Nigeria Content Online

While
President Goodluck Jonathan plays Hamlet, others are not so coy. His
former boss and mentor, Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, who said, “he calls my
wife mummy and my wife takes him as a son,” warned that if Mr. Jonathan
does not run, “the Ijaw man will be disappointed. This is not a threat;
we shall wait for him to come home. So let him listen to us as his
people.” Anyway, it is almost certain that the president will run.
Aides hint that an announcement will come after Ramadan, and his wife,
Patience, was not too subtle when she visited Delta State recently. “If
you love my husband, then go and register so you can vote.” They say
she is the ‘real’ politician in the family so emissaries from Bayelsa
State, led by the speaker, Werinipre Seibarugu, went to plead with her
to forgive the state governor, Timpreye Sylva, for failing to fall
behind her husband fast enough. According to reports, “though she is
still angry, feelers indicate that she is already reconsidering her
stand against the governor.” So run Mr. Jonathan will, for a rash of
reasons, and pressure so unreasonable he could claim, like Tony Blair,
“I can only go one way. I have not got a reverse gear.” Besides, said
Cairo Ojougboh, his special adviser on National Assembly matters who
first broke the news, “there is no moral justification to ask Jonathan
not to run.” There is no moral justification for him to run either. He
cannot claim that he is the best candidate for the job; that he has the
will and wherewithal to solve our economic and social problems; that he
could superintend free and fair elections while running his first
presidential campaign; that his anti-corruption war is not
circumscribed by the charge that his wife was caught trying to launder
13.5 million dollars. Or even that his candidacy will not deepen the
schism within the polity, making the north feel short-changed, betrayed.

“What that will
create is a serious problem in the future,” said Audu Ogbe who chaired
the 2002 meeting where 47 PDP chieftains (two abstained) voted for
zoning to allow the south complete an eight-year tenure. “Because if it
means ‘when we have it, we keep it, it can’t move’ then a suggestion is
being made to the northerners that ‘you’re a bunch of fools for
agreeing to do it in the first place.’” Besides, since he became
president, Mr. Jonathan has not ruled with any vigour, nor shown the
ability to bring new ideas or people to bear on perennial problems.
Even now, one gets the sense that he is being told to run simply
because he can, because he is there now and it is ‘their’ turn. He is
to be the torchbearer of the Ijaws, one chosen by divine grace to
cancel the injustice done to his people. These are hardly lofty reasons.

There is no sign
that Mr. Jonathan, himself, truly desires the job. He appears to be
running to avoid the consequences of not running. But this country does
not need another reluctant president, one pressured into office by
primordial forces. What other pressures will he succumb to when he gets
there?

Some say he wants the job but it is not in his nature to rush; he prefers to tread softly, feeling his way through the maze.

We are supposed to
believe that the fact that four months to elections a sitting president
is too timid to declare his candidacy, is a strategy. As one of his
aides told Reuters, “The president will not declare until he is sure
that he will win.” He is reportedly frustrated by PDP governors who
have refused to give him that kind of assurance. Governors Rotimi
Amaechi, Bukola Saraki, Babangida Aliyu, Mr. Sylva, Emmanuel Uduaghan,
Gbenga Daniel, and Danjuma Goje continue to hedge their bets and to
allegedly chip away at the support of their colleagues. “They will come
to me to pledge their loyalty and endorsements whereas intelligence
reports from their states indicate they have other agenda,” Mr.
Jonathan was quoted as saying at a recent meeting.

This is not good;
it does not show a mastery of the use of power. Mr. President must also
see how his vacillation allowed people like Ibrahim Babangida and Atiku
Abubakar, consummate players, to exploit his weak grasp of the reigns,
challenging him on the platform of his own party.

“The deal I have
with IBB” said Mr. Abukakar, “is that when this has been resolved, we
will enter into a room and then, one person would emerge.” Still, the
president waits, craving the support of powerful men, sending
emissaries to ‘key traditional rulers’, governors, party chieftains,
senators, and other ‘important people’. One day, perhaps sometimes before the elections,he may yet deign to meet with the rest of us, Nigerian people who, presumably,are the ones to vote him into office.

No, Mr. Jonathan is not the one we have been waiting for. Hamlet
should please take his bow, “Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.”

Whether the problem
is generation, transmission or distribution, the effect is the same; no
electricity power: Whether the damage is at Egbin, Kainji, Oji River,
Papalanto, Akangba or the local sub-station or transformer, it is all
the same, we receive no light.

Who gains from this
no light matter and who loses? All of us lose except a very few;
manufacturers, industrialists, students, patients, video-centre
operators, artisans, battery chargers, tailors, hairdressers,
cosmetologists; All of us Nigerians and Nigeria lose. Industries and
manufacturing concerns abandon the large Nigerian market and move to
tiny Ghana where they manufacture their products at greatly reduced
cost and from there feed the Nigerian market. Jobs are lost, government
revenue diminishes. We just can’t compete with Asia in terms of
production because whereas labour is cheap, electricity power is
impossibly expensive, as we all individually have to generate it
ourselves.

In the first
category of “winners” are: diesel sellers, generator manufacturers,
vendors and repairers, and transformer sellers. In the second category
is the staff of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN).

The diesel sellers
range from the smaller time dealers that make it impossible to navigate
through the streets of Marine Beach in the Apapa and Ajegunle areas of
Lagos to Tin-Can Island to the major importers of the product and
owners of the Tank-Farms, up to those who have been able to buy over
whole corporations. This latter group is peopled by several Big Boys
led by one white-apparel wearing no-value-added Forbes 500 billionaire
friend to the president who gives the impression that he knows what
others don’t know.

They all are
wonderful specie of human beings tremendously rich on the misery of a
nation. They have created a nationwide monumental demand for a product
that if not for PHCN and their demonic antics would be largely
unattractive and irrelevant to our existence. But then, what kind of
dark power have these people contacted that has enabled them to
successfully feed fat on the misery and backwardness of entire
generations of a nation, nay a race?

Several long-term
Nigerian based foreigners, including Indians, Lebanese, Greek and some
Nigerians, lead the generator manufacturers and sellers group. Their
names and products include Marapco, Jubaili, Leventis and P.Z. They
largely manufacture their cheaper and poorer genre Rolls Royce and
Perkins generators in Asia under license of European manufacturers.

The ubiquitous Igbo
trader who is at the lower end of the generator seller market supplies
incredibly poor quality Chinese manufactured very cheap generators that
promise much but deliver little. They are in the business of cutting
corners. A 5K.V.A generator is really 3K.V.A and a 10K.V.A is really
6K.V.A. No standards whatsoever are maintained and the Nigerian
Standards Organization watches. Nearly every urban Nigerian family has
one. In some compounds there are up to 20 generators going at the same
time. Some families that can hardly pay their children school fees are
the proud owners of at least two of these dead-on-arrival generators.
Finally, we have the repairers who include Mufu, Baba Kamoru and the
host of small time repairers who litter the streets of Ebute-Metta and
Ladipo, the headquarters of scrap.

As for their
accomplices and co-conspirators PHCN, the organisation that still
enjoys a monopoly on the provision of power but unashamedly neglects to
do so, it is essentially a cursed organisation whose staff benefit from
not providing any services. A couple of weeks ago they actually had the
effrontery to withdraw their services and go on strike. This was a
wonderful opportunity to invoke the toughest of sanctions on them for
an offence analogous to treason because ordinarily electricity is
essential to the life of a nation. This wasn’t done and the PHCN
Workers’ Union now realises that they can hold the nation to ransom and
cripple the privatisation exercise. They need to be watched! Have you
noticed that we have been struggling for the last twenty odd years to
increase generation beyond 3000 mega-watts? Anytime we go beyond 3000,
major damage occurs. In many parts of the Lagos Mainland, there has
been total power outage for an unprecedented period of nearly four
weeks. This time the problem is not low levels of water at Kainji or
gas supply at Oturugo or Papalanto but simply sabotage at Akangba. They
claim that the two transformers that feed the station have broken down.
For four weeks? The truth is that the network has simply been sabotaged
to maintain the demand for diesel.

Experts say that if
the outage continues for a week or two cumulative demand of diesel will
move our white apparel wearing yacht loving friend of the president
into the Forbes top 100 richest men in the world.

But nobody is fooled, one day, monkey go go market …… Agu Imo is based in Lagos.

As we gear up for
the countdown to elections, time is clearly going to be the biggest
dictator in our next attempt at democratic elections.

There were two
problems with the 60-30 day straitjacket into which the 1999
Constitution put Nigeria’s electoral timetable: one, that elections
were held too close to the handover date; and two, that the 30 day
period within which elections had to be held was too narrow.

To nobody’s great
surprise, in amending the Constitution the National Assembly failed to
read the instructions properly, so while it moved the election
timetable back to allow more time between election and handover, it
didn’t widen the 30-day window. That may not matter much for the
immediate future, but it will be interesting to see what will happen if
and when the 30 days coincide with Ramadan. It would have made more
sense to allow a 60 or even 75-day period within which the Independent
National Electoral Commission could exercise its discretion about
fixing election dates.

By holding
elections earlier, the amended Constitution has at least taken
elections out of the running for a clash with Easter. But the
often-stated objective of concluding any election petitions before the
time for handing over falls due was always a non-starter. Practically
the only 2007 election petitions that were concluded within three
months were those that turned on elementary matters such as the
omission of a candidate from the ballot.

It is surely
reasonable to hope that Attahiru Jega’s INEC will be better organised
to avoid this blunder into which Iwu’s Commission fell (either by
design or by reason of a chronic inability to follow basic rules about
closure of nominations). But in 2007 most litigation arose, and is
likely to arise in 2011 from the long list of other things that go
wrong with Nigerian elections: fake or missing voters’ registers, fake
or missing voters, stuffed or seized ballot boxes and fake collation of
figures, to name just a few.

However much
confidence we may have in Jega’s integrity, the pressure of time means
that the scrutiny of both INEC permanent employees and its ad hoc staff
is likely to be less than thorough, opening the door to all manner of
electoral misbehaviour. No, I’m not one of those who imagine that Youth
Corpers (who won’t even have to stick around to see the results of
their misdeeds) constitute a silver bullet for election rigging.

If there had been
any faint hope that election petitions could be finished in three
months, it would have made more sense to put the presidential and
gubernatorial elections – which have the largest constituencies, i.e. a
bigger arena for election-rigging, and consequently a lot more
witnesses to call to prove it – first.

Several political
parties, fearing the ‘bandwagon’ effect, have complained that Jega’s
timetable favours the ruling Peoples Democratic Party. This concern is
not groundless, given the issue- and ideology-free nature of Nigerian
politics. But that is as much the fault of non-PDP parties as it is of
the ruling party. For example, in the past few days electricity workers
have challenged President Goodluck Jonathan’s roadmap for electricity,
while the Nigeria Labour Congress has threatened a general strike if
fuel prices are raised, but nobody need expect these issues to feature
much in the coming campaigns.

There have also
been complaints that the electoral timetable gives the PDP an ‘unfair
advantage’ because other parties now have to rush their candidate
selection processes and campaigns. But nothing stopped any party from
getting its act, coalition or mega-merger together long ago if they
felt that Nigeria was entering a peculiar space warp where time would
run more slowly for the PDP than it would for other parties.

The truth is that
the just-released timetable could be just as bad for the PDP against an
organised and committed opposition. But that would need an opposition
that does more than mimic meaningless campaigns of ‘mass’ rallies at
which empty slogans – We Go Win! – are shouted at party supporters.

Like Iwu before
him, Jega doesn’t seem particularly concerned about the views of
ordinary voters. We just have to comply with his agenda. And even if
you registered to vote in 2007, you will be disenfranchised if you
don’t present yourself for registration in Nigeria within a narrow
period of 14 days.

Jega’s INEC no
doubt consulted itself when settling the electoral timetable. But just
like its predecessor, there has been little indication of readiness to
accept contributions from ordinary voters, such as: “That fourteen-day
period will clash with haj …”. Once again it was: “We have decided
what’s best. We’re not interested in what you have to say. Just be
quiet, listen and obey.” Given how little time there is, one must try
to be charitable about this type of attitude. Still, it is to be hoped
that the dictates of time won’t turn our electoral process into one in
which we, the voters, feature only as a tiresome inconvenience.

It has been a
winter of strikes in South Africa in 2010. The World Cup opened under
the darkening clouds of strike threats from Eskom’s workers. Eskom is
South Africa’s equivalent of NEPA. I appreciate that many Nigerians
will comment that NEPA workers have no need to go on strike since,
judging by the daily interruptions in the supply of Nigerian
electricity, they seem to be on perpetual strike.

Those cumulus
clouds dissipated so that the world’s soccer fans could enjoy a
memorable African world cup. But, they returned in a darker form, laced
with thunder and lightning, culminating in the storm of a three week
public worker strike. Black and white teachers of government-owned
schools, nurses of government-owned hospitals and sundry other
officials united to down their tools in support of an 8.6% increase in
their wages and a 1,000 Rands (N21,069 ) monthly housing allowance.

Consumer price
inflation in South Africa is less than 4% and is expected to remain
below 6% until 2012. Mr. Zwelinzima Vavi, secretary general of the
Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), justified those
demands by contrasting the huge gap between the wages of his union
members and the heads of South Africa’s government departments,
parliamentarians, and ministers. My impression is that a public school
teacher earns at least 120,000 Rands (N2.53 million ) per annum while
the director-general in the Ministry of Education earns close to 1
million Rands.

The strike has been suspended because the government has offered a wage increase of 7.5% and an 800 Rand housing allowance.

Violence and a
display of indifference to human suffering has marked this strike. Some
teachers who wanted to assist their students acquire their daily dose
of education were beaten. Babies died. They were simply “collateral
damage” in the quest of 1.3 million workers for decent wages in one
African country.

I was far from
impressed by this whole episode. Yet, I have to assume that the
unionized workers could do with the pay increase. Still, we in Africa
have to ask ourselves some questions? Can workers strike their way to
prosperity?

The South African
government or any other African government granting real wage increases
has to pay for those wage increases. Perpetual real wage increases,
therefore, lead to higher taxes or less investment by the government in
infrastructure necessary for South Africa’s future or cuts in social
grants for the unemployed and the poor. No doubt, many yearning for the
fabled communal equality of poor African villages, as well as Marxists
and communists, will hail the prospect of higher taxes on Africa’s
minute class of privileged souls. The smaller the number of Africans
able to afford brandy, books, and Benzs, the happier we shall be! Keep
on dreaming!! Government workers in rich countries are comfortable
because their tax payers are employed by successful businesses, big and
small, which themselves pay lots of company tax. Taxes rise in a
sustainable manner if, and only if, the tax-collector’s herd of
tax-payers gets fatter. Vampires do not like corpses. So, ironically
and unwittingly, Cosatu’s quest for decent wages is a search to
increase the size and profitability of Africa’s capitalists.

Trust South
Africa’s Chinese textile factory owners to expose this irony. The town
of Newcastle in Kwa-Zulu Natal, burdened with a 60% unemployment rate,
mines coal and has a Chinese Chamber of Commerce comprising small
garment factory owners. They pay their workers anywhere between 250
Rands (N5,267 ) per week and 500 Rands (N10,534 ) per week to produce
clothes that compete against imports of Chinese made clothes. The
garment workers unions demanded that all workers be paid the legal
minimum weekly wage of 324 Rands and sought to close 85 factories
employing 9000 workers that did not comply with the law.

The South African
Chinese capitalists pointed out that they could not earn a profit if
they applied the legal minimum wage in their factories because of the
low prices offered by the communist China capitalists. The workers
insisted on their legal rights and the Newcastle Chinese capitalists
went on strike. They closed all their factories at once. Talks have
resumed now that the workers understand that the capitalist has no duty
to employ a worker simply to lose money.

Africa needs more capitalists like the Zulu Chinese factory owners
or Nigeria’s tycoons. South Africa’s condition of hyper unemployment
signifies an acute dearth of capitalist employers. African unions need
more capitalists; not more strikes.

Last week faraway
in America I was sitting at the dining table staring at my computer,
trying so hard not to logon to Facebook when the headline, Hostage
Situation in Silver Spring, caught my eye.

I was ten minutes
away from the epicentre of the action. A further quick read of the news
made me realise it was live and ongoing.

The reason I was
particularly interested in this news was that, two months ago we had a
hostage situation in Nigeria that involved fellow journalists from the
Nigerian Union of Journalists.

The Nigerian media
followed the news as closely as possible. The fate of the journalists
was unknown. The kidnappers’ actual location, despite their telephone
communications with the police, could not be tracked. News of the
kidnapping filled the airwaves, newspapers and blogosphere on a daily
basis – not because kidnapping was a rare occurrence – but because
those in this hostage situation were journalists.

I quickly tuned to
NBC 4, the local TV channel to watch the event unfold. A lone gunman
had stormed the headquarters of the Discovery Channel in downtown
Silver Spring and held three hostages. Commercials and other regular
programmes were put on hold as information spewed off my television to
help the public understand the full picture of the situation.

Back home we would
be inundated with unverifiable speculations and uncontrollable panic
would take over, but here, though there was panic, the situation was
firmly under control.

The security
apparatus was not ill equipped or ill trained to handle hostage
situations or any emergency situation for that matter.

In few seconds, the
gunman was named – James Lee, a 43-year-old Asian male with a long
history of discontentment with Discovery Channel for not caring enough
about the environment and the planet. To many, he was an environmental
militant; something close to what we have in the Niger Delta, but with
a twist.

A picture of him
soon surfaced. Authorities sealed off the downtown Silver Spring and
all manner of security forces were deployed to rescue innocent people.
County police,

ATF, fire
department, FBI agents- with bomb sniffing dogs, bomb detonating
robots, fire trucks, handguns, rifles, binoculars, bullet proof vests
and masked snipers swarmed the place like bees to a hive.

My hopes for the
lives of those taken hostage was high as soon as I realised the gunman
was talking to a negotiator because I knew there were rescue plans
going on off camera. This was a different security force I was seeing
in operation, tactically ever ready for a day like this. They weren’t
scrambling for a game plan on the day of emergency; they have had
drills and simulations that prepared them for James Lee.

The county police
chief, Thomas Manger, did not go about begging an untrained public to
help him rescue the hostages or engaging in job-saving PR mission like
the Nigerian ex-police chief did.

During the
kidnapping of the journalists in Nigeria it became obvious that our
police force only knew how to threaten, extract bribes from ordinary
citizens and carry out extra judicial killings.

The Police Force
was scrambling around, constantly lying to the public that they were
handling the hostage situation well, whereas they did not know what to
do. Nigeria has lost hundreds of lives to hostage takers yet there
still is no concrete security plan in place to militate against the
least sophisticated kidnap.

I could only
imagine the dollar amounts used in purchasing all the rescue equipment
I was seeing on TV as well as the training most of the officers
handling the situation had received, and I bet no matter how outrageous
that dollar amount was, it did not amount to what a Nigerian police
chief has in his personal account or what his boys and girls extort
from us.

Watching on TV, the
discipline of the officers in this rescue operation was obvious. By 5pm
we were told the drama was over, authorities had taken care of
business. At about 4.48pm. Chief of police, Manger, announced that his
men, were watching James Lee via camera, and they were close enough to
hear what he was saying and see what he was doing. “At one point, the
suspect . . . pulled out the handgun that he came in with and pointed
it at one of the hostages at that point, our tactical units moved in
and shot the suspect.”

The kidnapped
journalists were released not because of any special rescue efforts by
the police force but by the “special grace of God” as we always say in
Nigeria. The kidnappers released their victims of their own volition,
yet the police lied to the general public that they were rescued. Till
now, no clear explanation has been given about what took place; we
don’t know who the kidnappers were or what has happened to them.

Hopefully the new police IG will help sanitise a Force that is in need of a fundamental overhaul. So welcome, chief.

Bayelsa, Benue, Ebonyi, Edo, Imo, Kaduna, Kwara, Lagos and Ogun: what do these states all have in common?

They have gone to the capital market to raise bonds ostensibly for various projects.

Before we go on,
let us define what a bond is. In finance, a bond is a debt security in
which the authorised issuer owes the holders a debt, and, depending on
the terms of the bond, is obliged to pay the interest, and to repay the
principal in the future, when the bond is said to mature. In English, a
bond is when you owe someone and repay with interest at an agreed date.

The idea behind the
government issuing bonds to finance large scale infrastructure projects
really took off in the United States at the end of World War II. Unlike
the pre-war years when there were many people who were willing to
accept next to nothing just to get some work, America had emerged from
the war as the only rich country in the world, and there were debts to
be bought. However, by the late 1950s and early 1960s, large, high
profile defaults on bonds particularly in the road construction sector
contributed to a perception that bonds were risky business.

We must however,
consider the two scenarios here, America pre-war (that is immediately
after The Great Depression), and America post-war (when there were a
lot of rich people). Then consider what is happening in Nigeria.

The first scenario
is what applies largely to Nigeria. Nigeria has a lot of able-bodied
young men who in reality constitute a vast pool of cheap labour.

Borrowing large
sums under the pretext of paying for projects that can be undertaken by
these people is in reality a non-starter.

I admit though,
there is indeed a need to tap into the cheap funds, which the bond
market supposedly represents, but that is if, and only if, the money
would be used for the purposes advertised. But the question has to be
asked about securities. What exactly would guarantee those bonds? How
do the various state governments intend to pay back the people who buy
the bonds?

Most importantly, WHY is it NOW that the state governments are one by one beginning to rush to the bond market?

A few years ago,
the Federal Ministry of Finance under Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala instituted a
process for handling bonds. A facility known as the Irrevocable
Standing Payment Order was instituted for all states, in the event that
a state could not make its bonds self paying. This means that states
that cannot pay back their bonds would have the money (plus interest)
deducted from their monthly federal allocations in the case of a
default.

You see, Nigeria is
a rent economy where the states do nothing but wait until the end of
the month (or is it beginning?) to receive their monthly allocations,
then go and share amongst each other. What becomes of such money is
anyone’s guess. The only state that has managed to extricate itself
from this vicious cycle is Lagos State. Lagos State has gone the route,
which the rest of the country really needs to go; one, which Edo State
has begun to slowly go down- taxes. If there were a proper and
efficient tax system in place, the issue of bonds and their payment
from the federal allocations would be a non-starter.

In recent times, strong signals have emerged to indicate that Nigeria is broke.

The excess crude
account created by the Obasanjo administration has been all but wiped
away, oil prices have not exactly been in favour of what is laid down
in the budget, and our legislators have been taking a lot more than
should be their fair share of our national income. This means that
there is a distinct possibility that the allocations from the federal
government to the states are beginning to dry up.

Now, given that our
state honchos are people who know how to do nothing other than
appropriate funds, staying in government would for them be paramount.
For those who have reached the end of their constitutionally allotted
tenures, anointing a ‘boy’ who would perform two functions is
important. The two functions are protecting their tenures from scrutiny
(remember Celestine Omehia in Rivers State), and to ensure that they
would still have a straw nestling deep in the government coffers
(remember Bola Tinubu in Lagos State). Ensuring all of this costs
money. And as we said, it is quite possible, that the only source of
money that they know is drying up.

Solution? Go into
the bond market, and take bonds that will over time be paid for with
future allocations from the Federal Government. How else can one
explain the mad rush by someone like Gbenga Daniels in Ogun State to
raise N100billion in bonds at all costs just a few months to the end of
his tenure?

How sustainable this is, is anyone’s guess, but the reality is this:
Nigeria can ill afford to go into more debt for any trivial reason, let
alone the avarice of serving government officials who are looking to
raise money in order to ensure that they remain in a position to steal
even more money.

A major problem
with the Nigerian oil industry can be traced to its regulatory
mechanisms. While we should assume that such mechanisms could actually
help secure efficient operations of the sector, they have led the
sector into more murky waters.

For a number of
years, the Nigerian president doubled as the minister of petroleum.
Busy on many fronts, a number of issues must have gone without strict
oversight. Because the president was also the minister, the office had
more powers assigned to it. Some experts believe that because of this
setting, the minister of petroleum was allowed wide scope for
discretion and decision-making powers, without commensurate systems of
review and accountability.

The sector is
disparately regulated, mainly from the Ministry of Environment and that
of Petroleum. How coherent these two perform and how their powers
overlap or synergise are issues for another day. But there are many
areas we ought to worry about. One area of concern is that the oil
sector has created some of the most critical environmental and health
problems for the Niger Delta and the entire nation.

Who is the
governmental watchdog for the Nigerian environment? The answer to that
question may seem obvious. Do you say it is the ministry of
environment? You would be right. But that would be only to a point.

When we had a
Federal Environmental Protection Agency (FEPA) as a subset of the
Federal Ministry of Environment, the answer would have been right to a
larger extent than it is now. After the demise of FEPA, another agency
with a suspiciously long name emerged in 2007. We are talking of the
National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency
(NESREA).

Let me confess that
I had to visit their website to be sure I got that name right! The
duties of NESREA, as stated in the Act by which it was set up, are
lofty and should build confidence in the agency. However, there are two
key areas that raise serious concern. And they are related.

First area of
concern is the composition of the governing council of the agency.
Article 3 (viii) of the NESREA Act of 2007 specifies a membership slot
in the council for a representative of the oil exploratory and
production companies in Nigeria.

Why, we ask, is
this space created for the oil companies to regulate our Nigerian
environment? We note that apart from a slot allowed for the
Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), there is a provision for
the Minister of Environment to appoint “three other persons to
represent public interest.” There is no clue in the Act as to who these
three would be and on what basis the minister would select them. Would
there be representatives of fishers, farmers, or pastoralists? Would
there be youth whose future we are already squandering?

We have picked on
the objectionable inclusion of the oil corporations in the regulation
of our environment because these entities, while baking the petrodollar
pie, are also guilty of causing severe damage to the environment and to
the psyche of our peoples.

The submission of
this writer is that the oil companies should be in the dock and not on
the bench in hallowed chambers of environmental and sundry justice.
What they have done in the oil communities is nothing short of criminal.

The second issue,
which, as already mentioned, relates to the first objection above, is
the stipulation of Article 7 (d) of the NESREA Act. This section states
that the agency shall “enforce compliance with regulations on the
importation, exportation, production, distribution, storage, sale, use,
handling and disposal of hazardous chemicals and waste other than in
the oil and gas sector.”

It is clear from
the above that a factor has been inserted here to confer a certain
status on the oil companies that keeps them away from being regulated
by an agency that sets environmental standards in Nigeria and which is
supposed to enforce regulations in the land.

With the biggest
environmental abuser excluded from the purview of NESREA, the agency
must be truly and fully handicapped to play the role it ought to play
in regulating the environment. Consider what it would mean if the
United States FEPA had no say about how oil companies handle and
dispose of chemicals and wastes in the oil and gas sector.

This exclusion from
regulation of the oil companies is shocking and scandalous. However,
what makes it more objectionable is the fact that these companies,
which continue to commit heinous environmental and human rights abuses
in the oil fields and communities, are also elevated to the seat of
judgement over other lesser polluters of the Nigerian environment.

This is a sad
commentary on environmental regulation in Nigeria. It is unacceptable
and needs urgent re-examination and correction. A very basic tenet of
justice holds that an offender cannot be a judge in his own case. The
unholy wedlock between regulatory agencies and the oil and gas
companies is ripe for a divorce.

Perhaps, you will
tell us that there are other agencies that regulate the oil and gas
companies. You could list the Directorate of Petroleum Resources as
one. That would make a good joke if you were on a comedy train. The DPR
that is unable to tell us how much oil is extracted from the wells and
keeps a blind eye or raises hands controlled by political levers cannot
take the place of a central environmental regulatory agency.

NESREA needs urgent attention to help close the dangerous gaps created by her blind spots.

The recently
released election timetable by the Independent National Electoral
Commission (INEC) shows that nationwide elections will kick off on
January 15 with that of the National Assembly, while the contest for
president is to hold on January 22. The election of State Assembly
members and governors is slated for January 29.

So far we think
the Commission has been able to win the confidence of the majority of
Nigerians most especially because many see the chairman Attahiru Jega,
a former university teacher and activist, as a credible person who can
conduct a process the nation can be proud of. The step to achieving
this started last week with the release of the election schedule.

Now the critical
stage is what we are entering into. It is one that is going to be
trying and will test the patience of many – political parties,
politicians, the electorate and even the international community which
is watching with keen interest. It is important that the dates have
taken into cognisance the need to have time after the elections and
between the swearing in date so as to give time to deal decisively with
matters that may arise from election disputes.

We think it is
wise and important to put a stop to the practise where a candidate is
declared elected and sworn in, but after spending more than a year in
office he/she is declared unelected and another candidate is sworn in,
thus creating a situation where a usurper is allowed to preside over
political affairs in the country. We hope in the time between when
elections are conducted from January 15 and 29 and when winners are
expected to be sworn in on May 29, 2011, a clear period of about four
months that all petitions would have been cleared in the courts for the
rightful winner to be sworn in. This would save the country the long
rigmarole of incumbents using government resources and time to defend
their election, thus denying the electorate the benefit of enjoying the
dividends of democracy.

The electoral
commission’s timetable also gave all registered political parties from
September 11 to October 30 to hold their primaries and choose their
candidates for the various offices. Of course the conducting of these
would involve the Commission, which has to certify them free and fair.
This is where it has to draw the line so as not to find itself immersed
in the murky partisan squabbles that political parties are wont to
engage in. INEC has to ensure that its officials who go a monitoring
will, like Caesar’s wife, be above board.

This process is
like a minefield which if not well managed by those with integrity will
mar the reputation of the Commission, and this would not be good. The
nation has invested too much time and faith in this election to allow
it to go the way of that of 2007.

However, the one
issue that gives us much concern is the period given for the
registration of voters. The timetable says this should hold between
November1-14. This means the Commission, by its own admission is hoping
to register 70 million voters across the country in 14 days! This will
surely constitute the eighth wonder of the world were it to be
accomplished and a feat that we fear may be the first great hitch in
this journey. We are at a loss as to how the Commission which at the
time of writing this has not got delivery of a single set of the
computers it hopes to use in the exercise, thinks it will be able to
meet this deadline.

This optimism is amazing in a country with an infrastructure that
leaves much to be desired. How the Commission hopes to compile a
comprehensive and credible voter list in 14 days is a question we would
welcome more enlightenment on so that we too can fully share in the
happy sentiment.

Auwal is 27, and
sells kola nuts. His heels have worn through his flip-flops. There is
no accurate way of measuring the distances he walks everyday peddling
kola nuts, but 10 kilometres is not a bad guess. He has a wife and
children back home, as well as aged parents he has to assist from time
to time. The combined value of his tray and the kola nuts he sells is
about N2,000. He lives from his tray.

Musa mai tabur has
a small table at the gate of the uncompleted building where he has
lived for a number of years. He is not sure of his age, only that he is
over 30 because he was born when General Obasanjo was head of state. He
does not have to trek long distances to sell his wares. On his table
are sweets, detergents, pure water, cigarettes, mosquito coils and a
variety of other things. He travels back home once in a while to see
his family. His entire stock is worth about N5,000. He lives from his
table.

Danjuma is a
teenager. He shows absolutely no fear as he darts in and out of
traffic, selling chewing gum to motorists along the highway. He is not
sure of his age, and frankly cannot be bothered. Whether he gets to eat
something each day depends on how much chewing gum he is able to sell.
He has no table, no tray and no wares of his own. He only gets a
commission on whatever he is able to sell each day. He has no
dependants yet, just fighting the brutal battle to survive by selling
chewing gum, come rain, come shine. He lives from meal to meal.

Ibro sells Gala.
His favourite spot is just before the traffic lights where vehicles
stop for a minute or two. His best customers are the harried and hungry
passengers in taxis and buses who buy Gala and canned drinks for a meal
on the go. Ibro is ever on the lookout for municipal authorities that
may arrest him and seize his carton of Gala and drinks. He has been
arrested many times before and his goods ‘forfeited’ to government. But
he comes back to the same spot as soon as he can raise enough capital
to stock up. The total value of his wares is about N4,000. He is
married with a child and sends money to his siblings whenever he can.
He lives from his carton.

Buba knows every
corner of the city. On his bicycle selling ice cream and bottled water,
he pedals as far as he can and only gives up when he is overcome by
sheer exhaustion. The bicycle does not belong to him, nor the ice cream
and bottled water. His is just to sell for a commission at the end of
the day. On good days, he earns between N600 to N700. But on very wet
days, he earns just enough for a meal to make up for the tens of
kilometres he pedals daily, rain or shine. He came to the city because
there was nothing to inherit from his family’s farm. Now he sends money
back home to his wife and children.

He lives from his icebox.

Danbala is not yet
10. His father is a security man, while his mother sells tuwo at
whatever construction site she can find. Along with his father, mother,
two stepmothers and other siblings, they live in the one room gatehouse
of the house where his father works as security man. For Danbala,
school is out of the question. He collects boxes of matches from Musa
mai tebur for sale to motorists and pedestrians. There is no pay and no
commission. He takes whatever Musa offers, grateful for a morsel or two
from Musa’s tuwo. His entire being is programmed to fighting the ever
present pangs of hunger to which he was born and from which there is no
probable escape. He lives from errand to errand.

These are real life people from a city in the North. The names may
be Emeka, Dele, Akpan or Joseph. The goods they sell may be ‘pure
water’, recharge cards or newspapers. All across Nigeria’s towns and
cities are millions of under-aged children and youth in the grip of
hunger and poverty. They live a brutish life, eking livelihoods from
trays, cartons, baskets and iceboxes, weaving through traffic and
defying death at every turn. They live from day to day.

I have already
anticipated the disdain with which the word “liver” will register in
the reader’s mind. Liver indeed! Of all the choice parts of meat that
one can eat and enjoy, why would anyone choose liver! Because it has
potential that’s why; potential for hot satisfying moorishness if
cooked just right.

For a few moments,
banish all the associations that your mind makes when it encounters the
word, like cod liver or food prescribed for geriatrics; cubes of
leather in party fried rice; meat in “poverty stew”; dejected looking
airline pate that tastes like plastic.

Think instead of
new yam, out of the ground for a few weeks and not so very bitter
anymore, just a little hint of bitterness in the back of the tongue,
not as flavourful as old yam, but texturally nice; falling away when
overcooked or cooked with a little salt.

Some people think a cube of sugar in the water for boiling the yam improves its taste. I disagree.

Now think of my
liver stew to go with new yam on a Saturday morning. This is one of the
only meals that I think back to my childhood and am totally,
completely, unabashedly nostalgic about.

On Saturday
mornings, my mother would cut up plenty of onions. This is the secret
of good liver stew; heaps of onions. The way the onions are cut matters
immensely; not chopped but cut in slivers, thin slivers, moderate
slivers, fat slivers because textures matter. Thin slivers will merge,
moderate slivers will curl appealingly in the stew, fat slivers will be
highlights, translucent with a slight bite.

The type of onion
also matters; not white but purple. One also needs some julienned green
pepper, one or two hot peppers chopped and some grated garlic and
ginger.

I tweaked my
mother’s recipe a little by first quartering half of my onion, and
putting it in the oven with half a leek, sprinkled with olive oil for
about thirty minutes. Waste of gas you might say, but this gives the
stew a fuller charred sweet onion flavour since roasted onions are
sweet and mellowed.

From the oven, I
transfer the roasted onions to a thick-bottomed frying pan with more
olive oil and some butter, along with my slivers of raw onion, my
peppers, garlic, ginger and salt and stir everything over moderate heat
for about twelve minutes. The frying mixture has to be moved around so
that the onions don’t burn or go brown.

My liver goes in the stew with more stirring and some salt.

One can’t dare to
leave it and go in the other room! It first greys on the outside
firming up, but the inside remains blood red. With more stirring (about
five minutes) and the gradual addition of small amounts of water, a
stew is formed. I add two bay leaves and some thyme. One needs to keep
watch over it to make sure that there is no sign of blood in the meat,
that the stew doesn’t dry up, and that it cooks to the texture of well
cooked red meat.

This does not
equate to endless cooking but to a point where the liver is both well
cooked and still soft. The stage after this is hard, leather like
texture. The only way to do it right is just to be vigilant. One good
marker; if one’s sense of smell is acute is that the liver will be
perfectly cooked when there is no smell of blood.

Some people are put
off not only by liver but also by onions, so that the very thought of
combining the two is torture. But I guarantee that even the avid hater
will change his mind once he tastes the liver, cooked, rested in the
umber coloured stew.

The other way to accompany my stew apart from freshly boiled slabs of yam is thickly cut bread dipped with fingers.