Several microchips could then be harnessed to run turbines that could produce the electricity. With the idea of nanotechnology, one could even make nanotechonological turbines being driven by microchip technology. I am not about to write more about this technological innovation in this piece. Rather I want to raise the issue of generating electricity from the technology that we already have to serve Nigerian needs right now. Given the right support what I intend to propose here will make electricity available to virtually all Nigerians within the space of six months to one year at the most. How do I intend to make this happen?

In Nigeria there are an aweful lot of standby generators. Most government offices, federal, state and a few local government offices have standby electricity generating plants. What is required is to harness these generators to the national grid and make the power available during instances of load shedding in certain areas so that those who would not have had electricity would now have. For instance, In say, the Alausa area of Lagos state, when there is load shedding affecting Alausa, generators feeding that area would be started to channel electricity to the affected area so that the area no longer is in darkness These generators would be augmenting the existing generation from the national grid, not that they would be the sole generation. It is the shortage that would be augmented by the generators. I have listed government generators in this write up but the same thing could apply to private or corporate generators which sit idle until there is a power failure in the area where they are used.

I used government because it is understood that the government is responsible for providing electricity to ghe public. However, what the electricity utility company could do is pay for the service. Where I live (in the US) the electric utility company has an arrangement with the people whereby the utility company is allowed to shut down consumption from household appliances during periods of high electric demand and pays compensation to each household for that permission in monetary terms. A certain amount of cash is paid to each individual consumer account for the service each year. What the Power Holding Company of Nigeria has to do is have an agreement written into the electric contract of every consumer that they will pay them for the service whereby all generators will be switched on as needed by the company and credit given to each consumer for such uses.

So, for instance, since each generator will already be connected to the national electric grid, whenever the company anticipates overload in a particular area, they simply switch on a consumer’s generator or several generators to meet the extra demand. That way there may never be a situation where the company runs short of supply to any part of the country. The PHCN could also have an agreement with households to switch off their high electricity consuming appliances, like refrigerators, air conditioners, and others during high demand periods so that the system does not break down. For the ability to switch off these appliances, PHCN would have to pay compensation in cash also. Such compensation would normally be paid through credits given on consumers’ electric bills.

So what would be required. There would have to be a national legislation empowering the PHCN to undertake individual contracts with consumers—federal, state and local governments, individuals, corporations, and other entities– to pay them for switching on their generators and using the power so provided to power the national grid, and to pay consumers for switching off their appliances to conserve power so that the Nigerian power system does not buckle during periods of high demand. PHCN would also have to make available to consumers all the paraphernalia to make switching possible from PHCN’s remote locations from those consumers. In this regard, the switching should allow PHCN to identify which generators in what businesses or government entities should be switched off/on or which appliances in what locations should be switched on/off.

This might seem a difficult task, but it is not as the consumers and PHCN have local connections right at the point of delivery, and not nationally in which case you could be talking about an appliance in Nguru when the section you are dealing with is in Kafanchan. If there was a fault in Nguru you would deal with it with resources in Nguru and vice versa in Kafanchan. The way to get the buying of swiches underway is for PHCN to buy them and install them or better still, to have Nigerians with generating capacity greater than a certain value determined by officials of PHCN buy the switches. It will be necessary for PHCN officials to determine the minimum generating capacity needed to use on the national grid because it is not every generator that will be powerful enough to be relied on for such uses.

For this transition to take place within the shortest time possible, switching off and on would presently have to be done manually until such a time that the remote electronic switching on/off gadgery have been acquired and the necessary training given to personnel. Nigerians have suffered for too long without electricity and this is not a time to start waiting for niceties. Nigeria has to start as crudely as possible to get electricity to all its inhabitants so that the true potential of the country could be realized as soon as possible regardless of the naysayers who had predicted the demise of the nation come 2015 but who now are saying that Nigeria would indeed be an economic force by 2030.

If this suggestion is carried out, Nigerians will be spared the frustration of not having electricity to run their daily lives, especially being without light in the middle of the night each night for several months in a year. The Nigerian economy will take off like a meteorite while the normal long term plan of providing electricity in enough amount to the entire nation proceeds apace. In Nigeria there is a lot of over capacity in standby power generation and this over capacity could be used to give everyone and every industry, continuous electricity. Thus there would be no need to constantly remain without electricity while the rich and government offices enjoy electricity during office hours only for people to go home to their dark and damp homes after closing from work each day. I hope this suggestion would be implemented immediately.;

By Dr. Philip Ikomi | NNP | June 27, 2012 -

In Nigeria, one does not know what laws are in place but it would probably be similar to the European law since the Nigerian body of laws came primarily from the Greco-Roman laws established in these shores at the time of the colonial enslavement of Nigerians by the British. Without knowing if there are any laws against anti-competition or unfair business practices, one can guess that no law is being enforced to prevent anti-competitive practices, unfair or unethical behavior among Nigerian businesses. It is against this back drop that we have to examine the recent protests by the Balogun Market branch of Dealers of Bags and Leatherwear Association of Nigeria against their self-declared “unfair business practices of their Chinese counterparts whom they accused of selling at “very cheap prices” reported in the Punch-on-line of June 19, 2012 by Onozure Dania. Dania reported that “the national Chairman of the association, Mr Azubike Nwachukwu , said Nigerian dealers have been operating at a loss since the Chinese business men started retail selling of the leather products at a very cheap price.” It is really demoralizing for a group of merchants to take to the streets to openly fight for an illegal position. Nigerians are supposed to side with these fellow Nigerians who are crying foul because they are being displaced in the marketplace by fellow merchants selling superior goods at affordable prices but whose only crime is that they are non-Nigerians. If there are any laws against anti-competitive practices in Nigeria, these Nigerian dealers should be rounded up and remanded in police custody until they are released on bail after a court date has been set for them.

They are asking that foreigners who are in Nigeria legally should be prevented from doing business because they are offering cheaper alternative goods to Nigerians. If anything, a government that allows free enterprise in the capitalist system and allows market forces to work welcomes competition among the providers of goods and services. It is to lower prices and by inviting competition that government welcomes diverse players whether in the air or on the ground in the markets. This quest for a truly diverse market place led the government to allow private airlines in the Nigerian sky and multiple phone companies in the country. It appears that the government   has not done enough educating the Nigerian on the street about the reason for government action. The ministry of information has its work cut out for it but it seems not to be bothered. They are more interested in traveling abroad collecting estacode or allowances for foreign travel and courting foreign investors than preparing the public to understand what the government is doing to improve the condition of the masses. If the masses were aware that the Balogun Market protesters were actually against their interests the protesters would not have seen the light of day. In fact, they would not have embarked on any such protests since they would have known that it was against the law or at the very least, against common sense.

In the last paragraph, I mentioned that the government opened the sky over Nigeria to private airlines. In the aviation sector, we have a body similar to the Balogun Market branch of the Bags and Leatherwear Association of Nigeria in the Aircraft or Airline Operators Association of Nigeria. You would think that this body is a legitimate trade organization until you realize that it is actually a price fixing body for the private airlines. They fix ticket prices such that individual airlines dare not deviate from the prices that have been jointly agreed to the detriment of the Nigerian public. The government of Nigeria agonizes over ticket prices and allows more airlines to be registered for increased competition among the airlines, but what does the government get? It gets less competition as each newly formed airline joins the so-called Operators and raises ticket prices to the level dictated by the Operators. We find similar associations in virtually all areas of human endeavor requiring competitive pricing in Nigeria. The practice of price fixing is done with Cement, building blocks, food, including yams, rice, gari, transport fares, etc. In fact, with   regard to transport fares, I was traveling to Abuja on one of the so-called luxury buses last July.

I was told that the price for the journey had been fixed but as they were taking less than the “association” fixed price, they would only write the fixed price on my ticket while they took the lower price from me! This way if confronted by those who check, they would find that the bus transport company was complying with the association price for the journey. This is very distressing. So, an operator who has reasons to want to charge less for the trip cannot because he would have to pay a price for not towing the line of the association that has designated a price that all operators must charge their passengers. The end result is that Nigerians are taken by their own people. Nigerians have nowhere to turn to reduce the burden of daily living. They endure hardships occasioned by the very people with whom they live and people who cannot meet the challenges of the day, simply fall through the cracks. Because there is no enforcement of anti-competition   measures, people live at the mercy of the sellers in the society. That is why during the holiday periods, you name it, Christmas, New Year, Eid El Fitre, Eid El Maulud, Easter, or what have you, prices often hit the roof with the price of every commodity having been fixed by the various associations. The prices of rice, tomato, fish, egusi, maggi, etc are all fixed. This scenario must cease if Nigeria must move forward as a country where the needs of everyone is taken into account, rather than the way it is at the moment where only the rich and the suppliers or sellers are doing well and holding all others to ransom. It is high time the nation’s law enforcement held the feet of all sellers to the fire for them to be truly competitive. If anti-competition laws are not in the Nigerian law books, the legislators must keep busy to institute them because that is the only way the legislators can be seen to be doing some good for the people they represent.

Capt. Philip A. Ikomi, Ph.D.

Former Airline Captain, Former Truck Driver, Retired Professor

Philip A. Ikomi is an Industrial/Organizational Psychologist

Feedback: Email: philikomi@Yahoo.com

Interested in more: Read my published books:

1.       Manual of Radiotelephony for Airline and other Pilots… http://www.buybooksontheweb.com/product.aspx?ISBN=0-7414-4882-3

2.       The Successful Truck Driver: http://www.buybooksontheweb.com/product.aspx?ISBN=0-7414-3936-0#

3.       Neuropsychological and Behavioral Evidence: People are slaves…:

http://www.buybooksontheweb.com/product.aspx?ISBN=0-7414-6253-2

See me on face book. http://www.facebook.com/#!/philikomi

The ill fated plane

Dear Editor:

I would like to first of all send my heart-felt condolences to all whose loved ones lost their lives in both the air cargo accident in Ghana and the Dana flight in the suburbs of Lagos.

On Saturday, June 2, 2012 a Nigerian registered cargo plane operated by Allied Air ploughed through the airport perimeter into the highway outside the Kotoka International Airport Accra, Ghana. This plane had landed and somehow was unable to stop within the confines of the runway and so ended on the highway where it collided with a passenger carrying bus with the collision resulting in the untimely death of ten people according to news reports. What do we make of this? There are several plausible reasons the plane could not stop. The primary one is that the runway was wet and slippery and as a result there was inadequate friction between the tyres of the plane and the runway asphalt which would ordinarily permit it to stop within the tabulated landing distance taking the prevailing weight, density altitude or runway elevation and atmospheric temperature into consideration. However, before you even consider the frictional forces, you have to have the plane touch down at a specific distance within the runway because if the plane touched down further down the runway than the performance charts assumed for the determination of its stopping distance, it obviously will not stop at the end of the runway’s stopping distance available. Touching down within the first four hundred and sixty meters (fifteen hundred feet) of the runway threshold is generally the spot recommended for a jet aircraft to target in order to stop within the performance limiting stopping distance of such an aircraft.

Thus the investigators will be checking through observation of the skid marks whether or not the plane touched down within the first four hundred and sixty meters (fifteen hundred feet) of the threshold of the runway. To be able to touch down on this spot, the airplane has to be flown down a three degree or a little higher glide path to the runway depending on the noise level permitted over the terrain below the glide path. If the terrain below the glide path does not permit a lot of noise, the glide path has to be higher than a three-degree slope. Now, every aircraft has an optimal approach speed in the landing configuration which depends on the weight of the airplane and which the pilot must diligently fly to the runway threshold before commencing the reduction of speed to flare out and touch down. If a pilot allows this speed to get out of hand and the airplane is either too slow or too fast, then the plane would not likely make the targeted touchdown spot. If the plane was slower, it could stall and fall short; however, if faster, it may overshoot the spot and require a longer stopping distance which the runway may not have.

So far, I have not talked about the nature of the plane in terms of whether or not it is a new or old plane. Normally no aviation personnel talks about old or new planes because aviators do not see a difference between the new and the old. We see planes through their performance and serviceability to fly. For commercial jet airplanes there are components that enable the pilot to effect changes in the tabulated landing distance of the plane. One of these components is the thrust reversers to reverse the forward thrust enabling the airplane to slow down considerably more than using brakes alone to stop the plane after landing. In addition to these are the ground spoilers which “spoil” the airflow over the wings when deployed on the ground after landing so that the plane does not move as smoothly through the air when on ground thus augmenting the retardation necessary to stop the plane. For various reasons, these two components are at times faulty and become inoperable when they are most needed.

At times, the thrust reversers are not working and at other times, it’s the spoilers that are deactivated. When you have good brakes and the runway is not wet, you could land without using the spoilers and if you have a long runway and the plane is not heavy, you may do without using the thrust reversers. When there is precipitation on the runway and the plane is fully laden, you need every device you have to enable you stop within the recommended distance or your plane could plough through the airport’s perimeter fence. In effect, the cargo plane disaster could have occurred for a number of reasons and only a thorough investigation can identify the cause or causes. The possible though not exhaustive causes are: Speed during the approach—higher speed than the recommended approach speed at touch down could lead to inability to stop and the blowing of tyres caused by the excessive use of brakes to force the plane to stop after landing. Higher touch down speed could also result in the tyres not establishing contact with the runway and thereby sliding along, a phenomenon known as hydroplaning or aquaplaning. When a plane hydroplanes, the brakes are ineffective, but the reversers and spoilers are effective. However, if the latter two are unserviceable, then the plane may not stop. Thus component failures—reversers and spoilers and even brake failures could have led to this result. Finally touching down further down the runway could also have resulted in this disaster.

The Dana flight is the other crash by a Nigerian registered plane that happened in Lagos state the next day (June 3, 2012) after the cargo plane crashed in Ghana. This flight has been extensively written about in the news media. This is understandable because of the huge loss of lives. Many of us were touched by this and I share their grief for the loss of dear ones. The most significant claim is that the plane had “hydraulic” problems and that the management did nothing about this only continuing the plane in service. (see Oyetunji Abioye’s story in Punch of June 5, 2012:   http://odili.net/news/source/2012/jun/5/838.html ) (In addition, see Hugo Odiogor and Lawani Mikairu’s Vanguard on line of June 5, 2012: http://odili.net/news/source/2012/jun/5/332.html

However Dana officials denied this claim saying the plane was flight tested to Ibadan on Saturday June 2, 2012 and flew several trips already on Sunday June 3, 2012 without any incident before the final fatal flight which was the fourth flight that day. This report was in Punch on-line of June 5, 2012 where reporter Oyetunde Abioye further reported that the Dana Air Director of Flight operations said that the plane went from Lagos to Abuja, returned to Lagos and was on its way back from Abuja, which was its fourth trip between Lagos and Abuja before   it crashed around 4pm.   The Director said:

“The plane, 5N-RAM, left Lagos for Abuja at 7:47am on flight number 999. It later came back to Lagos on flight 998. It left back for Abuja again on flight number 993. It was on its way back to Lagos on flight 992 when it crashed.”

It is possible that the plane came down as a result of an engine trouble. In fact, it’s been reported that Oscar Wason of Dana Air told CNN that the American captain of the flight had reported engine trouble to the control tower shortly before the crash. I have read reports too about possible fire being the cause of the disaster. However one has to carefully examine all available reports to see where the evidence leads. Eye witness accounts may not be accurate taken as the only evidence but one can make inferences from eye witness accounts when they are the only sources one has. For instance, while the twin towers of the World Trade Center were crumbling reporters on the scene were reporting that they were hearing deafening explosions. People who came out of the buildings were also reporting explosions from the basement of the buildings where no airplanes struck. The whole buildings were pulverized and yet the 911 Commission report said that there were no explosions and the buildings came down due to fire burning through. I have read in the newspapers on line that some eye witnesses of the Dana crash said that they saw the plane moving in an uncontrollable fashion in the air, coming lower and lower and at a point started climbing up, only to come down again and crash into the building. Some others reported that they saw the plane hit a building burst into flames and exploded. Some others have reported that they saw the engine on fire. From all these one could infer that perhaps the plane started losing altitude as a result of an engine failure because it was reported above that the plane was losing altitude.

As a former airline captain involved in training other pilots and examining them to issue them with their type rating so they could fly a particular type of jet plane, and as a former instrument rating examiner, I can infer from the eyewitness report that said that the plane was moving in an uncontrollable fashion that they probably had an engine failure. This inference is based on my knowledge of the flying characteristics of a plane after the simulated /or actual loss of an engine in a two-engine plane. I have practiced simulated engine out procedures several times over with my colleagues who wanted to do their type ratings or who were renewing their base checks and I have had to demonstrate my own competence several times over my life as a pilot. So, I know from the eyewitness that the plane   was losing height or altitude and it was moving uncontrollably. I also know from eye witness reports that the plane managed to climb a bit during this period before it hit the building. What does the slight climb tell me? It tells me that the airplane had a functioning engine, that is, it did not lose both engines due to engine failure. In other words it had an engine which was still running and in fact, you could also infer that it was because of the running engine that the path was zig zag. If it did not have an asymmetrical distribution of thrust at the initial stages when it was losing altitude it would have come down in a straight path. Now what are the expectations?

A twin engine airplane, like the Dana Air plane that crashed does not have to crash simply because of a loss of an engine eleven miles to the runway as reported. It was reported that it was about eleven miles to the airport by some papers. In case of an engine failure, the pilot flying puts all required effort to ensure the plane continues to fly in a straight path, not a ziz zag path or uncontrollably as reported by the eye witness. If the plane is not stabilized in a straight path, the forces acting on it would result in its losing altitude excessively. The next thing the pilot has to do after stabilizing the flight path is to ensure that the dead engine is cleaned up. This is usually done by shutting the failed engine by closing the throttles and fuel valves and if it was a fire that caused the engine malfunction, you fire the extinguishers on the failed engine. I would not want to believe that both engines failed here. In fact as I said earlier, the plane was flying in other than a straight path, indicating that the pilots somehow did not stabilize the flight path and the airplane engines were delivering asymmetrical thrust to the engines. Now, the plane is not stabilized and worse, the second engine which was functioning was inadvertently shut down! This I infer from the fact that the plane was reported to climb a bit before descending again. This means that the wrong engine was probably shut down in the ensuing panic from the failure of the first engine. Now the airplane cannot possibly fly again but headed downwards. It is not an unheard of event for a pilot to shut down a functioning engine when one engine has failed. I have had pilots doing their recurrent tests do this during simulated engine failures. One real life instance was in January 8, 1989 in a British Midlands airplane, a Boeing 737-400 where the pilot mistakenly shut down the right functioning engine when it was the left that was malfunctioning (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kegworth_air_disaster#Causes

A thorough investigation will pinpoint the cause of the accident. If one engine failed and the other was shut down inadvertently the records in the engine data recorder will show it. If both engines failed simultaneously, which is possible but highly unlikely, that will also be known from the data recorder or black box. In fact, the entire last thirty minutes of the flight until the crash which would include the performance of the airplane parameters, like the speed, the position of the engine actuators and its indicators, the flaps, landing gear, outside air temperature and forces acting on the plane,( eg,g-loads) and others will be recorded. So next time you hear of an accident you don’t think of old or new airplanes, but the performance of the crew because in most accidents, pilot error is a huge concern. Engines are made extremely reliable these days and the human element is still the weakest link. For that reason, manufacturers have looked into automating a lot of elements in the cockpit. This automation was again called into question because of the interaction between the human pilot and the components of the automated system. I looked into this several years ago to determine if cockpit automation led to more accidents compared to mechanical failures or other causes and found that automation resulted in far less accidents than mechanical or other causes . My findings were published in a chapter in E. Salas (Ed.),

Advances in Human Performance and Cognitive Engineering Research ,VOL. 2.   Boston, MA: Elsevier Science.

I have flown extensively in the Nigerian airspace and I have had my share of an accident although no life was lost nor did anybody sustain injury. However, the airplane was destroyed as I careened off the runway into the side strip. The problem was a poorly maintained airplane that should not have been flying. It was my first flight on the plane and I had only just joined the airline so I was not familiar with the plane to know that it had a tendency to veer off the runway which all other pilots knew about. Thus I was not ready for what took me by surprise but as someone who was quite conscientious in my calling I managed to control the airplane avoiding a calamity. To this day, I have not seen a report of that accident. I want to use this medium to call on the NCAA to publish all accident reports as the NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) of the US does so that pilots can learn from their mistakes. It is no use saying that accidents will be thoroughly investigated only to confine the findings to the vaults of the NCAA with no members of the pubic having access to them. The data I used for my automation research covering a period of sixteen years from 1983 to 1999 came from the NTSB data base on the World Wide Web (WWW). The NCAA of Nigeria should publish their accident reports as soon as they occur the same way the NTSB does, on the WWW. The NTSB publishes an initial report which is usually a sketch of what happened and a more detailed report is published when all facts are in after a thorough investigation. There is no reason Nigeria should not do the same.   We even have a greater need to show our people the reasons we have so many accidents so that they can be better prepared to avoid them.

Philip A. Ikomi, Ph.D.

Retired Airline Pilot and Psychology Professor

Philip A. Ikomi is an Industrial/Organizational Psychologist

Feedback: philikomi@yahoo.com

By Dr. Philip Ikomi | NNP | May 24, 2012 –

It is incomprehensible to me that even in Nigeria of today, armed forces personnel and the police have not been told in clear unambiguous terms that they cannot disturb the flow of traffic on our roads for any reason, no matter how highly placed the officer may be. I believe this and other civil conduct should be drilled into the ears of our military and police personnel while they are still in school and it should be enforced with severe penalties to any erring personnel. In fact, our legislators should have long addressed this kind of situation when it was manifestly clear that members of the armed forces and police and governors and senators and representatives have had the roads cleared for them to pass on several occasions and in many of those occasions, ordinary citizens have been brutalized, maimed, or even killed. The only person in Nigeria who should have roads cleared for him is the President of Nigeria. Nobody else deserves such an honour. I have watched in disgust as military officers drive against the normal flow of traffic with shear disregard for other road users. In fact, on one occasion, I was at Mile 2 junction on the Badagry Express Way when an army non-commissioned officer wielding a Koboko, came to the junction, whipped the traffic officer, and pushed him aside while he controlled the traffic until his convoy came along and he then passed it and hopped on and left. The traffic officer was completely helpless and was groaning under the weight of that assault before bystanders came to his aid. This is very disgraceful for a Nigerian citizen doing his lawful duty. Where are the authorities when such incidents are happening? I have also asked a police officer at a road junction where they were passing traffic why she allowed an officer to pass driving opposite the traffic and she said that the person was an officer. Well, I told her that she should have arrested the officer. When I said that she said she did not want to be punished for arresting her superior. If this is the thinking of the police on the matter of an officer breaking the law, it is apparent that the police believe that their officers are above the law.

Nigeria cannot make progress and give her people a better life if there is no law and order and obedience and compliance with the law. If there are no sanctions against the breaking of the laws of the land, everybody loses, including those who feel they are now at an advantage because they can break the law with impunity. Therefore, it is urgently necessary   that laws should be enforced fairly, evenly and everyone should be accountable for their behavior under the law.

In the case reported in the article in question, it was reported that the Naval officer to whom it was reported sent an apology. After breaking the law, beating someone who was trying to enforce the law in the course of his duty, a simple apology should not be seen as enough. Prosecution to the full extent of the law is required. The Navy has the responsibility to investigate the matter fully, and bring those responsible for beating the traffic officers to justice in our courts of law.

There is no reason we in Nigeria should say we are practicing democracy in which the people are not equal. The people in other lands, like the European Union member countries and the United States for example do not have their police and military clearing the citizens off the streets to make way for the officers to go to work, airport, or any other place that they are in a hurry to get to. Those countries all have traffic congestion and people and the military, even when the United States is at war remain patiently in their vehicles as the traffic moves slowly along. Nigerian military, the governors, and others must do the same. We can no longer see our country as different from those countries because we are not different. The only difference is the level of our development. We have a constitution that stipulates the relationship between the people and the armed forces and police and nowhere in that constitution does it suggest that ordinary citizens should yield right of way to military personnel or the governors   in the ordinary course of the day. In exceptional cases such as when there is a war or an emergency and emergency vehicles clearly so marked need a right of way, they will be accorded such right. Nigerians are already living in sub-perfect conditions and as such they do not deserve any additional undue stress being added to their situation on the roads. This menace whereby anybody with any rank or official insignia bulldozes his or her way through the streets of our country should be stopped immediately. Everybody should be under the law and all errant people including military officers who should really be the exemplars of law abiding citizens, should be brought to justice. I hereby urge Nigerian citizens to refuse to pull their vehicles off the roads when these military or gubernatorial vehicles come around threatening them with eviction from the roads. The orders are illegal. The police or military have no right under the Nigerian constitution to evict or beat up any citizen on the roads. They should have that drilled into their consciousness in the military or police academies and the police university that they now have.

Philip A. Ikomi, Ph.D.

Retired Airline Captain and Retired Professor of Psychology

Philip Ikomi is an Industrial/Organizational Psychologist

Email for feedback: philikomi@yahoo.com

Dear Inspector General: 

I am dismayed by your alleged utterance on the occasion of the inauguration of the Police Savings and Loans Board at the Force Headquarters in Abuja reported in the Punch newspaper on-line on May 17, 2012. You were quoted as saying the following, “The worst are those who died in active service as their families are generally ejected from either rented or official abodes before the end of their mourning period.” This was said in regard to your observation that the officers , men, and women of the Nigeria Police Force are corrupt and immoral. This is a very sad day for   me as a Nigerian. I say this because you have just indicated that you will now do nothing about the corruption and immorality of your officers and the rank and file because you have given a reason for them to be corrupt. If I were the President who appointed you, you will be history the moment you finished the statements you made at that inaugural. I will then start to get another IG who will not capitulate to corruption and immorality but would try his or her best effort to stamp the vice out of the Force.

Since the President will not do what I just said I would have done, let’s see why it was wrong for you   to have said what you said and why I would have summarily removed you from office. For one thing, it is fine to admit openly that the officers, rank and file are corrupt but you do not follow up with reasons you think they are corrupt. Once you do that you are, in other words endorsing the corruption. You are giving all those who are corrupt the reason they should continue and actually intensify the corruption because it is, according to you, their supreme head, what they have to do since they are not being properly catered to by the government, your employer. Where in the world would you remain with an employer while you are pointing accusing fingers to the employer that they are not paying you enough and so you have to do illegal things to make ends mee?. What you are doing by accusing the government of not taking proper care of the police is saying that the government, which still employs you is not doing enough for your welfare and you are angry with her. If that is the case though, you should not be in that organization. Therefore, President Jonathan should ask for your immediate resignation since you have openly given the government a rejection of the terms of your employment with her. Another consequence of your speech would be that the general public would now feel completely vulnerable and unprotected from   police brutality, extortion, false arrests and imprisonments, illegal beatings, summary extra judicial executions, illegal dispossessions of personal property and beatings. The police would now have your endorsement to continue to give false testimony in courts and to take bribe from members of the public in order to falsely accuse people who do not give the police the pay offs. In addition, you can expect a reoccurrence of the notorious road blocks where many Nigerians you swore to protect have met their untimely deaths in the hands of corrupt men and women of your police organization through such nefarious practices as “accidental discharge” of their Force issued firearms. These are just some of the ways corruption and immorality manifest themselves; and you have just made the police officers and their rank and file a bit more comfortable as they carry on with their outrageous and illegal behavior.

I think you should be told that the burden being borne by your officers and rank and file as it concerns the Nigerian nation is not limited to the police alone. The majority of Nigerians are employed by the Nigerian governments—federal, state, and local. The practice of not looking after the people in the Force is equally applicable to all federal, state, and local government employees. Harrowing tales of non-payment of retirement benefits are not limited to members of the Nigeria Police. As I mentioned earlier, the majority of Nigerians are in the same predicament as all branches of government in Nigeria subject their workers to this dire situation. So, does that justify Nigerians to be corrupt? Besides, the rest of Nigerians fend for themselves as truck pushers, road side mechanics, market traders, street traders, carpenters, private bus and taxi drivers, artisans, and others who are mostly self-employed and make very little money to feed from day to day.   These people include those that are homeless and sleep under the bridges at night. In their corrupt practices, the police go and pick up these individuals and lock them up or parade them as armed robbers when they feel like showing off their heroism and sense of duty to the public. What should such people say about the government if the head of the police force should say that the government is not taking care of them enough and so they are corrupt? I bet you think they don’t count. I think you should know that as a police officer or rank and file member of the Nigeria Police, you are the lucky ones in Nigeria. You should not cease to celebrate your luck by giving thanks to the government for taking care of you and paying your salaries.

There are millions of Nigerians working like you in government as civil servants and millions more who fend for themselves and do not receive pay from the government but have to stay in the sun or rain , on the streets and farming fields of Nigeria trying to make a little something because the government seems not to realize that ALL Nigerians are to be taken care of. You should not fail to take these latter Nigerians into consideration when you try to justify the unjustifiable corruption in the police force. Because Nigeria had been ruled by the armed forces for the larger part of the Nigerian existence as a nation, the government devotes quite a disproportionate part of its income to the armed forces and the police. The police was made a part of the armed forces under the government of General Yakubu Gowon and they are still being regarded as such today even though there is a police service commission and the pay is so harmonized. The armed forces and the police are not the only government entities in the country. There are also the civil servants and the people who serve in the parastatals. The police should not be allowed to give some flimsy excuses for poor performance of their primary duty which is protecting life and property of Nigerians in all walks of life. For a police force that should be protecting the rest of the country to say that they have to be corrupt and immoral because they are not getting their dues from the government smacks of irresponsibility and sheer disdain for the high position of the IG. The IG should be looking for ways to reduce corruption in the force, not encouraging it.

There are several obvious ways to supervise and ensure that police men and women are corruption free in Nigeria. It seems that the IG does not think of any of those ways. For instance, how many plain clothes police officers have you heard of arresting police who have falsely arrested an Okada driver ? Many Okada drivers have been falsely arrested every day since the road blocks were removed in Lagos so that the police could continue their extortions from the motorcycle drivers. What about plain clothes police officers arresting police who have beaten up somebody for not giving them money at various locations where police have been posted to oversee the conduct of various government businesses? If police men and women know that there are consequences for their actions they will not feel like they have the authority to make or unmake as they now feel and with impunity too. Immediate accountability is sorely needed in the Nigerian Police Force, not more excuses for corruption and immorality. Serious crimes like murder are openly committed but remain unsolved because individual police have no one looking over their shoulders. Each one and his or her supervisor become friends to share the booty. What is the IG doing about this? He should be able to come up with creative   and innovative ways to ensure that crimes are solved   quickly and fairly. Police men and women use the police powers in personal ways to solve personal disputes, to arrest, judge, and punish. This should not be the case. The police should only make an arrest and present the person arrested at the court. They are not authorized to beat up an individual or release an arrestee before they are presented before a competent judge or magistrate. However, they do this all the time. What is the IG doing about this practice. The members of the public need to be educated on some of their more obvious rights under the Nigerian legal system so that they can recognize abuse by the police when it arises. This is a very important part of the job of the IG in the highly illiterate Nigerian society where many market women and men look at the police with awe and unwittingly give them the opportunity to lord it over them. Nigeria and Nigerians deserve a better police force and IG.

Sincerely,

Capt. Philip A. Ikomi, Ph.D., is a retired airline captain and retired Professor of Psychology. He is an Industrial/Organizational Psychologist.
Feedback: philikomi@yahoo.com

By Philip Ikomi  | NNP | March 24, 2012 -

No developing country that has religiously followed the prescriptions of the bank for managing their economies has ever succeeded. Country after country has undergone structural changes of all sorts with high hopes of getting out of underdevelopment and failed to make it.People in these countries have undergone all manner of economic deprivations and sacrifices being goaded along by their partially blind and unsuspecting governments and their officials. The case of Argentina a few years ago brought it all to light when the country that was the darling of the World Bank and its sister the IMF was unable to pay her creditors. Argentina decided to deal with it in her own way and came out smelling like roses. Argentina was among the few countries that still had its head above water in the last recession that swept across the world. Agentina is still thriving in spite of doom’s day predictions by elements that are bent on placing everyone in the hands of the World Bank and its promoters. The economist, Ha-Joon Chang has written in his “Bad Samaritans” how the only countries that have become developed are those that pursued avenues to development that kept out the World Bank and IMF while working on their own.

Were Dr. Okonjo-Iweala to become the next President of the World Bank, does anybody think that she will change the policies of the bank? Unfortunately, it is not likely. Back in 1984 one of the World Bank’s conditions on loans to Nigeria was that Nigeria should stop funding university education beyond the undergraduate level and concentrate on basic education. By all accounts, Nigeria under Buhari and Idiagbon complied fully beause this writer was one of those about to be denied graduate education as a result of that conditionality on the World Bank loan. The Nigerian Central Bank would not release funds for graduate school for me because Buhari and Idiagbon were enforcing this ridiculous and self destructive conditionality on the World Bank loan to Nigeria. In hind sight, a large deficit in the number of Nigerians with graduate level education must have resulted from the imposition of this dictate of the World Bank on the Nigerian state. Both Buhari and Idiagbon apparently knew no better and so did not reject the loan or the conditions placed on it. This behavior is typical of all Nigerian leaders. They have tried their utmost best to carry out whatever the World Bank and IMF threw at them, hook, line, and sinker. General Obasanjo was equally a follower of the impositions of the World Bank and IMF as evidenced in the suffering of Nigerians under the yoke of IMF. Some of us still remember the structural adjustments and Operation Feed the Nation (OFN) and other tactics used by Obj in the service of foreign loan sharks.

IBB rushed to devalue the Naira and to open the flood gate of imports from anywhere because the World Bank and IMF had the liberalization of importation and the devaluation of the Naira as conditions for loans to Nigeria. The World Bank and IMF were the ones that said they would not fund Ajaokuta Steel Complex as it was cheaper for Nigeria to get her steel products from imports rather than making them domestically. Babangida who had requested the funding said that in that case, he would go ahead with the steel complex without their loan and today we know how that went. (Steel is the mother of industrialization and if a country could make steel products, that country is half way to being industrialized. Hence it should be clear why the World Bank and IMF would not want Nigeria to make its own steel). A few years ago, an old classmate told me he was a consultant to the World Bank (WB) in their loans to state governments to build rural roads to farms in order to bring out produce. You might think that this is a great idea until you ask about the produce that is to be carried on the roads. The fact is that many Nigerians have left the rural areas for the towns and cities and Nigerians are not farming. There is therefore no need to build roads that will lie unused for years to come. That has hapapened in my village, now a local government headquarters. This local government headquarters has a road well constructed but not used and grass is growing all over it.

What should be done is for the government to start a campaign to move the youth back to the rural areas and when that has succeeded, they can start the farms and then construct the roads. It is a waste of funds for roads to be available without their being used. However, because the World Bank has been rejected elsewhere in the world (countries in South America especially), they started concentrating their efforts on Nigeria and other less fortunate countries with gullible leaders. They can say that they are making their loan targets as people like my former class mate would be happy saying that they are WB consultants and receiving money to throw away and pile debt on Nigerian children yet unborn. In fact, my classmate pointed out that the loans were being disbursed directly to those doing the work because the Nigerian government was too corrupt. Corruption is the fall guy. Corruption has been used to hoodwink Nigerians while all manner of chicanry is carried out by the World Bank, IMF and foreign politicians. If any NIgerian still thinks that the World Bank and IMF are working to promote development in developing countries, he should think again. The only benefit of Okonjo-Iweala’s appointment as President of the WB would be her salary’s inflow into the country. But of course, she would not be living in Nigeria and therefore we cannot even hope for that. 
 
Philip A. Ikomi is a Retired Airline Pilot and Professor of I/O  Psychology