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Monday, November 24, 2014

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Vol. 1 No. 279

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12 pages of NEW YORK TIMEs PULLOUT INSIDE

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2015: Clear and present danger to our democracy T he United States' prediction of Nigeria's possible disintegration in 2015, following an anticipated political combustion, has, on several occasions, been

dismissed by the Federal Government and other well-meaning Nigerians, who hope and pray it doesn't happen.

But just on Friday, the International Crisis Group (ICG), an in-

Issue in the news

dependent, non-profit, non-governmental organisation committed to preventing and resolving deadly conflict,

came up with another gloom prediction: Nigeria is heading towards a very volatile and vicious electoral contest next year.

The ICG succinctly put its fear thus: “Ac-

tions by the police and other security services, all controlled by the Federal Government, could also aggravate tensions around the polls and undermine the credibility of their

outcomes. The conduct of some senior police officers, notably in Rivers State, has raised fears that the agency could be manipulated to serve the PDP’s CONTINUED ON PAGE 6

APC: We're battle ready over Tambuwal }5

lReps to extend resumption lPolice, threat to democracy, says NUJ

Quick Read

Editorial

Saving our children from pneumonia }19 FG to link state capitals with rail system }7

Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Sa'ad Abubakar III and Minister of Education, Malam Ibrahim Shekarau, at the 37th convocation of Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria…at the weekend.

Insurgents kill 48 in Borno village

lNgilari pleads with N'Assembly to extend emergency rule Ahmed Miringa MAIDUGURI

B

oko Haram struck again yesterday in Borno State, killing at least 48 people in

an attack on fishermen in Doron Baga village of Kukawa Local Government.

A fisherman from the

area, Mallam Labbo Idi, said the gunmen attacked their member’s boat while they were trying to cross

a river.

“Our members were attacked by Boko Haram CONTINUED ON PAGE 7

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MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2014 NEW TELEGRAPH

NEW TELEGRAPH MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2014

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MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2014 NEW TELEGRAPH

News

NEW TELEGRAPH MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2014

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APC: We're battle ready over Tambuwal Ayodele Ojo, Philip Nyam and Muhammad Kabir

T

he All Progressives Congress (APC) yesterday vowed not to succumb to the intimidation unleashed on the party and its members by the Federal Government as it was ready to challenge such an action.

According to the party, the hounding of its members in the Ekiti State House of Assembly, who formed the majority in the legislature, the attempt to prevent House of Representatives Speaker, Hon. Aminu Tambuwal from entering the National Assembly last Thursday and the raid on the data centre of the Lagos State chapter of the party are part of a larger sinister agenda to

cow the opposition party ahead of the 2015 polls.

APC National Chairman, Chief John OdigieOyegun, told New Telegraph yesterday that the party leaders would be meeting in Abuja today on strategies to adopt in tackling the Federal Government over what it described as clampdown on the opposition.

He spoke just as it was gathered that the House was considering extending its resumption date beyond December 3 to allow members to participate in the primaries of their parties.

Besides, the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) has condemned the police action at the National Assembly last Thursday, describing the law enforcement agency as a threat to democracy.

Today’s meeting of the APC will review the Thurs-

day assault on the National Assembly, the Saturday’s invasion of Lagos State data office of the party and the crisis rocking the Ekiti State House of Assembly.

“We would put our heads together on Monday.

We would map out our own responses. I can assure you that we are going to respond appropriately. We won’t allow these actions to go unchallenged,” OdigieOyegun said.

He cautioned the police to stop the clampdown on the opposition, saying: “The police are running away from Boko Haram, but they are very determined to fight in the National Assembly and they threw teargas at lawmakers. If they are looking for whom to fight, they should go to Borno, Adamawa or Yobe states. Unfortunately, the police are displaying their courage in the Na-

tional Assembly.

“The PDP-led government has run out of options. We talk, they too should just talk. They should not start using the force they cannot use in the North-East on innocent people. If they want to show their courage, they should go to the NorthEast.”

When pressed for the likely option the party would take, Odigie-Oyegun said: “I don’t constitute the leadership of the APC, I am just a leader among equals.

So, we will get together on Monday.”

But it was learnt that the party would explore legal and civil approaches to dealing with the matter.

A source said the party would approach the court to challenge what it termed as a flagrant breach of the constitution and unnecessary clampdown on the

Chairman, All Progressives Congress (APC), Jigawa State chapter, Alhaji Ado Kiri (left) and former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar at a meeting with APC delegates in Dutse…at the weekend.

Atiku: I won’t give up on my presidential bid lHolds private meeting with Lamido Dahiru Suleiman DUTSE

F

ormer Vice-President Atiku Abubakar has declared that he won’t give up on his bid to become the president of Nigeria now or in the future.

Atiku is a presidential aspirant on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC).

He spoke yesterday in Dutse, the Jigawa State capital, before he held a closed-door meeting with Governor Sule Lamido,

where he advised the governor to join the APC. The meeting, which lasted for one hour 30 minutes at the governor’s personal residence, was aimed at fostering a synergy between the duo ahead of the 2015 general election.

Newsmen were barred from covering the meeting as it was said to be ‘private’.

"My coming to Jigawa was personal, and to recruit my brother's into APC,” Atiku said.

Speaking before his

meeting with Lamido, Atiku said he was determined to continue to vie for the office of president if he lost the present bid until he eventually scaled through in the near future.

Atiku, however, said that his chances of winning his party’s primary on December 10 were bright.

He also said he was ready to support whoever emerges at the primary election to ensure that person’s victory at the 2015 presidential election.

Atiku had earlier told

newsmen that he was in Dutse to interact with his party delegates ahead of the December 10 presidential primary of the party.

The former vice president criticised the alleged swoop on APC data office in Lagos by security operatives.

The state chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Salisu Mamuda, told New Telegraph that Lamido as a public office holder is free to meet with any prominent personality like Atiku.

opposition.

It was further learnt that the leadership of the APC might hold Salvation rallies in Lagos and Kano this week.

According to a source, the Lagos rally may hold on Tuesday while that of Kano will hold on Thursday. The two states are in the grip of the opposition.

The planned rallies followed the success recorded at the Abuja Salvation Rally held last Wednesday during which the opposition leaders marched from Eagle Square to the Nigeria Police Headquarters.

At the Abuja rally, the APC leaders threatened to form parallel government if the 2015 elections are rigged.

“We are holding the rallies to sensitise the populace ahead of the 2015 elections. This is part of the sensitisation drive of the APC to outwit the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) ahead of the 2015 general election,” the source said.

But some chieftains of the party have expressed reservations over the planned rallies given the security clampdown on the House of Representatives’ members on Thursday by the police.

“With the clampdown on lawmakers by the police, the rallies may turn out bloody. If lawmakers could be tear gassed by policemen, then nobody is safe.

"Some of us had it on good record that the police regretted not 'dealing with us' when we barricaded the entrance of their headquarters in Abuja. The aggression at the National Assembly was direct fallout of the bottled anger of the previous day. We have to be careful so as not to record casualties.

"If they could do what they did to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal, then who are the bloody protesters in Lagos and Kano?," the source said But some leaders of the leading opposition party are insisting that the rallies should go on, adding that the poor management of the rallies by the agents of government will also dent the image of the PDP-led government and attract sympathy for the APC. Meanwhile, the House of Representatives may have decided to postpone its resumption date from December 3 until all primaries of all political parties have been concluded, New Telegraph has gathered.

A principal officer of the House confided in New Telegraph yesterday in Abuja that the postponement was to enable mem-

bers vying for various positions to participate in primaries.

He said for example, the APC had scheduled its gubernatorial primaries for December 4 a day after the House was expected to reconvene.

"For example, Speaker (Aminu) Tambuwal and some of our colleagues are contesting for governorship on the platform of APC and the primaries are to hold on December 4. So, how can they come here and start going back to their states?

"Mind you, they have to campaign and that period is the height of campaign activities so we may not resume till late December", he added.

Asked whether the impending postponement was not borne out of the fear of possible arrest of the speaker by the police, the member said: "Tambuwal has told the whole world that he is ready for arrest so that can't be an issue at all."

He explained that apart from Tambuwal's readiness to submit to any summon from a legal authority, members of the House have resolved to "play by the rules and not take the laws into their hands."

According to him, "we have uncovered a plot to force us (lawmakers) to act irresponsibly and outside the law; but we are resolved that no amount of blackmail or intimidation would push us to betray the confidence Nigerian people repose in us" Meanwhile, the NUJ has criticised, among others, the police for last Thursday's commotion at the National Assembly.

It warned that the recent actions of the police are threatening the nation’s democracy.

It cited the blockage of the National Assembly, the security cover provided the seven Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) lawmakers in Ekiti State and other similar actions.

NUJ President, Alhaji Muhammad Garba, told newsmen in Kano that the police lacked powers to block House members from performing their legislative activities.

Garba lamented that Nigerians are fast losing confidence in the ability of the police to maintain peace and order.

He also chided politicians for politicising security issue, especially the emergency rule in the North East states of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe.

He, however, admitted that the emergency rule has not succeeded as more territories have been captured.

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News

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2014 NEW TELEGRAPH

Alison-Madueke lobbies for Nigeria ahead of OPEC meeting Adeola Yusuf

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head of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries’ (OPEC) meeting billed for Thursday in Vienna, Austria, Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke, at the weekend, met with some economic and financial experts on the OPEC’s Economic Commission Board (ECB).

The meeting, it was learnt, was to ensure that the decision to be taken

by OPEC at the meeting favours the peculiar challenges facing Nigeria.

Sources said the ECB, which had earlier met last Friday over the falling oil prices and the economic future of Nigeria and other OPEC members, however, did not disclose its recommendations to the oil minister.

Alison-Madueke, who is the vice President of the OPEC, is expected to lead the Nigeria’s delegation to the meeting.

Nigeria, Africa's big-

gest economy and crude exporter, which depends largely on proceeds from crude to service over 85 per cent of its budget, has been seeking OPEC's blessing to hike its oil production quota.

The country has also been facing the biggest threat to its economy as prices of oil, its biggest revenue earner, crashed to a four-year low of $76.76

a barrel on November 14.

Also, a delegation comprising of the Group Managing Director, Nigerian National petroleum corporation (NNPC), Dr. Joseph T. Dawha, managing directors of the NNPC's subsidiaries, permanent secretary, Ministry of Petroleum Resources, some lawmakers, technocrats and media men are to arrive Vienna on Wednesday

ahead of the economysaving and policy setting meeting, which will decide how to address a looming over-supply of crude.

Meanwhile, OPEC has said Nigeria only pay lips services to the Greenfield refinery projects.

The country, OPEC said in its 2014 World outlook, had failed to fast-track the implementation of these new refinery projects and

had continued to face setback on rehabilitation of the existing refineries.

The group blamed the dismal refining capacity in Nigeria on its inability to weather the headwinds in the global oil industry.

It also criticised the huge refining gap within Africa, noting that the region is lagging behind in the implementation of refinery projects.

30o C 26oC Thunder Storms

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PORT HARCOURT

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KANO

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Mostly Sunny

ENUGU

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IBADAN

33oC

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CALABAR

29o C 23oC Thunder Storms

MAIDUGURI

ONITSHA

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FIRST NATION AIRWAYS LAGOS-ABUJA (MON-FRI) 06.50; 09:30; 11:45; 16:00 (SAT) 06:50; 11:45 (SUN) 11:45; 16:00 ABUJA-LAGOS (MON-FRI) 09:00; 11:30; 13:40;18:30 (SAT) 09:00; 13:40 (SUN) 13:40; 18:30 LAGOS-PORT-HARCOURT (MON-FRI) 14:45 (SAT) 16:15 (SUN) 14:45 PORT-HARCOURT-LAGOS (MON-FRI) 16:50 (SAT) 18:20 (SUN) 16:50 AEROCONTRACTORS LAGOS-ABUJA (MON-FRI) 06:50; 13:30; 16:30; 19:45 (SAT/SUN) 12:30; 16:45 ABUJA-LAGOS (MON-FRI) 07:30; 13:00; 19:00 (SAT) 12:30 (SUN) 15:30 MEDVIEW AIRLINES LAGOS-ABUJA (MON-FRI) 07:00; 08:50; 12:00; 15:30 (SAT) 10:00; 15:00 (SUN) 17:30; 18:30 ABUJA-LAGOS (MON-FRI) 09:00; 14:00, 15:00; 18:30

TODAY’S WEATHER FORECAST LAGOS

FLIGHT SCHEDULE

L-R: First Secretary, Niger Embassy, Mr. Saley Idrissa; Director General, National Orientation Agency (NOA), Mr. Mike Omeri ; Consular Affairs, Niger Embassy, Mr. Ibrahim Traore and Representative of Federal Capital Territory Police Commissioner, Mr. S.A Maidabino, at a conference on co-existence, forgiveness and religious tolerance, in Abuja…at the weekend.

2015: Clear and present danger to our democracy CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

interests. Similarly, some actions and pronouncements by the Department of State Security (DSS) – Nigeria’s main domestic intelligence agency – have raised concerns about institutional bias. If these agencies act or are perceived to act in a partisan manner, they could undermine free and fair polls and heighten the risks of violence, particularly after the vote.”

Crying wolf, when none exist? Not quite.

Already, events in the polity in the last one week have moved Nigeria closer to the precipice ahead of the 2015 general election. For whatever reason, the assault on the National Assembly last Thursday by the police, on the pretext of acting on an intelligence report of alleged invasion of the House by thugs, is a source of

concern to all.

The parliament is the symbol of democracy. For the police to have invaded the House of Representatives just to prevent the Speaker, Mr. Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, from presiding over the special session to consider the request of the president for an extension of emergency rule in the Boko Haram-ravaged Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states was an assault on Nigeria’s democracy. For policemen to fire canisters into the hallowed chamber of the National Assembly is grave and dangerous to our democracy, which at 15 is still at a fragile infancy.

In the face-off between the police and the lawmakers, the legislators had to resort to scaling the fence of the National Assembly to access the chamber in a bid to prevent what they have described as

an attempt to illegally remove Tambuwal.

The defence of the police, that the barricade of the National Assembly, meant to prevent Tambuwal and opposition lawmakers from entering the premises, was to prevent hoodlums from taking over the National Assembly complex, flies in the face of logic. One does not expect a police force with a deficit public trust to further drag itself into a political fray. The police have already given room for suspicion on its bias against the opposition. The speed at which the Inspector- General of Police, Suleiman Abba, withdrew the security aides attached to Tambuwal on the pretence that the speaker defected from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the All Progressives Congress (APC) is a pointer to the institutional bias of the law

enforcement agency in what is really a political battle between the ruling party and the opposition. As at today, the police have done nothing to the Speaker of the Ondo State House of Assembly, Ms Jumoke Akindele, who, along with other lawmakers from the Labour Party (LP) followed the state Governor, Dr. Olusegun Mimiko, to move to the PDP. However, the lawmakers should have treaded cautiously and needed not to have scaled the fence.

The resort to self-help, which both parties in the political crisis arising from Tambuwal's defection have embraced, is not healthy for democracy.

Like a planned scene, the invasion of the National Assembly by the security agents on November 20 coincided with the CONTINUED ON PAGE 7

OVERLAND AIRWAYS LAGOS-ILORIN (MON-FRI) 07:15 LAGOS-IBADAN (MON-FRI) 7:00 IBADAN-ABUJA (MON-FRI) 08:00 IBADAN-LAGOS (MON-FRI) 16:30 ILORIN –ABUJA (MON-FRI) 08:30 ILORIN –LAGOS (MON-FRI) 17:00 ABUJA-ASABA (MON-FRI) 10:00 ASABA-ABUJA (MON-FRI) 14:15 ASABA-LAGOS (MON-FRI) 11:30 LAGOS-ASABA (MON-FRI) 13:00 ABUJA-ILORIN 16:00 ABUJA-IBADAN 15:00 ARIK AIR LAGOS-ABUJA (MON-FRI) 07:00; 08:00; 09:00; 11:00 13:00; 15:00; 17:00; 19:00 (SAT) 07:00; 09:00; 11:00; 13:00; 15:00; 17:00; 19:00 (SUN) 11:00; 13:00; 15:00; 17:00; 19:00 ABUJA-LAGOS (MON-FRI) 07:00; 09:00; 11:00; 13:00; 15:00; 17:00; 19:00; 20:00 (SAT) 07:00; 09:00; 11:00; 13:00; 15:00; 17:00; 19:00 (SUN) 09:00; 13:00; 15:00; 17:00; 19:00 LAGOS-PORT-HARCOURT (MON-FRI) 07:00; 09:30; 11:00; 13:30; 15:00; 17:30 (SAT) 07:00; 11:00; 15:00 (SUN) 09:30; 11:00; 13:30; 15:00; 17:30 PORT-HARCOURT-LAGOS (MON-FRI) 07:30; 09:00; 11:30; 13:00; 15:30; 17:00 (SAT) 07:30; 11:30; 09:00; 13:00; 17:00 (SUN) 11:30; 13:00; 15:30; 17:00 ABUJA-PORT-HARCOURT (MON-FRI) 06:45; 10:10; 13:30; 16:50 (SAT/SUN) 06:45; 10:10; 13:30 PORT-HARCOURT-ABUJA (MON-FRI) 08:30; 11:50; 15:10; 18:30 (SAT/SUN) 08:30; 11:50; 15:10

News

NEW TELEGRAPH MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2014

FG to link state capitals with rail system

P

resident Goodluck Jonathan at the weekend unveiled a plan by the Federal Government to link all state capitals with rail transportation to boost the nation’s economy.

Jonathan told the 17th meeting of the Honorary International Investment Council (HIIC) in London that with such nationwide rail coverage, roads and highways would be better maintained, adding “if we do not link state capitals by rail, our roads will not last.’’

On upgrade and expansion of the nation’s public infrastructure, the

president said: “We cannot mould the economy of the country without good infrastructure.

“Quite a number of companies construct roads to their sites. This is not supposed to be so.

We are committed to addressing this, we have been working hard and we have improved our road networks significantly.’’

He expressed optimism that government will resurface all federal road networks across the country within the next three years.

“We intend to initiate some new ones that are very critical, especially to

link up Port Harcourt city and Bonny the major gas exporting terminal of our country,’’ a report by the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) quoted the president as saying.

The president also informed the HIIC members of government’s commitment to securing the nation’s air space and improving the quality of airport terminal buildings.

He also assured them that government was determined to end security challenge facing the country.

“We are improving in the area of security, for about a week now, no

new story of Boko Haram holding territories.

“Instead, we are reducing them by the day, before now, many local government areas in Borno State were taken

by Boko Haram, but now it has reduced.

“We are working to put an end to the holding of territories by Boko Haram’’, he stated.

Baroness Lynda Chalker, HIIC Coordinator, said the council had focused on various sectors of the economy since inception.

“But this 17th meeting will focus on rail transportation given its critical role to the economy,’’ she added.

L-R: Managing Director, Jaguar Landrover (sub Saharan Africa), Richard Gouveneur; Chief Executive Officer, Coscharis Group, Chief Cosmas Maduka; Director of Operations, Jaguar Landrover, Nigel Clarke and Group Managing Director, Coscharis Group, Mr. Josaiah Samuel, during a courtesy visit by the Jaguar Landrover officials to Coscharis Motors…recently

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2015: Clear and present danger to our democracy CONTINUED FROM PAGE 6

impeachment of the principal officers of the Ekiti State House of Assembly by seven out of the 26-member legislature. The drama in Ekiti is being spearheaded by seven PDP lawmakers. As at today, two speakers lay claim to the headship of the Assembly. One speaker is supported by six lawmakers and the Ayo Fayose-led government while Speaker Adewale Omirin has 18 lawmakers behind him.

This is a repeat of the madness during the Olusegun Obasanjo administration that attracted rebuke from the Supreme Court.

Then, minority lawmakers supported by the presidency supported the impeachment of Governors Rashidi Ladoja and Joshua Dariye in Oyo and Plateau states respectively. Fayose, in his first turbulent tenure, was also consumed by such an illegal impeachment process.

Also, the Department of State Security (DSS) and soldiers on Saturday, November 22, invaded the data office of APC, the main opposition party in Lagos State. In the process, 28 people – 25 data staff and three security guards – were arrested. Computer hardware, which con-

tained data of APC members throughout the country, were confiscated and equipment vandalised.

The frequent use of military in election and other purposes poses a danger to democracy.

There is no doubt that the assaults on the hallowed chamber of the House of Representatives, the invasion of the APC office by the DSS and the assault on the Ekiti State House of Assembly, portend great danger to Nigeria's growing democracy.

Politicians are unwittingly giving credence to the prediction that Nigeria will break up in 2015.

President Jonathan should decisively bring to a halt this clear and present danger to the nation’s democracy.

It’s not enough for the presidency to say it didn’t order the assault on the National Assembly. The flipside of the argument would be: What has the president done to call to order the unbecoming conducts of the nation's security apparatchik, being the appointing authority?

If this democracy fails, Nigerians will hardly forgive the present crop of political practitioners, after years of toil to send the military to the barracks. A word should be enough for the wise.

Ngilari pleads with N'Assembly to extend emergency rule CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

insurgents on their way to fish. Some were butchered; some were shot by gunmen while others were tied and thrown into the river,” he added.

He stated that he personally counted 48 corpses, including those thrown into the river, adding that people were fleeing the area as they were afraid of further attack.

An official of the Borno State Fishermen and Fish Traders Association, who craved for anonymity due to security reason, confirmed the incident.

He said: “The Boko Haram insurgents killed 48 of our members. As I am speaking with you now, our chairman is already in Baga to see things for himself.”

He said they had reported the matter to the Multinational Joint Task Force and called on the Federal

Government, the Nigerien and Cameroonian authorities to intensify efforts before the insurgents took over the whole area.

Effort to get the spokesman of the state Police command, Mr. Gideon Jibrin, a Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) for confirmation proved abortive as his telephone lines were switched off.

However, disturbed by the growing wave of insurgency in the North, the Sultan of Sokoto and President-General of the Jama’atu Nasril Islam, Alhaji Sa’ad Abubakar III, yesterday called on the Federal Government to recall ex-servicemen to join in the ongoing antiinsurgency war.

In a statement issued in Kaduna by the SecretaryGeneral of the JNI, Dr. Khalid Abubakar-Aliyu, the Sultan expressed concern about the war

against Boko Haram and urged the Federal Government to expedite efforts to quickly end the insurgency.

Also yesterday, Adamawa State Governor, Mr. Bala James Ngilari, appealed to the National Assembly to approve President Goodluck Jonathan's request to extend the state of emergency in his state as well as Borno and Yobe.

The sultan, a retired military officer, in the statement, described the annexation of towns and villages by Boko Haram as a grave danger to the nation.

He said Nigerian sovereignty had been threatened by the sect’s taking over of towns and villages and called on the government to “act fast and stop wallowing in diatribe, as human lives are sacred and must be seen to be treated as so!”

According to him, the Federal Government needs to urgently wake up to its responsibility of protecting lives and property, which is the primary responsibility of government.

“JNI condemns these heinous attacks in the strongest terms and once again calls on the Federal Government of Nigeria, with the loudest voice, to wake up to its fundamental and obligatory responsibility of protecting lives and properties of Nigerians,” the statement added.

The sultan who expressed worries over how soldiers flee battlefield said: “Where withered the Nigerian Army of the 1967-69 civil war? Where are the heroes of international peacekeeping?

When will the government bring an end to this scourge? Does the government really have the

capability, capacity, commitment and sincerity to bring an end to this insurgency and the multifarious security challenges facing the nation?

“As has been done painfully in previous cases, JNI President-General and the Sultan of Sokoto, His Eminence, Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar, on behalf of Nigerian Muslims, condemns these unabated acts of terror being unleashed on innocent citizens and calls for concerted introspection and sincere commitment by government to take proactive and effective measures in addressing this pernicious problem.

“The government should, as a matter of urgency, ensure that the security forces get all that they need for effective operations and that they serve diligently as soldiers should.

“In addition, all culprits must be apprehended and brought to justice, thus giving effect to the laws of the land and deterring others."

Meanwhile, Adamawa State governor has pleaded with the National Assembly to approve the request to extend the state of emergency in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states.

Ngilari told reporters in Abuja that his administration was already working with the military to rid the state of insurgents who have taken territories.

He said: "The state is working with the military to chase out the insurgents. The state and the military working together have made substantial gains. I appeal to members of the National Assembly to approve the state of emergency extension as requested by President Goodluck Jonathan.”

8

News

warning

Former president Olusegun Obasanjo under fire over his sharp tongue Kunle Olayeni and Wale Elegbede

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chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Ogun State, Prince Buruji Kashamu, yesterday warned former President

monday, november 24, 2014 NEW TELEGRAPH

national

Leave Jonathan alone, Kashamu, ARG tell Obasanjo Olusegun Obasanjo to desist from publicly denigrating President Goodluck Jonathan.

That was even as a group, the O’odua development Initiative, ODI, asked the former president to take responsibilities for the perceived failure of the president.

Kashamu spoke while reacting to comments credited to Obasanjo that the president had performed below average.

The PDP chieftain, who described the former president's comment as "self-serving, unjustifiable and totally unwarranted," maintained that Jonathan has performed above average and deserves a second term.

Obasanjo had during an encounter with book writers in Abeokuta as part of activities marking the popular Ake Festival at the weekend, said Jonathan's performance

"is below average."

But in a statement he issued in Abeokuta yesterday, Kashamu said it was most ridiculous for the former President to publicly denigrate his successors just to score cheap political points.

"If this is how he wants to regain his lost political relevance in the South West, then it would be counterproductive," he added.

He said the present ad-

ministration has set Nigeria in the right direction, making her to be one of the 26th largest economy in the world and the largest in Africa, with half a trillion naira Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

He said: "My attention has been drawn to yet another outburst and unwarranted attack by ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo on the person and office of President Goodluck Jonathan, wherein the former claimed that President Jonathan has performed below average.

"It is utterly nauseating how he cashes on the slightest opportunity to publicly cast aspersion on President Jonathan, with the intent of inciting the people against the President and swaying public opinion against him.

"If this occasional outburst is how he wants to regain his lost political relevance in the South West, then it would be counterproductive. We

thank God that since he turned his back on the PDP, the party has been repositioned and we have been winning elections fair and square."

"It is high time Obasanjo (was) reminded that he is not the only former leader in this country.

If he is not content with tending to his chicken and farm, at his age and level, he should commit himself to courses that would outlive him.

The ODI also berated Obasanjo for his utterances.

Speaking in Lagos at a press briefing, the group’s patron, Yinka Odumakin, said Obasanjo's scorecards and antecedents has clearly shown that he is most unqualified to assess the current administration given the fact that he (Obasanjo) did worse things during his eight year reign as civilian president, adding that the former president cannot be the conscience of the nation.

Akintola: IGP 'not matured' for office Biodun Oyeleye Ilorin

A L-R: Ondo State Governor, Dr. Olusegun Mimiko; Emeritus Prof. of Public Health, Adetokunbo Lucas and his wife, Lady Kofo, at the 5th Annual Lucas Lecture/Foundation laying of Prof. Lucas Adetokunbo Institute of Public Health building complex at OAU, Ile-Ife…at the weekend.

Fashola to Lagosians: I don't Tukur warns lawmakers, parties against killing democracy do business on Facebook, sembly involving the secuYekeen Nurudeen Twitter, others rity operatives, as well as Abuja

l Warns against fraudsters Muritala Ayinla

L

agos State Governor, Mr Babatunde Fashola (SAN) yesterday cautioned residents to be wary of fraudsters, who now create fake Facebook accounts for him to extort money from unsuspecting people.

He said he doesn't make any business transaction on Facebook or other social media, explaining that the latest warning was informed when the State Government’s attention was drawn to the latest activities of a certain Dr. Bukola David, who attempted to defraud a popular artiste by demanding that a certain percentage of money be paid into an account to facilitate the processing of a large sum of money in the SURE-P Empowerment Fund for the artiste, adding that members of the public should beware of such scammers.

Speaking through his Special Adviser on Media , Mr. Hakeem Bello, Fashola reiterated that he does not do business

on Facebook, adding that although he has facebook and twitter accounts, those are used strictly for communicating government policies and programmes when necessary.

He said: “The caution was informed when the State Government’s attention was drawn to the latest activities of a certain Dr. Bukola David, who attempted to defraud a popular artiste by demanding that a certain percentage of money be paid into an account to facilitate the processing of a large sum of money in the SURE-P Empowerment Fund for the artiste, adding that members of the public should beware of such scammers".

He warned the people against falling prey to such fraudsters, who are impersonating him in attempts to swindle innocent residents on the various social media platforms, adding that security men are already on the trail of the conman and would leave no stone unturned to ensuring that he and his likes are brought to justice.

F

or mer National Chairman of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, has advised political players, security operatives, government officials and Nigerians in general to be wary of conducts capable of destroying the hard earned nation's democracy, which he observed is currently being rocked to its very foundation.

He stated this in a press statement issued against the backdrop of reported chaos in the National As-

the perceived breakdown of confidence between political party leaders and members, on electoral matters.

Tukur said that every Nigerian, entrusted with sensitive public positions, must learn to first place national interest above every other consideration in his or her service to the nation.

The former PDP National Chairman said that doing so at this critical phase of the Nigeria's history, would assist in preventing the perceived drifting of the nation towards the edge of a cliff.

CNPP accuses police, DSS of partisanship Onwuka Nzeshi ABUJA

T

he Conference of Nigerian Political Parties (CNPP) yesterday accused the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) and the Department of State Security (DSS) of playing partisan roles in the build up to the 2015 polls.

National Publicity Secretary of CNPP, Mr Osita Okechukwu, who made the accusation, condemned the attempt by security agencies to

prevent the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal and some lawmakers from entering the National Assembly last Thursday while allowing the Deputy Speaker and other lawmakers perceived to be loyal to the ruling party.

The action of the police, Okechukwu said, was an act of selective justice and an infringement on the rights and privileges of Tambuwal as penalty for his defection to the opposition party.

Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Chief Adeniyi Akintola, has described the Inspector General of Police, Mr Suleiman Abba as not being matured for the position. He said that was given last week's invasion of the National Assembly by policemen.

Akintola, who spoke with newsmen in Ijagbo, Oyun Local Government Area of Kwara State, said the National Council of States should take the blames for using what he referred to as "fire brigade approach" in ratifying the appointment of Abba as substantive IGP. The senior lawyer argued that there are sensitive positions that would require the appointing authorities to subject those that would be manning them to psychological and psychiatric test to ascertain the state of their mental capability.

While berating the police boss for the disastrous outing at the National Assembly, Akintola said the commotion at the Assembly complex and the way the Police handled it, portend grave danger for the nation's nascent democracy .

He said even if the IGP was acting under instruction, he ought to have been guided by the nation's constitution and the Police Act, saying the policemen's action was an assault on the foundation of democracy, which should not be tolerated by all lovers of democracy .

He said: "It (the crisis) portends danger. But I will not want to lay the blame at the doorsteps of the government. I want to lay the blame at our doorsteps as Nigerians. Many of us have been so complacent about the affairs of this country. Many of us have not been able to subject the issues affecting the country to empirical analysis."

PUBLIC NOTICE BONMENEBARI LEADERSHIP FOUNDATION

The general public is hereby notified that the above named FOUNDATION has applied to the Corporate Affairs Commission for registration of ADDITIONAL TRUSTEES to the existing trustees and to also amend its constitution to increase the number of trustees under Part "C" of the Companies and Allied Matters Act 1990.

The Trustees are: Additional Trustees 1. Charles Kpandei 1. Olorunjo Adebayo Thomas 2. Bola Kpandei 2. Akande Olabisi Olugbenga 3. Solomon Kpandei 4. Oladejo Ajayi AIMS AND OBJECTIVES: 1. To organise leadership programmes and conferences 2. To organise entrepreneurship programmes and conferences 3. To organise youth development and empowerment programmes.

Any objection to the registration should be forwarded to the RegistrarGeneral, Corporate Affairs Commission, plot 420 Tigris Crescent, off Aguiyi Ironsi Street, Maitama, Abuja within 28 days of this publication.

Signed: BAYO SANNI ESQ

NEW TELEGRAPH monday, november 24, 2014

Yekeen Nurudeen Abuja

T

he Judiciary Staff Union of Nigeria (JUSUN) has finalised plans to resume its suspended strike over what it described as the unwillingness of both federal and state governments to obey the January 13, 2014 Federal High Court judgement on financial autonomy of the Judiciary.

The Judiciary workers union, at the end of an emergency meeting of its National Executive Council (NEC) held in Abuja at

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national

Autonomy: Judiciary workers to resume strike Dec 1 the weekend, also frowned at the continuous delay in the release of the Federal Judiciary allocations, noting that the delay has brought untold hardship to its members.

In a communiqué jointly signed by the President and General Secretary of the union, Comrade Marwan Mustapha Adamu and Isaiah Adetola respectively, the union

expressed concerns over a situation in which the Judiciary is seen as a branch of the Executive, stressing that the union would not rest until that arm of government gets its total freedom as enshrined in the constitution.

The union said the NEC decided to grant the seven days requested by the stakeholders at the November 19 meeting

0.94

The number of fixed-telephone The number of fixed-telephone subscripsubscriptions of Benin Republic in 2009. tions per 100 inhabitants of Guinea in 2009.

Source: Itu.int Source: Itu.int

to see if the court order would be implemented.

It, however, noted that the workers should not be blamed if activities at the nation's courts are grounded as a result of the impending strike if at the end of the seven days, governments failed to implement the court order.

It would be recalled that the November 19 meeting between the union leaders

73.8%

The percentage of the urban population of Cook Islands in 2012.

Source: Un.org

and government representatives such as Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Supervising Minister of Labour, Accountant General of the Federation and other stakeholders could not resolve the impasse.

Those who represented government requested for seven days to cross check the figure presented by the union.

587

The number of pending asylum seekers of Costa Rica at the beginning of 2010.

Source: Blatantworld.com

9

Pitfalls to avoid in 2015 elections,

by Iwu Wale Elegbede

F

ormer Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Maurice Iwu, has identified pitfalls Nigeria must avoid ahead of the 2015 general election.

He urged stakeholders to address issues such as electoral violence, influence of money politics, negative mindset of Nigerians, internal democracy within the political parties and the reluctance of women to participate in politics and elections.

Iwu spoke at the second anniversary lecture of an online news portal, RealNews, in Lagos at the weekend.

The former INEC boss said everything must be done to ensure that violence does not mar the elections. He noted that there are signs that some Nigerians who are desperate for power at all cost would do "just anything" in the bid to achieve their aims.

Jonathan tasks varsities on entrepreneurship Ibraheem Musa Kaduna

P L-R: Catholic Archbishop of Abuja, Cardinal John Onaiyekan with leading Catholic faithful on road procession in commemoration of this years Christ the King ceremony, at the Catholic Pro- Cathedral, Garki, in Abuja… yesterday. PHOTO: ELIJAH OLALUYI

Ahmadiyyah wants quick resolution of N'Assembly crisis

l More groups condemn police action Muritala Ayinla and Kunle Olayeni

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hmadiyyah Muslim Jama'at Nigeria has urged the Upper Chamber of the National Assembly to wade into the crisis rocking the Federal House of Representatives without bias, describing the crisis as unfortunate.

Also, an All Progressives Congress (APC) senatorial aspirant in Ogun State, Otunba Seyi Oduntan, has called on the Nigeria Police Council to query the Inspector-General of Police, Suleiman Abba, over the recent fracas at the House of Representatives.

The group also said that the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC should not fix

any deadline for voters registration, unless the commission puts in place adequate machinery for voters registration without tears.

Briefing journalists on the state of the nation, Head of Ahmadiyyah, Dr Moshood Fashola, blamed the political crisis in the National Assembly and Ekiti State on Nigerians and religious leaders, adding that Nigerians kept quiet when many things started going wrong.

While calling on the two chambers of the National Assembly to wade into the 'miserable and horrible' arrangement of voters registration exercise, the group said millions of Nigerians are made to suffer desiring to exercise their civic right.

Fashola said: "And if any group of any politicians or interest group is planning to perpetrate injustice and prevent a fair, free and peaceful election in 2015, the God of all creation, God of Justice, Majesty and Supreme will certainly deal severely with all of them.

Oduntan said the invasion of the National Assembly complex by policemen, who fired teargas at lawmakers loyal to the Speaker, Aminu Tambuwal, was against the law.

He spoke in Abeokuta at the weekend while featuring at the "Open Forum" organised by the Correspondents' Chapel of Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Ogun State Council.

Why we raided APC office, by DSS Emmanuel Onani Abuja

T

he Department of State Services (DSS) has said that its operatives raided one of the offices of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Lagos State, following a petition that the facility was being used to clone the Independent National Electoral Commission's (INEC's) Permanent Voters' Card (PVC).

The APC, through its spokesman, Alh. Lai Mohammed, had likened the raid to the Watergate Scandal in the United States (US).

However, in an electronic mail sent to New Telegraph yesterday, the secret service's Deputy Director of Public Relations, Marilyn Ogar, noted that those alleged in the petition to be cloning the PVCs, had the intention of hacking into INEC's data base, in order

to replace it with their own data.

The statement reads: "A petition was received by this Service about some activities at No. 10 Bola Ajibola Street, Allen Avenue, Ikeja, Lagos. The petition alleged that those behind the activities were cloning INEC Permanent Voters Card, with the intention of hacking into INEC data base, corrupting it and replacing them with their own data.

"Based on this information, the Service placed the building under surveillance, and having been convinced that some unwholesome activities were going on in the building, it undertook a raid of the premises. In the process, some persons were arrested while a server, three hard drives and 31 Ghana Must Go bags of hard copy documents were recovered and taken away for further investigation.

resident Goodluck Jonathan has advised the council and management of Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) to sustain the training of young Nigerians, who will channel their energies towards national growth.

The president, who was represented by Mallam Ibrahim Shekarau, the Minister of Education, stated this at the 37th convocation ceremony of the university, held at the ABU’s main campus in Samaru, Zaria.

Jonathan also said that entrepreneurial development was critical to national growth and therefore universities in the country must pursue it with all diligence.

The President assured that government would continue to address the issue of employment among the country’s unemployed youths in order to ensure rapid economic growth, urging the graduates to be creative.

Earlier, the Vice-Chancellor of the university, Professor Abdullahi Mustapha, had said his administration gave priority to the faculty of engineering because of its enormous potentials for the development of the country.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2014 NEW TELEGRAPH

10

Metro

Three killed as thugs burn houses, vandalise vehicles WILD WILD WEST

Political thugs continue to unleash a reign of terror on Ibadan, once regarded as the political hotbed of the South-West Sola Adeyemo Ibadan

A

gain, violence broke out in parts of Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, yesterday as some political thugs, who went on the rampage, vandalised property and burnt houses.

The melee was said to be an offshoot of Friday’s fracas at Oke Ado in Governor Abiola Ajimobi’s local government where a policeman was shot dead and two others injured.

Some residents said that three persons were killed yesterday, adding that their bodies had been taken away before journalists got to the area.

Some loyalists of a House of Representatives member, Saheed Fijabi and those of his challenger, Rotimi Ajanaku of the All Progressives Congress (APC), were said to be testing their strength and popularity while awaiting the governor in the area.

Several other people were injured in the fracas.

However, the state Director, Media and Publicity of the APC, Wale Sadare, alleged that the opposition parties, the Peoples Democratic Party

Muritala Ayinla

T

he Lagos State University (LASU) has said that it decided to withdraw the 19 PhD certificates suspected to be awarded in error in order to check the “certificate mess” in the institution.

Briefing journalists at the weekend, the LASU Vice-Chancellor, Prof John Obafunwa, said that the errors in the certificate

ABIODUN BELLO FEATURES Editor

abiodun. bello@newtelegraphonline.com

© Daily Telegraph Publishing Company Limited

Scenes of the attack

(PDP) and Accord Party, were behind the shooting.

While vehicles, tricycles and motorcycles were burnt at Born Photo, Iyana Asuni, Ile Eja and parts of Gege area, with shops vandalised, the house of Pa Yunusa Ladoja, the late father of former Oyo State Governor, Senator Rashidi Ladoja, was also not spared.

At press time, a house located at the main junction of Iyana Asuni was still burning while men of the State Fire Service were battling to put out the fire.

Tension was high in the areas with security operatives, including regular policemen,

taking positions, apparently to forestall further breakdown of law and order.

In his account of the incident, an octogenarian photographer, popularly called ‘Born Photo,’ whose shop was also vandalised, said the thugs were armed with weapons, including guns.

He said: “Someone just called me this morning to tell me that thugs had invaded my shop. By the time I got here, I met the doors and glass planes, as well as some finished photos damaged. The thugs were reportedly armed to the teeth.”

The window planes and

doors of Pa Ladoja’s house located at ‘Born Photo’ junction and other items were damaged.

A fuel station located at Iyana Asuni junction was also vandalised, although security operatives were already stationed there at press time.

Alhaji Lanre Latinwo, media aide to Senator Rashidi Ladoja, described the incident as unfortunate.

It could not be confirmed whether any arrest had been made in connection with the incident as the state Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), DSP Olabisi Ilobanafor, refused to speak on the issue.

Man leads gang to rob brother of N2.3m Dominic Adewole ASABA

A

24-year-old man, identified as Babayo Ali, has been arrested for allegedly leading three others to rob his elder brother, Ahmed Ali, of N2.3 million.

Other members of the gang, Nnamdi Ugwuonwa, Felix Igbeona and Babatunde Adebayo, who are also in police custody, allegedly conspired with Babayo to rob Ahmed in Asaba, the Delta State capital.

The state Public Relations Officer (PPRO), DSP Celetina Kalu, said the suspects robbed the victim opposite the defunct Textile Mill in Asaba before escaping to their hideout.

She said: “Based on the incident, detectives swung into action and arrested the suspects.

The architect of the crime and the insider that provided the information on the stolen money are now in custody.”

Kalu disclosed that the suspects had confessed to the crime and mentioned one Dumebi Onwuegbuzia, 25, who allegedly provided the locallymade cut-to-size gun used during the operation.

“However, the said Dumebi, who was paid N30,000 after the robbery, who has been at large and on our wanted list was arrested by operatives of the State Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) in Asaba,” she added.

According to Kalu, further investigations later revealed that Dumebi runs a Vikings confraternity and has initiated many boys into the dreaded cult group within Asaba metropolis.

‘Why LASU awarded 19 PhD certificates in error’ were discovered when one of the owners refused to collect hers on the grounds that she was awarded PhD certificate in the programme she did not enrol for.

The VC also said the “certificate mess” was part of the rot in the university, adding that the Senate of the institution was committed to streamlining the problems of “double honours” in the certificates and rectify those awarded for the programmes not run by the university.

He said: “Somebody complained to the university’s Senate that she was given a PhD in certificate in a programme that she did not enrol in. Specifically, she said that what she enrolled for was MPhil/PhD International Business. She told the Senate that she was given a PhD certificate in Business Administration

and Marketing and that person refused to collect the certificate.

“I didn’t even know anything about it until it came to the fore.

The case came to the Senate not to Professor Obafunwa. And the Senate directed the Dean of PostGraduate School, Dean, Faculty of Management Sciences to go and bring all the materials relating to these things. The PhD certificates that they have awarded over the last three to four years. We asked them to let us look at the documents and they came with 19.

“The Senate spent about three hours debating this particular issue. Members of the Senate were able to categorise everything into about three groups. I think about eight of them or so, virtually have no problems.

“Although the Senate decided that it will like to see their

Obafunwa

certificates of conversion and what they were admitted for in the first instance. Eight of them

were given PhD in the areas they actually enrolled for, but the Senate wanted the documentation.

Metro 11

NEW TELEGRAPH MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2014

Wole Shadare

A

member of the cabin crew of Associated Airlines whose aircraft crashed on October 3, 2013 in Lagos, Queeneth Owolabi, yesterday reunited with her family after returning from Johannesburg, South Africa, where she was rushed to for treatment.

The aircraft was conveying the body of former governor of Ondo State, Olusegun Agagu, from Lagos to Akure for burial. It lifted off from runway 18L of Murtala Mohammed Airport at 09:32am.

The crew received warnings from the aircraft’s aural warning system during the takeoff roll and also failed to make “V1” and “rotate” calls. It then struggled to gain altitude immediately after take-off; less than a minute after, the aircraft impacted terrain in a nose-down-and-near90-degrees-bank altitude.

Reports differ but, according to the manifest, the flight had 17 passengers and seven crew members; four passengers and two crew members survived the accident but one of the passengers later died in the hospital. Fatalities included relatives of Agagu and officials of the Ondo State Government.

Agagu: Associated Airlines crew member reunites with family

Juliana Francis

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Mrs. Owolabi and family members at the Lagos airport

However, Owolabi, who arrived aboard South Africa Airways about 4pm, could not hold back tears when she sighted her two daughters, age nine and six, as she held them to her bosom.

She told our correspondent that she was seeing them for the first time since the accident which left her

with some burns and deep cut in the head and legs.

Owolabi was on a wheelchair but expressed the hope that she would walk again.

Her husband and other relations were on hand to receive her and praised God for sparing her life.

Owolabi said she could not remember how the accident happened, saying

PHOTO: Wole Shadare

she was in a coma and only saw herself in the hospital.

She said: “I feel much better. The airline officials showed tremendous support and assistance towards me. They footed my medical bills 100 per cent. It is a great feeling to be reunited with my family again after more than a year in South African hospital.”

Policeman kills IT expert in Lagos Taiwo Jimoh

A

32-year-old Information Technology expert has been reportedly shot dead by a police inspector attached to the Lion Building on Lagos Island.

The victim, Adeniyi Asubiaro, was said to be sitting in front of his house on Oshodi Street on Thursday when he was shot by a policeman allegedly chasing some youths at a birthday party.

The victim’s mother, Mrs Iyabode Ganzalo, told our correspondent at the weekend that she went to a ParentTeacher Association meeting and decided to check on Adeniyi, but his wife said he was still in the office at Sura Shopping Complex.

She said: “Before I left my son’s house, I saw some youths gather at a garden close to his house on Oshodi Street celebrating birthday. I left for my shop where I sell groceries at King’s College hostel.

“As I was about to settle down to attend to some students, someone shouted ‘Mummy, meet us at the General Hospital, it is your son, Adeniyi’.

“When I got to the Island General Hospital, I met his friends and some other family members crying and rolling on the ground.

Yet, I had not known what

Mischief-makers creating panic, says Lagos PPRO

happened. But when I was allowed to see my son at the Emergency Ward, he was already dead.

“I started crying and was asking his friends who could have done this to me.

I was told that it was one ‘Inspector Akeem Skoda’ from the Lion Building police station. He fired a shot when he was chasing some youths at a birthday party.

It was the shot that hit my son where he was sitting in front of his house.

“After the policeman had killed my son, he ransacked his pocket and took his phone, money, wristwatch and office key.”

The widow, Mrs Idayat Asubiaro, who is eightmonth pregnant, said there was no light on the fateful day, so she and her husband decided to sit outside the house and take fresh air.

She said: “But suddenly we saw people running. My husband and I also ran and took different directions.

After the dust had settled, I went to his friends to know his whereabouts. I was told someone had been shot.

“I tried to know who was shot, but I was told it was not my husband.

“Who will take care of me and my baby? I want the Inspector General of Police, Suleiman Abba and Governor Babatunde Fashola to come to my aid. I have nobody to

ensure justice is done.”

When contacted on the telephone, the state Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), Mr Kenneth

Juliana Francis

T

he National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) said it had seized 4,832.74kg of various drugs and arrested 309 suspected drug traffickers in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja.

The Head, Media and Publicity, NDLEA, Mr Mitchel Ofoyeju, said the seizure and arrests were made between January and October.

According to him, among the seized drugs are 102 bottles of cough syrup with codeine content.

He said the bottles of cough

Politicians behind Ijaw monarch’s kidnap, says UPU Gabriel Choba Ughelli

T

Nwosu, asked our correspondent to send a text message to him on the issue.

But at press time, he did not reply the text message.

The late Asubiaro

olice in Lagos State have urged the residents to go about their lawful duties and disregard report in the social media warning the people to keep away from some areas in the metropolis.

The state Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), Mr Kenneth Nwosu, gave the assurance in a statement.

He said: “The attention of the Lagos State Police Command has once again been drawn to a false information making the rounds in some isolated social media platforms claiming that the residents and visitors to Lagos have been warned by the Nigeria Police to be wary of some locations like Estate Bus Stop at Ketu-Alapere, Berger bus stop (on OPIC–Ibadan Expressway), First Gate Junction, Agidingbi, Boundary bus stop in Ajegunle, Ijora bus stop, Mile 2 Oke, Church bus stop, Agboju, Mile 2 (Badagry Expressway), Agric bus stop, Mile 2, Abulosu bus stop on Mile 2-Badagry Expressway, Apongbon bus stop, School bus stop, on Iba-Mile 2 Road in Ajegunle and Bamboo area on Oworonshoki, Lagos-Ibadan Expressway.”

Nwosu said that the claim was false, misleading and a figment of the authors’ imagination.

“The command wishes to enjoin all the residents and visitors to Lagos to ignore the false and misleading information in its entirety and go about their lawful businesses without fear of molestation,” he added.

According to him, the police have stepped up efforts to secure lives and property of the residents and visitors alike.

he Urhobo Progress Union (UPU) at the weekend condemned the abduction of the spiritual leader of the worshipers of Ijaw deity, Egbesu, who doubles as the Pere (king) of Oporomor Kingdom in Bayelsa State, HRM Augustin Ebikeme, Pere Ekere.

Addressing journalists in Mosogar, Ethiope West Local Government of Delta State, the UPU President-General, Chief Joseph Omene, blamed the incident on politics.

Omene, who appealed to the people to continue maintain the existing peace and order between the two ethnic groups, expressed optimism that the monarch would soon be released if he was actually held anywhere within the Urhobo nation.

Omene also advised the Ijaw nation to beware of the prevailing politicking within the state.

He said: “Politicians can do anything including kidnapping, to sabotage the existing peaceful relationship between the Urhobo and the Ijaw nations, with a view to truncating the 2015 agenda of the two ethnic groups, to their advantage.

“They too are good students of history and they know that the Ijaw and the Urhobo are brothers and politically working in unison.

“The Ijaw people should also realise that for some time now, some Urhobo people have been kidnapped and are presumed to be held up till this moment in Ijaw enclaves. The Urhobo have not taking war to Ijaw land because we know that there are selfish politicians at it.

NDLEA arrests 309 traffickers syrup were found in an abandoned defunct NITEL box at Wuse Zone 4 during a raid.

Others included cannabis (4,787.35kg), psychotropic substances (44.86kg), cocaine (428 grams) and methamphetamine (103 grams).

Ofoyeju said that suspected drug traffickers arrested within the period were 12 females and 297 males.

He said: “The NDLEA equally won the conviction of 101 accused persons in 10 months while other cases are still pending. Items for-

feited from those convicted include 22 vehicles and 14 motorcycles.

Counselling and rehabilitation services were also provided for 79 persons with drug abuse problem.”

The NDLEA Chairman, Ahmadu Giade, said that those convicted included Abubakar Sadiq (21) and Abdullahi Haruna (22), both from Gwoza, Borno State.

They were sentenced to six years’ imprisonment each for dealing in 0.8 grams of cocaine and 1.6 grams of cocaine, respectively.

12

News

monday, november 24, 2014 NEW TELEGRAPH

nation's capital

Robbers steal documents challenging Jonathan Tunde Oyesina Abuja

M

en suspected to be armed robbers on Friday night broke into the law office of Wahab Olatoye, one of the plaintiffs in the suit challenging the eligibility of President Goodluck Jonathan, to re-contest in the 2015 general elections, and carted away most of the files containing docu-

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ments to be used in the suit. They also stole other vital documents.

Olatoye, alongside one Adejumo Ajagbe had approached the Federal High Court sitting in Abuja, seeking an order restraining the INEC and the AGF from allowing Jonathan and Sambo to seek re-election for their respective offices in 2015.

Speaking with New Telegraph in Abuja, Olatoye said his office located at Suite 33, Manga

Plaza, Garki Area 11, was burgled on Friday night and vital documents he was using to pursue his case against the President.

He added that the crime had since been reported to the Garki Police station.

"It was really a great surprise to me when I was called on Saturday morning that my office had been burgled by yetto-be identified persons.

It was my office alone

0.94

The number of fixed-telephone The number of fixed-telephone subscripsubscriptions of Benin Republic in 2009. tions per 100 inhabitants of Guinea in 2009.

Source: Itu.int Source: Itu.int

that was burgled out of all the offices in the plaza. The thieves came in through the ceiling and ransacked all the files in my office.

"Although, they made away with some amount of money I left in the office, they also took away some documents, especially the ones I am using in pursuing my case against the eligibility of President Goodluck Jonathan.

"As a plaintiff in the

73.8%

The percentage of the urban population of Cook Islands in 2012.

Source: Un.org

matter and a legal practitioner, there are some documents I need to hand over to my lawyers, which I kept in the office.

All my computer systems in the office were also destroyed. The office safe was also destroyed.

"The matter has been reported to the FCDA police station in Garki, and the police have promised to come around on Monday morning for further investigation", Olatoye stated.

587

The number of pending asylum seekers of Costa Rica at the beginning of 2010.

Source: Blatantworld.com

Olatoye and Ajagbe had anchored their suit against Jonathan on the provisions of sections 132(1), 135(2)(a) and (b), 137(1)(b), 142(1) and (2) of the Constitution and the Supreme Court decisions.

The plaintiffs argued that by the virtue of constitutional provisions, the President and the Vice President, elected in the same election and sworn into office on the same date and ceremony were taken to have been elected for single term of four years.

The plaintiffs also contended that by the virtue of the oaths taken by Jonathan and Sambo, following the death of President Umaru Yar’Adua in 2010 and their subsequent reelection in 2011, both of them were deemed to have completed the two terms allowed by law.

Exclusive luxury apartments go for $1.5m Yusuf Shuaib Abuja

S

President, International Road Safety Organisation, Joop Goos (left), decorating the Minister of Aviation, Osita Chidokaa with the Service Medal Award in recognition of his contributions towards advancement of road safety within global circles in Abuja…at the weekend

Okereke: Jega lacks capacity to conduct 2015 elections Yusuf Shuaib Abuja

D

irector General, National Taskforce on Illegal Importation/ Smuggling of Small Arms, Ammunition and Light-Weapons (NATFORCE), Chief Emmanuel Osita Okereke, has re-affirmed his support for President Goodluck Jonathan’s re-election in 2015 general elections.

He also said that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Chairman, Prof.

Attahiru Jega, has no capacity to conduct the 2015 general elections.

Okereke, who doubles as chairman and member of the Governing Council/Board of Federal Polytechnic, Afikpo, told New Telegraph in Abuja that President Jonathan has performed

exceedingly well and deserves another term to finish the good work he has started.

He said: “I have since left African Liberation Party (ALP) to join the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and I am now a member of the PDP; and I am solidly behind President Goodluk Jonathan’s re-election that will bring him back to Aso Rock Villa in the 2015 general elections,” he said while responding to a question.

Okereke, however, argued that the creation of additional polling booths by Jega is a taboo, adding that Jega wanted to use the additional polling booths to rig the 2015 general elections. He said Jega knows quite well that he does not have the capacity to conduct the 2015 elections.

FCTA awards contracts for cottage hospitals Yekeen Nurudeen Abuja

T

he Secretary, Health and Human Service Secretariat, Dr. Ademola Onakomaiya, has reaffirmed the commitment of the FCT administration to continue to provide qualitative health care services that is based on quality, equality and sustainability.

Onakomaiya said the FCT administration has already awarded the construction and equipping of three 60-bedded cottage hospitals in Gwagwalad, Karshi and Shere, with the aim of decongesting the city’s hospitals and are all at various levels of completion.

He made this affir-

mation at the weekend, when he received the Department of Foreign Affairs Trade and Development, Canadian High Commission (DFATD), which paid him a courtesy visit in his office.

He said FCT health sector witnessed a radical change even with ever decreasing budgetary allocation with the provision of additional infrastructure in all its hospitals, additional hospital equipment as well as expansion of services.

The secretary added that the FCT health has also improved health indices with decrease in maternal mortality rate and infant mortality rate, increase in immunisation coverage and family planning and also massive reduction

in polio outbreak.

While speaking at the occasion, leader of the delegation, Emily Alexander, said the Department of Foreign Affairs Trade and Development of the Canadian High Commission through the UNH4+ (United Nations Health 4) project has supported the FCT implementing activities through WHO, UNFPA, UNICEF and UNAIDS and World Bank that are delivering maternal and child health program as one.

She said the team came to conduct monitoring visit to facilities they support in the FCT and also monitor the activities of the maternal newborn and child health week, which is presently on going in the territory.

ales Manager of exclusive luxury apartments, the Ambassador Height, Robert Davis, has said that 50 per cent of the high-end residential development being built adjacent to the Moevenpick Ambassador Hotel in Accra, Ghana, due for completion in December 2015, would be sold to prospective customers and especially Nigerians, at $1.5million each.

Davis disclosed this to selected journalists during his business visit to the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Abuja, Nigeria, at the weekend.

His visit from Ghana to Nigeria, and especially the FCT, among other reasons, was to meeting with prospective development partners for a potential Moevenpick Hotel and residential project on Jabi Lake, Abuja, Nigeria.

“We want to create a small community by Jabi Lake in Abuja, from a density stand point, because there is huge opportunity in Abuja,” to satisfy the burning investment appetite and high taste for luxury

by Nigerians, especially family-minded couple and fun-seeking bachelors, Davis added.

The most reason we target Jabi Lake within the FCT is because the Nigerian property market has great growth potential and huge opportunities for investment; especially with the encouraging demand from Nigeria; FCT is our next focus," Davis explained.

NEW TELEGRAPH MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2014

Imminent crisis

2015

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20

ICG’s fears over 2015

13

Jonathan sets benchmark on clean campaigns

Politics For players and students of Lagos politics, the current tantrum between a former Deputy National Deputy Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Chief Olabode George, and the erstwhile Minister of State for Defence, Senator Musiliu Obanikoro, is a repeat of the 2007 battle for the Lagos PDP governorship ticket. WALE ELEGBEDE reports

War without end

A

n ego war is afoot in the Lagos State chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the bone of contention is about who becomes the party’s standard bearer for the February 28, 2015 governorship election.

Former Deputy National Chairman of the PDP, Chief Olabode George, and the immediate past Minister of State for Defence, Senator Musiliu Obanikoro, are locked in an ego battle. What initially looked like a proxy war has now been unveiled as darts are being thrown from different angles against each other by the two opposing camps.

The judicial ambush The latest judicial twist to the PDP crisis in Lagos State relives the memory of the battle Obanikoro, a governorship aspirant, fought in the build-up to the 2007 election, but from the opposition angle.

Some members of the party have asked a Lagos Court to stop the governorship ambition of Obanikoro over an alleged falsification of age and dual citizenship.

They alleged that the ex-minister

AYODELE OJO

DEPUTY Editor, POLITICS ayodele.ojo@newtelegraphonline.com

© Daily Telegraph Publishing Company Limited

had acquired the citizenship of the United States of America without renouncing his Nigerian citizenship.

The plantiffs, Michael Babatunde Ogun, Suleiman Olayinka Saheed and Wasiu Adeniyi Odusan, all PDP members in the state, asked the court to determine Obanikoro’s eligibility to participate in the party’s governorship primaries fixed for December 8, 2014, “having previously presented a forged birth certificate to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) contrary to Section 182 (1) (J) of the 1999 Constitution.”

The trio also prayed the court for an injunction barring Obanikoro from accepting what they called “the PDP’s candidacy or nomination” to contest next year’s governorship election in Lagos State until the matter was favourably disposed of.

The suit, filed at an Ikeja High Court, Lagos, has already created bad blood among members of the party and the race for the ticket had been redefined by virtue of

the legal dimension.

Joined as respondent with Obanikoro in the suit filed on behalf of the trio by their lawyer, Mr. Wahab Shittu, are INEC and the PDP. In sum, they are asking the court to halt Obanikoro’s governorship ambition until the following questions among others, are resolved.

First, whether upon a proper construction and interpretation of Section 182(1) (a) (j) of the 1999 Constitution, Obanikoro, having voluntarily acquired the citizenship of the United States in addition to the citizenship of Nigeria, is eligible to present himself for nomination as a candidate in the governorship primaries of the PDP or any other registered political party for the purpose of contesting the 2015 election in Lagos State or any subsequent elections in Nigeria and whether upon a proper construction of Section 182 (1) (j) of the Constitution of Nigeria 1999, Obanikoro, having previously presented a forged birth certificate to INEC in the

April 2007 general election, when he ran for governorship in Lagos State, is eligible to present himself for nomination as a candidate in the PDP governorship primaries or any other registered political party.

The plaintiffs also asked the court to determine whether by the provisions of Section 31 (2) (50 (6) and (8) of the Electoral Act, 2010, the applicants have locus standi to institute this present proceedings against the respondents and that the first respondent is not qualified to participate and or take part in the gubernatorial primary election of the PDP. Among others, the plaintiffs sought a declaration of the court that based on paragraph 4(a) of Part IV of the Electoral Guidelines for Primary Elections 2014 of the third respondent and the antecedents of the first respondent particularised in the applicants’ affidavit in support of the originating summons, Obanikoro is not eligible to participate and or take CONTINUED ON PAGE 14

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Politics

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2014 NEW TELEGRAPH

George, Obanikoro square up C O N T I N U E D F R O M PA G E 1 3

part in the gubernatorial primaries election of the PDP. The trio who affixed their membership identity cards to the suit also asked the court for order of perpetual injunction restraining Obanikoro from participating in the PDP’s governorship primaries or those of any of the registered political parties in Nigeria.

In an affidavit differently deposed to by the trio of Ogun, Saheed and Odusan, they particularly asked the court to restrain both the PDP and the INEC from nominating or accepting Obanikoro’s candidacy for the 2015 governorship election in Lagos State or any subsequent elections in Nigeria.

The suit stated that “Obanikoro deliberately declared falsely in answer to question 9 part B of the aforementioned affidavit when asked whether he had changed his nationality in the past and if so, what the nationality was, by answering “that is not applicable” when he knew that he had in actual fact acquired the citizenship of the United States of America as contained in his American Passport No.025317195 issued on June 16, 1995.

“Also, Obanikoro deliberately falsified his date of birth and age as the 28th of July 1954 and 52 years respectively notwithstanding the fact that Obanikoro knew that his official Nigerian passport and his diplomatic passport No.F0004473 and D0002471 respectively show contrarily that his actual date of birth is the 28th of July 1960.

“His American passport and application for admission to the Texas Southern University, Houston Texas, including extracts from Obanikoro’s marriage records to one Jewel M. Weller in the Harris County 1982 Marriage Records support the assertion that Obanikoro’s actual date of birth is 28th July 1960 as opposed to false declaration of 28th July 1954.

“And that unless Obanikoro is perpetually restrained from participating in the scheduled governorship primaries of my party, the PDP, which is to take place on the 8th of December 2014, the interest of the applicants as stakeholders and the overriding interest of the PDP, including the quality and character of the political space would be seriously endangered.”

Though the date for hearing of the suit has not been fixed and no judge has been appointed, members of the party are already putting their eggs in different basket as they await the outcome of the suit.

In defence of Obanikoro Accusing George’s camp of being the brain behind the suit, a political advocacy organisation, the Group of Concerned Lagosians (GCL), through its coordinator, Mr. Olayinka Sotade, who was a former ally of George, averred that George and Ogunlewe’s consistent antagonism and character assassination campaign is aimed at truncating the gubernatorial aspiration of Obanikoro.

“The latest in their character assassination game is a flimsy

George

Obanikoro

the Federal Republic of Nigeria in any way, including allegiance to a foreign power, this would have been discovered and his appointment would never have happened.”

For Obanikoro, it is another foray into a familiar terrain but with different permutations and issues on ground. Having represented the party in 2007 as its flag bearer, the former envoy sees himself as the only liberator for the PDP in the state. With measures of popularity among the indigents through his ‘Koro Ibo’ slogan, he is set to challenge the political structure of George for the ticket.

Mu’azu

lawsuit seeking to bar Senator Obanikoro from the polls based on a concocted accusation of dual citizenship. All of this is motivated by a simple fact: The fear that Obanikoro will sweep the primaries landslide and then proceed to win the gubernatorial elections.

“Let it be made clear that Musiliu Obanikoro is a natural born citizen of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and nowhere else, not USA, not UAE not Outer Mongolia. Instead of meeting him at the party primaries, desperate individuals are resorting to the same dirty tricks they used in years past to frustrate his aspiration, and at the least confuse the electorate.

“Having served as Nigeria’s High Commissioner to Ghana and Minister of State for Defence, Obanikoro had the highest level of security clearance obtainable from the Federal Government of Nigeria. Such clearance comes after a rigorous security check by relevant security agencies. If he was violating the Constitution of

If anyone said that he resigned as minister because the president endorsed him, that is the greatest lie... And when you build your house on lies, it cannot stand a little storm

Lagos PDP’s history of crisis Though the party has a steady stream of internal wrangling since 1999, an act, that has made the Lagos State governorship seat elusive for the PDP since the advent of the Fourth Republic, a semblance of a united and reconciled front was promoted within the ranks of the party recently, which seems to have gone with the winds and the party appears to be back to its crisis-ridden nomenclature.

Presently, there are two camps in the party and both are lurking to get the ticket at the December 6 governorship primaries. For George, the former Deputy National Deputy Chairman of the PDP, the representation the party needs lies in the former Democratic Party of Nigeria (DPN) governorship candidate in 2007, Mr. Jimi Agbaje, and with him, PDP can’t do any wrong. George and his horde of supporters believe this.

On the flip side, Obanikoro, who was the party’s candidate in 2007 and incidentally beat Agbaje to the second place in 2007, has his eyes fixed on the ticket and he is leaving no stone unturned to get a second shot for the governorship race.

At the formation of the PDP in 1998, George, a retired Navy Commodore, held sway and was regarded as the undisputed leader of the party in the state. Aside being the highest ranking Lagos politician in the party’s structure, he

also became a power broker who decides what and how political offices are shared in the state.

Widely called ‘Atona Oodua’ by his supporters, George’s long standing relationship with former President Olusegun Obasanjo gave him unlimited access in the corridors of power, he was at that time a member of Obasanjo’s kitchen cabinet, and the South-West route to Obasanjo was George, until the bubble busted between the two former military men.

Perhaps, the defection of the then senator representing Lagos Central Senatorial District on the platform of the Alliance for Democracy (AD), Obanikoro to the PDP on December 16, 2004, altered the political ambience of the PDP in the state up till date.

According to Obanikoro, his aim for jumping ship was to ensure that Lagos reaped from the mainstream of the country’s politics. He added that the Federal Government was determined to develop Lagos State as the country’s commercial hub and former seat of power but lamented that all the efforts were being rebuffed by his former boss, the then Lagos state governor, Senator Bola Tinubu.

With his defection to the PDP, majority of support for Obanikoro was coming from Abuja and it was no surprise that he was handed the 2007 ticket after nights of intrigues and denial at the primaries held at the National Stadium.

‘Koro’, as he is fondly addressed, was said to be seen as the liberator of the PDP in the state having wined and dined with the AD leadership in the state. It was believed that he was in a better position to identify their Achilles heel and employ it for PDP’s advantage.

With the brutal murder of Engr.

Funsho Williams, who had been projected as the party’s governorship candidate for the 2007 election, the PDP stakeholders in the state led by George, decided to give William’s widow, Hilda, the party’s ticket.

The plan was going as tailored until the defiance of Obanikoro to pick the ticket turned the pri-

Politics

NEW TELEGRAPH MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2014

15

for soul of Lagos PDP bers of the group queuing behind Obanikoro against Geroge are Chief Dele Ashiru, Chief Willy Akinlude, Otunba Femi Carrena, Chief Lookman Ajose, Mrs Doyin Ayanbadejo, among others.

Agbaje

maries to a theatre of absurd. In fact, the two different primaries held inside the National Stadium, Surulere for two days produced different results. The contenders included Tokunbo Kamson, Deji Doherty, Tunde Fanimokun, Kofo Akerele-Bucknor, Musiliu Obanikoro, Ademola Adeniji-Adele, Tunde Olowu, and Hilda Williams.

Only Obanikoro and Mrs Williams made it to the second round.

In the ensuing drama, the electoral panel chairman for the state, Babatunde Ogundele declared Hilda as the winner of the election while the Ahmadu Ali-led National Working Committee (NWC) of the PDP declared Obanikoro as the winner. It was a protracted crisis which bred more crises after the primaries and with a divided house, the party lost the election.

The George’s faction, alongside those sympathetic to the Williams’ widow, worked against Obanikoro during the election. There was collapse of mutual confidence. Few days to the election, many supporters of Williams defected to the Action Congress (AC).

Intrigues over ministerial slot After the election, the battle between George and Obanikoro camps continued. It was believed that the late President Umaru Yar’Adua wanted to compensate Obanikoro with a ministerial position but George used his highwired connection to block his nomination, but rather forwarded the name of a technocrat, Bode Agusto, to the presidency.

Interestingly, when Agusto’s name was forwarded to the Senate for confirmation, it was rejected by the Upper Chamber. The development became another burden for the George’s camp and not a few people believe that the senators were sympathetic to the cause of Obanikoro, regarded as “one of their own.” The rejection of George’s nominee further deepened hostility between the duo.

The Lagos ministerial slot was eventually given to Demola Seriki.

Obanikoro was later appointed Nigeria’s High Commissioner to Ghana in 2008. This move, it was

Ogunlewe

learnt, elated the George’s camp, which believed the appointment would further strengthened George’s stronghold in Lagos politics.

Not long after, George was sentenced to 30 months imprisonment

by Justice Olubunmi Oyewole of a Lagos High Court, Ikeja, over allegations of contract splitting during his tenure as Chairman of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA).

Despite being in prison, it was alleged that George still calls the shots in the party, as his candidate, Ade Dosunmu, became the party’s flag bearer in the 2011 governorship election. It was on record that Obanikoro visited George in Kirikiri Prisons notwithstanding their fissure.

Fast forward to 2014, the intrigues between George and Obanikoro did not abate but Obanikoro got the better of George when he emerged against all odds to pick the Lagos ministerial slot. Upon confirmation by the Senate, he was assigned as Minister of State for Defence, a position he held for eight months before throwing in the towel to confront his familiar foes for the gubernatorial ticket.

‘I won’t back ex-minister’ The signs of what to come manifested shortly after the conduct of the party’s ward congress in Lagos as Obanikoro was said to have written a notice of complaint to the PDP National Chairman, Adamu Mu’Azu, where he alleged that George and a former Minister of Works, Senator Adeseye Ogunlewe had unduly interfered with the conduct of the congresses to favour another aspirant, Agbaje.

Speaking during a recent interview, George accused Obanikoro of dropping President Goodluck Jonathan’s name by lying about getting the president’s nod to resign so as to contest the governorship election in Lagos. He similarly disowned reports making the rounds that he had endorsed Obanikoro, adding that he would never endorse the former minister for anything.

George said: “There is no amount of clothing a young man

Instead of meeting him at the party primaries, desperate individuals are resorting to the same dirty tricks they used in years past to frustrate his aspiration, and at the least confuse the electorate

has, he will never have as many rags as an old man. And you don’t buy that. All these little tots that are coming and thinking that they now want to flex their muscles, they can flex the muscles. When a child goes to the bush, it is the old man who knows where the tree will fall to. Like I said earlier, this is the season of rumours.

“If anyone said that he resigned as minister because the president endorsed him, that is the greatest lie. Quote me. That is the greatest lie. And when you build your house on lies, it cannot stand a little storm, not now.

Who asked him to be minister? I think the president has made his statement when he came here and I queue up behind that statement.

He is still very much alive. Wike too in Rivers, is it the president who asked him to resign? Did he put his name on the paper? Who signed the paper? Is it the president? People lie. That is a blatant lie. And you can put it down that I said that.”

Hammers for Obanikoro, George A group, the Lagos Integrity Watch, through its coordinator, Olarinde Onitolo, bashed Obanikoro for allegedly criticising George over the conduct of the ward congress in the state, telling him to forget his bid for the party’s ticket. In a statement, the group said, “We read with alarm and disgust the outrageous claim of Senator Musiliu Obanikoro, alleging that our national leader, Chief Olabode George, was somehow partisan in the ward congress held in Lagos State. This is unfair. It is crude, illogical and foul. The fact of the matter is that Obanikoro is a rejected aspirant. The stakes are too high. Obanikoro should apologise immediately to our party and Chief George for this gross indiscretion.”

In a flash, another group, The Patriots, believed to be a creation of Obanikoro, berated George for being a dictator in the party and said it is adopting Obanikoro as its sole candidate.

Aside the convener of the body, Chief Jide Damazio, other mem-

Alliances in the offing As the party’s governorship primary inches closer, anxiety and fresh permutations are already in the air for alliances and working relationships. While some will be ditching their allies and familiar companions, others will be making new professions for their new found group. In all, panics are on the cards in both George and Obanikoro’s group.

A source within the party said: “Expect to see some interesting movements across both side of the divide as sentiment would not butter anybody’s bread. Many people will move and switch allegiances based on where their interest can be serviced. Nobody wants to be left out of the train.

“Already, the underground moves to sweep the local government chairmen towards Obanikoro is part of what I am talking about. Those guys believe in the leadership of Bode George but they are already having a secondthought about his choice of Agbaje, a total stranger in the party.

“We are all aware of what happened in Ogun and Oyo when a party gave its ticket to complete strangers, you see the way those governors treated the original party members after assuming office on their platform. That is the simple reservation about Agbaje because we know we are going to win the election by the grace of God.” At Obanikoro’s governorship declaration last Friday at the party’s secretariat, notable faces queuing behind the former lawmaker were the Nigerian Envoy to Jamaica, Tokunbo Kamson; a governorship aspirant on the platform of the party, Dr. Adetokunbo Pearse, among others.

Also, PDP’s governorship candidate in the 2011 election, Dr. Ade Dosunmu, is said to have dropped his ambition on the altar of Obanikoro’s aspiration, choosing to contest for the Lagos Central Senatorial District seat.

Expectedly, switching of camps will be on a high in the coming days in the party and new fraternities will be formed from the divides. Whether this will eventually translate to the emergence of an acceptable candidate for 2015 is a different kettle of fish.

However, the puzzle for political pundits is if Obanikoro would still get the better of George after leaving him out in the cold on two different occasions? Would there still be a repeat of the 2007 election where George’s candidate, Hilda, widow of the murdered Funsho Williams, was flushed out by the PDP hierarchy in Abuja?

Would the party structure controlled by George accept and work for Obanikoro if he gets the ticket at the expense of Agbaje?

Would Obanikoro avoid a collision with George or will he take the battle to the door of the former deputy national chairman of the party?

16 Politics The International Crisis Group (ICG), an independent, non-profit, non-governmental organisation committed to preventing and resolving deadly conflict, in its November 21st report, titled: Nigeria’s Dangerous 2015 Elections: Limiting the Violence, warns about imminent crisis on the 2015 general election. It also makes recommendations on how to forestall impending violence

N

igeria’s presidential, parliamentary and state gubernatorial and assembly elections, scheduled for February 2015, will be more contentious than usual.

Tensions within and between the two major political parties, competing claims to the presidency between northern and Niger Delta politicians and along religious lines, the grim radical Islamist Boko Haram insurgency and increasing communal violence in several northern states, along with inadequate preparations by the electoral commission and apparent bias by security agencies, suggest the country is heading toward a very volatile and vicious electoral contest.

If this violent trend continues, and particularly if the vote is close, marred or followed by widespread violence, it would deepen Nigeria’s already grave security and governance crises. The government, its agencies and all other national figures must work urgently to ensure that the vote is not conducted in an explosive situation as this could further destabilise the country.

Nigerian elections are traditionally fiercely contested, but in 2015, risks of violence are particularly high. This will be the first nationwide contest essentially between two parties – the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) – since the return to civilian rule in 1999. While a genuine contest is a welcome sign of progress for Nigeria’s democracy (thanks to the emergence last year of the APC, a merger of the four largest opposition parties), increasingly acrimonious relations between the two parties could engender even fiercer clashes among their supporters once campaigning formally starts in December.

Factional feuds within both parties could degenerate into violence during their national and state primaries. Competing claims to the presidency, between northern leaders and their Niger Delta counterparts, could also result in violence in either or both regions, particularly after the polls. As in 2011, clashes could erupt in some northern states if the APC, whose frontrunners are all northerners, loses the polls; there is similarly a high risk of violence if the PDP

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2014 NEW TELEGRAPH

ICG’s fears over 2015

Jonathan

loses the presidency, particularly in the Niger Delta, home region of the party’s candidate, President Goodluck Jonathan.

The Boko Haram insurgency and the state of emergency in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe could prevent voting in parts of those north-eastern states. If this occurs, the opposition APC, which has large following in those (and other northern) states, could lose a significant number of votes, reject the presidential polls’ outcome and question the elected government’s legitimacy. An election not held in all states may also fall short of the constitutional requirements for electing a president, namely that the winner score 25 per cent of the votes in two-thirds of the 36 states, thereby raising serious legal disputes. Equally worrying are the increasing availability of firearms, the rise in communal violence across several northern states since 2013 and deepening criminality in the Niger Delta.

Deficiencies in electoral preparations are also compounding the risks of violence. Proposed amendments to the 2010 Electoral Act, including provisions for establishment of an election offences tribunal, which were intended to prevent or punish electoral offences including violence, remain stuck in the National Assembly (federal parliament). There is no certainty they will be passed in time to have meaningful impact on the polls.

Repeated assurances by the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Attahiru Jega, that the polls will be an improvement on the past, are not entirely supported by realities on ground.

There are growing fears that INEC may not be able to produce an updated and credible voter register before the polls. The commission’s decision to create 30,000 new polling units, mostly in northern states, was widely rejected by southern leaders and groups who feared Jega, a northerner, was handing his home region an electoral advantage. INEC’s decision to put the new polling units on hold has not entirely dispelled southern misgivings. Amid such lack of confidence, an election conducted with an incomplete

Jega

Clashes could erupt in some northern states if the APC, whose frontrunners are all northerners, loses the polls; there is similarly a high risk of violence if the PDP loses the presidency, particularly in the Niger Delta, home region of the party’s candidate, President Goodluck Jonathan

voter register will certainly be disputed.

Actions by the police and other security services, all controlled by the Federal Government, could also aggravate tensions around the polls and undermine the credibility of their outcomes. The conduct of some senior police officers, notably in Rivers State, has raised fears that the agency could be manipulated to serve the PDP’s interests. Similarly, some actions and pronouncements by the Department of State Security (DSS) – Nigeria’s main domestic intelligence agency – have raised concerns about institutional bias. If these agencies act or are perceived to act in a partisan manner, they could undermine free and fair polls and heighten the risks of violence, particularly after the vote.

With only three months before elections, the government cannot engage in long-term structural efforts to improve the quality of the vote, but it can and must be encouraged to urgently take several steps to limit the risk of widespread violence. These include increasing efforts to contain the Boko Haram insurgency, paying special attention to the police to improve the security environment, reinforcing the capacities of the INEC to restore confidence in the electoral process, and along with all politicians, avoid playing the religious card and reducing tensions within and between the parties. The government – President Goodluck Jonathan, the federal legislature, INEC and security agencies – must bear the greatest responsibility for implementing these measures, but other national and political figures, including civil society, as well as international partners must also rally to stop the slide.

Recommendations To the government of President Goodluck Jonathan: 1. Step up efforts to contain the conflict in the North East and ensure elections are held in all states, particularly by strengthening security services, improving coordination with state governments and implementing regional security arrangements in concert with neighbouring countries.

2. Direct publicly the heads of the Nigeria Police Force and other

security agencies to act lawfully and impartially with all parties and individuals participating in the elections.

To the president, major political parties and their candidates: 3. Avoid inflammatory rhetoric, publicly denounce violence, pledge to respect rules, in particular the Code of Conduct for Political Parties, and pursue grievances through lawful channels.

4. Respect party constitutions and particularly allow democratic candidate selections.

To leaders of regional, ethnic and religious groups: 5. Organise national, regional, ethnic and inter-faith public forums to jointly and publicly commit to non-violence, and establish channels of communication and contingency plans to respond to large-scale communal violence.

To the National Assembly: 6. Ensure speedy passage of the amended Electoral Act. 7. Approve urgently supplementary funds for INEC to meet its logistical requirements.

To INEC: 8. Intensify efforts to build relations with all parties, particularly opposition parties, including holding constant consultations to discuss and explain major decisions, sparing no effort in trying to increase confidence and ensuring transparent relations with all parties, individuals and civil society.

To the Nigeria Police Force and other security agencies: 9. Improve security arrangements for the elections by training more personnel for election duties and strengthening capacity to gather information, monitor developments and analyse threats; strengthen ongoing efforts to curb the influx and availability of illegal arms particularly in violenceprone areas; and ensure the newly established Elections Security Planning and Monitoring Unit is well resourced, firmly led and instructed on international best practices.

10. Direct publicly all officers to ensure neutrality in relations with all parties and apply exemplary sanctions against any officer who fails to comply.

To civil society organisations and mass media: 11. Engage more actively with youth leaders especially in poor urban and rural areas, strengthen participatory early warning and early response systems, and raise timely alerts of possible violence.

12. Ensure factual and balanced reporting of all election-related developments, and avoid publishing hateful, divisive and inflammatory statements.

To the UN, EU and other international partners: 13. Sustain ongoing capacity building programmes for major institutions involved in the elections, particularly INEC and the police, and increase technical and financial support to relevant civil society organisations.

14. Deploy observer missions for longer periods before and after the votes to monitor the process more comprehensively.

15. Create a common donor forum for collectively messaging and pressuring President Jonathan, political parties and their candidates, security agencies and all other stakeholders to act lawfully and prevent or mitigate violence.

17

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MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2014 NEW TELEGRAPH

Opinion

Bala Ngilari: Hope restored

Emmanuel Y. Kwache

T

here is a misconception about the personality of the Executive Governor of Adamawa State, Barrister Bala James Ngilari. Some mistake his humility for weakness. That is not so. By my experience and how I have read the Holy Bible thirteen times, from Genesis to Revelation, I am in the fourteenth, the Book of Nehemiah- those who know Christ are always humble, meek and take things as they come. They do not hurt. They do not go for vengeance. From Voxpox conducted by YAMEK many prefer flamboyance, extravagance and boastfulness. But the new Governor does not belong to that: checks reveal. What Adamawa State needs is a level headed chief executive, who sizes up situation before taking action. Adamawa State needs an individual who is careful, cautious, considerate and compassionate. The State is lucky that such a citizen has come at this point that the governed is disillusioned, disorganised and confused.

Adamawa is blessed at this moment that Ngilari is stabilising the State by not rushing things, as in the preceding years. Before the Court asserted him as the substantive Governor, hatred was visible between the two religions in Adamawa State. It is like they would jump at each other. But he is taking his time appointing credible persons into positions of responsibility like the Chief of Staff (COS) Alhaji Chubado Babbi Tijjani, the Chief of Protocol, Alhaji Abdulrahman Bobboi and Mr. P.P Elisha- Director of Press and Public Affairs. Some write unsavoury comments on the appointments of Alhaji Usman Hamidu Maiha- Acting Auditor- General Local Government and Acting Auditor- General State, Alhaji Ibrahim Iya Gurin, Alhaji Dauda Bello Furo, Executive Chairman, Adamawa State Universal Basic Education Commission and Mallam Usman Bukar, Coordinator, Millenium Development Goals. Throughout his speeches especially, when he swore-in the Secretary to the State Government, Deacon Ibrahim Andrew Welye- he noted patience is a virtue. Besides, he is not uncouth. He has called for understanding in all schemes. By the fact that the Premier Ruler of Adamawa Emirate, Lamido Mohammadu Barkindo Aliyu Mustapha, Chairman Traditional Council of Chiefs ventured to tell Mr President, Dr Goodluck Ebele Jonathan that they, all the traditional rulers in Adamawa prefer the candidature of Ngilari is a

sign of hope. The traditional rulers have all buried their differences. There are many traditional rulers in the State.

Alhaji Mohammadu Barkindo Aliyu Mustapha, first class, Alhaji Abubakar Isa Ahmadu, first class, Mubi Emirate, Homun Irmiya Stephen – Bachama Kingdom, first class, Alhaji Adamu Sanda- Ganye Chiefdom, Hama Bata – Mr Gladstone Teneke, Dr Alfred Kimde, Kwandi Nunguraya, the Chief of Guyuk, the Amna Shelleng – and many District Heads. This singular act should permeat the minds of the Peoples Democratic Party Delegates, who will be holding primaries on the 29th of this month, November 2014. A certain group Progressive Peoples Movement consisting of seventy one interest groups taxed themselves and collected the sum of one- hundred and fifty million Naira to campaign for current Ngilari. They have purchased a form for him and already it has been submitted at the National Headquarters of the Peoples Democratic Party in Abuja.

Another group the Adamawa Collective has supported this giant stride. A larger percentage of Adamawa citizenry desire peace and steady development. For the past seven and half years, there was no Chief Judge in Adamawa State. It was with the coming of Ngilari that a Chief Judge has been appointed. Still, he has said somewhere, it is wrong to abandon projects started by previous administrations. Therefore the Governor has launched the rehabilitation and construction of Zaranda, Bauchi and Ilorin streets in Jimeta metropolis at the cost of over 900 million Naira. He emphasised, he has declared a state of emergency on township and rural roads. That his administration’s commitment to address the problems of township and rural roads is order to boost Socio-economic activities in the State. Governor Ngilari charged the contractor handling the project Messrs Roads and Bridges (R and B) to ensure qualitative work by adhering strictly to contract specifications, stressing that his administration will not compromise standards. He called on the residents of the area to cooperate with the contractor to ensure quality and successful execution of the road projects. Governor Ngilari used the forum to call on the citizens of the State to continue to support his administration to enable it deliver dividends of democracy especially to those at the grassroots level. The company has four months within which to complete its works.

Another sign of hope, an Urban renewal committee with membership drawn from various ministries, departments and agencies under the leadership of Alhaji Saidu Ahmed, a retired civil servant has been inaugurated. The committee is saddled with the responsibility of identify-

ing, verifying, accessing and recommending the status as well as implementation of the existing projects in Adamawa State. Inaugurating the committee in Government House,Yola, Governor Bala James Ngilari described the members as imminent personalities, very knowledgeable and people with track record of performance and integrity.

Governor Ngilari explained that the essence of the committee among other things, is to look at the projects that are ongoing which were awarded by past administrations which should be renewed and give government road map in terms of short term, middle term and long term to address such projects.

Governor Nggilari who identified the spate of abandonment of projects as one of the major attributes of underdevelopment said government is a continuous process.

He said, he said, it is wrong for anybody coming to the corridors of power to abandon projects initiated by his predecessors, simply because he wants to score a political point.

On education, the Government in place in Adamawa State has called on the DI and DII batches of teachers employed by the previous administration to be a little patient. That, it will sort the tares and the wheat. Those, who are unable to meet up with the strains of teaching will be redeployed to the varying ministries, relevant to their courses, professions and their strengths. No one will be dropped at all. No more malingering, gallivanting and roaming aimlessly. He has purchased bulk medicine and medical equipment to be distributed to the various general hospitals, clinics, dispensaries and health out posts.

Governor Bala James Ngilari is a go-getter. According to Dr Abdullahi D Belel, Chairman, Adamawa State Primary Health Care Agency- that is a great step towards Health Delivery. Another sign of hope which Ngilari has taken is the pressure he has mounted on the presidency to intervene vigorously in the insurgency attacks and terrorism.

He has acted swiftly. In addition, he has made available relief materials to the refugees- those who ran away from Gwoza, Madagali; Michika, Mubi North and Maiha Local Governments. To fight insurgents to a standstill, he has engaged the services of Yan Baka, Local Vigilantes to complement the services of the Nigerian Army, the Mobile Police Force. This is in view of the fact, the Yan Baka, Yan Tauri and the Local Vigilantes are familiar with the Local terrain and can trace paths followed by the Bokoharam.

• Kwache (tizheyame@yahoo.com), a freelance journalist and commentator on National issues, writes from Adamawa State - Tel: 08059116547

APC and the limits of propaganda John Udumebraye

T

he leadership of the All Progressives Congress (APC) must have celebrated when a suicide bomber blew himself up and killed 47 students at the assembly ground of the Government Senior Science Secondary School in Potiskum, Yobe State, on Monday, November 10, 2014. Lai Mohammed, the National Publicity Secretary of the APC, must have been dizzy with joy on receiving news of the catastrophe for the single reason that it was a gift — never mind that it was a diabolical one from the pits of hell — with which he could accuse President Goodluck Jonathan of insensitivity and callousness when the latter formally declared his intention to seek re-election the next day.

Undeterred, Jonathan went ahead with his declaration. Expectedly, Lai Mohammed wasted no time in screaming “utterly insensitive and absolutely callous.” It is a wonder that he could not find more adjectives with which to ostensibly criticise the President.

Lai Mohammed even accused Jonathan of “dancing on the graves of the students,” but not once did he condemn the terrorists be-

hind the suicide bomb attack.

In the past, the APC has been accused of either funding or at least supporting the nefarious Boko Haram group that has been waging an insurgency against the Nigerian state in order to establish an Islamic caliphate in its stead. Some of us publicly averred that such accusations were a case of dirty politics taken too far. How, we asked, could the APC be in cahoots with those who seek to destroy the Nigerian state? If the insurgents were to succeed, of what benefit would that be to the APC or its members? Regrettably, one has been forced to have a rethink today.

To be clear, the resurgent state of bomb blasts that culminated in the Potiskum attack is just too much for even the most naive Nigerian to accept as mere coincidence. In recent times, APC presidential aspirants, ranging from former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, through former military dictator General Muhammadu Buhari, to Kano State Governor Rabiu Kwankwaso and publisher-turnedpolitician Sam Nda-Isaiah, have all held events to declare their intention to vie for the presidency. No bomb blasts were recorded. But as soon as Jonathan announced the date of his formal declaration, the bombs started going off. Fellow Nigerians, who is fooling whom?

We can run from pillar to post, or we can face up to what is self-evident to every discerning Nigerian: there is a clear connection between terrorist attacks whenever the Presi-

dent is scheduled to hold or attend a political event and the readiness of the APC propaganda machine to issue exploitative statements that condemn the President, but never the terrorists. It is now beyond any reasonable doubt that the APC is sympathetic to, if not in support outright of Boko Haram. Indeed, it appears Lai Mohammed even prepares the statement ahead of any terrorist attack and then releases it soon after.

Interestingly, nobody should forget that when former Minister of Aviation, Chief Femi FaniKayode, left the APC and rejoined the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), he had some remarkable revelations to share about his erstwhile APC colleagues. In one statement, Fani-Kayode told Nigerians, “The APC in the North is the political wing of Boko Haram in the northern part of Nigeria. This, I have said before and no one amongst them was bold enough to challenge me. I will continue to say it again and again. The northern elements in the APC have to explain to all Nigerians why some of their leaders in the North support, encourage and defend Boko Haram members.”

Fani-Kayode went on to add, “No member of the APC has been bold enough to controvert what I said about their relationship with the Boko Haram members in the North. I stand to be challenged if any of them has a contrary view.”

Moreover, it is a matter of public record that Lai Mohammed not only opposed the United

States of America classifying Boko Haram as a terrorist organisation, more importantly, he also actively protested the proscription of Boko Haram by the Federal Government of Nigeria in June 2013. In view of how much pleasure he takes in glorifying the dastardly acts of the despicable terrorist group, the reason for Lai Mohammed’s protestations is crystal clear.

Now, if an ordinary Nigerian like this writer can so easily deduce that Lai Mohammed and some other senior members of the APC are Boko Haram supporters and sympathisers, the question then arises: why has the government not arrested them and prosecuted them according to the law? Could it be that the government of President Jonathan does not want to be accused of stifling the opposition, especially in the run-up to a general election?

Whatever the case may be, the facts are plain for Nigerians to see. Lai Mohammed and his APC colleagues are always prepared with exploitative propaganda condemning President Jonathan whenever terrorists strike.

However, they typically never condemn the terrorists. This reveals clearly who is dancing on the graves of slain Nigerians. Despite their well-crafted propaganda designs, Nigerians have a duty to their nation to reject Boko Haram, their funders, supporters and sympathisers at the 2015 polls.

• Udumebraye sent this piece from Port Harcourt.

NEW TELEGRAPH MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2014

19

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Saving our children from pneumonia

A

s Nigeria joined the rest of the world on November 12 to mark this year’s World Pneumonia Day (WPD) with the theme: “Fight Pneumonia. Save the Children”, an estimated 231,000 under five Nigerian children are said to die yearly from pneumonia and diarrhea, both preventable and treatable diseases. This figure is not only staggering, but grim and must be tackled for the sake of the Nigerian child.

Marked annually on November 12, WPD does not only provide an opportunity for the world to stand together and demand action in the fight against pneumonia, it helps to bring this health crisis to the public attention and encourage policymakers and grassroots organizers to combat the disease. The United Nations first celebrated the day on November 12, 2009.

Speaking recently at an event in Ado-Ekiti , Ekiti state, organized to mark this year’s Global Hand Washing Day, the Programme Officer, Water and Sanitation Department of the Justice, Development and Peace Initiative (JDPI), Mr. Bamikole Adegbite, who described the figure as high, stated that pneumonia and diarrhea, the two leading killer diseases were rampant among children under five due to unsafe water and lack of basic sanitation and hygiene.

According to United Nations Fund for Children (UNICEF), pneumonia kills more children under five than any other single cause – an estimated 1.1 million in 2012 and 17 per cent of all child deaths (6.5 million). Eighty per cent of deaths are among children under two years of age and 330,000 are among newborns. Sixty per cent of deaths occur in just six countries India, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, China, and Ethiopia.

Globally, an estimated 155 million children under five are said to suffer from pneumonia, while 1.6 million children die each year.

This makes it number one killer of children under five, claiming more young lives than AIDS, malaria and measles combined.

According to 2008 estimates, about 177,000 children under five died of pneumonia in Nigeria. Today, the figure is higher (231,000).

This number is the highest in Africa and second highest overall in the world. Out of this figure, only an estimated one of every five children with pneumonia receives appropriate antibiotics, according World Health Organization (WHO).

Pneumonia is a form of acute respiratory infection that affects the lungs, making breathing painful and limiting oxygen intake.

Symptoms include rapid breathing, cough, fever, and chest indrawing. The biggest challenge is that these signs are often mistaken for

other illnesses or spiritual malady and as such wrong medicine or no medicine at all but local remedy is applied.

It is true that the disease is preventable using vaccines, diagnostic tools, and treatments but issues of availability, access and cost remain obstacles. Nearly half of early childhood deaths from pneumonia are estimated to result from lack of access or delay in appropriate diagnosis and treatment.

It is, however, disheartening to note that in spite of governments’ and donor agencies’ efforts to immunize children free of charge, a lot of them still die from a disease that is preventable and treatable via vaccines, antibiotic treatment and improved sanitation. Against this premise, it is high time, various governments began to change their strategies and adopt a more integrated approach that is capable of changing the health status of the Nigerian child positively. Availability of the vaccines should not only be on paper, there must be concerted efforts to make it available to everyone especially the critical mass of people who live in the rural areas.

Apart from unavailability of vaccines, energy crisis, poverty and ignorance also play a major role in aggravating the disease. Added to these are systemic barriers to routine immunization, vaccine stock out, inadequate funding and

delayed release of funds for routine immunization programmes as well as logistics and supply chain constraints.

Again, proper diagnosis is a major factor in preventing child death; against this background, healthcare providers must be conversant with the symptoms as well as know the difference between pneumonia and other conditions to avoid misapplication of drugs even as home-based management and improper in-take of medicine or incomplete course of prescription can lead to death.

Pertinent questions to also ask are: What is the quality of treatment?

Are there health facilities to take care; in cases where children arrive severely ill, can the facilities intervene to prevent death? If answers to these questions are not positive then the fight against pneumonia has not yet begun.

However, health authorities must understand the overriding need to push their innovations a little further to gain general acceptance, considering our traditional background where cultural biases and myths still play a major role in attitudinal change, it is expected that massive campaigns should be evolved to take health messages across to the people especially those in the rural areas who form the majority. The target of the campaigns should be to educate families about pneumonia, its causes, symptoms,and how to prevent it.

Managing Director/Editor-in-Chief n Eric Osagie Deputy Managing Directors n Gabriel Akinadewo

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Politics

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2014 NEW TELEGRAPH

Nicholas Ikejiani

R

eactions to what was a hugely successful declaration by President Goodluck Jonathan, last week, may not come to an end anytime soon.

The president, who was popularly elected by Nigerians in April 2011, only on Tuesday, November 11, at the Eagle Square, in the heart of the Federal Capital Territory of Abuja, declared his readiness to accede to the call of his party members in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to run for a second term in office. At that same venue on September 18, 2010, an inno-

Jonathan sets benchmark on clean campaigns cent and lamb-like Niger Delta ‘boy’, Jonathan, had captured the minds of Nigerians with his captivating Nigerian dream grass to grace life-story. But this time round, the president, still not shorn of any of his trademark humility and provincial innocence, came with a rich and verifiable scorecard for the three and a half years he has been in office.

It was like coming back to the people to say: “This is what I have done with the mandate you gave me in 2011 and if you permit, I am ready to serve you for another four years.”

For so many people, their takeaway from the presidential declaration was the remarkable improvement in Jonathan’s public presentation skills.

For some others, they are quick to observe that like red wine, the president is getting better and better every day in carrying himself as president of the most important country in Africa. For many others as well, it was simply the mammoth crowd, easily the largest ever seen in Abuja since the talk of 2015 general election began. Yes, we saw Muhammadu Buhari,

the most visible aspirant from the opposition clan at the same venue; we saw the former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, at the Yar’Adua Centre; we equally saw the governor of Kano State, Rabiu Kwankwaso, another aspirant from the All Progressives Congress (APC) at the old Parade Ground Abuja. The crowd from all of these APC presidential outings put together does not come close to what happened at the Jonathan declaration a few days ago.

Even then, the remarkable aspect of the President Jonathan’s presi-

dential declaration event has nothing to do with the crowd and attendance.

But it has everything to do with the way and manner Jonathan conducted himself admirably, not just as the PDP candidate but more importantly as the Nigerian President.

His speech was wonderful not because of its literary or poetic richness, how well it was scripted or smoothly delivered.

No. Rather, for the first time in our political history, we are witnessing a revolutionary change in the language of political discourse and electioneer-

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ing dwelling on development issues – away from infantile personal attacks and cheap blackmail and propaganda.

Has anyone spotted that Jonathan’s declaration speech contains as many as 5,049 words encapsulated in 112 paragraphs and from the beginning of that speech to the end, there was no single mention or reference to the opposition party, APC, and its leaders? Instead, the president started by taking Nigerians on memory lane from how he sought their mandate and got it in 2011 and the promises he made.

Yes, he admitted that along the way there have been challenges and obstacles especially of security nature that have bogged down the government and the people. Yet, in spite of these challenges, Jonathan said his government has stayed forthright to the pact he made with the Nigerian people to serve them. He dwelt extensively on the projects he has delivered since he was elected in 2011 and how the general life chances of the Nigerian people have improved since then. Listening to the president reel out the infrastructure transformation that has gone on in the country under his watch, it is amazing what he has achieved in three years in the agriculture, transport (road and rail), power, health and political sectors, for instance.

In offering himself for service to the people for another term in office from 2015, the president did not apportion blames, point fingers of guilt or cast aspersions on the main opposition party, APC, even though there are millions of reasons to do so especially as APC and its leaders are doing so every time.

Again, instead, Jonathan admitted that there are quite a lot more to be done to improve the lives of the people. He indeed lifted not a few souls by painting the picture of what is possible in our country when citizens come together to build the nation.

Let it be known today that President Jonathan has already set the benchmark for clean campaigns in the run-up to 2015 general election. Politicians are free to campaign but in the national interest they must learn to stick to issues of development and national unity and refrain from incendiary remarks, personal attacks and the free hurling of abuses and blackmail.

•Ikejiani, a public affairs commentator, writes from Port Harcourt.

NEW TELEGRAPH MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2014

21

More tightening expected as MPC meets today

Red Star Express: Harsh milieu hits profit

Stock Watch

Insurance

Market devt: Underwriters’ magic wand in limbo

Foreigners feasting on Nigeria’s printing sector –MD, Megavons

35

37

38

42-43

Money Line

Interview

Business What's news

Airlines lament as operations’ cost rise The depreciation of naira coupled with the high cost of operations could force some local airlines into extinction investigation by New Telegraph has revealed.

p.22

Chandlers gripe over $2bn job loss to foreigners Nigerian ship chandlers are losing $2 billion annually to foreigners on Nigeria’s coaster waters.

It was learnt that their jobs have been taken over by their foreign counterparts despite the local content policy of the Federal Government, which favours the local chandlers.

p.22

(CBN). Local and international analysts are speculating that the monetary authorities will eventually be forced to devalue, and non-deliverable forwards – contracts that allow investors to bet on future currency movements – imply that fund managers expect the currency to fall to N201.50 to the dollar in 12 months.

Investigations also revealed that government’s subsidy debt to marketers on interest and Foreign Exchange Differential (FED) are about N194 billion.

The value of the naira fell after the marketers had secured funding from banks and placed order for imports schedule with foreign refineries.

A marketer, who pleaded anonymity based on injury which disclosure of his name could inflict on his business, told this newspaper that marketers are L-R: Economy and Management expert, Prof. Patrick Utomi; founding partner, iamaCHAMP Limited, Abiola Salami and being subjected to embarrassPro-Chancellor of Pan-Atlantic University, Dr. Christopher Kolade, at the 2014 edition of the Goal Attainment Made Easy ment by banks over delay in (GAME) conference. interest and FED on loans for

PHOTO: SULEIMAN HUSAINI fuel imports.

“Our bankers and lenders are now threatening to sue or report defaulting marketers to government’s financial crime agencies,” he said, arguing that “everyone has been told that government is responsible for the delay based on their inability to adhere to the 45 days window given by law for them to pay up fuel subsidy.”

The Federal Government had recently released the import permits for the fourth tion of Premium Motor Spirit to a dollar last Friday at the quarter allocation three days DEFAULT (PMS), also known as petrol, in interbank, while it was traded after the expiration of the third jeopardy, New Telegraph has at N159.41 per dollar at the of- quarter supplementary allocaBankers and lenders learnt. ficial market moderated by CONTINUED ON PAGE 22 The currency closed at N179 the Central Bank of Nigeria threaten to report

Weak naira puts Q4 fuel imports in jeopardy Subsidy interest, forex differentials hit N194bn

The Business Desk Ayodele Aminu

Deputy Editor (Business)

Bayo Akomolafe

Asst. Editor (Maritime)

Sunday Ojeme

Asst. Editor (Insurance)

Godson Ikoro

defaulting fuel marketers to financial crimes agencies

Asst. Editor (Money Market)

Dele Alao

Industry & Agric Editor

Dayo Ayeyemi Property Editor

Adeola Yusuf Energy Editor

Wole Shadare Aviation Editor

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Capital Market Editor

Adeola Yusuf

P

ersistent fall of the Nigerian currency, the naira, which has lost about 8.8 per cent of its value to the dollar this year, has subjected the schedule for the fourth quarter importa-

Kunle Azeez

T

he Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) may soon sanction some telecoms operators over poor handling of customer complaints resolutions, even as the commission and other private concerns have started tracking consumer complaints’ trend on mobile networks, New Telegraph has gathered.

Telecoms consumers lately

Telecom operators face fresh sanctions have been complaining about the quality of attendance they get when trying to call dedicated customer care lines of most operators in the area of customer compliant resolution.

“Indeed, telecoms consumers complain every now and then that they are not getting the best of service when it comes to accessing the netCONTINUED ON PAGE 22

Abdulwahab Isa Finance Editor

Kunle Azeez

Senior Correspondent

Chuks Onuanyin Energy

Nnamdi Amadi Reporter

Johnson Adebayo

Asst Production Editor

Rates Dashboard INFLATION RATE October 2014............................8.1% September 2014.....................8.3% August 2014............................8.5%

LENDING RATE InterBank Rate....................11.57% Prime Lending Rate...........16.93% Maximum Lending Rate...25.83%

EXCHANGE RATE

(Parellel As at Nov. 21)

USD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . N182 Pounds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . N285 Euro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . N225

l Foreign Reserves – $37.54bn as at 14/11/2014

Source: CBN

EXCHANGE RATE (Official As at Nov. 21)

USD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . N159.41 Pounds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . N249.43 Euro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . N199.58

22

Business | News

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2014 NEW TELEGRAPH

Airlines lament as operations’ cost rise DANGER

Unsustainable price war is brewing but passengers are the ultimate beneficiaries Wole Shadare

T

he depreciation of naira coupled with the high cost of operations could force some local airlines into extinction investigation

by New Telegraph has revealed.

Consequently, some carriers have expressed worry over the skyrocketing cost of operations and have raised concern over their businesses.

Just last week, the airlines lamented the crushing effect of the depreciation of naira would have on their services.

The currency closed at N179 to a dollar last Friday at the interbank, while it was traded at N159.41 per dollar at the official market moderated by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

Some of the airline said they may be forced to pass on the extra to their operations since majority of their expens-

Carriers owe workers, contractors es are dollarised.

Failure of many of Nigeria’s domestic carriers, their short life span and uncertainty of the future have been attributed to wrong use of equipment, poor capitalisation, high cost of fuel and access to credit facility at high interest rates.

Till date, no Nigerian airline on scheduled commercial operation has thrived for up to 15 years, except the defunct national carrier, the Nigeria Airways Limited (NAL), which was finally liquidated by the Federal Government in 2004.

While the country’s air transport market is viable and highly profitable to foreign airlines, Nigerian operators narrate tales of woe, record losses and go bankrupt.

Some of the operators, who spoke to New Telegraph under the condition of anonymity, said running the business is no longer profitable for them, stressing that the cost of operations have doubled in the last few years.

One of the Managing Directors of a leading airline said the poor percentage of people who fly domestically is not only encouraging, but the

Fresh sanctions for telecom operators CONTINUED FROM PAGE 21

works’ customer care lines to resolve consumers’ complaints and the regulator is not happy about this also and failure to improve may lead to fresh sanctions on the regulator,” a source told New Telegraph at the weekend.

Executive Vice Chairman, NCC, Dr Eugene Juwah, had warned at a recent Telecoms Consumer Parliament (TCP) in Lagos; on the need for telecoms operators to improve their customer care platforms to be able to resolve complaints arising from the services

they provide to their subscribers.

Our correspondent gathered that, as a forerunner to possible sanction and to keep the operators on their toes to take corrective measures, the Commission has started tracking the volume of complaint level on mobile networks.

According to NCC, while the level of complaints on voice services is yet to abate, those associated with data services have also emerged.

For instance, NCC has released figures data service complaints recorded by the telecoms networks from July to October 2014.

Q4 fuel imports in jeopardy CONTINUED FROM PAGE 21

tion.

Although the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulating Agency (PPPRA), which released the allocation to fuel importing and marketing companies (FIMC) did not mention names of the beneficiaries and the volume, it was gathered that companies such as Oando, Folawiyo, NIPCO, Aiteo

and 24 others got the nod to import about 1.8 million metric tonnes of petrol.

Oando, Folawiyo, NIPCO, Aiteo got permits to import 90, 000 metric tonnes of petrol each based on their performance during the last quarter, according to sources.

“In total, about 27 fuel importers got an average total of 1.8 million tonnes for the quarter,” a source said.

great number of aircraft seats that are not occupied, coupled with harsh operating environment could lead to the folding up of some airlines before the middle of next year.

Already, some new entrants are in serious financial dire straits; a situation that has made them to owe workers,

portending danger for safe operations in the airline industry.

This has also raised concern that the operators may engage in corner cutting to remain in operation, which they said could be an invitation to air disaster.

To show how fragile they are, most of the air-

lines such as Aero Contractors, Dana Air, IRS and one other airline with huge passenger traffic are under receivership by the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON) over huge indebtedness that runs into over N300 billion.

Their situation is not helped by the over 16 airlines that are at the verge of getting Air Operators

Certificate (AON) from the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) whenever they scale aviation safety regulations huddles.

Speaking to New Telegraph at the weekend, Managing Director of IRS Airlines, Yemi Dada painted a gloomy picture for the industry, stressing that carriers are competing on price.

L-R: Group Head, Agric Finance, Sterling Bank Plc, Mrs Bukola Awosanya receiving the Agric Bank of The Year Award from Project Director, Agrainnovate Nigeria, Mr David Ross, during the maiden edition of Nigeria Agriculture Awards Nite in Lagos.

PHOTO: Godwin Irekhe

IRONY $10 billion yearly subsidy on chandelling mainly enjoyed by foreigners Bayo Akomolafe

N

igerian ship chandlers are losing $2 billion annually to foreigners on Nigeria’s coaster waters.

It was learnt that their jobs have been taken over by their foreign counterparts despite the local content policy of the Federal Government, which favours the local chandlers.

The chandlers are responsible for supplying food, beverage, maintenance and other allied services in the maritime industry.

Worried by this development, the Nigerian Customs Licensed Ship Chandlers Association has called on the Federal Government to intervene in order to save members who have been rendered redundant.

Former president of the association, Mr Vickson Aghanenu, lamented that for years, the Federal Government’s $10 billion yearly subsidy on chandelling was mainly enjoyed by foreigners.

He said that local chan-

Chandlers gripe over $2bn job loss to foreigners dlers had no access to foreign vessels and oil platforms.

The former president lamented that touts and foreigners at the ports and private jetties had hijacked the profession.

Aghanenu alleged that chandlers are yet to derive benefits from the Cabotage business since the introduction of the Cabotage Act. He said: “Ship chandelling is a corporate profession licensed by the Federal Government through the Board of the Nigerian Customs Service to provide services to vessels and rigs in the coastal waters.

“The law establishing the profession was passed by an Act of Parliament in 1958 and was reviewed in 1990 under the Customs and Excise Management Act. “The association was registered in 1985 with the Corporate Affairs Commission and affiliated to the International Ship Suppliers Association (ISSA) in 1955.”

Also, the current President of the association, Mrs Beatrice Ede Ogbumuo, said that though the Federal Gov-

ernment gave the sector 100 percent authority to render service inside the vessels, only about 10 per cent have access to chandelling in the country, while the remaining 90 per cent were expatriates.

The association, which has about 2,000-membership strength also said the activities of security agents consisting Army, Navy, Police were hindering their operations with its attendant delays and unnecessary interventions on the waters.

Ogbumuo explained that the menace of pirates on the high seas has been hampering their business.

She explained: “Too many challenges have been facing the association, they include finance and insecurity, which made our members found it difficult to supply even as it is finding it difficult to get jobs.

“The expatriates have taken over all the jobs, which Nigerians are suppose to do.

Our members are just there lamenting because less than 10 percent are working. We are the people who are really doing the jobs.

INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY

In collaboration with

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2014 Copyright © 2014 The New York Times

Sanctity of Truth

For Many, TVs Are Optional

By ALEX WILLIAMS

The television has always been more than just an appliance. For decades, going back to the days when a single family on a block might have a color TV that the neighbors were invited in to watch, it has been a portal to a dreamscape, a status symbol, a trusted late-night companion.

Back in the days of one-career households and family dinners, that trusted cathode box was not only the centerpiece of most living rooms, it also served as a form of emotional glue for the family. Through it, the shared experiences would define a generation.

But mention that experience to someone like Abigail McFee, a student at Tufts University near Boston, and she may look at you with puzzlement. She recently dropped by a friend’s room on campus and beheld the most incongruous sight: a small television perched on a dresser.

“It was little bit weird,” she said.

Ms. McFee, 19, has never owned a television set, nor do 90 percent of her friends at school, she estimates.

In the era of laptops and the Hulu streaming service, she is not quite sure why one would. “When I walk into a dorm room and see one, my first thought is, it’s unnecessary,” she said, “almost a waste of space.”

A decade ago, a home — even, in many cases, a dorm room — without a television would have seemed virtually unthinkable, like a house without a telephone.

And, that, in a sense, is the point.

Just as the landline went from household staple to quaint anachronism seemingly overnight during the last decade, the television set has started to look at best like a luxury, if not an irrelevance, in the eyes of many members of the wired generation, who have moved past the

Con­­tin­­ued on Page 26

AMBER FOUTS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Jonathan Ray relies on his MacBook Pro or iPhone and shared subscriptions to services to watch shows.

INTELLIGENCE

Global threats come to the Galápagos. PAGE 24

Arms Pick Whom to Kill

By JOHN MARKOFF

ON A BRIGHT fall day last year off the coast of Southern California, a United States Air Force B-1 bomber launched an experimental missile that may herald the future of warfare.

Initially, pilots aboard the plane directed the missile, but halfway to its destination, the missile severed communication with its operators. Alone, without human oversight, the weapon decided which of three ships to attack, dropping to just above the sea surface and striking a 260-foot unmanned freighter.

Warfare is increasingly guided by software. Today, armed drones can be operated by remote pilots peering into video screens thousands of miles from the battlefield. But now, some scientists say, arms makers have crossed into troubling territory, developing weapons that rely on artificial intelligence, not human instruction, to decide what to target and whom to kill.

As these weapons become smarter and nimbler, critics fear they will become increasingly difficult for humans to control — or to defend against. And while pinpoint accuracy could save civilian lives, critics fear weapons without human oversight could make war more likely, as easy as flipping a switch.

Britain, Israel and Norway are already deploying missiles and drones that carry out attacks against enemy radar, tanks or ships without direct human control. After launch, socalled autonomous weapons rely on artificial intelligence and sensors to select targets and to initiate an attack.

Britain’s “fire and forget” Brim-

stone missiles, for example, can distinguish among tanks and cars and buses without human assistance, and can hunt targets in a predesignated region without oversight. The Brimstones communicate with one another, sharing their targets.

Armaments with more advanced self-governance are in development.

“An autonomous weapons arms race is already taking place,” said Steve Omohundro, an artificial intelligence specialist at Self-Aware Systems in California. “They can respond faster, more efficiently and less predictably.”

Christof Heyns, the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, last year called for a moratorium on the development of these weapons.

The United States’ Defense Department has issued a directive requiring high-level authorization for the development of weapons capable of killing without human oversight.

But fast-moving technology has already made the directive obsolete,

Con­­tin­­ued on Page 26

FROM TOP: DEFENSE ADVANCED RESEARCH PROJECTS AGENCY; MINISTRY OF DEFENCE/CROWN COPYRIGHT, VIA AP

Top, testing a missile that can hunt and attack on its own. Above, a Brimstone strike in Iraq.

WORLD TRENDS

MONEY & BUSINESS

ARTS & DESIGN

Division deepens over Congo’s riches. PAGE 25

Plans for hauling cargo by airships. PAGE 29

A satirist sobered by a reporter’s tale. PAGE 34

24

THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY

Sanctity of Truth

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2014

O P I N I O N & C O M M E N TA RY

EDI TO RI A LS O F THE TI M ES

Cuban Brain Drain Cuban doctors serving in West Africa during the Ebola outbreak could easily abandon their posts, take a taxi to the nearest American Embassy and apply for a little-known immigration program that has allowed thousands of them to defect. Those who are accepted can be on American soil within weeks, on track to becoming United States citizens.

There is much to criticize about Washington’s failed policies toward Cuba and the embargo it has imposed on the island for decades. But the Cuban Medical Professional Parole Program, which in the last fiscal year enabled 1,278 Cubans to defect while on overseas assignments, is particularly hard to justify.

It is incongruous for the United States to value the contributions of Cuban doctors who are sent by their government to assist in international crises like the 2010 Haiti earthquake while working to subvert that government by making defection so easy.

American immigration policy should give priority to the world’s neediest refugees and persecuted people. It should not be used to exacerbate the brain drain of an adversarial nation at a time when improved relations between the two countries are a realistic goal.

The program was introduced through executive authority in August 2006, when Emilio González, a hard-line Cuban exile, was at the helm of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. Mr. González described the labor of Cuban doctors abroad as “state-sponsored human trafficking.” At the time, the Bush administration was trying to cripple the Cuban government.

Enabling medical personnel posted abroad to defect represented an opportunity to strike at the core of the island’s primary diplomatic tool, while embarrassing the Castro regime.

Cuba has been using its medical corps as the nation’s main source of revenue and soft power for many years. The country has one of the highest numbers of doctors per capita in the world and offers medical scholarships to hundreds of disadvantaged international students each year. According to Cuban government figures, more than 440,000 of the island’s 11 million citizens are employed in the health sector.

Havana gets subsidized oil

from Venezuela and money from several other countries in exchange for medical services. This year, according to the state-run newspaper Granma, the government expects to make $8.2 billion from its medical workers overseas.

Medical professionals, like most Cubans, earn meager wages. Doctors earn about $60 per month, while nurses make nearly $40. Overseas postings allow these health care workers to earn more. Doctors in Brazil, for example, are making about $1,200 per month.

The 256 Cuban medical professionals treating Ebola patients in West Africa are getting daily stipends of roughly $240 from the World Health Organization. José Luis Di Fabio, head of the W.H.O. in Havana, said he was confident the doctors and nurses dispatched to Africa have gone voluntarily.

Some doctors who have defected say they felt the overseas tours had an implicit element of coercion and have complained that the government pockets the bulk of the money it gets for their services. But the United States’ State Department says in its latest report on human trafficking that reported coercion of Cuban medical personnel does “not appear to reflect a uniform government policy.” Even so, the Cuban government would be wise to compensate medical personnel more generously if their work overseas is to remain the island’s economic bedrock.

Last year, Cuba liberalized its travel policies, allowing most citizens to leave the country freely. Doctors, who had faced stricter travel restrictions, no longer do. Some 20,000 Cubans immigrate to the United States yearly. And those who arrive in rafts or through border crossing points are authorized to stay.

The Cuban government has long regarded the medical defection program as a symbol of American duplicity. It undermines Cuba’s ability to respond to humanitarian crises and does nothing to make the government in Havana more democratic. As long as this policy is in place, establishing a healthier relationship between the nations will be harder.

Many medical professionals will continue to want to move to the United States, and they have every right to do so. But inviting them to defect while on overseas tours is going too far.

INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY NANCY LEE Executive editor TOM BRADY Editor ALAN MATTINGLY Managing editor The New York Times International Weekly 620 Eighth Avenue, New York, NY 10018

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More than 170,000 tourists visit the Galápagos every year, threatening the local ecology.

INTELLIGENCE/MATT CARR

A ‘Showcase of Evolution’ at Risk Puerto Ayora, Ecuador Unesco calls the Galápagos Islands a “living museum and showcase of evolution,” but it is much more than that. The islands have become the world’s foremost conservation laboratory, which scientists and the Ecuadorean government have promoted as a model on how humanity might prevent, or even reverse, the catastrophic species depletion that has taken place relentlessly ever since Charles Darwin first pondered the finches there.

These efforts matter more than ever now, as recent research suggests that Darwin was wrong when he rejected the natural catastrophe theory of evolution. According to a recent report from the World Wildlife Fund, populations of more than 10,000 vertebrate species declined by 52 percent on average between 1970 and 2010. In South America the rate of depletion has reached an astonishing 83 percent. This is the process that scientists have called the “sixth extinction,” comparable to the previous five great mass extinctions on earth. But unlike the others, the current destruction is entirely anthropogenic — the result of human activity. Worst-case scenarios predict the extinction of one-fourth of earth’s species within 20 years to 30 years if the rise in temperatures continues.

In recent years, scientists have cited climate change as a grave danger to the Galápagos Islands’ ecosystem, which depends on the confluence of hot and cold ocean currents. Some studies have already found evidence that abrupt changes in sea temperatures have caused the degradation of coral reefs, and one scientist preMatt Carr is an author and journalist. His latest book, “Sherman’s Ghosts: Soldiers, Civilians and the American Way of War,” will be published in March. Send comments to intelligence@nytimes.com.

dicted that Galápagos penguins might one day be forced to live in man-made “condos” if global warming continues.

But climate change is only one of the threats. In 2007, Unesco designated the Galápagos to be a World Heritage Site, in danger from tourism, immigration, poaching and overfishing, but it removed the region from the danger list on the grounds that Ecuador had taken vigorous action to protect it — a decision that some conservationists criticized.

Evidence of the conservation effort is visible everywhere on the islands: in the careful baggage screening before you arrive; in the decontamination mats at Baltra airport; in the specially designated paths that

The Galápagos: case study on the impact of global warming. all visitors must follow; in the signs warning of invasive species brought in by ships; in the turtle breeding programs at the Darwin Foundation.

At first sight these efforts seem to be working. Step out of the old United States military airport on Baltra and frigate birds with pointed zigzag black wings lazily hover overhead. On boat trips, it’s easy to spot sea turtles laboriously mating in the ocean, sea lions hanging out on rocks, or a marine iguana frozen to a rock.

But this beguiling combination of Jurassic Park and Bosch’s “Garden of Earthly Delights” is not immune to the man-made threats that have wrought havoc elsewhere. More than 170,000 tourists visit the Galápagos every year, with attendant cars, bars and restaurants, and the proliferation of jerry-built cin-

der-block houses on Santa Cruz is evidence of the 30,000 people living on the islands, many of whom service the tourist industry.

Salaries on the islands are three times as high as they are on the mainland, and the locals are not always concerned with conservation, despite the one-week course the government requires of new arrivals. Population growth has increased the risk of invasive species, which constitute some of the most destructive instruments of the “sixth extinction.” Humans no longer hunt turtles or iguanas, as they did in Darwin’s time, but goats, donkeys, dogs, cats and rats are often just as destructive.

Eradication and captive breeding programs have eliminated some of these threats. Goats have been removed from Pinta Island, and electronically tagged “Judas goats” are helping park rangers detect goats on other islands.

Feral dogs no longer terrorize the iguana population of North Seymour, and the introduction of lady bugs has driven back the cottony scale bugs that fed on indigenous trees and plants.

Jorge Carrión, the director of Environmental Management of the Galápagos National Park Service, said it was a success that 95 percent of the species that existed on the islands during Darwin’s time are still present. The techniques being developed to deal with invasive species, and the research into the impact of global warming, offer lessons to the rest of the world.

Failure to preserve the Galápagos Islands’ unique environment would not only be a disaster for one of the most extraordinary places on earth, it would also constitute further evidence that the catastrophe quietly unfolding across our planet may be unstoppable, leaving future generations with only videos and photographs to tell of the strange and wonderful creatures that once lived here.

THE NEW YORK TIMES IS PUBLISHED WEEKLY IN THE FOLLOWING NEWSPAPERS: CLARÍN, ARGENTINA n DER STANDARD, AUSTRIA n LA RAZÓN, BOLIVIA n A TARDE, FOLHA, GAZETA DO POVO, JORNAL O POVO AND O LIBERAL, BRAZIL n GUELPH MERCURY, THE HAMILTON SPECTATOR, TORONTO STAR AND WATERLOO REGION RECORD, CANADA n LA SEGUNDA, CHILE n EL ESPECTADOR, COLOMBIA n LISTIN DIARIO, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC n LE FIGARO, FRANCE n SÜDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG, GERMANY n PRENSA LIBRE, GUATEMALA n LA REPUBBLICA, ITALY n ASAHI SHIMBUN, JAPAN n DIARIO DE YUCATÁN, EL NORTE, EXPRESO, MURAL, REFORMA AND SÍNTESIS, MEXICO n EL DIARIO, MEXICO AND UNITED STATES n EL NUEVO DIARIO, NICARAGUA n NEW TELEGRAPH, NIGERIA n LA PRENSA, PANAMA n CORREO, PERU n MANILA BULLETIN, PHILIPPINES n TODAY, SINGAPORE n EL PAÍS, SPAIN n UNITED DAILY NEWS, TAIWAN n THE OBSERVER, UNITED KINGDOM n THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS, UNITED STATES

THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2014

Sanctity of Truth

25

WORLD TRENDS

Conflict is rising over oil exploration in Lake Edward, part of Virunga National Park, home to gorillas and lions.

Violence in Congo Over Oil Drilling PHOTOGRAPHS BY URIEL SINAI/THE NEW YORK TIMES

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

Conflicts Over Africa’s Wilderness

Virunga National Park

The hunt for resources is putting pressure on pristine wilderness areas in Eastern and Central Africa, including Virunga, the continent’s oldest national park.

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Atlantic Ocean Goma 800 KILOMETERS

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THE NEW YORK TIMES

Soldiers and park rangers at Virunga National Park.

The park director was wounded in April when gunmen ambushed him. and cloud forests constitute an otherworldly world for gorillas, elephants, lions and chimps — a rare mix.

Beyond that, Virunga’s Lake Edward, where the oil is believed to lie, is part of the headwaters of the Nile. An oil spill here could contaminate water that tens of millions, possibly hundreds of millions, rely on.

“Any toxins from here could flow up to the Mediterranean,” said Emmanuel de Merode, Virunga’s director. “It could reach all the way to Spain.”

A volatile mix of natural treasures and deep poverty.

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DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO

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VIRUNGA NATIONAL PARK, Democratic Republic of Congo — The trouble started when a British company appeared in this spectacularly beautiful national park, prospecting for oil.

Villagers who opposed the project were beaten by soldiers.

A park warden, who tried to block the oil company, SOCO International, from building a cellphone tower in the park, was kidnapped and tortured. Virunga’s director, a Belgian prince, was shot and nearly killed hours after he delivered a report on. the oil company’s activities.

The struggle over oil exploration in Africa’s national parks is a classic quandary, pitting economic development against environmental preservation.

And the stakes are high, on both sides.

New technology like deeper drilling has led to energy discoveries here on the continent’s east side. Oil companies are now circling several African parks like this one, home to critically endangered wildlife, such as colossal silverback mountain gorillas, among the last of their kind.

But development is more than a buzzword here. The people in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, northern Kenya, Uganda and Mozambique — all places of recent hydrocarbon finds — are among the poorest in the world.

African governments say they have a moral obligation to pursue anything that might lift their countries out of grinding poverty.

Environmentalists vowed to “draw the line” here in Virunga, Africa’s oldest national park and a Unesco World Heritage Site, protected for its “outstanding universal value” to all humankind. The World Wildlife Fund signed up hundreds of thousands of supporters in a global campaign. Then in June, it said the oil company had backed off.

There’s just one problem: It might not be true. The company’s chairman, Rui de Sousa, said at SOCO’s annual general meeting, “We have not pulled out.”

Virunga is considered one of the most biodiverse slices of the planet. Its savannas of yellow grass, towering volcanoes bubbling with lava, jungles, swamps

Mr. de Merode routinely confronts rebels, poachers and other outlaws who skulk through Virunga, which lies on the border of Rwanda and Uganda, in the eye of several recent wars.

In April, he was driving back from the Congolese city of Goma, where he had just delivered a confidential report to state prosecutors about suspicions of illegal oil activities in Virunga. A group of men in fatigues popped out of the bushes and raised their rifles.

“You ever been shot?” Mr. de

Merode said, recounting the ambush. “It’s like getting winded.

But it doesn’t knock you down, like in the movies.”

The shooters are suspected of being rogue government soldiers.

The House of Merode is a family of Belgian nobility. Mr. de Merode, 44, was born a prince, and his two young daughters, who live in Kenya, are princesses. He spends most of his time in Congo, in a mountainside tent, getting paid $800 a month by the Congolese government.

“I’m going to keep doing what I’ve been doing,” he said, “just a little bit more.”

It may take a lot more. Environmentalists have seen how malleable the boundaries of protected areas can be.

The Selous Game Reserve, also a Unesco World Heritage Site, in neighboring Tanzania, is one of the largest protected areas left in Africa. It is also where large quantities of uranium were discovered. In 2012, the Tanzanian government persuaded the

World Heritage Committee, the international body that designates World Heritage Sites, to modify the Selous’s boundaries so that the uranium area would lie just outside the site and mining could begin. Observers at the meetings said some committee members had environmental concerns, but did not want to appear as if they were trying to keep Africans poor — or valuing animals over humans.

Many predict something similar in store for Virunga.

“This is the battle not only for the oldest national park in Africa, it’s also the battle for maintaining the World Heritage Convention,” said Guy Debonnet, who has worked for the Unesco World Heritage Center. “If Virunga goes, many others will follow.”

In June, SOCO signed a joint declaration with the World Wildlife Fund, saying it would not drill in Virunga “unless Unesco and the D.R.C. government agree that such activities are not incompatible with its World Heritage status.” SOCO has also said it would not harm adjacent buffer zones.

“We had a massive support base, and overnight that support base was wiped out,” said Joanna Natasegara, the producer of a documentary about the dispute, “Virunga.” “The declaration said Virunga was safe.”

But World Wildlife Fund executives now acknowledge that the battle is hardly over. SOCO has yet to relinquish its operating permits or commit to a withdrawal.

“They’re leaving the door open,” said Zach Abraham of the World Wildlife Fund. Still, he said, “there are so many losing fights around the planet, if we don’t take a moment to celebrate achievements, we lose an important opportunity.”

“You need to remind the audience these fights are worth fighting,” he said. “Virunga is one of the most incredibly beautiful places you will ever see in your entire life.”

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Sanctity of Truth

THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2014

WORLD TRENDS

For Millennial Generation, a TV Is Not a Must-Have Con­­tin­­ued from Page 23 “cord-cutter” stage, in which they get rid of cable, to getting rid of their TV sets entirely.

As flat-screen sales skid, programming migrates to the web, and customs like password-swapping and live-tweeting render viewing habits unrecognizable from even five years ago, the central role of the television set is being shaken for the first time since the rabbit-ears era.

“Growing up, TV ruled my life,” said Francine Lieberman, a 25-year-old landscape architect. Even so, she has not owned a television since college, nor do at least half her female friends.

“I live in New York City, I find events to go to every night, and have seen my social and professional life flourish as a result,” Ms. Lieberman said.

“While there are certainly the rare nights where I find myself curling up with an iPad to catch a show, the only time I watch a program from an actual set is during my daily morning run at the gym.”

The notion that the television may go the way of the Sony Walk­ man may sound like hyperbole.

Liquid-crystal-display television panels even enjoyed unexpectedly high sales in the first half of the year, tied to enthusiastic TV viewing because of the World Cup and economic growth in North America, among other factors, according to the IHS Technology research firm.

Yet by another, more geek-futurist measure, it seems easy to start television sets’ obituary.

The smartphone age has been cruel to devices that have only one function. Not only telephones, but egg timers, alarm clocks, desktop calendars, video cameras, even flashlights have been rendered as inessential as pocket watches by the iPhone and its brethren.

Many millennials who have

Con­­tin­­ued from Page 23 some scientists say.

“Our concern is with how the targets are determined, and more importantly, who determines them,” said Peter Asaro of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control, a group of scientists that advocates restrictions on the use of military robots. “Are these human-designated targets? Or are these systems automatically deciding what is a target?”

Weapons manufacturers in the United States were the first to develop advanced autonomous weapons. An early version of the Tomahawk cruise missile had the ability to hunt for Soviet ships over the horizon without direct human control. It was withdrawn in the early 1990s after a nuclear arms treaty with Russia.

In 1988, the United States Navy test-fired a Harpoon antiship missile that used an early form of self-guidance. The missile mistook an Indian freighter that had strayed onto the test range for its target, hitting the freighter and killing a crew member. The Har-

PATRICK LEGER

Abigail McFee, a college student, has never owned a television set, nor have 90 percent of her friends.

MARK OSTOW FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

ditched their TVs still actually love television. They may, in fact, watch more of it than ever since unplugging, thanks to the relatively newfound ability to catch up on their latest shows on their phones or tablets anywhere, at any time.

“I can sit on the couch and watch the new season of ‘Orange Is the New Black’ in a weekend,” said Andrew Wojtek, a 26-yearold museum event producer who lives in Harlem. “I can watch while I’m traveling on trains or

planes, and staying in hotels. I can watch something on a break in the park or in a coffee shop while wasting time waiting to meet up with a friend.”

Jonathan Ray relies on his MacBook Pro or iPhone to catch most comedies, like “Veep.” For high-production-value shows like “Game of Thrones” that cry out for a more cinematic experience, Mr. Ray cobbled together a Franken-TV out of a spare computer monitor, an old set of computer speakers and an Apple TV box.

And no need for cable. To defray subscription costs, he shares with friends passwords for streaming services like Netflix, Hulu Plus and HBO Go. And though this transforms viewing habits from a communal experience to a singular one, with people sitting alone in their room, watching the latest episode of “American Horror Story” on their iPad — this generation has found ways of reviving the time-honored viewing party into one more representative of 21st-century technology.

With her college friends spread all around the country, Katy Taylor, 25, a Young Men’s Christian Association program director in Providence, Rhode Island, uses television to keep engaged with them, even though she, and many of her friends, do not have a set. They will simply log on at the appointed time for the latest episode of “Homeland” and spend the next hour live-tweeting the broadcast, trading quips, grilling one another, dissecting plot

New Arms Pick Whom They Will Kill poon remains in use.

New types of radar, laser and infrared sensors are helping missiles and drones better calculate their position. “Machine vision” identifies patterns in images and helps weapons distinguish targets. This information can be quickly interpreted by artificial intelligence systems, enabling a missile or drone to carry out its own analysis in flight.

The missile tested off the coast of California, the Long Range Anti-Ship Missile, is under development by Lockheed Martin for the United States. It is intended to fly for hundreds of miles, maneuvering on its own to avoid radar, and out of radio contact with human controllers.

In 2012, a defense department directive drew a line between semiautonomous weapons, whose targets are chosen by a human operator, and autonomous weapons that can hunt and engage targets without intervention. Weapons of the future, the

directive said, must be “designed to allow commanders and operators to exercise appropriate levels of human judgment over the use of force.”

The defense department says that the new antiship missile is semiautonomous and that humans are sufficiently represent-

In a war debate, precision versus human control. ed in its targeting and killing decisions.

“It will be operating autonomously when it searches for the enemy fleet,” said Mark A. Gubrud of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control.

“This is pretty sophisticated stuff that I would call artificial intelli-

gence outside human control.”

Paul Scharre, who is now at the Center for a New American Security and who led the group that wrote the defense department directive, said, “It’s valid to ask if this crosses the line.”

Some arms-control specialists say that requiring only “appropriate” human control of these weapons is too vague, speeding the development of systems that automate killing.

Mr. Heyns, of the United Nations, said that nations with advanced weapons should agree to limit their systems to those with “meaningful” human control. “It must be similar to the role a commander has over his troops,” he said.

Systems that permit humans to override the computer’s decisions may not meet that criterion, Mr. Heyns added. Weapons that make their own decisions move so quickly that humans soon may not be able to keep up. Yet many of the systems are designed to

points, and scouring Google for intelligence on characters.

Said Ms. Taylor, “I watch it more for the social experience, to have some thing to talk and joke about, than for the content.”

When the practice extends to sharing passwords — a common practice that in some cases violates service agreements, if not the law — TV-free television viewing becomes even more clubby, Mr. Ray said.

“There’s an intimacy, a social protocol,” he said. “You would never ask someone for their Netflix password unless you were very close to them.” Once a friend logs onto your account, that person can see your “Recently Watched” file, as well as your queue of movies.

Live-tweeting, in fact, has become such a habit among fans that networks are relying on it to create hits, and even save shows.

“Scandal” struck some critics as a candidate for cancellation after a lukewarm reception in its first season, in 2012. An aggressive Twitter outreach campaign, including live-tweeting by actors during broadcasts, helped transform the ABC crisis-management drama into a ratings heavyweight.

Even so, other hardened TV apostates confessed that they are not immune to the charms of a large-screen TV for some programs.

Having grown addicted to the “Doctor Who” reboot online, Hannah Hamill — a 29-year-old stay-at-home mother in Philadelphia who never bothered to replace her cathode-tube television when broadcast networks moved to the digital standard in 2009 — found herself driving 32 kilometers to her sister’s house, and her 139-centimeter TV screen, when BBC America broadcast a 50th anniversary “Doctor Who” special last November.

She said: “I thought, ‘I’m going to really treat myself.’ ”

permit humans to step away from controls. Israel’s antiradar missile, the Harpy, waits in the sky until an enemy radar is turned on. It then attacks and destroys the radar installation on its own.

Norway plans to equip jet fighters with the Joint Strike Missile, which can hunt, recognize and detect a target without human intervention. Opponents have called it a “killer robot.”

Military analysts like Mr. Scharre argue that automated weapons like these should be embraced because they may result in fewer mass killings and civilian casualties.

On September 16, 2011, for example, British warplanes fired two dozen Brimstone missiles at Libyan tanks that were shelling civilians. Eight or more tanks were simultaneously destroyed, a military spokesman said, saving the lives of many civilians.

Such precision would have been difficult for human operators to coordinate.

“Better, smarter weapons,” Mr. Scharre said, “are good if they reduce civilian casualties or indiscriminate killing.”

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2014

THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY

Sanctity of Truth

27

WORLD TRENDS

Deciding When It’s Time There are plenty of reasons — some religious and some humanitarian — that people object to assisted suicide, but Paul J. Frankel raised a more morbid LENS concern in a debate about the subject on the letters page of The New York Times: “I would need to see a specific plan and appropriate safeguards,” wrote Mr. Frankel, of Holmdale, New Jersey, “to ensure that the children don’t kill their elderly parents to get their inheritance, or because they are tired of taking care of them.”

Most of us would like to think we would face death, either our own or that of a loved one, with bravery and nobility. But as Mr. Frankel suggests, the reality is often a bit blurrier.

Brittany Maynard, a 29-year-old woman from California who moved to Oregon so doctors could legally prescribe the barbituates she would use to end her own life under the Death With Dignity Act, “put a human face — and a very young one — on a sometimes abstract debate,” The Times reported.

Ms. Maynard appeared on American television and made headlines internationally.

More than five million people visited her page on the Compassion and Choices website; 400,000 signed an online card.

When she died on November 1, the website drew 240,000 visits an hour.

While assisted suicide is legal in the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Switzerland, the American Medical Association opposes it, along with the Catholic Church, Protestant evangelicals and advocates for the disabled. A Vatican official called Ms. Maynard’s act “reprehensible.”

Joyce Appleby’s letter to The Times in early November, which called for granting the right to aid-in-dying for the For comments, write to nytweekly@nytimes.com.

elderly before they face a terminal or debilitating illness, started a debate that drew more than 300 letters, including Mr. Frankel’s note.

Vance Wilson, 91, wrote that he was healthy and enjoying life, but the thought that he might be subjected to the latest treatments from doctors if he got an illness like cancer caused him undue stress. “It would be nice to have a lethal, painless and legal pill on my dresser that would remove that source of stress,” Mr. Wilson wrote.

Mrs. Appleby argued that few would opt for “prophylactic suicide,” but her reasoning for legalizing it was simple.

“A recognized right to assisted suicide for those over 80 would ensure a painless death and allow an elderly person’s loved ones to be there at the end,” she wrote. “As someone who is 85, I know I would ap-

For some, peace of mind in having the option to die. preciate having that choice.”

Meghan Daum isn’t elderly, but four years ago she had a brush with death that made her consider her loved ones too. She contracted a bacterial infection from a flea bite that threatened to kill her or cause permanent brain damage. She was in an anesthesia-induced haze for most of her ordeal, but it was hard on her family and friends, she wrote in The Times. After surviving, she felt the need to soothe them. They wanted her to be miraculously changed by her “miracle” survival, a term her neurologist used when she complained about minor hearing problems.

“They wanted me to go back to being as healthy as I was when I was a whiny ingrate,” she wrote. “They wanted to make sure that I was sufficiently transformed so as to never whine or be ungrateful again.”

TOM BRADY

COMPASSION & CHOICES, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS

Brittany Maynard became the face of the assisted suicide debate in the United States when she died this month.

NADIA SHIRA COHEN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

A priest and his girlfriend, together in Italy in spite of the Roman Catholic Church’s policy.

The Struggle of Clerical Celibacy

By ELISABETTA POVOLEDO

ROME — They had not planned on falling in love, but they did.

They did not want to become the objects of malicious gossip, but they are. They had not imagined living a life of furtive affections and secret rendezvous, but that is what has happened since the woman and the priest defied a Roman Catholic Church taboo and became romantically involved.

“Some people see me as a devil, something dirty,” said the woman, who, along with the priest she is involved with, spoke at a hotel in a city far from his parish.

They asked to remain anonymous, fearing further disapproval from their parents, who know, and the disdain of friends and parishioners, who already suspect that their friendship is more than platonic.

“I risk losing everything if it were to come out into the open,” the priest said. Yet they agreed to speak, his partner said, “because suffering pushes you to do something, to try and change this injustice.”

An online search using “in love with a priest” produces blog after blog about churchcrossed lovers, in any number of languages. There are support groups on social media. One group of 26 women even petitioned Pope Francis to change the church’s requirement of celibacy for priests.

“It’s really hard to explain this relationship to someone who hasn’t gone through it,” said one of the women who signed the letter. “We wanted to let the pope know that the suffering is widespread.”

She again wrote to the pope in September just before the Synod of Bishops, a Vatican gathering of some 200 clerics convened to discuss contemporary issues.

It was the most closely watched synod in decades, and some Vatican experts drew parallels with the synod convened by Pope Paul

VI in 1971, where the celibacy requirement for priests drew heated debate. At that time, the synod reaffirmed celibacy, and there has been no official review since.

Those who were hoping the issue would be revisited during October’s synod were disappointed again.

Yet a growing number of priest organizations in the United States, Austria, Ireland and elsewhere continue to press for change. Challengers to clerical celibacy point to the shortage of priests worldwide and to studies that show celibacy is a significant deterrent for young men wanting to become priests.

While no numbers on the causes of the shortage are authoritative, Advent, a support group for priests who have left the ministry in Britain, estimates that

A continuing exodus of priests who choose to marry. about 10,000 men have left the priesthood to marry in the past 50 years in England and Wales alone.

The shortage has had significant impact in parishes around the world, said Alex Walker, the leader of Advent, who left the priesthood to marry.

“If celibacy is causing a problem,” he said, “they’ll have to allow optional celibacy.”

Another group, Married Priests Now, which was founded eight years ago by Emmanuel Milingo, the former archbishop of Lusaka, Zambia, who married in 2001, estimates there are 25,000 men in America who have left the priesthood to marry, and about 150,000 worldwide.

In a letter sent to the pope in September 2013, Married Priests Now praised the “new wind blow-

ing in the Church,” after Francis’ election that year, and noted that: “It would be nice if the new spirit of reconciliation would include the married priest.”

Organizations of liberal Catholics have also been calling for a change, arguing that clerics routinely married in the early centuries of the church.

“We know that St. Peter was married,” said the Reverend Thomas Reese, an analyst at The National Catholic Reporter. “All the apostles were married, so celibacy isn’t intrinsically connected to the priesthood.”

The debate took a turn when Pope Benedict XVI decided in 2009 to create a mechanism for welcoming priests from the Anglican Communion to the Roman Catholic Church, opening the door to clergy with families.

Those hoping for a change were encouraged last May when Pope Francis told reporters that clerical celibacy was an issue open to discussion.

“Celibacy is not a question of dogma, but rather a rule of life that I greatly appreciate, as I believe it is a gift for the Church,” the pope said. “But, since it is not a dogma, the door is always open.”

While seeming open to a change in policy, the pope has also exhorted priests to take their celibacy seriously, and to leave the church if they can’t.

But for many priests, leaving the priesthood is a tormented option. Some priests spoke of the demeaning procedures they must go through to “defect” from the ministry, made worse by unsupportive bishops who often try to get them to change their minds, and allow them to transfer to a different parish.

The priest who discussed his relationship at the hotel said he believed the relationship improved his ministry. “Since I am with her, I am a better priest, because I am calm, relaxed,” he said. “The only problem is having to sneak around.”

28

Sanctity of Truth

THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2014

WORLD TRENDS

Yazidi Girls Describe Ordeal in ISIS Captivity

By KIRK SEMPLE

KHANKE, Iraq — The 15-yearold girl, crying and terrified, refused to release her grip on her sister’s hand. Days earlier, Islamic State fighters had torn the girls from their family, and now were trying to split them up and distribute them as spoils of war.

The jihadist who had selected the 15-year-old as his prize pressed a pistol to her head, threatening to pull the trigger.

But it was only when the man put a knife to her 19-year-old sister’s neck that she finally relented, taking her next step in a dark odyssey of abduction and abuse at the hands of the Islamic State.

The sisters were among several thousand girls and young women from the minority Yazidi religion who were seized by the Islamic State in northern Iraq in early August.

The 15-year-old is also among a small number of kidnapping victims who escaped, bringing with them stories of a coldly

systemized industry of slavery.

Five girls and women who recently escaped agreed to be interviewed, on the condition that their names not be revealed.

The Islamic State regards Yazidis as pagans deserving of enslavement or death.

In a video posted on YouTube in October, men purported to be Islamic State fighters banter about buying and selling Yazidi girls on “slave market day.” One says he will check the girls’ teeth.

Another says he will trade a girl for a Glock handgun. The Islamic State has kidnapped more than 5,000 Yazidis.

On August 3, when the militants attacked Yazidi villages in the Sinjar region, thousands fled into the nearby mountains.

The 15-year-old, D. A., was part of that exodus, traveling in a car with her parents, five of her sisters and a niece. But their path was cut off by militant fighters who took them to the town of Sinjar. There, the militants separat-

ed the female Yazidis and young children from the men and boys, then later in the day picked out the unmarried women and older girls, D. A. said.

Along with dozens of other girls, D. A. and two of her sisters — one 19, the other 12 — were loaded onto a convoy of three buses and driven to the Islamic State stronghold of Mosul, where they were held in a building that functioned as a clearinghouse.

Islamic State fighters would stop by and take their pick. Some of the girls were as young as 11.

Over the next several weeks D. A. was moved at least eight more times. She remembers men haggling, money trading hands.

At one point, while she was being held in another house near Raqqa, D. A. tried to escape along with five other girls. But their attempt failed, and D. A., accused of being the ringleader, was beaten and imprisoned.

She was released into the custody of a jihadist who locked her

Missing Students Stir Anger

in a house with several other girls. The jihadist told them he was going to force them to marry him at the end of the week.

None of the five escapees interviewed said they had been raped.

But most said they had met other girls who had been raped, sometimes by several men. Several advocates said that even if the girls had been sexually assaulted, they might never admit it.

Late one night, D. A. and another girl squeezed through a small window, and the two ran into the darkness, eventually coming to a house in a rural area. They knocked on the door and a sympathetic-seeming young Arab man answered.

He took them to the house of a Kurdish family who then con-

tacted D. A.’s brother, arranged a meeting in a Kurdish area of Syria and agreed that the girls’ families would pay $3,700 each to the Arab man for his help.

Asked why the Arab took the extraordinary risk of helping the two girls, D. A. said, “I think he needed the money.”

That meshes with other accounts suggesting that a cottage industry of for-profit rescuers has sprung up in response to the Yazidi girls’ abductions. One 19-year-old woman said her family had paid a smuggler $15,000 to help her escape captors in Aleppo, Syria.

D. A.’s parents are still in captivity — if they are still alive — as are five sisters and her niece, relatives said. Their absence, D. A. said, has left her feeling bereft.

During the day, relatives, relief workers and television provide distractions. But at night, she said, when she is left alone with her thoughts, that is when it hurts the most.

Where Non-Muslims Cannot Say ‘Allah’

By THOMAS FULLER

By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD

MEXICO CITY — The fate of 43 college students missing and presumed killed and burned to ashes in a mass abduction in September has bred ire and indignation in many corners of Mexico.

Thousands of demonstrators, mostly teachers and students and young sympathizers, have poured into the streets of Mexico City and have blocked major intercity highways, while setting fires that damaged the door to the national palace in Mexico City and regional political party offices and the state congress building in Guerrero, where the students attended school.

And social media has lit up with related hashtags, including #YaMeCansedelMiedo (“I am tired of fear”), a play on a remark by the attorney general who cut off a question at a news conference on the students’ case by saying, “Ya me cansé” — “I’m tired now.”

Many wonder whether the president, Enrique Peña Nieto, will support efforts to address corruption and the rule of law.

Mexico has seen these convulsions over sensational crimes before. In 2011, galvanized by the kidnapping and murder of the son of a poet, Javier Sicilia, tens of thousands of protesters marched under the banner and hashtag #HastaLaMadre — roughly, “We have had it!” — and eventually Felipe Calderón, then the president, held a nationally televised meeting with relatives of the tens of thousands of people abducted and murdered during the drug war in his term.

That meeting gave rise to an underfunded office to address

ONLINE: ‘SLAVE MARKET DAY’

In a video, militants talk about a trade in girls: nytimes.com Search boast slaves

TOMAS BRAVO/REUTERS

Protests like one in Mexico City erupted in after reports that 43 missing Mexican students were caught in a police sweep. the needs of victims of violence but little else.

Andrew Selee of the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington said isolated areas like Ciudad Juárez and Monterrey received more attention after mass killings, resulting in some drops in crime. But politicians have been unable to carry out effective anticorruption measures.

“Politicians of all parties have a great opportunity to make transparency and fighting corruption a banner that they all want to march behind, but it is an open question if that will happen,” Mr. Selee said.

A general tolerance for corruption may explain the muted reaction from opposition parties to revelations about a private $7 million house the president’s wife is buying on credit from a company whose owner won large government construction contracts from Mexico State when Mr. Peña Nieto was its governor.

The owner of the house also has a company that was a partner in a Chinese-led consortium for a bullet-train contract Mr. Peña Nieto abruptly canceled, bowing to complaints that the bidding process was not transparent.

But the shocking reports about the students in Iguala, who the authorities said were swept up by the police on orders of a mayor, turned over to a drug gang and killed and incinerated, strike

at the frustration and contempt many people hold toward corrupt politicians and the police.

The public venting is spreading to normally quiet sectors like the members of the Roman Catholic bishops conference and the chief justice of the Supreme Court.

Juan Francisco Torres Landa of Mexico Unido Contra la Delincuencia (Mexicans United Against Crime), said, “We are asking, What do we expect from the most senior officials in government?” The civic group has organized marches before but is not doing so now.

The events in Iguala have discredited the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution, known as the PRD, which is usually quick to condemn the corruption in Mr. Peña Nieto’s Institutional Revolutionary Party.

On the right, the National Action Party has its own burden in dealing with the role of its standard-bearer, Mr. Calderón, in the drug war, as well as its share of corruption among officials.

“The political parties are paralyzed,” said Ernesto López Portillo, director of Insyde, a security think tank in Mexico City, who has long advocated better training and accountability for local and state police forces. “Social frustration has grown, and this is expressed peacefully for the most part, but political power has not transformed.”

KOTA KINABALU, Malaysia — As the students knelt at a Christian kindergarten near the shores of the South China Sea, a girl in pigtails read out a chapter from a children’s Bible: “Sepuluh hukum dari Allah” — God’s Ten Commandments.

Technically, she broke the law.

According to a series of government orders and rulings by Malaysia’s Islamic councils, the word for God in the Malay language — “Allah” — is reserved for Muslims. Malay-language Bibles are banned everywhere except inside churches. State regulations ban a list of words, including Allah, in any non-Muslim context.

Islam is the official religion of Malaysia, and Muslims are governed by Shariah, though Christians, Hindus and Buddhists make up sizable minorities. The government has sought to cultivate an image of a modern, moderate Islamic state, where 60 percent of the population is Muslim, and minorities live harmoniously.

But Christians, who make up 10 percent of the population, say the Allah ban is one of many signs of an increasingly intolerant government policy.

Religious authorities have barred Muslims from taking part in Halloween and scolded them for petting dogs, which they view as unclean. Zainah Anwar, the founder of Sisters in Islam, a women’s rights group, describes a “headlong descent into a puritanical, extremist, intolerant brand of Islam.”

The Department of Islamic Development argues that Allah is not a generic name for God but signifies “the religion of the Joe Cochrane reported from Jakarta, Indonesia.

person who uses it.”

Islamic scholars say banning non-Muslims from using “Allah” is unique to Malaysia. “You can’t find this idea in any previous Islamic discourse,” said Yahya Cholil Staquf of Nahdlatul Ulama, the largest Islamic organization in Indonesia.

Minorities need clarity on freedom of religion in the country, said the Reverend Jerry Dusing, the president of a large evangelical Christian denomination, Sidang Injil Borneo.

The Roman Catholic Church has been embroiled in a court case challenging Malaysia’s Allah ban after the government ordered that its newsletter, The Herald, stop using Allah.

An appeals court overturned the ruling last year. “It is our common finding that the name Allah was not an integral part of the Christian faith,” a judge, Mohamed Apandi Ali, said.

Liberal Muslims, who say they are concerned with what they see as the growing power of conservative forces, see reasons other than theology behind the ban.

In Malaysia’s ethnic-based politics, it is in the interest of politicians from the governing coalition to play up perceived threats to Islam, said Wan Saiful Wan Jan of the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs, a research organization in Kuala Lumpur.

The United Malays National Organization, or UMNO, has been the dominant party of the coalition in power for 57 years, but the group was nearly toppled by a multiethnic coalition of parties last year.

“The more Muslims feel they are under threat,” Mr. Wan Saiful said, “the more UMNO can maintain its political hegemony.”

THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2014

Sanctity of Truth

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MONEY & BUSINESS

Genetically Engineered To Produce a Safer Chip

By ANDREW POLLACK

At a time when many consumers are questioning the safety of genetically engineered crops, a potato modified to reduce a potentially harmful ingredient in French fries and potato chips has been approved for commercial planting in the United States.

The potato’s DNA has been altered so that less of a chemical called acrylamide, which is suspected of causing cancer in people, is produced when the potato is fried. The new potato also resists bruising.

The biotech tubers were developed by the J. R. Simplot Company of Boise, Idaho, which was the initial supplier of frozen French fries to McDonald’s in the 1960s and is still a major supplier. They are part of a new wave of genetically modified crops that aim to provide benefits to consumers, not just to farmers as do widely grown biotech crops like herbicide-tolerant soybeans and corn.

The question now is whether the potatoes — which come in the Russet Burbank, Ranger Russet and Atlantic varieties — will be adopted by food com-

Healthful promises after worries about modified crops. panies and restaurants.

At least one group opposed to genetically engineered crops has already pressed McDonald’s to reject them.

Genetically modified potatoes have failed before. In the late 1990s, Monsanto began selling potatoes genetically engineered to resist the Colorado potato beetle. But the market collapsed after big potato users, fearing consumer resistance, told farmers not to grow them. Simplot itself, after hearing from its fast-food chain customers, instructed its farmers to stop growing the Monsanto potatoes. This time could be different, however, because the potato promises potential health benefits to consumers.

The company plans to apply for approval of the potatoes in the major markets, starting with Canada, Mexico, Japan and then other parts of Asia.

Simplot hopes the way the potato was engineered will also help assuage consumer fears. The company calls its product the Innate potato because it does not contain genes from other species like bacteria, as do many biotech

crops. Rather, it contains fragments of potato DNA that act to silence four of the potatoes’ own genes involved in the production of certain enzymes.

Future crops — the company has already applied for approval of a potato resistant to late blight, the cause of the Irish potato famine — will also have genes from wild potatoes.“We are trying to use genes from the potato plant back in the potato plant,” said Haven Baker, who is in charge of the potato development at Simplot. “We believe there’s some more comfort in that.”

That is not likely to persuade groups opposed to such crops.

Doug Gurian-Sherman, a plant pathologist and senior scientist at the Center for Food Safety, an advocacy group, said that the technique used to silence the genes, called RNA interference, was still not well understood.

“We think this is a really premature approval of a technology that is not being adequately regulated,” he said, adding that his group might try to get a court to reverse the approval.

He said one of the substances being suppressed in the potatoes appeared to be important for proper use of nitrogen by the plant.

The United States’ Agriculture Department, in its assessment, said the levels of various nutrients in the potatoes were in the normal range, except for the substances targeted by the genetic engineering. Simplot has submitted the potato for a voluntary food safety review by the Food and Drug Administration. The company says that when the Innate potatoes are fried, the levels of acrylamide are 50 percent to 75 percent lower than for comparable nonengineered potatoes. It is unclear how much of a benefit that reprsents.

The chemical causes cancer in rodents and is a suspected human carcinogen, though the National Cancer Institute says that scientists do not know with certainty if the levels of the chemical typically found in food are harmful to human health.

Still, Gregory Jaffe, biotechnology project director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer group that deals with nutrition issues, welcomed the approval.

He said, “We support clearly trying to reduce consumers’ exposure to acrylamide and if this product helps do that, I think it’s a benefit.”

J. R. SIMPLOT COMPANY

Innate potatoes resist bruising.

AEROS CORPORATION; BELOW, DAVID WALTER BANKS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Airship Revolution For Hauling Cargo

By BILLY WITZ

MONTEBELLO, California — Igor Pasternak believes he is on the verge of changing the world of large cargo with a 235-meter-long, helium-filled airship that would be capable of delivering fresh fruit to Alaska, dropping triage units at disaster sites or depositing heavy machinery into remote locations.

No ports, rail lines, roads or airstrips would be necessary.

M r. Pa ster na k , 5 0 , a Ukrainian engineer who started his own company, Aeros Corporation, in the midst of perestroika, moved to the United States when the post-Soviet economy collapsed. He says his Aeroscraft airship would fly at up to 120 knots, four times as fast as a cargo ship. Its capacity of 225 metric tons is about twice that of a C-5 cargo plane, and it has a range of about 9,450 kilometers, enough to go from Boston to Burkina Faso.

The Aeroscraft will take off and land like a helicopter. Its designers, Mr. Pasternak said, have solved the major problem for lighter-than-air crafts: buoyancy control. If a dirigible unloads heavy cargo, it must be tethered or take on the same weight to keep from floating away. The Aeroscraft sends helium from its main chamber into compression tanks, which creates room for air — which is heavier — to be taken in, allowing for a controlled descent.

In October, several congressmen were present for the christening of a more modest, conventional airship from Mr. Pasternak’s company, a blimp sold to a Mexican company that plans to use it to monitor oil pipelines.

“When the Internet was created, it was to solve the problem of: In a nuclear war, how is the world going to communicate?” Mr. Pasternak said. “No one was thinking about the vision of Google and Facebook and Alibaba. We will change the distribution system same way with this project.”

But Chris Caplice, executive

Igor Pasternak is working on an airship that can carry 225 metric tons and fly at 120 knots, and does not need a docking station.

Above, a smaller model of the airship last year. director for Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Transportation and Logistics, is skeptical. He sees the Aeroscraft as only marginally more efficient than existing vessels.

“It has its uses, but they’re narrow,” Dr. Caplice said.

Dirigibles have long dealt with a stigma — nobody wants to get on the next Hindenburg. The sell is easier among scientists, who understand that these ships run on nonflammable helium, unlike the Hindenburg, which immolated when its hydrogen tanks exploded while docking in Lakehurst, New Jersey, in 1937.

Airships have found their most

A dirigible that may compete with cargo planes and ships. reliable use not in carrying people or cargo, but as slow-moving billboards in the sky. Interest was also keen from the military, but that has cooled in the face of cutbacks.

Though much of the Aeroscraft’s development cost has been covered by government military contracts, Mr. Pasternak has begun to turn more toward the private sector. He said he is convinced there is value in being able to deliver wind turbines to remote areas, something no air vessel can do. Or in getting overseas goods produced in November to American markets for the holiday season, something no cargo ship can move

quickly enough to do.

But Richard Aboulafia, a cargo industry analyst, said the market for an airship like the Aeroscraft “is a problematic one.”

Mr. Aboulafia said there were three hurdles to overcome: the difficulty in making a new market entrance in air transportation, Cold War-era Russian planes that can be leased inexpensively and the fact that exotic cargo is often a one-way trip, which raises costs.

A fleet of smaller Aeroscraft models, 170 meters with a 60-metric-ton capacity, should be ready in three years, he said, with the 225-metric-ton capacity ship coming the year after that.

Aeroscraft has signed partnership agreements with companies including Bertling Logistics, Air Charter Service and Pacific Airlift, though the terms are unclear.

As for financing? “Hah,” he said with a dismissive nod of his head, adding, “The best financing is customer financing.

It keeps you honest. There is a difference between a financial investor and a customer because a financial investor is looking for a return on his investment and a customer is looking for performance. When you go with this approach, it gives you more freedom.”

Photos of blimps and dirigibles in magazines fascinated Mr. Pasternak when he was a child in the Soviet Union. By the time he was 10, Mr. Pasternak was consumed with the idea of building an airship.

“It stuck,” Mr. Pasternak said.

“Because I don’t have enough imagination, I just stuck with this and became a boring person. I’ve become the horse with blinders.”

30

THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY

Sanctity of Truth

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2014

MONEY & BUSINESS

Declining Oil Prices Strain the Budgets of Producers

By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN

MOSCOW — A steep decline in oil prices is straining the budgets of petroleum-exporting countries, raising a specter of spending cuts in Russia, where the economy is under pressure from Western sanctions, and posing a potentially grave security challenge for Iraq, which is already struggling to finance its fight against the Islamic State.

From Moscow to Caracas, Riyadh to Baghdad, in Tehran, Algiers, Kuwait City and Lagos, political leaders, finance ministers and central bankers have been scrambling to confront the plunge in prices — roughly 30 percent since a peak in June — driven by increased production in the United States and by projections of sustained cuts in demand in many developed countries, as well as decelerating growth in China.

The price drop is mostly welcome news in the developed world. But countries like Russia, Iran and Venezuela that have sought to thwart America’s influence could begin to moderate their behavior, as they come under growing financial pressure.

Last month, Venezuela, which depends on oil for 95 percent of its export revenues, called for an emergency meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to address the steep William Neuman contributed reporting from Caracas.

Pressure on Oil Economies The falling price of oil creates varying degrees of financial difficulties for countries that rely heavily on its export. According to research by Deutsche Bank, the point at which their national budgets break even varies from about $125 a barrel for Iran to less than $75 for Kuwait.

Break-even point for national budgets A country above the price of oil predicts a budget deficit, below it, a surplus.

$140 a barrel

IRAN

130 120

VENEZUELA RUSSIA

110

Price of oil

100

IRAQ

90

SAUDI ARABIA

80

$84

70

KUWAIT

60 J

F

M

A

Sources: Bloomberg (price of oil); Deutsche Bank

slide in prices, a move that other members rebuffed in favor of a regular meeting on November 27.

The price of a barrel of Brent crude, a global benchmark, fell below $79 in mid-November, down from $115 per barrel in June.

Some of the surplus that is dragging down oil markets is a result of production increases in Iraq and Libya, both struggling with instability that could shut down their oil fields at any time and send prices rising.

But in the near term, the big

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producers will likely face budget problems in varying degrees of severity, with an array of economic, strategic and political ramifications.

“It depends how long and how sharp the decline, but if oil prices stay around 20 percent lower, that is going to be very challenging for countries that depend heavily on oil to meet their budget requirements,” said Jason Bordoff, the director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University in New York. “Many of these countries

have implicitly high break-even numbers.”

Professor Bordoff said that Russia and Iraq faced particularly difficult circumstances, partly because of broader geopolitical tensions in each region. Russia, already squeezed by inflation and a drastic decline in the ruble, has found its ability to borrow money severely constrained by the sanctions. Iraq is facing a costly, and potentially open-ended, military conflict against the Islamic State.

Some major oil producers are already experiencing substantially more budgetary pain from the decline in prices, particularly Venezuela, because of underlying economic problems, and Iran, which has faced years of Western economic sanctions over its nuclear energy program. Nigeria faces political uncertainty because it has a presidential election coming up early next year.

Venezuela has limited options in responding to the price decline, which leaves less money for social spending, government payrolls and subsidized imports of vital goods. The government could scale back on subsidized oil that it supplies to allies in South America and the Caribbean, including Nicaragua, Bolivia and Cuba. There is also some talk of raising the domestic price of gasoline, which is the cheapest in the world.

The question looming is if

Russia, Venezuela, Iraq and others may face economic pain.

OPEC, led by Saudi Arabia, will cut production and stabilize prices. Some analysts suggest that Saudi Arabia may allow lower prices to persist, in part to squeeze Iran and Russia, and in part to put pressure on shale oil producers in America, whose higher production costs make it harder for them to compete when prices are lower abroad.

Saudi Arabia’s relatively low production costs and its domestic spending program allow for a balanced budget at a price of roughly $95 a barrel, compared with $100 or more for Russia and even more for Iran. Saudi Arabia also has huge cash reserves to prop up its budget while prices remain low.

“The question is how much are you willing to eat into your cash reserves and for how long until you adjust your production down,” said Gal Luft, co-director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, a Washington research organization.

“In the short run, I think most of the players can survive,” he said. “In the long run, beyond a year, I don’t think they have the means.”

Mumbai Times Square?

The Neighbors Object

By MAX BEARAK

MUMBAI — It was a bold proposal. In an effort to bolster tourism, India’s new central government laid out plans last month to transform parts of one of Mumbai’s oldest and most charming neighborhoods into a “cultural hub.” The inspiration: Times Square in New York City.

The planned renewal of Kala Ghoda, which means “black horse” in Hindi, includes an enormous video screen and a nearly

India sees tourism as a major part of economic growth. five-meter Indian flag that would loom over the neighborhood’s maze of century-old buildings.

Tourists could snap selfies with costumed cartoon characters.

“We’ll have a fair. We’ll have jugglers. It’ll be an outing. It’ll be buzzing,” said Valsa Nair Singh of the Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation, which works with the Ministry of Tourism.

The proposal hits all the right economic notes. Tourism figures high into the government’s plans for economic revival, and getting

Mumbai’s many business travelers to stay an extra night would be a major boost to a lagging luxury sector. Last year, more than four million foreign tourists visited Mumbai and other sites in the state of Maharashtra, the highest rate in the country.

But locals aren’t exactly thrilled with the idea, which may not even be legal. Preservation groups and residents associations have denounced the plans, citing potential noise pollution and lack of parking space.

“The Times Square model is a nonstarter,” said Maneck Davar of the Kala Ghoda Association, a nonprofit that undertakes cultural preservation projects. “This is the first time the government has ever expressed interest in helping us develop Kala Ghoda, and we appreciate that, but we told them, ‘Sorry, you cannot do this because the area is an official silent zone and heritage district.’ ” India’s Supreme Court passed rulings in the early 2000s that prohibit construction projects in designated heritage districts like Kala Ghoda that would disturb the relative silence around judicial, religious and educational institutions like the Bombay High Court, Knesset Eliyahoo Synagogue and Elphinstone College, all dating to the colonial era.

But Anand Kumar, a former joint secretary in the Tourism

KUNI TAKAHASHI FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

The Indian government wants to transform the district of Kala Ghoda into a ‘‘cultural hub.’’

Ministry, said it made sense to focus on heritage-rich areas like Kala Ghoda because it creates compact tourist districts. Luxury hotels and restaurants are already clustered there.

Mr. Kumar said that his office wanted to communicate ambition, and that “everyone knows that Times Square is the center of the world.”

Santosh Desai, a columnist who has written about India’s consumer culture, called the proposal an effort to proclaim India’s presence on the global map.

“Here,” he said, “we have a strong desire to say ‘We have arrived,’ or ‘We have caught up.’ ”

In trying to connect Kala Ghoda to Times Square, the government has drawn upon a longstanding set of both real and imagined parallels between Mumbai and New York City.

Both cities’ natural harbors lured colonial trading companies in the 1600s, which in turn attracted mass settlement of coastal areas. Now, the two cities are home to their countries’ biggest urban populations, and they serve as their financial and entertainment capitals.

A number of tourist trappings already exist in Kala Ghoda.

Street vendors, in an organized pedestrian chaos, sell campy

T-shirts, plastic cellphone accessories and fake pashmina shawls.

Yet a trip to Kala Ghoda, like most urban spaces in India, is a chance to encounter other, less tourist-friendly realities like homelessness and stray animals.

Last month, beggars here slept on the pavement while a cacophonous stampede of office workers streamed out of the Bombay Stock Exchange and flies thronged the nearby remains of a dead cat.

Mr. Davar said he was confident that preservation efforts would prevail. “When you find art on the walls of caves, you don’t rub it off and paint over it.”

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2014

THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY

Sanctity of Truth

31

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

From a City’s Sewage, Clues to Public Health

By JOSHUA A. KRISCH

Beneath Visionaire, a highrise in Manhattan, sewage gushes through a network of pipes and then drools into a stone tank, which is draped in quivering cockroaches. They scatter as Dennis Keefe, a contractor for Natural Systems Utilities, dips a ladle into the less — thrive on paper money. putrid stew and gently stirs.

In the Microbikeome Project, Jane M. Carlton, a geneticist her team examined the microand director of New York Unibial life on public bicycles in Manhattan and London in an versity’s Center for Genomics effort to see how bacteria miand Systems Biology, hovers as her graduate students snap grate about a city. on gloves and draw samples Both efforts helped the team from the grimy ladle. Each virefine sequencing techniques.

Eric Alm, a professor at the al of sewage that they collect is Massachusetts Institute of teeming with microscopic life Technology, envisions a fuand saturated with dangerous viruses and essential bacteria ture in which policy makers — exactly what Dr. Carlton is and health care providers looking for. monitor sewage for real-time By analyzing wastewater information about the state of samples from each of the five public health. Dr. Alm recently boroughs of New York City, received a grant to develop a Dr. Carlton hopes to uncover smart sewage device that will trends in infectious disease — analyze public refuse and reto detect flu viruses before the lay broad public health data to next outbreak, for instance, experts and officials. The soand track antibiotic-resistant called Underworld platform bacteria. will scour sewage for the bioBut her ultimate goal is far markers of health and disease, more ambitious: Dr. Carlton and even detect trace chemicals wants to sequence the microbiused in bomb manufacturing.

“We are interested in geome of New York City.

About five billion liters of nomics, but we’re also looking wastewater flow through the for different chemicals that city sewage system every day. might not be within the DNA,” Residential and commercial sewage is combined with animal waste and groundwater runoff, so a single sample of sludge can hold a wealth of information about the local environment.

“We want to take an environmental sample, like sewage, and extract all JOSHUA A. KRISCH of the DNA from all Jane M. Carlton, left, and her of the microbes in that sample,” Dr. graduate students are analyzing raw Carlton said. sewage samples hoping to uncover If her tea m trends in infectious diseases. could sample sewage from every he said. If city officials were to neighborhood, Dr. Carlton start a public health campaign reasoned, the resulting genetic to reduce intake of sugary map would highlight microbial drinks, for example, the device diversity across different dismight track the presence of tricts. She hopes that once pubsugar in sewage to help show lic health officials know what whether the campaign was bacteria and viruses to expect having an effect. in each sector, they will be bet“It’s hard to imagine that in ter able to identify dangerous 20 years, every city won’t be outliers — a new strain of the monitoring sewage,” he said. flu, for instance, or an outbreak In the coming months, Dr. of food-borne illness.

Carlton’s students will be “It’s a preventative public studying how diseases move health question,” Dr. Carlton among humans and animals said. “We need to know the by tracking small changes in baseline to know how the basethe genetic makeup of sewline changes over time.”

Dr. Carlton started off lookage-borne parasites. They will also track antibiotic-resistant ing at the bacteria living on bacteria. paper money and on public Dr. Carlton hopes the work bicycles. Last April, her team will improve public health and presented the results of the educate the public about the Dirty Money Project, which “good” bacteria that surround involved sequencing all of the us.

DNA found on a wad of sever“Knowing about the mial dollar bills. Dr. Carlton had assumed that any bacteria she crobes in our environment is a found would be dead. Instead, positive thing,” she said. “Peoshe found that thousands of ple shouldn’t be afraid to find bacteria — most of them harmout what’s out there.”

Sampling sludge for genetic changes in microbes.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY BÉATRICE DE GÉA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Brain’s Secrets Hard to Unravel

By JAMES GORMAN

The United States and the European Union have launched new brain research programs, part of a recent surge in studies.

Scientists are mapping parts of mouse, fly and human brains at different levels of magnification.

They have a greater understanding of how the brain works, such as the way the mammalian brain navigates and remembers places, work that won the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Yet the growing body of data — maps, atlases and connectomes that show linkages between cells and regions of the brain — represents a paradox of progress, with the advances also highlighting great gaps in understanding.

So many large and small questions remain. How is information encoded and transferred from cell to cell or from network to network of cells? Science found a genetic code but there is no brainwide neural code; no electrical or chemical alphabet exists that can be recombined to say “red” or “fear.” And no one knows whether information is encoded differently in various parts of the brain.

Larry Abbott, 64, a former theoretical physicist who is now at Columbia University in New York, is one of the field’s most prominent theorists. He switched from physics to neuroscience in the late 1980s, after stopping by the lab of Eve Marder, a colleague of his at Brandeis University in Massachusetts. Her lab was studying neurons that control a muscle in crabs. One of her students showed him equipment recording the electrical activity of neurons and translating it into clicks that could be heard over speakers each time a cell fired, or spiked. “It was the sound of those spikes that entranced me,” Dr. Abbott said.

Dr. Marder and Dr. Abbott invented the dynamic clamp technique, a way to link brain cells to a computer to manipulate their activity and test ideas about how cells and networks of cells work.

A decade ago, he moved from Brandeis to Columbia, where he and other scientists are trying to build computer models of how the brain might work. Sin-

Larry Abbott has studied how perception works in weakly electric fish. Recordings of brain activity of the fish, top. gle neurons, he said, are fairly well understood. The question now is how larger groups, thousands of neurons, work together — whether to produce an action, like reaching for a cup, or to perceive a flower.

There are ways to record the electrical activity of neurons in a brain, and those methods are improving fast. But, he said, “If I give you a picture of a thousand neurons firing, it’s not going to tell you anything.” Computer analysis helps to reduce and simplify such a picture but, he said,

Efforts to pinpoint where intelligent thoughts form. the goal is to discover the physiological mechanism in the data.

He recently worked with Nate Sawtell, a fellow Columbia researcher, and Ann Kennedy a graduate student in Dr. Sawtell’s lab, on the weakly electric fish.

Unlike electric eels and other fish that use shocks to stun prey, this fish generates a weak electric field to help it locate prey.

Researchers have designed experiments to understand, up to a point, how its brain and electric-sensing organs work.

Dr. Abbott joined with others in the lab to take this understanding a step further. The fish

has two sensing systems. One is passive, picking up electric fields of other fish or prey. Another is active, sending out a pulse, for communication or as an electrical version of sonar. They knew the fish was able to cancel out its own pulse of electricity by creating what Dr. Abbott called a “negative image.”

They wired the brain of a weakly electric fish and found that a surprising group of neurons, called unipolar brush cells, were sending out a delayed copy of the command that another part of the brain was sending to its electric organ. The delayed signal went straight to the passive sensing system to cancel out the information from the electric pulse.

“The brain has to compute what’s self-generated versus what’s external,” Dr. Sawtell said.

This may not sound like a big advance, but it is the beginning of how a brain sorts a flood of data coming in from the outside world, and gives it meaning.

That is part of the brain’s job, after all — to build an image of the world from photons and electrons, light and dark, molecules and motion, and to connect it with what the fish, or the person, remembers, needs and wants.

“We’ve looked at the nervous system from the two ends in,” Dr. Abbott said, meaning sensations that flow into the brain and actions that are initiated there.

“Somewhere in the middle is really intelligence, right? That’s where the action is.”

32

Sanctity of Truth

THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2014

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

Controllers Undergo Training to Direct Traffic by Remote

By NICOLA CLARK

ORNSKOLDSVIK, Sweden — On a clear day, from his solitary perch inside the airport control tower here, Per Granquist has an unobstructed view of the future.

The big picture is provided from a 10-meter mast where a gray turret holds an array of digital video cameras, communications antennas, sensors and microphones. The system is meant to collect and integrate information of the sort that Mr. Granquist, 40, has been providing with his own eyes and ears as an air traffic controller for the last 17 years at this small airport in northern Sweden.

The information from this array, though, is being sent elsewhere by fiber-optic cable — to a windowless room at another airport, 160 kilometers south, in the larger town of Sundsvall.

Early next year, Mr. Granquist and a few of his colleagues expect to move to Sundsvall to begin “virtually” guiding the half-dozen or so daily flights in and out of Ornskoldsvik.

Ornskoldsvik is about to become the world’s first remotely controlled airport.

“At first it seemed a bit weird,” Mr. Granquist said of his training on the new system. In Sundsvall, instead of surveying the airport through plate-glass windows, Mr. Granquist will sit before a semicircular wall of more than a dozen 140-centimeter liquid-crystal displays.

“After two weeks,” Mr. Granquist added, “it really feels no different from sitting here.”

Carved from an Arctic pine forest along Sweden’s eastern coast,

Surrounded by airport runways that are far away.

CASPER HEDBERG FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

LCD screens at the airport in Sundsvall offer a wide view of the Ornskoldsvik runway.

Ornskoldsvik might seem an unlikely setting for an aviation revolution. But officials from dozens of countries have visited the airport to get a look at technology that many expect will transform the way air traffic is managed worldwide.

It is a concept that experts say has uses not only for the world’s out-of-the way places but also for enhancing efficiency and safety at urban airports where air traffic places ever increasing demands on human controllers.

“I have little doubt that this is

ONLINE: VIRTUAL VIEWS

More images of Sweden’s air traffic experiment: nytimes.com Search Granquist

the next big thing for our industry,” said Paul Jones of NATS, which provides navigation services at Heathrow and other British airports. “I do think one day it could replace traditional visual control towers almost completely.”

It is no accident that the idea

for a remote-controlled airport emerged from Sweden, whose northern regions are thinly populated and poorly served by rail or other transportation alternatives. Much like Alaska and vast swaths of northern Canada, Scandinavia is dotted with dozens of small airports that provide vital connections to the outside world.

Remote towns like Ornskoldsvik — population 55,000 — are just big enough to justify minimal scheduled airline services and a control tower. Yet with just a few

Challenges as the Danes Shift From Fossil Fuels

Denmark, with a pioneering wind-power program, aims to be off fossil fuels by 2050.

By JUSTIN GILLIS

COPENHAGEN — Denmark, a tiny country on the northern fringe of Europe, is pursuing the world’s most ambitious policy against climate change. It aims to end the burning of fossil fuels in any form by 2050 — not just in electricity production, as some other countries hope to do, but in transportation as well.

Lest anyone consider such a sweeping transition to be impossible in principle, the Danes beg to differ. They essentially invented the modern wind-power industry, and have pursued it more avidly than any country.

They are above 40 percent renewable power on their electric grid, aiming toward 50 percent by 2020. The political consensus here to keep pushing is all but unanimous.

Their policy is similar to that of neighboring Germany, which has spent tens of billions pursuing wind and solar power, and is likely to hit 30 percent renewable power on the electric grid this year. But Denmark is in certain ways the more interesting case. The 5.6 million Danes have pushed harder than the Germans — and they are reaching the point where the problems

Making sure there is power even when there is no wind. with the transition can no longer be ignored.

The trouble is that renewable power sources like wind and solar cost nothing to run, once installed. That is potentially a huge benefit in the long run. But as more of these types of power sources push their way onto the electric grid, they cause power prices to crash at what used to be the most profitable times of day.

That can render conventional power plants, operating on gas or coal or uranium, uneconomical to run. Yet those plants are needed to supply backup power for times when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining.

Electricity suppliers in Germany and Denmark have applied to shut down some newly unprofitable power plants, but nervous governments are resisting, afraid of being caught short on some cold winter’s night with little wind. The governments have

takeoffs and landings, air traffic controllers often spend more of their time monitoring the weather or filling out paperwork. Controllers in Sweden average about $77,000 a year in pay, and benefits increase the cost to $140,000.

“It doesn’t really make economic or even social sense to station a fully qualified air traffic controller in some of these places,” said Erik Backman, director of operations at LFV, Sweden’s state-owned air navigation service provider. For the 28 airports that LFV serves — several of them, like Ornskoldsvik, lose money — air traffic control represents a large part of their operating costs.

That is why LFV began exploring the idea of pooling controllers at a single location, to guide flights remotely. In 2006, the agency invited the Swedish aeronautics and technology group Saab to develop a prototype.

Three years ago, when he first learned of the plan to operate Ornskoldsvik’s tower remotely, Mr. Granquist was upset at the prospect of having to move his family to Sundsvall. But his reluctance has since turned to impatience — and excitement at the career possibilities.

“It will also be nice,” Mr. Granquist said, “to have some colleagues.”

EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY/E.ON/HO

offered short-term subsidies, knowing that if they force companies to operate these plants at a loss, it will be a matter of time before the companies start going bankrupt.

Throughout Europe, governments have come to the realization that electricity markets are going to have to be redesigned for the new age, but they are not pursuing this task with urgency.

A bad redesign could itself throw customers into the dark, after all, as happened in California a decade ago.

Denmark is geographically lucky. It has strong electrical linkages to neighboring Sweden, with plentiful nuclear pow-

er capacity, and Norway, with power available on demand from dams. But Swedish politicians have vowed to shut down the country’s nuclear plants and go renewable, and Norway’s cheap hydroelectric power is in rising demand, with a supply line under consideration to energy-hungry Britain.

“We are really worried about this situation,” said Anders Stouge, the deputy director general of the Danish Energy Association. “If we don’t do something, we will in the future face higher and higher risks of blackouts.”

So the trick now is to get the market redesign right. A modest version of reform would essen-

tially attach a market value, and thus a price, to standby capacity.

But Rasmus Helveg Petersen, the Danish climate minister, said he was tempted by a more ambitious approach. That would involve real-time pricing of electricity for anyone using it — if the wind is blowing vigorously or the sun is shining brightly, prices would fall off a cliff, but in times of shortage they would rise just as sharply.

As more smart meters and smart appliances able to track those prices are installed, one can imagine a system in which demand would adjust smoothly to the available supply.

Yet, even if Denmark can figure out a proper design for the electric market, it has another big task to meet its 2050 goal: squeezing the fossil fuels out of transportation. It embraced a proposed system of electric cars in which depleted batteries would be switched for fresh ones in minutes, but only a few hundred cars were sold before that plan flopped.

Mr. Petersen said he still felt electrification of cars was the way to go, but the cars themselves were not really ready.

“We need longer range and lower prices before this becomes a good option,” he said. “Technology needs to save us here.”

THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2014

Sanctity of Truth

33

AMERICANA

In Forlorn Churches, Pews Suddenly Fill Up

By MICHAEL PAULSON

CLEVELAND, Ohio — The glory days of Holy Ghost Church were years ago, when Catholics packed into the wooden pews.

OHIO The conCleveland g regat ion dwindled so much that in 20 0 9 the church was closed. But on a bright Sunday this summer, Holy Ghost was alive again. Mary Matei, visiting from Knoxville, Tennessee, snapped pictures on her iPhone, while Ann Cogar and Sue Koch, sisters from suburban Cleveland, admired stained glass windows and statuary.

They were taking part in a Mass mob, which mixes heritage tour and social occasion.

The movement is bringing thousands of suburban Catholics to visit the struggling or closed urban churches of their parents and grandparents. It is also attracting donations.

Named after flash mobs —

The flash-mob concept finds a new application. spontaneous gatherings of crowds, often in a public place, to make an artistic or political statement — Mass mobs are spreading around the nation and taking church leaders by surprise.

Fueled by social media, they are doing best around Lake Erie: In Detroit, nearly 2,000 people show up to visit churches that normally draw a fraction of that number; hundreds take part in Buffalo, New York; and scores join the events here in Cleveland.

Mass mobs began last November in Buffalo, where Christopher Byrd, 47, was inspired by an initiative called a cash mob, which sought to support local small businesses by having groups of people patronize the same mom-and-pop shop on a particular day.

Similarly, Mass mobs seek

to draw large crowds to a single church in a demonstration of support for Catholicism and its most beautiful — and often needy — churches.

“There’s a generational disconnect between when these cities emptied out and got blighted, and the young people who want to rediscover these roots,” Mr. Byrd said.

Although most of the parishes visited by Mass mobs are still open, several dioceses have granted permission to hold special worship services at closed churches, including at Holy Ghost in Cleveland, which was built to serve immigrant Catholics from the Carpathian Mountains and is now a Byzantine Catholic cultural center.

“We want to show that these parishes do have value — to the people within them, to the greater community and to the city itself,” said Stanislav Zadnik, 54, a union electrician from Parma, Ohio, who has organized the Cleveland Mass mob movement. “It’s a grand shame to make them go extinct.”

Several dioceses are now helping to promote Mass mobs through their newspapers and social media, and some bishops are openly welcoming the effort, particularly in Detroit, the metropolitan area that has lost the most Catholics since 1950. A side effect of the Mass mob phenomenon is that people often donate during their visit: An organizer of Detroit Mass Mob, Thom Mann, said participants had given nearly $100,000 to the six churches visited thus far.

The Fairfield County Mass mob campaign in Connecticut is the first in a suburban diocese; organizers note that even in an area known for leafy affluence, there are old, struggling parishes and disconnected Catholics.

Elizabeth Davis, 47, of Harmony, Pennsylvania, decided to start a Mass mob in Pittsburgh after hearing about the group in Buffalo.

“These beautiful old churches were built by our grandfathers and great-grandfathers, and to see them close is really sad,” said Ms. Davis. “We have 2,000 years of tradition, and it’s time we get excited about it.”

JOSHUA LOTT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Mass mobs have crowded into many urban Catholic churches, including St. Albertus Church in Detroit.

KIRSTEN LUCE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

For months, Carlos Garcia Lobo was kept from classes while his mother gathered paperwork.

School Is a Hurdle for Migrants

By BENJAMIN MUELLER

WESTBURY, New York — Before dawn, Carlos Garcia Lobo would bounce out of bed, his eyes alight with anticipation, and ask his mother if NEW YORK he could go to Westbury school.

Each time, she had to tell her 8 -yea r- old son: Not yet.

Four months after fleeing Honduras with a 15-year-old cousin, Carlos reached what his family said seemed like an impassable frontier. Like dozens of the roughly 2,500 unaccompanied immigrant children who have been released to relatives or sponsors on Long Island, Carlos had been unable to register for school. Finally, at the end of October, he was allowed to enroll.

The struggle has baffled parents, who say their scant resources have proved no match for school district bureaucracies. Required by law to attend school, some children were stuck at home weeks after the school year started, despite unrelenting efforts by their parents and others to prove that they are eligible. Suffolk and Nassau Counties, on Long Island, rank third and fifth, respectively, in the United States, after counties centered on Houston and Los Angeles, in the number of unaccompanied minors they have absorbed this year; Miami-Dade County is fourth.

Many of the children are barred because their families cannot gather the documents that schools require to prove they are residents of the district or have guardianship — obstacles that contravene legal guidance on enrollment procedures the State Education Department issued in New York in September.

Driven away from Honduras by gangs that robbed his grandmother’s home, Carlos trekked to the border in June with his cousin and a guide. On July 10, Carlos joined his mother, Yeinni Lobo,

who came to the United States when he was 11 months old. Since he arrived, Ms. Lobo said she visited the local school office at least 10 times, toting immunization records. She said she provided her address, and the name of the fellow tenant who collects her rent, to show that she lived in the district. But the school demanded a statement from the home’s absentee owner.

Ms. Lobo found her homeowner’s address on property records at a courthouse. A letter she sent pleading for help dropped back through her mail slot, marked “Return to Sender.” Carlos’s official manila file folder was affixed with a note reading, “Waiting for owner’s affidavit.”

New York City has built programs to guide undocumented children through filling out forms

Immigrants barred by the need for documentation. and even provided legal representation. But on neighboring Long Island, several low-cost lawyers say they are overwhelmed with hundreds of new cases.

Lease agreements or copies of bills are common prerequisites for school enrollment, a practice that is allowed under legal guidance the federal Education and Justice Departments issued in May. Activists say such requirements, when applied to newly arrived children, can impede their access to school and undermine federal law.

The superintendent of the Westbury schools, Mary A. Lagnado, said the district accommodated new arrivals by making paperwork available in Spanish and looking for “whatever alternative we can” when certain information is unobtainable. Dr. Lagnado said the district has al-

ready enrolled 121 more students this year than last.

But especially in a town sensitive to its tax burden, she said, certain residency requirements are rigid. Families like Ms. Lobo’s who are subleasing rooms in a home must provide a notarized lease or owner’s affidavit, the homeowner’s residential deed or mortgage statement, and two home bills.

“We try to make sure that they are a bona fide resident of the school district,” she said. “Taxes are very high on Long Island. We have a responsibility to our community and homeowners.”

The strain on already-packed classrooms builds because many immigrant children do not speak English and have scant experience in school, Dr. Lagnado said.

Integrating them without extra funding makes the perpetual academic competition with nearby districts even harder, she said.

Activists say the obstacles to enrollment on Long Island reflect a wariness toward new arrivals that prevails in schools across the country.

The federal Education Department has received at least 17 complaints nationwide since 2011 that led to legal action in school districts, while the Justice Department has evaluated enrollment procedures for 200 districts in Georgia alone.

On Long Island, where some districts in the mid-1990s tried to expel undocumented students, the re-emergence of “barriers to kids enrolling” has made the children’s lives difficult, said Patrick Young of the Central American Refugee Center.

“It kind of stigmatizes them.

They don’t socialize the same way,” Mr. Young said.

Jorge, 16, who fled from El Salvador in 2012, simmers at the memory of a gym teacher’s commanding two Hispanic students who had arrived late to class to, as he recalled, “go outside to do 50 push-ups and come back when they were residents.”

Jorge said, “I felt stepped on.”

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Sanctity of Truth

THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2014

ARTS & DESIGN

This Time, the Reporter as a Hero, Not a Joke

By DAVE ITZKOFF

For someone who spent 118 days imprisoned in Iran after reporting on the disputed 2009 election there, Maziar Bahari has a surprising sense of humor about the subject.

If “Rosewater,” Jon Stewart’s cinematic retelling of his incarceration, enjoys any success at all, then “credit goes to the Iranian government, really,” Mr. Bahari said wryly in a recent interview. On this morning, Mr. Bahari, a 47-year-old journalist, was sitting next to Mr. Stewart in the offices of “The Daily Show,” the satirical current-events program that Mr. Stewart hosts for Comedy Central, the cable TV network.

Being in New York, Mr. Bahari said, was as risky as being back in Iran, given “all the people who hold a grudge against Jon, from radical Zionists to radical Islamists.” Mr. Stewart replied, “I really do unite the world.”

That is the self-deprecating sensibility that audiences expect from Mr. Stewart, who has made his name speaking humorous truths about current events.

But “Rosewater,” his feature directing and screenwriting debut, shines a spotlight on the unapologetically sincere side of this 51-year-old late-night comedian.

“Rosewater,” now showing in the United States and Canada, has yielded some positive reviews. The movie is Mr. Stewart’s fulfillment of his desire to tell one

particular story — Mr. Bahari’s — that encapsulates the battle between individuals and governments that try to silence them.

“These apparatus are so much more damaging to these countries than any piece of information they would possibly want to suppress,” Mr. Stewart said.

Mr. Bahari, played by the Mexican actor Gael García Bernal in the film, was born in Tehran and studied in Montreal. He was among the hundreds of observers and demonstrators swept up by the Iranian government in June 2009. At that time, he had become a highly visible contributor to outlets like Newsweek and the BBC, covering the Iranian presidential election.

Mr. Bahari also appeared on “The Daily Show” a few days before being taken into custody, but he said that appearance was not responsible for his arrest. “I was already being monitored,” he said.

Following pressure from international leaders and the media, Mr. Bahari was released in October 2009 on $300,000 bail. He now lives in London.

Mr. Bahari was fascinated by his torturer, a Revolutionary Guardsman he nicknamed Rosewater (for the cologne he wore) and who said he believed Mr. Bahari received sexual massages on his journalistic assignments.

“You have a torturer who’s supposed to be this serious, ideo-

logical person,” Mr. Bahari said, “when at the same time, he’s like a 14-year-old schoolboy with pimples, and as horny as that.”

Mr. Stewart became fascinated with the narrative Mr. Bahari recounted in a best-selling memoir. “It’s not a polemic,” Mr. Stewart said. “It’s just a beautifully woven story of the generations of damage that are done by oppressive regimes.”

In the summer of 2013, Mr. Stewart set off for Amman, Jordan (which stood in for Tehran), with a production designer, a director of photography, a first assistant director “and that’s pretty much it.”

Mr. García Bernal said Mr. Stewart’s lack of experience made the making of the movie more exhilarating.

“Everything they told you was incredible,” he said. “ ‘It’s going to be in Jordan.’ Perfect. ‘It’s going to be in blistering heat.’

Perfect. ‘It’s going to be during Ramadan.’ Yes! It all sounds like a good plan, really.”

Mr. Bahari, who had considered himself intensely private, said “Rosewater” had taught him the value of opening up.

Mr. Stewart, who is ever sarcastic, said: “I’m his life coach now. There have been a lot of trust exercises. I can’t tell you how many times he’s fallen backwards off a table, into my arms.”

Nightlife Revives In Ethiopia

Mulatu Astatke, far left, seen as the father of Ethio-jazz, occasionally performs at his African Jazz Village club.

By RACHEL B. DOYLE

On a recent Sunday evening, a stylish audience of people in their 20s packed Mama’s Kitchen, a wood-and-glass lounge on the fourth floor of an otherwise closed shopping center near the Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital.

They were there to hear an adventurous young pianist, Samuel Yirga, as he careened between free jazz, études, R&B and the popular local style known as Ethio-jazz, a bewitching genre that fuses jazz with traditional Ethiopian music.

“I think we Ethiopians love our own thing more than other things,” Mr. Yirga said. “We respect and love other cultures, but we love our own music, our own food, dance and clothes the most.”

Mama’s Kitchen is one of several venues featuring jazz styles that have sprung up in the Ethiopian capital in recent years.

The resurgent music scene is far from the only change occurring in this frenetic city of nearly four million. Bulldozers have created canyons between the palm trees planted on busy boulevards to make way for a light rail system, set to debut in 2015.

There are brand-new skyscrap-

NICHOLE SOBECKI FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

ers, glass-fronted malls and the spaceship-like complex that houses the headquarters of the African Union.

Jazz concerts take place all over the city, on nearly every night of the week. But even though Ethio-jazz dates from the 1960s, its reappearance is a fairly new development.

For nearly two decades, until 1991, the country was ruled by a Communist military junta, the Derg, and its leader, Mengistu Haile Mariam. There was a curfew in place, so the nightclubs, concert spaces and traditional music houses called azmari bets essentially ceased to exist. The free-form nature of jazz music made it particularly suspect to the country’s rulers. Many musicians, along with hundreds of thousands of other Ethiopians seen as fomenting opposition, were killed, jailed or exiled.

“Imagine the city where you live without a single night of night life for 18 years,” said Francis Falceto, the producer of “Éthiopiques,” a 29-disc series of music recordings from the 1960s and 1970s that helped ignite global

interest in Ethiopian jazz. “It totally destroyed, almost overnight, the music life and radically stopped the development of Ethiopian modern music.”

Colonel Mengistu was overthrown in 1991, but the Addis music scene began a slow comeback only starting in the late 1990s.

Back in the mid-1960s, musicians like Mulatu Astatke had begun fusing Western-style jazz and funk with traditional Ethiopian folk and religious melodies, creating a unique strand of jazz.

Mr. Astatke is seen as the father of Ethio-jazz and is Ethiopia’s most famous living musician.

Today the 70-year-old Mr. Astatke has a demanding tour schedule, but he still found the time to open a music venue and school called African Jazz Village here in late 2013.

On a recent Saturday night, Mr. Astatke strode out on stage and began to play the conga drums.

The crowd filled the dance floor.

Before the concert, Mr. Astatke said, “There are a lot of young musicians playing Ethio-jazz,” he said. “It’s developing, which I think feels great.”

Maziar Bahari, near right, the subject of ‘‘Rosewater,’’ and Jon Stewart, who directed the film.

CHAD BATKA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Daring to Shed a Shirt, And Cancer’s Stigma

By JASON ZINOMAN

After revealing that she had undergone a successful double mastectomy with no reconstructive surgery, the comedian Tig Notaro told the crowd at her New York Comedy Festival p er for m a nc e on November 6 at Town Hall that she had thought of doTig ing the show with no shirt, Notaro almost daring the audience to make her do it. One more shout from the fans, and she ripped off her shirt with one tug, standing topless, in front of hundreds of people.

The point was not merely to shock, as quickly became clear. In fact, it was to convince us that there is nothing to be shocked about. For the next 30 minutes, Ms. Notaro told jokes so funny and involving that any anxiety or tension in the room disappeared.

She showed the audience her scars and then, through the force of her showmanship, made you forget that they were there. It was a powerful, even inspiring, statement about survival and recovery, and yet, it had the feel of a dare taken up for the fun of it.

Before she talked about cancer onstage, Ms. Notaro’s comedy was unsentimental and formally experimental in a way that drew attention to its own artifice.

But this show, part of her “Boyish Girl Interrupted” tour, was a return to form, albeit a little more caustic than usual. It was as if she had set out to prove that cancer (and success) would not soften or compromise her comedy. She alternated between moments of delirious silliness and a sunny aggressiveness that could even become slightly hostile with the audience.

The difference in this show was that the way she manipulated the crowd was more pointedly overt than before, and manipulation was actually the show’s dominant theme.

Taking her shirt off is not a subtle attention grab, but neither is orchestrating a standing ovation through some funny passive-aggressiveness.

Ms. Notaro’s new act is not just about conquering illness.

It’s an ingenious expression of the commanding and persuasive power of art. She shows that comedy can not only transform tragedy into humor, but that it can also distract people from the most marketed and objectified image in popular culture: the naked female body.

Business | Money Line

NEW TELEGRAPH MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2014

35

More tightening expected as MPC meets today EXCHANGE CONTROL Nigeria has started moving towards exchange control Godson Ikoro

A

s the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meets today and tomorrow in Abuja, experts expect further

tightening and slight devaluation of the naira.

This is because, since the foreign reserves, which the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) uses to defend the currency is already down to $ 37.54 billion as at November 15, should the currency continue its free-fall, the apex bank may not be in a position to continue defending the greenback.

The naira, which closed at a new low of N179 to the dollar last Friday, increased losses

to 8.8 per cent so far this year at the interbank market despite the intervention of the CBN. At the official market, the banking watchdog was also compelled to depreciate the greenback by 1.25 per cent.

It unexpectedly sold dollars at N158.41 naira at the window, having earlier auctioned the greenback at N156.59, unnerving dealers’ worries about the risk of a possible devaluation.

Local and interna-

tional analysts are speculating that Nigeria will eventually be forced to devalue, and non-deliverable forwards – contracts that allow investors to bet on future currency movements – imply that fund managers expect the currency to fall to N201.50 to the dollar in 12 months.

Stuart Culverhouse, chief economist at Exotix, said it was time for a “strong response” from policy makers to steady Nigeria’s financial markets.

“The pressure on the

ETI mulls sale of stake in Ecobank Nigeria

E

cobank Transnational Inc. (ETI) is considering selling a stake in its Nigerian subsidiary as part of a plan to raise about $500 million of equity for the unit.

“It’s possible that could happen,” Chief Executive Officer, Albert Essien, said about selling part of Ecobank Nigeria.

He spoke to Bloomberg by phone from Abidjan, Ivory Coast’s commercial capital. “There’s a board policy that we could, if we wanted, sell down and hold 75 percent in our subsidiaries.”

ETI, which operates

in 36 African countries, needs to increase the capital of Ecobank Nigeria, its biggest subsidiary, by March next year to meet new rules from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). A $500 million boost would take its capital-adequacy ratio to about 18 percent, above the minimum requirement of 16 percent, Jibril Aku, the managing director of Ecobank Nigeria Ltd., said on Nov. 14.

ETI has transferred to Ecobank Nigeria the “larger portion” of the $206 million in cash it received in October when South Africa’s Nedbank Group Ltd.

bought a 20 percent stake in ETI, Essien said. The rest of Ecobank Nigeria’s capital needs will come from retained earnings and a “private placement” of equity, he said.

Ecobank operates in most African countries of any bank.

Nedbank and Qatar National Bank SAQ, the second-biggest owner of ETI with a 17 percent stake, haven’t been approached about buying a stake in Ecobank Nigeria, said Essien. Nedbank parent Old Mutual Plc said it earmarked 4.3 billion rand ($393 million) for African acquisitions. The Johan-

nesburg-based insurer has identified Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana as key markets.

“The process has just started,” Essien said.

Ecobank Nigeria, which had $9.6 billion of assets at the end of September, is the country’s seventhbiggest lender. It made a $157 million post-tax profit in the first nine months, up 79 per cent from a year earlier, according to a presentation posted on ETI’s website.

The rest of the money from Nedbank’s acquisition has been put toward other subsidiaries, including Ecobank Kenya, Essien said.

Economic Indicators As at M2* CPS* INF IBR MPR 91-day NTB DPR PLR Bonny Light Ext Res**

N14,737,618.7m N16,509,472.5m 8 0.0000 12 10.899 7.96 17.01 US$109.9 US$42,604,781,796.6

Description

TTM

4.00% 23-Apr-2015 13.05% 16-Aug-2016 15.10% 27-Apr-2017 16.00% 29-Jun-2019 16.39% 27-Jan-2022 10.00% 23-Jul-2030

1.21 2.53 3.22 5.39 7.98 16.47

Tenor (Days) Call 7 30 60 90 180 365

Rate (%) 11.9167 12.3333 12.6667 12.9167 13.2167 13.5000 13.7500

NIBOR

Dec, 2013 Dec, 2013 Dec, 2013 2/5/2014 1/20/2014 11/6/2013 Dec, 2013 Dec, 2013 1/20/2014 2/5/2014 Source:CBN

FGN Bonds Bid Price 90.20 99.25 104.10 109.35 114.15 76.60

Offer Yield 13.01 13.40 13.47 13.49 13.44 13.59

Price 90.35 99.40 104.40 109.65 114.45 76.90

Tenor (Months) 1 2 3 6 9 12

Rate (%) 12.1827 12.2737 12.3744 12.8521 12.8535 13.8443

Treasury Bills Maturity Date 08-May-14 07-Aug-14 22-Jan-15

Bid 12.10 12.10 12.05

FX

Bid Spot ($/N) 163.28 THE FIXINGS –NIBOR,NITTY and NIFEX of February 6,2014

NITTY

Yield 12.86 13.33 13.35 13.42 13.38 13.53

Money Market Offer 11.85 11.85 11.80 Offer 163.38

Open-Buy-Back (OBB) Overnight (O/N)

Rate (%) 11.33 11.63

NIFEX Spot ($/N)

Bid 163.4000

Offer 163.5000 Source: FMDQ

naira poses a significant problem for policy makers, and the timing, ahead of February’s presidential election, could not be worse,” he wrote in a report.

Culverhouse said the CBN should introduce a 10 per cent devaluation and lift interest rates two percentage points to buttress the naira.

“Both measures would signal a bolder policy response and complement each other,” he wrote.

“We think the market is expecting a tightening at next week’s [monetary policy committee meeting], and devaluation is increasingly consensus too. Not doing either risks further damage to market sentiment.”

Managing Director, Financial Derivatives Company, Bismark Rewane, who had always insisted that the naira is overvalued, said Nigeria has started moving to-

wards exchange control.

Noting that the CBN had given a 2-day window for the utilisation of intervention funds, he said that the potential revenue loss on unsold dollars purchased is expected to reduce the speculative activities of the banks on Forex.

He rightly predicted the increase the frequency of CBN’s intervention as banks may reduce the quantum of forex purchased during each intervention, saying that dollar sales to the Bureau De Change Operators (BDCs) have been restricted effectively reducing dollar cast at the parallel market.

Also expected to be discussed at the meeting are measures that the lenders’ watchdog will undertake to amplify the austerity measures announced by the Minister of finance penultimate week.

Sterling is ‘Agric Bank of the Year’

S

terling Bank Plc at the weekend, bagged yet another award in the Agriculture Sector as it received the “Agric Bank of the Year 2014 in Nigeria” award.

The honour came just three months after the lender was conferred with an award as the Best Bank in Commercial Agriculture Credit Scheme (CACS).

According to a statement, the medal, which was powered by the Agriculture Policy Research Network (APRNet) and AgroNigeria Limited was presented to the bank at a dinner and conferment ceremony where the President, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan also received the award of the Grand Transformer of Nigerian Agriculture.

According to a member of the Organising Committee for the awards, Richard-Mark Mbaram Esq, Sterling Bank was conferred with the honour in recognition of its critical role in the dispensing of financial services to actors in the Nigerian agricultural value chain.

Speaking at the event, Managing Director and Chief Executive of Sterling Bank Plc, Mr Yemi Adeola, thanked the organisers of the award for recognising the various contributions of the lender to the continuous growth of the Agriculture Sector in the country.

Adeola, who was represented at the event by the bank’s Group Head, Agriculture Finance,

Mrs. Bukola Awosanya said: “Sterling Bank is particularly delighted to receive this award as the Best Agric Bank in Nigeria in recognition of its commitment to the growth of the Agric Sector. Let me assure all that the bank will continue to support the sector to ensure that it takes its pride of place in the nation’s economy,” The statement noted: “The commitment of Sterling Bank, which is one of the country’s fastest growing and most profitable banks to the growth of agriculture in Nigeria is legendary.

Despite the fact that the bank ventured into agriculture finance barely three years ago, it has received a lot of accolades for its involvement in the sector, where it currently ranks among the top three banks.”

To demonstrate its commitment to the growth of the sector, Sterling Bank in 2014 devoted five percent of its loan portfolio to the sector with a plan to increase this to 10 percent in the coming year. The bank’s portfolio cuts across the whole agricultural value chain.

The presentation of the award as the Best Bank in Commercial Agriculture Credit Scheme (CACS) to the lender by President Ebele Jonathan earlier in the year is a confirmation of its soaring pedigree in the business of agriculture finance in the country, the statement added.

36

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2014 NEW TELEGRAPH

Business | Movers, Shakers & Careers

Nigerian becomes IMO London Convention chair

N

igeria’s Alternate Permanent Representative (APR) to the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), Captain Ibrahim Olugbade, has been elected chairman, Governing Bodies of the organisation’s convention and protocol.

Olugbade was elected to the prestigious seat during the meeting of the governing bodies at the IMO headquarters in London.

He is a highly respected master mariner and member of the International Federation of Shipmasters Association (IFSMA), London, and a fellow of the Nautical Institute of Technology and Institute of Shipping Technology, Nigeria.

He holds various profes-

sional and academic qualifications from the Australian Maritime College; the Arab Academy for Science and Technology and Maritime Transport, Egypt; Rivers State University of Science and Technology; and the Maritime Academy of Nigeria, Oron.

Dr. Felicia Mogo, an assistant director in the Marine Environment Management department of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) was also appointed Chairman of the Compliance Group under the London Convention and Protocol.

Olugbade’s election and Mogo’s appointments are seen as a boost for Nigeria’s standing and respectability in the comity of maritime nations.

BOI director, Olagunju, receives NIPR award Kunle Azeez

N

igerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR) has conferred a Special Recognition Award on the Executive Director, Small and Medium Enterprises of the Bank of Industry (BoI), Mr. Waheed Olagunju.

The conferment took place at a ceremony tagged “Celebrating Our Stars” that took place recently in Abuja.

In selecting Olagunju for the award, the NIPR stated that, as the professional body that is statutorily mandated to regulate corporate communications, reputation management and public affairs practice, the institute “cannot but celebrate his expertise, commitment, patriotism and wealth of experience garnered over the past 33 years during, which he made outstanding contributions that impacted positively on Nigeria’s reputation as well as the country’s economic and social development.”

The institute added that it was not only imperative for Nigerians to appreciate Olagunju’s hardwork, stressing that it is also necessary for his untiring efforts to be put in public domain and documented for the records and posterity.

According to the award citation, Olagunju joined the BOI’s precursor institution, the Nigerian Industrial Development Bank (NIDB) in 1990 as a Senior Manager, Corporate Communications and rose to the position of Executive Director, Business

Development, in 2012.

He also acted as Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the BOI between April 11 and May 16, 2014 and was recently re-assigned as the Executive Director, SME under the bank’s new management led by Mr Rasheed Olaoluwa, BOI’s third Managing Director and Chief Executive.

Due to his versatility, Olagunju consistently demonstrated extra-ordinary efficiency, competence, capacity and capability in successfully taking on higher responsibilities assigned to him in the course of 24 years of banking career by the bank’s successive managements and boards of directors.

BOI’s first Chairman, Amb. Zakari Ibrahim, under whose leadership the restructuring of NIDB into BOI was accomplished between 2002 and 2005, attested to Olagunju’s outstanding contributions to the BOI during the send-forth ceremony in honour of the pioneer board of BOI eight years ago.

“I do not intend to bore you with details of your individual contributions to my success in the bank, because as I said earlier you have all contributed immensely. If you permit me however, I would particularly single out for mention the Secretary to the Board, Mr Waheed Olagunju for the selfless service he rendered throughout the period of our stewardship. Your contributions are highly appreciated,” Ibrahim said.

It would be recalled that Nigeria’s High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, Senator Dalhatu Tafida was elected first Vice President of the 28th IMO Assembly in London in November 2013.

Mogo

Gambia appoints two Nigerians as high court judges

T

he Gambia has appointed Justice Martin U Okoi and Justice Semeon Abeh as new high court judges.

The duo are Nigerians.

Also appointed as High court judge is Justice Awa Bah, a Gambian, who was appointed as judge of The Gambia Court of Appeal.

Already, they have taken their oaths of office to serve in their respective judicial positions.

Gambia’s Vice President, Isatou Njie-Saidy, who presided over the swearing in ceremony in Banjul, thanked the new judges for accepting their appointment, describing their job as critical and challenging.

She stressed that their appointments are

a manifestation of government’s commitment to improving the justice system.

Speaking at the ceremony, the Minister of Justice, Basiru Mahoney, said that the new judges had years of experience in the justice delivery system including Justice Awa Bah who has particularly served his ministry since 1998.

The Chief Justice of The Gambia, Eli Nawaz Chowhan, also welcomed the appointments, noting that it would greatly enhance the country’s judicial sector.

He said that the appointments are expected to reduce, if not clear, the number of pending cases in both the High Court and the Court of Appeal.

MTN Ghana appoints Nigerians as gm, CFO

M

TN Ghana has announced the appointment of Sam Addo as the General Manager for MTN Business and Modupe Kadri as Chief Financial Officer.

Sam will be responsible for Business Sales, ICT Sales and Business Development, Business Sales Operations and Support.

He was the General Manager in charge of Distributive Trade and Regional Sales - Southern Ghana, in the Sales and Distribution Division of MTN Ghana before his new appointment.

Sam was responsible for administrative leadership for all the functions in the South-

Sam Ado

ern Ghana Business Unit, including Western, Central, Eastern and Volta regions.

Before joining MTN in 2008, Addo had worked for 13 years with Unilever where he acquired extensive local and international experiences in sales leadership.

Addo holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Biological Sciences from the University of Ghana and a Post Graduate Diploma in Marketing from the Chartered Institute of Marketing, United Kingdom.

Also, Modupe Kadri moves from MTN Nigeria to take up the role of Chief Financial Officer in MTN Ghana.

He spent most of his seven-

Modupe Kadri

year career at MTN Nigeria as General Manager of Financial Operations, advising the Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer and stakeholders on business operations.

Modupe held the position of General Manager for Financial Planning in MTN Nigeria. Prior to his appointment in Ghana, he was the acting Chief Financial Officer at MTN Nigeria for three months.

He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics from the University of Lagos and also a Master’s degree in Management from the same institution. He started his professional career where he trained and qualified as a Chartered Accountant with the firm PricewaterhouseCoopers spanning a period of 11 years.

Modupe is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN) and the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA). He is also an alumnus of both INSEAD and Columbia Business Schools.

In a statement, MTN Ghana Chief Executive Officer, Serame Taukobong, congratulated Sam Addo and Modupe Kadri for their new roles.

Firm names 11 women, 67 others partners

G

oldman Sachs has named 78 employees to the coveted status of partners of the prestigious US investment bank.

The employees, 11 of them women, will gain more responsibilities and benefits, including salary increases.

The average monthly salary of a Goldman partner was $320,000 at the end of September.

Most of the new partners, 25, come from the Wall Street bank’s trading activities, fol-

lowed by 23 in the investment bank division.

“These appointments recognise some of the firm’s most senior professionals and acknowledge their embodiment of our culture and values, and their leadership of the firm’s business and people,” said Lloyd Blankfein, chairman and chief executive.

The best-known of the new traders is Richard “Jake” Siewert, head of corporate

communications, who joined Goldman in 2012. Siewert is a former White House spokesman under the administration of then-president Bill Clinton.

The employees will officially become new partners on January 1, bringing to 467 the number of partners in the bank’s nearly 33,000 workforce. The elite 1.6 per cent enjoys power, pay and benefits that are among the most envied on Wall Street.

Business | Stock Watch

NEW TELEGRAPH MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2014

SOCIAL MEDIA

The emergence of social networks have affected courier firms Chris Ugwu

T

hough the courier services sector of the Nigerian economy appears to be gradually bouncing back, as many quacks and unlicensed courier companies have been forced out of business, the segment still has its challenges.

This is because the economy generally has continued to face enormous socio-economic challenges. There is no doubt that the security challenges in the Northern part of the country with the attendant consequences of loss of lives and properties, domestic constraints such as depletion of fiscal buffers, dwindling foreign reserves, erratic supply of electricity, poor infrastructures, among others, have stifled the growth of businesses.

Other particular challenges that have eaten deep into the fabric of the sector is the emergence of social networks, which has made postages a hard nut to crack, as most people prefer to use Facebook, twitters, yahoo mails, among others, than using courier services companies including the Nigeria Postal Services (NIPOST).

While some companies were able to successfully weather the storm notwithstanding the difficulty in business environment, others were not.

Red Star Express Plc got its fair share from the mixed fortune, as 2014 full year result for the year ended March 2014, saw a leap as profit after tax for the 2014 full year rose 32 per cent from the previous year, but started dwindling during the first quarter. Market watchers believe this was induced by harsh operating environment.

Market analysts have also predicted that the company’s profit is likely to decline further in Q2 2014, following a disappointing start for the year.

However, market sentiments for the shares of the company has remained relatively firm in spite the recent lull in the equities following apprehensions being witnessed as a result of the forthcoming general elections and the recapialisation that have seen investors being cautious on investment actions.

Stockbrokers attributed investors’ sustained confidence in the stock to sustained proactive sales; marketing and distribution efforts as well as its strong presence across Nigeria.

The company has also maintained the top spot in the courrier services sector listed on the floor of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) in terms of share price. Financial analysts believe this will be sustained in the next few years.

The share price, which closed at N4.42 per share in December 31, 2013, has recorded a dip. At the close of business last Friday, the company’s share price was N4.20, a decline of 22 kobo or 5.2 per cent year to date.

Financials Red Star Express 2014 FY results showed a 21 per cent rise in revenue to N6.4 billion from 2013 FY of N5.3 billion. Gross profit rose 10.5 per cent to N1.8 billion compared with N1.6 billion posted a year earlier. Profit after tax rose 32 per cent to N404 million compared with N305 million a year earlier.

The increase in revenue is a 21 per cent increase compared with a 5 per cent increase the year before. The group has three major business segments, Courier, Freight, Logistics and

37

Red Star Express: Harsh milieu hits profit Share price movement of Red Star Express 2013 Dec 31

N4.42 2014 N4.30

Feb 28

N4.40

Mar 31

N4.47

Apr 30

N4.16

May 30

N4.55

Jun 30

N5.01

Jul 31

N4.65

Aug 29

N4.80

Sept 30

N4.59

Oct 24

N4.15

Nov 21

N4.20

business.

He noted that the inability of the privatised power sector to increase output as envisaged, as a result of issues with gas supply and power distribution, rising inflation cost and decaying infrastructure continue to pose great challenges to businesses in the country, resulting in maintenance and operations cost.

In an address to shareholders at the company’s AGM, Koguna said despite all these challenges, the Nigerian economy remains one of the fastest growing economies in the world with comparable high indices in foreign direct investment.

Koguna

Support Services. The four segments posted significant rise in revenue during the review year with each posting 12 per cent, 42 per cent, 8.4 per cent and 42 per cent respectively. The parent company does courier and posted N3.9 billion of the total, whilst the remaining four posted a combined N2.5 billion.

Despite a five per cent rise YoY, operating expenses, as a percentage of Gross Profit was 67 per cent compared with 70 per cent the year before.

Red Star Express has also refunded a huge chunk of its loans to N91 million. The loan balance of N91 million is the balance of a N114 million loan obtained from Fidelity bank to finance plants.

Operating profit margin was flat at 9.1 per cent in line with prior year trends. Profit margin was 6.3 per cent suggesting a low margin business.

Return on Equity was appreciable at 22 per cent compared with 18 per cent the year before.

Return on Assets was 18 per cent up from 16 per cent the year earlier.

The double figures in return on assets figures are in line with the business model, which depends very little on assets to provide service.

However, the company began the first quarter on negative footing as it recorded a 10.04 per cent dip in pre-tax profit.

Red Star in a filing with the Exchange posted a profit before tax of N125.028 million for the first quarter ended June 30, 2014, as against N137.583 million, accounting for a drop of 10.04 per cent.

Profit after tax equally dropped at

Jan 31

The company began the first quarter on negative footing as it recorded a 10.04 per cent dip in pre-tax profit

10.04 per cent from N96.308 million in contrast to N87.520 million recorded during the comparable period of 2013.

Turnover however, grew by 9.96 per cent from N1.428 billion in 2013 to N1.586 billion during the period under review.

Challenges Chairman, Red Star Express Plc, Dr Mohammed Koguna, had at the 21st Annual General Meeting (AGM) expressed worry over the difficult operating environment, noting that the economic and business environment continues to be challenging for most companies, including Red Star Express.

According to him, the increasing rate of insecurity in various parts of the country, particularly the Northeast, including Abuja, which is one of the company’s high revenue generating territory, slightly impacted on its

Expansion strategies Koguna said Red Star Express has been positioning to key into the increasing potential, noting that the company is embarking on various expansion projects that will spur phenomenal growth in the company and the process for the actualisation of the strategic investment projects are being put in place.

“Embarking on these projects we are certain would improve the quality of service offered to customers, increase our market share and ultimately improve margins,” Koguna said.

He further said that as part of corporate social responsibility, the company considers the community as a social partner.

“Red Star Express considers the community as a social partner and thereby established the Red Star Foundation 10 years ago as part of its corporate social responsibility. The objective of the Red Star Foundation is to partner with our host community through addressing support for education, poverty alleviation, skill development, and environmental responsiveness. In the area of education, 20 scholarship awards were given out to students from different schools in the western and northern regions of the country. While in the area of poverty alleviation, four homes (old people’s homes and orphanage homes) were beneficiaries of the “I care project”. A sum of N2,018,170 representing 0.5 per cent of our profit after tax was appropriated to the foundation,” Koguna said.

38

RECOGNITION Nigerian insurers need to step up their game to earn global recognition

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2014 NEW TELEGRAPH

Insurance

Market devt: Underwriters’ magic wand in limbo

Sunday Ojeme

T

he delayed implementation of the National Insurance Commission’s (NAICOM) initiated Market Development and Restructuring Initiative (MDRI) has continued to evoke deep concern among stakeholders in the insurance sector.

Since it came to the fore some years back, stakeholders and industry watchers have been looking forward to its implementation because of the inherent benefits embedded in it. The initiative, which was conceived as a catalyst to boost the industry fortune through a holistic implementation of Compulsory Insurance is still hanging due mainly to the lackluster approach of the operators.

With Nigeria aspiring to become one of the 20 biggest economies by the year 2020, there is no doubt that the insurance industry needs to grab the opportunities inherent in the MDRI if it must play along global players in underwriting business.

Reawaking the project This belief was basically what prompted the recent call on the regulator to reawaken the project including injection of funds to make it work.

At the vanguard of the move to resuscitate the scheme is a top consultant to the regulator and the Managing Director Riskguard-Africa Nigeria Limited, Yemi Soladoye, who also played an active role in the development of the initiative.

Soladoye believes that apart from the industry boosting its gross premium income, the implementation of the scheme will earn NAICOM about N800 million as sideline income.

This is in addition to N6.0 trillion premium to be generated by the industry in 2020 with about N25.0 billion supervision levy generated by NAICOM (2015 – 2020).

Funding According to the risk expert, NAICOM will only need to spend about N370 million on the MDRI project, while the industry operators make a pledge of N300 million for insurance education.

The MDRI was evolved by NAICOM to revolutionize insurance practise, it key deliverables include: Increase Gross Premium Income (GPI) from N200.0 billion in 2009 to N1.0 trillion in 2012, N2.5 trillion in 2015, and N6.0 trillion in 2020.

It was also to lower the Insurance Gap from 94 per cent

Brokers’ registration: Operators seek CAC’s support p.39

Commissioner for Insurance, Mr Fola Daniel

in 2009 to 70 per cent in 2012, increase insurance contribution to Gross Domestic Product (GDP from 0.72 per cent in 2009 to 3.0 per cent 2012 and Increase Premium per capital from N525.00 to N7,500 by 2012.

Apart from the benefits to be derived by individuals under the Compulsory Insurance covers, the MDRI will also play a major role in the nation’s economy if the operators work hard to design attractive products for the insuring public.

N1trn target At the inception of the programme, the Commissioner for Insurance, Mr. Fola Daniel, had set a target of N1 trillion Gross Premium for the industry, which currently has a GPI of less than N300 billion.

His confidence stemmed from the operators’ ability to comprehensively deploy the provisions of Compulsory Insurance programme.

The N1 trillion target, if achieved, is expected to enhance the sector’s current low contribution to the nation’s Gross Domestic Product that is dangling between 0.6 and 0.7 per cent.

Daniel believes even though the target is yet to be achieved, considerable progress has been made given the current statistics and the role the MDRI would play in the process.

According to him, there has been massive awareness about the Compulsory Insurances within and outside the industry. This is evident in the number of policies written by

Soladoye

companies under this class of insurance between 2009 and 2012, which rose sharply from 72,180 to 152,181 a whopping increase of 111 per cent.

He said: “The Nigerian insurance sector has great potential for massive growth.

You will agree with me that the population size of the country, if adequately harnessed, gives an added advantage to the insurance industry to further develop its market. This is what we intend to achieve with the various initiatives incepted by the Commission in recent times.

“I am encouraged that all of these and many other initiatives assure us of an evolving insurance model, a better insurance industry, a growing

Apart from the industry boosting its gross premium income, the implementation of the scheme will earn NAICOM about N800 million as sideline income.

market and a brighter future.

We will definitely appreciate the unflinching support and cooperation of all in this drive.”

As early as January 2013, Daniel had projected that the industry would hit the N1 trillion mark by 2017 from the current GPI written shortly after the wrap up of business in 2012.

According to him, the country planned to more than triple the value of its insurance market in the next four years He said then that the value of insurance contracts in the country should rise to about N1 trillion ($6.4 billion) in 2017, about three per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), from N300 billion now, or less than one per cent of GDP. Penetration should increase to 22.50 per cent of the insurable population in four years from 10 per cent currently.

He said: “We have a target of one trillion naira which we believe we can achieve, and all the fundamentals that were used in packaging that are still realistic.”

The commissioner noted that Nigeria had a population of over 150 million people, with a larger percentage that were not in any way under an insurance cover.

If just about 45 million Nigerians could be covered, he said, it would make a significant impact on the industry’s operations.

Innovative products According to him, the

companies need to develop environmental-friendly life policies that will encourage ordinary people, such as the artisans to buy life policies.

He said: “The biggest customer that the insurance company has is government.

Government has shown leadership, they are taking insurance policies. It is the ordinary Nigerians that we need to showcase value change, so that when they see value, they need to buy it, government is very compliant.”

At the ports, he observed that most marine insurance certificates were fake because people just take any kind of paper to show to the Nigerian Customs Service as evidence that they had complied with the law.

He urged the insurance industry to have a meeting point with Nigerian ports, and fashion a way by which they could introduce a mechanism to block the leakages.

“If you imagine the amount of imports that are coming into Nigeria that should be insured and are not insured, if all of them are insured and this money is coming to the coffers of insurance companies, insurance will be richer than the banking industry,” Daniel said.

Compulsary insurance The commissioner also pointed out that a new and commendable trend was setting into the industry with the unprecedented participation by government in compulsory insurance.

In one instance, a group of underwriters have come together to enforce the Motor Vehicle Third Party Liability Insurance in Imo State in collaboration with the state government and the scheme is working very well. Another group of 19 underwriters are enforcing the Occupiers Liability Insurance in Enugu State in collaboration with the State Government. And the Commission is working to get more states to embrace these models.

Daniel said: “We also recognised the need to develop the retail insurance market which has remained grossly untapped considering the vast population of the country. And as part of the Commission’s strategy of Financial Inclusiveness, the Micro Insurance Scheme and the Takaful Insurance were launched late last year. Every effort is being made to ensure they make the desired impact in the industry.”

Business |Insurance

NEW TELEGRAPH MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2014

QUALITY SERVICE Stakeholders demand better regulation Sunday Ojeme

T

he Nigerian Council of Registered Insurance Brokers (NCRIB) has solicited the understanding and support of the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) in the incorporation of new companies wishing to go into insurance broking.

A statement made available to New Tele-

39

Brokers’ registration: Operators seek CAC’s support graph on Friday said the appeal was to ensure sanity and professionalisation of insurance broking practice.

The Council encouraged CAC to hence forth request for evidence of professional qualification of the Chartered Insurance Institute of Nigeria (CIIN) or its equivalent, from at least a Director of prospective companies as required

for companies going into other professional practices.

This position of the Council was made known during a courtesy visit of a delegation of the NCRIB led by its President, Mr. Ayodapo Shoderu, to the Commission’s office in Abuja.

Shoderu explained that the request would further ensure greater professionalisation and

improve the quality of service delivery by the companies.

The NCRIB President, who applauded the CAC for ensuring effective corporate governance in business through its efficient and dispassionate approach in the registration and incorporation of business institutions in Nigeria, particularly under the management of the incumbent Regis-

trar-General, Mr. Bello Mahmud, stressed the need to imbibe the position of the Council on registration of new firms.

While intimating the Registrar and his team with the workings and importance of insurance brokers in relations to Nigeria economy, Shoderu explained that NCRIB, the umbrella body of all registered insurance brokers in Nigeria, with

over 500 members operating within the nooks and crannies of Nigeria, should be allowed to play its pivotal role in sustaining the nation’s economy.

According to him, Chartered by the NCRIB Act No. 21 of 2003, the Council is the only recognised body regulating insurance brokers in the country, a role it has been playing most creditably till date.

Speaking further, the President noted that NCRIB Act 2003 prescribed a minimum working capital of N5 million for insurance brokers.

He said: “It is the desire of our Council that this provision of the law should be taken into cognizance and given full effect when incorporating insurance brokerage companies by the Commission. Our Council has continued to experience a situation where insurance broking companies are registered with less than the prescribed minimum share capital only for our Council to insist that they increase their working capital to meet up with the registration requirement of N5 million working capital prescribed by the law.”

In his response, Mahmud assured the Council of the Commission’s commitment to adhere to all necessary laws and regulations that spelt out the basic minimum requirement before registration of any broking firm henceforth.

He immediately charged his management team to always pay attention to details as enumerated by the NCRIB President.

While appreciating the Council for the courtesy visit, Mahmud enjoined the industry to reconsider its stand on implementation of ‘No Premium, No Cover’ policy, stressing that many organisations had found it difficult to meet up with their insurance obligations.

According to him, many insured public still find it difficult to get their claims when there is need for it.

Shoderu later explained that the prayer of the Commission’s on the amendment to the implementation of “No Premium, No Cover” was not within the jurisdiction of the Council, stressing that the Insurance Act prohibited the practice.

40

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2014 NEW TELEGRAPH

(%)

Agency Bonds FMBN ***LCRM

0.00 FMB 24-MAY-2015 17.25 FMB II 03-APR-2017 0.00/16.00 LCRM 09-DEC-2016 0.00/16.50 LCRM II 20-APR-2017 0.00/16.50 LCRM III 06-JUL-2017

24-May-10 03-Apr-12 09-Dec-11 20-Apr-12 06-Jul-12

TOTAL OUTSTANDING VALUE

0.00 17.25 0.00/16.00 0.00/16.50 0.00/16.50

24.56 3.00 112.22 116.70 66.49

0.50 1.24 2.05 2.41 2.62

2.63 2.27 2.00 1.00 1.00

16.20 15.37 15.78 14.83 14.83

92.39 102.26 99.62 96.92 94.00

322.97

TOTAL MARKET CAPITALISATION

313.15

Sub-National Bonds

NEW TELEGRAPH MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2014 A+/Agusto A/Agusto A-/Agusto A+/Agusto A+/Agusto; A+/GCR A-/Agusto A/Agusto A+/Agusto; A+/GCR A-/Agusto; A-/GCR A/Agusto; A-/GCR† A-/Agusto A/Agusto; A-/GCR A/Agusto; A-/GCR Aa-/Agusto; AA-/GCR A/Agusto; A-/GCR A/Agusto Aa-/Agusto; AA-/GCR A-/Agusto; BBB+/DataPro A/Agusto A-/GCR

24-May-15 03-Apr-17 09-Dec-16 20-Apr-17 06-Jul-17

KADUNA *EBONYI *BENUE *IMO LAGOS *BAYELSA EDO *DELTA NIGER *EKITI *NIGER *ONDO *GOMBE LAGOS *OSUN *OSUN LAGOS KOGI *EKITI *NASARAWA

12.50 KADUNA 31-AUG-2015 13.00 EBONYI 30-SEP-2015 14.00 BENUE 30-JUN-2016 15.50 IMO 30-JUN-2016 10.00 LAGOS 19-APR-2017 13.75 BAYELSA 30-JUN-2017 14.00 EDO 31-DEC-2017 14.00 DELTA 30-SEP-2018 14.00 NIGER II 4-OCT-2018 14.50 EKITI 09-DEC-2018 14.00 NIGER III 12-DEC-2018 15.50 ONDO 14-FEB-2019 15.50 GOMBE 02-OCT-2019 14.50 LAGOS 22-NOV-2019 14.75 OSUN 12-DEC-2019 14.75 OSUN II 10-OCT-2020 13.50 LAGOS IV 27-NOV-2020 15.00 KOGI 31-DEC-2020 14.50 EKITI II 31-DEC-2020 15.00 NASARAWA 06-JAN-2021

31-Aug-10 30-Sep-10 30-Jun-11 30-Jun-09 19-Apr-10 30-Jun-10 30-Dec-10 30-Sep-11 04-Oct-11 09-Dec-11 12-Dec-13 14-Feb-12 02-Oct-12 22-Nov-12 12-Dec-12 10-Oct-13 27-Nov-13 31-Dec-13 31-Dec-13 06-Jan-14

UBA

14.00 UBA II 22-SEP-2018

Business | Financial Market News

12.50 13.00 14.00 15.50 10.00 13.75 14.00 14.00 14.00 14.50 14.00 15.50 15.50 14.50 14.75 14.75 13.50 15.00 14.50 15.00

8.50 4.18 6.27 7.37 57.00 29.92 25.00 34.14 9.00 14.96 11.13 27.00 16.23 80.00 27.51 11.40 87.50 5.00 4.78 4.79

22-Sep-11

14.00

18-Oct-13

15.75

41

31-Aug-15 30-Sep-15 30-Jun-16 30-Jun-16 19-Apr-17 30-Jun-17 31-Dec-17 30-Sep-18 04-Oct-18 09-Dec-18 12-Dec-18 14-Feb-19 02-Oct-19 22-Nov-19 12-Dec-19 10-Oct-20 27-Nov-20 31-Dec-20 31-Dec-20 06-Jan-21

0.78 0.62 0.90 0.91 2.41 1.46 3.11 2.28 3.87 2.28 2.28 2.66 2.92 5.00 2.89 3.44 6.02 6.11 3.59 3.62

4.44 3.23 4.46 3.48 5.59 1.00 1.79 1.80 1.00 1.00 4.78 1.00 1.00 1.00 2.74 1.00 1.00 1.94 1.44 1.95

17.59 16.63 17.41 16.43 19.42 14.36 15.60 15.61 14.78 14.81 18.59 14.83 14.82 14.71 16.56 14.80 14.61 15.54 15.23 15.74

96.40 98.60 97.21 99.53 82.50 99.38 96.12 97.23 97.71 99.48 91.69 99.37 101.68 99.27 96.05 99.92 95.65 97.87 98.17 98.18

35.00

22-Sep-18

3.84

1.35

15.13

96.74

2.40

18-Oct-18

2.16

2.29

16.09

99.61

0.41

17-Feb-19

2.24

6.11

19.92

95.30

4.50

01-Apr-19

3.11

2.16

15.97

100.12

2.05

14-Nov-20

5.98

2.76

16.37

95.80

0.10

30-Sep-24

9.86

1.00

14.72

85.64

14-Aug-21

8.44

8.22

100.56

101.66

Insurance firms’ dismal performance worry operators losses incurred dur- were not helping mating the recession even ters, as they are among as market sentiment companies that are often Sustained bad for other sectors have sanctioned for breachturned green. ing post-listing requireresults undermine ments.

Since the crash of the investors’ confidence nation’s capital market He linked the inabilin insurance stocks in 2008, negative percep- ity of the sub- sector to tion has trailed the sub- rise above the nominal sector, which was com- level to crisis of confiTOTAL OUTSTANDING VALUE Stories

by Chris Ugwu pounded by inability of dence.

TOTAL MARKET CAPITALISATION about 85 per cent of the “There were high Corporate Bonds companies inGUARANTY the industock market anaexpectations that18-Dec-09 some 13.50 TRUST 18-DEC-2014 Aa/Agusto GTB µ conlysts have try to pay dividend to of them will bring good 17.00 NGC 31-DEC-2014 01-Apr-10 NGC Nil 10.00 UPDC 17-Aug-10 shareholders for17-AUG-2015 many results to the market. tinued to express Bbb-/Agusto *UPDC 12.00 FLOURMILLS 9-DEC-2015 A-/Agustoanxiety over 09-Dec-10 *FLOURMILLS the years.

Investors have started 14.00 CHELLARAMS 06-JAN-2016 BB+/GCR 06-Jan-11 *CHELLARAMS dismal performance of Speaking to New Teletaking positions on the 13.00 NAHCO 29-SEP-2016 A+/Agusto; A-/GCR 29-Sep-11 NAHCO insurance stocks quoted graph, the Managing insurance stocks, but 14.25 FSDH 25-OCT-2016 A-/Agusto 25-Oct-13 FSDH UBA 30-SEP-2017 A/GCR 30-Sep-10 on the Nigerian Stock Director, 13.00 Crane Securi- they ended up posting UBA 18.00 C&I LEASING 30-NOV-2017 BBB-/GCR Exchange (NSE). *C & I LEASING ties Limited, Mr. Mike negative results, 30-Nov-12 which MPR+7.00 DANA 9-APR-2018 Nil 09-Apr-11 *DANA#{r} effect The insurance indusEze, said some of 9-SEP-2018 the now has a spiral09-Sep-11 # MPR+7.00 TOWER A-/DataPro†; BB-/GCR *TOWER insurance companies try is yet to recover from on other insurance # MPR+5.25 TOWER 9-SEP-2018 AAA/DataPro†; A+/GCR 09-Sep-11 *TOWER

NEGATIVE VIEW

S

A/Agusto; A/GCR

Bbb+/Agusto; BBB+/GCR

15.75 LA CASERA 18-OCT-2018

‘Nigeria’s stake in global mutual funds is $1bn’ *LA CASERA *CHELLARAMS#

BBB-/DataPro†; BB+/GCR

MPR+5.00 CHELLARAMS II 17-FEB-2019

17-Feb-12 of high returns by havNil 01-Apr-14 *DANA ing a registered profes15.25 NAHCO II 14-NOV-2020 A+/Agusto; A-/GCR 14-Nov-13 NAHCO 182D T.bills+1.20 STANBIC IA 30-SEP-2024 sional mange their inA/GCR 30-Sep-14 STANBIC IBTC 13.25 STANBIC IB 30-SEP-2024 A/GCR 30-Sep-14 STANBIC IBTC vestments.”

TOTAL OUTSTANDING VALUE In a related develTOTAL MARKET CAPITALISATION igeria invested Ogundare explained opment, the Chief Exthat investing through ecutive, Stanbic IBTC a total Supranational Bond of $1billion out of $30 mutual funds enables in- Management Limited, 10.20 IFC 11-FEB-2018 AAA/S&P 11-Feb-13 IFC 11.25 AFDB 1-FEB-2021 trillion global vestors maximise their Mr. Olumide Oyetan, Aaa/Moody's; AAA/S&P 10-Jul-14 AfDB TOTAL in OUTSTANDING VALUE funds mutual investopportunity to diversify put the total asset under TOTAL MARKET CAPITALISATION their portfolio. management of the firm ment, New Telegraph has learnt.

She added that the at around N186 billion, Description Rating/Agency Issue Date scheme is managed unThe Deputy Manag- Issuer which is an increase of ing Director of ARM Inder a well-articulated 300 per cent compared FGN Eurobonds vestment Mangers, Mrs governance structure, with a decade ago.

6.75 JAN 28, 2021 07-Oct-11 BB-/Fitch; Oyetan noted that the JumokeB+/S&P Ogundare, said which enables investors BB-/Fitch; this in Abuja at the to access their reports increase in personal inFGN 5.13 JUL 12, 2018 12-Jul-13 BB-/S&P and evaluate their inOgundare, who lacomes as well as attenBB-/Fitch; 6.38 JUL 12, 2023 12-Jul-13 mented the low level of vestments periodically dant increase in propenBB-/S&P TOTAL OUTSTANDING CIS penetration inVALUE Nige- in a transparent manner. sity to save and invest ria, stressed need for “Nigeria is coming far outpaced new investTOTAL MARKETthe CAPITALISATION the country to increase behind in this scheme ments by retail market in Corporate Eurobonds on the and we have $1 billion, mutual funds. its contributions 11.50 FEB 01, 2016 B/Fitch; B-/S&P PLC I scheme to be at parAFREN with which is small compared He said that that01-Feb-11 there 7.50 MAY 19, 2016 19-May-11 B+/Fitch; B+/S&P GTBANK PLC I her counterparts in oth- $30trillion generated7.25all are 45 collective investJUL 25, 2017 25-Jul-12 B+/S&P ACCESS BANK PLC erB/Fitch; jurisdictions. over the world. Mutual ment scheme in Nigeria, 6.88 MAY 09, 2018 09-May-13 B/S&P FIDELITY BANK PLC compared with over 3000 She pointed out that funds reduce investment 6.00 NOV 08, 2018 08-Nov-13 B+/Fitch; B+/S&P GTBANK PLC 10.25 APR 08,and 2019 130 mutual funds 08-Apr-12 in the increased contribuB/Fitch AFREN PLC II risk through diversifica6.25 APR 22,India 2019 22-Apr-14 B+/Fitch;recorded BB-/S&P BANK PLC tions in ZENITH other tion and reduce transand Pakistan re8.75 May 21, 2019 21-May-14 B/Fitch; B/S&P has helped DIAMOND PLC countries al- BANKaction cost on the other spectively; countries that 8.25 AUG 07, 2020 07-Aug-13 B-/Fitch; B/S&P FIRST BANK PLC leviate poverty as well as hand.

It also enables less have comparable Gross 6.63 DEC 09, 2020 09-Dec-13 B-/Fitch; B/S&P AFREN PLC III improved their standard sophisticated9.25/6M investors Domestic (GDP) USD LIBOR+7.677 JUN 24, 2021 Product24-Jun-14 B-/Fitch; B/S&P ACCESS BANK PLC II ofB-/Fitch; living. obtain the opportunity per 8.00/2Y USD SWAP+6.488 JULcapita 23 2021 to Nigeria.

23-Jul-14 B/S&P FIRST BANK LTD

17.00

16.00 DANA II 1-APR-2019

#{r}

16.00 15.25 11.93 13.25

N

B-/S&P

8.75 AUG 14, 2021

ECOBANK NIG. LTD

TOTAL OUTSTANDING VALUE TOTAL MARKET CAPITALISATION

trend in Nigeria’s in- tainable in other parts surance sector has re- of the world, he said mained a product of un- that the Nigerian marderdevelopment as well ket and economy has as public perception of not been able to break the insurance business even because of general in the country. perception of insurance Besides, he noted that business in the country. even though few of the “The insurance secinsurance companies tor may find it difficult have already submitted to materially affect the their reports, most of economy and the capital the companies0.07 are still 5.21market.16.02 You know that 18-Dec-14 99.75 challenged in terms of 8.71insurance sector 31-Dec-14 0.11 20.02 99.54 has 17-Aug-15 0.50 18.45 the people’s 96.39 filling their reports and 4.88not gained 09-Dec-15 0.57 14.47 and long 98.51 beregulatory approval of 1.00confidence 06-Jan-16 0.65 2.63 15.98 99.14 fore now when the sectheir reports among 29-Sep-16 1.86 1.00 14.67 97.32 other issues. 1.93 poorly regulat25-Oct-16 1.34 tor was15.06 98.65 30-Sep-17 14.82 95.83 Speaking on2.86 why the 1.00ed, it carved for itself a 30-Nov-17 1.67 15.42 104.80 sector has not been able 1.88negative image because 09-Apr-18 1.88 to 09-Sep-18 thrive in the Nigeri- 3.48 of their17.17 inability98.46 to set2.05 5.20 18.98 98.77 tle claims promptly .” an09-Sep-18 capital market as ob2.05 5.06 18.84 101.85

companies, hence investors started dumping their shares,” he said.

Chief Executive Officer, Lambert Securities Limited, Mr. David Adonri, said the insurance sector has not improved on its 471.68 performance after the452.15 recession because of volatility of13.50 the sector. 13.17 He 17.00said the stocks 2.00 10.00 penny stocks 3.61 though 12.00 have attracted 13.62 would 14.00 0.60 investors but because 13.00 15.00 of low 14.25dividend payout 5.53 13.00 companies, 20.00 inof the 18.00 are not willing 0.73 vestors 16.00 6.30 to take positions.

18.00 2.90 Adonri said that 16.00 0.80 the

10.20 11.25

Coupon (%)

6.75 5.13 6.38

11.50 7.50 7.25 6.88 6.00 10.25 6.25 8.75 8.25 6.63 9.25 8.00

14-Aug-14

8.75

Oando plans $300m share sale

N

9.86 igerian 30-Sep-24 energy firm 144.16 Oando has said it plans 139.95 to raise $300 million via a rights issue of new stock, starting from November 24. 3.23 12.00 11-Feb-18 Oando, with01-Feb-21 stock listings 12.95 4.45 in Johannesburg and Toronto, 24.95 said22.18 in a filing with the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) Outstanding Value Maturity Datebe able Bid Yield shareholders would to (%) ($mm) subscribe to one new share for every four already held as at 500.00 28-Jan-21 5.22 July 25.

Oando, one of Nigeria’s in500.00 12-Jul-18 4.37 digenous oil and gas producers, 500.00 posted a 43 per 12-Jul-23 cent growth5.53 in profit after tax for the third 1,500.00 quarter 1,580.98 ended September 30, 2014.

The company in a filing 450.00 01-Feb-16 with the Exchange posted8.48a 500.00 19-May-16 4.84 profit after tax of N10.700 bil350.00 25-Jul-17 6.83 lion300.00 during the02-May-18 review period 9.57 as against N6.091 billion, indi400.00 08-Nov-18 6.33 300.00a growth 08-Apr-19 cating of 43 per cent.

9.67 500.00 22-Apr-19 6.51 Pre-tax profit grew by 4.08 21-May-19 9.27 per200.00 cent from N9.761 reported 300.00 07-Aug-20 8.11 during the comparable period 360.00 09-Dec-20 8.11 of 2013 billion in 2014.

400.00 to N9.761 24-Jun-21 9.58 The company’s turnover 450.00 23-Jul-21 8.50 15.44

250.00

FMDQ Daily Quotations List

1.00 14.72 from N386.151 92.42 however, dropped billion in 2013 to N338.105 billion in 2014, amounting to a decrease of 14 per cent.

Oando had14.81 recorded88.47 a 103 1.00 per cent growth in pre-tax prof1.00 14.76 89.32 it for the half year ended, 2014.

The company in a filing with the Exchange posted a profit Offer Yield (%) Bid Price Price before tax of N12.532Offer billion for the first half of the year as Prices & Yields against N6.155 billion, indicat5.07 ing a growth 107.96 of 103 per 108.83 cent.

Net earnings grew 103.38 by 110 4.11 102.50 per cent from N8.980 billion in 105.73 5.40 106.63 the first half of 2014 as against N4.271 billion in 2013, while revenue dropped to N194.55 billion compared with N280.32 billion.

8.48 103.30 103.30 Chairman of the company, Oba4.84 Michael 103.75 Gbadebo,103.75 had at 6.83 101.00 101.00 the 37th Annual General Meet8.93 92.23 94.00 ing 6.00 (AGM) while 98.84 highlighting 99.98 the 9.67 impact of 102.00Oando’s 102.00$1.5 6.51 99.00 billion acquisition of 99.00 Cono9.02 98.14 99.02 coPhillips Nigeria, assured 8.11 99.75 99.75 shareholders of further im8.11 93.00 93.00 provements in the company’s 9.42 98.63 99.38 performance.

8.50 96.50 96.50

4,760.00 4,720.63

21-Nov-14

The FMDQ income securities and instruments inMarket the OTC market. The use of this report is subject to the **Treasury Bills Daily Quotations List (DQL) comprises market and model prices/rates of foreign exchange ($/N) products, fixed FIXINGS Money Foreign Exchange (Spot & Forwards) FMDQ Use and Disclaimer Statement DTM OTC PLC Terms of Maturity Bid Discounton (%) www.fmdqotc.com.

Offer Discount (%) Bid Yield (%) Tenor Rate (%) 13 20 FGN34 Bonds 41 48 55 Rating/Agency 62 69 76 83 90 97 104 111 125 132 NA 139 146 153 160 167 174 258 286

4-Dec-14 11-Dec-14 25-Dec-14 1-Jan-15 8-Jan-15 15-Jan-15 Issuer 22-Jan-15 29-Jan-15 5-Feb-15 12-Feb-15 19-Feb-15 26-Feb-15 5-Mar-15 12-Mar-15 26-Mar-15 2-Apr-15 NA 9-Apr-15 16-Apr-15 23-Apr-15 30-Apr-15 7-May-15 14-May-15 6-Aug-15 3-Sep-15

12.00 12.10 10.73 12.37 12.70 12.50 Description 12.41 4.0012.40 23-APR-2015 12.10 13.05 16-AUG-2016 12.16 15.1012.60 27-APR-2017 9.8512.10 27-JUL-2017 9.3511.75 31-AUG-2017 10.7012.40 30-MAY-2018 16.0012.40 29-JUN-2019 7.0011.24 23-OCT-2019 12.20 16.39 27-JAN-2022 12.01 14.20 14-MAR-2024 12.03 15.0012.55 28-NOV-2028 12.4911.90 22-MAY-2029 8.5012.80 20-NOV-2029 12.00 10.00 23-JUL-2030 11.60 12.1493 18-JUL-2034

11.75 11.85 10.48 12.12 12.45 12.25 Issue Date 12.16 12.15 23-Apr-10 11.85 16-Aug-13 11.91 27-Apr-12 12.35 27-Jul-07 11.85 31-Aug-07 11.50 30-May-08 12.15 12.15 29-Jun-12 10.99 23-Oct-09 11.95 27-Jan-12 11.76 14-Mar-14 11.78 28-Nov-08 12.30 22-May-09 11.65 20-Nov-09 12.55 11.75 23-Jul-10 11.35 18-Jul-14

NIBOR 12.05 12.18 Tenor Rate (%) 10.84 O/N 10.5033 12.54 1M 13.2166 12.92 3M 13.8216 Outstanding Value 12.74 6M 14.7524 Date Coupon (%) Maturity (N'bn) 12.68 12.704.00 535.00 23-Apr-15 12.41 13.05 563.89 NITTY 16-Aug-16 12.51 15.10 452.80 27-Apr-17 13.00 Tenor Rate (%) 27-Jul-17 12.509.85 1M20.00 12.4302 100.00 31-Aug-17 12.169.35 2M 12.5079 300.00 30-May-18 12.8910.70 3M 12.7245 12.9516.00 6M 12.9932 351.30 29-Jun-19 11.727.00 9M 13.1724 233.90 23-Oct-19 12.79 12M 13.6442 16.39 600.00 27-Jan-22 12.62 14.20 371.68 14-Mar-24 12.67 75.00 28-Nov-28 13.2815.00 NIFEX 150.00 22-May-29 12.5912.49 Current Price ($/N)20-Nov-29 200.00 13.638.50 13.1110.00 BID($/N) 591.57 176.9025 23-Jul-30 12.76 OFFER ($/N)130.00 177.0025 12.1493 18-Jul-34

Bonds

TOTAL OUTSTANDING VALUE

4,675.13

*for the Amortising bonds, theCAPITALISATION average life is calculated and not the duration TOTAL MARKET Risk Premium is a combination of credit risk and liquidity risk premiums **Exclusive of non-trading t.bills

FMBN Modified Duration Buckets

***LCRM

<3 3<5 CAPITALISATION >5 Market

TOTAL OUTSTANDING VALUE TOTAL MARKET

Sub-National Bonds A+/Agusto A/Agusto A-/Agusto A+/Agusto A+/Agusto; A+/GCR A-/Agusto A/Agusto A+/Agusto; A+/GCR

Description

Issuer

Agency Bonds

KADUNA *EBONYI *BENUE *IMO LAGOS *BAYELSA EDO *DELTA

O/N

REPO

Tenor(Yrs) TTM Call 1M 0.42 3M 1.74 6M

10.21

Tenor

Bid ($/N)

10.46

Spot 7D 14D Offer Yield 1M (%) 2M 3M 13.08 6M 13.58 1Y

177.00 172.27 172.55 173.18 Bid Price 174.40 175.62 96.22 179.48 99.00 187.30

Rate (%) (%) Bid Yield 12.08 13.20 13.47 14.00 13.68 14.89

2.43 13.79 13.72 2.68 13.83 13.76 2.78 13.83 13.76 :Benchmarks 3.52 13.79 13.68 * :Amortising 4.60Bond 13.74 13.65 µ :Convertible 4.92Bond 13.72 13.62 AMCON: Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria 7.18 13.55 13.49 FGN: Federal Government of Nigeria 9.31 13.71 13.65 FMBN: Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria 14.02 Finance Corporation 13.38 13.34 IFC: International 14.50 13.34 Management 13.29 LCRM: Local Contractors Receivables 15.00 Aviation Handling 13.29 Company 13.23 NAHCO: Nigerian 15.67 13.48 13.42 O/N: Overnight UPDC: UAC19.66 Property Development 13.25Company 13.20 NOTE:

WAPCO:West Africa Portland Cement Company

Offer ($/N)

Price

177.10 172.51 172.86 173.82 Offer Price 175.54 177.29 96.37 183.00 99.15 195.53

102.60 102.75 91.28 91.43 89.93 90.08 91.88 NA :Not91.58 Applicable # :Floating 107.50Rate Bond 107.80 ***: Deferred 76.50 coupon bonds 76.80 112.70 113.00 †: Bond rating expired 102.50 102.80 N/A :Not Available 110.13 110.43 {r} :Issuer in receivership 94.63 94.93 69.19 69.49 NGC: Nigeria-German Company UBA: United Bank for Africa 77.50 77.80 92.35 92.65

4,487.19

#

Rating/Agency

OBB

Issue Date

0.00 FMB 24-MAY-2015 17.25 FMB II 03-APR-2017 0.00/16.00 LCRM 09-DEC-2016 Porfolio Market Total Outstanding Value(Bn) Volume(Bn) 0.00/16.50 LCRM II 20-APR-2017 0.00/16.50 LCRM III 06-JUL-2017 1,022.82 1,016.68

1,053.85 959.49 3,036.16 12.50 KADUNA 31-AUG-2015 13.00 EBONYI 30-SEP-2015 14.00 BENUE 30-JUN-2016 15.50 IMO 30-JUN-2016 10.00 LAGOS 19-APR-2017 13.75 BAYELSA 30-JUN-2017 14.00 EDO 31-DEC-2017 14.00 DELTA 30-SEP-2018

951.30 1,093.25 3,061.23

Coupon (%)

Outstanding Value (N'bn)

FMDQ FGN BOND INDEX

Maturity Date

Avg. Life/TTM (Yrs)

24-May-10 03-Apr-12 Weighting by 09-Dec-11 Outstanding Vol 20-Apr-12 06-Jul-12 33.21

0.00 17.25 Weighting

by Mkt 0.00/16.00 Value 0.00/16.50 0.00/16.50 33.69

24.56 3.00 112.22 Bucket Weighting 116.70 66.49 0.33

24-May-15 03-Apr-17 % Exposure_ 09-Dec-16 Mod_Duration 20-Apr-17 06-Jul-17 14.56

0.50 1.24 2.05 Implied Yield 2.41 2.62 13.74

31.08 35.71 100.00

34.71 31.60 100.00

0.36 313.15

30.32 55.12 100.00

13.61 13.52 13.58

31-Aug-10 30-Sep-10 30-Jun-11 30-Jun-09 19-Apr-10 30-Jun-10 30-Dec-10 30-Sep-11 04-Oct-11

12.50 13.00 14.00 15.50 10.00 13.75 14.00 14.00 14.00

322.97 0.31

1.00 8.50 4.18 6.27 7.37 57.00 29.92 25.00 34.14 9.00

31-Aug-15 30-Sep-15 30-Jun-16 30-Jun-16 19-Apr-17 30-Jun-17 31-Dec-17 30-Sep-18 04-Oct-18

0.78 0.62 0.90 0.91 2.41 1.46 3.11 2.28 3.87

#

Risk Premium (%) 2.63 2.27 Implied 2.00 Portfolio 1.00Price 1.00 117.4050

130.2630 99.0569 114.8481 4.44 3.23 4.46 3.48 5.59 1.00 1.79 1.80 1.00

Valuation Yield (%)

Indicative Price

16.20 15.37 15.78 INDEX 14.83 14.83 1,115.11

92.39 102.26 YTD99.62 Return (%) 96.92 94.00 11.5109

1,103.02 1,158.15 1,096.70

10.3017 15.8150 9.6699

17.59 16.63 17.41 16.43 19.42 14.36 15.60 15.61 14.78

96.40 98.60 97.21 99.53 82.50 99.38 96.12 97.23 97.71

42

Business | Interview

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2014 NEW TELEGRAPH

Foreigners feasting on Nigeria’s Dr. Rotimi Oladele is the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, Megavons (West Africa) Limited, a leading printing firm in Nigeria. Oladele, who played active role in efforts to revive moribund three paper mills, lamented how Indians, Chinese and Lebanese, among other foreigners, are feasting on the sector. The printing technology expert, who is also the president of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR), reveals that the sector, if revived, is a good platform for employment generation, conservation of foreign exchange, among others. He spoke with DELE ALAO. What is your assessment of the country’s printing industry?

Nigerian’s printing industry is a very big industry. It has a lot of opportunities in terms of commerce and employment. Technology and expertise wise, Nigeria is a leading country in Africa when it comes to printing. Apart from South Africa, Nigeria can boast of a very good mileage of leadership in printing, business and career. We have big companies, we have medium, we have small companies. We have small enterprise and micro enterprises in printing and publishing in Nigeria.

For printing, we have various types because it is a very wide area of endeavour. We have the web offset, which is a mass production kind of printing, we also have the sheet spread; the gravure and the textile printing. We also have the large format which is taking a lot of speed to overtake its other siblings. We know this is an inkjet printing system.

Development in printing is a continum.

In the last 20 years, we could be talking of lithographers, among others, but technology has swept all these away.

We are now talking of Direct Imaging, which has eliminated a lot of processes and also compelling non-printers to do it yourself system. Direct Imaging system is eroding employment as well as business for printers because a lot of in-house magazines and journals or bulletins can be produced by the PR person or the advert person on his own desk with modern technology. It is quite an interesting industry. But, it remains a very big one because administration, information and education as well as commerce rely seriously on printing.

And how do you see the practice?

The practice of printing in Nigeria is getting better because professionalism is taking shape. There is Chartered Institute of Professional Printers (CIPON) which regulates printing. And there are couples of institutions which also train printers in academic arena

Oladele

like Yaba College of Technology, Kano State Polytechnic, Kaduna Polytechnic and a host of others. Even, there are technical colleges that teach printing technology. Though the problem most of them have is right equipment, at least, we are scratching it on the surface when it comes to capacity building for personnel. But we can do better, especially in this era of unemployment and the need for entrepreneurship education. So, more schools should do printing. Governments and proprietors should equip schools for printing because printing knowledge is needed even beyond the press. Information and Communications Technology (ICT) is an offshoot of printing. And printing knowledge will enhance the use of ICT.

pertise and experience because it is a business of creativity; it is a business of literacy. You must be able to read and write, you must be able to do at least preliminary editing, you must be able to also design if you want to work as one man business or a smallscale owner manager. And if you are to invest and employ too, it will not be a bad idea to have rudimentary knowledge of printing. Printing has so many branches, so many specialisations. So, it is a very good industry and sector for job creation. It is quite wide because you can talk of book printing, calendar, diary, product leaflets, packaging for products and lots. You can print on any surface paper, card, wood, glass, so many things.

problem. If paper is not available locally, ink is not available locally, film is not available locally, plates are not available locally, machines not available locally, it is a huge challenge. It is an import dependent business. And that is why the capital layout is very high. It is unfortunate that India and Nigeria were growing at par, but India has gone beyond that level. First of all, they were having challenge of paper, they were printing on newsprint, any book at all. But their policy of looking inward - Buy Indian books for Indian education - helped them. They are even now exporting printing machines.

They have gone beyond consumption level and they have gotten to invention level. So, we have not moved at all.

In terms of business, how do you see printing in the country?

Printing is a very lucrative business, but it calls for expertise. It requires ex-

But, do you think the country has fully harnessed the potential in this sector?

No. Not at all. Despite the size of that industry and the number of people working in that industry, the very tough challenges the industry have include lack of raw materials. Printing in Nigeria is 100 per cent import dependent. Everything is imported.

Even the commonest material which is paper, we don’t have because Oku Iboku Paper Mill, Akwa Ibom, is not working, Iwopin, Ogun State, is not working. Jebba, Kwara State… that has been resuscitated and is working below the capacity of 50 per cent. It is about 35 per cent capacity and that is far from the requirement of paper demand of Nigeria. And secondly, the printing and publishing sector is under-banked. The banking sector does not understand the intricacies of that business. It is underfunded and it is a seasonal business. Then the local contents in terms of human capital handling importation of paper is almost zero because you find paper importers to be foreigners – Indians, Lebanese, Chinese and so on. So, this is a huge

At what point do you think things went wrong with all the three paper companies you talked about?

It is over 20 years. So, it is a long time. Political factor also affected it because the factories were to be seen as infrastructures not as commercial ventures. And government that established them and were managing them never knew that it supposed not to be a government business. Paper is a causative material to a total industry.

Paper is a causative material and without it, you cannot print anything. And there are different papers. Oku Iboku is talking about newsprint and then you are talking about factories that will employ millions and also will create a lot of commerce in terms of buying and selling, warehousing, haulage, maintenance, ancillary services, among others. So, government should have allowed the private sector to be in that business. By now, we would have replicated it all over because we have paper to be made from different sources. Apart from pulps, bamboos are there which Chinese have tried to use. Then recycling is there, which is

If paper is not available locally, ink is not available locally, film is not available locally, plates are not available locally, machines not available locally, it is a huge challenge

Business | Interview

NEW TELEGRAPH MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2014

43

printing sector â&#x20AC;&#x201C;MD, Megavons defend printing, there is no local contents in terms of materials, there is no local patronage in terms of finished products. So, it is a problem.

BIODATA Previous position: Managing Director/CEO, African Newspapers of Nigeria Plc, publishers of the Nigerian Tribune newspaper, Ibadan.

Qualifications: Ph.D in Business Administration with specialty in Entrepreneurship from Babcock University, Nigeria; M.Sc in Corporate Governance from Leeds Metropolitan University, UK; M.Sc. Marketing (specialising in Public Relations) from University of Nigeria; MBA in Marketing & Management from Lagos State University, Nigeria; and Diploma in Marketing of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, UK; National Certificate of Education.

Work Experience: Human resources and administration manager, Senior Sales Representative, Longman Publishers Nigeria Plc.

Assistant General Manager, Marketing & Business Development, UI Ventures Limited, University of Ibadan.

Executive Secretary, Institute of Entrepreneurs.

Managing Director/CEO Bayorns Press Incorporation, Cameroon.

Controller, Marketing & Corporate Affairs for Academy Press Plc

Part Time Lecturer, University of Lagos, since 1997.

Years of Experience: Above 29 years.

very popular in Russia.

Has there not been any effort on the part of stakeholders like you to present your case to government on how to fully revive the paper mills?

In fact, a lot of efforts have been made, particularly by the Newspapers Proprietors Association of Nigeria (NPAN). I remember very well in both 90s and early 2000. Between 1990 and year 2002, I was actively involved because as an executive in a newspaper then, up to the time I was the Managing Director of Nigerian Tribune newspapers, we were trying to work hard not only on joint procurement which was immediate solution to their own problem, but in ensuring that an influence was put on government to sell to stakeholders. Those mills could have been sold to stakeholders like the Newspapers Proprietors Association of Nigeria, Guild of Editors, Nigerian Publishers Association, which is a book industry association and of course the chartered institute of professional printers and the likes, like it is done in South Africa. The stakeholders came together to establish a school, they came together to establish a mill. But in Nigeria, we donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t collaborate in that form. So, everybody will be scratching it on the face instead of concerted efforts, building a synergy and then bailing out a particular causative sector like the paper sector.

Do you think government is making efforts, especially now, to revive the Oku Iboku and Iwopin paper mills?

I have not seen anything on Oku Iboku and Iwopin, but I am aware that there is a skeletal resuscitation at Jebba which is not adequate for anything, because Jebba is about brown paper, Oku Iboku is about newsprints, Iwopin is about bond paper. But the volume we use in Nigeria is very high due to our

Any effort on the part of this present administration on the sector as in other sectors?

There are plans. There has been dialogue, discussions and so on. But we have not gotten to concrete terms like we have done and reached in agriculture, which everybody is saying. So, we need that sector not to be neglected in the train of development. My appeal to government is to allow the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment, Ministry of Information and the Ministry of Education to synergise to develop the paper mills, to actually privatise them and sell them off and also allow foreign direct investment into that sector or look at alternative sources of paper apart from the pulp, the looking at recycling process, look at bamboo, at any other material that is useful for paper making.

Oladele

population and it is understandable, due to the population of our students in various institutions. Even with ICT, e-marking, e-government, e-whatever, paper consumption in Nigeria is still very high. Take for example the coming elections, it will involve a lot of paper works. The number of newspapers we have, the magazines we have, the schools we have, the books we have, the ministries we have because of administration, education, security, commerce, all these will depend on printing.

And what do you think is the worth of the printing sector in Nigeria?

We cannot be thinking anything less than $400 million. And that cannot capture the entire sector. The World Bank project that was done as far back as about 14 years ago was talking about $500 million. If 10 persons are standing at the bus stop and you asked them to bring out what is inside their pockets, 80 per cent of what is in their pocket will likely be papers, apart from possibly the handkerchief and keys. That shows you the volume. If you ask women to offload their bags, the same thing you will see. So, we live with paper a lot. So, our volume is still very high.

You said printing in Nigeria is 100 per cent import dependent? that means the country will be losing a lot of revenue?

Our foreign exchange drainage in printing seems to be the highest compared with any other sector because everything is imported.

How about government patronage of the sector?

Even with the ban on government ministries doing calendars and diaries, they still have heavy dominance on papers for files. Every ministry has a retinue of duplicating machines, photocopy machines, binding machines,

If we are to make education and information really succeed and thrive, the law should ban finished products of printing like books and so on and also remove tariff and all sorts of taxes on papers

rim of papers on a daily basis.

I mean government patronising local printers?

Yes, they do. But when it comes to heavy volume, publishing companies like book publishers, do look out. And the reason is not unrelated to the challenge of the industry because consumables are imported. So, rather than giving the printers the jobs and printers importing the consumables, they will go abroad and do the printing and then bring in the books.

Unfortunately, the law is lopsided.

If we are to make education and information really succeed and thrive, the law should ban finished products of printing like books and so on and also remove tariff and all sorts of taxes on papers. But we have two opposites; there is tax on paper and taxes removed from finished products like books, whereas it should be other way round. So, the policy is not working for printing. Whereas, policy should

What is your assessment of the countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s business environment as a long standing entrepreneur and the high employment rate among the youths?

The Nigerian business environment is not a hopeless environment. When you come to resources, Nigeria is one of the best business environment in the world. Because this is where you can only complain of abundance, not inadequacy. Take good land, arable land, plain land, rich soil, solid minerals, petroleum, agricultural opportunity, tourism opportunity, everything here is in abundance. There are enough resources to run any business in Nigeria. But, there are areas where we need to look at. Security is key, political leadership must be stable. And of course, the mind-set of Nigerians in terms of being economic patriots is very key rather than being economic saboteurs. Now, if these are done and then we look at infrastructures, roads, energy, water, business can run very perfectly.

On unemployment rate among the youths, we must apply immediate solution and long term solution.

For immediate solution, we need to allow more government institutions and moribund institutions to be privatised and possibly open up finance with moratorium to open wide doors for employment creation. A good example is the paper industry we are talking about. If government should sell out those mills and facilitate huge loan which will be very low interest for 36 months for whosoever procures that place, the two mills will create not less than 10,000 jobs in three years. Both derivative jobs and direct jobs.

Then aside from this, we need to rework our curriculum in the schools.

The secondary schools we have today should be changed. We should be running the whole system of comprehensive secondary schools where a number of skills will be offered at secondary level.

What of access to fund?

Access to fund is getting better in that last three years. The fiscal policy and the regulatory role of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Nigerian Deposits Insurance Corporation (NDIC) as well as the effective leadership of some ministers particularly have already geared up Nigeria financial stand but it could be better.

44

Business | Capital Market

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2014 NEW TELEGRAPH Daily Summary as of 21/11/2014 Printed 21/11/2014 14:52:42.042

Daily Summary as of 21/11/2014

Printed 21/11/2014 14:52:42.042

The Nigerian Stock Market Exchange as at November 21, 2014 Daily Summary (Equities)

Daily Summary (Bonds)

Activity Summary on Board DEBT Federal

Bond Name 16.00% FGN JUN 2019 16.39% FGN JAN 2022 Federal Totals

Activity Summary on Board EQTY Symbol FG9B2019S3 FG9B2022S1

DEBT Board Totals

No. of Deals 1 1 2

Current Price 108.60 114.00

2

Bond Activity Totals

HEALTHCARE Pharmaceuticals NIGERIA-GERMAN CHEMICALS PLC. Pharmaceuticals Totals

Quantity Traded 100 100 200

Value Traded 115,113.76 119,389.30 234,503.06

234,503.06

HEALTHCARE Totals

200

234,503.06

ICT Computer Based Systems COURTEVILLE BUSINESS SOLUTIONS PLC Computer Based Systems Totals

200

2

Daily Summary (Equities) Activity Summary on Board EQTY AGRICULTURE Crop Production FTN COCOA PROCESSORS PLC OIL PALM PLC. Daily SummaryOKOMU as of 21/11/2014 PRESCO PLC Printed 21/11/2014 14:52:42.042 Crop Production Totals Livestock/Animal Specialties LIVESTOCK FEEDS PLC. Livestock/Animal Specialties Totals

Symbol FTNCOCOA OKOMUOIL PRESCO Symbol DailyLIVESTOCK Summary

No. of Deals 2 32 11 45

Current Price 0.50 26.80 26.13

Quantity Traded 105,500 267,397 50,850 423,747

Value Traded 52,750.00 7,069,638.96 1,264,120.91 8,386,509.87

No. of Deals 36 (Equities) 36

Current Price 2.00

Quantity Traded 1,132,023 1,132,023

Value Traded 2,307,252.03 2,307,252.03

1,555,770

10,693,761.90

Activity SummaryTotals on Board EQTY AGRICULTURE CONGLOMERATES Diversified Industries A.G. NIGERIA PLC. © Published by TheLEVENTIS Nigerian Stock Exchange CHELLARAMS PLC. TRANSNATIONAL CORPORATION OF NIGERIA PLC U A C N PLC. Diversified Industries Totals

81

Symbol AGLEVENT CHELLARAM TRANSCORP UACN

No. of Deals 4 1 244 50 299

CONGLOMERATES Totals CONSTRUCTION/REAL ESTATE Building Structure/Completion/Other COSTAIN (W A) PLC. G CAPPA PLC Building Structure/Completion/Other Totals Infrastructure/Heavy Daily Summary as of 21/11/2014 Construction JULIUS BERGER NIG. PLC. Printed 21/11/2014 14:52:42.042 Infrastructure/Heavy Construction Totals Real Estate Development UACN PROPERTY DEVELOPMENT CO. LIMITED Real Estate Development Totals

299

Quantity Traded 13,698Page 130 16,275,889 370,169 16,659,886 16,659,886

75,492,520.01

No. of Deals 11 1 12

Current Price 0.84 14.46

Quantity Traded 195,394 1 195,395

Value Traded 162,565.85 13.74 162,579.59

Symbol JBERGER

No. of Deals 30 30

Current Price 60.66

Quantity Traded 113,299 113,299

Value Traded 6,530,599.55 6,530,599.55

No. of Deals 18 (Equities) 18

Current Price 10.52

Quantity Traded 480,670 480,670

Value Traded 5,057,778.02 5,057,778.02

789,364

11,750,957.16

Symbol UAC-PROP Daily Summary

60

Value Traded 23,085.00 2 of 14 23,085.00

Beverages--Brewers/Distillers CHAMPION BREW. PLC. GUINNESS NIG PLC INTERNATIONAL BREWERIES PLC. NIGERIAN BREW. PLC. PREMIER BREWERIES PLC Beverages--Brewers/Distillers Totals

Symbol CHAMPION GUINNESS INTBREW NB PREMBREW

No. of Deals 5 27 11 124 1 168

Current Price 9.85 160.00 29.00 157.51 3.98

Quantity Traded 20,034 37,704 121,250 471,522 8,232 658,742

Value Traded 188,680.24 5,875,223.60 3,341,337.50 75,042,743.90 31,199.28 84,479,184.52

Beverages--Non-Alcoholic 7-UP BOTTLING COMP. PLC. Beverages--Non-Alcoholic Totals

Symbol 7UP

No. of Deals 21 21

Current Price 149.00

Quantity Traded 51,180 51,180

Value Traded 7,285,327.50 7,285,327.50

No. of Deals 4 47 96 17 31 Daily Summary (Equities) 195

Current Price 6.55 5.82 41.51 3.28 7.20

Quantity Traded 14,868 1,590,603 1,362,598 145,292 777,877 3,891,238

Value Traded 92,627.64 9,444,064.93 57,489,133.97 459,344.19 5,643,362.48 73,128,533.21

Food Products Totals

Food Products--Diversified CADBURY NIGERIA PLC.

Current Price 855.00

Page Quantity Traded 44,774 570,596

3Value Traded of 14 38,967,636.41 61,135,313.39

Household Durables VITAFOAM NIG PLC. VONO PRODUCTS PLC. Household Durables Totals

Symbol VITAFOAM VONO

No. of Deals 22 7 29

Current Price 3.78 1.00

Quantity Traded 743,281 21,097 764,378

Value Traded 2,656,572.24 22,144.10 2,678,716.34

Personal/Household Products P Z CUSSONS NIGERIA PLC. UNILEVER NIGERIA PLC. Personal/Household Products Totals

Symbol PZ UNILEVER

No. of Deals 45 42 87

Current Price 22.20 33.00

Quantity Traded 926,326 306,379 1,232,705

Value Traded 20,515,873.72 10,012,697.58 30,528,571.30

7,215,009

259,258,731.26

DIAMOND BANK PLC ECOBANK TRANSNATIONAL INCORPORATED FIDELITY BANK PLC GUARANTY TRUST BANK PLC. SKYEas BANK PLC Daily Summary of 21/11/2014 STERLING BANK PLC. Printed 21/11/2014 14:52:42.042 Activity Summary Board EQTY UNITED BANKon FOR AFRICA PLC

FINANCIAL SERVICES Published by The Nigerian Stock Exchange © Banking UNION BANK NIG.PLC. UNITY BANK PLC

Activity Summary on Board EQTY FINANCIAL SERVICES Banking WEMA BANK PLC. ZENITH INTERNATIONAL BANK PLC Banking Totals

Insurance Carriers, Brokers and Services AIICO INSURANCE PLC. CONTINENTAL REINSURANCE PLC EQUITY ASSURANCE PLC. MANSARD INSURANCE PLC MUTUAL BENEFITS ASSURANCE PLC. N.E.M INSURANCE CO (NIG) PLC. NIGER INSURANCE CO. PLC. STANDARD TRUST ASSURANCE PLC STANDARD ALLIANCE INSURANCE PLC. WAPIC INSURANCE PLC Insurance Carriers, Brokers and Services Totals Daily Summary as of 21/11/2014 Printed 21/11/2014 14:52:42.042 Micro-Finance Banks FORTIS MICROFINANCE BANK PLC Published by The Nigerian Stock Exchange © PLC NPF MICROFINANCE BANK Micro-Finance Banks Totals Mortgage Carriers, Brokers and Services UNION HOMES SAVINGS AND LOANS PLC.

Activity Summary on Board EQTY

FINANCIAL SERVICES Published by The Nigerian Stock Exchange © Mortgage Carriers, Brokers and Services

Mortgage Carriers, Brokers and Services Totals

Other Financial Institutions AFRICA PRUDENTIAL REGISTRARS PLC CUSTODIAN AND ALLIED PLC FBN HOLDINGS PLC FCMB GROUP PLC. ROYAL EXCHANGE PLC. STANBIC IBTC HOLDINGS PLC UBA CAPITAL PLC Other Financial Institutions Totals

No. of Deals 97 90 54 51 204 (Equities) 82 106 215

Current Price 7.83 5.50 17.05 1.70 23.40 2.47 2.30 4.37

Quantity Traded 5,757,122 9,784,690 4,019,611 4,051,662 5,517,529 9,040,760 73,270,506 53,356,029

No. of Deals 49 7

Current Price 8.35 0.50

Quantity Traded 745,348 10,009,000

Symbol

Daily UBN Summary (Equities) UNITYBNK

Pharmaceuticals EVANS MEDICAL PLC. FIDSON HEALTHCARE PLC GLAXO SMITHKLINE CONSUMER NIG. PLC. MAY & BAKER NIGERIA PLC. NEIMETH INTERNATIONAL PHARMACEUTICALS PLC Published by The Nigerian Stock Exchange ©

of

Value Traded 6,034,620.43 5,004,500.00

14

Quantity Traded 12,926,614 14,895,438 203,374,309

Value Traded 11,801,979.86 311,771,429.96 1,059,594,634.46

Symbol AIICO CONTINSURE EQUITYASUR MANSARD MBENEFIT NEM NIGERINS STACO STDINSURE WAPIC

No. of Deals 25 4 3 3 1 25 4 1 5 46 117

Current Price 0.85 0.89 0.50 2.86 0.50 0.61 0.50 0.50 0.50 0.69

Quantity Traded 75,190,121 127,000 91,375 20,114 980 992,621 123,000 31,680 10,000 3,248,233 79,835,124

Value Traded 67,575,462.42 113,130.00 45,687.50 58,142.00 490.00 605,596.49 61,500.00 15,840.00 5,000.00 2,208,334.52 70,689,182.93

Symbol FORTISMFB NPFMCRFBK

No. of Deals 1 7 8

Current Price 5.42 0.86

Quantity Traded 12,051 Page 444,962

Symbol UNHOMES

No. of Deals 5

Current Price 0.50

Quantity Traded 415,381

Value Traded 207,690.50

Symbol

No. of Deals 5

Current Price

Page Quantity Traded 415,381

6 of 14 Value Traded

Symbol AFRIPRUD CUSTODYINS FBNH FCMB ROYALEX STANBIC UBCAP

No. of Deals 21 20 482 74 2 21 52 672

Current Price 3.00 3.80 9.32 3.25 0.50 28.20 1.61

Daily Summary (Equities)

2,067

No. of Deals 1 1

Current Price 0.50

Quantity Traded 1,000,000 1,000,000

Value Traded 500,000.00 500,000.00

1,061,480

545,360.00

INDUSTRIAL Daily Summary as of GOODS 21/11/2014 Printed 21/11/2014 Building14:52:42.042 Materials Published by The Nigerian Stock Exchange ©

ASHAKA CEM PLC BERGER PAINTS PLC CAP PLC CEMENT CO. OF NORTH.NIG. PLC DANGOTE CEMENT PLC Activity Summary on Board EQTY DN MEYER PLC.

Daily Summary (Equities)

11

Symbol No. of Deals ASHAKACEM 19 BERGER 19 CAP 10 Daily Summary (Equities) CCNN 13 DANGCEM 126 DNMEYER 2

Value Traded 500,631.95 8,806,442.63 441,541,446.17 59,720,203.54 1,211.25 3,616,242.51 717,161.77 514,903,339.82

353,772,734

1,645,847,941.83

Symbol MORISON

No. of Deals 3 3

Current Price 1.82

Quantity Traded 12,500 12,500

Value Traded 21,625.00 21,625.00

Symbol EVANSMED FIDSON GLAXOSMITH MAYBAKER NEIMETH

No. of Deals 1 6 4 8 13

Current Price 2.20 3.40 52.00 1.43 0.92

Quantity Traded 2,000 123,920 2,500 180,300 1,174,903

Value Traded 4,180.00 429,005.00 128,950.00 257,868.00 1,079,955.42

Current Price 22.89 8.70 36.00 10.80 189.00 0.87

Quantity TradedPage 404,540 242,566 105,374 297,080 1,051,252 23,468

Value Traded 8 of 14 9,267,318.29 2,084,957.87 3,795,977.70 3,165,727.48 191,742,972.89 19,478.44

Symbol PAINTCOM PORTPAINT WAPCO

No. of Deals 2 2 25 218

Current Price 1.60 5.04 78.00

Quantity Traded 3,200 25,000 110,281 2,262,761

Value Traded 4,906.00 119,750.00 8,497,249.04 218,698,337.71

Electronic and Electrical Products CUTIX PLC. Electronic and Electrical Products Totals

Symbol CUTIX

No. of Deals 7 7

Current Price 1.53

Quantity Traded 249,267 249,267

Value Traded 382,528.51 382,528.51

Packaging/Containers AVON CROWNCAPS & CONTAINERS BETA GLASS CO PLC. Packaging/Containers Totals

Symbol AVONCROWN BETAGLAS

No. of Deals 1 4 5

Current Price 1.59 22.05

Quantity Traded 1,171 42,648 43,819

Value Traded 1,861.89 987,301.20 989,163.09

2,555,847

220,070,029.31 Value Traded 8,528.77 8,528.77

INDUSTRIAL Totals Daily Summary as ofGOODS 21/11/2014 Printed 21/11/2014 14:52:42.042 NATURAL RESOURCES Chemicals B.O.C. GASES PLC. Chemicals Totals

Petroleum and Petroleum Products Distributors BECO PETROLEUM PRODUCT PLC CONOIL PLC ETERNA PLC. FORTE OIL PLC. MOBIL OIL NIG PLC. MRS NIGERIA PLC. Daily Summary asOIL of 21/11/2014 TOTAL14:52:42.042 NIGERIA PLC. Printed 21/11/2014 Petroleum and Petroleum Products Distributors Totals

230 Symbol BOCGAS

No. of Deals 1 1

Current Price 5.48

Quantity Traded 1,637 1,637

No. of Deals 1 1

Current Price 0.50

Quantity Traded 600 600

Daily Summary (Equities) Symbol MULTIVERSE

Page

2

9

of

Value Traded 300.00 300.00

2,237

Page

10

8,828.77 of

Symbol JAPAULOIL

No. of Deals 7 7

Current Price 0.50

Quantity Traded 45,772 45,772

Value Traded 22,886.00 22,886.00

Symbol OANDO

No. of Deals 305 305

Current Price 20.39

Quantity Traded 5,770,935 5,770,935

Value Traded 111,556,843.62 111,556,843.62

Symbol BECOPETRO CONOIL ETERNA FO MOBIL MRS TOTAL

No. of Deals 1 1 15 67 64 4 30 182

Current Price 0.50 49.23 2.99 199.00 148.92 56.00 147.40

Quantity Traded 19,000 1,500 485,158 182,188 288,583 3,500 72,645 1,052,574

Value Traded 9,500.00 70,155.00 1,453,520.42 35,386,780.07 43,044,313.45 186,200.00 10,926,483.54 91,076,952.48

Symbol

No. of Deals 27 27

Current Price 426.01

Quantity Traded 189,333 189,333

Value Traded 80,548,379.29 80,548,379.29

7,058,614

283,205,061.39

SEPLAT Daily Summary (Equities)

521

14

14

Symbol RTBRISCOE

No. of Deals 14 14

Current Price 0.81

Page Quantity Traded 525,372 525,372

Courier/Freight/Delivery RED STAR EXPRESS PLC Courier/Freight/Delivery Totals

Symbol REDSTAREX

No. of Deals 3 3

Current Price 4.20

Quantity Traded 21,583 21,583

Value Traded 86,332.00 86,332.00

Employment Solutions C & I LEASING PLC. Employment Solutions Totals

Symbol CILEASING

No. of Deals 13 13

Current Price 0.50

Quantity Traded 1,300,000 1,300,000

Value Traded 650,000.00 650,000.00

Hospitality TANTALIZERS PLC Hospitality Totals

Symbol TANTALIZER

No. of Deals 1 1

Current Price 0.50

Quantity Traded 1,000 1,000

Value Traded 500.00 500.00

Symbol IKEJAHOTEL TOURIST

No. of Deals 25 1 26

Current Price 3.61 3.51

Quantity Traded 3,771,138 1,000 3,772,138

Value Traded 13,817,360.27 3,340.00 13,820,700.27

Symbol DAARCOMM

No. of Deals 5 5

Current Price 0.50

Quantity Traded 7,080 7,080

Value Traded 3,540.00 3,540.00

Symbol ACADEMY

No. of Deals 1

Current Price 1.00

Quantity Traded 7,000

Value Traded 7,350.00

Printing/Publishing

SERVICES Published

by The Nigerian Stock Exchange © Printing/Publishing LEARN AFRICA PLC STUDIO PRESS (NIG) PLC. Printing/Publishing Totals Road Transportation ASSOCIATED BUS COMPANY PLC Road Transportation Totals Transport-Related Services AIRLINE SERVICES AND LOGISTICS PLC NIGERIAN AVIATION HANDLING COMPANY PLC Transport-Related Services Totals Daily Summary as of 21/11/2014 Printed 21/11/2014 14:52:42.042 Support and Logistics CAVERTON OFFSHORE SUPPORT GRP PLC Support and Logistics Totals

207,690.50

of

Symbol CHAMS

ActivityACADEMY SummaryPRESS on Board PLC.EQTY

453,094.12

7

Value Traded 2,170.00 17,700.00 19,870.00

Media/Entertainment DAAR COMMUNICATIONS PLC Media/Entertainment Totals

Value Traded 63,870.30 of 14 389,223.82

Quantity Traded 168,901 2,320,210 47,981,469 18,645,602 2,375 128,220 444,130 69,690,907

Page

Quantity Traded 500 10,000 10,500

Hotels/Lodging IKEJA HOTEL PLC TOURIST COMPANY OF NIGERIA PLC. Daily Summary as of 21/11/2014 Hotels/Lodging Totals Printed 21/11/2014 14:52:42.042

Current Price 0.92 20.95

457,013

Current Price 4.56 1.86

Activity OIL ANDSummary GAS Totalson Board EQTY

No. of Deals 60 250 1,265

5

No. of Deals 1 5 6

SERVICES Published byAutomobile/Auto The Nigerian Stock Exchange © Part Retailers R T BRISCOE PLC. Automobile/Auto Part Retailers Totals

Value Traded 45,033,554.12 53,834,229.81 68,361,162.68 6,783,785.85 128,394,950.68 22,782,615.16 169,491,142.22 230,300,663.69 4

Symbol CWG TRIPPLEG

Exploration and Production SEPLAT PETROLEUM DEVELOPMENT COMPANY LTD Exploration and Production Totals

Symbol WEMABANK ZENITHBANK

FINANCIAL SERVICES Totals HEALTHCARE Medical Supplies MORISON INDUSTRIES PLC. Medical Supplies Totals

Page

IT Services

Integrated Oil and Gas Services OANDO PLC Integrated Oil and Gas Services Totals

No. of Deals 43 80

Symbol ACCESS DIAMONDBNK ETI FIDELITYBK GUARANTY Daily Summary SKYEBANK STERLNBANK UBA

Value Traded 490.00 490.00

OIL AND GAS Energy Equipment and Services JAPAUL OIL & MARITIME SERVICES PLC Energy Equipment and Services Totals

Symbol NESTLE

FINANCIAL SERVICES

Quantity Traded 980 980

NATURAL RESOURCES NATURAL RESOURCES Totals

Value Traded 22,167,676.98

Daily Summary as of 21/11/2014 Banking Printed 21/11/2014 14:52:42.042 ACCESS BANK PLC.

Current Price 0.50

Published by The Nigerian Stock Exchange ©

Quantity Traded 525,822

582

No. of Deals 3 3

Mining Services MULTIVERSE PLC Mining Services Totals

Current Price 42.09

CONSUMER GOODS Totals

Symbol OMATEK

Activity Summary on Board EQTY

No. of Deals 37

CONSUMER GOODS Food Published by The Products--Diversified Nigerian Stock Exchange © NESTLE NIGERIA PLC. Food Products--Diversified Totals

1,922,248.42

Computers and Peripherals OMATEK VENTURES PLC Computers and Peripherals Totals

Published by The Nigerian Stock Exchange ©

Symbol CADBURY

Activity Summary on Board EQTY

1,496,223

Value Traded 25,000.00 25,000.00

INDUSTRIAL GOODS Building Materials PAINTS AND COATINGS MANUFACTURES PLC PORTLAND PAINTS & PRODUCTS NIGERIA PLC LAFARGE AFRICA PLC. Building Materials Totals

Quantity Traded 46,170 Page 46,170

Value Traded 665.00 1,900,623.42

Quantity Traded 50,000 50,000

ICT Totals Activity Summary on Board EQTY

Current Price 0.50

Symbol DANGFLOUR DANGSUGAR FLOURMILL HONYFLOUR NASCON

36

Quantity Traded 100 1,483,723

Current Price 0.50

Processing Systems CHAMS PLC Processing Systems Totals

No. of Deals 2 2

Current Price 7.00

No. of Deals 1 1

IT Services Totals

Symbol DUNLOP

Food Products DANGOTE FLOUR MILLS PLC Daily Summary as of 21/11/2014 DANGOTE SUGAR REFINERY PLC Printed 21/11/2014 14:52:42.042 FLOUR MILLS NIG. PLC. HONEYWELL FLOUR MILL PLC NATIONAL SALT CO. NIG. PLC

No. of Deals 1 33

Symbol COURTVILLE

Daily Summary as of 21/11/2014 COMPUTER WAREHOUSE GROUP PLC TRIPPLE GEE AND COMPANY PLC. Printed 21/11/2014 14:52:42.042

Value Traded 1 18,185.52 of 14 488.80 59,991,457.77 15,482,387.92 75,492,520.01

Symbol COSTAIN GCAPPA

Activity Summary on Board EQTY CONSTRUCTION/REAL ESTATE Totals CONSUMER GOODS Automobiles/Auto Parts DN TYRE & RUBBER PLC Published Automobiles/Auto

by The Nigerian Stock Exchange Parts Totals ©

Current Price 1.30 3.95 3.88 41.99

Symbol NIG-GERMAN

SERVICES Totals

Daily Summary (Equities)

Page Quantity Traded 153,803 223 161,026

12 of 14 Value Traded 210,652.08 488.37 218,490.45

Current Price 0.58

Quantity Traded 335,750 335,750

Value Traded 195,417.50 195,417.50

No. of Deals 3 32 35

Current Price 1.66 4.69

Quantity Traded 11,700 708,445 720,145

Value Traded 18,486.00 3,280,357.97 3,298,843.97

No. of Deals 3 3

Current Price 3.44

Quantity Traded 15,000 15,000

Value Traded 51,600.00 51,600.00

117

6,859,094

18,758,537.88

4,006

399,026,258

2,527,553,977.93

Symbol LEARNAFRCA STUDPRESS

No. of Deals 6 1 8

Current Price 1.36 2.30

Symbol ABCTRANS

No. of Deals 9 9

Symbol AIRSERVICE NAHCO Symbol CAVERTON

Daily Summary (Equities)

Activity Summary on Board ASeM EQTY Board Totals FINANCIAL SERVICES Mortgage Carriers, Brokers and Services OMOLUABI SAVINGS AND LOANS PLC Mortgage Carriers, Brokers and Services Totals

Symbol OMOSAVBNK

11 of 14 Value Traded 433,113.69 433,113.69

No. of Deals 1 1

FINANCIAL SERVICES Totals Published by The Nigerian Stock Exchange ©

Current Price 0.67

Quantity Traded 54,000 54,000

1

Value Traded 36,180.00 36,180.00

54,000 Page

13

36,180.00 of 14

ASeM Board Totals

1

54,000

36,180.00

Equity Activity Totals

4,007

399,080,258

2,527,590,157.93

Daily Summary (ETP) Exchange Traded Fund

Name LOTUS HALAL EQUITY ETF NEWGOLD EXCHANGE TRADED FUND (ETF) VETIVA GRIFFIN 30 ETF Exchange Traded Fund Totals

Symbol LOTUSHAL15 NEWGOLD VETGRIF30

No. of Deals 2 3 3 8

Current Price 10.38 2,050.00 15.06

Quantity Traded 300,015 1,200 50,100 351,315

Value Traded 3,018,155.70 2,453,424.00 754,503.00 6,226,082.70

ETF Board Totals

8

351,315

6,226,082.70

ETP Activity Totals

8

351,315

6,226,082.70

14

Published by The Nigerian Stock Exchange ©

Page

14

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14

NEW TELEGRAPH MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2014

Photo | News

45

L-R: Chairman, Brand Journalists Association of Nigeria [BJAN], Goddie Ofose; Osun State Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Sunday Akere and Managing Director, The Sun Newspaper and the President, Nigeria Guild of Editors, Mr Femi Adesina, at BJAN’s 2nd Annual Brand and Marketing Conference, entitled ‘Tourism Marketing as catalyst For Economic Development in Osogbo…at the weekend

L-R: Assistant Editor-in-Chief, News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), Mr. Olisa Egbunike; National Coordinator, Independent Shareholders Association of Nigeria, Sir Sunny Nwosu; Obi of Onitsha, Igwe Nnaemeka Achebe and Managing Director, Greenwich Trust Plc, Lagos, Mr Kayode Falowo, during a courtesy visit to the Obi in Onitsha…recently

Vice President, Huawei West Africa, Richard Cao (left); Minister of Communication Technology, Ms. Omobola Johnson and others, at the E-Nigeria Summit 2014 in Abuja…recently.

L-R: All Progressives Congress Lagos State Governorship aspirant, Dr. Leke Pitan; National Conscience Party Lagos State Governorship aspirant, Mr. Kehinde Adeoye and All Progressives Congress Lagos State Governorship aspirant, Mr. Tokunbo Wahab, at the Lagos Open Parliament (LOP) organised by the Coalition Against Corrupt Leaders and People’s Action for Democracy (PAD) in Lagos.

PHOTO: GODWIN IREKHE

L-R: Executive Director, Bank of Industry (BoI), Mr. Waheed Olagunju; Deputy Register, Mrs. Dayo Buluro and President, Nigeria Institute of Public Relations (NIPR), Dr Rotimi Oladele, during the Institute’s recognition award in Abuja…recently.

L-R: General Secretary, Eko Club, Surulere, Lagos, Alhaji Babatunde Adele (left) and receiver of the Distinguished Staff Award, Mr. Sunday Ogede, at the 40th Anniversary of the Club…recently.

L-R: Chairman, Irepodun Local Government of Kwara State, Alhaji Luqman Owolewa; Managing Director, Infrastructure Bank, Abuja, Chief Adekunle Oyinloye and Olomu of Omu-Aran, Oba Charles Ibitoye, during the presentation of a Trophy at the Omu-Aran festival, Kwara State.

L-R: Head, Public Affairs and Communications, Nigerian Bottling Company Limited (NBC), Mr Uzo Odenigbo; Plant Manager, NBC, Kaduna, Mr Clement Adebayo; Director, Water Resources, Kaduna State Ministry of Water Resources, Mr Markus Anga and Seriki of Dawn Quarter, Alhaji Muhammadu Danjuma Musa, at the commissioning of the borehole water project donated by thre NBC in Kaduna.

46

News

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2014 NEW TELEGRAPH

SOUTH-WEST

Mass defection looms in Ondo PDP Tunde Oyesina and Babatope Okeowo

A

t least 50 aspirants into the Senate and the House of Representatives on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Ondo State yesterday said they would defect to other parties if the injustice meted out to them

by Governor Olusegun

21

Mimiko is not addressed.

But the national leadership of the party, at the weekend, said it has launched a peace move to arrest the situation and bring the aggrieved members back into the fold.

Addressing journalists on behalf of the aspirants in Abuja, a legal practitioner, Bola Aidi, said the screening panel had refused to give anyone of them certificate of quali-

The life expectancy of men at age 60 years in Belize in 2010-2015.

Source: Un.org

fication or disqualification after the exercise.

He, however, added that to their greatest surprise, Mimiko went ahead to present the list of his candidates to the national secretariat, having excluded all of them that went for the screening exercise.

But worried by the crisis rocking the party in the state, which has its roots in the integration of

£1.6m

the old and new members, the party’s leadership said it has launched a peace initiative to bring the major gladiators together in the interest of the party.

Meanwhile, Aidi, who is aspiring to represent Akoko North East/West in the House of Representatives, said all the excluded aspirants will be at the Wadata House headquarters of the party in Abuja this morning

48%

The average yearly salary of English Premier The percentage of NCD deaths caused by League players in 2012-2013 season. cardiovascular diseases in 2008.

Source: Soccernet.com Source: Who.int

to protest their exclusion.

“This is to intimate the nation and the PDP leadership of the calamity that is looming in the party in Ondo State if Governor Mimiko is allowed to continue to run the party as he is running Ondo State currently.

“I am aware that over 40 aspirants are in the race to the House of Representatives in the state

567m

The number of fixed-telephone subscriptions of Asia & Pacific region in 2008.

Source: Itu.int

while we have at least 10 people vying for the three senatorial slots.

“The PDP national leadership set up a screening panel to screen aspirants. Before then, there was a panel that was sent to screen aspirants into the House of Assembly and that panel came, but was hijacked by Mimiko and ended up not screening people, which led to fracas in the state.

Kekemeke alleges victimisation of House members Babatope Okeowo Akure

T

L-R: Wife of Lagos State Governor, Mrs. Abimbola Fashola; Oyo State Governor, Abiola Ajimobi and Secretary to the Oyo State Government, Mr. Olalekan Ali, at the grand finale of Ibadan Week, organised by the Central Council of Ibadan Indigenes (CCII), in Ibadan…at the weekend

‘Nobody should play politics with insurgency’ Adesina Wahab Ado-Ekiti

T

he leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the SouthWest has charged Nigerians to see the fight against insurgency in some parts of the country as an evil they must collectively resolve to fight and put to an end.

The party is also of the view that political considerations and affiliation must not be allowed to hinder the Federal Government’s resolve to tackle the menace.

This was just as the party called for support for President Goodluck Jonathan, even while appealing to the All Progressives Congress (APC) members of the Ekiti State House of Assembly

to give peace a chance.

The party said this in a statement signed by its Zonal Public Relations Officer, Mr. Dare Omotosho, in Ado-Ekiti after its meeting in Ibadan, Oyo State.

“The issue of insurgency in the north is being holistically looked into and we earnestly wish Nigerians would desist from playing politics with our national security and join hands with the Federal Government to bring about peace and security in the country,” the PDP said.

On the declaration by President Jonathan to seek another term in office, the party said Nigerians must “see beyond the media propaganda against President Goodluck Jonathan” and support him for a second term of office.

The PDP also noted said the recent declaration of interest by Jonathan was a good omen for the country and that “we the members of the PDP in the zone are happy that the President has heeded the call of millions of Nigerians for his continued steering of the ship of our beloved country.”

On the crisis rocking Ekiti State House of Assembly, the party chided APC members of the Assembly for “attempts to cause crisis by standing in the way of a popularly elected governor.”

Omotosho, who is from Ekiti State said: “The Assembly members were voted in from their constituencies, but they have not even come home to discuss with their constituents.”

he All Progressives Congress (APC) in Ondo State, at the weekend, alleged victimisation of its members in the State House of Assembly over their defection from the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

Also, the party accused the Assembly of political intolerance as APC members among them were allegedly treated like outcasts both at plenary and parliamentary sittings.

Chairman of the party, Isaac Kekemeke, who disclosed this, said the party is ready to drag the Assembly to court over alleged victimisation of its two members in the House, Hon. Gbenga Edema and Hon. Fola Olasehinde-Vincent.

The two lawmakers, who are representing Ilaje 11 and Ose constituencies respectively, defected from the Labour Party (LP) to the APC shortly after Governor Olusegun Mimiko joined the PDP.

APC calls for probe into Ibadan violence he All Progressives the state, Wale Shadare. evidences at its disposal Congress (APC) in T The party spoke pointed to a gang-up by Oyo State has called for against the backdrop of some politicians, currenta public enquiry into the violence that occurred in Ibadan on the last lap of its meet-the-people tour of the 33 local governments of the state, where a policeman was killed and some others injured.

This was contained in a release issued by the APC Director of Publicity in

an earlier statement from it, which accused opposition parties of masterminding the violence in order to invalidate the government’s claim to have brought peace and security to the state in the last three-and-a-halfyears of being in office.

The party said all

ly at large, to embarrass the APC-led government and destroy the years of peace in the state.

“We still insist that the people behind that violence were carrying out a high-level assignment which has to do with the 2015 elections,” Shadare said.

Group flays police invasion of National Assembly Babatope Okeowo Akure

A

head of General Muhammadu Buhari’s visit to Ondo State today as part of his meet the delegates tour, his campaign organisation yesterday condemned the crisis that rocked the National Assembly over the invasion of the complex by the police.

The group described the action as crass executive lawlessness, an open invitation to anarchy and democratic sacrilege.

Coordinator of the group in the state, Bola Ilori, who was addressing reporters after the weekly delegates’ meeting in Akure, lamented that the PDP government is desecrating all democratic in-

stitutions in the country.

He said: “PDP has definitely set out on a mission to oppress, repress and humiliate the legislators and the judiciary in Nigeria. Yesterday, it was the humiliation of Ekiti Speaker; today it’s about tear-gassing National Assembly members. This is crass executive lawlessness and an open invitation to anarchy,” Ilori said.

NEW TELEGRAPH MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2014

Okafor: APC sure of Imo

PDP screens South-East guber aspirants

Steve Uzoechi

Uwakwe Abugu

I

A

OWERRI

mmediate past Commissioner for Finance in Imo State, Deacon Chike Okafor, has declared that the All Progressives Congress (APC), would retain power in Imo after the 2015 elections and would also form the Federal Government if a fair and credible election is conducted in 2015.

Okafor stated this at the 2014 Imo State Correspondents Chapel Forum of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) which had as its theme “destination 2015 developing positive Democratic culture for good governance”.

He remarked that administrative ineptitude, gross insensitivity or apparent helplessness at the plight of the governed has become the hallmark of the PDP controlled federal government, stressing that Nigerians cannot be taken for a ride in 2015.

He described as alarming, the dwindling security of lives and property in the country which he said should have been the priority of any government.

“The PDP controlled federal government has brazenly failed to meet the worthy yearnings and aspirations of the electorate, with poverty, unemployment, illiteracy and insurgency taking the centre stage and this is at variance with the expectations of the people. Of course there are excuses to justify these shortcomings but again, they were elected to deliver results not excuses,” Okafor said.

Enugu

s the People’s Democratic Party( PDP), commenced the screening exercise of its governorship aspirants in the four states of the South- East zone of the country in Enugu at the weekend, Imo state topped the list of aspirants with 18 out of the total 38 aspirants that took part in the exercise in the zone.

But as the exercise got underway, Senator Chris Anyanwu, who spoke to

1%

newsmen shortly after she was screened by the panel warned that if the party does not resolve the crisis trailing the controversial ward congress elections in the state and should it not conduct transparent primary election, it stands the risk of losing the state in next year’s elections, like it happened in 2011.

Aspirants converged on the PDP Zonal office in Enugu from Abia, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo states with their presence and their supporters creating a rowdy at-

The annual population growth rate of Hong Kong, China in 2010-2015.

Source: Un.org

OWERRI

C

hairman of Imo Stakeholders’ Forum and former State Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Chief Elvis Agukwe, has called for the immediate arrest of governorship aspirants who allegedly conspired to forge the signature of Barr. Ken Njemanze in a petition to the national leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party.

Members of Coalition of Owerri Zone Governorship Aspirants of PDP in Imo State had on November, 17, 20,14 petitioned the National Chairman of PDP, Alhaji Adamu Muazu claiming that there was no ward congress in the

mosphere for the greater part of the day as the exercise lasted into the wee-hours of Saturday.

Some of the major contenders from Imo state are the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Emeka Ihedioha, Senator Ifeanyi Ararume, ex- governor of the state, Chief Ikedi Ohakim, and Chief Martin Agbaso, who recently defected from the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA),to the PDP, while the only female aspirant among them was Senator Chris Anyanwu.

N115.9m

Aspirants from Enugu included the PDP consensus candidate in the state, and member of the House of representatives, Hon. Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, Senator Ayogu Eze, Speaker of the state House of Assembly, Eugene Odoh, Anayo Onwuegbu, Chinedu Onuh, For Ebonyi State, were the immediate past Minister of Health, Prof.

Onyebuchi Chukwu, and the incumbent Deputy Governor, Dave Umahi.

Speaking on the need for transparency, in view of what happened during

£30,685

The IGR realized from direct assessment The average weekly salary of English Premier sources in Taraba State in 2010.

League players in 2012-2013 season.

Source: National Bureau of Statistics Source: Soccernet.com

the ward congresses in Imo stage, Anyanwu, said, “I plead with my party to do everything possible to see that we have a transparent primary election, the life of and success of the PDP in my state depends on that. Imo state has seen a lot of stormy weather, and we lost the governorship position last time, in 2011 and we cannot fail again, our people would depend on this transparency and I plead with the party leadership to do everything possible to see that this thing works for us this time around.’’

7.17%

The percentage of individuals using the internet in Bhutan in 2009.

Source: Itu.int

L-R: National President, Umuahia Premier Club, Mr. Sunny. Osuagwu; Chairman, Planning Committee, Mr. Nathaniel Emezue; Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Education, Dr. MacJohn Nwabiala and Chairman of the club, Abuja chapter, Sir. Chuck Nwaononiwu, during the club’s chairman’s ball and the association’s gala night in Abuja…at the weekend.

PHOTO: ELIJAH OLALUYI

Alleged forgery: Agukwe wants Anyanwu, Ahamba arrested Steve Uzoechi

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SOUTH-EAST

state on November 1. The signature of Njemanze was inserted among 11 others. But Njemanze, a former Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice in the state denied being a signatory to the petition and urged the Police to commence investigation into the matter.

Agukwe told newsmen in Owerri at the weekend that he aligned himself with the position of Njemanze, saying that all those involved in the forgery should be arrested and prosecuted. Those who signed the said petition and whom Agukwe want quizzed are Chief Mike Ahamba, Senator Chris Anyanwu, Hon Bethel Amadi, Senator Bright Nwanne, Prof Jude

Njoku, Lady Clara Njoku, Mr. Charles Onyeagbako, Dr Charles Amanze, Chief Charles Onuoha and Barr.

Humphrey Anumudu.

Agukwe described as despicable and desperate, the resort to alleged forgery by the governorship aspirants, in a bid to ‘destabilize the PDP because they failed to foist their depleting supporters as delegates.

He threatened to institute a case in court, if the Police failed to act on the petition, noting that desperate politicians must be restrained from polluting the political environment. “They are bitter because they failed woefully in their plots, hence the resort to frivolous petition and forged signatures’’, he stated.

Automatic ticket tears Abia South apart Igbeaku Orji Umuahia

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he recent decision of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), to grant automatic tickets to serving Senators in some part of South-East, who were said to have protested against their sidelining in the October ward congresses of the

party, has set the stage for a fresh crisis in the Ukwa-Ngwa political .

It was said that prior to the development, the Ukwa area of Abia South was touted for the senatorial slot to be vacated by the serving senator, Enyinnaya Abaribe, who had indicated interest in the governorship race. But fears that if the senators are given auto-

Onwe carpets Elechi Charles Onyekwere ABAKALIKI

A

Peoples Democratic party (PDP), Chieftain in Ebonyi state Hon. Peter Onwe, has urged the party to be wary of losing the state in the 2015 general elections, if it relies on the incumbent governor, Martin Elechi, whom he described

as not capable of delivering the state to the party.

In an interview with New Telegraph in Abakaliki yesterday, Onwe stated that what happened at the weekend during the PDP mega rally for Jonathan’s re-election organised by the state government, was a sign of failure on the side of Elechi.

According to him, the

matic ticket Ukwa will lose both the governorship and the senate are playing out.

Against this development, a group known as Ukwa Professionals and Political Stakeholders was said to have written to the national leadership of the PDP demanding that the 2015 governorship of Abia State be exclusively conceded to the Ukwa bloc.

choice of Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu, as the consensus candidate of the party, endorsed by the governor has only helped in deepening the PDP’s trouble in the state ,saying the only way to placate aggrieved members was at field Engr. Dave Umahi, as the deputy governor, a move he says could salvage the party from imminent loss.

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monday, november 24, 2014 NEW TELEGRAPH

south — south

PDP clears ex- Zenith Bank boss

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leading aspirant in the 2015 Akwa Ibom Governorship race, Mr Udom Emmanuel has secured the clearance the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), to contest in the primary elections of the party in Akwa Ibom State.

The former Zenith Bank Executive Director was cleared by the zonal screening committee of the party on Saturday, in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital to fully participate in the December 8, 2014 governorship primaries.

Emmanuel was accompanied to the zonal secretariat by party elders, stakeholders and campaign coordinators.

Isoko turns to prayers Dan Atori MINNA

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he Isoko Development Union (IDU), one of the nationalities in Delta State, on Sunday called on the people of the South-South region of Nigeria to seek the continued safety of indigent Isoko, residing in the north through their supplications to God in the face of the insurgency threatening the existence of all Nigerians.

Speaking after a thanksgiving service to mark a successful year for Isoko people living in the north, at the Kingdom church of God international Minna, the President of Niger state chapter of IDU, Chief Godwin Enih, said there was no need for Southerners to leave the north when they can pray.

He said, "We are a people from Delta state and we have been in the north for so many years, there has not been any crisis like this. The people of Niger are so friendly and it is a liberal state," Enih said.

Akwa Ibom governorship aspirant, Mr Udom Emmanuel (middle), being congratulated after being cleared to contest in the forthcoming primary elections of the party in Akwa Ibom State….yesterday

Discordant tunes as C’River holds ward congress today confusion

Ndoma-Egba's fight to stay afloat has not ended yet Clement James Calabar

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takeholders of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), in Cross River State were divided yesterday

Yenagoa

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peaker of the Bayelsa State House of Assembly, Rt. Hon. Konbowei Friday Benson says President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan’s humane leadership style represents the new breed of African liberation leaders, reiterating that the transformation agenda of the Jonathanled administration has

court case, so I have not decided,” he told our correspondent when asked if he would participate in the congress.

On his part, the Director General of NdomaEgba campaign organization, Chief Earnest Irek, who on Friday briefed the press rejecting the cancellation, said they will wait until today before taking a position on the matter.

A Federal High court sitting in Abuja is also

expected rule on the propriety of the case filed by the Ndoma-Egba group on today.

But the Director General of Jeddy-Agba campaign organization, Dr. Sandy Onor, told our Correspondent that his group will participate in the congress.

Although he acknowledged that there was a pending court case on the matter, he nevertheless insisted that his group will not shun the

congress.

“Yes, we are going to participate even though I learnt it has been shifted. But if it holds, we will participate,” Onor told our correspondent on telephone.

However, the State Secretary of the party, Mr. Goddy Etta, who also spoke on phone said; “I am right now at the national secretariat of the party and I can assure you that the congress will hold on Monday.”

UNDEDSS backs Jonathan’s second term Ali, Nwaoboshi, fight again l Proclaims Akpabio ‘Man of the Year’ Wale Elegbede

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rising from its 7th annual general assembly, in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, over the weekend, the coalition of all Niger Delta ethnic nationalities and civil society, the United Niger Delta Energy Development Security Strategy (UNDEDSS), declared its support for President Goodluck Jonathan’s 2015 re-election bid, just as it announced the governor of Akwa Ibom State, Godswill

Bayelsa speaker hails president Chris Ejim

ahead of the party’s rescheduled ward Congress slated for today.

Speaking to our Correspondent on telephone at the weekend, Senate Leader, Victor NdomaEgba, whose group had on Friday rejected the cancellation, said he was undecided if he would participate in the Monday congress as he was awaiting the outcome of the court case in Abuja.

“I have not decided yet. You know there is a

become a benchmark for good governance in Africa.

Benson, who spoke with newsmen in Yenagoa, on arrival from Abuja, where he had accompanied the state governor, Rt. Hon. Henry Seriake Dickson to the Presidential Villa to felicitate with President Jonathan on his 57th birthday, described the president as a unifying figure, giant of history and global ambassador.

Akpabio as the region’s “Man-of-the-Year-2014.

UNDEDSS, in a statement signed by its Secretary-General, Mr. Tony Iprinye Uranta, sued for reason and peace in Delta State; and, enjoined all Nigerians to fully support the Military in the ongoing war against terrorism.

While noting that leaders’ in the region’s have observed with growing apprehension the citizenry’s disconnect from the military, he asserts that Nigerians still depend on the military in the ongoing fight against terror.

The group noted that Akpabio was been designated by UNDEDSS’ as “Nigeria’s Man of the Year”, in recognition of his sterling role in both public and behind-thescenes, within the last twelve months, adding that the governor has been helping in keeping the nation stable, in partnership with his fellow Governors, President Jonathan, the National Assembly, and the international community.

“Whilst many public officers have abandoned their responsibility and indulged in childish grandstanding and cheap uncouth use of language, Godswill Akpabio has remained focused on helping shore-up the Nigerian state, in these perilous times; and, this he has done, without failing to deliver infrastructural development to the people of Akwa Ibom State.

We need more Akpabios, and Ibrahim Damkwabbos for Nigeria to truly attain its potentials,” Uranta said.

“Maybe, Nigerians are so carried away with petty partisan political wranglings that they seem to be really oblivious to the dangers posed by the increasing levels of terrorism, both global and in Nigeria. If we do not, calculatedly and consciously support our fighting forces, or if we continue to help paint terrorists in positive light, we will deprive our troops of their most potent weapon, which is high morale,” Uranta added.

Dominic Adewole ASABA

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ife of the former National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Ahmadu Ali, Mrs. Mariam Nnemaka Ali and other aspirants of the party are currently locked in a battle of wits over who picks the ticket of the PDP, to represent Delta North Senatorial District in the 2015 general elections.

The battle for who emerges the flagbearer of the party is said to have taken a new twist with serious challenge being posed to the ambition of Ali by the likes of the erstwhile state chairman of the party, Chief Peter Nwaoboshi, and a former House of Representatives member, Hon. Paschal Adigwe, who has declared his ambition saying he was in the race to trounce other aspirants.

Also in the race are a former House of Representatives member, Hon. Doris Uboh and a former aide to Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan, Chief Paul Osaji, all of whom recently declared their interest in the race.

The rivalry among the aspirants of the party over who emerges winner, was said to be getting fiercer, particularly between Ali and Nwaoboshi, while efforts at the state and national levels to resolve the face-off between them have met brick walls.

But speaking in Asaba yesterday, one of the aspirants, Adigwe, said there was no need for any aspirant to show any desperation in the race because according to him, the zoning arrangement of the party in the state does not favour the Oshimili South and North local government areas of Ali and Nwaoboshi .

According to the senatorial hopeful, it was the political deal that supports Delta North to produce Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan’s successor next year that favour his Aniocha South to field candidate for the senatorial seat correspondingly.

Adigwe, who represented Aniocha/Oshimili in the Federal House of Representatives between 19992003, vowed to combine time-tested and trusted quick-win schemes and long-term plans for job and wealth creation, if elected.

NEW TELEGRAPH monday, november 24, 2014

contradiction Kano gov. does not want to step down his presidential bid, but wants consesus in Kano Muhammad Kabir Kano

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ension has gripped members of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Kano State as the government of Governor Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, at the weekend, urged them to produce a consensus can-

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north

Tension as Kwankawso opts for consensus candidates didate from those contesting for the House of Representatives and House of Assembly seats from the state.

Already, APC caucuses from the 44 constituencies in the state are meeting at the Government House to come up with consensus candidates for state and National Assembly seats for the 2015 general elections as directed by the governor.

Kwankwaso, who an-

nounced the measure while meeting with stakeholders of the party yesterday, said the emergence of consensus candidates is better for the unity and progress of the party.

This is even as the national headquarters of the party had given every aspirant the right to purchase form for any post of their choice.

Kwankwaso said in Kano State, the party decided to use the consensus

option as an alternative to primaries unless where there is no agreement, then the option of primaries would play out.

However, as the action of the governor was announced, members of the party went wild, shouting that they will not accept such measure, preferring to go to the primaries.

Some even threatened to protest if they are not given what they want, insisting that allowing

people to partake in an election is the only known means of testing their popularity.

However, the governor said consensus is the only sure way of stopping violence and ensure victory.

Commenting on voters’ registration, Kwankwaso said he would take action against both the contestants and their followers if they fail to provide eligible voters in the state with their voters’ cards, lament-

ing that this development is a way of disfranchising the electorate.

He said APC can win election without any one, adding that the caucus’ members would act as mediators in order to come up with the best candidate for state and National Assembly elections, who can defend the manifestoes of the party.

The governor accused INEC of sabotaging the distribution of permanent voters’cards despite the support his government has given to the commission.

He vowed to take action against them if they refuse to provide eligible voters in the state with their cards, lamenting that this development is a way of disfranchising the people.

INEC bars journalists Muhammad Bashir Lokoja

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Borno State Governor, Kashim Shettima (middle), inspecting feeding facilities at an Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camp, during a routine visit in Maiduguri …at the weekend

APC: Aliyu is destroying the civil service Dan Atori MINNA

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he All Progressives Congress (APC) in Niger State has condemned the recent appointment of 13 permanent secretaries by Governor Muazu Babangida Aliyu, saying it lacks due process and is a destruction of the state’s civil service.

The APC through its spokesman, Mr. Jonathan Vatsa, said in a statement that for the state to move forward, appointment of unqualified people to such positions should be condemned and totally rejected.

He said: “No matter the level of intimidation, the APC will not keep quiet and watch Niger State grind to a halt; the governor has done it again. He has used the appointment of permanent secretaries as a political patronage.”

In a swift reaction to APC’s statement, the

Chief Press Secretary to the Governor, Mr. Israel Ebije, described the action of the APC as the ‘antics of a rudderless opposition’ to sustain its nuisance value.

Ebije expressed concern over the reasoning of the opposition, adding that they lack the administrative competence to understand the importance of the action.

But Vatsa further said that the APC considers the exalted office of a permanent secretary not a job for the boys, but a position where qualified career civil servants are appointed, considering competence, competitiveness and experience.

According to him; “The recent appointment of 13 permanent secretaries is lacking in all these process, it is a job for political loyalist and jobbers, we believe that for the state to move forward, appointment of unqualified people to such exalted positions should be condemned and totally rejected."

Muhammad Kabir Kano

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allam Salihu Sagir Takai, the anointed son of the Minister of Education, Ibrahim Shekarau, in the 2015 governorship election in Kano State has said that he is not desperate to be governor in this second coming after losing to Kwankwaso in 2011 with 60, 000 votes.

He said his contest is within the ambit of the law and that it is good for somebody to contest severally something that he thinks he can get, and this

Shekarau’s anointed son, Takai, declares for governor is because it is God that gives power to whom he so wishes.

Takai, who declared his interest to contest the governorship election in the state, also described Governor Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, as nothing but a dictator, who runs the state like a personal estate.

The aspirant, who made his aspiration known on Saturday, noted that his dream for Kano and its people is human

and infrastructural development.

He said Kano is so unlucky with a government that is so destructive, which has made life worse for the people, saying that is why things have to just change.

Takai, however, noted that he is not in any way desperate in the contest, by his yet another declaration after losing in 2011; he insisted that his aspiration is never a do-or-die affair.

PDP aspirants warn governors against imposition Ibraheem Musa Kaduna

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pressure group known as the Conference of Gubernatorial Aspirants in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the North-West, has warned PDP governors in the country against imposing candidates on the people in the interest of peace and unity.

The group, which stated

this in a communiqué released after the aspirants held an emergency meeting in Kaduna yesterday, said it is imperative to draw the attention of PDP leadership and the general public on the need to ensure a level playing field in the primaries.

The communiqué, which was jointly signed by Ibrahim Aliyu (Kebbi State), Senator Ibrahim Ida, (Katsina State), Hon. Felix Hyet

(Kaduna State) and Hon. Abba Anas Adamu (Jigawa State), said only free and fair primaries will be acceptable to their supporters.

The group accused the governors of Jigawa, Katsina, Kaduna and Kebbi States of trying to impose anointed candidates on the people, an action that may frustrate and deliberately compromise the party’s bright chances in the 2015 general elections.

he Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in Kogi State was yesterday accused of preventing journalists from covering its activities in the state.

Specifically, the electoral umpire was said to be discriminatory against some media organisations from covering it activities by resorting to selecting few media outfits in the dissemination of its activities.

The action of the electoral body was said to have led to suspicion in the media that the organisation, which is expected to use every available means to reach out to the electorate, seems to be hiding something, particularly in the ongoing voters’ registration exercise and the distribution of Permanent Voters’ Cards (PVCs) in the state.

Reacting on the issue, Kogi State Chairman of the correspondent chapel, Comrade Ademu Idakwo, said it is pertinent to draw the attention of the resident electoral commissioner to the ugly trend, which he said may jeopardise his efforts at having credible elections in the state in 2015.

INEC Commissioner in the state, Mr. Olusegun Agbaje, however, disabused the mind of the people on the issue, saying out of the 1, 189, 356 Permanent Voters’ Cards sent to the state, 755, 777 has been distributed across the 21 Local Government areas of the state.

50 WORLD | News

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2014 NEW TELEGRAPH

Tunisians hold landmark presidential election

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unisia took another step forward in its transition to democracy yesterday by holding its first free presidential election, with voters hoping for more stability and a better economy. Many Tunisians weighed security against the freedoms brought by their rev-

olution and by its democratic reforms, which have remained on track in sharp contrast to the upheavals brought by the Arab Spring elsewhere in the region, including the brutal military coup in Egypt and the conflicts in Syria, Yemen and Libya.

It hasn’t been easy for Tu-

nisia, however, and the nearly four years since the revolution have been marked by social unrest, terrorist attacks and high inflation that has voters punishing the moderate Islamists that first came to power.

“The thing I’m worried most about for the future is terrorism. Right now, we don’t know

who’s coming into the country, and this is a problem,” said Amira Judei, 21, who voted in the southern city of Kasserine, near the border with Algeria and a point of terrorist attacks. Voting hours in the rural regions along the border were reduced to 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. over security fears. But Judei insisted that “the most important priority is unemployment.”

Tunisia’s revolution began in areas such as Kasserine in the impoverished south, and the country’s 15 percent unemployment rate nearly doubles when it comes to young people.

Out of the nearly two dozen

candidates for the presidency, the person most feel can deliver on the twin issues of jobs and security is Beji Caid Essebsi, an 87-year-old former minister from the previous administrations who many are hoping will get the country back on track.

“He is a veteran politician with experience that can ensure security and stability,” said Mouldi Cherni, a middle age driver living in Tunis’ Carthage suburb who voted for Essebsi. “The people are tired, life has grown expensive and Tunisians don’t even have enough to make an ojja,” the local omelet favored by the poor.

British ruling party may fail to cut immigration

B Tunisian president, Moncef Marzouki casting his vote at a polling station during Tunisia’s presidential election yesterday

U.S Ambassador to FG: Tackle root cause of insurgency Appolonia Adeyemi

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nited States, U S government has urged the federal government to address factors that fuel insurgence including the terror inflicted on the populace by the Boko Haram sect and other terror groups. Ambassador of the U S to Nigeria, James F. Entwistle said tackling the root causes of insurgence will pave the way for security of life and property in the country.

Entwistle spoke at the Hubert Humphrey Fellowship Alumni Association of Nigeria Annual Lecture which held in Victoria Island, Lagos recently.

Speaking on the challenges of fighting terrorism, he said addressing terrorism involves “protection of civilian populations. It requires economic development in impoverished areas where extremism takes root.

It requires accessible education for all. It requires a free and fair press that can report openly and without fear of reprisal.” The U

S ambassador to Nigeria however noted that the American government wants Nigeria to win the war on terrorism and “fully supports the Nigerian people in their struggle.

He added that over the last decade, the U S Government has learnt that defeating terrorism requires more than military power. “Most importantly, it requires viable alternatives for young people who remain vulnerable to the lure of extremism due to the lack of opportunities. Referring to evidence which shows that Nigeria has over 10 million out-ofschool children, he charged the people of Nigeria and civil society organisations to demand actions that will create education for these children as well as do things that will move the country forward.

The USAID supports a range of humanitarian, transitional and long-term development activities in northern Nigeria. He said, “This represents a total investment by the American people of $129 million dollars.

We are working in collaboration with the government of Nigeria at the federal, state, and local levels.”

On the Hubert Humphrey Fellowship, he said it was founded in 1978 in honour of “our former Vice President and Minnesota Senator, Huber H. Humphrey who dedicated his life to public service. While about 5,000 fellows from 56 countries have completed the Hubert Humphrey Fellowship programme in the U.S., 120 Nigerians are alumni of the Fellowship, which promotes good governance, national unity and development, and commitment to public service.

Other discussants at the annual lecture are a Professor of international Law at the University of Lagos, Akindele Babatunde Oyebode; Executive Director of Women Advocates Research and Documentation Centre (WARD-C), Dr. (mrs) Abiola Akiyode-Afolabi; Mrs Abike Dabiri-Erewa, chairman, House Committee on Diaspora Matters, among others.

I won’t be president for life, says Putin

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ladimir Putin has said he won’t remain Russia’s president for life and will step down in line with the constitution no later than 2024, according to an interview with a Russian news agency released yesterday.

Staying beyond that would be “detrimental for the country and I don’t need this,” he told the Tass news agency. Putin, 62, has effectively led Rus-

sia since he was first elected in 2000. He stepped aside after two four-year terms to abide with constitutional term limits, but retained power as prime minister and was elected in 2012 to a six-year term. Putin said his decision on whether to run for a fourth term in 2018 will depend on the situation in the country and his “own mood.”

Throughout the interview, Putin described efforts at

home and abroad they he said were trying to undermine his rule.

He said the Western sanctions against Russian individuals and businesses over Ukraine were an attempt to punish his friends and were “driven by a desire to cause a split in the elite and then, perhaps, in society.”

But to the West’s chagrin, Putin said, Russian society remained consolidated behind him.

ritish Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservatives said yesterday they were unlikely to keep a promise to reduce net migration to “tens of thousands”, possibly damaging their reelection chances next year. Immigration has shot to the top of voter concerns before a 2015 national election after the UK Independence Party (UKIP), which wants to limit inflows and leave the EU, won European elections in Britain in May and later secured two seats in the British parliament. Cameron’s party has promised to cut net migration to the tens of thousands by next year’s election in May. Instead, it rose to 243,000 in the year to March 2014 and new data due this week is expected to show the numbers getting higher, not lower. “It is of course unlikely that we’re going to reach the tens of thousands by the end of the parliament,” Home Secretary (interior minister) Theresa May said yesterday.

“Why is that? It’s because we’ve seen increasing numbers of people coming from across Europe, partly because our economy is doing better,” she told BBC TV’s Andrew Marr Show. Though an apparent statement of the obvious, the comments by May, tipped as a possible contender to replace

Cameron, are significant because her party has until now been unwilling to concede defeat on such a major election issue.

Fearing UKIP will split the right-wing vote next year and make it harder for him to get re-elected, Cameron, who heads a coalition with the centrist Liberal Democrats, has hardened his rhetoric on immigration and taken modest measures to curb it. The issue is linked to Britain’s EU future. Cameron has promised to renegotiate the country’s EU ties if re-elected, before holding a referendum on membership in 2017.

He has said he would use such a renegotiation to try to win concessions to limit EU migrant numbers, something that is anathema to some EU leaders who say the bloc’s rules on freedom of movement of workers are sacrosanct.

Cameron is expected to deliver a speech on the issue this week in which he is likely to set out his ideas for making Britain a less attractive country for EU migrants. Local media suggest he may pledge to ban EU migrants from claiming welfare benefits for low-wage earners, for example tax credits or subsidized housing, until they have worked in Britain for a certain period of time.

Egypt willing to send troops to future Palestine

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gyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi said in remarks published yesterday that Egypt is prepared to send troops into a future Palestinian state to assist local police and guarantee Israel’s security. In comments to Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera, elSissi said the troops would be stationed there temporarily to establish confidence. In a clarifying statement later, his office said the idea is a way to encourage Israel to accept a two-state solution.

“The president said that

Egypt along with other Arab countries is willing to make available the necessary conditions for the creation of a Palestinian state,” the statement said.

The last round of U.S.-brokered peace talks collapsed in April. Since then, Israel fought a 50-day war against Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip and advanced plans to build hundreds of new homes in Jewish areas of east Jerusalem. Israel fears that Hamas would take control the West Bank if it withdrew its forces.

NEW TELEGRAPH MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2014

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Sports News

Sports News

We never learnt from history – Akuneto

Record breaker, Messi, labelled best ever

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Sport

Did you know?

In 1993, HFS Loans League team Congleton were forced to call off a minute’s silence to mourn the death of the club’s oldest fan... when he walked into the ground

Keshi: NFF awaits Presidency’s green light Ajibade Olusesan

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igeria Football Federation are still waiting for the green light from the Presidency before announcing a decision on the future of Super Eagles coach, Stephen Keshi.

Many Nigerians do not expect Keshi to keep his job after failing to qualify for the 2015 Africa Nations Cup and are surprised the NFF are yet to announce his sacking It will be recalled that President Goodluck Jonathan pleaded with NFF chiefs to reinstate the coach when he was earlier sacked due to poor performance in the AFCON qualifiers. The deal was that the coach should be allowed to

The Sport Team

see out the two remaining matches against Congo and South Africa before taking a decision on his future.

Although it was agreed at the meeting that should Keshi fail to lead the team to the AFCON his services should not be retained, a source informed New Telegraph that the Amaju Pinnick-led board decided to wait for the President’s approval to carry out their decision.

“Keshi’s issue is a delicate one for NFF. Although Mr President told them that they can sack the coach if he does not qualify the team but they still have to obtain his approval to carry out that decision. Jonathan is the one that brought Keshi back and you know how government works, if

the NFF goes ahead and sacks the coach without authorisation it could cause more trouble for them. They have learnt from the mistakes they made the other time.

They have been making frantic effort to hear from Mr President through the Sports Minister, Tammy Danagogo, but nothing concrete has come out ,” he said.

Our source also revealed that Keshi’s camp has fed the Presidency some stories that the NFF did not keep its promise to provide the coach with the support to ensure his success.

“I don’t know why Keshi still wants to hold on to the job because of the thing they have told the Presidency,” the source added.

Adekunle Salami Deputy Editor, Sports

Emmanuel Tobi Assistant Editor, Sports

Ifeanyi Ibeh Sports Correspondent

Ajibade Olusesan Sports Correspondent

Charles Ogundiya Sports Correspondent

© Daily Telegraph Publishing Company Limited

Mikel (left) in action against South Africa

Keshi (right) and his assistant, Amokachi

Ezeugo blames AFCON ouster on corruption Ifeanyi Ibeh

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ormer Nigeria international, Emeka Ezeugo, is still in shock over the failure of the Super Eagles to qualify for next January’s Africa Cup of Nations, and has blamed the distasteful habit of bribing match officials by politicians, clubs and FA officials for the shameful development.

A visibly angry Ezeugo told New Telegraph: “It’s about time to expose the ills. Football in Nigeria took 25 years destruction

courtesy of irresponsible politicians who through various state governments took over football and instituted the culture of cutting corners, paying referees and opposing teams to win matches while the media, players and the masses acted like they were ignorant of the irregularities.

“This is not the end though as there is not one chairman, secretary and team manager of a Premier League team in Nigeria that can deny this. If anyone dares, I put him in jail,” remarked the former midfielder.

“What they have taught our players is on match day just stroll around the pitch for the match has been purchased.

“Have you ever seen some of our so-called superstars change pace in a 90 minute game,” he asked, before retorting, “Our coaches don’t even have accurate assessment of the quality of players they have at their disposal. Either this or they are severely challenged tactically. It’s such a mess and a shame.

“The players are just way below average and fortunate to ride the coattails of my generation putting our beloved nation on the global landscape of football,” added Ezeugo, a member of the very first Nigerian team to play at the FIFA World Cup.

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MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2014 NEW TELEGRAPH

We never learnt from history – Akuneto Ifeanyi Ibeh

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ead of youth coaching at English League side FC United and former Nigeria international, Chuks Akuneto, has expressed his dismay over the failure of the Super Eagles to qualify for next January’s Africa Cup of Na-

tions, three years after a similar occurrence prevented the team from qualifying for the 2012 AFCON. Back in October 2011, the Super Eagles, then under the tutelage of Samson Siasia, required only a win to qualify for the tournament but ended up playing a 2-2 draw with Guinea in Abuja.

And Akuneto told New Telegraph from his Manchester, England base: “I watched the game and it was not hard to find reasons why we lost, because that is what that draw was: a loss.

“All we needed to do was to win at home and qualify. It was a very easy permutation. We didn’t do that and don’t deserve

to be there,” said the former Stationery Stores, Enugu Rangers and Shooting Stars defender.

“The key to the game was to defend very well and not concede a goal which gives us a chance because we have players that are proven goal scorers. But we didn’t do that as was the case the last time we didn’t qualify for the AFCON when Siasia did the same thing in our last qualifying match against Guinea.

“We needed to be cautious because if you concede a goal then you would require two to win. We needed 1-0 to go through but conceded two goals, and that was as a

result of poor organisation, tactics, and impatience borne out of tactical naivety.

“Even 0-0 at half time would have been okay, and then we throw everything at them in the last 30 minutes but heaven only knows what was going through the minds of the coaches,” said the UEFA A license holder, who also works for the English FA as a Club Mentor.

The FA Club Mentor scheme is a four-year project by the English FA aimed at providing quality targeted support for coaches at grassroots clubs to excel in their work and enhance coaching standards across England.

Enyeama prefers AFCON ticket to CAF, BBC awards

N

igeria captain Vincent Enyeama says he would gladly give up his CAF African Player of the Year award nomination for a place at the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations.

The Super Eagles will not be present to defend their continental crown at next year’s Equatorial Guinea showpiece after finishing third in AFCON qualifying Group A following Wednesday’s 2-2 draw against South Africa.

And Lille goalkeeper Enyeama, who was also shortlisted for the BBC African Player of the Year, insists the individual accolades mean little when

Ike Uche in action against South Africa

Stores ready to bounce back with COPA Lagos Charles Ogundiya

T

he chairman of relegated Stationary Stores of Lagos, Adetilewa Adebajo, has said the club would be looking up to the forthcoming COPA Lagos to begin reorganisation of the side.

The Flaming Flamingoes are one of the professional clubs, alongside Enyimba of Aba, that would be participating in the fourth edition of the annual Lagos beach soccer tourney.

And Adebajo, who stated his desire to reposition the team, blamed the late inclusion of his side in the league for the dismal performance this season.

“We have put our relega-

tion behind us and looking forward to the forthcoming COPA Lagos challenge where we will be playing alongside premier league side, Enyimba of Aba. “It will be a good opportunity for the club as we start the reforms for the players and our ever supporting fans,” the chairman said.

Meanwhile, Nigeria Professional Football League top scorer, Mfon Udoh of Enyimba, has said he can’t wait to experience the fun at the fourth edition of the event.

The mercurial goal scorer said judging by the past edition of the events, and all the lined up activities for the 2014 edition, he was sure the event would

be exciting and fun all the way.

“I can’t wait to take part in the event because of the fun and also, it will surely be another learning rope for my career,” the former Akwa United striker said.

Samuel, Adejoke savour Governor’s Cup success Ajibade Olusesan

N

igerian duo of Moses Samuel and Sarah Adejoke are relishing their success at the just-concluded 2014 Governor’s Cup Lagos Tennis Invitational Tournament at the Lagos Lawn Tennis Club at the weekend.

Samuel defeated Duncan Mugabe of Uganda to emerge champion in the men’s single while Adejoke lost to Zara Razafinmahatratra in the women single’s final but still combined with the Madagascar player to win the women’s double event.

Moses came from one set down to beat Mugabe 4-6, 6-1,6-2 and he told New Telegraph after the victory that; “I am happy to win this tournament. This

is one of the biggest things to have happened to me and I know it is a stepping stone for me to achieve more success in tennis. I want to thank everybody who has helped me get to this level, my coach, my family, all Nigerians who stood by me.”

Adejoke dedicated her trophy to Governor Babatunde Fashola saying the support of the Lagos State Governor has helped Nigerian tennis players.

“I am very delighted with this victory and I tell Nigerians to expect more from me. I really did not play to the best of my ability in the single event, I was not feeling my energy and concentration but I still thank God I got to the final and won the doubles,” she said.

considering Nigeria’s absence from AFCON 2015.

“It’s not important to me and I’ve always been saying it because those are individual awards and if you ask me to choose, I would take the AFCON over the awards,” Enyeama told SL10.

Enyeama

Quiet weekend for Eagles in Europe

lAs Lawal, Ujah score Ajibade Olusesan

F

ew days after failing to qualify for the 2015 Africa Nations Cup several Super Eagles players had a terrible weekend at their various clubs in Europe.

John Obi Mikel was not even on the bench when Chelsea beat West Brom 2-0 at the Stamford Bridge on Saturday. Brown Ideye was also consigned to the bench while Victor Anichebe had a cameo appearance for West Brom.

Victor Moses was hauled

off in the 56th minute as Stoke City suffered a shock 2-1 loss at home to Burnley.

Kenneth Omeruo was not listed by Coach Aitor Karanka as Middlebrough secured a 1-1 draw at Wigan while Ogenyi Onazi was also not given an opportunity by Lazio as they succumbed to a 3-0 defeat at home to Juventus.

In the Scottish league, Efe Ambrose came off the bench in Celtic’s 2-1 win against Dundee United the same fate Ahmed Musa suffered in CSKA Moscow’s 2-1 loss at Kransnodar in the Russian league.

However, Elderson Echiejile who played no part in the Eagles’ 2-2 draw with South Africa last Wednesday enjoyed 90 minutes of football in Monaco’s 2-2 draw with Caen on Saturday. Godfrey Oboabona got a 75th minute yellow card in Rizespor’s 2-0 home loss to Basaksehir.

Meanwhile, Raheem Lawal came off the bench to hand his club, Eskisehirspor a 2-1 win over Erciyesspor on Sunday. The Nigerian scored in the 86th minute.

Anthony Ujah also hit target for Cologne in their 2-1 defeat at home to Hertha Berlin.

Quadri for North American Teams Championships N

Quadri

igeria’s Aruna Quadri has been listed in the three-man Joola team that will feature in this week’s 17th edition of the North American Table Tennis Teams Championships holding in the United States.

Quadri, who is ranked 30 in the world, will be joined by former world champion and Olympian, Jörg Roßkopf as well as Austria’s Chen Weixing.

The 2014 NATT tournament holds from November 28 to 30 at the National Har-

bor, Maryland inside the Gaylord National Resort.

Quadri will be making his debut in the competition powered by Germany-based kits firm, Joola.

Weixing, a veteran of the tournament and also world ranked 49, will add his defensive style to the Joola team.

The organizers believe Quadri will add glamour to the tournament with his superb forehand, which has helped him to defeat some of the top rated players in the world.

International Sport 53

NEW TELEGRAPH MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2014

Record breaker, Messi, labelled best ever

Chelsea haven’t won anything yet – Mourinho The victory maintained Chelsea’s league unbeaten run and moved them seven points clear of second-placed Southampton, who play Aston Villa on Monday.

But manager Mourinho is keen to temper expectations despite his men being heavy favourites to lift the title.

“Only John Terry and Didier Drogba have won things with Chelsea, no­ one else in the team,” Mourinho said. “These guys have to win if they want to be seen as a great team. They have to win. It is not just about playing beautiful football or being autumn champions.

“When they win trophies we can compare them with other teams.”

B

arcelona coach Luis Enrique refused to be drawn into talk about Lionel Messi’s future as he hailed the record-breaker the best ever player.

Messi became the all-time leading La Liga goalscorer with 253 goals after scoring a hat-trick in Barca’s 5-1 thrashing of Sevilla on Saturday.

Messi opened the scoring in Barca’s rout of Sevilla before adding two late goals to break Telmo Zarra’s record of 251 goals.

Luis Enrique said the attacker was a unique talent.

“Everybody has the clarity of telling I haven’t seen a player like Lionel Messi and I am fortunate for training and seeing him every day at the training field,” he said.

“And even sometimes he surprises you with some good performances. There is not comparison with other players I have seen along Messi my life. He is unique.”

J

ose Mourinho has warned Chelsea they have won nothing yet despite another impressive performance in the triumph over West Brom.

Diego Costa’s 11th Premier League goal of the season and an Eden Hazard strike were enough for the leaders to defeat Alan Irvine’s men 2-0 at Stamford Bridge on Saturday.

Van Gaal plays down first away win

Federer leads Swiss to Davis Cup title M A

Federer

Roger Federer masterclass helped Switzerland clinch their first Davis Cup title as the 17-time grand slam champion defeated Richard Gasquet to hand them an unassailable 3-1 lead over hosts France.

The 6-4 6-2 6-2 win helped the 33-yearold Federer secure the historic decisive point and land the last big prize in tennis missing from his collection to rapturous applause by both sets of

supporters on the indoor clay court in Lille.

Jo-Wilfried Tsonga was initially set to face the Swiss star but was sidelined with an elbow injury meaning Gasquet took his spot for France.

But he was unable to cope with an inspired Federer, who looked back to his very best following a back injury which crippled him at the ATP World Tour finals in London last weekend.

Pacquiao ready for Mayweather M anny Pacquiao, his promoter and his trainer all threw down the gauntlet to Floyd Mayweather after the Filipino boxer comprehensively battered the latest challenger to his WBO welterweight crown into defeat.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve been wanting this fight, it has to happen,” said the eightweight world champion after knocking down Chris Algieri six times on his way to a huge points victory. “The fans

deserve it. It’s a good thing that we talk about that fight. It’s time to say yes.”

His promoter Bob Arum, who has been trying to secure the match for almost four years, said “enough is enough”.

“No excuses. Manny knocked Algieri down six times in one fight.

That’s twice as many knockdowns as Mayweather has had in all his fights in the last 12 years,” he taunted. “All they have to do to is pick up the telephone. I’ll be

Wenger sorry for United defeat

A

rsene Wenger has apologised to Arsenal fans after their November slump continued in Saturday’s home defeat to Manchester United.

Wenger’s side went down 2-1 to their old rivals in a loss that consigned the Gunners to back-to-back defeats and their worst start to a season since 1982.

The defeat followed a 2-1 reverse at Swansea City, which came days after throwing away a three-goal lead in a Champions League clash with Anderlecht in what has proved a miser-

able month for Arsenal thus far.

“There was lots of energy,” the manager told the club’s official website. “We produced a game of quality and energy and in the end we didn’t get the reward.

Manchester United had two shots on target and we lost the game - that’s what it was.

“All the rest was one of the most one-way traffic games I’ve seen against United. I feel so sorry for our fans and the energy level the players put in not to get a win because it’s so disappointing.”

at the phone. Manny will be at his phone,” added Arum.

Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach claimed there would always be a question mark over the pair’s careers if they never met in the ring.

“I think there will always be an asterisk on their records,” said Roach. “Let’s face it, the best should fight the best and they’ve been the best guys out there. This is something that will haunt them forever if it doesn’t happen.”

ENGLISH PREMIER LEAGUE Team P GD 1 Chelsea 12 19 2 Southampton 11 18 3 Man City 12 11 4 Man United 12 4 5 Newcastle 12 -1 6 West Ham 12 4

Pts 32 25 24 19 19 18

7 Swansea City 8 Arsenal 9 Everton 10 Tottenham 11 Stoke City 12 Liverpool 13 West Brom 14 Sunderland 15 C/Palace 16 Hull City 17 Aston Villa 18 Leicester 19 Burnley 20 QPR

18 17 17 17 15 14 13 13 12 11 11 10 10 8

12 12 12 12 12 12 12 12 12 12 11 12 12 12

3 5 3 -1 -2 -3 -4 -7 -4 -3 -11 -7 -12

-12

anchester United manager Louis van Gaal played down the significance of his side’s first away win of the season – a victory at Arsenal that propelled them into the Premier League top-four.

Kieran Gibbs’ second-half own goal and a breakaway second from Wayne Rooney saw United win 2-1 at the Emirates with Olivier Giroud pulling one back in injury time.

And Van Gaal told Sky Sports: “It was a fantastic victory. We

have a lot of injuries and despite that we won a difficult away match at a very good time.

“They are a great attacking team and I knew that in advance, and that’s why I chose this counter-attacking strategy. I can laugh now but it could have been a different game.

“It’s the first away victory and the players are very excited but it’s just one victory and we have to confirm it by winning the next two home games.

Rodriguez urges Real focus

J

ames Rodriguez has demanded no let up from Real Madrid ahead of a hectic run of matches.

The Liga leaders were once again at their dazzling best as they swept aside Eibar 4-0 on Saturday, with Rodriguez opening the scoring at the Estadio Municipal de Ipurua.

Real’s victory was their 14th straight win in all competitions and they now face a run of six matches in the space of 17 days, starting with Wednesday’s UEFA Champions League clash at Basel.

And Rodriguez has called on Carlo Ancelotti’s men to maintain their high standards during the busy period.

“We knew that it was going to be a tough match, but we also knew that we could go out and win if we played well and put in a good match,” he told the club’s official website.

“I’m happy about the win and coming away with a good result. We knew if we came out strong and got an early goal we were going to come out on top. 4-0 is a really good result.

Rodriguez

RESULTS European Premier League Chelsea 2 – 0 West Brom Everton 2 – 1 West Ham

Bundesliga Bayern 4 – 0 Hoffenheim Hannover 1 – 3 Leverkusen

Leicester 0 – 0 Sunderland

Mainz 2 – 2 Freiburg

Man City 2 – 1 Swansea

Gladbach 1 – 3 Frankfurt

Newcastle 1 – 0 QPR

Paderborn 2 – 2 Dortmund

Stoke 1 – 2 Burnley

Schalke 3 – 2 Wolfsburg

Arsenal 1 – 2 Man United

Cologne 1 – 2 Hertha

Crystal Palace 3 – 1 Liverpool

La Liga

Serie A

Atl. Madrid 3 – 1 Malaga

Atalanta 1 – 2 AS Roma

Eibar 0 – 4 Real Madrid

Lazio 0 – 3 Juventus

Barcelona 5 – 1 Sevilla

Napoli 3 – 3 Cagliari

Deportivo 0 – 0 Sociedad

Cesena 1 – 1 Sampdoria

Rayo 1 – 0 Celta Vigo

54

SPORT

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2014 NEW TELEGRAPH

Enyimba, Rivers Angels win Federation Cup

lEduok, Oshoala emerge MVP Charles Ogundiya

E

nyimba, on Sunday, at the Teslim Balogun Stadium, beat Dolphins 2-1 to retain the Federation Cup title.

Rivers Angels also defeated Sunshine Queens of Akure to win the women version of the tournament.

Mfon Udoh capped a brilliant individual season for Enyimba as his goal and assist gave the People’s Elephant the victory.

Enyimba were on the back

foot early on when strings of efforts from Emem Eduok put Femi Thomas, in goal for Enyimba, under pressure.

Enyimba were coping comfortably as Dolphins left Eduok too isolated at times until Udoh stormed off the blocks in the 55th minute when he profited from a brilliant pass from Markson Ojobo to shoot the ball into the right hand side of goalkeeper Sunday Rotimi’s post.

Some minutes later, a rare howler from Rotimi

gifted Udoh a sight at goal, but he elected to pass to Chinonso Okonkwo. The striker turned superbly before firing past the goalkeeper.

Ten minutes to the end of the match, Eduok reduced the tally from an excellent pass by Victor Alegbe.

Meanwhile, Assisat Oshoala and Stella Mbachu scored as Rivers Angels beat Sunshine Queens in the women’s final.

Eduok was named the Most Valuable Player of the tournament in the men’s category while Oshoala was picked MVP in the women’s category.

Pinnick vows to boost football with science Adekunle Salami

T

he President of the Nigeria Football Federation, Amaju Pinnick, has promised to add science to boost the administration of football in the country.

Pinnick noted that the current board of the NFF had experienced people from the former board who were part of the Aminu Maigari success story.

He stressed that it was important to move with cur-

rent global trend in the game to achieve results in Nigeria.

The NFF boss said: “If we monitor the leagues in Europe closely especially that of England, you will see the impact of science in the game. There are cases where you will see a move from the midfield and you will know a goal is bound to be scored.

“At France 98 World Cup final, 50 cameras were used to cover it and we felt that was huge but earlier this year in Brazil, it was 350 cameras used for the same

purpose. That has shown how the game has evolved scientifically and we have to key in to achieve a sustainable football development.”

Pinnick stated that the new board had a short, medium and long term plans for the game but all would take a gradual process.

“We appreciate that Nigerians love the game and we are looking at getting the results in various ways.

By next year, some of these plans will start manifesting,” he said.

Enyimba will equal Rangers’ record –Kalu I

t was yet another the end of the encounround of celebrations ter. for former Abia State Kalu joked yesterGovernor, Dr. Orji Uzor day that he could put Kalu, as Enyimba lifted his cash on the Aba Eltheir fourth Federation ephants.

Cup yesterday in Lagos.

“Enyimba are not “You can always like our Super Eagles. bank on Enyimba “, You can bank on the ElKalu said excitedly. ephants. At least, they “With this successful can fight hard as defendCup defence, I see them ing champions. They equaling Enugu Rang- won the CAF Champiers’ 38-year-old record ons League in 2003 and next year.” defended it successfully Rangers remain the in 2004. They won the only side to have won Federation Cup in 2013 the trophy thrice con- and have retained it in secutively. It began in 2014. The Eagles have 1974, when the Coal City never defended the NaBoys defeated Ismaila tions Cup successfully, Mabo’s Mighty Jets of check the records,” the Jos 2-0 at the National ex- governor stressed.

Stadium, Surulere, Lagos. They retained the trophy in 1975 with a lone goal victory over Sam Ojebode’s Shooting Stars of Ibadan.

In 1976, the Flying Antelopes stopped Owura Agyei and the Alyufsalam Rocks of Ilorin 2-0. It was a thing of pride as the Ilorin side paraded about 10 Ghanaians including James Quino and Ahmed Nalando.The lone Nigerian, Humphrey Okechukwu, was poached by Rangers at Kalu

NEW TELEGRAPH MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2014

55

Sanctity of Truth

On Marble

It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.

– Frederick Douglass

Igor Sikorsky: Inventor of the modern helicopter (1939)

NIGERIA’S MOST AUTHORITATIVE NEWSPAPER IN POLITICS AND BUSINESS

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2014

G

World Record

N150

God made it a great day

od is truly great and this essay serves as a testimony to His love, mercy, faithfulness and awesome power. We had a great day in court on Monday 17th November 2014. I give thanks to God. After we made our no case submission I was discharged and acquitted of 38 counts out of the 40 count charge that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) profered against me a number of years ago.

I have been fighting this matter and have waited for this day for the last seven years when the whole nightmare first started. God has once again proved how faithful He is to His own. Only He could have done it.

He promised that He would do it and He did it. To Him alone be the glory.

Where and how did it all begin? In 2007 after we left office and the late President UmarYar’adua came to power, the most vicious and insidious campaign of calmuny, misrepresentation, fabrication and persecution was unleashed against those of us that had served President Olusegun Obasanjo’s government faithfully, diligently and loyally, that were members of his inner circle and that were labelled as ‘’Obasanjo’’ or ‘’OBJ’’ boys. These so-called ‘’OBJ boys’’ included people like Nasir El Rufai, Nuhu Ribadu and a number of others. Each and every one of them have a story to tell.

Mine is as follows. In 2008 the Yar’adua administration alleged that I stole 19.5 billion naira (114 million USD) from the Aviation Intervention Fund when I was Minister of Aviation. This was despite the fact that the Senator Anyim Ude-led Senate Aviation Commitee had investigated the matter thoroughly in a highly celebrated and well-attended public hearing and gave me a clean bill of health on this allegation.

Despite that clean bill of health, the EFCC insisted on conducting their own investigation. After their so-called investigation, they arrested me, detained me illegally for 10 days and locked up, humiliated and tortured most of my staff, political associates and political appointees.

They also purged most of my known loyalists from government positions and key appointments and they went out of their way to destroy them. This was all done in an attempt to coerce them into making false statements against me and to implicate me.

Eventually they charged me to court but there was no evidence of any wrongdoing on my part and eventually all charges were dropped for want of evidence.

Later that same year, they came back again and alleged that I stole 6.5 billion naira (38 million USD) from the Safe Tower Project when I was Minister of Aviation. Again there was no evidence of any wrongdoing on my part and once again, eventually, all charges were dropped for want of evidence.

Yet as a consequence of the clear

Crossfire FEMI FANI-KAYODE

ffk2011@aol.com

Lamorde

Obasanjo

and precise orders that they got from the top, they refused to stop. That order was that I must be destroyed at all costs.

Rather than get better, things actually got far worse. It became an obsession for those in the corridors of power at that time to discredit, humiliate, shame and jail me even though they knew that I had done nothing wrong.

In 2009 they ambushed me, arrested me, detained me for another 10 days at Ikoyi prison and finally hit me with a 47 count money-laundering charge. They alleged that I laundered 200 million naira (1,169,000 USD) whilst I was Minister of Culture and Tourism and whilst I was Minister of Aviation respectively between 2006 and 2007.

I contested their claims and maintained that I was innocent of all the charges. After four years of going in and out of various courts before no less than three separate judges, they changed their minds, reduced the number of counts from 47 to 40 and alleged that I did not launder 200 million but rather 99 million (679,000 USD).

We contended that they had not even made a prima facie case let alone prove the allegation. Consequently we entered a no case submission before the presiding judge, Justice Rita Ofili-Ajumogobia of the Federal High Court in Lagos, on 10 November 2014.

Exactly one week later, on the 17th November 2014, and a good six years after the money- laundering charges were first filed, Justice Rita Ofili-Ajumogobia considered their 40 count charge and ruled that in 38 out of the 40 counts a prima facie case had not been made against me and that I had no case to answer.

I was therefore discharged and acquited of 38 counts of the charge without even having to enter a defence. Those counts represent the amount of 96.5 million naira (664, 000 USD).

The remaining two counts rep-

Without a test, there can be no testimony... without a mess there can be no message ... without trials and tribulations there can be no vindication or lasting victories

resent the sum of 1 million naira (6000 USD) and 1.1 million naira (6,500 USD) respectively which they allege that I laundered whilst I was Minister of Culture and Tourism in 2006. The court has directed that I present my defence to these two allegations.

I look forward to doing so on and we shall begin that process on December 8, 2014. On that day, we shall provide a vigorous defence to these spurious and politicallymotivated allegations and charges.

I remain confident in the belief that we shall prevail and that that which the Lord has started, He is faithful to complete.

By the grace and mercy of God victory was ours today and victory will be ours again tomorrow and indeed always. The bible says ‘’many are the afflictions of the righteous but the Lord delivers them of them all’’. My innocence has spoken for me at every turn, the Lord has delivered me and I do not have one iota of doubt that He shall continue to do so.

It is the doing of the Lord and it is marvelous in our sight. I have no doubt whatsoever that the Lord shall perfect His work and deliver me completely from the hands of my enemies.

I thank all those that have stood by me, encouraged me and prayed for me over the last seven years and indeed throughout this grueling ordeal. It was indeed a difficult period and a great test for me and my family.

Most important of all, it proved one thing to me: that without a test there can be no testimony. It proved that without a mess there can be no message. It proved that without trials and tribulations there can be no vindication or lasting victories.

It proved to me that without going through the hottest fire there can be no purification and refining. It proved to me that until you fall down and touch the bottom you cannot get up and rise to the top.

It proved to me that without any pain there can be no gain. I have been to the bottom of the valley and I have survived it: now I shall rise to the top of the mountain.

A special thanks goes to my darling wife Regina for never giving up on me and for always trusting in me. She is so strong and, unlike me, she never flinched for one second throughout this entire ordeal.

Without her I couldn’t have made it through the last seven years.

She is a great believer in the power of God, a true Daughter of Zion, a Princess of the Kingdom and a woman of unshakable faith and unimpeachable virtue and integrity.

The mother of my beloved daughter Remi, she is my heart and my strength: a precious gift from God. I bless the name of the Lord for all that I have been through and for delivering me from the hands of those that seek my destruction and death. I thank Him for His faithfulness. To Him alone be the glory.

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by Banex Junction, Mabushi, Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. Advert Hotline: 01-8541248, Email: info@newtelegraphonline.com Website: www.newtelegraphonline.com ISSN 2354-4317 Editor: YEMI AJAYI.