APGA: BETWEEN ENUGU COURT AND DEMOCRACY By Emmanuel Onwubiko

The Court of law is constitutionally clothed with the judicial powers of the state to adjudicate matters between parties with a view to interpreting the provisions of the law and by so doing to promote the respect for the principle of rule of law. In the exercise of these powers, the judges as ministers in the temple of justices are obliged to live above board and to dispense justice creditably, without allowing any sort of compromise or influence to make them reach a pre-determined end.

Since the inception of the ongoing democratic experiments in the country, the role of the judiciary has come under constant scrutiny even as several serving judges of the various court system in the country have been dismissed and/or sanctioned by the National Judicial Council (NJC) for offences bordering on bribery and frivolous granting of injunctions to applicants which have in the past operationally crippled the smooth conduct of elections by the independent National electoral commission.

Some of these ex parte injunctions which were awarded indiscriminately by some judges have also prevented political parties and other institutions of democracy from functioning optimally thereby making observers to question whether some of these judges who issue these nebulous injunctions are actually using their high offices to undermine democracy in Nigeria.

The National Judicial Council has also faced criticism in the past for not responding quickly to allegations of impropriety against certain judges in the High Courts of the various states and the Federal Capital Territory and the Federal High Court of diverse divisions in the country.

Observers are of the opinion that if the hierarchy of the National Judicial Council are always ready to effectively bring heavy sanctions and other disciplinary measures to bare on the indicted judges, then other judges who may be tempted to compromise their high office and misbehave will be effectively deterred since they are aware of the serious consequences of their actions and inactions.

With the exception of the periods that Justices Muhammadu Lawal Uwais and Alfa Belgore served as the Chief Justices of Nigeria and the chairmen of the National Judicial Council (NJC) respectively whereby a good number of indicted judges dragged before the disciplinary forum[NJC] were severely sanctioned, the National Judicial council has come under increasing criticism as not actively enforcing its constitutionally guaranteed mandate to ensure that Judges adhere to professional ethics and exercise their powers enshrined in the section 6 of the constitution with the highest display of maturity, wisdom and patriotism.

Most observers therefore remember Justices Uwais and Belgore for bringing high sense of discipline in the administration of the nation’s courts when they each served as the Chief Justice of the Federation. In the past few years, all eyes have seriously being directed toward the hierarchy of the National Judicial Council hoping that the unprecedented indiscipline and unprofessional conducts of some judges all across the country are checked.

When therefore, for the first time in the history of Nigeria, a woman by name Justice Maryam Alooma Muktar emerged as the Chief Justice of Nigeria, most Nigerians expressed optimism that she will carry out a clean sweep and restore credibility, respect and integrity to the institution of the judiciary and importantly that she will ensure that the National Judicial Council stops the business-as-usual tendency and rise up to the challenge of enforcing strict professional ethical codes of conduct among serving judicial officers.

The demand for the strict enforcement of discipline among judges is so that litigants and the members of the general public are not made by the gross indiscipline and apparent disposition of some judges to bribery and other monetary inducements, to lose faith in the impartiality of the court as the last hope of the common man.

The new Chief Justice of Nigeria, who is the first woman to become the leader of the court system in Nigeria since independence, is expected to carry out a moral revolution to once more convince Nigerians that those judges, who have constituted themselves into formidable cogs in the wheel of Justice, are effectively sanctioned and dismissed.

The current leadership of the National Judicial Council is facing a litmus test as a result of a troubling allegation of compromise made against the person of the Chief Judge of Enugu state Justice Innocent Umezulike by the National Chairman of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) Chief Victor Umeh.

Specifically, Chief. Umeh has come under intense pressure by some of his estrange party members who have resorted to the adoption of series of antics, manipulations and other strategies to compel him to relinquish the office of the National Chairman of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) which produced the Governors of Anambra (Peter Obi) and Imo States (Rochas Okorocha).

Chief Umeh has similarly been told by the governor of Enugu State Mr. Sullivan Iheanacho Chime of the People Democratic Party (PDP) to prepare for the demolition of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) since the ruling political party at the center (PDP) has set machinery in motion to defeat and uproot the All Progressives Grand Alliance from its traditional South East zone.

Soon after the Governor of Enugu State made the declaration, Chief Umeh was dragged in his personal capacity before the chief Judge of Enugu state by whom he (Umeh) described as an expelled member of the party form Udi local government which happens to be the home local council of the governor of Enugu state who had earlier served media notice of the impending ‘demise’ of the All progressives Grand Alliance (APGA).

Not long ago, the Chief Justice of Nigeria acknowledged publicly that state governors in most states of the federation are starving their state judiciary of funds. What this statement implies is that because state judiciary is not financially independent, it is possible that some governors may resort to blackmail to compel their state courts to play by their own game. If this is the case, then democracy is imperiled.

The petition instituted against the Chief Judge of Enugu state by the National Chairman of APGA Chief Victor Umeh has alleged that the Enugu Chief Judge failed to disqualify himself from hearing a matter seeking his ouster by an allegedly suspended party member from Udi local government even as the Chief Judge granted unnecessarily prolonged ex parte injunction against Chief Umeh which in effect crippled the administration of All Progressive Grand Alliance.

 Chief Umeh had reduced his grouse with the chief Judge of Enugu state in the following issues he has raised before the Justice Muktar-led National Judicial Council.

Umeh stated; “Recall, Sir, that by letter dated 19th September 2012, I prayed the Chief Judge of Enugu State to transfer/re-assign the Case to another Judge of the Enugu State High Court as I have no confidence of obtaining justice in his Court given the attitude and antecedents in the Case. This request was ignored and not responded to”.

Chief Umeh also disclosed that; “By Motion on Notice, through my Counsel, I prayed the Hon. Chief Judge of Enugu State for “an Order that the Honourable Chief Judge of Enugu State, Hon. Justice I. A. Umezulike, OFR the Presiding Judge in Suit No. E/270/2012 Ichie Okuli Jude Ejike V. Chif Sir Victor Umeh disqualifies himself and decline from continuing the hearing of Suit No. E/270/2012 pending before the Enugu State High Court”.

According to Chief Umeh; “The Motion was filed on 5 October 2012. One would have expected that the Hon. Chief Judge would, as a Court of Law, hear my said Motion on Notice and determine same one way or the other before proceeding further in the Case”.

He continued thus;

“The Case came up before the Hon. Chief Judge of Enugu State on 8 October 2012. I was perplexed that, not only did Hon. Chief Judge refuse to hear/entertain the Motion filed on 5 October 2012 seeking to disqualify him from hearing the Case, but the Chief Judge proceeded to the hearing of the Case even when Counsel representing me in Court urged him to hear the Motion.”                                     

The National Judicial Council needs to find out why the Chief Judge failed to transfer the matter to another judge because the moment a party in a case before you raises such fundamental doubt regarding the impartiality or otherwise of a presiding Judge, it is better for another judge to hear the matter so that Justice will not only be one but will be seen to have being done.

To even imagine that very senior members of the bar were part of the legal team that prayed the Chief Judge to hands off the matter, it is shocking that the Enugu state Chief Judge proceeded with hearing the substantive issue brought by a plaintiff even when the respondent shouted ‘blue murder’ severally and doubted the credibility of the presiding judge.

What then is the interest of the Enugu State Chief Judge in this matter? Is he playing the game prepared by some powerful politicians who vowed to ensure that the APGA is destroyed before the 2015 election? How is a judge to adjudicate a politically charged litigation to escape accusations of being bias and compromised?

These are the knotty issues that needed to be untied by the Justice Maryam Alooma Muktar’s-led National Judicial Council in the petition brought by Chief Victor Umeh of APGA against the Chief Judge of Enugu state who is also a holder of the national honour of officer of the Federal Republic.

 

* Emmanuel Onwubiko, Head, HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF        NIGERIA blogs@www.huriwa.blogspot.com.  

 

22/10/2012   

THE JONATHAN’S ‘NEW BORN’ REVOLUTION By Emmanuel Onwubiko

Africa is largely a traditional society. Africans have succeeded in retaining some of the original cultural values like respect for the sacredness of life.

Historically, Africa came under domination of some foreign forces from the West who originally invaded Africa in search of economic prosperity for their home territories.

Political historians have recorded that the various interface that Africa has had with the then invading foreign forces were in two parts namely cultural and political.

It is a historical fact that when the foreign invaders besieged Africa nearly two centuries ago, the political forces from the West were accompanied by their spiritual leaders who brought their foreign religions into Africa.

As a result of the aggressive religious teachings, most traditional Africans embraced these foreign religious belief systems but nevertheless retained some aspects of their original African value system. One of the original African cultural value systems retained by Africans is the African symbolism attached to the arrival of ‘new born’ seen as the arrival of new life.

Nigeria being the largest African country worldwide is renowned for this beautiful cultural value attached to new born but because of dearth of standard health facilities caused by political corruption and economic crime perpetrated by the political elite, a lot of children have died during child births even as infant mortality has become the most troubling health challenge that confronts twenty first century Nigeria.

Sadly, successive political administrations since independence in 1960 have paid only lip service to the critical issue of tackling the unprecedented rate of infant mortality in the country and this reality has made Nigeria a laughing stock in the international community as a nation that is richly endowed with mineral resources such as crude oil and solid minerals but also as the nation with some of the worst cases of high infant mortality annually.

Nigeria’s current President Good luck Jonathan, who was a former lecturer in a tertiary institution, has told Nigerians of his passion to stop this dangerous trend.

President Jonathan was once recently quoted in the media as saying that his resolve to stop the high rate of infant mortality was because of what he witnessed in his biological family where a lot of infant mortality cases were recorded.

He vowed to institute what I may call the ‘Jonathan’s new born Medicare revolution’ aimed at delivering quality pre and post-natal Medicare to pregnant ladies and their new born.

The United Nations Secretary General Mr. Banki Moon has provided institutional support to President Jonathan’s lofty health ambition to bring succor and good Medicare to Nigeria’s new born.

The United Nations has subsequently appointed the Nigeria’s President as co-chairman of the United Nations Commission on life saving commodities for women and children along with the prime minister of Norway, Jens Stoltenberg. This appointment is seen in human rights circle as the necessary tonic for Nigeria to overcome these dangerous threats to life confronting pregnant women and our unborn children.

In a recent article published in major Nigerian newspapers titled “saving the lives of women and children” both President Jonathan and Prime Minister Stoltenberg made profound commitment to see to the reduction of the high rate of infant mortality.

These great people, one from Nigeria (Africa) and the other from Norway (Europe) have through this well written newspaper article provided germane reason why infant mortality has remained a dominant health challenge even in this twenty first century that has seen several health related innovations and inventions by scientists.                    

They jointly argued thus; “The overarching health system and financial impediments for governments and end-users to access life-saving commodities is made worse by the lack of awareness of how, why and when to use them, preventing women and children from accessing and using appropriate commodities”.

They also submitted thus: “Other system barriers to these commodities include the severely under-resourced regulatory agencies in low-income countries, which lead to delayed registration of commodities, lack of oversight of product quality and general inefficiencies; market failures, where return on investment is too low to encourage manufacturers to enter the market or produce sufficient quantities; and user supply and demand challenges such as limited demand for the product by end-users, local delivery problems and incorrect prescription and use”.

One clear fact is that President Jonathan needs to work like a “lion” with the needed creative zeal to be able to minimize the unprecedented high rate of infant mortality in Nigeria.

Statistically, Nigeria is ranked as one place in the World whereby infants and new born are endangered species requiring special, urgent, comprehensive, effective, transparent and result-based measures to overcome rapidly to save our new born from pre-mature deaths.  

From pulitzercenter.org we learnt that the health statistics published by all respected and highly respected health authorities in the World have returned unpleasant report on the high rate of infant mortality in Nigeria.

In April 2010, The Lancet published a worldwide study on maternal mortality conducted by The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at Washington University. For the first time in decades, researchers are reporting a significant drop in the number of women dying each year from pregnancy and childbirth. From total maternal deaths of roughly 525,000 in 1980 to about 342,900 in 2008, the IHME analyses utilizes new and better country data and a more sophisticated statistical method that draws from birth records, national surveys census and surveys of siblings deaths.

The new findings from 181 countries also show an annual decrease of 1.3% in the maternal mortality ratio (MMR), the ratio of number of maternal deaths per 100,000 live births. However, Nigeria moved in the opposite direction of this global trend, with a 1.4% increase each year, from 473/100,000 in 1990 to 608/100,000 by 2008. For every woman who dies, twenty will face serious or long-last medical problems.

The report further indicated that 99 percent of women who survive severe, life-threatening complications often require lengthy recovery times and may face long-term physical, psychological, social and economic consequences. The chronic ill health of a mother puts at risk surviving children, who depend on their mothers for food, care and emotional support.

The report has it that reducing maternal mortality is one of the targets of the Millennium Development Goal 5 (Improving Maternal Health). It is the Millennium Development Goal that has shown the least progress since 2000 and the one that reveals the greatest disparity between rich and poor.

But what are the causes of high infant mortality?

As stated by the WHO in its 2005 World Health Report “Make Every Mother and Child Count”, the major causes of maternal deaths are: severe bleeding/hemorrhage (25%), infections (13%), unsafe abortions (13%), eclampsia (12%), obstructed labour (8%), other direct causes (8%), and indirect causes (20%). Indirect causes are things such as malaria, anaemia, HIV/AIDS, and cardiovascular disease, all of which complicate pregnancy or are aggravated by it.

Forty-five percent of postpartum deaths occur within 24 hours over 90% of maternal deaths occur in developing countries. In comparison, pregnancy associated homicide accounts for 2 to 10 deaths per 100,000 live births, possibly substantially higher due to underreporting.

Unintended pregnancy is a major cause of maternal deaths, so says World Health Organization. Worldwide, unintended pregnancy resulted in almost 700,000 maternal deaths from 1995 to 2000 (approximately one-fifth of the maternal deaths during that period). The majority (64%) resulted from complications from unsafe or unsanitary abortion.

As can be seen from the scientific facts produced by health experts, President Jonathan should note that his “pro-new born health revolution” will require profound political will and the necessary resources to achieve. In doing this, the current government must put politics aside and render quality health care for the benefit of our new born and pregnant women.

 

 

*    Emmanuel Onwubiko, Head, HUMAN Rights Writers’ Association of Nigeria blogs@www.huriwa.blogspot.com.          

 

22/10/2012

NIGERIAN GIRL CHILD AND THE MALALA INSPIRATION By Emmanuel Onwubiko

The last couple of weeks have seen the World’s attention focused on issues around the girl-child. Precisely on October 11th 2012, the World marked the first ever special day reserved by the United Nations as the International Day of the Girl Child. 

Incidentally, while the rest of the World paused for a while to reflect extensively on ways and means of promoting, protecting and enforcing legislative frameworks and laws that safeguard the rights of the girl child, the people of Pakistan were thrown into shock and trepidation over the attempted assassination of a foremost girl child activist little Miss. Malala Yousafzai by armed terrorists belonging to the banned Taliban gunmen while returning home on a school bus. 

The attempt on the life of this young school girl who has shown remarkable gifts and talents as a good speaker and defender of the educational right of the girl child, drew International condemnation.

The inspirational story of Miss. Malala Yousafzai as captured by the online encyclopedia Wikipedia has it that she was born in 1998 from the town of Mingora in the Swat District of Pakistan’s North-West Frontier province.

Malala according to documentary evidence is reputable as one of the best known Child rights activists of the contemporary times. She gained fame for her education and women’s rights activism in the Swat Valley, where the Taliban has at times banned girls from attending school. 

In early 2009, at the age of 11, Yousafzai wrote a blog under a pseudonym for the BBC detailing her life under Taliban rule, their attempts to take control of the valley, and her views on promoting education for girls. The following summer, a New York Times documentary was filmed about her life as the Pakistani military intervened in the region, culminating in the Second Battle of Swat. Yousafzai began to rise in prominence, giving interviews in print and on television, and taking a position as chairperson of the District Child Assembly Swat. She has since been nominated for the International Children’s Peace Prize by Desmond Tutu, and has won Pakistan’s first National Youth Peace Prize. 

Miss. Malala can as well be described as the new little ‘Nelson Mandela’ of our time.

I have keenly followed the ordeals of this beautiful girl since she was unfortunately shot by the bandits who do not have regards for human life and I can attest that she has provided inspiration for other girl child activists especially in a developing society like Nigeria and the rest of Africa to join the global advocacy to improve respect for the fundamental rights of all children and especially the girl child since all human rights are universal; inalienable; sacrosanct and inviolable.

Before Malala was airlifted to a British hospital for treatment in the wake of her attack by the armed terrorists, I watched the former premier of Britain Mr. Gordon Brown on the international media as he waged global-wide advocacy for World leaders to provide concrete support for the kind of Inspirational work and advocacy activities that the likes of Miss Malala has launched.

Mr. Gordon Brown who appeared on a special interview session with the UK-based television station-Skynews to inaugurate a United Nations petition in the name of Miss. Malala using the slogan “I am Malala,” demanded that all children World-wide be in school by the end of 2015. The former British premier Mr. Gordon Brown said he would hand over the petition to Pakistan’s President Mr. Asif Ali Zardari in November.

I was also opportune to have watched one of Malala’s recent interview by the United States-based Cable News Network (CNN) and was indeed proud of her display of prodigious intellect and wisdom when she clearly stated in very polished English language that “It is not true that the Islamic religion forbids girl child education. If I have a meeting with Taliban I will tell them that the Islamic religion promotes girl child education”.

The interesting dimension of Malala’s human rights advocacy is that it appears that the pivot of her campaign molded and inspired the United Nations’ introduction of the first ever international day of the Girl Child.

On October 11th 2012, the United Nations marked the first ever International Day of the girl child by calling for an end to child marriage, and stressed that education is a strategic background for protecting girls against this harmful practice.

“Education for girls is one of the best strategies for protecting girls against child marriage”, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in his message for the Day. “When they are able to stay in school and avoid being married early, girls can build a foundation for a better life for themselves and their families”.

“Let us do our part to let girls be girls, not brides,” he stated, urging governments, community and religious leaders, civil society, the private sector, and families-especially men and boys-to promote the rights of girls.

The International Day of the Girl Child was designated as 11 October by a resolution adopted by the UN General Assembly in December 2011, to recognize girls’ rights and highlight the unique challenges girls face worldwide. The theme of this year’s observance is ‘Ending Child Marriage.’

Approximately 70 million young women today were married before age 18, according to the UN, which notes that child marriage denies a girl her childhood, disrupts her education, limits her opportunities, increases her risk of being a victim of violence and abuse, and jeopardizes her health.

Girls with low levels of schooling are more likely to be married early, and child marriage has been shown to almost always end a girl’s education, the UN adds. Conversely, girls with secondary schooling are up to six times less likely to child marriage, according to the UN.

Nigeria is a case study of where government and indeed even the legislators pay lip service to these two fundamental rights of the girl child which are freedom from early marriage and right to sound education.

Few months back, a serving Senator of the Nigeria’s National Assembly was accused of marrying a suspected girl child of 13 years from Egypt but when different groups demanded his prosecution, the federal government through the office of the Federal Attorney General Criminally compromised and failed to protect the fundamental rights of this Egyptian girl child even when there is an extant law against such practice known as the Child Rights Act of 2003 which was passed validly by the Nigeria’s National Assembly of which the suspected high profile violator is a member.

A presenter with one of Nigeria’s best known Radio Stations-Ray power fm, Mrs. Queen Kunde told me that government’s lip service to the rights of the girl child is deeply entrenched.

Queen, who is a mother herself, disclosed that while President Jonathan rightly inaugurated the Almajiri educational rescue project for the over ten million street boys in Northern Nigeria who are out of formal schooling, the same government failed to introduce similar program for the girl child in Nigeria who largely face child labor such as street hawking and lack of education. 

The Federal government needs to urgently redress this systemic anomaly because what is good for the goose is also good for the gander, so goes the wise saying.

Nigeria is also blessed with talented young girls who have used their enormous gifts to campaign for the respect of the fundamental rights of the girl child.

In the 1980’s, Nigeria witnessed the emergence of an enormously talented young girl child by name Miss. Tosin Jegede who excelled in the music industry and indeed used her music talents to call on all stakeholders in the Nigerian project to train the girl child educationally and save them from child trafficking; sexual molestation and early marriage.

Punch Newspaper of Nigeria on July 20^th 2012 published a brief story on the remarkable activities of Tosin Jegede who has now grown to full adulthood and has also achieved so much academically.

According to Punch Newspapers, Tosin Jegede ruled the Nigerian music scene as one of the youngest child stars in the 80s. Renowned for persuasive songs, ‘urging parents to listen to their children and pay their school fees’, her foray into music began at age 4.

During her time, NTA Channel 5, 7 and 10 were the only TV stations in Lagos as such her music videos enjoyed generous air play.

She left the country 16 years ago, with three albums to her credit and then returned briefly in 2005, to stage a visual arts exhibition of her some of her works.

After bagging a degree in Business Decision and Analysis from the University of Bristol, London, she finally returned to Nigeria four years after. She also worked briefly in the UK as Pension Adviser.

Now in her late 20s, Punch recalled that the chubby artiste lost her mother, Mrs. Martha Jegede, recently after being diagnosed with a muscle disease.

The anti-human trafficking agency (NAPTIP) building upon some of the inspirational works of great children like the then little Tosin Jegede, should be empowered to independently prosecute habitual abusers of children without necessarily waiting for the Federal Attorney General to authorize such prosecution. 

The National Human Rights Commission of Nigeria with the new independence that the National Assembly gave it, must partner actively with sister organizations like NAPTIP and credible civil society groups to consistently put the issues around the rights of the girl child and indeed the Nigerian child on the front burner of national discourse.  

Mrs. Funmi Femi-Falana rightly noted in her new book titled “Girl Child education in Nigeria”, that ‘an untrained girl child is indeed an untrained society’.

* Emmanuel Onwubiko, Head, HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS’ ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA blogs@www.huriwa.blogspot.com.                               

19/10/2012

HUMAN RIGHTS SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT PROTECTING HUMAN RIGHTS IN NIGERIA By +John Onaiyekan, Catholic Archibishop of Abuja.

  1. A Painful Gap:

In general, what strikes me is the painful gap between words and deeds, between policies and realities as regards the protection of Human Rights of Nigeria. Despite some obvious lacunae and even outright contradictions within the texts of our Constitution, the general spirit within our present deficient constitution declares and prescribes the basic norms for a proper protection of the Human Rights of Nigerians. The problem therefore is not really with regard to our Laws and our Constitution. Furthermore, our country is also a signatory to the major International Human Rights Declarations and Conventions. The problem we have is clearly that of implementation, matching deeds with words and ensuring that the realities on the ground coincide with the policies that we claim to hold.

All this is in my opinion due to bad or weak government. Often there is no political will to do the right thing and even where there is the political will, there are no clear and efficient structures on ground to ensure that the right thing actually gets done. A typical example is in the whole area of access to redress in the law courts. Access to justice at the law courts which should be a right of every citizen has now become the privilege of the few who are rich and powerful.

  2. The Tyranny of Poverty

Over and above, there is the tyranny of poverty, rampant and abject poverty which has rendered many people powerless and voiceless, incapable of resisting injustice, less still fighting for their rights. This practically makes whatever we may say about human rights in Nigeria a dead letter.

In particular, I have serious concerns on three points:

 3. The Right to Life:

First, there is the right to life which is clearly spelt out in our Constitution and in the Fundamental Human Rights to which we are signatories. Yet there is so much wanton killing going on and killings with impunity. Extra-judicial killing by security agents is a regular occurrence. Then there are the frequent outbursts of murderous sectarian violence. As I am writing this text, we are hearing of over 500 villagers slaughtered in the middle of the night by marauding armed groups that seem to have dissolved into thin air. Besides, people are left to die through criminal neglect. And poverty is the greatest of these killers. We might take the example of pensioners who are left to spend the last part of their lives in misery. Many have died hanging around offices waiting for their meager pensions to be paid. The low value which our society and by extension, our government gives to the life of a Nigerian is very shameful. Otherwise, how can we take so lightly the fact that so many of our country men and women are dying day in day out, either through riots or conflicts or outright poverty and sickness?

    

   4. Freedom of Religion

The second aspect of concern has to do with the freedom of religion, which comes next in importance to the right to life itself. Our constitution spells this out very clearly. It even goes further to insist that the government of the Federation and of the States shall never adopt any religion as State Religion. Most of us take this formulation to mean that every religion is free and equal before the law of the land. And freedom in this matter is not only in respect of the individual but also of groups. It includes the freedom and the right to proclaim, to practice, to propagate and even to change ones religion just as it gives freedom for any Nigerian to claim to have no religion at all. But his is what the law says. In practice however, in many instances, the reality is not so. As a Christian who has many contacts with fellow Christians in many parts of Northern Nigeria where Islam has practically been made into the official religion of the State, I see here a lamentable gulf between what the law says and what is on ground. It is well known that in many parts of Northern Nigeria, the State and the government refuses as a matter of policy to give approval for land for Christians to build churches while in the same State, Mosques spring out everywhere, everyday with no restriction. Similarly, public funds are spent training Islamic Religious Leaders and no provisions are made for the training of the religious leaders of Christianity. The frequent instances of attack on churches and religious symbols in the North are clearly connected with this basic injustice and disregards for the fundamental human religious rights of many of the citizens in the North. Until we sort this out, I am afraid; we shall continue to hear bad news in many of these Northern States.

   

   5. Fake “Human Rights”

Third and finally, I am very much concerned about the so called “new Human Rights” that we keep hearing about now especially from strong lobby groups that seem to have taken control of the United Nations and its agencies, largely with their bases in the Western Countries of Europe and America. Many of these so called Human Rights actually contradict the basic rights that we have all already agreed upon in the classical fundamental human rights of humanity.

The first and obvious example is where abortion is being presented as a right of the woman which the state must fund from public resources. The eyes are deliberately closed to the fact that every abortion entails the killing of an innocent human being. Every law that permits abortion simply means that your human life is sacred only when you can fight for yourself. For as long as the modern world tolerates abortion as a right, we are simply denying with one hand what we are proclaiming with the other.

Similarly, issues of sexuality for example, homosexuality and same sex marriage are all now being proposed as “rights”. This has never been so until recent years. The responsibility for this lies with a small but powerful lobby doing all it can to impose these things on the whole of humanity. The criminal aspect of this exercise is that some of the rich nations are pressurizing poor countries to adopt these inhuman positions as a condition for help and assistance. Nigeria has no business giving in to these pressures because we have enough resources to feed our people. But I am not sure that there is an adequate clear vision in these matters. I suspect that many of those who attend big International meetings on our behalf are often very much unaware of the agenda behind many programmes that appear on the surface very positive and good. The tendency to use ambiguous terminology is often a way to deceive people into accepting things that they would not have accepted when presented bluntly. Thus expressions like “family planning”, “reproductive rights”, “safe motherhood” which are valid and wonderful on their own, often hide the gruesome crime of abortion, which is nothing less than the killing of innocent but defenseless human beings.

I believe our country should be strong enough to stand up to be counted and refuse to be led along a path that is at the end of the day not even for the good of humanity.

These are some of my thoughts and I wish your association God’s blessing.

+John Onaiyekan CON

ARCHBISHOP OF ABUJA

TAMBUWAL’S VOTE OF THANKS AND HARD FACTS By Emmanuel Onwubiko

Wednesday October 10th, 2012 was extra-ordinary in the political annals of Nigeria.

On that great day, President Goodluck Jonathan broke a record as the first elected President in over a decade to have presented a budget proposal of the coming Calender year within three clear months before the commencement of the actual implementation. Officials of the Federal Ministry of Finance should be commended for this uncommon feat.

October 10th 2012 would also be remembered by all right thinking analysts in Nigeria as one day when the leadership of the National Assembly put behind them the notorious political espirit de corp or the “family affair” tendency of the ruling People Democratic Party and spoke truth to power.

The Senate president David Mark was quoted to have told President Jonathan that the National Assembly members will thoroughly and comprehensively go through the proposed 2013 budget before passing it into law to become the Appropriation Act of 2013 for implementation by the executive Arms of government to meet public good.

 
The speaker of the Federal House of Representatives Aminu Waziri Tambuwal gave the vote of thanks in which he passed the message of most Nigerians to President Jonathan.

The Senior Special Assistant on Media and Public affairs to President Jonathan Dr. Doyin Okupe didn’t take the home truth with equanimity. This is sad.

The speaker who is a well respected legal mind, pointed out to President Jonathan the urgent need to take some steps so as to confront the hydra-headed monster of corruption and economic crimes occasioned by fraudulent awards of contracts by the various Federal ministries and Agencies of government.

Tambuwal also indicted the Federal Agencies for failing to adhere strictly to the implementation of the current 2012 budget.

His words; “As I speak, interim field oversight reports from House Committees on the 2012 budget implementation are clearly unimpressive both in terms of releases as well as utilization and this is a great challenge to all of us. It is important to state at this point the clear provisions of Section 8 of the Appropriation Act to the effect that approved budgeted funds shall be released to MDAs “as at when due”. This is sadly observed more in breach”.

The speaker also disclosed thus;

“The Composition of the Public Procurement Council provided under the Public Procurement Act is very critical to budget implementation….”

 
In this regard, The Speaker is right because it is preposterous to note that all that the Executive Council of the Federation does weekly is to award bogus contracts that are never implemented. This is the reason for the near-total collapse of basic infrastructure in most parts of the country. The entire Federal road infrastructures in the South East have collapsed and flash floods and erosion have also taken over most communities in Nigeria including the home town of the President.

One other area touched upon by speaker Tambuwal is on the area of high deficit and the overwhelming financial crisis occasioned by domestic borrowing to finance this deficit in the 2012 budget.

“There must be transparency, accountability and probity in the management of our resources generally, given recent developments that indicate our exposure to unforeseen natural disasters. We certainly, for instance, cannot take the protection of our environment for granted”,

Tambuwal charged.

Tambuwal spoke most Nigerians’ mind when he said:

“We must therefore, continue to work together to redeem this nation from the clutches of poverty and disease. The vaunted growth in the nation’s GDP must be reflected in the lives of everyone, not just a few people privileged to hold public office or those enjoying unfair public patronage.”

But my charge to speaker Tambuwal and the Senate President is that the unprecedented high cost of running the National Assembly must be checked because he who comes to equity must come with clean hands.

President Jonathan who titled his 2013 budget proposal as “fiscal consolidation with inclusive growth” had earlier claimed some successes recorded by government in the implementation of the 2012 budget.

The President said; “Over the past nine months, through a number of initiatives, we have created new jobs directly and supported many young entrepreneurs running SMEs to create jobs. Nigeria is looking to become more self-reliant again in food security and we are increasing local content in our manufacturing processes and the oil and gas sector”.

President Jonathan read his score card thus;

“As at the end of the second quarter, the economy recorded an impressive growth of 6.2% compared to 5.4% forecast for sub-Saharan Africa. It is gratifying to note that the non-oil sector remains the main driver of growth. There are also improvements in other macroeconomic indicators. Inflation has dropped from 12.9% in June 2012 to 11.7% in August 2012, and our goal is to reduce it further”

Where are all these economic miracles that President Jonathan talked about on October 10th 2012? From Sokoto in the far North to Yenogua, Bayelsa in the South, the common denominator affecting a greater majority of Nigerians is absolute poverty and insecurity.

Has the textile industry in the North not collapsed long ago and nothing concrete has been done to revive it? Has the economy of the South East not gone comatose because of absence of basic infrastructure and the needed credit facilities to drive the process of industrial growth?

Again, in the last two years, I have not come across any university graduate that has bagged employment whether in the public or private sectors. What we see are rampaging bunch of fake job rackets and syndicates who are daily defrauding young Nigerian graduates with fake promises to recruit them into some para-military agencies.

The political elite in Nigeria including the presidency, the National Assembly and importantly, the governors of the 36 States must stop the ongoing outright looting of public fund and re-channel these funds into rebuilding Nigeria’s collapsed infrastructure so as to create the enabling environment for rapid industrialization and actual job creation.

 

 *    Emmanuel Onwubiko, Head, HUMAN Rights Writers’ Association of Nigeria,          blogs@www.huriwa.blogspot.com. 

 

15/10/2012

 

      

HOW CHEATS CHEAT SPORTS By Emmanuel Onwubiko

George Ehusani is a priest of the Catholic Church in Nigeria and one of the best known writers on contemporary issues. He was quoted as saying that the meaning that humanity attaches to values and standards is in rapid decline.

In the volume one of the book edited by Emmanuel Ojeifo titled “Young people and the hunger for meaning”, Ehusani was quoted as saying thus; “It is true that we live in a post-modern age. Analytic and critical philosophies have radicalized our conception of language. A Philosopher once said that in our age, nothing seems to agree with anything else. Everything is in a flux”.

Ehusani however hazards a guess of what he views as the correct meaning that people should attach to the concept of values.

His words: “Values are for us fundamental pillars that give direction and meaning to our lives. They are the things we hold most dear, the fixed standards upon which we base our judgment of what is right and wrong or good and evil, the guiding principles for our choices and decisions, over which we organize our priorities, and in relation to which we build up our aspiration in life”.

Nowhere is this wholistic view of the meaning of standards and values accepted as the whole truth and nothing but the truth like in the world of sports whereby athletes are expected not to take any performance enhancing drugs or mechanisms with the diabolical goal of winning laurels all the times in all competitive tournaments.

In the first place, an athlete is defined simply even by the writers of the New Webster’s dictionary of the English language as “a person with the skill and training to be good at sports, especially as an individual competitor (in running jumping, throwing) rather than as one of a team.”     

By the same token, Sports is defined as “the playing of games or participation in competitive pastimes involving physical exertion and skill, especially those played outdoors”.

A cheat is “someone who tricks or deceives or someone who plays a game without following the rules and/or someone who uses unfair methods to score or win unfair advantage over other competitors”.

From the above definitions partly derived from the scholarly “the New Webster’s Dictionary of the English language”,  it is clear that cheats in Sports are as bad as armed robbers or other sets of bandits who wreck havocs on the unsuspecting members of the public in an attempt to gain unfair advantage.

How can one describe a sport athlete who cheats his/her contemporary(ies) so that she/he can win the gold medal say in an Olympic and other sporting tournaments which have become increasingly tough, competitive and highly financially rewarding?

Sports administrators since the advent of modern sports have expressed concern on how best to check the infiltration of competitive sports by drug cheats and the other set of gamblers who fix outcomes of sporting competitions to amass the proceeds of crime. In the United Kingdom, some Pakistani Cricket players were recently prosecuted in the judicial system for alleged fixing of matches and most of these indicted players have been banned for several years by the respective authorities in charge of these sports.   

Factually, drug cheats have become increasingly desperate and sophisticated because of the huge revenue and financial profits that come through endorsements awarded to frontline sporting athletes by rich multi-national companies since the history of modern sports a little less than a century ago.

While doing random research for this thematic area of sports cheats, I came across the piece posted in a website of www.thepeoplehistory.com in which the writers rightly explained the historical facts on how modern sports became big business which to most contemporary observers like me, forms the central reason why some athletes rather than rely on their natural talents and developed skills, have chosen the easy but very expensive way of embracing the administration of performance enhancing drugs before embarking on any competitive sports.

According to the writers who posted a piece titled; “Sports: the history and evolution” on the aforementioned website, sports have become big business because; “It is also impossible to talk about modern sports without considering the heavy influence of business. Sports and business have become forever linked, even in college, which is supposedly played by “amateurs” and not “professionals”, despite the fact that the coaches and athletic directors make as much as their counterparts in the professional leagues. From sports on television to sponsorships to naming rights on stadiums, the history of the business of sports reveals that business tied itself to sports more and more in the latter half of the 20th century, really ramping up in the 1970s and onward”.

These writers tried to rationalize why money and high fees have become synonymous to modern day sports and also rightly traced increasing wave of drug cheats in sports to this money-spinning possibilities when they wrote thus; “As a part of the stream of business into sports, another change has been the influx of money, which many believe has become obscene and wrong”.

According to them; “However, the fact of the matter is that when somebody is “The Best in the World” at anything, ordinary people want to watch or see those people perform-whether they are actors, musicians or athletes. As much as people decry the high salaries and excess of sports, the spectators and consumers of sports make it possible. Past the issue of public perception, however, there lie more serious issues. Like all things in life, when big money and business are involved, the opportunities and temptations to cheat or do whatever it takes to get ahead increase. In sports, this often involves performance enhancing drugs or gambling.”  

Recently, one of America’s all time best cycling athletes Mr. Lance Armstrong was exposed by his nation’s top cycling authority for alleged notorious use of performance enhancing drugs over a period of several years.

The New York Daily News of Wednesday October 10th 2012 reported the well researched findings of the United States Anti-doping Agency (USADA) detailing the sophisticated methods used by Mr. Lance Armstrong, a cancer survivor, to win several laurels through the inducement of performance enhancing drugs.
The New York Daily News reported thus; “Lance Armstrong wasn’t just a cheater who used performance-enhancing drugs to win seven Tour de France titles, according to the explosive “reasoned decision” released by the United States Anti-Doping Agency on October 10^th 2012-he was also a dope pusher who supplied banned substances to his teammate and threatened to replace cyclists who refused to juice”.

“The report describes an underground network of support staff-smugglers, dope doctors, drug runners-who kept Armstrong’s illicit program in business”.
“The evidence shows beyond any doubt that the US Postal Service Pro Cycling Team ran the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen,” USADA chief executive officer, Travis Tygart said.
USADA released 1,000 pages of evidence on October 10^th 2012, including a 202-page summary detailing why the anti-doping agency stripped Armstrong of his seven Tour de Franc titles this summer and barred him from competition for the rest of his life. The report was sent to cycling’s governing body, the International Cycling Union, as well as the World Anti-Doping Agency and the World Triathlon Corporation.

Incidentally, the United States topped the recent chat of top ten drugs cheats of all times in the sporting history. These drug cheats include Ben Johnson, once regarded as one of the greats in the sprinting world. The Jamaica-born Canadian Johnson, according to a compilation done by www.stuff.co.nz, had a high flying career throughout the 80’s.

Johnson won two Olympic bronze medals in Los Angeles and set consecutive World records at the 1987 World Championship in athletics in 1988 Olympics where he won gold. He was stripped of both World records and the Olympic title after his urine samples, were found to contain stanozolol in 1988.

Other cheats found out and sanctioned by world anti-doping body in sports are Floyd Landis; Marion Jones; Albertto Contador of Spain, other cheats include Chinese Swim team that tested positive for dihydrotestosterone at the 1994 Asian games; Nadzeja Ostapchuck of Belarus; Alex Schwazer of Italy and Ivan Tsikhan of Belarus who tested positive for abnormal levels of testosterone after the 2008 Olympic games.
The lesson for Nigerian athletes from the disgrace suffered by the American Lance Armstrong among other once sporting greats is that they must stay off drugs and the Sporting Authority in Nigeria must install state of arts anti-doping detection and testing facilities here in Nigeria to stop these cheats in their tracks before they disgrace us internationally. 

 * Emmanuel Onwubiko; Head, Human Rights Writers’ Association of Nigeria blogs @www.huriwa.blogspot.com.

 

15/10/2012