Public Affairs Analyst

In order to promote the culture of transparency, accountability and integrity of public officials, a legal requirement makes it mandatory for them to declare their assets. Paragraph 11 of Part one of the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution says: “(1) Subject to the provisions of this Constitution, every public officer shall within three months after the coming into force of this Code of Conduct or immediately after taking office and thereafter - (a) at the end of every four years; and (b) at the end of his term of office, submit to the Code of Conduct Bureau a written declaration of all his properties, assets, and liabilities and those of his unmarried children under the age of eighteen years.” This anti-corruption principle has been more of a paper tiger. How? Apart from the fact that some public officials do not bother to declare their assets as specified in the code of conduct for public officers, those who comply sometimes make false declarations. It is alleged that some of the...

There is no gainsaying the fact that Nigeria is faced with serious disaster management challenges. Frequently, the nation witnesses one disaster or the other. On Sunday, July 10, 2011 there was flash flood occasioned by a torrential rain that fell for about 15 hours in Lagos causing massive damage to lives and property; there have been recurrent collapse of buildings in many of our major cities with Lagos topping the list, that too has led to avoidable deaths of hundreds of people as well as huge economic loss. From the Nigeria Fire Service comes the report that no fewer than 990 lives were lost in 7,129 fire incidents in the country in 2010 just as property worth over N53m were destroyed during the same period. The Federal Road Safety Commission road crash data for 2010 shows that 2,441 people lost their lives to accidents on Nigerian roads between January and August 2010. Previous years were worse. FRSC record shows that 4,120 persons lost their lives while 20,975 others were serious...

The current ruckus between the state governors and the Nigeria Labour Congress as well as Trade Union Congress over the payment of the N18,000 minimum wage to workers is needless, but not entirely unexpected. The governors under the auspices of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum have kicked against the payment of the new minimum wage which they say will ‘deplete’ their treasuries. They have argued that acceding to the workers’ demand will render them incapacitated to carry out any capital project. The governors gave two preconditions if they will meet the workers’ request: Review of the current revenue allocation formula in favour of the states and the removal of subsidy on petroleum products. On the part of the labour unions, they have served notice of a three-day nationwide warning strike to force the implementation of the minimum wage by the state governments. It is however important to understand how the issue of the national minimum wage came about. Nigeria joined the league of Internat...

Farming looks mighty easy when your plough is a pencil and you’re a thousand miles from a cornfield –Dwight David Eisenhower 34th US President. Agriculture used to be the mainstay of Nigeria’s economy. That was before the discovery of the black gold (crude oil) at Oloibiri in 1956 or thereabout. With petro-dollars rolling in, we sidetracked our first love, agriculture. In the 21st century, many of the Nigeria’s farming population still practice subsistence cultivation. Yes, a few mechanised farms dotted the landscape but majorly the country is being fed by small-holding farmers. Quite sadly, the rank of the few persons still practising agriculture in Nigeria is fast depleting. In time past, we have government policies aimed at encouraging people to embrace agriculture. In the First Republic, I know for a fact that the government of Western Region established what is called Farm Settlements where those interested in farming are allocated farmlands and given loans to practise agricult...

I shudder at the staggering number of preventable deaths in Nigeria. A country that God has graciously spared the horrors of holocaust, tsunami, earthquake, volcano, mudslide and other similar natural disasters ought to do something urgent to reverse the soaring number of avoidable deaths being recorded annually in the country. Reduction of child mortality, improved maternal health, and eradication of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases are three of the eight millennium development goals meant for attainment by 2015. Four and a half years to the target date, our scorecard remains dreadful. Save the Children, an international non-profit group revealed that almost 800,000 Nigerian children die every year before their fifth birthday, making Nigeria the country with the highest number of new born deaths in Africa. The group released the figures at a Save the Children Special Campaign (STC) launched in Lagos on December 14, 2010. In a paper titled Maternal and Child Health in Nigeria, Pro...