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!

Nigerians:Docile Or Resilient?

By Emma Jimo

Nigeria is possibly the country with the greatest appellations and accolades in the world. Nigeria is called the giant of Africa, the world’s most populous Black nation, the nation with the highest number of malaria victims , etc. What about Nigerians? Some people have their own way of describing certain other persons. One of the most recent ones I have heard is the expression that ‘Nigerians are docile’!

(pix: abusidiqu)

 I think this is highly debatable, not to say annoyingly nauseating. An expression of this magnitude of indictment has its root in the perception that Nigerians remain calm often in the face of clear case of misrule  or uncomfortable policy or some other unprintable happenings. Against this backdrop, it pays to peep into semantics and epistemology. Semantically, to be docile is to be ‘quiet, not aggressive and easily controlled’. This is certainly helpful to arrive at my own viewpoint that Nigerians are resilient father than docile.

A writer Thomas Carlyle defines  genius as the infinite capacity for taking pains; that is, limitless ability for perseverance and capacity for endurance. I think seriously that tolerance, seemingly limitless capacity of Nigerians to endure pains and yet remaining hopeful against all clear signs of lack of hope in sight, all things being (un)equal are marks of ingenuity rather than docility. Since it is the relationship between the governed and the government that generated the assertion about docility, a politics – based example should not be out of place or off-tune here.

Since Nigerian political independence in 1960, governance or rulership has oscillated between military and civil rules sharing almost equal number of years until 1999 when a 16–year-at-a-stretch civil rule began. In Nigeria’s political history, no government, whether loved or hated, military or civil, imposed or voted legitimately has spent more than nine  years,  being also the maximum spent by the General Yakubu Gowon-led administration, by far the most economically comfortable, though arguably.

At least, the civil servants who got Udoji award would think about economic buoyancy even if academics would consider the same event as an (un)economically misdirected prodigality. Anyone who has got his ears close to the political realm should have heard, seen or read how in spite of nationally-acclaimed dribbling skills of a military ruler was fought to a stands till by a combined civil forces ofthe then very virile Nigerian Labour Congress and the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) with patriotic collaboration of the press, including the defunct clandestine and nocturnal Kudirat Radio, among others.

Corruption In Nigeria: Transparency International Replies British PM

Transparency International responds to Cameron comments regarding Nigeria, Afghanistan and UK Summit 

British PM Cameron and President Buhari 

Responding to the recent comments by David Cameron [in which he described Nigeria as a "fantastically corrupt" country], Cobus de Swardt, Managing Director of Transparency International said:

“There is no doubt that historically, Nigeria and Afghanistan have had very high levels of corruption, and that continues to this day.  But the leaders of those countries have sent strong signals that they want things to change, and the London Anti-Corruption Summit creates an opportunity for all the countries present to sign up to a new era.  This affects the UK as much as other countries: we should not forget that by providing a safe haven for corrupt assets, the UK and its Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies are a big part of the world’s corruption problem.”

Press contact(s):

Chris Sanders 
T: +49 30 34 38 20 666 
E: press@transparency.org

Watch the British PM make his remarks about Nigeria 

Meanwhile, President Muhammadu Buhari, has said that he was "deeply shocked and embarrassed" by Mr. Cameron's remarks. In Statement issued in Abuja and signed by presidential spokesman, Garba Shehu, Buhari said Cameron's statement “is certainly not reflective of the good work that the president is doing. The eyes of the world are on what is happening here.

“The Prime Minister must be looking at an old snapshot of Nigeria. Things are changing with corruption and everything else.
“That, we believe is the reason they chose him as a keynote speaker at the pre-summit conference.”

Since coming into office, the Buhari regime has arrested and arraigned several high-ranking members of the opposition party, the PDP, in a high-profile anti-corruption campaign that has been widely applauded. 

Some observers, however, think the anti-graft effort has been more successful in the media than in courtrooms. Although, virtually all the accused persons have been tried and sentenced on the pages of the newspapers, not a single one has been subjected to a successful trial in an open court.  

Fingers have also been pointed at several top members of the ruling party who have been accused of large-scale corruption, some of which are serving in Buhari's government. None of the has been invited by the relevant agencies or arraigned in court to establish their innocence. This had led many critics to conclude that the anti-corruption war may just be another political strategy for demarketing the opposition to the the advantage of the ruling APC in future elections.  

Too Much Tolerance For Child Rapists

By Olubusola Ajibola

The other day, I watched an interview granted a four-year-old rape survivor. Narrating how ‘Uncle Elias’, her school proprietor continuously defiled her, the girl said: “He wide (sic) my leg, cover my mouth, tell me to shut up….he will lap me, sit down on the chair and be doing me.” As a result, her mother confirms she suffers grave injuries around her private part. These past few years, I have experienced serious disturbance over alarming reports of cases of rape and child defilements. But our laid-back approach in handling the cases dazes me more. I don’t regard cases of child defilement as rape. I believe it is worse. An adult can expressly deny consent. An adult can put up a fight, and might succeed in escaping. But a child is helpless. A child does not understand consent, cannot give, or deny it.

As a people, how have we been able to condone this evildoing? Could it be that we are more tolerant of child-rapists? We adopt religion and culture as modes of validating the defilement of the girl-child. We ignore their silent screams. Why do we protect these monsters in our space? Why is it impossible to end such occurrence? Why can we not make those guilty of these crimes ‘pay severely’?

Marta Pais, a United Nations envoy in an interview granted in The Guardian on March 20, 2016, puts the statistics of Nigerian children who experience different forms of sexual abuse at 25%. That figure should be higher, given the numbers of cases that go unreported. In 2015, the Executive Director of Project Alert, a Non-Governmental Organisation based in Lagos insisted that 70% of cases of rape reported have children between the ages of 0-months to 17 years as victims. A glimpse at few news headlines between last December and now corroborates these statistics.

Late December 2015, the internet awash with a video posted by the Dorothy Njemarze Foundation of a three-year-old recounting how her 30-year old uncle defiled her.  In 2015, a UNICEF report states that the number of Child Brides in Africa will rise to 310 million in the next 35 years. Many of those girls, the report concludes, are in Nigeria.

Under Section 2-4 of the Sexual Offence Bill, the penalty for defiling a child between the ages of 0-month and 18 years is life imprisonment.  Under section 31(1) and (2) of the Child’s Right Act, the punishment for defiling and raping a child is life imprisonment. These laws are even yet to be fully domesticated in all the 36 states of the country. There are several other international treaties to which Nigeria is a signatory, yet at the point of implementation, the laws are reduced to fantasies. Why?

Is South East Still In PDP?

Oguwike Nwachuku

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), once a political behemoth that loomed large in Nigeria which boasted as the largest party in Africa – but now in the opposition – is at it again.
It is working to recover from what hit it in last year’s presidential election when, surprisingly, it succumbed to the All Progressives Congress (APC), which is now in the national leadership saddle, basking in the euphoria of change.
Last week, it released its new zoning arrangement ahead of the 2019 presidential election which its leaders have bragged they will win with ease.

It appears the PDP is yet to learn from its mistakes and from its new zoning formula, another fresh seed of crisis has been deliberately sowed or about to be sowed. And that is the thrust of my argument today.

Those who analysed the exchanges between Governor Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti State and a chieftain of the PDP, Olabode George, on Politics Today on Channels Television last week will easily conclude that the PDP is still far from being cured of the disease that befell it in the build up to the 2015 general election.
The disease that afflicted the PDP in the past? Selfishness. Greed (Avarice). Inordinate ambition. Hatred. Ethnic and tribal bigotry. Godfatherism. Politics of imposition.
These and others were the problems the APC saw as a window of opportunity and leveraged on to sell the dummy of change to Nigerians.

It is said that a man who does not know when rain started to drench him may not know when it will stop.
Most PDP watchers are looking forward to the so-called zoning arrangement and by extension, the party’s ward, council and state congresses to see if what the leaders are saying about their preparedness to return to power is real or a fluke.
Feelers from across the nation on its recent congresses are hardly encouraging. The stories we hear are not different from the ones we used to hear before which are reminiscent of the characters that most PDP leaders exhibit during election.

Enugu Killings: Matters Arising

By Ikechukwu Amaechi

There seems to be some quiet in the South East after the national uproar that greeted the massacring of over 50 indigenes of Ukpabi Nimbo community in Uzo-Uwani Local Government Area of Enugu State by Fulani herdsmen.
A lot of steps in the right direction also seem to have been taken since then.

*President Buhari and Gov Ugwuanyi

Enugu State Governor, Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, who was summoned to Abuja by President Muhammadu Buhari, has since returned to address the highly traumatised people, indicting the security agencies for ignoring security report that an attack on the community was imminent.

He has constituted a judicial commission of inquiry “to investigate the immediate and remote causes of all the violent occurrences in the state associated with Fulani herdsmen and recommend appropriate measures that will be put in place to prevent future occurrence.”
Traditional rulers and town union leaders from over 400 communities also met with Ugwuanyi and resolved to reactivate vigilante groups in all communities.

To underscore the importance of this initiative, Ugwuanyi pledged to provide an initial seed money of N100 million to support the security efforts.

The meeting urged him to prevail on the state House of Assembly to amend the law establishing vigilante groups to strengthen them and possibly enable them bear arms, while the communities were mandated to pay security levies as counterpart funding.

But there are also some missteps.

Matters Arising From Herdsmen’s Attack In Enugu

By Samson Ezea  

The recent fatal herdsmen’s attacks on the Nimbo community in Uzo-Uwani Council Area of Enugu State has once more brought to the fore the urgent need for a permanent solution to the recurring menace of herdsmen/host communities clashes across the country. Obviously, the clashes have assumed a more sinister dimension in recent times. Not helping matters in forestalling, precluding or quelling these clashes are the various security agencies that have always appeared unprepared, incapacitated or compromised in dealing with the situation as appropriate.

Unlike some attacks across the country where security agencies were taken unawares, that of Nimbo calls for introspection, investigation, punitive measures, and outright overhauling of the security agencies in the State for better performance. There is no doubt that the attack has raised more questions than answers, following the events that preceded the attack, explanations of the Enugu State governor, Chief Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi and the roles of the security chiefs in the saga.

While governor Ugwuanyi’s efforts and quick intervention as the Chief Security Officer of the State to prevent the attack is quite commendable, the role of the security chiefs in the saga is questionable, conspiratorial, shocking, and disturbing. Is it not obvious that if governor Ugwuanyi had not summoned the emergency security meeting and indigenes of Nimbo got hint of the impending attack and moved out, the killings would have been more disastrous? Quite surprising is the fact that none of the state security chiefs has refuted or countered governor Ugwuanyi’s explanations since then. There is every need for them to quickly explain to Nigerians why they decided to act otherwise after the meeting with the governor prior to the attack. This is despite the fact that the governor provided them with the intelligence report and other logistics required of them to carry out their duties. The State security chiefs’ studied silence signifies their admittance of failure to carry out their constitutional responsibilities of securing lives and property.

Fulani Herdsmen: Our Partners Our Enemies?

By Mike O. Akpati
The loud silence over the activities of the Fulani herdsmen has reached high heavens now. Tears are flowing from all ends and the heartless herdsmen I heard were boasting the other day that nobody can dare them as they have absolute right to tread and trample on our soil, destroy our crops planted with hard earned loans or direct labour and we can do nothing.

Today, the only unifying theme from all corners of the country is the needless cry for the loss of a father, mother, brother, sister, nice, nephew friends’ well-wishers. In some cases children have been rendered orphans and homeless in a twinkle of an eye.

The other day, I thought aloud about the whole menace and was prompted to ask one question. Who is that successful business man who in his quest to increase his profit goes ahead to rob his customer of his wealth then kill him, yet expects that the victim’s relations would patronize him?

Ohaneze Ndigbo captured it vividly when they said:

“… Our people were killed for cows;
…We are not at war yet they treat us like this in our own country, and our own land!

“… It also baffles us that the herdsmen are allowed to bear prohibited sophisticated firearms, and are NEVER arrested, while for other Nigerians it is against the law….

‘‘…It is high time people are encouraged to defend themselves, ‘first’ before placing reliance on any other person; and should articulate themselves to wade –off any invader in future;

“… That we cannot morn our kits and kin, and the hostility against us in our land by the continuous patronage of our assailants; hence ALL FAMILIES IN IGBO LAND SHOULD DE-LIST BEAF FROM THEIR MENU

“… There shall be no more use of Fulani Cows for any ceremony like Burials, Funerals, Weddings, Marriages, and Thanksgiving Celebrations etc…

“… He who kills his customers, will no longer expect patronage, as he has killed his market...”

Come to think of it how come we buy their Onion, Potatoes, yam, Tomatoes, and many more from their unharrassed land in the north as their farm yield, then they come with their cattle to our land destroy our crops, put us in debt, kill our kits and kin and finally sell their same cows to us for slaughter at the burial of their victims? It does not make any sense! The madness must stop.

Again I hear that the president has given matching order to the security operatives in the country to fish out any or every of the culprits involved the Enugu, Agatu and other similar killings. I am certain that this is even a tall order because evidence abound that no record of arrests and proper prosecution exists to date hence the impunity.

It is simply an insult to my sense of being that I continue to patronize my enemy. It does not make any common sense that in consideration of the comparative advantage in business, we buy their produce and finally cow meat from our northern trade partner. They transport these products to all the markets in the South and rear their cows uninhibited, and never molested and then they take their profit home.

We grow our Cassava, Yam, Okra, Melon, Vegetables and fruits etc which we ought to earn our profit from. But our supposed partners in trade send their cows to ravage our crops, impoverish us and reduce us to debtors, and when we ask why we are raided and killed at night while in our sleep! We are then expected to buy their cows from the killer for the burial ceremony of his victim! It does not add up. I will not do that.

Personally, like the Ohaneze Ndigbo, I have taken my stand, I do not know about you. Cow Beef will exit my meat effective immediately to avenge the death of my cousin a permanent secretary in Delta state who was needlessly killed by Herdsmen at Ogume in 2012. You may not join me in this. But there is penalty for both of us. If you do not join me now, I will not be at the burial to mourn with you because you are an associate killer of your friends and relations by encouraging the sales and rearing of cows in Delta State.

It is high time government takes the citizenry seriously in matters of great concern. If the cattle herdsmen are free to not only carry and shoot indiscriminately without sanction, I have every right to defend my territory by any means possible.

Today’s VANGUARD May 5, 2016, states in its front page that: “Spurred by the divergent comments trailing the Fulani herdsmen attacks in communities across Nigeria, senators from the North, under the aegis of Northern Sentor’s yesterday warned governors, leaders and community heads in the country to desist from making inflammatory statements that could further overheat the polity… they also warned that there would be no Nigeria, if other parts of the country asked Fulani herdsmen to leave their communities and states…”

It is absurd that at this point in time, rather than thinker what mode of appeasement would be appropriate for the affected states and communities, these thoughtless senator are deploying threats! It is a shame!

*Mike O. Akpati is a commentator on public issues