Let there be Peace in Bayelsa

It is a pity and indeed shameful that Bayelsans are busy fighting themselves while other States are pushing development with all vigour. The same thing happened during the Awolowo - cocoa era. While Awo was busy developing the West, other regions were busy engaging in political wrangling.

Let us be wise and stop fighting. We should concentrate and seek ways of developing Bayelsa State. Presently, States like Lagos, Aqua Ibom, Cross Rivers, Enugu and some others are focused and are busy developing their towns and cities, and here we are busy fighting.





The time will come again in future as it is now, when we have to give account of what we did with the resources available to us now. As usual with Nigerians, then, shall we again start putting the blame on the federal government? We have every opportunity now to move our people forward in the political, economical and fiscal arenas.





I really pity us, because, I hear all kinds of degradating comments about how "we like enjoyment too much," "we are lazy people," "we are illitrates," "we are trouble makers," so on and so forth. Really, when you pause and look at how our people behave, how we manage our resources, and how we run the government of the State, you can not but wonder whether all these negative lies and not true afterall.





Are we really serious at all? Bayelsans, let us be wise. Let us stop the fighting now. We should rather focus our energies on other areas. We should for instance capitalize on the Amnesty programme, and start deploying effectively the resources of the State and massively develope our infrusture with the seriousness it deserve.





Individual wealth will not get us anywhere. Personal wealth dies when you the owner passes away, but infrastructure remains as a legacy for our children. We should drop ergoism, selfishness and party differences and we should all put our hands on the plow without looking back.





We can not always be the back benchers in the affairs in the Nigeria federation. Now is the time to make a change. Peace to all Bayelsans and happy holidays.

Why Are Media Houses in Distress?

The emergence of new media in modern communications has lead to the development of wide ranging applications and opportunities in the ICT environment globally.

In Nigeria however, the impact of new media in our local media is greatly masked by the ineptitude of employers to provide adequate incentives to practitioners, who are poorly remunerated and often owed back log of salaries.

The implication of this is the lack of interest by new media practitioners to seek gainful employment in media houses and therefore unable to contribute to the expected growth and development of the practice in the sector and the country at large.

Until employers and other stake holders in the media industry pay adequate attention to these concerns, the expected positive impact and economic growth the country stand to benefit will continue to be elusive.

Though this is arguable, the truth however is that a lot of media houses worldwide are already paying the price for not embracing new media. Many are shutting down because they cannot keep-up with competition and are unable to key in and deploy new media technology in their operations.

Essentially and without over-emphasizing the fact, our local media houses are responsible for the dearth in new media practice in the country.

Power Supply, Key to Malaria Prevention

Malaria is transmitted by mosquito, a tiny blood sucking, desperate and often annoyingly noisy insect particularly around the ears.  Malaria is the number one killer of children in Nigeria and a major cause of weakness and fewer in adults. Malaria is traced to the cause of poor performance of the general work force and low productivity in mosquito infested environments.

Efforts by researchers in Nigerian universities and drug manufacturers have not yielded any appreciable result in the prevention and treatment of malaria. The national rate of malaria infection is still very high. Malaria control still remains a challenge in Africa where 45 countries, including Nigeria, are classified as malaria endemic regions, and about 588 million people are said to be at risk, according to the WHO, World Malaria Report 2008.

Nigeria is visibly the focus of global efforts aimed at eradicating this deadly malaria parasite. The recent disbandment by the federal government of Nigeria of chloroquine, a popular anti-malaria drug commonly used for the treatment of malaria, and introducing in its place, new sets of drug called artesunate, artemisinin, artemether and lumefantrin as substitutes. This is a major research effort by Nigeria universities and scientists to eliminate the deadly malaria parasite currently ravaging the region.

As research efforts continue to produce new discoveries of better and more effective malaria drugs, we should not also ignore alternative and traditional malaria prevention methods. The campaign for the use of mosquito treated nets has not gaining wide spread acceptance, particularly in the urban cities because of the claim that it causes heat and heat rashes for children which is a result of poor power supply. There are not very many homes that use mosquito treated nets as a result.

Most urban dwellers prefer closing their windows, particularly at night and keeping their air-conditioning system or electric fans on through the night to keep mosquitoes away. This is a very effective method of preventing malaria infection, because the breeze from the air-conditioning system or electric fan blows away the mosquitoes thereby preventing it from perching.

This unconventional method is cheap and bio-friendly, but requires constant supply of electricity for it to be effective. It becomes expensive if power is provided by an individual through power generating sets. Therefore, it is imperative for the federal government and research institutes include power supply to  homes as an integral part of the malaria elimination campaign in both rural dwellings as well as in the urban areas of the country.

I am therefore calling on the World Health Organization, Unicef and all other local and international agencies in the forefront of efforts toward the eradication of malaria in African to increase pressure on the federal government of Nigeria to hasten efforts towards improving electricity supply.

Pull Down The Wall

Nigerians from all parts of the country, across sectoral, cultural, religious and political divides are strongly against any form of separation or division of the federation. The scares of the Odumegwu Ojukwu led Biafra civil war is still very fresh in our memory.

Insinuations recently by Libyan leader Col. Muammar Gaddafi calling for a split of Nigerian into Christian south and Muslim north was largely seen as repulsive and condemnable. Federal government’s spontaneous reaction and recall of the Ambassador to Libya Alhaji Aliu Mohammed, was supported by both Christian and Muslim leaders.

Obviously, Nigerians want to remain as one indivisible entity. However, there are calls for a sovereign national conference to bring about a truly federal constitution. Nigeria is regarded by a school of thought as a mere ‘geographical expression” of the British Colonial masters, brought about by the amalgamation of the north and south when leadership was conceded to the Muslim north under Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa. The British Colonialist did not follow a genuine process of unification as there was no call for a referendum therefore the absense of a consensus amongst the federating regions. This lack of sincerity of purpose on the part of the colonial masters and the lack of consensus by the different sections in the Nigerian state left us as strange bed fellows.

Nigeria is made up of diverse religious, tribal, sectional and political groupings. The killings in March 2010 of over 500 children, women and the elderly in a village in Jos Plateau in Northern Nigeria, by suspected Fulani hardsmen, was suspected to have religious inclinations. The United Nations constituted investigation into the killings fearing possible genocide.

It has become more imperative for us to seek a permanent solution to the frequent riots and clashes amongst different tribes, religious groups  in the country. It is important for us to also start to de-emphasizing those things that causes separation amongst us and consolidate those things that brings us together as a people.

The promotion of one Nigeria by the National Orientation Agency and the Rebranding Nigeria Project along cultural and political lines should be given prominence. Those attributes that tend to divide us should be masked and relegated.

For Nigeria to remain as one indivisible nation, the contraption called ‘three major tribes’ should be eliminated from our body polity. Emphasis should be on majority vote and not majority tribe. This will effectively detribalize the polity. Same applies to religion. Government should stop using tax payers money to fund religion. Rather, it should fund a new cultural revolution aimed at promoting the unity of all tribes and cultures.

Recent accusations leveled against Multi-Choice’s African Magic channel by the Igbo Youths Congress that the network is marginalizing the Igbos by not showing their local movies while giving Hausa and Yoruba films considerable prominence. Such agitations are solemn pointers to this demon called ‘three major tribe. The separation of a people along tribal lines stirs up nothing but conflicts and distrust amongst the people.

You can envisage what will happen when Multi-Choice creates an Igbo channel, people from other parts of the country will start their own agitation as well, and we will never get to the bottom of it. The solution to this, I believe is the creation of a single Movie Magic channel that broadcast films from all parts of the country regardless of region, provided they meet the required standards.

Nigeria needs to step up. I advocate a new ‘One Nigeria’ campaign that will promote peace and justice amongst the. Creating a truly one-people, one-nation ideology whereby we will no longer count tribes but votes. A new society whereby the Muslim and the Christian will become equal. Let us create an harmonious society devoid of acrimony and rancor.

When East and West Germany wanted to unify, one of the most impactful of all the things they did to achieve their reunification was the historic pulling-down of the Berlin Wall. What are our own Berlin Walls that we need to pull down?

If Nigeria were to be a man

If Nigeria were to be a man, he would live in a one room wooden ramshackle in Gbondu waterfront in Port Harcourt, with no toilet, no ventilation, and in a mud-filled, garbage littered pedestals that can not take even a bicycle. Yet he would have a satellite dish hunged over his roof of rusty dilapidated metal sheets and a hummer jeep parked out on the streets.

A weird mixture of poverty and affluence is what you see all around you, under the bridge at Ojuelegba, you see families so poor they receive alms even from beggars. They can neither feed nor afford the rent of a single room even in the slums of Ajegunle. Their children, some of school age, roam the streets begging for alms in the heavy traffic, running after flashy luxury cars, often wound-up and driven by people living in high-brew areas the likes of Ikoyi and Lekki.

This unhealthy cacophony of extreme poverty and flamboyance in our towns and cities all around the country is infuriating at the least, and can be attributed to the vexation being expressed by these deprived population in the form of brutal robberies, militancy,  kidnapping and aggression towards those perceived to be the ‘rich’ in the society, and who are often accused of amassing illegal wealth through corruption, importation of fake and substandard products or outright stealing from government treasury.

Though these extremely affluent people are often fenced out by high perimeter estate walls or live in exclusive government reserved areas with security everywhere. And very often the poor share the same neighbourhood, ride on the same road, shop in the same market and suffer the effects of the same poor infrastructure such as power, water, roads and healthcare. It is impossible to separate the rich from the poor.

Nigeria's increasing poverty profile is not out of lack of resources but bad governance and corruption. The causes of poverty in Nigeria are well known and the consequential challenges are shared evenly by both the rich and the poor. Having known the problems, what is expected is to find solutions to these challenges. To the amazement of all, we even know the solutions, but the big worry is no one seems to be committed to effecting this change.

In reminding us of the solutions, good government will take the front burner. Equal rights and justice comes next. The later is very crucial to the survival of the nation as it determines our basic freedom and liberties. De-tribalizing our body polity is essential create mutual respect and peaceful co-existence amongst the various tribes in Nigeria.

It is evident that the ills of the society can be corrected by fighting and rebellion but by the re-engineering of our social disposition and laws governing us. The constitution we operate was impossed on us and was never constituted by the people taking cognisance of our diverse social, religious, cultural and ethnic interest. That needs to be done if we need to enjoy enduring peace and harmony.

I am therefore strongly in support of the review of the constitution in view of the agitations and calls by pro-democracy groups for a sovereign national conference, as against insistence by government for the constitution to be reviewed by the National Assemble. I recommend a combination of both by way of the submission of referandums by pro-democracy groups and the various regional groupings to the national assembly for compilation and review through a public deliberation which will give the various groups the opportunity to defend their proposals.

The outcome of such a deliberation will produce a mutual document that can now become a bill called ‘the review of the Nigeria Constitution Bill 2010.” It is only when this bill is passed into law that we can claim to have a New Constitution of the federal republic of Nigeria.

Peace is what strenghtens a nation, war destroys it. In the heat of the struggle and agitations, let us remember our goal – one indivisible and virile nation, where peace and justice reign.

Solution to Fuel Subsidy Removal Impasse

The positions of the organised labour and civil society groups are quite clear and it is that government must revert to status quo the fuel pump-price. On the other hand, government is insisting that they will go ahead with the subsidy removal. These two strong positions between labour and government have created the present impasse. As usual, when two elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers and it is the poor masses who are the ones caught in the cross-fire.

To put a stop to the pains already inflicted on the populace by the sharp and sudden increase in prices of every conceivable item in the marketplace as a result of the fuel subsidy removal by federal government, and also stop immediately the labour imposed stoppage of commercial activities and it attendant hardship on the citizenry.

It is in the respect that I propose a compromise plan that will redeem the impasse and meet half-way both positions by labour and government; drive down prices of goods and services to pre-January fuel subsidy removal announcement by President Goodluck Jonathan, and take the striking labour workers and civil society groups away from the streets to the board room for continuation of dialogue.

My Proposals:

1.     That with immediate commencement, the federal government should instruct the NNPC to sell fuel to all commercial vehicles that are branded and registered under the national road transport workers union at the old pump price of N65.00 per litre in all NNPC Mega Stations across the country.

2.      By implication, the traffic in the mega stations will increase and to curtail that, sale of fuel by the mega stations to private vehicles should seize until the proposed palliatives by government for the subsidy removal are implemented and operational.

3.      Because of the anticipated congestion of the existing few NNPC Mega Stations across the country, the federal government should designate certain strategically located privately-owned filling stations in different parts of the country as NNPC Sales points which will sell only to commercial vehicles.

4.      The federal government should put in place a process to check abuses and corrupt tendencies  that may arise from commercial vehicle owners and filling station management by developing a database application to capture vehicle chassis numbers from the vehicle license registration particulars.

The database will also provide figures of total sales by vehicles and compute total accrued subvention for a period to be reimbursed as transport subsidy to individual NNPC Mega Station of designate outlets.

5.      The petrol attendants should be equipped with smart pocket devices with which they can within a few seconds capture the vehicle chassis number before dispensing fuel. The device will alert the petrol attendant of attempts of multiple purchases by the same vehicle in any of the designated NNPC Mega Stations and designate sales points across the country.

6.      The smart devices and database application must be low cost and easily manageable. If the federal government implement this proposal, by the very next day the strike will be called off and commercial activities will resume. And in another two weeks fuel will be available again at the old pump price of N65.00 per litre to commercial vehicles and life will return to normal. By so doing, the government would have effective sustained the fuel subsidy removal from the downstream sector and transfer some of it to the transport sector.

This new arrangement will remain until the proposed palliatives of new refineries and turn-around maintenance of existing ones are completed, reduction of the size of government, pay cut and review of allowances of National Assembly members, and senior government officials; introduction of low-cost fuel efficient mass transit system and invigoration of the fight against corruption.

Different Colours, One People

Different Colours, One People

Chevron News - January - April 2009, Pg. 4

By March Oyinki

Many years ago when the late South African reggae musician, Lucky Dube, sang "Different Colours, One People," it was to address an obvious diversity gap that existed at that time especially in his country where people were judged not by the content of their character but the colour of their skin. And the renowned musician simply tried to impress it on people that no society which practices racial discrimination enjoys peace.

The Oxford Dictionary defines diversity as variety; several different kind. Notwithstanding whether you are from a different race, tribe, profession or group, the ability to relate with others is important. And in a company, this is paramount for the purpose of growing and moving forward the organization. As the saying goes, "no matter how large a tree becomes, it can never make a forest."

In a company, diversity is not only about the appreciation of race or colour of skin, but also about the appreciation of the contributions of everyone and every job. It is an appreciation of what the leadership and the subordinate do. It is an appreciation of the work of the chief executive, the foreman, manager, and the messenger or cleaner. It is about not looking down on people because of the kind of jobs they do.

Let us try not to be like the arrogant professor who was "so intelligent" that he would mock anyone he thought was less knowledgeable. One day, as the story goes, the professor boarded a ferry to take him to the other side of town across the river. The journey began. As the boatman got to the middle of the river, a strong wind blew and the canoe swayed as the waves splashed the boat from side to side.

The professor, obviously afraid of drowning, asked the boatman, "when do you think we will get to the other side?"

"I don’t know," the boatman replied.

The professor, very furious, said, "You must be an idiot. What on earth do you know? There is nothing I’ve asked you that you have ever known. You don’t know how to calculate simple velocity, which is the change in distance divided by the change in time."

"I don’t no sir, I no go to school," said the old boatman in pidgin English.

At that moment, the wind got stronger, and the waves grew bigger and started hitting hard on the boat. Water started entering the canoe.

The professor now terrified, asked the boatman, "Are we going to drown?" The boatman replied, "It depends."

"Depends on what?" the professor asked.

"You know about ‘swimology?" the boatman asked. "No," said the professor, "And what does that mean?"

"Oh, then you are the biggest idiot," said the boatman. He hissed and took a dive into the river, leaving the professor in the boat to his fate.

The lesson of this story? It is impossible to be a master of everything. We must learn to respect and accommodate each other.

Effectiveness in the work place is not only about the talented individual, but in the harnessing of the different skills brought to the table by various individuals. In other words, there is no substitute for teamwork and mutual respect.

It is for this reason that diversity is one of Chevron’s core values as clearly stated in The Chevron Way: "We learn from and respect the cultures in which we work. We value and demonstrate respect for the uniqueness of individuals and the varied perspectives and talents they provide. We have an inclusive work environment and actively embrace a diversity of people, ideas, talents and experience."

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