THE TYPE OF PRESIDENT WE WANT AND THE TYPE THAT WE DESERVE.

For so many years now, Nigerians have been clamoring for a certain type of leader. A leader that will submit himself to the yearnings of the Nigerian people and devote himself to taking us from our current precarious situation, where an entire country is on the brink, to a land flowing with milk and honey; a land where its many resources will be used to grow the economy and benefit its people.

A quick look at our past however indicates that Nigeria has had these types of leaders before!! Although I was too young to fully appreciate it, but my history lessons point to certain leaders of yesteryears such as Nnamdi Azikiwe, Obafemi Awolowo and a few others. The legacies of these men as leaders of the Western and Eastern regions still exist for all to see. Most of the roads, schools, universities and some industries that we are proud of in the West came about during the tenure of the late sage. The same goes for the Eastern region during the time of Zik. And all of these giant strides in development came about at a time when Nigeria had no crude oil, making the feats achieved all the more impressive.

These are the types of leaders that Nigerian’s want, but the question should be also be asked as to whether we deserve these kinds of leaders? I ask this question because I read somewhere once that “a country gets the kind of leaders its people deserve”. This statement got me thinking!

Arguably, the greatest problem of the country today is corruption. This cankerworm has cost our nation an estimated $600bln over the last 40 years, if newspaper reports are anything to go by. I wonder if this figure is simply hard cash or has been calculated to also include the amount of economic value that the money could have generated. As some of us may know, N1 can generate as much as N5 of economic value, depending on the national bank reserve rate. Therefore, if the $600bln is simply in hard cash, then Nigeria may have lost as much as $3trillion in economic value over the last 40 years.

However, while Nigerians cry out daily for an all out war on corruption, deep down, are we really ready and willing to kick the habit? The soul of the Nigerian has been consumed by corruption so much so that it is no longer a “big man” thing. It has eaten into our very fabric and has now become a part of us.

We all say that we want an end to corrupt practices, yet how many of us, working in a position with access to the necessary documents evidencing corruption in our civil service, banks, school, universities etc have ever made these known to the EFCC? How can we hate corruption as a people and yet process the documents that make so much of it possible on a daily basis?

An interesting scene played out during the trial and conviction of the Bode George. I watched a couple of the proceedings on television and I observed that at every court appearance, there were always a band of men and women, gaily dressed in Aso-ebi, a new one for every court appearance, singing his praise! A time was in this country, that just the charging of someone to court would have made one’s supporters to fade away, lest they themselves be seen as supporting corruption. I agree that a man is innocent until proven guilty, but now that he has been proven guilty, we still hear reports of daily visits to his prison by PDP stalwarts and his ever loyal supporters. The same PDP that claims to be fighting corruption!! And what of his supporters? Can they be said to be interested in a corrupt free Nigeria?

Away from Bode George, I see and hear on a daily basis; things that make me believe that Nigerians are only paying lip service to the issues that confront us as a nation. It seems we openly criticize, but in our respective closets, we pray and wait for the time it will be our turn to occupy the exalted position.

Even down to mundane issues, we curse as to why there is so much traffic, when so many of us are guilty of driving against traffic, refusing to obey traffic lights cum wardens and clogging up street junctions; how won’t there be traffic? We blame the government for the filth on the streets, but yet everyone eats gala and pure water and throws the wrappers out of their cars as they drive; for whom to come and pick up? Some even come out of their houses to place their rubbish on street medians in the middle of the night; for whom to get rid off? I have equally seen shop owners sweeping the frontage of their shops, readying themselves for another day’s business, only to drop the waste into the gutter lining the front of their shop, but we wonder how come flooding seems to occur so frequently?

It seems Nigeria is one huge paradox. We want certain things as a people, but funny enough, we live our lives in the exact opposite way. And if this is the case as a people, can we expect the government to do any better? Especially if one considers that the government is meant to be a representation of the people?

Nigerians it would seem want a certain type of leader, but it would seem that we also deserve the kind of leaders that we have!!

THE NIGERIAN UNIVERSITY SYSTEM: WHICH WAY FORWARD?

The Nigerian educational sector and our university system in particular, have been in the doldrums for a few decades now. The most popular phrase emanating out of our education system of recent has been “…ASUU has decided to embark on a strike action to press home its demand for…” rather than news of any scientific or research break through! Education in Nigeria is really at its lowest ebb!!

But is there no solution? Are we forever constrained to have a dysfunctional education system? I believe the answers are available with deep, strategic thinking and discourse. In order to arrive at a workable solution, it will require the active participation and commitment of all the stakeholders, from the government, to ASUU, parents and students, the NUC and perhaps donor agencies and NGO’s.

The government must begin to see education for its true importance to national development. Education is arguably the most important and strategic tool a country can equip its people with. Education is the knowledge of putting one's potentials to maximum use. One can safely say that a human being is not in the proper sense till he is educated. This importance of education is basically for two reasons. The first is that the training of a human mind is not complete without education. Education makes man a right thinker. It tells man how to think and how to make decisions.

The second reason for the importance of education is that only through the attainment of education is man enabled to receive information from the external world; to acquaint him with past history and receive all necessary information regarding the present. Without education, man is as though in a closed room and with education he finds himself in a room with all its windows open towards the outside world.

From the Senator at the National Assembly to the vulcaniser on the streets, a good quality education is vital. A good education has the capacity to lift a people out of poverty by equipping them with the means of making the best possible choices for their lives. A good education enables people to think imaginatively and creatively (which appears to be lacking in Nigeria, especially in public service), it enables them to act in more socially responsible ways and even make better decisions about their health.

The poor quality of our education is partly responsible for so many of the socio-economic issues which pervade our country today. With a better education, maybe so many of the garage boys and touts we have on the streets wouldn’t be there today. They would be able to better make smarter decisions as to what to do with their lives. The Boko Haram menace that has been thrust upon us is partly due to the un-education of millions of northern children in the eighties and nineties! If many of them had got a decent education I am sure that majority (certainly not all, as Mutallab has shown us) of those involved in suicide bombings today would probably have decided to chart another path for themselves. A better educated police would be able to think and act more proactively to prevent crime. A well educated school leaver would be able to identify career options available to him, without necessarily focusing on a white collar job. A carpentry shop owned by a well educated person would be able to appreciate the need to constantly improve and make use of available technologies to facilitate his business. It is really a sign of our failure that we have so many artisans in Nigeria who are not able to take advantage of electric tools in doing their work due to their high level illiteracy. A carpenter who uses electric saws, planers etc is likely to do a much better job and faster for that matter than one who saws wood by hand. Even a well-educated taxi driver is not the same as the typical uneducated taxi driver. While a well educated one can add value to the tourism drive of a country by also acting as a tour guide (the way they do in Ghana, South Africa, Kenya and Egypt), an uneducated one (like most Nigerian ones) wouldn’t even see the connection between his job as a taxi driver and his country’s tourism aspirations. Nigeria cannot develop anywhere near its potential without having the majority of its population WELL educated. If only the government could truly realise this and see the importance of an educated populace, perhaps it would be willing to put more resources, financial and other wise, to ensuring the sector emerges from its present comatose state.

Having said that, while our entire educational system needs to improve, from the primary right through secondary to the university, the focus of my article will be on the universities.

There is no doubt that due to the decades of neglect, the financial resources required to return our universities to some semblance of sanity will be massive. And while we certainly do not have a poor government, the financial position of the government is not particularly buoyant. Yes, corruption in Nigeria is massive, but even in the absence of large-scale corruption, I am not convinced that Nigeria can really afford to give its ballooning population a free and qualitative education right now. Let’s face ne fact - whatever is good and high quality costs money and education is no exception. Unfortunately, because of the failure of past governments, any government in Nigeria now has a colossal amount of things to spend money on and not enough money to spend. Infrastructure demands are looming! Nigeria needs to rehabilitate and build more roads, rehabilitate and build more schools and hospitals, power generating stations and related infrastructure, infrastructure for the Niger Delta, refineries, dams, sea ports et al. The financial implications are undoubtedly huge.

Let’s also face another fact - even in the midst of producing 2 million barrels of oil a day, Nigeria is still a relatively poor country. 2 million barrels sounds like a lot, but with 150 million people!? Trust me, it’s not. We tend to compare Nigeria with Saudi Arabia, Brunei, Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain, Norway and some other oil producing countries. But the truth is that these countries produce a lot more oil than we do, with a fraction of our population. To put it in more perspective let me give the per capita income of these countries; Saudi Arabia $18,855, Brunei $37,053, Kuwait $45,920, Bahrain $27,248, UAE $55, 028, Norway $94,387 and Nigeria, with its 2 million barrels of oil per day - a paltry $1,401!! To put it in more perspective, South Africa that produces no oil has a per capita income of $5,685!! And these are countries that as at today have largely sorted out their infrastructure problems and therefore do not need to spend so much on roads and electricity generation and the like. So is Nigeria really a RICH country!? I don’t really think so! Therefore in as much as we would like to believe that Nigeria should be able to make education free, the way it might be in so many of these countries, I am not convinced that Nigeria can really afford it.

Where am I going with this? I believe that our universities should be structured such that the government takes care of all capital expenditure (capex), which would be budgeted for, while the universities take care of all operating expenditure (opex), including salaries, from their own internally generated revenue. This will likely mean that university tuition would go up, but with the importance of a quality education, would it not be worth it to pay more for a higher quality education? Like I said earlier, rarely is a thing of value and quality cheap. We often make references to “abroad” where education is free, but I wonder where exactly. I just browsed on the web and found that the average tuition fee for British citizens is about £3,200 (about N860,000), while in America, it is about $9,000 (1,350,000) for American citizens. And while tuition in a few countries in western and central Europe is free, in some cases fees for accommodation, living expenses and books still exceed Eur1,000 and in most cases anyway, the governments of most of these countries are currently reviewing them. Besides these are also some of the most heavily taxed countries in the world. I am not saying our tuition should be at these levels, but at least let the universities themselves make the call as to how much to charge based on my suggested financial autonomy and their perception of the kind of quality education they deliver. If a particular university wants to pay its lecturers N800,000 a month, it will have to ensure that its internal revenue is capable of handling it. In fact, it is my belief that financial and political autonomy in the universities, along with disparate salaries based on financial capacity of the universities to pay (ASUU will not want to hear this), will actually enhance the university system by providing competition.

This competition will force our universities to develop a value proposition to attract students and lecturers alike and will force the universities to better manage their resources.

A university could put forward its academic excellence in engineering or its excellent sports facilities to students as its unique selling point. Another could sell its linkages to the private sector after graduation as its unique selling point in a bid to attract students. Likewise another could sell its appreciable research grants as a reason to attract quality lecturers. There should be a reason to seek to attend one university over the other. For now, the only perceived difference in quality of our universities is that some are federal, while some are state owned or perhaps private. Just a few days ago, I read an article in the papers suggesting that our universities lack proper management. I believe this totally. Our Professors and vice-chancellors are at best administrators, not visionaries. Though they are specialists in their field, most lack the all round management expertise to effectively manage the resources in our universities! In fact, with the current structure of our universities, where everything comes from the government, they are not really encouraged to do so. Indeed, not every Professor can effectively function as a Vice Chancellor! However, with political and financial autonomy, the governing council of each university would be hard pressed to elect a vice-chancellor that would deliver a really well managed and focused university. The universities are not primarily money-making institutions, but I am of the opinion that there is plenty of room for cost savings on the one hand and improved revenue generation on the other, if the VC’s think a little bit more creatively.

Now, let it not appear as though I live in the clouds and have lost sense of all reality. No doubt, the generality of Nigerians are poor. For many, to afford the existing “cheap” tuition is a challenge, how much more to afford tuition fees of 2 to 5 times that. I share that sentiment. However, I believe the university system is better served by support to the students themselves rather than to the university. Rather than make tuition unsustainably cheap, I would rather a situation where tuition is allowed to find its level, while the government, churches, NGO’s and wealthy individuals support poor students who are unable to afford university education via bursaries, grants and scholarships. A quick check online indicates that tuition at Bowen University, a private university in Nigeria, is about N500,000.00, at Covenant University, it is ranges from N370,000.00 to N460,000.00, while at Redeemers University, it is about N400,000.00 for old students and about N600,000.00 for new students. These are universities built from scratch. Therefore, if the structure earlier proposed was at play, where government universities cater for only their operating expenditure themselves, and considering that the physical structures are in most cases already in place, perhaps the tuition at our government universities might settle at anywhere between N100,000 and N150,000 for a session.

Do the students and parents themselves have any role to play in all of this? Yes, they do. I believe students and parents alike have lost all sense of how important a good education is and the reason why they go to university. On the one hand, society is to blame. We have all grown up to believe that if a child does not have a university (or higher education) that such a child has no future. So much so, that we do everything we can to ensure our children get into university and obtain a degree, without giving much thought as to the quality of that degree. Yet, I know a number of people in Nigeria today, who are active in businesses totally unrelated to the courses they studied in university. If we really value a good education, shouldn’t we be willing to pay for it, even if it means giving up a few things? The Nigerian people are a very wasteful one. Even in the midst of poverty, we always seem to be able to find money to buy one union cloth (aso egbe or aso ebi) or the other, or to bury a parent that died years ago, or to organise a party or wedding ceremony in a bid to outdo the party a friend threw a few months back. These are all nice things, especially if the financial capacity is available, but largely irrelevant when there are more important things to invest in, such as a quality education for our children. Even our students have lost all sense of why they are in university. Perhaps they have lost hope in the usefulness of the degree in the outside world. In most cases, our graduates are not able to gain employment once they leave the university with their degrees. But the truth is that the quality of our education is so poor that our graduates are not really equipped and ready to fit into the corporate world and the outside world. Their minds have not been developed. They can barely use the computer effectively, they can barely speak good English and are barely any better intellectually than when they entered. As the old saying goes “one should go through university and allow university to go through him”. Unfortunately most graduates go through university, but university does not go through them. Many of our girls have turned to prostitutes on campus in order obtain money to afford vain things; expensive phones, clothes, shoes and bags, while many of the boys are cult members or strive to drive cars on campus and wear clothes that even their working brothers are not wearing. All misplaced priorities!! I recall that back in the day, many of our parents had to carry firewood, fetch water or hawk in the morning before they went to school and after they returned. That was a time when we valued our education. Our parents were prepared to give an arm and a leg to get an education then. Funny enough, when Nigerians go abroad to study, they are usually willing to work in Burger King, Mc Donald’s, ASDA Tesco and the like to earn money to support their school fees in search of a valuable education. However, our local students are not willing to sacrifice a bit more for their education. I am convinced that if most relatively poor students were given the option of working at the university car wash to earn an income to support their education, 90% would refuse, probably too embarrassed to do “such a job”. I guess this is because they get the impression that the available education offers little value and they therefore see no need to sacrifice for it. However, if the quality of our education improves significantly, perhaps our students will be willing to do more to support their own tuition fees.

There is so much more that can be said about our higher educational framework. Although I have said a lot, I do acknowledge that my views are not meant to suggest that there is only one way forward for the development of our university system or that I have all the answers. I have however attempted to be as objective and dispassionate about the issue as possible, from all points of view. Therefore I will give a rundown of what would be my main policy thrusts, were I saddled with the responsibility of re-structuring our university system

1. The universities should be given political and financial autonomy. Political autonomy is defined here as “giving the universities the power to elect its own vice chancellor and other principal officers”, while financial autonomy is defined to mean “ each university should be given the freedom to determine the salaries of its lecturers and other staff, based on their academic quality and what they bring to the table, subject to a minimum, as well as charge whatever tuition fees it deems appropriate and in general be responsible for financing its own operating expenditure”.

2. Government should continue to be responsible for capital expenditure in the universities as well as all research grants, as well as give operational grants from time to time to support the universities.

3. Government should put in place mechanisms whereby poor students are supported with scholarships, grants, bursaries and loans.

4. The universities themselves need to re-orientate their thinking. The current modus operandi of our university system, where everything falls from the government table, does not appear sustainable.

5. NUC should live up to its responsibility and effectively regulate the amount of student intakes based on available facilities as well as regulate the university system generally in order to significantly improve on the quality.

6. University education should be de-emphasised in favour of equally high quality technical and vocational education that empowers students to start their own business and do their own thing.

Hopefully, one day very soon, the government, ASUU and other stakeholders, will sit down together and discuss objectively and chart a sustainable future for our education system. My fear though is the lack of trust. ASUU, based on our experiences of the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s, will likely not listen to any claims that the government cannot afford to give Nigerian’s an equivalent 60’s education in 2010. Government is also likely to be too big headed to agree that it has been largely incompetent in the managing of the human capital of this country and admit that it has to and can still afford to do much more than it is currently doing. All parties must be able to find some middle ground. However, if we cannot get this restructuring done, then it will be doom for this country over the next decade and beyond, as educational standards fall further and Nigeria does not possess the manpower required to effectively compete in an increasingly global and technologically driven economy.

THE FAILURE OF URBAN TOWN PLANNING

Nigeria is a country with a population of about 150 million people, and roughly 250 ethnic tribes all with different languages and ways of doing things. This diversity often makes it rather difficult to get the peoples of our dear country to agree on any one thing. However, one thing I am convinced I can get all Nigerians to agree on is that the successive governments of Nigeria have failed its people.

The issues confronting us as a nation are already well documented, so I will not mention the long list again here. Asides from the knowledge of the multiplicity of issues, we are also largely aware where the blame lies. For example, for our bad roads, we can label the Minister of Road, Works and Transport (as nomenclature changes) to be incompetent. For our poor economy the Minister of Finance and the CBN Governor are the usual suspects. When we fume about the poor state of our Electricity supply, PHCN and the Minister of Power take the bashing and for the inadequacies of the Police, the Minister of the Interior can be labeled inept.

However, as I sat here, thinking about some of the things that annoy me the most about this country, it occurred to me that there is a parastatal (or is it a ministry) whose failures are hardly ever mentioned in this country. I refer to Urban and Town Planning!!

I am constantly baffled at how our cities tend to look like shanties. In fact, I recall that one of the United Nation bodies - the United Nations Settlements Programme, otherwise known as UN-HABITAT, recently declared Abuja as the only real city in Nigeria! If this is so, then in what are the millions of people who live in Lagos, Kano, Ibadan, Port Harcourt, Aba, Onitsha etc living? I venture to call them “huge slums” for want of a better word.

What I see in our ‘cities’ is utter lack of planning. Entire neighborhoods spring up with no plan for utilities and drainage. There are no areas set aside for commercial and residential purposes. Markets are not properly situated; banks, eateries and shopping plazas are allowed to spring up without proper parking space. Once a road begins to take on pole position within a city, traders line both sides of the road with shops selling all manner of things usually ranging from electronics, clothing and provisions. The situation in our cities is rather like a case of a flock of sheep without a shepherd, all wandering about aimlessly and in different directions and doing as they please.

The Urban and Town Planning ministry in most States has become so irrelevant in our lives that most people do not even remember that they exist. In fact, in most states when any attempt to correct this anomaly in town planning is made, the arrowhead is usually one task force or the other. What then do the staffs of the town planning authority do? It seems all they do is create the mess by way of rubber-stamping building permits and looking the other way when all manner of incomprehensible buildings are put up.

For example, I cannot understand the culture we now have in construction whereby banks, eateries and other commercial properties design their parking lots in such a way that visitors departing the premises have to back out onto busy streets to leave!! I am not a town planning professional, but simple common sense tells me that such a design is absolutely not a professional one and to keep it simple, makes no sense at all!! I may not be able to put a percentage to it, but I am sure a lot of the traffic we have today is caused by security guards slowing traffic down on our highways for someone to reverse his vehicle out of one bank or eatery or the other unto the main road. This is the case on almost every major road in every city in this country. Unfortunately, this should never have been the case. A functioning town planning authority should never have approved such designs (that is even if such areas are even meant to be commercial areas).

I also find it incomprehensible how churches have taken over all public space. In residential and commercial areas, flats and warehouses, shopping plazas and even roadsides, the churches are taking over every available building and space. One would think that Men of God would be the last of hope for ensuring that things are done the proper way in this country, but this does not appear to be the case. While it is rare to find a Catholic, Anglican or Methodist church situated without sufficient landmass to allow for proper parking, unfortunately, most of our Pentecostal churches are improperly situated. A few are located in commercial and industrial areas, where human traffic is limited on Sunday mornings, but most erect huge church buildings smack in the middle of residential areas, where absolutely no thought is given for human and vehicular traffic, ultimately ending up in huge traffic jams and inconvenience to residents and road users. How on earth have all these building been approved? If the Town Planning authorities have approved all these buildings, then we have a serious problem. But even at that, shouldn’t a Pastor know better to do the right thing? What is right is right and what is wrong is wrong!!

In Victoria Island and Ikoyi, both in Lagos, what used to be well-designed residential areas have been lost, probably forever, as almost every building is turned into one commercial property or the other? No wonder then, that the traffic in V.I on a working day and even on some weekends is legendary. Of course the roads were never designed to take such an array of cars!! They were designed to handle the traffic load of regular everyday people returning to their homes, probably from the Federal Secretariat, which was in Ikoyi then. Buildings that were designed to occupy a single family of say 5 in the heart of V.I have been knocked down and remodeled to become office blocks, now occupying 30-50 people and to make matter worse, usually with no preemptive thought as to where all these staff would park their cars. The consequence is now that people spend hours driving to places that would ordinarily have taken minutes. The attendant man-hours lost and its value in monetary terms can best be imagined. Not to mention the unnecessary cost of fixing cars that spoil in traffic as well as the artificial demand for petrol that it causes. The losses to the economy are massive.

Another problem that many highly populated cities in Nigeria are grappling with is flooding. However, what I have observed in many cases is that low lying areas within most cities that have formed natural drainage basins are encroached upon and built up with no thought as to where the displaced water would flow to. As you might expect, water, not aware of our needs and doing its own thing, usually demands to find its own level. The consequence usually ends up being perennially flooded streets and communities. Port Harcourt is a case in point in this regard. What is however comical is that when the flooding now becomes unbearable, as more people build and constrict the flow of water, the landlords then form an association and begin to call on the government to come to their aid. However, cases like this should never have happened if the Urban and Town Planning Authorities had stepped in and restricted such areas as off limits to construction.

As I said earlier, Nigeria has many issues and people are regularly talking about them. However, I find that some of the problems which frustrates our existence as Nigerians on a day to day basis - traffic congestion, human congestion, failure of drainages, flooding in our “cities”, refuse lining our streets and gutters, non delineation of residential and commercial areas and its attendant difficulties - can all be said to be caused by the failure of our various Urban and Town Planning ministries, but somehow, they seem to have slipped under the radar of public discourse… no one seems to be talking about them!!

THE NEED FOR AND IMPOSSIBILITY OF STATE POLICE

There have been several calls made over the years for the provision of State Police in the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The most recent of these calls was made by a member of the Lagos State House of Assembly and reported in some national newspapers, and this has led to me writing this article.

The current operational framework puts the Police firmly within the control of the Federal Government via the Inspector General of Police who reports to the President of the country. The calls for state police have been given credence by the perceived ineffectiveness and incompetence of the police. This view is not far from the truth. The failures of the police force are well documented. Assassinations upon assassination have gone unsolved, crime and general lawlessness is on the rise, the police are ill equipped and unnecessary roadblocks litter our highways and so on and so forth. However, is spite of all of this, can state controlled police really be a viable alternative?

Based on the facts on the ground and with the use of logic, a State controlled police makes sense. A few proactive and forward-looking states are having their plans and vision truncated by the ineffectiveness and incompetence of the Nigerian Police. The plethora of State agencies and task forces devoted to traffic management, sanitation control, action against street trading and the like all owe their relevance to the failure of the police. No state has as yet been able to provide an agency to take crime head on because of course, such a body would be required to possess weaponry in order to defend itself from criminals, which the constitution does not allow. A police force under the control of the state government, properly managed, equipped and motivated would potentially be able to bring about more rapid development to the state in question. The Governor is meant to be the Chief Security Officer of every state. However, in a situation where he does not control the apparatus, how on earth can he really be held accountable for the actions and inactions of the police within the confines of his state? Take Lagos state for example. Governor Fasola has given an immense amount of the support to the Police Command in Lagos, by way of purchase of vehicles, communication gadgets, bulletproof vests and more. This has had some effect in reducing crime, as reports reaching me from friends and family who currently reside there say crime has actually reduced. The situation could however be better. A major obstacle to effective policing in Lagos and everywhere else has not necessarily been vehicles or bulletproof vests, but logistics. 100 new vehicles are all well and good, but how do you deploy them effectively? Various police numbers to call when in distress are all well and good, but do the police have a means of responding? Do they have service level agreements (SLA’s) in place to guarantee that they are at every residence within 10minutes of receiving a call? Have they practiced how to beat Lagos traffic and deploy within the agreed time frame? Are they effectively trained to deliver quality service to the people? In the absence of control, there is little the Governor can do to improve on the lack of logistical capacity of the police. The police are almost a government unto themselves. Perhaps if Fasola had his own police force, he would be able to structure it in such a way that would give a positive answer to all of these questions, which would set Lagos aside as a safe place to do invest and do business, night and day, and would undoubtedly serve to rapidly expand the economy of his state.

This is however just one side of the coin. Let me now flip over to the other side. Let me now postulate what might happen in some of the not so proactive and forward looking states (for the sake of avoiding any backlash, I will not mention any state here). A state police under the control of one of such backward looking states could proffer doom for the state and by extension the country. The 2011 election is not too far away. With the current stage of our political development, consider what might happen if some of our current Governors had the apparatus of state police firmly under their control? I put it to you that all hell would break loose. Such a police force would undoubtedly become agents of intimidation, harassment and assassinations. Without state police, unseating an incumbent Governor is almost impossible. They usually tend to unleash all manner of touts on the opposition. Imagine what would happen if they controlled a police force. Imagine the late Lamidi Adedibu having a police force under his control? I shudder at the thought!!!

No doubt, some arguments can be made for the establishment of a state police. However, while there may be some need for it, I believe we should consider it an impossibility at this stage of our political and socio-economic development.

THE DEATH OF PROFESSIONALISM

The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria, Chartered Institute of Stockbrokers, Chartered Institute of Bankers, Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators, Nigerian Society of Engineers. These are some examples of the professional bodies we have in Nigeria and others abound! The ones listed here are just a tip of the iceberg. However, the ongoing crisis in the banking sector suddenly leads me to the question of what exactly the roles of all these professional bodies are? A professional body is meant to consist of a group of people in a learned occupation, who are entrusted with maintaining control or oversight of the legitimate practice of the occupation. They are also supposed to safeguard the public interest

I take a look all around me and I suddenly discover that true professionalism died long ago and has taken the back seat in this country. Rather, in almost every industry what we now have is a situation where quacks have wrested control and are now at the forefront of the industry. In most developed countries before operating as a plumber, electrician or carpenter, much less as an Architect or Engineer, one would typically have passed some exams and obtained to sort of certification to qualify to repair plumbing or wire a house. But here, all manner of people, both qualified and usually unqualified take on such jobs.

The banking sector is a vital industry in any country. It is an industry where the raw material is money….other people’s money! Through lending, it has the capacity to provide much needed capital to millions of people and industries, which might ordinarily not have had access to the funds required to set up their own small business, expand an existing one or add another production line to a cement factory. All of which would provide millions of jobs, lift so many out of poverty and grow a national economy. Yet, despite all the benefits of a virile banking sector, the industry is fraught with risk as it challenges the leadership to find a right balance between the desire to make profits and satisfy shareholder demand on the one hand and the safeguarding of depositors funds on the other. Therefore one would typically expect that in order to achieve this, the leadership of our banks would certainly have to know what they were doing. But do they?
In an industry as delicate and important as banking, one would expect that the Chartered Institute of Bankers would play a vital role in the running of these banks. Not directly of course! But by ensuring that those saddled with the responsibility of managing our banks were sound in every aspect of the profession. But sadly, this does not appear to be the case.
The profession of banking has been so diminished that the sector now attracts all manner of people. In a typical bank, if any survey was carried out, I can almost guarantee that every bank in this country has fewer Chartered Bankers or even Banking and Finance graduates in its employ than non bankers. In fact, when I was in University I recall some of my fellow students telling those studying Banking and Finance that “they were wasting their time”. Now, that is not to say that only professional bankers can work in a bank. At junior levels, yes, I believe they can, but at senior level? At Assistant General Manger level? Where the decisions that determine the future viability and sustainability of a bank are taken? No, I think not! What does a Yoruba graduate know about banking? What does a graduate of pharmacy know about banking? There is no way such a person would have had the tenets of the profession ingrained in his mind. Such a person can be smart and highly intelligent, but that doesn’t make him or her a banker? I find it odd that someone who studied Pharmacy, who spent 6 years learning about the do’s and don’ts of her PROFESSION, all the ethical and moral issues, suddenly veers off into banking and before you can say “hopscotch”, is suddenly in charge of a sensitive department such as Credit and Risk Management or becomes the Head of Treasury. Little wonder then, that our banks have stupidly created all manner of bad loans. Little wonder that they continually put all their eggs in one basket, ignoring the risk of credit concentration as it relates to individuals or companies as well as industries. Little wonder that marketing has been reduced to employing pretty girls of questionable backgrounds to hit the streets and encouraging them to do “what the girls in that other bank do”, rather than actually selling a product. If banking were so simple or trivial, those who designed the course wouldn’t have designed it for 4 years and there wouldn’t be a professional body saddled with the responsibility of maintaining the highest standards of ethics, integrity and professionalism (although CIBN can be said to have failed in that regard).
While I have used banking as a case study, the fact is that professionalism has disappeared. Real Estate management is now an all comers affair. Everyone is now an ‘agent’. Architecture and Engineering have been taken over by quacks. Clearing and forwarding is now something everyone can do.

What are we loosing by the death of professionalism? Well, for one quality. Quality is a priority in any business and profession. It is not only restricted to the product, but also the performance of the professionals. Lack of quality leads to a compromise in the standard of performance. This compromise in the standard of performance is what our banking crisis smacks of!!

THE CLEANSING OF THE BANKING SECTOR

It has been a while since a single subject dominated the media the way the current banking reforms are doing. The media has been feeding fat on the frenzy the CBN Governors actions has caused and many a public commentator has lent his voice to the debate. Of all the various issues raised, the primary point of contention appears to be whether the action of the CBN Governor is a Northern orchestrated agenda or is an objective and independent mission to sanitize the banking system.

However, rather than play the typical North/South political game with the issue, I ask myself- based on the available facts, is the effort to cleanse the system the right thing to do? I have been privileged to work in a Bank before and in the Treasury department at that, as an inter bank trader, so at least I am qualified to say a thing or two on the subject matter. Like almost all people who have made one comment of or the other, I have not seen the findings of the CBN special audit. Therefore, my comments, like theirs, are based on available information.

I am well aware that of the 5 banks sanctioned, 3 of them have been absolute net takers of funds at the inter bank market as far back as 2002-2006 when I was an inter bank trader. Now, being a net taker of funds is in itself not a bad thing, but when it becomes a perpetual day in, day out, year in, year out thing, then there is obviously a problem. The inter bank is meant to be a market where banks borrow/lend for their short-term deficit/surplus clearing positions. It is absolutely not meant for long term financing. A bank can only be in a perpetual long term clearing deficit when there has been a gross mismatch of its assets and liabilities ie short term liabilities have been used to finance long term liabilities or assets that are not returning any cash flow (non performing loans). This may not have been an issue if it involved say 3-10% of existing loans, but when it involves half of a banks loan book, when never ending commercial papers are continuously rolled over and sold to generate liquidity, when ALCO (Asset and Liability Committee) meetings- arguably the most important top management meeting in any bank- are turned into meetings where the management chat about how much deposits their staff have brought in and whiplash those who have failed to meet their targets, then it is obvious that the CEO’s of these banks have no clue what they are doing and thus their removal from office by the CBN is well and truly justified.

So many of us have lost money or at least know someone who lost money to the failed banks of old. We have all wondered as to how the banks could continue to declare outlandish profits in a country where the manufacturing sector is almost dead and buried and most other businesses are experiencing declining fortunes. I’m therefore surprised that in spite of this, I hear so many negative comments about this reform exercise. While the approach of the CBN may have been better, I expect to hear more of constructive criticism as to how the process can be better facilitated, rather than outright condemnation of the exercise.

Anything that can reform our banking system and get it to effectively contribute to capital formation for meaningful economic growth and development is welcome and should be embraced by all, be it in the North or in the South.

THIS WHITE ELEPHANT UNION CALLED ASUU

For the umpteenth time, the Academic Staff Union of Nigerian Universities is on strike. ASUU is the union that has gone on strike the most over the last 20 years. And what are they on strike for this time? From what I gather, they intend to draw the governments’ attention to the decaying infrastructure in our universities, get a pay rise amongst other things.

There is no doubt that our educational system has decayed beyond belief. There is no doubt that the quality of our graduates are very poor, except for the rare few who still manage to excel (by Nigerian standards anyway). There is no doubt that the government should have done so much more for the sector. But the truth of the matter is that the education sector is not the only one that has suffered massive government neglect. Look at our roads and bridges; look at our electricity infrastructure, our police force and our health care. The whole country has been neglected and has had its infrastructure shredded to bits, so why do we continue to have ASUU in the news the way no other Union is.

It seems that ASUU has an over inflated opinion of its power. This bloated perception of itself seems to stem from the successes of ASUU in the Babangida era, where ASUU in conjunction with NUPENG and PENGASSAN and other unions successfully brought this country to a halt (the success of that era is also the reason NUPENG and PENGASSAN also strike at the slightest whim). However, in my opinion ASUU is not really that powerful. All the strikes that the union has embarked upon over the last decade or so have had little impact on the government. The governments’ receipts and revenues are generally guaranteed whatever ASUU does. In fact, ASUU’s continued strike actions have their greatest effects on the students, the very same ones ASUU is supposed to be fighting for, as well as the Nigerian Nation as an entity. Over the years, in all of the various altercations between ASUU and the government, ASUU has usually been painted as the hero and the government as the villain. This may well be, but rather than focus on the government, let me focus on ASUU for a change.

It is a well said proverb that it is only a fool that does the same thing the exact same way every time and expects a different result. ASUU has been striking consistently for over 20years now. Has anything changed significantly over the years? If not, why on earth would it suddenly change now? Has ASUU ever turned its spotlight on itself and challenged the Vice Chancellors of the various universities? The sector may be poorly funded, but we all know that like everywhere in this country, there is rather large scale corruption and nepotism in the ivory towers. There is room for much better management of available resources. We are also all too aware of the scourge of handouts and the harassment of female students in our universities. Many of the practices are being carried out by lecturers who are ASUU members. How many times have we heard ASUU challenge any of these practices successfully? If ASUU is not happy about the educational policies of the government, why does it not sponsor a bill at the National Assembly to right any wrongs that may be in our current laws? There are many other ways that ASUU can engage its energies to better the educational system, rather than its continued blind sighted approach to strike actions at every opportunity. Strikes may be necessary some of the time, but they certainly can’t be as necessary as the uncountable times the union has used the strategy.

If ASUU is to achieve its objective of making our educational system better, if indeed that is the true objective, then it must begin to think out of the box and perhaps seek to influence the formulation of acceptable policy, rather than seek to demolish already formulated but unacceptable policy. The Professors and Doctors who make up ASUU are meant to be highly intelligent, but they certainly don’t always act like it!

THIS ONCE GREAT NATION!

For the greater part of my lifetime, I have been fed with this rhetoric of Nigeria being the Giant of Africa, a Nation with great potential! However, the more I grow older and wiser and continue to analyze this country, the more I realize that Nigeria is far from being a great country. The definition of a great country may vary slightly from one person to the other, but I expect all the definitions to contain some of the same ingredients. I expect to hear that a great country is one that protects its citizens, where the political system is relatively stable, one that provides quality education and healthcare to its people, one where basic infrastructure such as water supply, electricity, an efficient transport system are available and work, whether or not they are provided by the private or public sector and one where the rule of law reigns and citizens can find redress in the law courts.

Unfortunately, all of these things are currently not ingredients of the Nigerian state. Roads, water, healthcare, education, security, access to justice and electricity (to mention a few) are not readily available to the majority of Nigerians. Maybe they once were, but no more.
The recent shunning of Nigeria by the President of the United States of America and the scathing remarks of the US Secretary of State, Mrs Hilary Clinton, on her recent visit to Nigeria show just how far down the rungs of greatness Nigeria has fallen. The sad part of all of this is that those in government have not realized that Nigeria is longer great, if it ever was. I would rather posit that Nigeria was never really great or a giant, she was just once rich, but even that wealth is no more. With a ballooning population of about 150 million people, its much vaunted oil wealth is but a drop in the ocean when calculated in per capita terms.
We continue to beat our chests and boast of the being the 12th largest producer of crude oil, 8th largest exporter of the product and the largest in Africa. But have any of the top functionaries at the Ministry of Finance or Ministry of Petroleum stopped to re-calculate those statistics? If they have, they will probably discover that Angola has swiftly relegated Nigeria to the 2nd largest producer and exporter of crude oil on the African continent. And the way other countries are attracting investment whilst Nigeria looses out on investment, it may not be long before we slip further to the 3rd and possibly 4th. What a tragedy!

Whilst South Africa is preparing to host the soccer world in 2010 and has already successfully staged the Confederations Cup, beaming high quality signals to the world, we are struggling to host the U-17 championships and fighting in-house about whether AIT or NTA has been given the broadcast rights, when FIFA is just a phone call or an e-mail away. Most Nigerians know more about the World Cup holding in South Africa in a year’s time than they do about a competition holding in their own backyard in 2 months time. Such is the shoddy way we do things.

Is Nigeria a great Nation? All things considered, my answer to that is far from it! And the sooner those in Aso rock and Abuja realize this and begin to take urgent steps to remedy the situation, the better.

NIGERIA: DOWN TO 2ND LARGEST PRODUCER OF OIL IN AFRICA

Nigeria has recently lost its title as Africa’s largest producer and exporter of crude oil. This is a title that we have clung to for many decades, yet our steady spiral down the ladder over the last couple of years is symptomatic of every thing that is Nigerian.

Why is that that we cannot get anything working in this country? You would think that an industry that provides about 90-95% of foreign exchange and about 80% of revenue would be treated like the proverbial goose that lays the golden egg, yet the oil and gas industry has suffered years of inattention characterised by inadequate funding and investment, policy somersaults, lack of a strategic direction and policy and so on and so forth. But then, the oil and gas industry is not the only one is it? Refineries have stopped working; roads have failed all over the country, the railway and airlines died long ago, PHCN has had its name changed several times, but has only gone from bad to worse, NITEL is comatose, gas plants are being built (some completed) with no earlier thought or plan about where the gas would come from - even with the Niger Delta crisis staring them boldly in the face, various stadia refurbished just 10 years ago for Nigeria ’99 look like they were never repaired, Murtala Mohammed International Airport is barely functional in the true sense of an international airport and various Government agencies and parastatals fail to perform their statutory duties efficiently and effectively!!

What exactly is the issue? Why can we not seem to get ourselves out of a perennial downward spiral? Have we been consigned to never grow, mature, and develop? Perhaps it is spiritual! Maybe the gods have put a curse on this country. Because sometimes the reasons for our continued backwardness defies explanation, despite the myriad of learned people that we have in this country. Churches fast and pray and things just get worse and worse. What on earth is going on???

The government of this once great country is just nailing the lid on our collective coffins - one after the other. It is bad enough that oil has too much leverage on our economy, but even this mono product that we have is being threatened by lack of government vision and sincerity to the issue of development in the Niger Delta. The crisis going on there need never have happened. Why spend so much to develop Abuja while millions languish right next to where the oil is being produced? These people have been pushed to the wall and have bounced back in the form of militancy, kidnapping, thuggery and general lawlessness. After all, he that is down need fear no fall.

We need a well-orchestrated strategy to get this country on the path of sustainable development and to resolve the myriad of issues that confront us as a nation. Unfortunately, the political ‘elite’ has not demonstrated that they have the intellectual capacity to fashion such a strategy. After all, 49 years of evidence cannot be wrong!

2 GOVERNORS AND 34 ADMINISTRATORS

Our country operates a Federal structure wherein the country is ‘broken’ up into smaller States in order to ease administration. To a large extent, the States are meant to be independent entities and in charge of these 36 States are certain individuals called Governors who are meant to direct the affairs of their States in a manner similar to the way the President directs the affairs of the country, although by virtue of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, some things may be held as the exclusive preserve of the Federal Government.

In fact, in my opinion, the States have a better capacity to affect the lives of the people in a more direct way than the Federal Government can. How easy can it be to drive visible development from Abuja for the common man on the streets of Abakaliki or Ogbomosho or Zungeru. On the other hand, a State is just about the right size to allow for meaningful development. It is big enough to allow for the meaningful pooling of resources and small enough that the eye of the Governor can effectively cover the whole State, but of course, only if the Governor is someone with the vision and wherewithal to make it happen.

Herein lies the problem! I look at all the States of this country and I have come to the conclusion that we have only 2 Governors. The Governor of Lagos State, Mr Fasola on the one hand and the Governor of Rivers State, Mr Amaechi on the other. The rest are just Administrators! The progress that has been made in Lagos State is visible for all to see. While to some extent, the changes there can be termed as basic, but for Goodness sake, from where we are coming from as a country, the changes there are almost on the same scale as a miracle. Unlike most “governors” who talk a lot, but have nothing to show for it (reminiscent of a certain Mr Peter Odili), Governor Fasola only talks when he is already about to take action. And action is there aplenty. The BRT has been working non-stop since it was launched, a waterways transport scheme has been launched and the Lekki master plan has been launched and its implementation has started via the improved Lekki expressway. In addition there are also concrete plans in place for a free port in Lekki, as well as an international airport. Contracts have also been awarded for the massive expansion of the Badagry Expressway, while plans for the red and blue lines of the light rail system are also making steady progress. Action they say, speaks louder than words.

In Port Harcourt also, there is a wind of change and development, the like of which has not been seen in a previous administration. The whole city is almost one huge construction site. While this has its nuisances in the fact that the traffic situation has actually worsened, the situation will sure improve remarkably once the multitude of roads being constructed in the city are all completed. The traffic situation in Port Harcourt is legendry and of all the state capitals I have been to, only Lagos beats it hands down in that regard. However the reasons for traffic in PH are not far fetched. Aside from the old PH city, which was rather planned, most of what we call Port Harcourt today grew out of the massive expansion of the city due to the influx of people in search of a better life in a city flowing with oil money. As such, whole middle class enclaves sprang up in places that where hitherto simply villages and small communities, with their small roads and pathways. It is these small roads that were later tarred and ended up not providing an adequate road network for the city, due to their narrowness. However, Governor Amaechi has taken the bull by the horn by undertaking a huge road construction and dualisation exercise. Within the city, at least 2 flyovers are being built, 4 major roads are at different stages of dualisation and not less than 4 other major single lane roads have been marked for dualisation. In addition, there are many other brand new roads being built to reduce traffic by diverting traffic away from areas that were usually grid locked. I have not seen any road construction of this scale all at once in any city, except Abuja and perhaps Lagos. His administration has also embarked on a massive urban renewal exercise. Lots of buildings that were too close to the road have been demolished, shops in many areas that lined certain roads have been demolished, businesses residing in commercial areas have been given one year to vacate, while business concerns on the popular and busy Aba Road that have no provision for parking for their customers have been told to either relocate or face closure/demolition. These are all visible signs of development that will immediately benefit the people and impact their lives.

On the other hand, the Oyo State Governor was recently interviewed and was quoted as saying in response to claims that his government was not working, that his government had achieved a lot because it was paying salaries on time!!! Isn’t it amazing that in this day and age paying salaries on time is considered an achievement!! I am sure that one of his claims, along with that of many of the other governors, would be that his state has no funds. In my opinion, this claim has no basis because seated right here, typing this, I can think of dozens of ways that a State can raise its revenue profile. A province I once read about in South Africa gets about 35% of its revenues from fines!! Every day people are breaking laws in this country. Laws relating to sanitation, traffic/driving, failure to follow building plans and approvals and so on. All the government needs to do is to put in place strong structures to ensure enforcement and collection. This will have a 2-pronged effect. First, it will improve the government’s revenue and secondly, once people see that the government is serious about enforcement, it will bring about greater compliance to the laws of the land.

Our governors seem to think that their jobs are only about going to Abuja to collect allocation and then returning to their states to pay salaries. They do not realise that they have the capacity to develop their own states at an even faster rate than the Federal government can. Thank goodness Mr Fasola and Mr Amaechi have realised that they can do more for their States than Yar A’dua. All that is required is a fair bit of creativity, imagination and vision and voila…. an administrator can become a Governor!

ARE WE THE SAME AS WHAT WE SEE IN HOME VIDEO?

If reports in the media are anything to go by, the Minister of Information has turned her spotlight on the local home video in her efforts at re-branding the country. In my opinion, she has every reason to do so!! Film, and acting generally, tries to re-enact what goes on in a country and generally portrays the values that a country holds dear. A typical American action film, while sometimes violent, usually extols the values of courage and bravery of a hero, reminiscent of the many heroes that America has produced in the many wars dotting its history. Likewise, the many films centred on adventure (Indiana Jones, Pirates of the Caribbean), crime (the Godfather), the police (Internal Affairs, Police Academy) etc seek to re-enact, the many adventures of people such as Christopher Columbus, the dark days of gangsters like Al Capone and the courage of policemen, day in day out, in America.

In Nigeria however, many, perhaps most of our home videos, especially the ones in English, do not seem to depict any positive values or teach many lessons. All we seem to see is women being abused and slapped, and our younger girls being showcased as adulterers, fornicators and hustlers, while the men are cultists, 419’ers or dubious businessmen and politicians. But if films are meant to recreate reality, then it must mean that all the attributes I just listed are indeed attributes of the average Nigerian. And that is that is really sad!! Dora certainly has lots of work to do. But then, should the attention be on the home video industry or the larger society that the home video industry mimics?

DOING THE RIGHT THING

Growing up, I was taught many principles and values by which to live. Not to tell lies, not to steal and so on and so forth. Another one was to ‘do the right thing’! Africa is a continent deeply steeped in culture and tradition and what is generally common across the continent is that our various cultures and tradition almost always place a high emphasis on morality, honesty and generally doing the right things.

However, of recent no one seems to do the right thing anymore. From all the way up the pyramid to the bottom, the peoples of this country all seem to thrive on doing the wrong thing. In fact, it usually seems you make no progress in this country if you do the right things. Driving against traffic, corruption, prostitution, cheating (even in the church), bearing false witness, lying, forgery etc are simple examples of the wrong things we do so easily in this nation. There are way too many of such vices to mention here. Funny enough, it would appear as though the few who still tend to do more of the right things are the people who reside in the villages, who do not have a proper education. There, they still trade in the market honestly, there is not much stealing and cheating, and there is still respect. On the other hand, in the cities, where we are supposed to be more educated, the opposite is the case.

Doing the right thing no longer seems to matter. Or has the psyche of the Nigerian been so brutalised that we no longer even know what is right? Or do we just deny the truth for the quick conveniences of doing the wrong thing? Whatever the answer,this country needs to return to a situation where the generality of the people do the right thing, not vice versa!

THE NIGERIAN POLICE

Daddy, when I grow up, I want to be a Policeman!! These were words often spoken by children long ago, when asked by their parent what they wanted to be when they grew up. Unfortunately, as time has gone by, statements such as these have become few and far between and to be honest, for a long time now, I have not heard any child make this kind of statement.

And how could they? Back in the day, a policeman was a respected individual, with his well tailored uniform, disciplined nature, standing in the society and community, high level of integrity and so on and so forth. But times have changed. In the current day, policemen are none of these. Rather policemen have become objects of corruption, raggedness and indiscipline. Policemen have lost all manner of respect in the society. Rather than look up to them, we now look down on them, if not in public (due to the fear of the gun), then at least in our hearts, where they fortunately have no means of entry. These days you see policemen wearing slippers about, dressed up in incomplete attire, looking haggard, hungry, malnourished and more. If all of these had no bearing and impact on larger society, perhaps I wouldn’t be bothered. Unfortunately it has! Due to the lack of respect for the police, breakdown of law and order is more and more becoming the order of the day. It is not uncommon to see people drive one way right up to a police checkpoint, offer N20 and be allowed to go scot-free! It is not uncommon for policemen to order tanker drivers off the roads and expressways where they park, causing hardship for other road users, only for the drivers to hiss and continue as is, knowing fully well that the policemen can always be bribed. Neither is it uncommon to see policemen being used as escorts and bodyguards for private citizens travelling, for weddings, for traders transporting goods across town and so on and so forth. It in not uncommon to see touts and pick pockets operate at major bus tops in full view of policemen. It is not uncommon to see taxis and buses parking at unauthorised street junctions and bridges and turning such areas to parks in full view of policemen, who should know better and act accordingly. It is now so bad that armed robbers operate without any hint of fear for the police! And why would they? The typical policeman is so ill trained and ill equipped that

The situation is indeed grave. The absence of a proper police force is causing more and more problems for the citizens of this country. A major, major overhaul needs to be done to salvage the situation. The minimum education standard for entry into the police needs to be raised; while those who do not met this new standard should be flushed out. Policemen need to be well educated, rather than barely capable of speaking English! The police also needs a newly developed and rigorous training regime that focuses on renewing their bodies and developing their minds for the challenges of 21st century policing, perhaps something modelled after the famous Police College in America. I doubt that in its current state the police colleges we have can graduate any useful policemen. The police also need to be well paid and insured for reasonable amounts in case of serious injury or death, after all, as a saying goes “if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys”. Then the senior police officers need to put in place procedures that govern how a policeman should operate in all facets of police work. This set of procedures should be monitored/audited by a separate outfit to ensure that even the police are being policed. This outfit should be comprised of professionals such as lawyers, accountants, engineers etc and some policemen and should be given legal backing to ensure they are authorised to delve into the affairs of the police.
A re-worked police force is extremely important. Nigeria cannot effectively develop as a nation with its police force in its current state of decay. The authorities need to act swiftly to salvage the situation, before the whole country descends so deep into lawlessness that the state of affairs can no longer be remedied

NIGERIA PLC

The issue of privatising and deregulation of public enterprises has been in the front burner for decades now. I remember the IBB days when we had the TCPC (Technical Committee on Privatisation and Commercialisation). Over time we have changed names, changed responsibilities, and now the organisation we know to be saddled with the responsibility of privatisation is the BPE (Bureau for Public Enterprises).

Privatisation cum deregulation has however been a very bumpy road. The moment deregulation policies are made; the polity seems to heat up. Unions begin to shout and threaten strike and all manner of things. Politicians, economists begin to say this and that, either for or against (usually against) and in most cases, the Government, not having enough will and probably never clear enough about the direction it wanted to go in the first place, backs down and things go on as usual. But to whose benefit?

Government has not been able to run any enterprise successfully over the last 20/30 odd years. The list of failed government enterprises is amazingly long. PHCN, Nitel, Nigeria Airways, Nigeria Railways, DFRRI, Ajaokuta steel complex, Nigerian National Shipping Line, Alscon (before it was privatised), NAFCON, National Theatre, Refineries, Eleme Petrochemical (before privatisation), Hotels, Banks, Newspapers and many more I can’t even remember! What makes us think they can do any better anytime soon? The longer these enterprises fail, especially the ones with no substitutes, the more the costs to the Nigerian economy and by extension, its people.

Yet, the many unions who go on strike to prevent the privatisation of all these enterprises don’t seem to think so. Usually they claim that once funding is in place, they can run the organisations, but I far as I am concerned that is a farce!! The unions of PHCN, Nitel etc, do not want these organisations privatised in order to hold on to their jobs (which they barely do) at the expense of the country. They know all too well that they cannot work in a privately owned company. They have spent too long working in a civil service way. The perfect comparison is Nitel vs the GSM companies. The GSM companies have brought in billions of dollars in investment, paid billions of Naira in taxes, created thousands of direct jobs and tens of thousand of indirect ones (from hawkers of recharge cards, distributors of recharge cards, builders of masts, steel fabricators, IT consultants, advertising agencies etc). On the other hand, how many times has Nitel advertised for staff in recent memory? Or when did it last contribute to Government income? The same questions can be asked of our refineries? Who has ever heard of any of our refineries putting out adverts for employment? Yet these are the places where our Petroleum Engineers, Mechanical Engineers and the like should be dreaming of working.

There is no doubt that many of the staff at these companies may loose their jobs if privatised. But the truth of the matter is that many of them are only currently employed due to the inefficiencies of the system. What 5 staff in the current PHCN do, 1 person in a privatised PHCN could probably do with a laptop- more efficiently for that matter!! The sooner the old, ancient and incompetent staffs of these companies give way to young, vibrant and competent people, the better for the Nigerian economy. It is also true that in the short term, the prices of the goods and services provided by these failed government enterprises may increase if privatised, as investments are made to bring existing facilities up to scratch, but I put forward that in the long term the prices will come down. After all we started GSM at N50 per minute in 2001, but now, depending on the service you are running, you may be charged as low as N16 per minute and that does not take depreciation of the Naira and inflation into consideration. In real terms it is even cheaper. What is the point of paying N6/Kwh of electricity that will never come and spend thousands of Naira running generators? Wouldn’t it be better to pay N11/kwh for stable electricity from a private company and have peace of mind to stock your freezer and conduct your business?

The truth is that the private sector will always be better at capital formation and allocation. The sooner we get the government to stop attempting to run businesses, and to convert Nigeria Ltd to Nigeria Plc, the better!!

SERVICE QUALITY

In most cases, service quality is a tool in the hands of businesses worldwide to gain an upper hand or a competitive advantage over other players in the same industry. However, as is so often the case, what works well everywhere else doesn’t quite seem to hold much water in Nigeria.

In both our private and public institutions, service quality is generally poor. No!! This is an understatement!! In the private sector, it is generally poor, but in the public sector it is horrific! I don’t need to think too hard to come up with dozens of examples of where service is so poor in the public sector. Some are PHCN, the Police, the Customs service, the civil service and so on and so forth.

I once called the number given on my power utility bill to complain that I had not had power, more often referred to as “light”, for 3 weeks. Rather than take down my details and dispatch someone to ascertain what the problem was, the phcn customer services manager simply said “…eh, eh. You will have to come o, so that we can discuss…” I was taken aback! I retorted, “…I’m sorry. I am calling from my office and I am busy and can’t make time out to come physically. I thought that was why a complaint number was put on the bill, besides what do I need to come to your office for?”. The lady at the other end simply said “…until you come now. After all you are not the only one living in that area without light. Someone else should come!” At this point, I decided there was nothing to gain in continuing the discussion. I excused myself and got of the phone!!

No doubt, this is reflective of the Nigerian society. No one wants to do his job anymore except some gratification is paid, a favour done etc. For how long will we continue like this? For how long will we continue to kill this country? Funny enough, we are all quick to point a finger and complain when others are doing the wrong thing or when we don’t get appropriate service elsewhere, but we usually do the same things and deny others the same service quality we expect for ourselves when the tables are turned. We complain about corruption in this country, but we are quick to offer a policeman N100 rather than regularise out vehicle particulars. We are quick to bribe customs officials to approve fake documents to underpay duties, rather than declare the right value and pay the proper amount. Remember, when you point one finger, four others are pointing right back at you!

LASG vs Tanker Drivers

I am almost certain that all Nigerians are now aware that there is a fuel crisis going on in the country. While for many years, especially for those in the north and east, fuel queues have always sprung up here and there, lasting for a few days, but never really getting out of hand, the current one, by all indications, is looking like it might end up as a mega crisis.

But how have we got ourselves here? The story in the media is that the cause of the current crisis is firstly as a result of importers and the NNPC to import fuel, due to a lack of clarity on the deregulation policy, and secondly due to the protracted issue between the Lagos State Government and tanker drivers over parking on the highways and the like.

I would like to focus on the second reason. The standoff between LASG and tanker drivers dates back many years. We have all been witnesses to the menace the tankers cause on our roads. Regular motorists on Lagos -Ibadan expressway will know what i'm talking about, as well as those who frequent the Apapa area. Even in Ibadan, at Ojo area, many a motorist has met his untimely death by crashing into one tanker or the other. But are the drivers at fault? My answer to this is yes and no. I say yes because every learned Nigeria should know that the highways are not parking areas and were never designed to be. Unfortunately, I doubt the average tanker driver is very learned!! And no, because the governments irresponsibility and incompetence (both state and federal) have led to this in the first place. First of all if our refineries were working, and we had built more by now, we probably wouldn't need as many tanker drivers and their hold on the product supply would be much less. Secondly, if we had a working pipeline system, we would need much fewer tankers and the distribution system would be more efficient. Thirdly, if the government had nipped this millitancy in the bud early enough, we would not have any issues with our pipeline network.

Unfortunate as it may be, we have handed power to the tanker drivers who now cannot be controlled, cannot be spoken to and to whom traffic laws no longer seem to apply, even it it causes misery for other road users.

If we had been brave enough to deregulate the downstream sector years ago, I doubt we would be in this mess today. By now there would have been more modern discharge facilities in other ports, thereby ensuring that not all produce comes in through Lagos. Also, if it were found to be cheaper, the railways may have become a more preferred mode of transport to the hinterland as opposed to the current system of trucking (how much fuel can one truck carry for goodness sake?) and perhaps that would have provided some impetus for the mordernisation or complete privatisation of the railway by now.

The current crisis is already among us, but what we must do is to ensure that it doesn't happen again. The solutions are available, but only to the creative, learned and proactive. Do we have such in government? Hopefully!!

CORRUPTION IN THE HALLWAYS OF JUSTICE

The government structure of Nigeria, like most other democracies, is made up of the Executive, the Legislative and the Judiciary. In recent times, while the Executive and Legislature have been enmeshed in one controversy or another, usually bordering on corruption, policy inconsistency et al, the Judiciary has been hailed! Especially in the light of their recent judgements, as relates to the 2007 election. So much so, that the Judiciary is being hailed as the “…last resort of the common man”.

While it is generally correct that the Judiciary has done rather well, a closer look will indicate that even within the hallways of the Justice, corruption can be just as rampant as what obtains within the outer perimeters of the larger society.

I draw my thinking and conclusions from an incident that occurred to my friend. My friend recently won a case against the Ministry of Transport in Port Harcourt for having his car impounded and being fined N50,000 without any legal backing or conviction of the court, as the law states. The real story is that even after the judgement, the court bailiff refused to serve the judgement on the respondents except my friend paid N5,000. What is more shocking is that the court and the Ministry of Transport are very close to one another, right there in the secretariat area of Port Harcourt.

Isn’t it amazing that the same court that exercises judgement in your favour against an injustice meted out to you, will turn around and exact a bribe before the same judgement is served on the defendants? Isn’t that another injustice? So perhaps maybe it is safe to say that our Judiciary simply replaces one injustice with another!!

Myth or Reality?

Nigeria is rich, there fore we should be enjoying! Nigeria has oil, so petrol must be cheap! Nigeria has money, so education should be free!!

Are these statements really true!? Or are they myths? Does Nigeria realy have all that much money and are we really all that rich?

A recent headline comes to mind. I was reading the news on yahoo, I think, and there was a report that University tuiton fees in the UK (for british citizens) were being proposed to rise from about £3,500 to about £5,000 and I wondered....."I thought education in the UK was free"!? After all that is what we tend to hear, as an reason for why it should be free here in Nigeria. I don't know what you think, but £3,500 doesn't sound free to me!!

The per capita GDP of the UK is about $40,000, while that of Nigeria, if the official figures are anything to go by, is just about $2,300. Wait a minute, is that right!? How can a country that earns so much be charging tuition fees of £3,500, while a country that earns so little (despite having oil), be charging £100 (GBP equivalent of about N25,000- private universities charge about 15 to 20 times that)? You would have thought the richer country should be able to afford to make its education free!!

But if these are the facts, can we expect a £500 education to equate to a £3,500 one? Is it possible!? Do I hear you say "......but Nigeria has oil"? True as this may be, lets compare our per capita GDP with a few other oil producing nations. Nigeria-$2,300; Qatar-$103,000; Kuwait-$57,400; Norway-$55,200; UAE-$40,000; Saudi Arabia-$20,700; Libya- $14,400 and Angola-$8,800.

So is Nigeria really rich after all!?

A good question to ask would be..."are countries rich because their citizens are well educated, or their citizens are well educated because their countries are rich..?"

The thinking that Nigeria is a rich country is a major problem we seem to have. The years of plenty have blinded us the the fact that all said and done, Nigeria is not really that rich, and that the country cannot really afford to give all its citizens as much free this and free that as we might like. Corruption is a factor. If corruption could be brought down to western levels, no doubt we would all have significantly better standards of living, but like I said before, all said and done, Nigeria isn't really that rich!!

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2004rank.html

Competence vs Incompetence

A friend once told me that after reviewing Nigeria's issues and problems, he had come to the conclusion that the problem with Nigeria is not so much of corruption as it is incompetence. While that may be a hard sell to the generality, after listening to his arguements I certainly do agree that he has a strong point.

But what is incompetence? A look at MS word for synonyms gives "ineffectiveness", "ineptitude", "stupidity" and "uselessness" as synonyms. What strong words!! Yet, a look around the public sphere in Nigeria shows that our nation reeks of incompetence!!

All around the world, the smartest most intelligent people are voted into public office. The American Senate is filled with Harvard, Oxford and Princeton style lawyers, successfull business men and generally men of real timber and calibre. But what do we have in Nigeria? The exact opposite. Those who fill our NASS, civil service, Police, PHCN etc seem to be the dullest and most unintelligble, unimaginative people possible. In America, the Army,Navy and Police compete with some of the best companies in the country to recruit the best brains for its services. The best engineers, IT specialists, Operations researchers etc can be found in these forces, but our own Army, Police, Navy etc are filled largely by non graduates. What do you expect from a police force that has primary 6 education as a minimum requirement!?

If these scenarios are representative of the entirety of our public institutions (which they are), then can we actually hope for any improvement in the way this country is administered? The sooner we exit from the throes of the incompetent the better.

And why should we? A cursory look at a scenario dominated by "competent" people will suffice. Take a look at the government of Lagos State. I look at that administration and I see competent people. The results are visible to all!!

My worst personal experiences in the county have come from the Police and PHCN. Imagine a PHCN staff cutting my power supply when I had paid to the same office a week prior. And his only explanation was that I should have pasted my bill on my gate. What incompetence!!! In a full week, a local PHCN office (Rumuokwrushi, PH to be exact) cannot reconcile its records to identify who has paid and who has not!!? That is really astonishing!! Even common MS excel can provide a means of keeping tabs of who has paid and who hasn't.

I'm not exactly clear on how this country can get out of the grip of the incompetent, but what is clear is that it must!!!

Haliburton Scandal

My people, isn't it odd that the Nigerian Government is moving at a snails pace over the Nigerian angle in this Haliburton scandal!? For a govenment that claims to be fighting corruption on all fronts and in all its ramifications, it seemed not to even know such a scandal existed. Not till the NASS screamed blue murder over this did we begin to see some reports in the newspapers attributing this and that to the Attorney General of the federation, the EFCC chairman and so on.

As far as I'm concerned, this Haliburton issue presented a rather quick and easy way for the government to drive home its message on zero tolerance for corruption, since the case had already been tried in the US. There would therefore no doubt be a large cache of evidence to draw from, if only the Nigerian authorities were so willing...!!

Hopefully, the last has not been heard on this issue.