₦airaland Forum

tayebest:
Government 'wahala' is different from personal project!

Igbo World Assembly (IWA) while condemning in strongest terms the nefarious activities of Fulani herdsmen in South East and other states across the nation has urged the government to provide as a matter of urgency, shelter, food, clothing, drinks, medicine and funds to the victims and families affected. Noting that the owners of the castles should be arrested and questioned by the government, the group expressed concern on why the Fulani herdsmen should be allowed to carry concealed weapons to kill innocent citizens of Nigeria in their communal farmlands.

The group in a statement jointly signed by its Chairman , Dr. Nwachukwu Anakwenze , and Oliver Nwankwor, Secretary General noted that the corporate unity of Nigeria was seriously challenged by present administration’s inaction and nonchalant attitude to stop the menace of the herdsmen.

“IWA posits that this insensitive behavior and inaction of government gives credence to the agitation of Biafra and Oduduwa out of this present chaotic Nigeria. We are of the opinion that the impetus of the killings by the Fulani herdsmen may have been aided by those in the corridors of powers.

“Who actually owns the herds? Why are the herdsmen allowed to carry weapons? Why are the security forces in Nigeria not doing their job? Who are behind this systematic agenda?Who regulates the activities of the herdsmen and their herds?”, the group asked.

With this development, IWA in the statement has called on Southern Governors, Senators, members of the House of Representatives and State Assemblies to act and defend their citizens. According to the group, “What we do not want is to reach a situation whereby citizens will arm themselves and protect their lives and properties”.

Accordingly, IWA noted that the first duty of the government is the protection of lives and property of its citizens, adding that it is illegal for citizens of Nigeria to possess and bear arms.

“Yet the marauding herds men are violating the second point above and the tiers of governments are not performing their duties per the first point leaving the impression that there might be a collusion between the herdsmen and the governments. To make matters worse the representatives of the people, such as the members of the Senate and the House also leave the impression that they are in on this conspiracy”, IWA added in the statement.

[size=13pt]IWA’s demands:[/szie]

Going forward, the group noted that the governments of the affected states and zones should immediately establish rules controlling the movement of animals within their areas and enforce the rules aggressively.

The group further demanded that the power to regulate agriculture is in the concurrent list of what both the federal government and the states can do. “The states have powers and should use them.

The owners or the Herds should be known and registered within the states, this will help to ascertain responsibility. “The Herdsmen should possess legitimate identity and be registered by State Government to distinguish herdsmen from criminals.

“That the Federal government establishes promptly, guidelines that follows the principle of live and let live. The herdsmen should follow the scientific cattle farming practices found in the other parts of the world and not the mosaic agricultural principles long forgotten.

“That the Federal government designate and declare these killings as a terrorist act. That the FG enforces its laws banning the possession of weapons. The rampant killing of farmers in their farms by herdsmen carrying AK 47 should be enforced or the laws governing owning of arms should be exorcised from the law books”, the further noted.

Lalasticlala

Jude Ndukwe, aide to erstwhile Aviation Minister, Femi Fani-Kayode, on Tuesday, decried that despite meeting the bail conditions set by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, Fani-Kayode was still being held by the anti-graft agency.

Ndukwe in a statement condemned the continued detention of the former minister by the EFCC, describing it as a tactics to keeping key and vocal members of the opposition out of circulation without due regard to Nigerian laws.

The statement read: “This tactics of keeping key and vocal members of the opposition out of circulation without due regard to our laws and or harass them with charges that cannot stand the test of judicial requirements has got to stop. The sweet smelling savour of democracy will be polluted when the opposition is stifled.

“The continued detention of Chief Femi Fani-Kayode in EFCC custody for this long, despite meeting his bail conditions goes a long way to show that this fight is not about corruption after all, but all about silencing the opposition.

“We condemn in very strong terms these acts of intimidation and harassment and request that he (Chief Fani-Kayode) be released forthwith, even as we call on all well-meaning Nigerians to know who to hold responsible should anything untoward happen to Chief Femi Fani-Kayode!

“This act of executive rascality, at a time when Nigerians are groaning more than ever before over the economic hardship inflicted on them by this administration, is needless. It will achieve nothing but will only lead to a puerile end.”

KissCODE:
if i didnt comment how else couldu have quoted me?

I commented just to attract you... PERIOD

The Senate on Tuesday endorsed the Federal Government’s decision to peg the pump price of petrol at N145 per litre.

Rising from an Executive Session, presided by Deputy President of the Senate, Ike Ekweremadu, the Senate called on the government to parley labour unions to forestall the threatened strike. Ekweremadu said that the Senate sympathised with Nigerians for the hardship which the new prices of petrol will cause and called on the government to implement the palliatives.

“The Senate in a closed session deliberated on the increase in the pump price of PMS by the Federal Government and the threats by the organised Labour to embark on a nationwide strike.

“We resolved as follows: that we sympathise with ordinary people of Nigeria on the hardships they are going through. “That the Senate will engage the Federal Government to find sustainable ways of improving the welfare of the people of Nigeria.

“That we call on government to continue to engage the organised labour and other stakeholders to resolve issues in order not to ground the system and impose more hardships on our people.

“That government should immediately start implementing palliative measures contained in the 2016 Appropriation Act passed by the National Assembly,” he said.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the Federal Government last week announced the removal of subsidy from petrol and pegged the price at not more than N145 per litre.

Organised labour threatened to embark on strike by Wednesday if government fails to revert to N86.5 per litre.

The Fulani herdsmen attacked at 6:00 am, just after morning prayers in Nimbo, an idyllic village in southeast Nigeria where farmers grow yams and pawpaws. Kingsley Onyebuchie sits in a Nsukka hospital room on May 5, 2016, after surviving a Fulani herdsmen machete attack in Nsukka, southeast Nigeria.

Over the past year Biafran independence protests have erupted across Nigeria’s south-east where many protesters where injured or killed during clashes with the Nigerian Police and army.

At first the villagers thought it was a joke. The nomadic cattle rearers, who have clashed with farmers over grazing rights in central Nigeria for decades, had never come this far south. But then they saw 20 young men descend from the hills and emerge from the palm tree forest, shooting AK-47 assault rifles in the air and waving machetes. “We started hearing the sound of gunshots everywhere. They shot so many people,” Kingsley Oneyebuchie, a 31-year-old civil servant, told AFP.

“They shot one of my brothers, they used a knife on my dad, they killed so many,” he said from his hospital bed in the nearby town of Nsukka, bare-chested and wearing only red athletic shorts. Oneyebuchie ran his fingers tentatively over a 20-centimetre (eight-inch) track of blue surgical stitches at the base of his scalp. “They used machete on me. After using machete on me, they thought that I died,” he said. Oneyebuchie was lucky to survive the attack on April 25. At least 10 people are thought to have been killed and scores of others injured.

[size=13pt]– Ethnic lines –[/size]

In the past year, raids by Fulani herdsmen have increased in the southeast. The worst happened some 200 kilometres (125 miles) away in Agatu, Benue state, in late February, where hundreds of people — most of them Christian farmers — were reportedly killed. The bloodshed mirrors that after Nigeria gained independence in 1960, when Igbos dominant in the mainly Christian southeast, were pitted against Hausa and Fulani in the largely Muslim north.

Kingsley Oneyebuchie stands in a hospital room on May 5, 2016, after surviving a Fulani herdsmen machete attack in Nsukka, southeast Nigeria. Ongoing clashes between nomadic Fulani herdsmen and farming communities in Nigeria’s middle belt and southeast states have accounted for the death and displacement of many people. The ethnic violence led to two military coups, hundreds of deaths — and ultimately a civil war, when the southeast broke away and declared an independent Republic of Biafra in 1967.

Some one million Igbos died either fighting for the fledgling nation or from starvation and disease in a brutal conflict that by its end in 1970 left the southeast broken. Now, stricken villagers maintain the only solution to the Fulani attacks — and perceived northern domination of political posts from the president downwards — is an independent state. “We need to know that this is Igbo and this is Fulani,” said Oneyebuchie. “We want them to leave our place so that we will be free.”

[size=13pt]– Growing conflict –[/size]

According to the Global Terrorism Index 2015 report, “Fulani militants” killed 1,229 people in 2014 — up from 63 in 2013 — making them the “fourth most deadly terrorist group” in the world. Most deaths happened in Nigeria’s religiously mixed so-called Middle Belt states.

But the apparent migration south into Igbo territory is being used by an increasingly hardline pro-Biafra movement as an indication the Nigerian government doesn’t serve or protect the region and is stoking discontent in the southeast. Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari, a northern Hausa-Fulani who opposes the pro-Biafran movement, took until late April to speak out about the herdsmen, saying he had ordered military and police to “take all necessary action to stop the carnage”.

He has proposed setting up a grazing plan that includes the establishment of cattle ranches and importing grass feed from Brazil. Critics argue his response is too little, too late and overly ambitious. “I have yet to hear this government articulate a firm policy of non-tolerance for the serial massacres,” Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka said recently, describing the ranch plan as “optimistic”.

– ‘A second genocide’ –

And elderly woman stands outside her house on May 5, 2016 in Nimbo, southeastern Nigeria, where nomadic Fulani herdsman attacked the village. Ongoing clashes between nomadic Fulani herdsmen and farming communities in Nigeria’s middle belt and southeast states have accounted for the death and displacement of many people. STEFAN HEUNIS / AFP

The arrest and detention of Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) leader Nnamdi Kanu last year catapulted him and his more hardline pressure group into the mainstream. “Buhari has authorised a second genocide on Biafra,” IPOB, which has been campaigning for Kanu’s release through public protests, said about the herdsmen. “Biafrans are on the verge of being exterminated,” it added.

In Nimbo, the farmers use less emotive language but their underlying message is the same. Today the village is deserted, with shiny new padlocks fastened on the wood doors of mud-brick houses and hectares of cassava and melon crops abandoned until safer times.

“We have been complaining to government, complaining to everyone, no help,” said Thaddeus Okenwa, a 65-year-old cassava farmer with a raspy voice and muscular hands. “We are now just managing because nothing goes normal. If they can give us our own independence, let’s go.

“We don’t pray for war now, but this (the Fulani issue) can cause it because you can’t be a stranger in your home”.

Bayelsa State Governor, Seriake Dickson, yesterday put the amount being lost by the state government annually to the activities of payroll fraudsters at about N24 billion. He also cited the deductions made at source, adding that, over N100 billion has so far been paid by his administration in the last four years on bonds and overpayments made to his predecessors.

According to him, about N1.3 billion goes for bond deductions, while more than one billion naira is deducted for overpayments, amounting to about N2.5 billion monthly. The fraudsters he noted noted perfect their act through connivance with some financial institutions in the state.‎

Dickson, who made the disclosure during a live interview programme in Yenagoa, explained that there had been a cabal over the years, who are now frustrating the government’s efforts in sanitising the payroll of its workforce.

While expressing his administration’s determination to clean up the payroll of the workers, he explained that government has devised a system, whereby payment of salaries would now be controlled.

Accordingly, all heads of ministries, departments, agencies and school principals have been directed to prepare nominal rolls and payroll vouchers. The governor stressed that they would be held responsible for any issue arising from their documents.

While lamenting the steady decline of the state’s revenue from the federation account, coupled with its poor internally generated revenue profile, Dickson stated that the current system of payment of salaries was no longer sustainable. He described the activities of the payroll fraudsters as a massive problem that has accumulated over the years.

On the payment of workers salaries, he said his administration gave some options to the leadership of labour in the state, which includes, 70 per cent pro rata payment or 50 percent across board for all civil servants.

Speaking on the on-going industrial action by staff of the state-owned Niger Delta Delta University (NDU), he said the institution was also bedeviled by the problem of over-bloated workforce, as the government spends about N500 million monthly as grant since 2012. He the system whereby NDU spends the entire amount on salary payment as unsustainable, and urged the management of the university to be innovative in generating revenue.

He also said, efforts are on to ensure the payment of workers, noting that, the government would introduce stringent measures aimed at checking absenteeism and other forms of indiscipline in the public service.

realjoker:
Which of the 5%? Last I checked SE still remain the greatest leech in this Country.

A source indicated that the girl’s mother had once caught the accused inserting his finger in the girl’s private part but decided to keep it away from her husband after warning the man.

Josphine4good:
I hate men

JeffreyJamez:
Do you?