No to ‘Supplementary Mandate’!

The Verdict By Olusegun Adeniyi; olusegun.adeniyi@thisdaylive.com

It would appear as if nothing in our country is ever straightforward. To secure admission to schools at virtually all levels, examinations are usually conducted. But gaining entrance into such schools does not necessarily depend on the scores of candidates because there is also the ubiquitous “supplementary admission” list which often accounts for all manner of under-the-table deals. Job placements in either the private or public sector are also not complete until you wait for the “supplementary employment” list. And the only job some Northern governors do now is to fund and preside over “supplementary marriages”. Of course with the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), winners hardly emerge from elections until they have gone through the rigours of “supplementary polls”!

Yet, if anyone considers the foregoing as absurd, Nigerians are now being told by no other than Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu that we should expect a “Supplementary Mandate” of two years for the current office holders who were elected in 2011 to serve a four-year mandate. The import of that proposal is that the 2015 general elections that have taken the eyes of our public officials from governance--such that the ruling party has even contrived to create a “supplementary PDP”--may not hold after-all.

Apparently flying a kite at a dinner with select reporters in Lagos, Ekweremadu said the National Assembly might consider extending the tenure of the president and governors which ordinarily should expire in 2015, for another two years, as part of the initiatives aimed at resolving the threat that the coming general elections could pose. By his logic, the additional two years would simply allow the present actors to be eased out of office without any tension.

“So I believe that if the players in the politics or stakeholders are able to come together one way to deal with the situation, it could be a win-win situation for everybody. I believe that the way it could work now is that people have been elected for four years, so let everybody complete the four years tenure for which they were elected. And then, through the doctrine of necessity and some sort of jurisprudential approach, do some kind of transition of two years in which case those present occupiers like the president and state governors who are finishing their tenures, will do another two years that would end in 2017...You can see that those fighting the president have hinged their complaints on the fact that if the president gets his second term by the time they are gone, he would start to chase them. So if we all agree, that is a way to solve the problem, after two years, both the president and other governors will exit. I believe that the fear would not be there and there would not be much pressure on the polity,” Ekweremadu said.

I have never heard anything more self-serving and asinine than this proposition which feelers suggest might actually be a well-oiled campaign that is antithetical to the good of our country. Pray, how does adding two more years to the mandate of the current office holders address the myriad of problems confronting the nation? Even at that, what is the guarantee that the demon the idea seeks to run away from will not still be waiting by 2017? How should the fear of political persecution by some individuals be a basis for subverting the constitution under which they were elected into office? What can be more cynical than changing the rules in the middle of a game?

Unfortunately, at about the same time that Ekweremadu was propounding his dinner table theory on tenure elongation in Lagos, some Boko Haram insurgents were attacking an airforce base, an army barrack and a divisional police headquarters in Maiduguri, Borno State. Students of our public universities have also been marooned at home now for six months and may effectively have lost one academic session to the ongoing strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU). Yet Ekweremadu and fellow travellers are only concerned about making political permutations on how to stay in power beyond their mandates.

It is indeed noteworthy that the idea being touted is not even original. It was also initially mooted during the Olusegun Obasanjo presidency as a prelude to the failed third term attempt. The excuse then also was that the 2007 elections could lead to a national implosion. Incidentally, it was the deputy senate president at that time, the then all-powerful Ibrahim Nasir Mantu, who supervised that ill-fated project. So in a way, the current deputy senate president is merely reading from the same script he inherited from his predecessor. But if history were any guide, the cold calculations that failed under Mantu will also fail under Ekweremadu.

However, what is more worrying is that a situation in which successive political office holders would want to change the laws and rules that govern political transition for selfish reasons is an open invitation to anarchy.  Against the background that a certain penchant for lawlessness and opportunism underlies the crises that characterize our political culture, the toxic suggestion by Ekweremadu for a collective tenure elongation by major political office holders beyond 2015 is a clear indication that most of our political leaders have become hostages to power and its corruption. What a shame!

Blame Not The Envelopes

Righ of Reply

Ben Akabueze

Dear Segun,

Your column last week titled “The Illusion of Budget Performance” aptly captured one of the flaws in the way budgetary performance is usually reported in our country. I agree with you that there is often an undue focus on expending the budgetary provisions without commensurate emphasis on the quality of the expenditures in terms of both priorities and value-for-money. While we cannot avoid expressing budgetary performance in percentages, performance measurement must go beyond that to also include Impact Assessment in terms of the budget’s actual outputs and outcomes vis-a-vis set targets. I know this can be done based on our practice in Lagos State.
However, I part ways with you in your attribution of the deficiencies in budgetary performance measurement to the “envelope system”. The problem may be with the way the system is practised, and not with the system per se. The “envelope system” is not inconsistent with establishing budget priorities. For instance, in Lagos State, our practice of the “envelope system” actually entails a two-tier establishment of priorities, first at the level of individual Ministries, Departments & Agencies (MDAs) and secondly at the overall state level. Practically speaking, how much ends up in each MDA’s envelope depends on how it fares in this hierarchy of priorities. If our priorities change unexpectedly in the course of the fiscal year, we re-cast the budget accordingly.

I hope that your interest in how we can make budgets work for the generality of Nigerians will be sustained beyond your last article. You can count on my support and continuing engagement in any such effort. The reality is that the budget process currently does not generally serve our people across the tiers of government. Why is the perennially late approval and low budget performance of the Federal Government not a matter of sufficient concern to Nigerians? How many state governments currently routinely measure and report their budget performance? How many local government areas even seriously prepare annual budgets at all? The questions to be asked abound.

•Akabueze is the Lagos State Commissioner for Economic Development

ThisDay

APC Crisis: Nyako, Marwa, Stakeholders to Meet in Abuja Tomorrow

Gov Murtala Nyako

Daji Sani
A former governorship aspirant of the defunct Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) in Adamawa State, Brigadier General Buba Marwa (rtd), has disclosed that the national leadership of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has invited the state Governor, Murtala Nyako and some party’s stakeholders for a meeting in Abuja, to address some of the issues bedevilling the progress of the party in the state.

Marwa, while speaking yesterday at a press conference he convened in Yola, told journalists that the purpose of the press conference was to douse tension among the party's supporters, who have vowed to leave APC because of the defection of Nyako and his supporters into the party.

He said according to their supporters, Nyako’s coming to highjack the political structures of party might not be in their interest if they remain in APC, hence their resolve to move to another party that would accommodate their interest.

Marwa explained that Nyako’s defection into the party was done without consultations from the party’s stakeholders in the state, stressing that even though if the governor was sacrosanct to the party, the method of his defection to the party was wrong.

“However, we also want to make it clear that Nyako advisers did not advise him well as to the method of his entry into APC because when you enter a new place that was already occupied, it is expected of you to knock at the door first and introduce yourself to the occupants unfortunately Nyako and supporters undermine the occupants and went straight into the bedroom without permission by calling a meeting of the APC at the grassroots,” he said.

He claimed that Nyako and his supporters ought to have met with the party’s stakeholders in the state, adding that it was not too late for an amendment to be made.
Marwa said himself, a governorship aspirant on the platform of the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), Mr. Markus Gundiri, and Nyako, who joined the party recently alongside some APC stakeholders in the state were invited by the national leadership of party headed by Chief Bisi Akande, to address some false insinuations that the party structures have been handed over to Nyako and his men.

“That is why the national leadership of the APC has called for a meeting between Nyako and us the stakeholders of the legacies parties that made up the APC because a lot of worries and fears from our members that the national leadership has given the soul the party to the governor, which is not true that is we ceasing the opportunity to inform them that insinuations are not true,” he said.

ThisDay

APC to‘re-strategise’ for 2015 general elections

A chieftain of the All Progressives Congress, Mr. Babalola Fabunmi, on Tuesday expressed the determination of the party to put its house in order ahead of the 2015 general elections.
Fabunmi, who said this in a chat with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lokoja, said the measure was necessary to arrest the crisis rocking the leadership of the state chapter of the party.
Fabunmi said the national secretariat of the party had rescheduled its congress for December 12.
He called for unity among party members in the state, saying that unity was all they needed to succeed.
Fabunmi expressed optimism that if the congress was successful, the next election would be a huge success.
The chieftain commended the leadership of the party for its prompt response in resolving the crisis that rocked the party recently.

Iyayi's Death: Autopsy Shows No Bullets – Medical Source

Festus Iyayi 

 

By Saharareporters, New York

A medical exam conducted to unravel the cause of death of Festus Iyayi showed no evidence of bullets, a source familiar with the autopsy has informed SaharaReporters. Mr. Iyayi, a professor of business management at the University of Benin who was also a well known novelist and academic activist, he died November 12 in an automobile accident near Lokoja. Mr. Iyayi was on his way to attend a meeting of the Academic Staff Union of Universities when the vehicle in which he was traveling was hit by a car in the convoy of Governor Idris Wada of Kogi State.
Our source said that a team of pathologists who included experts and witnesses from ASUU, medical doctors at the University of Benin Teaching Hospital and the Nigerian government carried out an autopsy and unanimously determined that Mr. Iyayi was not shot.
With the official report of the autopsy still being put together, our source disclosed that the participants in the autopsy confirmed the presence of holes in Mr. Iyayi's body, even though they could not trace the piercings to any bullets. He added that medical examiners recovered no pellets from the late Professor's body.
The autopsy was reportedly done about a week before the commencement of Mr. Iyayi's funeral. The late academic’s funeral ended yesterday with a “thanksgiving Mass at Saint Mathew’s Catholic Church in Ugbegun, Edo State. Mr. Iyayi's remains were buried in the same town on Saturday.
A renowned Nigerian writer and activist, Mr. Iyayi was a former national leader of ASUU. He also served as a former President of the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights (CDHR).
SaharaReporters disclosed that Mr. Iyayi was killed in a crash involving the notoriously reckless convoy of Kogi State Governor, Mr. Wada. Mr. Iyayi was on his way to Kano to attend a council meeting of ASUU executives to discuss the next step in a long-running strike by lecturers that has grounded Nigeria’s public universities and mired the country’s education in a crisis.
 However, members of the late Professor Iyayi's family and activists close to him said they have not been informed of the final results of the autopsy. His son, Omole,  told Saharareporters earlier today that the family had not received any official autopsy reports from doctors in Benin. He said they were therefore surprised at the conclusions.

Sadly, Jonathan lost the Mandela momentum

by Azuka Onwuka

Azuka Onwuka
 

It was sad seeing the United Kingdom and the United States – two countries which supported the vicious apartheid regime of South Africa and the incarceration of Dr. Nelson Mandela – in the limelight when Mandela died last week, while Nigeria, which led the African onslaught against apartheid, played the second fiddle.

Shortly after President Jacob Zuma of South Africa broke the news of Mandela’s death in the night of Thursday, December 5, President Barack Obama of the US and Prime Minister David Cameron of the UK addressed the media. The US, France and other countries announced that flags would be flown at half-mast. Conversely, our country issued a statement signed by Dr. Reuben Abati, the media aide to President Goodluck Jonathan.  Because ours was a statement signed by Abati while those from the US and UK were speeches read by their chief executives, naturally our TV and radio stations, while broadcasting the news of Mandela’s death the next day, gave priority to Obama and Cameron.

To further buttress our unpreparedness, an announcement came from the Presidency later in the day declaring three days of national mourning for Mandela with flags flying at half mast. It looked like an afterthought done because others had done so. Rather than setting the pace as the acclaimed Giant of Africa on such an African matter, we allowed others to take the glory and momentum.

Many excuses would be given for this. One would be that the President was not in the country when Mandela died. The second would be that Mandela died at night, while it was still day in the United States, which gave them a head start. But these are what they are: Excuses. And excuses do not rate highly among those who are strategy-driven.

Through his illness, Mandela warned the whole world for many months about his imminent departure. Even a few days before he passed on, it was announced that he had relapsed and could not recognise people anymore. That was his final warning.

Therefore, the Presidency had enough time to prepare for Mandela’s departure: in terms of what to say or do whenever he died. Even though the President was in Europe when Mandela died, nothing stopped him from addressing the Nigerian media that travelled with him and sending the clips to Reuters, AFP, NAN, NTA, etc, for broadcast.

Such a live broadcast would have given Jonathan the opportunity to subtly chip in the role Nigeria played in the life of Mandela and the fight against apartheid. For example, many of our people do not know that when the apartheid regime was looking for Mandela to jail him in the early 1960s, that he ran to Nigeria and Nigeria’s President, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, handed him over to Chief Mbazulike Amaechi – a parliamentarian then – to give him refuge for six months before he eventually decided to go back, and was arrested in August 1962, tried and jailed.

Many of our people do not know that during the Murtala Muhammed/Olusegun Obasanjo regime that a contributory fund was set up for students, civil servants and other Nigerians to donate money to support South Africans and the fight against apartheid. Nigeria was like a home to many African National Congress leaders and South African students. Many ANC leaders had access to the Nigerian passports to enable them to travel round the world because the apartheid regime seized their passports.

Furthermore, Nigeria antagonised many of the countries that supported the apartheid regime, especially Britain. For example, Nigeria privatised British companies in Nigeria, notably the Britain Petroleum, which it converted to National Oil. Nigeria boycotted some international meets, especially the Commonwealth Games. All these measures were meant to pressurise the UK to set South Africa free.

Mandela was very appreciative of Nigeria’s contributions to the fight against apartheid. For example, Nigeria was one of the first countries he visited after his release from prison after 27 years in February 1990. Not only that, when Nigeria and South Africa had a match to play for the 1994 World Cup qualification, Mandela was asked which country he would prefer to win. He said South Africa was his country, while Nigeria was like a country to him. So, he did not know the country he preferred to win. Nigeria eventually won that match and qualified for its first World Cup. Mandela was to reciprocate by rallying Africa and the Commonwealth to sanction the dictatorship of Gen. Sani Abacha after the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa in November 1995.

Unfortunately, we have allowed our people to be taught history by the CNN, the BBC and other Western media. And the Western media would always tell every story from their perspectives, and not ours. Our people know how George Washington fought the British for America’s independence but don’t know how Azikiwe fought the British for Nigeria’s independence. We know how Mahatma Gandhi or Mother Teresa lived for the downtrodden of India but do not know how Tai Solarin, Mallam Aminu Kano or Chief Gani Fawehinmi lived and fought for the downtrodden, or the Talakawas, of Nigeria.

In Christianity, for example, Christ taught that pure charity is when you give with your right hand without your left hand knowing. But in relations between a nation and other nations, it is not counted as vain or arrogant for a nation to draw attention to its contributions to any country or cause. What it does is that it guides the nationals of the benefitting country whenever they are taking any action concerning the other nation. For example, if young South Africans know the contributions of Nigeria to their nation’s freedom, whenever any xenophobic statement or sentiments are expressed by any of them concerning Nigerians, there would be some voices among them that would sue for caution, pointing out that Nigeria was very supportive during their time of need, and now that Nigeria is experiencing its own economic apartheid, caused by years of military-cum-civilian misrule and corruption, it would not be fair for South Africans to be hard on Nigerians living in South Africa.

Before his death, Mandela was the greatest living human being on earth. That cannot be diminished by envy or anything. In 2009, the United Nations General Assembly gave him the rare honour of declaring his birthday (July 18) Nelson Mandela International Day. His 27-year incarceration was the pedestal to his fame, but his pursuit of love and forgiveness, instead of hate and revenge against those who oppressed and killed his people, made him stand taller than any of his contemporaries. The Western world had taken advantage of his fame, naming monuments after him and erecting statues in his honour even before his death. What have we done to claim Mandela as our own, being the biggest Black nation in the world? What can we name after him even before his burial on December 15? If we knew how to play our cards well, we could have secured an agreement with the South African Government to have his body lie in state in Nigeria before burial or have Nigeria make a special presentation at his burial. Strategic planning is not an accident.

Mandela is indescribable and irreplaceable. For me, he is the greatest human being of all time. When he was ill, I had written a eulogy on this page for him on June 18, entitled “What is the fuss over Mandela’s health?” Since his passing, I have been short of words about what more to say about him. But I feel sad seeing our leaders and common people eulogising him, even when we continue to spread bitterness, hate and vengeance among our compatriots, causing bloodshed at the least misunderstanding, promoting corruption in our little spheres of authority, always thinking about ourselves and family first in all our dealings, and seeking power and clinging to it as if our life depended on it. Again, that he never got medical treatment abroad was also part of the South African pride. In our case, even sprains and headaches make our leaders seek treatment abroad because of our poor state of health care. We no longer feel embarrassed when our leaders and private individuals die abroad. It is telling enough that as he was dying in his South African home, the remains of Chief Solomon Lar were being brought from the US where he died recently.

Mandela has taught us that the life that is celebrated is a life of integrity, sacrifice and service to others. Anyone who lives like that never really dies.

Punch

Slap On PDP’s Face As Board Of Trustees Member Dumps Party For APC

A member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Board of Trustees, Chief Benjamin Apugo, yesterday landed another slap on the party’s leadership as he resigned his membership for the All Progressives Congress, APC .
Chief Apugo who is a member of the PDP Board of Trustees and a founding member of the party revealed that he has defected to the All Progressives Congress (APC).
Explaining to journalists his reason for dumping the PDP and renouncing his membership of the BOT at the Sam Mbakwe International cargo airport on Monday, Chief Apugo disclosed that he took the decision as a result of lack of internal democracy in the party which he added, has made the party lose its initial concept.

“We were not in APC before but we have joined now so you cannot say that it is a regional party. It is a national party that will provide Nigerians with a healthy alternative. Those who were failed by the PDP will now find succour in the APC. It is the change the people needed and it will unseat the PDP in 2015,” he said.

According to him, “I was a founding member of the PDP. We laboured tirelessly to build the party but today, the concept of the founding fathers is no longer there. In my home state, Abia, the PDP has failed woefully in all sectors and the APC will take over the state because every Abia indigene who wants those amenities that are currently lacking will identify with us and support the APC”.
He added that mass mobilization for APC in Abia State will commence soon.

TheParadigm

Fashola Speaks for Nigerians...

...

“I remember we did not go to the Commonwealth Games because of South Africa. I remember we took drastic measures against the foreign collaborators of the apartheid regime and nationalized their assets. There is no home that the anti-apartheid campaign was not then. Our university halls were named after Mozambique and all of these places. We funded all of these organisations in Angola and Zimbabwe among others.

Apart from scholarship to South Africans, I remember when South Africans used to come for exchange programme then. We are now the ones being driven out of South Africa. The British can enter South Africa visa free. We have to take a visa. These are deep questions because they hurt me. People like Fela nearly lost their voices, singing about freedom. I hope that as our president is going for Mandela’s burial, I hope that it would be to go and take the leadership roles that we deserve or we should ask ourselves if we have really lost it, what is the way back.

As I said, history has been revised and our voices are not heard on the international stage. This is our glory because we contributed so much to this course, and perhaps we ask ourselves what the investment payoff has been"

“I remember we did not go to the Commonwealth Games because of South Africa. I remember we took drastic measures against the foreign collaborators of the apartheid regime and nationalized their assets. There is no home that the anti-apartheid campaign was not then. Our university halls were named after Mozambique and all of these places. We funded all of these organisations in Angola and Zimbabwe among others.

Apart from scholarship to South Africans, I remember when South Africans used to come for exchange programme then. We are now the ones being driven out of South Africa. The British can enter South Africa visa free. We have to take a visa. These are deep questions because they hurt me. People like Fela nearly lost their voices, singing about freedom. I hope that as our president is going for Mandela’s burial, I hope that it would be to go and take the leadership roles that we deserve or we should ask ourselves if we have really lost it, what is the way back.

As I said, history has been revised and our voices are not heard on the international stage. This is our glory because we contributed so much to this course, and perhaps we ask ourselves what the investment payoff has been"

NaijaUrban