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16 — Vanguard, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 2022 Send Opinions & Letters to: opinions1234@yahoo.com No negotiating the Presidency THE Afenifere leader, Pa Ayo Adebanjo, has said it as it is, as usual. At a public lecture in Lagos on Monday, he chided the North for insisting that the South East must "negotiate" with it for support to produce the president of Nigeria next year. Saying that Afenifere is a principled organisation that believes in equity, justice, and fair play, Pa Adebanjo affirmed correctly that it is the turn of the South East to produce the next president of Nigeria, contrary to the false assertion of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu that it is his turn. He chided the North for claiming to have a superior population that is able to decide who gets to be president of Nigeria, as there is no credible evidence to prove such an assumption. As I have observed in earlier articles, our fathers and leaders, like Pa Adebanjo and Chief Edwin Kiagbodo Clark, are beacons of hope that Nigeria may still survive. These are the real nationalists. Adebanjo and Clark are saying: our ethnic groups have been favoured by the rotation and power-sharing principles, even when we were at great disadvantage. The Igbo nation supported us with their votes, they also supported the North. It is unfair and antithetical to the national spirit to deny them of their right, or place impossible hurdles in their way now that it is their turn to lead. You cannot beat the message and the logic driving it. The word: "negotiation" has become a football that some of us play the way we want, to satisfy our selfish desires. Merriam-Webster dictionary defines "negotiate" as: "to confer with another to arrive at the settlement of some matter." There is no doubt, this word is relevant in a diverse Nigeria that has not achieved harmony like other great ethno-religious diversities such as the United States of America, India, Brazil and others. The Bible says two cannot walk together unless they agree. Nigerians have not agreed. That is why the country is crisis-riddled. That is why the system is not working. The South calls for a renegotiation of Nigeria. Nigeria was negotiated before independence, but the departing British colonialists used the sudden delimitation of constituencies just before the federal elections of 1958 and 1959 to give unmerited constituency advantages to the North. Similarly, the North-controlled military political class also split Nigeria into 36 states and Abuja in a manner that gave the North 19 or 20 states and the South 17. The number of federal electoral constituencies was also configured to give the North a commanding edge over the South. Successive population censuses have been used to justify an incredible claim of a northern majority over the South. All these were concocted to empower the North and enable its tiny oligarchy and its crumbscollecting janissaries in the South to parasite on the wealth of the South. The South’s calls for a renegotiation are greeted with the refrain, "Nigeria’s unity is nonnegotiable." They kick against any move to reform our federalism and make it more equitable. But on the other hand, the same North is fond of insisting that any part of the South billed to produce the president must come and "negotiate" with it. The question is, what dividend came out when the North and South negotiated for president? The defunct Northern People’s Congress, NPC, in 1959 negotiated with the National Council for Nigerian Citizens, NCNC, yet their government ended in a bloody, revolutionary coup that produced the Civil War. Alhaji Shehu Shagari’s National Party of Nigeria, NPN, negotiated with the Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe’s The North never kept to the pacts; what guarantees do you have that the North will abide by the terms of the negotiations if the South East agrees to negotiate the presidency? Nigerian People’s Party, NPP, in 1979 to share power in an accord government. It ended in a coup in 1983. In addition, retired Major General Muhammadu Buhari negotiated with Alhaji Bola Tinubu in 2013 and produced the incumbent government in 2015, which is ending in disaster. On the other hand, General Abdulsalami Abubakar not only barred Northern politicians from contesting for the presidency in 1999, he also virtually imposed General Olusegun Obasanjo on Nigerians. Yet, Obasanjo emerged as the most successful president since 1999. I am not saying that the negotiation of the presidency is bad per se, or that it, on its own, was responsible for government failures. I am saying that even the negotiated governments still failed. The reason for that was simple. The elite negotiated to share political posts and loot our commonwealth. They did not negotiate for development. Even if they did, they jettisoned it once in power because it was not really their move for negotiating. Secondly, all negotiated governments favoured the North, because their southern counterparts were more willing to share. Those governments still failed because the North’s "dominative tendencies" later always showed up due to their disdain for equity. The North never kept to the pacts. What guarantees do you have that the North will abide by the terms of the negotiations if the South East agrees to negotiate the presidency? Thirdly, the issue of the North’s perceived game-changing population remains a ruse. It has been proven, time and time again, that no section of the country can produce a president to the exclusion of another. The North’s "majority" which is padded with millions of child voters and foreigners, still failed to give Buhari the presidency until the South (Tinubu, Chibuike Amaechi, Rochas Okorocha and others) supported him. The North alone cannot produce 25 percent of voters in 24 states, since it has only 19 states. If there is to be a negotiation, it should be for mutual purposes, not one-sided. It must also be people-centred, and the pacts must be implemented to the letter. It should not be for elite consumption. What we really need is a renegotiation of our federalism. Meanwhile, let’s give the candidates a free hand to campaign. Let’s not use ethno-religious and regional platforms to harass or blackmail them for selfish gain. ASUU, Ngige and the parapet of labour laws By IBRAHIM JIBIA EVEN if the Minister of Labour and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige, has gone personal in mediating the dispute between ASUU and the Federal Government, it can be successfully argued that all he has done is meticulously engage the relevant provisions of the Trade Disputes Act and the Trade Union Act to bring discipline and decorum to labour administration. ASUU, it must be stated unambiguously, is fighting a cause that cannot be punctured on the scale of patriotism but counterproductive, which must be accepted, given the manner and way it has lately pursued this. Social dialogue was effectively displaced, and social distemper enthroned, degenerating to cross-party name-calling and "panjandrum," the Zik of Africa would say. In the midst of it, was dissension over the place of law in the entire conundrum. But every progressive and prosperous society thrives on triumph of laws. In our peculiar clime, unfortunately, arguments still abound whether the problem of the country is the inadequacy of laws or the weakness of political authority to enforce laws despite their shortcomings. And just as the argument goes on, the quest for a better country where our children will suffer less than we currently face, gives no respite. The minister of labour must have chosen to prove there are enough laws in labour statute book to put restiveness on the back foot and ensure equable production milieu. But God continues to love Nigeria. While the strike lasted, over two million youths were dispatched to loiter at home, adding to the army of unemployed others, whose percentage was put at 34 percent by the National Bureau of Statistics. This is amidst galloping inflation, runaway prices of goods and services, amidst terrorism, banditry, kidnap- ping and armed robbery. Sadly, terrorism, thought to be resident of the ungoverned far-flung national periphery, surfaced in the nation’s centre. Kuje prison was disemboweled, hardened scorpion elements diffused, still at large. The chilly Kaduna train attack, became a prized trophy for terrorists, emboldened to even issue a threat to the President, further staging saber-rattling at Abuja suburb. Uprising capable of engulfing the entire nation would have snapped with the restiveness in the mass of idle youth population. Luckily, ASUU is back to school but skirmishes continue between it and the government over unresolved issues, accentuated lately by the pro rata payment of October salaries to university teachers. Ngige as usual is a constant factor at the receiving end of ceaseless blames. The no work-no pay protest organised by the University of Lagos chapter of ASUU was a lead op-ed on the bursting thoughts among members nationwide. It was literally gloves off for the chapter chairman, Dele Ashiru, who is as combative as his president, Emmanuel Osodeke. "Ngige is the agent provocateur; he is the one instigating the government against ASUU. He has inexplicable hatred against our union and that is the reason he turned our struggle to a personal fight." The allegations are long. "It was Ngige who poisoned the FEC against our union. Ngige started the campaign of "no work, no- pay" against our union. Ngige dragged ASUU before the court; Ngige wrote the Ministry of Finance to stop our salary and make it prorated. He registered two stinking unions to weaken our union, which was against the Trade Union Act. Ngige also wanted our union to be proscribed, suggesting that we have not been submitting our aaccounts Ngige is out there to destroy public universities." I partly agree with Ashiru. The Minister of Labour is not known for taking prisoners. His precedent is that once he is within the legal boundaries, all paws are out. However, the legality or otherwise of the track he walks to make ASUU earn its pay, time-proven tripartite social dialogue having collapsed, is in focus to prove ASUU or vindicate Ngige. But there is some bad news. The crisis in the public universities is festering like a wildfire fueled by harmattan wind. A source, I can’t place right out, had argued that Nigerian universities are hardly in the news for scientific research break through or academic excellence. It is always about doomscrolling that tethers the system to decadence. Does it shock that only the University of Ibadan and Lagos could make the list of 600 best world universities released by the Times Higher Education Global University in 2022? Did you know that education is classified as an essential service for which a strike requires 15 days' notice under Section 7 of the Trade Disputes Act, Cap. 9? Available records only recall ASUU complied last with this in 2017 The report further highlighted lack of political will and financial commitment to lift higher education from the doldrums. Political commitment and financial will are key operative phrases that may explain the reason federal budget on education dwindled from 11 percent in 2015 to 5.3 percent in 2021. But while the issue of funding remains cardinal in repositioning the university system, proper management of scarce resources becomes an albatross in a system accused of corruption. While the report of the visitation panels set up by the Federal Government, one of the demands of ASUU, gathers dust, guided information reveals high scale misappropriation. The President had raised the issue of corruption in the universities while addressing ASUU in August, but the riposte from the union raises doubt as to who is responsible. Since ASUU dared government to release the report and prosecute the bad eggs, the dial back from government raises further questions. Nigeria is a mystery, true! On the other hand, there is hushed allegation that for every one naira released to the universities as earned allowances,10 percent goes to ASUU as a booty for the struggle! Allegations and counter allegations confront each other. And the decay in the system doubles down. Anyway, back to Ngige's role as a provocation in the ASUU crisis. Did he go beyond the bounds of the law to chastise the union in his capacity as the competent authority on labour matters? With ASUU on strike for eight months, rejecting all entreaties even from tripartite-plus bodies, Ngige looked inwards and front loaded the elaborate provisions of the law, tucked away in a country of laissez-faire to ‘chastise’ the union. Ngige simply scraped around the recess of labour laws to resolve the phenomenon that is doomscrolling the university environment and desensitising ASUU to the torturing negativities of strikes. He simply said No to building a Potemkin that succumbs to perennial strikes. This is what must have disunited Ngige who used to tug the heartstrings of ASUU members. Now, the laws. Did you know that education is classified as an essential service for which a strike requires 15 days' notice under Section 7 of the Trade Disputes Act, Cap. 9? Available records only recall ASUU complied last with this in 2017. And to keep circumventing this, ASUU claims its strikes are roll-overs, which in the purview of the above section has no basis as strike has no other qualifier than being a strike. The similar interpretation of Section 17 of the Trade Disputes Act, Cap. T8, makes ASUU accuse the Minister of Labour of taking the union to court, whereas transmitting a dispute to the National Industrial Court is the next stage in a collapsed conciliation process. Before further insight into section 17, let’s upload section 18 which provides that once any union fails to settle dispute with its employer and goes on strike, the Minister, acting under the section, apprehends the action by convening conciliation for the two parties. Once apprehension is in place, the concerned union and the employer goes back to status quo antebellum. However, this is observed more in breach, otherwise, ASUU would have called off the February 14 strike on the 22nd of the same month when the Minister summoned a conciliation meeting. This section was a subject of intense discussion at the National Labour Advisory Council, which sat in Lagos on March 7, 2022. As it is, section 17 ties the hands of the Minister by providing he should, within 14 days of collapse of talks, transmit the dispute to the higher body which is either the Industrial Arbitration Panel or the National Industrial Court. That is exactly what the Minister did. In fact, he was in breach of the law by delaying the transmission from 14 days to 8 months! Hence, rather than stating incorrectly that Ngige took ASUU to court, it is the union that made conciliation difficult to warrant transmission to the industrial court. Similarly, the vexed issue of no work, no pay as contained in section 43 of the Trade Disputes Act has rarely been used. The present administration first invoked it on JOHESU in 2018 as well as ASUU and NARD in 2020 and 2021 respectively. Continues online: www.vanguardngr.com •Dr. Jibia is former Director of Skills and Certification, Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment and a member, National Labour Advisory Council.

Popular reactions to Charles Soludo’s comments on Peter Obi CHARLES Soludo, former governor of the Central Bank and current governor of Anambra State, has of late incurred the anger of many Igbo among other supporters of Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party. This for his blunt assessment of Obi’s stewardship as governor of Anambra State and his chances in next year’s election. As is now customary with the so-called obidients, the attack of Charles Soludo, spawned mostly by emotion than sound reason, has not surprisingly generated more heat than light on the points at issue. All Soludo did to incur the anger of his attackers followed his offhanded response to a question on Channels that the investments ascribed to Obi during his time as governor of Anambra were presently worth next to nothing. This rather blithe remark that could have been allowed to pass did not escape the attention of Obi’s supporters, the usual suspects, in so many cases of virulent social media attacks on real and perceived enemies of Peter Obi. They unleashed a torrent of both slanderous and libelous bile on Soludo so much that he could have been taken for a rogue caught poisoning the communal stream. The namecalling did not stop at attacks on his person. His tormentors somehow managed to put words in the mouth of his apparently selfpossessed musician-son who was reported to have registered his support for Peter Obi even as he distanced himself from his father’s comments on the aspirant president. A spokesperson for Soludo has now debunked the false attribution to the younger Soludo and exposed it for the forgery it is. So much for those celebrating and encouraging a son to openly defy his father even as they cannot stomach the father’s right to express an opinion or even a view in a matter that he appears far more qualified to comment on than the critics taking him to task. Or whose voice sounds more credible and should carry more factual or truthful valence than the other in matters of governance or economic(s) investment in this instance- that of Charles Soludo’s, a respected economist, former Central Bank governor, self-confessed friend and one of Peter Obi’s successors to the governor’s seat in Awka, or the voice of his many uninformed but high-strung critics? These are the “meddlesome interlopers” who know far less about Obi than the man they are attacking. Is it not instructive that Soludo’s critics are not the known or prominent Obi supporters aside members of his campaign council? Why did Pat Utomi saddle obidients with the task of responding to Soludo when he could have more credibly done it as an economist? But the rabble would rather rush in where angels fear to tread, hurling insults Vanguard, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 2022 —17 intention to, from a historical perspective, set the record straight in terms of the deliberate convolution and misrepresentation of his view of Peter Obi. It means nothing whether you agree with him or not what counts is that Charles Soludo has spoken his truth and shown himself to be a man of his own conviction. We know and he has admitted that he is not an angel and is susceptible to errors like any other man. But he has the right to make his stand known without necessarily having to explain to anyone or fear recrimination from others. It is the privilege of the herd in this era of suffocating intolerance to join the bandwagon of popular opinion even if only tongue in cheek. It takes people of conviction to beat a different path. For the most part, Soludo’s critics have had nothing more substantial to say in response to him than to engage in ad homineminsults and labelling him a saboteur out to truncate the 2023 presidential aspiration of the Igbo. There will always be a motive to every human action whether grossly self-centered or less so but that does not in itself transform truth claims into their opposites or undermine objective reality. Even non-Igbo commentators, highly educated and exposed, posturing as supporters of Obi and impartial arbiters in this supposed familycum national feud,have only sought to unlock the tap of self-pity by calling the Igbo their own worst enemy. For them, if anyone is critical of Obi it should not be another Igbo. Their apparently disinterested comments feed into and uncover the tribal angst that informs their action. Tomorrow they would with a different side of their mouth express their collective wish for and heap praises on a “detribalized” Nigerian leader while accusing Muhammadu Buhari of being partial to the Fulani. Peter Obi’s response to Soludo, delivered at the Lagos Business School, in part satiric, in part self-deflating, has been far more sober, intelligent and appropriate than that of his supporters. He admits he is no saint and accepts some of the failings ascribed to him, even of the diminished value of the investments he made. This is the response of a leader and potential president. and invectives at Soludo’s person, his household and generations after him. He’s got their goat and they would not quit until he has been dragged into their court of (in)justice and found guilty as charged. All of which rather than quench the fire in him has only spurred Soludo to pen a left-handed love letter to his “obedient” critics and their kith and kin, home and abroad- “just for the records”, he says. For their refusal to let a mere comment slip by, obidients now have to contend with a fullbodied, unflattering testimonial of their idol. In this first part response titled “History Beckons and I will not be Silent”, Charles Soludo offers a sober, defiant and, it would seem from his own perspective, unvarnished and relatively far more granular version of his initial comment that got the cyber horde baying at him. Having gone as far as they have in attacking Soludo and others who have dared to express a dissenting opinion about Obi, the question now is what more weapon do the obidients have left in their arsenal other than the now-familiar bullying, cusses and vitriol? Are there any more invectives to hurl? What further climbdown the murk of insults and Soludo’s critics have had nothing more substantial to say in response to him than to engage in ad hominem insults and labelling him a saboteur out to truncate the 2023 presidential aspiration of the Igbo uneducated bullying are Nigerians to expect? Or would things take more sinister dimension as Soludo alluded to in his love note about the gun men that attacked a security post in his village? It is in the nature of the intolerant to seek sinister byways in the expression and imposition of their will on others. What are the options left after the muckraking that has trailed Charles Soludo’s comments? This moment must be galling for his critics but Soludo came prepared and apparently meant his essay to achieve just such feeling and probably more. This is beside his main WITH the Stakeholders’ Consultative Forum held in mid-November and the publication of the final Information Memorandum (IM) on the website of the Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, it is no longer in doubt that the 5G Auction scheduled for December 19, 2022, will hold. All initial doubt and public apprehension pale into insignificance except that they help to incident a huge process that could still be up for questioning in the future. At the Stakeholder's Forum, which held in Lagos, healthy concerns were raised. The Reserve Price, RP, of US$273,600,000 for one Lot of 100MHz TDD for a ten-year license tenure, was on the high side, they observed. Having participated in the last auction which was held last December, Airtel, who participated in that process, canvassed to be offered one Lot through an administrative process, meaning it would not have to be part of the auction process again but allowed to pay the RP. MTN, who was one of the winners and has commenced limited 5G service roll out, the other being Mafab, made a case to be allowed to participate in the December 2022 Auction. Ikenna Ikeme, General Manager, Regulatory Affairs at MTN, explained that his organisation 08055069060 (SMS Only) 5G Spectrum Cap, spectrum auction, and other issues participated last year because it had the understanding that it would be an open auction going forward. Of course there was an outrage because that would confer the status of a dominant player on MTN in the nascent 5G sector in Nigeria. The outrage was rooted in the draft IM which pegged the Spectrum Cap at 100MHz per operator. The Cap is the spectrum upper limit that an operator could not exceed. When the regulator auctioned two lots of 100 MHz each in the 3.5 GHz band, ranging from 3500 to 3600 MHz and 3700 to 3800 MHz last year, they were won by MTN and Mafab. That success ironically rendered them unsuitable for the current process that will peak on December 19, 2022. Sensing the complexity of responses, the regulator had to do a quick rethink and take immediate action. The RP stays, like words carved in stone, except that this is liquid cash. To even get a little sniff at 5G services, Airtel must go to the auction and show its financial strength. Then there was the big one that seemed impossible. MTN will be part of the auction. This became manifest in the final IM. Not that it was stated explicitly, but a little magic wand to save the regulator from a certain headache The Commission places a cap of 200 MHz as the maximum amount of spectrum an applicant can acquire in the 3.5 GHz band. "A licensee with an existing assignment in the 3.5GHz band is eligible to bid for only one lot of 100 MHz. However, applicants without spectrum holdings in the 3.5 GHz band are eligible to bid for the two lots on offer," the IM stated. Like shifting the goalposts when the game is already on? Not at all. There was an immediate need to apply cooling balm to a business process that was expected to heat up if decisions were made incorrectly. How? This writer was informed by a source within the Commission that, based on decisions and promises made last year, MTN would have had a good reason to go to court if it was pressed to. There is no need for NCC should give licenses to those who can pay, those who can roll out service,; it should forget about market dominance and platitudinous innuendos any litigation now. There is yet another angle to this story. What is the real purpose of this auction? The regulator tried to provide an answer. "I want to disabuse the minds of those who feel that the objective of the NCC to auction the first and second rounds of the 5G spectrum bands is to generate money for the federal government. This is not correct. The overriding consideration is not to generate money for the Federal Government, but principally to ensure the deployment of 5G services that enhance a better life for Nigerians and the growth of the nation’s economy as a whole through provision of qualitative high-speed Internet services that increase productivity and efficiency across sectors," the Executive Vice Chairman, Prof. Umar Garba Danbatta, explained at the Forum. There is no need for disputation here. His sense of patriotism is duly recognized. But three things, we insist, seem to be at play here in this order - cash, desperation to satisfy some interests, and efficient service delivery. We also want to observe here that in doing an auction, the regulator must look out for organisations and individuals that can validate the process through their participation and their ability to raise the cash. MTN is one of such organisations. The organisation’s sense of patriotism and commitment to the country and her economy, no matter the political uncertainties, cannot be faulted. In nearly every Spectrum Auction, MTN participates and pays up immediately. A source within the regulatory authority gave this testimony. "If not for the likes of MTN, we would have been in a mess right now. MTN has a good corporate structure. And in terms of corporate governance, they are number one." A long story has been told in so few words. MTN is paradigmatic of what is good in the telecommunications industry, but such corporate sprucing up, has also attracted a streak of envy that earns it a bad report. What does the regulator want this time? One of the 5G licenses given out last year went to Mafab for $273.5m. The money was quickly paid by the winner. But for Mafab, 5G remains a greenfield, which is perhaps the reason it is still struggling to roll out services. Summary: The people don’t have any service from Mafab yet. If the regulator wants to emphasise cash and service delivery over patronage, we urge it to provide this cautionary support by telling the India story again. When the country concluded her 5G spectrum sales on August 1, 2022, a bouquet of spectrum bands - 600MHz, 700MHz, 800MHz, 1.8 GHz, 2.1 GHz, 2.3GHz, 3.3GHz and 26GHz, were on offer. At the final sound of the bell, Reliance Jo had a lion's share of the sales, shelling out a humongous $11.15bn, Bharti Airtel followed with $5.45bn, Vodafone Idea (Vi) came in third with $2.37bn, and wireless service provider Adani Group, kept a distant fourth with $26.84m. The entire package was about $19 billion, which is a very huge amount coming from just a sector of the economy within a few days. There is no doubt that the emphasis was on money, but they also ensured that the licenses went to those who could afford them and had the proof of ability to roll out services. This is what I will suggest to the NCC. Give licenses to those who can pay. Those who can roll out service. Forget about market dominance and platitudinous innuendos. Finally, let me state very clearly that I support the transparency claims of the NCC in executing its regulatory responsibilities. But the time has come to remove legacy blinkers from the eyes and face up with the reality that certain things are not going well in the telecommunications industry. Competition is impaired, services are growing increasingly worse, and there are loud complaints of an overbearing external influence on the Commission. I can observe that President Muhammadu Buhari is struggling to at least have one legacy to point to after May next year. 5G obviously is an easy pick. The NCC should make his job easy by conducting a good auction that will yield results in cash and in service delivery.

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