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Home Blog Page 5026

Certificate of Return: What the law says

By
Stanley Alieke
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0

Congratulations to Senator Ademola Adeleke as INEC finally issued him the certificate of return on Wednesday, the 20th of July as the winner of the Osun state governorship election held over the weekend; the certificate of return was issued to him four days after the election was conducted.

A certificate of return is an electoral document issued to the winner of an election, declaring the candidate the rightfully elected candidate of the election.

Mr. Adeleke, who contested the July 16 election on the ticket of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), polled 403,371 votes to defeat the incumbent governor, Gboyega Oyetola, of the All Progressives Congress (APC), who scored 375,027 votes, and 13 other candidates.

Before the certificate of return was finally issued, the camp of Senator Adeleke was already agitating about why after days the election was concluded INEC is yet to issue the certificate of return, the camp of the election winner was already clamoring that INEC is breaking the law for not to have issued the certificate of return days after the election. The most vocal about the issue was David Adeleke, the megastar musician who is also the nephew of Senator Adeleke, the winner of the election. In his tweet on Tuesday, the 19th of July while poking INEC on their reason for not having issued the certificate of return to his uncle he posted this: “@inecnigeria should we send you fuel money? LOL

“Please no one should tamper with the will of the Osun People!

“Issue the certificate as required by Law!”.

This tweet gained multiple retweets and comments as numerous other online activists joined the star musician and his family in calling out INEC and its officials, accusing INEC of breaking the law for not having issued the certificate of return to the winner of the election 3 days after the election. Unfortunately, this agitation was clothed in so much ignorance and lack of knowledge of the laws of Nigeria, specifically the electoral laws.

For the sake of legal knowledge and because we are in the election period in Nigeria we will be taking a look at what the law says about issuing the certificate of return to winners of elections and what is the number of days INEC has to issue the certificate of return and if INEC fails to issue a certificate of return to the winner of the election what should the winner do and what document can be used in the place of the certificate of return for the swearing-in ceremony of the winner of the election.

The latest electoral act of 2022 provides answers to these issues. It is provided in Section 72 of the act that a (sealed) certificate of return at an election shall be issued within “14 days” to every candidate who has been returned as the winner of the election by the Returning Officer in an election.

The implication of this provision is that INEC has up to 14 days to issue a certificate of return to any winner of an election and only after 14 days have passed without INEC issuing the certificate of return to the winner can we then say that INEC is breaking the law but anything less than 14 days after the election was held, INEC is still acting within the confines of the law.

But when the court in an election petition nullifies the certificate of return issued to a previous candidate, INEC has just 48 hours to issue a fresh certificate of return to the candidate the court has held to be the rightful winner of the election.

If for any reason INEC fails, refuses, or neglects to issue a certificate of return to the winner of an election, the candidate will obtain a certified true copy of the order of the court declaring him the winner of the election; rightfully elected and order of the court is enough and sufficient for the purpose of swearing in of the candidate into the office he/she was elected for.

In summary, INEC has the window of 14 days to issue a certificate of return to the winner of an election and no law is broken if the certificate is issued within that time frame but when the court nullifies a previous certificate of return issued to another candidate, then INEC has just 48 hours to issue a fresh certificate of return to the candidate the court has held to be the rightful winner of the election.

The Atiku Abubakar’s Proposal to Fix Electricity in Nigeria

By
Ndubuisi Ekekwe
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1

Nigeria’s national grid has been collapsing with reckless abandon. Of course, we know that if that trajectory does not change,  the harmattan season may come earlier, economically. So, there are many ideas on how to fix it; one is coming from the nation’s former Vice President and PDP presidential flagbearer, Atiku Abubakar: “The IDF [infrastructure debt fund ]  will have an initial investment capacity of approximately $20 billion. In addition, I’ll cause the creation of an infrastructure development credit guarantee agency to complement the operation of the IDF by de-risking investments in infrastructure to build investor confidence in taking risks and investing capital”. 

In their words,” Dear customers, we regret to inform you of a system collapse on the national grid at precisely 11:27 a.m today July 20. We are in talks with the transmission company of Nigeria to ascertain the cause of the collapse and a possible restoration timeline. We will keep you updated on the situation”.

Also displeased with the constant national grid collapse is People Democratic Party (PDP) Presidential aspirant Atiku Abubakar who via a series of tweets on Twitter proposed a solution to put a stop to the incessant collapse of the national grid.

See what he said, “I am reliably informed that there was a total national grid collapse at precisely 12:23 pm today. This is one collapse too many. It is the 6th time this is happening in this year alone. Due to the priority that I place on the power sector upon which the successes of other sectors are hinged, I am proposing infrastructure that will involve the facilitation of a review of financial, legal, and regulatory environment to promote private investment in power among the sectors.

”I’ll promote the identification, with tax breaks, a consortium of private sector institutions to establish an infrastructure debt fund (IDF) to primarily mobilize domestic and international private resources for the financing and delivery of large infrastructure projects across all sectors of the economy.

“The IDF will have an initial investment capacity of approximately $20 billion. In addition, I’ll cause the creation of an infrastructure development credit guarantee agency to complement the operation of the IDF by de-risking investments in infrastructure to build investor confidence in taking risks and investing capital”. 

I commend Mr. Abubakar for coming up with a solution; we need just that as the campaign season picks up. This proposal is not novel; Nigeria has tried it in many forms and it has one big problem: “credit guarantee” does not scale. 

In a 2018 presentation in Washington DC, at Ronald Reagan International Trade Center (see link here),  I made a case that credit guarantees cannot help Africa. My thesis was based on this: if you want someone to invest $1 million and guarantee $1m, when that person finishes investing that $1m, he will expect you to guarantee more funds, to unlock new investments.  If you do not have more capacity to guarantee more, scaling that project will stall. That is what has happened in most parts of Africa: credit guarantees work but are also limited once the guarantor cannot expand them.

What was my proposal in Washington DC? Go back to the root cause why a guarantee was even necessary? If you remove those impediments, investors will come and if they find opportunities, they can scale that mission, not just in the small pilots for guarantees, but for every part of the nation.

My suggestion to the nation is simple: credit guarantee is not scalable since it is bounded. However, we need to address the reasons why people see opportunities in the energy sector and yet refuse to invest. Interestingly, we know the #1 reason: a court now determines how much producers of power can charge their customers, irrespective if that will bankrupt the sector.

Sure, price ceilings are necessary for products produced by utilities but what is happening in Nigeria goes beyond managing oligopolies in municipalities. What we have is simple: many Nigerians believe that power has to be free and the court has blessed that thinking, making it hard to price energy reflectively.  The result is evident: many players in the energy sector are collapsing.

Yes, someone has to fight for investors so that investing in Nigeria’s energy sector does not translate to burying cash. We need to tell the court that while it can fix the prices customers pay for DStv and Zee World, when it comes to electricity, we need to modulate.

How do you reconcile a scenario where investors see HUGE opportunities in Nigeria’s electricity sector and yet few want to invest in the sector? Focusing on credit guarantees will not help. In my opinion, we need to focus on removing the bottlenecks and whatever makes it necessary to even guarantee people to come and make money!

Comment on LinkedIn Feed

Comment: I think a bigger question is where are they going to get the funds to guarantee investments made through the IDF in the first place. After all, the country is practically broke. The only possibility I see to guarantee such funds is to borrow again, and we all know how that goes in Nigeria with corruption?

My response: a great point. That is like 50% of the nation’s budget depending on the exchange rate of choice.

JAMB Benchmarks 2022 University Admissions Cut-Off Mark at 140, Says Less than 25% Scored 200 and Above

By
Tiamiyu Ismail
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1

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) is a Federal Government’s agency that conducts and standardize entrance examination into tertiary institutions in Nigeria. The body also sets cut-off point for its Unified Tertiary Matriculations Exams (UTME) every year.

Following the year 2022 edition of the UTME which held between Friday, May 6, and Saturday 14, the examination regulatory board, JAMB has on Thursday, 21 July announced 140 marks as the national minimum cut-off point for admission into public universities and 100 marks and above for admissions into Polytechnics and colleges of education for the year 2022 admissions exercise.

JAMB was reported to have reached this decision at the ongoing policy meeting on admissions to tertiary institutions in Nigeria.

According to the JAMB’s registrar, Professor Ishaq Oloyede who announced the cut-off, every institution is at liberty to fix its own cut-off mark even up to 220 but no one would be allowed to go below the minimum marks of 140 for universities and 100 for polytechnics and colleges of education.

The just concluded UTME recorded mass failure as the JAMB’s registrar revealed that 378,639 candidates which is about 22 percent of the total 1,761,338 candidates who wrote the 2022 UTME scored 200 and above.

Nigeria Experiences Blackout As National Grid Collapses Again – PDP Presidential Aspirant, Atiku Abubakar, Proposes Solution

By
Ojukwu Emmanuel
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0

The national grid in Nigeria on Wednesday suffered another system collapse which resulted in blackout in so many parts of the country. The incessant collapse has been a reoccurring issue in Nigeria, which is said to be the 18th time a nationwide blackout would be recorded in the country this year.

The federal government earlier last month attributed the incessant collapse of the National grid to poor generation by generation companies, Gencos, Low water levels at hydro water plants, and constant attacks on transmission towers.

The government also disclosed that its effort to expand the grid has often been frustrated by communities who deny the right of way to transmission projects.

Reacting to the recent collapse of the national grid, the Eko Electricity Distribution Company (EKEDC) disclosed that they are currently in talks with the transmission company of Nigeria to ascertain the cause of the collapse so that it can be restored as well as preventing it from happening in the future.

In their words,” Dear customers, we regret to inform you of a system collapse on the national grid at precisely 11:27 a.m today July 20. We are in talks with the transmission company of Nigeria to ascertain the cause of the collapse and a possible restoration timeline. We will keep you updated on the situation”.

Also displeased with the constant national grid collapse is People Democratic Party (PDP) Presidential aspirant Atiku Abubakar who via a series of tweets on Twitter proposed a solution to put a stop to the incessant collapse of the national grid.

See what he said, “I am reliably informed that there was a total national grid collapse at precisely 12:23 pm today. This is one collapse too many. It is the 6th time this is happening in this year alone. Due to the priority that I place on the power sector upon which the successes of other sectors are hinged, I am proposing infrastructure that will involve the facilitation of a review of financial, legal, and regulatory environment to promote private investment in power among the sectors.

”I’ll promote the identification, with tax breaks, a consortium of private sector institutions to establish an infrastructure debt fund (IDF) to primarily mobilize domestic and international private resources for the financing and delivery of large infrastructure projects across all sectors of the economy.

“The IDF will have an initial investment capacity of approximately $20 billion. In addition, I’ll cause the creation of an infrastructure development credit guarantee agency to complement the operation of the IDF by de-risking investments in infrastructure to build investor confidence in taking risks and investing capital”. 

The constant collapse of the national grid which often leads to nationwide blackout and epileptic supply of electricity, calls for serious attention with immediate actions taken to curb such problems.

It is appalling and disheartening that this is happening at a time when the country is ravaged by high inflation, hike in the price of diesel and petrol, constant devaluation of the Naira, and high prices of food items.

This has further compounded the woes of Nigerians, making living unbearable for so many households as well as seriously affecting businesses most especially the Small and Medium scale enterprise.

Despite the privatization of the electricity industry with a bid to address the situation, it has only worsened. There are insinuations that the problem of the constant grid collapse has been associated with the leadership at various levels in the country, as a large percentage of them are averse to genuine solutions.

Their lackluster attitude has continued to compound issues, using their positions to stifle any idea that could lead to change. In order to further prevent the collapse of the national grid, there have been calls from experts urging the federal government of Nigeria to switch to alternative energy sources which is now a global trend.

They further disclosed that solar power, hydropower generation, and wind energy should be given the necessary attention and implemented in the country, integrating them into the country’s strategic power plan.

Facebook Changes Playbook, Shifts Focus From News To Creator Economy

By
Ojukwu Emmanuel
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0

American multinational technology platform, Meta Formerly known as Facebook is shifting its focus from news tab and bulletin to building a creator economy.

Facebook executive Campbell Brown recently disclosed to employees that the engineering and product teams at Facebook would in the future, spend less time on news and bulletin to heighten their focus on building a more robust creator economy.

A spokesperson from Meta also disclosed that the company is always assessing where to allocate resources and the team at the company remains committed to the success of creators on the platform.

However, there are reports that Facebook is changing its playbook as the company is already threatened by the surge of users on the TikTok platform. Facebook has been known for acquiring its competitors just like how it acquired Instagram.

Over the years, the company has completed more than 70 mergers and acquisitions, involving everything from facial-recognition technology to other major social platforms like Instagram and WhatsApp. However, if the company can’t acquire its competitors, it would try every means to replicate its popular feature.

Throughout it’s existence, there have been many instances of Facebook adopting new features. Due to the nature and timing of these implementations, there has been much debate as to whether Facebook was simply adapting to market trends or directly copying its competitors.

For instance, Facebook has in the past replicated the snap chat disappearing photo/video which it later included as a feature on its platform. Meta is concerned that it no longer has that dominance it held in the past, as according to insider intelligence, TikTok became the world’s third largest social network last year, behind Meta’s Facebook and Instagram.

In the first quarter of 2021, Facebook for the first time in its 18-year history, lost daily users which Mark Zuckerberg believes was caused by the emergence of TikTok. With the numbers still declining, TikTok seems to have gotten a firm grip on Gen Z who are the most users of the app.

Reports reveal that teen users were spending more time on TikTok than they were on Facebook and Instagram. Meta has attempted to retain users by adopting the TikTok app defining aspect. However, it seems not to have worked for Meta after they launched a feature on Instagram called reel, which is a feature similar to the TikTok endless watch and scroll video model.

Heavily threatened by TikTok’s dominance, Meta has been forced to change its playbook on Facebook, to focus more on the creator economy, shifting away from its news bulletin.

The company continues to push hard to develop its short-form video reels in an effort to match up with TikTok. Recall that in 2018, due to TikTok’s rapid growth in its number of users, Facebook made an attempt to push the company off the market, after it hit 650 million users.

Facebook had to launch a copycat app called Lasso, but the app did not meet up with their expectations, as it didn’t draw much interest as expected, they were forced to shut it down. As the TikTok user base continues to grow rapidly, it is quickly becoming the most preferred option for businesses and content creators to reach new larger audiences.

Will this Facebook recent playbook of shifting into the creator economy help the company regain its social media dominance, or will TikTok continue to give the company a run for its money?

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