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The Federal High
Court sitting in Benin City, Edo State, has reserved November 3 for
ruling on whether to send the Inspector General of Police, the chairman
of the Police Service Commission, the Delta State commissioner of
police and two others to jail for contempt, for failing to appear in
court, as well as failing to carry out an earlier court order.

The ruling is over
hearing in the case of one Kayode Martins, who was dismissed by the
police force in 2000 but was reinstated by the court after a lengthy
court battle. But the police is yet to pay him a kobo or integrate him
into the force.

Mr Martins said his
ordeal started on December 6, 2000, when he was arrested and
subsequently dismissed on March 16, 2001, on charges which the court
later described as unlawful, irregular and wrongful, contrary to
natural justice, unconstitutional, null and void and of no effect
whatsoever.

This judgment was
upon a suit filed on the June 19, 2003 by S.O Orugbon on behalf of the
plaintiff. Judgment was subsequently given on the April 12, 2005 after
the defendants, which include the Inspector General of Police, the
Police Service Commission, the Commissioner of Police, the Provost
Marshall and the Attorney General of the Federation all failed to
attend the court proceeding.

The court also
ordered that the arrest, detention and subsequent dismissal by the
police force of the father of 11 children, for what they called the
heinous crime of conspiracy and economy sabotage, was unconstitutional
and of no effect.

Still an officer

The judgement also
stated that “the plaintiff is still a police officer in the Nigeria
Police Force till date, meaning that his services are unbroken and
continuous until the year 2014 when he is due to retire normally from
the force, all things being equal.

“That the plaintiff
is hereby reinstated into the Nigeria Police Force and should be
promptly accorded all the rights, privileges, salaries, wages,
emolument, promotions and all other entitlements and prerequisites of
office, with effect from the 4th of April 2001 till date”.

When the management
of the force refused to act on the judgment, Mr Martins sought another
court order at the Federal High Court in Benin City, presided over by
C.V.U Nwokorie, who authorized the issuance of a hearing notice of
consequence of disobedience to court order (form 48 and 49) to the IGP,
AGF, the chairman of the Police Service Commissions and two others.

Mr Martins, a sergeant before he was dismissed, said his life in the
past 10 years has lost meaning, as he has been made to feed his family
through goodwill from friends and the merger savings from his wife’s
make-shift shop at the Ekpan, a suburb of Warri, Delta State.

The Senate, on
Tuesday, received the report of its committees on the protracted
Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB), signalling the beginning of the
finalities on the bill. The bill was submitted by Lee Maeba (PDP River
State), committee chairman of Senate committee on upstream who chaired
the three committees that worked on the bill.

The submission of the report is coming just days after interested parties in the bill offered to withdraw and rewrite the bill.

At a session on oil
and gas policy dialogue during the 16th Nigerian Economic Summit
(NES16) in Abuja on last week, various participants agreed on the need
for all parties to work out a common position on the issues in
contention.

Country Chair,
Shell Nigeria, Mutiu Sunmonu, who presided over the session,
acknowledged the challenges the industry is facing as a result of the
delay in the passage of the bill, saying there is need for dialogue to
resolve the issues and salvage the industry.

The managing
director of Platform Petroleum Limited, Austin Avuru, argued that
though the PIB was initiated to bring about a tighter and deeper fiscal
regime, as well as a more flexible lease administration and solution to
the cash call, “the problem might worsen if the proposed law is passed
in its present form.” He described the controversy trailing the passage
of the PIB as a “genuine stalemate”, and called for the immediate
withdrawal of the draft currently pending before the National Assembly,
to allow all parties dialogue and come up with a piece legislation that
would be acceptable to all within six months.

“If we don’t agree
to dialogue, I do not think we will have a PIB that would be acceptable
to the industry. Otherwise, we will end up having a law that would have
to go through litigation or amendment before we start implementing
anything,” he said.

Lingering controversy

The PIB has long been controversial.

First, there was
the allegation that members of the petroleum committees of the National
Assembly benefitted from a sponsored trip to Ghana by some unnamed Oil
Producers Trade Section (OPTS) of the Lagos Chamber of Commerce, with
the motive of hatching a plot to derail the smooth passage of the Bill
by the lawmakers.

Shortly thereafter,
there were reports that two parallel versions of the new bill were in
circulation. These include the original version presented by President
Umaru Yar’Adua in the form of an Executive Bill to the Senate, and the
corrupted version said to have been masterminded by the NNPC hierarchy.

The delay in the
passage of the PIB had been attributed to the disagreements between the
Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and other industry
operators over the contents of the bill.

Deliberation on the final contents of the bill is expected to commence before the end of the year.

Nigeria has fallen
four steps on the global ranking of countries listed on the Corruption
Perception Index (CPI), released yesterday by Transparency
International.

The list, announced
by the Berlin based anti-corruption watchdog, showed that Nigeria is
now ranked 134, dropping from its 130 position in 2009 and 121 in 2008.

The 2010 CPI, drawn
on a scale from 10 (highly clean) to 0 (highly corrupt), showed that
Nigeria scored 2.4 and is ranked 134 amongst the 178 countries surveyed.

On the regional
scale, Nigeria is ranked 28, ahead of Sierra Leone, Togo, Zimbabwe,
Mauritania and Cameroun. Botswana, Mauritius, Cape Verde, Seychelles
and South Africa were ranked the top five countries on the continent,
with Botswana having an above average index score of 5.8.

Transparency
International claims that corruption remains an obstacle to achieving
much needed progress, even as governments commit huge sums to tackle
the world’s most pressing problems, from the instability of financial
markets to climate change and poverty. Denmark, New Zealand and
Singapore tie for first place in the 2010 CPI, with scores of 9.3,
whilst unstable governments, battling with a myriad of conflicts,
dominated the bottom rungs of the index. Afghanistan and Myanmar share
second to last place, with a score of 1.4, while Somalia ranked last
with a score of 1.1.

The federal
government announced on Tuesday that it will release N3.8 billion in
relief funds to the five states affected by the flood in recent times.

Ibukun Odusote,
permanent secretary of the Ecological Funds Office, told journalists in
Abuja that Goodluck Jonathan had acted in response to a preliminary
report presented by the office. She said the impact of the flood has
been most devastating in Jigawa, Kebbi, Lagos, Ogun and Sokoto States.
But she said that efforts were being made to control and forestall
future occurrences.

“It got the president’s attention because the devastation is beyond the state and local government,” she said.

Mrs Odusote said
that all the processes involved in the release of funds, were nearly
complete and the funds will be lodged in the bank accounts of the
states concerned before the end of this week.

“The federal
government has done its part and it has been sent to the accountant
general’s office from where it will be disbursed to the states’
accounts,” she said. “So we expect that Sokoto and Kebbi would have
been handled and we are left with Jigawa, Lagos and Ogun.”

Finding solutions

Although the
federal government is still studying effective solutions to the
floodings, preliminary assessments indicate that the problem was
compounded by man-made activities such as blocking of drainages,
obstruction of water ways and the building of residential and
commercial property on flood plains without expert advice.

Mrs Odusote also
said that the office will be embarking on sensitisation campaign to
create awareness on the impact of climate change problems such as
desertification, deforestation, flood, erosion and shoreline which make
flooding worse.

“Although
increasing awareness is occurring on the issue of climate change and
its impact in the country, the time has come for all hands to be on
deck to rev up this awareness for the benefit of our people,” she said.

“Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa and can no longer
wait to harness science-based knowledge from appropriate research
institutes.”

The minister of
labour and productivity, Emeka Wogu, has urged Nigerians not lose sleep
over the contentious issue of zoning of the presidency, saying it would
not in any way affect national unity after the 2011 elections.

He made the
assertion in Umuahia yesterday while delivering a lecture, entitled
“2011 Elections and Nigeria’s Unity, as part of activities lined up for
the 201 Press Week of the Abia State Council of the Nigeria Union of
Journalists (NUJ).

The minister said
the controversy arising from the issue “is undoubtedly borne out of the
deliberately fanned tension located among a few individuals. It is
highly regrettable that after 50 years of independence, that a sitting
President that is just over 50 years of age could be the target of a
self-serving interests masked by zoning of political office.” Mr Wogu
said it was the same politicians who have lost bearing with current
global political trends that are fanning fears of disunity.

“It is indeed
remarkable to note that a sizeable proportion of those who have stoked
the embers of disunity on the issue of zoning cannot show proof that
their own geopolitical zones fared better in terms of overall
development at the time they were at the helm of political affairs,”
the minister said.

Elect credible people

He therefore
enjoined the media “to drum it into the ears of all Nigerians” that
even though ethnic nationalism was part of Nigeria’s political history,
the current mood in the nation as “expressly canvassed by well meaning
Nigerians, is that national interest would be served better by
institutionalizing a multi- and credible political process.” The deputy
governor of Abia State, Acho Nwakanma, said Nigeria has been passing
through trying times over the issue of zoning, even “to the point of
mediocrity where some people have failed to see that we currently have
in the person of President Goodluck Jonathan is what is best for us.”
He said that the actions of journalists, both singly and collectively,
both before and after the 2011 elections, would critically affect the
nation’s unity.

“As opinion moulders, your reportage and interpretation of events must be done with the greatest sense of patriotism,” he said.

The Abia NUJ
chairman, Hyacinth Okoli, said Nigerians should concern themselves more
with electing credible people into positions of trust for positive
transformation of the polity.

“Nigerians must resist the temptation of allowing an exercise they
should ordinarily perform with enthusiasm to throw the nation into
turmoil or, in the extreme case, break up the county,” he said.

“Since Hannibal, no
African general has won a battle against a foreign invader,” he
declared, rather arrogantly. I was frightened to argue with my European
teacher who had made that assertion, simply because the facts for a
counter offensive were not properly researched.

It was a class in
Europe; I was only too sure how my white classmates would react – the
familiar majority howl of “here we go again,” and the usual accusation
that I had a chip on my shoulders. So, I held my peace and spent some
time at the library to cross-check.

The statement is
incorrect. Apart from successful campaigns by the Zulu kings, Chaka and
Dingaan against white settlers at the Cape, the Ethiopian Emperor
Menelek II defeated the Italians at the Battle of Adwa in 1896. Yet,
African armies have been busier more recently killing and raping their
own people in civil wars, since the white folks left.

Ethiopians, by
their manners, are not a people you would associate with war and
conflict. Yet that country has known nothing else for a very long time.
It is cut off cruelly from the sea by its hostile neighbours – Eritrea,
Djibouti and Somalia, and has little in the way of natural resources in
economically viable quantity to rely on.

The Ethiopians are
wisely developing tourism and the hospitality industry within their
tropical monsoon climate in high plateau, with central mountain range
that is divided by the Great African Rift Valley.

There had been full
scale war with Eritrea from 1998 to 2000, but another conflict is
imminent as both sides mass destructive weapons and troops on the
border while their people face recurrent food insecurity. My experience
in Addis Ababa has been that people loathe discussing politics, unlike
Nigerians. Cynics cite the long periods of feudalism and communism as
the reason.

It is a debatable
point, but Ethiopians are cultured, mild, extremely friendly,
disciplined and polite, yet they have one of the fiercest armies on the
continent of Africa, but also arguably the best commercial civil
aviation outfit.

Ethiopia is, with
about 70 million inhabitants of almost 80 ethnic groups, the second
most populous country in Africa. The country is the ideal place for the
Nigerian visitor to stop, reflect and gain perspective on the essence
of Africa. Apart from a brief colonial intermezzo by Italy, Ethiopia
was never colonised. This is an ancient country with its own alphabet,
one of the oldest sites of human existence known to science. It adopted
Christianity in the 4th Century, in addition to being the oldest Muslim
settlement on the continent and the spiritual homeland of Rastafarian
religious movement. Bob Marley posters and t-shirts are on sale in
every shop, dreadlocks are a common sight.

Nurtured by environment

My cab driver in
Addis Ababa and I struck a more mundane conversation on the quality of
Ethiopian runners, his country’s best ambassadors. He repaid my
compliments by inquiring after Kanu and Okocha, feeling disappointed to
hear they had retired. The driver’s excitement rose when I recalled the
feat of Abebe Bikila winning the gold medal for the Marathon event at
the Rome Olympics in 1960.

“Can you imagine running 42 kilometers barefoot!” he cried.

I disembarked at my Churchill Hotel, not far away from Nigeria
Street, to walk uphill in the direction of the Piazza through Mahatma
Gandhi, past General Wingate Street. By the time I got back, I had more
respect for long distance running; but I also understood the Ethiopian
successes in those disciplines much better. The altitude had left me on
the brink of collapse with fatigue!

The Nigerian Railway Corporation, Mass Transit Train Service (MTTS), currently lifts about 60,000 passengers weekly, as against the 36,000 passengers it lifted weekly last year.

The Lagos District Manager, John Dottie, told the News Agency of Nigeria, in Lagos on Monday, that the figure represented an average of 12,000 per day as against 6,000 per day last year.
Mr Dottie explained that the increase was due to more awareness and better services provided by the corporation. He said that there might be an increase in the number of passengers using the service as more people were becoming aware of the operations. He said that once the northern track being rehabilitated by the China Civil Engineering Construction Company (CCECC) was handed over, the number of trains would be increased from three to four.

“In addition, six coaches are being renovated and when completed would be attached to two of the trains to increase their coaches and accommodate their high patronage,” he said. “At present, the coaches are congested as commuters still stand inside and at the entrance of the coaches.”
According to him, each of the new locomotive engines has the capacity to pull 30 coaches on a rake. He said that NRC officials had inspected tracks on the downward line where spots requiring repairs had been identified. “We have ordered our engineers to move to the site and effect the necessary repairs to boost our operations,” he said.

The All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) has called for the conduct of all elections on the same day in 2011.
Ogbonnaya Onu, the National Chairman of the party, made the call in Abuja on Monday at a one-day public hearing on a bill for an Act to alter the provisions of the 1999 constitution after the first amendment.

“We in the ANPP therefore call for an amendment of the 2010 Electoral Act to reflect the conduct of all elections on the same day,” he said. “We believe that by so doing, we can determine the true will of the Nigerian people.”

The second amendment of the 2010 Electoral Act is aimed at shifting the date of the general elections, from January to possibly April, in line with requests from the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). The hearing was organised by the House of Representatives ad hoc committee on the review of the 1999 constitution.

According to Mr Onu, the popular feeling is that the subsisting order of elections will subvert the true desire of the people to elect their leaders during the forthcoming elections. “We in the new ANPP believe that if this problem of election dates is not addressed, it will work against the interest of Nigerians in the electoral process,” he said. “We need to ensure that only the choices of the people are declared winners of elections.”

He said that the conduct of free and fair elections in 2011 was a great challenge for all Nigerians, and urged the National Assembly to address indiscriminate defection by politicians during the second amendment. “Democracy and the rule of law must go hand in hand to ensure the credibility of our electoral process,” he said. “We cannot continue to use the provisions of freedom of association in our constitution to encourage and support what is clearly unprincipled. The challenge we face as a people is to rededicate ourselves to the strong need to work to ensure that our democracy endures in our polity.”

The national leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)
said yesterday that it will scrutinise the list of corrupt politicians on the
website of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to ensure that
those proven guilty are not given its ticket to contest for any position during
the forthcoming elections.

The party’s national publicity secretary, Rufa’i Ahmed Alkali,
who spoke to journalist last night after a meeting of the National Working
Committee, said it has not received any formal letter from the EFCC on the
matter, and that it will not take action based on newspapers reports since it
(party) is not a court of law.

The anti-graft agency reportedly listed the names of over 50
corrupt aspirants on its website. It also advised political parties not to
field them for any elective offices until they are cleared by the courts.

“What is important is that whatever that is be done has to be
done through a thorough work. Even though the names are there on the advisory
list, since we are not the court, it is not possible for us to pass judgement
whether somebody is guilty or not. That is why in the process of looking at all
the issues involved, there must be proper consultations and discussions at
every level so that everybody will be comfortable with the outcome,” Mr Alkali
said.

The PDP spokesperson noted that many members of the party will
be concerned about the list.

“When the EFCC which is the professional organ responsible for
this assignment issues a statement like this, many people will be concerned. We
should be able to calm them down to let them know that the party will not go
after their jugular just like that. So we want them to remain calm and continue
with their normal activities as party men and leaders.”

ANPP to checkmate the
move

The All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) said it is not in
possession of the list of corrupt politicians reportedly sent to the political
parties.

A statement by the its spokesperson, Emma Eneukwu said the EFCC
action must be checked.

“The ANPP views as a throw-back to the pre-2007 election era
the purported submission of list of politicians tagged as corrupt by the EFCC
and a development that must be checkmated.

“The ANPP is not in possession of any list containing names of
its either former or serving elected public office holders and therefore
defends its members of allegation of corrupt practiceswhen nine of them have
been found guilty by the competent court of jurisdiction.”

The party however said it does not tolerate corruption in any
form.

“Much as we welcome any legal move that will ensure that politicians with
questionable character are not allowed to return to office to continue their
looting spree or seek refuge against prosecution, we are also against the
decision of the EFCC to raise allegations and seek to stop such alleged
politicians from further pursuing their political ambition.

The Edo State House of Assembly yesterday passed a resolution
to dissolve the 18 local government councils with immediate effect. This is
sequel to a letter from the state governor, Adams Oshiomhole, requesting the
House to dissolve the councils.

The motion was moved by the majority leader, Phillip Shaibu,
and was seconded by the deputy speaker, Paul Ohonbamu.

The council chairmen were directed to hand over all government
properties in their possession to the head of local government administration
in their respective areas, just as the accounts of the councils remain frozen
with immediate effect.

The constitution of the Edo State Independent Electoral
Commission (EDSIEC) by Mr. Oshiomhole last week was an indication that the local
councils might soon be scrapped to make way for another election.

Caught unawares

Many of the local government bosses were, however, caught
unawares. Interestingly, Mr. Godsent Akhabue of Esan West local government was
putting finishing touches to a programme for the commissioning of some projects
in his local council on Thursday.

The chairmen were elected in December 2007 during the
government of former governor, Oseriemen Osunbor.

In a swift reaction, the Edo State chairman of the Peoples
Democratic Party (PDP), Dan Orbih, faulted Mr. Oshiomhole’s action, describing
it as illegal and unconstitutional.

“I am not surprised by the illegal action of the governor
because from his behaviour and conduct he has shown he has no respect for the
constitution. He is used to taking arbitrary decisions,” Mr. Orbih said.

He called on Mr. Oshiomhole to rescind his decision, saying
that if the governor failed to do so, the PDP would call on the federal
government not to release the local government allocations meant for the state
until he returned the local government administrations back to the elected
officials to complete their tenure.

According to him, Section 7 of the Constitution guaranteed the
tenure of elected local governments. He also said there were three tiers of
government and that the laws that govern the three tiers must be respected.

“The man thrives in illegality. It is like the federal
government saying it has cut short the tenure of state governors. Has he asked
himself how he will feel if the federal government wakes up and dissolves his
administration?” Orbih further said.