Ha Tinubu done hear. How would he believe there is no money in Nigeria now, more shege to come. He would withdraw all the palliative now.

Just jokes.

Nigeria is a great country and wishing everyone a prosperous year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kV4o0DvEagg




https://twitter.com/leadershipnga/status/1676003736349548544?s=46

Lights Out

At Quinn’s funeral in February 2015, they played The Lonesome Boatman, a flute ballad by the Fureys, one of the bands he’d managed in his youth. His obituary in the Irish Independent traced his love of Nigeria to those days, saying he’d found doing business there much like running show bands in the ’60s. “He was a clever guy, an honorable guy,” Murray said of his longtime friend. “He was trusted. How much money he made I don’t know. His house is a hell of a lot bigger than mine.”

In spite of Buhari’s comments and the criminal probe, Nigeria hasn’t made any formal allegations of misconduct, and it isn’t clear whether the country will challenge the deal’s legitimacy in court. Meanwhile, the $9 billion debt is growing by more than $1 million a day, because of interest. P&ID is now owed enough to fund Nigeria’s school system for seven years.

Or perhaps enough to eliminate flaring for good. In May an Abuja TV news program aired a segment about villagers who were using flames from the Niger Delta’s gas pipes to dry their fish, seemingly unaware of the health risks. “Communities don’t know the difference between day and night because they go to bed with active gas flare sites,” said Faith Nwadishi, a local activist. The show’s host was just beginning a sermon about electricity’s importance for economic development when a power outage struck, plunging central Abuja into darkness.



—With Tope Alake, Matthew Campbell, Gavin Finch, Daryna Krasnolutska, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, and Süddeutsche Zeitung

The Art of the Failed Deal

It’s said that in Nigeria you can go from pauper to millionaire overnight and back again just as quickly. Even old hands could be caught out by a sudden shift in the political climate, as Quinn was in October 2006. That month, he was charged with espionage and handling secret military materials, alongside his son Adam, a close associate from Ireland named James Nolan, three Nigerian officials, and three individuals from Israel, Romania, and Russia. Details are sketchy, but one of the Nigerian officials submitted an affidavit saying the indictment was over a “large scale of contract scam which involves very senior officers of the Ministry.” Nolan and Adam Quinn didn’t respond to requests from Businessweek for comment, but they denied the charges at the time. The prosecution appears to have been dropped within a year. A defense lawyer involved with the case recalls that the government intervened.”

That same year, Quinn formed P&ID and began exploring opportunities in gas power. He also branched out into medical technology. In 2006, more people were living with HIV/AIDS in Nigeria than in any country but South Africa or India. The Nigerian health ministry’s efforts to tackle the crisis included a multimillion-dollar partnership with Dublin-based Trinity Biotech Plc to supply HIV testing kits and help set up a factory at the Sheda Science & Technology Complex, which was being constructed outside Abuja. The contract for the factory went to an entity called Trinitron, which local media assumed was a subsidiary of the similarly named Irish company. In fact, it had no formal connection to Trinity Biotech of Dublin and was jointly owned by the health ministry and a group of Irish and Nigerian businessmen. Trinitron’s Irish directors included Adam Quinn and James Nolan, according to three people familiar with the deal. Quinn’s firm Industrial Consultants became a shareholder.

A few years into the contract, Trinity discovered that Trinitron had registered a company called Trinity Biotech Nigeria domestically and another called Trinity Biotech Joint Venture in the British Virgin Islands. Executives from the original Trinity were furious when they learned of the clones. In 2008 and 2009, they pulled out of the project entirely.

“Trinity Biotech had no ownership stake in Trinitron or the Sheda project or in any entity or assets within Nigeria,” the Dublin company said in a statement to Businessweek. “Our role in the project was the provision of HIV test kits, which we did, although we were left with a significant unpaid debt when the project ended.” Eventually, government funding dried up, and, according to two sources, Trinitron was reported to local police for allegedly misspending state funds, though no one was charged.

Gerry Nash, Trinitron’s former project director, said in a statement that test kit production at the factory in Nigeria hadn’t progressed because the health ministry wouldn’t buy the kits locally. “People in the Nigerian Ministries were more interested in picking up commissions on imported products,” he wrote. He said that Trinitron had succeeded in developing an IT system and in training HIV specialists, and he denied that the venture was a failure overall, even though the Sheda factory wound down after a few years.

Today, the Sheda site outside Abuja is overgrown with weeds. A pockmarked sign outside the front gate attests that Trinitron once operated there, but none of the buildings look functional. Gravel piles dot the parking lots. The handful of bored security guards and administrative staff on-site say only that Trinitron is no longer there.

When it wasn’t possible to squeeze profit directly from a floundering project, Quinn could enlist the law for the purpose. In 2010, Industrial Consultants brokered a $5 million deal with the Nigerian Air Force to repair ejector seats in six Alpha Jets, small fighter craft often used to train pilots. A British company called North Wales Military Aviation Services Ltd. would do the fixing.

A few months into the contract, the air force terminated it for no apparent reason. The ensuing dispute ended up before a Nigerian arbitration panel, which found that the military had pulled out for “flimsy, untenable, and unacceptable reasons.” It awarded NWMAS about $2.3 million for work allegedly done, plus interest, according to a copy of the private judgment seen by Businessweek.

The case was straightforward enough, apart from one detail: NWMAS didn’t know about any of it. In a statement, the company said its executives had hosted Nigerian officials but never got word it had won the job. Instead, a few months after the visit, it received a letter saying the air force was suing for nonperformance. NWMAS managers forwarded the letter to Quinn’s team and heard nothing further on the matter until being contacted by Businessweek earlier this year.

If NWMAS didn’t participate in the lawsuit, who did? Individuals from the Quinn organization. Long before the ejector seat contract was finalized, unbeknownst to the original company, Quinn’s team had registered a local entity called NWMAS Nigeria Ltd.—another clone.

Murray testified at the arbitration on behalf of NWMAS. “They never f---king paid,” he told Businessweek, referring to the Nigerian air force. He said the British NWMAS had been fully aware of the case and that NWMAS Nigeria had been created to comply with local regulations.

Quinn’s organization apparently had trouble collecting the award. In 2013, Cahill sent a message to colleagues about the struggle to enforce the judgment in Nigeria’s chaotic courts. “The moral of the story is that ideally the ‘seat’ of arbitration should be outside of Nigeria and preferably in London,” he wrote.

Quinn and Cahill already had a stake in at least two lawsuits against Nigeria before the British courts. One of the cases relates to IPCO (Nigeria) Ltd., formerly part of Singapore-based construction group IPCO International Ltd. The parent company sold most of its stake in 2003, leaving behind a shell company whose sole activity seems to have been to engage in lawsuits—notably a $150 million case against the Nigerian petroleum ministry over delays to the construction of an oil terminal. There were familiar allegations of overcharging, and the suit went all the way to the U.K. Supreme Court before being settled on confidential terms last year. How much IPCO Nigeria’s owners received and who benefited remains a mystery. You won’t find Quinn’s or Cahill’s name in the countless claims, counterclaims, and rulings produced since the case began more than a decade ago, but according to three people familiar with Cahill’s role, he helped manage the U.K. lawsuit for IPCO Nigeria in return for a share of the proceeds. The company’s director, Olu Adewunmi, declined to comment on whether Cahill was involved in the lawsuit.


Illustration: Jonathan Djob Nkondo for Bloomberg Businessweek
The Big One

The other case, of course, was P&ID. Nigeria’s desire to end flaring and provide power to the troubled Niger Delta had offered Quinn, almost 70 and in poor health, an opportunity to secure his legacy. “Mick was sick,” Murray said. “He wanted to go out on a big one.”

In 2012, once it had grown obvious the gas project wouldn’t come off, P&ID invoked its right to take Nigeria to arbitration in London. Three judges, two Brits and a Nigerian, oversaw the proceedings. From the start, Nigeria’s government seemed reluctant to participate. Its lawyers in Lagos didn’t provide a list of preliminary arguments until January 2014. Later that year, a few weeks before the first scheduled hearing, they told the tribunal they might not be able to set out the government’s case in writing or attend, “due to the inability of our client to provide us with complete instructions.”

P&ID’s submissions included a lengthy witness statement from Quinn, one of his last public declarations before he died. He described spending two years and an estimated $40 million on preparatory work for the gas plant, including a 3D digital model. “I cannot say with any certainty why the government failed to honour the GSPA,” Quinn wrote of the gas sale and purchase agreement. He suspected pressure from international oil companies was to blame. “In any event, I very much regret that we were prevented from implementing the GSPA, which I firmly believe would have been of significant benefit to the nation.” In outlining his history in Nigeria, he didn’t mention any of his military deals, the espionage charge, or the two other lawsuits against the country.

On the basis of largely unchallenged evidence provided by P&ID, the judges dismissed Nigeria’s objections and proceeded to the next stage: damages. According to the Abuja-based Premium Times, Quinn’s company agreed to settle for $850 million, but the government of President Muhammadu Buhari, who’d taken office in May 2015, rejected the deal. When the tribunal convened a hearing on the matter, Nigeria called only one witness—a lawyer who, in the words of the judges, didn’t “claim firsthand knowledge of any of the relevant events.” In January 2017 they awarded P&ID the profits they calculated it had missed out on because the plant wasn’t built: $6.6 billion, more than three times its original estimate of losses.

A ruling in London didn’t guarantee payment, though. P&ID’s lawyers took the judgment to several hedge funds that specialize in wringing cash from bad debts, according to someone familiar with the conversations. Records show they found at least one taker: VR Capital Group Ltd., a fund manager with offices in London, New York, and Moscow.

VR acquired one quarter of P&ID—which really meant, because the only thing of value P&ID possesses is a favorable legal ruling, that it was buying a share of the suit’s proceeds, presumably in return for helping finance the legal action. (Reached by phone, VR Capital President Richard Deitz said, “No. Can’t talk. I’m busy,” then hung up. The company didn’t respond to an emailed request for comment.) The remainder of P&ID is held by Cayman Islands-based Lismore Capital Ltd., whose ultimate owners are unknown. If the Nigerian government ever pays up, it will be impossible to know who benefits.

Last October law firm Kobre & Kim and public-relations specialist DCI Group registered with the U.S. Senate to lobby on behalf of P&ID. Op-eds critical of Nigeria soon appeared in Forbes and the Daily Telegraph, urging its government to honor the judgment; another, authored in London’s City A.M. newspaper by Priti Patel, a former British secretary of state for international development, accused the country of flouting international law. Journalists also began receiving messages from a group called P&ID Facts, whose emails list the same address as that of DCI Group. “The founders of P&ID have a track record of delivering in Nigeria and for Nigerians,” the organization’s website says. “The P&ID project was to be their swan song project after over three decades of public works projects in the country.”

Nigeria’s president thus far appears unmoved. A former general who styles himself as a simple cattle farmer and anticorruption crusader, Buhari has a relatively clean reputation. He responded angrily to Patel, issuing a statement through his spokesman that echoed what Pizzurro’s whistleblower had said: The P&ID lawsuit wasn’t what it appeared to be. “Before the coming of the Buhari administration, there existed in the country a racket encompassing elements in the three arms of government, the executive, legislature, and the judiciary through the activities of which artificial, engineered, and factored breaches of contract are made, judgments are obtained, appeals are delayed, and the penalty imposed is paid and shared,” the statement read. “Nigerians need to pity their own country for the way things were done in the past.”

A spokeswoman for P&ID said the panel of arbitrators had heard evidence from both sides and ruled unanimously that Nigeria failed to uphold its contractual commitments and was liable to P&ID. “It is unfortunate that instead of accepting the tribunal judgment and engaging in good-faith discussions to bring about a solution, President Buhari’s government has resorted to spreading unfounded allegations,” she said. She described the justice department’s corruption probe as a “sham” and said the government’s allegations were “entirely fictional,” adding, “The Nigerian people would be better served if the government made a serious offer to resolve this dispute rather than only blaming others, which will not make the legal obligation to pay go away.”

The list of Nigerians skeptical of P&ID’s position includes Danjuma, the 81-year-old billionaire and former general. In an interview with Businessweek, he said the gas flaring project was originally his idea, and that one of his companies, Tita-Kuru Petrochemicals Ltd., had spent the $40 million preparing it, not Quinn. The Irishman had been a consultant, using Danjuma’s funds and office space, the general said. When Quinn applied for the contract himself, Danjuma was upset.

The realization dawned, he said, that “my consultant was going to steal my project.” He recalled being promised a share of P&ID in return for his initial investment, but added that he hadn’t heard from the company in years and that Cahill hadn’t replied to letters about the lawsuit. At one point, Danjuma dusted off his hands to emphasize the relationship’s end. P&ID’s spokesperson declined to comment on Danjuma’s involvement or any other matters raised in this story. Cahill didn’t respond to attempts to contact him directly.

The Trouble With Nigeria

Throughout the 2000s, Quinn lived a kind of double life, divided between Nigeria and a comfortable suburban house near Dublin. At home he was Mick from Drimnagh, living with his wife, Anita, who’d been his childhood sweetheart, and their two Doberman pinschers. On Tuesday nights he’d drop Anita off at bingo, then pick up fish and chips for dinner.

Life in Nigeria was very different. The country’s freewheeling capitalism was fraught with risk and opportunity. The writer Chinua Achebe detailed the climate in his 1983 polemic The Trouble With Nigeria: Contracts with the military government were currency, doled out by senior politicians to allies and friends as the public bore the burden of hidden kickbacks, inflated prices, and stolen materials. Military rule ended in 1999, but democratic Nigeria was proving just as restive and complex. There were tribal uprisings in the Niger Delta and kidnappings and religious conflict elsewhere.

Quinn nevertheless thrived, befriending presidents and civil servants alike. He and Cahill used a company called Marshpearl to bid for lucrative military contracts, initially registering the name in Ireland, then in 1999 using the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca & Co. to create Marshpearl Ltd. in the British Virgin Islands. To the outside world, the BVI company was practically untraceable. Mossack Fonseca documents leaked to the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and made available to Businessweek by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists show that Marshpearl Ltd.’s directors were nominees, paper executives whose sole job was to sign documents. (Reached by phone, one of them, Nigel John Carter, a Geneva-based trusts specialist who was also a director of another Quinn BVI vehicle called Kristholm Ltd., said, “I’ve never heard of those two companies.”)


Quinn
Source: The Phoenix
Marshpearl sponsored a local polo team, giving Quinn an excuse to mix with the Nigerian ruling classes. His sons attended elite private schools with the sons of politicians and generals, who asked Quinn to help them acquire helicopters, Japanese motorcycles, and more. On the golf course back in Ireland, friends recall, Quinn would pick up the phone to talk to various officials or military leaders. “Did you get them guns?” one friend remembers him asking in his distinctive Drimnagh drawl. His golf buddies were never sure if he was joking. His contacts included Theophilus Danjuma, who’d risen to prominence in the ’60s by leading a bloody coup against Nigeria’s military ruler. Danjuma went on to become a general, then entered business and eventually politics, ascending to defense minister in 1999. He later sold a stake in a Nigerian oil field to a Chinese state company, helping make him a billionaire.

One of the few people who would speak on the record about Quinn’s life in Nigeria is Neil Murray, a friend of 30 years who was involved in several Quinn projects there. Sitting one night at the Abuja Hilton piano bar, a favorite haunt, Murray wasn’t hard to spot: a gray-haired figure so hunched over he was bent almost double, puffing cigarettes and chatting with businessmen and prostitutes, who called him Papa. After initially accusing a Businessweek reporter of being a spy for the Nigerian government, he agreed to talk. “Mick knew Obasanjo. He knew Yar’Adua,” Murray said, referring to former presidents Olusegun Obasanjo and Umaru Musa Yar’Adua. “He knew everyone.”

Among the projects Murray was involved in was a contract to repair and upgrade 36 British-made Scorpion tanks at an abandoned plant at Bauchi, in the dusty heart of Nigeria. It had all the hallmarks of Quinn’s deals in the country: complexity, misdirection, and a substantial payday for the middleman. “There was a subsequent contract, and a subsequent contract, and a subsequent contract,” Murray said. “It was an ongoing process.” Quinn personally recruited military experts to manage the work and find replacement parts. At one point, Danjuma visited the site.

Several people involved in the venture described each vehicle as an opportunity for profit. Petrol engines were replaced with diesel engines. New radios were installed. When faulty valves needed replacing, one former employee said, he found a British supplier for a few pounds a unit. “Too cheap,” he remembered Quinn telling him. They found costlier valves elsewhere. The more expensive the new part, the bigger Marshpearl’s cut.

A memo viewed by Businessweek that circulated among Quinn’s team noted that Marshpearl had charged the Nigerian army for undelivered tank parts, making his organization “vulnerable.” But the company kept winning contracts, in spite of this hitch and others. It’s not clear how many millions of dollars Nigeria spent on the Bauchi project, but the relationship likely made Quinn a fortune.

For one contract, a spinoff from the main deal, his company sought to supply about 4,000 rounds of tank ammunition made by Belgian defense company Mecar SA. A January 2005 memo outlining Marshpearl’s plan says Quinn’s staff told Mecar they would handle bidding, contracts, and billing. Mecar’s managers “do not want to know the details as they would be embarrassed with Belgian authorities and U.S. owners,” the memo said.

The blueprint called for Marshpearl to establish a company called Mecar SA, register it in Cyprus, and open a bank account for the new offshore entity to avoid Nigerian taxes on the income. The original Mecar would write up a bid for the contract and send it to Marshpearl, where the document would be scanned and altered to increase its value by 20%—commission for Quinn and his friends. Payment to the original Mecar would be routed through the offshore one. All documentation was to be delivered by hand.

The “paper trail” was Marshpearl’s greatest area of concern, the memo’s author wrote, without explaining why. Broadly speaking, while offshore companies have legitimate purposes, they’re also favored by those trying to avoid tax or government scrutiny or hide illicit income. In some jurisdictions, secrecy laws make it virtually impossible to find out who owns them. Registering a company with a virtually identical name to a separate, legitimate business would have the effect of further obscuring the real beneficiaries.

To a watchdog or another outside observer, the Mecar arrangement would look like a simple transaction between a respected manufacturer and the army, with the middleman getting its cut. A tender bid document sent by the offshore Mecar to the Ministry of Defense a few months after the memo’s date placed the contract’s ultimate value at €4.9 million ($5.6 million), meaning Marshpearl would have made almost a million euros.

Shown the memo at the Hilton bar, Murray said, “Very clever.” He didn’t see anything improper in the deal’s structure but added, “I wasn’t directly involved.” A spokesman for Mecar’s current owner, Nexter Group, said the Marshpearl deal took place before it acquired the company in 2014 and that it complies with rules and regulations.

Man in Mohair

Quinn grew up in Drimnagh, a tough neighborhood in Dublin. After leaving school as a teenager in the 1950s, he trained as a mechanic. An ordinary blue-collar life might have beckoned had one of his neighbors not started a show band, the Royal Olympics. These groups were unique to ’60s and ’70s Ireland: shiny-suited young men playing rock ’n’ roll or jazz, perpetually touring church halls and farm sheds to earn shoeboxes full of cash.

The Olympics needed a manager, and soon Quinn had a new career as one of the natty, ruthless handlers a BBC documentary labeled “men in mohair suits.” He ran some top acts: Daddy Cool & the Lollipops, Twink, Dickie Rock. An old friend recalls that he’d approach a singer and say, “How much are you earning? One hundred pounds a gig? I can get you 1,000.”

Quinn stuck with the industry for a while after the show bands’ popularity declined—newspaper reports suggest he arranged an Irish tour by Diana Ross and the Supremes—but there was more money to be made elsewhere. At some point in the ’70s he started working in Nigeria, either as an oil trader or a financier of cement deals, depending on which of the scattered accounts of his life you believe. He began profiting from a construction boom taking place in Lagos, which was then expanding with such chaotic abandon that hundreds of cement-bearing cargo ships were lined up at port waiting to dock.

He kept working in Ireland, too. In 1979 he and a partner, Brendan Cahill, formed an umbrella company with the resolutely dull name Industrial Consultants (International) to oversee their interests. They began working with the government, for example getting a public grant worth $450,000 to start a videocassette factory near Dublin. The project went bust within two years.

Quinn’s business drew on some powerful allies dating to his show band days. One of the closest was Albert Reynolds, a former music hall impresario who was elected to Parliament in 1977 and became prime minister in 1992. Two years after being elected PM, Reynolds was promoting Kent Steel, one of Quinn’s companies, as a potential savior of Irish industry. Kent had recently won 3 million Irish pounds (about $4.3 million at the time) from the European Union to explore cleaner technology for making steel—potentially a huge boon. Instead, the project produced nothing but some sketches and a bunch of debris.

Joe McCartin, then a member of the European Parliament, says he raised concerns with an EU official that the deal was a scam and was told, “Don’t worry. Your prime minister, Albert Reynolds, knows all about the project.” The EU did eventually start a probe into the grant, and McCartin, who’s now retired, says its investigators showed him a letter from Irish prosecutors relaying that a fraud had been committed but that they couldn’t identify the perpetrators. The probe was eventually closed without penalty; the EU refused to fulfill a freedom of information request about the case, citing privacy rules. Reynolds passed away in 2014.

Quinn’s name came up again during a nationwide corruption inquiry in Ireland. The Mahon Tribunal, as it was eventually known, lasted for 14 years, compiling evidence of graft on an epic scale. Quinn was called as a witness in June 2007, one of the few times he ever spoke on the record. The tribunal wanted to know more about relationships Industrial Consultants had with Frank Dunlop, a shady lobbyist, and Liam Lawlor, a corrupt Republican MP who’d resigned in disgrace before being killed in a 2005 car crash outside Moscow.

Quinn denied knowledge of invoices that bore his company’s name—payments for golf fundraisers, he guessed—and said he thought his signature had been forged on checks. He had no recollection of many of his dealings with Dunlop. “You are a singularly unhelpful witness,” Alan Mahon, the presiding judge, told him. “What you are telling us is nothing, absolutely nothing.” The tribunal later found that tens of thousands of pounds had flowed from Quinn’s companies to Lawlor, but Quinn wasn’t recalled to the stand, and neither he nor Industrial Consultants faced any action.

By then, Quinn had developed a fearsome reputation. Several former associates told Businessweek they were scared to speak on the record about him, because they believed he had ties to Irish paramilitaries; one said Quinn told him his father had been in the original Irish Republican Army in the 1920s. Employees introduced him as “the chairman,” and he employed a man with a pugilist’s squashed nose to drive guests around Dublin, apparently without great regard for red lights. A former Quinn associate says that when Quinn’s daughter ended a brief marriage to David Boreanaz, an American actor best known for roles on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, Boreanaz called Quinn to make sure there was no bad blood between them. Boreanaz’s manager didn’t respond to requests for comment.


Illustration: Jonathan Djob Nkondo for Bloomberg Businessweek

Is One of the World’s Biggest Lawsuits Built on a Sham?

A dying Irishman went for one last big score in Nigeria. The project failed, but a London tribunal says his company’s owed $9 billion and counting.

More stories by Kit Chellel
September 3, 2019, 10:01 PM CST

Illustration: Jonathan Djob Nkondo for Bloomberg Businessweek
Gaslighting

The oilfield fires of the Niger Delta burn day and night. Metal pipes snake through the swampland, spewing flames so vast they cast the sky in apocalyptic orange. Southern Nigeria sits atop a bubbling stew of oil and gas. Companies want only the former, so they incinerate the latter. The industry calls it “flaring.”

For millions of Nigerians, flaring is a curse. It fills the air with toxic fumes that cause respiratory disease and cancer and later fall as acid rain, which damages homes and crops. It also wastes vast amounts of energy in a region where many villages lack electricity and cities suffer daily blackouts.

In 2008 the Nigerian government said it would end flaring by using oilfield gas to generate electricity. The minister of petroleum resources acknowledged that the challenge would be “enormous.” Converting gas requires it to be captured, transported, refined, and piped back to power plants and onto the grid.

Officials struggled to persuade big multinationals to invest in the required infrastructure, so concessions were granted to 13 smaller companies, some virtually unknown. One was Process and Industrial Developments Ltd., or P&ID, which was registered in the British Virgin Islands but had no website or track record. Its chairman was Michael “Mick” Quinn, a 68-year-old Irishman with a rakish mustache and decades of experience in Nigeria, mostly as a military contractor.

Quinn knew powerful people, including the petroleum minister, who guaranteed P&ID a 20-year supply of “wet,” or unrefined, gas for a plant the company would build. The raw material would be supplied for free, to be treated and returned at no cost. P&ID would instead profit from the byproducts, butane and propane. Everyone stood to benefit, not least the villagers whose homes would be lit by electricity rather than the wan glow of flaming methane.

Then the plan fell apart. The government failed to secure any waste gas from oil companies, let alone link up the necessary pipeline, and the plant was never built. In 2012, P&ID notified the oil ministry that it was suing for breach of contract in a London arbitration forum. After a set of closed legal proceedings, judges awarded P&ID $6.6 billion, one of the biggest amounts a company has won from a sovereign state. When Nigeria dragged its feet on payment, P&ID teamed up with a hedge fund and moved the case to public courts, where it could ask judges to seize state assets, including bank accounts and cargo ships.

In the summer of 2018, a man who’d worked for Quinn contacted Joseph Pizzurro, a veteran New York lawyer hired by Nigeria to lead its defense in the U.S. The caller wanted to talk about the P&ID case. “I don’t think it’s genuine,” the man said, according to an account he gave Bloomberg Businessweek on condition of anonymity because he feared for his safety. He told Pizzurro that Quinn had conspired with officials to profit from government projects that were doomed from the start and that P&ID was one of at least three such lawsuits involving Quinn. The caller couldn’t provide enough evidence to substantiate his claims, though, and he didn’t contact Pizzurro again.

This August, P&ID won a ruling from a London judge allowing the firm to start seizing Nigerian assets. Hailed as a vindication by Quinn’s company, it caused an outcry in Nigeria. The country’s finance minister said at a press conference that the size of the award, which has risen above $9 billion with interest, meant all Nigerians would pay a price. The chair of the central bank said that the case has affected monetary policy. Toward the end of the month, the justice ministry opened a corruption investigation into how the gas plant deal was struck. “The contract was designed to fail right from inception,” attorney general Abubakar Malami told reporters. If the Nigerian government is right, P&ID was an audacious scheme that had made unwitting accomplices of legal professionals, financial institutions, and politicians around the world.

The company and its founders remain elusive. A Nigerian newspaper recently published a list of unanswered questions about the firm: Where are its offices? How many people does it employ? How did such a tiny company win such a large concession? Quinn isn’t around to answer them; he died of cancer in 2015. But a close examination of his career, drawn from public records, leaked documents, and interviews with friends and former associates, shows that P&ID wasn’t the only Quinn project to end in disappointment, lawsuits, and corruption allegations. It was just the largest—the one that was supposed to provide his biggest payday.

deleyi20:
The God that did it for Oyo State will deliver Nigeria from the shackles of APC/Buhari/Tinubu...

ATIKU will get his mandate at the Supreme Court

And you truly believe Atiku would rescue Nigeria. A 70 yr old plus man who had been in govt even before you were born and was/is part of the elite that destroyed this country is suddenly your saviour. Mami think well.

Tinubu is a strategist. He would eventually step down for Osinbajo. He knows how to play the game and his intelligence is way above the average Nigerian politician.

Real godfathers don’t run executive govt, they stay behind the show. However he has to put out an aura he wants the sit so whoever he steps down for would be loyal to him.

Any govt since 1999, the godfathers or ‘cabals’ are usually not the sitting president. It was only between 2003-2007 that Obasanjo managed to run the show himself using ‘Mr. Fix it’ Anenih and party chairmen.

Presidents are too busy travelling the country and the world.

A real godfather does not sit in Aso Rock.

Tinubu knows this.

Thumbs up to Geography Now, a YouTube Channel for taking time to make this splendid video on the past and current history of Nigeria.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4sWFJFge54

hisexcellency34:
Buhari left to meet Tinubu? President went to meet an ordinary ethnic leader. Are u ok?

The question you should ask is where is Tinubu?? Its not by mouth or by fight.

Buhari left to meet Tinubu in London today. The agenda and appointees that would effect change for the next level for his 2nd term would be discussed in private. People really under-estimate the bond between this two leaders. Just wait and see.

And nothing stops Buhari from meeting with his doctors afterwards.

m

bedspread:
I saw the form given out to the people to fill before having access to the form..

PVC number is a requirement!!

You can DECIEVE yourself
Not GOD

Please don’t spread lies. You don’t need a form to apply. Tradermoni agents in the market use apps on their phone to register you. Let’s endeavour not to spread FAKE NEWS.

The form you talking about is fake, someone made it up to scam people.

Personally I feel tithing is a very complex issue.

I feel the main ideology behind the blessing of tithing is all about sacrificial giving to a good cause.

Since the beginning of time, one law of God that touches all mankind is the law of giving.

God gave us life, gave his only begotten son for our salvation. God could have decided to save mankind without giving, he is God he can do anything but yet God gave all he had. Why? It is intertwined in spirituality that giving brings blessings.

Until a seed dies first it cannot bring forth fruit and life. The giving must be a form of sacrifice. God could have saved humanity with no stress, why did Jesus have to die such a terrible death, I feel because that gift for salvation must come at a price.

Going back to tithing. If I give my neighbour a part of my money if he/she is needy and that giving comes with a price, then I would benefit from the gift of that sacrifice, I may not need to tithe. Bill gates, Muslims, Dangote, Atheist etc all do that. There is psychological term for it called Altruism- giving to make you feel good. But actually I believe the feeling of good is a return of blessing but psychologists minimized the tangible return effect of the giving by focusing only on the emotional return giving causes.

I know a Muslim he was building a mosque in his town. He was very slow to complete it because he feels once he stops, the blessing may stop.

But as a Christian do I have to start looking for my needy neighbour every time. What if no one comes to me for help. What then do I do.

This I where I feel giving every month to a church comes in. I don’t then have to worry about looking for a needy neighbour. I would rather give to a bible believing church fully knowing I’m giving for a good purpose. The percentage of what you give is just the value or price of what it costs you. 10% of anyone earnings is a big sacrifice. I actually believe if you give more that 10% you get more blessings.

A lot of North Americans give for good cause by giving to their church. People just feel it’s safer to give where their heart is and whom they trust. People choose the church only because of trust. In my church here in North America, the account is published, they receive more than the church budgets for every year. It was a surprise to me.

The idea of looking for a needy neighbour is very tricky. They are lots of scammers out there. How do I really know who is needy. I would rather give to my church first and then give to someone else afterwards who I feel is needy.

God owns the church. If I trust my church and give to it, I’m directing giving to God. Complex issue though. But if I give to my neighbour, I may feel I’m helping the needy but I may be wrong about how needy that person is. It’s a gamble.

Finally, one thing I know about humans is that if an habit isn’t beneficial people wouldn't do it. Simple. Let’s ask why do people keep giving to the church. Humans beings are not naturally stupid. Humans have changed their behaviour and evolved over the years if they see no need for such a behaviour. But giving to the church as remained for many centuries. Why exactly. The Catholic Church is the richest institution in the entire world. They have their own city. (Vatican City). Why? Years of people giving to it. Why do they keep giving to the church, because they see a return in blessings. Charity giving to non profit organization worldwide keeps dropping Year after year. This whole idea Pastors force people to tithe does not fully justify why humans give to their church. If it’s wasn’t beneficial to them, how would a Pastor force them. Pastors don’t have access to peoples accounts. I’m talking worldwide here.

Very importantly Africans really are not a giving race. We are very self centred, reason our continent is the way it is. We rarely sacrifice for ourselves. If the pastors never preached about tithing, many would not give and may not have benefited from the blessings of giving.

Also the way the media and people outside the church paints this issue of tithing is like they assume most church goers tithe. When I was in Europe the Pastor told me it was very few people that was maintaining the account of the church. He said most people are in church are there to receive not to give financially. He even mentioned they would come asking in boldness because they assume all the others where giving. They would count the church population and multiply by 10% and assume the finances most be great. They would then ask for their share. It’s less 10% of the church population that tithe faithfully.

I never used to tithe consistently until 2012. I am a very practical ‘somebody’. I told Wife I’m going to experiment if I indeed I receive blessings like it is in the bible. To the glory of God my income has increased every year incrementally since then. I am even afraid to stop now. No Pastor forced or preached to me. My pastor in Europe never preached it. It was a total miracle to me. I repeat every year my income has increased. Even that same year 2012 I took time off to work part time and I earned more than 2011. I earned almost double of the income of 2011 in 2012 . My employer told me they made a mistake in my salary grade and returned a big cheque to me that year.

That doesn’t stop me from giving for other causes still. Last week gave a girl that I work with $50, she had a baby. I was very tight on cash that day but just gave her. Within same period a client left exactly $50 for me. I’m not saying it works like a charm or juju method. But I knew it was because I sacrificed that money. My body was dead to itself when I dropped that $50. I needed that money for something that day but forfeited it. I actually returned the $50 back to the client that left it. My work place policy states you can’t receive money from customers. But it was a lesson for me.

It’s not every time I give that I expect a return.I have done sacrificial giving with no expectations at all but when I see my children in good health and doing well, I get a good feeling and I know I don’t need a tangible return of blessing. I feel that altruistic feeling psychologists described. God himself felt very good afterwards after he gave Jesus for my salvation.

Finally I repeat, tithing is a complex issue. Everyman to himself. God is the one that sees our hearts.

The Nigerian Billionaire Syndrome.

Whatsapp has swiftly grown from a small startup to one of the most popular messaging apps in the world, with over one billion users.

While you may use it every day, you might be unaware of the cool tricks and secret features hiding in the app.

Here are our favourite 15.

Send the same message to multiple people without them knowing

In the top left of the WhatsApp "Chats" screen there is a little-used feature called "Broadcast Lists". This lets you send the same message to multiple contacts at once without them knowing, a bit like the "Bcc" button on emails.


Rather than turning to Facebook to invite people to a party event, or asking multiple people if they want to play football without setting up a group chat, you can do it with one message in WhatsApp.

Go to Chats -> Broadcast Lists -> New List -> add contacts and write out your message -> hit send. The message and their reply will appear in your private chat with each person, but with a little megaphone icon next to it. Your contacts won't have any idea that the message was sent to anyone but them.

Bold, Italics, Strikethrough

You can format the text in WhatsApp messages by adding symbols in front of and after words.

1 - For bold add asterisks to either side of a word or sentence, e.g. *bold*

2 - Italicise a message with underscores, e.g. _italics_

3 - To strikethrough text add tildes, e.g. ~strikethrough~

You can also combine the formats by adding multiple symbols before and after a word, such as _*bolditalics*_.

Find out who you talk to the most

To find out who your best friends on WhatsApp are, if you have an iOS device, head to Settings -> Account -> Storage Usage. Here you'll see a list of the people and groups you message on WhatsApp along with the total number of interactions you've had with that person/group.

If you select "Size" at the bottom right of the screen you can see who you have spent the most data WhatsApp-ing.

See how much data WhatsApp uses and reduce it

For a breakdown of the total amount of data you are using on WhatsApp go to Settings -> Data Usage -> Network Usage.

In the Data Usage menu you can limit the amount of data WhatsApp uses by only allowing the app to auto-download images, audio, video and documents when your phone is connected to Wi-Fi.

You can also select the Low Data Usage mode to reduce the amount of data that's used for WhatsApp calls.

Mute overzealous group chats

If you have one or two group messages that are constantly abuzz, you can mute the chat for eight hours, a week or a year. Go into the chat, and tap the name of the group -> Mute -> select the amount of time. You can also mute notifications on one-to-one chats.

Control what personal information unknown users can see

If you've ever been added to a group chat with people you don't know, or you've moved a Tinder conversation to WhatsApp but aren't sure it's going anywhere, you can restrict what information those users know about you.

Go to Settings -> Account -> Privacy and change Last Seen, Profile Photo and Status to My Contacts. This means only users saved in your phonebook will be able to see your picture and when you were last online.

Share documents

You can now share documents directly from your Google Drive and iCloud Drive into a WhatsApp chat.

Tap the upwards arrow that is to the left of the text window -> Share Document -> select where to share a document from, including Google Drive and iCloud Drive.

Read messages without blue ticks

If you want to give yourself time to reply to a message on WhatsApp without the other person seeing the dreaded blue ticks, this trick will help. It lets you read a message without giving the game away.

1 - Once you receive the message, don't open it, and dismiss any notifications on your home screen.

2 - Open up Airplane mode, which blocks Wi-Fi and mobile data, and prevents any new messages from arriving

3 - Open WhatsApp to read the message in full

4 - Fully close the app and then deactivate Airplane mode. Despite having read the message, the blue ticks won't be displayed.

If read receipts are the bane of your WhatsApp existence, you can turn them off completely by going to Settings -> Account -> Privacy and toggle Read Receipts off.

Stop incoming pictures and videos automatically saving to your phone

If you get fed up of having the pictures friends have sent you appear in your phone's Photo stream, go to Settings -> Chats -> turn off Save Incoming Media.

Add dates to your calendar

If you state a date or time for an activity in a WhatsApp chat on an iOS device the date will appear blue and underlined. Tap on the hyperlink and it will give you the option to Create Event in your calendar. It only works if you are specific with the dates, for example Tuesday 17 rather than just Tuesday.

Add a homescreen shortcut for individual chats

You can set up a homescreen icon that links directly to individual chats by tapping and holding on the chat and selecting Add Conversation Shortcut. An icon of the person's profile picture will appear on your homescreen, but only if you have an Android phone.

Another Android-only shortcut is that you can reply to messages without opening WhatsApp. You can enable the feature by going to Settings -> Notifications -> choose Always show popup. The notifications that appear when you receive a message will give you the option to reply from the lockscreen.

For iOS you can enable a quick reply function by downloading a third party app.

Use WhatsApp on your computer

You can send and receive WhatsApp messages on your computer using the browser version WhatsApp Web, or the desktop app.

To use WhatsApp Web go to web.whatsapp.com on your computer and Settings -> WhatsApp Web on your phone. Scan the QR code displayed on your desktop screen using your phone's camera until they connect. The two browser version of the app will only work if your phone remains switched on, connected to Wi-Fi, and near the computer.

If you want to keep WhatsApp running on your computer more permanently you can download the desktop app. Like WhatsApp Web, the app connects to your computer through a QR code and only works if your phone is present.

Transfer files between your phone and computer

With WhatsApp Web and desktop you can transfer files between your phone and computer with relative ease by sending them to yourself in a message.

1 - The easiest way to self-message is to create a group with one friend and then delete them from it

2 - Connect your phone to your computer using the QR code on WhatsApp Web or desktop

3 - Send a file from your phone and watch it appear on your computer

4 - To save a file to your computer click on it and tap the download icon

Protect your chats

Stop prying eyes from reading your messages by preventing the first line from appearing on your home screen. Go to Settings -> Notifications -> disable Show Preview.

You can also prevent nosy friends from happening on your chats by adding a password to WhatsApp through a third party app, such as AppLock for Android or iAppLock for iOS.

Send a giant heart

If you send a red heart emoji on its own it will appear as a giant, beating heart.

Telegraph.co.uk

Zika Virus: Two Cases Suggest It Could Be Spread Through Sex


Zika virus has already been linked to brain damage in babies and paralysis in adults. Now scientists are facing another ominous possibility: that on rare occasions, the virus might be transmitted through sex.


http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/01/26/health/two-cases-suggest-zika-virus-could-be-spread-through-sex.html?_r=0&referer=https://www.google.ie/

18 Jan 2016

It is a situation that mirrors the giant oil industry, where Nigeria has abundant resources but has lacked the capacity, will or ability to exploit it, forcing a reliance on imports.

But Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote is hoping to change tomato production with a giant factory that will boost domestic output, create jobs, and even, indirectly, fight Boko Haram.
For the past five years, the Dangote Group conglomerate he heads has been working to build a $20-million (18.4-million-euro) tomato processing plant outside the northern city of Kano.

The city and state of the same name has been blighted by poverty and unemployment, seen as key drivers to radicalisation fuelling the Islamist insurgency in the wider north since 2009.
But it’s hoped the giant factory the size of 10 football pitches, set alongside 17,000 hectares (acres) of irrigated fields, will help by tapping a potential agricultural goldmine.

The country’s agriculture ministry puts annual current demand for tomato puree at 900,000 tonnes.
When the Dangote factory opens from next month, it will provide 430,000 tonnes of paste that is used widely in Nigerian dishes from jollof rice to fiery soups.
“Nigeria is such a huge market for tomato paste that we will find quite challenging to satisfy,” the factory’s general manager, Abdulkarim Kaita, told AFP.

“Already local tomato paste packaging companies have placed orders with us which we will have to work hard to satisfy.
“We are set to begin operations. We are only waiting for the tomatoes which are ripening in the fields.”
Nigeria grows some 1.5 million tonnes of tomatoes every year, making it the 14th biggest producer in the world.
But it’s forced to rely on imports of tomato puree, mostly from China, because of a lack of processing plants.
Dangote’s factory, built by Switzerland-based Syngenta, will directly employ 120 people and 50,000 farmers have been engaged to grow the tomatoes required for the process of making concentrate.

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has provided technical assistance such as soft loans for seeds and fertiliser. The factory will then buy the produce at competitive rates, said Kaita.
Currently, about half of the local tomato crop rots because of a lack of storage facilities, poor pricing and access to markets, which has prompted many farmers to stop cultivation, said the CBN.
The improved seed varieties to increase yields, access to chemicals, more up-to-date farming techniques and a ready market for the produce is designed to entice farmers back.

“Once we start production the factory will be providing employment to farmers and (the) tomato paste packaging industry, traders, haulage operators and many others to support the tomato value chain,” said production manager Ashwin Patil.
Plans to increase production - and acquire an idle tomato paste factory in neighbouring Kaduna state - are in the pipeline, he added.
For farmers such as Yusuf Ado Kadawa, it’s a lifeline.
“We really incur heavy losses from our yield, which rots away due to lack of (a) ready market for our tomatoes, which is a perishable produce. But now we have a market close to us,” he said.

President Muhammadu Buhari is keen to diversify Nigeria’s economy away from an over-reliance on oil as revenues have been severely depleted by the global slump in crude prices.
Former Minister of Agriculture, Akinwumi Adesina, now head of the African Development Bank, in 2013 described the sector as “the new oil”.

Some 30 per cent of Nigeria’s estimated 170 million people are employed in agriculture, mostly at a subsistence level, although moves have been made to commercialise production.
Erratic power supply, which Nigeria has been grappling with for more than two decades, and lack of import controls remain the factory’s main challenges.
The factory will have to rely on diesel-hungry generators for electricity, adding to production costs and reducing competitiveness with cheaper imports.

Both issues contributed to the collapse of hundreds of factories in Dangote’s home state of Kano in the past two decades, including his textile and wheat flour factories.

But the vice-president of Nigeria’s manufacturers union, Ali Madugu, said the future still looked bright.

“Once the government can place restrictions on the import of Chinese tomato pastes... the sky’s the limit for the Dangote tomato paste because the market is there for them to exploit,” he added.

http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/dangote-invests-in-tomato-production-to-create-jobs-tackle-poverty-in-kano/230643/

Tompolo should come and see the swag of the man he intends to fight. I know more bombings may happen but the militants should forget winning this war this time around. Ask the shittes, their leader is still been kept in the dungeon. Tell me which recent 'my hero' past Nigerian leader can do such and still be swagging about. No messing with Buhari.

The militants can't keep the FG on his toes every time threatening and bombing Federal assets/pipes. I feel it's time to put this matter to rest once and for all even if it takes more bombings. The current military is different from past years. With new transparent procurement in military hardware the militants are in for a hard knock. Let the battle begin. FG Vs Militants.

rionel:
When a leader acts base on Bear parlour chants, you know that there is deficiency of wisdom. And this our Buhari has bankruptcy of wisdom. As a leader, there are problems you will tackle without even the public knowing about it. Whether you like it or not the maturity exhibited by Goodluck is missing in today's leadership. Oyibo dey wait to take advantage of any crack in our polity ooo!. Wisdom is beckoning Sir, don't be deceive by the chants you hear from these Almajiris here. Nobody knows them, but you will be held responsible for any misdemeanor that this country could be thrown into. Wish you Goodluck.

Did you just say Jonathan exhibited maturity. His leadership skills was a total disgrace. How can you allow your NSA to be an ATM for your political ambition. He totally lost it. Please how can you support such leadership skills, it shows your value system.

Etc or comma whatever you name...you are actually the one fooling yourself...the budget proposal you just quoted is actually a fake proposal that been gathering storm in social media for some few weeks now. The presidency as denied it but people are forcing themselves to believe it. You guys can react to whatever fake news come your way. Think smartly can Buhari who recently condemned the National Assembly plans to buy new cars and refused himself new cars as he stated on the media chart you watched approve such a budget. As my Oga at the top said #leavethrashforlawma.

The All Progressives Congress (APC) has announced that a fresh primary election will be conducted in Kogi state to pick a replacement for Abubakar Audu.

Audu, who passed away on Sunday, was the party’s candidate in the November 21 governorship election.

Speaking with reporters at the national secretariat of the party in Abuja on Tuesday, John Oyegun, chairman of the party, said the decision to hold a fresh primary was taken after the APC received a letter from the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) asking it to replace Audu.

“It’s in the public space already, that the chief law officer of the republic has made his views know on how things should develop from this stage on,” he said.

“He has made a pronouncement to the effect that all that is required is for the APC to go through the processes of providing a substitute to our late candidate with the implication being that thereafter the supplementary elections to conclude the process of electing a new governor of Kogi state will began to be put in place so as a party we going to proceed with process organising primary to provide a substitute candidate, Abubakar Audu.

“We are going to go into executive session now, to know the nature of the primary.”

Audu’s death had sparked debate among lawyers and public commentators, with some suggesting that Abidoun Faleke, the deceased’s running mate, should be given the ticket of the party.

“Kogi situation fits more into section 181(1) of the 1999 constitution (as amended) and as such James Abiodun Faleke automatically becomes the governorship candidate of the APC. As a result the joint ticket of Audu/Faleke has acquired some votes already. James Abiodun Faleke is as much entitled to those votes already counted as much as the late Abubakar Audu. He has a right to cling to those votes going into the supplementary election,” Festus Keyamo, a notable Nigerian lawyer, had argued.

But with the new development all the controversies have been put to rest.

Though Oyegun did not disclose the date for the exercise, it is expected to be this week since INEC has scheduled the supplementary election for December 5.

INEC declared Saturday’s election inconclusive because the number of cancelled votes was higher than the margin between the two leading candidates.

Audu, who was leading the election, secured 240,867 votes, ahead of Idris Wada, incumbent governor and candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), who polled 199,514 votes.

The difference between them was 41,353 votes, while a total of 49,953 votes were voided in the election as a result of irregularities.

Source: https://www.thecable.ng/breaking-apc-conduct-fresh-primary-kogi

We need to seriously regulate all this online news and bloggers. They are threat to national security. Everybody for the sake of buying a house in Banana Island are just creating false news.

https://www.thecable.ng/tinubu-fashola-made-proud-grandfather

Bola Tinubu, national leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), says he has no doubt that Babatunde Fashola will excel in his new ministerial assignment.

Referring to the minister as his political product, Tinubu recalled how he was antagonised over the choice of Fashola as his successor.

Tinubu was speaaking at the commissioning and launch of the Mile 12-Ikorodu road widening and Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) operation.

“We conquered the enemy when they said it was impossible through Babatunde Raji Fashola,” he said.

“You saw what happened when he was made minister yesterday. Lagos took the front seat. I am now a proud grandfather and I have no doubt he will succeed in that assignment.

“Leadership is about how many people you are able to bring up, build up and develop. I have done my bit.”

He also commended Akinwunmi Ambode, governor of the state, whom he said was “sought out” to lead the state.

The APC leader described the governor as “very creative” and commended him for his contribution towards making Lagos a model city.

Tinubu expressed optimism that Nigeria would succeed beyond people’s imaginations.

“We are in the front row now and we will ensure that Nigeria is turned around and succeeds beyond your imagination,” he said.

On his part, Ambode reassured the people of Lagos that he would address the issue of traffic congestion and improve road networks in the state.

He also pledged his government’s commitment to the infrastructural renewal and development of the state.

“Today’s commissioning is a milestone in public transportation system in the state,” he said.

“It is a delivery of world class transport infrastructure that will bring comfort and convenience to commuters, particularly Ikorodu residents.”

He said that the BRT system was initiated as part of strategies to modernise the public transport, like other major city states in the around.

“It is intended to provide efficient service that will encourage patronage by the middle-class thereby reducing the number of private vehicles on our roads,” he said.

“Today, the BRT system has to a large extent lived up to that expectation.”

Rauf Aregbesola, governor of Osun, was also present at the occasion.

Read more at: https://www.thecable.ng/tinubu-fashola-made-proud-grandfather

This budget is an increase of 273.7% from last year, is he overly ambitious in the midst of low oil prices.

http://crossriverwatch.com/2015/10/ayade-presents-350-billion-2016-budget-to-state-assembly-assures-of-actualizing-his-dreams/

The Cross River State Governor, Senator Ben Ayade this morning presented the 2016 appropriation proposal to the State House of Assembly.

While presenting the budget, Ayade called it “Budget of Deep Vision” maintaining that “I inherited a rich State”.

According to the Governor, the budget is structured on a deliberate principle of capital/recurrent budget ration of 72%:28%.

“The opinion of this ration is that while the State is industrialized and developed the individuals will also feel the impact of governance.

“Consequently we have proposed a budget size of 350, 000,000,000.00 (three hundred and fifty billion naira) only.

“This represents an increase of 222,147,546,485.00 (Two hundred and twenty-four billion, one hundred and forty-seven million, five hundred and forty-six thousand, four hundred and eighty-five naira) only or 273.7%.

According to the breakdown of the figures, “Recurrent Revenue: Internal Source: N22,353,122,650.00 (Twenty-four billion, three hundred and fifty-three million, one hundred and twenty-two thousand, six hundred and fifty naira) only. Federal Sources: 43, 200, 730, 000.00 (Forty-three billion, two million, seven hundred and thirty thousand naira) only.

Capital receipts: 284,446,147,350.00 (two hundred and eighty-four billion, four hundred and forty-six million, one hundred and forty-seven thousand, three hundred and fifty) naira only.

Personal cost: 27,319,642,401.00 (twenty-seven billion, three hundred and nineteen million, six hundred and forty-two thousand, four hundred and one) naira only.

“Overhead Cost: N 13,842,254,841.00 (Thirteen billion, eight hundred and forty-two million, two hundred and fifty-four thousand, eight hundred and forty-one naira) only. Statutory Expenditure: N 14,252,443,841.00 (Fourteen billion, two hundred and fifty-two million, four hundred and forty-three thousand, eight hundred and forty-one naira) only”.

In addition, he elaborated on the sector specific budgetary allocation as follows: Economic: Total Recurrent Expenditure (N 14,867,064,396.00), Capital Expenditure (N 164,860,766,008.00), Total Budget (N 179,727,830,404.00) and Percentage (51.41%).

Social Services: Total Recurrent Expenditure (N 19,132,554,115.00), Capital Expenditure (N 33,876,739,914.00), Total Budget (N 53,009,294,029.00) and Percentage (15.21%).

Regional Development: Total Recurrent Expenditure (N 2,546,477,919.00), Capital Expenditure (N 50,897,097,853.00), total budget (N 53,443,575,772.00) and Percentage (15.31%).

General Administration: Total Recurrent Expenditure (N 18,868,244,212.00), Capital Expenditure (N 44,351,055,573.00), Total Budget (N 63,219,299,785.00) and Percentage (18.1%).

Total Outflow: Total Recurrent Expenditure (N 55,414,340,642.00), Capital Expenditure (N 294,585,659,358.00), Total Budget (N 350,000,000,000.00) and Percentage (100%).

Concluding, Governor Ayade asserted that “Despite the challenging financial and economic variables at this inauspicious times, let me assure you that we are not deterred from making our Deep Vision practicable and realistic”.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/22/how-west-broke-libya-gaddafi-national-unity

How the west broke Libya and returned it to the hatred of the past | Yasmina Khadra

What exactly was toppled in Libya with the overthrow of Muammar Gadaffi? A dictator, or a working power structure? It was utterly predictable that military intervention would be a fiasco. Sadly the lessons of the Iraq war did not alert Nato leaders to the disastrous consequences of their punitive mission.

Western military strategists had, of course, identified the nerve centres they would need to target to bring down their enemy. They made detailed appraisals of Gaddafi’s defensive strongholds, his air bases, listening stations, electronic warfare and communications networks, tank regiments, ground troops, planning and command centres, logistics hubs, key infrastructure and administration. Everything.

But they failed to take account of the most essential consideration: the nature of the Arab-Berber world. And it’s this monumental oversight that holds the key to Libya’s current’s chaos, along with the chaos that has been tearing the Iraqi people apart for over a decade.

You cannot simply launch an attack on a country without any knowledge of the mindset or character of its inhabitants. You can destroy every tank and combat aircraft in its arsenal, wipe out its entire strategic networks, but if you don’t know what kind of people you’re dealing with, you are merely opening a Pandora’s box, and every idle peace operation embarked on later is doomed only to throw fuel on the fire.

To understand the Libyan tragedy we must first study the peculiarities of Arab-Berber culture. For centuries Libya languished on the sidelines, resisting the encroachment of the modern world and the perceived dangers of cosmopolitanism.

The Libyan people did not exist as a homogenous nation under one flag and sharing one common ideal. It was a collection of fiercely autonomous, proud and unruly tribes, suspicious of centralised rule (first there had been a substitute Ottoman regency, then a mandated principality, next a short-lived monarchy – the last king of Libya, Idris I, was Algerian), which they saw as a potential threat and to which they would only give allegiance to preserve their own independence.

The history of deeply hostile relationships between Libya’s ethnic groups is littered with violent raids, betrayals, unfulfilled vendettas and long-held frustrations carried like shameful injuries that have festered over the years as each generation is brought up to seek revenge for old sins. The terrible reality of the Libyan situation is precisely what Nato’s generals did not deem it necessary to know, dangerously choosing to ignore the unique combination of factors that make up the Libyan mindset. They failed to consider how Libyans would react to having a war thrust upon them.

You cannot simply launch an attack on a country without any knowledge of the mindset or character of its inhabitants

Gaddafi played a defining role in the rebuilding of the modern Libyan nation. By overthrowing the monarchy and declaring the Jamahiriya (a republic of the masses in which political power was to be passed to the people), the revolutionary army officer achieved what no sovereign before him had accomplished.

Born of the tribes and the outcasts, a wretched child destined for menial tasks and a lifetime of poverty, Gaddafi – thanks, in large part, to his humble roots – immediately won the adoration of the disadvantaged on the fringes of society and rallied the aggrieved and the rejected to his cause. But his greatest feat, after the coup d’etat, was absolutely remarkable: he succeeded in bringing together the intensely opposed ethnic groups of the north and south, who had always despised one another. To the casual western observer this might seem a basic achievement and of little import, but for an inveterate tribalist it is little short of a miracle.

For four decades Gaddafi acted as guarantor of the nation’s stability and a careful moderator between tribal leaders, reconciling warring parties and delicately handling the hangovers of the past that still awoke old demons from time to time. Gaddafi, as vigilant keeper of the flame, kept a weather eye open, heaping privileges on some and prestige on others in order to consolidate alliances and plaster over any cracks that threatened to appear.

Muammar Gaddafi
‘Gaddafi played a defining role in the rebuilding of the modern Libyan nation … he achieved what no sovereign before him had accomplished.’ Photograph: Mahmud Turkia/AFP/Getty Images
A peerless orator, unparalleled expert in tribal psychology and extraordinary manipulator, he ostentatiously showered gifts on his allies while pitilessly crushing his doubters. Giving with one hand, torturing with the other, he kept the nation on steady footing, as if marching in a parade.

Yet this authority essentially hinged on the precarious support of the ethnic groups whom Gaddafi made dependent on him. Nothing is as unpredictable and dangerous as a tribe turning on you – such sudden revolts are the stuff of legend and the hallmark of the Maghreb and its colonial history.

By toppling Gaddafi, Nato interfered with the order of things. Once the personal guarantor of national unity had been lynched by his compatriots, the Libyan people were left to their own devices in an appalling state of upheaval, with no roadmap to guide them.

Through herd mentality, or pure atavism, the leaderless state was drawn back to its one familiar point of reference, the tribal system of its ancestors, and with it the full force of its legacy: a return to the hatred of the past, to intractable rivalries, violent raids and an unquenchable thirst for vengeance.

After civil war, pillaging, settling of scores, mass rape and destruction on a massive scale, each ethnic group has withdrawn to its own territory and demands autonomy. The bastion Gaddafi built is crumbling. Libyan unity is now no more than an old story, a fairytale no one believes in.

Each militia, each religious community, each ethnic group rebels against the other, every region is a minefield. And into this advanced decomposition other deathly winds are blowing: Islamic State the sirocco of the north; and al-Qaida, the southerly harmattan sweeping up from Niger and Mali.

The noose tightens around Libya as competing ideological and territorial claims are staked on it. Today, no region has been spared violence and mass criminality. NGOs and even the Red Crescent are unwelcome: peacekeepers are rebuffed, hospitals doomed to failure.

In the face of western bewilderment and inaction, the situation is on the verge of spreading throughout the whole of north Africa, turning neighbouring countries into powder kegs whose shock waves could destroy the stability of the entire Mediterranean, possibly even dragging the rest of Europe into a calamitous downward spiral.

It is becoming a matter of urgency that a unity government is imposed on Libya – and with sufficient backing that popular support for Isis and al-Qaida are cut off. Only then can lasting stability in the region be restored. Failure means it is inevitable that the breakdown of law and order will be exported to the rest of the world. A solution to the Libyan crisis, on the other hand, could bring peace to other Arab countries mired in chaos.

Is such a solution possible? I remain convinced it could be, if only the west were to put its mind – and its means – to achieving it.

http://www.pmnewsnigeria.com/2015/10/20/buhari-launches-260km-super-highway-project-pledges-speedy-completion

President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday launched the 260-kilometre Calabar-Kastina-Ala Super Highway road project at Obung, Cross River.

The President expressed the hope that the road would create a new vista of business opportunities for Cross River and the nation at large while launching the project.

Buhari commended Governor Ben Ayade for his vision and foresight in conceptualising the project.

“So, I must at this juncture commend the state governor, Sen. Ben Ayade and his team for their foresight in conceptualising this project.

“Given the multiplier effect these two laudable projects are expected to generate, in terms of aggregate spinoffs, I want to assure you of my determination and as well as the commitment of the Federal Government to ensuring that this road and indeed the seaport runs to a quick completion.

“Let me commend our young Governor, Professor Ben Ayade who globe-trotted to get these core foreign investors to invest in these huge projects.”

According to the president, the road which will link south-south and northern parts of the country, when completed, will also ensure a reduction in travel time and man-hour.

He said that the project was a significant milestone in the economic transformation agenda of the state.

Buhari, who was forced to abandon his official Chopper and embarked on road journey to the venue of the event due to heavy rain, pledged to be back in due course for the inauguration of the project.

“I feel the warmth of your embrace and the passion in your gaze.

“The future of Cross River State is certain.

“I am one with you on this. I promise to come back to commission (inaugurate) this road upon completion and that is very soon too.’’

In his remarks, Ayade said apart from the road project, the state would also be constructing a deep sea port in Bakassi.

According to him, the two projects will be executed through the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) .

He said the idea behind the projects rooted back to when the state lost its oil wells to Akwa Ibom upon the loss of Bakassi.

“The theological kinetics of this road started with the loss of our oil wells consequent upon the loss of Bakassi, therefore the state was reduced to wants in body and spirit.

“It became imperative that we reconstruct a new means of production; we need to open the horizon to get teeming young people employed.

“It is against such background as I sought to leave this state it became very clear and evident that we must construct new means of production.

“Within the limit of our resources, the projects would have been impossible but because we know that you are the President of all, we know that once we dream, it is his duty to make the dream a reality that is why we dreamt that we need to construct a deep seaport.

“As soon as I sent a letter to you on the Bakassi seaport, it took less than one day in your office and it was minuted out.”

On the 260km super highway, Ayade stated that it would serve as an evacuation corridor from the seaport.

“It will have a track of 14metres and a key wall of 680 metres that will allow for vessels from outside and every other vessel to berth.

“It will, therefore, provide an evacuation corridor for vessels, material and equipment lying in Calabar uniformly, effortlessly to Northern Nigeria.”

According to the governor, the existing federal road will require up to five to six hours to get to Benue State from Calabar but with the construction of this super highway, only one hour, 30 minutes will be spent.

“What is special about this super highway? It is that we have internet connectivity all through the highway, a photographic solar system with a satellite antenna.

“Mr president, it is also going to be the first to have anti-sleep bumps on the highway.

“It is also going to be the first to have speed cameras. It is also going to be the first to have ambulatory services.

“Mr President, this road is a digital road, designed for the 21st century.’’

The governor expressed optimism that the road would be completed in the next four to five years.

“We envisioned that this road will be done in the next four to five years.

“We also have people who have collaborated and partnered with us.

“ They include an Israeli-British firm, the broad spectrum that had provided 500 million euros.

“We also have Heritage, Skye and Zenith banks.

“We know that with the support Mr. President has given to us, the project will be a reality.’’