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In an effort to
ensure that Nigerian telecommunications consumers get value for the
money spent for services, the federal government has directed the
Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC to develop an action plan for
improving quality of service before July 9, 2010.

Dora Akunyili,
Minister of Information and Communications, gave this directive last
week in Abuja during an interactive session with investors in the
communications sector.

This, according to
her, is essential considering that most Nigerians have been asking
questions and expressing displeasure over the services provided by
mobile telecommunications industry.

“We all know there
is a problem,” she said. “Poor quality of service has become a
recurring decimal and the government is deeply concerned about this
seemingly intractable problem. We shall tackle this head-on and hereby
direct the management of NCC to submit to my office within two weeks a
comprehensive plan of action on how to improve quality of service.”

Ignored complaints

The minister also
said that in spite of the repeated calls by the government to operators
and regulators to address the problems related to service quality,
nothing tangible has been done. “Drop calls remain a problem despite
our constant appeals for you to improve on it. Poor voice signal
quality and reception is becoming peculiar to Nigeria. It is not only
wasting our money and wasting our time but also creating a very bad
image. It is creating a terrible culture of Nigerians shouting on the
phone instead of talking. The lack of inadequate inter connectivity
remains an area of concern,” Mrs. Akunyili added noting that it is
worrying that although these concerns are correctable, yet they persist.

According to the
Minister, the Nigerian telecoms market is experiencing a boom and
government intends to ensure that this growth profile is sustainable
through sound policies and a proper regulatory framework.

Huge success

The telecoms
industry has continued to deliver superior returns on investment
despite the global economic meltdown. This is evident in the huge
turnovers being made by the network operators as well as the market’s
ability to steadily attract international telecoms companies.

For Mrs Akunyili,
despite the perceived operational challenges that telecom operators
face, Nigeria’s subscriber base currently stands at about 78 million.
“We are not unmindful that the huge success recorded so far is not
without its fair share of responsibilities such as ensuring good
quality of service, affordable tariffs among other. The ministry is
interested in addressing the issues and finding lasting solutions.”

“I understand that
the big operators are making it big. If we sanitise the environment you
will grow faster. The small ones are not growing as they should because
the environment is not sanitised enough for them to grow.

“As long as the
regulation is not strong, the big will remain bigger while the small
will be so suppressed that eventually they will fizzle out and we do
not want it to happen because the more people we have as operators, the
more the operators and the better for the consumers,” she said.

Responding to the Minister, Bashir Gwandu, the Acting Executive Vice
Chairman of NCC there said that the commission will deliver on the
mandate within the time frame given. “The document will be ready in the
next few weeks. We will be consulting with the industry to see how we
can finalise the document in accordance with the law establishing the
NCC,” he said.

Bashiru Apapa, Oyo
state chairman of the Nigeria Labour Congress, has chided Governor
Adebayo Alao-Akala for reportedly saying that he would not break the
bank to pay the new teachers’ enhanced salary scale.

The labour boss
spoke with journalists in Ibadan, the state capital on Monday, in
reaction to the governor’s comment which he described as
“uncomplimentary.” Teachers in public primary and secondary schools in
the state have being at daggers drawn with the government over its
refusal to pay the new salary structure. For the last three weeks, no
effective work went on in the state’s public schools as teachers have
embarked on warning strike every Wednesday and also put on black attire
to register their displeasure over the government’s insensitivity to
their plight.

Blaming the hard
stand of the government on the poor performance of the state’s students
in graduating examinations, the teachers have threatened to embark on a
total strike if the government refuses to reconsider its stand by the
end of this week. The governor did not only deny recognising the NUT in
the state, he also said that the state’s finances would not enable
government pay the money, saying, he would not break the bank to
satisfy the teachers.

Unbecoming statement

Mr. Apapa, said the
statement was unbecoming of a state governor. “That a state governor
could make such a statement is uncalled for, unfortunate and
misguided,” he said. According to him, since the teachers are employees
of the state and are not begging for the money, they needed to be well
compensated for the services rendered to the state. “If the governor is
not breaking banks to construct road and to pay allowances, I think if
he decides to break bank to pay the salary of teachers, it is not too
much,” he said. “If he decides to do that on his own he can go ahead
and break the bank because that statement should not be attributed to a
state governor.”

He said the state government was not playing his role effectively,
adding that Oyo State is among the only four defaulting in the
implementation of the new wage structure in the country. “We are
surprise that the state government is now foot dragging. We are not
happy; we expected the state government to have complied before now,”
he said.

President Goodluck Jonathan yesterday
pledged that his administration will implement policies and programmes
that will make Nigeria an attractive destination for foreign investors.

Mr. Jonathan made the promise while speaking during separate meeting with the outgoing Ambassadors of China and the Netherlands.

He said that the federal government
will do all to attract greater foreign investment to Nigeria because it
was conscious of the fact that foreign investors will help to create
more employment opportunities for the country’s growing youth
population.

“We having a growing population of
young people and as a government we have an enormous responsibility to
plan and prepare for their future,” Mr. Jonathan said. “Greater foreign
investment will clearly help us in creating more gainful employment for
our youth and we will do all we can to promote it.”

More bilateral trade

Welcoming the increased volume of
bilateral trade between Nigeria, China, and the Netherlands, the
President said that Nigeria is now opening its doors to foreign
investors more than ever before, adding that sectors of the economy
such as aviation, power supply, and the development of infrastructure,
previously run by the government alone, are now open to private
investors from within and outside the country.

He also told the outgoing Ambassadors
that his administration is doing everything possible to deal with all
outstanding domestic issues which can discourage foreign investors,
saying that significant progress was being made in areas such as peace
in the Niger Delta and power supply.

Improving the electoral system

President Jonathan reiterated his
commitment to good governance as well as free and fair elections in
Nigeria next year, adding that steps will be taken to plug gaps in the
electoral system which made it difficult to conduct credible elections
in the past.

He thanked Arie Van Der Wiel of the
Netherlands, and Xu Jiango of China, for their efforts in the past four
years to promote trade and cooperation between Nigeria and their
respective countries, and wished them well at their new posts.

In response, Mr. Van der Wiel told the President that the volume of
annual trade between Nigeria and the Netherlands had risen from about
$2 billion when he arrived in 2006 to $4 billion currently, while Mr.
Jiango reported that the volume of annual trade between Nigeria and
China now stood at about $7 billion per annum, up from $3 billion in
2006.

The Nigerian
Communications Commission (NCC) has denied that its accounts have been
frozen due to the change in leadership, it said in a statement
yesterday.

“While it is not
the intention of the Commission to join issues with the press, we have
the responsibility to inform the Nigerian public, that no account of
the Commission has been frozen for whatever reason.

“This embarrassing
report is a figment of the imagination of the author and should be
discountenanced by the reading public,” it said.

No crisis in NCC

Barely a week after
Bashir Gwandu was appointed as an acting executive vice-chairman for
the commission, the NCC was also forced to explain that there was no
crisis at the commission.

“We wish to also
inform the public that there is no crisis of succession in the
commission. For the avoidance of any doubt, Bashir Gwandu, the
Executive Commissioner in charge of Engineering and Standards, have
since 21 June been appointed the acting executive vice chairman of the
commission.

“This followed
government’s directive to the former acting executive vice chairman,
Stephen Bello, whose five-year tenure as an Executive Commissioner with
the Commission expires on July 5, 2010, to proceed on his formal
retirement.”

In a telephone interview, Deolu Ogunbanjo, the president of National
Association of Telecoms Subscribers (NATCOMS), said, “There is nothing
wrong with the appointment of Mr. Gwandu. I think he would be able to
perform better and he would definitely perform. I do not think that the
recent change in leadership in the commission would create a negative
reaction in the sector, as the NCC is a regulatory body and this is
only a temporary situation.”

The Borno State
Police Command said on Monday that it had uncovered a plot by the Boko
Haram Islamic sect to cause another round of mayhem in the state.

The state’s
Commissioner of Police, Ibrahim Abdu, who disclosed this to journalists
in Maiduguri, said the attack was to commemorate the one year
anniversary of the death of the sect’s leader, Sheikh Mohammed Yusuf.

Mr. Yusuf died under controversial circumstances after he was arrested and transferred from the military to the police.

Mr. Abdu said the
threat should be of concern to law-abiding citizens of the state, as
the safety of Borno should be of priority to everybody.

He called on
traditional and religious leaders, as well as members of the public, to
assist the police with useful information on the whereabouts of the
proscribed Boko Harm members.

“We have put in
place a surveillance team, ‘Stop and Search patrol’, as well as plain
clothes policemen. Police officers have been deployed to strategic
positions in the state as part of security arrangements,” he said.

The commissioner
advised the people to go about their normal businesses, assuring them
that the police and other security agencies are in position to
guarantee their safety.

In 2009, the group unleashed mayhem in some states in northern
Nigeria that led to the death of over 700 people in clashes between
them and security forces. The group seeks the imposition of sharia law
throughout Nigeria.

What are our lives
about? The cycle of life is basically being born, living, then dying.
And throughout that lifelong journey we are learning.

Learning to
survive, learning to thrive, learning from our experiences and the
experiences of others, learning together in families and groups,
suffering from lack of learning, accumulating learning (knowledge),
applying or failing to apply learning, benefiting from learning,
becoming learned, and passing on learning to others with a sense of
having lived a fulfilled and meaningful life. At least that is what
many of us hope for.

The reason I like
the word ‘learning’ is that it implies there is something that we need
to learn, that we need to apply, that we need to benefit from. The
activity of learning, on its own, is insufficient without the content
of the learning; the purpose behind it and the substance of the effort.
In teaching and learning, there has been an ongoing struggle between
the substance of education (the content), and the form of education
(the systems and policies).

The substance of an
education includes learning knowledge and developing skills, and it can
be measured in academic success, the well-being of students, their
values and ethics, their employability, participation in class,
engagement with research and teachers, a sense of belonging and pride
in the alma mater, the ability to sustain relationships, the
applicability of what they have learned in everyday life, and what they
are able to achieve through the application of their minds and bodies.

Very often, this
substance is expressed in institutions of learning via various forms;
such as attendance in class, hours of teaching time, place of learning,
class size, teacher-student ratios, policies and processes,
qualifications of teachers etcetera.

In young adulthood,
sometimes we have good substance in imperfect form – the National Youth
Service Corps is a good example. I don’t think anyone debates the
tremendous value to our graduates and to national identity of the NYSC,
but because the form, the way it is managed and the risks the youth
corps members are exposed to, are unacceptable, people are agitating to
‘throw the baby out with the bath water.’ Thus, we lose all benefits
and impact of NYSC on employers, young lives and our nation – in effect
the substance of the service year – because the organization behind it
is not responding well to changing and deteriorating societal
conditions.

Electing to discard
substance, rather than to improve the form it takes, can only take us
backward; the way our infrastructure, our educational institutions and
our traditional values have gone backwards. Does anyone dispute the
life lessons inherent in many of our native traditions?

Abhorrence of some
of the practices employed to teach those lessons has led to the
traditions themselves being abandoned rather than changed. The result?
A generation growing up without imbibing the necessary values and
without home training.

Our native
intelligence is very wise. A child with good home training but without
formal education can develop the basics with just a year of adult
learning because they have received the substance of a real education
at home. The values that are embedded through our home cultures, of
respect for elders, manners, cleanliness, teamwork, caring, hard work,
and long hours should not have been jettisoned when the opportunity of
sending children to school appeared. That was an opportunity to improve
the substance of our education by adding to it. Instead, we invested in
a new form and lost the core substance that sustains us as a people.

Seek substance Is
this where we are going wrong, by confusing form and substance? Making
things look grand instead of making them work? Building a school, even
if it does not deliver an education! Opening a beautiful restaurant
with an attractive menu, when the service is bad and half the dishes
not available. The titles – Chief, Senator, and Manager – come with
responsibilities. Without the burden of accountability and the results
of their work, the titles are meaningless and empty.

Let’s stop treating
form as substance. Don’t respect anyone for having a job or position if
they are not doing the work that comes with it. The reason for the job
is the work. Without it, it is valueless and un-deserving of respect.

Let’s stop focusing
on appearances instead of on worth. Driving a big car when you do not
have money to fuel it, or wearing designer clothes when you cannot pay
school fees is capital and energy diverted from productivity and it is
a big shame. Let’s stop investing in form rather than substance. Look
for the school where your child can get the best all-round education in
academics, behaviour and attitude, rather than the latest ‘in-fashion’
school where all the ‘big’ people’s children go. Of course, if that
school is also the best, then that is a lucky coincidence.

Seek substance, demand substance, fight for substance. Form, and ‘for show’ can come afterwards.

This was bound to
be a difficult time for the company long known as British Petroleum. An
explosion at an oil well near the southern U.S. coast has set-off the
worst spill in American history. Even after nearly two months it’s
still not plugged.

President Barack
Obama pumped up the pressure on BP this week. He made his fourth visit
to the disaster zone, spoke about it in the first televised address
he’s ever made from the enormously symbolic setting of the Oval Office
and summoned BP executives to meet face-to-face.

Obama has blamed
the company at every opportunity and used this week’s White House
meeting to convince it to create a 20-billion-dollar fund to cover the
environmental and economic cost.

But BP executives seem adept at making things worse on their own.

BP Chief Executive
Tony Hayward first described the spill as ‘tiny’ and then ‘very, very
modest.’ He complained that he wanted his life back, apparently
forgetting that 11 rig workers lost their lives in the explosion that
set-off the spill.

His boss hardly
helped. After the meeting with Obama this week, BP Chairman Carl-Henric
Svanberg apologized and said his company wouldn’t ignore the people
affected by the spill’s impact on fishing, tourism or way of life.

“We care about the
small people,” he said. That unfortunate turn of phrase seemed like a
patronizing description of the very people already punished by BP’s
mishap. The chairman later apologized for that too.

The politics have been bad for President Obama as well.

A USA Today/Gallup poll found that 71 percent of Americans say the president hasn’t been tough enough on BP.

His administration is being blamed for what local residents describe as a slow and disorganized response to the catastrophe.

BP and the Obama
administration have been unintentionally paired-up in an awkward
partnership. Both are suffering the effects of the spill. Neither has
been able to end it.

There is just too much oil and a lot of Bad Politics.