Guess what Julius Berger Nigeria Plc calls this 'human crate'? They call it 'workers container' and I ask if their management staff could and have ever been 'contained' in this...

Acts of terror and the politics of hospital visit

Since the Monday morning bomb explosion in Nyanya, leading to the death of an indeterminable number of people (the official figure stands at about 75) and the injury of more than 200, watching news of it on our local television stations can be so boring. Don’t get me wrong please. I am not bored about the news of the pains, lamentations and anguish of citizens. Far be it. My heart bleeds every time I hear of a new angle of how people got killed or maimed for no other reason than that they live in a country that has failed to meet their basic needs and rights to life and peaceful and safe environment.

What bores me are the various ‘news’ items of one politician or another (or their wives) trooping through our hospital wards with their aides, hangers-on, praise-singers and sycophants in tow plus a horde of news reporters with cameras, purporting to go on sympathy visits to victims. So what we see are photo shoots of politicians smiling to the camera, expressing shock, delivering handouts, with the media announcing the amount of money or items donated. Sometimes the promises made end there.

We do not need to be experts in medical science to know that such riotous visits would constitute impediment and distractions to the medical personnel in giving urgent and life-saving attentions to the victims. It also has more damaging effects on patients who need serene atmosphere to recover and heal faster.

Unfortunately, whenever we see reports of ‘high-powered’ and ‘high-level’ (we love hyperboles) visits of these politicians or their wives, I often notice that an equally ‘high-powered’ medical official such as the minister of health or the chief medical director of the hospital is always on hand to receive them and thank them afterwards. Why must this be? Why can’t these politicians take their hypocrisy elsewhere and stop playing politics with human predicaments and vulnerability? Why can’t our medical service managers act professionally by stopping the shenanigans?

This is tough luck, no doubt, because most of them are political appointees (and politicians) and sycophancy is a major oil in the engine of politics and political appointments. So we can see the link. What is more, on the altar of politics, nothing is too sacrosanct and too huge to be sacrificed. So, the comfort and healing of those victims can be sacrificed, just so that our politicos could have their kicks and get high on a dose of self glorification.  So for the next few days, until our usual amnesia sets in and we forget this present calamity, it seems we are stuck with these politicians grinning at our pains and getting media attention for their acts of ‘benevolence’ and ‘magnanimity’.

But for some of us, we can discern beyond their cheap actions and we know better. In fact a television station has reported that the promise by the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory that the FCT administration would pick the hospital bills of victims has not been complied with in the National Hospital particularly. It may be the same with the other hospitals too. What does it take to get this implemented?

DO NOT celebrate the Women if...

DO NOT celebrate the Women if...

By Obo Effanga

As the world celebrates this year’s International Women’s Day and some churches celebrate Mother's Day, the following persons should shut up and not pretend to celebrate womanhood:

The rapist and those who blame the rape victim as causing her predicament because of what she wore. Pray, how do infants (two years and below) dress to attract a rapist?

The father (and any other man) who rapes his daughter and other family members (even if no one else is aware of your crime/sin).

The woman (and man) of the house who uses physical and psychological torture and violence on their housemaids, even if on Sunday, they will go ‘waving holy hands’ and ululate in church.

The charlatan who wears the garb of religion, yet violates hapless women in the name of ‘spiritual cleansing’.

The woman, who insists that another woman (possibly her daughter or sister-in-law) goes through the ‘widowhood’ rites including physical and mental torture to prove that she truly mourns the death of her spouse or was not responsible for the death.

The in-laws who deprive a widow from keeping the property left behind by her late husband and justify it on ‘tradition’.

The family members and leaders of religious faiths who pretend that violence against women do not exist among their highly ‘spirit-filled’ members and when such is reported they treat it with levity and encourage the woman to go back and live with it, thus exposing her to more violence and ultimately death.

The legislators who keep playing politics and fail to pass the Violence Against Persons Bill, yet are quick to pass other less urgent and non-life-threatening bills.

The businesses and business leaders who put  young female marketing staff in harms’ way through unrealistic ‘targets’ and don’t give a damn about how they achieve such targets.

The law enforcement officer who  dismisses reported cases of violence against a woman as ‘family matter’ and interrogates the woman as to what she did to her husband to warrant the attack, even suggesting that she may have been rude or failed to fix him a meal.

The husband who holds the wife captive through violence or threat thereof; deprivation; physical, mental and psychological torture.

The citizen who looks the other way when issues of violence against women are mentioned because they think it is “other people’s problem” or asks, “is that the problem of Nigeria?” Oh, actually, it is a problem of Nigeria!

And for the rest of you out there with no skeletons in your cupboard, Happy Women’s Day!

We failed our children

Has life become so useless and worthless in Nigeria?

If there's shooting in US school, the media keeps the story running as main news all day. Yesterday, 29+ students were killed in a Federal Government College in Yobe, yet the first news on NTA network news at 9pm yesterday was about the president commissioning the Audit House.

Yet, if a plane crashes with fewer but 'expensive' people, it becomes national calamity.

On a night the president suggested that if he withdraws the security forces from Yobe for a month, things would be worse, there is allegation that security forces surprisingly were absent near the school that night the devils in human form struck.

For many, the dead are just 'numbers' and later this week the presidency is laying out a banquet to celebrate our centenary and honour 100 people, even as we failed the dead children. 

We cannot continue like this. 

Budget 2014: Beyond heads and figures

As the National Assembly resumes for 2014, one of the key functions they are expected to dwell on is the consideration and passage of the budget proposal as prepared by the Executive. As citizens, we owe our country a duty to interrogate the contents of the proposed budget and offer our views. This, it is hoped, would help our parliamentarians, as our representatives to make informed decisions when considering the proposal for passage.

One way to look at the budget is to consider what each of the heads and figures allocated means for our country and its development. Here are a few of those queries.

The first observation to make is that the budget proposal allocates 76.3% to recurrent expenditure and just 23.7% to capital expenditure. One interpretation of this is that the budget is meant to just keep the country and its institutions running with nothing spectacular to show for. A budget focused on massive development of infrastructure would assign more to capital rather than to recurrent which covers personnel and overhead costs.

There are however a few noticeable exceptions which are to be commended. These include agriculture and rural development that allocates N35.1b to capital and N31.4b to recurrent respectively; water resources, N30.6b and N7.7b; power N59b and N3.3b; transport, N29.3b and N8.1b; works, N100.1b and N28.5b; lands and housing, N12.8b and N5.6 and aviation N26.1b and N6.1b.

The rest of the 42 ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) will spend more on their recurrent than on capital and in some instances the difference is so huge. Here are a few cases: the Ministry of Interior which is expected to spend N144.7b in recurrent and just N6.29b on capital; Police formation and commands, N285.5b and N6.79b; Education including UBEC, N443.9b and N49.5b and Health, N216.4b and N46.3b.

Zeroing in on the Interior Ministry’s budget shows that the Prisons Service would spend N45.2b on recurrent and a mere N2.3b on capital. With such lopsided allocation, it is doubtful if our prisons infrastructure would be revamped from their current state of dilapidation and dehumanisation this year. Equally difficult to carry out would be construction of new prisons to decongest the present number, even as the country has just signed a deal with the UK that might see the repatriation of more than 600 Nigerians serving jail terms in the UK to come home to complete their sentences.

But why is the recurrent expenditure so huge? Perhaps we should look at what typically appears under the recurrent expenditure, particularly under the overhead costs. Here are a few of such expenditure heads which need more explanation to the Nigerian public. What do we mean by ‘Welfare packages’, which will gulp as much as N40.4m in the headquarters of the Ministry of Water Resources? Please note that the said figure is not for the entire ministry and agencies under it, rather for the headquarters. Welfare package typically appears in the budget of every MDA and one wonders who audits this spending. How is the money disbursed, to whom and under what circumstances? Who determines the quantum to be disbursed in every office? Under what rules of engagement or laws did we turn our government offices to welfare package disbursers? This budget head is one that needs to be checked or discouraged as it is susceptible to abuse and corruption.

Other heads of interest demanding explanation include ‘Cleaning and fumigation services’ (for which the Headquarters of the Foreign Affairs Ministry would spend N201.7m and the Niger Delta Ministry will spend N25m on) and ‘Anniversaries and celebrations (for which the Ministry of Women Affairs will spend N71.6m)’. There are also budgetary heads for ‘Printing of security documents’; ‘Printing of non-security documents’; ‘Field and camping materials supplies’ (N4.39m in the Ministry of Women Affairs); ‘Uniforms and other clothing’; ‘Refreshments and meals’ (N16.7m in the Ministry of Women Affairs); ‘Honorarium and sitting allowance’ and ‘consultancy services for budget preparation’ (N8.36m in the Ministry of Women Affairs). This last bit suggests that the Ministry of Women Affairs has no internal personnel to prepare its budget for the year and for that reason it would procure consultant(s) to help it do so and it would then part with N8.36m).

There are even more interesting budgetary provisions elsewhere, including the State House. For instance, the State House Headquarters plans to purchase an embalming machine at the cost of N1.65m and a hydraulic post-mortem table at N4m. What morbid humour! Of course we know what embalmment and post-mortem are about, but in the State House Headquarters? No doubt there is a clinic in the State House, but I am not sure that clinic caters for a very large number of clients requiring it to have every kind of specialised units including mortuary. I am sure any such requirement for embalmment and post-mortem would not be routine and frequently required in a clinic in the State House and thus the said equipment cannot be seen as necessities. If and when such needs arise, referral could be made to larger state hospitals like the National Hospital. But apparently, our State House functions as an integrated town that must have every facility within. After all it has its own church (chapel) and mosque and even a zoo where N8m would be spent to upgrade and maintain it and an additional sum of N14.5m would be spent to purchase two beasts, all for the pleasure of its privileged patrons. And this is after we budgeted N7.5m for wildlife conservation in the State House last year.

Still in the State House, there is plan to spend N76.3m to purchase ‘crested cutlery, flatware and glassware’. Now, isn’t that too much to spend on those items, for a State House that has existed for years and been playing host to several dinners? We don’t dispose of dinnerware on a yearly basis, do we?

General maintenance in the State House will cost N1.19b of which N138.9 will go for motor vehicle and transport equipment maintenance, N907m for office and residential building maintenance; N17.4m for office furniture maintenance and N40m to maintain office and IT equipment (that comes to spending more than N3m each month to maintain office and IT equipment in the office of the president). Recalling that only last year, we budgeted N90.9m for this item, it is bewildering why we plan to spend so much this year. Yet, this is aside N188.3m to be spent on office stationery and computer consumables (for which we budgeted N507.9m last year).

A peep into the budget for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs brings its own excitement. For instance, we plan to spend money for the maintenance of plants and generators in several of our foreign missions, including the one in London. It’s with the same incredulity that we notice the plan to spend money in fuelling boats and aircraft in virtually all of our foreign missions. As an example, we plan to spend N2.38m and N1.78m respectively for the above services in our Foreign Mission in Abidjan. As earlier mentioned the foreign ministry’s headquarters would part with N201.7m for fumigation and cleaning services during the year.

There is this entry of N100m for the maintenance of Nigeria’s seat in the UN Security Council. Pray what does that come to? One would think that since we have a permanent representative to the UN, that office would be responsible for attending Security Council meetings, which cost would be borne by the UN anyway. So what would the N100m be used for?

Other interesting budgetary provisions proposed in this ministry include N40m for ‘global power on women’s empowerment, HIV and SRHR’ and N9m to be spent by one of its agencies, the Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution for ‘building democracy as an instrument of peace’. And although every MDA budgets for health insurance subscription as well as medicals, there is still this curious budgetary head in the foreign affairs ministry known as ‘cost of medical treatment for Mrs. XYZ (I have withheld the real names) at St. Andrews Burns Service at Broomfield Hospital’ for the sum of N49.76m. I am just curious why an individual’s name is listed in a federal budget as a spending. Who is the person? Why is this cost not subsumed in other medical costs or covered by insurance?

Next, the Foreign Affairs ministry plans to spend N834.4m to purchase and freight 40 ‘representational cars’ to 40 of our foreign missions. This translates to N20.86m as average cost for the cars. Wouldn’t this cost be reduced if these cars are bought in the locations they are to be used?

No doubt the above are just some of the numerous line items in the budget that one could query, not necessarily because they are fake, but sometimes because they don’t appear to show prudence in the management of our resources.

As the National Assembly considers the budget, it is hoped that they would be detailed enough to query these and more bogus and phoney entries in the Appropriation Bill.

First published on Saturday January 11, 2014 in Premium Times under the title, INVESTIGATION: Inside Nigeria's scandalous 2014 budget: http://premiumtimesng.com/news/153138-investigation-inside-nigerias-scandalous-2014-budget.html?wpmp_tp=0 and in The Punch on Monday January 13, 2014: http://www.punchng.com/opinion/budget-2014-beyond-heads-and-figures/ 

Working for our rights (World Human Rights Day 2013)

As the world marks this year’s Human Rights Day on December 10, the United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon is urging everyone to intensify efforts to fulfil “our collective responsibility to promote and protect the rights and dignity of all people everywhere”. For the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights, it will commemorate its 20 years of existence with the theme, “Working for your rights”. It is a good opportunity to draw attention to those of our rights that we often overlook in Nigeria and hope thereby to jolt us to consciousness about them. The fact that these rights are routinely abused does not stop them from remaining human rights. It only means we have to take steps to assert them. In other words, we must work for them.

Many Nigerians, including government officials and their apologists tend to see human rights issues as esoteric or an alien concept that human rights “activists” make too much noise about. They often remind us that, “this is Nigeria”. By that, they apparently mean, we need to see the internationally-recognised human rights “within our own context”, a euphemism for saying we are not “ripe” for such standards or we should make do with sub-standards. Such an argument is puerile! If we see ourselves as part of the world community and we love to appropriate all the trappings of modernity, including state-of-the-art personal gadgets, toys, cars and yes, private jets, what is so difficult with accepting human rights and promoting and protecting them?

The Human Rights Day comes a day after the International Anti-Corruption Day. It is therefore important to remind us of how corruption, especially by government officials, breach our rights to human dignity. To the extent that money stolen from our collective purse by public officials robs us of good roads, quality education, potable water, access to good health facilities and even the right to freely choose our governments means that our human rights are trampled upon.

Apart from the various human rights instruments Nigeria has signed up to and is bound by, the Nigerian Constitution remains the most important source of human rights we must work for. I intend to draw attention to some of these here. Sections 33, 34 and 35 of the Constitution recognise the rights to life, dignity of the human person and personal liberty respectively. Those words seem very clear to understand.

Many see the breach of the right to life mainly from the context of deaths occurring from direct acts of violence such as those perpetrated by armed insurgents and religious anarchists on the one hand and security forces on the other hand. But we must remind ourselves of other under-reported or “uncelebrated” breaches to the right to life which the state must be made to account for. These include the hundreds and thousands that get killed in road accidents caused by a combination of bad or collapsed roads, poor enforcement of road safety regulations, failure to prosecute perpetrators and the general lack of concern for safety rules by the citizenry. How about the deaths resulting from the suicidal speeds and reckless use of public highways by government officials and their convoys as happened in the death of Prof. Festus Iyayi in an auto crash involving the convoy of the Okgi State Governor, Idris Wada, recently? The abuse of the right to life is also seen in the many reports of lives lost on our waterways because the boats carried more human and material weights than required and there were no regulatory authorities to enforce or the officials compromised safety for dirty lucre. The same is applicable to air disasters.

Working for our human rights means that we must demand diligent prosecution of the drivers and operators of vehicles that cause the accidents and killings as well as sanction of enforcement officials for dereliction of duty for every avoidable accident, whether or not occasioning death. And society must learn to sheath its sentiments when such prosecutions commence because people will always ask why a particular person is being tried when others in the past or in other areas of our national rot were not so prosecuted. Truly, such a defence is jejune, silly and takes us nowhere.

Another area the rights to life and of human dignity and are abused is in the failure of the health institutions. Too many deaths have occurred in Nigeria due to poor handling of medical cases, be they emergency, life-threatening or routine. This is often caused by outright corruption which means that even the essential drugs and facilities are not found in health facilities. In the cause of my work, I have come across health facilities in our rural communities that cannot effectively treat our commonest of ailments like malaria while childbirth remains one of the most live-threatening adventures in the country. It is time to hold the state to account for the failure to provide the basic facilities that guarantee health care. It would include prosecution for corruption in the sector and for dereliction of duty as well.

Similar to the above is the collapse of our education sector. Public schools, especially at the primary and secondary levels, are in a total shambles, not only in the rural communities but everywhere. In their current conditions, our public schools abuse the rights of children to life and human dignity and also prepare the children not to be able to stand up and demand such rights in the future, due to ignorance. If children in schools are not guaranteed safe environment, qualified teachers, adequate number of teachers, requisite books and teaching materials as well as proper furniture, they are simply prepared for a bleak future where they cannot cope with their peers within and outside the country.

It raises a very heavy burden in the mind as to the future of our country. I say this because I have seen what passes for public schools in different parts of the country. And it tells of one thing – the Nigerian state, as represented by our governments at all levels don’t really care about education. Most of the present government officials today went to public schools anyway and if the schools were of these present standards, we would not have had the requisite personnel to run our affairs as a country today.

We must therefore continue to demand that government puts in more money into critical sectors such as health and education. But much more than that, we demand that those budgets should go to the real items that would turn around the sector. What we need are facilities, equipment, qualified, efficient and committed personnel to deliver quality services. We demand a departure from the usual budget headings with huge allocations for “welfare package”; “refreshments and meals”; “publicity and advertisements”; “sporting activities”; “anniversaries/celebrations”; “honorarium and sitting allowance” and “international trainings”.

Nelson 'Troublemaker' Mandela (1918-2013)

This is in honour of Nelson Mandela of South Africa, nay, Mandela of Africa. Okay, okay, it is for Mandela of the world! That seems like a more appropriate epithet of the man generally called Madiba. I am always awed by this exceptional personality who on co-receiving the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1993 humbly said: “We stand here today as nothing more than a representative of the millions of our people who dared to rise up against a social system whose very essence is war, violence, racism, oppression, repression and the impoverishment of an entire people.” At some other time, Mandela has been quoted as saying: “I was not a messiah, but an ordinary man who had become a leader because of extraordinary circumstances.” Clearly, in victory, he remains humble. Despite what he achieved for his country and the human race, he does not flaunt those qualities as making him a superhuman, with a claim to love his country more than any other citizen or know what is best for his country, more than anybody else. Yet, if he were minded to appropriate such status, many would not disagree with him. He went through 27 odd years of unfair incarceration, coming out and still preaching peaceful struggle, winning the struggle, becoming president, charting a course for reconciliation and integration for his country and quietly bowing out without asking for a second term.
In 2004, Mandela announced his retirement from “public life”. But such retirement could not be, for Mandela belongs in the public realm and cannot be allowed to fade away. He is like the gold fish that has no hiding place. That is why his imprimatur is on many charitable activities such as the fight against HIV/AIDS and the annual Nelson Mandela Christmas party for children. He was also the arrowhead for South Africa’s successful bid to host the 2010 FIFA World Cup.
While announcing his retirement from public life Mandela said: “Thank you for being kind to an old man - allowing him to take a rest, even if many of you may feel that after loafing somewhere on an island and other places for 27 years, the rest is not really deserved.” Mandela and everything associated with him (including his prison uniform number 46664) are super brands.
Mandela has a remarkable pedigree that is often overlooked. Born Rolihlahla Mandela on July 18, 1918 in Qunu, near Umtata, in the black homeland of Transkei, his father, Henry Mgadla Mandela, was chief councillor to Thembuland’s acting paramount chief David Dalindyebo. When his father died, Mandela became the chief’s ward and was groomed for the chieftainship. His first name could be interpreted, as “troublemaker.” It was only a primary school teacher who named him Nelson afterwards.
But could Mandela rightly be described as a troublemaker? Looked at from the eyes of the apartheid government, he may well have been a troublemaker during his younger days when he fought against that heinous regime in his country. But in later life, this troublemaker has become a trouble-shooter. And that is what won him the Nobel Peace Prize.
The “troublemaker” joined the African National Congress (ANC) in 1944, was tried for treason between 1956 and 1961, but was acquitted. The white supremacist regime was not done yet with Mandela until it jailed him on June 12, 1964 for life, for allegedly plotting to overthrow the government. For 27 long years he was incarcerated, first at Robben Island Prison and later (1982-1990) at Pollsmoor Prison.
Because of the long period of incarceration, the only photographs of the man were those taken before he was thrown into jail, which painted a perfect image of “old school” dressing. He was certainly nobody’s idea of a dandy in haute couture. How wrong we all were as just a few years after he came out of prison, Mandela became a fashion model with his flowery designer shirts rightly named “Mandela”.
On February 18, 1990, the world’s most famous prisoner tasted freedom.
I never gave Mandela the chance to become president, even when he was out of prison and the apartheid regime crumbled. I thought 27 years in jail was long enough to finish him off physically and mentally or that he might have lost touch with reality. How wrong I was for the South Africans saw in Mandela the living spirit of their nation, one that was needed to piece together a fragmented society into a rainbow country. And so it was that for five years, 1994-1999, Nelson “troublemaker” Mandela was president of South Africa and unofficial leader of a new Africa.
At 92, this jolly old man has every cause to be glad, for God has endowed him with exceptional qualities. He has witnessed the worst and the best parts of life. He does not have any option than to keep going. After all, he once said: “... after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb...” And he gets recognised for all his good work. Last November, the United Nations adopted by consensus a resolution for commemoration of the Nelson Mandela Day on July 18, beginning in 2010. This recognises the Nobel laureate’s contribution to resolving conflicts and promoting race relations, human rights and reconciliation. I couldn’t agree more with the world body.

* The original of this piece was published in NewAge newspaper on July 18, 2005 to mark Mandela's 87th birthday while this updated version was first published in Next newspaper on July 17, 2010 to mark Mandela's 92nd birthday.