July 12, 2015

Newspaper of the Year

Suicide bombers strike near Maiduguri DSS Office Page 6

Gunmen kill traditional ruler, 3 others Page 7

Three killed, five Insurgents seize 14 die in Chad Zaria terror attack could have injured in attack Damaturu highway suicide bombing been averted, says El-Rufai

Nigeria’s widest circulating newspaper

Vol.09, No. 3274

TRUTH IN DEFENCE OF FREEDOM

SUNDAY

N200.00

JULY 12, 2015

Buhari sacks Tafida, Bianca, Maduekwe, Farounbi, others President Page 4 recalls political appointees serving as envoys abroad

•Tafida

•Ojukwu

•Maduekwe

•Farounbi

•L-R: Benin Republic Prime Minister, Mr. Lionel Zinsou; Vice President Yemi Osinbajo; Founder, Tony Elumelu Foundation, Mr. Tony Elumelu; and Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai at the $100 Million Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurship Programme (TEEP) boot camp for 1000 entrepreneurs from 51 countries across Africa, at Ota, Ogun State yesterday.

APC,PDPINWAROFWORDSOVERRIVERSLGs Wike must obey court injunction, say sacked chairmen Page 5

•Njeze

Serena Williams is Wimbledon

champion Page 70

PAGE 2

THE NATION ON SUNDAY JULY 12, 2015

Briton in court for racist slur against Nigerians

CAPTURED

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YEOVIL, England pensioner who allegedly made offensive and racist remarks about his former Nigerian employee has appeared in court charged with sending malicious communications.

William Harding, 70, of Huish, appeared before Somerset Magistrates sitting at Yeovil.

He was charged that between August 18 and September 30 last year at Yeovil, he sent by means of a public electronic communications network, namely a counter-claim to the small claims court, a message that was grossly offensive or of an obscene character.

Prosecutor Joanne Pearce said that the defendant had allegedly filled in a form to the small claims court saying the victim was a “typical thieving Nigerian”.

He is also alleged to have stated: “I don’t think God made a worse race than Nigerians, I’ve not come across an honest one yet.”

Harding pleaded not guilty to the offence saying he did not intend to cause any offence and did not think the victim would have been offended by the remarks.

Following a review of the case the magistrates adjourned the mater until September 23 when Harding must return to the court for a trial to take place.

In the meantime he was released on unconditional bail.

The faded warning posted on the crumbling walls of this building is a fairly familiar one: “This house is not for sale.” Any suggestion that PHOTO:MIYIWA HASSAN those who fail to heed the warning could wind up in one of these two caskets? Draw your own conclusion!

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F all the problems besetting the Muahammadu Buhari presidency, especially soon after he assumed office, the most intriguing must be the needless misunderstanding between the president’s Aide de Camp (ADC), Lt.Col. Lawal Abubakar, and the now redeployed president’s Chief Security Officer (CSO), Abdulrahman Mani.

The misunderstanding centred on who should perform close protection duties for the president: the Department of State Services (DSS) or the military. The ADC, perhaps reflecting the mood of the presidency, preferred the military, while the DSS believed that that duty should be performed by the secret service. When the tiff began, no one was sure where the president leaned.

After Mr Mani’s redeployment, it became clear how the president voted.

There are arguments

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N a three-pronged bailout that does not include a drawdown on Excess Crude Account (ECA), the Buhari presidency has approved the disbursement of targetted funds to states to help them overcome their crippling cash crunch. The funds are sourced from NLNG proceeds of almost N414bn, CBN-packaged soft loans of about N300bn, and restructured commercial loans totalling some N600bn organised by Debt Management Office (DMO).

In all, over N700bn cash will be made available to the federal government and the states in a matter of weeks.

The injection is expected to reflate the economy and ease

Caveat emptor

sunday@thenationonlineng.net

Needless Aso Villa security tiff about who is statutorily empowered to provide the president close protection (inner ring) in a three concentric circles security system. The balance of argument tilts in favour of the DSS. But there are also arguments about the president reserving the right to determine who should perform that function, notwithstanding what the law and convention say. Sadly, public discourse on the matter, which should have been done exhaustively and with flourish, has been unadvisedly curtailed by general indifference. It seems everyone has deferred to the president’s wish.

However, public discourse and a broad examination of what the statutes say about the

subject should lead the country to establish and follow conventions, until such conventions are amended by, again, broad, public consensus.

Three important issues flow from the controversy.

One, even if the disagreement was inevitable, it was important it should not have broken out so embarrassingly into the open as it did. The president’s ADC unprecedentedly issued an order directing the DSS operatives to vacate their close body protection duty posts, when that order should have come from the DSS. And the CSO himself openly and scathingly rebuked the ADC, making it impossible for any middle ground to be agreed.

In addition, it remains a

mystery that the president, over whom the two officers quarreled, should fail to intervene when the tiff was at its infancy. If the president recognised that the misunderstanding gave an unflattering image of his presidency, and in particular of his mastery of governance, he would probably have intervened much earlier.

Two, the misunderstanding was also indicative of some of the dangers the president may face in the early period of his presidency for as long as he defers appointing his advisory team. Had he assembled a team of advisers, collective and dispassionate reasoning would have helped him nip the problem in the bud before it became a public

A bailout and its aftermath

political tension in the about 24 states enmeshed in the financial quagmire.

This is probably the most remarkable step taken by the B u h a r i presidency since its inauguration more than a month ago.

Unlike the sanctimonious Goodluck Jonathan government before it, the new government recognises the security and economic implications of the salaries crisis, and has taken

concrete steps to ameliorate it. Yet, this is a mere palliative. If some 12 states imaginatively and creatively managed their economies away from that cul-desac, it implied that the crises-ridden states were either less clever in f i n a n c i a l management or, despite their loud protestations, more unwisely adventurous and reckless.

There will likely not be another bailout, at least not in

the next four years. The stricken states must therefore find ways of recalibrating their economies, engaging financial managers to reexamine their finances and staffing, conceiving fewer idealistic or legacy projects, and living and working within their means. It is inconceivable that state Houses of Assembly do not have qualified lawmakers to take their governments to task on the management of state resources. They should now be less patronising of their governors and parties by insisting that sensible and workable policies must be approved and implemented.

embarrassment. Even after the tiff, the president had still not felt the urgent need to put a team together. It is not only Aso Villa that is temporarily in danger of dissolving into a cauldron of intrigues and quarrels, even the domestic economy and international community must feel exasperated that nothing in the Buhari government guides them as to what decisions and policies to conceive, let alone align with those of the government.

Three, there are suggestions that the seeming bellicosity the Buhari presidency may be demonstrating towards the DSS is a consequence of the Service’s initial hostility to President Buhari when he was contesting the presidency. This insinuation has not been corroborated. But what is clear is that the DSS has not seemed to earn the confidence and trust of the president, a pointer perhaps to the lack of professionalism and detachment displayed by Nigeria’s security and law enforcement organisations in their incomprehensible and fanatical zeal to demonstrate loyalty to the government of the day.

During electioneering, this column had warned that the open bias demonstrated by the military, police and DSS against the candidacy of Gen Buhari was both unprofessional and antithetical to the dictates of the constitution and even common sense. What if Gen

Buhari should win? this column asked.

There is nothing in the ADC/CSO tiff, nor in how the matter was tackled, that gives indication the country has learnt any lessons. The ADC was wrong to issue orders to the DSS operatives; and the CSO was unwisely combative. It was as if both officers engaged in a power struggle, and perhaps viewed what took place as power struggle. President Buhari urgently needs to administer the right remedies. He needs a team quickly, one that will show him how to be sensitive to the fact that he is president of Nigeria in a way that transcends his background and idiosyncratic stereotypes. Crucially, too, he needs to deftly tackle controversies and conflicts both around him and all over the country, for controversies will always arise. So far, he has not shown that nimbleness of feet and suppleness of fingers in reactively and proactively applying presidential powers and prerogatives to the problems that needle him and the country.

By ADEKUNLE ADE-ADELEYE

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, JULY 12, 2015

COLUMN

On principalities and public principles (2)

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RINCIPALITIES, being primates of power production and consumption, endanger public principles because public principles are a danger to them. Democracy, being the principal public principle by which modern man has chosen to order and govern his affairs, is a principal enemy of principalities.

Democracy remains the most implacable enemy of principalities because it replaces the rule of principalities with the reign of public principles.

But what are principalities?

Principalities are like principals and wardens of politics and public institutes. But comparing principals with principalities is like comparing conditions to conditionalities.

Conditionalities are also conditions, but they are much more than that.

Conditionalities are structured and organized conditions which give a higher efficiency and abstract rigour to their operative order.

Going by the same logic, principalities are structured and highly organized principals who endure much longer and whose domination of their environment is such that they can only be prised apart by force or higher cunning or a combination of both. Such is the power of principali-

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VER since the colonial inception of Nigeria, the constituent nationalities have waged a war of emancipation against the state and its principalities of power. This perpetual political warfare against an alien and alienating state is occasionally collective but more often the efforts of individual nationalities resisting an oppressive power and its principalities. It has shaped and framed the political contours and topography of modern Nigeria and has turned the nation into a permanent war camp irrespective of the principality in power.

Democracy became a ruse; a pious fraud in which the people and the power to determine their democratic destiny were summarily abolished. More often than not, the electorate tried to elect and the selectorate selected. On one occasion when the table threatened to turn against the run of play, less than thirty Nigerians summarily annulled the electoral will of fourteen million other Nigerians. Talk of the power of principalities.

On some other occasions, principalities in power simply imposed their preferred principalities even as they organized expensive electoral charades and chicaneries to formalize the epic joke. But as we have noted in the first part of this treatise, the problems with principalities of power is that they never know when the balance of power has shifted against them. If they are imbued with this historical awareness, they would not have been principalities in the first instance. Emperors exist to defend empires even when the empire has virtually collapsed.

The last elections in Nigeria, particularly the presidential slugfest, is a classic confirmation of the great observation that history often moves forward by lurching sideways. Away from the watchful eyes of the principalities of power, single drops of the water of resistance often become a mighty ocean of retribution and restitution sweeping all before it.

But contradictions and ironies abound. As history teaches us, the people in themselves cannot successfully conclude democratic revolutions without a fraction of the ruling class who have consciously or unconsciously committed political suicide.

In other words, you cannot subdue principalities without the help of principalities. This is the iron para-

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nooping around With

Tatalo Alamu power of principalities in the exercise of their new found freedom. They hedged their bet about the efficacy of democracy which may well degenerate to mob rule in certain circumstances. Like the ancient Romans, they put in place an authoritarian and patrician senate to act as a countervailing check to the rowdily plebeian House teeming with casual riffraff. In addition, the American president is elected by an electoral college rather than a simple democratic majority.

Although they may be vestigial remains of an ancient world of kingdoms, fiefdoms and empires, powerful principalities do sometimes return to haunt the modern world and to remind it of unfinished business.

The twentieth century had its fair share of these sacred monsters. There is no record of modern civilization which is not at the same time a record of superhuman struggles against principalities.

Every human society has to negotiate its terms of release from principalities, either through dodgy or

sometimes tense cooptation (Britain, Spain, Holland, Norway, Denmark etc), through the introduction of a monarchical presidency(France) or an all-powerful imperial presidency(America). In many other parts of the world such as the Middle East, Far East, Asia and Latin America, authoritarian traditional monarchies, dynastic despotism and the cruel oxymoron of democratic autocracies subsist.

In Africa where the ancient, the colonial and the post-colonial modes of power productions jostle in bitter contention and with several mutually incompatible people and societies thrown into the historic melee, powerful principalities have been engaged in a perpetual political warfare with the residual, the prevailing and the emergent platforms of human emancipation at very great cost to the nascent nations. Sometimes in the course of the struggle, the state or the nation disappears altogether.

It is the Nigerian chapter of this centennial struggle that we must now address.

Principalities and people’s power in Nigeria

As traditionalists looking back at the political evolution of their own society, the emergent dominant political tendency in the South West can view the problem of underdevelopment and feudalism in the north with sympathetic insights and hindsight.

But as forward-looking modernists, they can also align with the economic dynamism and republican industriousness of their eastern brothers as long as it doesn’t tip over into the carnage capitalism which breeds anomie and lack of compassion for others. Unregulated mercantilism often brings out the worst in human beings.

But there is a price to pay for everything, even for being at the vanguard of change. For the Yoruba establishment, this in-between and gobetween and the distrust it provokes from all sides may well turn out a formula or recipe for revolutionary political suicide. While we are still at the game, the federal establishment has poached two vital Yoruba states and others may well be threatened in the current combustible configuration, which all but removes the old plank of regionalism as a fallback position.

Going forward, for there is no going backward in the situation we have found ourselves, the dominant political tendency in the west must find all the political savvy and calm comportment it can muster and avoid the political narcissism which grates badly on others without compromising its core ideals. Sacrifice does not equate to surrender. As for President Mohammadu Buhari, he must avoid being captured by ethnic irredentists who view everything from the narrow primordial prism of ethnic supremacy.

We are not out of the wood yet.

Many are already deeply disillusioned by the turn of events. But it is morning yet on creation day. As Buhari’s ascetic personal example and reforms kick in, those who profited from the old order and who cut across ethnic formations will fight back. In a society in the throes of traumatic transition, the struggle against principalities is not a tea party. When not prosecuted with vigour and alertness it may open the door for other lurking principalities as we have seen in the battle for the senate. Having shed the toga of a military general, Buhari must now look for the civilian fatigues of a political generalissimo.

•Buhari

ties and the way it has been burnt into human consciousness that long after the material conditions which gave rise to them have been superseded, they continue to exert tremendous pressure on human imagination

dox of historical advancement which lies at the roots of threatened and aborted democratic revolutions.

In March and April, driven to the edge of frustration and despair by poverty, misery and biblical suffering, the Nigerian multitude rose as one, irrespective of tribe, creed, region and religion, to reaffirm their humanity and to send off the evil principalities of power that have held the nation hostage for sixteen sorry years and by extension since independence.

It was the very first time in the history of the nation that a ruling conglomeration has been forcibly retired and sent packing. It sent reverberations round the world that Nigeria has finally arrived.

Leading the pack against the principalities is a retired general who is himself a lapsed principality and military autocrat with fanatical following among the northern masses who had gradually moved away from the shrine of northern protector to the altar of national emancipator. Thrice the stubborn and implacably selfwilled general tried to breach the Maginot Wall of oppression and thrice he was beaten back. On the last occasion, he broke down and publicly wept for the nation.

It is important to situate things and put them in a proper context so that Nigerians can grasp what has just happened to the country. It is also important to explode certain myths so that we may know where we are headed from here. There are those who maintain that this is not the first time the west has been in alliance with the north. As proof, they cite the old Akintola/ Sardauna working arrangement in which the NNDP was fused with the NPC to form the NNA. The truth of the matter was that the NNDP and NPC alliance was not a marriage of equals but the incorporation of the weaker faction of the Yoruba political class into the dominant northern feudal machinery for the purposes of protection and reassurance. With the west very much on fire, Akintola felt very much unsafe from the rampaging Yoruba mob without the federal might.

It was clear that throughout this period, the late premier felt very much at home with his status as a junior partner in the federal arrangement. When he was not wittily exco-

and institutional memory.

Long after they had arrived in the new world, away from tyrannical and feudal Europe where ancient principalities abounded, the Americans gave considerable thought to the

riating his former political associates turned bitter enemies, Akintola was content with relentless Igbo-baiting.

As documented by Chief Awolowo himself, Akintola held the Igbo political elite in seething contempt.

What Awo did not add was that it was over what Akintola, rightly or wrongly, considered to be a lack of a sense of fairness or fair play on their part.

The fusion of ACN, CPC, ANPP and others to birth the APC was the first time in Nigerian history that the dominant political tendency in the west will go into alliance with the core north. This would have been impossible during the Awo era. The Ikenne titan viewed northern feudalism with towering rage and implacable contempt which betray a cultural rigidity which was also evident in the old northern power masters.

Perhaps this was how the colonial barons, in their divide and rule proficiency wanted things. Yet one of the unintended but beneficial trade off of protracted military rule is that it has forcibly brought sections of the nation’s political elite together in a way and manner that tend to thaw old cultural and political animosities. We may yet have to thank the military for this paradoxical bequeathal.

As it is evident in the robust selfassurance and sheer bravura of its leaders from various sections of the country, the APC is a marriage of equal partners with a visionary conception of a new national project. The old north may have the edge in sheer numbers, but Buhari’s previous attempts show that in the battle against principalities, the organizational discipline, the maximum mobilization, the technocratic savvy and the political modernity of sophisticated message infiltration brought to bear on this by the South West political elite may count for more. Fanatical mobs vote but they do not protect their votes, waiting instead for the call out against the electoral infidels.

It should be noted that for a long time after the Abiola tragedy and the forcible imposition of General Obasanjo on the nation, the old west went back to its default mode of insular and isolationist tendency dreaming of regional resurgence in a multinational nation brimming with mutually hindering and inhibiting po-

litical conspiracies. But as long as it has not developed the military will to impose its political wish on the nation, it cannot opt out just like that.

How history often plays poker with political developments! In July 1966, the victorious northern military putchists were shouting “Araba!”, before they were reportedly cautioned by western diplomats about the sheer stupidity of attempting to secede after they had just captured an entire country. Ever since, arms and their managers assumed a centrality in determining who rules or who prevails in the power game in Nigeria.

But almost fifty years after, it has taken a rebellious scion of the north and former golden boy of the establishment to return full electoral sovereignty to the Nigerian people in a nation-defining presidential election that pitched him against the first minority president of the nation. When thus contextualized, it can be seen that the alliance between the dominant tendency in the South West and the core North cannot be envisioned as a conspiracy of domination but an unfurling pan-Nigerian elite project gradually incorporating all the progressive and forwarding looking segments of the nation in a bid to rescue a traumatized polity.

This is why what happened in the senate on June 9th is as unfortunate as it is tragic. It brings back the politics and polity of principalities and insinuates through the backdoor what Nigerians have just thrown out through the front door. It brings back the demons of ethnicity, of religious divisions and opens up old cultural and regional animosities. No matter how much anybody hates Tinubu’s political guts, you cannot blame a man if his politics are in canny alignment with the prevalent mood of his country.

Contrary to the insinuations of ethnic carrion feeders, there is nothing special or unique about the South West political elite who spearheaded this alliance that has given Nigeria a fresh chance. But there are moments in the life of a nation when a particular segment of the elite are placed in a position by history and culture to think through the national contradictions and come forward with practical solutions. This has nothing to do with any unique gifts.

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THE NATION ON SUNDAY JULY 12, 2015

NEWS

HE call of duty is over for top ranking members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) who were appointed ambassadors by former President Goodluck Jonathan.

They were recalled home last night by President Muhammadu Buhari after three years of service abroad.

Prominent among them are a former Foreign Affairs Minister , Chief Ojo Maduekwe (Canada); Chairman of the Jonathan Presidential Campaign Organisation in the 2011 election, Dr. Dalhatu Tafida (UK);Professor Ade Adefuye (USA);widow of the late Ikemba Nnewi, Chief Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, Bianca (Spain);and former deputy governor of Oyo State, Mr. Taofeek Arapaja (Jordan).

The rest include a former aviation minister, Mrs. Fidelia Njeze (Switzerland);exGeneral Manager, Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), Ibadan, Mr. Yemi Farounbi (Philippines); a one-time

Buhari sacks Tafida, Bianca, Maduekwe, Farounbi, others

•President recalls political appointees serving as envoys abroad From Yomi Odunuga, Deputy Editor, Nation’s Capital/Dare Odufowokan, Assistant Editor

governorship aspirant in Lagos State, Mr. Olatokunbo Kamson (Jamaica); a PDP front liner in Ondo State, Mr. Cornelius Oluwateru (UAE); Alhaji Abubakar Shehu Bunu (Saudi Arabia); a former Commissioner for Justice and Attorney General in Benue State, Mr. Chive Kaave (Argentina); a former financial secretary of the PDP, Alhaji Tukur Mani (Iran);and former permanent secretary, Federal Capital Territory Administration, FCTA Biodun Nathaniel Olorunfemi (Namibia).

Also on the list are: Chief Asam Asam (SAN), (Russia);

Don’t cut corners, Osinbajo tells entrepreneurs

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ICE President Yemi Osinbajo has told entrepreneurs that success could only be achieved by not cutting corners.

The Vice President who was speaking at the Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurship Programme (TEEP) Boot Camp 2015, at the Covenant University, Ota, Ogun State, said the payment of taxes is a matter of self-interest not just civic duty, “selfdiscipline, the ability to serve and to invest as well as bearing losses are critical.”

Osinbajo who represented President Muhammadu Buhari at the event identified the pivotal role of exemplary character in entrepreneurship, which, he said, can in turn become the platform for the growth of business and development of a nation’s economy.

He noted that the ground for entrepreneurial success is character, adding that that discipline alone was not sufficient. According to him, “Enterprises and societies thrive on the values of moral integrity, self discipline, hard work and innovation, respect for rule of law and the prompt payment of taxes.

These are the critical components for successful economies and countries anywhere.

“The core of success in business is integrity, honesty and trust in the conduct of business. Credit worthiness is important in business, because when trust fails every other thing fails.

“The payment of taxes and other obligations, be it moral or civic, for the purpose of development of the economy, for building infrastructure and other services are all important in business”.

He expressed optimism that Africa now stands at the face of greatness after many years of being regarded as

“the dark continent”, recording highest figures in poverty poor health- care, illiteracy, poor human development.

The Vice President observed that the world today sees Africa as the next frontier for international business, a hub for development and growth of local and global enterprises.

Other speakers at the Boot Camp included the Kaduna State Governor, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, and the Prime Minister of Republic of Benin Republic, Mr. Lionel Zinsou.

Zinsou commended the Tony Elumelu Foundation for organizing the Boot Camp programme that brought together 1000 young entrepreneurs from several African countries.

The Chancellor of the Covenant University, Bishop David Oyedepo was also in attendance alongside Elumelu and several other dignitaries.

Mr. Okwudili Nwosu (Burundi); Mr. Okeke Chukwuemeka (Vatican); Mr. Eric Aworahbi (Italy); Dauda Danladi (Pakistan); and Mrs. Katherine Okon (Czeck Republic); Mr. Nwofe Alexander,; Princess Victoria Bosede Onipede (Republic of Congo); Senator Haruna Garba (Kuwait); Mrs. Nonye Rajis-Okpara (Singapore); Chief Eddy Onuoha (Hungary); Mr. Adamu Babangida Ibrahim (Syria); Dr. Sam Jimba (Poland) They were among the 93 envoys posted out in June 2012.

Authoritative sources said last night in Abuja that the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, had communicated the President’s directive to the affected ambassadors.

They were told to hand over to the highest ranking

officer in their various locations.

A Presidency source confirmed to The Nation that some of the ambassadors including the envoy in Saudi Arabia were already on their way back to the country at press time.

The source said: “the President has issued a directive to the Permanent Secretary in Ministry of Foreign Affairs to recall all the political appointees currently serving as ambassadors in all parts of the world. It doesn’t matter whether they have just few months to the end of their tenure.

“I am sure the envoy in Saudi Arabia is already on his way and quite many others should be reporting to the ministry by Monday. I really don’t have a comprehensive list of the number of people that are

affected but they are posted in different continents mostly in key European, Asian and American countries.”

The sack is the biggest since President Buhari assumed office on May 29.

Their nominations were endorsed by the Senate on Wednesday February 8, 2012, nearly two months after former President Jonathan submitted their names.

On the list were 32 names of politicians.

The ex-President in a letter to the then Senate President, David Mark, requested that in line with section 171(1) C, sub-section 4 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as amended, the Senate should consider the list, hoping that “this exercise will receive the usual kind expeditious attention of the Distinguished Members of the

Senate of the Federal Republic.”

Of the 88 nominees sent to the Senate by Jonathan, only 87 appeared before the screening committee, while 84 passed the screening. Two of the nominees, Mrs. Sifawu Momoh, Edo; and Mazi Okafor Ojih, Ebonyi, could not scale the screening as the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs did not recommend them for confirmation.

Mrs. Bianca Ojukwu, who was nominated to represent Anambra State on the list of non-career category, did not appear for screening but was confirmed nonetheless, her nomination coming barely a week after her husband died in a London hospital.

Maduekwue was nominated by Jonathan following his ouster as National Secretary of the party in what observers said was a move to placate him.

Kamson, Njeze and Arapaja had all failed to secure the party’s governorship tickets in their states.

The recall of Ambassadors serving in foreign missions is a routine exercise especially where there is a change of guard at the federal level.

•People and soldiers stand outside a market in N'Djamena following a suicide bomb attack yesterday.

Jonathan caused PDP’s loss at poll, says PDP chief •Ex-President broke power shift pact

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HE Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has blamed the party’s defeat in the last presidential election on former President Goodluck Jonathan, saying the ex President broke the power shift arrangement agreed upon by the party.

The party said it has learnt its lesson from the mistake, vowing never again to take the zoning arrangement enshrined in its constitution for granted.

The party’s National Vice Chairman, South-south, Dr. Cairo Ojougboh states this in Abuja yesterday. According to him, Jonathan went against the zoning arrangement, a development that led to his rejection by the North.

He added that that was the

From Gbade Ogunwale, Assistant Editor, Abuja

reason the North decided to vote President Muhammadu Buhari. Jonathan, he said, failed to honour a gentleman’s agreement reached in 1998 to serve a single term.

According to him, the agreement was for power to shift between the North and the South after eight years.

“So PDP had the first shot, everybody cooperated, (former President Olusegun) Obasanjo became president.

After eight years, it was the turn of the North to become president then problem started. Some people started toying with the idea of third term.

“PDP said no, PDP

members of the National Assembly and other parties said no it will not work; wonderful. The PDP had to produce a candidate and that is how (the late Umoru) ‘Yar ‘Adua came. Unfortunately, he did not survive so the North said look this presidency is our own, we have to utilise our allotted eight years and they were right.

“Jonathan himself said he will do only four years. Emirs, leaders and stakeholders in the country accepted that Jonathan will do only four years so that the power can shift to the North. When time came, a lot of ‘Macapa’ dances started; people started putting pressure here and there and people started encouraging Jonathan to contest.

Unfortunately, Jonathan didn’t have the nerves to say no, I will keep my agreement.

“So, Jonathan contesting meant that zoning formula had been breached. The North didn’t take kindly to that; they said no, this is not what we agreed. Even the Christian North that used to be very friendly, especially the North Central said we had an agreement. Some governors about five of them left the party because of that because they saw what was happening. So it was this pressure that the North now agreed that they must take power back, that it was their turn.

“Fortunately or unfortunately, only two candidates were presented at the election whether you like it

or not; Jonathan and Buhari.

Buhari is from the North, Jonathan is from the South.

The south had done more than enough for the time been for the agreement of 1998/ 1999. So the North said look we are going to vote for our son whether he is good or bad,” he said.

The PDP chief said the All Progressives Congress (APC) led Federal Government will not stand the test of time, adding however that the PDP would have no hand in APC’s affairs.

Ojougboh also ruled out the issue of resignation or dissolution of the National Working Committee (NWC) of the PDP, saying they are to remain in office till March, 2016.

THE NATION ON SUNDAY JULY 12, 2015

NEWS

Why I banned street begging, hawking -El-Rufai

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ADUNA State Governor, Malam Nasir ElRufai, yesterday said the recent ban on street begging and hawking was for the safety of beggars, hawkers and others following suicide attack that rocked Sabon Gari Local Government secretariat.

Addressing a press conference in Kaduna, the governor’s Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Samuel Aruwan, explained that, the ban of hawking and begging was necessitated by security situation in the state and to ensure maximum protection of lives and property.

El-Rufai, who expressed sadness over the Sabon Gari attack, said he will never unleash pains on beggars and hawkers in the state, adding that government decision was not aimed or targeted at the vulnerable group but to protect citizens.

However, the beggars yesterday took their case to the Kaduna State Council secretariat of Nigeria Union of Journalist (NUJ). They said the governor’s ban is a gentle way of calling them terrorists hence the need to take legal action against the governor for defamation and to seek redress.

But the governor appealed to the people to see reason with the ban and cooperate with the government for the safety of citizens in the state.

According to him, “Kaduna State Government’s decision to ban hawking and begging in the state followed

•Beggars threaten to sue governor From Abdulgafar Alabelewe, Kaduna

last week’s bomb attack that killed 26 innocent citizens and injured 32 persons.”

The special assistant said “the government is a responsible government and con-

scious of its constitutional role to protect citizens and to ensure law and order for common good. The state government will not fold its arms and allowed citizens to be killed via terror act and break down of law and order hence the decision”

The beggars dared the governor saying they will remain on the streets, until the government gets them gainful employment.

They insist they have the constitutional right to stay wherever they wish to stay saying until their demands are

met, the government should prepare their graves that they would fight the battle to the finish.

The beggars who thronged out in their numbers, both men and women, old and young, said they are giving the authorities three days to rescind its decision or risk been victims of spell they would profess against them.

•From right, Director Public Affairs of NCC, Tony Ojobo, Deputy Director Consumer Affairs Bureau, Dr. Femi Afoyebi, Director Special Duties, Ms. Funlola Akiode and Head Compliance Monitoring, Mr. Ephraim Nwokonneya at the consumer out reach programme by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) in Enugu, yesterday.

PHOTO: OBI CLETUS

APC, PDP trade words over Rivers dissolved councils

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HE All Progressives Congress (APC), Rivers State chapter, has accused the national leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) of crying wolf over the Rivers local government councils.

The party, through its Rivers Chairman, Chief Davies Ibiamu Ikanya, yesterday in Port Harcourt, declared that rather than making reckless, unguarded and careless utterances on the political crisis in the state, it should rather call to order, Governor Nyesom Wike.

The National Publicity Secretary of the PDP, Chief Olisa Metuh, in a statement, alleged partisanship by the Federal Government and the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) in the decision by the police to secure and forestall breakdown of law and order in Rivers state, following the illegal dissolution of 22 of the 23 local government councils and replacement with caretaker committees by Wike.

However, Governor Nyesom Wike yesterday in a radio broadcast claimed that the Inspector General of Police has ordered the seal off of the council secretariat. This could not be independently confirmed at press time.

Rivers APC said: “As a political party, the APC fails to see the need for such accusation by the PDP, while it refused to caution Wike to resist the lure of polluting the hallowed corridor of justice, through the encouragement and purchasing of Jankara court rulings, as witnessed in Port Harcourt.”

In Abuja, the chairmen of the 23 dissolved local governments told Governor Nyesom Wike to obey the court injunction restraining his govern-

• Council chairmen ask Wike to obey court injunction

From Olugbenga Adanikin, Abuja and Bisi Olaniyi, Port Harcourt

ment from sacking them.

They told reporters in Abuja that they obtained the order of injunction from the National Industrial Arbitration Court sitting in Bayelsa State to restrain the governor from implementing judgement on their sack.

A Federal High Court in Port Harcourt had, on Thursday, nullified the May 23, 2015 local government election in the state on the ground that it was conducted in flagrant disobedience of a court order.

Justice Lambo Akambo ordered that the election should therefore be set aside and the chairmen and councillors that emerged there from be sacked.

But speaking to reporters in Abuja yesterday, the 23 chairmen operating on the platform of Association of Local Government of Nigeria (ALGON) said “we have obtained an order of interim injunction restraining the same River State government, the House of Assembly and other parties, from ýthe National Industrial Court in Bayelsa State.”

They described Wike’s action as the latest in the series of moves to destroy the legacies of the immediate past governor, Mr. Rotimi Amaechi.

Their spokesman and State Chairman of ALGON, Mr. Sogbeye Eli, said they are currently “under an atmosphere of war levelled against us by the Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike.” He added, “The same governor has done the same to make it impossible for the third tier of government to work in the state.

“From embarking on liti-

gation where PDP decided not to participate in elections, they went to court to seek an order stopping INEC from tampering with the process by not giving INEC updated voters register.

“Where that did not work, they decided to ambush...I mean the same government had directed via the same governor that councils in Rivers State should not be availed of any credit lines, loans, grants by financial institutions. That clearly was a forced regime of financial strangulation.

“It does not matter to this government whether or not such actions touch on the lives of our people where the majority of our people reside.”

Eli insisted that he and his colleagues were validly elected and only after three years will their tenure expire “by the provisions of Rivers State law 2 of 2012.”

He also cited previous decisions of the Supreme Court on the sanctity of the tenure of elected local government councils.

“We have gone to court to ask that governors, the State House of Assembly and other agencies connected there to, be restrained from tampering with ourý tenures,” he said.

“On our part, we have obtained an order of interim injunction restraining the same River State government, the House of Assembly and other parties from ýthe National Industrial court, in Bayelsa state.

Our return day to court is 13th of July, 2015.

“One would have thought that a law abiding government under a democratic dispensation would not resort to self help; that they will wait until 13th July, 2015 and see what to

do; not to vacate that interim order; and argue that we have no case.

“We have had the dissolution, reckless and very reckless dissolution of boards of parastatals and commissions duly inaugurated by the past regime of Chibike Amaechi as if to say, they are here to obliterate the legacies the last governor.

“We are calling on all good people of Nigeria, authorities of this nation, particularly law enforcement agencies to please step into River State and call these people to order. Everyone is subject to the law and local government chairmen have the right to remain in their offices because they have the mandate of the people of River State in their respective LGAs.” APC in Rivers also expressed surprise that purportedly acting on the sham ruling

by Justice Akanbi, the Rivers governor immediately dissolved the councils, in spite of the fact that there was a subsisting order of interim injunction by the national industrial court in Yenagoa, which Wike, the Rivers House of Assembly and other parties were duly served, describing the action as illegal and aimed at humiliating the subsisting order by Justice Agbadu-Fishim.

It said: “It is worthy of mention that the National Industrial Court in Yenagoa, which issued the order of interim injunction on the 22nd of June, 2015 is of equal or cognate jurisdiction with the Federal High Court in Port Harcourt, presided over by Justice Lambo Akanbi, which handed his curious ruling on July 9, 2015.

“Obviously, the Nigeria

Police were properly advised to obey and stick to an order, duly issued on June 22, 2015 until vacated or superseded by a judgment or order of the same court or of a higher court.

“The APC simply sees the accusation by the PDP against the Federal Government and the Nigeria Police as cheap blackmail, aimed at eliciting undeserved sympathy from the Nigerian populace and the international community.

However, we are happy that both Nigerians and the international community are discerning enough to see through the antics of the PDP.” Justice Akanbi had sacked the 22 chairmen, for allegedly disobeying his order, who all belong to the APC, and their councillors, who were elected on May 23 this year, during the Rotimi Amaechi’s administration.

The tenure of the chairman and councillors of Ogba/ Egbema/Ndoni LGA will expire next year and not affected by the dissolution.

Prior to Thursday morning’s sitting of the FHC, there was an explosion at the premises of the FHC, which led to pandemonium, with the people around scampering to safety, but no life was lost, while Justice Akanbi still went ahead to deliver the ruling.

Wike immediately sent names of members of caretaker committees for the 22 LGAs to the state’s House of Assembly, led by IkuinyiOwaji Ibani and they were quickly screened by the 32 lawmakers, consisting of 31 PDP and one APC member.

The caretaker committee members were inaugurated

by Wike around 10 p.m. on the same day.

5

Police recover remains of Bayelsa pipeline explosion victims

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HE Police in Bayelsa State said yesterday that they have recovered the remains of victims of Thursday’s crude oil pipeline explosion which occurred in Agip’s field in the state.

Twelve people died in the explosion which occurred while Agip staff were carrying out routine maintenance on Tebidaba-Clough line, in Southern Ijaw Local Government Area of the state.

Two persons are still missing according to the police.

Spokesman for the State Police Command, Mr Asinim Butswat, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Yenagoa that search and rescue efforts for the missing persons had been activated, but yet to yield any result.

He said: “twelve persons were burnt beyond recognition, which included a soldier on guard duty amongst others.

“Four persons were rescued alive and are undergoing treatment, while two persons are still missing. Search for the missing persons is ongoing,” Butswat said.

Yobe disburses N61.8m to traders affected by insurgency

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IGHTY-SEVEN traders in Yobe State who lost their property to insurgency and fire outbreaks were yesterday, in Damaturu, reimbursed to the tune of N61.8 million by the State Emergency Management Agency.

The Executive Secretary of the agency, Musa Isa, who handed over the money to the beneficiaries, said it was intended to provide succour to victims of the disaster to reengage in their trades.

“This is not a compensation but an assistance from the state government,” he said.

Mr. Musa advised other victims and Internally Displaced Persons to be wary of fraudsters selling forms purportedly issued by SEMA for similar assistance.

“SEMA has a procedure and a working collaboration with community leaders on the mode of collecting data of victims and providing assistance to them,” he said.

“The agency did not issue out forms for any assistance.

The fraudsters are taking advantage of the victims by selling useless forms that has no purpose.”

Muhammadu Kalli, chairman, Damaturu Local Government Council, advised the beneficiaries to invest wisely into their businesses.

Umar Adamu, a beneficiary, said he would use the money to offset the loan he secured to restart his business after the attack.

Usman Muazu, chairman, Yobe Traders Association, described the assistance as a resurrection for the devastated members of the association, who lost means of livelihood.

He appealed to the agency to also assist other victims in Giedam, Tarmuwa, Fika and Gujba.

6

THE NATION ON SUNDAY JULY 12, 2015

NEWS

We could have prevented Zaria massacre by Boko Haram, says el-Rufai

Boko Haram releases first beheading video since pledging allegiance to ISIS

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•Bemoans lack of intelligence tools

By Innocent Duru,Otta/ Austine Ehikioya, Abuja

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OVERNOR Nasir elRufai of Kaduna State yesterday in Otta, Ogun State, said last Tuesday's suicide bombing in Zaria and the attendant loss of lives could have been prevented if the security agencies had the necessary intelligence tools.

About 25 people, many of whom were identified as primary school teachers, died when an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) carried by a female suicide bomber went off at the premises of Sabon Gari Local Government.

The victims were queuing for identity checks when the incident occurred.

However, el-Rufai said yesterday that government was aware that Boko Haram was planning to unleash terror on the town at least 12 hours before the incident.

Speaking at the 2015 Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurship Programme (TEEP) boot camp, Otta, Ogun State said, "I feel pained that such a dastardly act occurred even when we were aware that such was going to happen. Twelve hours to the time the incident occurred, we knew through intelligence report that some people were coming to do such.

"We kept monitoring them but they switched off their phones when they got to Zaria. Seven hours later, we heard of the blast. If we had the right equipment, it could have been averted. We need twice the number of police officers than we have now."

The governor who spoke on 'Creating an enabling environment for entrepreneurs', identified the provision of security, education, social capital and investor-friendly policies as crucial to the enhancement of entrepreneurship.

He said:" The quality of a government in any environment can make or mar entrepreneurship. Nothing is possible without a functioning government.

"No matter how rich you are, without a functioning government you are limited in what you can do because there are things that the government can do that you cannot do your by yourself."

Workshop on power sector coming

I

NFRANET Energy Services and the Nigerian Electricity Market & System Operator - ISO are organizing a two-day workshop on "Interpretation and Understanding of the Nigerian Transitional Electricity Market Rules".

The workshop is aimed at creating an electricity trading system for the Nigerian Electricity Market that guarantees an efficient, transparent and nondiscriminatory market administration service to all participants.

According to Adewale Ogunbunfunmi, commercial director, Infranet, the workshop will also examine the biggest challenge facing electricity distribution in Nigeria : limited power generation which makes it difficult for them to distribute regular and constant supply to customers.

• (L-R) Governor of Kaduna State, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, Director General of the National Pension Commission (PenCom), Mrs. Chinelo Anohu-Amazu, PenCom's Commissioner, Inspectorate, Professor Mohammed Abubakar Kaoje, PenCom's Commissioner, Finance, Prince Adesoji Olaoba-Efuntayo, and Commissioner, Administration, Mr. Ebenezer Foby during a courtesy visit by members of the Executive Committee of PenCom to the Governor in Kaduna

HE terror sect, Boko Haram, has released a gruesome video of a beheading, its first since pledging allegiance to ISIS. The victim wears an army camouflage uniform and is seen kneeling down surrounded by three masked terrorists, two of them pointing their AK 47s at his head.

The video ends with the killing of the soldier and soon cuts to reveal his decapitated body on the floor.

Islamic State accepted a pledge of allegiance from Boko Haram last March.

The audio message entitled 'kill and be killed' - released through the militants' vast social media channels - was read by an ISIS spokesperson who also threatened further violence against the Christian and Jewish communities.

Suicide bombers strike close to SSS office in Maiduguri A •Insurgents ambush soldiers to hijack weapons

Suicide bomber kills 14 in N'Djamena

B

OKO Haram yesterday took its terrorism within a few meters of the Borno State command of the Department of Security Services (DSS), Maiduguri, claiming three lives.

Two of the dead were the suicide bombers.

The third was a passer-by.

Five other passers-by were injured by shrapnel from the Improvised Explosive Device (IED) carried by the terrorists on a day a gang of Boko Haram fighters laid ambush for a convoy of military vehicles on the Maiduguri/ Damaturu highway.

The hoodlums were routed, according to eye witnesses.

Overnight, terrorists raided Ngamdu village some 100 kilometres from Maiduguri, killing 11, just 24 hours after another gang opened fire on residents of Gamboru, Borno State, as they returned to inspect their damaged homes in the abandoned town.

Eight of the villagers died in the incident, displaced people said.

Many of the residents who had fled the town, close to the border with Cameroon during a previous attack, were said to have sneaked back on Thursday following a rumour that Chadian and Cameroonian troops were providing security.

The terrorists opened fire on them with only a few managing to escape.

The police confirmed that yesterday's attack was carried out by two suspected Boko Haram suicide bombers in a tricycle.

Police Commissioner Aderemi Opadokun said the explosive went off at about 7am "by the Welcome to Maiduguri Gate and near the office of the State Department of Security Services (SSS) and El-Kanemi Theological College, Maiduguri."

He said the suspects were apparently targeting the Borno Express Motor Park, during the early morning rush hours.

Eyewitness Sani Modu said there were three persons in the tricycle at the time of

•Eight fleeing villagers killed on return home

By Duku JOEL, Maiduguri with agency reports

the explosion.

He said:" the entire place was thrown into confusion as the bomb exploded and tension quickly rose. Everyone started running for his life.

Motorists and tricycle drivers on both sides of the road began making a U turn in a bid to escape, although a few parked to see what was happening.

"The remains of the explosion were scattered all over the place and the tricycle reduced to scrap."

Soon after the explosion, security operatives and rescue officials from the National Emergency management Agency (NEMA) and the Red Cross stormed the scene to take the wounded to the hospital and clear the debris.

Sources at the State Specialist Hospital Maiduguri confirmed that the five people brought from the scene were treated and discharged.

A few hours after the incident, scores of travellers on the Damaturu/Maiduguri highway were abandoning their trips after Boko Haram fighters engaged soldiers on the route in what appeared to be an ambush.

Baba Aminu who was travelling from Damaturu to Maiduguri claimed to have witnessed it all.

His words: "I left Damaturu this morning (yesterday) to come to Maiduguri. Soon after our vehicle passed Benishiek, we suddenly sighted ahead of us a long convoy of over 30 military vehicles.

"We were trailing them until they stopped in the middle of the road and the soldiers jumped down from their vehicles and lay on the ground.

"Facing their convoy a few meters away were three Hilux vans apparently owned by Boko Haram. The soldiers threw a bomb at the Hilux vans, destroying two instantly. More explosions came in quick succession and

what we saw next was the boys (Boko Haram members) running into the bush.

"The soldiers gave them a chase. They returned about an hour later and told us that the road was clear for us to proceed with our journey.

"We drove behind them until we got to Jakana (about 36km from Maiduguri). They stopped again and asked from us the distance from there to Maiduguri. When we told them, they asked us to continue with our journey while they remained there."

A military source who does not want to be named said: "the insurgents are desperate to get weapons hence they decided to test their confidence. They thought they could ambush and overpower our men and then seize the weapons being moved to Maiduguri to prosecute the war against them."

Earlier on Friday, terrorists raided Ngamdu village, killing 11, residents and a member of the civilian militia said while on Thursday, eight people were killed in Gamboru, when Boko Haram fighters opened fire on residents returning to the abandoned town from Fotokol, just across the border in northern Cameroon.

"We lost eight people to Boko Haram gunmen," said Babagana Bukar, a Nigerian from Gamboru now living in the town of Fotokol, just across the border in Cameroon.

"Some of our people went back to Gamboru after they were told the town was safe for them.... While they were inspecting their homes, Boko Haram gunmen on a motorcycle opened fire on them killing five men and three women," he told AFP. Two other former residents of the town, also now living in Fotokol, supported Bukar's account.

One of them, Umar Babakalli, said two other women were seized and beaten.

They managed to make it

back across the bridge that forms the border and were being treated for their injuries, he added.

Boko Haram fighters have been seen going in and out of Gamboru for months, sometimes firing rocketpropelled grenades towards Fotokol, according to those who fled.

The group, which has been pushed out of captured towns across the Northeast by soldiers from Nigeria, Niger Republic, Chad and Cameroun since February, are said to be dispersed in different areas.

In the last few weeks the extremists have stepped up their attacks on civilians, hitting crowded markets, mosques and churches.

More than 550 people have been killed.

man dressed in a woman's burqa blew himself up in the main market in Chad's capital N'Djamena yesterday, killing 14 people and injuring 74, a police spokesman said.

No group immediately claimed responsibility but Chad blamed Boko Haram.

"Our current count is 15 dead," police spokesman Paul Manga, said, a total which included the suicide bomber.

A Reuters witness saw at least ten bodies lying near the entrance to the market where aid workers helped injured people into ambulances.

Security forces stopped people entering the area and searched stalls for more explosives.

Several witnesses said that the bomber had tried to enter the market wearing a woman's burqa.

Chad authorities banned the headto-toe religious garment last month, citing the risk that attackers could use it as a disguise or hide explosives underneath.

THE NATION ON SUNDAY JULY 12, 2015

NEWS

7

Gunmen kill traditional ruler, 3 others

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UNMEN suspected to be hired assassins on Friday night invaded Nkerefi community in Nkanu East Local Government Area of Enugu State, killing the traditional ruler of Isienu Amofu, Igwe Peter Onuoha.

Also gunned down were a native identified as Daniel Ogbu alias Chocho and two others identified as a couple, Ejike Udeme Uzor and his wife, Evelyn Udeme Uzor.

Igwe Onuoha, the Eze Na Chi 1, was the Managing Director of Posdonal Nigeria Limited and Secretary of Nkanu East Traditional

From Chris Oji, Enugu

Rulers Council.

Apart from bullet wounds, the deceased persons had several machete cuts on their bodies.

Some other natives who were reportedly wounded by the gunmen are said to be receiving treatment at the Catholic Church-owned, Annunciation Specialists Hospital, Emene, Enugu.

It was gathered that the residents of the community were thrown into confusion when the noise of the sporadic shooting by the gunmen rented the air.

Those residing near the palace of the royal father

were said to have fled their homes on hearing the sound of the guns but some unlucky ones were hit by the flying bullets.

At the end of the shooting, the fleeing natives returned only to discover that their traditional ruler, Igwe Onuoha, and one Chocho had been shot dead. The personal assistant to the royal father, identified as Vincent, was reportedly shot while fleeing the palace but he survived the attack.

Within the neighborhood, it was further gathered, a man and his wife said to be a nurse, were also found dead as a result

of gunshot wounds they sustained.

The reason for the attack could not be immediately ascertained but sources said the royal father and some youths in the community had disagreed over a suspicious spiritual sacrifice he allegedly made in the community sometime last year.

Said the source: "Last year, Igwe and youths in the village had problem when they (youths) accused the monarch of retarding the progress of the community through fetish practices but the Igwe had reportedly told them that the sacrifice he did

was purely for his protection and that of his family members and not on behalf of the entire community.

"Angered by the development, the youths were said to have forcefully uprooted the royal father's signboard to express their disloyalty but the community leaders condemned the act and threatened to fish out and discipline the youths involved. Some of the culprits ran out of the community since then but it is not clear for now if the exiled youths are responsible for this bloodbath."

The Enugu state police spokesman, Mr. Ebere

Niger imposes curfew over ethnic clash

Gov's aide chides Ohaneze Ndigbo over Tinubu

‌4 persons feared dead

A

former Senior Special Assistant to Governor Rauf Aregbesola on Electronics and Broadcast, Engineer Remi Omowaiye, has chided the Ohanaeze Youth Council over its attack on the National Leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Tinubu.

Omowaiye, who also condemned the statement credited to the group in its reaction to the invitation of the Deputy Senate President, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, by the police for alleged forgery of the Senate Rules, warned the Igbo group against being used to tarnish Tinubu's image.

According to Omowaiye, it is shameful for the Ohanaeze Youth Council to associate itself with allegation of forgery levelled against Ekweremadu, adding that the group is expected to preach justice, rule of law and campaign against executive lawlessness.

He warned the OYC against politicising the criminal case and whipping up ethnical sentiments on the matter, arguing that Ekweremadu could not have been invited by the police if, indeed, he had no hand in the forgery allegation.

Omowaiye called on the Inspector General of Police, Mr. Solomon Arase, not to succumb to the campaign of calumny to discredit the police on the case.

Omowaiye said: "It is shameful for a group of elites like Ohanaeze Youth Council to associate with criminal allegation, and it is also mischievous for the group to accuse Asiwaju Bola Tinubu of being the man behind the ordeal of Senator Ekweremadu.

"Asiwaju is the factor in Nigerian politics and the icon of common sense revolution and he could not be wished away no matter the blackmail and conspiracy of detractors.

Speaking on the forthcoming election to choose the Chairman, Board of Trustees of the APC, Omowaiye urged leaders of the party to unanimously elect Tinubu for the position, stating that he is the most qualified for the exalted position.

Amaraizu, confirmed the incident.

He said the corpse of the royal father had been deposited at the Eastern Nigeria Medical Centre, Enugu, while three other corpses were deposited at Agbani Health Centre in Nkanu West Local Government Area.

The police spokesman said operatives of the state police command "are already on the matter to unravel the circumstances surrounding their deaths but from available information there seems to be an internal wrangling among the people of the community."

From Jide Orintunsin, Minna

T

• Federal Road Safety Corps Marshal, Boboye Oyeyemi (sixth from left), with other African Road Safety leaders and experts, during the African Road Safety Conference in Addis-Ababa, Ethiopia.

UN Commission releases modality for housing Adamawa IDPs T HE United Nations High Commission for Refugees in Africa has said that the aged, physically challenged, orphans and very sick persons will be the beneficiaries of the 500 housing units to be constructed for the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) in Adamawa State.

The High Commissioner for Refugees, Mr.

From Barnabas Manyam, Yola

Cesar Tshilombo, disclosed this while briefing the deputy governor of the state, Mr. Martins Babale, on the modalities adopted by the body to share the houses after completion.

Noting that the Commis-

sion cannot singlehandedly shoulder the responsibility of building all the destroyed houses by the Boko Haram sect, he said it was due to this reason that certain categories of the IDPs were picked as prospective beneficiaries.

In his response, the deputy governor gave an as-

surance that the sharing of the houses would not be politicised, adding that all the stakeholders in all the communities affected would be involved in the process.

He, however, suggested that IDPs camps should be built outside the state capital and also suggested Toungo Local Government in South senatorial district of the state as the proposed site.

Don't demonise Aregbesola, Osun APC warns

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HE All Progressives Congress (APC) in Osun State has called the attention of Nigerians to what it described as "a devious orchestration of series of allegations targeted at demonising the state governor, Rauf Aregbesola."

In its reaction to media reports alleging that some unidentified thugs attacked some residents at a newsstand in Osogbo, the state capital, the party in a statement said "available facts indicate that what was sold to the media as an attack by thugs fraudulently and mischievously called APC thugs, was a disagreement that ensued between two people who engaged each other in arguments over football and politics."

According to the statement by the chairman of the party in the state, Prince Gboyega Famodun, the situation was the usual happenings at newsstands where people gather to buy and read newspapers and engage in debates.

The party said it gathered that the argument degenerated

From Adesoji Adeniyi, Osogbo

into a free for all, which also led to the destruction of the newspapers of one of the feuding parties.

It added that investigations showed that after the fight which involved the two people with their own supporters, "the development got to the knowledge of the same people who were behind the failed protests in Osogbo on Tuesday."

The party said: "We have since found out that the fight between these people and their friends led to the tearing of newspapers belonging to one of them who operates the newsstand named Kazeem.

"Therefore, we shudder to think how anyone can link this to the government or the governor of Osun? However, we learnt that the fight got to the knowledge of the group calling itself Coalition of Civil Society Organisation for the Emancipation of Osun, which organised Tuesday's failed rally against the government.

They were the ones who thereafter saw an opportunity in this and felt it would make good news and help their campaigns of calumny to link the fight to the government.

"It is instructive that the statement on this so-called attack on people was written and sent out through the same email address of the group, osuncoalition@gmail.com. The question should then be asked: what evidence have these people provided to establish this link to the governor or our party, the APC? "It is also instructive to note that the matter in question, if it was of the magnitude painted by the organisation in the email sent out to journalists in and outside the state, was never reported to the Police.

How could three buses loaded with thugs have carried out attacks on innocent people in the state capital without the Osun Police Command being aware of it?

"It should be noted that the scene of the alleged attack, which is opposite the Old Gov-

ernor's Office in Osogbo, is just about a kilometer to the headquarters of the Nigeria Police Force, Osun Command less than 300 metres to the popular Olaiya Junction where one of the Police Armoured Personnel Carriers of the state is stationed. It is equally less than 400 metres away from the Directorate of State Security (DSS) office in Osogbo."

The APC queried why "all these agencies were not able to arrest the thugs especially with evidence that they are members of our party."

The party said the chairman of the Newspapers Vendors Association had denied accusing the government of the violence.

The party insisted that the report was just the creation of those who wanted to cast aspersions on the governor and the party.

It further added that the call by the group asking President Muhammadu Buhari to call Aregbesola to order was calculated at tarnishing the image of the governor.

HE Niger State government has imposed a six-hour curfew on Paiko town in Paikoro local government area of the state following a violent tribal clash that claimed four lives with eight people critically injured over leadership control of the township central mosque.

The curfew was declared to forestall further hostilities between the natives (Gbagyis) and the Hausa, which started on Wednesday.

A cold war between the two tribes blew open about three months ago when the deputy Chief Imam (Na'ibi) of the town passed on. Subsequently, the natives demanded to fill the vacant office, following the nomination of one Mallam Garba Akili, a Hausa man for the vacant position.

The request did not go down well with the Hausas, who were said to have allegedly vowed to retain the seat.

The natives, it was gathered, however argued that they also have competent natives who are more knowledgeable in Islamic theology and jurisprudence than the Hausas.

Following the failure of the two parties to resolve their disagreement, sources disclosed that the warring factions took their cases before the state governor, Abubakar Sani Bello, who subsequently directed them to the Emir of Minna, Alhaji Faruoq Bahago, to broker a truce.

But the frosty relationship got to the climax on Wednesday when members of the two groups violently attacked each other leading to the death of two persons.

It was further gathered that the crisis took a new turn on Friday when some youths in the town challenged and demanded for a total overhaul of the leadership of the mosque by calling for the removal of the 70-year old Chief Imam of the Mosque, Mallam Akili, who is also of Hausa extraction.

This led to another violent clash that claimed the life of a young man with 8 others injured. The fourth person reportedly died in the early hours of Saturday from injury sustained.

Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO) in the state, Baba Elkan, an Assistant Superintendent of Police however told newsmen that only one person died, while eight others sustained injuries.

THE NATION ON SUNDAY JULY 12, 2015

Lawmaker advocates community ownership of public facilities

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HE House of Assembly member representing Obokun State constituency in Osun State, Hon. Olatunbosun Oyintiloye, has disclosed that community ownership, protection and maintenance of public facilities will promote and sustain development.

He spoke at the commissioning and handing over of a borehole donated to Ibokun community by Egbe Omo Obokun of Ijesaland in Batimore/Washington, United States, saying such gesture would automatically lead to bottom top development, which he described as community-driven.

To achieve this objective, the lawmaker said the people must revert to the old African cultural mode of developing communities through collective efforts to achieve more results.

He said: “We need to live out our cultural values of building and modernising our communities. Through community spirit, service and development, people would be able to identify their needs and use collective communal efforts to achieve it and maintain those ones provided by government and or donated by individuals and NGO’s.

“We have to revert to our African cultural mode of developing our community whereby we use collective efforts, synergise our power and resources to get bigger results. This is one of the cultural virtues we have lost as a people.”

The lawmaker further charged the people to take ownership of every public structure in their domain, saying this would propel citizens to imbibe maintenance culture.

Promote traditional medicine as alternative revenue, FG urged

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HE Chairman, Traditional Medicine Council of Osun State, Chief Idowu Esuleke, has charged the federal government to harness the potentials of traditional medicine as alternative revenue to oil.

Esuleke’s remarks are captured in his memoir, ‘The Boy Esuleke,’ due for public presentation July 25 this month in Osogbo, the Osu State capital to commemorate his 75th birthday.

He said: “The Federal Government must wake up to the reality that herbal medicine is one of the resources that God has deposited in Nigeria, and if it is properly explored, structured, packaged and regulated, it will give the country more money than what crude oil brings.”

He further admonished the government to adopt a diplomatic approach in handling the international conspiracy against the potency of Nigerian herbs, leaves and roots.

NEWS

NASS crisis: Alasoadura must apologise, says ex-lawmaker

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RISIS is looming in the Ondo State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC).

The crisis is the fall-out over the emergence of Dr. Bukola Saraki as the Senate President with one of the APC senators in the state, Chief Tayo Alasoadura, believed to have voted for Saraki in defiance of the directives by the party’s national leadership.

Alasoadura, who served as Commissioner for Finance in the administration of the late governor, Dr. Olusegun Agagu, was alleged to be the only APC Senator in the Southwest that supported the emergence of the new Senate President.

The lawmaker’s action, it

From Damisi Ojo, Akure

was learnt, sparked a row among the leadership and members of the party particularly in Ondo Central Senatorial District comprising six local government areas in the state which Alasoadura represents in the National Assembly.

The leadership of the party in the state under the former Secretary to the State Government (SSG), Mr. Isaacs Kekemeke, was accused of supporting Alasoadura’s action.

A leader of the party in Ondo Central and former member, House of Representatives, Ifedayo Abegunde with our correspondent, said Alasoadura should apologise

for working against the interest of his constituency.

But Alasoadura, sources disclosed, maintained that he did not work against the interest of the party on any issues that are in conformity with the aspiration of his people.

Abegunde however insisted that the senator should retrace his steps rather than embarking on what he called “political propaganda in the media.”

He added that Alasoadura must “swallow his pride and submit himself for necessary actions.”

The APC chieftain noted that the Senator must show remorse and apologise to his party because of the public out-

cry the issue of Saraki’s emergence as Senate President has generated.

He wondered why the state leadership of the party under Kekemeke should be celebrating a man who joined few party members to put the party in disarray.

The former legislator lamented that Alasoadura did not consult his constituents nor had their mandate to go against the party’s directives on the National Assembly election.

Abegunde added that majority of party members in the party in the state aligned with the position of its National Leader, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, whom he said had come to the aid of the party in the state at critical period.

• From left: National President, Association of General and Private Medical Practitioners of Nigeria (AGPMPN), Dr Frank Odafen; Secretary General, Dr Kayode Adesola and former Commissioner of Health, Lagos State, Dr Leke Pitan, at the association's National Executive Council Meeting in Lagos, yesterday.

PHOTO: NAN

Call off your strike, Osun monarchs appeal to workers

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RADITIONAL rulers in Osun State over the weekend appealed to workers to call off their industrial action in the interest of peace, progress and development of the state.

In a release signed by 15 prominent Obas from across the state, the royal fathers said though the workers have genuine ground to go on strike, they, however, appealed to them to protect the interest of the state.

Speaking on behalf of the monarchs, the Akinrun of Ikirun, Oba AbdulRauf Olawale Adedeji, expressed sympathy for workers, government and the people of the state over the lingering industrial action.

•Rally support for Aregbesola While noting that the overall interest of the state is paramount, the monarchs said it is imperative for the workers to call off their industrial action.

They said: “We sympathise with the workers and also sympathise with the government. We also sympathise with the people of Osun State, because they are also affected in one way or the other by the financial crisis.

“We commend the labour unions, particularly its leadership for comporting themselves. We salute their endurance. We want to appeal to them to bear with government.

We assure them that from what

we have seen, this challenge would soon be resolved.”

According to them, the state governor, Rauf Aregbesola, means well judging from how he has turned around the state in the last five years.

They noted that the era when the state was referred to as a glorified local government and Osogbo, the state capital, as a glorified capital, has gone, due to the massive development Aregbesola has brought to the state.

“One does not need to look at the crystal ball to know that the Aregbesola administration has, in the last four years, been

busy turning the state around in all ramifications.

“This is a government whose presence is felt in all the nooks and crannies of the state; this is one government that had been paying workers’ salaries as and when due; this is the government that has introduced novelty by paying bonus to workers at the end of the year; that is the 13th month salary,” the monarchs noted.

The royal fathers warned that the current situation in the state should not be politicised by those who are seeking to capitalise on the situation to score cheap political points.

The monarchs equally appealed to the government to intensify its effort geared towards resolving the problems.

Ondo reaffirms commitment to tackle polio

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HE Ondo State government has reaffirmed its commitment to routine immunisation exercise for mothers and children in order to eradicate killer diseases in the state.

The state Deputy Governor, Alhaji Lasisi Oluboyo who disclosed this, said the government would continue to partner with health organisations and other relevant stakeholders towards eradi-

From Leke Akeredolu, Akure cating polio in the state and the country in general.

Oluboyo, who represented the governor, Dr. Olusegun Mimiko, during a meeting with members of the state task force on polio eradication at the governor’s office in Akure, the state capital, said the government has invested heavily in the health sector because of its importance and peculiarity.

According to him, the present administration in the state would not relent in its efforts in the health sector, adding that the government would continue to work towards eradicating communicable and non-communicable diseases in the state.

He commended the state Ministry of Health, health workers and their partners for their efforts at ensuring that polio is kicked out in the state,

noting that the their commitment and dedication to this task has greatly contributed to the successes recorded in the health sector in the past few years.

The governor further urged all stakeholders in health care delivery in the various local government areas in the state to continue to work and positively impact on polio eradication strategies at the grassroots level.

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UI to hold stakeholders’ workshop on seed yam production From Sikiru Akinola, Ibadan

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HE University of Ibadan later this month will hold a stakeholders’ workshop on seed yam production using low-cost bioreactors.

The workshop, which will consider year-round production and availability of seed yam using plant tissue culture technology, will take place at the Auditorium of the Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry.

This forms part of the objectives of a project christened ‘Improving yam seed systems through production of dormancy-controlled seed tubers in Temporary Immersion Bioreactors’, according to the Principal Investigator, Dr. Morufat Balogun, a geneticist and tissue culture specialist in the Department of Crop Protection and Environmental Biology, Faculty of Agriculture of the institution.

The project is funded through the National Science Foundation-Partnerships for Enhanced Engagement in Research (PEER) Science programme under the Prime Agreement entered into between the United States’ National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

The University of Ibadan and the Pennsylvania State University is in partnership on the project, according to its organisers.

Balogun further explained that the project has been researching into growing yam in Temporary Immersion Bioreactors, a system that feeds the yam plant with liquid nutrients intermittently in sterile containers, to produce small tubers and investigate control of their dormancy.

‘Students on the Runway’ holds in August HE second edition of “Students on the Runway” is slated to hold on July 25 at the University of Lagos (UNILAG).

The show is the brainchild of Wise-Plus Concepts in conjunction with City People and NUESS. The maiden edition, which held in March this year, featured a fashion show and skills acquisition training program in different vocations for students of tertiary institutions.

The second edition, christened ‘Students on the Runway 2’, would incorporate scholarship/empowerment for students to fashion schools; beauty/make-up training, as well as bead making skills.

It would also feature a fashion show/seminar, with many leading and upcoming fashion designers on parade. There will also be music segment that will feature top artistes and comedians in the music industry.

Other activities lined up for the event include a road walk which will take participants at the show on campaign tours to four different higher institutions.

World-renowned motivational speaker, Gbenga Ademujimi will be the keynote speaker at the show.

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THE NATION ON SUNDAY JULY 12, 2015

•Saraki

•Maikasuwa

•Dogara

•National Assembly in session

National Assembly Budget: Who oversees the overseer?

How much do Nigerians know about the National Assembly budget procedure? In this report, Jide Babalola, Assistant Editor, Abuja, takes a look at a process in which the lawmakers’ budgets are approved by same legislators without outside oversight.

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ANY Nigerians may feel outraged to know that over the past five years; the National Assembly annually spends about half a billion naira on the maintenance of generators alone! Within a period of four years, not less than three contracts were awarded at close to one billion naira, for installing or rehabilitating closed circuit television (cctv) cameras within the Assembly complex. Also, standard Plasma television sets were procured for the offices of each Senator, Representative and other National Assembly top bureaucrats at about five times the market rate at about N500, 000 each.

To some extent, shielding the National Assembly’s annual N150b budget from citizens’ scrutiny helps to save many from seeing expenditure items that could gen-

erate major headaches and depression. In a country where millions daily live on less than N500 per day, a cctv installation contract of N200m on some very frivolous item like N15 million special glass cups for drinking wine, beer or juice could be randomly awarded to a lucky beneficiary.

Such contractors are usually in two categories - highly connected persons or mere fronts for the powers -that - be.

Beaming a searchlight on the catacombs of the National Assembly’s thoroughly opaque budget would require more than sheer guts and political will. The scandals waiting to be uncovered therein are of gargantuan propensities and for years, the prevailing wisdom had been to literally let sleeping dogs lie, feed fat and lie further while pretentiously projecting

commitments towards service and sacrifice.

After all, it is the National Assembly that investigates suspicious or fraudulent activities in the oil sector; calls law enforcement and security agencies to order when it deemed necessary while its sustained practice of ‘inviting’ chief executives of various parastatals is now wearing thin on effect.

Budget The word “budget” is derived from an old French word ‘bougette’ (purse) which implies a quantified financial plan for a forthcoming accounting period. The Chartered Institute of Management Accountants, the world’s largest professional body of management accountants defines a

•Contd. on page 10

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THE NATION ON SUNDAY, JULY 12, 2015

NEWS REVIEW

NASS budget: A uniquely secret process •Continued from page 9 budget as “a quantitative expression of a plan for a defined period of time that may include planned sales volumes and revenues, resource quantities, costs and expenses, assets, liabilities and cash flows.

It expresses strategic plans of business units, organizations, activities or events in measurable terms.”

Nowhere is a public budget defined as a classified document to be shrouded in mystery and held away from the scrutiny of taxpayers.

Broadly, Wikipedia, the online treasure trove of information, defines the purpose of a budget document as being to “aid the planning of actual operations by forcing managers to consider how the conditions might change and what steps should be taken now and by encouraging managers to consider problems before they arise. It also helps co-ordinate the activities of the organization by compelling managers to examine relationships between their own operation and those of other departments.”

Other essentials aspects attributed to a budget include: controlling resources, communicating plans to others bearing relevant responsibilities, motivating managers towards striving to achieve budget goals, enhancing performance and ensuring accountability.

Legislatures’ budgets elsewhere In terms of secrecy, the National Assembly’s budget process probably stands in a unique position of its own among all the legislatures’ budgets in the entire universe.

The Senate President, the Speaker, their two deputies, Chairmen of Services Committees in both the Senate and House of Representatives, along with the Clerk of the National Assembly (CNA) are the top crust of everything in Nigeria’s federal legislature.

The CNA has a handful of very powerful civil servants under him, including the Director of Procurement through whose offices all procurement arrangement passes; the Director of Finance who oversees all payments and bank arrangements, and; the Director of Estate and Works who supervises all utilities’ maintenance (including generators) and construction. Working with the successive Directors of Estate and Works, since 1998, Julius Berger has continuously been engaged in one multi- billion Naira project after another within the National Assembly Complex. The civil servants maintain a strict code of silence and expectantly work towards gaining their bosses’ confidence while sustaining hopes for their coming turns in the future.

The budget of a government is a summary or plan of the intended revenues and expenditures of that government. In Ni-

• Senate President, Bukola Saraki

geria, except for a few privileged directors and principal officials, no one, not even most of the senior personnel of the National Assembly have the vaguest idea about items in the federal legislature’s budget.

As budgeting is understood to be the setting of expenditure levels for each organization or government department’s functions, it is the estimation and allocation of available capital used to achieve designated targets.

A budget process refers to the process by which governments create and approve a budget. In the United States whose democracy we seek to emulate, the budget process for the Senate or any other government department and the entire federal structure is unambiguously defined for the understanding of all.

Their budget process is as follows: * The Financial Service Department prepares worksheets to assist the department head in preparation of department budget estimates * The Administrator calls a meeting of managers and they present and discuss plans for the following year’s projected level of activity. * The managers can work with the Financial Services, or work alone to prepare an estimate for the departments coming year. * The completed budgets are presented by the managers to their Executive Officers for review and approval. * Justification of the budget request may be required in writing.

In most cases, the manager talks with their administrative officers about budget requirements.

Adjustments to the budget submission may be required as a result of this phase in the process.

In their book, Public Budgeting in America, Smith, Robert W. and Thomas D. Lynch (2004) described public budgeting through four perspectives. According to them, “The politician sees the

• Speaker, House, Yakubu Dogara

budget process as ‘a political event conducted in the political arena for political advantage’. The economist views budgeting as a matter of allocating resources in terms of opportunity cost where allocating resources to one consumer takes resources away from another consumer. The role of the economist, therefore, is to provide decision makers with the best possible information. The accountant perspective focuses on the accountability value in budgeting which analyzes the amount budgeted to the actual expenditures thereby describing the “wisdom of the original policy”.

Smith and Lynch’s public manager’s perspective on a budget is a policy tool to describe the implementation of public policy.

In the United Kingdom, Parliament’s budget is part of general one prepared by the Treasury team led by the Chancellor of the Exchequer and is presented to Parliament by the Chancellor of the Exchequer on Budget Day. Customarily, the Chancellor stands on the steps of Number 11, Downing Street with his or her team for the media to get photographic shots of the Red Box containing all budget documents, immediately prior to them going to the House of Commons. Once presented in the House of Commons it is debated and then voted on. Minor changes may be made however with the budget being written and presented by the party with the majority in the House of Commons, (The Government), the Whips then ensure that is it passed as written by the Chancellor.

In United States, the legislative arm’s budget is encapsulated within the federal budget which is prepared by the Office of Management and Budget, and submitted to Congress for consideration.

Invariably, Congress makes many and substantial changes.

In India, the budget is prepared by the Budget Division De-

partment of Economic Affairs of the Ministry of Finance annually.

The Philippine budget, considered to be the most complicated in the world, incorporates multiple approaches in one single budget system: line-item (budget execution), performance (budget accountability), and zero-based budgeting. The Department of Budget and Management prepares the National Expenditure Programme and forwards it to the Committee on Appropriations of the House of Representative to come up with a General Appropriations Bill (GAB). The GAB will go through budget deliberations and voting and the same process is repeated when the GAB is transmitted to the Philippine Senate.

During all the deliberations and voting, public scrutiny of the legislatures’ budget is allowed, unlike the practice in Nigeria.

Sterile watchdogs Ironically, Nigeria has some of the world’s most extensive laws to prohibit the secrecy and manipulations that go on behind the scene in the course of procurements and contract implementation in all government establishments, including the National Assembly.

The Public Procurement Act of 2007 alone is a ferocious anti-corruption instrument that guarantees ten years jail term without any option of fines, for any official who infringes stringent rules on public procurement.

Regularly, the Bureau for Public Procurement (BPP) harasses various government bodies over issues such as non-advertisement of contract bids before the award of huge contracts. However, BPP, like the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Independent Corrupt Practices and other Offences Commission (ICPC) and the nation’s AuditorGeneral’s office know better than to dare ‘embarrass’ the nation’s legislative arm.

When one notes that it is rare to see tenders being published in Nigerian newspapers for contracts covered by the National Assembly’s annual N150 billion budget, the picture becomes clearer.

The Public Procurement Act 2007 established the Bureau of Public Procurement charged with the responsibility to amongst others, provide legal and institutional framework and professional capacity for public procurement in Nigeria. The objectives of establishing the Bureau of Public Procurement are to; • Harmonize existing government policies and practices on public procurement and ensure probity, accountability and transparency in the procurement process; • Establish pricing standards and benchmarks; • Ensure the application of fair, competitive, transparent, value-for-money standards and practices for the procurement and disposal of public assets; and • Attain transparency, competitiveness, cost effectiveness and professionalism in the public sector procurement system.

At a workshop in Abuja few days ago, the Director-General of the BPP, Emeka Eze stated that corrupt public officials prefer to be prosecuted by either EFCC or ICPC rather than under the Procurement Act. “The Procurement Act has no provision for a fine and has a maximum 10 calendar years and not prison-term years,” Eze stated at the event organized by the Anti-Corruption Academy of Nigeria in Abuja.

There is also the EFCC Act which mandates the EFCC to combat financial and economic crimes. The Commission is empowered to prevent, investigate, prosecute and penalize economic and financial crimes and is charged with the responsibil-

•Contd. on page 12

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, JULY 12, 2015

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THE NATION ON SUNDAY, JULY 12, 2015

NEWS REVIEW

•Continued from page 10 ity of enforcing the provisions of other laws and regulations relating to economic and financial crimes, including: *Economic and Financial Crimes Commission Establishment act (2004) *The Money Laundering Act 1995 *The Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act 2004 *The Advance Fee Fraud and Other Fraud Related Offences Act 1995 *The Failed Banks (Recovery of Debts) and Financial Malpractices in Banks Act 1994 *The Banks and other Financial Institutions Act 1991; and Miscellaneous Offences Act. Another body that performs a watchdog function over public funds/procurements is the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC). It was inaugurated on September 29, 2000 following the recommendation of President Olusegun Obasanjo. Its mandate is to receive and investigate reports of corruption and in appropriate cases, prosecute the offender[s], to examine, review and enforce the correction of corruption prone systems and procedures of public bodies, with a view to eliminating corruption in public life, and to educate and enlighten the public on and against corruption and related offences with a view to enlisting and fostering public support for the fight against corruption.

Till date, not a single case has been prosecuted in the course of disbursing the National Assembly’s five years’ cumulative N750 billion budget. Knowing the National Assembly’s sweeping powers, it is wise to give the place a wide berth while beaming a searchlight on problems elsewhere.

NASS: Who oversees the overseer?

It states thus: (1) Subject to the provisions of this Constitution, each House of the National Assembly shall have power by resolution published in its journal or in the Official Gazette of the Government of the Federation to direct or cause to be directed investigation into(a) any matter or thing with respect to which it has power to make laws, and (b) the conduct of affairs of any person, authority, ministry or government department charged, or intended to be charged, with the duty of or responsibility for (i) executing or administering laws enacted by National Assembly, and (ii) disbursing or administering moneys appropriated or to be appropriated by the National Assembly.

(2) The powers conferred on the National Assembly under the provisions of this section are exercisable only for the purpose of enabling it to (a) make laws with respect to any matter within its legislative competence and correct any defects in existing laws; and (b) expose corruption, inefficiency or waste in the execution or administration of laws within its legislative competence and in the disbursement or administration of funds appropriated by it.

•Clerk of National Assembly, Alhaji Salisu Maikasuwa

Constitutional powers Section 81 of the 1999 Constitution deals with the authorization of expenditure from the Consolidated Revenue Fund, and like INEC and the nation’s judiciary, the National Assembly directly re-

ceives funds for its budget through the CRF. Provisions under Section 88 of the constitution deal with the power to conduct investigation into any matter in both the Exclusive and Concurrent legislative lists.

Conclusion While the budgets of the Presidency, the Department of State Security Services, police and numerous ministries, departments and agencies are at least partly open open to scrutiny, that of the National Assembly remains a secret known only to a handful of persons who draw up the annual N150 billion document. Accord-

ing to Awwalu Rafsanjani, the head of Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC), a non-governmental advocacy body that has much interest in the National Assembly, the unnecessary veil of secrecy over their budget has facilitated much conjectures and suspicions.

He told The Nation on Sunday that it is ironical that members of the assembly turn round to complain about speculations when members of the public randomly attribute all manners of non-transparent acts to them.

Without any iota of doubt, Nigeria’s National Assembly operates the most opaque annual budget in the country.

Some critics see it as an avenue for what they refer to as “democratised stealing”. It is an irony that the arm of government that statutorily conducts oversight functions on all ministries, departments and agencies shrouds its yearly humongous budget from even the most basic checks by citizens. None of its presiding officers or bureaucrats has come forward with any convincing or logical explanation as to why this has remained so over the years.

Saying that the ruling All Progressives Congress ‘change’ mantra is needed in the National Assembly’s internal budgeting process would amount to stating the obvious.

Observers of the national politics and the wind of change are therefore watching to see how things would differ under the current dispensation.

Will it or will it not? The answer is in the winds…of change? We wait and see.

Ropo Sekoni

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Femi Orebe Page 16

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HE recently announced presidential bail out approved by President Muhammadu Buhari for states owing workers months of unpaid salaries will, no doubt, be a welcome development to concerned workers across the country and, indeed, many of the affected states. It should be stressed that more than a quarter of the 36 states of the federation owe workers’ salaries in arrears believed to be in the region of over N110billion.

The worst hit states are Osun, Rivers, Oyo, Ekiti, Kwara, Kogi, Ondo, Plateau, Benue and Bauchi.

An integral part of the bailout strategy as announced by government is for the federal and state governments to share $2.1 billion (about N497 billion) sourced from recent LNG proceeds to the federation account. Equally, the federal government has directed the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, to arrange a special intervention fund that will offer steady financing to the states. The package, which is between N250 billion and N300 billion, is to serve as a soft loan available to states to access to settle arrears of salaries.

Additionally, the president has approved a debt reprieve plan devised by the Debt Management Office, which will help states to streamline their commercial loans which is presently put at around N660 billion, and extend the life span of such loans while reducing their debt-servicing expenditures. Another part of the plan is to free up more money currently being used for debt servicing by guarantying the elongation of the loans in the benefit of the states.

Various public affairs analysts and social commentators have taken divergent positions on the presidential bailout since it was announced by the federal government. While some applauded the initiative, others simply denigrate it. To those in support of the move, it is the best option available, for now, especially given the parlous state of the nation’s economy occasioned by dwindling global price of oil. With the sharp drop in the monthly revenue allocation to states coupled with their various debt commitments, there is no way most of the states could offset unpaid salaries arrears.

However, those who are against the move hinged their stand on the fact that it would further entrench corruption in the system. They argued that, in as much as it is true that the national economy is experiencing a downward trend, most of the states actually compounded the situation through unbridled financial recklessness.

Bailing them out would, therefore, amount to promoting and commending their perceived corrupt tendencies.

In a democracy, these conflicting views and opinions are quite understandable. It is, however, essential to point out that in a troubled economy like ours, government bailout is one of the economic measures that could rescue the polity from a possible or a definite collapse. It is customary, even in advanced democracies, for government to roll out bailout strategies in order to preserve democratic institutions and provide soccour to the downtrodden. Without a doubt, most of the states might possibly go insolvent partly in view of the parlous state of the national economy. It is equally important to stress that but for the bail out, we would have had an unavoidable workers’ rebellion that could pose a serious threat to democracy.

SUNDAY, JULY 12, 2015

Presidential bailout for states: matters arising otufodunrin@thenationonlineng.net

08050498530(SMS only)

Media: The log in our eyes

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•Buhari

By Tayo Ogunbiyi

The snag, nonetheless, is for how long will the federal government continue to bailout the states, especially if the economy doesn’t record a significant improvement as soon as expected? This, of course, is where the states need to be more creative and inward looking in shoving up their Internally Generated Revenue, IGR, base.

It is better not to have states than to have states that are not economically buoyant.

Such would only serve as a huge burden on the country. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, the IGR of most states in the country is recording a downward slide. For instance, the IGR of Lagos State in 2014 was N276, 163,978,675.95 as against N384, 259,410,959.19 collected in 2013. Next to Lagos is Rivers State with an IGR collection of N89, 112,448,347.58 in 2014 compared to N87, 914,415,268.80 collected in 2013 fiscal year. Hence, there is a need for states to plug all loopholes for an improved IGR base.

To achieve this, we need to re-examine the idea of global taxation for all citizens.

This major source of funding has for long been relegated to the background. Now is the time to reverse the trend. In most of the states, the source of government revenue is limited to taxes paid by the civil servants.

Creative strategies must be evolved to drag more taxable citizens into the tax net. Governments all over the world run on the taxes paid by the citizens, we cannot be an exception. It should be stressed, however, that funds accrued from taxes should be judiciously expended in order to encourage the tax payers.

Also, the states and other tiers of government should embrace prudent management of available resources. The cost of governance must be reasonably pruned down.

There is no point keeping arrays of need-

“How long will the federal government continue to bailout the states, especially if the economy doesn’t record a significant improvement as soon as expected? This is where the states need to be more creative and inward looking in shoving up their Internally Generated Revenue, IGR, base.

It is better not to have states than to have states that are not economically buoyant. Such would only serve as a huge burden on the country”

less aides if the economy cannot afford such. Our leaders need to start leading by example. All meaningless extravagant tendencies that could plunge the states and, indeed, the nation into deeper economic mess must be shunned.

Transparency and accountability must become the order of the day in all government establishments.

It is equally fundamental for both the federal and state governments to address the issue of over bloated civil service. If it is true, as it is being alleged, that some MDAs keep more than the required number of staff that is actually needed, efforts must be made to deal with such.

It is particularly undesirable for any government to spend the bulk of its resources in paying the wages of a lethargic and parasitic workforce. The bureaucracy that is required to drive democracy is one that is prompt, forthright and farsighted. In any nation where bureaucracy has become a drain pipe, democracy would certainly become endangered.

Perhaps, more importantly, the FG should step up efforts to improve the national economy. One way of doing this is to develop the non-oil sector. It is unacceptable for a country of Nigeria’s stature to continue to be a mono economy.

Our current national economic predicament is a direct result of the failure of the federal government to diversify the country’s economy. Succeeding administrations has for long been paying lip services to the development of the nonoil sector, but have all failed when it comes to actualisation. This trend must change. For us to have a buoyant economy, generate more employment and increase productivity, we must diversify the economy.

On a final note, the federal government should improve the power situation in the country. Regular and stable power supply will enable Small Medium Enterprises to thrive. Equally, multi-national firms that have relocated because of epileptic power situation could be lured back if the power situation improves. This would not only bring back lost jobs, but will certainly restore lost ones and our economy will be the better for it. God bless Nigeria!

•Ogunbiyi is of the Features Unit, Lagos State Ministry of Information and Strategy, Alausa, Ikeja.

OLLOWING widespread media reports about state governments owing civil servants’ salaries for months, especially in Osun State, I remember seeing a Facebook page post meant to justifiably mock some media organisations.

The post read: Hypocrisy is when a media house is owing staff salaries and is writing an editorial criticising state government defaulting in payment of salaries.

Whoever came up with the post has good reasons to do so, considering the shocking salary debt profile of some media organisations in the country.

Some broadcast and print media organisations in the country are as guilty as some state governments for failing to meet their obligations to their workers. A report by the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ) shows that the salary debt ranged from five months to 18 months.

Despite all efforts to get the concerned media organisations to pay up, they have refused to pay and continued to publish and broadcast as if the welfare of the journalists does not matter.

The NUJ and the workers have been forced to resort to picketing some of the organisations in the hope that the managements will pay. Most times, the media owners have not been able to fulfil the terms of agreements reached with protesting workers.

It is very ironic that some media houses in the forefront of campaigning for the payment of salaries and allowances of civil servants are not paying their workers. How can the concerned media organisations be taken seriously by defaulting governments and private organisations when they preach what they don’t practice themselves?

If they knew better, they would have implemented their suggestions in their media organisations and shown other employers how to treat their workers better.

What some media houses pay as salaries and allowances is poor enough compared to other sectors. Their inability to pay is a major indictment which they should be ashamed of instead of carrying on as if they are above the law.

While media houses like others can complain about the down turn of the economy which has negatively impacted on their operations, there is no justification to subject affected journalists to the kind of hardship they have had to cope with due to non-payment of their salaries.

What is apparent in some cases is that lack of proper management of human and financial resources is responsible for the sorry state the debtor media houses have found themselves. It is not that some of them are not making money that is enough to pay their staff and for operations, the problem is that they are not operating the proper corporate governance principles required for growing the business.

I remember joining The Punch newspaper in May 1987, when the company was battling to survive. That the newspaper has grown to become the leading newspaper in the industry is a testimony to the efficient management which the company has become known for.

If only some of the owners and management of some of the defaulting media houses can be more disciplined and subject their operations to due diligence, they will not find themselves in the mess they are today.

The media houses are lucky that they are operating in a country like Nigeria where the labour law is not strong enough to penalise employers who don’t pay their staff. One of them who tried to publish in South Africa folded up in less than a year due to the stringent law that protects the interest of the workers.

It is high time media houses which cannot pay their staff were shut down and stop pretending to be what they are not. Media organisations cannot continue to point out the speck in others’ eyes when we have logs in ours.

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THE NATION ON SUNDAY JULY 12, 2015

COMMENT

Fear of progressives in our country Trying to pretend that there is no wing of the northern elite that is opposed to Buhari’s candidacy and may thus be interested in sponsoring opposition to his anti-corruption policies and programmes is being deliberately myopic

F

EAR of progressives or of progressive ideas by individuals and groups obsessed with reactionary or conservative ideas has been a part of human organisations from time immemorial. The tension since the beginning of human history between conservative (originally known as feudal) forces and liberty-oriented individuals (generally known as progressives) is still evident in many societies of today. For as long as there are people who identify with ideas that seek to promote and protect the interests of the people at large while there are others who remain fixed to the position that it is only the personal or class interests of the few with various forms of advantage that should dominate majority with the power to determine what benefits should be given to the masses from the common wealth in any society, there is bound to be morbid fear between the two groups. It is usually the few individuals with the advantage of power in politics, economy, and society that generally appear more afraid of those cultivating new ideas than the other way around. But in cases of successful revolutions championed by those on the side of progress, such progressives quickly learn that the fear of reactionary forces is the beginning of wisdom.

Those who were around to witness the political history of the country and those who have had opportunities to study the country’s political journey since independence ought not to be surprised when Chief Bisi Akande made the following observation: “Most northern elites, the Nigerian oil subsidy barons and other business cartels who never liked President Buhari’s anti-corruption political stance are quickly backing-up the rebellion against the APC with strong support….While other position seekers are waiting in the wings until Buhari’s ministers are announced, a large section of the South-West sees the rebellion as a conspiracy of the north against the Yoruba.” Many persons and organisations, including the north’s apex socio-cultural organisation, the Arewa Consultative Forum, have castigated Chief Akande for making inflammatory statements and for attempting to return with this statement, despite his contributions to the building of a pan-Nigeria political party in APC, to the politics of ethnicity and religion. The ACF said authoritatively that “the

era of tribal and religious politics or inciting one tribe over [sic] the other has no place in our present political focus.”

As expected, people have lined up in the last two or so weeks behind or against Chief Akande for his statement or assessment of what went wrong with the election of National Assembly officers about a month ago. What is missing in the reactions of individuals and associations to Akande’s statement is the courage to ask pertinent questions before attacking the messenger.

One of such questions should have been about whether there is a stratum of the elite in the north and other regions that is mortally opposed to Buhari’s anti-corruption stance and his ethic of change of the manner Nigeria is governed.

Without mincing words, there are and have to be members of the elite in the north and south who are not comfortable with Buhari’s electoral victory and citizens’ mandate to him to work towards change of governance philosophy and style in the country. From the infancy of modern politics in multiethnic Nigeria during and after colonialism, there has always been a stratum of the elite class in all the regions with unmistakable aversion for modernity and change. In the 1940s for example, a strong group of traditional elite in the north unapologetically stood against calls for political independence from colonial subjugation, apparently for fear that sending British colonisers away would diminish the power and influence of the core of the north’s traditional leadership.

Even in the west, now referred to as southwest and some sections of the south-south, there were persons who considered themselves cultural leaders who campaigned overtly and covertly against the introduction of free primary education when Chief Obafemi Awolowo and his Action Group party launched the policy of providing access to members of all social classes in the western region to acquisition of knowledge that could accelerate the process of modernisation. It was such opposition against reducing the barriers to change and equality that explained why the northern region looked away from copying the experiment in free universal education in the west after Awolowo’s progressive politicians overshadowed their conservative counterparts in the region with large support of the citizenry.

Similarly in the second republic, conservative members of the elite in the north and the south in

the NPN tried to justify the denial of access to universal education to citizens by insisting that there should be no universal education until the country was in a position to provide ‘qualitative education,’ as if access and quality were mutually exclusive. The entire country is suffering today for the denial of education to millions of children in the north when the Unity Party of Nigeria, a progressive political party, pleaded with citizens that no amount of learning was useless. Most of the young people in the army of Boko Haram terrorists today must be children or grandchildren of Nigerian citizens in the north that were denied access to modern education in the first and second republics in particular. The current push by the international community for a total approach to the problem of Boko Haram certainly includes a recognition of decades of marginalisation of the masses in a region dominated by elites with little confidence in universal education, one of the pillars of political and social reform.

Just as there were conservatives or reformaverse individuals in the north and the south in the pre-independence era, so were there agents of reaction and reform in both sections of the country in subsequent republics. While the NPC was the dominant political group in the north at the time of the 1959 election, so was there NEPU of Malam Aminu Kano. In the second republic, the dominance of change-resisting NPN in the north was countered by a change-promoting political party also led by Aminu Kano, the PRP. Alhaji Balarabe Musa and Abubakar Rimi won gubernatorial elections in Kaduna and Kano under the PRP. Both agents of change then served as governors until the wheel of impeachment at the instance of the conservative wing of the northern elite removed Balarabe Musa from office. There were many intellectuals even in the southwest who believed that the UPN was not progressive enough for the problems confronting Nigeria and thus chose to register as members of the PRP. Just as the north had fire-eating enemies of change then, so did the region have change-promoting activists and intellectuals. For example, Bala Usman compared favourably with his radical counterparts in the south: Segun Osoba (the historian, not the journalist) and many others.

Even in the third republic, the nation’s political space was divided into two: ‘a little to the right and a little to the left.’ The candidate for the right

emerged from the north while the one for the left came from the south. It is only in 2015 that the candidate for the presidency on the platform of progressives is a northerner, an unmistakable member of the northern elite that Chief Akande referred to as producing most of those who sponsored the controversial election of officers in the National Assembly. Clearly Akande’s use of northern must have been in terms of geography, rather than ethnicity or religion.

Reducing Akande’s argument about the role of conservative forces in the crusade against change (after the election of Buhari as the nation’s agent of and for change) to ethnic or religious distraction does not help matters in any way. It smacks more of intimidation of the first chairman of APC who Buhari himself has referred to as a major builder of the party. Even though northern elite in general asked for a northerner to succeed Jonathan, it is not unexpected that Buhari’s coming to power on the platform of change, reform, and improvement may not please all members of the northern and southern elite. Trying to pretend that there is no wing of the northern elite that is opposed to Buhari’s candidacy and may thus be interested in sponsoring opposition to his anti-corruption policies and programmes is being deliberately myopic.

If our children are to have proper political education, no individual or group should deny the existence of some elites in the north and in the south and of their power or influence to scuttle the process of change, especially when power is in the hands of a progressive, whether he or she is from the north or the south. Ideological differences have always been a part of the country’s political culture and no amount of effort to occlude this fact can lead to reform. Conservatives and progressives must have the courage to identify public with their political stance, and no group should seek to benefit from the regime of change from shielded enclaves of reactionary forces in any part of the country while denying the existence of reactionary forces. Most modern countries of the world use ideology to structure their political conflict and competition for power. Majority of Nigerians opted for a progressive political party in the March/April elections and those who are behind neutralisation of the party of change need to be exposed so that citizens can take proper note.

THE NATION ON SUNDAY JULY 12, 2015

COMMENT

15

Reconsider that move Protests against the relocation of Boko Haram prisoners to the South East deserves dispassionate assessment

I

T is not unusual in a democracy for people to protest against public policies for various reasons. This is the hallmark of the democratic prder. However, in our clime, such protests and the response to them are often smeared by sectarian considerations. The plan by the federal authorities to move some insurgents serving term in some Northern prisons to Ekwulobia in Anambra State in the South East is being stoutly resisted by the governments, leaders and people of the region.

Last week, governors pf the five states in the zone rose from a meeting in Owerri, the Imo State capital, to denounce the move and request that the federal government restrict Boko Haram prisoners to the federal capital city, Abuja. They reasoned, quite logically, that the South East has been so devastated by its own peculiar security challenge that it could not afford to watch another dimension introduced.

They also argued that only Abuja, with the concentration of security agencies, devices and personnel, could house such men and women.

But, earlier, the people of Anambra State had protested against the plan on the ground that Northern prisoners should not be brought to their state. We consider that line of reasoning untenable as all prisons in the country are owned by the federal government and the prisoners were tried and sentenced under federal laws. It is therefore unacceptable that people of different localities determine who may be jailed in what federal facility. If the protest along that line is sustained, there would soon come a time when deciding where to locate detainees and prisoners would become a problem.

We recall that there had been times when prominent political prisoners were moved away from the scene of their alleged crimes. The late Chief Gani Fawehinmi was jailed at the Gashua prison while the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo,

I

OFTEN hear this epigram from journalists: “Comment is free, but facts are sacred.”

Politics is about self-interest; hence I do not begrudge Dr Sarah Olabimtan, the author of the article, “2015 and a people’s aspiration”, published in The Nation of July 5, 2015. What I frown at was her attempt to turn Ogun East, where I come from, into a pawn on her political chessboard. One is equally bemused by the efforts of the writer to make the Ogun State governor, Senator Ibikunle Amosun, a hostage to some queer and indecipherable commitments to Ogun West. We (women) can sometimes be emotional, but facts will always be facts.

It was my Awori friend from Ado/Odo Ota that first rang me up on the piece by Dr Sarah. “The Yewa now wish to reap where they did not sow!” she exclaimed. Of course, the facts are in the public domain.

Of the 84,241 votes delivered to the APC in the governorship poll of April 11, 2015 by the five local councils in Ogun West senatorial district, Ado/Odo Ota local council alone, peopled essentially by the Aworis, delivered 34,097, representing 41% of the votes to Senator Amosun. In other words, the entire Yewa, with four out of the five local councils in Ogun West, delivered only 59% of the APC votes.

On the contrary, out of the 69,535 votes of the PDP in the

after the famous Treasonable Felony trials of the First Republic was moved to the Calabar prison.

The people could, applying sentiments, have protested the decision on political, ethnic or sentimental grounds. They could also have argued, perhaps irrationally, that it could generate tension with their kiths and kins in Yoruba land being attacked.

We, however, call on the prison authorities to consider the plea on the ground of insufficiency of security network in the area. It is known that dare devil attacks have been launched by heavily armed insurgents to free their colleagues. In Kotokarfe, Kogi State, such an attack was launched and prisoners set free. In Ado Ekiti, too, a jail break last year was said to have been informed by the presence of some Boko Haram insurgents there. When this is considered along with the blood chilling operations of the terrorists, it is not surprising that the Anambra State people are worried at the frightening prospect of sending some of them to the state.

In 2011, the suicide bombing of the United Nations House in Abuja and the unprecedented earlier attack on the Police Headquarters at the federal capital city caught the attention of the world. Since then, the sacking of military and Police formation in Bama, Borno State, abduction of more than 200 secondary school girls in Chibok, Yobe State, capture of towns in the TRUTH IN DEFENCE OF FREEDOM

•Editor Festus Eriye

•Managing Director/ Editor-in-Chief Victor Ifijeh

•Deputy Editor Olayinka Oyegbile

•Chairman, Editorial Board Sam Omatseye

•Associate Editor Sam Egburonu

•General Editor Adekunle Ade-Adeleye

North East, successes recorded against the Nigerian military and internationalization of their operations have shown that it is a well corordinated and funded group.

The war of words involving Anambra State Governor Willie Obiano and his predecessor, Mr Peter Obi is uncalled for and diversionary.

The suggestion that the relocation was approved by the former governor is ridiculous as the federal government needed no one’sendorsement to locate prisoners. It is a classical example of how not to politicize a matter of serious public interest. Politicians and public officers should always place the general interest above narrow political gains.

The Ekwulobia prison is small and thus unsuitable for such use. Jailed terrorists are meant tio be kept in maximum security prisons where the security forces are at alert at all times and the facilities adequate to deter attempts at freeing them We call on the federal government to upgrade facilities in all the prisons. They should be rehabilitated and security in and around them improved. This should take into consideration development in the country.

Armed robbers are known to have access to the most sophisticated weapons and could be encouraged by successes recorded by the Boko Haram attacks to make bids of their own.

There are also those jailed for laundering huge sums of money and could therefore hire hands to overwhelm the security in the prisons. The logic of spreading the jailed terrorists in various parts of the country should inform the need to establish maximum security prisons in all the geo-political zones. Until then, while the federal government has the right to decide where to send prisoners, terrorists should be kept in only maximum security prisons located in cities where there is sufficient security presence.

LETTERS

Re: Ogun 2015 and a people’s aspiration same governorship poll, Ado/ Odo local council delivered only 12,769, representing 18% of the votes to Gboyega Nasir Isiaka, who is a Yewa. This implies that the entire four councils of Yewa people delivered a whopping 82% of the total votes of the PDP! The obvious conclusion from this is that the Yewa people voted massively for their son, Gboyega Isiaka of the PDP. Therefore, it was a fallacy and an exercise in sophistry for Mrs Sarah to write that, “Two distinguished Yewa-Awori sons were overlooked by their people for the incumbent...

Yewa-Awori have used the vote to say in unmistakable terms that the two candidates raised against Amosun did not have their backing...

S

ECURITY information is supposed to be covert, especially when it concerns national security. But in Nigeria, such information is bandied in the public domain. Recently, President Muhammadu Buhari announced the relocation of the command and control of the defence headquarters from

Amosun whipped the two Yewa-Awori indigenes in their own backyard in Ogun West.”

Nothing could be further from the truth!

It is instructive, however, to note that, whereas Senator Akin Odunsi, the candidate of the SDP in the governorship election, who is an Awori, got only 59 votes from his local council, Ado/Odo Ota, Senator Ibikunle Amosun of the APC polled 34,097 in the same local council. Therefore, it was the Awori that actually rose in some way above the son-ofthe-soil syndrome in the 2015 gubernatorial poll in Ogun State. Consequently, it is totally illogical and wrong for the writer to suggest that the Yewa people voted massively for Amosun so that he could

back a candidate from the zone in 2019. If anything, it is the Awori that seemingly have some claims to lay to 2019 from Ogun West, but then not until the full matrix and calculus of Ogun politics are unravelled.

What I propose at this juncture is nothing more than a tip of the iceberg, for it is too early in the day to discuss full blast the politics that will shape 2019, on which Ogun East has overriding stakes. Amosun has just won the mandate for a second term and he should not be distracted from accomplishing the goals he had set for the new term.

The writer equally embarked on somewhat sentimental generalisation without getting her facts right on the issue of appointments. One

wonders where she got her list of appointments from. When you deal with figures, accuracy should be the watchword.

Politics is a game of numbers. Whereas my people from Ogun East delivered 94,974 votes to Governor Ibikunle Amosun, analysis of the contracts awarded, in monetary terms, shows that Ogun West got far more than its due from the resources of the state than Ogun East or Ogun Central, which is more populous than Ogun West. The writer therefore missed the point by comparing projects sited in Ogun East with Ogun West. In fact, the writer committed political hara-kiri by not contemplating the ramifications of such a strange voyage. It is on record that the longest road con-

Don’t tell Boko Haram where you are Abuja to Maiduguri. Also being bandied around the public space is information concerning the kind of weaponry being purchased to fight terrorists. This should not be so.

Announcing these measures like that in the public compromises these operations and

rules out the element of surprise, an essential ingredient in the fight against the enemy.

Apart from those in government who give them information, the insurgents also have access to the internet, radio and television and can monitor the information coming

out of government. If sincerely the government is interested in achieving a hundred percent success on the fight against the Boko Haram, it should desist from revealing its tactics on the public domain.

•Kelly Umukoro, Benin City.

structed by the Amosun administration - the 107km IlaraIjoun road - which cuts across four local councils, is in Ogun West. Whereas, the governor has through this succeeded in opening up the rural areas in Ogun West, the people of Ogun East are green with envy. Imagine the economic turnaround that Amosun brought to Ota and Aiyetoro through the modernisation of their roads.

Indeed, considering the manner the PDP conducted itself in Ogun East, especially in Ijebu axis during the last general elections, the indignities meted out to many supporters of the APC who dared the rampaging monsters, the limited funds of the APC in sharp contrast with the limitless funds of the PDP to prosecute the election in Ogun East, where votes were up for grabs since neither Amosun nor Isiaka is from the senatorial district and the fact that the senatorial district still polled far above Ogun West to deliver the second term to Amosun, despite Ogun West taking the lion’s share of the funds for infrastructural development of the state, it is only human and logical for the incumbent governor to reward the people of Ogun East with his support in 2019.

•By Chief (Mrs) Adetola Adewuyi, Ijebu Ode, Ogun State.

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16

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, JULY 12, 2015

COMMENT

Slavery in commercial banks in Nigeria: CBN must intervene We knew nothing of the pressures young bankers are today put through chasing deposits, mostly proceeds of corruption, in billions, which their crafty directors end up fraudulently converting to their own

T

HE title of this article does not belong to me. Rather, it belongs to a highly introspective senior citizen, a retired public servant who has seen more than eight decades on terra firma. He is, incidentally, a trained economist who, therefore, knows the critical role banks play in the economic development of nations.

And as I recently wrote on these pages, unlike the young, who looks forward when he falls, the old does the reverse, that is, looks backwards, eager to know exactly where the fault lies. Chief Deji Fasuan, MON, JP and, by His grace, 84 next September, has been doing just that about what tragedy has befallen the banking industry in Nigeria, at least, in one particular respect.

More about that later.

My first ever job on graduating from Christ’s School, Ado-Ekiti, December ’63, was as a banker at the prestigious Bank of West Africa, now First Bank, starting out at its headquarters in Marina, from where I would later be transferred to its Ebute Meta branch, Apapa Road, opposite the Fire Brigade office. Those were the days of 500-page ledgers, and bi-monthly balancing 15th and last day of every month - when you were sure to sleep in the office if you could not balance those assigned to you. For instance, some of us, Tayo Orukotan, our most proficient ‘balancer’, inclusive, said our Happy New Year hurrays, right there in the office, on Saturday, 31st December, 1966.

There were, of course, much more interesting things about banking in the 60s than having to spend your New Year eve in the office. For instance, I was guaranteed, as gift, the topmost five of whichever denomination the

ever fashionably turned out Papa J M Johnson, then Minister of Labour in the Tafawa Balewa federal government, was paid any time he came to the bank. Just like I knew I was loaded whenever the wealthy business magnate, Papa Aduroja, breezed in all the way from Ilesha. And, of course, those unforgettable bankers’ picnics that saw many of us, friends , among them Leke Owolabi and dear departed Arthur Medeiros, and bankers from Barclays Bank, African Continental Bank, Bank of West Africa, etc with Victor Abiodun of the Central Bank coordinating, heading to Pension Smith, Agege, at every festive period.

We used to charter the popular LMTS bus. We knew nothing of the pressures young bankers are today put through chasing deposits, mostly proceeds of corruption, in billions, which their crafty directors end up fraudulently converting to their own. We are told the ladies among them are now, in fact, encouraged to do whatever, as long as deposits roll in. How many of these young Nigerians are now on medication for hypertension we would never know. Right from our desks, in our various banks, we ordered the best of Van Heusen shirts, all the way from England, which enabled the likes of Bayo Famotibe, Funmi Banjo, Femi Turton, Mike Okonkwo – yes the Bishop - and, of course, yours truly, turn out smelling like a thousand roses week in, week out. Indeed, after leaving our almost every month-end parties at Railway Recreation Club around 6 am on Sunday, the Bishop, rather than sleep, was sure to drive Papa and Mama to the early morning Mass.

Such was the ease under which we lived as young bankers, envied by our contemporaries in the community. Today, smart Alecs have so changed it that the first thing even a chronic unemployed tells you is that he/she does not want a marketing job. While fraud was not completely unheard of – I won’t ever forget Orukotan, a cashier, bursting a local unemployed boy who was being used by a colleague of ours to withdraw from dormant savings accounts- they were a far cry from what now obtains as billions now get stolen annually. Indeed, NDIC has just reported an increase of 182.8 per cent in bank frauds for 2014. Deposits, in our days, were voluntarily brought in by individuals like the Oke Arin traders, cooperative societies, churches etc unlike now when banks daily deploy armadas of young persons in search of deposits.

And this, precisely, is what here engages the attention of a concerned Chief Fasuan who is calling on the Central Bank to urgently address the issue.

Happy reading.’

I am not exactly sure of the origin of commercial banking in Nigeria. All I grew to know in the late 40s and early 50s is that there were BBWA (Bank of British West Africa), Agbonmagbe Bank, African Continental Bank, New Nigeria Bank, National Bank of Nigeria Limited and Barclays Bank. These banks served the needs of market men and women around whom they were located. Very little was known of their staff outside the banking circle. They were either headed by expatriates or highly skilled Nigerian professionals. And all you hear were ‘manager’, ‘accountant’ and ‘clerk’; certainly none of today’s plethora of hierar-

chies and titles. The economy was compact and banking customers were few. Customers took their cash physically to their banks for deposit either at the current or savings level.

The customer was given a document in which the transactions (deposit and withdrawal) and liquidity position were clearly stated. However, banking in Nigeria has changed dramatically within the last two decades. For example, it’s no longer necessary to carry bank documents (Savings Book for example) to and fro, each time you want to pay or withdraw although you still write cheques to collect money from your current account. The practice now is that bright, educated and spritely young men and women are hired by commercial banks, designated ‘marketing officers,’ and thrown out to the world to look for customers. Desperately, these young ones invade homes, offices, entertainment centres, etc to look for depositors and other customers. You will think they are newly recruited salesmen and women for goods and articles manufactured by local industries. They hardly have a seat at their branch office.

One can see the level of desperation and anxiety to keep their jobs in the faces of these young Nigerians.

When you tell them you have no money to invest in their bank, they will try to persuade you to transfer your money from your present bank to theirs, even if for only one month.

This is to show their bosses back in the office that they are working.

Some, indeed, travel out with their bosses at weekends to retain their volatile jobs!

Without a doubt, the banking industry in Nigeria has been infiltrated with negative practices that were originally unknown to commercial

banking – an otherwise elegant and elitist profession. The question now is what is the role of the Central Bank as a regulator of the banking industry in Nigeria? Also, are the labour unions within the banking industry unaware of the treatment meted to these young people, which border on slavery and exploitation?

Some may ask how banks would get customers if these young men and women are not sent the harm’s way. Simple. Advertisement in the media, all media, is the answer. Vigorous advertisement on radio, television, the social media and billboards can ensure the competiveness of banks and how attractive their products are will then be the deciding factor. It is absolute obscenity to send our girls to the streets in adolescent age to canvass for business for the big man up there.

The Central Bank of Nigeria should not be seen to be concerned only with the safety of the depositors’ funds or returns on investment.

The regulatory body should also look into the ethics of the profession especially between the mighty managers and the vulnerable ‘marketing’ officers. Some level of security of job and the sanctity of the human dignity are necessary in banking operations as we see it in other climes.

While each member of the industry should continue to have freedom to organise its operations within the extant regulations– the CBN must ensure a level of decency and comportment by the banks.

Also, Labour, as a defender of the dignity of labour, has a responsibility not to allow a sector of the workforce be treated as slaves and be assigned derogatory, even dangerous and hazardous roles in the work place.

Has anyone found Nigeria, please?

With Nigeria lost in the power games and starched agbadas of her rescuers, we do have a situation

I

DON’T know if you have noticed this trend, but these days, our politicians seem to be carrying on as if they were superstars of Hollywood. At least, we all know that Hollywood stars, by dint of hard work and paid dues, usually earn enough money to buy themselves large egos. Don’t ask me if they deserve all that money considering that teachers and road-side labourers labour more, spend more hours working, less hours frolicking, and still cannot manage to keep their roofs. Your stars however find that they can buy themselves some exotic islands on earth as Marlon Brando was reputed to have done once.

Our Nigerian politicians have quite a bit in common with them. They also spend less hours working than the teacher, or roadside labourer who spends his entire energy digging up an unyielding earth. Politicians are supposed to be people whose lives have been interrupted ‘for a bit’ to ‘go and work for the people’. (Someone, not me, said they have been engaged to ‘just talk’). In the process, however, I guess they fancy themselves something like superstars; so they like to carry on like them stars and also buy themselves islands not by dint of hard work but courtesy of the Nigerian treasury.

You know how to recognise superstars, no? First there is the dressing, which is often outlandish. In fact, it often goes against the grains of sense; in-

deed, fig leaves make much better sense. If they are not opening up the frontage and dipping the neckline to the toes, they are putting on things that expose the muscles to the naked elements. You recognise our own superstar politicians by their own coverings also. Rather than baring anything, they don starched and excessively flowing agbada which are big enough to use as parachutes in landing emergences; or Savile Row suits and shirts, the costs of each of which can feed a family for a year.

Then there are the rides. Man, when you see the rides, you agree that there are stars. Every superstar knows that.

We will not talk about Hollywood rides. We are more concerned about the big, shinny, black jeeps that shove my poor car off the road each time we have a confrontation. Actually, it’s got to the point now my car recognises them: as soon as one of the big bad wolves comes in view, my car begins to tremble. Honestly, if I wasn’t so annoyed by the cowardice of my car, I would be green with envy.

The conclusion is that it now pays to know one politician in Nigeria.

There was a time it used to be that a family that had produced a graduate considered itself in seventh heaven.

People could no longer talk to them anyhow in the market place. Soon after, graduates became two a penny, while some can’t even get jobs. So, it

seems that our politicians have risen to take the superstardom space formerly occupied by graduates. People now stand tall knowing there is a politician in the family. Judging by the way they carry on, you would think they were now second class citizens while the rest of us are consigned to carrying on with life on the plains of sixth class citizenship (sniff! sniff!). By their politico-familial connections, they can get taken abroad, build houses and generally do well. Honestly, if I wasn’t so preoccupied looking for a politician who would adopt me as family, I would again be envious.

Something gnaws at me though, and that is that, in the midst of all this confusion, many things are being lost.

There is first that thing that you use to remember with... what do you call it now... err...err... oh yes, memory. These days, I find that my memory is not what it used to be, like our president’s strength. Previously, I could remember the names of all the people throttling this country and holding it by the jugular. Now, I’m content to remember what I had for breakfast.

Then, I have established beyond any doubt that Nigeria has lost her sanity. That is the only thing that can account for all the carryings-on within her walls. Just imagine, only insanity can explain the juxtaposition of extreme poverty endured by the majority in the land and having the highest number of private jets in the world enjoyed by Nigerian governors.

Worse, none of them entered the government houses with the jets. Even worse, many of them cannot now pay

their workers’ meagre salaries, yet they are unwilling to let go those jets.

Worse.... I need not go on. However, know this; only total loss of sanity can warrant thugs beating up people who were merely reading the news considered unfavourable to the governor as happened in Osun State. That is a sign that we have lost it completely.

This is why I can authoritatively and solemnly declare that Nigeria itself is lost. Somehow, between the flowing parachutes and the turbulence of the inter/intra-party fisticuff parlances, chair throwing jaw-jaws, swirling round-table talks and boiling turbulences arising from minor elections, everyone seems to have lost the country. Last time I looked, it was tucked in somewhere between the thick layers of starch on these parachutes but now, it’s not even there anymore. I tell you, things are going on around here, the most important of which is that everyone is busy promoting him/herself to superstardom and no one is considering the interests of the country.

To start with, have you noticed how so many sirens have taken over our roads now? Seriously, on a particular day last week, the vehicle I was in was forced to give way to a sirenblaring convoy tagged ‘Oni-Something of Somewhere’ consisting of a Hilux outrider, the blessed vehicle and another one bringing up the rear. Along the same route, we were forced yet again to give way to a bullion van carrying gun-wielding policemen and any amount of money. I took solace in the fact that we are used to being pushed

aside for money’s sake. Next day, my vehicle had to give way to what I can only conclude must have been the convoy of a politician – no name tag, only one or two black, evil looking jeeps roaring around the kingdom. There are so many convoys on the road, so much shoving and pushing of ordinary people and their poor cars, so much indifference to people’s dignity and esteem that I am inclined to believe that somewhere along the way, the soul of Nigeria has evaporated.

It’s a little like the story of our folk tales in which someone is sent on a quest but ends up getting lost. Unfortunately, those sent in search of them also end up getting lost. Think the rather tragic story told in the film Saving Private Ryan in which the searchers end up getting more dead than the object of rescue.

Think of the stories of Troy and Greece in which the rescuers end up suffering more than the bereaved. Now think of the tortoise who insisted on crying more than the lizard at the latter’s mother’s burial. Now, you’ve got the situation.

Those we sent to rescue Nigeria have somehow contrived to get themselves lost and this is no laughing matter; for that matter, it is no crying matter either. Every one of our politicians in all the political parties has demonstrated nothing so far but naked greed for posts, positions and power – total loss of focus. With Nigeria lost in the power games and starched agbadas of her rescuers, we do have a situation.

It seems to me that the Nigeria of our dreams must be retrieved from these agbadas by our collective voices.

We must insist now on the country we want before it becomes permanently folded into those parachutes. We must find Nigeria.

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, JULY 12, 2015

COMMENT

17

(124)

The premier university is (now) Nigeria’s highest ranked university? So what?

L

AST Saturday in an email directed to me personally, I received the news from JournalsConsortium.org itself: the University of Ibadan, my alma mater, is the new highest ranked research university in Nigeria; and it is the eighth ranked on the African continent. I don’t know whether JournalsConsortium.org sent the memo to me because they knew that I am a product of UI or because I am one of the academics they specially targeted. Whatever their reasoning might have been, I was very surprised to receive the notification. There are two reasons for this: one, it had never happened before; two, it is not the usual practice for any of the dozens of organizations dedicated to collecting, computing and disseminating data on the ranking of universities to send their findings to individual academics.

I confess that my first reaction to this memo from JournalsConsortium.org was that of elation. This is because I have warm and admittedly somewhat very sentimental memories of my years as an undergraduate at UI.We received very sound university education from the UI of those years, even if this high quality education was based on a very elitist conception of access to higher learning in a developing country like ours. Moreover, to the soundness of the education, add the very comfortable physical and social conditions within which the high quality learning was dispensed to us.

Later on, I would discover that that sound education was compromised by the enormously crucial fact that if had little relevance to the cultural and social dimensions of any truly progressive and liberating intellectualism in the world we live in, especially in the developing nations of the global South. This critical knowledge about the kind of learning that my mates and I had received at UI was crucial to the emergence of my intellectual adulthood. But all the same, it did not erase, indeed could not erase the value, the fondness that I had and still have for the learning I received as an undergraduate at Ibadan.

And this is why the email from JournalsConortium.org last Saturday gave me a strong sense of pride in my alma mater. But this elation did not last. In fact, it was so short that altogether, it must have been less than ten minutes in duration! What is the reason for this?

Perhaps the best way to express the complex and ambiguous feelings of great unease that followed my initial happiness in this matter is to invoke the analogy provided by the sublime satire and parody of both the title

•National Universities Commission Headquarters and the plot of the late Nkem Nwakwo’s novel, My Mercedes Is Bigger than Yours.The passion and the anxieties over rankings that we now see everywhere in the universities of Nigeria and the world seem to come from the same social and psychological etiology of the magical or fetishistic spell that the Mercedes Benz car or brand used to exercise over all segments of our society. People who did (not yet) have it used to look with deep admiration and envy at those who (already) had it. People who could afford to buy a Mercedes but chose not to were mercilessly hounded by their relatives and friends until they succumbed to the pressure and bought a Mercedes. Even people who could not and would never in their lifetimes be able to buy that fetish of a car exulted in its powerful, seemingly occult hold over the popular imagination. And so it is now with university rankings and the magical hold they exercise over virtually all the universities of the world, especially universities in our country and our continent.

One particularly illustrative fact might serve to underscore the analogy that I am making in this discussion between university rankings and “Mesi oloye”. If my memory serves me right, not too long ago, the University of Ilorin was ranked the highest in Nigeria. Before that, I remember that Uniben occupied the spotlight. In

the case of Unilorin as now with UI, the spotlight was beamed across the length and breadth of the land.There were secret and not-so-secret whispers that Unilorin had achieved that spotlight by questionable means having to do with computational mumbo jumbo. We can very well imagine that UI’s present claim over the spotlight will also be disputed, if not on the same grounds then on some other comparable grounds having to do with methodology. At any rate, the most important point that I wish to draw attention to here is the highly distorted and exaggerated value that university rakings have come to have in our society over and above real value in teaching, learning and research precisely because of the ruinous state of teaching and learning in virtually all our universities without a single exception.

In the present discussion, I do not wish to rehash all over again as I have done many times in this column the many terrible things wrong with both the content and the environment for basic teaching and learning in all our universities and other tertiary institutions. Suffice it to say that apart from the perennial complaints of would-be employers of highly educated, highly skilled labour that the products of our universities are so badly trained as to be “unemployable”, there is the very im-

portant fact that late last year, under the initiating direction of ASUU, all the unions in our tertiary institutions collaborated to convene a so-called National Educational Summit (NES) to address all the problems contributing to the regressive state of our universities, colleges of education and polytechnics. I had the honor of being the Chairman at that important Summit. While we await its final document which will be issued under the title of a “National Charter on Education”, I can report here that the ranking of Nigerian universities, whether in Africa or in the rest of the world, was not a major theme at the Summit. To simplify a lot, that theme had two distinct but interlocking ideas: relevant and quality education; and liberating education whose effect would be to develop critical skills indispensable for a developing nation like ours. In other words, the Summit focused squarely on two things.

One of these is the fact that in all modern societies and economies, education has become an intellectual capital of great importance in which great investments must be made. The other thing is the recognition that education is more than a sellable or marketable commodity; it is also a means of self-liberation on both the individual and national levels.

The University in Ruins, that is the title of a book written by

the late Bill Readings, a brilliant poststructuralist theorist and critic of millennial capitalism and its educational institutions.

The “ruins” that Readings discusses in this book is of course not exactly of the same kind of “ruins” that have overtaken the UI that trained me as an undergraduate; and neither is it of exactly the same kind of “ruins” of physical infrastructures and teaching and research facilities that we see everywhere in virtually all our universities in Nigeria today. Readings had in mind in his book the “ruins” that have come in the wake of the take-over of North American universities by superannuated administrators and managers who run universities exactly like profit-making corporations, with the attendant almost complete marginalization of the professoriate. In other words, when professors, when women and men of great learning are no longer in control of what happens in teaching and research in the major universities of the heartland of global capitalism, the university is, for Readings, historically in “ruins”.

It is time to begin to bring these reflections to a close.In Readings’ deployment of the trope of “ruins” university rankings derive their rationale and power from the “branding’ that they give to universities in order to make them more competitive in the marketplaces of higher education. In our own historic case in Nigeria and Africa, things have not gotten that far down the road of the corporatization of universities.

As a matter of fact, the obverse is true: the private, for-profit universities in Nigeria and Africa are now far more numerous than “national” or public-funded universities, but they are extremely parasitic on the public universities without which, in fact, they could not survive. For this reason, the “ruins”, the extremely deplorable conditions under which teaching and research take place in our universities, come from pseudo-capitalist political and economic conditions in which the private preys on the public, the rich prey on the poor, economics preys on politics, primitive accumulation preys on sustainable development - andthe ranking system preys and feeds on the need of our universities to keep up the appearance of quality and relevance. My Mercedes is bigger than yours, even though all our roads and highways are barely motorable; the ranking of my university is higher than yours, even if we are all in a terrible state of ruination.

Biodun Jeyifo bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

18

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, JULY 12, 2015

COMMENT

Politics, public service, morality and integrity in Nigeria (1)

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HE recent and indeed ongoing crude and barbaric conduct by our legislators in the National Assembly, reminds me of the popular saying “it does not merely rain, it pours”. I thought I was confronting the worst in Nigerian political misconduct in January 2011, when I gave a public address entitled, “Politics, Public Service, Morality and Integrity in Nigeria of our Times” Infact, it has turned out that that paper was written in anticipation of June 2015 and Nigeria’s descent into stone age politics. I have therefore decided to publish the paper, whose time has apparently come.

1.2 By morality, I mean up-right conduct. The concept of Morals is concerned with right and wrong and the distinction between them1.

In his book entitled Enforcement of Morals (1965) P. Devlin explains the importance of morality to the survival of any society. He states that one of the essential elements of a society is a shared morality. If a society’s shared morality is weakened, this has a tendency to lead to the destruction of the society itself. We have seen and experienced this progressively in Nigeria in the last 50 years. The elevation of corruption to state policy during the regime of one of our Military Rulers has had a permanent and destructive impact on Nigeria. Even if an act which is wrong by the society’s moral standards is committed in private and harms no one in the way of offence to decency, corruption or exploitation, its very practice weakens the shared morality of the society and so may lead to the weakening of society. In other words, a weak link in the chain of society’s shared morality affects the over all moral standard.

Individual freedom of choice is an important value, but it is outweighed by the overriding right of society to survive. Just as treason is punishable because it threatens society’s existence, irrespective of private moral or practical convictions of the traitor, society is entitled to punish and prohibit any act which according to the

I

T was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, well known to his many followers as Mahatma, or ‘the greatsouled one’ that made famous the above quote and his entire life was a testimony to this. In another of his famous quotes, Mahatma said ‘My life is my message,’ and one cannot agree more because the late Indian sage lived simply for his people; millions of poor and oppressed Indians that he non-violently worked fearlessly to liberate till death.

Today, few Nigerians aptly fit into Gandhi’s quotes more than Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the former Senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and Governor of Lagos state, now a national leader of All Progressives Congress (APC).

His style may be a little different from that of Mahatma, yet they are very similar.

He, like Mahatma, lives above fear. He spoke up and acted against injustice, and marched in the forefront to slap injustice in the face.

In this regard, Tinubu has a rich history beginning from his days as a fresh face young man in the Nigeria upper house, otherwise called the Senate. He actually became noticeable here, and later spoke out in defiance to Gen Ibrahim Babangida’s annulment of the 1993 general election won by late business mogul, Chief M.K.O Abiola.

When Gen. Sani Abacha came onto the scene and Nigeria was thoroughly beaten under the jackboot of military dictatorship, Tinubu’s voice became even louder. Just as another great man, the South African legendary leader, Nelson Mandela had said that, “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear,” the young Tinubu did not seat back, he joined hands with the pro-democracy group, National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) and boldly spoke out against the Junta.

He singlehandedly sponsored NADECO in the 1990s alongside like minds such as Nobel Literature Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, Alani Akinriade and Beko Ransome-Kuti.

So fierce and loud was the proclamation for democratic independence that the world soon joined in and the

dissolved, and he had to contest fresh elections into the Eastern Region House of Assembly which he won by a landslide.

2.3 Awolowo was a tireless work horse; “the man with a plan”.

An enlightened political culture did not exist in Nigeria before Awolowo’s emergence as leader of the Action Group. That phenomenon has also disappeared with his death. What do I mean by the Awolowo political culture?

I mean, a legion of phenomena and characteristics associated with Awolowo’s political style, including meticulous research and planning, the adoption of an ideology and a programme for governance, principled and consistent position on issues and a determined and unswerving implementation of the declared programme. In other words, Awolowo had a clear vision of the goal of governance and moved towards that goal inexorably. All this led to the cognomen, ‘The man with a plan’.

2.4 Awolowo’s Action Group was the first political party to introduce programmes into politics and electioneering in Nigeria. This is accurately recorded in his autobiography.2 ‘In the regional elections of 1951, the Action Group was the only party that published policy papers as well as a manifesto. Dr. Azikiwe himself condemned this innovation, and regarded it as an attempt on our part wantonly to deceive the voters. He was confidently of the opinion that policy papers were unnecessary and should never be published for the purpose of elections. It was when a party has won an election, he argued, that it should essay to declare and publish the details of the policy it would pursue in office.

This was the NCNC stand, and we described it as a demand on the voters to give the NCNC a blank cheque.

2.5 Awolowo then added: “At every election since 1952, we had adopted the same method of publishing both policy papers and manifesto. Our persistent efforts yielded dividend only during the federal

elections of December 1959, when both the NCNC and the NPC for the first time emulated the Action Group (which was again first in the field in this regard) and published their own policy papers alongside their manifestoes. As a result, the last federal elections smacked much less of personal abuse and gutter electioneering tactics than was the case in previous years. Each political party strove more than ever before to win votes on the basis of the relative merits of its policies and programmes.’

2.6 In other words, the Awolowo-led Action Group was responsible for the introduction of modern, civilized and enlightened election practices in Nigeria. These innovations, creativity and resourcefulness were brought into play during the federal electioneering campaigns in 1959. Apart from having the best and most well-articulated policies, the Action Group conducted by far the most effective and sophisticated election campaign in Nigerian history.

Thus Awolowo brought into the Nigerian political environment, a culture of organization and discipline unheard of in Africa, which was comparable to the level of organization in the developed capitalist democracies of Europe and America.”

Indeed, when Awolowo died in May 1987, The Times of London said in an Obituary that he was a man of great ability who would have been a great Prime Minister in a place like Britain.

2.6 Because of the extensive degree of federalism being practiced in the first Republic, there was a high competitive spirit amongst the Regions leading to a rapid development of the whole country. Thus even though free primary education was first introduced into the Western Region, this was quickly followed in the two other Regions. This was equally so with regard to the introduction of minimum wage for workers and free medical treatment for all persons below the age of 18.

Like Mahatma, like Tinubu

and his wife, Chief Mrs Remi Tinubu, Senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, have been supportive of the over 70 visually challenged students with food items, bus to get around, cash and gifts. I know this because I was chairman of Surulere Local Government for three years and the home is under my jurisdiction.

I deliberately traced this path to clear doubt if there is any, about Tinubu’s tortured path to freedom. There is no doubt that Tinubu’s claim to leadership of APC and of the country at large is earned and should any politician toy with it, then thousands like me that have learnt under his tutelage that politics is service to humanity, should be able to ask the following questions.

Where were they when Abacha’s bulwark lashed at people’s freewill to choose its leader? Where were they when Tinubu was using his resources to fund Afenifere, AD, and ACN? Where were they when PDP threatened to rule forever or when APC emergence was almost truncated before birth? Where were they when Buhari’s emergence as Presidential candidate of APC was almost killed at birth and where were they when APC toured all the states campaigning vigorously? Where were they when Tinubu became the cruel targets of the Fayoses and AITs of this country just to scorecheappublicity?Whereweretheywhen snipers paraded the corridor of Bourdillon to intimidate him? Where were they?

There are more questions and I leave that to discerning Nigerians who cried out for change and thronged out to take back our democracy. Surely, we cannot afford to look on as the same cabal attempt to snatch it away again.

For our leader, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, the Jagaban Borgu, the Bridge Builder between the poor and the rich, the voice of the voiceless, and the help of the helpless, I will simply calm your nerves with this line written by our great mentor; Chief Obafemi Awolowo. He said; “those who desire to reach, and keep their places at the top in any calling must be prepared to do so the hard way.”

God bless our leader, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

• Ajide is former chairman of Surulere Local Government, Lagos.

By Itse Sagay general opinion, is grossly immoral. It is this incapacity of our present society to identity grossly immoral acts and to impose sanctions as a corporate entity, that is responsible for the rapid decline of our polity today.

1.3 The Rules are simple enough. The Western World derived its moral code from Christianity and we derived ours through our colonial experience and western education.

The basic rules are to be found in the Bible. Apart from the spiritual and Devine nature of their origins (from which the Western World parted ways long ago) these Biblical Rules constitute a fundamental standard for human conduct and survival. The Rules contained in the Ten Commandments may be summarized thus: (i) We must have no other god, but Jehovah God himself. (ii) We must honour our Fathers and our Mothers. (iii) We must not kill. (iv)We must not commit adultery. (v) We must not steal (vi)We must not bear false witness against each other. (vii) We must not habour a longing for anything belonging to other people, including their spouses, properties and so on.

(Deuteronomy 5, 7 – 21) 1.4 It is obvious that these rules, even without their religious connotation, constitute a manual for a stable, happy, peaceful and caring society. This Christian ethos is the basis of politics, governance and public service in the free and democratic societies of the West, which are also subject to the Rule of Law. All our Criminal Codes, Commercial Laws, Principles of Equity, etc, are mere comprehensive and detailed elaborations of these fundamental religious principles.

1.5 My very simple and brief thesis, this morning, is that our society has become fractured and we are gradually degenerating into a failed state because we have abandoned these principles, which guided our collective

and individual operations as a country, during the colonial era and for about a decade after independence.

2. The Psychological Orientation Of The Nigerian Political And Public Service Elite In The 1st Republic 2.1 What ever the differences they might have had amongst themselves, the political elite of the preindependence era and the first Republic, 1960 – 1966, had one thing in common, the spirit of whole hearted service without personal gain. Ahmadu Bello, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Obafemi Awolowo, and their colleagues all wanted to serve and sacrifice for Nigeria or their Regions in Nigeria. There was not a wiff of corruption, acquisition, and accumulation of wealth etc, in the orientation of any of these great men and their colleagues and followers. The only benefit they enjoyed in governance was to see Nigeria, grow, develop and progress. Some of them (particularly Ahmadu Bello) might have been justifiably accused of being ruthless and oppressive in the pursuit of power or even of election malpractices, but once in power they all worked tirelessly to promote the interest of the people without a thought for themselves.

Ahmadu Bello’s service to his people transcended religion and ethnicity. For him anyone within the borders of the Northern Region was his responsibility.

He distributed government largesse appointments, and infrastructural development to all sectors of the Region. He however had zero tolerance for political opposition.

2.2 Azikiwe was a charismatic figure with great oratorical powers. He also devoted himself completely to the service of the people of the Eastern Region without any consideration for his own self interest. His greatest offence was that he allegedly banked some government funds in his Bank, African Continental Bank. Based on this allegation, a commission headed by the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Sir Forster Sutton, was set up. Upon the allegation being established, Zik resigned as Premier, his Government was

“Be the change you want to see in the world.”

By Tajudeen Ajide

incoming Head of State Gen Abdusalami Abubakar quickly organized a general election and handed power to a democratically elected leader. History has granted Tinubu the boasting right that Asiwaju and many NADECO members put their life on line to rescue Nigeria from Military brutality. Nothing can change that.

Former Secretary-General of Afenifere and ex-General Secretary of the National Democratic Coalition, Chief Ayo Opadokun, in a recent interview published in the Punch Newspapers, acknowledged Tinubu’s focus and daunting spirit to liberate Nigerian masses from the hands of dictatorship and set democracy on a smooth sail in Nigeria. He affirmed that Tinubu played a key role in the emergence from Afenifere of the Alliance for Democracy (AD) and sponsored fully the registration of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN).

His passion to better the life of the common people is nearly inborn and this, according to Sam Omatseye, one of Nigeria’s leading columnists and Chairman, Editorial board of The Nation Newspapers, who was with him in his early political days, propelled him to drive the campaign for enduring democracy from his London home in the Junta days of Gen. Abacha. “The story began in an obscure room in England. The ignominious fall of the Abacha junta foreshadowed a new era in Nigeria. Like bivouacking armies, the habitués of that room had shifted their tents from home to a stranger’s land. There and elsewhere in the western world, they pitched battles for democracy against an era of the butchery and finality of a tyrant’s order.

IBB first represented it and preceded Abacha of the Gestapo, goggle frame and the fame of excited whores.”

“The unravelled Abacha era meant it was time to go home for this man. Others did not trust the so-called promise. They doubted democracy would return. To them, it was a false dawn, shadowy with

booby traps. Isolation and battle from a distance had imparted them with an awful comfort. Better to grieve and throw lobs of bombs from outside than risk the fates of the then lamented dead. Kudirat Abiola, Alfred Rewane, Bagauda Kaltho, et al.”

For two years it is on record that Tinubu left his wife, Senator Remi Tinubu and affectionate mother in Nigeria, while working tirelessly to liberate his country form the claws of an unapologetic dictator.

Even after he became governor of Lagos State, there were more battles to fight against the leadership of another General in Agbada and the ruling party; Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and like a true captain, he kept his shoulder at the wheel, he shove and pushed and again, he won.

Tinubu, did not cow in fear, like other governors, he fought his battle alone in justice, and fairness to his people and Lagos was the better for it.

Social/political commentator, Maxwell Adegbenro captured it well in his ‘One Man Tinubu In The Face Of History’.

He described the APC chieftain, as a fearless leader of men. “In the face of hapless financial turbulent orchestrated by the government of PDP led by Olusegun Obasanjo, he turned the adversity to opportunities. Lagos State under him survived workers scare and later became benchmark for states in such precarious situation. Volumes you will agree it speaks of man who will stride in any venture he delve. However, his happy-go attitude wouldn’t go without inspiring torrents that spells across south west in human capacity; paving heavy way for purposeful leadership and developing leaders with quintessential service torch.”

Mandela knew the attributes of a great leader because he was one. He said; ‘It is better to lead from behind and to put others in front, especially when you celebrate victory when nice things occur. You take the front line when there is danger. Then people will appreciate your leadership.”

That much Tinubu has shown in his

political voyage.

As a politician of over 20 years and a staunch member of APC, I am conversant with the emergence of the ruling party and how our great leader, Tinubu, midwifed the new baby that is now the pride of Africa and the rest of the world.

A master strategist, his suave political manoeuvring towers above the rest, and he exhibits good understanding of Mandela’s thought; that “If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner.”

In 2006, through the merger of the AD, Justice Party (JP) and Advanced Congress of Democrats (ACD), he formed the Action Congress (AC) party, maintaining a lead role in the party. During the 2007 general elections, he regained all the states in the Southwest, leaving only Ondo which was controlled by the Labour Party (LP).”

A man with immense passion for great accomplishment, Tinubu will never settle for a life that is less than the one he is capable of living. He moved on to orchestrate a merger with the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), the All Nigerian Peoples Party (ANPP) and a faction of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) to form the All Progressives Congress (APC) with the broom as their party symbol. He lobbied top political brass in the country from all parts of the country to join him sweep off the second term agenda of former President Goodluck Jonathan by backing the ambition of Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, a one-time Head of State with impeccable record of honesty and discipline. Asiwaju’s master stoke became the masses song of freedom and on May 29, 2015, Buhari was sworn in as President, 16 years of PDP reign over.

Beyond politics, no politician, since MKO Abiola, has touched the lives of the common Nigerians, as Tinubu has done and for confirmation, ask the Director of Bethesda Home for the Blind, Yaba, Mrs Chioma Ohakwe. She would tell you how Tinubu

• Continued on page 69

PAGE 33

JULY 12, 2015

• Jonathan

• Sambo

• Patience Jonathan

• Anenih

• Alison-Madueke

• Lamido

• Clark

• Okonjo-Iweala

• Fani Kayode

Where are Jonathan's henchmen now?

Pages 36 & 37

Turbulent transition: Governors battle predecessors (2)

Pages 34

Buhari needs time to succeed - Ogunsanya Pages 38

2016: Jonathan's defeat redefines battle forBayelsa governorship

Pages 40

34

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, JULY 12, 2015

POLITICS

Turbulent transition: Governors battle pr Transition has remained turbulent in many states since the May 29 handover in Nigeria as some new governors are currently engaged in serious battle with their predecessors over alleged frauds, indecent debts, and sundry political differences. Last week, we presented the first installment of the report on turbulent transition in Nigeria. In the concluding part of the report, Precious Dikewoha in Port Harcourt, Abdulgafar Alabelewe in Kaduna and Okungbowa Aiwerie in Asaba, present the intrigues in the states they cover

T

Rivers HE last transition in Rivers State from former Governor Rotimi Amaechi of All Progressives Congress (APC) to Governor Nyesom Wike of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is probably the most turbulent in Nigeria this year.

The face-off between the two politicians and their supporters was so turbulent that many feared it may resort to uncontrollable bloody clashes. At the end of the election, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) announced Wike the winner while Amaechi and his party, the APC, cried blue murder.

That was not the end of the face-off. Even before he was sworn-in, Wike swore to probe Amaechi, while the latter headed to court to challenge the election and the result, describing them as a sham. Wike had followed up by confiscating some of the vehicles and other properties used by top officials in Amaechi's government. The drama remains most intriguing.

The story of the two political leaders dates back beyond May 26, 2007, when the Supreme Court's judgment favoured Amaechi, thereby launching him as the governor of the oil-rich state. That judgment not only marked the beginning of his journey as the governor of Rivers State, it also marked the beginning of his political sojourn alongside his now estranged political ally, Wike.

However Amaechi's political history could be incomplete without tracing his humble beginning as a true godson of former Governor Peter Odili of Rivers State.

Notwithstanding the political disagreement between Odili and Amaechi, many people still believe their quarrel is only on the surface as far as politics is concerned.

Many political analysts in the state had described Amaechi as one of the luckiest politicians in the modern politics of Rivers State. He rose on the back of former governor, Dr Peter Odili, to become the Speaker of the State House of Assembly in 1999. He remained on that post until 2007. He was therefore the longest serving Speaker since the creation of the state in 1967.

Speaking on Amaechi's achievement as the Speaker of Rivers State House of Assembly, Hon. Azubike Chikere Wajoku, former member representing Ikwerre Constituency at Rivers State House of Assembly, who lost out to the PDP candidate at the last Assembly election in the state said, "Amaechi presided over an Assembly that was in every standard very peaceful, devoid of rancor, mainly because the three arms of government were strictly run in accordance with the rule of law".

It would be recalled that the administration of Odili witnessed a dramatic transformation in terms of elitist projects, even though he was accused of donating Rivers State money to lazy politicians who have nothing to offer to the state instead of concentrating on capital projects. But we cannot forget that he moved the Assembly from the ramshackle structure in the state secretariat to the dome, a befitting edifice located on the Moscow road, which is also good enough for legislative business.

In 2007, former President Olusegun Obasanjo put a spanner in the works of Amaechi's governorship plan with his novel K-Leg saga, thereby temporarily denying him the opportunity of contesting the election of that year as a governorship candidate on the platform of People's Democratic Party (PDP).

Amaechi reportedly escaped to Ghana, probably to regroup for a greater fight ahead of him. While he was away, Amaechi teamed up with some political allies, including

Barrister Nyesom Wike, who had served as a two-time chairman of Obio/Akpor Local Government Area while Amaechi was Speaker of the state Assembly.

Because of Wike's contribution to the struggle that led to Amaechi's victory at the Supreme Court, he became the first to be appointed into political position as the Chief of Staff in Amaechi's new government in 2007. And in the euphoria of that judgment, Amaechi quickly established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) with the late Justice Kayode Esho as chairman. The commission was widely condemned by many Rivers people as it was viewed as being politically motivated to witchhunt his former boss, Odili, and other politicians in the state.

Odili and Dr. Abiye Sekibo who were allegedly some of the targets by the commission, refused to make any appearance, citing insecurity in Port-Harcourt at the time as an excuse. Odili had expressed concern that he would not have any justice with Eso as the chairman of the commission.

In his first tenure as governor of Rivers State, Amaechi received encomiums from the Rivers people for his foresight in the provision of infrastructural development in the state. Roads were expanded, several health centers built, model schools, student scholarship and many more.

However, his disagreement with Wike and other PDP chieftains over the rotation policy in the state is believed the root cause of his current face-off with Wike.

However, Wike's associates say the foundation for the current squabble was laid when Amaechi left the seat of power without a formal handover to his successor. But Amaechi's Commissioner of Information, Ibim Semenitari, explained that Amaechi handed over the affairs of the state to the Secretary to the State Government.

Wike on his part had complained that Amaechi bluntly refused to set up a transition committee to synergise with that of his committee to work out a smooth transition for his government.

There is no doubt up till date that Wike's intention to probe the administration of Amaechi did not start today. Wike at the presentation of vehicles to PDP local government chairmen in the state last year said "Once the Independent National Electoral Commission announces the victory of President Jonathan, we will immediately shut down the Port-Harcourt International Airport and all land and sea boarders in Rivers State to prevent Governor Amaechi from escaping."

So, when the governor set up a Judicial Commission of Inquiry for the investigation of the former governor with respect to the sale of valued assets of the state and other related matters, it did not come as a surprise to many. The sixmember investigative panel has Justice George Omereji as chairman. Other members of the committee are Dr Edith Chukwu, Chief Monday Ekekenta, Rev. Canon Alex Usifo and Elder Ignatius Piegbara while Mrs. Florence Fiberesima and Dr. Zaccheaus Adango will serve as secretary and counsel to the commission respectively.

Rivers State governor at the inauguration of the commission in Port-Harcourt gave them 23 terms of reference to work with. The governor charged the commission to investigate the sale of Omoku 150 MW Gas Turbine, Afam 360 MW Gas Turbine, Trans Amadi 136 MW as well as the sale of Olympia Hotel.

Other areas the commission was to look into were the mono-rail project, the non-execution of the contract for the construction of the Justice Adolphus Karibi Whyte Specialist Hospital, the disbursement of the sum of N2bn Agricultural Credit Guarantee Scheme Funds and the withdrawal and expenditure of the accrued N96 billion from Rivers State Reserve Fund without

• Okowa

• El-Rufai

• Uduaghan compliance with the Rivers State Reserve Fund Law No.2 of 2008.

The commission was also charged to ascertain the circumstances of the sale of the Omoku, Trans Amadi and Eleme Gas Turbine by the former governor. They are to also identify the purchaser of the gas turbine, the total costs for which they were sold and the whereabouts of the proceeds of their sale.

It is also to ascertain whether the transaction was conducted with the requisite transparency and accountability in accordance with the provisions of the extant laws in force in Rivers State and to determine if the government and the people of Rivers State have any equity left in the said gas turbines and the value of such equity among other issues.

The state chapter of APC in its reaction dismissed the probe as "a wild goose chase". The party in a statement signed by its chairman, Dr Davis Ikanya, said "this is at best a fruitless and laughable venture, a wild goose chase".

The party noted that Amaechi ran a transparent administration and made it a habit to render account of his stewardship to Rivers people almost on a quarterly basis throughout his eight years in office as governor.

The party stated that it is aware of the governor's desperate effort to bring down Amaechi and rubbish his good name despite all his feats, adding that the probe is aimed to stop President Muhammadu Buhari from appointing the former governor into his cabinet.

But Wike's Commissioner for Housing, Barrister Emma Okah, said Amaechi is being mischievous for accusing the state government of witch hunting him through the probe, stressing that there is nothing wrong or immoral for an administration that received and managed about three trillion naira on behalf of the people of Rivers State to explain some of her actions.

He said the governor is merely protecting the people's interest by inquiring into how public

• Yero resources were allegedly wasted, stolen or misappropriated by the past administration, adding that every lover of democracy and rule of law should not complain about the probe. He said the simple thing Amaechi should do if invited by any commission of inquiry is to state his own side of the story and tender documents to buttress his case.

On the dwindling financial issue of the state, Amaechi before he left the seat of power in the state had on several occasions complained that the state is broke. But the PDP leadership in the state sponsored by Wike said he was deceiving Rivers people.

But with the current situation of the state financial status, where Wike is struggling to pay salaries of civil servants, leading to reduction of staff strength through the recent sack of thousand of lecturers in the state and the disbandment of Rivers State traffic marshals it seems Amaechi may have been right after all.

The Rivers State House of Assembly under the administration of the immediate past governor of the state, Rotimi Amaechi, had before now ordered the Special Adviser to the Governor on Revenue Generation, Chief Nwankwo Nwankwo, and the Commissioner for Finance, Dr Chamberline Peterside, to appear before it over the dwindling revenue base of the state.

Also summoned at that time was the chairman of Rivers State Internal Revenue Service Board (RSBIR), Mrs. Onene Osila Obele, over what the lawmakers described as a "monumental fraud" in the agency. The invitation to the trio followed a motion to strengthen the internal revenue base of the state, which was presented by the then Deputy Leader of the House, Hon. Ename Robinson Ewor.

Ewor, had in the motion, urged the House to strengthen the state's revenue base to enable the then governor, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, meet up with the daily administration of the state. He stated that in the last one year, the state had

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, JULY 12, 2015

le predecessors (2)

• Wike

• Amaechi witnessed a downward trend on receipt of monies accrued to the state from the federation account.

The former Deputy Leader said; "From a monthly average of about N17 billion to N13 billion. This amount cannot cater for the payment of staff salaries, overheard and general administration of the state monthly."

But the then Leader of the House, Hon. Chidi Julius Lloyd, stated that there is a monumental fraud going on at the internal revenue office, accusing the board of not making efforts to improve the revenue base of the state.

Speaking through his Commissioner for Information, Mrs. Ibim Semenitari, over the financial crisis of the state, Amaechi, before he left office, said the PDP was being mischievous by its deliberate resort to falsehood.

"It is the PDP that owes Rivers people the return of its revenue diverted by the Federal Government to other states as well as the millions spent by Amaechi administration to fix its (FG's) roads in the state. Amaechi has paid civil servants up to the month of April. He had committed himself to the welfare of Rivers' civil servants these past eight years and had exemplified that by regular payment of salaries in the face of dwindling national revenue," she said.

Delta Delta State Government has fallen on hard times. With a huge debt overhang and falling revenues from the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC), the resource-rich state is in dire financial straits.

While the immediate past administration of ex-Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan has been tight lipped about the true financial state of the state's economy in the last 8 years, Governor Ifeanyi Okowa has been more forthcoming.

Okowa, who gave specifics in a briefing with lawmakers on the state's financial status recently in Asaba, the Delta State capital, painted a bleak picture confronting his administration in its bid to implement his electoral promises.

With a debt profile of N637.2 billion owed to commercial banks and outstanding contractual obligations, the current regime headed by Dr Ifeanyi Okowa has called for belt tightening measures and understanding from Deltans.

Okowa gave a breakdown of the current indebtedness to commercial banks as N98.62 billion (principal sum) while outstanding contractual obligation is N538, 601,421.50.

He said in 2011, the state government took a N50 billion facility from the bond market with a repayment period of seven years in 84 installments at N1.098 billion each month, adding that the facility will terminate in September 2018 with a further 40 more installments (totalling N43.92 billion) to pay effect from June 2015.

According to Okowa, in November 2014, Delta State acted as guarantor to some contractors supported by the issuance of an Irrevocable Standing Payment Order (ISPO) of N2.23billion monthly for which the contractor has received the total of N40 billion.

Okowa said having paid four installments; the state has 20 more monthly installments totaling N44.60billion extending through year 2017 to pay.

Furthermore, Okowa said the state has an outstanding overdraft facility with Zenith Bank Plc of N19 billion and N715 million, adding that there are other smaller loan and overdraft facilities totaling N2 billion that have to be paid.

He added that with effect from June through to March 2017 after a deduction of N4.60 billion from Federation Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC) receipts, the state will draw a meagre N3.4 billion assuming the FAAC allocation stays at N8.03 billion.

With receipts from Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) at N2.0 billion monthly, the implication is that funds available to run the state is a meagre N5.40 billion monthly.

Okowa lamented that with a workforce of over 60,000 persons and wage bill of N7, 437,940,015.38, the available fund of N5.4 billion is insufficient to offset wage bill, let alone, fund overheads or capital projects.

He urged the legislature to review the 2015 budget of N409 billion, adding that 'it is no longer realistic in the wake of current realities'.

The Nation gathered that the alleged financial recklessness of the Uduaghan administration continued to its dying days, a situation that caused frosty relationship between the incumbent and his predecessor.

It was gathered that an alarmed Okowa, who got wind of pressure by the ex-Governor Uduaghan on the state's Accountant General to spend the state's April N9 billion federal allocation, allegedly instigated the disappearance of Mr. Cyril Agbele.

Mr Agbele who hails from the same local government as Governor Okowa escaped to Lagos on the orders of Governor Okowa.

It was learnt that the ex-Governor wanted release of funds ostensibly for security agencies and the transition committee of the then governor-elect, but sources say that the funds were meant for contract done by his wife amounting to N5billion.

Another move allegedly made by exGovernor Uduaghan to further plunder the state's resources was frustrated after the Central Bank Governor, Godwin Emefiele, stopped a move for a N40 billion bond from the Nigerian Stock Exchange.

Although both the former governor and the current governor are from the same political party, the PDP, their differences can be traced back to the pre-election decisions, when it was alleged that the then governor Uduaghan dumped Okowa, who later won both the party nomination and the governorship election.

So, beyond the alleged accumulation of excess debt, insiders said the current transition turbulence in Delta is also political.

Kaduna Kaduna State is one of the states in the country where transition may be described as somehow turbulent. It began as debt controversy although it has now been laid to rest. However, the new government, led by Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai, still laments the economic realities of the state, alleging that the state is broke.

The controversy, which was very hot, was laid to rest on the eve of the swearing-in of Governor Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai on May 29. His predecessor, Alhaji Mukhtar Ramalan Yero, had then debunked the earlier speculation that the state was indebted to the tune of over N100 billion. r El-Rufai after emerging the winner of the April 11 gubernatorial poll had vowed to probe the administration of Governor Yero over the allegation of financial recklessness.

At a reception organised for him by the Kaduna Peoples Association at the Arewa House, Kaduna, ?El-Rufai had said that the debt profile of the state will run into N100 billion before the May 29, 2015 hand over date.

According to him, the PDP administrations at federal and state levels had become so bad that they had to obtain loans to pay salaries.

Therefore, Nigerians should stop congratulating him and the President-elect, but should rather pity them and pray for them to succeed because of the "bankrupt economy" they would inherit.

He stated categorically that Kaduna State had incurred N90billion debt and that before the May 29 hand over date, the debt might increase to N100billion.

But to the amazement of everyone and Governor El-Rufai, the immediate past Governor Yero took advantage of the presentation of handover notes to give analysis of debts, which according him were incurred by his predecessors since 1965 long before the state was carved out of the then North Central State in 1975, and how far he has gone in settling those debts within and outside the Nigerian soil.

According to him, the sum of N8.6billion was left in the state's treasury as at 28 of May, 2015, contrary to the insinuation that the treasury was empty.

Yero said All Progressives Congress (APC) must deliver all the election promises to the people of the state, saying that the party has no excuse not to.

While addressing newsmen shortly after he presented the handover note to El-Rufai at Sir Ibrahim Kashim House, Kaduna, he further cleared the air on the alleged debt he would be leaving behind.

In his words; "I joined the Kaduna State Government as a Commissioner for Finance. And I know the real position of financial status of the state. People are more concerned about insinuation that we are leaving behind N109billion. Well, they may be right or wrong.

"In spite of the numerous people-oriented projects executed by the outgoing administration, a total cash balance of N8.6 billion would be left in various accounts as at 28th May, 2015.

"The current debt position of the state as at 28th May,2015 is a total debt stock of N73,933,104,923.22 which comprises of external and internal debts", stressed the governor.

Yero stated that external debt stood at N46.062 billion while the internal loans which include bond, contractors' arrears, gratuity arrears and CBN MSMEDF stands at N27, 870 billion.

"The state government awarded 82 number contracts for the construction/rehabilitation of roads, culverts, drainages and bridges with a distance of 327.93km.

"In the same vein, 32 road projects have also been completed with 67.50 kilometres surface dressed finished and 75.798 kilometres with asphaltic wearing course finish.

"The remaining other projects are at various stages of completion. The contracts were awarded at the cost of N61, 108,376,239.09 of which the sum of N30,949,987,696.67 has been paid", added the former governor.

Meanwhile, Governor El-Rufai, who had earlier vowed to probe Yero's administration, quickly confessed that the situation is not as bad as he thought.

He said he was accepting the handing over notes with all sense of humility and equally with heavy responsibility and burden.

He said, "The situation is not as bad as we thought, we will engage officials to seek clarification where necessary.

"We will govern the state with the fear of God, equity and justice; we assure you that we will work as hard as we can to make Kaduna great again", he reiterated.

But whether Yero's claims were the true position of the state economy or not, El-Rufai has not come out clearly to tell, expect that the new governor has continued to reiterate at every forum that the financial state of Kaduna is poor.

This according to him informed his resolve to slash the salary and allowances of both himself and his deputy, until the time the economy of the state stabilizes.

The public explanation and acceptance of Yero and El-RUfai respectively notwithstanding, observers said the transition turbulence in Kaduna is also political following the results of the governorship election in the state.

POLITICS 35 Edo 2016: Central makes case for governorship slot In 2016, Edo State will hold its governorship election. Justice Ilevbare reports on the issues that may determine Governor Adams Oshiomhole's successor There are indication that 2016 promises to be an interesting year for the people of Edo State. By then, they will be heading to the polls to elect the next executive governor who is expected to take over from the incumbent, Comrade Adams Aliyu Oshiomhole.

Though the year is about six months away, there are visible signs that politicking, awareness raising, fence mending and handshake across the divides are going on in earnest. Unlike before, a number of prominent politicians in the state are already getting their acts together by way of embarking on public service undertakings, all in an attempt to endear themselves to the people.

While every stakeholder is getting ready to set the ball rolling, observers are concerned over the need to ensure that in the distribution of offices, fair play and equity remain the guiding principle.

In this case, stakeholders are already talking about the three tripods on which the state stands.

More than very important offices like the Secretary to the State Government, Chief of Staff to the Governor and, in a way, Speaker of Edo State House of Assembly, which are not elective, stakeholders are interested in the two foremost positions, the office of the governor and that of the deputy governor.

Stakeholders have argued that the founding fathers of the state, in recognition of the importance of these plum positions have tried to ensure that the tripod are adequately represented in successive governments that adopted rotation policy to ensure fairness and equity.

Though it cannot be said to have been followed to the letter, adherence proved to be the only way politics in the state took place without rancour, bitterness and accusations of marginalization.

As the state prepares for the 2016 race, the time has come again for politicians and other stakeholders to prove to the people generally that the state will remain a shining example for others in the practice of fair and equitable politicking.

Making a case for Edo Central Senatorial District to be allowed to produce the governor, Akhigbe Oshioma in Benin City told The Nation that record of leadership indicates that between 1979 and now, power has not fairly rotated along the three axis. "For instance, in 1979, Professor Ambrose Folorunsho Alli, from Ekpoma in the Central Senatorial Zone, became governor of the state. He was barely into his second term when the military struck and ended the country's democratic process.

John Odigie-Oyegun, from Benin City, South Senatorial Zone, held the reins while Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida attempted to midwife a return to full democracy. His attempt to retain office for a second tenure was cut short when his kinsman, Osagbovo Ogbemudia, also from the same senatorial zone, sent him packing but was himself sacked a few months later.

But by the time full democracy returned in 1999, Lucky Nosakhare Igbinedion, another candidate from the South Senatorial Zone, became governor of the state. Cumulatively, the zone held the reins for almost 14 years before Professor Osarhiemen Osunbor, from Iruekpen, Central Senatorial Zone took over. Like Ogbemudia, Osunbor's reign was cut short barely two years later when, by an order of the appeal court tribunal ruling, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, from the North Senatorial District, assumed office in November 2008.

"While it is important to note here that Oshiomhole's second tenure, a cumulative unbroken run of eight years for the north is expected to expire by the same date next year, the combined tenures of both Alli and O s u n b o r , representing central, is less than six years.

Oshioma added, "So far, no representation has come from the central. Certainly, this is hardly the r i g h t advertisement for fair play and equity and it needs not be over emphasized that the situation needs to be addressed without further • Oshiomhole delay.

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POLITICS

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, JULY 12, 2015

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, JULY 12, 2015

Where are Jonathan's henchmen now?

One month after the expiration of former President Goodluck Jonathan's government, the whereabouts of most of his henchmen remains a subject of conjecture. Associate Editor, Sam Egburonu and Assistant Editor, Remi Adelowo, attempt to trail their movements and what they are doing now

T

HERE were the men and women behind the throne during the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan. Reports describe them then as Jonathan henchmen, the men and women of power who made the headlines.

Today, barely one month after the expiration of the government, some of them seem to have vanished into thin air while the few that are still in the country are hiding quietly in remote places. Only few are currently facing hard times in the hands of anticorruption agency, who have dragged them to court.

It began long before the eve of the inauguration of the new government, headed by President Muhammadu Buhari, when it was first reported that most of them had either sneaked out of the country or have perfected plans to jet out in a desperate bid to evade feared prosecution over corruption charges.

Although virtually all of them denied any plan to evade prosecution, claiming that they only want to cool off for few weeks, it seems many of them have either vanished in far away countries or have returned and managed to evade the Eagle eyes of newsmen. The henchmen whose whereabouts remain a subject of interest include: Dame Patience Jonathan The former First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan disappeared from the public even before the handover. Apart from her appearance when her husband was received in his Otuoke country home after the handover, the wife of the former President, who made headlines every day, became suddenly silent.

Although uncomfirmed reports claimed she travelled to United Kingdom to cool off, when her husband, the former President Goodluck Jonathan was spotted in UK with his grandchild, nothing was heard of her, leading to speculation that she may not have travelled with her husband.

However, at the weekend, there was newsflash that she accompanied her husband who, according to the report, returned back home.

It is yet to be seen how the former first family intend to spend the rest of their lives after office even as sources said Mrs. Jonathan may keep herself busy by managing her alleged massive investment in property and hospitality business.

Namadi Sambo Former Vice President Namadi Sambo is amongst the topmost officials of former President Goodluck Jonathan whose plans to jet out of the country before or immediately after the handover generated interest in the polity. It was reported then that Sambo had concluded plans to travel to London on May 31, a day after the handover.

Like his boss, the former president, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, Sambo had reportedly said he only wanted to jet out to have at least two weeks' rest before returning back to the country.

POLITICS Commission (EFCC) over allegation bordering on corrupt enrichment while he served as governor.

Shortly after he stepped down as governor in May, Lamido had travelled to an undisclosed foreign country believed by some to be UAE for a short holiday. It was immediately on his return to the country that he was arrested alongside two of his sons by the EFCC. Though not yet convicted, Lamido's trial is seen by many as a classic case study of a fall from grace to grass. At the weekend, he and his sons were denied bail at the court, a development interpreted to mean that he may celebrate the Sallah behind bars.

Femi Fani Kayode The controversial spokesman of the PDP Campaign Organisation was in the news lately following his acquittal by a Federal High Court on corruption charges.

Since the inauguration of Muhammadu Buhari as President, FFK has also unofficially assumed the spokesman of ex President Goodluck Jonathan. His recent statement that Buhari's assumption of power is an indirect support for Boko Haram, which he later denied, clearly portrayed a man who is not ready to shun the limelight.

He is presently based in Abuja where he owns a posh mansion in the Asokoro area which he allegedly bought some days before the March 28 presidential election.

• Sambo

• Alison-Madueke

But his critics said the planned trip was more than a just a vacation trip, alleging that it was a plot to escape from prosecution from corrupt charges.

Reacting, the Senior Special Assistant to the Vice-President on Media and Publicity, Umar Sani, dismissed this insinuations, when he said, "There is nothing to fear. VicePresident Namadi Sambo is not afraid of any persecution or victimisation by the incoming government. His planned trip has nothing to do with fear. If he is afraid of anything, he would have gone before May 29," Sani said.

When he returned to Kaduna, his home state from Abuja, after the swearing in of Buhari as president Sambo, accompanied by his wife, Amina and personal aides, was hosted by the state PDP in his home at the state capital. He assured his supporters that he would join hands with Jonathan to rebuild PDP. This suggests that when he returns, he would be in the country to prepare his party for the 2019 race.

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala Long before the inauguration of the Buhari's government on May 29, reports had confirmed that the powerful former Minister of Finance and Coordinator of Economy under Jonathan, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, had perfected plans to return to the United States at the end of the administration.

Although she traveled out of the country even before the handover, the controversy that trailed the tail end of the administration, especially allegations over use of oil money

• Jonathan

• Anenih

• Lamido

• Clark

put her so much in the news that she could not really keep away. As the coordinator of the economy of that administration, Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala was pilloried for her alleged roles in the Jonathan government, which according to critics "bequeathed dwindling revenues and huge debts amidst allegation of large scale fraud."

In the last days of the Jonathan government, when she traveled to London, perhaps en-route US, she reportedly had lunch with Financial Times where she defended some of her actions insisting that some of her critics in the new government will soon learn the truth and will come to appreciate that she took necessary actions.

Since the handover, there has been unending verbal exchange between Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala and some top government officials. One of the issues under contention is the approval of the controversial withdrawal and spending of the $2bn from Nigeria's excess crude oil revenue account last December.

From the FT lunch chat, it can be deduced that the once powerful oil minister, who the foreign press described as one of the most popular African officials, is planning to pursue other interests after dominating Nigeria's economic and political theatre for almost three decades. William Wallis captured this sentiment her when he wrote, "Women tend to have more of a life outside the office."He quoted her as saying, "They (Women) move on rapidly. They have other lives. That is the same way I feel. I can move on and I have a life. A rather interesting one

and I am looking forward to it so much." The impression is that the former Vice President of World Bank will most likely chose to lead that life more in the US. Diezani Alison-Madueke A few weeks to the inauguration of the current Muhammadu Buhari-led government, former Minister of Petroleum, Mrs-Diezani-Alison-Madueke, left the country to the United Kingdom. The powerful former oil minister, who was accused of traveling always in private jets, made that trip on a British Airways flight in a First Class cabin.

Since then, there has been controversy over her sudden trip. While her critics insist she left the country because she was afraid Buhari would turn his anti-corruption searchlight on the oil sector and may get her implicated, her aides were quoted as saying, "she went to take care of her health because she has been down medically and she needs proper medical attention."

The controversy over her whereabouts had remained hot because of several allegations against her and the ministry under her watch, especially because of the allegation by the former Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and now Emir of Kano, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, that a whopping $20 billion was diverted from the federation account by the former minister and her cronies in the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).

Her critics are also expressing concern over her aide's explanation of how long she

• Okonjo-Iweala

• Fani Kayode

intends to stay abroad. Asked before the handover when the then minister will return to the country, one of her aides reportedly said, "no one can say when she will be back.

That depends on her health and the advice of her doctors. She may come before May 29, she may decide to stay back with her children over there till anytime to take care of herself."

May 29 handover had come and gone and the new government is already in its second month, yet it is not certain whether Mrs Alison- Madueke's doctors in UK had certified her healthy enough to return.

Adamu Muazu Shortly after the last presidential election was won and lost, the then PDP National Chairman, Adamu Muazu, travelled out of the country ostensibly to cool off from the heat that arose from his party's loss at the polls.

But it later emerged that he travelled out on a medical trip to an European country and has since not returned.

Until his surprise emergence as the PDP boss early last year, Muazu was based in the United Arab Emirates where he had relocated in 2007 after he served out his tenure as the governor of Bauchi State.

Sources say he would return to his UAE base where he allegedly has some business interests.

Sule Lamido These are indeed not the best of times for the former Jigawa State governor who was last week arraigned before a Federal High Court in Kano by the Economic and Financial Crimes

Mallam Ibrahim Shekarau Former Minister of Education, Mallam Ibrahim Shekarau's plans to leave the country at the dawn of the new government became a public issue when he publicly challenged the new government over alleged threat to stop him and some other top officials of Jonathan's government from jetting out of the country.

Shekarau was quoted as boasting that no amount of road block could stop him from travelling to any country of his choice.

Shekarau reportedly dared the Buhari administration to proceed and mount a checkpoint for him in the crusade against corruption, adding that he had nothing to hide.

Tony Anenih Since he resigned his plum position as Chairman of Board of Trustees of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) soon after the lost the presidential election, claiming that he resigned to enable Jonathan take over the leadership of the party, not much has been heard of the man often referred to as 'Mr. Fix it,' or 'the Leader.'

For the more than two decades that PDP led the political stage in Nigeria, Anenih was one of the most powerful politicians in the country. He supported Jonathan, his fellow Niger Delta man, with a fatherly passion.

Since they lost out, it seems the elderly man has finally retired to his home village in Edo. Edwin Clark Another prominent father figure of former President Goodluck Jonathan, who has suddenly disappeared from public radar, is Chief Edwin Clark. When Jonathan was in power, the elderly politician literally covered him with his wide wings like a mother hen. If any political opponent verbally attacked the then President, Pa Clark is sure to respond even before the presidential media team will finish their formal press releases.

Since the PDP lost the presidential election, and Jonathan returned to Otuoke, Clark has been very quiet. Like Anineh, sources said he may have finally retired to his country home in Delta.

Peter Obi When, at the dawn of his administration, former President Goodluck Jonathan appointed former governor of Anambra State, Mr. Peter Obi, as the new Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), many wondered not only why it took the former president so long to give a formal appointment to Obi, but also if he really expect him to last on that position.

With his background as a banker of repute and as a strict financial manager, added to his wide experience in boardroom politics, many experts said he is on a familiar terrain but the poser is political considerations. One month after the exit of Jonathan, Obi is still chairing SEC, where insiders said he has brought some improvements. Obi is most of the time in Lagos although he has been seen severally in Abuja and Awka, in Anambra State.

37

'Why Buhari will deliver' Kenneth Imansuangbon, a former governorship aspirant of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Edo State, recently defected to the All Progressives Congress (APC). He spoke with Sunday Oguntola on his political journey and passion to serve.

OU are a lawyer, educationist and businessman. But lately, politics has pushed all those other preoccupations to the background. What triggered your interest in politics?

I have always said it was nothing but passion to serve the people. The first time I got to the United States of America, I wept.

The American Customs officer asked why I was weeping. I told him I was weeping because I didn't know why my country was not like the US. I started to think: Where did we miss it as a people?

I discovered that the missing link was leadership. Lack of purposely and peopleoriented people in key governmental positions. We lack people prepared to die for what they believe in to make a change in our country. That was actually what triggered my interest in politics.

No matter the hazards in politics, some of us are ready for change to come. On March 28, Nigerians voted for change. That change is here to live. We all must support the new government. If President Muhammadu Buhari fails, Nigeria fails; if he succeeds, Nigeria succeeds. Let everybody support the President. When we support the president, it is the country we are supporting.

Why did you dump the PDP for the APC given the fact that you were one of the leaders and financiers of the party in Edo State?

I have always been a supporter of the APC. Don't forget that I was a major backer of the defunct ACN in Edo State. Yes, I am a member of the APC. I foresaw a change and I left the PDP before the last general elections.

I worked and also directed my group and supporters to work for the success of President Buhari and all the APC candidates in the three senatorial districts in Edo State. My decision paid off as you can see the results of the general elections in Edo State. I thank God that I contributed my quota towards the emergence of Buhari as president and members of the national and state Assemblies in my state.

President Buhari is a man of honour; the type of a leader Nigeria deserves. Few days to the arrival of Buhari, Nigerians are embracing the change. The president is making the people to be conscious, everybody is determined to change for good in order to make Nigeria grow.

Buhari's success in the election is a testimony that it is good to be good, that money is not everything, that good name, integrity and discipline have their reward.

The reward may be slow but it will surely come. If it's about cash, Buhari would have found it difficult. God determines leadership and He made his election possible.

With Buhari as Nigeria leader, corruption, which is a cankerworm that has eaten deep in Nigeria, will be a thing of the past because the man is already leading by example.

But some people are saying that the President has not hit the ground running.

I want Nigerians to be patient with the new government. We have to be patient.

There is no need to panic. What is necessary for this government to succeed is our patience and support.

President Buhari has Nigeria's interest at heart and he is taking the country to greater heights. Buhari's emergence is like a political respite for the country, a freedom.

He will not fail Nigerians who want an end to corruption, who desire stable power supply, job opportunities and equal access to the opportunities and wealth of the nation. Insecurity will become a thing of the past if we have jobs for the youths.

Y

• Imansuangbon

It is poverty that is responsible for all forms of unrest and militancy, including Boko Haram, kidnapping and other crimes.

Why did you part ways with the PDP? I finally left PDP late last year when I discovered that the party has abandoned democratic principles and embraced total autocracy. There is no longer internal democracy in the party again, instead, anarchy reigns.

The leaders refused to allow free and fair primaries, candidates were imposed making the party to be losing elections and the leaders were not bothered but continued in their dictatorship. They forget that no tyrant lives forever.

We have to be just in using power, there must be justice and fairness. My people invited me and told me to leave the party for APC before the last general elections and we all agreed to work for the success of APC under the leadership of Governor Adams Oshiomhole. For me, PDP is history and I am now a committed APC man.

So, is the APC embracing internal democracy?

From all indications, APC is in good stead to promote internal democracy. The party has demonstrated this during the last primaries at the national and state levels. APC is blessed with progressive leaders who are lovers of democracy.

They will not accept anything less than justice and fairness. I believe in the leadership of the party.

The next elections in Kogi and Edo states will be a test case for APC but with President Buhari, Chief John OdigieOyegun and Comrade Governor Oshiomohle in my state, elections in the party will continue to be free and fair.

Democracy has come to stay in the party.

What is your assessment of the leadership of Governor Adams Oshiomohle in Edo State?

Governor Oshiomhole is a good man and a good leader. I have a lot of respect for him. Before him, Edo State was a laughing stock as one of the worst developed in the nation. But in the last five years, he has been able to turn things around for the better. He has touched every nook and cranny of the state with his developmental want.

He has introduced a lot of sociopolitical and economic changes in Edo State. His welfare programme is okay and has taken Edo beyond the rot of the past.

He will forever be in the hearts of Edo people.

What is your next political plan?

My next political move will be solely determined by God. For now, I am contributing towards building the party in the state. My people will have a say in determining what is next for me to do.

But I have confidence in the leadership and the ability of the APC leaders in Edo State; they will do what is right.

38

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, JULY 12, 2015

POLITICS

Buhari needs time to succeed - Ogunsanya

Former Secretary to the Lagos State Government, Princess Adenrele Ogunsanya, in this interview with Assistant Editor, Remi Adelowo, speaks on the last general elections and her expectations

H

OW would you assess the performance of the APC-led federal government so far?

I think it a bit early to start judging President Muhammadu Buhari. A month plus is too short to assess him, but I also believe the President must hit the ground running because he has the experience even though the scenario he finds himself now is quite different. But I am very optimistic that he would do well; we just have to give him time to straighten things up, ditto Governor Akinwunmi Ambode. If you have not been in government, it's easy to criticise and say many things.

Nigerians must realise that it's not easy running a government; however, I don't have any doubt that both of them will do well.

Having being a part of former Governor Babatunde Fashola's government during his first term in office, what are some of the things you think the present government should build on?

I'm sure the former governor left handover notes, which the incumbent will definitely find very useful to work and build on. Again, the incumbent governor was part of the former government before he left, so he is well informed about how government

• Ogunsanya

works. Though everybody has his own method of operating, but government still runs the same way. I am not in any doubt that Governor Ambode will follow up on projects that are on ground and add his own to it.

If you want to be specific on some of the things that need urgent attention in the state, what would that be?

If am not too selfish, the Lagos East Senatorial District, which I come from, needs urgent attention, even though every other part of the state is also in need of government intervention in certain areas.

Of course, ex-Governor Fashola did well

during his tenure. The Ikorodu division is becoming very large and there is a lot that needs to be done in terms of infrastructure. The past government reconstructed the road leading to Ikorodu from Mile 12, but it is important to build on that. All the environs in Ikorodu need better infrastructure because of the large influx of people to make the place their home.

Many people are of the opinion that the former governor set a very huge standard that would be difficult for subsequent governors to beat. What is your take on that?

There is no doubt that the former governor set good standards; even if we don't acknowledge it, the rest of the country does. But as I said earlier, Ambode is a very good, intelligent young man who will definitely live up to and even surpass our expectations.

Now that the elections are over, the APC has been enmeshed in crisis over the sharing of positions in the National Assembly and those jostling for other oppositions. Don't you think this scheming is capable of destabilising the party?

People will definitely lobby for positions because this is politics. It's so painful seeing many people that contributed little or nothing to the success of the party now claiming wolf where there is none. But the leaders know the contribution of everybody. For some of us, it's all about fighting for my people so that many of our young ones will not be jettisoned in the scheme of things, because the truth is they fought hard for the party.

There are many young and qualified members who have remained faithful, who had stepped down for their colleagues in the past, even those who have PhD, professionals who have contributed

significantly to the development of Ikorodu; these are the people we want the party to consider first.

You are a former Secretary to the Lagos State Government; if you are called upon to take up any position either in the state or national level, will you consider it?

I will, but sincerely my first concern is to see some of these our young, qualified members fixed up. I am saying this with all sense of responsibility; I'm not one of those who would wait until some members will say it to your presence that all the elders should go and die for them to take up their positions. We must encourage our young members and let them get benefits of their hard work.

That is what I'm particular about.

Do you agree to the belief in certain quarters that the personality of President Buhari is bringing forth positive things in some sectors even with no cabinet in place?

That is the truth, because his body language tells you that he does not want corrupt individuals in his government and if you know that, you must sit up. Though it will take time to fight corruption and get good result, but he has started on a very good note.

What is your take on the propriety or otherwise of the removal of oil subsidy?

Though I am not an expert in that sector, what I think we need to do is to explain very well to our people on what it entails, the benefits of removing the subsidy and the adverse effect, because a lot of people do not understand what this is all about. I believe if people are well informed, we will get good results.

Everywhere in the world, people make sacrifices for their country to get better.

Between Ikpeazu and Aba renewal puzzle Even before the emergence of Dr. Okezie Ikpeazu as the governor of Abia State, the issue of Aba urban renewal has assumed a central symbol of the politics of the state. Over the years, Aba, which is the commercial nerve centre of Abia State and the entire South-East zone, has become a puzzle. So, as he assumes office, Ikpeazu made it a primary priority. Godwin Adindu, the Chief Press Secretary to the governor, in this report, situates the position of Aba in the political and economic development of Abia State and explains how Ikpeazu's government intends to unravel the puzzle. emember Aba? Have you wondered about these things: why did the great Ikemba Nnewi, Sir Odumegwu Ojukwu, give instructions that his corpse must be hosted in Aba? Why did Chief Ralph Uwazuruike, leader of the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOP), make his declaration of the new Biafra in Aba? Why did women in the old Eastern Region, from the four provinces, choose Aba for their earth-shaking riot in 1929 that brought the colonial administration to it's kneels?

You must continue to wonder: Why is it that every political leader from preindependence era through the First Republic to date has shown an overt interest in capturing Aba? How come that every Igbo of repute has a story or a life that is somewhat connected to Aba? How come that Aba, more than any other eastern city, seems to capture the symbolism of the Igbo spirit of commerce, courage and creativity? How come that what happens in Aba or what concerns Aba concerns the world?

These are the puzzle Governor Okezie Ikpeazu of Abia State is trying to unravel through his Aba Urban renewal drive. The truth is that Aba has been a melting pot of human activities since 1903 when the District Colonial Office was moved from Akwete in today's Ukwa East Local Council to the area called Aba. Then, in 1904, the colonial administration designated the place as a municipality to serve as a trading post for the old colonial companies. So from day one, Aba was constructed to be a city of commerce and trade, Nigeria's own version of the ancient Italian cities of Venice and Florence. And so it has been to date.

“R

For decades, Aba remained the symbol of the Igbo man's sense of community and Nigeria's idea of indigenous technology.

Indeed, for many years, the city lived its dream; the people lived to their fulfillment in a destiny tied to trade, fun, sex and money. It was the home of all, where men of every hue and colour became united by one kindred spirit and one common humanity. There was the Aba Man, a cosmopolitan hybrid, characterized by a dogged survivalist spirit. There was the Aba boy, a certain smart truant, not too puritanical but more clever in the things of the street than in the things of the classroom. There was also the Aba girl, a cultured bred who carried herself with so much respectability and walked as if she has put a price on herself.

The Aba-made-goods remained a story that went far and wide. The rare ingenuity of the people, the power of creativity of the artisans and tradesmen and their profound skill in developing local content of all products became a story that transcended many shores.

It became a marvel to the world and a source of attraction to the city and her people. Thus, Aba presents an old legend of little great minds ruling the world from their little backyard huts and shades, from where, armed with common tools and a restless mind, they could produce anything but man.

Indeed, Aba has lived with many years of glory. Many Nigerians of old still retain sweet memories of the old Enyimba City. But, along the line of the trajectory of urban pressure, the narrative took an ugly twist. While it remained the melting pot, it lost its thrill; it lost its drama and attraction; it lost the charm that created a symphony of drama of the human spirit, an epicentre of a new world of possibilities. The story suddenly fell in pitch from the crescendo

• Ikpeazu of great commercial hub to the lowly catharsis of a lamentable meltdown. And the reasons: The human population explosion was occurring without the corresponding action of infrastructural renewal. No government paid attention to the creak and squeak of a foundation that was carrying more than its original capacity. And Aba collapsed!

Thank God a Daniel has come to judgment!

Just a day after his inauguration, Dr. Okezie Ikpeazu stepped foot in Aba and commenced a massive urban renewal drive that has become the selling point of his one-month-old administration.

He immediately commissioned the construction of seven roads and established the Aba Urban Renewal Office.

The office is a totally new creation with the mandate of reviewing the dream that is Aba, the mandate to regain the paradise lost. Under this platform, the government is set to bring

Aba back to its old pride of place. It will be the driving force of the new administration.

As I write, the bulldozers are at work.

Ikpeazu is working to restore the original map and the original plan, and trying to lift Aba to the global status of modern cities.

The road construction is in progress alongside the desilting of drainages, gutters, storm water systems and flood channels. He has reiterated his stance not to compromise quality and charging the contractors to do quality jobs and to deliver on schedule or be blacklisted by the government.

You cannot make omelet without breaking eggs. Yes, the governor is breaking the eggs; he is stepping on toes and Aba people are happy for it. If he must create the new Aba city of everyone's dream, then he must apply a strong political will. This is manifesting in the demolition of illegal structures built on service lanes, and on top of drainages. Along the seven roads under construction, the governor is demolishing illegal shops, illegal fences and such other structures that constitute a blockade to the free flow of traffic and drainages. This action will progress to other roads as work continues.

The governor is also reviewing the markets. And many illegal shops have been pulled down in the Ariaria International Market and the other markets. But, it is not only the structures that are going down, human being are also "going down." The governor has had to dissolve the Committee on Review and Revalidation of Ariaria International Market headed by Mr. Chigozie Osuala and also invalidated all construction works authorized and executed by the committee in the market. This is the first action towards the plan for the upgrading and reformation of the market to its original master plan, which includes spaces for banking, fire service, car, police station and other essential services.

There is a new programme for domestic waste management under which Aba has been divided into six segments. By the time he is done, waste will be moving from the first depositors to the recycling plants. The dream is big, the will is strong and hopes are high. But, more interestingly, Aba people are happy that a Daniel has come to judgement."

•Contd. on page 68

W THE NATION ON SUNDAY, JULY 12, 2015 HE unfolding power play at the National Assembly has attracted attention of Nigerians more than ever before.

The reason is not far-fetched; the masses are beginning to know the implication of the choice of a lawmaker that speaks for them.

The fight was not new, but the level of debate emanating from the emergence of current leadership of the National Assembly has been raising critical discourse.

I am actually not surprised to see how people are reacting to this with bitterness. The lawmakers have been called 'greedy', 'self-serving', 'power drunk' and in some cases 'thieves'. They described as disgraceful and shameful the current fiasco going on at both the red and green chambers, claiming that the nation is severely suffering from leadership deficit.

To argue in favour of normality of the present scenario might meet severe condemnation on the path of Nigerians. But why will anyone expect a House totally free of rancour as if the Parliament is expected to be the most sacred and safe place to run business?

For anyone having such expectation, I will request him to speak to Julius Caesar on this issue.

Debate is the fundamental principle of legislature; for and against teams assemble to iron out matters in order to produce good resolutions, though not in all cases. The Chamber is likened to a courtyard where power stands as threshold for all forms of achievements as a lawmaker; and wherever argument reigns as the main business of the day, brawls are just around the corner, knocking!

Before now, no one cares about the legislature but presently everyone cares and it is a good sign that awareness is growing and our democracy steadily evolving; am sure when next we queue at the polling booths, the choice of who represents us will be sacrosanct.

Legislative scuffles are not limited to Nigeria alone. Indeed, around the world, heated parliamentary debates have, on occasions, turned violent.

To witness severe parliament fights, a trip must be taken to Ukraine where yelling, pulling, pushing, shouting and fighting are very common. In some cases, pillars which support foundations of parliament were pulled causing a collapse of structures upon lawmakers themselves.

Further visits to Georgia, Argentina, South Korean, Pakistani, and Taiwanese Parliaments will reveal House of commotion loaded with free for all.

The top five parliamentary riots were recorded in Turkey, South Korean, Taiwanese, Ukrainian and Indian Parliaments. As a matter of fact, the great British Parliament is not excluded from legislative brawls.

Much this said, the nature of purpose for legislative brawls differs from country to country.

It is sad that in Nigeria, in most cases, lawmakers fight only about sharing something. In some other countries, scuffles have erupted based on policy

POLITICS

39

T

Again, the Buhari team

M

• Saraki

Senate and purging of political pebble

By Segun Olulade issues, though not without interest in something, which is fundamental.

While agreeing that there must be disagreements, the fundamental question is "where do we place the interest of the constituents?"

Today, the parliament is being made to lose respect. Many lawmakers are unconsciously debasing integrity of the institution that earns us the title of 'Honourable' or 'Distinguished' members of the society. Also, the rules of the party are being thrown away at slightest consideration of power, forgetting that fundamentally every legislator already has embedded in him both political and legislative powers combined together once he is voted into office.

Speaking about the larger picture, there is the school of thought that argues that party should have refrained from dabbling into selection of leaders of the upper and lower chambers.

This argument is so riddled with flaw you can liken it to asking the eye not to shed tears as long as it is not the part of the body that was hit.

Talking about the supremacy of the party, you can liken it to a game of Chess whereby the puns in the attacking force are all elements of advances on and defence against the opponent.

Whenever a pun stills, it does no good to its constituency. Senator Saraki suddenly became a pun that could not be used to advance the cause of its constituency (APC), and at the same time it is not playing a trusted role capable of preventing imminent onslaught from the opposing constituency, it stills.

Historically, constituting self as a pebble that one's constituency has to cope with usually has dare consequences.

In worst case scenario, the constituency (APC in this case) can choose to purge itself even using a painful surgical method; but importantly, if this happens, the political future of the purged pebble (being a Saraki) might just end there. If we have had a President who is keen at political push, the Saraki caucus would, after a while, be withdrawn back into the party ship, allowing the supposed smart red chamber leader to drown. In the entire game, the ascension of Saraki into Senate Presidency only makes him a Castle or Knight bringing back my Chess power play analysis, but it never made him the Queen in the game. The personality being castigated without him uttering a response in the entire scenario understands the game and the moves.

Silent, calm, unruffled, calculated and patient, the owner of the entire game knows how to use patience and intensity to let the world know when the Castle or the Knight is picked before the game is over.

There are too many angles to the unfolding situation; there are many agenda running all at the same time. The Adamawa factor is always taken care of so no lasting threat is feasible from that power bloc; the North/South alliance for advancing the cause of the party is yet to even recognise many political puns serving as lieutenants of the current Senate President talking about taking major decisions in the party. And when the die is cast, what is left is the sight of many broken pebbles. The spoil of war shall be many with no one interested to pick them because they will be of no use in the future political equation. Time is all we need to see a clearer picture of how the entire equation stands. •Olulade is a member of the Lagos State House of Assembly, representing Epe Constituency II

UCH as I would have loved to leave this subject alone for now, I am compelled to revisit it by the news that President Muhammadu Buhari is suggesting that he enjoys constitutional cover in failing to pick a team to work with.

He quoted section 5 of the constitution as his authority.

I beg to differ. While he coukd find some latitude in the supreme law of the land excusing this inaction, the spirit of the constitution negates having the President as the Executive. He is the Chuef Executive. Yes, he was elected to run national affairs. He is the overall head of the executive arm of government, but is not expected to arrogate all executive power to himself. He is not a Leviathan.

I want to draw the attention of the President to constitutional provision section 150for an Attorney General who shall be the Chief Law Officer. He is also expected to be a minister of the government of the Federation. Is he meant to be the sole minister?

Second, has the President considered that the constitution provides that a President could be removed by the vote of his ministers if they believe him incapacitated to manage national affairs? If there is no Executive Council of the Federation, how would this be activated if and when required?

The Council is also meant to serve mobilisational purpose.

Ministers are to be appointed from all the states of the federation. The simple reason is to give the people a sense of belonging and ensure that political parties have a say in governance. Ministers and other top appointees are mainly drawn from the party victorious at the polls, It is assumed that the senior members of the party are thoroughly schooled in its philosophy and mandated to implement the party's manifesto.

Conventionally, there are ministers saddled with tasks of administering departments of state. Their roles cannot be performed by the Permanent Secretaries and bureaucrats.

While the top civil servants have their place in government, they are to be checked by political appointees who, presumably, have greater stake in the government. The politicians are expected to be more passionate about the success of the administration. This is the norm.

Conventions may not have the force of law, but, in stable societies, they are as strongly regarded.

There are limits to what the President alone could approve without seeking the input of the Executive Council. This is informed by the principle of collective wisdom. How would the President and his deputy alone conduct the huge bureaucracy in the country.

It is to be noted that appointment of ministers serve as

a level of responsibility to the people. All in government are expected to report to the people.

The President is too far away to address issues as they crop up and civil servants by their training and orientation are sworn to secrecy and anonymity. They do not have the mandate of the people, whether directly or vicariously, and could thus not explain government decision on key issues. This role would be better played by the ministers at the federal level and commissioners at state level.

The idea of postponing the filling of the positions is untenable.

It means that the economy would be run in tentative manner and markets and institutions left to guess the way forward.

There is indeed a compelling need for the President to set up his team now. A government is as strong as the assembled team. A dream team would ensure that government machinery is revived and made to move. If the President is afraid that the existing culture of stealing is checked, he only needs to be reassured that as leader he would dictate the pace and set the template. It is not enough that we have had governors dragged before the courts by the EFCC, ministers, too, especially those who presided at the Works, Power and Petroleum Resources should be closely watched and made to account for every Naira. Whoever falls below the standard set by the President should pay the price. Others would then sit up.

The Team Buhari is not just about ministers; the quality of other key appointments would demonstrate how he intends to move and how sincere he is with the Change Pledge. We look forward to knowing his choice as replacement for Professor Attahiru Jega at INEC; we want to see his list of ambassadorial nominees; we want to see the reformin the Defence sector and the anti-corruption agency. Who takes charge at the NNPC is very important.

I still believe that morning shows the day. A very slow start could be instructive to the ultitude eventually gained.

• Buhari

40

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, JULY 12, 2015

POLITICS

2016: Jonathan's defeat redefines battle for Bayelsa governorship

• Jonathan

The failure of ex-President Goodluck Jonathan to win a second term in office may have altered the permutations for the 2016 governorship race in his home state of Bayelsa, reports Assistant Editor, Remi Adelowo

F

OR the first time since the return of democratic rule in 1999, the strangle-like hold of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) of the governorship seat appears to be shaky at the moment.

No thanks to the defeat of Dr. Goodluck Jonathan in the March 28 presidential election, opposition parties in the South-South state, particularly the All Progressives Congress (APC) now fancy their chances to upstage the PDP from Creek Haven Government House in Yenagoa, the state capital.

What has further reinforced the line of thought that it may not be business as usual for the PDP in the governorship election is the unexpected modest victories recorded by the APC and the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) in the state and national elections in Bayelsa.

The APC, according to party leaders in Bayelsa, defeated the PDP in about seven constituencies out of the 16 decided at the poll but the result announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), according to them, was fraudulent and would be challenged. Only one constituency, Brass 1, was declared won by the APC. The internal crisis within the PDP has not helped matters. In the last few months, some party stakeholders have been up in arms against the incumbent governor over issues that arose from the outcome of the party primaries.

Pitched against the governor are prominent personalities, including the

• Sylva

• Dickson

former Senator representing Bayelsa West Senatorial District, Heineken Lokpobiri, his counterpart in Bayelsa Central, Senator Emmanuel Paulker, Senator Ikisikpo, who has since defected to the APC and the former Senior Special Assistant to ex- President Jonathan on Domestic Matters, Wariponmowei Dudafagh.

Dudafagh, according to reports, is the preferred candidate of former First Lady, Patience Jonathan, to succeed Dickson.

Obviously aware of the opposition arrayed against him, the incumbent governor appears ready to go for the broke.

Some weeks ago, the Bayelsa PDP, allegedly acting on Dickson's promptings, suspended some members of the party, while others led by Dudafagha were outrightly expelled for alleged anti-party activities.

Besides, shortly after the general elections, the leadership of the party instituted a probe to investigate the roles of some chieftains of the party, including some top aides of Jonathan for allegedly working against the interests of its candidates at the polls.

Sources said the leadership of the party summoned and queried some top party chiefs in the state over their non-committal role and anti-party activities during the House of Assembly elections, especially the open support given to APGA, Labour Party and APC candidates.

Instances were further cited where Senator Paulker and his wife allegedly mobilised against the PDP candidate in his constituency in favour of his preferred APGA candidate.

More defection looms in Bayelsa PDP With Jonathan out of power, strong indications have emerged that many bigwigs of Bayelsa PDP may dump the party for the APC ahead the governorship election later in October.

Sources say many former members of the State Assembly and former aides of former Governor Timipre Sylva are set to return to the APC and realign with their boss.

It was gathered that several consultative meetings have been held between Sylva and some disgruntled PDP members in the state preparatory to their formal defection to the APC.

"We cannot continue to cope with the excesses of Governor Dickson. He appears bent on destroying the party for his personal ambition," said one of those opposed to him in the party.

But the Dickson camp is unperturbed over the ongoing moves to oust him. His supporters readily point to his "achievements", particularly in the area of infrastructural development to market him as deserving a second term in office.

Projects carried out by the present administration include the completion of the first flyover project in the state, the Ogobiri/ Toru-Ebeni Bridge, dualisation of the Hospital, Diete Spiff, Road Safety and Water Board Roads in Yenagoa, in addition to several other ongoing projects such as the dualisation of the Isaac Adaka Boro Expressway and AIT-Elebele Road, construction of the 17-storey five-star Tower Hotel initiated by ex-President Jonathan during his tenure as governor and the Bayelsa International Cargo and Passenger Airport, according to his supporters, have endeared the governor to the people.

APC and 2016 poll With its emergence in the state where it was virtually non-existent until recently, the APC seems poised to give the PDP a bloodied nose in the next governorship election.

Sources disclosed that the decision of the former governor and leader of the APC in Bayelsa, Chief Timipre Sylva, to keep out of the rising list of possible candidates of the party for the 2016 governorship race may be determined by whether or not he gets a cabinet appointment in the APCled Federal Government.

In the last few weeks, names of prominent politicians, including the first civilian governor of the state, Chief D.S.P Alameiseigha, former Managing Director of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), Timi Alaibe, are being mentioned for the governorship job.

Though Alameisegha and Alaibe have not formally joined the race, the Convener of the Nigeria Professionals Leadership Forum, Moses Siasia, has indicated his interest to succeed Dickson.

Sometime ago, there were unconfirmed reports that Alaibe, who has been quiet on the political scene in the last five years, had concluded plans to defect to the APC,

• Zakari

but the man at the center of it all has however kept mute on the subject.

Before his sabbatical from the politics of the state, Alaibe was a prominent politician who came close to clinching the 2007 PDP governorship ticket until he was allegedly asked to step down for Dr. Goodluck Jonathan by the then President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo and Chief Anthony Anenih, the former Chairman, Board of Trustees.

Though Alaibe stepped down from the race, he never got on well with Jonathan who won the 2007 governorship election. His political profile further took a downward slide following the surprise emergence of Jonathan as President in 2010.

For Alameisegha, his alleged plan to stage a comeback to the seat he unceremoniously left in 2005 is still shrouded in uncertainty. From all indications, the PDP governorship ticket is Dickson's for the asking and it remains to be seen if the former controversial governor would pursue his alleged ambition on another political platform or pitch his tent with Dickson.

Other names being touted as putting up structures to contest for the exalted seat in the APC include the current General Manager of the State Transport Company, Ebitimi Angbare, who is reportedly banking on his closeness with one of the national leaders of the party to clinch the governorship ticket.

Angbare was the flag bearer of the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) during the 2007 governorship race in Bayelsa State, which was won

by Sylva but later annulled by the tribunal. The re-run ordered by the Federal Court of Appeal, was however won by Sylva.

There is also party Chairman in the state, Chief Tiwei Orunimigha.

Orunimigha, who served as the Chairman of Southern Ijaw Local Government Area of Bayelsa, is a close associate of Sylva and believed to be the latter's preferred candidate for the seat.

As the date for the election draws nearer, one fact that is incontrovertible is that the ruling PDP would be given a run for its money by opposition parties for the first time in 15 years.

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, JULY 12, 2015

POLITICS

41

Why I am optimistic Enugu will work - Ugwuanyi Associate Editor, Sam Egburonu, had a brief encounter with Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi of Enugu State last weekend and attempts, in this report, to capture the governor's vision for his state and the raw passion that fuels his drive VEN before assumption of office, Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi did not leave anybody guessing on the direction of his government. He had anchored his electoral campaign on what he termed seamless continuity and consolidation. So, when he won the election, his supporters said it was victory for continuity. Only opponents of the Chime political family hoped he would change on assumption of office.

So far however, they seem disappointed as the relationship between the governor and his predecessor has remained robust.

Confirming his determination not only to consolidate on Chime’s policies and developmental direction but also to improve it, Ugwuanyi had said in his inaugural speech, “The government of Governor Sullivan Chime has done well and we are justifiably proud and happy about it. But we cannot rest there. What we can and must do, is to try and utilise the advantage that come from this historic achievement.”

He added, “in line with my campaign promises, I recommit myself to continuing with the legacies of the Sullivan Chime’s administration and his roadmap for taking Enugu State to the next level. I recommit myself to employment generation, enhanced social services and good governance, rural development and indeed, security and justice. We will deploy government services to create fair and equal opportunity for every willing citizen to make a living and create wealth, educate our children, and enjoy life in a peaceful and secure environment. We will drive with full force investment promotion, agricultural sector renewal, provision of critical infrastructure, human capital development, and skills acquisition.

“We are all aware that unemployment is a major issue in our country today. In order to alleviate the sufferings of our people in this regard, we deliberately designed government policies embedded in our roadmap to generate employment and provide the platform to partner with the private sector.

“In the area of agriculture, we shall consolidate the efforts of the past administration in the San Carlos Farm Project, the Adarice and other such farm settlements where our people will be gainfully employed.

“We undertake to continue with the ongoing educational reforms, which have lifted our public schools to new levels of excellence. The introduction of e-learning and exchange programmes for our tertiary institutions in line with international best practices will be our priority.

“The need to compliment the already established state-of-the-art medical diagnostic centre – the first of its kind in our geo-political zone- with our vision to create hospital chains to make Enugu the preferred destination for receiving high quality and affordable Medicare in the country will be a matter of first choice.”

With such firm promises, Enugu indigenes believe that Ugwuanyi, a former Chairman of Committee on Maritime at the House of Representatives, who is

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• Ugwuanyi

fondly addressed by his supporters as 'Gburugburu,' is poised not only to advance the developmental direction of Sullivan's administration but also to do it with the usual glamour that surround his person.

Giving an insight into what Enugu people should expect, one of his close associates, a likely key player in his administration, who pleaded not to be named on the pages of newspapers for now, told The Nation, “Gburugburu is a glamorous politician. But he is more than just glamour. He is an idea man and a man of action. On the first days of his tenure for example, he shocked contractors when he paid unscheduled visits to construction sites. The result of such visits is better seen than described. Right now in Enugu, every contractor or worker in any corner of the state knows or fears that Gburugburu may visit him or her unannounced, any time. Go and find out, the effect is electric. We expect such changes in different areas even as the governor pursues the seamless continuity policy.”

The impression so far caused by his first steps notwithstanding, virtually all that have come in close contact with Ugwuanyi since he became governor do not fail to say his humility is rather disarming. Our brief meeting at the Government House in Enugu last weekend also left that impression. Given his popularity while he served as a federal lawmaker at the Green Chamber and the glamour of his elaborate campaign before the governorship election, one had expected to meet a governor that would at least be very conscious of his exulted position as the state chief executive. Not so. As he walks in casually, side by side with the Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, he stretches out his hands for a handshake almost in a boyish gesture, patting your back as if you were an old school mate or a childhood friend.

Beyond his evident humility and the easy going nature, it has been established that Ugwuanyi’s aim is high, so high that the opposition is already expressing doubts over the possibility of realizing some of the campaign promises he made.

Reacting to this fear, Ugwuanyi said, “One of the promises we made is that Nsukka is going to be modernized. But that is not accommodated in the budget. So, the first thing we are going to do is to revise the budget and accommodate those electoral promises that are not provided for in the budget.”

It would be recalled that as soon as he assumed office, Ugwuanyi had assured: “Enugu State under us will pay a special attention to rural development because the bulk of our people live in the rural areas. We will create more urban areas to boost

economic growth. In line with this, we must equip and modernize Nsukka – a university town founded over half a century ago – to compete with other university towns in attracting technology and knowledge-based businesses and other industrial support ventures, bearing in mind that Nsukka is the second largest town in Enugu State.

“In the same vein, the Ninth Mile Corner is a long overlooked economic hub that we need to harness to enjoy the full benefits of our newly acquired status as a Free Trade Zone. We will give attention to these places to speed up urban development, create fresh economic opportunities and reduce pressure on Enugu metropolis.

“Likewise we will boost the Enugu city by opening up the Independence Layout Phase Two, Abakpa Nike, Emene and other satellite towns to compliment the proposed Industrial Park. We will partner with the private sector, not only in housing development but also in agricultural development and industrialisation. We want people who are ready to enter into strategic partnership with us to develop Enugu State. We will provide the necessary legal and policy framework to make investment thrive.

Explaining how he hopes to achieve all these ambitious and capital intensive projects in spite of the fact that Chime, while handing over to him, confessed that the purse of the state has become very lean, he said at the informal meeting: “We are blessed with great men and women. We feel as a government that while others are busy lamenting over their fate as a result of the development in the oil sector, we should quickly initiate the Enugu State Economic Advisory Board. This, we have done."

A political associate recently told me that this is not the best of times to be the Governor of Enugu State. But I replied that this is indeed the best time to lead Enugu State. If former President Franklin Roosevelt could lead America out of the great depression; and if President Barack Obama could lead the Americans out of the economic meltdown, I believe that we too can turn the present economic challenges into huge blessings

The calibre of members that constitute the board, according to observers, is a testimony of the tall vision he has on economic rebirth of the state. For example, the Vicar-General of the Catholic Diocese of Enugu, an outstanding entrepreneurial and financial magnet, Monsignor Prof.

Obiora Ike, is the chairman of the board.

There are also members like the Deputy Senate President, Sen. Ike Ekweremadu; former Minister of Power, Prof. Barth Nnaji and the highly respected industrialist and Chairman of Innoson Group of Companies, Chief Innocent Chukwuma, who is not from the state but was convinced to be part of the vision.

There are also the former Economic Adviser to the President and current Director of the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Nigeria, Prof.

Osita Ogbu and former Aviation Minister, Amb. Fidelia Njeze among others.

Commenting on the board Ugwuanyi said "they have all agreed to help and open up the state and to attract investors, which will ultimately boost our Internally Generated Revenue. The reason for this approach is that we want to begin by laying a strong foundation.”

Explaining further that he expects swift economic revival of the state if the people key in to his economic blueprint, Ugwuanyi said, “it is on this note that I wish to call on our people in the Diaspora and the business community to key more freely into the new phase of development in Enugu State.

I enjoy their overwhelming support and goodwill for which I will remain grateful. Now, it is time for them to consummate this support by investing more at home and using their wide network of contacts to boost socioeconomic development in the state.

Although it is said among our people that “Ebe onye bi ka o na awachi”, it is also a fact that “Aku ruo uno, amara onye kpara ya”.

He also said, “we will continue with our foreign investment drive. We were in China recently. We had fruitful discussions with some businessmen who want to invest in our state. The result of those meetings will be felt by the good people of Enugu State when the investors storm Enugu State soon. We will continue to provide favourable policies, legal frameworks, and business-friendly environment to encourage others to follow suit."

Considering the harsh economic realities in the country, these are difficult days for states in Nigeria, most of which can hardly afford basic necessities like payment of workers salaries. But Ugwuanyi is optimistic that Enugu will work.

He explains the secrets of his optimism this way: “A political associate recently told me that this is not the best of times to be the Governor of Enugu State.

But I replied that this is indeed the best time to lead Enugu State. If former President Franklin Roosevelt could lead America out of the great depression; and if President Barack Obama could lead the Americans out of the economic meltdown, I believe that we too can turn the present economic challenges into huge blessings. Since it is knowledgedriven economies and not oil-driven economies that rule the world, I believe that this is another great opportunity for Enugu State and indeed Nigeria to look inwards and harness those potentials, which free oil money has blinded us from exploiting. It is an opportunity to live to our full potentials and discard the feeding bottle federalism syndrome.

Importantly, I believe in the miracle of five loaves and two fish. I believe that God will give us the wisdom and courage to successfully navigate the state through the current economic crunch.” This is vintage Ugwuanyi. As the former lawmaker navigates the ship of the SouthEast state with such raw passion, observers are keen to see how far he can go.

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THE NATION ON SUNDAY, JULY 12, 2015

POLITICS

Ladoja jittery over planned mass defection in Accord

Edo 2016: Imansuagbon revives machinery

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HE battle over who succeeds Governor Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State next year is gradually but steadily heating up. While the governor has kept his succession plans close to his chest, aspirants dreaming to take over from him are quietly resuscitating their political machineries within the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). And one politician who has never hidden his ambition to rule the SouthSouth state is Mr. Kenneth Imansuagbon, who recently defected to the APC from the PDP. The outspoken politician left the defunct Action Congress (AC) in 2007 following the emergence of Oshiomhole as the party's governorship candidate about eight years ago. But it appears he has reconciled with the governor and is set to announce his interest in the 2016 governorship race.

• Ladoja

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HE Accord Party in Oyo State is in serious disarray. And this is just putting the situation in the party mildly. Hundreds of leading members of the party, sources revealed, have allegedly concluded plans to abandon the party for the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), a scenario reportedly giving Senator Rashidi Ladoja, the party leader in the state serious concern. If Ladoja's associates eventually carry out their rumoured plan, that would, no doubt, be a double jeopardy for Ladoja, who is still hoping to get the victory of Governor Abiola Ajimobi upturned at the tribunal.

• Jubrin

Why Jibrin is opposed to Gbajabiamila

Why Sylva withdrew from Bayelsa governorship race

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HAT Dr. Abdulmumin Jubrin is one of the arrowheads of Speaker Yakubu Dogara's group in the House of Representatives is no longer news.

But not many are aware that Jibrin had initially rooted for Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila to emerge as Speaker on the condition that he would become the latter's deputy. It was gathered that the alleged refusal of the Gbajibiamila group to play ball and concede the deputy speakership slot to Jibrin allegedly led the Kano State-born politician to shift allegiance to Dogara.

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• Imansuagbon

The chemistry between Ugwuanyi, Chime

HE withdrawal of Chief Timipre Sylvia from the Bayelsa 2016 governorship race was taken after extensive consultations with his associates, it was learnt. The decision, sources disclosed, was arrived at in order to take the wind off the sail of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the state, which is eager to use his (Sylvia) corruption cases with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) against him during the campaign.

The former governor, associates claim, has decided to place the greater interest of his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) above his personal interest by supporting a fresh candidate with the requisite credentials to dislodge Governor Seriake Dickson from office c o m e next year.

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• Goje

Still on Goje's expulsion

by Gombe APC

HE warm relationship between Governor Emeka Ugwuanyi of Enugu State and his predecessor, Sullivan Chime seems to be waxing stronger, contrary to earlier predictions by political opponents.

Since he assumed office, Ugwuanyi has continued to pay due courtesies to Chime, who fiercely supported him against other heavyweight contenders who included Senator Ayogu Eze. And those who had earlier predicted that the incumbent governor would turn his back against Chime are still in awe that their relationship has become smoother than ever before.

T

HE Gombe State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) is not ready to reverse its decision to expel a former governor of the state, Senator Danjuma Goje from the party. Since the announcement of Goje's expulsion, associates of Goje have reportedly been putting pressure on the leadership of the party in the state to readmit the senator all to no avail.

Sources disclosed that Goje presently is in a fix on how to wriggle out of this mess, as he is also not in the good books of the national leadership of the party over issues not unconnected to his support for the Senator Bukola Saraki faction of the APC caucus in the National Assembly.

• Chime

• Ugwuanyi

• Sylvia

Continued on Page 53

GENDER, CHILDBIRTH ON KSDT SHOW TODAY

‘My pay is more mature now’ Continued from Page 52

e k o v n i o t s k e e Gulder s n e m n i e c n e d i conf

‘AS AN ENTERTAINER,

I STILL FEAR GOD’

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THE NATION ON SUNDAY, JULY 12, 2015

•You are a great man in your clan. But you’re still a child, my child

•Ikwuemesi

•Evil Forest began to speak and all the while he spoke everyone was silent. The eight other Egwugwu were as still as statues.

Putting Things Fall Apart in visual forms A

LTHOUGH Chinua Achebe’s iconoclastic novel, Things Fall Apart turned fifty years in 2008, the dream to turn it into images through drawings and paintings was mooted the same year

by Krydz Ikwuemesi. Ikwuemesi, a native of Ogidi, like Achebe, is a Professor of Fine and Applied Arts at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, (UNN). His dream was to bring together fellow artists in the persons of George Odoh and Henry Mujunga, an Ugandan, to dissect the book and put the scenes into drawings.

At the moment, the project titled In the Heart of Things Fall Apart has produced over 75 visual works and they are mounted at the Quintessence Art Gallery, Ikoyi, Lagos. Opened last weekend, the works had already been previously mounted at Nsukka where the public had the singular privilege of viewing and appreciating in totality what the drawings had to say about the scenes in Umuofia and beyond.

Of the 75 works on display, each is considered and based on the installationist principles. However, Mujunga opted to be different. He is said to have taken a holistic approach to the project, with each of his works dealing with the issues of conflict and dissonance.

This was done in such a way that each of his pieces stands on its own but still related to others thematically. His are the only works that came out in watercolours, even when the whole concept was to do the pieces in pen and ink.

Speaking to The Nation on the idea behind the project, Ikwuemesi said he was driven by the passion he has for the book and the aura it has evoked over the years.

“Yes, what we have done is to identify what seemed to us the iconic moments or reflections of Igbo culture in the novel.

Thereafter, we used them as bases for creative and imaginative sorties, which in turn raised new questions and interests in the whole essence of the novel and the enabling cultures therein.”

This is why each drawing by each artist represents a chapter in the book. The novel is done into 25 chapters and so are

In the Heart of Things Fall Apart is a project earmarked and embarked upon by Krydz Ikwuemesi, a Professor of Fine and Applied Arts at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, (UNN) and some other artists, to present Achebe’s iconic book in visual forms. Now, with over 75 drawings on the novel on display at the Quintessence Gallery, Lagos, Ikwuemesi draws attention to the very many issues raised by the novel more than 50 years ago, Edozie Udeze reports the drawings both in what they represent and the emotions they evoke in the annals of Igbo culture as represented by Achebe.

“When the book turned 50 in 2008, we thought, those of us younger than the Achebes, that we could re-engage the novel, but this time in visual form. So, we thought these drawings should be done as part of that celebration. We actually did a conference in Enugu in this regard, with the support of The Commonwealth Foundation. It was to mark the 50th anniversary and then these drawings were to be exhibited there. However, we didn’t have all of them ready then. But again these drawings have been shown at the Anambra Book Festival in Awka,” Ikwuemesi explained.

The works in their largest epitome and thematic thrusts, indeed took a wider thematic look into what the book said 50 years ago. How do these issues now affect or relate to us? Are those issues still thematic and important in this age and time? What has the book in common with the present era if viewed through the pictures it presented many years ago? Indeed, the most remarkable of the pictures are where Okonkwo took his life and where Obierika confronted the white man on the death of his best friend and the hero of the book, Okonkwo. There, you see Obierika tell the white man; “This man was one of the greatest men in Umuofia. You drove him to kill himself and now he will be buried like a

dog”. Thereafter, he bowed his head and left.

These drawings went deep into the core values of Things Fall Apart that even the novel itself may have been illustrated with the drawings. They give a clearer and fresher insight into the scenic views of the Igbo village square. They penetrate in to the Umuofia of Achebe era, where the Igbo culture was at the peril of extinction; where the white man held the knife and the yam and decided who blinked first – he or the Igbo man.

Is Things Fall Apart a work that can still open our eyes to the realities of our time?

In doing the drawings the artists intended to use the idea to encourage people the more to show more interests in the issues and problems raised in the book.

Ikwuemesi who began this work with his colleagues many years ago enumerated some of the difficulties he encountered on the way. “I am even surprised that I finished mine just last month. There were times I could not even find the time and the inspiration to go on. There were nights, however, when I did two to three works and it ended there,” he remonstrated.

There were also moments when as an artist, he felt that travelling out could help him to accelerate the works. “On a number of occasions I had the drawings in my suitcase, with pen and everything hoping that if I got to some place I’d be able to draw.

But after two or three weeks, the inspira-

tion would not come. There were other drawings which I did and ended up not liking and I would come back to see that what I captured did not do justice to the project. So, I had a few drawings I discarded and in the process did new ones to replace them. Those works may be better in the sight of other people, but they were not to me,” Ikwuemesi said.

It was such hitches as this that really delayed the completion and public presentation of the project. At the Quintessence Gallery where they are currently mounted, his works portray a harvest of ideas that speak volumes and pierce the heart. The drawings tell the story in more vivid forms and bring out emotions long forgotten.

And as an Ogidi man, how does this affect Ikwuemesi himself who also confessed that somehow nostalgia contributed to the drive to do the project. “Some of the issues raised in Things Fall Apart are peculiar to Ogidi, no doubt. But generally, they pertain to the Igbo cultures and the issues that are shared by the Igbo in general. However, when you look at it from a very minute level, Achebe could have been writing a kind of autobiography if you like. It is however not that kind of autobiography where you are talking about yourself but about your birth place, origin and cradle. Achebe is talking about his own personal experience, something you’ve lived and been part of. It is from that perspective that I feel so much connected with the novel. Some of the places, some of the ideas and issues and taboos in the book are known to me. Some of those issues still exist today in our place.

So, I have that sense of personal connection and it is because Achebe and I come from the same place… Also my father and grandfather shared some of those moments with Achebe. So there they are in Ogidi, our cradle and there are some of the things we see today.”

So, as the exhibition continues, it is proper to see the importance of Things Fall Apart within the context it was written. The drawings are necessary embellishments to add value to the scenes for more concerted appreciation.

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THE NATION ON SUNDAY,

ARTS

JULY 12, 2015

The magic of photographs I

T was Andreas Broundoni, an international photographer from Austria who once said, “whenever I look at the photographic works, alienated as they might be, all I see are snapshots of reality – nothing artificial, that is, since the raw material, the moment when the finger pressed the release, appears as proof of the real existence of what I see on the photograph. And I believe what I see. That naïve faith can neither be shaken by smart computers nor by skillful manual montage.”

This has indeed described the photographic images of Boju – Boju, a photo – installation by Akin Akinwande which has just ended in Lagos.

The photographs, drawn mainly from his repertoire of images on masquerades and masks based on the Oro festival shows how deep he has become in his chosen career.

The one week exhibition offered the public enough time to view the different pictures of a festival well-known in most parts of the Western part of Nigeria.

Boju – Boju therefore was a carefully chosen title to bring out the follies in the pictures and what the masks stand for.

On the main point of the event, Akinwande opined that he dwelt on duality, and multifaceted layers of the human reality. He took it a bit higher by inculcating the concepts of perception. He showed that

By Edozie Udeze

with his works, just like most works of photography often manifests “time is distant whereas space is present.”

Therefore Boju-Boju which took Akinwande a while to package drew attention to some of the cultural themes that may soon go extinct, if proper care is not taken to preserve them through documentation. Photography indeed serves for the sake of posterity the needs of ideal documentary evidence. In other words, it helps, in most known cases, “forensic experts, intelligence operatives, scientific and anthropologists to keep records of evidence or document unique examples and references,” so says Frank Ugiomoh, a scholar and sculptor.

Akinwande took the metaphor of Boju-Boju a bit further, for it is also a traditional game played in Yorubaland. It is an adaptation of hid and seek and this was why he cleverly and professionally created these overlapping thoughts and themes into his work. As an artist, he was too clear as to what he intended to do with the masquerade ideas of his work. He was able to highlight, for the sake of deeper effects, the focal points of a social spectrum and using same to address certain phenomena that often stare people in the face.

It was through this way that he was able to hold viewers spellbound while the exhibition lasted. The entire 100 works on display focused on the aura of Oro, on the thematic thrust of a tradition that signifies the heritage of a people. The photographs were not only illustrative, they could be taken one at a time to show the historical narrative of the Oro festival before it began to be infiltrated by modernity.

A graduate of Architecture from Covenant University, Akinwande took to photography to express his journey of life through what pertains to the people most. It is to afford him that free and unadulterated freedom to be creative in the way he deems best for himself and for the society.

Part of his dream is to fulfill the mantra in photography that says: “Photography creates objects that are often extractions from a given space and time… This is to affirm in obvious sense the status of the object in the narrative engagements called art history.”

As the photo-exhibition ended last week, the lessons in it were too many to forget.

It was to show the people how the love and lure of the art can transcend time and age. It also proved that photography is fast encroaching on the conscience of the society as a formidable means for historical documentations and lots more.

•Oro mask by Akinwande

•Lagos traffic

Uchay Chima tackles environmentalissues with Revisions

W

ITH the discourse on environmental degradation and social anomalies still ongoing, Nigerian artist, Uchay Chima has taken a stand in his ongoing solo art exhibition Revisions which opened on Friday, June 5, at the SugarCube Building, Denver, United States of America (USA), Featuring over thirty works comprising a selection of his recent mixed media works such as charcoal briquettes, newspaper scraps, and twine, the exhibition runs until August 28.

Chima described the opening as one of his best so far. “The hall was filled with people, it was a massive opening,” said the Institute of Management and Technology (IMT) Enugu, graduate.

He also explains why the works on display focus on social and environmental issues. “I am interested in social and envi-

T

Babanriga of Cobwebs

I don my babanriga of cobwebs in twilight country where sheep graze at night where roofs stand askew seeking to brace the earth I don my babanriga…

I don my babanriga of dry leaves in twilight country where tubers grow on trees and fruits ripen on teevee where barns are bald like ancient olumo rocks I don my babanriga…

•Uchay Chima (middle) with guests at the opening of the exhibition

By Ovwe Medeme

ronmental issues. When working on environmental issues, lots of things flood my mind. In an era where global upheaval, whether

nature, economic or social are the issues of the day, I am of the view that humans have contributed to a large extent to the cause of environmental degradation, and it will also re-

Calling on young dramatists HE Lagos Theatre Festival 2016 is calling on young and enterprising playwrights and dramatists between 18 and 35 years to submit scripts for the next year’s festival.

The plays should reflect experiences and encounters of young people living in Lagos today.

The shortlisted plays are ex-

POEM

pected to be selected by a panel of seasoned and creative writers well-versed in script-writing.

The winners will be awarded a cash prize of N100,000 each, with the option of performing the play during the 2016 Lagos Theatre festival. There’s no entry fee for the competition.

However, every young Nige-

rian within this age range is qualified to participate.

Each person is expected to submit one play that has not been published or produced elsewhere.

The deadline for the submission is August 9th, 2015 and only shortlisted dramatist will be contacted.

All entries should be sent to arts.nigeria@ng.britishcouncil.org.

quire the contribution of humans to fight these ills,” he said.

With new techniques and styles emerging on a daily basis, more Nigerian artists have chosen to break of the confines of the regular, experimenting with other media. Chima belongs to that school. “I want to create art that can be appreciated anywhere in the world,” he said.

To his credit, Chima has exhibited his works in prominent galleries in Nigeria, South Africa, the United States, and Canada. Curated by Janine Sytsma, the exhibition is put together by the staff of the SugarCube

Building.

Sytsma described the transformation process represented in Chima’s works as one where “devastation becomes the catalyst for reinvention.” Using materials from his Nigerian environment, Systma says, Chima responds to various sociopolitical issues, from environmental disasters to social injustices.

“Chima acknowledges a history of degradation in Nigeria and elsewhere, but refuses to allow that history to define the current reality. Instead, he imbues his works with a sense of beauty, hope, and promise,” explains Sytsma.

I don my babanriga of tears in scarlet country where youths stow away and are cast away where nubile damsels drape distant streets like cheap linen I don my babanriga…

I don my babanriga of shame in broken country which a bang does not stir frequency modulated souls who travel north in quest of south like an old bat I don my babanriga…

I don my babanriga of sorrow in orphan country where Julius Berger moves earth of corruption and run national emergency cranes where savagery is draped in green-white fineries like a dark Lisa night I don my babanriga…

•By Steve Osuji

No end to fuel crisis

Page 58, 59

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, JULY 12, 2015

•Yahchouchy

‘Chocolat Royal committed to service delivery’ Page 59

•Sadiku

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'How -- Page 53 agriculture can unlock Nigeria's economy'Page 60

Group wants economic sabotage probed

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• From left: Chairman, Board of Directors Unity Bank Plc, Thomas Etuh, Inspector General of Police, Solomon Arase and Acting Managing Director/CEO Unity Bank Plc, , Aisha Azumi Abraham during a courtesy visit at the Force Headquarters, Abuja…recently

TATA to invest $8million in Nigeria’s auto industry T

ATA Motors Limited has invested over $8million as part of preparation to assemble the first batch of made in Nigerian cars with subsequent exportation of automobiles to other parts of Africa.

The Regional Manager, TATA, Kshitij Verma gave this hint during a meeting between the company and the management of National Automotive Council (NAC) in Abuja at the weekend.

According to him, the target of the company is not just to start assembling of automobiles but also for

From Franca Ochigbo, Abuja

export market.

“The idea is to establish an assembly plant In Nigeria as a sub regional centre where vehicles will be manufactured for exportation,” he said, adding: “Already the company has employed over 240 Nigerians many of whom are currently undergoing training in India, they have already installed a factory which is sited on a large expanse of land measuring about 130 hectares at Ijebu Ode.” In his remarks, NAC DG, Aminu Jalal observed that the

coming of TATA and other foreign auto companies is an expression of the confidence of global investors in the potential of nation’s auto industry.

NAC boss, while noting that the demand of wholesale vehicle import which runs into trillions of naira annually is not sustainable, said: “The automotive demand in foreign exchange is the second largest on Nigeria’s reserves there is an urgent need to reduce it.”

He was however quick to commend current efforts aimed ensuring the local content in the manufacturing

of vehicles.

“Unlike the previous attempts in automotive development in Nigeria which was undermined by badly managed trade liberalisation policy, the present attempt is characterised by the involvement of local entrepreneurs with experience in the motor industries.”

NAC, he stressed, “has the competence to ensure that Nigeria is not short-changed in this strategy to diversify the Nigerian economy adding that sustenance of the automotive industry is critical in this regard.”

Custom, transport owners may clash over tariff

T

HE Road Transport E m p l o y e r s Association of Nigeria (RTEAN) has vowed to resist any further attempt to impound their registered vehicles with the guise of no customs duty by men of the Nigerian Customs Services (NCS).

Speaking with The Nation in Abuja, the association’s National President, Alhaji Shehu Isiwele Musa noted that Customs personnel have been stopping and apprehending vehicles from his members on the highways even after the Vehicle Inspectorate Office (VIO) have duly registered the vehicles.

He, however, raised some questions about the propriety of impounding the same

From John Ofikhenua, Abuja

vehicles that ordinarily passed through all customs borders in the first place.

He described the act as part of the corrupt practices that the President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration must eradicate.

The RTEAN boss however advised that the NCS could partner with the VIO to ask the latter to insist that vehicle owners produce their customs duty before registration.

“That is why I’m asking when the cars passed the borders where was customs?

The vehicles are in the markets why not go to the dealers to ask them to get the duty before selling them?

“Then they leave those ones to embarrass our boys who at times even buy on hire purchase. They have no money to buy cars so they buy hire purchase so that they will be working and pay for it.

Unfortunately, Customs will now impound it. So, we want the government to look into this and put a stop to it.”

As part of his agenda for the new government, Musa advised the administration to reintroduce tollgates for revenue generation, especially now that oil revenue is declining.

He also suggested that the gates must have automatic vending machines as measures for guarding against diversion of the proceeds into private

pocket.

According to him, government could spend the proceeds on road construction and rehabilitation instead of shopping for funds to fix them.

He tasked the government on building highway motor parks where tired drivers could stop to pass a night and freshen up before proceeding on his journey to avoid accident from exhaustion.

He described weighbridge as “a scale that every vehicle must climb before proceeding to load and after loading come for the paper so that when you reach another 50kilometer you also climb the scale. This is to prevent a driver from carrying additional or excess luggage that could burst the vehicles tyres on the way.”

HE Director of Publicity of the Nigerian Human Rights Community (NHRC), Dr. Duro Oluwayemi has urged President Muhammadu Buhari to probe economic sabotage in the Ileja community of Ondo State.

Addressing reporters in Lagos, he said government should probe the violent killings, arms proliferation which has grounded economic activities in the oil producing community, noting that it was sponsored by traditional rulers.

He said the situation has grossly affected development, stressing that people now live in fears because of the wanton destruction of property and arms proliferation.

Oluwayemi added that the crisis in the Ilaje community was a fall out of the 2015 Presidential election which singled out those loyal to the Buhari led administration for persecution.

He said: "Oba Afolabi Odidiomo and his subjects have been singled out for persecution and maltreatment by the richer and

more recalcitrant king. In the last few months, six people have been killed in clearly orchestrated cases of murder.

"The murder is linked to bitter tussle over lordship in the area. It took our research officers 21 days to conduct extensive investigation on the crisis, if not checked it will lead to a major armed conflict and economic paralysis."

The NHRC accused the traditional rulers of arming youths who maim innocent people who go about the legitimate business.

"There is a surge to acquire weapons in the area due to the festering crisis. The thugs parade the town with sophisticated weapons at the prompting of the traditional ruler.

"What we see in Igbokoda is another disaster waiting to happen. They go about with AK 47 automatic weapons. The police must wake up to its responsibilities by not compromising. The force had turned a blind eye to cases of rights abuse, but must stop this one in order to allow the people go about the businesses unmolested."

Standford Microfinance bank targets commercial bank status

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ANAGEMENT of a new microfinance bank, Stanford Microfinance Bank Limited, which set up shop in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State capital, has hinted of plans to begin full banking operations.

Speaking with The Nation in Uyo, the Chairman of the bank, Mr. Unyime Idem, explained that the vision and mission of the bank was borne out of the need to address some teething challenges facing small and medium scale entrepreneurs in the country.

Idem who is also the Chief Executive Officer, IDEMS Ultimate Limited, a telecoms company emphasised that the bank aims to empower the lives as well as ensure selfreliance and economic independence, especially for small and medium scale enterprises.

Besides, he said the bank would cater for low income earners as well as render business advisory, marketing, technical and administrative support and non-financial

From Uyoatta Eshiet, Uyo

services to prospective clients.

According to him, the diversification into the financial sector was a strategic action plan to boost the private sector by creating more entrepreneurs in Akwa Ibom economy as well as engender positive multiplier effects of cutting unemployment and reducing crime among the active population.

Expatiating, Idem suggested that for smooth business development, there was need for government at all levels to provide the enabling environment for business. “For business to thrive, government needs to provide easy access to mortgage securities and business titles including Certificates of Occupancy to businesses in the State.”

He added that very soon branches of the Microfinance bank will be established in all local government areas in the state.

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THE NATION ON SUNDAY JULY 12, 2015

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ILL the protracted fuel crisis being experienced across the length and breadth of the country ever abate?

This simple question has remained one jigsaw puzzle begging for answers.

Investigation by The Nation revealed that the lingering scarcity of refined petroleum products, especially petrol, may continue across the country in the future because marketers have stopped importing the products due to the reluctance of the banks to provide them with credit.

At the last count, the amount being owed all the oil marketers by the federal government was N291.7bn.

It was gathered that the refusal of the banks to provide credit to the marketers had adversely affected the business of some of them, as many were already contemplating leaving the venture.

Sources in the sector, who spoke with The Nation, said that the refusal of the banks to provide additional loans to the marketers could be due to the federal government’s delay in paying the huge subsidy debt being owed the fuel importers.

Although they admitted that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation was currently the sole importer of petrol, the quantity of fuel being consumed in the country was so high that the NNPC might not be able to handle it solely.

“Banks are refusing to give some marketers loans to import petrol and they are hoping that the present administration will intervene, particularly by paying the huge subsidy debt, because the NNPC alone may not be able to shoulder all the fuel need of Nigeria,” an official at the Federal Ministry of Petroleum Resources, who spoke to our correspondent on the condition of anonymity, said.

Confirming this, the Executive Secretary, Depot and Petroleum Products Marketers Association, Mr. Olufemi Adewole, told our correspondent that members of the group were not importing petrol again, because the banks had yet to open credit lines to them.

He said, “We are still being owed, and as of May 29, the total debt owed all marketers was N291.7bn. Banks have yet to fully reopen credit lines to all our members, hence we have not been importing as much as we should.

“At DAPPMA, what I can tell you is that since the tanker drivers called off their strike, we have not resumed importation. Our money is still outstanding and, in fact, banks have not fully opened their credit lines to us.

“Meanwhile, we are aware that the NNPC has been coming up with a lot of statements and we still can’t say whether it has products or not. But on our own part, we have not been paid and we have not been importing as much as we should.”

Recently the NNPC said it had enough stock of petrol to service the country for 25 days at a national consumption rate of 40 million litres per day, adding that it had stepped up product distribution to petroleum marketers and its retail outlets across the country.

Despite these assurances, the scarcity of petrol has continued in Abuja, Lagos and other parts of the country.

The Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN) recently said that its prolonged in-house tussle for control of its affairs by various groups and power blocs contributed in no small measure to the scarcity of petrol and ongoing mess in Nigeria’s downstream petroleum sector.

No end to fuel crisis

In the view of analysts and stakeholders in the petroleum sub-sector, the lingering fuel crisis being experienced across the country may take awhile to abate as the federal government is faced with many contending issues at the moment, reports Bukola Aroloye

• Mamoth crowd at a filling station

IPMAN said in Abuja that in as much as its members own and manage up to 60 per cent of petrol retail outlets in Nigeria, their leadership crisis ensured that they were mostly left out in the distribution of petrol to marketers in the country.

Its National President, Mr. Obasi Lawson, said at a briefing that the crisis in IPMAN prevented most members of the group from accessing petroleum products, alleging that the association’s share of petroleum products were diverted to other groups in the downstream petroleum sector due to its in-house crisis.

“IPMAN is a major player in the downstream subsector of the oil and gas industry. We control over 60 per cent of the retail outlets across the country and we have over 10,000 members with over 30,000 petrol stations. What the masses suffered because of fuel scarcity was largely caused by the crisis in IPMAN,” Lawson said.

“But the suffering started as a result of this crisis and this is because we control 60 per cent of the retail outlets.

“During the crisis we were not getting products as and when due, the products that were supposed to come to us were diverted to MOMAN and DAPMAN. And as at that time most of our petrol stations were not selling.”

“It is not that we are not getting the products, but we get them at exorbitant prices and we have to transport it ourselves. It wasn’t the fault of the PPMC (Pipelines and Product Marketing Company), but it was because we were not united.

They prefer giving it to MOMAN and DAPMAN that were united,” said Lawson.

Fuel scarcity looms again Another round of fuel scarcity may after all be on the way, if nothing is done to resolve the lingering crisis between the Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) and the Chevron management

The union is asking for, among other things, the revisit of the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) reached between the management of Chevron and the union in 2012 and again the reinstatement of the executive chairman of the branch of the NUPENG in Chevron, Comrade Shabi Dada, who it said was removed from office one year ago for no just reasons as well as the issue of categorisation casualisation.

Speaking with journalists in Lagos at the weekend, the Lagos Zonal Chairman of NUPENG, Comrade Tokunbo Korodo, said the sacking of the executive chairman of the Chevron branch was an affront to the union, expressing disappointment that all the calls by the union for his reinstatement proved abortive He informed that the contract workers of Chevron had been on strike for nine days now in order to press home some of these demands from the management.

According to him, before now, the contract workers had been under the control of six contractors about three years ago.

On the other hand, the existing Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) with the former contractor was cancelled and the one in existence now was imposed on the union, adding that there was no contribution of the union to it He said: “We have been agitating for the revisit of these issues and they also made us understand that the contract is also coming to an end by December this year.

“As this is still going on, some of our members have been pencilled down for termination of appointment and retirement. There is need to have a vibrant CBA that will take care of the benefits of members. All efforts to have a listening ear from the management of Chevron proved abortive, hence the agitation by the workers “It took them complete seven

good years before we were called for a meeting and even when we attended the meeting, no concrete result came out of it.”

“If nothing is done, the union will be forced to ask other branches of the NUPENG to embark on strike to press home these demands, and there would be another fuel scarcity as a result of this.”

Secretary, Chevron Contract Workers Union of the NUPENG, Segun Odukoya, disclosed that some people had been on casual employment for the past twenty years.

He said there is no vacation, overtime or medical attention given to the workers.

“We say no to categorisation; we say no to casualisation; and we say no to intimidation and victimisation. The NUPENG will always fight for the rights of the workers”, he said.

Why fuel crisis won’t abate Giving a fresh perspective on the fuel crisis imbroglio, an economist, Henry Boyo said that it would probably be more difficult to find a contrary view to the above popular perception.

According to Boyo, the widely reported ‘extreme’ annual subsidy values seem to also confirm that these fuel barons make a kill on the back of fellow Nigerians.

“Despite several allegations that marketers collect billions of Naira as refund of subsidies on fuel supplies which were never delivered, no convictions have, surprisingly, so far resulted from EFCC’s tenuous efforts.”

Speaking further, Boyo said: “It will be useful to examine the process of fuel importation more closely to actually identify the real beneficiaries in this business.

Indeed, the major oil marketers, Total, Mobil, Oando, Conoil, NNPC inclusive, and a few others have not been fingered for collecting subsidy with fake import papers.”

However, it may be more

difficult to vouch for the innocence of the motley subset of hundreds of indigenous independent marketers, as this class also accommodates the ubiquitous briefcase importer, who is clearly, a more footloose buccaneer, Boyo stressed.

Sadly, much to the chagrin of the public, the snail speed procedure for prosecuting financial crimes, may, postpone judgment day for fuel subsidy racketeers, while a judicial process that is allegedly compromised may actually also set the guilty free.

However, let us examine, hereafter, how profitable the fuel supply business is for bonafide importers, who have to borrow billions of dollars and Naira to finance their operations.

However, Boyo said the premium on each dollar sold may well exceed N10 per dollar, whenever dollar is relatively scarce and the parallel market exchange rate is over N220 while official rate remains below N200/ $ as is currently the case. It is also not immediately obvious to non business persons, that the same banks lend fuel importers the trillions of Naira which they subsequently exchange for dollars; presently, marketers would pay between 17-20% interest for the trillions of Naira borrowed for fuel imports.

Sad at the persisting scarcity of petroleum products in the country, especially in the South East zone, marketers at the Aba depot in Abia State, under the aegis of concerned members of the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN), have urged President Muhammadu Buhari to investigate the problem.

In a statement, the Aba Depot IPMAN Chairman, Levi Amah, said it is worrisome that contrary to the assurances by officials of Pipelines and Product Marketing Company (PPMC), members still face difficulties procuring the

THE NATION ON SUNDAY JULY 12, 2015

BUSINESS

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Why land is highly priced in Lagos

A

• Lawson

CQUIRING a land anywhere in Nigeria can be a very difficult thing especially if you don't have proper information on the property you want to acquire.

Opinions differ on the accessibility of quality space for property, especially in Lagos.

However, one man who should know better, Barrister Ezenne Solomon provides an insight on the beauty of becoming a house owner without the usual vigour and stress.

"Property is a very technical aspect of law and you don't just jump into it," the Ichida-born lawyer told The Nation. "What I have come to understand is that everyone needs a professional in anything you do.

Pressed further, he said: "For instance, when you go for an operation, a surgeon is needed so also if you want to get a property you need a property lawyer because

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•Korodo

EMBERS of the Akwa Ibom State House of Assembly have joined other groups in the state to oppose the planned siting of a nuclear power plant at a location in Itu Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom State.

The motion was sponsored by a member representing Onna State Constituency, Hon. (Otuekong) Nse Essien.

Essien noted that it is in the public domain that the National Atomic Energy Commission (NAEC) has decided to build nuclear power plants in the country to boost power generation and in agreement with Rosatom, the Russian government-owned nuclear energy corporation, has already designated

By Medinat Kanabe

so many lawyers don't understand property.

"Some families use their lands for farming and don't need the government to give permits before they could do that. Every property you buy is a lease from government for 99 years although it ought to be 100, that's what the C of O gives you."

Continuing, he said: "If I've acquired a property and I have a C of O for it and wants to sell after 30 years - what you will buy from me is the remainder of the 100 years."

The Principal Counsel at Ezenne and Associates Law firm who also doubles as the Managing Director of Green Pastures Interbiz Projects Ltd explained that the federal government can make life easier for practitioners by reviewing the Land Use Act.

• Solomon

"Believe me they can help a lot because land in Lagos is like Oil in the Niger-Delta. The federal government needs to change the

Land Use Act because that lease-hold is a problem and those who don't know the legal frame work of property business are easy to dispose of their land," he said.

On the challenges he faced so far in dealing with clients, he explained that getting title for property in Lagos State can be cumbersome and expensive.

"While trying to get our C of O, sometimes we have to pass that burden to the subscriber and some don't find it funny. Getting the C of O of a particular property, for example 20 million now and the government in the next few months review it to 50 million - how do you reconcile that? And you've already set the property at a fix prize, now if you go touch the price the clients will complain and some might walk away so this is the major problem we face."

Row over siting of nuclear plant in Uyo From Uyoatta Eshiet, Uyo two sites in Akwa Ibom and Kogi States for the siting of the plants.

Essien in the motion noted that though Akwa Ibom State government and its people are in full support of the federal government’s efforts aimed at boosting power generation to ensure the socio-cultural and economic development of the entire country, however expressed serious fears of the threats and danger the State would be exposed to.

The lawmaker noted and recounted the destructions and disasters nuclear accidents have

wrecked in over 18 highly industrialised countries, adding that ever since the first serious nuclear accident in the Chalk River, Ontario, Canada in 1952, trillions of dollars with thousands of lives across generations have been destroyed.

Other countries that have also suffered the adverse effect of nuclear power-induced calamity include: United States of America, Japan, Sweden, Germany, France, Russia, United Kingdom and many other very developed and advanced societies, he stressed.

The House moved a motion calling on the NAEC and the federal government to reconsider

its desire to build the plant in Akwa Ibom with a dense population per square kilometer.

The House also called on Governor Udom Emmanuel to protest vigorously to the National Atomic Energy Commission and the federal government against the proposed nuclear plant.

The House however called on the federal government to explore other available and harmless means of power in the state including increasing the capacity of the Ibom Power Plant.

The Speaker of the House, Rt. Hon. Aniekan Uko referred the motion to the Committee on Environment.

‘Chocolat Royal committed to service delivery’

•Boyo

products, since they have to get them from outside the zone.

“For the umpteenth time, officials of PPMC have assured us of availability of products but we did not see any. This makes us travel as far as Lagos, with its attendant risks, to buy products that we would ordinarily get in Aba.” Amah also described as untrue and flimsy the statement by some people that the scarcity was being caused by the old and rustic pipelines conveying the products from Port Harcourt to Aba. Strident calls for removal of petroleum subsidy There have been strident calls for the removal of subsidy with many stakeholders arguing that it is the way to go.

Not happy with the way things are going on the sector, they have called on President Muhammadu Buhari to revitalise Nigeria’s refineries and build new ones as a means of ensuring the regular and adequate supply of locally produced petroleum products.

The best way to eliminate the recurrent scarcity of petroleum products in the country, many of the analysts have contended, is to remove subsidy outright.

It said the subsidy removal would end the importation of petroleum products and its consequent sharp practices, as well as create jobs.

They urged government to pay attention to agriculture and the solid mineral sector as a means of diversifying the economy and generating more revenue.

The analysts pleaded with the government to engage adequate global coalition to tackle the security issues.

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HE management of Chocolat Royal, a popular elite and confectionery company in Lagos has restated its commitment to excellent service delivery.

Giving this assurance at the weekend was the Restaurant Chain Manager, Elie Yahchouchy.

Cholcolat Royal established 21 years ago, he recalled, has continued to service the taste buds of teeming expatriates as well as Nigerians with sweet tooth.

Chocolat Royal is owned by the wife of Mr Amin Moussalli, Chairman of AIM Group, the business mogul with interest in media, construction, consultancy, hospitality, among others.

Yahchouchy, who took our correspondent on a tour of inspection of the company’s headquarters in Victoria Island, Lagos, said the management has since improved on its system and processes.

Specifically, he said, customers would continue to enjoy the best of culinary delights like bread, biscuits, cake, pastry, ice cream, muffins, chocolates, beverages and other bakery and confectionery products, which are some of the staples on its menu.

Besides, the confectionery giant, he further hinted, hopes to introduce some popular Nigerian delicatessen, especially the local barbecue otherwise known as suya.

Speaking on the company’s modus operandi, Yahchoucy said a typical day at the Chocolat Royal begins very early in the day.

“Usually we work on shifts and the early shift can be here as early as 5am. Most of the restaurants staff are housed within and there’s also a bus service available for ease of movement. We typically open for business by 7am, especially for people who would like to come in for breakfast and all that. They also work on orders for onward deliveries to homes and offices as the case may be.”

• Yahchouchy

By Ibrahim Apekhade Yusuf

The expatriate who joined the employ of the company over three years also shed light on the recent clampdown on Chocolat Royal outlets in 267A Etim Iyang Crescent, VI, Shoprite and Centro mall, Lekki by the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC).

It would be recalled that a newspaper had blown the whistle on the discovery of some contaminated food items in the warehouse of the company.

According to the chief chef, a disgruntled staff member who was indicted for serious misdeamanour and subsequently was asked to go allegedly set up the organisation.

Yahchouchy however said the management was not interested in the blame game because it has since moved on.

Pressed further, he said: “When this sad episode happened, all kinds of stories were been bandied about. The fact is that NAFDAC came and said that for proper investigation to be done, they needed to shutdown the place for one month. It was during the

shutdown they carried out their investigation and afterwards gave us a clean bill of health.”

“However, for us this is no time for recriminations. We just want to let people know we’re back and better. The place was declared opened on June 22nd. But because we needed to tidy up some things, we reopened on June 30th,” he said.

Expectedly, the company incurred losses of unimaginable magnitude. “We recorded losses.

We lost customers, funds and all. We have over 100 staff serving the three food outlets. During this whole period there were no layoffs. Their services were retained for the duration of the shutdown and their salaries paid.

“So the losses were more on the company. But because we didn’t set up the company purely for profit motive, we were able to weather the storm for the most part.”

For a company which has been in the industry for 21 years with many laurels and plaudits under its belts, the singular sad episode was just a setback, Yahchouchy stressed.

“In the 21 years we have existed, we have never had brushes with the law or even with NADFAC for that matter. We are a law-abiding corporate citizen. We’re back and better.”

“We regret that this whole episode happened at all. But as a company we’re in the industry for the long haul. We have won many laurels on account of our adherence to safety and highest standards,” he emphasised.

Interestingly, Yahchoucy said the company learnt some lessons.

“The lessons we learnt from the experience is to serve our customers better and more efficiently. Now that we have reopened, we want to assure the customers of better service delivery which is the hallmark of Chocolat Royal. At the risk of sounding immodest, Chocolat

Royal is known for upholding the highest standards in terms of procedures and processes in the line of business that we do.

“So the least we can do at this point is to maintain that high standard. But we hope to go beyond that. As it is, the world keeps evolving every now and then, such that no matter how good things were yesterday, something new and better comes out today.

So that is the focus of Chocolat Royal. It was good yesterday, it can be better today and tomorrow.

“We hope to still improve on the efficient service delivery that we’re known for in the industry.

For now, we’re trying to rise from the dust. Going forward, we hope to introduce some popular Nigerian delicatessen, especially the local barbecue otherwise known as suya. We don’t do full Nigerian dishes and all of that.

We’re pan-Asian and all that but we also don’t think it’s a bad idea to inject a few local delicatessen every now and then.”

Thankfully, since the company reopened there’s been a tremendous uptake of clients. “In fact, the day we reopened, a loyal customer came and was all over the moon and happy that we are back at last and he has been coming ever since. That was really touching for us. So the clients’ uptake is building up and very encouraging too. Of course, to woo back old and new clients, we have been offering services at a discounted rate. Staff have always enjoyed 20 per cent discount. We’re back and better.”

The company is not completely about profit. “We’re involved in a number of Corporate Social Responsibility activities every now and then. We visit motherless babies home to present packages from time to time. We also have different holiday packages and festive packages as well.”

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THE NATION ON SUNDAY JULY 12, 2015

BUSINESS

ITH the dwindling oil fortunes, do you see any attention serious attention being focused on agriculture?

Agriculture has always been the core of Nigerian economy in the past and people have been practicing agriculture as far as you can remember the history of the country.

People are involved consciously or unconsciously, it has been created by nature. Food plays a vital role in the live of man and this has come to be through agricultural activities. Agriculture is a renewable assets but oil is not, if it is harnessed, it can used for the benefit of the people, it can create job opportunity and economy sustainability. It can also provide raw materials for our industries. Aside this we can even export some of these foods if we get it right in agricultural revolution.

After satisfying the local demand, the excess can also serve as economic generation when it is exported. We have about 170 million people to feed; therefore it is a sector we cannot joke with.

Agriculture involved finding from production level to processing, packaging and the final product. This is where the Bank of Agriculture comes in, we are ready to do this, and we have been doing it and can do better if the resources are available.

Agriculture can improve lives especially if we ban poverty and conquer hunger.

In fact, agriculture is the pivot that any nation can rest upon for her industrial revolution in which Nigeria cannot shy away from. This is a sure way to banish hunger in the society.

From here we can now be thinking about some younger generation who want to take agric as a commercial business. It is expedient that the country should take agriculture as a serious business, not something we return to when other areas failed us.

A consistent agricultural programme with deliberate funding will provide a lot of opportunities for all our young graduates who are trooping out of the university in droves.

Take for instance, we can have a system that will provide a small cottage industry in all the places whereas our fruits are rotten away at every season, talk about mangoes, cashew, oranges, guava, tomatoes and a host of others. If we have processing factories all over the country at only one per local government at these places where the fruits are available, the multiplier effect will not only produced food security, but also discourages all these different kind of can and bottled juicy fruit imported into the country.

To get there we only need a key word, sincerity on the part of the government, the civil servant and the populace who will see it as their

'How agriculture can unlock Nigeria's economy' Mr. Babatunde Sadiku is the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, Bank of Agriculture. In this interview with Sina Fadare, he shares his views on how agricultural resources, if fully harnessed, can serve as a sustainable revenue earner for the country to cushion the effect of dwindling oil fortunes. Excerpts: project and not the usual national cake that need to be squandered or abused.

How far has your bank gone in promoting this agricultural value chain?

We have been able to participate fully well in the production and those who are into processing. We are into financing oil palm processes in the South-East area of the country and those who are involved in animal husbandry. We equally finance those in fishing farming, fabrications and agro allied productions. We handled those who want to go into mechanisation and we served as an intermediary to some state government who want to disburse agricultural loans to their farmers. Some of them moved from the usual tiling the ground with hoes to big mechanised farming which we are directly involved.

Most of the farmers are complaining about poor infrastructural amenities which hinders their operations, are you looking into that direction?

Presently there is a bank purposely set up to solve that specific problem, it is called Bank for Infrastructure, and initially it was called Development Bank. They are to provide finance for infrastructure.

They arrange for syndicated loans. Along the line all these financial institutions have their mandate and vision, but there is usually a collaborative effort. Our functions are complimentary and there are some areas which we inter relate.

Take for instance, the Bank of Industry (BoI) deals with industrial processing while the BOA equally deals with agriculture processors and agro-allied processors.

We are all linked together. But on our own we want to grow community and make them selfsufficient by banishing hunger and encourage rural community agriculture. By so doing, we are equally financing non-agricultural businesses like micro credit facilities. This is going to improve their wellbeing.

Therefore, you have to do a lot of collaboration with the

•Sadiku

Infrastructural bank and Bank of Industry.

Your bank was involved in the now famous cassavabread project, how many farmers benefited and to the tune of how much?

The government gave us N2.16 billion, categorised into loans and grants. Up to date, we have disbursed N2.3 billion to over 7,780 farmers across the country.

In addition to that, in our normal lending, we have provided over N1 billion to cassava farmers too under cassava value chain through our own lending process.

How were you able to curb the excess of those lending from you who may see it as another national cake?

We have our lending process which everybody

getting loan from us must follow. Before they collect any fund, they have to pay some amount as a commitment that they are ready to do business with us. We have to do a lot of project evaluation, vetting of project proposal and thorough inspection to be ascertain that the collector of the loans are actually farmers.

Before disbursement you have to do project appraisal, visit and approval. Again, there is the security of the loans, in terms of collaterals. If you fail to refund the loan, there are consequences. We sometime cajole them to pay, take court action against them, employ debt collector or you sell off the security.

Is it true that politicians

instead of rural famers hijacked this fund?

In reality we do as much as possible to get to the farmers at the grassroots to benefit from the loans. We have 136 locations throughout the country. In some local government areas, BOA is the only financial institution you can find, that will tell you how rural we are.

As much as we can, we minimise our loans to those who are not politically exposed. But you cannot rule it out. There is no law that says if you are a politician you cannot as well become a farmer and vice versa. Therefore as long as they are Nigerians, they are also qualified. But in the context that you are thinking about, no way, no politician, no matter how connected he may be, can use that opportunity to access our loans and grants because there are lots of procedures and serious scrutiny of projects before any loan or grant could be approve to any lender.

Are politicians not Nigerians?

But the reality is that by the time we visit the farm, quantify it and juxtapose to the loan or the grants the farmer is requesting for, you can easily decode whether he is just a mere farmer by the word of mouth or a politician disguising as a farmer. So it is neither here nor there. The system we put in place like the opening of an account with our bank where any monetary transaction will go directly to the beneficiary through epayment, it has enabled us to differentiate those rural farmers who are in dire need of the grants from those who do not need it but want to get it for getting sake.

We are doing a network where any of our clients can access his or fund anywhere in the country even if there is no banking facility in such community, it is called Green Cash, it was modeled after the existing facility like ATM. This facility will go a long way to make accessibility of our grants and loans get to the rural community where we want to make life better.

“It is expedient that the country should take agriculture as a serious business, not something we return to when other areas failed us.

A consistent agricultural programme with deliberate funding will provide a lot of opportunities for all our young graduates who are trooping out of the university in droves�

What are the challenges you are facing on the task at hand?

The first challenges we are facing is that of funding.

In as much as we have a lot of people we intend to reach and provide our services, inadequate funding did not give us the opportunity. The operating model we are using in the past is giving way to a new one. There are few challenges on this.

Then there is also the cost of overhead and the struggling to recoup all the backlog of nonperforming loans, we are still struggling to collect. Then the long time it takes to sort out court cases is also affecting us.

Some 14 years and even more than that and yet we are yet to settle it.

The farmers also were unable to secure the C of O of the land they are using to farm, this has created a bottleneck because such land cannot be used as a security in case of any eventuality, this has taken a long time and money for them to perfect and before you know it, the season has passed.

Occasionally natural disaster always hinders what could have been our success story for our farmers. Take for instance, the issues of bird flu, a lot of our poultry farmers are affected. The drought disaster of 2012 affected some farmers in Kogi, part of North Central and Delta areas.

If the farmers suffered all these, it impair their ability to sustain themselves and still keep in tune on the business, talk less of repaying back their loans.

Though insurance is there, but it cannot compensate you fully.

Cashew farmers are complaining that they cannot access any of your funds. How can they benefit?

If they come to us either as a group or as an individual with a good proposal we are going to extend our service to them.

There will be a memorandum of understanding and from there we are going to let out our terms of operation.

Even Sugar Development Council gave us N1billion to manage for them. We are going to lend farmers who are involved in sugar cane production; they use part of the money as a back up or collateral Do you think BOA can guarantee Nigerians food sufficiency in the next few years?

If we have the funding, we can. Among all the banks in the country, we have more agriculture experts. Our mission is to finance agriculture across the value chain and we have the right experts to deliver this at a short duration if the funds are available. We equally have the outlets that can accommodate this. At least we have about two to three branches in every state of the federation. With the level of human resources at our disposal we can deliver the needed food sufficiency to Nigerians if we have the required funding.

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Fears heighten as EU temporarily bans beans importation from Nigeria

•Dry beans

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ONSUMERS express fears of the safety of consuming beans as the European Union (EU) has temporarily banned dried beans importation from Nigeria because of the high levels of dichlorvos pesticide in the beans which poses serious risk to the health of the consumers.

Also high levels of other chemicals like Chlorpyrifos, Cyhalothrin, Dimathoate, Trichlorphon and Omethoate were also discovered in the dried beans.

These are all pesticides that are intentionally applied to plants to attack invertebrate pest and plant diseases and also utilised in the storage of beans, but the presence of their residues proves high risk to human health.

Most of the rejected dried beans were found to contain between 0.03mg per kilogramme and 4.6mg/kg of the dichlorvos pesticide when its acceptable maximum residue level in the product is 0.01mg/kg.

Dichlorvos is considered to be highly toxic and if ingested can result in convulsions, dizziness, sweating, difficulty in breathing, abdominal cramping, diarrhoea, vomiting and loss of consciousness. It is a confirmed human carcinogen and is a suspected endocrine system disruptor.

The ban was confirmed at an export forum by the Deputy Director, Ports Inspection Directorate, National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Mrs. Comfort Makanjuola.

Speaking at the forum organised by Rays of Light Empowerment Initiative in Lagos, Makanjuola said that the EU suspended the importation of dried beans originating from Nigeria until June 30th 2016.

Also, consumers who are unfortunate to consume such meals, are likely to have reduced motor skills “though those symptoms are often very subtle and may be the reasons it has not become very noticeable in Nigerians,” added Dr. Femi Ajayi, a paediatrician with the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) Idi-Araba Lagos.

Explaining further, Ajayi said that other possible health effects that can result from bean meals made from beans with high levels of pesticide residue include asthma, allergies, hypersensitivity.

“Pesticide exposure is also linked with cancer, hormone disruption and problems with reproduction and foetal development,” he noted.

According to information outlined in the EU Commission Implementing Regulation 2015/943, 50 notifications have been issued since January 2013

through its alert system to Nigeria concerning dried beans containing high levels of dichlorvos pesticide.

Further information revealed that 13 border rejection alerts on dried beans had been issued by the United Kingdom authorities between January to July 1st 2015.

Now the questions that come upper most in mind are where is the rejected dried beans and where did they originate from? Asked a food nutritionist at LUTH, Idi- Araba Lagos.

Proffering answers, a female top civil servant who requested anonymity said, “the answers, of course, are not farfetched. The rejected beans have gone to the open market.

In terms of origin, the beans originated from the same source that the current beans in the open markets came from.”

Just about a week ago, a close friend of mine complained about the taste of the bean meal she made. According to her, she said she bought the dried beans in her Ikeja neigbourhood but noticed it tasted somehow as if it had some form of kerosene contaminate.

Giving high lights of the findings from the study, National Coordinator of the World Bank Assisted Programme in Nigeria, Prof.

Damian Chikwendu, described Nigeria as a home to uncontrolled market of outdated, substandard and

unscrupulous pesticide which he said are mostly peddled and used by people with no real expertise on them.

Of a total of 360 farmers that were interviewed in 57 Local Government Areas across the nine states (Abia, Benue, Edo, Gombe, Imo, Kaduna, Kano, Niger, Oyo), WAPP-Nig National Coordinator disclosed that about 92% of them admitted to the use of pesticide in varying proportions.

This, however, comes with a worrying trend as Prof.

Chikwendu said “one

noticeable trend is that most of the people who sell and use these pesticides have little knowledge of them. They do not even know how to use it.”

Citing records from the studies, he said that not less than 74% of the farmers purchase their pesticides from the open markets, disclosing that only a paltry 8-12% of them obtain theirs from farmer groups and cooperatives, government agencies and Non Governmental Organisations (NGO).

On how the pesticides are

used, the result found that most of the applications were done by the famers themselves while a smaller fraction of them employ the services of hired applicators and family members using ‘knap snack’ sprayer.

“These days, we hear of cancers and all manners of health conditions. So many of these are related to the poor use of chemicals like pesticides.

Many farmers use these chemicals to protect their beans and other crops and the effects are obvious,” lamented Ckikwendu.

Firm unveils e-learning platform

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•Chief Executive Officer, Emerging Platforms, Mr Kola Aina (middle) explaining the EduPlatforms e-learning solutions to the Deputy Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Dr. Debretsion Gebremichael at the 10th International Conference on ICT for Development, Education and Training (ELA 2015) in Addis Ababa Ethiopia

ERTIARY education across African continent is set to witness a major boost with the launch of a new e-learning platform.

Making this disclosure yesterday was the Group Chief Executive Officer, Emerging Platforms Group, Mr. Kola Aina.

Aina made this submission at the E-learning Africa Conference 2015 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The e-Learning Africa Conference was a gathering of business professionals and education technology (edtech) entrepreneurs to showcase and debate on advancing education technology in Africa.

According to him, Africa and Africans cannot afford to be left

out of the educational technology movement that is presently showcasing the best of e-learning solutions that are brining education closer to the people at their own convenience.

While presenting EduPlatforms, one of the start-up companies in Nigeria within the Emerging Platforms Group, Aina stated that personalised elearning solution is a revolution needed in advancing education in Africa.

EduPlatforms which recently signed a partnership with the National Open University Nigeria and the Kano State University of Science and Technology is growing steadily with provision of customised e-

solutions for tertiary education.

“With EduPlatforms, we have created an innovative and personalised e-learning solution for tertiary institutions with the aim of making learning more efficient and effective for both students and tutors. We realise that today’s students are digital natives; it is therefore important that School Administrators invest in academic solutions that are technologically driven which will meet today’s digital students at his/her comfort zone,” Aina said.

Speaking on the ilearn and ilearn Plus solutions for tertiary education at the exhibition, Aina informed that it is an end-to-end turnkey solution that provides

world class e-learning services particularly for students of Open and Distance learning institutions.

“The ilearn spans the deployment of administration portals and learning management systems, instructional design, multimedia content production and support services. It offers more flexibility and convenience for students of Open & Distance Learning (ODL) institutions as well as conventional institutions, by providing an effective and personalised learning platform that encourages students to create study groups with students and tutors online.”

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THE NATION ON SUNDAY, JULY 12, 2015

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NIGERIAN pastor has said that he’s grateful his daughter, who was one of the over 200 Chibok girls kidnapped by Boko Haram in 2014, did not convert to Islam and died “for the sake of Christ” when the terror group forced her to choose between her life and her faith.

A video clip of Pastor Enoch Mark, part of a BBC Panorama investigation that was originally published in June, captures the father revealing the details of his kidnapped daughter, Monica’s, death.

Map of Nigeria locating suspected Boko Haram attacks since last week which have killed more than 200 people.

“I was told that my daughter refused to change her religion. I was told that they dug a hole and buried her from the neck and stoned her to death,” the pastor says.

“To die for the sake of Christ, that’s the happiest thing for me. I’m grateful that she didn’t change her religion. She trust[ed] in God.” His wife, identified only as Marta, adds: “I believe she died with dignity.

Monica is now in heaven because she refused to convert.”

The original BBC report highlighted how some of the schoolgirls, taken in a

Chibok Pastor ‘grateful’ daughter didn’t deny Christ

•Chibok girls

By Stoyan Zaimov

raid from Chibok in April last year, have been forced

to join the Islamist militants.

With the majority of the kidnapped schoolgirls be-

ing Christian, there have been several reports that the jihadists have been forcing them to convert to Islam,

and have been marrying them off.

One 17-year-old girl named Miriam who man-

aged to escape Boko Haram after six months of captivity revealed that she was forced to marry one of the jihadists, and is now pregnant with his child.

Miriam explained how she refused with four other girls to be married after they were first taken, after which they were threatened with their lives.

“They came back with four men, they slit their throats in front of us. They then said that this will happen to any girl that refuses to get married,” the girl said.

She added that after agreeing to their demands, she was repeatedly raped.

“There was so much pain,” she said. “I was only there in body… I couldn’t do anything about it.”

Boko Haram has killed at least 5,500 civilians in Nigeria since 2014 alone, and has been waging war on the country for close to six years now. The terror group has targeted Christians, trying to force them to leave the country, where they make up half the population, but has also massacred Muslims and all who stand in its way.

Boko Haram has pledged allegiance and has been following many of the same tactics as terror group ISIS in Iraq and Syria, which has been beheading Christians who refuse to convert to its brand of Islam.

•Courtesy: Christian Post

US couple fined $135,000 for refusing gay wedding Adeboye condemnes same-sex marriage in US

By Adeola Ogunlade situation was gradually imHE General Overseer HE Christian owners cake unrepentant from denying the full and proving in the country, owof the Redeemed now living in the flesh. equal accommodations, adof an Oregon, United

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States bakery ordered to pay a $135,000 fine for refusing to bake a wedding cake for a lesbian couple are requesting a stay of enforcement, meaning that they will not have to pay up unless their appeal fails.

Aaron Klein, who owns the Sweetcakes by Melissa bakery with his wife Melissa, confirmed to The Blaze on Wednesday that they would do all they can to avoid paying the fine, which is due on Monday.

“I will not relent. I will continue,” Klein said. “I will use every legal remedy I have to make sure that this man [Oregon Labour Commissioner Brad Avakian, who handed the bakery the order] cannot do this to me, cannot do it to my wife, cannot do it to my five children, [and] cannot do it to any other Ameri-

By Carey Lodge

can.”

A discrimination case against the Kleins was originally filed by a lesbian couple in 2013, who were refused service because the bakery said it did not make cakes for samesex couples due to their Christian beliefs.

Refusing to serve someone because of their sexual orientation is illegal under Oregon law. The state’s Labour Bureau wrote in its final order: “Within Oregon’s public accommodations law is the basic principle of human decency that every person, regardless of their sexual orientation, has the freedom to fully participate in society – the ability to enter public places, to shop, to dine, to move about unfettered by bigotry.”

The Kleins were therefore ordered to “cease and desist

vantages, facilities and privileges of Sweetcakes by Melissa to any person based on that person’s sexual orientation.”

However, Klein told The Blaze that this is an “overreach of the government” and said “we’re looking at the persecution of Christians in this country”.

A crowdfunding campaign to raise money for the couple has now reached over $300,000 – more than twice its original goal. If they lose their appeal, the Kleins will owe interest and other fees on top of the fine.

According to The Blaze, even if donations cover the full amount, Klein said there remains a wider religious freedom issue in the US. Same-sex marriage has been legal in Oregon since 2014, and it was legalised across all states two •Source: Christian Today

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Christian Church of God, Pastor Enoch Adeboye, has condemned the recent United States Supreme Court ruling supporting same-sex marriages across the country as satanic and demonic.

Adeboye made this known at a Special Prayer and Thanksgiving Service for security operatives held last week at the national headquarters of RCCG, Throne of Grace, Ebutte- Metta, Lagos.

The theme, Divine security for the Nigeria Police Force and their family, brought together hundreds of police men and officers from across the country.

According to him, the recent national approval given by the apex court on samesex marriage in the US is from the pit of hell. He said it is unfortunate that America who started in the spirit is

Israeli scientists create world’s smallest Bible

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HE Bible is known for many things. It is the most revered book for Christians, and it also contains sacred texts for the Jews. It is also the most widely translated book in the world, having been translated into 2,400 of the world’s 6,800 languages.

Now, the Bible also holds the distinction as one of the few books to have a nano version—a version with text so

By Andre Mitchell

small that it could fit on the tip of a pen.

The world’s smallest version of the Bible, conceived by Uri Sivan and Ohad Zohar, was created by scientists from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, located in Northern Israel.

How exactly was this diminutive version of the Holy Book made? The scientists cre-

ated a very thin layer of silicon, with a thickness of less than 100 atoms, to which they placed a golden plating.

Using a focused ion beam, a machine usually used in the semiconductor industry to etch surfaces, the scientists carefully engraved 1.2 million characters, one at a time, blasting away the gold plating to reveal the silicon beneath.

Sivan, one of those who

conceptualised the Nano Bible, said he wanted to spark people’s interest both in God’s Word and technology.

“More than any other book, the Bible symbolises the transmission of human civilisation from one generation to another. We tried to connect to the device. We wanted to get people curious about the revolution that is taking place before their eyes,” he said.

Pastor Johnson Odesola, speaking on behalf of Adeboye, said that the United States of America had long deviated from the fundamental foundation of God which their forefathers laid.

He noted that America is on its way to the valley as backsliding, moral degeneration and ungodliness continue unabated in the country.

He said: “It shows the end of time and level of degeneration. The same-sex marriage is from the pit of hell and a backsliding victory for America.”

He challenged Africa to rise against any ungodly pressure from the West to legalise same-sex marriage, as it is against nature and unAfrican.

He also called for prayers for the protection and fear of God for the police as they discharge their statutory duty of securing lives and properties.

“You that are protectors also need divine protection, and even the best police in the world require divine protection,” the preacher said.

He urged them to put their confidence in God who is able to build the wall of defence around them.

The Inspector General of Police, Mr. Solomon Arise, remarked that the security

ing to the improvement of training of members of the force.

Arase, who was represented by Assistant Commissioner of Police, Administration (Lagos), Ngozi Iloh, expressed appreciation for the programme, saying it would boost the morale of the officers.

The Assistant Inspector General of Police-in-Charge of Counter Terrorism, Yahaya Garba Audu, described the programme as very rewarding.

He advised the organisers to give the programme more publicity in the future so that the turn out will be more than what they saw.

“If enough publicity is made for subsequent programmes, I quite believe that a lot of officers from all over the country would attend.”

Audu added that the security agencies in the country were doing their best to nip terrorism in the bud.

“Our challenge is that these terrorists are faceless, striking here and there. Today, they are in Maiduguri, tomorrow they are in Jos. “All we can do is to make arrest because if we embark on shoot-at-sight, innocent persons would be involved and we would be indicted for human right abuse,” Audu stated.

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THE NATION ON SUNDAY, JULY 12, 2015

WORSHIP

COLUMN

Living Faith

By Dr. David Oyedepo

Serving God pays! (2)

L •L-R: Representative of Former Governor of Lagos State, Mr. Babatunde Raji Fashola, Mrs. Oyinkansola Badejo-Okusanya; Chairman, Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Lagos State Chapter, Apostle Alexander Bamgbola; Representative of Lagos State Governor, Mr. Akinwumi Ambode, Permanent Secretary Ministry of Home Affairs, Mrs. Oladimeji Grace Ebunoluwa and Chairman South-West, Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN),Archbishop Magnus Atilade at the Thanksgiving service for Peaceful transition in Lagos State organized by Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Lagos State.

PHOTO: OLUSEGUN RAPHEAL

Makinde tasks Lagos state on development

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HE Prelate Emeritus of the Methodist Church of Nigeria, Dr. Sunday Makinde, has appealed to the Lagos State Governor, Akinwunmi Ambode, to consolidate on the development strides of his predecessor.

Makinde said this in an interview with journalists at the 2015 Peaceful Transition Thanksgiving Service organised by the Lagos State chapter of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) held over the week at the Chapel of Christ the Light, Alausa, Ikeja, Lagos.

The service, themed The Awesome God, brought together thousands of Christian faithful from the six blocks of The Christian Association of Nigeria: Evangelical Church Winning All (ECWA), Women Wing of CAN (WOWICAN), Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN), Oganisation of African International Churches, Christian Council of Nigeria (CCN), among others.

He said that the development in Lagos State in the last 16 years is monumental and should be built upon by the new administration so that the state will continue to be the pacesetter for the

By Adeola Ogunlade

country.

Makinde said: “We need peace and even development in Lagos State. Lagos State is for all and every policy and programmes should capture the need and aspiration of everyone in the state no matter their ethnic, religious or language differences.”

The cleric lamented recent cases of crime, kidnapping and violent activities in the state, which, according to him, should be looked into as a developmental challenge.

He noted that the much anticipated growth and development in Nigeria can only be achieved in an atmosphere free of rancour.

Makinde went further to appeal to the All Progressives Congress members in the national assembly to sheath their swords and ego and give peace a chance in Nigeria.

Earlier in his words, the Lagos State Governor, Akinwunmi Ambode, applauded the thanksgiving service put together by CAN as commendable and noble.

Ambode, who was represented by the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs, Mrs. Dimeji Ebunola Grace, said that thanksgiving is very germane as it is a pointer to the fact that God answer prayers. “Many

thought that there would be war and bloodshed and they left Nigeria, but we waited and trusted God for a hitch-free exercise and God answered our prayers.”

In his words, the Lagos State Chairman of CAN, Apostle Alexander Bamgbola, said that the thanksgiving service was aimed at appreciating God for showing the people of Lagos mercy and granting petitions concerning a peaceful election and transition of power in Lagos State.

“We have received a new dawn of greatness and progress in our state of Lagos. The church is rising again. We give God all the glory,” he said.

Bambglola went ahead to appeal to the church to continue to love one another as the Lord Jesus commanded. “Without the true love of God, we will get nowhere in building the kingdom.

“It is time for true unity in CAN in Lagos State. It is time for us to be one as our Lord Jesus desires. It is unity that God will send down his blessings upon us collectively and individually. It is time to pull together our God-given resources in Lagos and build his kingdom for him,” declared the cleric.

ASTS week,we began this teaching series by identifying Kingdom stewardship is the most profitableventure in the world because it offers incomparable dividends and out-of-this world order of blessings. We also examined physical and spiritualstewardships, and their benefits. In addition, we looked at prayer and fasting as one of the ways through which engage spiritual stewardship. This week, I will conclude the series with another means through which we engage spiritual stewardship.

We engage in spiritual stewardship by reaching out to the lost for their salvation: Soul-winning is a grand commandment that makes a grand commander of everyone that engages in it. By redemption, every believer is ordained a soul-winner.

Jesus said: Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you (John 15:16).

We must understand that God is glorified when we bear much fruits and it is a risk to be fruitless as believers. This is because fruit bearing secures our place in Christ (John 15:2, 8; Luke 13:7-9, 14:23).

Moreover, every child of God is a Kingdom star and it is engaging in Kingdom promotion that creates the platform for the star in us to shine. As it is written: And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars forever and ever (Daniel 12:3; see also Proverbs 11:30).

It is important to also note that though in all labour there is profit but nothing compares with the profits that accrue to us in spiritual stewardship, as it is the most profitable of all spiritual engagements in the Kingdom. As it is written: But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy

door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly (Matthew 6:6, 18; see also Luke 18:28-30).

It is also written:But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you (Matthew 6:33).

In September 1976, God showed me the above scripture.

I call it ‘the jackpot of life’. The Spirit of the Lord said to me, “Seek first My Kingdom and all its demands and all these things that others are dying to get will be added to you.”What a wonder to seek only one thing (God’s Kingdom) and gain qualified access to all other things.

For instance, we understand from scriptures that when Israel made a covenant to serve the Lord God of their fathers with all their heart and soul, He gave them all-round rest and the war ceased. A covenant to serve God and the pursuit of same is the gateway to a world of all-round rest and fulfilment. Therefore, seeking God and the interests of His Kingdom must be our priority for living (2 Chronicles 15:12-15, 19).

Unfortunately, most believers are merely using God for their desires and not serving His interests in any form. We must understand that every commandment of scripture is absolutely to our benefit. Thus, God doesn’t need us for anything but we need Him for everything.

Our serving God adds nothing to Him but adds everything to us. He is not looking for who to use but who to bless. Furthermore, God is not looking for who to burden but who to engrace with supernatural breakthroughs. It is simply a privilege for us to serve Him. Thus, the returns will show whether we are serving God or simply in pursuit of our personal interests (Malachi 3:18; Revelation 22:12).

It is important to note that God is a reliable rewarder. This is why every genuine soulhunter is enlisted among the army of pace-setters in the body of Christ, obtains express answers to prayers and gets on God’s payroll, among others.

Remember the Bible says: And he that reapethreceiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eter-

nal: that both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together(John 4:36; see also Galatians 6:7-9).

‘Sowing to the Spirit’ simply means engaging in spiritual stewardship, which entitles us to reap eternal life, everlasting life and the Heaven on Earth kind of life in return.

We must recognize that prophetically, we are in our harvest time as a church and the months of June are July are ordained as our harvest season, where the mystery of the Midst of the year will be fulfilled in our lives. It is not just a season for harvest of souls but also harvest of the testimonies of every prophetic word for the year. It is also a season ordained for spiritual awakening/revival that will usher us into next levels of grace and glory. Furthermore, all long standing challenges will be turned to testimonies and we will be launched into our high places in life (Habakkuk 3:219; Haggai 2:1-9).

However, the key to experiencing the wonders of the Midst of the Year is to work for the Lord. Nothing advances us than our commitment to the advancement of the Kingdom.

Thus, to secure a change of level this season, we must commit to the advancement of God’s Kingdom and engage in His business. When we do this, He becomes committed to our advancement and intervenes in our affairs. As you genuinely commit to the advancement of the Kingdom in this Midst of the Year season, you will experience strange liftings and breakthroughs in Jesus’ name!

Are you born again? This means, have you accepted Jesus Christ as your Saviour and Lord? If you haven’t, you can do so as you say this prayer: “Lord Jesus, I come to You today.

I am a sinner. Forgive me of my sins. Cleanse me with Your precious Blood. Deliver me from sin and satan to serve the Living God. Today, I accept You as my Lord and Saviour. Thank You Jesus for saving me! Now I know I am born again!”

For further reading, please get my books: Wisdom that Works, Walking in Wisdom, All you need to have all your needs met, Winning Wisdom and Excellency of Wisdom.

I invite you to come and fellowship with us at the Faith Tabernacle, Canaan Land, Ota, the covenant home of Winners. We have four services on Sundays, holding at 6:00 a.m., 7:50 a.m., 9:40 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. respectively.

I know this teaching has blessed you. Write and share your testimony with me through: Faith Tabernacle, Canaan Land, Ota, P.M.B. 21688, Ikeja, Lagos, Nigeria; or call 7747546-8; or E-mail: feedback@lfcww.org

RCCG holds crusade for change in Nigeria

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HERE is no doubt that Nigeria is confronted with so many disturbing issues, especially as it affects politics in the country.

The change that people clamoured for tends to be turning the other way round with the crisis going on in the National Assembly.

This, among many others, calls for a sober reflection and serious prayers for

By Adeola Ogunlade

divine intervention in the current situation.

The Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) Lagos Province 40, Ajuwon zone, is organising a one-night special vigil with a theme: “It’s Time for my Manifestation” on July 17, 2015.

Addressing a group of journalists at the church, Pastor in Charge of RCCG, Testimony Area, Ajuwon zone, Pastor Goke Aniyeloye, said the

church organised a special prayer in February concerning the necessary change that is required for the nation to move forward, adding that the much-needed change has come but the ongoing political crisis is hindering it from manifesting, hence the call for another special prayer.

According to him, the night is going to be a solution night to many problems and challenges confronting the country as well as indi-

vidual lives, stressing that every Nigerian prayed for a change but the change they are witnessing currently is not the desired change they prayed for.

“We all cannot sit down and fold our arms and allow a faction of the society in the name of lawmakers to distort our muchawaited change. Although we cried to God for a divine change and God granted our prayer request,

what is happening now is not allowing the manifestation of that change,” he said.

He said only God can touch the heart of the law makers to become submissive and adhere to rules and laws governing the national assembly. He stressed that if anyone, however, refuses to bow to the rules, God is in the best position to humble such.

“I implore our leaders to be law abiding because the change we are waiting for is

already here. The kind of change we need in this nation is integrity, uprightness and corrupt-free nation. People are crying there is no money in Nigeria but a group of people is sitting upon the money meant for the whole country, that is why I suggest that those who have stolen our money should be probed and be brought to book. They must not go away with such huge amount of money,” he said.

THE NATION ON SUNDAY,

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JULY 12, 2015

CHANGE OF NAME IBIDAPO Formerly addressed as Miss Ibidapo, Funmilayo Rachael, now wish to be addressed as Mrs. Daramola Funmilayo Rachael.

Former documents remain valid.

General public take note.

UDO Formerly addressed as Udo Friday Oton, now wish to be addressed as Ekwere Friday Oton. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

BAMIGBADE Formerly addressed as Miss Oluwatoni Bamigbade, now wish to be addressed as Mrs. Oluwatoni Bethel Olonisakin. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

OLADAPO Formerly addressed as Oladapo, Oluwaseun Gloria, now wish to be addressed as Mrs. Philemon Oluwaseun Gloria. Former documents remain valid. WAEC, NECO, N.M.C.N and general public take note.

AINA Formerly addressed as Aina, Mosunmola Omolayo, now wish to be addressed as Folarin Raimi Mosunmola Omolayo. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

DAVID Formerly addressed as Miss Juliana Damilola David, now wish to be addressed as Mrs. Juliana Damilola Boluwaji. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

NSE-ABASI Formerly addressed as Miss NseAbasi, Ndiokho, now wish to be addressed as Mrs. Nseabasi, PhilEbosie. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

EGBETAYO Formerly addressed as Egbetayo, Oyindamola Alice, now wish to be addressed as Bolasodun, Oyindamola Ariyike. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

FASHORO Formerly addressed as Miss Abimbola Abosede Fashoro, now wish to be addressed as Mrs. Abimbola Abosede Dada. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

TOKOSI Formerly addressed as Miss Tokosi, Awawu Motubrayo, now wish to be addressed as Mrs. Fawo Awawu Motunrayo. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

AJAYI Formerly addressed as Ajayi, Oluwamodupe Omolara, now wish to be addressed as Arokodare Oluwamodupe Omolara. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

OTOKITI Formerly addressed as Mrs. Otokiti, Animashaun Bolanle Rashidat, now wish to be addressed as Miss Animashaun Bolanle Rashidat. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

MADUBUIKE Formerly addressed as Miss Madubuike, Esther Chidinma, now wish to be addressed as Mrs. Uhie, Esther Chidinma. Former documents remain valid. Fed. Polytechnic, Nekede, Owerri, NYSC and general public take note.

ADEDEJI Formerly addressed as Miss Adedeji, Omowumi Comfort , now wish to be addressed as Mrs. Makun, Omowumi Comfort. Former documents remain valid. General Hospital, Ipe-Akoko, Akoko South East Ondo State and general public take note.

ISMAILA Formerly addressed as Ismaila Abiodun Idiagbon, now wish to be addressed as Mogbanjubola Adelodun. Former documents remain valid. My Bankers, NIBBS and general public take note.

AROJOJOYE Formerly addressed as Miss Arojojoye, Rashidat Abimbola, now wish to be addressed as Mrs. Aroyewun, Rashidat Abimbola.

Former documents remain valid.

General public take note.

OBASI Formerly addressed as Obasi Chidubem Patience, now wish to be addressed as Pepple Obasi Patience. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

AINA Formerly addressed as Miss Aina, Gbenuola Opeyemi, now wish to be addressed as Mrs. Ayedun, Gbenuola Opeyemi. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

AKINOLA Formerly addressed as Miss Akinola, Bosede Comfort, now wish to be addressed as Mrs. Anifowose, Bosede Comfort. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

CHANGE OF OF NAME NAME CHANGE

CHANGE OF NAME

CHANGE OF NAME

CHANGE OF NAME

CHANGE OF NAME

LASOJU Formerly addressed as Lasoju Kuburat Mopelola, now wish to be addressed as Lasoju Lola Apinke.

Former documents remain valid.

General public take note.

ONWUANICHA Formerly addressed as Miss Onwuanicha Helen, now wish to be addressed as Mrs. Olalekan sessi Helen. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

EJIOFOR Formerly addressed as Miss Ejiofor Lynda C., now wish to be addressed as Mrs. Chukwuocha Lynda C. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

OGUNREMI Formerly addressed as Miss Ogunremi, Tolulope Margaret, now wish to be addressed as Mrs. Ilesanmi, Tolulope Margaret.

Former documents remain valid.

FEDPOLY, Ado-Ekiti and general public take note.

TIJANI Formerly addressed as Miss Tijani, Habeebat Adekilekun, now wish to be addressed as Mrs. Oyewusi, Habeebat Adekilekun. Former documents remain valid.

FEDPOLY, Ado-Ekiti and general public take note.

ADISA Formerly addressed as Miss Adisa, Oluwaseyi Motunrayo, now wish to be addressed as Mrs. Adisa, Oluwaseyi Motunrayo. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

CONFIRMATION OF NAME I, EWOH-ROBINSON PRECIOUS BUDUZHI and EWOH PRECIOUS BUDUZHI refer to one and the same person. All former documents remain valid. General public please take note.

OLUFADE Formerly addressed as Miss Rofee’ah Olayinka Olufade, now wish to be addressed as Mrs. Rofee’ah Olufade-Adigun. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

ABDULAZEEZ Formerly addressed as Miss Abdulazeez Rabiat Okikiola, now wish to be addressed as Mrs. Alamutu Rabiat Okikiola. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

OLADIPUPO Formerly addressed as Miss Olabanke Olasubomi Oladipupo, now wish to be addressed as Mrs. Olabanke Olasubomi Bodunrin.

Former documents remain valid.

General public take note.

LAWAL Formerly addressed as Miss Lawal Abiodun Risikat, now wish to be addressed as Mrs. Sulaimon Risikat. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

OGUNJUMO Formerly addressed as Miss Ogunjumo, Folasade, now wish to be addressed as Mrs. Folasade Olushina. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

JEREMIAH Formerly addressed as Friday Ndaanee Jeremiah, now wish to be addressed as Friday Jeremiah Peba. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

AYIBOWU Formerly addressed as Miss Ayibowu, Ireti Ngozi, now wish to be addressed as Mrs. Adeyanju, Ireti Ngozi. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

CONFIRMATION OF NAME I Agbeleye Oluwaseun and Fele Johnson Oluwaseun refers to one and the same person. Former documents bearing the above names remain valid. General public take note.

AJIBOLA Formerly addressed as Ajibola, Adenike Aminat, now wish to be addressed as Oshinowo Adenike Aminat. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

OLANIRAN Formerly addressed as Olaniran Iyabo Sakirat, now wish to be addressed as Mrs. Afolabi, Iyabo Yemisi. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

YUSUF Formerly addressed as Miss Yusuf, Azizat Abimbola, now wish to be addressed as Mrs. Yususf-Alabi, Azizat Abimbola.

Former documents remain valid. MDCN, NYSCGeneral public take note.

ALPHEAUS Formerly addressed as Miss Alpheaus Chinaza Glory, now wish to be addressed as Mrs. Duru, Chinaza Glory. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

AMOSU Formerly addressed as Mr. Amosu, Benjamin, now wish to be addressed as Mr. Kukoyi Bolaji Benjamin. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

BAMIDELE Formerly addressed as Miss Temitope Mary Bamidele, now wish to be addressed as Mrs. Mary Temitope Akintunde. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

AKINSHE Formerly addressed as Miss Olayinka Ibiwunmi Akinshe, now wish to be addressed as Mrs. Olayinka Ibiwunmi AkinsheBakare. Former documents remain valid. AISE, Gtbank, Access Bank and general public take note.

EMA Formerly addressed as Ema Okon Essien, now wish to be addressed as Imaobong Okon Essien. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

SMART Formerly addressed as Miss Lois Nneoma Smart, now wish to be addressed as Mrs. Lois Nneoma Ibeka. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

NDUBUISI Formerly addressed as Anaele Austin Ndubuisi, now wish to be addressed as Anaele Charles Ndubuihe. Former documents remain valid.General public take note.

ADENIJI Formerly addressed as Adeniji, Adeoluwatojunilo Adeite, now wish to be addressed as Nwabufo Adeoluwatojunilo Adeniji. Former documents remain valid. UK government and general public take note.

OLUKOYA Formerly addressed as Miss Olukoya, Olurike Keji, now wish to be addressed as Mrs. Adetilewa, Olurike Keji. Former documents remain valid. UK government and general public take note.

OSAEGBU Formerly addressed as Miss Isioma Patricia Osaegbu, now wish to be addressed as Mrs. Isioma Patricia Paul. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

OGUNMOLA Formerly addressed as Miss Ogunmola, Hannah Taiwo, now wish to be addressed as Mrs. Falona Hannah Taiwo. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

ANYANWU Formerly addressed as Tochi Gloria Anyanwu, now wish to be addressed as Sandra Nwaobilor Azubuike. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

ADENIRAN Formerly addressed as Miss Iyabo Omolade Adeniran, now wish to be addressed as Mrs. Bola Modupeola Adeniran. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

OKWUDINKA Formerly addressed as Miss Okwudinka Patricia Onyinye, now wish to be addressed as Mrs. Owunwa Patricia Onyinye. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

CONFIRMATION OF NAME I, Otu Samuel Udog is the same person as Paul Otu Samuel. Former documents bearing the above names remain valid. General public take note.

OPATA Formerly addressed as MISS OPATA UCHENNA EUCHARIA now wish to be addressed as MRS. EZEMA UCHENNA EUCHARIA. All former documents remain valid.

General public should please take note.

UBA Formerly known and addressed as MRS. UBA NNENNA LOVETH now wish to be known and addressed as MRS. OZOUDE NNENNA LOVETH. All former documents remain valid. General public should please take note.

ADEMISOYE Formerly known and addressed as Miss Ademisoye Clara Adebanke, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Alake Clara Adebanke. All former documents remain valid. General public should please take note.

ONOJA Formerly addressed as Catherine Ihotu Onoja, now wish to be addressed as Catherine Ihotu Onoja Ochada. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

NNANI Formerly addressed as Miss Nnani, May Sylvia, now wish to be addressed as Mrs. Ochia May Sylvia. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

OBASUYI Formerly addressed as Miss Sarah Noyin Obasuyi, now wish to be addressed as Mrs. Sarah Noyin Akintola. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

CONFIRMATION OF NAME I Oluchi Chikwendu and Oluchi Peter and Cherukei Oluchi Chike refers to same and one person.Now to be known as Mrs. Oluchi Cherukei Chike. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

BAKARE Formerly addressed as Miss Halimat Omobola Bakare, now wish to be addressed as Mrs. Halimat Omobola Raheem. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

POPOOLA Formerly addressed as Miss Oluwafolakemi Grace Popoola, now wish to be addressed as Mrs. Oluwafolakemi Grace Ala. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

CONFIRMATION OF NAME I Nelson Alisi Ahamefuna and Sampson Alisi Amaechi refers to same and one person. Former documents bearing the above names remain valid. General public take note.

CONFIRMATION OF NAME I, UMUNNA IFEANYI SOLOMON and TOSANWUMI UMUNNA RICHARD refers to one and the same person. Former documents bearing the above names remain valid. General public please take note.

OKE Formerly addressed as MISS AYAYO OKE now wish to be addressed as MRS. ADEBAMBO OKE. Former documents remain valid. General public should please take note.

ORUGBANI Formerly addressed as MISS BOMA EVANGEL ORUGBANI, now wish to be addressed as MRS. BOMA CHARLES DAWARI. Former documents remain valid.

General public should please take note.

FATELE Formerly addressed as Miss Fatele, Oluwatosin Cecilia, now wish to be addressed as Mrs. Ajewumi, Baliks Oluwatosin.

Former documents remain valid.

General public take note.

AKINWANDE Formerly addressed as Miss Akinwande, Grace Fisayo now wish to be addressed as Mrs. Alabi, Grace Fisayo. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

IDRIS Formerly addressed as Mr. Abdulazeez Abiodun ldris now wish to be addressed as Mr. Lasisi Abiodun ldris. F ormer documents remain valid. GTB and general public take note.

AJAO Formerly addressed as Miss Ajao, Adewumi Oluwatoyin now wish to be addressed as Mrs. OwuAdewumi Oluwatoyin.

Former documents remain valid.

General public take note.

ODEDELE Formerly addressed as Miss Odedele, Bukola Yemisi, now wish to be addressed as Mrs. Olajuyinnu, Bukola Yemisi. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

ABDULKAREEM Formerly addressed as MISS ABDULKAREEM MUFIDAT OLAYINKA now wish to be addressed as MRS. ABDULKAREEM-ABDULFATAI MUFIDAT OLAYINKA. Former documents remains valid. LAUTECH OGBOMOSO, NYSC and general public take note.

OYEWUMI addressed as Miss OYEWUMI CHARLOTTE OYEBOLA now wish to be addressed as Mrs. ADEYEMI CHARLOTTE OYEBOLA. Former documents remains Formerly

valid. INCE and general public take note.

ABDULRAHEEM Formerly addressed as MISS ABDUL RAHEEM YIDIAT TEMILADE now wish to be addressed as MRS.ISMAILA YIDIAT TEMILADE. Former documents remains valid. General public take note.

AWESU Formerly addressed as Miss AWESU KAFAYAT AJOKE now wish to be addressed as Mrs. KAFAYAT AJOKE TAIWO-AWESU. Former documents remains valid. INEC and general public take note.

IRIKEFE Formerly addressed as Miss Oghenekaro Stephanie Irikefe, now wish to be addressed as Mrs. Oghenekaro Stephanie IrikefeUgbebor. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

ODIMKPA Formerly addressed as MISS ODIMKPA ANGELINA now wish to be addressed as MRS AYOGU ANGELINA. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

ADEJUMO Formerly addressed as Miss Oluwatomi Adejumo, now wish to be addressed as Mrs. Oluwatomi Femi-Oyinsan. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

AWODIYA Formerly addressed as Awodiya Oluyomi Ayokanmi, now wish to be addressed as Iyiola Oluyomi Ayokanmi. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

SOMORIN Formerly addressed as Somorin Olugbenga Tunde, now wish to be addressed as Somorin Ellis Oluwagbemiga.

Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

OYETUNJI Formerly addressed as OYETUNJI, BOLA JANET, now wish to be known and addressed as JANET OBERIKO. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

OBIORA Formerly addressed as OBIORA ONYEKA MARY, now wish to be known and addressed as ESUMEI ONYEKA MARY. All former documents remain valid. The general public should please take note.

ALADE Formerly addressed as ALADE OLAYINKA SAKIRAT, now wish to be addressed as MRS. JUNAID OLAYINKA SAKIRAT. Former documents remain valid. Lagos State Ministry of Education and the general public should please take note.

ESENE Formerly addressed as MISS PATIENCE ESENE, now wish to be known and addressed as MRS. PATIENCE OSEAHUMEN UNUIGBE. All former documents remain valid. THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY and the general public should please take note.

APELOGUN Formerly addressed as Miss Apelogun Bolaji Mariam and Miss Abolaji Mariam Anike now wish to be known as Miss Apelogun Abolaji Mariam. All documents bearing my former names remain valid. The General public should please take note.

APELOGUN Formerly addressed as Miss Apelogun Bolaji Mistura and Miss Abolaji Mistura Omolara now wish to be known as Miss Apelogun Abolaji Mistura. All documents bearing my former names remain valid. The General public should please take note.

EJIMAGWA Formerly addressed as Miss Ejimagwa Chiamaka Ugonnaya, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Okengwu Chiamaka Ugonnaya.

Former documents remain valid. General public should please take note.

CORRECTION OF NAME My name was wrongly written by WACE may/June 2013 as OGUNTIMEHIN FADEKEMI O and my rightful name is OGUNTIMEHIN FADEKEMI OMOLARA all the document that bear the above names and remain valid. Osun State POLY, Iree, General public take note.

OSUJI Formerly addressed as Mr. Osuji Francis, now wish to be known and addressed as Mr. Ihechi Francis. Former documents remain valid. General public should please take note.

CHINONSO Formerly addressed as Miss Aka, Truth Chinonso, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Ezeudoye Truth Chinonso. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

EZEUDOYE Formerly known and addressed as Miss Ezeudoye Chidinma, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Obah-Eni Chidinma Chinaecherem. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

EHIZIBUE Formerly Known as Mrs. ADEDAMOLA EHIZIBUE, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. ADEDAMOLA MICHEAL. All former documents still remain valid. General Public should please take note.

AKINTOROYE Formerly known as MISS Akintoroye Abimbola Bunmi, now wish to be addressed as MRS. Odejimi Abimbola Bunmi. Former documents still remain valid.General public take note.

DUOSARO Formerly Miss HALIMAH OLABISI DUROSARO, now wish to be known as Mrs. HALIMAH OLABISI OSENI. All former documents remain valid, the general public should please take note.

ONYIA Formerly addressed as Miss Ngozi Onyia, now wish to be addressed as Mrs. Ngozi Abiri. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

Formerly Miss OMODARA TOLULOPE MARY now wish to be known as Mrs . OBADEMI, TOLULOPE MARY. Former documents remain valid, the general public take note.

JOHN Formerly addressed as Miss John, Bridget Otini, now wish to be addressed as Mrs. Peter, Bridget Otini. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

Formerly MISS ADEWALE TITILOPE OLUWASEUN E. now wish to be known as MRS. OYERINDE TITILOPE OLUWASEUN E. Former documents remain valid, the general public take note.

OMODARA

ADEWALE

BANKOLE Formerly addressed as Bankole Matthew Sunday, now wish to be addressed as Babatunde Sunday Mutiu. Former documents remain valid. ICAN and general public take note.

AKANNI Formerly addressed as Miss Adedamola Akanni, now wish to be addressed as Mrs. Adedamola Micheal. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

CONFIRMATION OF NAME This is to confirm that Mrs. Josephine Ibhas and/or Miss Josephine Imansemowu is the same person as Mrs. Josephine Ibhaguezejele. Former documents bearing the above names remain valid. General public take note.

OLADELE Formerly addressed as Oladele Olawunmi Funmi, now wish to be addressed as Salako Olawunmi Funke. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

KOLAPO Formerly addressed as Kolapo Muibat Oluwatosin, now wish to be addressed as Salami Muibat Oluwatosin. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

BALOGUN Formerly addressed as Mrs. Balogun, Rashidat Abiodun, now wish to be addressed as Mrs. Sanusi, Rashidat Abiodun Folashade. Former documents remain valid. General public take note.

ELUSAKIN Formerly known as MISS ELUFISOYE ITUNUOLUWA TOMIWA, now wish to be addressed as MISS ELUSAKIN ITUNUOLUWA TOMIWA. All documents remain valid. ICAN, OAU, UNILAG, WAEC, and the general public take note.

KORNA Formerly known as Miss Shagbakwase Korna, now wish to be addressed as Mrs . Shagbakwase Fanen Terdoo. Former documents remained valid . General public to please take note AMUSA Formerly known as Amusa Sidikat Mojisola, now wish to be addressed as Osadola Mojisola Sidikat.

Former documents remained valid.

General public to please take note

ADVERT: Simply produce your marriage certificate or sworn affidavit for a change of name publication, with just N4,500. The payment can be made through FIRST BANK of Nigeria Plc. Account number - 2017220392 Account Name VINTAGE PRESS LIMITED Scan the details of your advert and teller to gbengaodejide @yahoo.com or thenation_advert @yahoo.com.

For enquiry please contact: Gbenga on 08052720421, 08161675390, Emailgbengaodejide@ yahoo.com or our offices nationwide.

Note this! Change of name is now published every Sundays, all materials should reach us two days before publication.

THE NATION ON SUNDAY JULY 12, 2015

66

Still on can evil triumph over good?

EBERE WABARA

WORDSWORTH T 08055001948

ewabara@yahoo.com

Misuse of ‘include’, ‘some’

“T

RUCK crushes okada rider to death” (The PUNCH metro headline, July 8) I have always wondered how when a truck or any other articulated vehicle crushes a man he still survives. For me, except there are some extraordinary or supernatural powers shielding the fellow the chances of survival are remote, if nonexistent. This is just my own take—what do you think? Please note that most dictionaries and reference books approve the application as excerpted, but I strongly disagree!

We continue with the front and inside pages of The Guardian of July 7, which did not nurture truth: “A debt relief (debt-relief) programme proposed by the Debt Management Office (DMO) will also help states….”

“UI is Nigeria’s best varsity, eight (eighth) in Africa” “Editors guild (Editors’ Guild) donates N1m to NIJ” The next grammatical crises are from The Guardian Editorial and Opinion Page of the edition under focus: “…an order from the President that all revenue generating (revenue-generating) agencies must pay into the Consolidated Federation Account….”

“These include Baga, Gwoza, Bama, Monguno, Dikwa, Michika, Mubi and Baga amongst (sic) others.” Nigerian Army at 52: the fact of inclusion implies that there are other cities. Most people misuse words like ‘include’ and ‘some’. In other words, the extract should have ended at ‘Baga’.

“Commission supports move to draw from ECA to bailout (bail out) states” “With UnionCare, our automated customer center, our customers enjoy round the clock (round-the-clock) access to a full range of banking support (banking-support) services, with multilanguage assistance.”

(Full-page advertisement

by UNION BANK) “Lagos Court of Arbitration pledges committment (sic) to its mandate” Commitment is basic in the circumstance and so does not require any pledge!

Contrary to Mr. Bayo Oguntunase’s assertions last week, “practice

makes perfect” is very correct! In addition, both “all hands on deck” and “all hands to the pumps” (British English) are right. Similarly, “the likes of somebody/something” (a) which means ‘used to talk about someone you do not like or do not approve of: I do not want you spending time with the likes of him. (b) Used to talk about people of a particular type: Information is collected through the likes of FBI, CIA and Scotland Yard. I think the mix-up originated from Mr. Oloko (below) and was inadvertently publicised (Mind Your Grammar, DAILY SUN, every Thursday) by Mr. Oguntuanse. I take secondary responsibility/ blame for my unusual lack of interrogation of this particular contribution.

Mr. Charles Iyoha’s advice on this is appreciated and noted.

The like of somebody/ something (also somebody’s/something’s like) (formal) something similar to someone or a particular person or thing, or of equal importance or value: This will be a show the like of which has never been seen before. The man was a genius. We shall not see his like again. (Credit: Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English New Edition for Advanced Learners, among other references) Wrong: “Let me repeat again….” Right: Let me repeat….

“Commission supports move to draw from ECA to bailout (bail out) states” FEEDBACK A regular contributor to Wordsworth asserted on May 3, Page 66, that “practice makes perfect” could not be changed to “practice makes perfection”. In a surprising twist, the contributor, however, stated on July 5, Page 66 that “practice makes perfect” was wrong and “practice makes perfection” right from his “language laboratory”. Why is this confusion? To the best of my knowledge, the dictionaries approve only of “practice makes perfect” as an idiom, an unchangeable, fixed English expression.

KOLA DANISA/ 07068074257 PLEASE take note that certain words, phrases and terms that are of American English origin or Stateside English are preferred in British English (BE). They include “waste-basket” (Americanism) is preferred to

“waste-paper basket” (Briticism/Anglicism); “industrial action” (Americanism) is preferred to “strike action”, e.g. The train drivers have voted to take strike action.-(Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (NEW 8TH EDITION) page 1479; “Study” (American English) is preferred to “study room” (British English)— OALD page 1484; “driver’s licence” (Americanism) is preferred to “driving licence” (Briticism).

Another note: Driver’s licence/driver’s licences, British English; spelt “driver’s “license” in American English (see BBC English Dictionary, page 346).

“Insurance coverage” (American English) is preferred to “insurance cover” (British English).

Please see the Economist’s STYLE GUIDE: the bestselling Guide in English Usage, Page77; insurance coverage (not “insurance cover”)!

Wrong: Practice makes perfect. Right: practice makes perfection—from a handout written by M.J. Oloko, ENGLISH MASTER, IKOSI High School, Ketu, (Nos 81a & 81b).

Note on usage: As Fela Anikulapo Kuti, the Afrobeat legend would say, “Teacher, don’t teach me nonsense”! Don’t teach our children rubbish!

“Practice makes perfect”, means “only by doing a thing again and again can you attain skill or efficiency”, is an English proverb. Nobody has any licence—poetic, pedagogical or literary—to change or alter a formal proverb or idiom, Thanks. BAYO O G U N T U N A S E (08056180046) ARE the priests of usages becoming errant?

How do we rationalize the curious shift from the form that has helped to sustain gender equity? One is talking about sentences starting with the indefinite pronoun “one” where the word and its possessive form “one’s” is retained all through in such sentences. One is here responding inter alia to Papa Oguntunase’s in The Sun. On this one, the priests of usage have goofed abysmally. Replacing the possessive form with the masculine, “his”, will again draw the ire of feminists. Reverting to the staus quo ante is urgently a d v o c a t e d .

(FOLORUNSO B. F., Ilesa/08169500840

HE tragedy of our socio-political reality is that clowns and pretenders now see themselves as the new agents of history. This sad commentary is further exacerbated by our convoluted socio economic quagmire which affords these charlatans and visionless lackeys the opportunity to pontificate and perhaps enjoy a joke or two at our expense. Orji Uzor Kalu’s viewpoint: Can Evil Triumph over Good?, published in The Sun of July 5, 2015 is a ghastly attempt to join the national conversation on the festering crisis in states and the inability of some Governors to discharge their basic and mandatory statutory function of paying the salaries of workers under their employment.

After his rigmarole and pseudo analysis of the intractable crisis of governance, it was not by the sleight of hand that the former governor descended on the administration of Senator Theodore Orji, the immediate past governor of Abia State who he accused of maladministration and other vices. For the avoidance of doubt, Kalu’s vitriolic and withering attacks on Senator Theodore Orji is fuelled by deep seated animosity and hatred of the former governor for dismantling the former’s political dynasty that had hitherto held Abia to ransom. By confronting, defeating and dismantling the Orji Uzor Kalu political dynasty, Governor Orji brought to an end the serial raping and systematic pillage of the resources of the state by rapacious kleptomaniacs who had boasted in their fleeting moments of madness that they would enslave the state in perpetuity.

In truth, no one can rationalize and justify the inability of some states to pay the salaries of its workers. As a matter of fact, this vicarious responsibility is so basic that the failing of many of these state governments continue to provoke righteous outrage from citizens and rightly so. Many of these governors overwhelmed by the lure of power saw themselves as potentates and proceeded to govern the state as their fiefdoms. Profligacy rather than prudence and fiscal discipline became the grand norm of governance spewing in its wake, insipient decay. In the case of Abia State, former Governor Theodore Orji took over power from Orji Uzor Kalu and in the process inherited a staggering debt in excess of a whopping N55 billion naira deficit and bank loans which could not be accounted for. As a result of this monumental debt overhang, N1.5 billion was deducted at source from the federation account to service the 22 banks/ creditors on monthly basis.

The ruination of the finances of Abia State and the high scale mismanagement of its resources under the watch of Orji Uzor Kalu more than any other factor contributed to the parlous state of affairs in the state.

In addition, the N1.8 billion given by the pension office to the Orji Uzor Kalu’s government to pay Abians who worked in the federal institutions disappeared into the thin air without a trace .As had been confirmed by discerning observers of Abia State politics, while Orji Uzor Kalu held sway, cronyism was elevated

•Orji

By Koos James

to a statecraft to the extent that fiscal rascality became one of the defining legacies of his visionless years as governor.

In fairness to him, he had to his credit, the invention of mamacracy, a skewered political ideology dedicated to the deification of his mother. Under his watch, it was an open secret that no individual will occupy any position of authority in the state without going to Aba to pay homage to his mother. Those who ignored this conventional wisdom did so at their own peril. It was under this strange contraption that the state was misruled for eight years.

Agreed, our contemporary society is beset with enormous challenges with ramifications on the quality of lives of citizens. Our convoluted political process and the quality of governance have cast a pall on our political leadership, exposing their lack of vision and the patriotic zeal needed to unlock the great Nigeria possibility.

Clearly, the new Buhari administration has its work cut of for it by the exigencies of our time and the myriad of problems we are saddled with as a nation. The next four years will prove if the hope of a new Nigeria they had professed on the campaign trial is for real or a fluke.

Given Orji Uzor Kalu;s antecedents in and out of power, he is the least qualified to rail against a decadent political order. If evil is on the ascendency in our clime as he has so eloquently canvassed, then we are safe to posit that he is one of the most prominent actors in this axis of evil. For one of the leading actors of this decadent order to now deride and lampoon the political class over the single minded pursuit of their “Clannish and parochial interests” is a ghastly attempt of a discredited politician to rewrite history. To state that this image make over and macabre dance of infamy have failed is as clear as day light.

If the immediate past administration in Abia State failed as Orji Kalu would want us to believe, then he contributed is no small measure to the ruination of the state. The precarious financial position of the state is traceable to his action and inactions while in office. The crushing huge debt burden on the state on account of the over N55 billion naira debt he incurred in office shrunk the state allocation from the federation account with negative impact on governance. But in spite of this, Governor Theodore Orji embarked upon and completed about 34 legacy projects. These include ultra modern e-library complex, Umuahia , 28 room constituency office at Abia State House of Assembly, Skill

Acquisition centre, Umuahia, New Government House Complex, Abia State Environmental Protection Agency office complex, Umuahia, New Workers’ Secretariat, Joint Allocation Committee Complex and Ministry of Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs complex, Umuahia, New High Court Complex, Umuahia, Abia Hotels (under construction), Accident and Emergency Ward, Abia State Specialist Hospital and Diagnostic Centre, Ohobo Housing Estate , 30 classroom Block at Government College, Umuahia, Ndume Otuka Community Primary School, Federal Government Secretariat ( reconstructed by Abia State Government), Ministry of Justice, New Government Guest House, Umuahia, New Senior Police Officers Quarters, New Broadcasting Corporation of Abia (BCA) office complex, Renovated Abia State House of Assembly, Amaokkwe Housing Estate, Chest Clinic , Amachara General Hospital, Ochendo Liberation Housing Estate, Old Umuahia, Free School buses, Ovim Technical School, Isuikwuato, numerous road construction, etc.

As against the many visible achievements of Senator Theodore Orji who he loves to vilify, there are hardly any projects for which posterity will stand Orji Uzor Kalu in good stead to justify the eight long years he governed the state. His administration can at best be characterized as a parchment of corruption and scroll of iniquities. Little wonder that he has swirling cases of corrupt enrichment for which the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has put him under the sword.

While Kalu is desperately trying to instigate the anti-corruption agencies against patriotic leaders of the state, we advise him to first of all remove the log of wood that has impaired his vision before drawing attention to the speck in another’s eyes.

Given the serial rape of Abia State during his government, there is a convergence of opinion that he will go down in the history of the state in form of a footnote and if he has chapter, it will chronicle and document his maladministration of the state.

There is a consensus of opinion on this score amongst all the stakeholders in the state including professionals, academics, business men, artisans, the infirm etc.

It is not surprising that after his disastrous outing as governor, he has offered himself for service on two occasions and was roundly rejected by the people. In 2011, Senator Uche Chukwumerije of blessed memory inflicted a stinging electoral defeat on him. In 2015, the people of Abia North Senatorial Distric rejected him once again at the polls when he came a distant third. Twice he has hit a brick wall following his massive rejection by the people leaving his senatorial ambition in tatters. As repositories of power, the people are still waiting for him with their votes in the future. As the axiomatic phrase poignantly captures it: you can fool the people sometimes but you cannot fool them all the time.

•James wrote in through koosdonkelly@yahoo.com

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THE NATION ON SUNDAY JULY 12, 2015

Car bomb hits Italian Consulate

O

NE person has died after a car bomb exploded outside the Italian Consulate in Cairo, destroying several floors of the historic building.

The blast, which killed an Egyptian civilian, is the latest casualty in an ongoing Islamic militant campaign targeting the country’s security forces.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the blast, though Egypt faces threats from insurgent factions including an Islamic State (IS) affiliate in its restive Sinai Peninsula which the military said killed at least 17 soldiers in a recent assault there.

The Italian Consulate bomb detonated in a side street in Cairo near the building’s back entrance and a busy highway overpass.

Italian authorities said the consulate was closed at the time and none of its workers were wounded.

The blast killed a passerby and wounded eight, only one of whom is still in the hospital, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

Italian premier Matteo Renzi spoke with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi after the attack, saying in a statement: “We will not leave Egypt alone: Italy and Egypt are and will always be together in the fight against terrorism.”

At least 2 dead in Ukraine sports club attack

A

T least two people were killed yesterday in a gun and grenade attack in a western Ukraine city involving the country’s notorious nationalist militia Right Sector.

The violence in the city of Mukhachevo, near the Polish and Hungarian borders, broke out at a sports facility reportedly controlled by a national parliament member from a faction opposed to Right Sector.

Details remained unclear, but Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said some armed men have been surrounded and are being offered the chance to surrender.

A Right Sector statement reported by Ukrainian news media said two of the militia’s members had been killed.

Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to the interior ministry, said three were killed and that three policemen and four civilians were wounded. He also said the attackers destroyed two police cars with grenade launchers.

The Right Sector statement said its members were attacked by “bandits” connected to Mikhail Lano, who controlled the sports facility, which local media said includes a gym and swimming pool.

Srebrenica: stone-throwing crowd chases Serb PM

A

CROWD throwing bottles and stones chased Serbia’s prime minister from a ceremony in Bosnia yesterday marking the 20th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre, underscoring the depth of anger over Belgrade’s continued denial of the crime as genocide.

Bodyguards whisked Aleksandar Vucic through angry mourners shouting and booing while a crowd surged up the hill behind the delega-

tion as they ran for their cars.

A Bosnian government source said the delegation had left the site.

The scene marred a ceremony to commemorate the day that Srebrenica, designated a safe haven protected

by Dutch United Nations peacekeepers, fell to Bosnian Serb forces in the closing months of the 1992-95 war.

Bill Clinton, who was U.S. president at the time of the massacre, earlier told those

gathered: “I grieve that it took us so long.” “I never want to see another killing field like this,” he said.

Some 8,000 Muslim men and boys were executed over the next five days, their bodies dumped in pits only to be dug up months later and scattered in smaller graves in an effort to conceal the crime.

More than 1,000 are yet to be found.

The remains of 136 recently identified victims were

to be buried yesterday. Serbia, which backed Bosnian Serb forces with men and money during the war, last week enlisted ally Russia to veto a British-backed U.N. resolution that would have condemned the denial of Srebrenica as genocide, as a U.N. court has ruled it was.

Many Serbs dispute the term, the death toll and the official account of what went on, reflecting conflicting narratives about the Yugoslav wars that still feed political divisions and stifle progress toward integration with western Europe.

During the 1990s, Vucic was a disciple of the “Greater

Serbia” ideology that fueled much of the bloodshed that accompanied Yugoslavia’s demise.

He has since rebranded himself as pro-Western and his attendance yesterday was intended to be symbolic of how far the region has come since wars that left at least 135,000 people dead, 100,000 of them in Bosnia.

“Look at him (Vucic) and look at those thousands of tombstones,” said Hamida Dzanovic, who had come to bury two bones identified by DNA as those of her missing husband. “Is he not ashamed to say that this was not genocide? Is he not ashamed to come here?”

Remember Ibrahim said: “O my Lord! make this city one of peace and security and preserve me and my sons from worshipping idols.

Qur’an 14 vs 35 Sponsored by ALHAJI KHAMIS OLATUNDE BADMUS Asiwaju Musulumi of Yorubaland

RAMADAN GUIDE

• Serbian Prime Minister Alexander Vucic escorted by security leave the Potocari Memorial Cemetary yesterday after being booed by protesters

WITH FEMI ABBAS e-mail: femabbas@yahoo.com Tel: 08122697498

US air strike kills Islamic State leader in Afghanistan

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HE top Islamic State commander in Afghanistan has been killed by a U.S. air strike in the country’s east, officials said yesterday.

Hafez Saeed was the fourth high-ranking member of the militant group to be killed by U.S. air strikes in Nangarhar province in the past week.

Saeed was the leader of Islamic State in the “so-called Khorasan state”, according to Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security (NDS), referring to an old term to describe Afghanistan and Pakistan.

He was killed along with 30 other militants as they gath-

ered in Achin district of Nangarhar province late on Friday, the intelligence agency said. It gave no further details of the air strike.

Saeed, a Pakistani, was among a small but increasing number of senior Taliban militants who have switched allegiance to Islamic State, the radical Islamist movement that has seized territory in Iraq and Syria and inspired attacks worldwide.

The new IS loyalists have been targets for U.S drone strikes in Afghanistan, which have killed three other Islamic State commanders in the same

area in the past week, including Shahidullah Shahid and Gul Zaman.

A spokesman for U.S. military in Afghanistan, Col. Brian Tribus, confirmed yesterday that “U.S. Forces conducted a precision strike in Achin District, Nangarhar Province, on July 10 against individuals threatening the force”.

After pushing out the Taliban insurgents, Islamic State fighters have in the past two months gained ground in several districts of Nangarhar province, which shares a long and porous border with lawless areas inside Pakistan.

Burundi presidential elections postponed to July 21

A

N official in Burundi says presidential elections have been postponed by nearly a week, after a U.N. official warned the president’s decision to seek a third term could spark an explosion of violence.

Presidential spokesman Gervais Abayeho said yester-

day the vote will be held July 21, six days later than originally scheduled.

Burundi has been hit by violence since the April announcement that President Pierre Nkurunziza would run for a third term in presidential elections that had been set for July 15.

Protesters say Nkurunziza must go because the constitution limits the president to two terms, but the president’s supporters say he is eligible for a third term because he was chosen by lawmakers — and not popularly elected — for his first term.

BurkinaFasopartyofoustedpresidentpicksnewcandidate

B

URKINA Faso’s ruling party yesterday nominated a former lawmaker as its presidential candidate in a vote scheduled for October, one year after a popular uprising forced longtime President Blaise Compaore to resign and flee the country.

Eddie Comboigo, an accountant, accepted the nomination yesterday at a packed stadium in the capital, Ouagadougou. During his speech, he asked for a standing

ovation for Compaore, whom he credited with having set Burkina Faso on a path to modernity during his 27 years in office despite widespread complaints about corruption and misrule.

“I will be the candidate of the youth, the elders, the women and all generations,” Comboigo said. “We are still the majority in this country.”

At least 10 politicians have so far declared their candidacy for the October vote. A new electoral law says anyone who

supported Compaore’s bid to stay in office can’t stand in the election, though the party has filed a complaint against transitional authorities over the code with a West African regional court.

Addressing his supporters, Comboigo yesterday also asked for prayers for peace in Burkina Faso, which the head of the transition said in a brief statement Friday night was on the brink of “chaos and disorder.”

The issue of Nisab

A

S stated in this column yesterday, Zakah is of two types. One is Zakatul Mal (levy on wealth). The other is Zakatul Fitr (levy for festivity). The two are obligatory and paid annually. But while Zakatul Mal is to be paid only by those who have excess in their custody after one full year, Zakatul Fitr is a flat levy to be paid at the end of Ramadan by every Muslim irrespective of age, gender and financial status.

Zakatul Mal is paid not only on the amount of money kept in one’s bank account but also on fixed property like commercial house(s), land, farm crops as well as animals.

Each of these has a taxable amount called ‘NISAB’. For Zakah of money, the NISAB prescribed by Prophet Muhammad (SAW) is 200 Dirham or 20 Dinar. Both amounts are equal in value at the exchange rate.

The use of silver or gold as a means of determining NISAB as earlier recommended by the Prophet was later relaxed with the Qur’anic revelation which ordered the wives of the Prophet to pay Zakatul Mal. None of the Prophet’s wives was rich enough to meet the NISAB by gold or silver after the demise of Sayyidah Khadijah. And Zakah did not come as a pillar of Islam until after Khadijah’s demise.

With the revelation ordering them to pay Zakah, the Prophet’s wives had to comply despite their pecuniary handicap.

Caliphs Umar bn Khattab and Ali bn Abi Talib in particular laid emphasis on the monetary NISAB of 200 Dirham or 20 Dinar prescribed by Prophet Muhammad (SAW) in order to make payment of Zakah easier for majority of Muslims. Otherwise, Zakah would have been an exclusive pillar of Islam for the rich alone. And that would have defeated the welfare purpose which Zakah was meant to serve and it would have excluded most Muslims from that pillar of Islam.

For Nigerian Muslims of today, the Dirham of the United Arab Emirates is chosen by ‘THE MESSAGE’ as the mode of determining the NISAB not only because it is the most consistent in exchange rate especially against the American Dollar having remained almost same since 1982 but also because it is the only one with which most Nigerian Muslim s are familiar. And its current rate against American Dollar is 200 Dirham to 54 US Dollars which translates to N8210. Whoever is in possession of a minimum of N8210 therefore as net income after one full year must pay Zakah of N205.25 which is one over forty or two and a half percent the NISAB. And if the net income is higher than that then, the payable amount is worked accordingly.

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THE NATION ON SUNDAY, JULY 12, 2015

NEWS

AMA, I can’t believe you have gone. I was under the illusion that you will live over ninety years like your mother did. But this was not meant to be. Well, this is why we must always be ready by keeping our spiritual “lamps oiled” for we neither know the day, nor the hour, nor the second when the Owner of our lives will call us to give account of our stewardship. I am indeed glad and thankful to God for extending His grace and mercy at the hour of your demise to receive the last sacrament surrounded by most of your children.

You had a blessed and glorious exit and for that we are thankful to God. Mama, you were indeed a woman of many parts. Being the eldest of the many children God blessed you with, I

Mama Odion Otoide: A tribute observed you from your early years as you navigated through the maze of life. You were a strong and determined woman who knew what she wanted even at a very young age. Your quiet and thoughtful disposition was a huge asset, Mama. I admire and salute your strength of character and your determination to excel and remain focused in spite of some retrogressive cultural practices then.

First, with tremendous love for your twin brother, you often reflected with heaviness in your heart the obnoxious culture that denied you a formal education just because you were a “woman”. I could only imagine the hurt and psychological trauma you experienced every day at such a tender age of 6/7 years, at being separated from your

By Mary Arumemi-Ikhide

twin.

You also told me how you freed yourself from another tradition that betrothed you to an old man and rather made a bold choice to marry my father, an educated and enlightened teacher. That move was the catalyst that paved the way for generations of educated men and women in your lineage of which I am a product.

Thank you Mama for your courage in standing up for your right. You are indeed a woman of tremendous and exemplary character. For despite these seeming setbacks you exhibited a high level of intelligence beyond comparison.

This was shown in the ways you managed your life and your home; the choices

you made; your total comportment and carriage and most importantly the training you gave to your children. You could easily adapt to any situation that was thrown at you.

You became the strong pillar on whom everyone leaned on in the home. Even my father called you “mama” only referring to you as “Magi” when he was upset with you. You were such great fun to be with. A reservoir of wisdom and insight. I can still remember your evening tales and songs from which I drew and internalized great moral values that have helped me in life and to impact same to my children.

In fact, Mama, you were the best. An excellent homemaker, a great cook, an intelligent and creative

designer and a friend to your children. I am who I am today by the grace of God and the effort you made to raise me.

Mama, you trained all your daughters well; you were a unique example for us. You taught me diligence, humility, hard work, contentment and resilience in the face of difficulties. Cleanliness was your watchword. Thank you Mama for being such a role model. There aren’t many of your stock anymore.

Mama, you have done your best. You have finished your race and very well too.

You have fought the good fight of faith. You are not dead. You have only moved on. You are at rest. Away from all the challenges of this world you are an overcomer.

You have gone to a better place. No more sorrows, or pains or tears. You are at peace now Mama.

You have strived to stay strong for your children ever since our father departed this world twenty years ago, leaving you with the

enormous responsibility of taking care of the family.

There was no doubt that you missed your dear husband all these years.

You are now both in the presence of the Lord. I miss you already but I must always remind myself that you are now among the “host of witnesses” and angels watching over us.

Mama, nothing and nobody can touch or hurt you anymore. You are happy where you are, so we should be happy for you. You are with Papa in the house the Lord has prepared for you. Mama, I shall by the grace of God continue to keep the family as one and in the love of God. We shall meet someday in heaven to part no more.

A d i e u Mama. Farewell. Okinbue!

•Dame Mary Ehiomome ArumemiIkhide (KSG) wrote from Port Harcourt.

•Mr Oma Djebah, former Delta State Commissioner for Information and Chairman, The New Diplomat Media Group (R), Mr Myron Bonang, Head of Chancery, Botswana High Commission, Abuja and Mr Peter Ishaka of the Editorial Board of ThisDay at a dinner hosted by the US Ambassador to Nigeria at the US Embassy in Abuja weekend..

RIGHT OF REPLY

Re: Media siege of Abia: The limit of indulgence

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HE moment I saw a rabidly calumnous article, entitled “Media seige (sic) on (sic) Abia: The limit of indulgence” published in THE NATION ON SUNDAY of June 28, 2015, Page 69, I knew instantly that the victims would be the former governor of Abia State (19992007) and publisher of The Sun, Dr. Orji Kalu and this writer. What I never expected was that the famished hustler who wrote it, Ethelbert Okere, would beat the vicious records of the hungry media blokes who monumentally mismanaged and battered irredeemably the image and, extrapolatively, the public reputation and perception of the immediate-past governor, Chief Theodore Ahamefule Orji.

On a critical prefatory note, it is apposite to x-ray and skeletonize Okere before addressing all the points he raised in his half-page bile in his conventional quest for recognition and patronage by the governor of Abia State, Dr. Okezie Ikpeazu, and other unsuspecting politicians.

From the illiterate headline, I was not astonished by the poverty of the language and the caustic contents of the beggarly contribution by a floundering man in his 50s.

Now to Okere’s sillies: first, Okere is questioning why I should be on the Editorial Board of The Sun as well as being the Media Advisor to Dr. Kalu. In his trite article under reference, he said some of his “colleagues” and politicians he spoke

By Ebere Wabara

with faulted my job schedule and he concluded that the dual development was a mark of media impunity in the country. Does this he know anything about the history of the Nigerian media (which I studied as a sophomore), ethics, ownership, proprietorial interest, public interest, national interest, vision and mission statements before his interjection?

If this dishevelled fellow knew these journalistic fundamentals, he won’t be intruding in matters that are obviously beyond him and his equally ignorant “colleagues” and disreputable politicianfriends who do not know anything about journalism, yet pontificate on its professionalism or lack of it because the Okeres of this world give them the fleeting platform usually monetized. What business of Okere is it if my employer decides to give me a multiplicity of tasks based on my versatility and capacity?

An extract from Okere’s malicious article to corroborate my assertions about him: “…he (Wabara) was charged for (sic) sedition.

Hell was let loose in a section of the media where Wabara and his publisher dominated.”

This is just one of the innumerable asininities of Okere. My barbaric abduction by imbecilic agents of T. A. Orji drew global attention and umbrage through multi-media dissemination of the assault. Rascals like Okere should not be reminding me of the bizarre effrontery by one of his traitorous benefactors. I have closed that chapter and

moved on miles away from the sordid tragedy, by God’s grace. I advise Okere to do a media audit of the reportage of that ugly incident that has eternally diminished the actors.

Another excerpt: “His (Wabara) weekly column published by his political cum professional (sic) benefactor is devoted chiefly on (sic) T. A. Orji. Those familiar with the column know that it is all about an unashamed solidarity with his publisher…”

This impolitic chap is so confused that he mixes up my column with my regular essays on T. A. Orji’s eight-year disastrous misadventure in Abia State that has earned him brazen senatorship! This can only happen in Nigeria.

By Okere’s treacherous antecedents and current waywardness, I should antagonise my publisher/employer and dine with devils and demons personified by his floating principals! This dishevelled stranger to my state needs a psychotic examination and should be quarantined meanwhile. Why should I be embarrassed or ashamed defending my publisher or care about thirdparty approval/disapproval? Is this critic confused?

Still on Okere’s trash: “Is Wabara in any position to cause Orji any discomfiture even if the entire newspaper is handed over to him to do columns on Orji every day?” It is not the volume/space of a newspaper that matters—what counts is the quality of work.

I did only six articles (two of them rejoinders) on T. A. Orji and inerasable international blunt was made by my Orji-induced kidnap.

The outcome of that executive brigandage is now history.

Ordinarily, I will not respond to a character like Okere, but the issues he clownishly raised are such that need elucidation lest his principals and prospects like Owelle Anayo Rochas Okorocha of Imo State and Dr. Ikpeazu go and contract him for more deviancies.

Finally from the latest oppositional ant: “I have written severally (sic) that Dr. Kalu and his media boys (demonstration of Okere’s incurable insanity) have taken the matter too far. Abia is the only state that has (sic) the misfortune of having a media siege laid on (sic) it by two of their (sic) own.” Other states did not have media siege laid to them because their governors exemplified visible good governance devoid of callousness, malice, devilishness, demonism, multiple taxation of Abians and illegal demolition of their shops/homes, surrogacy, propaganda, deceit, lies and amnesia. Above all, they feared God and never had people like Ethelbert Okere and three notorious lawyers (one a former special asistant, the other a judge aspirant that will never be and the main legal actor now foisted on Ikpeazu)!

It is well with my state. Dr. Kalu and I cannot pick a fight with Okere because he has nothing to lose! Who will rant next? I dey wait for una.

•Wabara (ewabara@yahoo.com/ 08055001948) is the media adviser to Dr. Orji Kalu.

THE NATION ON SUNDAY JULY 12, 2015

I

COMMENCED this discourse with philosophy as a discipline; I then enlarged the argument to embrace the humanities. With my town and gown lecture at Covenant University’s Faculty of the Social Sciences in April, I applied the disciplinary relevance dominant argument to the social sciences (which dominant arguments are paraphrased in this piece) and, at the UI department of political science public lecture in honour of professor emeriti Adekanye and Ayoade, I took on my specific domain, political science, as a discipline. This has simply been a strictly intellectual reflection to address concerns that are indeed global, but more relevantly, germane to Nigeria’s specific policy concern to address graduate unemployment and the gradual emasculation of the HSS and the great danger it portends for a nation that needs to hurry to achieve real development with sense.

The social sciences constitute the third in the disciplinary tripod consisting of the natural sciences and the humanities. Its fluid theoretical boundary allows it to straddle the natural science in terms of methodology and the humanities in terms of substantive issues relating to the study of man and the society. The social sciences evolved from the attempt to reproduce the methodological successes in the natural science to the study of the human society, institutions and social behaviour. Yet, like the humanities that we have had about three occasions to x-ray so far, the social sciences are equally caught in the predicament of pedagogical relevance, especially in a situation, like Nigeria’s, where all that seems to matter is getting a certificate.

At a recent Town and Gown Seminar at Covenant University, Sango Ota, I had an occasion to initiate a critical appraisal of the stature of the social sciences as an academic field, and their perceived role and relevance in national development in Nigeria. At that auspicious occasion, I argued that the endemic questioning of the relevance of the social sciences derives from a justified albeit jaundiced perception of their prospect in the formulation of life-plans and future purposes: What will you do with Sociology/History/Psychology/ Geography/Political Science? How, for instance, in common sense reflection, can the discipline of political theory or anthropology enable me to make sense of my life in a manner that Accountancy, Engineering or Human Resource Management or Medicine can if I am not an academic? And indeed, how many graduates of the HSS can the academia retain? What income level can political science as professional calling generate in Nigeria? This questioning is only a manifestation of a deeper dynamics. There are two broad factors that are responsible for how others perceive our disciplinary integrity. (And in this connection and as an aside, the 60:40 funding ratio in

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Social sciences and the crisis of relevance in Nigeria

•Bolaji Akinyemi

By Tunji Olaopa favour of STEM – an acronym for the sciences, technology, engineering and mathematics, in the dynamics of transition, makes some sense but is a point in our argument for emphasis.)

On the one hand, the field of the social sciences is incredibly and methodologically problematic. The first point of worry derives from the disciplinary desire for scientific methodology. As the philosophers would ask: How does one scientifically study, rather than interpret, human unpredictable behaviour? How is the analysis of social fact, for instance, modelled on the scientific study of natural fact? The second point of worry is the lack of methodological consensus on how the vast subjects and data of the social sciences ought to be studied. The diversity of methodologies ranges from Emile Durkheim to Max Weber to Vilfredo Pareto and then Karl Popper and Robert Dahl.

On the other hand, the social science disciplines, like the humanities, are confronted by a global curricular consensus which puts the social sciences into serious retreat. At the Covenant University Seminar, I alluded to the domineering influence of global capitalism on university management and pedagogical practices. Thus, the idea of management itself, rather than administration, has become the key to understanding the reason why only disciplines and programmes with cash values are recognised. This neo-liberal capitalist orientation has affected the way we perceive education and the role of universities, especially in national development. Consider, for instance, the rise and significance of the STEM

•Akin Mabogunje

•Charles Soludo

fields. STEM is significant because it constitutes a kind of educational/ curriculum philosophy motivated by laissez faire global competitiveness in terms of scientific and technological progress. Of course, the absence of the social sciences in the acronym speaks volume about the disciplinary invisibility of the social scientist.

In the face of all these challenges, we are confronted with a more troubling question: What is the unique stature of the social sciences in Nigeria?

Claude Ake spoke about the social sciences as imperialism. This simply implies that Western social science disciplines—and anthropology readily comes to mind here—possess an ideological character which attempts to foist Western framework of scholarship on hapless third world countries like Nigeria. This immediately raises the issue of what social science discourses and researches in Nigeria ought to pursue—a theoretically sound, dynamic and pragmatic framework of ideas, processes and recommendations that could orient national policy trajectory in education, healthcare, security, infrastructural development, public services, mental health and social formations. If I am asked, I will say that the social sciences evolved as a theoretical and practical means by which we can imagine what is possible in terms of our social structures and our relationship with them. This objective is all the more urgent within the context of the Nigerian state and our plural existence along religious, ethnic, cultural and linguistic lines. Thus: How can the social sciences redefine our idea of what we are as Nigerians in manner that practically engages policy-makers?

Let me reiterate my earlier worry, especially with philosophers and other

humanities scholars. No discipline within the postcolonial context of Nigeria is immune from the charge of relevance. The existence and significance of each discipline is bound up with how they are able and enabled to confront the Nigerian predicament and our collective resolve to reimagine the national project. This implies that, in spite of the fact that the Western social sciences wield enormous influence in terms of theories and ideas, the Nigerian social scientists must be wary of the imperial gaze of the West and the global dimensions. This should then translate into a concerted effort to locate all processes, methodologies, ideas and reflections of social research within the context of national rebirth and reconstruction. Theories are not enough; the social scientists in Nigeria must facilitate the transition from theories to practical and pragmatic policy considerations. This, it seems to me, is the essence of the town and gown interaction that people like Simeon Adebo were part of in the early years of the Nigerian state. The social scientists must become theoretically adept and policy oriented. In this regard, the late Profs. Claude Ake, Ojetunji Aboyade and Sam Aluko and Prof. Akin Mabogunje, Bolaji Akinyemi, were exemplary, with many after them, the likes of Ademola Oyejide, Charles Soludo, Attahiru Jega - to name just a few - are no less eminent. But how many of them are there now?

Unfortunately, the problem now is that social scientists either pontificate in conference halls and seminars where their beautiful ideas are usually mostly lost in rapturous applause or publications in obscure journals which are soon forgotten in dusty libraries.

Whereas for Roberto Unger, the social

sciences lack the capacity for ‘structural imagination’—this is a kind of insight into the nature of our present and existing social structures and institutions and how we can transcend them into something better given our present circumstances — I can tell that besides that point, it is the pervasive antiintellectualism in the governance space that has become a disincentive to social scientists. Structural imagination requires the constant reinvention of the structures and social formations of our society. The essential question for Nigerian social scientists in spite of their virtual consignment to research for research sake therefore is: What is the role of the social sciences in ‘difficult times’ (as a commentator puts it)? How does social science research in Nigeria rebrand and transform into a nuanced analysis of the Nigerian predicament and a resolution of it in manner that attracts clients? How, for instance, does a social scientist’s analysis of the phenomenon of climate change, mental health, social welfare, governance or labour relations impact the direction of government policy and national development and how can they connect to policy better through more engaging town and gown interdependence, et al?

Like the humanities, there is no doubt that the social sciences contribute to our collective knowledge of the nature of man and the functioning of social institutions. But the society requires more. For instance, there is a distinct democratic imperative on social science research: What are the conditions for the possibility of a free and democratic society?

As I see it, what will orient structural imagination is the insinuation of the social sciences into the depth of social policy which is defined by its continuous reflection on the broad range of human needs and how social institutions can be created and recreated to meet these needs—welfare, public services, security, human rights and justice, law and order, income and wealth distribution, social accounting, housing, equitable allocation of resources, labour relations and employment, etc and serious rethinking of how policy makers could be better engaged. Social policy is too significant to be left to the policy makers and politicians alone; there is the urgent need to infuse a large dose of social scientific understanding and explorations.

Nigeria presently stands at a critical juncture. And one of the high point of the change mantra must result from a deep rethinking of our curriculum philosophy. In other words, we require a phased transition from STEM to STEAMHSS (science, technology, engineering, arts, mathematics, humanities and the social sciences).

Change will not just happen to us as Nigerians, rather, we require a steady infusion of political, bureaucratic and intellectual energies to produce the steam that would drive Nigeria beyond its endemic crisis points.

Politics, public service, morality and integrity in Nigeria (1) • Continued from page 18 Also in the three Regions, about 40% of the annual budgets was devoted to education alone as against the average of 5% of the budget as provided by the Federal Government in recent years.

2.7 It is amazing how relatively enlightened our first Republic Politicians were. In comparison to our current set of politicians, they were civilized, polished, honest, had a high sense of honour and integrity and were incorruptible. Could it be that the British political culture had worn off on them?

How does one explain such refinement and civilized political culture and etiquette?

3. Nigerian Politicians: 2nd Republic – 4th Republic 3.1 Nigerian politics and politicians, since the end of the 1st Republic have degenerated rapidly towards the bottom of the pit of infamy.

Every passing generation of politicians, is succeeded by a more primitive and

barbaric set. The 2nd Republic (Shagari) politicians were terrible. The 3rd Republic politicians were more terrible.

The present, 4th Republic politicians are the most terrible so far. One common thread runs through the attitude, beliefs and actions of the recent politicians, greed, avarice, self-service and accumulation of wealth at the expense of the country. There is a total lack of patriotism, or a spirit of public or national service. They are in politics to make a quick fortune. In other words, the post – 1st Republic politics has been carnal, banal, mundane and pedestrian.

The saddest part of it all is that the younger the politician, the greedier, more corrupt, and rabidly anti-social he is.

3.2 With each successive generation of politicians and public servants, we seem to have become afflicted with a more degenerate class of humanity whose only propensity is to plunder our wealth and resources, oppress us, and reduce our country and

society to devastated and chaotic conditions. Whilst the rest of the world is moving on, we are retrogressing into the stone age.

It is unbelievable that in terms of development, we were once at par with Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea and Indonesia.

It is also difficult to believe that this is the Nigeria that Awo, Zik and Sarduna bequeathed to us.

3.3 In today’s Nigeria, the ruling party must not only win an election but, must win every state and every seat in the legislature. In the 1954 elections to the Federal House of Representatives, the NCNC opposition party in the West actually defeated the ruling Action Group party, by winning 22 seats compared to the Action Group’s 19 seats.

Can this happen at the federal level or in any state in Nigeria today? Does the PDP not always win all the chairmanship positions in all local councils in PDP controlled States?

Any review of the Nigeria’s political

history, can only result in depression for the reviewer; for the glorious period of our history seems so unreal in the light of our present circumstances. Nigeria enjoyed a certain degree of political civilization in the era of the founding fathers of our country. That has all been destroyed and trampled underfoot by our modern day predators. Our civilization has been destroyed.

3.4 Let me list some of the acts of depredation with which the present politicians and public servants have brought us down.

As I have already noted elsewhere, in 2009, the Federal Legislators received a total of N102. 8 billion comprising N11.8 billion as salaries and N90.96 billion (non-taxable) as allowances. Is the tax payer getting value for this colossal sum in the current democratic dispensation? Should 5% of Nigeria’s annual budget be spent on 109 Senators and 360 House of Representative members? In other words, should 469 Nigerians gulp 5% of our Budget leaving

the remaining 150 million of us to receive about N1000 each?

3.5 President Obama, President of the richest country in the world earns $400,000 per annum. The British Prime Minister earns 190,000 Pounds. A Senator, in Nigeria, one of the poorest countries in the world, earns, $1,700,000 per annum. It is absurd. It is, as someone has called it, “a feeding frenzy” The Senate President is reported to be earning N250, Million quarterly or N83.33 Million per month, whilst his deputy earns N50 million per month.

The Senate has allocated N1,024,000,000 as quarterly allowance to its 10 principal officers, known collectively as Senate leadership. Each of the other principal officers earns N78 million every three months or N26 million per month.33 All data on legislators salaries and allowances were obtained from (1) Business Hallmark Newspaper, June

• TO BE CONCLUDED NEXT SUNDAY

70

SPORTS THE NATION ON SUNDAY

Al Ain warns fans over Emenike

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L Ain board m e m b e r Mohammed Bin Abdulah has urged the press and fans not to compare Emmanuel Emenike with Ghana star Asamoah Gyan who he replaced at the club.

He said both players are different and so have their different attributes.

"It is not logical to compare Emenike and Gyan. Both are top quality strikers with special qualities of their own," he argued.

Emenike has replaced Gyan, who has left for China after becoming a household name at Al Ain, where he scored a total of 95 goals in 81 matches.

Meanwhile, Nigeria international Emenike commenced training with his new team Al Ain of Dubai on Friday just hours after he was presented to the press and public.

The former Spartak Moscow striker joined Al Ain on a year's loan deal from Fenerbahce and has settled down for business immediately. The team will soon hit Austria for a training camping ahead of the new season.

Musa, Ighalo keep scoring form

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ATCH out for Ahmed Musa and Odion Ighalo in the new season in Europe after both Nigeria stars scored again for CSKA Moscow and Watford respectively yesterday.

Musa was on target for CSKA Moscow in the 13th minute to open the scoring in the 2-0 win over Krylya Sovetov Samara.

He has now scored two goals in two games as they prepare for the season's kick-off. He reportedly said he was just getting set for the season, where he hopes for many goals.

"It's always good when a striker score goals. I am looking forward to scoring many goals when the season starts as I am just getting set with the preseason games," Musa told AfricanFootball.com CSKA Moscow will open the 2015/2016 season on Saturday.

In same vein, Odion Ighalo scored in Watford's 2-2 draw with AFC Wimbledon.

He scored in the 34th minute to equalise at 1-1.He has now scored three goals in two pre-season games for the EPL new comers.

Meanwhile, Flying Eagles forward Suleiman Abdullahi continued his impressive displays for his Norwegian team Viking as he scored in a 4-1 win over Aalesund.

Viking are now third on the league table with 28 points from 16 games, while Aalesund are 10th with 19 points from 16 games.

EXTRA

JULY 12, 2015

Masters gather in PH for Shell Scramble Championship

SERENA SLAM

From , Osemwengie Ben Ogbemudia, Benin

T

Serena makes Wimbledon history S

•Breaks Navratilova's record

ERENA Williams beat a battling Garbine Muguruza 6-4 6-4 to claim her second 'Serena Slam' and win her 21st Grand Slam title in the Wimbledon final on Saturday.

After losing a close first set and battling bravely to come back from 5-1 down in the second, the 21-year-old Spaniard was eventually defeated after one hour and 23 minutes, to leave Williams to receive the acclaim of the Centre Crowd.

At 33 years and 289 days, Serena surpasses Martina Navratilova as the oldest player to win Wimbledon, and any of the other three Grand Slams, in the Open era.

Muguruza, born in Venezuela and raised in Barcelona, had insisted facing Serena was a task to be relished rather than feared.

She was proving true to her bold claim and, by the time Muguruza moved into a 4-2 lead, it seemed an epic shock was on the cards.

However, Serena had recovered from worse predicaments earlier in the tournament.

With the pressure ratcheted up, the inevitable Serena break back arrived in the eighth game when Muguruza missed with a wild forehand.

Williams scented blood and Muguruza crumbled, a double-fault on set point

gift-wrapping the lead to Serena in a set that had been the underdog's for the taking.

The American had won 28 of her last 30 tour-level finals, including her last nine at the majors, and, in her eighth Wimbledon final, she was finally back in that muscular groove.

Serena's fierce grimace and clenched fist after breaking in the fourth game of the second set suggested the finish line was in sight But, serving for the match with 5-1 and then 5-3 leads, Williams was gripped by a bad case of nerves and Muguruza broke twice to prolong the contest.

Serena's sixth Wimbledon crown brought with it a slew

of other remarkable landmarks that underline her credentials as one of the greatest female athletes of all time.

The American's 21st Grand Slam crown and 68th tour-level title earned her a cheque for £1.8 million.

But it is her legacy rather than her bank balance that concerns Williams these days and she now holds all four Grand Slam titles at the same time - the rare 'Serena Slam' she last achieved in 2002-03.

Serena is the first woman to land the French Open and Wimbledon back-to-back since she last won that difficult double in 2002.

untenable because it looked unlikely he would achieve set objectives.

“We (NFF) are not very eager to open old wounds because this is a new era (where we are about to appoint a) new coach (for the national team).

“We looked at the whole

scenario surrounding his appointment with us and we thought that we were not going in the same direction in terms of what we hoped in the short and long term.

“As a result, we took the option open to us to terminate his contract and that is the end of it,”

Akinwunmi said on popular Nigerian magazine programme, Naija Made, on SuperSport TV. Keshi was fired on July 4 with an official statement of the NFF noting that the former Nigeria captain flouted several clauses in his contract.

minutes later.

The five-time African champions have now amassed the maximum six points at the group stage after beating CS Sfaxien two weeks ago, opening a threepoint lead at the summit, with the South Africans behind on three points.

Congolese torchbearers, AC Leopards and CS Sfaxien follow in that order with a point apiece.

Zamalek, which suffered a 4-1 loss in the previous meeting involving both sides, two years ago at the group phase of the prestigious CAF Champions League, defied the odds to continue their impressive

run this term, where they are on the brink of winning the Egyptian Premier League for the first time since the 2003/2004 season.

The visitors recovered

from a poor start which saw the South Africans dominate the opening half, but failed to let their control of the game reflect on the score cards.

Akinwunmi: Why Keshi was fired

F

ORMER Super Eagles head coach Stephen Keshi was “not on the same page” with his employers, the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) vice president, Seyi Akinwunmi, has revealed.

Akinwunmi said that Keshi's position became

CCL: Zamalek beat Pirates to go top

E

GYPTIAN giants, Zamalek assumed top spot of Group B after silencing Orlando Pirates 21 on Saturday at the Mbombela Stadium in Nelspruit.

Substitute Mustapha Fathi was the hero scoring the winner seven minutes from time as the Cairo-based side came from behind to snatch the maximum points at the expense of their hosts.

Striker Lehlohonolo Majoro earlier shot the Buccaneers into the lead on 68 minutes with virtually his first touch after replacing Kermit Erasmus before Nigerian Maroof Yusuf levelled for the visitors four

HE Garden City of Port Harcourt will be alive with scintilating scrabble displays as the very best of scrabble warloads and gladiators prepares to storm the city with bag loads of words.

It promises to be a show piece as both the old, middle age and young will be available.

According to the chairman , organising committee , Engr. Ojior Osikhena, crème de la crème of Nigeria Scrabble whom ply their artistry in the Masters Category will spice up the tourney with their bag load of words and composure for the seeming viewers to appreciate the hours they will spend with us.

The tournament is Five Category based and will have the following categories: Masters Category : 1500 rating point and above, Intermediate Category: 1499 - 1200 rating points, Opens Category: 1199 rating points and below, Female Category: all females in the country, while Veteran Category: from ages 55+ and above, Captains of Industries and non active players.

‘Schweinsteiger will shine at Man U’

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ERMANY coach Joachim Low has backed Bastian Schweinsteiger to shine at Manchester United following confirmation that a deal has been agreed between the Premier League giants and Bayern Munich for the transfer of the midfielder.

Both United and Bayern CEO Karl-Heinz Rummenigge announced on Saturday that the Germany captain is set to depart the club where he has spent his entire professional career.

And Low has little doubt Schweinsteiger will carry the form that has seen him win eight Bundesliga titles, one Champions League and a World Cup into his new challenge under former Bayern boss Louis van Gaal at Old Trafford.

"Basti is an absolute leader and a world-class player who can put his stamp on any team, including of course Manchester United," said Low.

Celestial Church unveils Ilerioluwa Boys and Girls U-16 Tourney

A

Christian religious leader, Prophet Mamukuyomi Isaiah Ilerioluwa has described the game of football as good means to convey God's message to the youths and that was the conviction he had in mind in financing a national tournaments to be played in Ore, Ondo State.

The Shepherd-in-charge of Celestial Church of

Christ, Ilerioluwa Parish Ore, Ondo State said apart from the opportunity of evangelizing through the tourney, he also expressed his happiness with pace of grassroots football development in Ondo State which he attributed to the good idea of the State's governor who established Ondo Football Agency.

He however, commended

the efforts of the Akin Akinbobola led Ondo State Football Agency in developing and exposing the youths in the state through their football talent discovery scheme of the agency, which he claimed has also motivated him to sponsor a national soccer competition to be played in the state.

THE NATION ON SUNDAY JULY 12, 2015

Bayern deny Muller move to Man Utd

T

HOMAS Muller has been rumoured to be another Old Trafford target, but the Bavarians' president has thrown a spanner in Louis van Gaal's reported plans.

Bayern Munich have insisted Manchester United will not raid their squad and say Bastian Schweinsteiger's successor will embody his spirit.

The Bavarians confirmed the sale of Schweinsteiger to Old Trafford on Saturday, with the German midfielder joining for an estimated £12 million on a three-year contract.

Schweinsteiger is not the only Bayern star linked with a move to Louis van Gaal's men, with Thomas Muller also reported to be a top target for the Dutch coach as he revamps his squad ahead of 2015-16's kick-off.

But Bayern CEO KarlHeinz Rummenigge has sought to placate any fears amongst fans of the Bundesliga champions that Muller or any other of Pep Guardiola's team will follow Schweinsteiger to their European rivals.

"I can calm the worries of all Bayern supporters: We will not let another player leave for Manchester United,” he told reporters.

Matthias Sammer, sporting director at the Allianz Arena, stressed that Bayern would leap into the transfer market for someone who fits Schweinsteiger's mould.

SPORT EXTRA

Newcastle seal Wijnaldum deal

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E O R G I N I O Wijnaldum has become the third most expensive signing in Newcastle's history after putting pen to paper on fiveyear deal.

The 24-year-old Holland international midfielder completed his move from PSV Eindhoven on Saturday morning for a fee understood to be in the region of 20 million euros, around £14.4million.

Wijnaldum said: "I'm delighted to be a Newcastle United player.I felt the time was right for me to move and the Club have shown they really want me, so I'm very happy to be here."

Only Michael Owen and Alan Shearer have cost the Magpies more, and his capture represents a statement of intent from owner Mike Ashley, who has been criticised in recent years for his concentration on potential rather than proven quality.

Wijnaldum, who becomes the fifth Dutch player on the books at St James' Park along with Tim Krul, Daryl Janmaat, Vurnon Anita and Siem de Jong, said: "There are a few players here who are from Holland - I know them well and they will help me feel at home in

Newcastle.

"I know the club has a great stadium with great fans. I want to play here as soon as possible - I want to feel the atmosphere and hear the crowd. I cannot wait to get started."

News of Wijnaldum's arrival will come as a major boost to head coach Steve McClaren, who insisted on Thursday that he was not

frustrated by the apparent lack of action in the transfer market and remained excited at the prospect of landing the players the club is targeting this summer.

McClaren said: "This signing is a real statement for the club. It is a big transfer for a very good player and I am delighted to have Gini here at the club.

"He has lots of energy and

a great tempo to his game.

He is very skilful, but is also capable of playing box-tobox, and - importantly - he can score goals.

"He is at the right age and the right fit for Newcastle.

He is a leader as well and you will see that. He is someone who always wants the ball, can deal with it, and we need that kind of character in the team.”

71

Ujah propels Werder Bremen to Audi Cup final

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I G E R I A international Anthony Ujah was among the goal scorers as Werder Bremen thrashed Salzburg 4-0 to reach the final of Audi Quattro Cup on Saturday.

The former FC Cologne hit man scored a wonderful goal in the 22nd minute through a back-heel flick to give Werder Bremen a 3-0 lead.

The German Bundesliga side will now face Valencia in the final after the Spanish La Liga team defeated English Premier League outfit Southampton 1-0 in the other

Winning start for Olabiyi at Houston Dynamo

•Steve McClaren and Wijnaldum

Wenger woos Benzema to Emirates

A

transfer rumor from someone rumour known as Paco Gonzalez has made it all the

way to the Telegraph. They're sharing the news that Arsène Wenger has evidently called Real Madrid striker and

perennial Arsenal transfer target Karim Benzema using a telephone to discuss the possibility of a transfer.

Hull City name change rejected

H

ULL City's bid to change their name to Hull Tigers has been rejected for a second time by the Football Association Council.

The FA Council voted against the proposal in a meeting at its St George's Park headquarters near Burton on Saturday and the decision could have farreaching consequences.

Club owner Assem Allam, who first floated the idea in the summer of 2013, has threatened to sell the club if he did not get his way.

Allam put the club up for sale after failing with his first application 15 months ago

and it remains to be seen whether he will continue as owner.

A brief statement from the FA read: "The FA Council has rejected Hull City's application to change their playing name to Hull Tigers.

"The Council's decision carried by a 69.9 per cent vote of its members - came after a recommendation from The FA's Membership Committee.

"The Council, which is made up of representatives from across football, fully c o n s i d e r e d t h e recommendation in reaching its decision.”

Pastor Adeboye to grace RCCG Region 21 Cup final

T

HE General Overseer of the Redeemed Christain Church of God, Pastor Enoch Adeboye will grace the final of Region 21 cup. The final match has been fixed for July 27 subject to the approval of the GO. Region 21 cup is a competition of the ten province of the Redeemed Christain Church (RCCG) Region 21 made of all the ten province except for seven which is not featuring.

According to the Chairman of the Sports committee,Coach Samuel Akinlade, province one will tackle the opponent from six while four and three will lock horns for. Honours.

He added that giant trophy will be presented to the eventual winners just as there would be and other consolation prizes.

The Chairman explained that the purpose of organizing the competition has been realized as many souls have Benn son for Christ even as the taournament had been able to fish out hidden talent in the grassroots.

N

IGERIA midfielder Rasheed Olabiyi got off to a winning start in the MLS when his new club Houston Dynamo won 2-0 at San Jose Earthquakes.

Olabiyi, who joined the MLS team from Shooting Stars in Nigeria, was a 78th minutes substitute for Alexander Lopez and he sported jersey n u m b e r 2 0 .

The former Enyimba player contributed to Dynamo's second goal after he picked up the ball from the edge of his team's box and delivered the ball upfront.

He has played for Nigeria at U17, U20 and U23 levels.

Sterling to go on Liverpool tour

R

AHEEM Sterling has been included in Liverpool's 30-man squad for their pre-season tour of Thailand, Australia and Malaysia.

The Barclays Premier League club named their squad for the tour on Saturday with the 20-yearold England striker included, but Italy forward Mario Balotelli was a notable omission.

Sterling's involvement in the tour comes after he failed to report to the club's Melwood base for pre-season work on Wednesday and Thursday, citing illness, before turning up on Friday.

It was reported that the striker had also asked manager Brendan Rodgers to be allowed not to travel on the club's pre-season tour as question marks over his future with the Reds rumbles on.

Sterling has been the subject of two failed bids, the second reported to be worth B#40million, from Manchester City this summer and it is understood senior figures at the Etihad Stadium are continuing to monitor the situation at Anfield.

QUOTABLE “Since the President has done this for himself, he is expecting that others will join him in making sacrifices for their fatherland.”

SUNDAY, JULY 12, 2015 TRUTH IN DEFENCE OF FREEDOM VOL. 9, NO. 3274

I

N his last incarnation as Head of State, Muhammadu Buhari and his second-incommand, Tunde Idiagbon, were a couple of all-action soldiers who took an unruly nation by the scruff of the neck and set it straight.

The impact of their short reign remains branded in the nation’s psyche such that many anticipated another action-packed crack at governing Nigeria. The opening 30 days of the new All Progressives Congress (APC) have been anything but that – leading to the resurrection of the less than flattering “Baba Go Slow” tag that was last hung around the neck of the late President Umaru Yar’Adua.

A recent Bloomberg article by Daniel Magnowski titled ‘Buhari Goes From Nigeria’s Change Champion to ‘Baba Go Slow’ aptly captured the frustration of people who expected him to come out with guns blazing.

Aside from those who are interested in Buhari’s appointments because they hope to be beneficiaries, there are others for whom politics is spectator sport.

For them the whole business of hiring and firing is entertainment. On that front very little is happening. Many who had expected that Buhari would send the remnants of the Goodluck Jonathan era – everyone from service chiefs to hastily appointed agency heads – packing once installed in office, are mystified that he’s taking his sweet time getting rid of them.

In fact so frustrated have some Nigerians become that since Buhari would not name his aides and ministers they have taken to appointing them for him. In the course of a meeting a little over a week ago a colleague excitedly announced that the president had just ‘named’ long-time associate Col. Hamid Ali as Chief of Staff. News of the ‘appointment’ soon went viral online.

Three hours later the Presidency was denying that such an appointment had been made.

While Buhari keeps his list of cabinet nominees in a bomb-proof safe in Aso Rock, journalists and other stakeholders entertain themselves with speculations, or vent their anger at the lack of action by reminding us of how everyone from Barack Obama to Olusegun Obasanjo had – to use their favourite cliché – ‘hit the ground running.’

The leisurely take-off of the new administration has inspired Nigerians who are past masters at gallows humour to offload

P

RESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari recently rejected a proposal by the State House bureaucracy to procure five armoured Mercedes Benz cars worth N400 million for his comfort and safety. On Friday, he and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo announced a 50% cut in their salaries.

Last week also, he met with within the confines of Aso Villa with the activists from the BringBackOurGirls (BBOG) group which has been campaigning for the rescue of hundreds of kidnapped Chibok schoolgirls. Not only did he meet with them, both sides

E-mail: festus.eriye@gmail.com Twitter: @EriyeFestus

sms only: 08116759748

Pros and cons of presidential ‘go slow’ a few jokes. I saw an online comment the other day asking Jonathan to quickly send ‘Patience’ back to Aso Villa because Buhari keeps asking for her!

Although six weeks have passed I still refuse to join the chorus line that’s already writing the obituary of the new administration. My position is simple: If Buhari received a ‘change’ mandate doesn’t he deserve breathing space to do things differently – even if it’s not at the pace some would •Buhari like?

Those who keep reminding us of what Obasanjo, Yar’Adua and Jonathan did in their first few days in office are actually saying – yes we voted ‘change’ but what we actually want is for you to do things the exact way these former leaders did.

Pace is important given that the last administration left Nigeria prostrate. But in the current situation haste just for the sake of appearing busy has dubious benefits. What is important in a race is not how fast the take-off is but how well you end. Jonathan et al presumably ‘hit the ground running’ but ended up running the country aground.

That said, we must concede that not every-

one who has criticized Buhari’s tardiness in naming a team has done so with base motives. Many have made very strong points that the president and whoever has his ears need to take on board.

We have heard excuses about the lack of cooperation from the last administration with regards to hand over notes. But that doesn’t explain the fact that between when the presidential election results were declared and May 29 the incoming crew had a clear two months to put together some sort of

skeletal structure.

We’ve been told that Buhari is busy doing mysterious things to make the governing environment pristine for his new team to operate in. The upshot is that the earliest a cabinet would be constituted could be September.

No matter how reasonable the reasons are the longer the president takes to cobble together a governing team, the more uncertainty would shroud the government and its intentions within the country and without. People have mentioned the impact of this uncertainty on the financial markets. It is also critically important in a country where much of the ac-

The power of atmospherics ended up posing for a group photograph.

This marks a sea change in relations between the seat of power and this influential citizens group. Before now Jonathan used to barricade himself within the villa while sending some female minister to engage BBOG leader, Dr. Oby Ezekwesili and her team in a shouting match. That is when former presidential aide Dr. Doyin Okupe wasn’t accusing the group of being in cahoots with the evil opposi-

tion APC and antagonizing the military. Back it always felt like Jonathan was threatened by BBOG. These populist moves that may not significantly change the state of the average citizen’s pocket. But it affects the overall atmospherics and sustains that sense that a new day has dawned in the country and things can never be the way they were ever again. Such symbolic gestures shouldn’t be dismissed lightly.

What’s come upon EFCC?

A

S he was being led away to the van that would convey him to the prison where he would spend days while perfecting his bail conditions, former Jigawa State Governor, Sule Lamido, reportedly blurted out: ‘Am I now a prisoner?’

He’s not alone in the dock. From former Imo State Governor Ikedi Ohakim to exGovernor Timpre Sylva of Bayelsa, Murtala Nyako of Adamawa, Audu Abubakar of Kogi and one-time Head of the Federal Civil Service, Stephen Oronsaye, a steady stream of once powerful figures are getting their day in court.

It is not the first time we would be treated to these dramatic images of public figures being tried for abusing their positions of trust – only to see the much-hyped prosecutions collapse like a cardboard box.

There’s no guarantee that these cases wouldn’t go the way of others with the one-

—Mallam Garba Shehu’s , Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity on President Mohamadu Buhari and his Vice’s decision to slash their salaries by 50%

time accused walking away as free men because of prosecutorial incompetence.

What should interest us is the sudden surge of zeal sweeping through the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). In the last couple of years this same organisation under the same leadership had been in deep slumber.

Many attributed this to the perception that the last administration didn’t seem too interested in fighting graft. As Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal, famously said the then president’s body language suggested a tolerance of sleaze. Indeed, Jonathan often defensively argued that Nigeria’s bad image for corruption was overblown.

So what suddenly come upon Ibrahim Lamorde’s EFCC? I would suggest that Buhari happened to them. The anti-graft agency didn’t need an army of interpreters to decode his ‘body language.’

•Lamorde

tivity revolves around what the government does or doesn’t do.

It has also been argued that one of the reasons there seems to be an upswing in the spate of insurgents attacks in the NorthEast is the sense that the new administration is still feeling its way - trying to put in place its own strategies.

Somehow the military momentum that swept Boko Haram out of the villages and towns they had hitherto occupied appears to have dissipated. In the intervening period when one government gave way to another, the insurgents have gotten second wind, retooled their strategy and returned with multiple suicide attacks in different locations.

It is hard to argue with the statistics.

There has been an upsurge in suicide attacks in recent weeks. Every few days now there’s a new one. Last weekend in Borno State six female suicide bombers wreaked havoc. The killers have visited Kaduna and Kano States and have been to one of their old stomping grounds – Buni Yadi.

Something is definitely going on here. It may or may not be down to the fact that those tasked with leading the fight against the insurgents are unsettled because they are uncertain about their future. Whatever it is, that feelgood factor that was so evident in the days following APC’s stunning electoral victory is slowly ebbing away. The new regime would be making a costly mistake if it dismisses this view out of hand.

The delay in constituting a team may have conveyed a sense of ennui, but the bungled National Assembly leadership selection process added a picture of disarray so early in the life of the administration – leaving its foes to crow ‘morning shows the day.’

Buhari may have been forced to calibrate his speed by the shock of what he met on the ground, but he must understand that his stock of goodwill with an impatient population cannot last forever.

It is in his interest to constitute a team as soon as possible. There’s too much pressure when one man is the focus of all, and he definitely doesn’t need the air of uncertainty generated by his ad-hoc arrangement.

Corruption: what can one man do?

B

UHARI has vowed to kill corruption in Nigeria. It may well be a long and painful death. While many appreciate the president’s zeal they scoff at suggestions he’s is going to rid the country totally of graft in the next four years.

In fact there’s deep cynicism about how far he can go given that stealing in government isn’t about party affiliation: the tags are surface dressing whereas underneath the system operates in much the same way across the country.

A cynical colleague who had served in the federal government in the not-too-distant past had this pidgin English exchange with me recently regarding my suggestion that that ‘chopping’ was likely to decline under Buhari.

He retorted: “Abeg forget that one my brother. Not only would they continue to chop, they would even chop Buhari’s cows in Daura!”

It is a depressing assessment of the depth of the national malaise. Still you get the sense that Buhari is willing to have a go at the problem. Not only is he willing to act, he’s not likely to become the defender of ministers and other officials caught behaving scandalously with public funds. This in itself is significant movement from the recent past where the president would only act in the face of unbearable public pressure.

PALLADIUM IS ON VACATION

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Website: www.thenationonlineng.net ISSN: 115-5302 E-mail: sunday@thenationonlineng.net Editor: FESTUS ERIYE