₦airaland Forum

I have created upto 72 posts and many are member of front page. What did you think "72" do I nid any award "72 posts".......
Still make your contribution on the post.... I think Jonathan will beat who ever any time any day

A female student at Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile Ife was caught trying to flushher new born baby down the toilet. The girl was caught by one of the cleaners who noticed blood streaming from the drainage linked to the bathroom.
There is some speculation that she may not havebeen trying to flush the bay, but may have given birth unexpectedly while sitting on the toilet.
The child was rescued and both mother and childare receiving treatment at the University’s health institution

A soldier, Muazu Mohammed, on Wednesday shot and killed himself following the murder of his parents and two children by Boko Haram in Yobe......
I don't think , thiss man is a real soldier...really bleeped up

SLIDE waxie: U are the DUMBEST

bia anybody wey fight ontop of my post go hear am...i break ant rule?

Raymondenyi: I think dey should bring d boy 4 me 2 perform similar moves on him! Let's see how it goes!!! I bet his both kkidneys will pop out 4rm his anus n mouth respectively...

RIP 2d poor sweet pweety gurl,( I just lost my 2nd wife )

na so u dey count dem?

Nigeria’s military on Wednesday banned the use of satellite phones in much of the restive northeast after cutting mobile phone service, further isolating the area after a series of fresh attacks.

The military claimed in announcing the ban that Islamist extremist group Boko Haram had used satellite phones to plan attacks on schools.

The insurgents have attacked two schools in the northeast this week, leaving at least 16 students and two teachers dead.

“Therefore, effective from 19 June 2013, the (military) imposes a ban on the use and sale of Thuraya phones and accessories, including Thuraya recharge cards in Borno state,” said a statement from Lieutenant Colonel Sagir Musa.

Thuraya is a popular brand of satellite phones.

“Anyone seen with Thuraya phones, recharge cards and accessories will be arrested,” the statement said.

It was unclear whether the ban would also apply to journalists, who have used satellite phones to communicate when visiting the region, where the military launched a sweeping offensive on May 15.

The announcement applied to Borno state, the hardest hit in the region, and it was unclear if it would be extended.

The military has claimed it has pushed out the insurgents with its offensive, but a series of attacks in recent days have raised questions over whether the gains were only temporary.

On Sunday, suspected Boko Haram gunmen opened fire on a secondary school in Damaturu in Yobe state, killing seven students and two teachers.

Two of the attackers were also killed, said the army.

On Monday in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state, suspected Islamists shot dead nine students as they sat an exam in a private school.
http://www.vanguardngr.com/2013/06/fg-bans-sat-phones-in-northeast-after-fresh-attacks/?utm_source=&utm_medium=twitter

There are strong reports that no fewer than 20 persons have been killed in the past four days in different parts of Benin City, following a renewed cult war between suspected members of Eiye Confraternity and .
The conflict which started last Thursday escalated to Idu Owena, after Ugbowo, Isihor, Ugbiyoko, Textile Mill Road, New Benin and Igbesanwa area of Benin thereby shutting down social life activities inthe state.
Gov Oshiomole on his own part, has summoned a security meeting with his chief of staffs.
It was however gathered that some of the leaders of the groups are on the run following the collaboration of security agencies with the state government to hunt for the suspects.
Over 10 persons were said to have been arrested by the Edo State Police Command in connection with the incident.

Shooting is going on now around onitsha/obosi border... Its a war between obosi and onitsha. The little I know is land issue. Details letter. anybody that has more info should add pls

AbdH: What has Buhari got to do with this? You guys are unbelievable.

ntg jus that we knw he wil b sipin his alamo by now

Google wants to completely eradicate child porn from the Internet. what did you think? is it the right step? what about adult porn?

kaorama: Buhari must be smiling with this development. His boys are still around and doing what he loves them to do. Uselss fools.

seconded

One month after the declaration of emergency rule to fight insurgency in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states, violence has erupted again, as gunmen suspected to be members of Islamist terrorist sect attacked four communities of Hwa’a, Kunde, Gathahure and Gjigga of Gwoza Hills settlements, torching four churches with Improvised Explosives Devices,IEDS, and petro-bombs Thursday afternoon.

According to Tada Garuta, a resident of Kunde, the gunmen climbed the hills on foot with explosives and petro-bombs, and chanted God is great, in Arabic, before setting four local churches ablaze. Thereafter, they ransacked and emptied their bans of grains along with some livestocks. Gathahure and Hwa’a communities were also affected.

The attacked communities are located in Gwoza council area of Borno state of Mandara Hills, and 151 kilometres south of Maiduguri, the state capital.

Two churches at Hrazah and Hembe,hilly communities were also torched by the gunmen in April this year with the killing of two residents.

Garuta also told newsmen in Maiduguri, Bama road Motor Park yesterday that after torching another church in Hwa’a community, the gunmen also killed Rev. Jacob Kwiza (rtd) of Church of Christ in Nigeria (COCIN), while picking mangoes at his father’s orchard on the hills settlement of Hwa’a.

He said: “as the gunmen threw some explosives at our church, they forced the retired Reverend to renounce Christianity and be converted to Islam, but Rev. Jacob defied the gunmen’s threats of being killed, as he insisted on being a Christian among his people on the hills of Hwa’a. They slit his throat with sharp objects; and we started to flee for safety, as we don’t know the next targets of these gunmen.”

He said because of fears and terrorizing around Hwa’a’s community, none of the residents came to pick the body of the slain Reverend for burial and prayers.

Lamenting on the continued fears of hills dwellers, Garuta said: “after the church at Hrazah was also torched by the gunmen, the people had to flee.”

He said they have now relocated to Ngoshe Ndahang, 10 kilometres east of Limankara, a border village with Cameroon and Adamawa state.

It was also disclosed by Garuta that the district heads of Kurana Bassa and Damboa were also killed by gunmen, adding that when the principal (name withheld) of Government Day Secondary School; Izge was travelling on his motorcycle to the school on Thursday, he was trailed and shot dead by unknown gunmen.

He said: “the district head of Kurana Bassa was trailed by gunmen in a Golf Volkswagen vehicle, before he was shot dead at Mbamba village of Gwoza council area of the state.”

Speaking on infiltration of fleeing Boko Haram gunmen into the neighbouring towns of Gwoza, Damboa, Chibok and other communities yesterday, a top military officer of the Special Operation Force said that the gunmen must have fled from their demobilized camps of Sambisa Games Reserve Forests.

He said: “all the attacked towns and communities where churches and local residents were recently burnt and killed by the suspected Boko Haram gunmen are located at the peripheral of the Borno Forests, which had been reclaimed and taken over by the soldiers since the commencement of our operations here in this state.”
http://dailypost.com.ng/2013/06/16/borno-boko-haram-attacks-four-churches-kills-pastor-two-others-in-gwoza/?utm_source=&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=borno-boko-haram-attacks-four-churches-kills-pastor-two-others-in-gwoza

this is for people that can read.... so enjoy cool writeup

Minister of State Takes Over

Courtesies.

I am also not going to waste time. I am going to talk about what the ministry has been doing to actually ensure that we have reformed the financial sector. All the banks in Nigeria are fully capitalised. And we’re also happy today that the level of non-performing loan has come down to only 5%. Nigerian banks are the healthiest you can find in Africa and this has been shown. You remember 3–4 years back, most of the banks have reported losses, but today they are reporting profits that they never reported prior to 2008. And for those who have been following, the highest profit ever recorded in the history of Nigerian banking system was reported last year – N97.58 billion made by Guaranty Trust. You look at Zenith making 90 billion. Profitability has returned to the Nigerian financial system and people can now safely go and get finances.

The problem we have is the cost of borrowing. After now, interest rate is relatively high and we need to have lasting solution for it. That’s why we’re now restructuring and strengthening our development financing institutions so that they can give concessional loans to the critical sectors of the economy. To strengthen them again, the President set up a committee to look at how to solve the problem of development lending and we are going to establish a wholesale development finance institution that will be well capitalised which will lend wholesale money to the development institutions so that they can lend to the real sector. We are also inviting the private sector to come and invest in some of our development institutions. As you can see already, our infrastructural bank has some private sector and we are now trying to make sure that we get some private sector capital into that of agriculture.

Back to the capital market, last year, Mr President magnanimously approved forbearance to all our stockbrokers. Our stockbrokers are those who actually make the market perform and all of them have lost their capital. Most of the borrowing they did, they actually put in their money to borrow on the margin. They lost that investment. Yet, as far as the banks are concerned, they have to pay the nominal value of the debt while the real value of the shares that are underlying the debt are almost 20% of the loss they have taken. There is no way the capital market will actually progress with that kind of situation. Mr President magnanimously approved that forbearance and our stockbrokers are now healthy. They are now relieved of all these debts, they are now free to borrow more. And they’ve also regained confidence that yes, the Nigerian government can really support the stock broking companies, and you know that 60% of the money comes from international portfolio investors. Now, what we have done to our own domestic companies told them that we are really out to support our people. Therefore, they have more confidence in our market; money is now flowing.

From last year when we got the forbearance to date, the capitalisation of the market has increased by 70%. This has never been recorded anywhere. Everybody knows that in Nigerian insurance, you only do it under compulsion because people don’t have any confidence in the insurance sector. We know that this is a big problem and we went ahead to strengthen the regulatory authorities in order to bring sanity to the insurance sector. One thing we did in insurance, people just hook policies, report their own premium and declare profits where cash is not collected. So we came with No Premium, No Cover policy. At first, most of the brokers were not happy because the broker wants to make his money whether the man pays his premium or not. But today we say No, if you take insurance cover, nobody should recognise income unless cash is paid. So now, insurance is done on cash basis. Last year, we had a backlog of unpaid insurance of N55 billion; today, it is zero. All insurance are cash covered and that gives confidence to the policy holders.

When we came in, we had only 700 thousand. Now we have about 1.5 million policy holders and more equity is coming from abroad. We now have a lot of FDIs. About 10 companies have come into Nigeria and Nigerian companies can now even give insurance cover to oil and gas sector. There is 48% local retention of all the policies issued in that sector and this has actually improved our insurance industry and it will enable the industry to raise a lot of resources because in some countries, insurance companies have more money than banks. They even fund banks. We are encouraging our own so that they grow and we mobilise enough resources for investment in the real sector.

Another function we do is to ensure that all federally collected revenues are distributed to the three tiers of government according to the revenue sharing formula. In the past, FAC actually made it acrimonious; a lot of issues were there. We actually ensured that all outstanding issues that we met have been cleared. Today, when we come to FAC, we have turned it into committee where problems are solved, to committees where we educate ourselves, where we encourage others to copy the good practices of other states. We do peer comparison and we also ensure that we adopt the best practices and that’s why we’re just introducing the IPSAS – the International Public Sector Accounting Standards which all the states, parastatals and Federal Government are going to adopt so that our accounts are transparent and comparable to others. We have already ensured that we always hold FAC on time because holding FAC on time has a very serious implication on payment of salaries. And you know in Nigeria, unless salary is paid on time, workers are not happy. And you can agree with me that today, our workers are happy because we ensure that at least, Federal Government workers get their salary before 20th of every month and now with the electronic payment system, it is now – at least some get about 18th or 19th of the month and this has brought relative industrial harmony to Nigeria.

We also have a skill in the Federal Ministry of Finance for encouraging export of non-oil products. Before, few people know about the Export Expansion Grant. What we do, is in order to diversify the economy away from oil, all non-oil exporters get a grant based on the export proceed that they expatriated back. So, if you now produce anything non-oil and export, when you bring the money back we calculate based on certain parameters and you can get as much as 20% of the value of your export being given to you free by the government. Why are we doing that? It is because the cost of production in Nigeria is higher than the cost of production internationally. So, we have to make up for the cost of production to make our own manufacturers competitive. We have been doing that, yet we have some glut. We have the glut because growth in export has been growing very fast and we have to revise the system. We have parameters we have actually looked at and we realise that export growth is no more our problem in Nigeria because the target we set for our exporters; 71% of all exporters are growing higher than 10% every year. So, that has been solved. Re-investment of export growth; also 68.9% of our exporters are re-investing the money they get from the bank to develop their own companies. So, that is not also our problem.

Today in order to get the EEG (export expansion grant), you have to do well in the area of employment and you have to do well in the area of value addition. We are now reducing the weight for export and retention because we have already succeeded there. I think I will call on the CME to continue.

CME Continues

OK. Let me round off very quickly for Finance, because Minister of Information is telling me we need our own day. Let me just mention a couple of other areas quickly. The ministry supports; we are of finance but we’re also about making sure that the real sectors of the economy work. So in addition to the budget which we manage, we also have the task of mobilising resources for the sectors of the economy and I’m not going to go through all that I wrote; they can quickly roll it through the screen.

I’m very proud to announce that we have been very active to mobilise – sometimes zero interest – very low interest concessional financing for our sectors; money that is zero interest, 40 years to repay, 10 years of grace – the type that you cannot find easily anywhere. So we have been very careful to do that and 12 billion dollars worth, almost every sector. Agriculture – from China Exim Bank, from the World Bank, we have mobilised money. Environment: 450 million from the World Bank for environmental issues; transport. You know, we’re doing even guarantees so that we can have some of our infrastructure developed; for example, a letter of comfort to develop the Lekki deep sea port. So when you see all these things being developed, you know that Finance has done some work to make resources available or guarantees that make it work. Second Niger bridge – we’re now working on a private-public partnership arrangement where we’re going to co-invest with some investors that have been identified from outside with PPP to make sure that this bridge gets built. As we speak, they’re already on site trying to do some of the initial groundwork. We work with the World Bank, the African Development Bank, the Islamic Development bank and other banks to try to make this happen.

So, you can see, in health, in power, we are going to go to the market very soon to raise a Eurobond of about a billion dollars for the power sector. We know that power is what we need in this country; that’s what we have focused on. So, all that money will make gas available to fire the power and the emergency gas plan of the Minister of Petroleum Resources has already been yielding results in terms of making gas available to make our power situation better. But we want to support them to improve even more. So, we raise resources for that.

And the education sector – we’ve also raised money for states that have challenges: Bauchi, Ekiti, Anambra – so many of the states to benefit from that. In ICT we’ve raised resources. And aviation, housing – I can just say almost every sector of the economy – I’m proud to say we’ve done that. The Nexim Bank has also used resources to support trade for our economy; export-import bank which is under the Ministry of Finance. Let me just mention one interesting thing. We have supported the empowerment of women in the ministry through devoting some resources – 3 billion naira – to specific programs in five pilot ministries like Agriculture, Health, Water Resources, ICT and so on that focus on works, focus on delivering for women. For example, the Ministry of Works said that they will make more women contractors, sub-contractors. They will increase the number that will get contracts and jobs because women are not favoured and we have said that when they do it, we will support them with additional disbursement from this N3 billion. So we are encouraging support for women within this budget and that is something that the President really supports. So, these are some of the things we are doing.

Finally, we are supporting job creation. We are managing some job creation programmes apart from what we are doing for the real sectors of the economy, mobilising money for them in addition to the budget to create jobs like the 3.5 million jobs targeted by Agriculture in 2015. It’s the resources we help mobilise that will help them deliver that. But we are also managing some direct job creation being undertaken and implemented by government. Just a couple of examples which you know – we have the program that was mentioned by the Honourable Minister of Information, the YouWIN program of Mr President – this is his program – and I’m happy to tell you this is one of the most popular programs in Nigeria. From the first round we did, we have already created 14,000 jobs all over all parts of the federation. This is just the first survey. The second survey, maybe another 14,000 – that’s almost 30,000. The second round we just launched for women only and the third round we’re going to launch for men and women, the target of 80,000 to 110,000 jobs is easily reachable.

This program is surpassing our expectations in terms of job creation and we’re very proud of our young entrepreneurs who are doing this. We are also managing the Graduate Internship Program. Our objective there is to place 50,000 graduate interns with private sector. Over 1,000 private sector firms have applied. We have placed so far 1,309 graduates and we’re working very hard to speed up to place all the 50,000 who have been processed as qualified to participate in this scheme. And of course, we were previously supporting the community services program designed to create 370,000 jobs a year. We’ve moved that to the ministry of labour now, but I want to tell you that 178,000 jobs have already been created. And people who have seen these people working in the field, building ditches, doing drains, maintaining buildings have reported that they’re there and the jobs are real. So, these are some of the things that we have tried to do within the ministry to support the job creation agenda. I could go on and on.

We actually need more time but let me just stop here and say that Ministry of Finance is a multi-faceted ministry that is delivering day by day on the budget, on the additional finances for the sectors of the country, on managing direct job creation programs and on supporting the sectors – I haven’t even told you the things we do to support power through the bulk trader, to manage the debts of NEMCO, to push the various sectors along. We are doing so much more than we have time to share today and we are achieving results.

Thank you very much.

Quickly, let me move on to talk about debt. On Friday, I think it was on the back page of This Day, I wrote an article about our debt because there are so many misconceptions about it. I want you to know that no one in government – neither Mr President nor the Ministry of Finance, the debt management office and the legislature – we don’t support that Nigeria becomes an indebted country again. So, what are we doing? The ministry is delivering a very prudent and strategic debt management approach to the country. I want you to look at some of the numbers. You know, we say that our national debt is low; and that is true because if you measure us against so many indicators you will see. If you look at that, you will see that domestic debt is really the issue. And if you look at the flow of domestic borrowing, you will see that it spiked in 2010 where we increase salary by 53% at once.

Now, I’m not against increase of salary, so don’t let anybody go from here and misquote me. But it has implications; and in order to cover it, domestic borrowing spiked. Bonds had to be floated. It’s not that good to borrow for things like recurrent expenditure and consumption. So, part of our new strategy is not to do that; to start lowering domestic borrowing. One of the things Mr President said to us is, we have to bring it down and we’re doing it. From N852 billion in 2011, we went down to N744 in 2012, and for 2013 budget, I think to N588 billion, and we’ll continue to bring it down. That’s part of the new strategy.

At the same time, we’re slowing down the growth of the debt stock. So, it’s not that the debt stock won’t grow, but it will grow much more slowly than before; and you can see it. The debt stock, total debt is now at about 7.5 trillion naira made up of 6.49 trillion domestic and about 1.0 trillion external and we will slow that down by trying to retire the bonds that are coming due instead of rolling them over at high interest rates. I’m very proud to say that in 2013 we retired 75 billion in bonds and that’s the first time we’ve done it in so many years. That is part of the overall strategy.

The last part is that we have also developed a sinking fund and every year we put in 25 billion in it so that we can continue to retire this debt and not grow it at a very fast pace. We will be borrowing, but it will be for very prudent things that really make a difference on the ground for Nigerians and it will be at a much slower pace. Now, quickly, the ministry has worked hard – Federal Inland Revenue Service, the Customs Service – to try and bring in more revenue into our coffers. And of course, they face challenges. We have to improve in terms of our tax collection and I want to tell you that we are launching a tax drive for non-oil revenue taxes to increase; and you will be seeing very soon, adverts from FIRS to push this on. The Customs is also modernising its operations with an objective to become a modern Customs system that can manage destination inspection and all the things that Customs does by the end of this year.

The objective is that we shouldn’t only look at the expenditure side all the time, we must also look at growing our revenues in the country; and this is what Finance has done.

I want to spend just one minute before handing over to my colleague on a few things that Finance is delivering to make public financial management more efficient and more transparent. We have to step away from the manual management of our finances whereby, for instance, for payments, we used to send money in bulk to ministries to pay their staff, to pay for their expenses. We have now put in place three electronic platforms that we are introducing and implementing at the moment. The Integrated Personnel and Payroll Management System is in place and it is allowing us to pay staff straight through biometric data means, we can check and pay them directly. Now, we haven’t done all MDAs; we’ve done about 215 and this exercise has helped us weed out about 45,000 ghost workers and save ourselves about 118 billion naira. That’s a lot of money.

Now, people say to me, where are these ghost workers and who is responsible? I just want to say here that we’ve looked and we’ve found that in almost every ministry, department and agency we had series of these ghost workers and it is identifying who to pinpoint, that’s what we’re looking at now. But it is very difficult because with people coming and going within ministries, it is not easy. The important thing we are facing is to get them out so we can save the money and put in place systems to make sure that this does not occur. That’s what Finance is doing.

We still have to complete the rest of the MDAs by the end of this year. We’ve also put in place a government integrated financial management system and, in the beginning, this has slowed down the transfer of resources to ministries. Bear with us, this will improve. But what this means is that transparently we can connect the MDAs, be able to see all our money and be able to pull it back. So, all those who may be contemplating this, I think you should revise your thinking because transparency is on the way.

Now, to stem leakages and improve our finances, we also worked very hard in the ministry to totally change the way we do business in terms of paying subsidies. We audited N1 trillion in subsidy payments under the presidential task force led by Aig Imokhuede, and we found N32 billion questionable. We have recovered N14 billion as we speak and we have tightened the payment process, so that there is more independent verification of how that is being done. The other thing the ministry has delivered is the cleaning up of the contributory pension scheme. This is something very painful to Nigerians that they would work and then people would steal the money that should be for their pension in their old age. This is not acceptable. So, to reform this, the President gave us permission to implement a section of the Pensions Reform Act which had hitherto been blocked; it had not been implemented, to bring all these pensions – the defined benefit systems – under one roof, under a pension transition administration department, and that will enable us to keep a hold on this fraud and to keep it at bay because these things will be managed under one roof transparently. The implementation of this is now underway.

The contributory pension scheme is fine, we have more than N3 trillion there, it’s working well and I want to reassure Nigerians of its good health. So, it’s only people who are still under the old scheme which we are reforming that are affected. We are implementing a more transparent system. Within the next six months, by God’s grace, we’ll have everything together with biometric systems in place so we can also pay our pensioners directly.

So, let me just say to you that all this, as was said by the Minister of Information, have been validated; all these things we’re doing, which amalgamate to underpin a stable economy have been validated outside. You don’t have to listen to me or Mr President or even the Minister of Information. Just check what the rating agencies are doing. Nigeria is one of the few countries being upgraded and rated as stable in an environment where other countries, including some close to us here in Africa, are being downgraded, and I think that Nigerians, even if you’re critical of government, you have to accept external evidence that we have a stable economy. The grading does not say that we’ve solved all the problems of our economy – no country ever does that – but it says that we’ve got the platform with which to do it.

Now, just before I hand over, I want to say one word on SURE-P, the subsidy reinvestment program. We promised Nigerians, at Ministry of Finance, that we will share with them the money that comes into this program transparently and what it is being used for transparently so that they will see because Nigerians were sceptical that this money will be put to good use. You can see on the screen. We have published every single month; we’ve kept faith with Nigerians. Every single month in the newspapers, we publish how much money comes in and you can see that; in 2012, N180 billion came in to Federal Government, the states got N154.6 billion, local governments, N76.4 billion. In January to May 2013, we have received N75 billion, state governments N64.4 billion, local governments N31.8 billion so far, and we have been publishing it.

And what has it been used for? We said, go and check for yourselves. We have used it for social safety nets for our women and children, to strengthen and improve immunisation for our children, to strengthen and improve safe delivery for our women. I know that no man here wants his wife to die; no woman wants to die in child birth. We have the names of every woman in every ward that has benefitted from this scheme. So, for those who say, “Ah, no one in my place has benefitted” you can verify it. We have it. If you want it, ask me. I will give it to you so you can check that people are really benefitting and they’re getting cash transfers.

When they come for pre-natal care, they get cash transfer of two thousand naira. When they come to have attended delivery, when the child is brought for immunisation; that is what we call conditional cash transfer program and, so far, in the present Saving One Million Lives program, more than 400,000 women’s lives and children’s lives have been saved through the money used by SURE-P.

In addition to that, we have been working on transportation and I know you heard from the Minister of Transport on roads and bridges built using this money; so I will not dwell on it. My intent was from the Finance point of view to just show you that we kept faith with Nigerians, we have been transparent, you can verify and we’ll be happy to give you all the information.

Let me now call on the Honourable Minister of State (Finance) to talk about the other things we have been doing in the financial sector.

The GDP Illustration

Now, I want to spend one minute on something very important, because after we talk, people will say, “GDP growth, what is GDP growth? It’s not important; that’s not what we will eat.” But let me explain to you that without that growth, you cannot even begin to solve the problems of this economy. Let me illustrate to you. [She picks up a cake]. This cake symbolises our income, our GDP or your income within your household. GDP is nothing but the income of the country – the amount of cake you have to eat; you and your wife and children – the same with a country. So, let’s say this is the amount of cake we have to eat.

Now, these are four people sharing this cake – four people: a man, his wife and two children, or Nigeria with a population of let’s say 167 million people. So, this is the cake we have. You have this cake. Having this cake does not mean that every problem in your household is solved. Is it? It doesn’t mean that your income can now take care of all your relatives in the family who still have problems. It doesn’t mean that in your household, you don’t have problems of people not being employed, but you have this cake that you’re sharing. Now, what happens if we add three more people? Suppose, as a family, you marry another wife and you add one wife and three more children. How many are you now? (Answer: Seven). This is the cake. What will happen if this cake doesn’t grow? All of you will be suffering. Isn’t it? When you marry that wife and have more children, or even if you have four and you have another three or four; you will want your cake to grow. That is the same way we want GDP to grow – right? So, this is the first cake. What happens if the cake doesn’t grow is that all of you will start suffering. [She takes up another cake].

Supposing you now have a bigger cake; put all the people on top and you now have the seven people; would you not be better off? What if you have an even bigger cake? You see this biggest cake? You can put so many more people on top. [Speaking to assistants to collect illustrative materials: “give me all the people, give them to me, all of them will be there”]. And what will happen? That means you will have even more food. So, is it not false when people say that growing the cake does not matter? It matters; because if you have the same cake and your size is growing, what will happen is that you become even poorer and poorer; isn’t it? If it is not growing, you will suffer even more. Now, Nigeria has a cake – our GDP – and our population is growing at 2.5% per annum. If we don’t grow this, we will stay with the same cake and it will become worse and worse. So what we want to do is grow this cake as fast as possible, as large as we can, while solving the other problems. Note that I didn’t say growing the cake solves all the problems; but if we don’t grow the cake, we are going to suffer.

So, don’t listen to those who say, “What is GDP growth – it doesn’t matter.” It is not true; it matters tremendously. It’s with this growing cake that you can now call those people in your family or village who say you are not helping them. Isn’t it? If your cake is growing, you can call them; help them with their health problems, help them with food, help them with other things. But if you say cake does not matter, then you cannot help them at all. This is what GDP growth is about. I want Nigerians to understand this so that we don’t have this challenge of, “What is GDP?” In fact, we need to grow at almost 8 to 10 percent per year. In fact, Vision 2020 projects 13 percent in order to solve unemployment and other problems that we have. I’m sorry I spent some time on this, but it’s about time for the Nigerian population to stop being deceived by people who are not telling them the truth about what happens in the economy.

Now, let me quickly pass to other things. The first thing this country does, of course, is prepare the budget and everybody knows about it; to manage the finances and we have the DG Budget here. We’ve had problem with getting budget preparation done on time, and I want to say that for the first time, the 2013 Budget was prepared in record time and also passed by the National Assembly in record time on 20th December 2012, just before Christmas. Now, this should give us the year to implement; but of course, you know that we have some challenges with implementation and some things that we need to agree with the National Assembly in order to make the budget hold. For this year, we have been working on it but it has not stopped us from moving forward. We released first quarter capital – 400 billion; didn’t we? And work is going on. We released second quarter capital – 200 billion – so we will continue to implement to the best our ability, and it’s the job of Finance to make sure that we get that money in.

But the money that we get in also depends on what happens with the sectors of the economy. So, Finance does not print money. We don’t manufacture money. We only can disburse money that comes into our coffers; that the country genuinely earns from its oil and gas, from agriculture, from all the other aspects, the money it gets from taxes that it collects even on non-oil revenue and Customs taxes. So, once we get all those in, we disburse them. But if anything happens and we experience a shock, for example, this year, Customs is a little bit down in terms of collection because importation has come down, especially importation of rice; partly because we are growing our own, more of it as we said in the midterm report; but also because people stocked up last year in anticipation of what would happen. So, when we have these things happening, then the income reduces and Finance has to manage whatever comes in. So, I want people to know when they’re feeling very stressed out that there’s not enough money, Finance does not have money hidden somewhere in the safe; it is what it gets that it disburses.

Now, let me move quickly to one of the things we have delivered. Nigerians have complained that the cost of government is too high; we are spending too much on recurrent budget. What have we developed in Finance? With the support of the President and all of you, we’ve managed to take expenditures down from 74% recurrent of the total budget to 68% in 2013, and we’ll continue to take it down to the best of our ability. We have the envelope system. People don’t understand it but it enables us to engage other ministries and agencies in the management and setting of the budget. That allows them to put forward their priorities in a way that we can engage them in a conversation and to prioritise especially in terms of completing uncompleted projects of which we have about six thousand in this country and these are some of the systems that we’ve put in place to make that work. I talked a little while ago about the fact that imports are down. Whilst that means that some of our revenue are down, but we’re happy because we want to diversify this economy. Nigerians don’t want to keep importing. So, non-oil imports have decreased – things like textiles, plastic, rubber – things we’re making here; and those things have even increased in terms of exports. I’m sure that the Minister of Trade and Investment will say more about that. But I also want to mention our waiver and tariff policies to just let you know that Mr President has insisted on a policy of not doing individual waivers. So this ministry is doing sectoral waivers. When we give a waiver now, it is to encourage a whole sector not just to encourage an individual; and those kinds of policies; we’ve done them for aviation, for agriculture, for solid minerals. They can import spare parts and equipments at zero duty. And this is all designed to spur the rest of our economy.

Let me start with something that we said during the mid-term report. The first is, on the macro-economy, I want to report that the economy is strong and stable. But of course, it faces challenge of inequality and inclusion; meaning that even though the economy is strong, we have problems with jobs and unemployment. We have problems with working to eradicate poverty. We need to move faster. We need to grow faster in order to tackle these problems. So, we are not saying that everything is solved, or that everything is great, but it’s strong; and that stability provides the platform on which we can use to solve the other problems.

What do I mean? We talked before that if you notice – everybody follows the exchange rate between the dollar and the naira – it has been relatively stable in these past two years at 155 to 160. At least, that is something you can evidence for yourself and attest to. It has been stable because we have also been able to accumulate reserves. People wonder why we are saving these reserves that are now almost $50 billion – we’re at $48 billion now. It’s very important because the reserves are what make the exchange rate stable. When the reserves are going down, that’s when you experience that instability and people can come and attack your currency. So, we have managed, working with the Central Bank – I also want to give them credit for good monetary policy – to be able to grow these reserves, stabilise, so that now, we have an exchange rate that can allow people to plan and allow people to do their work. As the Honourable Minister of Information said, inflation is coming down; from about 12.4% in May 2011, it has slowed to about 9.1% now and these all form the bedrock of this stability.

We have made savings. Part of our reserves is also the Excess Crude Account savings that we talk about. We have had about $4 billion in May 2011. We grew it to about 9 billion dollars equivalent at the end of 2012, and now we’re about $6 billion. Why are we down? Because the Excess Crude Account helps us to manage the economy and keep growing even when we experience shocks like when oil production comes down because of either oil theft, or leakages from pipelines and so on. You know, the money we have saved enables this country to keep going and we have enough to keep us going even in the face of shocks for another four to five months whilst we try to solve our problems. This is something that Nigeria did not have before and we are very proud of it. In the past, when we experience shocks, what did we do? We would have to go to the IMF or World Bank to go and look for money – the IMF in particular to shore up the economy, to shore up our balance of payments (that’s what economists call it). But now, even through all the ups and downs that we have experienced, have we gone there? No. Because Nigeria has now put itself – with the existence of this Excess Crude Account – in a position where in the event of any shock, we can go there to stabilise ourselves. That’s why Nigerians must support this account, the saving of this money; the Sovereign Wealth Fund. This country like a family must be able to put money aside so that if you experience shock, you don’t go around begging, you can stabilise yourself with your own savings. That’s what we manage to do.

The second thing I want to talk about is about GDP growth. This stability has enabled the economy to grow. Certain sectors are growing – I will come to that. Overall, this economy is growing and growth is projected at 6.75% by us; by the National Bureau of Statistics in 2013. Even the IMF has projected higher growth, but we’re being very cautious. Over there [referring to a slide], you will see how we compare with some other countries; with the whole of sub-Saharan Africa, they are growing at 5.6%, so we are much higher; even the emerging markets, we’re higher than them. And you can see Brazil, China, South Africa – South Africa at 2.8%, we at 6.75% et cetera – so we are doing well!

Thank you very much to the Honourable Minister of Information for that very rousing welcome and for hosting us for this event.

For my colleague, the Honourable Minister of Sports, I don’t think it’s coincidental that Sports and Finance are together today, because I’d always joked that if I was not the Minister of Finance, I’d love to be the Minister of Sports. So, I totally envy him in his job, especially now that we’re winning.

And to my colleagues, the Honourable Minister of State (Finance), the Perm Sec., and all the members of the audience here; I want to say that we’re going to handle our presentation in such a way that I will start up, pass to my minister of state and then he will pass back to me to round off. And I can’t start this without first acknowledging the support of the President to the Ministry of Finance. It’s not an easy ministry to run, as you all know. Nobody likes Finance because everybody likes to say they never have enough. So, we are grateful for the support. We are also very proud of our staff in the Ministry of Finance – the budget office, the Accountant-General’s office; and I want to thank them openly because, without their dedication and good work, we would not be able to accomplish what we have today. So, what I’m going to tell you, some of it you may have heard when Mr President presented his mid-term report and score card, but it bears repeating. And some will be additional expatiation on that; or new information.

I want to begin with what it is that the Ministry of Finance does. I want to remind people of our mission. Our mission is to manage the nation’s finances in an open, transparent, accountable and efficient manner that delivers on the country’s development priorities. There are four basic things we do in managing these finances and helping to manage the economy. The first is macroeconomic management. It’s the job of the Ministry of Finance, working with the Central Bank, to have a stable macro-economy. If there’s no stability, if things are moving, exchange rate is volatile, inflation is high – we have experienced it in this country before – what happens? You cannot even begin to think of development of the economy. So, that’s one of our jobs.

The other, of course, is managing the finances and mobilising finances for the real sector of the economy; meaning the other sectors that create jobs can grow. Then we also have the job of supporting enabling reforms that make this economy move. And finally, we have the job of supporting job creation indirectly and directly. So, we’re going to talk about what the Ministry of Finance does and has achieved in those four areas.

 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlW62t5QSQQ

A woman on a Chinese bus loses her seat to some guy in a relatively rude fashion. Naturally, this leads to a fight that results in the woman sitting on the intruding man’s lap.

Am I missing something or is there not an open seat right next to him that is available for sitting? Not to mention seats everywhere else on the bus? Let’s just admit to ourselves that we’re drowning in bus-bred sexual tension and leave it at that, Or the girl want to tag him Rape?
http://www.weyab.com/2013/06/hilarious-woman-chooses-to-sit-on-mans.html

so to push this work to front page they hard all this MOD....well this is not about tonto na

keep the good work my chirman d greenmouse... guy dis guy taught me under two weeks nd i became good in designing dis website www.bestarchstructure.com the guy is really good... and this not about teaching you tables..nope....he will teach u real coding.....and more tricks to hav a good css. i love him... greenmouse na igwe odibe

The United States has concluded that Syrian government forces used chemical weapons to kill at least 100 people, crossing a “red line” and prompting President Obama to provide direct military support to the rebels for the first time, the White House said Thursday.

“The president has said that the use of chemical weapons would change his calculus, and it has,” White House deputy national security adviser Benjamin J. Rhodes said.

Rhodes declined to provide an “inventory” or timetable for any military equipment to be sent, but said the assistance would be “responsive to the needs” expressed by the rebel command. He said the president had “not made any decision to pursue a military option such as a no-fly zone.”

Syria’s outgunned rebels have issued urgent appeals this week for anti-tank and anti-aircraft weaponry to counter a government offensive that is backed by Hezbollah and Iranian forces.

“Suffice it to say this is going to be different in both scope and scale,” Rhodes said of the new assistance.

Until now the United States has limited its assistance to nonlethal supplies and aid such as communications gear, food and medical supplies. In a conference call with reporters, Rhodes declined to detail the types of “military support” that would be provided. He added that the United States will continue to seek a negotiated peace settlement even while more broadly joining the Syrian fight.

Rhodes said Obama would consult allies about the specifics of the new shipments at next week’s Group of Eight summit in Northern Ireland. The sessions will also be attended by Russia, the Syrian government’s main international ally and arms supplier.

Rhodes said U.S. officials had briefed Russia on what U.S. intelligence agencies said was a “high confidence” assessment that chemical weapons had been used the nerve gas sarin “in small quantities” on at least four occasions this year.

There is no reliable evidence that Western-backed rebels in Syria have used chemical agents, as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad claims, the White House said in a statement.

“There is an urgency to the situation. There has been an urgency to the situation for two years,” Rhodes said. “It’s particularly urgent right now in terms of the situation on the ground, in some respect, because we have seen Hezbollah and Iran increase their own involvement in the conflict.”

The announcement came after an interim determination in April that chemical weapons were likely used in Syria. Obama said he wanted further evidence before deciding what to do next, in part because of the lesson of Iraq, where inaccurate U.S. intelligence indicated Saddam Hussein’s government had developed weapons of mass destruction.

“Following a deliberative review, our intelligence community assesses that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons, including the nerve agent sarin, on a small scale against the opposition multiple times in the last year,” a White House statement said.

Between 100 and 150 people are estimated to have died as a result of chemical weapons, the White House said, although it added that the casualty data is probably incomplete.

The United Nations estimated Thursday that more than 90,000 people have died in more than two years of fighting.

“The president has been clear that the use of chemical weapons – or the transfer of chemical weapons to terrorist groups – is a red line for the United States,” the White Hose statement said.

The announcement follows similar determinations from close U.S. allies Britain and France
http://www.weyab.com/2013/06/syrian-government-forces-punched-obama.html

Finally we can all smile, Nigeria players have agreed to travel to Brazil for the FIFA Confederations Cup after calling off their strike over a bonus row on Thursday. please we need more news on this. im happy now

Mr. Okupe said President Jonathan is most unjustifiably maligned leader in Nigeria’s history.

The presidency, on Thursday, dismissed the speech presented by the leader of Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, and former governor of Lagos State, Bola Tinubu, at a forum in London last Monday, in which he described the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan as a colossal failure.

At the forum, Mr. Tinubu, who canvassed a ‘revolution” in Nigeria also unveiled the blueprint of the yet to be registered All Progressives Congress, APC, the proposed merger of some opposition political parties, including ACN.

Reacting to the speech, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Public Affairs, Doyin Okupe, said the former governor “was not only wide off the mark but betray the hypocrisy for which the national leader of ACN and his party have become very well known.”

Mr. Okupe described Mr. Tinubu as a man living in the past, adding that the address was full of full of inconsistencies and utter falsehood.

“Everyone claims to be democratic but not everyone is faithful to his or her word, is a clear case of self-indictment as will be evident in due course,” he said.

“As any keen and discerning observer of Nigeria’s democracy will attest, Senator Tinubu and his ACN are completely lacking in democratic temper. The ACN as a party is not only undemocratic but blatantly autocratic and makes no pretenses about it.

“It is clear that ACN leadership’s understanding of democracy is tainted and skewed by his undemocratic mindset, which has seen him exert authoritarian control over the party. With such disposition, it is easy to understand his warped and defective reading of the democratic situation in Nigeria. To assert as he did in that paper that Nigeria under the leadership of President Goodluck Jonathan is a dysfunctional democracy is not only the height of ignorance but equally of unbridled mischief.”

The presidential aide said that Mr. Tinubu’s claim on Nigeria’s democracy is nothing but wild conjecture, completely unrelated to reality.

Mr. Okupe said though Mr. Jonathan is the most accommodating president in Nigeria, yet he (President) remains the most unjustifiably maligned leader in the history of Nigeria with critics using their overriding influence on print and electronic media freely and in many cases unfairly to take potshots at him.

He stressed, “It is common knowledge that no administration has been abused, lied against and harangued like the present administration under Jonathan and yet there have not been any reprisals or harassment from government agencies.

“Instead, the administration has encouraged free speech and open government. It is on record that despite the avalanche of criticisms and attacks in the media, journalists and their organisations have not been hounded or closed down as we witnessed in recent past.

“Rather than muzzle free speech, this administration has always explored the legal option in seeking redress as was the case recently with the recent Leadership Newspaper issue. Furthermore, the signing into law of the Freedom of Information Act after previous administrations had stalled it was a pointer to the inherent democratic character of the Present administration.

“Unlike the governments being run by ACN party at the state levels, the administration of President Jonathan however, has always bowed to the wishes of the Nigerian public on a number of occasions when they have disagreed with certain policies of his government.

“The reversal of his decision on the removal of subsidy on petroleum products, the offer of amnesty to terrorists at the insistence of Nigerians in the northern part of the country and the decision to shelve the introduction of the N5000 note following public opposition, are three examples that will suffice in this regard.”
http://premiumtimesng.com/news/138695-presidency-berates-tinubu-over-london-speech.html#disqus_thread
http://www.weyab.com/2013/06/presidency-berates-tinubu-over-london.html

A New Mexico man has been sentenced to six months in federal prison for using homemade instruments to tattoo the letter “I” on the arm of his 3-year-old nephew.

Federal prosecutors say 29-year-old Cruz Tenorio of Kewa Pueblo was sentenced Tuesday. He must serve six months in a half-way house when he’s released from prison.

Tenorio must also pay restitution. Prosecutors say that will ensure the child has access to any needed medical or psychological services, including the removal of the tattoo.

Tenorio pleaded guilty in March to child abuse. The charge stemmed from 2011, when authorities say he tattooed his nephew’s arm using rudimentary and unsterilized tools.

Prosecutors say Tenorio had no formal training and he took no precautions to prevent possible infection.
is "I" the symbol of Illuminati?
http://www.weyab.com/2013/06/man-sentenced-to-6-months-in-jail-for.html
http://www.ynaija.com/who-does-this-man-sentenced-to-6-months-in-jail-for-tattooing-3-year-old-nephew/?utm_source=&utm_medium=twitter

For me oooo, I will b happy to see NFF playing in that tournament , I bliv they will make us proud, SE will only go dere to giv me HBP

Happy bday to my sweet mother.... Mum I'm with your extranet ATM ooo. Just to collect small money to party with ojukwu son , Jona daughter, IBB girl and OBJ aunt. Love u mum

The building of the Edo State Ministry of Education in Benin City, was, on Wednesday, gutted by a fire which razed about 20 office apartments where certificates and examinations records of Edo State and the former Bendel State were kept.

Eyewitnesses revealed that the fire started on the last floor, and the timely response of the Edo State Fire Service and Nigerian Army School of Supply and Transport prevented the building from being completely destroyed.

The Edo State Commissioner of Education, Washington Osifo, described the incident as a national loss, adding that all unclaimed certificates that dated back to the mid-west region were burnt.

Osifo said that he suspected foul play as there was power outage throughout the night, ruling out electricity which is usually blamed for fire outbreak.

“I want to say I don’t know why it is happening at this time, though there is no time that is good for anyone to experience what he/she has laboured for to be destroyed by fire,” he said.

“We are disheartened to know that the educational records dating from the time of Mid-Western region to date were destroyed. I was not even born then. I met these records here.

“The records are no more. What that means is that anything that is binding now as far as education is concerned in the state is affected. Both primary and secondary records in Edo State are here. With this fire outbreak, there is a total disconnection now.”

The commissioner promised that a panel of inquiry would be set up with the mandate to investigate the cause of the incident.

The Edo State Governor, Adams Oshiomhole, during an on-the-spot assessment of the extent of damage, described it as a case of arson.
http://www.weyab.com/2013/06/fire-guts-edo-ministry-of-education.html

rip

I think its time for fun and time for our MODS to appreciate US here. Think of one of your BEST MOD and demand HE/SHE should do ONE thing for you. Note: its should be something easy to do please. I believe they will comply also. Starting with me, My best MOD is SEXKILLS and I demand HE should put my post on front page .