Public Affairs Analyst

Enugu State Independent Electoral Commission (ENSIEC) is one of the 36 state electoral commissions in Nigeria. The Commission is at present making earnest preparations for the conduct of chairmanship and councillorship elections into the 17 Local Government Areas of the State. ENSIEC recently released the official guidelines for the elections. The 3rd September 211 official gazette titled “E.S.L.N. No. 6 of 2011 – Enugu State Independent Electoral Commission (ENSIEC) Guidelines for Local Government Council Elections Scheduled for the 10th December 2011” has a total of seventeen sections. Of greater relevance to this writer are the sections related to campaign finance in the guidelines. Section 3 (n) of the document states that “each candidate shall pay a non-refundable deposit of two hundred thousand naira (N200, 000) for Chairmanship candidates and fifty thousand naira (N50, 000) for Councillorship candidates.” This same provision was repeated verbatim as a possible ground for disqua...

“A corrupt Judge is more harmful to the society than a man who runs amok with a dagger in a crowded street. The latter can be restrained physically. But a corrupt Judge deliberately destroys the moral foundation of society and causes incalculable distress to individuals through abusing his office while still being referred to as ‘honourable.’ – Hon. Justice Samson Uwaifo (Retd) There is no gainsaying that Nigeria’s judiciary, particularly in 2011, have been in the eye of the storm. The institution has been enmeshed in war of attrition that has left it battered, bruised and soiled. At a lecture organised by the Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (NIALS) on 10 November 2011, Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Dahiru Musdapher in a paper titled “The Nigerian Judiciary: Towards Reform of the Bastion of Constitutional Democracy” lamented the delay in the dispensation of justice which he identified as a major challenge in the justice delivery sector. He attributed such delay...

Baby Gabriel, born 12am at Gwarinpa General Hospital, Abuja, officially made Nigeria’s population 167 million (82 million females and 85 million males) as the world celebrates Day of Seven Billion People on Monday, October 31, 2011. At that official figure, Nigeria also becomes the sixth largest population in the world after China, India, USA, Indonesia and Brazil according to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). Nigeria’s latest projected inhabitants represent 2.4 per cent of the world’s new population. According to recent estimates by the UN Population Division, by 2100 Nigeria will be the third most populous country in the world, next to India and China. Immediate past Chairman of National Population Commission (NPC), Samu’ila Danko Makama at his valedictory meeting with the media on October 26, 2011 “urged leaders at the three tiers of government to up the ante on nation-building initiatives, with a view to expanding public infrastructure in proportion to population growth ...

Two notable Nigerian women would on Monday, 14 November 2011 join 362 others to be conferred with national honours by President Goodluck Jonathan in Abuja. Hajia Saudatu Magajiya Mahdi and Barrister (Mrs.) Maryam Uwais (nee Isa Wali) have both been nominated among the 68 recipients for the Member of the Federal Republic (MFR). These women of substance, achievers and change champions have performed incredible feats in development work. Like a colossus, their activities and activisms straddle the area of education, human rights, law reform, legislative advocacy, banking and finance, etcetera. Born on 20 April 1957, Hajia Saudatu Mahdi hails from Katsina State. She studied at Ahmadu Bello University and Administrative Staff College of Nigeria (ASCON) from where she obtained her first and post graduate qualifications in 1978 and 1992 respectively. She has certificates in entrepreneurship, Fiscal/Financial management, advocacy and human rights and Institution Building skills. She is a Fel...

Public funding of political parties has been very contentious in Nigeria. The 1999 Nigerian Constitution in section 228 (c) and Electoral Act 2006 in section 91 contain provisions that enable the National Assembly to make grant available to the Independent National Electoral Commission for distribution to registered political parties. However, with the coming into effect of the Electoral Act 2010, as amended, the provision for public funding of political parties was removed. It was therefore curious to read in the newspaper that River State Independent Electoral Commission has sustained the tradition of public funding for political parties operating in Rivers State. A news item in Vanguard of October 12 reported that some 45 political parties under the aegis of the Rivers State Association of Frontline Political Parties have called on the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, to investigate the state’s Independent Election Commission, RSIEC, over the N4.7 billion grant by...

The presidency and the National Assembly (Senate and House of Representatives) have embarked on a strange move to collapse Nigerian prison system. How do I mean? An executive bill seeking to amend the Transfer of Convicted Offender (Enactment & Enforcement) Act Cap. T16 LSN 2004 (Amendment Bill 2001) is currently being processed at the National Assembly. Once the amendment sails through, the consent of convicted Nigerians serving various jail sentences abroad would no longer be sought before they are repatriated home to continue to serve their respective jail terms. This is because the prisoners’ swap legislation seeks the removal of “consent” and “verification procedure” from the Act. I find this move which is said to be a request from British authorities curious because the situation of Nigeria’s prison system at present is heart-rending. According to a report in Thisday of October 2, 2010 titled ‘Nigerian Prison’s Rising Population’: “The Nigerian Prisons Service derives its ope...

I do the best I know how, the very best I can, and I mean to keep on doing it to the end. If the end brings me out all wrong, what is said against me will not amount to anything. – Abraham Lincoln. When Dr. OBC Nwolise of the Department of Political Science, University of Ibadan charged students in the Advanced Level Extra Mural Class at Emmanuel College, Agbowo, Ibadan in 1988 to use media advocacy to demand for better society, many heard but only few heeded his advice. I am one of the few who chose to take up the challenge. However, I couldn’t bring myself to communicate to the public through the media until 1990 because I had low self esteem having failed to get credit pass in ‘O’ Level English and Mathematics to enable me move to tertiary institution. This went on from 1985 – 1990. Secondly, being the era of military rule when freedom of speech was severely curtailed with several media houses proscribed by the ruling junta, it was suicidal expressing anti-government opinion then. A...