Peoples Daily Newspaper, Thursday 20, June, 2013

www.peoplesdailyng.com

Vol. 11 No. 24

Thursday, June 20, 2013

. . . putting the people first

FG, states, local govts share N502bn >>3

Sha’aban 12, 1434 AH

N150

Olisa Metuh quits as PDP spokesman >>5

Boko Haram: JTF bans Thuraya phones in Borno Searches for weapons in cof ins

From Mustapha Isah Kwaru, Maiduguri & Joy Baba, Abuja

T

he Joint Military Task Force (JTF) in Borno state yesterday imposed an outright ban on the sale and use of Thuraya (satellite) mobile telephone as well as its accessories in the entire state.

Our correspondent reports that following the cutting off of mobile telecommunications network over a month ago, some residents resorted to the use of Thuraya phones as alternative.

However, spokesman for the JTF, Lt-Col. Sagir Musa, in a statement, said the measure had become imperative as Boko Haram insurgents had reportedly used such phones to communicate with one another before launching the latest attacks in parts of the state.

According to the statement, “the attention of the JTF has been drawn to the use of Thuraya phones by Boko Haram to coordinate the recent assassination of civilians especially school children and Imams”, the statement said.

“Therefore, effective from June 19, 2013, the JTF imposes a ban on the use and sale of Thuraya phone, its accessories and recharge cards in Borno state.

“Anyone found violating the ban will be arrested.”

The statement urged the general public Contd. on Page 2

L-R: First Bank Executive Director, Public Sector, North, Mr. Dauda Lawal, and Kwara state Governor, Alhaji Abdufatah Ahmed, during a visit by the First Bank ED to the governor, recently at the State House, in Ilorin.

Kano arms cache

By Sunday Ejike Benjamin

SSS withdraws T suit over court’s jurisdiction

he trial of three Lebanese nationals before a Karu Chief Magistrate Court, Abuja, yesterday assumed a new dimension as he Federal Government withdrew the charges against the accused persons.

The owner of Amigo Supermarket, Abuja, Mustapha Fawaz, along with Abdullahi Thaini and Talal Roda, all Lebanese, suspected to have imported arms

cache into the country for alleged terrorist activities were arraigned by the State Security Services (SSS) on charges bordering on criminal conspiracy and unlawful importation of prohibited firearms.

When the matter came up, the prosecution counsel, Mr. Eric Osagie, told Chief Magistrate Yemi Oyeyipo that evidence arising from investigations in the matter, has shown that the offences for which the accused persons were alleged to have committed are outside the

jurisdiction of the court.

The prosecution counsel informed the court that the case file on the matter had been forwarded to the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF) and Minister of Justice, Mr. Mohammed Bello Adoke (SAN) for further advice.

“To this end, we apply for the withdrawal of the First Information Report (FIR) from the court”, Mr. Osagie prayed the court.

Counsel to the suspects, Ahmed Contd. on Page 2

FEC approves N420 billion for Onne Port

>>2

PAGE 2

PEOPLES DAILY, THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 2013

News CONTENTS News

2-10

Editorial

12

Op.Ed

13

Letters

14

Opinion

15

Metro

16-18

Business

19-22

Stockwatch

23

S/Report

24-25

Earth

26-27

Update

28-29

Feature

30

Jonathan beckons on hangmen, Page 4

Int’l

31-34

Strange World 35 Digest

36

Politics

37-38

Newsxtra

39-40

Sports

41-46

Leisure

47

Columnist

48

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FEC approves N420bn for Onne Port devt T he Federal Government yesterday ratified President Goodluck Jonathan’s approval of $2.9 billion (N420bn) for the development of Phase 4B Port Facilities at Onne Oil and Gas Free Zone, Onne Port Complex in Port Harcourt, Rivers state.

This was part of the outcome of the Federal Executive Council (FEC).

FEC also deliberated the award of contract for the supply of Hitachi Generator special tools to Jebba Hydro Electric Plc and the White Paper on the Presidential Committee on the Restructuring and Rationalization of Government

Parastatals, Commissions and Agencies report, otherwise known as the Oronsaye report.

Minister of information, Labaran Maku, in company of Minister of Power, Prof, Chinedu Nebo and Minister of Agriculture, Dr. Akinwunmi Adeshida, explained that the development of the port facilities is aimed at decongesting Lagos and Port Harcourt ports.

According to a working document of the council meeting the minister of transport, Sen. Idris Umar, brought a memo to seek the council’s ratification.

“The project that is expected to

be completed within six years will not attract any taxes, but will have a concession period of 25 years to be solely pre-funded by the contractor while the cost will be “amortized from the service boat and other port charges in all the ports.”

“The concept of the development of the facilities was to decongest the Lagos and Port Harcourt ports while entrenching PPP in the establishment and upgrading of public sector facilities,” the working document stated.

“The project is expected to generate 4,000 job opportunities for both professionals during its

execution and about 20,000 direct and indirect job opportunities when it is in full operation.

On the Jebba contract, Prof.

Nebo said in view of the fact that the availability of the special tools is a major prerequisite for commencement of the site work of the main project, the federal government awarded a contract of N706, 903, 945, of Hitachi Generator special tools to Messrs Marubeni Corporation.

“The project will guarantee steady supply of another 96.4 mw of electricity on completion by September 2014,” he said.

Boko Haram: JTF bans Thuraya phones in Borno Contd. from Front Page for continued assistance and cooperation over the measure which it said was aimed at safeguarding their lives and property.

Meanwhile, following a new strategy by suspected Boko Haram insurgents to conceal weapons inside coffins, security forces in Borno state have commenced searching of coffins on a burial procession, a Peoples Daily investigation revealed yesterday.

This came about two weeks after suspected insurgents went on a revenge mission, killing 13 persons in Hausari Ward of Maiduguri metropolis.

Witnesses said the assailants had hidden assault rifles inside a coffin and smuggled them into the area, pretending to be mourners on a burial procession before firing sporadic shots into the crowd.

It was observed that operatives of JTF stationed in various streets of the town began extensive surveillance on any corpse being

taken for burial to discover if weapons were concealed in the casket carrying the presumed deceased.

Similarly, beside extensive search on the contents of the coffin, all the motorcades and occupants in the burial procession were subjected to thorough checks.

Our correspondent, who spotted a funeral procession along Post Office road yesterday reports that JTF personnel deployed at the abandoned building belonging to the Nigerian Telecommunication Company (NITEL) stopped the mourners who were in a convoy of over 20 vehicles.

Five of the soldiers were seen trying to ascertain the content of a coffin, with others searching other vehicles.

The mourners were allowed to proceed with the burial after the security officers were convinced that the coffin was indeed carrying a corpse.

A cross section of residents who

spoke to our reporter expressed total support for the new security tactics adopted by the JTF in its aggressive search for hidden weapons. in a related development, defence Headquarters in Abuja said yesterday that some fleeing insurgents recently carried out attacks and killing of innocent citizens recently in Borno and Yobe states.

This was contained in a press statement signed by the Director of Defence Information, (DDI) BrigGen Chris Olukolade.

Olukolade said the whole trend and development remains unfortunate and condemnable assuring the public that these incidences are by no means indicative of a relapse in the counterinsurgency operation aimed at curbing terrorists’ activities in the country.

According to the statement, “this trend of sneaking in to carry out isolated attack on soft targets as a way of seeking attention is a typical

end-game strategy often employed by insurgents all over the world.

“In this instance, the recent activities are signs of desperation of a decimated insurgent group attempting to hang on to public consciousness.

“With the destruction of their operational bases and camps by the Special Forces, the group’s centre of gravity has been effectively dislocated making it impossible for them to have freedom of action to operate as they did previously”.

The DDI further said the Special Forces had stepped up the mop up, cordon and search operations to ensure that the vestiges of terrorism are effectively further decimated in those states.

He said eight of the terrorists who perpetrated the mayhem during the weekend have been apprehended at the outskirts of Maiduguri and urged members of the public to continue to report any suspicious movements to security agents.

SSS withdraws suit over court’s jurisdiction Contd. from Front Page Raji (SAN) who agreed to the submission of the prosecution counsel that the court lacks the jurisdiction to entertain the matter, did not object to the application of withdrawal by the prosecution.

He told the court that the Preliminary Objection brought before the court by the defense has been overtaken by event, following the withdrawal of the matter by the prosecution.

Chief Magistrate Yemi Oyeyipo granted the application for withdrawal of the matter as prayed by the prosecution and consequently struck out the case.

He equally struck out the Preliminary Objection by the defense and ordered that the accused persons be discharged.

“Having listened to the oral application of the prosecuting counsel and the submission of the defense counsel, I hereby grant as prayed that the charge filed on the basis of First Information Report (FIR) on June 5, 2013 is hereby struck out” Oyeyipo ordered and

added that, “In the circumstance, the preliminary objection filed by the defense counsel is equally struck out and the accused persons are hereby discharged”.

The three accused persons were formally arraigned before the Karu Chief Magistrate Court on the 5th of May, 2013 on the basis of a First Information Report on allegations of criminal conspiracy and unlawful importation of prohibited firearms.

It would be recalled that SSS told a Federal High Court in Abuja, sitting before Justice Adeniyi Ademola that the accused persons belong to the Hezbollah military wing and disclosed that investigation into the incident had established a serious case of terrorism with international dimension.

The accused persons had, in a suit filed on their behalf by their counsel, Chief Robert Clark (SAN), asked the court to compel SSS, the Inspector General of Police and the Attorney General of the Federation to release them

or charge them to court if they had committed any offence.

The three Lebanese had been in custody of the SSS for over a month when an alleged bunker stockpiled with arms and ammunitions were found in their house in Kano and in the Wonderland Amusement Park in Abuja.

In the suit for enforcement of their fundamental rights to freedom of liberty, they claimed that the defendants breached their fundamental rights and the 1999 constitution with their endless detention without trial.

They demanded N3 billion as compensation for hardships they suffered in the breach of their rights and their unlawful detention without trial.

They have also prayed the court to stop the respondents from extraditing them except by a procedure permitted by law, that the court should declare their arrest and continued detention without trial by the SSS as “illegal, unlawful, unconstitutional, null, void and

of no effect whatsoever” and prayed the court for an order directing their release and an order of perpetual injunction restraining the respondents from arresting or detaining or continuing to detain them except by a procedure permitted by law.

In a counter affidavit, the SSS through its counsel, Eric Osagie said that the applicants could not be released for security reasons, especially their alleged link with the military wing of Hezbollah, an international terrorism group.

The counsel claimed that another major suspect in the illegal ammunition stock piling was on the run and that releasing the three suspects will not only be premature but could jeopardize further investigation into their link with foreign terror group.

The trial Judge, Justice Ademola who adjourned the case till June 21, 2013 ordered that the three applicants be remanded in SSS custody to enable the Services continue their investigation.

PEOPLES DAILY, THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 2013

PAGE 3

News APC winds up merger committee

By Ikechukwu Okaforadi & Umar Mohammed Puma

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L-R: Deputy National Chairman of PDP, Dr. Sam Jaja, National Chairman, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, Vice-President Mohammed Namadi Sambo, President Goodluck Jonathan, and Chairman, PDP Board of Trustees, Chief Tony Anenih, during the party’s Board of Trustees meeting, yesterday at the State House, Abuja.

Photo:JoeOroye

FG, states, LGs share N502bn

By Abdulwahab Isa

A

fter a protracted stalemate, the Federal Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) yesterday approved for sharing, sum of N502.617 billion as statutory revenue for three tiers of government for the month of May. The government also yielded to the demand for arrears by states’ Commissioners of Finance by approving N156 billion being February arrears to be shared by the three tiers with a commitment to pay additional N92 billion representing May arrears at a future date.

Minister of state for Finance who doubles as Chairman of FAAC Dr. Yerima Ngama confirmed the

figures yesterday at an interactive session with the media shortly after FAAC session.

He put the gross revenue received during the month at N590.777 billion, an amount he said was lower than the N621.070 billion received in the previous month by N30.293 billion.

He attributed the low revenue received for the month to the drop in crude oil production and lifting operations occasioned by Force Manjeur declared at Bonny terminal and the continuous theft of crude and vandalism.

The Minister said there was an increase in the revenue from non-oil sector , a development he attributed to increase in payment

by companies filling returns.

The sum of N7.617 billion refunded by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation(NNPC) was also distributed in addition to N35.549 billion being SURE-P fund that was also approved for distribution to the beneficiaries.

For Value Added Tax(VAT) , a gross revenue of N74. 873 billion was available for distribution as against N54.471 billion shared in the month of April.

Of the amount shared, the Federal got the highest allocation of N235.778 billion followed by states which got N119.590 billion while the Local Government Councils got N92.

199 billion.

The sum of N48.874 billion was

approved for sharing as 13 derivation for the oil producing states.

Speaking on the impasse that trailed FAAC meeting last week, the Chairman of the Forum of Commissioners of finance, Mr. Timothy Odan said all the issues that forum raised had been tackled by the President, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan at a meeting had with the Governors.

The monthly FAAC meeting, a forum for considering revenue accruals to the federation accounts for sharing among the three tiers ended a stalemate last Thursday as Finance Commissioners walked out of the session citing willful renege on several agreement previously reached by the session.

SSS confirms arrest of proprietor, 16 inmates of baby factory in Abia T he State Security Service (SSS) in Abia said it has arrested 16 pregnant inmates and the proprietor of an alleged ‘baby factory’ in Umungasi, Aba, Abia state.

The state Director of SSS, Mr. Matthew Obodoechi, told newsmen that the proprietor, Dr Ndudim Orikara, is now in custody.

Obodoechi said that the expectant mothers, whose ages ranged between 17 to 37, and the proprietor, were arrested on Monday andWednesday, respectively following intelligence reports in Aba. He alleged that the proprietor, who owned a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO), called Cross Foundation International, keeps pregnant women.

According to him, the proprietor

keeps pregnant women, who upon delivery, are given a paltry sum of N50,000 and sent away, while their babies are sold to people from different parts of the country.

The SSS director said that the investigation so far conducted by the officers and men of the service, showed that some of the women were brought to the foundation by their relatives and friends.

He mentioned the case of a particular woman, who secretly took her daughter to the place, because she did not want her husband to know that their daughter was pregnant.

Obodoechi, called on the Abia House of Assembly to enact a law, with stiffer punishment for culprits, in order to serve as deterrent to others.

He said that those arrested in

connection with the act would be prosecuted by the organisation in conjunction with the police and other relevant security agencies in the state.

Obodoechi warned those who hide under the guise of NGOs to perpetrate crimes and other illegalities, to desist forthwith or be ready to face the full wrath of the law. ``Members of the public should assist security agents with useful information that will help us to permanently deal with the phenomenon,” he said.

A cross-section of the inmates told the NAN that they were catered for by the foundation, pending when they would be delivered of their babies.

Ifunanya Nwankworie, a 25-year-old student of Federal

Polytechnic, Nekede, who hails from Ikpoku in Rivers, said that she was impregnated by a panel beater in Owerri, who later denied the pregnancy.

While 19 years old Chioma Kalu from Arochukwu also told NAN that she was impregnated by a man in Jos, adding that she came to the foundation from Jos, following a friend’s advice.

The proprietor, who denied engaging in acts of illegality, said that the foundation was running a programme on ``Nurse your own baby,’ as part of the efforts to check the abandoned baby syndrome in society.

He said that the NGO was registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission, to cater for the welfare of women with unwanted pregnancies.

he Joint Merger Committee of All Progressive Congress (APC), yesterday announced that the committee stands dissolved, adding that the leadership of the various parties in the merger would complete the remaining part of APC registration process.

Briefing journalists yesterday in Abuja, the members of the joint merger committee led by its chairman, Tom Ikimi, said that the dissolution was to enable the members move on to the next level, adding that some members of the committee would still feature in the interim leadership of APC, which would be announced very soon.

Ikimi who disclosed that the modalities for shearing of the interim leadership of APC has been worked out by the committee and submitted to the leaders of the party for implementation, added that the committee may still be reconvened as deemed necessary by the leaders of the merging parties.

“The four parties in the merger: CPC, ANPP, ACN, faction of APGA and DPP, came together to form a formidable party APC, to give Nigerians alternative to PDP in Nigeria democracy journey”, he said.

While pointing out that the committee has made notable progress, the chairman said “this committee has done what has never been done in the history of Nigeria.

Established parties ceased their identities, we have held conventions in Abuja, Lagos and Gusau. We now have manifesto, constitution,flag and logo.”

Meanwhile, he dismissed the claim that the committee was dismissed abruptly owing to the clash of interest between some of its members and the leadership of the party.

Reacting to this, he said, “it is now five months since this committee was set up to carry out the merger process. It has completed its duty, and now time to move on to the next level.

“The next thing to do is to register the party and other documentation as required by both INEC. The remaining part of the registration process would be completed by the leadership of our various political parties”, he added.

It would be recalled that since February, the committee has been saddled with the responsibility of forming a mega party, and designing the manifesto, logo and constitution for the party.

After several meetings by the committee, the name, APC was arrived at, while the manifesto for the party was designed, remaining the task of how to get the new association registered by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

However, despite receiving the documents of the party, INEC could not finalise the registration of the APC, hence the committee could not constitute an interim leadership for the party, owing to some issues.

The Page 4 Report

PEOPLES DAILY, THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 2013

Jonathan beckons on hangmen W ith more than two-thirds of the countries in the world abolishing death penalty in law or practice, President Goodluck Jonathan onSunday, June 16, 2013, at the Aso Rock Villa Chapel where he attended a special service to mark this year’s Fathers’ Day disclosed that he has been urging state governors to give the seal of approval to death penalties handed down on convicts by the courts in their domains to encourage an atmosphere of discipline in the society.

The President, in his remarks at the occasion noted that discipline could be in various forms, including admonition from a magistrate’s court, jail terms and capital punishment and said: “In the case of capital punishment, the state governors will have to sign.

Even governors sometimes find it difficult to sign. I have been telling the governors that they must sign because that is the law. The jobs we are doing have very sweet part and very ugly part and we must perform both. No matter how painful it is, it is part of their responsibilities”.

“So, for us as parents, it is important for us to let our children constantly know that it is good to take the right path. It is good for them to know that they must be upright,” Jonathan told those gathered at the Aso Rock Villa Chapel to celebrate this year’s Fathers’ Day. President Jonathan, while giving the directive to state governors added that, it is part of the constitutional responsibilities of the state governors and that, it will amount to breach of the constitution for state governors to refuse to sign death warrants, after the pronouncement of death penalty by a court of competent jurisdiction.

Armed robbery and murder are some of the offences punishable by death under Nigeria’s extant laws.

Nigeria is one of the countries in theworld still harboring the capital punishment in its statute books. A report released by the Office of United Nations (UN) Secretary-General shows that out of 198nations in the world, only 47 retain the death penalty.

According to the report, 81 nations, excluding Nigeria have already committed themselves to prohibition of the death penalty throughratification of international or regional instruments. However, humanrights groups and some non-governmental organizations are worried that Nigeria is still retaining the death penalty in its legal codes.

Someof the human rights’ activists want the country to abolish the death penalty, describing it as outdated, as there is no justification why the state should champion the killing of its citizens.

Mr. Ivan Paneff, Vice -President, Avocats Sans Frontieres, an international Non Governmental Organisation (NGO), was in the country recently to stimulate

President Goodluck Jonathan, on the occasion of the celebration of Fathers’ Day directed state governors to sign the death warrants on condemned criminals. Sunday Ejike Benjamin here takes a look at the directive, and the on-going global debate on whether or not to abolish the death penalty.

President Goodluck Jonathan

“

In the word of the former NBA boss, “The life of any victim of murder is important and the sanctity of the society, and therefore, we need to understand why countries like America have not abolished the death penalty. The penalty serves as a deterrent, and nobody would tell me the death penalty does not deter people who would otherwise have killed other people.” discourse on the need to erase the “obnoxious death penalty from Nigeria’s legal system”.

Paneff, who also spoke at a recent conference organised in Abuja by the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), in partnership with National Human Rights Commission and Access to Justice, another NGO, explained that death penalty was an “out-dated practice’’. He said the public, through the parliament, has the right to bring this to an end.

“We believe other punitive judgments could be passed on criminals. Life imprisonment, for instance, is good enough,’’ he

stated. Former Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Dahiru Musdapher also threw his weight to the abolition of the death penalty, when he said that the abolition or retention of the death penalty was a matter for the legislature to decide and not for the court to wade into.

“As social reality is constantly changing, the law’s connection to this fluid reality implies that it too is always changing. Hence we must ask ourselves: has societal reality changed, thus necessitating a change in law as it relates to the death penalty?

Although the statutory role played by the judiciary on the

death penalty issue may appear to be restricted, I will not shy away from the fact that in the 21st century, judges are gradually acknowledging the more robust role they play in shaping the law, policy and the principles upon which judicial reviews rest. The death penalty hasbeen an issue, which has often drawn out raw emotions whenever andwherever discussed. Arguments in favour or against death penalty are both compelling and persuasive,’’ he said.

Mr. Livingstone Sewanyana, a resource person from Uganda, in a paper entitled: “Towards Global Abolition of the Death Penalty: The AfricanExperience,’’ said the public should form a global coalition against the practice. He said, where the death penalty has been challenged, the anti-death penalty activists have played a prominent role; lawyersas officers of court have to take the lead”.

The head of the European Union (EU) desk on Political Governance and Democracy in Nigeria and ECOWAS, Mr. Allan Munday, had called on the Federal Government to abolish capital punishment from the country’s law books and to adopt the alternative of life imprisonment to death penalty.

The EU official stressed that the campaign would not be stopped until the death penalty is abolished in the country, just as he urged Nigeria’s leaders to emulate the leaders of other nations which have jettisoned the death penalty.

Meanwhile, the immediate past president of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Mr. Joe Daudu (SAN), in his own submission, argued that it was premature to advocate for the abolition of death penalty from the country’s legal system. Daudu, while speaking at a conference on: “Saving Lives: Strengthening the Role of Lawyers to fight Against the Death Penalty”, said the country needs to solve other problems relating to how criminals are punished.

He said the call for the abolition of the death penalty wasill-timed in view of the murderous activities of the Boko Haram Sect, which had led to the untimely death of scores of innocent Nigerians.

“How would you feel if your family member is among those so far killed by the Boko Haram sect? In our law, there are offences that prescribe death penalty and

I believe what the European Union should do is to re-orientate Nigerians against crime”, he said.

In the word of the former NBA boss, “The life of any victim of murder is important and the sanctity of the society, and therefore, we need to understand why countries like America have not abolished the death penalty.

The penalty serves as a deterrent, and nobody would tell me the death penalty does not deter people who would otherwise have killed other people.”

He said that it was not a bad argument for death penalty to be abolished, but held that the criminal justice system must first be made effective.

Analysts however say that for the campaign to sail through, the proponents have to recognise the huge odds that confront them in running against a thick current of pro-death public opinion, especially in view of the current social and political challenges.

Although the global trend towards abolition remain strong, 2012 saw a resumption of executions in a number of countries, notably Gambia, India, Japan and Pakistan.

India carried out its first execution since 2004, with the hanging of Mumbai’s lone surviving gunman, Ajmal Kasab.

However, overall, use of the death penalty was restricted to an isolated group of countries.

The total number of confirmed executions, 682, was virtually unchanged from 2011. This figure excludes the thousands of executions that were carried out in China, where accurate information on the death penalty is still impossible to obtain.

Twenty-one countries carried out executions in 2011, compared to 28 adecade ago. Once again, China, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the USA were the five biggest executioners in the world.

2012 also saw some positive developments. A number of countries which had consistently executed in previous years, such as Viet Nam, did not carry out any death sentences in 2012. In the USA, only nine states carried out executions, compared to 13 states in 2011.

The number of countries where death sentences were imposed fell from 63 to 58.

Latvia became the 97th country worldwide to abolish the death penalty for all crimes. A total of 140 countries worldwide have abolished the death penalty in law or in practice.

An overwhelming majority of countries did not use the death penalty in 2011. Only 21 out of 198 countries carried out executions, a drop of more than a third over the last decade.

Death sentences were pardoned or commuted in 33 countries, compared to just 19 in 2010.

At least 18,750 people remained under sentence of death at the end of the year and at least 680 people were executed worldwide in 2011, excluding China.

PEOPLES DAILY,THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 2013

By Sunday Ejike Benjamin

A

n application for stay of proceedings filed by former Chairman of the House of Representatives’ adhoc committee on Fuel Subsidy Regime, Hon. Farouk Lawan, and his Secretary, Mr. Boniface Emenalo, before an Abuja High Court, was yesterday opposed by the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC).

The duo of Farouk and Emenalo had filed an application seeking to stay proceedings in their ongoing trial, pending the

Useni challenges confiscation of properties at tribunal

PAGE 5

News

$620,000 bribery scam: Farouk Lawan asks court to suspend trial determination of an appeal before the Abuja Division of the Court of Appeal.

At the resumed hearing of the matter, the anti-graft agency, represented by Chief Adegboyega Awomolo (SAN) told the court that the accused person’s application is, “frivolous, vexatious and a design to stall trial of the accused persons.

He argued further that the pending appeal filed on June 6, raises a fundamental issue on the court’s jurisdiction and competence to hear and determine the seven-count charge, bordering on conspiracy and corruption

preferred against the accused.

He said, “the continuation of this case while the appeal is pending will render the outcome of appeal nugatory, should the Court of Appeal decide the appeal in the Accused/Applicants’ favour.

“The continuation of proceedings in this suit while the appeal is pending is capable of overreaching whatever decision the Court of.”

Opposing the application, Awomolo observed that stay of proceedings was a very grave, serious and a fundamental interruption of the right of the prosecution to prove the alleged

criminal conduct of Lawan and Emenalo.

Awomolo added that trial courts, in circumstances such as this, were enjoined not to “impose a stay of proceedings, unless the applicant has shown beyond reasonable doubt that the trial ought not to continue, particularly, it it’s an application based on an interlocutory appeal”.

He said the applicants failed to show special and exceptional circumstances for a stay of proceedings adding that, “it is the duty of the applicants to demonstrate this in the affidavit in support of the application.”

R-L: Information Officer, Embassy of the United States of America, Rhonda L. FergusonAugustus, receiving some copies of Peoples Daily from Chief Operating Officer, Peoples Media Ltd, Malam Ali M. Ali, during her visit to Peoples Media head office, yesterday in Abuja.

Photo: Mahmud Isa

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former FCT Minister, Lt.Gen. Jeremiah Useni, on Wednesday in Abuja asked the Code of Conduct Tribunal to compel the Federal Government to release the title documents of his properties that were confiscated in 1999.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that five of Useni’s assets were confiscated by the office of the Attorney-General of the Federation and the National Security Adviser between on Oct. 4 and Dec. 14, 1999.

Useni’s counsel, Mr. Victor Odjemu, in a motion on notice, prayed the tribunal to order the Federal Government to release the documents to the tribunal, pending the determination of the case.

Useni said it was only the Tribunal that could order seizure and forfeiture of the assets of a public officer, confirmed to have breached provisions of its relevant laws.

According to him, the documents were confiscated by government without first obtaining an order of the Tribunal or any other court and without employing any due process of law.

“It was only after the said confiscation that the Federal Government, through the AttorneyGeneral of the Federation, filed charges against my client.

“The interest of justice would be best served and the complainant would not be prejudiced by the granting of this application,’’ Odjemu said.

He said the Tribunal was the only court competent to handle the matter, and urged it to guard its jurisdiction and use it accordingly.

Mr. Simon Egede, acting Director, Public Prosecution, Federal Ministry of Justice, filed a motion of preliminary objection to Odjemu’s motion.

Egede urged the tribunal to dismiss the motion, adding that the Tribunal was not competent to entertain the matter.

According to him, it is only a high court that has the exclusive jurisdiction to handle such case.

Chairman of the Tribunal, Justice Danladi Umar, adjourned the case to June 25 for further hearing. (NAN)

ICPC maintained that there is nothing in support of the motion to suggest that the accused persons will suffer any prejudice if the application is refused, more so that the applicants are not in custody and urged the court to dismiss the application and order accelerated hearing.

The court adjourned till July 10, 2013 to rule on the application.

Lawan and Emenalo, are being prosecuted for allegedly collecting the sum of $620, 000 as bribe from Chairman of Zenon Oil and Gas, Mr. Femi Otedola.

Olisa Metuh resigns as PDP Spokesman

By Lawrence Olaoye

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he National Publicity Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Chief Olisa Metuh, yesterday resigned his position ahead of the party’s National Executive Council (NEC)’s meeting today.

This is even as Chyna Iwuanyanwu who contested against him for the position last year during the party’s convention has indicated interest in running for the office.

Metuh disclosed that all those affected by the INEC report will leave their offices, adding that the National Chairman of the party, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, is not affected by the INEC report and would therefore remain in office.

He said, “the National Chairman is not going to resign as he is not only in office but in power.

“There is no controversy about his election and he is not in court.

“The INEC report did not say his election was flawed. He complied with the Constitution of the party and the guideline of the

2012 convention.”

The former PDP National Publicity Secretary who addressed journalists yesterday in Abuja on his resignation, said further that, “I want to inform you that I am resigning as the National Publicity Secretary with effect from Thursday 20th June 2013.

“This resignation is in the overall interest of the party and is being

done to put a final stop to the controversies generated by the INEC report on the mode of my election as National Publicity Secretary.

“I have served this party as a member of National Executive Committee for over 10 years and therefore my interest is to ensure that this party stabilizes and progresses.

“I have noted that the PDP is the only party that can safeguard democracy in Nigeria, in whatever capacity I may find myself, I will always vote and support the PDP.” Reacting to the development, Iwuanyanwu who contested for the position last year said that, “with the recent development in PDP, God has provided another opportunity to do it right.

PDP NEC: Tukur, others must go - Stakeholders

By Lawrence Olaoye

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s the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) holds its National Executive Council (NEC)s meeting today, a group, the PDP Stakeholders Forum, yesterday called on the members to sack the party’s National Chairman, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, alongside other members of the National Working Committee (NWC) without fail.

This is coming as another group, Movement for Change and Empowerment in the Peoples Democratic Party (MCE – PDP), insisted that any attempt to remove Tukur and others, no matter how

well-meaning, will be subjudice and ultra vires.

The Stakeholders Forum, in a petition forwarded to members of NEC and made available to newsmen yesterday, urged the NEC to remove Tukur on grounds of “breach of PDP constitution, ineligibility, incompetence, nonmembership of the PDP and carrying out illegal party activities.”

The Forum in the petition signed by its Chairman, Ikenga Imo Ugochinyere, stated that, “Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, at the point of his nomination for election as National Chairman, was never a registered

member of not less than two years since his expulsion from the party in 2001.”

According to him, this contravened the provisions of Article 17 (2)(g) of the PDP constitution 2009, now Section 49(4) of PDP constitution 2012 (as amended).

In a related development, the National Coordinator of MCEPDP, Mr. Kola Dakova-Vaughan, cautioned the members of the NEC to be conscious of a substantive court ruling by Justice Adamu Bello of Abuja Federal High Court which ordered parties to maintain status quo.

PAGE 6

News Briefs

Governor Yero pardons 12 prison inmates

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overnor Muktar Ramalan Yero has approved amnesty for twelve inmates serving various terms in prisons in the state, as part of activities marking this year’s Democracy Day celebrations.

The amnesty follows the recommendation by the Advisory Council of the Prerogative of Mercy for the committal of the sentences of the prisoners.

Governor Yero’s action is in exercise of his powers under section 212 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (as amended).

In a letter to the Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, the governor duly endorsed the Release Order for the inmates and directed the commissioner to take action.

Governor Yero used the opportunity to call on all citizens of Kaduna to continue to support his administration by living in peace with one another, irrespective of differences.

He also urged the people to continue to support security agencies by providing them with useful information on suspicious activities in their areas.

In a similar development, as part of his comprehensive plan to ensure peace and security of all citizens of Kaduna State, Governor Yero has approved a law to establish the Kaduna State Vigilance Service.

A letter from the Governor’s Office has already been sent to the State Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice for implementation of the law.

The Vigilance Service is expected to complement activities of security agencies in providing security in communities across the state.

PEOPLES DAILY, THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 2013

Niger Delta amnesty programme will lose relevance beyond 2015 - Kuku From Suleiman Idris, Lagos

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note of caution was given yesterday by Special Adviser to the President on Niger Delta and Chairman, Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP), Hon. Kingsley Kuku, when he affirmed that there is no going back on the 2015 terminal date of the amnesty programme for former agitators in the Niger Delta region.

Kuku explained that any attempt to extend the programme beyond the date is tantamount to anarchy as it could bring about instability in the region emphasizing that it is currently grappling with exit strategy challenges that were not envisaged when the Presidential Amnesty Proclamation was made in 2009 by the late President

Musa Yar’ Adua.

Speaking as the guest lecturer at the 7th Business Law Conference of the Nigeria Bar Association Section on Business Law in Lagos, Kuku said governors in the Niger Delta states must begin to initiate youth engagement programmes that will create opportunity for empowerment for the ex-agitators in their respective states.

Also the inability to secure jobs for the ex-agitators that have been trained in many technical areas related to oil and gas he explained portends more danger for the region, as the youths may be tempted to seek for means of livelihood through dishonest and illegal activities.

The Special Adviser reiterated

that the gains of the programme are likely to be eroded if government fails to close the programme by 2015 because of fresh agitations for enlistment by youths of the region, who now see militancy as a way of accessing public funds.

He said it would be better to train people who seek empowerment rather than just distributing money to youths who do not add value to economic activities.

Concerning the current stipends dished out to beneficiaries, he canvassed equity in the stipends paid to ex-agitators in training in various tertiary institutions, as opposed to those who collect monthly stipend that are awaiting to be sent for training.

He sought for a reduction of the

N65,000 paid to beneficiaries in training to the statutory N18,000 pegged as minimum wage, such that those who are undergoing training do not earn far more than those awaiting training.

“It will be in the best interest of Nigeria for government to terminate the presidential amnesty programme by 2015. If it is not closed by 2015, it will lose its taste. This is because it will become an alternative government in the Niger Delta region.

“We are currently battling exit strategy challenges. If we reduce the monthly stipend to those in training to the prescribed minimum wage for the country, which is N18,000, it would discourage more people to take to militancy”.

From Mohammad Ibrahim, Kaduna

Committee donates special food to diabetic patients

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he Sokoto State Zakat and Endowment Committee, on Wednesday donated 11 bags of special food items to diabetic patients on admission at the the State Specialist Hospital, Sokoto.

The chairman of the Health SubCommittee, Alhaji Nura Attajiri, said food items would be shared to those on admission and out-patients.

Attajiri told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) that the hospital attends to the highest number of patients suffering from diabetes, after the Usman Danfodiyo University Teaching Hospital.

“Thirty-four of the patients benefited from the gesture at the hospital and it will be extended to others in hospitals across the state. Most of these patients are indigenes and they need to be supported by the government and other well meaning individuals”, he said, adding that the committee would extend the gesture to 100 additional diabetic patients across the state, to alleviate their suffering. (NAN)

L-R: Minister of State for Education, Chief Nyesom Wike, Minister of Agriculture, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, FCT Minister, Senator Bala Mohammed, and Minister of State for Niger Delta Affairs, Mr. Darius Ishaku, during the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting, yesterday at the State House, in Abuja.

Photo Joe Oroye

Oshiomhole approves special allowance for secondary school teachers From Osaigbovo Iguobaro, Benin

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overnor Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State has approved the implementation of the twenty-seven and half percent Teachers Special Allowance (TSA) for Secondary School Teachers in the State. This does not however cover the striking primary school teachers as the governor threatened to invoke the No Work, No Pay rule on them.

Speaking yesterday after a meeting with the executive members of the Academic Staff Union of Secondary Schools, (ASUSS), Oshiomhole criticised the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT) for embarking on an illegal strike.

•shuns striking primary school teachers According to him, “I want to thank you for trusting me and accepting the students under your care as your own children and refusing to do anything that would adversely affect their academic calendar.

“By your conduct, you have shown that you recognize and are committed to upholding the noble values that shape the attitude of the average teacher.

You have demonstrated that you see yourselves as not just working for salary, but because you believe in teaching. I appreciate that you have done this in the face of being blackmailed or misunderstood. You recognize that all of us in Edo are stakeholders

with shared responsibility to ensure that the younger ones have access to quality education”, he noted.”

Oshiomhole, who acknowledged there were national financial challenges, noted that no government in the federation had been getting what is due to it.

He stated, “you have refused to put issues of your personal welfare over and above your personal obligation and that is very well demonstrated by the fact that you have remained in classroom while you are pursuing your legitimate demand. When we condemn those who put their personal calling above public in-

terest, we must appreciate those who have done otherwise” “On that basis, irrespective of the financial challenges that we are in, we have looked at it and we have resolved as government to revisit the issue of the allowance. We know we are already paying seventeen percent, leaving a balance of ten percent.

We will commence implementation of the full 27.5 per cent from the 1stof July, 2013”.

Responding on behalf of the Academic Staff Union of Secondary School Teachers, the Deputy President, Mr. Broderick Ighalo, said “we want to thank the governor for this 27.5% which has been graciously granted to secondary school teachers, we want to say thank you very much”.

PAGE 8

Photos Splash

Transition committee chairman of Musawa local government area of Katsina state, Alhaji Tanimu Kira (3rd left), measuring grains to people during the launch of third phase of sales of subsidised grains to less privileged families, yesterday.

PEOPLES DAILY, THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 2013

Speaker, House of Representatives, Hon. Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, (left), receiving the certificate of membership of Island Club, Lagos from the club Chairman, Prince Ademola Dada (middle), during a business lecture, titled “The Legislature and the Growth of Our Democracy”, on Tuesday in Lagos. With them is representative of Lagos state Governor, Dr. Wale Ahmed (right).

Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), achievement award for the Federal Republic of Nigeria being presented to President Goodluck Jonathan by Minister of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina (2nd right), yesterday at the state house, in Abuja. From left with them are Vice-President Mohammed Namadi Sambo, Minister of State for Finance, Dr Yerima Ngama, Minister of State for Health, Dr Muhammad Ali Pate, Minister of Education, Prof. Ruqayyatu Ahmed Rufa’i, and Senior Special Assistant to the President on MDGs, Dr. Precious Gbeneol (right).

Suspected drug traffickers paraded by National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, yesterday in Lagos.

Traffic on Apapa road, Ijora, in Lagos yesterday after rain.

Photos: Joe Oroye, Olawale Rotimi & NAN

PEOPLES DAILY, THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 2013

PAGE 9

News BUK stops diploma programmes From Edwin Olofu, Kano

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L-R: Co-Chairman of Merger Party, Alhjaji Garba Gadi of CPC, Co-Chairman, Chief Tom Ikimi of ACN, Co-Chairman and former Kano state Governor, Malam Ibrahim Shekaru of ANPP, and former Zamfara state Governor Senator Ahmed Sani Yarima, during a press conference marking end of Merger Committee’s work of All Progressive Congress (APC), yesterday in Abuja. Photo: Mahmud Isa

Jonathan receives UN award for poverty, hunger reduction

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resident Goodluck Jonathan received an award from the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), an arm of the United Nations (UN), in recognition of Federal Government’s efforts at hunger and chronic poverty reduction.

Receiving the award at the Presidential Villa, Jonathan re-affirmed government’s commitment towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The FAO believes that government has been able to cut by half, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people living on less than $1.25 a day.

The development, according to the Romebased FAO, has led to the attainment of provision of decent employment for

women, men, and young people as well as reducing by half, etween 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.

Accomplishment of these feats was what qualified Nigeria for recognition by the Rome based ancillary of the UN. But Jonathan acknowledged that the country still has a long way to go to achieve more of the MDG goals including achieving universal primaryeducation, promoting gender equality and empowering, reducing childmortality rates, improving maternal health, combating HIV/AIDS scourge, malaria and other diseases, among others.

“We are yet to reach where we want to go but surely we will get there,” Jonathan

said, adding that, “let me use this unique opportunity to tell Nigerians and the rest of the world that we appreciate this recognition.” Minister of Agriculture, Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina, who presented the awarad on behalf of the FAO, noted that the administration has done well in curbing hunger in the country.

According to him, “Mr. President, you are feeding Nigeria and the international community recognizes your efforts and leadership in feeding Nigeria.

“The FAO of the UN has just given a special recognition to Nigeria for the achievement in reducing the number of people suffering from chronic hunger and for making notable progress in guarantee food security for our citizens.

“Nigeria got the award because the number of Nigerians suffering from hunger reduced from 19.31 million in 1990 and 1992 to 13.38 in 2010 to 2012.”

Moreover, according to him, there has been a decline in the prevalence of undernourishment in the country from 19.3 per cent in 1990/1991 to 8.5 per cent by 2010/2012.

“This is below the MDG target of 9.7 per cent that was set for 2015,” he said.

The FAO also identified Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cuba, Djibouti, Georgia, Ghana, Guyana, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Nicaragua, Peru, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, Sao Tome and Principe, Thailand, Turkmenistan, Venezuela and VietNam, as other countries that have achieved both MDG 1 and the World Food Summit (WFS) goal.

Alleged N15m scam: Witness tells court no vessel, no cargo

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prosecution witness in a N15 million fraud case, on Wednesday said that there was no vessel laden with 30,000 tonnes of Low-Pour Fuel Oil (LPFO) as claimed by an accused.

The accused, Clement Obukeuwi, is being prosecuted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for allegedly obtaining the sum under pretext, from Mr George Oni, now deceased.

He is standing trial before Justice Deborah Oluwayemi of an Igbosere High Court in Lagos.

The witness, Mr Oluseyi Ademuyiwa, gave evidence during an examination by EFCC Counsel, Miss O. Odiri.

Ademuyiwa, a Ship Inspector, said he went to Port Harcourt three times to evaluate the cargo claimed by Obukeuwi to have been loaded for Oni. He testified that he found out that there was no vessel or cargo available for Oni. “I was employed by Mr George Oni to go with the defendant to confirm and inspect a cargo. ``We went to Port Harcourt

and when we got there, the defendant gave me a location where he claimed the cargo was, but on getting there, there was no vessel and no cargo.

“It was after the third trip that I called Mr. George Oni and told him not to continue with the business because there were no vessel and cargo. ``I also told him that I was leaving Port Harcourt because the assignment was life-threatening,” he said.

According to him, Oni persuaded him to stay but he refused and came to Lagos, and thereafter, was invited by

the EFCC to come and make a statement on the transaction.

After the evidence of the witness, Defence Counsel, Mr U. C. Ikebulu, prayed the court to fix a date for the defence to open its case.

The court consequently adjourned the case to July 2, for evidence by the defence.

The News Agency of Nigeria reports that Obukeuwi was first arraigned on Oct. 31, 2011 on a two-count charge but he pleaded not guilty.

According to the prosecution, the offences contravene Sections 285 and 313 of the Criminal Code Laws of Lagos state, 2003.(NAN)

ice Chancellor of Bayero University (BUK), Kano, Prof.

Abubakar Adamu Rasheed, has said that the institution no longer runs sub-degree programmes.

Rasheed, who spoke at a press conference ahead of the 30th convocation ceremony, said that open and part-time degree programmes would be introduced at the Institute of Continuing Education (ICE).

As part of the university’s effort at improving its academic pursuit, he said that they the institution had commenced started a programme in Mechatronics Engineering and that Dentistry, Allied Medicine Sciences, Communication Engineering, Fisheries, Forestry/Agro, Food Science and Technology would soon be introduced.

He further disclosed that the university was collaborating with the National Universities Commission to start Chemical Engineering and Petroleum Engineering.

“A Bio-Technic Research Center will soon be commissioned as we are going to organize international conferenceonBio-TechnologyinKano.

“We are also lucky that we are among the six universities in the country that are benefiting from a major intervention by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), he said.

Flood: Dangote c’ttee to build houses for victims

By Abdulwahab Isa

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uge relief is coming the way of victims of last year’s flood disaster that ravaged several states, as the Presidential Committee on Flood Relief and Rehabilitation (PCFRR) has concluded arrangements to build new houses to replace the ones swept away by the flood.

The Committee, co-chaired by business mogul, Aliko Dangote and frontline lawyer, Olisa Agbakoba, in a statement, said it had called on reputable companies to bid for building of houses as well as provision of essential amenities in the 22 affected states.

The states are Abia, Adamawa, Anambra, Bauchi, Benue, Cross Rivers, Delta, Edo, Imo, Jigawa, Kano, Kaduna,Katsina, Kebbi, Kogi, Kwara, Nasarawa, Niger, Plateau,Rivers and Taraba.

Apart from the houses, the PCFRR also called for companies to bid for the provision of potable water in the affected states.

According to the statement: “the committee is desirous of executing several projects/ programmes in line with its terms of reference(TOR) and therefore invites interested reputable and qualified companies to submit technical and financial bids for the procurement and construction of the lots in the 22 affected states.”

PAGE 10

PEOPLES DAILY, THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 2013

News Briefs

UK institute to train Nigerian journalists on job safety

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r Eugene Itua, Regional Director of United Kingdom (UK) Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, on Wednesday said the institute planned to train Nigerian journalists on job safety.

Itua told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos that the training was to equip journalists with skills that would help them in the management of challenges and dangers associated with the profession.

The regional director said that the first phase of the training would be for journalists in Lagos and Abuja.

“We know that in their search and reporting of developments in communities, journalists are often harassed, detained, and sometimes get killed. And especially now that there are pockets of communal crisis, religious violence and terrorist attacks, the institute deemed it important to build capacity of journalists, to ensure their safety when going about their duties, he said, adding that “we need to give journalists, especially those in the job by accident, the necessary preparation and on the job safety management skills”.

(NAN)

World Sickle Cell Day: Expert laments poor research funding From Femi Oyelola, Kaduna

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on provision of adequate funds to carry out research work into the sickle cell disorder has been described as the major obstacle to finding a solution to the pandemic.

A Pharmacist, Dr. Abass Waziri, who said yesterday at the World Sickle Cell Day celebrations in Kaduna, organized by the Sickle Cell Patients Health Promotion Centre, blamed the government for not paying the needed attention to research works on sickle cell anemia.

“That is why we have to import malaria drugs from India while we have our own traditional way

of treating malaria long time ago but we abandon the whole thing because there is no research.

We have the researchers but no funding to do the research work,” he said.

Waziri, who is the Managing Director of Tradomed Pharmaceutical Limited said his organization has put on trial, Cellron, a drug expected to help the sickle cell anemia patients.

“We are test running a drug known as Cellron,” he said, adding that “the initial drive of the whole work is to ensure that persons live a healthy live. They can be carriers but won’t have any crises. But if along the line we find a cure to the

disease, we will be glad to see the end of the disease. If the governments are willing to support the work, we are willing to welcome them but at the moment, we are working with Sickle Cell Foundation of Nigeria.

We have given them some samples and we are collaborating in all the research work we have been able to carry out.

We have given them some of the papers we published on this.

Recently, we did a publication in ethno-pharmacology, a world class pharmaceutical outfit whereby other professors in the world can criticize what we have done and also give advice on how we can improve to find a lasting solution to

the whole thing”.

According to him, “these drugs are herbal. They are natural with little or no chemical, no additive, no preservative. They are driven from eatable plants that people eat on daily basis. Its just that there are no proper research works that have been done on these for a long period of time,” In her remarks the wife of the Kaduna State governor, Hajiya Fatima Ramalan Yero, said the sickle cell anemia is an inherited blood disorder and can be prevented through adequate sensitization and information to prospective couples. She therefore called for collected efforts to tackle the menace.

No PDP in South West, ACN tells Jonathan

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ction Congress of Nigeria, (ACN), Lagos State chapter has said the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) does not exist in the South-West.

Reacting to the endorsement of President Goodluck Jonathan for the 2015 presidential election by the PDP in South-West, ACN Lagos State Publicity Secretary, Joe Igbokwe, in a statement yesterday dismissed the endorsement as laughable, saying PDP does not even exist in the South-West.

“PDP South-West is free to choose who they feel can lead them to victory.

We cannot do that for them but what amuses us is that PDP is non existent in the South-West. They just gathered with the intention to send signals to Abuja that they are still in existence, alive and kicking, but in reality this is a farce”, Igbokwe said.

From Ayodele Samuel, Lagos

NEMA partners with schools on disaster management

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ational Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), is to partner with schools in disaster management. NEMA made this known at a workshop it organised in Jos, yesterday.

Besides having disaster management in the school curriculum, NEMA will collaborate with schools in finding ways to manage disaster anytime it occours.

The Agency’s North Central, Acting Zonal Coordinator, Mr.Muhammad Abdussalam, made the disclosures at the workshop organized for stakeholders drawn from Benue, Nasarawa and Plateau States.

From Ado Abubaka Musa

L-R: Director-General, National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Dr. Paul Orhii, Director, Narcotics and Controlled Substance, Alhaji Hashim Ubale, and Director, Chemical Evaluation and Research, Mr. Momodu Segiri Momodu, during a press briefing on the activities of NAFDAC, yesterday in Lagos.

Photo: Olawale Rotimi

Meningitis kills 562 in Nigeria From Ahmed Kaigam, Bauchi

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o fewer than 562 died of cerebro spinal meningitis outbreak in Nigeria from 2009 to date.

The Head of Operations of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), Gombe, Mr. Apollos Jediel,

disclosed this during a one day public awareness and sensitization campaign on meningitis, measles, cholera and Lassa fever to teachers, district heads, and health workers held in Bauchi, yesterday.

According to him, Nigeria has been ranked as the worst country in the African continent that has

the highest cases of the cerebro spinal meningis epidemic.

He noted that the Northern states of Bauchi, Jigawa, Kano, Yobe and Katsina are currently among the worst hit and explained that the epidemic normally breaks out when the rain commences.

“As at 2010 the zone had the highest rate of casualties

of 22 deaths in Bauchi and 139 cases reported with Jigawa state coming close to with 19 deaths.

Borno state has 48 reported cases and four deaths, Gombe state has 61 cases reported and four deaths.

Adamawa state has 51 cases and nine deaths while Taraba state has 18 cases and three deaths as reported”, he pointed out.

Commission recovers stolen artifacts From Maaji Dandaura, Lafia

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he National Commission for Museums and Monuments has so far repatriated over sixty stolen Nigerian cultural objects from France, Canada, South Africa, United States of America and Switzerland.

The Director-General of the Commission, Mallam Yusuf Abdallah, made this known in his speech presented in Lafia during the celebration of the 2013

International Museum Day. He said one of the functions of the Commission was to administer national museums, antiquities and monuments, adding that the commission is also charged with the responsibility of making recommendations to any state government or authority concerning the establishment and management of museums and preservation of antiquities and monuments declared to be natural antiquities and

monuments.

The Commission is also empowered to approve a museum that is privately established and maintained and at anytime withdraw such approval, he said.

Mallam Abdalla reminded museum professionals of the complexity of museums and their positive influence in the community and its development.

In her speech, the Director, Commission for Museums and Monuments, Nasarawa State,

Mrs. Emily Isah Emmanuel said the national museum at Lafia has only seven small office rooms that accommodate forty museum workers, adding that they have visited some historic sites across the state which include Farinruwa water falls in Wamba local government council, Perperuwa Lake in Assakio town in Lafia local government area, Odu cultural festivals in Doma local government area among many other historic sites.

PEOPLES DAILY, THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 2013

PAGE 11

Money Sense

Maximize your time, maximize your money

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rading time for money is one of the hardest ways to make cash. But when it’s your job (or hobby, or second job), you must use it wisely or you lose. Since time is finite, every second wasted means dollars gone.

When you waste money, car payments may come up late, rent may be hard to make, or you may not have enough to buy the extras you want. Either way, wasting time hurts your bottom line.

Here are a few ways to help service-based business owners and hobbyists find more time, so they can make more money.

Start out with a detailed plan of what you must accomplish each day.

Never go to bed without knowing what you need to do the next morning (or whenever you work your gig). This is your Door-Die List. If you don’t do, your business dies, and so does your money. Create a focused plan before you sleep. Then, check it again when you wake up. Make it a habit to check it before you sit at your computer; it can help jog your

memory before you get lost in the Facebook rabbit hole.

Schedule your most complex and time-consuming tasks when your mind is freshest.

If you work a primary job, this’ll require a little creativity. You’ll need to figure out your best days for getting things done. It may be at 8 pm in the evening, when the kids have gone to bed. It may be when you get up on Saturday morning and don’t have to work. Whenever it is, make sure you’re focused on your best and most profitable projects then.

Invest in time-saving projects.

If you’re busy tweaking your website or doing laundry, instead of doing what earns you money, then you’re wasting your time and, therefore, your dimes. I know people in my industry that don’t even touch their laundry or the house cleaning. And these people are insanely productive because of it.

These are investments well spent. Take a look at the activities that take up most of your time and budget having someone handle them for you. But, you don’t get to play while they tend to your

“chores” — make the most of your investment and spend that time earning.

Prioritize.

Work on the money first. Leave the movies for the people who don’t have an agenda for earning. We all love vegging on the couch, but

we have to be smart about how our time’s spent. If the goal is to collect minutes and earn dollars, be prepared for this — especially in the beginning.

Master your craft.

You’ll earn more when you can quickly crank out whatever it is you

do. The guy cutting grass knows how to mow four lawns an hour, when it takes you one for your own. He’s a master. He knows how to work quickly, so he earns more money mowing lawns than you would. Master your craft and you’ll also earn more in less time.

Money Tip: Learning from the rich: 4 traits you should emulate

Ways to save money

Get Out of Debt Do you know how much money you are paying in interest each month?

How much of your monthly budget is being eaten up by student loans, car payments and credit card bills? If you could take all of that money and put it into retirement, it is amazing at how quickly you could save for your retirement and other things that you want. Debt often becomes a burden and limits the choices that you can make. One of the best things you can do with your money is to get out of debt and stay out of debt!

Save Your Money Once you have freed up all that extra money from paying off your debt you need to begin saving aggressively.

There will be a point when the money you have will earn more than you do in a month. This takes quite a bit of money, and in order for this to happen you need put a large amount away each month. Once you have a six month emergency fund saved, you will need to begin investing your money.

This is how you can grow your wealth most effectively. Additionally, saving money can help you be prepared to handle the ups and downs that will happen throughout your life.

Quote Be awful nice to ‘em goin’ up, because you’re gonna meet ‘em all comin’ down. -Jimmy Durante

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ost people wouldn’t complain if they suddenly became rich. In fact, millions of people play the lottery every week with just this hope — even though, statistically, their chances of winning are next to nothing.

Obviously, very few of the wealthy people we’re jealous of have gotten rich this way. As we know, “get rich quick” schemes are usually a gimmick or a con, so it follows that most wealthy people have invested time and effort into getting where they are today.

If we’re honest, we can admit that if we spent less time complaining about our circumstances and more time studying and following the lifestyle habits and principles that have made people rich, we’d

be a lot closer to our financial goals.

The ideology and practices that build wealth can be summed up as hard work, conservatism, ingenuity, and an opportunistic mindset.

Let’s break those factors down.

Hard work There really isn’t a magical formula for building wealth effortlessly. Sure, there are smarter ways to build wealth, and principles that work better than others. But what it really boils down to is just plain, hard work.

At some point in their life, rich people have been the ones who studied for hours, worked late into the night, never watched television, went on vacation, or had social lives, and gave up countless small luxuries for the sake of their goal. A large amount

of effort is required for a large financial gain. Most people aren’t willing to put that much effort into it.

Conservatism The simplest reason why rich people have money is that they haven’t spent it. Think about it.

As the old adage says, you can’t eat your cake and have it, too. In the consumerism culture we live in, it’s easy to fall into the habit of spending everything we make.

Wealthy people have mastered the discipline of saving money and making it work for them instead of always working for money.

If you study the lifestyles of the wealthiest people in the world, you won’t find them buying the newest, most popular vehicle every year. Instead you’ll probably find them driving a vehicle that’s paid off and has

high mileage. You won’t find them maxing out credit cards for every known retailer; you’ll find them to be conservative and wise about their spending. A well-known financial adviser, Dave Ramsay, has said, “You have to live like no one else in order to live like no one else.”

Ingenuity By ingenuity, I’m not saying wealthy people are any smarter or even more educated than ordinary folk. But they’ve realized their own unique abilities and mixed them with some creativity to say, do, or create something no one else has — something that works, and something that everybody wants.

Ingenuity lies in everyone, but wealthy people have utilized it to their financial advantage.

An opportunistic mindset Wealthy people work hard and are wise and careful planners. On the other hand, they’re also willing to take the risks often necessary for great success. People who are tentative when an opportunity arises often miss out on some of the greatest advantages.

While being unafraid of opportunity is a good trait to have, it sometimes carries consequences.

Not every uncertain or risky opportunity succeeds (otherwise, there would be no need for courage). Rich people have often faced discouraging failures, but remain undeterred by them. They know that, in spite of failures, they’ll eventually succeed, and because they’re willing to take great risks, their success will be equal to it.

The path to riches is paved with hard work, conservatism, ingenuity, and an opportunistic mindset. Without these traits, it’s difficult to live a lifestyle that will result in lasting wealth.

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PEOPLES DAILY, THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 2013

EDITORIAL

Iran: New president, higher expectations electoral process as restrictive because certain aspirants were disqualified. We ask the west to point out in any of their democracies where there is no benchmark for qualification to stand in elections. The footage of jubilant Iranians pouring out into the streets to celebrate was a clear pointer that the election and its

the reason for the country’s major rift with the west, would be made more transparent to engender confidence. Rouhani, obviously, knows what he is talking about because apart from once having been the secretary of the National Security Council, he recently led his country’s nuclear negotiation team.

The president-elect also promised to work hard to ease the hard-biting sanctions imposed on the country by the mostly hostile western nations.

Rouhani has a formidable More importantly, the election mandate to fulfill his election expressed the desire of Iranians promises and we, therefore, to engage with the rest of the urge the western powers to show world and for their nation to take flexibility in dealing with the its rightful place in global affairs country on the nuclear issue. The current stand-off is clearly at odds with Iran’s political reality outcome met the expectations of most today. The outgoing Ahmadinejad Iranians. We congratulate them.

Presidency was too provocative More importantly, the election to make any dialogue possible. expressed the desire of Iranians to Hopefully, the west will find in engage with the rest of the world and Rouhani a president to do business for their nation to take its rightful with. At home, the clear mandate of place in global affairs. Rouhani, Rouhani should give momentum to who has been a key player in Iran’s the progress Iran has been making political life, made clear that he would in spite of a regime of crippling pursue a course of “constructive sanctions imposed by the west. interaction” with the rest of the world. This is what hardworking and Above all, he said that the Iranian resourceful Iranians expect of their nuclear programme, which has been new president.

OUR MISSION “To be the market place of ideas and the leading player in the industry by putting the people first, upholding the truth, maintaining the highest professional and ethical standards while delivering value to our stakeholders”

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I

ran’s presidential poll, held on June 14, more than anything, has shown the country’s democracy as coming of age. As in every credible election devoid of any backroom manipulation, the poll had its initial uncertainties and even produced an unexpected result. The winner of the election, 64-year-old Hassan Rouhani, who scooped over 70 percent of the total votes cast, was not considered a frontrunner by the western media that called his main opponent, Saeed Jalil, “a stalwart disciple of the supreme leader”.

The implication was that Jalil was already anointed by the supreme leader and, therefore, in spite of how Iranians voted, his victory was certain.

On the contrary, the outcome that massively endorsed Rouhani has demonstrated that the popular will of the Iranian people demonstrated through the ballot box has been duly respected and upheld. This is a landmark in a region where the major allies of the western democracies do not have anything close to a popular democratic choice. Before the election, western political establishments and media outlets severely criticized Iran’s

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PEOPLES DAILY, THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 2013

By Emma Agu

W

here does fair criticism end and vulgar disrespect for authority begin?

This, to me, remains one of the enduring dilemmas of liberal democracy. Time and again in this country, we see situations where the citizenry, in robust display of their freedom of speech, tend to discard those canons of decent behaviour that formed the bedrock of our traditional society. Bad as it is, disrespect for authority assumes steeper dysfunction when the perpetrator is an elder or a member of the disciplined forces; somebody of Abubakar Tsav’s standing in society.

This perhaps explains but does not justify why, often times, government officials in some climes, initiate legislation, in some cases, excessive, to guard against scurrilous and unguarded statements that could incite public opprobrium and violence against the state or public officers. One such example was Decree 4 of 1984 which the regime of General Muhamadu Buhari promulgated to punish journalists whose stories, even when true, embarrassed a public officer. I am convinced that if we had such a law today, people like Tsav would end up in prison, not necessarily on account of the veracity of his story or not but because he has described President Goodluck Jonathan, the man who eventually assented to the Freedom of Information (FOI) Bill, as a liar.

Displaying dubious clairvoyance, Tsav had said “The President is targeting job slots for political thugs. This action will create vacancies for them to be planted in the (police) force so that they can be put in strategic positions to aid the snatching of ballot boxes in 2015”. Then he went ahead to make another prediction: “The outcome is obvious-it is to discredit Osayande and make him look like he is incompetent; it is to make him look like he was the problem of the Nigeria Police. The President is targeting Osayande, to destroy

PAGE 13

Opinion The limits of criticism him”.

Taken in its ordinary context, Tsav is saying that the President is a liar; that he is a deceptive and fraudulent person who wants to rig elections (even with Jega as umpire?) and a vindictive person who is targeting Osayande for destruction? Can anyone be more disrespectful to the President?

Incredible! And to claim, without any shred of evidence that the President is out to destroy a former deputy inspector general of police exceeds the limits of fair comment.

If this was how Tsav served as commissioner of police, even the President’s most avowed critics will begin to think that the President has a point.

Fortuitously, the President doesn’t need a better salesman than Tsav to market the case for a total overhaul of the senior police cadre. Besides what Nigerians already know, about the police force, Tsav, by stating categorically that the President was trying to create jobs for pliable officers, was admitting that there are indeed bad eggs among the senior cadre.

At least, Tsav did not insinuate that the President was going to recruit senior police officers from the rank and file of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) or that there were plans to absorb the Niger Delta militants into the police force.

Instead, his recruitment ground is the existing Nigeria Police Force.

What a contradiction! Now that Tsav, even without intending so has agreed with the President that there are those (potential thugs) who do not merit promotion, why would he quarrel with reforming the system to flush such people out? Or is the statement simply unpalatable just because it was erroneously credited to a man who has to be hounded out of office by every imaginable stratagem, including denying credit in areas where he has taken uncommon steps to solve hitherto intractable

problems? Haba Tsav!

To Tsav and former IGP Ibrahim Coomassie, government should concentrate on vital issues such as security and welfare of its people. Perhaps we should thank the President for drawing out the former IGP who was quoted by a national daily as saying: “I always wonder why the federal government is ignoring vital issues and concentrating on issues that are less important to people and the country. People are being killed in this country since 2009 and government (ha)s failed to address the issue and instead is talking about minor issues. Nigerians are very much aware that PDP, the ruling party, has put this country in a total mess”. Is that so?

Coomassie needs to be reminded that except for the Jonathan in the Bible, the name had not joined Nigeria’s political lexicon when the police went on strike over unpaid remuneration and poor conditions of service in 1993. That was 20 years ago when the PDP had not been formed and President Jonathan was probably doing post graduate studies. The shame of Nigeria therefore is not what the Americans have said about Nigeria but the fact that Jonathan and his generation are condemned to fixing what the leadership cadre destroyed when Jonathan was a student.

If Coomassie is to cast his mind back, he will have no difficulty recollecting that it was the same iniquitous cabal that unpatriotically swept away the government of Chief Ernest Shonekan, a corporate guru with the Midas touch who was determined to fix the economy.

If the dubious political and security elite had not conspired to terminate the Shonekan administration, chances were that he would have established a culture of integrity, merit and sustainable development on which the country

would be running today. Instead, we went for political turncoats and avaricious and predatory elements who effectively derailed the country’s march to greatness.

Haven’t we paid a huge price for this?

Let’s get this straight: it’s such a great shame that many of our elite are prepared to sacrifice civility and fairness on the altar of narrow political interests.

Nothing else would justify the unwholesome dismissal of the President as a failure and the rather laughable effort to hold him responsible for the nation’s protracted political and economic woes. While we have no difficulty admitting that the times are indeed hard, it also amounts to intellectual fraud to deny the bold efforts of the President Jonathan Administration to redress years of power failure, fuel shortages, massive importation of food that have spanned several administrations or the seething insecurity that predates the Ogoni crisis (leading to the death of Ken Saro Wiwa), the Odi crisis, the Zaki Biam crisis, the Niger Delta militancy, all before the present Boko Haram insurgency.

If Jonathan is not the messiah that Nigeria is looking for, it may well be because Nigeria’s warped institutional framework is incapable of producing a messiah. If we are to be honest with ourselves, we should admit that it is almost impossible to have a messiah here given the institutional and other shackles that the political elite has refused to honestly address because doing so would dislodge the unholy privileged structure that has been used to sentence the greater majority of Nigerians to subsistence and at times, sub human existence.

Be that as it may, and in spite of the cacophony of opposition voices, President Jonathan’s

scorecard after only two years of being effectively in the saddle remains encouraging: in the oil sector, his administration has put paid to the perennial fuel shortages that bedeviled the country; the aviation sector has recorded unprecedented infrastructural boost through the remodeling of the airports and installation of navigational tools; the power sector reform is on course with commendable improvement in the power supply situation; agriculture has recorded tremendous boost while the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) under the present leadership has won world-wide acclaim for its innovativeness and effectiveness.

In the public works department, with the possible exception of the immediate post-war era in Nigeria, it is doubtful if the country has ever witnessed road rehabilitation on the scale that FERMA is pursuing, nation-wide while the health sector is being re-energized through the massive construction of tertiary health institutions and other projects. You only need to visit the Federal Teaching Hospital in Abakaliki to appreciate what the Jonathan Administration is doing to upscale the healthcare delivery in the historically forgotten parts of the country.

Enough of the grandstanding and throwing of stones; the posturing must stop: receiving applause while throwing stones from glass houses can last, only for as long as it takes to pull a wool over the eyes of Nigerians.

Jonathan is not the problem of Nigeria; the problem with Nigeria is the conspiracy of the entire political class to perpetuate the inequitable structure of privileges that confer undeserved power and influence on its members. That is what the likes of Abubakar Tsav and others should assiduously address when there is still time. It is then, and only then, that their criticisms will begin to make sense.

Emma Agu is former managing director/editorin-chief of Champion Newspapers

Curbing corruption: Success and failure of the law

By Akin Oyebode

O

ur military conquistadores who had brandished all manner of reformist agenda when they came on board did not find it expedient to overhaul the existing generally ineffective and ineffectual legal machinery on corruption, limiting themselves to confiscation by decree of illgotten wealth of some politicians or sentencing them to long incarceration through military tribunals. Paradoxically, however, it was an ex-military El Caudillo that thought it fit to engineer the promulgation of ostensibly anticorruption laws as well as create institutions under the guise of the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) Act, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) Act, the Money Laundering Prohibition Act. All of those laws, coupled with the Code of Conduct provisions of the 1999 Constitution, could well have been a fool-proof legal framework for prosecuting the much-trumpeted war against corruption. However, all that came to naught as a result of selective enforcement, double standards, ad hominem application and

other lapses that enabled fat camels to pass through the eye of the Nigerian needle. What is more, the inclusion of newfangled notions of plea bargaining tagged “compounding” enabled some corrupt personalities to get off with slaps on the wrists to the chagrin and discomfiture of helpless Nigerian on-lookers who were earnestly looking forward to inflicting long terms of imprisonment on those who had frittered away with public resources which could have gone a long way in alleviating their suffering. The sense of catharsis which severe penalties for corruption would have engendered left the masses with discomfiture, ending up by seeking solace in the eternal prayer of the distraught and helpless: “God dey!”

They watched in utter disgust as privileged accused persons hired the most celebrated legal practitioners, who exploited every technicality in the book to either secure injunctions against trial of these selfsame individuals or argued against admissibility of electronically generated evidence or, in the final analysis, won for their clients mere fines or unconscionably disproportionate and symbolic terms of imprisonment, with little or no

regard for the signals such cozy treatment of looters of the public treasury was sending to society at large.

In a country where petty thieves are visited upon with the severest punishment, it is quite bewildering that the ruling class can so brazenly display its solidarity with its members who had been found to commit breach of the Eleventh Commandment of bourgeoisdom: “Thou shall not be caught”! And, if all else failed, some of the most notorious members of the nation’s rogues’ gallery could rest assured of having bestowed on them an amnesty or prerogative of mercy, courtesy of even the highest levels of government…

The level of corruption and impropriety among some judicial officers and law-enforcement officers as revealed in recent times is such as to make one wonder if gold rusts, what should be expected of iron. For, there is now wide suspicion that the figurine of Themis that adorns our courthouses is really a sham as the Lady of Justice herself can actually be “seen” and persuaded to either peep though her blindfold or even totally remove it and tilt the scales of justice in favour of a litigant, if only the price was right! Indeed

so sordid is the state of affairs in Nigeria today that one can only pose the question Juvenal had posed many centuries ago: Quis custodiet ipso custodies?

Today, Nigeria is at the cross-roads. Buffeted on all sides by innumerable political crises, socio-economic downturn, terrorism, kidnapping, ethnic conflict, instability, incompetence bordering on leadership failure, fear and collective self-doubt, the portents could not be worse for our dear country. When to all that is added ravaging corruption and loss of shame by those who pose as the nation’s ruling class, it becomes clear that the country has to stem the tide of imminent collapse by overhauling its legal system, especially sanctions prescribed for corruption.

Admittedly severity of sanctions is not as critical as certainty of punishment. Nevertheless, the slip-shod manner we have hitherto handled the poison that corruption represents to our collective wellbeing suggests that a new way has to be found to contain the ogre. We might need to borrow a leaf from other jurisdictions like China and Singapore in order to put a cap on the high incidence of corruption in this country.

Even if many might be averse to the suggestion of treating corruption with execution by the firing squad, the time is now ripe to consider incarceration for life for those who commit vile and venal crimes of stealing from the public purse. Besides, there is a crying need to send the right signals to the rest of the population and the international community to the effect that we are indeed a selfrespecting people, wedded to zero tolerance for corruption, opposed to impunity and dedicated to the promotion of due process and equality before the law.

If we are truly intent on securing respect for our flag, passport and good name, we must do whatever needs to be done to join the rest of humanity by evincing the will not to condone corruption. Failure to take immediate action along these lines would only result in our being grudgingly tolerated by the rest of the world in spite of our muchvaunted status of “Giant of Africa” with a manifest destiny to lead Africa and the entire black race.

Akin Oyebode is professor of law and chair, Office of International Relations, Partnerships and Prospects, University of Lagos.

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Letters & Opinion

PEOPLES DAILY, THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 2013

Imperative of transparency and accountability in oil sector

By Felix Ayanruoh

R

ecently, Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Allison – Madueke, ordered an immediate investigation into the management of 445,000 BPD domestic crude purchase by the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and remittances to the federation account. This is a welcome development. However, the government should act now rather than wait for the outcome of the investigation or the passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill since the country is losing billions of naira daily. Albeit the recent oil subsidy scandal, Nigeria’s oil and gas management is still shrouded in secrecy and corruption. This development shows how few conspire against economic development and hinders the lives of over 160 million citizens from economic transformation.

It is aphoristic (and supported by the empirical evidence) that corruption was and is still inherent in the oil and gas industry and it occurs in all sector of the industry.

It can occur in the licensing stage – where government officials might be tempted to ask for kickbacks in the issuance and renewal of upstream petroleum licenses and leases. Also, as was widely reported, it has its deep roots in the downstream sector – oil subsidy scandal were serious graft was alleged to have occurred in fuel importation among others.

The Nigerian Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative

By Jibrin Abubakar

W

ednesday June 19, 2013 made it one year since Africa’s richest person, Aliko Dangote, assumed office as the 17th President of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE). His reinstatement followed an Appeal Court ruling in Lagos on June 15, 2012. One year into his tenure, market operators and shareholders are agreed that Dangote has not fared badly in steering the hitherto sinking ship out of tumultuous waves. Stocks that were moving southwards suddenly changed course as the bulls chased away rampaging bears from the country’s bourse.

When Dangote held his first meeting with the National Council of the Exchange on June 19, 2012, the NSE All-Share Index (ASI) was around 21, 184.58 basis points. Today it stands in the region of 39,737.79 basis points. Market operators say the one year astronomical leap in liquidity is unprecedented in the history of the bourse. The Exchange’s capitalization that was N6.7trillion has hit an all time high of N12.8trillion compared to a peak of N12.6trillion recorded in 2008. This was before the market nose-dived and the bubble started bursting.

Experts say Dangote’s team at the NSE did not achieve this feat on a platter of gold but through a careful selection of priorities and the introduction of innovative

South Africa and (NEITI) Morocco among expressed others. concern over The Africa the country’s Peoples Daily welcomes your letters, opinion articles, Progress Panel poor rating (APP), an in the recent text messages and ‘pictures of yesteryears.’ All written organization that global report contributions should be concise. Word limits: Letters portrays itself issued by - 150 words, Articles - 750 words. Please include your as possessing Revenue name and a valid location.

Letters to the Editor should be cutting edge Watch addressed to: policy analysis Institute skills and (RWI). The advocate for institutes The Editor, equitable and Resource Peoples Daily, 1st Floor Peace Plaza, sustainable Governance 35 Ajose Adeogun Street, Utako, Abuja. development Index (RGI) Email: opinion@peoplesdailyng.com in Africa, in its measures the recent report transparency SMS: 08134607052 “Equity in and Extractives”, also accountability decried the lack of accountability of the industry. The report ranked in the oil, gas and mining sector and transparency in the nation’s Nigeria 40th position out of 58 of 58 countries worldwide and national oil company. The report resource-rich countries across the finds that Nigeria fail to meet cited the numerous examples world. Furthermore, in the group satisfactory standards on how its of 17 sub-Saharan African countries of shortcomings in the revenue oil and gas resources are governed. administration of the NNPC that ranked in the RGI report, Nigeria The report went on to state that have been identified. The report lagged behind 10 countries, which opacity, corruption and weak further stated that, a task force set included Ghana, Liberia, Zambia, processes are the major problems

WRITE TO US

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The Africa Progress Panel (APP), an organization that portrays itself as possessing cutting edge policy analysis skills and advocate for equitable and sustainable development in Africa, in its recent report “Equity in Extractives”, also decried the lack of accountability and transparency in the nation’s national oil company. The report cited the numerous examples of shortcomings in the revenue administration of the NNPC that have been identified.

up by the government concluded that around US$6.8 billion had been lost between 2010 and 2012 as a result of corruption and mismanagement involving transfers of fuel subsidies. And that another government investigative body, identified losses of US$29 billion resulting from a natural gas pricing, along with missing payments connected to concessions and production-sharing arrangements.

It is no accident that at every stage of the petroleum industry reform process, including reports, findings and recommendations since the late 1990s, the common denominator has been corruption and mismanagement. It will be readily apparent from the foregoing, that the leadership and the very entities charged with policy implementation have collectively failed to recognize - or just as likely, abdicated responsibility for - this endemic and corrosive social problem. Many of the loopholes can be traced back to the NNPC. The NNPC has refused to issue its annual reports and provides limited information on its balance sheet. The lack of transparency and accountability has a pernicious effect on public financing. I humbly call on the honorable minister to immediately demand a full financial disclosure of all transaction entered into by NNPC after the fuel subsidy scandal and request a published mandatory quarterly financial report.

Felix.ayanruohlaw@gmail. com

Stock market: A 12-month scorecard ideas in tandem with global best practices. Not surprising. As a private sector man, Dangote’s cement company which controls about two thirds of the stock market’s capitalization is the biggest in Africa south of the Sahara. With the market now on an upward swing, economists say it is an indication that the economic fundamentals of the country are gradually being buoyed. One of Nigeria’s leading experts on stock market operations and Managing Director of APT Securities and Funds Limited, Mr. Kasimu Kurfi, was quoted as saying that the performance of market capitalization was due to the stocks of Dangote Cement Plc. He said that company alone controls about 30 per cent of the market capitalization.

On resumption of office, Dangote had assured investors when he said “I have no doubt that my tenure as the President of the NSE will be tough and challenging especially because of the global economic downturn, its effect on our economy and our capital market. However, I believe that these challenges will provide the opportunity for us to reposition our Stock Exchange and capital market to become the leading stock exchange in Africa for capital formation driven by

transparency, innovation, efficiency and liquidity.” The first thing he did on taking office was to set out a five-point plan to reverse the bearish trend of the stock market: transparency and improved governance of the market; improving the liquidity, turnover and size of the market; enhancing efficiency by ensuring clearer and updated rules; processes and procedures; provision of world class infrastructure and technology; massive capacity building of the staff of the Stock Exchange. A stock broker and Managing Director of Partnership Investment Company

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Limited Mr. Victor Ogienwonyi, said he had confidence in Dangote’s leadership because “he is a doer and not a talker.”

True, the capitalization and All Share Index has grown by about 80 per cent. The total value of transactions in stocks stood at N510.1bn at the end of the first quarter this year. The amount represents an increase of N152bn or 42.4 per cent over the N358.16bn recorded at the end of February 2012. The value of N510.1bn comprised both foreign portfolios and domestic investments. Market pundits say

True, the capitalization and All Share Index has grown by about 80 per cent.

The total value of transactions in stocks stood at N510.1bn at the end of the first quarter this year. The amount represents an increase of N152bn or 42.4 per cent over the N358.16bn recorded at the end of February 2012. The value of N510.1bn comprised both foreign portfolios and domestic investments.

the data reflects increased interest of investors who were participating only minimally before.

The Nigerian Exchange was among the best performing markets in 2012 and in the first quarter of 2013, observers say.

Having closed as the third best performing emerging market on the global scale with a growth of 34.5 per cent in 2012, the Nigerian bourse also recorded a growth of 13.4 per cent to occupy the first position in Africa in January this year. Kenya, which hitherto posted the best growth in 2012, positioned second at 8.3 per cent. Mauritius posted 4.1 per cent, while South Africa and Egypt ended the month with 2.8 per cent and 2.6 per cent respectively.

Experts attributed the rebound to the impressive reforms implemented by in the bourse.

Chief Executive Officer of Lambert Trust and Investment Company Limited, Mr. David Adonri, was quoted as saying that the NSE has undergone transformation from a mono product capital market to that of multiple products offering.

Even then, experts say, for the stock market to maintain its gains, the key actors-regulators and operators-must not rest on their oars.

Jibrin Abubakar via jibrinabu28@yahoo.com

PEOPLES DAILY, THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 2013

PAGE 15

Comment

Look who is ruling us

By Anthony A. Kila

T

hough those that are paid to represent and act on behalf of the citizens of this great country have decided to celebrate its democracy day last month, it is this week, of June of 12 that many of us continue to believe democracy should be celebrated and reflected upon. And though most of us still privately provide for our own electricity, pay for our children’s education, employ our security staff and go the extra miles to personally reassure international partners to do business with us, we still cannot ignore those ruling the country.

We are forced to acknowledge that there is a government in place when we have to slow down or even stop and park our cars on our generally damaged and badly patched roads because a convoy of cars, lead by annoying sirens is taking one public officer or another to heavens knows where.

We remember that there is a government in place when open our newspapers, turn on our TVs and we have to cringingly wade through the self-serving parochial insipid declarations of this or that Honourable or Excellency and their cohorts before getting to any form of useful or informative news item.

In the month they have chosen to celebrate and reflect upon democracy, those ruling this country have acted in such

indecorous ways and made such ridiculous declarations that tempt one to ask on which planet, in which century are these people living in? And to wonder if there is effectively something wrong with Nigeria and if it can ever be truly well with the country. But then again, there is nothing wrong with Nigeria, the only problem is leadership; those ruling the country are simply proving Chinua Achebe right when he insightfully noted that “There is nothing basically wrong with the Nigerian character. There is nothing wrong with the Nigerian land or climate or water or air or anything else.

The Nigerian problem is the unwillingness or inability of its leaders to rise to the responsibility, to the challenge of personal example, which is the hallmark of

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true leadership”.

Take the ruling governors, for example, a group of 36 men lavishly paid for managing the affairs of their states that contain about 160 million people and budgets worth billions and billons of naira, quite a role you would say. Well, these men could not get together to calmly and clearly elect a chairman for their own forum. No, they had to shout foul, accuse each other of rigging, generate debates about the difference between endorsement and vote, dissect loyalty, promise battle, end up into factions and even creating another parallel governors’ forum with its own office and website. These rulers should not be surprised nor complain, if tomorrow some people from their states seriously

consider these rulers as leaders and taking examples from their deeds, as followers should do, set up their own state and elect parallel Governors if for any reason their own candidate is not elected governor after elections.

What shall say we say of the ruling President of the federation and his team who, on their own democracy day, put us through a litany of achievements and reforms that most cannot follow because they have no electricity to watch the TV, that many cannot feel or see because it is not around them.

Someone needs to tell these rulers that politics at its basic level might be perception, but governance is reality. Governance is neither emotional nor psychological; let there be light and you will not need to explain it, just fix the roads and

What shall say we say of the ruling President of the federation and his team who, on their own democracy day, put us through a litany of achievements and reforms that most cannot follow because they have no electricity to watch the TV, that many cannot feel or see because it is not around them. Someone needs to tell these rulers that politics at its basic level might be perception, but governance is reality. Governance is neither emotional nor psychological; let there be light and you will not need to explain it, just fix the roads and you won’t need to say it.

you won’t need to say it. Lower interest rates for businesses, reduce their fiscal and bureaucratic encumbrance and watch them invest, expand and employ.

Not to be left out, the ruling party too has had to step into this on going national carnival of the absurd and pure embarrassment, the PDP and those ruling it came into the parade dancing to the tune of suspension. Suspend this, suspend that. Did it even occur to any of those ruling that party that they have never made headlines, let alone history for suspending or indeed taking any form of disciplinary action against their members for stealing, wasting or misusing public funds or even failing to implement the party’s manifesto. In that their newly found article 58 (a) to (z) of the PDP constitution so dear to the NWC, is there a part that says “Thou shall not steal or make sure you work hard”? The disagreements and confrontations of those ruling this country never seem to be on policy or ideology for the interest of their party, people or the country; they never seem to have serious debates about how to resolve one problem or another. They are just personal issues: who will be the next this or that? Who did not greet whom or did not respond to whose call or invitation? As we stepped into this People’s Democracy week, it was worth taking a look at who is ruling, at all levels, and ask if these are kinds of people we want there and if we believe they have what it takes to govern 160 million people in this age and time.

Anthony A. Kila is on LinkedIn.

Ribadu should address issues instead of throwing mud

By Adamu Yaro

R

eading Ribadu’s statement in response to the Presidency’s riposte about his hypocrisy, it is amusing that the irony of his political instability does not stare him in the face. Ribadu says “It is unfortunate that he (Mr. Abati) stands on crooked crutches of rehashed falsehoods fabricated by corrupt politicians prosecuted

by Mallam Nuhu Ribadu”. I am a bit confused here. Isn’t Bola Tinubu one of the “corrupt politicians” Ribadu talks about? Who is today serving Tinubu between Ribadu and Reuben Abati, President Goodluck Jonathan’s media spokesman?

Abati serves Nigeria by working for President Goodluck Jonathan while Nuhu Ribadu serves Bola Tinubu. I will now replay Ribadu’s past words concerning Tinubu.

Before 2007 Nuhu Ribadu said Bola Tinubu was “not fit to hold public office”. Today, Ribadu has turned to Tinubu’s lap dog.

Now Ribadu has the effrontery to say that rather than being accused of ingratitude he is the one who can make such a claim, “having been betrayed after his selfless service to the nation in the Petroleum Revenue Task Force committee.” What hogwash! He is so narcissistic that he is only

conscious of himself and has little capacity to remember what others have done for him. Was it not the same Ribadu who confessed in the Petroleum Revenue Task Force committee report that “The data used in this report was presented by various stakeholders who made submissions to the task force in the course of our assignment on various dates which have been disclosed in relevant sections of the report. Due to the time frame of the assignment, some of the data used could not be INDEPENDENTLY VERIFIED and the Task Force recommends that the Government

“

should conduct such necessary verifications and reconciliations”?

Ribadu betrayed his incompetence in that his committee was saddled with the task of unravelling what was stolen in the fuel subsidy regime and other petroleum industry related transactions and instead of doing that he signed a report containing what he acknowledged were unverified numbers and expected the president to act on it. Was it not precisely because the president wanted verified figures that he appointed the Committee?

Yet, because of his hunger for the

media spotlight, Ribadu presented a haphazard report and rejected Steve Oronsanye’s advise to request for more time to do a proper job.

And now Ribadu expects gratitude for doing a shoddy job and refuses to give gratitude to the president who returned him from exile, reversed his dismissal from the police and restored his full rank of Assistant Inspector General of Police with full entitlements.

Talk about biting the fingers that fed you. From his statement, it is clear that Nuhu Ribadu wants to muddy the waters and divert attention from the real issues by

He is so narcissistic that he is only conscious of himself and has little capacity to remember what others have done for him. Was it not the same Ribadu who confessed in the Petroleum Revenue Task Force committee report that “The data used in this report was presented by various stakeholders who made submissions to the task force in the course of our assignment on various dates which have been disclosed in relevant sections of the report. Due to the time frame of the assignment, some of the data used could not be INDEPENDENTLY VERIFIED and the Task Force recommends that the Government should conduct such necessary verifications and reconciliations”?

insulting Reuben Abati. So in order to force him to address issues, I will attempt to reduce them to two questions: Did you or did you not once say former governor of Lagos state, Chief Bola Tinubu, was a corrupt politician? Did you or did you not turn around to become Tinubu’s lackey and presidential candidate of his choosing?

Ribadu has turned out to be a tragic hero, a man in whom the youths of Nigeria once placed so much hope but who has turned out to be, as his former friend Elrufai wrote in his book the Accidental Public Servant, a “typical policeman”! I can however understand Ribadu’s predicament. It is obvious that his political husband has decided to embrace polygamy and is thinking of marrying a new political wife who happens to be a general. It is understandable that the scorned wife that Ribadu has become will do everything to regain the attention of the political husband.

I won’t begrudge Ribadu his attention seeking. He is entitled to that as he is entitled to his opinion.

But he is not entitled to the facts.

Facts are sacred and the fact is that Ribadu is now eternally attached to a man he once publicly called a crook.

Yaro Adamu resides in Abuja, FCT.

PEOPLES DAILY, THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 2013

PAGE 17

Metro

Nyanya: Invasion of green area by traders Feature

By Stanley Onyekwere

W

ith the commencement of the total restriction on minibuses popularly referred to as Aaraba buses from operating in Abuja city centre, residents and commuters in the FCT and its environs are now faced with reality of the new transport policy.

Prior to the reintroduction of the policy, after its aborted introduction early this year, the FCT administration while allaying palpable fears regarding the policy, also promised and assured relevant stakeholders in the sector, including concerned residents, of adequate, efficient and affordable high capacity buses to carter for the transport need of the territory.

The new policy, restraining mini-buses operations to specified feeder routes outside city limits and in the satellite towns, was delayed from August 1, 2012 following increasing criticism from the operators in the territory.

But with expected obvious distortions on the routine flow of activities in these places, people now get swallowed up in the ensuing confusion and chaotic hard realities as part of the fall outs of the much talked about novel transport policy.

Undoubtedly, one of such initial fallouts of the policy is the displacement of seasonal traders of the popular NyanyaWednesday market, as the FCT administration converted the market space used by the traders for their weekly trading activities as the terminus for the mini buses, which now converged there to convey commuters coming into the city centre.

As a result dislodged traders of the market now displays their wares in every available space as the site they hitherto traded in had been turned into parking space by these high capacity buses.

When Peoples Daily visited area, yesterday, displaced traders were spotted displaying

An overview of the market their wares under a make shift umbrella tents, in a nearby green area, also serving as a football field to the locals, and even extending to the NyanyaKeffi Express Way. The development which many commuters and residents alike decried would result in more gridlock and even the degrading of the field which remains the only green area in Nyanya.

A resident, James Okon, who was particularly visibly angry over the development, noted that it would only compound the hardship emanation from gridlock in the area.

“With these traders every Wednesday turning the only green space in the area into market place, what will have is more than gridlock, as gradually the whole place will besiege by these people.

A section of the field covered by traders

He wondered why the traders were allowed to be having a free day since they were forced out of the other side of the open space, where they used for their trading activities settle in the field at first, without the authorities doing nothing to move them away.

Aside the issue of gridlock, many keen observers are concerned that it was only a matter of time before the only surviving green area in the place, to be defaced with trash and refuse as it was the other side of the Nyanya Bridge.

However, it is the hope of those who expressed displeasure with the development that the relevant authorities will step up fast with every sense of urgency required to remedy the situation.

“There is no way that these traders would restrict their activities within the limited field

space; and given the proximity of the place to the expressway, it is only logical that within shortest time they will flood everywhere.

He said, for sanity and orderliness to be upheld around the area, there is the need for displaced traders to relocate to elsewhere or be forced to take their trade elsewhere.

A commuter, Ike Manu, who described the development as sad and bad news to already battered commuters plying the routes, said it portends to the well welfare of the hapless masses, because of the likelihood of it causing more difficulties for commuters around the area.

However, most of the traders are of the view that government should have at least provided them with a place to transfer their business activities to before displacing them.

Also some believe that what

has happened to them is like the traders are now paying for the sins of the banned commercial operators, who were accused of constituting a nuisance.

One of the traders, Malam Adamu Isah, who sells fruits, complained that with the conversion of their former place to mini bus park, they had no alternative to fall on, for their business activities, so had to move into the field.

“For many of us, this is the only source of generating income for our survival and catering for our families and children, but since the commuter buses have taken over the other place without the provision of somewhere else to carry out our activities.

“So, the governments ought to assist and relocate us to a more suitable environment because we are aware of the dangers associated with our presence in the area, he stressed.

Similarly, a second hand wear dealer, Olu Temi, also decried their dislodgement by the commencement of the new transport policy by the FCT administration without taking into consideration what the impact of the policy on the ordinary man trying to do something to survive.

“I don’t understand why it is the poor who are made to pay the bitter price for the any reform policy in the country? As we are always treated like trash by the sane people who claim to be working for our interest, because without thinking about us they have already made the plan on who takes over the field.

While some suggested that the government should relocate the seasonal traders to a more appropriate place, others were of the view that they are made to move into the designated place for trading activities, in the area.

PEOPLES DAILY, THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 2013

PAGE 16

Mini buses ban: NURTW leadership debunks planned protest

By Halima Mohammed

T

he chairman FCT chapter of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NUTRW), Alhaji Isah Dahiru has denied speculations that members of the union are planning to stage a protest in the territory following the recent ban on mini buses, popularly called Araba, in the city centres.

Dahiru said the union has no constitutional right to fight government policy that will impact positively on FCT residents.

He made this point while fielding questions from journalists shortly after the unions meeting.

He therefore enjoined members to support the new transport policy, in line with the directives by the FCT minister, Senator Bala Mohammed.

Traditional musicians entertaining guests, during a public function, on Monday at Radio House, in Abuja.

Photo: Justin Imo-Owo

AEBP set to flush out miscreants, destitute

Four suspected bag snatchers nabbed near central mosque T

By Halima Mohammed

T

he Abuja Environmental Protection Board (AEPB) yesterday arrested four persons suspected to be members of a notorious bag snatchers syndicate, laying siege on unsuspecting passers-by along the Abuja national mosque area, in the central business district of the FCT. They are Ayuba Kiya, Lawrence Mboro, Yusuf Adamu and Emmanuel Tunde.

Their arrest yesterday at about 10:30 am happened when AEPB enforcement team stormed the area, following the receipt of series

of complaints from the public on the nefarious activities of the syndicate around the area.

Speaking on the development, the Head of Department (HOD), Monitoring and enforcement of the board, Kaka Ali, said the suspects on citing his men ran into a nearby plantation where they were followed and arrested in the process.

He said the four men apprehended are part of gang, who are majorly young boys pretend to beg for alms from the public, and in the process attack and snatch bags from innocent passer-by’s especially ladies, and disappearing

into a plantation close to the mosque.

“We have been having series of complaints from the public around the national mosque there were series of incidences of small boys who are snatching peoples bags and attacking innocent passer-by’s, and incidentally today we apprehended four of them.

“There is a stream in plantation, so what they do is they snatch your bag or they happen to collect something from a passer-by they run into the place; but unfortunately for them we followed them and happily were able to arrest four of them.

“People have to be very visible

and very careful about their movement especially around the mosque and they shouldn’t think these people are just soliciting for money or something because they are in a way trying to distract you and pick something from your car or snatch something from you and run into the stream.

“This is a social problem that has to be everybody and everybody has to be concerned they need serious rehabilitation.

However, the HOD said the board would hand over the suspects to the police , for further investigation into their involvement in the crime and prosecution.

Fadama: FCTA restates commitment to empower women, youth

T

he Minister of State for FCT, Ms. Olajumoke Akinjide, has restated the administration’s commitment to empower women and youth through Fadama III projects.

Akinjide made this point when she visited the FCT Fadama III project in Kwali Area Council.

She said that her visit was part of a deliberate strategy’’ by the administration to monitor activities and track performance, to ensure delivery of quality services.

The minister said the administration would continue to accord priority attention to issues of women and youths as a panacea to the problems of poverty and unemployment which was more

prevalent among the group.

“It is indeed our desire to ensure that our teeming rural poor are empowered in order to arrest the problem of rural urban migration.’’

Akinjide said that agriculture was an essential platform to create wealth in the country, adding: “agriculture is the future of this country, that is what we started with and that is what we are going back to.’’

Earlier, the Secretary, Agriculture and Rural Development Secretariat (ARDS), Mrs Ovaldi Madayi, said that the project had achieved significant success since its inception in June 2009.

Madayi said the project had disbursed about N425.38 million to Fadama Community Associations

(FCAs) and Fadama User Groups (FUGs) to implement their chosen sub- projects.

According to her, 1,072 Fadama User Groups have been formed as cooperative entities with total membership strength of 15,718 individuals.

This, she said, had facilitated the preparation of 85 local development plans and implemented 516 subprojects across the FCT. Madayi said that under the input support component, 314 groups had accessed assorted agricultural inputs such as seeds, fingerlings, day-old chicks, fertilisers and agro chemicals.

She further said that more than 75 per cent of the project was channelled to support women and

youth, adding that about 5,000 direct jobs were also created through the project.

One of the beneficiaries, Mrs Grace Matthew, who spoke to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), said the project had improved her standard of living.

Matthew said that with the modern equipment, the quality of their produce (garri) had improved.

She, however, requested that road leading to the cassava processing mills be constructed, facilitate easy access to the area.

NAN reports that the Ayebodo Fadama Community Association (Bukpe Village) consisting of 130 members in the cassava producing site, were mainly women. (NAN)

he Abuja Environmental Protection Agency (AEBP) has said the agency is determined to rid the city centre of miscreants and destitute.

The AEBP Public Relation Officer, Mr Joe Ukairo, made this known in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).

According to him, the miscreants constitute themselves into nuisance in the city centre.

“What we have resolved was to use a biometrics and photographic methods because it is becoming difficult to rid them from the city centre.

“It has helped us to reduce the number of hawkers and beggars within the city centre, but this only cannot help us out; as we need the help of the stakeholders and individuals as well as non-governmental organisations to help do justice to this embarrassing development,’’ he said.

Ukairo also identified religion as one of the impediments in ridding the city centre of the miscreants, most especially on Fridays.

“Most of them use mosque as shield to evade arrest because they pretend as if have come to mosque to pray.

“If we make move to arrest them, they will run into the mosque for cover”, he explained.

Ukairo said that the agency had a social development centre within Bwari Area Council in Abuja that was created for beggars to undergo different vocational trainings. ``Although we are trying our best to take this hawkers and beggars off the city centre, while the immigrants among them will be sent back to their countries.

(NAN)

PEOPLES DAILY, THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 2013

PAGE 18

Metro

Labourer to spend 90 days in prison for absconding from custody

A

n Abuja Senior Magistrates’ Court yesterday sentenced one Musa Abdullahi, 22, to 90 days imprisonment for escaping from police custody.

Abdullahi was sentenced by the Senior Magistrate, Mr. Zubairu Mohammed, after he pleaded guilty to a one-count charge of escaping from the Life Camp Police Station.

Mohammed, however, gave the convict an option of N2, 000 fine.

“There is need to punish offenders to deter others from committing crimes.

“The court is sentencing you after listening to your plea for leniency. The sentence is also based on the fact that you are a first time offender,’’ he said.

Earlier, the police prosecutor, Cpl. Simon Emmanuel, had told the court that the 22-year-old convict, who lives in Jabi Garage Abuja, was arrested on June 14 for alleged joint act, theft and causing hurt on one Samaila Jibrin of Daki–Biyu village, Abuja.

He said that while the convict was detained in the police cell, pending investigations, he escaped but was later re-arrested.

Theft: Store keeper bags 9 months imprisonment

O

ne Joseph Oyobo, 25, of Ancient Douglas Estate, Abuja, was yesterday sentenced to nine months imprisonment by an Abuja Grade 2 Area Court in Kado, for joint act and theft.

Oyobo conspired with two others, now at large and stole 155 bags of cement valued at N263, 500.

He pleaded guilty to the two counts and begged for leniency An option of N10, 000 fine was levied on him by The presiding judge, Ahmed Ado which must be paid on or before July 10.

Ado also ordered the convict to pay N263, 500 in compensation, to the complainant because he could not provide the bags of cement he stole.

Ado also ordered him to give a written undertaking that he would pay the compensation.

Earlier, police prosecutor Sani Yakubu told the court that Mr Sunday Eze of block 32, shop 350, Wuse Market, Abuja, reported the matter to Wuye Police Station on May 9.

He said the complainant employed Oyobo as a store keeper in his site.

Yakubu said the Oyobo was arrested and he confessed to the crime, adding that the offence contravenes the provision of sections 79 and 287 of the Penal Code.

INSIDE FCT COURTS

Guard docked over attempt to steal from church

O

ne Gabriel Ogebe, 25, was, arraigned by the police before a Wuse Zone 2 Senior Magistrates’ Court, for allegedly hiding on top of the roof of a church in an attempt to steal.

The police prosecutor, Cpl. Emmanuel Adiku, informed the court that the accused is a resident of Jenta in Mangu Local Government Area of Plateau, and works as a security guard.

According to Adiku, one Chike Solomon of Holy Trinity Church, Maitama, Abuja, reported the accused at the Maitama Police Station on June 13.

He told the court that the accused criminally trespassed into the church and hid himself on top of the roof of the building with the intention to commit crime.

Adiku added that the accused was arrested by the security man on

duty.

He said the accused is charged with criminal trespass and attempt to commit an offence of theft, but he denied the charges.

The counsel to the accused, Mr Gabriel Egbule, applied for bail for his client, saying that he would not jump bail if obliged and would produce a reasonable surety.

The Senior Magistrate, Mrs. Grace Adebayo, granted the accused

Mobile tailor on the move, yesterday at Wuse Zone II, in Abuja.

bail in the sum of N100, 000 with two sureties in like sum.

She said the sureties must live within the jurisdiction of the court.

Adebayo added that one of the sureties must be a civil servant, while the other must have a fix business place in the FCT. Adebayo said that the sureties must also deposit an affidavit of means with the court, and adjourned the case to July 15 for hearing.

Photo: Mahmud Isa

Negligence lands two private guards in court

T

he police have arraigned two security guards, Ibrahim Indyeryo and Igba Jerry, in a Wuse Zone 2, Senior Magistrates’ Court for alleged negligent conduct.

The accused persons were attached to No 4, Alexandra Crescent, FCDA Quarters, Wuse 2, Abuja.

The Police Prosecutor, Mr Emmanuel Adiku, told the court that on June 15, at about 8.00

am, one Capt. Nehemiah Kwani, of the same address, reported the accused persons to the Maitama police station.

He said that Kwani had reported that, on that same day, at about 7.00am, the two accused were found to have neglected their duty and failed to safeguard the property in the premises.

According to him, their action encouraged unknown persons to trespass into the premises and

vandalised an Automatic Voltage Regulator (AVR) from the 22 KVA generating set in the premises.

He said that the vandalised AVR was valued at N50, 000.

The accused persons pleaded not guilty.

The Defence Counsel, Mr Gabriel Egbule, however, applied for bail for the accused persons.

He said that his clients would not jump bail and would avail themselves for their trial.

The Senior Magistrate, Mrs Simisola Adeniyi, granted the accused persons bail in the sum of N150, 000 each with two reasonable sureties each in the like sum.

She added that the sureties shall be resident within the jurisdiction of the court and both addresses must be verified by the registrar.

Adeniyi adjourned the case to July 17 for hearing. (NAN)

Cheating: Sales boy bags 7 months imprisonment

A

23-year-old man, Francis Yakubu of Gishiri Village was yesterday convicted and sentenced by an Abuja Grade 2 Area Court in Kado to seven months imprisonment, for criminal breach of trust and cheating.

Yakubu was tried on a two count-charge after pleading

guilty to the charges.

The Judge, Mr Ahmed Ado, who convicted him, however, gave him an option of N5, 000 fines.

Ado ordered that the convict must pay the amount before July 6.

He also ordered the convict to pay N55, 000 as compensation

to the complainant for the money he stole.

Earlier, the police prosecutor, Insp. Abdullahi Alhassan, told the court that Fatima Abubakar of Gishiri Village, Abuja, reported the matter to Gishiri Police Station on May 26.

Alhassan said the convict

was entrusted with the complainant’s provision shop where he stole N55, 000 out of the sales he made.

He said the convict was arrested and he confessed to the crime The convict, who pleaded for leniency, promised to be of good behaviour.

PEOPLES DAILY, THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 2013

PAGE 19

INSIDE

LCCI faults scrapping of government agencies

- Pg 20

SON warns manufacturers against substandard - Pg 21 products L-R: DG, BPE, Benjamin E. Dikki, Deputy Chairman, Senate Committee on Privatization; Senator Chris Ngige, Minister of State for Power; Hajia Zainab Ibrahim-Kuchi, Benue state governor and Chairman of the occasion; Gabriel Suswam and his wife, Yemisi Suswam; MD, NDPHC, Mr. James Olotu, and, Counsular-General, Nigeria High Commission, Hong Kong, Mrs. Mary Okon at a presentation to prospective investors in Hong Kong at a road show jointly organised by the NDPHC and the BPE.

NIPP: Shortlisted bidders emerge August

By Abdulwahab Isa

T

he Director-General of the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), Mr. Benjamin Ezra Dikki, said shortlisted bidders for the BPE/Niger Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHC) joint sale transaction process for the sale of 10 National Integrated Power Project (NIPP) power plants will be announced on the 8th of August 2013.

A press statement issued by the BPE, signed by BPE’s Head, Public Communications, Mr. Chigbo Anichebe quoted PBE DG given the assurance in a presentation to prospective investors in Hong Kong at a road show jointly organised by the NDPHC and the BPE. Dikki stated that the sale of the power plants falls within the context of President Goodluck Jonathan’s Transformation Agenda, which seeks to, among other things, create a conducive atmosphere for private capital inflows.

He noted that besides

power, the transport and housing sectors, development finance institutions and the Abuja Commodities and Stock Exchange that will introduce the warehouse receipt trading system, are also great investment opportunities awaiting interested local and international investors.

Dikki said that BPE and NDPHC are partners in the joint sale transaction process for the sale of the 10 power plants. He added that BPE is legally

The DG extolled that the BPE will add significant value to the process using its vast experience in privatization of assets in Nigeria spanning nearly 500 transactions in its 25 year history. The most recent, he noted, were the sale of the 15 Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) successor companies.

Dikki advised prospective bidders to be aware of some of the observed lapses by prospective bidders in the previous bid processes. They involve bids failing to substantially comply w i t h t h e

BPE is legally authorized to sell Federal Government’s 47% shares, while NDPHC has the authorization of the States and local government councils to sell 53% of the 80% shares on offer. authorized to sell Federal Government’s 47% shares, while NDPHC has the authorization of the States and local government councils to sell 53% of the 80% shares on offer.

Requests for Proposal (RFP), failure to meet the threshold of required tangible net worth, failure to submit bid bonds, failure to submit audited accounts, failure to submit bids on time, among others.

He noted that the intension of the Expressions of Interest (EOI) process for the sale of the10 power plants was meant to improve on the rigorous requirements of the PHCN successor companies’ privatization transactions.

He warned that: “It is critical that all interested parties/ potential investors go through the EOI guideline document”.

He reiterated to the potential investors that the deadline for the submission of expressions of interest remains 19th of July 2013, warning that the date would not be extended.

CBN

Exchange Rates

as at 17th June, 2013 Selling Buying

$

154.75

155.75

€

242.61

243.82

£

207.38

208.72

41.26

41.53

Riyal

Parallel Rates Buying

Selling

$

157.50

158.40

€

250

253.00

£

206.00

210.00

Riyal

43.00

45.00

MANAGEMENT TIP OF THE DAY look at how many times “and” and Go ahead and “but” begin sentences in high-quality prose. As sentence-starters, these break some words keep readers following a train of thought and are more colloquial grammar rules than “additionally” or “however.”

W

hen it comes to business writing, some people feel paralyzed by grammar. But it’s important to distinguish between the rules that help writing and those that hinder it. There are some outdated “rules” that grammarians have long dismissed as ill-founded and unnecessary.

For example, you may have been told in school never to begin a sentence with a conjunction. But

It’s also acceptable to end a sentence with a preposition.

A sentence with a terminal preposition may sound far more natural than the same sentence forced into avoiding one. “What will the new product be used for?” sounds much better than “For what purpose will the new product be used?”

Source: Harvard Business Review

PAGE 20

Commerce&Industry Company News

FBN Holdings Plc

F

BN Holdings Plc said it will continue to push top line growth across its group with an emphasis on customer acquisition, high growth products and segments.

It also said it will drive cost efficiency by continuing to leverage shared distribution platforms across the group; accelerating the deployment and usage of alternative delivery channels; and maintaining a staffing structure that is appropriate for its business.

FBN Holdings Managing Director, Bello Maccido disclosed this last Thursday during the “facts behind the figures” presentation at the Nigerian Stock Exchange

Total Nigeria Plc

T

he 2012 financials of Total Nigeria Plc presented to shareholders at the company’s 35th Annual General Meeting (AGM) held Friday in Lagos are indicative of the board and management commitment to growing shareholders values irrespective of operating challenges.

In its financial year ended December 31, 2012, Total Nigeria Plc recorded revenue increase from N173.95billion in 2011 to N217.84billion.

Its market share rose to 11.4 percent from 10.3 percent.

Profit After Tax (PAT) increased from N3.81billion to N4.67billion (22 percent higher than the preceding year).

Etisalat

E

tisalat Nigeria, has entered into a deal with Techno a telephone company in other to launch a new Android Smartphone, Tecno Phantom A in the market.

Mr. Lucas Dada, director of Products and Services, Etisalat Nigeria, said that the deal is to provide customers with Tecno products at a very cheap price with reliable internet build, adding that the product is mostly for African consumptions.

According to him, for every purchase of the new Phantom A android Smartphone, Etisalat will offer 12-month free data bundle on its EasyBlaze platform.

PEOPLES DAILY, THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 2013

How we are creating Jobs in Gombe – Commissioner Stories by Ayodele Samuel, Lagos

• state gets 3bn BOI Fund

ombe state commissioner for Trade and Industry, Hamza Sule has given insight on how the state is creating jobs and making the state conducive for Small and Medium-scale Enterprises (SMEs).

Speaking with news men in Lagos, Hamza said the Bank of Industry (BOI) has granted the State government N3 billion in support of the state’s entrepreneur businesses.

Giving insight into the partnership between Bank of Industry and the state, Sule said BOI had disbursed N3 billion to Small and Mediumscale Enterprises (SMEs) under the second phase of trade intervention aimed at providing more funds for entrepreneurs in the state.

He said that Governor Ibrahim Hassan Dankwambo had directed that the fund is to be disbursed as soft and affordable loans to SMEs in the state, to invest in value addition activities in the agro-allied and mineral sectors of the state’s economy.

He recalled that the state

government had two years ago signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with BOI in order to reposition the economic fortunes of the state.

This, according to him, led to the creation of a “Matching Fund” of N1 billion through a joint contribution of N500 million each by the state government and BOI to SMEs engaged in value addition activities in fertilizer blending, groundnut oil processing rice processing, poultry feeds processing, fish feeds processing and tomato processing.

He said the scheme has generated hundreds of jobs through cooperative societies and the SMEs, adding that 1,380 jobs have been created by 39 cooperative societies while it is envisaged that by the time all the 133 cooperative societies are visited, more than 3,000 new jobs would have been created.

He said the state government has provided the counterpart funding interest free, provided technical support to the cooperatives, provided a

G

transparent process of selection of beneficiaries based purely on merit, creation of an industrial cluster for rice processors and ground nut oil millers and the approval of more clusters due to huge demand while BOI provided technical expertise in handling the processes of selection and disbursement to beneficiaries “BOI have also provided the counterpart funding, as well as provided technical support to the beneficiaries. With the achievement of the above milestones, BOI upgraded the facility from N1billion to N3 billion which Gombe state graciously accepted. The next phase is just about to commence and huge benefits are expected to be gained by the beneficiaries.

Higher sums (above N10million) will be disbursed in this phase and some beneficiaries of phase 1 who are found to be worthy shall be considered also.”

He further said government has approved the setting up of new clusters and as a result of this, there is also an overriding

Gombe state commissioner for Trade and Industry, Hamza Sule need for more training.

He also said in the first quarter of this year, BOI had approved N791 million for 133 cooperative societies engaged in the agriculture and solid minerals value chain. MSMEs engaged in rice processing, groundnut oil extraction, feed mills, furniture making, confectionaries, cosmetics, meat processing, fertilizer making, etc benefitted from the facility.

SMEDAN repositions SMEs for economic development

D

irector-General of the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria, (SMEDAN), Alhaji Bature Umar Masari has said the agency had concluded plans to reposition the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) sector to enhance economic development in the country.

Masari said that the agency was committed to achieving its mandate of promoting and developing the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) sector in Nigeria.

SMEDAN, in a statement signed by the Assistant Chief Information Officer, Ibrahim Mohamed, said the agency had recently sent 22 of its staff for 10 days capacity building training programme in India.

Masari, while addressing the staff at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Lagos, explained that the training was part of the initiatives to reposition the SMEs sector.

According to Masari, the training was initiated by the agency in collaboration with

the international centre for entrepreneurship and career development in Ahmedabab of Gujurat, India to equip the workforce.

He charged the staff to be good ambassadors of the country, saying “there are lots of programmes to be implemented by the agency and if our workforce is not well equipped; the agency may not achieve its target”.

Masari added their study tour abroad was mainly to build their capacity so as to improve on service delivery, urging

them concentrate on their lectures and learn fast from the study tour. Responding, the leader of the delegation, who is also a Director in the Planning Department, Alhaji Shehu Sada, thanked the director-general for ensuring the actualisation of the trip. Sada pledged the delegation’s commitment to the development of SMEs in Nigeria. “We promise to be good ambassadors of the agency and the nation, we will ensure that the knowledge acquired is used for the development of the SMEs in Nigeria’’, he said.

LCCI faults scrapping of government agencies

T

he Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI), yesterday appealed to the Federal government to eradicate corruption in government agencies rather than scrap them.

The appeal was made by chamber’s Director-General, Mr. Muda Yusuf during an interactive section with press men in Lagos.

Yusuf noted that, the Federal Government could save more funds by eradicating corruption in its agencies.

“The bigger issue for government to worry about is corruption. I believe that more savings could be made

Director-General, LCCI, Mr. Muda Yusuf

from curbing corruption and leakages in government than rationalizing the agencies.

“Much of the personnel costs posted in the budgets are bloated; there are profound leakages in overhead expenses of many these agencies.

“Non-remittance of funds to the federation accounts coupled with huge remunerations of political office holder is a high level of corruption,” he said.

According to Yusuf, the discovery of 46,000 ghost workers in government ministries and agencies as well as a resulting savings of N110 billion is an evidence that corruption abounds in those agencies.

“The same scenario is playing out with the pension administration.

The phenomenon of ghost pensioners is widespread in public service, the recent pension scam is a good example”, he said.

Yusuf added that there was need to create a balance between the need to cut governance cost and the adverse social consequences of escalating unemployment in the country.

“In governance, social outcomes are as important as economic considerations in the choice of policy. The government should however try to minimize job losses, as much as possible”, he stated.

PEOPLES DAILY, THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 2013

PAGE 21

Economy

SON warns manufacturers against sub-standard products From Olanrewaju Lawal, Ilorin

T

he Director-General of Standards Organisation of Nigeria, (SON) Dr. Joseph Odumodu, has warned Manufacturers in Nigeria against production of sub-standard products in the country.

Odumodu said the agency would not tolerance any sub-standard products in the country as way to ensure healthy consumption among the peo-

ple before the end of this year.

The SON DGO warned manufacturers across the country to endeavour to get all their products registered with MANCAP stressing that the agency are committed to ensure sanity in the manufacturing sector.

Odumodu, who stated this in Ilorin while presenting a re-validation certificate to Ayo-Ayodele pharmaceutical industry on Tuesday said “among the over 400 industries in Kwara state,

I am happy to inform you that AyoAyodele is outstanding among all.”

Represented by the State Head SON, Kwara State, Mr. Musbau Popoola, the DG urged Nigerians to always watch out for the NIS mark which indicates the authenticity of both consumable and non-consumable products in the market before use.

While congratulating the entire management and staff of Ayo-Ayodele for the efforts which earned the

firm the re-validation award by SON, Odumodu urged the recipient to continue to meet the laid down rules of the agency.

“This award you are receiving today is worth celebrating and at the same time, it is a big challenge towards attaining greater heights in line with the standards in our operations. We are going to put Ayo-Ayodele under a one-year surveillance after which the NIS mark award

would be granted based on excellent performance”, he said.

In his response, the Chairman/ Chief Executive Officer, Ayo-Ayodele Pharmaceutical industry, Hon. Ayodele Shittu commended the DG for finding the company worthy of the award and assured that the honour would not only be celebrated rather it always serve as a searchlight towards the growth of the nation at large.

FG plans road show ahead of N160bn Eurobond, timetable shows

N

igeria is planning a oneweek Road Show to Britain, Germany and the United States from June 19 with the bookrunners for its $1 billion (N 160 bn) Eurobond, with a view to issuing it this year, a timetable for the trip showed on Tuesday.

The timetable, forwarded to Reuters in an e-mail by a banking source close to the deal, showed that the meetings will be led by finance minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, and other senior government officials from the debt office.

In May it appointed Deutsche Bank and Citigroup to lead manage the bond.

The FG issued a debut $500 million 10-yearEurobond two years ago, which was 2-1/2 times oversubscribed, with investors spanning 18 countries from Europe, the Unit-

L-R: Chief Executive Officer, First City Monument Bank Plc, Mr Ladi Balogun, Chairman, Dr. Jonathan Long, Company Secretary, Mrs Olajumoke Bakare, and Founder, Otunba Michael Balogun, during the 30th Annual General Meeting of the bank, yesterday in Lagos.

Photo: NAN

New broadband policy may earn Nigeria N600bn

By Chris Alu

T

he recent approval of a national broadband policy

by President Goodluck Jonathan has opened the door for further investments in Nigeria’s vibrant telecommunications industry and may have a direct revenue impact of N600 billion by 2016, experts have said.

This, according to analysts, would assist in moving available bandwidth from undersea cables across the length and breadth of the country.

Private investment, including Foreign Direct Investments (FDIs) in Nigeria’s telecoms sector had increased by 38.8 percent in three years.

The industry’s FDI, which stood at $18 billion in 2009, grew significantly to reach $25 billion in 2012. Expectations are that with the new policy, this figure would increase over the next three years. “The new policy will encourage further investments in the telecoms industry.

The GSMA, a global body representing the interest of mobile network operators, had earlier predicted that Nigeria’s broadband market

would have a direct revenue impact of N600 billion by 2016.

This, according to the body, is only if the Federal Government can create the needed enabling environment.

According to observers, government’s decision to approve the policy is indeed a positive development, in view of the recent proclamation by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) that every country should have a broadband policy by 2015.

“Jobs will be created and young people can feed on their intellectual property (IP).

“Small businesses will spring up across the country. Creative people will come up with new solutions that would take Internet services to the hinterland.

“Government can generate huge revenue from taxing new businesses that would spring up as a result of improved internet connectivity”, , senior director, high communications, Accenture Nigeria, Usen Udoh said.

Since the liberalisation of the telecoms sector in 2001, government

has generated over N300 billion from spectrum licensing, making it a major revenue earner.

Expectations are that the policy would facilitate the aggressive build out of requisite distribution and lastmile infrastructure.

According to the World Bank, every 10 percent increase in broadband penetration in low and middle-income countries, accelerated growth by about 1.3 percentage points.

Broadband penetration in Nigeria remains low at 8 percent but the policy is projecting an 80 percent nationwide Internet coverage by 2018. The new broadband policy has drawn out an immediate strategic action plan, including transparent cost based price caps.

The broadband policy has also secured a four-year row waver agreement, as well as mandates the pre-installation of ducts when constructing new roads and buildings.

Others include the production of a GIS-based national fibre infrastructure map and introduction of low cost wireless and satellite solution, to hard to reach areas.

ed States, Asia and Africa.

Last month, the head of the debt office said Nigeria will increase the amount it borrows overseas to around 40 percent of all debt over the next three to five years, from 12 percent currently, to lower its funding costs.

The Debt Management Office (DMO)had said it wanted to raise the money before the end of September to help finance Nigeria’s power reforms.

It will begin the Road Show in London on Wednesday, June 19, going on to Germany on June 20, then New York and Boston, and ending in Los Angeles on June 26.

Nigeria, Africa’s top oil producer, has a credit rating of BB- with a stable outlook from both Fitch and Standard & Poors.

(Reuters)

•••may pay 6 pct yield for Eurobond - analysts

By Abdulwahab Isa with agency report

N

igeria will likely have to pay around 6 percent for a 10-year maturity on its $1 billion Eurobond if it goes ahead with the issue after a debt meeting with investors next week, an analyst and a fund manager said yesterday.

Senior Nigerian government officials led by Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala started a one-week roadshow to Britain, Germany and the United States on Wednesday with book-runners for the Eurobond, with a view to issuing it this year.

The timing of the bond and its maturity have not been decided yet and will depend on the market, a London-based fund manager who attended the roadshow told Reuters, asking not to be named.

Nigeria’s debt office had said it wanted to sell the bond by endSeptember and that it was increasing the amount it borrows overseas to lower funding costs.

Deutsche Bank and Citigroup are acting as book-runners for the Eurobond.

“If they went for a 10-year they could get one in the region of 6 percent,” said the fund manager, adding that Nigeria may hold

back on the sale to minimise the yield.

Yields on emerging market debt have risen sharply over the past six weeks owing to lingering concerns that major central banks may start to back off loose monetary policies that kept global markets awash with cash.

Yields on Nigeria’s 10-year domestic bond spiked nearly 3 percent this month while stocks and the naira tumbled last week, as foreign investors dumped frontier market assets.

“Nigeria is likely to pay a higher yield to launch its second Eurobond than the external funding cost that it would have secured a couple of months ago,” said Samir Gadio, emerging market strategist at Standard Bank.

However, Gadio said he thinks Nigeria will still be able to issue the new bond at a lower yield than the 7 percent its $500 million debut Eurobond fetched in January 2011.

That 10-year paper is now yielding 5.2 percent, up sharply from 4 percent on May 1 and 3.3 percent above U.S. Treasuries.

The U.S. Federal Reserve will meet on Wednesday and if it gives an indication that quantitative easing is to continue, that could support emerging markets and see bond yields fall. (Reuters)

PAGE 22

PEOPLES DAILY, THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 2013

Business Extra

Huawei launches world’s slimmest smartphone C hina’s Huawei unveiled its flagship smartphone, the Ascend P6, at its first standalone launch event on Tuesday, underlining its ambitions to compete with Apple and Samsung in the top tier of mobile technology.

The company says the device, at 6.18 mm thick, is the world’s slimmest. It has a 5 megapixel front-facing camera, designed for taking “selfies”, or pictures of the owner to be shared on social media networks, Reuters

reports.

The company picked the launch date - June 18 - to tie in with the smartphone’s dimensions.

The launch, at an arts venue in North London, takes a cue from Apple and Samsung, both of which have made new product announcements at high profile events for a number of years.

Huawei, which also makes

telecom networking gear, is looking to drive sales of its consumer devices, a sector in

which it has only had its own brand for about three years.

The company was the fourthlargest maker of smartphones in the first quarter of 2013, trailing LG Electronics and the

Nokia enhances messaging capability with ‘line’ app

F two

dominant brands

Apple a n d Samsung, according to analyst firm Gartner.

The top two sold more than 100 million units between them, while LG sold 10 million and Huawei 9 million, most of which were in its native China. The Ascend P6 uses Huawei’s customised version of Google’s Android operating system. Industry analyst Ben Wood at CCS Insight said that at the right price the Ascend P6 would attract buyers who had not considered Huawei before.

(BBCNews)

Safety tips when using earbuds / headphones

M

usic can be quite a distraction (especially if it is loud) and so you should avoid listening to it when concentration is important.

Examples include: operating any type of machinery, cycling, jogging, and other activities in a public place where hearing is a crucial sense.

Listening in the Car it may seem safe to listen in your car using earbuds or headphones, but you will significantly increase the chances of an accident if you do.

As well as using your eyes, you need to listen out for dangers while driving too.

If you want to listen to your digital music library in the car, then there are various car stereo accessories for the iPod, iPhone, MP3 Player, etc. Many cars these days have facilities to integrate MP3 players into their stereo systems by using wireless methods (like Bluetooth) or by physical connections (FM transmitters, USB ports for flash drives, etc).

Additionally, if your car has controls on its steering wheel

such as skip track, volume up/ down, etc., then try to use this method rather than using one hand to drive while operating your portable player.

Protect Your Hearing Prolonged exposure to loud music can permanently damage your hearing. However, there are safeguards you can employ to prevent hearing loss. Volumelimiting headphones for instance restrict how loud the volume can go regardless of how much volume an MP3 player outputs. This is a great solution if you are worried about your kids hearing and want to protect their ears at all times.

There are also apps available to download for various mobile operating systems (iOS, Android, etc.) that can be used to set volume limits on your device.

Avoid electric shock It may sound impossible but you can get an electric shock if you don’t use your portable correctly and in an appropriate place. It’s important to keep your portable away from sources of moisture that can

The MP3 player makes it possible to listen to music practically anywhere, but there are times when you should think about how you listen to music to stay safe. cause an electric shock. This includes: heavy rain, drinks, showers, bath tubs, sinks, etc.

It’s also important to use your portable in a safe way and not to expose its internals or damage the battery which can cause a short-circuit, fire, etc.

(About.com)

innish mobile phone maker, Nokia is providing another alternative to popular chat applications such as BBM (BlackBerry Messenger), Whatsapp, with the introduction of the ‘Line’ messaging app on its Asha and Lumia smartphones.

The new app is compatible with the Nokia Lumia devices and Asha full touch ranges including dual SIM: Asha 305, 308, 309, 310 and 311. Line is a messaging application for smartphones, built with lovable sticker characters.

For its first Asha app, ‘Line’ will unveil four varieties of default stickers - Moon, Cony, Brown and James - while enabling 1:1 chat and group chat.

The app, which is already huge in Asia and growing fast in the rest of the world, allows users to send instant messages to friends or groups, and send photos and stickers to each other for free. It also enables users to send messages to friends from a Personal Computers (PCs) to a mobile phone.

According to Marketing Manager, Nokia West Africa, Kesiena Ogbemi, the phone maker is focused on bringing continuous innovation to Asha and providing choice to Nokia’s valued– consumers, with a multitude of chat apps.

“LINE will take advantage of our Nokia Notifications API (Application Programming Interface) solution allowing consumers to receive chat notifications in the background, saving memory, data and battery consumption. A fantastic feature of the app is that it works on both single and dual SIM, providing choice across the Asha full touch range” said Ogbemi.

LINE, which boasts 130 million users in over 240 countries, also has other worthwhile features such as the ability to block certain users, turn off public ID and stop people from automatically adding you to their friends list.

Nokia’s collaboration with LINE was announced during this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. LINE’s partnership with Nokia on Asha smartphones is expected to serve as an critical platform for improving awareness on LINE’s global service and attracting new consumers from across the globe.

After making LINE publicly available in March this year, the two firms are now working towards delivering more capabilities for Asha consumers.

(CNET.com)

6 Secrets to better smartphone battery life Never dead again: Boost your smartphone battery life—whether it’s an iPhone, Android, or Blackberry—with these easy tips.

1. Beware of location services Many apps on iPhone and Android use “location services” to, say, tag status updates with GPS data (“We’re at Disney World!”) or find good deals in your immediate area. This can reduce battery life, so always keep track of it. You can tell if an app is using location services by looking out for a small arrow on the top of your menu bar.

2. Watch for push notifications How much battery life is drained by push notifications—those app-specific messages that pop up on your lock screen from time to time? That’s up for debate, but consider this: Each time your phone receives a notification from the network, it lights up and, depending on your settings, vibrates or makes a noise, too. That all takes a toll on your battery, especially if you receive a lot of updates. Toggle push notification options in your settings screen or within the apps themselves to remove all but the vital stuff.

3. Use ‘Airplane Mode’ Your iPhone or Android device will always try to connect to a cellular network when possible, which can put a strain on your battery if you’re in an area with limited (or no) service. Switching on Airplane Mode in Settings will stop this from happening—just know that you won’t be able to make or receive calls while it’s toggled on.

4. Lower the brightness Obvious but easy to neglect: The brighter your screen, the more battery it’s eating. Head over to your settings and turn down the lights to keep your phone running longer.

5. Turn Wi-Fi off Another simple-but-forgettable tip: If you’re not using your smartphone to connect to wireless internet, switch the Wi-Fi settings to “off.” This will stop your phone from sniffing out networks—even when you think it’s not—thereby saving resources.

6. Keep it cool If your phone’s Lithium-Ion battery gets too hot, it’ll discharge its energy faster, and could even degrade the battery’s maximum life over time. Don’t carry it in your pocket if you can avoid it (especially if your pants are tight), and never leave your device sitting in direct sunlight or in a toasty car. (Source:http://www.rd.com)

PEOPLES DAILY, THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 2013

PAGE 23

Stock Watch

Report as at Wednesday, June 19, 2013

PEOPLES DAILY, THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 2013

PAGE 24

PAGE 25

Special Report

Jordan: A Muslim state with a difference

By Folu Olamiti

H

ave you been to Dutse, the capital of Jigawa State? Or Tel Aviv in Israel? If your answer is in the affirmative, then, you are in a familiar terrain.

Then, hop into this flight and let’s cruise to Amman, the capital and the largest city in Jordan. Like Dutse, like Tel Aviv, Amman is a city of enthralling contrasts. A unique blend of the old and the new, this fascinating city is situated on a ring of hills located between the desert and the Jordan Valley. Its undulating topography, its unique architecture, its temperate climate and air of prosperity that swirls everywhere and its people’s hospitality are some of the delightful features that not only make your stay enjoyable but tempt you to want to come again and again.

For 10 days last month (precisely between May 17 and 27, 2013), I had the rare privilege of savouring the beauty and alluring ambience of this distinctive elegant city that accounts for half of the population of Jordan.

The privilege came my way courtesy of the International Press Institute, IPI, which invited us, its members, to congregate for its 62nd annual congress.

Although, it sits right in the midst of countries touched by the fire of revolution that swept through some Arab countries until recently, otherwise known as Arab Spring, Amman is unfazed. In contrast, the city wears a quiet mien and beckoning tranquility that could be likened to calm in the midst of storm. Majority of the citizens give thumbs up for their American/ British trained-monarch, King Abdullah II-who was crowned as King of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan on February 7, 1999, and has used his education and management acumen to transform the country and meet the yearning of his people.

Despite that, his people still daily call for democratic change. In a speech he delivered to over 1,000 media executives for the congress on May 20, 2013, Dr. Abdullah Ensour, Prime Minister of Jordan, underscored this point when he said: “The past few years have been momentous in our region. The Arab Spring has

king Abdullah II opened new opportunities, created new needs and added more urgency to old ones: Generating jobs, especially for the youths that form the majority of Jordan and this entire region’s population, developing transparent and inclusive governance.

Ending the injustice that the Palestinians have been suffering and that has kept the region in crisis. Mobilizing help, global help, for the Syrian refugee emergency; and for a political solution in Syria, to stop the bloodshed and maintain unity and territorial integrity.”

In case you didn’t know, Jordan shares borders with Lebanon, Syria and Israel, and, as it has been stated, it is built on a ring of as well as a plateau. Moving round the city, you are confronted with a scenic view of several mountains, rings of hills, and caves that were inhabited by people till the early 1970s.

If you are a Christian and familiar with the great Bible stories, you would see vividly how biblical sages, like Abraham, Esau, Jacob, Saul and David, had wandered among mountains and deserts. They lived in caves and had tents on dusty plains. Our tour guide told us that Amman was the capital of the Ammonites, popularly referred to, in the Old Testament, as Rabat-

Amman. One of the revealed sites is named Jericho.

At the start of the trip, I had left Nigeria on May 17 aboard Ethihad Airways for the 12 hour-flight to Jordan, with a stopover in Abu Dhabi, capital of United Arab Emirate (UAE). By the way, Ethihad Airways is the national carrier of United Arab Emirate, UAE, while Emirate Airline is privately owned.

In the aviation world, these two airlines are rated and proudly referred to as “5-Star Airlines”. Flying in and out of Nigeria two times daily, Ethihad Airways has many brand new planes on its fleet and boasts of one of the best in-flight services you can get anywhere in the world.

There was no waiting on my arrival at the imposing Queen Mia International Airport in Amman as a taxi was already waiting to take me to my hotel - Le Royal which also doubles as the venue for the IPI Congress.

As I settled down in my room on the 17th floor of the hotel, I intuitively peeped out of the window and was struck by the enthralling beauty of this city that seems to fall behind the mountains as the sun recoils into its shell at sunset. Apart from these, one cannot but be over awed by the culture of the locals who showered us, and other tourists, with

profuse affection at every point.

P o l i t i c a l administration At the head of Jordanian Administration is a king.

Known, in full, as the King of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, he is Jordan’s Head of State and monarch.

He serves as the head of the Jordanian monarchy.

According to Wikipedia, the Hashemite Dynasty of Jordan was established in 1921 by Abdulai bin Al-Gysseub Ali. He was succeeded, in 1951, by Talal, his eldest son (1902-1972). Fate, however, scuttled Talal’s reign, as he had to abdicate in 1952 due to ill health. He died in 1972. King Hussein became

the first crowned King of Jordan in 1953 at the age of 18. He died in 1999, and was succeeded by the incumbent monarch, King Abdullah II. He was crowned the second king in June 1999.

Culture and worship In Jordan, Muslims constitute 95 percent of the population while the rest are made up of Christians.

The working week begins from Sunday while Fridays and Saturdays are free days, strictly devoted to Islamic worship. The city virtually shuts down during these two days while almost all social and commercial activities grind to a halt. Jordan, like most countries in the Arab world, has its own peculiar charm and its own set of rules. And whether written or unwritten, cultural differences abound here too.

To avoid any problem, IPI, organizers of the congress, alerted and ran participants through some of the norms as follow: Greetings/salutations Man greeting man: Men usually greet one another using the phrase ‘Salaamu Alaikum’ (meaning: ‘peace be upon you’). The appropriate response is ‘Wa’alaikum assalamma’(meaning: ‘and peace be unto you’). This is accompanied by warm handshake (always use the right hand.) This will follow with a series of three to five kisses to the cheek.

Woman greeting woman: Women greet each other in a similar manner to men.

Handshakes (always use the right hand) and kisses are common.

Man greeting woman: Social interaction between non-related members of the opposite sex is not common.

Consequently, handshake is usually not included in the introduction. You will be

“

Despite the booming of guns and mortar fires in neighbouring countries, Jordan is a country enveloped in peace. It is a country with huge potentials that could make less-endowed countries turn grey with envy

able to tell if the person you are introduced to is leery of a handshake as they will fold their hand up and across their chest to let you know they do not intend to shake hands. Always wait for the woman to initiate, if at all.

It is important to note that when meeting a group of people, greetings start with the person on the right and continue on to the last person on the left.

Transportation Women do not sit in front seat of taxis. And it’s uncommon for an unrelated man and a woman to be seen alone together as this can lead to awkward or potentially dangerous situation. Other laws that are strongly enforced and can result in lengthy prison sentences. Please, note that preaching about any religion other than Islam or speaking negative words against the royal family and the king is a serious offence.

Tourism as oxygen Despite the booming of guns and mortar fires in neighbouring countries, Jordan is a country enveloped in peace. It is a country with huge potentials that could make less-endowed countries turn grey with envy. It is not an oil- producing country yet it taps enormous wealth from tourism to keep the economy afloat. Of course, Jordan does not allow anyone to monkey with taxation. It ensures that every citizen pays his or her tax. It boasts of a strong currency as one US Dollar exchanges for 70 Jordanian Cents. It is also worthy of note that crime rate is very low in the country, but advance fee fraud is nearing epidemic proportion.

The city called Petra After the congress, the organizers took us on a guided tour of an old ancient city called PETRA which the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, UNESCO, renamed The nine wonders of the world. The inhabitants, called Nabateans, were moved from their enclave and abode inside rocks and got resettled outside the enclave in modern estates and jawdropping buildings that had been furnished to the hilt with basic amenities. Little wonder UNESCO turned the once habited enclave into a money-spinning tourist destination for Jordan.

PETRA is a city carved in stones by Nabateans in 400

B.C. A huge rock formation that grew from the ground forms an alley way to PETRA city. Horses and carriages line up on both sides of the way, waiting to transport people who could not walk down and up the alley into PETRA. In other to savour the scenic scenes spread ahead of us, I decided to walk with my colleaguesMaida Wada, Publisher/ CEO of Peoples Daily, Kabiru Yusuf, Chairman/CEO Trust Newspapers and Garba Shehu, a prolific journalist and tested columnist. We also had in our company, Jim Clancy of the CNN and others.

Walking around PETRA helps to appreciate the awesome power of God, especially the wonderful manner He employed nature to protect the early inhabitants.

How they comfortably lived in caves, got water running from rocks saved in rock shaped cisterns to cook their meals with make-shift cooking utensils,

remains a marvel. On the average, our guide told us, more than 1,000 people visit the site daily.

Our entourage also visited other areas like the Dead Sea, the Baptismal Site and the Nebo Hill where Moses went and never returned. Over all, and from whichever perspective on looks at it, it was a soullifting and unforgettable historical experience.

Postscript I am not a public relations officer for Arik Airline and other private. Airlines but what I saw on this trip begets this brief comment.

I flew Ethihad Airline for the first time and was highly impressed by its services. I have flown many airlines, however, flying Ethihad was a thrilling experience. As I said earlier, it is the national carrier of UAE while Emirate Airline is privately owned.

But the two are blazing the trail in air travel. Both operate two flights everyday from Lagos. If these two airlines are flourishing from

UAE and are enjoying rocksolid support from their home-government, I can’t see any reason why the government of Nigeria should not support Arik Airline and a few other private airlines that are doing well to expand and succeed even more. Up till now, Nigeria is yet to have a national carrier, a luxury that smaller and struggling countries like Niger take for granted.

It’s time the incumbent Minister of Aviation, Mrs. Stella Oduah, translated her promise to assist private airlines into reality. Though I appreciate her vision to remodel and transform the nation’s airports, the situation is still far from what it should be. This country still needs another international airport and a national carrier.

Those who designed Murtala Mohammed and Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airports in Lagos and Abuja, respectively, were so myopic that they never thought of future expansion. See how

PETRA is a historical and archeological city in theSouthern Jordanian governorate of Ma’an

transformation of major airports in the world is being pursued on daily basis. Nigeria should join the bandwagon of getting a befitting International Airport. The cosmetic renovations going on in some of our airports are insufficient. Let the Federal Government find a big virgin land for this structure.

Jewelry shop You may be wondering what took me to a jewelry shop on my way to Nigeria on May 27, 2013. I had a sixhour stopover at Abudhabi International Airport.

To ward off boredom, I decided to go window-shopping. I got to a jewelry shop where a Nigerian lady asking for the price of a pin-sized gold earring attracted me.

The seller brought out his calculator to convert the price in local currency into dollars, and announced without looking up: US$8000.

Holy Moses!

Eight Thousand what? I became curious. And I paused to watch the lady’s reaction. I

thought she would hiss and walk away. How wrong was I! She calmly took out her Visa card and handed it over to the cashier who swiped it and smiled. Our young lady had paid US$8000 in a jiffy. I was dumbfounded. Involuntarily, I looked at my wallet, I had less than US$600!!

The point I’m making is this: If I didn’t witness that purchase, there was no way I could have cast a second at that lady, especially to see those earrings. Even if I looked at the earrings, there was one chance in a million that I would, on the surface, know that she was wearing a fortune. That means that our ladies that adorn themselves with gold jewelries are actually wearing a fortune on their fragile ears. Imagine what you can achieve with US$8000.

Imagine how far you can go in providing shelter for some poor people in your neighbourhood. Lord have mercy!!!

Folu Olamiti writes this piece from Abuja

PEOPLES DAILY, THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 2013

PAGE 27

Mother Earth

Preparing for floods in West Africa

W

est African and Sahel countries are setting up measures to minimize flood damage as the annual rainy season approaches.

The African Centre of Meteorological Applications for Development (ACMAD) in a seasonal weather outlook says near-average or aboveaverage rainfall is likely over the western Sahel, which stretches across Mauritania, Senegal and western and central Niger.

These regions are “expected to be the area with the highest risk of above average number of extreme precipitating events that may lead to flash floods”.

Heavy rains in 2012 triggered extensive flooding in Cameroon, Chad, Niger, Nigeria and Senegal, with hundreds killed, millions left homeless and vast areas of farmland inundated. In many of these countries, the flooding was the worst in years.

Average or below average rainfall is likely in Lake Chad and central Chad regions as well as along the Guinean coast from Cameroon to Liberia, ACMAD said.

Allegra Baiocchi, head of the UN Office for the Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in West Africa, at the annual meeting of the regional committee for disaster management last week, said globally 4.4 billion people have been affected by natural disasters over the past 20 years.

According to the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR), direct losses from disasters have been underestimated by at least 50 percent.

The cost to the global economy is in the region of US$2.5 trillion since the start of this century, said Baiocchi.

West Africa’s urbanization and population growth trends indicate that more and more people are likely to be affected by floods in coming years, OCHA’s West Africa disaster response adviser, Laurent Dufour, told IRIN. At the meeting, representatives of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) agreed to better harmonize their disaster response, find ways to collect better climate-related data and share it with those who need it - farmers and pastoralists - and to focus more on preparedness. “ECOWAS nations [must] work towards building regional drought, flood and epidemics early warning systems and search and rescue platforms that will enhance our cooperation,” said Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) head, Alhaji Mohammed Sani Sidi.

An efficient, operational disaster platform should include actors from several different sectors, said Dufour, including government, civil society and the private sector.

The financial impact of last year’s flooding in Nigeria was a “wake-up call” to governments, he said. “There’s more attention this year as decisionmakers have realized the human and financial costs involved.”

Awareness-raising of at-risk communities is expanding, said Dufour, pointing to community-level efforts in southern Nigeria, Togo and Benin, but this needs to grow further.

“There is a need to work with local level communities so they know what is at stake,” he said.

IRIN spoke to disaster management officials and aid agencies about what they are doing to prepare for potential flooding this year.

Some 23 Nigerian states (out of 36) were affected by flooding last year,

displacing 2.1 million people, killing 363, destroying almost 600,000 houses and creating “unprecedented” ecological damage, said Sani Sidi, as well as destroying hundreds of thousands of hectares of farmland.

We learnt a lot of lessons after last year’s floods,” said Ibrahim Farinloye, an information officer with NEMA. “There is need to invest in disaster prevention. The state and local government authorities are now showing commitment...

“Having realized what some states went through last year and with these predictions, the local authorities have started expansion of drainage, construction of new drainage, demolitions of structures that are blocking water ways. The traditional rulers are also now showing much more interest in flood preparation,” Farinloye told IRIN. He said NEMA has conducted public information campaigns, trained volunteers (including a unit of volunteers), and organized training on emergency responses such as first aid

ENVIRONMENT WATCH

“The government must move very fast to enhance the awareness to prevent any disasters,” he said.

In 2012 Niger experienced the worst floods on record since 1929, with almost half a million people displaced and at least 68 deaths, affecting 70,000 households in total.

The fifth neighbourhood of the capital Niamey, on the banks of the Niger River, was seriously affected by the flooding, with 400 households taking refuge in schools and other public buildings.

Almost one year later, some of these households are still in tents managed by the municipal authorities.

“They will be there for some time,” said the mayor of the neighbourhood, Issa Hamni Hima.

The neighbourhood, with the help of the state, started an ambitious rehousing project of the flooddisplaced. Some 200 families have been moved to higher ground and given new land, which is half of the population concerned - but only in

The structure will be reinstated if floods hit this year, said Pierre Peron, spokesperson for OCHA. According to him, governors and mayors of N’djamena and floodaffected cities in the south such as Bongor, are trying to identify the right sites for flood-displaced people this year. Southern Chad, which is most affected by floods but least frequented by aid agencies, complicated response efforts, said Peron. OCHA is working with local authorities across the south and has trained dozens of humanitarian focal points to improve information collection and needs analysis to share

has undertaken several flood action plans over the years, including rehousing families living on flood plains, and building reservoirs to contain flood-water, but many of its past programmes have stalled, and an urban population explosion means that as families are moved out of flood plains, others move in.

At the end of 2012 the government set up a Rainwater Management and Adaption to Climate Change Project (PROGEP) in partnership the World Bank. Through this project it aims to invest $132 million in flood management projects in 2013, reaching $1.4 billion over the course

that neighbourhood.

Some families living on the new site told IRIN they were pleased they had water pumps - and according to the mayor, the authorities are negotiating with the electricity company to provide them with power.

Oxfam held a disaster contingency planning workshop last week, according to its disaster manager Patrick Andre, but implementing it will be a longer-term project, he said.

“Most agencies have not yet put in place contingency stocks in at-risk areas, for instance,” he told IRIN. Following torrential floods in 2012 which displaced hundreds of thousands and swamped 255,720 hectares of cropland, several hundred families in the capital N’djamena were moved to higher ground, according to Qasim Sufi, head of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Chad, which drilled wells for re-housed families.

During the 2012 floods the Chadian government reinstated a crisis task-force made up of members of several ministry focal points, such as Health, Urban Planning, Civil Protection, Social Acton and others.

with aid agencies and others when floods occur.

Humanitarian clusters are trying to coordinate preparedness activities, including prepositioning equipment and health kits in at-risk zones, said Peron.

But much more needs to be done on the preparation front, according to Sufi. Last year IOM received 500,000 euros from the German government to respond to floodaffected people, and IOM wanted to extend these efforts to preparedness this year, but has not received any of the $1 million it requires to do so.

Activities include cleaning canals, repairing water pumping stations, training local officials, putting in place disaster contingency plans in at-risk areas and training field brigades who can respond rapidly to an emergency. “We shouldn’t wait for these problems to happen, we should be prepared,” said Sufi.

The government has invited engineers to propose possible infrastructure solutions for neighbourhoods that are perennially flood-prone, but no concrete projects are yet under way.

The Senegalese government

of 10 years. Since 2012 the Ministry of Restructuring and Management of Flood Zones has focused on shortterm flood preparation, including clearing draining systems, ensuring pumping stations are working, and moving some families. It also plans to relocate 2,000 families living in highrisk areas, with the first relocation scheduled for 30 June.

To plan for an emergency response, the Senegalese Red Cross has been trying to raise awareness of proper hygiene to prevent waterborne diseases during the rainy season. It and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) have been stocking up and pre-positioning emergency supplies and hygiene kits to distribute when floods occur.

Between them, these include jerry cans, soap, sleeping mats, mosquito nets, water-treatment chemicals and information cards on good hygiene practices.

Meanwhile, the UN inter-agency humanitarian country team is starting to prepare to respond with the Department of Civil Protection, according to OCHA.

By Ambrose Inusa Sule, mnes globenviron@yahoo.com 0703-441-4410 (sms only)

Repercussion of the rains in 2012 and the identification of high ground and other safe areas for evacuation.

Teachers have also been urged to train pupils on how to stay safe during flooding.

“We have also signed memoranda of understanding with private companies to use their equipment during emergencies,” he said.

Nigerian weather and hydrology experts in April forecast an increase in rainfall across the country this year compared to 2012. Nigeria Hydrology Services Agency has suggested lowering water levels on major reservoirs to accommodate the expected floodwater.

NEMA spokesman Ezekiel Manzo said they are advising state authorities to relocate people in flood-prone areas, particularly those living on the plains of the River Benue and River Niger.

“In all our eight offices across the country we have stockpiled basic household items, food, clothing and sanitary materials for women and children - not only for the floods but for any disasters,” he said. They have also bought earth-moving equipment and they are doing a lot of awarenessraising of flood risks.

Source: allafrica.com

PEOPLES DAILY, THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 2013

PAGE 26

Mother Earth NASA wants backyard astronomers to help track asteroids

N

ational Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has called on backyard astronomers and other citizen-scientists to help track asteroids that could create havoc on Earth.

The U.S. space agency identified 95 per cent of the potentially planet-killing NEOs near Earth objects with a diameter of 1 km or more, a size comparable to the space rock many scientists believe wiped out the dinosaurs some 65 million years ago.

Now NASA wants to work

with individuals, government agencies, international partners and academia to ``find all asteroid threats to human populations and know what to do about them.’’

Between 50 and 100 amateur astronomers are doing what is called light-curve analysis on space rocks.

They are making repeated images of the astronomical bodies to help determine their characteristics, said Jason Kessler, programme executive, for what NASA calls Astroid Grand Challenge.

``We’re certainly going to need more help with that as our detection rate goes up,’’ Kessler said by telephone.

He acknowledged that what NASA aims to do, at least in part, is to crowd-source asteroid detection.

Even smaller space rocks can be dangerous, whether or not they hit the Earth.

In February, a meteorite about 17 m in diameter exploded over central Russia, shattering windows, damaging buildings and injuring 1,200 people.

Earlier this month, an asteroid the size of a small truck zoomed past the Earth four times closer than the moon, crossing within about 105,000 km over the Southern Ocean south of Tasmania, Australia.

Estimates suggest less than 10 per cent of NEOs smaller than 300 m across have been detected, and less than one per cent of objects smaller than 100 m in diameter have been detected, NASA said in a statement.

The initiative aims to detect all NEOs of 30 m or larger, Kessler

said.

The space agency also announced plans for a mission to capture a small asteroid, redirect it into a stable orbit and send humans to study it as early as 2021.

U.S. lawmakers have also become interested in NEO. In March the House of Representatives’ science committee held a hearing on ``Threats from Space’’ that reviewed efforts to track and mitigate asteroids and meteors.

(NAN)

NEMA enjoins students, teachers to be disaster vanguards

T

h e N a t i o n a l E m e r g e n c y Management Agency (NEMA) has enjoined students and teachers to serve disaster vanguards in their schools and homes.

The Head of Operations of NEMA in Gombe, Mr Jediel Apollos, made the call at a workshop on children and emergency risk reduction in Gombe.

Apollos urged students and teachers to imbibe the basic knowledge and techniques of emergency response, preparedness, prevention and mitigation, response and recovery.

He said:“Available records have shown that disasters are on the increase both in frequency and intensity, especially in recent times.

“The experience of the recent flooding which ravaged thousands of our communities is still fresh in our memories. ``The disaster caused deaths of several people and displaced thousands of communities, thereby posing a challenge to food security in Nigeria .

“Disasters as we all know, can wipe out our developmental gains, deepening poverty for millions and leaving them more exposed to future hazards and disaster risks.”

He said that the workshop was organised to train students and teachers on how to prevent or minimise impact of disasters and educate communities on their expected roles prior, during and after disasters.

In her paper entitled “Fire Prevention, Mitigation and Control in Disaster and Emergencies, the Principal Fire Officer of the Gombe Fire Service, Mrs Lami Williams, advised the public to take the necessary precautionary measures against fire disaster.

Williams warned the public against lighting and keeping candles on combustible materials and to ensure that all electrical appliances were switched off when not in use.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that officials of the Nigerian Red Cross staged a demonstration on First Aid efforts in disaster management.

No fewer than 60 students, principals, headmasters and teachers attended the workshop. (NAN)

Nigeria’s space ambition a welcome move

N

igeria’s bid to send its local astronauts to the moon by 2015 should be lauded. Already, the country has set up a launch site with a 20-kilometre launch capability in Epe, Lagos State, and dispatched 12 engineers from the National Space Research and Development Agency (NARSDA) in China for training.

The country has three satellites in orbit and two earthobservation satellites. These track crops and weather around the country, monitor the oilrich Niger Delta where there has been massive crude oil theft

and environmental damage from oil spills, generate very high resolution images used for urban planning and provide cross border surveillance information.

The move by Nigeria should send Africa’s policy makers back to the drawing board to deliberate on how the continent can stop spending on services it can locally provide. In 2007, for example, the late Muammar Gadaffi sponsored and funded US$300 million of the total cost of $400 million for the African Telecommunication Satellite Project. This saved Africa the $500 million in annual fees plus

compounding interest it was paying Western corporations for Satellite services.

Africa largely depends on foreign companies for early warning systems on floods, tsunamis, and earthquakes, among others. Furthermore, none of the companies that have a stronghold on the Internet have their origin in Africa. Following the Nigerian example, capabilities to develop these should be considered and adopted. As this is done, respective African countries must however prioritize improving the living standards of their people first.

Head of Operations of NEMA in Gombe, Mr Jediel Apollos (C) speaks to teachers in Gombe.

PEOPLES DAILY, THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 2013

PAGE 29

Emergency Update

NEMA DG elected president, ECOWAS committee on disaster management

I

n recognition of the progress made by Nigeria in advancing the cause of disaster management and providing exemplary leadership for the countries West Africa region, the Director-General, National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) Muhammad Sani Sidi was recently elected as President of the ECOWAS Regional Committee for Disaster Management in the West Africa.

The NEMA boss was elected at 7th annual meeting of the committee held in Abuja under the auspices of ECOWAS with participants drawn from the heads of disaster management agencies and international humanitarian organizations in the West African countries.

Of course, in the last three years, many stakeholders both within and outside Nigeria would have noticed the miraculous changes in the sphere of disaster management in the

country which could be attributed to the tireless and dedicated efforts of the Director General National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), Alhaji Muhammad Sani Sidi who was appointed in September 2010.

It is an indisputable fact that Sani Sidi has turned around the approaches to disaster management in the country using strategic values that have helped to save thousands of lives and billions of naira worth of properties; as well as sustaining and improving the relationship with stakeholders, especially specialized volunteers on disaster management in the country.

As one of the beneficiaries of capacity building programmes of NEMA during my national youth service programme, I noticed the deployment of latest technology to advance the cause of disaster management in Nigeria. The last innovation is the introduction of the toll free number (0800CALLNEMA)

in the case of an emergency where the general public could call free.

In his newly published book titled Disaster Management is Everyone’s Business, Sani-Sadi wrote: “It is therefore; everybody’s business and we must all put our hands on deck to ensure effective disaster management by regularly evolving strategies, policies and programmes so as to reduce loss of lives and property in our communities, thereby facilitating development”.

As part of his efforts to make disaster management everyone’s business, Sani-Sidi has flagged off the setting up and training of Community Resilient Network and Peace Brigade in all the geo-political zones of the country. So far, under his leadership and supervision, NEMA has inaugurated other voluntary schemes like Executive Volunteers Against Disaster, Grassroots Emergency Vanguard, Disaster Risk Reduction Club.

NEMA officials distributing relief items to residents of Mashamari district in Maiduguri, Borno State recently

UN Chief drums support for disaster management in Nigeria

By Mohammed Kandi

U

nited Nations’ Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordination, Baroness Valerie Amos has solicited more support from the government to the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) to improve on its disaster management role in the country.

Speaking at NEMA’s during her working visit to Nigeria at the weekend, Baroness Amos also called on the organized private sector, civil society organizations and grassroot communities to cooperate with the agency in the effort to boost disaster management in the country by building structures to reduce risk and increase community resilience.

Amos said she was confident that Nigeria was capable of handling most of the disaster issues in the country given necessary supports and cooperation to the organs established for disaster management and to also serve as model for other countries in the

region.

In a statement by the agnecy’s press officer, Manzo Ezekiel, she noted that the timely response given to the flood of 2012 which devastated many communities was evidence of progress in disaster management which Nigeria must strive to continuously improve in the face of the increasing global disaster challenges.

According to her, she was in Nigeria to advocate more political supports to disaster management and visit some locations of the 2012 flood which her office had given some assistance. After the visit, she said the United Nations may consider further assistance where necessary.

In his remarks, Director-General of NEMA Muhammad Sani Sidi led the management of the agency in receiving the top official from the United Nations requested the Under Secretary General to explore the UN system to “develop the capacities of NEMA and SEMAs in terms of acquisition of vital assets, technical training and capacity building.”

He said in the effort to streamline emergency response operations during disasters, NEMA had recently developed eight plans which could be activated and applied according to specific areas of disasters. The Agency, he continued has on behalf of Federal Government of Nigeria provided relief assistance to several African countries, established close cooperation with emergency management and humanitarian actors with other countries.

In addition to the visit to NEMA, the United Nations Under Secretary General Baroness Valerie Amos also met with Vice President Namadi Sambo who is the Chairman of NEMA’s Governing Council at the President Villa.

NEMA had within the week also received the visits of Special Representative of the UN Secretary General (SRSG) for International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR), Ms. Margareta Wahlstrom and the Special Representative of the UN Secretary General for West Africa Mr Said Djinnit.

YOUTH FOR PUBLIC SAFETY

By Abubakar Jimoh abujimoh01@yahoo.com More importantly he has encouraged the formation of Journalists Against Disaster (JAD) and Youths Against Disaster Initiative (YADI), all in a bid to make disaster management everybody’s business.

Most of the activities of the agency are undertaken under collaborative efforts with other response agencies and volunteers who are also trained to provide supports whenever required. The volunteer groups include those for top level officers in the public and private sectors known as Executive Volunteers, The Grassroots Volunteers at community level and Youth Volunteers. The successes of the volunteers are noticeable in public awareness campaigns and response to emergencies.

Realizing that quality education and awareness campaigns are major pillars towards disasterrisk reduction, NEMA under SaniSidi has expended more resources in training and retraining of its staffs and stakeholders through regional seminars, conferences and simulation exercises. There is also tremendous public awareness on disaster management through effective media relations and strategic relations with relevant response agencies.

The improvement in early warning alerts by NEMA have assisted in great measures reducing risk from excessive rainfall that have resulted massive flooding this year alone. Though lives and properties have been lost, those that had adhered to the early alerts from the agency were saved.

While preventive strategies are antidotes against occurrence, timely response to disaster occurrences are now the hallmark of NEMA going by their response to bomb explosion sites, collapsed buildings, flooded communities among others. While NEMA rescue officers search for victims, relief and rehabilitation teams provide succour to the affected communities.

NEMA’s success story in the last two years is not limited to managing challenges in Nigeria but also with the international communities. The agency has rendered various types of assistance and supports to many African countries. For instance relief materials were provided to victims of explosion in Congo Brazzaville, while The Gambia benefitted from deployment of skilled NEMA emergency officers to support in setting up similar agency in that country. In the same vein, stranded Nigerians during the political crises in Arab countries were successfully evacuated and united with their families in Nigeria. Egypt, Tunisia and Libya were cases in point.

It is pertinent to note that while NEMA offices are in only six states representing each geopolitical zone of the Federation, Sani-Sidi finds it necessary to improve the capacities of the stakeholders, especially the volunteer groups. The National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) is

a beneficiary of the gesture. The NEMA-NYSC Emergency Youths Vanguard (EYV) has received financial and moral supports for their programmes and projects.

For instance, such assistance helped this writer to realise some projects including pamphlets, Zebra crossing, school quiz, relief donations and advocacy visitations during the NYSC days.

To the corps members who contributes immensely towards disaster risk reduction campaigns and projects, the NEMA DG single handed provided scholarships to them to pursue Masters Degree programmes on Disaster Management in any of the six Nigerian universities where the programme are offered.

Before his presenr appointment, Sani-Sidi began his working career at Ministry of Finance, Katsina state, where he served as Data Entry Officer for one year mandatory NYSC Primary assignment in 1989 to 1990. Senior Manager (Supplies) at National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) in 1990 to 2003. He became Special Assistant to Honourable Minister of Finance, Abuja in 2003 to 2007.

He was Honourable Commissioner, Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources Kaduna state in July, 2007 to 2008; Honourable Commissioner, Ministry of Works & Transport Kaduna state in 2008 to 2010; Honourable Commissioner Ministry of Culture & Tourism Kaduna state in July 2010 to September 2010; Director General, National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) in September 2010 to date.

He is a member of many national and international professional bodies such as the International Association of Emergency Managers (IAEM), USA; International Emergency Management Society (TIEMS), Belgium; Institute of Civil Protection and Emergency Management (ICPEM), United Kingdom; World Society of Victomology (WSV), Germany; and Institute of Corporate Administration, Nigeria.

Sani Sidi has received several awards to his excellence in public service. These include Fellowship Award for Distinguished Professional Contribution by the Institute of Corporate Administration, March 2011; Award for Exemplary Leadership in Disaster Management

by Conference on Disaster, Safety and Management, March 2011; Outstanding Chief Executive Officer by Thisday Newspaper Special Report, April 2011; CEO of Best Emergency and Disaster Management Agency of the Year

by African Leadership Magazine, London, June 2011; Human Rights Friendly Public Official of the Year by Human Right Writers Association of Nigeria, December 2012.

Abubakar Jimoh is the National Coordinator, Youths Against Disaster (YADI), and lives in Abuja.

PEOPLES DAILY, THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 2013

PAGE 28

Emergency Update NEMA advises states to prepare for impending floods

T

he Director-General, National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), Dr Muhammad Sani-Sidi, yesterday advised states that were flood prone in 2013 to take actions to mitigate its effects.

Sani-Sidi gave the advice when he received the Deputy Governor of Imo, Mr Eze Maduere, in Abuja.

He said that NEMA had since sent alerts to the concerned states that were listed by the Nigerian Metrological Agency’s (NIMET) prediction for 2013 on the impending disaster.

He urged the affected states to intensify awareness campaigns and actions on the relocation of communities from flood prone areas to higher grounds.

Sani-Sidi further urged affected states to take the NIMET early warning seriously to forestall a repetition of the 2012 overwhelming disasters.

He said, ``we must match early warning alerts with early actions by making more efforts to move communities in flood prone areas to higher grounds. ``There should also be constant creation of awareness and capacity building, especially at the local levels.’’

Earlier, the Imo Deputy Governor said he was in NEMA in appreciation of the agency’s level of competence showed in its response to the 2012 flood situation in the country.

Maduere said some parts of Imo were affected by the 2012 flood, adding that actions were being taken to prevent a reoccurrence. ``What we are doing in Imo is basically to create a lot of awareness in those areas that have challenges. ``Like in Owerri, Okigwe and Orlu, we are opening up all the

NEMA north east director of Public Affairs, Malam Abdullahi Abubakar (Left), presenting relief materials to Adamawa state Commissioner for Special Duties, Mr Salihu Zumo (Middle), for displaced persons in Adamawa, yesterday in Yola.

PHOTO: NAN water ways to allow the natural waterways to flow into the rivers and the streams,’’ he said.

He said that the state government was also creating awareness in areas like OhajiEgbema and Oguta on the need for people to vacate such areas.

``we are encouraging them to come up to the upper land because of the rainy season, especially people around the Orashi River, where we have challenges,’’ he said.

Maduere said that funds received to ease the effect of the

disaster on the affected population was being judiciously utilised. ``Imo Government is currently building upland emergency centres in case there is a reoccurrence of the flood disaster,’’ he said.

He pledged the state government’s commitment to host

the just created NEMA zonal office in Owerri.

Maduere said that the government was willing to work with NEMA to provide an office accommodation as well as a storage facility for the zonal office.

(NAN)

Flood: NEMA recruits 10, 500 volunteers in 3 states

N

ational Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) has recruited 10, 500 volunteers in three flood-prone states to serve as first respondents to disasters to minimise losses in case of flooding.

NEMA Coordinator, NorthCentral, Malam Mohammed AbdulSalam, said that, 4,000 volunteers had been recruited in Benue, 3,500 in Plateau and 3,000 in Nasarawa State.

The three states suffered massive flooding that claimed several lives and destroyed livestock, farms, houses and other properties last year.

NIMET has warned of more rains this year and the high possibility of even worse floods in the areas that suffered the disaster last year.

A breakdown of the recruitment showed that Toto and Loko, two local governments in Nasarawa State, situated along River Benue, have 1,500 volunteers each.

Five local governments in Benue – Makurdi, Guma, Agatu,

Logo and Gwer share the 4,000 recruits while in Plateau, Wase, Shendam, Kanam, Mikang, Jos North, Langtang North and South local governments have 500 each.

AbdulSalam said that NEMA had trained the recruits and procured equipment they would require to carry out their duties.

“We expect the volunteers to quickly reach NEMA in the event of

any flooding while taking steps to contain the situation and minimise the damage.

“We also expect them to guide the affected persons on what was expected of them in the face of such happening.

“Because we tend to suffer more losses in the confusion as people keep running helter-skelter for safety,’’ he said.

He said that NEMA would soon sign an MOU with INEC toward getting boats to ferry people to safety during the floods.

“We have also contacted local fishermen to be on standby as they would be contacted to help in rescue missions as part of our proactive steps to avoid the calamity that took us unawares last year,’’ he said.

He said that NEMA had also procured lots of relief materials, while workshops were also being held to prepare people for the worst scenario.

Abdulsalam said that the Federal Government was committed to protecting the nation from destruction, and described what happened last year as `just unbelievable.’

“The agency has embarked on the distribution of food items to communities affected by the state of emergency in the three states of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe.

“The gesture is aimed at tackling acute food shortages due to the on-going military offensive against terrorists in the area,’’ it said.

The statement said further that items distributed included bags of rice, millet, beans, noodles, sugar, milk, beverages, among others.

“NEMA also distributed drinking water to the communities to ameliorate their hardship,” it added.

The statement said the exercise started in May at New Marte, headquarters of Marte Local Government Area (LGA) of Borno.

“The distribution was kicked off in Marte LGA in May,

by NEMA’s North-East Coordinator, Alhaji Muhammed Kanar, with a call on the citizens to be law-abiding and go about their normal activities.

“Kanar also advised the people to co-operate with security operatives by reporting suspicious movements and strange people in their localities,” the statement said.

It added that NEMA had so far covered areas like Marte LGA, Bama LGA and Maiduguri Metropolis, all in Borno, in the distribution exercise.

The statement disclosed that NEMA planned to commence the distribution of the items in Adamawa and Yobe next week

…Distributes relief materials to Adamawa, Borno, Yobe

N

ational Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) said recently in Maiduguri, the Borno State capital that it had begun distributing food items to communities affected by the state of emergency in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe.

In a statement by NEMA’s North-East Information Officer, Malam Abdulkadir Ibrahim, it said this was in line with the agency’s mandate of providing succour to Internally Displaced Persons (IEDs).

PAGE 30

PEOPLES DAILY, THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 2013

Feature Electronic tattoos, replacement for internet passwords and identification

By Theodora Ekah

W

ould you wear an electronic tattoo if you couldn’t log on to the Internet without one?

That may sound crazy to many of you, but the technology for such a system already exists. RFID tattoos have existed for quite some time, and they are already being used on animals.

But now an entirely new generation of electronic tattoos are being developed that can monitor your vital signs, interact with your mobile phone and even communicate directly with your mind.

These new electronic tattoos are thinner than a human hair, and they are going to fundamentally transform the way that we think about human identification.

Right now, the Internet is being absolutely plagued by hackers, and identity theft has become a multi-billion dollar enterprise. It is becoming increasingly difficult to determine if someone is actually who they say that they are. And as even more of our commerce gets conducted through the Internet, identity security is going to be absolutely critical. Without a doubt, there will continue to be a push for more secure forms of identification than we have today. But there is also a very dark side to this kind of technology.

The truth is that technology is always a double-edged sword. It always brings with it the promise of progress, but it also always has a dark side that could potentially be abused.

The latest generation of electronic tattoos is quite remarkable. They are called “Bio stamps”, and they were originally developed for medical purposes.

However, as a recent Daily Mail article detailed, Motorola believes that these Bio stamps could potentially replace passwords and make the Internet a much more secure place… Motorola claims that the circuits, which also contain antennae and built-in sensors, could be adapted to work with mobile phones and tablets. This would prevent thieves and other people from being able to access a phone, or individual apps on the device, if it is stolen or lost.

These Bio stamps are extremely, extremely thin. They are actually thinner than a human hair. It bonds to the skin, somewhat like a temporary tattoo, flexing and bending in sync with your skin the way you wish a Band-Aid would But why would such technology be needed on the Internet? After all, don’t our passwords work just fine?

Actually, we are rapidly getting to the point where passwords are a joke. Hackers are becoming so sophisticated that they can crack even very long passwords with ease.

A team of hackers, commissioned by technology website Ars Technica, recently managed to crack more than 14,800 supposedly random passwords – from a list of 16,449 – as part of a hacking experiment.

The success rate for each hacker ranged from 62 percent to 90 percent, and the hacker who cracked 90 percent of hashed passwords did so in less than an hour using a computer cluster.

The hackers also managed to crack 16-character passwords including

electronic tattoos ‘qeadzcwrsfxv1331′.

Unfortunately, this kind of technology is going to be heavily pushed in the years ahead. According to Wired magazine, even the U.S. military is devoting resources to developing electronic tattoo technology… . Military scientists believe that using the device — preferably a tattoo — to track heart-rate, temperature or bioelectric response during various training situations will help them crack the code of

combat fatigue.

Soon, we might interact with our smartphones and computers simply by using our minds. In a couple of years, we could be turning on the lights at home just by thinking about it, or sending an e-mail from our smartphone without even pulling the device from our pocket. Farther into the future, your robot assistant will appear by your side with a glass of lemonade simply because it knows you are thirsty.

Researchers in Samsung’s Emerging Technology Lab are testing tablets that can be controlled by your brain, using a cap that resembles a ski hat studded with monitoring electrodes. The technology, often called a brain computer interface, was conceived to enable people with paralysis and other disabilities to interact with computers or control robotic arms, all by simply thinking about such actions. Before long, these technologies could well be in consumer electronics, too.

So what if you could combine the two trends discussed above?

What if an electronic tattoo would allow you to operate your tablet computer, send an email, fly a drone or even “speak” telepathically using only your mind?

We live at a time when technology is advancing at an exponential rate. The world is going to look very, very different ten years from now. But will the changes be for the better?

Technology is advancing at a faster pace than we have ever seen before, but at the same time the world is becoming an increasingly unstable place.

Could technology that enables us to interact with our environment using our minds actually be turned around and used to control our minds by a future tyrannical government?

Could technology that helps us identify one another on the Internet someday be used to brand us all like cattle and force all of humanity into a dark system of control and enslavement?

Don’t think that such a dystopian society can never exist in our modern world. So what is going to happen when the world goes crazy someday and the planet is absolutely ravaged by economic collapse, pandemics, crime, rioting, natural disasters and war? That is something to think about.

PEOPLES DAILY, THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 2013

PAGE 31

International

Xenophobia and its discontents in South Africa ANALYSIS

By Cawo Abdi

D

espite South Africa’s recent wealth and economic success, immigrants from Somalia and elsewhere looking for opportunity in the country have little chance of attaining success and comfort.

These immigrants, who are unable to find work in South Africa’s formal economy, often live in informal settlements rife with structural xenophobia, thereby creating highly violent and combustible conditions.

Daily news coverage in South Africa includes horrific crimes against women and children. One recent such incident involved two women, one 82 and the other 21, who were gang-raped and brutally hacked to death. The ubiquitous rape of women and children in South Africa led Interpol to designate the country as the “rape capital of the world”. In 2009, 28 percent of men in South Africa admitted to committing rape.

But South Africa’s violence is not limited to rape. As we approach the 20-year anniversary of the fall of apartheid, South Africa remains one of the most violent societies in the world. A video posted to YouTube on June 1 shows the gruesome killing of a Somali refugee man, with young men and boys kicking and hurling bricks and stones on the shattered body of the victim as pedestrians and cars passed by.

The inhumane murder of 25-year-old AbdiNasir Mahmoud God triggered Somali demonstrations against the South African government.

Violence against migrants and refugees in South Africa is often framed as “xenophobic”, and it was no surprise to see Somali demonstrators carrying banners and slogans that made this point. Coverage of this violence frequently underscored how the plight of refugees and migrants in South Africa threatens the dreams of the rainbow nation, as envisioned by anti-apartheid leaders such as Nelson Mandela.

But while migrant and refugee victimisation in South Africa cannot be denied, attention must be paid to South Africa’s own chasm between the haves and have-nots. Evidence from seven years of research in these informal communities provides evidence that the victimisation Somalis and other foreigners confront is context-specific and cannot be divorced from the generalised violence experienced by poor residents of these informal settlements.

Somalis and other migrants in informal housing areas are often unable to enter the formal economic sector, and run small stores called spazas instead. A young Somali man who moves to Johannesburg may head to Mayfair, a heavily Somali neighbourhood, and seek employment from within the community.

Successful Somali entrepreneurs who own multiple spaza shops in townships and informal settlements may employ him. The young man

Vigilante justice is common in impoverished parts of South Africa (Nombulelo Damba/WCN) may head to work in a spaza - which often consist of caged, corrugated-iron shacks - serving customers he fears through metal barriers. He may have a machete, a gun or at least a club beside him. He eats, sleeps, defecates and prays with one eye open to watch out for potential robbery and violence from local thugs.

The young man takes this job, which permits him to send home $50 to $100 a month to families left behind and to dream of a better life.

The man may save $1,000 to $2,000 within a year or so. Two to three men may combine their savings and eventually start their own business. If they survive the first few years, these men will eventually employ the new refugee arrivals while they settle in Mayfair or Bellville, where they will rarely confront physical violence.

For many of these Somali refugees, their entrepreneurial spirit and the lack of other options leads them to poor black South African residential areas. Mainstream economic industries neglect these informal settlements. The only goods and services that poor residents in these areas would be able to obtain requires travel to grocery stores such as Shoprite and PicknPay, found in central townships and city centres.

Somalis, Mozambicans, Bangladeshis and other foreign-born entrepreneurs go into these informal settlements and start successful small enterprises that free the locals from travelling for basic needs. Foreign entrepreneurs

have thus done something that South Africa’s established business community never dared to do.

But many of these informal settlements are unfortunately nogo zones, rarely serviced by the police, mostly with unpaved roads and plagued by crime, poverty and unemployment.

In a speech on “Reconciliation and Nation Building” that the then Deputy President Thabo Mbeki gave at the National Assembly in Cape Town on May 29, 1998, he stated: “This reality of two nations, underwritten by the perpetuation of the racial, gender and spatial disparities born of a very long period of colonial and apartheid white minority domination, constitutes the material base which reinforces the notion that, indeed, we are not one nation, but two nations.”

The white/black racial divide Mbeki referred to is now accompanied by the increasing class divisions within the black majority population. The millions of government housing units, known as “Mandela houses”, in most townships also represent a major accomplishment of post-apartheid South African governments. These uniform small brick houses are the most visible fruits of the liberation reaped by an important segment of the South African black population, creating what may be considered working-class neighbourhoods now representing a second nation in South Africa.

Another key accomplishment

“

of the South African post-apartheid governments has been the refugee and migrant law reforms undertaken since 1994. South Africa now hosts the largest number of asylum seekers in the world. Groups such as Somalis are granted refugee status, with freedom of movement, work permits and access to basic services such as healthcare.

Somali enclaves in Mayfair in greater Johannesburg, Bellville in Cape Town, and Korsten in Port Elizabeth showcase how little differentiated these refugees can become from the mainstream diverse populations seeking their livelihoods in urban centres. Successful Somali entrepreneurs who belong to the earliest cohort are adamant that they rarely confront any violence or xenophobia in their urban settings.

Some of these entrepreneurs run clothing stores in the heart of central business districts in Cape Town, Port Elizabeth and Johannesburg. These Somalis are part and parcel of the middle-class South African nation and their experiences could not be further from those working and living in informal South African settlements.

Violence against migrants and refugees is thus mostly concentrated in certain areas. This represents a third nation in post-apartheid South Africa. This is one that you will never see when travelling on the high-speed Guatrain from Pretoria to Sandton.

And this nation is where migrants and refugees are most vulnerable to vicious

But many of these informal settlements are unfortunately no-go zones, rarely serviced by the police, mostly with unpaved roads and plagued by crime, poverty and unemployment.

attacks, where more than 1,000 Somalis have been killed since 1997.

This is where law and order is absent.

But this violence in informal settlements does not discriminate, and here is where xenophobic rhetoric fails to take context into account. Five South African men were necklaced in informal settlements in Khayelitsha in the first five months of 2012.

Necklacing refers to mobs forcing a tyre around the neck and shoulders of an alleged robber, rapist or gang member, dousing him and the tyre with petrol and setting him on fire while the community watches. In New Brighton in Port Elizabeth, four men were necklaced in one month in 2011.

Such violence is invisible to South African and migrant elites who escape to their highly securitised compounds; those fortunate enough to belong to these middle and upper classes live in gated communities serviced by private security personnel now estimated to be double the size of South Africa’s police force.

But desperate refugees and migrants unable to find economic opportunities in the formal economy seek their South African dreams in dangerous informal settlements. This desperation brings them into contact with a community at war with itself. The image of a community in Khayelitsha that burns its own sons, with many watching the gore, testifies to the indifference that the stoning of a Somali prompts among these communities.

Somalis around the globe mourned AbdiNasir Mahmoud God. Presidents of two nations discussed his case. But let us also hope that his brutal demise contributes to a national awareness of the thousands of poor, invisible South Africans who live in informal settlements.

Demonisation of the South Africans who killed God exempts the South African government from addressing the communal crisis in these areas. Labelling violence against migrants as simply xenophobic diverts attention from the context of the violence, the generalised criminality that is a daily reality for those in informal settlements.

The brutality forces us to confront the limited access that many South Africans have to the social, economic and political rights enshrined in the country’s progressive constitution.

Foreign-born spaza owners’ security in informal settlements cannot be addressed outside of the violence subjected to other victims in these communities. These residents perceive vigilantism as the only option to protect themselves from criminals, and at times new comers, that they perceive as reaping the benefits of liberation denied them. As misplaced as this perception is, all in this setting suffer - regardless of citizenship.

Source: Aljazeera

PEOPLES DAILY, THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 2013

PAGE 32

International

Somali UN compound attacked in Mogadishu

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unmen have entered a UN office in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, firing their weapons, following a loud explosion, witnesses have said.

A cameraman outside the UN Development Programme office told the BBC soldiers from the African Union force and Somali army were fighting the men inside.

He said a suicide bomber blew up a car at the entrance to the office, and he saw four gunmen enter.

Islamist militants often target government facilities

in the city.

The AFP news agency is reporting that the Islamist group al-Shabab, which is part of the al-Qaeda network, has claimed responsibility for the attack.

“Our commandos have attacked the UN compound... we set off an explosion and have entered the compound, where we are fighting with the infidel forces,” it quotes an al-Shabab official as saying.

The UN Development Programme office is next to the heavily fortified airport

in southern Mogadishu.

“A suicide bomber blew himself up at the gate of the UNDP and then several armed fighters went in and opened fire,” a senior police official told the Reuters news agency.

The cameraman, who asked not to be named for security reasons, told the BBC Somali Service that some people had been wounded in the blast and he had personally helped three people to a military ambulance.

Residents in the area have

fled and some buildings were seriously damaged after the vehicle exploded, he said.

It is unclear whether any UN officials have been caught up in the gun battle, but foreigners and Somalis are known to work at the UNDP office, the cameraman said.

As he was talking to the BBC, gunshots could be heard in the background.

The cameraman said a number of security experts had joined the AU and Somali soldiers in tackling the militants.

UN chief hails truce between Malian govt, Tuareg rebels

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N Secretary-General Ban Ki- moon welcomed the signing of an agreement between the government of Mali and Tuareg rebels on Tuesday.

“The agreement provides for an immediate ceasefire, paves the way for the holding of presidential elections nationwide and commits the parties to discussing sustainable peace in Mali through an inclusive dialogue that will take place after the election,” said a statement issued here by Ban’s spokesperson.

The Malian government and the separatist MNLA and HCA rebels on Tuesday afternoon signed a truce agreement in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso.

Negotiations opened on June 8 to iron out differences

between the rival sides ahead of the planned election in July to end the crisis since a military coup on March 22 last year.

In the statement, the UN chief said he is encouraged by the parties’ commitment to national reconciliation and the resolution of differences through dialogue, and urged them to “begin implementation of the agreement at once.”

Meanwhile, Ban is grateful to the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) for its mediation efforts, with the support of the African Union and the UN, the statement said.

In addition, Ban reiterated that the UN stands ready to support the implementation of the agreement through the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in

Ban Ki- moon

Mali (MINUSMA) and other members of the UN system, in cooperation with the African-led International Support Mission

in Mali (AFISMA), the AU and ECOWAS. Source: Xinhua

U.S applauds Peoples Media, calls for more information sharing

Nigerian journalism industry saying she looks forward to continued discussions and information sharing.

Mrs. Rhoda FergusonAugustus made this

observation during a courtesy call to the offices of People’s Media limited on Wednesday.

Being new in the country, she said she looked forward to learning new opinions and getting to know the Nigerian people better, adding that every country in Africa has something that makes it unique and special” in line with contributing to the strength of the continent.

Mrs. Ferguson- Augustus is a seasoned diplomat from the U.S state of Arkansas who has served in Europe, Africa and South America.

Although acknowledging there were challenges in the country, she expressed optimism looking forward.

The U.S and Nigeria share a healthy relationship, she

The number of police officers guarding the entrances of the hospital also dwindled.

But well wishers continued to come by to pray for Mandela’s recovery.

The latest news about Mandela’s health came from his daughter Zenani MandelaDlamini who said on Monday that Mandela “is doing very well”.

Zenani was the second

family member who gave comments about Mandela’s condition. Mandla Mandela, the grandson of Mandela, already gave out two confirmations, saying Mandela’s health was getting better.

On Sunday, President Jacob Zuma said Mandela “continues to get better” although his condition “remains serious”.

But ever since, no official update has been issued.

Information officer, Embassy of the United States, Rhonda I. Ferguson-Augustus during her visit

By Hassan Haruna Ginsau

T

he U.S information officer to Nigeria has applauded the efforts of People’s Media limited in the

said, and she tasked the media to create even more “togetherness”.

She emphasized the importance of “working together” and vowed to always supply additional information concerning the two countries.

With regards to the U.S travel advisory issued to A m e r i c a n citizens visiting or residing in Nigeria she explained that it wasn’t a prohibition against a group of people or particular faith but rather to simply protect U.S citizens against “incidents” that occurred in these danger zones and a lack of knowledge of the area, adding that it was about violence rather than being against a faith or a disinterest in a particular area.

Mandela spends 12th day in hospital

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ormer South African President Nelson Mandela spent his 12th day in hospital on Wednesday, with no further official update about his condition.

The press contingent outside the Mediclinic Heart Hospital in Pretoria where Mandela is receiving treatment shrank to only a few, compared with more than one hundred in previous days.

Mandela, who turns 95 next month, was rushed to hospital on June 8 after days of experiencing a deterioration in his recurring lung problem which was the result of tuberculosis developed when he was in prison under the apartheid rule.

Mandela has been in and out of hospital several times since last December, raising concern about his frail health. (Xinhua)

Mugabe files application to delay elections

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imbabwean President Robert Mugabe has filed an urgent application with the country’s top court to push back crucial elections by two weeks, his justice minister said.

Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa told the AFP news agency on Wednesday he had filed papers on Tuesday that sought “a postponement of the date for the harmonised elections from July 31, 2013 to August 14, 2013.”

The announcement comes just days after Southern African leaders pressed Mugabe to delay the polls to allow more time for democratic reforms.

In setting the original election date, Mugabe had said he was complying with the constitutional court’s ruling to hold elections by July 31.

The elections will choose a successor to Zimbabwe’s uncomfortable power-sharing government, which was forged four years ago as a path away from a decade of political violence.

Prime Minister Morgan Tsvanigirai, a long-time Mugabe rival, has called for reforms - to free the media, depoliticise the security services and make sure the electoral roll is accurate before the vote is held.

It was not immediately clear whether the court would grant the extension, or whether two more weeks will be enough to see Tsvangirai’s demands met.

Leaders from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) had on Saturday issued an unusual rebuke of Mugabe, asking that he go back to the court and seek a delay.

The SADC summit called on all parties to “create a conducive environment for the holding of peaceful, credible, free and fair elections”.

“During proceedings at the said summit, I, in particular was directed to make an urgent application before this honourable court to seek a postponement,” Chinamasa’s filing read.

“In my ca p a c i t y a s t h e minister responsible for the administration of the electoral act, I pray for an order for the extension of the elections to the 14th of August.”

PEOPLES DAILY , THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 2013

PAGE 33

International

China executes exofficial for raping minors

North Korea condemns Hitler Mein Kampf report

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hina has executed a former official of the ruling Communist Party after he was convicted of raping 11 underage girls, state media reports.

Li Xingong, 44, was executed after he was found guilty by a court in the central city of Yongcheng, Henan province, state broadcaster China Central Television quoted court officials as saying on Wednesday.

Li, the former deputy secretary of Yongcheng’s Communist Party branch, was arrested in May 2012 after police found him having sex in a car with an underage girl, earlier reports said.

The convicted man had his appeal rejected by the Henan Provincial Higher People’s Court, and his execution was approved by China’s Supreme People’s Court.

Online commentators had reacted furiously to initial reports of Li’s alleged crimes.

His execution was carried out “at a time when China has vowed to beef up protection for juveniles following a series of sexual abuse cases involving children”, the official Xinhua news agency said.

It also coincides with a major drive, led by party leader and state president Xi Jinping, against corruption and abuse of power by officials.

Afghanistan suspends talks after US-Taliban move

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fghanistan has suspended talks under way in Kabul on a bilateral security agreement with the US. A spokesman for President Hamid Karzai said the decision was taken in protest over inconsistencies in proposed US direct talks with the Taliban.

The row centres on the name given to the Taliban office, which opened in Qatar on Tuesday, the spokesman said.

US-Afghan talks are to determine the nature of US military presence after foreign troops withdraw in 2014.

President Karzai has been reluctant to sign a long-term agreement with the US amid fears it would undermine Afghan sovereignty - and how it might reflect on him during his remaining time in office, the BBC’s Bilal Sarwary, in Kabul, reports.

On Wednesday morning, Afghanistan’s National Security Council confirmed President Karzai had suspended the fourth round of the bilateral security agreement talks with the US government.

“There is a contradiction between what the US government says and what it does regarding Afghanistan peace talks,” the president’s spokesman AimalFaizi said.

He added that the president disagreed with the name given to the new Taliban office in the Qatari capital, Doha.

North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un (R).

N

orth Korea has blasted a report that its leader, Kim Jong-un, gave out copies of Adolf Hitler’s memoir Mein Kampf to officials on his birthday.

The report, from a news website run by North Korean defectors, said that senior officials were given the book as a gift in January.

North Korea has denounced

the defectors as “human scum” and threatened to kill them.

Nazi leader Adolf Hitler wrote Mein Kampf in 1924 while in prison.

The book, which translates as My Struggle in English, outlines his early life and racist views.

News portal New Focus International wrote the original report, citing an unnamed North Korean official in China.

“Mentioning that Hitler managed to rebuild Germany in a short time following its defeat in WWI, Kim Jong-un issued an order for the Third Reich to be studied in depth and asked that practical applications be drawn from it,” the source reportedly said.

North Korea’s Ministry of People’s Security, which is responsible for policing, issued an angry response which was carried by the country’s official

Asia & Middle East

news agency, KCNA. It dismissed the report as a “smear campaign” written by “a handful of human scum... moving desperately to deter [North Korea’s] progress”.

The defectors were being used by South Korea and the US, it went on.

The ministry was determined to “physically remove [the] despicable human scum who are committing treason”, the statement added.

The two Koreas remain technically at war after the 1950-53 Korean war ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.

Ties between the two are currently very tense in the wake of Pyongyang’s 12 February nuclear test.

It is estimated that more than 20,000 North Koreans have defected to the South since the 1950s.

However, fleeing North Korea is dangerous, and defectors who are repatriated to North Korea face punishments including labour camps and execution, activists say.

More than seven million refugees displaced in 2012 – UN

A

report from the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) says that Syria is “a major new factor” driving up refugee numbers.

The report say 55% of all refugees come from five countries: Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq, Sudan and Syria.

It also found that developing countries now hosted 81% of the world’s refugees, 11% more than a decade ago.

“These truly are alarming numbers. They reflect individual suffering on a huge scale and they reflect the difficulties of the international community in preventing conflicts and promoting timely solutions for them,” said UNHCR chief Antonio Guterres.

Mr Guterres said that the figure of 7.6 million meant there was a new displaced person every 4.1 seconds. “Each time you blink

another person is forced to flee,” he said.

The UNHCR says the figures are based on data from the agency itself as well as from governments and other NGOs. Afghanistan remained the world’s biggest source of refugees, a position it has now held for 32 years, with 95% of Afghan refugees located in either Iran or Pakistan.

Somalis were the second biggest group of refugees in 2012, followed by Iraqis. Syrians were the fourth biggest group.

The figures do not, however, reflect the additional one million people who have fled Syria in the last six months.

The UN says if current trends persist, a further two million people will have left Syria by the end of this year. In the next few days it is expected to ask European countries to take at least some of

them in.

The report also says there has been a marked rise in displacement from Mali and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Mali’s army, heavily backed by France, has been fighting Islamist and ethnic Tuareg rebels this

of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh had been swept away in the floods and authorities were using helicopters to evacuate people and drop essential food supplies.

Northern India has witnessed torrentialrainsatleastthreetimesmore

thanusualoverthepastweekeversince the annual monsoon broke a fortnight aheadofschedule,leavingthousandsof pilgrims and tourists stranded, officials said.

“The state government and the army are trying to rescue thousands of tourists who are stranded near the submergedvalleysandHindushrines,” said JaspalArya, the disaster relief minister of Uttarakhand.

Arya said portions of the famous Hindutemple,Kedarnath,werewashed away on Tuesday and about 10,000 pilgrims were in need of rescuing.

“The Kedarnath temple is submerged in mud and slush. We just hopethatitdoesnotcollapse,”Aryatold the AFP news agency.

Authorities have cancelled pilgrimage trips, fearing further rains andlandslidesinthestate,oftenreferred to as the “Land of the Gods” because of its many Hindu temples and Hindu religious sites.

year. Islamists seized control of the north of the country after a military coup last year.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, some 800,000 people have fled since fighting broke out last year between government forces and the M23 rebel movement.

The UN says 7.6 million people became refugees in 2012, with the total number now higher than at any time since 1994.

Flood death toll in Indian hilly states climb

A

tleast130peoplehavebeenkilled and 70,000 others left stranded in devastating flash floods to hit northern India, private television channel NDTV has reported.

The channel said on Wednesday that thousands of houses in the states

The early arrival of monsoon rains caught many by surprise and exposed the country’s lack of preparedness [Reuters]

Officials in Uttarakhand, the worsthit state, said about 200 cars, two earthmoving equipment and even a parkedhelicopterhadbeensweptaway by floods.

The torrential rains began lashing theregiononSaturdayandlocalofficials said 40 relief camps had been set up to provide food and water to locals and tourists.

On Tuesday, 250 people were rescued by air force helicopters from different parts of the state and many were moved to the relief camps.

“Butmanyarestillstuckanditcould take us three more days to rescue all of them,” Arya added.

The monsoon, which India’s farming sector depends on, covers the subcontinent from June to September, usually bringing some flooding.

But the heavy rains arrived early this year, catching many by surprise and exposing the country’s lack of preparedness.

PEOPLES DAILY, THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 2013

PAGE 34

International Obama pledges reduction in nuclear stockpiles

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S President Barack Obama has renewed his call to reduce the world’s nuclear stockpiles during a speech in front of Berlin’s iconic Brandenburg Gate.

Obama pledged on Wednesday to reduce the number of nuclear weapons held by Russia and the US by one-third during a speech which used the theme “peace through justice”.

“As president I will seek reductions in the US and Russia’s tactical weapons while rejecting the nuclear weaponisation that North

Korea and Iran may be seeking,” he said.

He also called for a global reduction in the manufacturing of materials used in the construction of nuclear weapons.

The speech also included pledges over tackling climate change, which the president called “the global threat of our time” and unemployment.

The Kremlin responded to the US president’s proposals by saying that the new cuts in nuclear stockpiles should expand beyond

Russia and the US and include other nuclear armed states.

Earlier in the day, President Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel discussed the importance of Europe’s relationship with the US. “Sometimes there has been talk that the trans-atlantic alliance is fading in importance, that the United States has turned its attention more towards Asia and the Pacific,” Obama said.

“In conversations with Chancellor Merkel and earlier

President Obama making a speech at the Brandenburg gate in Berlin

with your president, I reminded them that from our perspective the relationship with Europe remains the cornerstone for our freedom and our security.”

Merkel was also keen to emphasise the impact the US had on Germany’s own history.

“When the president addresses the crowd in front of the Brandenburg Gate, he will be a president who can do this in front of a gate that is open,” she said.

“Other presidents had to remind us all that the wall needed to be torn down, and the wall is down and this is what we owe to our American partners and friends.”

Obama spoke in front of Brandenburg Gate nearly 50 years after former US President John F Kennedy’s famous Cold War speech in this once-divided city.

The US president made several references to the history of the gate, and the city, during his speech, which was warmly recieved by the cheering crowds.

“Today’s threats are not as stark as they were half a century ago, but the struggle for freedom and security and human dignity, that struggle goes on,’’ he said.

“I come here to this city of hope because the test of our time demands the same fighting spirit that defined Berlin a half-century ago.

“No wall can stand against the yearnings of justice, yearnings of freedom, yearnings of peace that stand in the human heart.”

Chile to extradite Argentina ‘Dirty War’ judge

T

he Chilean Supreme Court has approved the extradition of a former Argentine judge accused of human rights abuses during the 1976-1983 military rule.

Otilio Romano has been accused in Argentina of complicity in forced disappearances, torture and illegal raids while serving as a state prosecutor in the city of

Mendoza.

He fled to Chile when the allegations emerged two years ago.

Mr Romano says he will appeal against his extradition.

Human rights groups estimate that at least 30,000 people were killed during the military government era in Argentina.

The period became known as

the “Dirty War”.

The military government said they needed to combat “left-wing terrorism”.

Otilio Romano was suspended from the post of judge in August 2011.

The day before the decision was announced he fled to Chile to avoid trial and asked for political asylum

there, the Buenos Aires Herald reports.

Chile rejected the request and placed him under house arrest.

In December 2011, he was expelled from the Council of Magistrates, which considered him an accomplice of the military government in human rights abuses.

Cyprus leader attacks bank bailout terms

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yprus President Nicos Anastasiades has urged eurozone leaders to help his country’s biggest bank and sharply criticised the bailout agreed in March.

The “haircut” imposed on large deposits under the 10bneuro (£8.6bn) bailout led to businesses losing large amounts of the capital they kept in banks.

His comments came in a letter sent last week but leaked on Wednesday.

Losses were imposed on big deposits in Bank of Cyprus (BoC) and Laiki Bank. BoC is now in trouble, the letter said.

“I urge you to support a long-term solution to Bank of Cyprus’ thin liquidity position,” Mr Anastasiades said.

Laiki Bank is being wound up and its safe assets transferred

Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades

to BoC. Capital restrictions imposed to prevent a run on Cypriot banks

have been eased, but remain in place. The president said such “artificial” measures “will only

aggravate the depositors the longer they persist”.

“Rather than creating confidence in the banking system they are eroding it by the day,” he warned.

The text of his letter appeared on the Open Europe think tank’s blog on Wednesday. His complaints about the bailout were also reported by the Financial Times.

Unnamed eurozone officials quoted by Reuters news agency say there are no plans to alter the terms of the bailout for Cyprus or to supply more funds.

Eurozone finance ministers will discuss the letter at a meeting in Luxembourg on Thursday, Reuters reports.

Cyprus has started receiving instalments of the bailout package from international creditors.

Europe and Americas NSA head, lawmakers defend surveillance programmes

T

he head of the National Security Agency said U.S. surveillance programs had helped disrupt more than 50 possible attacks since September 11, 2001, as sympathetic membersofCongressalsodefendedthe use of the top-secret spying operations.

In the first public hearing dedicated to the programmes since former NSA contractor Edward Snowden exposed them this month, members of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee showed little will on Tuesday to pursue significant reforms.

Instead, both U.S. officials and lawmakers spent hours publicly justifying the phone and Internet monitoring programmes as vital security tools and criticized Snowden’s decision to leak documents about them to media outlets.

General Keith Alexander, the head of the NSA, said Snowden’s leaks had inflicted “irreversible and significant” damage on national security.

“I believe it will hurt us and our allies,” Alexander told the House intelligence panel, which helps oversee the vast surveillance efforts.

Snowden’s disclosures have ignited a political furor over the balance between privacy rights and national security, but President Barack Obama and congressional leaders in both parties have backed the programmes and no significant effort has emerged to roll them back.

While critics have blasted the surveillance as government overreach withoutenoughindependentoversight, proposedlegislativeremediesdiscussed so far have focused on tightening rules for contractors and making the secret court that approves warrants for surveillance more transparent.

“People who are skeptical of the programhavenounderstandingofwhat the program is,” U.S. Representative MikeRogers,theRepublicanchairman of the intelligence panel, told reporters after the hearing.

Alexander told the panel the monitoring was not “some rogue operation,” and defended it as legal, closely supervised and crucial to defending Americans.

“I would much rather be here today debatingthispointthantryingtoexplain how we failed to prevent another 9/11,” he told the committee in his second public appearance before Congress since the programmess were exposed.

“Inrecentyearstheseprogrammess, together with other intelligence, have protected the U.S. and our allies from terrorist threats across the globe to include helping prevent ... potential terrorist events over 50 times since 9/11,” he said.

Alexander said at least 10 of those plots involved U.S. targets or suspects in the United States.

Alexander promised to give classified details of all of the foiled incidents to the House and Senate intelligence committees within 24 hours.

Sean Joyce, deputy FBI director, offered information on two of the cases - a plot to bomb the New York Stock Exchange and a conspiracy to give money to a Somali militia designated bytheUnitedStatesasaterroristgroup.

PEOPLES DAILY, THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 2013

PAGE 35

Strange World

Shins of Steel – The man who can break three baseball bats with a super-kick

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or obvious reasons, most people wouldn’t even attempt to break a baseball bat with a shin kick, but Dr. Mak Yuree owes his superhuman reputation to his ability to break through three baseball bats with his thunder kicks.

Hailing from Dakha, Bangladesh, Mak Yuree is a world renowned martial arts expert who has spent almost his entire life training in 40 different fighting styles, including Varma Kalai, one of the oldest and deadliest forms of pressure point martial art. He is also an international authority on meditation, mind training and motivational speaking, but most average people know him as the guy who can break baseball bats with his tibia. Yuree has

set a world record for most wooden baseball bats broken with a single kick, after shattering three of them in one go, and has since then performed the amazing feat at a number of events and on television. Growing up under iron discipline in military boarding school, Thundershin Man says he trained for nearly 20 years by kicking tree trunks with rope rolled over them.

Featured on a number of superhuman-related TV shows, Dr. Mak Yuree stunned audiences around the world with his incredibly powerful shin kicks. Eager to learn if there’s more to his “trick” than constant physical and mental training, experts examined his legs and found that he had more bone mass in his tibia that the average

person. But that can also be considered a consequence of his life-long training, because every time Mak Yuree kicks something hard with his shins, microfractures occur and that sends a message to his body that it needs a stronger bone in that particular area, so it is automatically laying down more bone. At the same time, an experiment has shown he is also capable of using virtually all of the muscle force in his leg, which is also very unusual for the average human.

But the sheer courage with which he bangs his tibia on multiple baseball bats knowing full well there’s a big chance it might break is the most impressive part of Dr. Mak Yuree’s superhuman stunt. Source: spooky

Kite wars of Pakistan

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Photo: Facebook

English official says he has a child by an alien

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member of a town council in northern England says he has fathered a child with an alien who visits him four times a year.

Simon Parkes, a member of the Labor Party who sits on the council in Whitby on the Yorkshire coast, said many people think he is crazy, The Northern Echo reported. But he says his beliefs do not affect his work for his constituents.

Parkes is featured on “Confessions of an Alien Abductee,” a documentary by Channel 4. He said his child is named Zarka and he calls the mother the Cat Queen.

“What will happen is that we will hold hands and I will say ‘I’m

ready’ and then the technology I don’t understand will take us up to a craft orbiting the earth,” he said. “My wife found out about it and was very unhappy, clearly.

That caused a few problems, but it is not on a human level, so I don’t see it as wrong.”

Parkes, 53, is also a driving instructor. He and his wife have three children.

He says his mother was an alien as well and his earliest memory is of an alien picking him up.

“There are plenty of people in my position who don’t chose to come out and say it because they are terrified it will destroy their careers,” he said. Source: UPI.com

id you know you could get arrested for flying a kite in Pakistan, after the pastime was banned in 2007, for safety reasons?

But as long as you stay away from power lines, where is the danger in flying a paper kite, right? Believe it or not, authorities say kites kill people.

In Asian countries like India, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan kite fighting is a very popular sport. The goal is to bring down your opponent’s kite by using an abrasive line coated with a mixture of finely crushed glass and rice glue to cut through its line or the soft paper skin.

Some cultures use metallic lines or attached metal knives to hook and cut the opponent’s line. It takes a lot of practice and expert precision to maneuver a fighting kite, but winning a battle earns the victor the respect and praise of his peers. In Pakistan, the city of Lahore was considered the center of the kite fighting community, and even hosted the grand Basant Festival, where hundreds of thousands of kite flyers battled day and night for air supremacy. The festive event brought in people from all over Pakistan and beyond, but it all ended in 2007, when officials banned it, after several people were reportedly killed and hundreds others injured.

Photo: Rehan Fazal

Photo: Iffyrana

After kite-related tragedies were reported in previous years, Pakistani authorities decided to finally ban kite flying in 2007 and even arrested 1,000 people threatening that anyone caught flying a kite could be tried as a terrorist. Sounds like a pretty serious charge for engaging in something as harmless as kite flying, doesn’t it? Only it turns out the glass coated lines used to slice rival’s kites sometimes sliced through bystanders’ and motorcycle riders’ necks as well, causing horrific injuries and even death. These sharp lines would fall across roads at head height becoming death traps for unsuspecting motorcyclists. Some

fitted their vehicles with arched rods for protection against the sharp strings, but even so, deaths were reported every year. People also fell off rooftops and were electrocuted when their lines made contact with power lines, until authorities took action.

The Basant Kite Festival was originally banned in 2005, but following protests by kite flying enthusiasts and local manufacturers whose livelihood depended on the big event, the ban was temporarily lifted in 2007. Eleven people died and hundreds others were injured that year as a result of kite fighting, and Lahore hasn’t hosted Basant ever since. You can still see the occasional kite flying high over the city skyline, but those who dare engage in the pastime face serious consequences if caught.

The Lahore Kite Flying Association has suggested creating designated kite-flying zones to minimize accidents, but to no avail . There are voices who claim the reasons for the ban have less to do with accidnets and more with religion, as extremist groups see the tradition as un-Islamic and threaten to launch attacks if Basant is held again.

PAGE 36

PEOPLES DAILY, THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 2013

Digest

Could being overweight cause deafness?

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bese teenagers are more likely to suffer hearing loss than their slim peers, according to a new study.

Scientists found that obese adolescents suffered increased hearing loss across all frequencies and were almost twice as likely to develop one-sided, low-frequency hearing loss.

‘This is the first paper to show that obesity is associated with hearing loss in adolescents,’ said study author Professor Anil Lalwani of the Department of Otolaryngology/Head & Neck Surgery at the Columbia University Medical Center.

The study found that obesity in adolescents is associated with sensorineural hearing loss across all frequencies (the frequency range that can be heard by humans).

Sensorineural hearing loss is caused by damage to the inner ear hair cells.

But the the highest rates were for low-frequency hearing loss—15 per cent of obese adolescents compared with 8 per cent of nonobese adolescents developed the problem.

People with low-frequency hearing loss cannot hear sounds in frequencies 2,000 Hz and below. In most cases they can still understand human speech well, but may have difficulty hearing in groups or in noisy places.

‘These results have several

important public health implications,’ said Dr Lalwani.

‘Because previous research found that 80 per cent of adolescents with hearing loss were unaware of having hearing difficulty, adolescents with obesity should receive regular hearing screening so they can be treated appropriately to avoid cognitive and behavioural issues.’

Although the overall hearing loss among obese adolescents was relatively mild, the almost 2-fold increase in the odds of unilateral low-frequency hearing loss is particularly worrisome.

It suggests early, and possibly ongoing, injury to the inner ear that could progress as the obese adolescent becomes an obese

adult.

Future research is needed on the dangerous consequences of this early hearing loss on social development, academic performance, and behavioural and cognitive function.

‘Furthermore, hearing loss should be added to the growing list of the negative health consequences of obesity that affect both children and adults— adding to the impetus to reduce obesity among people of all ages,’ said Dr Lalwani.

The study analysed data from nearly 1,500 adolescents from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey—a large, nationally representative sample of adolescents between the ages

The risk of developing type 2 diabetes may rise in those who increase the amount of red meat in their diet, warn researchers

Obese teenagers are more likely to suffer hearing loss than their slim peers of 12 and 19, conducted from 2005 to 2006 by the National Center for Health Statistics of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Participants were interviewed at home, taking into account family medical history, current medical conditions, medication use, household smokers, socioeconomic and demographic factors, and noise-exposure history.

Dr. Lalwani and his colleagues speculate that obesity may directly or indirectly lead to hearing loss.

Although additional research is needed to determine the mechanisms involved, they theorise that obesity-induced

inflammation may contribute to hearing loss.

Low plasma levels of the antiinflammatory protein adiponectin, which is secreted from adipose tissue, have been found in obese children, and low levels in obese adults have been associated with high-frequency hearing loss, which affects a person’s ability to understand speech.

Obesity also may also contribute to hearing loss as a result of associated problems including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and high cholesterol - all of which have been reported to be associated with deafness.

Source: Dailymail.co.uk

Reading articles about health and disease can make you feel ill

By Emma Innes

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care stories about illnesses may trigger symptoms in some people, according to a new study.

Researchers found that media reports about substances that are supposedly dangerous to health may cause ‘suggestible’ people to develop symptoms - even though there is no objective reason for them to do so.

Researchers studied the phenomenon known as electromagnetic hypersensitivity, which is associated with mobile phone use.

Doctor Michael Witthvft, of Johannes Gutenberg University in Germany, said: ‘There is a considerable body of evidence that electromagnetic hypersensitivity might actually be the result of a so-called “nocebo” effect.

‘The mere anticipation of possible injury may actually trigger pain or disorders. This is the opposite of the analgesic effects we know can be associated with exposure to placebos.’

The study illustrates how media reports about health hazards may trigger or amplify ‘nocebo’ effects in

some people.

For example, people who are sensitive to electromagnetic fields report symptoms such as headaches, dizziness, burning or tingling sensations on their skin, after watching or reading reports into the dangers.

Dr Witthvft said: ‘Tests have shown that the people affected are unable to tell if they have really been exposed to an electromagnetic field.

‘In fact, their symptoms are triggered in exactly the same way if

they are exposed to genuine and sham fields.’

As part of the study, 147 test subjects were first shown a television report.

One group of participants watched a BBC documentary, which dealt with the potential health hazards supposedly associated with mobile phones and WiFi signals.

The other group watched a report on the security of internet and mobile phone data.

Reports about disease and hazardous substances can make people anxious about developing conditions and cause them to develop symptoms

Then all the subjects in both groups were exposed to fake WiFi signals that they were told were real.

Even though they were not exposed to any radiation, some of the subjects developed characteristic symptoms more than half of the subjects reported experiencing agitation and anxiety, loss of concentration or tingling in their fingers, arms, legs, and feet.

Two even left the study prematurely because their symptoms were so severe that they no longer wanted to be exposed to the assumed radiation.

It became apparent that the symptoms were most severe among the subjects who had high pre-existing anxiety as a result of viewing the documentary about the possible hazards of electromagnetic radiation.

Dr Witthvft said the study demonstrates that ‘sensationalised’ reports on potential risks, which often lack scientific evidence, can have a significant effect on the health of large sections of the population.

Source: Dailymail.co.uk

Symptoms can feel very real even though there is nothing wrong with a person

PEOPLES DAILY, THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 2013

PAGE 37

ACN condemns Jonathan over comments on Tinubu

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By Lawrence Olaoye

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he Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) yesterday condemned President Goodluck Jonathan over his response to the recent speech at the British African Diaspora Conference in London by Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, describing as unnecessary and diversionary the name calling and personal attacks against the ACN leader.

In a statement issued in Abuja yesterday by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party said instead of reading the speech objectively, the presidency pressed the panic button by sending its self-confessed ‘’attack dog’’ to criticise a report he had barely read and denigrate the ACN and its leader, an action he alleged has now become the favourite pastime of the presidency.

The presidency went after the messenger, rather than the message, rehashing its old and stale cliches about the ACN and its leader for daring to carry out an objective analysis of the state of our economy as well as the state of the nation and also suggesting the way forward,’’ it said ACN challenged the presidency to controvert what can be described as the kernel of the speech concerning the economy.

According to him, Tinubu had raised the questions about the country’s development: What has become of poverty? What has happened to unemployment?

What is the state of socioeconominequality?

The party said the presidency should rather tell Nigerians whether indeed the poverty level in the country has reduced since

President Goodluck Jonathan 1999 when the PDP assumed power at the centre, as well as how much unemployment has been tamed and how far the socio-economic inequality has been curbed.

“This is how to counter any perceived incorrect assertion by any critic, instead of engaging in name calling,’’ it said. ‘’The assertion by Asiwaju in his speech tallies with our earlier statement that what we are experiencing in Nigeria, under the Jonathan Presidency which has been reeling out highfalutin economic statistics, is growth without development, which is useless.’’

ACN also challenged the presidency to prove to Nigerians that the country’s leadership in the past 14 years has been visionary, disciplined and courageous - what Asiwaju described as the ‘’missing link’’ that has led to the retrogression

Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the three key drivers of development.

“As Asiwaju said, ‘the gap between poor and rich widens.

There is grinding poverty and people have to work twice as hard each day to make ends meet.

There is massive unemployment.

Of what use is any leadership that does little to solve these problems?’’’

The party also challenged the presidency to deny that it had turned the concept of democracy, especially one man, one vote, on its head, especially against the background of its (presidency’s) antics in the recently-conducted election of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum. “’Here is what Asiwaju said in his speech on that election: ‘Look at the recent controversy surrounding election of the Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF) chairman. Thirty-five state governors assembled to vote for

the chairmanship. They did this among themselves by secret ballot.

One contestant earned 19 votes.

The other attracted 16. In a place where honesty matters, the result would be clear and undisputed.

“But not in today’s Nigeria under the current leadership.

The chap who earned fewer votes was declared the winner by those who backed him. In Nigeria, the tenets of basic arithmetic have little application concerning elections. Votes do not count, they are concocted. Elections are not necessarily won by the candidate with the highest votes. Elections are won by the candidate of the powerful and mighty,” he party alleged.

It would be recalled that the Senior Special Assistant to the President, Dr. doyin Okupe, has referred to Tinubu as an unpatriotic leader based on the speech he delivered at the British House of Commons recently.

Reps want budget review for embassies

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embers of the House of Representative Committee on Foreign Affairs yesterday stressed the need for a review of budget for the nation’s embassies and missions abroad.

A four-member subcommittee on oversight function to the Nigerian High Commission said this in London on Wednesday.

The members, who spoke against the backdrop of what they described as ``structural challenges’’ in the affairs of Nigerian missions abroad, expressed concern over peculiar needs of the missions.

The Europe Correspondent

Ex Rep urges politicians to abide by INEC’s warning on early campaigns

of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that inadequate funding remains a major problem for the embassies.

The Leader of the delegation, Mr Nkoyo Toyo, said that a review of the budget would ensure adequate appropriation of funds to suit the peculiar needs of the various missions. ``These are structural problems, it is not about putting money here or there, we have to address issues of balancing needs against the availability of funds. ``Therefore, the budget and structure of foreign missions has to be reviewed. Also we need to

ensure that funding for consular assistance is judiciously used,’’ she said.

Mr Ibrahim Gusau, who also spoken, said all the embassies visited by the committee had similar challenges with funding, consular and staff welfare.

Gusau said the committee would tailor its report based on observation and challenges of the various missions.

In the same vein, Mr Ibrahim Malle and Mr Ben Nwakwu, said that some missions had money voted in areas that were not necessary, while stressing the need for proper allocation of votes.

They also called for a closer relationship between the High Commission and the Nigerian community.

In his remarks, Mr Oluwatosin Lawal, the Nigeria’s Deputy Ambassador to the UK, told the delegation that the mission had recently been restructured for effective service delivery.

Lawal also gave a brief on the cordial bilateral relations between the both countries, and plans to double trade volume to eight billion pounds by 2014.

NAN reports that all the heads of department in the mission briefed the delegation on their activities. (NAN)

ndependence Ogunewe, a former House of Representatives’ member, has advised politicians to abide

by INEC’s warning against early campaigns for the 2015 general elections.

Ogunewe, who was a twoterm member of the House (2003 -2011) representing Ahiazu/Ezinihitte Federal Constituency of Imo, gave the advice in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria yesterday in Abuja.

He called on politicians to be law-abiding, adding that, as gentlemen and women, they should keep to the rules as stipulated in INEC’s time-table on campaigns.

“INEC is the body empowered by law to organise elections and put regulations in place to guide for peaceful electoral process. If the organisation states 90 days, they should stick to that,’’ he said.

He said that there were issues INEC might not be able to handle that required some other intelligence agencies to deal with.

According to him, such include overnight pasting of posters, and urged the security operatives to fish out those responsible for such acts.

Ogunewe said some posters were even pasted by mischief makers without the knowledge of the person involved.

He added that security agencies should therefore follow up on that and find those causing such a mischief ``Mischief makers could do such unlawful acts without the consent of the individual they are campaigning for. ``It is, therefore, the duty of security agencies to rise to the occasion and bring such violators of the Electoral Act to book,’’ he said.

He called on INEC to request assistance from intelligence agencies to find out where the posters emanated from and those funding them. ``The security operatives should be able to spread out their nets and be able to know exactly where those posters are emanating from,’’ Ogunewe said.

It would be recalled that INEC had said that the directive to stop politicians from early campaigns became imperative as some individuals had engaged in early campaigns for the 2015 general elections.

INEC said this in a statement signed by the Chief Press Secretary to the chairman, Mr Kayode Idowu. (NAN)

PAGE 38

PEOPLES DAILY, THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 2013

Politics

Gombe Speaker calls on FG to diversify economy to create jobs

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he Speaker, Gombe State House of Assembly, Alhaji Inuwa Garba, yesterday called on the Federal Government to diversify the nation’s economy to create employment opportunities for youths.

Garba made the call in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja.

He described youth unemployment as a global phenomenon, adding that “the only way to address the situation in the Nigerian context is through economic diversification.”

He noted that agricultural sector alone could create employment opportunities for the unemployed youths, if government properly harnessed its enormous potentials.

“Agricultural sector has the potentials of creating job opportunities for the people to be self-employed. It will also develop other sectors, like the manufacturing industries.`` Garba stressed the need for increased allocation in the federal and states’ governments’ budgets on agriculture and mineral resources to boost agricultural and mineral activities.

He also called on the three tiers of government to create a deliberate policy toward enhancing exploration in agricultural and mineral resources of the country.

Garba, who noted that agriculture had suffered “total neglect for decades,” called on the government to establish research department to identify areas of priority in farming. “ Even from the federal, state and local government’s budgets, agricultural sector receives less allocation compared to other sectors of the economy. `` The speaker urged key players in the nation’s economy to look inward and explore the rich potentials in agriculture to reduce food importation into the country.

The chairman expressed optimism that if the potentials of the agricultural and mineral industries were fully developed, it would generate wealth and develop the nation’s economy.

Garba said that Gombe State Government had commenced research to identify areas that could produce what type of crops and when, to boost food production.

He added that the state government had brought experts to advise it on how to go about the research for better result.

Garba said that the government was determined to establish export processing zone to start exporting agricultural produce to other countries.

(NAN)

Resign honourably, Adamawa PDP scribe tells Tukur From Umar Dankano, Yola

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he Secretary of the ruling People’s Democratic Party in Adamawa State, Mr. P.P Elisha, has urged the party stakeholders not to advise its National Chairman Alhaji Bamanga Tukur to resign his appointment for lack of performance.

Elisha in an interview with newsmen in Yola, said that Tukur as a successful businessman and elder state man with his 86years needed not to be advised to

resign knowing fully well that since emergence as the national chairman of the party, his administration has been in one political razzmatazz to another.

According to him,’’ Tukur is our father, not our candidate, he has no home base support and needed to be reminded that the history has recorded that he only got two votes while Babayo got eight votes right from Zonal election at Bauchi. We will not be surprised if he is eventually booted out of the office because he came on board through

manipulation ’’.

He explained that the Adamawa State Chapter of the party will not be surprised on today if the PDP NEC pushes him out of the office stressing that Tukur is a complete failure politically based on his antecedents and his leadership style.

Elisha said that in 1983 under the National Party of Nigeria (NPN), Tukur was declared the elected governor of defunct Gongola state before Court of Appeal sitting in Jos turned

down his victory and declared Wilson Sabiya of Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) as the winner of the election.

According to him, Tukur, has been parading himself as former Governor of Gongola state which is incorrect because it has not been gazetted based on court judgment against him stressing that the PDP stakeholders in the north east will not be surprised if history will repeat itself on today stressing however that “we will advise him to bow honorably in order not to be disgraced out of office.”

L-R: Chief Judge of Anambra state, Justice Peter Umeadi, Anambra state Governor, Mr. Peter Obi, and Deputy Speaker, Anambra House of Assembly, Hon. Chukwudi Orizu, during the inauguration of new judges’ quarters, yesterday in Onitsha.

Photo: NAN

Amaechi plans street protest against security breaches in Rivers

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ivers Government says it is preparing to take to the streets to protest the `security breaches’ in the state.

Gov. Chibuike Amaechi made the remark while exchanging views with a Prof. Tam David-West, at Government House, Port Harcourt on Wednesday.

Amaechi told the former Petroleum Minister that ``we have that problem and we believe that we should begin to address it. ``Prof., if we need to match on the streets, we will call you to come and join us; we are preparing to match on the streets if this anomaly continues,’’ Amaechi said.

He said that some Nigerians in Diaspora and some other people outside the state had already agreed to join in the march.

Amaechi said that the state had a serious challenge because issues discussed at the state Security Council meetings were leaked while kidnapping and armed robbery were on the rise.

According to him, I will give you (David-West) snippets of the letter I am trying to send to the president.

He said the letter became necessary because ``we are unable to hold any security council meeting anymore because of that. ``Prof, insecurity is threatening to comeback, kidnapping is on the rise, armed robbery is on the rise because they have hijacked the security of the state.

Amaechi said that the Federal Government should remember that the state police was not supported due to the impression that the governors would mismanage it.

He said that the federal police should not be mismanaged against Nigerians as it was an institution for all Nigerians.

Earlier, David-West observed that Amaechi was going through difficult times, but said that he would prevail in the end.

He commended Amaechi’s achievement, especially in terms of

development.

According to him, Amaechi has out-performed every other governor the state ever had; anyone who disputes Amaechi’s performance in the state is blinder than the bat.

“I have followed the history of all governors from Diette-Spiff to Amaechi, I make bold to say without any apologies or regrets that no governor has focused himself to elevating Rivers than Amaechi.

“I took personal interest in the Amaechi’s case ever before I met him in person as I said before. I support a cause not for personal gain.

David-West who decried the crisis in the governor’s forum, said, ``we are going through very strange times in Nigeria’’.

“I am not a member of any political party; I am supporting a cause that is very dear to me and that cause is justice.

“I have been a victim of injustice in my life, so when I see people suffering injustice or victims, I naturally support them. (NAN)

Ondo Assembly suspends member over alleged involvement in fetish activities

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ndo State House of Assembly yesterday suspended the member representing Ose State Constituency, Fola Olasehinde, over her alleged involvement in fetish activities.

The decision to suspend the lawmaker was taken during plenary presided over by the Deputy Speaker, Dare Emiola.

The motion for the suspension of the lawmaker was sponsored by the Majority Leader, Dayo Akinsoyinu, who alleged that Olasehinde’s activities had brought ridicule and embarrassment to the Assembly.

Following the debate on the motion, the House resolved to set up a five-man committee headed by Olotu Fatai.

The House mandated the committee to investigate the allegation against the lawmaker and report its findings within two weeks. (NAN)

PEOPLES DAILY, THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 2013

North worst hit by malnutrition - FG From Ayodele Samuel,and Ngozi Onyeakusi, Lagos

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he Federal Government yesterday said the northern region is worst hit with the menace of malnutrition which mostly affects children under the age of five.

The Minister for Health Prof Onyebuchi Chukwu in a keynote address at the second Shared Value Media Workshop organised by Nestle Nigeria Plc in Lagos said the North West has 53% of Stunting and wasting in the country.

While North Central has 44% , North East 49% , South West 31% South South 31% and South East 22%.

The Minster who was represented by Deputy Director/Head, Nutrition Department, Federal Ministry of Health, Dr Chris Isokpunwu said is really unfortunate that despite the fact that most of the food being consumed in Nigeria are being produced in from northern Nigeria, yet the region has highest number of malnourished children in the country.

“The FAO has said that there is enough food that can feed the seven billion world population, yet over one billion people are still suffering from malnutrition.

In Nigeria, most of the food we consume are produced from the northern part of the country, yet the region has highest number of malnourished children under the age of five” Isokpunwu said.

He lamented that about 41 percent of Nigerian children under the age of five are suffering from stunted growth, 14 percent suffer from wasting while 23 percent are suffering from underweight. He added that the problem of malnutrition has been less noticed because when doctors write their postdeath reports, they hardly attribute it to malnutrition.

“When doctors write their reports after a child’s death they fail to attribute it to malnutrition but will only indicate missiles, malaria, pneumonia as sources of death. This continues to undermine the ravaging effect of malnutrition which often gives birth to some of these stories,” Isokpunwu said.

He said the federal government is putting policies and guidelines in place to address the issue of malnutrition in the country He said the review of the National policy on Food and Nutrition is under way.

Declaring the workshop open, Managing Director and Chief Executive Nestle Nigeria, Mr. Dharnesh Gordhon Said one third of pre-school children are deficient in Vitamin A, while more than three quarters of young children and pregnant women suffers from iron deficiency.

PAGE 39

News Extra

Jigawa SSG suspends perm sec over insubordination From, Ahmed Abubakar, Dutse

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he Jigawa state permanent secretary for special services handling security matters, Alhaji Ibrahim Alhaji has been suspended from office for alleged administrative lapses and insubordination.

The Secretary to the State government, Alhaji Lawal Abdu announced the suspension and directed the permanent secretary

for religious and Chieftaincy affairs to oversee the special services department.

Though reasons for the action remain unclear,findings revealed that the SSG was bitter with an earlier action of the suspended permanent secretary in releasing sensitive information without the consent of his supervising boss (SSG).

Our reporter gathered that the permanent secretary, through his

source received a vital information on a possible security threat in the state but instead of reporting same to the SSG, leaked out the information.

A source close to the office of the SSG who preferred anonymity disclosed that “what happened was the PS received a report, so instead of him to report to his superior, that is SSG, he leaked the report publicly”.

When contacted, the state’s

head of civil service, Alhaji Mustapha Aminu confirmed the suspension of the permanent secretary.

Alhaji Mustapha Aminu said “yes he was suspended for acting without directive,that is insubordination which is an administrative lapse”.

The head of civil service declined to comment on the offense committed by the permanent secretary or reason behind the government punishment.

NERC commissions Port Harcourt complaints office

By Etuka Sunday

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People waiting for free eye check up sponsored by Jigawa government, yesterday at Dutse General Hospital.

Photo: NAN

Lagos PDP wants Senator Tinubu recalled From Ayodele Samuel, Lagos

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he Lagos State chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party PDP has described the confessional statement by Senator Oluremi Tinubu that she cannot understand the operations of the senate and is indeed confused about the workings of the Senate, as the long awaited evidence needed to commence the recall of the confused Senator.

The party in a statement signed by its Publicity Secretary Taofik Gani, calls on the registered voters in the Lagos

central Senatorial district to immediately commence the recall process of the Senator without further delay.

The party said that Senator Oluremi Tinubu has not only performed below expectation on the floor of the Senate, but has not initiated any successful bill to justify her membership of the senate.

PDP said, Senator Oluremi Tinubu also acted dishonourably when she chastised her Senator colleagues for acts not proved when she alleged that “they don’t go home to their people”.

“She has also misapplied the privilege of being the senator representing the most strategic senatorial district in the state, even though she is non-Lagosian, an experience that may not encourage Lagos indigenes to allow non indigenes hold sensitive political office henceforth”.

Senator Tinubu allegedly asserted this view on Saturday during her meeting with some editors to give reports of her stay in the Senate and also to denounce the popular belief that she is interested in the Governorship of the State in 2015.

Appeal court sentences driver to death for killing FRSC Special Marshal

By Tobias Lengnan Dapam

T

he Appeal Court in Port Harcourt, has confirmed an earlier Rivers State High Court ruling of July 15, 1999 sentencing a bus driver, Emeka Mbachu, to death for killing a Special Marshal of the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC).

The Corps Public Education

Officer (CPEO), Jonas Agwu, made this known yesterday in a statement made available to newsmen.

The statement recalled that Clifford Azubuike, met his untimely death while on patrol duties on November 3, 1995, at about 6.45 pm, at the 1st Artillery Junction, along Aba - Port Harcourt highway.

Agwu said, Justice E Eko (JCA) in his lead judgement, dismissed the appeal filed by Emeka Mbachu against his earlier conviction and sentenced him to death, quoting the learned Justice saying, “On the whole, there is no substance in the appeal. In my candid view, the appeal deserves to be, and it is hereby dismissed in its entirety.

he Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission yesterday announced that it has commissioned a new electricity complaints forum office in Port Harcourt, Rivers State with the mandate to resolve disputes, as well as listen to complaints of electricity consumers in the zone.

The forum is expected to handle complaints from consumers across Cross Rivers, Delta, Akwa Ibom and Bayelsa states.

NERC in a statement quoted the Commissioner, Government and Consumer Affairs, NERC, Mr. Abba Ibrahim, as saying, “We are witnessing a very important milestone in electricity service in Nigeria that we have never witnessed before.

Our priority is to have disputes and complaints addressed at the customer care units of the electricity distribution companies across the nation.

“But we know that some may fall off, while some may not be resolved to the satisfaction of the parties involved.

So, that is why we have decided to come up with this forum office to address such complaints.”

Ibrahim said, “Sometimes we receive complaints by the service providers against consumers of electricity, especially when it has to do with cases of electricity theft, vandalism, by-passing and all sorts of issues.

“There are billing issues reported to the commission by electricity consumers, such as crazy bills, estimated bills, no meters, no power and cases of exploitation. So, as we are marching towards a new power system that will be run by the private sector, we thought it necessary that we must have a very robust means of resolving disputes.”

According to him, the forum members are individuals with quality integrity drawn from the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria; Nigerian Association of Chamber, Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture; Nigerian Society of Engineers; Consumer Protection Council; and a Non-Government Organisation within the zone.

PEOPLES DAILY, THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 2013

PAGE 40

News Briefs

Suspension:Court slates July 1 for judgment in Joe Musa’s suit

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federal high court in Maitama, Abuja has fixed July 11, 2013 to deliver judgment in a suit brought before it by the director general of the National Gallery of Art, Chief Joe Musa, challenging his suspension.

Joe Musa joined the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF), the minister of culture and Mr. Abdullahi Muku in the suit.

The trial Judge, Justice Elvin S. Chukwu adjourned the matter for judgment after both parties adopted their written addresses when the matter came up yesterday.

By Sunday Ejike Benjamin

Soldier’s fiancé kills FRSC offical, in accident

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n officer with the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) serving in Nasarawa state, RMA1 S.K Glabe, was reportedly killed in an accident that occurred along the Akwanga-Keffi road, involving the fiancé of a yet-to-be identified Group Captain, while three others sustained injuries and are now being treated at the OLA Hospital in Akwanga, Nasarawa state.

Confirming the incident to journalists in his office yesterday, Sector commander of the FRSC in Nasarawa, Udoma. O. Francis disclosed that the accident which occurred at about 3:11 pm on Sunday, involved a Nissan Maxima with Reg. No BR 403 ABC, driven by a lady in company of the said NAF officer, NE to Gudi.

He said that, according to reports, the lady driver, a fiancé of the Group Captain, who were said to be returning from their wedding ntroduction, swerved to avoid hitting two oncoming motorcyclists, following which she rammed into the rear of the FRSC patrol vehicle ahead of them, sending the Hilux van crashing into a ditch, killing one of its occupants and injuring three others.

From Ali Abare Abubakar, Lafia

Benue police arrests 30 robbery suspects

T

he Benue State Police command has apprehended over 30 suspected armed robbers for different crimes.

While parading the robbers to newsmen yesterday at the Police headquarters, the new commissioner of Police Adams Audu declared zero tolerance for criminal activities in the State.

He said that the police arrested four persons in connection with the death of the sales manager of West African Milk Company, WAMCO Lukman Razaq.

According to him, Lukman was found murdered on June 3 in his room along Modern Market, Makurdi while his Toyota Corolla car and other items inside his room were stolen.

From Uche Nnorom, Makurdi

L-R: Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Education, Dr. MacJohn Nwabiala, Minister of Education, Professor Ruqayyatu Ahmed Rufa’I, and Senior Education Adviser, Human Development Team of Department for International Development, British High Commission, Ms. Barbara Payne, during the latter’s working visit to the Ministry of Education, yesterday in Abuja.

Photo: Justin Imo-Owo

Disengaged staff call on Unity Bank to settle outstanding entitlements From David Hassan, Gombe

T

he disengaged staff of former Bank of the North now Unity Bank have called on the bank to settle all their pension liabilities.

Briefing the newsmen in Gombe on Tuesday, a retiree, Malam Babayola Isah stated that the staff were disengaged since 2004 following the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) directives for banks to merge and give rooms for mega banks that can positively compete in the new world’s emerging economies.

According to him, section 9 subsection 2 of the consolidation guidelines of the CBN, directed

Maaji Dandaura from Lafia

N

asarawa state Government has procured 4,500 tons of fertilizer equivalent to 150 trailer load, for distribution to farmers in the state.

The permanent secretary, state ministry of agriculture and water resources, Mallam Ishaku Danladi Abari disclosed this in his office in Lafia while addressing Agric coordinators of local Government councils and development areas on the modalities for the distribution of fertilizer to farmers in their respective localities.

The permanent secretary who stood in for the commissioner of Agriculture and water resources said both the local government councils and development areas were allocated three trailer loads of fertilizer for distribution to

that all the merging banks should settle their pension liabilities before they effect the merger.

“Unity bank refused to follow the directives of CBN but went ahead and merged which was enough to invalidate the entire merger and render the process illegal”, he said.

Isah said, two years after their disengagement, Unity Bank paid Bank of the North’s staff 50 per cent of their pension and gratuity but was fraudulently calculated.

He further explained that the amount given to them was converted to cover loans and prepaid expenses taken by the affected staff on 100 per cent recovery by the bank from staff.

“This action of Unity Bank has rendered the disengaged staff absolutely distressed and poor. “A good number of them have died in poverty while their entitlements have not been paid…only to declare huge financial report (profit) with their disengaged staff benefit”, he said.

According to him, in 2010, N5.665 billion which is supposed to be their entitlement, transferred from (BON LEGACY) was declared as part of the bank profit.

“The public should see how some banks are using blood money to intimidate the general public with bogus financial report to investors and depositors”, he

said.

Isah added: “But the Managing director of Unity Bank for reasons best known to him has disregarded the instruction, instead telling us that the Governors forum had refused to discuss our matter”.

He said in view of this, the ex staff of the bank have resolved to “mobilize ourselves all over the country to stage a peaceful picketing of the entire branches of Unity Bank nationwide given the management two weeks ultimatum with effect from June 18, 2013 to July 5 to pay them their outstanding 50 per cent entitlements”.

farmers.

According to Malam Abari, the Agric coordinators are staff of the ministry of Agriculture and water resources and representatives of the ministry at the local government councils and development areas.

He pointed out that the state ministry of agriculture and water resources has constituted a committee on the distribution of fertilizer at both the local government councils and development areas.

The committee on the

distribution of fertilizer has the commissioners, special advisers and permanent secretaries to serve as chairmen in their respective local government councils and development areas, while the party chairman is to serve as member of the committee.

Nasarawa buys 4500 tons of fertilizer

Kebbi to digitalize state television station - Director

T

he Kebbi Government on Wednesday said it would instal digital equipment at the state- owned television

station.

Alhaji Garba Hamisu, the State Director of Information, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Birnin Kebbi.

He said that provision had been made for the project in the 2013 budget, while the blue print had been

provided.

Hamisu said that booster stations, located in Koko and Zuru local government areas would also be upgraded for a wider coverage.

He said the staff would be trained on how best to handle the new equipment to ensure the easy migration from analogue to the modern system of operation.

He said the digitalisation would only be limited to the state-owned

television since the state radio had since been digitalised. ``We would mount ultra-modern communication gadgets to enable us compete with other sister stations across the country and ensure that the station enjoys wider coverage.

The director urged journalists in the state to adhere to the ethics of their profession, especially seeking clarifications and dissemination of the right facts and figures. (NAN)

PEOPLES DAILY| THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 2013

CIV get nod to host 2014 3rd ECOWAS Games

T

he ECOWAS Commission and the Ivorian Government have signed an agreement formally awarding the hosting rights of the 3rd ECOWAS Games to that country.

ECOWAS Commission President Kadre Desire Ouédraogo and

Mikel (Inset: Suarez)

PAGE 41

the Ivorian Minister of Youth Development, Sports and Entertainment, Alain Lobognon, signed the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU).

The Commission said in a statement yesterday, in Abuja, that this was done at a brief cer-

emony on Monday in Abidjan.

Côte d’Ivoire received the nod to host the biennial Games at the end of the second edition in June 2012, hosted and won by Ghana.

Nigeria hosted the first edition in September 2010.

The statement said that the

Brown Ideye embraces Nnamdi Oduamadi after the latter scored against Kenya in Calabar

third edition would be held in Yamoussoukro, the Ivorian political capital, in August 2014.

Five sports codes - athletics, traditional wrestling, handball, volleyball and boxing - feature in the under-23 regional competition.

Edinson Cavani

Super Eagles, La Celeste in make or mar clash today

By Patrick Andrew

I

t’s African champions against South American champions in what is likely to be a clash of flair, depth and individual brilliance.

The Super Eagles of Nigeria and the La Celeste of Uruguay will this night trade tackles for a possible ticket to the next stage of the FIFA Confederation Cup in Salvador.

The Eagles have the edge courtesy the 6-1 drubbing of fledglings- the Iron Warriors of Tahiti. On the other hand, La Celeste, who paraded some of the best known soccer star in Lius Suarez, Edison Cavani, Diego Forlan among others, lost their opening game of the fiesta to world champions- La Roja.

But the La Celeste are yet to play the Tahitians which means they also stand the chance of trouncing the French Polynesian

team in their last group game.

Both countries realize the importance of their clash at the Arena Fonte Nova, making tonight’s game one in which they must take something from to harbour hope of advancing to the next stage.

A win will hand the semi-finals ticket to either. For Nigeria, it will make their final group game against Spain a formality, while a draw or loss would alter the complexion of that game.

Though Nigeria have played South American opponents such as Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Venezuela, Peru and Colombia, today’s clash is the first between them and Uruguay.

In some way it will be a tactical war between the benches. Stephen Keshi, who wants to make a statement for African coaches and Oscar Tabarez, whose men will need to reproduce a form different from what the displayed against Spain.

Against Spain, lively Suarez and Edinson Cavani were well policed by a midfield laden with skills and vision. It may be slightly different when they face the Eagles.

Here is where the likes of Mikel Obi, Sunday Mba and Fegur Ogude will have to raise their game if the Eagles must stamp their authority.

Keshi has options in Ogenyi Onazi if he has fully recuperated and John Ogu, who has shown lately that he possesses the skill to dictate the pace of the game against opponents. They can rattle the Uruguayans’ defence as did Spain, whose only fault was lacking a point man.

The Eagles though must guide against the experience and suave of Diego Forlan, who restored some samblance of order when he came on in the match with Spain.

For the Eagles, who tend to thrive more in high profile games,

this exactly fits the bill. Aside from an unassure offensive approach, the Eagles can rise to the challenge as was the case against the Catalunyan.

Ahmed Musa is sure to be pacy, Nnamdi Oduamadi daring, but whether Brown Ideye or Joseph Akpala or Anthony Ujah whoever lands the arrowhead role to play the role will determine to a large extend whether the result will be favourable or not.

Nigeria’s backline seems suspect sometimes but also obvious is the fact that kenneth Omeruo and Godfrey Oboabona have blended well and adding Efe Ambrose to the mix makes the defence assuring.

That though is if Efe and Elderson Echiejile are not too ambitious.

Efe for one supports the attack well but like Elderson has problem with recovery rate and could create ample room for the sleek Suarez to punish the Eagles.

True, the Eagles humbled the

Iron Warriors of Tahiti, but that should not lure them into a false sense of security. In the Uruguayans, they will a far stiffer test of their abilities than the Oceania champions.

Coach Stephen Keshi has already said he will be making changes at the back in a bid to contain the effervescent twosome of Edinson Cavani and Luis Suarez.

The Eagles must draw inspiration from their two-wins-out-oftwo against Venezuela, following a 1-0 defeat in a friendly in London in July 2003 and the sweet 3-1 thumping in America seven months ago.

It may be different but the fact that Venezuela have given Uruguay bloody nose means the Eagles can do so as well.

Again, though Nigeria are unbeaten in 18 matches, their dismal record against CONMEBOL sides- 17 matches lost 10, drawn four and won only three- means they must to improve it.

PEOPLES DAILY| THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 2013

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Sports FIFA cancels Eagles’ victory dinner party over insecurity A

dinner party planned for the victorious Super Eagles squad on Monday night after the 6-1 defeat of Tahiti in their Group B 2013 FIFA Confederation Cup match, was cancelled at

the instance of FIFA. A PANA Correspondent reported on Tuesday that the team was billed to have the dinner at Restaurant Atelier in Savassi centre in Belo Horizonte but FIFA

Enyeama

officials, citing security reasons, prevented the Nigerian players from leaving their hotel at Belvedere.

They said that there had been street protests in Belo Horizonte and the measure was to prevent the Nigerian team from being caught up in any mob action.

PANA reports that most major streets in Belo Horizonte were closed on Monday night by the Brazilian military police following increased protests in the city.

One of the organisers of the dinner, Olusegun Akinruli, lamented the turn of events.

“It is sad, but we have to understand the concerns of FIFA. We would have loved to celebrate the victory with guests of Nigerian roots,’’ said Olusegun, who prepared the dishes for the players.

The Super Eagles, who at about 4.30 p.m. Nigerian time, touched down at the denselypopulated Atlantic coastal city of Salvador for the next game, had private dinner at BH Mall in Belo Horizonte and walked back to their Ceaser Park hotel.

Councilman Leo Bourgeois also lamented the cancellation of the dinner.

"It's sad. We try to show that there was sufficient security for the athletes. But we have to accept the decision of the FIFA. The cancellation was because of legitimate demonstrations within a democratic country.’’

The party could still be held after their match against Uruguay this night

Ex-Eagles goalkeeper believes team can beat Uruguay

F

ormer Super Eagles goalkeeper, Christian Obi, has expressed the belief that the team can defeat Uruguay in Thursday’s match at the ongoing FIFA Confederation’s Cup tournament.

Obi, the Assistant Coach of Heartland FC of Owerri, said yesterday the Eagles, who play Uruguay tonight, are capable of producing needed result. He based his optimism on the team’s performances in recent times.

He said the Eagles had improved in recent times, stressing that the team needed to correct little errors to win the two big games ahead in their group B. “Although the Eagles defeated Tahiti with a wide margin, they still need to improve on the attack to be able to match their next two opponents,” he said.

According to him, Uruguay and Spain are tough teams, technically, but in football any team can win.

“I know that the two teams may be technically gifted, but we should not forget that history has a big role to play in football,” he said.

He advised the Eagles’ Chief Coach, Stephen Keshi, to lay more emphasis on a technically knit midfield and attack.

Onigbinde urges LMC to aim at improving League

A

degboye Onigbinde, a former Head Coach of the Super Eagles, has urged the League Management Company (LMC) to strive toward an improved Nigeria Professional Football League (NPFL).

Onigbinde, who spoke in Lagos yesterday, urged the Nduka Iraborled LMC to take advantage of the two-week break for teams in the Nigeria Professional Football League (NPFL) to marshal out ways of improving the league on all front.

Onigbinde stressed the need for the administrators of the NPFL to ensure that the league ended on schedule to avoid the recurrence of an elongated season.

“Well, initially most of us thought that clubs may play an abridged league because it didn’t kick-off when it should; this should not happen again.

“Our league portrays the state of the country’s football; the confusion that marred the kick-off date this season should not recur again,’’ he said.

Onigbinde added that he was looking forward to a better league, and hoped for an improved level of understanding among the administrators.

Wimbledon: Fifth seeded Nadal may face Djokovic or Federer in quarter-finals R afael Nadal could face world number one Novak Djokovic, defending champion Roger Federer or home favorite Andy Murray as early as the Wimbledon quarter-finals, after he was seeded fifth for the grass court major yesterday.

Tomorrow's draw for the tournament, which begins at the All England Club on Monday, could now produce a nightmare scenario.

Top three seeds Djokovic, Murray and Federer, could end up being in the same quarter as 2008 and 2010 winner Nadal.

The Wimbledon seeding reflects Nadal's current ranking, with the Mallorcan behind fourth-ranked Spanish compatriot David Ferrer, whom he beat to win an eighth French Open title this month.

Wimbledon is the only grand slam that does not automatically follow the men's rankings when seedings are decided.

Instead, officials rely on a three-stage formula which also takes into account grass-court performances of the past two seasons.

As Nadal suffered a shock second-round exit in southwest London 12 months ago, after which his ranking slipped as he spent seven months on the sidelines with a knee injury, Wimbledon's seeding formula failed to favour him.

John McEnroe, the retired three-time Wimbledon champion, said on Tuesday that it would be 'totally wrong' for 12-times grand slam champion Nadal to be seeded outside the top four.

“In my opinion there is no doubt he should be in the top four," American McEnroe said in a conference call.

“If he ran into Ferrer in the quarter-finals it would be the same old, same old because Ferrer is used to running into one of the big four in the last eight.

“But if Nadal played Djokovic in the quarters, or possibly Murray or Federer, that would be a big difference, and absolutely wrong for that to happen, in my opinion."

Nadal

Roger

Novak

PEOPLES DAILY| THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 2013

Sports

Inte r national Transf e r

Arsenal set to land £22m Higuain

A

rsenal hope to end their nine-year wait to sign Gonzalo Higuain this week by making a club record £22million offer for the striker.

The Argentina international has privately agreed to make the switch to the Emirates Stadium this summer.

And the Gunners - who are also confident of keeping Bacary Sagna and Laurent Koscielny ahead of next season - will this week formalise their interest in the Real Madrid star, who has been told he is free to leave the Bernebe Talks between Arsenal officials and Higuain’s representatives have progressed well and it seems all that is left is for the two clubs to agree a price.

In addition to smashing their transfer current transfer record, the £15million paid to Zenit St Petersburg for Andrey Arshavin, Arsenal are willing to make Higuain their top earner on around £150,000-per-week.

The Gunners have kept close tabs on the 25-yearold forward ever since his breakthrough into River

Plate’s first-team in 2004.

Arsenal maintains a strong interest in Wayne Rooney and Stevan Jovetic, but the Higuain deal is viewed as the most realistic.

A

est Ham United have completed the signing of England striker Andy Carroll from Liverpool for a club record £15m.

Carroll, 24, cost Liverpool £35m but was loaned to West Ham in August, scoring seven goals in 24 games.

The former Newcastle United forward has signed a six-year contract, with an option for a further two years.

Carroll suffered a number of injuries during his time on loan at Upton Park, with knee and hamstring problems keeping him out of action for several months.

Carroll believed he could play his way into England manager Roy Hodgson’s plans if he could improve on his fitness record next term.

Carroll, who made his England debut in 2010 and has won nine caps, was signed by Kenny Dalglish for Liverpool on transfer deadline day in January 2011, for what remains a record fee for a British player.

He had impressed by scoring 31 times for his boyhood club Newcastle in 81 appearances, but his time at Anfield was short-lived.

Coupled with the arrival of Brendan Rodgers and a new style of play, Carroll’s return of just six goals in 44 league outings for Liverpool saw him loaned to West Ham. The Hammers’ previous record signing was Matt Jarvis, for £10.75m from Wolverhampton Wanderers in August 2012.

Signed: B. M. Gwadabawa Secretary NUJ Sokoto State Council Twitter: @Damyiloh GSM: +2347031140009, +2348065887777 Blog: www.elkurebe.blogspot.com

CHANGE OF NAME

CHANGE OF NAME

to make the switch to the Emirates Stadium this summer.

And the Gunners - who are also confident of keeping Bacary Sagna and Laurent Koscielny ahead of next season - will this week formalise their interest in the Real Madrid star, who has been told he is free to leave the Bernebe Talks between Arsenal officials and Higuain’s representatives have progressed well and it seems all that is left is for the two clubs to agree a price.

In addition to smashing their transfer current transfer record, the £15million paid to Zenit St Petersburg for Andrey Arshavin, Arsenal are willing to make Higuain their top earner on around £150,000-per-week.

The Gunners have kept close tabs on the 25-yearold forward ever since his breakthrough into River Plate’s first-team in 2004.

Arsenal maintains a strong interest in Wayne Rooney and Stevan Jovetic, but the Higuain deal is viewed as the most realistic.

Carroll complete £15m Hammers move

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LOSS OF DOCUMENT The general public is hereby notified that the Original Certificate of Occupancy or Right of Ownership No. HD/RES/9396, issued in Sokoto and bearing the name of one BINTA M. GWADABAWA, got missing. All efforts to trace the said document has proved abortive. Anybody that does any business with the said document, does so at his/her own risk.

I, FORMERLY KNOWN AND ADDRESSED AS UMAR MOHAMMED, NOW WISH TO BE KNOWN AND ADDRESSED AS MOHAMMED YAKUBU. ALL FORMER DOCUMENTS REMAIN VALID. SHARIAH COURT OF APPEAL BAUCHI AND THE GENERAL PUBLIC TO TAKE NOTE.

Tottenham close to £15m Paulinho deal rsenal hope to end their nine-year wait to sign Gonzalo Higuain this week by making a club record £22million offer for the striker.

The Argentina international has privately agreed

PAGE 43

I, FORMERLY KNOWN AND ADDRESSED AS NWANGWU T. CHINEDU, NOW WISH TO BE KNOWN AND ADDRESSED AS NWANGWU A. CHINEDU. ALL FORMER DOCUMENTS REMAIN VALID. OJI RIVER L.G.A ENUGU STATE AND THE GENERAL PUBLIC TO TAKE NOTE.

CHANGE OF NAME I, FORMERLY KNOWN AND ADDRESSED AS MRS. RISIKAT ABDULKAREEM, NOW WISH TO BE KNOWN AND ADDRESSED AS MRS. RISIKAT OLUBUNMI ENIOLA. ALL FORMER DOCUMENTS REMAIN VALID. THE GENERAL PUBLIC TO TAKE NOTE.

CHANGE OF NAME I, FORMERLY KNOWN AND ADDRESSED AS MISS IDOWU ADENIKE OLUWAFUNMILOLA, NOW WISH TO BE KNOWN AND ADDRESSED AS MRS. AKANDE ADENIKE OLUWAFUNMILAYO. ALL FORMER DOCUMENTS REMAIN VALID. ELIZADE NIGERIA LIMITED AND THE GENERAL PUBLIC TO TAKE NOTE.

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CHANGE OF NAME I, FORMERLY KNOWN AND ADDRESSED AS ASAOLU LOVINA LEBECHUKWU, NOW WISH TO BE KNOWN AND ADDRESSED AS EZE LOVINA LEBECHUKWU. ALL FORMER DOCUMENTS REMAIN VALID. NATIONAL INDUSTRIAL COURT OF NIGERIA AND THE GENERAL PUBLIC TO TAKE NOTE.

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PEOPLES DAILY| THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 2013

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Sports Inte r national Transf er

Real Madrid desperate to pin down Cristiano Ronaldo, offer N317bn

R

eal Madrid are desperate to keep their prize star, Cristiano Ronaldo, as a result they are dangling €155m or N317, 750 billion (at the current rate of N205 per euro) to secure the Portuguese player in their fold.

Already, Madrid are in advanced talks with Ronaldo’s representatives over the deal that will a period of five years. Should the deal be sealed, Ronaldo will earn €15m annually after tax in what will be the most lucrative contract in the history of the game.

Ronaldo, who has scored 201 goals in just 199 games in his four seasons at the Santiago Bernabeu, raised alarm bells on Thursday when he posted a cryptic message on Twitter which read simply: “All the news about my renewal with Real Madrid are false.” Days earlier, however, he revealed his intention to remain at the Spanish side beyond his current contract, which expires in 2015.

The former Manchester United had issues with Real following the club’s a lack of public support from the club in the race for the Ballon d’Or, a fall-out with team-mate Marcelo and the club’s apparent unwillingness to discuss a new deal.

His once robust relationship with Jose Mourinho went soar a few months ago over a tactical correction made by Mourinho in a game against Valencia in January.

Madrid signed Ronaldo from Manchester United in a world-record €94 million deal back in the summer of 2009, following Florentino Perez’s return to the presidency at the capital club. He currently earns around €10m annually after tax.

When Ronaldo arrived, however, the so-called ‘Beckham Law’, which allowed foreigners who had lived in Spain for less than 10 years and who earned above €120,000 per annum to pay a lower tax rate of around 23 per cent and not the usual 45%, was still in force. David Beckham was one of the first to take advantage of the law after his move from Manchester United in 2003.

However, the Spanish government has since scrapped that initiative and a new deal would see Ronaldo required to pay 52% of his salary to the taxman. Hence, Madrid will be faced with an annual outlay close to €31m in order to pay the Portuguese the net €15m he has asked for.

Madrid, however, are aware of the importance of keeping Cristiano. The capi-

M

anager Brendan Rodgers has returned from his holiday in Spain to oversee the capture of midfield playmaker Henrik Mkhitaryan, goalkeeper Simon Mignolet as well as wide forwards Luis Alberto and Christian Atsu.

The Merseysiders have already signed Kolo Toure on a free and agreed a €8.8m that will be completed when it receives international clearance.

Liverpool also remain confident of signing top centre-back target Kyriakos Papadopoulos despite reaching a stalemate in negotiations with his club, Schalke.

It adds up to a massive overhaul of the first-team squad, which will be enhanced even further if Luis Suarez is successful in

tal club missed out on Neymar recently, while they look to be frustrated in their pursuit of Dortmund duo Ilkay Gundogan and Robert Lewandowski.

Other previous transfer targets, such as Sergio Aguero and Radamel Falcao, will not be arriving either, while Gareth Bale is expensive and unwilling to force a move and Edinson Cavani is considered overpriced by the Madrid board. Ronaldo’s renewal, therefore, assumes even greater importance.

President Perez has already revealed Real’s intention to make the Portuguese the cornerstone of the club’s next sporting project. “I want to build Real Madrid around Cristiano Ronaldo,” he said late last month.

“And I want Cristiano to be the best-paid player in the world.”

Madrid are ready to meet Ronaldo’s wage demands and make the Portuguese a higher earner than Lionel Messi, who takes home around €13m before bonuses at Barcelona, and Falcao, who will bring in €14m annually at Monaco. Samuel Eto’o earns €20m per year at Anzhi Makhachkala, although the Cameroonian is on just a threeyear deal and his total package will be surpassed by Ronaldo’s Real contract.

The one sticking point currently is the player’s image rights. Cristiano currently has a 60 per cent share (of which he pays a third to Jorge Mendes’ company Gestifute), while the club keep 40%.

The Portuguese is keen to improve that ratio and his recent tweet, as well as news stories leaked to press over a stalemate in negotiations, is thought to be two tactics used in conjunction with Mendes in order to apply pressure on the club. However, both parties are confident an agreement will be reached in the coming weeks.

Culled from

engineering a €40m-plus move, most likely to Real Madrid.

The biggest statement to rivals clubs would be the signing of Shakhtar Donetsk’s versatile midfielder Mkhitaryan, who has gained an excellent reputation in club and international football for his ability to play a number of central midfield roles.

Liverpool and Donetsk are in advanced negotiations on the fee for the Armenian, with the Ukraine club holding out for €26m. Sources say the deal is now “60 per cent done”.

Anfield officials are also in talks with their counterparts at Sunderland about the fee for Mignolet, which is likely to be close to €12m. The deal is expected to be secured

Ronaldo

by the end of the week.

It is understood that Liverpool expect Pepe Reina to end his seven-year spell on Merseyside this summer as he holds out for a move to Barcelona, but the waters have been muddied by uncertainty over whether Victor Valdes will leave the Catalan giants.

Rodgers and Liverpool’s recruitment team have prioritised the signings of attacking players to fit into the manager’s favoured 4-2-3-1 formation.

Alberto is set to become the Reds’ third signing of the summer, with Liverpool confident of completing a deal for the 20-yearold at some point this week.

Sevilla are holding out for €8.1m for the youngster, who spent last season on loan

at Barcelona, but a compromise is expected to be struck at around the £7m mark.

Liverpool are also targeting Porto winger Atsu, who has only 12 months remaining on his contract and could arrive at Anfield for a cut-price fee of as little as €5m.

The Merseysiders have not given up hope of landing Papadopoulos, even though no deal is imminent. His club Schalke are holding out for a €17m fee for the 21-year-old Greece international, but Liverpool are unwilling to pay more than £19m for the player and are willing to bide their time in order to get him.

Martin Skrtel is expected to be off-loaded if Papadopoulos arrives at Anfield.

PEOPLES DAILY| THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 2013

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P-i-c-t-o-r-i-a-l

Sports 1. David Moyes' first home game as the new Manchester United manager will be against Jose Mourinho's Chelsea. Barclays Premier League champions United will start the 2013-14 seasons at League Cup winners Swansea on August 17, before the returning Mourinho's Chelsea visit Old Trafford the following weekend. A match at Liverpool follows for United on August 31.

2. Former Brazil star Ronaldo has warned Mario Balotelli not to throw his talent away, highlighting the fate of his former Brazil team-mate Adriano.

3. British and Irish Lions wing George North has been passed fit for the first Test against Australia on Saturday 4. Laura Robson loses to Caroline Wozniacki and Heather Watson is struggling against Elena Vesnina at Eastbourne.

4

2

1

3

PEOPLES DAILY| THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 2013

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Sports Nigerian WBO African champion aims at world title

I

saac Ekpo, the reigning World Boxing Organisation (WBO) African Super middleweight Champion, has vowed to win the world title for Nigeria.

The Army sergeant, who successfully defended his title after defeating Ayitey Powers of Ghana in round 10 on June 8 in Cotonou, said he intends to step up his preparations in order to meet the challenge at the world level.

The military officer, who won the title first in December 2012 by knocking out Said Mada of Algeria at the Eko Hotel and Suites, Lagos, boasted that he would claim the world title. “ My target is to fly the Nigerian flag high at the world level, I have not arrived yet, African title is the beginning; there are other heights to reach.

“I am still working very hard, I know there are battles to fight to get there but I am confident that with commitment to training and prayer I will get to the peak.

I am set to make my country proud in

the world of boxing,’’ Ekpo said.

Ekpo, who promised Nigerians that he would try to bring back the glorious days of Nigerian boxing, appealed to fans to pray for him.

He described the title fight as tough but said that experience and tactics made him defeat his opponent who came with many fans from London and his home country.

“Ayitey Powers is five times African Champion, he is a professional fighter based in London, he boasted that he would rob me of the title.

“But I led in all the rounds which I did not believe. However, I give all glory to God and thanks to my manager, Anthony Kamal, who stood by me,’’ he said.

Ranked eighth in the world by the WBO, Ekpo has had 22 fights, losing one, won 21 of which 15 were by knockouts and six by points decisions.

Ekpo being decorated with his WBO AFrica Super Middleweight belt

Nigeria’s volleyball team set to shine at world tourney, says Official

T

he Nigeria Volleyball Federation (NVBF) says the Nigerian junior women volleyball team is in high spirits ahead of participation at the FIVB Women’s U-20 World Championship in Czech Republic.

Nigerian team has been drawn in Group D alongside Turkey, Italy, Egypt and Algeria at the world championship.

The Chairman, NVBF’s Technical Committee, Tony OghumaEghiemai, said in Abuja shortly before the team jets out yesterday that their pre-competition performances have been encouraging.

It would be recalled that the team had been in camp preparing for the world championship in Brno, Czech Republic scheduled to begin from June 21 through June 30 since April. ``The team has been in camp for 10 weeks and it played three trial matches, all of which it won.

That is a clear pointer to the fact that the players are in high spirits and ready to go for the championship,’’ Oghuma-Eghiemai said.

The NVBF Technical Director added that the team would also be motivated to perform well because of the high standard of the kits they now have.

“This time around, we have gone out to Japan to bring Mizuno shoes and jerseys. We have three sets of jerseys for each player, with track suits, towels, kit bags

and some other things,” he said.

Oghuma-Eghiemai, however, allayed fears of under-performance by the team, as witnessed during the African qualifiers which Nigeria hosted in Abuja in

March. ``Although the team didn’t put up a good performance during the qualifier, it has fine-tuned it through the rigorous preparation of the past weeks. The players

were barely three weeks in camp and that affected their performance.

“Since then, we decided to bring them together in camp early and some other new hands have

Rowing, canoe and sailing demonstration event in Abuja

joined them afterwards. So, the team has blended and their performance so far in camp has been heart-warming. ``I am sure that by the time they get to Czech Republic, they will do the country proud,’’ the technical committee chairman said.

He said the championship would be an opportunity of extracting revenge against some of its opponents during the African qualifiers. ``One good thing to look out for about the team at the championship is that they are in the same group with the two teams they lost out to at the qualifiers. ``So, it is a good opportunity for them to avenge the defeat they (Egypt and Algeria) handed to the team right here in Abuja,’’ Oghuma-Eghiemai, who is the team’s manager to the championship said.

The Nigerian team earned its qualification in March when only three countries (Nigeria, Egypt and Algeria) turned out for the African Qualifiers instead of the expected seven.

Although, they lost their two matches at the qualifiers, they still qualified alongside Egypt and Algeria because Africa must have three representatives at the world championship.

Official says postponement of NUGA not good for athletes

C

ecilia Arinye, Zone F Coordinator of the Nigeria Universities Games Association (NUGA), yesterday in Lagos said that the postponement of the 2013 edition of the Games was unhealthy for athletes’ development.

NUGA officials had on Monday announced the postponement of the 10-day Games from June to October, saying they were not ready.

Arinye said that the deferment would demoralise the student-

athletes who had prepared for the annual event. ``This is the second time the Games would be postponed and at each occasion, the students had trained for the event without competing. Who is sure that the Octo-

ber date will be realistic?” Arinye, who is also the Director of Sports, University of Lagos, said.

The Coordinator said that any other shift in date would amount to not staging it in 2013 and appealed to the organisers to exer-

cise caution in the shifting of the Games to avoid its underdevelopment.

The 2013 NUGA edition is scheduled to hold at the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), IleIfe, Osun.

PEOPLES DAILY, THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 2013

Some Interesting Facts The people who live on Tristan da Cunha are over 2,000km (about 1,300 miles) from their nearest neighbours on the island of St. Helena. That’s nearly as far as Moscow is from London.

The temperature of Earth increases about 36 degrees Fahrenheit (20 degrees Celsius) for every kilometer (about 0.62 miles) you go down.

The age of the earth is Loudly proclaimed by the scientific establishment of evolution believers and the mass media as being around 4.6 billion years old.

Life began in the seas 3.1 billion to 3.4 billion years ago. Land dwellers appeared 400 million years ago, a relatively recent point in the geologic time line.

The Peregrine Falcon around 200mph (320 km/h) is the fastest bird on the planet, the top speed recorded is 242.3mph (390 km/h).

The flower with the world’s largest bloom is the Rafflesia arnoldii. This rare flower is found in the rainforests of Indonesia. It can grow to be 3 feet across and weigh up to 15 pounds.

About 70% of the world’s fresh water is stored as glacial ice.

Total fertility rate of the world is 2.59 children born/ woman. Niger is 7.46 (highest), India is 2.73, US is 2.09

PAGE 47

Leisure & Hong Kong is 0.95 only (Lowest).

Blue whales are found throughout the world’s oceans, the lifespan is estimated to be 80 years & population is between 1300 & 2000 only, its dangerously low.

There is no land at all at the North Pole, only ice on top of sea. The Arctic Ocean has about 12 million sq km of floating ice and has the coldest winter temperature of -34 degrees centigrade.

A 1960 Chilean earthquake was the strongest earthquake in recent times, which occurred off the coast, had a magnitude of 9.6 and broke a fault more than 1000

miles (1600 kilometers) long.

The distance from the surface of Earth to the center is about 3,963 miles (6,378 kilometers).

The coldest temperature ever measured on Earth was -129 Fahrenheit (-89 Celsius) at Vostok, Antarctica, on July 21, 1983.

About 20 to 30 volcanoes erupt each year, mostly under the sea.

Continents are typically defined as landmasses made of low-density rock that essentially floats on the molten material below. Greenland fits this description.

Lake Bosumtwi in Ghana

formed in a hollow made by a meteorite.

Baikal Lake in Russian Fed. is the deepest lake (5315 ft) in the world.

El Azizia in Libya recorded a temperature of 136 degrees Fahrenheit (57.8 Celsius) on Sept.

13, 1922 - the hottest ever measured.

The Antarctic ice sheet is 3-4 km thick, covers 13 million sq km and has temperatures as low as -70 degrees centigrade.

The world’s windiest place is Commonwealth Bay, Antartica with winds regularly exceeding 150 miles per hour.

Say what?

SUDODKU

PHOTO OF THE DAY

Driving for success: Four young students wearing their smart shirts and trousers squeeze onto a moped as they make their way to school.

Source: Dailymail.co.uk

www.peoplesdailyng.com

. . . putting the people first

THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 2013

SPORTS LATEST

Thousand fans set to watch Pep’s first match

A

round 25,000 Bayern Munich fans are expected to flock to the Allianz Arena to see new coach Pep Guardiola take each of his first two public training sessions next week.

With Munich’s underground trains not currently running through to the Allianz Arena, shuttle buses will be laid on to carry fans there.

Bundesliga TV rights holder is planning a full day of coverage of the new man at the helm, featuring Guardiola biographer Daniel Martinez as a studio guest.

EPL fixtures: Man Utd meet Swansea as Chelsea host Hull City

M

anchester United manager David Moyes has been handed a first match in charge at Swansea as the full 2013-14 football fixtures are announced.

Jose Mourinho starts his second spell at Chelsea with a home game against newly promoted Hull on 17 August.

Manuel Pellegrini’s first game in charge of Manchester City is against Newcastle at the Etihad Stadium.

Following their promotion from the Championship, Cardiff will travel to West Ham and Crystal Palace host Tottenham.

Relegated QPR will start life in the Championship with a home game against Sheffield Wednesday on 3 August.

New Everton boss Roberto Martinez takes his team to Norwich on the opening weekend, while Liverpool hosts Mark Hughes’ Stoke at Anfield.

Arsenal start with a home game against Aston Villa, Sunderland host Fulham and Southampton travel to West Brom.

After the game at Swansea, Moyes’s United host Chelsea at Old Trafford before the former Everton manager returns to Merseyside to face Liverpool the following weekend.

Arsenal v Aston Villa Chelsea v Hull Crystal Palace v Tottenham Liverpool v Stoke Man City v Newcastle Norwich v Everton Sunderland v Fulham Swansea v Man Utd West Brom v Southampton West Ham v Cardiff Brazil 2

Confed Cup Mexico 0

ADVERT: BUSINESS: NEWS: LAGOS:

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QUOTABLE QUOTE I am your property, Mr. President. I am not hiding — Speaker, House of Representatives, Alhaji Aminu Tambuwal, answering when President Goodluck Jonathan asked him where he had been

States of Emergency (III): The October 1 overhang

I

n 2010 shortly after the October 1 atrocity this column commented thus: Life is precious, always… As we pray for the souls of the dead which include policemen and a SSS officer, we hope for the quick and complete recovery of the injured. Rather than spinning more incongruous tales, I believe an apology is necessary from the government for its handling of the whole tragic debacle: the sooner, the better.

A small indicator of what responsible governments do is that hardly any dignitary privileged to have even an inkling of the bomb warnings bothered to attend. Even all important Britain did not think it rational to send their representative of the Queen into possible harm’s way.

President Goodwill should take an apparently much needed sobering lesson from that.

The group that claimed responsibility for that October attack gave ample warnings days before - that they were going to place bombs in cars at the Independence Square venue of that year’s jubilee Independence Day celebrations. In fact, reports have it that the group blamed the government after the bombing for not paying heed to their warning and of, therefore, being (equally?) responsible for the deaths that resulted.

By now readers of Cartelopia will note that hardly a month goes by that this column does not make reference to that first, incredible and unprecedented ‘mass’ bombing. Yes, it is an obsession for us because it is like a leitmotif – symbolic in all its aspects of Prime Minister Jonah’s government. Everything about it - from the warnings that were ignored, to the reaction of the PM, to the convoluted conclusion in Southern Africa. It is like an imprimatur that has blighted our beautiful country since…

Take the State of Emergency under discussion. In the first edition we noted how every single wing of the armed forces of this country had already been deployed in our North East provinces for upwards of two years. They were called Joint Special Forces for that very reason. Their actions and activities have never indicated that they were under any legal, logistical

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CARTELOPIA

as warning why would they have stayed? One of our multiple states of emergency is the urgent need to fix the way Cartelopia’s leaders reason.

With Aisha Yolah

Targeted killings, economic destruction continue They are telling us now peace is returning… giving us carefully staged National Television footage to convince us. But everyone knows that real, enduring security is not to be found in the illusion of TV programming. We salute the dogged Governor Shettima who even at the height of the carnage always dared the evil machinations of those who would bring his people to their knees. Last week, he relaunched primary health care and immunisation campaigns in those local councils previously occupied (in full light of day!!!) by the Boko Horror.

But no-one should still be under any illusion as to the really sinister and evil intentions of creatures who have really only achieved two things: i. Despoil Islam’s glorious heritage as a bastion of scholarship and civilised tenets as well as ii. Destroy age-old economic centres of the North.

If you were –like me- wondering where the Boko Horror fled to ‘taking their dead’… then you are on the right track.

The headlines this week tell us horrible stories – ‘5 NECO candidates, 13 others killed in fresh Boko Haram attacks’, ‘Boko Haram sacks 19,000 wheat, rice farmers’.

The government says they are smoking them out…of course. And the end of the government’s state of emergency is as open –ended as smoke. They say when things return to ‘normalcy.’

ayolah06@yahoo.com 08086296783 (text only please)

JTF spokesman, Lt-Colonel Sagir Musa or ethical constraints. Similarly, their numbers could have been increased-‘surged’-without any permission from anyone.

It has also been revealed that the finances of these North Eastern provinces had literally been locked down as it were by the 2-year deployment without a penny from the federal government. Now how reasonable or responsible does that sound?

Emergency or fore-warning?

So PM Jonah declares an emergency. But the military’s own narrative describes large terrorist camps that were clearly obvious to the naked eye for weeks and weeks as they grew stronger. We asked why they were allowed to grow from strength to strength, last week. This week we ask why the government found it necessary to announce that it was going to attack. By beating the drums of war, showing off their shiny new camouflage painted SUVs and Hilux vans for days before hand it seems to me the element of surprise

was clearly lost. Last week, we read that terrorist elements may have indeed melted away, which is why only one proper battle has been made reference to by the military itself.

The military spokesman has been telling us how ‘anyone found in a terrorist camp is, of course, a terrorist’. That is his response to accusations of having merely mowed down more civilians. I imagine that the real big-gun terrorists would have had, at least, 5 days to disappear… So the government has gone overboard to prove success- even finally letting journalists see for themselves.

According to one foreign report, not a bullet or empty shell could be seen, no evidence of a real battle.

Asked where all the dead terrorists were, a commanding officer said they -the Boko Horror- took their dead away. ‘For all that is left [condoms, gloves and burnt out trucks] they could have fled before a shot was fired’ was his conclusion.

Well, when the PM has given them a whole official broadcast

Courage One is glad that, at least, a certain Luka has summoned the courage to sue the government for its blanket ban on mobile communications slammed on the whole population, indiscriminately.

Someone should also remind the government that it was the Boko Horror terrorists themselves who were taking out mobile phone infrastructure, particularly in areas under their control. What a terrible coincidence. Really, October 1 2010 is always hanging suspended over everything.

Published by Peoples Media Limited, 35, Ajose Adeogun Street, 1st Floor Peace Park Plaza, Utako, Abuja. Kano office: Plot 3, Zaria Road, Opposite Kano State House of Assembly. Lagos Office: No.8 Oliyide Street, off Unity Road, Ikeja, Lagos. Tel: +234 814 292 9046. Cell: +234 802 443 2099; 803 7007 759. e-mail: contact@peoplesdailyng.com; pmlnewsdesk@gmail.com ISSN: 2141– 6141