Public Affairs Analyst

“But when workers go on strike, the principle of ‘No work, no pay’ will also be applied because that principle is enshrined in that same Section 43 of the Labour Act. That section says for the period a worker withdraws his services, government or his employers are not entitled to pay and the period for which they were absent will not count as part of his pensionable period in the public service.” —Labour and Employment Minister, Dr. Chris Ngige, while addressing journalists after the FEC meeting on October 16, 2018 Another industrial unrest is brewing! This is the consequence of last Wednesday’s adoption of the draft White Paper enforcing the ‘No work, no pay’ rule by the Federal Executive Council.   According to the Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr. Chris Ngige, the decision was in compliance with Section 43 of the Labour Act which he said the National Industrial Court had earlier upheld. The draft White Paper was allegedly submitted by a 10-man committee that the minis...

“I want to assure Ekiti workers that I am going to pay all their outstanding salaries and make life comfortable for them and their families.   My re-election as the Governor-elect of Ekiti State was not accidental, but divine intervention…   I want all the civil servants to note that my re-election was not to take vengeance, but to restore peace, transformation and development to the state.” —Governor Kayode Fayemi at a news conference in Ado Ekiti on July 15, 2018 I heartily congratulate Governor John Kayode Fayemi on his inauguration on Tuesday! I welcome him back to his seat, vacated four years ago. Fayemi is indeed a man of destiny, an early achiever who not only excelled in academics but also in development work and governance. He is an academic, journalist, researcher, and administrator par excellence. As he takes his oath of office again, the second time in eight years, at a colourful ceremony in Ado Ekiti, may I use this opportunity to remind him of his campaig...

“Instead of a free and fair democratic ritual, the exercise became an ominous sign-post as thuggery, gunshots, snatching of electoral materials, parallel contests and vote-buying took centre stage.” —The PUNCH editorial, Tuesday, October 9, 2018 The credibility of next year’s general election has been flawed ab initio. For those of us working in the election sub-sector of Democracy and Good Governance, we have often emphasised that election is not an event but a process. There are three phases in the electoral cycle. They are the pre-election, Election Day and the post-election. Among the pre-election activities are party registration, voter registration, strengthening of the legal framework, voter education, procurement of election materials, recruitment and training of election officials, nomination of candidates and campaigns. The Election Day activities include deployment of election personnel and materials, setting up of Polling Units, Accreditation, Voting, Sorting, Countin...

The Crippled Giant is a coinage borrowed from Prof. Eghosa Osagae’s classic book, “The Crippled Giant: Nigeria since Independence”. Although I have not read the book, African Studies Review of the tome says it “is an excellent summary of Nigerian political history…The work is notable for an even-handed analysis of both history and theory. The result is an introduction of the highest quality to the study of Nigerian politics.” I have had the privilege of being invited on several radio and television programmes to discuss Nigeria at 58, including reviewing the President’s speech on October 1; my conclusion is that Nigeria, though a well-endowed nation with great potential, is still a perpetual underachiever. President Muhammadu Buhari’s speech to the nation last Monday lacks statistics. He talked about fighting insurgency, corruption, cleaning up Ogoniland, youth participation in politics and governance, challenge of climate change, his bid to unite Nigeria, support to the Independe...

One eyewitness is of more weight than 10 hearsays    – Plautus I was an accredited observer in the September 22, 2018 governorship election in Osun State. I was part of the Nigeria Women Trust Fund team of Independent National Electoral Commission-accredited poll watchers.   The NWTF set the pace by deploying an all-female 63 observers (two exceptions being myself and Mustapha Yahaya, the Executive Director of Democratic Action Group, Kano). The aim was to conduct gender-focused election observation. We arrived Osogbo, the Osun State capital on Thursday, September 20, 2018. The same day, we trained the observers. We equally spared time to attend the INEC Observer Briefing. A day before the election, we had a pre-election observation trip across the three senatorial districts of the state and addressed a press conference on our observation the same day. The NWTF observers were stationary in the Polling Units they were deployed from the opening to closing of polls. Ho...

“When it comes to fighting corruption in the National Assembly and the Judiciary and in the larger Nigerian sectors, the President uses insecticide, but when it comes to fighting corruption within the Presidency, they use deodorants.” – Senator Shehu Sani in January 2017. President Muhammadu Buhari campaigned on a three-point agenda in the lead-up to the 2015 general election. He promised to fight insecurity, revamp the economy and tackle corruption. On these, while he may have recorded some baby-step successes, his performance has been anything but sterling.   In all honesty, we cannot in good conscience claim to be more secure now than we were before Buhari came to power on May 29, 2015. While he’s been able to contain the Boko Haram insurgency in the North-East, banditry, herdsmen killings and kidnapping have soared. The economy is still on tenterhooks with Nigeria currently ranked as the country with the highest number of poor people in the world while the anti-corruptio...

“The card reader is not in danger of being discarded. It is a sine qua non for credible elections. We appeal to the National Assembly to reconvene as soon as possible to consider and approve the necessary corrections to the amended Electoral Act” –Garba Shehu, Senior Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on Media and Publicity in a press statement   on Sunday, September 9, 2018 Since President Muhammadu Buhari’s decision to withhold assent for the third time on the Electoral Act Amendment Bill 2018 was made public on Monday, September 3, 2018, a lot of motives have been read into his action. Critics believe that the President does not want credible elections in 2019. They claim that the President is afraid of allowing the law to recognise the use of Smart Card Reader for voter accreditation.   Not even the explanation of clerical errors, inelegant drafting and cross-referencing issues in the bill as advanced by the President’s aide on legislative matters (Senat...