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The House of
Representatives has stopped the bid by the Nigerian Communications
Commission to spend N6.1b on the registration of SIM cards, saying the
exercise is the responsibility of operators in the telecoms industry.

Lawmakers dumped
the plan on Thursday, overwhelming Dave Salako, the Communications
Committee chairman of the House, who, last week, offered to raise the
amount and spent minutes justifying the sum during yesterday’s debate
on the commission’s 2010 budget.

At the sitting, Mr.
Salako was asked to explain his committee’s recommendation that the
commission proceed with the project, after many lawmakers argued that
the burden should be borne by the service providers.

He explained that
operators fear they lack the technical capacity to carry out the
registration and may not be able to complete the job on schedule.

He said the
decision, as reached by the both sides, was for the NCC to register
existing phone users while the providers register new ones.

The details
prompted members to condemn the plan, with the Speaker, Dimeji Bankole,
and the Deputy, Usman Nafada, reminding Mr. Salako of the powers of the
lawmaking body to decide, and not to be decided to.

“It is not a choice
for them to make,” Mr. Nafada said. “Even if they are not registering
existing lines, the National Assembly has the power to direct them to
do so.”

Mr. Bankole
advised, that, “We don’t want to put you in a difficult position so
that it does not look as if you are an advocate.”

The House voted overwhelmingly against that provision after series of consultations.

Mr. Salako’s
defence of the N6.1bn allocation, against the disapproval his
colleagues, has deepened the complexities surrounding the project meant
to curb kidnapping and extortion.

Vague issues

The Representatives
had recommended that the communications committee should disallow the
allocation on the grounds that, as a regulatory body, the NCC has no
duty registering phone users since they do not sell the SIMs.

But at last week’s
committee consideration of the N42.6b budget of the commission, the
chairman overruled that concern and offered to raise the amount if the
commission said N6.1bn would be insufficient.

The understanding
is that contracts for the job have already been awarded even before the
appropriation and the chairman himself pointed that out during the
budget defence session.

His insistence, backed Halims Agoda, and Austin Uchendu, is viewed as an attempt at properly retiring the contract claims.

Mr. Bankole vowed
to unearth the vague issues surrounding the project, and justified the
decision after Mr. Uchendu said it would work against the fight against
kidnapping.

“No member of this house will support of kidnapping, and nobody opposes this project,” he said.

“What we are saying
is that, in the process of doing this, we cannot do what will touch on
the mood of the public by appropriating money when money has already
been made available by the service providers.

“Therefore, we will get to the bottom of this matter without anyone playing on our intelligence,” he warned.

Mr. Bankole, however, ruled that the chamber’s position on the matter could be revisited through the House rescinding rule.

Former military president and presidential aspirant,
Muhammed Buhari, of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), has
expressed confidence about the Independent National Electoral
Commission’s (INEC) capacity to conduct free and fair elections in 2011.

Mr. Buhari stated this yesterday when he commissioned
the new party secretariat in Jos-Makurdi road in the Bukan-Sidi area of
Nasarawa State.

The general urged INEC to update the voter’s register
in preparation for the forthcoming general election. He warned against
disenfranchising the youth, saying that those who were 18 years and
older should be allowed to take part in the forthcoming general
election.

He asked Nigerians not to vote for corrupt leaders again because
they are criminals, and urged the large crowd who came out to welcome
him, to vote for people of high integrity. He noted that the money
current leaders had realized in the past ten years, was enough to cover
the cost of free education, health care and security.

Women, who do not
necessarily partake in conflict situations or the processes that lead
to them, are usually the most affected by the several ethno-religious
crisis that have hit Nigeria in recent times.

Several
professionals in Gender Studies and Women Affairs, who came to this
consensus during a conference on Women’s Human Rights and Religion, in
Abuja, organised by a non-governmental organisation, BAOBAB for Women’s
Human Rights, also advised women to be more proactive in their response
to conflict situations.

Aituaje Pogoson, a
senior lecturer at the University of Ibadan, said women and children
are more susceptible to unprovoked violence during and after conflict
situations. “Women who are not involved in the decisions that lead to
religious and ethnic conflicts usually bear the brunt of the
conflicts,” she said. “Women are more susceptible to harm in conflict
situations whether or not they are involved in the war or conflict
situation. The able bodied men go to war but the women are left
unprotected and to care for the children leaving them vulnerable to
attacks.”

Mrs. Pogoson advocated for an increased focus on how women survive during and after conflict situations.

In support, Doris
Onieje, who lectures at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, reiterated
that the coverage of the recent Jos crisis by the Nigerian media did
not draw much attention to the plight of women, some of whom were
widowed, raped, and killed during the course of the conflict. “The
media has failed to adequately capture the impact of the conflict on
women,” she said.

No security during conflicts

Vonke Dickson, a
participant in the conference, recounted a frightful experience during
the Jos crisis. Five days ago, Mrs. Dickson said she was alone in her
home with her two children, aged 10 months and 3 years. Not too far
away in a neighbouring village, Mahza, a fresh upheaval had just
occurred and she feared that her village would be next. Mrs. Dickson,
with her husband away, kept vigil from midnight till dawn with no way
to contact any emergency service. “I could do nothing but stay awake
and wish that there was an emergency number that I could call,” she
said. “Even if I could jump over the fence and run away, what about the
children?” Her story effectively re-emphasized the helpless state that
women, who are left to care for the children in conflict situation,
find themselves.

Some speakers urged
women who overhear plans by their husbands, brothers, or neighbours to
perpetrate violence, to alert relevant authorities so that future
conflicts can be prevented. “Women must learn to speak out and report
such plans which lead to conflicts,” Mrs. Obieje said, adding that more
women should “clamour for affirmative participation in policy making.”
Other speakers, however, rose in defence of women who keep silent in
conflict situations.

“Women should be encouraged to speak out. But we must realise that
keeping quiet is something that has been embedded in our subconscious
by the society because of cultural or religious reasons. Women are
usually expected to be silent,” Snow Ogunjimi, who is the Programme
Officer (Youth and Women Initiatives) in TY Danjuma Foundation, said.
Mrs. Pogoson agreed with Ms. Ogunjimi. “It may not always be deliberate
silence, but that which has existed over the years. Women need courage
to be able to report some of the things they may overhear,” she said.

Some Ondo State residents, yesterday, faulted the
deployment of former Ekiti State Resident Electoral Commissioner, Ayoka
Adebayo to Ondo State.

Mrs. Adebayo conducted last year’s contentious
re-run elections in the Ekiti State in a manner observers believed was
highly controversial. She initially refused to declare the result of
the election and went incommunicado for days until she surfaced in
Abuja and pronounced the Peoples’ Democratic Party candidate, Segun
Oni, winner of the polls. Sola Iji, the state Chairman of the Action
Congress, said there was no point retaining Mrs. Adebayo in INEC after
her performance in Ekiti State last year.

“I want to pass vote of no confidence on Ayoka
Adebayo to conduct flawless election in Ondo state,” he said. “Her
redeployment to the state at this auspicious moment was shocking.
Attahiru Jega (INEC Chair) should be held responsible for any debacle
in next year elections in the state. Redeployment of Mrs. Adebayo is a
wrong signal to the credibility of Jega’s led electoral body to conduct
generally acceptable polls.”

Also, an Akure based legal practitioner, Titiloye Charles, expressed
concern on the deployment of Mrs. Adebayo, saying “it is on record that
her controversial role in the disputed Ekiti re-run election is still
pending before the court of Appeal in Ilorin. We doubt her neutrality
in the face of threat by some individuals to capture the state in 2011.
Mrs Adebayo’s redeployment has cast a doubt on the ability of new INEC
boss to conduct fair next year.”

I have read or
heard such recurring negative comments over the past five years and
each time, I shudder. Out of curiosity and displeasure, I set out to
find out for myself what may be wrong. I had long perceived that our
state-run schools could be at the root of the problem, so I started to
volunteer my time and resources, and supported by friends and
colleagues, at a neighbourhood junior secondary school.

What I have learnt
is instructive and as I write this article, it must be 14 months since
I first stepped into the school to the warm reception of the school
authority.

Literacy and
numeracy are, in my opinion, at the core of every intellectual pursuit.
I even consider literacy as the foundation for numeracy, which is why
language is what the child first learns before all else. The students
were in JSS1 at the time and after introductions, I made each person
write a simple essay about her or himself and this gave me an insight
into their backgrounds. You’d imagine that many of them are from
economically challenging environments. Rightly so.

Notwithstanding, I
came away with a strong impression of their enthusiasm and high
aspirations. Musa Yahaya, for instance, had long adopted Aliko Dangote
as his role model. But in order to succeed, preparation must match or
even exceed aspiration.

Can state run
schools, as they are today, therefore be said to equip students with
tools they need to succeed in life? I dare say no. As I corrected the
essay scripts, there was no content, neither was there good structure
or organisation. Many sentences were poorly constructed and the
grammatical flaws were shocking. Some students could not even write
their names properly.

The vice principal
rightly pointed out that things were in a sorry state and that her
students will be expected to compete with others from private
establishments within and outside Nigeria!

Over the past
months, my friends and I have organised motivational sessions,
mobilised supply of learning materials, and actively sought to impress
on the students the need to take their studies seriously. But it’s not
only the students that need to sit up.

I have, at some
point, had to teach the students under a tree in the school compound,
because the dilapidated classroom block was being refurbished. I had my
fair share of experience in the poor classroom infrastructure. While
delivering a ‘Brighter Grammar’ lesson one morning, a ceiling square
almost fell on my head.

The school lacks
discipline. Students stroll in leisurely at 9am, sometimes later (I
hear the “elites” may be complicit because some of the students are
domestic hands who are not allowed to prepare for school until
“madam’s” children have been picked by the school bus).

Teachers look
de-motivated, distracted, even uninterested – for good reason? I was in
class one day and I asked the students “why do you all speak pidgin
English?” One of them – a young, bold girl, stood up and said rather
angrily, “the teachers teach us in pidgin.” Most of the students agreed
with her, but at the same time out of fear, queried why she would say
such a thing!

The school
environment is not conducive for learning. The vice principal, whom I
respect for her long years of service and ability to roundly motivate
the students, once said that if she had her way she would ask the many
food sellers to stay out of the school premises, at least until
break/lunch time. This is because she finds that students eat rice,
beans, plantain, and so on in class while teachers deliver lessons.

Ill prepared for future

It is useful at
this juncture to present the outcome of an analysis I did using average
scores for vocabulary tests that I dispensed. 270 students were tested
over five (5) class sessions, using 50 words each time (I came up with
the test words from a pool of about 10,000 words which the students
themselves drafted). From the population of 270, I selected a sample of
81 students – those who had record of at least 3 scores out of the 5
test sessions. (70% did not qualify for the sample) 32 students scored
average of 50% and below, while the remaining can be said to have
passed.

40% failure rate is
still “positive”, when compared to the over 98% failure rate in 2009
SSCE. However, if I analysed the scores of all 270 students, about 70%
would have failed – failed simple vocabulary tests for which the
students had at least one week ahead to prepare!

There’s no doubt
that with an ill-educated, ill-prepared population, Nigeria’s internal
security, and its economic growth and development aspirations, are
gravely threatened and our country risks being relegated to the
background in the comity of nations.

Mayowa Amoo lives and works in Lagos and can be reached on mayowa_amoo@yahoo.com

The Nigerian
government yesterday refuted reports indicting its citizen in the
recent bomb blast which claimed the lives of 76 people in Kamapala,
Uganda.

Three viewing
centres were simultaneously bombed in Uganda during the final of the
South Africa 2010 World Football competition between Spain and Holland
on July 11th, leading to 74 deaths and over 50 injured. A Ugandan local
newspaper in Kampala had, on Wednesday and Thursday, reported that a
Nigerian was among the 43 suspects so far arrested over the bombing
incident. The paper however did not mention the name of the Nigerian,
but it was gathered that one Emmanuel Nweke was on Tuesday reported to
have been arrested in Busia, a town not far from Kampala and has since
been transferred to Kampala for interrogation. Other nationalities
listed among the suspects include those of Pakistan, Uganda and Somalia
and seven others whose nationalities are yet to be identified. A group
in Somolia, al-Shabaab militants has already claimed responsibility for
the attack stating that it was a retaliation.

Immigration offence

But the Nigeria
High Commissioner to Uganda, Fidel Ayogu said from his investigation,
Mr. Nweke was arrested over immigration-related offence. “The Nigerian
they arrested in Busai was not linked to the incident and so could not
have been a culprit in that bomb blast. From all indications, the
suspect has immigration problem,” he said. He also noted that the
consular has written officially to the Ugandan government demanding to
know the level of involvement of the said Nigerian and has not gotten
any reply yet.

“We have written to the Ugandan Foreign Ministry to inform us
properly where and how the Nigerian is linked to the bomb blast and we
have not gotten any reply. We took immediate action we wrote to the
Minister of Foreign Affair to inform us on how a Nigerian photographed
in the newspaper was connected,” Mr. Ayogu said. “Our observation is
that the problem he has is immigration and not necessarily linked to
the blast. From the investigations we have done, because we went to
where the suspect is, we interrogated him and we interrogated the
Ugandan immigration officials and he hasn’t been linked to the bomb
blast. We are not pre-empting their investigations. If a Nigerian is
arrested, we should know the charges. We have written for clarification
to know what he has done and until they do that and reply we cannot
accept the report as true.”

Five
civil society groups have presented the report of the investigations by
the House of Representatives on the power sector to the Independent
Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offence Commission (ICPC), and to
the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), asking them to
“urgently take action on the reports.”

Also presented to
the anti-graft agencies was the report on the non-remittance of
received public revenue into the federation account by ministries,
departments, and agencies between 2003 and 2008.

The reports were
also submitted to the director of operations of the Economic and
Financial Crime Commission (EFCC), Salawu Bello, who represented the
agency’s chairperson.

The groups, which
made the presentation in a meeting with the chairman of ICPC, Olayinka
Ayoola, demanded that the people indicted in the power probe report
must be prosecuted forthwith.

The groups quoted
the recommendation made by the report that both the ICPC and EFCC
prosecute former president, Olusegun Obasanjo; the former minister of
power and steel, Liyel Imoke; former minister of state for energy,
Abdulhamid Ahmed; and former minister of power and steel, Olusegun
Agagu.

Other former
government officials the report mentioned for prosecution included the
former managing director of Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN),
Joseph Makoju; the chief executive officer of Transmission Company of
Nigeria (TCN), C. E. Ifesie, and his assistant general manager, G.O.P.
Osakue.

The NIPP’s project
manager, Mike Ezeudenna; the chairperson, technical committee of NIPP,
C. N. O. Nwachukwu; and the managing director of NIPP, J. A. Olotu, and
others were all asked to face the law for the mismanagement of funds.

The House of
Representatives in 2008 mandated its committee on power and steel to
conduct a comprehensive investigation into how huge sums of money was
expended on power generation, transmission, and distribution between
June 1999 and May 2007, without any commensurate result as the nation’s
power generation fell to a meagre 2,500MW.

The last
administration claimed to have expended $16 billion on overhauling the
nation’s power sector via the National Integrated Power Project (NIPP).

The groups added
that the committee submitted its report at the end of the
investigation, in which it revealed that “the sum of $13.28 billion was
expended on the power sector during the period, with further unfunded
commitment of over $12 billion” and nothing has been done on the report
till date.

“Specifically, the
report concluded that looting of the national treasury through the
National Power Project (NPP) and the Power Holding Company of Nigeria
(PHCN) greatly diminished national capacity to provide electric
power…” the groups noted.

Crimes against humanity

They also quoted
the report as saying “what senior officials and politicians did is an
economic crime against humanity, which has caused Nigerians not only
financial loss, but also inestimable mental and physical suffering.”

Some companies on
the indicted list are Rockson Engineering/ Rockson International; Pivot
Engineering; Marubeni West Africa and Marubeni International; Lahmeyer
International; and ABB Powerlines.

The second report
submitted by the groups, alleged that “between 2003 and 2008, about N4
trillion, collected by various ministries, departments and agencies in
the area of Internally Generated Revenue (IGR), Pay As You Earn (PAYE),
Withholding Tax (WHT), Value Added Tax (VAT), and Operating Surpluses,
were not remitted into the Federation Account” as dictated by the
constitution.

Reaction to groups’ demand

ICPC chairperson
promised to “urgently work on the reports”, while the EFCC director
noted that he was not sure whether the reports were already submitted
to the agency. He promised to make enquiries and get back to the group.

The civil groups
championing this call includes the Socio-Economic Rights and
Accountability Project (SERAP); Committee for Defence of Human Rights
(CDHR); Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Ikeja Branch; Center for the
Rule of Law (CENTROLAW); and the National Association of Democratic
Lawyers (NADL).

In keeping with its
promise made to teachers, Association of Senior Civil Servants of
Nigeria, and the Ministry of Labour and Productivity, the Federal
Executive Council, yesterday, approved the restoration of the junior
secondary component into the federal unity colleges (FUCs).

The junior school
was scrapped from the unity colleges in 2008. Minister of Information,
Dora Akunyili, told journalists, at the state house in Abuja, that this
approval follows a recommendation made by the committee set up by the
immediate past minister of education to re-introduce the Junior School
component into the FUCs, since it does not contravene the UBEC Act. The
Education Minister, Ruqayyatu Rufa’i, thereafter sought council’s
approval for the restoration of the Junior School component into the
colleges with effect from the academic sessions commencing in September
2011.

“The 104 Federal Unity Colleges were established to promote national
unity, academic excellence and serve as model to states and other
proprietors,” said Mrs Akunyili. “Until 2008, each of the Federal Unity
Colleges had both junior and senior components, but the junior
component was cancelled as a result of wrong interpretation of the NCE
decision of 2005 on the disarticulation policy arising from the
application of the UBEC Act. Since the FUCs were not benefiting from
the UBEC intervention funds, they should have been disarticulated in
the first place. There had been outcries by the members of the public,
parents, other stakeholders, including trade unions, calling on the
federal government to re-consider its decision on the junior component
of the Federal Unity Colleges.” She added that the restoration was
approved because of the need to improve skills and enhance standards
and to answer the yearnings of parents. “The National Council on
Education had already adopted this in their 2009 meeting,” she said.

The Federal Road
Safety Corporation and road transport unions, yesterday, supported a
new law that will guarantee a mandatory compensation of N1m to families
of people who die in road crashes.

According to the
bill under debate by the lawmakers, commuters travelling by commercial
vehicles, who are injured, permanently incapacitated, or get killed
will be entitled to N1million in insurance compensations. The current
package for the three categories of casualties range from N5, 000 to
N50, 000 only, and the amounts are often left unclaimed, according to
lawmakers who spoke at the public hearing for the bill yesterday. The
new rates, when operational, will target the victims of fatal road
crashes in the country. Between 2006 and 2008 for instance, FRSC
figures say 29,000 road accidents resulted in the death of 16,278
persons; with only five states – Ogun, Lagos, Kaduna, Kano and the
Federal Capital Territory – responsible for about 42% of the total.

The criticisms

Insurance experts
however expressed fear that the new figure will lead to a rise in
already hiked transport fares around the country. “The bill is
unnecessary, because its real intent has been taken care of by the
Insurance Act of 2003, motor vehicle and third party Act,” said Talmisi
Usman, who represented the National Insurance Commission of Nigeria at
a public hearing organized by the House of Representatives on Wednesday.

One of the insurance experts, Thomas Olundare, also attacked the
proposed compensation margin as being “too high” and certain to have a
multiplier effect on the cost of goods and services. But the FRSC, the
National Union of Road Transport Workers, the Road Transport Employers
Association of Nigeria, and the Road Accident Prevention Society of
Nigeria, welcomed the provisions of the proposed bill, and hoped it
will help reduce the pains of victims of such crashes. The Corps
Marshal of the FRSC, Osita Chidoka, said the bill was ‘timely.” He,
however, said insurance companies could be made to award separate
claims based on the degree of casualty.

Nigerian combatants
who helped end the bloody years of Liberian civil war between 1989 and
1996 left behind peace, and about 250,000 children, a senior Foreign
Affairs official said yesterday.

The Director
General of the Directorate of Technical Cooperation in Africa, Sule
Bassi, told the House of Representatives Diaspora committee yesterday
that Nigerian soldiers, who almost single-handedly restored peace to
the West African nation, had affairs with the local women which
produced the large number of children. Thousands of Nigerian soldiers,
under the ECOWAS monitoring group force (ECOMOG), deployed to the
nation in the nineties after violent clashes broke out between
government forces and a rebel group led by a former president, Charles
Taylor. The conflict is said to have claimed more than 200,000 lives,
and displaced millions more. Mr. Taylor has been accused of war crimes
during the period and is standing trial at the International Criminal
Court. But the our forces did not only fight. According to Mr Bassi,
they also engaged in dalliances with the locals and the children
produced are in hundreds of thousands, with majority of them left back
in the country.

“Many of the kids
have undergone registration and naturalization as Liberians, having
waited for years without seeing their fathers,” he said. “The mothers
are trying to make sure they are properly documented as Liberian and so
on.” Many of the mothers too, according to him, have been undaunted in
locating the fathers to the children and are said to be continuing with
the search. He however assured that although his agency is only
concerned with the issues of experts and professionals in the Diaspora,
the Nigerian embassy in Liberia is offering the matter attention and
has made effort to assist with the situation. “Definitely, you can’t
run away from your our people there are our people; they are still
young and they need schooling and they will also need to be nurtured
just like every other Nigerian,” he said.

Expulsion from Gabon

The House committee
on Diaspora, headed by Abike Dabiri-Erewa, said its members will visit
the country on a “fact finding mission.” Meanwhile, the Nigerian
community in Gabon say they face expulsion threats by the Gabonese
authorities who have allegedly warned that legal and illegal Nigerian
residents will be forced out of the country in response to rising
migration to the oil-rich nation. Over 210,000 Nigerian would be
affected if the threat is carried out, the Chairman of the Nigerian
Community in Gabon, Babatunde Yekini, told the House committee. Mr.
Yekini said that the Gabonese authority complains that large number of
Nigerians has continued to drift into the nation inspite of repeated
representations to the Nigerian government for an intervention.