₦airaland Forum

Fajzay: Its a bond. You get it back when u return to your country within the time frame given to u for stay. SO if u try anything funny, u loose it

cap28: Tell that to the marines - it may be a terrible tourist destination for Nigerians but come to London and see the number of Japanese, American, French, Italian, south Africans(white), austrialians who flock to London - why? because they have money to burn on travelling just for the fun of it, a luxury the vast number of Nigerians will never be able to afford.

The UK economy can not be finished as long as st.upid Africans and Nigerians in particular continue to allow shell bp to call the shots in Nigeria.

Why did the west hate Chavez so much? because he called the shots when it came to the running of the Venezuelan oil industry - something no Nigerian coward leader will ever dream of doing - Chavez insisted that the oil revenues must be used for the benefit of the Venezuelan people not for the benefit of european and American multinationals and banks.
Until Nigeria gets such a leader there is no hope for Nigeria.

siaco: what of checks on her form indicate that she filled in religion column "christianity" while she is practicing african traditional religion, what will u say about that?

Jarus: Too bad. Thought religion has taken away all these. This is one of the reason I don't intend participating in elective politics in Nigeria. Hardly possible not to compromise, if not moral/ethics, it's faith.

The president insult our collective sense and sensibility everyday. He is not bigger than Nigeria. If he comport himself presidentially, respect will naturally flow from his people to him and from him to his people. I cannot respect a man who by his action or inaction threatens my life every living second. I risk my life everyday just by going on the bad road, I risk my life everyday just by visiting a hospital, I practically live a life of risk being in Nigeria. How do I respect the man charged with the responsibility of securing a better life for me and my family if all he now does after promising heaven and earth including fresh air is to enrich himself and that of his friends. All I now get is excuse morning day and night. It now seem as if what other people in other parts of the world take for granted is now privilege reserved for the selected few in Nigeria. It is not a rocket science to fight corruption or fix the electricity problem, it is not a rocket science to build a similar hospital to the one GEJ wife went to in Germany here in Nigeria, it is not a rocket science to build good school like the one their children go to in Western Europe here in Nigeria. So why are they not doing it? The only reason is because they do not give a damn about the ordinary man. So me as an ordinary man do not give a damn about them either. Respect is the last thing I have for GEJ.

[size=16pt]N2 Trillion in two years, GOING! GOING!! GONEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!

Intervention funds: FG spends N2trn in two years[/size]

JANUARY 13, 2013 BY ALLWELL OKPI AND LEKE BAIYEWU


The Federal Government, under the leadership of President Goodluck Jonathan, has spent at least N1.732trn on intervention funds in different sectors of the economy, SUNDAY PUNCH investigation has found.

The figure represents the sum of the amounts approved by the Federal Government as intervention funds between 2010, when Jonathan became President and December 2012.

Some of the intervention funds include the N200bn Small and Medium Guarantee Scheme, N200bn Restructuring and Refinancing Facility Scheme and the N300bn Power and Airline Intervention Fund.

Others are the N75bn Grooming Enterprise Leaders Business Intervention Fund, N32bn Entertainment Intervention Fund and N10.71bn Commercial Agriculture Credit Guarantee Scheme to six banks by the Central Bank of Nigeria.

Also on the long list of intervention funds, are the N300bn approved for the hotel and leisure sub-sector in 2012; N200bn for indigenous pharmaceutical companies and N100bn textile industry bailout.

The Federal Government, between 2010 and 2012, also disbursed N126.1bn as export expansion grant.

Also in 2010, the Federal Government reportedly disbursed about N7.9bn to 25 companies from the National Automotive Fund. The money was for the production of vehicles, motorcycles and bicycle tyres and accessories.

An additional N3bn was earmarked for disbursement to nine companies before the end of that year.

In July 2012, the Federal Government approved N330m grants to assist 20,000 farmers in Lagos state.

Similarly, in November, 2012, the Federal Government, in collaboration with the Central Bank of Nigeria, disbursed a soft loan worth N9.4m to members of the Nigeria Cassava Growers Association, Nasarawa State chapter.

As at July 2011, the Bank of Industry had reportedly disbursed N195bn out of the N200bn meant for the refinancing of the manufacturing sector to 518 companies across the six geo-political zones, while N83bn out of the N300bn for the power and aviation sectors had also been disbursed to companies in these sectors.

As part of Federal Government’s intervention in education in 2012, it approved N95.653bn for public tertiary institutions in the country, through the Tertiary Education Trust Fund.

Within the period under review, the Federal Government disbursed several funds through the Universal Basic Education Commission. One of such was N94m disbursed to 125 communities in Bayelsa State, in September, 2011, for self-help projects.

In the agricultural sector, the CBN, through its Nigerian Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending, approved a take-off grant of N75bn to boost agriculture businesses.

The Head, Project Implementation of NIRSAL, CBN, Mr. Jude Uzonwanne, reportedly said N45bn from the N75bn had been set aside as loans to the farmers, while the balance would be used to train and insure them.

Irked by the situation in which government’s interventions have had little or no impact on the economy, the Nigerian Association of Chambers of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture, conducted a survey and found that only six per cent of industrialists accessed the funds.

NACCIMA said this at the presentation of the survey report to stakeholders in July 2012.

NACCIMA President, Dr. Ademola Ajayi, said the intervention funds were faced with the problem of accessibility.

According to Ajayi, despite the Federal Government’s N100bn textile bailout fund, less than 25 per cent of textile manufacturers were operating above 50 per cent capacity utilisation.

Apart from inability of stakeholders to access the government’s intervention funds, there have been discrepancies in the administration of the funds.

While some of the funds have been diverted to other uses, parts of the funds can no longer be accounted for.

The Senate Committee on Public Accounts, last year, raised the alarm over a missing N44bn from the Federal Government’s Special Intervention Fund on Solid Minerals.

The committee discovered the missing funds during an interactive session it had with officials of the Federal Ministry of Finance, the Central Bank of Nigeria and the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation.

The committee said despite the fact that the fund was created by the Federal Government as a special intervention fund to develop the non-oil sector of the nation’s economy, no project had been accomplished in the sector.

According to the Senator Ahmad Lawan-led committee, the records of the Federal Ministry of Finance and that of the Central Bank of Nigeria could not properly account for about N44bn, out of the total figure of N873bn, between 2002 and May 31, 2012.

The committee also found that part of the funds had been used to finance projects in other sectors.

Meanwhile, an anti-corruption group, Coalition for Against Corrupt Leaders, said Nigerians had yet to see the impact of the funds on their lives.

The Executive Chairman, CACOL, Mr. Debo Adeniran, said, “The funds are meant to settle the boys, the political elite. It is just a palliative to hoodwink people into believing that the government is helping them.

“The solution is not to dole out funds but to make sure jobs are generated and infrastructure is developed to encourage small and medium-scale industries. There should be micro-credit facilities for entrepreneurs to increase local content. Most intervention funds are a wrong step in the right direction. The government is just chasing shadows. The funds will not make people face the reality to be creative and productive.”

Another group, Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project, said it was improper for the government to approve intervention funds for private enterprises, citing the example of the aviation sector.

The Executive Director, SERAP, Mr. Adetokunbo Mumuni, said, “If the government allocates funds for public institutions, provided it is properly accounted for, it is acceptable; when such funds are for private businesses, it is not acceptable. Why use the public funds to intervene in private enterprises? It is unreasonable and unjustifiable.

“Spending on private businesses sounds fraudulent. Monies have been spent without proper account for them. The government can only give financial intervention, provided funds would be spent transparently and accountably.”

N5tn stolen under Jonathan –Investigation
NOVEMBER 25, 2012 BY TOYOSI OGUNSEYE, ALLWELL OKPI AND LEKE BAIYEWU


Over N5tn in government funds have been stolen through fraud, embezzlement and theft since President Goodluck Jonathan assumed office on May 6, 2010, a SUNDAY PUNCH investigation has found.

Our correspondents arrived at the stolen sum after poring over the reports of the various committees set up by the President to probe some sectors of the economy, particularly oil and gas. SUNDAY PUNCH also relied on disclosures by some senior government officials.

Five trillion naira is the summation of government funds said to have been stolen, according to the Mallam Nuhu Ribadu-led Petroleum Task Force report; the Minister of Trade and Investment’s report on stolen crude; the House of Representatives fuel subsidy report and investigations into the ecological fund, SIM card registration and frequency band spectrum sale.

The Ribadu report on the oil and gas sector put daily crude oil theft at a high 250,000 barrels daily at a cost of $6.3bn (N1.2trn) a year. This puts the total amount lost through oil theft in the two years of Jonathan’s government at over $12.6bn (N2trn).

Oil theft is common in the Nigerian oil and gas sector. In June, a special naval team impounded a French ship, MT Vannessa, at Brass Loading Terminal, Bayelsa State, for allegedly stealing 500,000 barrels of crude oil per day from the country.

Our sister publication, SATURDAY PUNCH, had reported that the suspects, in their confessional statements, indicted some political office holders, many fuel marketers and some officials of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation and Department of Petroleum Resources.

In October, Minister of Trade and Investment, Dr. Olusegun Aganga, in a letter to the President, said 24 million barrels of oil worth $1.6bn (N252bn) was stolen between July and September.

According to Aganga, his signature was forged on the Export Clearance Permit that was used to export the crude oil from Nigeria.

Confirming that oil theft was depleting Nigeria’s resources, the Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, in May, said the government lost a fifth of its oil revenues to theft in April.

Apart from income lost through oil theft, the Ribadu report also said ministers of Petroleum Resources between 2008 and 2011 handed out seven discretionary oil licences and that government lost $183m (N29bn) in signature bonuses via these deals.

The Ribadu panel discovered that three of the oil licences were awarded under the current petroleum minister, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke, who took up her position in 2010. Alison-Madueke, however, denied knowledge of the discretionary awards.

Shortly before the Ribadu report, the House of Representatives had raised the alarm that the N2.6trn the Federal Government paid for oil subsidy in 2011 could not be properly accounted for.

The House said, “Fuel subsidy payments amounted to N261.1bn in 2006, N278.8bn in 2007 and N346.7bn in 2008, but, even after the subsidy on diesel had been removed, the ‘subsidy’ payments jumped to N2.58trn in 2011 — more than 900 per cent of the sum appropriated for the year (N245bn).”

A subsequent report by the Presidential Committee on Verification and Reconciliation of Fuel Subsidy Payments, led by Mr. Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede, revealed that in 2011, 197 subsidy transactions worth N232bn were illegitimate.

These frauds are not limited to the oil industry, as similar probes have shown that almost all sectors are involved.

In July, the House of Representatives Committee on Environment discovered a tree seedling fraud worth N2bn awarded by the Ecological Fund office.

Chairman of the committee on environment, Mrs. Uche Ekwunife, said this during an investigative hearing on the mismanagement of ecological funds for the development of tree nurseries and seedlings in the 36 states.

According to her, out of the N3bn approved by the Presidency in 2010, N2bn was released to the contractors and consultants without government getting value.

Minister of Environment Hadiza Mailafia, however, said the contract was awarded by her predecessor.

In the telecommunications sector, the House instituted a probe into the sale of the frequency brand spectrum, which was reportedly sold for less than its value.

The 450MHz frequency, which was valued at over $50m, was allegedly sold for less than $6m (a difference of $44m or N6.9bn) by the Nigeria Communications Commission.

In the same sector, the reps, earlier this year, commenced investigations into the N6.1bn SIM card registration project embarked upon by the NCC in 2011.

The investigation followed the delay in completing the exercise and the request by NCC for additional N1bn for the project in its 2012 budget.

The lawmakers insisted that the NCC had no business embarking on the project since various service providers were already registering their subscribers.

Deputy Chairman, House Committee on Communications, Mr. Usman Bawa, had said, “The NCC has no business with SIM card registration. Apart from that, the service providers have done about 80 per cent of the registration because they started before the NCC. To me, for the regulatory body to be involved in the registration is a duplication of effort, a waste of resources and time.

“Even, the manner with which the bill for the N6.1bn was passed during the Sixth Assembly showed that there was more to it than meets the eyes. From our investigations, from which our report was compiled, our interactions with the NCC contractors for the SIM card registration and the service providers, a lot has been exposed and this was part of the reason why we removed the N1bn that was budgeted for the same SIM card registration in the last budget.”

It would be recalled that the then Minister of Information and Communication, Prof. Dora Akunyili, had, in August, 2010, agreed that the amount budgeted for SIM card registration was exorbitant.

Reacting to the massive frauds that have greeted Jonathan’s tenure, Transparency International, told one of our correspondents that Nigeria would continue to slack in development as long as it keeps paying lip service to the fight against corruption.

It said via electronic mail, “President Jonathan should insist that those accused of corruption are properly investigated and punished if found guilty, irrespective of their positions and connections. The judiciary must be seen as impartial and fair.

“To signal a break with the past, the government should set up an independent investigatory panel to review charges of corruption within government and the private sector. President Jonathan should endorse the panel and commit to ensure it has both the scope and the power to investigate and prosecute.

“This is not just a matter of justice; fighting corruption can affect the lives and livelihoods of millions of people. The current culture of corruption hurts the majority of Nigerians while the inequality gap widens.”

Also speaking to SUNDAY PUNCH, the Director, Centre for Applied Economics, Lagos Business School, Prof. Pat Utomi, said the spate of corruption in the country was unprecedented.

The political economist argued that prosecution and jail terms for corrupt individuals would not be as effective as building a societal institution that would prevent corruption.

A former Vice Chancellor, Crescent University, Prof. Sheriffdeen Tella, also warned that corruption would spell doom for the country if the trend continued.

He said, “It is unfortunate that the country will not be able to meet the Millennium Development Goals. There is a need for the masses to hold a three-day protest against corruption to force government to prosecute those indicted for corruption.”

Similarly, Executive Chairman, Coalition Against Corrupt Leaders, Mr. Debo Adeniran, said, “For Jonathan to fight corruption, he must start with his cabinet. The way Jonathan is going about his campaign against corruption is not the best way to go about it.”

A global audit and financial advisory firm, KPMG, had on Thursday stated that Nigeria accounted for the highest number of fraud cases in Africa in the first half of 2012.

The cost of fraud in the country during the period was put at $1.5bn (N225bn).

ilugunboy: You are absolutely spot on with this....

The irony is the unbridled influx of these ungrateful people from across the Niger is putting heavy pressure on the school facilities in Lagos.

Ngwakwe: As I told your kinsman, the same applies to you.

Politics and the way it's being played
today has changed. Electorates are
becoming wiser.

Opposition is about promoting your
ideologies, party manifesto and previous
antecedents if any . It no longer includes
character assassination, political adultery
and manipulation.

I can only advice that your handlers
arrange more training programme for
you.

Make no mistake, the Electorates are
getting wiser "day by day".

thelastPope: So at least, you admit that PDP has good governors and performers, because your old posts says otherwise oh! Should I re post them here?

thelastPope: So are you saying that there good governors and performers in PDP after all?

thelastPope: This your GEJ diversion is soooooooo weak! Please try something else! Amaechi, a PDP governor, is far better than Fashola, an ACN governor, fact! If you doubt me, ask Eko Ile, your brother.....

Policewoman: These schools are soooo.....20th century. For your info, we are now in the 21st century

thelastPope: Chairman, no vex. Please stop posting this yeye pictures. You are messing up this thread! You no see wetin your brother post for page 1? Abeg, go back to page 1 and look closely again before you come back and post these Alaba market shopping complex wey you dey call schools! Honest advise bro!

thelastPope: You people have been circulating those pictures since the beginning of time. Only one bloack of 21 classrooms in Surulere...

Show us public schools all over Lagos. Amaechi Built the same thing all over Rivers. Infact, he used the same design thoughout. Same thing you find in Akwa Ibom. Good schools all over. Wher your own na?