SOCIAL PROTECTION AS HUMAN RIGHT By Emmanuel Onwubiko

In the last couple of weeks, Nigerians have faced a barrage of threats from government officials including President Jonathan to remove the subsidy the government pays for the petroleum products sold to Nigerians. Officials of the current federal administration have also used most public events in the last few weeks to urge Nigerians to be ready to make more sacrifices.  

The psychological and media war waged by top political office holders against the Nigerian people started some few months ago when the minister of finance Professor Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala presented to the National Assembly, the Federal government‘s medium term expenditure framework (MTEP) which disclosed that the government will from January 2012 withdraw the subsidy it pays for petroleum products sold to Nigerians.

In all of these submissions made so far by government officials, the interest of the very poor citizens did not feature just as it is now clear that the current government has created the bad impression and image as being anti-poor, anti-people and therefore does not care about providing social protection, social security and social welfare to the greatest percentage of the citizenry who are obviously poor, unemployed, homeless and bombarded by the current unprecedented state of insecurity.

Most people are worried that this administration which rode on the back of popular mandate to come to political power in April 2011 has now become a friend of the extremely rich who are not even up to one percent of the nation’s population. How come that the current government is doing everything possible to assist the rich but doing nothing to assist the poor?     

If you doubt my assertion, then read the disclosure in the Daily Sun newspaper report carried in page 11 of November 14th 2011 edition, whereby the Federal government under President Goodluck Jonathan reached an ‘unholy’ agreement with defaulting companies that cumulatively owes the federal government over N170 Billion tax.

Rather than allow the full weight of the law to be brought to these defaulting companies that have refused to pay the N170 Billion tax to the public treasury, the current administration negotiated with the defaulting companies for them to pay only N22 Billion. How come then that the federal government is providing tax subsidy to the rich company owners but is threatening fire and brimstone to remove fuel subsidy which ought to benefit the very poor Nigerians if properly enforced?

Come to think of it, the universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Nigerian Constitution regard social security as human right. But why then is the current government bent on increasing the economic burden of the very poor citizens in the guise of enforcing strict economic austerity measures? Where then is the essence of democracy if public office holders especially those in the executive arm of government keep back huge chunk of cash running to several Billions of tax payers’ money as security votes which they siphon to their private bank accounts offshore, but are determined to make the cost of living for the poor harsher and tougher?

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights stated in Article 22 that social security is a human right. Section 16[1][b] of the Nigerian constitution provides for social welfare for Nigerians.

what the removal of subsidy on petroleum products will bring about to the majority of Nigerians who are poor include among others, more poverty, high cost of transportation, unprecedented misery, frustration and may increasingly push more Nigerians into social crime, immoralities of prostitution and fraud and will inevitably lead to more suicide rate in Nigeria.

Ever imagined why Nigeria is not spending anything to cater for the poor populace even when the United States is spending huge amount to take care of the vulnerable members of their society?

The 2011 annual report by the Social Security program's Board of Trustees noted that in 2010, 54 million people were receiving Social Security benefits, while 157 million people were paying into the fund; of those receiving benefits, 44 million were receiving retirement benefits and 10 million disability benefits. In 2011, there will be 56 million beneficiaries and 158 million workers paying in. In 2010, total income was $781.1 billion and expenditures were $712.5 billion, which meant a total net increase in assets of $68.6 billion. Assets in 2010 were $2.6 trillion, an amount that is expected to be adequate to cover the next 10 years.

You may call it social security or social protection, the important thing is that the poor among us must be protected from going extinct as a result of hunger and civil conflicts instigated by poverty.

* Emmanuel Onwubiko heads HUMAN Rights Writers’ Association of Nigeria.     

14/11/2011

IS CITIZEN DIPLOMACY DEAD? By Emmanuel Onwubiko

Tales of tears, terror, torments and trauma is the apt description of the experiences undergone by hundreds of stranded Nigerians who fled Libya at the heat of the anti-Gaddafi rebellion to escape targeted assassination by the rebels of the National Transitional Council of Libya.

In voices generously dripping with emotion, the Nigerian returnees who reportedly spent two months in the notorious deserts from Libya to Nigeria arrived in late October 2011 through Borno State with sad stories of the series of gang rape, armed robbery, and physical torture that majority of them suffered in the hands of the xenophobic Libyan rebels.

One of the returnees, Paddy Irete a student of Civil Engineering at the Federal Polytechnic Auchi, Edo state who reportedly abandoned his Higher National Diploma program mid-way in search of the proverbial but elusive greener pastures in Libya early last year, told the media that many Nigerians and blacks in Libya were principal targets of the rebels because they believed that the now murdered dictator Colonel Muamar Gaddafi recruited blacks to fight his compatriots who wanted his 42 year tyranny ended.

Amid these genuine complaints from stranded Nigerians and other black Africans that they are undergoing tumultuous xenophobic attacks from the rebels who have taken over political power, the Nigerian government has failed to galvanize the African union to convoke emergency session to brainstorm on measures to be adopted to ensure that the growing racism in Libya and the targeted extinction of all blacks in that country is brought to an effective end.

The Nigerian government has therefore abandoned the hundreds of thousands of stranded Nigerians in Libya to their unfortunate fate. The neglect by the Nigerian government of its constitutional obligation to protect the citizenry who are caught between the devil and the deep blue sea in Libya is a gross human rights violation committed by the state against her citizens and a breach of the citizen diplomacy doctrine.

As a member of the international community, the Nigerian government is under a legal obligation to respect, protect and fulfill human rights of the citizenry globally.

Experts have repeatedly canvassed the logical position that from a legal standpoint, human rights can be defined as the sum of individual and collective rights recognized by sovereign states and enshrined in their constitutions and in international law.

The question that begs for an immediate response is why the Nigerian government has up until this moment failed to concretely take action to protect the fundamental rights of her citizens who were unfortunately caught up in the civil conflicts in Libya and are currently subjected to horrendous regime of targeted abuses, humiliations, physical attacks and extra-legal execution in the hands of the new big boys in political power in Libya who wrongly believe that all black Africans were hired mercenaries of the now murdered dictator Colonel Muamar Gaddafi.

Nigeria ought to have initiated transparent probe of these groundswell of allegations of human rights violations in Libya through the nation’s embassy in Tripoli even as the nation ought to have current and reliable data of the Nigerians that live outside our shores and their legal status in such foreign countries.

The concept of ‘citizen diplomacy’ was couched by the Olusegun Obasanjo’s civilian administration from section 19 of the Nigerian constitution which clearly spells out Nigeria’s foreign policy objective as the promotion and protection of the national interest.

What then is more of our national interest than ensuring that Nigerians in all parts of the world are treated with dignity and offered the universal plat form for the promotion, protection and safeguarding of their fundamental human rights as human beings and members of the civilized global village?

The sad tales as told by the hundreds of Nigerian returnees from Libya show that the Federal government has clearly abnegated from her constitutional and legal obligations to protect the rights of Nigerian citizens in distress. On October 25th 2011, The Guardian Captured the story of the experiences encountered by about 250 Nigerians who spent months in the notorious deserts to return to Nigeria from the then war ravaged Libya.

Citizen diplomacy as the new approach to Nigeria’s foreign policy ought to have evolved to such a time that Nigeria will become attractive to not only Nigerians but even to foreigners who would view Nigeria as the most favoured tourism point to visit. But the reverse is still the case so much so that hundreds of thousands of Nigerian youth who ought to stay back home, develop their human capacity and skills to build Nigeria, are now jumping ships to travel to foreign territories even without valid immigration document.

Nigeria has become so unfriendly and economically inclement to her younger citizens that hundreds of thousands of young Nigerian girls are sold into modern day prostitution rings in Italy and other Western European Countries whereby they are subjected to all manner of human rights violations.

What has happened to the doctrine of citizen diplomacy introduced by the immediate past people Democratic Party’s federal administration so much so that Nigeria is still ranked as one of the worst nations to live in?

The Economist reported in February 21st 2011 that VANCOUVER remains the most livable city in the world, according to the latest annual ranking compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit. The Canadian city scored 98 out of a maximum 100, as it has done for the past two years.

The ranking scores 140 cities from 0-100 on 30 factors spread across five areas: stability, health care, culture and environment, education, and infrastructure. These numbers are then weighted and combined to produce an overall figure. The top ten cities occupy the same positions as last year, with the exception of Melbourne and Vienna, which have swapped places.

Cities that score best tend to be mid-sized cities in wealthier countries with a relatively low population density. This often fosters a broad range of recreational availability without leading to high crime levels or overburdened infrastructure. Seven of the top ten scoring cities are in Australia and Canada, where population densities of 2.88 and 3.40 people per sq km respectively compare with a global (land) average of 45.65 and a US average of 32.

At the other end of the ranking, Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, is in 140th place, thanks to particularly poor scores for its stability, health care and infrastructure.

Nigeria’s ugly position as one of the worst places to live on earth remains a far cry from the aspirations of our citizenry who had hoped that with several billions of United States dollars earned by Nigeria from crude oil export in the last couple of years would have been used to transform Nigerian cities into favourable cities for human habitation.

Alas! corruption, greed and weak legal enforcement of anti-graft legislations in Nigeria have combined to make Nigeria hostile to her citizens so much so that ‘citizen diplomacy’ has become a mere artificial cliché that is so notoriously irrelevant so long as the negative factors are not quickly reversed because citizens are forced into irregular migration to escape the overwhelming weight of poverty, unemployment, high crime wave and insecurity in our motherland.

Duncan Clarke in his widely acclaimed book “Crude Continent: the struggle for Africa’s oil prize”, stated that “As oil developed, so corruption expanded in favour of middlemen, commission agents and those close to central power, especially within the state company, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC)”.

Only recently, the National Assembly discovered that several billions of tax payers fund running to over N400 Billion, grew wings and disappeared in the last one year in the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation [NNPC]. With these type of monumental frauds not tackled radically, how can the doctrine of ‘citizen diplomacy’ work?

*          Emmanuel Onwubiko writes from HUMAN Rights Writers’ Association of Nigeria and can be reached on doziebiko@yahoo.com; www.huriwa.blogspot.com; www.huriwa.com.     

15/11/2011.

GROUP CANVASS SUPPORT FOR JUSTICE MINISTRY * URGES FG TO RESPECT HUMAN RIGHTS IN ANTI-TERRORISM FIGHT

HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS’ ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA, (HURIWA), a democracy inclined non-governmental organization has canvassed public support for the justice sector agenda currently implemented by the office of the Federal Attorney General and minister of Justice put in place by Mr. Mohammed Bello Adoke (SAN), the Chief law officer of the country. It also wants the Federal Government to respect fundamental human rights of citizens in the current fight against terrorism in the country.

In a position paper after a one day national policy dialogue on human rights in Abuja the Rights group stated that it was impressed by the extent of work done by the Federal Justice Sector reform co-coordinating committee set up by the Justice Minister Mr. Mohammed Bello Adoke (SAN) even as it tasked the Federal government to practically implement those measures because of the beneficial effects they will impact on the ordinary Nigerians.

In a statement endorsed by the National Coordinator Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko and the National media officer Miss. Zainab Yusuf, the Rights group also exonerated the federal Attorney General Mohammed Bello Adoke [SAN] of the alleged illegal acquisition of a choice property in Maitama, Abuja for allegedly facilitating a land transaction for a private business mogul as published by an online media.

HURIWA specifically stated that so far it has been unable to verify the allegation of misconduct against the Chief Law officer of Nigeria just as it called on critics to always cross check their facts and ensure that their claims are substantially verifiable, constructive and factual before rushing to the public media.

It stated thus: “after a pain staking and thorough independent probe of the allegation as published by an online site, we are of the considered opinion in our preliminary report that so far no nexus has been established on the ownership of the aforementioned massive housing asset in Maitama, Abuja to the person of the current Federal Attorney General. We have also found out that President Good Luck Jonathan has nothing to do with the transaction involving the Central Bank of Nigeria and the private business mogul in the sale and purchase of the former Nitel property in Garki, Abuja.”

On the achievements of the Justice Ministry so far, the Rights group said it was satisfied with the legal frame work against terrorism fashioned by the office of the federal Attorney General but cautioned the federal government not to abridge the fundamental freedoms including right to privacy as enshrined in chapter four of the constitution as amended.

The group said; “Even as we are shocked and worried by the unprecedented bloody violence and brazen acts of terrorism unleashed on Nigerians by armed and dangerous splinter groups in North East Nigeria, we are happy that the office of the Federal Attorney General has introduced an implementation guideline for waging war against terrorism in compliance with the provisions of the constitution and the validly passed legislation against terrorism in Nigeria”.

“However, we are worried that some basic rights and freedoms that are inalienable and inviolable which are constitutionally protected may be abridged if operatives of the security community are not professionally and competently trained to respect provisions of the fundamental human rights enshrined in chapter four of the constitution”, it stated.

The Rights group called for partnership between hierarchy of the security community and the federal ministry of Justice in the professional training of security operatives on the areas of respect for the fundamental human rights of the citizenry even while fighting terrorism.

HURIWA lauded the ministry of justice for introducing a new prison standing order which will guarantee the protection of the rights of anyone in lawful custody in any detention facility in Nigeria even as the Rights group tasked the justice ministry to rapidly implement measures to quicken justice delivery as one sure way of checking the heavy congestion of the nation’s prisons with awaiting trial inmates (ATI’s).

HURIWA stated that; “We are amazed that as at 2008, out of the 40,000 inmates in the prisons, about 24,250 of them are awaiting trial according to official figures. Right now we are aware that the figure of awaiting trial inmates has escalated. The justice sector reform agenda must be vigorously pursued”.   

11/11/2011.   

NIGERIAN POLITICIANS AND ALCOHOLIC RODENTS By Emmanuel Onwubiko

In late 2009 I did an article with same title of ‘Nigerian politicians and alcoholic rodents’ whereby I drew sharp parallel between the conducts of our current breed of politicians in public offices with that of alcoholic rodents. In December 2009 when I did the first version with same title, I was so vexed just like millions of other Nigerians that the then President Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar’adua (now late) reportedly checked into a foreign hospital in Saudi Arabia to seek for medical treatments for his medical challenge which was officially identified as heart-related illness without proper handing over processes.

I observed then that if the question was only that the then President proceeded on medical vacation and handed over his presidential powers in the interim to his vice President so that strategic issues involved with daily administration of the executive Arm of government that there will be no vacuum in the governance structure of this country, then we have no much problems with the President’s absence for prolonged period of time.

But the issue was that the then President allegedly accepted an unconstitutional and divisive advise from his Presidential Advisor on National Assembly matters by not transmitting a notice to the National Assembly’s senate President and speaker informing them that he had a medical emergency to attend to and in compliance with the extant constitutional provision in section 145 of the 1999 constitution he had decided that his then vice President should act as the President for him pending his return.

The monumental problems created by the lapses of the then President was later corrected by the Senate using the doctrine of necessity and the rest is now history.  But we are still witnessing certain tendencies among the political class that portray them as “alcoholic Rodents” who are out to satisfy their selfish interests to the detriment of Nigeria and Nigerians in general who are at the receiving end of the massive bad governance, greed, corruption and Sponsorship of violent crimes by politicians unleashed on all of us.

The concept of alcoholic Rodent is largely attributed to the research work carried out by John Crabbe an American behavior geneticist at the Oregon Health and Science University and the Portland VA Medical center, renowned for his studies of alcoholic Rodents. Crabbe has for years done research on mice from a strain called C57BL/6J, who are unique in their voracious appetite for alcohol.

Before proceeding, let me say here that majority of Nigerian politicians especially those in the corridors of power are the same with these alcoholic Rodents because of their propensity and voracious appetite for corruption, greed and electoral violence which are synonymous with animals like the alcohol Rodent controlled by some external forces and their insatiable appetite for alcohol.

Are these bad behaviors of Nigerian politicians psychological or genetical?

Is it in the gene of Nigerian politicians that they should conduct themselves in public offices like the alcoholic Rodents who because of drunkenness will inevitably unleash devastating destruction on any unfortunate house-hold that they may criminally sneak in searching for what to steal?

We will return to this question but first let us read the book by Daniel Goleman titled ‘Social intelligence’ and subtitled “the revolutionary new science of human relationship,” so as to comprehend John Crabbe’s concept of ‘alcoholic rodents’ and to link it up with the behaviors of Nigerian politicians. Goleman even told us in his book that the study of alcoholic rodents holds the promise of clues to the causes and one hopes, cures for alcoholism in humans.

The author Goleman among other details wrote thus;

“This strain of alcohol-loving mice is one of a hundred or so that are useful for medical research, such as susceptibility to diabetes or heart disease. Each mouse in a given inbred strain is, in effect, a clone of every other such mouse; they share their genes like identical twins. One virtue of these strains for scientific researcher is their stability; a mouse of a given strain tested in various labs around the world should react like every other such mouse. But this very assumption of stability was questioned by Crabbe, in a now famous, simple experiment”.

Going further with the report of the research, Goleman averred thus; “So at the identical point-April 20, 1998, between 8:30 and 9:00am local time-all the mice from eight different inbred strains, including C57BL/6J, were tested. One test simply offered them a choice of drinking regular water or an alcohol solution. True to form, the liquor-lovers chose the rodent martini far more often than did other mouse strains.”

From John Crabbe’s research findings as reported by Goleman, it is safe to conclude that the alcoholic rodent-like behaviors of Nigerian politicians are not in-born, genetic or psychological, but were encouraged by the docility of the civil society and the weak law enforcement and judicial institutions that should have served as effective remedial checks to these excesses of corruption and greed associated with a majority of Nigeria’s public office holders.

I deliberately dug deep into the research on alcoholic rodents to demonstrate the fact that the breeds of politicians we have in Nigeria have gained notoriety around the world for the very bad reasons such as corruption, greed, indiscipline disloyalty and disrespect to the constitution of Nigeria.

Antonio Maria Costa of the United Nations office on Drugs and crime in a paper he delivered at a public forum in Abuja in 2007 stated thus; “Your country used be notorious for corruption. It lost billions of dollars-the livelihoods of millions of people-to foreign havens, stolen and expatriated by corruption leaders. By some estimates close to $400 billion was stolen between 1960 and 1999. Sani Abacha alone is estimated to have stolen the equivalent of 2 to 3% of the countries GDP for every year that he was President.”

 “400 billion dollars ladies and gentlemen: think of the millions of vaccinations that could have been bought; the thousands of kilometers of roads that could have been paved; the hundreds of schools, hospitals and training centres that could have been built; and the water treatment facilities that could have been modernized with this money. The “opportunity cost” of the stolen common wealth is enormous. Think of how different Nigeria would look today.”

Rational minds around the world have expressed shock at the high level of corruption by virtually all former Governors and other high profile public office holders. More shocking is the fact that even the current Governors who are witnesses to the public odium faced by their erstwhile colleagues in the hands of the operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission whose arrests and prosecution are dramatized in the public media still go ahead to dip their hands into public treasury and loot the financial resources meant for development of their states. If these tendencies are not similar to those of alcoholic rodents, what then are?

Even as the widely corrupt Petroleum ministry is spearheading the infamous campaign for withdrawal of subsidy paid on petroleum products, some online journals are currently circulating a story that the current oil minister in Nigeria Mrs. Alison-Madueke allegedly bought a mansion in Viena, Austria worth 20 million Euros. This damaging allegation must be probed and if found true the minister must be made to face the full wrath of the law. When will our politicians stop behaving like alcoholic rodents or are they waiting for violent revolution before turning a new leaf?

* Emmanuel Onwubiko heads HUMAN Rights Writers’ Association of Nigeria     and can be reached on doziebiko@yahoo.com; www.huriwa.blogspot.com;  www.huriwa.com.

9/11/2011.

THE THING ABOUT TAXATION By Emmanuel Onwubiko

Long before Miss Chimamanda Adichie, the University of Nigeria, Nsukka – produced literary prodigy wrote her third book titled “the thing around your neck”, the theme of taxation and its inter-connectedness with human rights dominated discussion even among uninformed minds in Nigeria.

Adichie’s beautiful work of scholarship did not specifically talk about taxation but rather dwelt on some basic questions around the fundamental issue of social justice and equity. This great female writer, who is following the footprints of one of the World’s best known literary icons Professor Chinua Achebe, used her third book to also talk about the growing trend of lesbianism and same sex sexual orientation which has gained currency or should I say notoriety in the developed Western World.

In those early 1980’s, surely before the irrepressible novelist Miss. Chimaamanda Adichie was born, most traders and other artisans were so much scared of tax collectors so much so that they usually run as fast as possible to escape been caught by these council officials who collect taxes.

Today, I have elected to dwell on ‘the thing about taxation’ with a mindset that transparent and accountable revenue generation mechanisms when adopted by Government officials will surely lift the greatest number of our people to their better selves and will inevitably make Nigeria a true home for all whereby the basic necessities of life will be made affordable and available.

It was perhaps in line with this thinking, that a quarter of a century ago, a group of high achievers in the diverse fields of the private sector with the blessing of the federal government commenced a national platform that was built to liberalize the generation of revenues and other forms of taxation for the purposes of developing the various tiers of government in Nigeria.

Under the aegis of mobile advert association of Nigeria (MOAN) these group of Nigerians set out to contribute greatly towards making payment of certain categories of taxation much easier and to ensure that transparency, accountability and anti-corruption become the watchwords of those who collect taxes in order to motivate the tax payers to become useful members of the society and by so doing promote human rights, social justice, rural development and respect for the Rule of law by all irrespective of social status.

When on Friday the first week in November of this year when the strong executive council of this body inaugurated the year 2012 new certificate clearance, it was an auspicious opportunity for brainstorming by all critical stakeholders and leaders of the major segments of the general society including the media, organized civil society and governments officials.

At the end of the public forum in Abuja which was described as a defining moment in the life of the association’s drive to make the payment of tax by Nigerians easier and transparent, the group unveiled broad based blueprint on strategies for engagement in partnership with all stake holders to promote the anti-graft program of the current administration just as the group also issued strong worded statement of commitment to the media.

The statement was endorsed jointly by the national President, Otumba John Obriba; Vice president, Alhaji Abubakar Ndarani, Director General, joint mobile Sanitation Agency (JAMSA) Mr. Samuel Ele Asebe; Secretary General Mr. Christopher Egbobor; National Treasurer, Alhaji Aminu Yunusa and National publicity secretary Alhaji Tijani G. Shariff.  

It said it has worked out an elaborate plan to drag notorious tax evaders to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Independent Corrupt practices and other related offences commission.

The Mobile Advert Association of Nigeria in a statement made available to journalists stated thus; “The association stands to fight against double collection and multiple collection of taxes especially on our roads and 774 local government areas all over the federation. Therefore, the multinational and indigenous companies must also join us to fight this cause by paying their taxes and levies to their areas of jurisdiction without fear or favour from any quarters.”

On the achievements of the body, the statement noted thus; “Apart from achieving uniformity and eradicating multiple taxation, we have also succeeded in creating employment opportunities for our youths; just as the group raised alarm of surreptitious moves to undermine the organization by fifth columnists.

Well stated, but my take on all these is that officials who collect taxes from the citizens must respect their fundamental human rights of human dignity and also government officials must ensure that transparency in the deployment of revenues for development of the nation, remains the thing about taxation.

+Emmanuel Onwubiko heads Human rights writers association of Nigeria and writes from Abuja.

7/11/2011

AS ABIA FIGHTS ITSELF By Emmanuel Onwubiko

I am a witness to the groundswell of alleged irregularities that characterized the April 2011 governorship election in Abia State and therefore I decided to watch proceedings at the election petitions’ Tribunal to see what will come out of the spate of petitions filed by politicians who alleged electoral malpractices against the current holder of the office of the Governor of Abia State. But my attention at the election petition Tribunal has suffered spectacular distraction because of the series of dramatic and self inflicted political battles ignited by the political administration in Abia State.

I must confess that my heart, mind/Soul is in Abia because Aba City in Abia State is a spiritual home of all the Igbo speaking people all over the world because of the undeniable fact that all Igbo families are represented in the diverse entrepreneurial activities going on in that gravely neglected commercial town. I weep on daily basis for Aba, a city seen by even we ‘non-indigenes’ as our spiritual home.

Even the old Boys of the National High School Aba, Abia State in the Guardian of October 28^th, 2011 described the bad situation of things currently in Aba thus; “Aba is currently held hostage by poverty, unemployment, kidnapping and crime-very low levels for a town once seen as Nigeria’s hope to join the league of industrial nations”.

Even while we bemoan the unfortunate situation of gross underdevelopment in Abia State, the government of the day is busy churning out illegal and laughable policies. One of the most atrocious discriminatory policies ever experimented by any political entity in Nigeria is the current policy by Governor Orji of Abia to compulsorily disengage the state civil servants who are not from Abia State originally.

What this bad policy implies is that even former products of the National Youth Service Scheme (NYSC) who secured automatic employment previously by the virtue of their excellent performance while serving Abia state have now been shown red cards to quit the Abia state civil service.

What this policy of disengagement of non-indigenes from Abia state civil service imply is that even male workers who are originally not from Abia state but are happily married to Abia state daughters have now lost their civil service positions going by the new draconian and apartheid policy of the state government.

Another dangerous implication of this primitive unconstitutional policy is that non-indigenes who have been in the state civil service for over two decades or as long as the state has been, will now be flush out even if they have few years to retire happily and secure their legal entitlements and benefits. Mr. Tu face Idibia the irrepressible entertainer and musician recently released a wonderful album he aptly titled ‘implication’. The apartheid policy in Abia indeed has several implications.

Keen observers of development in Abia would have noticed that several newspaper advertisements costing the tax payers’ several millions of naira have been placed in strategic national newspapers all in an attempt to wage media war of attrition against right thinking Nigerians who have raised their rational voices against this unusual policy.

Although some of these aides of governor Orji that I know have privately expressed their well considered opinion particularly against this anti-Igbo, anti-people and anti-progress policy, but the greater majority of the assistants of the governor have now found a way of justifying their huge salaries by dishing out illogical publications to justify some of the bad policies of their boss.

I have tried without success to locate genuine reason for Abia state government to implement this policy of targeted annihilation of non-indigenes from Abia civil service and I find it extremely difficult to believe that the current National minimum wage Act which specifies payment of at least N18,000 to civil servants as possible logical background.

Why is the Abia state government so adept at generating needless controversies?

A friend told me in Umuahia that probably the state government has decided to use one of the 48 laws of power which is ‘consistent attack’ of your opponents as a weapon of mass destruction to cover up their track since no meaningful governance and infrastructural development is going on in Abia state.

The Catholic Church has spoken out against this bad policy in the same way that several legal scholars have indeed sounded notes of warning that the policy of disengagement of non-indigenes from Abia state civil service is unconstitutional.

The Catholic Bishop of Umuahia Diocese, Lucius Ugorji, says the disengagement of non-indigenes from the Abia civil service is ill-conceived and unconstitutional.  

In a statement he issued recently the cleric described the action as “discriminatory and a serious contravention of section 42(1), (2), and (3) of the 1999 Constitution of the country.”

The state government had on August 25th; issued a circular signed by Godswill Adiele, head of service, transferring non-indigenes to their states of origin with effect from October 1^st 2011.

A professional colleague called to inform me that he suspects that the Abia state governor may be playing the scripts of those who never wish that any Nigerian from the South East should emerge as president come 2015 when President Goodluck has announced as his Presidential terminal date.

But I ask, what will it profit Governor Orji, of Abia state if he actively undermines the aspiration of his ethnic nationality to produce the civilian president of Nigeria in 2015 for the first time in the political annals of Nigeria?

Does Governor Orji not know that a kingdom that fights against itself can not and will not stand as the Holy Bible teaches us?

Another dimension of the political absurdities in Abia state is the decision of the state government to use the instrumentality of coercion, threats and physical violence unleashed by the Nigeria police force, Abia state command against ordinary women who have tried to protest the prolonged institutional silence to bring to justice the five male students that gang raped a teenage female student of the Abia state university. 

·              Emmanuel Onwubiko heads HUMAN Rights Writers’ Association of Nigeria and can be reached on doziebiko@yahoo.com;  www.huriwa.com; www.huriwa.blogspot.com     

31/10/2011

‘NEGOTIATE’ WITH GHOST WORKERS PLEASE By Emmanuel Onwubiko

Magaji Folorunsho Akuabata (not real names) is barely thirty but is immensely endowed with massive material wealth. He is generous to a fault.

Magaji Folorunsho Akuabata is not known to have any visible means of livelihood yet he never seemed to lack all the luxurious items and services that money can buy even as his house is one of the most aesthetically decorated piece of real estate in the bustling area of the city where he stays with his small but beautiful family of two wives and two babies in their early years.

One thing led to another during the course of a community development event in which yours faithfully was invited to deliver a lecture and behold I was sitting next to this man of immense but invisible or suspicious means and he beamed broadly with smiles as if to say he has just been visited by a long expected messenger of fortune.

We spoke for more than fifteen minutes before the master of ceremony invited me to give my lecture. At the end of over thirty minutes of explosive lectures on the topic of “the essence of reward and punishment as the bed rock of a better society”, Mr. Magaji Folorunsho Akuabata was so impressed that he demanded for my complimentary card and promised to send his personal assistant with a package for me.

The sixth sense in me inspired me to launch an investigation to unravel or uncover the real identity of this man who most people in the community fall on themselves to invite as chief launcher in most fund raise events. At the end of my probe I came up with a ground breaking finding that the man in question is one of the most notorious ghost workers of our era in the federal civil service.  

In his latest scholarly book titled; “WITNESS TO JUSTICE” Mathew Hassan Kukah, the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese stated that in Nigeria, ‘institutional chaos has produced selfishness and greed. The result is that we are a nation of the walking wounded’.

This institutional chaos I do believe has also produced a class of people who hold top civil service jobs but who manipulate the system to pay themselves huge salary package in the guise of paying salaries to legitimate workers when in the real sense, no such staff can be validly identified. This is called the ghost workers’ syndrome.    

The phenomenon of ghost workers is as old as the civil service establishment in Nigeria and the trend has occupied the minds of policy planners at all levels of civil governance so much so that several tons of millions of tax payers’ fund are spent by government hunting for these ghost workers who are growing in number and notoriety.

Daily, Nigerians are inundated with the unverifiable story of effort that the federal or state government is making to flush out ghost workers but this same scenario has consistently repeated itself since the emergence of civil democracy in 1999 but those ghost workers are waxing much stronger.

The emergence of the then Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar’adua’s (of blessed memory) federal administration in 2007 led to a new kind of practice whereby those considered as out laws and who have rightly or wrongly embarked on armed struggles against the state were invited for ‘dialogue’ and ‘settled’. Absurdity has thus been elevated to statecraft in Nigeria.

The armed militants in the oil rich but heavily impoverished Niger Delta region were the first official beneficiaries of an elaborate amnesty program which included very juicy financial inducement schemes.

Yar’adua who kick- started the amnesty program has transited to the great beyond but his then loyal vice President now democratically elected and inaugurated President Dr. Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan has continued the implementation of the amnesty program which, to be fair, has significantly led to the reduction in youth restiveness and violence in the oil producing areas thus creating better atmosphere for the crude oil business- as-usual to continue.

But another challenge has emerged from another armed splinter group in the North East Nigeria whose members have successfully unleashed devastating violence and campaign of detonation of bombs which have so far attracted the attention of the international community with the successful bombing of the Nigerian Police Headquarters and the United Nations House, both in the Nigeria’s federal capital.

Members of the political elite who have come under intense threats of violence from this armed religious group in the North East Nigeria have even called on the Federal government to negotiate with members of the armed religious extremists blamed for the spate of violence in Northern Nigeria and Abuja.

The latest call for government to negotiate with the armed religious group came from the immediate past deputy Governor of Akwa Ibom State Mr. Patrick Ekpotu who was quoted in the media to have made the call for negotiation with the violent armed extremist religious group.

But since Nigeria has been converted into a huge drama stage by political actors who no longer pay attention to the time- tested fact that no nation ever survives that does not operate on the basis of the respect to the principle and practice of rule of law and constitutionalism, a friend just told me that it may as well be nice to advise the federal government to please enter into ‘negotiation’ with ghost workers in the civil service so that the scarce funds usually used to hunt them would be used to bring democracy dividends to the greatest number of our people who will soon be greatly impoverished if the ill-advised anti-poor policy of withdrawal of subsidy on petroleum products is implemented in 2012.

Government, please ‘negotiate’ with ghost workers since government business now thrives on negotiations with diverse groups of out- laws, professional law breakers and armed hoodlums. For sure, these ghost workers will accept handsome final settlement of cash bonus and quit the public space unlike the armed militants who will hand over their weapons for cash and immediately buy a replacement for the surrendered weapon from the small arms market that have sprang up in all corners of the country.

If you think it does not make sense for government to ‘negotiate’ with ghost workers, then read the revelation by Finance minister Professor Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala that ghost workers usually graduate to become ghost pensioners.

On October 22 2011, the media reported Professor Okonjo-Iweala as outlining strategies by the Federal government to flush out ghost workers.

The Minister said that several ghost workers had even graduated to ghost pensioners in government's payroll and that the biometric data capturing exercise, which the government embarked upon was designed to identify these ghost workers and ghost pensioners in the country.

But Nigerians have heard these same stories all over again since 1999 with no meaningful result.

The rate at which politics and government business in Nigeria is rapidly becoming one huge racket and organized scam, will any one be surprise if tomorrow we wake up to find out that government is indeed ‘negotiating’ with ghost workers? Wonders they say, shall never end in Nigeria.

It is my conviction that if ordinary Nigerians who are at the receiving end of these harsh, oppressive, and dubious policies of government, remain docile, then our burden as a people will expand in leaps and bounds. So let’s take ownership of Nigeria and enthrone just, fair and an egalitarian society where social evils are punished using the instrumentality of the Rule of law or we should be prepared to get many more absurd policies from these weird actors that dominate the public space as public office holders today.

·              Emmanuel Onwubiko heads HUMAN Rights Writers’ Association of Nigeria and can be reached on doziebiko@yahoo.com; www.huriwa.com www.huriwa.blogspot.com;

26/10/2011