Presidential Persecution Complex.

The Verdict according to Olusegun Adeniyi. 

Without conducting a poll or a content analysis, Dr Goodluck Jonathan has declared himself the most criticized president in the world. That I guess is what he is being told by some favour-seeking politicians and ‘media consultants’. But from experience I know why the people who peddle those tales to the president do so: one, to make his media managers look bad; two, to bring in their own men if possible; and three, to make money. Before I however conclude on what President Jonathan’s real problem is, I want to share my experience with the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua on this same issue.

In my first year working for him, I was aware that many people were telling my late principal how his efforts were not appreciated by Nigerians because of media opposition. Both the Minister of Information, Mr John Odey, and myself were blamed for this situation. These were, however, mere whispering campaigns until the day I got a document from the president directing me and Odey to read before meeting with him to discuss it. The document in question was a media strategy paper from one of the aides retained from the President Olusegun Obasanjo era. Even though the man wrote that it was strictly a secret paper, the president forwarded copies to myself and Odey.

The paper brought to the fore the challenges I faced and which I think any serious journalist in government would face. My understanding of an effective media strategy was for government to address the issues critics were raising and that was the approach I adopted which my late principal appreciated even though there was also pressure on him that by not “fighting back”, I was not showing enough commitment to his administration. This was the same argument advanced in the ten-page paper which the author apparently never imagined would come back to me.

The “foundation” to the submission, according to the man, centered on the fact that “Nigeria is today being led by a visionary, self-less and committed leader but how many Nigerians know about him or his vision? Whereas government has done so much and achieved positive results in so short a time, most of the achievements are not known to the public and other critical constituencies, largely because of the barrage of negative press coming out of the Nigerian and international media—both in hardcopies of Nigerian newspapers and other internet media.”

According to the official who incidentally was brought to the villa by Obasanjo, and is a Yorubaman, a good media manager should be able to sell Yar’Adua’s “gentle mien and approach (dialogue and consensus building) in contrasts to President Obasanjo’s aggressive and combative approach” aside Yar’Adua’s “personal integrity and simplicity which Nigerian masses can identify with and the ambitious vision 20-20-20 can be positively projected for maximum redefining.”

After the long preamble, the official now recommended a Media and Information Management Team which would require “co-option of good writers drawn from editors of Nigerian newspapers” to be domiciled in his office! There were other recommendations that would require huge capital outlay for both domestic and international propaganda.

When I got a copy of this paper with a directive that myself, Odey and the man should meet with him (Yar’Adua) four days later, I could not contain my anger as I sent a memo back to the president that same day. I am reproducing excerpts from my memo which underscores my own understanding of what I consider to be the role of a journalist in government.

“I have received an invitation to a meeting with Your Excellency on Monday with an accompanying document on ‘Media and Information Management’ and I hasten to say that the meeting is not only unnecessary, the motive behind it is unfortunate. I wish to inform Your Excellency that the so-called strategy paper is a rehash of an eight million Dollar proposal from a consultant promoted by…to me upon assuming office last year but which I turned down because I believed then, and even more so now, that that is not the way to go.

“While I will in a separate paper counter each of the false assumptions which inform the conclusion that there is information management deficit, I wish to reiterate my stand that on balance, this government and indeed President Yar’Adua has a relatively fair media image. While it can be better, the approach being proposed is unnecessary, wasteful and will at the end be counterproductive.

“This ridiculous idea of selective newspaper cuttings (of negative media news reports or articles) to the president has a purpose: either to portray me as incompetent or create the image of a media siege so that some consultants (and necessarily huge resources) can be deployed to combat this exaggerated problem. While some people can bring in ‘experts’ who they assume have the magic wand to ensure that the media begin to celebrate the president and the government without any criticism, the problem is that the only beneficiaries of such self-deluding enterprise are the consultants and their promoters, not the president or the government.

“Your Excellency, I scan the Nigerian media everyday and I also do same for American and British media and I am aware our media is not as cynical and contemptuous of their government and the man in power as the British or American media. While some people have issues with the style of government, there is still a general perception that the president is a man of integrity and has his plan but rather slow in his approach. Because some key issues like power emergency/Niger Delta Summit/Infrastructure are yet to be resolved, I am aware of current media challenge. But I also know that this can be an advantage because when the media create low expectations, as they do now, results will be easy to see and appreciate as it would ultimately happen in this instance. On the other hand, when you pump the people up with expensive media propaganda, then you create problem when results don’t match expectations…”

After reading my memo, President Yar’Adua cancelled the meeting earlier called and just directed that myself, Odey and the man should iron out the issue. Not surprisingly, the man felt so small at our meeting chaired by Odey and three weeks later, he was sacked by the president. But it would not be the end of the intrigues I would survive in the villa nor of the constant bombardment of the president with insinuation that the media was his problem.

Now that President Jonathan is also facing a barrage of criticism, he has promised to be “the most praised president” by 2013. If I understand that statement clearly, what it means is that the critics are justified because the president has not met their expectations and that by next year, his performance would have been such that they would begin to sing his praise. But we all know that is not what President Jonathan meant to convey. He feels he is being unfairly attacked by the media.

That, however, is not true. The fact is that the conventional media is not more critical of President Jonathan than his predecessors. The real problem this president is facing is from his social media “friends”, the crowd he carefully cultivated and set out to please as the first “Nigerian Facebook President”. Unfortunately, he ought to have been warned that the social media can cut both ways. So if he in 2010 enjoyed public adulation at the expense of the “Yar’Adua cabal”, it is naïve not to understand that he is playing in a jungle where rumour peddling, hate mongering, bitter retorts, malicious gossips and innuendoes are also fair games.

It is, however, patently dishonest for his handlers to argue that those who criticize or hurl personal abuse at the president do so because he is from Niger Delta (or whatever other ridiculous reasons being invented). No, it is because he is the president of Nigeria while his implacable traducers even enjoy attacking him for the simple reason that he has made them to know that they are getting to him.

What makes the situation so pathetic is that those close to the president refuse to locate when the real problem began, especially with regards to genuine supporters who now feel disappointed. It all started in January following the sudden withdrawal of fuel subsidy on the first day of the year. Not only was the timing inauspicious (with many still in their villages) there was also the question of trust since government officials had announced that the policy (which by the way I wholeheartedly endorse) would not commence until the second quarter of the year.

To compound the situation, revelations began to come from the probe of fuel subsidy payments in 2011 of how billions (in Dollar) of public funds were practically shared by some unscrupulous marketers and their government collaborators, all under President Jonathan’s watch. Then, on a rare interview on national television which was watched by many Nigerians (at home and in the Diaspora), he angrily proclaimed that he doesn’t give a damn about what people feel on his refusal to publicly declare his assets. With all these, the president frittered away enormous goodwill though there is still time to make amends not with the critics but with the silent majority of Nigerians who only desire good leadership and appreciate genuine efforts.

What Dr Goodluck Jonathan must, however, come to terms with is that presidents don’t crave momentary applause as he seems to be doing; they target history. To his credit, the power situation has improved significantly but the things that would earn him enduring legacy in the sector (or in any other sector for that matter) are not necessarily decisions that would provoke instant praise. The way things are in Nigeria today, the president is like a man charged with leading an orchestra. To succeed, he must learn to back the crowd.

But here is the greater lesson for President Jonathan: Asked on Monday how he took actor Clint Eastwood’s bizarre attack on him (characterised by an empty chair) at the Republican Convention, President Barack Obama said: “One thing about being president or running for president—if you’re easily offended, you should probably choose another profession.”

In Memory of Gani Fawehinmi, Master Of The Rolls By Ogaga Ifowodo.

Gani Fawehinmi

On 5 September 2012, it will be three years since Gani Fawehinmi died of cancer and joined the ancestors. The void he left in our political life remains unfilled, for so large was his presence while he breathed.  The park at the Ojota area of Lagos named in his honour has since become Nigeria’s primary spot where the suffering masses gather to expose their wounds and protest their unrelieved oppression worsened by the staggering corruption of their so-called leaders. There is no doubt that every true patriot, every lover of freedom, democracy and good governance, mourns still the untimely departure of Fawehinmi.
On 8 September 2009, a slightly different version of the following tribute appeared in the defunct NEXT newspaper.  I republish it here in the light of the declining influence of lawyers and the Nigeria Bar Association in our public life.

The office of Master of the Rolls does not exist in Nigeria. And even if, given our stunning lack of self-belief, we had also copied that most British aspect of the administration of justice, the post could not have been held by Gani. Why then do I permit myself this allusion? Because I first “knew” Gani while a freshman law student. As virtually every Nigerian law student will testify, the late Lord Alfred Denning, Master of the Rolls, added something exhilarating to the rather staid and predictable study of law. And he personified the office in a way no predecessor or successor did. Denning’s many astounding, even if occasionally controversial, decisions had unprecedented impacts on the development of the common law. A man of great erudition, his writing style, more flexibly literary than rigidly legalistic, was cultivated for the purpose of simplifying the law in homage to the great dictum, Ubi jus, ibi remedium: for every wrong, the law provides a remedy. So dedicated to this principle, whether the plaintiff be a smug citizen or a harried immigrant, was he that Denning often wrote the dissenting opinion. He would even abdicate his seat on the House of Lords’ appellate division just so that the plaintiff might have one more chance of obtaining justice! Denning became known as “the people’s judge” and retired as perhaps the greatest jurist of his time. In the late Sapara Williams, Gani found the embodiment of this principle of the lawyer as the conscience of his society.

In Gani’s dogged commitment to the law as an instrument of social change, he became for me the master of the rolls, that is, keeper of the records of our travails. You could take this literally and point to his meticulous documentation of the decisions of our superior courts of record through the law publishing arm of his practice. Every judge and lawyer, whether friend or foe, would gladly admit that without Gani’s law reports and indexes legal practice today would be a portrait straight out of Charles Dickens’s Bleak House. To be sure, the courtrooms remain, by and large, owlish edifices that admit no light of day but for the illumination provided by Gani’s Weekly Law Reports and other publications. But that is hardly the half of my meaning.
The untrammelled reputation Gani enjoyed was as much a product of his forensic legal mind as of his role as the people’s plaintiff who filed countless suits to challenge the excesses of power. Yet, though he swore by constitutional means of struggle he saw clearly that “the mountains of costly nonsense” that emanate from the courtrooms could not be expected to break the yoke of tyranny, military or civilian. In filing case upon case, then, he merely sought to bring into the court of public opinion those high crimes and malfeasances that would otherwise be protected by secrecy. Inevitably, he embraced defiant political activism, too often in ways that alienated many natural allies, and offered his body as the notice board of the nation’s woes. In and out of prison, at certain periods more than he was in and out of the courtroom, his body bore in every tissue the whip and lash of our successive governments’ terrorism. I speak of Gani, then, as the embodiment of the rolls of wrongs that our self-appointed leaders have unrelentingly visited on us for five decades.

I said that I first met Gani as a law student and it is on that more personal note that I wish to end this brief tribute, too brief, alas, to be just to his greatness. In collaboration with Professor Itse Sagay, founding dean of law at the University of Benin, Gani had endowed an annual Justice Idigbe memorial lecture. Justice Chukwudifu Oputa, then still on the Supreme Court, had come to deliver the second lecture in the series. Imagine this for a starry-eyed law student, awakening to a social consciousness that bode no peace of mind if restricted to the complacent acquisition of knowledge and who wasn’t sure his future lay in law. The cast was assembled for me, you might say. Following my subsequent involvement in the student and democracy movements, I became a regular visitor to Gani’s Anthony Village chambers. I had managed to complete my studies, in any case, thanks to the legal precedent of fair hearing he had fought to establish on unshakable grounds in what would become the locus classicus on the subject: Garba & Ors vs University of Maiduguri. I recall now two visits in 1992 that helped in no small measure to resolve the conflict I was undergoing as to which to make a career: law or literature? On the first, I had gone to seek Gani’s counsel and help on my return from Makurdi after completing youth service. Counsel given, he wrote a check for N1000 to help me with the immediate need of furnishing the room Sagay had kindly given me rent free in the Boys Quarters of his chambers in Alaka Estate, Surulere. When on the second visit I presented a money-making venture that would purportedly help me to meet the costs of setting up practice, Gani chuckled and dismissed it out of hand. Then he looked at me and said, “Ogaga, you are a writer. I believe that is your true calling, not that of going to court everyday to nod and say, My Lord this, My Lord that. I think you should follow your heart’s desire.”

I didn’t get the loan I had asked for to underwrite my business venture, but what I got was validation of a sort that every budding writer needs. And it was even more valuable because we do not think of Gani in literary terms. If he could discern promise worth encouraging in my tenderfoot days, then I had just been handed a fatter cheque than he could have written. In this, too, Gani was a master of my personal rolls.

We ‘ll appoint new power, defence ministers in two weeks – Jonathan.

ABUJA—President Goodluck Jonathan said Wednesday  in Abuja he would forward names of replacements for ministers of defence and power immediately the Senate resumed from recess on September 22.
The President disclosed this at the inauguration of the reconstituted Presidential Action Committee on Power and Presidential Task Force on Power.
At the ceremony, Jonathan directed the Minister of State for Power, Mr Darius Ishaku, to take charge of the power ministry in the interim. He said it was important to reconstitute the two committees on power so that the achievement recorded in the sector would not relapse. The President set up the two bodies in 2010 to closely monitor and implement the Power Reform Agenda.

President Goodluck Jonathan addressing the Nation at The State House in Abuja. on Tuesday

The President said: “Definitely immediately the National Assembly comes back especially the Senate, we will clear the two vacancies that we have. They will get cleared and we will place people accordingly so that the Ministry of Power will come up.
“But, in the interim, the Minister of State Power is holding on to that. But whether the Minister of Power comes or not, we want to reconstitute the two teams because Nigerians will not be happy if we relapse and I believe that as we progress from now till December if Nigerians can go home in December and do their parties without generators and can drive to their States without gutters (potholes) on our roads stopping them, I think the rating of government will improve. So we must work hard to get to this level.”
Dagogo-Jack appointed as NIPP chairman
The President appointed, Mr Reynolds Dagogo-Jack of National Integrated Power Project, NIPP, as the Chairman of the reconstituted Presidential Task Force on Power.
The body was hitherto chaired by the former Minister of Power, Prof Barth Nnaji, who resigned his appointment on ground of conflict of interest.
“We have done it this way because, the other time when Nnaji was the Chairman, the secretary was my special adviser; so there was a lot of conflict between the two of them because they say two captains cannot drive a ship. This time around we just want one captain and others will work with him.”
Members of the task force include Messrs Rumundakaa Wonodi, Olusola Akinniranye and Abdulganiyu Umar, the managing directors and chief executive officers of Nigeria Bulk Electricity Trading Plc; Transmission Company of Nigeria; and Abuja Electricity Distribution Company respectively.
Others are Mr Paul Umunna and Mr Oladele Amoda, the chief executive officers of Ughelli Power Plc and Eko Electricity Distribution Company respectively, as well as the Managing Director of Niger Delta Power Holding Company, Mr James Olotu.
The MD of the Nigerian Gas Company, Mr Saidu Mohammed and the CEO of Geregu Power Plc, Mr Adeyemi Adenuga, are also members of the task force. The Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Power, Dr Dere Awosika, will serve as the Secretary of the task force.
Meanwhile, the Presidential Action Committee on Power will be chaired by Jonathan with Vice President Namadi Sambo as Deputy Chairman. Members of the committee are the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Sen. Anyim Pius Anyim; the Head of Civil Service of the Federation, Alhaji Ali Sali; and the Chief of Staff to the President, Mr Mike Oghiadome. The Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mr Mohammed Adoke;  Minister of Finance, Dr, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala; and Minister of Labour and Productivity, Mr Emeka Wogu, are members.
Some other members of the committee are Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs Diezzani Allison Madueke; Minister of National Planning, Dr Shamsudeen Usman; and the Chief Economic Adviser to the President. The special adviser to the President on Performance Monitoring and Evaluation; the directors-general of the Bureau of Public Enterprises and Bureau of Public Procurement are also members of the committee.
Others are the Group Managing Director of NNPC and the Chairman of the National Electricity Regulatory Commission. It will be recalled that the President, on June 21, relieved the former Minister of Defence, Dr Haliru Bello of his appointment. The President is expected to name replacements for Haliru and Nnaji, who while in office, represented Kebbi and Enugu States in the cabinet respectively.

Vanguard.

David West says if you put IBB and Buhari on a scale of corruption, IBB will fall down…FG figures for fuel subsidy is Amoebic.

 

Former Petroleum Minister, Prof. Tam David-West, on Wednesday slammed former Military President Ibrahim Babangida for accusing his predecessor, Maj.-Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), of corruption, ionigeria.com reports.
David-West, alongside human rights lawyer, Mr. Femi Falana, also accused Goodluck Jonathan of deceiving Nigerians to justify his “anti-people” policies.
They were the guest speakers at the 3rd Year Memorial Lecture held in Lagos in honor of the late Chief Gani Fawehinmi.
David-West, who was Minister of Petroleum under Buhari, alleged Babangida institutionalized corruption in the oil industry.
He said, “If you put IBB and Buhari on a scale of corruption in Nigeria, IBB will fall down.
“IBB cannot challenge Buhari in terms of corruption and management because IBB destroyed the oil industry.”
David-West maintained that there was never subsidy on fuel and that the government was only deceiving Nigerians when it said it was going to remove it.
The Professor of Virology said the amount spent on fuel subsidy assumed the nature of “amoeba”, changing to about 10 figures as given by different government sources including President Goodluck Jonathan.
He said, “The government itself does not have the figure that has changed 10 times. The so-called subsidy is a fraud rooted in government lies. The government has been lying to justify the removal of subsidy that does not exist.”
He said the sale of petrol at N97 “is a political figure”, adding that based on his calculations Nigerians should be buying it for a maximum of N40.
Falana said payments on subsidy by government in 2011 were fraud involving officials of the Ministry of Finance, the Central Bank of Nigeria and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation.
He said, “N245bn was budgeted for fuel subsidy in 2011. By the end of December, the CBN had released 1.7trn. The coordinating minister (Mrs. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala) released additional N500bn. The implication of that is that about 2.2trn was spent without appropriation.
“Those who looted the treasury and pay money to their friends including the officials of the CBN, the Ministry of Finance and the NNPC, all of them, must be dealt with under the law.”
He also criticized CBN’s proposed introduction of N5,000 note and coinage of N20, N10 and N5, saying the plan is to make it “easy to bribe. It is not about the economy.”
Representative of Jonathan at the event, Ken Saro-Wiwa Jr., paid tribute to Gani, describing him as “the people’s lawyer, strong in body and soul.”
He said, “He was a champion of all champions who fought vigorously for an untrammeled rule of law, aiming for an all-embracing social justice system, and undiluted democracy.
President of the Gani Fawehimi Memorial Organization, the group which organized the lecture, Mr. Ayodele Akele, called on government to immortalize Fawehinmi by naming the office of the National Human Rights Commission in Abuja after him.
Fawehinmi, popularly called Gani, a social critic, human and civil rights lawyer, died on September 5, 2009 at 71 after a prolonged battle with lung cancer.
Courtesy Punch

Nigeria’s N5,000 notes to be reserved for banks, heavy cash users.

Nigeria’s N5,000 notes will be reserved for banks and heavy cash users said the nation’s National Planning Minister, Shamsudeen Usman recently. According to him, the notes will not be for mass circulation.
Meanwhile, an activist group called the “Anti Corruption Network” recently protested the introduction of N5,000 notes in the country. The protesters stormed the Central Bank of Nigeria headquarters in Abuja chanting anti government songs even though there was a heavy downpour.
Usman argues that like the 5000 Euro note, the N5,000 note would not be in circulation to the average cash user but would e specially reserved for people who need a lot of cash to store higher value. He noted that the proposal for the higher currency note has been endorsed and that the notes would not lead to inflation in the polity nor would it encourage corruption.
“Clearly, the N5000 note unlike some people misrepresent, is not going to lead to higher inflation. There is absolutely no link. I am an economist, I had been deputy governor operations of the Central Bank. The last review of the introduction of N1000 note and the various coins I was deeply involved, it was my responsibility at the Central Bank.
There is absolutely no link between inflation and the currency denomination. So, obviously the discussion today was basically to endorse. Mr. President had already approved, that is the only requirement by law. The CBN is to propose and Mr. President is to approve. And since Mr. President has approved, really what is important is to just explain,” he said.
He further noted: “A 100 dollar bill is N16,000 while N5000 note will be 30 dollars, so which one is bigger to carry if you are doing corruption? So, I do not think is necessarily going to increase the level of corruption.
Those doing corruption will probably find that too small than 100 dollar bill, which is still bigger than the N5,000 note.”
Africa’s richest man, Alhaji Aliko Dangote also weighed in on the introduction of the high value currency saying that the N5000 note would not cause inflation but protect the economy.
In the same vein, Chief Atedo Peterside, the Chairman of IBTC, argued the N5000 would reduce the cost of printing bills.
“If I were the CBN Governor, I will prefer to print N10,000 notes,” he said.
CP-Africa.com

Sack Sanusi Lamido, CDHR Appeals to National Assembly.

Central Bank Governor Lamido Sanusi.

 

By SaharaReporters, New York

The Committee for the Defence of Human Rights (CDHR) has called on the National Assembly to sack the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, over his intention to introduce a five Naira currency bill.
In a statement signed by Comrade Taiwo Otitolaye, its National Vice-President, CDHR cited Sanusi’s “recurring display of power- arrogance and unapologetic agency for imperialist policies and dictates.” It said that the introduction of the five thousand Naira note is a confirmation that the CBN governor and his cronies are “playing the script of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and other Imperialist agencies.”
CDHR described the measure as an attempt to further entrap Nigeria’s economy to the desires of Western countries, and that to enforce such an economic regime demonstrates lost focus by the Jonathan administration and a disconnect with the people.
With more than 100 million Nigerians living below the poverty line, CDHR questioned why the nation must commit over 40billion Naira into a wasteful exercise when that kind of money can be deployed towards creating jobs.
“This is a road map to further inflation,” CDHR said.  “Acceding to this obnoxious policy will lead to the introduction of higher denominations in the near future, which continues to devalue our currency, erode our economy and dehumanize our people. The amount of money required for petrol (PMS) to fill a tank could buy a brand new Peugeot in the early eighties.”
It argued that Sanusi’s economic command subjugates Nigeria’s national growth and development and called on the National Assembly to begin the process of sacking Sanusi before a national mass revolt against his policies erupts.

Nigerians At Risk : Japanese Radioactive Cars In The Market By Chika Ezeanya.

Chika Ezeanya

Over one year has passed since the Japanese tsunami caused about seven nuclear meltdowns at three reactors  in the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.  The immediate result was that about 50 km radius of the plant’s range, dangerous radiation rays affected lives and properties.

Initially, there were tight restrictions on the export of products from the nuclear meltdown affected areas by the Japanese government. As time has passed, the restrictions are becoming more relaxed, and now, more and more products with dangerously high levels of radiation are being shipped to several ill-regulated markets. This is most especially the case with used vehicles, which are  hardly subjected to the same level of safety testing as brand new vehicles, prior to shipment.

Immediately after the nuclear incident, governments of countries around the world installed radiation testing equipments at the ports of entry. Australian government was among the first to test 700 vehicles in the June of 2011; this testing has continued till date and thousands of cars are tested monthly.

In Chile, port workers and custom agents staged a protest against their government for not immediately destroying 21 vehicles found with traces of radiation. In the view of the Chilean Nuclear Commission, the radiation levels found was not high enough to cause damage to humans. The workers thought otherwise and forced the government to revisit its decision.

In a July 2012 report, Russian government stated that it has so far  denied entry to about 300 cars proven to come from the nuclear explosion district and found with very high levels of radiation. The Daily Telegraph of UK not too long ago, reported that fraudulent Japanese used-car dealers were selling vehicles “exposed to dangerously high levels of radiation to unsuspecting buyers.”

Cars having up to twenty times the permissible level of radiation have found their way to African countries where several governments are clueless or unconcerned about such health risks. Governments of Kenya and Tanzania however,  are among the few African countries, who, unable to afford the high cost of testing all incoming vehicles have expressly banned the importation of cars from Japan into their markets. Kenyan government went as far as destroying some cars after it hired independent firms to test for radiation levels.

Uganda imports between between 4,000 – 5,000 cars monthly, several of them used.  The government of Uganda, concerned about the threat to its citizens sent a delegation to Japan headed by the House committee leader on trade and which included officials of Uganda National Bureau of Standards. The delegations reported upon return that “it was established, through random scientific tests as well as motor vehicle inspection records, that many used motor vehicles destined for export markets from Japan are contaminated with significantly high level of ionizing radiation, way above recommended levels.”

Nigerians buy more used cars than brand new cars, and Japanese cars are the favorite of most first-time and budget car buyers. For the sake of peace of mind, one must desist from thinking of how many radiation drenched cars have already found their way to the Nigerian market. Most radioactive materials settle on the body of the car, windows and seats, and no amount of scrubbing or re-painting or even change of chaircover can remove them.

Radioactive agents are highly carcinogenic. Radiation forms cancerous cells and makes them grow aggressively. Other side effects of radiation include infertility, birth defects and irreversible DNA alterations that exposes future generations to yet-to-be ascertained risks.

Although a little belated, the Nigerian government should immediately release a public statement on the stand of the government towards used Japanese cars, or else the health of Nigerian citizens and residents would no longer be assured. It is suggested that Nigerian government should, as a matter of urgency, join its Kenyan and Tanzanian counterparts in placing a temporary ban on importation of used cars from Japan, until it has acquired equipments to test cars for radiation at the various ports of entry.