Funeral Rites for the Labour Party while in a State of Coma
by simbo olorunfemi

http://ekoonibajeng.com/index.php?topic=8297.new#new

It had to be that the Labour Party would be stretchered into the Banquet Hall of Aso Rock in a body bag, even in a state of coma. It had to be that at the head of that team would be a Medical Doctor to superintend over the final rites of passage for the party he had midwifed into national relevance. It had to be that the death certificate of the Labour Party would have the imprimatur of the Presidency. The rites, of a necessity, had to be at the Presidential Villa.

It is now up to us to make anything of it - Was that a gathering of party members in the Presidency for official business or was it one of government officials paid to serve Nigerians partying and politicking, while they were supposed to be at work? The distinction between governance and politics had long been lost on the occupants of our high offices, so that, in itself, does not count for much. The inappropriateness of the venue must have been lost on the conveners who were so much in haste to conduct a funeral mass, while the patient was still in coma.

It was a simple ceremony, though - The Doctor pronounces the patient dead. He places the cadaver before a coterie of undertakers and pall bearers gathered to help put a benefactor away and welcome the prodigal son back home. He makes a speech and the mourners beam with smiles. Such a ceremony to mark the death of the Labour Party and celebrate the gains of another catch had to be at the ultimate seat of power.

It is safe to assume that the Labour Party has now been quarantined in a morgue of. It has fallen victim to the shenanigans of politicians who sold the founders a lie, bought the party off them and exchanged it for an umbrella. But the unraveling of the party has only been long in coming, it is no surprise. The poison that triggered its implosion lies in the seed that launched it into prominence. It has only taken time for the inevitable to become obvious.

A strange romance between the Labour party, which ought to represent the extreme left of the political spectrum and the PDP, which lies at the extreme right has hardly been hidden. When Comrade Issa Aremu, Deputy Secretary of the party and Vice President of the NLC frantically called Dr Mimiko to order, months back, over his controversial support for the Jang-led group of Governors, some of us chuckled. He sought then to remind him Mimiko that the Governor’s conduct of the Governor was not in line with the ideology of the party, but that was too little, too late. The falcon was no longer listening to the falconer, he should have known.

But truth be told, we never really had a Labour Party. What masqueraded as one was a caricature, cobbled together by strange bedfellows lacking in rudimentary understanding of what such a party should symbolise, with the Nigerian Labour Congress only carrying on as a nominal passenger. Rather than build a movement of workers, artisans, traders, students, intellectuals, farmers and the like, leaders of the Labour party were more at home, frolicking in the dark corridors to hand over the party platform, for a plate of porridge, to all-comers. The figures at the head of the party were seemingly more interested in a platform with which to negotiate for crumbs from the tables of the overlords, rather than building an authentic workers party.

Political Jobbers, Hustlers and Itinerants of varied political persuasion showed up as candidates for the party at different levels. The party for workers had become a haven for mercenaries angling for political power at all cost. Running for office on the platform of Labour Party began to look more like a routine ‘buying and selling’ business, consummated at the car-park of Alaba market. The platform, it would seem, was available to the highest bidder, with no pretence of affinity to any ideology close to the left, but only one founded on convenience and infrastructure of the stomach.

The list of politicians who found accommodation on the Labour Party platform is a rich one. Illustrious Nigerians such as the Ekiti State Governor-elect, Ayodele Fayose, Ifeanyi Uba ofAnambra State, Femi Pedro, Timi Alaibe and Senator Andy Uba, were once candidates of the party. The Ogun state chapter of the party remains a floating vehicle of convenience for Governor Gbenga Daniel to maintain relevance in the ever-dynamic politics of the state. That is what has become of the Labour Party. It does not even have a functional website.

But the party itself might have continued to wallow in obscurity, but for the fortuitous move by Dr Segun Mimiko to adopt the party platform in the 2007 Gubernatorial elections in Ondo State, having been shut out by the PDP. Victory was to come for him, through the instrumentality of the court, in 2008. With that, the Labour party took on a new life. The Governor became the leader of the party with Dan Nwanyanwu serving as National Chairman. Both men struck a working partnership that suited them both. Perhaps it is no coincidence that Nwanyanwu has chosen this moment to step down as Chairman, with Mimiko having abandoned the boat, mid-stream.

But the tragedy that has befallen the Labour Party is not one for the party alone to bear. Indeed, its looming demise is no accident. It is a deliberate manipulation by the ruling elite to ensure that alternative political platforms do not thrive in Nigeria. The objective is the continuation of same and domination by the oligarchy at the helm of affairs in the country. It does not bode well for the future of Nigeria.
At every point in the historical journey of Nigeria, organised labour has turned up to play a progressive role. It was at the vanguard of the struggle against the colonial powers, with its 52-day strike in 1945, helping, in no small way, to bring about independence for Nigeria in 1960. Even then, the Labour party that was formed in 1946 fell victim to the shenanigans both within and outside, it died prematurely.

A resurrection came in 1989 in response to the political transition programme of Ibrahim Babangida. The Nigerian Labour Congress, under the leadership of Paschal Bafyau, descended into the political arena. The argument then was that “those who are out to change society for the better, by whatever name they go, must set out consciously and fastidiously to win political power.” It was a valid submission that made sense to some of us. Drunk on idealism, we bought the dream and pounded the streets of Nigeria in its pursuit, before IBB pulled the plug on that dream.

Tragically though, it is difficult to see the current Labour Party as an encapsulation of that dream or desire to change society. The faces that have come to be identified with the party neither echo the dream we had 25 years ago nor resonate with the vision for the future. This Labour Party has nothing in common with that of 1946 or 1989. It does not inspire us into remembering the heroic role played by the organised labour in the fight for the validation of June 12 elections and the enthronement of democracy in Nigeria.

That the Labour party has neither been able to carve a niche for itself in the political space nor successfully engineered the buy-in of workers and intellectuals from the progressive fold that should ordinarily serve as its constituency, speaks a volume. Yet again, the vultures have sucked life out of the bones of another Labour party, its carcass now lies in state at Wadata Plaza. Though the funeral rites for the Labour party might have begun, yet the party might only just be in a state of coma. Who knows if there is someone lurking in the shadows looking to hire the flag of the Labour Party for another political adventure? Who knows if we might yet have a Nigerian Labour Party in line with the dream we shared and worked on, day and night in Maiduguri, twenty-five years ago? Who knows if Labour party might yet be the “organisational expression of the Nigerian conscience”, as was once the dream?


Simbo Olorunfemi, a Brand and Political Strategist, works for Hoofbeatdotcom, a Nigerian Commmunications Consultancy.

Airtel’s 3,050 Naira Refund and a tongue-in-cheek Apology
By Simbo Olorunfemi

Two weeks back, I went public (http://ekoonibajeng.com/index.php?topic=8279.msg21475;topicseen#msg21475) with my ordeal at the hands of Airtel Nigeria. In spite of an understandable blackout of the story by the mainstream media, a controlled circulation via online media platforms took the message home to some of the people who had hitherto pretended to be unconcerned. Two days after going public, a message came from the Lagos office of the Consumer Protection Council. It forwarded to me a response from Airtel which it had received on the 1st of August, but had somehow forgotten to bring to my attention. Same day, a call came from Airtel’s Oluwaseyi Dalmeida. Our conversation was as frosty as it could get, as the company was not willing to shift grounds.

Airtel had, in fact, upped the ante in the letter it sent to the Consumer Protection Council. Apart from maintaining its claim that I had subscribed to its value added service, Airtel went further to argue that I never called its customer Service, in the period under review, to lodge a complaint about the nuisance from its 54950, as I had claimed. In other words, Airtel would have CPC believe I had lied. The company also attached two documents in support of its claims – call centre log and subscription log. According to Airtel’s record, there was no entry of a complaint to its customer service on incessant calls from 54950 from me, but only one over an inability to make calls and the other, a ‘hoax’ call. On the strength of this ‘record’, Airtel elected to wave my complaint away.

One little snag though, that ‘record’ leaves one with more questions than answers. In any case, it is necessary to respond to Airtel’s claims and place an explanation before Nigerian Communications Commission, and the Consumer Protection Council. That, I will make the effort to do, irrespective of developments thereafter.

Indeed, a day after my conversation with Airtel’s Oluwaseyi Dalmeida, a text message came from the company informing me of a refund of N3,050 and an apology for “all inconvenience”. The question is -Is Airtel offering an apology, in spite of its own ‘record’ which proved it had done nothing wrong? For me, it is important to have that established, so I can give kudos to the company, rather than the flak I had thrown its way. It is not enough for Airtel to simply throw a N3,050 refund at me, four months after a formal complaint. If the company that will suddenly make this go away, it must be sorely mistaken. I am even more interested in Airtel’s ‘record’ which has conveniently accused me of a few things - lying, not calling to lodge complaints and even making a ‘hoax’ call to its Customer Service Unit.

In seeking answers, the question arises - What is the role of NCC, our Ombudsman, in this matter? Or is it that the regulator is too busy to see the gaps in the story put forward by Airtel? But then, if the CPC can hold on to a letter from Airtel for 6 weeks rather than inform the complainant or act upon it, what can we expect? If NCC will receive a response from Airtel and simply go to bed, what can we do? One would have thought that the regulator will conduct its own investigation and come to its own conclusions, but what do I know? How does one even explain that neither NCC nor CPC has thought it fit to query the indefensible contradictions in the claims put forward by Airtel? Yet, some of these gaps are only too obvious for any discerning eye to see.

In its letter to the Nigerian Communications Commission, Airtel submits that I subscribed to its Value Added Service on February 12, 2014. But in the letter sent to the Consumer Protection Council, the company claims I subscribed to the same service on February 13, 2013. How can that be? Which of the dates does Airtel really want us to hold on to? Is there a problem with Airtel’s record? Why the contradiction? There must be a reason why the company will claim two different dates as that on which a customer supposedly subscribed for its service. It cannot be that the records of such a corporate institution will suddenly become suspect, or can it be?

Airtel submits in its letter to the Consumer Protection Council that the only record they have of my call to the Customer service, apart from the ‘hoax’ call, was that of December 5, 2013, which it claims, I made to complain about my inability to make calls with my phone. That is strange! Airtel claims to have no record of all the calls I made to Airtel Customer Service unit. Not even that of May 2014 which led to the termination of the service could be found on Airtel’s record? Is Airtel implying that the discontinuation of the disputed subscription came by some form of divine intervention, rather than in response to a complaint from me?

It is interesting that in the bid by Airtel to make this customer a villain rather than the victim, the company has left little to restraint. Airtel sends out a document that loudly announces to all that its anti-malware database is out-of-date, yet it wants us to take a ‘record’, generated from a system potentially vulnerable to malware, seriously. How does that inspire confidence?

It is simply amazing to see what little regard some companies have for their customers. After these months of back and forth, Airtel wakes up and fires a text message to my phone with an ‘apology’. How it came to the decision that this was just about a face-saving refund of a N3,050, we are not to know. How it settled on that figure is a mystery, too. Sorry, Airtel, it is not that simple. You will need to provide answers to some of the questions, your shoddy response has generated, with or without the support of NCC and CPC. But, we must give Airtel an opportunity to explain itself.

Simbo Olorunfemi, a Brand and Political Strategist works for Hoofbeatdotcom, a Communications Consultancy.

http://ekoonibajeng.com/index.php?topic=8290.msg21487;topicseen#msg21487

Has President Jonathan canonised docility as Nigeria’s foreign policy?
by simbo olorunfemi

http://ekoonibajeng.com/index.php?topic=8287.msg21484;topicseen#msg21484

Too soon, the recent events all around us – in Chad, Gabon, South Africa, and Egypt have forced upon me yet another interrogation of Nigeria’s dysfunctional relationship with the world under President Goodluck Jonathan. Was it not only a few weeks ago that I was compelled to ask what President Jonathan was doing in Washington? I had queried, then, the sense in fifty African Elders journeying, like beggars, to go meet with a lame-duck Chief Obama in his own court-yard. Seeing that the man had this rush to renew marital vows with an estranged Africa in the wee hours of his final term in office, did he then have to summon elders from the wife’s village for lunch, to make that point to the world?

The symbolism of that trip to Washington is not lost on the discerning. It confirmed the status of Nigeria as a journey-man in international relations. We have elevated naivety to the point where we roll in the mud, heap sand on our own head, while the world is busy throwing dirty water at us, yet expecting things to end well. With each day, it becomes more apparent that Nigeria’s engagement with the world, under President Jonathan, is not founded on any guiding philosophy. With the yawning absence of a compass, we grope in the dark, our diary one of serial misadventure on the global arena.

We are simply all over the place. It is impossible to tell what President Jonathan’s vision is, and difficult to identify the underpinning philosophy that governs his foreign policy. He is not helped by the people around him. Routine matters of protocol have suddenly taken on a shoddy life of their own, in the hands of incompetent aides. Again and again, we end up with eggs on our faces - lost in the crowd in the gathering of world leaders, snubbed at the Mandela funeral service, relegated to the back row at the US-African Leaders Summit. How did it get this bad?

We flounder at little things others take for granted. How do you even explain the fact that our President ended up in a meeting with Chadian President Idriss Deby in the company of the Sheriff of Borno, with photographs as exhibit? How is the world to take us seriously with such faux pas? How did things even get to the point where we have to kow-tow to dark places to gain traction for issues that should not take a regional leader more than a phone call to resolve?

Nigeria faffs around the globe, with no discernible purpose and direction, its stature visibly diminished. We have lost our voice. We have become an object of scorn and ridicule, in our supposed backyard. Respect for the giant of Africa has been eroded, the sub-region is yearns for leadership from Nigeria. How much of a rallying point on the Ebola crisis were we for West Africa, before the virus came calling? Even now, with the disease ravaging the region, where is our plan of action? Every country now mistakes us for a football, kicking us around the ECOWAS field, like Ebola virus. The aura around the giant of Africa has worn off.

For years, Nigerians have been stigmatised on account of sundry crimes which ordinarily know no geographical boundaries. These days, even dwarfs on the international stage are clutching onto the Ebola outbreak as excuse to keep us away from engagement with the rest of civilisation. Where do we start? Is it with the treatment meted out to young Nigerian Athletes in China, leading to a decision to withdraw them from the Youth Olympics? Is it the blatantly hostile act of the Gabonese, having first stopped flights from Nigeria, then forcing our Under-17 Football team to disembark from the plane in Togo? Is it the abuse and disrespect Nigerian citizens experience in different parts of the world for holding the green passport? Over the weekend, there was a report about Air France, leaving some Nigerians stranded abroad, on account of a section of its crew refusing to fly to Nigeria, on account of the Ebola outbreak. What won’t we see?

To a large extent, we brought this upon ourselves, as a nation. The international arena is a war-zone. There is no room for naïve weaklings who cannot put their house in order. Respect is earned, the hard way, not by bandying population figures or rebased GDP. How can there be respect for citizens of a crawling giant, disabled by the incompetence of her own leadership? Who will show respect for a country that has not demonstrated duty of care over its own citizens, leaving them to the perils of wilderness, home and abroad? Other countries are quick at jumping on the queue to maltreat Nigerians, because our leadership has proven, over time, it places little value on the lives of its own people.

Which country will allow her citizens to be locked up in jail, under questionable circumstances, as presently obtains for many Nigerians, in China? Which other country will allow for her citizens to be hounded and harassed as is often the experience of Nigerians in a number of African countries? Which country will allow for the shenanigans in the foreign embassies in Nigeria, in the name of visa interview? Between the Swedish and Austrian Embassies in Abuja, it is difficult to tell who takes the gold medal in the shoddy handling of visa applications. Even then, what does one make of Professor Obododimma Oha’s ordeal in the hands of our brothers in the South African High Commission?

We might not have our house in order, yet. But that is definitely no excuse for kindergarten Consular officials subjecting Nigerians to all forms of abuse as it’s presently the case in many of the embassies. You often wonder if some of these open-house visa interviews were designed to humiliate and dehumanise Nigerians. There is no excuse in the world for Egypt Air to still be flying out of Nigeria after the inhumane treatment meted out to Kunle Abdul-Azeez, recently deported to Nigeria, after 4 days of ordeal at the hands of the airline. What was that about the tearing of his Nigerian passport in Egypt?

The General Manager of Egypt Air, Khaled El Rafie, must have had appeasement on his mind, when he reportedly told the 17-year old passenger, whom his airline wrongly routed to Moldova instead of Ukraine that he “may have been locked up in a cell in Cairo because of Ebola virus”. As we like to say here – it is not Khaled’s fault. As we did not deem it fit to send a few Chinese citizens back home, to protect them from the Ebola ‘epidemic’ in Nigeria in reciprocation for the good gesture by the Chinese, why won’t the Egyptian treat us so shabbily.

It is not his fault, no doubt. A write, the Gabonese Ambassador to Nigeria has not been summoned by the Foreign Affairs Ministry, as prelude to his being declared persona-non-grata for the unfriendly acts of his country. Yet, we want to be treated with respect. It does not work that way. How long are we going to put up with disrespect, especially from corners of the field we watered with sweat and blood, while we fold our hands and watch?

We might have faltered as a nation. We might not be getting it right, in many areas of life. But this cannot be excuse for us to be docile and play the field with such naivety. We cannot suddenly canonise docility as Nigeria’s foreign policy. It has not always been like this. Nigeria did not influence the seismic shift in Southern Africa which led to the independence of Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Namibia and the end of apartheid in South Africa, by being docile. The time for President Jonathan to stand firm as the leader of a people deserving of some respect, is now. He can start by telling Gabon one or two things.

Simbo Olorunfemi, a Brand and Political Strategist, works for Hoofbeatdotcom, a Nigerian Commmunications Consultancy.

What do I do with Airtel?
By Simbo Olorunfemi

“A good company is known... not because they have produced the best product in
the market but by the way they take care of the people i.e. customers using their
products/services, especially, when such a customer is having issues with the product.”
- Ikenna Ogbaraegbe

There is something not just right for the customer in the world of our GSM telecoms providers. The gang of four seems to have the understanding that they have been licensed to ride roughshod over their customers, while they routinely ferry plane-loads of cash to their owners, in the name of profit. Customer Service Desks exist, mostly to please regulators, and not to make customers happy. They toss customers to and fro over minor complaints that could be resolved in a moment. The customer is put ‘on hold’ in an endless wait over the phone, just to be able to lodge minor complaints. He finally gets through to the Customer Service Representative to be told that the issue cannot be resolved at the moment, as the customer’s current details have not been updated. He is told to repeat the call.

One would think that after a decade in business, the companies by now, will have in place robust customer service delivery platforms to make life easy for customers, but that obviously is not a priority. They are rather busy in turf battles over football sponsorship and ephemeral reality shows. They prefer to throw their weight around, in sponsorship of all forms of inanities with little value for the Nigerian project. Telecoms Brand Managers have suddenly become overnight celebrities, cat-walking different colours of carpet, competing for attention with their own brands. Today, show dominates business. Hype outshines service.

The Nigerian Communications Commission must have thought enabling the Mobile Number Portability Regime which allows customers to migrate from one provider to the other while retaining their numbers will do the magic of reining in the providers from their wayward ways. What were they to know? They would not have known that not many people will follow the cue from Saka. But that, in itself, is telling. Most customers are simply stuck wherever they are, seeing that ‘porting’ makes little or no difference. What is the difference between six and half-a- dozen, they ask themselves. Who ports from Libya to Syria? Customers are stuck, receiving tons of spam messages from the providers’ funny short codes, while the regulator snores. What can we do?

When my Grandmother said something about the customer being king, she probably did not have Airtel in mind. My Facebook friend, Bumite Susan wrote - “I Hate Airtel network with passion....with wat they did to me today.” What could they have done to Susan? Ikenna Ogbaraegbe writes on Airtel’s Facebook page - “Airtel … has the worst customer service in Nigeria.” Airtel did not bother to respond, not even to the customer’s expletives. What could Airtel have done to Ikenna?

For years, Airtel insisted on harassing me with calls from one of their short codes, in spite of several appeals to the Customer Service Representatives. Nothing could stop Airtel. Calls came deep into the night. They called me in the course of official business. They called any hour of the day. Airtel was an all-round nuisance. Left with nothing to do, I saved the number on my phone as ‘Wahala People’ and assigned a distinct ringtone to it.

I finally was in luck with one of their Customer Service Representatives sometime in May, this year, as he succeeded in disabling the service. But, was I shocked to learn from him that the calls Airtel had been making to me, for years, had actually been at my expense. Airtel was either charging me N50 for each call or doing so on weekly basis. I protested to Airtel and demanded that they track how long the calls had been coming and make a refund of all that they had fraudulently debited from my account. You would think that the company will be apologetic. Not, Airtel. It opted to rather ignore the customer, scurrying around to cover its dirty tracks. Not even a mail to the Corporate Affairs Chief was deemed worthy of acknowledgement. The Customer Service team promised to investigate, that they have been doing for over 3 months, with no update.
Following my complaints to Consumer Protection Council and Nigerian Communications Commission, in June, Airtel’s Oluwaseyi Dalmeida of Service Recovery unit finally calls me. He claimed to have been in the process of generating a log of the calls. That was taking time, given the length of time involved, he said. He has not gotten back to me since then and refused to respond a call placed to his phone. Yet, Dalmeida, in a mail sent to NCC on July 25th 2014, claimed thus -“Our investigation revealed that the customer’s subscribed to a Value Added Service (VAS) operating on the Airtel network with the short code 54950 on Feb 12 2014.”

I have asked Airtel to explain the following to me - How can I subscribe to a service that was already active for over a year, before then? How could I have subscribed on February 12, 2014 for a service that I had called their Customer Service Desk in 2013 about, asking them to desist from calling me with, but they never did? What is there to subscribe to in 54950, even when I would elect not to subscribe for data service with Airtel for the Iphone in which their sim resides? What record do I have with Airtel or any other provider of ever subscribing for VAS? Airtel obviously is lacking in integrity, otherwise it will not blatantly put out a lie that I subscribed to its nuisance-added service.

I still do not know how long Airtel has been fleecing me. I have challenged Airtel to produce the log and evidence of subscription, but they won’t. NCC receives a response from Airtel, asks for my position, which I sent promptly. Has NCC gone to sleep? CPC sends a letter to Airtel, waiting on me for an update, months after. But that is our fate, as Nigerians. There is nowhere to turn.

I cannot be absolute about which GSM company provides the worst telecommunications service in the country, as complaints come from everywhere. But since customer service has to be experienced to be able to come to an unbiased judgement, Airtel truly stands out, in my limited interaction with service providers, as a sad story to tell.

You would think the essence of customer service is to patiently listen to the customer, take ownership of the problem, responsibility for fixing it and ensure that you restore his confidence in your product or service. Obviously, for Airtel, that is not the case.

Call customer Service, the first thing you notice is the lack of interest in listening to you. When the Representative is not busy mixing up names, he is too distracted or irritated to follow the thread of the complaint. He is too eager to pass the blame might for whatever that might have gone wrong onto the customer. It would seem that the Customer Service Representatives are specifically schooled to assume that only stupid customers call them to lodge complaints. They are schooled to lecture the customer on what he must have done wrong to complicate his own life.

If you need help in understanding the mind of our service providers, Emeka Oparah, Director, Corporate Communications & CSR, at Airtel, offers an insight. He says – “The customers most times do not totally understand what they want. Sometimes they have products or services they use with little or no understanding of how it operates. They sometimes do not understand the benefits they derive from these products. Customers complain about various issues that they could easily have understood if they had read the manuals or the policies regarding the services. They buy products without knowing what the service provider is offering.” Emeka Opara is right. As an Airtel customer, there are many things I did not know. There are many things I did not understand. I did not know Airtel could be so crude. I did not know that rather than take responsibility for its ineptitude, Airtel will opt to ignore its customer. Mr Opara is right - I had little or no understanding that Airtel has no clear procedure for resolving complaints.

Most customers, he says, do not understand what they want. I beg to disagree .I know what I want, Sir. The provider might be confused in identifying what the customer wants. But I know what I want and I am definitely not confused. I want a service provider that will not force a product which I did not subscribe for, on me. I want a provider that will respond to my complaints, live up to its promise, and not insist on harassing me with prank calls, then lie about it. I want a provider that will not be too arrogant to admit error, but one that will not be hesitant in coming down from its pent-house.

Now is the time to begin to look beyond NCC and CPC for redress. The process in court might be slow, but it sometimes delivers on its promise. It might still be the saving grace for Nigerian from the hands of the oligopoly with a stranglehold on telecoms service in Nigeria. Howard Schultz says, “mass advertising can help build brands, but authenticity is what makes them last.” I hope some people understand that.

http://ekoonibajeng.com/index.php?topic=8279.msg21475;topicseen#msg21475

A clean red 1996 Honda in excellent condition, personally used, sparingly used in the last 3 years is up for sale.
It has been used exclusively by the owner since purchase.

Engine condition - Excellent
A/C - excellent
Price - N400,000

Nigerian journalist drags FIFA President Blatter to FIFA ethics committee

Nigerian journalist, Olajide Fashikun, has officially complained against Messrs Joseph Sepp Blatter and Jerome Valcke, FIFA’s President and Secretary General to FIFA’s Ethics Committee on the alleged forged letter from the world soccer governing body.
Fashikun in his letter dated 3rd November 2011 petitioned the FIFA ethics committee chairman, Claudio Sulser, to open an inquest into the allegation involving the forging of the signature of Mr. Blatter and the one written by Valcke to confirm the authenticity of the forged document.

http://ekoonibajeng.com/index.php?topic=4751.msg7042;topicseen#msg7042

For all the information & news on Lagos, pls visit www.ekoonibajeng.com
Thanks.

ekoonibajeng.com is hiring, on freelance basis, writers/bloggers who have personal experiences of Lagos to share with the world. We also welcome specialist-writers in different areas; Reporters to execute specific assignments; and Correspondents to cover the divisions and/or local government areas in Lagos state.
Send a private message to hoofbeat @ www.ekoonibajeng.com with details - qualifications, experience, interests.

So much for BBC. So much for us dissipating our energy debating the correctness or otherwise of wild claims peddled about us. At this time, we must take our destiny in our hands. We must start writing our own stories. Documenting our yesterday, recording today, for the sake of tomorrow. We have started, in our own little way. One step, at a time. Join us, if you may.

The time has come for us to start presenting a different picture of us from the one being presented by the bbcs of the west. One line after the other, a frame after another, we need to re-write our own story. Someday, the balance will tilt in our favour. No one is going to do it for us. We might not have a large enough platform to project, but we can start with we have. Write our own stories. Document through photography. Shoot our own documentaries. We have already started, in our own little way. Join us.

An offer came in from China to replace the satellite, free of cost.
We have to be wary of Western propaganda when it comes to the Chinese.
With respect to the project though, due diligence is key.

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LALA has a large stock of bedsheets, duvets, throw-pillows, etc, all exquisitely made from rare and beautiful fabrics. Our items are excellent as Christmas gifts for customers and loved ones . Wholesale purchases come with throw-in extras. Take advantage of our wide-ranging stock now. Prices are unbelievably fair.
All our products are durable and are of the excellent quality, LALA Interiors has come to be identified with.
LALA offers services in all areas of interior decoration, Event management and Protocol Services.

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For those still in doubt on the powers of the CBN, as provided for in BOFIA, the CBN Governor responds :

", Consequently, having reviewed all the reports of the examiners and the comments of the Directors and Deputy Governors, I am satisfied that these 5 institutions are in a grave situation and that their Management have acted in a manner detrimental to the interest of their depositors and creditors. Therefore, in exercise of my powers as contained in Sections 33 and 35 of the Banks and other Financial institutions Act 1991, as amended, and after securing the consent of the Board Directors of the CBN. I hereby remove the Managing Directors and the Executive Directors of the following banks from office with effect from Friday, August 14, 2009.
1.
Afribank Plc
2.
Intercontinental Bank Plc
3.
Union Bank of Nigeria Plc
4.
Oceanic International Bank Plc
5.
FinBank Plc
These persons forthwith cease to be directors and officers of their respective banks."

Between the Federal Government and the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Nigerians are once again challenged to arbitrate, empathise or even choose. The attention on both is largely unmerited but nonetheless imperative because of the strategic nature of the issue on hand: education. On the one hand, a wobbly Federal Government that insists it wants to take Nigeria to the club of G20 by 2020 has shown less than serious commitment to education. On its part, a teachers’ trade union of controversial credibility that claims to represent the best interests of the university system has narrowed its claim to public attention, almost habitually, to bread and butter. Salaries and pecuniary benefits!
This latest version of the all too familiar ASUU distraction has to do with lingering issues of pay increases, the retirement age for professors and university autonomy. On the matter of an appropriate retirement age for professors, the argument should never have arisen in the first place. It was wrong headed to impose the same retirement age on professors as civil servants. Ordinarily, even the age limit of 75 which ASUU is insisting on is uncalled for. Proper professors are lifelong treasures, mobile repositories of accumulated learning, wisdom, experience and information. We need to harvest them until they can yield no more. Therefore, in my view, the only useless professor is a dead one. Similarly, the question of university autonomy should also not have been allowed to rise to the level of a trade dispute in a democratic setting. The democratic essence of our new polity dictates that both leadership selection and core decision making in our universities should be democratic and subject to the apex authority of individual councils. I doubt that any sensible elected government should dispute this as well except politicians want to continue to infiltrate the campuses with their surrogates for whatever reason.
On the matter of salary increases, I prefer to deal with the atmosphere in which the entire discussion is taking place. There has been a lingering charge by ASUU that successive government delegations to discussions with ASUU on remuneration have not displayed fidelity to agreements reached in the past. A situation in which representatives of government enter into agreements with individuals and organisations only to breach these agreements is not a compliment to the integrity of government. Even on this, ASUU should take solace in the fact that successive governments in our country have serially breached the most fundamental covenant that binds every government to the people: the social contract.
But as matters stand today, there is not enough evidence that this government has substantially breached any particular agreement with ASUU on this matter of salaries. At least that is what the Ministry of Education wants us to believe. I understand that the government has agreed to a higher retirement age for professors. It has also granted the relevant autonomy to the institutions and in fact offered the teachers some 40 per cent pay increase. It has also reportedly requested that subsequent discussion on the matter of remuneration should revert to the respective councils of the institutions in line with the new spirit of autonomy. Of course, ASUU cannot want autonomy and balk at the idea of negotiating with the newly empowered councils who will be controlling their internally derived revenues. ASUU has not yet disputed these concessions and developments to date. Instead, the association is reported to be insisting on a 109 per cent pay increase!
I would vote any day for a decent pay for all Nigerian workers more so those who ordinarily should be the custodians of our most strategic asset: national intellect. Similarly, since the Federal Government insists on remaining the owner of the federal universities, it has a responsibility to engage with ASUU on these matters. It is their employer. But the concessions almost end there. Thereafter, serious concerns about the implications of ASUU’s actions for the nation and its future as well as the overall credibility of ASUU itself take over. The issues at stake are far weightier than the narrow interests of ASUU as a trade union no matter how glorified the paper credentials of its membership might be.
First, the timing of this whole matter is unfortunate. That any group of people should be asking for such an astronomical pay increase at a time of demonstrable economic downturn is not the most edifying tribute to ASUU’s sense of enlightenment. Even our usually insensitive political leaders have made token reductions to their large pay packets as a symbolic demonstration of some sensitivity to the travails of our hapless compatriots.
Furthermore, that the association should turn its back on the mechanism of industrial arbitration that has been set in motion to resolve the matter on hand while adamantly insisting that only its demands be met is even more distressing. An association whose members act in locus parentis for our children has no business displaying the kind of arbitrariness, obduracy and wanton disregard for due process which we all condemn in our young ones.
Ordinarily, the way things are today, an ASUU strike, like that of PHCN, should not make news. Between the two organisations, the difficulty is in knowing when exactly they are on duty. For ASUU in particular, the real news would be a strike that is not informed by these all too frequent demands for salary increases. Even parents of wards in Nigerian universities have lost count of how long their wards stay in these universities because no one knows when ASUU is on strike or not. Because of this long period of unbroken interruptions, some of the more negative trends in our tertiary institutions (cultism, degenerate standards, commercialism etc) are vicariously traceable to ASUU’s all too frequent strikes and disruptive behaviour. Aided by a succession of insensitive governments, it needs to be said that later deformations of the original ASUU idea have ended up destroying the Nigerian university system.
However, it is perhaps a measure of its institutional resilience that ASUU has managed to attract and dominate national attention in a concerted fashion for perhaps the longest period of any other trade union in our national history to date. It has also managed to engage nearly every administration since the Gowon era of the early 1970s with, unfortunately, nearly the same central question: remuneration issues. Unfortunately also, in nearly all these engagements, the association has not varied its tactics and language: ultimatums, warning strikes, actual strikes, violations of standard observances of trade dispute and procedures of arbitration as well as the use of incendiary rhetoric to intimidate both its target governments and, by extension, the public that sustains the very institutions upon which it feeds.
But ASUU has not always been like this. It started as a forum for the articulation of enlightened views on national issues with a secondary but equally important role of maintaining the integrity and protecting the interests of the academic community. ASUU fought commendably, side by side, with enlightened civil society against the worst excesses of military rule. Its original leaders proffered systematic and practicable suggestions on critical issues of national development and thus compelled successive governments to listen to them. It was not always a rosy relationship but we were respected even by our adversaries.
Over the years, however, ASUU became more of a career in and of itself for some of our colleagues who have remained a perennial ASUU establishment for more than three decades. No one knows how much time these perpetual ASUU unionists spend on research and teaching, a matter which should engage the attention of the education authorities. People are free of course to make a career of ASUU unionism but they may need to relocate to proper secretariats instead of disturbing the peace of the campuses.
Tragically, therefore, after close to four decades of dominance of public attention, ASUU has metamorphosed in our collective consciousness from an association of patriotic and concerned intellectuals with penetrating insights into national problems to a national nuisance, an eccentric conclave of highly educated mendicants and supplicants before the altar of power and money.
In the face of the rot in our university system, the expectation of Nigerians is that ASUU should momentarily distance itself from these bread and butter strikes and engage with the education authorities to seek solutions to the most prominent and embarrassing problems of the university system. That kind of engagement would be the best justification for whatever pecuniary enhancements they are seeking.
In case they are unmindful of the more glaring ills in the system, Dr. Sam Egwu, the Education Minister, should sit down with the ASUU leadership and have a heart-to-heart talk on the following matters: corruption within university administrations, sexual harassment and exploitation (“sex for grades”), admission rackets (“cash for admissions”), sale of mimeographs, “hand outs” and obligatory instructional materials, racketeering in promotions, the casual award of professorships like chieftaincy titles to persons who are far removed from the universities as well as the commercialisation of honorary degrees etc. If ASUU is unwilling to collaborate with the education ministry on these, Egwu has a golden opportunity to do what Mrs. Dora Akunyili did in NAFDAC.
What the system immediately calls for is a very comprehensive overhaul in order to even justify the funds that are currently being deployed in the universities. The processes that immediately recommend themselves include a productivity audit, a personnel adequacy audit, a financial and compliance audit, the introduction of 360 degree evaluations of staff for promotions as an addition to the now jaded Appointments and Promotions Committee approach which has in many universities developed into a cartel as well as increased competitive benchmarking for appointments to academic positions.
For now, the immediate option of ASUU is to return to the classrooms while the industrial arbitration process resolves whatever lingering issues there may still be.

@Labiyemmy
Please can you stop dissipating your energy replying to posts that won't solve the problem. Do note that copyright infringement has both the civil and the criminal element. Both the supposed 'buyer' - cotek in this case and the alleged perpetrator are culpable. There are clear legal options - for the criminal and civil aspects open to you. You should be working on the path of making the proposed launch a non-event, if you have your facts. If you do need advice, call 017444704.

I feel sorry for these Gt bank mouthpieces. I never complained about paying for bank statement. Of course, u can print that online. The complaint is simple - I was clearly told about payment for bank statement. I consented. I WAS NEVER TOLD THAT THERE IS A N2,500 CHARGE FOR A LETTER. AND MY ACCOUNT WAS NOT DEBITED UNTIL 2 DAYS LATER. If insulting people with complaints is the best GT Bank mouthpieces can do, I wish them well. For the oga at Gtbank who wants to take this up, thanks. You can start by going to find out from your customer feedback system, as I did lodge complaints twice. Start by finding out why your customer service will not respond to a simple complaint by a customer.

I will not dignify the innuendoes and insinuations with a response. I guess some of these guys are too daft that there are a number of nairalanders who are silent bystanders, who don't post, unless absolutely necessary. The day our service providers realise they are not infallible and begin to place value on what a simple apology can achieve, that will be the day.


Thanks guys, for your contributions. Essence of post achieved. Peace.

Can you see why we are where we are. Some people are either too lazy to read or rather too dull to comprehend. Did I not make it clear that I was not told about the charges? Did I not state that I was told about the charge for d bank statement to which I agreed. Gt bank mouthpieces were too desperate that they could not see that I clearly stated that the debit notice came via text message 2 days later? What fine print was one loudmouth talking about ? Is the whole transaction not verbal ? You request for a letter, same is given to you. Guess some of the PR people are not even familiar with the mode of their bank's operations. It is this arrogance on the part of some of the staffers there that is at the root of their problem.

The games banks play? That is a whole new topic on its own. This thing about casual staffers. I know about the bulk tellers really. But the demeanour of some of the staff makes me wonder too, if the casualisation policy has not been extended to the banking halls. Na wa o!