₦airaland Forum

udezue:
That is what Nigeria should be like.

Would you stop having fantasies

I am so worried about the above - it might breed an atmosphere for Coups.

The Brig.-Gen. Ishaya Bauka-led court martial on Monday sentenced 27 former United Nations peacekeepers to life imprisonment for protesting the non-payment of their peacekeeping allowances.
Some of the soldiers sentenced to life imprisonment while arriving for judgment at the 323 Artillery Regiment, Akure, Ondo State ,  on Monday.

The convicts include three female members of the peace operation.

The court, however, discharged and acquitted one of the 28 accused soldiers, Lance Corporal Bala Aliyu, for want of evidence.

The female soldiers, Yetunde Olanihun, Mary Idoko and Esther Nkawor, and other convicted soldiers who have been in detention since July 2008, did not betray any emotion as the court handed them the maximum punishment for their offence.

The defence counsel, Mr. Femi Falana, who appeared briefly during the judgment, described it as a charade, saying the soldiers would appeal the judgment.

Falana had accused the president of the court martial of bias during the hearing.

He claimed that Bauka had said that no matter what, the soldiers would be punished for protesting. The human rights lawyer and the president of the court martial had an altercation during the hearing which led to Bauka walked away from the court.

In a judgment that was read for more than five hours, the president of the court martial said that the prosecution team, led by Lt.-Col. Sampson Nurseman, proved beyond reasonable doubt that the 27 soldiers, who served in the United Nations Mission in Liberia, were guilty of a one count charge of mutiny levelled against them.

The court held that the soldiers violated Section 12 subsection 2 of the Armed Forces Act of 2004.

It added that the punishment prescribed by the law was life imprisonment for the offenders, subject to the confirmation by the superior authorities.

The 27 soldiers jailed for life include Sergeant Oliver Akwara, Corporals Princewill Onwunari, Corporals Abass Saliu and Paul Maikudi.

Others are Lance Corporals Umar Abdukadir, Musa Salisu, Paschal Steven, Ibrahim Yusuf Loveday Nnadi, Yomi Ibukun, Bello Zaharadeen, Okani Pope, Wanogho Shadrack, Lawal Abubakar, Innocent Egbuna and John Felix.

The rest are Kabiru Mohammed, Chukwudi Onwukanjo, Samuel Ogbe, Jonathan Komo, Adaraloye Olalekan, Salisu Ibrahim, Anthogah Jonathan and Kelechi Anukan.

All the soldiers served under Lt. Col.-Godwin Umelo in NIBATT 15 at the United Nations Missions in Liberia.

Bauka held that the soldiers disobeyed the order of the commanding officer of the 323 Artillery Regiment, Akure, Ondo State, where they staged a public protest to press for the payment of their compulsory savings.

Bauka said, “A junior serving personnel is bound to obey the order of their superior once the order is legal. The refusal to obey the order fails to meet the military standard.”

The soldiers had during the trial said that they were arrested at random, adding that one of the officers collected a bribe of $150 from some of those arrested for the same offence.

They stated that the officer freed those who paid the bribe and refused to let go those of them who refused to cooperate with him.

But while the soldiers were jailed for life, the officers who were responsible for the mix-up which triggered the protest were given a very light punishment.

The Army paying team, led by Lt. Col. Paul Baba, who was the Deputy Director at the Army Finance Corps, Abuja, was said to have wrongly paid the allowance of the convicted soldiers to members of NIBATT 14, including the commanding officer who were drawn from the 72 Para-Battalion, Makurdi, Benue State .

Baba and other paying officers and the former Commanding Officer of 72 Para-Battallion, Col. A. Awotoye, were charged with cheating, stealing and negligence of duty before the same court martial. They were, however, punished by demotion, while the 27 soldiers were jailed for life.

Falana, while praying for freedom for the soldiers, told the court that the prosecution failed woefully to prove the offence of mutiny against the accused persons.

He said that although the ex-peacekeepers protested the illegal diversion of their allowances, none of them engaged in violence or any act capable of putting the Nigerian Army in imminent danger. The lawyer added that the accused persons did not conspire with foreign forces to subvert the sovereignty of Nigeria.

Falana also told the court that the accused persons had constitutional right to protest as provided under Section 38 and 40 of 1999 Constitution, arguing that as soldiers, they could not be denied of this right as citizens of Nigeria.

He said, “ The conduct of the accused persons cannot be classified as mutiny. By virtue of Section (52) (3) of the Armed Forces Act, a mere protest by soldiers is not a mutiny because ingredients of the offence of mutiny have been judicially defined in the case of CPL Segun Oladele and 22 Others versus Nigerian Army (2004)”

He said that Oladele’s case had to do with a similar protest by 23 soldiers over the illegal seizure of their estacode and lack of adequate medical treatment after serving Africa in ECOMOG Peace Keeping Force in Liberia and Sierra Leone.

The 23 soldiers were tried, convicted and sentenced to various terms of imprisonment, including life imprisonment, but the Court of Appeal set aside their conviction and the sentences passed on them.

http://www.punchontheweb.com/Articl.aspx?theartic=Art200904283573534

emmydee:
@ poster

dont even go there. nigeria is a failed nation, so these and more are d sort of things found in a failed state.
u have seen anything yet.

Are you by any chance praying for more bad things to happen?

Although i came from a system development background (Java) but for the last 3 years i have involved in software testing. I would like to return to programming. at moment i have been training myself in (javascript, asp.net, c++ &php).

if i may ask " any reason you dont want amateurs"

The story was made up by the poster

very funny

The One:
I think it's absolutely preposterous for anyone to make the assertions in the article. I'm not one for long write-ups but I can confidently tell you that crude loading is one of the most scrutinized activities in Nigeria. Oil companies don't just sell oil at any place, there are loading jetties where you have DPR representatives strictly monitoring what is being loaded into tankers. The only oil that is unaccounted for is that stolen by the Niger Delta militants/bunkerers and their collaborators

I only wish we come to the understanding that the media is not 100% right at all times.

Obviously you have failed to read report  . nobody here is speculating .  I have highlighted some parts for you have a scan through.

Even a cursory check by NEXT has revealed that various agencies of our government give conflicting figures of how much oil we produce and sell.

The Central Bank, the Ministry of Finance, the Department of Petroleum Resources, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) cannot agree on exactly what the numbers are.

So they have come up with an ingenious solution: they simply 'average' the various figures and let sleeping dogs lie.

Among Nigeria's most significant oil ministers over the past several decades are the former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, who for several years served as his own oil minister.

And the current oil minister, Rilwanu Lukman, has been in and out of the same job so many times that he has become nearly synonymous with the portfolio.

If either of these two gentlemen, or any of their predecessors, ever was troubled by this shabby state of affairs, which almost certainly guarantees large scale theft of our resources, it is unknown to an unsuspecting public.

A brick wall

For several days, we tried to reach the minister of state for petroleum, Odein Ajumogobia, but each time he promised to get back to us but never did.

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, our state oil company which enters into joint ventures with the oil multinationals, even goes so far as to say on its website that it cannot be held responsible for the accuracy of the sales figures it publishes.

The Central Bank, which receives the money on behalf of the Nigerian people, also would say nothing regarding the veracity of these numbers.

The Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), the industry regulator, makes the astonishing claim that it does not know the figures.

After more than two weeks of constant calls, text messages and email, the department's acting director, Billy Agha, informed us through a spokesman that "we only corroborate what NNPC gives to us."

Oil revenues account for more than 90 percent of our foreign exchange earnings and more than 80 percent of total revenue.

How much of it we get directly affects our ability to pave our roads, care for our infirm, secure our neighbourhoods and educate our children.

The politics of numbers

The mystery surrounding a simple issue of accounting for oil revenue has proved impervious to changes in administrations, political parties, elected governments or military dictatorships.

Last month, the news agency Reuters quoted Mr. Lukman as putting our daily oil production at about 2 million barrels per day. But Mansur Muhtar, the minister of finance, has quoted an average of 1.6 million barrels per day, which according to him, is "significantly lower than government projections."

Last week, Mr. Ajumogobia put the production figure at 2.1 million. Even if Nigerian citizens are to be deceived, government officials should at least agree on a particular figure, and all of these announced figures are at variance with data supplied to the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, the cartel that caps how much oil each of its members is expected to produce.

Nigeria has come a long way from producing about 500 barrels per day following the discovery at Oloibiri in 1958, but the oil majors that have been instrumental since that time, were understandably reluctant to talk to us last week. The current method of accounting seemingly works as well for them as it does for the public officials in charge who have maintained it.

NNPC's Disclaimer

Even the figures quoted in the NNPC's latest Annual Statistical Bulletin (2007) posted on its website, had a caveat; "The publications in this section present information on the oil and gas industry. Its content reflects individual as well as general analysis and trend of activities that characterised the industry within the country.

"Although NNPC endeavours to ensure accuracy of information in these documents, it cannot guarantee 100 percent accuracy nor can it be held liable for errors that may occur. Users are to note that use of any information herein is purely at their discretion."

In their defence, some in the industry say they have technical challenges that make it difficult to collate accurate figures. "Production figures are voluminous. If someone is sitting down and doing the stuff manually, the person will be confused," said a key industry executive.

"They should have a spreadsheet such that as the figures come in they are being recorded automatically. For them to come up with a compilation that is accurate, they need to have adequate data management, which they do not have, as is the case in all government establishments."

As a result, while some base their estimates on the volumes arriving at terminals and off-take points, others are based on volumes from oil wells and flow stations. These were responsible for the disparity in the NEITI's Audit of 1999-2004.

Oil workers don't know

Even oil industry workers don't have a clue. Peter Esele, former president of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association, says, "Whatever information that is gotten from the NNPC is from the producers.

"One thing is clear, DPR does not even have the capacity to undergo or even know the quantity of crude. They don't have a meter, they don't have a measuring meter. Now, if you go to NNPC, the figure is different, DPR's is different, producers' different, CBN is different. So you cannot really reconcile all this." Esele for a time had served in NEITI.

Peter Akpatason, president National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers, said: "Officially we don't know. But we have access to the information each time we want to get them.

"But, it is not as if on daily basis, we get the figures. I'm sure you know that there is always discrepancy of some sort between what NNPC declares and what DPR declares.

"What somebody explained to us in DPR is that NNPC figure is taken at the point of production while DPR take theirs at the terminal."

For Mr. Akpatason, the reason for these discrepancies is because, "The case of oil production is like any other developmental issue in Nigeria. The government has always shown ineptitude in handling very serious economic issues in this country.

And for us, we believe that this is a mark of poor leadership. Because, there is no reason why a country cannot say specifically that this is the quantity of goods and services that are produced and this is the naira value of such goods and services."

Yaradua : master of deception . all this is just dealy tactics to push himself into another 4 years. i am not fooled

redsun:
What a joke,not even household management can be so lax and here we are talking of our national cake being toyed with like akara.

Akara ke ? Akara is far more better , it is properly looked after better than nigerian crude oil.

i never said Nigeria is a failed state but i said it is showing trends of a failed. The instance you when mentioned about delta state paying fees for its student ( thousand of students out of possible 4 to 5 Million students). Private universities many of them the main indigence cant afford.  Violence in election or election malpractices creates an tense atmosphere.  Coups or civil disobedience are very likely outcomes

We have to be worried about the ongoing situation


" Nigeria is not failed state yet but if things continue like this then we are going to be failed state"

If Nigeria is not a failed state then is definately showing indices of a Failed state.

Land of Famine, Gross Human Rights Violations, Stolen Elections and Poverty is re-certified as a “Failed State".

A failed state is most readily identified by the existence of rampant corruption and criminality in the state apparatus, massive human rights violations, rigged elections, predatory elites with protracted monopoly on power, an absence of the rule of law, severe ethnic divisions and sectarianism, deep economic crises and a significant refugee problem caused by political persecution, among other factors.

It is accurate to say that Nigeria’s political institutions have been corrupted to a point where they have become ineffective in performing basic governmental functions.

On every measure of state failure, this can be demonstrated. For instance, security apparatuses (army, police, etc.) are used as private military forces to suppress the citizenry and opposition elements, and prevent the growth of democratic institutions.

Indices of failed state

1. Failure on Human Rights -

the institutions responsible for the protection and promotion of human rights have been mangled beyond recognition. The regime maintains itself in power through brute force and massive repression. Arbitrary arrests, extrajudicial killings, torture and other abusive political persecution practices go on unchecked even today. The past and present regime has consistently interfered in the functioning of judicial institutions and undermined their legitimacy, efficacy and credibility by installing political hacks as judges - el rufai , ribadu, bola ige, ken saro wiwa and thousands more


2 Failure on Health

Nigerians continue to suffer from preventable diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, and diarrhoeal diseases.


3.Failure on Youth: The Greatest Failure of All

Underfunding of the education establishments and Parents were too poor to pay for their children’s education. Inability of parents to afford basic school supplies such as books, pens and paper

sick leader leading a sick nation , eventually they will both die together.

Nigeria : Free for all market. Nigeria is one of few places on this earth where you can a commit any crime and get away with it. That sounds more like a failed state. It is estimated that Nigeria loses at least 500000 barrels per day.

As they have done everyday for the past 50 years, oil tankers steamed away from Nigeria's coast yesterday loaded with hundreds of thousands of barrels of crude, from which Nigeria gets most of its income.

But the Nigerian government cannot say exactly how much oil is being lifted from the country, mostly by Shell, Mobil, Chevron, Total, Agip and a few others.

Instead, the government of Umaru Yar'Adua, like all others before it, relies almost entirely on whatever the oil companies tell them.

The situation is such that, if Mobil, for example, declares that it lifted 50,000 barrels of oil yesterday, the government just has to take their word for it.

Worse still, Nigeria's political leaders and top bureaucrats for decades have not shown the slightest interest in finding out. In a notoriously corrupt industry, which has spawn scandals such as the on-going Halliburton case, roping in the top echelon of the political class, it is very convenient to keep everything vague.

Add to this the increased crude oil theft or illegal bunkering in the Delta region described by President Umaru Yar'Adua in July 2008 as fuelling a trade in 'blood oil', which is run by powerful cartels and the figures officially quoted become increasingly weightless.

more on the report

http://www.234next.com/csp/cms/sites/Next/Money/Business/5408495-146/Black_Hole:_Nobody_knows_how_much.csp

i have stopped pork eating (fried bacon, ham sandwiches) until further notice.  Please remind me when to come of hiding

ElRazur:
I have a feeling someone will pick up the bait.

It is a fat and juicy bait

The Nigerian government have failed deal with common malaria or polio. Please forget about this swine virus. Seek alternative protection if you are a true christian you are covered by the blood of Jesus. Any other religon ( you at the mercy of your devices)

[quote author=chi_acn link=topic=266094.msg3784921#msg3784921 date=1240819572]it takes only GOD;S DIRECT intervention.we nigerians and our leaders are so corrupt that it is only GOD that can right all the wrongs.credible election is no where feasible in this country.[/quote]God will have wipe out Nigeria and restart the country again which i doubt is going to happen. Dear friend u and i need to do something radical.

ElRazur:
And I answered you that I am not afraid to die, Meh. Never mind.

U cant die man - I rebuke premature death in the Name of Jesus - Ultimately everyone goes but you will have to live the fulfilment of your days.

Igbo progressing i believe should not be problem to any other tribe. Speaking as a yoruba man i strongly say it is for benefit of the whole of Nigera " Everybody is equally important to the survival of Nigeria"

I absolutely dont see point of this thread  unless it was started to instigate unnecessary arguments or may be it sounds more like wounded animal crying seeking justice because it dying.  Unfortunately the animal is dying and the rest of the pack have moved on.

* AC leads in 4 LGAs, PDP in 3
* Election postponed in two wards, holds today
* 35 thugs arrested


Former governor of Lagos State, Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu, has said the Action Congress is winning the Ekiti rerun election. Speaking to LEADERSHIP SUNDAY in an exclusive interview last night, he said "We are winning this election, but we are also vigilantly watching the PDP. Already, we are keenly watching to ensure they don't succeed in using their pre-thumbed ballot papers, which they are carrying in Ghana-Must-Go bags. We are sure of winning this election," he added emphatically.

http://leadershipnigeria.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=500:ekiti-we-are-winning--tinubu&catid=51:cover-stories&Itemid=74

As i said i earlier  - until we have other alternative ways of making money, political positions will be the desired route.  It is just to attractive.

who gives a shit

If i were the next  chairman -  Having concurrent elections in Nigeria is obviously not working.  I would immediately adopt staggered elections approach with the focus of two states per day. Hopefully the electoral laws should allows this.  involving all stakeholders, media and all civil liberties group. An election in a state will have to be concluded before moving to another state.

morpheus24:
Nigerian Property Laws are ridiculous which is the reason why I can't risk my cash buying anything there unless I live there. especiallly Lagos.

Talking from experience

I concurr- it is so important to be on ground.

jazzsoul:
I cannot understand why properties sellers here still refuse to include pictures with their listings. Listings of cars on Nairaland that sell for a few thousand dollars all have pictures while a property listing for a billion Naira has no picture to show for it.

I will not make any contact with a real estate posting without a picture. I suppose these posters must believe that Nigerians are not sophisticated enough to demand good and accurate information in the buying process.

They obviously have something to hide

The head of the AU observer team to SA. Nigeria’s former leader Olusegun Obasanjo says South Africa’s general elections were free fair and credible.

Obasanjo who had toured the Kwazulu-Natal, Nkandla, Durban and two other areas, observing the polls said the electorate had exercised their voting rights with enthusiasm which was indicative of their desire to make a success of the polls despite genuine fear.

He said his impression of the polls is a testimony to the birthing of a mature democracy in South Africa. The chief AU observer argued that the incidents of electoral malpractices were isolated and would not affect the credibility of the election. ‘We cannot legislate for the behavior of electoral officials, we must make allowance for human error’ The former Nigerian leader argued adding that if 4 electoral fraud incidents were reported in the entire country, the electoral commission-IEC deserved to be congratulated.

http://connectafrica./2009/04/23/obasanjo-scores-sa-polls-high/

As we are all looking for solutions -

1. Rebrand or reform the Police ( without respect for the police or laws of the country nothing will never work)

2. Strengthen the educational establishment ( underfunding has killed edcational establishments in Nigeria. Good Education system gives people hope. In nigeria today one of the fastest way of making money is through a political positions until we can channel that energy to other areas nothing will never work)

3. Reform the people ( Hopefully education and policereforms should take care of this area)  Nigerians are generally law abidding people an example - people actually queue for buses in lagos state.  I was a very young boy then but i understand during WAI era it equated to law and order in the country.

so we can do it

We ARE finished in this country. N