₦airaland Forum

Amigoss:
Aside Amaechi,most of them are top men in this admin....

liveLongNprospa:
Hold on.. Wait a minute 😁

iamoyindamola:
Blueraydick I go try this one out

https://www.nairaland.com/7927579/immigration-opens-another-passport-office

DissTroy:
You better believe there are no neutrals here. Everyone has an agenda. Playing neutral is also an agenda so they can emotionally blackmail the otherside firing from all cylinders to tone down while turning a blide eye to the side they support .

Ibime:
You dey contribute to discussion. The discussion na why some olders wey see PTF works choose Buhari over Jonathan. You dey bring counterargument to PTF works and you think say you no dey involved for the discussion. Dey play.

raumdeuter:
PTF Buhari despite the alleged lopsidedness of what they did actually did something we could all see, Almost everywhere was touched and we could see, The writer is not faulting that PTF did or didnt, he was alleging that PTF did for North more than for South

No one can refute what PTF did, whether its hostel, roads, buses

That was the credential Buhari brought to 2015 election which made him an obvious choice over Jonathan

Ibime:
Pesin ask me why I chose Buhari over Jonathan, I cited his work with PTF, na you carry busybody go bring article to disparage PTF work, come cosign am say




If you want chook mouth, chook mouth like man, no dey behave like woman.

Bring wetin Jonathan do pass that one wey Buhari do with common PTF wey go make me vote am in 2015.

Ibime:
I'm not debating the wrong person. Na una dey ask me why I chose Buhari over Jonathan and na you dey provide the evidence

How many kilometres of Road did Jonathan build?

Let me shock you, PTF budget over the 4 years was only N144bln, and you just listed out what N144bln achieved. In dollar terms (blackmarket) then, that whole budget is less than $2bln. Even going by official rate, it was less than $7bln

Na una dey write article to disparage PTF work, na una dey still highlight the achievement unwittingly. PTF na something we see korokoro everyday, even with that small budget.

Ibime:
"All southern states had 4,440.43 kilometres of roads rehabilitated (24%) while states in the north had 13,870.47 kilometres rehabilitated (76%)."

BlueRaydick, how many kilometres of Road did Jonathan do with 30 times the budget

200km from Lagos-Ore-Benin, Jonathan couldn't rehabilitate with gazillions more money

Yet one tribalist will start looking for problem in 4,440km of Southern roads Buhari built compared to 14,000km in North, as if na today things will favour ruling tribe in Nigeria

I read this tribal hatchet job at the time, which only highlighted the evidence of the difference between both candidates

BTW does North road need gutters and suffer from heavy rainfall as South? The money to achieve the same km of road in Bayelsa and Kano can be 5 to 1 because of drainage. What is the landmass of North compared to South? Why will they have same km?

Buhari performance with PTF we all saw with our eyes. Nobody will tell you lamba when PTF bus is picking you up from Federal Government College everyday

It is not known to this column how close Brigadier Sani Abacha was to Major General Muhammadu Buhari by December 1983. It was Abacha who announced at the end of a few minutes of martial music on new year’s eve that the government of President Shehu Shagari had been thrown into the dust bin of history. Buhari became the fulcrum of that history as Nigeria’s head of state. On August 27, 1985, there was another game, the Revolving Doors’ game. Buhari was out, thrown out, while Ibrahim Babangida, was in, thrown into the pinnacle of political power in Nigeria. Babangida clamped Buhari into the dungeon for some months where he cooled his feet, while his colleagues were bestriding the Nigerian political and military firmament like they owned the world. Babangida left or was forced to leave the throne after eight years of dangerous foot work. He called Chief Ernest Shonekan, a successful private sector entrepreneur, to come and take the baton of leadership.

He took it and as he was trying to hold it in his hand firmly, Abacha who had been eyeing the coveted prize greedily grabbed it in 1994. He immediately increased the price of petroleum products. The public rolled out a series of protests. As an appeasement measure, he set up the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF) as an intervention development agency to bring succor to the people especially in the rural areas. He made Buhari the executive chairman of the Fund which he ran for five years (1994-1999).

Why did Abacha appoint Buhari the Executive Chairman of PTF? Was it as an atonement for the sin of standing by while he was overthrown by the Babangida Boys? Or was he just sympathetic seeing that the man had been left in the cold by Babangida since his ouster on August 27, 1985? Or was Abacha simply looking for a fabled disciplinarian who didn’t love money too much or the dirty part of it? Buhari needed that rehabilitation, physical, financial and reputational. He was eager to come in from the biting cold and be seen as a man who, despite the overthrow and detention, had kept his dignity and integrity such that Abacha who was Babangida’s man, could trust him with the big-wallet job.

The Petroleum Trust Fund was to intervene in such areas as roads and waterways, supply of educational materials, rehabilitation of educational infrastructure, food supply, health, water supply, etc. Buhari set up a capricious management structure and appointed Afri-Project Consortium (APC) led by a 42 year old man, Salihijo Ahmad. This Consortium was the sole manager of the PTF projects. Ahmad had admitted to Newswatch in an interview published by the magazine in its April 19, 1999 issue that it was APC that wrote the proposal which defined the mandate of the PTF. It suggested the criteria, procedure for selection and appointment of contractors, consultants and suppliers. It also worked out the monitoring mechanism adopted by the PTF. The APC had some 620 consulting firms reporting to it. It was the sole management consultants to the PTF. Most Nigerians had no idea how the PTF was run. It was when President Olusegun Obasanjo took over in 1999 and set up an interim management committee (IMC) headed by Dr Haroun Adamu to wind down the PTF that the worms crawled out of the can. That Interim Management Committee appointed three technical consultants to investigate various aspects of the PTF management. Their findings conducted independently were damning. [b]When I read President Buhari’s remarks a few weeks ago in which he crowed about the achievements of the PTF under his leadership, I decided to do a facts-check since I knew that Newswatch had done a cover story titled “How Buhari ran PTF” which was published in its March 13, 2000 issue. This story was the product of a thorough investigation into the mammoth fraud as discovered by the technical consultants hired by the IMC. Details of the IMC report are distilled for you here. The findings: N144.51 billion had been given to PTF by the Federal Government during its lifetime; A residential estate was to be built at Wuse, Abuja, for N703 million but the technical consultants hired by IMC put the realistic valuation at about N328 million; Between July 1994 and July 1999, about N25 billion was either stolen or improperly expended; Extension of PTF headquarters was to gulp N650 million; Expired HIV/Aids drugs and kits worth N28 billion was supplied to several hospitals nationwide. This was confirmed by the Nigerian Guild of Medical Directors whose Secretary, Mr. Rowland Ogbonna, asked the Federal Government to withdraw the drugs immediately from all hospitals in the country. Many projects were abandoned while the completion rate of other projects was put at 30%; the sum of N500 million that the PTF deposited in a bank disappeared as soon as the IMC was announced. The bank agreed to pay the money after President Obasanjo read the Riot Act to the bank officials. On taking over, IMC discovered that there were no contract documents, drawings or specifications relating to projects. The APC could and did award contracts and vary the pricing without any reference to the PTF. Mr. Ahmad had asked the IMC officials to come and collect some documents in connection with all the transactions. On the day of the appointment he collapsed and died. The other members of the APC team claimed that they were not in a position to supply the documents.[/b]

There were more sordid revelations. The Afenifere did an analysis of the siting of the projects. The consumption of petroleum products by the South was 70% while that of the North was 30%. However, the distribution of the PTF projects was a reversal of the consumption pattern: 70% to the north and 30% to the south. All southern states had 4,440.43 kilometres of roads rehabilitated (24%) while states in the north had 13,870.47 kilometres rehabilitated (76%). Teaching Hospitals’ rehabilitation: South 38%, North 62%; Specialist hospitals: South 29%, North 71%; Food supply: South 17%, North 83%; National Health and Educational Rehabilitation Programme (NHERP): South 0% and North 100%; Vocational Programme: South 3%, North 97%; Primary School rehabilitation: South 12%, North 88%. Haroun Adamu acknowledged the gross imbalances in the sharing of the projects but regretted that his committee could not do much to remedy the situation since by the IMC mandate they could not embark on new projects.

From the findings there was massive fraud in PTF, fraudulently masquerading as achievements. The institution was a government intervention agency but run without the regulatory checks and balances that undergird the implementation of government projects. The Afri-Projects Consortium was just on its own, a loose canon with no authority to check it. Buhari was the Executive Chairman but he was absent-minded and had capriciously surrendered the operational powers of the PTF to APC without diligent supervision. The boys looted the place dry and there was no evidence that Buhari had an inkling of the huge corruption under his feet. Sometime before the IMC takeover, a newsmagazine, TheWeek, had interviewed him about the swirling corruption allegations. He said allegations of corruption against him were false. “My integrity is intact.” His friends said so too and even insinuated that Dr. Adamu was going after Buhari because the former dictator had detained him in 1994. Adamu told Newswatch: “I am not here to probe Buhari, No, that is not our mandate. Whatever happened when he was head of state is long forgotten. He is my friend.”

Buhari’s personal integrity was not soiled by the Petroleum Trust Fraud but he displayed supreme incompetence as a manager. As an Executive Chairman the buck stopped at his desk and no matter how you want to slice it he takes vicarious responsibility for the humongous fraud that took place in that institution. Secondly, the grossly lopsided distribution of the PTF projects between North and South is an awful testimonial for a man of his national standing to whom the nation through the coup makers had given the highest position in the land. His lopsided appointments today constitute a déjà vu.

When I read what he said about Abacha I was sorry for him. He said to a delegation, Buhari Support Group led by Comptroller General of Customs, Hameed Ali. “I don’t care about the opinion you have on Abacha but I agreed to work with him and we constructed roads from Abuja to Port Harcourt, Benin, Onitsha and so on. We also touched education and health. One of the former Heads of State was bragging that he spent $16 billion on power in Nigeria. Where is the power?” The emerging confrontation between the two former dictators, former friends and former allies and now fierce foes, Obasanjo and Buhari, will receive the attention of this column in due course. For now, I think President Buhari’s open veneration of the kleptocratic and autocratic Abacha is a cause for nausea. At the 10th anniversary of Abacha’s death Buhari had given the fantastically corrupt Abacha a clean bill of integrity. Even at that time, Nigeria was running all over the world trying to retrieve the billions Abacha had scattered in several banks in several countries and several continents. The horrifying stories of the elimination of prominent politicians and businessmen by Abacha constitute a notorious portion of our national narrative. No matter how hard Buhari tries, no matter what he thinks of the despicable, despotic Abacha, no matter why he thinks the man was a saint he will never succeed in winning Nigerians to his side. He will only wake up with fleas since he chooses to be in bed with dogs

liveLongNprospa:
BlueRayDick 😁😁

The Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Financial Derivatives Company Limited, Bismarck Rewane, has said that Nigerians are more concerned about the rising food prices and less bothered about the 2024 budget

Speaking on Channels Television’s ‘Business Morning’ show, on Thursday, the respected economist said, “In the end, budgetary arithmetics, budgetary mathematics in economics is of no use to anybody except when by this time, six months, if we are buying rice at N40,000 a bag rather than N60,000 a bag, if we are buying bread N900 a big loaf instead of N1,300 which we are doing today. If we are buying garri at lower prices. “The people are not interested in whether the budget is balanced and what the debt is. How does it (the budget) affect their day-to-day livelihood? That is the key thing.”

The economist said the high level of poverty is already causing mental health challenges for many people.

He said, “You will notice that on the streets of Lagos in particular, the number of lunatics has increased and part of it is driven by poverty.

We are having “many mental health issues. People are pushed to the wall. Some of them walk across the road even in moving traffic.”

He said the government must be honest with Nigerians on the economic realities, noting that people cannot start pretending to be happy.

“You can fake news but you can’t fake prosperity,” Rewane noted

WhoDeyHause:
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂.
Instead of him to cast this update so others can chop too he just decided to lock up, eat alone and die alone in the hands of angry united fans.
If he had just given us this clue earlier with the money I would have chopped upandan to fast track my Japa. I would have even helped patrickmuf to catch expert17 and bring him back to Nigeria for severe grilling when I get there. No matter what happens he must explain taya. With evidence. 🤭

Amigoss:
🤣🤣NigerIan's dey quick forget and no dey hold grudge,all he needs to do is a giveaway and drop a banger,and we go vibe

GloriousGbola:
to be honest it is the fate of most artistes

short shelf life, surrounded by hangers on - sometimes even your agent and accountant go dey chop you

there is a rap show queens featuring brandy , eve and someone who i forget as artistes past their prime.
i am sure you saw video of bobby brown crashing in one video vixens house

and we have this dramatization of the fall of a rapper from grace


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7SS-z-Vto8

iamoyindamola:
Reminds me of sege lord of ajasa he dan turn egbon adugbo now

Emaprince:
damn. Those guys no just get luck sha.

They paved the way and faded out broke.

Amigoss:
Izzou,you sef join Abi...if to say oladips dey nairaland,e go add as that types in blue

AdisaOwala:
Aha

So that the score line would be what?

Ibime:
Freestyle went to Yankee and joined the Navy there

Ibime:
At the time these guys left the industry, they could make more money (and promised more longevity) being a regular professional in USA than a star in Naija

iamoyindamola:
Them do owo abu lafin se abu lalejo for izzou

GloriousGbola:
they will now shack the 10k with hero beer and nkwobi with bros izzou on a Friday night

mostob:
I know beating teams with 8, 9 or 10 goals might have a side effect psychologically but Arteta should think of the positive effects too. That was a rubbish second half. I was expecting us to go for more goals.

GloriousGbola:
It will be very very hard as corruption has been institutionalized in the passport office and the officers from oga at the top to cleaner all feel entitled to the money from bribes and fast tracking.

It can be done. Oloyede did it after all. But it will be hard and will require a hands on approach or a really focused team.

Something as simple as online registration will be sabotaged by the team in house.

You will continue to hear network is down. We have to do it offline or locally.

iamoyindamola:
Told you
No be naija again, these people don't have business with heaven aje

izzou:


[color=royalblue]The guy that was my agent is my good friend.

If the Minister was really working, that guy would be out of business.

On Saturday, we hungout and the 10k bill we incurred was settled by him...Passport money.

This Interior guy just sabi how to use the media to talk pass..Some are already hailing him as the next best thing after John the Baptist

[/color]

izzou:
[color=royalblue]That guy go tall pass MI

I remember his part in 2face' Ole remix

His track with Blaise.

Omoh! Freestyle came too early[/color]

iamoyindamola:
Sip easy plenty lighter for here
plenty shayo for there

Jamz that year