₦airaland Forum

Very strange bedfellows, this NW and SE. Though I guess I shouldn't be surprised. . . this is not the first time they've teamed up to my zone's detriment 

I'm glad their plot is being foiled

May 26, 2011 01:25AM


After a lull occasioned by the House of Representatives adjustment of internal voting rules last week, the South West push for the speakership of the lower chamber gained support yesterday with the House North East caucus backing the quest.

The unexpected move yesterday shored up a support base that already has the South-South, South-West, and North-Central lawmakers backing the ruling Peoples Democratic Party formular.

That leaves out only the North-West and the South-East, which both planned a coalition for the speakership and the deputy speakership respectively, after a refusal of the party to zone the seat to the South East.

At a briefing yesterday, after a closed meeting of members from the region, Anthony Madwatte, the chairman of the caucus, said the zone will oppose any decision that will discard current arrangement since it affords the region the deputy speakership - a position it currently holds.

"The caucus believes that since the zoning arrangement entails that the status quo be maintained, that invariably means that the zone should be allowed to produce the next deputy Speaker - a position the zone currently occupies," the caucus said in a statement read by Mr Madwatte.

"The caucus supports the zoning arrangement of political offices at the national level, which cedes the deputy Speakership to the North East," it added.

The position came as the lower chamber faced a renewed steam in the race for the new Speaker when the seventh National Assembly is inaugurated early June.

Early yesterday, the current Speaker, Dimeji Bankole, was in a closed door meeting for hours with the elected members who will be coming to the House for the first time.

Mr Bankole reportedly advised the members to "choose wise leaders as the end would justify such a choice." He said choosing wise leaders would help the nation to move forward because it is the end that matters, not the beginning.

A representative of the group, Abdulmumuni Jubril, said the essence of the meeting is to rub minds with the Speaker and the leadership of the House, refusing to state the members' position regarding the election of a new Speaker.

Mr Jubril only said "this kind of discussion would continue until the seventh House is inaugurated; all we are doing is dialogue and consultations, compromise and discus all vital issues.

"Our emphasis is for us to get to know ourselves better and see how we can forge ahead in the new House; the meeting is a mutual one," he added.

The move by the North-East is seen as a blow to a proposed partnership between the North-West represented by Aminu Tambawal who hails from Sokoto State (for Speaker), and Emeka Ihedioha, the current Chief Whip of the House (as the deputy Speaker), who hails from Imo State.

The partnership was planned as part of a defiance pushed by the House against the PDP zoning which alloted the speakership position to the South-West.

Currently, two members from the North-East are gunning for the deputy Speaker's position. However, the caucus said it had not endorsed a particular lawmaker in the zone for the deputy speakership but insisted that "any other arrangement that seeks to re-zone the office of the deputy Speaker to another zone other than North East will amount to total disregard for the entire North East region and our contributions to the Nigeria Project."

Still, some lawmakers from the region are said to be withholding their support for the decision. Some who attended their closed meeting later backed off and refused to meet with the press.

http://234next.com/csp/cms/sites/Next/Home/5704986-146/story.csp

lmao

Wow

Hard for me to understand how huge sums of money like this just disappear

Nice effort! Thanks.

You might want to just do a screen capture next time to save yourself from typing. Capture the text as an image, then upload to tinypic.com or something, then link here.

Human beings are inherently corrupt.

But yeah, given that the salary you were paying him wasn't linked to attendance, a bit funny/sad he did this side hustle.

Man, any chance you could remove that picture. Kind of gross. Just make a link to it or something.

Hrm, I really wonder how healthcare should be tackled in Nigeria

If GEJ privatizes electricity as planned, he'll easily be Nigeria's greatest president ever.

That is just to tell you how important it is.

@jmaine: Watch the video and see how Lamido is aggressively planting trees.

Probably the best way to fight the desert is to plant trees/other plants to hold the soil and to hope that electricity comes online so firewood becomes less attractive.

13volts:

is just like asking why on earth shud GEJ send ex militants to USA or Ghana for vocational training only for them to be repatriated

But in both cases, it is dumb and a waste of money, no? Take your 100 best WAEC students and send them to do medical training locally

13volts:
every year the best 100 students in WAEC are sponsored to Egypt to study medicine, just as emphasis is also given to local students.

Why Egypt? Why not a medical school in Nigeria? Would be cheaper.

Man. . . is it really this cheap to build roads in Nigeria?

Despite some initial set-backs, Hadejia – Garun Gabas road is also progressing very steadily to
be completed during the year. In addition to these, contracts for six new road projects traversing
a distance of 205 kilometers were awarded during the year at a cost of about N13 billion all of
which have been mobilized and are now ongoing.

Which by my calculations is less than $700,000 per mile. Why on earth are major roads in the SW and most of Nigeria so poor? Very annoying.

Hon. Members would recall that capital expenditure in the 2009 Appropriation Law constituted
over 64% of the total approved estimates, a significant proportion of which was meant for the
completion or continuation of several ongoing projects.

That is how you build a state, lol. 64% on capital projects, means less than 40% on recurrent expenditure. Given that $500 million budget, that means he spent (or intended to spend) roughly $320 million on infrastruture for that year.

Now, why isn't every governor in Nigeria doing the same?

I guess too much temptation to just steal the money

Dude planted 8 million trees too to combat the encroaching desert.

I must say, I'm very impressed. He seems to know what his state needs. Hrm, the North would be a lot better off if he represented your typical governor rather than the best.

Sort of shameful that he is outperforming so many other governors in Nigeria given his seemingly small budget ($500 million.) I guess says a lot about how much other governors are stealing? 


Anyway, a big kudos to him.

@GARTH: Watching that now. Impressive so far.

What do you mean by "highly educated citizens?" Relative to where?

@J12: You may laugh, but that is how America brought people into the middle class. Ownership of property. A man spends 30 years paying his mortgage then at the end of that process has an asset that is worth a lot of money. That he can then pass on to his kids. Or borrow against to educate his kids, turn them into a doctor or engineer.

Home ownership is critical.

^-- I'm not complaining, just trying to get a sense of how much the guy is working with, what he is spending where.

And regarding the official 4 million figure, if what I've seen of pop density in Kano State holds true for Jigawa, it is probably double (at least) the real #.

Some budget info from an article written by one of Lamido's staff:
http://sunday.dailytrust.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5721:an-insight-into-sule-lamidos-n7725bn-budget&catid=16:community-news-pyramid-trust&Itemid=28

N77 billion budget, so roughly $500 million.

I'm having difficulty finding out how much he is spending on education, healthcare, roads, etc. I sort of want a more precise breakdown

J12:
Poverty rate @ 95%! So these housing projects don't and won't impact on the lives of most jigawa jigawa people.

I don't understand this sort of thinking.

Who cares if it impacts the lives of most Jigawa people? He isn't using any (or much) public funds to do it. He is just the middle man arranging the loan for the civil servants to own homes.

That you'll turn those civil servants into property owners w/o any (or much) public funds spent is a good thing. You've now create a middle class, who will now grow the local economy.

There is pretty much no way to knock this housing scheme.

I'd still like to see what the budget, allocation and revenue information looks like, 13volts. As the Good Book says, "To whom much is given. . . "

Information on other areas too (education, healthcare, etc) is also important.

Yes, programming isn't something women have some sort of physical disadvantage in

@13volts: Do you live in Jigawa? What about progress on healthcare and education?

How easy is it to access this loan (http://www.fmbnigeria.org/benefits.html) in practice?

Can your average person who pays the tax access it easily? Or is it difficult to do? 6% interest loan in naija for up to N15 million sounds like a sweet deal to me.

Are tons of people financing their homes through this scheme already? If so, why not?

Hold on a sec, so this National Housing Fund Loan, is it mandatory for ALL Nigerian public workers to contribute 2.5% of their salary to it?

Or is it optional? And you contribute this 2.5% of your salary to the scheme, is it a tax? Or do you get the money back one day somehow?

EDIT: Nm, looks like everyone in Nigeria is supposed to contribute: http://www.fmbnigeria.org/nhfcollection.html

@Mariory: That is fine, imo. Better that he doesn't use his own money to do it. The key thing is to link the civil servants to the scheme, bring in this professional housing contractor to build a nice estate, and perhaps to provide a bit more of loan money over the N5 million limit.

This National Housing Fund Scheme is available to everyone. But how many governors have actually taken advantage of it in this way?

13volts:
the houses are given out to civil servants and the cost deducted from their salary, a period of 30yrs
see

Hrm, interesting. Probably not too much money out of pocket, at least reading about this National Housing Fund Scheme (http://www.fbnmortgages.com/dynamicpage.asp?id=25&parentId=2).

Beaf:
Lamido is a miracle worker, do him proud if you are pointing him out. And don't bother replying bigots who only know about Nigeria from google and ask about IGR and budgets.

Hehe. One of the most important questions one can ask regarding any administrator's performance is to ask how much money he has available to spend.

Of course, no one should expect someone like you to be able to separate the relevant from the irrelevant.