THE AIR IS STILL FRESH!

written by Abbas Abubakar

Permit me to quote Ho Yanxi who lived during the Sung Dynasty and contributed his own to humanity by commentating on the Sun Tzu’s Art of War. This quote is also derived from the same book of strategy by Sun Tzu The Art Of War. Yanxi quoted ancient classics in governance and leadership by saying “the one who treats me well is my leader, the one who treats me cruelly is my enemy. The question is, which side has a humane government and which side has a cruel government?”

The clock has tick and it’s a year now since President Goodluck Jonathan ascended the most valuable seat on May 29, 2011. During his campaigns, the president’s first promise was a “breath of fresh air” then the ‘transformation agenda’ etc, because Nigerians believe that if you want to test a man’s credibility give him power.

The president ran the 2011 election and as God will have it won ‘hands down’ as optimist in all facets of life would say. As soon as the president was announced winner of the election by the INEC chairman, a political professor, Prof Attahiru Jega, the air in the north where the main challenger of the election came began to smell fresh. The youth, unhappy with the result took to the street to quench their anger and their fury sprouted like a spark of light and converted to a wild fire which leaves nothing that blocked it way. Lives were lost and properties worth millions were destroy, yet the air still smell fresh and the transformation continues.

From then, the security of lives of the common people change hands from the security agents to God as they (security agents) cannot shoulder the responsibility- because their lives are also threatened by boko haram or as the media will report it ‘gunmen.” Reason for this is the police headquarters bombing in Abuja as well as other police stations and the killing of police men in the north.

Another fresh air blew on January 1. A day when Nigerians join the world to celebrate new year. The federal government announced the removal of the oil subsidy which triggered Nigerians to unite against the Jonathan’s administration. At least two people were reported killed. The removal shot fuel prices from #65 to #140. This led transport fares to sky rocket doubling the actual transport fare that they used to pay with more than double of the original price.

But an intervention by the NLC and other parties lessen the situation and the government reduced the price to #97 per liter, yet the transport fare didn’t decrease. The senate constituted committees to investigate those accused of fuel subsidy fraud. Since then, many skeletons were found in top government officials’ cupboard. A typical example is the police pension scam, the rolex scam and the oteh scam.

There is no doubt that in the first one year of Dr Goodluck Jonathan as president, not much was achieved in improving the lives of people living less than a dollar a day. You can’t even evaluate the performance of this government which promises life but give death, which promises transformation but destroy and which promises ‘fresh air’ but ends up polluting the polity. Yet the air is still fresh.

There is a saying in Hausa which says “in gani a kasa, ance da kare ana biki a gidanku,” simply translated as “seeing is believing.” Nigerians will surely judge this government by what is actually happening on ground: the suffering of the masses, the insecurity of life and property, the corruption/ fraud issues, the politicization of religion, the brain drain in all sectors of the society, the instability in power and increase in tariff , the rotten system of governance and make a stand cum 2015. Long live Nigeria.

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House Rents, Transport Fares and the Meaning of Despair

 After the reading the full text speech of 2013 budget proposal to National House of Assemble by President Goodluck Jonathan, recast my mined to 2012 budget criticism by Nasir Elrufa’I to which I have strong believed on him by his constructive criticism. Here is another critic of 2012 budget implementations and the recent 2013 budget proposal.

 

by Nasir El-Rufai

Just when you think President Goodluck Jonathan should have finished settling his political debts to enable him focus on easing the hardships that most Nigerians face simply to remain alive, the man decides that the welfare of Nigerians and job creation are not his priorities. How else can one explain his plan to spend a staggering N2.4 trillion to run government in 2013? Actually, the question should be: Which government?

Broadly speaking, the major functions of government include protecting the state from external aggression, provision of stable legal and social frameworks, delivery of public goods and services, redistributing incomes where needed and stabilizing the economy. Going by that definition, one can safely conclude that Nigeria has no government, despite planning to spend an outrageous N2.4 trillion – the equivalent of some $15bn on itself next year. This is against the backdrop that this year’s budget has barely achieved 30% implementation. In essence, Nigeria is spending 70% of its income on about one million government officials that can only achieve 30% of annually-set budgetary targets.

The absence of social infrastructure is particularly glaring, since this is an aspect that can help create part of the three million new jobs that Nigeria needs annually just to clear the backlog of the rising unemployment. And nowhere is the absence of government more manifest than in the provision of public goods and services, especially in housing and transportation. Thus, even with the new minimum wage, house rents and transportation costs consume about 80 per cent or more of average household incomes in Nigeria.

Across Nigeria, the massive shortage of housing and transport infrastructure mean that in addition to rising food costs (which our government has denied), many Nigerian families spend most of their income on accommodation and transportation. What would be left for other essentials of life? What about healthcare, education, clothing and other basic essentials? It is no wonder that Nigeria remains in the list of top 15 places with the highest incidence of poverty, with over 112 million out of our 162 million people living below the absolute poverty threshold in 2011. It is sad that one of the top crude oil and gas exporters is now ranked the 25th poorest country in the world.

Incidentally, there is nothing new about these figures. What is painfully obvious is that government does not have the right statistics of housing deficits in Nigeria, nor a workable transport sector development strategy under implementation. For example, the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria, recently said the Federal Government would require more than N56 trillion to provide 16 million housing units to bridge the housing deficit in the country. However, assuming that each household has an average of 6 residents, it means that 96 million Nigerians are homeless. That does not sound intuitively accurate.

Another related agency, the Federal Housing Authority of Nigeria (FHA) which has the statutory responsibility of providing housing for Nigerians has only built about 40, 000 houses nationwide since its inception in 1973. This, according to the FHA, has resulted in a deficit of about 25 million houses in the national housing scheme, suggesting that about 150 million Nigerians out of about 162 million in 2011, are homeless – even more far-fetched!. Which figures do we work with, 16 or 25 million? The figures do not add up!

In order to facilitate the sales of federal government houses in Abuja, we initiated a pilot mortgage which enabled many public servants and other citizens to buy houses. Unfortunately, the plan to mainstream the system nationally was truncated by our successors-in-office. This is why today, the only hope honest Nigerians have of owning homes is through the traditional and tortuous method – self-purchase and direct labour from life savings which is herculean since only a few people can own houses through legitimate sources. Now that this year’s flooding has destroyed thousands of homes across Nigeria, more Nigerians have been made homeless.

Apart from the massive housing deficits and the exorbitant rents Nigerians are forced to pay, rising costs of transportation occasioned by abysmal infrastructure in the sector is also consuming significant portion of household and personal incomes in the country.

Transportation is critical for economic growth in every country, but due to our poor transportation infrastructure, logistic costs for our goods and services are now typically more than 20 per cent of sales from the global average of 2 per cent. In Nigeria, transport costs alone can be as high as 15 per cent of the costs of goods or services.

Statistics indicate that for many growing economies, the value added by transportation to the economy accounts for 3 to 8 per cent of GDP while employment in transport sector ranges between 2.5 and 11.5 per cent of total paid employment. But in this year’s budget, government earmarked only 6 per cent to the Works, Transport and Aviation ministries combined, without any clear policy to get the private sector incentivized to invest more in the sector. For a struggling economy like Nigeria, intensified investment in transport will not only increase disposable incomes for millions of Nigerians, but also create millions of jobs and stimulate critical sectors of the economy.

In addition, an effective transportation system can have direct and significant effect on the daily lives of our people. Properly targeted and managed investments in transport facilities will mean efficient travel that could save time, fuel and reduce pollution. Lives will be saved and there will be fewer delays and hassles for the average Nigerian.

Efficient highways, rail systems, airlines, airports, harbors, and waterways will not only provide the backbone to grow our economy by moving people and goods around seamlessly, cheaply and safely, it can also employ millions of workers to generate substantial share of economic output in the country. If well exploited, transportation can actually contribute in excess of 10 per cent of our total domestic product annually.

Most Nigerians travel by road because we do not have a functional railway system and air travel is beyond the reach of most (though the fear of our skies has also driven more people back to our death traps on the ground). This has further compounded an already appalling situation. The state of our roads is distressing because of the level of deterioration, volume of traffic and the countless number of fatalities every day. At the moment, only about 15% of our roads are paved and of this, only about 28% can be easily used by motorists.

The excessive number of federal roads which have overstretched available resources and project management capacity of the government are largely responsible for their long construction periods and poor maintenance of existing roads. Yet every Wednesday, the Federal Executive Council awards more roads contracts that cannot be completed, while the legislature introduces more and more federal roads as ‘constituency projects’.

There is certainly the compelling need to rehabilitate our road networks and invest in road widening schemes to increase capacity through increased total lane length. Compared to the Republic of South Africa which has a population density of about 40 persons per square kilometre, with a total road network of about 754,000 kilometres that are well maintained, Nigeria with a population density of about 150 per square kilometre has only 108,000 kilometres of poorly maintained roads, most of which are unpaved. This year’s flooding has washed away important roads, including major arteries, leaving tens of thousands of travellers stranded and communities disconnected.

Why is it that despite having about 8,600km of waterways, Nigeria has been unable to put them to meaningful use? It is worth stating that effective inland water transportation has the potential to make commerce more competitive and our economy more vibrant.

Well structured, the aviation sector can be a key growth engine for our economy. An efficient and modernized aviation sector, with regulations and incentives for the private sector to thrive can make air travel an essential form of transportation, create jobs and economic growth. Nigeria needs to leverage on transport infrastructure development urgently to eliminate the avoidable logistic costs that are up to 50 per cent higher than what is normal for operations in all spheres of our economy. Such a programme would create millions of jobs and open up the entire country to rapid economic and social development.

Government must live up to its responsibility of developing and implementing policies that would strengthen primary mortgage institutions while simultaneously embarking on social housing projects across the length and breadth of Nigeria. It must also invest heavily in public transportation systems like roads, railways, aviation and inland waterways systems. That way, apart from providing urgently needed social infrastructure, the processes involved would create millions of jobs in Nigeria, promote house ownership for families and facilitate the emergence of a middle class which would in turn form the basis of economic development, security and political stability.

Why is government yet to find creative solutions to develop this vital economic artery? Why can’t we find ways to innovatively leverage the three trillion naira pension funds sitting quietly in banks, the sovereign wealth fund and whatever is left of the depleted excess crude account to address these critical infrastructure deficits?.

For now, it remains a tale of despair for majority of Nigerians who go to bed thinking of landlords, estate agents and house rents, with the voice of rickety bus conductors still ringing in their ears, “no change!” Paradoxically, what most Nigerians want and deserve is just that: Change

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JOS YOUTH’S UNEMPLOYMENT AND WAY OUT

 

Plateau state government has side-line Jos city, no meaning project, no good road and no standard market for the past year’s, Jos city was double alienated first, marginalised by the state government and secondly was been engulfed by the issue of settlers-indigene issues which often escalated crisis and  which keep on occurring and reoccurring. What could a youth of Jos site should do? To be educated and to be reasonable in other confront those challenges.

 

Unemployment simply means any resources that is not fully utilized but in these piece am referring to human resource precisely ‘THE YOUTH’. Man most work in other to survive and he has nothing but his labour power, which here by submits his power to the market, in search of his daily bread.

 

Nigeria has almost 163 million population according to population census(2004).70% of the population are below the age of 40 years, therefore apart from oil and other natural resources Nigeria has youthful and productive population. The disturbing trend in youth transformation in Nigeria is unemployment. According to the Federal Ministry of youth Development in an Administrative record shown that Nigeria generate about 4.5 million new entrant into the labour market annually and the labour market is often able to absorb only 10% and therefore living about 4 million people who are either unemployed or underemployed. This led to many social vices and crisis across the federation which include armed robbery, political thuggery, and other act of terrorisms.

 

It is obvious that youth unemployment crisis has substantially contributed to the nation high poverty incidence currently estimated that about 54.4% large number of the population living in abject poverty, because of growing divergence between economic growth(GDP), similarly in Jos city, poor quality of education, training  and skill development

 

The state government under the administration of governor jang,  banned commercial motorcycles in Jos and some local government area of plateau state, in other to cushion the menace of insecurity, which bring an agitations by angry youths to the extent that lives  and properties  of individuals was been vanish. The good will is that, the state government could have provide sufficient ‘kekenape’,  commercial car’s that would circulate the city, and other developmental and empowering youth   skills acquisitions centres., that would make them, self-employed.  Indeed most of our youth remained unemployed because ‘okada’ is the only means of self-sustenance to them; some has wives and children’s. yet a couple of mouth ago, MTN Nigeria closed its jos network centre which lead to another catastrophe to jos youth because hundreds of graduate remained idle at home with no job.

 

Plateau state government need to empowered the youth to provide job opportunities in other to make them busy because ‘an idle mind is a workshop of devil’. More so to remove the sentiment of enthnocentricism, also urge the Member state House of Assembly Jos North-North in person of BABS and Member National House of Assembly Jos North/Bassa Federal Constituency in person of Suleiman Yahaya  as our only hope and heroes in plateau state to initiate Developmental Programmes that would up-lift Jos city and to revive the loose glory of democracy.

 

 

 

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THE NEMESIS CALLED SURE-P (2)

Last two weeks president Goodluck Jonathan presented 2013 budget proposal to the joint session of national assembly at Abuja with the theme of ‘Fiscal consolidation with exclusive growth’. As Nigeria is moving toward economic freedom and self-sufficiency by Mr. President Transformations Agenda.

If my memory will serve me well, President Goodluck Jonathan had assured Nigerians that the incomes of the partial withdrawal of petroleum subsidies will be applied to implementing the Subsidy Reinvestment Programme (SURE-P). In the 2012 fiscal year, the federal government also voted for N180 billion for the implementation of social safety net programmes, road and rail infrastructure projects. So far, N36.5 billion of this amount has been utilized to support maternal and child health programmes as well as mass transit, roads and rail projects and job creation through the Community Services and Public Works programme.

 

The SURE-P Board under the able chairmanship of Dr. Christopher Kolade is presently working hard to ensure the successful oversight of the implementation of this programed. Also Mr.prsident launched the Community Service, Women and Youth Empowerment Program (CSWYEP) under the SURE-P in February 2012. Which is now working in pilot phase in 14 states, and to be replicated in other states in 2 weeks. The federal government innovate the Graduate Internship Programme, in which participating private companies provide one-year internships to 50,000 graduates, paid by the Federal Government. So far, 700 firms, and 20,000 young graduates have applied to participate in this scheme.

 

President Goodluck Jonathan assured Nigerians in his 2013 budget  proposal speech  that the SURE-P will continue with the expected resources of N180 billion in 2013 augmented by the projected 2012 unspent balances bringing the total to about N273.5 billion. Urge the law makers to look into Mr. president 2013 budget proposal by proper debate before  the approval in other to ensure Mr. president Good will to Nigerians.

 

 

 

 

 

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NANS: UNITY OR DIVERSITY?

 

Nigerian student movement is relevant as any other group in the plural societies of Nigeria for it development. They have an historical responsibilities in political, economic and social activities of the country. History also informed us how Nigerian student struggle for the emacipetation of Nigerian independent in 1960. As the banning of National Union of Nigerian Students (NUNS) in 1978, student regroups into National Association of Nigerian Student (NANS). Then, student unionism was full of patriotism and selfless services for student and by all students. NANS of today is NANS of NONE STUDENT, as stalk holders which are universities drop out, deliberately have a spill over as the case may be and remained in NANS for donkey years with what they called interest and they decide ‘on who is or who is not’ on NANS leadership.

As Nigeria a federal and a heterogonous nation with almost 250 ethnic tribal groups, which up till date Nigeria is searching for it unity in diversity because It is obvious that, the standard of living among average Nigerians stands at zero level and corruption seem to be progressing every day. Poverty and crime rate are simultaneously at multiplier effect, the state of our education system is nothing to write home about; bedeviled with insuffiency in providing the basic necessities. The government cannot even secure the lives and properties of the citizens, needless to say that such government has failed.

Similarly in NANS politics, as educated leaders of tomorrow that was mainly made for student but a great paradox where by NANS representing their pocket and self-centered interest. Indeed NANS has a chameleon pieces with a policy of ‘no winner no looser’ strongly believed that if you have a mined and you can with stand any difficulties and challenges that might come your way. Therefore, one can declared self as a leader. The current NANS president in person of Muhammed Dauda has four factional leaders, which are executing their programs as NANS leaders, collecting money from government and other politician.

As Robert Greene in his book ‘the 48 law of power’ law number one assert that ‘never outshined your master’. In NANS there was no master but gang of educated illiterate because even HIM muhmmed Dauda is there as NANS president to enrich himself while universities management are increasing tuitions fees to student, insecurity seems to be the order of the day in porthencort, sokoto, mubi to name but few and student welfare is very poor. Nigerian students did we really need change and are we ready to be the leaders of tomorrow?

 In sequel to the preconvention and senate meeting of muhammed Dauda in Ibadan and that of kole Otaye in sokoto state on which muhammed Dauda set Jigawa state to be his conventional ground and kole Otaye set Taraba State be his conventional ground all in name of NANS which would schedule to take place in December for an election to a new government. We only have one president in Nigeria, only one moon and one sun, then why NANS has more than two presidents?

The hope of liberation of Nigerians falls on the youth and (we) must rise up to act, to speak and reject all forms of incompetency and irregularities in governances. I urge comr. Jude Imgwe Speacial Asistance on Student and Youth Matters to his excellency president Goodluck Jonathan. Who I know as student and once a factional president of NANS 2010 but now a leader and an elder to called a unity convention to also restructure and reshape NANS leadership. I strongly belived sir, that you can do it because you know NANS more than I do.

 

 

 

 

 

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