mama-gee:

How do I watch that live please. . .

I really want to watch it.

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
Nigeria's first female Finance Minister wants to make sure her country's petrodollars help people

"Monkey they work, baboon they chop" goes an old Nigerian saying. The people work while their leaders eat. Not Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. Nigeria's combative Finance Minister has rolled up her sleeves since her appointment last year by President Olusegun Obasanjo. A former World Bank vice president, Okonjo-Iweala, 50, was lured back from Washington to her oil-rich yet impoverished West African nation of 130 million to fix its chaotic finances and clean up corruption. The bottom line: the Nigerian government exported $20 billion worth of oil last year, but its people still scrape by on an average wage of just a dollar a day. Okonjo-Iweala's mission is to make sure more of those billions go to roads, schools and health care.

Fixing Africa's broken giant is no easy task. Berlin-based watchdog Transparency International ranks Nigeria the second most corrupt place in the world, after Bangladesh. Oil money has often been wasted in kickbacks and bribes. The country's economy has struggled with years of mismanagement. Okonjo-Iweala, who studied at Harvard and M.I.T., has begun trimming Nigeria's bloated civil service, cut fuel subsidies and begun accounting for all the money the government spends. She has also helped set up an antifraud team to crack down on "419" letter and Internet advance-fee scams, which bilk everyone from unsuspecting pensioners to large banks by convincing them to part with their money on the promise of a cut of hidden "millions." The team has already caught more than 500 people.

Yet to hear her tell it, she's on the receiving end. "I've been very grateful for what my life has become," says Okonjo-Iweala. "My motivation is to take whatever knowledge I have and put it to the use of my country." Other ministers, who earn around $6,000 a year, initially questioned her hefty (more than $240,000) salary, paid by the United Nations in a program to repatriate Nigeria's best brains. The scam artists want to kill her, she says, because they don't like her meddling. But Okonjo-Iweala, a mother of four, can play tough too. When President Obasanjo announced he had removed the vital budget and planning departments from her ministry, Okonjo-Iweala quit, returning only when the President backed down.

Improving Nigeria's image, she says, is as important as fixing its economy. "It is a sense of anger that drives me. Anger that this country [and] the Nigerians that I know are being maligned by a small percentage," she says. "You have to do something to clean this up. You can't always look up to other people do to it. The fight begins with you." And with that, she gets back to work.
— By Simon Robinson, With Gilbert Da Costa/Abuja

violent:

The sense in it is this:

A bank collects money from Mr A (depositor) and gives it out for Mr B (borrower) to conduct business or whatever.  Thus the Bank acts as an Intermediary and is not really concerned with what Mr B does with the money as long as he generates enough profits to pay him (intermediary) back, so that he (intermediary) could refund Mr A's deposit as and at when due.

Now this is the typical Banking system!

Let's say Mr A is a Muslim, whose believe it is a sin to eat pork/ gamble/ consume alcohol/ engage in prostitution.  and Let's say for some reason Mr A holds this view religiously so much so that he wouldn't give out his money for anyone to conduct such businesses.  Under the normal banking system rule stated above, directly or indirectly, Mr A would still be lending out his capital to individuals engaged in such businesses-------> one which contraries his own beliefs.

So Mr A is simply asking for a Banking product, that will ensure that his capital deposits is only directed at businesses according to his religious beliefs.  The catch here is Mr A might likely earn very low interest on this capital as the product provider will NOT be charging borrowers an interest, which implies that the provider will only make profits by investing a substantial sum of the capital in other companies such as auto manufacture, agriculture, technology etc etc.

It's just a banking product that allows for individuals and investors to conduct business transaction in a way that provides allowance for their personal and religious views, nothing more.

And NO, contrary to what many people think, it will NOT be forced on everyone!

Bliss4Lyfe:

Anybody dat looks properly at this map can see that Benue is not Mibble-belt or North but a south-eastern state [/b]that borders middle-belt. Like i said earlier the [b]Idoma and Igala have strong Igbo routes. Idoma are igbos dat migrated north. Igala are Idoma that migrated west. [b]The yoruba and edo descended from the Igala. Thus, a third generation of ethno-igbo.

Lagosboy:

OBJ has spoken 100% the truth here , although when he says corrupt people are entrenched in the system , he forgot to include himself as well.

It is only Buhari among the 3 top candidates that could have sincerley fought corruption in Nigeria. But what i have come to realise is that the nigerians that want corruption stamped out of the system are in the minority and this is a fact often ignored by many commentators.

Politicans want to develop their party and few will use their personal money to develop the party when they have access to govt cash, they will also go further to amass monstrous war chest to further their political ambitions. Common citizens deman bribe for every single thing in Nigeria and the bulkk of the civil service in Nigeria have corruption in their DNA.

My sister when to Ikoyi registry to get a replacement for her lost certificate and every single person there demanded a bribe in the region of 10 k from her. Every single desk she went to it was the same story which means they all share the money from top to bottom.
Nigerians have the mentality that you must not depend on your salary which means you have to look for ways to steal or extort. It will take a generation for this mentality to vanish and this can only be achieved with a sincer incorruptible leader at the helm of affiars in Nigeria. I personally dont think this kind of leader is electable in Nigeria which means for it to happen he has to acquire the keys to Aso rock through alternative means.

Just my thoughts and i coul dbe wrong.

Tinubu’s trial: Tribunal members nominated •To be inaugurated next week
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Written by Lanre Adewole Thursday, 16 June 2011

AT last, the two members needed for the Code of Conduct Tribunal to begin trial of cases sent to it by the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) have been reportedly nominated, awaiting the approval of President Goodluck Jonathan.

A plethora of high-profile cases had been reportedly sent to the tribunal by the bureau, with the money-laundering and illegal operation of foreign accounts cases of former Lagos State governor, Senator Bola Tinubu, topping the list.

The chairman of the bureau, Sam Saba, had confirmed to the Nigerian Tribune that lack of quorum at the tribunal was responsible for the delay in arraigning Tinubu.

A former member, upgraded as acting chairman, Danladi Umar Yakubu, had solely been holding forte at the tribunal since the death of the former chairman, Adebayo Muritala Sanni, with the system completely inactive due to lack of quorum.

On the president’s table awaiting his approval were said to be two nominees from Benue and Cross River states, while Yakubu; the acting chairman was also said to have been granted full powers in another upward swing.

With his reported ele-vation as substantive chairman and two mem-bers already on the card, the tribunal, according to the Nigerian Tribune source, would be fully active next week.

The inauguration of the tribunal, according to a credible source, had also been tentatively fixed for next week.

There had been specu-lations that certain political understanding had stalled the appointment of the members by President Jonathan.

Nigerian Tribune can also reveal that commissioners of the Code of Conduct Bureau who had been on the field collating evidence on the level of compliance on asset declaration by the immediate past public office holders and the newly-elected, would be meeting with Saba either today or tomorrow, to brief him on their findings.

The commissioners were said to have been converging on Abuja since last week, with the last batch reportedly in, on Tuesday and the meeting to discuss their findings reportedly scheduled to start today.

Saba, during a chat with the Nigerian Tribune, had disclosed that some immediate past commi-ssioners in Nasarawa State had been found making untrue entries in their asset declaration form, with some said to be declaring N1,000 as account balance, even when it was discovered that they were lodging N1 million every month into the same bank account.

He lamented situations in recent past, when names of high-ranking public officials charged by the bureau, disappeared from the prosecution list at the tribunal, promising to plug all the holes as the bureau braced for the next round of prosecution of defaulting public officials.