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When you are an
Editor of national media organisation and also have the rare privilege
of writing a regular column, you have to exercise great judgment in
deciding what your topics should be. But this isn’t as easy or
straightforward as it sounds.

The ability to be
fair and balanced is an essential quality in an editor. But that is not
enough; you must also be seen to be fair and balanced. And as the umpire
that directs newsgathering and has the final word on what gets into the
paper and what does not, perception is important and can help determine
the level of trust established between a media organisation and its
audience.

In a complex and
potentially volatile place like Nigeria, the decision on what subject to
write on, can sometimes be a fine balancing act entailing some tough
judgment calls. Some subjects can even be taboo; not because I do not
have an opinion about these things, or that I lack the courage or
conviction to publicise those beliefs but because there is a real danger
that my beliefs could be mistaken for the opinion of the paper and some
may even assume it influences the way we gather and disseminate news
and information.

I have been
pondering for some time the question of attributes that need to be
present in the man or woman we elect as president in next year’s
elections. But, I have also been wary of writing about it to avoid the
perception that I am endorsing this or that other candidate. Yet I have
not been able to completely push the issue out of my mind.

So I have come up
with a solution, a list of attributes that I believe we should be
looking for in the next Nigerian president and indeed everyone we are
putting in an elective office.

Some will find the
list simplistic and naive and say it does not take into account all the
various nuances and paradoxes inherent in human character and present
day Nigeria. I think it is a decent list and invite you to add to it.
Maybe when we have put together a list that we believe is complete, we
can circulate it and encourage voters to use it as check before they
cast their vote.

So here goes:

It is my judgment, that the following qualities are essential in anyone seeking to lead Nigeria successfully –

1. A truly
detribalised Nigerian- A person who will take decisions based on the
overall interest of Nigeria and not a single state or region. A person
who although proud of his or her roots, does not feel a sense of
superiority and genuinely judges people based on their actions and not
their place of origin.

2. A person with
integrity – A man or woman who has no record of enriching himself or
herself from public coffers. A person whose wealth can be measured and
traced, who has not shown any indication of the rapacious greed we have
come to associate with Nigerian politicians. A leader who will put
national interest above the need for personal enrichment and monetary
benefits.

3. A smart person –
Someone with the brain, or to put it another way, the processing power
to deal with the complexity of the Nigerian situation and with the
intellectual capacity to craft plans for addressing its many problems
and actually execute those plans.

4. A ‘unifying’
candidate- A person that will be acceptable and trusted by all regions
across the nation, with the capacity to unite the country and ensure buy
in for his or her policies across the tribal and political spectrum in
this nation. A candidate that will not exacerbate further, the divisions
that already exist, but lead Nigeria to celebrate its diversity while
harnessing it for cultural and economic growth: A man or woman who
passionately believes in the Nigerian project and will work diligently
to realise it.

5. A candidate with
the strength and courage – to take tough decisions, to stand up to
politicians who refuse to pursue an agenda of national growth. A man or
woman with he dogged determination and audacity to do the right thing no
matter whose ox is gored.

6. A spiritual
person – Someone who has genuine faith and spirituality and is not
merely religious in the way many Nigerians are. It should not be about
how often the candidate goes to the mosque or church or how many times
the person proclaims their religiosity. It should be an examination of
the person’s life, both the public and the private to see if God plays a
part in that life. Does he do good by his neighbours, is he or she
honest in everyday dealings? Does he or she conduct their affairs with
honour and fairness? Does the person’s behaviour make them the ideal
role model for the society we are trying to build?

These are my six. Should the candidate we vote for be in possession
of all of these attributes or would the possession of 5 out of 6 be
acceptable for president, vice – president, governor, senator, house of
representative member, local government chairman etc?

Americans
tend to associate “modern slavery” with illiterate girls in India or Cambodia.
Yet there I was the other day, interviewing a college graduate who says she
spent three years terrorised by pimps in a brothel in Midtown Manhattan.

Those who
think that commercial sex in this country is invariably voluntary – and
especially men who pay for sex – should listen to her story. The men buying her
services all mistakenly assumed that she was working of her own volition, she
says.

Yumi Li (a
nickname) grew up in a Korean area of northeastern China. After university, she
became an accountant, but, restless and ambitious, she yearned to go abroad.

So she
accepted an offer from a female jobs agent to be smuggled to New York and take
up a job using her accounting skills and paying $5,000 a month. Yumi’s
relatives had to sign documents pledging their homes as collateral if she did
not pay back the $50,000 smugglers’ fee from her earnings.

Yumi set
off for America with a fake South Korean passport. On arrival in New York,
however, Yumi was ordered to work in a brothel.

“When they
first mentioned prostitution, I thought I would go crazy,” Yumi told me. “I was
thinking, ‘How can this happen to someone like me who is college-educated?”‘
Her voice trailed off, and she added: “I wanted to die.”

She says
that the four men who ran the smuggling operation – all Chinese or South
Koreans – took her into their office on 36th Street in Midtown Manhattan. They
beat her with their fists (but did not hit her in the face, for that might
damage her commercial value), gang-raped her and videotaped her naked in
humiliating poses. For extra intimidation, they held a gun to her head.

If she
continued to resist working as a prostitute, she says they told her, the video
would be sent to her relatives and acquaintances back home. Relatives would be
told that Yumi was a prostitute, and several of them would lose their homes as
well.

Yumi
caved. For the next three years, she says, she was one of about 20 Asian
prostitutes working out of the office on 36th Street. Some of them worked
voluntarily, she says, but others were forced and received no share in the
money.

Yumi
played her role robotically. On one occasion, Yumi was arrested for
prostitution, and she says the police asked her if she had been trafficked.

“I said
no,” she recalled. “I was really afraid that if I hinted that I was a victim,
the gang would send the video to my family.”

Then one
day Yumi’s closest friend in the brothel was handcuffed by a customer, abused
and strangled almost to death. Yumi rescued her and took her to the hospital.
She said that in her rage, she then confronted the pimps and threatened to go
public.

At that
point, the gang hurriedly moved offices and changed phone numbers. The pimps
never mailed the video or claimed the homes in China; those may have been
bluffs all along. As for Yumi and her friend, they found help with Restore NYC,
a nonprofit that helps human trafficking victims in the city.

I can’t be
sure of elements of Yumi’s story, but it mostly rings true to me and to the
social workers who have worked with her. There’s no doubt that while some women
come to the United States voluntarily to seek their fortunes in the sex trade,
many others are coerced – and still others start out forced but eventually
continue voluntarily. And it’s not just foreign women. The worst cases of
forced prostitution, especially of children, often involve homegrown teenage
runaways.

No one has
a clear idea of the scale of the problem, and estimates vary hugely. Some think
the problem is getting worse; others believe that Internet services reduce the
role of pimps and lead to commercial sex that is more consensual. What is clear
is that forced prostitution should be a national scandal. Just this month,
authorities indicted 29 people, mostly people of Somali origin from the
Minneapolis area, on charges of running a human trafficking ring that allegedly
sold many girls into prostitution – one at the age of 12.

There are
no silver bullets, but the critical step is for the police and prosecutors to
focus more on customers (to reduce demand) and, above all, on pimps.
Prostitutes tend to be arrested because they are easy to catch, while pimping
is a far more difficult crime to prosecute. That’s one reason thugs become
pimps: It’s hugely profitable and carries less risk than selling drugs or
stealing cars. But that can change as state and federal authorities target
traffickers rather than their victims.

Nearly 150
years after the Emancipation Proclamation, it’s time to wipe out the remnants
of slavery in this country.

© 2010 New York Times News Service

Dateline
Kinshasa – The annual EU-ACP Joint Parliamentary Assembly kicks off in the
Congolese capital this week against a background of challenging developments in
international relations. Prominent on the agenda are issues such as climate
change, governance and democracy, post-conflict reconstruction in war-torn
countries, and immigration and religious toleration in the New Europe.

The
partnership between the European Union and the African, Caribbean and Pacific
(ACP) Group of States has long been regarded as a model for North-South
cooperation. In spite of all the rhetoric of interdependence and equality, no
one can be in doubt that Europe calls the final shots by sheer virtue of its
control over the purse strings – some €23 billion under the 10th European
Development Fund (EDF).

Africa in particular can lay claim to having
several friends in the EU Parliament, but be that as it may, there are growing
concerns within ACP circles that the EU may be turning its back on an age-old
relationship. With its new overtures towards Latin America and the new
priorities being given to the so-called “European neighbourhood” – Eastern
Europe and North Africa – there are legitimate fears that Europe may be
disengaging itself from its traditional partnership that goes as far back as
the Rome Treaty 1957 that saw the creation of the Common Market with an associated
status for the erstwhile colonial dependencies.

Former
U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger once remarked that if he needed to talk
to the Kremlin he always knew precisely who to call; ditto for Beijing and
Tokyo. He lamented that, for Europe, you never could know who to call.

With the
coming into force of the Lisbon Treaty in December 2009 the Kissingers of this
world no longer have to worry. Under the new treaty Europe is to reform its
internal architecture so as to have coherence and more effectiveness on the
international arena. Under the new plan, the EU now has a High Representative
of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy in the person of Catherine
Ashton of the United Kingdom. She effectively combines the role of foreign as
well as defence minister and would have a new corps of foreign service
personnel at her disposal.

Well and
good for Europe. The problem for the ACP is that for the first time in its long
years of evolution, Europe has a constitutive legal document that makes no express
reference to the EU-ACP partnership. It is also not clear if the ACP can be
entitled to a predictable envelope of financial resources as had been the case
hitherto. This is a major concern to several African countries whose annual
budgets depend on significant contributions from foreign donors, notable among
them Uganda, Tanzania, Ghana and Mozambique.

The simple
truth is that the EU remains the largest donor in the world – well ahead of the
USA, Japan, China and the World Bank. What Europe does or fails to do will have
major implications for the life-chances of so many on our continent.

There is
also the question of the ongoing negotiations on Economic Partnership
Agreements (EPAs). For more than three decades the ACP enjoyed concessional
trading terms with the EU, with duty-free access for most of the imports from
the poorest countries. Such arrangements, we are told, are no longer compatible
with current WTO international trading rules.

The EPAs
being negotiated between Europe and the regional economic communities of the
ACP are supposed to replace the erstwhile trading arrangements that had been
put in place over decades of painstaking multilateral negotiations. While the
Caribbean has made significant progress in reaching an agreement with the EU,
much of Africa and the Pacific are yet to make any major progress. I am told
that our own ECOWAS is expected to reach an agreement by year’s end 2010, all
things being equal.

Former EU
Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson, one of the architects of Britain’s New
Labour, never endeared himself by what appeared to be a bullying approach to
the EPA negotiations. The Europeans seem
unmoved by the concerns of some of the poorest countries that wholesale trade
liberalisation would wipe out local industries while poor peasant farmers will
suffer devastating income losses as they try to compete with over-subsidized
European farm products. Under the Common Agricultural Policy, the EU commits
over 30 percent of its budget to farm subsidies (amounting to €43.8 billion in
2010).

It is my
first time ever in Kinshasa. I find it to be a lovely city, although the signs
of its manifold traumas are everywhere to be seen. During the course of this
week, parliamentarians from Europe, Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific will jaw-jaw
about all the aforesaid issues. But it is doubtful if any of this will shift
Europe’s fundamental position in any way. We would not need a magic lantern to
peer through the fog of doublespeak and obfuscation.

The
handwriting on the wall is clear: we live in a world where national interests
ultimately prevail; where there are no permanent friends or permanent enemies.
Anyone who approaches international economic diplomacy with the bowl of
mendicancy and nothing else besides, would make of himself a lone voice crying
in the wilderness.

What we need now is another Jonathan Swift.

Most people know
Swift as the author of “Gulliver’s Travels.” But recent events have me
thinking of his 1729 essay “A Modest Proposal,” in which he observed
the dire poverty of the Irish and offered a solution: Sell the children
as food. “I grant this food will be somewhat dear,” he admitted, but
this would make it “very proper for landlords, who, as they have
already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title to
the children.”

OK, these days it’s
not the landlords, it’s the bankers – and they’re just impoverishing
the populace, not eating it. But only a satirist – and one with a very
savage pen – could do justice to what’s happening to Ireland now.

The Irish story
began with a genuine economic miracle. Eventually, though, this gave
way to a speculative frenzy driven by runaway banks and real estate
developers, all in a cozy relationship with leading politicians. The
frenzy was financed with huge borrowing on the part of Irish banks,
largely from banks in other European nations.

Then the bubble
burst, and those banks faced huge losses. You might have expected those
who lent money to the banks to share in the losses. After all, they
were consenting adults, and if they failed to understand the risks they
were taking that was nobody’s fault but their own. But, no, the Irish
government stepped in to guarantee the banks’ debt, turning private
losses into public obligations.

Before the bank
bust, Ireland had little public debt. However, with taxpayers suddenly
on the hook for gigantic bank losses, even as revenues plunged, the
nation’s creditworthiness was put in doubt. So Ireland tried to
reassure the markets with a harsh programme of spending cuts.

Step back for a
minute and think about that. These debts were incurred, not to pay for
public programmes, but by private wheeler-dealers seeking nothing but
their own profit. Ordinary Irish citizens are now bearing the burden of
those debts.

Or to be more
accurate, they’re bearing a burden much larger than the debt – because
those spending cuts have caused a severe recession so that in addition
to taking on the banks’ debts, the Irish are suffering from plunging
incomes and high unemployment.

There is no alternative, though, say the serious people: all of this is necessary to restore confidence.

Strange to say,
however, confidence is not improving. On the contrary, investors have
noticed that all those austerity measures are depressing the Irish
economy – and are fleeing Irish debt because of that economic weakness.

Now what? Last
weekend Ireland and its neighbors put together what has widely been
described as a “bailout.” What really happened, though, was that the
Irish government promised to impose even more pain, in return for a
credit line that would presumably give Ireland more time to, um,
restore confidence. Markets, understandably, were not impressed as
interest rates on Irish bonds have risen even further.

Does it really have to be this way?

In early 2009, a
joke was making the rounds: “What’s the difference between Iceland and
Ireland? Answer: One letter and about six months.” This was supposed to
be gallows humor. No matter how bad the Irish situation, it couldn’t be
compared with the utter disaster that was Iceland.

At this point,
however, Iceland seems, if anything, to be doing better than its
near-namesake. Its economic slump was no deeper than Ireland’s, its job
losses were less severe and it seems better positioned for recovery. In
fact, investors now appear to consider Iceland’s debt safer than
Ireland’s. How is that possible?

Part of the answer
is that Iceland let foreign lenders to its runaway banks pay the price
of their poor judgment, rather than putting its own taxpayers on the
line to guarantee bad private debts. As the International Monetary Fund
notes – approvingly! “Private sector bankruptcies have led to a marked
decline in external debt.” Meanwhile, Iceland helped avoid a financial
panic in part by imposing temporary capital controls – that is, by
limiting the ability of residents to pull funds out of the country.

Iceland has also
benefited from the fact that, unlike Ireland, it still has its own
currency; devaluation of the krona, which has made Iceland’s exports
more competitive, has been an important factor in limiting the depth of
Iceland’s slump.

None of these
heterodox options are available to Ireland, say the wise heads.
Ireland, they say, must continue to inflict pain on its citizens –
because to do anything else would fatally undermine confidence.

But Ireland is now
in its third year of austerity, and confidence just keeps draining
away. And you have to wonder what it will take for serious people to
realise that punishing the populace for the bankers’ sins is worse than
a crime; it’s a mistake.

© 2010 New York Times News Service

In continuation of
the series of events marking Nigeria’s 50th anniversary, the left and
progressive persons converged at the Aminu Kano Centre for Democratic
Research and Training in Kano to reflect on their contributions to the
construction of democracy in the country.

Numerous comrades
including Baba Omojola, Issa Aremu, Bamidele Aturu, Ibrahim Muazzam, W.
O. Alli, Dipo Fashina, Baba Aye, Hauwa Mustapha, Nasiru Kura, Raufu
Mustapha, Abiodun Aremu and Y. Z. Yau graced the occasion. Our foreign
friends such as Bjorn Beckman (Sweden), Yusuf Bangura (Sierra Leone),
Lloyd Sachikonye (Zimbabwe) and Sakhela Buhlungo (South Africa) also
participated in the event.

It was an occasion
for the celebration of ideas, of recognising that over the past fifty
years, the ideas of progress, social change, development and
transforming the lives of the masses for the better have always been
championed by the small but articulate left circle in Nigeria. Indeed,
it was with the relative decline of leftist ideology over the past two
decades that Nigeria descended into the current regime that is governed
by sheer and absolute greed, self-interest and self-aggrandisement.

Leftist forces in
Nigeria were influenced by the great revolutionary ideas of Marx,
Engels and Lenin. In Nigeria, our teachers have included Michael
Imoudu, Ola Oni, Esker Toyo, Dapo Fatogun, Hassan Sumonu and Baba
Omojola. The inspiration of the Left also came with the promise of the
defunct Soviet Union that the mobilisation unleashed by socialism can
generate the electricity and steel that would industrialise the economy
in a couple of decades. And then, the Berlin Wall collapsed and the
Soviet Union disintegrated provoking disillusion for some and
disorientation for others.

The core of the
progressive Left however never gave up the struggle. Having been
schooled in the Leninist theory of organisation aimed at precipitating
the “national democratic revolution,” this energy was transferred to
the struggle against military rule and for the expansion of human
rights.

The Left is
eminently qualified for this having been schooled in the radical
tradition of the progressive student’s movement and the Academic Staff
Union of Universities and has cut its teeth in journalism, trade
unionism and civil society activism in human rights organisations. In
spite of, or rather, because of its ideological training the Left
became a powerful agitator of the liberal state based on the rule of
law, even if in our own thinking, we were keenly engaged in the
struggle for socialism and uplifting the masses from poverty and
squalor.

The Nigerian Left,
I am convinced, has been the champion of the promotion of liberal
democratic rights. A key ally has been the legal and judicial system.
It has been a powerful ally because Nigeria has an old tradition of
producing crop of lawyers engaged in private practice for whom the
emergence and improvement of the rule of law and a regime of rights is
a professional and political necessity.

Of course the
alliance between the progressives, the lawyers and the judicial system
has been based on the fact that the principles and practice of the rule
of law have been constantly violated and threatened by successive
military and civilian regimes. In this context, one of the most
frightening moments for the alliance was the enactment by the Buhari
regime of Decree no. 2 of 1984 that allowed the Chief of General Staff
to detain citizens for extended periods without charging them to court.
The decree suspended the important instrument of ‘habeas corpus’ that
citizens could use to compel the state to produce detainees in court.

It should be
remembered that in April 1961, the three ‘National Government’ leaders;
Ahmadu Bello, Michael Okpara and Tafawa Balewa met and decided to enact
this type of detention law but resistance to their plans was too strong
(African Concord 16.8.1988, p. 16). It took the Nigerian state 23 years
of ‘effort’ to impose this repugnant law. The Civil Liberties
Organisation (CLO), and the Nigerian Organisation of Democratic Lawyers
needed to organise to confront the risk.

What emerged from
the conference was that democracy is a progressive feature of political
society because it is based on the premise that all human beings are
free and equal. It is a progressive principle for the organisation of
society even if it is true that democratic principles are not fully
implemented in the societies that lay claim to it. A gap therefore,
exists between enunciated democratic principles and ‘really existing
democracies’.

Of course, the
problem with liberal democracy is that it neglects the need for
economic equality and social justice. This is why the Left believes
strongly that liberal democracy is not enough. The conclusion of the
conference was that the Left must never give up on the task of building
the capacity and will to engender social movements that can bring
economic equality and social justice back into the democratic agenda of
empowering the people.

Say hello to the
new me: Mrs. Princess Barrister Sister Daughter Angela Ajetunmobi, BaC
(Babelicious Chick), GC (Great Cook), WM (wife and mum). Well, one has
finally decided that one shall acquire a ‘’good’’ title (or two) before
one gets any more cheek from the hired help.

Hmmm, Come and see
‘‘dissing’’ from a glorified, albeit uniformed gateman! And why? All
because I filled an official visitors form, and had no pompous title. I
no blame am: I blame political correctness! I blame the conversion of
the modest gateman of old, now transformed to the new ‘security’
detail, complete with uniform and all. And we all enabled this
confusion in their minds.

So even if just to
preserve family pride, acquire some ‘respect’ and be important, one has
narrowed down the options on possible titles. And the opportunities are
endless!

First step is to
determine how many titles one wants to go with; more doesn’t
necessarily translate to better. I am convinced that one only needs
those titles that will conjure awards and endow me with Instant
Immediate Importance (the three I’s)! One must leave no room for ifs or
maybes, ‘sugbon or tabi’, but one can be crass if one so wishes.
Crassness just may bestow that awe many reserve for titled people.

And one doesn’t
want to copy the woman one met the other day, who’s complimentary card
read- ‘’Double-Chief Mrs. Surv’’. Married thrice, one felt the ‘Mrs.’
seemed a little lonely, not even hyphenated and she also had a Master’s
degree. I think, though I couldn’t say so, that it should have been
perhaps ‘’Double-Chief, Triple-Mrs. Surv-in-Mast’’ to reflect her
reality. After all, none of the titles would have been a
walk-in-the-park for her to acquire. But I digress!

I deciphered long
ago how significant the Nigerian title is. Young newly married couples
while still single, would happily and lovingly address each other by
their first names, but once kids come along, it becomes an abomination
to call hubby by name. First-name calling is automatically banned
because parenthood has been achieved. So, good old Kunle suddenly
transmuted to Daddy-Wa or Daddy Junior or Papa ‘Bornboy’. Funke also
became Mummy-Wa or Mama-something. So if no children arrive after a
year or two of marriage, can we call them Mama or Baba Didn’t-Born-yet’?

And one doesn’t
want titles that you have to explain. What then will be the point?
While Angela’s father wanted her to study ‘Classics’ at university, her
mother would have none of that! ‘’No oh, what will they now call me,
the mother of a ‘Classics’ graduate or ‘Mama-Classics? Please, let the
girl read something that will be easy to incorporate into a name’’.
Mother wanted the girl to read a subject that will automatically confer
a more specific title. So, instead of just ‘Mama Graduate’, Angela’s
mum wanted ‘Mama Doctor/Lawyer/Professor’’.

And you are
forgiven if you thought JP meant ‘Justice of the Peace’ because that is
the norm. But did you know that it also means Jerusalem pilgrim? What
about some professionals who never thought they needed to fix a title
to their name, suddenly now attaching Pharm, Surv, and even specifying
what type of engineer they are: Auto Engr, Mech Engr, Civ Engr.

And from the
ridiculous to the mundane: BeauQ for Beauty Queen; ProDanc for
professional dancer; Plumb for plumber; Carp for carpenter; Mech for
mechanic; CSO for chief security officer, as in gateman; HSCSD for head
sub-committee for special duties.

I just cannot keep up people.

Nigeria’s Senate President David Mark declared a
few days ago that the National Assembly would not succumb to pressures
from oil companies to pass a watered down version of the Petroleum
Industry Bill (PIB). This sounds very positive and patriotic, but how
true is this threat?

The PIB potentially promises to deliver far
reaching reforms to the Nigerian petroleum industry. The reforms
include: transforming the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation from
a cost centre to a profit centre competing with Petrobras of Brazil and
Petronas of Indonesia; deregulating the downstream sector; boosting
funding to arrest decline in production; introducing globally
competitive fiscal systems; increasing revenue streams through gas
production; improving the overall transparency regime in the sector,
and so on.

Since the draft bill was submitted to the National
Assembly in 2008 by the late President Yar’ Adua its consideration by
the federal legislature has been shrouded in secrecy. More than three
different versions of the bill have been circulating. Even the Inter
Agency Team, which drafted the bill, did a u-turn at some point,
submitting a memorandum suggesting areas of amendment to their own
bill. Both chambers of the National Assembly held poorly coordinated
public hearing sessions. A few weeks ago, unconfirmed sources within
the National Assembly indicated that a particular version gave
multinationals in the oil industry significant concessions including
juicy fiscal terms on gas and off shore investments.

The promise of the PIB to improve transparency in
the sector is based on its compliance with the principles of the
Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI). It
prescribes that the reforms in the sector must comply with the NEITI
Act 2007. Many observers are unaware that Section 14(a) of NEITI Act
states that disclosure of audit information will only happen if such
information is not prejudicial to the proprietary interest and
contractual obligations of the audited entity. With this clause in
place, the NEITI Act retains the issue of confidentiality and so it is
worrisome to make the PIB compliant on such an Act.

Interestingly however, section 173(1) of the PIB
states that “Confidentiality clauses or other clauses contained within
any licenses, leases, agreements or contracts for upstream petroleum
operations that are for the purpose of preventing access to information
in respect of any payments. ……shall be null and void” Many observers
believe that this clause in the initial draft might have been tampered
with too.

The worrisome implication of this is that the so
called reforms to be ushered in by the Petroleum Industry Bill when
passed will likely accommodate a practice that has already been
abandoned in the oil and gas industry worldwide.

Of all the prescriptions of the PIB, the
fundamental issue of crude oil metering is conspicuously missing. Very
few suggestions on improved metering are contained in the Bill. It is
public knowledge that the NEITI audit 1999-2004 recommended a change in
the metering infrastructure to include measurements at the flow station
to ascertain the number of barrels of oil Nigeria is currently
producing and to compute royalties based on that figure as contained in
many MOUs entered with the Joint Venture Partners. However, crude oil
metering is currently done only at the export terminals, which provide
export figures only. Verifiable practice is that in many other oil
producing countries, precision metering begins at flow stations, but
not in Nigeria.

The inter ministerial task team put together to
implement the recommendations of the NEITI audit confirmed that it is
both technically and financially feasible to install precision meters
at the flow stations in Nigeria. The silence of the PIB on metering
means that the questions stakeholders are asking about the numbers of
barrels of oil we produce per day will remain unanswered.

One of the most interesting aspects of the
Petroleum Industry Bill was the introduction of equity payments to oil
bearing communities. This fairly popular memo was introduced by the
office of the Presidential adviser on Petroleum matters. It recommended
the idea of 10 percent equity ownership of the Joint venture by oil
producing communities.

The idea began as we were told, with the concept
of 10 percent of Joint Venture equity, that later became 10 percent of
profit and now finally $600 million annually as host community
dividends.

Could this be another community windfall or the
usual handout that will end up in the pockets of self appointed
community leaders?

A watered down PIB will mean reduced revenue to
government at all levels, an export oriented oil and gas sector with
minimal downstream multiplier effect on the economy (poor local
content), increased unemployment, low incentive for domestic gas
utilization leading to hiccups in power generation and
industrialisation.

Despite the threats of Senator Mark and our
“wise” legislators, it is crystal clear that the Petroleum Industry
Bill as it is being conceived and pursued cannot reform the Nigerian
oil and gas sector. After spending so much energy, time and resources,
we will suddenly find ourselves at the same point where we began. It is
called a national perambulation! Uche Igwe is an Africa Public Policy
Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Centre writes from Washington DC, USA.

One hundred years ago, Leo Tolstoy lay dying at a
train station in southern Russia. Journalists, acolytes and newsreel
photographers gathered for the passing of the great prophet. Between
3:30 and 5:30 on that freezing November morning, Tolstoy’s wife stood
on the porch outside his death chamber because his acolytes would not
let her in. At one point she begged them to at least admit her into an
anteroom so that the photographers would get the impression she was
being allowed to see her husband on his final day.

There are many reasons to think about Tolstoy on
the centennial of his death. Among them: his ability to see. Tolstoy
had an almost superhuman ability to perceive reality.

As a young man, he was both sensually and
spiritually acute. He drank, gambled and went off in search of
sensations and adventures. But he also experienced piercing religious
crises.

As a soldier, he conceived “a stupendous idea, to
the realisation of which I feel capable of dedicating my whole life.
The idea is the founding of a new religion corresponding to the present
development of mankind: The religion of Christ purged of dogmas and
mysticism.” But when he sat down to write his great novels, his dreams
of saving mankind were bleached out by the vividness of the reality he
saw around him. Readers often comment that the worlds created in those
books are more vivid than the real world around them. With Olympian
detachment and piercing directness, Tolstoy could describe a particular
tablecloth, a particular moment in a particular battle, and the
particular feeling in a girl’s heart before a ball.

He had his biases. In any Tolstoy story, the
simple, rural characters are likely to be good and the urbane ones bad.
But his ability to enter into and recreate the experiences of each of
his characters overwhelms his generalizations.

Isaiah Berlin famously argued that Tolstoy was a
writer in search of Big Truths, but his ability to see reality in all
its particulars destroyed the very theories he hoped to build. By
entering directly into life in all its contradictions, he destroyed his
own peace of mind.

As Tolstoy himself wrote, “The aim of an artist is
not to solve a problem irrefutably, but to make people love life in all
its countless, inexhaustible manifestations.” But after “Anna
Karenina,” that changed. He was overwhelmed by the pointlessness of
existence. As his biographer A.N. Wilson surmises, he ran out of things
to write about. He had consumed the material of his life.

So he gave up big novels and became a holy man.
Fulfilling his early ambition, he created his own religion, which
rejected the Jesus story but embraced the teachings of Jesus. He
embraced simplicity, poverty, vegetarianism, abstinence, poverty and
pacifism. He dressed like a peasant. He wrote religious tracts to
attract people to the simple, pure life.

Many contemporary readers like the novel-writing
Tolstoy but regard the holy man as a semi-crackpot. But he was still
Tolstoy, and his later writings were still brilliant. Moreover, he
inspired a worldwide movement, deeply influencing Gandhi among many
others. He emerged as the Russian government’s most potent critic – the
one the czar didn’t dare imprison.

What had changed, though, was his ability to see.
Now a crusader instead of an observer, he was absurd as often as he was
brilliant. He went slumming with the peasantry, making everybody feel
uncomfortable. He’d try to mow the grass (badly), make shoes (worse),
and then he’d return to his mansion for dinner. He was the first
trust-fund hippie. He seemed to lose perspective about himself: “I
alone understand the doctrine of Jesus.” There were many consistencies
running through Tolstoy’s life, but there were also two phases: first,
the novelist; then, the crusader. And each of these activities called
forth its own way of seeing.

As a novelist, Tolstoy was an unsurpassed
observer. But he found that life unfulfilling. As he set out to improve
the world, his ability to perceive it deteriorated. Instead of
conforming his ideas to the particularities of existence, he conformed
his perception of reality to his vision for the world. He preached
universal love but seemed oblivious to the violence he was doing to his
family.

In middle age, it was as a novelist that Tolstoy
achieved his most lasting influence. After all, description is
prescription. If you can get people to see the world as you do, you
have unwittingly framed every subsequent choice.

But public spirited, he also wanted to heal the
world directly. Tolstoy devoted himself to activism and spiritual
improvement – and paid the mental price. After all, most historical
leaders write pallid memoirs not because they are hiding the truth but
because they’ve been engaged in an activity that makes it impossible
for them to see it clearly. Activism is admirable, necessary and
self-undermining – the more passionate, the more self-blinding.

© 2010 New York Times News Service

One of the risks of
taking the bus at night is that you are more likely to enter the
devil’s danfo, otherwise known as One Chance. It uses the best line in
public transport advertising: it is going your way and you are the last
passenger. It is also not the whole truth.

Oh, it is going
your way all right, it is always going your way. But you are the only
passenger: the rest are robbers. Welcome to your worst nightmare.
Prepare to be slapped, stripped and shoved out of a speeding vehicle.
It is a robbery and an accident rolled into one. And it does not have
to be at night either.

The other day, a
young colleague of mine was coming to work when he unluckily took such
a bus. He was, to add to his misfortune, flouting a beautiful new phone
that must have set him back some. As he studied the sundry
applications, three men approached and without further ado began to
pummel him: blows, kicks, and screams were coming at him from
everywhere. Ah, how they worked Ayo (oops) over, and since he is a big
guy, they didn’t take any chances.

There were all
kinds of plasters on his face the next day, but I suspect the loss of
that E72 was the unkindest cut of all. And for that, there is no
bandage.

Yesterday, in the
bus I took to Ojota, a woman was on the phone (not an E72) to her
daughter who said she had just escaped from a One Chance. “Are you OK?”
she kept asking. “Stay there, am coming. No enter any bus. Just stay
there.”

She was quite
agitated, so I gave her my sympathy look, and she gave me the story.
The girl had gone to visit her cousins at Mile 12 but she never got
there. The woman, after calling her cell phone to no avail, had spent
the whole day taking all kinds of buses to all kinds of places in
search of her daughter. She was losing all hope when the girl called
minutes ago – with her own phone.

Journalism is
nothing if not pitiless in its search for truth, so I asked, gently,
“How come the girl didn’t lose her phone?” As Ayo’s case demonstrated,
the phone is usually the first to go. But a mother is nothing if not
defensive.

“You see, na wise
girl. She quick notice the kine people wey dey the bus, so she hide her
phone. After everything, she call me. She is wise.”

No doubt, but I
still wondered. And my next question would not have been wise but
fortunately the driver was then giving his take on the matter. “You go
do thanksgiving o,” he said.

“Yesterday, as I
dey go ‘Yanaoworo for express, the bus for my front na One Chance. I
suspect am because e too slow. So as I wan overtake am, dem just
throway one pregnant woman from inside suddenly for the middle of the
road there. Na God say I no go match am. Remain small.”

“So what happened to her?” I asked.

“Ehn? As I see that woman, she go die. Woman with belle, for that night. No hope.”

I was, as they say, flabbergasted. “You no stop pick am?”

“Pick wetin? You
know the kine people wey dey do One chance? My passengers sef no gree.
Dem say e fit be trap. If we stop, the other bus go fit turn back rob
us. Na speed we take leave the place.”

“Eeewo!,” said the
woman whose child may just have escaped a similar ordeal. She resumed
her call, “Bose, BOSE. No enter bus o. Wait for me …”