YET, under section 23 of the proposed anti-progress Law, “Any organization registered under this Act shall not be entitled to diplomatic or consular privileges or immunities”, a provision designed to starve NGOs of funds.
Then section 24 covers the field, as it were, by providing that, under the pain of a prohibitive fine of N500,000 or imprisonment for eighteen months, “it shall be an offence for any person to operate a Non-Governmental Organization in Nigeria for welfare, research, health relief, agriculture, education, industry, the supply of amenities or any other similar purposes without registration and certificate under this Act” (the dog-in-the- manger provision).
If and whenever an NGO obtains any funds from any quarters, national or international, according to this Bill, the NGO must not only disclose its source(s) of income but must render an account (a financial statement of its expenses, subject to periodic audit by the Federal Government). In default of this provision, the defaulter(s) will be liable to imprisonment for up to 18 months. Imagine the les Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF) (Doctors without Borders), a Non-Governmental Organization, advancing the cause of humanity and best known in war-torn regions and in developing countries afflicted by endemic diseases, being required by the French Government to show the sources of their income and the use thereof or creating a Commission and a Board to supervise their activities! The NGOs in Nigeria are to this country what the MSF is to the international community.
Since Churches are categorized as NGOs or Civil Society Organizations, the NGO Regulatory Bill is patently a political subterfuge to bring Christianity under Government control with a grand design to arrest its growth and expansion by supervising and monitoring its operations as well as superintending the activities of its clerics; yet steering clear of religion and religious matters by a government, any government, is the beginning of wisdom. That was the gravamen of the very First Amendment of the US Constitution in 1791, when the US Government distanced itself from all religious matters. In the language of the First Amendment, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
The Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (as amended), though an amalgam of irreconcilable inconsistencies, enshrines secularity in its section 10 and the fundamental freedoms of worship, speech and association in its Chapter Four. Similar and identical provisions can be found in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), in the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (domesticated as Cap. 10, LFN. 1990) and in several Treaties and Conventions to which Nigeria is signatory. The NGO Regulatory Bill must NEVER become Law.

ABUJA — AT the commencement of Judiciary’s new legal year last week in Abuja, the Chief Justice of Nigeria, CJN, Justice Walter Onnoghen, read riot act to judges. He threatened to wield the big stick against corrupt judicial officers.

BOTHERED by the decadence in  virtually all sectors, the Institute for National Transformation, a non-governmental organisation, is set to train 21,000 Nigerians across various sectors as it marks its 10th anniversary.

By Innocent Anaba Twelve representatives of Owerri community have dragged the Imo State Governor, Mr Rochas Okoroha before an Imo State High Court, challenging the illegal removal of Eke Ukwu market situated at Owerri and the demolition of the said market despite the subsistence of a pending suit and a restraining court order. They want […]

PORT HARCOURT— Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State, yesterday assigned portfolios to 19 newly-sworn in Commissioners, with Mr Emma Okah as his new commissioner for Information.

RECENTLY a sitting Senator Hamman Misau, who is also a retired police officer leveled humongous allegations against the Inspector General of Police, Mr. Ibrahim Idris.

Jos—THE Christian Council of Nigeria, CCN, has called on government at all levels and non-governmental organisations not to feel satisfied only with the provision of relief materials to victims of violence, but to set up trauma healing centres that will help victims overcome depression.

MAKURDI—Former Commissioner of Police, and the current Public Complaints Commissioner for Benue State, Alhaji Abubakar Tsav, has been advised by a Makurdi Magistrate’s Court judge, Justice Isaac Ajim, to bury his pride and tender a public apology to Governor Samuel Ortom, if he knew he had done wrong.

NISSAN Motor Co., Ltd. has reached a new milestone with 150 million vehicles produced globally. It took 73 years for Nissan to produce its first 100 million vehicles after the company was  founded in 1933, and another 11 years to build the last 50 million.

ILORIN—Governor Abdulfatah Ahmed of Kwara State, yesterday, wielded the big stick against the two warring monarchs of Odo-Owa and Iloffa in Oke-Ero Local Government Area of the state, ordering that they forfeit three months salaries.