Any move to import foreign doctors?

By Emmanuel Onwubiko

Article 3 of the universal declaration of human rights says “everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.” 

Closely following this international precept of human right is the section 33(1) of the Nigerian constitution which guarantees right to life. 

The provision contained in that specific constitutional code goes thus: “Every person has a right to life, and no one shall be deprived intentionally of his life save in the execution of the sentence of a court in respect of a criminal offence of which he has been found guilty in Nigeria.”

Sections 17(3) are more primarily concerned about the health rights of Nigerians. 

These sub-sections of the Nigerian constitution states as follows: “The State shall direct its policy towards ensuring that- (a) all citizens, without discrimination on any group whatsoever, have the opportunity for securing adequate means of livelihood as well as adequate opportunity to secure suitable employment; (b) conditions of work are just and humane, and that there are adequate facilities for leisure and for social, religious and cultural life; (c) the health, safety and welfare of all persons in employment are safeguarded and not endangered or abused; (d) there are adequate medical and health facilities for all persons: (e) there is equal pay for equal work without discrimination on account of sex, or on any other ground whatsoever; (f) children, young persons and the age are protected against any exploitation whatsoever, and against moral and material neglect; (g) provision is made for public assistance in deserving cases or other conditions of need; and (h) the evolution and promotion of family life is encouraged.”

Following from the above is the need to state that implementation of public policies in all its ramifications are the functions of bureaucracy and other administration organs of government.

The public policy expert R. K. Sapru made the above points very clear in his authoritative book titled: “Public Policy: formulation, implementation and evaluation.”

He wrote thus: “The principal function of public administration is the implementation of public policies. Public administration has concentrated on the machinery for the implementation of public policies, as given, rather than on making them. In an era when about 2/5^th of the Indian work force is employed by government, the functions and roles of government employees determine what happens after a policy, in the form of a law or a statue has been adopted. 

The expert said also that Public policies in India, as in other countries, are implemented by a complex system of administrative organizations and agencies. 

They perform several activities. 

What this means is that the day-to-day running of these enterprises becomes a matter of wide public concern. 

The main agencies which are implementing government activities and public policies are as follows:

Bureaucracy and other Administrative Organizations.

RK Sapru defines these institutional organs that implements public policies ss follows: "The bureaucracy is an executive branch of the government. It is an administrative organization consisting of a legal body of non-elected employed officials which is organized hierarchically into departments in accordance with the rules governing the conditions of their service." 

Bureacracy he argues rightly is an important institution which performs most of the day-to-day work of government. 

It is the bureaucracy who controls the personnel, money, materials and legal powers of government, and it is this institution that receives most of the implementation directives from the executive, legislative and judicial decision-makers, he affirmed. 

The author said something of interest to us in this piece when he reminds us that it is a question of controversy whether the bureaucracy is strong enough to dominate the political elite or vice versa. 

He then added that however, bureaucracy has never been a popular word. It is said to be afflicted with excesses of red tape, tedious rules and an attitude of unresponsiveness. 

Despite its maladies, it is important because implementation is the continuation of policy-making through means, he averred. 

These basic foundations is necessary so as to properly focus on the thematic area of our piece which came about by a certain news story in The Guardian few days quoting the health minister as planning to import medical doctors to Nigeria as a way of checking medical tourism.

This news story instigated and ignited a groundswell of disturbing signals in the organized human rights community particularly because if it is indeed true that after over half a century that Nigeria became an independent nation that we are still relying on foreign medical doctors to work in our public health institutions and indeed the bureaucrats in this government would come up with such a weird public policy, it therefore means that Nigeria has returned to square one. 

The HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA therefore undertook an interface with the Health minister Dr. Osagie Ehanire and his minister of state Senator Oloruninmbe Mamora to hear from them the real position and also to demand accountability from them on what the Federal government has in the pipeline to ensure the delivery of the right to qualitative healthcare to Nigerians. 

From the totality of what the two ministers told us during the two hours meeting, there is nothing that shows that President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration is planning to impart foreign doctors. Here are their words so you judge for yourself. 

The Honorable Minister of Health said thus: “As you know we are in the period of budget defence and the various committees of the house invite all the Ministers to come and make submissions to them and while we were having the submission with the committee on Diaspora, Diaspora are those Nigerians who work outside the country and some of them do come here. The doctors and nurses and pharmacies among them gather to work here, we cooperate with them and they corporate with us. And in the course of asking about diaspora doctors and about medical tourism, the committee members asked those questions, we answered that yes we do work with the Nigeria diaspora doctors they come from abroad for 2weeks, sometimes 3weeks, 4weeks, one week depending on how much time of leave they have, because they are working over there. So they use their leave to come home to work. As far as medical tourism is concerned we need also to improve our health delivery by looking for people who have experience from outside the country who have perhaps retired and who are looking for somewhere to volunteer to spread their experience and their knowledge. If they could come here, work in our teaching hospitals to also share their experience. Because there are some very experienced people who have worked retired and some of them are still strong and they don’t know what to do want to go volunteer and work somewhere else to share their experience among those who are coming up that we shall also be happy to engage those in fact we are in discussion with some of the embassies to see if they can help us to find some of those people and perform particularly difficult operations which we are not able to do here. They are such operations that we don’t have either the equipment or maybe because the expertise or maybe very seldom operation where in some cases we actually infact justifiably have to send few cases abroad because we cannot do it here, so they can come and share their experiences with us. That’s what we said, and then the next thing was that it took a different turn that we are importing doctors.

Well first of all, let me tell you that Nigeria doesn’t have money to import people because it’s difficult not paying salaries here so where are we going to see the money to go and import doctors from American or from anywhere, do we have the money? There is a lot of expenses here that the government has to meet and you hear sometimes doctors and workers go on strike because of their salaries are owed here. Is that the time to be importing doctors?

It does not make sense; we are talking about people volunteering. What we want to import is not doctors but we want to import their knowledge and skills. Who would come here  volunteer to work in may be in UBTH, Lagos Teaching Hospital, LUTH, National Hospital, Ahmadu Bello University, and University of Nigeria Nsukka, Ibadan and these experienced Professors from abroad, from America, Germany, Uk, England, France will just work for about 2, 3 months to take care of them they are volunteers because they have their pensions, and there is nothing they are looking for again other than to find a way to also share their experience and give their experience to our own expertise so that they can be stronger and better. That is the story we gave to the committee that’s it and it started going a different way so we called them and said this was not what happened and as far as am concerned my door is always open l talk to people who always come and ask for interviews who we give them interviews, so if you have been able to make a phone call or ask a question you would have been given a scenario of what happened , the point is that we don’t even have money to pay the salary of any expatriate coming. Nigerians won’t even have the money and that was not the thinking or even the words that were used. The words that were used are that we are looking for volunteers. Do you pay for volunteers? No you don’t and that the volunteers will come and they must be experienced not just any other person who will be able to add value so that people will have more confidence in this system and they would not want to go and get treatment outside. That is the way the story went. So for those of you who have heard now yes.

1-it is not even on our budget to be able to bring foreign doctors to come. If it is not in the budget so why will anybody say they are bringing doctors.

2-Secondly, we need their knowledge, we need their experience, we need their expertise and some of them have also learnt, I mean they have new technology that they can also show us here because medicine is a science that is constantly improving and changing. And those people who are retired and they have all this knowledge and expertise can come here and show us the latest in approach to treatment, to operations and to managing patients, so that was the story and now you know it.

We agree with you that the health sector in Nigeria requires repair that is what the president has been saying over and over again that he took over this country in a very difficult time where people in the past government believes that when you talk about health, you build big hospitals inside the city that everybody can see and say this man is working. But in the village where nobody there is nothing. So since president Buhari came, his idea is to balance this thinking if you are in the big town, ok you can have big hospital, if you are in the small town then you can have small hospital. So that’s why we are developing primary health care so that you can give health care to people in the rural area also, in the village, in the remote areas in hamlets even if it’s just a small primary health care with 5 or 6 people, they can have something and his policy is to have at least one primary health care centre in every ward if the ward is big or population is very big you can have two or even three but you must have one minimum in every ward that will give about nearly [10,000] ten thousands which we have been working on, infact one group just left before you became an NGO that receives support to help us with this primary health care centres. Since we announced it, many foreign friends have been very happy they said yes now you are doing something about the poor people we will support you. So this particular group has renovated about 1,000 one thousands primary health care centre in Nigeria. And that’s exactly the kind of example we are looking for so when we are talking about foreign people well, they can help us in many ways because some of them have money, the expertise, the technology and what this people are doing now helping to renovate and take health care to the rural areas. We have done more than half or about half of the number we are looking for. And we are also going to continue those health care centres. You asked a question about who is in charge?

Well Nigeria operates according to constitution. Who is in charge of primary schools? It is supposed to be local government. Who is in charge of secondary schools? It is supposed to be state government. And who is in charge of University? It is supposed to be the federal government. That is the way the constitution actually divides it. And in the same thing, in health care local government is actually supposed to be responsible for primary health care but they are not strong you are correct. They are not strong and the general hospital does actually what the state government should be doing but what the federal has to do. And you said the only ones working are the big hospitals in the city, the teaching hospitals you are correct. So the result is that anyone who has transport fare coming from the village, coming from everywhere and crowding the teaching hospitals and federal medical centres. They have to do all the out patients, treat everybody cough, catarrh, backache and waist pain which normally can be taken care of at primary health care level. Malaria, waist pain, even deliveries, many deliveries, diarrhea, stooling, all those are things that can be done in primary health care so that people will not waste their transport fare and those who have no transport fare and those who do not have transport fare will not lose their lives. That is why we are taking health care to all rural areas .If we have primary health care centre, you can also have health posts in different villages where people can at least get advice or get a few tablets for their ailment that is the plan and for the secondary level, the general hospitals again, the states were not really doing that. Some of them were building big hospitals like tertiary, which the federal government has already done. So that is the area we should believe the private sector will be very important because those doctors who are building their own hospitals may be 20, 40, 50 beds and they are able to perform some operations and employee other doctors, they are now like general hospitals .Some of the private hospitals so those ones will fill in gap for the secondary health care part of it and then be able to have a place where the people who cannot be treated in the primary health care can be referred to. As you know we are also working on National health insurance scheme to be able to have people contribute  maybe when you begin to hear of it you will join too because you are supposed to contribute Health Insurance Scheme when you are well so that you will make it a monthly contribution, so that any day you fall sick nobody will ask you to come and pay money again because you already have a card that says you are a contributor and being a contributor is like being a member of a hospital where you can go and get treatment because you are paying. It is like a membership fee which is what they do all over Europe they do it in many of those countries and we should be doing it here too. The law is about to be passed out to allow the National Health Insurance Scheme to expand and make it mandatory for people to join so yes I agree with you that there is a right to health, but to have the right the right to health you must have the health facility there, and it’s the Federal Government that is now going in to put money and put resources for Primary Health Care because at the end of the day, the federal government feels responsibility for all citizens we won’t say we are sorry, local government take care of yourself because local government, the constitution has left them weak and unable to do those things that are expected of them. As equipment concerned well people stay outside and say the hospital has no equipment nobody has really gone to examine, have you gone there to examine? NO you haven’t. The point is that yes it is true that they are some that they don’t have the equipment they want, there are some of that have equipment that are in need of repair, but there are good number that have good equipment, equipment that work and are functioning. So those ones too we expect better performance from them. While we are trying to have a better strategy for either repairing our equipment or how to buy equipment because yes equipment are extremely expensive we don’t make them. They all have to be important and some of them are millions and even millions of dollars and to have them is not easy at all, so we are in need of a strategy to be able to get all the equipment that we need perhaps helping the private sector, everybody has money for example, if you have money and you want to invest money in the health sector, we encourage you to come, you can build an x-ray centre in the hospital and you can be charging that’s private sector joining where government cannot supply the whole of 36 states the whole of 774 local government and the whole 9,844 wards federal government alone is not able to take care of all of those so we are looking for participation from private sector which are very much interested in. As far as complain about service  is concerned , most hospital who  have servicom points where you can go and complain if you have any issue that didn’t appeal to you, you make your complain, I myself received petition when people have been to   hospital they were not happy.

They write letter complaining to me, i will investigate if a doctor didn’t treat them right or the nurse abuse them they will set up a committee to go and find out and then discipline the person, so yes complains we are waiting.  Infact we welcome complain so that we can correct people who are not doing the right thing. If you keep quiet, we will never know who is doing it well and who is not doing it well, so for interface, you can interface with us, anybody here that you know. But the chief person here is the deputy media director who has her own team, she can speak to you anytime. Infact she brought somebody to interview us this morning, so you are not blocked off. That we are attending only to doctors, that is not true we attend to anybody who wants to know because it is the people’s ministry, we just work here and it’s yours. So that’s the way the story went about importation of Doctors as you said just now let me repeat:

A. We didn’t have in our budget to import anybody, so nobody could be importing a doctor and secondly, we didn’t need to import anybody and thirdly, what we want to import is skills and knowledge from volunteers. Volunteer because we know we cannot pay them. We can’t pay so, it is only people who are interested who have these knowledge and skills from outside the country, from modern world and they want to help us. We appeal to them that come if can spend about three (3) months, six  (6) months we can give food and water and a place to stay and they teach our experts to know more and have more skills.

The Honorable Minister of State added the following: “Comrade let me thank you and your team for finding time to see us. I will say without mincing that every expectancy in respect of the news that was very unfortunate because nothing was said that way to even be misconstrued in that regard by anyone not the minister, not myself not anyone that had privilege of making any comment on that day.

And the question to ask is, if truly that kind of thing was even contemplated and shared. That was a major news item why is it that it’s only just one paper that carried it, in front page? That’s the question. Such a news item that carries such weight, if it was true why would it be that one paper would carry it. Not a side news but front page headline. I felt disappointed really, I must be frank because a number of my friends locally and internationally called me and were asking .So no iota of truth in that publication and its quiet unfortunate coming from that stable. So we must think. Even if we make mistakes we must be ready to accept our mistakes but it should not happen. The constitution gives a specific room to media as partners in governance process but every right I must say, every right has a commensurate responsibility attached to it.

There is no right that is absolute, every right is qualified and has responsibility attached to it even the right to health that you are talking about. We have a righto health but if you continue to abuse your health, through alcohol abuse or cigarette smoking and all that, I mean nobody would but you would just be told these things are dangerous to your health. But if you fail to do what is right, in terms of responsibility that you have then there is a limit. So am saying that as much as we  appreciate and welcome journalist, media people as partners for good governance, we need to be careful with what we push out and as you said in regards to that first news going out there, a lot of people may not even get to read the re-rejoinder, and they will just go on . It’s unfair we shouldn’t and whoever wrote that story had the opportunity to cross check. I always say, the basic principle of justice is to hear from the other side.

That’s the basic concept of justice so please I’m happy that you are here by virtue of what you do as the Guardian of Human Rights. I think our own right at the Ministry too has been violated through that publication. That’s the truth it’s not fair, if we are wrong we would apologise so i don’t know what the motive could have been but I must say that it is not right. Then the other thing is that the current leadership in this Ministry will engage you on regular basis so that you can have the opportunity  to issues that bothers you particularly that has to do with national interest which we are all here to protect so we will have regular engagements as much as time permits .

So that issues that have to do with health can be discussed and you can have the position of the Ministry. That’s what we intend to do and that would be established in due course. And finally is to say that we have never claimed that we can do it alone as officials of the Federal Ministry of Health so we welcome this partnership as much as possible we will also try to be proactive so that we can all be on the same page on issues that concerns health in our country.”

*Emmanuel Onwubiko heads HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA (HURIWA) and blogs @www.emmanuelonwubiko.com, www.huriwa.blogspot.com,www.thenigerianinsidernews.com.

Atiku versus Buhari: Supreme Court’s verdict has yet to resolve the knotty issues: says HURIWA:

The leading civil Rights advocacy group – HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA (HURIWA) has expressed disappointment with the lackadaisical and pedestrian approach the supreme court of Nigeria handled the election petition by ex-vice president Atiku Abubakar of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) against the incumbent president Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC).

HURIWA stated that the judgment is rather a harsh judgment on the integrity of the nation’s judicial system because rather than meticulously resolve the knotty issues thrown up by the thoroughly manipulated 2019 presidential poll, the apex court has opened new yet to be experimented areas of organized mistrust and lack of integrity of the current status quo at the Nigerian judicial system.

“The stain caused by the aloofness; substantial disconnect with electoral realities of our times and tardiness in the handling of this historic petition by the current set up at the supreme court of Nigeria has only asked political office seekers to fight to the finish during polls just as henceforth election would become contestation for power by all means possible because there would be no light at the end of the judicial tunnel should losers of election with justifiable reasons to seek judicial intervention head to the Nigerian convoluted and compromised court system. The import of this miscarriage of justice by the supreme court is that elections henceforth in Nigeria would be for the survival of the fittest since illegal exercise of disproportionate might has been ruled right.”

In a statement, HURIWA through the national coordinator Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko has called on all lovers of Nigeria to rally round to rescue the judiciary from the oppressive hold of reactionary elements railroaded into official positions in the hierarchies through brute force and executive manipulations. HURIWA said the judicial system now lacks integrity and courage and therefore would be litigants would opt for the use of self-help measures such as violence to seek for some form of redress.

HURIWA said: " We are rudely shocked and disappointed that the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Tanko Muhammadu, is which led the seven-man panel which to heard the appeals in respect of the case instituted by the People’s Democratic Party and its presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, to challenge the victory of President Muhammadu Buhari at the February 23, 2019 poll tragically ended up not resolving even a single of those claims filed by the aggrieved."

"HURIWA believes that Justice Muhammad and other six members of the panel including Justices Bode Rhodes-Vivour, Kayode Ariwoola, John Okoro, Amiru Sanusi, Ejembi Eko and Uwani Abba-Ajji have failed to dispense justice in line with global best practices and ended up creating further problems which include the total loss of faith in the judiciary because what it shows is that there is no integrity or independence in the nation's judicial system”

"Like most lovers of constitutional democracy, HURIWA is well aware that the tribunal’s judgment which Atiku and his party are dissatisfied with had dismissed their petition challenging the outcome of the February 23, 2019 poll even as subsequently, the petitioners on September 23, 2019, filed 66 grounds of appeal before the Supreme Court to challenge the judgment of the tribunal in which they prayed the Supreme Court to nullify Buhari’s victory and either order that Atiku be declared as the valid winner of the poll or order the Independent National Electoral Commission to conduct a fresh presidential election. Sadly, the entire exercise has become an exercise in futility and has thrown up the clear evidence of a nation's judiciary that is hijacked by reactionary elements. The verdict which simply dismissed the petition for lacking merit is laughable and will on its own be treated as mere tissues of morally depraved drama unworthy of any historical references and veneration. Today is tragic and sad for real democracy. "

Borrowing and taxation stifling citizens

By Emmanuel Onwubiko

Hassan Tunde Onwuegbu was just a little less than ten years when we all enrolled into a public secondary school in Kafanchan, deep in the south of Kaduna state just as his middle aged father was a junior staff of the then near -moribund Nigerian Railways.

Yours faithfully and Hassan had much more than just been school mates as our areas of similarities because Hassan’s family happened to be the longest staying tenant in my father’s modest housing asset in that diminutive and rusty Kafanchan town which then served as the regional headquarters of the Nigerian Railways.

Although Hassan and myself were best of friends, his dad’s penchant for not meeting up with the rent obligations to my dad became a source of intermittent dramas in the house.

Hassan’s dad found a perfect strategy of dodging any physical meeting with my dad so as to beat back any opportunity to remind him to do the needful in the area of paying his long overdue rents to my father.

 Aside my father, Hassan's Dad became a chronic debtor to one other neighbor who sells food items because Hassan’s dad will always buy on credit promising to pay at the end of the month but predictably, he would be in no position to pay since the Nigerian government had become adept at owing public workers for as long as a year without payment of salaries.

His status as someone who practically owes everyone in the street nearly pushed Hassan’s dad into committing suicide but for the swift intervention of the kind hearted creditors such as my dad who decided to exercise immense patience with him just as Hassan was almost treated like my twin brother in such a way that we practically got fed together always by my mother- Mrs Gladys AdaUdensi.

Years after, Hassan is now a big man engineering expert in one of the federal universities but he constantly calls me to extend his appreciation for the generosity of my parents towards his family.

Such is the ordeal of a chronic debtor even at the level of an individual. How much worst will this be if a country is classified as such?

To be rated in the world as one of the most heavily indebted nations in addition to being a member of the less fancied third world categorization, is not the kind of status symbol that a sane person would like to see his own country being identified with.

This feeling was what gave a lot of public support to the then chief Olusegun Obasanjo’s led government when through the expertise of the then Finance minister – Mrs. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nigeria’s debt profile of over $25 billion USD to Paris Club and London Club of creditors was cleared on generous discounts and terms.

Sadly, just like sweet bad habit of yore, some few years down the line, the current federal government of Muhammadu Buhari has led Nigeria right back into the infamous club of heavily indebted nations and the bulk of the loans collected have always ended up in the pockets of politicians and corrupt bureaucrats in the federal government even as the state of federal or public infrastructure has continued to nose-dive and several parts of Nigeria currently looks like villages of the sixteenth century primitive era.

The costs of governance has also continued to balloon out of control just as the regimes of taxation by the current government on Nigerians coupled with lack of employment opportunities for youngsters have posed much more than grave existential threat.

Poverty, high crime rate, high taxation and public institutional corruption are some of the afflictions stifling the advancement of the living standards of millions of Nigerians to a dangerous extent that even the minister of humanitarian affairs Hajia Umar Farouk few hours back admitted that Nigeria now has 90 million absolutely poor citizens. However, even amidst these poverty indices, SENATORS who are less than 80 in number have appropriated N5 billion of the National wealth to buy up expensive SUVS for themselves even as the Central government keep borrowing from all sorts of places. 

The debt office reports on Nigeria’s debt every three months. Its website shows that at the end of March 2015 – two months before Buhari took office on 29 May – the country owed a total of N12 trillion, says a research based organization.

At the end of June 2015, this debt had risen slightly to N12.1 trillion. This was US$63.8 billion at the official exchange rate of the time, N196.95 to the dollar.

By the end of June 2018, total public debt had almost doubled to N22.4 trillion. The debt office said the latest increase comprised of a US$2.5 billion Eurobond issued by the government in February 2018. (Note: A Eurobond is a loan given out in a currency that is different to the currency of the country where it is issued.)

This took Nigeria’s total debt to US$73.2 billion, using the Central Bank of Nigeria’s 2018 exchange rate of N305 to the dollar.

What is the government borrowing for? The debt management office justified the borrowings in its 2017 report on Nigeria’s national debt.

“While Nigeria’s total public debt stock is relatively low vis-à-vis the country’s GDP, the increased funding requirements needed to sustain the economic recovery, address the huge infrastructural deficit, as well as meet budget financing requirements, would entail enormous funding resources, including borrowing,” it said.

Prof Olufemi Saibu interviewed by the researchers is of the economics department at the University of Lagos focuses on development macroeconomics and public finance. He told Africa Check the debt might be worrying, but would be justified if it were used for development projects and not just for regular spending on, for example, salaries and overheads.

“The debt profile is high but it’s not in the red lines yet,” Saibu said. “The problem is that the debt cannot continue to increase; there must be a check on it. And the question is, what are they using the debt for? The quality of projects, productivity and impact of the projects are what matters.”

Peter Obi, the People’s Democratic Party candidate for vice president in the recently held Presidential poll, accused President Muhammadu Buhari’s government of borrowing too much, with little to show for it.

“This present regime has plunged us into a deeper debt profile to the tune of $80 billion, an indication that the nation is collapsing,” Vanguard newspaper quoted him as saying on 24 October 2018.

Does Nigeria’s government owe even more? While Obi’s claim is largely true, the real picture of Nigeria’s debt is larger than what’s reported by the debt office, according to Atiku Samuel. He is the head of research at BudgiT, a civil society organization that works to make public spending transparent and accountable.

“What you see at the Debt Management Office is just a fraction of Nigeria’s debt,” he said. “There are special accounts that are dedicated by law, but unfortunately the federal government has been taking funds from [them] to meet its budgetary obligations.”

Samuel said the government had been drawing from “funds like the ecological fund, even borrowing from the excess crude account. Another big component is debt to contractors and the overdrafts it takes from the Central Bank – which is now about N4 trillion – and there are also judgment debts.” Government has drawn a lot of cash from the Pensions savings.

These would add to the debt “if you look at debt from the globally accepted definition, as these are still obligations to the government”, says the researchers.

In conclusion experts said thus: Nigeria’s debt rose from N12.1 trillion ($63.8 billion) in 2015 to N22.4 trillion ($73.2 billion) in 2018

Pathetically this government continues to borrow under the guise that it is part of efforts to grow Nigeria's Information and Communication Technology sector, in which case the Export-Import Bank of China will provide a loan of $328 million to support the country.

A statement by Garba Shehu, Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity to the President, revealed.

According to the statement, President Muhammadu Buhari and Chinese President Xi Jinping will sign the agreement during the former's current visit to the country.

The agreement will be between Galaxy Backbone Ltd., a Nigerian company and Huawei Technologies of China.

The statement read in part: "During the 6-day official visit of the Nigerian President, he is expected to join his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping to witness the signing of an agreement on the National Information and Communication Technology Infrastructure Backbone Phase 11 (NICTIB 11) between Galaxy Backbone Limited and Huawei Technologies Limited (HUAWEI) at the cost of US $328 million facility provided by the Chinese EXIM Bank.

"The bank facility is for the development of NICTIB 11 project which is consistent with the current administration’s commitment to incorporating the development of ICT into national strategic planning under the National Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP). The borrowing has become unlimited of recent with the World Bank adding to the profile of Nigeria as a heavily indebted nation with a whopping $3 billion loan.

Finance officials of President Muhammadu Buhari argues that the $3 billion that we are trying to raise from the World Bank is for financing the power sector.

This financing they stated will include right now, the gap between what is provided for in the current tariff and the cost of the businesses themselves so there is a tariff shortfall but it would also enhance our ability to pay the previous obligations that have crystalized that we have not yet been able to pay.

Some portion of it says government will be for the transmission network and if we are able to expand the facility to $4 billion, the additional $1 billion is for the distribution network.

"It will help us to exit the subsidy that is now inherent in the power sector. It is supposed to be to reform the sector, to restore the distribution business side of the sector especially on a stronger footing so that they are freed up enough to go out and raise financing to invest in expanding the distribution network."

Therein lies the beginning of more poverty inducing problems for millions of Nigerians with the expected hike in tariffs for electricity. Already there are all kinds of tax regimes in the telecommunications and in the value added tax system hobbling Nigerians. This spiraling inequality in Nigeria perfectly makes the Country a broken ladder similar to what the current version of The Economist wrote on inequality in the USA.

The Economist says: "Part of the problem is that American policy has exacerbated the effect of economic pressures. In their new book, “The Triumph of Injustice", Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman pin the blame for rising inequality squarely on the American tax system."

The authors – both economists at the University of California, Berkeley – argue that taxation in America has become less progressive over the past four decades.

In the 1970s they observed that the rich paid twice as much in tax, as a share of their income, as the working poor (taking into account all taxes, including those at the state and local level).

After President Donald Trump’s tax reform in 2018, by contrast, the very rich paid a smaller share than many Americans in the bottom half of the income distribution.

The 400 richest Americans paid an average tax rate of about 23% of income in 2018, according to the authors’ estimates. Low income Americans paid roughly 25%, the authors say, although this excludes transfer payments made to the very poorest households: a misleading omission, some critics reckon. Personal taxation is only part of the story, as authors curiosity allow. Even so, the decline in the tax burden on the very rich, at a time of extraordinary growth in their incomes, is startling."

 This analysis poses a question: why has American tax reform been so heedless of inequality? Messrs Saez and Zucman suggest a rationale. Economic injustice (as they see it) is a result of a simple cycle. The rich try to avoid tax, then win concessions from politicians who argue that attempts to get more from the wealthy are doomed..."

Nigeria needs to redress the high levels of income inequality and the high unemployment rate to check the declining standards of living and bridge the gap between the haves and the haves-not. Time is running out and from empirical evidence it doesn't show that President Muhammadu Buhari has the political will and the will power to dismantle this harsh regime of inequality and disparity. The Nation is increasingly deteriorating into anarchy and doom.  Who bails the cat? The billion dollar question.

*Emmanuel Onwubiko heads HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA (HURIWA) and blogs @www.emmanuelonwubiko.com, www.huriwa.blogspot.com,www.thenigerianinsidernews.com.