Saturday, 20 July 2013

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala

The Finance Minister would not respond to PREMIUM TIMES enquiry.

Last week Thursday in Beijing, China, President Goodluck Jonathan detailed, in an interview with Chinese television, CCTV, why Nigeria must immediately move away from its perilous dependence on oil and gas as the nation’s sole economic mainstay.

The president said the increasing utilization of shale gas and other alternative sources of energy by the United States and other advanced oil importing nations of the world was a matter of concern for Nigeria.

“That is why we have to increase the pace of diversifying our economy and move our country away from dependence on the oil and gas industry,” the president told his host. “We must work towards greater industrialization; add more value to our agricultural products; develop our solid minerals potentials and other sectors of our economy before the time comes when crude oil may no longer be dominant as a global source of energy.”

How the president intends to achieve that new goal is unclear. But while the clearly familiar declaration offered a promising new zeal, it also shoved back to focus what has turned out a grand deception by Nigeria’s top economists and officials – one that lasted 10 years and left three of the nation’s most vital savings badly depleted.

The ruse, noted in a recent Senate investigation, has been about officials publicly highlighting why Nigeria must grow other sectors in a rapidly unpredictable global economic order. Yet, behind the scenes, same officials consistently ruin the very mechanisms that should help achieve that goal.

One account needed to address the president’s concern is the Natural Resources Account, created to hold savings needed for the speedy development of solid mineral sector. But over a span of 10 years, those savings have been frittered by the same officials who publicly promote its usefulness, the Senate report stated.

Mr. Jonathan and his two predecessors, Olusegun Obasanjo and Umar Yar’Adua, bear responsibilities for the violation. The report showed how N1.06 trillion stipulated for crucial economic needs, was signed off illegally by the three administrations to fund what lawmakers called “frivolities” that stretched from a phantom new mall to religious pilgrimage.

Six finance ministers superintended over those abuses. Of the 44 total illicit withdrawals between them, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the current finance minister and one of Nigeria’s finest public officials, renowned for her advocacy for disciplined spending, approved at least 22, PREMIUM TIMES can report.

Her immediate successor, Nenadi Usman, now a senator, approved 10; their predecessor, Adamu Ciroma, approved seven, while the remaining three ministers -Shamsudeen Usman (current National Planning minister), Mansur Muhtar (current alternate Executive Director, World Bank) and Olusegun Aganga (current Trade and Investment minister) shared the remaining five.

The funds, illegally drawn by each of the ministers, were meant to help accelerate the exploration for natural resources to quicken the diversification of national economic base from oil and gas, as well as provide a cushion against the volatility of oil prices at the international market. A third account was to help address environmental emergencies.

But the report showed how, for years, the ministers assured a distrustful public how passionate the government was about achieving those goals while behind closed doors, they abused the opportunities for realizing those objectives.

Since the findings were first made public, PREMIUM TIMES has sought clarifications on how the disbursements were made and has repeatedly pressed the finance minister, Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala, who presided over the largest withdrawals between her first and second tours of office, for clarification to no avail.

Separately, correspondents have put forward enquiries to the minister as well as her spokesperson, Paul Nwabuikwu, at media briefings, through emailed enquiries and telephone calls, asking why she failed to bar the leakages and instead took the lead furthering it.

On each occasion, Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala and Mr. Nwabuikwu have dismissed the concerns as foregone cases, wondering why the media bothers itself with reopening closed chapters.

Mrs. Nenadi Usman, who took over from Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala in the dying days of the Obasanjo administration did not also comment. Calls to her official telephone line were not answered.

The two accounts -Development of Natural Resources Account and Stabilization Account- are stipulated by federal laws to serve clear purposes of helping to develop alternative funding sources for the government, and cushioning the country’s economy against shocks arising from international oil price volatility.

The first account is fed by three percent proceeds from oil sales and the second receives 0.72 percent. The third account, named Derivation and Ecology Account, receives 1.46 percent.

For the Natural Resources Account, N701.5 billion was signed off between 2002 and 2012, while N149.9 billion of the Ecology fund was abused within the same period, the Senate said in its report. N191.8 billion of the Stabilization fund was also spent arbitrarily on unintended expenditure.

Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala took unparalleled lead in misusing the funds. Of the total 16 times the biggest withdrawals were made from the Natural Resources Account, the minister oversaw nine; Mrs. Nenadi Usman four; their predecessor and successors, Adamu Ciroma, Shamsudeen Usman, Olusegun Aganga, one apiece.

For the Stabilization Account, the current finance minister illegally signed off nine out of 12, one during her second stint in 2011. Mr. Aganga approved two and Mrs. Nenadi Usman did one.

The minister only took a beating in the disbursement of the Ecology Fund with Mr. Ciroma signing six; Mrs. Usman five; Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala four and Messrs Shamsudeen and Muhtar approving one apiece.

How they secretly sliced the savings

While the illicit disbursement, which only came to light after the presentation of the Senate report in April, flourished, the sectors they were meant to serve, faced continuing shortages that stifled accelerated search for minerals capable of providing reasonable diversification from oil and gas.

For instance, official funding to the Ministry of Mines and Steel (the supposed beneficiary for the fund) has remained abysmal between the 10 year period, only managing to reach an all time high of N15.95 billion in 2012. Current allocation to the sector stands at N13.95 billion.

By contrast, if the N701.5 billion abused under the Natural Resources Funds had been ploughed into the sector within the decade, each year, an average of N70 billion would have been spent on aggressive exploration activities.

But under the six ministers, the three accounts took the form of a slush account for arbitrarily offsetting spendings not covered by the government.

Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala reached for the savings early in her stint under former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, as she delivered her first illegal approval just nine days after taking office in July 2003, with the signing off of N1.3 billion from the Natural Resources Account as loan to derivation escrow account.

A year later, the minister approved N50 billion loan to finance the 2004 budget deficit and approved N3.8 billion as loan to the Foreign Affairs ministry for the purchase of a Chancery in Tokyo, Japan.

In the months and years that followed, the withdrawals exacerbated. When the ministry of power sought to clear the benefits of its disengaged staff in 2005, N5.7 billion was issued from that account. When aviation ministry needed an intervention fund in 2006, Mrs. Usman approved N11 billion.

Ahead of the two ministers, funds from the triple account were also abused by Mr. Ciroma, who drew N200million from the Ecology Account to Mr. Obasanjo’s “Presidential Research and Communication Unit”.

Mrs. Usman also approved N750 million for an “Abuja mall”, while Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala voted out N16.3 billion from the Ecology funds as loan to the Directorate of Pilgrim Affairs. PREMIUM TIMES’ finding has shown the mall does not exist anywhere.

The loans have not been repaid, the Senate said. Yet, in a manner that would depict Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala’s penchant for abusing those savings, she ordered the release of N5 billion to the Aviation ministry, Identity Management Commission and the National Judicial Council, again just weeks after returning to the job in 2011.

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BOOK REVIEW: A Combatant’s Chronicle Of The Nigeria – Biafra War By Kunle Ajibade

Brigadier-General Williams Alabi-Isama

It is fitting and quite thoughtful that General Godwin Alabi– Isama has chosen Nelson Mandela’s birthday to present his book, The Tragedy of Victory. For Mandela, in so many ways, exemplifies the generosity of spirit which you will constantly encounter as you read this sprawling book. In Long Walk to Freedom. Nelson Mandela’s engrossing and deeply moving chronicle of his extraordinary life, he shares the honour and glory of the successes of the anti-apartheid struggles, not only with all the comrades with whom he served long jail terms, but also with many others who supported the struggles. For instance, on page 601 of that fascinating book, Mandela pays the following tribute to one of his comrades: “In Plato’s allegory of the metals, the philosopher classifies men into groups of gold, silver and lead. Oliver Tambo was pure gold; there was gold in his intellectual brilliance, gold in his unfailing loyalty and in his tolerance and generosity, gold in his unfailing loyalty and self-sacrifice. As much as I respected him as a leader, that is how much I loved him as a man”.
Gratitude matters. Appreciation of the good contribution of others humanises us all. When you recognise the goodness of others, you’re actually laying the building blocks of what will make humankind endure and survive. It doesn’t diminish you; the world is incredibly richer for it.
The total lack of this kind of generous spirit in General Olusegun Obasanjo prompted General Alabi-Isama to write The Tragedy of Victory. Three years ago, when General Godwin Alabi – Isama turned 70; he came to Nigeria from the US to celebrate his birthday. His close friend, General Alani Akinrinade who attended the ceremony, gave him two copies of General Olusegun Obasanjo’s My Command. By that time Alabi-Isama had heard about the book but had never read it. Akinrinade had told his friend that the book would turn his belly. It surely did. General Alabi-Isama discovered that there were so many distortions of fact in the book, and he immediately dismissed it as a tapestry of inaccuracies. As he read it, he marked out not less than eighty two passages in My Command where General Obasanjo simply told outright lies to massage his ego and damage the reputation of his colleagues. Alabi-Isama then thought that since he was still a moving encyclopaedia on the three Marine Commando Division, it was time to tear the painted mask of Obasanjo’s lies.
In My Command, the achievements of gallant officers like Benjamin Adekunle (The Black Scorpion), Alani Akinrinade, Godwin Ally, Ayo Ariyo, Ola Oni, Isaac Adaka Boro, Ahmadu Aliyu, Roland Omowa, Sani Bello, SS Tomoye, Yemi Alabi, Philemon Shande, Musa Wamba, Mac Isemede, Sunny Tuoyo, Audu Jalingo, Ignatius Obeya, and their informants like Ndidi Okereke – Onyiuke, Margaret Eyo, Florence Ita-Giwa and many other women who made the 3 Marine Commando Division such a formidable force, are tainted and belittled. Blessed with very good memory, General Alabi-Isama, in Tragedy of Victory, offers a ferocious and damning critique of General Olusegun Obasanjo’s vainglorious claims of his gallantry. He sets the mangled records straight with absolute passion, precision and indignation. To him, history matters because it is meant to inspire and instruct posterity. He shares George Santayana’s view that those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. And because Nigerians have been made cynical by many decades of lies, all claims that Alabi-Isama makes he supports with abundant evidence. If this book is a 671-page to me it is in part because the memoirist illustrates his story with 450 pictures, 36 maps and 20 documents. It is also partly because the author meanders. He repeats himself many times.
By and large, his responses to General Obasanjo’s claims show that he was a more competent soldier, military strategist and theorist than OBJ, who tends to mistake good luck for profound gift and talent. Alabi-Isama simply did his duty and left politics in the army for all the crafty war profiteers who have been described by Wole Soyinka in Jero’s metamorphosis as DGS – Desk Generals. As Chief of Staff of 3 Marine Commando Division, he was very demanding of everyone – he was hard on his men and women without ever losing tenderness. Deep knowledge was central to his strategy and tactics, so he sought for it everywhere. Indeed, one very important duty of the 3 Marine Commando women was collecting vast data about Biafran soldiers and their operational orders. The 3 Marine Commando Division operated in a very difficult terrain of creeks and mangrove forest comprising the present Rivers, Cross Rivers, Akwa Ibom and Bayelsa States. Those young men and women fighting for the unity of a country that would later abandon them demonstrated uncommon patriotism. Consider the courage of a young officer who just got shot in the war front, and as he was about to die, he asked his commander, Alabi-Isama, who was carrying him, “Have I tried? . Those young men were brave people. Consider the immense talent and heroic move of captain Gbadamosi King, the Nigerian Air Force pilot whose air-to-air operation was the first, not only in Nigeria’s history but was the first in Africa. Consider also the exploits of those ladies who cheered up the troops when their morale was down. The book is dedicated to Alabi-Isama’s mother who solidly supported the war efforts of her only son.
This was war at the Atlantic theatre. A very difficult place to fight to keep Nigeria one. Each time situations became intractable and confounding; it was either Akinrinade or Alabi-Isama who were ordered to go and sorts things out. Many of the troops died of malaria, dysentery, cholera; cold and snake bites. One soldier was swallowed by a 50-foot-long snake. The troops had to kill the snake with the soldier still inside.
As the troops were getting tired, the Biafrans redoubled their efforts. Helped by France, they launched deadly attacks. With the capture of Port Harcourt by the 3 Marine Commando in 1968 and the capture of Enugu and Umuahia in April 1969, Biafrans had lost three of its major capitals. Uli-Ihiala then became its centre of gravity. But Colonel Benjamin Adekunle, the commanding officer, did not see Uli-Ihiala that way. Missing the point completely, he ordered that OAU (Owerri, Aba and Umuahia) be captured as an October 1 1968 as Independence gift to General Yakubu Gowon. It was a complete disaster. General Alabi-Isama says he warned his commander against the operation, but Colonel Benjamin Adekunle did not listen. The 3 Marine Commando Division that had given a good account of itself in Bonny, Calabar, Warri, Ugep, Obubra, Oron, Uyo, Ikot Ekpene, Itu, Eket, Abak, Etinan, Opobo, Bori, Okrika, Port Harcourt, Degema, Buguma, Abonema, Finima, Nembe, brass, Ahoada and part of Midwest now became a butt of joke in other divisions. Other blunders followed.
Suffering from stress, all those who criticised Benjamin Adekunle constructively he regarded as cowards. The case became so bad when he decided to get both Alabi-Isama and Akinrinade killed in an ambush. They escaped to Lagos where they reported to General Gowon the crisis of confidence in the 3 Marine Commando. But Gowon was very reluctant to remove Adekunle thinking that, with the Agbekoya riots and protests in Ibadan, many people would shout, “ethnic cleansing” if a non-Yoruba officer was brought in as a commander. He therefore asked Akinrinade and Alabi-Isama to suggest a Senior Yoruba Officer he could use. Akinrinade suggested Obasanjo--not Oluleye, not Sotoye, not Olutoye because Akinrinade and his friend were simply desperate to have a commander who would listen to them and implement Alabi-Isama’s operation Pincer 2, a plan that they were sure would end the war in 30 days. Obasanjo was not an infantry officer, he was in the Army Engineers Corps, but Akinrinade rooted for him because he thought he was his friend. General Gowon, who suspected that Obasanjo would not want to go to the war front, asked Akinrinade and Alabi-Isama to go and persuade him which they did. Of course, General Gowon was right. General Obasanjo was furious that they suggested his name. He thought these men wanted him dead. While Akinrinade was civil in his dealing with him, Alabi-Isama was impatient; he told him off, wanting at a point to walk out after several hours of talking without any food or drink from their host. Alabi-Isama would soon pay the big price for doing that to Obasanjo who obviously has what the medical experts call pachydermatous memory for slights and insults.
When General Gowon gave the order that all divisional commanders at the war front, who had been there for two years, should be replaced and the then Colonel Obasanjo was made the commander of the 3 Marine Commando Division both Alabi-Isama and Akinrinade thought they had won but their victory is part of the tragedy recounted in this book. General Olusegun Obasanjo’s did not take over the 3 Marine Commando until 16 May 1969. As soon as he did, he simply sidelined Akinrinade and Alabi-Isama. He went after all the members of the dream team of the Commando with vengeance. The winning force that was being praised for fighting gallantly to keep Nigeria one was now fighting a war of attrition. George Ininh who knew how to play the politics of genuflection which Obasanjo wanted rose meteorically during and after the war.
Four days after he resumed duty, Obasanjo’s first battle experience as a commander of 3 Marine Commando Division was a disaster. In what Alabi-Isama describes as a complete disregard of the sound advice of his sector commanders, he ordered Godwin Ally to attack Ohoba, a town 40 kilometres south of Owerri. The Division lost over 1,000 troops. This loss still enrages Alabi-Isama, who suggests that in a saner society, Obasanjo should have lost his commission on account of that tragedy. Why would he be bothered? Did the high command in Lagos ever sanction Murtala Mohammed of 2 Division for ordering an Asaba – River Niger crossing, against the advice of Akinrinade in which about 2,000 troops died by drowning and bullet wounds in the River Niger? Alabi-Isama reminds us many times that Obasanjo, the blundering Commander of 3 Marine Commando Division “had no battle experience and had never fought at any of the three fronts of the war. He had never commanded a battalion or a brigade, now he had to command a division in battle. That was why his military administration and logistics placing was that of a cadet”.
It was because of his tactical error as a commander that he was almost killed in an ambush when he visited Col. Iluyomade’s unit. He had to flee from the ambush and got shot in the bottom. Alabi-Isama’s take on that is that true generals do get shot in the chest, not bottom. Before Obasanjo was posted to 3 Marine Commando Division, Alabi-Isama, in consultation with Adekunle and other officers, had three plans – Pincer 1, 2 and 3, strategies and tactics which their division knew would win the war. Pincer 1 would be a monstrous operation that was meant to level many towns in Biafra. As if to impress those who were doubting his ability, Obasanjo wanted his troops to settle for that. If the 3 Marine Commando had used that plan, Alabi-Isama argues, the charge of genocide that Chinua Achebe raises in his book, There Was a Country would have been justified. Thankfully, reasons prevailed. The commander finally listened to his officers. Pincer 2 was used. And it took only 23 days for the 3 Marine Commando Division to put an end to the Nigeria-Biafra War. Biafra surrendered, not to Obasanjo, who was not at the war front, but to Alani Akinrinade, who was very much there.
It was a triumphant and self-centered Obasanjo, who rushed to Lagos with Effiong and some of the Biafran officers. And the real heroes of that war were then forgotten. But Alabi-Isama was not only forgotten he was later persecuted and dismissed from the army by General Olusegun Obasanjo who was then the head of state. Alabi-Isama was accused of stealing money which he did not know anything about. He was even accused of being part of the Dimka coup. The two officers who refused to implicate him suddenly died mysteriously. But as James Frederick Green would say their organised slaughter did not settle the dispute; it merely silenced an argument which The Tragedy of Victory has now brought to the front burner. Before his unjustified persecution, General Alabi-Isama was the likeable Principal General Staff Officer of the Nigerian Army. He was a well-decorated officer. He gave the Nigerian Army his best shot. And he was a role model. It is important to remember that our history is full of this kind of bad behaviour. Let me explain that with just one example. In 1980, Chief Bola Ige accepted to review My Command because he thought General Olusegun Obasanjo was a good friend. But since Ige’s assassination, has the general not been dancing on his grave?
Of course, The Tragedy of Victory is not only about the civil war and the 3 Marine Commando Division even though it is the major plank of it, its centre of gravity. There are other+ interesting stories. The story of his humble early life, how he joined the army after his secondary school at Ibadan Boys High School, his military training in Zaria and England, his peace-keeping mission in the Congo where he helped to kill a huge and notorious hippopotamus that had been terrorising a village for many years. There is a sense in which the story of the Nigerian Army mock battle in Ibadan which he, and his troops won foretold the victory of the Nigeria-Biafra war in the Atlantic Theatre. We are told of how he was captured by the Biafrans, how he was sent to Kirikiri prison for wrong accusation. We are moved by the story of Azuatalam the wonderful swimmer who was later recommended to be recruited into the Army by General Alani Akinrinade. The reader is told of how Alabi-Isama, and his officers arrived at their strategies and tactics like the dilemma strategy. As Generals, Yakubu Gowon and Adeyinka Adebayo write in their introductory remarks, this is a book about military strategies, tactics and campaigns. There is the interesting story of the visit, in 1993, of Stella Obasanjo to his American home where Stella stayed for a pleasurable week. You will not miss the story of how he saved General T.Y. Danjuma and Domkat Bali from being killed by the Dimka coupists.
Finally, it is clear from our reading of this book that when we yield our hallowed ground to clueless people, they will grow and nurture their weeds on it, thereby suffocating the flowers of the land. May our country have the good sense to always choose good people who will reproduce their goodness in others.
Mr. Kunle Ajibade, Executive Editor of THENEWS, read this review on 18 July 2013 at the public presentation of The Tragedy of Victory at the NIIA, Kofo Abayomi, Victoria Island, Lagos.

Saharareporters

Group Scores President Jonathan’s Administration Low

President Goodluck Jonathan

Independent Service delivery monitoring group, a transparency advocacy organization, has scored President Jonathan’s administration low on transformation programs saying nothing on the ground to match the achievements recently flaunted by many ministries.
Rising from a one-day forum organized to assess the mid-term report of the administration, the group noted that the “midterm report did not show any correlation between the amount of money spent and the impact on the lives of citizens in relation to the claims of economic growth.”
The Communique reads:
The Independent Service Delivery Monitoring Group convened a Civil Society Forum on the Midterm report of the Nigerian Government in Abuja on Monday July 9, 2013.
Background
In the past few weeks, the Nigerian public has been inundated with claims of ‘unusual’ achievements by the administration of President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan using the ongoing platform of the Ministerial Midterm Report packaged by the administration through the Ministry of Information.
The Midterm Report by Ministers is following on the heels of President Jonathan's presentation of his two-year scorecard on May 29, 2013. While presenting his two-year scorecard, the President challenged Nigerians to develop a ‘marking scheme’ by which his achievements and scorecard can be judged. However, since that challenge was made, Civil Society was yet to pick the gauntlet thereby allowing the administration and its agents the free reign to rile Nigerians through the media with wide, one sided and unsubstantiated claims of performance.
It was against this background that the Independent Service Delivery Monitoring Group thought it necessary to organise this forum to provide a platform for civil society organisations spread across Nigeria to engage and dispassionately assess the claims of achievements of the administration using government’s own benchmarks.
Participation and Presentations
There were panel discussions on four ministerial reports followed by general discussion, and questions and answers.
Panelists and participants were drawn from civil society organisations spread across Nigeria. The Participants at the forum included:
1. Dr Nasir Isah Fagge - ASUU President
2. Dr Chima Amadi - Executive Director, ISDMG
3. Adeola Soetan-Project Executive, Feed Nigeria Initiative among others.
4. Dr. Sofiri Joab-Peterside - Executive Director, Centre for Advanced Social Science
5. Lanre Arogundade - Executive Director, International Press Centre
6. Jaye Gaskia - Convener, United Action for Democracy (former country Director, Action Aid)
7. Barr. Mahmud Abdulmumin - President, Public Interest Lawyers League
8. Hajiya Zainab Abdullahi Mohammed - National Coordinator, Transition Monitoring Group
9. Kyauta Iliya Giwa - Coordinator, Community Action for Popular Participation
10. Ben Adoga - News Editor, Pilot Newspapers
11. Ezenwa Nwagwu - Former Vice President! Transparency in Nigeria
12. Oluajo Babatunde - National Secretary- Zero Corruption Coalition
13. Abdulrazaqque Barkindo - Publisher,The Road Newspapers
14. Prof. Emeka Ezeonu - Lecturer NAU, Awka.
15. Okechukwu Nwanguma - coordinator, Network on Police Reform in Nigeria
16. Faith Nwadishi - National Coordinator, Publish What You Pay and Member, NEITI Board
17. Adeola Soetan - Project Executive, Feed Nigeria Initiative among others.
Panellists led critical discussions on reports by four Ministries: Education, Health, Transportation (aviation, road, water and rail transport) and Agriculture, in the first instance, to see if the achievements listed in their reports correspond with the objective realities on ground.
Participants contributed through free and robust debates, comments and questions to the panel reviews and generally examined the activities of the administration during the period under review to ascertain if they meet the yearnings and aspirations of the Nigerian people.
GENERAL OBSERVATIONS
1. Participants welcomed in principle, the idea of a midterm report, but doubted the sincerity of the Jonathan administration in coming up with its own midterm report.
2. The remark by President Jonathan that he should be judged on a marking scheme highlights the deficiency of the midterm report.
Transformation is embedded in development; it is a visible thing; there would therefore, be no need for any assessment to determine whether the government has performed or succeeded in its transformation agenda.
3. Participants observed that the regime has been in office for more than four years beginning from the late President Yar’Adua administration of which Goodluck Jonathan was an integral part, first as Vice President and later, Acting President, before the last 2 years when he became substantive President following the demise of President Yaradua.
4. Participants also noted that the regime has been a continuous one rather than a break from the past 12 years that the PDP has been in the saddle.
5. Participants noted that virtually all the economic policies being pursued by the Jonathan administration are a recycling of the same old World Bank and IMF dictated policies founded on a neo liberal philosophical and economic paradigm which previous administrations including Obasanjo had implemented, but which had not worked for Nigeria.
6. Participants also observed that the figures bandied by the various ministries in their midterm reports as indicators of progress did not provide baseline information and data, as well as failed to reveal whether the projects which various ministries claimed to have completed were initiated within the two years since Jonathan has been on the saddle or prior to it.
7. Participants observed that the midterm report did not show any correlation between the amount of money spent and the impact on the lives of citizens in relation to the claims of economic growth.
8. The midterm report presents a picture of lack of coordination between and among the various sectors. It presented no sense that sectoral targets feed into an overall socioeconomic picture and goal, and nothing to indicate that the sectors are interlinked and that progress or lack of it in any one sector affects progress in other sectors.
EDUCATION SECTOR
9. With particular regard to the education sector, participants noted that contrary to the claimed achievements in the midterm report, there has been a near total neglect of the education sector reflected in poor annual budgetary allocations to the sector. Allocation to the healthcare sector as a percentage of the annual national budget has continued to decline while capital votes have been consistently below 25 percent of healthcare annual budget.
10. It was observed that government has failed in its responsibility to provide quality education for Nigerians in line with Section 18 of the 1999 Constitution which mandates the state to ensure equal and adequate educational opportunities for all and to strive to eradicate illiteracy.
11. Participants noted that in seeking to justify the recent ridiculously low cut off marks for admission into federal government colleges (unity schools), which in some states in the North, was put at as low as 2, the ministry of education premised this ridiculous decision on what it called ‘collective intelligence of all students’ while also saying that ‘the students do not necessarily have a low mental capacity to grasp concepts’. The Minister of Education however, went further to admit the real causes of poor performance among students when the Minister said ‘perhaps, we should note that a major reason why the students score so low in examinations is that the state of education in Northern Nigeria is poor, a serious lack of competent teaching staff, corruption in the management of education, lack of adequate educational plan; poor implementation of educational goals; and demographic problems.
Yet each successive state government has done little more than nod in agreement to the identified issues.’
12. Participants however observed that while poor state of education in parts of the North may represent the extreme, the reality is that education in all parts of Nigeria is in total state of decay.
13. Participants noted that government has abandoned its responsibility for ensuring adequate and quality education to private merchants whose primary motive is profit. The effect is that, using Lagos as an example, private schools currently account for 57 percent of all enrolments in Lagos as reported by the DFID in its Lagos Private Schools Census 2010 – 2011. Abandoning education to private merchants is not the way out of the rot in Nigeria’s educational system, rather the way forward is to prioritize education and see it as an investment in the nation’s human capital without which its much avowed developmental aspirations cannot be attained.
14. Participants also noted the trend towards abandoning the funding of education and educational development to interventionist agencies. They cautioned that interventionist agencies remain largely interventionist and are not a substitute for the duty of governments at all levels to fund and commit the needed resources to education.
15. Participants asserted that while interventionist agencies like Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND) has done a yeoman’s job in its effort at stabilizing education at the tertiary level, government at all levels must be alive to their fundamental duties of investing in the education of Nigerians.
16. Participants further observed that the administration's midterm report listed achievements by interventionist agencies such as Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) and TETFUND as part of its scorecard. While some of the interventionist agencies have done quite a lot towards revitalizing education, the continued abandonment of the primary duty of funding education by government at the various levels have not made the impact of these agencies felt as it should have been.
17. Using TETFUND as an example, participants observed that properly focusing interventionist agencies rather than abandoning its primary duty to fund education by government at the state and federal levels can help such agencies make more impact in the efforts at stabilizing education and ultimately improving standards.
18. Recalling that TETFUND was the product of sustained agitation by ASUU for improved funding of education through the collection of an Education Tax, participants noted that the historic 1992 strike by ASUU culminated in the establishment of an Education Tax Fund to be administered by a Management Team set up by the General Babangida military junta.
19. Participants observed that between 1992 and 1999, nothing much could be ascribed to this agency. But by 1999 the Obasanjo administration revamped the fund at the prompting of ASUU. Between 1999 and 2007 this agency was merely handing out palliatives to beneficiary institutions which cut across all levels of education in the country. The structural and institutional framework of the agency was a major setback to its effectiveness sits and this led to calls for its scrapping. However, by 2007 and with a new government, a new Management Team headed by Prof. Mahmud Yakubu was appointed to refocus the Fund.
20. The law establishing the Fund was amended which mandated it to restrict interventions to only Tertiary institutions. This move restored the original concept of ETF as initiated and negotiated by ASUU and FGN in 1992. Between 2007 and now, the refocusing has enabled the fund to be consolidated for impact in the following areas-
• Allocations to beneficiaries increased manifold. Prior to 2007, the highest amount ever allocated to any University in normal intervention was N58.5m. By 2012, however, each University received N595m in normal intervention. The allocations to the Polytechnics and Colleges of Education also increased astronomically.
• In addition to increased normal allocation, the Special High Impact projects were also introduced under which select tertiary institutions on the equality of geopolitical zones were given special allocations of N3b per university and N1b per Polytechnic and College of Education (based on the 2.1.1 sharing formula enshrined in the Act). Each year, 6 universities, 3 Polytechnics and 3 colleges of education benefitted (i.e. One university and a Polytechnic or College of Education per zone) benefitted. This is a continuous intervention which is meant to continue until all institutions benefit in the long run.
• Until 2008, the highest amount ever allocated for postgraduate staff training by ETF was a one-off N1.75m (one million seven hundred and fifty thousand Naira), an amount that was significantly inadequate. The refocusing of TETFUND made it possible for this sum to be increased substantially to about N80 million resulting in over 6,000 lecturers benefitting. This is the highest number of lecturers from Federal and State tertiary institutions sponsored for PG studies within a 4-year period since Nigeria's independence in 1960. This is in addition to over 7,000 lecturers who have benefitted from Conference Attendance (CA) initiative introduced in 2009.
• The fund also initiated a National Research Fund for the education sector with a seed grant of N3b approved and earmarked to support research for national development in critical sectors such as power, security etc. This is in addition to the Book Development Fund introduced to support the revitalization of Journals (beginning with those of professional/scholarly associations). So far, over 100 journals have benefitted from the sum of only N5m each out of a N2b seed grant. In addition to journals, the seed grant of N2b is also used to support the publication of tertiary levels textbooks, including outstanding PhD theses submitted to the universities.
21. While conceding that TETFUND has done a good job in its effort at stabilizing education at the tertiary level, participants observed that the same cannot be said of other levels of education. Participants therefore, called on the government to be alive to its fundamental duties of investing in the education of Nigerians and not abandon the funding of education and educational development to interventionist agencies, reiterating that interventionist agencies remain largely interventionist and are not a substitute for the duty of governments at all levels to fund and commit the needed resources to education.
22. Participants noted that children of most public servants and privileged Nigerians are either in private schools or attending school outside the country thereby leading to capital flight.
23. Participants noted that the NUC, rather than focus on and take seriously its statutory duties of oversight and ensuring quality delivery in university education through the full implementation of national minimum standards, has rather preoccupied itself with wasteful and spurious activities such as organizing irrelevant conferences and usurping the powers and functions of university senate in many respects. Participants also noted that the struggles of ASUU over the years have bordered on the duties that the NUC ought to play under the law establishing it but which it has failed to perform.
24. Government's decision to establish 12 new universities across geopolitical zones when it has failed to adequately fund existing ones is a mere political maneuver that will not enhance access to education but has the dangerous effect of promoting disunity. Our youths will be restricted to their immediate environments and prevented from moving out of their states of origin or birth to mix up and interact with their peers in other parts of the country.
25. Government has over the years demonstrated lack of honour to abide by and fulfill agreements reached with ASUU on most of the issues plaguing the educational system. This is a clear testimony to its lack of commitment to improving the state of education. No country achieves development without placing high premium on education.
HEALTH SECTOR
26. Participants noted, with respect to the health sector, that government’s claims of achievement in this sector are not supported by verifiable evidence on the ground.
27. Contrary to government’s claimed achievements in the healthcare sector, Nigeria has been consistently ranked within the category of low human development index in all UNDP Human Development Index reports. Other recent reports have also ranked Nigeria as the worse place to be born, one of the worse places to be a mother as well as one of the countries in the ‘serious’ category- the one but last category in the Global Hunger Index. All these combined or taken in isolation, make it difficult for Nigeria to achieve the levels of improvements in the healthcare sector as it claimed in the midterm report.
28. The high levels of joblessness, insecurity, hunger, homelessness, poverty, lack of access to portable drinking water- all jointly and individually impede access by the majority of the population to quality and affordable healthcare and general wellbeing. This is not to talk about the lack of availability of quality healthcare facilities.
29. Participants noted that the transformation agenda vision- to save one million lives by 2015 was launched in 2012 as Nigeria government’s contribution towards saving 6 million lives of mothers and children globally by 2015. Participants however observed that the Global Health Index with a score of 15.7 ranked Nigeria 40 out of 79 countries with a score higher than 5 thereby contradicting the federal government’s claimed achievements in the key performance indicators for the healthcare sector.
30. With regard to the 4 pillars enunciated in the National Strategic Health Development Programme with focus on expanding access to basic services in the areas of maternal, neonatal and child health, Nigeria has consistently ranked low among low Human Development Index (HDI) category of countries from 2010 to 2013. Life expectancy has also continued to lower from 51.9 in 2011 to 41.4 in 2013.
31. The most significant indicator of the decline in the state of healthcare over the years, and particularly, in recent times, is the fact that state dignitaries, as well as other privileged personalities including high profile business persons, continue to seek medical treatment outside the country for all manner of ailments from the most common to the most complex.
The Nigeria Medical Association has stated that the country loses over 600 billion naira annually to what it calls ‘medical tourism’.
TRANSPORT SECTOR
32. Participants observed that transportation is one of the many keys to economic and industrial development.
33. Participants further noted government's acceptance in the midterm report that the growth of the transport sector has been marginal. Between 2010 and 2012, there was a mere marginal 0.8% percent growth of the sector from 6.71% in 2010 to 6.79% in 2012.
34. In terms of contribution to GDP growth, transport accounted for 2.67% in 2010 and 2.66% in 2012. Thus in 2012, the contribution to GDP declined by 0.1% in 2012.
35. With regard to railway, participants observed that the achievements of the sector outlined in the midterm report do not show any strategic investment beyond the rehabilitation of dilapidated rail tracks the management of which is in the hands of the politically controlled and inefficient Nigerian Railways Corporation. Whilst the report highlights rehabilitation of rail tracks and wagons as achievements, it makes no reference to the passenger capacity utilization within the sector and how many passenger seats the rehabilitation of wagons has created.
36. Participants noted that while the current cosmetic make-overs of the airports are laudable, such cosmetic reform does not address the capacity utilization weaknesses of the aviation industry. Only the Murtala Mohammed International Airport operates beyond design capacity; scarce public funds are expended on airports with little passenger capacity. There is no consideration for the development of manpower within the industry. The Nigerian College of Aviation Technology (NCAT) in Zaria still remains the manpower training centre for the aviation industry. Viewed against the near dilapidated state of that college, it is not hard to see why manpower remains the challenge of the industry.
37. Participants also raised questions of transparency and accountability over the manner contracts for the redesigns of airports were awarded, and noted that many critics of the government have alleged that contracts were awarded without recourse to due process as stipulated by Section 16 (1) (c) of the Public Procurement Act, 2007 which provides that ‘’subject to any exemption allowed by the Act, all public procurement shall be conducted by open competitive bidding; in a manner which is transparent, timely, equitable for ensuring accountability and conformity with this Act and regulations deriving therefrom’’.
38. The poor aesthetic designs of some of the airports, particularly the Abuja airport, give fillips to the criticisms that the manner in which the redesign contracts were awarded was all but competitive and transparent. The new look Abuja airport isn’t close to what a modern world class airport should be. And it is even worse that only recently reports of incessant power cuts at the Abuja and Uyo airports were reported in the media. The power cut incident in Uyo was even more ludicrous. The media reported that the airport staff responsible for ensuring that the alternative source of power that light up the airport left after the close of work with the keys to the airport’s generator house.
39. Participants noted that there is clear evidence that the transport environment has not provided enough returns to investments considering the declining contributions to GDP growth. Participants also noted that the policy framework has not been effective and efficient and there have been no real improvements in the sector as the government claims.
40. The dismal performance in this sector is evidenced by the poor state of infrastructure, low budgetary allocation, low investment, poor performance, poor maintenance culture, corruption and waste, lack of due process and accountability, no growth and blame trading between the federal and various state governments on major road repairs.
AGRICULTURE
41. With regard to the Agriculture sector, participants noted that the performance of the regime in review has not been satisfactory to this vital segment and the resultant effect is the persistent rise in market prices of foods.
42. Participants observed that the midterm report presentation was not a sober reflection of the true state of Agriculture and food security in Nigeria and the Minister of Agriculture’s extravagant romance with questionable statistics, like many of his predecessors in office, might have beclouded his rational appraisal of the gravity of the challenges faced by farmers and other stakeholders in the sector.
43. While noting some achievements recorded in the sector in the period under review, participants observed that much more could have been achieved if the implementation processes of these policies and programmes were decentralized and be more inclusive to include farmers’ organizations in the local council areas and states of the federation.
44. Participants noted that before the nation arrives at the envisioned commercial, large scale mechanized agriculture, the small scale farmers that presently constitute over ninety percent of Agricultural workforce and contribute over eighty percent to domestic food production should be the central focus of the transformation agenda.
CONCLUSION
45. Participants commended the transport ministry for sending representatives to defend their report, and particularly noted the commitment by the ministry representatives to henceforth open a website for the ministry where members of the public can access information from and about the ministry's activities.
46. Participants noted and condemned the failure of other ministries to send delegates and interpreted this as a confirmation that they could not defend and substantiate their touted achievements as reported in their sectoral reports.
47. Participants were unanimous in their conclusion that taking overall, the performance of the current administration in the four sectors so far assessed during the forum was far below average, unsatisfactory and did not meet the aspirations of Nigeria. The claims were not supported by the realities on the ground.
Transformation is embedded in development. It is visible. Therefore, was no need, in the first place, for an assessment, to determine whether or not the Jonathan government has performed or succeeded in its transformation agenda.
Signed: For Communique Drafting Committee
Okechukwu Nwanguma
National Coordinator Network for Police Reform in Nigeria (NOPRIN)
Oluajo Babatunde
National Secretary
Zero Corruption Coalition

Eddy Ogunbor

Saturday, 20 July 2013

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