₦airaland Forum

Chedarking: But the waiting lists on the NHS can sometimes stretch for years bruv...you know that..

You know that private healthcare schemes like BUPA aint free...

fatdon2: The statement also said “The truth, which
Sanusi as a beneficiary is running away from,
is that corruption has become a real burden
on the economy and it should be the only
priority item on the table of any serious
government. Even if you sack all the workers in Nigeria, any amount saved from that will be
stolen and the culprits will walk in freedom”.
www.channelstv.com/home/2012/11/28/nlc-orders-fg-to-sack-sanusi-as-cbn-governor/

ballabriggs: Why not? Workers that come to work by 12 pm and leave for home by 3pm, what assets do they manage? Some of them don't do anything in those offices, they only wait for contracts to be awarded and then go after the contractor for their share. We spend 70% of our budgets on them and they end up stealing the remaining 30% which should go to the entire population.

A government has a budget deficit, bulk of which is made up of consumption and you think the government should not implement cost cutting measures? It continues to issue debts to finance this budget of consumption whilst leaving out areas of high priority. Who is going to repay this debt? Generations unborn that have not been left with anything on ground? So they face a double task of repaying debts incurred by a greedy future generation whilst struggling to provide social services which the future barely laid down for them. How selfish!

I hear people talk trash of high interest rates and inflation here everyday. How do you drop interest rates when government borrowing is on the increase? So it means with the budget of consumption, government has succeeded in crowding-out the productive sectors of the economy whilst not also providing needed social amenities.

Fact is to implement change, there are hard decisions that need to be made. Some of the processes that these civil servants implement are of low complexities but of high value to development. For such a process, you automate it, implement information management systems to take over these tasks thus freeing up finance for development.

Now go to an office in the ministry and see people running around with paper files. Why do you need such waste? Automate the process, free up initial finance for development and as we grow as a people the macro-environment becomes more complex again and there will be a need to get more people to work in the civil service.

The present state of the civil service is a drain on the economy. Does Ebele have the political will to implement a change programme? That is the big issue!

249 PPPRA staff get N5.7bn salary this year
Written by Isiaka Wakili
Wednesday, 28 November 2012 05:00

The Petroleum Products Pricing and Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) says the total salary of its 249 staff for the 2012 fiscal year is N5.7 billion, prompting concerns from federal lawmakers that the figures were too high.
PPPRA executive secretary Reginald Stanley disclosed the staff salaries yesterday at a budget defence before a joint committee of the National Assembly on petroleum resources (downstream).

Based on the total wage figures he gave, the average salary per worker at the agency stands at N23,694,780 for 2012, which is much higher than the annual salary of a permanent secretary.

Some of the National Assembly committee members including their chairman Senator Magnus Abe were alarmed by the huge salary figures.

“N5.725 billion for 249 workers? In this country?” Abe asked.

The committee members were enraged by what they saw as Stanley’s inability to provide documents backing the salary expenditure profile. Because of that, the committee stopped the budget defence session and ordered the management of the agency to report back on a date to be fixed later.

Abe did not say specifically what the committee will do about the salaries of PPPRA staff but said the amounts budgeted for government agencies were subject to review by legislators.

Stanley also told the committee that his agency gets 15 kobo on every litre of petroleum sold in the country as administrative charges, prompting further questions from lawmakers on how the monies generated were spent.

Abe said it was an offence for ministries, department and agencies to spend funds outside the Appropriation Act, adding: “If that has been going on in the past, we should put a final stop to it, it shouldn’t happen again.”

He added: “I want to bring to your attention, the attitude of some of our operators in the sector who always think that except appropriations are drawn directly from the Consolidated Revenue Fund, they are not accountable to the parliament for it.

“I want to make it very clear that, except the money you get from your father’s farm or your grandfather’s farm is spent, any amount that comes through you or to you is expended through any agency as part of the public responsibility is subject to a review by Nigerians and the National Assembly that represents the interest of Nigerians.

“Nobody can receive money on behalf of Nigerians, spend it on his own behalf without recourse to the National Assembly. I say it with a particular reference to agencies that are by law allowed to generate and make their own expenditures.”

Also speaking, the chairman of the House of Representatives committee on petroleum (downstream), Peterside Dakuku, said, “In this era of reforms, one great tool to reform is the budget. That is why we’re taking our budgetary process very seriously.”

Churches, mosques should pay tax – Falana
NOVEMBER 27, 2012 BY ENIOLA AKINKUOTU

Human Rights lawyer, Femi Falana (SAN), has canvassed that churches and mosques should begin to pay tax in the country.

Falana, who expressed worry about the role of religious bodies in the fight against corruption, spoke against the backdrop of the acquisition of a jet by the President of the Christian Association of Nigeria, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, said to have been donated by the cleric’s church members.

He stated this while delivering a lecture, ‘Asking the unasked questions: society, corruption and punishment in Nigeria’ in Lagos on Monday.

The SAN, who represented Prof. Wole Soyinka at a workshop entitled ‘the dynamics of cashless economy and emerging methods in financial crimes,’ said both society and the government had failed in the fight against corruption.

He said, “Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, the President of the Christian Association of Nigeria, someone who just acquired his own jet a couple of weeks ago, took a swipe at Pastor Tunde Bakare for condemning their crave for jets and opulent life. He (Oritsejafor) said everything a pastor could get for evangelism should be acquired, not minding the economic situation of the people

“If this is the case then, the tax authorities must extend their dragnets to all religious centres where substantial income is generated on a regular basis in the name of God. The prosperity pastors, who are buying jets to preach the gospel to those who wallow in abject poverty should be assessed according to their wealth and be made to pay commensurate taxes.

“After all, they pay appropriate fees for parking their jets at local and international airports at home and abroad.”

Falana also noted that death penalty was logical but not necessary in curbing corruption.

According to him, death penalty for crimes such as robbery has not served as a deterrent and will not work in this regard.

He said, “Notwithstanding the horrendous effect of corruption in the society, we should not be frustrated to support the campaign for the brutalization of humanity through the death penalty.

“Even in Nigeria, our experience with murder and armed robbery has proved that death penalty is not a deterrent for violent crimes.”

Nigeria Boko Haram member sends letter offering dialogue
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria | Mon Nov 26, 2012 9:14pm GMT

(Reuters) - A purported senior member of Islamist militant group Boko Haram has distributed a letter requesting talks with the government, a day after a double suicide bombing blamed on the sect killed at least 11 and wounded 30 in an army barracks.

The letter was signed by Sheik Abu Mohammed Ibn Abdulazeez, a man known by local security sources to be a sect member but considered to be a moderate.

If the letter is genuine, it would appear to mark a change of tack for the Islamists that fits ill with a spate of violent episodes, including the bombing of the military church on Sunday. That bombing showed a degree of sophistication not seen from Boko Haram for months.

Nearly 3,000 people have died violent deaths related to the conflict since the sect launched its uprising in 2009, according to a count by Human Rights Watch. Boko Haram has replaced militancy in the oil-rich Niger Delta over that time to become the biggest security threat to Africa's top energy producer.

The letter was handed to the national head of the union of journalists, Aba Kakami, who has often received and distributed statements from the sect, usually claiming attacks against high profile targets or warning of them.

Communication with the shadowy Islamists, who are fighting to impose sharia, Islamic law, on Nigeria, has been even more sporadic than normal since the military killed their spokesman Abu Qaqa in September in a gun battle.

Abdulazeez first contacted journalists in Maiduguri earlier this month, setting conditions for peace talks in teleconference and nominating former military ruler and northerner Muhammadu Buhari as a mediator. Buhari has since declined the offer.

"We are by this letter of invitation to our respected elders proving to government that we are not joking with the government, but we are awaiting the response of those concerned," the letter said.

Abdulazeez said he was speaking on behalf of Abubakar Shekau, the sect's leader.

But even if Abdulazeez does represent Shekau, the extent to which Boko Haram is controlled by Shekau is in doubt, and analysts think military pressure has fragmented it.

The letter nominated as mediator Imam Gabchiya, an official from the university in the city of Maiduguri, in the heartland of the Islamist insurgency against President Goodluck Jonathan's government.

There was no immediate reaction from government officials, but Jonathan said on November 18 that no talks were going on with Boko Haram while they remained faceless and in the shadows.

The handover of the letter came three days after Nigeria's army offered a 290 million naira (1.1 million pounds) bounty for information leading to the capture of 19 leading members of the sect.

(Reporting by Ibrahim Mshelizza; Writing by Tim Cocks; Editing by Alison Williams)

Serving minister linked with N2.7bn subsidy scam •Power cabal warns EFCC, ICPC off case

Written by Tayo Babarinde
Sunday, 25 November 2012

A minister in the current Federal Executive Council (FEC) has been linked with the unregistered company that collected N2.7 billion oil subsidy claims, informed sources have said.
In September, there was a riddle over the ownership of Pinnacle Contractors Limited whose identity could not be located in the database of the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC), but got at total of N2.7 billion as subsidy claims without supplying any litre of fuel last year.

The company is one of those listed by the Ministry of Finance and is being investigated by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

The Anti-Corruption Network, a non-governmental organisation, headed by a former member of the House of Representatives, Honourable Dino Melaye, had, two weeks ago, led a street protest at the Ministry of Finance’s headquarters in Abuja to demand the identity of the company.

But sources close to the intelligence networks confirmed on Friday in Abuja that a serving minister in the cabinet of President Goodluck Jonathan is actually the brain behind the unregistered company and that some political forces had asked the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) and the EFCC to back out of the case involving the company.

It was also gathered that top echelons of the anti-graft bodies are being constanly reminded of the fate that befell the pioneer chairman of EFCC when he took on the matter of former governor of Delta State, James Ibori.

The EFCC and some officials of the State Security Services (SSS) had investigated the company and linked it with the serving minister.

Though sources refused to disclose whether the said minister was male or female, the minister, it was said, had just been named as a member of the White Paper committee on some reports on the oil sector submitted to the president recently.

“I can confirm to you that the minister involved is well connected. There are reports that the powers that be could be offended, if the EFCC goes further with the investigations.”

It was also confirmed that the unregistered company was able to secure bank accounts through cloning of Forms Co2 and 45 of another company with a similar name registered with the CAC.

A search conducted on 18 September showed that only Pinnacle Company Nigeria Limited is registered on the CAC system.

The Federal Government had, in August, announced that Pinnacle Contractors Limited was one of the 25 companies that mismanaged different sums of subsidy funds.

Details from the Ministry of Finance showed that Pinnacle Contractors Limited got N1.2 billion for alleged importation of fuel into Nigeria when the vessel said to have supplied the fuel was not at the location where it could actually do so.

The company also got another N1.5 billion for supplying fuel through a vessel that was no longer in operation at the time of supply.

It was gathered from officials of the CAC that Pinnacle Contractors Limited could not have been registered since Pinnacle Company Nigeria Limited had already been registered on the CAC website.

Searches on the CAC system indicated that Pinnacle Company Nigeria Limited was registered on 18 September, 1981 with registration number RC. 8740. Its registered office is given as 12, Iwehen Street, Benin City, Edo State.

The directors are given as Samuel Okhorutomwen Uwadie and Samuel Omorodion Iwadie.

According to the data at the CAC, the company is registered as importers, exporters, manufacturers’ representatives, as well as sellers and distributors of general goods.

The document released by the Ministry of Finance in August shows that Pinnacle Contractors is number 22 on the list of indicted companies.

Private Jets For Jesus By Sonala Olumhense
Posted: November 25, 2012 - 03:35

Should a pastor own a private jet? That this is even a debate issue in Nigeria reflects just how wayward some of our Christianity has travelled, particularly since the end of the civil war and the arrival of large piles of oil money.

We are good adopters, and in the past 20 or 30 years, these Christian strands in Nigeria have “grown” side by side with the monies flowing in the streets and the technologies produced by others. Christianity has moved from the pews into the realm of business, and from the pulpits to American-style television.

In the process, some of the emerging Christian leadership, adopting the culture of American television and stage, became celebrities and rock stars. Christianity became marketable, and marketability became mistaken for commercialization.

These pastors also became instant television producers, concerned about their looks and make-up as they prepared for worship services tailored for broadcasting. They worked on scripts and colours and lighting, and arrived in stardom wearing expensive suits and jewelry.

They became stars as their Ministry became a business. And since there is no business without politics, business took politics in its arms and kissed her. Increasingly, pastors prayed not for right over wrong, nor simply for the mercy of God or the wisdom of Solomon, but for specific individuals or political parties.

Increasingly, pastors enshrined and preached the immediacy and centrality of prosperity, often praying for prosperity answers before nightfall.

Prosperity is good. In a way, our entire journey as homo sapiens is about prosperity: health, education, longevity; heaven is prosperity over earth, and if we make heaven, we triumph—that is, prosper—over humanity.

The problem is that some of our Christian leaders often neglected the fact that prosperity is not always about materialism. From their glittering thousand-dollar suits, some of them prospered into the best cars, alligator-skin shoes, suites in five-star hotels.

All of this often happened alongside barbaric businessmen, guzzling governors and looting legislators many of whom, in moments of guilt or periods of sickness or sadness, sought the comfort of a pastor.

As you know by now, many pastors pray with their eyes closed. It helps focus on the celestial, but also conveys the impression of holiness.
Evidently, it also helps block out the obvious: that some of the powerful people appearing for prayers in the dead of night, or conveniently arranging to meet with the pastor in faraway lands, are thieves who have robbed the people blind.

Now, forgiveness is normal in Christianity. It is the foundation of the Christian Church, as the entire mission of Jesus Christ, in the Christian faith, was to take away sin and effect reconciliation with the Father. It is the place of a Christian leader to help with that process, so when he engages a sinner, it is to be expected.

The only problem is that in Nigeria, some pastors have often seemed to close their eyes a little too much and too long: allowing celebrity thieves to impoverish the people longer or escape justice. The pastor thereby becomes an accomplice, accepting vast “contributions” they had reason to know could not have come from a legitimate income.

In 2007, Archbishop Peter Akinola, the leader of the Anglican Church, showed up at a “glorious homecoming” celebration for one Olusegun Obasanjo, who had recently, reluctantly, and vindictively, given up the job of President of the Federal Republic.

“You have got the best in the world and your eyes have seen the worst in the world. All that is left now is to make heaven,” he told Obasanjo.
He assured the former president that while he had finished his “horizontal fights,” his spiritual journey had just begun, and urged him to fight the battle of his conscience, and seek forgiveness from those he has wronged.

The people Obasanjo had wronged, for eight long years, were the people of Nigeria, and the good bishop knew it as did all of the pastors who followed Obasanjo around and prayed with him routinely.

Akinola told Obasanjo God had blessed him with everything. “You have enough money, you have enough houses, you have enough land, enough (cars), and enough properties, even enough children and all should be enough God has given you far too many houses. What to eat is not your problem. Paying children’s school fees is no longer your problem…”

He did not tell Obasanjo that all those riches were at the expense of his deeply disappointed people.

Indeed, many of the Christian leaders who interpret Christianity as a tool for personal prosperity pretend to see no link between bad governance and the manna from heaven they preach to their exhausted congregations. For them, their access to the corridors of power is merely part of their own prosperity.

They do not see their blindness to bad governance to be collusion, or their silence to be support.

This is really a double rape, because on the other side, the pastors collect relentlessly from the poor to fund an affluent lifestyle. It is the collections that are now said to be lucrative enough for pastors to bank hundreds of millions of Naira in personal wealth, and purchase jets by which to rule the sky.

In the case of Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, the President of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), he did not even have to work at buying the jet himself: his congregation presented it to him as a “gift.” It is impressive when a congregation can raise $40 or $50 million to buy a jet.

According to a recent newspaper story, in Nigeria private jet ownership has grown by 650 per cent in the past five years, with those wealthy enough to afford it, including our pastors, spending about $7.5 billion

Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah has described this trend on the part of Christian leaders as an embarrassment because it diminishes the moral voice of the church in the fight against corruption.

It is not surprising that he immediately came under attack. Sunday Oibe, a spokesman for CAN, said: “If there is any clergyman in the country whose constituency is government, it is Bishop Kukah, who served every government in power in the last decade.”

Kukah, he accused, served in the Obasanjo government, only to later attack the former president. Kukah, he accused, fraternized with former Governors James Ibori and Peter Odili.

Kukah never served in the Obasanjo government. “Fraternized” with corrupt governors? Does that mean he knew them, accepted contracts from them, used them as his route to riches and glamour?

Which explains the very point: corruption fights back. Corruption not only defends itself; in Nigeria, it advertises in Eagle Square. Corruption blackmails; on the offensive, it paints everything in its own colours.

The obvious is that it is those pastors who buy jets remind one less of a Christian leader and more of a playboy or a corrupt former governor. A pastor who buys a jet, even from “legitimate” resources, cannot avoid being perceived as being corrupt or compromised

The reason is that a private jet is not just a mode of transportation. It symbolizes a lifestyle of opulence and challenges the Christian values of humility. It suggests matching riches and possessions, affluent luxury homes, exotic cars, expansive hotel suites and immense bank accounts.

A private jet, for a Christian leader, suggests the corruption of the Christian spirit and contradicts the life of Christ and the ability to live a life of humility and compassion, or to serve the poor.

A private jet may be transportation to a businessman, and a Christian leader can argue eloquently that he needs it to simplify his mission. In a country as desperate as Nigeria, the only destination to which a luxury private jet transports a pastor is away: from his ability to confront power, and from the mission.

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).

Degis: O ooook!. The Publisher of Sahara lie reporters. The Shoprite of lies.