The Nigerian
PUBLISHED SINCE MAY 29, 1968 • Vol. 39 NO. 013 • MONDAY, JUNE 16, 20 14 •N 100.00 POLITICS Pg 15 Ekiti And Osun Election
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Jega On My Mind
Edo APC ’ll abide by rule of law BENIN CITY - The Edo State Chairman of the All Progressive Congress (APC), Anselm U. Ojezua (Esq) has expressed gratitude to the Oba of
Benin Omo N’Oba N’Edo, Uku Akpolokpolor, for his timely intervention in the ongoing crisis in Edo State House of Assembly.
In a statement issued in Benin City yesterday, Barrister Ojezua expressed the hope that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) will heed the Omo N’Oba’s appeal
and prevail on its members to maintain peace, obey the Court order and allow the judicial process to take its course.
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Police uncover plot to invade Edo Assembly By MIKE OSAROGIAGBON
TRIBUTE Pg. 27 Dora Akunyili
The Exit Of An Amazon
BENIN CITY - The Edo State Police Command said it is fully aware of plans by some political thugs to invade the state House of Assembly complex today, June 16, 2014. The command has violence in the state. therefore, warned that The commissioner any person or group of however advised persons found political gladiators to formenting trouble in and follow legal process in around the Assembly complex would be dealt with accordingly. The Commissioner of Police in Edo State, Mr. Foluso Adebanjo stated this while commenting on the crisis rocking the state House of Assembly and the police readiness to curtail all forms of
settling their dispute. Meanwhile, the police command weekend paraded 42 criminal suspects arrested for various allegations,
ranging from murder, defilement, rape, armed robbery, kidnapping to unlawful possession of firearms. Arms, ammunition,
vehicles and dangerous weapon said to be exhibits recovered from them were also displayed. The suspects
8 persons arrested over vandalised EDSTMA truck BENIN CITY – No fewer than eight persons have been arrested in connection with the destruction of an ultramodern towing truck belonging to Edo State Traffic Management Agency (EDSTMA) on Mission Road, Benin City. The truck with registration number Edo ED58-A09 was towing a vehicle along Mission Road where commercial activities were on going when some persons suspected to be traders vented their anger on staff of the Agency and Smashed the front windscreen and the side screen on both sides of the truck. Three of the EDSTMA personnel attached to the
EDSTMA vehicle were beaten to a coma and were later hospitalized. It was the quick intervention of the officers and men of the Nigeria Police Force that saved the situation from degenerating. Consequently, some of the stores of traders in the vicinity of the incident were sealed up and reopened few hours later. Reacting to the incident, the Head of Operations of EDSTMA, Amadin Owas warned against manhandling staff of the Agency, destruction of public property and members of the public taking laws into their hands including traders on James Watt Street in Benin City.
TIT BIT “One easy way of recognising an unbridled ambition is the one that makes a man to start dancing before the music begins”. - Kingsley-Ogbeide-Ihama
REPATRIATION: The two celebrated Benin artefacts, Ahiamwen-Oro and the Egogo, stolen during the British invasion of Benin Kingdom in 1897 billed for repatriation and formal hand-over on June 20, 2014.
included a gang of men who allegedly killed one George O. Aguebor, 28, in Egor Area of Benin on May 26, 2014. Leader of the gang who identified himself as O s a y e m w e r e Igbinomwanhia (a.k.a Labister) said they are members of Eiye confraternity. He stated that on that fateful day, his boys reported the deceased to him and he ordered them to take the boy to Egor Police outpost. He claimed that he was later informed that one of his boys stabbed the victim to death on their way to the police outpost. Other members of the gang include, Ibrahim Tahiru, Iroghama Osaro, Tyson Osemwenkhoe and Ifemenoku Ifeanyi. Exibits allegely recovered from them included one T-shirt, stained with blood, a white singlet, one Tecno and one Nokia handsets. The Commissioner of Police maintained that the suspects would be charged to court on completion of investigation.
Convention: APC thanks Nigerians LAGOS - The All Progressives Congress (APC) yesterday thanked Nigerians for their congratulatory messages and words of encouragement, following its successful inaugural national convention. The convention, which held in Abuja from Friday to Saturday, resulted in the election of the party’s National Executive Committee led by Chief John Oyegun. ‘’We are encouraged
and gratified by the goodwill messages from a cross section of Nigerians, many of them from outside our party, especially on the openness and transparency of our convention.
‘’This massive support from Nigerians has strengthened our resolve to continue with our efforts to move our country forward,’’ the party said in a statement issued in Lagos by its National Publicity
Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed. The party said that in the days ahead, it would provide more details of its Road Map that would help change the face of the country for the benefit of all her people.
ADO-EKITI - The President of Nigeria Labour Congress, Abdulwaheed Omar, weekend warned against external forces who might interfere in the June 21
governorship election in Ekiti State. Omar issued the warning in Ado Ekiti when he led members of the Central Working Committee of the
congress on a courtesy call on Governor Kayode Fayemi. He said the people of the state must be allowed to make their
It said that the agenda it had made public to showcase its determination to change the face of the country including job creation, war against corruption, free, relevant quality Continues on page 2
NLC warns against rigging in Ekiti
free choice during the election. The NLC president warned against rigging, saying the congress will continue to identify with Continues on page 2
News Ekiti: NSCDC warns officers against accepting gifts ADO-EKITI - The Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps has warned its officers and men against soliciting or accepting gifts from politicians and government officials in the course of the governorship polls in Ekiti. The CommandantGeneral of the corps, Dr Ade Abolurin, gave the warning in Ado-Ekiti weekend, while addressing the officers. He warned that any staff who solicited or accepted any form of logistic support from government or individuals in the course of the polls, slated for June 21, would be dealt with. The commandant-general said the corps had already made adequate provisions for needed logistics for its officers and men. According to him, it will be offensive, if they still go ahead, to either solicit for such or accept gifts from either government or politicians. “We do not want a situation where our people will be offered support that will make them compromise neutrality.” He said that the Ekiti State Command of the corps had equally been mobilised with necessary welfare package such as money, food and fuel for vehicles, among others. Abolurin, who addressed
senior officers ranging from unit commanders, local government commanders and area commanders, warned them against compromising during the election. He directed the corps members to be watchful at polling booths to ensure that harmful materials, including nylon bags were not brought by any individual or group.
Abolurin, who would not disclose the total number of his men to be deployed for the election for security reasons, assured residents of adequate security. “Our intervention in the election will be total; there will be a total coverage of the election while security will be effective.” He announced that a special crime detection and control vehicle, known as
“Surveillance Equipped Cameral Vehicle” had already been deployed in Ekiti. According to him, the equipment will capture developments in a wide area, noting that there would be no escape route for criminals. The commandant-general urged the populace to support and cooperate with security agents by giving them useful information to nib crimes at the bud.
Edo APC ’ll abide by rule of law
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He thanked the good people of Edo State for their understanding and cooperation since last week when the plot to destabilize the House of Assembly was exposed. He assured the people that APC – controlled State Government led by the Comrade Governor, Adams Oshiomhole will continue to strive towards improving the lives of Edo people through the execution of peopleoriented projects. The APC Chairman advised the youths not to allow themselves to be used by selfish and wicked politicians whose children are in expensive foreign schools while they deprive our citizens of the scarce resources badly needed for development.
OWERRI The Commissioner of Police in Imo, Mr. Abdulmajid Ali, said yesterday in Owerri, that six persons had been arrested in connection with two improvised explosive devices (IEDs) planted at the Living Faith Church (a.k.a. Winners’ Chapel). Ali, who spoke to newsmen at the church premises along Port Harcourt Road Owerri, said the ‘two timed bombs’ were planted at the church premises by unknown persons. According to him, the command was alerted about the strange objects in the church compound. “We were alerted that some devices were seen in
the church and immediately we deployed our anti-bomb squad. “We are happy that the squad immediately detonated the bomb on arrival and six persons have been arrested so far,” he said. Ali said the command would do everything possible to unravel the perpetrators of the act. He urged the people to go about their normal activities as the two IEDs have been detonated. Also speaking, Brigade Commander, 34 Artillery Brigade, Owerri, Brig.-Gen. Lanre Bello, confirmed that the explosives were capable of killing many people at a time.
PMS: FG releases third
quarter import allocation
L-R: South-East Coordinator, Foundation of Ethics and Values, Dr. Mike Okpara; Enugu State Coordinator, Ozo Chris Akam and Anambra State Coordinator, Chief Vin Ikelie at the committee’s zonal meeting in Enugu yesterday.
UN hinges sustainable dev on peace, education
ABUJA - The United Nations (UN) Resident Coordinator in Nigeria, at the weekend hinged the sustainability of peace, stability and development on peace, education, intercultural and interfaith dialogue. Toure told newsmen in Abuja that education would
Explosive devices found in Church
promote positive value reorientation and behavioural change. According to him, the UN in Nigeria is responding to the contemporary challenges in the country, especially in the North-East through multiple approaches and programmes. He said that UN had commenced the implementation of the third UN Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF III) with strong focus on social capital development and response to human security and risk management. “We are working closely with government partners and have developed a UN Integrated Support Package (ISP) for the North-East and the Chibok girls. “We believe this will contribute in no small measure to addressing the root causes of development challenges, ensure sustainable peace built on economic, social security, human rights and dialogue,’’ he said. Toure said the UN system in Nigeria through its specialised agencies, such as United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisations (UNESCO) had organised capacity building sessions
on peace building. “We have realigned our programmes to support Nigerian government to pursue aggressive policies on job creation, particularly for the women and youths to promote inclusive growth and ensure sustainable development. “Recently, the UN in partnership with the Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution (IPCR) organised a National Inter-Faith Dialogue on Conflict Prevention and Peacemaking. “This is part of efforts at addressing violent conflicts and extremism in the country,’’ he said. He said that efforts were ongoing by the UN in collaboration with the government to convene another national inter-faith
dialogue. He urged the government to focus more on youth empowerment, so as to arrest youth restiveness. “We must do more work on the de-radicalisation of the young people in this country. “And to do this, the country must create more employment opportunities, encourage their active and meaningful participation in the political process,’’ he said.
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marketers to make adequate preparations toward products sourcing and importation. He commended the minister for all the proactive initiatives put in place to ensure products availability across the nation and at PPPRA-regulated price. He appealed to all oil marketers to reciprocate government’s gesture by commencing the process of products purchase in time in order to forestall any future shortages. The executive secretary promised to ensure prompt processing of documents for all imported products duly brought into the country. He recalled that the minister commenced a regime of early release of quarterly PMS allocations, with the release of Q2 in April 2014, in addition to a supplementary Q1 allocation. He said apart from providing additional imports to supplement prevailing level of importation, the approval was responsible for availability of petroleum products across the country at regulated prices.
NLC warns against rigging in Ekiti Continued from page 1 leaders who performed creditably well while in office and keep the confidence the people reposed on them. Omar said, “nobody can stop us from identifying with whoever we want.’’
APC thanks Nigerians education and security among others. The party said that based on the nationwide scientific poll it conducted across the 36 states and the federal capital, it had identified job creation, war against corruption and security as sectors that needed special attention.
ABUJA - The Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Allison-Madueke, has approved the release of third quarter (Q3) import allocations for Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) or petrol. Mr. Farouk Ahmed, Executive Secretary, Petroleum Products Pricing and Regulatory Agency (PPPRA), announced this in a statement made available to newsmen in Abuja on Saturday. Ahmed said the gesture was in line with President Goodluck Jonathan’s Transformation Agenda in the downstream oil and gas sector. “It shows that the Federal Government is highly committed to its promise of ensuring sustained products availability across the country, and at government approved-price.’’ Ahmed added that government had facilitated an improved national PMS supply situation and stock build-up, put at 35 days sufficiency (Land -19 and Marine-16). According to him, the latest directive by the minister is also to enable
It repeated its call on the Federal Government to do everything humanly possible to secure the release of the over 200 school girls who were abducted by Boko Haram on April 14. ‘’We hereby reiterate our support and cooperation for all the efforts that could reunite these girls with their families,’’ it said.
“The congress decided to identify with Fayemi because he has done well by delivering more dividends of democracy to the people.’’ Omar prayed for peaceful election in the state, adding that a tour of the town showed that recent report of violence was exaggerated. The NLC president said the people must be allowed to make their choice without any interference. “Ekiti people know what they want.’’ He described Fayemi as a performer who should be returned by popular votes. An endorsement rally for Fayemi was held at the Oluyemi Kayode Stadium in the state capital. The state chapter of the
NLC led by its Ayodeji Aluko and his counterpart in the Trade Union Congress, Kolawole Olaiya organised the rally. Fayemi praised NLC for campaigning against election violence, urging the congress to intensify their campaign for one man, one vote. “We are appealing to the labour leaders to continue to canvass for one man, one vote, so that whoever wins or loses can accept the outcome of the election.” He expressed confidence that the election would be peaceful in spite of the violence that had dogged the electioneering since March 23.
News 2013: Ebonyi Records 332,938 ABAKALIKI - Governor. Flood Victims Martin Elechi of Ebonyi state said in Abakaliki that the state recorded no fewer than 332,938 flood victims during the 2013 flood disaster. Elechi announced the figure in Abakaliki, Ebonyi state the inauguration of the Nigeria Erosion and Watershed Management Project, a World Bank-assisted project. According to him, the effect of flooding and gully erosion in the state has been devastating and had caused the state loss of property estimated at billions of naira. The governor expressed optimism that the project would rewrite the ugly trend in the area. Elechi said the state government, in conjunction with the Federal Government, had put in a series of intervention measures to control and contain flood and erosion menace in the state capital. “I wish to implore you take time off your schedule to visit some of the major flood and erosion sites to appreciate ongoing remedial measures being put in place by the state in conjunction with the Federal Government. “Survey shows that the South East zone of the country is at imminent danger as gully erosion alone contributes to its environmental degradation and other associated damages
estimated at millions of dollars annually. “It is for this reason that the Federal Government solicited the support of the World Bank. “The response of the bank gave rise to the initiative for which we are all gathered today,’’ Elechi said. He commended the World Bank for its timely response to the daunting challenge and for its many partnering developmental initiatives in the state. He enumerated areas of the bank’s assistance to include HIV and AIDS, Community-Based Urban Development Project, Community and Social Development Project and Health
System Development Project, among others. In his remarks, Mr Amos Abu, the task team leader of the project, commended the federal and state governments for tackling challenges of erosion menace, especially in the South East. He said the project would collaborate with relevant stakeholders to address flooding and gully erosion in Ebonyi. “Ebonyi is the first among the five South East states to key into the programme and we are optimistic that the project will go a long way in tackling the flooding and erosion menace in the state,” he said.
ABUJA - The Iron and Steel Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (ISSSAN) has urged the Federal Government not to sell the National Iron Ore Mining Company (NIOMCO) Ltd, Itapke in Kogi. The Chairman of the association, Mr Ibori Salihu, told newsmen in Abuja that staff members of NIOMCO were not comfortable with the proposed sale. According to him, selling the company to Global Infrastructure Nigeria (GINL)
Ltd as planned will hamper the National Industrial Revolution Plan of the Federal Government. “We have heard of the coming back of GINL and we are simply not comfortable with this development. “Is Nigeria still ready for industrial revolution as promised by President Goodluck Jonathan during his visit to Nasarawa and Kogi States in 2011? Salihu said that the company had nothing to offer Nigeria and NIOMCO. He appealed to the Federal
L-R: First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan (left), receiving a bouquet of flowers from the President, Association of Spouses of Heads of Mission in Nigeria (ASOHOM), Mrs. Mai Shoji, during a courtesy visit to the First Lady in Abuja recently.
Association Kicks Against Sale Of Mining Coy
Director, Air Drum and Airspace Standard, Mr. Nkemakolam Daniel (left), being received by Governor Sule Lamido of Jigawa, during his visit to the Governor after inspection of Dutse International Airport recently.
Government to complete the rehabilitation of all the plants in NIOMCO before handing it over to any investor of good track record. He urged the government to capture steel companies in its intervention fund to accelerate the completion of their rehabilitation to guarantee
maximum utilisation. The chairman of the association also appealed to the Federal Government to support the move of NIOMCO to achieve its mandate. Salihu commended the Minister of Mines and Steel Development, Mr Musa Sada,
Wike, has urged public examination bodies to embrace the use of Computer-Based Test (CBT) in the conduct of examinations. Wike gave the advice in his address at the inauguration of the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) CBT centre located in Kogo community, Bwari. He said that the CBT centre was endorsed by President Goodluck Jonathan to ensure maintenance of best practices in the conduct of public examinations. The minister urged examination bodies to employ the CBT to improve operational standard in conduct of examination in line with international best practice.
“I urge other public examination bodies to embrace the CBT mode in order to synergise the administration of public examination in Nigeria. “The JAMB experience is already a model in Africa and has become a national pride which can proudly be show-cased to the world,” he said. Wike commended the board for coming up with the CBT mode initiative, saying that it should not relent in its efforts to maintain the required qualities. He lauded the Katsina State Government for building three CBT centres in the three senatorial districts as a right step in the right direction. He urged other state governors to emulate Gov. Ibrahim Shema of Katsina by building CBT centre in local government
The beneficiaries of the scholarship are Chidi Ifeanyi (Electrical Engineering), Nwosu Chinonso (Public Administration), Ihekweme Sampson (Office Management Technology) Esther Ogadimma (Electrical Engineering), Okafor Ogechukwu (Computer Engineering Technology) and Onyewuchi Anthonia (Quantity Survey). She advised the new students to shun negative vices capable of stalling their career and called on the parents and guardians to keep watch over their children and
wards to ensure that they did not derail. “While congratulating you on the admission of your children and wards into this great citadel of learning, we urge you to be highly involved in their activities and upbringing. “You should ensure that your children and wards do not derail due to negative influences and pursuits but to successfully achieve their goals of graduating within the apportioned time and going out into the world as products we can all be proud of,” she said.
Minister Advocates Computer-Based BWARI (FCT) -The Minister Test For Exam Bodies of Education, Mr Nyesome
Rector Urges Students To Acquire Practical Skills OWERRI -The Rector of the Federal Polytechnic, Nekede, Dr Celestina Njoku, has advised its students to acquire practical skills that would give them an edge over others in the labour market. Njoku made the call at the 36th matriculation ceremony of the polytechnic where more than 3,000 students were sworn-in. She said the institution had established an entrepreneurship centre where students could sharpen their skills or learn new ones in line with the Millennium Development Goals.
The rector listed the areas of training to include bead making, sewing, baking, music, art, fishery, speech writing, decoration and catering. She added that three new courses had been added to the academic programmes of the school, bringing the total number of courses to 31. “As of last year, the polytechnic had a total of 28 programmes in five schools, today, the institution has an additional three new programmes namely hospitality
management, arts and design technology and chemical engineering, making a total of 31. “The institution is fully equipped to compete favorably in the labour market with the quality of graduates we produce from our mills,” she said. The rector called on philanthropists and donor agencies to assist the institution in achieving excellence as she awarded scholarships to six students who distinguished themselves in their fields of study.
for the development of the roadmap for metals and solid minerals. NAN recalls that the Federal Government had cancelled its contract with Global Infrastructure Nigeria limited in respect of the National Iron Ore Mining Company. The Federal Government said GNIL was unable to meet the terms of agreement in respect of the National Iron Ore Mining Company.
headquarters to achieve meaningful growth in the education sector. “With CBT coming on stream, it is important therefore that states begin to seriously address the issue of fully integrating technology into curriculum and instruction. “This is important because it is not just keeping with global trends in education, it is also teaching children in today’s digital reality,” he said. In his speech, Prof. Dibu Ojerinde, Registrar of JAMB, said the centre built by the board within four weeks had the capacity to accommodate 250 candidates per session. He said although 156 centres were used to conduct this year’s Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) across the country, only 10 were built by the Board at the cost of N150 million to include the system. According to him, CBT was introduced by the Board to address perennial challenges associated with conduct of Paper Pencil Test. “The CBT has shown that the mode of examination has all it takes to curb the scourge of malpractice, solve challenges of missing scripts, incomplete results and complaints by candidates.” He called for partnership from corporate organisations to build adequate CBT centre across the country.
News
Emir Of Gwoza Gets Appointment Letter MAIDUGURI- The Borno government has presented letter of appointment to the new Emir of Gwoza, Alhaji Muhammad Shehu. Alhaji Baba Kaka, the Commissioner for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs , who presented letter to the new emir in Maiduguri, urged him to uphold the good virtues exhibited by his late father. He said that Shehu’s appointment took effect from June 12. Kaka said that Shehu’s selection was in line with the people’s choice as well as the entire members of the Gwoza Emirate council. “Gwoza has witnessed many challenges, including ethnic and religious differences among its people. “You should strive hard to unite the people of Gwoza irrespective of their differences.” The commissioner
consoled the people of Gwoza Emirate over the demise of the former emir and prayed God to grant his soul eternal peace. In his remark, Shehu thanked the Almighty God for giving him the opportunity to succeed his late father. He pledged to justify the confidence reposed in him by the people and promised to carry everybody along. The last emir died after an attack on his motorcade by insurgents on his way to Gombe to condole the people over the death of Emir of Gombe.
Zamfara Assembly Approves Pensions For Gov, Deputy
Gov. Jonah Jang of Plateau (2nd-left) inspecting the new protocol lounge at Plateau Airport in Jos recently.
NSCDC Arrests Man For Stealing Diesel DUTSE- The Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) in Jigawa, has arrested one Mohammad Garuba, 67, for allegedly stealing 30 litres of diesel in Gwaram Local Government area. Mr Muhammad Gidado NSCDC Commandant in the state told newsmen in Dutse that the suspect was arrested in Gwaram town on Friday night. He said the suspect was arrested by intelligence officers of the command operating in the area while attempting to sell the commodity. He said the suspect, a generator operator, stole the diesel meant to power one of the bore holes sunk in the area. Gidado explained that the suspect had confessed that he had been committing the offence for a long period. He said the suspect would soon be charged to court.
Plateau Commissioner for Tourism, Culture and Hospitality, Pastor Yiljap Abraham (3-left), at the Assop Water falls during familiarisation visit to tourist sites in Riyom Local Government Area of Plateau recently.
Insurgency: MAIDUGURI- Mr Dominic Alistair, the Director, Operations of the International Red Cross (IRC) has pledged the commitment of the organisation to assist displaced victims of insurgency in Borno. Alistair gave the pledge during his courtesy call on the Shehu of Borno, Alhaji Abubakar IbnGarbai at his palace in Maiduguri. He said that the visit was to condole with the people of the state on the incessant attacks by insurgents. Alistair explained that
GUSAU-The Zamfara House of Assembly has passed a bill on payment of grants and pensions to former governors and deputy governors in the state. Moving the motion for the adoption of law, the Majority Leader of the House, Alhaji Salisu Musa, urged his colleagues to pass the law considering the contributions of exgovernors and their deputies to the development of the state. Contributing to the debate, Malam Aminu Danjibga (APC-Tsafe 2),said the motion came at the right time since such officers had started emerging from the state. Danjigba called on his collagues to unanimously adopt the bill and pass it to law. After listening to contributions, the Speaker of the Assembly, Alhaji Sunusi Rikiji, said the house had agreed with the motion. Rikiji then directed the Clerk of the House, Alhaji Abdullahi Bayero, to give it its third reading and allow its passage in to law.
IRC Pledges To Assist Victims
the aim of the visit was to also get first- hand information on the security situation in the state as well as identify means of assisting the
affected victims. In his response, IbnGarbai commended the IRC for the gesture and willingness to assist the people of the state.
The Shehu condemned in totality the activities of the insurgents, pointing out that their actions were contrary to the teachings of both Islam and
Christianity. He further commended the Federal Government in its effort toward restoring peace in the state and the country at large.
Hijacked Tanker Off West Africa Coast Found ACCRAAn oil tanker missing for a week off the coast of West Africa was attacked by pirates who stole its cargo, the company that managed the ship said after speaking with its captain. The Liberia-flagged MT Fair Artemis had last made contact with its
manager, Fairdeal Group SA, on June 4 when it was off the coast of Ghana. “The ship was boarded by a number of pirates who stole the cargo and other items on the vessel,” Fairdeal fleet director John Gray, said in a statement. He added that all on
board were safe. The statement gave no further details. Pirate attacks on vessels jumped by a third off the coast of West Africa last year. Such attacks have pushed up insurance costs for shipping firms operating in a key commodities export hub.
West African piracy attacks are alleged to have its roots in an uprising in Nigeria’s oilrich Niger Delta that has given rise to criminal networks. Gangs target cargoes, which are often transporting fuel, and rob or kidnap crew members.
South West 26 Women DieSchool DailyGirls Of Cervical Chibok Cancer In Nigeria - Expert
L-R: Bauchi State Chairperson, National Association Of Women Journalists (NAWOJ), Hajia Kaltume Shall; Emir of Bauchi, Alhaji Rilwanu Adamu and newly elected NorthEast NAWOJ Zonal Secretary, Hajia Halima Dimis, during the introductory visit of newly elected North-East NAWOJ Zonal Secretary to the Emir recently.
Ekiti Poll
INEC Engages 7,941 Ad Hoc Staff ADO-EKITI - Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has engaged 7, 941 people as ad hoc staff to conduct the June 21 governorship election in Ekiti, Mr Halilu Pai, the state Resident Electoral Commissioner, has said. Pai told newsmen in Ado-Ekiti that the bulk of the ad hoc staff are members of the National Youth Service Corps and students of tertiary institutions. He said the commission engaged such a high number of ad hoc staff in order to attend to the 766,132 persons duly registered as voters in the state.
He said that out of the 7,941 people engaged as ad hoc staff, 2,195 would work as Presiding Officers while 5,605 would work as Assistant Presiding Officers. “Some of the ad hoc staff will be deployed to 177 electoral
Artistes Mourn Kefee LAGOS - Some artistes and residents of Lagos have reacted to the death of Kefee Don Momoh, a popular musician fondly called the Branama Queen. The reports state that Kefee died on June 13 after a 14-hour
Train Vandalism: Railway
Police Grabs Kingpin
LAGOS - The Railway Command of Nigerian Police Force said it had arrested the master-mind of the Tuesday attack on a railway station in Ogun State. The reports state that some aggrieved persons attacked the Itoki Station of the corporation in protest against the sharp hike in the fares of Mass Transit Train Services. During the attack, the station was burnt and somed wagons vandalised. Some tickets, money and phones were also carted away by the hoodlums. The Commissioner of Police in the Command, Mr Nyats Jatau, told newsmen that the command arrested the kingpin of the mob after surveillance. “In the process of screening the people we arrested on Tuesday, we were able to get someone who led us to the kingpin.
wards, 16 collation centres at the local government headquarters and the rest will stay at AdoEkiti,” he said. The REC said the money to pay the allowances of those engaged had been credited into the account of the NYSC, Ekiti to avoid delay in payment.
LAGOS - No fewer than 26 Nigerian women die daily as a result of cervical cancer, a Radiologist, Prof. Ifeoma Okoye, said in Lagos. Okoye, also the Founder, Breast Without Spot (BWS) Initiative, an NGO, made the disclosure at the inauguration of a School-Based Cervical Cancer Vaccination Awareness Initiative. She said that cervical cancer was killing more people worldwide than HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria put together. “We conducted a survey and discovered that cervical cancer is the second killer cancer among women and Nigeria is also the tenth in cervical cancer death worldwide. “Forty-eight million women are at risk, 17, 550 women are diagnosed yearly, 9, 659 women die annually and 26 women on daily basis in Nigeria. “This is alarming and most of the cases are rampant in the developing countries like Nigeria. “It, therefore, requires a proactive political commitment to fight the scourge,” she said. Okoye said that cervical cancer was 99 per cent preventable and prevention was necessary for the reduction and control of cancer burden in the country. The radiologist then, urged government at all levels to improve and strengthen the
“Even now, we are still looking for some of them who fled when they learnt about our operations. “This kingpin was caught with one of the tickets that were carted away when the vandals attacked the station. “Surveillance was laid and nemesis caught up with him and he was grabbed,’’ Jatau said. The commissioner said that the command was still hunting for others in connection with the attack. According to him, no fewer than 40 persons connected with the vandalism have been charged to the Ebute Metta Magistrates’ Court. He said that the command had released those arrested, but found to be innocent. The corporation, introduced two new train services and six 68-capacity air-conditioned coaches launched by the Vice President, Arch. Namadi Sambo.
flight to Chicago, USA for an event. She reportedly collapsed in the course of the flight and went into coma, forcing the plane to land in Los Angeles for medical attention. The Leader of Infinity musical group of the “Olori Oko” fame, Joseph Okugbo, described the death of Kefee as a ‘rude shock’ to the nation’s entertainment industry. Okugbo said that he and other artistes were confident and
hopeful Kefee would recover from her illness. “Sincerely we are still in shock. She was such a vibrant, talented and sweet person. “Her departure can only be understood by God Almighty but we can only take solace in the fact that she lived a purposeful life. “She impacted on millions of people around the globe and even though she is gone now, she will keep on inspiring young people for years to come through her music.
healthcare system in terms of funding, infrastructure upgrade and training of medical personnel. She also urged Nigerians to imbibe regular health check to prevent late detection of cancer cases and cancer mortality. Also speaking, Dr Joy Agbara, Senior Registrar, Obstetrics and Gynaecology Department, Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH), said it was unacceptable that many women still died when cervical cancer was preventable, treatable and curable. Agbara said that lack of awareness, resources and low budgetary allocation to the health sector contributed to the country’s high rate of the disease burden. She urged women to go for
Smoking
regular screening for early detection and prompt treatment. “Cervical cancer has no particular symptoms but women should look out for signs such as pains around the cervix, painful intercourse, foul smelly discharge, weight loss and weakness. “A lot of patients died due to lack of access to healthcare and high cost of cancer treatment,” she said. In her remark, Miss Funmilayo James, BWS National Coordinator, said the schoolbased vaccination initiative was adopted to prevent cervical cancer in countries. James said the initiative involved parents and school owners or administrators to consent and sponsor the vaccination of girls between the age of nine and 13 as a primary prevention.
Root Cause Of Bad Breath - Expert
OSOGBO - A medical practitioner in Osogbo, Dr Taiwo Oso, identified smoking as a major cause of offensive breath, known as Halitosis in medical parlance. Oso, who works with Emmanuel Maternity in OgoOluwa area of Osogbo town, told the newsmen that the health hazard of smoking without caution was disastrous. He said the danger inherent in smoking apart from the long time adverse effect like heart diseases, complication in the liver and a host of others, was the menace of bad or offensive breath. According to him, offensive breath for smokers in most cases might be a prelude to lung diseases which is as a result of constant smoking. “Halitosis in the medical world simply implies offensive or bad breath, which principally come up as a result of smoking. “Although there are some other causes of bad breath, smoking remains an integral part of the causes. “Smokers who are experiencing this must be careful and make frantic efforts to eschew the habit because this
may be a sign of acute lung disease,’’ he said. He decried the high rate of smoking among students which, he said, was even more prevalent in secondary schools and described it as dangerous and pathetic. The medical expert therefore, called on parents to be vigilant and monitor the activities their children before it becames too late to correct. “Sincerely, the rate of smoking among young boys and girls in our secondary school nowadays is dangerous and pitiable. “It is dangerous because it tends to derail them and pitiable because they are the future. “Beyond recent legislations in some of the states where public smoking were outlawed, efforts must also be made to discourage this habit among the young chaps in the secondary schools,’’ he said. Oso further said that the most inherent danger of smoking was the psychological potency of addiction which made it practically difficult to stop the act in a jiffy.
Emir Of Bauchi, Alhaji Rilwanu Adamu (middle) with NAWOJ officials during the introductory visit of newly elected North-East NAWOJ Zonal Secretary to the Emir recently.
Lagos Choice Of Leaders: Fashola, Sagay, Falae, Advise Nigerians
LAGOS Governor Babatunde Fashola of Lagos State has urged Nigerians to choose leaders based on their ability to deliver good governance rather than sentiments. He gave the advice in Ikeja at a programme to commemorate the 21st anniversary of the June 12, 1993 presidential election, which was widely adjudged to be free and fair, but was annulled by the then military administration. The programme, with the theme “June 12 and Challenges of the Fourth Republic,“ was organised by the state government in conjunction with June 12 Coalition of Democratic Formations. Fashola contended that it was the capacity of leaders that would deliver democratic dividends and not sentiments or emotions. The governor, therefore, advised the electorate to make informed choices during elections by subjecting would-be leaders to debates to ascertain their leadership capacity before voting for them. “We must not have elections without testing the capacity of the candidates. We cannot go to elections without putting the candidates to test. “And debates on TV across all sections must become part of our democratic culture, because it enables us to make informed choice about competence. “So we can no longer vote on emotions and empathy .We must subject the candidates to tests .We must ask questions like “What would do you about my circumstance? “What are your plans?“ “In this way, we can leave all the emotional issues; they may be relevant, but they are not as important as the capacity of the candidates to deliver and their
understanding of development issues, “ he said. Fashola said the June 12, 1993 election was particularly memorable as Nigerians had the opportunity to scruitinise the presumed winner, Chief Moshood Abiola, via debates before voting for him. He described June 12 as a watershed in the political history of the country, saying it represented the hope of a truly democratic Nigeria. The governor advised Nigerians to live by the lessons of June 12 by joining efforts in strengthening democracy and democratic institutions. He implored Nigerians to help bring change in the country by showing more interest in the political process and voting competent candidates during elections. Also speaking, constitutional lawyer, Prof. Itse Sagay advised Nigerians to shun sentiments like religion in voting candidates during elections. He advised the electorate to rather choose leaders based on competence as democratic dividends had no religious coloration. “Religion has no place in good governance. For example, it is not a Muslim-Muslim ticket or a Christian-Christian ticket that will build roads, hospitals and so on. It is good leadership. “Therefore, Nigerians should vote for leaders based on what they can offer, rather than sentiments like religion,“ he said. Sagay called for the strengthening of the electoral system to make the nation’s democracy more virile. He contended that democracy was a misnomer in the absence of rule of law and free and fair elections. The lawyer described the June 12 election as a historic moment in the nation’s political history
as it gave room for the emergence of the presumed winner, Chief Moshood Abiola, through popular decision. Sagay urged Nigerians to imbibe the values of the election and pursue efforts that would promote free and fair elections in the country. On his part, Chief Ayo
Opadokun, a pro-democracy activist, said fighting corruption was central to strengthening democracy. He urged Nigerians to resolve to eliminate the threats of corruption in the country by doing what was right and living above board. Opadokun said June 12 should
L-R: -Sen Olabiyi Durojaiye; Gov Babatunde Fashola of Lagos and Afenifere -Chieftain, Chief Ayo Opadokun, at a June 12 lecture in Lagos recently.
unexpectedly been involved in some domestic issues because some children have been kidnapped by either of the parents. “There was an experience when issues were raised over the release of a child to either the mother or the father, unknown to the school that they had a domestic problem. “The security of the child lies on us the moment the child is in our care, till the time the parent or guardian comes for the child. “We take roll calls or head counts after the long and short breaks, and immediately before school closes, before being released to their parents. “Teachers, pupils and all concerned in the school are trained to be security conscious,” he said. Rev. Sister Bernadette Okure (SHCJ), School Administrator of Cardoso Secondary School and St. Mary’s Primary School, Ajegunle, said the security of a child should not be left to the parents alone. “The security of a child is the
Falae spoke at a programme organised by the Oodua Peoples’ Congress (OPC) tagged: “June 12, A Solution Model for 2015 Electoral Challenges. “June 12, 1993 presidential election was a beautiful day, Nigerians need to repent and connect with the spirit of June 12. “We must repent and prevent impunity from splitting our system for us to overcome the trouble and challenges facing the country,’’ he said. Falae, a former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, appealed to Nigerians to pray for the delegates at the ongoing national conference so that they would achieve a formidable outcome. Mr. Gani Adams, the National Coordinator of OPC, said that people voted during the June 12 elections without fear. Adams said that the election was properly planned and well conducted and it was the freest and fairest in Nigeria. He advised Prof. Attahiru Jega, the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, to take a cue from the way the June 12, 1993 election was conducted to ensure success in 2015.
Emergencies: Distress
LAGOS- The Deputy Director, Lagos State Ambulance Service, Dr Saidat Okaga, has underscored the importance of making distress calls during emergency situations, saying they could save lives. Okaga told newsmen in Lagos that making distress calls was particularly important especially in a situation where expectant mothers were about to be
Calls Can Save Lives - Official delivered of their babies. According to her, distress calls can help to improve access to healthcare in the state. “We expect people to call us on 767 only when there are emergencies. “Emergencies like ‘my wife is in labour‘, ‘there is no access to a vehicle‘ or ‘it is very late‘. “Also, if you see somebody on
Security In Schools: Education Stakeholders should be an eye opener to all. LAGOS- Some stakeholders Canvass Collaboration Oke said that the movement of in education have urged parents to assist schools in ensuring adequate security for pupils by allowing only trusted people to take care of their children after school hours. The stakeholders expressed the viewpoint in separate interviews with newsmen in Lagos. Chief Yomi Otubela, Principal Consultant, Lagooz Schools, Orile-Agege, Lagos told newsmen that most parents and guardians were negligent about their children’s security. Otubela said that children most times walked long distances to schools, unaccompanied, because their parents had other commitments to attend to. “With the incessant cases of kidnappings, it is not a healthy practise because security starts from the moment a child leaves the house,” Otubela said. He said inasmuch as it was understood that there was the need for parents to make ends meet, the child should be left in the care of a responsible adult. Mr Shakiru Raji, Proprietor, Golden-Light Private School, Ejigbo, said some schools had
be a guide in the nation’s quest to attain true democracy and good governance. In another event organised to commemorate the anniversary in Lagos, Chief Olu Falae urged Nigerians to repent and be connected to the spirit of the June 12 election.
responsibility of every adult, which is the African culture, and we need to go back to that culture,” she said. Mr Lawrence Oke, Proprietor of Springland Private School, Kosofe, said that the security challenges in parts of the country
people within and around the school environment was monitored, and that any suspicious movement was reported. He stressed that there must be an agreement from both parents on who should take the child from school, after closing.
the street, in a vehicle, or at home in need of medical assistance, people should feel free to call 767. “And the public should know that they would be speaking to qualified personnel. We have nurses and paramedics available to answer the calls. “We have well-equipped ambulances to take care of the distress calls that could be made; the 767 line is free. “It is available all day long and it doesn’t warrant you calling
unnecessarily and of course, it is a way of improving access to healthcare in Lagos State.“ Okaga said that the agency received 5,654 distress calls between May 2013 and February. 2014. She said that 28 of the calls were on maternal cases, out of which 20 were moved to definitive points of care. The doctor added that four women died due to delay in placing a distress call or “wrong address factor“.
Assault: Estate Agent Docked LAGOS- The Police have brought a 25-year old estate agent, Elijah Imoh, who allegedly beat up a landlord, before a Lagos Magistrates’ Court.
Awake Nigeria movement in a peaceful demonsration during June 12 lecture in Lagos recently.
Imoh, who resides within Ikota Housing Estate, Ajah, is facing a two-count charge of conspiracy and unlawful assault. The prosecutor, Sgt. Daniel Ighodalo, said that the offences were committed on May 20, at about 9. 05 p.m. within the estate. Ighodalo said that Imoh beat up a landlord, Mr Paul Effiong, who asked him to remit the rent owed by one of his tenants, which was in his (Imoh’s) possession. According to the prosecutor, Imoh descended on Effiong and beat him to a state of unconsciousness. Ighodalo said that the offences contravened Sections 171 and 409 of the Criminal Law of Lagos State, 2011. Imoh, however, pleaded not guilty to both counts of the charge. The Magistrate, Mrs. Olaitan Ajayi, granted the accused N50, 000 bails with two sureties in like sum and adjourned the case till July 4, for trial.
News Voters Registration:
L-R: Former Lagos Administrator, Rear Admiral Ndubuisi Kanu (rtd); Lagos Commissioner for Environment, Mr Tunji Bello, Gov Babatunde Fashola of Lagos and his Deputy, Mrs Adejoke-orelope Adefulire, at the inauguration of Ndubuisi Kanu park in Lagos recently.
ABUJA- Pastor Divine Eches, a former youth leader of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), has advised Nigerian youths to register with INEC to enable them fulfil their civic rights . Eches, who is the immediate past president of CAN Youth Wing in the South-East, gave the advice in Abuja in an interview with newsmen. He said that it was necessary for the youths to register in order not to deny themselves of their right. “Youths who are up to 18 years of age and above should ensure they register and ensure they have their permanent voters’ cards. “It is not just complaining
Cleric Tasks Youths
about the leadership of the country but they must ensure they vote in the right candidates in 2015,’’he said. Eches urged the youths not allow themselves to be used by selfish politicians, adding that such politicians would not use their children to foment violence. He said that the youths could bring about the desired positive change in the society since they constitute the largest population of the country. He said that though Nigeria was going through some challenges, this should not discourage the youths from exercising their civic responsibilities.
“The youths have a very unique place in the 2015 elections. The youths must have a place and they must play a role to develop the nation. “Democracy and politics is a process that is why we are telling our leaders that whatever they are doing about us, we must be involved,’’ he said. Eches stressed the need for the youths to be involved in nation building and urged them to contribute their quota to national development. He said that the desired changed in the country would not be achieved if the youths continue to complain about the leaders.
Association Tasks NASS
VAPP Bill:
Part of Ndubuisi Kanu park inaugurated in Lagos recently.
Fashola Names Park After Ndubuisi Kanu IKEJA Governor Babatunde Fashola of Lagos State inaugurated a park in Ikeja, and named it after retired Rear Admiral Ndubusi Kanu, a former governor of the state. Speaking at the inauguration, Fashola said he named the park after Kanu in recognition of his service to the state and his consistent role in promoting the ideals of June 12, 1993 elections. The reports state that the new park created on a land area of 17,195 sq metres, has trees, playing ground, a multi-purpose hall, garden seats and lights, walkways and a parking lot. Fashola said: “Rear Admiral Ndubuisi Kanu has been a long distance runner in his choice and commitments he made 21 years ago. “Year on year as I can remember, I cannot remember any June 12 anniversary that he did not participate in. “All office bearers today across the country must continue to remember that if those who stood up for democracy did not do so, we may not be office bearers today. “Therefore, I dedicate this park in honour of Rear Admiral Ndubuisi Kanu, not only for his service to the state as one of my predecessors, but also for his support for democracy, ‘’he said. Fashola said that the creation of the park as well as the other ones in the state was one of the
government‘s strategies to create opportunities and mitigate the negative impact of climate change. Responding, Kanu said the naming of the park after him came as a surprise, he thanked the governor for the gesture and dedicated the structure to all those who stood for democracy. He said that he had always seen and admired the park even when it was under construction but could not have imagined it would be named after him on completion. Ealier, Mr Tunji Bello, the Commissioner for Environment said the park, apart from enhancing the aesthetics of Alausa and its environment, it was created to provide a cool relaxation place for residents. In Osogbo, Governor Rauf Aregbesola stressed the need to nurture true democracy in Nigeria, to enable the country stabilise and develop the existing structure. “The annulment of June 12 by the then military dictatorship had really affected the country both economically and politically. “Retrogressive forces are also working hard to see that true democracy is truncated and such heinous act must not repeat itself again in Nigeria,’’ Aregbesola said. Dr Afolabi Samuel, a Senior Lecturer at the Department of
Political Science, Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), called on election stakeholders to ensure that all the votes count during elections. Samuel that said Nigerians needed to engage in mass participation in the political process and ensure access to their civic right. He said that with what happened on June 12, 1993, “there is the need to re-visit the problems and prospects of free and fair elections in order to ensure credibility of future
exercises.” The university teacher however called on the people to monitor their votes and ensure that no politician would lure them into selling their right to vote. It was be recalled that former military president retired Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, on June 23, 1993 annulled the June 12, 1993 presidential election. The election was believed to have been won by Chief Moshood Abiola, a business mogul.
Women Empowerment:
Maku Lauds First Lady
ABUJA- The Minister of Information, Mr Labaran Maku, has commended the foresight of the First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan, in mobilising and empowering women to pursue peace and development in the country. Maku made the commendation in Abuja when he received a delegation from the Nasarawa State Chapter of Women for Change Initiative. He described Jonathan as the most successful First Lady in the history of Nigeria, especially in the political empowerment of women. Maku said she worked tirelessly, campaigning for women to occupy key public
positions in the country. He said that her relentless commitment to the course resulted in the appointment of 13 women into the current federal cabinet and 16 women permanent secretaries. The minister said the Women for Change Initiative was an agenda that was timely and tasked the Nasarawa State Chapter to emulate the first lady in the campaign for peace in the state. The minister expressed sadness over the frequent eruption of violence in Nasarawa the state ?and urged the women to be in the forefront in the campaign for peaceful coexistence.
ABUJA- Dr Valerie Obot, the National President, Medical Women Association of Nigeria (MWAN), has urged the National Assembly to ensure the early passage of the Violence Against Persons Prohibition (VAPP) Bill. Obot, in a statement in Abuja, said “such legislation should be passed and enforced to protect women and girls from physical, sexual and mental abuse’’. The reports state that the VAPP Bill passed by the House of Representatives in May 2013 has passed through the first reading stage at the Senate. Obot said MWAN wanted the stipulation of more active penalties for all perpetrators of rape, violence against women and abduction. She, however, decried the recent abduction of over 200 girls from the Government Secondary School at Chibok in Borno by Boko Haram insurgents. The MWAN president said the
abduction of “defenceless schoolgirls is a crime against womenfolk and a violation of the girl-child. “It is time for all citizens of Nigeria, particularly women, to join the Federal Government and the security forces in protecting our children. “If we do not protect our children, who will? Where is the confidence and joy of parenthood if our children cannot be assured of their safety. “The abducted girls should be searched for as a matter of urgency in consideration of the health implications and the trauma brought upon their parents and family.’’ Obot appealed to government at all levels and security agencies to ensure that the Chibok girls were rescued urgently. “As mothers, protectors of girls and nurturers of feminine virtues, we are shocked that these events have continued unabated. “We join other Nigerians to plead for a stop to the menace,’’ she said.
Driver Arraigned For Breaking Neighbour’s Fence ABUJA- The police have arraigned a driver, Ogochukwu Olelewe, in a Wuse Zone 2 Senior Magistrates’ Court Abuja for mischief. Olelewe, 30, who resides at Zone 7, Lugbe, Abuja, was alleged to have broken a blocked fence, causing water to flow into the complainant’s compound. The prosecutor, Sgt Jeremiah Elijah, told the court that on June 4, one Mr Prince Imo of Lugbe Zone 7, Abuja reported the matter to the Lugbe Police Station. Elijah told the court that the complainant blocked a fence through which water was flowing into his apartment, but that the accused was alleged to have deliberately opened up the fence. The prosecutor informed the court that the complainant had warned the accused on several occasions to stop causing trouble for him and not tamper with the
fence, but Olelewe went ahead to break the fence. The prosecutor said the offence contravened section 327 of the Penal Code. If convicted, the offence is punishable with two years imprisonment, a fine or both. The accused, however, pleaded not guilty to the charge. The prosecutor prayed the court to grant him a date to open his case against the accused after his plea of innocence. The magistrate, Mrs Grace Adebayo, granted Olelewa bail for N100,000 and two sureties, adding that they must be public servants not below Grade Level 05. Adebayo also ordered that the sureties must be resident within the court’s jurisdiction and should have a traceable residential address. The magistrate adjourned the matter until August 11 for hearing
Abuja NSCDC Distributes 120 Cars To Officers ABUJA - The Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) said that it had taken delivery of 120 KIA vehicles for distribution to its officers. Mr Dapo Yusuf, the Head, Private Security Guard Unit of the corps, disclosed this in an interview with newsman in Abuja. He said the vehicles, purchased by the NSCDC Cooperative, were distributed to 120 officers of the corps by the Minister of Interior, Abba Moro. Yusuf said 200 officers had applied but the cooperative was able to deliver only 120 cars, adding that the remaining 80 would be delivered soon.
APC Committed To Providing Alternative Platform - Akande ABUJA - The outgoing Interim National Chairman, All Progressive Congress (APC), Chief Bisi Akande, has said the party is committed to creating an alternative platform that would satisfy the yearnings and aspirations of Nigerians. Akande gave the assurance in his opening remark at the first National Convention of the APC in Abuja. “ APC will provide effective security to lives and property as well as improve the welfare of the citizens if voted into power in 2015, “ Akande said. He said the convention would produce credible and reliable leaders that would administer the party in the next four years. He said that the APC was a child of necessity that was determined to address insecurity and the high level of decay of the nation’s infrastructure. According to him, Nigerians are advocating for change that will alleviate their sufferings from hunger and starvation since 1999. The interim chairman said
M a n a g i n g Director, News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), Mr Ima Niboro (left), being welcomed by the C h i n e s e Ambassador to Nigeria, Amb. GU Xiaojie, during his courtesy visit to the Embassy in Abuja recently.
He said the vehicles were distributed on loan basis to the beneficiaries at the cost of between N1.2 million and N4.3 million each. He said that the beneficiaries were expected to pay the loan within five years. Yusuf, who commended the cooperative for the effort, said the gesture would enhance staff welfare. “Ordinarily, the staff will not have been able to raise this huge amount to buy the cars,” he said. usuf, however, appealed to officials of the cooperative societies nationwide to be transparent in the conduct of the exercise.
that the philosophy surrounding the formation of the party was the desire to provide social security to the citizens and restore public confidence in governance. He stressed the need for INEC to use electronic voting in the 2015 general elections with a view to preventing rigging and irregularities. “ The need for increased ICT role in our election management and electoral process cannot be overemphasised in order to ensure free, fair and transparent election in Nigeria.“ Earlier, the Chairman of the Progressives Governors Forum, Gov. Rochas Okorocha of Imo, said APC was a political party carefully built to improve the lives of all Nigerians. Okorocha said “come 2015, our victory has been signed, sealed and deliver”. He said that the party believed in the doctrine of social contract between the leaders and the led, adding that the public office holder was a trustee of the people.
FG Distributes 8 SURE-P Buses To People With Disabilities ABUJA - The Federal Government distributed eight Subsidy Re-Investment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P) buses to People With Disabilities (PWD). Sen. Anyim Pius Anyim, the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), who presented the buses to the representatives of the group, said that the buses would ensure easy movement for them. Anyim said that the buses were part of the efforts by government
to provide more support and empowerment to them and that the buses would help them to move freely as they carry out their businesses. He said that another eight buses would be distributed to PWD before the end of the month. “My office is available to you all. Anything we can do to assist the members of your association to ensure that your desires are achieved would be done by government. “If there is any problem facing
any of you the government is ready to attend to it. Government will always be willing and available to work with you to actualise your dreams. “Government will also be willing to partner with you in every area we think can help you for the progress and growth of the association,’’ he said. He, however, advised members of the association not to feel intimidated or think that there was no hope for them. Ayim urged them to appreciate God in whatever situation they
insurgency and terrorism and complementing the efforts of the government. The communiqué was signed by former Head of State, Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar who chaired the summit. The representatives of APGA, PDP, LP, APC, IPAC and the INEC chairman, the National Security Adviser to the President, Mohammed Sambo Dasuki also signed the document. The Special Adviser to the
President on Inter-Party Affairs Ben Obi also signed the communiqué. The communiqué said that “once a person is elected and sworn in as president, he or she becomes the symbol, heart and soul of the nation. “He or she must therefore be accorded the honour, the protection and respect of all devoid of partisan politics and primordial sentiments.”
Political Parties Urged To Work ABUJA - The leadership of For National Unity political parties in the country have been urged to work toward fostering the unity of Nigeria. The call is contained in a communiqué issued at the end of the All Political Parties and Stakeholders Summit which held in Abuja. According to the communiqué, political parties and stakeholders must act and speak with one voice and as one nation. “The political parties must pool resources to forestall breaching national security, fight
President, Nigerian Medical Association, Dr Kayode Obembe (middle), addressing a News Conference on contemporary issues in Abuja recently with him are: 1st Vice president, Dr Titus Ibekwe (left) and Secretary, Dr Aderemi Alayaki.
found themselves physically. “Having a disability does not mean a person is not healthy or that he or she cannot be healthy. “You can do something to empower yourselves in any area you feel you can. The government is committed to providing support and assistance to your association,’’ he said. In his rermarks, Mr Chike Okongwu, a member of SUREP and one of the disabled persons said that SURE-P had invested a total of N15 billion in the Mass Transit Scheme. Okongwu said that 8.9 billion was provided in the 2012 budget and 6.1 billion in the 2013 budget. He said that the money was being managed by Infrastructure Bank Nigeria, adding that the bank had the expertise in managing revolving loans and that the N15 billion was actually a revolving loan. “The money is not given to any individuals. We have recorded a high percentage in recovering the money from people who take loans. We ensure that people who collect loans pay back,’’ he said.
FCT Water Board Vows To Sustain Supply Of Potable Water
ABUJA - The Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Water Board has assured residents of the territory of improved and uninterrupted supply of clean water to the territory. Mr Michael Adebayo, Director of the board, gave this assurance in an interview with newsman in Abuja. Adebayo said that the completion and commissioning of phases 3 and 4 of the FCT Water treatment plants would further boost water supply in areas where supply had been problematic. According to him, the board has an “Urban Water Monitoring Unit’’ which monitors the quality off water at the level of
consumption to ensure that it is germ free. “Completion of phases 3 and 4 of our treatment plant has helped improve pressure of water supply to hilly areas like Maitama, where supply had been problematic. “Our Urban monitoring Unit ensures that the water at the level of consumption is, not only germ free, but also capable of fighting disease. “We equally have a department of “rural water supply’’ which collaborates with the Satellite Towns Development Agency to ensure that satellite towns enjoy the same quality supply as the city centre,’’ the director said.
Business + Economy Bauchi Can Generate N4.8bn From Zalanga Crusher Plant - Commissioner
L-R: Head of Registration, National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), Dr. Zainab Makarfi; Head of Zonal Offices Operations, Alhaji Idris Mohammed and Executive Secretary, Dr. Femi Thomas, at NHIS workshop for Zonal and State Coordinators in Enugu recently.
ZALANGA (BAUCHI) Alhaji Sani Bura, the Bauchi State Commissioner for Works and Transport, says the state can generate more than N4.8 billion revenue annually from its Zalanga Crusher Plant. Bura made the revenue projection in Zalanga while handing over the plant to the Bauchi Mining Synergy and Exploration (BSMSEL), an agency under the state Ministry of Solid Minerals. He said the plant, with the capacity to crush 960 tonnes of aggregate stones daily at N5, 000 per cubic meter, would generate N4, 893,151,000 annually. He said that the plant, established in 1988, was functioning at full capacity before the creation of Gombe State in 1996.
Participants at a workshop on voters education for Principals of secondary schools and electoral officers in Bauchi recently.
FG To Invest $1.6bn In Power Transmission
ABUJA -The Federal Government has said that it would invest 1.6 billion dollars to upgrade and expand the power transmission network. The Minister of Power, Prof. Chinedu Nebo, made this known when a delegation of the Bankers’ Forum visited him in his office in Abuja. Nebo said the investment, which was to ensure stable power supply in the country, had been approved by the National Economic Council. He said the fund would be sourced from the proceeds of the National Integrated Power Projects (NIPP) in the country. Nebo said the Federal Government would also source 500 million dollars from the World Bank and 150 million dollars from African Development Bank (AfDB) to turn around the sector. He said that the renewed vigor was geared toward infrastructure development of the transmission sub-sector, which was important to power supply chain. The minister described transmission as the life-wire in the electricity value chain, and expressed government’s commitment to expanding transmission capacity to 120 per cent of generation. He said the Federal government was also trying to address the issue of gas challenge to the power plants and adequate funding for the sector as a whole.
Nebo called on the banking sector to intensify their partnership with the Federal Government and private investors in the sector as a way of fast tracking its development. He stressed the need for the banking sector to help genuine
investors and individuals willing to invest in the sector with loans. Earlier, Mr Ifie Sekibo, Managing Director, Heritage Bank and Chairman of the forum, said that the visit was to show their support for the transformation of the power
sector. Sekibo pledged the forum’s continued support for the sector, and called on other stakeholders to join the transformation train. He stressed the need for government to tackle the issue of gas challenge, infrastructure decay and adequate funding for the sector to make it more vibrant.
Confab: Delegates Want Special Banks ABUJA - Some delegates to the National Conference in Abuja proposed the establishment of special banks for women in the country. The delegates, who made the suggestion while deliberating on the report of the Committee on Economy, Trade and Investment of the conference, said the proposed bank would provide women with access to low interest loan. Hajia Aishatu Isma’iI, representing Kano state said there was need to establish a special bank for women to access low interest loans to finance their businesses. She said that most women were engaged in various small businesses and since they were not big business owners, they could not compete with industrialists to seek loans from commercial banks. “I want to suggest that either Peoples’ Bank should be resuscitated or a similar bank should be established to help the women who cannot go to the commercial banks to borrow money.
For Women
“This has become imperative because they are major contributors to the Nigerian economy as they provide services in various areas. “I am an advocate of women’s bank because with that, the bottlenecks will be removed especially the collaterals banks are asking us to pay. Some of us do not have these collaterals. “With the establishment of women’s bank, I think a lot of progress would be made in that direction,’’ Isma’il said. In her contribution, Mrs. Felicail Sani, representing National Association of Market Women also supported the establishment of special banks for women. Sani said in spite of their contribution to the country’s economic development, the women had not been given the needed attention. “In 1989, we were deceived and given the now defunct Peoples’ Bank but now we don’t have that bank. Community Bank was also introduced; where
is the bank now? Now it is Micro Finance Bank. “I am appealing to this conference to recommend to government through an act to establish a special bank for the women.
“With the creation of Gombe State, some of the plant’s assets were shared between the Bauchi s State Government and the new state. “This development was largely responsible for the collapse of activities at the plant and since then the state government had been leasing the plant to one construction company to the other,” he said. The commissioner expressed optimism that the taking over of the plant by BSMSEL would go a long way in resuscitating the plant to operate at full capacity and enable the state exploit its huge revenue potential. Responding, Alhaji Sagir Saleh, the state Commissioner for Solid Minerals, said that Bauchi State was blessed with abundant solid mineral resources which could impact positively on the state revenue if properly harnessed. “The transfer of this plant to Bauchi Mining Synergy and Exploration is a step in the right direction towards exploiting the potentials of the rich solid minerals deposit in the state. “The time for talking is over. It is time for action which is
being demonstrated today with the handing over of this abandoned gold-mine to the experts for proper utilisation,” Saleh said. Saleh, who was represented by the Permanent Secretary in the ministry, Malam Isa Mohammed, who is also the Managing Director of BSMSEL, said that huge capital outlay would be required to overhaul the plant. He called on all stakeholders in the solid minerals industry to join hands with the state government and invest in the company with assurance of huge returns on investment. “As miners, research institutes, mining related associations, you all has a key roles to play for effective resuscitation of the plant. “I therefore urged you to partner with us to move the solid mineral sector to greater heights and we will all be smiling to the bank,” he said. Also speaking, Alhaji Bello Galoji, the Chairman, Bauchi State Chapter of the Miners Association of Nigeria (MAN), commended the state government for the effort to resuscitate the plant.
Association Urges Mandatory Micro-Insurance LAGOS - Mr Yemi Soladoye, the Technical Adviser, Insurance Consumers Association of Nigeria (ISCAN), urged the authorities to make microinsurance mandatory at the local government level. Soladoye told newsmen in Lagos that the federal and state governments needed to also subsidise the insurance premium to make it affordable. The technical adviser said once that was done, victims of unforeseen incidents, such as the recent bombings in Abuja, would be able to make valid claims from an insurance company. “So, when that kind of incident happens, things like flood disaster, things like market fire, no government needs to go and take (funds) out of its allocation and say we are giving N1 billion to so-so-so people.
“That kind of post-loss coping mechanism is not going to help us anywhere in this country. It is not modern. It is not progressive. “Let us make pre-loss arrangements so that once it happens, not just from bomb blasts, but from other causes, this person can go and make a valid claim in an insurance company. “And then insurance will grow. There will be funds for projects of national development because insurance companies will still invest such funds in the society. “And then they will create employment unlike this handout approach which is not modern in any way.“ He said that the federal and state governments could collaborate with ISCAN to organise people into groups and mutual trusts in order to arrange insurance policies for them.
Institute To Establish Fish Farmers’ Cooperative LAGOS - The Nigerian
Institute for Oceanography and Marine Research says it is set to establish a fish farmers’ cooperative to checkmate irregularities in market prices of fish. Dr Mabel Yarhere, the Head, Extension Research Liaison Services section of the institute said this at the Aquaculture Innovation Platform for stakeholders in Lagos on Tuesday. Yarhere said that the cooperative organisation would serve as an organised body for aggrieved fish farmers and as a platform to help farmers in the fisheries sub-sector. “They need to come together
and agree on a regular price. If they come together as one platform, it will help them instead of the market women reaping all the profit. “We are going to register farmers into cooperatives; bankers are ready to give them facility once they are registered.” Yarhere said that the platform would enlighten fish farmers on ways to develop and create a sustainable market. She said that the enlightenment would help to reduce fish importation and increase food security. “We have a lot of youths here and potential fish farmers who will key into this enlightenment programme to service their own
fish farms. “Once they start producing, it will stop fish importation, there will be excess in the market,’’ Yarhere said. Mr Eze Nwakwoma, the Head of Agribusiness, Union Bank of Nigeria reaffirmed the bank’s commitment to fund farmers who were ready to add value. Nwakwoma said that a cooperative would accord farmers easy access to bank loans and enhance production. “A forum like this organised for fish farmers is an avenue for them to form a cooperative. “It gives them the opportunity to access loan, and they can produce 10 times the capacity they are producing.’’
A SHORT SPEECH BY OMO N’OBA N’EDO, UKU AKPOLOKPOLO, OBA OF BENIN, ON THE INVITATION OF SOME LEADERS OF APC AND PDP ON SATURDAY, 14 JUNE 2014
I thank leaders of All Progressive Congress (APC) and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for honouring my invitation at short notice. I invite you to my Palace to appeal to you on the need to allow peace to continue to reign in Edo State. I know you as politicians have a way of resolving political issues no matter how delicate and sensitive the issues are. Politicians in Edo State, regardless of whichever political parties they belong to, I am quite sure, will do all they can to ensure that our great State especially Benin City the Capital is not made ungovernable for political reasons. I know as citizens of Edo State, you will always do all you can to protect our people and our land. On this very note, taking into consideration what has been happening since the beginning of this week, I am appealing to you not to engage in the destruction of lives and properties for whatever reasons. I also appeal to you as you leave here to have the interest of Edo State at heart and amicably resolve whatever political disagreement you may have, which I am very sure you are well capable of resolving for peace and security to continue. I thank you for coming and God bless you all. OMO N’OBA EREDIAUWA, OBA OF BENIN
THE need for gainful employment of citizens in any society cannot be over emphasised, as it provides the key to a chain of other stabilising socio economic as well as political activities in any given society. MANY a country or society with employment problems have had their social, political and economic structures dislocated as the scourge of unemployment has a spiraling effect on all other sectors of the economy. This among other reasons explains why countries of the world, make frantic efforts to ensure that unemployment as a problem, is tackled headlong so as to keep it in check DIFFERENT countries of the world, adopt various means of checking the scourge especially youth unemployment The advanced democracies for example, have some cushioning measures like welfare scheme in which the unemployed are given some stipends to keep body and soul together before they are finally fixed up with jobs. COUPLED with this scheme, are also Employment Agencies which serve dual purposes of acting as data bank and “middle men” for the employers as well as jobs seekers; providing useful information for employers of labour as to the availability of qualified applicants who register with them with details of their curriculum vitae, and to the applicants, who are well fed with vital information of available jobs with details about such job specification, qualification required, remuneration and all other such information as may be required. HERE in Nigeria, spirited efforts have been made over the years to also address the issue of unemployment, especially among youths who have created social, economic and political problems for governments at all levels. IT will be recalled that as a way of redirecting the attention of unemployed Nigerian youths, the then military government of Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo floated a youth employment scheme which it tagged. “Operation Feed the Nation’ (OFN), the aim of which was to have our youths go back to the land and farm for the benefit of all.
THE NIGERIAN
Tackling Unemployment Challenge PHILOSOPHICALLY, the scheme was to serve the dual purpose of directing the energies of the teeming unemployed youths into productive venture and also to reduce the army of the unemployed even as Nigerians were to have abundant food to eat. REALISING the unending scourge of unemployment, the then Alhji Shehu Shagari’s administration also made effort to contain it by floating the ‘Green Revolution” programme to achieve a zero unemployment status. AFTER these, the then IBB administration created a body called the National Directorate of Employment (NDE) to try and collate and coordinate the task of registering and giving employment to the unemployed. The OBJ’s second coming, saw the creation of the National Poverty Eradication Programme (NAPEP), all aimed at tackling unemployment. IT is imperative to note at this point that all these strategies have not been effective due mainly to policy summersaults and inconsistencies on the part of every succeeding government. TO this end, The NIGERIAN OBSERVER applauds the moves by the Federal Government in effectively tackling unemployment problems in Nigeria, by liaising with relevant stakeholders in terms of job creation. COMRADE Governor Adams Oshiomhole unequivocally expressed his concern about the threat to social and economic peace by the scourge of unemployment, noting that “the only way to measure the economic progress of any nation is by the number of jobs created.” He then promised to do everything within his powers to
collaborate with the federal government in the area of job creation. WORTHY of note is the Edo State continuous creation of jobs for the unemployed youths in the state. Already, this has taken shape with the employment of many graduates under the Youth Employment Scheme (YES). Against this background, The NIGERIAN OBSERVER admonishes that the proliferation of institutions saddled with the responsibilities of creating jobs like the National Directorate of (NDE) and the National Poverty Eradication Programme (NAPEP) and other employment agencies be made more functional or if possible, merged into one for proper handling of employment administration in the country. TO effectively tackle the menace of unemployment in the country there is the need to conduct a survey on job creation in Nigeria. The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) needs to create a data base on the true state of unemployment in terms of both the skilled and unskilled. BESIDES, we need to constantly Improve on available information and data on the Nation’s labour market through appropriate statistical methodology for tracking variability in the number of jobs created or lost every quarter. This is where the readiness of NBS to conduct such a survey is heart-warming. SINCE accurate, timely and reliable data are major pre-requisites for strategic planning and development, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and National Planning Commission (NPC) should collaborate to boost job creation in the country. ALSO worth mentioning is the federal government’s resolve to develop people without skills to make them employable, through the establishment of Skills Acquisition Centres nation-wide. This is in tandem with Edo State’s maintenance of its already established Skills Acquisition Centres wherein the unemployed and other victims of human trafficking have been getting rehabilitation over the years. BY and large, it must be Observed that the only way to solve the problem of poverty is to invest in skills acquisition through human capital development so as to make job seekers to become employers of labour.
Issues NIGERIA as a nation has been faced with several problems that have kept the nation the purported giant of Africa on her knees. The problems have continued to grow and expand unabated and almost all the sector of the economy has one problem or the other to contend with. The
problems include kidnapping, assassination, murder, rape, prostitution, militancy, religious and ethnic violence, looting, corruption and now the biggest of them all “terrorism and insurgency by the so called Boko Haram” Finding a way out of these numerous problems facing this nation, the federal government led by president Goodluck Abele Jonathan decided to organize a National Conference where various delegate representing various part of the Country would come together to discuss the issue troubling this nation and probably finding a lasting solution to these issues through resolutions and recommendations from the confab. Various groups both government and non governmental have all shown their support or dis-regard for the conference. While some believed that the conference is all that is needed to solve the problem facing this nation, and others see it as a waste of time saying this is another way to waste our resources. Supporting the confab and presenting a paper title “A Position Paper on Re-Engineering Nigeria” Jubilee Emancipation Initiative Nigeria, has presented a possible solution to the numerous problems facing the country. Jubilee Emancipation Initiative Nigeria is an advocacy wing of the Beacon-Knights Nigeria. This group is led by Dr. Dele Oluwatade and the group is a Non Governmental Organization (NGO) and non political group. The group’s mission statement is to enlighten the masses on the practice and defence of democracy and also to uphold the tenets and group rules for true democracy and freedom among all stake holders. Their vision is to promote good governance by upholding truth, justice and equity. PAPER PRESENTATION: “We join others to thank Mr. president, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan for listening to the voice of the people in organising this conference, thus creating an opportunity for the nationalities that constitute Nigeria to “jaw-jaw” and “wind their minds” to help Nigeria to live in peace and unity. We thank God for Nigeria, His goodness to the black man created with the hands of the colonial masters. 100 years is not a joke in the
life of any nation, some have become super powers within the same period, a few like Nigeria with the wrong foundation is still crawling. This crucial and all important gathering of nationalities should not be a time for cock and bull story, “we conquered your grand father, he promised to serve us till death do us part”, “we are freeborn you are slaves”. Likewise religious and political rascality will lead us nowhere but to “your tent O Nigeria”. For emphasis, no delegate in this conference is here to tolerate anymore of those temper tantrums and insolence. A solid foundation is required for a solid structure which we have come here to do. Everybody must be ready to reason together to get a good ground work, at the end of which nobody should blame the British, Italians, the Spanish, the Arabians for the failure of Nigeria anymore. This is our golden opportunity to set the ancient and modem wrongs right; and we shall be better for it. We need to remind ourselves that president Goodluck Jonathan had said the unity of Nigeria is a “no go area”. Our thinking is that His Excellency meant that, “the indivisibility of Nigeria is a no go area”. We have been living together in disharmony for a hundred years, now we are here to engineer how to live in peace and unity. The unity of Nigeria is the “real go area”. A sound structure, a formidable judiciary system and non partisan policies will bring the elusive harmony that we have been longing for. If Nigeria will be indivisible, the onus is on us distinguished Nigerians to provide a stable political equilibrium. Namely in summary: 1. True federalism of an eight-zonal federating unit, with resource control: States are too many for attention and concentration of Mr. President. 2. A single 6-year term for president, governors, and Local Government chairman, to allow the incumbent to function without distractions from angry losers and restless politicians. 3. Zonal or State police. 4. Transparently secular constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria: The issue of Theocracy (sharia) versus Democracy in the nation ultimately holds the key to the indivisibility of Nigeria. Whatever is arrived at in this conference is first step, the practical realization of decisions taken at this
National Confab
Re-Engineering Nigeria
conference is the second and most important step, because this may be the last chance that will save Nigeria, or the last straw that will break the camel’s back as no body is coming back here for further negotiation or razzmatazz. Confab: Money And Conscience. Every participant is expected to have a clear conscience in all their deliberations and discussions. For we know that there are many caucuses that are interested in this confab and
By RICHARD OKORO-EWEKA
what you can present back home. What then are we positing: They include the following? I. HUMAN RIGHTS, JUSTICE AND EQUITY The Nigeria that everybody will subscribe to must be a Nation where there is fairness, dignity, and a commitment to eradicate corruption: political, economic, social and religious corruption. The new
iii. Presidency: A National President presiding over 8Zonal Vice Presidents as head of the eight zones. iv. Structure: Eight zonal arrangement backed up with true federalism is the way forward. UNBUNDLING NIGERIA This process was started when the Midwestern region was cut out from western region. With that, the minorities were freed from
President Goodluck Jonathan (2nd left), Vice President Namadi Sambo (left) and Delegates to the ongoing National Conference, at the inauguration of the conference in Abuja. are ready to buy, sell and monetize to achieve their motives which may not be beneficial to this nation. After all, “the love of money is the root of all evil” says the holy book. Many evils will pursue Nigeria if the love of money is allowed to corrupt the outcome of this live saving conference. Therefore, participants are expected to be of high integrity not to sell out or enslave Nigerians or Nigeria. Don’t sell your birth right is a wonderful piece of advice. Selling it means transferring your destiny to the buyer for ever. Esau, the twin brother of Jacob will explain better to you what could become of the generations yet unborn of persons that sell their birth right. Don’t sell your birth right, it is your future and the fixture of Nigeria. Nationalities conferees should watch out for schemers, agents of derailment, and merchants of conscience who want to enslave all Nigerians with their wealth. You are about 500 members; remember 150 million Nigerians are waiting for you at home. Decide what you can defend, agree on
Nigeria that would practice freedom of religion, freedom of worship, freedom of association politically and economically. R e l i g i o u s jurisprudence should not be sponsored by the state. All religious judgments must be moderated by the constitution and made answerable to state and federal high courts. Religious pilgrimages should not be the concern of Governments. In this era of privatization of education, power and communication; religious practices and faiths should be completely privatized; because religion is a total private affair of an individual with his God. 2. TYPE OF GOVERNMENT The pattern of government that can save this nation and put her back into the Committee of respectable and determined to live nations is as follows: I. True Federalism: The type of government should be true federalism in a participatory democracy; not winner takes all. ii. Single Term Tenure: All elected officers should serve once: that is; presidency and other elected officers.
the over bearing leadership roles of the Yoruba’s. The eastern Nigeria was quickly unbundled to reduce Biafra to an Igbo agenda. The freedom of the eastern minority tribes was strategic to Nigerian army initial victories. And of course the leadership of the minorities was found not to be in the inner caucus of Biafra. Whereas in the South, the South West Zone and South East Zone had to negotiate cooperation with the South-South Zone nationalities; in the North, the Hausa and Fulani were the father and owners over minority nationalities. The middle belt, the conglomeration of vibrant, virile nationalities, the divine stabilizers of the nation is yet to filly bring to light her political identity like her southern counterparts. The delay in delineating the boundaries of minority nationalities of the middle belt is a fundamental political problem; which allowed the upper north to exercise unopposed political power on Nigeria. At the end of the Biafra war the slogan was: NO VICTOR NO VANQUISHED. But honest non
sentimental observation was and still is; that the south and the middle belt were the vanquished and the sharia north was the victor: They have more retired Presidents, more retired powerful Generals, and they have more states, more Local governments, more Senators, more Reps and more federal allocations. They make southern presidential candidates promise one term on the throne and unleash terror if he refuses to back down, and ferment tenor for such incumbent presidents. Their political bigwigs talk with inexplicable braggadocio, promising fire and brimstone on the nation if their political interests are obstructed. Unbundling the North is the next step for a stable political equilibrium. It is separating and dividing the upper Sharia North into two zones and creating two zones for the minorities of the Middle belt of Nigeria. Fractionalized Minority nationalities attached to major nationalities should be merged with their mainframe in the middle belt zone. It must be noted that the southern minorities are many political miles ahead of their northern counterparts. The middle belters need a relief from the overbearing posture of the Sharia North. PROPOSED REGIONAL OR ZONAL STRUCTURES Political Wisdom From United States Of America. Going by the land size of United States of America (USA) and Nigeria, Nigeria has 36 states and America 50 states: using Nigeria’s state multiplication democracy, USA should be divided into three hundred and sixty (360) states to match Nigeria. Three hundred and sixty (360) Excellencies with their retinue of State Commissioners, Special Advisers, Personal Secretaries and Secretaries to state Governments, plus House of Assembly members and their supportive staffs would have crashed the economy of USA. Therefore the number of political units in Nigeria should be about 8 — 16 for maximum political performance with minimal over head cost on tax payers and the masses. Nigeria is about 923, 768 sq km2, even at that, the state of California 423,971 sq km is about half of Nigeria. In the light of the above, if there are 36 states in Nigeria California should have about 18 governors. Considering the fact that USA: 9,826,630 Continues on pg. 14
Issues Continued from pg. 13
sq. km=10 x the size of Nigeria. Therefore USA should be able to cope with about 360 Governors of Nigerian type. Considering the above facts we therefore proffer the following: 1. Nigeria should consist of Eight Federating zonal units. 2. The unit of federal Administration is the zone. 3. The unit of Zonal government is the state. 4. All zones are equal. 5. All states within a zone are equal. Namely: A. NWZ- Northern West Zone: Sokoto, Northern Kebbi, Southern Kebbi, Zamfara, Katsina, Northern Kaduna, Jigawa, and Kano State. B. NEZ- North East Zone: Northern Yobe, Southern Yobe, Northern Borno, Bauchi, and Northern Gombe State, C. MBWZ- Middle Belt West Zone: Niger, Southern Kaduna, Kwara, and Kogi State. D. MBEZ- Middle Belt East Zone: Nasarawa, Southern Gombe, Southern Borno, Adamawa, Plateau, Taraba and Benue State. (new states- Borno South and Gombe South) E. SWZ- South West Zone: Oyo, Osun, Ekiti, Ogun, Ondo and Lagos State. F. MWZ- Mid West Zone: Edo and Delta State. G. SEZ- South East Zone: Anambra, Enugu, Ebonyi, Imo andAbia State. H. SSEZ- South South East Zone: Rivers, Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa and Cross River State. Legislative Houses: The legislative houses should take this formA. State Nationalities House of Assembly: Assembly of representatives of all nationalities in the state. B. Uni-camera National Assembly consisting of 15 seats per
...Re-Engineering Nigeria autocratic military rulers of Nigeria over the years. It is not going to be an easy task. If Nigeria is a federal nation, she should allow true federalism to take root. Federal governments all over the world are sustained by tax payers. The reason for tax evasion in Nigeria is because of the enormous oil profit. That the federal government feels endangered with the implementation of resource control is a surprise. Is America endangered by the federal system? No. There are other resources better than the crude oil but nobody cares. Other countries are not waiting for us. The advantage of resource controls are as follows: • Guaranteed stability and future: Resource control will guarantee the stability and future of this country in many ways. Right now most of the chief executives at the local and state government are spoilt because they have enough money coming from above. They are not looking down to develop the resource base of their states or local governments. God subsidizes the budget of Nigeria up to 90 percent. Many chief executives are just spending and balancing the books from free petroleum — exploited by foreign companies, transported and marketed by foreign merchants. There is no incentive or pressure to develop or tap the resources that are present in their states. • Encouragement of taxation drive: for some to even collect tax is difficult, there are many defaulting taxable adults yearin year-out in big cars and big houses and are not bothered. Federal wind fall had affected the resources of development drive of the executives that everybody is waiting for federal allocations, everybody is arguing about allocation percentages and other resources are untapped. This is petroleum induced disorientation.
“The Governor is a lame duck chief executive, a political moneybag with a huge unaccountable security vote to dole out to settle rogues, godfathers and the security chiefs for peace in his state. He has no control over the police. The police commissioner can be changed without informing the state Governors.” zone; thus, a total of 120 senators on part time sitting. 3. ELECTORAL PROCESS A. Political Parties: •Maximum of 4 political parties and private candidates should be allowed. •The political parties should form government at the local or state governments according to their performances. •Political parties should form government any where they win. •State Elections: State Elections should be two in one that will determine local Government and state Government. •Winning parties should form government at local government levels and state majority winner will form the state Government. B.Voting • A state government Area is One Unit Vote for President • Vice-Presidents are elected from zonal college of governors. • The local Government is one unit vote for the Governor, • and the ward is the unit vote for Local Government Chairman. • Two third majority winning is 2/3 states majority. Number of votes is immaterial, like the points awarded to football teams are not related to the number of goals scored to win: (13-0 score line attracts 3 match points just as 6-5 score line.) 4. RESOURCE CONTROL The control of resources by states, local governments and communities is resource control and is in line with the practice of true Federalism. The military tailored the government to suit the central take over syndrome. Imagine the description “Federal Military Government”. This is an aberration. There is no military government that is Federal. It is a barracks coinage of a political aberration. Resource control is the practice in a federal system but because of the “barracks” injuries the military inflicted on the governance of Nigeria, the federal government became the “Father government”. The Federal government should not be a father, but a regulatory government to both the state and local governments. Some people have derailed Nigeria and she has to come back on rail. It is time to repair what was destroyed by cascades of
• Incentive for the development of other resources: Nobody is thinking of how to develop the Oil Palm Industry, the rubber industry, the cocoa, the groundnut, the rice, and the caning industry. Therefore, the Nigerian people are lazy, jobless, but eating and drinking on the Niger delta, I pity this zone. If the president and the other chief executives continue in this mono export syndrome, when it dries up or there is a hiccup in any form, Nigeria will experience fiscal collapse of the presidential system. • Good resource management and investment: Resource control leads to good resource management and investment to generate resources within the local areas. All the dormant facilities in the states will be resuscitated. The west will be more interested in cocoa and rubber, and the mid-west will be interested in rubber, rice, fish, and oil. The East will be interested in oil palm and rice. Crude oil is the cause of under development of other resources in the country, unless we practice resource control (true federalism), the nation will not thrive well. • National strength and international respect: Nigeria is not a strong country; we are only popular because of what we have. If by tomorrow we no longer have oil in Nigeria, most airlines will fly non-stop over Nigeria because there will be no business here again. Nigeria will become abandoned field. The oil is depressing other resources and the earlier we allow those who have oil to re invest their oil wealth in other things the better. If the oil dries up tomorrow they cannot show us what oil did for them, then they are most pitiable, that is why they are fighting for resource control • Better management by owners’: Poor management is the cause of what is on ground now because the managers are in Abuja. When you allow people who have it to manage it, Nigeria will be better. Take the beef cattle market for instance; if the federal government takes over the industry today to supply cow meat to each of the states of the federation, some states will not have beef for three months because the federal government is incapable of handling it. Ordinarily, an agricultural fertilizer doesn’t go round. But let it be privatized deregulated, you will see everything going well. Federalism is one of the best governments in the world because it allows private entrepreneurship, the federal government is there to regulate. The type of federalism we have in Nigeria today is
the bastardized form, from the military, which must be reversed if Nigeria has to survive. 5. STATE POLICE: THE GRASS ROOT SECURITY SYSTEM Nigeria’s police is controlled by the federal government. We can understand the military — Army, Air force, and Navy controlled by the federal government but for the control of police nation wide to be under the command of the presidency via the inspector— general is de-capacitating the security in the states. In times of crisis, state governors usually become hostages of the security agencies because he is not their commander — in — chief He can not command the state commissioner of police. The Governor becomes helpless, as he has no authority over them. The Governor is a lame duck chief executive, a political moneybag with a huge unaccountable security vote to dole out to settle rogues, godfathers and the security chiefs for peace in his state. He has no control over the police. The police commissioner can be changed without informing the state Governors. The security of a state could be undermined by partisan politics and religious affiliations of the president on board. In a situation like this, the governors normally mobilize (“bribe”) the police apparatus to work. Bribe can be in form of buying Hilux Vans, Jeeps of various categories, communication equipments and special allowances to make them to work. If the police were under the state governments the police needs no petting and security of the state would be better. We would advocate the establishment of community or state police while the federal government continues to control the Navy, Army and Air force. State and Community police Governors should be constitutionally empowered to secure the state, the present “house boy” arrangement between the federal and the state is de-capacitating security. The communities know their rogues and robbers et al. State police is the security of the people by the people for the people, crimes will definitely reduce. There is no need to fear abuse of power by governors or local government chairmen. There is no difference between a governor and a president, because many governors in Nigeria have become president and vice president. The courts are there to mid wife or decide the limit of executive power and authority. The governor or presidents are executive officers; they are not necessarily the most powerful in the state. The court rooms will educate all of us. State and community policing will empower the governors to be truly the chief security officers of their states, presently they are not. Every other pretension is political illusion. 6. RELIGION AND NEOCOLONIALISM The issue of religion is a keg of disaster for Nigeria because religious policies, politics, polluting the constitution of Nigeria with religion are the beginning to the end. The 1999 constitution as amended is an Islamic document constitution: a scan reveals the following details: Words Number of times mentioned in the constitution: Sharia (73 times), Islam (28 times), Grand Kadi (54), Muslim (10), Christianity was not mention at all. Others not mentioned in the constitution includes: Canon law; Christians and other religion. This, no doubt is the confidence of the Sharia north and Muslims to do and undo. Islam and Muslims have pocketed Nigeria. For example, if my religion is given so much mention and prominence as Islam and Muslim enjoy in a revered national document like the constitution, I will feel we are the owners of Nigeria and therefore threaten the president, the nation and any body that crosses our path. Boko Haram is the result of this special privilege entrenched since 1999. You don’t convert people with bombs and bullets, or by smuggling or forcing your religion into the constitution. The Hausa Fulani nationalities are the most armed in Nigeria judging from atrocities committed in rural Nigeria which news paper reports and editorials confirmed in Benue, Plateau, Imo, Edo, Delta, Anambra, Ondo, Oyo, Niger, Adamawa states name it, etc. Killing and maiming hundreds of other Nigerians, hundred of miles from their states of origin. It is therefore imperative that the Hausa Fulani nationalities should disarm or be disarmed. The carrying of daggers, swords and AK47 riffles around the country need to stop; if they don’t want to be seen and tagged as terrorists and militants. If not, Nigeria should be ready! What an Igbo, a Yoruba, an Ijaw, or a Tiv person can not do in Sokoto or Kano they will do it in other lands with impunity! They are emboldened by the constitutional provisions skewed in their favor. Any group who cannot but bully his religion on everybody in Nigeria could take a bow out of the union. • Obas and Emirs should steer clear of masterminding religious riots and disharmony. They are father of all.
Politics
Ekiti And Osun Elections Jega On My Mind
IF you ever thought that one smart, educated person cannot change the world, then you need to consider the life of former South Africa President – the late Nelson Mandela – a man who has suffered the slings of arrows of cruel apartheid regime upon a national stage at the level of a Shakespearian tragedy and triumphed. Also, an individual can ruin the fortune of his country just the same way an unpatriotic acts have brought down nations. But due to the zeitgeist of our time and the electoral robbery in Nigeria, we had hoped the like of Prof Attahiru Jegga would make the utmost difference and right the electoral wrongs the nation has been made to suffer in the hands of pure Machiavelli agent like Prof Maurice Iwu. Many elections conducted under the watch of Prof Jegga have proved the confidence we invested in him is gross misplacement of the people’s honest quest for change. Prof Jegga’s “Cult of Personality” which he cultivated as the Chairman of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU which paved the way for his present appointment as the Independent National Electoral Commission’s Chair has dwindled. “Cult of personality” has both positive and negative ends because of the individuals who have had success with either noble or evil ends. But Prof Jegga must prove he is not a “riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma”, according to Winston Churchll. Historically, both the infamous and famous have been described as having a “Cult of Personality.” for example, both Adolf Hitler and Franklin D. Roosevelt are considered to have projected great energy, mesmerising their audiences. In case you don’t know, “cult of personality” is the quality associated with and exhibited by a leader that mesmerises those they meet by projecting a powerful inner energy, no matter what position or condition they found
By ERASMUS IKHIDE themselves. Haven read much about Roosevelt and Hitler, I found similar “cult of personality” attributes associated with Franklin D. Roosevelt firmly in the person of Prof Attahiru Jegga in my first encounter with him in Lagos, just before his appointment as INEC henchman. You could easily and instantly peered into his soul and see goodness in Prof Jegga’s heart and discern every nuance of values, virtues and vanity as you listen to his compassionate and patriotic stance on the nation’s developmental politics, including INEC. Prof Jegga has the attribute of bringing to bare the quality and strength of his being through rigorous interrogations on issues that border on national development that one was tempted to think that he was the Franklin Roosevelt of our time. It’s worthy of note that American politicians who become president of US must, as a matter of necessity, service their county and states before becoming president. It was that climatic witticisms on that occasion that endeared Prof Jegga eternally to me as a pantheon-saint of our national conscience. This has nothing to do with becoming the president of our dear country. After all it’s not everyone who has garnered “cult of personality unto himself that becomes president of their country. It appeared to me that Prof Jegga didn’t do thorough self-exploration sufficiently – if at all he ever did – before taking his present appointment as the INEC goal keeper. I am sure to date, Prof Jegga is till drawing from the proudest, and act of great human activism that sent primitive dictator like IBB to “Step Aside” at the zenith of his evil rule. Now, I doubt that Prof Jegga is competently informed on the issues that
affect the people served by the office he holds. If he depend on the plain old dumb luck as we have it at the presidency, then Nigeria can go up in smoke with greater chaos as the people of Ektiti and Osun match towards the polling stations to elect their Governors. There is the need to drum this into Prof Jegga’s ears that flip-flopp on critical policy decisions or representing yourself as
misunderstood, but who, nevertheless, do the right thing. Nigerians have now known that Prof Jegga is no longer himself. He is someone who had been handled and mismanaged to be someone else. This is the least we can say of the former labour activist who did not only fight for the return to democratic rule, but one that celebrates and reverences the sovereign will of the people. Prof Jegga still has the ample chance of redeeming his name and that of INEC which has become
INEC Chairman, Prof Attahiru Jega
someone having values that you do not is the development politics of old, not the necessary politics of change we all advocate. Prof Jegga has constituted himself into the problem he is expected to solve. One expects that he will heed former US President John F. Kennedy call of “Profile in Courage”, an acts by which public officials who risk tremendous political backlash, even possibly
a manipulating machine by turning winners to losers. Prof Jegga’s policy statement contradicting his earlier stance that Ekiti and Osun elections will benefit from the card readers chip is unfortunate, to say the least. He has lost the opportunity of escaping the people’s wrath, should the elections go the Anambra State’s way and the others before it. Now, he has demonstrated to Nigerians that the frauds that
“There is only one way out of the elections crises. Wholesale reformation and transformation or total deconstruction and reorganisation is needed. INEC cannot return to the part of moral and ethical rearmament unless the fraudulent channels through which undeserving candidates are flushed unto the seat of power for the governance of our people are checkmated.”
attended all the elections INEC he has been conducting are simply errors of the heart than errors of the head. INEC has to reverse that slights and restores Nigeria’s place in the ranks of democratic countries who run their countries through the sanctity of the ballots. The outmoded, analogue and manipulation-prone elections have to give way to thoroughly scrutinised electronic card readers. His conducts of previous elections has upended the major pillar of democracy which is one-person-onevote. Electronic card readers is as easy as anyone can imagine. Electronic card reader is a data input that reads data from a cardshaped storage medium. Modern card readers are electronic devices that can read plastic cards embedded with either a barcode, magnetic strip, computer chip or another storage medium. This, if installed, will prevent multiple voting, impersonation, vote manipulation and concocted figure during and after elections. By blithely shrugging off the importance of electronic card readers, Prof Jegga has puts work on the electoral and political stability on indefinite hold. He has utterly sanction electoral robbers to continue to menace voters, thereby throwing darker shadows over the credibilities of the forth coming elections. It is doable if the INEC czar wants to right the infamy very quickly. The numbers of polling units in Ekiti is 2,195, while that of Osun is 3,100; a little above 5,000 polling units, all together. For wants of reasons, INEC should try electronic card readers in the states as a prelude to the 2015 general elections. Electronic card readers in both states will, at least determine the competence and the desirability of the card readers in subsequent elections. INEC and its pay masters know that if Ekiti and Osun elections are allowed to remain in the fold of opposition the 2015 Presidential election will promptly and decidedly go the same way. This is one of the reasons INEC has never seized to be a rogue outlier. Prof Jegga’s new vision of an ascendant INEC will be dealt a severe and embarrassing blown if he doesn’t reverse to the use of electronic Card readers. This is the position of strength from which he must operate, other than his earlier position of weakness. But Prof Jegga still has all the time to quash his policy summersault, handily.
One thing to note is whether Prof Jegga approaches these elections in a way the electorate simply doesn’t grasp, and unmindful of his past, as a patriotic nationalist. He has consistently announced the Commission’s readiness for the conduct of Ekiti and Osun elections, even though he is in denial of it. “The commission would do everything possible to ensure that the elections are free, fair, peaceful and credible. We have distributed the Permanent Voters’ Cards (PVCs) and also conducted registration for those who have become 18 years since the last registration. We also conducted registration for those whose details have not been sufficiently captured in the electronic register”, said Prof Jegga. All this will be efforts in futility if Prof Jegga did not also insist on inputing the electronic card readers into the conducts of the two states elections as he did with the Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) which, in my estimation, falls bellow standard. I have sufficiently addressed the issue of (CVR) in my earlier piece. There is only one way out of the elections crises. Wholesale reformation and transformation or total deconstruction and reorganisation is needed. INEC cannot return to the part of moral and ethical rearmament unless the fraudulent channels through which undeserving candidates are flushed unto the seat of power for the governance of our people are checkmated. Electronic card readers is the surest way to preventing elections manipulators from getting away with the acts of snatching the peope’s will. With electronic card readers, manipulators will be prevented even long before such scammers approach the polling booths. Barring the charge of sounding hawkish, I dare say Prof Jegga will be putting a match to the tinderbox if he allows wrongheaded decisions to take better part of him over the electronic card readers. It will amount to testing the resolve of voters’, which will in turn pierce a dagger in the heart of the nation’s nascent democracy. As tension climbs, in the two states of Ekiti and Osun over electronic card readers, so do pressure mounts ominously against 2015 general elections; thereby breeding a state of paranoia. It’s now clear where Prof Jegga plans to steer the ship Ekiti and Osun elections, but it’s not clear where exactly he hopes to anchor them.
Footprints Continued from penultimate week A truce with England during the following few months left Joan with little to do. On 23 March 1430, she dictated a threatening letter to the Hussites, a dissident group which had broken with the Catholic Church on a number of doctrinal points and had defeated several previous crusades sent against them. Joan’s letter promises to “remove your madness and foul superstition, taking away either your heresy or your lives.” However, the truce with England quickly came to an end. Joan traveled to Compiègne the following May to help defend the city against an English and Burgundian siege. A skirmish on 23 May 1430 led to her capture, when her force attempted to attack the Burgundians’ camp at Margny. When the troops began to withdraw toward the nearby fortifications of Compiègne after the advance of an additional force of 6,000 Burgundians, Joan stayed with the rear guard. Burgundian troops surrounded the rear guard, and she was pulled off her horse by an archer. She agreed to surrender to a proBurgundian nobleman named Lionel of Wandomme, a member of Jean de Luxembourg’s unit. Joan was imprisoned by the Burgundians at Beaurevoir Castle. She attempted several escapes, on one occasion jumping from her 70 foot (21 m) tower, landing on the soft earth of a dry moat, after which she was moved to the Burgundian town of Arras. The English negotiated with their Burgundian allies to transfer her to their custody, with Bishop Pierre Cauchon of Beauvais, an English partisan, assuming a prominent role in these negotiations and her later trial. The final agreement called for the English to pay the sum of 10,000 livres tournois to obtain her from Jean de Luxembourg, a member of the Council of Duke Philip of Burgundy. The English moved Joan to the city of Rouen, which
served as their main headquarters in France. Historian Pierre Champion notes that the Armagnacs attempted to rescue her several times by launching military campaigns toward Rouen while she was held there. One campaign occurred during the winter of 1430-1431, another in March 1431, and one in late May shortly before her execution. These attempts were beaten back. The trial for heresy was politically motivated. The tribunal was composed entirely of pro-English and Burgundian clerics, and overseen by English commanders including the Duke of Bedford and Earl of Warwick. Legal proceedings commenced on 9 January 1431 at Rouen, the seat of the English occupation government. The procedure was illegal on a number of points, which would later provoke scathing criticism of the tribunal by the chief inquisitor who investigated the trial after the war. To summarize some major problems: Under ecclesiastical law, Bishop Cauchon lacked jurisdiction over the case. Cauchon owed his appointment to his partisan support of the English government which financed the trial. Clerical notary Nicolas Bailly, commissioned to collect testimony against Joan, could find no adverse evidence. Without such evidence the court lacked grounds to initiate a trial. Opening a trial anyway, the court also violated ecclesiastical law by denying her right to a legal adviser. Worse, stacking the tribunal entirely with proEnglish clergy violated the medieval Church’s requirement that heresy trials needed to be judged by an impartial or balanced group of clerics. Upon the opening of the first public examination Joan complained that those present were all partisans against her and asked for “ecclesiastics of the French side” to be invited in order to provide balance. However, the ViceInquisitor of Northern France
(Jean Lemaitre) objected to the trial at its outset, and several eyewitnesses later said he was forced to cooperate after the English threatened his life. Some of the other clergy at the trial were also threatened when they refused to cooperate, including a Dominican friar named Isambart de la Pierre. These threats, and the domination of the trial by a secular government, were obvious violations of the Church’s rules and undermined the right of the Church to conduct heresy trials without secular interference. Joan’s remarkable intellect is corroborated in her trial record. The transcript’s most famous exchange is an exercise in subtlety. “Asked if she knew she was in God’s grace, she answered: ‘If I am not, may God put me there; and if I am, may God so keep me.’” The question is a scholarly trap. Church doctrine held that no one could be certain of being in God’s grace. If she had answered yes, then she would have been charged with heresy. If she had answered no, then she would have confessed her own guilt. Notary Boisguillaume later testified that at the moment the court heard this reply, “Those who were interrogating her were stupefied.” Several court functionaries later testified that important portions of the transcript were altered in her disfavor. Under Inquisitorial guidelines, Joan should have been confined in an ecclesiastical prison under the supervision of female guards (i.e., nuns). Instead, the English kept her in a secular prison guarded by their own soldiers. Bishop Cauchon denied Joan’s appeals to the Council of Basel and the Pope, which should have stopped his proceeding. The twelve articles of accusation which summarize the court’s finding contradict the already doctored court record. The illiterate defendant signed an abjuration document she did not understand under threat of immediate execution. The
The Irrepressible S
court substituted a different abjuration in the official record. Heresy was a capital crime only for a repeat offense. Joan agreed to wear feminine clothing when she abjured. This created a problem. According to the later descriptions of some of the tribunal members, she had previously been wearing male (i.e. military) clothing in prison because it gave her the ability to fasten her hosen and tunic together into one piece, which deterred rape by making it difficult to pull her hosen off. A woman’s dress offered no such protection. A few days after adopting a dress, she told a tribunal member that “a great English lord had entered her prison and tried to take her by force. She resumed male attire either as a defense against molestation or, in the testimony of Jean Massieu, because her dress had been taken by the guards and she was left with nothing else to wear. Joan’s resumption of male military clothing was labeled a relapse into heresy, although this would later be disputed by the inquisitor who presided over the appeals court which examined the case after the war. Medieval Catholic doctrine held that crossdressing should be evaluated based on context, as stated in the “Summa Theologica” by St. Thomas Aquinas, which says that necessity would be a permissible reason for cross-dressing. This would include the use of clothing as protection against rape if the clothing would offer protection. In terms of doctrine, she had been justified in disguising herself as a pageboy during her journey through enemy territory and she was justified in wearing armor during battle and protective clothing in camp and then in prison. The Chronique de la Pucelle states that it deterred molestation while she was camped in the field. When her soldiers’ clothing wasn’t needed while on campaign, she was said to have gone
“The twelve articles of accusation which summarize the court’s finding contradict the already doctored court record. The illiterate defendant signed an abjuration document she did not understand under threat of immediate execution.”
back to wearing a dress. Clergy who later testified at the posthumous appellate trial affirmed that she continued to wear male clothing in prison to deter molestation and rape. She referred the court to the Poitiers inquiry when questioned on the matter. The Poitiers record no longer survives but circumstances indicate the Poitiers clerics had
By O
burning on 30 May 1431. Tied to a tall pillar at the Vieux-Marché in Rouen, she asked two of the clergy, Fr Martin Ladvenu and Fr Isambart de la Pierre, to hold a crucifix before her. An English soldier also constructed a small cross which she put in the front of her dress. After she died, the English raked back the coals to expose her charred
ki ri H ca D te E m o 14 al Tr D
body so that no one could claim she had escaped alive, then burned the body twice more to reduce it to ashes and prevent any collection of relics. They cast her remains into the Seine River. The executioner, Geoffroy Therage, later stated that he “...greatly feared to be damned.” The Hundred Years’ War continued for twenty-two years after her death. Charles VII succeeded in retaining legitimacy as the
sam bec En reg wa im con tha use ass tac I po he dec in h
Saint Joan of Arc
approved her practice. She also kept her hair cut short through her military campaigns and while in prison. Her supporters, such as the theologian Jean Gerson, defended her hairstyle for practical reasons, as did Inquisitor Brehal later during the appellate trial. Nonetheless, at the trial in 1431 she was condemned and sentenced to die. Eyewitnesses described the scene of the execution by
Footprints
Saint Joan Of Arc
ing of France in spite of a ival coronation held for Henry VI at Notre-Dame athedral in Paris, on 16 December 1431, on the boy’s enth birthday. Before ngland could rebuild its military leadership and force f long bowmen, lost in 429, the country lost its lliance with Burgundy at the reaty of Arras in 1435. The Duke of Bedford died the
allow attendees to gain an indulgence (remission of temporal punishment for sin) by making a pilgrimage to the event. A posthumous retrial opened after the war ended. Pope Callixtus III authorized this proceeding, also known as the “nullification trial”, at the request of Inquisitor-General Jean Bréhal and Joan’s mother Isabelle Romée. The aim of the trial was to investigate whether the trial
me year and Henry VI came the youngest king of ngland to rule without a gent; his weak leadership as probably the most mportant factor in ending the nflict. Kelly DeVries argues at Joan of Arc’s aggressive e of artillery and frontal saults influenced French ctics for the rest of the war. n 1452, during the sthumous investigation into r execution, the Church clared that a religious play her honor at Orléans would
of condemnation and its verdict had been handled justly and according to canon law. Investigations started with an inquest by Guillaume Bouillé, a theologian and former rector of the University of Paris (Sorbonne). Bréhal conducted an investigation in 1452. A formal appeal followed in November 1455. The appellate process involved clergy from throughout Europe and observed
OBUSEH JUDE
standard court procedure. A panel of theologians analyzed testimony from 115 witnesses. Bréhal drew up his final summary in June 1456, which describes Joan as a martyr and implicated the late Pierre Cauchon with heresy for having convicted an innocent woman in pursuit of a secular vendetta. The technical reason for her execution had been a Biblical clothing law. The nullification trial reversed the conviction in part because the condemnation proceeding had failed to consider the doctrinal exceptions to that stricture. The appellate court declared her innocent on 7 July 1456. Joan of Arc became a symbol of the Catholic League during the 16th century. When Félix Dupanloup was made bishop of Orléans in 1849, he pronounced a fervid panegyric on Joan of Arc, which attracted attention in England as well as France, and he led the efforts which culminated in Joan of Arc’s beatification in 1909. Pope Benedict XV canonized Joan on 16 May 1920. As Saint Joan of Arc, she has become one of the most popular saints of the Roman Catholic Church. Joan of Arc became a semilegendary figure for the four centuries after her death. The main sources of information about her were chronicles. Five original manuscripts of her condemnation trial surfaced in old archives during the 19th century. Soon, historians also located the complete records of her rehabilitation trial, which contained sworn testimony from 115 witnesses, and the original French notes for the Latin condemnation trial transcript. Various contemporary letters also emerged, three of which carry the signature Jehanne in the unsteady hand of a person learning to write. This unusual wealth of primary source material is one reason DeVries declares, “No person of the Middle Ages,
male or female, has been the subject of more study. Joan of Arc came from an obscure village and rose to prominence when she was a teenager, and she did so as an uneducated peasant. The French and English kings had justified the ongoing war through competing interpretations of the thousand-year-old Salic law. The conflict had been an inheritance feud between monarchs. She gave meaning to appeals such as that of squire Jean de Metz when he asked, “Must the king be driven from the kingdom; and are we to be English? In the words of Stephen Richey, “She turned what had been a dry dynastic squabble that left the common people unmoved except for their own suffering into a passionately popular war of national liberation. The people who came after her in the five centuries since her death tried to make everything of her: demonic fanatic, spiritual mystic, naive and tragically ill-used tool of the powerful, creator and icon of modern popular nationalism, adored heroine, saint. She insisted, even when threatened with torture and faced with death by fire, that she was guided by voices from God. Voices or no voices, her achievements leave anyone who knows her story shaking his head in amazed wonder. From Christine de Pizan to the present, women have looked to Joan as a positive example of a brave and active female. She operated within a religious tradition that believed an exceptional person from any level of society might receive a divine calling. Some of her most significant aid came from women. King Charles VII’s mother-in-law, Yolande of Aragon, confirmed Joan’s virginity and financed her departure to Orléans. Joan of Luxembourg, aunt to the count of Luxembourg who held custody of her after Compiègne, alleviated her conditions of captivity and may have delayed her sale to the English. Finally, Anne of
Burgundy, the duchess of Bedford and wife to the regent of England, declared Joan a virgin during pretrial inquiries. For technical reasons this prevented the court from charging her with witchcraft. Ultimately this provided part of the basis for her vindication and sainthood. Joan of Arc has been a political symbol in France since the time of Napoleon. Liberals emphasized her humble origins. Early conservatives stressed her support of the monarchy. Later conservatives recalled her nationalism. During World War II, both the Vichy Regime and the French Resistance used her image: Vichy propaganda remembered her campaign against the English with posters that showed British warplanes bombing Rouen and the ominous caption: “They Always Return to the Scene of Their Crimes.” The Resistance emphasized her fight against foreign occupation and her origins in the province of Lorraine, which had fallen under Nazi control. Three separate vessels of the French Navy have been named after her, including a helicopter carrier which was retired from active service on 7 June 2010. At present, the controversial French far-right political party Front National holds rallies at her statues, reproduces her likeness in party publications, and uses a tricolor flame partly symbolic of her martyrdom as its emblem. This party’s opponents sometimes satirize its appropriation of her image. The French civic holiday in her honour is the second Sunday of May. Traditionalist Catholics, in France and elsewhere, also use her as a symbol of inspiration, often comparing the 1988 excommunication of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre (founder of the Society of St. Pius X and a dissident against the Vatican II reforms), to her excommunication. Philippe-Alexandre Le Brun de Charmettes is the first historian who wrote Joan of Arc’s complete history in
1817, in an attempt to restore her family’s reputation from Joan’s status as a relapsed heretic. His interest in Joan came at a time when France was still struggling to define its new identity after the Revolution and the Napoleonic wars. The national ethos was in search of noncontroversial heroes. As a staunch supporter of King and country, Joan of Arc was an acceptable symbol to the monarchists. As a patriot and the daughter of commoners, she was seen as one prototype of the low-born volunteers, (the soldats de l’an II), who had victoriously fought for revolutionary France in 17921793 and as such could be claimed by the Republicans. As a religious martyr, she was also popular in the powerful Catholic community. De Charmette’s Orléanide, today largely forgotten, was another attempt to magnify the national ethos as writers like Virgil (the Aeneid), or Camoens (Os Lusíadas) had done for Rome and Portugal. Joan of Arc has been a popular figure to depict in the culture since the time of her death and many famous writers, filmmakers and composers who have created works about her. They include: William Shakespeare (Henry VI, Part 1), Voltaire (The Maid of Orleans), Friedrich Schiller (The Maid of Orleans), Giuseppe Verdi (Giovanna d’Arco), Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (The Maid of Orleans), Mark Twain (Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc), Jean Anouilh (L’Alouette), Bertolt Brecht (Saint Joan of the Stockyards), George Bernard Shaw (Saint Joan), Maxwell Anderson (Joan of Lorraine), Carl Theodor Dreyer (The Passion of Joan of Arc), Robert Bresson (The Trial of Joan of Arc), Arthur Honegger (Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher), Leonard Cohen (Joan of Arc), and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (Joan of Arc and Maid of Orleans). Cultural depictions of Joan of Arc have continued in film, theatre, television, video games, music, and performances to this day. Concluded
“From Christine de Pizan to the present, women have looked to Joan as a positive example of a brave and active female. She operated within a religious tradition that believed an exceptional person from any level of society might receive a divine calling.”
Opinion
A Future Wrecked By Divorce TOM Ugo is not his real name. He was 4 years old when his parents were divorced in 2012, because of what they said were their irreconcilable differences. Ugo did not go to school in the preceding year due to the quandaries that the divorce had degenerated into. Ugo’s family resided in Oyigbo, a suburb of Port Harcourt, the capital of Rivers State, during the time of their troubles. His parents fought over who should take custody of Ugo. While doing so, they did not take into cognizance the sermon by experts on marital challenges that parents’ divorce will mean breaking of trust among their children. Also, they did not mind the matrix that says what is on the mind of every child is to see their family being stable and last with love. Given the situation, Ugo’s parents were not in the near to recognize the anxiety their separation from marriage was causing him. His hope was shattered. No professional counselling or approaches seemed to be in place to tame and manage the experiences of Separation Anxiety Disorder that supervened. Ugo’s parents later went back to court and were cleared on who should take custody of the young boy. Making clear the security and care for Ugo by the court Ugo will go to school again by living with his mother. Ugo had to start going to school again in 2014. Although, Ugo’s mother won the custody of keeping Ugo, the impact of the divorce was still visible. The young Ugo was always upset by the issue of separation. He hardly kept useful routine at home. This was because he could not maximize the benefits he needed from both parents he would have loved to live together. Unpredictability and poor structure caused by the separation of his parents was quickly weighing him down. What is the origin of divorce? Has it a history? Divorce is as old as the origin of human family relationships. Some early history of divorce was traced to Europe around 1857; and in that early era, only men were permitted to divorce. In this period of time, there was Matrimonial Causes Act. This act allowed ordinary people to divorce. Though all men were presumed to marry and divorce, the right to divorce through the Act of
BY ODIMEGWU ONWUMERE
Parliament was only opened to the rich. Divorce was hugely an expensive social occurrence then. From Henry VIII to White v White as reported on Saturday 19 September 2009 investigation by a broadsheet, Henry VIII was granted a divorce by the Archbishop of Canterbury, long before then. Church courts retained the power to dissolve marriages. Conversely, whichever institution that retains the autonomy to dissolve marriages, psychoanalysis by a Gimba Abdullahi Liman on June 15 2012 expressed the concern of one Mrs. Maryam Mohammed Madam, a Sociologist, in the Department of General Studies, Federal Polytechnic Bida that divorce has negative effects on children’s education. It highlighted the impact of physical, emotional, cognitive, moral and educational effects on the children. Liman in his summation, added that the single parent no longer has ample time for the children and they fall victim of many antisocial behaviours from peer groups. Parenting as a single household is increasingly under pressure to do better and save children faced with stressful lives of here today with a mother and there tomorrow with a father in shared time lines. Coming to terms with a high rate of divorce in society these days, many children in Nigeria are being exposed to divorce that many had to repeat class over and over. In the event that children from divorced backgrounds did not drop out from school in its entirety, a child is easily trapped with poor school performance and repeating of classes. They are subjected by their parents’ divorce to experience rejection, trouncing of love and bodily injury. In school, they show traits of urchins, because they were not given attention and, are made to be unhappy. The impact of divorce on children is no easy emotional and stressful development. Such children with divorce experiences may engage in drugs and other social crimes such as petty stealing, suicide, murder. They suffer the psychological and social issues of their parents’ divorce anywhere they went. Some of them show serious mental health
outcomes to deal with. The consequence of which will give their school authorities a handful of troubles that they cannot contain. Many suffer from delayed learning process; while others who are not in bodily contact with each of their parents, may fail to equal the level of the educational achievements of their
parent. The list of challenges on children caused by divorce is a long one. The least of the effects that children of school going age may suffer in divorce situations in Nigeria can range from poverty to traumatic health imbalances. In the so-called civilized climes, children who are suffering from psychological traumas, as a result of divorce, are subjected to undergo psycho-educational testing. But in Nigeria they would be dropped out of school, due to the lackadaisical approach with which governments at all levels handle the issues pertaining to educators and parents. Apart from that there is hardly any role of the government to determine
the life of a child’s uneasiness at school. Just recently, the Director of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, UNESCO, in Nigeria, Professor Hassana Alidou at a launch of the Education For All, EFA, Global Monitoring Report, GMR, said that Nigeria has some of the worst educational indicators in the world.
UNESCO’s representative in Nigeria disclosed that the menace is already costing governments $129 billion a year; ten per cent of the global spending is on primary education, yet, hardly a child out of four children can read a single sentence or solve a simple mathematics. UNESCO feared that it would take poorest young women in developing countries of Asia and Africa until 2072, for all to be literate. This is coming after the body lamented in a report that over 10 million Nigerian children of school age are not in school. It is observable that children from divorced homes have inattentive and uncooperative manners and are beleaguered at school.
And while these children suffer learning processes, hardly has any school in the country appropriately engaged a school psychologist that could examine the child and offer some appropriate counseling measures in order to place the child properly in school. It is known that some schools attempt to say they have school counselors, who may have read such courses at school, but they are not professionals, who could have responsibility of
a department, as observers and analyzers of troubles associated with behaviours of concern related to divorce at school. Factors that most times put the children’s academic future in danger could be itemized under frivolities of divorce. Lately, a 50 year old business man whose name was given as Mr. Saliu Adesokan reportedly implored an Igando Customary Court in Lagos to dissolve his 17-year-old marriage to his wife, Jumoke Adesokan, for switching his children to Christianity. According to comments credited to Mr. Adesokan, he had enrolled his children in an Islamic school, but his wife withdrew them from the school and took them to
church. But the wife, whose age was given at 45, said that it was the children, who on their own preferred attending church and, that she had no hand in their choice for church. Investigation revealed that Mr. Adesokan had divorced his first two wives claiming that they had bad conduct; a case that Jumoke said that her step daughters were making life depressed for her and had turned her into a knocking bag. According to her, “If I report them to my husband, what he always says is that leave them, they will soon go to their husband’s houses, he will not even scold them.” On March 5, 2014, Mr. Yusuf Abdulkareem, an Ilorin Upper Area Court Judge, apparently decried the high rate of divorce in the country and how it is disadvantageous to the future of children. Abdulkareem made this disclosure in Ilorin. He informed newsmen: “Children get wayward and unsecured as soon as their parents dissolve their marriage, because two good hands are better than one in training a child. You see children going into prostitution, armed robbery and other terrible acts just because their parents are no more together and they see themselves as being hopeless.” The irony of divorce is that while the couple enjoys the attention they sought for in the hands of the authorities, the children do not, from such marriage. It is visible that children respond to divorce differently, depending on their gender, age and juncture of development. They have a feeling that since their parents could not stay together it was imperative that they did not love themselves. Divorce is a current social crisis in Nigeria that is affecting children’s education. From across the regions – East, West, South and North – the story is the same. Northern areas of Nigeria continue to be hit by the nuisances of insurgents Continues on pg. 20
“UNESCO’s representative in Nigeria disclosed that the menace is already costing governments $129 billion a year; ten per cent of the global spending is on primary education, yet, hardly a child out of four children can read a single sentence or solve a simple mathematics.”
Family Planning Family Planning Centers As Gateways To Health Coverage
FAMILY planning centers are the main interface with the health care system for many of the clients they serve. Increasingly, centers are leveraging that reality to connect clients not only to insurance coverage but also to needed health care beyond what the centers provide directly. This unique role could serve as a critically important stepping stone toward a sustainable path for the family planning provider network in the emerging health care landscape. The nationwide network of more than 8,000 publicly funded family planning centers provides contraceptive and related services to more than seven million women a year. One in four women who obtain contraceptive services in the United States—including half of poor women accessing contraceptive care—does so at a publicly funded family planning center. These women receive other important, related care as well, including Pap tests, breast exams, and testing and treatment for STIs. One in three women who get tested for HIV does so at a family planning center. It is therefore not at all surprising that six in 10 women who obtain care at a family planning center describe it as their usual source of medical care. In fact, in many cases it may be their exclusive source of care: according to one study conducted at Planned Parenthood centers in Los Angeles, 29% of adults and 19% of teens said the center was their only source of medical care. In other words, family planning centers are a significant entry point to the health care system in the United States. Connecting Clients to Coverage Because the door to the family planning center may be the only door to the health care system they have walked through, clients come into centers with a multiplicity of needs. But they also often come in eligible for insurance coverage for which they have not yet enrolled. Through their years of experience with state Medicaid family
By RACHEL BENSON GOLD planning expansions, centers have developed a range of innovative approaches to assist clients in enrolling. Some centers assist clients in applying for coverage onsite. Planned Parenthood of New York City (PPNYC), for example, aided more than 2,500 clients in enrolling in the state’s Medicaid family planning expansion last year alone. When a client calling for an appointment indicates that he or she is uninsured and needs financial assistance, the telephone operator also schedules an appointment with an entitlement counselor as part of her visit and gives her the list of required documentation to bring. (Entitlement counselors are on-site at all the agency’s clinical centers during all operating hours.) During the visit, if the client appears eligible, the counselor assists him or her in filling out the application; the counselor also attests that he or she has viewed original copies of the materials necessary to document citizenship. Then center staff sends the completed application to the Department of Social Services for processing. Once the application is approved, PPNYC bills the state program, which will reimburse providers for care retroactively back to the date on which the application was filed. Given the high approval rate that PPNYC receives for their submitted applications, the agency is comfortable providing the service prior to obtaining a final decision. Social Services sends the enrollment card directly to the client at the mailing address she has specified. The cost of the entitlement counselors is made up many times over by the savings from reducing the number of uninsured clients, according to Alice Berger, vice president of health care planning. Three states with Medicaid family planning expansions—California, Iowa and Oregon—have moved beyond point-ofservice application to actual point-of-service enrollment.
In these states, the process begins much as it does at PPNYC. Clients calling to schedule an appointment are screened to determine whether they might be eligible, asked if they are interested in applying and, if so, given a list of the documentation they will need to bring to their visit. Once they arrive, center staff guide them through the application process. When the application is complete, the client signs a hard copy and the staff verify any required documentation and enter the client’s information into a state-developed Web-based
program initiated by Tapestry Health—an agency that provides family planning, STI and HIV counseling and testing, WIC and needleexchange services in western Massachusetts—as part of the state’s health care reform efforts goes a giant step further to assist clients, and members of the community who are not seeking family planning services, to apply for full-benefit coverage through the state’s health insurance exchange. The effort has assisted more than 2,000 individuals in accessing coverage since 2007. Tapestry Health staff are certified to access the state’s
eligibility system. During the course of the visit, this system can generate an eligibility determination and the client can leave the visit enrolled in the program, which enables the center to be reimbursed for the care provided. Clients come into centers with a multiplicity of needs, but they also often come in eligible for insurance coverage for which they have not yet enrolled. These systems offer a route to enrollment in states’ Medicaid family planning expansions, which cover contraceptive services and related medical care, such as treatment for STIs. A
Web-based Virtual Gateway, which allows them to assist clients in assessing their options, as well as in applying for either Medicaid or subsidized private coverage. Trained staff assists clients in completing the application and views the required documentation. They then help clients with choosing a specific plan that best meets their needs, and often with selecting a primary care provider in the health plan in which they have enrolled. Because many of the clients are new to the health care system or to health insurance, the conversations often include basic education on
“It is therefore not at all surprising that six in 10 women who obtain care at a family planning center describe it as their usual source of medical care. In fact, in many cases it may be their exclusive source of care.”
the different types of service providers and the mechanics of insurance coverage (such as how to find providers in the plan’s network and submit claims), as well as health care terminology (such as “deductible” and “copay”) that is often unfamiliar and intimidating. Over the course of 2010, Tapestry Health staff assisted 451 individuals in applying for coverage; 384 of these applications have been approved and 67 are still pending. The assistance provided by Tapestry Health staff goes well beyond initial enrollment. Clients are able to assign the staff ongoing rights to view insurance information through the system. This allows staff to provide continuing support with paperwork and documentation critical to
maintaining coverage as clients’ life circumstances change. They can also provide assistance with reenrollment when a client loses coverage because of changes in eligibility or other administrative pitfalls. The system enables the Tapestry Health staff to be an ongoing interface between clients and a bureaucracy that is new and daunting to many clients, but well-known to the staff. Of the individuals assisted in 2010, 100 returned for some type of additional assistance with insurance enrollment or coverage. Connecting Clients to Care Family planning centers can provide clients with the contraceptive services and related care they are seeking, and often, that is the only care needed. But many clients, especially those new to the health care system, come to a family planning visit with needs beyond the scope of services centers provide. They may need treatment for conditions as diverse as bronchitis and eye infections, or they may have issues
related to dental health, mental health or substance abuse. In fact, significant medical concerns are frequently identified in the course of a family planning visit. “They come in thinking that they need to get their Pap smear, or they’re interested in a family planning method,” says Karen Klauss, a nurse midwife at Unity Health Care, a community health center Washington, DC. “But as soon as I see them, I see that their blood pressure is completely out of control, or based on the family history that I’ve gathered, they’re at really high risk for diabetes and I check their blood sugar and it’s sky high.” Title X, the federal legislation that organizes and gives shape to the national family planning network, has long required family planning centers to have procedures for referring clients for additional care when needed. These requirements apply to most of the nationwide network of family planning centers; two-thirds of clients obtaining care at a family planning center do so at a site that receives some funding through the program. Both Unity Health Care in Washington, DC, and Tapestry Heath in western Massachusetts are grantees under the program. According to program guidelines, Title X projects are required to maintain a list of local health care providers, health and human services departments, hospitals, and other providers and agencies for referral purposes. Some Title X grantees require more specific protocols. The Texas Department of State Health Services, for example, requires family planning programs to establish communication with community health centers or other state-funded organizations providing primary care or services for breast or cervical cancer within their service area. But many family planning providers have gone further to establish linkages with local providers. For example, the Family Planning Association of Maine, the state’s only Title X grantee, maintains an extensive referral protocol. For conditions that do not appear serious, such as a mild rash, the client is referred to another provider. For socalled second-tier conditions, such as an abnormal Pap test result or an STI, the staff will offer to make an appointment for care. For top-tier acute conditions, such as a suspected ectopic pregnancy or a breast lump, according to Senior Vice President Evelyn Kieltyka, “we’ll make sure you get in and we’ll make sure you get there.” To be continued
Opinion Continued from pg. 18
and divorce. The plague called almajiri could not be a product only created by the Islamic education system in the north, but, also, by failed marriages and family values. Freshly, the Federal Government of Nigeria under the leadership of President Jonathan Goodluck government instituted Almajiri Education Programme in order to tackle the menace. But how seriously the nineteen states in the north and the Muslim clerics are that the almajiris utilize the school system modeled in a Western education form,
does not meet the eyes. According to a source: “The nineteen states in the north have had little success in containing the problem of the almajiris, facing strong resistance from Muslim clerics in the more traditional Muslim states of the north against any policy that is seen to restrict the operations of Islamic schools that are the source of these almajiris.” The source was worried that the high rate of divorce in that region of the country is telling on children. The source also informed that since Muslims form the large part of the population of the north and are
... Wrecked By Divorce
authorized to marry more than one wife, polygamy is rife “with 38% of those in rural areas and 22% of those in urban areas in polygamous marriages.” Not even the religious and civic and traditional orders on marriage have helped the Nigerian children from being the most affected in divorce. Such children will most often hawk and beg, on the streets, to augment their income for wellbeing. The Universal Basic Education scheme (UBE) has a limit in funding the basic school, let alone, the children who are financially
“The outcome of disturbed emotions translates into behaviours of concern that impede learning and positive contribution to one’s society. This is more noticeable among children challenged with circumstances of their parental divorce.”
BY ODIMEGWU ONWUMERE constrained. It is unclear how the Matrimonial Causes Act enacted in 1970 has saved or is saving marriages in the country. The Act was primarily formulated to address the issue of dissolution of marriages under three separate laws. Social pundits apparently regret that what the Act had mainly focused on was to register more marriages than to solve the problem of dissolution of marriages. One Rita Gonyok who was a youth corper with National Press Centre, Abuja, on 10 July 2008 advised that parents who propose to divorce should take their children’s security and their stability into consideration in order not to jeopardize their future. She warned that there is no loss that is heavier and that could be measured in both parents and the children than that of
contested and devastating divorce. She frowned at divorce because, according to her, it causes the children untold stress, complications in sleeping, problems in schooling, nervous habits, recurring physical behaviours, and a relapse of episodes of behaviours. The dangers of such emotional stresses will result in bedwetting, fears, and at randomly taking solace in undesirable pastime activities to wreck their future. In Gonyok’s strong view, children may become clingy and whiny and they may need greater understanding of their moods and behaviour. She warned that children have a greater need to be nurtured; but failure of which may in turn impose greater need to “take care” of their parents. She added
Hunted By Unsustainable Payoff To Politicians, MEND And Boko Haram
THE outrageous salary of politicians, Boko Haram and MEND seems to be cast in stone since no Jupiter of criticism, logic or foreign pressure has imparted any changes. Yet it is unsustainable, bearing forbidden fruits to others as examples to pluck or loot. No country wastes trillion cash in currency and remains solvent. Nigeria can spend N63.28 billion on degradation of Niger Delta environment to employ former militants to restore agriculture, not idle them as in 2014 budget. If the folks in the oil producing areas have a choice on what to spend their money on, the least vote getter would be militia. Enough money has been made in those areas to turn their folks that work hard and play by the rules into productive citizens providing jobs for their youths and keeping children happy in schools. Even Boko Haram would not be the choice of Hausa whose culture and belief have been maligned, suppressed and misrepresented, if jobs exist in Delta. As in Niger Delta, we watch BP with envy declared Mississippi oil cleanup completed after $13b claims by displaced workers and businesses. Politicians are in pockets of BP, despite high salary. By legalized corruption, the Economist magazine reveals that Nigerian federal legislators
are the highest paid in the world with annual basic salary of N30.6 m (or $189,500). Of course the Assembly claimed that it is “grossly exaggerated.” Who are they fooling? Read more here We have a unique opportunity here to turn Niger Delta into attractive job producing area not only for indigene but for all Nigerians willing to work hard and play hard with earned money. N8billion proposed on job creation scheme, and N1billion on ‘Quick Win’, an empowerment programme in which youths compete for Federal assistance to start their own enterprises while a good step in the right direction, N2billion on pilot initiative for Boko Haram militants falls short. In our greed for money, we lost focus and the ability to plan for the future of our children. Too busy with microsurgery separating stealing, poverty, from corruption; delineate religion, belief and culture; defining race from ethnicity. Just for the purpose of recruiting our talikawa to fight against their own interest, against brothers and sisters in the name of freedom, democracy and God to obtain the power to destroy one another. Only crazy man cuts his nose to spite his face. Depending on whose figures you believe, OXFAM
BY FAROUK MARTINS ARESA
claimed $63bn illicit funds go out of Africa every year. Most of it from Nigeria with only 23,000 registered engineers whereas over 100,000 claim to be engineers that secured contracts. Politicians whose job it is to create more enabling environment, train and employ youths for
With about 5.3million unemployed graduates, it does not make sense to create a welfare state for those that graduated from Boko Haram, MEND, OPC and MASSOB universities. Unemployed Niger Delta graduate paid 19,800 per month as NYSC to manage oil clean up business more productive
President Goodluck Jonathan infrastructure, only fear for dear lives, as terrorists. What we have now is a treasury that leaks and the more violent you are the better your access to money from dwindling resources.
than MEND’s 65,000 naira per month as militia. We all know nobody has a monopoly on violence since it is so easy to destroy, even by brainless vagabond.
Building takes consensus, contribution and enabling environment to create. Nobody puts a curse on black people, Africans have excel in spite of, not because of, in environments more hostile far away from home. People must have some love for one another to move closer together, not alone to sabotage your own brother or sister just to get ahead and dominate. It does not take the act of God or a miracle to make a country productive. It takes dedication to service for the people you care about and sound management. However, violence that haunts us did not come as a surprise. Anyone could have predicted it. Indeed, warnings were given by some that saw a reckless ship ending to disaster, prophet of doom. On the other hand are those that bragged that if they do not get their ways, would unleash violence like the plague of Egypt. It hurts so much that we had skillful political leaders like Macaulay, Nkrumah and competent economic genius Awolowo in this Continent that cannot get its bearing right today. Our children will rain curses on our generation for not producing a world power with all the opportunities bestowed on us in terms of resources and people. Western Region alone did not have as much resources as oil producing areas. But for the last ten years, which part of Africa is
that giving up one’s childhood to care for emotionally troubled parents is an allencompassing characteristic outcome in children of divorced family. The outcome of disturbed emotions translates into behaviours of concern that impede learning and positive contribution to one’s society. This is more noticeable among children challenged with circumstances of their parental divorce. By experiencing children faced with sporadic and planned divorce, educators in Nigeria must truly find ways to work with professionals in the field of child education and complex needs to make them better persons through balanced psychological, supportive and positive behaviour approaches. Odimegwu Onwumere writes from Port Harcourt getting richer? Come to think of how much Mbakwe got for all the work he did in Imo State after the war. The value of money was greater but not the most important. During negotiation to form a coalition government, Ahmadu Bello as the leader of NPC, was willing to trade off the Finance Minister. The point here is what people did with the little they had and that there were more important positions in the government than to be in charge of looting the treasury. We thought Congo was depressing, Somali distasteful and Sudan pure madness. Africans watch as the hope of the continent destroys itself. Even those that had no country to go to wanted out of Nigeria. If Oduduwa State can be that great outside Nigeria, it could have found credible leader; if Arewa State could survive on its own it could have had its Independence delayed; if Biafra could become Sweden, folks could have stayed within and left minorities alone. At this point autonomy is not negotiable, only the degree of affiliation is, in Nigeria. Each region must learn to live within its own means or trade by barter for what others have. Nigeria passed the point of no return long time ago, and nothing can force others into an association they do not want. The youths have shown the use of military might to be counterproductive since anyone can buy weapons in the open market. The earlier we realised Nigeria as a country of associates the better.
View Point
Nigeria’s Film Industry And Nation Building BY KINGSLEY OKOYE
THE nation’s entertainment industry in the last two decades is said to be one of the viable sectors which has provided platform for the emergence of various entrepreneurs. Analysts have repeatedly argued that the nation’s film industry has contributed to nation building, and capable of becoming a major driver of economic growth and job creation, if the potential inherent in the sector are adequately harnessed. In Nigeria, film has been used to highlight the cultural heritage, political needs and aspirations of the people. Dr Danjuma Dadu, Managing Director of the Nigerian Film Corporation (NFC) said that the nation’s movie industry had promoted and united the various sociocultural groups in the country. He said the movie industry through its story lines had served as a connecting cord that had united Nigeria in the last two decades. Dadu said the movie industry had promoted global peace, progress, as well as contributed significantly to the growth of the economy, through various productions.
He pointed out that the industry over the years had showcased the creative ingenuity of numerous young Nigerian actors and actresses, who were making significant impact in the industry The managing director also noted that the industry had made laudable strides as an important player in the global audio- visual industry, and boosted the image of the country globally. “Movie production has driven the Nigerian state to her level of greatness,’’ he said. Prof. Oyedele Enoch of Department of History, Ahmadu Bello University Zaria, on his part, said efforts should be intensified to produce movies that would inform, educate and provide advice on how to address the many development challenges in the country. “Film makers must tailor movies produced to foster economic, cultural, social and political consciousness of the people so as to give a voice on how best to increase development,’’ he said.
THE Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) was established in 1960 as the Lagos Stock Exchange. Observers note that over the years, the NSE has weathered several storms before emerging as one of the best performing equities market in Africa. From all indications, the Nigerian capital market has grown to become the most preferred investment destination for foreign investors due to its enhanced return on investment. However, economic experts argue that the 15 years of uninterrupted democracy in Nigeria has been a major driver of the market’s growth. They say that the factors, which facilitated the market’s growth, include several initiatives introduced by the market regulators to ensure strict adherence to the principles of corporate governance. The other factors, they add, are the consolidation of the banking industry in 2005, the licensing of market markers in 2012, the establishment of short selling and securities
lending, the prompt release of information by quoted companies and improved financial results. As at May 26, 2014, the NSE’s Market Capitalisation increased to N13.154 trillion, as against a little above N10 trillion posted on May 28, 1999. Also, the All-Share Index also appreciated to 39, 755.47 points as at May 26, 2014. The market in 2013 witnessed a growth of 37.96 per cent, as against 34.5 per cent which was achieved in 2012. However, from January 2014 to May 26, 2014, the market declined by 3.81 per cent, following what analysts attributed to nation’s security challenges and the general uncertainty surrounding the 2015 general elections. Consequently, the NSE index in the first five months dropped by 1,573 points to close trading on May 26, 2014 at 39,755.47 points; compared with opening index of 41,329.10 points. Besides, the market capitalisation, which opened for the year at N13.226
Oyedele also recalled that the colonial administrators used movies to accelerate development in their various colonies. He said the film makers should consolidate the growth of the industry by making movies that bordered on promotion of national interest. The don said that synergy between government and stakeholders in the industry would enable movie producers, key into government policies
on transformation and nation building. Oyedele said the popularity of Nigerian films had made it a medium for reinforcing information meant to promote certain facts on nation building. It was to boost the contributions of the sector to the national economy that prompted President Goodluck Jonathan to announce a N3 billion cash grant to the movie sector. The aim was to further consolidate the role of film as
a change agent and harnessing of the huge potential inherent in the sector. This gesture was considered by many as a fair recognition of the sector’s importance and as well as consolidate the administration’s efforts at diversifying the economy. The Nigerian film industry known as Nollywood is reputed to be the third largest movie industry in the world and it tells the Nigerian story in creative and innovative ways. It produces about 50 movies per week, second only to India’s Bollywood; more than Hollywood in the United States. Although its revenues cannot be compared with that of Bollywood and Hollywood, Nollywood still generates impressive revenue
“Film makers must tailor movies produced to foster economic, cultural, social and political consciousness of the people so as to give a voice on how best to increase development.’’
annually. Sani Danja, a Nigeria artist believes that although the industry is rated third in quantity and quality, more needs to be done in area of recouping of investment for industry practitioners. He said that could be done through restructuring of the methods of distribution of Nigeria movies. Danja said movies produced in Nigeria should be marketed legitimately in Nigeria and other countries of the world. Zik Zulu, President of Movie Producers Associations of Nigeria , said a new crop of film makers have over the years brought some level of professionalism into the industry; this, he said, had led to significant growth of Nollywood, and by extension Nigeria. He added that the industry could be further developed for nation building through the enhancement of capacity of stakeholders in the industry. Perceptive analysts say that in a heterogeneous country like Nigeria, film industry must be seen as an institution where cultural values, development initiatives and aspirations are propagated. They say that movies that evolve workable measures that would further consolidate the growth of the Nigerian state should be encouraged and promoted.
Nigerian Capital Market Under Democratic Dispensation
trillion, lost N72 billion or 0.54 per cent to close trading on May 26, 2014 at N13.154 trillion. However, the market capitalisation was enhanced by the listing of the shares of Seplat Petroleum Company and Caverton Company in April and May respectively. In spite of the unprecedented growth posted so far at the nation’s bourse, the growing rate of unclaimed dividends and the nonelimination of stamp duties and Value Added Tax (VAT) on transactions have remained an albatross for portfolio investments. This is because the Federal Government’s pledge in December 2012 to cancel stamp duties and VAT charges on capital market transactions has not translated into a reality following the bureaucratic bottlenecks encountered in gazetting the policy. Speaking on the market
BY CHINYERE JOEL-NWOKEOMA
performance, Alhaji Rasheed Yussuf, the immediate-past President, Association of Stockbroking Houses of Nigeria, described democracy as a blessing to the nation’s bourse. Yussuf said that the country’s democracy had particularly increased the confidence of foreign investors in the Nigerian capital market. He said that the market would have recorded more growth if not for the security challenges in some parts of the country, the tight monetary policy of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the suspension of Mallam Lamido Sanusi Lamido, the former Governor of CBN. He, however, noted that the market was still battling with the issue of unclaimed dividends in spite of the
“In spite of the unprecedented growth posted so far at the nation’s bourse, the growing rate of unclaimed dividends and the non-elimination of stamp duties and Value Added Tax (VAT) on transactions have remained an albatross for portfolio investments.”
introduction of e-dividend policy. Available records indicate that unclaimed dividends stood at N60 billion as at Dec. 31, 2012. Yussuf urged stakeholders in the capital market and quoted companies to intensify efforts to reduce the menace of outrageous figures quoted in some companies’ financial reports so as to build investors’ confidence in the market. Mr Ariyo Olushekun, the immediate-past President of the Chartered Institute of Stockbrokers, called on the government to ensure urgent implementation of plans to remove VAT charges and stamp duties on capital market transactions so as to increase transactions and boost the confidence of investors. He urged the Federal Government to expedite action on gazetting the policy so as to facilitate its prompt implementation. Nevertheless, Mr Sehinde Adenagbe, the Managing Director of Standard Union Securities Ltd., said that the capital market had gained international acceptability in terms of transactions since the advent of democracy. He noted that many foreign companies had started business in Nigeria since the
advent of democracy, while crea ting employment opportunities for the citizens. “However, we can do better if not for the corruption that is endemic in our system,’’ Adenagbe added. All the same, Mr Adebayo Adeleke, the National Secretary, Independent Shareholders Association of Nigeria (ISAN), said that the national economy had yet to feel the full impact of the potential of democracy He said that the democracy ought to facilitate wealth creation and value orientation in the country, adding that this would increase the citizens’ living standards. Adeleke, nonetheless, urged the government at all levels to embrace economic platforms like the capital market in efforts to create wealth and develop the country’s infrastructure. All in all, capital market experts contend that portfolio investments usually perform better under a democratic government. They say that the Nigerian democracy, in spite of emerging economic challenges, has provided the basis for proactive thoughts and development of new investment vehicles. To them, the new investment horizon, if sustained, will gradually expand the national economy and create diverse opportunities for the Nigerian population.
Science
Effects Of Agricultural Activities On Ecological Systems Bush burning/clearing Bush burning makes the bush to reduce its organic content, while the inorganic content is increased in the soil and the micro-organisms in the soil are reduced. Tillage When a soil is tilled all the time, the soil aerated and it also leads to erosion. Fertilizers/herbicides and their effects Application of fertilizer changes the PH of the soil, it alters the chemical composition of the soil and adds more nutrients to the soil. While the pesticides and herbicides pollutes our water and land. Irrigation Irrigation brings a lot of high humidity in the soil. Overgrazing When animals like cows over graze the soil, thereby eating up all the grasses, the soil is prone to soil erosion because it does not have a soil cover anymore. Effects of different types of farming on ecological system Shifting cultivation has resulted in the loss of vegetation in the soil. Monocropping which is the planting of one type of crop on a farmland leads to the loss of soil fertility and rapid spread of pests and diseases to farms, operating the system. Pests and diseases of agricultural importance Knowledge of Pests (type, life-cycles and control) A pest is an organism that cause damage to man, his domestic animals and crops in the course of living their normal lives. Fugi, nematodes, insects, some rodents are agricultural common pests. They damage our crops, both in the field and during their storage periods. The disease conditions
render crops, man and his domestic animals weak and inefficient in their activities. Micro –organisms, cause disease and also few parasitic worms but disease causing organisms include bacteria, viruses and some fungi. Some disease –causing organisms are aided and spread by other organism that act as vectors like the aphids. Rust of maize It is spread by wind which scatters the spores of the fungus. Symptoms It has yellowish –brown patches on the leaves and this would decrease the yields. Control It can be controlled by a method known as crop rotation and the planting of resistant varieties Black pod disease of cocoa Black pod disease of coca is spread by either or rain, during this process the fungus spores are being dispersed. Symptoms They contain circular brown spots on affected pods which is followed by drying and the blacking of the affected pod. Control The affected pods or trees are either buried or being burnt. The plants are being sprayed by chemicals like Bordeaux mixture or perenox. Foot rot of sheep It is spread by the contact of the animals foot with contaminated marshy pastures. Symptoms
With Oyakhilome Clementina
There are sores on the skin of the feet between hooves which impairs the movement of the sheep. Control The sheep feet is deep into dilute copper sulphate solution Diseases caused by bacteria (plants and animals) cassava bacterial blight This is spreed by either infected cassava cuttings or contaminated farm implements. Symptoms Wilting, defoliation, gum exudation and Angular leaf spot. Control Planting materials are carefully selected, use of resistant strains, that can withstand disease. The implementation of crop rotation and prunning of parts of the leaves above the soil level. Bacterial wilt of tomato Infection may occur through the wounds on the stem of the leaves Symptoms The vascular system of the tomato will be turning brownish in colour, there is development of Adventitious roots along the stem of the plant, there is drooping and wilting of the plants. Control It can be controlled by imploring the use of crop rotation and the planting of resistant varieties. Fowl typhoid It occurs by contact with faeces of infected birds and also transmitted through the eggs of birds. Symptoms There is the greenish or yellowish waters waste material discharge like diarrhea, loss of weight, reduced food intake, they have ruffled feathers, they become drowsy and their combs may become bluish in nature. Control When all or some of the above signs occurs in a bird, the infected birds are removed, birds are also inoculated when they are about 5 weeks old, treatment by a veterinary doctor and maintaining a clean environment.
Discourse SMEDAN: Showcasing Nigeria’s Investment Opportunities
EXPERTS say, with an estimated population of over 160 million, large oil and gas reserves, agricultural resources and mineral deposits; Nigeria possesses abundant investment opportunities waiting to be harnessed. They say that these opportunities need not only to be showcased to local and foreign investors in order to increase Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), but also require competent government organs to execute the task. That responsibility falls within the mandate of the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN), established by the SMEDAN Act of 2003,to promote the development of micro, small and medium enterprises [MSME] sector of the Nigerian economy. The agency positions itself as a One-Stop Shop for MSME development. Alhaji Bature Masari, the Director-General of SMEDAN, at a recent interactive session in Abuja with Japanese investors showcased the investment potential in Nigeria. The interactive session was organised by the Japanese Trade Mission to Nigeria and the Embassy of Nigeria in
Tokyo, Japan. About 44 chief executives of 29 Japanese companies attended the session. In his paper titled: “Investment Opportunities in the Nigerian Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) Sub-Sector,” Masari said the sector hold the key to Nigeria’s industrial development. He informed the session that there were currently 17.2 million MSMEs in Nigeria that accounted for 80 per cent of the total number of enterprises in the country and 75 per cent of the nation’s total employment base. “The sub-sector has been identified as one of the important elements to achieving the Nigerian Vision 20:2020 and the Transformation Agenda of Mr President,” the DirectorGeneral said. He said that the MSMEs were spread across economic sectors with the highest proportion being in the agricultural sector. According to him, majority of the MSMEs are located in Lagos and Kano States due to the “large population of the two states, awareness and exposure and the availability of ready markets.’’
STAKEHOLDERS are worried about the poor ranking of Nigerian universities, as no Nigerian university was named among the top schools in 2013 based on global standards. They say that for Nigerian universities to be rated high, tertiary education in the country must be well funded. They, however, express dismay that the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), is not making the desired impact, as principal officers of many tertiary institutions have been guests of anti-graft agencies for alleged mismanagement of funds. TETFund, in order to strengthen the capacity of tertiary institutions on how to utilise the funds, as well as access other intervention funds, recently organised a conference in Abuja, for heads of tertiary institutions and principal stakeholders. The workshop was
organised in conjunction with the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), and the Office of the Special Adviser to the President on Ethics and Value. The theme of the conference was: “Transparency, Accountability and Ethical Values in Tertiary Institutions for Sustainable Development.’’ It was targeted at improving the capacity of tertiary institutions to access and utilise TETFund interventions, create higher sense of awareness for transparency, accountability and ethical conduct in the management of tertiary institutions. Speaking at the conference, President Goodluck Jonathan said the delay by some institutions to access the funds was not in the interest of the nation’s education sector. The president urged the
BY ABDULLAHI YUSUF
Masari said that President Jonathan had on Feb. 11, officially launched the National Enterprise Development Programme (NEDEP), aimed at generating five million direct and indirect jobs. NEDEP, according to him, is meant to revitalise the rural economy, improve employment opportunities, create wealth and alleviate poverty in rural areas. “This will be done through the establishment of sustainable MSMEs in the 774 local government areas in the country, based on comparative and competitive advantages. “NEDEP will also help to entrench entrepreneurial culture, industrialisation of rural areas, enhanced industrial cluster development, increased MSMEs contribution to GDP, increased export potential,” he said. According to him, there are vast investment opportunities under NEDEP that were embedded in the nation’s Vision 20:2020. “The vast investment opportunities exist in ICT and modernisation of existing value chain in the agro and agro-allied sector, with regard
to production and processing,’’ he said. The Director-General listed some of the agro and agroallied products for both domestic and exports market and the states in which they were found. Masari informed the session that fish, coconut and raffia palm could be harnessed in Lagos State, palm oil in Abia; and fish and plantain in Bayelsa. He also said that leather, groundnut oil and rice were being produced in Kano State, while Kaduna State produced millet and ginger and Niger produced yam, shea nuts and groundnut oil. “You will also find tie and dye and timber in Ogun, solid minerals, potato and tomato in Plateau, cotton and leather in Katsina State, and shea nuts and fruits in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. “The other vital area is
storage, packaging and marketing as well as distribution of food-related items,’’ Masari told the session. He also informed the Japanese investors that the role of SMEDAN was to coordinate and facilitate the development of the MSMEs sub-sector. “The potential of the MSMEs sub-sector are huge, both for social and economic reasons, implying a vast landscape for investing in small businesses, whether to achieve Millennium Development Goals or to create employment and wealth to reduce poverty. “The economic reform programme of the Federal Government, especially Mr President’s Transformation Agenda, is making the environment even more friendly and rewarding,” he said. In his opening remarks, the Japanese Ambassador to Nigeria, Mr Ryuichi Shoji, said the Japanese Government would continue to invest in Nigeria.
Shoji told the session that the Japanese Government would also encourage its citizens to invest in Nigeria, describing Nigeria as a huge market. He said his country would also help Nigeria to develop its market and boost its economy. The development of the economy would indeed help to check the current security challenge, as it could be attributed to unemployment. Alhaji Muhammad Nadada Umar, a former DirectorGeneral of SMEDAN, had advised stakeholders to give attention to job creation, as a way of tackling the challenges facing the country. He said that developing MSMEs was the best crusade ever undertaken in the country. Umar added that it had become imperative to tackle the problems of poverty and unemployment for peace to stand a chance in the country. “And without peace, neither the small nor the big businesses would grow or survive in Nigeria.” he said.
“NEDEP will also help to entrench entrepreneurial culture, industrialisation of rural areas, enhanced industrial cluster development, increased MSMEs contribution to GDP, increased export potential.”
Boosting Capacity Of Tertiary Institutions By MONDAY IJEH
participants to put in place a mechanism for monitoring the implementation of the decisions and outcome of the conference. “Under my watch, the tertiary education sector will continue to be supported in terms of incentives and supportive financing,’’ he said. Dr Musa Babayo, Chairman, Board of Trustees of TETFund, said the conference was timely considering the present situation of the nation’s tertiary institutions. He said a study conducted in 2012 by the Committee on Needs Assessment of Nigerian Public Universities, set up by the Federal Government, revealed that public universities were grossly mismanaged. Babayo said the institutions were lacking in human and
“He identified admission racketeering, poor record keeping, poor examinations management, improper management of funds and facilities as some of the unethical and criminal practices.”
material resources in spite of huge investments in them by the Federal Government through TETFund. “Between 2009 and 2014, the fund, in keeping with its mandate, has injected a colossal sum of N456.66 billion into the Nigerian education sector, while N65.65 billion was yet to be accessed. “This is exclusive of the recent N100 billion interventions by the Federal Government, based on agreement between the Federal Government and the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ’’ he said. In his view, Dr Iyela Ajayi, Provost, Federal College of Education, Okene, Kogi, some of the tertiary institutions could not access TETFund because of inadequate planning. He said failure of managers of tertiary institutions to plan on the effective utilisation of the intervention funds was a major factor hindering access to the fund. “Some institutions either do not have or lack adequate planning on what they intend to do with the allocation yearly. “Use of unqualified professionals, engagement of incompetent contractors and
appointment of unqualified TETFund desk officers are major factors responsible for failure of institutions to access intervention funds,’’ he said. Nonetheless, Ajayi observed that delay in honouring invitations by institutions for project monitoring on the part of TETFund, had also resulted in delay in the disbursement of funds. “It takes a minimum of two weeks for TETFund to honour invitations, probably because of shortage of manpower and this is not in the interest of institutions that are ready to access the fund. “It has tendency to delay disbursement of funds and my advice is for TETFund to increase its staff strength to enhance prompt response to invitations,’’ he suggested. He called for the establishment of TETFund offices across the geopolitical zones of the country, noting that difficulties of travelling long distances for little problems could hinder institutions from accessing the fund. Ajayi also advocated for online submission of documents to reduce challenges of travelling long distances to access the fund. Mr Ekpo Nta, Chairman of ICPC, said the goal of the conference was to entrench the culture of transparency, accountability and ethical
conduct in tertiary institutions. He said the ICPC, in collaboration with the Nigerian Universities Commission had in 2012, conducted a pilot system study of corruption prone processes in the operation of Nigerian universities. Nta said the study was to help the universities to identify and deal with some unethical and criminal practices that were inimical to the smooth running of universities. He identified admission racketeering, poor record keeping, poor examinations management, improper management of funds and facilities as some of the unethical and criminal practices. Prof. Janice Olawoye of the University of Ibadan, said the conference was useful considering the fact that the tertiary institutions were still part of the society where corruption was already a challenge. “I do know that in the society, there are problems of fund mismanagement and am sure that the education sector is not exempted from this kind of problem,’’ she said. Stakeholders at the conference are of the view that boosting the capacity of the nation’s tertiary institutions is not just a question of getting the fund, but how the fund is managed.
International Features
US Sends Aircraft Carrier To Gulf
THE United States ordered an aircraft carrier into the Gulf Saturday over the Iraq crisis, where Sunni Arab jihadists have seized a swathe of the country, as Shiite Iran said it would consider helping foe Washington should it take action. The order came as Iraqi commanders said that soldiers had recaptured two towns north of Baghdad, and thousands of volunteers answered a call to arms from top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. US President Barack Obama said he was “looking at all the options” to halt the offensive that has brought Sunni Arab militants within 50 miles (80 kilometres) of Baghdad’s city limits, but ruled out any return of US combat troops. “We will not be sending US troops back into combat in Iraq, but I have asked my national security team to prepare a range of other options that could help support Iraqi security forces,” he said. Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby said Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel had ordered aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush into the Gulf in response to the crisis. Obama has been under mounting fire from his Republican opponents over the swift collapse of Iraq’s security forces, which Washington spent billions of CHANGE OF NAME
AKHARELE I formerly Anthony Ehes Akharele now wish to be known, called and addressed as Anthony Ehis Akhare. All former documents remain valid. Concerned authorities and the general public should please take note. CONFIRMATION OF NAME I, Omonowa Gladys wish to bring for the information of the general public that I am the same person as Osagie Gladys as appeared in my voter ’s Identity Card. Henceforth, I am now properly known and addressed as Omonowa Gladys. All former documents remain valid. First Bank of Nigeria Plc and the general public should please take note.
dollars training and equipping before pulling out its own troops in 2011. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who since taking office last August has overseen a rapprochement with a superpower Tehran long derided as the “Great Satan”, said his government was prepared to consider offering help. “If we see that the United States takes action against terrorist groups in Iraq, then one can think about it,” Rouhani told a news conference. Iraq’s Shiite premier Nuri al-Maliki said the cabinet had granted him “unlimited powers” to reverse the offensive, in which militants swept towards Baghdad after overrunning second city Mosul on Tuesday — before losing some steam. Troops found the burned bodies of 12 policemen as they recaptured the town of Ishaqi in Salaheddin province from the insurgents, a police colonel and a doctor said. It was one of the closest points to Baghdad militants reached as they overran a large part of northern and north-central Iraq. Troops also retook the nearby Muatassam area of Salaheddin, the colonel said. Late Friday, police and residents expelled militants from another town in the province, Dhuluiyah, witnesses said. Security forces have also held fast in the Muqdadiyah area of Diyala province, preventing militants from taking the town in heavy fighting, police said. In the besieged city of Samarra, north of the capital, reinforcements were awaiting orders to launch a counter-offensive against areas north of the city, including Dur and Tikrit, seized by militants earlier this week, an army colonel said. Maliki visited Samarra Friday to rally troops and pray at the Al-Askari Shiite shrine, a revered site whose 2006 bombing by Al-Qaeda sparked a sectarian conflict that killed tens of thousands. North of Baghdad, gunmen attacked a convoy carrying the head of Iraq’s anti-corruption watchdog,
killing nine police, and a convoy carrying the deputy head of the Shiite religious endowment was also targeted, killing eight guards. Security forces have generally performed poorly, with some abandoning their vehicles and positions and discarding their uniforms, though they seem to have
A Qatar-based union of Sunni Muslim clerics on Saturday denounced the call, saying developments in Iraq were a “result of oppression and exclusion of people that wanted freedom”. Obama said while the US was willing to help, Iraq needed to heal the deep divide between the Shiite-led
joined by a serious and sincere effort by Iraq’s leaders to set aside sectarian differences.” State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf dismissed Republican lawmakers’ criticism that a residual US force would have prevented the Iraqi army’s collapse.
minister Tony Blair, meanwhile, hit out at critics who linked the 2003 invasion of Iraq with the current violence in the country, blaming instead the West’s failure to act in Syria. Blair, who took Britain into the US-led war to remove Saddam Hussein and is now a diplomatic envoy in the Middle East, also
Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush, which has been ordered to the Gulf in response to the Iraq crisis.
begun to recover from the initial onslaught and have started to regain ground. They will be joined by a flood of volunteers, urged on by Sistani’s call Friday for Iraqis to join up to defend the country. A representative of Sistani, who is adored by Shiites but rarely appears in public, made the call on his behalf from the shrine city of Karbala, south of Baghdad.
government and the Sunni Arab minority, whose resentment jihadists have exploited. Washington “will not involve itself in military action in the absence of a political plan by the Iraqis that gives us some assurance that they’re prepared to work together,” Obama said. “Any action that we may take to provide assistance to Iraqi security forces has to be
“When we left Iraq, after years of sacrifice and American taxpayer money, and certainly our troops felt that sacrifice more than anyone, the Iraqis had an opportunity,” Harf told reporters. Instead, Iraqi leaders “created a climate where there were vulnerabilities when it came to the cohesion of the Iraqi army,” she said. Former British prime
criticised the sectarianism of the government in Baghdad. In a long article published on his website, Blair said arguments that there would be no crisis in the region if the Iraqi dictator had remained in power were “bizarre”. He condemned the sectarianism of Maliki’s government, who he said had “snuffed out what was a genuine opportunity to build a cohesive Iraq”.
“US President Barack Obama said he was “looking at all the options” to halt the offensive that has brought Sunni Arab militants within 50 miles (80 kilometres) of Baghdad’s city limits, but ruled out any return of US combat troops.”
International Features
America Allies Funding ISIS THE extremist group that is threatening the existence of the Iraqi state was built and grown for years with the help of elite donors from American supposed allies in the Persian Gulf region. There, the threat of Iran, Assad, and the SunniShiite sectarian war trumps the U.S. goal of stability and moderation in the region. It’s an ironic twist, especially for donors in Kuwait (who, to be fair, back a wide variety of militias). ISIS has aligned itself with remnants of the Baathist regime once led by Saddam Hussein. Back in 1990, the U.S. attacked Iraq in order to liberate Kuwait from Hussein’s clutches. Now Kuwait is helping the rise of his successors. As ISIS takes over town after town in Iraq, they are acquiring money and supplies including American made vehicles, arms, and ammunition. The group reportedly scored $430 million this week when they looted the main bank in Mosul. They reportedly now have a stream of steady income sources, including from selling oil in the Northern Syrian regions they control, sometimes directly to the Assad regime. But in the years they were getting started, a key component of ISIS’s support came from wealthy individuals in the Arab Gulf States of Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi
Arabia. Sometimes the support came with the tacit nod of approval from those regimes; often, it took advantage of poor money laundering protections in those states, according to officials, experts, and leaders of the Syrian opposition, which is fighting ISIS as well as the regime. “Everybody knows the money is going through Kuwait and that it’s coming from the Arab Gulf,” said Andrew Tabler, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Studies. “Kuwait’s banking system and its money changers have long been a huge problem because they are a major conduit for money to extremist groups in Syria and now Iraq.” Iraqi Prime Minister has been publicly accusing Saudi Arabia and Qatar of funding ISIS for months. Several reports have detailed how private Gulf funding to various Syrian rebel groups has splintered the Syrian opposition and paved the way for the rise of groups like ISIS and others. Gulf donors support ISIS, the Syrian branch of al Qaeda called the al Nusrah Front, and other Islamic groups fighting on the ground in Syria because they feel an obligation to protect Sunnis suffering under the atrocities of the Assad regime. Many of these backers don’t trust or like the American backed moderate opposition,
which the West has refused to provide significant arms to. Under significant U.S. pressure, the Arab Gulf governments have belatedly been cracking down on funding to Sunni extremist groups, but Gulf regimes are also under domestic pressure to fight in what many Sunnis see as an unavoidable Shiite-Sunni regional war that is only getting worse by the day. “ISIS is part of the Sunni forces that are fighting Shia forces in this regional sectarian conflict. They are in an existential battle with both the (Iranian aligned) Maliki government and the Assad regime,” said Tabler. “The U.S. has made the case as strongly as they can to regional countries, including Kuwait. But ultimately when you take a hands off, leading from behind approach to things, people don’t take you seriously and they take matters into their own hands.” Donors in Kuwait, the Sunni majority Kingdom on Iraq’s border, have taken advantage of Kuwait’s weak financial rules to channel hundreds of millions of dollars to a host of Syrian rebel brigades, according to a December 2013 report by The Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank that receives some funding from the Qatari government. “Over the last two and
“Kuwait’s banking system and its money changers have long been a huge problem because they are a major conduit for money to extremist groups in Syria and now Iraq.”
Militants from the al-Qaida-inspired Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) with captured Iraqi soldiers wearing plain clothes after taking over a base in Tikrit, Iraq. The Islamic militant group that seized much of northern Iraq has posted photos that appear to show its fighters shooting dead dozens of captured Iraqi soldiers in a province north of the capital Baghdad. Iraq’s top military spokesman Lt. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi confirmed the photos’ authenticity yesterday and said he was aware of cases of mass murder of Iraqi soldiers.
a half years, Kuwait has emerged as a financing and organizational hub for charities and individuals supporting Syria’s myriad rebel groups,” the report said. “Today, there is evidence that Kuwaiti donors have backed rebels who have committed atrocities and who are either directly linked to al-Qa’ida or cooperate with its affiliated brigades on the ground.” Kuwaiti donors collect funds from donors in other Arab Gulf countries and the money often travels through Turkey or Jordan before reaching its Syrian destination, the report said. The governments of Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia have passed laws to curb the flow of illicit funds, but many donors still operate out in the open. The Brookings paper argues the U.S. government needs to do more. “The U.S. Treasury is aware of this activity and has expressed concern about this flow of private financing. But Western diplomats’ and officials’ general response has been a collective shrug,” the report states. When confronted with the problem, Gulf leaders often justify allowing their Salafi constituents to fund
Syrian extremist groups by pointing back to what they see as a failed U.S. policy in Syria and a loss of credibility after President Obama reneged on his pledge to strike Assad if the regime used chemical weapons. That’s what Prince Bandar bin Sultan, head of Saudi intelligence since 2012 and former Saudi ambassador in Washington, reportedly told Secretary of State John Kerry when Kerry pressed him on Saudi financing of extremist groups earlier this year. Saudi Arabia has retaken a leadership role in past months guiding help to the Syrian armed rebels, displacing Qatar, which was seen as supporting some of the worst of the worst organizations on the ground. The rise of ISIS, a group that officially broke with al Qaeda core last year, is devastating for the moderate Syrian opposition, which is now fighting a war on two fronts, severely outmanned and outgunned by both extremist groups and the regime. There is increasing evidence that Assad is working with ISIS to squash the Free Syrian Army. But the Syrian moderate opposition is also wary of
confronting the Arab Gulf states about their support for extremist groups. The rebels are still competing for those governments’ favor and they are dependent on other types of support from Arab Gulf countries. So instead, they blame others—the regimes in Tehran and Damascus, for examples—for ISIS’ rise. “The Iraqi State of Iraq and the [Sham] received support from Iran and the Syrian intelligence,” said Hassan Hachimi, Head of Political Affairs for the United States and Canada for Syrian National Coalition, at the Brookings U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Doha this week. “There are private individuals in the Gulf that do support extremist groups there,” along with other funding sources, countered Mouaz Moustafa, executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a Syrian-American organization that supports the opposition “[The extremist groups] are the most well-resourced on the ground… If the United States and the international community better resourced [moderate] battalions… then many of the people will take that option instead of the other one.”
International Features Iraq Crisis: Why Have US-Trained Security Forces Folded? IRAQI security forces have been on a steady decline since US forces departed in 2011. Experts see a splintered and unmotivated military that must be wrested from sectarian control. After eight years of war in which training Iraqi security forces was a top mission for the Pentagon – which spent $25 billion to do it – those military forces have turned out to be a considerable disappointment from the US military’s perspective. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) this week seized control of Mosul, one of Iraq’s largest cities, and Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit. The Islamist insurgent group’s next stop, it has proclaimed, is Baghdad. Along the way, the militants have reportedly captured US-made Humvees and trucks. “Look, the United States has poured a lot of money into these Iraqi security forces, and we devoted a lot of training to Iraqi security forces,” President Obama said Friday. “The fact that they are not willing to stand and fight and defend their posts against admittedly hardened terrorists – but not terrorists who are overwhelming in numbers – indicates that there’s a problem.” What has happened to this military force that US troops spent years – and US troop lives – training and equipping? And what, if anything, should the US now do to aid these forces? “They should be doing better. There’s no doubt that they should be doing better,” says retired Lt. Gen. James Dubik, who was the commander of the US training mission in Iraq in 2007 to 2008. The deterioration of the Iraqi security forces has not been a sudden development, however, but rather the result of a steady decline since US forces departed in December 2011. In that time, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki “has gotten rid of most of the commanders who aren’t personally loyal to him and has staffed the forces with political hacks,” says retired Col. Peter Mansoor, who served as executive officer to retired Gen. David Petraeus during the Iraq surge. This was part of Mr. Maliki’s effort to ensure that the military wouldn’t launch a coup against him. At the same time, however, it ensured “that the Army couldn’t fight effectively against a really capable military force, which ISIS clearly is,” says Mr. Mansoor, author of “Surge: My Journey With General David Petraeus and the Remaking of the Iraq War” and an associate professor of military history at Ohio State University in Columbus.
But ISIS will probably encounter a major roadblock on its proclaimed march to Baghdad, say current and former US military officials. “They are going to reach a natural culmination point: Their supply lines are going to get stretched, and they will enter an area with a much greater Shiite presence,” says Mr. Dubik, now a senior fellow at the Institute for the Study of War. The predominantly Shiite nation of Iran is reportedly sending forces to help counter the Sunni ISIS fighters. ISIS is “not going to be able to take over Baghdad,” Mansoor says. The resistance that ISIS will face could offer the US an opportunity, he adds. As the Iraqi government approaches the US for military aid, this gives US officials the leverage “to make Maliki get the politics right.” Maliki’s sectarian agenda has created a splintered and unmotivated Iraqi Army, and to make it effective, it must be wrested from sectarian control. “Once that’s done, then we can go in with military support in the form of airstrikes, advisory teams, special forces, forward air controllers, and intelligence – and help them destroy [ISIS], which is an existential threat to Iraq,” Mansoor says. The Pentagon has said that this is Iraq’s war to wage now. “Ultimately, this is an issue for Iraqi security forces to handle,” Rear Adm. John Kirby, Pentagon press secretary, said this week. But if Iraqi security forces could handle the fight, “they would,” Dubik says. While Maliki’s sectarian domestic policies have created the problem and domestic politics must be part of the solution, the US should be willing to provide boots on the ground, he adds. “If ISIS is even partially successful” in holding the territories it has gained in western and northern Iraq, it could be on its way to creating “exactly the kind of sanctuary we’ve been fighting against since 9/ 11.” A “small number” of US military planners could help to create a plan for a “properly executed defense and then transfer to a counteroffensive,” Dubik says, adding that the US should conduct airstrikes with US military aircraft and put tactical air combat controllers on the ground to make sure the strikes are accurate and don’t harm civilians. There might even be political will among Americans for this sort of move if politicians make their case, argues Mansoor, who would like to see a “substantial” force of 10,000 to 12,000 US troops return to Iraq.
“We were the glue holding Iraq together, and unfortunately the glue hadn’t dried before we left,” he says. “I think the American people will understand.” Mr. Obama reiterated
Friday that sending US combat troops to Iraq is not part of the calculus, but that he will be exploring “a range of other options” in the days to come. Ultimately, however, Iraq
must heed the wake-up call that is the ISIS military advance and “solve their problems,” Obama said. “Obviously our troops and the American people and the
American taxpayers made huge investments and sacrifices in order to give Iraqis the opportunity to chart a better course, a better destiny,” he added. “They’re going to have to seize it.”
“Maliki’s sectarian agenda has created a splintered and unmotivated Iraqi Army, and to make it effective, it must be wrested from sectarian control. “Once that’s done, then we can go in with military support in the form of airstrikes, advisory teams, special forces, forward air controllers, and intelligence – and help them destroy [ISIS], which is an existential threat to Iraq,”
ISIL Iraq Onslaught Aids Assad, Jihadists BOTH Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and jihadist groups battling to oust him stand to benefit from a lightning offensive by militants across the border in Iraq, analysts believe. Fighters from the powerful jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant began an offensive in Iraq on Monday, taking a swathe of mostly Sunni Arab territory in the north. The attack led by ISIL, which operates in both countries, has brought Iraq’s army to the brink of collapse. Analysts say their advance could deliver not just a military boost to jihadists in Syria, but also political gains for Assad. ISIL’s brutal tactics and reputation for abuses against civilians and rival rebels may force Western governments to reconsider their support for Syrian insurgents. “Washington and London are going to find themselves on the same side as Damascus, facing what appears to be a threat to the region, the West and Europe,” said Frederic Pichon, author of “Syria: Why the West was Wrong”. Since the Syrian conflict started in March 2011, Assad has become the “bete noire” of the Western governments who opposed him. With some 162,000 killed in the more than three-yearlong conflict and fighting still raging, Assad won a third, seven-year term in office earlier this month in an election dubbed a “parody of democracy” by opponents. But for Bassam Abu Abdullah of the Damascus Centre for Strategic Studies, which is close to the regime, ISIL’s advances could alter Western policy. He said the change may come “because there is an imminent threat to the security and stability of the whole region”. Events in Iraq have bolstered Damscus’ claims that the threat posed by
“terrorists” in the region requires a regional and international response, he said. “Particularly when you consider that there are Europeans and Americans among the jihadists’ ranks,” he said. The Damascus government labels all rebels as “terrorists” and has repeatedly accused the West, Turkey and Gulf Arab states of backing insurgents financially and militarily. But the jihadist push on Baghdad could also increase pressure on Assad’s troops, other analysts said. Firas Abi Ali, of Londonbased risk analysts IHS, said the Iraqi army’s withdrawal from the border is a major “problem for the Syrian government because they need that border to be open to get supplies from Iraq”. If not enough volunteers can be found to tackle the militant advance in Iraq, it is possible Iraqi Shiite militiamen fighting alongside Assad’s troops could be recalled. This, Abi Ali says, could
dent the Syrian government’s battlefield strength. For ISIL, which is currently fighting other rebels in Syria, including their fellow jihadists in the AlQaeda-linked Al-Nusra front, their advances in Iraq are a huge military and financial step forward. “The seizure of Mosul is going to increase ISIL’s prestige around the world, but especially in Syria,” said Romain Caillet, an expert in radical Islamism in the region. ISIL’s successes in Fallujah, Ramadi and Mosul could persuade people “it could also take cities in Syria, which the revolution, for all its outside support, is unable to do,” he added. The jihadist group and its tribal allies brought Iraq’s armed forces close to collapse, with many troops shedding their uniforms and abandoning positions and equipment. “It may not necessarily be a game changer altogether for Syria, but ISIS will come out of all of this significantly
strengthened and emboldened with confidence,” said Charles Lister of the Brookings Doha Centre. ISIL “has already transferred captured weaponry and new recruits into parts of northern and eastern Syria, and it seems likely this will serve to bolster their counter offensives in Deir Ezzor and farther west towards Aleppo,” he added. The Syrian Observatory for Human rights, a Britainbased monitor, also said weapons seized in Iraq are being taken into Syria. Some in Syria’s armed opposition welcomed ISIL when it first emerged there in spring 2013. But its systematic abuses and quest for dominance prompted a backlash that escalated into open hostilities between ISIL and a coalition of moderate and Islamist rebels backed by Al-Nusra Front. The fighting inside Syria pitting ISIL against the rebels and Al-Nusra is estimated to have killed 6,000 people since January.
Iraqi men raise up weapons in the central Shiite Muslim shrine city of Najaf on Saturday to show their support for the call to arms by Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
Tribute
Dora Akunyili: The Exit Of
SHE came into limelight with lightning speed; she stepped on toes in the pharmaceutical industry in her bid to save the people from the havoc of fake and adulterated drugs. Prof. Dora Nkem Akunyili, was indeed a mother, an erudite scholar, a consummate personality who carried out responsibilities given to her with patriotic zeal. Her tenure as DirectorGeneral of National Agency for Food, Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), and Minister of Information and Communication were both remarkable. It was therefore with great shock that the nation received the news of her death in faraway India on June 7, 2014, at the age of 59 years after battling with cancer. Born on July 14, 1954 in Makurdi, Benue, Akunyili attended the University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN), where she obtained a first class in pharmacy in 1978 and Ph.D in 1985. She was a lecturer in the same university and elevated to the rank of professor in October 2000. She was appointed the Director-General of NAFDAC in April 2001, a position that brought her to national limelight. Nigerians, during her tenure, were sensitised on the dangers of consuming expired foods and drugs. She raised the awareness for people to ask questions about expiry date on foods and drugs, as well as NAFDAC numbers to ascertain the genuineness of the products. As NAFDAC DG, she was known internationally as the face of Pharmacy in Nigeria and this won her many awards, making her one of the most celebrated women on the African continent. She finished her assignment at NAFDAC in 2008 and took up an appointment as the Minister of Information and Communication. Akunyili anchored the Rebranding Nigeria Project, driven by the slogan, “Nigeria: Good People, Great Nation.’’ The Re-branding Nigeria Project programme was conceived by her to address Nigeria’s negative image both at home and abroad. Here, Akunyili proved her versatility as she was able to make a remarkable impact in a field that had nothing to do with Pharmacy. Akunyili showed an outstanding boldness when late President Musa Yar‘Adua was sick and then Vice President Goodluck Jonathan was not empowered to act. Akunyili raised a memo which she distributed to members of the Federal Executive Council.
An Amazon By FOLASADE FOLARIN
She stated inter alia in the memo:“ We love our President but we should remember that he is not infallible. Before he left Nigeria he had a moral and constitutional obligation to officially inform the Senate and hand over the mantle of leadership to the Vice President pending his return and recovery. That did not happen. Yes, the mistake has been made by our Boss and our brother. “Mr. President is ill and did not choose to be sick. But while we continue to pray for his recovery, we should try to right the wrong. “ Some have argued that he left the country in a hurry. This argument has been punctured by the fact that he signed the Appropriation Bill for National Assembly. If he could sign the Bill, why did he not sign a letter for Vice President to act on his behalf until he is well enough? “ We have a local proverb that says that ‘A goat does not get strangulated by the rope used in tying it when an adult is present. “We are all in a better position to know that the polity is overheated to a frightening level. Posterity will judge us harshly if we do not positively intervene to resolve this logjam. “ I wish to call on the Federal Executive Council to act now in the best interest of our dear President and our dear Nation.’’ The rest of what happened is now history. The late Akunyili also showed an example of honesty in service, when she was the Zonal Secretary of Petroleum (Special ) Trust Fund (PTF), South-East zone. She was diagnosed of an ailment and had to travel to Britain for surgery. She was given 17,000 pounds by the Federal Government; 12,000 pounds for surgery and 5,000 pounds for tests and other expenses. It was later discovered that she did not need surgery, so she returned the 12,000 pounds.
When she left the Federal Executive Council, she ventured into politics, a path many women and men dread. She aspired to serve her own people in Anambra as a senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Her most recent, which unfortunately was her last service to the nation was her nomination to serve as a delegate at the ongoing National Conference. In the course of her many assignments, she touched the lives of many Nigerians, which explained the quality of
served the nation with passion and conviction, describing her demise as a great loss to the nation and the womenfolk. “Words cannot adequately express the shock and deep sadness I feel on receiving this news. “Akunyili demonstrated that if given the opportunity, women can make a difference as evident from her glowing career as an internationally renowned pharmacist, respected academic and distinguished administrator.’’ A statement issued by her successor at the Ministry of Information, Mr Labaran Maku, described her as “a patriot, who devoted her career to the ?struggle to enhance the quality of life of
initiating the re-branding campaign in the Federal Ministry of Information, which was aimed at repackaging Nigeria and improving the image of the country. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo in whose administration she soared as the DG of NAFDAC, described her death as a deadly blow to the nation. He said Akunyili was a dedicated professional whose exit would leave a vacuum that would require a conscious search to fill. Obasanjo recalled Akunyili’s commitment to the crusade against fake drugs when she served as the DG, NAFDAC, saying “many innocent Nigerians would have gone to their early graves’’ if not for the crusade she championed against many
the citizenry. “Prof. Akunyili displayed uncommon passion and zest for service to the nation and was a social crusader whose faith in Nigeria was unwavering.’’ The minister stated that she would be remembered for
drug barons and cabals. “Akunyili was a workaholic member of my administration, and I sincerely appreciate her service. “Her life made a great change in many areas of lives of the country, particularly in
Late Prof. Dora Akunyili tributes and eulogies since she died. The First Lady, Mrs Patience Jonathan, while expressing sadness over her death, described her as “a titan and a bright and shining star.’’ She said that Akunyili
“Prof. Akunyili displayed uncommon passion and zest for service to the nation and was a social crusader whose faith in Nigeria was unwavering.’’
the health sector. “She was everywhere to fight fake drugs, and it could have been fatal for Nigeria if she had not stood up against the situation then.’’ Her successor at NAFDAC, Dr Paul Orhii, said Akunyili’s legacy would forever be remembered. “She was a highly patriotic woman who deeply loved Nigeria and dedicated her entire life to the service of this great nation,’’ Orhii said. There are however no enemies in death, as Sen. Chris Ngige who she keenly contested the Anambra Central Senatorial seat into the 7th Senate of the National Assembly described her death as a great shock. ‘I received with great shock and sadness the news of the passing on of my sister, friend and schoolmate, Prof. Dora Nkem Akunyili. “Although Dora and I had a very spirited contest in 2011 for the Anambra Central Senatorial seat into the 7th Senate of the National Assembly, she and I had been friends and very close. “We were schoolmates at UNN. She was studying Pharmacy and I, Medicine. Thus, our parts crossed often. Even back then, Dora competed fiercely with her pharmacy contemporaries and even more with those of us in the Faculty of Medicine.’’ While some are extolling her virtues, others have advocated that she be immortalised. Dr Ifeanyichukwu Abada, the Chairman, Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), UNN branch, said Akunyili should be given a befitting burial as well as name an edifice after her. “Government should ensure that the former NAFDAC DG is given a befitting burial, as well as name an edifice after her as a way of rewarding her patriotism. “Nothing will be too big to immortalise Akunyili as she believed in the Nigerian Project and continued to champion it till death. The Nigerian Association of Women Journalists (NAWOJ) also urged the Federal Government to immortalise the late NAFDAC boss. The NAWOJ National President, Ifeyinwa Omowole, in a statement in Abuja, said the death of Akunyili was the fall of a dedicated and a pragmatic public servant. “Akunyili was indeed a woman who made her mark on the sands of time and her death has created a hollow in the heart of this great nation, especially the women. “She sanitised the drug and food industry and saved many families the sorrow of losing one or more of their members to the consumption of fake drugs or unwholesome food. “Indeed, she deserves to be immortalised by our great nation,’’ Omowole said.
Lamouchi Hails ‘Game-Changer’ Drogba DROGBA injured his thigh in training on Thursday and started on the bench in Ivory Coast’s FIFA World Cup opener on Saturday, with Lamouchi selecting Wilfried Bony up front in Recife. Without Drogba, who had nine appearances for his scored seven goals in his past country, Lamouchi’s side
appeared to lack ideas in attack as they chased Japan, who took the lead in the 16th minute at the Itaipava Arena Pernambuco through Keisuke Honda. Lamouchi brought Drogba
two minutes later, Ivory Coast were in front. Drogba could have stretched his team’s lead even further late in the match as his powerful free-kick was parried away by Eiji Kawashima and a shot from the edge of the box was deflected just the wrong side of the post. But despite that, Ivory Coast held on to win their opening game at a World Cup for the first time. At the previous two World Cups finals, the Ivory Coast failed to get out of their group after missing out on victory in their first match, although Lamouchi underlined that winning the opening game was not a guarantee of reaching the round of 16. “The players are very happy with the victory but we are not yet qualified,” he said. Ivory Coast face Group C leaders Colombia on Thursday in Brasilia.
Zaccheroni Rues Lack Of Cohesion
Didier Drogba speed past Japanese defence
Franjic ‘Shattered’ As World Cup Ends
FRANJIC hurt himself just after the interval in Australia’s 3-1 Group B defeat to Chile on Friday, and subsequent scans found a tear in his right leg. Early goals from Alexis Sanchez and Jorge Valdivia put the South Americans in control but Tim Cahill led a superb fightback, equalising before half-time and seeing another goal disallowed for offside. However, Ange Postecoglou’s men could not find a way through as Jean Beausejour’s late effort clinched a crucial win for Chile. Franjic’s injury is a further blow to Postecoglou, who is likely to call on Ryan McGowan - a centre-back by trade - for the remainder of the tournament. The Brisbane Roar man remains positive despite the setback though, and has backed his team-mates to impress in daunting fixtures against the Netherlands and Spain to come. He posted on Instagram: “Shattered to get the bad news that ends my @fifaworldcup but I would not change anything for the world. “Everything happens for a reason in life and this will only make me stronger. “I will be standing by the boys all the way and still believe we can progress from the group stage.”
on in the 62nd minute and although the 36-year-old did not create or score either of Ivory Coast’s goals, the French coach claimed the bustling striker made a big difference. “We didn’t start the game very well by conceding through a lapse in concentration,” Lamouchi said. “After that, we got into a lot of good positions. For us it was really important to start well this tournament. To have a player like Didier Drogba in your squad, as a starter or a sub, changes a game.” Within a minute of coming off the bench, Drogba almost set up a goal with a clever back-heel in the area, which Gervinho could not capitalise on. Soon after, Bony equalised with a header from Serge Aurier and when the rightback crossed for Gervinho
THE Asian giants appeared to be on track for victory in their FIFA World Cup opener thanks to Keisuke Honda’s 16th-minute strike at the Itaipava Arena Pernambuco. Instead, Japan were left to pick up the pieces after Wilfried Bony and Gervinho both scored in the space of two minutes just past the hour-mark as Ivory Coast kicked off their Group C campaign on a winning note. “The players gave 100 per cent but we were not cohesive enough,” Zaccheroni told FIFA.com post-game. “After we took the lead, we did go on the back foot, but that was because of our opponents’ attacking qualities. “Not through our own
Ivan Franjic
choosing where they really pushed us back. That especially happened on the wings.” Zaccheroni introduced Yoshito Okubo and Yoichiro Kakitani in search for an equaliser but it never came and the Italian had called for improvement ahead of fixtures against Greece (Thursday) and Colombia (June 24). “Despite my substitutions, I was not able to change the course of the game,” he said. “We were not aggressive enough and we need to improve on that because we’ve been playing better than that. “We can play better than that – and we will work on that in our next two games.”
Casillas Admits Poor Game Against Dutch SPAIN goalkeeper Iker Casillas said he had endured a bad night, but was quick to congratulate Netherlands after their 5-1 demolition of the defending champions in Brazil. Spain led through a Xavi Alonso penalty but conceded a spectacular equaliser to Robin van Persie late in the first half and then fell apart in the second as they conceded four more goals. Casillas, who was at fault for the third — and particularly the fourth — Netherlands goals, told AS: “They played phenomenally and we didn’t. I also didn’t play well, and what happened, happened.”
He said Vicente del Bosque’s men had to treat their next group game against Chile “as if it were the final” and admitted: “We knew at 13 that it was over.” Meanwhile, midfielder Xavi said the disastrous performance could be the spur Spain needed, adding: “Sometimes it can be good that these things happen.” He insisted: “We shouldn’t dramatise this too much. We are world champions, and we can take the criticism. It’s normal.” Defender Jordi Alba also said he believed things could only improve for Spain. “We had certain expectations, but we did things badly. We’re sure that this will change —
it doesn’t mean anything,” he explained. Sergio Ramos insisted the huge defeat did not spell the end of his side’s hopes of defending their title. He told AS: “It was difficult. It wasn’t the start we were after, but it isn’t the end of things. “We are all at fault. We wanted another result. We must not take anything away from Netherlands, who were inspired.” “At 1-0, we could have made it 2-0 [when David Silva had an effort saved seconds before Van Persie’s equaliser] and we didn’t. “But the success that this side has come from lifting itself up from difficult
moments. We have to selfcriticise. We also need to have
the same humility that we have always had.”
Vicente Del Bosque of Spain
Herrera Confident After Mexico Win Natal On Flood Alert Prior To US Opener THE Brazilian city in which the U.S. play Ghana in their World Cup opener on Monday is on high alert after 36 hours of non-stop rain sparked flooding and landslides in some districts. Monitors said more than 220mm (0.8in) of rain had fallen in Natal — well over half the average 350mm total for the month of June — ahead of the match, due to be attended by the U.S. vice-president Joe Biden. The sudden and extreme weather conditions led mayor Carlos Eduardo to impose the state of alert, and the local authorities have evacuated around 50 homes. Power to some areas of the city has been cut off as a precautionary measure, but Christiano Couceiro, a spokesman for the fire department, said: “Our teams are alert and ready to avoid accidents and to not have the city come to a stop due to this.” A statement to residents said “the key words here are caution and solidarity” and that “the best thing to do is wait — and wait in a safe place.” Mexico played Cameroon in Natal, winning 1-0 in heavy rain on Friday.
Mario Balotelli fought through the heat to give Italy the lead
NATAL — Mexico boss Miguel Herrera congratulated his players for having dominated
‘Best Still To Come For Belgium’ Belgium team
BELGIUM attacker Kevin Mirallas says the squad’s best days are ahead of them — whatever they may achieve in Brazil. Many pundits are tipping Marc Wilmots’ exciting Red Devils as outsiders for World Cup glory, but Mirallas believes they will be even stronger by the time Euro 2016 and the 2018 World Cup come around. The Everton player admitted the expectation generated by the exciting talents in the Belgium squad could be a burden, telling a news conference: “Everyone is thinking that we are going to have an absolutely magical experience in Brazil. For us as players it is going to be special, but we remain very focused. “One thing we can definitely say is that we will be stronger for Euro 2016. We will be better for this experience of the World Cup. “But there is a huge amount of
expectation on us for Brazil, and with that comes pressure. We lost two friendlies at home after we had qualified and received loads of criticism. “A lot of the talk back home is that we’ve got an easy group and we’ll easily progress, but we are keeping our feet very much on the ground. “All we are concentrating on at the moment is getting out of the group, because it won’t be easy. You have to remember that we are a young group, and only [defender Daniel] Van Buyten has played in a World Cup.” He urged people to “be honest and say that experience is important in these tournaments,” adding that the players were determined not to get carried away by the hype surrounding
them. Belgium, whose squad boasts star names including Romelu Lukaku, Eden Hazard, Adnan Januzaj and Vincent Kompany, begin their Group H campaign against Algeria on Tuesday. They have been boosted by
confirmation that the highlyrated Wilmots has put pen to paper on a contract extension that takes him up to the 2018 World Cup. Speaking to reporters after a
FIFA’s head of refereeing has backed the controversial penalty award that enabled Brazil to take a 2-1 lead in their opening World Cup match against Croatia on Thursday. With 20 minutes remaining and the scores level in Sao Paolo, Japanese official Yuichi Nishimura pointed to the spot after ruling that Brazil forward Fred had been fouled by defender Dejan Lovren inside the area. Neymar converted from the
spot to score his second goal of a game the host nation eventually won 3-1, and an angry Lovren described the penalty decision as “a scandal.” But refereeing chief Massimo Busacca told reporters in Rio De Janeiro that Nishimura was justified in awarding a penalty, saying: “The referee was in a very good position.” He said photographic evidence showed Lovren had touched Fred not only with his left hand but also his right. “If you make
training session last week, he said: “I’ve signed. Vital [Borkelmans, his assistant coach] and Mario [Innaurato, physical trainer] also extended their contracts a few days ago, as well as the doctor [Kris Van Crombrugge].”
Cameroon in difficult playing conditions on the field at Estadio das Dunas in Natal, Brazil, and told Televisa his team “is more excited than ever” ahead of the games against Brazil and Croatia. While unhappy with refereeing decisions in his team’s 1-0 win, Herrera said that his team held possession of the ball and roundly defeated Cameroon, enjoying an infusion of strength that the team had needed. “Today it was pretty one-sided in terms of possession of the ball, and we had a couple of setbacks in there, but our possession was probably around 70-30 (percent) at least,” Herrera said in a subsequent interview with TV Azteca. “The fact that the officials took two goals away from us was obvious, but in the end you have to work for it. We have three points heading into the next game, and feel confident. Today we were the home team, and we know we’ll be the visitors next game. We have to play to win.” Herrera said that his team had been playing well but now were fortunate to score. “I said before, the team had been doing things right, we were lacking when it comes to taking our chances, but the truth is everyone’s playing excellently well.” Mexico captain Rafael Marquez said after the win the team played a great game despite the two goals disallowed. “We did a good job — the team adapted well to the circumstances,” he said. The veteran defender, playing in his fourth World Cup, was also pleased that El Tri took an important step in their World Cup aspirations. “I just have to enjoy it, draw on the experience, and play for my teammates,” he said. “You have to motivate them to continue playing this way. The team looked pretty well.”
Referees Chief Backs Brazil Penalty contact, you permit the referee to go in one direction,” he explained. The player said the incident had been “a clear penalty.” However, Busacca declined to answer questions about whether Nishimura would officiate at other matches during the World Cup. And when one reporter suggested that the penalty decision had been a mistake, he said: “It’s your opinion, and I’ll let you think it if you want.”
There was further refereeing controversy in Friday’s game between Mexico and Cameroon in Natal after two Giovani dos Santos efforts were disallowed in the first half as Mexico won 10. In his address to the FIFA congress this week, the organisation’s president Sepp Blatter suggested introducing a television referral system that would enable managers to challenge up to two refereeing decisions per match.
Iran, Nigeria Look To End 16-Year Winless Run
IRAN and Nigeria have something in common ahead of their World Cup clash today and it’s something both teams want to shake off. When they meet at the Arena experienced players at his da Baixada, Iran and Nigeria will disposal, many of whom play for be bidding for a first win in a some of Europe’s top clubs. World Cup match since France Much could hinge on the form 1998. With Argentina the clear and fitness of Fenerbahce striker favorite in Group F, Iran and Emmanuel Emenike, who has Nigeria are expected to compete been prolific for Nigeria since his with tournament newcomer debut in 2011. Behind Emenike, John Obi Bosnia-Herzegovina for second Mikel has license to play more spot. Though Nigeria is often creatively than he does for his considered a powerhouse of club side Chelsea, where he’s African football, the Super often a shield in front of the Eagles have not won a game at defense. And in goal, Keshi can the World Cup finals since call upon Lille’s Vincent defeating Bulgaria in a group Enyeama, one of the most match 16 years ago. Since then, experienced goalkeepers in the Nigeria has endured two fairly tournament. Iran’s last victory at the World dismal World Cup campaigns, including in South Africa in Cup was against the United 2010, notching up a grand total States in one of the great geopolitical clashes. Iran’s one of two points. That’s not good enough for a trip the World Cup since then, at team many have touted as the Germany 2006, yielded just a most likely to become Africa’s solitary point. Despite haphazard first-ever World Cup winner. After all, Nigeria has pedigree on preparations that involved a the global stage, having defeated dearth of friendlies and financial Argentina to win the Olympic constraints, Iran will be no pushover. With Carlos Queiroz, gold medal in Atlanta in 1996. The current African champion a former coach of Real Madrid has got back on track over the and Portugal, at the helm, Nigeria past couple of years under coach will find Iran difficult to break Stephen Keshi, who played for down. To bolster the attack, Queiroz Nigeria in the 1994 World Cup convinced Reza and has helped it recover some has of the flair and power that Ghoochannejhad and Ashkan marked his country’s football in Dejagah to represent the country of their birth. Both played key the 1990s. Keshi appears unconcerned roles in Iran’s late charge to that his team failed to win any clinch top spot in an Asian of its three pre-tournament qualifying group that included regional powerhouse South friendlies. “My concern is how I’m going Korea. Ghoochannejhad, often known to bring my players to understand the style of play, to as “Gucci”, is a speedy forward bring them back into the rhythm who has been prolific for Iran, that we are used to, because it’s scoring 10 goals in 14 a long time we were apart,” appearances since Queiroz convinced him in 2012 to opt for Keshi said. Keshi has a number of hugely “Team Melli” rather than the
TODAY’S MATCHES Germany Vs I ran Vs Ghana Vs
Portugal Nigeria United States
5:00 pm 8: 00 pm 11: 00pm
Netherlands, whom he had represented at youth level. And Dejagah has similarly impressed since he opted for Iran instead of Germany. Queiroz’s team will be led by Javad Nekounam in what is probably going to be his final
three points as we know how important it is to win the first game in any competition.
disappointing experience in 2006, Nekounam’s experience could prove invaluable. Iran goalkeeper coach coach Dan Gaspar described the Iranian squad as a “mystery team” for their opponents, something they planned to use to
Emmanuel Emenike (middle) in action.
Jonathan Motivates Eagles By JOSES SEDE
PRESIDENT Goodluck Jonathan has appealed to the Super Eagles of Nigeria to recreate the nation’s image by working hard to win the Federation International Football Association (FIFA) organized 20th soccer World Cup holding in Brazil. In a goodwill message
Nigeria Taking Iran Seriously THE sides begin their FIFA World Cup campaigns against each other in Curitiba today Argentina are expected to comfortably top the pool, with Nigeria and BosniaHerzegovina evenly matched in many commentator’s eyes. Despite Iran’s status as rank outsiders to progress, Carlos Quieroz led his side through an impressive qualification campaign, conceding just twice in the final phase to top AFC Group A. And CSKA Moscow man Musa says Nigeria will be at their absolute best as they look to get their World Cup off to the best possible start. The winger told Africanfootball.com: “We will not toy with the game against Iran. “We are gunning for all
World Cup. The 33-year-old is Iran’s talisman and now plays in a deeper position. Much of the team’s rhythm revolves around Nekounam, whose task is to break up opposing attacks and launch his team on the counterattack. Despite the
their advantage. “We are probably the team that is the least recognized, the least known of all the other 31 teams,” he said. “But the one thing that I can guarantee is that after 90 minutes we will earn the respect of the Nigerians, we will earn the respect of the football fans and the world will begin to recognize the level of play that we have on our team.”
“Iran will be tough, but we are ready. And I am ready to give everything for us to win.”
delivered by the leader of the Federal Government delegation, President of the Senate, Senator David Mark, to the team at Campinas, São Paulo, President Jonathan said the Super Eagles “is our nation’s greatest unifying factor on the face of our current national challenges.” “You can not afford to disappoint the nation because with your performance at this World Cup tournament, we can recreate a new image for our great country,” he further said. Recalling the Super Eagles’ sterling performances at various tournaments in the past, President Jonathan maintained that the current team can relive such brilliant performances in Brasil “if you concentrate on the
main objective of bringing the cup home to make Nigeria and Africa proud,” adding that the nation looks unto the team. “I therefore urge you to win the first match against Iran in a way that will send a very clear message to the remaining teams in this tournament that you are in Brasil to win the World Cup. You must keep the resilient Nigerian spirit with you, be patriotic in exhibiting your prowesses and go the extra mile to bring the cup home. “Nigerians are eagerly waiting to celebrate you when you come home with the cup,” he said. Responding on behalf of the officials of the team, Coach Stephen Keshi, told the President of the Senate, Senator Mark, to
“assure President Jonathan that we will make Nigeria proud. We will exhibit the character of being a Nigerian and make the nation as well as Africa proud. “We are very prepared and if it is possible to take the game right now, we are ready,” he further said. Earlier, the captain of the team Joseph Yobo told the delegation that playing for the nation confers a huge responsibility on the team noting however that “it is a task we can achieve. “We have come a very long way to be here but are prepared and more motivated having seen you to fight like lions. We will make our nation, our family and Africa proud,” Yobo assured.
A former coach of 3SC FC of Ibadan, Festus Allen, on Saturday advised the Super Eagles to be mentally focused in their Group F opening match against Iran at the ongoing World Cup in Brazil. The Eagles are to battle Iran today at 8 p.m. in Curitiba. Allen told newsmen in Lagos that the team should play the match with the right attitude, to ensure victory for Nigeria. “The entire nation is expecting nothing less than victory against Iran and we can only achieve
victory if our players are not just physically fit but are also psychologically ready for the match. “With the right attitude and mentality, nothing will stop the team from getting the three points at stake in the encounter.’’ The coach noted that a win in the opening match was crucial for Nigeria’s qualification for the next round of the tournament. Allen, however, cautioned the Joseph Yobo-captained side against underrating their opponents.
“If we can get the full points from this match, there is the possibility that we will get to the round of 16 in Brazil. “No team is a pushover when it comes to the World Cup and this is also applicable to the Iranians. “So, the Super Eagles should play the match with all seriousness,’’ Allen advised. Nigeria are in group F alongside Argentina, BosniaHerzegovina and Iran. The competition which began on June 12 is to end on July 13.
Coach Advises Eagles On How To Overcome Iran
Ahmed Musa
Mikel Excited By Seniority NIGERIA’S failure to qualify for Germany 2006 and a knee injury that forced him out of the South Africa edition four years ago mean the Chelsea midfielder has never previously appeared in the world’s biggest football tournament. However, he is one of the senior players in a Nigeria side aiming to make a splash in Brazil having been drawn alongside Argentina, BosniaHerzegovina and Iran in Group F. “This is my first World Cup,” he said. “I want to make sure we achieve something coming here. We don’t just want to come and make up the numbers; we want to do well. “I have to make sure I lead by example. We are all driving in the same direction. We all know what we want and hopefully we will have a good tournament.” While Mikel is set for his first taste of the showpiece, he is no stranger to big international tournaments having been part of the Nigeria side that won last year ’s African Cup of Nations. Mikel said: ‘’We know we’re the African champions and people expect us to do well, to represent the African continent. ‘’That’s a bit more extra pressure but it’s pressure that we love. We love to be African champions.”
Ecuadorian Ref To Handle Nigeria/Iran Match
John Mikel Obi
Soccer Fans Rue Poor Services From Pay TV
SUBSCRIBERS of Dstv, a pay TV service providers, in Awka have said that they were being frustrated by their continued inability to follow the World Cup in their homes due to connection problems. Some of the subscribers who spoke with newsmen in Awka on Saturday said they had not been able to renew their subscription since the beginning of the week. Abuchi Ifesinachi said he installed his decorder on June
Paralympic Committee of Nigeria, appealed to the governor to assist in sponsoring the athletes to the tournament. In a letter to the governor, Emoghavwe stated that the participation of the Abia team would showcase the abundant talents at the grassroots.’’
“My brother, I am just tired with my decorder which I installed on Monday, up till now I have not sat in my house to enjoy it. “They said I should be patient that they are working on it, but I do not know for how long,’’ he wondered. Another resident, who identified himself as Gideon, said he had paid for the renewal of his subscription for about four days and the account had not been activated. Gideon said he managed to watch the first two matches outside his house but returned home late, saying he could no risk being on the street at about 1:00 a.m. when some of the matches ended. He called on the service providers to restore the network so that he could enjoy
THE Head Coach of Rivers Hockey Association, Collins Iheanyi, on Saturday said it had stepped up preparations to ensure qualification from the zonal competition, ahead of the 19th National Sports Festival. The festival, tagged, ‘Paradise Games’, would hold from November 23 to December 3 in Calabar, Cross River. Iheanyi told newsmen in Lagos that the association had drawn up a tactical training
schedule to sharpen the players’ skills before the commencement of the zonal preliminaries. Zonal qualifiers for team events would hold in the six geo-political zones of Nigeria, at a yet-to-be announced date by the National Sports Commission. “Our major priority now is to qualify from our zone, and take part in the sports festival in Calabar. “We have programnes lined up to keep our players
8 but had not watched any match in his home because he had not been connection to make the facility work. Ifesinashi said he had to buy the services because he wanted to follow the competition in the comfort of his home.
Abia Athletes Seek Sponsorship ATHLETES with disabilities in Abia have appealed to Governor Theodore Orji to sponsor their participation in the 10th International Wheelchair and Amputee Sports Junior Games in London. They also appealed to corporate organisations and individuals in the state to sponsor them to the tournament which will be held from August 2 to August 8. Sam Ekeoma, the chairman of the Abia State PhysicallyChallenged Sports Club, made the call in an interview with newsmen in Umuahia on Sunday. He said the Paralympic Committee of Nigeria had selected the Abia team to represent Nigeria in the tournament. Ekeoma said: “The team has started training for the tournament and it needs sponsorship; if we have the sponsorship to participate in
the games, we will win laurel,’’ he said. According to him, Abia para-sports athletes have always excelled in local and international competitions and that the forthcoming tournament will not be an exception. “Abia has never failed to participate in international competitions and Governor Theodore Orji and his wife have great confidence in the physically-challenged athletes in the state,’’ he said. He recalled that the state contingent to the 2012 Paralympic Games won three out of the five silver medals for Nigeria. The chairman further explained that the Abia team to the just-concluded National Youth Games in Abuja won gold medals, observing that new talents were also discovered during the competition. Also, Monday Emoghavwe, President,
the full benefits of his money. “I had to buy a bigger bouquet this time with more money so that I don’t miss any bit of the show but I still go to beer joints to watch matches,’’ he said. Tony Okafor, a football enthusiast, said he was afraid if he would renew the service when his current subscription ran out., When newsmen visited one of the agents of Dstv who preferred anonymity, he confirmed that the connectivity problem had been on for some days, especially for those who wished to renew their subscription. He said it had not only embarrassed them but affected their sales, while assuring that the company was working to have the problem fixed.
Rivers Prepares For Zonal Hockey Qualifiers fit and ready for the zonal elimination when the date is announced’’, the coach said. Iheanyi said Rivers had talented players who would ensure its qualification for the games. He lauded the Rivers Government for providing an enabling environment for the development of sports in the state. He appealed to corporate bodies and philanthropists to complement government’s efforts by sponsoring sports.
ECUADORIAN referee Carlos Vera will officiate the Nigeria/Iran match of today, in the Group F of the ongoing 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil. Vera has been overseeing international matches since 2007 and has officiated at several CONMEBOL competitions, including the Copa America 2011 and the Copa Libertadores since 2008. He was also at the FIFA Club World Cup in 2012. In other referee designations for matches, Germany against Portugal will be refereed by Milorad Mazic from Serbia. He is 41 years old and worked at the FIFA U-20 World Cup in 2013 and at several UEFA competitions. Ghana-USA is the second match in Natal and will be handled by Jonas Eriksson, 40, from Sweden. He officiated two matches at UEFA EURO 2012 and the second leg of the CONMEBOL/ AFC play-off between Uruguay and Jordan in November 2013.
NCF To Establish Cricket Academy THE Nigeria Cricket Federation (NCF) on Saturday said it was set to establish a cricket academy, using the crop of new players who would be selected from the national cricket championships. The NCF President, Emeka Onyeama, told newsmen in Abuja that establishing the academy would help to intensify training for players and boost the development of the game. It will be recalled that 26 players were selected from the just-concluded national Under15 Male Championships, the South West emerged champions. On the female team, the president said that five regions were participating in the ongoing first edition of the National Under-17 Female Cricket Championships, taking place in Abuja. He said that 26 female cricketers would be selected from the championship and admitted into the academy. Onyeama said that 19 out of the 26 female players would be selected to represent Nigeria in the forthcoming age grade international competition. In one of the semi-final matches, Team Southwest qualified for the finals after defeating North Central by 45 runs in seven wickets as against 44 runs all out. ? The National U-17 Female Cricket Championships which kicked-off on June 12, is billed to close on Sunday.
CMYK
Seeing Fathers As Nation Builders IN many parts of the world, the third Sunday of June is earmarked for the celebration of the vital contributions of fathers and father figures to human progress. Father’s Day, as it is known, seeks to extol the sacrifices dads make for the wellbeing of their children and communities. Its essence derives from the fact that family stability, which is the bedrock of social harmony and economic progress, is almost always in jeopardy, when fathers are not alive to their responsibilities. “Fatherless” families pose many developmentretarding challenges to society. The converse is true as well. Good fathers fast-track national development. The alarmingly high number of outof-school children in Nigeria points to the crisis of fatherlessness. Children can have fathers, and yet be fatherless. If a father fails to provide affirmation, protection, direction, and demonstrate affection to his child, that child is f a t h e r l e s s . Fatherhood is not a title, it is a function. Steve Job affirmed the fact that there is no such thing as nominal fathers. According to Walter Isaacson in his a u t h o r i s e d biography of Steve Jobs, Steve disclosed to him that, “Paul and Clara are 100% my parents. And Joanna and Abdulfatah - are only a sperm and an egg bank. It’s not rude, it is the truth.” On this day, every father should ask himself: “How would my children ultimately see me?” Paul Jobs
demonstrated that a good father exceeds the worth of a hundred teachers. Education begins with fathers, not with teachers. Paul taught Steve how to work on electronics. Their family garage was a laboratory of sorts, where Steve cultivated the habit of technical tinkering. No nation can have zillions of educated souls without good fathers. Teachers can soundly educate minds, but they cannot shape the total person without the active support of fathers. The children of absentee dads are more likely to embody vices, use drugs, revolt against c o n s t i t u t e d authorities, cause mayhem, drop out of school, commit crimes of passion, and become teenage parents. When fathers fail, generations are affected negatively. It induces a circle of multi-generational poverty and knowledge gaps. These could weaken the foundation of a just, inclusive and prosperous nation. Some children consider their fathers as fifth wheels in their family, for they are hardly at home. If fathers will bear in mind Sigmund Freud’s postulation: “I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father’s protection”,
children will be happier. They will be poised to create better societies. If the problem with Nigeria is leadership, the solution is with fathers. Fathers are natural leaders. Children learn leadership lessons from them. Many great leaders in history were influenced by the exemplary leadership ethics and style of
root of Nigeria’s perennial leadership failure will be extirpated very soon. Weak families hardly produce great leaders. The strength of a nation to attain enduring greatness starts to wane, when families fall apart. Fathers have the power to transform society and shape the future. Their seemingly little
knows his own child.” A father’s intimate knowledge of his child set the tone of the child’s future and by extension, her orbit of influence. No father can sufficiently provide protection, instruction and direction for the child, he does not know deeply. Unfortunately, urban realities, economic hardship, and workplace pressures
Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, CAN President
their fathers. Therefore, if every father in Nigeria will make a commitment to be a role model of moral, ethical and mental excellence, the
contributions to posterity oil the wheels of civilisation. Children become what they are taught. Shakespeare said, “It is a wise father that
debar many fathers from knowing their children. Hence, we have a generation of reluctant grown-ups raised by domestic helps and morally
By OMOZUWA GABRIEL OSAMWONYI tutored by screen goddesses. Our blame culture creates docile fathers. Everywhere, fathers are disparaged. Everything worthy of celebration about fatherhood is in the past, some affirm. In fact, berating fathers for their shortcomings is becoming a marked feature of Father ’s Day observance. They are largely seen as the instrumental cause of most societal ills, because of their inability to outdo mothers in terms of childcare. Many grown-ups readily attribute their character flaws, failures and elusive happiness to their fathers’ lacklustre parenting style. They insist they cannot soar to stratospheres of honour, innovation, fortune, and power, because their “father did not give them feathers.” Fathers are supporters. Caregiving cannot be separated from fatherhood. Failure to provide holistic support retards the growth of children in many facets of life. Evidently, many fathers have not achieved balance in providing cash and care for their family. In a bid to guarantee the material comfort of their family, they fail to cater to their emotional, moral and spiritual needs.
“Some children consider their fathers as fifth wheels in their family, for they are hardly at home. If fathers will bear in mind Sigmund Freud’s postulation: I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father’s protection.”
Hence, the significance of Father ’s Day observance is a subject of hot debate. If “father” becomes synonyms of love, care, and support, the narrative will change. I agree with Abby Prevost’s claim, “The heart of a father is the masterpiece of nature.” This is why every year on Father’s Day, I call my loving dad to let him know how grateful I am for all his sacrifices to ensure my concept of the good life is achieved. After such calls, I keep asking myself “Is that all I can possibly do to demonstrate my enormous affection and appreciation for who he is and what he embodies?” In other words, I ask myself, “What is the reward of fathers?” The greatest tribute we can pay to our fathers is to live out their humane values. The men of my father ’s generation prized integrity and good reputation. They knew integrity is the cornerstone for an inclusive and progressive society. Think about the cultural and moral renewal that will transpire in Nigeria, if we all choose to honour the legacies of our forebears. In the days of our forebears, people could leave their wares on the table knowing nobody would steal them. Those who needed the wares duly paid for them even when no one was watching. It is wise to ponder on the words of Pope John XXIII: “It is easier for a father to have children than for children to have a real father.” If our children cannot say they will love us till eternity ends, it may mean we are mere sperm banks.
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