The major political issue today is the on-going impasse in the House of Representatives occasioned by the Speaker, Mrs Patricia Etteh's scandalous award of N628 million contract for the renovation of her house and that of her deputy, Mallam Babangida Nguroje without due process.  She has so far, refused to vacate her seat for another person to preside over the debate on the Idoko Panel that investigated her award of the contract.

     The total sum of the contract, N628 million, is about $5 million. People are wondering what is the real worth of the houses that the renovation will cost this much. The sum is enough to build over 200 three bedroom flats at the cost of N3 million each. The amount is also the cost of a donor agency's water supply scheme for 33 villages in three countries according to a columnist recently. It is simply ridiculous and has attracted the most attention since the death of the third term.

   As a result of the Ettehgate, one House member, Dr. Aminu Safana, exhausted himself so much and collapsed in the House chamber last week and did not survive. One opinion said he died in defence of democracy while others said he died in defence of a discredited leadership. Whatever the circumstance, may God forgive him. Another consequence of the House crisis is the fact that President Yar'Adua had to defer the presentation of the 2008 budget to the National Assembly. The integrity of the House and Nigerian women is obviously at stake.

Be that as it may, there is no reason the current House leadership under Mrs Etteh should continue to hold the country to ransom. She keeps adjourning House sittings in the hope that some divine intervention will save her from disgrace if she continues to buy time. This is a scientific era and no miracle can save an insensitive, immature, irresponsible and inept leadership.

Meanwhile, President Yar'Adua must know that the entire nation is his constituency. He owes it a duty to bring to an end this hostage situation. It is obvious that governance is suffering in the circumstance and, in Nigeria, there is nothing called establishment as is the case in other countries, who can intervene in times of crisis like this. There is a limit to how the president can remain indifferent to what is happening. I saw what SGF Kingibe released the other day and I thought he was just being a typical diplomat forgetting that no amount of diplomacy or rhetoric can be a substitute for reality. And the reality is that government is allowing the country to drift aimlessly which is very dangerous.

The three arms of government collectively constitute the machinery of government. The crisis in the House of Representatives is not a simple legislative one. It is not a south west issue. It is not even a PDP issue. This is a national issue requiring serious attention at the highest level. It should not be allowed to continue to degenerate. How President Yar'Adua resolves this will have profound impact on his subsequent actions. He must be decisive.

Another major issue in the political landscape is the on-going electoral tribunal cases across the country. It is very clear that the judiciary is earning a lot of respect across the country and beyond over the manner it is handling the cases so far. There are a lot of disputed legislative and gubernatorial seats that are being upturned now. People in Nigeria and beyond are also watching with keen interest what is happening at the Presidential Election Tribunal where Justice James Ogebe has recently summoned even foreign observers to come and testify.

The most celebrated judgement so far was the one given by the Kebbi State Gubernatorial Election Tribunal. Why it attracted undue attention is the fact that soon after he was sworn in as Governor of the State, Alhaji Saidu Usman Dakin Gari married President Yar'Adua's daughter, Zainab, with much fanfare and wide publicity. But the tribunal went ahead and nullified his election and ordered a fresh one to be conducted.

This clearly brings two things into focus: one is the fact that Mallam Umaru Yar'Adua has truly maintained strict neutrality and has not been interfering in the judicial process surrounding the last election. Secondly, the judiciary has also shown clear independence and ensured strict observance of the rule of law by nullifying the election of a son-inlaw of the No. 1 citizen of this country. The judiciary really wants to reduce Dakingari to an ordinary party member which would not have been imagined if it were last year especially if, as now, it was affecting the ruling PDP.

It is very obvious that the judiciary is now alive to its responsibility of being the last hope of the down trodden. By what is happening, it is now very clear that for every oppressed, there is hope. If the National Assembly members were to wake up from their current catatonic stupor, the country would have been much better. Perhaps, the on-going crisis may end up giving birth to a more vigorous and more vibrant House of Representatives and, by extension, a reinvigorated National Assembly. Every patriot hopes and prays so.

SOURCE: http://allafrica.com/stories/200710250718.html

A Chinese bank has struck a deal with a lender in Nigeria who will enable it finance infrastructure projects in Africa which have attracted attention over the labour practices of Chinese contractors.

Critics say the contractors are abetting the export of unskilled personnel to lay roads, bridges and manufacturing plants even as the continent is bursting to the seams with millions of unemployed youth.

The entry of China Development Bank through a partnership with United Bank of Africa, a leading financier in Nigeria, points to Chinese firms gaining virtual control of projects in Africa, from financing to construction.

The Financial Times reported yesterday that the deal was sealed last month, but is yet to be announced, expanding CDB's ability to finance utilities in Africa.

CDB is the second Chinese Bank to launch a decisive foray into Africa within a week, after another government owned bank, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, announced it was buying a 20 per cent stake in South Africa's Standard Bank for $5.56bn.

Standard Bank is Africa's largest bank by assets and has a presence in 18 countries in Africa, including Kenya where its subsidiary - Stanbic Kenya - has acquired a 60 per cent stake in listed CFC Bank for Sh19 billion. It is the country's biggest merger.

According to the report CDB has not bought equity in UBA, which is listed on the Nigerian stock exchange.

The two deals mark the start of a transformation in Africa's banking industry, opening fresh channels for finance in a region hitherto dependent on western companies and donors. 

"It is no longer a question of funding capability, but about our ability to identify good projects," Mr Elumelu said.

"Africa is a huge untapped market - but it takes those who understand African markets and African risks to take advantage."

CDB has more assets than the World Bank and Asian Development Bank combined, with $281bn of loans outstanding by the end of June.

Isa Muhammad Inuwa
 

Ever since the "Federal Road Safety Corps" was founded during Nigeria's military regime under General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida in the late 1980s to date, the body which was meant to regulate the activities of road users has been left swinging in limbo and at the mercy of lack of clear-cut directions and responsibilities as far as control of driving vehicles is concerned.

The dilemma seems to have arisen from the fact that the Road Safety Corps came as a child of circumstance when Babangida's regime introduced some auxiliary projects without backing them up with thought and thorough objectives. This made FRSC to have its functions clashing with those of VIOs and at times that of traffic wardens.

This particular reality made the body to look like a kind of hybrid which neither belongs to the police nor to the traffic officers and to the extent that at different occasions, the Corps has been merged with the police and at another separated from the police, while the police themselves look at the Road Corps as alien to their service. The present situation is that the Federal Road Safety Corps has outlived the regime that founded it, but it is yet to gain its real identity and yet to fix its roots like the rest of federal government bodies. Worse still, road accidents, which the Corps were thought to control and minimise, kept rising astronomically year in, year out, with the body still in existence and its staff being paid salaries with Nigerian taxpayers' money.

The great irony is that despite the Federal Road Safety Corps, Nigerian roads are no longer safe and they are still unsafe as highway massive accidents and city and town accidents mainly caused by notorious motorcyclists known as "achaba" continue to snuff out the lives of innocent citizens. This particular fact tends to raise the question: what actual purpose is the Road Safety Corps serving? Is it only serving in recording the number of deaths and related aggregate of death tolls over the years, as they occur on our roads? Please, can that be enough?

Possibly and obviously, it is the attempt of proponents and guardians of the Corps in covering its disabilities that they ended up camouflaging, thereby introducing and insisting on the use of seat belt by motorists; the idea which in my opinion, is wrongly applied. Everyone knows the idea behind using seat belt, but is it enough to emphasise on using belt by motorists on the one hand and ignore the imposition of using helmets by motorcyclists?

Or is it due to the fear by the Corps about the uncontrollable and rugged habit of commercial motorcyclists, the "okada riders" who would not consent to the idea of using helmets and would end up fighting the Road Corps officers? The result now is that the law seems to be too lopsided and unbalanced, whereby the Road Corps takes pleasure in molesting respected, peace-loving and gentle car owners who would not quarrel with them on the roads because of their decorum. The respected Nigerians are therefore being harassed and fined for the simple reason that they do not or even forget to use seat belt, especially during township driving (not even inter-state or highway driving).

Another reason why the Road Corps law is despotic, made of nepotism and selective is that the officers tend to allow vehicle owners that carry any government sign or the ones that look so luxurious and flashy to go scot-free for fear of offending a highly-connected or highly-positioned person, which could make them to lose their job or fetch them a dismissal. This selective justice with road gendarmes and the police is even more pronounced in the case of arresting users of the so-called tinted glasses, at which some selected individuals are allowed to use them while other citizens are punished for doing so.

This writer therefore considers the work of the Road Corps of emphasising the use of seat belt in the town and leaving other fundamental issues like using hard drugs by drivers and riders, reckless driving by commercial motorcyclists and more importantly checking the menace of highway driving as highly narrow and naïve. Some people have even begun to complain that the FRSC officers were only seeking for dirty money and bribery by concentrating on the city alone, while it is a fact that highway driving is much riskier and accident prone, as far as car driving is concerned. Those holding this view added that members of the Corps are seen to be more serious and strict whenever big seasonal festivities such as Xmas and Eid are approaching, so that they can fill their pockets in readiness for the grand occasions.

Whether the above assumption is true or false, the glaring fact is that the road gendarmes were being used by their superior officers or rather by the higher authorities in order to further subjugate the common citizens, to demonstrate to them that the power of dealing with the common man is still in existence and that he is nothing more than a subject and a commoner. Whichever is the case, the law of checking seat belts in cars alone is too primitive and selective, because even in the cars, it is the driver alone (according to Kano Corps) that should have his belt on.

In this case, passengers are exempted and are regarded as not worthy in terms of possible accidents. Likewise the tricycles lack belts for the driver and passengers, while in the case of commercial buses, only the driver can use belt with the exception of the overloaded passengers. For the motorcycle riders, helmets were not used in spite of the numerous accidents they cause daily. All of the above facts and much more indicate and prove the selectiveness of the FRSC in their law, which fall far behind curbing the recurring accidents and loss of precious lives on our roads. Finally, this leads to exploitation rather than correction of road users.