Yet Another Fuel Scarcity

It was a relapse to the painful past when Nigerians woke up last week to find queues at filling stations across the country. Petrol was scarce again! Most of the queues stretched into highways and caused terrible traffic snarls.
Shortly before this latest experience, several Nigerian motorists have had the engine of their vehicles damaged as a result of contaminated fuel imported by some of the petroleum marketers. And the excuse was that there was too much ethanol content in the imported petrol. Not a few cars were damaged, most of whom are already contemplating class action against the marketers and perhaps the Department of Petroleum Resources, (DPR) whose duty it is to confirm the quality of petroleum products being imported for consumption in the country.
DPR may have dealt well with the initial case of contaminated fuel importation, it is surprising to hear now that another three ship loads of same type of fuel with 20% ethanol content (instead of the 10% ethanol-content permitted) were being imported again to the country. The report is that the vessels bearing these ethanol-ladenned petrol had to be returned from mid-sea recently to the countries from where they were being imported.
Yet, NNPC sources explain that beside the ethanol issue, one of the three major marketers, Texaco had labour-related issues with its staff, which, in a way, disrupted operation flow of the company. Mobil and Oando were the ones involved in the importation of the foul fuel.
But all these plethora of reasons came against the background that the Federal Government had, since the beginning of the year awarded till December, the licenses for the importation of fuel into the country.
If this had been settled from the beginning of the year, one would have thought the essence is to have uninterrupted supply flow with standard set. But the harsh experience of Nigerians is an odious throw-back to a nasty past and puts a question mark on the importation contracts so awarded
The other question remains whether or not the DPR is still alive to its responsibility. We had in an earlier editorial praised the department for its timely response to the first case of contaminated fuel. But it seems the unit had since gone to sleep given the new report. Where were they again when importers still loaded ship with fuel considered dangerous to Nigerian vehicles?
In all, the blame lands squarely on the table of government. It is bad enough that, after all the huge sum pumped into the repairs of the nation’s refineries, we are yet in the business of importing fuel, yet it is worse that we can no longer import even the right and proper fuel.
We believe it is either a mark of dereliction of duty, or that the DPR is deliberately being protective of those persons keen on bringing in unsuitable petrol. Either way, the DPR deserves severe reprimand for the present impasse.
We expect that those oil marketing companies that have caused this needless pain should be brought to book by the concerned authorities. If this is not done or seen to have been done, we may be left with no option than to conclude that the crisis is contrived and a programmed confusion as a result of high-level conspiracy.
The period the scarcity lasted visited untold hardship on many Nigerians with all the concomitant losses suffered by the citizenry. This can hardly be the face of a government with a human face. It is such contrived hardship that sometimes causes desperation on the part of the poor and lowly as to take extreme steps in making ends meet. Little wonder that at the slightest sign of fuel scarcity, the black market springs up with an army of burgeoning youths willing to make dangerous brisk business selling petrol along the road
We call on the government to work out a more enduring strategy that will not only enhance steady supply of petrol, but also and more importantly, encourage local refining of petroleum products, not only by making our refineries produce at maximum capacity, but also encouraging privately licensed refineries to commence production. Only then will this periodic pain come to an end.

Banks and the SMEs

For an economy that is gradually shifting from public sector dominance to a private sector-driven one, the encouragement and sustenance of the private sector should be considered key. And what is the private sector without the Small and Medium Scale Enterprises?
That the Small and Medium Scale Enterprises are experiencing a squeeze is public knowledge. The Director General of the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN), Mrs Modupe Adelaja cried out recently when she accused the banks of not doing enough to support the implementation of the Small and Medium Enterprises Equity Investment Scheme (SMEEIS) which was set up seven years ago to jump-start the growth of the real sector. But seven years after, the scheme is still floundering. Mrs. Adelaja has blamed this on the unwillingness of the banks to assist the operators of the scheme.
One of the strong reasons canvassed by the CBN authorities in ordering a recapitalization of the nation’s banks over two years ago, is that with the consolidation, banks will have the financial muscle to assist the private sector to grow. Two years after the exercise, the banks have neither been able to finance the small and medium scale enterprises nor mega projects. Yet the same banks declare huge profits year-in, year-out.
What this failure translates to is economic stagnation. If the public sector is seemingly scaling down its activities and the private sector is not empowered to intervene, the result will be a shrinking economy. With the failure of the SMEEIS, the unemployment index will only be on a daily increase, with the attendant consequences of crime and insecurity, a malaise which will in turn hunt the banks themselves.
But the irony is that the failure of the banks to assist is not so much as a result of the unavailability of the funds to support the scheme, as it is the inability of the SMEEIS operators to meet the “stringent conditions” set by the banks before such facilities can be accessed.
While we agree that banks must exercise caution in the deployment of depositors’ funds, we also believe that excessive caution that complicates access to needed funds by the private sector is neither helpful in the long run, nor of real benefit to the banks themselves.
We believe the various state governments could be made to sign Irrevocable Standing Payment Orders (ISPOs) on behalf of the entrepreneurs in their various states, so the banks can really release the funds to the SMEEIS through the state governments, as a way of reflating the economy.
Indeed, for a government desirous of tackling poverty and unemployment - the twin malaise of our society- deliberate efforts must be made to bridge the gap between the haves and the have-nots, even if it means relaxing some policies. The SMEEIS scheme is one veritable means of achieving this.
We also believe that the near moribund National Directorate of Employment (NDE) can be re-awakened by making it an integral part of this scheme, what with the structure it should have had in place over the years. The NDE, by its nature should be able to provide a good guide to the SMEs on how to not only generate employment opportunities, but also regenerate the Nigerian economy altogether.

The Dumped Electricity Equipment

In Nigeria, it is often difficult to understand how government works and reasons. What ordinarily should be treated with dispatch is given the most lackadaisical treatment. This wasteful approach to governance was again exposed when recent media reports indicated that some N4 billion worth of energy equipment was just being deployed to user companies, ten years after they were procured. Some of the equipment included transformers, circuit breakers and isolators.
For ten years, after procurement, the items were abandoned in the warehouse of the Energy Ministry without distributing them to the user agencies. This is most worrisome to say the least. How can it be explained that in the face of the daily agony Nigerians are going through on the energy sector, equipment meant to improve the efficiency of the sector were left to rot for a decade? Was it that the Ministry did not have need for the equipment at the time they were bought as to warrant abandoning them since then? But even if that was the case, won’t the nation-wide complaint of worsening power situation , often blamed on lack of equipment to service the power stations have caused the ministry to urgently release the materials? Whose interest were the abandoned equipment serving in the store?
How could six hundred transformers, for instance, have been bought and abandoned for ten years when most of the complaints of electricity distributors is that there are not enough transformers to facilitate efficient power distribution? Listeners to the FRCN radio programme I Beg Una are often treated to the routine complaint of how consumers are tasked by the PHCN staff to contribute monies with which to buy new transformers, so they can enjoy improved power supply. How can this be the case when transformers are left to rot in the ministry’s store houses? It is no surprise that ten years after, some of the equipment are no longer functional necessitating their repairs before they can be distributed.
No doubt, the life span of the equipment would have been shortened while they lay fallow in the store house. They must have also lost their warranty.
This unfortunate development is akin to a doctor having a critically ill patient with all signs of anemia, and who has all the needed vitamins and other drugs to boost the health of the patient, yet refuses to administer them on the patient. It is either the doctor wants the patient dead, or has lost his professional competence. Either way, he is no longer fit to bear the name.
A former Power and Steel minister confessed that he was aware of the abandoned equipment, for which he had set up a committee to work out how to distribute it. Yet the committee’s report never saw the light of day. The bureaucracy apparently stalled the distribution of the equipment all these years.
What that simply means is that it is either a clear case of sabotage or criminal professional negligence. It is for acts like this that the civil service is sometimes likened to evil service.
Any wonder that the civil servants have sometimes been accused of conniving with Generator sellers in ensuring that the power sector remains perpetually prostrate, so that the generating plant market will continue to boom.
Were it not so, how come for ten years, the audit unit of the Ministry of Power and Steel did not file a report on the abandoned items in the store? Is it a case of collusion with the powers that be in the ministry? Or was it done so that the abandoned equipment can always be presented as the supplies from current orders? The puzzles are many.
This is inhibitive bureaucracy on parade. Hence we believe that all those involved should be summoned to explain their role in this scandal.
This sort of development impels us to recommend that external auditors be always invited to look into the books

The Nigeria Police

Who will guard the guards? – Ancient Roman saying.

EVEN for a country that stumbles from one scandal to the other, it was shocking to read about the arrest of 45 prospective police recruits, who wanted to make the marks through unwholesome means.


During re-screening of the recruits for training, 45 of them were discovered to have hired people to write the examinations for them last March. What gave them away was that the pictures of those who took the examinations were different from theirs. The police explained that seven of the suspects escaped.

“A situation where people who are supposed to be trained as law enforcement officers are ab initio criminals or persons with questionable character is bad and unacceptable,” Mr. Mike Okiro, the Inspector General of Police said of the incident.

While investigations continue, it is startling that the suspects had the temerity to pull this one off against the police, the organisation that is to arrest also arrests candidates for examination malpractices.

This is not an isolated incident. Mr. Okiro could have before him a massive scandal that would require further scrutiny to unravel. How were the suspects able to take the examinations at their various centres without being detected? Who were their collaborators in the police? What are the chances that some others who got into the police this manner are not in service? Has the search for these criminals ended with the apprehension of the 45?

Who in the police offers protection to officers who engage in this act? For how long could this have been going on? Is it possible that some officers who got into the force in this way are the ones who recruited the suspects? Perhaps, the escape of seven of these suspects indicates the unseriousness that the police attached to the offence.


Vast consequences await the country if this case is not handled well. Once criminals are able to take over the police, the jump in crime rate will reduce today’s situation to a child’s play. Police personnel who join the force in this twisted manner have set out from the beginning to create criminal havens in the force for themselves and their sponsors.


These are the type of police personnel who will be ineffective in their duties because they know that their backgrounds give room for them to be blackmailed.


How this case is resolved will have great bearing on the police personnel of the future. At a time the country’s crime combating system is overdue for overhauling, it is instructive that criminals are not afraid to carry out their activities against the police, an institution they should otherwise dread.

This scandal hints at the poor background checks, if any that the police conducts on those entrusted with the security of the nation.


If the police cannot protect itself from criminals, it is probably time we searched for an outfit that would protect the police from itself because it is important to guard the guards.

The solar energy option

The bid by the Federal Government to explore the solar energy option in addressing the nation’s intractable power supply problem is a welcome development. The Minister of State for Science and Technology, Dr. Alhassan Zaku, who disclosed the plan during a facility tour of the Engineering Materials Development Institute (EMDI), Akure, Ondo State, which is collaborating with the federal government on the initiative, said the proposal has already received the approval of the Federal Executive Council (FEC).

The solar option for electricity generation, which involves the tapping of the sun’s energy with solar panels for the country’s power needs, is expected to be less expensive and cumbersome than the difficulties involved in running an unwieldy institution like the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN).

It is believed to hold out a promise of success because the government is likely to only facilitate availability and affordability of the solar power generating materials for Nigerians. The government will not play any role in administering the solar operations and will therefore not be burdened with the implementation and administration of the solar energy technology.

The government is said to be considering the Far East, particularly China, for technological support. Already, the EMDI is carrying out various researches on the production of solar panels that would be wholly made in Nigeria. The Director of the Institute, Dr. Babaniyi Babatope, is optimistic that the country will soon record a breakthrough in the effort to harness the sun’s energy for electricity generation, using local technology.

We support the government’s plan to facilitate electricity generation through solar energy in Nigeria. Given the nation’s inability to surmount the challenge of adequate electricity generation and distribution via thermal projects over the years, any effort to provide an electricity generation option to boost the present epileptic electricity supply is commendable, and worth exploring.

Nigeria is a tropical country with abundance of sunlight. It is right that we join the league of countries that are harnessing the free resource for their power needs. Although solar energy exploitation is not entirely new in the country as some institutions and individuals have been reported to be making use of it already, the involvement of government in making the technology widely available and affordable to our people is a step in the right direction.

We are of the view that using a multi-pronged approach to the electricity generation and distribution problem will increase our electricity output. Besides, solar energy has many useful benefits. It is relatively cheap, reliable and environmentally friendly. Sunlight is inexhaustible and the technology is safe.

The only challenge before the government is to guard against the debilitating Nigerian factor, for example, quota system, nepotism and corruption, which can bog down the implementation of the project. The government agencies that are charged with bringing the initiative to life should be given the necessary support to deliver on their mandate, and closely monitored to ensure that they do not derail from their objectives.

It is good that the nation is looking at the direction of local manufacturing of the panels that are used to harness solar energy. Efforts should be made to ensure that any foreign technical partners that might be needed to complement and quicken their efforts are credible ones that can add value to the project.

The efforts of EMDI and other relevant government agencies and institutions that are involved in the project should be supported in every way possible so that this viable energy alternative can become a reliable component of our energy policy and significantly boost the volume of electricity available to the people and industries.

For professionalism in foreign service

There is grave concern among diplomatic careerists in the foreign service sector that successive Nigerian Governments are shutting the pyramid apex of their service against them. This comes by way of Government showing preference in appointments for politicians into the position of Ambassadors, high Commissioners, Attaches, to professional careerists in the diplomatic.

Discipline. Indeed, the concern among career diplomats may have catapulted to the level of despair due to apex career truncation. The aspiration and anticipation of every civil servant in career diplomacy is to attain the professional climax of an Ambassador before retiring or quitting service. What they fear may have become the norm is that political appointees have become more preponderantly appointed to the positions of Ambassadors to the detriment of career diplomats whose progress is by that token being.

terminated or determined for apparent political expediency.
The recent celebration, by President Musa Yar’ Adua,via a dinner party held in honour of twenty out of the sixty one appointed and cleared Ambassadors, aggravated the anguish of the nation’s career diplomats who consider the possibility of their rise to the apex of the pyramid of their career being terminally whittled. Many dissenting career diplomats find their disillusion being aggravated by the expressed fact that the civilian dispensation, including the Yar’ Adua Administration, as fairing worse than the Military in the disproportionate favour in Ambassadorial appointments in the direction of politicians rather than career diplomats.

They cite the fact that during the military aegis, about fifty percent ratio for politicians and
professional diplomats receive Ambassadorial appointments. Today, they alleged, the ratio has crashed to about thirty percent in favour of political
appointees.

What is more aggravating, according to the career diplomats, is that vertical, promotional progression of diplomatic careerists is being consciously retarded in order to further frustrate the attainment of their peak in professional rise, to the frightening extent that many of them may never hit the roof of their career before they retire.

The Ambassadorial position is, strictly speaking, a representational position held for the President of the nation. In the country where they serve, they hold certificates of credence which implicates the entirety of the nation. The profile, identity and the global image of the country rest wholly on their diplomatic shoulder. This perception anticipates a professional and a political perceptiveness on the part of the envoys.. The careerists in the diplomatic discipline possess the requisite wherewithal’s to meet the policy, technocratic and routine essentials to serve the nation at the peak of diplomacy—national and global. Their agitation to rise to occupy the Ambassadorial position is therefore not only legitimate but aptly in order.

The fact that summits and retreats are being organized for new Ambassadors is an open admission of the fact that the challenges of diplomatic service at the apex is not purely a matter of political brinkmanship and expediency, but a factor of knowledge, experience and practical skill. Issues of national profile, image, global integration of the country with economic globalization, security council and so on are better understood and perceptively conceived by career diplomats.

Yet there are non-technocratic matters that only the politicians can and should expediently handle. For instance, the fact that only twenty out of over sixty appointed and Senate-screened Ambassadors have received their certificates of credence, appreciably for the political reasons of the reluctance shown by foreign countries’ displeasure with the 2007 polls , reveal that the matter is more political than legal or even technical. Politicians are therefore needed as envoys in certain nations where it is politically expedient to launder the nation’s political image and make those nations more receptive to our political realities.

It is our view that the Government may need to draw an equitable balance in appointing career diplomats and politicians as Ambassadors to foreign countries in a way that will douse the present fear of side-lining that career diplomats express. National interest should determine Ambassadorial appointments rather than political patronage.

Transforming the semi-democratic state

THE semi-democratic state, in my own definition, is a state which upholds democracy as an idea but falls short in the application of its principles. The principles of freedom of speech and association, free and fair elections as well as transparency in government constitute essential attributes of the democratic state.

Most African states, including Nigeria, fall into the category of the semi-democratic state. We have witnessed in recent months two national elections on the African continent which attracted the attention of the international community. The Kenyan election of December 2007 resulted in violent protests in which more than a thousand people were reportedly killed, while Robert Mugabe's tactics or attempts to rig the Zimbabwean presidential elections of March 2008 have kept the rest of the world waiting.

Mr. Mugabe is 84; even when he was no longer popular he relied on the coercive institutions of state to sustain his rule. One characteristic of the semi-democratic state is the role undemocratic institutions such as the military and police are made to play in the democratic process. They aid and abet the rigging of elections, and are more than willing agents in the suppression of dissent. Mr. Mugabe used the coercive institutions of state to devastating effect; Condaleeza Rice, the American Secretary of State described Mugabe as a "disgrace to Africa". What a befitting epithet to the political career of a leader who would not leave office when the ovation was loudest!

The type of electoral misbehaviour recently highlighted in Kenya and Mugabe's Zimbabwe are common place in Africa and have more or less become the tradition in Nigeria since independence in 1960. Nigeria's most recent presidential election of April 2007 was not in any way less fraudulent than the chaotic Kenyan election of December. When the Nigerian electoral game was tagged "operation do or die" by the then incumbent president no one was left in any doubt as to what the intended outcome would be. General Olusegun Obasanjo single-handedly determined his own successor in office (as Mr .Vladimir Putin would later do in the semi-democratic state of Russia) in an election that was believed to have been massively rigged in order to ensure his will prevailed. That Nigerians did not take the law into their own hands like their counterparts in Kenya should not suggest the former were more civilised. Nigeria has shed more blood than most African nations since the inception of partisan politics.

The suggestion has been made, especially by some Nigerian commentators, that a bloody revolution is needed to sort things out. Of course revolutions have played a significant role in the history of democracy, but such revolutions were directed at sources that made democracy impossible in the first place. In Europe, for instance, revolutions have resulted in the eradication of the monarchy or curtailment of its influence. The history of revolt in some African nations has been a history of one ethnic group taking up arms against another. In Nigeria, for instance, a relatively minor religious disagreement has the capacity to provoke greater resentment than the rigging of an election. This, however, is not to say that a revolt of some sort cannot lead to positive change.

The road to true democracy is continuity. Democracy has been interrupted in Nigeria on several occasions since independence in 1960, while the American political system, for instance, has endured more than 200 years of continuity. We may today admire the sophistication of the Clintons, Obamas and McCains but the history of American presidential contest has not always been that straightforward. George Washington's elections in 1789 and 1792 were in effect uncontested. In 1800, Thomas Jefferson defeated Aaron Burr in an election in which no one had a majority and the election was turned over to the House of Representatives which deliberated and voted 36 times between 11 and 17 February 1801. The first time ever that a presidential candidate would go on a nationwide campaign tour was 1860 and that candidate was Stephen Douglas who lost the presidential election to Abraham Lincoln that year. A hundred years later, in 1960, came the age of television and the first ever televised presidential debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. America's presidential elections have continued to improve in transparency from the early days when the political mafia were said to have had a big say.

The citizenry and patriotic leadership must continue to emphasise the reform of the political process. Reform of the constitution and the electoral processes is essential to correcting the mistakes of the past. Those who have successfully organised the electoral overthrow of elected dictators must also learn not to behave like the tyrants they replaced. Mr. Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) who has persevered over the years in his campaign against the tyranny of Mr. Robert Mugabe has the historic task of launching Zimbabwe on the path of true democracy and development if he becomes president. Mr. Mugabe completed his own historical task many years ago "he liberated his nation from the clutches of imperialism" but greed and fear continued to propel him in office. He remains an important historical figure in Zimbabwean politics regardless.

The political party, it must be emphasised, is an important element in the democratic arena and true democrats must be tolerant of competing ideas. The political party may have been defined as an association of like-minded individuals but this is not always the case. The political party, in the Nigerian context, is an umbrellage of diverse ethnic, religious and ideological interests. The political party itself must be disciplined for it to be effective and successful in the organisation of state and society. Nigeria's People's Democratic Party (PDP) is building itself for the future; any political party that genuinely wants to complete with the PDP must begin to widen its nets now. The political party of the future must transcend the transient ambition of the individual.

The transformation of the semi-democratic state is largely about the economic and educational transformation of society itself. The African continent, in spite of its resources, is the poorest in the world. The quality of our democracy will improve considerably once the economic and educational fortunes of our people have also improved. Most Africans do not read, neither do they have access to television. Pseudo-democrats who only fend for themselves are quite happy with the status quo because all they ever want is to be worshipped.

Mugabe, elections and the future of Zimbabwe

WITH the call by the leader of the main opposition party, Morgan Tsvangirai on the people of Zimbabwe to stage a mass protest against the non release of the results of the recent general elections, it is obvious that the battle ground for Zimbabawe's nationhood has shifted from between ZANU-PF party and the erstwhile white minority rule under Ian Smith to Mugabe vs the free people of Zimbabawe. This is very unfortunate and a minus for Africa, a continent devastated by decades of inglorious leadership.

Following the deadlock over the elections, which the opposition claims it won but which Mugabe and his ruling ZANU-PF is clinching with tight fist, the rival parties have declared their intention to fight the vote recount that was ordered by Mugabe. The stage is gradually being set for possible civil unrest unless Mugabe retracts his steps and threads the path of honour by stepping down and giving the people the chance to redefine their destiny.

The political and economic crises in Zimbabwe have created one of the worst enclaves of political hardship and human mass suffering in the world. Life has become brutish as millions of people hardly find food to eat. It is a catastrophe that can only be compared to a war situation even though there is no shooting in Zimbabwe. The economy has been crippled. Basic food supplies are lacking. Zimbabwe has earned the unenviable record of having the highest inflation rate of 100,000 per cent in the world! The currency has become more of worthless bundle of paper where a loaf of bread costs millions of Zimbabwe dollars. Millions of Zimbabweans have fled the country. The situation is a historic antithesis.

Amidst the worsening situation, and in an attempt to forestall the break down of law and order, the police at the weekend banned all political rallies in the country. Tension is rising as hunger, poverty and deprivation bite hard on the population. There is no doubt that Zimbabwe is in deep crisis and is facing its worst turmoil since independence in 1980.

Denying that fact is preposterous, as President Thabo Mbeki seems to suggest. What is a crisis? In this context, we are talking of a situation in a country where the future is uncertain and life is difficult and painful. In such a situation, what is required is urgent action to avoid complete disaster or anarchy. Zimbabwe is facing such a precarious situation. This is the time that those who love that country must rally round to save its people.

Zimbabwe drew nearer to the brink in the past two weeks following a general election that is yet to produce any official winner. The election was contested between three political parties and their flag bearers, namely Robert Mugabe of the ruling ZANU-PF party, Morgan Tsvangira of the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and Mr. Simba Makoni, Mugabe's former finance minister, who split from the MDC to run as an independent candidate. The issue of the economy and political change dominated the campaign debates. Without doubt, most Zimbabweans want a change from the current abhorrent state of affairs and they demonstrated this through their votes. Zimbabweans are wearied by the Mugabe regime, which clearly has nothing new to offer.

The election results already released showed that the ruling ZANU-PF party has lost grip of the political machinery. The party secured 97 seats while the opposition MDC won 99. The minority breakaway MDC won 10 seats. Altogether, the opposition won 109 seats against Mugabe's 97.

The parliamentary results gave insight into what the presidential poll is like. Analysts believe that Mugabe definitely lost in the elections. This naturally expected outcome is certainly the reason why the presidential result is being withheld. There is no way Mr. Mugabe would have withheld the result for a second if he had won the election.

Amidst the deadlock, the opposition party has declared that it won 50.3 per cent of the votes. The Zimbabwe electoral law requires a benchmark 50 per cent win of the total votes cast for a candidate to be declared president. As the opposition is insisting that Mr. Tsvangira be declared president, it has also gone to court to compel the electoral body to release the results. On the other hand, Mr. Mugabe and his ZANU-PF party have ordered a recount of the votes accusing the electoral officials of deliberately undercounting votes in favour of the opposition. Given the stalemate, a runoff election is being expected to resolve the matter. Mugabe is banking on the runoff to regain his lost ground.

But why were the parliamentary election result released and the crucial presidential result withheld? Was it not the same method used in counting both the parliamentary and presidential votes? Both the vote recounting and the anticipated run off election are ploys by Mugabe to perpetuate himself in power against the desire and wishes of his people.

Once again, we are confronted with a situation of tyrannical leadership where one man drags the entire country to ruins in the guise of fighting perceived imperialist forces. The former strongman of Uganda, Idi Amin Dada pursued the same counter productive agenda that ruined his country and pauperized its people. No one can fight a force that is greater than him. Even with good intentions, it is clear that Mugabe cannot fight the forces that are greater than him. The consequences of such a misadventure are obvious on the country. Zimbabwe and its people have been ravaged. The people have been turned into refugees and despised by its neighbours.

Mugabe played a crucial role in the fight for Zimbabwe's independence. But history will be harsh on him for contributing to the destruction of Zimbabwe. Mr. Mugabe clearly fits as a nation builder considering his antecedents as a freedom fighter. But unless he steps down now after being in power for twenty-eight years and is weak and advanced in age at 84 years, he would also be called the destroyer of modern Zimbabwe. That would be uncomplimentary for a man who doggedly led a liberation movement against white minority rule in his country.

Zimbabwe's current crisis has its roots in the promises Mugabe made during the liberation movement on land rights. The issue of land rights reemerged shortly after Mugabe became the executive president. The liberation movement promised to solve this vital issue. Mugabe embarked on land redistribution since 2000. Under the programme, land was taken from the white holders that owned large farms and given to Africans.

The policy did not go down well with Britain, the former colonial master. Critics say Mugabe allocated land to his cronies leaving the vast majority of the people with nothing. We note that Zimbabwe is not the only country in the sub-region to carry out land reforms. Kenya did the same under its land consolidation policy but it didn't cause crisis. In the case of Zimbabwe, by not addressing the matter from the point of view of equity, many Zimbabweans including whites and blacks are complaining of exclusion in the land matter.

The failure of diplomacy to assuage Mugabe led Britain, America and the European Union (EU) to isolate Zimbabwe through a subsisting legislation that was passed in 2001. Under the legislation, the government of Zimbabwe is prohibited from accessing loan, credit or debt cancellation from the IMF and the other financial institutions. This exclusion has led to hyperinflation and unprecedented food shortage in Zimbabwe.

It is on this basis that Mugabe maintains that there is no problem in Zimbabwe except that created by its Western critics. Certainly, the West would not lift the embargo against Zimbabwe under Mugabe. What that means is that if Mugabe manipulates his way to be president for another five-year term that would amount to self-annihilation for Zimbabwe. Mugabe cannot continue to fight the forces that are greater than him with empty stomach.

On this basis, this election is crucial to save the country from further disastrous consequences. The West has deliberately allowed the old man to continue fighting until he is exhausted and leaves the stage drained. Mugabe is fighting a loosing battle. The SADC countries must take drastic steps to make Mugabe step down in the interest of his people. As it is, Zimbabwe cannot move forward so long as Mugabe remains in power. Let another regime redress the land issue. Zimbabwe can only regain its devastated nationhood with Mugabe outside the ring.

The Lagos BRT Scheme

After months of delay, Governor Babatunde Fashola of Lagos State finally launched the much awaited Bus Rapid Transit system that is meant to reduce the long intractable problem of traffic congestion in Lagos. Lagos like any other mega city must necessarily suffer from problems associated with transportation, but over the years the successive administrations in the state with the exception of that of Jakande and lately Tinubu, have failed to deal with it.
Initiated by the Bola Tinubu Administration with the assistance of the World Bank and successfully completed by Fashola's Government, the BRT is one of the three-pronged attacks the state has unleashed against the urban traffic congestion. The two others are the light rail and water transportation projects which are yet to fully commence. Regulated by the Lagos Metropolitan Area Transport Authority (LAMATA) an agency created for the purpose, 126 high capacity buses have been provided to ply the designated BRT routes. The buses are classified into two groups: the Red and Blue buses. While the Red buses which are operated by Lagos Asset Investment Limited run direct non-stop trips from Mile 12 to CMS; the Blue buses under the operation of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW), also running the Mile 12 to CMS axis will stop for about four minutes at every stop until they get to the final destination. About 26 decent shelters have also been provided for commuters along the routes. An estimated 7000 passengers are expected to be transited per direction every hour. The passengers are expected to have a smooth ride and arrive at the other end in less than one hour for a journey that ordinarily takes two and half hours or more on the regular rickety molue or danfo buses.
With the launch of the scheme, Lagos has now joined such modern and mega cities as Mexico City, San Francisco, Seoul, Rio de Janeiro, Bogota, Kuala Lumpur, Curitiba, Caracas, Prague, which have sought successfully to combat the hydraheaded problem of traffic congestion that nearly destroyed the cities economic productivities. It is our view that the Lagos initiative is in line with that modern solution.
Properly managed, the BRT scheme is capable of reducing the Lagos traffic menace significantly as more people will not only be transported across during business hours, but also capable of reducing the number of vehicles on the road with their attendant environmental pollution as more car owners may be encouraged to use the buses thus saving themselves of the stress of wading through Lagos traffic snarls. We commend Governor Fashola and his predecessor for such a wonderful initiative and for moving Lagos into the real twenty-first century. Yet this is by no means the only solution. Given the Lagos heavy population the BRT scheme will only be efficient and sustainable if it is quickly complemented by the promised light rail system and water transportation scheme. Work on these must be accelerated and funds mobilised immediately. It is only when this is done that Lagos can be said to have a real urban mass transit system. Equally, we must commend the government for integrating the old but unruly NURTW that had run the Lagos dirty transportation system for ages. Had they been sidelined, that would have created another chaos and social problems for the state. However, we hope its members would be properly trained to adjust to the challenge and discipline of the more modern BRT scheme.
Much as the Lagos State Government deserves to be supported there are still serious concerns which critics have raised in the execution of the scheme which can not be ignored. The first is the reduction of the lanes instead of expansion of such major highways as Ikorodu road and Western Avenue to accommodate the scheme. This in itself is one of the major causes of the recent traffic congestion in Lagos. As if that was not enough, the resurfacing of some of the lanes were not only amateurish but scandalously of low quality and unbecoming of the standard already set by same government at Awolowo, Oregun, Lawanson - Yaba, Adeola Odeku, Agege motor roads and the on-going Boudillion in Ikoyi road project. This must be corrected immediately in view of the coming raining season and their likelihood of causing accidents. We are equally worried about the enforcement required for the scheme. How the government will be able to tame notorious law breakers such as soldiers, policemen, bullion van drivers, commercial danfo and molue drivers, official vehicle drivers will pose a serious challenge to the scheme. We hope the traffic management authorities are up to the task in implementing Fashola's promise that "anyone who flouts the rules governing the BRT corridor, no matter his or status will face the wrath of the law." This is crucial, because starting a new scheme is one thing, sustaining it is another. The next few months will show how well prepared the government is in conforming with these challenges

The Abandoned N4bn Power Equipment

In Nigeria, it is often difficult to understand how government works and reasons. What ordinarily should be treated with dispatch is given the most lackadaisical treatment. This wasteful approach to governance was again exposed when recent media reports indicated that some N4 billion worth of energy equipment was just being deployed to user companies, ten years after they were procured. Some of the equipment included transformers, circuit breakers and isolators.
For ten years, after procurement, the items were abandoned in the warehouse of the Energy Ministry without distributing them to the user agencies. This is most worrisome to say the least. How can it be explained that in the face of the daily agony Nigerians are going through on the energy sector, equipment meant to improve the efficiency of the sector were left to rot for a decade? Was it that the Ministry did not have need for the equipment at the time they were bought as to warrant abandoning them since then? But even if that was the case, won’t the nation-wide complaint of worsening power situation , often blamed on lack of equipment to service the power stations have caused the ministry to urgently release the materials? Whose interest were the abandoned equipment serving in the store?
How could six hundred transformers, for instance, have been bought and abandoned for ten years when most of the complaints of electricity distributors is that there are not enough transformers to facilitate efficient power distribution? Listeners to the FRCN radio programme I Beg Una are often treated to the routine complaint of how consumers are tasked by the PHCN staff to contribute monies with which to buy new transformers, so they can enjoy improved power supply. How can this be the case when transformers are left to rot in the ministry’s store houses? It is no surprise that ten years after, some of the equipment are no longer functional necessitating their repairs before they can be distributed.
No doubt, the life span of the equipment would have been shortened while they lay fallow in the store house. They must have also lost their warranty.
This unfortunate development is akin to a doctor having a critically ill patient with all signs of anemia, and who has all the needed vitamins and other drugs to boost the health of the patient, yet refuses to administer them on the patient. It is either the doctor wants the patient dead, or has lost his professional competence. Either way, he is no longer fit to bear the name.
A former Power and Steel minister confessed that he was aware of the abandoned equipment, for which he had set up a committee to work out how to distribute it. Yet the committee’s report never saw the light of day. The bureaucracy apparently stalled the distribution of the equipment all these years.
What that simply means is that it is either a clear case of sabotage or criminal professional negligence. It is for acts like this that the civil service is sometimes likened to evil service.
Any wonder that the civil servants have sometimes been accused of conniving with Generator sellers in ensuring that the power sector remains perpetually prostrate, so that the generating plant market will continue to boom.
Were it not so, how come for ten years, the audit unit of the Ministry of Power and Steel did not file a report on the abandoned items in the store? Is it a case of collusion with the powers that be in the ministry? Or was it done so that the abandoned equipment can always be presented as the supplies from current orders? The puzzles are many.
This is inhibitive bureaucracy on parade. Hence we believe that all those involved should be summoned to explain their role in this scandal.
This sort of development impels us to recommend that external auditors be always invited to look into the books

AFRICOM

The most contentious foreign policy issue in our country today is AFRICOM and its role in the protection of the resources of Gulf of Guinea. The position of the ECOWAS regional defence initiative ECOMOG becomes a pertinent question. The National Council of States rose from its meeting recently to denounce the location of AFRICOM in Nigeria. I personally think that the decision of the Council of State is hasty and uninformed and the issue should be subjected to more rigorous debate by the National Assembly, Nigerians and experts. AFRICOM from what I know of it is merely a proposal for a regional military alliance, with USA playing a major role to protect her interest and Nigeria or Africa deriving her own benefit from the relationship.
AFRICOM would not be the first military alliance. NATO was able to sustain peace in Europe after the World War 2 and in the process averted the use of nuclear weapons during the cold war years. It was a regional alliance pitched against the Warsaw Pact nations. The outcome of that alliance and its role in averting nuclear War and its possible devastation is now history. At no time did USA colonize Europe with the presence of NATO. The USA still maintains a strong military presence in Taiwan to protect that nation against Chinese hegemony in South East Asia. The USA still provides military support for Japan since the end of the WW2 and that has not stopped Japan outstripping USA in industrial electronics technology.
There have been so many political sentiments against AFRICOM which are not necessary. The fear of re-colonization is palpable and we are always suspicious of the West in any move made even when it could be to our advantage. Thinking of it though the most glorious period of our national life was the immediate post colonial era. Our education standard was at its peak in the early 60s to 70s. Unemployment for graduates was unthinkable. Teachers were some of the most respected middle class groups.
Our railways were the best in Africa. Electricity supply was not as epileptic as it is today. Those of us who grew up in those days and attended schools like Methodist College Uzuakoli, Govern-ment College Umuahia, and Kings College Lagos etc can attest to the fact that those were the golden years. Since we took over and made a clean break from our colonial past everything has broken down and the centre is not holding. Parents now have to take their children abroad to have a semblance of the kind of education they enjoyed.
This is not to say that I am advocating for us to go back to colonialism because it had its own problems. What I am really saying here is that we should examine AFRICOM more dispassionately and find the good sides to it. We must put everything in perspective before rejecting or accepting AFRICOM.
At a valedictory lecture I delivered in the Command and Staff College in 2002 on threat analysis, I had predicted that the generation of officers I was addressing would be facing counter insurgency and terrorism being experienced in the Niger Delta today. The concept of war has since changed and it would continue for the next decade. The change in threat has brought with it new concept of war and new types of machinery of war. The Nigerian Armed Forces is currently ill-equipped for the kind of limited war they are faced with today. Most of the warships of the navy today were procured during the regime of Shehu Shagari; they have no functional weapons systems anymore. Even the ones onboard are no longer useful for the kind of threats they are faced with. The weapons are obsolete and the manufacturers have since discontinued their production. Even if there is sincerity on the part of the service to repair them there are no spare parts. The same for the Airforce which recently decommissioned 150 aircraft due to unserviceability and obsolescence.
The Chief of Airforce recently brought this to the attention of the nation recently that all our fighter planes are grounded while the navy is still embarking on grand deception of the public by its recent flag showing exercises in the British Isle and South America with warships without weapons which could easily have been captured by well armed terrorists groups. The Army is not saved from the same problems. The Nigerian military has some of the best trained officers and men in the world today but grossly ill-equipped for contemporary warfare.
It is in view of these deficiencies that AFRICOM becomes relevant. While I agree that USA will want AFRICOM to serve its national interest, the Nigerian government should also ensure that AFRICOM serves its military and industrial interest. There are two dimensions to AFRICOM; the military and political dimensions. The advantage of the military dimension far outweighs its disadvantage to Nigeria. The Nigerian Government should insist that USA should provide the necessary equipment needed by Nigerian Armed Forces to play a major role in AFRICOM. President Yar’Adua is right to say that Nigeria should partner with the US in AFRICOM. In view of our desire to join the 20 industrial nations in 2020 the government should demand that all the ships and equipment of war should be built in Nigeria to create employment for our engineers and scientist and enhance our industrial base. Already Nigeria has industrial foundation that can develop into a defence industrial complex.
The Dockyard in Snake Island has already produced ferries; it can produce naval Inshore Patrol Boats. The aircraft production facilities provided by AIEP in KADUNA which produced Air Beetles should be revived to produce some combat platforms for the Airforce. The Styr plants in Bauchi should be re-activated to produce armoured vehicles for the Army. We should not just dismiss AFRICOM we should accept it but while US protects its interest in the region we should demand that our Armed Forces must be re-tooled to play the major role in AFRICOM. During the cold war days 85 percent of British industries relied on NATO military production for their survival. These created employment for their population. Britain is still a major ally of the US in NATO and they have benefited immensely from that relationship, better than any other NATO nation. The threat to our economy by terrorist is palpable. Can you imagine an Al Qaeda cell bombing our oil installations? The navy is finding it difficult to fight the militants in Niger Delta and they are not capable of fighting Al-Qaeda and let no one try to deceive us because we know. To equip the armed forces today and modernize them would create a deep hole in our lean budget and cost a lot in foreign exchange. We need the funds for the development of our dilapidated infrastructures in power and other areas. We must depend on the US to assist us by providing the industrial base and funds for the production of the needed platforms for the military.
The argument of espionage does not arise because we really have nothing to hide. All our defence systems were procured from the West and they are aware that they have broken down. If you read the Jane’s Fighting Ships and Aircraft which is not a secret journal the state of Nigerian warships and war planes are clearly written there. If the US wants to spy on the President in his bedroom they have the capability to do that even without AFRICOM in Nigeria.
On the political dimension, USA has never indulged in colonization from history. USA was also colonized like Nigeria but they have grown to be the world’s only superpower and I think there is a lot we can gain from such military alliance even if it has some political connotation. The US played a vital role forcing Britain to relinquish her colonies Britain. It was the US that insisted that Britain must pull out of Egypt and Suez Canal. US has continued to maintain the sovereignty of Taiwan in spite of Chinese insistence to the contrary. The US has no history of colonization rather they have played vital roles in freeing the world from tyranny and any form of oppression. There is the tendency to look at Iraq expedition as a failed one but the region is a safer one without such a tyrant like Sadam Hussein. The progress in the Middle East so far to create a state for the Palestinian people is also commendable.
Africa is the centre piece of Nigerian foreign policy and it has been for quite a while. The transformation of OAU to AU has brought with it new challenges in African politics. The agitation for an African State with no borders will materialize in a matter of time. The dream of Kwame Nkrumah for an African High Command will start with AFRICOM. With the end of major conflicts in Africa that dream is just around the corner. Nigeria must play a major role in achieving this dream. South Africa is always lurking around the corner to remove the wind off our sail but South Africa does not provide the psychological ‘Africanness’ Nigeria provides for the Africans and the Africans in Diaspora. If indeed there is going to be an African state in the near future and an African High command it must be spear-headed by Nigeria. President Yar’Adua is right to say that Nigeria should partner with US on AFRICOM. There is need for a rigorous debate on this subject by the National Assembly and the entire country. Let us not discount AFRICOM without understanding its implications. The Jewish people in Israel have benefited immensely from US because of the Jewish lobby in the US. The Arabs in spite of their aversion to US role in protecting Israel has benefited from the Arab lobby in the US, some of the effect is what we see today in Dubai and other Arab nations. AFRICOM is the opportunity for the Black lobby in the US to help develop Africa through AFRICOM. It will be regrettable if Nigeria allows smaller African Sates to host AFRICOM. We should not lose the opportunity because of sentiment and fear of re-colonization which does not arise. Finally AFRICOM has its good side which far outweighs its disadvantage to our country it would depend on the terms of the relationship. Let us give AFRICOM a chance.

Dilemma of the Nigerian Youth

It is very alarming, shameful or rather painful that Nigeria, a country that claims to have dedicated and enlightened leaders, does not know its problem let alone knowing the cause of it. It is really annoying and embarrassing too that a country of 47 years old still wallows in confusion over the root of its problems. One of which is its youths.

We all know that youth is the life-wire of any society. Whether this country believe it or not, the age bracket of 18 to 55, 60 is the prime bracket of every society. The country, if care is not taken, as we see today, lacks tomorrow. Don’t misunderstand this. Or if there is a tomorrow for this country, it is the tomorrow of a selected few, by a selected family.

Probably the family of the selected few that are on it now. We say God forbid. But a word with our youths, mostly those job-seekers we see in the streets with their files fastened to them, will make us doubt a brighter tomorrow. Some of these youths have lost hope and confidence in themselves just because the frustration and discrimination meted out to them by their leaders.

The question is: where are we going from here, as a country? I know this question is repeatedly asked but the answer remains unsupplied. A good leader of any nation should be a leader that knows how to exploit and tap the strength of its youth to enrich the nation and at the same time, make its youths fulfilled. Mr. President’s first priority should be how to utilize the human resources at his disposal.

Between Energy Committee and Tariff

Despite the Federal Government’s denial of a plan to increase the electricity tariff for consumers, it would seem that the controversy already generated by the Minister of Energy (power), Hajia Fatimah Balarabe Ibrahim’s original announcement is not about to disappear. On a daily basis, it has been one condemnation or the other from different sectors of the economy particularly from the Labour Unions, the Manufacturers and Commerce Associations. What this clearly shows, is that the Federal Government still needs to do a lot to make Nigerians believe that it means well and that its plan to revamp the nation’s important energy sector is actually on course and devoid of other social conditions.
About ten days ago, during the Nigerian Oil and Gas (NOC) conference, the minister had announced that for the nation to enjoy a stable power supply, the ailing sector needed a minimum of $150 billion. This she claimed would enable the sector to generate a minimum of 100,000 mega watts of electricity by 2015. She said there was no way Nigeria could achieve a 13 percent growth and also attain the world’s top 20 economies by 2020 unless the targeted quantum of power supply was met. She envisaged that by 2020, the nation would need to generate no less than 290,000 megawatts. And since the government does not have that kind of resources now, the need to attract huge private investment into the sector has become more than imperative. Unfortunately, she argued, poor electricity regime which currently stands at N6.00 per Kilowatt hour (km/h) discourages investment and draws back development of the power sub-sector. Therefore for serious investors to be attracted to invest in the energy sector, she said the current price being charged consumers would have to go up.
The outrage the minister’s proposal has since generated is quite justified. The proposal only reminds Nigerians of the old lazy argument used to legitimise the almost annual increase in petroleum products prices since the last 20 years without any improvement or iota of efficiency in the sector. Here we go again with the energy sector! It appears as if Nigerian policy makers have stopped thinking and instead have become accustomed to duplicating solution from one sector to the other. Their understanding of social conditions and reality of Nigerian economy appears illogical and unrealistic. Since 1986, Nigerians have lost confidence in the government’s ability to deliver on promises after calling for sacrifices from all and only to fail woefully thereafter. We had thought the challenge before Yar’adua’s government was first of all to regain that confidence by delivering on such promises as constant electricity supply before calling for more sacrifice.
Even by government’s own admission, it has over the years mismanaged the energy sectors. Compared with South Africa with 40 million people which generates 36,000 megawatts and Iran with a population half of Nigeria’s which generates 45,000 megawatts, Nigeria today can only generate 3000 megawatts. With 14 available generating plants, three hydro and 11 thermal, they run at undercapacity. Most of these plants have become obsolete and in the last 20 years some of them have never had turn-around maintenance. Even the new plants at Geregu, Omotosho and Papalanto could only operate at 50 percent capacity due to shortage of gas supply in a country with excess gas resources.
While we note the presidency’s retraction of the Minister’s proposal when it said “Nigerians can be rest assured that no kobo will be added until they begin to enjoy stable electricity”, we wish to caution on frequent flip-flop on policy matters by government officials. New measures are announced by one official today only to be denounced by another official tomorrow. In this particular case, it is yet to be understood how a minister who was made a chairman of an 11-man presidential committee on energy inaugurated on the 19th of February and mandated to look at ways to deliver 6000 additional megawatts over the next 18 months and add extra 11,000 megawatts by 2011 from various sources and submit report in 30 days, could come out a day after proposing a tariff increase when the committee was yet to even sit. This is like putting the cart before the horse. This is not good enough for a government that claims to have an economic master plan and wants to be taken seriously.

Child-education: A sobering report

The recent report of the United Nations Children’s Education Fund (UNICEF) about the status of Nigerian children is quite frightening. It is revealed that approximately 10 million Nigerian children of school age are not attending any formal education, in other words, they are not in school. It was a report given by UNICEF’s Deputy Country Representative in Nigeria, Robert Limlim, in Abuja.

Limlim said, of that figure, 4.7 million are of primary school age while 5.3 million are those who ought to be in secondary school. Again, he said that of the number of children not attending school, 62 percent are girls and that gender disparity against the girls is worse at the secondary school level with a ratio of 44 percent.

The northern states of the federation have a more sobering picture. For, according to the UNICEF’s representative, only 49 percent of primary school age are boys and 34 percent are girls. Worse is that majority of these drop out of school by the end of primary four, which would mean that transition rate to secondary school is low.

These are indeed frightening revelations and they are facts of our country; a country hoping to compete and be relevant in a world that is knowledge-propelled. It is a scary report also because it puts the nation in danger of having a potential army of socially disoriented and misfits. Today, societies are structured in such a way that the uneducated hardly has any serious relevance both to himself and to the society. It stands to reason, therefore, that any nation that harbours a preponderance of these individuals, is a nation set for a major catastrophe.

It is imperative to state that in present human advancement, education remains the centrepiece for human and national developments. It is the critical element in civilization and therefore cannot and must not be seen as a secondary item in the menu of our national priorities.

It will then mean that government at all levels must re-appraise its policies, especially in the area of education. It is unfortunate that over the years, governments have been glossing over the issue of providing quality education to citizens. Even when it is available, only children of the few well-to-do and better-placed individuals in the society can assess it. This can also explain why our national development index is as pathetic as it is today.

What then should be done? As already said, there must be urgent and holistic re-appraisal of the country’s education policy that will address all the deficits and deficiencies that are working against not only the delivery of quality education, but also making school and learning attractive to those who otherwise would have felt disinterested. People must also be debriefed of the popular notion that education is only a meal ticket.

They should be made to know that that is just half of the truth. Education makes the total person. It is important for them to know that the quality of the human person – of his thoughts, words, actions and, in fact, his appreciation of everything around him – is to a large extent, a function of how well-educated he is.

Perhaps, too, the idea of giving free education to girls should be seriously considered. The report we considered above, if anything, is a show of how the girl-child has been relegated, wittingly or unwittingly. From our experience as a people, we know that the fate of the girl-child, as educating her is concerned, is a result of the callous and jaundiced patriarchal reaches of the Nigerian society. The way tradition views gender issues must change. It is not uncommon to see parents giving more attention and resources to the education of the boy to the disadvantage of the girl. It is beyond doubt that an educated mother is a far better mother and a better human being.

The place of poverty in this sobering report cannot be overemphasized. Unless we want to embark on a journey of self-deceit, the pervading poverty across the land is a major contributory factor to having many of our children out of school. It is uncomfortable to say, but it is time, that there is severe poverty spread across Nigeria.

The fact is that any parent who cannot afford the very basic things of life; anyone who ekes out a living on a daily basis, can ill-afford to put his child in school. And because of poverty and associated afflictions, some of these children have become breadwinners of their families. It goes without saying, therefore, that there must be overhaul of the entire Nigerian system.

Stalling the energy crisis

A few days ago, President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua constituted an 11-man committee to give practical effect to his administration’s pledge to end the country’s long-running energy crisis within the shortest possible time. This is perhaps the most serious and direct initiative by the President to lift the sector from its years in prostrate position. Nine months into his administration, the state of the nation’s energy has remained one big embarrassment both to the regime as well as the nation. It has been so over the years.

The President had charged the committee to deliver to the country a total additional 6,000MW generation, transmission and distribution capacity within the next 18 months. Currently, the country’s available capacity hovers between 3,000 and 3,500MW. The committee is also asked to add to the national grid an extra 11,000MW of power generation capacity by 2011.

All of this is to be done, according to the President, through diverse sources while the 6,000 additional megawatts target would be met through the National Integrated Power Project (NIPP). The delivery of this objective is expected to be private sector-driven. Tagged, Presidential Committee for the Accelerated Expansion of Nigeria’s Power Infrastructure, the committee is chaired by the Minister of State for Energy (Power), Mrs. Fatima Balarabe Ibrahim.

There is indeed no doubt that the country’s energy sector is in crisis. The whole of the country is virtually in darkness and its productive capacity has remained stunted, if not degenerative, as a result. The president’s concern in the face of the sorry state of this vital sector is quite understandable and he is only lending his voice and weight to the frustration and the near resignation of the Nigerian people.
In modern societies, power remains the elixir for human development. It is the crucial element for any nation desirous of attending greater height. In the same way, it is central to our economic status and stature.

Rural development definitely cannot take off with our current power profile; nor can small-scale industry, which is the engine of economic growth and sophistication of any nation, thrive. It is instructive as well to remember that the administration’s Vision 2020 cannot be realized on the strength of the power capacity, just as delivering the Millennium Development Goals will remain a mere slogan.

We therefore welcome the President’s practical move to resuscitate the power sector. His plan is ambitious and we want to believe that he has thought about it properly and exhaustively. He really cannot afford to fail, as his predecessors did, especially the immediate past administration.

The country now knows that so much money was pumped into the sector by ex-President Obasanjo without a corresponding return in efficiency and effectiveness. Specifically, President Yar’Adua revealed recently that as much as $10 billion was thrown into the sector and all we see is nothing. Obasanjo even balkanized what was the National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) to form 18 different companies under the process termed “unbundling” of the NEPA institution and the problem of the sector still remains unyielding and intractable.

It is just as bad that the country’s capacity of 3,000MW is available to a population of 140 million people. Experts say, to be comfortable, the country needs between 8,000MW and 10,000MW. Other countries drawing ranks with Nigeria, like Egypt and South Africa, have far more active and robust energy sector. While Egypt has 33,000MW, South Africa has 45,000MW, a far cry from where Nigeria is.

Working from these sorry paradigms, we want the President to put all he has into this new assault on this troubled sector. The truth is that even if giving Nigeria constant and steady power supply is all he can achieve as a President, he would have earned himself the respect and honour perhaps no Nigerian president has ever earned or been accorded.

Energy (electricity) touches every life and everything a people need to live in the contemporary times. It is the hub of development and advancement. We therefore give our support to the President. If he pulls it through, we are confident that Nigeria will be a tremendously changed country.

Ilorin 49: When Enough is Enough

The lingering crisis between the Federal government and Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) over the re-instatement of the 49 sacked lecturers of the University of Ilorin (“Ilorin 49”) has become an open sore which if left untreated today could become a great destabilizing factor in the nation’s tertiary education.
Between Monday, February 18 and Friday February 22, ASUU had embarked on a one-week warning strike to press home its six-year old demand for the re-instatement of the sacked lecturers. The grievances that led to the aforesaid ASUU warning strike are well known to all. 1n 1981, 1982, 1999 and 2001, the government, pursuant to international bargaining principles, entered into four different agreements with ASUU on how to resolve such vexed issues like salaries and conditions of service for academic staff, University autonomy, academic freedom among others.
But the Federal government defaulted in keeping to its own part of the agreements, causing ASUU then to embark on strike to draw government’s attention to the details of the said agreements.
But the strike however became a big problem in the University of Ilorin, as the then Vice Chancellor, Professor Shuaib Oba Abdulraheem chose to sack some 49 ASUU members who participated in the strike. Ever since then, all entreaties from top and influential members of society and even the academia, to re-instate the sacked lecturers have fallen on deaf ears. Even when the ASUU took the matter to court and secured an order to re-instate the sacked lecturers, the order was not, obeyed, until the Unilorin authorities chose to appeal against the order almost a year after, where upon the Appeal court reversed the order of the lower court. ASUU then went to the Supreme court, where the case is, as at today.
Not even the frequent strikes called by ASUU to press home that demand could thaw the ice of obduracy on the part of the Unilorin authorities, as it soon became an ego war.
Consequently, the academic calendar of the nation’s universities has been disrupted many times over.
That was the impasse both ASUU and the Federal Government had got into when the tenure of former president Olusegun Obasanjo who supported the Unilorin position expired.
It thus became a source of refreshing relief when President Umar Musa Yar’Adua promised to deal with the Ilorin 49 issue within six months. In no small measure, the promise doused the tension in the university campuses nationwide. But eight months after, Mr President has not responded to the issue.
It is said that suddenly, the President has chosen to wait for the pending court cases to resolve the issues at stake.
We believe that the President can use his father figure to encourage both parties to settle this issue out of court .If nothing else, for the sake of ensuring smooth academic calendar for the students, the Federal government must seek for expedient ways of breaking the jinx over the Ilorin 49. To attempt to use the courts to forestall the ASUU strike is surely not the way to go. Meaningful and sincere dialogue can help break the logjam. To allow the issue to keep re-occurring does not portray the Federal Government in good light.
We also believe the said lecturers, four of whom have died now, can be re-instated and posted to other universities if they must not remain in Unilorin.
The nation can hardly afford a further disruption of the already distorted academic programmes of the universities. The future of the nation’s leaders cannot be sacrificed on the banal altars of cheap politics. The Federal Government must thus rise above the fray and decisively deal with the Ilorin 49 issue, once and for all.

The scandal in PEF

When the objective of the Presidential Committee on Police Equipment Fund (PCPEF) was sold to the public during the last administration of President Olusegun Obasanjo, it was unreservedly received. It had to be so because Nigeria had come to that point that any measure at all that would lift the status of the Nigeria Police in a way that it will begin to perform efficiently and effectively, will receive maximum support and encouragement from all and sundry.

It was based on this, that donations to the fund came tumbling in from all over. Individuals, organizations and even foreign institutions and embassies enthusiastically made substantial donations. Although no account of receipt has been made public, the money so collected is reported to amount to several billions of naira. At once, that is a reasonable sum, which can make a serious impact on the dishevelled and distraught Nigeria Police force.

However, we are quite disturbed by recent allegations of how the fund has been misapplied in the most irresponsible and callous manner. If there is indeed truth in these swirling allegations, then it is most unfortunate, if not a national scandal of a monumental proportion.

Among other allegations, it is reported that the PCPEF spent over N5 billion of the fund’s collectables for such purposes other than the purpose for which it is meant. It is said that the sum was spent on car gifts to well-placed individuals in the society, including the National Assembly, security agencies and government departments.

Press reports put the beneficiaries to include, Yar’Adua Campaign Organization, the Sultan of Sokoto, Senate Committee on Police Affairs, its counterpart in the House of Representatives, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Federal Ministry of Interior, the Army, Nigerian Intelligence Agency and Directorate of Intelligence. These cars, it is alleged, are no utility but BMW luxury cars.

The original idea for raising the fund is to equip the police and bring the force to such a position that it will perform its roles as prescribed by the Nigerian Constitution. The question then is, in what way does giving luxury cars to individuals and organizations promote that idea and ideal? Again, how were private individuals given such unchecked powers to collect and disburse a fund of this nature?

There are also some other grave allegations against this body, including the one which said that two Ukrainian helicopters, which were earlier purchased by the fund, were later returned to the sellers after payment had been made. It is also alleged that some N250.5 million of the fund was squandered in a pre-launch dinner in August 2006. It is even said that at some point, what had started as Presidential Committee later transformed into a non-governmental organization now known and called Police Equipment Foundation.

It is understood that the Independent Corrupt Practices (and Related Offences) Commission (ICPC) has launched an investigation into all these allegations. That is encouraging, but we think that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) should have been involved in the investigation, in spite of the fact that it is also alleged to be a beneficiary of the car gifts.

To begin with, all these vehicles must be retrieved. It is immoral for those who have been listed as beneficiaries of the gifts to have accepted them. We believe that there are certain gifts our leaders should not accept.

It is embarrassing for these kinds of allegations to be made of the fund. This is a fund that well-meaning individuals and institutions, both local and international, donated into. How would these donors receive news of this nature? Indeed, this does not speak well of this country and its institutions. It is reprehensible. Even the police, for whom the fund was put together, is still reeling in its abject condition, while the moneys realised in its name are being used for debauchery.
We therefore call for a probe of the activities of the managers of this fund.

We also ask that government takes over the fund and reconstitutes its management, to include Nigerians of impeccable integrity. A judicial panel of inquiry should probe the management of this fund so far. This is not to discountenance the efforts of the ICPC. We want to believe that a judicial inquiry will be more effective and appropriate in this case.

Time to Tackle Sea Violence

Late last year, Nigeria regained her membership of the prestigious Governing Council of the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) in the "C" Category, via a keenly contested election in London. That good news is being rubbished at the moment by the activities of sea pirates who have turned the nation's territorial waters into theatres of violence. If it is not confronted frontally soon, this felony will completely destroy the economic and social essence of maritime in the country and further undermine the nation's international standing.
It is indeed embarrassing and troubling that Nigeria's only companion in the current high level of sea insecurity worldwide is Somalia. The frustration of the global community over this security breakdown culminated in IMO's warning to Nigeria early last month to combat the banditry before April this year or risk blacklisting by foreign ships that lift crude oil from the country. The government must grasp the import of that threat and the scope of damage already done by the criminals.
From Lagos to Calabar, heavily armed sea robbers who are sometimes dressed in military camouflage engage in their criminal acts with impunity and often overpower their targets and even the naval resistance. In two years, at least 50 attacks have been recorded, claiming the lives of close to 60 ship captains and sailors. The Navy has also lost some of its men while challenging the bandits. Consequently, numerous vessels are now idle at jetties across the nation's sea belt as many fishing trawler owners are apprehensive about the fate of their crew members and ships.
This despondent scenario took a dramatic turn the other day when members of the Fishing Trawlers Workers Association staged a protest march to the Government House, Alausa, Lagos, armed with the corpse of one of the victims of sea attacks, Tayo Nana. The letter jointly signed by the body's President, Captain Shehu Kosoko, and Secretary General, Captain Isaac Esiekpe, and presented to Governor Babatunde Fashola for delivery to President Umaru Yar'Adua captures the severity of the situation. It reads in part: "This industry has over 3070 vessels, with more than 10,000 family members and dependents who earn their livelihood from it. This includes market women, who trade on fish, and the public. The loss of revenue, which would have accrued to the government through tax and export levy is monumental with its attendant social implications, should this industry be crippled by the activities of sea pirates, as many workers will be rendered jobless."
Beyond the effects of this criminality on the domestic economy and personal fortunes, Nigeria's external earnings and influence in the 40-member strong decision making organ of IMO - the United Nations agency with sweeping powers in maritime matters - are also threatened. Militancy in the Niger Delta region accounts for the upsurge in the operations of the sea criminals. It, therefore, means that since the causes are known, finding permanent solutions to the problem is achievable, with the determination of stakeholders, especially the government.
The steps taken so far to halt the menace that attempts to defy Nigeria's rising profile in world maritime are noteworthy. Naval personnel have been seconded to the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) for the war against piracy. A 10-man joint committee of the Navy and NIMASA was also set up not long ago with a mandate to establish offshore platforms, facilitate the procurement of patrol boats and communication equipment, engender efficiency in the operational staff, among other preventive and redemptive measures. Ultimately, adequate dominance of the nation's sea space by the navy, rather than by the agents of despair and death, should be sought vigorously by the relevant authorities.
Though Herculean, that aim is realisable. It requires greater attention from the government whose responsibility it is to protect the territorial integrity of the country. Its armed forces should be properly funded, equipped and motivated to withstand the onslaught of the men of the underworld who clearly have the upper hand at present. Words must be matched with immediate, decisive action. Before the IMO team arrives next month for inspection, concrete steps towards normalcy must be taken.

The high child mortality rate

The alarm raised recently by the Paediatrics Association of Nigeria (PAN) that 90 percent of child deaths in the country is preventable is indeed worrisome. The paediatricians had, at a press conference in Lagos to herald their 39th annual scientific conference, said that poor routine immunization, under-nutrition and ignorance are responsible for the unacceptable high child death rate.
PAN’s position has been buttressed by the new United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) report on global child health. According to the report, the sub-Saharan Africa is at the bottom of the child survival table. It revealed that poverty and war are harming advances in infant mortality, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.

Globally, 62 countries were reported to be making no or insufficient progress towards a key 2015 child mortality target. In all indices, whether global or continental, Nigeria does not fare better.
Recent statistics from the Federal Ministry of Health showed that 194 children per 1,000 live births in the country do not survive and 1,000 pregnant women out of 100,000 die in circumstances surrounding child birth.

The President of PAN, Prof. William Nuhu Ogala, underscored the gravity of the problem when he said that the bulk of the problem was caused by ignorance and poverty. Under-nutrition is said to be the major cause contributing about 60 percent of all child deaths in Nigeria.
About 33 percent of Nigeria’s children are said to be moderately mal- nourished with the rural areas recording a higher figure than urban areas. As a result of malnutrition, this group of children is adjudged short or stunted for their age.

According to Ogala, “almost every death of a child in this country has something to do with nutrition and that underscores the level of poverty in this country,”

We bemoan this unacceptable high rate of child mortality in Nigeria given the abundant human and material resources available for us to confront any of our health problems. It is a matter of regret that many years after the late Health Minister, Prof. Olikoye Ransome-Kuti, launched the nation into the orbit of countries with best practices in Primary Health Care (PHC), the country is caught in this unexplainable rate of child deaths.

Having identified the causes of these deaths, we think that the best way to deal with the problem is to eliminate the causes. And since there is an inseparable link between poverty and malnutrition, we suggest that the government should step up the pace of tackling mass poverty, which drives the health problem. People should differentiate between belief and medicine and seek medical solutions to their health problems before they degenerate to worsening or critical stage. A situation where Nigerian children die of preventable deaths is unacceptable. Vaccines for routine immunization are available in all council areas in the country.

Parents should ensure that their wards access these facilities.
In cases of water borne diseases, we implore the government to provide potable water to all Nigerians. There is need to reduce the number of births a woman can give to reduce this incidence.
The health authorities should go back to the drawing board and resuscitate the PHC as enunciated by Ransome-Kuti. Fortunately, the Health Minister, Prof. Adenike Grange, is no stranger to PHC. She knows what to do to reduce that tally of child and maternal deaths to a bearable level. We urge her to do that fast as time is of essence in the war against child and maternal deaths.

The president and governments at state and local government levels should wade into the problem and reverse the trend.

George Bush’s Africa Tour

If the purpose of the five-nation tour of Africa by the United States President, Mr. George Bush was to strengthen bilateral relations between the US and Africa, it may have only partially achieved that goal. Coming in the waning days of Bush's tenure, the tour might have served the rather unintended purpose of showing the ambivalent nature of America's policy towards the development of democracy in the continent.
True, President Bush's tour was marked by huge donations in financial aids to all the countries he visited--Ghana, Liberia, Tanzania, Benin and Rwanda. But his failure to deprecate in clear terms the sham elections in Kenya was a thunderous indictment of the US leader's commitment to the eradication of electoral fraud in Africa in particular and elsewhere. His so-called intervention in the Kenyan political crisis was at best tepid. As critics have rightly noted, perhaps the US president had acted out of enlightened self-interest. Electoral disputes may, after all, not be a respecter of nations if we are to recall the Florida incident that dogged Bush's own election in 2000. Still, his failure to speak up against the avoidable shortcomings of the Kenyan presidential election took the thunder out of what would have been a win-win situation for the US leader.
Notwithstanding, the Africa tour may well be a reassuring proof that the continent has not disappeared altogether from the US foreign policy radar. At every stop, President Bush announced handsome donations in support of the campaign to eradicate diseases such as malaria or halt the spread of HIV-AIDS. Bush left no one in doubt that his administration was as committed as any other in the world to helping Africa overcome its health and development challenges.
In Tanzania where he announced a donation of more than 600 million dollars in development grant, Bush said it was the desire of the US government to encourage faster economic growth in a continent so richly endowed but so poorly governed. He said almost the same thing in other countries, urging African leaders to pay greater attention to the welfare of their people. Such generosity and timely admonition deserve to be commended. African leaders, for their part, would do well to heed it.
In truth Africa's greatest progress-stopper has been mal-governance and irresponsible leadership. Corruption accounts for more than 75 per cent of the grinding poverty in Africa. African leaders are notorious for mindless pillaging of public treasury. Leaders who corner the commonweal to themselves only make it easy for poverty to flourish.
While the US leader may have said nothing new during his Africa tour, it is noteworthy that he made similar remarks during a previous tour of the continent a couple of years earlier. That he found it necessary to restate it during his latest tour is clearly an indication that the lessons had not been learnt. How regrettable.
On the nurture of democracy in the continent, we think the US ought to adopt a more decisive policy that will seek to isolate African leaders who try to thwart the electoral preferences of their people. The Kenyan episode is particularly painful given that country's profile as a place with relative political stability. The role of President Mwai Kibaki in the entire process leaves much to be desired.
All said, Bush's Africa tour will no doubt enhance bilateral relations between the US and Africa. What is left now is for all the nations that benefited from the tour to proceed to convert the gains of the visit to tangible improvement in the living standards of their people. This will necessarily entail careful and prudent planning. We hope the opportunity will not be lost.