Public Affairs Analyst

The Benue State Independent Electoral Commission (BSIEC) plans to hold elections into the 23 chairmanship and 267 councillorship positions of the middle belt state on Saturday, November 24, 2012. Preparation is at the fever pitch since the Commission released the Notice of Election on July 31. As part of the groundwork for the LG poll, the 2007 Benue State Electoral Law was amended in April 2012 while a new guideline for the conduct of the elections has also been issued.   Of greater interest to this writer are the campaign finance provisions in the state’s electoral law and guidelines. Electoral contest in any country of the world attract some costs. There are both legitimate and illegitimate income and expenditures during the electioneering period. While the 1999 Constitution of Nigeria (as amended)  as well as the Electoral Act 2010 (as amended) specify  appropriate ways and means by which political parties and candidates can raise and spend  campaign f...

Since President Goodluck Jonathan presented Nigeria’s 2013 budget to the joint sitting of the National Assembly on Wednesday, October 10, 2012, the Appropriation Bill has been greeted by many controversies. The budget has pitted the legislative against the executive arms of government leading to a needless media war among the two institutions. For one, the lawmakers are not impressed with the level of implementation of the current 2012 budget. It has been a perennial problem for Nigeria’s budget not to be fully implemented. The budgets are often presented to the legislature in December while the estimates are habitually unbalanced as the recurrent almost always outweighs capital expenditures while the presented and passed budgets are always in deficit. Aside the poor implementation of the previous budgets, 2012 edition inclusive, the Senate and the House of Representatives are also unhappy with the executive’s insistence on the budget being passed with minimal alterations or at best,...

A British Development Economist, Dudley Seers (1920 – 1983) gave a simple test on how to determine if a country is developing. He said there are three indicators, rate of poverty, unemployment and inflation. If any two of these three are on the increase, then there is no development. In Nigeria, all the three indicators are on the increase.  There is galloping inflation, high rate of unemployment and grinding poverty. Since 1983 when the regime of former President Shehu Shagari introduced austerity measures, Nigerian masses have gone through a lot of hardship. By the time the military regime of military president Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida introduced structural adjustment (SAP) programme in 1986, things simply went from bad to worse. Many Nigerian workers were thrown out of job under the guise of right-sizing and down-sizing. Nigeria’s currency was also devalued so much so that the exchange rate moved from about $1 to N6 in the late 80s to about $1 to N160 in 2012. The rationale ...

I have been living in Abuja for about a decade now and sometimes, I wonder what the attraction is that makes people to covet living in the city. The hassles are just too many for one’s liking. The cost of living is astronomic and makes mincemeat of the salary being paid workers in the city. Of all the stress residents of the city face, housing is number one. House rent is unimaginable. Likewise, the cost of buying landed property. A plot of land in Abuja municipal is in hundreds of millions of naira while in the satellite towns such as Gwarinpa, Kubwa, Kuje, Gwagwalada and Karu, it costs a few millions of naira. When the cost of land is added to the high cost of building materials, it therefore goes without saying that the cost of rent will not be cheap.  Ironically, most of the houses in Abuja are said to be owned by, wait for it, public servants! Since the Federal Government backed out of provision of mass housing for the populace and had to even sell off the ones it built af...

Effort at further alteration of the 1999 Constitution of Nigeria gathered momentum last week when the Senate Committee on Constitution Review held a two day public hearing at the International Conference Centre Abuja on October 11 and 12. Though not physically at the venue of the public hearing, I have in the last two weeks participated in two strategy sessions and dialogues on constitutional review. The first, held on October 4, had as its theme “Entrenching Democratic Local Governance in the Constitution Review Process”. It was organized by Centre for Democracy and Development and chaired by the former Chief Justice of Nigeria, Hon. Justice Mohammed Lawal Uwais (Retd). The session reviewed the key challenges to effective and democratic local government system and charted constitutional reforms needed to strengthen local government in Nigeria. These include proposed amendments that will guarantee autonomy; accountability and transparency as well as citizens’ participation in local g...

God, please save our souls in Nigeria. The parlous state of the nation’s health sector needs divine intervention. I came to this conclusion when I reflected on the health care delivery system of my native land. For crying out loud, how on earth can we have a government in place and life will become this short, brutish and nasty? For decades, we have been kicking out polio and rolling back malaria without any significant success. These are preventable and curable diseases. Our maternal mortality and infant mortality are scary, second to none in Africa. Fifty two years after Independence, my compatriots still die of cholera, diarrhea, typhoid fever, pneumonia and other such minor ailments that can be treated by paramedics in other climes. If this is not shameful, I think nothing again can embarrass us. During the October 1 Independence Day speech, President Goodluck Jonathan only made two bland statements on the state of Nigeria’s health care delivery. He said, “In the last two years...

Listening to President Goodluck Jonathan on October 1, 2012, one cannot but sympathise with him as he laboured to reel out the achievements of his administration since assuming office on May 6, 2010. The aspect of his speech which caught my attention most is that of the economy. Mr. President gave what is tantamount to a scorecard but failed to dwell on the specific milestones that have been achieved by his administration. According to him, “Over the past five years, the global economy has been going through a weak and uncertain recovery. During the same period, and particularly in the last two years, the Nigerian economy has done appreciably well despite the global financial crisis. Nigeria’s real Gross Domestic Product has grown by 7.1 per cent on average. It is also significant that the GDP growth has been driven largely by the non-oil sector.” Yes, there has been growth but this has not translated into development. The President also said the country’s power supply situat...

As Nigeria marks 52 years of independence from colonial rule on October 1, 2012, a reflection on the state of the nation will show that it has been a mixed grill for the most populous black nation on earth. Opinions are divided on how much progress has been made in the area of the economy and indeed the financial sector. However, there is a near unanimity of view that the country is not where it should be in terms of national development. Yes indeed, we have made progress but not an appreciable one considering where contemporary third world nations like Brazil, South Africa, India, Malaysia and Singapore are. Nigeria is lucky to remain united in spite of many centrifugal forces pulling it apart.  Nigeria since independence has launched many development plans and articulated a number of visions such as Vision 2000, 2010 and now 2020.  Unfortunately, the country hasn’t got much to show in terms of real development. There is still a lot of infrastructural deficit while unem...