FEW THOUGHTS ON DASUKI

I have two confessions that I want those who read this post to know before going on to read the rest of the article.

My first confession is that though I am a legal practitioner, this post is not meant to be any deep legal critique of Sambo Dasuki's on-going travails at the hands of the Federal government of Nigeria. It is merely a casual observation of what is going on in the country and what it could possibly portend for the future of this country.

My second confession is perhaps more serious than the first one and it is that I did not really have the time to go through most of the newspaper reports on the Sambo Dasuki case before writing this post. Yeah, I know, I know, but there it is...

Having read my confessions, you are at liberty to stop reading at this point. If however you decide to venture further into this write-up and you have a violent disagreement with my observations, drink a cup of cool water and remind yourself that you were warned.

For those who may not know who Sambo Dasuki is, he was the National Security Adviser under the immediate past administration of Dr. Goodluck Jonathan. Sambo Dasuki was recently arraigned by the Federal government of Nigeria for illegal possession of firearms and money laundering. The presiding judge exercised his discretion and granted him bail on self-recognition at the time of the arraignment. However, ruling on Dasuki's application to travel out of the country for three weeks for medical reasons, the judge decided to vary his bail conditions by directing that he get a surety on certain terms and conditions.

The judge went on to rule in favour of granting Dasuki's application to travel out of the country for medical check-up. The Department of State Security (DSS) however seem to disagree with the judge's ruling since on the heels of the judge's directive that Dasuki's passport should be returned to him and he should be allowed to travel as requested, DSS officials relocated part of their office to Dasuki's neighbourhood and effectively put him under some form of house arrest.

The DSS claimed in justification of their seeming disobedience of the Court Order, that Dasuki had been invited to answer some questions before a panel on some other charges and he had refused or failed to honour the invitation. In their opinion, since the charges because of which they decided to set up camp around Dasuki's house did not relate to the ones already in Court, they were not flouting any Court Order.

It would be recalled that before Dasuki was arrested and arraigned on the illegal possession of firearms charge, there was also some sort of siege on his house by the DSS.

One of the complaints some people including yours truly, had against the immediate past government at the centre in Nigeria was the level of impunity and the geometric, if not astronomic rate at which it was growing. It is my opinion then that this government has to be extremely careful about the actions of its agencies and the messages those actions send both to those of us casual(?!) observers and to the global community.

First off, I'm not sure what information Dasuki put before the judge which prompted the judge to exercise his discretion in favour of allowing Dasuki to travel out of the country. For instance, is the medical reason so grave that Dasuki cannot receive adequate attention/treatment in any of the hospitals in the country?

It will also be important to know what information the prosecutors who opposed Dasuki's application to be allowed to travel out of the country put before the Court which the judge apparently did not consider weighty enough to warrant a refusal of Dasuki's prayer/request. It would for instance be pertinent whether the prosecution informed the Court that Dasuki is a flight risk especially considering the fact that he may already be aware of weightier charges coming against him.

The above questions are important because those of us who do not have all the information may make the mistake of condemning the judge while not realising that perhaps the fault in a Court's decision may lie with the prosecution. It is fairly common knowledge that prosecutions of high profile cases in this country are largely compromised at both the investigative level and in their actual prosecution in Court. This is not to completely absolve some judges of misdeeds however.

Assuming that in spite of whatever relevant and important information that the prosecution might have put before the Court, the Court nevertheless wrongly ruled in favour of Dasuki's travel abroad, I believe that the DSS, having conducted their investigations and gathered sufficient evidence against Dasuki should just have gone ahead to arrest him on the new charges. The siege tactic first employed by the NDLEA against Buruji Kashamu and now employed repeatedly by the DSS in which not just Dasuki, but other people in his neighbourhood are terrorised is in my opinion, not the best way to go.

This government has to let its agencies imbibe the culture of doing things the right way. If we make exceptions for particular persons perhaps because of the supposed gravity of the offence committed by those persons, we might in future have the problem of the exceptions being used for the wrong reasons against innocent people.

The DSS should stop the siege tactic and make arrests where they have sufficient information and evidence to prefer charges against those who violate the Law. Where government and its agencies give the impression that they can determine when the rule of law should prevail, we may all have to pay dearly for it.

TERROR ATTACK IN FRANCE AND THE PRAYER FOR HUMANITY

a picture is worth a thousand words

The Friday 13th November 2015 multiple terror strikes in Paris and the resultant shows of solidarity with the French people all over the world on social media and elsewhere ignited a hot debate on social media in Nigeria.

While one group believed those changing their profile pictures on Facebook in Nigeria are hypocrites since terror attacks are a virtual daily affair in Nigeria and people do not change their profile pictures because of the terror attacks, another group felt they did nothing wrong by aligning themselves with the fight against terrorism through the change of their profile pictures.

This is of course not the first time this kind of debate will take place on social media in Nigeria. In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attack also in France early in the year, a lot of people showed their solidarity by using the #IAmCharlie hashtag on Facebook, twitter and other social media platforms.

Nigerian social media users are not the only ones engaged in the debate about the supposed hypocrisy of people showing their solidarity to the French people in the wake of the Friday the 13th’s terror attacks in France. People in the Middle East are also talking and protesting the apparently skewed coverage of terror attacks by Western media outfits like the CNN and BBC especially because a terror attack in Beirut at around the same time as those in France went unreported.

While it cannot be said that either of the two groups is wrong, it is a fact that the Western media downplays some news items while inundating us with everything that should or should not be known about others even while those they decide to downplay are equally if not even more important than some of those they decide to play to the hilt.

Much as we down here may want to be patriotic and feel for all those killed daily by boko haram (and others who hide under boko haram to carry out dastardly attacks), it may be a bit hard for us and the reasons are simple. Down here in Nigeria, the thousands of people whose lives have been cut brutally short by boko haram are mostly faceless and nameless. Our press, both those in the print and electronic media, perhaps does not know how to engage in investigative journalism. Perhaps they do but the cost is too prohibitive both in terms of finances and the danger to those who may seek to engage in it.

And because all we hear and read about almost daily is numbers of those killed without anybody making any serious attempt to find and interview family members of those killed or even to get pictures of them, a majority of us have, like people who work in the morgue, become “de-sensitised” to the killings carried out daily right in our backyard. I doubt very seriously that in spite of media outcry and global awareness about the Chibok girls and the on-going countdown of how many days the girls have been missing, we can find up to twenty Nigerians (outside of their former teachers and parents) who know the name of just ten of those girls.

If we don’t know the names of the girls, or have any idea how many of them dreamed of being doctors or engineers or astronauts, if we were never made to see what their lives really were before their abductions, how can we really feel a part of the pains their family and close friends have felt over the months they have been in captivity (assuming they are not the ones being used to carry out suicide bombings)?

This is however not the same for any news of terror attacks that the Western media choose to play up. For instance, it is almost certain that in the coming several days at the very least, a lot of people will get acquainted with the families and friends of most, if not all of the people that were killed and injured in the multiple terror attacks in France. We would almost certainly get to know where they grew up and what dreams they had that were cut short by the evil terror strikes. And we would get to see their faces so often that we would be forgiven if we swear we had seen them before.

It is in the light of the exposure given to tragedies like the November 13th one in France by the Western media including Facebook that encourages people to show support by changing their profile pictures that a lot of people changed their profile pictures. Those who did, I believe, would just as willingly change their profile pictures to show solidarity to those experiencing attacks in Nigeria if they are made to see that those killed are more than just numbers and were in fact people like them with dreams and aspirations even if those dreams were no more than just to wake up and go back to sleep at night peacefully every day.

Our journalists in Nigeria and indeed in Africa need to let the world know and keep its attention of the world on what goes on in this country and continent. With social media, this is not quite as difficult as it may seem.

Do we need to pray for France? Most certainly! And just as importantly, ne ween to pray for humanity and we need to pray for Nigeria to see the last of the insurgents and every single sponsor they have.

…NOT REALLY LIKE THE PIG

When a person is referred to as a pig, it usually would mean such a person is dirty, gluttonous and repulsive. There are quite a number of very uncomplimentary sayings and analogies around a pig. A few of them are listed below:

When you wrestle with a pig, you both get dirty and the pig likes it.

…the place is like a pigsty (meaning the place is very messy and dirty).

The pig remains one of the most maligned animals in the world judging by how people (mostly wrongly) associate many things negative including immorality with the pig. Some religions in fact banned the eating of pork (pig meat) because of its perceived filthiness.

It is said that if something is repeated often enough, even when it is utter falsehood, it becomes the truth (sic), and so it is that I was one of those who believed the popular sayings about pigs being dirty. Indeed I was as surprised as some people might be after reading this when several years ago in my second year at the university I read in the general course textbook we were required to read, that pigs were (I believe still are) generally very clean animals if they are bred in a regulated environment. Articles I have read in recent times also point in this direction. The dirty pigs are said to be those in the wild or the stray pigs (like we have stray dogs) which have nobody rearing them. And even for the supposedly dirty stray pigs which seem to enjoy rolling around in the mud, a very good reason has been suggested for this behavior and it is that since pigs do not sweat, they usually roll in the mud in order to bring down their body temperature.

Humans are the highest of all God’s creatures. We are smart, we possess a very high level of reasoning that we may safely say most animals lack. To a very large extent then, we can say that we are in control of quite a number of things we engage in. For instance, the focus of this article is completely within our control as humans. We are fully in control of whether or not we want to litter our environment.

I visited Calabar twice last year on some land-related study and I was very impressed at how clean the place was. No pure-water sachets littering the streets or other such things that come together to make a place an eye-sore. One would in fact be forgiven if one assumes that the good and neat people of Calabar do not join those of us in the South-West in the consumption of pure-water (by the way, do they actually drink pure water in Calabar?). What is even more impressive is the fact that you don’t really see the city cleaners as they go about their duty like we see them here in Lagos. The cleaners come very early in the mornings to clean the city. It is not an all-day affair like it is here in the not-so-clean Lagos.

The fact that the people of Calabar were able to achieve the level of neatness they have, is a pointer to the fact that at least, that aspect of our lives is completely within our control as humans.

In spite of this however, it is a fairly common sight to see drivers and passengers in both private and commercial vehicles throwing all sorts of things on the road out of their vehicles. The first time I saw someone throw a plastic bag and the back of a watermelon out of a car, I was shell-shocked. I have since then seen very well dressed ladies and men driving very nice and expensive-looking cars calmly wind down their windows and throw all sorts of rubbish ranging from the very small to the biggest thing that one can imagine (and even the ones no rational person can imagine! )can be thrown out of a vehicle onto the road.

Where this sort of thing is done by the commercial bus drivers, one may somehow rationalize it by saying that the Indian hemp and kaikai they indulge in have taken their toll on their reasoning ability. But where you find otherwise respectable members of the society who should serve as beacons engaging in this dirty habit…

Some of the articles on pigs go so far as to say that some pigs sometime make themselves ill by holding their urine because they could not get to an acceptable place in which they could relieve themselves. It is in fact said that if a pig kept in a regulated and clean environment begins to defecate or urinate in its bedding, then that pig has a health problem.

Perhaps, one should by the same token conclude that a human who chooses to litter the environment might have some health challenges that makes him/her incapable of doing the right thing.

And so if you are one of the too many supposedly educated people who still litter the city, and you do not have any health challenge which makes you litter, then you are not really like the pig, it would in fact be an insult to the pig to compare you with it.

THAT HUGE $5.2 BILLION NCC FINE ON MTN

It was widely reported on Tuesday the 27th of October 2015 that NCC, the regulatory body for the telecommunication companies in Nigeria had slammed MTN with a huge fine of $5.2 Billion! The fine was to serve as punishment to MTN for failing, contrary to the directive of NCC, to disconnect about 5.1 million phone lines which were not registered as directed by NCC after the end of the August 2015 deadline set by the NCC.

While it is appropriate that MTN be sanctioned for violation of NCC’s directive, the fine levied, N200,000 for every line not disconnected by MTN is huge and could result in crippling the network’s operations.

Analysis of the fine according to AP (Associated Press), may provide some guidance. In the AP report, the $5.2 Billion fine imposed on MTN is equivalent to at least 2 years average profit for MTN and nearly three times the $1.83 (this figure might be a mistake as the figure on MTN's website differs) the telecommunications network has invested in Nigeria. Also, when looked at from the fact that MTN in 2001 paid what now seems like a mere $285 Million for the licence that enabled it to start operations in Nigeria, one can only conclude that the regulatory body has dealt a blow which while it may not result in death for the big telecommunications firm, may send a big part of its operations into a coma for quite a while.

Information available on MTN’s website show that MTN invested a total of $12 billion in the country from 2001 to 2013 and planned to invest additional $3 Billion between 2013 and 2015. The amount invested in the country by MTN was said to include what was spent on getting the largest digital (microwave) transmission backbone across the country, the investment in fibre optic service and the largest network switch centre in the country.

The above are mentioned to serve as a guide to what an amount as huge as $5.2 Billion can achieve.

Indeed, the NCC in imposing the fine on MTN must have borne in mind the provision of Section 2 of its Guidelines on Procedure for Granting Approval to Disconnect Telecommunications Operators. Paragraph (3) under Section 2 of the Draft (Not sure whether it’s still draft or now in force) Guidelines provides that one of the criteria which NCC should consider in deciding whether or not to grant approval for a network operator to be disconnected shall include the public interest to observe the rule of Law and the need to entrench good corporate governance practices among operators.

There is absolutely no doubt that the above guide is a very sound one. I am a firm believer in the fact that the major reason why our dear country has turned out the way it has is because no sanction attaches to wrongdoings. Where the wrong doer is particularly a “big” man or woman, not only is there no sanction, what the wrong doer gets is a reward. This will always have the effect of promoting wrongdoings while at the same time discouraging all those who always want to the right things.

Because of this, I believe very strongly that MTN should be sanctioned for disobeying the NCC directive especially in these days when the country is battling with terrorism and kidnappings and all sorts of other criminal activities. However, much as I support that MTN should be sanctioned, the sanction should not be such as would cripple the operations of the company unless that was the intent of the NCC in imposing such a debilitating fine.

A look through the provisions of NCC’s Guide on Interconnectivity earlier mentioned shows the reluctance by the drafters of that guide to approve the disconnection of any network operator mainly because of how this may affect subscribers. In the same vein, I believe NCC should also bear in mind the larger impact crippling a company as big as MTN may have on the economy. There is no doubt MTN should be sanctioned. But while the sanction should have an impact on the sanctioned in order to serve as deterrence to others, it should not be such that it could kill it.

NCC under Sections 55 & 65(1) of the 2003 Nigeria Communication Commission Act that created it has the power to impose fines in such amounts by exercising its discretion. But just like judges, such discretions are not to be exercised arbitrarily.

As an aside, I wonder what NCC does with all the fines collected from licensees. I remember that NCC slammed huge fines a few years ago on the three major telecommunication networks for the bad services they were rendering. Since then however, the services of the network operators have consistently deteriorated. Perhaps, NCC has to think of another way to enforce provision of good services to consumers of telecommunication services.

SOMEWHERE IN THE LAW… Lagos State Traffic Management Authority Law 2004

Since LASTMA is a hot topic at the moment, it might be appropriate to start off this new segment (which I hope to continue diligently) with the Law which established the Lagos State Traffic Management Authority in 2004. The focus today in that Law is on Section 16 which provides:

Section 16 (1): A person shall, before he is appointed as a member of the Authority, be required to declare his interest, if any, in any transport or other business organization undertaking transportation of passengers, or goods or engaged in the repairs and maintenance of vehicles or manufacturing or sale of any equipment used by the Authority.

Section 16(2): A member of the Authority who acquires any financial interest in any organization undertaking transportation of passengers or goods or engaged in the repairs and maintenance of vehicles in the production or sale of any equipment used by the Authority shall within one month of such acquisition give notice thereof in writing to the Authority specifying the interest so acquired and the Authority may, after taking into consideration all the circumstances of the case, decide whether—

(a) to retain him as a member of the Authority; or
(b) to remove him from such membership; or
(c) attach any condition to his membership.

Section 16 was picked in view of the fact that a good number of the members of LASTMA either have interests or own quite a number of commercial vehicles now operating in the State. I in fact got to know once when I was at one of the LASTMA offices in the State that commercial buses arrested are not booked until LASTMA officials ascertain that such vehicles were not owned by one of them.

It is also not much of a secret that some LASTMA officials (or members as the Law refers to them) either own or have interests in private towing vehicles.

In view of the provision of Section 16, one wonders how many commercial bus-owning LASTMA officials declared their interests and how quite a number of them would be able to explain the acquisition of the buses and towing vehicles. Perhaps the really relevant question to ask is how many of them are aware of this provision of the Law.

LASTMA ON "STRIKE"

Sometime in the early 90s, I represented my mum at the Parents/Teachers Association (PTA) meeting at one of my brothers’ school. One of the parents at the meeting in talking about getting the school back on track said it was important that the standards of education not be allowed to decline. He said that if there is a serious problem with the infrastructure in the school, that could be built within a short time once the funds were available but if pupils/students are not given the right foundation or education, it may take much more than just funds to get things right. I have never forgotten that statement and I will come back to the statement later in the course of this write-up.

In 2004, the then governor of Lagos State, Senator Bola Tinubu, who really achieved more for Lagos State than most people remember or are willing to give him credit for, established the Lagos State Traffic Management Authority (LASTMA) to ease the traffic bottlenecks in the State.

In spite of the fact that the Second Schedule to the Law under which LASTMA was established created some offences and listed the penalties therefor, I doubt that very many people would dispute the fact that LASTMA under Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu stuck to its mandate and indeed achieved the main objective of easing traffic bottlenecks in the State.

LASTMA continued in the direction under former governor Bola Tinubu in the first few years under the immediate past governor, Babatunde Raji Fashola. And indeed, it should be said that the procurement for LASTMA under the administration of former governor Fashola of several towing vehicles, helped in no small measure to quickly clear the road either after a breakdown or an accident.

Trouble started in my opinion however when the State under the immediate past governor decided that slamming heavy fines on errant drivers was the ultimate solution to traffic lawlessness. It is no secret that most LASTMA officials make a lot of money daily by entering into negotiations with apprehended drivers and diverting fractions of the official fines to their own pockets. The heavy fines set by the State government turned most LASTMA officials into the monsters they later became. I don’t know if the State government was making a lot of money from the fines imposed on errant drivers, but I know that a lot of LASTMA officials made a lot of money because the fines set were so high.

LASTMA went from being a genuine traffic management outfit to a body which had as its priority, revenue generation; both for the State and (as it appeared), more importantly for individual officials. The lust for money became so great that quite a number of LASTMA officials would in fact deliberately mislead drivers into entering one-way roads in the absence of conspicuous signs which should have done the job, and have their colleagues waiting ahead to make arrests. Where LASTMA officials should have been proactive in preventing the commission of traffic offences, they wait (and perhaps even pray) for you to make sometimes, honest mistakes and then swoop on you because it puts money in their pockets.

It can then be imagined, how majority of these extremely dirty LASTMA officials would feel when the new governor told them to stop harassing motorists. Perhaps there was a meeting, perhaps there was a directive. But what followed after the governor’s directive was an open defiance or rebellion by LASTMA officials who then decided to report at their duty posts, but to lift no finger (or leg) in traffic management.

LASTMA officials, at least a good number of them, stopped working. In Lagos State where commercial bus drivers have an infinite capacity for lawlessness, LASTMA officials stopped working. In Lagos State where the average private vehicle driver has a near infinite capacity for lawlessness, LASTMA officials stopped working. The result is what most Lagosians have been experiencing in the past several weeks. Traffic gridlocks for no discernible reason. And of course, with these gridlocks come robberies in traffic.


Governor Akinwunmi Ambode should respond by sanctioning a number of LASTMA top officials. The last I checked, the governor retains the power under the 2004 law which established LASTMA. He can remove any official however high-ranking who openly defies his directive. Under Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu, LASTMA did not need to harass motorists to be effective. And majority of people in Lagos and other States acknowledged LASTMA’s effectiveness.

Back to my earlier story about the fixing of decayed infrastructure versus the fixing of damaged humans. It is my belief, rightly or wrongly, that over-emphasis on too heavy fines and criminalization of every little infraction under the Fashola government did substantial damage to the psyche of LASTMA officials and turned them into monsters. The heaviness of the fines and the fact that it took average of a whole day to get it paid, was an effective bargaining chip for LASTMA officials who thus enriched themselves immensely and illegally at the expense of both the State and the people.

Governor Ambode should insist on LASTMA, VIO & KAI not harassing people. And this insistence should in no way stop them from performing their duties. If this open defiance continues, the governor should make examples of a few top officials to keep the underlings in line. The State cannot long afford to waste such long debilitating hours in traffic.