Public Affairs Analyst

  Vocabulary.com, an online dictionary, describes farming as the act or process of working the ground, planting seeds and growing edible plants. You can also describe raising animals for milk or meat as farming. However, will it be inappropriate to classify breeding children for sale as farming? Are you shocked that there are some mindless animals in human skins who, under different guises and ruses, arrange for young boys to impregnate teenage girls and then sell off those children to prospective buyers when they were born? Things are indeed happening in Nigeria. An online magazine named Wide Angle in a November 11, 2008 news report titled Nigerian Babies Bred for Sale reported thus: “police in the city of Enugu in south-eastern Nigeria raided a maternity hospital suspected to be a ‘baby farm.’ The authorities were tipped off by a pregnant teenage girl who managed to escape from the clinic, where she was being held hostage along with seven other pregnant women awaiting delivery....

  Unknown to many compatriots, Nigeria does not have 774 Local Government Areas. There are actually 768 LGAs and six area councils. This is according to the provision of section 3 (6) of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, as amended. The six area councils are listed in the First Schedule, Part II, Paragraph 2 of the constitution as Abaji, Abuja Municipal, Bwari, Gwagwalada, Kuje and Kwali with all of them retaining the names as headquarters except Abuja Municipal with headquarters at Garki. It is also important to stress that the conduct of elections into the area councils are not part of the constitutional responsibilities of the Independent National Electoral Commission as stipulated in paragraph 15 (a) of the Third Schedule of the Nigerian Constitution. However, that does not make INEC’s conduct of the area councils election illegal. Section 299 of the Constitution says the provisions of the constitution shall apply to the FCT, Abuja as if it were one of...

  Two weeks ago, precisely on January 26, 2022, I wrote on this page about Nigeria’s tearful education sector. Arising from that, I got invited by TOS Television, Abuja to discuss how to reset Nigeria’s education system. Again, last Wednesday and Thursday, I was a participant at a two-day national education summit organised by an NGO, Human Development Initiatives. Most of the participants at the national dialogue were drawn from the education sector and it was humbling and quite revealing the extent of the rot in Nigeria’s education sector and the imperative of fixing it. There is no gainsaying that education is the cornerstone of knowledge. According to a great philosopher, Aristotle, “Education is the best provision for old age” while another philosopher, Plato (428 – 348 B.C), says “The direction in which education starts a man, will determine his future.”   A scholar, G.K Chesterton, opined that “Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation...

  On Tuesday, January 25, 2022, Transparency International via the Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre released the 2021 Corruption Perception Index. The survey shows that Nigeria scored 24 out of 100 points in the 2021 CPI, falling back one point compared to the 2020 CPI. This made Nigeria the second most corrupt country in West Africa, after Guinea. In the country comparison for the year, Nigeria ranks 154 out of 180 countries—five places down compared to the 2020 CPI results. The country’s score had dropped from 26 in 2019 to 25 in the 2020 assessment and further to 24 in the latest 2021 record. It is indeed not heartwarming news for Nigeria’s anti-corruption agencies and indeed the Federal Government whose mantra and cardinal objective is to combat corruption. Should we believe Transparency International’s CPI on Nigeria given the great job being done by frontline anti-graft agencies such as the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission, and th...

    “Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern, but impossible to enslave” – Henry Peter Brougham (1828) Last Monday, January 24, 2022 was the commemoration of the International Day of Education. According to an internet source, it was celebrated under the theme, “Changing Course, Transforming Education.” The event, led by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, showcased the most important transformations that have to be nurtured to realise everyone’s fundamental right to education and build a more sustainable, inclusive and peaceful futures. On December 3, 2018, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution (resolution 73/25) proclaiming 24 January as International Day of Education, in celebration of the role of education for peace and development. How has my dear native land, Nigeria fared in this respect? Poorly, I dare say. One of the popular reading texts while I was in secondary school between 1980 and 1985 was “E...

  There are three arms of government, namely: the executive, the legislature and the judiciary. The three, though independent, are also dependent on one another for effective governance. There are arguments about which arm is superior to the other, but suffice it to say, one cannot do without the other. The legislature makes the law, the executive implements the law, and the judiciary interprets the law. That’s elementary, though. The executive can introduce laws in the form of executive bills to be processed into legislation by the legislative assembly. A very clear case in point is the Appropriation Bill which is annually presented to the legislature by the executive for passage. In a similar manner, no bill will have a force of law unless signed by the head of the executive arm, which is the president, governor or chairman of the local government area. Alternative to that is the overriding of the veto by the lawmakers. A warm welcome to Nigeria’s federal lawmakers as they resu...

  Believe it or not, Nigeria Police is one of the anti-corruption institutions in Nigeria. With enormous constitutional powers to investigate, arrest and prosecute, the law enforcement agency is administratively and legally backed to curb corrupt practices. Indeed, there is a Special Fraud Unit in the police that handles corruption-related issues. Several police personnel are also on ‘secondment’ to anti-corruption agencies such as the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission. It is however quite disturbing and heart-rending to see an anti-corruption institution being indicted for what it meant to fight. Many Nigerian media organisations, both print and electronic, recently carried the unsavoury news of the 2019 Auditor General of the Federation’s corruption indictment of the Nigeria Police. Using THISDAY newspaper of Monday, January 3, 2022 as a source, the report said the Office of the Auditor General for the Federation has disclosed that about 178,459 different types of arms a...