of the National Assembly on Wednesday September 9. The latter’s offence was, in the words of Igwe, “he has just embarrassed me and I won’t take it”.
News reports say the security official had asked the Representative to identify himself as he (Igwe) made to enter the National Assembly but the legislator replied with the assault and battery. He would probably have done worse but for the intervention of other security personnel who rescued their colleague from the lawless lawmaker!
One newspaper (The Nation) quotes the dishonourable member as saying afterwards: “Imagine that boy. How could he claim not to know me? Does his duty not include recognition of faces of members? He has just embarrassed me, I won’t take it. This case will not end here. I will take it to any length, including the National Assembly Service Commission, where he would be disciplined.”
Really Rep. Igwe? You mean you actually said that? Talk about the audacity of dishonour! If Igwe truly believes that the duty of a security officer in the National Assembly includes recognising the faces of all 360 members of the House of Representatives and all 109 Senators, he must be a comedian. And to think that most of the 360 Reps and 109 Senators are absentee legislators or bench-warmers who hardly speak on any issue, let alone sponsor a bill or motion, Igwe must be berated. I have never heard of Rep. Igwe, and I cannot be described as a person non-conversant with issues in the National Assembly. I am just knowing today that the man is (embarrassingly) the vice chair of the committee on human rights. What horror!
Pray, what is embarrassing in a security officer asking for the identity of a public officer, just to be sure that he has the right of free access to the National Assembly? One ordinarily flays the idea of unduly fettering public access to the legislative building, but our present legislators prefer to build undue security round themselves, hence the extra screening of persons going to the National Assembly. So, if a security officer asks anybody to identify himself/herself, such must be taken in the line of the duty of providing security.
The newspaper description of the dishonourable member’s appearance is relevant here. He was “casually” dressed in black trousers and a “flying” khaki short-sleeve shirt. He also wore a “jungle face cap” and slippers! Given our stereotyping nature, who would blame a security officer for having a doubt that a “big man” could be so dressed in the “corridors of power”? The main building of our National Assembly is actually referred to as “White House” among staff and members of the federal legislature.
The federal legislator talked about the matter not ending there and threatened to take it up to the National Assembly Service Commission (NASC) to “discipline” the staff. I just wonder who between the aggressive legislator and the battery victim needs to be disciplined by the appropriate body. Is there any hope that the House of Representatives would sanction the dishonourable lawmaker for his undisciplined public behaviour?
Igwe, no doubt, talked like a typical Nigerian “big man”, who in the face of his guilt is shameless to throw his weight around. He plans to take the matter to a higher authority, where he would sit as superior or at least a contemporary to discuss the matter involving a “poor, lowly security man” who stands the chance of being “disciplined” by the powers that be. A pointer to what might happen when the matter goes to a higher authority could be seen in the news report which said the matter lasted for 30 minutes “before other National Assembly security operatives and the police intervened to calm the lawmaker”. Calm the lawmaker? That is apparently a euphemism for “beg the lawmaker”.
I fear therefore that soon, the senior management of the legislature may compel the victim to apologise to the aggressor for embarrassing him! But if the leadership of the Sergeant-at-arms office is worth its professional status, it must rise to defend its officer and in fact demand an apology, if not more from the legislator.
And this calls to question again the quality, temperament, value system and mental frame of some of our public officers. Igwe’s attitude is to a large extent, representative of the arrogance of the ruling class in Nigeria and the contempt with which they treat the rest of the society. Sadly, nothing, absolutely nothing positive would come out of this incident. It would just be one in a series of human rights abuses by the powerful against the powerless in Nigeria.

Of Alice Band and Red

I remember the day in 1996

Yes I remember, as she just sat quietly there

She arrived early for my visit of Leo Clubs in Region 1

I knew not who she was, even though her name I was familiar with

She was the secretary of Eko Leo Club

And I the Leo District President

Her timely club reports I always read, without seeing the person behind them

But there she was, that October morning and I did not know

I remember her long hair, packed in Alice band

Oh, that Alice band!

It’s always been my memory of her

And, of course, her love for the red colour

So I remember today my friend of more than 12 years

And wife of more than eight

Even as she goes home

Transformed to meet her maker

Yes, I remember our good and bad times together

Our shared laughter and shared tears

I remember our jokes, our hopes and our fears

Yes, I remember my Jess even though she is no more today

* Tribute to my late wife, Jessie Obo Effanga on her burial September 4, 2009 in Abuja.

I WOULD HAVE WISHED HIM HAPPY 85 TODAY

If not that he left five years ago
Today, I would have called him, as I usually do
Probably I would have found time to travel down there
Maybe surprise him with an unannounced visit

Would have gone with one or all my girls
To brighten his day, as he always did mine
Knowing that August is not only the eighth month of the year
But also a special month to him, Mother and me

That his birthday is eight days from mine
And mine eight days from Mother’s
If not that he left five years ago
I would have wished my Father Happy 85th Birthday today.

(In rememberance of my father, Late Elder Obo Effiom Effanga, whose birthday was August 7)

Nigeria's federalism and local government creation

The misunderstanding between the Federal and the Lagos State governments over the legality or otherwise of the 37 ‘local council development authorities’ (LCDA), formerly known as ‘new local government areas’ (LGAs) of Lagos State raises fundamental questions about Nigeria’s peculiar form of federalism and constitutionalism.There is ample evidence to posit that Nigeria has in fact been operating a unitary state, rather than federalism in many respects, either because the Constitution made it so or the operators of the document wilfully do so. Sometimes the operators conspire or accede to such unitary set-up. A good example was when the National Assembly and the presidency conspired to pass the Electoral Act 2001 which smuggled in the provision of tenure of local government elected officials, something that is the exclusive right of the various state houses of assembly to legislate on. Then President Obasanjo, in signing the law, asked those who were aggrieved to go to court. Thankfully the Supreme Court later shut down that provision of the law. Similarly, the government of Akwa Ibom state was at one point arm-twisted to abandoning its duly-passed and operated Local Government Law which provided for parliamentary system of government at that level. To the extent that that law was consistent with section 7 of the Constitution, it was valid. That section states: 7. (1) The system of local government by democratically elected local government councils is under this Constitution guaranteed; and accordingly, the Government of every State shall, subject to section 8 of this Constitution, ensure their existence under a Law which provides for the establishment, structure, composition, finance and functions of such councils. It was disheartening and a disservice to constitutionalism and the principle of federalism for the Federal Government and the ruling Peoples Democratic Party to pressure the PDP government of that state to change to the presidential system, as practised in the rest of the country. The argument was simply that one state could not be different from all others in the federation. Even the argument of Akwa Ibom that its adopted system was inexpensive (compared to the presidential system) and more effective at that level was considered. More importantly, the parliamentary system qualified as a “government by democratically elected local government council” and thus met the constitutional requirement.In an ideal federal system, the responsibility for the creation or division of LGAs resides in the state government. But ours is not an ‘ideal’ federal structure. Our pseudo-federal Constitution provides for local government area creation by state governments, but limits such power by making the creation subject to “ratification” by the National Assembly (NASS). We should also note that the federating states in Nigeria do not have their individual Constitution, as you would expect in a true federal structure. In the case of Lagos State’s 37 ‘new’ LGAs, the Supreme Court held that the process followed in their creation was legal but that until the National Assembly made the consequential order (which many have described as “ratification”), the said creations remained inchoate. The dictionary defines “inchoate” as: “not yet completed or fully developed; rudimentary; just begun; incipient; not organised; lacking order” etc.Some commentators have drawn an allusion between the Lagos LGA creation and childbirth. They opine that the child has already been born and that what the federal legislature was required to do was merely a naming ceremony. If that be the case, then we could argue that when the Supreme Court referred to the LGAs as inchoate, it meant, using the example of a baby, that the baby is ill-formed, maybe premature! In such a situation, the baby must be kept in an incubator until it is properly formed and ready to face the real world. But it seems the health officers (in this case, NASS) have refused to provide the necessary support and medication needed to guarantee life for the baby.No doubt, Lagos, for its mere population and resources, deserves more local government areas, but that is no reason to support a short cut approach to the creation of the new areas.One equally agrees that NASS should not unduly withhold the ratification of any LGA duly created. But parliamentary actions, including ratification, are more than legal issues. They also touch a lot, if not more, on politics. It must be further noted that once the National Assembly ratifies the creation of the new LGAs, the new LGAs take up equal status with all the existing 774 LGAs and must be taken into account when money from the Federation Account is distributed to the states, which are the federating units. The argument that Lagos can generate its own resources to maintain the new LGAs is not enough reason because by the Constitution, all LGAs must be allocated funds from the Federation Account.It seems likely that the reluctance of NASS to ratify may be hinged mainly on the fear of a deluge of returns from several states for similar ratifications. Recall that virtually all the states had previously “created” more LGAs in the last 10 years and only backed down when they were confronted by federal authorities. The way to cure this concern again takes us to the fundamentals of true federalism. If each federating unit (the state) depended on its generated resources to fund its operations and not from the largess of federation account allocation, fuelled by oil rentier system, nobody would bother about how many LGAs a state decides to create. What any aggrieved party to the failure/refusal/negligence of NASS to ratify the creation of new LGAs needs to do is (unfortunately) to keep lobbying and appealing to NASS to ratify. Were the ratification a mere administrative action to be taken by the executive arm of government, an aggrieved party could have resorted to approaching the court to issue an order of mandamus directing such authority to carry out a duty it is obliged to. Unfortunately, we cannot obtain such an order against the legislature. Merely changing the appellation of the “new LGAs” to “local council development authority” is no cure for the situation, especially when the new creations still have the full components of LGAs – an elected chairperson who heads the executive arm, the legislative council made up of elected councillors, local authority secretariat, marriage registries etc. Those who say the “new LGAs” have already come into being should also consider another provision of the Constitution which says that any amendment to the Constitution by NASS shall be subject to ratification by two-thirds of state houses of assembly. Would we therefore argue that once NASS passes a resolution to amend the Constitution, such amendment would become effective even before ratification by the states? What all these mean is that our present Constitution needs immediate amendment, if not a total overhaul to save us from logjams as this.

Effanga, a lawyer, is Parliamentary Advisor with ActionAid Nigeria in Abuja

*Published in the Law page of Thisday newspaper of August 4, 2009 under the rider, "National Assembly cannot be compelled to ratify LCDAs"

DIS-honourable member admits taking blood oath

A member of the Ogun State House of Assembly, Wale Alausa, is featured naked, apparently taking a blood oath of allegiance to whatever or whomever, as opposed to his constituency, in the discharge of his constitutional role.While Compass newspaper owned by Gov. Gbenga Daniel claims the man took the oath of secrecy with others to oppose the governor, PM news says the dishonourable member admits that he is the one in the photograph but that the event was actually in 2007, in Gbenga Daniel's house and that he was forced by Daniel to take the oath of allegiance to him (Daniel) as condition for being 'given' the PDP's ticket to stand election to go to the House of Assembly.There are two stories from opposing newspaper camps on the same issue. Choose your perspective. The story behind it gives an insight to the extent our politicians go to gain power, sustain it and rob us all of our collective resources.‘Honourable’ Wale Alausa has not denied taking the oath but is disputing where it was taken, at whose behest and for what purpose. Whichever way, it is SHAME, SHAME and SHAME on him and his likes. And you know what? The man may at the same time be an ‘active’ or vocal claimant to one of the two major religions in the country.Sickening, isn’t it?

Ogun G15 lawmakers in blood oath scandal Monday, 29 June 2009 00:00
•Storm Ijebu-Igbo shrine COMPASS NEWS
•Pledge first childSoji Adefemi
THE crisis in Ogun State involving G 15 members of the House of Assembly was triggered by a blood oath taken at a shrine in Ijebu-Igbo, Ijebu North Local Government, last year, the Nigerian Compass learnt last night. The members took the oath to ensure a united front against Governor Gbenga Daniel.The oath was sponsored by some politicians including the father of a prominent politician in Abuja, a Senator, a former South-West governor, a former minister and another prominent politician in Ogun State.The oath, which was taken naked by the members and in daylight, was witnessed by the sponsors and the native doctors, the administrators of the oath.Items used for the oath included blood, cow heads, calabash and other fetish materials.Each participant swore to upholding opposition to Daniel at all times and submitted to the death of their first born, should they renege on the oath.Each of them was required to mention the name of their first child in the course of the oath, setting in motion serious consequences for the children should their fathers go back on the prescribed course of opposition.The Nigerian Compass learnt that the finality of this oath is why prominent traditional rulers such as the Awujale of Ijebuland, Oba Sikiru Adetona, the Alake of Egbaland, Oba Adedotun Aremu Gbadebo, the Akarigbo of Remoland, Oba Michael Sonariwo, and other prominent leaders such as Prince Bola Ajibola, General Tunji Olurin and Yeye Oodua H.I.D. Awolowo were unable to persuade them to change their stance.In exclusive photographs obtained by the Nigerian Compass, one of those who took the oath, Hon. Wale Alausa, representing Ijebu-Ode State Constituency and a member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), is seen holding a white article of oath, standing in front of a calabash filled with blood at the shrine.The photographs were taken by the initiators of the oath to blackmail the G 15 members and prevent them from reneging. The Nigerian Compass obtained some of the photographs following a disagreement in the camp of the initiators.Behind him in the photograph on the right taken outside the shrine (with his hand showing) is one of the native doctors who administered the oath. The photograph on the left was taken inside the shrine.A source said last night: “It is because of the oath that the crisis in the state has been protracted. They have vowed that nobody or nothing will stop them from achieving their goal, which is to impeach the governor and make the state ungovernable.“This lawmaker called Alausa was jobless when his father, Alhaji Agboola Alausa, took him to the governor and the governor made him a special assistant in the office of the deputy governor. Even when he was working with Alhaja Salmot Badru, the deputy governor was not happy with him because of the various scandals he was involved in. “In 2007, the father also begged that he should be made a lawmaker and the state PDP respected his view by giving the Ijebu-Ode State Constituency to his son.“But since Wale Alausa and other members of the G 15 seized the Assembly in a coup last year, peace has eluded the state. That is why they are blocking the N50 billion bond and embarrassing members of the executive under the cover of oversight functions.”It would be recalled that the recalcitrant lawmakers began the festering crisis in the state by first impeaching the then Speaker, Mrs. Titi Shodunke-Oseni.They followed the impeachment with her suspension and that of another member of the House who was loyal to her, despite the fact that the court ruled otherwise.For several weeks, they also refused to sit, blaming lack of protection by security agents for their action.Besides, they recently passed Resolution 167 barring financial institutions from dealing with the state government, especially over its attempt to raise a N50 billion bond.

‘How Daniel Forced Me To Take Oath’—LawmakerJune 29, 2009 15:19, 2,610 views PM NEWS By Jide Osokoya
Honourable Wale Alausa, representing Ijebu-Ode Constituency in the Ogun State House of Assembly, has said that governor Gbenga Daniel forced him to take an oath in 2007, contrary to the report in the Nigerian Compass this morning.Reacting to the story, “Ogun 15 lawmakers on blood oath,” Hon. Alausa said it was a fabrication aimed at ridiculing his person and his colleagues in the house by Daniel and his agents. He confessed that the photographs published by Compass today, were genuine but were taken in 2007, inside Daniel’s Sagamu mansion and its environs, when he was forced to take an oath before he could get the PDP ticket to the state House of Assembly.The lawmaker said he and his colleagues (G15) never took any oath and neither did they visit any shrine in Ijebu-Igbo to take an oath, adding that it was pure blackmail by Daniel to stop the House from carrying out its oversight functions. “The photographs on the front page of Compass today, were truly mine but the story was fabricated. I was forced to take the photographs in governor Daniel’s Sagamu home in 2007, when he forcefully implemented the oath on me in order to get me a ticket to the House of Assembly. And that is what he has done to everybody.“Let him come out and deny, if he did not compel my father, Chief Agboola Alausa, to persuade me to take the oath. I rest my case for now. But the struggle continues,” he said. According to Compass: “the crisis in Ogun state involving the G 15 members of the House of Assembly was triggered by a blood oath taken at a shrine in Ijebu-Igbo, Ijebu North Local Government, last year, the Nigerian Compass learnt last night.“The members took the oath to ensure a united front against governor Gbenga Daniel. The oath was sponsored by some politicians including the father of a prominent politician in Abuja, a Senator, a former South-West governor, a former minister and another prominent politician in Ogun state.” The report added that: “the oath, which was taken naked by the members and in daylight, was witnessed by the sponsors and the native doctors, the administrators of the oath.“Items used for the oath included blood, cow heads, calabash and other fetish materials. Each participant swore to upholding opposition to Daniel at all times and submitted to the death of their first born, should they renege on the oath. “Each of them was required to mention the name of their first child in the course of the oath, setting in motion serious consequences for the children should their fathers go back on the prescribed course of opposition.“The Nigerian Compass learnt that the finality of this oath is why prominent traditional rulers, such as the Awujale of Ijebuland, Oba Sikiru Adetona; the Alake of Egbaland, Oba Adedotun Aremu Gbadebo; the Akarigbo of Remoland, Oba Michael Sonariwo, and other prominent leaders such as Prince Bola Ajibola, General Tunji Olurin and Yeye Oodua H.I.D. Awolowo were unable to persuade them to change their stance.”