Nigeria Content Online

Teachers in the
public primary and secondary schools in Oyo State will proceed on an
indefinite strike on Monday, July 5, to protest the non-implementation
of the new Teachers’ Salary Structure (TSS) in the state.

The decision was
reached at an emergency congress of the state’s chapter of the Nigeria
Union of Teachers (NUT) on Wednesday, after assessing the outcome of
the meeting between the leadership of the union and the state governor,
Adebayo Alao-Akala, on Tuesday. The governor had incurred the teachers’
wrath for his government’s insistence on not implementing the new
special wage structure for them. This has led to series of agitations
which culminated in a warning strike observed every Wednesday in the
last 21 days. At the meeting held with the leadership of the teachers’
union on Tuesday, the governor insisted that the government lacks the
wherewithal to foot the monthly bill for teachers’ wages if the
enhanced pay would be implemented.

Rather, he asked
them to choose between retrenching some of them, or wait till the
federal government approves the proposed new salary scale for
government workers across the country. However, neither of the options
appealed to the teachers gathered at the state of the Nigeria Labour
Congress (NLC) yesterday to get the report of the meeting between the
government and their leaders.

Immediate action

The governor’s
action subsequently prodded the teachers to demand for the immediate
commencement of the strike immediately. All efforts from their leaders
to make them see why they should prepare better for the indefinite
strike were bluntly rebuffed. After putting the options of starting the
strike immediately and later to voice vote, the majority favoured
immediate action. Olu Abiala, state secretary of the union, who
conducted the congress, had to beg them before they agreed to wait till
Monday before the strike starts.

He told them that
it would be unfair to the government if the outcome of yesterday
meeting was not communicated to them before the strike starts proper.
The congress, who were mobilized from different parts of the state,
intermittently sang anti-government songs, and occasionally rained
curses on the government for wanting to starve them to death. Although
the agitation for the enhanced teachers’ pay has being on for about two
years in the state, the aggrieved NUT members began a definite step
against the government three weeks ago when they began a 21 warning
strike.

During the period, the teachers skipped work on Wednesdays, and wore
black attires to work the following days to register their displeasure
over the non-implementation of the scheme.

The House of
Representatives Committee on Public Procurement, on Wednesday,
disclosed that it has commenced “thorough monitoring” of how funds
assigned to various aviation agencies are being spent.

This is coming
after last week’s directive by the committee to the Nigerian Airspace
Management Agency (NAMA), mandating the agency to halt further action
on its 17 million Euro contract for the installation of 27 units of
Aeronautical Information Service (AIS) in all airports across the
country following alleged poor handling of the deal by the Ministry of
Aviation and the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP). “We are here to
oversight departments and agencies under the aviation sector in
continuance of the oversight function we embarked on two weeks ago; and
the whole idea is to track how public funds are used vis-à-vis
procurement from the bidding,” said Yusuf Tuggar, chairman and leader
of the committee while speaking to aviation correspondents at the
presidential wing of the Murtala Muhammed Airport (MMA), Lagos.

Observing from afar

According to Mr.
Tuggar, the committee have been observing and monitoring the agencies
from a distance, adding that the 22 members of the House will commence
their scrutiny with the airspace agency before visiting other
authorities in the industry. “We are going to start with NAMA; we are
going to visit FAAN also, and all the other parastatals under the
aviation sector,” he said. “We will have our information, for we want
to know what they have been doing from the advertising stage to award
and implementation, which we hope to see also for ourselves. So it is
an ongoing thing.”

Explaining why the
committee terminated the contract by NAMA, Mr. Tuggar said that the
House received a petition against the agency, stressing that the
airspace management failed to honour the invitation sent them by the
House of Representatives. “We did receive a petition and we had a
public hearing on Monday, NAMA failed to show up, the ministry failed
to show up, but BPP showed up with a particular contract about
Aeronautical Information System,” he said. “We wrote them insisting
they suspend all further action on that particular contract, which is
the AIS. Because there was a lower bidder, yet the contract was awarded
to someone who bided higher. And then there seems to have been a
unilateral negotiation. But know that the Act does not say that you
pick one contractor and you go and negotiate with them. It has to be
open, it has to be competitive, and it has to be transparent.”

Penalising defaulters

The committee
chairman, however, disclosed that the House does not have the right to
penalise agencies found of contravening the act, rather defaulters will
channelled to the appropriate disciplinary arms of government. “We are
not a law enforcement body, so if we find them culpable, if we deem it
fit, we can send on the information to law enforcement body such as
EFCC or the police or any other one,” he said. “That’s if there is a
clear violation of the Public Procurement Act, a grave one that we feel
requires that.”

“The fear of being
a victim of crime is far higher than the possibility of being a victim.
People who are afraid of crime are virtually incapacitated. It affects
social relationships, economic activities, political stability and
confidence, especially in the government and law enforcement agencies,”
said Etannibi Alemika, a professor of criminology at the University of
Jos.

Mr. Alemika said
this Tuesday while presenting the findings of a national criminal
victimisation and safety survey held between 2007 and 2009 involving
10,228 respondents across the 36 states of Nigeria and Abuja. The
survey was conducted by CLEEN Foundation (formerly known as the Centre
for Law Enforcement Education); Practical Sampling International (PSI),
a field survey company; and DC Pro-Data Consult Ltd, a data management
company.

The findings
revealed that an overall national figure of 86.6 per cent of
respondents expressed a “very high degree of fear”, with the most
troubled respondents residing in Gombe, Abuja, Plateau, Ebonyi, Ondo
and Sokoto. It also revealed that the dominant forms of crime in the
country were theft (money, GSM handset, agricultural products, cars,
etc), robbery, domestic violence, physical assault and burglary.

From the
statistics provided, three-fifths (60 per cent) of all respondents said
corruption has increased in the last three years, with Ogun, Abia,
Nasarawa and Imo States being perceived as the most corrupt states in
Nigeria.

On public
officials viewed as most corrupt, Mr. Alemika said 51.7 per cent of
respondents complained of having been solicited for bribe by the Police
in the past 12 months. This was followed by the department of
Immigration (29.8 per cent), the Federal Road Safety Corps (29.4 per
cent), the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (27.6 per cent), the Custom
Service (26.0 per cent) and lecturers in tertiary institutions (23.2
per cent).

“More than 50 per
cent of those who report to the Police said they were dissatisfied with
the police. The major source of this dissatisfaction has to do with
their lack of capacity and gross ineffectiveness. Then, police
treatment of complainants and their integrity or lack of it, which has
to do with bribery and the Police colluding with suspects,” said Mr.
Alemika.

Reason for the study

Explaining the
objectives of the survey, CLEEN Foundation’s executive director,
Innocent Chukwuma, said, “investment in producing reliable statistics
on crime in Nigeria and promotion of their use in police planning and
deployment” has been overlooked over the years, making the federal
government, which controls law enforcement agencies, to appear
“helpless and hopeless”.

“Our objectives
include generating reliable complimentary data to official statistics
on crime and assist policy makers in crime prevention and control
planning. It will provide the Police with an information base that
would help it in the deployment of policing resources to areas most
needed and contribute in reducing the high level of fear of crime in
Nigeria,” Mr. Chukwuma said.

Moses Olusola, the
general manager of Practical Sampling International, said the
stratified multi-stage random selection procedure was used to select
female and male adult respondents aged 18 and above across the 37
states, who had lived in urban and rural households for a period of not
less than six months.

The conveners of
the conference said the survey’s findings will soon be published in a
book and advertised in the newspapers for easy access by the public.

The House of
Representatives might recommend the blacklisting of the construction
giant, Julius Berger Plc, and other construction firms for allegedly
over-evaluating and other sundry contractual offences in the contract
for the rehabilitation of the Lagos-Ota-Abeokuta Expressway.

The chairman of the
House Committee on Works, Chukwuma Onyema, who disclosed this yesterday
at a meeting with officials of the Federal Ministry of Works in Abuja,
also lamented that the works on the road have been abandoned. Mr
Onyema, who was only appointed into the position early June, complained
of the shoddy handling of the road contracts in the country, stressing
it is lamentable.

He also said that
the Minister of State for Works, Chris Ogiemwonyi, shared the
displeasure of members of the committee and doubted the competence of
most contractors, handling some roads in the country.

The members of the
committee, who spoke one after the other at the meeting, said Julius
Berger Plc failed in the project, and regretted that the contract which
the Works ministry claimed in its report, is 87% completed, has jumped
from its original contract sum of N11.930 billion to over N33 billion.
They described the increase as “astronomical and bogus.” The lawmakers
criticized the company for failing to appear before them despite an
invitation to it last week. The House had passed a resolution on
Thursday last week, mandating its works committee to invite the
Minister of Works, Sanusi Daggash, over a plethora of abandoned road
projects in the country. Last month, the senate committee on
environment also criticised Julius Berger and other construction
companies for the poor handling of their stone quarries in Abuja. The
committee, which described the operations as dangerous and unhealthy
for the environment, gave the companies about two weeks to clean up
their acts or face sanctions.

Half done

Subsequently, the
committee began its hearings on the dualisation of phases 1-4 of the
Abuja-Abaji Road in Kogi State, handled by Dantata & Sawoe in the
first phase, Reynolds Construction in the second phase, Bulletin
Company Limited in the third phase and Gitto Construction in the fourth
phase. The first phase of the contract was supposed to gulp
N11.227billion, and the commencement date was 3rd August, 2006, and to
be completed February 2, 2009, but the contract the Ministry of Works
told the Committee, was, due to logistics extended to February 2, 2011.

Though the amount “certified so far for the project,” pegged at
N6.445billion is released, the contract, is just at 51% completion
level, while its phase was budgeted at N9.627billion, the contractor
got N5billion, but just about 50.58% completed. The third phase of the
contract, handled by bulletin, was for N9.697billion.

Cable television
networks will soon operate pay-as-you-go. Eddy Aina, a director at the
office of the Director General of the Nigerian Broadcasting Commission,
NBC, said the organisation is working on and will soon establish a
policy that will compel cable television networks in Nigeria to charge
as the consumers use their services.

Mr. Aina was
responding to concerns raised at the Consumer Forum organised by the
Consumer Advocacy Forum of Nigeria (CAFON) at the Lagos Television,
Agidingbi, Ikeja on Tuesday. Many consumers, including Shola Salako,
president, CAFON, and the convener of the forum complained that the
major cable networks in the country, DSTV and HiTV, are ripping
consumers off by charging for services that are sometimes not provided
or they cannot access due to poor power supply. “In the next few
months, NBC is going to come up with a pay-as-you go policy for the
cable TV networks,” said Mr Aina. “As for tariff, it is an industry
thing. They set up the tariff and if you ask why it is so high in
Nigeria they will tell you the poor infrastructure like poor power
supply made it so. But when government is able to settle the issue of
electricity then we can ask them to reduce the tariff.”

At this edition of
the monthly consumer forum which focused on getting better services
from cable TV networks, officials and members of the Sports Viewing
Centres Association of Nigeria voiced their grievances, particularly as
it relates to their on-going tussle with HiTV.

‘It’s a rip off’

The president of
the association, Seye Aluko, said they are insisting on not paying the
N15,000 monthly subscription fee that HiTV is charging for viewing
centres as against N6,000 for home use. “HiTV started well by telling
us to buy decoder with subscription for N2,500; that time it was only
La Liga they were showing. The next season they got English Premier
League and they increased to N3,000. From that to N4,000; from N4,000
to N6,000; from N6000 to N15,000, haba! HiTV,” said Deolu Ogubanjo,
president of the National Association of Telecom Subscribers of Nigeria.

Mrs. Salako advised the proprietors of the viewing centres to
register with the NBC and the Lagos State Consumer Protection Committee
so that their case can be settled through those authorities. She also
raised questions of consumers who had contacted her before the
programme, including why the cable network goes off when it is raining,
considering that the consumer’s money is still reading whether there is
rain or not? The representatives of DSTV, Segun Fayose and that of
HiTV, Vivian Chigboh, attempted to answer all the questions.

An Abuja High
Court, on Tuesday, said that an order forcefully ejecting Eseme Eyiboh,
the chairman of the House Committee on Media and Public Affairs, from
his house in Abuja was given in error. The court ordered Mr. Eyiboh to
take back possession of the home.

Earlier this month,
armed policemen stormed Mr. Eyiboh’s residence, located at 7A Iyamoye
Close, off Gimbiya Street, Area 11, Garki, at about 8 a.m and threw out
his belongings. They were accompanied by officials of the court and
relations of the man who is disputing the property with the lawmaker.

History of the case

Mr. Eyiboh, a
member from Akwa Ibom State, has been engaged in a contentious dispute
with Senator Hassan Muhammed Gusau since 2008 over the land on which he
erected his house.

The lawmaker said
that he bought the property in 2007 from the family of late Sheik
Mujaddadi. However, Mr. Gusau also claimed to have purchased the same
property from the same administrators.

When he discovered
the counter sale, Mr. Eyiboh sued the administrators of Mujaddadi’s
estate and sought a court order to keep from being evicted from a
property he claimed he validly bought.

However, in
February 2008, Mr. Eyiboh testified that the senator invaded his home
with 14 young men, a team of armed policemen, and a bailiff from the
Upper Court Area with the intent to evict him.

Mr. Gusau, a
senator from Zamfara, had got a writ of possession from a Sharia court
in Jigawa State and a letter from an Abuja Upper Area Court judge,
directing the police to aid the enforcement of the eviction. Mr. Eyiboh
said that he called in his lawyers who intervened and succeeded in
dissuading the team from carrying out the eviction.

Last month, the
member petitioned the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related
Offences Commission (ICPC), alleging that Mr. Akoyi, the judge who
authorised the letter, had abused his office and should be investigated
by the commission.

“I strongly believe
that M.U. Akoyi attempted to help my adversaries take illegal
possession of my property, because he must either have been bribed or
given some other incentives to knowingly exceed his jurisdiction,” Mr.
Eyiboh said.

“I cannot
comprehend how an Upper Area Court in Gwagwalada can direct execution
against a property located in Garki, in the centre of the city,” he
said.

In his written
address, Mr. Gusau argued that he had asked Mr. Eyiboh to sell the
property to him because Sharia law does not allow a non-Muslim to buy
the estate of a Muslim when he dies.

However, Mr. Eyiboh
dispelled that argument, saying that the Sharia Law clause does not
specify that the buyer must be a Muslim, but rather, that the buyer
must be a neighbour, which Mr. Eyiboh was, and Mr. Gusau was not.

The ruling

Delivering the
ruling, Othman Musa said that the court’s decision took precedence over
any of Mr. Gusau’s eviction orders, including the most recent one made
on June 3, 2010. He ordered that the Chief Registrar of the High Court
take the necessary steps to restore Mr. Eyiboh’s possession of the
property without delay.

“I have gone
through the prayers and its counter views canvassed by the third
respondents (Mr. Gusau). It shows clearly that the application has
merit,” said Mr. Musa.

“It is regrettable that the court, on May 28, granted an ex parte
order, which temporarily dispossessed Eyiboh of his valid property.”

Indication emerged on Tuesday that about half of those who picked forms to join the police are barely literate.

Olabisi Okuwobi,
Police Public Relations Officer, Oyo state command, who gave the hint
in Ibadan yesterday, expressed dismay that almost 50 per cent of the
applicants screened in the command headquarters could seldom read or
write simple English, while many among them could not even spell their
names. “Even with the presentation of their school certificate with
credit in English, they could neither read nor write,” Ms Okuwobi said.

The police
spokesperson, also a member of the five-member screening panel for the
applicants in the state, declared that a number of the applicants who
are ‘half-literates’ stand disqualified. “Police force is not a dumping
ground for educational delinquencies,” she said. “We asked them to read
simple English in the dailies they could not, some of them even failed
to write or spell correctly their names.” Assuring that the police
would do a thorough job in screening all the applicants, she described
as unfortunate the fact that a number of them were not qualified,
wondering how they got their results in the first instance.

“Even those who passed through the screening will still undergo
written text to further clarify their competence,” she said, adding
that the police would also verify the certificates of those who pass
the written tests from their acclaimed examination bodies for
clearance. Speaking with journalists, the state commissioner of police,
Baba Adisa Bolanta, expressed satisfaction with the large turnout of
young Nigerians for enlistment into the police, describing it as a good
omen for the future of the country and the profession.

The Nigerian
Communications Satellite (NigComSat) Ltd. yesterday said it is working
with the Nigerian police to use satellite technology to combat crime in
the country.

Ahmed Rufai, the
managing director of NigComSat, made this known during the visit of a
group called the Jonathan Youth Vanguard to the company headquarters in
Abuja. The group had wanted to learn about the electronic voting system
and other devices designed by the company.

“In the next three
months, we will be able to provide a modernised public safety network
for effective policing because policing and crime control thrive on
their capacity to gather intelligence, track and process information,”
said Mr. Rufai. “If you don’t have this capacity, then the criminals
are a step ahead of you.”

The technology

The technology, a
code division multiple access (CDMA) channel, allows several people to
communicate over the same bandwidth at the same time, without
interfering with each other. It is currently being used in radio
communication technologies.

Mr. Rufai said
there are five channel towers in Abuja, three of which were built in
Utako, Nyanya, and Kubwa, and the rest two will be situated in Kuje,
and Gwagwalada. He said three more towers will be needed to fully cover
the city.

The Abuja version of the technology will be commissioned in the next few months,

and the police in the city will be enhanced to monitor and track incidences that are of interest to them, said Mr. Rufai.

“When we are able
to that, Nigerians will be able to sleep with their eyes closed,
because before a criminal can strike, the police should have [struck]
first,” he said. “We now want the police to stop a crime before it is
committed.” The president general of the youth group, George Turner,
commended NigComSat’s efforts and said the money invested by the
federal government in the company was not a waste.

Mr. Turner
expressed his hope that the development would address the problem of
unemployment to a very large extent in the country.

In the last one
week, there has been two oil spills in Qua Iboe, Akwa Ibom state; and
three oil spills in Bayelsa State. In both cases the federal government
has not moved to remedy the situation.

However, yesterday
in Abuja, far away from the spills, key players in the emergency
management sector in Nigeria held a conference to access the access
level of preparedness of the government to handle such emergencies. The
general consensus showed that they were not satisfied with their
performances, but they all blamed it on either lack of funds or
political will on the part of the government to properly handle
emergency situations. Participants at the conference, which was
organised by the senate committee on environment, called for a greater
political will and more funding by the federal government to emergency
management sector.

“We haven’t got a
plan yet,” the senate president, David Mark, said while declaring the
conference open. He added that the country currently have no plan for
emergency management due to lack of political will by the government.
He cited the long standing oil spillage and soil degradation in the
Niger Delta as examples. “We have all that it takes to handle
environmental problems but we do not have the will power,” he said. “It
is not enough to sign agreements and be signatory to international
conventions, but we need to start see how they can be translated into
practical realities. I think all the stakeholders need to come together
with a working plan that will address the problems of environment.”

However, he
expressed concern over series of seminars and conferences organized in
the country without meaningful results and saying it was time for
action and less of the speeches in conferences. “The issue here today
is when something suddenly goes wrong,” he said. “We must seriously
address how to coordinate activities of the response agencies to meet
the emergencies.”

Dire consequences

Grace Bent (PDP
Adamawa state), chairperson of the organising committee added that
developing countries like Nigeria suffer immensely from disaster and
uncontrolled emergencies

More than a
thousand women yesterday stormed the National Assembly to call for the
reinstatement of the female federal lawmaker who was physically
attacked during last week’s fighting at the House of Representatives.

The women, who
staged a protest at the Assembly, condemned the treatment of Doris
Uboh, the representative of Ika federal constituency of Delta State,
who was roughened up last Tuesday by her male colleagues and guards
during a violent session where lawmakers openly jabbed each other and
exchanged diatribes.

Ms. Uboh and 10
other members of a House group, nicknamed Progressives, were attacked
and later suspended from the chamber for leading calls for the removal
of the speaker, Dimeji Bankole, on allegations of corruption.

In a bizarre
episode that clearly discountenanced the touchy question of gender
violence and discrimination, she was dragged out of the chamber by a
number of male colleagues and guards, ripping some of her wears in the
process. She was later hospitalised due to an ear injury she sustained
in the incident.

The women group,
comprising of market women and groups from the Ika constituency,
flooded a part of the National Assembly yesterday, dressed in multi
coloured wears that bore inscriptions denouncing the violence and
calling for Mr. Bankole’s probe.

“Bankole, what
happened to the N9bn capital vote,” one T-shirt read, while another
said “EFCC must probe Bankole!” The calls re-echoed the demands of the
‘progressive’ group of lawmakers in the chamber, which is led by Dino
Melaye and received the support of Ms. Uboh, the only female member of
the chamber to openly do so.

The group canvassed
for two weeks, accusing Mr. Bankole of misusing the House 2009 capital
vote of N9 billion and asking for his removal.

At the chamber’s
resumption, where the issue was to be discussed officially, members of
the group were physically attacked by members loyal to the speaker, and
were later suspended for the rest of the year.

“For one year, it
means there will be no one to represent Ika in the House of Reps,” said
Nwadimeje John, who led a delegation of supporters from Delta State.
“We are asking the National Assembly to rescind that decision.”

Reversal of suspension

Members of the
Abuja Market Women Association, who led the protest and were barred
from the main complex of the National Assembly, asked for more than a
reversal of the suspension order.

“We want to see
Dimeji Bankole, if we cannot see him, let us see (Senate President)
David Mark. We want to talk with them,” said Felicia Sanni, the group’s
president general.

The group condemned
the violent acts that led to Ms. Uboh being hospitalised, asked for her
re-instatement, and also demanded investigations into the allegations
raised by the Rep group.

“The entire
Nigerian women were ashamed and surprised that this type of treatment
was meted on a woman by her male colleagues,” Mrs. Sanni said.

For hours, they remained and were stopped from gaining access to the main Assembly complex.

The chairperson, House committee on Women Affairs, Binta Garba, told
journalists later she was “advised” not to receive the protesting
women, and said the House has not been served any letter of the protest.