Dokubo-Asari Calls For SNC, Dissolution Of Jonathan’s Government.

Leader of the Niger Delta Peoples Volunteer Force, Alhaji Mujaheed Dokubo-Asari, on Monday canvassed the dissolution of the President Goodluck Jonathan’s government to pave the way for the convocation of a Sovereign National Conference.

He said the conference was the only solution to the menace of the violent Islamist sect, Boko Haram, whose members are currently executing a bombing campaign against military and police facilities and churches especially in the northern states and Abuja.

“Whether he likes it or not, Goodluck Jonathan must convoke an SNC. There is a need for a national discourse and dialogue. It is only an SNC that will solve the problem. The solution to the Boko Haram crisis is to dissolve the government and convoke an SNC,” Dokubo-Asari told journalists at the meeting with youths of the Niger Delta in Abuja.

The ex-Niger Delta militant warned that if the Boko Haram issue could lead to another civil war if not tackled on time. He said the sect’s “arrogance” was unIslamic.

“The arrogance of Boko Haram is un-Islamic. The level of bombs they are using is low. If we begin throwing bombs, nobody will stay in Abuja,” the man who claimed to have started arms struggle in the oil rich Niger Delta said.

While threatening that the Niger Delta youths would retaliate if any evil should befall Jonathan, Dokubo-Asari however said the President had failed in the governance of the country.

“We are saying that nothing must happen to Goodluck Jonathan because if anything happens to him, the world will know.

“But we are not saying Goodluck Jonathan has tried. He has failed. What is Godswill Orubebe (Minister of Niger Delta) still doing in the federal cabinet? If Orubebe has failed, Jonathan has failed.

“A time will come if he didn’t change, our people would say, Goodluck, you are on your own. He has every power and every moral authority to convoke a Sovereign National Conference. He must correct the 55 years of injustice against us.”

On the face-off between ex-dictator Ibrahim Babangida and leader of the Ijaw nation/First Republic Minister of Information, Edwin Clark, over the Boko Haram menace, the NDPVF leader said IBB and former Head of State, General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), had no hands in the violence unleashed on the country by the sect.

Clark last week had accused Babangida of alleged complicity in the Boko Haram activities thus attracting a response from the ex-dictator camp that the first republic minister “is a loose cannon in public discourse.”

Dokubo-Asari said, “I want to be fair to IBB and Buhari on the Boko Haram crisis. They have nothing to do and cannot do anything about it. But the fact remains that the political elite of which IBB and Buhari belongs have not been able to address the problem of Boko Haram.

“They cannot do anything because nobody wants to commit suicide. The Boko Haram people are just killing themselves but cannot kill us.”

He also faulted the amnesty programme of the Federal Government which he said amounted to bribery and blackmail.

“The Amnesty is a bribe. I did not partake in the amnesty programme. That amnesty will not work because it amounts to criminalising people on account of kidnapping and they will later be settled. Amnesty was just a bribe for the oil to flow,” he said.

Reflections on state police.

Written by Jideofor Adibe.

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The proposal for a state police appears to have become mired in politics. And like most issues in the country in which the emotionally-charged identities of region and religion are brought in to interface in the discourse, opinions and positions appear to increasingly converge with the politics of North-South divide. Of course it is sometimes difficult to know when the purveyors of the various perspectives really mean what they say and when they are merely grandstanding or perhaps trying to use their publicly stated positions as bargaining chips in the authoritative allocation of values in other areas of our national political economy. The danger of dragging the emotive issue of primordial identity into what should be a rational political discourse, however, is that while our favourite past time as Nigerians is to bemoan why things don’t work in our country, we will often be happy to vote for things not to work if what is necessary to make those things work will be perceived as disadvantaging or humiliating ‘our people’, even if temporarily.

Several issues are raised by the current arguments for, and against, state police:

One, state police, which are a type of sub-national territorial police force, operate widely across the world in both federal and non-federal states. Where they are found, they are usually responsible for most normal police duties, including the maintenance of public order, criminal detection and highway patrol. Countries with territorial police include USA, UK, Australia, Canada, India, Japan and Switzerland. Contrary to popular belief, having state police does not preclude having national police forces. For instance, in the United Kingdom where you have territorial police, including special police for some towns such as the Metropolitan Police for the Greater London Area, you also have national police with specific, non-regional jurisdiction such as the British Transport Police who are responsible for policing the railways and light rail systems. Similarly, in the USA with its multiplicity of state and county police forces, there are various specialized agencies that enforce national laws such as the FBI, the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Drug Enforcement Administration and the United States Coast Guards.

In Nigeria, sections 214 and 215 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) provide that the Nigerian Police shall be under the full and exclusive control of the federal government and that the authority and powers of the force extends over the entire country. At the apex of the Nigeria Police Force is the Inspector General of Police who is vested with the command of the entire Police Force.  Each state of the federation has a commissioner of police who is the commander of the contingent of police stationed in the state but answerable to the IGP.

Two, proponents of state police argue that given the pervasive insecurity in the country, it is important to have state police so the state governors can effectively be in charge of security in their domain. They see as anomalous the idea that a governor who is constitutionally designated as the chief security officer of his state is neither in control of the police forces stationed in his state nor is he allowed to establish one. It is also argued that policing is essentially a local service and that since most crimes are local in nature, a state police force may be needed because crime detection will often require local knowledge and methods that such a state police force can better provide. Proponents of state police equally argue that the Nigerian police, as constituted, are grossly underfunded and ill-trained and that many state governments are already helping in the provision of logistics to the police forces stationed in their state.

Three, the opponents of state police have their own arguments: For instance, they argue that a state police force will be abused by the state governors as happened under the First Republic. They call attention to several instances of state abuse of state agencies such as the State Independent Electoral Commissions (SIECs) which have not been able to conduct elections to local governments in most states since their creation because the governors do not want such elections. Attention is also drawn to the emasculation of state legislatures and the virtual pocketing of state High Courts by these governors. It is equally argued that the establishment of state police will empower secessionist tendencies as it will make it easier to militarize the various ethnic militias. Opponents of state police also argue that state police will impose a strangulating financial burden on the states, most of which are already on the brink of bankruptcy. For most of the opponents of state police, therefore, it will be better to strengthen the existing police force by embarking on reforms, including those that will help it to meet the UN recommended target of at least 220 police officers per 100,000 citizens.

Four, while I share some of the concerns of the opponents of state police, I feel strongly  that given the enormous crisis in our nation building project and the near consensus that ‘true federalism’ is the answer, the notion of state police readily recommends itself. I completely reject as self-fulfilling prophecy the argument that we are not ‘ripe’ for state police. What are we then exactly ripe for, one may ask?

While I am in full support of state and even local government and special police forces at the states, I equally share the concerns about the possible misuse of such police by state governors who are more or less Machiavellian Octopuses in their enclaves. Just as I believe there is a need to reduce the powers of the federal government, there is equally a need to drastically reduce the powers of state governors and local government chairmen by introducing effective safeguards and checks and balances. I believe that restructuring the country should precede the introduction of state police. The country first needs to agree on the appropriate number of states for the country, the units that will partake in revenue sharing from the federation account and the system of sharing revenue among the different tiers of government. A state police without the necessary structural reforms will only compound the problems.

Five, it is difficult to fathom out the real reasons why the Northern Governors are opposing the idea of state police. Their formal argument that such could lead to the break-up of the country unfortunately plays into the hands of those who unfairly accuse the region of being parasitic. In any marriage, it is often wrong for one partner to give the impression that he or she is unduly scared of the marriage imploding up because the impression will then be created that the partner is an undue beneficiary from the union. Both partners must desire the marriage for it to work and no one should be allowed to use it as a tool of blackmail. In the unlikely event that Nigeria breaks up, there is no way of knowing which area will fare better or worse as necessity is often the mother of invention. In fact, if we use the current internally generated revenue as a measure of which area will survive in the unlikely event of a break-up, then only Lagos and Sokoto States will. According to the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Lagos had the highest IGR in 2008/2009 of 60 per cent followed by Sokoto State which had an IGR of 46 per cent. Besides, why should a region which undoubtedly is the food basket of the country continue to give the impression that it is dead-scared of the country imploding? And this is coming after the same forum not long ago called the bluff of champions of the Sovereign National Conference – part of the political cat and mouse games played by the various regional and ethnic factions of the elite – by suddenly supporting the idea? I feel that those who purport to speak for the North sometimes take positions that play into the hands of their political adversaries.

My personal opinion is that in the unlikely event of the break-up of the country, one of the most vulnerable parts of the country will be the Niger Delta. This is because in the resource curse theory and practice in Africa, countries endowed with abundant natural resources have a higher tendency for instability and even wars as we see in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and as happened in Liberia.

Six, it is always good to ‘jaw-jaw’ and Nigerians debating passionately about state police enrich our marketplace of political ideas which is a key infrastructure of any democracy. In the marketplace of ideas notion of democracy, ideas compete vigorously for acceptance.  In this sense, Rep Gerald Irona, who is the Vice Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Gas, got it all wrong when he declared that “people canvassing for state police had evil agenda and do not want the corporate existence of Nigeria.” (BusinessDay July 29 2012). You cannot use blackmail to suppress ideas you do not like in the marketplace of ideas because the only acceptable currency is the power of the thoughts and the logic behind them. Resort to blackmail is often an indication that either one has no ideas to market or that the power and logic behind his ideas are not strong enough to compete.

Reforming Political Parties

Written by Dr. Jibrin Ibrahim.

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According to the National Chairman of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Bamanga Tukur: “It is an illusion for the party’s members to think that the PDP will rule Nigeria forever, if there are no reforms that will enable the party to deliver good governance to the Nigerian people” (Daily Trust, 29/7/12). The party, he said, is engaging in a major drive to recruit new members. Along the same line, the woman leader of the party organised an E-Conference in Abuja last week with the objective of attracting young cyber-literate women to the party. She committed to paying 100,000 naira to any woman who is able to recruit 1,000 women into the party. These developments signal a new frame of mind for Nigeria’s ruling party.

One of the challenges of Nigerian politics is the penchant for everybody to be part of the ruling parties. Over the past 12 years, most of Nigeria’s political class has been in and out and in the party again. It is in that context that the party has seen itself as the dominant party in the country. We recall the words of the former Chairman of PDP, Col. Ahmadu Ali: “The PDP is full of members who fraudulently obtained their party membership” (Tribune, 23/11/2005). He was justifying the decision of the party to dismiss all its members in November 2005 and request that they all re-apply for new membership. For weeks, the PDP enjoyed the distinction of being the only ruling political party in world history without a single member. After a “thorough process of screening”, suitable members were recruited to organize the rigging of the 2007 elections. Obviously, the PDP did not believe it needed members.

Nigerian parties can afford to sack members because they are not about democracy and elections. Nigerian elections have become occasions in which the outcome has been the subversion of the democratic process rather than its consolidation. Especially during the 2003 and 2007 elections, the polls were not opportunities in which party members and supporters expressed political choices through voting who they wanted to rule them. The elections were massively rigged and the ruling party could not have been in need of members because it could deliver votes without having party members.

To be fair to the PDP, the other parties in the country also resemble the ruling party and are also not organizations that are owned by party members. Most Nigerian parties are “owned” by godfathers and the historical strength of the PDP is based on the fact that it has the largest concentration of godfathers in the country. It is normal that party “owners” would have a lot of contempt for party members. Party members are people who are paid and ‘bused’ into party conventions and rallies and are therefore not stakeholders. The new change we are seeing today might not be unconnected to the fact that for the first time in 2011, the elections were better than the preceding ones. When elections are free and fair, political parties need members and supporters as that is the basis on which they have access to political parties. The recent crushing defeat the PDP suffered in the Edo elections might have raised their consciousness about the importance of attracting members.

There is however still a long road for our parties to travel before our political system can improve significantly. Political parties in Nigeria since 1978 have had a persistent tendency to factionalise and fractionalise. This is because they have been instruments used for mafia style gangsterism by political entrepreneurs. The key political resources used in the battles are state power, money and violence. Godfathers decide on party nominations and campaign outcomes and when candidates try to steer an independent course, they use their favourite instruments to deal with them. The result was that they raised the level of electoral violence in the country and made free and fair elections difficult.

Most of the parties are small and have little impact on the political process. They have existed for one of two reasons – to collect grants from INEC or as fall back party for a godfather that might be dethroned from their current party, mostly, from the PDP. The birth of the Action Party of Nigeria has been a game changer in Nigerian politics because they were able to demonstrate that the PDP was beatable. In the North, the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) could have been another game changer but the party ruined its chances due to its inability to respect choices party members had made in the nomination of candidates. The failure of the party to win in many states where it had real chances is the evidence that political parties need to respect their members.

The tendency in the Fourth Republic has been that as the number of political parties in the country increases, the movement towards a one-party regime accelerates. This tendency has now been challenged by the ability of the ACN to demonstrate that the PDP was beatable. Should the rumoured merger between the ACN and CPC occur successfully, the new party would have the ability to challenge the PDP for national political power? Mergers of political parties are however very difficult because there are too many egos to satisfy and too many people who will lose their positions.

It is for this reason that many opposition party members have sought for the easy answer by canvassing for a statutory reduction in the number of parties to between two and five. This option cannot work in a way that enhances democracy. The state would have to play a major role in devising the parties to be registered and once that happens, state manipulation becomes the order of the day. Even after the initial registration, the state, and by extension the ruling party, would retain the power to foment splits within opposition parties and influence which factions get recognised as authentic.

The only solution is for committed Nigerians to establish new forms of parties that are owned, financed and controlled by members rather than by godfathers. As Obama has shown in the United States, with sufficient planning and foresight, it’s possible for people to change the nature of politics. The godfather syndrome makes it impossible for true accountability to be practised in parties. The fact that one or two individuals bear the cost of running campaigns and funding of other party activities leads to a privatization of both party and state machinery because government officials would naturally owe allegiance to the political godfather who “put” them in office rather than to the ordinary citizen.

One of the legacies of militarization of Nigerian society and its impact on the political process is the organization of political parties around personalities, tribe or religion rather than on issues. Parties that are not in power have serious difficulties raising funds for their activities. The ruling party is rich because it has access to state funds through government contracts and other creative means of funding.

The new type of party we require must subscribe to the principle that all citizens can freely join and participate fully in all of its activities regardless of ethnic, religious, gender, class, social background or standing and disability. Above all, the practices of the party must conform to the principles of internal party democracy, especially in regard to the nomination of candidates for elections. They must be accountable to their members. I do hope that more parties understand this and move to reform themselves rather than wait to be thrown out.

Exclusive: New NSA Dasuki threatens to quit office; As JTF Members engages in mass Exodus.

The new spate of violence which is currently sweeping across the Nation along a bloody trail that appears emboldened with each corrective measure undertaken by the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Dr. Goodluck Ebelemi Jonathan, may have triggered other more latent squabbles within the security operatives of Executive cabinet of the President.
Information available to 247ureports.com through a source close to the National Security Adviser (NSA) to the President indicates that there appear confirmatory indicators that the New NSA might be on his way out of the NSA, if his demands remain un-meet.
According to the information received, the new NSA recently threatened to abandon his post in a direct tirade to Mr. President. Dasuki is said to have demanded for his men to be recruited into his office to enable him discharge his duty as expected. However, our source revealed that Mr. President refused Dasuki’s request and insisted that his (Jonathan) men should remain intact.
Knowledgeable sources credit the President’s unwilling behavior to the circumstances surrounding the NSA appointment. It is also gathered that Background information indicates Dasuki’s accession to the Post of NSA came as a result of blackmail and a not too friendly arm-twisting of President Jonathan by forces believed to be aligned with the former Nigerian Dictator, General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida, the former Vice President Abubakar Atiku and other influential members of the People Democratic Party (PDP) from the North.
In what President Jonathan, believed was a move to appease the North, buckled and appointed an NSA he never wanted to appoint. So a volatile cocktail was brewed at the goal post of innocent lives and insecurity –as men of the Islamic terrorist group, the Boko Haram opted to serve the new NSA an embarrassing dish.
This, the group achieved through unleashing new attacks on areas it had never attacked before. The terrorist group attacked the hometown of the NSA using sophisticated suicide bomber who drove in a Mercedes Benz Sport Utility Vehicle- killing six Nigerian Police officers. In addition, the group have continued to launch successive successful attacks in the typical areas of Yobe, Borno, Gombe, Kaduna.
The group in a show of arrogance has touted the appointment of Dasuki as indicative and/or symptomatic of desperation on the part of Mr. President and his men. This they noted while threatening to engage in more spectacular attacks and assassination of highly placed officials in the social spectra.
Dasuki, on his part is said to be aware of the impending posture of the Terrorist group immediately following the end of the Holy period Ramadan and for this reason, he had asked the president to allow him recruit his men in order to penetrate and dislodge the terrorist group against the next wave of attacks. But the President’s refusal saw an angry Dasuki threatening to abandon his post- to save his face. President Jonathan, according to a source, has yet to respond to Dasuki or accede to his demand. The President seems deeply engaged in quelling the impeachment threat against him, said the source.
Meanwhile an unnerving silence is said to be brewing in the various federated security outfits over the spate of renewed violence against security operatives appear to have further undermined the already weakened moral amongst the security operatives.
Our sources pointed particular attention to the trend observed among the members of the Joint Task Force (JTF) stationed to Mubi area of Adamawa State stretching to Bornu State area near the Cameroun/Nigeria Border. The members of the JTF have experienced a mass exodus of officers- including men of the State Security Services.
Accordingly available information indicates the Presidency had been briefed on the ongoing trend two months ago. But the trending appears undeterred.

Convictions of Ibori, Akingbola: Eso, Akanbi, Indict Nigerian Judges, Call For Clean-up.

  PAUL DADA, AHURAKA ISAH, CHUKA ODITAH, and ABDULLAH OLESIN.

Former justice of the Supreme Court Kayode Eso and former president, Court of Appeal (PCA), Justice Mustapha Akanbi, have raised the alarm over the non- conviction of high-profile corruption suspects in the country while former Delta State governor James Ibori and former managing director of Intercontinental Bank Plc Mr. Erastus Akingbola have been convicted in the United Kingdom (UK) court.
The jurists also decried the conduct of some judges in their handling of high-profile cases, saying that there was the urgent need for Nigerian courts to convict high profile suspects standing trial for the past five years to restore confidence in the judiciary.
Eso and Akanbi also faulted the antics of some lawyers and prosecutors, saying that most of the cases are lost due to shoddy investigation and delayed tactics by the lawyers.
They further asked the new chief justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Mariam Aloma Mukhtar, to initiate a review of the country’s criminal justice system to reduce the abuse of interlocutory injunctions usually employed by lawyers to frustrate timely delivery of judgement.
Other stakeholders including six legal practitioners –  Prof. Itse Sagay (SAN),  Mrs. Funke Adekoya (SAN), Mallam Abubakar Malami (SAN), Dr Alex Izinyon (SAN) and two Lagos-based lawyers Wahab Shittu and Emmanuel Ajayi – also concurred with the stance of Eso and Akanbi on the matter.
Eso, Akanbi and the lawyers spoke in separate exclusive interviews with our correspondents yesterday.
 Judge Anthony Pitts of Southwark Crown Court, London, UK had on April 17, 2012, sentenced Ibori to 13 years for his involvement in £50 million (about $77 million) fraud and money laundering.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) had  on December 31, 2008, secured  a Mareva injunction (also known as a freezing order) from a London court to freeze all the global assets of  Akingbola after discovering funds allegedly belonging to the bank’s depositors traced to Akingbola’s foreign account.
Justice Eso said, “There are inherent things that are wrong with our courts, lawyers and the criminal justice system which make it difficult to secure convictions against the high-profile corruption suspects.
“Take, for instance, the same prosecution (EFCC) that filed 170- count charge against Ibori and failed to obtain conviction in Nigeria court got it right with mere 10- count charge in London court. The Nigerian court judge (Justice Marcel Awokulehin) said Ibori had no case to answer in all the 170- count charge.
‘’But I don’t need to advice Justice Aloma-Muktar because I personally believe that her appointment as the CJN would usher in a new dawn in Nigeria judiciary.
“As for the lawyers, they know the judges they can approach to procure judgement. None of them would dare to come near me for such when I was a judge.”
Akanbi further said the convictions of Ibori and Akingbola by UK courts have exposed the flaws in the nation’s  criminal justice system.
For effective administration of justice in the country, the eminent jurist called for the splitting of the office of the minister of justice and attorney-general of the federation (AGF).
He emphasised that the AGF should not be under the control of the executive, adding that such appointee “must be competent, above board and committed to the nation. His loyalty to the nation must be paramount”.
Explaining that the courts do not appear to appreciate the underpinning factor for fighting corruption, Akanbi posited that, for an effective war against corruption, Nigeria requires the services of investigators and prosecutors “who are competent and are above corruption and have ability to perform effectively”.
He said, “The problem with our criminal justice is either we don’t have competent investigators or prosecutors. One finds it difficult to understand what is happening. This is not the Nigeria we used to know. The offences committed by Ibori and Akingbola are of high magnitude to ignore.”
Blaming the politicisation of appointment of judges for the dearth of courageous judges in the country, he said, “As you lay your bed, you lie on it. How are judges appointed? In the past there was no question of lobbying; you are invited to the Bench. But today, people lobby, use influence to become judges. The politicians lobby for people to be appointed as judges. Unless we go back to the roots and appoint men of honour as judges, the problem will persist.  The ‘fear of the unknown’ also encouraged judges not to be upright in the discharge of their duties.”

Sagay, Adekoya, Mallami, others react
Also speaking on the issue, Sagay said, “There are two main reasons. Most of these major cases involving persons are stalled because they are part of the establishment. It’s like protecting each other.
“Our judicial system permits preliminary objection. Instead of going to defend yourself, you can file an application that the court has no jurisdiction over the matter. And then the appeal on the preliminary objection is dragged until it gets to the Supreme Court.
“Remove the right to make a preliminary objection. If you have a case, go and defend yourself. And if it is not possible to remove the application for preliminary objection, then the court should be allowed to take the preliminary objection and the substantive case together. Either you remove it or you allow for both the preliminary objection and the substantive case together.”
Adekoya said,  “I believe the difficulty in obtaining convictions or concluding the trials of high-profile corruption cases in Nigerian courts is a result of the weak criminal justice system in Nigeria. UK newspaper reports show the amount of time and resources spent on investigating the offences before the offenders are brought to trial. Documents, bank statements and banking records are meticulously cross-checked before trial in order to ensure that charges brought can be proved beyond reasonable doubt.
‘’It is this lack of supporting infrastructure within our criminal investigative units that make convictions difficult. Sufficient investigation is not done before the accused is brought to court for trial. Once remanded on bail, investigations continue and eventually die out, either due to lack of resources or lack of commitment. Our criminal investigators require training in current methods of investigating especially in areas such as electronic bank transfers etc. If the political will to stamp out corruption exists, the funds will be made available to acquire the needed training and, where necessary, equipment.”
Malami said,  ‘’The problem lies largely with the executive which owns the police, the EFCC, and the justice ministry that are charged with responsibilities to investigate, arraign or prosecute these high-profile corruption cases.
“There is an extent a judge can go with a hopeless investigative report - hopeless proof of evidence placed before him for the trial of these suspects. What do you expect a judge to do with the investigative report borne out of executive compromise and inefficiency other than to throw out such cases or keep it pending until the executive is able to do the needful.”
But Izinyon said, ‘’I won’t say that everybody is wrong or castigate anyone or the system in the trial of these cases. The London courts did not decide these matters within the same day they were filed. Some have dragged for years also in their courts.
“The two criminal justice systems differ. Ours was modelled to guarantee fair hearing. You can’t deny a person who raise objection against some charges because you want the matter decided immediately. But that does not mean that one would rule out manipulation by either the defence counsel or the other in this type of cases. The prosecution can be ready while the defence may raise one thing or the other to allow the matter drag endlessly.”
For Shittu, “the Nigerian judiciary system is not working the way it should work. This is attributed to the delay in the judicial process and the corruption in the judiciary. This is not to say that the entire judiciary is corrupt but you cannot overrule that there is corruption in the judiciary.
“But you cannot blame the judges alone. I think all stakeholders including lawyers, police officers and others should also be blamed. I think everyone has a fair share. The idea is to strengthen the integrity of the process.”
 Ajayi said, “The rich can afford the service of a lawyer of high legal standing, mostly SANs, to whom the courts often give regard and preference. The senior lawyers often approach the court with different kinds of injunctions which are capable of stalling proceedings.
“Another factor is corruption. Our society generally gives preference to status, hence the reason we have political interference in cases involving the rich who, at one time or the other, had made contributions towards installing a candidate into one political office or the other.

EFCC, ICPC convictions
Since inception, the EFCC has successfully arraigned over 20 former governors and a handful of ex-ministers over corruption charges. In April 2007, pioneer chairman of the EFCC Mallam Nuhu Ribadu stated that 31 serving governors were corrupt. His claim later prepared the ground for the trial of state governors who were alleged to have been corrupt. Till his exit from office, trial of allegedly corrupt governors continued without conclusion and was subsequently handed over to his successor, Farida Waziri.
From inception in year 2000, the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), has also been unsuccessful in securing judgement against high-profile offenders for corrupt charges. The commission, during the days of its pioneer chairman Mustapha Akanbi, was able to arrest the now late cabinet minister, S.M. Afolabi as well as Akwanga, Mrs Akerele, and Senator Wabara, and, of late, Sunday Ehindero. There cases are still hanging in the balance as of today.

Do You Believe Nigeria’s Statistics?

The Soludo Solution By Chukwuma Charles Soludo

Wolfgang Stolper’s 1966 classic lamented that Nigeria’s First National Development Plan 1962 - 68 was an exercise in planning with limited statistics. Almost 50 years after, the concern is deepening. Several of the most important national data (if they are available and on time) are either of poor quality or downright wrong. Do you believe that Nigeria’s population is 167 million this year? Do you believe that GDP is growing at nearly 8 per cent (led by the non-oil sector) and at the same time poverty has worsened to all time high of 72 per cent in 2011? Do you believe the school enrolment figures? Does the inflation figure make sense to you? Do you believe the data on consumption, investment, etc? I am at pains to admit that I am not sure.

“If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.” That was the seminal conclusion of Lord Kelvin in 1883. Without timely and reliable data on social and economic conditions of a society, much of public policy becomes an exercise in shadow-boxing. Policy analysis becomes a case of garbage in, garbage out. Many commentators and policy analysts casually refer to the poor quality of our national data, but I am not sure the public and the government truly appreciate the magnitude of the crisis. When I accepted to write this column, I also decided to ensure that it is evidence-based. But not without the necessary caveat emptor with regards to my articles on Nigeria! That explains the focus of this first article.

Of course, in Nigeria everyone is a moving statistical agency. Everyone reels out his or her own statistics on anything. Some will tell you that poverty incidence is 90 per cent; 70 per cent or that unemployment is 80 per cent and all kinds of numbers are bandied around. Ask them the source of their statistics and they will be surprised that you “can’t see it”. Don’t try to get into the argument that no person, based on his limited observations, can postulate about the conditions of the entire country covering 774 local governments. The reality is that aside from some sectoral data produced by a myriad of agencies, only the former Federal Office of Statistics (FOS) and now the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has the national mandate and organisation to produce nationwide statistics on the social and economic conditions of the country.

Sometimes, one is embarrassed to see even officers of government reeling out unsubstantiated statistics from their heads or quoting figures from the World Bank. Quoting World Bank figures by government officials is an admission that the government does not trust its own statistics. Nothing is a more national embarrassment than seeing the National Planning Commission (which supervises the NBS) repeatedly refer to World Bank ‘estimates’ in its Vision 2020 document. The World Bank does not have the operational infrastructure to collect economy-wide primary statistics on Nigeria. It relies on national statistics produced by NBS and other government agencies plus its own ‘staff estimates’. I know that some of the World Bank figures are suspect.

In 2001, I wrote an article entitled ‘The numbers do not add up’. This highlighted the inconsistencies and contradictions in the statistics published by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), the FOS and the Ministry of Finance on the Nigerian economy.  In 2003, I became Chief Economic Adviser to the President and CEO of the National Planning Commission (with FOS as one of the parastatals to supervise). I faced the true reality of the pitiable state of our national statistical system. A diagnostic evaluation of the FOS revealed a systemic collapse. Less than 20 per cent of the thousands of staff had any professional qualification or experience to work in such an institution. It had no office building, grossly underfunded, and did not have the technology to function.

I believed we needed to reconstruct a new statistical agency from the scratch. We produced the “Statistical Master Plan for the Nigeria National Statistical System (2004/5-2008/9)”; renamed the FOS to the current name of NBS; set out to secure its current office building, and drew a huge agenda for total transformation including manpower recruitment and training, aiming to have at least 80 per cent of the staff as professionals. I left for the CBN a few months later and I want to believe that the reforms are still work-in-progress. From what I can see, we still have a very long way to go.

In the last few years, I have been advising institutional investors on Africa and have had to tease out information from country statistics of many African countries. My experience is that there are few African countries whose statistics are as poor as Nigeria’s. Investors keep asking me about the conflicting figures on the Nigerian economy. It is serious!

Every data is important. However, it is extremely difficult for policymakers to make or measure progress without reliable data on demography (population and its characteristics); income or GDP and its distribution; unemployment; poverty; inflation; health and educational standards. In advanced democracies, the fate of governments depends critically on the standard of living of the people measured by unemployment and poverty. In Nigeria, I guess these numbers don’t excite the public because they either do not understand or do not believe them.

We know that our population figures and school enrolment rates are tied to revenue allocation from Abuja. Recall the dispute between the National Population Commission and Lagos State as to whether the state’s population was 9 million or 18 million? We know what happened during the census. We also know what goes on with school enrolment figures. States are in competition to maximise these numbers to get more money. Ultimately our population figures are political figures designed to balance and maintain some presumed structures of the country. Truth be told: we don’t know how many Nigerians we are planning for. If we are serious, there is the technology to undertake biometric capture of all citizens, without any duplication.

Recently, the NBS released a bombshell on poverty incidence. According to NBS, poverty has worsened from 54 per cent in 2004 to 69 per cent in 2010 and 72 per cent in 2011. A decomposition of the figures reveals that states in the South contributed 70 per cent of the deterioration while states in the North contributed 30 per cent. Wonderful! This is a subject for another day. In more organised societies, such figures (if they are believable) can pull down a government. But, are they believable?

Empirical evidence for Africa in the late 1990s showed that a GDP growth rate of about 4-5 per cent was required to stop poverty from getting worse; and 7 per cent or more to achieve the MDG goal of halving poverty by 2015. In fact, I do not know any country with a broad-based GDP growth rate of 5 per cent or more for a decade without a significant reduction in poverty. Income (measured by GDP) is the most important determinant of poverty.

For Nigeria, NBS tells us the economy has been growing (at least since 2003) by an average of 7 per cent or more. It also says that the growth is driven mostly by non-oil sector whose growth rate exceeds 8 per cent. Agriculture which employs most of the poor people is said to be growing at an average of 7 per cent per annum. So, the growth is broadly shared.  Furthermore, the statistics says Nigeria has become less unequal. Gini coefficient has declined from 49 per cent in 2004 to 44 per cent in 2010 -- bringing the level of inequality in Nigeria to just about the level in China. Hmmm!

The explanations given by the NBS for the recent deterioration in poverty are, to say the least, very flimsy. The NBS 2005 detailed report has more robust and plausible explanation of poverty dynamics in Nigeria.

I am not making any judgment as to which of the statistics is right or wrong, but both cannot be right at the same time. You cannot have ‘high broadly-shared’ growth of 7 per cent or more (as reported) and escalating poverty at the same time. If the poverty numbers are correct, then the GDP numbers are wrong. If the GDP numbers are correct, then the poverty numbers must be wrong. Let me be more emphatic: if the GDP numbers are correct, poverty will be below 50 per cent in 2011; and if the poverty numbers are correct, then GDP must have been contracting dangerously!

All the pedestrian explanations for increased poverty including insecurity, corruption, waste, poor infrastructure including power, etc ought to show up in the GDP growth rate. If, in spite of all these, GDP or income is still growing rapidly as claimed, then poverty cannot be rising. In a layman’s language, the GDP data claim that most people are getting richer. Nigeria cannot publish data showing us that people are getting richer and poorer at the same time. Investors are getting confused.

To further illustrate the absurdities, let us rewind back to 1985. With the collapse of oil prices in 1982, the economy massively imploded, with stringent austerity measures, mass retrenchment of workers and non-payment of salaries, queuing for essential commodities, negative average income growth, and yet poverty incidence was reported at just 45 per cent. Under the SAP era, poverty was reported to have fallen to 42 per cent in 1992, before climbing dramatically to 66 per cent in 1996. Between 1996 and 2003, average GDP growth rate was about 4 per cent, and poverty dropped to 54 per cent. Now came the ‘boom era’—income growth of 7 per cent or more since 2003, and paradoxically, poverty also exploded to all time high of 72 per cent in 2011. Something is definitely not adding up!

I suspect a fundamental flaw in the sampling process and computational technique. Nigeria must get to work. Full implementation of the Statistical Master Plan is an important first step. Reliable statistical system costs money but it is an inevitable soft infrastructure of development. As CEO of National Planning, I refused to sign on to a $50 million World Bank loan for NBS. For me, Nigeria should only borrow for bankable projects, and not for all kinds of waste pipes dressed as ‘capacity building’. If we cannot adequately fund NBS, I wonder what else deserves better attention.

Pastor Bakare Lampoons Mrs. Patience Jonathan.

Pastor Tunde Bakare

By SaharaReporters, New York

Pastor Tunde Bakare’s bracing criticism of the state of Nigerian politics continued today, with his spotlight turning on First Lady Patience Jonathan.
Before delivering his latest salvo in a series that began on July 22, Mr. Bakare reviewed the firestorm in cyberspace over his previous sermon titled “How to Change the Government Peacefully.” He remarked that “whether anybody likes it or not, we are not waiting for time to tell. The time is already telling.” In a fervent defense of a political bent in his recent sermons, Mr. Bakare stated, “You may say I no longer teach you Bible but politics. That’s fine. Use it, and we will have a new nation.”
He criticized the declaration of self-autonomy by the Ogoni people. Even so, he condemned the insincerity on the part of the Federal Government and the State Security Service (SSS), carpeting them for pretending to be unaware of the developments in Ogoniland.
“On the 2nd of August, Ogoni people declared their own political autonomy from Nigeria’s political landscape, and 72 hours after this declaration, the Federal Government is playing deaf and dumb. The Special Assistant to the Information Minister says they are not aware of such declaration. Whereas, I had preached a simple message on how to change government peacefully and make the society better, and within two hours the tape had landed on the table of the State
Security Department that they began to hound me the following day,” said the pastor.
Mr. Bakare’s topic for today was titled “Personal Insecurity/Inferiority Aborts Your Destiny (Part 1).” The talk lampooned Mrs. Jonathan’s recent covetous behavior, describing her as suffering from a psyche of characteristic inferiority. The activist pastor, who was a vice presidential candidate to General Muhammadu Buhari (ret.), asserted that Mrs. Jonathan’s background as a stark pauper caused her to seek “aggressive compensation.” He added that, because Nigeria’s First Lady was unsure of the reality of the provisions she currently enjoys, she wants to secure her sudden opulence at all cost, even at the detriment of public interest.
“Now I know why Jonathan’s wife has become Permanent Secretary; they are preparing her for the position of the Prime Minister of Niger Delta Republic,” quipped Mr. Bakare. He condemned the desperation with which Mrs. Jonathan seeks to be the head of all Africa’s First Ladies, a permanent secretary in Bayelsa State, as well as her possible greed for political power in a prospective Niger Delta Republic.
Mr. Bakare stated, “In the time of Awolowo, Nnamdi Azikiwe and Ahmadu Bello, they annexed
their resources to the development of their regions and there were serious competitions in each region, which in turn contributed to the federal purse. Now, it is the turn of Otuoke people, and they are declaring autonomy.”
Mr. Bakare prayed that any agenda set to balkanize the nation would fail. “We are not saying that people should not control the resources in their own regions, but they had benefited from the largesse of our unity in the past. Now, they cannot divorce when they have their own child.” He added, “It is not true that Nigeria was formed by Lord Lugard, no. The Bible says in Acts 14 that God predetermines the boundaries of all nations. He only used the hands of those in the Western world (to form Nigeria).”
The pastor’s sermon suggested that President Goodluck Jonathan’s gluttony for power and the First Lady’s actions portrayed a couple bent on executive misadventures.
“Within ten years from when he was working among the marine animals, [Mr. Jonathan] was appointed to become deputy governor, and then became acting governor. Without even thinking about it, he was appointed as vice presidential candidate and, by doctrine of necessity, he became acting president. Before he could study how to act, God factor made him President. Now, he has not even performed in 2011/2012, he is planning for 2015. His middle name is Jeroboam!” said Mr. Bakare.
In a series of declamations, Mr. Bakare asserted, “When the shoeless takes over, he does clueless things. When such men of low estate find themselves in power, terrible things begin to happen.” He added, “It is the timidity of the inferior that prods them to cover up. Deep rivers flow in majestic silence.”
In today’s sermon, Mr. Bakare narrated a reported encounter between Mr. Jonathan and Cardinal Anthony Olubunmi Okogie during a visit by the former prior to the 2011 elections. Bakare related that Mr. Jonathan had requested that the Catholic prelate pray for him to win the 2011 election. In response, the latter reportedly prophesied, “You will win, but you will not rule.”
Pastor Bakare stated that the prophecy had been realized since Mrs. Jonathan and members of a cabal had overshadowed the president.