₦airaland Forum

A bill for an Act for the establishment of the Institute of Transport Management and Administration in Nigeria, on Tuesday passed second reading at the House of Representatives.

The bill which was sponsored by Rep. Oghene Egoh (Lagos-PDP), sought to improve the transport sector in the country to meet International best practices.

Leading the debate earlier, Egoh said the transport sector in the country lacked complete regulation and control.

He said transport management has not been accorded any form of recognition as others such as the law, education, engineering and the medical sectors.

The lawmaker said when established, it would be dedicated to ensuring the proper management of road, air, water and rail transportation.

Egoh said it would be saddled with the responsibility of ensuring advancement of study, training and practice of transport management in the country.

The legislator said a structure already exists in the country saying that a legal backing was all that was needed.

Also contributing, Rep. Edward Pwajok (Plateau-APC) said effective transport management would ensure traffic control.

He said the institute would aid road decongestion as it would provide adequate information on the state of roads to road users.

According to the legislator, the institute would also produce experts that would manage the Federal Ministry of Transportation and all its affairs.

Similarly, Rep Olayonu Tope (Kwara-APC) said the impact of effective transport management on the economy would be very significant.

He said the economic benefits of free movement of people, goods and services makes the transport sector as important as the oil and gas sector.

In his ruling, the Speaker of the House, Mr Yakubu Dogara directed that the bill be forwarded to the Committee on Land Transport for further legislative action.

The Kano State House of Assembly has called off its investigation of alleged misappropriation of funds and other infractions by the Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi.

The House resolved to drop the probe following a plea through a letter by the state governor, Abdullahi Ganduje, which was read by the speaker, Kabiru Alhassan Rirum, on the floor of the House.

On Sunday, a coalition of civil society groups in the state had also joined in calling on the legislators to stop the exercise.

In his letter, Governor Ganduje said he was calling for the investigation to be dropped as a result of interventions by highly-placed personalities in the matter.

These personalities, according to the letter, include the acting president, Yemi Osinbajo; party leaders; former heads of state Ibrahim Babangida and Abdulsalami Abubakar; Sultan of Sokoto, Sa’ad Abubakar; and to businessmen and indigenes of the state, Aliko Dangote and Aminu Dantata.

Mr. Ganduje said although he was reluctant to interfere in the activities of the state’s legislative arm, he appealed to the lawmakers to “temper justice with mercy” and allow peace prevail.

“Much as I recognize your independence as a separate arm of government and who has right to investigate the emir, I am pleading with you to allow peace prevail”, he stated.

He said there had been a meeting in Kaduna over the matter “at the instance of some governors”.

“There is no gain saying (the fact) that the Emir Muhammadu Sunusi ii has admitted all his faults and mistakes and agreed to make adjustment. I think at this juncture, we should allow peace as been achieved to continue”, the governor stated.

The House subsequently resolved to drop the probe.

The decision is coming more than a week after the Kano State government’s anti-corruption agency suspended probe into the financial dealings of the Emirate council.

The Kano State Public Complaints and Anti-corruption Commission was investigating the alleged misuse of N6 billion.

The state’s House of Assembly had launched a separate investigation of the Emir following allegations of funds misappropriation, “defamation of character, breach of oath of office/oath of allegiance, abuse of office privileges and protocol, and political and religious interference”.

The chairman of the anti-corruption body, Muhyi Gado, said the commission was suspending its probe “indefinitely”.

He said the commission could not continue as the House was also conducting an investigation.

Mr. Gado declined further comments.

But a source told PREMIUM TIMES that the commission viewed the investigation by House of Assembly as interference and an effort to scuttle the probe.

“We are not happy with the coming in of the House of Assembly into this matter and we cannot continue doing the same thing with them; that is why we allowed them to do it themselves,” the source

The Ogun State Government has cautioned herdsmen to stay off the premises of its newly constructed model schools across the state.

The Commissioner for Education, Science and Technology, Modupe Mujota, gave the advice at a press conference on Saturday in preparation for the maiden edition of its education summit.

The official said herdsmen have been sighted with their cattle grazing within the premises of some of the colleges ‎still under construction.

Ms. Mujota, however, noted that the affected colleges were still under the care of contractors, and have not been handed over to the state.

She said it was, however, necessary to caution the herdsmen.

The Ogun government’s announcement follows that by similar educational institutions including the University of Ilorin and the University of Uyo warning herdsmen to stay off their premises.

Speaking on the education summit, Ms. Mujota said it is aimed at addressing issues affecting the sector with a view to proffering solutions to them.

She said education stakeholders from the 36 states of Nigeria would converge in Ogun to brainstorm on salient issues bordering on the sector towards engendering policies that would revitalize the sector.

The theme of the summit is ‘’Affordable Qualitative Education, Pursuit of Excellence,” she said.

“Education is a right and not a privilege, Ogun State has with a sense of duty and responsibility made education first in its Five Cardinal Programmes since it came on board.

“We have in the beginning of this year had an agenda setting session with His Excellency where each of the Five Cardinal Programmes were strongly reviewed, and as an anchor of that interaction’

‘We ae set to hold an education summit where all stakeholders in the education sector can come together, deliberate on the successes of the past with considerable investment made by the administration so as to review the outcome so far and also propose the next step’’, she said.

Ms. ‎Mujota said the summit, scheduled to hold between May 22 and 23, would have participants drawn from private and public schools, Parent Teachers Associations, market women, religious associations, State Universal Basic Education Board, Teaching Service Commission, past commissioners and permanent secretaries.

The Sultan of Sokoto, Sa’ad Abubakar III, has said that the Almajiri practice which involves children who have deviated from being students of Quránic schools to being beggars in the streets after their parents had sent them to distant Islamic schools to learn does not represent Islam and its teachings but instead, represents hunger and poverty.

The Sultan spoke during a meeting in preparation for the Ramadan period.

According to him, “Almajiri does not represent Islam, but hunger and poverty. Almajiri system of begging is not representing Islam and must therefore be distinguished from Islam,” the sultan said.

“Islam encourages scholarship and entrepreneurship and frowns at laziness and idleness as exemplified by itinerant Almajiri. Therefore attempt must be made to stop the practice Almajiri system of begging among Muslim faithful.”

Recall that, in like voice, the Kano state Governor, Abdullahi Ganduje had in April raised an alarm over the increasing number of Almajiris in the state, saying they had become both social and economic problem to the country at large.

Govenor Ganduje had said that a survey the state conducted indicated that there were about three million out of school children, roaming the streets of the state, as Almajiris.

“What we discovered from our survey is that many of these Almajiris come from the Niger Republic, some from Chad, Northern Cameroon and some from other states of the north-west”, he had pointed out.

He had however suggested the introduction of a legislation to prevent the movement of school age children as panacea to the problem.

“So, if we can come together and have a common synergy to introduce a common legislation, preventing the movement of school age children from one place to another, I think the states will find it very easy to address the problem of Almajiri syndrome”, he emphasized.

“Since the closure of land borders, another question begging for an answer is that has the government been able to ascertained maximum revenue generation at the sea ports since the land borders were closed?! The federal government should therefore go back to her record to see how much had been lost since the closure of the land borders,” the Forum said.

By Our correspondent Controversy has continued to trail the proposed take-over of Port Harcourt refinery by Oando Plc, recently given wide reportage by the media.

The media attention however, appeared to have unsettled the management of Oando, which readily issued a statement in form of clarification, signed by its Chief Strategy and Corporate Services Officer, Ainoije Alex Irune, explaining that:

The company stated that with the concerted efforts of the Ministry of Petroleum Resources and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to aggressively drive private sector led refineries rehabilitation and expansion programmes, Oando as local partner to NAOC/ENI will support the active rehabilitation of PHRC on activities of terminalling, logistics, structuring and funding. It explained that active negotiations are ongoing and it is expected that a final agreement will be reached by the end of July, 2017.

But ENI was one of the firms whose name featured prominently in the Malabu Scandal, a scandal involving an alleged bribery saga between company representatives and officials of the Nigerian government. Its officials denied the charge.

Although mentioned as being involved, former President Goodluck Jonathan denied any participation in the alleged bribery supposedly paid to him through proxies.

However, according to the Bureau of Public Enterprises, BPE, privatisation of refineries, chronicle of events, obtained by Sunday Vanguard, the PHRC transaction process effectively commenced in March 2004.

It stated, “Bids by four bidders were received at the deadline of December 2, 2005: They included Essar Infrastructure of India; Oando Plc; Refinee Petroplus; and Transcorp Plc (now Bluestar Oil Service Limited Consortium). “On evaluation, it was discovered that all the four bidders did not meet the minimum qualification benchmark apparently due to misunderstanding of the provisions of the Request of Proposals circulated by CSFB.”

According to the BPE, “All the bidders’ technical bids were evaluated and recommended for the financial bid opening, scheduled for July 2006.

“The Bureau subsequently received a letter from the Honourable Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (now Minister of Energy) conveying Federal Government’s directive to suspend the conclusion of the privatisation of PHRC to enable government investigate a complaint by one of the bidders.

“The Economic Management Team (EMT) intervened to rescue the transaction and (complied) with the Policy Support Instrument (PSI). Subsequently, the transaction was re-opened and fresh advertisements for expressions of interest were placed in December 2006. The deadline for submission of EOIs was January 19, 2007.”

BPE further stated that six bids were received from the following prospective investors: Mittal Investments Limited, Indorama International Finance Limited, Global Oil and Energy, LinkGlobal International Limited, Taleveras Group and Oil Works Limited (DFP Project Finance Limited).

BPE explained that “following evaluation of new Expression of Interests, EOI, approval was granted for prequalification of eight consortia. The firms recommended to proceed to the next stage included Essar Infrastructure of India, Oando Plc, Refinee Petroplus and Bluestar Oil Services Limited Consortium. Others included Mittal Investments Limited, Indorama International Finance Limited, LinkGlobal International Limited and Global Oil and Energy.

“BNP Paribas was engaged to conduct fresh valuation of the refineries.”

BPE noted that at the financial bid opening, Bluestar Oil Services Limited Consortium emerged the preferred bidder with a bid of $561 million. Other bidders were disqualified for breaching bidding rules. Refinee Petroplus was said to not to have presented the bank draft for 50 percent of their bid, while the bank draft (allegedly) provided by Oando Plc did not sum up to the 50 percent of their bid price as required in the bidding rules.

“NCP”, BPE then concluded, “ ubsequently approved Bluestar Oil Services as the core investor in PHRC. Bluestar completed payment for the full amount of their bid price of $561 million on Friday May 25, 2007, and share certificate for PHRC was handed over to Bluestar Oil Services Limited on May 28, 2007,” BPE added.

Though the refinery was handed down over to Bluestar a day before former President Olusegun Obasanjo handed over power to late President Umar Yar’ Adua, the latter cancelled the privatisation exercise done for all the refineries. Prior to that, the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association, PENGASSAN and Petroleum and the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas workers, NUPENG, had protested that sale of the nation’s refineries. When Sunday Vanguard contacted the two unions, neither of them responded to calls nor text messages. But according to Oando, it “shares the vision of the Nigerian Government to become a petroleum product self-sufficient country in the short to medium term and ultimately be a net exporter of such products.

“Accordingly, pursuant to the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) reached by the Federal Government and NAOC/ENI, Oando will partner with NAOC/ENI in the proposed rehabilitation of the Port Harcourt refinery (PHRC). This will be based on a repair, operate and maintain (ROM) agreement which will see PHRC’s capacity grow from its current 30 percent to 100 percent, its main capacity of 210,000 BPSD.”

By Ishola Balogun

Arewa youth at Seme border, Badagry Lagos Chapter have tasked the Federal Government on the need to secure the nations seaports with a view to curbing criminal activities at the points of the country’s sources of revenue.

The youth, under the umbrella of the Arewa Youth Consultative Forum (AYCF), made the call in a statement signed by their chapter Chairman, Comrade Adamu Sambo, in which they lamented the negligence of the government on the matter concerning seaports and land borders import and export activities since the closure of the land borders.

The Forum cited example of the recent discovery of 661 pump action riffles in a consignment which the landing Bill claimed contained steel door.

The Forum wondered what were the respective departments like the Customs, Bomb disposals department DMI,SSS,NDLEA NAFDAC were doing, reminding that their responsibilities included confirmation and physical examination of any items before the signing of any kind of goods out of the port.

The forum however appreciated the first step taken at the assumption of duty by the office of Comptroller General, CG particularly the cleaning order of the Nigerian Customs Service that brought to book and eventual act to the dismissal of high ranking Custom officers who have abused power and engaged in illicit acts at the sea port.

The group was of the hope that the CG would leave no stone unturned in his fight against corruption just as it called on the federal government to have more loyal and honest personnel at the sea ports to check likely criminal activities.

The AYCF regretted that, seaports that are supposed to be a source of great revenue generation avenues has become a source of threat to the nation’s peace in terms of security.

“Since the closure of land borders, another question begging for an answer is that has the government been able to ascertained maximum revenue generation at the sea ports since the land borders were closed?! The federal government should therefore go back to her record to see how much had been lost since the closure of the land borders,” the Forum said.

The group therefore stressed the need for the government to review the policy of the closure of land borders in the interest of the government and in the interest of Nigerians who have been made jobless as a result of the closure.

The Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr Babatunde Fashola, has said that the rehabilitation of access roads at Apapa Port in Lagos State was a priority project of the Federal Government.

Fashola told newsmen on Friday in Abuja that work would soon commence on the project.

He appealed to residents of Apapa and its environs affected by the deplorable state of the roads to be patient with the federal government.

According to him, “we have done the design and all that we needed to do is to commence the execution of the project.

“I can assure you that it is going to be a concrete road that I believe, will last for another 30 years when completed.

“A couple of private companies have offered to work with us to fix the roads and I think in a matter of weeks, we should be able to commence work.

“We are very close, we have held two meetings in the last 10 days with the companies and have agreed; what is left now is for us to formally sign the MoU,” he said.

He said the delay in its commencement followed the commitment of the ministry to ensure transparency in the procurement process of the project.

According to him, irrespective of the fact that it is private money, there has to be some transparency in the procurement process.

“We must follow the approved procurement guidelines because in government if we receive a gift, it must have a value and you must declare that value.

“We needed to get certification of all the prices as well as approval from the Federal Executive Council to commence the project and that is the only delay.

Fashola said that provisions for budget funding of Apapa, Tincan Island and Mile2-Oworoshoki road, all of which should evacuate the port, has not been sufficient. He said that the estimated cost from contractors for the project was in the region of over N100 billion, adding that the annual budgetary appropriation approved was about N7 billion.

Entry Experience of Visitors and Travellers

14. Ordinary tourist and business entry visas to Nigeria shall henceforth be issued or rejected with reason by the Consular Office of Nigerian Embassies and High Commissions within 48 hours of receipt of valid application. The timeline shall be notified to the public by pasting a notice conspicuously at every Consular Office and by publication on every website of Nigerian Embassies and High Commissions.

15. A comprehensive and up to date list of requirements, conditions and procedures for obtaining visa on arrival, including estimated timeframe, shall be published on all immigration-related websites in Nigeria and abroad, including Embassies and High Commissions, and all ports of entry into Nigeria.

16. The processing of issuance of visas on arrival shall be carried out in a transparent manner. Visas on arrival shall be granted at all Nigerian ports of entry once applicants have met all the published requirements.

AllHailBiafra:
Tree long, can't read

Moving around Africa is notoriously difficult for travelers with African passports. Only 10 out of 55 countries on the continent waive visas for all African visitors or grant visas on arrival. Meanwhile, Americans can travel to at least 20 African countries without restrictions.

This is slowly changing. African Union officials and governments like Rwanda are pushing for more open borders to encourage intra-regional trade and tourism. As part of those efforts, the African Development Bank has been measuring the openness of countries based on visa restrictions for other African citizens for the past few years. According to its latest index, 21 countries have loosened visa rules over the past two years, pushing up the average “visa openness” score for the continent.


Take Senegal, which now grants visa-free access to citizens of 42 African countries, up from just 16 in 2015. Tunisia has lifted requirements for visas on arrival for 21 African countries, and Malawi is waiving visa requirements for citizens from certain regional blocs. São Tomé et Príncipe now allows visitors from 13 African countries to enter visa free; two years ago, all Africans visitors needed a visa to visit.

Still, progress is uneven and not everyone is ready for a borderless African continent. The majority of the most open countries are in East or West Africa. Small, landlocked, or island countries tend to be more open and bigger, wealthier countries are among the most closed. South Africa, the continent’s most industrialized economy, ranks 34th and requires a visa for more than half of countries on the continent.

As part of the push for a more integrated Africa, the African Union launched an AU passport last year that would grant holders access to all 55 AU members. So far, it’s only been issued for heads of state, foreign ministers, and other top-level officials.

Desyner:
What does a prisoner contribute to the govt?

The House of Representatives on Thursday urged the Federal Government to provide quality healthcare services for prison inmates across the country.

This followed a unanimous adoption of a motion on “Need to Address the Deplorable State of Healthcare Service in Nigerian Prisons’’ sponsored by Rep. Chike Okafor (Imo-APC).

Moving the motion, Okafor said that non-availability of drugs and inadequate medical personnel in health facilities in the prisons had resulted in avoidable death of inmates.

He said that due to the comatose nature of the facilities, inmates depended on donations and outreach programmes from churches, mosques and voluntary organisations to access healthcare.

According to him, inmates at times, have to buy drugs from vendors, some of whom sold fake, sub-standard or adulterated drugs with their deleterious consequences.

“This has resulted in the frequent outbreak of epidemics in the prisons and the high death rate recorded among inmates.

“It is evident in the over 32 deaths of inmate recorded in 2016 at a Lagos prison owing to unavailability of quality medical care.

“The condition of our prisoners could be said to be near death sentence as many have died because of lack of proper healthcare services.

“No wonder, in the last one year over 900 inmates died across the country, with one state accounting for 32 deaths.

“The deplorable health situation in the prisons is a major public health hazard which without intervention, could result in more deaths and would amount to unsolicited death sentence to prison inmates.

“Inmates are still entitled to their fundamental human right to quality healthcare services even while in prison as envisaged by section 12 (1) of the Prisons Act, 2004,” Okafor said.

After contributions by members, the House, therefore, urged the Ministry of Interior, and the Health counterpart as well as Comptroller-General of Prisons to intervene by providing quality healthcare services for prison inmates.

The House mandate its Committee on Interior and one on Healthcare Services to embark on oversight to prisons with a view to finding permanent solution to poor healthcare services in the facilities.

The Committees are to report back within three weeks.

The Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Air Peace Limited, Allen Onyema, has described Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi of Enugu State as the best governor in the south-east zone.

Mr. Onyema also said that Mr. Ugwuanyi is a visionary and forward-thinking governor who has assembled technocrats to think about what to do for his people.

The Air Peace chief made the assertion at the Government House, Enugu when he paid a courtesy visit to the governor to deliberate on the economic development of the south-east region.

He said that it is the company’s vision to use the Enugu International Airport as the economic hub of Nigeria in particular and Africa in general, to enable the nation play its leading role in Africa, saying that the decision to establish business in Enugu was based on its assessment of the governor’s leadership qualities and positive impacts in governance.

“We have in Governor Ugwuanyi the best governor in the South East. He is very visionary, he has brought many technocrats together to think about what he will do for his people. So, we want to align ourselves with his dreams and that is why we decided to choose Enugu Airport among all the Airports in Nigeria for our business investment”, Mr. Onyema said.

Responding, Mr. Ugwuanyi expressed delight at the decision of the Air Peace Limited to invest in Enugu State, saying that it is in line with his administration’s investment drive.

The governor also appreciated the benefits derivable from the business initiatives of the company, which will create employment for about four thousand people in the state and beyond.

“We are excited with the good news from Air Peace Limited. The government and people of Enugu State will certainly do the needful to support Air Peace,” said Mr. Ugwuanyi.

NWAFOR POLYCARP
16 MAY 2017
By Gabriel Ewepu

ABUJA—THE Federal Government said foreign exchange revenue from agric produce export will be used to pay the nation’s debts.

Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh, stated this while considering calls made to commence second phase of the West Africa Agricultural Productivity Programme, WAAPP, in the country.

Ogbeh also expressed optimism that the debt burden of the country could be drastically reduced through generation of foreign exchange from food exportation.

He said: “A portion of any loan we take now will be dedicated to encouraging agricultural production and exportation of products grown by young people and women.

“We just have to earn more foreign exchange because we must pay our debts. According to statistics, we are spending 66 per cent of all our tax revenues on servicing debts.

Audu Ogbeh
“If we are servicing debts and not paying the principal, in another 10 years, this country will be in such debts that will make us to be facing major embarrassment.

“So, we will take part of our loans and invest it in agricultural projects that young people pursue for exports, so that we can earn both foreign exchange and Naira. The rest of the loans will go into training of youths and promotion of our produce.”

Meanwhile, the Minister, who also commended the results achieved in the first phase of WAAPP, said the World Bank was working assiduously to ensure the commencement of the second phase of the programme.

He said: “The World Bank is preparing for the next phase but this time around, the input from the ministry will be stronger.

“They (World Bank) did quite well but there were duplications in our programmes; we intend to streamline them now.”

The objectives of WAAPP has been on transforming West African agriculture by boosting agricultural productivity and its sustainability, reducing hunger and improving nutrition as well as creating jobs and supporting collaboration across borders.

The programme has 13 participating West African countries, including Nigeria, Republic of Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo.

Ogbeh, told newsmen in Abuja that the new policy would boost agricultural production, while facilitating efforts to improve exports of agricultural commodities.

BY NDAHI MARAMA, MAIDUGURI
The Group Managing Director of Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, Alhaji Maikanti Baru has said the corporation has concluded arrangement to mobilize heavy and sophisticated equipment to resume the oil exploration in the Lake Chad Basin of Borno state.

He said, the resumption which will be done in the next six months was based on the military’s assurance of adequate security, relative peace and the degrading of boko haram sects in the north east sub -region.

Baru stated this when he led top management staff of NNPC on a courtesy call on governor Kashim Shettima at the Government House, Maiduguri on Monday.

Naijaguy12345:
NAN new association of Nigeria.

The Minister of Communications, Adebayo Shittu, says Nigeria is set to hold a smart cities summit in June as part of efforts by the Federal Government to develop ICT sector in the country.

Mr. Shittu disclosed this in an interview the News Agency of Nigeria on the sideline of the Transform Africa Summit held in Kigali, Rwanda, an ICT conference focused on development of smart cities.

The minister, who said the plan was to replicate the unparalleled ICT transformation of Rwanda in Nigeria, said the “Smart Cities Nigeria 2017 Summit” was scheduled for June 28 and 29.

NAN reports that a smart city is an urban development vision to integrate in ICT and Internet of Things (IoT) technology in a secure fashion to manage a city’s assets
The initiative aims at leveraging technology solutions to improve efficiency of cities.

Rwanda which is spearheading the initiative has rolled out a number of developments such as WiFi in public areas, including public transport vehicles, as well as cashless payment systems in public transport.

Currently, the initiative is backed by 18 African countries while more nations including Nigeria are expected to join.

While explaining further on the Smart Cities Summit, Mr. Shittu said Nigeria was starting late but steadily.

“I will say that we have some delays within the government operations we ought to have unleashed some of these ideas in the Nigerian scene more than eight months ago.

“In consonance with our desire to pursue all initiative in the ICT transformation including smart cities we have planned a summit.“

The summit is with the theme `Smart Cities Nigeria 2017’ fixed for 28 and 29 of June, this year, is with a view to getting the buy in of stakeholders in the Nigeria projects.

“From that point, we will kick off and there would not be any stoppage,” he said.
Mr. Shittu said the Smart cities project would provide the opportunity to get a buy in of all stakeholders in the Nigerian project.

According to him, Nigeria needs the buy-in of all stakeholders especially that of the state governments if the ICT transformation project is to work.
“To transform Nigeria using ICT we need the buy-in of all states that must get it right from the onset that ICT is the way to go.

“Of course, we would demand the patriotic participation of all states,” he said.

He also said that government was seeking foreign investments into the country’s ICT sectors to fast-track the digital transformation agenda in the country.
The minister said that he had spoken with some foreign investors to that effect.

“I have had the privilege of speaking with a lot of foreign investors persuading them to come to Nigeria because Nigeria offers a lot of advantage in terms of the huge population.

“On the West African sector of the African continent, Nigeria’s population is more than that of the other 14 countries. That means that there is a huge market and any investor who comes will never regret.

“I have spoken with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation; Strive Masiyuwa, Chairman and founder of Econet Wireless, as well as Inmarsat, among others.

“In fact, Inmarsat will be coming to Nigeria for a meeting in first week of June. I have spoken with Korean Telecommunications,” he said.

Mr. Shittu said that when he went to Rwanda four months ago he spoke with them and put in application for them to bring in smart towers to Nigeria, adding that the process was still ongoing.

“I have renewed our bid for them to come and invest in solar based tower stations and I am confident that once they come, it will be a leap jump towards our having enough infrastructure for the steady progress of ICT,” he said.

(NAN)

The Maritime Workers Union of Nigeria (MWUN) on Sunday gave the Federal Government a 21-day ultimatum to rehabilitate and make the Oshodi-Apapa Dual Carriage Way and the access roads leading to the nation’s sea ports motorable.

The President of MWUN, Prince Adewale Adeyanju, gave the ultimatum while responding to questions from journalists in Lagos.

He said that it was sad that the access roads to the ports were in a deplorable condition.

Adeyanju said that the union was worried that the access roads to the nation’s seaports and the Oshodi-Apapa Dual Carriage Way that leads to Apapa and Tin-Can had been abandoned.

“It is sad that the gateway to the nation’s economy is abandoned. We have written several letters including issuance of ultimatums over these roads but all to no avail.

“’We can no longer live with the abandonment of access roads to the ports which have been in the state of disrepair for years in spite of efforts to draw government attention to the need to fix them,” he said.

The union president said that for a long time, the Oshodi-Apapa Dual Carriage Way as well as other port access roads had become death traps to road users.

He said that the roads had been recording fatal accidents on a daily basis, and in December 2016, and the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) said that the contract for rehabilitation of the Dual Carriage Way had been awarded.

”We are in May 2017, nothing has been done. The sad thing is that no sign that any contract had been awarded to any contractor,” Adeyanju said.

He further said that last week, NPA wrote again to the union that contracts had been awarded for the rehabilitation of the roads.

”If after three months to six months, the rehabilitation project does not start, we shall be compelled to take necessary action without further notice,” the union leader said.

He appealed to the government to repair the roads to save lives of innocent Nigerians that get trapped on the road or being attacked, robbed, harassed, intimidated and abused by hoodlums.

He said that hoodlums had been taken advantage of the deplorable roads to perpetuate all sorts of crimes.

The chairman of Zamfara State Universal Basic Education Board, Murtala Adamu, was on Friday convicted and sentenced to six months imprisonment by Justice Zainab Abubakar of the Federal High Court Gusau Zamfara State for engaging in private business while in public service.

The convict was however given the option of fine of N200, 000.

The convict’s journey to prison started when the commission received a petition from Abdullahi Nakura who alleged that the convict refused to pay him and other contractors for jobs executed for the board.

Upon receipt of the petition, the EFCC said it investigated and found that apart from nonpayment for contracts, the convict was also in the habit of collecting kickbacks from contractors. It was further discovered that the convict also awarded contract to his own company.

In her judgment, Justice Zainab discharged and acquitted the convict on the 10-count corruption charge brought against him by the EFCC, but found him guilty of the offence of engaging in private business while still in Public Service.

Mr. Adamu is a former two-term House of Assembly member in Zamfara State. He was in the house between 2003 and 2011, after which he was appointed chairman of the Zamfara State Universal Basic Education Board where he is now serving his second term.

One of the charge read that “You Murtala Adamu trading under the name and style of MJIE Enterprises ( while being the Executive Chairman of the Zamfara State Universal Basic Education Board) on or about 25th April, 2012, within the jurisdiction of Federal High Court disguised the origin of the sum of N3,000,000 (Three Million Naira Only) paid by Alhaji Yusha’u Sokoto of Alkanci Furniture by way of receiving the said sum into an account you maintain in the name of MJIE Enterprises in Fidelity Bank which sum was derived directly from participation in corruption with the aim of concealing the illicit origin of the money and you thereby committed an offense punishable under section 15(1)(a)(ii) of the Money Laundering Prohibition Act, 2011.”