Adeola Aderounmu   

“That census enumerators trek short or long distances to count people is a shame in the 21st century”

 The essence of this write up will be to proffer an advice to the Nigerian Nation and the authorities who don’t seem to have learnt anything from the way the world has advanced in recent years. This is the 21st century and it is now possible to count how many people live within a defined geographical region anywhere in the world without much hullabaloo.   

To count Nigerians is not a 5-day project. It is not even a 50 days project. Counting in every country should be a routine work based on how many people live in that country at a particular point in time. It should also involve close monitoring of the number of births or deaths that have been registered in a specific time frame.   

It is the work of some people to keep track of population flow. The first step is to make an attainment to the technological level where you can make a click on the computer and enter a database where the appropriate authorities are keeping track of registration of all citizens within the country. Similarly, immigration and emigration of persons should be noted. Unless certain individuals have decided to live illegally within a country, we now know that in some countries, all the people living in that country are registered on a database system.   

Taken simply in the Nigerian context, what we need in terms of knowing how many people make up Nigerians is a long term plan. It is a process that will start gradually, remain focused and eventually reach a stabile. Nigeria needs a system where her citizens are recognized by social security number (SSN) or what in some countries is known as personal numbers (PN). This number which is also indicated on your national ID or passport is a tag that does not change whatever happens! Everything that affects you (good or bad) is always recorded against this SSN on a computer database.   

This SSN should be with every public institution under strict conditions of trust regarding the personnel that work in such offices. Some private institutions may have special access too depending on the nature of their assignments. It should not be possible for a person to have double SSN because fingerprints go along with it. However, that does not rule out that identities cannot be stolen but if the law catches up with the perpetrators, they should face the music. An individual’s SSN should be connected to records at the Hospital, Tax office, unemployment office, Insurance companies, Motor Vehicle Licensing office, Bank records, Statistics bureau, and so on and so forth.   

Where do we start from in Nigeria? The problem in Nigeria is that counting is not done with sincerity of purpose. Politicians meddle with everything that is of National Interest for selfish gains and personal reasons. This is the debacle that must be removed. A public institution like the National Population Commission (NPC) has to be re-engineered to catch up with modern realities.  The way we count ourselves must change.  

Personally, I will suggest a 5-10 years plan to count all Nigerians coupled simultaneously with daily observations of changes from the start. This will make good planning possible. We should monitor daily population growth and periodic influx or out-flux. Where you reside in the country is not a factor, the point is that we should know that you exist and live within a certain region in the country. If you leave the country, it should be possible to detect that. We should also be aware when you return as long as you have taken the legal approaches to do these things. In crime situations, people can beat some of these checks but the essence of knowing the estimated number of people will remain.  

A 5-10 years plan to determine our population is not a bad idea so that nobody is rushing or running to meet a deadline. There is no need to create chaos just because you want to meet a deadline. It is not necessary to count Nigerians in a hurry. It is also not a matter of life and death that a particular administration should be saddled with the task. Knowing the population is not a job for a particular regime, it is the reason that the NPC is in existence. This commission should be able to send out population figures at a click!  Nigeria must look into the future; make solid plans for things that work forever, not temporarily.

What about the NPC registering every Nigerian at its local offices, giving out SSN and taking fingerprints? All the local office should be connected to a central computer network at the headquarters. State of the art technology must be in place to detect multiple fingerprints. Let us look at this scenario, a young man sought asylum in Greece and somehow surfaced in Sweden for the same purpose. He was told that his fingerprint has been previously recorded on the central European asylum seekers machine!

This is the stage that the world has reached. A person need to be identified with his name, SSN, address, occupation, marital status, children (or not) and so on. A change of address should be immediately reported so that the state or local government knows who has moved in or out. People moved for many reasons; to be with family, change of job and so on.  

A 5-10 year period is more than enough to let people know how population flow is observed and what is expected of everyone concerning their registration on the database. Nobody would rush or engage in irrelevant travelling because they want to be counted. When a child is born, the hospital should have the means (either by the computer network) or otherwise to inform the NPC of a registration of birth. Obviously, the families of newborns know that they are obliged to get a SSN for their newborns. The local authorities would only need to see the baby and the information that they have received from the hospital about the sex, weight at birth, time of delivery, etc. The connection between the local authorities or local governments and the NPC should be paramount as the number of people in the locality has financial/economic implications.  

In essence, what I am trying to say here is that with time, all Nigerians will be registered. The operations of the NPC must be completely computerized with appropriate backup. The registration of deaths should also be taken into account as much as that of births. How many foreigners live among us can also be noted. Foreigners should also have SSN that can be coded so that once they appear on the system, it becomes obvious that they are for foreigners and the exact country they come from appears. The nature of their businesses in Nigeria is also reveal by the same SSN.   

It is unnecessary and a waste of time and resources to count people before, during and after elections. We should be able to click on the NPC database in the next 10 years and say there are maybe 150 million people in Nigeria. We should be able to say things like, 2,000 foreigners live in Ikeja and that 30, 000 Nigerians have emigrated to Europe in the last 2 years for example.  

A statistician should be able to have a cup of coffee or tea by his side and still make a first check to find out the latest entry on the database network and a second click to give the total number of people living in Nigeria. If Nigeria is also truly the heartbeat of Africa, then we need to set the pace not only in population or census aspects but in other areas that affect the quality of our lives.  

I hope that in 2016, NPC will find it easy to look in the digitalized system and tell us how many we are in Nigeria. By then it should be possible to stop counting cows, goats and sheep as humans. The 2006 census should be the last time we count ourselves using paper and biros. It should be the last time the government sent people to our homes. We deserve our privacy!   

 Adeola Aderounmu

The part of our constitution that grants immunity to governors, presidents and other thieves that have been in public positions or power in Nigeria is very appalling.I can imagine that that part was written be some thieves too.

So in essence, our constitution gives room for stealing and looting of public funds without liability to prosecution.This is very ridiculous and it is the height of madness in public service.

There are many reasons why public officers should resign from office or be dismissed. Tax evasion and falsification are 2 examples among numerous scandals in the Nigeria Political terrain. Looting is the greatest crime. Invariably, almost everyone who is expected to serve in Nigeria turned out to be a thief of some sort. 

In other places, people can be probed immediately they are alleged to be involved in financial misappropriation and they can be prosecuted immediately and disgraced out of office. In Nigeria, that is not the case. We have to wait until they have left office. In the end, many of them get away with the looting.

There is no way we can make progress in Nigeria unless we start to ask for honesty and sincerity in public offices. If we continue to look the other way because our family and friends are beneficiaries of this looting, the majority will continue to suffer and that is not fair. The life of the citizens should not be based on “lucky chances” to get into privileged positions, it should be based on equality, mutual consideration and the good of all.

I am looking forward to Nigeria been able to delete completely (not amend) that part of the constitution. A new section should be written to state that anyone found wanting with public funds should go to jail. There should be no questions about that. What is bad is bad, it has no alternative name.

If we don’t do that, then I am afraid that the war on corruption will continue to be a fruitless chase. It will only exist in our imaginations.

By Edo Ukpong (From The Nigerian Guardian, June 4 2006)

(I have posted this article from the Guardian because it supports one of my main argument. The last election is not about Yar’Adua being a good man or not. It is about telling those who are thoughtless that there was actually no election in Nigeria in 2007).

‘He that will make his liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.’—–Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine was a radical intellectual writer mainly on ethics and politics. Although English by birth he emigrated to what is now the United States of America and his writings helped inspire the American Revolution.’ He is the author of the phrase ‘These are the times that try men’s souls’. “Common Sense” is the title of his most popular writing. Nothing best describes the way he simplifies complex societal issues like that title. That kind of simplicity is what we need to understand what is happening to this country.

It has happened before, it may happen again. Yet again as a nation we find ourselves in a dilemma, like others, of our collective creation. We have just witnessed a process of national degradation and gang rape wrongly termed ‘elections’. The process of choosing a person for a position by voting is termed an ‘election’. The process inflicted on us this past April is known as spoliation – conferring or obtaining power by conquest. Not new, not even strange. So why am I flogging a dead horse? The problem is that the horse is not dead. I have a problem with the school of thought that advocates ‘moving forward’. By this they mean that we should forget or perhaps forgive what has happened, not ‘rock the boat’ and hope for the best from the beneficiaries of the spoliation. So much has been spent, how can that all go down the drain? So who is the saint that will now conduct a new election? Will the Police Force change or are we going to import electoral officers? Will it not result in tenure elongation for Obasanjo? Good questions or are they really?

Let us look at it this way, the simple way, if you are driving from Lagos to Uyo and the car engine starts making a strange noise at Sagamu, do you make a U Turn to Lagos to get the car checked out before continuing the journey or do you keep going hoping that the car will hold out? There are those for sure who will plead the blood of Jesus over the car and keep going, if they get there it is God’s will, if they don’t it is God’s will, of course everything is God’s will. Will it not also be God’s will if you stop or drive back to Lagos to repair the car and proceeded on the journey when the car was good and ready? Nothing is perfect but which option gives you the best opportunity to reach your destination at all or with the least damage? Where I stand will be made obvious.

Our country is not a car, it is far more important than that, but democracy is a journey. Our country’s ‘democratic journey’ is experiencing ‘technical problems’ and we are at crossroads what to do. Never mind those who are carrying on as if all is well, faced with the faulty car scenario this group would have carried on merrily in the foolish belief that the problem ‘will correct itself’.

Rather unfortunately, we are missing the point by personalizing this matter. Getting our country on the right track is not about Obasanjo, Atiku, Buhari, YarAdua or Tom Ikimi for that matter. It is about us. About our Country and our future. Perchance those people drop dead, will the country drop dead? No chance, perhaps we will be better off, but God forbid! They will not die; I cover them with…….I am convinced that had Obasanjo and Atiku remained partners in crime, the same spoliation would have handed Atiku the Presidency and he would have urged those crying foul to ‘move on’ and that his ‘victory’ is ‘an act of God’.

Why should I care if Maurice Iwu is Atiku’s running mate in 2011, loses the ‘election’ and cries fouulll! As General Gowon famously quoted Shakespeare when he was overthrown ‘the world is a stage and all men and women are actors and actresses…’what we need to do is set out the script, by building structures, not give the actors and actresses a free hand. With structures we will achieve consistency, with consistency we will build standards, with standards we will make progress. We cannot expect human beings to be fair, selfless and generally do what is right voluntarily, it will not happen, that is why they are human. Human Beings need to be constrained to do what is agreed by society to be right.

The way to establish the constraints is to set standards. These standards which come in the form of laws, traditions and customs are necessary to make societies function as such. Standards are a prerequisite for the creation of an orderly society. An orderly society is a must for harmonious co-existence, which in turn is necessary for a society to develop. We must be constrained to adhere to these standards otherwise we will slide into anarchy or lawlessness.

This is what Thomas Paine must have had in mind when he wrote ‘the domestic tranquility of a nation, depends greatly on the chastity of what might properly be called ‘national manners’ Our collective problem is that we focus on individuals rather than standards. That is why people are ignorantly making the point that YarAdua is a man of integrity, so what? Our Constitution does not provide that if a man has integrity he should be President. It says that an election should be held for the post and the winner based on the given criteria, should assume office as President. By all reasonable accounts what transpired in April does not equate to an election as envisaged by our Constitution or even as defined in any Dictionary. It cannot be said to be an election when the person or organization responsible for counting the votes already knows what outcome is fathomable to the usurpers to whom he is answerable. So it is not about YarAdua, it is about adhering to the Constitution by which we have agreed to structure the administration of our society..

Many people take the view, that elections and all these talk of standards are an esoteric luxury. Their view is that so long as there is peace and those in authority govern well, there is no big deal about the process that brought them in. They posit that Yar’Adua is not like…….that he is genuinely honest and God-fearing (they hear) that he will do well bla bla bla .They are wrong because they are answering questions that are not being asked. To put it simply and in a nutshell, societies function on the basis that decisions affecting the society should be decided based on the wishes of the majority. It is impracticable for a vote to be taken every time something is to be done. So society is organized on the basis that it will choose those who will act on its behalf and do its will. The Constitution is there as the ‘script’ which all of us must follow for orderly co-existence. Anything outside the script is invitation to anarchy.

The disappointing aspect of it all is that it becomes obvious that this country is not taken seriously by many of us. In a recruitment exercise for a Chief Executive, most company directors or entrepreneurs would cancel the process if it was discovered that those in charge corrupted the process. They will not ‘accept’ it, in spite of how much was spent or the time or the sheer inconvenience of repeating the exercise. Their rationale would be that’ management makes the company’, so a process has been worked out to get the right calibre. To compromise the process would therefore be tantamount to compromising the well-being of the company. Simple logic, but why it should apply to a mere Company or Business but not apply to our country creates the impression that we don’t take this Country seriously.

The only way to prevent the institutionalisation of grabbing power by spoliation is to ensure that nobody benefits from it. If we reject it now and insist on it being done acceptably (not perfectly) the pull to try it next time will be less because there will be no gain. That is why no criminal justice system in the world will allow a thief to keep his loot, no matter the gravity of any other punishment. As a country, we have collectively decided that democracy is the form of government that will best keep us together in peace and prosperity. There can be no democracy without elections. No price should be too high to pay to hold elections in order to have democracy. Those shouting about the cost should rather worry about the cost of not having democracy. Perhaps a peep into Zimbabwe will be a good guide.

Section 14(1) of our Constitution states ‘The Federal Republic of Nigeria shall be a State based on the principles of democracy and social justice.” Section 14(2) (a): “It is hereby, accordingly, declared that- sovereignty belongs to the people of Nigeria from whom government through this Constitution derives all its powers and authority;…”

Given the above, who are we to advocate the acceptance of a situation clearly at variance with the Constitution. The orderly functioning of our society is based on a mix, the ingredients of which are provided by the Constitution, elections constitute a key ingredient without which power will not be derived from the agreed source- the people. What to do? Maybe it is time for a Peoples Sovereign Conference. Power belongs to the People as affirmed in the Constitution, so anything they decide is Constitutional. Better to stop and get the car fixed now, not wait till we get to Agbor, if we get there – then it will cost more, we would have wasted more time, it would be more complicated and it will still be an ‘Act of God’

Ukpong, a legal practitioner, lives in Lagos

BY DELE FANIMO AND ADEWALE SANYAOLU (The Guardian June 2nd 2007) 

In the interest of industrial harmony, the Trade Union Congress of Nigeria (TUC) has given the Federal Government a 14-day ultimatum to revert to old price of N65 per litre of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) also known as petrol.

After an emergency National Executive Council (NEC), meeting, in Lagos yesterday, the senior workers said the fuel price hike was totally unacceptable and uncalled for.

In a statement issued by the group and signed by the TUC President General, Mr. Peter Esele, and the Secretary-General Mr. John Kolawole, the union said the ultimatum begins from Monday.

The union leaders added that the recent increase of Value Added Tax (VAT) rate from five per cent to 10 per cent, the sale of Port Harcourt and Kaduna refineries as well as the non-implementation of 15 per cent salary increase by the Government were part of the issues deliberated upon by the NEC.

The NEC-in session demanded a return to status quo of all the issues raised.

The government last Sunday increased the pump price of PMS from N65 to N75 per litre.

Speaking with journalists, Esele said the TUC had decided to go for a total reversal to N65 per litre for PMS and would not negotiate for anything less.

He said fuel price increase did not follow due process because the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) was not aware of the action.

Also, the increase in VAT, he said, was not approved by the National Assembly which has the constitutional power to do so.