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Just before restructuring begins

At this point in time, it seems rational to assume that most Nigerians are now set for the restructuring of our country. The decision of the ruling All Progressive Congress APC to set up its own committee to harmonize its position on the subject has no doubt helped to virtually put us all on notice. Another factor which has helped many to buy the idea is attributable to the ample light which has been further thrown on it by the continuing arguments of the restructuring protagonists. restructuring We now know for instance that restructuring is not a call for the break-up of the country but a mere desire to rearrange the conditions of our co-existence in one country. It is therefore a correct step in the right direction that many activists are fast learning the most palatable way of putting their views across. It certainly sounds better to amplify the gains of keeping Nigeria together than the old diction of ‘the unity of Nigeria is not negotiable’ which controverts the universal principle of self-determination. It is however necessary to remind everyone that because the subject is being appreciated from different dimensions, agreeing on the modalities for restructuring is another battle. Last week, the popular Lagos dialogue ‘the platform’ on Channels TV featured a cream of excellent speakers on the subject of the moment which is restructuring. Segun Adeniyi who has become a media guru in agenda setting was there, I enjoyed his presentation as much as that of Segun Odegbami the best sports administrator we are yet to have. Of course, the legendary Fr Kuka, the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto kept everyone heartily entertained. Pat Utomi reminded me of my days in the NTA when government ‘Ogas’ equated my granting him a TV slot to a mortal sin. Perhaps, the speaker who blew my mind but who probably got the least applause was Eghosa Osaghae, Vice Chancellor, Igbinedion University, Okada. He obviously didn’t expect any applause because he deliberately opted to tell the crowd the opposite of what they wanted to hear. But I was pleasantly delighted to listen to him telling Nigerians that to comprehend today’s issues so as to plan for tomorrow, humanity must understand yesterday. As the famous Spanish-born philosopher, poet, and novelist, George Santayana (1863  – 1952) once stated, “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” In my view it is the failure to appreciate this historical imperative of life that has been the undoing of Nigeria. How did we get to where we are? It seems as if in reaction to our devastating civil war, we all encouraged the then leaders to unify everything. Alas, many people who claim to be democrats that are supposedly opposed to military rule in Nigeria served conscientiously in our successive military governments. Right from the Constitution Drafting Committee of the famous ‘49 wise men’ through all the Constituent Assemblies we had till date, the Decrees that were translated into the 1979,1989 and 1999 Constitutions were the handiwork of those who tell us daily that our current constitution is bad because it was authored by the military! Even at that can’t we identify and amend the popularly mouthed defects in our constitution? Those who say it is hard to amend our constitution miss the point on two grounds. First, what is popularly accepted as defective cannot be hard to amend. Second, one achievement of our National Assembly is the quantum of constitutional amendments they have carried out without the rest of us sometime realizing the trap. The nation was recently shocked to hear that the provision on the recall principle giving constituents power to recall non-performing legislators had been amended to virtually transfer the power to the legislature hence the Senate declared that the Kogi constituents being manipulated by their governor to recall their senator were wasting their time. I just hope the legislature which did that was not military!! Many of those calling for restructuring are clearly worried about our over-strong central government. Earlier, Governor Rochas Okorocha who is conveniently silent on it now once said that because our head is to too bogus to be carried by our feeble legs, Nigerian was suffering from ‘Kwashiorkorism’. Interestingly, one of the things our present senate would be remembered for is its decision to vote against devolution of powers. Will anyone suggest that our senators who are bonafide representatives of the people imagined that they were voting for the wish of their people? Assuming we manage to restructure by reducing the federal power, certain things such as Defence and Foreign Affairs will still be central. There is no guarantee that such common issues will still not generate tension as whoever is in control would as usual take everything without remembering to follow genuine federal character. In other words, restructure or not, the few commonly held assets will still be appropriated by whoever is there for himself and his kith and kin. So, before we structure, we need to review many issues. In the case of the police for example it makes some sense to correct the ‘anomaly’ whereby governors are chief security officers in their states without control over the police. That always made the federal government to put the police into ignoble use especially during elections. But we should not transfer a problem from one head to another because the way some state governors utilize state apparatus against their political opponents is amazing. Therefore, those who are weary of more powers to states would support scrapping local government areas otherwise their allocations would no longer be diverted but formally confiscated by the states. Unknown to us some of us are working to achieve queer federalism in which many people want the federal to hands off many things while the same people want her to take up quite a lot of things. For example, for uniformity and security of tenure, teachers, local government staff and even the Labour Congress want to be paid by the federal government. Again no one would genuinely support states independent electoral commissions whose result sheets are in the governor’s bedroom. Under that condition what happens? The answer is that there is a lot to restructure.

Nigeria’s divided heart

I witnessed firsthand the deep-seated and seething divisions in Nigeria and realised that after all said and done that our greatest and irreconcilable differences might just be in the attitude to our various religions! This happened at the  recently concluded national conference on the welfare of the child organised by the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs and supported by Global Affairs Canada and Save the Children. There were over 264 participants, a majority of whom came from core northern states that had not passed the Child Rights Act. The Child Rights Act emanates from the Convention on the Rights of the Child and seeks the best possible welfare and protection for the child against the background of abuses and exploitation. It was domesticated in 2003 without any reservations in Nigeria. Several states have further passed the Act into law within their jurisdictions, as it is mainly the constitution that superintends over all jurisdictions but Acts of the National Assembly may have to be made into laws in each state to have effect.

The Child Rights Act of itself is seen by many as superfluous. Although it makes attempts to bring under one umbrella all legal provisions that concern the child, many see it as an unnecessary parrying to whatever comes from the West. For instance, in Section 20, a child is never to be given corporal punishment. The sensitivity of some of these provisions which make it seem that a parent would lose control over his/her child makes it appear un-African. A real case occurred where a man visited his brother in the UK and spanked his nephew when he misbehaved and the child called the police. The brother had to come from work to bail his brother.

It is true the child in Nigeria suffers many abuses. There are at least 32 reported cases of rape every month in Katsina State according to some sources; and this is not limited to that state alone. Uncles rape cousins whether in the South-South or theSouth-West. In Borno State, it has been reported that many young boys have severe anal injuries because of rape. This is apart from the uncountable Almajiri boys who roam the streets of most of the states of the North-West and North-East begging for food, without additional education or skills that would make them economically viable. In some South-South states, children are branded witches and wizards and thrown out of homes by parents and guardians, while there is the pervading houseboy and housegirl syndrome that turns girls and boys into slavish hawkers of goods even at night.

Nonetheless, some participants felt that even in states where the CRA had been adopted into a law, there was no significant difference between the conditions of the child and those of children in other states, and therefore that it was better to improve governance and enforce access to universal free basic education as enunciated in the UBE Act. Many participants prefer the pursuit of family rights, as the Child Rights Act seems to rather single out the child whereas the smallest unit of society in Africa is the family.

In no other place was Nigeria’s divided heart laid bare than in the issue of age of marriage. The Muslims were uncompromising in their position that Islam does not recognise 18 as the age of marriage and decried the criminalisation of marriage to someone below the age of 18. While Christians maintained that just as there is respect for 18 years being the legal age one could obtain a driving licence or consume alcohol, 18 should also be respected as the legal age of marriage, considering certain complications as Vesico-vaginal fistula (VVF), “a hole that develops between the vagina and the bladder after child birth, resulting in uncontrollable leaking of urine through the vagina;” a phenomenon which occurs a lot among underage girls who give birth. The Muslim group opined that there are other causes of the VVF, and a girl’s immaturity may not just be because of age but because of poor care. Early marriage was seen as panacea for parents who want their girls to go out of poverty.

So, while the Christians condemned the dual legal system in Nigeria, the Muslims insisted anything that was against Sharia was null and void.

Incidentally, not many people know that the Canon Law of the Catholic Church actually states the age of marriage to be 16 for the male gender and 14 for the female gender. This was to factor in cultures which practise early marriage. However, the Catholic Church authorities direct that the Bishops’ conference in each country is to respect the laws of the land; this is why in Nigeria if you are marrying in the Catholic Church, a girl must be 18 years old even though the universal law allows for a lower age.

What disturbs me is, how do we compromise to live together as a nation? Islam has as its first principle the protection of religion; how do we ensure that in a nation state as Nigeria, it is not only one religion that is protected? How does the state ensure that Sharia is restricted to Muslims? How do we ensure that the state would be neutral to prosecute men who forcefully abduct underage girls, force them to convert to a religion and then marry them off, claiming they are now converts? Christians in the North claim that when a Muslim undergraduate girl converts, her age is reduced to under-18 to enable the prosecution of the agent of conversion while law enforcement officers become helpless when the religious conversion card is put forward in the case of an underage Christian girl. Our religions have various expectations of us but how does the state become neutral enough to guarantee the human rights of the weak against the strong? How do we find a meeting point to live together as one humanity? It is really sad, because at the end of it all, while the rich never have divisions, victims are always the children of the poor.

The Guardian view on universal credit: brake, don’t accelerate

The government plans to speed up the rollout of its welfare reform. But what matters is the delay in paying people who desperately need it

Universal Credit, once trailed as the Conservatives’ flagship benefit reform, has staggered from crisis to crisis since its inception seven years ago. On Thursday a letter from a dozen Tory backbenchers to the work and pensions secretary, David Gauke, calling for a pause was leaked to the Daily Telegraph. Later, the former government adviser Dame Louise Casey added her voice, warning that to go ahead with so many problems unresolved would be like jumping off a cliff.

On the brink of a major acceleration in a programme intended to bring together six benefits into a single monthly payment under the banner of making work pay, this is opposition that must be heard.

The underlying idea of integrating benefits into a simpler and more responsive package still has cross-party support. But it is hugely ambitious and at every step it has run into trouble. It was inevitable that the anticipated six-week wait for payments – now being amended – would leave people in desperate circumstances: the most recent of many critical reports, from Citizens Advice, found that one in 10 new claimants waited more than two months for any payment at all. Tens of thousands of people have fallen into rent arrears and it threatens many more.

Across the 105 local authorities where housing benefit is already paid under the new system, the number of tenants in social housing a month behind with their rent has multiplied five times. Nearly a third are two months behind with their rent, six times as many as under the old system. The switch is behind a steep rise in the number of children living in temporary accommodation.

The DWP has tried to improve the system as it was introduced. The rollout has been repeatedly delayed. Yet insensitivity to basic needs has still been evident. The CAB report found that even basic essentials like calls to the helpline were charged at an unaffordable 50p a minute, and delays of 10 minutes were not uncommon. Claimants struggled to come up with the evidence needed, while some, particularly in rural areas, did not have access to a computer for the entirely digitised service.

Most egregious, the rate at which some claimants will lose benefit is set at 63p in the pound. Compare this with the top rate of income tax – 45% on incomes over £150,000 a year – and the unfairness makes a mockery of the prime minister’s declared concern for the just about managing.

Every experience of reform of the benefits system suggests that it cannot be done while implementing cuts. Yet George Osborne’s last budget before his ignominious dismissal gouged £14bn out of the support available to the poorest in society, and his successor Philip Hammond has hardly restored any of that money.

As a result, some families will be an estimated £2,800 worse off: the chair of the work and pensions select committee, Frank Field, has predicted that it will mean the return of real destitution for the first time since the introduction of the welfare state. For many claimants, the debts that build up become inescapable, an invitation to loan sharks.

If she is wise, Theresa May would make the success of universal credit a highly visible test of her commitment to a new style of Conservatism. It is not only that every argument from pragmatism and experience, as well as from basic human decency, argues that the programme should be halted, rethought, and only cautiously resumed. It is also a matter of parliamentary arithmetic, as MPs realise just how damaging and unpopular this will be.

The letter from the backbenchers is enough for a government defeat on a timely opposition amendment. The DUP, which demanded that the threat to means test winter fuel payments was abandoned as a price for their support, is also likely to be concerned about its implications.

His opponents believe that Mr Gauke is listening and that he may be ready to reconsider. To push ahead in the face of such intense and well-founded criticism would be both an act of political self-harm – and a betrayal of the very people Mrs May pledged to help.

The rate at which which some claimants will lose benefit, originally stated in the article above as 65p in the pound, has in fact been 63p in the pound since the autumn statement, according to the DWP. The text has now been corrected. 

Leaders from 1999 responsible for nation’s woes – Saraki

Sunday Aborisade , Abuj a

Senate President, Bukola Saraki, said on Tuesday that all public office holders in Nigeria since 1999 , were guilty of the mistakes of the past that led the country to its present political and economic mess .

Saraki stated this while responding to a question on the secrecy of the National Assembly ’s budget and corruption levelled against it by former President Olusegun Obasanjo in a recent letter .

The Senate President insisted that it was wrong for anybody to hold an individual or group of people solely responsible for the mess of the past .

Saraki said what was required of all stakeholders was collective participation for the good of all Nigerians.

He, however, pledged that details of the N 115 bn National Assembly budget on a section - by - section basis , would be made public this year as against the usual practice .

Police kill 7 suspected abductors of Lagos council boss, nab 2

The Lagos State Police Command has smashed a kidnap syndicate comprising nine Nigerians based in Ghana. They are said to have been responsible for the kidnap of the Ejigbo Local Council Development Area boss, Mr Kehinde Bamigbetan, two months ago and a Federal High Court Judge. In the process, seven suspected members of the syndicate were killed during a gun battle, yesterday. Two suspected members of the gang were also arrested at their hideout in Agbara area of Ogun State, while an Indian national identified as Vivex Changrani, said to have been kidnapped Sunday, was rescued. The suspects Recovered at the end of the gun battle said to have lasted 30 minutes, were four AK 47 riffles, two of which had police identification mark, 28 AK 47 magazines fully loaded, more than 1,000 rounds of AK- 47 live ammunition, army uniforms and two vehicles — a Honda CRV SUV with number plate ABC 106 AE and a Nissan Pathfinder SUV with number plate AGL 730 AZ.