₦airaland Forum

Ooni’s death ’ll be announced in due course — Source

JULY 30, 2015 : TUNDE ODESOLA AND FEMI MAKINDE



Despite the rebuttal of the news of the death of the Ooni of Ife, Oba Okunade Sijuwade, by the Royal Traditional Council of Ife, a source close to the palace said the monarch has joined his ancestors.

It was gathered that the Lowa of Ife, who is the head of the kingmakers, Oba Olasoji Ijaodola, would soon make an announcement of the passage of the monarch at a later date.

Traditionally, the passage of the Ooni, who is referred to as the second-in-command to the deities, should not be announced until the various levels of rites of passage had been completed.

It was gathered that one of the rites of passage includes an announcement by the Lowa, who would announce the passage upon the sounding of a bell at the Enu-Owa square located in front of the palace.

One of our correspondents learnt that after the announcement, markets would be closed while all forms of merrymaking such as drumming or partying would be suspended in the town for a number of days.

According to him, the process of breaking the news to the public would start from the eldest prince, who would tell the traditional council and the Ife traditional council would, in turn, inform the Osun State Council of Traditional Rulers.

The Osun State Council of Traditional Rulers, he said would subsequently inform the governor of the state officially after which the rites of passage would commence.

The source, who was not willing to divulge the details of what the rites of passage would entail, stated that, drummers would come to the palace and beat special drums for some days.

After this, he said, some elders and women would also gather at the palace and sing dirges for some days.

After the rites of passage have been completed, the source, who is a traditional ruler, stated that the Lowa of Ife would come to the main entrance where he would beat the gong and announce the demise of the Ooni to the public.

The source added that the throne would remain vacant for a period of mourning before the ruling houses would present names of contestants to the stool.

Another source, who corroborated the news of the death of the monarch, said the media was not supposed to be the one to break the news of the death of the monarch.

He said it was wrong but stated that such news could no longer be hidden because of the advancement in technology, adding that the chiefs would still not abdicate their roles for the media.

The four ruling houses in Ife include Giesi, Ajagbun, Osikola, where the late Oba Adesoji Aderemi hailed from, and Ogbooru, where Sijuwade hailed from.

The Oluomo of Ife, Chief Gbenga Owolabi, said that it was wrong to say that the “Ooni is dead.” According to him, the Ooni is an institution and a royal stool, and not a person.


http://www.punchng.com/news/oonis-death-ll-be-announced-in-due-course-source/

New exploit means nearly any Android phone can be hacked with a single text

By Dell Cameron
Jul 27, 2015, 10:48am CT | Last updated Jul 27, 2015, 5:18pm CT
As many as 950 million Android devices might be vulnerable to a hack so simple that it only requires a text message.

In some cases, the recipient need not even open the text message for the device to be compromised, according to security researcher Joshua Drake, who first reported the exploit in April. His company, Zimperium zLabs, has labeled it “the worst Android vulnerability in the mobile OS history.”

Zimperium will provide full disclosure of the exploit at the Blackhat and DEF CON hacking conferences next month in Las Vegas. “If you ever heard about Heartbleed, this is much worse,” the company says.

This “unicorn” of smartphone security flaws exists thanks to an Android media playback tool called Stagefright—the vulnerability is likewise called “Stagefright,” and yes, it has its own logo:


Drake, co-author of the Android Hacker’s Handbook, tells Forbes that a malicious hacker could write code to or steal data from Android devices by sending a multimedia message (MMS) which would gain them access to the Stagefright tool. From that point, the attacker could record audio and video and view stored media files. The target phone’s Bluetooth is also vulnerable to Stagefright, Drake reports.

Through the exploit, a hacker would gain full access to whatever permissions are granted to Stagefright’s code. On a few older devices, including the Samsung S4 and LG Optimus Elite, the exploit would give the hackers system-level privileges. The exploits, Drake said, are easy to find and quite a few are already public.

“I’ve done a lot of testing on an Ice Cream Sandwich Galaxy Nexus… where the default MMS is the messaging application Messenger,” Drake told Forbes. “That one does not trigger automatically but if you [look] at the MMS, it triggers—you don’t have to try to play the media or anything, you just have to look at it.”

According to Google, many new phones running Android have technologies in place “designed to make the exploitation more difficult.” The company cited as one example the Application Sandbox, which isolates app data and code execution from other apps.


http://www.dailydot.com/technology/android-stagefright-vulnerability-blackhat-defcon/

Presidency, Boko Haram begin talks




Hopes of freedom for the 219 Chibok girls have been rekindled, with preliminary talks between the Presidency and some Boko Haram leaders.

The new deal is being brokered by some confidants of the Presidency and the sect.

Some key commanders of Boko Haram in detention are also eager to be part of the initiative, The Nation learnt.

The new understanding came amid security reports that about 500 insurgents in a neighboring country are interested in renouncing terrorism – in line with the reconciliatory agenda of President Muhammadu Buhari.

But the President is being cautious in rushing at the new offer from some leaders of the sect to avoid what a source described as the “costly mistakes of the past administration of ex-President Goodluck Jonathan.

Buhari has asked security agents to “screen or certify” those spearheading the new negotiation to ensure that the government is dealing with the right Boko Haram leaders.

Some Boko Haram leaders are believed to have been overwhelmed by the President ‘s olive branch.

It was learnt that the President’s reconciliatory agenda made some confidants of the sect to initiate a fresh negotiation between the Presidency and some Boko Haram leaders.

It was gathered that at the preliminary level, a “cautious understanding” has been struck by both parties.

Some mileage gained so far include the following:

likely release of some Chibok girls to underscore the readiness of Boko Haram for negotiation;
involvement of some Boko Haram leaders, on whom the United States Government placed ransom, in the peace deal; and
commitment of the Buhari administration to the negotiation.
A source, who spoke in confidence, said: “The President’s appeal for peace in the Northeast is yielding dividends because a fresh facilitation of talks between the Presidency and Boko Haram has started.

“This latest negotiation, which is at the preliminary stage, is being promoted by some mutual confidants of the Presidency and Boko Haram.

“The new deal may lead to the release of some Chibok girls to set the tone for a comprehensive negotiation by both sides.”

Responding to a question, the source added: “The President is extremely cautious on this offer of negotiation.

“ Buhari has ordered security agencies to screen or certify those Boko Haram commanders interested in facilitating this latest negotiation to ensure that they are bonafide leaders of the sect.

“The position of the President is that why he is not averse to a peace deal, the Federal Government must avoid the costly mistakes of the past which led to a waste of time and huge resources.

“The President wants the release of the Chibok girls and quick restoration of peace to the Northeast; he is ready to negotiate with the right people for sustainable results.”

But there are strong indications that the leader of the sect, Imam Abubakar Shekau, is yet to be involved in the new deal.

“I think we are still at the preliminary stage. At the right time, there is a way the negotiation offer will be forwarded to their leader.

“But the fact that some Boko Haram commanders, whom US placed ransom upon, might be part of the negotiation shows that the crisis can be resolved, if all hands are on deck, “ another source added.

The defunct Joint Task Force(JTF) in the Northeast on November 23, 2012 placed ransom on 19 leaders of Boko Haram.

The list had comprised five members of the Shurra Committee (the highest making body of the sect) and 14 Boko Haram commanders.

But one of the Shurra Committee members, Mohammed Zangina (a.k.a Mallam Abdullahi/Alh. Musa) was allegedly killed in a shoot-out with the Joint Task Force(JTF) in Maiduguri.

With Zangina out, those still wanted are four members of the Shurra Committee of the sect, Imam Abubakar Shekau (N50million); Habibu Yusuf (a.k.a Asalafi) N25million; Khalid Albarnawai (N25million); and Momodu Bama (N25 million).

The fate of Momodu Bama was also unknown as at press time, following conflicting reports on whether he is alive or dead.

The Boko Haram Commanders being sought for by the JTF are Abu Saad (N10million); Abba Kaka (N10million); Abdulmalik Bama (N10million) Umar Fulata(N10million); Alhaji Mustapha (Massa) Ibrahim (N10million); Abubakar Suleiman-Habu (a.k.a Khalid) N10million; Hassan Jazair N10million; Ali Jalingo (N10million); Alhaji Musa Modu (N10million); Bashir Aketa (N10million); Abba Goroma (N10million); Ibrahim Bashir (N10million); Abubakar Zakariya (N10million); and Tukur Ahmed Mohammed (N10million).

Buhari’s “peace agenda” has motivated 500 Boko Haram members in a neighboring country to signify interest in renouncing terrorism.

A third source said: “These 500 insurgents said they were specifically encouraged by the rapprochement of the President.

“They have offered to surrender in return for integration by the administration of the President.”

The Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Mallam Garba Shehu, said: “If the President gets the right partners in doing a deal, he will consider a peaceful resolution. He has said that unambiguously in the course of the visit to the U.S. If that doesn’t work out, the President has the will and willingness to crush terror using the army.”


http://thenationonlineng.net/presidency-boko-haram-begin-talks/

emmalezy:
[img]http://1.bp..com/-AxxPP-FqjPk/VbYZ0EB128I/AAAAAAAGB0k/nMhxuAVFGWw/s1600/1.jpg[/img]
Have an idea what it is so you don't get over-billed. See the rest after the cut..
[img]http://4.bp..com/-WsOYYVTVnm0/VbYZ0dN7-VI/AAAAAAAGB0o/MyAgiStoP2s/s1600/CK6MkknVAAA5KZz.jpg[/img]

source
http://www.reportnaija.com/2015/07/list-of-approved-trafficvehicle.html

cc lalasticlala

Thanks for this list.

Army Arrests 3 Igbo Traders Supplying Ammunition To Boko Haram



The three suspected gun runners of Igbo origin, who were heading to the North from Imo State, were intercepted in Nsukka, Enugu State, by officers and men of the Nigerian Army while travelling in a bus.Items recovered from them include 40 AK47 magazines, 4 boxes of AK47 live ammunition,100 pieces of live cartridges, one piece of Denim Mopol khaki and charms concealed in a cap.

One of the army officers who spoke to reporters under anonymity disclosed that a police corporal serving in Imo State Police Command was also involved in the arms running.

He said: “When we asked the occupants of the vehicle to come down, we discovered a police corporal in uniform among them. The corporal on getting down pretended to be pressed; he later ran away.

– Source: Abuja Voice


http://www.osundefender.org/?p=169177

First Thing I Learnt From Dr David Oyedepo
MY FIRST LESSON FROM DR DAVID OYEDEPO

As told by Pastor Sam Adeyemi.

The first day I went to Canaanland, Ota to see Bishop David Oyedepo was a memorable one full of lessons. I had met him at the National Ecumenical Centre, Abuja where I first told him I wanted him to mentor me in ministry; because I needed the same grace of effortless accomplishments on his life and ministry.david_oyedepo

He had his PA give me his complimentary card, then told me to come to his office at Canaanland, Ota. I was so excited that I couldnt wait for the Independence Day National Christain Service to end at the Ecumenical Centre so I could dash home and tell my wife about my encounter with the bishop.

On the appointed date, I went to Canaanland, Ota with my wife Nike to see the bishop. We waited for six hours and could not see him. There was a crowd of people also waiting. He is a thoroughly busy person, and he gives a good measure of time to each person that enters the office.

I was totally disappointed that day. I thought he would tell his orderlies and PA to bring me inside immediately once they saw me; because I was Pastor Sam Adeyemi of Daystar Christain Center.Pastor Sam Adeyemi

By 3pm, we were all told to go home and come at another appointed day; without as much as any explanation. Since I entered full time ministry, that was my first time of having to wait for an audience with someone; to wait for a full six hours!

I went home angry. I told myself I wont go there again. “What sort of thing is this?” “How can I stay there and waste a whole day without seeing the bishop?” “Dont I have other things to do?” I kept fuming to myself at home. I couldnt calm down to piece together all that happened at Canaanland that day. For all I cared, the bishop knew I was coming that day to see him.

But my wife kept telling me to be patient so as to get what I want. Nike talked me into going back to canaanland for another wait for the bishop. I finally determined that I must see him, no matter the time it would take.

On the new date of appointment, I went again with my wife and waited another six hours before we were sent home. I had cancelled a lot of meetings and shifted a dozen appointments to go back to Canaanland, Ota. I was so thoroughly washed down by that second disappointment.

It then happened for the third time before my wife stopped talking me into going again. She allowed me to make my decision. I had had enough. I went home and got busy. I neither called the bishop during this my period of total hands-on-ministry, nor went to see him again. I simply bought all his books, and a thousand tapes of the bishop. I read the books till they became a part of me. I listened to the tapes at home, in the office, and when I’m driving. I soaked myself in the work of the ministry. We started many projects in our church, including setting up schools, orphanages, and the Daystar Leadership Academy. I didn’t bother to call nor try fixing another appointment with his PAs.

Six months later, we met at the domestic wing of the Murtala Mohammed International Airport in Lagos, and you should have seen the look of surprise and happiness at the same time on the bishop’s face.

“This my son. Where on earth have you been?” Did you travel to Mars?” He hugged me so tight as if his life depended on it. He was all smiles. He started asking me questions about how ministry has been going, and I answered excitedly, with all the clarity he wanted.

We found a seat in the lounge and talked for about 30 minutes; because the flight was delayed by 30 minutes. He kept asking questions and I kept talking.

The next day, the bishop called me. He called me again after three days. From then on, seeing him became less cumbersome. That was how I became a regular keynote speaker at the Covenant University Special Programmes on Character Development and National Transformation.

Today, the bishop pubicly refers to me as one of his favourite sons in ministry, and our ministry has grown in leaps and bounds because I sense the same grace upon the bishop operating in our ministry too.

TAKE HOME LESSON
Deep calls unto deep. Men of destiny, men of purpose, men who are busy and occupied with their primary assignment on the earth can easily recognise themselves across a hall when they meet.

All things being equal, busy people love busy people. Busy people rarely love to associate with, or accomodate people who slow down their momentum.

So whenever you find yourself complaining about an apperant lack of attention from a busy person, the solution is to just go and get busy with your life and assignment. First of all, discover your specific assignment, your niche, and grow in your influence. Get busy!

This is because recognising each other when you’re both at the top is far easier and effortless than recognising each other at the crowded ground level. The high decibel of noise and purposeless activity of the crowd at the ground level, comprising of people of all sort of character and orientation will never allow that to happen.

Up your game!

- See more at: http://247nigerianewsupdate.co/first-thing-i-learnt-from-dr-david-oyedepo/#sthash.i5bY6Zmx.dpuf

10 Conspiracy Theories That Turned Out To Be True


Jake Anderson
May 18, 2015

(ANTIMEDIA) In recent years, the mere notion of the conspiracy theory has increasingly been stigmatized and ridiculed by mainstream news outlets, internet trolls, and “rational” thinkers. Yet, with powerful revelations by Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, WikiLeaks, and generations of intrepid journalists, we now know that many outlandish geopolitical and domestic “conspiracy theories” were and are cold-blooded truths of the modern world. Here are 10 that are well-documented and profoundly disturbing…

1) The Gulf of Tonkin Incident
The Gulf of Tonkin incident, a major escalator of US involvement in the Vietnam War, never actually occurred.

It’s true. The original incident – also sometimes referred to as the USS Maddox Incident(s) –involved the destroyer USS Maddox supposedly engaging three North Vietnamese Navy torpedo boats as part of an intelligence patrol. The Maddox fired almost 300 shells.

President Lyndon B. Johnson promptly drafted the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which became his administration’s legal justification for military involvement in Vietnam. The problem is the event never happened.

In 2005, a declassified internal National Security Agency study revealed that there were NO North Vietnamese naval vessels present during the incident. So, what was the Maddox firing at? In 1965, President Johnson commented: “For all I know, our Navy was shooting at whales out there.”

Worth pointing out: The NSA’s own historian, Robert J. Hanyok, wrote a report stating that the agency had deliberately distorted intelligence reports in 1964. He concluded: “The parallels between the faulty intelligence on Tonkin Gulf and the manipulated intelligence used to justify the Iraq War make it all the more worthwhile to re-examine the events of August 1964.”

2) Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment

Between 1932 and 1972, the US Public Health Service conducted a clinical study on rural African American men who had contracted syphilis. The Public Health Service never informed these men they had a sexually transmitted disease, nor did they offer treatment, even after penicillin became available as a cure in the 1940s.

Tragically, it’s true. Rather than receiving treatment, the subjects of these studies were told they had “bad blood.”

When World War II began, 250 of the men registered for the draft and were only then, for the first time, informed they had syphilis. Even then, the PHS denied them treatment.

By the early 1970s, 128 of the original 399 men had died of syphilis and syphilis-related complications, 40 of their wives had the disease and 19 of their children were born with congenital syphilis.

Worth pointing out: A similar experiment conducted on prisoners, soldiers, and patients of a mental hospital in Guatemala actually involved the PHS deliberately infecting the patients and then treating them with antibiotics.
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3) Project MKUltra

The CIA ran secret mind control experiments on US citizens from the 1950s until 1973.

It’s so true that in 1995 President Clinton actually issued a formal apology on behalf of the US government.

Essentially, the CIA used drugs, electronics, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, verbal and sexual abuse, and torture to conduct experimental behavioral engineering experiments on subjects. The program subcontracted hundreds of these projects to over 80 different institutions, including universities, hospitals, prisons, and pharmaceutical companies.

Most of this was uncovered in 1977 when a Freedom of Information Act exposed 20,000 previously classified documents and triggered a series of Senate hearings. Because CIA Director Richard Helms had most of the more damning MKULTRA files destroyed in 1973, much of what actually occurred during these experiments is still unknown and, of course, not a single person was brought to justice.

Worth pointing out: There is growing evidence that Theodore Kaczynski, otherwise known as the Unabomber, was a subject of the Project MKULTRA while he was at Harvard in the late 1950s.

4) Operation Northwoods

The Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US military drew up and approved plans to create acts of terrorism on US soil in order to sway the American public into supporting a war against Cuba.

It’s true and the documents are out there.

Fortunately, President Kennedy rejected the plan, which included: innocent Americans being shot dead on the streets; boats carrying refugees fleeing Cuba to be sunk on the high seas; a wave of violent terrorism to be launched in Washington, D.C., Miami, and elsewhere; people being framed for bombings they did not commit; and planes being hijacked.

Additionally, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, led by Chairman Lyman Lemnitzer, planned to fabricate evidence that would implicate Fidel Castro and Cuban refugees as the perpetrators of the attacks.

Perhaps most horrifyingly, Lemnitzer planned for an elaborately staged incident whereby a Cuban aircraft would attack and shoot down a plane full of college students.

5) CIA Drug Trafficking

During the 1980s, the CIA facilitated the sale of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods street gangs of Los Angeles and funneled millions in drug profits to a Latin American guerrilla army.

It’s convoluted and complex, but it’s true.

Gary Webb’s book Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion outlines how CIA-backed Contras smuggled cocaine into the U.S. and then distributed crack to Los Angeles gangs, pocketing the profits. The CIA directly aided the drug dealers to raise money for the Contras.

“This drug network,” Webb wrote in a 1996 San Jose MercuryNews article, “opened the first pipeline between Colombia’s cocaine cartels and the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles, a city now known as the ‘crack’ capital of the world. The cocaine that flooded in helped spark a crack explosion in urban America . . . and provided the cash and connections needed for L.A.’s gangs to buy automatic weapons.”

Worth pointing out: On December 10, 2004, Webb committed suicide under suspicious circumstances, namely the fact that he used two bullets to shoot himself in the head.

6) Operation Mockingbird

In the late 1940s, as the Cold War was just getting underway, the CIA launched a top secret project called Operation Mockingbird. Their goal was to buy influence and control among the major media outlets. They also planned to put journalists and reporters directly on the CIA payroll, which some claim is ongoing to this day. The architects of this plan were Frank Wisner, Allen Dulles, Richard Helms, and Philip Graham (publisher of The Washington Post), who planned to enlist American news organizations and journalists to basically become spies and propagandists.

Their list of entrenched agents eventually included journalists from ABC, NBC, CBS, Time, Newsweek, Associated Press, United Press International (UPI), Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps-Howard, and Copley News Service. By the 1950s, the CIA had infiltrated the nation’s businesses, media, and universities with tens of thousands of on-call operatives.

Fortunately, our media is no longer lured in by corporations and governments to disseminate propaganda and disinformation….hmmm, never mind–strike that last statement.

7) COINTELPRO

COINTELPRO was a series of clandestine, illegal FBI projects that infiltrated domestic political organizations to discredit and smear them. This included critics of the Vietnam War, civil rights leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King and a wide variety of activists and journalists.

The acts committed against them included psychological warfare, slander using forged documents and false reports in the media, harassment, wrongful imprisonment and, according to some, intimidation and possibly violence and assassination.

Similar and possibly more sophisticated tactics are still used today, including NSA monitoring (see #10).

Operation Snow White

Operation Snow White is the name given to an unprecedented infiltration of the US government by the Church of Scientology during the 1970s. They stole classified government files regarding Scientology from dozens of government agencies.

In 1977, the FBI finally cracked Snow White open which led to the arrest and imprisonment of a senior Church official.

The core mission of the program was to expose and legally expunge “all false and secret files of the nations of operating areas” and to enable Church seniors and L. Ron Hubbard himself to “frequent all Western nations without threat.” By the end, of course, there was nothing legal about their endeavors.

9) Secret Global Economic Policies

For years, activists who feared a sinister globalist corporatocracy were told they were being paranoid. Whether you want to call it the New World Order or not: they were right.

In 2013, WikiLeaks released the secretly negotiated draft text for the entire TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) Intellectual Property Rights Chapter. It revealed a closed-door regional free trade agreement being negotiated by countries in the Asia-Pacific region, including Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States, and Vietnam.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation says TPP has “extensive negative ramifications for users’ freedom of speech, right to privacy and due process, and [will] hinder peoples’ abilities to innovate.”

Worth pointing out: In June 2014, WikiLeaks revealed the even more far-reaching Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA), a 50-country agreement that will promote unprecedented levels of privatization across the world. The agreement will essentially prevent governments from returning public services into public hands. This could dramatically affect our ability to enact environmental regulations and keep workers safe.

10) The US Government Illegally Spies On Its Own Citizens

This used to be laughed at as a dystopian fantasy derived from an overactive imagination, Orwell’s 1984, and a juvenile distrust of the government. When you claimed “they” were spying on you, people labeled you a paranoid conspiracy theorist, a tinfoil hat-wearing loon.

Even after it was revealed that the NSA has been illegally eavesdropping on us and collecting our cell phone metadata for over a decade, people still hedged on the meaning of it. Yes, they are analyzing our transmissions, but it’s under the auspices of national security. “In a post 9/11 world” certain liberties must be sacrificed for the sake of security, right?

It turns out that is patently untrue. Not only is there no evidence that the NSA has protected us from terrorism, there is growing evidence that it makes us more vulnerable. Thanks to revelations about the NSA and their Prism project, we know that the scope of the NSA’s eavesdropping is even beyond what we originally believed.

In early June of 2014, the Washington Post reported that almost 90% of the data being collected by NSA surveillance programs is from Internet users with no connection to terrorist activities. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, this is in clear violation of the constitution.

The ACLU is pursuing a lawsuit against the NSA, claiming that the dragnet-style mass collection of data violates the Fourth Amendment right of privacy as well as the First Amendment rights of free speech and association.


http://theantimedia.org/10-conspiracy-theories-that-turned-out-to-be-true/

OAU workers suspend strike as Ooni intervenes

JULY 23, 2015 : SODIQ OYELEKE

Aggrieved members of the Non-Accademic Staff Union, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, have suspended a strike they embarked upon about three weeks ago.

The strike was to protest the alleged non-payment of their 64-month hazard allowance.

It was gathered that the workers suspended their strike after a meeting on Wednesday with the school management and the Ooni of Ife, Oba Okunade Sijuwade, as the mediator.

The workers suspended the strike following a promise by the management to pay them palliatives

When contacted, the Chairman of NASU, OAU chapter, Wole Odewunmi, confirmed the suspension of the strike. He said, “We have agreed to suspend the strike following the Ooni’s intervention. Our members will be resuming on Friday because we still need to put some things in place.”

It would be recalled that the workers embarked on a protest over their unpaid hazard allowance.

In a bid to show their grievances, they paralysed activities on the university campus by closing the library and the senate building. They also blocked the major entrances and refused to supply light and water to the campus.

As the crisis deepened, the authorities of the university closed the school. The authorities later ordered students and the workers to resume in less than a week.

To also prevent further protests, no fewer than three Armoured Police Carriers were positioned close to the university’s gate with about 100 policemen seen at the school’s gate on Monday.

The management, through a press release by the university’s Public Relations Officer, Mr. Biodun Olarewaju, last Thursday, vowed to punish any worker who did not resume on Tuesday (today).

“These illegal activities have been reported to the appropriate security agencies. In view of the total disregard for constituted authority and the recalcitrant behavior by members of NASU, all NASU members are hereby directed to return to their duty posts on or before Tuesday, July 21, failing which appropriate disciplinary measures will be taken against erring members of the university,” the management had said.

http://www.punchng.com/news/oau-workers-suspend-strike-as-ooni-intervenes/

CONT'D

AMANPOUR: Let me ask you because, look, you came to power on a platform that you would do better than the previous president, in all regards: security, corruption, economy, et cetera. But there have been hundreds of people killed since you’ve become president. How can you do any better?
BUHARI: I think I have — I can be held to my promises for the next three and three-quarter years ahead of me. And I think (INAUDIBLE) also is too early for anybody to pass judgment on my campaign promises.

AMANPOUR: What about your campaign promise to root out corruption? If they turned out that some of the guilty ones were members of your own party or your own associates, would you crack down on them, too?
BUHARI: I just have to. There isn’t going to be any party member or any personality that can escape justice.

AMANPOUR: Mr. President, are you disappointed that President Obama is yet again not going to Nigeria, the biggest and most economically powerful country in Africa?
BUHARI: Well, I wouldn’t say I was disappointed. But how I wished he will change his mind and go to Nigeria.

AMANPOUR: Did you ask him? Did he say he would?
BUHARI: Well, I will ask him. I will send a formal invitation.

AMANPOUR: So finally, let me ask you about a previous African leader, a former African leader, the former dictator of Chad, Hissene Habre, who is being tried — or at least they’re trying to try him — in Senegal. And he’s refusing to cooperate. Do you support that process of trying an accused African leader in Africa rather than at the International Criminal Court?
BUHARI: Justice is justice, whether it’s done in Africa or elsewhere in the world. The important thing is let justice be done, whatever evidence the prosecution has in Senegal. I think they should — you should proceed to make it available to the world and prosecute him according to international law on human rights.

AMANPOUR: So you — so you support that process?
BUHARI: I support any process that is based on justice.

AMANPOUR: President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria, thank you for joining me from Washington today.
BUHARI: Thank you very much.


Culled from Today Internet Newspaper

CONT'D

Full Transcript of President Buhari's Latest CNN Interview


On Tuesday, President Muhammadu Buhari was interviewed by CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. Read full transcript of the interview below:


AMANPOUR: President Buhari, welcome back to the program.
BUHARI: Thank you.

AMANPOUR: Mr. President, you have asked the United States to help you in the fight against Boko Haram. What exactly did you ask in this regard? What do you need? And what answer did the president, Obama, give you?
BUHARI: United States, leader of the G7, promised to do what they can to help Nigeria. So we have brought our requirements in terms of training, equipping and intelligence gathering for Nigeria to be able to fight Boko Haram.

AMANPOUR: And you mentioned the economy and the falling in oil prices over the last many months. How are you going to deal with that? Because that is really what your people want.
BUHARI: My people firstly, I believe, they want the security (ph) in the country to be stabilized so that normal life, both in the southern part of the country, where the militants are still sabotaging oil installations and kidnapping people and demanding ransom, and in the northeast of the country, where Boko Haram is still active. This is the military occupation of Nigeria now and is the reality of (INAUDIBLE). Nothing will work until the country is secure.

AMANPOUR: But despite your vows to tackle Boko Haram, there are reports in your own country that there have been at least 400 deaths by that group since you became president. Added to that, Amnesty International reports that your military has totally lost the credibility and trust of the people because of the systematic human rights abuses, the killing of some 8,000 people. How do you expect your military to be able to go against Boko Haram, to get the trust of the people instead of being a platform for Boko Haram’s grievances?
BUHARI: Well, I have just mentioned that, under Lake Chad Basin Commission, we have agreed to form a multinational joint task force. So whatever happened before that decision was taken, we have to allow further investigation to verify the question of human rights abuse. And with that, I’m sure you must have known the decision taken by this government, the federal government of Nigeria, in changing the military command.

AMANPOUR: What about the girls, the famous Chibok girls, the 200 or so who were abducted so long ago? Yet again there’s been a suggestion that the Boko Haram captors may trade them, may seek to trade them for incarcerated inmates, who they want to get out. Is your government willing to trade those girls in that regard?
BUHARI: We have to be very careful about the credibility of various Boko Haram leaderships coming up and declaring that they can deliver. We have to be very careful indeed. And we are taking our time because we want to bring them safe back to their parents and to their school.

AMANPOUR: So are you in principle against or would you consider negotiating with Boko Haram if you can verify the credibility of those who approach you?
BUHARI: I cannot be (INAUDIBLE). I told you our main objective as a government is to secure those girls safe and sound back to their schools and rehabilitated them to go back to normal life. So if we are convinced that the leadership has presented itself can deliver those girls, (INAUDIBLE) who will be (INAUDIBLE) negotiate what they want.

http://www.nigerianbulletin.com/threads/full-transcript-of-president-buharis-latest-cnn-interview.114859/

All new Met police constables MUST be able to speak a second language


From today if you want a job with the Met Police you'll need to speak these languages
Only applicants with a second language will be accepted in to the Met’s current recruitment drive.
Fancy becoming a copper in the Met? Well you had better start brushing up on your Punjabi or Greek then.

That is if you want to apply to the London force during their current recruitment drive.

The Metropolitan Police have announced their during their current intake on constables they will only accept applicants with a second language.

This advert has now appeared on the Met Police’s website.

And don’t think your GCSE French will get you in either because they are pretty specific about what they want.

Here they are:

Yoruba (Nigeria)
Hebrew
Arabic
Hindi
Punjabi
Italian
German
Turkish
Greek
Spanish
Polish
Portuguese
Sinhali (Sri Lanka)
Bengali
A spokesman from the Met told Metro.co.uk that this current recruitment drive will last about four weeks.


At that point they said they will review the policy.

The drive has been launched to help officers better interact with London’s ethnically diverse communities.

However interestingly enough neither Somali or French are on the list.



Somali is the capital’s third most spoken language and the London is the sixth biggest French speaking city in the world.



Read more: http://metro.co.uk/2015/07/20/all-new-met-police-constables-must-be-able-to-speak-a-second-language-5304857/#ixzz3gd09m1LD

Obama expresses confidence in Buhari’s leadership style


Barack Obama welcomed Nigeria’s new president to the Oval Office on Monday and praised him for working to bring “safety, security and peace” to a nation challenged by economic strains, a history of corruption and violence unleashed by the Islamic extremist group Boko Haram.

Obama met with President Muhammadu Buhari less than eight weeks after Buhari took office, to underscore the importance the US attaches to good relations with Nigeria.

The US president said Buhari had “a very clear agenda in defeating Boko Haramand extremists of all sorts inside of his country.

“And he has a very clear agenda in terms of rooting out the corruption that too often has held back the economic growth and prosperity of his country,” Obama said.

Obama, speaking to reporters at the outset of the meeting, said the US hoped to partner with the African nation “so that Nigeria ends up being not only an anchor of prosperity and stability in the eastern part of the continent, but can also be an outstanding role model for developing countries around the world”.

He said he would discuss with Buhari how the two nations can cooperate on counter-terrorism and how the US “can be helpful in addressing some of the corruption issues that have held Nigeria back”.

Buhari said Nigeria would be “ever grateful” to the US for its support of free elections in his country. Buhari said US and European pressures to ensure the election was “fair and credible led us to where we are now”.

US relations with Nigeria soured over failures by the government and military, including the inability to locate more than 200 schoolgirls, most of them Christian, who were kidnapped by Boko Haram from the northern town of Chibok in April 2014. The abduction led to international condemnation and a campaign to “Bring Back Our Girls” that reached as far as the White House.

The then president Goodluck Jonathan was angered by the US refusal to sell his government helicopter gunships and retaliated by halting a US military training programme.

Relations are expected to improve under Buhari, a 72-year-old former military dictator who has pledged allegiance to democracy and promised to address US concerns.

Obama extended his invitation for a visit to Buhari almost immediately after he was declared the winner of the March election.

“This feels to us like Nigeria is at an important moment in which there can be real reforms across the board,” Grant Harris, the senior director for African affairs at the National Security Council, told reporters last week.

“We’re looking forward to what we can do with a president who has staked out an agenda that we think is the right agenda at the right time.”

Nigeria’s new leader has been criticized for being slow to form a cabinet. He has yet to name any ministers.

Last week, Buhari fired the entire top echelon of the military, which he has accused of corruption that prevents what once was Africa’s mightiest armed force from curbing the Islamist insurgency based in Nigeria’s northeast. The insurgency has killed more than 13,000 people and driven another 1.5 million from their homes.

Besides the Oval Office meeting with Obama, Buhari is to meet with Vice-President Joe Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry and other senior administration officials.


http://www.sundayadelajablog.com/archives/745

Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu: At last, the Jagaban breaks his silence
Posted By: AYO ESANon: July 19, 2015


After being in the background for some week now and more especially with the crisis bedeviling his party, the National Leader of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu came into the open last Tuesday, when he led other party stalwarts to the Presidential Villa where he held Ramadan breaking of the fast with President Muhammadu Buhari.

Obviously, the dinner with the president was held to further the peace initiatives by the ruling party to reconcile the warring factions in the National Assembly.

It would be recalled that the APC lawmakers in both chambers of the national assembly have been at loggerheads since the elections last month that threw up Senator Bukola Saraki as Senate President and Hon. Yakubu Dogara as Speaker of the House of Representatives. Their election was in defiance of the preferred nominees of the party for the two positions.

Loyalists of Tinubu lost in the race for the leadership of the national assembly and since then, he has refused to speak on the issue either in the open or in public.

After the breaking of fast with Mr President, hordes of journalists who have been looking for an opportunity to get Tinubu’s response to the crisis in the national assembly bombarded him right there in the Villa.

Tinubu, while talking to them was evasive in his response, stating: “that is an area where I am very cautious of my position and my utterances. I still want to keep my side of the interpretation or analysis to be able to achieve a resolution of the matter as quickly as possible.”

He stated that he was in support of what the president had carefully enumerated and articulated to the party on the issue, adding: “the party is supreme. The party must have disciplined leadership and followers. The party’s process must be respected because that is the confidence and the trust of the people.

“However, in every environment, we could have conflicts and conflict resolution mechanisms would be applied to resolve all the problems so we are there.

“There is honour in every struggle and every competition; there must be honour in victory too.”
Tinubu also used the opportunity to deny the claims by some of his antagonists that he has been making demands from President Muhammadu Buhari, as to who the latter should appoint to his government.

He said he respects Buhari and remains loyal to him.

He said: “I have no demands. If you understand what party politics and leadership is all about, it is about loyalty and commitment to the values, which the leadership believes in.

“I believe in what the president believes in. I respect him and I stand firmly loyal to his cause. So you can go to any length of speculation that you might want, I have not responded to all of that because I understand the president and the president understands me clearly.”

He further called on Nigerians to ignore the claims by the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, that, Buhari was too slow, saying that the President could not be expected to clean up the mess left behind by the PDP’s 16 years of bad governance in 30 days.

“We are different, we cannot be PDP, we are APC, and we will not repeat their mistakes. We know their mistakes, errors, we understand what Nigeria wanted and Nigerians gave this party victory because of our manifesto,” he said.

“We are pro-people, we are progressives. We have had a conservative government in the last 16 years; this is a progressive party, just coming in barely 30 days.

“We understand the hopes of Nigerians, we understand the expectations of Nigerians, we believe in that expectation and in our promise of prosperity to the people. We will not change that,” he said.

Tinubu‎ described the APC as armoured personnel carrier, APC, saying it represented the diversity of Nigeria.
While thanking Buhari for the opportunity to break fast with him and for bringing together people from different background regardless of religious affiliations, he said: “We believe this diversity will continue to propel us for economic growth under your leadership.

“This is the first Ramadan after the election, we thank God for cutting down the opponents’ 60 years of fake promises to 16 years.
“I heard them say we are slow. Yes, we didn’t campaign to be fire fighters, but planners and meticulous ones at that. A latrine of 16 years can’t be cleaned up in 30 days because the mess is much.

“Mr. President, you started well, you hit the ground running. You promised Nigerians that you will address security and your first meeting with the Economic Community of West African States ( ECOWAS) presidents, was on security because we cannot fight it alone.

“You have been to other places; if they think it is a game of Ludo, we will say it is serious business. If they forgot G7, we will remind them.
“We have faith in you Mr. President; we have faith in your capacity and uprightness. I’m here filled up and not fed up.
“We promise to continue to be with you and support you, no matter what they are saying we are not re-running the election until four years time.

“We pray to God to give us four more years of this month and pray to Him to forgive our misdeeds and for peace and stability.

Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu was born on March 29, 1952, in Lagos . He attended St. John’s Primary School, Aroloya, Lagos, and Children’s Home School in Ibadan . Tinubu went to the United States in 1975, where he studied first at Richard J. Dailey College in Chicago, Illinois , and then at Chicago State University . He graduated in 1979 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Accounting.

His political career began in 1992, when he was elected to the Nigerian Senate representing the Lagos West constituency in the short-lived Nigerian Third Republic. After the results of the June 12, 1993 presidential elections were annulled, Tinubu became a founding member of the pro-democracy movement, the National Democratic Coalition, NADECO, which mobilized support for the restoration of democracy and recognition of the 12 June results. He went into exile in 1994 and returned to the country in 1998, after the death of military dictator, Gen Sani Abacha, which ushered in a new democratic order.

In April 1999, he stood for the position of Executive Governor of Lagos State on the platform of Alliance for Democracy, AD, as the party’s governorship candidate .He won the gubernatorial election.

Tinubu completed his second term tenure as Lagos State Governor on May 29, 2007.

After the expiration of his tenure , the Jagaban Borgu , as he is fondly called by his admires, handed over to his political godson, Mr. Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN) of the Action Congress (AC) . Before then,. Fashola had been Chief of Staff to Bola Tinubu.


http://nationalmirroronline.net/new/asiwaju-bola-ahmed-tinubu-at-last-the-jagaban-breaks-his-silence/

Does it really matter if you pull a USB out before it safely ejects?
Because life's too short.

FIONA MACDONALD10 JUL 2015

We've all been guilty of ripping our USB drives out of our computers instead of ejecting them properly, only to receive the judgemental pop up telling us we really shouldn't have done that. But when everything on the USB works fine next time you plug it in, you can't help but wonder: does it actually do anything when you safely eject your disk before removing it?

Well, we've done a little background research, and it turns out that it does. In fact, waiting those extra 30 seconds to safely eject could help to properly save your data and software. But the risk really depends on your operating system, and what you're actually doing with your USB drive.


As Phillip Remaker explains over at Quora (in a response that now has more than 11,000 views), our operating systems have been programmed to treat our external drives - like USB sticks - like they'll always be there. It expects the files on it to remain accessible indefinitely and this changes the way it interacts with a flash drive.

This means if a program on your computer is just reading a file and not actually saving any information to the drive, it's probably not going mess things up too much for the files on your USB stick if you suddenly yank it out. But you do risk confusing your computer, says Remaker. "Symptoms could include: Lost data, corrupted filesystems, crashing programs, or hanging computers requiring a reboot."

On the other hand, if you've altered or uploaded new information to your drive at some point, no matter how long ago, things are a bit more risky. That's because our operating systems are too efficient to simply stop what they're doing and save information whenever you tell it to. Instead, most are programmed to do what's known as 'write caching'.

Rachel Z. Arndt explains what that means over at Popular Mechanics:

"For efficiency's sake, they don't actually write the files you're moving to the disk until there are multiple files to move. Ejecting the disk is a way of telling the computer that it's time to do the writing, regardless of whether the computer deems it efficient. When you remove a flash drive without warning the computer first, it might not have finished writing to the drive."

This means that pulling your external drive out without warning could result in the file you just saved being lost forever - even if you saved it hours ago.

So how does the "safely remove hardware" command fix this problem? As Remaker explains, the command does the following things:

It flushes all active writes to disk.
It alerts all programs (that know how to be alerted) that the disk is going away, and to take appropriate action.
It alerts the user when programs have failed to take action, and still are holding files open.
Of course, modern operating systems are getting better and better and preparing for us to pull the rug out from under them by trying to write and read files as quickly as possible. Windows has even introduced a feature called "Optimise for Quick Removal" that you can select to make sure files are written quickly, rather than by write caching, which is the most efficient way.

But you can still never be sure exactly when your computer is done with your external flash drive, and that makes pulling it out a big gamble. Bottom line? "You can remove a disk at any time, but you are at the mercy of how well programs using the disk cope with the sudden disappearance of that disk," says Remaker.

So go on and continue living life on the edge, ripping those USB drives out with abandon if you really don't have the 30 seconds to spare. But just remember what's at stake next time you're saving precious information (say, the new Game of Thrones episode...legally downloaded, of course) onto your USB drive.


http://www.sciencealert.com/does-it-really-matter-if-you-pull-a-usb-out-without-waiting-for-it-to-safely-eject

UK to force out Nigerian students, others after graduation …ban them from working



Nigerian students studying in the United Kingdom, and their counterparts from other countries, will be forced to leave the country after graduation.
A fresh policy ordered by Home Secretary, Theresa May, seeks to ban foreign students, with the exception of those from EU countries, from working in Britain after completing their studies.
The policy requires that they return to their countries and reapply for a visa to return and work in the country.
It is argued that many students are using colleges as a “back door to a British work visa”.
According to official figures, out of the 121,000 non-EU students that entered the UK in the 12 months to June 2014, only 51,000 left.
This indicated a net influx of 70,000 students.
Already, May has banned 870 UK colleges from taking foreign students as a means to stop student visas being used as an easy way to enter the UK before getting a job and claiming benefits.
The new rules will deny non-EU students the right to work while in the UK and prevent them from applying for visa extensions on completion of their studies.
Thus, they will have to return to their home countries and apply to return under a work visa.
Several stakeholders in the education sector have however argued that the new rules would damage businesses and lead to a loss of important skills.


http://pulse.ng/student/bad-news-uk-to-force-out-nigerian-students-others-after-graduation-ban-them-from-working-id3977333.html?utm_campaign=art-bad-news-uk-to-force-out-nigerian-students-others-after-graduation-ban-them-from-working-2015-07-16&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook

Fear Of Buhari: IBB Returns ‘Part’ Of $12.4bn Gulf Oil Windfall Money




Unconfirmed reports indicates that former Nigerian head of state , Gen Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida has allegedly returned ‘part’ of $12.4bn Gulf oil windfall money.

According to a source within the presidency, the retired gap tooth general “secretly returned the money this weekend to the nations coffers”.

Though our source could not elaborate on the details surrounding the sudden action of the retired Minna general.

Daily Onus recalled that a Federal High Court in Abuja has dismissed the suit filed by civil society groups against the Attorney General of the Federation, AGF, and the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN.

The presiding judge, Gabriel Kolawole, delivered the ruling on Thursday November 29 2012 in Abuja. The judge averred that the applicants lack the locus standi to institute the case.

Mr. Kolawole however said the plaintiffs should not be seen as busy bodies but patriotic citizens.

Six civil society groups, including the Socio-Economic and Accountability Project (SERAP), sued the Attorney- General of the Federation (AGF) and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) over the much publicised $12.4 billion oil windfall, which the country recorded between 1988 and 1992, while former military dictator, Ibrahim Babangida, was in power.

The groups wanted the court to compel the government to release a report of a probe panel headed by Pius Okigbo which probed the spending of the money by the government.

The Federal Government raised many arguments against the suit including: that the report was missing, only the AGF could demand for such a report, and the court had no jurisdiction to entertain the suit.

Former president Olusegun Obasanjo was reported to have returned $200 millions to the federation account, If Babangida’s case is finally confirmed he will be the second ex-president to have returned looted money back to Nigeria.

- See more at: http://dailyonus.com/fear-of-buhari-ibb-returns-part-of-12-4bn-gulf-oil-windfall-money/#sthash.InqIeRgu.fQywtPda.dpuf

Fear Of Buhari: IBB Returns ‘Part’ Of $12.4bn Gulf Oil Windfall Money




Unconfirmed reports indicates that former Nigerian head of state , Gen Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida has allegedly returned ‘part’ of $12.4bn Gulf oil windfall money.

According to a source within the presidency, the retired gap tooth general “secretly returned the money this weekend to the nations coffers”.

Though our source could not elaborate on the details surrounding the sudden action of the retired Minna general.

Daily Onus recalled that a Federal High Court in Abuja has dismissed the suit filed by civil society groups against the Attorney General of the Federation, AGF, and the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN.

The presiding judge, Gabriel Kolawole, delivered the ruling on Thursday November 29 2012 in Abuja. The judge averred that the applicants lack the locus standi to institute the case.

Mr. Kolawole however said the plaintiffs should not be seen as busy bodies but patriotic citizens.

Six civil society groups, including the Socio-Economic and Accountability Project (SERAP), sued the Attorney- General of the Federation (AGF) and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) over the much publicised $12.4 billion oil windfall, which the country recorded between 1988 and 1992, while former military dictator, Ibrahim Babangida, was in power.

The groups wanted the court to compel the government to release a report of a probe panel headed by Pius Okigbo which probed the spending of the money by the government.

The Federal Government raised many arguments against the suit including: that the report was missing, only the AGF could demand for such a report, and the court had no jurisdiction to entertain the suit.

Former president Olusegun Obasanjo was reported to have returned $200 millions to the federation account, If Babangida’s case is finally confirmed he will be the second ex-president to have returned looted money back to Nigeria.

- See more at: http://dailyonus.com/fear-of-buhari-ibb-returns-part-of-12-4bn-gulf-oil-windfall-money/#sthash.InqIeRgu.fQywtPda.dpuf

Nigerian Ex-Governor To Be Jailed In UK



The Metropolitan police in the United Kingdom have arrested the former Benue state governor Gabriel Suswam after he allegedly battered his wife.

After his arrest, the Metropolitan Police Domestic Violence Office initially held him at its London detention centre. He was later released on £5,000 bail.

According to nigeriancurrent.com, Suswam’s wife Yemisi placed an emergency call to the police from their luxury London home to report that the embattled governor had physically assaulted her.

She explained to the police dispatcher that during a minor argument in which she condemned her husbands questionable relationship with mistress ‘Shidoo’, Suswam battered her which prompted her to run for her life.

If found guilty, the ex-governor could be jailed for about six months in the UK under the Persons Act of 1861.

It was alleged Shidoo is beginning to gain more influence in the life of the ex-governor and as a result, Suswam, who has allegedly previously attacked his wife, increased the tempo.

In fact, a close family source revealed that Suswah had always told Yemisi he would legally marry Shidoo.

A family source described Shidoo as a very loving woman. “She was always helpful to the Benue people and that was what endeared her to our people. She was always ready to help. If any Benue person needed something from the former governor, Shidoo was always ready to help”, he said.

Like most governors, Suswam owns a permanent home in London which he visited while in office and has relocated to now that he has retired.
It was reported that the ex-governor sought refuge in the UK after he had ruled Benue state for eight years, in order to avoid the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.


http://www.naij.com/477052-nigerian-ex-governor-to-be-jailed-in-uk.html?utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=mgidnew&utm_campaign=mgid2&utm_term=30314&utm_content=1474205

President Buhari Drops Politicians Under EFCC Probe From His Cabinet List



Barring a last-minute change of mind on facts available to him, President Muhammadu Buhari may not appoint into his cabinet anybody under probe by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

It was also gathered yesterday that the President is under pressure from some eminent Nigerians, including a former President, to appoint ministers without further delay.

The President had promised to constitute his cabinet by September, but the eminent Nigerians, it was learnt, have advised that any further delay would be counter-productive.

Investigation by our correspondent revealed that anybody arrested, detained, quizzed, or arraigned by the EFCC may not make Buhari’s cabinet in line with his commitment to probity.

It was learnt that the heightening of arrest and arraignment of some Politically Exposed Persons by the EFCC and the delay in raising the Federal Executive Council may be a setback for such politicians and technocrats eyeing ministerial slots.

One of those who might be affected is the former Head of Service of the Federation, Mr. Steve Oronsaye, who was said to be in contention for either the Chief of Staff to the President or the Secretary to the Government of the Federation.

Oronsaye, who was arrested on Wednesday by the EFCC and might be prosecuted next week, is competing for the SGF slot with ex-governors Rotimi Amaechi, and Ogbonnaya Onu.

It was learnt that Oronsaye is a favoured candidate of former President Olusegun Obasanjo.



It was also gathered that the petition against ex-Governor Rabiu Kwankwaso before the EFCC was part of a plot by some politicians to abort plans to make him a minister.

Some forces and groups were said to have made a case for Kwankwaso as the next Minister of the Federal Capital Tertitory.

Others who may have difficulty in serving in Buhari’s government in any capacity are ex-governors Timpreye Sylva, Murtala Nyako, Prince Abubakar Audu, Danjuma Goje.

Although these former governors played a vital role in delivering their states to APC, they are all under trial in one form or the other with the cases dragging for about four to five years.

A reliable source said: “I think that those who have cases or undergoing investigation with EFCC or ICPC might not make the ministerial list until the allegations against them are sorted out.

“Although the law presumes these former governors innocent until proven guilty by the court, there may be a challenge in making them nominees because of public opinion.

“The list is being carefully screened in such a way that there will be no issues with their clearance in the Senate.”

Meanwhile, contrary to the alleged recommendation of the Ahmed Joda Transition Committee, the President may not be able to appoint 19 ministers.


http://thenationonlineng.net/new/buharis-cabinet-nominees-under-efcc-probe-face-tough-hurdles/

Poor budget: 2016 census may not hold, says NPC


JULY 10, 2015 : FRIDAY OLOKOR
2 Comments
The National Population Commission has hinted that the conduct of the population census and head count for all Nigerians scheduled for 2016 would depend on the willingness of Nigerians and the Federal Government because of poor budgetary allocation.

The commission also called for a review of The National Policy on Population to accommodate current realities “in view of recent changes in the demographic profile of the country.”

NPC said, “The review is to assess the performance of the programmes outlined in the policy and also to respond to emerging national and international issues in population and development. We are currently leading the review process”.

The Chairman of the NPC, Chief Eze DuruIheoma (SAN), expressed these views on Thursday in Abuja during a press briefing in commemoration of the 2015 World Population Day, with the theme, “Vulnerable population in emergencies.”

According to him, if indeed Nigerians want the conduct of 2016 national census, they must demand for it, just like they did during the recently concluded general elections.

The PUNCH recalls that a former chairman of NPC, Chief Festus Odumegwu, was removed in 2013 by former President Goodluck Jonathan, following comments credited to him that previous national censuses figures were inflated to favour the northern parts of the country.

He had said that over N200bn would be required to carry out the census exercise that would be universally acceptable to correct the mistakes of the past.

But DuruIheoma, who recently complained of poor budgetary allocation, said the fate of the conduct of 2016 census rests solely on Nigerians and the Federal Government that should provide the needed funds for the exercise.

He said, “I want to remind us that censuses are supposed to be held between five and 10 years after the previous one. Now, the previous census in Nigeria took place in 2006. A maximum of 10 years will take us to 2016. That is why we are sticking to the 2016 date. That is when the next census is due in this country.

“Population census is an exercise that involves Nigerians. Look at the way Nigerians reacted to the last (2015) election. They demanded that they wanted it; the next thing after the elections ought to be the national census. We want it to be in the consciousness of Nigerians. The last one took place in 2006. Ten years after, we want to know how many we are.

“Our duty here in the NPC is to help Nigerians realise this goal. We are ready to heed the call of Nigerians. Whatever they want us to do, we will carry out their wish. If they want us to carry out the exercise, we will.”

The NPC boss while decrying the pitiable conditions of Internally-Displaced Persons, called on Nigerians and relevant agencies of government to protect the rights of victims of insurgency in the North-East.


http://www.punchng.com/news/news-analysis/poor-budget-2016-census-may-not-hold-says-npc/

APC Expels Former Gombe Governor,Serving Senator For Anti-Party Activities


The Gombe State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has expelled a former Governor of the state, Senator Danjuma Goje from the party.


Goje who is currently representing Gombe Central Senatorial District in the Nigerian Senate was expelled for anti-party activities.

According to NIGERIAN EYE, State chairman of the party, Magaji Doho, said the former Gombe governor was expelled with effect from July 1, 2015.

He said, ''Having gone through the rigours of campaigns and the 2015 general elections, some of our members, led by Senator Danjuma Goje, have decided to have parallel state executives of the party. Secondly, one of our senators representing Gombe-South, Danjuma Goje, is grossly involved in anti-party activities and we have, therefore, decided to expel him from the party from the first day of July, 2015, to instill discipline in our great party.

''We have expelled Goje from the APC because of his activities, disloyalty and going contrary to the constitution of the party,” the party chairman said.


http://www.nigerianbulletin.com/threads/apc-expels-former-gombe-governor-serving-senator-for-anti-party-activities.114199/

Kojo blasts NFF over Keshi’s sack

By John Egbokhan
Former President of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), Anthony Kojo Williams has blasted the Amaju Pinnick-led board for relieving Stephen Keshi of his duties as Super Eagles coach.

Speaking in an interview with Sports Vanguard, Kojo-Williams lambasted the NFF for the poor handling of the Keshi matter, noting that it was clear that the coach was sacked following the exit of a top official of the Department of State Security. He said the NFF was not professional in handling the matter.
‘’There are many issues at stake in this matter. One was the choice of Keshi in the first place. He was not the choice of the NFF, having failed to qualify the Eagles for the 2015 Nations Cup. The Nff did not want him but they had to back down following perceived pressure from a top officer in the SSS.

‘’The NFF has not been professional in handling the case of Keshi. They never wanted Keshi in the first place but buckled under pressure from the top. If they were professionals as they claim, why did they not sack Keshi when the security man was still on the job’’, Kojo asked rhetorically.

‘’But they could not have done this because they cannot stand the fire and that explains why they hurriedly pushed Keshi out at the shortest notice. Unlike others, I see beyond the sack, that is why I feel the NFF has not displayed professionalism in conducting its internal affair’’, added Kojo-Williams.


http://www.vanguardngr.com/2015/07/kojo-blasts-nff-over-keshis-sack/

Nice post.

Ivoirian job: ‘NFF will sack Keshi if found guilty’


The Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) will not hesitate in sacking Super Eagles’ coach, Stephen Keshi, if he is found guilty of applying for the vacant Cote d’Ivoire job, an official of the federation has revealed.

Keshi, who appeared before a disciplinary hearing in Abuja Tuesday, has denied ever applying for the Cote d’Ivoire post, but the NFF has since launched a probe that may take them to Abidjan to uncover the truth of the matter.

NFF president, Amaju Pinnick, has already said Keshi would be “suicidal” to apply for another post when the football federation was up to date with the payment of his salaries.

Speaking on the issue yesterday, a top official of the n federation, Iyke Igbokwe, told Africanfootball.com, that the NFF disciplinary committee would recommend the dismissal of coach Stephen Keshi if it were proven he applied to handle African champions, Cote d’Ivoire.


Disciplinary committee vice-president, Igbokwe said: “If it were proven that he indeed applied to coach Cote d’Ivoire when he is still coaching the Super Eagles, then that is a breach of trust.

“We will then recommend (to the executive committee) that he be relieved of his job so that he could go and coach Cote d’Ivoire.”

Keshi has a two-year contract after his first three-year stint in charge of the Super Eagles during which time he guided the team to the knockout rounds of the 2014 World Cup and a third Africa Cup of Nations victory.


http://www.ngrguardiannews.com/2015/06/ivoirian-job-nff-will-sack-keshi-if-found-guilty/

D

Still on the cost of governance how would you react to reports over the proposed N9billion allowances for national assembly members, a development that this is generating controversy?
You know I am an old man and I am used to the old ways. When I was permanent secretary here the premier of Northern Nigeria, the Sardauna you hear about, and his house is there and you can go and look at it. It had two bedrooms, one sitting room, one dining room, a kitchen and boys quarters. The family lived in the boys quarters while he lived in the main house. There was a conference room attached to the house and there was one guest house where important visitors to Kaduna lived. He also had two saloon cars and one other car attached to him; the two saloon cars were there because if he was going on tour, say, an engagement in Kano or Zaria if he insisted on getting there like say 5pm he insisted on keeping to time because he didn’t want to keep people waiting. So if along the way he had a puncture tyre he would not wait for it to be repaired so he jumps into the second car and kept to time. They had to explain that to the northern public as to why Sardauna had two cars. His office had no air conditioners and when they said he must have an air conditioner he said no it was a waste of money. And, he said, in any case I don’t like air conditioner. Even when they insisted it was not necessarily for him, sometimes for foreign dignitaries, he said no. So, until he died there was no air conditioner in his office or house. The Governor, Sir Kashim Ibrahim, after Sardauna got two cars. It was felt that he, too, as governor should not have less, so he was given a second car and a pick up van which was used to convey the family to the markets or if they were going on a trip it conveyed food items and assistants. My first shock after the military took over and Gongola was created and I was invited to government house. When I got there I found about six cars with escort vehicles, which Sardauna never had, and an ambulance with large convoy of about a hundred people. If you go to Abuja today half of the governors are there and the sort of expenditure in terms of allowances is so high. I was permanent secretary from 1966 to 1978 and never had an official driver, never had an official car, never had a cook, never had a gardener. I paid my electricity bills and water rates. Of course, they gave me a house but they would give you chairs and a dining table but no bed sheets, no curtains, no pillows and pillow cases. What the government did for us was that you could apply for a loan to buy a car and they would give you an allowance that you could use the car for your official duties. There was what was called the basic allowance; they gave you that and it took care of fuelling and servicing the car, going to your office and back to your house. But if you were in Lagos and had to go on official trip to Ibadan they you applied for what was called touring advance and there was somebody who knew the exact kilometers from Lagos to Ibadan, in those days it was miles. They had a table and they would give you that money; Lagos to Ibadan and Ibadan to Lagos and they said okay where would you go when you get to Ibadan for your duty? If you went from Apatagangan to the secretariat you were required to come back and explain how you spent the money and if there was any surplus you returned it and in the case of an over expenditure that you could justify they paid you. They didn’t just give you N100,000 when you said you were going from Lagos to Kano as they do now, though going to Kano and coming back may be N50,000. And if you were working in Kaduna, for instance, you were not allowed to use government vehicles to go to your village for a weekend or to a naming ceremony or any social event. Today, I know people who go every weekend, 200 to 300 kilometers for purely personal affairs, not only for themselves but with escorts, followers with three, four cars. Every trip might cost N1million or even N2million; this country cannot afford to continue like this. I don’t really know whether this can be solved. You said we want fuel subsidy, but are you really getting fuel subsidy? Maybe in Abuja they are selling it at N87 per liter but anywhere in-between Abuja and Kaduna is N130 and who is getting it? I can tell you; they take the fuel to Cameroon, Chad, Niger, Benin Republic and sell it three times the cost. And what are you getting here? When you say you are selling N87 per liter the meter is tempered with so that by the time you buy ten liters you probably get only seven liters. And this fuel is not even delivered; sometimes they just take the subsidy and go and they give it to the black-market. So there is a lot to clean up.


So how can we come out of this?
The government has to come out and tell the people of Nigeria this is the situation we are in; in this sector this is what is happening and they should put it in a way that people would see and understand it and appreciate any decision they want to take. If they take the decision to remove fuel subsidy this is the reason and they should so explain it not just for a few but to the ordinary man to also know why he or she must pay more and what are the benefits. There are a lot of tangible benefits that can occur if the government can get out of this racket and apply the money to do other things. Our schools are in bad shape and they may find the money to fix the schools, the roads, provide drugs in the hospitals. But if for policy reasons they cannot do it then they have to find the money to do the other things which are necessary.


There was the Steve Orosanya report during the tenure of Obasanjo that recommended the merger and even scrapping of so many research agencies that have outlived their usefulness. Do you think this is one of the ways forward?

Let me first confess that I have heard a lot about the Orosanya report but, unfortunately, I have not laid my hand on it. I have looked for it and have been promised, but I haven’t gotten it so I don’t know the details of its contents. But I was also engaged under the Obasanjo dispensation to review government parastatals and agencies. Government, at the beginning of our exercise thought that there were about just 500 parastatals and agencies, but by the time we finished our work there were over 800. Some of them were established many years ago and have ceased to have any relevance and they had no need to exist. They were forgotten and the people remained there and they continued to be reflected in the budget ant to be paid for. They should have been wound up and it was so recommend. This is about fifteen years now and I don’t know what has happened, but I have the impression that more are being more added. I think the Orosanya report, if it has addressed these issues, should be revisited and actions taken immediately. People, especially those out of government, are too fearful of any suggestion that more unemployment would be added in the market and an institution, no matter how irrelevant employs people and they get paid but they are really not doing anybody any good; not even for themselves. When you make people redundant you don’t just throw them away, you should work out an exit for them. I remember when I was growing up there was one small generator supplying electricity to the European Quarters and it was so fragile that if there was raincloud in the sky, with the possibility of thunder, there was a man employed to go and switch it off so that it is not damaged by thunder. But this man remained there even when electricity was expanded and got to the town, but if there was a storm in Yola he would just go and switch it off; nobody could tell him to do otherwise. This continued until well into the 1990s when he died and that stopped. The same story in Yola; the toilet in Yola Airport in the arrival departure hall was the cleanest in any airport in Nigeria that I used to wonder why. If you went to Lagos Airport at that time, or Port Harcourt, the toilets were always filthy and smelling but reverse was the case at the Yola Airport; it was not only clean but always smelling fresh. I discovered that the only reason was because this man was so well trained by the European about cleaning toilets and so and he maintained that standard until his death and if you go to Yola Airport now it is like any other.


After submitting your report to the president, were you still under pressure from lobbyists for appointments into the new government?
Yes! When you came didn’t you see people here waiting for me? Wherever I go; I came to Yola and went to my village on Sunday. There is no road to my village. In the dry season, we just manage to go to the village. I went to see my sister and the family and when I was going they collected CV’s and gave me. I couldn’t throw them away so I continued to receive them by telephones, by emails by text message.
Given the enormous task ahead, what would you advise the president, Buhari?

Well, I am not an adviser to the president. I was a chairman of his transition committee and I have finished my work. He has the sole responsibility of assembling his advisers to advise him on every aspect and he can call on anybody in Nigeria to help him do this task. I am thinking of writing-if you people will agree to publish-some of my thoughts of what should happen. But I don’t think I am entitled to be writing to the president every day to say this is what he should do or not do. He is receiving too much of that kind of advice.

C
Given the picture you have painted how challenging is the task before the new administration?
I think the new administration has a pretty good idea but the situation we are going to meet is going to be difficult. They should have prepared themselves to face these challenges adequately. That is why it is necessary for the government of Buhari to select those who would work for him to be extremely careful of how they select the people who will be doing the work for them; people who are willing and able to do the job and who are capable of delivering the goods. These are people who must devote themselves absolutely to the people of Nigeria and it is possible. It was possible under Awolowo, it was possible under Sardauna. I was a very young man of about 32 but I know now what I did not appreciate before that those people - and I have worked with the two of them - were men who understood their responsibilities and duties and they encouraged those who worked for them to tell them the truth and nothing but the truth. It was possible for me to go to Sardauna and tell him that a decision they had taken or this action they had taken in my view was wrong and he would said sit down and tell me why you think it is wrong and I would tell him. And if he agrees with you he would thank you and if he doesn’t agree with you he would take time to explain to you why he preferred his own decision to yours. I once served in a committee in which Awolowo was chairman and I knew he felt very strongly about a point why the committee was set up. When the presentation was made to him in his office he didn’t allow the meeting to continue because he said he now agreed that he didn’t know the basis of that recommendation. It was like that; you don’t receive decisions from above. I don’t know at what point a decision from above was invented, but we never had it in our own vocabulary; everything had to be reasoned and everything had to be recorded.


Talking about the cost of governance, the new administration is inheriting a battered economy with over bloated system of governance; what do you think is the way out?
A lot of work needs to be done. I don’t know exactly how the budgeting system operates now but up to the time I left you had a budget which captured every item of expenditure. Go and look at the published budget estimates of the sixties and up to the seventies and, if you look at it, take the ministry of, say agriculture. You will find out that the top of the line on the salary page one; minister, so much salary per annum; one minister of state, salary is so much per month; one permanent secretary, salary so much per annum. That is under the administration of the ministry of agriculture; then you have senior assistant secretary at so and so much per annum; ten assistant secretaries, so much per person per annum right up to the cleaner everything is listed and when it was approved you could not have a ghost worker because the salaries were clearly earmarked and you could not employ unless there was vacancy. If there were supposed to be ten assistant secretaries in an establishment but only eight in place during the budget year you could employ not more that number to fill those vacancies. But now you have a situation where you have only ten vacancies but twenty people are employed; all the ten extra people are illegal and are not covered by the budget and under what we used to call the finance management Act it is a criminal offence to do that because you are breaching the approved budget. How do you employ these people by getting names from The Presidency that this or that man be appointed director in a ministry which already had one director, but The Presidency or Senate or House of Representatives or you have the senators and the members of the House asking for contracts from ministries and parastatals, and if you don’t give them the contracts they will put up an investigation against you. So why government is bloated is because it is from the presidency, from the ministers, from the senators, from the House of Representatives and all these are because of this impunity from high places where everybody feels that they would have their way. So unless you clean up these things but the cleaning process cannot also be immediate because in a situation whereby there is so much unemployment and the government says it has sacked thirty or fifty thousand people, what is the public’s reaction? If issue a press release to that effect everybody would be angry. Therefore what I think the government can do is to sit down to see how they can rationalize this whole thing. I believe there are so many jobs to be done in Nigeria if we get our act right; that anybody you remove from a ministry, for example, out of twelve or thirteen River Basin Development authorities and if they are working they can dramatically change the economic fortunes of Nigeria because instead of producing one crop per year you can be producing three and people will be fully engaged among which would not be the farmers alone but irrigation engineers, irrigation technicians, it would be thousands of jobs. But all that you have at the River Basin Development Authorities now are idle people with a board of directors of about seven or eight members being paid allowances and so no and so forth; guest houses, protocol and administration people, financial people but no irrigation people. And there are so many engineers in Nigeria who are either idle or underutilized all over the place. These people can almost immediately put back to work and I am sure if you have sensible projects for irrigation you can find the financing. Our railways are not working but they could be made to work so you don’t need to sack people there but at the moment all you are doing is to pay pensions and salaries of people who are there idling away. Take Ajaokuta Steel Company; it has been there for over thirty years doing absolutely nothing and maintaining so many people. Why can it not be made to work? If there is nothing for them to do there or at Alaja Steel or Kaduna Steel Rolling Mill, Jos, Oshogbo; there are engineers there and instead of wasting there get them to do something that is beneficial to the economy and to themselves. You cannot have an engineer who is idle living there without doing any engineering job for the next five years and still be called an engineer. If a doctor doesn’t practice for five years he is not a doctor for you to submit yourself to him. So the solution is sitting down to look at the service as it is, rationalizing it and creating jobs; public works where everybody gets engaged and the country see the results.

B

Was there any interface between your committee and some of the critical sectors of the past government and if there wasn’t, how did you cope?
The situation was this: we were to receive the handing over notes, study them and wherever necessary to seek clarifications from wherever, whether ministers, civil servants or chairmen of boards or chief executives of parastatals. But, like I told you, we did not receive those notes in time and our terms of reference although extended by the president limited us by the mere fact of our name ‘transition committee’. On May 29, we could not be a transition committee because the transition had ended. We did not want to ask for extension in order to be able to interrogate the other government people. In any case the ministers had gone and it would have been a complicated, probably expensive exercise to bring them. We did not want to stay and nobody asked us to extend our time to interrogate them so what we said in our report is that look in view of the fact that the handover notes were delayed we did not have time to interrogate, question or interact with any of the people of government; therefore we leave this to the incoming government. In any case, it would be an investigative thing by now and the government can do what it likes.

What would you consider to be the greatest challenges you face in carrying out this assignment?
Nigeria should be ready to face a lot of challenges. The biggest in my view is corruption; it is everywhere. There is no department, no ministry that can be said to be free of corruption. There is nowhere that fraud does not take place on a daily basis. It has become embedded in the minds of the people because the rule books have been thrown away and everybody is doing what they like. Nobody follows the rules anymore. You employ people anyhow and pay them anyhow and I think you in the media have a fairly idea of what is going on and are surprised how bad things are. I often wondered, since the beginning of this exercise, if the PDP and president Jonathan had won the election what would have been the fate of Nigeria. It would have been more difficult for them to face the challenge because they had been telling people that everything was good; the roads are good. They were not talking about the absence of light in the house, but they were talking about the capacity to produce electricity is 12,000 megawatts out of which only 5,000 could be released. But even out of this 5,000 at the time they were doing the handing over notes only 1,300 megawatts were being generated, but they were talking about 35,000 kilometers of distribution lines and so on, but nobody told us the real problem - that there is no gas, or there is no capacity to transmit the electricity that could be generated; that even when it is delivered at the point of distribution the distribution system is so weak that it can’t take it. I personally didn’t know that until I got into this exercise. Now, if they came back, they couldn’t wake up in the morning and say we can’t pay salaries, we couldn’t do this or even pay contractors and might even not be able to pay pensions and gratuities or finance any of our operations. We were told at the beginning of the exercise that the government was in deficit of at least N1.3 trillion and by the end people were talking about N7 trillion; everything is in a state of collapse. The civil service is bloated and the military and police, if you are a Nigerian, you know what they have been facing for a long time; everywhere is in a mess and these things have to be fixed. Now back to your question about the delay of appointment of ministers and other key officials. These are large numbers of people; in my experience as a civil servant one of the most difficult tasks is to get a list of names to appoint to existing appointments. Buhari, as a politician, knows a large number of people but not intimately. They have come and joined the political party in which there is Buhari and his knowledge of them can only be superficial. The only people he will know intimately are his friends, his relations and colleagues at work. But when you are forming a cabinet the Constitution says the entire country must be represented. Now in Benue, for example, there may be at least 20 to 30 people who can claim to be ministers and who by their paper qualifications and working experience are suitable materials for appointment but is that all you want from a minister? If you want to know the integrity of a person, his performance at his workplace, his relations with his workplace or even with his community and other weaknesses he has, you have to have all these and analyze them. If Buhari came to be president in Nigeria on his claim that he is a man of very high principles, a man of integrity and courage, then you can’t go to him as a leader of your community and say ‘Joda is a good man, appoint him minister because he has his paper qualifications.’ You have to investigate these things so that they meet, not only the criteria you laid down, but your own expectation of the man; it needs some time. We have made mistakes before; I have known of ministerial appointments during the military days when they had announced the name of somebody is a similar name to somebody else and the young man arrived to be sworn in or you appoint a minister and suddenly something surfaces. I don’t know where you were when Murtala was the head of state, but if you can go and read back the newspapers of that time (August 1975) you will see that there were at least two people in the military government; serving officers who had to be replaced immediately because no checks were carried out on them. In the past, when you were prepared to ignore security reports as had happened in the recent past in Nigeria you can appoint anybody, but Buhari says he is going to work with perfect people and the he appoints someone only to discover a week later or a month later that there is really no way you can keep him there; what happened? How did the man get there? But I am not making excuses; I am talking to you as a former civil servant who has had some experience of how things are done. For example, to appoint a chairman of let’s say the cement company in Yandev or Ashaka; I was permanent secretary industry and we had about 30 of such companies in which government had majority shares at that time and we had to work on assembling names for every one of these thirty companies. We had to produce about 5 or 6 people times 30 and it was extremely difficult. Because if I tell you I want somebody you will go and bring your friend or schoolmates. It is unavoidable because you can only bring names of people you know and politically there are people vying for these things.

Having served as chairman of transition committee in 1979 and as again as a member in 1999; now you have just chaired another transition committee, what parallels can you draw from these?
By 1979 the civil service was still intact; it was largely efficient and it had a tradition of being loyal to the government of the day for the time being; it had not been politicized. People were not put there on political basis, but largely on their merits and they were prepared and willing to do their work. I served in the Gowon administration and in the Murtala administration and that of Obasanjo, but none of them interfered with the civil service. Now, I think we have been witnesses to what had been the practice in recent years: permanent secretaries, directors of departments, chief executives of parastatals were all appointed on the basis of their party loyalty, if not affiliations. You could not survive in the system if you were independent and it is also a demoralized service; it is over-established and inefficient. So what happened in 1979, I had left the service in April 1978, so all the people in government; the permanent secretaries from the new head of service and the secretary to the government down to directors were all people with whom I had worked and who were junior to me in service. So it was easier for me to talk to the SGF and HOS without any restraint at all and they told me the truth and if the information is there they give it to me. The man who was now permanent secretary in the cabinet office and who was liaising with my committee was my deputy permanent secretary and if I had any problem I called him and said, ‘George, I don’t have this. What is the matter?’ And within the next one hour he would bring it; it is not so anymore and, like I said, these were polite times when people recognized the government as government, not the political party of the government. The chairman of the defunct NPN, the late Adisa, was very powerful but he was also a gentleman who understood how to handle people. Even if he wanted to discuss sensitive political issues he did it in such a way that you cannot afford not to listen to the man; it is no longer the same.

"We Found Corruption Everywhere" Says Buhari Transition Committee Chairman, Ahmed Joda.

Buhari must be decisive on fuel subsidy .The state nearly collapsed under Jonathan .The last regime left behind a deficit of N7 trillion .New president must be careful in choosing his ministers
BY FIDELIS MAC-LEVA AND NURUDDEEN M. ABDALLAHJUN 21, 2015

Malam Ahmed Joda chaired President Muhammadu Buhari’s Transition Committee, which interfaced with former President Goodluck Jonathan’s team. In an exclusive interview, the ‘super permsec’ of the 1970s and 1980s, would not reveal any of the recommendations his committee made to President Buhari. But he was forthcoming on the state of the nation and the challenges the new government will face in the next four years. Malam Joda was frank and witty in this explosive interaction.


Can you recall your experience when you were appointed to head the APC transition committee and your feelings over the appointment?
I really don’t know how I felt. I had gone to bed and there was a bang on my door at about 1:30 am and I was naturally feeling sleepy and even afraid that anybody should wake me up at that hour. But they persisted so I opened the door and asked what it was and they said it was the president-elect who wanted to speak with me. I woke up a little bit jolted and the person who was on the telephone said the president-elect wanted to speak to me but they couldn’t get me earlier so he had just gone up but wanted to see you tomorrow. I do get surprises like that sometimes but I went to bed and slept without knowing what he was calling me for. But I guessed that it must be some kind of involvement in the transition, though I didn’t know in what capacity. The next day I flew back to Abuja and met with the president. He told me about my appointment as chairman of his transition committee. I thanked him for the honour and privilege to serve our country and that was it. He then gave me a letter with the terms of reference attached and said I should do the work in two weeks and I made two observations. That, for the size of the task the number of the members was too small because I anticipated that we needed to set up a number of specialized committees that would receive volumes and volumes of papers from both the government and from other interested parties: the business community, the society groups, individuals who felt they wanted to make an input. He explained to me why the size of the committee was kept too low and I said the time was too short, but he said I should try and do it. Our first problem was where to meet and work; how to get the personnel that would help to do the work, set up the secretariat and appoint the resource persons, appoint rapporteurs and everything. It took us three days to find a suitable area of buildings where we could do our work efficiently. We then had to buy the computers and the necessary hard and software with which to work. At the end of the first week we were ready to go and I had my first meeting with the former secretary to the federal government after one week of being appointed and we learnt that the government handover notes, upon which our terms of reference were based, would not be available to us until sometime in May, which would be four weeks after we were appointed and two weeks after our mandate would have terminated. We had to strategize to receive memoranda; sometimes even without invitation there were a lot of memoranda coming from the public, trade groups, chambers of commerce, industry experts whether oil or gas, agriculture or electricity or transport, railway, waterways, port, harbours; everything was coming. But there was nothing coming from the government and we did not receive a single piece of paper until May 25, four days to the handover. This came in many volumes amounting to 18,000 pages so we had to set up our work groups and about five sub-committees. We spent the next three to four days trying to sort these papers out and assigning them to the various committees. We couldn’t start real work until the first of June and we eventually submitted our report and our recommendations on Friday the last week to the president.

Specifically, what were the major terms of reference given to your committee?
Broadly speaking, we were to receive the handover notes from the outgoing government, study the notes, analyze them and make recommendations to the government on the economy specifically, on governance, security, corruption, on ministries and departments of government and agencies, defence; nearly everything you can think about. Specifically, we had to look into revenue streams from NNPC, from Federal Inland Revenue Service, Customs and other big corporations of government.

In the course of your assignment were you under some kind of pressure from people coming to lobby for one favour or the other?
There was a lot of that from people who wanted contract, who wanted to be given special favours. They were coming to me day and night and I said to them these are my terms of reference; they didn’t include things like award of contracts or recovery of bad debts from government or for employment of any group of people or individuals. I told them these were not part of our terms of reference. But we continued to receive them and nobody believed me when I said I could not appoint them ministers or chairmen or whatever; they said look you have influence on Buhari and I said I don’t have and even if I had I didn’t think he would respect me if all I did was go to him with piles papers and saying he should do this favour to this or that man or this or that woman. Also, I was inundated with telephone calls. For example, somebody telephoned and after introduction said he wanted to vie for the position of minister of sports. I said well I don’t know the address to which you would send it to.

Did you come under similar pressures from people connected with the government of the past government who wanted to cover or influence certain things?
No! Not one single case. I have had people coming to me to say they had information about what went wrong, but I said to them we were not an investigative panel, and even if we were given that term of reference we would politely tell the president that we could not be investigators because we didn’t know how to investigate and more importantly we didn’t have time to undertake such investigations. But where people submitted documents incriminating people we just put them in envelopes and sent them to the relevant authorities.

You said it was barely four days to May 29 when you received communication from the past government’s transition committee. How did that delay impact on your assignment?
Of course, it delayed our work because we were mainly to receive the handover notes from ministries, departments and agencies of government. But we could not receive them for five or nearly six weeks after our appointment and, to that extent, our work was delayed. But as soon as we realized that this was going to happen we devised methods of getting our information because so much of this information is in the public domain. The problem was that you couldn’t define the true situation in the government.

When you submitted your report to the president you called on Nigerians to be patient with him over his cabinet appointments. What informed that appeal?
Well, I was the chairman of the transition committee in 1979 when General Obasanjo handed over to president Shagari. That handover was the military deciding on their own to handover power back to the civilians. They conducted the elections, accepted the outcome and decided to hand over and go and rest. There was no acrimony between incoming and the outgoing government because they were all polite and nice; it was smooth. By the time I was appointed chairman the Obasanjo administration had set up a complete office, furnished it and equipped it together with committee and conference rooms. He had also appointed people from the civil service and from the private sector to serve as rapporteurs, resource persons and so on. All we needed to do was to walk into these offices and start work; absolutely there was no problem. In 1999, I was on what Obasanjo called Presidential Policy Advisory Group under the chairmanship of General T.Y Danjuma and I was Number Two and the same thing happened. We had a complete office block already made, vehicles and buses and our accommodation had been booked and when you arrived everything was smooth, including all the handing over notes were prepared on the first day. We had everything. Now, this election is the first time in the history of Nigeria that an opposition party had uprooted a ruling party. It was not just changing the president or changing the members of the states or national assemblies. We were all witnesses to the election campaigns, how bitter it was. There were predictions that the country would collapse; there were also all sorts of allegations and counter-allegations and the environment was very hostile. People were expecting the worst, but God, in His infinite mercies, diffused all the tension but, perhaps, the outgone government did not expect to lose the election, I don’t know. They lost the election and had to put up a brave face. I, as a person, I completely understood the difficult situation emotionally they were in but the meetings I had with both the SGF and Vice President Namadi Sambo were extremely friendly. They offered me all the cooperation and we discussed things as Nigerians. I personally decided that I was not going to enter into any controversy or make the situation worse. In any case, whatever they did or did not do would not likely affect the critical question of the change of government on May 29. And if they didn’t give us any information that information would be ours on that May 29. Therefore, I worked on this basis and I think our committee accepted that way of doing things instead of creating unnecessary additional tension to the political environment.

http://saharareporters.com/2015/06/21/we-found-corruption-everywhere-says-buhari-transition-committee-chairman-ahmed-joda

Why Buhari Has Refused To Meet Saraki

BY SAHARAREPORTERS,
President Muhammadu Buhari has refused to meet one-on-one with Senator Bukola Saraki two weeks after the latter connived with top officials of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to win the post of Senate President in a move that both stunned and angered the hierarchy of the All Progressives Congress (APC).

SaharaReporters learned that Senator Saraki had made several overtures to get a private meeting with Mr. Buhari, to no avail. One source revealed that Mr. Saraki’s latest attempt was to follow the president to his hometown of Daura in Katsina State to take in the commencement of the Islamic Ramadan period. The president reportedly rebuffed the move.

Following President Buhari’s rebuff, Mr. Saraki reportedly arranged a quiet visit to Vice President Yemi Osibanjo to apologize for an insulting remark he had made in the heat of his high-stakes maneuver to win the leadership of the Senate by striking an alliance with the PDP. Top APC officials claimed that Mr. Saraki had turned down an invitation by VP Osibanjo to discuss his contentious pursuit of the Senate Presidency by stating contemptuously that “a mere commissioner” could not summon him to a meeting. Mr. Osibanjo, a former commissioner in Lagos State, had sought to meet with Senator Saraki in order to resolve a crisis that arose from the latter’s scheme to outmaneuver his party, the APC.

Following Mr. Saraki’s emergence as Senate President in an election described by officials of the APC as irregular, Mr. Buhari had publicly accepted his triumph. Even so, the president has refused to do anything that would amount to a public validation of Mr. Saraki’s victory.

Two associates of Mr. Buhari told SaharaReporters that the president shared the APC’s dismay with Mr. Saraki’s alliance with the PDP to snatch up the top Senate post. “The fact of the matter is that the president [Mr. Buhari] will not abandon the party’s position altogether,” one of our sources said. Another added, “Mr. President [Buhari] has never been comfortable anyway with Dr. Saraki since [Mr. Saraki] is well known as a corrupt person who will try to hinder the administration’s fight against corruption.”

One source in the Senate told SaharaReporters that Senator Saraki, troubled by President Buhari’s refusal to meet with him, reached out to former President Olusegun Obasanjo to broker a truce with the president. The source said Mr. Saraki had used a personal friend, Andy Uba, a senator from Anambra State, to seek Mr. Obasanjo’s intervention to mend the cold rift with President Buhari. Mr. Uba, who served as a senior aide on domestic matters to Mr. Obasanjo, was one of the closest and most powerful associates of the former president.

A source at the Presidency told SaharaReporters that President Buhari was not impressed by Mr. Saraki’s reasons for colluding with the PDP to gain power as Senate President. “The way Senator Saraki colluded with the PDP to gain power through the backdoor, what prevents him from colluding against Buhari in the future? What prevents him from even working with certain political interests to get Mr. President impeached?” the source stated.

http://saharareporters.com/2015/06/19/why-buhari-has-refused-meet-saraki

If this is the BlackBerry Android phone, I want one
Authored by: Kris Carlon

You know those whacky rumors that BlackBerry is planning to put out an Android phone later this year? Well, an impressive specs sheet is out there. Pictures of a rather futuristic looking phone are out there. And if all this turns out to be true, I want one.

Why? A few reasons. I still remember slider phones with a pang of nostalgia. Like Amy Winehouse, slider phones were quirky and cool and taken from us way too soon. I'm also old-school enough to still have fond memories of T9 and physical keyboards. As much as swipe typing has sped things up, I find myself endlessly going back over messages to correct mis-predicted words. That never happened with T9.

I also like an underdog, and if there has ever been an underdog in this age of Samsung and Apple world domination it is BlackBerry. Even Nokia gets more love than BlackBerry these days. But even more than an underdog I love a comeback. This is why I'm overjoyed that The Goonies is being remade and why Searching For Sugar Man made me feel all warm and fuzzy. It's also why I'd love to see this thing succeed.

So bring it on, I say. Shut up and take my money. Give me that crazy Android-powered BlackBerry slider thing with physical keyboard, who-knows-what software and odd, Project Ara-like appearance. With a rumored Snapdragon 808, 3 GB of RAM and 5.4-inch QHD display, this thing is basically an LG G4 anyway. We should only have to wait until November to see this thing, codenamed Venice, for real.

Who doesn't still harbor a little nostalgic love for physical keyboards on phones? / © BlackBerry

For me, this would be the comeback, revival, underdog, nostalgia story of the year. Who, in a million years, would ever think that BlackBerry might have a shot at entering our best Android phones list? Perhaps there's no chance, but maybe it's feasible.

Either way, I have to hold out hope. If Rocky could do it, if Will Smith could repel hordes of alien invaders in pretty much every movie he's ever made and if Game of Thrones can kill off its entire cast and still keep going strong, then anything is possible.


https://www.androidpit.com/blackberry-android-phone?utm_source=DailyNewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20150620_DN