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SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 18, 2016 T H I S D AY

T H I S D AY SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 18, 2016

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SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 18, 2016 T H I S D AY

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SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2016 • T H I S D AY T H E S U N D AY N E W S PA P E R

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18 Nigerian Pilgrims Died in 2016 Hajj Jameelah Sanda in Makkah Saudi Arabia Comparing the rate of mortality in this hajj and the previous one, the Head of Medical Team, Dr. Ibrahim Kana, said 18 Nigerian Pilgrims had lost their lives while performing the hajj rites.

The dead 18 pilgrims were among the 76,000 pilgrims who travelled to Saudi Arabia for 2016 Hajj .

Kana, who disclosed this at the 2016 Hajj post Arafat meeting in Makkah, Saudi Arabia, also acknowledged the improvement

in sanitation around Nigerian tents in Mina and the cooperation of the pilgrims in maintaining a healthy environment.

The death toll in the 2016 hajj is the lowest in five years in Nigeria According Kana, the low figure was as a result of enhanced sanitation, increased medical awareness and compressed national medical team. NAHCON’s medical team attended to over 21,000 patients since the commencement of the hajj rites and detected five pregnant women despite repeated warnings.

Meanwhile, the National

Hajj Commission of Nigeria has been urged to sustain and upgrade the standard of operations carried out in the 2016 Hajj Exercise.

Stakeholders made the call at the meeting, which also focused on reviewing the challenges encountered during the Hajj exercise and plans for the 2017 hajj.

In a welcome address, Charge d’Affairs, Nigeria Embassy, Riyadh, Ambassador Salihu Umar, commended the efforts of the Commission in executing the chain of operations successfully.

Umar further called on

the commission and State Pilgrims Welfare Boards to maintain the standards set in this year’s Hajj and improve on operations for subsequent Hajj.

In his presentation, the Chairman of the commission, Mallam Abdullahi Muktar, explained that the sustainability of the standards in this year hajj could not be achieved without the full commitment of States pilgrims’ welfare boards. He tasked stakeholders to work as a team in all aspects of the hajj operations especially in the enlightenment of pilgrims.

While analysing the performance of the commission so far, the Chairman House Committee on Nigeria-Saudi interparliamentary Friendship and Hajj Affair, Dr. Abdullahi Balarabe, said despite the successes achieved, the commission needed to re-strategise for better performance in future operations.

On arrangement for departure of pilgrims back to the country, the Commissioner of Operations, Alhaji Abdullahi Modibbo, called on airliners to ensure adherence to their schedules and alert pilgrims 24

hours before departure.

Modibbo advised pilgrims and officials to enforce the rules of carrying hand luggage of 8 kilogrammes, the main luggage of 32 kilogrammes and avoid carrying prohibited items. Meanwhile airlifting back to the country commenced yesterday with the departure of about 500 Kogi state pilgrims.

Over three million pilgrims performed this year’s Hajj, which starts with movement to Muna ,Arafat and Muzdalifa and throwing stones at the devil (Jamrah) .

from 2000 to 2010.”

It, however, added that, “this average disguises stark divergence. Growth slowed sharply among oil exporters and North African countries affected by the 2011 Arab Spring democracy movements. The rest of Africa posted accelerating growth at an average annual rate of 4.4 per cent in 2010 to 2015, compared with 4.1 per cent in 2000 to 2010. Africa as a whole is projected by the International Monetary Fund to be the world’s secondfastest-growing economy to 2020.”

But it submitted that, “The region has robust long-term economic fundamentals. In an aging world, Africa has the advantage of a young and growing population and will soon have the fastest urbanisation rate in the world. By 2034, the region is expected to have a larger workforce than either China or India—and, so far, job creation is outpacing growth in the labour force. Accelerating technological change is unlocking new opportunities for consumers and businesses, and Africa still has abundant resources.”

MCKINSEY: NIGERIA TO REMAIN AFRICA'S LARGEST CONSUMER MARKET BY 2025 jected to spend $44 billion; and emerging consumers, with $28 billion of spending.” The biggest spending categories, according to the report, will be food and beverages, housing, consumer goods, education, and transportation services.

It noted that, “Africa’s household consumption has continued to grow at a robust pace,” pointing out that, “sixty per cent of consumption growth has come from an expanding population, and the rest from incomes rising enough to fuel spending on discretionary goods and services as well as basic necessities – all powered by rapid urbanisation.”

MGI, which said there was currently $4 trillion business opportunities in Africa, projected that the opportunities would increase to $5.6 trillion by 2025.

According to the report, “Spending by consumers and businesses today totals $4 trillion. Household consumption is expected to grow at 3.8 per cent a year to 2025 to reach $2.1 trillion.

Business spending is expect-

ed to grow from $2.6 trillion in 2015 to $3.5 trillion by 2025.” The report estimated that “half of this additional growth will come from East Africa, Egypt, and Nigeria.”

McKinsey advised that, “Tapping consumer markets will require companies to have a detailed understanding of income, geographic, and category trends. Thriving in business markets will require them to offer products and develop sales forces able to target the relatively fragmented private sector.”

It, however, added that the geographic spread of consumption is changing.

Accordingly, it pointed out: “South Africa’s share of consumption is set to decline from 15 per cent in 2005 to 12 per cent in 2025 and Nigeria’s share from 26 per cent to 22 per cent over the same period. However, the share of regional consumption is projected to increase in East Africa from 12 per cent in 2005 to 15 per cent in 2025, and in Francophone Africa from 9 per cent to 11 per cent.”

The McKinsey report not-

ed that, the substantial contribution of rising per capita spending has implications for patterns of consumption.

“Basic items such as food and beverages are expected to account for the largest share of consumption growth in the period to 2025, but discretionary categories are projected to be the fastest growing: 5.4 per cent in the case of financial services, 5.1 per cent for recreation-related activities, 4.4 per cent for housing, and 4.3 per cent for health care.

As per capita spending rises, it noted that, “it becomes even more important for consumer-serving companies to understand where their customers are and the evolution of their incomes, and then to tailor products and services accordingly.”

Historically, MGI recalled: “Household consumption grew at a 3.9 per cent compound annual rate between 2010 and 2015 to reach $1.4 trillion in 2015. To put these trends into an international context, Africa’s consumption growth has been the second fastest of any

region after emerging Asia, whose consumption growth was 7.8 per cent.”

The McKinsey report also predicted that, “Africa could nearly double its manufacturing output from $500 billion today to $930 billion in 2025, provided countries take decisive action to create an improved environment for manufacturers.

It noted that, “Three quarters of the potential could come from Africa-based companies meeting domestic demand (today, Africa imports one-third of the food, beverages, and similar processed goods it consumes)”, adding that, “The other one quarter could come from more exports.

The rewards of accelerated industrialisation would include a step change in productivity and the creation of six million to 14 million stable jobs over the next decade.”

Reviewing growth of African economies, MGI noted that, “Africa’s real GDP grew at an average of 3.3 per cent a year between 2010 and 2015, considerably slower than the 5.4 per cent

INCIDENCE OF PIRACY, OTHER CRIMES IN COASTAL AREAS DECLINE, SAYS NAVY Also recovered were five empty magazines of AK-47 rifle and a magazine of Fabrique Nationale rifle.

The Chief of Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Ibok-Ete Ibas, said the reduced rate of piracy was the direct result of the naval operation targeted at criminal gangs operating on the country’s waters and in the Niger Delta communities. Ibas disclosed this yesterday at Mogadishu Barracks, Abuja, during the Third Quarter Route March for naval personnel, where he was represented by the Chief of Training and Operation of the Navy, Rear Admiral Adeyinka Osinowo.

Fielding questions from journalists after the walk, Osinowo said Operation Tsera Teku, which was launched on April 15 at the height of piracy activities in the maritime areas, had been a huge success.

He said, "We have sharpened our skills as well as operational concepts. You are probably aware that we have derived a new concept, two-point management control. We have a dedicated anti-piracy op-

eration also in the past two months.

“And all these have to a reasonable extent decimated the undesirable spate of attacks that we noticed in the early part of this year, and we have limited attacks within the onshore and, of course, attack on the oil and gas infrastructure offshore.”

Osinowo also acknowledged the efforts of the other security agencies in what he called a significant progress in the protection of the country’s oil and gas facilities located within the onshore and offshore areas of the Niger Delta. “What you have seen is the result of a number of concerted efforts, ranging from the strategic level to the tactical level involving our boys and gunboats in the creeks as well as offshore,” he stated, emphasising, “We have significant cooperation from all the cooperating agencies.”

On the route march, he said the exercise was one of the key operational requirements designed to test the physical fitness of personnel of the service.

Investigation by THISDAY revealed that there were 34 recorded cases of attacks on the country’s waters between January and May, resulting in the deaths of more than 15 persons. However, the number reduced considerably between June and August, in the wake of the navy’s antipiracy battle, with only two attacks recorded in June and only one case in July.

August witnessed three attacks.

The waterways of Bayelsa and Rivers states have seen many attacks on passenger boats in recent months. In January, 30 people were kidnapped in two incidents that occurred on January 15 and January 18. Last year, a number of passengers were kidnapped or killed in several incidents that occurred in December.

Ibas had on April 15 launched Operation Tsare Teku in response to an upsurge in piracy and other criminal activities in the Niger Delta. He set up a Task Force Committee, headed by a Commodore, to lead the operation aimed at rid-

ding the country’s territorial waters of criminals.

The launch of that operation came barely 48 hours after President Muhammadu Buhari issued a strong warning to pirates and other criminals in the riverine areas of the Niger Delta to desist from their nefarious acts or face the full weight of the law. The president vowed to deal decisively with criminals in the region the same manner the Boko Haram terrorists were been dealt with.

Ibas disclosed that seven Nigerian Naval Ships would be involved in the operation, namely, NNS Okpabana, NNS Kyanwa, NNS Sagbama, NNS Andoni, NNS Centenary, NNS Burutu, and NNS Zaria. He said the country’s economy was feeling the bite of piracy and related criminal activities in the maritime areas. He stated, “As you are all aware, the jugular of the Nigeria economy is at the maritime area of Niger Delta. So when we noticed an infringement in that area, it affects the economy of the nation.”

EX-CJN: NIGERIA BECAME MORE DIVIDED AFTER 2015 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION amalgamation of separate regions in an arranged marriage that some argue only lasted while the matchmakers, colonial Britain, was still around and in control.

The former CJN noted that favouritism, nepotism and tribal sentiments had made it impossible to run a merit-driven-system in Nigeria.

He said: "Hard work, brilliance, honesty and integrity in our dealings are no longer rewarded. Rather, we celebrate mediocrity soaked in the corruption we claim is our common enemy.”

Noting that the fourth estate of the realm has a big role to play in this crusade, he said he was also aware “today that most media houses have an editorial policy and clear leaning towards sectional and myopic perspectives.

Tribal and nepotic leanings are present in most issues debated or reported in our media.”

He said "The governmentowned media showcase the activities of the government with little or no critique in contrast to the harsh realities faced by millions of subscribers of these news media.

"Newspapers and media owned and operated by politicians are mostly reflective of the interest of their principals as opposed to the need to permanently side with the truth and Justice.

"It has become commonplace for one to read of an 'Igbo' presidency or 'northern' presidency in line with a tacit approval of outright nepotism by

majority of Nigerians .

Musdapher however, urged the government to develop a tradition of continuity and positive transition from one administration to the next.

In his remarks, the celebrant, Chief Alani Bankole, said he would have celebrated his 70th birthday five years ago, but shelved it following the prosecution of his son, the former Speaker.

Bankole said, he had begun plans for the 70th birthday, but, when his son, who just relinquished office of the Speaker was arrested and prosecuted he had to cancel it.

He however, urged young politicians to practise developmental politics, saying, politics shouldn’t lead to hatred among themselves.

Dignitaries at the event include, Speaker of the House of Representations, Hon. Yakubu Dogara; his deputy, Hon.Yusuf Lasun; minority leader, Hon Oyenma Chuchu; Ogun State Governor Ibikunle Amosun; former governor of Ogun State, Chief Olusegun Osoba,; Secretary to the State government, Bar. Taiwo Adeoluwa; and the Managing Director and Editor-In-Chief, Vanguard, Mr. Gbenga Adefaye.

Others include, Former Judge of the World Court, Haque, Prince Bola Ajibola; former governor of Jigawa state, Sule Lamido; former minister of sport, Mr Taoheed Adedoja; Oba of Lagos, HRH Oba Rildwan Akinolu, and the Oliwo of Iwo, Oba Abdulrasheed Akanwo among other traditional rulers.

T H I S D AY SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 18, 2016

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SEPTEMBER 18, 2016 • T H I S D AY, T H E S U N D AY N E W S PA P E R

SUNDAY COMMENT

Editor, Editorial Page PETER ISHAKA Email peter.ishaka@thisdaylive.com

DEATH IN PROTECTIVE CUSTODY

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There is urgent need to overhaul the country’s criminal justice and prison system

igeria is a signatory to the international protocols which prohibit the use of torture and other inhuman measures to extract confessions from detainees. Indeed, Nigerian laws consider such acts a taboo. But virtually all the security agencies in the country have turned their shadowy detention facilities into more or less death chambers, where suspects are treated to a cocktail of ordeals.

Gbenga Omolo, a 70-year-old man and a member of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW), for instance, was allegedly tortured to death while being detained by the Special AntiRobbery Squad of Ondo State Police Command.

Omolo was reportedly beaten by police officers for hours at the Oda Our laws are clear several Road SARS office and on issue of deaths died in their custody. in custody. They His real offence, acrequire thorough cording to members of his union who staged a investigation. protest, was having the We insist that effrontery to challenge from now on, a police officer in mufti the result of such for obstructing traffic. investigations, in Similarly, Samuel form of autopsies, Chimezie Omeagwa a 400-level student of must be placed in the public domain University of Agriculture, Makurdi, met his untimely death in weird circumstances last May. Omeagwa and his friend, Ekene, were whisked to Police Thunder Zone 4 Office, Old G.R.A, Makurdi after complaining of losing his phone at the place where he went to buy oranges. At the station, they were laid on the bare floor with “a flash-light” permanently fixed to their faces. Thereafter, there was a “systematic session” of torture led by an officer nicknamed “undertaker” perhaps for his brutality. By the time he was released to his parents the following day, Omeagwa had become incoherent. He was rushed to the Federal Medical Centre where he died on May 16, 2016.

Death from torture in facilities ran by security forces notably the police, the military, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA)

Letters to the Editor

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espite efforts of the FCT Administration and the media to tackle the problem of begging in the FCT, all efforts have proved futile as the population of beggars is on the rise as can be seen in public places, commercial centres, neighbourhoods and on pedestrian bridges.

Begging has serious implications for the city and national economy as beggars are not economically productive in any way. They contribute nothing to the country’s economy. The increasing population of beggars in the city is demeaning the city.

They constitute environmental hazards and nuisance on major roads and public places.

While efforts of a number of stakeholders to combat the problem in the FCT are com-

and to even the National Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) is widespread. The mode of torture varies from one security agency to another and they range from suffocation, starvation to severe beatings with metallic or wooden objects, spraying of tear gas in the face or eyes while some are shot in the leg during interrogation and left to bleed to death.

J S U N DAY N E W S PA P E R EDITOR TOKUNBO ADEDOJA DEPUTY EDITOR VINCENT OBIA MANAGING DIRECTOR ENIOLA BELLO DEPUTY MANAGING DIRECTOR KAYODE KOMOLAFE CHAIRMAN EDITORIAL BOARD OLUSEGUN ADENIYI EDITOR NATION’S CAPITAL IYOBOSA UWUGIAREN

T H I S DAY N E W S PA P E R S L I M I T E D EDITOR-IN-CHIEF/CHAIRMAN NDUKA OBAIGBENA GROUP EXECUTIVE DIRECTORS ENIOLA BELLO, KAYODE KOMOLAFE, ISRAEL IWEGBU, EMMANUEL EFENI, IJEOMA NWOGWUGWU GROUP FINANCE DIRECTOR OLUFEMI ABOROWA DIVISIONAL DIRECTORS PETER IWEGBU, FIDELIS ELEMA, MBAYILAN ANDOAKA, ANTHONY OGEDENGBE DEPUTY DIVISIONAL DIRECTOR OJOGUN VICTOR DANBOYI SNR. ASSOCIATE DIRECTORS ERIC OJEH ASSOCIATE DIRECTORS HENRY NWACHOKOR, SAHEED ADEYEMO CONTROLLERS ABIMBOLA TAIWO, UCHENNA DIBIAGWU, NDUKA MOSERI GENERAL MANAGER PATRICK EIMIUHI GROUP HEAD FEMI TOLUFASHE ART DIRECTOR OCHI OGBUAKU II DIRECTOR, PRINTING PRODUCTION CHUKS ONWUDINJO TO SEND EMAIL: first name.surname@thisdaylive.com

ust recently, two suspects reportedly died in EFCC custody. A few months ago, a young man was also alleged to have been tortured to death by the Department of Security Service (DSS) at their Shangisha detention facility in Lagos. The Sokoto State Command of the NSCDC set up a committee recently to unravel the “mystery” behind the death of a 38-year-old suspect, Jamilu Abdullahi, while in its custody. It is common knowledge that the notorious transborder convicted armed robber, Ahmani Tijani, died in Kirikiri Maximum Security Prisons last year.

To say that the criminal justice administration in Nigeria needs reform is to state the obvious. In particular, armed robbery and kidnap suspects are arrested and paraded at crowded press conferences addressed by police commissioners. After the “media trial”, there were reports that some of these suspects were extra-judicially executed and secretly buried in mass graves. Such suspects are usually reported to have died during shoot-out with the police anti-robbery squads or while attempting to escape from custody. But the unofficial justification is usually that if the suspects were charged to court they may be released and then turn round to kill the police personnel who arrested them!

Some of the deaths are, however, due to overcrowding, prolonged pre-trial detention and inadequate medical attention. But our laws are clear on issue of deaths in custody. They require thorough investigation. We insist that from now on, the result of such investigations, in form of autopsies, must be placed in the public domain. In addition, government should take concrete steps to overhaul the country’s criminal justice and prison system.

It is time to ensure that persons taken into custody do not necessarily come out in bodybags.

TO OUR READERS Letters in response to specific publications in THISDAY should be brief (150-200 words) and straight to the point. Interested readers may send such letters along with their contact details to opinion@thisdaylive.com. We also welcome comments and opinions on topical local, national and international issues provided they are well-written and should also not be longer than (950- 1000 words). They should be sent to opinion@thisdaylive.com along with the email address and phone numbers of the writer.

THE MENACE OF BEGGARS IN FCT mendable, it should be noted that the problem of begging is dimensional in nature and should be approached with care.

This is why the recent proposition by the FCT Minister, Malam Muhammad Musa Bello to repatriate beggars and destitute in the FCT to their various states of origin where they will be received by welfare officials, in line with the extant rules of the FCT, is one that is worthy of commendation.

Also worthy of note is the plan of the FCT Administration to create a database under the Social Development Secretariat for all the arrested beggars and destitute taken to the Vocational and Rehabilitation Centre at Kuchiko, in Bwari Area Council, Abuja.

Obviously, the establishment of this database would avail the

administration adequate information on those arrested, as well as afford the government the opportunity to make adequate arrangement for their repatriation.

Additionally, this database would also ensure easy reference for all those arrested and captured or repatriated, in the event they decide to return to their dishonorable trade which could attract stiffer sanctions.

It would be recalled that Malam Muhammad Musa Bello had earlier created a special task team, headed by Squadron Leader Abdullahi Monjel (rtd.) to complement the efforts of the AEPB in curtailing the menace of street begging. To the credit of this task team, they were able to bust a begging syndicate based in Karma-Jiji, a suburb of Abuja led by one Baba Gwarma from

Kaduna State, in addition to other numerous arrests.

All these efforts are commendable because begging will continue to thrive if nothing is done to curb the menace and curbing the menace depends on how organised cities and public places are. A less organised commercial and public place where informal activities are predominant tends to attract more beggars.

Any ban should be welcome against begging in the FCT. But when doing so, authorities concerned should also make adequate plans to rehabilitate beggars. They should be made to understand the importance of self-respect, and will power. Policies focusing at addressing issues related to people with disabilities and old people should seek to provide sustainable solutions

pushing disabled and old people into begging.

The social understanding of begging requires knowledge of the forces that promote it. Attempts to confront the problem in isolation of social measures are not likely to yield positive results. In this light, the rehabilitation centre in Bwari is not basically to take care of them but to get them off the streets.

Arguments have been made against such centres because they lack the basic amenities necessary for living, and therefore not effective for curbing street begging. But the FCT Administration has reportedly commenced moves to revamp all the vocational rehabilitation centres in the territory which is commendable.

--Danladi Akilu, Gudu District, Abuja

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T H I S D AY, T H E S U N D AY N E W S PA P E R • SEPTEMBER 18, 2016

SUNDAYNEWS

News Editor Abimbola Akosile E-mail: abimbola.akosile@thisdaylive.com, 08023117639 (sms only)

Troops Nab Another Militant Kingpin, Six Others in Calabar Senator Iroegbu in Abuja

ADIEU, PA EGUNJOBI L-R: Children and in-laws former Head of Programmes at the African Academy of Sciences, Nairobi, Kenya, Prof. James Kolawole Egunjobi, Mr. Michael Kolawole, Mrs. Iyadunni Kolawole, Mr. Taiwo Egunjobi, Mrs. Modupe Adewunmi, Mrs. Toyin Eriye, Mrs. Titi Olujobi, Mr. Segun Olujobi, Dr. Mrs. Victoria Egunjobi, Mr. Tope Egunjobi, Mr. Ayodeji Egunjobi, Mrs. Yemisi Egunjobi, Mr. Sola Egunjobi; and back row: Mr. Festus Eriye, Mr. Tayo Egunjobi, as the don was laid to rest at his hometown in Emure-Ekiti, Ekiti State…recently

Budget Padding Saga: APC to Meet with House Appropriation C’ttee Members Damilola Oyedele and Onyebuchi Ezigbo in Abuja As the National Assembly resumes plenary session this week, the All Progressives Congress (APC) has intensified efforts to find amicable resolution of the budget padding saga that has cast a blight on the APC-led House of Representatives.

The House has been embroiled in crises since the removal of Abdulmumin, who the House leadership accused of abuse of the budgetary process and misconduct. Abdulmumin, employing a scorched earth policy, embarked on a whistle blowing spree, accusing four principal officers and chairmen of nine standing committees, of making senseless insertions into the 2016 budget.

He also petitioned the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption (PACC) and the Nigeria Police, demanding investigation into allegations he raised against the principal of-

ficers and others.

There are high expectations that Abdulmumin may be suspended for embarrassing the House by channeling his allegations and grievances through the public instead of using the appropriate channel, which is through the Committee on Ethics, whose duty is to handle such issues.

The embattled lawmaker has however explained several times, that he chose to air the allegations through the mainstream media and social media, as he did not believe the Ethics committee would do justice to the matter.

THISDAY however gathered that there are moves among several lawmakers to ensure that proceedings at plenary go smoothly on Tuesday, and the budget scandal is handled through the appropriate channel.

A lawmaker told THISDAY that talks were ongoing to prevent the suspension of Abdulmumin as is widely expected.

“Yes, the reason which the House would cite is that he did not go through the appropriate

channel, but how many Nigerians do we start explaining this to?

The public may consider it to be a vendetta if he is suspended, and win him some sympathy, and again present the House in bad light,” the lawmaker said.

The lawmaker added that the best option was to refer the matter to the Ethics committee which Abdulmumin should have submitted his petitions to in the first instance.

“We have due process to handle such matters, and we need to show that even though he threw caution to the wind, the House is matured enough to deal with such, through its laid down rules,” he said.

Another lawmaker told THISDAY however that it would be a ‘miracle’ if proceedings run smoothly on Tuesday.

“Yes, we are trying to see that there are no fights, and we do not generate into fisticuffs, but anything can happen. A well solidified plan can be truncated by just one statement from anybody,” the lawmaker said.

The lawmaker further explained that proceedings may run smoothly if Abdulmumin does not attend plenary on Tuesday. But APC said yesterday that it had secured guarantees from the feuding parties in the budget crisis that rocked the House of Representatives shortly before it went for recess that they will abide strictly by the rules of conduct in the legislative chamber.

Speaking to THISDAY on telephone yesterday, the Deputy National Chairman of APC (north) Senator Lawan Shuaibu said that the party is very much concerned about ensuring that its members in the National Assembly conduct themselves very well as expected of a ruling party.

Regarding the party’s intervention in the budget crisis rocking the lower chamber of the National Assembly, Shauibu who chairs the panel set up to mediate on the matter said the panel is continuing in its work and would be inviting all APC members in the House of Representatives appropriation committee.

Army Vows to Checkmate Militancy, Kidnapping in Niger Delta, S’East • Says 23 militants, 5 soldiers die during ‘Crocodile Smile’ operation Christopher Isiguzo in Enugu and Chiemelie Ezeobi

The Nigerian Army yesterday in Enugu vowed to checkmate all forms of criminality such as militancy, kidnapping, economic sabotage, secessionism and piracy in the Niger Delta and South-east region of the country, declaring that its recently concluded military exercise tagged ‘Crocodile Smile’ had restored peace and security in the region.

Briefing newsmen at the headquarters of the 82 Division of the Nigerian Army on the exercise Crocodile Smile, the General Officer Commanding the Division, Major General Ibrahim Attahiru said the exercise, apart from checkmating various forms of criminal-

ity, also sharpened the individual and collective skills of “our troops in conducting operations in the riverine environment.”

In the course of the exercise in which over 3,000 soldiers were deployed along two axis on land, creeks and general littoral area of the Niger Delta region, about 55 assorted weapons were recovered from suspected criminals/militants, while 23 militants were killed in operation, with several others escaping with varying degrees of gunshot wounds.

He said four solders also got drowned in the general area of Brass in Bayelsa state due to a boat mishap, while another one was killed in action elsewhere around Obiozumini near Obite in Onelga, Rivers state in a fire-fight with the

militants.

The GOC also noted that in all, 38 militant camps, 91 illegal refineries and bunkering sites were destroyed during the operation, while underground tunnels used by militants were discovered and destroyed.

Gen. Attahiru said the exercise ended not just as a training exercise but also as a way of demonstrating the capacity and efficacy of the Nigerian Army to secure lives and property in the Niger Delta and South-east region.

The intended outcome, he said was to put an effective halt to the myriad of security threats cum economic sabotage in the area and ‘this was by way of denying the criminals freedom of action, winning the hearts and minds of the

local populace and traditional institutions and rendering of corporate social responsibilities especially through medical outreaches and sundry support for educational institutions across the space.”

He acknowledged the support and collaboration of other sister security agencies including the Nigerian Navy, Nigerian Air Force, Nigerian Police, Department of State Services (DSS) and the Civil Defence which made the exercise to yield huge successes in the final analysis.

He said the 82 Division would continue without hesitation to defeat any attempt at brazen attacks on national critical infrastructure, oil and gas resources and overall strangulationofthesocio-economy of the law-abiding citizenry by any group of militants or criminals.

The troops of 13 Brigade, 82 Division, Nigerian Army, have in a coordinated operation arrested a suspected high ranking militant kingpin Mr. Victory Benjamin (aka Abuja Daddy and G3) and three other suspects.

The Director of Army Public Relations (DAPR), Col. Sani Usman, in a statement yesterday, said the kingpin was arrested at Saint Joseph Hospital, Ikot Ene junction, Akpabuyo Local Government Area (LGA) of Cross Rivers State.

Usman said the suspects were nabbed while attempting

to collect ransom from one of their kidnap victim’s relations.

In a related development, he said the troops of the same formation have also arrested three militants with locally-made pistol and some cartridges while robbing victims around Refugees Camp at Efut Isigi in Bakassi LGA, Cross Rivers State.

The DAPR said the troops have also cordoned off the residents of the most wanted militant kingpin, Alias G1 still at large. He said already, the arrested militants known as ‘G2’ and ‘G3’ are providing useful information that would assist the military to track other criminals in the region.

Recession: FG Not Resting on Oars to Address Challenges, Says Amaechi Dele Ogbodo in Abuja The Minister of Transportation, Mr. Rotimi Amaechi, has said the federal government is not resting on its oars to address the present economic challenges being faced

by Nigerians.

In a statement signed by Mrs. Yetunde Sonaike, the ministry’s Director of Press and Public Relations, on behalf of the minister said the current economic recession experienced in the country will soon be over.

The minister, who addressed staff members of the ministry at a town-hall meeting, therefore encouraged them to be optimistic as government is not resting on its oars to address the present challenges facing the country.

Amaechi urged the entire staff members to have a change of attitude by being punctual to the office and be diligent in their duties.

He also disclosed that President Muhammadu Buhari is extremely concerned about the current situation in the country

and he is making concerted efforts to bring solution to the country’s perennial problems.

The minister was optimistic that the current economic recession experienced in the country will soon be over; he therefore encouraged the staff members to be optimistic as government is not resting on its oars to address the present challenges facing the country.

The statement read: “In the area of staff welfare, Amaechi stressed that the welfare of staff is paramount as this would motivate and boost their morale for better productivity.

“He buttressed the need for staff members to be trained and re-trained, adding that it is “the priority of the government to embark on staff training as this would enhance the performance of staff on their duty post.”

The minister also enjoined the staff members to advance themselves in the area of Information Technology (IT) to be able to make use of computers and internet facilities at their disposal.

Again, IPOB Raises the Alarm over Nnamdi Kanu’s Health David-Chyddy Eleke in Awka

The indigenous people of Biafra (IPOB) have yet again raised the alarm over the deteriorating health condition of its leader, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, saying reports from his lawyer who was privileged to visit him has it that the freedom fighter was suffering greatly in prison.

IPOB had weeks ago called for help from the international community, saying that its leader had fallen ill in prison and has been denied access to his doctors or allowed out of the prison to cater for his health.

The group said his health condition may not be unconnected to constant threats to his life, and that his health is getting out of hand.

In a press release signed on behalf of the group by its publicity Secretary, Emma Powerful, and made available to journalists in Awka, it called on the international community to prevail upon the administration of President Buhari not to impede medical access to him.

IPOB also accused the

Department of State Service (DSS) of conniving with some prisons officials to tamper with Kanu’s life. Part of the release reads, “Information received from our lawyers who visited him showed troubling ill health condition. We have notified the international community about his present conditions which are debilitating abdominal pains and occasional tightening of the chest resulting in cough which we thought was dust accumulating in the lungs but which has persisted.”

The group said some of the conditions started after his tortuous period in DSS custody when he lost a lot of blood through bouts of sustained nose bleeding, resulting from the physical and mental torture he underwent.

He said “DSS has this information on their record and we suggest they make it public for the world to know. This loss of blood through bleeding from the nose prompted the agency to send in an external doctor to examine him while in their custody.

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T H I S D AY, T H E S U N D AY N E W S PA P E R • SEPTEMBER 18, 2016

NEWS

CELEBRATING BANKOLE L-R: Celebrant, Chief Suarau Alani Bankole; former Chief Judge of the Federation, Justice Dahiru Musdapher, CFR and former Governor of Ogun State, Chief Segun Osoba, during a 75th birthday lecture in honour of Chief Bankole at Radisson Park Inn Abeokuta, Ogun State...yesterday PHOTO: Ibrahim Adewale

NEW VERSION L-R: Chief of Staff to the Executive Vice Chairman (EVC) Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Mr. Usmam Malah; Council Member, Internet Protocol Version 6, Mrs. Mary Uduma; EVC of NCC Prof. Umar Garba Danbatta, and Chairman, Nigerian Council on Internet Protocol Version 6, Muhammed Radman, during their courtesy visit to the Commission in Abuja...recently

CBN Advocates Investment in Housing Sector to Mitigate Recession

Kano State Loses Two Pilgrims in Saudi Arabia

Dele Ogbodo in Abuja

Kano State Pilgrims Welfare Board has announced that two of its pilgrims lost their lives during the 2016 Hajj exercise in Saudi Arabia.

Spokesman of the board, Mr. Badamasi Nuhu, who confirmed this to reporters on phone from Saudi Arabia yesterday, said the deceased, who were males, died after a brief illness in Mina and Mecca respectively.

The Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mr. Godwin Emiefele, has advocated for sustainable investment in housing development to help mitigate the economic challenges the country is presently facing.

Fielding questions at the recent Africa’s Housing Agenda, jointly organised by the African Union for Housing Finance (AUHF) and the Nigerian Mortgage Refinance Company (NMRC), in Abuja, weekend, Emefiele suggested sustainable investment into the housing sector to grow it from its dismal one per cent contribution to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

The CBN governor, who was represented by Mr. Ahmed Abdullahi, a Director in the bank, said if the housing sector

can contribute over 80 per cent to GDP in the United States of America (USA), it can also be used to improve the economy significantly.

He said: “If you look at the housing market in Nigeria and in Africa, compared to the more developed economies, you will find that the housing markets in Africa are indeed largely underdeveloped.

“The contribution of the housing market to the GDP in Nigeria is less than 1 per cent, compared to that of the U.S, which accounts for over 80 per cent.

According to him, the housing sector in US represents the highest financial assets class in the world as it is the highest contributor to its capital market combined, adding that it represents a higher subsection of that country’s economy.

He advised African governments to use the housing sector as stimulant to grow the economy thereby increasing its contribution to GDP. “If you look at Nigeria’s 1 per cent contribution if housing to GDP, imagine what the economy will look like when it is grown to 80 per cent,’ the CBN governor said.

However, to attain this, he said the daunting challenges and barriers facing the sector must be removed, adding “The first of these challenges is the absence of long term loan capital, which can be used to create mortgages.”

According to him, most of the liabilities in the banking sector are short-term liabilities, which often times are not used to finance mortgages.

Another impediment to housing development, he said,

is the high cost of procuring basic building raw materials, adding that housing becomes inaccessible to the average Nigerian because of the cost of building materials.

Also in a remark, the Director the Public Private Partnership (PPP), Mrs. Eucharia Alozie, who stood in on behalf of the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, said from inception of government initiative in organised housing finance system till date, only a merger sum has so far been injected into the system.

He said: “This accounts for less than 0.5 per cent of the GDP as compared to other clines like the United Kingdom and South Africa, due to the inability of the financial system in providing low cost finance that meets the need of low and medium income earners.”

#BBOG Will Stay Civil, But We’ll Resist Oppression, Says Ezekwesili • As CPJ launches with fanfare in Lagos

Abimbola Akosile

Co-founder of the Bring Back Our Girls (#BBOG) Campaign, Dr. Oby Ezekwesili yesterday said her group, which is advocating for the release of the 219 girls who were kidnapped from Chibok Secondary School, Borno State in April 2014, will be civil in their agitation but would resist any form of oppression.

Ezekwesili, who was former Minister of Education and pioneer head of the Budget Monitoring and Price Intelligence Unit (nick-named Due Process Unit), also frowned on the wanton looting of the nation’s public treasury, which has a dire negative impact on the livelihoods of the poor, who cannot afford to get basic items from anywhere else.

She spoke at the launching of a new faith-based nongovernmental organisation named Catalyst for Global Peace & Justice Initiative (CPJ), which was founded by the popular clergyman Abraham Sam Aiyedogbon, at a well-attended event at the Golden Tulip hotel in Festac, Lagos.

Ezekwesili, who was the Chairperson of the occasion, said “only a nation that has lost its way will put the issue of 219 people to

debate. The issue is that children of this nation went to school and disappeared. Rather than decry this act, people sat in their little corner and began to discuss. I am looking to that day when every child born in this nation gets a sense that the people will defend their rights to justice if anything happens to them.”

Responding to insinuations that the #BBOG group is being paid for their advocacy, the former Minister of Solid Minerals and Vice President of the World Bank’s Africa division said, “BBOG doesn’t take a dime from local or international donors. We made it a critical decision. That is what is keeping us. BBOG is a non-violent group and will remain so. We will stay civil but we will resist oppression.”

Ezekwesili who said the recent sealing of the mouths of the BBOG members during a sit-down protest in Abuja was a symbolic gesture which spoke more than their voices, warned potential catalysts for social justice to refrain from corrupt acts and be ready to take sustained action to effect true change.

Speaking on the CPJ launch theme which is ‘Activating credible commitment for good governance and social justice’

she said, “as long as there are people, there will be problems.

Under any bedrock of good governance is institution building. Institutions can only be built under democratic rule. Being a Christian is not enough credential for being a catalyst. There is huge percentage of Christians in government and business sector many of who inflate contracts, lie, oppress those not from their tribes”.

She called on those gathered at the launch to do a selfassessment on how ready and capable they are to influence change, adding, “To be a catalyst is extremely costly. Nigerians don’t like cost, especially nonfinancial cost. Those who cannot pay the cost cannot be catalysts.

Those who take from the poor are robbing God. The public treasury represents a lot to the poor because the rich can afford all luxuries of life. Anyone who violates the public treasury cannot be a catalyst.”

Ezekwesili’s views were echoed by the keynote speaker Dr. Sam Amadi, former Chairman of the National Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) who affirmed that the world is in a helpless age because “we have run out of major ideas. Nigeria is also afflicted

by helplessness. CPJ has come to fill a void. In the global arena, the Christian voice has not been heard on the issue of peace. The church is punching below its weight on the matters affecting social justice in Nigeria”.

Also, the Executive Director of the Centre for Leadership and Development (Centre LSD), Dr. Otive Igbuzor, who gave the second keynote address on ‘Commitment towards becoming a member of Value’ said CPJ is meant to bring Biblical perspectives to a secular world, adding that Christians must follow the example of Jesus Christ.

He urged Protestants, Evangelicals and Pentecostals to go back to the basics. “It is an aspiration that CPJ will be embraced by the Protestants, Evangelicals and Pentecostals to promote social justice. CPJ is a faith-based organisation.

God demands that we resist oppression as CPJ members, by speaking out against it and by overcoming slavery mentality by knowledge.”

Igbuzor urged CPJ members to be involved in the social dynamics to demonstrate commitment and urged them to build their skills and be ready to take action when necessary through advocacy.

Ibrahim Shuaibu in Kano

Nuhu said one of the deceased came from Kano Municipal while the other pilgrim was from Gaya local government area of the state. He said the deceased had since been buried in accordance with the Islamic rites in Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

The spokesman said the board had concluded arrangements for the commencement of the return airlift of its pilgrims scheduled for Wednesday or Thursday next week.

Ogbemudia Seeks Massive Vote for Obaseki as Oshiomhole, Others Celebrate Him at 84 Adibe Emenyonu in Benin City

For elder statesman and two time Governor of Midwestern region and Bendel state, Dr. Samuel Osaigbovo Ogbemudia, it was celebration all the way as eminent citizens of Edo state, including Governor Adams Oshiomhole celebrated him at 84.

Ogbemudia, at a colourful birthday dinner held in his honour at the New Era Secondary School Benin, now named after him as Samuel Ogbemudia Secondary School, called on people of the state to vote massively for the All Progressives Congress (APC) governorship candidate in the September 28 election in the state, Mr. Godwin Obaseki,

in order for him to continue from where Governor Oshiomhole stopped.

Ogbemudia noted that Obaseki has what it takes to drive the ship of the state to the next level and therefore urged all and sundry across the three senatorial districts of the state to mobilise the electorate for the epic battle come next week.

He said “I do not know how to start this speech, firstly because two days ago when the governor (Oshiomhole) told me that there would be a banquet I thought it was a joke and I never knew he would be able to bring together so many people as we have seen here today. “

Wike Approves Administration of Criminal Justice, LG Laws

Anayo Okolie

Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike has given his assent to the bills on the state’s criminal justice administration and the amendment of the local government law. The two bills were recently passed by the House of Assembly.

Speaking yesterday at Government House, Port Harcourt, during the signing of the bills, Wike said the new laws, the Rivers State Local Government (Amendment No.1) Law Number 5 of 2016 and the Rivers State Administration of Criminal Justice No. 7 of 2015, would make for better governance.

Wike said the new local government law will give the

governor the necessary leverage to extend the appointments of local council caretaker committees for up to nine months. He said such extension of tenure was often needed to ensure stability in council administration.

The governor said, “Instead of three months or six months, this amended law allows the governor to appoint caretaker committees for nine months. It is not meant to keep the caretaker committees in perpetuity. Once we have elected councils, the elected officials will stay for three years and for a maximum of two terms.” He said the administration of criminal justice law will help the state to fight crime and maintain law and order.

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T H I S D AY, T H E S U N D AY N E W S PA P E R • SEPTEMBER 18, 2016

NEWS Fayose, APC Trade Tackles over NECO Results Olakiitan Victor in Ado Ekiti

FOR BETTER ROADS R-L: Lagos State Deputy Governor, Dr. (Mrs.) Oluranti Adebule; Ayangburen of Ikorodu, Oba Kabiru Shotobi; Commissioner for Local Government & Community Affairs, Hon. Muslim Folami, and Majority Leader, Lagos State House of Assembly, Hon. Sanai Agunbiade during the flag-off of the formal unveiling of the 114 Roads across the Local Governments in the State...yesterday

Nigeria is Overdue for Re-assessment, Says Ex-Gov Kalu • As Orji berates Kalu over senatorial post Emmanuel Ugwu in Umuahia

Former governor of Abia state, Chief Orji Uzor Kalu has asserted Nigeria has come to a point where re-assessment of its political structure must be carried out and a fitting shape fashioned out to ensure its political and economic survival.

He expressed this view in a chat with journalists at Umuahia weekend, noting that the clamour for restructuring should not have been allowed to fester as the country was long over-due for reassessment.

“We don’t even need to be talking about restructuring. The country is due for re-assessment, which is also restructuring because it is over growing,” he said, adding that restructuring “is the right thing to do” to get the nation

on the proper pedestal for development.

Using analogy of a man overgrowing his shirt Kalu said in such a situation the proper thing to do is to visit his tailor, take a new measurement and do the necessary adjustments to achieve a proper fitting. “That is why we are saying the country needs new arrangements, new solutions to political and economic survival,” he said.

The former governor was a guest of the Ibeku people led by their traditional ruler, Eze Samuel Onuoha, the Ogurube of Ibeku clan, who profusely apologised to Kalu “for the wrong we did to you after helping our son become governor.”

Kalu acknowledged the political significance of the reconciliation meeting, which

attracted politicians from other parties, saying that “democracy is going to be strong in our state and Southeast zone following a forthcoming realignment of forces.

“We are going to bring strong democratic ethics; we are going to show our people that we are going to rekindle and do what we know best how to do, which is politics and process of anchoring our people to true democracy,” he said.

Kalu, who founded the Progressive People Alliance (PPA) in 2006 and used the platform to vie for the presidency the following year, said the party, which he also used to contest for the Abia North senatorial seat was alive and kicking.

According to him, there is no problem peculiar to PPA because “there is no party in

Nigeria that does not have problem. Every party is struggling for life. (But) by end of this year people would see where our party stands. Every political party would stake its stand”.

On the dismissal of his petition challenging the outcome of the rerun election for Abia North senatorial zone, Kalu said he respected the opinion of the tribunal that dismissed his petition but vowed to test it at the appellate court.

He said: “I respect the opinion of the tribunal justices, the three of them that gave the judgment. The opinion of the justices truly is their opinion and when I heard about the judgment I gave glory to God. We will go back to another court and if their opinion is the same with that of the tribunal we will accept it”.

Group Decries Destruction of Oil Facilities in Urhoboland Sylvester Idowu in Warri

OML 30 Community Developmet Board, comprising representatives of Isoko, Urhobo, Itsekiris and Ndokwas, yesterday decried the destruction of oil facilities in Urhoboland, noting that it was not in the character of Urhobos to employ violence in agitating for their rights.

OML 30 is a body put together by the government

and Joint Venture Partners (JVP) with oil companies for the development of host communities to multi-national oil firms operating in Delta Central district in Delta Sate.

Chairman of the Board, Hon. Morris Idiovwa said in a statement that the Urhobos were still mindful of the fact that not all problems were solvable through force of violence.

He therefore appealed

to youths in Urhoboland to embrace peace, stressing that they should not turn the area to a battle ground which they might regret later, apparently referring to the activities of the militant group, Niger Delta Greenland Justice Mandate.

“So much as we desire our people and our land to receive the appropriate return for their contributions to Nigeria’s national develop-

ment, through our physical labour and natural resources, we believe there are many routes to access to access the market.

“Urhobo nation has been patient and peaceful and we believe that we are drawing closer to getting our dues from the Nigerian union, therefore, we want to call on all our youths not to give in to the lure and invitation to violence.

Cleric Warns against Oppression as Chief Ojo is Buried in Ekiti Olakiitan Victor in Ado Ekiti

A retired Bishop of Anglican Communion, Akure Diocese, Most Rev Michael Ipinmoye yesterday hinged the problems pummeling the country on oppression and greediness of the Nigerian leaders.

The Bishop warned that Nigeria will continue to wallow in myriad of economic, social and political challenges until those saddled with the

responsibilities of driving the affairs of the nation shed the toga of avarice and learn how to help the poor in the society.

The fiery cleric said this in Ikoro Ekiti in Ijero Local Government during the burial of a foremost industrialist and community leader in the town, High Chief Joshua Akanbi, the Eisaba of Ikoro Ekiti.

The town was agog as people trooped out to give a man, whose philanthropic gesture

was described as unparalleled during his lifetime a befitting burial.

Different age groups, traditionalists and Olukoro and Ajero-in-council clad in aso ebi, danced round the town praising a man they branded the pillar of development in the community.

Delivering his sermon tagged: ‘the Game is Over’ at Saint Michael’s Anglican Church in Ikoro Ekiti, Bishop

Ipinmoye described the late Ojo as a thoroughbred community leader and family man, whose contributions would ever remain indelible in the annals of history.

The cleric said the fact that Chief Ojo was a well celebrated community leader was reflected in the turnout of people at the event that was graced by former Governor of Ekiti State, Otunba Niyi Adebayo and other eminent Nigerians.

Governor of Ekiti State, Dr. Ayodele Fayose has revealed the secrets behind the outstanding performance of his state’s candidates at the just released results of the National Examination Council (NECO, 2016) and earlier results of the West African Examination Council (WAEC, 2015-2016) in which the state’s candidates’ performance improved significantly.

An analysis of the NECO result across the 36 states of the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), released last Friday, indicated that Ekiti state topped all others with 96.485 of its candidates that sat for the examination coming out victorious while Edo state was second with 96.31 per cent while Abia and Kogi states were jointly third.

Speaking through his Chief Press Secretary, Mr. Idowu Adelusi, Fayose, who attributed the significant success of his candidates to the immense efforts he has put in supporting education in the state, said it was a heart-warming development, adding that his administration has so far committed a total of N411.7m to paying a total of 5,130 core subject teachers under the new scheme.

Adelusi said the students’ feat was an indication that the efforts of the present administration to reposition education in the state were already yielding results.

He said the governor was particularly happy that no fewer than 37 per cent of the state candidates that sat for WAEC in 2016 had minimum of five credits including English and Mathematics while similar feat was recorded in 2015.

Obokun Security Receives Boost as Armoured Vehicle is Deployed Ibikunle Abikoye

Respite came the way of the people of Ibokun, Obokun Local Government of Osun State weekend, following the deployment of an Armoured Personnel Carrier (APC) to the town.

The deployment of the vehicle followed its facilitation and renovation by the House of Assembly member representing Obokun state Constituency, Hon. Olatunbosun Oyintiloye.

THISDAY recalled that the area has been under security threats such as an armed robbery attack which took place at Wema Bank Ibokun, the only bank in the area on December 15, 2015.

Two persons lost their lives, others injured and a large sum of money was carted away, while the incident rendered the bank incapacitated from doing business since that time even as economic activities in the areas had been compromised.

To restore order, ensure that the bank re-open office for business, restore economic activities and promote com-

merce, Oyintiloye, with the approval of the governor of the state Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, facilitated and financed the renovation of the vehicle for security of the area.

There was jubilation in the ancient town, as residents trooped out to receive the vehicle which was led to Ibokun by the lawmaker and security operatives.

Oba’bokun of Ibokunland, Oba Festus Awogboro commended the efforts of the state government and the lawmaker towards ensuring security of lives and property.

He lamented that the residents of Ibokun and environs have been experiencing hardship in banking transactions since the armed robbery attack, saying the provision of the armoured vehicle has brought succour.

The Yeye Mojumu of Ibokun, Chief (Mrs.) Adenike Dunsin and the Iyaloja of Ibokun, Chief (Mrs.) Adeyemo Ramat said the provision of the armoured vehicle was the exact need of the people of the area for their economic development.

9 Borno Students for Oriental Energy Scholarship Uju Ifediora Oriental Energy Resources Ltd in collaboration with Muhammadu Indimi Scholarship Foundation have offered scholarships to Nine indigent youths in Borno State.

A statement made available by the public relation officer of Oriental Energy Resources Ltd, Mr. Mamman Ibrahim, said the students scholarship is an annual programme, aimed at building up educational capacity of the beneficiaries.

According to him, the scholarship programme commenced last year with five students from Borno State. The scholarship covers the tuition fee, accommodation and feeding of the beneficiaries.

Ibrahim said: “The beneficiaries will be studying at the International University of Africa in Khartoum. We want to encourage the spirit of hard work through this scholarships, which will make them grow up to be better citizens and become more useful to the society.

“The five beneficiaries of the 2014/2015 program are Abdulkarim Usman Ali, Abdullahi Usman Umar, Adamu Muhammed Dogo, Ahmad MustaphaTahir and Ahmad Umar Goni.”

Ibrahim also noted that all Nigerian child and youth needs quality education and not mere certificate to be able to unlock their full potentials.

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T H I S D AY, T H E S U N D AY N E W S PA P E R • SEPTEMBER 18, 2016

NEWS

CHANGE OF BATON MERIT AWARD L-R: Wife of immediate past President, Rotary Club of Maryland, Ikeja, Lagos, Rotarian Anne Dupe Akodu; L-R: Managing Director, Smile Communications Nigeria Ltd, Mr. Godfrey Efeurhobo; Dr. Agunobi nim; and Head, Marketing, Smile Communication Ltd, Ololade Shonubi, during the presentation of the best premium 4g LTE/ mobile network brand for the year 2016 Africa quality achievement award to the company in Lagos...recently

her spouse, Rotarian Femi Akodu; newly installed President, Rotarian Babatunde Ojo; his wife, Rotarian Anne Temitope Ojo; a past President, Rotarian Kareem Olayemi Arigbabu and the Club’s Charter President, Rotarian Bola Oyebade, at the installation of the new President held at Ikeja CBD, Alausa, Ikeja, Lagos...recently

Ambode Flags Off Unveiling of 114 Local Govt Roads

Former Edo Deputy Speaker Sues IGP, Others for Violation of Rights

Abimbola Akosile and Moriam Yusuf

Former Deputy Speaker of the Edo State House of Assembly and a chieftain of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP), Mr. Fred Omogberale has instituted a legal action against the Inspector General of Police, Alhaji Idris Ibrahim over the violation of his fundamental rights to personal liberty, privacy, to assemble freely, and to associate with other persons and own property.

Other defendants in the suit filed at the Federal High Court in Benin by his counsel, D. A. Alegbe Esq. are the Assistant Inspector of Police, Zone 5, Benin, Isaac Eke; Edo State Commissioner of police, Femihan Adept; and Franklyn Akanou, OC SARS- Benin.

In the suit, Omogberale is asking the Court for an order of perpetual injunction restrain-

Lagos State Governor, Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode yesterday flagged off a week-long unveiling of 114 roads newly constructed in all the 57 Local Government Areas and Local Council Development Areas (LCDAs) in the State, with a pledge to commence the construction of second round of another 114 roads across the State soon.

Construction of the inner roads, which is an initiative of the Ambode administration and in fulfillment of his campaign promise, was geared towards massive intervention on access and link roads, boost security and increase the socio-economic well-being of residents of the State.

The newly-constructed 114 roads, which were designed with walkways, medians,

street lights, and standard drainage systems, were selected two per each of the 57 LGs and LCDAs in the State, according to a release issued by the Chief Press Secretary to the Governor, Mr. Habib Aruna.

Speaking at the formal flag off of the unveiling ceremony in Ikorodu North LCDA, Governor Ambode said the remarkable feat was not only an eloquent confirmation of a promise kept, but a testimony of the popular saying that nothing can stop a people who have resolved to move forward.

The Governor, represented by his deputy, Dr. Mrs. Idiat Oluranti Adebule, recalled the contract of hope which he signed with the people during the electioneering and his inaugural speech, adding that the completion of the 114 roads was a glorious dawn

of community development accelerated through inclusive governance and a historic leap of faith for his administration and the citizens.

“This means that the road network in our State of Excellence has increased by 56.1 kilometres. It means that we have added 112 kilometres of walkways and covered drains.

And it means additional 56.1 kilometres of our roads are being lit by independent powered street lights to improve the security of our neighbourhoods, the visibility of pedestrians, commuters and motorists as well as creation of a night economy.

“At a time the national economy is facing financial challenges, our administration is able to inject over N19 billion into the economy of our State, stimulating employment and engaging the business sector.

“No fewer than 89 local

companies executed the road project with thorough supervision by the communities and government. About 5,700 direct jobs were created for professionals, artisans and labourers in the construction industry. A larger number of people, approximately 10,000 suppliers and dependants felt the positive impact of this stimulus package in their lives,” Governor Ambode said.

Giving an insight as to how the roads were selected, the Governor said in line with the principle of civic engagement of his administration, Community Development Associations (CDAs) were encouraged to suggest the roads requiring construction according to their needs, adding that the CDAs were also motivated to participate in the monitoring of the projects with the view to taking ownership on completion.

No Plan to Change Name of Niger Delta Power Holding Company, Says Ugbo Ejiofor Alike

The new Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Niger Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHC), owners of the National Integrated Power Project (NIPP), Mr. Chiedu Ugbo has stated that there is no plan to change the name of the company.

Ugbo has also restated the determination of the federal

government to complete all ongoing NIPP projects across the country.

“I want to state categorically that all our projects are ongoing.

There is no plan by the new management to change the name of the company; neither has the government ordered us to do so,” he said.

He also stated that the new management is determined to complete all ongoing projects,

adding that the company has been working with contractors and stakeholders to ensure that projects are delivered as soon as possible.

NDPHC’s General Manager in charge of Communication and Public Relations, Mr. Yakubu Lawal quoted Ugbo as saying in a statement yesterday that the company met with the Oronta Community of Abia State a couple of days ago to

resolve a lingering Right of Way (RoW) dispute, which had hindered the completion of its 330KV Transmission line passing through that community.

Ugbo further said the dispute has been resolved and the parties involved have signed terms of settlement, stressing that “all other projects are going on unhindered and where there is an issue, I personally will go there to resolve the issue”.

Enugu Orthopaedic Resident Doctors Down Tools over Alleged Oppression Christopher Isiguzo in Enugu Resident doctors at the National Orthopaedic Hospital, Enugu have embarked on an indefinite strike over alleged discrimination, intimidation of oppression of members as well as nonchalance of the hospital’s management to the general welfare of doctors in

the hospital.

In a two-page letter addressed to the Medical Director of the hospital, Dr. Cajetan Nwadinigwe, titled ‘Commencement of Indefinite Strike Action’ and signed by Dr. Ifeanyi Anikwe as president and Dr. Ifeanyi Okorie as Secretary, a copy of which was obtained by newsmen, the association said

they were compelled to withdraw their services from the hospital as a result of the failure of the hospital management to meet their five-point demand after several correspondences.

While accusing Nwadinigwe of insensitivity to their welfare, the resident doctors said the option of industrial action was taken as the

medical director showed no human face to their grievances after their 21-day ultimatum expired.

The doctors frowned on the implementation of differential taxation against their members only in the hospital thereby extorting them in order to pay the outstanding debt owed the Enugu State Board of Internal Revenue.

Adibe Emenyonu in Benin City

ing the defendants from further harassing, arresting, torturing, dehumanising him and to freely without further violating his rights to personal liberty and to associate with other persons at Afuze and throughout Nigeria for no offence.

He also demanded for the sum of N100 million as compensation from the defendants jointly and severally for arrest, torture, dehumanising, preventing him from moving freely as well as the violation of his rights to personal liberty and psychological trauma among others.

The applicant wants the court to declare that his arrest, assault, torture, dehumanisation and detention and depriving of his business on the 3rd and 4th of September 2016 is a breach of his fundamental rights as guaranteed by Sections 35, 37,40,41, and 47 of the Constitution of Nigeria 1999 as amended.

Hawkers Defy Lagos State Directives Chiamaka Ozulumba

Efforts by the Lagos State Government to rid the streets of hawkers have so far failed, because the latter have continued to defy government’s directives on street trading; thereby causing traffic gridlock in the metropolis.

Lagos state recently passed a law whereby anyone found hawking on the streets would be fined N90,000 and anyone caught patronising the hawkers would also pay a fine of N90,000.

But this has not deterred the street hawkers from their activities.

They run after vehicles to sell their wares, ranging from snacks, foodstuffs, recharge cards, household appliances amongst others, and they constitute a nuisance on the roads as they sometimes obstruct the free flow of traffic while commuters buy their wares, disregarding the state traffic laws and regulations.

There is stiff competition among hawkers as they hustle for customers and fisticuffs tend to break out when tension escalates with busy roads and traffic gridlocks a hot spot for business like; Ketu, Anthony, Mile12, Surulere, Maryland, and Ikorodu roads.

Delta at 25: Rainoil Gets Award Uju Ifediora

Rainoil Limited, a company in the downstream oil and gas industry, was among the organisations presented with recognition awards at the recent Delta State Jubilee Anniversary Grand Gala and Awards night.

The Group Managing Director of Rainoil Limited, Mr. Gabriel Ogbechie, who received award of ‘Distinguished Service in the Oil and Gas Sector’ (Downstream) on behalf of the company, appreciated the State Government

for the honour bestowed and the unwavering support of her people.

Ogbechie lauded the government for its recognition of exceptional service and acknowledgement of the company’s years of professionalism and integrity in the state.

He also congratulated the people of Delta State on its 25th Anniversary, adding that Rainoil Limited would continue to support the state with its Scholarship projects and Corporate Social Responsibility Initiatives.

T H I S D AY SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 18, 2016

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SEPTEMBER 18, 2016 • THISDAY, THE SUNDAY NEWSPAPER

OPINION

Fighting Recession with Local Refining

Modular refineries will make a significant difference in the present economic situation, argues Joe Attueyi

T

he latest word (no pun intended) in our economic lexicon is recession. As is usual with Nigeria, we have gone to our default solution. Diversify into agriculture is our talismanic phrase anytime we run into economic troubled waters. General Yakubu Gowon mouthed it. General Olusegun Obasanjo did “Operation Feed the Nation”. Alhaji Shehu Shagari did “Green Revolution” and ad infinitum we went. Yet here we are: singing the same song of ‘diversify into agriculture’!

For sure, there is nothing wrong with diversifying into agriculture. However, if the goal is to target a specific sector as a lever for economic development, there should be an overaching end in mind, a strategy for getting there and tactical steps that will deliver it. There is no developed country that has built an economy around exporting primary agriculture products. Ivory Coast is one of the largest exporters of cocoa in the world. There are global chocolate makers whose annual revenues exceed the GDP of Ivory Coast. If you want to diversify into agriculture there ought to be some brain work done on where in the value chain we want to play and what it will take to play and win there.

In contradistinction to the above, one wishes to share with our economic planners another sector of our economy where the instruments of government’s fiscal and monetary policies can be used to make a significant difference in the present economic situation we find ourselves. A report in The Vanguard Newspapers of September 12, 2016 stated: “...Nigeria, in spite of the declining economic fortunes, spent N595.5 billion on the importation of fuel in the first six months of 2016, rising by N34.3 billion from the amount spent in the last six months of 2015. According to data obtained from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) the country spent N276.226 billion on petrol import in the first quarter of 2016, while N319.28 billion was spent in the second quarter.”

This report is food for thought on many levels. We produce the crude oil, export it to say Europe, someone refines it, we buy the refined product, ship it back to Nigeria and in order to sell it at a capped price the federal government, through the NNPC, swallows whatever difference exists between the actual price and the capped price. This simplified description of the refinery sector of our economy will at current rate cost us N1 trillion which is 1/6th of our 2016 federal budget without adding jobs, local capacity growth or taxes while on the other hand consuming the already scarce foreign reserves. Without a change of direction we

will utilise in excess of US$3 billion this year importing petrol.

The pertinent question now is: What can we do differently?

There are at least 18 different organisations that have been working on building local modular refineries in Nigeria for many years without making much head way. About four of these projects have gone much farther than others with Dr. Usua Amanan’s Amakpe Refinery being probably the most advanced. A study of why these projects are all stalled can give an insight to the government on how it can use monetary and fiscal policies to reengineer the economy out of recession.

The bottomline is project finance. A modular refinery is a processing plant that has been constructed entirely on skid mounted structures. Each structure contains a portion of the entire process plant, and through interstitial piping the components link together to form an easily manageable process. Many of the project sponsors referenced above went for the modular refinery concept because it could be started small and scaled up as needed.

A 12,000 bpd modular will cost about US$150 million or less to install and will take 18-24 months to become operational. Once a project sponsor can come up with 20% equity contribution of project cost, the USEXIM Bank (amongst other export promotion institutions) will, with a local bank guarantee, provide a loan facility for the balance 80% at a single digit interest rate as long as the equipment and services are provided by US companies.

The more advanced projects referenced above have all raised

The beauty of the modular refineries is that they represent small scale projects that can be replicated at many locations.

It therefore spreads industrialisation, creates jobs, enhances local content, expands the local economy, reduces the demand pressure on our foreign reserves and the consequent devaluation impact on the naira

their equity contributions from investors, signed up Engineering Procurement Construction and Management contracts with American firms and received approved term sheets from USEXIM Bank for the debt portion of the financing subject to a local bank guarantee of the loan amount; which is where the rubber hit the road and the projects have stalled—some going to eight years! No Nigerian bank is interested in providing bank guarantees for projects that will take 18-24 months to come on stream when they can fund the importation of petrol products and recycle the same money several times within the same period.

Another question: What can the government do?

For those who are able to provide the equity portion of the project finance and secure a term sheet from USEXIM Bank (or similar debt funders) government should through the CBN intervention provide the guarantees required by USEXIMBANK. These guarantees can be collaterialised as first charge against the sponsor’s equity and project assets/cashflow.

It is important to note that these guarantees by the federal government to the USEXIM Bank for instance do not involve any upfront commitment of cash on the part of government while it engineers foreign investment into a critical sector of the economy.

Government should also consider making project economics more robust by granting fiscal incentives like pioneer status, duty and VAT exemptions for import of machinery and discounted purchase of its primary raw material which is crude oil Yet, another important question: What is in it for Nigeria?

The beauty of the modular refineries is that they represent small scale projects that can be replicated at many locations.

It therefore spreads industrialisation, creates jobs, enhances local content, expands the local economy, reduces the demand pressure on our foreign reserves and the consequent devaluation impact on the naira. Refineries by their nature also create subsidiary industries all around them—plastics, paints, etc. The cumulative effect of 10 modular refineries of 12,000 bpd each on the economy far exceeds that of a single 120,000 bpd in one location.

---Attueyi is CEO of an indigenous integrated energy company and can be reached on topcrestt@yahoo.com

Change and The Reconstruction of Expectation

The reconstruction of the change agenda is destabilising, contends Dumebi Onwordi-Okonji

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ords and their meanings scared us as children.

We stayed away from the high-sounding ones and accused the English language of complex instability in the behaviour of words and rules – synonyms, antonyms, lexis and structures etc; a phenomenon that affected the fortunes of our school career in those growing up years. Generally, the words we sought to use were the ones we encountered on a daily basis; the ones that would not abandon us in embarrassing situations. Only on occasions did we go for highfalutin words that built a sense of importance around us because of their rarity on the streets but change was never one of them.

Change as a word was common and familiar; everyone knew what it meant and what to expect whenever it was used. It remained consistent and predictable in meaning for it always simply conveyed a sense of a different way of experiencing, of a conscious and natural transition - the way the night gives way to the day or the way a child is moved from one school to another.

But away from school experience and its mixed recollections, change – the word – appears now to have lost a sense of its own meaning in our political context, or in the political lexicon of the country called Nigeria.

How did we get here? Throughout the opening quarters of 2015, change was a word that gripped and possessed our sense of awareness with urgency and singularity of purpose. It loomed large in the consciousness of whoever desired anything else. It ceased being a mere word and suddenly appreciated in value and acquired fresh relevance. We had never seen change possess such authenticity and enthusiasm. It was padded with layers of expectations and a majority of Nigerians yearned for it for it worked like magic in its promise and delivery. Each time it was chanted in homes and public places, it split the air with great expectations, thus setting 2015 and the years to follow as the golden age of our democracy and, of course, the best historical period to be alive and proud in Nigeria.

Change, then, was thought to signify the epilogue of what was considered pervasive, political profligacy – and some said, cluelessness - and the prologue of what had all the promises of political renaissance. We were happy. Not less than 14 million Nigerian voters strutted upandan the streets as the right-thinking humans blessed with the logic and insight to reorder our political preferences with their votes. The atmosphere was overwhelming and we often went to bed bidding farewell to our daily troubles of existence, in the assurance that a solution bigger than our travails was on the

way. Our political differences were suspended. Change sounded like a new country to which every Nigerian was ready to migrate.

It became more promising to experience it than it was to hold an opposing belief or to go abroad.

After a period of tension and trepidation, the change ticket was won and change officially became a national destination. When it thus took six long months to assemble the transformation team, change, again, was chanted to dispel all fears, criticism and cynicism. We were given to believe that the viruses of the past years had eaten deep into the political community and corrupted the career files of most Nigerians, destroying their eligibility to the now fumigated corridors of power. The search therefore was well advised, we were told. We waited. When time eventually came, expectations were, however, shattered as the final selection reflected what was considered a curious breed of complex influences and gratification. It was not worth the wait, Nigerians grumbled. But we needed to move on. In the final analysis, these men and women were charged with the multiple implications of the change agenda and it fell on the shoulders of a few of them to take the message to town and, possibly, win more believers.

The other half of Nigerians believed what was unfolding before them though much against their better judgment. Body language of a sheriff in town became a weapon, a political charm that dispelled growing pessimism. Dozens of foreign trips were initiated to reconnect Nigeria, as we were told, with relevant countries of the world for investment and economic recovery. Today, time has passed and sadly enough, this is 2016 – 17 months after – and Nigerians are transfixed by the change that has overcome the change campaign. The chant has lost some decibels and weakened to heartbreaking murmurs. The campaign, if it is still being mentioned, now speaks different languages to different people inevitably creating in the process a babble of meanings and expectations. One’s preferred inflection or intonation depending largely on one’s sociopolitical affiliation or mother tongue. As it is, Nigerians do not know where to go for the substantive meaning of change. The dictionary, as we know it, cannot help anymore; we have consulted many times and returned with meanings that widened the gap between perception and reality.

Before now, change was a word we used without looking over our shoulder. I wish I could explain. It is perplexing that a word so commonly used by children to demand options and choices from their nanny has now turned rebellious in our hands. Change is now being reconstructed to take in different meanings and obligations. What it meant in 2015 and what it

means now in 2016 appear to meet on unfamiliar territories.

Could time alter the meaning of a simple word this much? The change agenda is now pushed back to Nigerians who are told that they, themselves, are the real custodians of change – that it begins with them. This, of course, was not the bargain! Nigerians are shocked not because they are righteous and see themselves as immune from change. No. Rather, they are shocked because government’s current attitude is tantamount to a reversal of role that smacks heavily of political betrayal and bad faith.

The meaning of change is now lost in transition and Nigerians are polarised. To government, change is synonymous with openended patience and sacrifice through very difficult process and time; a long journey in which lives and jobs and the dignity of human life would be lost. A journey that would see businesses crumble in the face of inscrutable policies; a journey that would see Nigerian families trade or exchange their loved ones for a coveted bag of garri or rice; a process that would see the pump price of fuel hit an all-time high amongst many other dreary variables and components; yet a journey that means blaming the past and stripping it naked in order to reveal a new future; a foray into the embarrassing closets of the last government where have been found loots of varying sizes; a journey that means a deafening battering on the doors of corruption. A journey… change is a journey.

Nigerians feel hard done by to be charged with the burden of change, to be told it begins with them. In effect, Nigerians fulfilled their own part of the change treaty when they forced the past government out of power with the power of their ballot.

So, they feel bitterly shortchanged that this is where all the high hopes sold to them have led them – to desolation and despondency. To all intents and purposes, the reconstruction of the change agenda is diabolical and destabilising. It is a classic case of a creditor who after many months of expectation discovers that, for reasons beyond his comprehension, he is now the debtor.

Kafkaesque disillusionment. Someone somewhere has challenged Nigerians unjustly and set up a programme of subverted expectation against them. If anything, government’s volte-face spells doom for our political culture and optimism. At the end of the day, the prevailing trauma and anguish would condemn change and integrity into our receptacle of political nothingness and produce a political ecosystem filled with endangered species and Eliot’s Prufrocks.

--Onwordi-Okonji wrote from Lagos.

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T H I S D AY, T H E S U N D AY N E W S PA P E R • SEPTEMBER 18, 2016

LETTERS

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his latest attempt to re-brand Nigeria, I’m not sorry to say, is dead on arrival.

We’ve been through this road over and over again and it beats me why we are still doing this like we don’t already know how it will end.

The last time we rebranded, complemented with a logo, was during late President Umaru Yar’Adua’s regime.

Where is ‘Great People, Great Country’ today?

It turned out to be what it was – an effort in futility.

It was Albert Einstein who defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Here we go again wasting the same time and resources like yesterday.

Change begins with me? That’s not totally true.

There are elements that are critical to durable change and providing them does not rest with the people.

These elements are, but

WHERE CHANGE REALLY BEGINS

Lai Mohammed

not limited to, investing in human capital, building strong partnership, developing existing infrastructure as well as creating new ones, providing basic sound education to the masses, investing in technology and trying out new initiatives.

As is, Nigeria does not have these. Putting these things in place is where change begins

and providing them is not the responsibility of the people; it is government’s.

Change cannot begin with a civil servant who earns N18,000, feeds his family, pays rent and still sends his children to school from that meagre pay. It is almost like a miracle how they do it, especially in today’s Nigeria.

The living condition of

your average policeman is a blot on the landscape. It is disgraceful for someone whose job it is to protect the rest of the citizenry. I’m sorry, but change cannot begin with these ones.

It’s time to realise our aspirations and for that to happen, it is vital that good roads are put in place so that the farmer can take his produce to the market.

It is vital that electricity is made available to the citizenry so they can be more productive-so that they can get to their full potential. So that businesses and factories can function unimpeded. It is vital that basic education is provided to our children, so we do not have to have to battle with Boko Haram and Avengers tomorrow. It is vital that people get access to clean water so they do not get ill from consuming contaminated water. To realise our aspirations, it is important that people feed. Change cannot begin with a people who lack most of the basic

WHY ELECHI A MADI SHOULD BE CELEBRATED

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irst of all let me thank the governor of Rivers State for declaring that the Rivers State government will bury the late Captain Elechi Amadi (rtd). He deserves it!

On the day of the burial, the Ikwerre Ethnic Nationality in Nigeria will surely celebrate our beloved and amiable Sir Elechi Amadi: a name known and memorised by every Ikwerre child.

The name, Elechi Amadi provokes heavy nationalism in us such that we become proud of being Ikwerre. That is one of the significant achievements of our elder, uncle, father and brother, late Capt. Elechi Amadi. This pride enables us to meet, interact and speak in the midst of other ethnic groups in Nigeria.

In Rivers State and indeed Niger Delta where Ikwerre is located, it is a name equivalent to those of Ken SaroWiwa, Claude Ake, Obi Wali, the Clarks, Isaac Adaka Boro, Dappa Briye, and Francis Ella.

Beyond these, his name rings good bell when you mention Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, Cyprian Ekwensi, etc.

All these are men who stood to represent and project their people in the literary and sociopolitical consciousness of their environment and even beyond. I vividly remember my former managing director at Compumetrics Solu-

tions Ltd. told me she read and studied The Concubine in her class as an undergraduate in a UK university. This is awesome, uplifting and gratifying in Nigeria where ethnic minorities are seen as people who must be suppressed to extinction. Elechi Amadi will forever remain sacred in the heart of the Ikwerre people.

Another reason for celebrating Elechi Amadi was his immense efforts in the intellectualisation of Ikwerre. This was richly captured as fiction in many of his numerous books. He dwelt to explain Ikwerre in social themes like marriage and extra-marital affairs, divinity, wrestling (which he called the chief sport in Ikwerre), libation, slavery, farming, community organisation, naming, proverbs, etc.

As a renowned writer whose ideas and concepts were rooted in Ikwerre cosmology and found in many of his books of immeasurable values, he remains the father of the intellectualisation of the Ikwerre people of Nigeria. Ikwerre people are not in a hurry to forget that following him in the early 1970s were “Ikwerre Nbom” and “Otnutnu nonu Ikwerre” books which we briefly studied in Ikwerre in the early 1970s, had a lot of impact on our people just like Elechi Amadi’s books.

In about 1993, Sir Elechi was a member of the Ogbakor Ikwerre

Research Committee.

This was a very powerful committee that produced the most authoritative book on Ikwerre: “Studies in Ikwerre History and Culture” volumes 1 and 2 in 1993 and 2005 respectively. Ogbakor Ikwerre is the global assembly of the Ikwerre people to discuss and deal with issues concerning Ikwerre Ethnic Nationality. He later became the President of Ogbakor Ikwerre in 2002.

There is hardly any modern writer on Ikwerre that did not receive input and/or commendation from Elechi Amadi. I received both on my book titled “The Challenge of Ikwerre Development in Nigeria (2011)”. It was the same for Eke and Chuku in “Onomastics (2003)” and Tasie, Alex (2008) in “Ikwerreland: History, Culture and People”.

I cannot forget his on-the-spot-approval for the formation of Ikwerre Writers Association (IWA) in 2013 when I called him and inquired whether it would be okay to form such a body to encourage an organised effort at writing down the lives and affairs of Ikwerre in books and other forms for purpose of providing researched information on Ikwerre’s yesterday, today and tomorrow. I cannot forget in one of my interviews with him in 2014. I asked him whether religion is still relevant to humanity given all the atrocities

committed by man under the umbrella of religion.

His response was: “Very well. It provides stability for the human being”.

Instantly I considered his response as too simple given the voluminous things people have written and spoken about religion. In fact I could not understand the meaning of his answer because I was expecting him to tell me that it is for the salvation of humanity and probably expatiate. But later, seeing critically through the answer, I discovered that those concepts used in the Bible to guide human relationships with God and man, were meant really to ensure the stability of man in such relationships and assist in the longevity of man.

Those words include: patience, love, humbleness, longsuffering, meek, forgiveness, carefulness, faith, mercy, sympathy etc. Can man be stable psychologically, emotionally, spiritually and physically if he ignores these virtues of good human relations? No! Another reason we must celebrate Elechi Amadi was the fact that he stood to define and defend the existence of Ikwerre as Ikwerre during the late Justice C. Oputa panel’s investigations on human rights violation in Nigeria between 1999 and 2002.

He made it clear that Ikwerre is not Igbo.

Okachikwu Dibia, Abuja

necessities of life.

Change cannot start with the people, when trucks and trucks of grains meant to feed the helpless and hapless in our IDP camps go missing without explanation. Without anybody brought to book. Make an example out of these cold-blooded thieves and see change. People will think twice before robing the feeble.

We are in an increasingly complex world where the pace of change is accelerating. I hope that the government knows it must re-invent the way of doing business. The patience of the man on the street is wearing thin. This government has to start to provide what the people want and when they want it, irrespective of whatever pressure it faces.

We are in dire straits.

We are not blind to that fact and the fact that this government is facing enormous challenges.

Everybody saw this coming what with the kleptomania of the last six years. The question however is – is the government responsive, flexible and creative enough? Is the government seeking opportunities and developing strategies to confront the barrier? These, if they

I

exist, are yet to be felt.

What the government needs to do, especially in today’s Nigeria, is build relationships with the people, not upset them with some utterances.

This re-branding is out of order.

That is not to say we, the people, do not have a role to play. It is our duty to support this government in whatever way we can. If it fails we bear the brunt. We all have a stake in this.

Aiding and abetting criminality in every sphere of our lives is getting to be a norm.

For example, I find it somewhat ludicrous that people who contributed to putting us where we are today are being hounded and the same citizen who bore the brunt of their atrocities most, stand in their defence.

It defies logic! I mean, we cannot be selfappointed defenders of the corrupt and expect a better today and tomorrow. We need to be better people so our country can achieve its bounteous potential.

It is time to start to provide the change that was promised the people, not the other way round.

Chiechefulam Ikebuiro,thalynxis@ yahoo.ca

FAREWELL, ISIDORE OKPEWHO

am devastated, not only because Professor Isidore Okpewho departed this earth, but also because I did not play my part aggressively to show him how much he meant to me. Isidore was nearly three years younger than I, yet he was an inspiration to me.

I remember when he was in publishing with Longmans in Ibadan in the early 70’s, he spent nearly every evening, when he was in town, in the University where I was a young lecturer. His words of encouragement for us to pursue excellence were especially meaningful to me. He talked about publishing with a lot of passion. All of us who were close to him knew that he was something special. When he graduated in 1964, the news of his accomplishment and that of our own Peter Ekeh spread far and wide throughout our land.

The pride that Urhobo harboured such “brains” was spoken of in every community. At that

same time in Ibadan in 1964, two other Urhobo sons, Professors Frank Ukoli and Matthew B. Scott-Emuakpor, were returning from London and Cambridge respectively with PhD’s in the Biological Sciences.

Urhobos were regarded with awe.

Isidore’s academic life was singularly spectacular. He was intellectually intense and he demanded the same type of intensity from his students. It was Isidore who made me see beauty in Literature.

He forced me to read my first non-medical book, and I have not stopped reading since then.

I will miss him dearly and I pray that he forgives me for not making the effort to spend some more time with him. I echo Professor Ekeh, “Beneath all of these glorious remembrances, I want us to celebrate him as a man who made Urhobo people proud in various ways”. May his soul rest in peace.

--Ajovi ScottEmuakpor, East Lansing, Michigan

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SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 18, 2016 T H I S D AY

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T H I S D AY, T H E S U N D AY N E W S PA P E R • SEPTEMBER 18, 2016

IMAGES

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ecently, Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Malam Yusuf Ali, held a public presentation of his book “Anatomy of Corruption in Nigeria: Issues, Challenges and Solutions.” The book launch held at Ladi Kwali Hall, Sheraton Hotel, Abuja was attended by prominent personalities. Here are some of the personalities that graced the event.

R-L: Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo (SAN); author, Malam Yusuf Ali (SAN) and former Chairman, Skye Bank and Chief Presenter, Otunba Tunde Ayeni

L-R: Mr. Adebayo Adelodun SAN, former MD of Jaiz bank, Alhaji Mohammed Bintube, Sec. Gen., Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede and the author, Malam Yusuf Ali, SAN

L- R: Alhaji Aliyu Sheu, Alhaji Ado Adamu, Malam Yusuf Ali SAN, Alhaji Yunus Usman SAN, and Alhaji Ibrahim Gaidam

L-R: Hon. Justice Bode Rhodes Vivour, Hon. Justice Mary Peter-Odili of the Supreme Court, Chief Judge of Federal High Court, Hon. Justice Ibrahim Auta, Hon. Justice Paul Galinje of the Court of Appeal, and a retired director NNPC, Dr. Jubril Oyekan

The book reviewer Prof. Ademola Popoola

L-R: Mr. Lateef Fagbemi SAN, Chief Judge Federal High Court, Hon. Justice Ibrahim Auta, Malam Yusuf Ali SAN, and managing director of Overland Airways, Capt. Edward Boyo

The author surrounded by his family members

L-R: Aunty Grace of the NMGS, Prof. Emeritus Umar Rahaman and Mr. Akin George

L-R: Army Director of Administration representing the Chief of Army Staff, Maj. General Abubakar, and another officer.

L-R: Alhaji Mahmoud Magaji SAN, Mr. Adebayo Adelodun SAN

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T H I S D AY, T H E S U N D AY N E W S PA P E R • SEPTEMBER 18, 2016

BUSINESS/ENERGY

Perennial Funding Challenges Haunt Power Sector

As the nation continues to grapple with the quest to increase electricity supply, indications are beginning to emerge that the schedule of fund disbursement in the sector may be faltering, writes Chineme Okafor and Olaseni Durojaiye

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recent directive of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) reiterating punitive measures to deposit money banks (DMBs), who failed to adhere to the terms and conditions of the Nigerian Electricity Market Stabilisation Facility (NEMSF) with regards to disbursement of funds to operators in the sector appear to underscore the CBN’s commitment to ensuring that the sector is not deprived of funds needed for capital expenditure.

The directive is coming on the heels of debate bordering on whether the improvement in power supply being witnessed in some parts of the country is traceable to the efforts of government or the weather condition. Some hold that the improvement was the result of the incremental power generation and supply strategic approach preached by the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Fashola. Others insists that the visible improvement, especially in many parts of Lagos was as a result of the cool weather which ensures that power generation and distribution facilities are not heated.

Besides, metering has also continued to generate heated discussion in the sector. While welcoming the improved power supply, many consumers are worried that they are unable to access the pre-paid meters months after they signed up and paid for the pre-paid meters. Even though pre-paid meters have been installed and in use in some parts of the country, at least four million Nigerians are still without it.

The Acting Chairman of the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), Dr. Anthony Aka, who disclosed so recently, had argued that the commission improved on metering system traced the shortage to the availability of meter manufacturing companies in Nigeria adding that the commission would sanction any electricity distribution company, which failed to comply with directives relating to the distribution of pre-paid meters.

Against the backdrop of the various issues bedevilling the sector, many see the directive as a welcome development. Sources in the know opined that the distribution companies (DISCOS) and generation companies (GENCOS) are presently facing funding challenges, which to a large extent negatively impact their ability to procure and install prepaid meters.

Interestingly, THISDAY gathered that the apex bank was preparing another round on financial intervention for the sector under the Nigerian Electricity Market Stabilisation Facility (NEMSF) initiative, thus the need to ensure that earlier disbursements were expended according to the dictates of NEMSF. The CBN Directive The CBN directive warned commercial banks who failed to comply with the terms and conditions in implementing the NEMSF and stated punitive measures that will be meted out to errant banks.

The directive was contained in a circular signed by its Director of Financial Regulations Department, Mr. Kevin Amogu.

The N213 billion facilities were launched on 18 November 2014 and were expected to bring about improvements in power supply for the benefits of Nigerians. The CBN had, in collaboration with the Ministry of Petroleum Resources, Ministry of Power and the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on the NEMSF with Chief Executive Officers of Deposit Money Banks The beneficiary companies included three DISCOS and three GENCOS. The facility, which was part of the initiatives to support the reforms in the power sector, was to be repaid within a 10-year period to enable them address the challenges hampering power generation and distribution in the country. The six companies are located in

A view of Egbin power plant in Ikorodu, Lagos Enugu, Ibadan, Kano, Ughelli, Egbin and Geregu.

In the list of sanctions, the CBN stated that if a collection bank and the principal collection bank fails to provide the refinancer/administrator with statement of account for the transaction account within five business days after the end of each month, the first sanction would be a warning letter to the bank, instructing that the infraction must be remedied within two working days.

Further infraction on the matter would involve a financial penalty of a minimum of N500, 000 daily on each account that such infraction is committed, until the infraction is remedied.

“If there is further infraction by the deposit money bank after the payment of the above financial penalty, the DMB’s participation as a Mandate Bank under the CBN-NEMSF shall be terminated,” it added.

Secondly, the circular stated that if a DMB fails to comply with the request by the refinancer/ administrator to provide statement for any of the DISCOs’ accounts maintained by it and such other information relating to the transaction effected or to be effected on the transaction accounts within five business days from the date of such request, the bank would be served a warning letter at first.

“Failure to comply within two working days will attract a financial penalty of a minimum of N500,000 daily until the infraction is remedied.

If there is further infraction by the DMB after payment of the above financial penalty, the DMB’s participation as a Mandate Bank under the CBN-NEMSF shall be terminated,” it added.

Thirdly, any DMB that does not comply with operational process document (circular) issued by the CBN to the accounts administration agreement, would also be issued a warning letter with other sanctions stated in the first and second infractions stated above.

Fourthly, if there is a closure of a transaction account by a DMB without prior written consent of the refinancer, the penalty, according to the CBN, would be N2 million and further sanction entails terminating the DMB’s participation as a Mandate Bank.

Funding Status The total disbursement of funds to operators in Nigeria’s power sector from the N213 billion

Nigerian Electricity Market Stabilisation Facility (NEMSF), which the CBN initiated, has reached N120.2 billion or 57 per cent of the total amount earmarked by the bank.

A status report of the disbursement of fund from the CBN, released in May indicated that about N92.8 billion was left to be disbursed by the bank in its next disbursement window as the funds are to be disbursed in tranches.

From the N102.2 billion so far disbursed, operators in the power sector have been able to procure up to 171,071 meters for deployment to their customers; upgrade their generation capacities to add another 905 megawatts to their pool; as well as provide bank guarantees to the Nigerian Electricity Bulk Trader (NEBT) for power transactions.

The first disbursement was done in February 12, 2015 to industry participants and after one year into it, the sum of N64 billion or 30 per cent of the facility was disbursed to 18 participants, which include five distribution companies - DISCOs (N41.06 billion); seven generating companies – GENCOs (N18.46 billion); and six gas companies (N5.24 billion).

The next tranche of the disbursement included the payment of N55.456 billion to 24 other industry participants – three DISCOs; 14 GENCOs including six NIPP plants; one service provider; and six gas companies.

Some new entrants into the scheme then were Benin and Jos Discos; Agip/Okpai and Shell IPPs; Alaoji, Geregu, Ihovbor, Olorunsogo-2, Omotosho-2 and Sapele-2 NIPP plants. So far, total disbursement to the DISCOs is N49.73 billion (91.7 per cent); GENCOs - N54.29 billion (62.5 per cent), gas companies - N15.73 billion (36.9 per cent) and service providers - N0.46 billion (1.7 per cent), bringing total disbursement under the initiative to N120.2 billion, representing 57 per cent of the total amount earmarked.

Stakeholders Keep Mute The level of fund disbursement to the sector has however sparked concerns among observers who wondered why the fund was being withheld even as DISCOs and GENCOs continue to lament paucity of funds to either procure pre-paid meters or invest in other infrastructural equipment needed

to scale up their services.

A source, who wished not to be named, told THISDAY that some of the banks were not keeping to the MoU entered into with the CBN, which necessitated the CBN directive.

According to him, “Some banks have not been faithful to the terms and conditions of the NEMSF; I suppose the CBN is aware of it and that was why they came out with the circular to remind them of what is expected of them and the sanction for default.

“One of the DISCOs is being denied access to the fund because it has not been able to come up with a clear revenue generation template,” he stated.

THISDAY could not get official reactions of players in the sector. Efforts to reach the Executive Secretary of Association of Nigerian Electricity Distributors (ANED), Barrister Sunday Oduntan, were futile. While calls to his mobile telephone lines failed to connect, response to an electronic mail to him was still being expected as at the time of going to press Friday night.

However, reaction of one of the stakeholders in the sector, who spoke anonymously indicated that he was not pleased with goings on in the sector, funding inclusive. He traced the problem in the sector, mainly, to absence of a duly constituted boards of National Council on Privatisation (NCP) and the National Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), lamenting that efforts of players in the sector have not yielded the desired result.

“All is not well within the power sector; nothing is done the way it is supposed to be done. The challenges are much and daunting; only insiders are abreast of how huge the challenges are. Part of the challenge is the absence of a dully constituted National Council on Privatisation (NCP) which is supposed to ensure smooth running of the activities in the privatization processes including in the power sector,” he stated.

According to him, the CBN was able to issue the circular because it has some measure of autonomy.

Even though the CBN governor is a member of the NCP, the absence of the a duly constituted NCP will continue to haunt the power sector and hamper the performance of the DISCOs and GENCOs, he emphasised.

T H I S D AY, T H E S U N D AY N E W S PA P E R • SEPTEMBER 18 , 2016

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BUSINESS/ECONOMY

Making Innovative Investments in Infrastructure

As Nigeria once again blazes the trail by playing host, for the third consecutive time, to world delegates for the World Pension Summit in Abuja later this month, James Emejo examines the challenges that are likely to be the focus of this year’s deliberations

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ounded in the Netherlands in 2010, the World Pension Summit - Africa Special (WPS-AS) is one of the premium global platforms for knowledge sharing in the pension industry.

Again, the country will be the centre of attraction between September 27 to 28, 2016, as key players in the global pension industry converge on the nation’s capital for the third consecutive year for the World Pension Summit.

Annually, it brings together well over 500 professionals, in addition to pension regulators and key stakeholders from more than 45 countries across the world, to participate and debate relevant innovations and best practices in the industry.

As the founder of the WPS, who is also a financial services marketing and positioning strategist, Harry Smorenberg, aptly captured it: “The WPS is the place to exchange key developments and solutions and learn from each other.”

In 2014, Nigeria became the first country outside Europe and indeed the first African nation to host the WPS, known as WPS- Africa Special. And it secured this hosting right for five consecutive years, thanks to the foresight and leadership provided by the National Pension Commission (PenCom).

The maiden edition in 2014, which former President Goodluck Jonathan declared open and the subsequent one in 2015, were considered huge success both for Nigeria’s image and industry growth and for the development of the pension industries in Africa. They rallied pension regulatory authorities from major African environments, leading players in the continent’s pension industries, key figures and leaders of thought from the global business communities, the who-is-who in the finance sectors as well as captains of industries to share their expertise and boost transnational cooperation on the African continent.

According to the National Pension Commission, PenCom, the Africa Pension Summit “provides top-level environment for exchange of business insights on essential ‘crossroads’ in pensions.”

“The themes of the summits were selected based on the need to lay a solid foundation for the establishment of enduring pension systems in Africa and chart ways for effectively channelling the pension funds to sustainable investments such as railways, power, agriculture and real estate. It was envisaged that this would serve as a catalyst to actively stimulate economic development across countries in the African continent”, it added.

The summit is held in high esteem by both local and international experts and stakeholders, who also see it as a testimony of Nigeria’s ability to transit from a bad example in pension management to the leading light in the industry in Africa.

Dr. Gerald Lyons, a renowned economist succinctly captured the perceptions of such stakeholders at the 2015 edition of Africa Special Summit. His words:“I think that the fact this summit is taking place here in Nigeria at this time is a sign of how the pension industry in Nigeria and PenCom, in particular, has achieved great success in the past decade. Also, it is an indication of how Nigeria is starting to play an important role on the global stage addressing some key issues such as pension.”

In the same vein, Senior Financial Sector Specialist, World Bank, Fiona Stewart, sees the WPS- Africa Special as“a great opportunity and it is important that we have more of these to get the regions talking to each other because learning from each other is absolutely key to economic development”.

“We can have international experience, but very much talking to each other in regions with member nations who understand the challenges is very important; I hope it will continue,”he added.

At a recent world press conference in Lagos, PenCom explained that“the 3rd Summit, which has as its theme, ‘Pension Innovations: The African Perspective’, was aimed at driving into

A road Infrastructure being commissioned

greater prominence, the revolutionary strides and achievements of African Governments in the area of pensions and social benefits.”

“It is expected that this year’s summit would, again, bring together professionals and highly experienced resources from across the world in the areas of investment, actuarial science, insurance, coverage extension, and other pension-related fields,”it added.

It is not surprising, therefore, when information on the summit website show that stakeholders from around the world, especially key players from the various African pension industries, were already making final jostle for the remaining spaces, as the 2016 edition promises to be notches higher than the previous editions.

The rush is not just due to the antecedents of the Africa Special Summit, but also the rich array of sub-themes and plenaries lined up for the two-day event.

For instance, the insurance sector and products, such as Group Life Insurance and Life Annuity are quite central to the effective implementation of benefits pay-out schemes by pension managers.

Unfortunately, even in the 21st Century, the African insurance markets are way behind those of the markets in the developed world. Thus,“Emerging Insurer Role”will be dedicated to the challenges of the Insurance sectors in their roles towards delivering long-term retirement outcomes.

Also slated for major attention is the challenge of huge infrastructural deficits in Africa. Experts have projected requirement for infrastructure development in Nigeria alone in the next 10 years to be about $100 billion for power, roads, railway, bridges, and seaports. Addressing housing deficits alone will require $228 million. Pension funds, being long-term, patient capital, are ideally suited to address some of these infrastructure challenges.

Thus, the diversity of the panelists on ‘The Dynamics of Pension Investments’ would no doubt bring expert perspectives on various asset classes, particularly infrastructure, real estate, and other specialised areas.

Again, only very few African countries have achieved reasonable progress in extending pension coverage to the informal sector and the self-employed. Access to financial services is a massive challenge across Africa. This is mainly as a result of low awareness of the existence of these services by those who are being served. Again, there is lack of clear appreciation of customer preferences on financial products and services.

Currently, PenCom is at the verge of rolling out the Micro Pension Scheme (MPS) to accommodate this informal sector. And Nigeria will be the first PenCom industry in Africa to venture into Micro Pension. The plenary on ‘Financial Inclusion’, promises to proffer ways to efficiently and effectively design financial literacy programmes and share experiences on Micro Pension design and policy implementation. No doubt, PenCom will find ideas from other global climes experienced in Micro Pension useful, just as Africa PenCom industries especially, stand to also benefit from PenCom’s trailblazing experience in this regard.

Technology now rules virtually every aspects of life today, including pension administration.

WPS-Africa Special is therefore set to discuss the use of technology in pension administration for the third consecutive time. The topic“Pension Distribution: The Impact of Technology”, aims to showcase new methods and advancements in technology that could be effectively deployed to provide efficient services to pension plan members, particularly in awareness creation and communication.

Other vital areas, such as actuarial valuations, are not also left out to ensure a holistic capacitybuilding and experience and knowledge sharing.The summit will, for the first time, feature discussions on the topic ‘Actuarial Issues and their Impact on Pension Benefits’.

The plenary will discuss issues such as actuarial assessment tools, policy and governance. This will improve the appreciation of actuarial valuations in assessing demographies and designing pension schemes.

Kaduna State Governor, Malam Nasir El-Rufai,

is one of the architects of pension reform in the country and among the governors that have never missed out on any of the past editions of the WPS. According to him,“it is important to encourage Pension Commissions all across Africa to up their ante to do more and to regulate more innovatively and ensure that the pension funds grow and are invested in the appropriate areas for development of their respective countries.”

As authorities in the global pension industries look forward to yet another rewarding engagement in Abuja, especially at a time of serious economic challenges, Nigeria has another opportunity to show that it has something other than oil and gas to offer to the world.

In its 12-year history, PenCom has painstakingly built a strong, transparent, and dependable pension system in Nigeria characterised by a dynamic and very efficient regulatory structure. From N2 trillion deficit inherited in 2004, PenCom has grown the nation’s pension assets to N5.7 trillion investible assets as at June this year.

However, stakeholders believe that the innovations and successes in the Nigerian pension industry spearheaded by PenCom have been significantly helped by the fact that the Pension Reform Act mandates the PenCom to report directly to the President. And President Muhammadu Buhari has shown uncommon political will for the pension regulator to succeed.

Essentially, this year’s programme could pave the way for a home-grown solutions to pension investment to reflect the peculiarities of the environment.

Several times, the lack of investible instrument had been blamed for the rather unwillingness by funds managers to invest the over N5.8 trillion assets in the country, and often times, highlighting the need for government guarantee as incentives.

Among other things, the gathering is expected to further seek innovative ways to deploy resources for development amid the current challenging conditions occasioned largely by the fiscal crisis caused by the falling prices of oil.

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T H I S D AY, T H E S U N D AY N E W S PA P E R ˾ SEPTEMBER 18 , 2016

BUSINESS/ENERGY

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Reports that Mobil Producing Nigeria Unlimited (MPN) will resume shipment of Qua Iboe crude may indicate that the downtime in Nigeria’s crude oil production may be easing off, writes Chineme Okafor

has continued to impact heavily on Nigeria’s oil production. The region has continued to ask for increased control of its oil resources, and adequate compensation for the oil spillage in the area.

Its militants have also indicated the willingness to dialogue with the government, which some weeks back said it had secured their commitment to a ceasefire on vandalism of oil installation and production disruption; the situation has however, remained unchanged going by a recent bombing of an oil pipeline and OPEC’s August production report.

Although the government has not said anything new about its planned dialogue with the militants, it would however appear like the plan has encountered some hitches, thus leading to the bombing of the Afiesere-Iwhrenene major delivery line to UPS/ UQCC, operated by Nigeria Petroleum Development Company (NDPC) and Shorelines Petroleum in Ughelli North Local Government Area of Delta State by the Niger Delta Greenland Justice Mandate (NDGJM), one of the many militant groups in the early hours of Tuesday.

The attack, which was reportedly confirmed by a leader of the group, Aldo Agbalaja, was almost at the same time the foremost Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) which ceased its bombing of oil facilities last month to dialogue with the government, accused the country’s military of harassing old men, women and innocent youths in the region under the guise of hunting for militants. This therefore raises suspicion that the dialogue may not have started.

An oil worker on a rig

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eports from Reuters within the week indicated that Mobil Producing Nigeria Unlimited (MPN), a unit of ExxonMobil, will resume shipment of Qua Iboe crude, Nigeria’s largest grade of crude oil in October, three months after the company declared a force majeure on the exports of the grade.

Accordingly, ExxonMobil is offering an Octoberloading cargo of Qua Iboe crude oil, the first offer since it declared the force majeure. The report however stated that it was not clear if the pipeline through which the crude grade passes had been repaired, or if the company expected it to be back on stream in time to load crude in October.

Notwithstanding, the report noted that the cargo had been offered for October 8 to 16 loading at a premium of $1.80 per barrel to dated Brent. If this sails through, Nigeria could perhaps be on the path to recovery in terms of production and sales volumes.

Before Mobil declared the force majeure, the last ship to reportedly load crude at the Qua Iboe terminal was the Ottoman Nobility on July 9. One of the three other ships scheduled to load the crude had been near the terminal since July 12.

A vessel loads one million barrel of the grade every three to four days, and exports of 250,000 barrels per day aboard eight vessels were scheduled for July when Mobil observed a leak caused by what it described as a“system anomaly”during a routine check of its loading facility on July 14, 2016.

When MPN took this decision, the cause of the leak was not clear, but it came just days after a militant group, the Niger Delta Avengers (NDA), claimed to have bombed the company’s 48-inch Qua Iboe crude oil export pipeline on July 11.

24 hours after the claim by the militants, the company’s spokesperson, Todd Spitler, however

debunked the claim, saying,“there was no attack on our facilities.”

And while ExxonMobil said at the time it declared the force majeure that the export terminal was operating, traders reportedly said the company did not release a revised loading schedule for the crude exports. The new development however suggests that Nigeria was ramping up its production.

Is Stability Returning in Nigeria’s Oil Fields?

In March, Nigeria lost its longstanding position as Africa’s top oil producer to Angola when its oil production dropped to 1.677 million barrels per day (mbpd). Compared to Angola’s 1.782mbpd production then, the country was behind Angola by about 105,000bpd of production volumes.

Nigeria’s trailing Angola was primarily occasioned by resumed militancy in her oil-bearing Delta region in February. From when militant groups resumed bombing oil installations in the region, the country’s production began to slide away from the 2016 budget target of 2.2mbpd.

Six months after, the OPEC in its Monthly Oil Market Report (MOMR) for September, which was released last Monday, indicated that Nigeria’s oil output had taken a further dip to 1.468mbpd in August from 1.52mbpd recorded in the previous month.

OPEC, which nevertheless, based its report on direct communication with the country, also stated that Angola saw its oil output rise to 1.775mbpd in August from 1.767mbpd the previous month.

The cartel also said Libya’s production dropped to 292,000bpd from 313,000bpd, while Venezuela produced 2.104mbpd, down from 2.117mbpd, Ecuador, 542,000bpd from 549,000bpd it previously recorded, while Iraq saw its production dropped by 2,000 barrels to 4.354mbpd.

The MOMR equally stated that Saudi Arabia, the

biggest producer in the group, recorded the biggest increase in August as it produced 10.605mbpd, up from 10.577mbpd in the previous month and Iran which has just come out of a global embargo, continued to increase output in a bid to snap up more market share with 3.653mbpd, up from 3.631mbpd.

Coming with the unstable oil prices in the global market, the situation appears quite difficult for Nigeria. This is even more with OPEC’s forecast of an oversupply into 2017.

Hopes of Stability Still Guarded About 90 per cent of Nigeria’s foreign earning comes from oil and gas produced in the Niger Delta but the situation in the region has not improved even with the federal government’s attempt at dialogue with militants.

It is also a fact that for Nigeria to improve her foreign exchange earnings and work out ways to get out of her current economic recession, the Niger Delta region will have to be considered as an important factor.

The region’s light crude oil is sought after by refineries in the US and Europe. Aside this, Nigeria also holds the world’s seventh largest proven gas reserves and supplies up to 10 per cent of global liquefied natural gas, if production shuts-in continue on the scale it is now, the country will produce less as well as have less foreign exchange to balance its trade and perhaps get out of recession.

In addition, terrorism in the Middle East makes Niger Delta an alternative supply source for countries like China and India whose economies have good demands for oil. A restive Niger Delta will however cut whatever gains the country stands to make from such conditions.

Fuelled by agitation for resource control and environmental pollution, the Niger Delta unrest

Unfavourable Market According to OPEC, Nigeria in July recorded the biggest increase in oil output from her field.

That was however not enough to bring her back to Africa’s top producer.

It said that while OPEC’s collective crude oil production in August was 33.24mbpd, a decrease of 23,000bpd, Nigeria and Libya contributed immensely to the drop.

“Crude oil output increased mainly from Saudi Arabia and Iran, while Nigeria and Libya showed the largest drop,” the MOMR said.

It also said that Africa’s oil supply is projected to average 2.12mbpd in 2016, representing a decline of 20,000bpd year-on-year, with increases however expected from Congo by 50,000 bpd to average 320,000bpd, and Ghana’s production start-up in the Tweneboa, Enyenra, Ntomme project, as well as a production ramp-up in the country’s Jubilee field in the second half of the year.

OPEC also raised its forecast of oil supplies from non-member countries in 2017. It said new fields were expected to come online especially from US shale drillers who have proved more resilient than expected to cheap crude.

It added that demand for its crude will average 32.48mbpd in 2017, down by 530,000bpd from the previous forecast. These forecasts, however, do not look favourable to Nigeria.

With oil prices still under pressure at an average of $47 per barrel, and renewed oversupply concerns, Nigeria now appears to have to contend with two tough challenges – dealing with instability in price and her production levels. The combined effect of these pose serious threats to forex earnings and naira exchange rate stability.

As stated by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in 2016 edition of its ‘Africa Oil and Gas Review’ published in August, Nigeria is not only affected by the decline in the oil price, but also by the reduced production due to the severe security issues onshore and increased piracy incidents.

PwC further said that:“This is adding an additional layer of complication, causing hesitation among oil majors to invest further. Consequently, many are considering postponing additional investment.”

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T H I S D AY, T H E S U N D AY N E W S PA P E R • SEPTEMBER 18, 2016

INTERVIEW

Jubrin: Sun Trust Bank is Part of the Tectonic Movement in Banking

Managing Director/CEO of Sun Trust Bank, Muhammad Jibrin, tells Sumaina Kassim why the new entrant’s game plan is anchored on tectonic shift in banking with emphasis on the retail customer, the small and medium business sector

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an you give an insight into your optimism attracting 30 million or more new customers to your data base?

I said earlier we have 30 million bank accounts only, okay? And we have looked at it and seen that in a population of 180 million, 150 million people are excluded from the banking population. Let’s agree that 50 million of that population is our target; the idea still is to add value to the existing number of the bankable population. Here we are trying to attract or accommodate about 50 million people excluded from having banking services; that is one. Secondly, statistics have shown that of all the transactions executed today, not only in Nigeria but worldwide, more than 90 percent of such transactions are electronic; so it is just this very insignificant ten percent that is being projected to be accommodated in the tectonic banking plan; That was why we were very clear about this policy from day one, which is that any institution that thinks the branch banking is still at the core of its brand network is not ready for the customer of tomorrow. The customer of today is executing 90 percent of his transaction electronically, and we are not even talking of the customer of tomorrow.

Does that suggest physical branches would no longer be there?

No, I don’t think so. We will still have physical presence; people need to interact; nobody wants to talk to machines from time to time but when we tried to test our systems, people did come with cheques to cash them and we asked them why they need the cash and they replied they needed to make a withdrawal because someone has given them a cheque and they wanted to pay it into their accounts. I asked them to give me their account details and after giving me the account details, I transferred the money to their accounts immediately and they received their alerts and then thanked me for saving them from some problems. Seriously, this is exactly what we need now and all it takes is to educate the customer.

Will Sun Trust run minimum across the counter transactions?

There will be zero behind-the-counter transactions.

Absolutely; what we are driving is powered by the electronic movement

But even in the U.S. Bank of America, Chase, Citi et al still operate across-the-counter transactions?

Look, there will still be one or two such activities but we don’t want to do that. Apart from the banks you mentioned, there are still financial technology banks that don’t even have any physical presence.

Today, you don’t need to come to SunTrust to open an account, you don’t need to fill a physical form to open an account, all I ask you to do is go to the website, go to the personal banking page of the website and you will be able to fill your account opening form online, submit it online and the next morning you will get your account number, cheque book and data.

So what if I have a million naira to deposit in cash, what do I do?

We will collect it and take it to the Central Bank, we can collect it but you will not see a physical counter.

And if I want to draw cash, I go to the ATM?

You go to the ATM, why do you need to carry one million naira? It’s risky because your demands would not be up to that.

What do I do when I am depositing my cash?

We can take it from you and send it to the Central Bank. There are four major drivers of the economy in the building block today, which will continue to change the future of everything; one is mobile penetration, that has been achieved in Nigeria as

Jubrin

there is huge mobile telephone penetration in this country, the next is the broadband penetration as there is huge and ongoing broadband penetration in Nigeria especially with the deployment of various fibre-optic technology n the system across the country and the sub-region. When these things happen, the next big thing is where we are, which is the small and medium enterprise or the mass market, this is what I call the mass market.

How is a technology driven bank’s function different from what we know?

It is a matter of emphasis and reaching out to a larger population because over ninety percent of transactions today are executed electronically.

Here at Sun Trust we do not have counter, teller and cashier cubicles. This is because there is no need for them. Any institution that believes that physical branches are at the core of its brand is not prepared for the customer of tomorrow who neither wants to go to the physical branch nor wants to go and carry out a transaction over the counter either in cash or cheque. On the contrary most customers today would rather execute their transactions electronically; at the minimum if they need cash they will go to an ATM. So banking is no longer where you go to today; it is what you do 24/7 and this is at the heart of our philosophy and if you believe in this then there is no need for you to have physical branches. At the heart of our strategy therefore, we agreed that this bank would be known as a financial technology bank, we are going to drive and deliver banking services using technology, and this is the future of banking. We need to ensure that people have access to ATMs and businesses are working very well and that people can do mobile banking; once we are able to deliver these services there is really no need for a bank to speculate how honest a bank is with the customer. The truth is that quite a large number of the populace has been excluded from having access to financial services, so our target market would continue to be the small and medium enterprises and the retail ones but more importantly we shall focus

on them, on those that are in the South and those that are excluded from financial services and I will tell you why I said so. If you look at it, after the bidding exercise that was conducted by the Central Bank in conjunction with the commercial banks, you would agree with me that the total number of bank accounts in the system that we have seen is not more than thirty million; Nigeria’s population is about 180 million; it is growing at an annual growth rate of about three percent and when that is compounded over the next ten years Nigeria would not be less than 220 to 230 million people.

Now more than 70 percent of that population largely made up of young people, is excluded from financial services. When you analyse the demography, if you categorize the population, you will notice that about 70 percent of this population consists of the youth and therefore looking at it today our youth population would be more than double by 2020 and when this happens, we shall be looking at a population that is technologically savvy and very agile when it comes to the issue of technology.

Sadly they are the ones excluded from financial services, what you and I take for granted, services

At the heart of our strategy is a financial technology bank, we are going to drive and deliver banking services using technology, and this is the future of banking

that easily give us access to all types of transactions, payment of our bills, saving for a rainy day and even borrowing on very reasonable terms from banks. This group does not have that access and the Central Bank of Nigeria is trying to ensure that there is financial inclusion; so given all these things together and looking at where the economy is going, where the country is going, where the growth is, we believe that we should target the youths as tomorrow’s beneficiaries of the larger network of electronic banking technology.

Will this innovation mean a shift of emphasis on collaterals?

Our target market is the retail customer, who is a very difficult customer but in these very small and medium enterprises you can clearly see an engine room for growth and development and you can put them in clusters, in cooperatives and in groups and therefore be able to provide credit to this particular group of people and when you do this peer pressure would be on each and every one to ensure that you settle your obligations to ensure that the next person gets access to credit.

Does that mean your security network here is moderately designed?

Absolutely, we don’t have a forest of police men guarding this place because I don’t have anything in physical form that you can come and take but I have a cyber security network and that means you cannot break into my system, that is the issue that we are selling because rather than spend money on physical security, I spend more money on cyber-security as a financial technology bank. Of course, we have adequate security for the premises; there would always be a good measure of security.

Who are your correspondent banks abroad?

We are working with Citibank, Barclays in China, ICBC, Deutsche Bank and the normal banks; of course we are going to focus on trade and work with those banks we need for our trade and other transactions.

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T H I S D AY, T H E S U N D AY N E W S PA P E R • SEPTEMBER 18, 2016

BUSINESS/MARITIME

Stakeholders Identify Challenges to Export Trade

With emphasis on export trade by the federal government for the sake of foreign exchange earnings at a time of economic recession, stakeholders identify challenges facing export business in Nigeria, writes Francis Ugwoke

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ith oil trade on the downside in what has affected foreign exchange earning drastically, Nigeria is currently promoting export trade. Importation of major trade goods has for the past one year suffered a lot of setback. With the 41-item list which importers cannot access foreign exchange officially because of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) policy. It has become tough for businessmen, who had over the years survived through importation. Under the current policy, importers who manage to bring in goods into the country do so under very difficult circumstances, sourcing foreign exchange through the black market to trade with the fluctuating exchange rate. To exporters, this makes trade a herculean task. This trend has at the same time promoted export business as the fashionable international trade in Nigeria.

But this is not without series of challenges which exporters have lamented to no avail.

Q2 Export Figures The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) had recently announced that the nation’s export trade had risen to N1.873 trillion in the second quarter of this year. From the statistics, this was about N725.6 billion or 63.3 per cent higher when compared with the figure recorded in the last quarter. Yet, there is not much celebration about the rise considering that the Piles of containers waiting to be discharged from the vessel NBS had also explained that the increase was as a result of the depreciation of naira in value. Secondly, for those who think so much ones that determine which vessel transports work with trade support institutes all over progress is being made is the clarification that the cargo from the point of loading to its the country to promote export trade by the export trade was dominated by crude final destination. Every year, the amount of talking to people on export. He explained oil exports which value was put at N1.493 income that could be generated from such that this had become necessary as a result trillion or 79.7 per cent when compared with trade runs into billions of dollars. If Nigerian of poor packaging and standards of products other domestic products. This is not what ship-owners were privileged to carry such exported out of the country. To achieve export the federal government and many Nigerians goods, it would bring multiplier effect to target, training, he said, was very relevant.

Similarly, a trade expert, John Chikere, also are expecting, as the target for export trade the national economy, providing so many listed some of the constraints for export trade improvement is on other new domestic jobs as well. products. Incidentally, the value of trade for Udofia and many other concerned Nigerians, as logistics and storage facilities for those such products, including animal vegetable including indigenous shipping companies are into export of farm produce. He said that poor fats, oil and other cleavage products was of the view that the trade terms for the sale storage for perishable items would be a big N55.7billion, or three per cent of total export. of oil should be changed to Cost Insurance loss to the trade, adding that many items The report also had it that other articles for and Freight (CIF) so that Nigerian indigenous are damaged before they arrive their export export, such as base metals and articles of shipping companies, such as the national carrier, destination. Chikere referred to the case of the base metals accounted for N28.4billion or would be in a position to participate in the European Union which last year rejected some 1.5 per cent, while the value of prepared affreightment of crude oil. But beyond the food items exported from Nigeria, adding that foodstuffs, beverages, spirits and vinegar crude oil export issue, according to him, was this was a big setback.

It would be recalled that last year, United and tobacco was put at N16.2 billion or the difficulty exporters go through to finance 0.9 per cent. their businesses. He said that few banks were Nations Industrial Development Organization ready to promote export, adding that there (UNIDO) had during the National Quality Issues Affecting Export Trade was the need to educate the banks more on Infrastructure (NQI) forum hinted about its Big time manufacturing companies in this line of trade. On the part of terminal moves to improve on the nation’s quality and Nigeria are into export trade. They have such operators, he accused the concessionaires who standards system as part of the efforts to address products that are easily marketable within the run the ports of high tariffs compared with the challenges of exports trade. During the meeting, a UNIDO representative, Mr. Chuma West African sub-region. Those ones therefore what obtains in other climes. do not encounter so much difficulty because Udofia who is equally the Chairman, Rivers, Ezedinma, was reported to have said that they have been tested overtime and certi- Bayelsa Shippers’ Association, complained of the agency had trained over 500 people for fied okay. But this is not the same for small poor infrastructure, such as bad road, high this purpose. scale businessmen who are just struggling cost of transport and power that have all Standardisation, Packaging of Export to open up the market for their products. combined to affect export business.

These categories of exporters encounter a He specifically said many of the agencies Products On how Nigeria can earn a lot of foreign lot of challenges, including the difficulty of in the ports and border stations that are infrastructure decay, bureaucratic bottlenecks supposed to promote export have been so exchange from export trade, the Executive and poor finance. Executive Secretary, Institute much interested in revenue collection than Secretary of the Nigerian Shippers’ Council, of Export Operations & Management, Port trade facilitators. He called for the creation Hassan Bello, said Nigerian businessmen Harcourt, Rivers State, Mr. Ofon Udofia, said of the National Trade Facilitation Committee, should work hard to do a good job on the that for Nigeria to benefit from export, the comprising Nigerian Shippers’ Council and products they want to export.

Bello, who described export trade as the trade policy needs to be reviewed. Udofia other agencies of government to simplify spoke on the background knowledge of the export trade in Nigeria. He also called on hallmark for diversification of the national fact that the nation’s oil export is based on the NSC to be in the port, arguing that a economy, also identified the problem with Free on Board (FOB), which in effect means referee cannot be outside the field of play Nigerian export as infrastructure deficit and poor that the buyer of the product, as in the case in a football match. He equally called on access to finance. But he said that despite these of oil, is left with the power to choose who the NSC to open up more offices in states issues, there could not be any alternative to standardisation and packaging for the products carries the product. With such trade term, the to champion export trade. buyers of Nigeria’s crude oil are therefore the Udofia advised the federal government to to do well. He said that there were cases when

export products were rejected overseas as a result of poor standards and packaging. He accused exporters of engaging in fraudulent practices of obtaining fake certificates for their export products, adding that this was the case with some of the goods that were rejected by overseas buyers.

“Many of our exports are rejected and brought back to Nigeria because they don’t conform to the standard. We need mahogany for example, this is the thickness, this is the specification and everything. And then, you have to have standard organisation here in Nigeria certifying them, saying they are up to the standard for export; but this is not done. Some of the certificates are faked.”

On the issue of poor packaging, Bello said some traders have not done enough to preserve what they are exporting, adding that this was among the reasons why some products don’t survive the stress before they get to the market.

He said:“We package to withstand the journey by sea and some Nigerian brothers don’t know that if you have a product, it goes through a lot of changes; chemical changes. If you have sorghum for example, the volume will change, it will expand, it will go through a lot of things. So you have to package your product to withstand the temperature.

“We have to package well for competition, because packaging is very important… The way we package our things, we just want to put things together, no. You have to package very well, attractive so that people will buy it”.

Bello disclosed that the council was planning to organise a workshop to educate exporters on the best way to package for export, among others.

Emphasising the importance of export trade, Bello said: “We either export or we perish because we really have to start exporting. That is very important for this country.”

He expressed optimism that with time the challenges of infrastructure deficit, such as poor road network and rail links to the ports would be addressed.

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T H I S D AY, T H E S U N D AY N E W S PA P E R • SEPTEMBER 18, 2016

BUSINESS/ MEDIA

Made in Nigeria Goods in Focus as Star Auto Opens Break Pads Factory Stories by Raheem Akingbolu

S

takeholders in the auto industry, including the Director General of the National Automotive Design and Development Council, Engr.

Aminu Jalal, have emphasised the need for Nigerian consumers to patronise Made in Nigeria products to help the economy.

Speaking as the guest of honour at the inauguration of a new factory to produce brake pads and linings at Navy Town, Lagos, Jalal, said Nigerian brands could become global brands only when Nigerian consumers appreciate and patronise them.

The factory was established by Star Auto Industries Limited, a leading manufacturer of spare parts in the country.

“We all talk about building global brands but our actions are totally against such goal. Every day, we go to the market and overlook Nigerian products. The truth is that nobody will consume our products if we don’t consume it. Today, Nigeria music and home video are in all the nooks and crannies of Nigeria basically because we appreciate it and consume it ourselves,” he said.

While declaring the factory opened, Jalal commended the effort of the chairman of Star Auto Industries Limited, Chidi Ukachukwu, and his team, for their consistent and commitment to the manufacturing sector, despite the economic challenges currently facing the country. The DG, who expressed the desire of the council to partner with Star Auto to take the company to the next level, said he had been in close contact with Star Auto Industries Limited for many years.

“I have always been a friend of the company for many years, especially the chairman, Chidi Ukachukwu, and I know how committed the company is to manufacturing of quality goods.

Over the years, Ukachukwu has explored the manufacturing spaces in Ibadan, Lagos and other places, which makes the terrain easy for him to tread. With the opening of the Brake Pads and Linings factory here in Navy Town, I’m convinced that this will go a long way in cushioning the effect of harsh economy in the country as well as bringing spare parts close to vehicle owners,” he said.

Speaking at the event, the Managing Director of Star Auto, Mrs. Ngozi Ukachukwu, said the establishment of the company was in line with the aspiration of the current administration to encourage Made in Nigeria goods.

Jalal

While assuring Nigerians that the company was committed at manufacturing brake pads and linings for Nigerians at competitive prices, the managing director expressed the determination of the management of the company to serve Nigeria and Nigerians with the new factory in the area of revenue generation, employment opportunities and manufacturing of quality products for Nigerians.

According to her, “Star Auto is going to create jobs; we previously had over 200 staff and we intend to grow to levels and the capacity exists to increase our strength in the near term. Our operations are also in line with the current monetary and fiscal policies of the government of the day. About 60 per cent of our raw materials can presently be sourced locally.

We expect that our optimal operations will reduce the amount of foreign exchange

Ukachukwu

demanded for the importation of brake pads.”

Ukachukwu further stated that the company was currently partnering with a government agency and a couple of educational institutions to carry out independent research and testing.

According to her, these include research in local resin production and replacement of certain materials with local alternatives extracted from Palm Kernels. It is expected that these efforts would yield results and further reduce the company’s imported raw materials component to 20 per cent over the next two years.

The managing director, who disclosed that the foundation of the factory was laid in January 2015, stated that the company had mapped out some business and marketing strategies that would enable it survive the tough economic regime the country is currently undergoing.

Earlier, the chairman of the occasion, Engr.

Tunde Zedomi, who was represented at the event by Engr. Kayode Akinsowon, had commended the doggedness of the Ukachukwus and pointed out that brake pads and linings, which are the major items that would be coming out of the factory, are part of the major items required in any automobile.

“They are precision parts, which must be manufactured to acceptable world standards and their manufacturing ingredients are specially sorted so as to avoid any unforeseen malfunctions of any particular batch,” he said.

On the need for the management of the company to follow the rules and regulations that guides the military environment, Capt.

A.E. Olorogun, said Navy Authority abhors embarrassment and therefore called on Star Auto management to produce quality goods as well as promoting healthy and safety environment.

For Glo, Overload is a Game Changer

I

n tariff, customer services and reward for subscribers, Globacom has always set the pace in the telecommunications industry. In the last one year, it has recorded the same feat through many innovations, especially in the area of promo and data affordability.

Few weeks ago, the company again took data affordability to unprecedented level with Overload, through which subscribers could get 2GB with just N1,000 and get 48GB with N8000. With this, Glo has thus reconfirmed its status as the grand masters of data in Nigeria with unprecedented data plans.

In the new plan tagged Data Overload, subscribers to the network now receive up to double the data volume previously available on every plan.

A breakdown of the offer shows that the N1,000 plan which used to give the subscriber 1.5GB of data now gives 2GB, while the N2,000 plan which hitherto came with 3GB of data now has 6GB data.

Similarly, subscribers will now get 10GB of data for N2,500 plan instead of 5GB and 12GB for N3,000 instead of 6GB data which the plan offered before.

For the N4,000 data plan, the subscriber will now get 18GB instead of the old 9GB, while the N5,000 subscription will give the customer 24GB.

The biggest offer is the N8,000 subscription which, instead of the old 24GB, now gives the customer a whopping 48GB of data.

The new Data Overload is currently the most attractive in the market as no operator offers anything near it.

A statement from Globacom explained that the new Data Overload was designed to promote upward migration from lower plans and excite Nigerians. The company added that customers can buy the data plans by dialling *777#, adding that they can also share and gift any part of the plan to their loved ones.

“As the data game-changer in the industry, we have decided to give our esteemed subscribers the most affordable data value on our superfast network powered by the Glo 1 submarine cable.

We also wish to enrich their communication experience through unbelievable data volumes at best-in-class prices,” Globacom added.

The company said it would continue to come out with innovative products and services for the benefit of its teeming subscribers.

Looking back at Globacom exploit in the market, it will be difficult to doubt its power of innovation. Four years ago, in its characteristic manner of jolting the Nigerian telephony market, its handlers announced the introduction of a new Glo infinito which allowed subscribers to pay only 25 kobo per second for calls made to any network in Nigeria.

According to the company, the 25 kobo per second charge was a flat rate which applied for all local calls irrespective of which network was being called or time of day or which part of the country the call was originating from.

The package also allowed subscribers to call one Special Number at only 2 kobo per second.

Interestingly, no daily or monthly rental was charged to enjoy the cheap rate.

The subscriber, however, had an option of registering 5 Glo numbers which could be called at 18 kobo per second. Again, registration was free and there was no rental charge.

Like others in the market that are struggling every day to grab substantial part of the telecommunication market, Glo is definitely not losing sleep on positioning and marketing strategies.

In a related development, the company recently unfolded the details of its strategic partnership with Vodafone, assuring its subscribers of a new phase of innovation-leadership and unrivalled quality of service.

The mutually beneficial and reciprocal agreement was formally unveiled to the public at a high profile ceremony attended by top officials of the two companies, senior officials of British High Commission and Globacom’s brand ambassadors.

Under the Partner Market Agreement covering Nigeria and Benin Republic, Globacom and

Chairman Globacom, Mike Adenuga

Vodafone will work together to significantly enhance the experience of individual and corporate

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T H I S DAY, T H E S U N DAY N E W S PA P E R • SEPTEMBER 18, 2016

COVER

ESTHER ONOLEMEMEN

A VOICE FOR SICKLE CELL DISEASE

Esther Onolememen was understandably crestfallen when doctors told her there was nothing more they could do for her daughter. In part, she felt responsible for genetically passing down the blood disorder. She told Funke Olaode that rather than bemoan her misfortune, she became a campaigner for a cure and/or a better understanding of Sickle-cell Disease

I

Onolememen

t was a bombshell with an enduring impact. Till today, she is still grappling with the shock.

However, she has overcome the initial astonishment and summoned the courage to confront her misfortune with a consummate determination to get to the very bottom of the matter. Rather than throw her hands up in the air in apparent helplessness, Esther Onolememen has entered the fight of her life in a bid to find some kind of succour from the misery of her two children afflicted with Sickle-cell disease.

In part, her burden comes from a weight of guilt as medical examination has since revealed that Esther and husband share the blame for their children’s health condition, as one of them genetically passed down the blood disorder to the children, as manifested in two of their four children.

It was a diagnosis that came rather too late having been satisfied okay prior to their marriage. The first sign that the family was in for a topsy-turvy life surfaced when her daughter, Reme, who was born in Nigeria in 2000 suffered a severe crisis at eight months. That disaster left her partially paralysed for life. In search of better health care, the Onolememens relocated abroad the following month.

The tragedy could be compared to a death sentence in some quarters. And having two children with the medical condition was too overwhelming for a young mother. Instead of wallowing in self-pity or blaming her travails on marital bad luck, the Onolememens summoned up courage by facing the reality at hand. Of course, the better option was to seek medical help.

Narrating her ordeal, the Rivers State born who is now naturalized in Ireland said she moved to Ireland 16 years ago when she had her second child, Reme.

“I had my daughter in 2000 and we noticed she was always very sick and we didn’t know what was happening. When she was around eight months she was significantly ill and had a seizure which affected a part of her body. At a particular

point in time, she lost oxygen supply to her brain and she passed out. We prayed and believed God and she came back to life,” she recalled.

The infant went through all the medicals in Nigeria and most of the consultants gave up on her case. Reme’s test for sickle cell was misdiagnosed. She was diagnosed as ‘AS’, which absolutely nullified the fact that sickle cell could be a contributing factor. Her mother, Esther was an AS. Her husband was an AA. So the idea of having children with sickle cell disorder was out of place. But it happened. With the problem at hand, she couldn’t really get help for her daughter and they decided to seek medical help abroad.

The entire family first resided in the United Kingdom before relocating to Ireland in pursuit of better medical treatment. As the troubled parents of Reme were one of the first few to access Sickle Cell services, they had to overcome the hurdle of little knowledge about the disease. “You can imagine health care professionals asking you what the disease was all about. For me, I felt I had a burden to begin a research on sickle cell. It was only when we got to Ireland that we found out that she had traces of sickle cell. They carried out research on what was common

Reme...when the going was tough

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T H I S D AY, T H E S U N D AY N E W S PA P E R • SEPTEMBER 18, 2016

PERSONALITY

Tony Ezekiel: Furniture Maker with a Difference

With a Seminar Room named after him at the University of Oxford, UK, Bachelor and Masters’ degrees, and currently on the verge of completing his doctorate, with a plethora of awards for distinguishing himself in his chosen field, Tony Ohifeme Ezekiel is a furniture maker with a difference, writes Oladipo Awojobi

I

n this clime, it’s unusual to see a man in an industry that is not grouped among the key sectors of the economy, sitting with the high and mighty and with a basket-full of awards of excellence. But Tony Ohifeme Ezekiel is an exception.

With a combination of integrity, humility, hard work, and academic and professional competences, he has broken the glass ceiling. Today, Ezekiel, who was born in 1958 in the northern city of Kaduna, has raised the bar with his ingenuity in several areas of human endeavours.

Tony is the founder and CEO of Itex Furniture; an indigenous furniture manufacturing company in Abuja, Nigeria which has handled several high profile jobs in the country.

His success in building his enterprise is also linked to his passion for the country and for ‘building’ people. Indeed, this passion, determination and integrity have earned him a reputation as a visionary leader, loyal friend, honest partner and a man of the people.

Tony embodies the image of a total Nigerian, having been exposed to the socio-cultural diversities and dynamics of the country. He spent his childhood years in Northern Nigeria and the better part of adulthood in Southern Nigeria.

His background and experience have left him devoid of all tribal or religious sentiments whatsoever; and has made him a versatile and amiable character gifted with crosscultural people management skills.

This is further evidenced by his fluency in English, Yoruba, Hausa, Edo and Ora languages.

Tony Ezekiel, a man of uncommon talents, and human relations, was born to the family of the late Mr. Joseph Aiguabasimin Ezekiel and Mrs. Emily Ajayi Ezekiel of Eme-Ora in Owan West LGC of Edo State, Nigeria. He attended Our Lady Primary School, Kaduna in 1966 and finished at St. Mary’s Primary School, Lokoja in 1972.

Upon completing his primary education, he attended Government Secondary School, Koton Karfi before proceeding to Ahmadu Bello University in the Mathematics Department.

He also studied the following courses; Knowledge Management Application, Change Management, Strategic Leadership, Advanced Management and Leadership Programme, PGD in Global Business Executive, Masters in Business Administration, D. Phil, Management and Leadership Candidate, all at the prestigious University of Oxford in the United

Ezekiel

Kingdom.

Fondly called ‘The Carpenter,’ Tony’s Itex Furniture started its

TONY EMBODIES THE IMAGE OF A TOTAL NIGERIAN, HAVING BEEN EXPOSED TO THE SOCIOCULTURAL DIVERSITIES AND DYNAMICS OF THE COUNTRY. HE SPENT HIS CHILDHOOD YEARS IN NORTHERN NIGERIA AND THE BETTER PART OF ADULTHOOD IN SOUTHERN NIGERIA. HIS BACKGROUND AND EXPERIENCE HAVE LEFT HIM DEVOID OF ALL TRIBAL OR RELIGIOUS SENTIMENTS WHATSOEVER; AND HAS MADE HIM A VERSATILE AND AMIABLE CHARACTER GIFTED WITH CROSS-CULTURAL PEOPLE MANAGEMENT SKILLS. THIS IS FURTHER EVIDENCED BY HIS FLUENCY IN ENGLISH, YORUBA, HAUSA, EDO AND ORA LANGUAGES

operation from a car port garage and has grown to an ultra-modern factory complex with state of the art machines on a 2.5 hectares parcel of land in the new Idu Industrial District, Abuja with a staff strength of more than 100 persons.

Itex’s meteoric growth is largely due to the visionary and dynamism of its founder, his commitment to innovation, quality and delivery of excellent customer experience; resulting in Itex becoming one of the leading furniture manufacturing companies in Nigeria.

Itex Furniture has contributed immensely in transforming the look, feel and comfort of offices and homes in Nigeria.

The company has been privileged to furnish various landmark buildings in Nigeria.

The list include Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Headquarters in Abuja, Central Bank of Nigeria Headquarters, Abuja, Federal Ministry of Finance Headquarters, Abuja, Federal Ministry of Water Resources, Abuja, Ministry of Defence Headquarters, Abuja, the Federal Ministry of Transport, Ministry of Aviation, Rivers State Government Secretariat, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Federal Inland Revenue offices in Abuja, Ibadan, Akure, Military Pensions Board, Abuja, Court of Appeal, Abuja, the Bureau for Public Enterprise (BPE), Presidential Palace of the Republic

of Sao Tome and Principe amongst others.

In pursuit of its vision, Itex Furniture used the Blue Ocean theorem in creating a comfortable learning environment with functional and durable school desks as evident in the furnishing of all primary and secondary institutions in the following states; Edo, Bayelsa, Ekiti, Ondo, Gombe, and Lagos, just to mention a few.

As part of giving back to the society, Itex has been actively involved in the development of human capital some of which include; Solomon Giwa Amu Foundation-Skill Acquisition Programme Factory and excursion visits by various schools; Regent Int’l School, Benue State University, Federal Polytechnic, Nasarawa State, as well as Entrepreneurial Training for Senior Officers of the Nigerian Army in preparatory to retirement Ezekiel possesses political influence. His experience in governance has helped shaped the success of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Edo State, especially in his constituency; ‘Owan West’.

It is on record that through his visionary leadership, the political structure of Owan West was redefined. He ensured that only qualified individuals with a heart to serve the people were elected into political offices in his constituency in 2011.

In recognition of his achievements in business, humanitarian works and other spheres of life, Ezekiel has received numerous awards, some of which include; a Seminar Room named after him at the University of Oxford (for bringing experience to class), in May 2013; the Corporate Service award from Ahmadu Bello University Alumni Association in 2013; Entrepreneur of the year in 2008, the Abuja Enterprise Agency – Fastest Growing Furniture Company in 2006; FCT Leaders’ Summit – Honour Award, and 2008 Midwest Times – Midwest Personality of the Year Award.

Tony Ezekiel is happily married to Mrs. Adeola Olowu Ezekiel and they are blessed with three loving children, Emilomo Evette Ezekiel, Emmanuel Ailohi Ezekiel and Oare Edmond Ezekiel.

He is a complete man in terms of character, a man of vision, a honest and dependable fellow, a humanist, welfarist, man of the people and above all a man of integrity, whose achievements and activities over the years are pointers to his potentials and ability to make things happen even where others dread to touch.

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T H I S D AY, T H E S U N D AY N E W S PA P E R • SEPTEMBER 18, 2016

IMAGES

T

he Gregory’s College Old Boys Association set of 1966/1970 recently celebrated its 50th Anniversary Thanksgiving with a Holy Mass at St. Gregory’s College in Ikoyi, Lagos. Later, a breakfast reception followed at the school’s College hall. Here are PHOTO: IBRAHIM ADEWALE faces of some Gregorians at the event.

L-R: Former Judge of Federal High Court, Justice Charles Archibong; Chief Judge of Lagos State, Justice Funmilayo Atilade and Chief Ayo Iroche

L-R: Dr. Charles Hammond; Ms. Alero Edu and Engr. Emeka Nwankwo

L-R: Sir. Bob Okonyia and Chief of Staff to Delta State Governor, Hon.Tam Brisibe

L-R: Chairman Project Commitee, St. Gregory’s College, Sir. Bandele Obilana; Justice Bode RhodesVivour and Chairman Emeritus, Board of Governors, St. Gregory’s College, Dr. Oluyomi MacGregor

L-R: Permanent Secretary, Waterfront Infrastructure Development, Lagos State (rted), Engr. Wasiu Buraimoh; Commissioner forWorks and Infrastructure, Lagos State, Engr. Ganiyu Johnson and his wife, Funke

R-L: President, St. Gregory’s College Old Boys Association, Dr. John Abebe and Mr. Ken Oboh

L-R: Mr. Banjoko Bimbo; Mr. Joseph Atoyebi and Mr. Tunji Alapini

L-R: Sir. Paddie Oko; Wife of former Military Administrator of Lagos State (Rtd), Mrs. Josephine NdubuisiKanu and Dr. Abiodun Aluko

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SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 18, 2016 T H I S D AY

65

THISDAY, THE SUNDAY NEWSPAPER • SEPTEMBER 18, 2016

ARTS & REVIEW\\VISUAL ARTS The Inverted Pyramid; Adapted from a novel by Emeka Dike

NESS

sense that they were grappling with a new uncomfortable reality. Eventually, he found that he was always on the lookout for suitable models wherever he was. If he ran into a girl he was interested in drawing, he’d ask.

Usually they’d say yes. Occasionally they’d decline. Maybe too shy. Maybe cautious. It didn’t matter though. A lot of girls were keen on sitting.

The girls with facial markings intrigued him. These were not the obvious, bold tribal marks of old but, rather, the subtle facial markings that he saw in girls from the South and the East of Nigeria. Tiny cuts on the cheeks or the temple. It seemed a holdover from another time. The parents had been marked and still felt a need to put these marks on their children. Yet, like a strange brush stroke, the marks intrigued him—the way they decorated the face added a different element to the lines of the face. The way the girls reacted to their markings varied. Some were comfortable with it, just another fact of life. Some were self-conscious, keen to hide them as if the marks were some sort of blemish. Blemish for some, beauty mark for some, mere fact of life for some, culture and heritage for some. Tiny marks that, for him, said so much.

He tried to keep the portraits as true to the girls as possible. He wanted to stay true to their likeness. He also wanted to make it simple. The only decorative element was usually around the ears. The earrings for him played a central role in the centring of the face.

He dwelt on the earrings, distorting them sometimes, elaborating on them, and in some cases creating new patterns that spread from these earrings to other areas of the portrait.

The girls came. They sat. They smiled, frowned, laughed, talked, sulked. He drew. Again and again on his black paper, outlining their African features.

Letting the paper and the chalks illuminate their blackness—their youth, their dreams, their hopes, their loves, their heartbreaks. He tried to find their humanity, but also their distinct African-ness. The original pastels boxes ran out in no time. He migrated from Faber Castell pastels to Rembrandt soft pastels. He kept drawing. Everyday. He also started to exhibit the pastels all over the country—Lagos, Abuja, Kano. Years later, one of his models, Osato Adams, had graduated and moved to the United States. She’d gone with some friends to visit an American family who had been to Nigeria. She could tell something was up as soon as she walked into their home. Everyone was staring at her.

“We have an artwork upstairs and the girl looks exactly like you,” they told her. “We got it in Kano, but you’ve never been to Kano.”

She went upstairs to see the artwork.

“That’s me,” she said. “That’s me.”

It was years ago. But she still remembered sitting and laughing and joking.

Four years after he started the pastel portraits, Ovraiti stopped painting them. It was just time to stop. They were other paths to explore. He started experimenting with more abstract water colours. But the girls stayed on the black paper—with their marks, their youth, their laughter, their blackness.

- Igweze runs the Hourglass Gallery, Lagos

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THISDAY, THE SUNDAY NEWSPAPER • SEPTEMBER 18, 2016

ARTS & REVIEW\\MuSIc

NIGERIA IS A MUSIC POWERHOUSE WORTH TRILLIONS OF NAIRA

Tony Amadi

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s the government grapples with the reality of recession and an unprecedented economic downturn in generations, everyone is talking about one thing: How to diversify the economy and top up the federation account with the usual billions of dollars scooped from crude oil sales when the going was good for Nigeria. Now that oil is no more as a result of the terror unleashed by mindless militants or is finished as a viable product in the long term, Nigeria has been shaken severely by its overdependence on oil as the lone product of its economy. We should wonder how our leaders from the second republic to date refused to diversify the political economy of the country and only knew how to stash our hard earned billions into their foreign bank accounts. No single one of them thought of investing their loot in Nigeria and make a difference like the military juntas of Indonesia to create jobs at home for the people.

The current president is now ready to make a difference not only by talking tough but ensuring that we can smoke out the militants but ensuring that we can make up the quota allowed Nigeria by the Organisation of Oil Producing Countries, OPEC. While time is needed for the president’s economic policy of diversification yield fruit, he must realise that the Niger Delta solution will not be achieved unless he embraces the Umar Yar’Adua Option of making peace with the war mongering militants, increase the oil output while hoping that oil prices will hit the rooftops, if ever, in the near future.

Our leaders have no idea that there are areas not at all tapped which can be used to get us out of recession in the short and long term. The music industry via the increasing impact of Nigerian musicians at home and abroad is one of the tickets the country can use to ride out of recession. For the purpose of this article, I went back to my old beat in journalism to re-examine the situation of the Nigerian music industry and found that music is one of the answers that can help Nigeria ride out of recession in double quick time.

I would therefore expect the Minister of Information and Culture and National Orientation, the one and only Lai Mohammed to prepare a memo to the Federal Executive Council, apply his convincing rhetoric used effectively to win the elections for the APC government to urge the president and the council of ministers to vote money to enable the music industry to expand its scope and propel it to international success. In the 1960’s the British government rode out of economic troubles through the music of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and several others. That was the Swinging Sixties which with a little help from the powerful British media spread the simple but catchy music of the United Kingdom around the world and scooped money for their country.

Nigeria contributed to that UK musical explosion as the British pop music spread around the world like wild fire. Right now, Nigerian music is spreading world-wide like wild fire and all the government needs to do is provide the enabling environment.

The last government of President Goodluck Jonathan was ready to do something through Nollywood and President Buhari should encourage the music industry to unleash a free flow of ‘ego igwe’ (foreign exchange) into the economy in dire need of dollars.

I spent the last few weeks immersed in the power-packed content of the new music pouring out of Nigeria and came out fully convinced that Nigerian music has become a powerhouse worth billions of dollars if the government can get out of its panic in the wake of the economic depression that it has found itself currently. I bought two dozen records of the latest crop of Nigerian music which I played in the car stereo, then listened to the avalanche of pop videos emanating from HipTV, Trace Naija, Trace Mziki, MTV Base, Afro Music English and SoundCity, and what have you. High

Korede Bello

Patorankingww quality production they were, and the level of creativity that came along with the videos was unimaginable. My only regret was that 99.9% of the videos were made in South Africa. Why? Why? Why? It is either that Nigerian studios were not well equipped or that the scenic requirement to produce world class videos were not possible in Nigeria. This is where the government can chip in and provide the enabling environment such as world class studios and top film production centres. And they can then chill and watch their taxman Tunde Fowler and his people at FIRS pick up the pieces. But let me return to the music and the musicians who has made the music of Nigeria a gold mine for us to reap from. I must first pay complements to the musicians that paid the dues that the younger musicians are now reaping immensely from. Fela, Sunny Ade, Ebenezer Obey, Rex Lawson, Victor Uwaifo, BLO etc first made the foray into internationalizing Nigeria music before the likes of 2Baba or 2Face Flavour, DBanj, PSquare and lately Davido, Wizkid or Patoranking and Phyno took the music to a different level and began to grab the dollars

in tons.

If the government is unaware of the impact Nigerian music is making around the world, they must shine their eyes as the local parlance goes and prepare to reap in dollars rather than our comatose naira. But they cannot reap without sowing. They must talk to the musicians and their management first to see how they can come in and help now that the food is cooking and not when it is ready for eating. I have watched hours of video of Nigerian acts playing in African countries and seen terrific scenes that were unimaginable just 10 years ago. Flavour, PSquare and others are usually treated like royalty when they tour African countries, playing in big arenas including stadia. A YouTube video of Flavour that I have seen have presidents of some African countries anxious to watch the phenomenon that are Nigerian musicians.

The same goes for PSquare and as for Davido, riotous scenes were recorded in Congo recently when Davido had to cancel a concert in Kinshasa for some reason.

And the music is getting better and better.

Either because of the collaboration tendencies of Nigerian musicians or whatever reason

may be deduced for the vast improvement in their musical content and its marketability, the sky has become the limit for their potential achievements. And the interesting point is that in the process of creating the music, the culture of the country along with the vivacity of Nollywood is being sold to the world. For instance, Davido’s greatest hit ‘Aye’ or Wizkid’s ‘Jaiye Jaiye’ featuring the frenetic saxophone of the legendary Femi Kuti or Flavours ‘Baby Oku’ are all world stoppers.

Talking about the cultural spin off from these super hits, a new phenomenon Phyno, (Azubuke Chibuzo Nelson) the young musician from the backwoods of Enugu state who doesn’t forget that he is a product of the ghetto has fused the Igbo language into a veritable material for Rapping his way to millions of dollars as exemplified in his block buster ‘Fada Fada’ currently in the top three of Nigerian music charts of all time. Then there is Patrick Nnaemeka Okorie, better known as Patoranking who has fused the tribal sounds of his homeland of Ebonyi State into a world beater now threatening to take America and Europe by storm.

When I got an invitation from Glo to see the 2015 edition of Africa Footballer of the year award last January, I had a sneak preview of the Don Jazzy’s acts which included Korede Bello of the Godwin fame as well as Di’ja belt out some of the funkiest beats of recent memory. It was at that concert that I began to reassess Nigerian music as the powerhouse of African music. That event was again technically guaranteed by South African equipment and technicians because Nigerians were either not capable of producing events of that calibre, yet we are the ones with the music, the most important material needed in the first place to produce the show of that magnitude.

Tiwa Savage, Chidinma, Asa, Yemi Alade and several others in the female category have joined the likes of DBanj, Flavour, PSquare and others in making waves at the highest levels of the local and international music scene. I asked Vanessa Amadi-Ogbonna of VA-PR, the London based international music publicist, who has broken the international boundary to expose Nigerian music abroad what is making our music so strong in Europe and America.

“The music coming out of Nigeria has always been good but what was required was the cooperation of the international media to translate the story of this sound across to the consumers in Europe and America. That is where those of us who know and work with the media abroad come in”, she said.

“Our company roster includes a number of top international acts and I know what was required and because the music of Nigeria or Africa was good, I thought I could do something for the growth. First I worked with Genevieve and DBanj. Then Davido and Tiwa Savage and their success came naturally and today they are international property. I may be British but my parents are Nigerians and therefore I owe Nigeria something which I believe I have contributed my quota for the progress of the country by promoting Nigerian music and culture abroad. And in that respect, Nigeria is working”, she concluded.

Finally I was privileged to watch a repeat of an award night in 2015 on HipTV recently in which Senator Ben Bruce presented an award to 2Face. The award night was indeed a spectacular. Bruce talked about his experience 35 years ago when he started out in musical promotions when Nigerian artistes used to move in buses.

Today, he said, they travel in private jets which means that things have turned the corner as far as our music was concerned.

If our government is unaware of these developments, Mr President should do something for the industry so that we shall begin to reap a bigger and bigger harvest from a diversified economy which music is part of.

And that will add up to the depleting federation account.

Amadi was publisher of London based Africa Music magazine in the 80’s now lives in Abuja, tonyamadi2009@yahoo.com

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Gboyega Oguntuase: Fayose Righting Past Wrongs of APC in Ekiti Mr Gboyega Oguntuase, a lawyer by profession, is the chairman of Peoples Democratic Party in Ekiti State. In this interview with Olakiitan Victor, in Ado Ekiti, Oguntuase speaks on politics in the state and the performance of the APC federal government. Excerpts:

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overnor Ayo Fayose has spent two years in office. How would you rate his performance?

It is so clear that Governor Ayodele Fayose and the PDP have shown that Ekiti people have not lost the votes they overwhelmingly cast for Fayose during the June 21, 2014 governorship poll. Governor Fayose, in spite of the poor economic situation in the country, has lived up to the expectations of Ekiti masses by living up to his electioneering promises. He has been able to show the reason why he was voted into power. Prior to the governorship election, the APC had lived a reckless life in Ekiti.

Their fiscal and political decisions could be best described as abysmal and lacking sobriety. Through this, the APC government of Dr Kayode Fayemi left a huge debt, which almost crippled the state’s economy and left immeasurable uncompleted and abandoned projects that bear no relevance to the realities on ground.

During the APC regime in Ekiti, there wasn’t value for the money spent on projects. They just did those projects to meet their own taste rather than meeting the needs of Ekiti people. Going by available records, that government took about N36 billion commercial loans from different banks and a total of N25 billion was taken as bonds. This is apart from huge indebtedness secured in other areas. Because of this, Ekiti is paying back every month from the federal allocation to service those debts. Money being deducted from the federation account is N1.2 billion monthly and as a result of this, government has to be managing with at times N900 million per month and in most cases N750 million per month.

This is different from the situation under Fayemi who received N3.5 billion monthly or higher. Against this background of hopelessness, Fayose picked up the tattered structure and embarked on massive infrastructural facilities. As of now, almost all the local government headquarters have their major roads dualised. Ado-Ikere dualisation road is nearing completion. In Ado Ekiti, several new roads have been constructed and the state capital is wearing a new look.

Even a monumental flyover is springing up, in spite of the dwindling revenue.

In terms of sectoral attention…

In the area of agriculture, the Fayose administration has been giving seedlings and loans to farmers. Water supply in areas like Aramoko Ekiti, Igbara Odo, Otun and in many other towns has improved.

In the area of education, Fayose has been fighting hard to restore the Ekiti glory of a deserving educationloving state. Before we came in, Ekiti and, in fact, all the South-west states being controlled by APC were lagging behind in WAEC results. But today, Ekiti has jumped over several states because of the attention being given to that sector.

Again, this state under Fayose has been able to maintain relative peace to the extent that no case of political assassination has been recorded. We have not also done anything like depriving the opposition of the right of assembly. This is different from what we witnessed under Fayemi. And you can see now that people can feel the peace all over the state.

The health facilities across are also receiving attention.

Fayose in a bid to boost the economy initiated the stomach infrastructure and enhanced entrepreneurial scheme, where loans were given to people across the 177 wards of the state. To further consolidate the scheme, another set of 10 persons per ward has been compiled so that they can benefit N5,000 monthly stipend as social security scheme. All these are aimed at making life better for our people and making the populace feel the impact of the government.

What is your take on the menace of Fulani herdsmen in Ekiti State?

Fayose was able to neutralise the Fulani herdsmen who wanted to make incursion into the state through Ikole Local Government Area because he has the political will to do so. The governor is working hand-inhand with the security operatives to ensure that social

than N400,000 and Lagos to the US has increased from N350,000 to N600,000 or more.

The totality of what is happening vividly shows that Nigeria is under tension and a suffocating economic situation and needs the attention of people who truly believe in the survival of the Nigerian nation. I also want us to remember that because of this recession, over 30 states can’t pay salaries and all these are clear indications that the APC government has lost control of the economic shape of Nigeria and the economic shape is gradually moving towards a catastrophic structure if nothing is done.

However, the situation looks redeemable and this could have been made possible if we had a listening government and approachable president at the centre.

The agenda of change promised by APC has only manifested in retrogressive and negative manners that all of us must do something to change the change by booting out APC in 2019.

Oguntuase vices like robbery, kidnapping are no longer visible in Ekiti State. Fayose under two years has been able to maintain peace with the traditional rulers. If you observe very well, there has been no case of conflict between the governor and the traditional rulers. Our Obas are being treated with dignity and they are receiving serious attention. The palace of Ewi of Ado Ekiti has been turned into a huge tourist attraction.

Recently, the chiefs from all the towns in Ekiti State were invited to Government House to contribute to the making of the next budget, so that they can discuss our areas of need in the state. Also, the governor used the forum to secure a common position on the security matter to ensure that the state is not infiltrated and this consultation is going to be a regular thing, so that the government can have a feel of what is happening at the grassroots.

The government has been taking proactive measures to make Ekiti a peaceful state and the result is manifesting in the peaceful coexistence among the indigenes and the non-indigenes. The governor has also assented to a grazing prohibition law to further checkmate rampaging herdsmen and criminalise their illegal activities here in Ekiti.

How would you rate President Muhammadu Buhari’s performance?

Buhari has clearly manifested that his government has no economic programme and policies for Nigerians. The ignorance of the APC government led

by Buhari has caused the current economic recession.

It is no longer news that naira has stumbled to N420 per dollar. It is equally noticeable across the country that petrol, which sold for N87 per litre under Goodluck Jonathan, now sells for N145 under the APC government . Prices of food items have gone up astronomically and the ordinary man can hardly have three square meals per day. Apart from the increase in transport fares across Nigeria, air fares have also increased. As we speak now, economy class ticket from Lagos to London has increased from N250,000 to more

What is your take on the menace of militancy and insurgency?

We have witnessed nothing but deception under a government that presented itself to Nigerians above its real stature. APC promised that it will wipe out Boko Haram few months after assuming office but today nothing has been achieved. Those who said President Buhari was winning the war should be asked ask whether the Chibok girls have been recovered from their captors, one and half years after Buhari got into office. The insurgents are still making serious incursions into many of the North-east states. What I am trying to say is that Boko Haram is still a huge threat to our nation, so Buhari has failed in this regard.

The incapability of Buhari to handle some of these crises is manifesting in the militancy in the South-south and the rampaging herdsmen, who daily kill, rape and destroy farmlands belonging to innocent Nigerians without any checks from the APC government. The inability of Buhari to emulate the diplomatic approach of the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua and the meekness of Goodluck Jonathan in settling militancy is responsible for Nigeria losing several millions of dollars daily, because of the activities of the Niger Delta Avengers, who are bombing our oil installations.

Apart from the destructive violence, don’t forget the activities of Independent People of Biafra. President Buhari has failed woefully in appeasing the agitators in the South-east and South-south and this is responsible for the zealousness on the part of these militants to fight the federal government to a standstill. It seems the APC –led government has a security network that has no relevance to the contemporary security situation at hand. These visible dangers have compounded the harsh economy and led to the increase in the social vices. Without fear of contradiction, Buhari’s approach to security issues is either antiquated or insufficient to the contemporary challenges at hand and he has performed abysmally low in this aspect.

Your party is polarised into two factions. Don’t you think this will affect your chances in 2019?

Well, 2019 is a little bit far, so we have time to deal with the issue squarely. Committed PDP men would have resolved the issue before now, but some external forces have made it more challenging to resolve. But I want to tell you, as much as I agree that Ali Modu Sheriff issue is a huge distraction, I have the belief that the leaders of the PDP across the nation are doing what reasonable men should do to resolve the matter. Let me be categorical, the Ahmed Makarfi –led PDP controls 90 per cent of the PDP members in Nigeria, including all the governors elected on the platform of the party, 95 per cent of the members of the National Assembly too, as well as all the state party chairmen. Aside from that, all the elders of the party are united behind Makarfi.

The position of the PDP has been that in a genuine democracy, allowance should be made for differences in opinions, but the structures within the party must be sufficient enough to harmonise the opinions and that is why we appeal to the Sheriff group to explore the internal mechanism in resolving whatever matter they have rather than the courts being used to inflict injuries on the party, so that our heroes, past and current nationalists and upcoming revolutionary youths can be happy with us.

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Obende: PDP Lacks Leadership that Can Guarantee Victory in Edo Election In this media chat, Chairman, Publicity and Media, All Progressives Congress (APC) National Campaign Council, Senator Domingo Obende, speaks on the upcoming gubernatorial election in Edo State insisting that the Peoples Democratic Party lacks the leadership and record of stewardship to win. Olaseni Durojaiye brings excerpts

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have already produced two governors from that family, Igbinedion himself and Oshiomhole. Now, we cannot allow three brothers to rule us in Edo state from the same family. Oshiomhole came from Lucky’s angle and as at that time, Chief Anenih was angry until they met and had a meeting point of revolution.

ow is your party taking the postponement of the election?

I think we have prepared so hard and we believe and we know that the voters are behind us that we are going to win. Secondly, I am also happy because Edo has not been known to be a place where violence is the order of the day. If for security reasons as stated by both the police and the DSS, this shift is realized, I think I am happy for it presupposes, come 28 of September the election will be peaceful.

We have heard talk about APC forcing postponement, but first and foremost, APC never imported any thug. Secondly, we are not harbouring anybody, thirdly we did not bring anybody to come and register that are not from Edo state. What do we have to lose? Nothing. What is more, our strength are the voters and we have them behind us, they are not going to die or shift. So for us any time any day we are ready for the election and I can bet you that the gap is going to be even wider now than we had imagined. We are going to win.

Will you say that the current economic hardship is affecting your party, the APC, in this election?

Things are tough but it is not peculiar to Edo state. Here in Edo state there is no governor that you can compare with Oshiomhole. You can talk about Gen.Ogbemudia yes but Oshiomhole is fantastic. If you compare Oshiomhole’s work and that of other governors, if they had one at all, you will find out they are not at per at all. And that is a big plus for us in this election. The two weeks they gave us is a two weeks of grace, where we will showcase all the things we have done. And what is more, it has given us the opportunity to reintroduce our candidate across the state. For the economic situation, everybody knows that the whole world is in total recession and PDP brought us into this problem. We cannot leave the past to blame the current person in government for not finding solution to the problem. APC promised three things, security, economy, fighting corruption. Right now we all know who collected our money without doing anything. Right now we all know why the economy has tilted to this way.

What APC is doing is trying to rebuild Nigeria and put it in a solid foundation for growth.

PDP leaders in Edo state are boasting they will win, how do you see this?

There is this adage that says a house divided against itself cannot stand. PDP as we speak today has no clear cut leadership and for that I don’t think anybody would want to take PDP seriously in Edo state. They have two factional governorship candidates Ize-Iyamu and Iduoriyekemwen so how will they win? PDP has had a pattern of leadership in Edo state for more than ten years and that did not lead us to any developmental stride as far as Edo state is concerned. Then Comrade started in the past seven and half years, infact I should say six and half years because within a year he was still within the whims and caprices of the PDP House of Assembly then and Chief Tony Anenih.

Anenih controlled the budget for the whole one year bearing in mind that Zakawanu Garuba was the Speaker of the House as at that time. And within that one year Comrade did nothing in the state. But immediately he left the hook, in his second year he started performing and that was part of the failure of the leadership of the PDP. For me, I do not think any Edo man, haven seen or known these experiences on the part of the leadership of PDP, that any body will believe that PDP leaders will allow any elected person in PDP to perform. When you look at it clearly, you will ask, who are the people that actually destroyed PDP in Edo state? And of course development in Edo state. Lucky Igbinedion could not do much because the leadership was sharing the money.

The moment money comes they share. And I don’t

Meeting point? But....

But as you know Oshiomhole needed to be his own man so as to fulfil his campaign promises and that was where he had issues with these people which is good for the people of the state. Lucky is our brother, so he brought another of our brother Oshiomhole who is completing his eight years so we don’t want him to go and bring another person from the same family. We are satisfied with Oshiomhole that he gave to us and we are going to get another governor from another family, in the person of Obaseki.

Obende

think any Edo man wants to do that right now. I know clearly that we have taken clear study about this issue and that is why a lot of us have resolved that it must be APC all the way. Why is it APC all the way because Comrade in seven years have given us development we never anticipated. He may have his private issues with people, but has he performed? The answer is yes. Has he done what exactly he was voted for? The answer is yes.

Did he as a politician deliver on his promises?

The answer is yes. Go and check after Ogbemudia’s days who else can compare with Comrade, nobody else. Because why he did not have a clear cut leadership controlling him. And that is the same way we feel that bringing in Obaseki, he is going to be following the same way of Comrade’s development strategy. Their character are not the same, their training are not the same so you don’t expect that the social indices of Comrade is going to be the social indices of Obaseki.

Everybody knows Comrade as a fighter, he has been a labour man, he likes challenges. But there are people who navigates around their challenges, Comrade does not navigate around challenges, he confronts it. And that is what makes him different from the Obaseki that is coming in. So even from the debate, you could see the differences when you put questions across to Obaseki. So for me, PDP has no leadership that can guarantee them victory in this forthcoming election.

Former Governor Lucky Igbinedion reportedly boasted that the next governor of Edo state will be produced by the Igbinedion family in the person of Pastor Ize-Iyamu and Chief Ikimi also boasted in the same manner, what is your take on that?

First and foremost, my brother Lucky Igbinedion knows who Oshiomhole is, he was one of those who brought Oshiomhole so you can say Oshiomhole is equally part of that family. So we

What about Chief Ikimi And of course for Ikimi, he is a man that likes talking big and that is his style. But I will advise him to win his polling unit first for his party before talking about winning the general election.

He knows what I mean, so I don’t need to expatiate on that. And talking about our current situation, what we are facing today as a nation is a product of PDP because we don’t want to lament about it, we are still working in Edo state and Edo will keep working. So in this light, we do not think we need a change of government in Edo state. The strategy that we have been using even in the state of nothing, particular three years to Oshiomhole’s exit that is working for us we want to maintain that and the people behind this success is the Chairman of the Economic and Strategy Team, which is Godwin Obaseki. And of course I must tell you clearly that Ize-Iyamu will equally agree that this government has worked. But when things have become personalized, you cannot say the fact as it is anymore. Everybody wants to have it his own way. But on this Edo people cannot be short changed, Edo people are wiser, Edo people will stand to claim what belongs to them by speaking our minds on 28th September with our votes and we will make sure that we suppress and oppress PDP where they are right now. They can never resurface anymore because as far as we are concerned we have the people who will use their votes to suppress them. The problem for Ize-Iyamu too is that while Obaseki has been able to point at what his party APC has done, Ize-Iyamu has nothing to point to because his boss while he was SSG to government, that is Lucky Igbinedion, performed woefully. But you can see what Comrade Oshiomhole has done today. Fantastic governor that all of us will miss.

There are allegation of rigging by PDP and can you justify this postponement of the election?

For me the threats that led to the postponement of the election have been justified. First and foremost we saw militants being charged to court in Edo state. Some are still facing interrogation.

Secondly, the tension in Edo state has come down very drastically, you don’t find people walking as if tomorrow we are going to die. That has calmed down. And security agencies have strategized, they have now known the positions to place their men. For me, the postponement of this election is going to give us another wide margin we need in our election. For PDP, it think they will keep crying wolf because they know why, its like I have made an arrangement that tomorrow I will do something, is like that thing is dispensable. PDP is lost now because they are finding it difficult to re-strategize and energize, that is the problem they are having. For us, in APC, we are going to win the election because we have embarked in more strategy, we are doing more work to ensure that we win and we are going to win.

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Mbang: We Need Stable, Inclusive Approach to Governance to Move Nigeria Forward The Prelate Emeritus, Methodist Church Nigeria, His Eminence Dr. Sunday Mbang, clocked 80 years on September 10. In this interview, Mbang speaks on a wide range of social, political and economic issues. He also comments on his life after retirement. Okon Bassey brings the excerpts

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t 80, you have the agility that is uncommon in this part of the world.

What is your secret?

Live a simple life. What kills people easily is when they allow the office to take over their life. They make the office become the priority of their life. The simply life which their fathers and mothers brought them up with, they abandon that life and go for the bigger life. So you die quick. Leave simple life, that life that God gave to you when you were born. Don’t forget that life. Whatsoever you become don’t forget the first life that you lived.

That has been my attitude. As a result of that, everybody is my friend. Like I said, when I used to go on tour, I ate with my driver; my secretary took a long time to agree to eat with me. If you ask our Bishops, throughout my stay, when we go out to Bishop Council I eat with them, I stay with them. They will book a fantastic place for me, but I will stay with them. Life is funny; you don’t know how long you will live, the more you make yourself out of the system the more you die quickly. I sympathise with those of my colleagues who think they can protect themselves, because God is the one who can protect.

How has life been since after your retirement?

I live the type of life I used to live. They are inviting me for events; I go, but come back to my village. One of the things my doctor advised me when I was retiring was, “you are a very active person, remain active.” Unfortunately, that doctor that gave me that advise died before me.

Since your retirement you have not been as vocal as you used to be. Why? When I was in active service, I used to have a lot of information from journalists and you will be able to give a balanced view. Now in the village, no much information and you want me to disgrace myself? This is the problem, once you retire, you don’t get the kind of information you used to have. So, I am careful in case I say something that is irrelevant. That is why I am not as vocal as before.

How would you expalin your rise to prominence in the ecclesiastical ministry at a relatively young age?

I inherited a Methodist Church divided into two. I was 48 when I became the head of the Methodist Church. As a young person, I owed a great deal to my late father who was a Qua Iboe Church pastor. He drilled us in discipline and I don’t forget how my father used to drill us. I carried it to my ministry. So the discipline my father gave to me I took it to the church. I lived a disciplined life and then I went to the University of Ibadan. I was a student Bishop at the University of Ibadan, I was 44years when I was elected Bishop and I worked with the head of the church. I think the head found me reasonable. One of the good qualities of a leader is exposure and I had that, so it wasn’t difficult for the leader to see that I might be able to lead the church. I was elected the leader of the church at 48. I think my antecedents in the Christian Council of Nigeria and the Christian Association of Nigeria made it possible for me to become the president of the Christian Association of Nigeria and before I was also a member of the Methodist World Council for some time and that made it possible for me to become the vice and the president of the World Methodist Council. But then, when Pope John II came he advised us to start dialogue with the Muslims and since I was the president of CAN, the Catholics talked to me about it. So with the help of President Obasanjo, my friend, I went to the Sultan of Sokoto and with him we established the Christian Inter-Religious Council for dialogue with the Muslims.

During that period, we didn’t have too much Muslim/ Christian problems. The reason was that people were able to know when problem was coming and told Head of State. Then government will inform us, we will tell Muslims and Christians in those affected states and they will deal with the problem before it even starts. But I don’t know what is happening today because I am no more active.

What is your advice to young pastors today?

Recently, I have been talking. In fact, in some of the

Mbang

books I have written, I have included that. When Jesus Christ called his disciples, he called them to be fishers of men and women but what we find now is that people are now fishers of money and property. The young people are too much in a hurry. One of the reasons is that we older ones belief that you cannot be a good servant of God if you are not called by God and that call had to be so known to you that God has really called you.

Let me give you the example of myself. My father was a pastor in Qua Iboe Church and I watched my father dying for one week. My father couldn’t talk but just at the time he wanted to give up the ghost, he invited all of us and said the Grace. After that, the man died. That came on me so strong that my father didn’t finish his work and wanted me to finish it; and I struggled to have nothing to do with it. But I was in the student Christian movement.

I wrote a letter to my church that I wanted to be a priest.

I did not understand I wrote that letter until I was told I

There is little continuity. A government comes, runs down the former one and then you look at the change from the former to the new one, you don’t see so much change; but they run down the former one

wrote such letter. So, somebody should be aware that somebody has called you. What is happening today is that most of them didn’t have that call, they are just looking for a job and the church becomes the easier way.

So you have all these charlatans all over the place.

You look at Akwa Ibom, every street has two to three churches, but there are cultists, why are we having cultist. Sometime ago I was told about 800 women were naked and went to the river to get something from mammy water, why? Definitely, the issues of false prophets and false teachers abound everywhere. I don’t know how we are going to solve it.

Do you think Christianity in Nigeria is threatened?

No. The good thing with Christianity is that it is not only a Nigeria thing. So it cannot be threatened. I am an Old Testament teacher. If you read the Old Testament all these things were there, but the church still survived.

We will have all these things. They will come and go but Christianity will remain. On the other hand, religion might be part of Nigeria’s problems, but not all the problem.

How did you and Obasanjo become close?

Very simple thing, OBJ is very straightforward. That is what many people don’t know. I have been straightforward myself. That is why we are joined together.

What is your impression about youth unemployment in the country?

I must say, every time I see these young people I pity them. In our time, it wasn’t as terrible as it is now. In our time we had only three or four universities, so you couldn’t produce too many people from the university.

We are now having so many universities without

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CICERO/INTERVIEW • ‘OperatiOn CrOCOdile Smile’ iS a needleSS military Campaign • Continued from Pg. 72 any plan for what they will come to do. It disturbs me to see young people graduating and not having work and, unfortunately, I have nothing to be able to do to assist them. But my prayer for the young people is that, rather than them becoming vagabonds, because most of them have decided to become so, let them look for small things to do and be a little patient and all will be well with them. I sympathised with their conditions, but that shouldn’t make them to become vagabonds. There will be time they will be useful to this country, they should be a little bit patient.

What do you think is the problem with Nigeria, and how can the country come out of the current economic difficulties?

Part of the problem of Nigeria is that everybody comes and wants to do his own thing. There is little continuity. A government comes, runs down the former one and then you look at the change from the former to the new one, you don’t see so much change; but they run down the former one. One thing I like about Akwa Ibom here is, Governor Akpabio left and the one who has come is continuing where Akpabio stopped.

One problem in Nigeria is that we don’t continue, especially, when one party comes in and next time another party comes. But Nigeria should be one, so once we are able to continue with what people have done before, then we might not have the kind of problems we have.

On recession, my advice to the present government is, don’t look at anybody as your enemy, take everybody, put them in one room, let them talk about the economy of Nigeria. I am definitely sure they will get the right answer. What they are doing now, they are all confused. They are speaking different grammar. Let them put all the economists, the best we have in the country, in one room, do as when the Catholic is selecting their Pope. Put them in one place, if they agree, allow them stay there. Believe me, if we do that, we are going to get something reasonable. But definitely, Nigeria has enough brains for government to use and I am advising government to use those brains. When I went sometime to have an operation in Britain, it was a very serious operation; it was a Nigerian who did it. Believe me, I don’t know of any African country that has the kind of brains we have. But they are not using them, because most of them don’t want to be politicians. Use them and this country will be okay. As a spiritual leader, that is my advice. Nigeria has the brains that can solve the country’s problems. Let government forget about party line and invite all these people. Look round for the best brains, they may not be party people, bring them together to solve the country’s problems, they are Nigerians.

What is your advice to Nigerians in the face of this recession?

There is nothing anybody can say to Nigerians, only for them to belief that God will solve their problems at no time.

My experience has been that sometimes Nigerians go through so many kinds of unusual difficulties and when they come out of it they don’t know. For instance, when late Sani Abacha was in power, it looked as if it was eternal. My belief is that any problem that comes to Nigeria, the day it will finish Nigerians will not be ready for it. This is just a small thing, I belief that the day this problem will finish is near. I pity Nigerians. Garri and rice, the staple food, is not within the reach of people again. The other day we were in the church someone told us that rice was selling for N18, 000 the previous day and was now N22,000 a bag and I was wondering how would any family be able to eat rice now because rice used to be the common food that everybody ate.

My belief is that it is just a matter of time.

Things will change.

This government is talking of agriculture, I hope they are talking and doing it. My problem with this country is that

always they talk, they don’t do the talk. I am going to watch them. If I stay another one year from 80 years that I am today, I am going to watch to see whether this agricultural thing they are talking will come to pass. If the government is sincere with what they are talking, the country will be better for it. If they do it sincerely in the next two to three years things will change in Nigeria. But if on paper it will not work. I was happy when one central bank governor told the government that you have been talking too much about the past government, do your own leave the past government alone. I hope they will now do their own. I think they have finished one year, they should have finished about talking about former President Goodluck Jonathan What is your take on the military campaign in the Niger Delta, called “Operation Crocodile Smile”, which the federal government says is meant to protect oil facilities in the region and rein in criminals?

The truth is that you cannot use dialogue and force to settle issues. To make sense, I prefer dialogue, but when you talk dialogue then you bring in military, it defeats the aim of dialogue. Have they tried it to the end before using the military? I was disappointed to see the crocodile nonsense. I must be sincere. The trouble in the Niger Delta is not today’s trouble. It is a trouble that has gone on for long and I am sure people know the solution to it. But they decide to be dancing around what they know. The solution to them, all of them know. The solution is not those boys carrying the guns, I don’t believe. These boys are working for people. Whether they believe me or not, they are working for people.

There are certain things in Niger Delta that should be dealt with and for justice sake, let government deal with those things through dialogue. Niger Delta cannot get everything they want. But they will get some of the things they want.

I’m sure by then they will have peace, but if they think they can use force, it is not going to work. It has not worked anywhere. America wanted to use force in Afghanistan, Iraq, it did not solve the problems. In fact, it is creating more problems for them. If they try to use force in the area, it will create more problem for Nigeria. Boko Haram, I don’t know how the thing started. I don’t even know what they are fighting for. The Niger Delta people, they have a case. People from outside have come to look at this case, they should sit down and deal with it the way they want to deal with it – force will not solve it. They have told me that one problem is the issue of oil blocs, that no Niger Delta man has one oil bloc in their area and there are others. I really want to see them dealing with it. If there are oil blocs given to others, why don’t they give to people from the area so that whenever anybody wants to talk about it, they will say, this man has it? Maybe there are people taking money on behalf of the area; government should point them out for us to see. Any government can tell us these are the people who are standing on your way, but if they cannot do that, let justice roll like over flowing water.

But apart from the recent Niger Delta Avengers, there is Independent People of Biafra, Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra, and others. There is also the Boko Haram terrorism. Do you think dialogue can resolve all these issues?

Like the Biafra issue, they will tell you they are looking for Biafra. I’m sure if you ask them properly, they will tell you why they have the Biafra problem. But you cannot get that from Boko Haram. I have been reading papers; I have not been able to see why Boko Haram is disturbing.

When Boko Haram wanted to come, my friend (President Obasanjo) went to meet their leaders and there were a lot of suggestions to solve the problem. But

Mbang

government decided not to implement what had almost cost him his life. So, this is part of the problem of Nigeria. Maybe we wouldn’t have had Boko Haram today because the reason for Boko Haram is not like the reason for Biafra or Niger Delta, a simple reason which could have been solved, but government was careless about it and that is why we still have Boko Haram today. But for these are two, if you ask them they have reasons why they are angry. Simply sit down with them and talk and try to sort out some of their problems. They are Nigerians; they have every right to ask questions where they are uncomfortable. I was not happy when President Buhari said the report of the National Conference set up by the immediate past government should not be looked into. Read it, look at it, those you don’t like, tell everybody you don’t like this area.

But for you to come and say I won’t look at it, I don’t think it is a way forward for the country, because definitely, this country needs some kind of restructuring.

The other day I watched, the police took over Rivers State, when the governor was there and the governor is supposed to be the chief security of the state. What is the meaning of chief security when the governor cannot secure the state? There are areas I believe we should look at. The governor sits in the state, police come and take over the state, he can’t say any word, how is he the chief security of the state?

These are areas we need to look at. It looks to me that the federal government has so many things in his hands. They should borrow a leaf from other countries like America. In America, the local government, they are in charge of their area, just like the states, why can ’t we borrow this and free the federal government of all these things? They are everything. So maybe, when people talk of restructuring, these are areas they are talking of and I believe that all Nigerians should sit together and I believe this government

should look at that document.

At 80, do you have any regrets in life?

My regret should be that I should not come to Nigeria, but I love Nigeria, that is why I am staying here. I had an opportunity to be an American citizen, but I refused to. I love my country. If I am regretting, I’m saying God didn’t do well for me. God has been so good to me.

I went to Harvard the best university in the world, without my father, why should I regret at 80, I was the head of Methodist Church for 22 years, president of CAN for eight years, in World Methodist Council almost 10 years, Nigeria’s Inter-Religious Council eight years, so what regret?

How would you assess Akwa Ibom State 29 years after its creation?

Let me start with former Governor Godswill Akpabio, he did a marvellous work in Akwa Ibom State. You need to go to the Ibom Specialist Hospital and see what is going on there. The present governor, Udom Emmanuel, is following the footsteps of Akpabio. One of the things I like in Udom is that he is a very religious person, he believes God will help him to achieve his dreams. Udom is a quite person, he is doing his things quietly and I can assure you, by the time Udom leaves office, Akwa Ibom people will be better for it and surprised about the industrialisation he is talking about. Udom’s priority is industrialisation and his own way of doing things will be different, his own strategy will be siting induswtries side by side the raw materials. He is doing oil palm in Mkpat Enin, he will put an industry there, he will put cocoa in Ini, he will put industry there that is his style.

Most of the things are in the planning stages. My belief is that whether people like it or not people will come to Akwa Ibom to see it as a modern state in this country. It is just a matter of time.

The truth is that you cannot use dialogue and force to settle issues. I prefer dialogue, but when you talk dialogue then you bring in military, it defeats the aim of dialogue.

Have they tried it to the end before using the military? I was disappointed to see the crocodile nonsense

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T H I S D AY, T H E S U N D AY N E W S PA P E R • SEPTEMBER 18, 2016

CICERO/EDO POLL POSTPONEMENT

Edo: Growing Anxiety Over Election Security Following the postponement of the Edo State governorship election, Adibe Emenyonu, in Benin City, looks at the sense of alarm felt by the rival political parties

D

emocratic elections anywhere in the world come with huddles. And one of the most fundamental means of overcoming those hurdles is developing appropriate institutions to handle key aspects of the poll. Security is a critical aspect of any election, as adequate security is needed to prevent, contain and control factors that may trigger disorder and violence during polls. An effective security measure, no doubt, is one of the ways of measuring the credibility of an election. The neutrality of the security agencies helps to guarantee the integrity of elections.

It was in the light of the above that the Nigeria Police and Department of State Services advised that the Edo State governorship, earlier scheduled for September 10, should be postponed.

The decision by the Independent National Electoral Commission to shift the poll, which came only 48 hours to the election, stirred argument by the various stakeholders, particularly, as the political parties said they were not consulted by the commission before reaching such decision.

Although, INEC had hesitated and said the election would go on after a meeting with stakeholders, it later decided to shift the election to September 28, citing security concerns as raised by the police and DSS.

Ize-Iyamu

Obaseki

Alleged Importation of Thugs

election in Edo State.”

state, I bring out vouchers to support my claim. I challenge him to bring evidence to show that anybody contributed even one million from the two states he is talking about.”

After the postponement, Governor Adams Oshiomhole reiterated the concern of the ruling All Progressives Congress in the state about an alleged plot by some governors in the South-south to import about 8, 000 militants into the state to rig the election and cause mayhem.

Speaking while receiving the Inspector-general of Police, Mr Ibrahim Idris Ibrahim, at the Government House, Benin City, on September 9, Oshiomhole said there was a plan by the opposition to mar the election.

He stated, “Our opponent unable to find local thugs to help them perpetrate violence, which they have done between 1999 and 2007 when I took over, resorted to liaising with my brothers in the sub-region, Delta and Rivers, in particular, to export criminals and militants into Edo State in order to make peaceful election impossible.

“In line with my tradition, I have always tried to speak out on any matter that I am worried about. I first raised this alarm on the eve of the INEC continuous voter registration exercise, an exercise that has been designed to register those who have become 18 between the last registration and the current one.

“But these criminals who are determined to perpetrate violence and deny us the beauty of a peaceful election, unable to find local participants, have chosen to import these militants with the support of two or so of my brothers. When I say brothers, I mean brother governors. It doesn’t matter if I disagree with them, they are my brothers.

“They are exporting militants to Edo State to register so that with the PVC in their hands, they will appear to have the lawful basis to be present at the designated polling units where they are expected to unleash violence on election day.”

The governor added, “When I raised this alarm, I should expect, naturally, criminals are not as courageous as they seem.

They denied that there was any such plan, but happily our ever vigilant, peace-loving electorate were able to apprehend some of these people from other states that came into Edo State for the purpose of this exercise.

“At least, 13 of them were handed over to the police. The IG may wish to establish what has happened to those people who were handed over. So, we handed them over to the police in line with what we were expected to do as civilised people.

“Having done that, we are clear that there are a lot of people, up to 8,000 of them who are non-resident in Edo State, who are not indigenes of Edo State, who are indigenes and residents of Delta and Rivers states and some other states in the Southsouth, some from Bayelsa State, who have registered for the sole purpose not to swell the votes, but to be present in various locations on election day.

“Now, as part of the processes they put in place to effect this, they had conspirators in INEC that made available to them data capturing machines in the residences of various opposition leaders. We shared these experiences with the police and the DSS. “Our people are very anxious to have a free and fair election but the challenge is these people who are determined to import thuggery and violence, and they have an easier task and we have a more difficult task to protect the electoral process.”

Speaking, earlier, on his visit to the state, Idris said, “We are on a working visit. We have come here to interact with our officers and colleagues from other security agencies to see that the election we are having in a few days’ time is carried out in a seamless manner.

“Our presence here shows the synergy between the security agencies working in the state. This is an assurance that there is a lot of cooperation between us and other security agencies, and it is an assurance that we are definitely sure that in a few days’ time, we are going to have a successful governorship

Security Plan The IGP also used the opportunity to brief the governor on some of the security plans for the election. Idris said, “Within the police, we are deploying about 25, 000 reinforcement to the command, and these 25, 000 will consist of conventional police officers, mobile police officers, counter-terrorists, marine police, air wing.

“We are going to deploy air support to the people on the ground, with a medical team also, including the waterways. They are going to cover the waterways. And we are bringing some reinforcement of gunboats to support our patrols on the water. This, obviously, we are doing to ensure that this election is provided maximum security.

“This governorship election, I think, is the first, apart from the Rivers election, which has been postponed, that we are going to carry out. So, we are very serious about this election. The men are going to report about three days to the election date and this will enable them to take care of most of the flash points in the state.

We expect that on the election day we are not going to record any problem.”

Idris further stated, “I want to use this opportunity also to state that the laws are very clear in the Electoral Act, that every agency, including the police, on that day we are going to restrict movement.

And since it is going to be a joint operation, any personnel, whether from the police or military, that we see moving outside the area of responsibility, I think we have given our officers on the ground the mandate to arrest all of them so that we deal with them departmentally.

“Equally, all supporting agencies, any of them that attempt to violate the Electoral Act in the conduct of the election, that is going contrary to the Electoral Act, we are going to take serious actions against them, whether they are working for state government, whether they are working for INEC or whatever, we are going to take appropriate action.

“What I am saying is that every person must try to conduct himself in line with the Electoral Act because we are going to be very decisive for anybody that violates the Electoral Act in the conduct of this election.”

Denial

But reacting to Oshiomhole’s allegation about the importation of thugs, the PDP chairman in Edo State, Chief Dan Orbih, said, “It is unfortunate that we have an outgoing governor of the state who has decided to state a lie just to achieve his political purpose. We know very well that what the governor was telling the IG is not true.

“For me, he was indicting the security agencies right in front of the IG because if you can bring in 8,000 people from outside Edo State and they all found their way into Edo State without the security agencies watching their movement, it means that nobody is safe in Edo State and it is a big indictment on the security agencies.”

On the allegation that the Rivers and Delta governors were interfering with the electoral process, with, among other, the alleged donation of N2 billion to the party, Orbih said, “How? Are they part of INEC? He has even gone to the extent of accusing them of contributing two billion to the election.

“For those who are from Edo State, it is no longer surprising when they see Oshiomhole talk, especially, when he lies. He tells lies at will and nobody takes his lies seriously; two billion is no two million. He should substantiate whatever allegation he is making with facts and figures. I would like to see a situation where Oshiomhole says somebody contributed two billion; he brings out a bank statement to show.

“Each time I accuse Oshiomhole of stealing money from the

Open Registration

The INEC Resident Commissioner in Edo State, Mr. Samuel Olumekan, also dismissed Oshiomhole’s allegation, saying the continuous voter registration exercise is open to all Nigerians. He, however, added that double registrations had been identified and deleted.

Olumekan pointed out that when people come to register, they do not put anything on their foreheads to indicate who are militants and those from other states.

According to him, “In any event, anybody who had registered before and came back to register, we deleted and announced the number we deleted. How do I come to know that somebody is a militant? ” He stressed, “ They should not drag INEC into their whatever.

We did a registration for Nigerians. Every Nigerian is free to come and register and they do not put it on their faces that they are militants. INEC registers human beings and you are free to register in a place close to your area. ”

Militants Arrested

In spite of the allegations, denials and counter allegations, police detectives in the state were said to have arrested 54 suspected militants from the Niger Delta. They were, allegedly, picked up from different parts of the state by a crack team of detectives from the police force headquarters in Abuja.

Among items found on the arrested suspects, according to sources, are several AK47 rifles and pump actions guns and the sum of N9 million. The suspected militants were said to have invaded the state from neighbouring states with a view to causing mayhem during the election.

It was learnt that the covert operation that led to the arrests was ordered by the IGP following the uncovering of plans by the suspected militants to unleash mayhem on Edo State. Sources within the security services said it was this discovery that led to the postponement of the governorship election.

THISDAY was reliably informed by security sources that the police detectives were assisted by the intelligence unit of the military and DSS. The arrested suspects were said to have invaded the state through the riverine communities. They were, allegedly, arrested in popular hotels in Benin City and Okada town. THISDAY also learnt that attempts by a top chieftain of one of the political parties to secure their release were rebuffed.

On Thursday, two of the arrested suspects were arraigned before an Evboriaria magistrates’ court in Benin City. They are General Pere Ejune, 45, and Trim Ade, 32, who were remanded in prison custody for, allegedly, been in possession of a double-barrel gun, a cut-to-size double-barrel gun and 18 live cartridges.

In the case filed by the Edo State Police Command, the duo and others at large were said to have committed the crime on September 8, 2016, about 2am at Upper Sakponba Road, Benin City.

Magistrate C.E. Oghuma remanded both men, who are brothers, at Oko Prison, in Benin City, and adjourned the case to October 20 for further hearing. She, thereafter, ordered that the original case file be duplicated and sent to the office of the Department of Public Prosecutions for advisement.

Uncertainty

Oshiomhole had shortly before the shift of the election raised concerns about an alleged invasion of the state by militants. With the unfolding events, it does appear that the governor’s alarm is not unfounded. What is uncertain is whether the security agencies will be able to avert the alleged plot to disrupt the polls.

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T H I S D AY, T H E S U N D AY N E W S PA P E R • SEPTEMBER 18, 2016

CICERO/ISSUE

Abia Governorship Tussle: As Royal Fathers Take a Stand

Emmanuel Ugwu, in Umuahia, looks at the stance of traditional rulers in Abia State on the battle for the governorship seat

W

hen the traditional rulers of Abia State came together on August 29 to confer a chieftaincy title on the embattled governor of the state, Dr Okezie Ikpeazu, it was not expected that the ceremony would be suffused with political undercurrents. But when the chairman of the Abia State Council of Traditional Rulers, Eze Eberechi Dick, began to present his address he did not leave anybody in doubt where the royal fathers were going. The Grand Royal reception, as it was tagged, turned out to be a veritable platform for the traditional rulers representing the 732 autonomous communities in Abia State to make a political statement by taking a stand on the lingering legal tussle over the governorship seat occupied by Ikpeazu.

Endorsement

“We are here today to tell the whole world, the entire Abia State, that there is no vacancy in Abia State Government House in the next eight years,” said Dick.

Alluding to the Abia Charter of Equity under which power shifted to Abia South zone, the chairman of the traditional rulers’ council argued that since Ikpeazu had won the governorship election he should be allowed to do the job he was elected to do.

It was clear that the traditional rulers were fed up with the legal challenges mounted by the oil tycoon, Mr. Uche Ogah, and an Abuja-based legal practitioner, Mr. Friday Nwosu. Both politicians have refused to give Ikpeazu a breather since he was sworn in as governor on May 29 last year. They have been striving hard to unseat Ikpeazu after losing the governorship ticket during the primary election of the Peoples Democratic Party.

The pre-election matter which revolves around the tax papers of Ikpeazu has dragged on to the Supreme Court after the appeal court had ruled in his favour.

The royal fathers were obviously angry with Ogah and Nwosu for taking the matter further after losing at the appeal court and they specifically asked the litigants to withdraw their respective suits even at the final level it has reached.

Their tenacity in pursuing the case at the risk of slowing down the momentum of governance in Abia was interpreted by the royal fathers as a display of their financial capacity which they have deployed to “hold the state down”. But according to Dick, “Nobody can use money to buy Abia State.”

He added that whoever had ambition to become the governor of the state should submit himself at the polls for the people to decide his fate with their votes.

“This is the final word,” the royal father emphasised.

He stated that the entire traditional rulers in Abia State were aware the Ikpeazu was the person that won the 2015 governorship poll, which has been confirmed by the courts.

Public Denunciation

The leader of the Abia royal fathers, who is also the chairman of South East Council of Ndieze, went a bit theatrical in a bid to prove that their resolve to call Ogah and Nwosu to order was unanimous. One by one he called out the traditional rulers under whose domains each of the two politicians fighting Ikpeazu hails from. The traditional rulers were also required to publicly declare if the actions of the political gladiators received their blessing and the support of the people of their respective autonomous communities.

First to mount the podium was Eze Ngozi Matthias Nwoko of Mgboko Oriefu autonomous community, where Nwosu hails from. The royal father said he had asked Nwosu to drop his ambition of becoming the governor of Abia State, having seen that he would not succeed. Eze Nwoko pointed out that he had not received staff of office at the time he advised Nwosu to shelve his governorship project, inferring that his advice might not have carried enough weight. He assured that now he could speak more authoritatively having received his staff of office, hence he would once again impress it on Nwosu that it was time to let go.

The traditional ruler from Uturu, Eze Silas Chukwu, said Ogah did not consult him over his governorship

Ikpeazu

ambition. He said if his subject had sought his advice he would have advised him against any plan to violate the charter of equity, since Abia North and Abia Central had taken their turns to occupy Government House, Umuahia, for 16 years, each spending eight years between 1999 and 2015.

The testimonies of the two traditional rulers were assuring enough, or so it appeared.

Surprise

Ikpeazu, no doubt, was pleased with the royal fathers for throwing their weights behind him. But he surprised observers by accepting the chieftaincy title of Onwa Abia (the moon that shines and brightens Abia State). It was the first chieftaincy title ikpeazu has accepted since becoming governor, having been turning down such offers. He had right from the onset made known his aversion for titles and awards.

However, he confessed that he found this very chieftaincy title from the entire Abia royal fathers quite irresistible.

The governor explained that there was no way he could have turned down the Abia royal fathers when they sought his approval to honour him with a chieftaincy title. “There are titles I can’t accept but this one (Onwa) I have accepted because it came from the royal fathers,” he said.

Ikpeazu really demonstrated that he was at home with his new title. Before making his acceptance speech after he was decorated with the title, the governor called out to the capacity crowd at the Michael Okpara auditorium to hail him with the new title.

He was instantly greeted with thunderous ovation of “Onwa” several times to which he acknowledged, waving and beaming with a broad smile.

Though the Abia State governor is not likely going to prefix the title “Chief” to his name, he felt very pleased at the political message that came with it. He said, “It is with the deep sense of equity and justice that the traditional rulers have come together and took a stand (on the governorship tussle)”. Ikpeazu, who made history as the first person from Ukwa/ Ngwa part of Abia to ascend to the height of state governor, noted that the remarkable thing about the conspiracy to unseat him was, “It is fuelled and supported by people who are not from this state.”

The corollary was that the unseen hands from outside would not be supporting the plot to unseat him if they were aware of the political dynamics of God’s Own State and what the charter of equity really represents for the people. Ikpeazu asked that those fighting him should bear in mind that the founding fathers of Abia had in their wisdom come up with the charter of equity to serve as “pillar of peace and unity in Abia”.

The Commissioner for Local Government, Chief Charles Ogbonna, said Abia State was already reaping the dividends of power shift, as peace prevails in over 90 per cent of Abia’s 732 autonomous communities while efforts were in top gear to resolve the problems in few areas where there were disagreements over chieftaincy stools. He lauded the traditional rulers for honouring the state governor, saying, “it is good to recognise and honour somebody who is doing well.”

The grand royal reception in honour of Ikpeazu was in part a celebration of the triumph of equity and justice in Abia politics, which effectively put an end to the cries of marginalisation from the Ukwa/Ngwa section of Abia.

Expectedly, the royal fathers did not forget the man who rode out the storm of power shift to Abia South.

They were grateful to Senator Theodore Orji and recognised him as the special guest of honour at the event for leaving behind a legacy of equity in Abia politics, which sustainability is now under threat as the battle to unseat Ikpeazu continues. Orji, who has come to be known as man of equity, restated his belief that power rotation remained indispensable for rancour-free politics in Abia.

Represented by the former Commissioner for Works, Mr. Longman Nwachukwu, the senator for Abia Central noted that the Abia Charter of Equity “is the ground rule for power sharing” as fashioned out by the founding fathers of Abia, hence it should remain sacrosanct. “It is unfortunate that some people are trying to thwart the ground rules laid by the founding fathers,” he said, warning that in any game where there are no rules chaos would take over. But with the strenuous effort mounted by those opposed to the charter of equity to eject Ikpeazu from Government House, it has become a big challenge to prevent the equity foundation laid by Orji from being destroyed.

That was why the chairman of the occasion, Elder Emma Adaelu, urged the Abia royal fathers to approach those who feel aggrieved and are still fighting Ikpeazu to end the war because “we don’t want anybody to continue to make Abia a laughing stock”.

The elder statesman and industrialist emphasised the desirability of allowing equity to reign in Abia politics, noting that the state stands to reap huge dividends of peace and development when every component of society is given a sense of belonging.

The co-chairman of the event, Chief Tony Enukeme, the chief executive of Tonimas Group of Companies, advised Abia people to allow the prevailing spirit of equity to reign. The Aba-based industrialist, who is an indigene of Anambra State, said since Ikpeazu emerged victorious in the struggle for power, his opponents should accept the outcome and stop the battle to unseat the governor.

The firm stand taken by the royal fathers of Abia in the governorship tussle may not raise eye brows.

Royal fathers have often dropped their supposed neural garb and let their private political interests to burst in the open. But in some instances public display of partisanship had in the past resulted in suspension or outright withdrawal of the staff of office from the offending traditional ruler by state government. Such sanctions were usually applied if the political activities of the partisan royal father were at variance with the interest of the ruling party.

In situations where neither suspension nor deposition could be meted out to the erring traditional ruler, especially the powerful ones, government usually resorted to whittling down the influence and powers of the targeted royal father by splitting his domain into several autonomous communities. Nonetheless, some royal fathers had in the past dammed the consequences and openly expressing their political interests.

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T H I S D AY, T H E S U N D AY N E W S PA P E R • SEPTEMBER 18, 2016

CICERO/ENCOUNTER

Onaji inspecting the guard of honour at the ceremony

Onaji:ArmedForces Alone CannotMaintain Peace The outgoing Commandant of the Nigerian Navy Basic Training School, Onne, Port Harcourt, Commodore Peter Agu Onaji, who has been reassigned by the Chief of Army Staff to assume a new office at the Naval Headquarters Abuja as the Director of Transformation recently celebrated a successful tenure in Onne. He shared his experiences, challenges and achievements with Uchechukwu Nnaike and Chris Asika, as well as the need for collaboration between the public and the armed forces to ensure peace in the country

T

he peace and progress of Nigeria, which have in recent times, been threatened by the activities of insurgents, as well as several internal agitations and attacks across all the geo-political zones of the country, has continued to generate reactions in all quarters, while efforts are being intensified by the armed forces to achieve a lasting solution.

For the outgoing Commandant of the Nigerian Navy Basic Training School (NNBTS), Onne, Port Harcourt, Commodore Peter Onaji, who recently celebrated a successful 15-month school with a send forth parade, most of the civil disturbance in the country cannot be fought conventionally so the public needs to play a huge role by supporting the armed forces.

According to him, the armed forces exist to serve the public and are trained to fight conventional wars, but not trained to fight asymmetric war fares (fighting faceless enemies).

“Conventional wars are meant to know the enemies at the other side and we have our own enemy we use our training and equipment to fight and subdue our opponents to our own will.

Now the kind of wars we fight in our society now like the one in the north-east and the one in the maritime environment, the coastal areas, pipeline vandalism, crude oil theft and all that, these are wars that cannot be fought conventionally.

“I enjoin the public to be part of the wars; to be patient and help the armed forces, the navy in particular in the task of defeating the enemy, the common enemy of our society. The public should help us with useful information and the civil leadership or the political leadership to also help out the security agencies in carrying out their duties in their areas of jurisdiction.”

Recounting his experiences during his 15-month tenure, his achievements and challenges, Onaji said: “I’ve had a very historic

experience serving as the commandant here.

During my tenure, the NNBTS Onne had all its training infrastructure transformed and through our efforts, the chief of naval staff lived up to his mission statement which is to deploy a force that is well trained, motivated and highly organised to perform the constitutional roles of the Nigerian Navy and to ensure that the products of the NNBTS receive the best training.”

He said he relocated all the accommodation blocks for the trainees to a standard hostel and embarked on the construction of new accommodation blocks specifically three 40-room accommodations which will soon be completed. On completion, he said there will be 120 large rooms in those places in addition to nine buildings already existing.

“It is a thing of joy for me that this transformation of NNBTS training infrastructure is taking place during my tenure. We also have a dining hall of the school that is being transformed into an ultra-modern cafeteria courtesy of the Chief of Naval Staff. We on our own have successfully trained 1,250 trainees; these are the recruits that undertake trainings with us here. And at the end of the training period of six months 1,205 successfully completed and we did their graduation in grand style with a partner parade that is unprecedented. So that is a very big experience for me as the commandant of the school.”

Also, during Onaji’s tenure, the school signed a first of its kind Memorandum of Understanding with the University of Port Harcourt to undertake a diploma programme for senior ratings who have spent upwards of 15 to 20 years, some of them 30 years in the service, to study a leadership and management course.

He said 86 of the participants would get an academic diploma which will qualify them for a university direct entry admission, and they can now serve in strategic offices like that of the chief of naval staff, flag officers commanding brand chiefs. “The university diploma certificate is an improvement from the one

issued to naval personnel and this will enable them to fit into the civil society properly with recognised academic qualification.”

As part of his efforts, Onaji said he also invited the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) to inspect the sick bay for consideration to accredit into the national health insurance programme. He said investigations have been carried out and the report indicates that the clinic facilities satisfied the requirements, while awaiting the final approval for the final accreditation of the sick bay into the NHIS scheme.

The commodore pledges his commitment to his new office, just like previous ones by giving first class service that would contribute to the realisation of the vision and mission of the Chief of Naval Staff which is to contribute and to serve in whatever capacity to the professional and efficient discharge of the Nigerian Navy’s constitutional role so as to bring about prosperity and national security.

He therefore charged younger officers to acknowledge the efforts of the naval chief to transform the navy and provide good working tools, adding that they must be prepared to provide the best service and make the best use of resources that would be given to them to produce results that will help the navy to discharge its constitutional responsibility professionally and efficiently. “So that requires a whole commitment, rededication and change of attitude by everybody.”

In the area of community relationship with host communities, he thanked the traditional ruler of Ipokiri Community, HRM Victor Nangibo, and members of Onne community who were present for the parade, for a cordial relationship that has existed over the years. He reiterated the commitment he made to naval headquarters to ensure that members of the communities enroll in the next batch of the training.

On his part, the Director, School of Government, University of Port Harcourt, Professor Eme Ekekwe, who witnessed the send forth ceremony, lauded Onaji’s achievements during his tenure.

“For us from the university’s point of view the MoU has been very good, very enriching because it gives us an opportunity to interact with people who are otherwise professionals in the security area, with UNIPORT being in the Niger Delta and the school being based here, the interaction has been mutually supportive.

“We have run through batches of training for them and the last one under commodore Onaji, we had 56 ratings who came in for the diploma programme. It is an intensive programme and our evaluation of their work so far has been very good, the idea is to give them an orientation so that when they eventually retire from service, they will have some qualification that will allow them to find their way in the civil society in a way that will allow them live normal lives that they will be proud of the navy and what they gave to them professionally.”

Ekekwe tasked the civil society on the need to have continuous and mutually supportive collaborations with the armed forces as they are an integral part of the society.

“In other climes the interchange between army and civil institutions is very common, you find people who have sent their senior military officers going back to teaching in higher institutions, and you find people in institutions of higher learning going to give instructions to various military colleges and institutions. That is the normal thing, we have not quite pushed in that direction far enough in Nigeria, but it is a direction we need to be working towards.”

He stressed that the Navy and the university want to see that relationship develop so that “we gain mutual synergy from each other’s work. You give them the civilian perspective on their work which is meaningful because without the civil society, their work is de-conceptualised. And also from the civil society angle recognise the critical importance of the role that they play, everybody is playing a role provided we all work towards a common purpose which is the development of our nation.”

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SEPTEMBER 18, 2016 • THISDAY, THE SUNDAY NEWSPAPER

PERSPECTIVE A Review of Adamu Adamu’s Education Roadmap Bisi Daniels

T

he Education Ministry looks on the surface as one so easy to manage, but it is certainly not if it is to achieve its role as a key sector for sustainable human and economic development.

Presently, it looks like investment in education is a long-term one, a people desperate for relief from socio-economic hardship are unlikely to wait on; just as a government looking for low-hanging fruits to assuage the feeling of the people may be unlikely to adopt it as an early option.

Yet, we cannot run away from a growing world-wide acceptance of the vital role of education. Messrs E. Orji Kingdom and Job Maekae elaborated on this in their paper, “The Role of Education in National Development: The Nigerian Experience,” in the European Scientific Journal.

“A nation develops in relation to its achievement in education,” they noted.

“This explains why contemporary world attention has focused on education as an instrument of launching nations into the world of science and technology and with consequential hope of human advancement in terms of living conditions and development of the environment.

“This is because, education, in the life of a nation, is the live wire of its industries and also the foundation of moral regeneration and revival of its people. It is also the force and bulwark of any nation’s defence and it has been observed that no nation rises above the level of its education. Seeing education in this perspective calls for proper funding from federal, state and local governments to make the sector produce the desired results which will stimulate national development.”

All that and more is what Education Minister, Mallam Adamu Adamu, seeks to achieve, even when the Federal Government’s 2016 budget allocated only eight per cent to the education sector against the stipulated 26 per cent approved by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) for the sector.

Presenting a draft Roadmap of the Ministry - Education for Change: A Ministerial Strategic Plan (2016-2019) recently, he agreed that “No nation can achieve economic prosperity without a sound and functional education system.”

That “Education is at the heart of all national development efforts; and, in recognizing that, the Muhammadu Buhari Administration believes that Nigeria’s education system must prepare its children for responsibilities of citizenship and national development.”

Every good roadmap provides a clear situation report (where we are) which the document has done. The picture looks relatively bad, but not unmindful of the challenges it faces, Mallam Adamu, described by some observers as a minister with a steely willpower, assured that, “The ministry of Education under my stewardship will confront these problems with all the seriousness, commitment and strong political will to ensure that we address them once and for all.

Allowing these problems to persist is akin to surrendering the fate of our country to ignorance; we cannot afford to do that.”

Where we are:

Child Education

• About 25.3 million students at all levels of education are out- of- school in the country.

public universities to be admitted. It also identified “equity” as a problem that requires attention. As a result of these, there has been a proliferation of states and private universities, some of which people describe as glorified secondary schools.

A Test of Courage

It is in the face of these and other challenges that the Roadmap is seen as a courageous attempt to uplift the overall level of education. Indeed, the strategic plan was built on 9 pillars, based on the core strategic and measurable goals that need to be attained. For each of them, there are clearly defined objectives as well as strategies for their achievement.

The pillars are:

Adamu, Education Minister • With 11.4 million out-of-school children, Nigeria has the highest out-ofschool children in the world.

• More than 50 per cent of in-school children are not learning because they cannot read or write.

• About 63 per cent of children who live in rural areas cannot read at all.

• Around 84 per cent of children in the lowest economic quartile cannot read at all.

• There is inadequate teacher training and support.

• Proliferation of unregulated non-state schools.

• Near absence of reliable data to support education administration and planning.

• Lack of support for girl-child education.

Teacher Quality

The minister said the teaching profession had declined and there was need to ensure professionalism to improve the quality of education.

The quality of teachers produced by teacher education institutions and their classroom performance are generally

The ministry of Education under my stewardship will confront these problems with all the seriousness, commitment and strong political will to ensure that we address them once and for all. Allowing these problems to persist is akin to surrendering the fate of our country to ignorance; we cannot afford to do that

unsatisfactory. For example, about 44 per cent of primary school teachers in the country are unqualified as they do not possess the prescribed minimum teaching qualification (NCE) for teaching.

Mallam Adamu said, “Teacher education itself is dying simply because non-professionals have now become teachers.

“Therefore, the professionalisation and registration of teachers will help make sure that the profession is reorganised with quacks kicked out.”

“So nobody should be employed as a teacher if he or she does not have a teaching qualification; there is no magic if you are not qualified as a teacher: you cannot teach.”

According to the Minister, teaching qualification means the person has undergone the course of philosophy of education and the method of teaching.

Adult Literacy

The document notes that despite various attempts to drastically reduce mass illiteracy in Nigeria, adult illiteracy levels in Nigeria is at about 57 per cent, and there are chances that the about 10 million school-age Nigerian children who are currently out of school would join the adult illiteracy population if care is not taken.

Basic and Secondary Education Curriculum The situation analysis in the Roadmap shows there is a lot of work to be done to bring it to acceptable global standards

Technical and Vocational Education and Training Although countries such as India, Brazil and Singapore have used this platform for technological advancement and economic boom, the document admits that the state of technical education in Nigeria shows an urgent need of repositioning to yield similar benefits.

Tertiary Education

The Roadmap shows that in addition to bringing this equally vital stage of education up to speed, there is an urgent need to address the ‘crisis’ at the point of access – a bottleneck which allows only 17 per cent of those qualified to and seeking placement in

• Addressing the out- of- school children phenomenon; • Strengthening basic and secondary school education; • Teacher education, capacity building and professional development; • Adult literacy and special needs education; • Education data and planning; • Curriculum and benchmark minimum academic standard • Technical and vocational education and training; • Quality and access in higher education; and • E-learning The added beauty of the strategic plan is the detailed action plan for each broad challenge, with clear targets, action parties and timelines.

Adamu, however, made it clear that the draft Roadmap is “not complete, rather it is meant to stimulate a robust critique. Through our collective efforts, we can translate this written document to become the `change on ground’ that we are all waiting for.”

He also stated that at the end of the critique meeting by all stakeholders, a finalised document would be presented to the National Council of Education for approval and endorsement.

Urging for all hands to be on deck for a successful plan implementation, he reiterated that it is the collective responsibility of all stakeholders to address the challenges and salvage the system to return education to the path of excellence, enjoining them to own and implement the plan.

“No doubt, the successful implementation of any plan requires concerted effort by all levels of government, stakeholders, community leaders, religious leaders, civil society organisations, development partners and the media,” Mallam Adamu said.

But some stakeholders have been quick to recall how factors like funding, political distraction and bottlenecks, sectoral competition for scarce resources, corruption by key stakeholders and policy discontinuity interplay to derail lovely strategic plans for development in the country.

Added to this basket of challenges is the need for the states and local councils to not only understand the urgency of the plan, but to discharge their responsibilities with the passion of all other key stakeholders. With some states unable to pay salaries, causing teacher-frustration, some of the challenges look a bit more complicated.

All those add to the test of the steely will and determination of Mallam Adamu Adamu and his team. But the country has only one way to go – to join other countries, including her contemporaries, which showcase education as a key success factor in national development. As pointed out earlier, “no nation rises above the level of its education.”

---Daniels, a journalist and author, was a teacher

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T H I S D AY, T H E S U N D AY N E W S PA P E R • SEPTEMBER 18, 2016

PERSPECTIVE

Dogara, Jibrin and Other Tales Victor Afam Ogene

“I have accepted a seat in the House of Representatives, and thereby have consented to my ruin, to your ruin, and to the ruin of our children. I gave you this warning that you may prepare your mind for your fate.” - John Adams, 2nd President of the United states of America (1735-1826)

I

n penning these words to his wife, Abigail and their five children, Adams was obviously under the clear understanding that the legislature was the anvil upon which every hammer of public discontent descended. Aged only 39 at the time, Adams had just been elected to the USA’s first Continental Congress, as delegate from Massachusetts, in 1774.

Although Adams, a top-notch Federalist and deep-rooted political philosopher went on to become the first Vice President, and later second President of the USA, succeeding the immortal George Washington, the ‘burden’ which comes with serving in the legislature as against the Executive branch was not lost on him throughout his distinguished career.

Back home in Nigeria, the fear which Adams nursed about public office, especially as it concerns the legislature, continues to titillate the public almost 200 years after the U.S congressman’s demise. Between the Senate and the House of Representatives, there is apparently no shortage of theatrics in-between sessions, with the state assemblies offering occasional side-shows to compliment the orchestra of spectacular comic relief. Remarkably, these brickbats, besides providing the citizenry the elixir needed to vent pent-up anger and frustration with life itself, invariably end up with few useful lessons which, going forward, aid the institution of public service to imbibe new moral ethics - thus making living more tolerable.

Yet, to be able to synthesize the positives embedded in any public spat for the general good, society ought to be able to discern between fact and fiction, as well as decipher truth from propaganda. After all, as native wisdom counsels, it is from the black pot that cometh the white pap!

Sadly, in Nigeria, upon the dawn of a fresh ‘scandal’, the goal is often to applaud the accuser and hasten to convict the accused in the court of public opinion. Just name and shame the fellow(s) concerned until they are able to prove their innocence, in an inverse application of the standard law which presumes an accused as innocent, until proven otherwise. It does not matter if the pursued, most often in front of the chasing mob, is the one now chanting, ‘thief, thief, thief’ in order to secure a get-away.

It is against this backdrop that the Nigerian tribe of analysts, commentators and indeed, public opinion influencers ought to, unlike the Roman plebeians, seek an intense understanding of the real issues involved in the Speaker Yakubu Dogara and Representative Abdulmumin Jibrin face-off.

Colunmist, Niyi Akinnaso, writing in the back page of The Punch Newspaper of Tuesday, August 2,

Dogara

Jibrin

2016 captures this mindset succinctly when he asserted thus: “Whatever the outcome of the investigation, however, the alleged culprits have fallen short of the honour and respect due to their ranks, at least in the court of public opinion (emphasis mine)”. Really?

Although Akinnaso concedes that “to be frank with ourselves, the National Assembly is constitutionally empowered to modify the budgetary proposals submitted by the President, by deleting or adding particular items to the budget”, such realization was sadly not potent enough to dissuade him from dismissing the concerned institution as “The House of Representative Thieves?”

It is such quick-to-convict disposition and blanket condemnation that usually pitch the public against the legislature. Often, such conclusions arise out of the claim - and sometimes correct charge - that some legislators derive personal monetary and other benefits from their positions and projects which they influence into the Appropriation Act. Well, maybe. But assuming, without conceding that such scenario exists, how is that tantamount to an institutional failing on the part of the legislature? Indeed, if truth must be told, the real culprits, if any, ought to be officials of Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), which advertise, shortlist, award, supervise, and effect payment for all projects/ services certified okay.

Agreed that there are chances of being arm-twisted by ‘powerful’ individual legislators, that still does not detract the MDAs culpability in the event of any malfeasance. Pray, why won’t such MDAs whistle-blow, especially as they and all the nation’s security architecture belong to the Executive?

Before one loses focus concerning the issues at hand, only one issue could be distilled from the din of cacophony that has trailed the 8th National Assembly, be it in Senate or the House of Representatives; to wit: those who lost out of the equation in both chambers on Inauguration Day 14 months ago, are still sulking and seething. And every crevice in collective unity offers an opportunity to draw long knives and seek regime change, if only to assuage bruised egos.

Remarkably, the current attempt to rail-road the House of Representatives into committing a kind of class suicide, in pursuit of the avenging mission of a distraught member is

a familiar path often trudged by legislators who held the short end of a stick after every internal struggle for power and recognition.

If recent memory is anything to go by, an Etteh ascends the throne and a Farouk misses the all-important Appropriation Committee chair as a reward for his part in the enterprise, and all hell is let loose. Enter a Dimeji Bankole, and a Dino (and friends) don’t get the recognition they crave, and the House snowballs into a huge mat for wrestlemania.

But while these two instances could be regarded as internal affairs of the House, the externalisation of similar disagreement, reached a new high in the 7th Assembly under the leadership of Rt. Hon. Aminu Tambuwal, which I was a proud part of.

Two quick instances, using the 7th Assembly’s two Presiding Officers, Tambuwal and his deputy, Rt. Hon. Emeka Ihedioha, would suffice. First, on January 6, 2014, preparatory to resumption from Christmas/New Year break, some interest groups went to town to canvass the possible removal of Ihedioha, citing the newfound-majority of the burgeoning All Progressives Congress (APC), following the defection of 37 Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) House members.

As Deputy Chairman, Media and Public Affairs, I have to counter such move, citing, among others, Section 50(1) (b) of the 1999 Nigeria Constitution, as amended, to wit: “There shall be a Speaker and a Deputy Speaker of House of Representatives, who shall be elected by the members of that House from among themselves.”

The same constitutional provision was to come in handy, when on October 28, 2014 Speaker Tambuwal announced his switch to the APC, and the full weight of the state power was deployed in an undisguised attempt to unseat him.

Instructively, in spite of the clear provisions of the constitution, as stated above, many cheerleaders masquerading as analysts had, in deference to public hysteria, cried themselves hoarse on the propriety of a Tambuwal resignation.

Sadly, under another dispensation, we are yet to see a change in attitude - one in which an arm of government is allowed to self-regulate. Speaker Dogara, and indeed, his leadership, serve only at the behest of their honorable colleagues. And the House Rules and the Nigerian constitution clearly spell out how any of them can exit their privileged position(s). I have

searched through both documents and I could not find where hounding one out of office is cited as a route towards dethroning any of them.

Though Jibrin denounces the word “padding”, he seeks to make heavy weather over claims that Speaker Dogara inserted projects into an Appropriation Bill which he authored.

Oftentimes, the tendency is to play the ostrich in such matters, when in actual fact, it is generally acknowledged that primus inter pares anywhere in the world, from class monitors, to student representatives, labour leaders and even Presidents get a little more.

Pray, who in his right senses would expect a state governor or President, who ran on the same ticket as their deputies, to wield the same amount of influence?

Without a doubt, Representative Jibrin appears to be on top of the propaganda warfare which he unleashed barely hours after his removal as Appropriation chair of the House. A disciple of Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s ignoble war propagandist, Jibrin apparently holds dear Goebbels’ notion that “if you tell the same lie enough times, people will believe it; and the bigger the lie, the better.”

One such big lie which Jibrin has ceaselessly trumpeted is the claim that he installed Speaker Dogara and some other principal officers. The question that naturally trails this claim is: how? Perhaps the embattled lawmaker did not reckon with the wise counsel of late French dramatist, Jean Anouilh, who cautioned that “propaganda is a soft weapon, hold it in your hands too long, and it will move like a snake, and strike the other way.”

If Jibrin contributed funds towards the quest, I wouldn’t know, but as an insider who ran the media wing of the Consolidation Group, which produced the Speaker and his deputy, Lasun Yusuf, I challenge Hon. Jibrin to name one, just one member who he convinced to join the Dogara camp, himself having crossed over barely one week to inauguration on June 9, 2015.

I do need to point out, however, that the essence of my intervention today is neither to denigrate Jibrin , nor question his integrity ( members of the 7th and 8th Assembly are free to draw up their own conclusions); rather my concern centers around how to preserve the sacred institution of the legislature, rather than have its disgruntled members lie through the teeth, in a classic rehash of the ‘You Tarka me, I Daboh you’ episode.

It would seem, regrettably, that Representative Jibrin is perhaps too far gone in his open display of hate for Speaker Dogara, that he could gloss over the timeless warning of his presumptive hero, Goebbels, who himself asserted, “there will come a day when all the lies will collapse under their own weight, and the truth will triumph again.”

To Jibrin and his co-travelers, that time is nigh, in September, 2016 when the honorable members of the House of Representatives will resume for plenary. Until then, he may do well to take a deserve vacation, away from the path of propaganda and the denigration of an institution which he ought to help fortify.

––Hon. Ogene, a journalist, served as Deputy Chairman, Media & Public Affairs Committee in the House of Representatives (2011-2015).

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SEPTEMBER 18, 2016 • THISDAY, THE SUNDAY NEWSPAPER

PERSPECTIVE

Made in Nigeria: A Dream or Possibility Tunji Olaopa

T

he Nigerian development predicament has so many dimensions from which one can begin to unpack its meaning and solutions.

But there is only one way Nigerians experience all these dimensions of economic disarticulation and policy incoherence: extreme suffering.

This suffering is aggravated by the indices of our development dilemma—jobless growth phenomenon, infrastructural deficit, illiteracy, unemployment, zero-level poverty, income inequality, very low mortality, institutional crisis, and so many more. Understanding the implication of Nigeria’s development predicament is theoretical, but alleviating the sufferings of Nigerians requires, as a first condition, a mix of theoretical and experiential understanding of what has gone wrong and how the elements of positive development can be put together in an enabling policy framework that will deliver the dividends of democratic governance to the Nigerian citizens. We need to first understand, for example, why government policies fail to deliver the dividends of democracy, and how these policies can be calibrated to do what government intended them to do in the first place.

One good way, therefore, to understand Nigeria’s development problem, since independence, is to beam the searchlight on the gradual but steadily growing discrepancy between Nigeria’s productive capacities and her increasing but debilitating consumptive patterns. Since the 80s, and after the terrible logic of oil has become firmly established, Nigeria’s productive energies have gradually lagged.

Today, the Nigeria state has reached an unenviable point at which we consume what we do not produce. This is one of the most significant and counterintuitive occurrence in development studies.

There is no country that achieves any real and sustainable development by depending essentially on others to produce what it consumes.

In economic theory, the principle of comparative advantage, for instance, states that an agent or a country ought to produce more and consume less of any good or product for which they have a comparative advantage. Comparative advantage comes from the production of a good or product at a lower relative opportunity cost than any other

country. A country might even produce and export what its citizens are not skilled at producing. Nigeria has a definite comparative advantage in mineral production, automotive industry, light manufacturing, agriculture and agro-processing, textiles and garment, oil and gas, and petrochemicals, etc. for example, Nigeria is the world’s fourth largest producer and exporter of cocoa, the sixth largest producer of oil, the world largest producer of cassava, etc.

But unfortunately for Nigeria, we discovered crude oil, and every other thing became moribund.

With oil, Nigeria became a high consuming state, its economic structure became essentially mono-cultural and driven by what Alfred Marshall calls “negative production”—a weak productive capacity that ensures that, in order to feed its growing consumptive pattern, a state imports what it possesses the capacity to produce. A gloomy statistics tells the rest of the story. Nigeria’s importation of especially major staples like rice, wheat, fish, and sugar has grown to an alarming $11million recently. The cumulative total amount spent on the importation of rice and wheat between 1960 and 2013 is $28.4billion. And even though Nigeria is a major world producer of rice, we have now become the second largest importer of rice in the world from an annual average of one thousand metric tons between 1961 and 1971 to a peak average of 2.5 million metric tons in 2012.

Nigeria’s production of cocoa and cassava where we have huge comparative advantages has lagged tremendously, especially due to the fact that only 50% of Nigeria’s 71million hectares of cultivable land are under current use. Cocoa production has slide to an 8% global output from its original 20% after independence. The domestic manufacturing industry has suffered from lack of electricity, low technological development and high interest rates. Even the oil and gas industry has remained disappointingly sub-optimal with a growing discrepancy between average crude oil production per day (2million bpd), installed refining capacity (445’000bpd) and actual average refined product (82’400bpd). This has undermined the tantalizing possibility of Nigeria becoming a hub for refining and exporting petroleum products through effective development of the crude oil value chain.

No one ought to be surprised therefore at the multitude of Nigeria’s economic challenges: declining global demand for crude oil resulting in negative price shocks, decreasing foreign exchange inflows,

plummeting foreign exchange reserve, increasingly weakening currency, poor and inefficient infrastructure especially power and transportation, high dependence on oil revenues by all levels of government, increasing State Governments’ debt obligations especially of workers’ salaries, weakening domestic consumption, etc. All these have dealt a huge blow to Nigeria’s quest for a self-reliant and self-sustaining economy functioning on the optimal production of local goods and services. The Nigerian economy is essentially a consumerist economy: pencils, toothpicks and toothbrushes are major imports for Nigeria; our MDAs now effectively run on imported generators!

And so in a globalizing world given to a neoliberal capitalism economic ideology, Nigeria does not stand any chance of making her democratic experiment a truly empowering system that not only liberate the citizens capacities to become whoever and whatever they want to become, but to also protect them from the vagaries of a global system that is unequal in terms of its benefits and advantages. The global capitalist dynamics is mightily skewed against less developed and nonindustrialized countries, especially those beholden to the Washington Consensus and its many crippling conditionalities. Globalization is often couched in glorious terms.

Thus, Kenichi Ohmae could say bluntly: “In a borderless world, traditional national interest—which has become little more than a cloak for subsidy and protection—has no meaningful place.” Everything is thus deterritorialized and denationalized. But citizens are not satisfied based on global trappings; they are satisfied on the basis of a national development interest that plans for their future. Take the consumerist ideology, for instance. Inspite of their modernising and globalising potentials, when Shoprite and KFC and Coca Cola, multinational companies, and other features of the global consumerist culture invade our national space, local industries and local initiatives suffer and die. National development has one fundamental goal—the harnessing of a nation’s human and material resources towards the empowering of its citizens’ capacities. And national development paradigms are always at the mercy of global capitalist interests and alliances that attempt to swamp it under the burden of aids, loans, and bilateral relationships. No nation can ever hope to survive except it is prepared to look inward towards

a self-sustaining economic paradigm that draws in the strength of global economies to stand. Bill Clinton hits the nail right on the head: “The only preparation for prospering in the global economy is investing in ourselves.” And investing in ourselves begins from directing the entire policy architecture of Nigeria to reversing the consumption-production discrepancy. It implies a rigorous attention to local goods and services, and to the enabling of local content.

The Local Content Act of 2010 was enacted specifically on behalf of the oil and gas industry.

It was meant specifically to reverse the trend that sees foreign expatriates and interests dominating the petroleum industries, as well as increase the capacities of the industry through local human and material resources. The Act is geared towards “...the quantum of composite value added to or created in the Nigerian economy by a systematic development of capacity and capabilities through the deliberate utilization of Nigerian human, material resources and services in the Nigerian Petroleum Industry”. If properly implemented, the fundamental clauses of this Act—value creation, development of capacities, utilisation of local resources—are sufficient to serve as the kernel of a national development plan that addresses Nigeria’s production troubles. These are the essential elements a nation requires to champion an economic philosophy of self-reliance and self-sustenance that could backstop democratic governance and its imperatives.

But the “if” of policy implementation in Nigeria is a very huge one, considering that reforms are easy to come by but not easy to see through to their logical conclusions. The policy environment in Nigeria is a tough one that is encumbered by political and other extra-policy matters that drag and impede policies from achieving their true democratic intentions. With our increasing orientation towards everything foreign, we have no choice if we must move forward and become development—we need to produce what we consume or consume what we produce.

--Being a paper delivered by Dr. Tunji Olaopa, the Executive Vice Chairman, Ibadan School of Government and Public Policy (ISGPP), as Lead Speaker at Prof. Ojetunji Aboyade 2016 Memorial Lecture Organisedby the Development Policy Centre (DPC). Ibadan recently

preparations for the 2015 general election reached fever pitch, Rivers residents watched helplessly the bizarre sight of, apparently, procured militants and ex-militants storming Government House and bearing political statements demanding Amaechi’s resignation as governor. Among the marchers were leaders of some of the most notorious armed groups in Rivers State. They had, ostensibly, been procured by Jonathan and his newfound godson, Wike, emboldened and assigned the task of making the state ungovernable for Amaechi. Security agents in the state under the then Commander-in-Chief Jonathan watched in bewilderment as the militants and ex-militants laid siege to the seat of Amaechi’s administration. They never came to demand anything relating to the amnesty programme for ex-militants, but to oppose the sitting governor on behalf of the then incoming Wike.

That marked the return of violence to the state, a situation that residents have continued to contend with. As the saying goes, “Rain does not fall on only one man’s house.” Wike and his erstwhile principal had thought the reign of violence would disappear immediately they succeeded in getting power. They were mistaken.

After the Supreme Court awarded the governorship to him, Wike danced across Port Harcourt.

It was like a dance on the graves of the many innocent residents killed during the election.

Wike has continued to act with impunity since he captured power. Under his watch, armed individuals and groups have brazenly attacked and killed many people, mainly those that hold contrary opinions.

On November 30 last year, APC members in the state were attacked by suspected PDP thugs at the Isaac Boro Park area of Port Harcourt as well as in Asari Toru, Akuku Toru, and virtually all the local government areas of the state as they participated in a memorial march, tagged Rivers Black Day, to peacefully remember the about 100 persons killed during the last general election in the state. In a curious twist, the PDP chairman in the state, Mr

Felix Obuah, gave blanket exoneration to PDP members with regard to the attacks without so much as an investigation. But Obuah also gave it up for the attackers, when he condemned the APC rally as illegal, treasonable and a breach of security. Reading his lips, those who attacked the peaceful marches simply helped to deal with an “illegality.”

Currently, under Wike’s watch, hardly does a day pass without one violent incident or another in Rivers State. This is a throwback to the violent process that brought him to power, and he has been hard-pressed to deal with this peculiar insecurity. A human rights activist and prominent attorney to the All Progressives Congress, Mr. Ken Atsuete, was murdered on August 29 in Port Harcourt in very strange circumstances.

The APC lawyer’s murder came just after the August show-offs by Wike, with the hosting of the 26th All Nigerian Editors Conference and the Nigerian Bar Association’s 56th annual general conference. They were all part of a tradition of deceit, to try to impress outsiders that all is well, when everyone knows a contrary situation reigns.

As if to cap the regime of torment, teachers, pensioners, and other civil servants in the state are being owed several months’ salaries, some upwards of five months, while the governor is embarking on a spending spree to revive and appropriate the dying soul of the PDP. These atrocities against the people of Rivers State and humanity, generally, are what “would end very soon” the regime of Wike, as Obioha rightly recognised in his article. What will bring down the reign of Wike is his seemingly sworn determination to misstep and mislead a people desperately in need of good leadership. What will end the Wike era is his penchant for using the people’s resources for the servicing his own vainglory at the expense of their welfare.

It is not the frank and innocent comments of Dr. Dakuku Peterside.

---Paul writes from Port Harcourt.

Wike and the Fantasies of a Political Deceiver

Tamunotonye Paul

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here are quite a few in Rivers State who still believe that the people’s wrath against Governor Nyesom Wike over the many disappointments and betrayals they have seen in his administration can be whitewashed by caustic attacks on genuine leaders and stakeholders who are concerned about the present abyss of despair in their state. Robert Obioha, a notorious hatchet man and co-traveller with Wike on the lane of perfidy, is one of them.

In his usual column of escapist fantasies in The Sun, “Afara Lane”, on Friday, September 2, Obioha launched into a campaign of misinformation against Dr. Dakuku Peterside for commenting on the lies, sorrows, tears, and blood that have become the lot of Rivers State since the coming of Wike.

Obioha, certainly, thought that by his many virulent words against the director-general of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, the attention of the Rivers people can be diverted from their anguish under Wike.

But Obioha and others of that ilk simply dupe themselves. The people of Rivers State can no longer allow themselves to be duped by their campaign of falsehood. The people have since seen through Wike’s lies. And they are praying daily, watching and waiting for an opportunity to escape from his vicious rule. They believe that opportunity will come sooner rather than later.

But while the people hope and wait, it is time those saddled with the difficult task of whitewashing Wike learned some basic facts about their principal and the Rivers situation.

The Wike government has smashed all national records in political violence, impunity, and statesponsored lawlessness. The ground for this anomie was prepared before he came on board. While Wike was still contesting the governorship seat on the platform of Peoples Democratic Party, the whole

Wike world watched in bewilderment how he and his then principal, former President Goodluck Jonathan, deliberately dismantled the state’s security apparatus.

That security architecture had been set up by the administration of former Governor Rotimi Amaechi to contain the worrisome insecurity at the time occasioned by growing militancy and agitation in the Niger Delta. It was a security establishment that had made Rivers State the envy of the country, but which Wike and Jonathan destroyed. What followed was an orgy of violence unleashed on the peace-loving people of Rivers State during the electioneering for last year’s general election.

Jonathan and Wike emboldened militants who had been roundly defeated and chased out of the state by the Amaechi government. They returned with amazing force in a reign of terror. Having received the necessary federal cover and vitality, the militants were ever ready to express them. The All Progressives Congress rallies and the party’s governorship candidate, Peterside, were their prime targets. Many innocent members of the public, mostly APC supporters and members, were killed or maimed.

Then on one fateful day in May 2013, just before

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Edited by Vincent Obia Email vincent.obia@thisdaylive.com

Cross section of Parliamentarians at the end of the retreat in Accra, Ghana...recently

When Legislators, Civil Society United For Improved Health Care The House of Representatives committees on appropriation and health, in partnership with Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre, a non-governmental organisation, recently, organised a two-day retreat in Accra, Ghana, for their members on financing primary health care. Funke Olaode reports

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hile adequate, accessible and affordable health care system is paramount to the wellbeing of the citizens, the Nigerian health care system is said to be among the worst in the world. Hit by inadequate budgetary allocation, delayed release of funds, imprudent utilisation of existing funds, poor monitoring, and lack of transparency and accountability at all levels, the country’s healthcare system has been troubled for a long time. But how can these impediments to efficient medical care be removed? This was the main question that stakeholders tried to find answers to at a two-day retreat recently organised by the Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre.

CISLAC is a non-governmental organisation dedicated to strengthening the link between civil society and the legislature through advocacy and capacity building for civil society groups and policy makers on legislative processes and governance issues.

Between September 7 and 8, members of the House of Representatives committees on appropriation and health converged on Holiday Inn in Accra, Ghana, for a two-day retreat aimed at providing a platform for the legislators to discuss and review current challenges and opportunities in financing primary health care in Nigeria. The retreat drew about 60 participants from the House of Representatives, the Federal Ministry of Health, Ministry of Budget and Planning, civil society and development partners.

It featured presentations from experts and representatives of the Minister of Budget and National Planning and the health minister.

the country. This situation adversely affects the economy and impedes development, generally. The above factors are largely attributed to poor budgetary allocation to the health sector.

Rafsanjani stated that child spacing had direct impact on the health of the family and the economy of a nation as a whole, with tendency to mitigate maternal and child deaths in the country. He said budgetary allocation to child spacing services in the context of the Nigeria family planning blueprint and implementation plans was an endemic challenge at all levels.

Major Challenge In his opening address, the executive director of CISLAC, Auwal Musa Rafsanjani, said the retreat would not have come at a better time than now, when Nigeria is moving towards another fiscal year, where critical inputs are expected into the country’s budgetary process, especially by the executive and legislature.

Rafsanjani said all hands must be on deck to ensure a better health care system, stressing that health remains a major challenge in the development of the economy. This fact, he said, was buttressed by a study conducted by CISLAC in 2013. The study shows that in Nigeria, one in 13 women dies during pregnancy or childbirth, and 12 per cent of children die before reaching the age of five. The study observes that every 10 minutes one woman dies from conditions associated with childbirth.

According to the study, only 39 per cent births take place with the assistance of medically trained personnel, coupled with the scarcity of skilled attendants, absence of personnel, among other factors impeding the effectiveness of health services in

National Health Bill Rafsanjani commended the legislators for the bold step it took in 2014 to revive to long embattled National Health Bill and advocated for its passage into law by the National Assembly.

The National Health Act 2014, he emphasised, is a comprehensive legal document containing several pro-poor provisions for primary health care, which if effectively implemented, will resuscitate the dwindling health care resources, facilities and services at all levels, especially given the one per cent Consolidated Revenue Fund from the national budget. However, the Act which implementation was supposed to have commenced since 2015, is yet to see the light of day even in the 2016 Appropriation Act. The CISLAC boss hoped that with quality representations from the National Assembly, the Federal Ministries of Health, and Budget and Planning, at the retreat, it would be a result oriented deliberation, which would be applied in developing holistic strategies for adequate and sustainable health care financing.

He advocated proper legislative and policy directions in fund

Challenge of Donor Dependence The executive director of CISLAC regretted the recent reversal of the announcement by the World Health Organisation last year declaring Nigeria free from the long dreaded polio epidemic owing to the discovery of two different cases of the wild polio virus in Borno State. He attributed this to inadequate financing and timely release of funds by the government to sustain the gains made in the fight against polio in the country.

It is noteworthy that health care financing in Nigeria has hitherto been donor-dependent, which poses a fresh challenge to sustainability. Cases in point are nutrition funded by UNICEF; routine immunisation funded by Global Alliance for Vaccine Initiative, GAVI, Bill Gates and Aliko Dangote; HIV/AIDS funded

by Global Fund, etc. However, with the rebasing of the Nigerian economy, there has been a paradigm shift from donor-driven funding to advocacy for ownership of the health sector by Nigerian government.

mobilisation, allocation, and utilisation for health care systems at all levels.

In his paper, titled, “Financing the Basic Health Care Provision Plan,” the director-general, Budget Office of the Federation, Mr. Ben Akabueze, noted that the overarching health sector goal for Nigeria, as for most nations, was Universal Health Coverage. And to achieve this goal, government in Nigeria needs to be spending about $86 per person in providing basic health services. But actual expenditure is under 50 per cent of this amount.

Akabueze stated, “The recommended public expenditure on health is five per cent of a nation’s Gross Domestic Product; Nigeria currently spends only about 1% of GDP (note however total government revenues less than 10 per cent of GDP).”

On how the Basic Health Care Provision Fund could be appropriated, Akabueze said 50 per cent of the fund would be transferred to the National Health Insurance Scheme to cover basic health care services, 45 per cent will be disbursed to the National Primary Health Care DevelopmentAgency (NPHCDA) for essential drugs/ vaccines/consumables, maintaining PHC facilities, equipment, transportation, and strengthening human resource capacity at primary healthcare facilities around the country; while the the final 5 per cent would be used by the Federal Ministry of Health to respond to health emergencies and epidemics.

On the implementation issues on the BHCPF, Akabueze said it had been observed that it was one thing to appropriate the funds and another to actually use them to achieve the desired objectives. He assured that the BHCPF, which will probably be treated as a statutory transfer in the budget, will still be classified as part of aggregate funds allocated to the health sector; just as health is classified as a priority sector.

Throwing more light on how National Health Act and how the provisions will impact the health sector, Dr. Muhammad Muhammad Saleh said the National Health Bill was assented to by the president on October 31, 2014, but the major challenge observed in the NHS prior to the act was the lack of clarity on the responsibilities of the different tiers of the health system in the provision of health care services.

The act, he said, presents a lot of economic benefits to Nigerians by saving more disposable income through reduction in huge health expenditure, especially for the vulnerable groups.

In 2008 life expectancy for male and female in Nigeria was 48 years and 50 years, respectively, according to the NDHS. The participants observed that if the NSHDP was fully implemented, it would have improved the life expectancy to 55 years in 2011, 63 in 2013 and 70 years in 2015. (see concluding part on www.thisdaylive.com)

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Budget Padding is a Misconstruction of Legitimate Insertions Tailored to Constituents’Needs, Says Daramola Hon. Bimbo Daramola represented Ekiti North federal constituency 1 in the House of Representatives from 2011 to 2015. In this interview with some journalists, covered by Anayo Okolie, Daramola bares his soul on the budget padding saga rocking the lower chamber. Excerpts:

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said it is senseless insertion. I believe that we cannot completely legislate on every issue; it is not possible to have a situation where everything is legislated upon in this country.

Somebody says there must be a reason for a baby to be crying, thus, all we need to do is to get a copy of the petition and see what can be learnt from it. I know Yakubu Dogara reasonably well; I was in his committee on house services at the seventh assembly. Not many people know that at the sixth assembly, I learnt reliably that Yakubu Dogara was approached with huge bribe as chairman, customs, he refused. This same Dogara that they are saying is corrupt and all that nonsense, they offered him a huge sum of money, running into millions of dollars and he declined. The Speaker will be approached for favour because he is the number four man in Nigeria. It is the man who has head that can have head ache, or have you seen a headless man say “I need panadol?”

hat is your reaction to the current budget padding saga rocking the House of Representatives?

The attitude of Nigerians to the parliament is very stereotypical; it’s even made worse by the social media sometimes because a professor of science or law would rather take whatever they read on Facebook sometimes as gospel. So no matter what anybody else is saying to offer another factual perspective, for an opportunity to get a better diet of information from which informed decisions can be taken from, such persons would have shut their minds.

Now coming back to the matter, I have given this background to achieve one thing because the media is also intrinsically taken along by the mob sentiments. What is the role of the legislature? The legislature is supposed to do three things, to oversight, represent and prepare your budget. That is clear, it’s in the constitution like that, section 82 I think, and the constitution is the grund norm. If the constitution says we must walk with our heads, anyone who does anything to the contrary is against the constitution.

The intention of the drafters of the constitution is that we will have a set of rules that encapsulates all and we are duty bound Daramola to subsume ourselves to the spirit and letters of the constitution. The constitution says we want to build airport in Ekiti, and says that the president shall cause annual the representatives say no we need schools; estimates of expenditure to be prepared the intention of Mr. President may not be and brought to the National Assembly. wrong ab-initio to want to build an airport, That’s clear. People have suddenly forgotten but the representatives know the place the fact that even in euphemistic sense, more. For equitable representation you seniors do not take spending estimates to need the people who have also evolved juniors, neither do subordinates oversight from those constituencies generically to superiors; it is the superior who oversights speak to their needs. So what is my take the junior. on it? I do not agree that there is anything What I am saying is that the constitution called budget padding, expressly says Mr President Sir, whatever For instance, in the Deputy Speaker, Rt you are planning to spend in health, educa- Hon Sulaimon Lasun Yussuff’s constitution, water resources, infrastructure and ency there is a 52 years old mono lane whatever, you will cause the estimates to bridge called Ojutu Bridge; a bridge be prepared as you best deem fit at that that is as old as Nigeria. Oncoming, cars level, put it together, bring it and lay it at would have to pull over and wait for the the National Assembly.

In the wisdom of the drafters of the constitution, the estimation is that 109+360 will most likely give a better judgement than 50 people in the driver’s seat of the executive arm. So there is a corollary, when the president, the number 1 citizen, comes When they say budget to the National Assembly, and he lays the padding, has Dogara annual estimates with a bow, it is also indicative of the fact that “I respect the collected one Naira? authority of the legislature”, from that level the indication is that National Assembly No! It’s not as if money will now begin the critical evaluation of has exchanged hands. those annual estimates.

Mr. President practically has about 40 When they put the ministers and there are 360 constituencies and 109 senatorial districts. Who best projects there, they sent can talk about what is happening in Oye it back to Mr. President; and Ikole local government areas than the representative of that area; is it the minister, he signs and sends it to president or vice president? That is the intention of voting them in. the ministries who will The constitution says what Mr. President eventually prequalify, will lay is annual estimates? For instance if Mr. President is saying, I want to build tender and then award. a film institute in Oye Ikole and the representative of the area disagrees and says it So where is the budget is hospital that we need, whose decision padding? should take the pride of place? If the man

What can be done to save the situation currently?

one on the bridge to go through, three motorcycles cannot go on the bridge side by side at the same time; the bridge is still there now. Governments have come and gone yet the bridge remains, so you have a representative from that constituency, who now says it is time to change.

Further compelled by being the Deputy Speaker, he now has the opportunity to attract the needed attention, and now ensures that it gets into the budget, you say he has padded the budget? Or that is a senseless insertion? In the fit of confusion, the earlier used word, padding, has metamorphosed into senseless insertion! Are you saying the people from that constituency are not Nigerians? So, what they do most times is to approach leadership and appropriation chair and committee chairmen that are relevant for lobby.

When they say budget padding, has Dogara collected one Naira? No! It’s not as if money has exchanged hands. When they put the projects there, they sent it back to Mr. President; he signs and sends it to the ministries who will eventually prequalify, tender and then award. So where is the budget padding? Has anybody really asked what the job of the National Assembly is? If a mechanic uses spanner to lose a bolt in your car, will you ask him why he is using a spanner. The man realised it and he quickly said “no no I don’t mean padding, I mean insertion”, he now said “senseless insertion”.

Are there constitutional amendments that can be made to properly capture these controversial insertions, now called padding, by legislators?

That you are still saying budget padding, what you have succeeded in doing is to venerate the claims of Jubrin. You are putting integrity behind his claim and that cannot be sustained. Even by himself, he said it is not budget padding, rather he

There is this Yoruba saying which is interpreted as “if you don’t finish removing the lice in your hair, you will continue to have blood on your thumb”. Jubrin triggered an alarm that has unsettled all and that has to be taken care of. I’m not saying negatively. And in dealing with this, they have to make him realise that he has constituted himself into an obstruction/ distraction in the way the administration of the National Assembly should be run.

People are now distracted. How many of them have had reasons to look at the constitution amendment process that should be going on now?. Even the so-called projects have not been executed because of all this brouhaha going on. So what I believe we should do at this point in time is to say, “Mr. Jubrin, we have heard you.

We don’t want any more of this rubbish going on, which is beginning to distract everybody; you have submitted your petition, so subject this issue to the internal process of the house; let the ethics and privileges committee look into it.” Give him a fair hearing, if he is not satisfied let him explore all opportunities available to him and if need be, let them escalate it in the House and let the business of the House go on. I am told that the man said to some people that he would stop at nothing until he brings the House down; is that how to be a crusader for justice?

What do you think should be done to Jubrin?

Unfortunately, I am not in the House anymore, there are provisions to deal with errant individuals and abhorrent actions and activities. Today, what is the worth of a parliamentarian? Any representative that is going on the street, people would say, “look at them budget padders, armed robbers, ole”. So how do you expect that man to function with the right frame of mind, when you already called him an ole for putting the project that will affect his constituency positively in the estimated expenditure profile of the nation? So, what should be done to him? I’m no longer in the House. If I were still in the House, I know what I would have done, because I will come by way of privilege, that the man has assaulted my reputation; and I did that a few times when I was in the House.

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Okafor: I Keyed Myself to the Legislative Mainstream Early Hon Chike Okafor represents Okigwe South federal constituency of Imo State in the House of Representatives. He is also the chairman, House Committee on Health, and a close ally of the Speaker, Hon. Yakubu Dogara. It was Okafor who seconded the motion that nominated Dogara for the post of speaker during the crucial session on June 9 last year to select principal officers for the lower chamber. In this interview with Amby Uneze, Okafor, a first time member of the House, talks about his experience in the law-making process. Excerpts:

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n how he feels after one year as a legislator in the green chamber?

Actually, being a first timer, one need enough time to study the environment, assess the chamber vis-a-vis the relationship with members, try to settle in terms of national politics the political zone balancing and what have you. Maybe that is why there is much emphasis on ranking. That is to say that if you are coming for the first time it is a lot difficult than if you are a second timer, when it is assumed that you are a lot more experienced than a man who is coming for the first time without any legislative experience. Well these are issues for argument, but for me, I had told myself what I was going to do irrespective of any prior legislative experience, that I wasn’t going to be deterred. I didn’t see any handicap.

For me politics is in the horizon. Politics is a part of life. In law-making, you study the rudiments: how do you start, how do you raise your hand, how do you move your bill or pass your motion, what are you supposed to say, when are you supposed to say it when the Speaker gives you the floor? These are things people also know by watching what happens in the National Assembly on TV. You need to observe that senate is live every Wednesday and the House of Representatives is live on Thursday. So even by watching TV in your house you can always catch some tips.

On the psychological pressures of being very green in the House.

I went into the chamber not allowing the obvious fact that I am a first timer to affect me in any form because failure is of the mind. If you have that positive mindset, which is of success, you will excel.

So I didn’t have problems. Remember it was on June 9, 2015 that those of us who were first timers found ourselves in the green chamber. Don’t forget that from the moment we stepped into that chamber I was the second person that raised his hand after Hon Jibrin Aminu to second the motion for Hon. Yakubu Dogara to be the Speaker of the eightieth house.

When I stepped into that chamber I was not under any illusion as to my mission.

I knew exactly what I was there to do, knowing well where I come from. I come from Imo State and I had served under a pragmatic governor, a workaholic and result-oriented governor successfully, too, for four years. I know that the governor in particular and Imo people will not expect anything less from me there. So I hit the ground running from day one. What people see as challenges, I did not see them because you will agree with me that if you are going to play a role as important as raising up your hand to second the motion in support of someone who eventually became the speaker it means that I was part and parcel of the caucus that produced the speaker. It also means that I was not just appointed at the chamber there, so before the inauguration I keyed into the caucus that championed that Dogara has to be the speaker and Yusufu Sulaiman Lasun has to be the deputy speaker. I didn’t feel any disadvantage till now that one has become a voice in that chamber.

Okafor

That was what I promised the people of Okigwe South federal constituency, that I would be a strong voice in the House of Representatives. I know my background, coming from the private sector as a banker and working with a government that was always on the go as a Commissioner for Finance for four years. I leant under Governor Okorocha who didn’t lack on what to say and when and how to say it.

For me, what to say and when and how to say it wasn’t my problem.

On his pedigree

I will rather say what I was able to do for my people while I served in the state as commissioner. It got to a point that I was being referred to as one who gives transformer as kola. In other words, when I discovered that electricity was a big challenge across my area, I felt the need to provide them with electricity. The last time I checked I gave out about 67 transformers to quite a lot of communities that didn’t have electricity in Obowo and Ehime Mbano. We had to embark on full scale electricity project in those areas. Now they are enjoying light and are happy. We also were able to identify some indigent widows and built houses for them. We did more than 30 of those houses. In Obowo today you will see a 500 capacity pavilion I built for the people, police post and two vehicles for community policing. I also

attracted the biggest market in the state called ‘Malaysian market’ that is sited in Obowo. These were the things we were able to do when I was serving the state and the governor was magnanimous enough to allow those of us who were interested in taking development home to do so.

Now in the National Assembly, which is more of law-making, we leverage on our relationship with the agencies that we supervise to see what we can take home. A lot of that are in the pipeline.

On his development projects

I’m planning my first constituency briefing by next month across the local government areas so that I can now unfold other packages. However, you assess a legislator by the number of bills and motions he is able to contribute that would affect his constituents positively. I am in the health sector, chairing the health committee, we have plans to do quite a lot of things, not only in Okigwe South federal constituency but in other parts of the state and to see how we can assist the government of the state to upgrade certain health centres, like the Federal Medical Centre, Owerri, to a federal teaching hospital and have the current FMC relocate somewhere. We will have a federal teaching hospital as well as a federal medical centre in Imo. That will happen before the end of the 2017 budget

year.

We have also succeeded in getting NAFDCAC to Imo. NAFDAC is coming to Imo; government has approved a massive land for NAFDAC to build South-east regional office, warehouse and laboratory. The main office will be located somewhere opposite ISOPADEC office. I have pleaded with the governor to allow me take the laboratory to my federal constituency, and I think I have his nod for that. If one continues to be in the health committee, I’m thinking of getting another national hospital to Imo, like the national orthopaedic centre or national trauma centre, if the current relationship existing with the relevant agencies and bodies continue. We are also attracting primary health centres across the wards in my federal constituency. However, I’m thinking of spreading the project to the larger Imo State. So we will do that before the end of 2017. Primary health centres must be in place in the 305 wards in Imo State because anything that will promote the state under the governor I will do it.

I’m planning a huge medical outreach where experts in medicine from across the medical facilities in the country will move down to my federal constituency with equipment and drugs, starting from October 5 to December 5. These will attract officials of the Federal Ministry Health, National Health Insurance Scheme, and UNICEF to Okigwe South. I want my people to feel the impact of my representation and they will get treated of all their ailments. The medical team will perform open surgeries and the FMC, Owerri and Umuahia will be available as referral centres. All these will be at no cost to the people. It is completely a free outreach and will be the biggest in the history of Imo. UNTH, Enugu, will be sending over 2,000 mosquito treated nets, Emzor will supply drugs.

On the suspended medical director of the Federal Medical Centre, Owerri

When I was appointed the chairman of house committee on health last October, I realised that FMC, Owerri, was shut down for seven months. I had a meeting with the Minister of Health (Prof. Adewole) and he graciously gave me a lowdown on the problem. The federal government under the last administration set up a panel and the panel investigated the matter and did not find anything incriminating against the MD, Dr. (Mrs.) Angela Uwakwem. She was not culpable or guilty of any of the issues the workers accused her of. This is a woman who had spent about seven years improving infrastructure there and, suddenly, you don’t want her.

After several discussions with the minister, he came to Imo with me to assess the situation by himself and, finally, the idea of interim management team came up.

However, I support any option that will keep that place open as may be determined by the Minister of Health. But very soon, the minister will address the problem, as three options are being considered. It may be either the substantive MD is put back, or deployed elsewhere or something different. In solving the problem, the most important thing is the facility functioning for the optimum benefit of Imo people.