Stop the blames game

By Josef Omorotionmwan
THIS column today is dedicated to two Nigerians – Master Daniel Ohikhena, that wizkid who flew from Benin City to Lagos without paying a kobo; and Alhaji Danbaba Suntai, the Executive Governor of Taraba State, who travelled to hell and back.

The blames game has always been with us. We blame everybody and everything for our failures. Until recently, there was no natural death. Every death was attributed to witchcraft. Meanwhile, these people have never seen a stethoscope and no matter how ill they were, as long as they still had some breath in them, they still struggled to the cassava farm, sometimes after swallowing two tablets of expired panadol.

Yet, when we come face to face with actual wizardry, we throw away all its advantages. The penultimate weekend, 13-year-old Daniel Ohikhena hid inside the wheel of an Arik airplane from Benin City to Lagos. This is a great feat for which that wiz-kid deserves an award.

[caption id="attachment_410831" align="alignnone" width="412"] Daniel Oikhena[/caption]

Were he an American, the following day, he would have been in the White House, early enough to have lunch with the President. From there, he would have been dispatched to the best school around where he would have been carefully nurtured to greatness. But here we are, the little boy is at the very centre of the blames game and his mother is being hunted all over the place. The mother has given enough lead on him to enable us discover his latent qualities. He tries his hands on everything electrical. This JSS I student started his early education in a private school, but because of lack of funds, he has found himself in the public school system. Under a good system, the boy would have been whisked off to the Federal Government Academy for gifted children or even the Defence Academy, for further development.

But here, he must be punished for attempting to expose the porous nature of our security network. The blames machine is now on him and his mother. Meanwhile, no one is talking about the Nigerian Airports Authority and its security lapses. It is possible that rather than face the task of providing security at the airport, the security officers were elsewhere looking for small-small paje.

Why are we challenging God? As it were, Governor Danbaba Suntai of Taraba State fell from the sky. Others who fell like that died but Suntai did not die. Is it not clear that God has a purpose for sparing his life?

Even in his illness, Suntai has kept clearly within the letters and spirit of the Nigerian Constitution. A combined reading of Sections 189 and 190 which deal with the incapacitation and subsequent absence of the Governor, will show that Suntai has fulfilled every aspect of the Constitution. Section 190 requires that: “Whenever the Governor transmits to the Speaker of the House of Assembly a written declaration that he is proceeding on vacation or that he is otherwise unable to discharge the functions of his office, until he transmits to the Speaker of the House of Assembly a written declaration to the contrary such functions shall be discharged by the Deputy Governor as Acting Governor”.

Clearly, anything that is amended is patched. All those who expect Suntai to still be as strong as he was before the accident, as the Taraba State House of Assembly is doing, is ungrateful to God. That is why the Assembly is now going outside the Constitution to make the extra demand that he must come and address them as a precondition for his resuming duty.

We expected the Deputy Governor, Umar Garba, to welcome his boss wholeheartedly and assist him to serve out the remaining part of his tenure, but rather, having tasted the office, Garba started nurturing private ambition on how to unseat the man.

It is undermining of faith in our system for a man to be kind enough to bring you on board to serve as his deputy and as soon as he has an accident you begin to wish him dead.

In sharp contrast, this is where we have a profound admiration for President Goodluck Jonathan. While the Abuja-induced war raged in Bayelsa State, he remained calm and calculated and did not move near the door to the office of Governor Diepreye Alamieyeseigha until he was finally evicted.

When the late President Umaru Yar’Adua became critically ill, Jonathan remained a reliable ally, even when the man was virtually vegetable. We are sure that if Yar’Adua had returned to Nigeria half as healthy as Suntai is now, Jonathan would have faithfully assisted him to serve out his tenure. Like Shakespeare, Jonathan believes that: “If fortune would have me king, let fortune crown me without my stir”. And it is paying off, isn’t it?

Why is the Taraba State House of Assembly becoming over-bearing to the extent of standing the Constitution on its head? They certainly cannot feign total ignorance of the provisions of Section 189(1) (a), (2), (3), (4) and (5) of the Constitution, which set out the full procedure for declaring a Governor incapacitated. Why are they jumping the gun? Is it not clear that the antics of the House of Assembly, notwithstanding, Suntai remains the duly elected Governor of Taraba State? Garba must wait for his turn. And the back door is locked.

The Suntai case has parallels elsewhere: As President of the US, Woodrow Wilson became incapacitated by partial paralysis and was unable to cope with the responsibilities of his office, his wife took over effectively and the country was able to survive the simmering crisis.

Again, President Dwight Eisenhower was twice disabled between 1955 and 1957 by a heart attack and a stroke. A Presidential Assistant, Sherman Adams, took over his responsibilities. However, in 1967, the 25th Amendment was ratified and this gave the Vice-President definite roles, including the assumption of the President’s office in the event of incapacitation.

Suntai is on course and we wish him well.

 

Merit, quota system and all that

By Josef Omorotionmwan
OUR sense of democracy may be warped. There is still a large group of Nigerian youths who are deprived of freedom to learn because of poverty or prejudice or the absence of adequate educational facilities.

And as citizens of a democratic society whose moral premise is that each individual has a right to that education that will permit him to achieve his maximum growth as a person, our duty is to work for, and support, whatever measures of reconstruction we deem necessary to remove the social obstacles to freedom of learning.

It is morally binding on us all to study these problems and proffer solutions to them. The world over, all universities worthy of the name are already doing so.

It admits of open failure that more than 53 years of our nominal independence, we are still engaged at the level of the elemental politics of cut-off marks to our secondary and tertiary institutions of learning.

Never has one had a better cause to doubt if the government is still making efforts to “direct its policy towards ensuring that there are equal and adequate educational opportunities at all levels”, as enshrined in Section 18 of the country’s Constitution. In our search here, no approach is entirely wrong.

Sometimes, we talk of merit as if that is the panacea to all the problems besetting our educational system – just as our first generation universities are currently doing, when they refuse to bend backwards a little to accept candidates who have scored lower than the cut-off mark of 200 points.

Invariably, what this does is to open itself to the opportunity for a university to accept say 1000 students from Abia State while allowing only three students from say Zamfara State.

It does violence to the principle of Federal Character, which originally realised that the country should be treated as a unit of development in which the strongest shall uplift the weakest and they shall both move on together.

At the base line, we have this year’s table of scores at the National Common Entrance Examination for all the states of the Federation, which has fully accepted the principle of federal character and the inherent concepts of quota and compensatory treatment.

This table shows that while candidates from Zamfara and Yobe states could be admitted with as low as two points, their counterparts from Anambra State can only be admitted with 139 points and higher.

Because of the accident of geography, that candidate from Anambra State who scores 138 points has to watch helplessly as he is unaccepted in the Unity Schools while his friend from Zamfara State with two points proudly walks into the same Unity Schools.

The quota system such as we are faced with here has been attacked at various fronts, including the fact that the presence of less able and ill-prepared students in a class cannot but retard and depress the level of classroom teaching and participation. An instructor who wishes to reach all his students would have no choice but to seek the lowest common denominator, thus further sinking the standard of our already deteriorating educational system.

It is time to invite Albert Einstein (1879-1955): “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its entire life believing that it is stupid”. Our Northern youths are not stupid. Neither can we accept the sweeping generalisation that they are of lower Intelligence Quotient, IQ, but what must be done immediately is for the Northern leaders to sit down and rearrange their priorities and pay greater attention to education.

For instance, salvation remains a personal issue. The sponsor of many people to the holy land on pilgrimage may itself not be offensive, but it becomes rather lamentable alongside the continued poor performance of their children in schools because of poor funding.

A society without problems is a non-existent society. There must be problems and there must be people to solve them. We have demonstrated that whichever mode of admission is accepted, there are associated problems. Individual institutions must be left with the task of working out internal mechanisms for dealing with the problems associated with their choices!

The cure for democracy is more democracy. We cannot wish away the problems associated with the candidates eliminated by the two extremes of merit and the quota system. We must realise that no matter what we do, everyone cannot get placement in the Ivy League Schools.

All the same, government has a duty to ensure that there is a classroom for every student to sit and a teacher to teach him. Here, we think that there is no alternative to the provision of community colleges where there will be open enrolment for all.

Yes, what we are discussing here is capital intensive, and highly so. In any event, this lofty goal is attainable, if only we can plan more and steal less.

In this journey, we shall not be deterred by the not-so-easily attainable goal of full employment, which would include the provision of jobs to graduates from the system.

The goal of full employment is laudable and it is an integral part of the responsibilities of a good government. But where this is not immediately attainable, as we now have, we must also contend with the obvious fact that education, too, has its intrinsic value.

Besides the employment value of education, an educated citizenry is easier to govern and in the final analysis, for society at large, an educated prostitute is better than her illiterate counterpart because among other things, the former would be more likely to observe the rules of hygiene and less likely to be a liberal donor of sexually-transmitted diseases. An educated taxi driver is also better than the uneducated one for obvious reasons.

Need we remind the Federal Government of the familiar cliché: If you think education is expensive, try ignorance? Time is of the essence!

 

State of the Nation Address

By Josef Omorotionmwan
SOME have asked: "Who wants the President to appear on national television annually to deliver one more boring speech?" Such people see the State of the Nation Address as an avenue for the President to blow hot air on us for a whole hour. We think otherwise.

The State of the Nation Address is a unique opportunity for the President to x-ray the political, economic and social health of the nation. It presents the President with a golden opportunity to showcase himself and his administration's policies and programmes to the world.

In an election year, for instance, there is no telling how many campaign points an incumbent can rub into an address. Properly utilized, the President will soon find that the State of the Nation Address is the best marking scheme he can ever have.

Rather than seeking to kill the Bill, we think the President should be the one lobbying for its passage. He needs it. We need it.

The State of the Nation Address Bill as already passed by both Houses of the National Assembly requires the President to deliver the Address to a joint sitting of the National Assembly on the first legislative day of July, every year.

The President has since refused to assent to the Bill, advancing several reasons. The President's refusal is based, in the main, on the provisions of Section 67(1) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999, which states: "The President may attend any joint meeting of the National Assembly or any meeting of either House of the National Assembly, either to deliver an address on national affairs, including fiscal measures, or to make such statement on the policy of government as he considers to be of national importance."

We must assume that we did not hear the President complain that the proposed law is a duplication of the provisions of Section 67 of the 1999 Constitution. Otherwise, all other objections raised by him would simply collapse.

A combined reading of Section 1(3) of the 1999 Constitution, which provides: "If any other law is inconsistent with the provisions of this Constitution, this Constitution shall prevail, and that other law shall to the extent of the inconsistency be void"; with Section 67 aforementioned; and the text of the Bill, will easily show that there is no inconsistency whatsoever. What we have is complementality.

If we were to accept the argument that the Bill is a duplication of the provisions of Section 67, the Constitution would not still frown at that. The Bill would be in furtherance of the provisions of Section 67. In this particular case, the Bill would seek to give Section 67 some biting teeth by providing specific time frame within which the State of the Nation Address should be delivered.

It is instructive that the Constitution does not frown at duplications as shown in Section 1(3); it forbids inconsistencies. If the lawmakers were attempting to deny the President an opportunity to address a joint sitting of the National Assembly as provided in Section 67, then, the Constitution would have so boldly declared to prevent them.

With the full realisation that a law without sanction is not only a toothless bulldog, but it is also as dead as the dodo, possessing only moral suasion, the lawmakers went ahead to provide that in the event of the President's default in presenting the Address, he shall be compelled to appear before them to offer explanation.

We disagree with the President that the language of the Bill here is coercive. Our counsel is that whoever wants to separate a fight should first seek to prevent a quarrel and whoever hates the language of coercion must learn to comply in good time.

However, unless the State of the Nation Address is to be nothing but a cruel fraud, the President must be given ample opportunity and enough time to prepare for, and deliver, the Address.

This is where we are inclined to believe that the President's demand that the "Address be delivered to a joint sitting of the National Assembly within 30 days of the commencement of the legislative year" should be preferred to the lawmakers' more restrictive prescription of "the first legislative day in July".

What should not be accepted is the President's attempt to whittle down the effect of the proposed law by suggesting that the Address could be delivered by proxy.

Hear the President: "Where the President is unable to present the address in accordance with the Act, the President shall in writing inform the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives and either designate the Vice President to present the address on his behalf or transmit to the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the text of the address."

How did we get to the current impasse? Apparently, by this politics of confrontation, the President has perhaps unwittingly boxed himself to a tight corner. Right from the time when the Bill was published in the Official Gazette or in the National Assembly Journal to the Committee stage where there were public hearings in both Houses, to plenary in the two Chambers, there was ample opportunity for the President to make his input.

Now the Bill has been passed in both Chambers. It is too late in the day to retrieve it and begin to incorporate the amendments sought. The Rules of the Houses would frown at that. An escape route must be sought.

There are possibilities: Either the President assents to the Bill as passed by the National Assembly or the National Assembly should take the President's objections as a veto of the Bill, in which case, they should override the President's veto so that the Bill can become law. Immediately after that, the President's observations should be submitted as amendments to the Act.

The State of the Nation address is an idea whose time has come!

 

Let who is dying die quickly

By Josef Omorotionmwan
WE see aspects of misinformation, and sometimes, outright disinformation, in the Edo hanging row.

When we woke up on Tuesday, June 25, 2013, the newsstand was awash with the news, "Four death row prisoners - Chima Ejiofor, Daniel Nsofor, Osarenmwinda Aigbokhai and Richard Igagu - in Edo State, were, yesterday, executed, despite their pending appeals at the Court of Appeal."

[caption id="attachment_329854" align="alignnone" width="412"] *Oshiomhole[/caption]

The veiled impression is created here that the cases of these suspects were hurriedly terminated at the High Court level and they were led to the gallows, without exhausting the judicial remedies of going to the Courts of Appeal and the Supreme Court.

The truth is that the cases went through the thorough judicial process from the High Court to all the appeal processes and the verdict everywhere was death sentence. This was 16 years ago.

Lately, though, the Legal Defense and Assistance Project, LEDAP, approached the Federal High Court, Benin City, on behalf of the condemned felons, arguing that "to execute them after 16 years of trauma, suspense and imminent death would amount to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment."

They asked the court to order the Edo State Governor to commute their death sentences to life imprisonment.

However, judgment was delivered against the felons by Justice A.M. Liman for lack of sufficient facts to substantiate the relief sought. LEDAP proceeded to the Court of Appeal in Benin City to appeal against the judgement and also to ask for stay of execution, pending the determination of the appeal.

Meanwhile, all the death row prisoners in the country (Association of Felons?) are, in the case of Godwin Pius & ors Vs. Governor of Abia State & ors, challenging the decision of the state governors to sign their execution warrants. LEDAP is representing the inmates in both appeals.

People must understand the division of the labour arrangement inherent in every execution exercise: State governors do not execute anybody.

The courts determine the criminal status of the individual; in the case of condemned felons, the Governor as the Chief Security Officer of the State, signs the death warrant; and it is the prison authorities that carry out the execution.

This clarification has become necessary against the backdrop of insinuations that the Edo condemned felons were executed by the Governor.

Those who sit in judgement also stand in judgement. Even the most humane and "non-barbaric countries" of the world, the home countries of the human rights activists, still visit the death sentence on certain classes of crime.

This is where the stance of the human rights advocates, particularly Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, soon borders on meddlesomeness for trying to prevent the execution of the judgements of the courts of competent jurisdiction.

As at now, any governor who refuses to sign a warrant of execution for a duly condemned felon reneges on his duties in just the same way that a chief executive who refuses to implement a law duly passed by the legislature commits an impeachable offence.

In the Edo hanging row, the human rights community may as well be fighting a good fight - that capital punishment is barbaric in this age. This column has argued relentlessly along the same line. But the human rights advocates are clearly in the wrong battle field.

The best time to prevent a death sentence and its execution is before the sentence is pronounced, not when the condemned felon is already being led down the alley, destined for the guillotine.

Capital punishment is not yet abolished in Nigeria. All those against it must proceed to the national and state assemblies with a view to   getting them to change the law so that capital punishment can be abolished.

To that extent, too, we see the current LEDAP battles raging at the Federal Courts of Appeal in Lagos and Benin City as wrongly situated. Capital punishment cannot be abolished through the back door.

Meanwhile, the human rights advocates are clever by half. They stick to the rights of the deviants without caring about what happens to the human rights of the innocent members of the law-abiding public whose right to life and the achievement of their potentials under the law are savagely terminated by the deviants.

The human right advocates must have in their fold, victimologists who will constantly remind them of the need to create a balance between criminology and victimology because there are human rights issues to be satisfied on either side.

When a person takes the law into his hands and brutally terminates the life of another, the system has a duty to bring the offender to justice. This should also be of great concern to human rights advocates.

It is the only way to reassure the victims' families that the law is fighting for them, thus averting the propensity for self-help and leaving the strong moral message that crime does not pay.

Justice delayed could be justice denied. It is still difficult to understand why the condemned felons have remained on death row for 16 whole years. There are aspects of double jeopardy here: instead of promptly executing the felons, you must first punish them in prison for 16 years before presenting them to the hangman, eh?

Again, this is reminiscent of the overall rot which Oshiomhole inherited in Edo State. Rather than attract opprobrium, the signing of the death warrants should portray the Governor as a man who is truly on a rescue mission; and a man who realises that in the process, the hard decisions must also be taken.

After all, this is not the first of its kind - those educational institutions that have now been revamped had been comatose for more than 30 years before his arrival, while those fantastic road networks that now adorn the entire state constituted death-traps.

Truly, the execution of a death sentence in Nigeria is not time-barred. But if the punishment for an offence is death, after due process of trial, let who is dying die quickly!

 

Sheltering African First Ladies

By Josef Omorotiomwan
THIS writer has been caught severally on the soft side of providing the good life for past leaders. During the debate at the Constituent Assembly on the pension scheme for past Presidents and Governors, I made this demand: “Hands up, all those who will be happy to see their former President driving a taxi or moonlighting as a charge-hand in a factory, trying to make ends meet”. There was not a single hand up.

I proceeded from there to posit to the Assembly that the only way to obviate that ugly situation is to devise a robust pension scheme for past Presidents and Governors.

We were travelling to the East to take a wife for my son (name withheld). On the way, I kicked off a discussion: “Suppose we get there to find that the head of the household, your prospective father-in law, is the one pounding the yam that we would eat, what would your reaction be?“ He retorted: “I will not continue with the marriage.

I will just go home.” When I asked why he would react that way, he quipped rather angrily: “Is it not clear that the only alternative to that would be to patiently enter into the marriage and gear up to be pounding for my wife when we are married? Why would I stay in a household that has no head?”

It gets even messier if you come into a village and you are told to wait a little because the Odionwere (village head) will soon return from where he went to tap rubber. What type of village will not cater for its head?

All the same, none of these flourishing arguments will sway even the most patriotic citizen to support the plan of the country’s First Lady apparently to build a hotel complex for herself with public funds.

Suddenly, Nigeria’s First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan, is asking for a whopping sum of N13 billion for the building of the headquarters of the African First Ladies Peace Centre, AFLPC.

Funny enough, the piece of land on which the edifice is to be sited had earlier been allocated to Hajia Turai Yar’Adua, Dame Patience Jonathan’s predecessor in office. It is now a subject of litigation between the two First Ladies. Hajia cannot see why land allocated to her should now be reallocated to Dame. Each of them asked for the land for a pet project. One thing is clear from this: First Ladies also cry. Hajia has approached the courts for interpretation.

[caption id="attachment_297433" align="alignnone" width="412"] Dame Patience Jonathan (2nd-l), African First Ladies and Heads of Delegation, Admiring the Model of the Permanent Secretariat of African First Ladies Peace Mission (AFLPM) in Abuja on Thursday (26/7/12). NAN Photo[/caption]

This was the ground on which the Senate Committee on FCT rejected an initial N4 billion draw-down on the project from the office of the First Lady. Hear the Chairman of the Senate Committee on the FCT, Senator Smart Adeyemi: “Due to the litigation in respect of the proposed plot of land, money cannot be accessed this year”.

This project has a number of question marks around it. One, it has no parallel anywhere in the world that government builds a hostel for conference participants. When countries, states or municipalities struggle for hosting rights of events, they do so for the business opportunities inherent therein – during the events, social, commercial and all forms of activities come alive; and you find citizens smiling to the banks.

Two, and perhaps more importantly, these First Ladies are playing smart. Hajia got the allocation on the pretext of using it for a pet project but today, the story has changed. She is now claiming the land as her personal property.

Is this not enough reason for us to be scared of the intentions of the incumbent First Lady? Hajia’s posturing simply succeeds in blowing the lid off Dame’s cover, which makes Dame look like a person providing for her post-retirement years.

Are these African First Ladies refugees in their home countries? If not, there is a subtle suggestion that the Inn will have no permanent residents. And when the inmates are not meeting, to what use do you put this white elephant project?

Again, the office of First Lady is an anomaly, totally alien to the country’s Constitution or any law of the land for that matter. It would have been a neater innovation if the “Oga at the top” was the one asking for a hostel for his foreign colleagues.

Meanwhile, Nigerians are angry with the Senate Committee on FCT. They think the Committee’s rejection of the initial draw-down request of N4 billion was not only far-reaching enough, but it was also lousy. They reckon that the Committee should have used the opportunity of the request to throw the entire project out of the window. People not tutored in the art of legislation are wont to think this way.

Knowing how legislators everywhere work, I can bet my December salary that the AFLPC Project is dead; in fact, it is deader than dead!

The business of legislation is different from journalism where you say it like it is. What the FCT Committee has just started is the Dance of Legislation, which in the words of Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924): “Once you begin the dance of legislation and you must struggle through its mazes as best you can to its breathless end, if any end there be”.

The National Assembly also has a responsibility to produce the greatest happiness to the greatest number. Without cutting off the major arteries of the project, Dame for now remains happy that she has a project in the works. That project will remain in the legislative maze until it will be quarter to Madam’s departure from Aso Rock.

At the committee level, the lawmakers retain the option of loving the proposal to death. Legislatively speaking, this means that the measure could be amended even beyond Madam’s recognition by the time it limps out of the committee room.

For now, we must allow the National Assembly and its committees to do their best, hoping that their best will be enough for all of us.