₦airaland Forum

TemplarLandry:

sIfioksq:
Reno Omokri always knows how to stir the pot! His insights are often thought-provoking and timely. It's refreshing to see someone challenge the status quo.

WINON1:
Starting from their primaries, we all saw how the whole thing played out. Bribery and all forms of corruption seen at that convention ground. Their presidential candidate emerged with many issues eg certificate forgery , corruption allegations, forfeiture of money relating to drugs, Age and other issues.

And finally the grabbed , snatched and run away with the mandate.

SatoshiX:
Obaseki will be put to shame at the end.

NIGERIANS have said the distribution of palliatives by the Federal Government was not the solution to the food shortage facing the country.

They urged President Bola Tinubu to declare an emergency in food security, introduce a national food policy, and tackle insecurity caused by herders, which had forced farmers in different states of the country, especially in southern Nigeria, to abandon farming.

Misplaced priority– Adima, political activist
A political activist, Mr Blessing Adima, who spoke to Saturday Vanguard in Delta State, said “Buying grains and rice for distribution to Nigerians is a misplaced priority. It goes to show that the federal government itself does not care about food production and doesn’t know how to tackle the problems that we are facing in Nigeria today.

Herdsmen have chased farmers from their farmlands and now, we import the rice that Benue State alone could have produced for Nigeria, and we also import the rice that southern Kaduna, Zamfara, Ebonyi and Taraba could have made for Nigeria.

The federal government does not know what to do. The money they are spending to import rice could have been used to tackle insecurity, banditry, terrorism and herdsmen menace and the problem would be solved.

You are talking about the Ministry of Livestock; Nigeria is not one of the greatest exporters of cow meat and milk and the top 10 countries do not practice this kind of archaic open grazing system; it is ranching that they resort to. Let us come to the South, if they are importing rice, will they import garri from China too? Agricultural produce is scarce. When Dr. Goodluck Jonathan’s administration introduced its agriculture revolution, we saw how he addressed it.

Today, fertilizer is not what the peasant farmer can afford and the government is not thinking in that direction. We want to see insecurity tackled in the rural areas, and let farmers go to their farms. We want to see tractors, fertilizers and farm implements distributed to the farmers.

That is what will solve the food crisis, palliatives will not cure hunger, rather they will increase hunger because the people who should have gone to farms are in the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps. How will food be produced when 30 percent, if not 40 percent are in IDP camps? The government should tackle the problem of insecurity.”

Encourage farmers to return to the farm – Akene, development consultant

A development consultant, Furoebi Akene, stated, “All efforts should be made for the farmers to return to their farms. Beyond that, how honest and patriotic are the people entrusted with the distribution of the rice to ensure they get to the targeted beneficiaries? The same dubious and fraudulent characters will play out.”

Palliatives offer temporal relief- Idi, Ndokwa youth leader
The Secretary of the Ndokwa National Youth Movement, NNYM, Comrade Presley Idi, said: “For us, we believe that the pathway to solving the food crisis bedeviling Nigeria right now is to ensure a secured environment for our farmers. Without providing the needed security for farmers to return to their farms, we will continue to experience food shortages. Not only are palliatives like the
distribution of rice and other food items temporary solutions, but it will always be difficult for the items to get to those who truly need them because of the high level of corruption amongst the political elite.

We reiterate the only way to solve the current food crisis is to provide better security, once this is done and our farmers are back to their farms, the prices of food items will come crashing down.”

Govt not addressing the problem – Wills, legal practitioner
A legal practitioner in Bayelsa State, Iniruo Wills, said, “Extravaganza is not governance, and public spectacle is no strategy. Whenever the government decides to start rational governance, food and other crises will start to subside. That is if it is not too late by then.”

Palliatives not sustainable – Ekerefe, ex-IYC spokesperson
Ex-spokesman of the Ijaw Youth Council (IYC), Ebilade Ekerefe, asserted, “Sharing billions of trailer loads of rice and distributing money as palliatives is not the solution to our food security crisis in the country. Even if it is a temporary stopgap, it must be noted that the items and monies do not even get to the end users in most cases. Corrupt government officials at the federal, state, and local government levels divert and resell the items to market vendors and make huge profits. This is the reality and it is not good. Instead of distributing food items and money as palliatives, which corrupt government officials usually divert, the federal government should urgently declare an emergency in food security.

“The government should introduce a holistic national policy to address this challenge before it gets out of control. We know the problems that led to the high cost of living in the country.

Inflation and fuel hikes are some of the major causes. Insecurity, bad roads and lack of incentives provided by the government to farmers to become more productive and efficient is another.

Therefore, it is a whole gamut of issues and the government must be sincere enough to address the challenges holistically rather than just providing palliatives that are not sustainable and efficient. They should act now. The country is currently nose-diving and it affects all sectors of the economy. Hunger and starvation are pervasive and Nigerians are dying daily. It has not been this bad in our country.”

No clear policy direction – Rukevwe, educationist
A Warri, Delta state-based educationist, Mrs. Edna Rukevwe, said, “It has become clear that President Tinubu did not prepare for economic reactions to his removal of subsidy on petroleum. So no clear policy direction. Throwing money and food at the problem of hunger in the country is not a solution.

The government should work out modalities to redress insecurity so that farmers can return to the farms. Also provide fertilizers and allow tax-free importation of farm tools into the country. The government should also acquire farming tractors for the local government areas. The tractors should cultivate farmlands for farmers across the country and be monitored by the local government councils.

“The government should drop propaganda and focus on real governance. The condition that Nigeria is now, is not the time for propaganda. The All Progressives Congress (APC) is a party that thrives in propaganda, but sadly, this is not the time for such. The people are wary of the government’s lies.

Tackle farmers’ insecurity, distribution of palliatives alone can’t stop hunger—AFAN
Chairman, Board of Trustees, BoT,
representing South East in the All Farmers Association of Nigeria, AFAN, Chief Israel Amanze, also argued that “distribution of palliatives and trucks of food items to Nigerians is only a temporary measure and not a permanent one to address food insecurity in the country. The government missed it a long time ago. The way it’s going is not how to take Nigeria out of hunger. They promised to support farmers with inputs and the rainy season farming for Southern Nigeria is almost over.

Distribution of palliatives can only bring down the cost of food for a few months but it is not a lasting solution. They should first address the insecurity that drove away farmers from the farm. The government should subsidize fertilizer and farm inputs. In this way, they will encourage farmers to go back to farm.”

Saviour Akpan, Executive Director, of COMPPART Foundation for Justice and Peacebuilding, said: “Instead of donating trucks of food to the citizens, the government subsidize and make available to the citizens organic seedlings and fertilizers. This will encourage self-reliance as production will be based on two folds namely Subsistence and Commercial production. The citizens should also be educated on the danger of living a wasteful life which includes purchasing commodities not based on their needs but according to their want which contributes to inflation and scarcity.

Furthermore, the Land Use Act of 1978 should be amended to make land more and readily available for all agricultural purposes without hindrances.”

Ogunbiyi Olajunwo is a rights lawyers based in Uyo said: ”The Federal Government doesn’t have its priorities right. The first thing the current administration should have done immediately it came to power was to open the borders. Nothing was hindering us from importing food. We are not self sufficient in food production. We are not even at war with our neighbours, so why are we closing the borders to food coming in? It’s common sense that the government opens the borders for food to come in. And they need to reduce tariffs on essential goods, not just rice and wheat.

They need to reduce it so that food can come and reduce the burden on Nigerians. The hardship Nigerians are facing is not natural, it is man made. Then government needs a clear plan to tackle insecurity that has not allowed the farmers to go to the farms. And they need to stop giving those stupid subsidies and palliatives. Even with fertilizers, the federal government needs to stop it, those are not solutions. There is need for purposeful investment into food chains. Same way they look for investors to come and farm our oil and gas, that’s how we need investors to develop agriculture.

Ten mega farms can feed this nation. It is about capacity, not the number of people struggling to farm. We need to move away from this crude, subsistence farming and move into real mechanised farming. That is how we can feed ourselves, not by sharing food or giving fertilisers that can’t reach even the common man. Some of the farmers they give fertiliser sell it. It goes back to those who are rich and they commit it to some other personal purpose.

In Jos, Plateau state, an Executive of Small-Scale Women Farmers Organization in Nigeria, SWOFON, Mrs. Mary Afan said, “Women should be encouraged to continue to put food on the table of every household. When we talk about food security, people look at big farms but what you find in the markets are what the small-holder farmers produce. The big farms target exports or industrial use.

Smallholder farmers produce vegetables, grains, tubers, and others. But when the government wants to support, you hardly see the smallholder farmers benefit. It is either the political farmers that will get it and resell it because they don’t have farms or it is the big farmers that would benefit. That is why we are facing food insecurity; small farms are neglected, the real farmers don’t get the needed support. Insecurity is also stopping women from going to the farms because some of them are raped and killed in the farms, so people are afraid.”

Another resident, Jamila Benzies-Buyengum said, “People should be encouraged to go back to the farms, and implements should be subsidized and made available. When the government at all levels do these, food will be available. Farming has evolved, the capacity of citizens should be built to engage in farming dynamically at homes using sacks and these will improve the availability of food.”

On his part, Adamu Musa noted that, “More youths should be trained and modern farming tools deployed to enable them to go to the farms. This will reduce insecurity, and promote food production and food availability.

To Daniel Dazang, “The grassroots dwellers should be actively involved and supported to produce food. When they have enough to eat, the leftovers will be taken to the market and others will buy them. The government giving out palliative measures is not sustainable and by the way, how many people have access to the palliatives? The best thing is to engage the people in farming and this will be possible when insecurity is curbed and farm inputs are provided by the governments at all levels.”

Noerection:
Next time limit your IPOB terrorism to only Alaigbo
Yoruba will never take order from someone who stays in Finland

THE Nigeria Police Force seems to have saddled itself with the role of revenue generation as it continues to advance the entrenchment of the Electronic Central Motor Registry for vehicle owners. Although the police have suspended the initiative, they should confront insecurity, their primary responsibility. The Inspector-General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun, should dismantle the project outright.

Force spokesperson, Muyiwa Adejobi, recently gave vehicle owners a few days to meet the July 29 deadline for the e-CMR registration. The process, which included issuing the e-CMR certificates by the police, was meant to cost vehicle owners at least N5,375. A breakdown showed that N5,000 was accrued to the police while N375 was VAT.

This caused a backlash as citizens accused the police of creating a conduit for extortion and oppression.

With over 11.8 million vehicles in the country, the police would have reportedly earned at least N59 billion if the deadline was implemented.

The police say the e-CMR provides “information about vehicle ownership and other details that will be useful in the investigation of motor vehicle theft and recovery and for enhancing national security.” They stress that it would digitise policing, ensure the safety of lives and properties by collating data and biometrics of vehicle owners, and provide robust incidence reports across the Ministries, Departments, and Agencies. Security agencies make these claims in their attempt to burden Nigerians.

It is not a well-timed initiative. Nigerians are confronted with high fuel prices, a cost-of-living crisis, and a slew of taxes. A 2023 federal initiative to prune taxes from 62 to nine has yet to see the light of day. During this period, the Federal Government introduced the 5.0 per cent excise duty on telecom services before suspending it. It disdainfully revived the EMT in May. It was again suspended after a national outcry.

Although Adejobi has denied that the e-CMR is a ploy to generate revenues, the intention of the Force to sensitise the public to adopt the data collation system while retaining the e-CMR website shows that the police remain stuck to their guns.

Despite the rationale behind the vehicle biometric platform, it duplicates existing database architectures that can be harnessed through collaboration between the police, the National Identity Management Commission, the Federal Road Safety Corps, and the Vehicle Inspection Service.

Therefore, the police do not need to create a new data collection platform to tackle crime, track and apprehend vehicle thieves, recover stolen vehicles, and validate the authenticity of vehicle ownership.

The e-CMR complicates the intention of the Bola Tinubu administration to streamline the numerous taxes, including nuisance taxes. While it is working on drastically reducing taxes, the police are compounding the situation by introducing the e-CMR.

The police should tackle the fundamental issue of manpower, ethics, and discipline within the Force, quickly dissolve the bickering between them and the Police Service Commission over jurisdiction, and recruit more officers. There are only 371,000 officers for 230 million Nigerians. Out of the existing police personnel, two-thirds are illegally deployed to VIPs, leading to a grave shortfall and a loophole for criminal activities in the country.

The Nigeria Police should borrow a leaf out of the book of the United Kingdom where the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency is involved in vehicle database and taxes, not the police.

Corralling Nigerians through another biometric process is unnecessary. The police should harvest data from NIN, vehicle registration, and the FRSC number plate registry. Indeed, such a policy should go through the Joint Tax Board. This will enable the Federal Inland Revenue Service, and state tax agencies to make inputs on the initiative.

PRESIDENT Bola Tinubu appears to have woken up to the reality that his economic reforms will not work if the massive fiscal haemorrhaging associated with crude oil theft and pipeline vandalism persists. Ending oil theft is the first step in Nigeria’s road to economic recovery.

On Monday, the Chief of Defence Staff, Christopher Musa, pledged to end oil theft within three months. The latest directive to end oil theft mandates a collaborative effort involving the Armed Forces, the Nigeria Police Force, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, and other security agencies.

This is a decisive stance against the illicit activities that have robbed Nigeria of valuable resources for decades based on directives from the President.

Former President Muhammadu Buhari gave a similar directive in January 2023 in a last-ditch attempt to leave a tangible legacy to no avail. Tinubu is taking up the challenge, albeit belatedly. His National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu, said Nigeria was losing over 400,000 barrels per day to theft, equivalent to $12.26 billion a year since August 2023. It is confounding that it has taken Tinubu almost a year to declare an outright war against oil theft.

The Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative said on Monday that audit figures covering 2009 to 2020 put Nigeria’s losses to oil theft over 12 years at 619.7 million barrels valued at $46.16 billion or N16.25 trillion. Between 2009 and 2018, Nigeria lost 4.2 billion litres of petroleum products from refineries valued at $1.84 billion.

Apart from monetary losses, the environmental degradation resulting from pipeline vandalism and oil spills has resulted in deaths, illness, and destruction of farmland and fishing grounds, tourism facilities, and cultural areas.

Nigeria can easily produce over 2mbpd if oil theft is eliminated. The Group Managing Director of the NNPC, Mele Kyari, recently pointed out that oil production rose to 2.2mpbd in April 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic when the oil thieves went into hiding.

The NNPC reported that 5,800 illegal pipeline connections had been removed and over 600 illegal refineries destroyed in recent months, which contributed to oil production of 1.7mbd recorded in May.

Oil theft and pipeline vandalism have driven international oil companies from the Niger Delta. TotalEnergies just sold its onshore Nigeria assets to a local firm for $860 million after diverting a $6 billion investment to Angola.

This order will test the sincerity of these entities, including the government itself. Multiple accounts have attributed oil theft to collusion between the oil-producing companies, the NNPC and other government officials, military and security agents, and other actors operating illegal refineries. The Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, in 2021 during his tenure as Rivers’ governor, accused a General Officer Commanding an Army division of running an oil theft syndicate.

It is a shame that Nigeria cannot properly account for the crude oil produced. Flow stations have no meters. It was only last week that the Federal Executive Council awarded a $21 million contract to install meters at the 187 flow stations within six months. Another contract was awarded to install tracking facilities for all crude cargoes leaving Nigeria to the point of discharge. These are significant corrective measures, but the human element remains suspect.

Saudi Arabia has advanced systems with sensors and monitors that can track every single barrel of oil produced from the wells through pipelines to export terminals in real time.

If Tinubu is indeed committed to ending oil theft in Nigeria, accountability by those in charge must be paramount. There must be consequences if there are no marked improvements within specific timelines. There must be a monthly or quarterly re view of measures being implemented to adjust as required. The NNPC should be privatised as soon as possible for improved efficiency.

yarimo:
federal courts judgement that is not in your favor abi

yarimo:
like rivers state high courts abi

Minister of Aviation and Development, Mr Festus Keyamo, has banned international flight operations at non-international airports.

Keyamo, who directed all international flight operations at general aviation terminals, GAT, and other private terminals at the international airports, said except those exempted by the national security adviser, NSA, others must complete clearances at international terminals.

This was stated in a circular issued by the directorate of air traffic services of the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency, NAMA, noting that no international flight operations should be conducted through non-international airports.

Deputy General Manager of NAMA, S.E. Inegbedion, who signed the circular, informed all stations of the ministerial directive, saying the instruction must be immediately followed.

Inegbedion said compliance was “compulsory” and any violation will attract “appropriate sanctions”.

ddippset:
I say it again.

30k under Buhari is better than 70k today.

So technically, minimum wage has been reduced!


Do the math.

WINON1:
Peter obi is well accepted wherever he goes. He earned all the respect accorded to him not by force.

Sonnobax15:

If it were the South Africans dissing us,it won't pain me...But Kenyans? . Like wtf?

Philipponzaghi:
Chai! Na wa o! Minimum wage matter don turn saga! But make we no forget, Tinubu dey try for some areas. E no easy to balance the economy. Abeg, make we dey manage smallsmall, e go better!

yarimo:
One agulu fraudster will soon condemn labour union for accepting #70,000

casualobserver:
So long as you keep your protests to the SE and don’t think you can use protests as a guise to destroy infrastructure in the SW like you did during Endsars!

EreluRoz:
Whenever I log in I see so many mentions and it's all related to Tinubu and the current situation of the country. For God's sake how am I responsible for the turn out of events?

We all supported our individual candidates for one selfish reasons or the other and the majority won, instead of holding your leaders accountable you are dragging those who supported them because they also believe in them just the same way you believed in yours.

To those of you who throw curses foolishly may your tongue not put you in trouble that'll consume you. If I decide to make anyone a scapegoat I bet he or she will regret his/her existence.

Supporting a candidate doesn't mean you support the turnout of events. Please respect yourselves henceforth.

Racoon:
He craftily left out the core corrupt politicians( including the despicable man that appointed him into a corrupt office) to be hampering on the corruption their young protégés learnt from the same old Brigade corrupt politicians See a hypocritical pastor that sees white but desperately trying in futility to change it to black.