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AKOR SYLVESTER, Abuja
The Former President of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Ayuba Wabba, has urged labour unions to oppose the government’s proposed annual increase in Value Added Tax (VAT) cautioning that it will have severe consequences for the working class.
Wabba who spoke at the inauguration of the newly elected State Council Chairmen of the Medical and Health Workers Union of Nigeria (MHWUN) in Abuja Wednesday, said the proposal, when allowed to see the light of the day, will be harmful to workers’ welfare and the economy at large.
He expressed dissatisfaction over the government’s plan to gradually increase VAT from 7.5% to 15%, maintaining that such a decision would lead to higher costs of goods and services, and increase the economic burden on ordinary Nigerians.
Wabba noted that while many countries, including Ghana, are reducing VAT to ease the cost of living, Nigeria is moving in the opposite direction, which he described as “regressive.” He warned that such an increase would erode the purchasing power of workers and affect wages, including the minimum wage, which would be insufficient to cover the rising costs of essential goods.
NLC former president urged unions to challenge the policy and ensure that workers’ voices are heard in the ongoing discussions.
He also advocated for a fairer tax system, suggesting that the wealthy should bear a larger share of the tax burden while providing subsidies for the poor. “We must tax the rich and subsidize the poor,” he said.
Wabba used the occasion to congratulate the newly elected MHWUN state chairmen on their victory, charging them to uphold the legacy of integrity and progressive trade unionism.
He stated that the union’s strength lies in its commitment to accountability and transparency, urging the new leaders to avoid corruption and ensure that union funds are used responsibly.
The labour leader highlighted the critical role of integrity in union leadership, stating that those who misuse union resources will not be tolerated. “And so, therefore, none of you should be found wanting. You must make sure that you are able to represent our members in your various states effectively. And also try to make sure that you are able to reflect the good image of the union,” he noted.
Speaking, Kabiru Ado Sani, the National President of MHWUN, outlined the vision for his administration, noting that accountability, transparency, and discipline are key pillars of the union’s operations.
Sani congratulated the new chairmen, recognizing that many were stepping into leadership for the first time.
He urged them to familiarize themselves with the union’s constitution, policies, and the public service rules in order to better serve their members.
He also demanded of the union’s commitment to building a prosperous and progressive MHWUN, one that future generations of workers would be proud to belong to.
“As you are aware, my predecessors had sacrificed a lot to bring this union to the top and it is our responsibility to guard this jealously and sustain that enviable
height. The current administration would deal decisively with any Chairman that may try to pull the Union down or tarnish the hard-earned image of the Union,” he maintained.
The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Resident Electoral Commissioner, REC, in Osun State, Dr Mutiu Agboke has asserted that for successful conduct of elections in Nigeria, ad-hoc staff must display a high level of integrity, efficiency and professionalism.
Agboke made the assertion at the third INEC consultative meeting with election stakeholders Tuesday in Osogbo.
The theme of the meeting was, ‘2023 General Election: Recruitment, Training and Deployment of Ad-hoc Personnel: Issues, Challenges, and Recommendations for Future Credible Elections in Nigeria’.
While agreeing that ad-hoc staff served as the backbone of the electoral process especially during the 2023 general election, Agboke held that several challenges were encountered.
He also insisted that INEC has resolved to address the issues head on hence the need to reflect on the experience of the 2023 general election with a particular focus on the recruitment, training and deployment of the ad-hoc personnel.
He said, “Today, we are gathered to reflect on the experiences of the 2023 General Election with a particular focus on the recruitment, training, and deployment of ad-hoc personnel-one of the most critical elements in the conduct of elections in Nigeria.
“The successful conduct of any election relies heavily on the integrity, efficiency, and professionalism of the ad-hoc staff who serve as the backbone of the process.
“In the 2023 General Election, like in previous elections, the recruitment, training, and deployment of these personnel were key to ensuring that the electoral process was conducted in a transparent and credible manner.
“However, it is also clear that challenges were encountered, and as a Commission, we must not shy away from addressing these issues head-on, hence the need for interrogation of the previous processes, procedures and the aftermath of the election particularly as they relate to the conduct of the ad-hoc staff, political gladiators and other critical stakeholders, with a view to enhancing the future exercise.”
Nigerians were taken aback recently when the NNPC came out with so much gusto to admit a debt it had vehemently rejected on different occasions, raising concerns about the integrity of a company that released its 2023 financial report in the third quarter of 2024, reports DARE OLAWIN
The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited recently shocked many Nigerians when it admitted owing petrol suppliers. The masses were not surprised that the company was in debt; rather, they found it difficult to believe that after months of denial, a corporate company owned by the government could come out and admit the same claim.
Nigeria’s state-owned oil company admitted to owing $6.8bn. This stunning reversal raises questions about transparency, accountability, and the true state of the nation’s oil finances.
There have been reports that the NNPC owes its suppliers, hindering access to sufficient fuel supply. The PUNCH reported in July that Nigeria’s debt to petrol suppliers surpassed $6bn, making the NNPC struggle to cover the gap between fixed pump prices and international fuel costs.
A Reuters report stated that the national oil company began struggling early this year when late PMS payments surpassed $3bn. It was said that the company has still not paid for some January imports and the debt kept piling.
Since June, Nigeria’s tenders to buy PMS were smaller, traders said. From two in July, three more traders were said to have stopped supplying PMS to the NNPC as of now, making a total of five unpaid traders.
The spokesman of the oil company, Olufemi Soneye, denied claims of unpaid debt to PMS suppliers on several occasions. In August, he issued a statement to deny emphatically that the NNPC owed international oil traders $6.8bn.
“NNPC Ltd does not owe the sum of $6.8bn to any international trader(s). In the oil trading business, transactions are carried out on credit, so it is normal to have outstanding amounts at certain times. However, NNPC Ltd, through its subsidiary NNPC Trading, maintains many open trade credit lines with several traders. The company is fulfilling its obligations on a first-in-first-out (FIFO) basis,” he stated.
Without an iota of remorse, the company made a U-turn in admitting that it owed oil suppliers.
“NNPC Ltd has acknowledged recent reports in national newspapers regarding the company’s significant debt to petrol suppliers. This financial strain has placed considerable pressure on the company and poses a threat to the sustainability of fuel supply,” Soneye said in another statement.
As Nigerians continue to complain over the lingering fuel crisis that has refused to ease off since July, the sudden admission of a claim the NNPC has severally denied came as an act unbecoming of a government-owned corporate organisation.
Earlier before this, the NNPC also admitted that it had been selling petrol to marketers at half of the cost. This was also after several months of denying that there was no subsidy payment on PMS.
The NNPC, being the sole importer of petrol, admitted that the Federal Government subsidised the current price of PMS, which the marketers recently put at N1,117 per litre.
Though the NNPC denied paying fuel subsidies to marketers in the last nine years, it said the government allows it to sell at a price below the landing cost.
The Chief Financial Officer of the company, Alhaji Umar Ajiya, stated, “In the last eight to nine years, NNPC has not paid anybody a dime as a subsidy; no one has been paid kobo by NNPC in the name of subsidy. No marketer has received any money from us by way of subsidy.
“What has been happening is that we have been importing PMS, which has been landing at a specific cost price, and the government tells us to sell it at half price. So the difference between the landing price and that half price is a shortfall.
“And the deal is between the Federation and NNPC to reconcile. Sometimes, they give us money, so there is no money exchanging hands with any marketer in the name of subsidy,” he said.
Many have been asking to know if all these latest revelations were the true state of NNPC or if these were made to hoodwink Nigerians because the government wanted to hike the price of petrol to N900/litre.
“Why should we believe you now when you lied to us in the past? Where is the trust? Where is the integrity,” a netizen asked.
Over the years and up to now, many are of the view that the NNPC is full of opacity, lacking transparency and accountability. The recent disclosure by the President of the Dangote Group, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, that the NNPC only has a 7.2 per cent stake in his refinery was a startling one to Nigerians who thought the nation had a 20 per cent stake in the refinery.
While she was reacting to this, a former Minister of Education, Oby Ezekwesili, recalled that during the Olusegun Obasanjo administration, she used to tell the NNPC that it could not continue to run as a federation on its own.
“When we were in government, I often told the NNPC leadership that they cannot carry on as though there is a ‘Federal Republic of the NNPC’ just because they think of themselves as ‘the goose that lays the golden egg’.
“The opacity of the NNPC was the reason we took great delight in designing the Multi-Stakeholders Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency International in the early 2000s that I pioneered as chairperson. We went above global minimum voluntary standards of transparency requirements by entrenching ours in an Act that established NEITI as the transparency regulator of the oil and minerals sector,” she explained.
Since 2007 when Obasanjo’s administration wound up, the NNPC has gone through various transformation and leadership changes. With the advent of the Petroleum Industry Act, the NNPC changed from a corporation to a limited company. However, many have argued that nothing much has improved when it comes to transparency within the NNPC.
In a recent interview, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Olisa Agbakoba, bemoaned what he called the opaqueness in the NNPC. Agbakoba, who called for the repeal of the PIA, said the act gave the NNPC too much power, though he lamented that the NNPC has not been as efficient as Saudi Aramco.
“The GCEO of NNPC today under the PIA wears two caps; it is so confusing when you read the act and cannot tell exactly the job the office does. He is the state regulator of oil, he is also an oil operator; so, he does two things, and he cannot do them well.
“It is either you are regulating like the Minister of Energy in Saudi Arabia, or you are a player like Chevron. The NNPC should be efficient like Saudi Aramco. It doesn’t matter whether it is public or private. It has to refine the interest of Nigeria,” Agbakoba stated.
Asking that the NNPC and the entire oil sector be overhauled, he said, “Section 62 of the PIA states that the NNPC can deduct money. Before, NNPC used to deduct money. I hope you know that Section 162 creates a federation account. All monies due to the government from all sources shall be paid into the federation account except for a few things.
“How is it that the PIA legitimizes what the NNPC has been doing? That is shocking. Before now, they used to do it claiming they cannot operate without money. But now, the act says they can deduct all their expenses. That is the opaqueness of NNPC. That’s the problem.”
A Professor Emeritus, Wumi Iledare, wondered why anyone would believe the NNPC when it was denying its debt and subsidy payments.
Iledare held that it was not the NNPC organisational structure that was at fault, but manpower deployment. He lamented that the PIA was signed to rekindle the oil and gas sector, but it was haphazardly implemented.
He stated that the entire Ministry of Petroleum and not just the NNPC needs restructuring, as he asked President Bola Tinubu to appoint an anchor Minister of Petroleum to oversee the oil and gas sector, saying the ministers of state do not have the constitutional backing to perform the duties of the full-fledged minister.
Speaking with The PUNCH, the Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Community Development Committees of Niger Delta Oil and Gas Producing Areas, Joseph Ambakederimo, lamented the development, saying it baffles one to the marrow when one sees what’s coming out from the NNPC, a supposed corporate organisation that should be at par with Saudi Aramco, a company that manages the revenue stream of the country.
Ambakederimo worried if the leadership of the country is comfortable with how the company is being run.
He queried: “The question to ask is what would have happened to Mele Kyari and his management team if the NNPC was to be a responsible corporate organisation that should operate within and regulated by CAMA, taking into cognisance the latest admission of the NNPC owing $6bn to gasoline suppliers after deliberately pushing back on the story?”
He added, “The company practically denied the story, lied about it, cooked its books by declaring evaporated profits, bandied figures and only now to admit without remorse or the board resigning en masse.
“Again, look at the issues with the refineries, with many failures on its functionalities, defaulting on its own timelines set by itself, yet no one is held to account. Certainly, the NNPC is still tied to the apron strings of the Presidency and it has practically been run aground.”
Reacting to claims that foreign exchange liquidity was the reason it could not import PMS into the country, Ambakederimo asked the NNPC to state where all of the monies accruing to the country from the forward sale of crude oil are.
“Where is the inflow? Or can we not mention the other very important issues of cost of production that have become a recurring decimal with no gains made, increased production levels and lack of new investments into the sector, all of these were promised by Mele Kyari when he was appointed some five years ago and yet none has been achieved and we are all keeping quiet?
“For me, the NNPC has become an albatross to the country, to the government of President Bola Tinubu, and to Nigerians, except the President is not seeing it that way or perhaps he is being misinformed of the true state of the NNPC and its activities.
“Therefore, my submissions would be that if President Bola Tinubu refuses to sack the board of the NNPC and order a painstaking audit of the company and all of its subsidiaries, then the conclusion would be that the President is insensitive to the plight of Nigerians,” he submitted.
Similarly, an oil and gas expert, Henry Adigun, stated that the NNPC loves to deny the obvious, with the way it has chosen to operate its business. Adigun said he had repeatedly told journalists that the NNPC was selling PMS below the landing cost but it was only denying it. He called for transparency and accountability going forward.
The NNPC’s admission of debt to petrol suppliers has raised fundamental questions about its integrity, transparency, and accountability. The corporation’s history of denial and opacity has eroded public trust, and its recent about-face has only added to the confusion.
As Nigerians continue to grapple with the lingering fuel crisis and economic uncertainty, it is clear that the NNPC must undergo a radical transformation to restore its credibility and effectiveness. This requires a commitment to transparency, accountability, and good governance, as well as a willingness to reform its outdated structures and practices.
Ultimately, the NNPC’s integrity crisis reflects the broader challenges facing Nigeria’s oil and gas sector, and addressing these issues will require a concerted effort from policymakers, industry stakeholders, and civil society.
Yiaga Africa has condemned the results of the Edo State governorship election announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, saying it failed its integrity test.
The civil society group said it reached the conclusion after it deployed the Process and Results Verification for Transparency (PRVT) methodology to observe the Edo State governorship election, utilizing 300 stationary and 25 roving observers covering a representative sample of polling units across all 18 LGAs.
This was made known in a statement released on Monday and jointly signed by Dr. Aisha Abdullahi, Chair of the 2024 Edo Election Mission, and Samson Itodo, Executive Director.
Yiaga Africa stated that the election failed the electoral integrity test due to the lack of post election statement on the transparency in the results collation process, which according to it, led to the manipulation of results.
“While key processes such as accreditation, voting, counting, and recording of results at the polling unit substantially complied with procedures, the results collation process was compromised by the actions of some biased INEC officials in connivance with other actors.
“This manipulation severely undermines the overall integrity of the election,” the group said.
According to report INEC declared Monday Okpebholo, candidate of the All Progressives Congress, APC, winner after defeating his main challengers, Asue Ighodalo of the Peoples Democratic Party and Olumide Akpata of the Labour Party.
On the official results announced by INEC, Yiaga Africa said it recorded incidents of manipulation and disruptions during ward and local government collation in Ikpoba/Okha, Etsako West, Egor and Oredo LGAs, including intimidation of INEC officials, observers and party agents.
“The disparities between the official results released by INEC and Yiaga Africa’s PRVT estimates indicate manipulation of results during the collation process.
“Yiaga Africa strongly condemns the actions of some biased INEC officials who altered figures during collation, including the actions of some security officials who interfered with the collation process.
“Yiaga Africa notes that the cases of disruption in Ikpoba/Okha, Etsako West, Egor, and Oredo LGAs in the course of collation created opportunities for election manipulation, raising significant concerns about the credibility and integrity of the results collation process,” parts of the statement read.
The National Publicity Secretary, Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN), Archbishop-elect Dr. Emmah Isong, has vouched for the PFN National
President, Bishop Dr. Wale Oke, stressing that the latter’s integrity has never been in doubt.
Isong made the remark on Tuesday in Calabar, Cross River State, while reacting to comments in the media space by some individuals who were casting aspersions on Bishop Oke’s integrity and dragging his name in the mud.
He described Dr. Oke as a prudent and honest man who can go the extra mile to ensure that only the truth prevails.
“My take is that, he is a father figure in the Pentecostalism. He is a father even to the staff working at the national headquarters.
“He knows when they are sick, and gives a listening ear to staff,” Isong said, stressing that with Oke’s managerial efficiency, the PFN has more to gain before his tenure elapsed.
Isong, who doubles as the founder and General Overseer, Christian Central Chapel International (CCCI) World Headquarters a.k.a Faith Mansion World Headquarters, Ikot Ene Obong, 8 Miles Calabar, averred that with Bishop Oke on the saddle, PFN was set to commence the construction of the state-of-the-art new headquarters at Abuja despite the economic crunch.
Isong stressed that owing to Oke’s wealth of experience and good leadership qualities, there is peace and unity in PFN, a development which has attracted testimonies and celebrations among members in the Christian organisation.
“Under Bishop Oke’s watch, we have just gotten a big parcel of land, we are commencing another national building at the nation’s federal capital territory Abuja,” he added.
The Centre for Bioethics and Research, Nigeria has promised to establish a Research Integrity Unit inside the Ajayi Crowther University, Oyo in Oyo State.
The institution’s Public Relations Officer, Mr Olufemi Atoyebi, said the agreement was announced by the Programme Coordinator of the Centre, Adesola Adeyemo, when he led his team on a visit to the Vice-Chancellor of the institution, Professor Timothy Adebayo and his deputy, Professor Muyiwa Popoola.
Adeyemo who said 18 other institutions were partnering with the Centre, highlighted other benefits of partnering with the research Centre including access to research grants offered by the United States, creation of research opportunities with global visibility and by extension, further exposure and acceptability of Ajayi Crowther University globally.
Adeyemo said, “Part of the programme covers training up to the level of Master’s degree in Bioethics. It focuses on responsible conduct of research. At the end of the training, the trainees through the programme would have become research integrity officers.
“One of the things we intend to do is to establish a research integrity unit here at Ajayi Crowther University. We are going to make available necessary support for the office to take off. Across the nation, we are going to have a national research integrity offices that will be similar to what we have in the US.
“With this training that we are providing, it is actually in line with the National Institute of Health in Nigeria. For any researcher, particularly bio-medical researchers who are conducting research that involves humans, they are expected to go through a minimum of eight hours of physical contact training on responsible conduct of research. That is what we are providing right now.
“Those who want to access any grant as long as it has to do with the US government fund will be expected to provide evidence of this training.”
Adeyemo stated that already, ACU researchers have an edge in accessing the US-funded grants because each participant would be issued a certificate of participation from the workshop.
“The interesting thing is that your researchers from Ajayi Crowther University who have participated are already taken care of. They can access the US grant and show evidence that they have gone through this training.
“At the end of this training, we are going to provide them with the Certificate of Participation. Already they have some forms of certificates because they were all mandated to take some courses on CITI; that is Collaborative Institution Training Initiative.
“The Center for Ethics and Research paid for those courses so that researchers in Nigeria can access them free of charge. We paid for them so that as long as you come in through our platform to say you are affiliated to the Centre, you have access to those courses free of charge and we have been providing that over the years. We are going to continue to do that,” the coordinator explained.
Responding, the Vice-Chancellor assured that ACU was ready to be part of the initiative, promising that the University will facilitate participation in the programme.
“We will provide an enabling environment for all that you want to do. We are just an evolving university, and we want to sprout. We are still building on the integrity of St Andrews College,” said the VC.