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bottom of page Dora
Akunyili is one of Nigeria’s best known current public office
holders. For purposes of better emphasis, let me tell those who
may not have known, Dora Akunyili is the current Minister of Information
and Communication. Her appointment from her professional field of
pharmacy as the then Director General of the National Agency for
Foods, Drugs Administration and control [NAFDAC] to assume the position
of the Federal minister of Information and Communication, an area
that she is a total stranger is all together not strange especially
considering the fact that the current Federal administration does
not respect merit and professionalism. In fact the best name for
this Federal administration of Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar’adua
is the ‘perfect stranger’ administration. How else do
you want me to explain the fact that a medical doctor Dr. Paul Orhii
who reportedly spent the better part of his professional career
in the United States of America was handpicked because he is related
to the current Federal Attorney General and posted as the Director
General of the National Agency for Foods and Drugs administration
and Control [NAFDAC], an area that he is a perfect stranger? Again
how do you doubt the fact that this administration is the one headed
by perfect strangers when the Federal Government has just declared
her intention to deregulate the downstream sector of the petroleum
industry even when all other Countries of the World are intervening
directly to bail out their once heavily deregulated financial sector
of their economies? All rational and analytically minded observers
in Nigeria who would have found time to digest the recently published
piece of the Special Adviser on Media Communication Segun Adeniyi
whereby he attempted to force down our throats the conviction of
his paymaster that deregulation was appropriate now at a time that
the rest of the developed and developing nations are witnessing
Governments’ takeover of hitherto privately owned businesses,
are not really amused. Not amused because the presidential spokesman
took a serious debate to the level of the absurd by arguing incoherently
that because some cabals have for long hijacked the several billions
of taxpayers’ funds released by the Federal Government as
subsidies to fuel marketers in the open markets, therefore the best
solution is to impose collective punishment on innocent Nigerians
including of course Mr. Adeniyi’s relatives who also patronize
the same fuel stations like all of us. Adeniyi should have blamed
the security operatives for their inability to arrest those cabals
and stop them from sabotaging Government’s effort to provide
succour to millions of impoverished motorists and their dependents.
Adeniyi’s argument is like saying that because stray goats
have invaded my yams’ barn the previous night therefore I
am going to throw my yams’ barn open to the goats. |
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ASUU STRIKE: GOVERNMENT’S BLUNDER AND PROPAGANDA
BY EMMANUEL ONWUBIKO
For nearly two months now, the members of the Academic Staff Union of
Universities [ASUU] have been on an indefinite industrial action and there
seems to be no end in sight except if miracle happens because the Federal
Government unilaterally pulled out of the collective bargaining and negotiations
with the striking university lecturers. For this long period of time,
I deliberately stayed away from doing any piece on the issues involved
in the ongoing strike action because they are so well known to even the
most silly kindergarten pupil that repeating them may serve no serious
purpose.
Be that as it may, I had thought that before this time of writing this
piece that the Federal Government would have seen reasons to competently
engage the members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities in resolving
and redressing some or all of those thorny issues that have for over a
decade constituted a major stumbling block to the free and uninterrupted
learning in the nation’s thoroughly messed up public university
system. The Federal Government did not only show lack of respect to common
labour laws in matters of negotiating with the striking university teachers
but has gone a step further by deliberately committing the blunder of
unilaterally withdrawing from the collective negotiation with the lecturers
and has resorted to the use of propaganda not just through the publicly
funded television station Nigerian Television Authority but has also decided
to recruit the state Governors who ganged up together with the Federal
Government to engage in a well coordinated propaganda with the aim of
destabilizing the ranks of the Academic Staff Union of Universities.
I will cite two examples from Imo and Delta States. In Imo state where
the state administration went to a more bizarre dimension, the commissioner
for information Amanze Obi, a former journalist with one of the nation’s
most vibrant and liberal newspapers, abused his privilege as the commissioner
by deploying the state owned and publicly funded Imo broadcasting service
Radio and television to harass the local members of the Academic Staff
Union of Universities working with the Imo State University and cajoling
them to unilaterally call off their industrial action and resume work
even when it is very clear to my colleague Amanze Obi who has a doctorate
degree that it was wrong to force the members to call off an action that
was collectively embarked upon by the national body. Luckily he got his
nose bloodied literarily because the university teachers called off the
bluff of the illiterate state government. In Delta State the Governor
who is a medical doctor issued a statement in the media asking the university
lecturers to call off the ongoing strike because in his words if they
refused to call off the strike, then they will lose public sympathy. This
to me is puerile and unacceptable because it does not address the substance
of the matter. The Governor did not also explain to the nation why together
with his colleagues they ganged up to support the Federal Government’s
unfortunate action of pulling out of a collective negotiation at the point
of signing an agreement reached with the striking lecturers.
As the head of the HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS’ ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA,
HURIWA, a development focused and Democracy inclined Non-Governmental
Organization we faulted the 36 State Governors and the Federal Government’s
stand on the ongoing industrial action embarked upon by the Academic Staff
Union of Universities [ASUU] because we believe that it was wrong for
the State Governors to gang up with the Federal administration to undermine
the future of education in Nigeria. HURIWA urged both the Federal Government
and the striking university lecturers to constructively conclude the negotiations
and sign an agreement that will upgrade the standard of facilities in
the public universities to be able to compete favourably with the best
in the World in the twenty first century.
Besides, we canvassed organized civil society groups’ and the Nigerian
Labour Congress unified support for the striking University teachers because
the actions taken so far by the Federal Government to pull out of further
negotiations with the Academic Staff Union of Universities and the decision
of the Vice president to rally the support of state Governors against
the striking university teachers will rather than resolve the lingering
bad situation caused by the ongoing strike with the attendant risks to
the educational future of the Nigerian youths, will surely aggravate an
already tensed atmosphere in the nation’s educational sector.
Specifically, at a meeting organized by the Vice President Good luck Jonathan
attended by the thirty six state Governors, the governors wrongly endorsed
the position of the Federal Government that it cannot sign an agreement
with the striking University teachers that would be binding on state Governments
since according to them, Nigeria runs a Federal structure even as some
of the Governors threatened legal action against the striking lecturers.
We faulted that line of thinking of the Governors as pedestrian saying
that it is a fact that in a Federal structure as we currently have in
Nigeria there is synergy between the various Federating units which is
why the National University Commission [NUC] is the sole body that regulates
all Universities in Nigeria irrespective of whether these institutions
are sponsored by the Federal, State or private investors. It was right
that we also opposed the rumoured moves by the Government to introduce
high tuition fees for students of public Universities in the Country saying
that the decision will alienate millions of Nigerians from very poor backgrounds
who are also entitled to the universally protected Right to education.
The outcome of the meeting of the state Governors and the vice president
on the ongoing strike in the Nigerian university system shows that those
who claimed that Nigerians voted them in as political office holders have
lost touch with reality and have decided to gang up so as to undermine
the development and progress of the nation’s educational sector
rather than find lasting, non-partisan and constructive solution to the
lingering crisis of gross underdevelopment of the structures in the entire
public university system of Nigeria.
This writer together with the Human Rights platform that I head will resolutely
back the striking lecturers for their commitment to collective bargaining
which is lawful in labour law and has already blamed the Federal Government
for incompetently managing the crisis in the University system by the
use of propaganda through the publicly owned and funded Nigerian Television
Authority.
+Onwubiko heads the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria
IS ATTORNEY GENERAL MICHAEL ANDOOAKAA INCOMPETENT?
BY EMMANUEL ONWUBIKO
By virtue of section 150 [1] of the 1999 constitution of the Federal
Republic of Nigeria which states that ‘’there shall be an
Attorney General of the Federation who shall be the chief law officer
of the Federation and minister of justice of the Government of the Federation’’
and subsection [2] ‘’ a person shall not be qualified to
hold or perform the functions of the office of the Attorney General
of the Federation unless he is qualified to practice as a legal practitioner
in Nigeria and has been so qualified for not less than ten years’’,
President Umaru Musa Yar’adua on assumption of office in 2007
appointed Michael Aondooakaa, who is largely unknown in legal circles
in Nigeria and who is not associated with any significant landmark judgment
in all levels of the court system in Nigeria and who incidentally became
a Senior Advocate of Nigeria in 2006. At that time most people including
this writer who has covered the nation’s court for nearly a decade
rightly described the appointment of this unknown lawyer as the Federal
Attorney General and minister of justice of the Federation as the ‘eighth
wonder of the World’ and another sign of ‘Government Magic’
where anything goes and where appointments are made not on the basis
of merit and competence but on partisanship and on the recommendation
of some notorious political ‘godfathers’ who have over the
years held this country spellbound and underdeveloped.
He has showed that he does not possess any salient qualities that will
mark him out as a great statesman and a distinguished lawyer. The current
holder of the office of the Federal Attorney General of the Federation
has through his unpopular decisions to defend the interest of some past
Governors in Nigeria who are facing series of anti-graft cases and investigations
both locally and abroad, carved a niche for himself as Nigeria’s
most incompetent and notoriously unserious Federal Attorney General
in the recorded history of Nigeria. In my book ‘’politics
and litigation’’ I had drawn the attention of the readers
of that 516 page general interest book to the compelling thought of
the great Greek Philosopher Plato on what constitute competent leadership.
In Plato’s thought, politic theory is closely related to moral
philosophy. Indeed Plato considered the nation-State as ‘Man writ
large’. As justice is the general virtue of the moral man so also
it is justice that characterizes the good society. Plato postulated
that there is a structural and natural as well as logical relation between
man and the nation-state. In his classic the Republic, Plato argued
that the best way to understand the just man is to analyze the nature
of the nation-state, we should begin, he says, by inquiring what justice
means in a nation-state... To him Competence is the best quality of
a leader. The ruler, he says, should be the one who has the peculiar
abilities to fulfil the arduous functions of a political leader. Plato
stated that disorder in the nation-state is caused by the same circumstances
that produce disorder in the individual, mainly the attempt on the part
of lower elements to usurp the role of the higher faculties. Plato asked
rhetorically, who should be the captain of a ship? Should it be the
most popular man or the one who knows the art of navigation? The ruler,
he said, must come as close as possible to a knowledge of the Good,
for the wellbeing of the nation-state depends upon knowledge and character.
The appointment of Michael Aondooakaa by the current administration
as the federal Attorney General did not pass the test of competence,
integrity and credibility as clearly pointed out several hundreds of
years back by one of the finest fathers of philosophy and scholarship-
Plato. This is the reason why Nigeria is facing serious international
image problem as a nation that is not committed to fighting political
and economic corruption.
The first ignominious role the current Federal Attorney General played
was to devise a scheme to scuttle the work of the Economic and Financial
Crimes Commission [EFCC] headed then by a tough and no-nonsense police
officer Nuhu Ribadu who refused to budge in his determination to bring
to trial all indicted former state Governors some of who incidentally
were clients of the current minister of justice when he was in practice
in one corner of Gboko in Benue State. He succeeded in removing the
then Chairman of the Anti-graft commission and ensured the appointment
of a retired Assistant Inspector General of police from his ethnic group
Farida Waziri to take over and since then the then vibrant anti-graft
agency has gone to sleep so much so that even the Secretary of State
of the United States of America Hilary Clinton who came visiting Nigeria
recently described the anti-graft war in Nigeria currently as ‘’functionally
dead’’.
Mr. Andooakaa further showed his nepotism by arbitrarily sacking the
Executive secretary of the National Anti-Human Trafficking Agency [NAPTIP]
Mrs. Carol Ndaguba who built the agency from the scratch to a phenomenal
height and brought in his former Personal Assistant who comes from his
home state of Benue- Simion Egede as the new executive secretary of
NAPTIP and things have never remained the same because he has failed
to settle down to work but has consistently become a foreign traveller
from one international conference to the other and neglecting the essence
for which the agency was set up which is to wage unrelenting battle
against all forms of human trafficking and not for merry making of foreign
travels for foreign currency as travelling allowances. The federal Attorney
General lobbied for the appointment of his kinsman Dr. Paul Orhii to
take over the vacant position of the Director General of the National
Agency for Foods, Drugs administration and control [NAFDAC] vacated
by the then respected Professor Dora Akunyili who was made the minister
of information and communication where she has performed so very badly
that Nigeria now has worst international image than even in during the
dreaded General Sani Abacha military dictatorship. The current Federal
Attorney General will surely be recorded in history as the worst and
most notorious Nigeria’s chief law officer so much so that even
his professional constituency the Nigeria Bar Association have severally
called for his removal for being manifestly incompetent. He has refused
to provide vital information and evidence that will help the British
judicial system nail some of Nigeria’s best known allegedly corrupt
erstwhile State Governors because they are allegedly his paymasters.
+Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko heads Human Rights Writers’ Association
of Nigeria.
| ROADS TO DISASTER By Emmanuel Onwubiko The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) under the leadership of Air Vice Marshal Muhammad Audu – Bida (rtd) has gained public confidence because of the numerous sustainable programmes which it has carried out including but not limited to relief distribution; rehabilitation of disaster victims; evacuation/rehabilitations from Abroad; and awareness campaigns on periodic disasters. For now, the decision of the Director General of National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) Muhammad Audu-Bida, a retired Air Force General, to take disaster management to the grassroots has received the commendation of several independent development focused non-governmental organizations including the Human Rights Writers’ Association of Nigeria which has invited the Agency to deliver a keynote speech at its charity fund raising scheduled for November 11th 2009 in the nation’s capital. AVM. Audu-Bida told a select group of media executives
including this writer that his agency is focusing on taking disaster
management to the grassroots because; “It is in the light of the above that the National Emergency Management Agency adopted the grassroots emergency volunteer programme. Under this programme, 200 volunteers are being trained for each participating local government to provide a pool of trained emergency managers in the communities, who will act as first responders in the event of disaster. The training programme introduces the volunteers to disaster management concepts, community responsibilities, support systems and resources required for primary disaster management, stakeholders networking and coordination, prevention and mitigation options and some basic first aids procedures.” He spoke further; “The Agency has so far trained 4,694 volunteers in 21 local governments of the six geopolitical zones, between 2nd June 2008 and December, 2008.” I learnt from very competent sources that NEMA has equally done a study on the major causes of road accidents across the country in collaboration with the Federal Roads Safety Commission (FRSC) in close partnership with members of some State Emergency Management Agencies in some flash points and made recommendations to some state governments on the urgent need to decongest some major Federal Highways which passed through these states and are now used by heavy duty vehicles drivers as transit camps thereby constituting veritable sources of road disaster. Tafa Junction, Forest/Mararaba- Jos, all in Kaduna state are some of these flash points that need urgent action to stop further preventable deaths from accidents. It is a well known fact that Nigerian roads are death traps and are indeed the greatest contributor to the cases of disaster in Nigeria so much so that several hundreds of our citizens have perished on these pot-holes ridden federal roads all across Nigeria and especially in the South-East, Lagos-Benin Express, Lokoja-Abuja Highway and the Maiduguri highways. But for mother luck and the intervention of our Blessed Virgin Mary and the Almighty God, a living legend like Chinua Achebe of the ‘Things fall Apart’ fame would have died from road accident which left him permanently confined to the wheel chair because he sustained severe spinal chord injuries in a motor accident in Nigeria. Professor Chinua Achebe had to be rushed to the United States of America where he got a world class medical attention because if he was taken to any of our heavily neglected public health institutions, only God knows what would have become of him. Several vastly gifted Nigerians were not so lucky like Chinua Achebe because they perished in one car mishap or the other caused basically by the bad condition of the Nigerian highways among other human factors. Chinua Ubani, a well known Human Rights Activist who fought vigorously alongside other patriotic Nigerians to actualize our current civilian rule, died in a car crash along the Maiduguri’s dilapidated federal road infrastructure. The story of the notorious state of some South African roads as captured in the book “South Africa’s brave new world; the beloved country since the end of Apartheid” as written by R.W. Johnson is a true of reflection of Nigeria’s roads’ situation especially the so-called Federal Roads. Johnson observed that; Johnson called South African Highways as ‘roads to disaster’. Nigeria roads are indeed roads to disaster. Unlike South Africa where Mr. Johnson in his scholarly book had traced under funding as the sole factor responsible for the decay in roads’ infrastructure, in Nigeria’s case several billions of tax payers’ funds were budgeted and released since 1999 but as can be seen by even the most senile blind observer, Nigerian roads are in such a terrible state of disrepair that they can be rated as some of the worst roads in the entire world with the possible exception of the roads in Haiti, the World’s poorest nation. Shockingly, no Government official of the ministry of Works is undergoing prosecution for the criminal diversion, looting and fraudulent conversion to private use of the massive amount of money said to have been released. Nigerian government and all Stakeholders must wake up from slumber to repair our roads and save millions of commuters from untimely deaths. • Onwubiko heads Human Rights Writers’ Association
of Nigeria. Read
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