₦airaland Forum

In essence one of such things that must be fixed is that the speaker should focus on legislative matters and not serve as CEO and CFO of the house. But is that really how it is right now? That is fundamentally too much of power for one person unless it is a one man business.

koruji:
Great excuse mate. The only problem is BANKOLE WAS THE ONE WHO WAS SUPPOSED TO FIX THE SYSTEM. How about that?

True. And that is the problem, the people we elect are to fix the problem. Take a look at the assemblies (upper and lower) do they look like people who can fix anything? Sure they cant fix their homes. It is not their fault, we saw them like that before we voted for them.

Bankole was the speaker, and it doesnt make sense that he should be punished for approving what the majority of the house desires. Infact he could not have declined, because that is the idea of the assembly. The problem is with us Nigerians, we elect wrong people into the house of assembly, people with little or no intelligence, people who only go there for the sake of their pocket, their children, grand children and great grand children. Of all of them Bankole seem (cant vouch for a Nigerian politician, but this was a general opinion when he took office) to be the only responsible personality that fits that chamber. Unfortunately, our systems says that he has to uphold what the remaining (I dont know what to call them again) says. And they always want more money, because that is the only reason they are there. We need to fix our system and not the person who by virtue of ill luck has to uphold the ills. Something must happen!

@T.M.,
you are right but while we wait for these culprits to apologize, i suggest the yoruba community on her own shld look at these accusations carefully. obasanjo, bode george, mrs. etteh, iyabo obasanjo, gbenga daniel, akala, tinubu and a host of other elder statesmen have one or two things in common. if an igboman steals, he is an igbo thief and same with a hausa man. please it is a thing or great importance that the yorubas look very well before presenting representatives especially at the national levels because at the end of the day, the ppl will be judged by their representatives. on my own, i still call bankole another shameless yoruba thief and i will be available to apologize when my predecessors apologize.

But name a Nigerian political office holder who is not corrupt and then tell us if corruption has anything to do with your tribe.

Presidential wing? Am sure even if he's jailed he will be taken to the presidential wing of the prison.

People who used to lan on the presidential wing continue to land there regardless of if they are still in office or not. Except they are declared persona non grata.

In a discomforting sign that Nigeria’s new president will travel a familiar old track after all, Goodluck Jonathan has nominated two questionable men, Haliru Bello Mohammed and Yusuf Hamisu Abubakar Mairago, for ministerial appointments.

Mohammed is famously known as one of the beneficiaries of the infamous £8.6 billion Siemens international bribery scandal that spanned several countries and embarrassed Nigeria, while Mairago, who has been nominated to represent Kaduna, was the executive director of the Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF). He was arrested and detained by the EFCC for close to one year over his fraudulent activities in the PTDF.

Mr. Mohammed has previously been Minister for Communication. Recently, he was also the deputy chair of Mr. Jonathan's party, the People's Democratic Party (PDP).

In the Siemens scandal, several other Nigerian officials besides Mohammed were named by Reinhard Siekaczek, who faced charges of bribery in a Munich court in 2007. Others named include Tajudeen Olanrewaju, Cornelius Adebayo, Alhaji Elewi , and Professor Jibril Aminu, a former Minister of Petroleum Resources who went on to become a PDP Senator.

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) did investigate the scandal but no prosecution of the main culprits ever arose from it even though the former Ministers reportedly admitted to taking the cash payments from Siemens.

Jonathan’s nomination of tainted officials to high office is an important early signal either of weakness, or of readiness to betray the promises he made to voters as he campaigned for office, or both. On almost every campaign stop, he promised to engage in the “transformation” of Nigeria, including combating corruption.

For that purpose, some Nigerians claimed to have voted for him but not his party, the PDP, which they said they loathed.

http://www.saharareporters.com/news-page/jonathan-nominates-siemens-bribe-taker-haliru-bello-mohammed-minister

Most of the time, some people just talk before they think (and that's if they think atall).

Before you go about raining curses or abuses on your fathers, whether they are Agbayas or not, ask yourself this, would it be wrong if other partakers of the fraud were tried?

Answer that and judge your sense of reason.

Uhm, not many people reason like that.

If he commited the crime with him, it is fair that he be tried along with him. But I guess nothing like that will happen, at least for now that he is in office.

Genevieve has some sort of make up on, i guess

I think for the mean time, NYSC should be a post final year class at the universities. So you do it where you schooled or a kind of an exchange program.

Nice piece of work, sir. It time we get objective about the whole issue. Our country needs to be rid of corruption and I totally agree with that. However, what the country needs least now is witch-hunting because it blinds a people. One of the most shameful eras American and European history is the witch hunting eras. Once, Supposed witches were burnt in the public square. There was a book that described how a house wives would allege their mothers in-law of witch craft so that they could have less mouths to feed when the poor women had been burnt. Likewise in the mid twentieth century, the American congress came up with this witch hunting committee to route out communist from the American society. Many innocent lives were destroyed in the process. Today films were made about this era to show how shameful the whole process was. Recently, the Wiki leak boss was arraigned over some spurious allegations because he leaked some vital shady deals of the American government all over the world. We should not bring this back into our politics. Abacha once did, Yaradua did likewise to the ex EFCC boss. Witch hunting in our politics will scare true reformists away and leave corrupt mediocre to run the show. Or why do you think someone like Soyinka would not get himself involved in Nigerian politics.

Well, no one is supposed to be guilty until proven innocent. We need to give this guy a fair hearing. I think we need to step back a minute and give him a chance to clean his good name. To me, I think he is unjustifiably attacked.