19th December 2015

NIGERIA’S MOST INFORMATIVE NEWSPAPER

NO 1,130

SATURDAY, 19 DECEMBER, 2015

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Nigerian Tribune

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Nigerian Tribune

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Court nullifies A/Ibom gov’s election My brother had a hole in his heart

—Linda Ejiofor (‘Bimpe’ in Tinsel) pgs 2 & 30

Judiciary needs total overhaul —CJN

Shi’ite: Tension

pg3

mounts in Northern states pg3

Police tighten security, ban processions

$2.1bn arms deal:

Court grants Dasuki, others N250m bail pg4

Suspected crude oil thieves paraded by the Nigerian Navy at the Warri Naval Base on Friday. PHOTO: NAN

Boko Haram plans to kidnap foreigners, students

FG alerts

pg4

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19 December, 2015

klieglight I

T has been eight years in MNET’s Tinsel, why do you think Bimpe has stayed this long?

I think everyone loves Bimpe. People can easily relate with the character. You can always find a friend, a sister in Bimpe. I am the darling of ‘Tinsel’. Who would want to take away the sweetheart of ‘Tinsel’? It wouldn’t be fun anymore.

Was there a time you struggled with the character?

Yes. That was in the beginning — between Season 1 and 2. I was complaining that Bimpe was boring and awkward. The writer in Season 3 was like, “You think you are boring, right?” And so he started loading me with a lot of fun. I started doing naughty things, some mischievous, some wicked, some fun things. That was when I started enjoying my character.

After eight years, how are you struggling not to become Bimpe?

[Laughs] I get this a lot. The truth is I have been Linda all my life. Bimpe was just born eight years ago. She is still a baby, so I can control her. Therefore I can still stay that there is a huge difference between Linda and Bimpe. For instance, Bimpe is awkward, Linda is not. Bimpe is dumb, Linda is not. Linda is not naughty. She can be mischievous.

Yes. I could be mischievous.

We would like you to give us an example of a very mischievous thing you did while growing up?

I can’t remember one right now. Even if I do remember I can’t tell you because I am ashamed of what I did. It was something horrible.

How horrible?

Not very. My cousin and I did it to somebody.

We were punished for it. It was not a good thing.

I can’t share it. Fogerit.

Would you then like to tell us one experience that has remained a part of you since?

I think it was my brother’s illness. He was born with a hole in the heart. My parents did everything to alleviate his pain. They spent money, sold most of our property on medical treatments. He would always cry morning, afternoon and night. My mommy almost gave up on him, but my dad was always optimistic that help would come his way in form of surgery. This young man was the cutest of us all, but because of that situation he lost a lot of weight. As children we were vicariously suffering with him. Whenever he was writhing in pain, we were in tears. He was very close to me.

He was the person I could tell anything, things I couldn’t tell my mum. He was an understanding person. We loved and protected him from those who wanted to make jest of him. I think our care and love brought him around. After several years, he was flown [abroad] for a surgery, which was successful and he has been on his feet since then.

How is he now?

He is a big boy now. His health has always reContinues on pg30

My brother had a hole in his heart —Linda Ejiofor Linda Ejiofor is ‘Bimpe’ in MNET’s TV series Tinsel. Her emergence in the movie industry with Rita Dominic’s first movie ‘The Meeting’ earned her positive reviews, awards and opened doors to many more movie productions. The Imo State-born actress, in this interview with NEWTON-RAY UKWUOMA, speaks about the journey so far.

Saturday Tribune

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19 December, 2015

Shi’ite: Tension mounts in the North Muhammad Sabiu - Kaduna

S

ECURITY was beefed up in major cities across the North, on Friday, following threats by the Islamic Movement in Nigeria, also known as the Shi’ite sect, to stage a mass demonstration over the detention of its leader, Sheikh Ibrahim El-Zakzaky.

The Chief of Army Staff, Lieutenant-General Tukur Buratai, had said on Thursday that the arrested Shi’ite leader was no longer in the

custody of the Nigerian Army.

Buratai said, in Abuja, during a meeting with a delegation from the Nigerian Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs (NSCIA), that El-Zakzaky had been handed over to the appropriate authorities for prosecution.

However, the planned protests did not materialise in most of the cities targeted for the action, where there were heavy presences of security operatives.

In Katsina, the Shi’ite fol-

lowers had been called out in a statement by the sect’s leader in the state, Sheikh Yahaya Yaqub, but the demonstration, billed to start by 3.00 p.m., did not hold due to heavy security prensence.

In Kaduna, policemen were deployed in strategic places, just as a police helicopter hovered around trouble spots in areas like Tudun Wada, Tudun Nupawa, Rigasa, Unguwar Muazu and Kinkinau.

There was a similar security situation in Sokoto, where most places remained

peaceful.

Earlier, the state police command, in a statement by the Public Relations Officer, DSP Mustapha Sani, had announced the ban of any processions in any part of the state, especially the capital city.

In Zamfara, Kano and Jigiwa states, police and other security personnel were visible in strategic places.

In Zamfara State, for instance, the police had warned against staging any “illegal rally.”

Appeal Court sacks A/Ibom gov, upholds Yobe gov’s election Sunday Ejike - Abuja THE Court of Appeal in Abuja, on Friday, nullified the election of Governor Emmanuel Udom of Akwa Ibom State on account of gross irregularities in the election that ushered him into office.

This is just as the court of appeal, also in Abuja, upheld the election of Ibrahim Gaidam of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as the governor of Yobe State.

In the Akwa Ibom case, the court ordered that a fresh election be conducted within 90 days in compliance with the Electoral Act 2010.

Delivering judgement in an appeal filed by the governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Umana Okon Umana, the court set aside the judgement of the state election petition tribunal, delivered on October 21, which nullified the election in 18 out of the 31 local government areas of the state.

A unanimous judgement of a panel of five justices of the court, headed by Justice Oludotun-Okojie, held that having established that the irregularities in the election were widespread, the tribunal ought not to have spared the remaining 13 local government areas.

The justices held that the evidence from all parties showed that there was no collation during the purported election and as such, election cannot be said to have been conducted under that circumstance.

Jutice Oludotun-Okojie also said that the non-substantial compliance with the Electoral Act in the conduct of the election entitled the lower tribunal to have nullified the entire election held in the state.

The court said there was no dispute that the votes cast on the election day

exceeded the number of accredited voters for the election, adding that in the face of the malpractices, Governor Udom could not have been said to have scored the majority of the lawful votes cast.

According to her, 437, 128 voters were accredited for the election, but over 1, 222, 885 votes were said to have been cast, showing an excess of 685, 780 votes accredited for the poll.

From community read of some provisions of the law and simple arithmetic, no one needs a soothsayer to conclude that there was over-voting in the entire election in the state, she said.

Meanwhile, a three-member panel of justices of the Court of Appeal, Abuja Division, in a judgement delivered on Friday, held that Governor Gaidam was duly elected and returned as the winner of the April 11, 2015 governorship election in Yobe State.

The court upheld the decision of the state election petition tribunal which had earlier struck out the petition filed by the PDP candidate in the election, Alhaji Adamu Waziri, challenging the victory of the governor.

The panel also held that the fifth respondent in the matter, the aide-de-camp to the governor, Zakeri Deba, was not a necessary party in the matter and the court struck out his name from the appeal.

The appellate court affirmed Gaidam’s election and struck out Waziri’s appdeal with a cost of N50, 000 against the appellant, to be paid to every respondent in the matter.

The court held that the appeal was not only frivolous but also lacking in merit.

The state governorship election petition tribunal, headed by Justice Mojisola Dada, which sat in Abuja,

had, in October, upheld the election of Governor Gaidam and dismissed Waziri’s petition.

Justice Dada held that the petitioners failed to prove beyond reasonable doubt that there were electoral malpractices in the April election in the state and

held that the petition lacked in merit.

Waziri had challenged Governor Gaidam’s election on the grounds of alleged substantial non-compliance with the Electoral Act 2010 as amended, bribery, corrupt practices, among other irregularities.

A statement by the command’s spokesman, DSP Sanusi Amiru, had described any procession that was not permitted by the police as illegal.

In Kano and Jigawa, the planned protests also failed to hold as security was beefed up in the states, too. Commercial activities went on as banks and other businesses opened to customers.

Meanwhile, Governor Nasiru el-Rufai of Kaduna State has said that owners of properties destroyed in the clashes between military personnel and Shi’ite followers in Zaria will be compensated.

The governor, who said this in a special broadcast to the people of the state over the crisis, added that the event of last Saturday was unfortunate.

According to him, the government has to take responsibility for the protection of life and property.

Saturday Tribune

To this end, el-Rufai announced the banning of illegal processions.

He said having inspected the scenes of destruction, the government intended to compensate anyone who had their house, shop or vehicle destroyed during the crisis.

He also said that the government had set up a judicial commission of enquiry to investigate the immediate and remote causes of the crisis with a view to avoiding future occurrences.

El-Rufai disclosed that when he was briefed on the breach of the peace, he took measures, including contacting General Buratai and El-Zakzaky, to douse the situation.

While commiserating with the Emir of Zaria, Alhaji Shehu Idris and the people of the Emirate, the governor said any institution or body that wanted to hold a procession must do so lawfully.

Nigerian judiciary needs complete overhaul, says CJN THE Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Mahmud Mohammed, says the Nigerian judicial system needs a complete overhaul in order to ensure quick and inexpensive justice delivery.

Mohammed spoke on Friday in Abuja at the inauguration of the Alternative Dispute Resolution centre of the National Industrial Court of Nigeria (NICN).

“There is the need for an overhaul of the Nigerian judicial system in order to render it fit for the 21st century circumstances. There is the need to ensure that justice is quick and inexpensive.

“Litigation has become slow, costly and highly in-

flating, especially given their complexity, endless interlocutory applications and potential for acrimony,” he said.

The ADR centre is an arm of the NICN, which seeks to resolve disputes through a neutral mediator, devoid of litigation, with agreements upheld as consent judgment.

While commending the NICN’s initiative and vision in instituting an ADR centre which, he noted was the first in the West African sub-region, the CJN said the centre would ensure swift dispensation of justice without acrimony.

“It has now become abundantly clear that ADR offers

a more flexible, peopleoriented dispute resolution mechanism.

“The ADR would help prevent widespread industrial relations crises if given adequate support,” he added.

The CJN urged the NICN to employ capable mediators and build the capacity of the centre’s staff to ensure that the “wheels of justice move more freely.”

He expressed the hope that the centre would be a reference point for affordable and accessible justice for peaceful resolutions.

The president of the NICN, Justice Babatunde Adejumo, gave the assurance that the centre would ensure adequate resolution

of labour-related issues.

“One pivotal aim for the centre is to assist parties in dispute to collaborate towards settling their disputes and arriving at a win-win or mutually acceptable agreement in less costly, speedy and efficient manner.”

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reported that representatives from the United States embassy, National Assembly, Anambra and Abia state governments, the Nigerian Bar Association were present at the inauguration.

Other guests at the event were the president of the Nigeria Labour Congress and Governor Adams Oshiomole of Edo State.

Resign if you can’t pay N18,000 minimum wage, NLC tells governors Biola Azeez - Ilorin THE Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has asked any of the nation’s 36 state governors who is unable to pay the N18,000 minimum wage to resign immediately.

Speaking with journalists in Ilorin, Kwara State, when he paid a condolence visit to the family of a labour leader, Comrade Issa Aremu, who recently lost his wife, the president of the NLC, Comrade Ayuba Wabba, insisted that the N18,000 minimum wage for Nigerian workers was not fixed but was negotiated through a tripartite arrangement.

Wabba, who said that any governor that reneged on the agreement would be breaking the law of the land, added that such a governor should resign from his position.

The labour leader, who commended the war against corruption by President Muhammadu Buhari, said corruption had killed more people in the country than road accidents.

“They have been misinforming the people about the N18,000 minimum wage. Minimum wage was not fixed; it was negotiated through a tripartite system.

Nineteen state governors

represented the governors.

The Federal Government and the organised private sector were also represented. It was a tripartite process of collective bargaining.

“We had looked at all the indices of ability to pay. It is a law and anybody that refuses to pay is breaking the law of Nigeria and we advise any such governor to resign.

“Why is it that the salary of councillors and the high political office holders all over the country, despite their inability to pay, is the same? If there is an economic challenge, why should it be the workers

that will bear the burden?

Councillors in the least economically viable to the most economically viable states in the country earn the same salaries. So, who are they fooling?

“Can they continue to fool us? When the resources were there, workers were not enjoying. Now that there is a challenge in the system, why should the burden be shifted to the workers? That is not acceptable to us. This is like a battle for us as we must continue to insist that workers should work in dignity and there must be dignity in labour,” he said.

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19 December, 2015

Saturday Tribune

Boko Haram plans abduction of students, foreigners for ransom —FG Christian Okeke -Abuja

From left, Minister of Labour and Productivity, Dr Chris Ngige; Minister of State for Health, Dr Osagie Ehenare and Minister of Health, Professor Isaac Adewole, outside the Council Chamber of the Presidential Villa, after the Federal Executive Council meeting was re-scheduled, in Abuja on Friday. PHOTO: NAN.

$2.1bn arms deal: Court grants Dasuki, others N250m bail Sunday Ejike - Abuja

A

N Abuja High Court on Friday granted bail to former National Security Adviser (NSA), Colonel Sambo

Dasuki (retd) and four others standing trial for alleged money laundering and criminal breach of trust.

Others standing trial along with the former NSA over a 19-count charge preferred

against them are former director of finance at the office of the NSA, Shuaibu Salisu; a former Group General Manager of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Aminu Baba

Bayelsa rerun: We may impose restrictions 48 hours ahead polls —INEC Says no going back on card reader Jacob Segun Olatunji - Abuja THE Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, on Friday declared that as part of pre-emptive measures to protect the South Ijaw area of Bayelsa State where the state governorship election rerun had been scheduled for January 9 2016, the Commission might impose a dusk-to-dawn restriction for 48 hours in the area .

The INEC boss, who disclosed this on Friday during an interactive session with the media and civil society organisations at the INEC office in Abuja, also stated that irrespective of the shortcomings of the card reader, the electronic device remained the best option for guaranteeing free and fair election in the country.

Professor Yakubu said that as part of the efforts by the Commission to create a conducive environment for the peaceful conduct of the election in the troubled areas in Bayelsa State, it had already started series of consultations with stakeholders.

He said the commission had mapped out series of meetings one of which was held on Wednesday with members of the inter-agency committee on election security.

According to him,”One of the things we are going to do is to demand that security agencies are deployed a

day or two before the election date in order to help us secure the environment.

On our part we believe that the lead agency in election security is the police but when it feels that the situation beyond its capacity, it can ask for support from the military.”

Speaking on insecurity and alleged snatching of voting materials and movement of weapons by militants during the Bayelsa election, Yakubu assured that the Commission would be exploring the possibility of collaborating with the Nigerian Navy with a view to assisting in moving election materials to the Creeks.

While describing the dire security situation during the Bayelsa State governorship, Yakubu lamented that it got to a point when INEC staff were sandwiched in between security gunboats on the sea as they convey election materials to the polling areas.

According to him,”the major challenge we had with the Bayesla was not logistics, it wasn’t deployment of materials but it was essentially the security component and as you all know this is beyond our control. The issue of malfunctioning of card reader was raised during the interactive session with the media stakeholders urging the INEC to do more to reduce this anomaly.

On the reoccurring incidence of card reader malfunctioning during elections, Yakubu

said the introduction of the technological innovations in electoral conduct will continue notwithstanding perceived shortcomings which in most cases are minute.

According to him,”INEC will not be swayed into abandoning the use of the card reader just because some persons who desire the retention of the old order to continue for selfish reasons.”

“We need to reinforce the use of the card reader and to study the cause of the glitches at least for use to know the reason for the glitches. For instance, he said out of the 3018 polling units, 68 had problems with card reader.

This aggregates to about 2%,” he said.

He pointed out that most often the complaint against the problems associated with use of card reader were coming from people who were not comfortable over its ability to prevent rigging.

Said he,”Just as Nigerian electorates are applauding the use of card readers, there are others who may not like its introduction and therefore they will continue to talk about the glitches and others negative sides so that we will go back to the old days.

“The use of card reader has come to stay and we can wish to improve our biometrics on a continual basis. But I make bold to say that no one will be disenfranchised on account of problem with the card reader. That is why we have the incidence form,” he said.

Kusa and two firms, Acacia Holdings Limited and Reliance Reference Hospital.

The trial judge, Justice Husseini Baba Yusuf, admitted the accused persons to bail in the sum of N250 million each.

The court also ordered that the accused persons should produce a surety each who must be a serving or retired civil servant of not lower than the rank of a director.

The civil servant must also show proof of possession of a property within the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) worth N250 million and also an affidavit of means.

The court also asked all the accused persons to deposit copies of their international passports with the court registrar.

They are to also notify the court of any travel arrangement outside Abuja.

Justice Yusuf added that until the accused persons perfect their bail conditions, they will remain in the custody of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

Baba-Yusuf also adjourned the matter till Thursday and Friday, January 21 and 22, 2016 respectively for definite hearing.

The Federal Government is prosecuting Dasuki and his co-accused over their alleged involvement in the $2.1 billion arms purchase scandal during the reign of former president, Dr Goodluck Jonathan.

They, however, pleaded not guilty to the 19-count charge slammed against them by the Federal Government.

Justice Baba-Yusuf, while delivering his ruling on the bail application, said he was amused at the arguments by the parties, adding that it is in the spirit of the Criminal Justice Act that the court would grant all the defendants bail with various conditions that would ensure they come back to stand trial.

THE Federal Government, on Friday, warned that Boko Haram terrorists are planning another abduction of pupils/students or foreigners in a “desperate” effort to raise funds through ransom for food, medical and arms supply.

The government advised the general public, operators of hotels and entertainment centres, motor parks and similar facilities to upgrade their security arrangements for the holidays.

In a statement, in Abuja, the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, said the planned abduction is in line with the terrorists’ new modus operandi of focusing on soft targets, having been routed from their stronghold and their capacity to stage spectacular attacks substantially degraded.

He said while the largely defeated terrorists have now concentrated their attacks on soft targets like motor parks, schools and entertainment centres, they have been decimated to a level that they are now incapable of staging spectacular attacks like they used to do.

The minister, however, gave the assurance that the Federal Government would build on the successes recorded by the military, which has largely met the deadline to degrade the capability of Boko Haram.

“The kidnap of the Chibok girls in 2014, which attracted global attention to the terrorist group, is what it is now trying to repeat, hoping it can find vulnerable targets, especially schools or a group of foreigners outside the frontline states.

“The plan by Boko Haram is also part of an overall strategy by the terrorists to seek to negatively impact on the psyche of the gallant troops who have routed them from their stronghold and also give the impression that they have not been largely defeated by the December 2015 deadline given by this administration to effectively degrade the insurgency in the North-East.

“This is why we have decided to issue this alert to enable the authorities of both public primary and secondary schools in remote locations, particular in the northern states, to upgrade security arrangements.

Gunmen abduct two priests in Delta Alphonsus Agborh - Asaba GUNMEN have kidnapped two catholic priests at Obior community, Aniocha North Local Government Area of Delta State.

Report from the area said Reverend Father Franklyn Odiaka, who is the Parish Priest of Catholic Church of Assumption (Zappa Parish), Asaba and another who was identified as Moses Onwaonwochie were abducted between Obior and Ubulu-Uku on the Umunede-Ogwashiuku Road in the evening of Thursday.

They were said to be returning from a ceremony in honour of the Bishop of Issele-Uku Diocese, The Most Rev. (Dr.) Michael Elue.

According to the Police Public Relations Officer of the Delta State Police Command, DSP Celestina Kalu while confirming the report, the incident has not been officially reported to the police at the time of filing this report, saying information about the situation was still scant.

Anxious parishioners of Assumption Catholic Church were seen on Friday around the church in clusters discussing the development in hush tunes.

S/Arabia-led Islamic State alliance: ‘Nigeria yet to decide on membership’ NIGERIA has yet to decide whether to join a Saudiled alliance to fight the militant group Islamic State, a spokesman for President Muhammadu Buhari said on Thursday.

On Tuesday, Saudi Arabia announced a 34-nation Islamic military coalition, a move welcomed by the United States, which has been urging greater regional efforts to push back Islamic State, now in control of large parts of Iraq and Syria.

However, there has been confusion over the initiative, with some of the countries named as members of the coalition caught unawares by the announcement.

A list published by the Saudi state news agency included Nigeria, which, with other West African states, is battling homegrown militants in the form of Boko Haram, a group that like Islamic State wants to carve out a territory ruled

by Islamic law.

“Nigeria has been formally invited to be a member of the alliance and President Buhari is looking into it,” Buhari’s spokesman Garuba Shehu told Reuters, in the first official comment from Abuja.

“A decision to join has not been taken yet. Nigeria is not in or out.”

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Saturday Tribune

Zaria, Onitsha killings barbaric —Gani Adams Oluwole Ige - Osogbo

From left, Independent National Electoral Commission (Inec) National Commissioner, Prince Solomon Soyebi; Inec Chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, and a National Commissioner, Hajia Amina Zakari, during Inec Chairman’s Consultative Meeting with the media and Civil Society Organisations, on conclusion of Bayelsa State governorship election, in Abuja, on Friday. Photo: Nan

Again, Navy arrests 10 with 100 trucks of crude oil in Delta ...I was jobless for eight months —Suspect EbenezerAdurokiya-Warri

B

arely three weeks after the arrest of MT Camille laden with about 4,000 metric tons of crude oil, operatives of the Nigerian Navy Ship (NNS DELTA), Warri Naval Base, have intercepted another vessel with over 670 metric tons; an equivalence of about 100 trucks of substance suspected to be crude oil.

Ten crew members, led by the captain, one John Fregene, were also arrested along the vessel, Som-

trans VII which measured 110 metres long.

Flight Officer Commanding (FOC), Central Naval Command, Yenagoa, Rear Admiral Apochi Suleiman, with Commander, NNS DELTA, Commodore Raimi Mohammed, paraded the suspects and also took journalists round to inspect the gigantic vessel on Friday morning in Warri.

Rear Admiral Suleiman disclosed that the suspects confessed that the vessel was owned by one Mr Robinson who manages a company called African Sky.

He said the vessel came from Lagos on December 13 with the initial plan to head for Calabar for maintenance but ended up at Forcados Terminal to siphon crude oil before it was caught on December 14 with the crew members.

Meanwhile, some of the suspects, who spoke with Saturday Tribune, said they were not aware that the vessel was on its way to steal crude oil from Forcados terminal Warri South West Local Government Area of the state.

Captain of the ship, who

5,000 policemen, 1,500 Civil Defence operatives for Ekiti LG polls Sam Nwaoko - Ado-Ekiti The police in Ekiti State have announced that 5,000 officers and men would be deployed in the state for today’s local government elections, just as the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) also announced that no fewer than 1,500 of its officers and men would be working in the election.

The Public Relations Officer of the Ekiti police command, Mr. Alberto Adeyemi, who announced the readiness of the police in the state, also said the relevant officers and men had been mobilised and were ready to ensure peace and peaceful conduct of the polls.

Also, the Ekiti State Independent Electoral Commission (EKSIEC) has distributed both sensitive and non-sensitive materials for the election and has also deployed the 7,000 ad hoc workers it said it had employed for the elections in the 16 local government areas and 177 wards of the state.

The commission, according to its chairman, Justice Kayode Bamisile (retd), said apart from Peoples

Democratic Party (PDP), other political parties partaking in the polls are: KOWA, African Peoples Alliance (APA), United Peoples Party (UPP) and Peoples Party of Nigeria (PPN).

Justice Bamisile, while addressing newsmen on Friday, had promised a free, fair and peaceful election, and also assured all the participating parties a level playing field.

The Ekiti PPRO, Adey-

emi, said the police would work in conjunction with sister agencies like the Department of State Services (DSS), Nigeria Prison Service, Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps, Nigeria Immigration Service and others to ensure a peaceful election.

Adeyemi warned people with criminal intentions “to steer clear of the elections,” threatening that “the command would deal with whoever found perpetrating

was brought from the Naval Clinic at Effurun to have a chat with journalists, said he had been jobless for eight months before he got the plum job.

He said he was hired on December 4 at Liverpool, Apapa, Lagos by one Mr Robinson to ferry the vessel to Calabar for maintenance, but on the way, Robinson redirected him to Forcados terminal to load diesel.

He said he was shocked to see crude oil being loaded into the vessel, saying if he had had the courage, he would have jumped into the sea to escape from the scene.

Other suspects, who spoke to Saturday Tribune also narrated that they were hired by Mr Robinson to sail the vessel to Calabar for maintenance before they were redirected to Forcados to load diesel.

Meanwhile, Commander, NNS DELTA, Commodore Mohammed, has disclosed that about 4,200 metric tons of crude oil, an equivalence of 1,000 trucks, 221.1 metric tons of diesel and 7.8 metric tons of kerosene have been recovered from oil thieves between October 28 and December 14.

Shell can be sued for Nigeria’s spills —Court We’re disappointed —SPDC

A Dutch Appeals Court ruled on Friday that Royal Dutch Shell can be held liable for oil spills at its subsidiary in Nigeria.

Judges in The Hague ordered Shell to make available to the court documents that might shed light on the cause of the oil spills and whether leading managers were aware of them.

Friday’s ruling overturned a finding by a lower Dutch court in 2013 that Shell’s Dutch-based parent company could not be held liable for spills at its Nige-

rian subsidiary.

The legal dispute dates back to 2008 when four Nigerian farmers and campaign group “Friends of the Earth” filed suit against the oil company in Netherlands, where its global headquarters is based.

“Shell can be taken to court in the Netherlands for the effects of the oil spills,” the court ruling stated on Friday.

“Shell is also ordered to provide access to documents that could shed more light on the cause of the leaks.”

Judge Hans van der Klooster said the court had also found that it “has jurisdiction in the case against Shell and its subsidiary in Nigeria”.

The case has been adjourned till March for hearing.

Shell’s Nigerian subsidiary, Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Ltd (SPDC), said in a statement: “We are disappointed the Dutch court has determined it should assume international jurisdiction over SPDC.”

The national coordinator of Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC), Otunba Gani Adams, on Friday in Osogbo said there was no justification for the alleged killing of members of Shiite sect in Zaria last week and the recent shooting of Biafra protesters in Onitsha by the soldiers.

It will be recalled that unspecified number of members of Shiite sect in Zaria were last Saturday killed for allegedly planning to attack the Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Yusuf Buratai, who was on his way to the palace of Emir of Zazzau.

Similarly on Thursday, five people were allegedly killed by the soldiers in Onitsha during the jubilation that greeted the release of Nnamdi Kanu, the director of Radio Biafra by court.

Speaking shortly after receiving award for his role in promoting Yoruba culture from members, Correspondents’ Chapel of Osun Council of Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Adams maintained that “in more advanced countries, no security agent would dare kill unarmed civilian regardless the level of provocation”.

He lamented that killing was never the best way to address agitation for Biafra Republic, observing that the Onitsha killing could aggravate already tensed situation in the East.

According to him, “it is very barbaric and uncalled for.

What happened in Kaduna State is not what we are expecting right now, especially when the crises of Boko Haram, the agitation of the MASSOB, are ravaging the country. But I will appeal to the military and other security agencies to be calm under provocation.”

Rivers: Write your will before rerun, Dakuku tells Wike Uduakabasi Patrick - Port Harcourt

The governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the April elections in Rivers State, Dakuku Peterside has asked the governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Wike to write his will before he prepares for the rerun of the election.

Dakuku disclosed this when addressing party members at the airport in Port Harcourt on Friday.

Dakuku alleged that Wike had threatened earlier while addressing his officials that any one coming into Rivers State to conduct election should write his will because the move will result to death.

“Tell Ezebuwo Nyesom Wike that Dakuku Peterside and true leaders of Rivers State say he should write his will, I heard yesterday (Thursday) they claimed that they were threatening to kill all those coming to conduct election in Rivers State and that those coming should write their will before they come.”

Dakuku also alleged that people had been killed over elections but that the previous government did not bring them to book, but warned that the current Federal Government, led by President Muhammadu Buhari has the capacity to provide adequate security for the people.

“If they think what they did last time and got away with rigging will repeat itself, they are joking, we will come out on any day INEC fixes for the rerun and cast our votes and our votes will count,” Dakuku said.

Anti-social media bill: Oyintiloye cautions Senate against cyber repression

A member of the Osun State House of Assembly representing Obokun State Constituency, Hon Olatunbosun Oyintiloye, has said any exertion by the Nigerian Senate to constrain the civil liberties of its citizenry in expressing themselves on social media platforms amounts to repression and a repeat of the impunity that pervaded governance in the inglorious days of the military era.

Oyintiloye who is the Chairman, House Committee on Information and Strategy in the Assembly spoke at an interactive session with a group of bloggers and social media enthusiasts in Osogbo.

He spoke on the backdrop of the proposed bill, titled “Bill for an Act to Prohibit Frivolous Petitions and other Matters Connected Therewith (SB.143)”, sponsored by the Senate Deputy Majority Leader, Senator Bala Ibn Na’Allah.

The bill stipulates two-year jail term and option of N2 million upon conviction for anyone who posts abusive statements on the social media, while it would become unlawful for anyone to submit any petition, and statement intended to report the conduct of any person for the purpose of an investigation, inquiry without a duly sworn affidavit, among others.

6

news

19 December, 2015

Saturday Tribune

50 patients benefit from Amosun’s free breast cancer surgery

By Doyin Adeoye

From left, chairman, Voice of Women Radio FM 91.7, Dr. Tunde Okewale; Executive Director, WFM 91.7, Kikiopefoluwa Wale-Okewale; special guest, Honourable Abike Dabiri-Erewa; Mrs Folorunsho Alakija, keynote speaker and the CEO, WFM 91.7, Toun Okewale-Sonaiya, at the official launch of WFM 91.7, Nigeria’s first radio station for women, held in Lagos on Friday. PHOTO: Sylvester Okoruwa.

Deregulation: Fuel may sell below N87 —NNPC Says subsidy on fuel was N4.52k per litre as of Dec 17 Taiwo Adisa - Abuja

T

He however said that the government was looking forward to a situation where fuel would not sell above N97 per litre in case the price has to go up at all after the review.

According to him, price reduction could be possible when the government is able to eliminate the inefficiencies in petroleum products pricing, adding that products prices could go below current pump prices.

HE Group General Manager (GGM) of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Corporate Planning and Strategy, Mr. Bello Rabiu has said that the ongoing review of fuel importation template by the Federal Government could lead to reduction in the pump price of petrol and eliminate existing subsidy.

The GGM, who spoke to newsmen in Abuja on Friday, said that the Federal Government was reviewing the template to remove inefficiencies and ensure that unnecessary costs are not transferred to the people.

He said that the NNPC has discovered that the template currently being used by the NNPC was faulty, adding that a review of the template could help remove the redundancies and possibly bring down the pump price.

THE joint military operation deployed to the Niger Delta codenamed ‘Operation Pulo Shield’, has apprehended three suspected militants and pipeline vandals.

Maj.-Gen. Alani Okunlola, Commander of the military outfit, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Yenagoa on Friday that the arrest followed intensified

WITH the dreary state of affairs in Osun State, as occasioned by the ineptitude of the All Progressives Congress (APC)-led administration in the state, former Secretary to the State Government, Alhaji Fatai Akinbade, has called for divine intervention to rescue the state and its people from the present shackles.

In addition, Akinbade charged the state governor, Mr Rauf Aregbesola to atone for his sins so as to clear the mess he created which has resulted in hardship for the people of the state.

The former SSG, who was the Labour Party(LP) flagbearer in the last state gov-

ernorship election, made the calls in a statement.

Imploring Christians and Muslims across the country to intercede for the state and its people in order to bail them out of their problems, Akinbade maintained that this has become imperative in view of the fact that the administration of Aregbesola has lost touch with reality, causing its retrogression.

“Everything has gone awry as our people in the state now go about with long faces. Every tinge of hope in them is fading away. Government business is now shrouded in mystery as it has largely been reduced to the whims and caprices of

He said: “Our review of the current PPPRA (Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency) template suggests that there are significant inefficiencies in the current template. It is important that changes in the template are based upon a proper evaluation of the costs of the different elements.

He also told newsmen that as of Thursday, December 17, 2015, there was

only a subsidy of N4.52 per litre on petrol, adding that the details indicate that Cost and Freight cost N65.48; Logistics (Trader’s Margin, Lightening Expenses, NPA, Financing, Jetty –Depot thru put, storage) cost N10.55; Distribution Margin (Retail, Transportation, Dealers, Bridging Fund, Administration) N15.49, bringing the Open Market Price to N91.52 per litre.

Military nabs 3 suspected militants, pipeline vandals, recovers arms raids and patrols.

Okunola explained that the raid carried out on December 6 led to the recovery of a cache of arms and ammunition by troops deployed to patrol Benin River and adjourning creeks in Itagbene, Warri North Local Government Area of Delta.

According to him, “the

Osun needs divine intervention —ex-SSG

an individual.”

The LP stalwart noted that the fact that the state got a paltry sum of N55 million for the September allocation as confessed by the governor, was a pointer that the state was done for.

Akingbade explained: “Out of an allocation of over N2 billion, all we could get was N55 million after all our debts had been deducted.

This is serious because during the Goodluck Jonathan administration, our governor was crying all over the place that he was being victimised. If I may ask, is President Buhari who is of the APC too, victimising him? We can no longer suffer any fool gladly.”

three suspects were arrested with items which included one Light Machine Gun (LMG), 5 AK-47 rifles, one G3 rifle, and one LAR rifle.

“Others include 20 AK-47 magazines, two LAR rifle magazines and 415 rounds of 7.62 mm x 39 mm special ammunition, 229 x 7.62 NATO ammunition, 273 rounds of 5.65 ammunition, 10 dynamites and bundles of 2 detonating cords.

“The recovery of the arms and ammunition was as a result of the raids on suspected militants camps. The operation is a continuous one aimed at recovering all illegally acquired arms that have found their way into the Niger Delta region.”

He gave assurance that the suspects currently in the custody of ‘Operation Pulo Shield’, would be handed over to the prosecuting agencies after preliminary investigations.

The commander solicited the support of Niger Delta people for the campaign against oil theft and sundry crimes in the region by providing useful information to aid the troops in tracking miscreants in the area.

FIFTY patients discovered to have lumps in their breasts have been operated by medical experts at the Olabisi Onabanjo Teaching Hospital, Sagamu.

This is in furtherance of the free cancer awareness and screening exercise put together by the wife of the Ogun State governor and founder of the Uplift Development Foundation, Mrs Olufunso Amosun.

The free cancer surgery, which was sponsored by the state governor, Senator Ibikunle Amosun was carried out on female students of tertiary institutions and rural women in the state, as part of his commitment to improve the health needs of the people, particularly the underprivileged.

Speaking at the occasion, the wife of the governor, noted that the best form of empowerment any government could give its people was to ensure they are healthy, adding that “the state government is today fulfilling its promise to women who had early benefited from the free breast and cervical cancer screening in October 2015, to pay their surgery bills as a means of reducing maternal mortality in the state.”

Corruption control in school calls for special education —Don

By Kehinde Adio The chairman, Board of Directors, Kingston College, Ibadan, Professor Labode Popoola, has called on the proprietors of schools in the country, including the government, to introduce special education into the school curriculum that would promote integrity, moral and the fear of God education among the students and the young ones in the society.

Popoola, a professor of Forest Economics from University of Ibadan, made the call at the Kingston College’s Christmas Carol and end of the year party.

According to him, the teaching of integrity and moral value education has become inevitable in the corruption control process in Nigerian schools system to check the spread of corruption among the young ones in the society.

He said that the government should intensify its efforts in the fight against corruption not only in the political sector, but in all other sectors in the polity.

Oyo NSCDC Commandant warns against hoarding of fuel, vandalism

By Oluwatoyin Malik THE Commandant of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), Mr John Adewoye, has warned members of the public against hoarding of fuel in their house and shops as well as throwing of fireworks and cigarette buts in bushes near their houses, to avert fire incidents, during the harmattan season.

In a statement signed by the NSCDC Public Relations Officer, Olusegun Oluwole, he said that Adewoye gave the warning while addressing 532 officers and men of the command during the closing ceremony of the threemonth in-house training organised for the personnel of the corps.

At the ceremony, Commandant Adewoye admonished the officers not to engage in vices, corruption and indiscipline, but to be good ambassadors of their various homes.

Funke Felix Adejumobi bags Diamond Award WIFE of the presiding Bishop of Agape Christian Ministries and President of the Funke Felix Adejumo Foundation, Rev. (Mrs) Funke Felix Adejumo, has won the 2015 edition of the Diamond Award for Woman of Substance in Africa (DAWSA).

The radiant preacher and gospel crusader, whose message of hope and women empowerment initiatives have been touching millions of lives in Africa and the diaspora, became the favourite of the organisers on account of her many life-changing programmes targeted at women and children as the most vulnerable class of the social rung.

A statement by the Director of Publicity of African Stride International, organisers of the continental DAWSA, Henry Ogunjumelo, revealed that Mrs. Adejumo was among the 10 outstanding African women nominated for the award in June 2015.

7

19 December, 2015

Saturday Tribune

8 feature

19 December, 2015

Saturday Tribune

Christmas: Five ‘deadly’ roads to avoid

Chukwuma Okparaocha - Lagos It is Christmas time and expectedly travelling on all major roads is expected to reach a significant high.

In its usual manner, the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) has embarked on a lot of enlightenment campaigns to sensitise travellers on the need for them to drive safely on the roads.

But there are some roads in the country which have over the years been notorious for claiming lives due to various factors, particularly during festive seasons such as the Yuletide.

Frightening statistics In 2009, the nation lost 7,000 persons to road accidents; 969 of them were said to be children. The figures dropped slightly to 5,279 in 2010. In 2012, 11 persons were killed each day through accidents on the roads, according to statistics from the FRSC. More than 20,000 people sustained varying degrees of injuries, some of the injuries were so serious they could render the victims invalid for the rest of their lives, from about 6, 269 cases of road accidents recoded that year by the FRSC. The Lagos-Ibadan Expressway This is arguably the most popular road in the country.

It is also one of the most controversial, as construction efforts on the road had in recent times witnessed a lot of contract cancellations, revocations and even litigation.

Construction works on it by two construction giants in the country have recently witnessed stalled progress, among other problems.

Sadly, the road has also claimed its own share of human lives.

Despite construction efforts on the road, both inward and outward Lagos, the road still has a lot of bad portions which make it largely unsafe for driving.

Observations made by Saturday Tribune which travelled on the road recently showed many portions that were so bad they could throw a careless driver off his wheels.

The Benin-Ore Road This is yet another road of huge national importance, as it links the western part of the country to the eastern part.

Though, the road which was once notorious for many bad portions which often caused massive gridlock as well as fatal and non-fatal accidents, has witnessed positive turnaround in recent months, it is still a road to travel on with great care.

In August this year, about 14 people lost their lives while two others were injured in a fatal motor accident on the Benin-Ore-Lagos Expressway at Akinfosile Area in Odigbo Local Government area of Ondo State.

The accident was said to have occurred as a result of over speeding and reckless driving on the part of the drivers of the vehicles involved.

Owerri-Port Harcourt Road In a recent chat with the media, the immediate past president of Association of Nigeria Licensed Customs Agents Port Harcourt-based businessman, Ernest Elochukwu, urged the Federal Government to repair the bad portion on the Owerri-Port Harcourt highway.

An embittered Elochukwu, pointed out that the Ohaji to Umuagwo portion of the road in Imo had become a nightmare to road users.

“The condition of the road has become deplorable and we plead that urgent attention or some amelioration repairs be carried out to save the situation.

“Road users, commuters, transporters and indeed, the business community in the South-East and South South zones are suffering and bearing unpleasant consequences,” he said.

It was gathered that the situation of things on the road has become so bad that it is causing a big nightmare for road users.

“It is also affecting business in the eastern part of the country because the business community uses the road virtually everyday,” Elochukwu had stated.

and its environs, while places such as Salolo, Adura and Kola in Agbado area of the Lagos Abeokuta Expressway as well many other portions in the Ogun State end of the road are also known to have various bad spots which often lead to massive gridlock, especially late in the evening.

Information gathered by Saturday Tribune further shows that many sections of the road have been in a state of disrepair for a very long time such that many denizens of communities adjoining the road as well as its frequent users have lost count of the number of years such sections of the road have been in that state.

Saturday Tribune which swung into action immediately after the gridlock experience gathered from a resident of Abule-Egba area of the state that many portions of the road had been in a state of disrepair for many years.

Lagos-Abeokuta Expressway At the peak of the rainy season, just a few months ago, the queue at the Oke-Odo area of the Lagos-Abeokuta Expressway must have had no fewer than several hundreds of vehicles trapped in it.

After spending over one hour trapped in the gridlock, Saturday Tribune eventually got to know what the source of the problem was a large pool of water, which had gathered after a downpour that lasted for less than one hour. The development totally made a large section of the road virtually impossible for any vehicle to travel on. This made hundreds of drivers to be left with no choice but to scamper for the only dry section of the road that was available.

Despite numerous promises made by the government at various times to make infrastructural amenities available to the citizenry, including promises of good roads, a journey on many roads in the country will doubtless leave a traveller bewildered, as scores of roads are in a bad state, including the so-called federal roads.

It is not uncommon to find large bad portions on many federal roads in virtually all over the country including the state that prides itself as the centre of excellence – Lagos.

Travelling on the Lagos Abeokuta Expressway (according to those who frequently make use of the road) is gradually becoming synonymous with passing through the proverbial needle’s eye as many bad potions full of crevices, potholes or cracks are not difficult to spot.

Travelling on it during the festive season may not be an exemption.

Major bad portions on the expressway can be spotted in popular areas such as Iyana Ipaja as well as Abule Egba

Apapa-Oshodi Expressway Though not an inter-state road, the Oshodi-Apapa Expressway, deserves a mention in this report because of its economic importance to Lagos State and Nigeria as a whole.

At the Balet Bus Stop area of the expressway, there exist many bad portions which, it is understood, have been causing massive gridlock, which at times extend from Cele Bus Stop to Balet/Sadiku areas of the road. A lot of motorists, it was gathered, had in the past rammed into many of the bad portions of the road, thus damaging their vehicles.

However, there are physical signs that residents of the area had, in the past, made attempts to ameliorate the problem. This they did by stacking the hole with bags of sand, but this, it was observed, has had little or no impact on operations on the road, as motorists still often try to avoid it.

There are also reports that travellers to places such as Kaduna, Jebba, Calabar, Itu, Aba and Ikot Ekpene, Calabar and Ogoja, Onitsha and Enugu, among others generally have harrowing tales to tell about the state of roads in these parts.

Other roads that in this category include the AbujaLokoja, Nyanya-Maraba, Maiduguri-Monguno-MarteDikwa, Makurdi- Otukpo, among others.

When commenting on the spate of bad roads in the country, Professor Mayo Agbai, a seasoned professor of economics in one of the nation’s tertiary institutions, in a telephone chat with Saturday Tribune, said: “Nigerians deserve nothing but the best from their leaders. What will it take the government to fix its roads once and for all, or what will it cost the government, in conjunction with the private sector, to give us good roads? By the time we calculate the cost of embarking on endless patching and rehabilitation of the road, you will realise that it would have made more sense if a new one had been constructed all together.”

President Muhammadu Buhari has himself admitted that most of the Nigerian roads are death traps and that they deserved urgent attention of the government.

The president, who advised all relevant agencies to make the roads work again, recently, said: “The roads are dead.

Those who drive between Lagos and Ibadan will have a lot of stories to tell you. Those who drive from Kaduna to Jebba may have more stories to tell. The same thing is applicable to the East West roads.”

What will it take the government to fix its roads once and for all, or what will it cost the government, in conjunction with the private sector, to give us good roads?

9

19 December, 2015

Saturday Tribune

newsmaker

Al-Zakzaky: Poster boy of Iranian revolution in Nigeria

By Saliu Gbadamosi

B

ARELY two weeks after about 22 of its members were allegedly killed during a procession in Zaria, an attack for which insurgent group, Boko Haram, claimed responsibility, the Ibrahim Al-Zakzaky-led Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN), widely known as the Shiite, was last Saturday, again, in the news. And typical of the group, it was for the wrong reason.

The Shiite members, as they were wont to do, barricaded the road while celebrating their Maulud at Hussainiyya in Zaria, their headquarters. The Chief of Army Staff (COAS), Lieutenant-General Tukur Buratai, was scheduled to pass through the road to attend the passing out parade of the 73 regular recruits intake of Depot Nigerian Army, Zaria. The convoy of the COAS was eventually attacked by members of the sect, who were said to wield dangerous weapons. General Buratai was within a whisker of being killed in the ensuing melee as soldiers and Shiites clashed in a bid to clear the road to enable the COAS’s convoy pass through thoroughfare.

The Shiites’ clash with soldiers lasted between last Saturday and Monday, leading to the death of some people, mostly IMN members, including a son of Zakzaky, Aliyu; his second in command, Sheikh Muhammad Turi, among others, though there were said to be some casualties on the part of the Army too. Zakzaky, whose trademark is dressing in robes and turban to resemble Iranian ayatollah, was on Sunday arrested by soldiers with injuries sustained in a raid on his residence at Gyallesu in Zaria, which was said to be destroyed by soldiers.The incident of those days was indeed bloody!

The recent clash with soldiers drew condemnations, both from within the country and outside, particularly human rights activists, with the Iranian and Iraqi governments warning Nigeria against taking hasty actions against Shiites in the country. The American Embassy in Nigeria has also come out to urge the Federal Government not only to investigate the clash but also hold anyone culpable accountable.

“The United States calls on the Government of Nigeria to quickly, credibly, and transparently investigate these events in Zaria and hold to account any individuals found to have committed crimes,” the U.S. Embassy said in a statement on Wednesday.

“It is essential that all sides refrain from actions that further destabilise the situation,” U.S. Ambassador James Entwhistle added.

The Shiite sect, also known as Shia, was relatively unpopular in the country until the 1980s when Zakzaky, who graduated from the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) in Zaria, transformed the Islamic Movement in Nigeria, which was formed as a students activist group, to a Shiite group. The transformation came after Zakzaky returned from Iran, where he converted to Shia Islam, in 1980.

Prior to his conversion to Shia Islam, Zakzaky,

interview

who was born on May 5, 1953 in Zaria, Kaduna State, was a leading member of the Muslim Students Society of Nigeria (MSSN).

He was MSSN’s secretary at A B U , Zaria, between 1977 and 1978 and later became the body’s National Vice-President in 1979.

In the early 1980s, Zakzaky led the then Nigeria’s Muslim Brotherhood. But all these changed as soon as he visited Iran, which is regarded as the world headquarters of Shiites.

He was perhaps motivated by the then Iranian leader and founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini, who led the February 1979 revolution that toppled the then American-backed Iranian government of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, putting an end to the Pahlavi monarchy in the Asian country and sacked the provisional government of Shapour Bakhtiar.

Zakzaky’s firebrand preachings have always been against the establishment and the ‘Great Satan’, the United States of America and its allies, including Israel. He had declared Nigerian government unfit to rule and was highly critical of the traditional Sunni

entertainment

Bakassi returnees are still hungry and homeless —Leader

Tonto Dikeh warns married women

P13 P33

leadership of Nigeria, including the Sultan of Sokoto, which he believed was guilty of siding with the government. The Shiite leader in Nigeria is propagating his Shia tenets without any regard for political institutions in the country.

The Shiites’ principal approach to practicing their belief is that they can never be subservient to any other authority except those established under the Sharia. This emanates from their belief that it is only the Sharia that is the solution to the world’s problems. In fact, Zakzaky was a known advocate of Islam as a solution to both socialism and capitalism during the Cold War period.

This then explains why the sect has constantly been having issues with constituted authorities in the country with Zakzaky being jailed on many occasions in the late 1980s and 1990s. When the current no-nonsense Comptroller-General of Customs, Colonel Hameed Ibrahim Ali (retd), was the military administrator of Kaduna State, the Shiite sect members’ excesses was thoroughly put to check. Until Ali’s coming to the state, the sect, which membership was largely drawn from youths who were disenchanted with the the establishment, had almost taken over the control of the state and set up its own Islamic government. The sect, unlike insurgent group, Boko Haram, does not discourage people from acquiring education despite its lackadaisical attitude to the establishment.

The Ali blow to the sect forced it to remain virtually ‘silent’ until the advent of democracy under the current dispensation when ex-governor, Ahmed Mohammed Makarfi, recognised Za-

politics&policy

Senate and the TSA controversy Pp38,39

kzaky as an Islamic scholar in the state. This, no doubt, emboldened the sect as it has unfettered right to worship and carry out its activities, including holding processions through which it blocked roads, thus denying other people of various beliefs of their right to free movement.

Most cities in the North always witness processions of the Shiites, particularly on Ashura Day, which falls of the ninth day of the month of Muharam in the Islamic calendar. The sect normally uses the day to mark the day the grandson of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) was slain in the Battle of Karbala.

In one of such processions last year, the Shiites had a face-off with soldiers in Zaria, their national headquarters, leading to a clash in which 35 people lost their lives.

The July 2014 procession was organised to celebrate Quds Day and also to protest Israeli military attacks against Palestinians in Gaza.

Zakzaky’s arrest by the Army in the recent clash is seen as a relief to residents of the ancient town of Zaria. They were shown jubilating over the ‘conquer’ of Zakzaky by soldiers in a video clip played by the General Officer Commanding 1 Division, Nigerian Army, Major-General A Oyebode, at a press briefing in Kaduna last Monday.

With Zakzaky in custody and his followers giving condition to let peace reign, one take from this is government ought to be wary of the way and manner it handles the Shiites’ case to avoid indirectly giving life to another insurgent group like Boko Haram, whose founder, Muhammed Yusuf, was arrested in 2009 by soldiers during a clash with the authorities and handed over to the police, only to be killed later in custody.

Like the apex Islamic body in the country, the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA) warns: “While there are claims and counter-claims on what actually precipitated the latest heart-rendering incident, NSCIA urges the authorities to exercise restraint.

“The history of the circumstances that engendered the outbreak of militant insurgency in the past, with cataclysmic consequences that Nigeria is yet to recover from, should not be allowed to repeat itself.”

court&crime

She got pregnant under my roof for another man —Husband He was subjecting me to inhuman treatment —Wife Pp18&31

10

19 December, 2015

Saturday Tribune

08050498504 toluwaniforever@yahoo.com

Art brought

me and my husband together —Nike Okundaye

Chief (Mrs) Nike Okundaye, founder of Nike Art Gallery, located in Lagos, Abuja and Osogbo has no doubt made her mark in the world of arts.

In this interview with TUNDE BUSARI, she speaks on her art world and how art cemented her matrimony.

How will you describe him?

How else can I describe him other than what I have said earlier that he has always been a pillar of support in this work. He also shares my passion and which has made things work well.

A

trip to your gallery would naturally provoke the question of how you came about this gigantic project, can you share with us this background informa-

tion?

In the course of my travelling abroad, I came in contact with different galleries but a particular one I saw in London, known as Convent Garden appealed to me most and this inspired my coming up with this in Nigeria. It was conceived a long time ago. I am happy it came to a reality and it is serving the purpose for which it was set up. It is more or less a window to showcase the works of talent we have in this country. Young artists are coming up everyday doing promising things. These artists love to see their works on display here. They love to identify with what we are doing to promote art as a whole.

You are a giant in the world of art as your works have proved over the years, does this rob you of the attention you give your family?

I am a family woman. I love my family so dearly. I must confess that I have been able to bring out my best on all these works because of the support I get from my family.

I am blessed with a husband who is so much interested in what I am doing. He not only inspires me; he also goes all out to support me.

Is your husband also into art?

To some extent, he is. You can see him sitting comfortably here overseeing our operations.

Can we say art actually joined you?

Mind you, he is a retired commissioner of police. But his love for art is something else. I can say art joined us because we started a relationship through arts which led to our marriage.

When was that?

That was in 1993.

Can we say you, like other ventures in Nigeria, are faced with challenges?

There is hardly a big project without one or two challenges. We thank God that we are moving on despite the challenges. But for the benefit of your question I think it will be a disservice if I fail to tell you that funding is an issue, a serious issue we face. The government should go beyond lip service and come forward to support us financially. It is not fair to impose tax on us as they do on companies which make millions of naira. I am not given to complaining but it is biting hard and very discouraging. If I tell you more of what we are facing, you will sympathise with us. For instance, poor electricity supply means we have to rely on alternative source, which, of course, is the generator. We don’t like to leave here in darkness. It does not present us well to our loyal customers who must be given right treatment at every visit. What is the right treatment apart from our courtesy reception? It is having a clear view of the whole gallery.

So we are appealing to the government to improve electricity supply to save us diesel budget. The money that goes into maintaining the generator can be used to do other meaningful things.

How then do you make money with the chal-

I have been able to bring out my best on all these works because of the support I get from my family. I am blessed with a husband who is so much interested in what I am doing.

He not only inspires me but goes all out to support me.

lenges you just enumerated?

We give thanks to God for the little we make. But if I must be sincere with you we don’t make as much as you think we do. Patriotism is what we are doing here and there is no regret about it because this gallery is my legacy that the future generation would relate with. Our works are also outside the country and are making good sales.

This is saying that we are making more money outside Nigeria. This is also saying that our government should do something in supporting us. The Ministry of Culture and other relevant parastatals and agencies should rise and support us. As of today, we have at least 30,000 registered artists who are doing a great work of art. Yet there are many more not registered. This shows our country is blessed but we seem not to appreciate it. When we make money outside and bring it home, that is capital flight in favour of Nigeria as against taking our money abroad. But I must not forget to acknowledge the support we receive from time to time from some individuals and bodies.

If you take an account of the totality of your works, which one can you pick as your favourite?

In art it is not easy to say one work is the best over others. This is because each work comes with a unique inspiration. But talking in terms of what the world knows me for, I will say adire. Adire is more than fabric. It is essentially a medium of communication among women.

You recall that in the olden days women were not given enough space to make verbal communication. The design on the adire they put on was used as a means of communication. It was a power of a sort which we use over men.

I think I have answered that question.

Was there an experience you had which you cannot forget on your journey?

There was an incident in 1982 when my works got burnt. It was in Washington [United States]. I was thoroughly demoralised. I smelt a rat and my suspicion was later confirmed by the FBI. It was a challenge that could have discouraged me but God lifted me up after it. The incident is a professional hazard. In your profession, I guess you also occasionally have such low moment. But above all, I want people to be sincere in whatever they do. This is most important in the journey of life. I believe whatever evil done will not go just like that. We should not take envy to the level of destroying other people.

Can you talk about unique headgears you are lately seen with?

Don't you like them? There is nothing special about them. They are an expression of art. As I always say Africans are blessed with varieties of art designs and colours.

I have got to a stage that I should set a standard because there are so many women who look up to me. What I do must at all times meet their expectation, including what I put on.

11

19 December, 2015

BLESSING EKUM ekumblessing@gmail.com 08116954639

food&drink

‘Fried rice & chicken,

my family’s delight at Christmas’ Mrs. Abosede Omitoyin, Chief Executive Officer, Oluwadamilare Catering Services, in this interview with OMODASOLA SMITH, speaks on her cooking skills and her favourite delicacy at Christmas.

H

ow early did you start cooking as a child?

I started cooking at the age of 10. As the first child of the family, I used to stay in the kitchen. I was around six years old then. So when I was 10, my mum gave me the opportunity to cook.

Do you cook because you are a woman or you have passion for cooking?

I have great passion for cooking, it is my hobby.

Can you recall the first food you prepared?

Yes! The first food I prepared was amala with ewedu soup.

How did it turn out?

It turned out really bad, I mean the amala was full of lumps but I was happy I prepared it.

What was your favourite meal as a child?

Pounded yam with crayfish, garnished egusi soup and cat fish.

Has this changed?

No. I still love pounded yam very much.

Which food did you hate to eat then?

I hated eating beans. Anytime my mum cooked beans, I would pretend as if I was sleeping so as not to be forced to eat it.

Which food do you like to serve your family most?

It’s still the same pounded yam.

What was your mum’s favourite delicacy which she served the family at Christmas?

Back in those days, the general food we ate every Christmas was jollof rice with fried fish.

Can you tell us what food you intend

to treat your family to this Christmas?

Fried rice and chicken.

What are the ingredients?

Long grain white rice, chicken or turkey stock, cow liver, carrots, green peas or runner beans, green bell pepper, onion bulb, curry powder, garlic powder, black or white pepper (optional). Vegetable oil, stock cube for seasoning, salt, chicken thighs or drumstick.

How is this prepared?

Place chicken in a pot, add seasoning, seasoning cube, sliced onion and little water and cook for about 10 minutes. Wash and place cow liver in a pot, add seasoning cube and salt to taste. Cook for 10 minutes and when it cools cut into cubes and fry.

Parboil rice, sieve to drain out excess water.

Wash all the vegetables, dice onions and set aside, peel carrot and cut into small cubes, remove seeds of green bell peppers and cut into small cubes. Place carrot and

Saturday Tribune

green peas in boiling water for five minutes, strain out and place in a bowl of cold water, leave to cool and place into a sieve and set aside.

Place chicken stock into a large pot and bring to boil. Add parboiled rice, seasoning cubes, seasoning, garlic powder, onions and salt to taste. Leave to cook on a medium heat until it is done.

Heat vegetable oil, add carrot, peas, green bell pepper and diced liver, then add a little black and white pepper, garlic, seasoning and seasoning cubes, stir fry for one minute and pour into a bowl.

Pour a portion of the stir-fried mixture into the frying pan, add cooked rice and stir for about two minutes. Repeat the same process for the remaining rice and vegie mix.

Serve with fried Chicken.

What time of the day is it best taken?

It is best taken for lunch.

12

19 December, 2015

Saturday Tribune

08055001741 (sms only)

conversewithyemisi

yemiaofolaju@yahoo.com

Re: I want to end it all!

S

imi, forget your experience and cling to God. Your so called husband is not your destined husband, because why will he abandon you just because his brother once befriended you? When you go into another relationship, ask for God’s opinion before jumping into another marriage. It is well with you, Ify, ehikstony@gmail.com

father’s house for a man; firstly, the man should meet the ladies’ parents for her hand in marriage; then when the families agree, you go ahead blessed. Second, in the process of demonstrating your affection for each other, don’t be involved in sexual relationship until you are ready for wedding.

Ladies should keep themselves for decent and responsible husbands. Many that admire you are just to have sex when they feel it.

08168933895, Saki.

Dear Simi...though you didn’t tell us what transpired during the visit between you and your so-called lover now turned brother-visitor, but all the same, in a time like this, all you need to do is to seek the face of God, and don’t forget to seek forgiveness from your creator because there are some areas you would have erred, Samuel A. Igbayilola, Ado Ekiti, solubayo@ yahoo.com Simi, as pathetic as your story is, it is not enough for you to succumb to what fate has handed you now! I want you to know that your case is not the worst, as there are countless number of people out there going through worse situations that will compel you to appreciate God. However, I need to draw your attention to the mistake you made which quite a number of ladies still make. You should have let your ‘husband’ into your past relationship(s). If truly he loved you, he would appreciate you for your sincerity, as everyone has his or her past. It is better to have a broken courtship than a broken marriage. I think it is high time ladies preserved their chastity when in a serious relationship that is intended to end up in a matrimony. Expensive ornaments are not displayed on the shelves for all to touch, but are kept under lock.

Nevertheless, you need to pull yourself together and move on.

It will certainly be an unending adventure for you to go back to the father of your baby immediately, because you are not wanted by his family. For now, see your baby as your reward, take good care of him or her, and wait patiently for God to direct your next step. Yom Yom, Abuja, elizabeth dada, abayomilizzy@yahoo.com Simi, you do not need to think of it at all, not to think of ending it all with your life. Do you know tomorrow? No. Do you know whether your man family’s shame would be a laughing stock for you?

God wanted your faith to be total and be for Him before He does the ‘greatest’ for you. Brace up and get another suitor/ husband.

If your husband hadn’t listened to his parents to reject you, better. You had no option than to leave them. Think less about the rejection. Move on to God and get a new suitor who should be

Simi, you do not need to end it all. If you kill yourself now, you will face the wrath and judgement of God. You were supposed to have told your present husband your past and ask him about his past, because there is nobody without a past. Now as the case is, return to God and confess your sins, ask Him to reshape your life and redirect your steps. Lean on God, continue to ask for His mercy and He will visit you. A.D.O Eriuwa, 08077352090.

your husband. God wanted your case this way, Lanre Oseni, 07064181043.

Simi, death is not a solution to your travail. You need the experience in order to learn a lesson.

You should learn the right lesson, be strong and move forward in life. The strong ones pursue their path unswerving and unerringly amid dangers, Abdrushin, 09095304746.

Simi, you shouldn’t end it with life but rather look up to God because your tomorrow will be better. You are just 28 years, your man will surely come. You were just unlucky that you married into an unreasonable family. On the other hand, is it possible that your behaviour while dating your husband’s brother could have informed the decision of the family not to marry you? Stanley, 08185029115.

Simi, you are the mastermind of your problem, the only excuse for abortion is when the woman who is delivering a child is in danger in the labour room. You clamed to have aborted pregnancy several times, you should have kept such.

Who knows what those children would have become tomorrow?

Anyway, I almost as a man be-

fore. You should give your life to God, work hard and move on with life, Nurudeen Popoola, 08134656045.

Simi, before you get married to another man, let the person know everything about you. Hide nothing from him. Don’t let failure/ pleasure ruin the beauty of tomorrow. Death isn’t the answer, when there is life there is hope, leave everything to God to lead you. Abstain from pre-marital sex, it ruins. Take this evangelism to all.

Kayode, 07065309876.

Simi, I sympathise with you. You should not because of your experience terminate your life. Leave everything in the hand of God. Get a job and take care of your child.

Weeping may endure for a night, joy cometh in the morning’. If your in-laws rejected you, I believe God will take control. Simi, do not end it all. What of your child?

07055011208.

Simi, ending it all is not the best.

You are still a young lady; this issue of eventualities doesn’t work well in marriage sometimes. My advice to you is to be prayerful, God will show you your real husband. To the readers, particularly ladies, before you conclude leaving your

Simi, I pray the grace of God will uphold you. Perhaps you should have listened to your mother’s advice, but she didn’t seem to have explained reasons for her objection. Simi, wipe your tears as you were not destined to be in that family. The brothers who brought such cruel fate upon you will be rewarded for their irrational behaviour. I pray you find solace in God and find joy in your baby. Hang on Simi and know that when you are down to nothing God is up to something. Rose Omionawele, 08023838371.

Simi, give your life to Christ.

08078090837.

Simi, first and foremost, you should embrace God the sure banker to life and living who would not disappoint, no matter what. I am sure you had a riotus sex relationship with the Londoner and now made to pay the price of your promiscuity while the men presumably go scot free. You should re- arrange your life and face it squarely, look for a paying job or find a small business and take care of your child. Don’t mess yourself about again, later or sooner, he will come begging. If he doesn’t not come back, surely decent men are coming. Take your time and pick your best. Londoner is your past, no more. Life is too precious to lose cheaply because of a man.

What a man throws away as a junk, is jewel of inestimable value of another. Best wishes. Prince Bola Olaoye, Ilorin, 08033553706.

Simi, you are not serious. Those who ‘want to end it all’ don’t tell anyone. Simi, you should not be a coward such as to ‘end it all’. All

you need to do now is to encourage yourself in the Lord to start all over prayerfully. You should give your life to Jesus. Jesus, alone is the author and the one who can recreate and recognise a life that is committed to Him. I prophesise that you will soon forget your past. Pastor Omoolorun J.O, 08033521344.

Simi, now is the time to return to God and not by dying, taking your life will only lead to hell. So, please, be strong, be fervent in prayer and never give up hope in life. Simi, be strong. 08184464692.

Simi, take your case to your creator instead of wanting to end your life. You must remember that every disappointment is a blessing in disguise. Your right man will soon come. To kill oneself is a great sin before God. I have passed through this stage before, but with prayers, things changed for better. Prayer will solve your problems. Olorunnisola Inisa, 08159801343.

Simi, I think you shouldn’t take your life since you didn’t give it to yourself. I think it is just a suggestion from Satan so that he would have a testimony against you. God loves you and He heals the broken hearted (Psalm 147:3, Psalm 34:18). Sam, Lagos.

08188198358.

Simi, one thing I know is that there is a purpose why God allowed it to happen to you. Hold on to God because He has a purpose for your life. The Bible says ‘weeping may endure for a night but joy comes in the morning’. Your morning of joy is on the way. Be patient, pray more and have faith in God. The good God will perfect everything that concerns you. Oluwasegun, 0806449028.

Simi, I want to advise you that if you kill yourself because of the problem you have, you will stand before God to give account of your life. Be patient, your husband is on the way. Samuel 08076935154.

Simi, I feel sorry for you. You now realise why pastors do advise young ladies and boys to avoid pre-marital sex. One of the intents behind such warnings is exactly what you have experienced. The word of God will ever remain relevant. From my own end, you are advised to pick up your wounded life, turn to the Cross where there is healing and continue to live the rest of your life at feet of the Cross for the Lord. God knows how to judge those who have badly bruised you. I tell you killing yourself will gladden Satan who seeks to destroy you eternally. Once again, turn to Jesus for healing, Ajayi O.

13 interview

19 December, 2015

Saturday Tribune

Bakassi returnees are still hungry and homeless —Leader More than 12 years after the ceding of the oil-rich Bakassi Peninsular to the Republic of Cameroon, the displaced Bakassi natives have continued to roam the streets in search of food and a permanent home. As it is, there is no imminent sign that the returnees would get a better life even as they are now camped on the premises of Government Secondary and Primary Schools Akwa Ikot Edem, Akpabuyo Local Government area of Cross River State. The camp leader, Etim Okon Ene, in this interview with ANTHONY UBONG at the camp, narrates the sorrowful experiences of the returnees, whom he says have taken to begging to survive.

I

T’S been over 12 years now since you were ejected from your native homeland, so how has life been since then?

Life has been nothing but hell. Our experiences since we were chased out of our homeland about three years ago have been terrible and traumatic. As you can see for yourself, we have been living in those halls of primary school since then. We have no home of our own, no food or any means of livelihood.

Though, initially after we moved to this camp, the Cross River State government, through the State Management Agency (SEMA), tried for us. We were given relief materials, including mattresses, food items. In fact we used to queue to collect food. It lasted for about one year (it ended in August 2014).

Why do you think the state government stopped food supplies to the camp?

Government promised to provide us with conditional cash transfer of N5,000 each a month to enable us to fend for ourselves, instead of queuing to collect food. We were happy to hear that because we as adults were even tired of queueing to collect food and we wondered for how long we would be doing this. Government agencies took inventory and data of all returnees. But since that exercise was carried out, they stopped feeding us. We have not seen the cash or any food again till today. On inquiry, we were told there was no money yet. So we have been left to our fate.

The local, state and federal governments have not done or said anything concerning us again. The local government chairman once told us that even teachers in primary schools have not been paid their salaries. We even wrote to the state government requesting for assistance, to provide us with a permanent land to go into farming, though we were born fishermen and women. It will save us a lot of problems. We also requested for fishing boats, fishing nets, seedlings of some crops, herbicides, insecticides, etc.

But up till this time, nothing has been done to that effect.

If you are given boats and nets as requested, where will you carry out your fishing activities since you’ve been chased out of your waters?

There are creeks and other waters within the Cross River coastal areas, Qua Island are all areas within Cross River that we can go fishing without being molested. For now that such provisions have not been made, government should give us permanent land so we can start life here, even if it is poultry business. If we were given land we can call our own, we can even build thatch houses as well as mud houses. So long as we have our privacy, live our lives without depending on government or anybody, we will be okay. After all, we are not a lazy people.

So, how do you survive now that the state government has stopped feeding you?

You can see our children and women looking malnourished, because it has not been easy to survive. The camp as you can see, is almost empty, except for children and our aged parents, every adult has scattered into the community and neighbouring communities looking for one menial job or the other to work for people to eke a living. Any day we get menial job, we feed, but if we don’t, then we are on our own. It is as bad as that. When children cry for hunger, if you can’t provide, so be it. It is very challenging for us here.

Apart from food, what are your major needs now?

No accommodation, no privacy of any kind for us. We live in open primary school building with our wives and children for this long. There is no money to send our children to school not to talk of buying of uniforms, books, sandals etc. We need a land to build our own home. We need home that will be called ours and where we can get means of livelihood.

We learnt government built houses for returnees, what happened to the houses, why have you not moved in there?

Yes. That was at Abutu, Ikot Effiom. Houses were built for the first batch of returnees. When the representatives of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) visited us at Ikang, the first camp, they asked me what our top priorities were. I told them, accommodation and means of livelihood. They passed through the state government to build

Mr. Etim Okon Ene

those houses. Unfortunately government did not negotiate properly with the real owners of that land. Government just seized the land from them without any form of compensation for their crops and local buildings destroyed. They just built and asked returnees to live in there. No sooner than returnees moved in that the original indigenes chased the returnees out and occupied the houses built on their land. In this case, there was nothing the returnees could do, but to find their way back to the camp again. That is at Ebutung, Ikot Effiom, Etigi communities.

Were your people given the opportunity to carry your belongings from your native homeland?

Never! It was like a war situation. We did not carry anything. Some of our people were even killed by the Cameroon gendarmes who came suddenly to chase us out, that our government [Nigeria] had yielded to the ICJ judgement and asked what were we still doing there. So there was a stampede in the course of that pandemonium. We lost everything we have toiled for in life. And three years after, we [still] have no home, no food and we do not even have the hope of how to start a new life.

What about the farms that the returnees were assisted with?

Truly, there is a lady, Mrs Vivian Odu, Programme Officer, Department of International Development Cooperation, who has been of immense assistance to us. Even before her agency came in to assist us. She personally did her best in assisting us. She introduced us to farming which was then new to us because we were mainly fishermen and

While we were there some pastors from Calabar used to come there and acquire powers for their ministries...

But having left the area, we have been introduced to a new God who we now realise is the Supreme God with all power.

Mrs Edisua Iso, Chairman Bakassi LGA

women. She taught us how to cultivate pumpkin, garden eggs, pepper, among others.

Later, the DIDC, through her, selected 200 returnees and trained. Out of the 200, 100 were trained on different vocations, including tailoring, hairdressing, among others, while 100 others were taught how to farm. One way or the other, those people are now trying to fend for themselves as shops have been rented for them, courtesy of DIDC. So it is a relief to 200 people out of 3,226 returnees. The remaining 3,026 are now justling for survival. Thanks to DIDC and the Programme Officer, Mrs Odu, for that assistance. We are also appealing to government to help our youths in the area of employment, especially our youths who were sometime ago sponsored to write WAEC, especially, recruitment into the police and skill acquisition programmes, etc.

What are the things you are missing about your ancestral home since you were chased out of the place?

The ceding of our land to Cameroon has caused us everlasting pains. Though, it came like a child’s play, the memory of the trauma is everlasting. We are missing our native land greatly - our gods, our healing waters, our cultural heritage - we have been chased away from the graves of our forefathers, our fathers, our land, especially some areas we have gold, oil, best oil, best sea, wonder lakes, where sick persons take a bath and get healed. Isobo, god of the water dwells in this lake, in case of any challenge around you, you go there and take your bath and you are okay.

We also have Anansa, another god that provides us enablement during fishing activities (it causes fishes to flock into one fishing nets for bumper harvest).

The shrines are there or may have been destroyed by the Cameroon gendarmes because they would not know their values.

While we were there, some pastors from Calabar used to come there and acquire powers for their ministries.

Some of them were even calling us after our calamity with the gendarmes to sympathise with us. Some have been disturbing us to take them to renew their powers in our ancestral home, but we decline for fear of being killed by the gendarmes. But having left the area, we have been introduced to a new God who we now realise is the Supreme God with all power. Alpha and omega.

Do you have any regrets leaving those gods behind now that you know of the God Almighty?

No regrets at all, because we have seen that the powers of those gods were lesser powers, that cannot in anyway be compared to that of the the Supreme God.

14

19 December, 2015

Saturday Tribune

With Aunty Yemi 08056834515 ojeleyeoyeyemi@yahoo.com

m S o a r f n t n t a a w C e l w a t u a h s W 4

3

2

5

Respondents are pupils of Brightville Nur\Pry school, Ashi-Bodija, Ibadan, Oyo State.

1

1. Adegoke Qoumah, 9 yrs old, Basic 4 I like Christmas season because it gives me opportunity to visit friends I have not seen in a long time. I’m expecting Father Christmas to give me a gift that will be useful for me because during this season, I receive gifts from my parents, friends and families which I make use of for a long time.

gible gift that I will always see as a remembrance of Christmas 2015. I will also be going to church on Sunday for Christmas carol where Santa Claus will be visiting to give out gifts to children. The kind of gift I am expecting from Santa Claus is a golden bicycle. I also wish to go to Broadcasting Corporation of Oyo State (BCOS) and the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) to see Santa Claus.

I want my parents to buy me a beautiful gown, shoes and a Christmas cap. I would like to go to amusement park on Christmas day with my brothers. I long to eat fried rice, chicken, plantain with drink on Christmas day.

6 I like to read.

My school is planning a carol where I will see Santa Claus. During the holiday, I will be going to my aunt’s house to celebrate Christmas and New Year with her and her children. I would have loved my parents to buy me a goggle, necklace and a gown with a pair of golden shoes for the festival period, but they have already bought a pair of black shoes and a green gown with a necklace.

6. Yeniyo Ekundayo, 10yrs old, Basic 5 My expectation from Santa Claus is a story book because

PUZZLE

3. Isaac John, 8 yrs old, Basic 5 I’m expecting a schoolbag and toys from Santa Claus; I will visit him during my school’s party. I have statrted planning for a trip with my family members to my village during the period. My daddy has promised to take me to Agodi Gardens to have fun before we travel to the village. I wish my parents also present Christmas cap, bicycle and a wristwatch to me during the celebrations.

4. Tomiwa Olanrewaju, 8 yrs old, Basic 1 I did not see Santa Claus last year, but I will see him in my school this year. I would like to receive gifts such as books, toys, pencils, Christmas cap and the like. I would like to visit my sister’s house this Christmas, I want my parents to buy me a dress, a pair of shoes and earrings.

Dear children, as Christmas and the New Year celebrations are approaching, there is need for you to control your appetite. Be careful of what and how you eat and drink by maintaining a good manner when you are offered food or drink. Let it be a part of you to turn down offers politely when you go visiting a friend, neighbour or visitors come to your house. You do that by simply saying “thank you, I’m OK,” or something like that. This shows you are disciplined. If you that during a period full of merriment, it will help you thereafter. Eat, drink and be merry. I wish you a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year in advance.

—By Fabusua Omotayo

RIDDLES 1. I’m a season everyone looks forward to every year. What am I? 2. I am a date which comes once in a year. On my day, almost everyone goes on a holiday to merry. What am I? 3. I am something, people exchange me. I start with letter G and ends with T. Human beings also bear me. What am I? ANSWERS 4. I am something I have three different coluors in my season which are red, green and gold.

What am I? 5. I am something made in the shape of a man with a long nose but I cannot move. What am I? 6. I am a tree. All year round, I neither bear fruits nor increase in size and height. What am I?

By Ogunsola Gbenga

1. Christmas 2. December 25 3. Gift 4. Christmas colors 5. A snowman 6. Christmas tree

Etiquette Class Control your appetite

5. Olatunde Temilola, 8yrs old, Basic 4 I will be seeing Santa Claus in my school during the Christmas party. I want Santa Claus to give me a tan-

Gift ideas for your friends at Christmas

2. Oyelere Kehinde, 10 yrs old, Basic 5 I will like to visit my church’s Santa Claus. Every year, the church organises a Christmas party where Santa Claus gives every child a gift. I will not like to miss it this year. I want my parents to buy me a new pair of shoes and clothes as Christmas gift. I will also like to visit my grandma on Christmas day.

in adv anc e

15

19 December, 2015

Saturday Tribune BLESSING EKUM

health&fitness

ekumblessing@gmail.com 08116954639

Can cold, catarrh be prevented in harmattan?

By Blessing Ekum

T

HE harmattan is here in full earnest and along with it most times, comes the sniffles and sneezes.

Having a cold with its accompanying running nose, headaches and fever can be very discomfiting. But it doesn’t have to be so. Infection with the cold virus which has catarrh as one of its symptoms can actually be stayed if the right steps are taken. According to the Healthy Archive, an online health resource, taking the following steps can bring an end to ever having a cold or catarrh.

Don’t pick your nose Picking your nose puts the germs on your hands in contact with your membrane, giving them a direct path into your system. The fastest way to catch a cold is to touch your nose a lot or enter your nose with your finger, especially if you’re not washing your hands regularly. If you have an itch, or something you need to remove from your nose, use a tissue, and if one isn’t on hand, you’re better off using the inside of the collar of your shirt, sleeve, or bottom of your shirt, but never use your finger. It’s not a good idea!

Steer clear of those with a cold Steer clear of sick people whenever feasibly possible.

Airborne illnesses travel fast as people cough or sneeze into the air. These germs are inhaled by your nose or mouth, and travel down your throat and oesophagus, spreading throughout your body. When in an enclosed environment with a cougher or sneezer, try to discreetly cover your nose with a part of your shirt or a hanky. This will prevent the entrance of germs into your body.

Eat spicy foods Spicy foods can ward off germs. Spices such as cayenne pepper contain capsaicin which is great for keeping your nasal passages clear by thinning mucus. Garlic is also great because it contains allicin, a chemical that can stop germs in their track. Either of these spices are easy to add to your

Touching your eyes or nose is worse than putting your fingers in your mouth. If you can keep that in mind, you will surely prevent or reduce the frequency of getting colds.

diet by sprinkling some cayenne pepper into soups and stews while adding garlic to any sauce can add just the right taste, while fighting viruses.

Don’t rub your eyes As with your nose, touching the membranes to your eyes provides another direct pathway for germs into your body.

Rubbing your eyes with your fingers during a work day, or when you are anywhere in public, especially during cold season, increases your chances of getting sick. Touching your eyes or nose is worse than putting your fingers in your mouth. If you can keep that in mind, you will surely prevent or reduce the frequency of getting colds.

Exercise Regular exercise keeps things moving in your body, boosts your immune system and releases endorphins, the feel-good hormone. You should aim for at least three times per week doing exercises that elevate the heart rate for at least 30 minutes per session, and should also include weight resistance training. A boosted immune system will reduce the chances of you catching a cold should you be in close proximity to people who have colds and the flu.

Eat green, leafy vegetables Green leafy vegetables boost your immune system by ensuring that white blood cells are at their peak. White blood cells help the body fight off infections and prevent your body from succumbing to invaders. Served raw, steamed, or stir fried, you should aim for eating two or three servings per day. Another great idea is to use them in a green smoothie.

Get more sleep Getting enough sleep per night boosts your immune system thereby warding off colds. In fact, the more sleep you get, the better off you’ll be. Try to get at least seven hours of sleep per night, especially during cold season. A run-down body will not easily fight off viruses that cause the common cold. Most importantly, listen to your body; it will tell you when to stop and rest. The problem is that most people keep pushing, until they get sick.

Increase Vitamin D Vitamins really do work. During cold seasons, you should Increase your vitamin C intake to boost your immune system. This is one of the most important vitamins to take to prevent colds.

Carrot juice Carrot juice is one of the top ways to stay healthy and if you feel a cold coming on, it will blast it right out of your system. Packed with vitamin C, it really works for shortening the length of a cold as well. The best way to make carrot juice is with your own juicer. Buying it already juiced in a store diminishes the vitamin quality.

Suck on some zinc If all else fails and you still get that tickle in your nose or throat, suck slowly on a zinc lozenge. Repeat every four hours, and you may prevent that cold from materialising, or at least shorten its duration. Zinc also lessens cold symptoms, making your cold less severe and more tolerable. A great natural remedy that helps boost your immune system, and knock that cold right out of your system. Forget cough drops, and reach for a zinc lozenge.

16

healthandfitness

My irregular periods

Dr. Wale Okediran

LAST month, I took Clomiphene to correct my ovulation and irregular menstrual flow on the first day of my period as prescribed.

Since then, my monthly flow has ceased and I am not pregnant. I am 36 years old. Please, what do I do?

Lydia (by SMS) It does not appear as if you used the drug as prescribed.

The prescribed dosage for Clomiphene is 50 mg orally once a day for five days. Therapy should be initiated on or near the 5th day of the menstrual cycle, but may be started at any time in patients without recent uterine bleeding.

If ovulation occurs and pregnancy is not achieved, up to two additional courses of clomiphene 50 mg orally once a day for five days may be administered. Each sub-

Saturday Tribune

19 December, 2015

waleokediran@yahoo.co.uk

08055069356 (sms only)

My painful sexual experience

sequent course may be started as early as 30 days after the previous course and after pregnancy has been excluded.

Most patients ovulate following the first course of therapy.

However, if the patient fails to ovulate, a second course of 100 mg/dayforfivedaysmaybegiven as early as 30 days following the

initial course. A third course of 100 mg/day for five days may be given after 30 days, if necessary.

Treatment beyond three cycles of clomiphene, dosages greater than 100 mg once a day, and/or course durations beyond five days are not recommended by the manufacturer.

What is the cure for knock-knee?

I recently got married as a virgin. My first sexual experience with my husband was so painful that we had to abandon the act. Since then about two weeks ago, I have been dreading having sex with my husband out of a repeat of the painful experience. Kindly advise me on what to do. I am 18 years old.

Aminat (by SMS) It is not unusual for the first sexual experience to be painful, especially when the bride is as young as you are. Apart from misconceptions among some religious purists about sex as being ‘dirty’, lack of experience and impatience

My son eats too much

I have a six-year-old daughter and another 20 year old nephew who both have knock-knees. I will appreciate it if you can let me know how to treat them.

Chiedozie (by SMS)

their lives. Although you may be concerned about the shape of your child’s legs, a slight degree of bowing or knocking is normal. That said, the treatment for k leg varies from age to age. While very

Knock-knees (k legs) occur when the knees appear to bend toward each other. If a child is knock-kneed, it will be most evident when he or she is around 3 years of age, and will then gradually become less pronounced. By age 7, these children will have attained the normal adult amount of slight knock-knee — 5 to 9 degrees — which they will maintain throughout

My daughter’s head infection I have a six-year old daughter whose hair has been scrapping off so much so that she is almost bald. She has had a foul smelling wound on her head since childhood and we have taken her to both the orthodox and traditional hospitals for treatment, to no avail. I now use Dettol to clean her head

young children can still benefit from conservative treatments such as physiotherapy and POP applications, older patients may require surgical procedures to correct the condition.

which is going bald and I am getting worried. Please help me.

Gboyega (by SMS) In view of the long standing infection, it will be very important for your daughter to see another doctor who will take a swab of the head infection and send to the labora-

especially among the newly married husbands not to talk of some women with unusu-

I have a seven-year old son who likes food too much.

He can eat several times a day and goes into tantrum anytime he is denied food.

Because of the food, he has

tory for investigation. This investigation will confirm the kind of infection and the appropriate antibiotics to be used to treat the infection. If necessary, the doctor could also scrape some skin off your daughter’s head and send it to the laboratory for examination to confirm the correct diagnosis.

grown so fat that he is becoming an embarrassment to us his parents. I will appreciate your kind suggestion on what to do about this problem.

Margaret (by SMS) While it is a good thing for a growing child to show active interest in food, excessive eating as you rightly pointed out is not good for your child’s health. One way of correcting the problem is to encourage your son to snack more on fruits such as bananas, oranges, apples and so on instead of eating food items that will make him put on weight. You should

S

EXUAL dysfunction otherwise called erectile dysfunction (ED) is a major problem in most families in the world. In some it has led to separation or outright divorce. In some religious faith, where divorce is not allowed it makes both spouses to endure the marriage rather than enjoying it. Erectile dysfunction, apart from the social problem, may be a warning sign for impending heart diseases. Interestingly, men with even mild ED had a greater risk of certain kinds of heart problems, and of early death, than men without. Studies have shown that there’s a consistent link between ED and heart disease, even when all other risk factors (smoking, weight, physical activity, alcohol consumption, and the like) are absent. This simply means that every man who is suffering from any degree of erectile dysfunction should be seeking medical assistance as early as possible and also insisting on a heart health check by their doctors at the same time.

What is erectile dysfunction?

Erectile dysfunction means that a man cannot get or keep penile erection or he cannot have erection sufficient for sex.

Our esteemed readers, the problem is not limited to your home. It affects more than 30% men between 40 and 70 years of age. I have overheard a woman on phone reminding the husband not to forget the actual complaint which was ED. This man is just in his 50s but the wife says it was too early! On a lighter mood I advise our women to enjoy unrestricted adequate sex with their husbands because nobody knows the age at which erectile dysfunction can set in. Social problems aside, the main issue here is that, the mild ED may signal heart problems.

There are several different causes of ED, including depression, low testosterone, nerve problems, and some medications. The list of drugs that cause erectile dysfunction is endless but the major culprits are the blood pressure medications. All blood pressure medications can cause erectile dysfunction. The cause of erectile dysfunction that connects both ED and heart disease together is a problem with the blood vessels called atherosclerosis.

What is atherosclerosis?

Atherosclerosis sometimes called hardening of the arteries is the link between erectile dysfunction and heart diseases.

ally tough hymens usually contribute to some of the difficulties encountered by some newly married couples. From the foregoing, the solutions to your problem range from a better understanding between you and your husband, especially the need for your husband to be more understanding and patient with you. If these do not work, you may need to see a doctor for a proper examination in case there is a need for a medical intervention.

also add plenty of vegetables and water in his diet. Since fruits and vegetables are very filling without adding to the child’s weight, they are good forms of snacks. Another way of keeping your child off too much food is to encourage him to take interest in outdoor activities such as exercises and sporting activities. This way, your son will reduce his excessive interest in food.

Dr. Abiodun Adeoye adeoyemoshood@yahoo.com

08056564360, 08072000017 (sms only)

Erectile dysfunction: Signal of heart disease?

The arterial wall becomes thickened and clogged with fat plaque (cholesterol plaque), thereby narrowing the lumen and in turn affects the ability of the artery to dilate because the elasticity is lost. The aftereffect of it is the poor supply of oxygen rich blood to the organs in the body, in this case the penis. Atherosclerosis affects different people in different places, but it often affects the penis first, then the heart and brain, and the legs last.

Rather than concentrating on the social problem, it is good to note that ED can be a warning sign that a heart attack or a stroke may follow, often in the next three to five years. This warning sign can be a good thing if it alerts you and your doctor that you have atherosclerosis, because then you can take steps to treat the atherosclerosis and prevent a heart attack or stroke.

Who is at risk?

Men with the following medical problems are more at risk than others. I advise spouses to reason together and take actions against these seemingly preventable disorders •Diabetes mellitus. Men who have diabetes (excess sugar in the blood and urine) are at especially high risk of erectile dysfunction, heart disease and other problems caused by restricted blood flow.

•Having high cholesterol. A high level of low-density lipoprotein (LDL, or “bad”) cholesterol can lead to atherosclerosis. All those turkey and chicken that we refuse to remove the skin before eating, plus other fat laden fast food we freely consume might have contributed to the load of bad cholesterol in our blood.

•Being a smoker. Smoking cigarettes raises your risk of de-

veloping atherosclerosis. It also directly affects your ability to get an erection.

•Having high blood pressure. Over time, high blood pressure damages the lining of your arteries and accelerates the process of atherosclerosis.

•Having a family member with heart disease. It’s more likely your erectile dysfunction could be linked to heart disease if you have a first-degree relative such as a sibling or a parent who had heart disease at a young age.

•Your age. The younger you are, the more likely that erectile dysfunction signals a risk of heart disease. Men younger than age 50 are at high risk. In men older than 70, erectile dysfunction is much less likely to be a sign of heart disease.

•Obesity. Being overweight or obese increases your risk of both heart disease and erectile dysfunction due to atherosclerosis and other reasons.

•Depression. There’s some evidence that depression is associated with an increased chance of having heart problems — and erectile dysfunction.

What are you to do?

Talk with your doctor about your sexual health. Do not be shy or embarrassed. Many of our people find it difficult to discuss it with their doctors, especially in the teaching hospital setting where the trainees are surrounding the physician. It is a barrier you have to get a way round. Your doctor has probably dealt with many cases in the past or even the doctor himself might even have erectile dysfunction. Experience counts here and remember we are pressed for time, do not hide the information.

Till next week, compliment of the seasons!

17

19 December, 2015

mediascope The chairman of Osun State Broadcasting Corporation (OSBC), Mr Kola Akanji, recently led the corporation’s management team to Lagos to fraternise with the nation’s advertising clan. He spared some moments with Akin Adewakun to discuss issues bordering on the progress so far made by the state broadcasting station under his watch, the nation’s broadcast space and some of the challenges the nation’s media still have to grapple with.

Walking down memory lane now, especially talking about your days in BCOS and now, what would you say have changed in the nation’s broadcast space?

A lot has changed. For instance, we have so many new stations springing up now. Then in those days we had only BCOS, NTA and FRCN. But now in Ibadan, we have so many new private stations, the same thing in Osun. We have so many new private radio stations springing up. And, what that simply means is that you have to continue to be the best if you really desire to survive in the business. You have to come up with new thinking, new ideas to attract listeners because today’s listener has a lot of channels to tune to, so you have to continue to strive towards perfection. So that is what I believe has changed. We have many stations now competing for this shrinking advertising budget. So you have to be relevant and be the best for you to be able to attract this fund.

One would have expected this type of event (business forum), organised by the management of the station in Lagos to be held in Osun, so why here?

We are just being realistic because the major advertising agencies are here in Lagos. Lagos is where the money is. That is why we decided to hold this forum in Lagos. It is better to come over here to meet the advertisers than expect them to come to Osun. It is like taking the battle to them, and I’m sure everybody is impressed with the turn-out, the level of

akadewakun@yahoo.co.uk 08054683584

How do you handle the issue of ownership interference, especially in a state-controlled radio station like yours?

It will surprise you to know that the governor does not interfere in our activities. When we were in opposition and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was in power in the state, our adverts that we were ready to pay for were not used. They were turning them back then. But Governor Aregbesola has made it clear, don’t turn down any advert, no matter where it comes from, if you bring your press release, we will look at it, if it is abusive, we will not use it the way it is written and if you give us the go-ahead, we will rewrite, remove the abusive portion and use. I want to believe that Osun, under Aregbesola, will be the first state to allow such freedom in its broadcast space. Despite the fact that the common adage has always been that ‘he who pays the piper calls the tune’, the governor has allowed some level of freedom and independence, the more reason the governor went round and looked for somebody who is in the profession, to be at the helm. And I can tell you authoritatively, since I resume here, we have been enjoying that freedom. The governor has never, for once, interfered in our operations, we have a free hand, I have a free hand.

H

Talking of training and acquisition of new equipment, how far is the station getting set for digitisation?

It will surprise you to note that the governor has budgeted a lot of money in the acquisition of digital-compliant equipment. We have not got there yet, but we have started.

I believe before the end of 2016, we would have been fully digital-compliant. We have already commenced changing of our equipment from analogue to digital, the governor started way back three years ago.

WITH AKIN ADEWAKUN

us in the outgoing year, and we appeal for more patronage in the coming year.

OW does it feel managing a regional or state broadcasting station?

Well, it’s a big challenge. But I thank God because I actually started this profession as a broadcaster, way back in 1982, when the Television Service of Oyo State (TSOS) was established by the late Chief Bola Ige, the Oyo State governor then. So I’ve been in the profession all along, So I see it as a challenge when Ogbeni [Governor Rauf Aregbesola of Osun State] asked me to take over the chairmanship of the organisation. He believes I’ve been there and that I have a lot to contribute to the development of the station. It has always been my station, I worked there before I left briefly to be the Chief Press Secretary to Segun Ajiborisha when Osun State was created, and also the Chief Press Secretary to Governor Isiaka Adeleke. So I’ve been in the business all along and I see it as a challenge. I also see it as an opportunity to execute all those lofty dreams of mine about the station.

In your presentation at the Business Forum we just concluded, you claimed OSBC is the third best in the South West, how did you arrive at this and how did you do it?

Well, we have committed management staff. People in the present management team of the station had been in the former BCOS. We started BCOS, we were there, and we had the best talent then. Even when we were in BCOS, before Osun State was created, if you were following the trend, you would notice that virtually the top echelon of BCOS moved to Osun. So we always had professionals, so it was not a big deal starting a new station. That is why it was not too difficult bringing in different innovations to the corporation. Besides, we have a media-friendly governor, who was ready to pump in a lot of money, acquire new equipment, train and retrain the staff to be the best.

Saturday Tribune

You talked about the time you were in opposition, does that not simply mean you’ve taken sides and that you are partisan?

No. I’m talking because I know. I’m one of the leaders of the party, I know the way we were treated then because I was one of the image makers of the party, I was part of the information-gathering network of the incoming governor then, I knew what they did to us then. We made it clear right from the onset that we were not going to behave that way.

Bias ’ll remain an issue in the media

—Kola Akanji, Chairman, OSBC contributions and comments from the advertising agencies that are here today. We know what we are doing. We’ve been getting a lot from them, we have been giving back and we want to continue that type of symbiotic relationship with them. We were able to explain a lot of things they never knew about us to them. For instance, most people don’t know that apart from Radio Nigeria, OSBC is the next biggest radio in the nation. We transmit to as many as 19,20,21 states. If you are going to Abuja, up to Gwagwalada, you will still be receiving our signals. You receive our signals in Ekiti, in Kogi, that is Kabba. When we are having our programmes, people call as far away as Kaduna. So we have to continue to strive for that perfection. And the fact that we have somebody that is there for us, always assisting us, whenever we have problems, puts us in good stead.

Is the Business Forum going to be a one-off thing?

No it’s an annual thing. We come to Lagos at the end of the year, meet advertising agencies and thank them formally. We thank them in this kind of interactive business forum and we exchange ideas. We thank them for what they have done for

There are lots of changes in the broadcast industry now. New equipment is being churned out everyday, you must be ready to invest heavily in the broadcast industry now.

How would you assess the nation’s broadcast landscape today, especially against what it used to be when you were a reporter?

So far so good, but we still have a very long way to go. You notice that there are so many private media stations now and many of them are doing well. Interestingly, as a state-owned broadcast outfit, you can’t just allow yourself to be left behind, you have to move with the times. There are lots of changes in the broadcast industry now. New equipment is being churned out everyday, you must be ready to invest heavily in the broadcast industry now, because virtually the entire equipment we were using ten years ago is no longer in vogue.

Apart from investing heavily on equipment, you must be ready to train and retrain. It should be a continuous process.

Moving out of the broadcast space now, how neutral is the Nigerian media today?

Whichever way you want to look at it, there will be some level of bias. You can’t rule that out completely. But when you make it so obvious and so annoying, I don’t think that is good for the industry and even that media organisation.

Let people see that independence in you to an extent. In radio stations owned by government, people know they will be biased, they will take sides with the government, but that shouldn’t hinder them from showing the positive aspect of the other side. If we can get over that, it will be well and good, because there are so many newspaper houses that are guilty. There are so many private television stations that were guilty during the last elections, which you know. You can churn out documentaries, but make sure you are speaking the truth. In most cases, the documentaries you saw then should not have been aired in the first place. In the print there are so many people that were annoyed with the activities of some newspapers.

Where are we seeing OSBC in the next few years?

Well in the next few years, we are looking forward to a perfect corporation, a model, according to the governor’s dream. You know the governor is a perfectionist. He calls me and when he talks, he is a perfectionist. He wants the best at all times. Most times, when you go to him, he is still not happy despite the fact that we have done a lot to improve our contents and improve the equipment. But we have not gotten to where he wants us to be. We would continue to strive, we would continue to do our best. Everyday we are churning out new programmes, and like I have said, we will continue to train and retrain staff. If we are able to train our staff to meet modern-day expectations, because that is the key to successful business, then we would have gotten somewhere.

Then talking about contents, with more funding, we would improve. And in terms of equipment, by God’s grace, in the next two, three years, we would be fully digital-compliant.

18

19 December, 2015

Saturday Tribune

crimeandcourt

She got pregnant under my roof for another man —Husband He was subjecting me to inhuman treatment —Wife Stories by Yejide Gbenga-0gundare, Ayomide Owonibi, Rukayat Olufemi and Taibat Alimi with Agency Reports

A

Mapo customary court in Ibadan, Oyo State has dissolved the 43-year-old marriage between one Disu Onifade and his wife, Sherifat, over the latter’s quarrelsomeness.

Mr Ademola Odunade, the president of the court, stated that he was merely carrying out the wishes of the couple as an amicable settlement could not be made. ”In the interest of peaceful co-existence, the union between both of you has ceased to be henceforth.

“Onifade shall pay N2,000 to enable Sherifat to pack her belongings,” he ruled.

Earlier in his petition to the court, Onifade said that his wife was quarrelsome even after divorcing and accepting her again.

“Sherifat got pregnant under my roof for another man in 1983 and we parted ways then and one of the children she had for me pleaded that I took her back.

“She started quarrelling with my new wife again. As old as she is, she still stays out late in the night.

“In fact, she has never changed her old ways of doing things since she returned to my house in 1995.

“Apart from the fact that she is disobedient to me, Sherifat is ruining my home by causing disharmony in the family,” Onifade said.

Sherifat, however, had argued that her husband often subjected her to inhuman treatment.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reported that the duo lived at Agbaje area of Ibadan where they had five children. Sherifat meanwhile, has three other children for another man.

31

She vowed to terminate my life, man tells court I only warned him not to bring his other wife home —Wife AN Igando customary court in Lagos State has intervened and saved a 30-year-old marriage between Mr Sarafa Hassan and his wife, Waliat from collapsing.

President of the court, Mr Adegboyega Omilola, reconciled the couple, instead of dissolving the union, after the couple went through a series of counselling session.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reported that while striking out the case, Omilola admonished the couple to maintain the peace always.

“I urge you both to go home and continue in love and peace,” he said.

Mr Sarafa Hassan, 60, a welder, had filed a suit for the dissolution of his 30-year-old marriage, claiming that his wife was always threatening to kill him.

“I received the tip-off from a reliable source, warning me not to go home that my wife had set a trap for me to paralyse me, and a few minutes later, my wife called me several times to come home but I refused.

“She always hit me with dangerous weapons; she vowed to terminate my life and because of her threats, I ran away from the house I built and started sleeping in my shop.

“I have reported her to her family on several occasions but they always begged me to exercise patience that she would change but she never did,” he said.

The petitioner said that when he could no longer bear the

situation, he married another woman to love and care for him, but that Waliat was also threatening his new wife.

“She always calls my new wife to tell her that she will become a widow soon,” he said.

He accused his wife of infidelity, alleging that she was having an affair with a landlord living on their street.

The husband described his wife as a thief as she was always stealing from him.

However, Mrs Waliat Hassan, a 49-year-old trader, denied all the allegations.

She said that she had neither threatened to kill her husband nor had she attacked him with any dangerous weapons.

“How will I attempt to kill the father of my children? I can’t do that because it is my children that will suffer,” she said.

The mother of five denied dating the man her husband accused her of having an affair with, saying that she had been faithful to her husband since their marriage.

Waliat also denied threatening to kill the man’s other wife, adding that she only told her husband not to bring the woman to their house.

She begged the court not to grant her husband’s wish for the dissolution of the marriage, insisting that she still loved him.

My husband raped my niece —Wife

It was only an attempt —Husband A woman, Mrs. Elizabeth Omonike Ojo, has filed a suit at a Grade C customary court, Agodi Gate, Ibadan, Oyo State seeking dissolution to a 26-year-old marriage to her husband, Ezekiel Ojo, over what she described as adulterous and irresponsible attitude.

Elizabeth told the court that Ezekiel paid dowry on her when they got married and that the union had been blessed with five children.

‘He is a pastor yet he is promiscuous and fetish,” said Elizabeth. She added: ‘He befriended the best friend of mine and attempted to rape one of my nieces. There was a time he planned with one of his friends to use our first born for money rituals. Sometimes, he leaves the house for up to 12 days without calling and whenever I called him; he won’t pick up his phone.”

On account of Ezekiel’s waywardness, Elizabeth said she packed out the house and lived apart for about one month but that after her parents intervened, she had to return to Ezekiel.

‘When I returned home, I called my pastor to speak to him and it was then my husband opened up to my pastor and confessed all the abortive moves he and one of his friends had made to make money rituals. He had gone to my son’s school to demand his photograph but one of the school’s

She has adopted a negative lifestyle —Husband

Please, grant his request — Wife AN Ikole-Ekiti Customary Courtsitting in Ekiti State, has dissolved a one-year old marriage between Ayodele Olukayode and his wife, Kikelomo, over the wife’s lack of proper care for the husband.

According to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), the husband had sought divorce in a suit filed against his wife on November 17 on the grounds that the 12-month-old union had broken down irretrievably.

Olukayode told the court that he sought divorce because his wife had adopted a negative lifestyle.

He added that his wife had no respect for him, other members of his family, and was always fighting him on minor domestic issues.

The plaintiff further told the court that there was no child between them.

Kikelomo, however, denied the allegation against her, saying that she cared for the plaintiff and gave due respect to him and his family.

She also denied fighting the plaintiff on any issues, but instead accused her husband of not caring for her since their marriage.

Kikelomo pleaded with the court to grant the divorce request made by the plaintiff.

Mrs Yemisi Ojo, president of the court, upheld the request of the plaintiff, noting that pieces of evidence before the court proved that there was no more love between Olukayode and Kikelomo.

Saturday Tribune

He always threatened to kill me whenever I refused him sex —Wife I will respond during next hearing —Husband A woman, Mrs Tina Agada, has approached an Ikole Ekiti customary court in Ekiti State, seeking for the dissolution of her six-year-old marriage to John Agada, over alleged brutality and lack of care.

According to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), in a suit filed before the court during the week, Tina alleged that the defendant was in the habit of beating her and always threatening to kill her.

She said the defendant who had not paid her bride price since they married six years ago, had no regard for her and the two children of the union.

She told the court that her husband neither cared about the wellbeing of the two children nor paid their school fees.

Tina further said Agada always threatened to kill her whenever she refused to allow him to sleep with her.

She urged the court to dissolve the union, saying she could no longer cope with the challenges facing her at the hands of the defendant.

She also prayed the court to give her the custody of the two children for proper care and demanded N10,000 monthly allowance to support the feeding of the kids.

‘He stopped being nice moment I got pregnant’

The defendant, however, did not cross-examine the plaintiff, saying he would give his own side of the story on the next adjournment date.

Mrs Yemisi Ojo, president of the court, adjourned the case till January 25, for continuation of hearing.

She’s uncooperative and unfaithful —Husband Tell him to stop chasing me around —Wife AN Ile-Ife customary court in Osun State has dissolved the five-year-old marriage between Adesola Adewuyi and his wife, Grace, over adultery and lack of care.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reported that the deputy president of the court, Chief Bunmi Adegoke, who presided, awarded the custody of their only child to Grace.

He asked Adewuyi to continue the payment of N5, 000 to the welfare home at Osogbo, where the wife had reported him for lack of care.

The judge also ordered him to be paying N5, 000 monthly for the welfare of the child.

teachers secretly called me to ask if the photograph should be released to him. I declined and asked the school not to release the photograph to him because I feared he wanted to use it for evil intention. When I reported this to my parents, it was then they told me that he had attempted to rape one of my nieces but that they kept the case secret because they did not want to ruin our home, Ezekiel being a pastor.”

Elizabeth also explained that the woman who is Ezekiel’s boss, said she would be arriving in the country from abroad and so asked her husband to tidy up her house. Elizabeth asked one of her nieces to help Ezekiel out but the niece barely survived being raped by Ezekiel.

Responding to all the allegations, Ezekiel said he had no objection to the dissolution because he had offended Elizabeth gravely. He added, however, that his actions were due to the bad influences of his close friend with whom he has severed relationship.

“When I realised my friend had misled me, I ran away from home. And of the allegation of raping Elizabeth’s niece, I only tried to sleep with her but was unsuccessful,” confessed Ezekiel President of the court, Alhaji Amusa Makinde counselled both parties and urged them to maintain the peace because of their children while adjourning the case till December 22.

The court warned Adewuyi, who is the co-coordinator of Oodua People’s Congress, Ife Central chapter, to desist from pursing Grace around with his boys, since they are no longer husband and wife.

Adewuyi had on November 16 filed a petition against his wife and urged the court to dissolve the union, on grounds of uncooperative attitude, unfaithfulness and threats to his life.

He noted that they met in 2010 and got married in 2012, while the marriage was blessed with a girl named Deborah, who is two years old.

A woman, Mrs Sakirat Adebayo has filed a suit at a Grade C Customary Court, Agodi Gate, Ibadan, Oyo state seeking a dissolution to a four years old marriage to her husband, Hamed Adebayo, over an alleged lack of care.

Sakirat alleged that Hamed was nice to her during courtship but explained that the gesture stopped immediately she moved into Hamed’s house, though the dowry was duly paid.

“Ever since he got me pregnant, he has abandoned me and showed no concern to the extent that it was his mother who paid the medical bills when I was delivered of a baby.”

Sakirat continued: ‘He is too lazy to find a job, he complains regularly of being broke. I am a graduate of The Polytechnic Ibadan where I studied accounting but couldn’t secure employment on time. Later I got a job with the University College Hospital,( UCH). However, on a Sunday when I had gone for prayers at NASFAT weekly service, I discovered that the door to our house was slightly opened and checked through if there was something missing. I eventually discovered that my statement of results was missing. When my husband returned, I asked him if he ever saw my result, he insisted he knew nothing about the missing document but that it was he who mistakenly left the door ajar’’ Sakirat said she had to pull out of the UCH service because she could not tender the results for mandatory periodic

verification and so had to work so as to raise money to get another statement of result. Upon earning enough money, she tendered the result at the UCH but according to her, she was only retaken by the UCH as a contract staff.

According to Shakirat, Hamed reported her to his brother that the home-front was losing because of Shakirat’s commitment to work which keeps her late to return home. In addition, Hamed accused Shakirat of dressing to seduce her bosses at work.

‘Then his brother asked me to stop the job and trade in detergent and sugar in our street to which I declined. The brother then asked me how much I earn from my work.

When I told him, the brother explained that if I continued on the job, I would be richer than my husband which would not be very good for the home.’

Moreover, Shakira told the court that the landlord had served the couple a quit notice because of unpaid rents.

Hamed was not in court but his mother-in-law said the day Hamed was served the court summon, he tore the letter into shreds even in her presence and said they could go away with the child Shakirat had for him as a parting gift.

President of the court, Alhaji Amusa Makinde said since the defendant was not in the court, the case would be adjourned till December 28 during which a letter would be written to him to make an appearance.

19

voxpop Mothers-in-law, by virtues of age and tradition, are expected to stabilise their children’s homes by providing solutions to emerging matrimonial crisis through their wealth of experience. However, some couples would rather keep mothers-in-law at arm’s length for obvious reason.

OMODASOLA SMITH asks Nigerians who they will rather keep at bay—husband’s mum or the mother of the wife.

19 December, 2015

With Kate Ani

08071080888

anikate92@yahoo.com

Who poses more problem in a marriage: Husband’s mother or wife’s mother?

Dapo Talabi It is the husband’s mother. First and foremost, as a male child, we are always close to our mothers, the closeness makes mum and son seem inseparable.

When the son finally gets married, his mother still won’t be able to let go. As a result of this, she sees his boy’s wife as a rival. Whenever the son takes decisions swithout her knowledge, the mum feels she is being left behind and becomes jealous with the mindset that someone has taken her position in her son’s life.

She may retaliate by causing confusion between her son and his wife.

Oladunni Lawal Often, the wife’s mother has the mindset that the husband is not taking good care of her daughter, so she tends to interfere in the relationship and it might cause conflict in the marriage.

Funke Matthew The man’s mother is naturally devilish. Some of them hate their sons’ wives immediately they meet them for the first time and tend to make life miserable for them. They feel they should come first in their sons’ lives.

Trouble comes when the son’s mother wants something and the wife also wants something at the same time, the mother would want her son to attend to her needs first before she attends to that of his wife and if the son does otherwise, she would start making statements like: ‘I gave birth to you’, ‘I carried you in my womb for nine months’, ‘I have known you even before you met your wife’ and all sorts of things like that.

Opeoluwa Kareem I have seen a mother that poisoned the mind of her daughter, teaching her things that were not right. She taught her daughter how to become the head of the marriage even when the husband was still alive.

Saturday Tribune

Gbenga Odanye Husband’s mother! I hail them! The husband’s mother has the mindset that the wife is out to exploit her son. She gets angry when the son gives his wife money. She believes the wife is poisoning her son’s mind against her. The husband’s mother also wants to get the attention, care, love and money the son gives to his wife which is not possible.

Charles Gold From my own point of view, I would say it is the wife’s mother. The mother of the woman at times doesn’t give her daughter genuine advice that will help her and anything the mother says, the daughter follows and acts on it and the wife might misbehave to her husband, thereby causing crisis between her daughter and her husband.

Kemi Kehinde We always have different cases, but the man’s mother is more liable as most of them don’t welcome their sons’ wives as their own daughters. They treat their sons’ wives as strangers because mothers believe the wives will limit what they get from their sons. Sometimes when the husband is broke and is unable to give his mum money, she believes it’s the son’s wife that is behind it, and when the mother sees the wife buying new things, she would think it is her son’s money she is spending.

Folashade Makinde The husband’s mother causes more trouble, especially if the wife does not get pregnant early. She would start saying all sorts of things, alleging that the wife had aborted so much that she can’t get pregnant for her son.

Kemi Fayefunmi Both of them cause trouble, but the husband’s mother causes trouble more. The husband’s mother makes complaints like “His wife is not allowing him to take care of me” the way he used to before getting married.

Titilayo The wife’s mother can be covetous. Some of them like to extort money from their daughters’ husbands.

They would even collect money without their daughters’ knowledge and when the daughter gets to know later, she might be angry and it can cause havoc in the marriage.

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19 December, 2015

From left, Senator Remi Tinubu OON, converner of Musical Youth Fiesta 2015; Mrs Bolanle Ambode, wife of the Lagos State governor; Mrs Yetunde Odejayi, who represented the Lagos State deputy governor and Mrs Grace Giwa, Executive Secretary, New Era Foundation, during the 2015 Musical Youth Fiesta, tagged “The Faithful God”, held at Eko Hotel and Suites, Victoria Island, Lagos.

From left, Eze Geoffrey Okoro, the Oko 1 of Upe Autonomous Community, Owerri North, Imo State, receiving a free safe birth bag from Abdulwahab Umoru, Specialist, Community Relations and Tochukwu Okafor, Community Relations Officer, both of Etisalat Nigeria and Chinomso Obi-Peters, CEO, Traffina Foundation for Maternal Health, at the Etisalat-Traffina Community Maternal Health Platforms Programme in Ulakwo, Owerri North, Imo State, during the week.

feature

Chief Executive Officer of the Mother and Girl Child Protection Initiative (MAGI), Alhaja Adijat T. Malik, MBA, MNIM (second left); Mrs Oluyemisi Abimbola, Legal Adviser (left), Mrs B.A. Adeniyi, Board of Directors (right) and the special guest of honour, Ambassador Ronke Adefowope (second left), during the 2015 vocational training graduation ceremony of students of MAGI held at Felele Area, Challenge, Ibadan. PHOTO: D’TOYIN

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A former Secretary to the Oyo State Government, Chief Ayodele Adigun (second left); Honourable Adeniyi Adesina (left); Honourable Kehinde Olaoya (second right) and another guest, during the funeral of Adigun’s mother in Ibadan. PHOTO: ALOLADE GANIYU

Deaconess Olufunmilayo Bankole (third left), with members of her family, from left, Mr Moshood Bankole, Mr Bayo Bankole, Mogaji Akeem Bankole, Honourable Tunji Bankole, Toye Bankole and Mr Ibraheem Bankole, during the ordination of deacons and deaconesses of the Church of Peace of the Universe, Gbekuba, Apata, Ibadan, recently.

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Saturday Tribune 19 December, 2015 21 feature “Massacre” of Shia in Northern Nigeria an opening for Iran

By John Campbell

A

FRICA watchers have been focused of late on Burundi. On December 12, however, their attention was drawn back to Nigeria. The Nigerian army killed a number of Shia Muslims in Zaria, Kaduna state. This has resulted in representations from Tehran, Iran, which regards itself as the protector of the Shia everywhere, including Nigeria. As of now, reports from Shia sources are more credible than the lame denials from the military. Amnesty International is demanding an urgent investigation. Yet again, the Nigerian military’s lack of transparency may have made a bad situation worse. Iranian involvement in northern Nigeria and the potential radicalization of the Nigerian Shia could have negative consequences for Africa broader than the current turmoil in Burundi.

Shia sources are reporting that the army killed up to one thousand in Zaria, and that the fighting is continuing. Many of the same sources claim that the army attacked a Shia procession that was blocking the movement of the Chief of Army Staff Lt. Gen. Tukur Buratai’s motorcade; the military is claiming that the Shia threatened the motorcade and attacked a police station. Military sources claim that the number of casualties was as low as seven. As reported in the New York Times and elsewhere, the specificity of the Shia spokesmen lends credibility to their claims. The Times quoted Abdullahi Tumburkai, a journalist, as saying he had counted more than 830 bodies in a local mortuary. Ibrahim Musa, a Shia spokesman, said up to one thousand had been killed. Chidi Odinkalu, a Nigerian human rights advocate and not a Shia, has characterized the killings as “a massacre.”

According to the media, the Nigerian security services on December 13 arrested the Nigeria Shia sect’s leader Sheikh Ibrahim Zakzaky as fighting continued. Social media is carrying pictures of him bloodied. Citing as its source Odinkalu, ABC News is reporting that Zakzaky suffered four bullet wounds, and two of his sons and one of his wives were killed. There are also reports of Shia protests in other cities, and that

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (right) meets President Muhammadu Buhari in Tehran, Iran, November 23, 2015. PHOTO: REUTERS

the group blocked the highway between Abuja and Zaria.

The Times, citing Iranian media, reports that the Iranian foreign minister has called the Nigerian foreign minister for an explanation. ABC News reports that Iranian President Hassan Rouhai has called Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari to say that he expects the Nigerian state to compensate the families of the dead and injured.

Zakzaky has claimed a following of millions, almost certainly an exaggeration. The Shia presence in Nigeria appears to have been established by Iranian missionaries and to receive funding from Iran. The Nigerian Shia and Zakzaky have nothing to do with Boko Haram, the Sunni Salafist insurrection against the Nigerian state.

Indeed, they would appear to be mortal enemies, and Boko Haram has launched suicide bombers against Shia crowds. Iran has long sought to increase its influence in Nigeria, and maintains a large diplomatic pres-

ence. The Nigerian Shia have been a vector of Iranian influence.

Though the two movements are enemies, there are disturbing parallels between the 2015 Zaria killings and the 2009 killing of Boko Haram members and the murder of its leader, Muhammed Yussuf, which led to its murderous radicalization.

In both cases the numbers killed may have been of the same magnitude: eight hundred. There are differences. Yussuf was murdered; Zakzaky was not, though the description that he was “bloodied” and suffered bullet wounds indicates it may have been close. But, perhaps the most significant difference is that Boko Haram had no foreign patrons then; Zakzaky and the Nigerian Shia do have a foreign patron: Iran.

Courtesy:blogs.cfr.org/campbell

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19 December, 2015

Saturday Tribune

Saturday Tribune

newsfeature

Children as

breadwinners in Nigeria

The use of children for employment and other purposes that deprive them of their childhood has evolved into a more dangerous height in Nigeria as many of these children have been forced to become adults overnight having to cater for the financial and general upkeep of their families. YEJIDE GBENGA-OGUNDARE writes.

T

EN-YEAR-OLD Ade is a familiar sight along the major street of Dugbe, Ibadan, the capital of Oyo State. Every afternoon, the primary four pupil of one of the state-run schools and resident of Ekotedo, finds his way to the streets to hawk sachet water. His is a complete trade with different schedules as he changes his wares to suit demands.

Once the sun is down, Ade switches over to hawking of sponge, sweets and sometimes, plantain. For him, the heavier the traffic, the better his business as he can be seen meandering vehicles in the traffic, all in a bid to get the attention of people and convince them to buy from him.

Away from from Ade. Chike is nine years old and is a street hawker along the Lagos-Abeokuta Expressway. He sells gala and cakes and his business starts from three in the afternoon till around nine at night and his own business too is pedestrian. Chike walks between the traffic from Ikeja towards Dopemu under bridge and back, selling his goods and there is no end to the number of times he makes this tedious journey daily.

The similarity in Chike’s and Ade’s itineraries, aside the fact that they both hawk in traffic, irrespective of the numerous dangers involved, is that while they are struggling to make ends meet, their mothers are at home doing nothing aside keeping house and taking care of their alleged younger children and except these boys take money home, evrybody would starve in their respective families.

This is the situation many children in Nigeria have found themselves; they have been exposed to the harsh realities of life at tender ages by parents who believe that once their children can move around, they have a responsibility towards the family. On days when the families are in dire need of money, these children rise up to the challenge by starting work very early and the implication of this is that on such days, attendance in school is a no-no.

What started as children helping out their parents after school has now evolved into a serious case of child labour as many parents have handed over the baton of financial responsibility to their wards and children while they enjoy a life of leisure. Child labour has become widespread across the Nigerian society and is now an acceptable practice in spite of the fact that it erodes the innocence of the poor children and saddles them with responsibilities that they are not mentally and physically equipped to handle.

Some parents send out all their children - both male and female - without considering the risks and hazards involved. Twelve-year-old Tola and 10-year-old Biodun are siblings who hawk bottled drinks in Akowonjo, Alimosho Local Government area of Lagos. These two children rarely attend school and more often than not, they move around the neighborhood in the morning selling bread and butter before they go to the main road in the evening to sell drinks.

Tola, while speaking to Saturday Tribune, said she had been sent to the streets since she was seven, adding that her younger brother joined her when he clocked eight years. According to her, the life of a street child is not an easy one, especially as a female as they run the risk of sexual harassment.

Even in the empire of the street kids, there is hierarchy.

The home-based street kids feign superiority over the streetbased ones and see themselves as having a brighter future than their counterparts. The home-based street kids are those that have homes and families who will make an effort to look for them if they don’t go home, most often because without them, the family starve, they come out in the evening to trade and go back at night while the street-based kids are those who have no homes; everything about their life is on the street.

On a regular basis, the number of children that take to the

streets to cater for their family increases. A recent report by a coalition of some non-governmental organisations in Nigeria lends credence to this fact. It revealed that about 15 million children under the age of 14 are in the Nigerian labour market, while a great percentage of them are exposed to long hours of work in dangerous and unhealthy environments. And many of them are saddled with too much responsibility for their age.

While it is true that children have always worked with their families in a bid to learn skills that would serve them as adults, they undertook it as a leisure activity and are not pressured to bring in money for the family to eat. Also, children then do these things while being chaperoned by adults and are consequently protected from many dangers unlike now that some parents have willingly abdicated their natural responsibilities to their young children and children are forced to work for the survival of their families with their income is the family’s main sustenance.

It revealed that about 15 million children under the age of 14 are in the Nigerian labour market, while a great percentage of them are exposed to long hours of work in dangerous and unhealthy environments.

Statistics further reveals that most of these career children end up losing out on education because they don’t have the time, money, energy as well as inclination to go to school.

About six million of them do not attend school at all while one million are forced to drop out of school due to poverty or because their parents demand that they contribute to the family’s income.

However, out of the over eight million that manage to stay in school and work at their spare time to pay school fees, few really do well at their studies due to high demand at work and frequent absence.

This alarming trend raises the question of the effectiveness of the Child Rights Law which is supposed to ensure that children are nurtured and assisted to develop into responsible and productive adults that will take over the administration of the society later. The Nigerian Child Rights law confers on every child, the right to life, survival, balanced development, protection against abuse and exploitation and education among others.

The government has not been silent on this issue. In fact, the Federal Government has made various efforts to control the child labour process. The Nigerian government, in August 2003, formally adopted three International Labour Organisation (ILO) conventions setting a minimum age for the employment of children and signed a memorandum of understanding in cooperation with ILO to launch a country programme under the International Programme for Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC). Further, the government passed the Child Rights Act Section 28 and 29 into law to prohibit exploitative labour and enforced Sections 58 to 64 of the Labour Decree of 1974, now Labour Act. All this makes it a grievous offence to use children in exploitative ways but it has not done anything to assist children. Rather, the rate at which children are forced into labour has increased. In fact, the magnitude of the act has so much increased that many have the impression that it is legal, forgetting that missing out on education makes it

impossible to break the cycle of poverty and exploitation as it prevents the children from having a better life and safer future.

The United Nations International Children Emergency Fund (UNICEF), in one of its reports, stated that in spite of legislative measures, child labour is a major issue in Nigeria.

Recent global estimates, according to data from UNICEF, ILO and the World Bank, indicate that 168 million children, aged 5 to 17, are engaged in child labour while 120 million among them are below the age of 14. A further 30 million children in this age group – mostly girls – perform unpaid household chores within their own families while millions of children suffer in the other worst forms of child labour, including slavery and slavery-like practices such as forced and bonded labour and child soldiering, sexual exploitation or are used by adults in illicit activities, including drug trafficking.

The report added that despite a steady decline in child labour, progress is far too slow. “At current rates, more than 100 million children will still be trapped in child labour by 2020. The continuing persistence of child labour poses a

27

threat to national economies and has severe negative short and long-term consequences for the fulfillment of children’s rights guaranteed by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) – including denial of education and frequent exposure to violence.

“Child labour reinforces intergenerational cycles of poverty; undermines national economies and impedes achieving progress towards the Millennium Development Goals. It is not only a cause, but also a consequence of social inequities reinforced by discrimination. Children from indigenous groups or lower castes are more likely to drop out of school to work. Migrant children are also vulnerable to hidden and illicit labour.”

Many factors have been adduced as being responsible for the rise in this trend and these include poverty, religion, poor family planning, child trafficking, wars and illiteracy. Since education has often been named as a major factor in eradicating poverty and stemming the tide of generational backwardness, it is a wonder that some parents don’t consider it important that their children go to school.

A social worker who spoke on condition of anonymity stated that people that give poverty as an excuse are merely repeating a general statement because in the past, poor parents struggled to ensure that their children get basic education in order to put them a step ahead and better their lots in life. According to her, some parents do not pay any good respect to education and prefer to send their children to the streets where they will make money for them, thereby transferring the baton of poverty.

She added that some parents refuse to plan their family and give birth to too many children that they would not even bother to feed or train. “In many of these cases, both parents are jobless and their children are being handed over to other people to care for or as house helps. They keep the elderly ones at home to hawk and bring money home for them to eat. And while the children are running around to make money, the parents are making more babies at home.”

Though the children make life easier for their families, this early exposure often derails their own courses in life. The effect of sending these children to the streets to make money at an early age does not only affect the children but also the family and the society at large. The innocence of such children is shattered aggressively and many end up engaging in prostitution after being raped, many engage in gang stealing due to poor education and more often than not, they get on a moral decline early in life.

With the continuous increase in the number of street kids, it is obvious that drastic steps need to be taken by all stakeholders to stop the parents of these vulnerable children from sacrificing their innocence and future on the altar of selfishness as it has been confirmed that all forms of child labour exposes children to exploitation and abuse.

According to UNICEF, child labour is preventable, not inevitable. “UNICEF believes that effective action against child labour requires children to be placed squarely at the centre of programmes designed to protect children’s rights.

Looking at child labour through a broader lens – addressing the full range of children’s vulnerabilities and protection challenges – comes as a result of the recognition that these wider concerns are not always fully addressed in action against child labour.

“UNICEF supports the 2010 Road map for achieving the elimination of the worst forms of child labour by 2016 and its follow-up Brasilia Declaration on Child Labour (2013) which provides guidance for an integrated response to child labour. UNICEF supports communities in changing their cultural acceptance of child labour, while supporting strategies and programming to provide alternative income to families, access to nurseries, quality education, and protective services. UNICEF works with governments to strengthen the application of national laws and regulate the working conditions of children old enough to work. At the policy level, UNICEF assists governments to provide support to child workers; promote decent youth employment; include child labour concerns in national education plans; and make social protection systems ‘child-sensitive.”

Children are usually referred to as future leaders, and for Nigerian children to become future leaders, there is urgent need for them to be rescued from parents whose actions are detrimental to the future of their children. And for this to be done, according to a rights activist, there is a need for aggressive implementation of the Child’s Rights Act as well as the amendment of some religious practices, for example, those that stop women from working

23

19 December, 2015

Saturday Tribune

views.com

At 53, the bridge-builder is still constructing

By Yusuph Olaniyonu

T

HE venue was one of the banquet halls in the Aso Rock Presidential Villa. Date was November 25 and the event was the dinner held by President Muhammadu Buhari for senators, the first since the National Assembly was inaugurated last June.

Senate President, Dr. Abubakar Bukola Saraki had just surprised every one, including the host, President Muhammadu Buhari. Without looking at any paper, he introduced all his colleagues, about a hundred of them, by names and constituency. He also did not miss any. He got a standing ovation from his colleagues, in addition to a presidential handshake. The fellow sitting next to me remarked: “This man is brilliant.” I did not know when I proudly told him that “you don’t read medicine and graduate from the University of London, if you are not cerebral.”

I do not know anybody who went to school at the time I did in the 80s who will not agree with me that only the most extremely brilliant ones made it to the College of Medicine and graduated to become a medical doctor.

Many who make comments about Dr. Saraki today simply talk about him as a politician, perhaps one with a privileged background. However, analysing the man in the context of politics and his family does not do justice to the topic.

It is true that Saraki as a politician has a unique place in Nigerian political history. He is the only senator today whose father was elected senator twice (the old man was even the Senate Leader between 1979 and 1983) and his immediate younger sister has also served as senator for two terms while he himself is on his second term as a senator. Three senators from a nuclear family! That is a rarity in a Nigeria still bogged down by zoning formula instead of competence.

However, the incumbent President of the Nigerian Senate is a man who has earned his stripes. Those who know him closely can testify that he is a hard worker, very diligent on any assignment he is handling and expects same from those who work with him. A man who gives attention to detail. He is also a man who believes in strategising before handling any task. He often asks: ‘what is your plan for accomplishing this task?. He is not a man who underrates his opponent. He believes in thorough preparation before any engagement.

From the quality and calibre of his staff, the time devoted to National Assembly tasks as Senate President, the initiatives that have emerged in the six months that he has been Senate President and chairman of National Assembly and the global networking that he has done on behalf of the Nigerian state and the institution that he leads, it is clear that he had prepared for the job that he has now. Also, it is obvious that his colleagues have not made any mistake in their staunch support for him.

He is always saying to us, his aides, that it is easy to be in an office and just be bogged down by the routines without making any significant difference until the tenure will expire. Only a man who cares about his own place in history reasons like that. So, that is why he is vigorously pursuing the idea of the eighth Senate having an agenda which will be its compass and guides it till 2019.

He has also ensured that there is an ad hoc committee on compliance which is to monitor the 65 committees set up by the Senate. This ad hoc committee is to ensure that members of the standing ones deliver on their mandate while also keeping to the rules of the Senate in their engagement with ministries, departments and agencies, as well as other external bodies or individuals.

Definitely, he is determined to be one of the most successful Senate presidents ever and this guides most of his activities on the job. First, a journalist who has been covering the Senate in the last 12 years described him as the most hardworking and energetic Senate President he has seen. Of course, he is also the youngest and one of the few who can be called home-grown Senate President. He assumed office and has been sustained solely by the sheer force of support from his colleague-senators. The journalist said past Senate presidents would never come to the National Assembly complex on days that were not meant for plenary sitting, that is Monday and Friday. Like when he was a banker or as governor of Kwara State, Monday to Friday are work days in the office, except he is out of town, mostly on official duties. Even when out of town,

he runs the office from wherever he is as he dishes out assignments to aides and expects them to report to him from time to time.

On Mondays, since there is no plenary sitting of the Senate, he schedules courtesy calls and stakeholder engagement appointments as well as other crucial meetings for that first working day of the week. Two of the meetings are worthy of mention here. The first is the management meeting in which he meets his key aides to plan the timetable for the week. Here, his schedule - legislative, social and political — are pre-arranged.

Here too, the shape of the issues, agenda, proposed bills, motions and other plan for the Senate in the new week will first be deliberated upon and reviewed. The outcome of this meeting helps to set the tone for the second crucial meeting later in his residence. That is with the Senate leadership. The first meeting also allowed the man to review and shape the plan of each of the units in his office for the week.

The management meeting, for example, is such a serious session in which the Economic Adviser addresses the meeting on key economic issues for the week. The Legal Adviser is called upon to give the position of the law on raging issues and yours truly speaks on issues trending in the media and what narrative is prevalent.

The second meeting enables the ten-man Senate leadership to agree on a timetable for the week and the strategy for achieving smooth and productive sessions. In addition to this meeting, the leadership also meets before the commencement of the plenary sessions before every sitting to finalise the contents of the order paper. What these meetings have done is to carry the leadership along in the happenings on the floor while also ensuring the decisions percolate to other members who belong to both APC and PDP. It also properly structures the schedule and parliamentary programme of the institution.

This methodical and strategic leadership is making this Eighth Senate system-driven, all-inclusive and a more cohesive chamber. A formal process is emerging. That, perhaps, is why its president continues to grow in popularity, respect and acceptability among his colleagues.

To say that ABS, as he is fondly called by his close friends, is an elite is not far from the truth. What may not be correct is to view him as the ‘butter, pampered, rich kid’. The man is as ‘grass-roots’ as they can come in Nigerian politics. It is surprising how he has managed to blend so well with ordinary people, even those in the remotest part of his state, for example. He has wormed his way into the hearts of the people of Kwara State with ease. He feels so much at home with them. Like his late father, Senator Olusola Saraki, popularly called ‘Oloye’ among the general populace in Kwara State, the Senate President is also a folk hero among his people. Each time he visits Ilorin, the excitement, undiluted loyalty and passion with which the people welcome him and gather

round him reminds me of how the same crowd usually hailed his father. Now in addition to the chants of ‘Oloye’, the new slogan is ‘Sai Leader, Sai Bukky, Oloye!’.

He is still one of the few politicians who will attract an extremely huge, passionate and supportive crowd without any prior plan or mobilisation at any time of the day he arrives in the state. Also, like the late Wazirin Ilorin, Saraki, who is Turakin Ilorin, is an energetic, enigmatic campaigner who goes from hamlet to hamlet, village to village and ward to ward during electioneering.

Beyond election period, he goes out to the furthest part of the state to keep in touch with supporters and attend to social events. It is a wonderful transformation for the medical doctor-turned banker as he is at home among his people. He probably learnt good lessons from his old man. A fruit, they say, does not fall too far from the tree that produced it.

He is also a pan-Nigerian operator. Saraki is at home with all Nigerians and in all parts of the country. A Fulani who speaks Yoruba fluently and who by his state of origin is from the North Central zone. No wonder he has a good relationship with all his other 108 colleagues. Such an attribute is a benefit from his family and professional background. Check out his staff list, it is as diversified as Nigeria is.

He is at home discussing any serious topic, once it is about governance. Apart from his brilliant mind, the eight years experience as a governor, particularly as chairman of Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) must have also shaped his versatility. This man also has a high sense of humour. This attribute helps him to remain calm and unfazed even during critical and difficult periods.

Senator Saraki is always preaching the gospel of a man remaining focused on his goals and not allowing detractors dictate what one does and how one proceeds on his journey. A very confident man, when people were putting pressure on him to declare war on some leaders of the All Progressives Congress (APC) who have been sponsoring media propaganda against him, he will always say to me, “Please, don’t let us start all that. It can only distract us.

If one is not careful, that is what I will use the entire four years to do. Is that what I want people to remember me for? We have our legislative agenda to pursue. We must remain focused and not allow some people who have no responsibility to determine our agenda for us.’

Some critics have refused to admit that one of the reasons they ceaselessly fight, undermine and plot against him is because of their fear that he has a consistent history of making a success out of any assignment given to him. This opposition is aware of his record as a presidential aide which saw him being one of the authors of the Fiscal Responsibility Act. They know that Kwara State under him became better and was able to compete and even surpass many states that were created alongside it in 1967. They are conscious of his administration’s achievements in infrastructural development, health, agriculture, trade and commerce when he was governor and how he made the hitherto obscure NGF became a major governance institution that the Presidency now struggles to control. They have seen that despite their consistent attacks aimed at distracting him, he has continued to lead the Senate into taking giant strides and making positive decisions that are unprecedented in the history of the law-making institution.

There is no doubt that with a legislative agenda, a proposed e-parliament, a legislative chamber that continues to engage stakeholders in various sectors, a law-making body that may record the passage of the highest number of the most relevant laws that will help revive the economy, a Senate whose leadership continues to complement the executive in pleading Nigeria’s case in relevant national and international fora and a Senate whose motions have led to the resolution of issues that are of interest to the ordinary people, Saraki will continue to remain popular with both his supporters and adversaries.

That is why as he celebrates his 53rd anniversary today, I pray to God to give him the wisdom, energy, resources and platform to continue to build bridges of unity, development, prosperity, peace and understanding across Nigeria, in particular, and the entire world. Happy birthday to the 13th President of the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Olaniyonu is Special Adviser to the Senate President on Media and Publicity.

24

19 December, 2015

Saturday Tribune

style

Have a Merry ‘ankara’ Christmas!

C

By Opeyemi Oladipupo

HRISTMAS is here again!

It is the season of rocking trendy styles and there is no better way to look stunning on Christmas Day than to wear ankara textile styles.]

Ankara print has never been out of fashion as it comes in different patterns, colours and textures. Shoes, bags and neckpieces have been made from ankara.

Thinking of what to do with that Ankara that has been lying in your wardrobe for some time now? Here are some ideas of what style to sew it into.

Saturday Tribune With Kate Ani 08071080888 anikate92@yahoo.com

Yemi Alade unveils jewellery line ONE fashion accessory that has been trending this year is the choker neckpiece. Award-winning Afro-pop star, Yemi Alade has capitalised on this stylish show-stopper by unveiling her jewellery line. The jewellery line consists of glamorous chockers, rings, bracelets, earrings and many more. You will sure know how to rock yours after seeing this.

During the launching held in Lagos that had dignitaries like Senator ItaGiwa in attendance, Yemi Alade emphasised that the collection had the Afro-politan set, Tangerine set, #HOHA brooch, The Kingpin Set, the Stay Smitten Set, the Show-stopper Set and of course, her favourite Johnny Set. “A very special thing about this collection is that they have my autograph on them as it is also my own way of bringing myself much closer to my fans,” she said.

Show-stopper set

By Segun Adebayo

Johnny set

Tinuola Ayanniyi tayanniyi@yahoo.com 08055069379

Xmas mood light-up trees

Do-it-yourself:

Faces at the launch of Veuve Clicquot Champagne

THE official launch of the Veuve Clicquot Champagne was held on Sunday 12 December, 2015 at the Sip Lounge, Victoria Island, Lagos.

The launch had in attendance the crème de la crème in the entertainment and fashion industries. The venue was a beehive of activities, especially on the red carpet where different celebrities attempted to outshine one another with their outfits.

It was also an ample time for some of the stars to get along and again to share ideas and rub minds.

Days after the event, it has remained the talk of the town within and outside Lagos.

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19 December, 2015

outofthisworld

Saturday Tribune WITH FEMI OSINUSI

osfem2@yahoo.com 08055069292

See what they do with okada in China

O

N many occasions, we have seen the unusual things commercial motorcycle riders use their machines for. We have seen them carry more than two passengers, carry some heavy goods, among others.

But what okada riders do in our country pales into insignificance going by what the Chinese use their motorcycles for. Or how can one explain an okada that is able to ‘conveniently’ carry about 10 passengers?

According to People’s Daily Online, many rural farmers in some towns in the country also use motorcycles to ferry their produce to the cities in the country.

‘Eight-coach’ okada

Extremely overloaded

Washerman on duty

A ‘10-seater’ okada They want to get to work early

Used to transport heavy water pipes

‘Skyscraper’ okada

28

19 December, 2015

businessextra

Saturday Tribune

Edited by Sulaimon Olanrewaju

lanresulaimon123@gmail.com 08055001708

Excess liquidity in banking system, yet no cash to spend Presently the CBN charges 13 percent (15 percent previously) and on the standing deposit facility it pays 4 percent (11percent previously).

Existing rule has it that banks and discount houses will only be paid the 4 per cent interest rate on the first N7.5 billion deposited with CBN under SDF, whereas larger balances will not be “remunerated.”

Based on the October 2015 data of the CBN, sighted by Saturday Tribune, the decision of the apex bank to effect a 5.0 per cent cut in banks’ Cash Reserve Ratio (CRR), a total of N771.4 billion was released to the banking system for commercial lending to the real sector. The CRR was reduced to 20 per cent from 25 per cent.

Chima Nwokoji - Lagos

F

or you to pay for any project in the University of Lagos, you have to wait for the money to come from Abuja. There is no money any where. Even the university staff have not been paid”. That was how Professor D.K. Olugbenla captured the scarcity of cash scenario in the economy, which he attributed to the recently introduced Treasury Single Account (TSA). TSA is a public accounting system under which all government revenues, receipts and incomes are collected into one single account.

On the other hand, Olugbenla’s description is different from the situation of excess liquidity (too much money) in the Nigerian banking system today. Not because the bankers accept deposit from the public, but because of how the Nigerian financial system is structured- a structure which an average Nigerian on the street accepts with some degree of doubt.

The surprising aspect, as some analysts have maintained, is that it would come as yet a huge surprise to Nigerians if anyone suggested that surplus money constitutes the greatest impediment to the creation of more jobs to enhance the quality of economic and social welfare of the people.

Some questions therefore arises: how can the public be complaining of economic hardship and lack of money to spend; most state governors threatening to cut salaries of workers or sack them because of no money to pay, while some sectors in the economy are looking for where to put their excess cash? How can there be excess liquidity when manufacturers and small businesses are crying that they do not have enough money to operate, and that available money with the banks attracts high interest rate. Before providing answers to the above questions, it is important to view some evidence of excess liquidity.

“

Is there really too much cash?

In explaining how money constitutes the greatest impediment to the creation of more jobs in the economy, an economist, Henry Boyo, who has been an antagonist of the existing structure that creates excess liquidity and no cash to spend, observed that while the real sector struggles to survive, the banks continue to declare bountiful profits which are primarily derived from loans to government.

He raised yet another concern that while government’s fiscal debts may require almost N900billion to service annually, the banks, primarily, will also earn over N600billion from the related high interest charges from buying government’s (instruments) Treasury Bills. If there is no excess liquidity, the banks would not have the money to lend to government .

To Boyo, it is important to ask why such loans (money borrowed from banks) cost the government so much despite the alleged too much of money supply in the market. Undoubtedly, if CBN does not borrow trillions of naira to store

away as idle funds annually, the banks would have no choice but to eagerly seek out real sector investors for patronage with cheaper credit, the economist noted.

This situation did not start in 2015. Incidentally, after the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting in July 2013, former governor of CBN Lamido Sanusi, also ‘remorsefully’ observed that: “First of all, you have got liquidity surplus in the banking industry…. there is over N1.3 trillion or so sitting in banks belonging to government agencies. Now basically, they (these funds) are at zero percent interest and the banks are lending about N2 trillion to government and charging 13 to 14 per cent; so why would I, as a bank, go and lend to anyone?”

Similarly, Godwin Emefiele, the present CBN governor, in another press briefing after another MPC meeting in November 2015, also disdainfully noted that: “We have discovered that, instead of banks to deploy their liquidity to the real sector to create credit, (and) stimulate growth, what the banks do is to dump their money on CBN and earn 11 per cent FOR DOING NOTHING.” Also, indications emerged recently that Deposit Money Banks made huge cash deposits with the CBN as the financial market remains awash with liquidity ( cash). This is even as scarcity of dollar in the system pushed the naira exchange rate to N257 to a dollar.

The central bank, a few weeks ago, refunded about N400 billion cash set aside by banks to buy dollars to them. This was attributed to the inability of some buyers to complete documentation, while some authorised dealers insist that the apex bank has no dollar to supply as revenue from oil continue to dwindle.

Cash deposits, according to banking sources, were made in high volumes despite low interest rate the central bank has decided to pay under the Standing Deposit Facility (SDF), from which the banks expect to be paid only 4 percent as interest on such deposit placements as against 11 per cent earlier .

Commercial banks, through the Standing Lending Facility (SLF), borrow from the CBN while they access the SDF to place deposit with the CBN.

CBN made Nigerian banks richer as it returned N740billion to the sector, and in the process made liquidity available to the banking system.

Why there is no money to spend Analysts blame the CBN and the Federal Government for high cost of items and lack of money in the hands of households to spend. They say government is introducing austerity measures and job creation is declining, while the CBN on the other hand is introducing a lot of restrictive measures that make business operations difficult.

But just as an individual who refuses to work or produce has no income or money to spend, a group of economists has agreed that an unproductive economy earns little or no revenue. Nigeria has been described as an import dependent, unproductive economy except the God- given crude oil which it adds no productive effort before exporting. The price of this single product has been hit by excess supply of crude in the international oil market.

The falling trend in crude oil prices at the international oil market has continued to negatively affect Nigeria’s earnings from crude oil exports. The country lost $22.53 million (about N4.48 billion) in June, 2015. This has continued till date.

In fact, tougher times seem to lie ahead for Nigeria as crude oil price tumbled four per cent on Monday to $36-40 per barrel, coming close to an 11-year low, and potentially endangering the implementation of the 2016 budget, which is predicated on an oil price of $38 per barrel and output of 2.2 million barrels of crude per day.

The effect of falling oil prices, Nigeria’s major revenue source, varies Ninety-five per cent of foreign exchange earning is tied to oil and with shortened revenue in dollars terms, the naira will be under continuous pressure, meaning that prices of imported items are rising beyond the reach of low income earners.

Savings is a way of wealth creation that lifts people out of poverty, declining oil prices means that Nigeria might not be able to add additional revenue due to pressure from states who also run high recurrent expenditure. It might also be difficult for the Federal Government to save funds in the sovereign wealth fund, considering the austerity measures of the times. Debt servicing is rising, especially foreign debts and Nigeria will need more fund to cover budget deficit (difference between accrued revenue and expenditure). With stagnated excess crude account savings, raising debts is the glaring . The haste to spend on recurrent items is a drain on government finances and when government is not spending, economic activity remains dull. Capital expenditure is threatened by lower oil prices as government strives to keep its deficit within the limits of the fiscal responsibility act whilst ensuring it meets its day-to day obligations.

The public sector is still the largest employer of formal labour and with cut in government expenditure due to falling oil prices, as well as job losses due to merger of ministries, the number of people without job and income increases daily.

Also, the marginal impact of TSA on banks’ liquidity was recently underscored by Nnamdi Okonkwo, chairman of the Bankers Committee, in his reaction to CBN’s earlier harmonisation of Cash Reserve Ratios for public and private sectors deposits with banks to 25 per cent. In October 2015, Okonkwo happily declared that: “CBN made Nigerian banks richer as it returned N740billion to the sector, and in the process made liquidity available to the banking system” Okonkwo concluded that “we can say that there is no alarm on account of moving TSA funds and I am (therefore) pleased to inform you that after the review and after compliance, industry liquidity remained strong”.

29

19 December, 2015

ntertainment Society Gist

News

Saturday Tribune with Joan Omionawele and

jistwtjoan@yahoo.com Twitter:@joanbajojo 08059793705 Newton-Ray Ukwuoma 08052271251

Celebrity Interviews

Tonto Dikeh warns

marriedwomen 3 P3

•Says don’t bring friends into your home —p33

Lancelot Imasuen, Stephanie Linus, others shine at BON

—p32

Music Meets Runway marks 5th anniversary —p33

30

19 December, 2015

Saturday Tribune

‘I hate the ‘Linda’ mix-up, my Igbo name is sexy’

Yes. You know my brother bought me the form so that I would not while away the time after secondary school doing nothing, but within three months I had begun to embrace acting and all that the film industry represents until my dad came and cut it off. I listened to him. Throughout my days in University of Port Harcourt, I did not act. I completely blocked everything acting from my mind because my father did not want.

Continued from pg2

mained a source of joy to me.

How did you manage to branch off into movie from TV? First, I would like to appreciate Rita Dominic and Mildred Okwo. They were the ones who gave me a chance.

I am indebted to them for believing in me. Rita Dominic was instrumental in getting that role in The Meeting. She perhaps saw what others didn’t see.

My first movie, The Meeting, won me an award. After that people started seeing me differently. I believe people started seeing what Rita Dominic saw.

After The Meeting, other projects started coming. I did Heroes and Zeroes, Secret Room, Dejavu, Soldier’s Story, Out of Luck, which just came out, and the Series Diary. I would say a big thank you to Rita and Mildred Okwo. And to God, because without the talent I wouldn’t be doing all I am doing today.

What is your advice to young talented people who haven’t found their own Rita Dominic and Mildred Okwo yet?

I tell young actors, who talk to me on social media about their interest in acting; that first of all you have to have the talent to act, don’t just say it. You have to be able to go in front of a producer or a director to show your stuff and he would be driven to take you up.

When you have the talent, go for auditions, read books, watch movies, learn from every character, watch people.

Wherever you are, watch people.

You can pick something from people.

Wherever I go, in a bus, at the market, I love to watch people. I started acting by watching and imitating people.

From secondary school days, after I watched a film, I would imitate some characters in the movies. Sometimes I would share roles with my siblings at home. Other times I waited until when I went to boarding house, when we had nothing to do, we would all gather and a friend of mine, Amuche and I would begin to narrate the stories from the movies we had watched at home to people and while narrating the movie, we would show them by acting some of the funny roles from the movies.

We could narrate a whole film to people.

I think you must have a creative m i n d .

You have to be able to remember what you have read or watched. So, you have to have the talent; you have to read books, watch movies and watch people.

When you have all these, nothing will hold you back.

You will always be a success in auditions.

I am beginning to answer my Igbo name now. I think it is sexy. And that way, people wouldn’t mistake me for Linda Ikeji sometimes because I get that a lot.

You once said you came into acting by chance, how did that happen?

I studied Sociology in

You seem to be someone who listens to elderly people, how has that shaped your life?

My parents brought me up that way. My dad would say that what an elder sees sitting down, a child wouldn’t see it standing on a mountain.

I think they know best. In the event I think they don’t, I always offer my suggestions. And for my parents when you talk to them with reasons they let you do what you want. Still I will always listen and think about what they have told me.

Has that made you who you are today?

Yes. The woman I am today is a product of all I have learnt from my parents.

In your last movie, ‘Out of Luck’, you had to interpret the role of a bread seller, how did you pull that off?

Like I mentioned earlier, I watch people.

When I was told that the character wouldn’t be speaking English, I was happy. I knew I would not have to rack my brain to speak standard English. You know, Pidgin is fun. You don’t have to force yourself to speak Pidgin. It just comes with the right responses. All I had to do was to watch people who sell bread. I took it as a project. I was watching this kind of people, their lifestyles and their thought processes.

When I got on set it was a bit easy to pull off. It was much easier, also because of the director.

Whenever I slid into proper English, he would jump in immediately. He would say, “Linda, that is ‘fone’ (RP English). He would take me through the ‘Waffi’ pidgin again.

You were allowed a lot of kissing in that movie.

No. What you saw was not kissing. It was mostly pecking on the neck and the cheek.

There was no real kissing.

Are you saying it was really physical with Tope Otedola?

You have seen the movie. It was just once.

school. After secondary school, my brother got me a form to study diploma in Theatre Arts at the University of Ibadan. I was there for three months only before my dad asked me to return home. He wasn’t around when my brother bought the form. He asked me to come back as he didn’t want his daughter to go into acting. Looking back I don’t blame him because then actors did not have the credibility they have now. So he pulled me out and I went to University of Port Harcourt to study Sociology. While waiting to go for service, a friend of mine suggested I go for ‘Tinsel’ audition. I refused because of my father. But after a while I went for it. I was invited and given a role and the rest is no more news.

Have you always loved the film industry?

How would you describe Linda Ejiofor?

Linda Ihuoma Ejiofor. I am beginning to answer my Igbo name now. I think it is sexy.

And that way, people wouldn’t mistake me for Linda Ikeji sometimes because I get that a lot.

Okay, Linda Ihuoma Ejiofor is a lady who was lucky to finish school, she is the daughter of Mr and Mrs Matthew Ejiofor, second child of five children, first girl, four siblings, graduate of the University of Port Harcourt, came out got into acting by mistake and has since never turned back and is grateful God took her towards that path.

Would you say this year has been good?

Yes. This year has been fantastic. I have done a number of great movies this year. I can only hope it gets better next year.

What is your opinion of Nollywood after the premiere of ‘Beasts of No Nation’?

This is a giant leap for Nollywood. Now, we are getting international recognition. Netflix is coming, Relativity and hopefully Universal Television is looking our way. It shows we are doing well. And I am thankful that I am in the era where good things are coming into the industry.

32 entertainment

19 December, 2015

Saturday Tribune

Genevieve Nnaji, Stephanie Okereke in close battle as AMVCA announces nominees

Stories By Joan Omionawele

D

URING the week, Africa’s major television subscription platform, MultiChoice announced the nominees for the fourth edition of the prestigious Africa Magic Viewers’ Choice Awards (AMVCAs) Announcing the nominees were the duo of popular Kenyan broadcaster Larry Madowo and renowned Nigerian comedienne ChiGurl, during a special live broadcast on all Africa Magic channels on DStv and GOtv. Under the category of the best overall movie, Stephanie Linues-Okereke’s movie, Dry, Genevieve Nnaji and Chinny Onwugbenu’s Road to yesterday, as well as Ayanda were nominated, while Mike Ezuruonye, Majid Mickel and Van Vicker were also unveiled as nominees in the best actor category.

Also in the best actress (comedy) category Funke Akindele’s ‘Jenifa’s diary’, Lepacious Bose, Ini Edo and Nana Mensah were nominated, while Nse Ikpe Etim, Belinda Effah, Genevieve Nnaji and Adesua Etomi were nominated in the best actress (movie categories).

Other nominees include Mercy Aigbe-Gentry, O. C. Ukeje, Blossom Chukwujekwu, Don Omope, among others AMVCA, an annual awards ceremony hosted

by Africa Magic has continued to set the pace in the African cinema setting and has created a platform to showcase the African story to the world by hosting the greatest actors and actresses in Africa and supporting their efforts.

Lancelot Imasuen, Stephanie Linus, others shine at BON Awards IN a bid to reward and acknowledge the efforts of outstanding Nollywood celebrities and stakeholders of the entertainment industry, the organisers of the Best of Nollywood (BON) Awards held its sixth edition of the awards ceremony at Akure, Ondo State, during the week.

Situated at the newly-launched International Conference Centre, Ondo State, the awards night hosted some of Nollywood’s most talented actors and actresses, including Bimbo Akintola and Gideon Okeke, who were both hosts, as well as other top Nollywood acts like Ibinabo Fiberesima, Bukky Wright, Segun Arinze, Yemi Blaq, Yomi Fash-Lanso, Dayo Amusa, Iyabo Ojo, comedians, Gbenga Adeyinka, Omobaba and a host of others, to a night of glitz and frenzy.

Governor Olusegun Mimiko, the host governor of this year’s BON Awards, acknowledged the organisers and stated that he was an ardent believer and fan of the entertainment industry. He also enthusiastically revealed that his state served as the root for many artistes in the industry.

“I congratulate Nollywood practitioners as well as the CEO of BON, Seun Oloketuyi, who is focused and driven. I am proud to be part of Nollywood and the possibilities it wields. I want to call on people to invest in Nollywood, because Ondo State would soon start investing in film production. Nollywood is one of the best exports Nigeria has, and it contributes almost two percent to Nigeria’s GDP,’ Mimiko explained.

One of the most significant moments of the awards night was the remembrance of the stars of Nollywood who are now late. Those remembered included Amaka Igwe, Muna Obiekwe, Justus Esiri, Enebeli Elebuwa, Sam Loco.

Among the biggest winners of the night was Stephanie Okereke’s advocacy film, ‘Dry’ The advocacy movie based on a true life story won three awards — the Award for Best Cinematography, Best Screenplay and Movie with the Best Social message, while Lancelot Imasuen’s movie Invasion 1897 carted away awards for the Best Movie of the Year, Best

Galaxy TV will be on DStv soon —MD

From left, Account Manager, Mr. Kazeem Diekola, General Manager, Mr. Kolawole Akintoba and the Business Development Manager, Mr. Bernard Ugonna Nwosu, all of Galaxy Television, at a press briefing to announce the station’s new TV programmes, held on Thursday in Lagos. PHOTO: SYLVESTER OKORUWA.

Newton-Ray Ukwuoma - Lagos

Director and Best Soundtrack,while as Kunle Afolayan’s ‘October 1’ won Best Production Design, Best Actor and Best Costume Awards.

For their contributions to the movie industry, organisers of the awards recognised former president Goodluck Jonathan, Tade Ogidan, Godswill Akpabio and Patience Ozokwor in a special recognition category.

Other winners include Sadiq Daba, Nse Ikpe Etim, Queen Nwokoye, Kunle Afod, Ope Aiyeola, Ebube Nwagbo, Nafisat Abdullahi and Omowunmi Dada.

However, towards the end of the event, the hosts, Bimbo Akintola and Gideon Okeke were conspicuously missing from the stage as other actresses were invited to the stage to continue as the event comperes as many wondered where the hosts had disappeared to.

Fillmmaker, Lancelot Imasuen, whose movie, ‘Invasion 1897’ was rated the Movie of the year, dedicated the award to his late mother who died while he was on the set of the movie and also the 800-man crew of the movie. He said: “Contrary to the belief that most Nollywood movies take about six days to produce, ‘Invasion’ took us about five years to produce”. While thanking Senator Daisy Danjuma who financed the movie, Imasuen further added: “I also want to thank the organisers of BON for evading all elements of tribe by recognising a Benin story and taking the African: “Cinema to the world.”

A predominantly South West TV station, Galaxy TV, is hoping to expand its audiences in the coming year as it is looking to join the DStv paid channel before the end of 2015.

Mr Kola Akintoba, the Managing Director of Galaxy TV, made the statement on Friday while reeling out the station’s 2016 programmes to stakeholders and newsmen.

“Discussions,” he said, “have reached an advanced stage for us to be on DStv platform. We are hoping that in the next week we will be on DStv. We have endeared ourselves already to audiences in states like Lagos, Oyo, Osun, Ekiti, Ogun and Ondo where we broadcast informative and entertaining programmes. We have also been on StarTimes and early this year we got onto the African Cable Station which just started business in Nigeria. Nevertheless, we are looking to expand our audiences further in the coming year.

“Our business is driven by content, but more importantly, it is rewarded when the right contents get to the right audiences. This is why are not only sharing our programmes for the next quarter, we also putting measures in place to make sure these programmes get to everyone.”

Among the programmes/contents unveiled during the press briefing are award-winning foreign telenovelas, Windheck and Made For Each Other, which according to Akintoba, will be running next year.

Akintoba also revealed that the station partners a sister company, Nollywood Worldwide Entertainment, in producing as well as distributing local movie contents in Yoruba and English.

“Right now we are producing some new contents. We are also improving on the old programmes. Some of the new telenovelas you see were produced by Nollywood Worldwide Entertainment, a sister company. We will continue to partner with them in the future to produce and distribute more local movie contents in Yoruba and English. We want to prove that we are predominantly an entertainment station,” he said.

33 entertainment FilmHouse partners Imax on new cinema projects

AS the cinema segment of the Nigerian entertainment industry continues to wax stronger, FilmHouse has decided to take the cinema experience to another level by collaborating with Image Maximum (IMAX), world’s biggest motion picture film format, with a set of cinema projection standards, to bring a never-before-seen cinematic experience to Nigeria, which would improve cinema customers’ satisfaction.

IMAX was founded in 1969 by the Canadian company, IMAX Corporation, and is solely aimed at providing unrivalled image qualities for its consumers.

Having established about 1008 of its state-of-the-art cinemas in 66 countries, including India, China, Phillipines, Indonesia, Toronto, Spain, Taiwan, United Kingdom, Poland, Israel, Romania, Australia, USA and Scotland, the company finally decided to bring the wonderful cinema experience to West Africa, and has decided to start with the ‘giant of Africa’ Nigeria.

During a visit to FilmHouse headquarters in Lagos, Nigeria, Mr. Giovanni Dolci, Vice-President, Theatre Development, said that the plan had been on for a long time, but IMAX got some disappointments on earlier partnership projects. It, however, eventually got struck by the brilliant dream of FilmHouse to build foremost cinemas in Nigeria.

FilmHouse has the largest Nigerian chain of theatres, and in Giovanni Dolci’s description, it is putting in a lot to give Nigerians the world acclaimed IMAX experience in cinemas. According to Kene Mkparu, CEO, FilmHouse Cinemas, the mission of this new agreement is to establish the best movie-going experience for Nigerians, who have wholeheartedly received the cinema culture. The partnership quest which started sometime in April 2014, kicked off its plan in June 2015, and as the plan goes, the cinema should be ready before mid 2016.

Shirley Manso’s new movie ‘Rebecca’ set for UK premiere MULTIPLE award- winning director and producer, Shirley Frimpong Manso’s new movie Rebecca, starring Joseph Benjamin and Yvonne Okoro will premiere in the UK at the Odeon Cinema, Bugsbys Way, London, on 22 January, 2016.

‘Rebecca’ recently got two Africa Magic Viewer’s Choice Awards (AMVCA) nominations for Best Director and Best Picture Editor.

“I woke up and the conversation still continued. It was the strangest few hours as I heard two voices chatter in my head. ‘Rebecca’ has the strongest dialogue I have ever written. After Joseph Benjamin read the script, he sent a text immediately...

“Hmmm, Shirley, what was going through your mind when you were writing this script?” I replied: “I let my mind take me to places.” I hope ‘Rebecca’ takes everyone to that unique place,” said Shirley Frimpong Manso The movie is about an abandoned and lost in the middle of a deserted road egotistic proper city guy who gets a rude awakening when he begins to realise that his only companion, a timid-looking village girl who he had been forced to marry only a few hours earlier is anything but ordinary.

19 December, 2015

Saturday Tribune

Tonto Dikeh warns married women Says never entertain friends in your home

StoriesbyJoanOmionawele

N

Brazilian, Spanish beauties set for Calabar Carnival ONE of the biggest carnival bands in Brazil, the Vai Vai Samba is to make its second appearance at the Calabar Carnival this year as it takes part in the International Carnival Band competition introduced into the carnival calendar by Governor Ben Ayade.

Their appearance at the 2012 edition of the carnival

caused a huge sensation around the country.

The Brazilians will however, have to slug it out this year with the Flamenco of Spain band that parades a bevy of Spanish beauties for the spotlight.

Italy, the land of the Azurris, will also take part in the carnival. The Italians will be represented by the im-

pressive and exciting Flag Twirlers.

There is also the Circus Oasis of France and the Carnival Troupe of Belize from Europe.

From Asia, the Henan Province of China will put up a show at the Carnival.

To achieve this, it is sending its acrobatic band to the carnival.

OLLYWOOD actress, Tonto Dike may have dropped the bags and identity of being a controversial actress since she got married few months ago.

The actress who was trailed with many controversies has recently been posting motivational talks and pieces of advice to aspiring couples.

In one of her recent messages on her Instagram page, she pointed out that her goal in life was not to lavish money, nor walk the streets like a queen, but that she was more interested in keeping her home.

“My goal isn’t to lavish money, walk the streets like a queen I truly am, feel stuck up I married right, brag about where I am, but be a victor in what I hold dear (MY HOME),” she said.

Dike continues: “Yours can be part of history too and a great inspiration to others. Elegance is when the inside is as beautiful as the outside.

“Keep your dirty and clean linens to yourself and never let them have a say in your home.

“If you can, never entertain friends in your home, meet elsewhere, now that my friend is wisdom.

“I tell myself, I refuse to be one of the broken ones, I cannot do it alone so I invited my greatest lovers, father, son and holy spirit, goals and dreams.”

Music Meets Runway announces date as it marks fifth anniversary THE relationship between popular music and fashion has been culturally significant since the 1950s.

However, the fusion between fashion and music at Music Meets Runway (MMR) would be taking this relationship to the next level as it announces the date for its fifth anniversary of the event that has consistently offered double dose of pleasurable moment on runway with heavy musical infusion via live performances by notable local and international acts.

There will be another edition of such scintillating fusion this month, as the organisers have announced the date and venue for the next edi-

tion.

The organisers have also released the promotional image that features top models for the event which would be holding on 22 December at the Eko Hotel and Suites, Victoria Island,

Lagos.

Music Meets Runway has over the years created a platform for talented designers in the highly competitive world of fashion to showcase their unique art works while talented music

artistes perform on stage; the models strut down the stage elegantly, as they are accompanied by sensational acts that blow the mind.

MMR seems not only interested in raising budding designers, but also

upcoming artistes, as it gives a platform each year for an upcoming artiste to perform to a large audience, in the hope of getting them recognition and popularity from the event. Davido performed for the first time his smash hit single ‘Back When’ on the Music Meets Runway Stage in 2011.

Some of the A-list artistes that have performed at Music Meets Runway are Tiwa Savage, 2 Face, Dbanj, Femi Kuti, Lola Rae, Toni Tones, Burna Boy, May D, Ajebutter, Taikoon, Banky W, Sasha, Shank, Naeto C, Duncan Mighty, D’Prince, Seyi Shay, Wizkid, Davido and Cynthia Morgan.

34

19 December, 2015

Saturday Tribune

with Tunde Ayanda ayandaayotunde@yahoo.com 08034649018

Ambode, Wigwe, others step out for Access Conference 2015 THE sophomore edition of the biggest innovative conference in Africa, Access Conference 2015 was held recently at the Eko Hotels, Lagos and brought together entrepreneurs, politicians and corporate gurus from all over the country.

The conference saw business moguls from different spectra, including technology, broadcast-

Sijibomi Ogundele unveils The Lorenzo

HISTORY was made in Lagos a few days ago when young entrepreneur, Sijibomi Ogundele unveiled the tallest residential building model in Lagos known as the Lorenzo.

At the Intercontinental Hotel where the event took place, the Managing Director of Sujimoto, Siji Ogundele said the project which is a symbol of structural mastery, was named after the late Lorenzo de’ Medici, who inspired the works of great artists like Botticalli and Michelangelo.

According to him, The Lorenzo will be a fully automated building where one can control all appliances wth the touch of a button.

It will be a highly secure building where, through an automated system, no one can enter another person’s apartment without the knowledge of the owner.

He also affirmed that The Lorenzo by Sujimoto is a great project that guarantees a minimum of 100 per cent return on investment.

ing, banking, media and fashion coming together to have a discussion on the imperative of innovation in a transformational world.

The Access conference, which was anchored by Lucy Alexander, had in attendance Apple cofounder, Steve Wozniak; Lagos State governor, Mr Akinwumi Ambode; Chief Executive Officer

Folorunso Alakija

of Access Bank, Herbert Wigwe, Aliko Dangote, Ibukun Awosika, Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede, Muhammed Yunus, Osayi Alile, Lanre Da Silva Ajayi and many others who witnessed the presentation of the W-Awards to the likes of Bukky George, Professor Grace Alele-Williams, Iquo Ukoh and other Nigerian women who have made their marks in their chosen fields of endeavour.

headlines WFM launch

B

USINESS tycoon, Folorunso Alakija dazzled her friends and admirers in Lagos a few days ago as she launched the WFM 91.7 radio station where she gave a keynote address on women-related matters.

The event, which took place at the Oriental Hotel, Lagos had in attendance 500 women and men that support women causes and it was an event that attracted a rare attendance of celebrities from all over Africa.

The WFM 91.7 is the first women radio station in Nigeria and is owned by Dr Tunde Okewale and a veteran broadcast journalist, Okewale Sonaiya.

The radio station presents wonderful prospects in a desert of ideas and is licensed to air women’s programmes.

Something new from IFC THE Ivory Friends Club, a reputable non-governmental association in Nigeria has a big project up its sleeve.

Disclosing this at the annual gathering of the club which took place at the Civic Centre, Victoria Island, Lagos recently was the President-General, Ikechukwu Okosa, who claimed the IFC has concluded plans to construct a modern recreational sporting

event centre in Awka, the capital of Anambra State.

Okosa said the project will afford the people of the state an opportunity to have access to facilities that will enable them to undertake physical and healthy exercise to the delight of the state’s deputy governor, Dr Nkem Okeke, who was present at the event as the special guest of honour.

Wasiu Ayinde is happy THE joy of top Fuji musician, King Wasiu Ayinde, currently knows no bounds.

The musician was a proud father when one of his children, Damilola, was called to the Bar some days ago.

The young woman graduated from the North America University, Cotonou, Republic of Benin and is now the second child of the musician to become a barrister after Monsurat, the first daughter was called to the Bar a while ago.

35

19 December, 2015

Saturday Tribune

With Ronke Sanya & Oyeyemi Okunlade 07036050161\ 08056834515 sanyaaderonke@gmail.com ojeleyeoyeyemi@yahoo.com

achievers

Toyin Falola:

Giant in African studies

RONKE SANYA gives a narration on the giant strides of a renowned historian, Toyin Falola, revealing his exploits from cradle till date.

Q

UITE a number of Africans are working tirelessly to engrave the name of native home countries in gold and make the world a better place: Dr Toyin Omoyeni Falola is one.

Born on January 1, 1953 in Ibadan, Nigeria, Falola, given to human rights activism, dropped out of high school in the 1960s to join a peasant rebellion that protested high taxation and the ill-treatment of farmers (Agbekoya).

Although he initially planned to venture into the world of the sciences and medicine, the death of Falola’s grandfather during the rebellion made him to veer into the humanities.

Falola began his educational career in 1970, teaching at the UAMC Primary School, Pahayi, Ilaro, Ogun State Nigeria.

He earned his Bachelor’s degree in History from the then University of Ife and obtained his Ph.D. in 1981 from the same institution, which is now known as Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU).

Falola served in the Faculty of History at the University of Ife for about a decade before moving to the USA in 1991 to teach History and African Studies at the University of Texas, at Austin.

A prolific author, Falola has more than 100 single-authored, co-authored and ed-

ited books to his name. Although he is best known for his work on the political economy of southwestern Nigeria, his intellectual interests are wide-ranging, such that he has published on teen life in Africa, Black business leaders, the global oil industry, and African landscapes and environments. He also has a volume of works on poetry.

According to his website, wwwtoyinfalola.com, his acclaimed memoir, ‘A Mouth Sweeter than Salt’ (University of Michigan Press, 2004), was a finalist for the prestigious Herskovits Prize, granted through the African Studies Association (ASA), for which Falola has served as President.

Falola is notable to have supported research through his mentorship of students, long-term editorship of the African Economic History Review, service on many editorial boards of academic journals, and his creation and editorship of several academic book series, including the University of Rochester series, Studies in Africa and the Diaspora and the Carolina Academic Press African World Series.

He is also a founding member of the Ife Humanities Society, the President of the Nigerian Studies Association, and the General Secretary of the Historical Society of Nigeria.

In addition, Dr Falola has hosted his own

Annual Africa Conference at the University of Texas-Austin (UT-Austin) for more than a decade, drawing students and scholars from across North America, Europe and Africa.

He also engages in fundraising to make his Texas-based Africa conference affordable and he graciously invites conference goers to his home for a banquet. His daughter, Bisola, a geographer, assists with the organisation of the annual event, including the programme and peer-reviewed books based on select conference papers.

A pioneer in digital communication among Africanists, Falola has worked tire-

A pioneer in digital communication among Africanists, Falola has worked tirelessly to build linkages between African and US-based institutions of higher education.

lessly to build linkages between African and US-based institutions of higher education.

He has helped make UT-Austin a destination for members of the highly competitive Young African Leadership Initiative (Mandela Washington Fellows Programme).

The world acclaimed erudite has received many honours and awards. He is a recipient of the University of Texas System Chancellor’s Teaching Award (2003), the Cheikh Anta Diop Award for Excellence in African Studies (2006), the Ibn Khaldun Distinguished Award for Research Excellence, and the ASA’s Distinguished Africanist Award (2011). In 2013, an annual conference was held in Falola’s name known as the Toyin Falola Annual International Conference on Africa and the African Diaspora (TOFAC).

The meeting has also been held in South Africa.

Falola, a giant in African Sstudies has invested much effort at debunking myths and misconceptions about African continent. He has also assisted and is still assisting people in the United States of America (USA) and beyond, to understand Africa’s contributions to the Americas, from scholars and businesspeople, to products such as oil and coffee. These positive contributions go well beyond topics such as slavery that might get covered in history books.

36

19 December, 2015

weekend cartoons

Saturday Tribune

Adeeko Olusegun adeeko.olusegun@yahoo.com 0811 695 4638

Just a Laffing Mata

FUNOLOGY

POLITICO

Home needs

One day, Segeluulu’s class teacher went around her class, asking each of the kids what they needed at home.

1st kid: “A computer,” the teacher replied, “Good.”

2nd kid: “A new washing machine.”

The teacher replied with a similar response...

Segeluulu stood up and said: “In my house we don’t need anything.” The teacher asked him to think again carefully as everybody needs something... Segeluulu replied, “I am very sure. Whenever my sister goes out with a boy, I remember, my dad says, “that’s the last thing we need.”

Wor ms

Segeluulu’s Chemistry teacher wanted to teach his class about the evils of liquor. For the experiment needed for the teaching, he gathered a glass of water, a glass of whiskey, and two worms.

“Now class, observe what happens to the two worms,” said the teacher, putting the first worm in the glass of water. The worm in the water moved about, twisting, seemingly unharmed.

He then dropped the second worm in the whiskey glass. It writhed in pain for a moment, then quickly sank to the bottom and died. “Now kids, what lesson can we derive from this experiment?” he asked.

Segeluulu raised his hand and responded, “Drink whiskey and you won’t get worms!”

Why we stopped going to church since 2007 — ‘Busy Body’ singers

37 interview

19 December, 2015

Saturday Tribune

Why Nigerian varsities are poorly rated in the world —VC

The Vice Chancellor of the Federal University, Wukari (FUW), in Taraba State, Professor Geoffrey Okogbaa, in this interview by SYLVANUS VIASHIMA, speaks on Nigeria’s university system and allied issues. Excerpts:

Y

OUR tenure as vice chancellor of Federal University, Wukari is almost over, would you say you have achieved your dreams for the university?

Yes, I think I can say that confidently. With the development in the university - the infrastructure, especially the internal roads, the faculty buildings, principal officers housing, houses for senior staff and professors, and our housing plans for all the staff, both junior and senior - I think we have done well.

I wish we had done better, especially with regard to classrooms and offices. Hopefully, as the two new faculty buildings are completed March next year, we would be able to put most of our academic staff in their offices and have more than enough lecture rooms for all our students. So, I can say that I am pleased, especially given the Nigerian situation where funding of the university is not what it should be. We have done very well.

FUW has done better in that wise than other universities. I hoped to establish the Faculty of Engineering. We have finished the drawing. We know where the building would be, but the funds, which we expected from the Central Bank of Nigeria, didn’t come. So, hopefully, in the next few years, the university will have the faculty of engineering.

We are looking forward to having the Faculty of Medicine. We have got approval from the [National Universities Commission] NUC to start the Faculty of Basic Medicine so that in the next few years, we will start. We are also privileged to have got approval to start the university’s teaching hospital, although that is not what we are calling it now. By the end of this year, we will be able to break ground for the project. We have the funds for that and we are going to site it on the edge of the campus, close to the community, because our plan is to use it not just as a teaching hospital, but also as a community hospital.

What challenges have you faced so far?

The major challenge we have is the issue of incessant crises in the host community of Wukari. That is something we have been having trouble addressing. All we can do is to pray for wisdom and fortitude to handle it. When we went through the many crises, about seven of them, we got calls from well-meaning and concerned persons for us to close the school for the safety of the students. Of course, we had to ask the students about their take on the issue and they insisted that we continue since they felt safe on the campus. In any case, students are tired of spending more years than required for degree programmes in the country due to strikes. So, given the crises in the community, they, understandably, would stay if they had a choice.

How would you describe the students?

They are about the best students you can find anywhere.

Even with lack of adequate resources, they go about their activities with commitment and dedication.

When we first came up with the awards system, we had so many of them who were first class students and I wondered how we would be able to cater for them all, but some of them later dropped to lower grades and the number went down. Even at that, we still have a good number of first class students. These students are very good, I must say.

With all the issues that we have, most of them have remained focused. For instance, there have never been any protests even as their condition may not be as good as in other institutions.

How best do you think Nigerian universities should be funded?

I think we are on the path of getting it right in that regard.

The president is actually taking the right steps towards that. We must be willing to borrow as much as possible to sufficiently fund our education system. We are too afraid of borrowing in Nigeria. The United States of America, for instance, owes more money than the rest of the world put together. You see, they do that because they want the best for their people. So, I don’t think it is terribly wrong to seek resources to fund our education. No country has ever made any serious progress without a sound education system and Nigeria is no exception. World’s leading economies, first

that based on your capacity or the limit given by the NUC? The target the NUC gave all new universities was 1600 students, probably because they are aware of the pressure on the schools. In the next five years, FUW will be approaching 10,000 because it is the right thing to do.

As you continue to take the children off the streets, you will be doing a lot of things - reducing unemployment and providing them a place to expend their energies so that they can focus on meaningful things.

Prof. Okogbaa

of all, decided to strengthen their education system and they did what was necessary to do that. The president has a good idea. From what we understand, he has told the NUC that he is going to make sure the universities are funded properly so that when you come to a university campus, you don’t see a glorified high school but an actual university.

I think we are an example of that. We have been lucky because each time this university went to any agencies and ask them for help, they helped. And we are expecting support from PTDF. We spoke with them last year and they said we should wait. We are expecting funds from the Central Bank of Nigeria.

Some of the tasks rest with the vice chancellor who is also working hard to explore all options. That is what we did here. Most of the time, we are out there in Abuja or Lagos talking to individuals and groups to help us with funds and the results have always been very impressive.

The Ministry of Water Resources has promised us a water treatment plant just as the Ministry of Power has promised to give us light from the Kashimbila Dam. It is a combination of focus, doggedness and not shying away from begging. I don’t get tired of begging so long as I see the prospects of raising any funds for the development of the school.

You just matriculated about 1,200 students, is

Nigeria is a great. There is no other country like it because it is devoid of natural disasters except for the mild flooding we experience once in a while. Once power is stable, I see Nigeria growing beyond imagination and becoming the envy of the world.

Nigerian universities are rated low around the world, how do you react to this?

I don’t believe those ratings. For instance, some of our contemporaries are rated above us, but our academic brief was developed quite early and approved by NUC and our teachers are good. Although we didn’t have many PhDs at first, we are getting them now. So, I think we rate just as high. I tell people that these things, I wouldn’t worry about them.

We have spent the past few years providing infrastructure in FUW. For instance, in the next few years, we will focus on the building of sound academic programmes. But you can’t do it if you don’t have the basic infrastructure on the ground. You don’t expect the students to be at their best when they are learning under very poor conditions and the lecturers lack the basic facilities. Once we pass through this hurdle of infrastructure, I can go ahead and have people go into extensive research and development. I think that is the next thing.

Nigerian universities are good but people are biased because they believe our system is generally corrupt. They don’t even pay us any attention. How can you tell me that a university in Ghana, for instance, is better than a university in Nigeria? It just can’t be, no matter how bad the situation is. It is just that people have bias against Nigeria and we should discourage this.

Nigeria is great. There is no other country like it because it is devoid of natural disasters except for the mild flooding we experience once in a while. Once power is stable, I see Nigeria growing beyond imagination and becoming the envy of the world. We have all it takes to achieve this.

This is a good country. We just need to keep trying until we get to where we hope to be. The current administration is already taking giant steps in tackling corruption and this is a positive step in the right direction. It is commendable.

As the pioneer vice chancellor, where do you see FUW in the next few years?

I see us getting over this hump of infrastructure so that we have stable water and power. We have enough classrooms.

We have enough laboratories. We are about the only university that is building what we call integrated sciences laboratory. That is a laboratory for not just students but also our staff to carry out researches. If you live in Taraba State, you will know that the state is one of the most richly endowed in the country in terms of minerals. You have all kinds of minerals here. We may even discover oil here if we look closely enough. So, we are getting ready.

I believe Taraba is poised to become one of the leading states in the country in terms of industrialisation. So, we are getting ready. I see a bright future for FUW, especially once we get our infrastructure ready as we are already getting academic staff with PhD and are also training some.

The only thing is that our host community has to decide to live in peace. You know, it is extremely difficult for one to make progress where there is no peace. Our governor is already taking positive steps in that regard. Anywhere he goes, the first thing he says is ‘give me peace.’

What is the worth of TETFUND-funded projects in the school now?

It is over N5 billion. They just gave us money for a hospital worth over N1 billion, in addition to the over N4 billion they had given the institution over time. TETFUND has been very supportive and we are deeply grateful.

38

politics&policy

19 December, 2015

Saturday Tribune With Saheed Salawu 0811 695 4643

yinkadejavu@yahoo.com

Senate and the TSA controversy

The Treasury Single Account (TSA) has been touted as a game changer in the process of managing the nation’s finances but not a few are jolted by the controversy dogging the policy as revealed in the ongoing Senate investigation. Group Politics Editor, TAIWO ADISA, presents the unfolding drama.

President Muhammadu Buhari

T

HE Treasury Single Account (TSA) policy enforced by the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari from September 15 has been touted as the saviour for government’s finances. It has been said that the policy would ensure that the government keeps tabs on its finances and is able to check the excesses of revenue generating ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs).

Although the policy had been in the making since 2010, when the administration of Dr Goodluck Jonathan kickstarted preparations to that effect and caused it to come into effect in January 2012 with 116 agencies, the September 15, 2015 deadline given by Buhari ensured that some 900 agencies are now listed on the TSA. A number of government actors hailed the president for mopping up the resources of government from banks that are believed to have failed to embark on normal banking operations while sitting on huge public funds.

But while the accolades were still pouring in, some grumblings were equally being heard. The banking sector could not fathom the loss of huge billions of naira as a result of the full implementation of the policy. Some banks started laying off workers in charge of public funds management.

While the grumblings from the banking sector could do little to shake the TSA policy, the Senate, on November 11, received a motion that sent shivers down the spines of all stakeholders in the TSA business. The nation was alerted that despite the laudable projections into the TSA policy, the nation had rather been bleeding from the effects of its full implementation.

Senator Dino Melaye, who raised the motion entitled the “Abuse and Mismanagement of the Treasury Single Ac-

count Regime,” alongside 32 other senators, alleged that the TSA had led to the loss of public funds as he claimed that the operating company, Remita, earned N25 billion in one day.

He quoted Section 162 (1) of the 1999 Constitution which provides that the federation shall maintain a special account to be called the federation account, into which all revenues collected by the government shall be paid.

Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe (PDP Abia South), who seconded the motion, asked some pertinent questions. He wanted the Senate to know who authorised the payment of commissions on the TSA account and which powers such persons relied upon to issue the order. Many other senators who contributed to the debate criticised the payment of the supposed N25 billion from the TSA and called for further probe.

At the end of the long debate, the President of the Senate, Bukola Saraki, referred the probe to the Senate commit-

The nation was alerted that despite the laudable projections into the TSA policy, the nation had rather been bleeding from the effects of its full implementation.

tees on Finance, Banking and other Financial Institutions and Public Accounts. He asked them to submit a report in four weeks.

More revelations were, however, to take the centre stage on December 9 as the three Senate standing committees commenced work. The hearing room was packed with stakeholders, bankers and IT experts who came to witness the confessional statements on the management of the magical TSA. There was the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Dr Godwin Emefiele; the Accountant General of the Federation, Ahmed Idris, as well as officials of some 15 banks and SystemsSpecs, owners of the operating platform, Remita. For the senators, it was a deep, dramatic inquest.

The Accountant General of the Federation opened the floodgate of testimonies. He told the senators what he knew about the TSA and declared that he was aware of the payment platform, Remita. The CBN governor also admitted knowing of the Remita arrangement and that they had been collecting funds for the government. The duo agreed that Remita should be paid for its services to the government.

But controversy started setting in when denials crept in.

The drama began as the CBN governor Emefiele denied knowledge of the payment of N8 billion to SystemsSpecs.

His footsteps were immediately followed by the Accountant General of the Federation, Idris, who also told the senators that if the CBN was unaware of the sum, he too could not claim knowledge.

The Senate had, on November 11, mandated its committees on Finance, Public Accounts and Banking, Insurance Continues pg39

39 politics&policy

19 December, 2015

TSA: The unresolved issues

Senate President, Bukola Saraki Continued from pg38

and other Financial Institutions to investigate allegations that the sum of N25 billion was paid to SystemsSpecs for the use of its platform, Remita, for collecting government revenue under the TSA arrangement.

After initially commending the Remita platform for providing service to the government and recommending a reduction of the one percent charge, Emefiele made a Uturn and announced that he was unaware of the payment of N8 billion to Remita.

He said: “The truth is that I will like to confess that I did not really know, because I have to say what I know that there is one percent charge being taken on that account until the Senate and the House of Representatives raised it when we were summoned to the office of the Senate President and I sounded very surprised at that session and I promised that I was going to look into it.

“Indeed, I asked who is Mr Obaro and what is this N25 billion about. I am very surprised because I didn’t know anything about it. It was immediately after that I swung into action and I discovered that the issue raised in the office of the Senate President was right and I immediately called the MD of Remita to find out who he was, and I insisted that the money had to be reversed. Immediately after that, it was reversed.”

The Accountant General also followed in Emefiele’s steps in denying the payment.

He said: “As far as I am concerned, there is no agreement between the CBN and our office that is duly signed. As far as I am concerned, my office has not made any payment to any service provider with respect to moving TSA. We have not made any payment. We have not engaged anybody and, therefore, we have not paid anybody. I don’t have any reason to hide any information. What I told you is what I know.”

He insisted that his office was not part of the Remita

commission payment, saying: “I’m not part of it and my office is not part of any payment.”

But the Managing Director of SystemsSpecs, Mr John Obaro, who also addressed the lawmakers, said that his company had a valid contract with the Federal Government over the TSA arrangement.

He told the Senate committees that the Federal Government had initiated the process of the implementation of the TSA in 2010 and that Remita was approved as the platform for the funds remittance in October 2011 after a process initiated by the CBN and the Office of the Accountant General.

According to him, the collection charge of one percent was agreed to after the Accountant General’s office rejected the proposed 2.5 percent.

He stated: “We immediately set to work and we have proven that Remita, the indigenously developed flagship product of the Nigerian Software Industry, works.

“By January 2012, the foreign core accounting software of government was not ready and three months behind schedule.

“As you would have seen among the documents earlier sent to you, SystemsSpecs has a valid contract with CBN for the provision of the Payment Gateway that supports payment and collections of government revenue.

“The fees were discussed by all stakeholders, set by CBN and OAGF, communicated to all by the CBN and included in our contract. We did not charge above the agreed rates.”

He also agreed that about N8 billion was collected as a result of the collections on the platform of Remita, adding that the funds were returned to the CBN in October, following a letter to that effect.

He also stated that the company decided to follow a business line rather than a legal approach in refunding the earlier charges, even though it had a valid contract with the government.

Saturday Tribune

He explained further: “On September 14, 2015, the OAGF had expressed concern at a project review meeting about the fees considering the enlarged scope of the project.

SystemsSpecs was not averse to price renegotiation. We wrote to the CBN that we are open to renegotiation and that an all stakeholders meeting be convened.

“Three weeks later, on October 7, we wrote again that an all stakeholders meeting should be convened to review processing fees.

“Two weeks later, on October 27, we were instructed by the CBN to refund all fees that have accrued to us in accordance with the contract. We strategically chose to comply within 24 hours of receipt of their letter as we did not want to allow the issue of fees in the heat of the moment to becloud the work we have done in the delivery of TSA for Nigeria. While refunding our own portion of the fees as demanded by the CBN, however, we accompanied the refund with a fairly worded letter stating why the fees legitimately earned in line with our contract should be refunded to us. How much more could we have demonstrated good faith?”

The Remita boss further decried what he called syndicated attacks on his company, adding that an erroneous impression was created that he collected N25 billion.

He said: “On November 11, two weeks after refunding all fees and operating zero fees at the risk of a legal battle with other stakeholders, without hearing our own side of the story, we were erroneously accused of fraud, abuse and mismanagement of the TSA on the hallowed chambers of this highly respected Senate.

“To say the least, we feel used, abused, unappreciated and abandoned by the country for which we stuck out our necks and faith to deliver the platform that made the TSA possible, which in other climes, all citizens would be proud of, acclaimed, encouraged and motivated to further the frontiers of greater technological breakthroughs and innovation.

“In any case, pray, how could enforcing the terms of a validly signed and subsisting contract amount to fraud while discussions were already ongoing on whether the terms of the valid contract may need to be reviewed to recognise emerging realities? How can discussions on the need to re-negotiate contractual terms due to increased volumes form the basis to seek to throw the baby away with the bath water?

“In the unfortunate syndicated attempt to discredit Remita, the Senate was misled into believing that a whopping sum of N25 billion was paid out to one company in one day for doing nothing. Nothing can be further from the truth and by now it is obvious to the world that the Senate was misled.

“Two days later, a major newspaper had a blazing headline that indicated CBN had ‘recovered’ N8.6 billion from SystemsSpecs, owners of Remita. Even while the quoted figure was wrong, the writer forgot to mention that fee charges had been suspended since October 23, 2015, almost three weeks before the Senate motion.”

On December 8, the CBN governor told the Senate committees that the TSA account had to the tune of N2.038 billion in its kitty with the Remita platform accounting for the sum of N1.419 trillion, another platform, RTGS, collecting N233 billion and the CBN having a direct remittance of N269.7 billion.

He admitted that the sum of N8 billion had been drawn from the TSA so far, even though he admitted asking Remita to return the funds.

The figures made public by the CBN governor were, however, another source of controversy as the Accountant General claimed that only the sum of N1.8 trillion had been paid into TSA account.

One thing, however, came to the fore. The charge of one percent commission to be paid to Remita, banks and the CBN was on the high side. The CBN governor admitted that much in his presentations, ditto the Accountant General.

Managing Director of SystemsSpecs, Obaro, also admitted at the hearing that the one percent commission was arrived at when only a few MDAs were hooked to the TSA policy.

He said that the company would be willing to renegotiate the terms in view of the huge volume of cash that will now pass through the Remita platform.

The Senate committee, last week, praised itself for opening up the TSA matter, even though it had been unable to prove the alleged N25 billion said to have been paid out of the TSA. Rather, there are indications that the government will have to, at a point, cough up some funds as payment for the services rendered by Remita.

40

newsfeature

19 December, 2015

Saturday Tribune

for

Mbanefo drawing water from a well dug in 1847, at the museum.

Director-General, Nigerian Tourism Development Corporation (NTDC), Chief Sally Mbanefo, at the Badagry Slave Trade Museum.

Badagry Slave Trade Museum:

What Mbanefo saw

NTDC DG tasks multinational companies on tourism promotion By wale Ojo Lanre

T

he Director–General, Nigerian Tourism Development (NTDC), Chief Sally Mbanefo has called on multi–national companies and network providers to show more interest in promoting the tourism potentialities of Nigeria. Chief Mbanefo, who made the call during a visit to Badagry Slave Trade Museum, pointed out that “Nigeria has huge potentialities in the tourism sector.

The Federal Government is trying to make sure that the sector grows despite the financial crunch being experienced because of fluctuation in the price of crude since two years ago. However, I am not comfortable with the passive posture of major multinational companies and the network providers towards the tourism sector.”

According to her, “the financing of tourism projects and sites should not be totally hung on the neck of the Federal Government. There are many companies that are direct beneficiaries of the sector, these companies must be tasked to ensure that they play their parts in developing the sector.”

“It is apparent that oil companies are the major beneficiaries of the tourism industry. Tourism lubricates the wheel of the oil industry. There will be a major problem if travellers refused to travel and the masses decided to shun vehicles by embarking on travel strike, the oil sector will collapse.”

“It will be a good step if 50 multinational companies can adopt 50 tourism sites and develop them in the spirit of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). These companies will not do this in vain as they too will be eligible to a certain percentage of

the revenue from the sites.”

“It is high time the Federal Government tasked or compelled particularly the major network providers to adopt a tourism site like Ipole Iloro Waterfalls or Ozimini Blue River in Abia or the Assop Fall in Jos. These network providers make the chunk of their fortune from tourism.”

She pointed out that “cell phone is one of the most important items a tourist has, tourists make more calls to their families and friends when they are out of area of domicile. Unless while roaming, a typical tourist will seek first the SIM package of the host countries and other things will follow. Thus, the network provider should be compelled to adopt a tourist centre and develop it to international standard.”

Chief Mbanefo, who was conducted on a tour of the Slave Trade Museum, nearly broke down in tears when... Anago, the curator at the Museum, recapped the harrowing experience of the victims of the slave trade.

Anago explained that the slave trade period was the darkest in the history of the Yoruba who, he said, were the major par-

Tourism lubricates the wheel of the oil industry. There will be a major problem if travellers refused to travel and the masses decided to shun vehicles by embarking on travel strike, the oil sector will collapse.

ticipants and victims of the trade.

“It was a time of pure wickedness when 40 able-bodied, healthy and strong men were the barter commodity for an umbrella,” Anago said.

On getting to the rooms where the 40 slaves were quartered before they were shipped to Europe, Chief Mbanefo cried and prayed for the souls of those who were victims of the trade.

The NTDC boss directed the National Commission for Museum and Monument (NCMM) to see to the safe keeping of those items which she called “historical and informative and irreplaceable items of history.”

She pointed out that “this is one of the emotionally-stoking tourism sites. The items here are wonderful, but still need better branding and showcasing. The NTDC is ready and willing to form a synergy of purpose at promoting this site.”

41 commentary

19 December, 2015

Let us all be Nigerians

By Naza Okoli

I

asked a lawyer friend what he thought about this renewed clamour for Biafra. I specifically asked if it was unlawful for any part of the country to say it wants to be independent, and he said the law does not permit secession. “It is not like marriage where there is a law on divorce,” he said. “The bond that ties us as a country is far stronger; we are indivisible.” I reminded him of the Scottish Independence Referendum of last year, and he said it was a different matter. And so he won, as all lawyers do.

As undergraduates at the University of Lagos, some close friends and I formed what we called the Nigerian Scholar Project. We identified tribalism as Nigeria’s greatest problem and we asked people questions like: “who told you that you are Yoruba?” “Can you prove that you are Igbo?” We were hotheads: we challenged our schoolmates to denounce their “tribes” and become “Nigerian Scholars.” Seun Odeyemi was the most eloquent of us all. Tolu Akinwole spoke little but thought a lot.

Newton-Ray Ukwuoma believed the movement of the century had been born. Olumide Ayodele nodded quite frequently. However, many people found our ideas amusing. Abayomi Olatemiju would ask: “So you mean we should forget our tribes and become Nigerians, abi?” Kafayat Otunbaloye had never heard anything that absurd all her life. It was a short-lived adventure. I don’t think any of us remembers how it all ended. We just realised that we had stopped talking about it.

The story of Biafra is not about the South-East and the South-South, it is about Nigeria. We have always taken it for granted that Nigeria exists because it has a map, a flag and a tuneful anthem. But the truth is that we have invested little in our quest to become a united nation. We are yet to evolve a national culture that consciously highlights our collective strengths while dousing issues that instigate anger, pain, regret or suspicion. When we praise [Yakubu] Gowon and say he fought to keep the nation together, we imply that the people he fought against were villains who did not know what was good for them and for the nation. When we say [Odumegwu] Ojukwu wanted Biafra because his juniors in the military were promoted ahead of him, we imply that the thousands who died fighting beside him were daft and could not see it was really the colonel’s war. It should be asked:

was the death of Biafra in 1970 victory for Nigeria, for all of us? What purpose has this victory served? When a couple can no longer make any sense of their marriage, do you lock them up in a room and declare the problem solved?

I wish young people in the East would stop talking about Biafra and channel all that time and energy towards holding their governors accountable. I wish they would see just how comically silly it is to call the rest of Nigeria “zoo,” whereas the states in their own region, together with their public institutions, reek of neglect and mediocrity. I wish the Igbo were less reactive, and would more often take the initiative.

Where are the bold projects in the South-East? Where are the TINAPA-sized schemes? I wish the Igbo were less migratory, and that they didn’t need to have “Eze Ndi Igbo” in other people’s towns, just to foment trouble. I wish they were quieter, and wouldn’t always cry foul just because it happened to one of their own, much like Papa Chidimma in Kunle Afolayan’s ‘October 1’.

Many people have said that the reason for the current agitation for Biafra is Jonathan’s defeat at the polls. That may be true. The day after Buhari emerged winner, a colleague of mine told me that “my” people had voted “out of sentiment”. He made it sound as though there was something wrong with the people themselves. It

Saturday Tribune

may be difficult to explain with any accuracy why people vote the way they do, but it is my impression that everybody really votes for “their own”. Those who say they voted for Buhari because of his sterling military career and “zero tolerance for corruption” are often unable to explain why they did not bother about him in 2011, 2007 and 2003. Make no mistake: everybody votes for their own, and it is from our definition and manipulation of the idea of “ownership” that our journey towards oneness can be measured. Find us a candidate who is so much like all of us that it is difficult to think of them of as a member of any particular ethnic group.

Speaking in 2004, at the Democratic National Convention, at Boston, MA, Barack Obama (then candidate for US Senate in Illinois) said: “I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story, that I owe a debt to all those who came before me, and that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible… For alongside our famous individualism, there’s another ingredient in the American saga, a belief that we are all connected as one people. If there is a child on the south side of Chicago who can’t read – that matters to me even if it’s not my child…

“Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us… Well, I say to them tonight, there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America; there’s the United States of America. There’s not a Black America and White America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America… There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq, and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.”

Nobody spoke to us in this manner during the campaigns.

We do not speak like this around here. I would advise that the president begin to talk to us – about love, respect and our common destiny and strength as one nation. He should learn to smile more frequently too. It is only a people united who can fight corruption – who can fight any fight. But even unity must be preceded by justice: fairness and equity shown to all. The Yoruba say that the dog that is hungry does not play with the one that is full.

Okoli is on the staff of the Nigerian Tribune.

Osun and IITA’s timely partnership

By Femi Babatunde With the recent signing of the agreement between the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and the Osun State government, led by the Governor Rauf Aregbesola, the state is apparently treading an uncommon path of agricultural revolution capable of permanently changing its economic fortunes. The agreement is a culmination of a four-year partnership between the two parties over a series of agriculture projects hitherto embarked upon by the state through the flagship programme, Osun Rural Enterprise and Agriculture Programme (O’REAP).

Through the project, IITA, reputed to have in its kitty a centre that has in store over 30,000 seed varieties and at the forefront of agricultural research and innovation, would carry out research and maintain demonstrations plot for best farming practices in Osun, while carrying out crop multiplication and working with the government to facilitate a most robust and shortened research-extension-farmer linkage. Perhaps, the highlight of the project, envisaged to generate substantial impact and ripple effect, is the involvement of the O’REAP Youth and other Osun youths alongside the youth programme within the IITA, christened the Youth Agripreneur programme. This would ensure that Osun youths are exposed to worldclass training in modern agriculture to make agriculture more commercial and profitable, thereby making it more attractive to Osun State and Nigerian youths in general.

Governor Aregbesola said under the partnership, “the state is releasing 205.5 hectares of land around Ago Owu in the state, to IITA for the purpose of conducting research and setting up demonstration farms for best farming practices.

The project, which the governor is convinced, has enormous potential, complements the agriculture programmes of the state and also gives it a new fillip.

It is envisaged that the implementation of the project will bring in agricultural investment, ensure the improved efficiency of the agriculture value chain, create jobs and hopefully make millionaires out of our farmers, especially the youth who are interested in farming.

As a largely agrarian state, farmers in Osun stand to benefit in no small measure from the move. The governor underscored the strategic thought behind the project thus:

“The parcel of land being released to IITA is very strategic.

It is within a 4,000 hectares farm estate we are developing and is located next to a farm settlement of 11,496 hectares in the Ago Owu area and in close proximity to another farm settlement in Mokore with3,340 hectares of land. This IITA centre is surrounded by some 85 farming villages that we expect would be the first beneficiaries of the farming innovation that would come from the centre. There is no doubt that this would spread to the entire farming community in Osun and then to our neighbouring states.”

Dr Nteranya Sanginga, the Director General of the IITA, who led a team of officials of the institute to pen his signature to the agreement, expressed his excitement over the project and appreciated the hands of partnership extended to IITA by the Aregbesola-led government on the project. He assured the people of his commitment. Being a Congolese, whose country, like Nigeria, is enormously blessed with natural resources, but in his words, “has been corrupted by the proceeds from oil,” Sanginga noted that the “only future for us in Africa is in land and agriculture, with the over 70 percent of our youth without jobs.” Failure to take this seriously, he emphasised, “would mean that the continent would pay the harsh price.”

Emphasising that it must indeed be a partnership that truly benefits from the mutual commitment of both parties, Saginga said that even though IITA with enormous skills and experience in the sector is committed to fulfilling her part in the agreement, all hands must be put on deck to drive the vision. Particularly, he challenged the governor in this regard. “I have a few extension workers but the state has 1,000 and they have to be put to use. We would respect our duties, but if you don’t respect yours, the ball will be in your court. My hope is in young people.

We would like to engage them and support them.”

Indeed, the import of this challenge was not lost on the governor. Proving that he meant business, the governor reiterated his commitment to the vision of making the state a point of reference in agricultural revolution in the country. To this end, he informed the audience that the state is embarking on a ‘back to farm project’ that would see all its employees in the agriculture sector go on the farm and achieve the desired results that would catapult the state to the desired zenith. “None of our agricul-

tural officers would be permitted to stay in the office any longer – they will manage farms and farmers. If you fail, you either get demoted or get sacked. It is now a new era, the era of management by production”, he said.

With the falling price of crude oil now sold for $38.18, the governor quipped that the era of cheap money coming from the federal account is gone. “We don’t need a soothsayer to tell us that our focus must shift to agriculture if we must survive the looming financial storm. The only way to survive is to depend on ourselves and our hands,” Aregbesola counselled.

Earlier, Dr Charles Akinola of the Office of Economic Development and Partnership (OEDP), whose responsibility it was to broker the agreement between Osun State and IITA, gave further insight into the extent of the expected impact of the project. “The location of the land being released today is part of about 4,000 hectares earmarked for food production. The Agricultural Production Zone will house two new Signature Farm Estates (residential) with farmers land parcels set at 5, 10 and 20 hectares respectively. The Farm estates are to be commissioned and open to use anytime from now and well in time for the 2016 planting season”, he said.

Farmers, traditional rulers and other citizens of the state witnessed the signing of the agreement between the two parties recently at the executive lounge of the governor’s office at the Bola Ige Building, Osogbo. It is envisaged that the impact of the IITA presence would be felt among the farming population in that area working on over 50,000ha of land (excluding the farm settlements) in the immediate and the state as a whole.

Governor Aregbesola must be commended for this great leap, having earlier invested over N5 billion in agriculture. Indeed, he has again shown that in spite of the uninspiring economic challenges currently facing the nation, he is a visionary leader whose arsenal never runs out of giant ideas. For in many ways, the partnership reflects the audacious but realistic vigilance of the Osun State government in granting a catalytic direction to the ambition of the state to become a major player in the agriculture sector where it has long been acknowledged as having an undeniable comparative advantage.

Babatunde sent in this piece from Osogbo.

42

Saturday Tribune

19 December, 2015

motoring

With Seyi Gesinde seyigesinde@yahoo.com 08116954632

Kia Motors Nigeria named among ‘100 Most Respected Companies’ in Nigeria

K

IA Motors Nigeria has been named among 100 Most Respected Companies in Nigeria.

Over the years, the auto company has earned a remarkable reputation in offering top notch brand of vehicles that continuously set the pace and remains at the fore of innovative products in Nigeria.

The company’s Marketing Manager, Mr Jimoh Olawale said Kia Motor’s giant stride in exceeding the expectations of customers at all touch points has positioned the brand as one of the most respected company in Nigeria.

He said recognising the company’s unequalled accomplishments as a corporate citizen in the Nigerian auto industry, earned it the honour of being named among the top 100 most respected companies in Nigeria.

The organisers of the award, Businessday, called it a reward and recognition for companies who have thrived against all odds and prevalent economic challenges in Nigeria.

“The companies were selected following a rigorous survey conducted by Businesday Research and Intelligence Unit (BRIU).

“Opinions of respondents, widely dispersed across the country, were rated on companies having the best advertising and branding, customer complaint resolution and product packaging.

Each respondent listed the top companies that have unmatched customer service in all spheres of Nigerian economy and Kia Motors Nigeria was named the best in the automobile industry,” the organisers said.

Responding, Guatam Hathiramani, Deputy Managing Director, Kia Motors Nigeria, said: “To be named among the top 100 most respected companies in Nigeria validate our path of delivering exceptional sales and service experience to our esteemed customers and allow us to stand out in a crowded market space.

“Kia Motors Nigeria is truly honoured to win this highly reputable business award. We are proud to offer a globally recognised brand that aligns with our commitment to quality and responsible corporate citizenship as this resonated with our core ethical values.

“It’s an honour to be selected by our customers and the judging panel of top industry influencers who understand one of the greatest challenges and opportunities facing businesses today. We will

From left, Emeka Okafor, Chief Executive Officer, ConnectNigeria and Gautam Hathiramani, Deputy Managing Director, Kia Motors Nigeria at the presentation of award to Kia.

continue to lead the market in offering top-of-the-segment vehicles to our customers.” publisher/CEO, Businessday,

Frank Aigbogun, speaking on the award said “the year has been challenging for businesses. BusinessDay believe that if all the

RT Briscoe, UNILAG open auto workshop RT Briscoe PLC, franchise owners of the Toyota and Ford brands in Nigeria, has collaborated with the University of Lagos (UNILAG) to open an automobile workshop for auto repair and services for corporate fleet owners, institutional and

individual vehicles owners.

The opening of the workshop, a 10-work bay facility, refurbished with capacity to service more than 15 vehicles simultaneously, followed years of discussions between the university authorities

and RT Briscoe.

With the business arrangement, RT Briscoe will stock the workshop with modern equipment and also ensure that original spare parts are made available.

In his remark at the official open-

Porsche adds 718 designation to Boxster, Cayman for 2016 PORSCHE has confirmed the next Porsche Boxster roadster and Porsche Cayman coupe models will get new names, the 718 Boxster and 718 Cayman.

This new format is a nod to the historic Porsche 718 of the late fifties, which was powered by a flat four-cylinder ‘boxer’ engine and raced successfully at Le Mans and elsewhere, Car Buyers said.

The name change coincides with a mid-life makeover that is also set to introduce four-cylinder turbo engines. The Porsche 718 Cayman and Porsche 718 Boxster will join the modern line-up in 2016.

The new models will be powered by four-cylinder turbocharged engines in a bid to reduce CO2 emissions and improve fuel economy across the range in the same way the recently updated Porsche 911 range uses downsized turbocharged engines.

According to Porsche, abso-

businesses are engaged in baking the cakes as the winners of the awards do, Nigeria will be a better, happier place.”

lutely: “The Roadster will be positioned at a higher price level than the Coupe as is done for the

911 models.”

This reverses the current situation, which has always seen the

more heavily performance orientated Cayman priced higher than the Boxster.

ing ceremony, Seyi Onajide, managing director and chief executive officer of RT Briscoe PLC, said the automobile garage is a joint venture between UNILAG and RT Briscoe.

Onajide noted that the duo can never go wrong in a situation where the business conglomerate is bringing its almost 60 years of automotive engineering to bear with so many decades of academic experience and excellence of University of Lagos.

This, he said was the rationale for these two coming together to have a joint venture like this.

“We have our expertise in different areas, but with a synergy of bringing those two together, you can be rest assured that what we are going to get from this joint venture is a combination of academic excellence, professional competence and value driven to our discerning customers,” Onajide said.

Professor Duro Oni, deputy vice chancellor of the institution, while commending the new marriage of convenience between the University and RT Briscoe corroborated Seyi Onajide’s statement that the partnership is the result of a long journey with lots of ups and downs, with series of meetings spanning almost a period of almost three years.

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19 December, 2015

Saturday Tribune

44

19 December, 2015

Saturday Tribune

45 news

1

19 December, 2015

Unveiling of Glo CAF awards top three nominees in Abuja

2

1. From left, ex internationals, Daniel ‘The Bull’ Amokachi, Folorunsho Okenla and former Secretary General of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), Dr. Bolaji Ojo Oba. 2. Guests at the event.

3. From left, ex-international, Folorunso Okenla; second vice president of the Nigeria Football Federation and chairman, League Management Company, Alhaji Shehu Dikko; CAF executive committee member and president of the Republic of Benin Football Federation, Mr Moucharafou Anjorin; Globacom’s Business Director Abuja, Mr Kemi Kaka; Globacom

Saturday Tribune

3

4 Brand Specialist, Lydia Alfred and ex-international, Daniel Amokachi, during the unveiling of the top nominees for the 2015 Glo-CAF awards, held at Sheraton Hotel, Abuja, on Monday.

4. From left, second vice president of the Nigeria Football Federation and chairman, League Management Company, Alhaji Sheu Dikko; CAF executive committee member and president of the Republic of Benin Football Federation, Mr Moucharafou Anjorin and Globacom’s Business Director Abuja, Mr Kemi Kaka; Glo Brand Specialist, Anne Achimugu and ex-international, Folorunso Okenla, during the unveiling of the top nominees for the 2015 Glo CAF awards, held at Sheraton Hotel, Abuja on Monday.

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19 December, 2015

Saturday Tribune

Editor: Ganiyu Salman tribunesporteditor@yahoo.com 08053789060

Enyimba would have won world club championship —Anyansi Agwu Saliu Gbadamosi - Abuja

DESPITE leading Enyimba FC of Aba to break Nigeria’s Confederation of African Football (CAF) Champions League jinx, the club chairman, Felix Anyansi-Agwu says his greatest regret in life is the People’s Elephant’s inability to play at the World Club Championship.

Enyimba, which emerged winner in the recent 2014/2015 Glo Premier League, broke the age long jinx for the country in 2003 when against all odd it won

15th Gov’s Cup Tennis ends today ACTIONS at the ongoing 15th Governor’s Cup Lagos Tennis Championship will come to an end today with the Governor of Lagos, Mr Akinwunmi Ambode and the Minister of Youth and Sports, Barrister Solomon Dalung, among others expected to grace the finals billed for the Lagos Lawn Tennis Club, Onikan.

The finals of Futures 4 will start at 1pm with the women’s singles to be followed immediately with the men’s final.

The International Tennis Federation, ITF, pro circuit which attracts the prize money of $80,000 is played for two weeks.

Aldin Setkic, it will be recalled, from Bosnia won the Men’s Singles of the Futures 3 decided last weekend, while 17-year-old Tessah Andrianjafitrimo from France clinched the women’s singles title.

Meanwhile, in the women’s singles final, Tadeja Majeric from Slovakia will face Conny Perrin of Switzerland. Tadeja who lost in the Futures 3 final last weekend, on Friday upset number one seed, Valeriya Strakhova 6-4, 6-4, while Conny dumped Bulgarian Julia Terziyska 4-6, 6-2, 6-1 in the second semi-final. In the men’s final, Zimbabwe’s Takanyi Garanganga will confront Antal Van Der Duim of the Netherlands. Takanyi who remains African’s only finalist in both categories, upset number one seed Aldin Setkic 6-7 (2), 6-2, 6-3, while Der Duim dumped South African Lloyd Harris in the second semi-final also on Friday.

the CAF Champions League, lifting the trophy in far away Egypt and won the prime African diadem back to back in 2004.

However, the World C l u b Championship in which continent a l champions from all FIFA affiliated confederations slug it out to decide the best world club each year, did not hold on the two occasions the Aba side emerged African champion.

Speaking with Tribunesport in Abuja, Anyansi Agwu stated that he regretted it each time he remembered that Enyimba was not allowed to play at the championship.

Saraki lauds Dream Team over cup victory Ayodele Adesanmi Abuja The Senate President, Dr Abubakar Bukola Saraki on Friday lauded the Under-23 soccer team for bringing glory to the country by emerging victorious at the finals of the Under-23 Africa Nations Football Championship in Dakar, Senegal last Saturday.

The Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to Saraki Mr Yusuph Olaniyonu in a statement Abuja, said the Dream Team VI has once again advanced the soccer prowess of the country particularly in Africa and the world in general.

He specifically commended the resilience, dedication and focus of the team which saw them beating their Algerian counterparts during the finals to lift the coveted trophy for the first time.

He equally commended Ni­gerians, team officials and the Nigeria Football Federa­tion (NFF) for their support and efforts which culminated in the success recorded by the Dream Team VI. According to him “You have made us proud by leading the country to at-

tain this soccer victory for the first time in this particular category. You have equally lived up to your name as the Dream Team by emerging best in Africa.

It is my hope that you will go to Brazil and conquer the world at the 2017 Olym­pics in Rio de Janeiro.

Ajimobi golf kitty tees off

By Olawale Olaniyan The Governor Abiola Ajimobi victory celebration/ birthday golf kitty gets underway at the Ibadan Golf Club (IGC) today.

Speaking with Tribunesports, the Chairman, Local Organising Committe for the kitty, Barrister Idowu Salami said the tournament is to celebrate the reelection of Ajimobi in the last governorship polls, which happened for the first time in the history of the state.

He said the governor’s contribution towards the development of IGC, Oyo State as a result of his leadership, needs to be celebrated.

The tee off is slated for 7am and will be followed by the closing ceremony.

Warri Wolves demand $2m for Etebo

N

ig e ria premier league s i d e , Warri Wolves have placed

a staggering $2 million on U-23 midfielder Oghenekaro Etebo.

Etebo was standout performer as Nigeria clinched the U23 AFCON in Senegal last week.

He was top scorer at the championship with five goals and has been nominated for the CAF Most Promising Talent of this outgoing year.

Several clubs are already queuing up for the exciting attacking midfielder including Egyptian double

champions Zamalek.

Two top Tunisian clubs are already willing to join the race for the players, it was further gathered.

“Top officials at the Delta Sports Commission have demanded for $2 million as transfer fee for Etebo,” a top source informed.

Etebo, who has previously undergone trials in Italy, has been capped by Nigeria at full international level.

In his rookie season, two years ago, with his hometown club he netted 16 goals and this past season he fired five goals as Wolves finished runners-up behind champions Enyimba.

47 sport

19 December, 2015

Saturday Tribune

Mourinho’s journey to sack

By Ganiyu Salman

U

NARGUABLY, a chapter was added to the history of English football on Thursday as Chelsea manager, Jose Mourinho was shown the door following a spate of poor results in a season which is yet to reach half way.

The maxim that a coach is as good as his last result manifested in the case as the Blues only on Monday night lost 1-2 to Leicester City, the ninth in 16 EPL games this season.

To say Mourinho has been having a troubled season with the team he guided to win the English Premier League about seven months ago, is an understatement, as he watched helplessly how his wards lost four times before their teeming fans at Stamford Bridge this season.

Perhaps, Mourinho did not have a premonition that he is in a worst season ever as a coach as the Blues in the 2015 season’s opener on August 9 settled for a 2-2 draw with Swansea at Stamford Bridge.

Unknown to the Portuguese manager, he vented his spleen on the team doctor, Eva Carneiro, who he accused of untimely entry into the pitch during the game to treat injured Eden Hazard as the Blues were about to defend a set piece in stoppage time.

An exasperated Mourinho after the failure to nick home what would have been the team’s first victory poured vitriols on Eva. “I wasn’t happy with my medical staff because even if you are a medical doctor or secretary on the bench, you have to understand the game.

“If you go to the pitch to assist a player, then you must be sure that a player has a serious problem. I was sure that Eden didn’t have a serious problem. He had a knock and was very tired.

“My medical department left me with eight fit outfield players in a counter attack after a set piece and we were worried we didn’t have enough players left,” he had submitted.

His judgment was to relegate the physio to the second team, a decision which eventually led to her resignation from the club.

Perhaps, to many ‘die-hard-fans’ of Chelsea, that episode marked the genesis of Mourinho saga. At the final whistle of 16 games, the Blues had been beaten nine times, four of which were at home from Crystal Palace, Southampton, Liverpool and Bournemouth on December 6.

Prior to Thursday’s drama, Mourinho had received backing from top technocrats like Sir Alex Ferguson, Rafael Benitez as well as from the likes of Frank Lampard and lately, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, but owner, Roman Abramovich perhaps was already fed up with the team still under The Special One. Mourinho’s sack however, came as shock to some soccer personalities.

“I’ve never known a capitulation like it from a football club,” former England captain, Alan Shearer told BBC Radio 5 live.

“I have never known players to perform like they did last season and then be so bad now. It’s unprecedented,” added the BBC Match of the Day pundit.

Sunderland boss, Sam Allardyce said he was “shocked to say the least”, adding: “They must already have somebody lined up to have done it now.

“I’m sad to see Jose go because I got to know him quite well and he’s a great manager with great character. He’s a loss to the Premier League.”

Also, former England and Arsenal defender Martin Keown

Olu of Ilaro installs new chiefs ALL roads lead to Ilaro, Yewa, Ogun State, as Oba Kehinde Gbadewole Olugbenle, the Olu of Ilaro and paramount ruler of Yewaland, will install new chiefs today, 19 December, 2015.

According to a statement signed by the secretary of the Olu Ilaro-council, Prince A. Adegoke Olusoji, the new chiefs of Ilaro to be installed are Chief Adeshola Kusimo (Are Agunro Of Ilaro), Chief Michael Ba-

Oba Olugbenle batunde Ajuwon (Sawo), Chief (Mrs) Afusat Ayoka

Odunfa Omoboni (Iyalode), Chief Ganiyu Ishola Aderonmu (Balogun Ilu-ata), Chief Adenitumo Adewunmi Odunewu (Ekefa), Chief Ishola Ewunmi (Baale Ipaja), Chief Dauda Ayinla Fadayiro (Baale Ipake).

The venue of the event is Agunloye Asade Pavillion Empire Ground, Ilaro, Yewa, Ogun State. Dignitaries are expected from all walks of life.

said Mourinho, who had only four wins and three draws to show this season had “lost the players”.

“It has imploded in front of our eyes,” he said. “It is astonishing. I saw players who were not giving everything.

“There is no trust there, respect is gone. Ultimately it is easier to change a manager than 22 players.”

The 52-year-old tactician during his trying period also got maximum support from his players as they resolved to save him from being axed.

“Last year we were champions, we won two trophies. Jose knows this club more than any other manager.

“I think he’s the most successful manager in the club’s history. I definitely think that if anything is wrong, if anything can be fixed, he is the one. There’s nobody out there that is going to come in and fix what’s going on.

“If we were not giving 100 per cent, then there is the doubt, but we are giving 100 per cent, we are playing for the manager, we are right behind him,” Nigerian international and Chelsea star, John Mikel Obi had said.

Today Premier League fixtures

NO 1130

Saturday, 19 DECEMBER, 2015

Musa relishes Rio Olympics action Ahmed Musa has said he is excited with the prospect of playing at the Rio 2016 Olympics football event.

T h e

Super E a g l e s skipper,

Dream Team VI coach, Samson Siasia has hinted at inviting the CSKA Moscow striker and Odion Ighalo as the overage players for the Rio 2016 Olympics.

“I am delighted and happy to hear this news (Siasia considering him for Rio Olympics). I will be glad to play in the Olympics,” said Ahmed Musa, who will be a few months above the eligible age of 23 when the football event at Rio 2016 gets underway in August.

“It’s a big event and I am always ready to play for my country Nigeria whenever I a m

called upon.

“I am a l ready looking forward to be part of it.”

n150

Saturday, December 19 Chelsea V Sunderland Everton V Leicester City Man Utd V Norwich City Southampton V Tottenham Stoke City V Crystal Palace West Brom V Bournemouth

Newcastle

vs Aston Villa 6:30pm Sunday, December 20 Watford vs Liverpool 2:30pm Swansea City vs West Ham Utd 5:00pm Monday, December 21 vs Man City 9:00pm Arsenal

Mourinho let himself down —Emenalo

Ex-Nigerian international reads Riot Act to Chelsea players

By Dipo Ogunsola

C

HELSEA’S Technical Director, Michael Emenalo, says sacked manager, Jose Mourinho, was wrong to make scapegoats of his squad following poor performance in the English Premier League.

Mourinho was dismissed with Chelsea, the Barclays Premier League champions sitting a point above the relegation zone after nine defeats in their opening 16 games to the season.

Appearing on Chelsea TV on Thursday night, Emenalo apparently avoided being personal with Mourinho but dismissed the coach’s claim that the players failed to play to instructions.

Mourinho had claimed that he had worked for three days to show his players how Leicester City score their goals but wondered why his team conceded two goals from the tactics they had decoded prior to the 2-1 away loss to the league leaders on Monday night.

However, Emenalo described Mourinho’s position as untenable to the club’s hierarchy.

“They played to instruction.

They adhered to everything that the manager asked them to do. It’s very easy to make that kind of inference (not playing to instructions) but it’s not one that the club accepts,” Emenalo said.

The former Nigerian international acknowledges that there were many pro-

40 points, Watford target —Ighalo

Ighalo

4:00pm 4:00pm 4:00pm 4:00pm 4:00pm 4:00pm

international Nigeria Odion Ighalo has revealed top priority for him and his Watford teammates will be to retain their place in English Premier League at the end of the season and 40 points could guarantee them that.

Watford are seventh with 25 points from 16 games ahead of the likes of Liverpool, Chelsea, West Ham

and Everton.

“We are not thinking of anything other than retaining our status as a Premier League at the end of the season, our mind is set on getting at least 40 points to be sure of our EPL position. That is our target, which we are working towards,” he said.

“Anything that comes after that, we will thank God for it.”

Mourinho elements at the Stamford Bridge but asks the teeming fans to eschew personal interest and get behind the club.

“One point above relegation in the English Premier League and that’s not good enough (for Chelsea). Anybody, or any fan, even those who are not fans who love the club or have any kind of affiliation to the club, can understand that this club is in trouble. Something needed to be done”.

With Mourinho gone, Emenalo cautioned the players had no more excuse but rise to the challenge and steer the club to safety, saying : “Obviously we know now that the players have a responsibility to go out and prove everyone wrong and show a certain level of commitment to the decision that has been made. To try to get the club up the league table.

That’s what they have to do.

That’s what they’re supposed to do. I believe that’s what they’ve been trying to do”.

Emenalo insists Mourinho would not be missed today as the club hosts Sunderland.

“You’re not a big club if you don’t have contingency plans for situations like this. We’re a big club that have quality coaches embedded within the club. I think we will be OK for Saturday,” he said.

Emenalo

...Drogba returns

Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich has summoned Blues legend, Didier Drogba back to Stamford Bridge hours after having pulled the plug on José Mourinho, Jeune Afrique revealed on Friday.

The Impact Montreal striker, who is on his offseason break, was in Abidjan when he received the phone call from the Russian oligarch.

“He is happy to be able to return to Chelsea,” a close source told Jeune Afrique.

“It is the club of his heart, even if he had felt betrayed

by José Mourinho, who didn’t honour all his commitments to him when he came back for the 2014-2015 season.”

Chelsea, who are about to appoint former coach Guus Hiddink as caretaker until the end of the season, could entrust the Côte d’Ivoire international with a specific mission that is yet to be known.

The 37-year-old played for the Blues from 2004 - 2012 and during the 2014-15 successful campaign, winning more than ten major trophies including the prestigious UEFA Champions League in 2012.

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