Are You See What I’M Saw?

By Chuks Iloegbunam 

"Are you see what I’m saw?" Chief Zebrudaya Okoroigwe Nwogbo, alias 4.30, often asked his co-actors this question in the New Masquerade, the soap opera that held millions, especially east of the Niger River, spellbound during the 1970s and 1980s. Each time he put that question, there was something astonishing or peculiar. Often that peculiar or astonishing “something” formed the bedrock upon which a specific offering of the episodic sitcom was developed.

 

*Buhari and Cameron 

In borrowing from Chief Zebrudaya’s lingo, to ask whether or not readers of this column are in awareness of certain things all too obvious to this columnist, the intention is simply to point to confounding and bizarre happenings that are plenteous in the entity today.

A few of these developments deserve a mention, and possible exploration, here. British Prime Minister David Cameron pronounced Nigeria “fantastically corrupt”. A leaked document showed that Minister of Information Lai Mohammed had transgressed the antiseptic integrity of the Change Administration to seek a loan in excess of N13 million from a parastatal under his Ministry, and for an international junket. The government, after months of insistence to the contrary, devalued the Naira. Or did it? The government, after a prolonged stretch of inchoation in the petroleum sector of the economy, inflicted an upward spiral of over a hundred percent in the pump price of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) or petrol.

All these happened at such a dizzying speed as to impel the weary and unwary to demand a stoppage of the world so they could hop off. All these happened, predictably, when the Steersman of the Ship of State, was blissfully abroad, attending yet another one of his innumerable conferences across the length and breadth of the globe. All these, predictably again, prompted reactions as numerous as they were conflicting.

It may be easiest to start from an astonishing development, one that incongruously escaped critical examination, despite its underlying ominous implications. CNN’s Christiane Amanpour cornered President Buhari in London, where he was busily attending the anti-corruption summit put together by the one who had cheekily pronounced his country “fantastically corrupt”, and prized from him an interview slightly in excess of six minutes.

As the short interview progressed, Ms Amanpour asked how the Nigerian government was killing corruption in order that corruption doesn’t kill the country. Buhari responded by discussing those he claimed had pocketed billions meant for the fight against terrorism. The interviewer’s follow-up was inevitable: 

Who Will Outlaw Advance Rent Payment?

By Dan Amor

In what appears to be one of the most salutary pronouncements by a functionary of the administration of the late President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua in 2009, the then Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mr. Michael Aondoakaa (SAN), challenged the Body of Attorney Generals of Nigeria, to initiate laws in their respective states to criminalise the demand for advance rent payments by landlords and landladies across the country. Aondoakaa who said this in a keynote address he presented at the opening of the Second Body of Attorney Generals Conference in Makurdi, Benue state, attributed the rising incidence of corruption in the country to the demand of between one and five year advance rent payment from tenants by greedy Nigerian landlords and landladies.

Similarly, the current Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Malam Muhammad Musa Bello, recently frowned at the high cost of accommodation in Abuja and promised to urgently address the ugly situation. Indeed, a situation in which a 2-bedroom flat, even on the outskirts of Abuja metropolis goes for at least N500,000 per annum and the tenant is expected to renew the rent at the same rate annually, is unacceptable. Where will he or she get the money from? If a man who has three or more children in school should pay N500,000 yearly as rent in addition to other variable costs, how much is his annual salary or income? Like Aondoakaa rightly pointed out, if in countries like Ghana, Gambia and Benin Republic, rents are paid on monthly basis, why should Nigeria be an exception?

Despite its inelegant implications such as corruption or outright stealing, harassment, psychological torture and such other vice crimes as murder and prostitution, this evil practice, which is the highest form of feudalism, is thriving in Nigeria because of the high degree of insensitivity of government towards the plight of the suffering masses. These landlords or landladies work in connivance with those who call themselves estate agents and some dubious lawyers to manipulate the law and hoodwink unsuspecting and hapless tenants using some local customary courts presided by local criminals who are not even lawyers. You would rent an apartment for, say N700,000 per annum probably with a loan secured from your organisation or through savings. At the end of the year, that is, when it expires and you don't have money to renew the rent immediately with another N700,000, you are given a quit notice in which you are expected to park out of the apartment within a stipulated period of one week (seven days). At the end of the seven day notice, thugs ostensibly from a court invade your home with a fake warrant to forcefully eject you.

Buhari And The Savaging Of The Poor

By Okey Ndibe

Before the 2015 presidential election, Candidate Muhammadu Buhari essentially advertised himself as a magician. Even though oil prices were tumbling, Mr. Buhari promised to pay N5,000 a month to unemployed youth, make the country more secure, fix the perennial electric power crisis, root out corruption, strengthen the naira against the dollar and reduce the price per litre of fuel.

*Buhari 

Once elected, Mr. Buhari began a serial retreat from his promises. Nigeria’s hapless youth have received no cash.  Boko Haram may have been weakened in the northeast, but heavily armed herdsmen have maimed and killed and ramped up Nigeria’s violence quotient. And – thanks to the administration’s hectoring tone and strong-arm tactics – the southeast and oil-rich Niger Delta have become highly volatile. Power outages are as bad as ever, and arguably worse.

The war against corruption has targeted some well-known persons, among them Senate President, Bukola Saraki, former National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki, and the spokesman of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Olisa Metuh. Even so, the war appears imperiled in several ways.

One is Mr. Buhari’s failure to devise a fresh, innovative approach to combating corruption. The cases currently in court are making plodding progress – and are likely to drag on. Given the sheer number of suspects out there, the lesson is that the prosecutorial route is not particularly promising.

Besides, as I suggested shortly after his inauguration, Mr. Buhari is mired in an ethical bind: As some of the financiers of his campaign are perceived as plunderers of public funds.

More troubling still is that the president has paid scant attention to ways of plugging the loopholes that permit public officials and their cohorts to loot funds. What we have, then, is a policy of patching a system that demands an overhaul.

Politics Of Fuel Subsidy

By Sunday John

ONCE  again, the issue of fuel subsidy has come to the crucible of socio-economic life of Nigerians. Politics of fuel subsidy withdrawal has been a recurring issue over the years, from the time of General Yakubu Gowon as head of state. No government has come without harassing and intimidating Nigerians with fuel pump price increase and/or complete removal of fuel subsidy, otherwise called deregulation. It appears to have become a pastime for our rulers especially when they want to make scapegoats for their corruption, failures and economic naivety.

All governance ineptitude by the political rulers are heaped on fuel subsidy. It is the reason for the country’s backwardness, abysmal infrastructure, debt burden, poverty, corruption, etc. That is the reason the populace is intermittently administered with some obsolete concoctions of the benefits of subsidy removal by every successive government. Buhari may not have engaged in this sophistry of the benefits of subsidy removal because of some want of oratory. Indeed, as long as fuel subsidy is concerned, Nigerians have gone through a lot of torture in the hands of various governments. We have been harassed, tormented and bamboozled.

 Protests against fuel pump price increase/subsidy removal have cost lives, wastage and destructions. The ruling class are, of course, not the victims. The victims are the commoners, on whom they unleash their mediocrity and sadism. Like the ancient Roman emperors, the governments of Nigeria revel in seeing their subjects fight with the beast of subsidy now and again in the amphitheater.

 It is entertainment for them to hear us cry, see us abandon our legitimate duties and spill to the streets in protest, and our children roam the streets because schools are shut. Otherwise, how can a president or the ruling class that say they understand our pains add to the same pains instead of ameliorating it? The government knows that petroleum products, especially the Premium Motor Spirit, PMS, is one thing that affects the lives of all Nigerians irrespective of their social status or age. All aspects of life is based on it, and that is why the people do not react happily to any tampering with its price. With a high currency exchange rate that has triggered inflation and put private businesses at risk, the removal of fuel subsidy at this time is nothing but rubbing salt in a putrefying sore.

Fuel Price Hike: Buhari Must Apologise

By Ochereome Nnanna

 PRESIDENT  Muhammadu Buhari owes us apologies for the latest hike from N86.50k to N145 of the official pump price for Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) announced on Thursday last week by his Deputy Minister of Petroleum, Dr. Emmanuel Kachikwu.

First, he must apologise to Nigerians, on behalf of himself, his political party, the All Progressives Congress, APC, his foremost apologist, Professor Tam David-West, Labour and the hired “civil society” groups who truncated the deregulation of the downstream sector of the petroleum industry in January 2012. Second, he must also apologise to his predecessor, ex-President Goodluck Jonathan, who lost his post-electoral “honeymoon” period early in 2012 when he stuck out his neck in an attempt to lay to rest, once and for all, the bogey of fuel scarcity and its attendant high cost and human suffering which have trailed the nation for nearly thirty years.

After maligning the Otuoke-born lecturer, he went back to implement a policy that Jonathan would have carried out four years ago if not for irresponsible and unpatriotic opposition. Whenever the deregulation of this sector is contemplated, people always say the timing is wrong without telling us when the timing will ever be right. Certainly, the timing for this steep hike is wrong. It comes so soon after the equally steep hike in the cost of electricity tariffs which the Federal Government through its Power, Works and Housing Minister, Babatunde Fashola, openly approves of.

It comes at a time when thousands of people are losing their jobs and most employers cannot pay the salaries of their workers because of the parlous economic situation brought about by low oil prices, the crash in the value of the naira and the inability of the Buhari administration to tackle them. To top it all, Labour is priming for a new national minimum wage of between N56,000 to N90,000. Now that the official price of petrol has been nearly doubled, who knows the amount that Labour will now ask for? If ever there was a right time for the deregulation of the downstream sector, the year 2012 was it. We had just emerged unscathed from the worldwide economic meltdown of 2008/2009. By 2012 our Brent crude was selling for $114.26 per barrel, a trend that was generally sustained until toward the end of 2014 when the tide of transitional political was in full swing.

Unlike now when economic activities are low, poverty rate is higher than ever and most investors have fled, there was money in the system then. The economy was even becoming increasingly “dollarised” as a result of oil-fed liquidity in the system. In fact, it was shortly after this that a review of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product terms showed that Nigeria had emerged as the largest economy in Africa and the continent’s number one investors’ destination. Nigeria could have weathered the shock of deregulation much more easily than now. But the opposition would have none of it. Labour unions went on strike.

Resolving The Herdsmen Menace

By Dennis Brown James

The Federal Government’s passive condem­nation of the killings and mayhem unleashed by Fulani herdsmen across the federation re­cently is not what is required to douse the ten­sion and apprehension in many quarters in the country today.

To say that this carnage has led to a severe disruption of our national economy is a mere understatement. Apart from the fact that many communities have been sacked, abandoned or now live in perpetual fear of imminent attacks, many farmlands have been obliterated with scores of farmers killed.

The Federal Government under the leader­ship of President Muhammadu Buhari should reach a consensus with all the warring parties on how to nip these mindless killings in the bud before it is too late to do so.

The pockets of reprisal attacks and counter attacks witnessed in various communities that were affected in these tensions are an indica­tion that this might snowball into national chaos that might leave Nigeria’s national fab­ric badly affected and threaten her corporate existence, to the consternation of many of us. The activities of the herdsmen may still bring about the previous bookmaker’s prophecies that Nigeria will disintegrate in 2015.

Goodbye Nigeria!

By Idowu Ohioze

Recent occurrences, many of which many Nigerians would identify with, have led me to reach an arguably inevitable conclusion: Nigeria is a country on an unarrestable decline.

*President Buhari 

You may or may not share my rather pessimistic opinion depending on your ethnic or political affiliation or religious persuasion since most Nigerians are easily given to assessing public policies and socio-political trends on destructively bias yardsticks namely –and in order of subjective preference - the ethnicity, religious or political origins of the principal protagonists.

My conclusion is the outcome of a deductive reasoning that is based on an analysis of the essentials that impede national progress or are known to have orchestrated the demise of known ancient empires and nation-states.

In the following short essays on a range of issues, I make, hopefully, a string of compelling arguments to support my hypothesis of a disappearing political construct.

The genie is out of the bottle. We just have to figure out how the demise of Nigeria will affect us as individuals

A Killing Field?

If you consider that the emergence of Boko Haram insurgency was sadly the failure of government at each level in Nigeria, you certainly should be alarmed that cattle rearers are wrecking havoc in parts of Nigeria unchallenged by the government.

Confrontations between landowners and heavily armed nomadic cattle rearers have resulted in numerous deaths in Benue, Enugu and other parts of Nigeria but the closest to a government response has been a tepid statement by Lai Mohammed, the federal minister of information.

Rumour of the presence, at the National Assembly, of a draft grazing bill with equally rumoured provisions for statutorily delineated grazing lands within states, has so far been denied by some legislators but the question of Nigerians’ age-long vulnerability within its borders has been brought to the forefront of the debate by the wanton destruction of lives and properties by individuals who are, disturbingly, above the law.

Some state governors have vowed to resist cattle rearers within their territories. In fact, in the south-east, a governor has hinted at resuscitating and re-arming the dreaded Bakassi boys in defence of the citizens of his state against terrorizing cattle herders. As it is commonly the level to which such matters of dire consequences degenerate to in Nigeria, some ethnicists – among them the influential Sultan of Sokoto and Senator Godswill Akpabio – promptly disclaim the erring cattle rearers as Nigerian Fulanis but foreigners from bordering countries.

Cost Reflective Tariff: New Framework For Electricity Supply, Distribution And Pricing Required In NESI

By Idowu Oyebanjo

The issues surrounding cost reflective tariffs in NESI has remained unresolved even though it seemed all stakeholders acknowledged it but did nothing about coming together to deal with the issue which has kept the reform process in limbo since February 2016! This is about to change.

The two most important stakeholders in the business of electricity supply in Nigeria are the "demons" - those who believe that having a stable electricity situation in Nigeria will mean a huge loss of cash flow for them and their families and the customers who will actually pay the monies defined by any "cost reflective tariff", short-changed without meters but made impoverished by the corruption based estimated billing system which holds way today in NESI. The demons may include "Generator" importers, marketers, repair technicians and those involved in businesses connected with the scarcely available gas and oil (fuel for most power generating plants) such as marketers of petroleum products and the vandals who destroy gas pipelines to earn income from those who carry out repair works or those who gain political scores therefrom. These two groups of stakeholders have been grossly and arrogantly neglected when decisions are made for them or because of them. 

This is not to say there are no other important stakeholders like the government, CBN, NERC, Ministry of Power, consumer advocacy groups, ANED, NBET, DISCOs, GENCOs, TCN, foreign investors, local Banks, to mention but a few. The senate has thrown its weight behind the consumers of electricity declaring to put a stop to the recurring spate of bail out for which we predicted will become the lot of the ill-conceived, wrongly timed electricity market conjectured by some unqualified Nigerians who mediated the reform process. But there is always a time to make a U-turn in life when one is confirmed to be headed in the wrong direction. It is a question how far wrong is one prepared to go before doing the needful. In this regard, it is pertinent to examine the just released framework for petroleum products supply, distribution and pricing in May 2016 by the Federal Ministry of Petroleum Resources.

Fix the Fuel Supply Problem; Don’t Dump It On Nigerians

By Moses E. Ochonu

Now that one has had time to digest the announcement of a massive increase in petrol price, one should enter a few comments. The astronomical hike has nothing to do with the “cost of production” argument we have become accustomed to hearing. There is some cost involved in refining crude oil abroad and transporting it to Nigeria, but with crude being so cheap, the previous price of 86 naira a litre had already accounted for all the cost, give or take a few naira.

With the price of crude inching up slightly in the last few weeks, it should add no more than a few nairas to the price if indeed we want to let market fluctuations modulate the pump price. This increase has everything to do with government’s last ditch effort to end the scarcity, which is caused by the inability of fuel importers to secure foreign exchange, a problem that was in turn caused by the government’s rigid restrictions on access to foreign exchange.

It was unrealistic to expect fuel importers without access to Forex at the official rate to continue to import fuel with Forex sourced from the parallel market ($1=N320) and then sell the same fuel at N86. They would have lost money. The Forex policy was a disincentive to fuel importation business and many importers simply stopped importing, especially since the government announced that it would no longer pay subsidy; subsidy being the difference between the total cost of importing fuel plus a small profit margin and the pump price. Now, with the deregulated regime, fuel importers can source Forex from the parallel market, import fuel, and sell at a price that would allow them to recoup their cost and make a small margin.

In other words, the government wittingly or unwittingly created a problem, which caused many fuel importers to quit the business, and the same government is now deregulating the sector fully so that it does not have to (1) pay subsidy, and (2) subsidise Forex for fuel importers. The government also desperately wants to end the fuel scarcity, which has eroded its political goodwill. In plain language, the government wants to kill three birds with one stone.

Another appropriate proverbial metaphor is that the government wants to eat its cake and have it too. It wants to subsidise neither Forex nor the difference between the cost of fuel importation and the pump price, but at the same time it wants fuel to become widely available. The government wants to transfer the burden of solving a fuel scarcity problem caused by its Forex restriction policy to Nigerians. The government is throwing Nigerians to the jaws of fuel marketers in the hope that, as long as fuel becomes widely available through improved supply, Nigerians will forgive the insensitivity of the policy, especially since this will also mean the end of the fraudulent subsidy regime that Nigerians universally despise.

Genocidal Actions By Successive Nigerian Governments

By Mike Ozekhome

Genocide In The Creeks

We continue today, government-driven acts of genocide across Nigeria, over the years.

The Setting
It was a hot afternoon at the Palace in Oporoza, Gbaramatu Kingdom, Delta State. Dateline: May 14, 2009. The kingdom is of Ijaw (Izon) nation that contributes nearly 70 per cent to the nation’s economy. It is also the 4th largest ethnic group in Nigeria, after the Hausas/Fulanis, Igbos and Yorubas, spread across Bayelsa (a whole state), Rivers, Edo, Delta, Ondo and Cross River states. The Oporoza community was in a festive mood, for the Amaseikumor festival, with influx of hundreds of guests into the community, to partake of the presentation of the staff of office to the king, the Pere of Gbaramatu Kingdom, HRM, Ogie III. It also marked his one year anniversary on the throne. It was about the same time that nearby city of Warri was to be inspected by FIFA delegates, towards considering Nigeria’s hosting of the 2009, under 17 World Cup. Umaru Yar’Adua was president. Air Marshall Paul Dike was Chief of Defence Staff.

Suddenly, three low flying helicopters emerged from the serene skies. The people gawked, awed, clapped, salivated, believing erroneously the helicopters bore dignitaries to add to the glamour, razzmatazz and panache of the royal ceremony. But they were wrong, dead wrong. The helicopters were actually harbingers of death; deadly gunboats, deployed by the Joint Task Force (as ordered by then President Umar Yar’Adua), to mow down Gabaramatu Kingdom. The kingdom came under a hale of bombs, the Palace inclusive. Two naval warships identified as “NNS Obula” and “NNS Nwanba”, 14 gunboats and four Air Force helicopter gunships completed the awesome armada of the JTF codenamed “Operation Restore Hope.” About 3, 000 troops were involved in this genocidal warfare that targeted the Ijaw enclave that housed the dreaded “Camp 5” and “Iroko Camp.”

Ironically, one of the villages destroyed, Oporoza, had hosted the crew who made the movie, “Sweet crude.” But the crude was now sour.

 Genesis Of The Crisis
The Niger Delta is buried in the creeks. Fragile, swampy and neglected by successive governments after the discovery of oil at Oloibiri in 1956, the people felt short changed. Where they asked for fish, they were given stones. When they asked for bread, they were given bullets. Like in the ancient Mariner, they have “water, water everywhere, but none fit enough to drink.” They defecate in still, spirogyra-infested ponds from which they also drink. The perennial gas flaring leaves cancerous skins and diseases. Aquatic and agrarian life is completely destroyed. The black gold, rather than be a blessing, has thus become a curse. There are no roads, hospitals, schools, infrastructure. No nothing! The people live in pains, pangs, sweat, blood, exploitation and crude marginalization.

Buhari And The Biafra Question

By Wale Sokunbi
President Muhammadu Buhari has of late been speaking up on the renewed agitation for the realization of Biafra by our brothers and sisters in the eastern part of the country. The president, who had for some time been reticent on the troubling topic and had earlier said that the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Mr. Nnamdi Kanu, would not be released because he could jump bail, has become more eloquent on this topic of late.

*Buhari

During a visit to the palace of the Emir of Katsina, in his home state of Katsina on Monday, Buhari used the agitation for the independent state of Biafra as a peg to make pronouncements on the indivisibility of Nigeria. 

Toeing the path of all other past presidents of the country, he was unequivocal on the need to retain the country as one indivisible entity. As many notable Nigerians have said before him, he also affirmed that the continuing existence of Nigeria as one country is not negotiable. He explained that Nigeria is a strong and united country because some people laid down their lives for it, but some people who were not born during the civil war are agitating for the division of the country.

He, however, took his convictions on the subject a bit further with his strong affirmation that “there will be no Biafra” under his government.

He was also reported in many organs of the mass media to have vowed to use all the resources at his disposal to crush any agitation for the division of Nigeria. According to the president, the country fought a civil war which claimed the lives of over two million people in order to be united and it would be better for the entire country to commit mass suicide than to allow the campaign for Biafra to succeed.  As he put it: “For Nigeria to divide now, it is better for all of us to jump into the sea and get drowned.”

The frustration of President Buhari with the many winds blowing against Nigeria’s continued existence as one country is understandable. Even the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), through Mr. Osondu Okwaraeke who was identified as the Central Director of the Biafran Red Cross, also on Monday in Onitsha, listed the attacks of herdsmen on parts of Southern Nigeria, the Boko Haram attacks in the North East, the Niger Delta militants’ attacks on oil installations and the agitation for Biafra, as signs that Nigeria is on the verge of a break up.

Herdsmen Of Terror

By Lewis Obi  

On 2nd October 2015, I offered it as my opinion on this page that the provocative activities of Fulani herdsmen are likely to lead to war which “when it begins, will be like all wars – senseless, destructive and lamentable. No one knows when and where it will begin, but it will begin as a convulsive reprisal for a massacre by Fulani herdsmen, a phenomenon that has now assumed all but a common occur­rence in Nigeria.’

“The scale and frequency of massa­cres by Fulani herdsmen without a single prosecution is the clearest evidence of what is known as impunity, and impunity is the reason the coming war is inescap­able.”

That was before the herdsmen had kid­napped and murdered the traditional rul­er of Ubulu-Ukwu in Delta State. That was before the herdsmen conducted their full-scale terrorist invasion of Agatu land in Benue State practically paralyzing and occupying eight local governments in the state and killing at least 500 per­sons and burning scores of towns and villages. That was before the Ugwuneshi incident in Enugu State where a dis­tressed community being harassed by the herdsmen was gathering to discuss its predicament. Suddenly Nigerian Army trucks arrived and, as the herdsmen cheered, the army bun­dled 76 men into their trucks and on to the Umuahia Prison. Enugu State Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi then went to Umuahia, trying to secure the freedom of the humiliated men, and dropped a tear or two. But that was just the beginning of his anguish. In Ugwuneshi he was dealing with 76 men unjustly imprisoned. He broke down last week when he had to see recovered dead bodies of men slaugh­tered by the same Fulani herdsmen at Ukpabi Nimbo, Uzo-Uwani.

The rampaging herdsmen had at­tacked and burned seven villages – Nimbo Ngwoko, Ugwuijoro, Ekwuru, Ebor, Enugu Nimbo, Umuome, and Ugwuachara.

The most frightening part of the attack on Nimbo was the high level discipline and military precision of its execution. The Enugu State Govern­ment had been informed of the im­pending attack and the governor had promptly convened the state’s secu­rity council meeting which included every arm of the security agencies – the Enugu Garrison Command 82nd Division of the Nigerian Army, the Commissioner of Police, the Depart­ment of |State Security, and Prison officials. Each arm assured the gov­ernor that it would do everything to pre-empt the attack. The herdsmen apparently operate at a much higher level and, so, the best laid plans of the governor and the state’s security agencies were thwarted by Fulani herdsmen. That sense of impotence and helplessness necessitated the gover­nor’s recourse to and the re-mobilization of the state’s indigenous neighborhood watch. With the unanimous approval of the traditional rulers and the association of town unions, Governor Ugwuanyi had to cough out N100 million to begin the process of activating the vigilante net­work.

The scariest part of the Nimbo disaster was the reaction of the 19 governors of Northern Nigeria who flat out denied the fact known to all that Fulani herdsmen had conducted the massacre. Indeed, in a show of righteous indignation, they warned Nigerians to stop ‘insulting’ Fu­lani herdsmen.

How To Repel Zika-Infected Mosquitoes

Zika has been known to exist since 1947, but was long considered to be a minor disease that causes only mild illness. Late last year, Zika became linked to a dramatic increase in Brazil of microcephaly, a birth defect in which babies are born with abnormally small heads.

The World Health Organization has already deemed Zika virus to be an international public health emergency and has said that the disease may cause a severe public health crisis.

Here in America, the Zika virus has taken many states by storm. The virus is transmitted to people primarily through the bite of an infected Aedes species mosquito (A. aegypti and A. albopictus). These are the same mosquitoes that spread dengue and chikungunya viruses. These mosquitoes typically lay eggs in and near standing water in things like buckets, bowls, animal dishes, flower pots and vases.

Mosquitoes prefer to bite people, and live indoors and outdoors near people. They are aggressive daytime biters, but they can also bite at night. Mosquitoes become infected when they feed on a person already infected with the virus. Infected mosquitoes can then spread the virus to other people through bites. To help control mosquitos from biting, you’re going to need protection. Knowing what mosquito repellents to use is the best defense.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends people use insect repellents that contain picaridin, DEET, oil of lemon eucalyptus (OLE) or IR3535.

The agency also advises that pregnant women, lactating mothers and infants aged 2 months old and above may safely use products that have DEET, picaridin and IR3535. This is provided that users apply the products strictly as directed on the label.

Effective Mosquito Repellents
DEET –  The compound was found not toxic to mammals, and in the subsequent use of DEET-based repellents on humans, products were found to be effective with no effects on pregnant mothers or babies.

Petrol: N145 Per Litre For Who?

By Ikeddy ISIGUZO
The security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government – Section 14 (2b) of the 1999 Constitution
• WHY is it always easy for us to choose sentiment over logic? 
• Why would anyone celebrate “deregulation of price of petrol?”
• What are the bases of the celebrations? 

(pix:SR)

• How are MARKET FORCES supposed to flow through fuel at N145 per litre eventually downwards? 
• Why do we often situate our arguments by referring to price of fuel abroad?
• Where is the security and welfare of Nigerians in this decision?
• Has the primary purpose of government changed?
• Who changed it?
• What replaced it?

Some basic FACTS:
• Fuel is still imported.
• Price of fuel is based on US Dollars (or Chinese Yuan Renminbi)
• If the Naira falls against the US Dollar (or Chinese Yuan Renminbi), the price of fuel will not be N145 per litre
• If the Naira gains against the US Dollar (or Chinese Yuan Renminbi) there are no guarantees that the price would go below N145 per litre
• There is scarcity of foreign exchange meaning that N145 per litre will not work
• “Everybody can bring in petrol” is not true, regulatory strictures are plenteous
• Our porous borders mean that the products would end up other countries willing to pay more than N145 per litre 
• Our refineries never work at any reasonable capacity
• An increase in the price of fuel doubles prices of most goods and services, food, transportation
• Inflation will spiral

The Avengers And A Nation’s Injustice

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

Despite the nation’s attempts to remain oblivious of being a pastiche of unresolved contradictions, it is often confronted with the stark reminders that it cannot keep forging ahead until it decisively launches itself on the path of enduring stability.  Such cohesion would continue to elude the nation in so far as tepid efforts are only made to identify what gnaws at its well-being at those moments that there are threats to the interests of those who consider the country as their exclusive patrimony. 

If the victims of Fulani’s antediluvian practices of herding livestock had not demonstrated a clear resolve to shake off their ogre, a disposition vitalised by national outrage, we would not spare a thought for those whose farmlands and other means of livelihood are being decimated by the business interests of others. But as has been shown in the herdsmen-farmers’ crisis and other crises in the past, the  state’s intervention rather provokes  the aggrieved citizens’ animus against it. The citizens are reminded of the state’s smug indisposition to appropriately provide the right answers to the questions they have raised about what should be done to guarantee their existence as eligible stakeholders in the polity. When this is the situation, aggrieved citizens feel more alienated and driven to resorting to self-help.

It is the same way that the state has responded to the question of socio-economic injustice in the Niger Delta. Whenever the indigenes of the  region lament  that their major means of livelihood, farming and fishing,  have been destroyed by oil pollution , a situation aggravated by a dearth of commensurate compensation,  the rest of the citizens who largely benefit from the resources of the region often dismiss them as a people who are never appreciative of what the state has done for them. Thus if the citizens now resort to self-help, the state does not see the need to consider the merit of their case in the first place. Its response brims with hubris and hauteur as expressed in the immediate deployment of its might to squelch any protest.

To be sure, while the attacks on oil facilities in the Niger Delta have drawn attention to the problems of the area, continuing to take up arms against the state is not the best strategy by the indigenes of the region. Such a strategy benefits only a very negligible number of people who are invited by the state to negotiate some selfish terms of peace. Such deals have transformed those previously marooned in the creeks as agitators into billionaires. They now possess the financial sinews to bulldoze their way into public offices or as king makers in the political arena,  and to set up  universities  and other big businesses.  It is because such a strategy of selective state beneficence does not improve the lot of the majority of the people that there is a ceaseless replication of the tactic of threatening oil production in the Niger Delta.

We Shall Resist This Increase – Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC)

The unilateral increase in prices of petroleum products today by government represents the height of insensitivity and impunity and shall be resisted by the Nigeria Labour Congress and its civil society allies.

With the imposition on the citizenry of criminal and unjustifiable electricity tariff and resultant darkness and other economic challenges brought on by the devaluation of the Naira and spiraling inflation, the least one had expected at this point in time was another policy measure that would further make life more miserable for the ordinary Nigerian

The latest increase is the most audacious and cruel in the history of product price increase as It represents not only about 80 per cent increase but it is tied to the black market exchange rate.

Further more, the process through which government arrived at this is both illogical and illegal as the board of the PPPRA is not duly constituted. In our previous statements and communiques, we had stressed the need for reconstituting the boards of NNPC and PPPRA and wean both away from the overbearing influence of the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources who has assumed the role of a Sole Administrator.

Petrol Price Increment: FG Insensitive To Nigerians’ Plight – Fayose

PRESS RELEASE 

Ekiti State Governor, Mr Ayodele Fayose, has condemned the increment from N86.50 to N145 of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) otherwise known as petrol, describing it as insensitive and demonstration of the level of hatred the President Mohammadu Buhari led All Progressives Congress (APC) government has for Nigerians.

*Gov Ayo Fayose 

The governor, who said the over 70 per cent increment was another vindication of his predictions on what to expect in 2016, added that it was now clear that the scarcity of petrol being experienced in the last three months was deliberately orchestrated by the federal government to pave way for the already conceived increment.

According to his Special Assistant on Public Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka, Governor Fayose said “Nigerians are now left at the mercy of political liars who took over power by deception and are governing by deceit.”

He said he was waiting for the reaction of those who took to the streets to protest when fuel subsidy was removed by the Dr Goodluck Jonathan administration in 2012, urging labour unions in the country to stand by their members always, not minding the political party in government.

He said: “When they were seeking for votes from Nigerians, they promised to reduce petrol pump price to from N87 to N45 per litre, they promised to create three million jobs per year, they said $1 will be equal to N1 and above all, they promised to pay unemployed youths N5, 000 stipend and provide one meal a day to pupils nationwide.

“Instead of fulfilling their promises, they have increased petrol pump price to N145 per litre, increased electricity tariffs, retrenched thousands of workers and imposed untold hardships on Nigerians.

“As they did in 2012, if labour leaders do not also stand up for the people at this time, posterity will not forgive them.”

Fuel Price Hike: Few Preliminary Thoughts

By Moses Ochonu

The astronomical hike in the price of petrol announced in Nigeria yesterday has nothing to do with the "cost of production" argument we have become accustomed to hearing. Yes, there is some cost involved in refining the crude abroad and transporting it to Nigeria, but with crude being so cheap, the previous price of 86 Naira a liter had already accounted for all the cost, give and take a few naira.

With the price of crude inching up slightly in the last few weeks, it should add no more than a few naira to the price if indeed we want to let market fluctuations modulate the pump price. This increase has everything to do with government's last ditch effort to end the scarcity, which is caused by the inability of fuel importers to secure foreign exchange, a problem which was in turn caused by the government's rigid restrictions on access to forex.

It was unrealistic to expect fuel importers without access to forex at the official rate to continue to import fuel with forex sourced from the parallel market ($1=N320) and then sell the same fuel at N86. They would have lost money. It was a disincentive to fuel importation business and many importers simply stopped importing, especially since the government announced sometime in February or March that it would no longer pay subsidy, i.e the difference between the total cost of importing fuel plus a small profit margin and the pump price. Now, with the deregulated regime, fuel importers can source forex from the parallel market, import fuel, and sell at a price that would allow them to recoup their cost and make a small margin.

In other words, the government created a problem of restricting forex, which caused many fuel importers to quit the business, and the same government is now deregulating the sector fully so that it does not have to

(1)           pay subsidy, and

(2)         subsidize forex for fuel importers.

Buhari: Who Is Sabotaging The Sheriff?

By Abiodun Komolafe

Bonnie Honig, political theorist and author of 'Emergency Politics: Paradox, Law, Democracy' wrote: "Democracies must resist emergency's pull to focus on life's necessities (food, security, and bare essentials)" as they "tend to privatize and isolate citizens rather than bring us together on behalf of hopeful futures."  Emphasizing the connections between contemporary food politics and the infrastructure of consumption, among others, Honig argued that though  "good citizens with aspirational ideals"   are needed to make good politics, infusion of citizens with idealism is also a product of good politics.

*Buhari 

Nigeria's 2016 budget impasse, which has not only left the political actors in mirthful mistrust of one another but has also reduced the electorate to mere spectators, watching in utter bewilderment, refers!

All things considered, our major priority beyond the billions of naira  approved for various portions of the budget is how the contents of this working document will in the end be utilized in a way as to  mitigate the sufferings of a vast majority of Nigerians who had, with the commencement  of this administration, expected programme redirection and policy implementation that would vigorously improve  their  standard of living.  As things stand, Nigerians are no longer interested in moonlight  tales on the  impunity that took the better part of our immediate past or the flourish of trumpets that heralded Muhammadu Buhari into office as president. After all, Nigerians were not unconscious  of what the future under the now-expired Goodluck Jonathan administration possibly portended before they decided to speak with their thumbs a year ago.

Archbishop Adewale Martins beautifully summed up the mood of the moment when he noted: “There is too much despondency, poverty and suffering in the land, and if care is not taken to remedy the situation, the people will one day stand up and revolt because their expectations from the government have  not been met."  Needless to repeat that Nigeria currently suffers from dwindling resources in the face of unshrinking responsibilities,   a huge corruption scandal and  an opportunistically overstretched  texture of Nigeria's politics. Gold diggers  and fortune seekers are at work and a resource-rich nation like Nigeria is  now an island of violence in a sea of poverty and squalor.  Civil servants are frustratingly panting  under the pangs of unpaid salaries and power  has become so epileptic that, at  a point in our recent history, generation  reportedly accessed Ground Zero. No thanks to a national crisis orchestrated by Jonathan's  inability to picture into the future!