MY NYSC LIFE AND EXPERIENCE

 MY NYSC LIFE AND EXPERIENCE

BY

MUDASSIR ALIYU YUNUSA

NTA KADUNA NWC

mudassiray@gmail.com

In early 2009 I recieved my NYSC Posting later  which red 'BO' which compells me to answer and obey the clarion call to serve my nation in Borno State, The home of peace. Surely Borno is peaceful city then with clear testimony from all and sundry who happened to visit the the popular Yerwa. 'WUSHE KENDERO YERWA' is written boldly in KANURI at the top of the main gates and all entrance to Maiduguri from all angle meaning ' WELCOME TO MAIDUGURI'  I was received harmoniously by a friend of my father who was the serving commissioner of education in Ali Sheriff's administration. What made me amazed and felt important and became so elated was the kind gesture and good hospitality received after our Jigawa Sunrise shuttle bus arrived safely at Borno Express terminus, I called him and informed him about my arrival, could you imagine the humble Commissioner came along with official vehicle and driver to picked me off. What a reception! He took me to his office at the famous Musa Usman Secretariat and ordered delicious delicacies and assorted drinks. Good to the unkitted Corper who last ate Masar bauchi and suya at Azare bus stop about 3 hours ago. That was the beginning of understanding abd justifying the good gesture and kindness of people of Maiduguri that I will never forget. This also testified the title of the state. 'The Home of Peace'. Later in the evening we went to his house at commissioner's/ perm Sect lodge at old GRA Maiduguri where I was also warmly welcomed by his family. After magrib I was asked to come to his sitting room, I met all his male children most of whom are my mates and his male house maids. To cut the story short we had a dinner together in the same dish, I was so impressed but I was told this is the culture of Borno people.

In the morning I was taken to NYSC Camp at Bulunkutu where another friend of my father asked me to see him before proceeding to the CAMP, he later took me to the camp directly where I saw corpers on arrival receiving fatigue from military men calling them WAWA YAZO. I was luckily enough to escape that fatigue as we drove directly through the gate to the camp masjid which houses the Secretariat of Muslim Corpers Association of Nigeria (MCAN). Thanks for another warm reception from its members.

After the 3 weeks stayed in camp participating in almost all activities to include parade, football, festival carnival, musabaqah, paradise night etc which exonerated me from becoming an Otondo. I was posted to NTA Maiduguri Network Centre. We share room at Shehu Garbai Staff Quarters with my immediate colleague Abdulladir Balarabe (Abba) who is also from Kano, our NYSC numbers are similar to the brand old Peugeot 504 and 505, that was why we almost do everything in collaboration, like clearance, CDS meeting, we cook and eat together, go to market and move around altogether. Though Abba was already engaged, after working hours he mostly concentrated in phone love while I was preoccupied by my write up and playing football, yet our lives are good and enviable.

I was peacefully and harmoniously roaming about the streets, some nooks and crannies of Maiduguri

ELECTRICITY DISTRIBITION AND QUANTITY RATIONING

ELECTRICITY  DISTRIBITION AND QUANTITY RATIONING

BY:

MUDASSIR ALIYU YUNUSA

NTA ZARIA

mudassiray@gmail.com

  Electricity is one of the major issues for national growth and development, but in Nigeria the issue of advancement with regard to power supply has been a mere pipe dream for long especially with the failure of the Nigerian power sector to provide adequate electricity for domestic households and industrial purposes. Power supply difficulties crippled our nucleus sectors (Agriculture, Industrial and Mining) which impede the Nigeria's socio economic development. The energy supply crisis is complex, stems from  variety of issues and has been ongoing for long, the most trembling among them is the unconstitutional treatment and silent exploitation of consumers by some electricity distribution companies whose mandate is to distribute  power appropriately to customers for domestic and industrial consumption. Their actions has continue to tramp on the right of people especially the companies' failure to provide  prepaid metres to their clients which outrightly violated the guidelines on customers' metering and billing law of the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC).

The Commission's regulation on standard performance for electricity distribution stipulates three months ultimatum after which the utility firm must find every possible means to read the meters for actual energy consumed. In the same vein the Electric Power Sector Reform Act of 2005, which is an effort made to ensure efficient and effective management of electricity supply to meet the yearnings of Nigerians through provision of stable, adequate, safe and reliable electricity supply provided that:

- All customers have the right to be provided and installed with proper and functional metres.

- All customers have the right to be informed and educated on electricity services.

- All customers have the right to transparent electricity billing (not illegal estimated billing).

-  All unmetered customers should be issued with electricity bills strictly base on NERC's estimated billing methodology.

- It is the customer’s right to be notified in writing ahead of disconnection of electricity service

by the DisCo (Distribution Company) serving the customer in line with NERC’s guidelines.

-All customers have a right to file complaints and to the prompt investigation of complaints.

- All customers have the right to be refunded when over billed.

Above are some guidelines which are mainly disregarded and violated by some distribution companies and some wicked customers who deliberately bye passes the prepaid metre for illegal consumption  which seriously causes mutual misunderstanding and distrust between the customers and electricity distributors. What pain me much to write this piece is the exorbitant, estimated and informal billings charge by some distributors where some personnel of these companies use to write the amount to be paid with pen on top of the original computer print out bill from the company. What kind of nasty act and foul play is this? I personally deemed it as highly unprofessional, unethical and against the provision of NERC, and also contrary to the principles of Nigerian Consumer Protection Council (NCPC), whose aim is to protect and enhance consumers' interest through information, education, and enforcement of the rights of consumers which was purposely established by an Act of Parliament to promote and protect the interests of consumers over all products and services.

However, this ill treatment makes many electricity consumers feel aggrieved and cheated day by day couple with poor and epileptic electricy supply as well as unjustifiable estimated and over billings. It is obvious that Distribution companies generated more revenue from estimating billing than from prepaid meters, that could be the reason why they failed to provide prepaid meters entirely to their consumers, eventhough Government have initiated a system of Meter Asset Providers (MAP) an investors whose task is to provide  Prepaid Meters to all consumers.

However  Some customers considered this action as fraud,  even though in many cases they  (consumers) are not helping the situation by declining to pay diligently the energy consumed as at when due, this makes some  distribution companies to  initiate Load Management Plan (LMP) in which hours of electricity supply is rationing to consumers just for the company to regulate and determine the load, consumption and also to reduce  what they called Aggregate Technical Collection and Commercial loses (ATC&C). This is incredible expression especially to other customers that are complying to the terms and conditions of payment.

It is pertinent to note that transforming Nigeria's electricity sector has to be thoroughly supervised right from generation, transmission and more specifically the distribution. Therefore, Government must intervene to checkmate the operations of these companies, call them to order and force them to work in line with laid down rules and regulations, and in respect to that, Nigerians should collectively compliment the course and if cheated and deprived, they should respond accordingly and fight for their right, express their grievances through proper ways such as peaceful demonstrations, letters, petitions and they should go through the right channels seeking for remedies on all atrocities associated with electricity.

Finally, I want to emphasize and call the attention of all Distribution Companies that estimated billing is always negative and inconsistent to them and their customers, either by under charging high consumption or over charging low consumption respectively. And at the same time writing amount of money on customer's bill is illegal, unethical, and exploitation of the highest order.

Mudassir can be reached mudassiray@gmail.com

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ON THE PROMOTION OF LOCAL EDUCATION OFFICERS. BY: MUDASSIR ALIYU YUNUSA

ON THE PROMOTION OF LOCAL EDUCATION OFFICERS.

BY:

MUDASSIR ALIYU YUNUSA

NTA ZARIA

mudassiray@gmail.com

Education is recognized internationally as key to human, social and economic development. It is the backbone for societal transformation, that is why Education should be given special attention as a prerequisite of positive future of all societies. In Nigeria the management of  Education falls under concurrent legislative list where all tiers of Government are mandated to supervise the provision and quality assurance of Education. Federal Ministry of Education, State Ministry of Education and Local Education Authority (LEA) are deliberately established to provide and enhance qualitative Education at all level. In most cases Primary schools are mainly supervised by Local Government with Education Secretary as a head, Secondary schools by State government with Commissioner of Education as Officer in charge, while Minister is a general overseer of the federal ministry of education which is mainly concern with tertiary institutions and universities respectively.

Conventionally, Local Education Authority is purposely created to supervise the activities of Primary Schools as well as proper control and smooth running of the affairs of teachers which include appointment, promotion and discipline; payment of remunerations (salary and allowances); overall management of primary education, quality control and executing primary educational plans.

It is obvious that the promotion of Primary School teachers has been experiencing serious setback in many States of the federation. In Kano the delay has became hindrance to the prosperity and carrier success of primary school teachers. It is revealed that for long many teachers and non teaching staff of Local education Authority were unable to be promoted to the next grade level, the previous promotions of primary school teachers in Kano as captured by many newspapers took place in 2007 and 2013, this clearly proved that all Local Education Officers are ought to attain two or three level higher than their present grade level if the promotion would have been actually and promptly taking place in view of three years interval as laid down by civil service rules. It is also interesting to note that in Kano for long majority of  primary school teachers are hanging on the same grade level receiving the same salary and allowances (if any) despite the series of economic fluctuations and social changes that happened within the stipulated period. For e.g from 2007 to date the petroleum pump price per litre was N65 then rose to N97, dropped to N87 and now the price is N145. The Naira/Dollar exchange rate volatility has also deepened the welfare crisis facing by the masses especially lower income earners. Apart from this we all know the prices of food stuffs and other necessity commodities have considerably skyrocketed, but Government is still paying same salary to workers particularly Primary School teachers who are always at the receiving end.

In respond to the above, Kano State Government set a committee to look into the matter and directed the State Universal Primary Education Board (SUBEB) to carry out promotion exercise in order to advance all the stagnated Officers that are due for promotion for the period onwards, huge amount of money is given by the state government for the exercise. Quite rightly the board responded immediately but unfortunately the exercise is full of anomalies and irregularities to the extent that some that are suppose to be promoted are  either mistakenly omitted or deliberately neglected. The situation is highly worrisome especially when it was exposed that some teachers are forced to give out money as bribe to induce those at the hemp of the promotion affairs to put their names in the promotion list. It is also revealed that some stakeholders in Primary Board are collecting money from teachers to include and capture them in the payroll after they (teachers) were privileged to be promoted. It is obvious in my Local Government (1 out of 44 LG), over 100 Education Officers that are due and suppose to be promoted base on merit but were completely excluded from the promotion exercise for the flimsy reason of been omitted, but the reality was that many of them were deliberately ignored because of their failure give out money or to do some kind of underground movement as an inducement which I am sure the appropriate authorities (especially the Governor who committed huge amount of money for the exercise) are not aware about all this blunder.

I suggest that special task force should be set by the State Government to look deeply into this matter so that the exercise and conduct of promotion  in Local education will be accurate and acceptable.  It will be better if the process of evaluating the performance and functioning of workers should be adopted to find out staff worthy for promotion, this could be done through writing exams and interviews in the course of promoting teachers the way some Federal institutions are doing. With this I am optimistic that the principle of fair play, transparency, justice and impartiality will reign in our Educational sector particularly in Primary Schools.

MUDASSIR write from NTA Zaria.

POLITICS OF god- FATHERISM AND THE WAY IT CRUMBLES IN KANO

 POLITICS OF god- FATHERISM AND THE WAY IT CRUMBLES IN KANO

BY:

MUDASSIR ALIYU YUNUSA

mudassiray@gmail.com

It is often said  'No permanent friend and no permanent enemy in politics'. This is really true considering how political coalitions, alliances, god fatherism used to fall apart particularly in Kano. In Democratic system, election, appointment or selection is what determine the power of politician, a successful politician is the one who either won election or secure political appointment, and sometimes for someone to win or acquire appointment one has to be anointed by somebody who is powerful within the political circle, either a President, a Governor, party chairman or any other influential person who posseses high political sagacity and whose political decision and wisdom to some extend became always respected and unquestionable by the community.

For long the politics of god fatherism became order of the day in Nigeria, Kano not an exception. This type of politics in Kano can be traced back to the time of second republic when Mallam Aminu Kano was the overall political father who dominated the political scenery of Kano with massive support from talakawa, at that time most of the elected or appointed political office holders are loyalists  of Malam Aminu mainly from NEPU down to PRP. In 1979 Abubakar Rimi, the first civilian Governor of kano who won under the platform of PRP was unilaterally picked by Mallam Aminu Kano when he (Rimi) was busy vying for the seat of legislature not a Governor after Federal Electoral Commission (FEDECO) disqualified Salihi Iliyasu and Ibrahim Wazirin Gumel governorship ticket. Later in 1983 Alh Sabo Bakin Zuwo became elected Governor after he was equally annointed by Mallam Aminu Kano. Kwankwaso the 4th civilian Governor of Kano secured governorship ticket by the political forces of Musa Gwadabe and Rimi in 1999.  Mallam Shekarau was equally pinpointed by Buhari in 2003. Recently in 2015 Kwankwaso annointed  Ganduje to be his successor under APC.

Looking at the political history, PRP, SDP and PDP have dominated the political scene in Kano, during their respective periods and they were composed with the State’s most prominent and renowned political figures, they also registered massive grass root support in almost all the local Governments in the State, they were also seen as replica of NEPU because  their members are mainly associates within the political bandwagon of Mallam Aminu Kano,  nevertheless in 1991 with all the strength and substantive support of SDP, the party lost to NRC in Governorship election. In 1999, there were three political parties(AD, APP & PDP) PDP composed almost all political key players in Kano, which made  their primary election more complicated. It was purely fused with political strength between Late Rimi and Musa gwadabe, both have different candidates for the party guber ticket. At that time a kind of cold and peaceful political war took place which was  amicably settled within the party. Mallam Musa Gwadabe produced a Governor and the deputy came from Abubakar Rimi's faction. Both supported the ticket which eventually won 1999 polls.

It was the same story in 2003 to the opposition ANPP, when General Muhammadu Buhari decided to join politics and contested in the party, his nation wide directives to vote ANPP SAK saw many of incompetent people and some with low political caliber to emerged victorious, and we can say most of those that won 2003 election under the flat form of ANPP in kano and beyond were as a result of political order (SAK) by Buhari. It is pertinent to note that only in 2007 and 2011 political transition came with differences. In 2007 the incumbent Governor Mallam Shekarau won the election on two consecutive terms which is the first in the history of Kano State. Likewise in 2011 the incumbency strength was again broke by Kwankwaso who suffered election bitterness in 2003.

With 2007 and 2011 elections,it was believed by many that the politics of god fatherism and anointment is no more in Kano, but it resurfaced in 2015 under APC, the out going Governor anointed his deputy who succeeded in winning the election as against the case of 2011.

However, it is obvious that all the political alliances made in the history of Kano politics failed  to deliver fruitful outcomes as a result of some disputes that always happens between god fathers and their boys. We all know what happened in PRP during 1983 election which led to the failure of the serving Governor; The political dispute of selecting the appropriate running mate was the clear reason for the failure of SDP in 1991 Governorship poll. Likewise in 2003 the powerful Governor with all the supports and backup from the then President was forced to vacate Kano government house with no arrangement, which was allegedly believed to happened as a result of bitterness and disintegration  among the stakeholders in the ruling party (PDP) in the State.

However, the Present political hullabaloo that is happening between the Governor and his predecessor is a clear manifestation of how the political alliances used to turn offside down in a game of politics.

Therefore, the only way forward is for the people of Kano to desist from voting any politician who happened to have powerful god father and or annointed by Governor or President considering how it crumbles untimely with little or no gain. It also brought serious setback to the development of the people and the government in the State. It is obvious that political annointment have been hindering and stagnating certain development as a result of some personal whims and caprices from the part of either the annointed leader or his god father. It is rather to have strong opposition from other political parties than to have antagonistic relationship within the party itself. The intra party crises is mostly surfaces as a result of certain cracks among the caucus of the same party. I consider the action as a great drawback to the socioeconomic and political development of people and government of Kano State.

Fellow Kanawa, let us say no to politics of god fatherism and strive to vote for credibility, competency and reliability.

Mudassir write from NTA Zaria.