Leah, Oyediran@80, North/South governors

Today we also look at ministers; Missing persons register; Okada register; Fine for non-voting; Cut JAMB fees please; Super Falcons win; Abuja’s war on women; Petty traders register; traders strangling Oja Oba and Okadas strangling Mokola Roundabout!!

Ministers, thank you! New faces please!

As victims of our undeclared war, we remember thousands killed and kidnapped and Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and especially Leah [email protected] from Dapchi. The great Femi Falana, SAN, recommends Missing Persons Registers obviously at federal and for governors at state, LGA and ward levels.  This register should complement a Herbalist Register to prevent and detect ritual murder. We need Okada and Traders Registers …see below.

About 22 countries have compulsory voting, including Australia where 10 million voted and which has a fine of $20-50 for non-voting. Perhaps Nigeria should raise election funds like this. 55+million non-voters in 2019 translate to N100b-N300b at a fine of N2,000 -5,000/non-voter, for INEC.

Warm congratulations to Professor Olukayode [email protected], a multitalented iconic role model who has touched many as a family and religious person, and in the international space as a doctor, in medicine and tertiary education, as an apex administrator including Chief Medical Director, UCH and vice chancellor, University of Ibadan, as an international administration figure in postgraduate regulatory bodies including the National and West African Postgraduate Medical and Physicians Colleges, and as a dedicated environmentalist founding the Nigeria Network for Awareness and Action for Environmental  Health.

We also know him as a dedicated supporter of many good causes including Educare Trust to which he generously donated a full medical skeleton attracting many into medicine. Please note that the mere holding of high office, private or government, is usually always applauded without question, but is not always a stellar achievement on scrutiny. Far too often, the attainment is self-serving for perks with little genuine service intended and it may be undeserved, bought at a moral price or achieved through means, including bribery and corruption that cannot be proudly told one’s grandchildren or NTA or Channels TV news. In addition, conduct in office often brings the office and the holder into disrepute. We live steeped in the quagmire of pervading crass politics and a corruption-driven political and governance system often celebrating failure even in high office. Today ‘distinguished’, ‘excellency’ and ‘honourable’ are mostly unearned and meaningless to the users, signifying the opposite to listeners. When Nigeria is fortunately presented with an uncontaminated real, true, honest, heroic individual of marked untainted distinction and carriage, we as students and promoters of good practices, should be discerning enough to honour and offer a resounding ovation and a genuine ‘Happy 80th Birthday, Sir’.

On Internally Generated Revenue, IGR, JAMB under Professor Oloyede took N4,700/candidate yielded N8.8billion from 1.88m candidates. With running costs of N3.8b, JAMB has honestly returned the excess to government. Wrong! That N5b or N2,648/candidate should be returned to candidates.  Certainly in 2020 the JAMB fee should be cut again, to N4,700 -2,648 = N2,162/candidate. It is noted that N2b of the N5b or N1059/candidate was returned to JAMB for ‘development’ costs as JAMB got zero budget in 2018/9. However N3b or N1,588/candidate is still an immoral ‘profit’ from a unemployed section of the community- youth. If N2b is to be returned to JAMB in 2020, then the recommended 2020 JAMB fee is N4,700- 1,588= N3,222/candidate. Averagely the 2019 JAMB fee should be N2,500 yielding N4.7b with N3.8-4b for running costs and N0.7b-N1b for development. Only a greedy corrupted unprincipled government would ‘profit’ from its children!

Congratulations Super Falcons for the WAFU Cup win. Please don’t celebrate by clubbing or walking around Abuja in football gear to avoid victimization by misled or mischievous unsupervised authorities on a ‘war on women’ without female supervision. Google anti-rape activist Dorothy Njemanze and her lawyer, Azubueze Okocha who took Nigeria to the ECOWAS Court for violating women’s rights and won!

Northern Governors Meeting, NGM, attempt to stem terrorism, kidnapping and insecurity and also improve financial integration. Great! Action at last. Nigeria requires an immediate complementary Southern Governors Meeting to plan with the NGM to encircle and capture the terrorists or they will merely continue to bring terror southward having fled the over-advertised military heat in the North. If not, issues like the okada ban in many northern states will lead a serious insecurity threat in the South from an invasion of even more okada into the South.

One important measure that must be undertaken is a ward and LGA Okada Register and government limitations of okadas/road position to ten. The unregulated nationwide Okada Epidemic with riders blatantly contravening every road rules and riding in all lanes at all speeds is hospitalizing tens of thousands and burying thousands and orphaning hundreds of thousands from okada crashes. The Okada Epidemic resists traffic controllers and slows down and even strangling transportation movement to a single lane crawl at for example the formerly famous Mokola Roundabout, Ibadan and at junctions nationwide. Undisciplined ‘Okada Swarms’ gather like wasps or bees at okada crashes to protect their own and also swarm in an unruly manner at junctions. These ‘Okada Swarms’ are superior to or feared by traffic authorities.

Similar  indiscriminate parking of wheelbarrow vegetable traders at OjaOba, Mapo Ibadan is paralyzing transport around the Olubadan’s palace as does new unregulated street traders selling vegetables and cooked meat all over the city.