₦airaland Forum

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The out-going Speaker called the refusal of Jonathan to assent the constitution amendment transmitted to him by the National Assembly as a “conspiracy”.
“Today, we are faced with the potential of incalculable waste of public resources through the conspiracy of the Constitutional amendment impasse.

THE administration of President Goodluck Jonathan distracted the 7th House of Representatives unnecessarily, the outgoing Speaker, Aminu Tambuwal, has said.
Tambuwal spoke in a speech titled: “The Power of Unity of Purpose,” during the valedictory session of the 7th House yesterday, where he regretted that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)-led government caused unwarranted friction because it wanted to ride roughshod over the legislature.
His words: “I must say that the frosty relationship between the Executive and Seventh House was an unnecessary distraction and a source of embarrassment to the nation. It is unwarranted that a ruling party with clear majority boxed itself into that situation.
“If the executive fails to recognise the independence of the legislature and expects that it is its rubber stamp, then frosty relation is bound to follow. I would strongly urge the incoming executive arm and indeed the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) to avert this unwholesome situation.”
He, however, stressed the need for legislature to have a measure of independence to fulfill its mandate to the people.
Tambuwal said: “A legislature that seeks to fulfill its duty and obligation to the electorate whom they represent must exercise its independence and this comes at a price.
“A legislature truly playing its checks and balances role would normally experience friction with the other arms of government and other interest groups who have broken the law or desire to break the law in the course of time.
“We had more than a fair share of this friction and torment, but overcame because the naughty walls of partisanship and selfish pecuniary considerations could not withstand the power of unity of purpose”.
The out-going Speaker called the refusal of Jonathan to assent the constitution amendment transmitted to him by the National Assembly as a “conspiracy”.
“Today, we are faced with the potential of incalculable waste of public resources through the conspiracy of the Constitutional amendment impasse. This document is a product of the highest and most intimate consultations with Nigerians; indeed it is the Bill of the Nigerian people.
“All parties involved have a duty to allow or disallow this looming monumental waste of public funds and public opinion. For our part, we owe Nigerians a statement once again and I am confident that with the slimmest opportunity, this House will make that statement,” he added.
Thanking his colleagues and other stakeholders for the success of the 7th House, Tambuwal expressed sadness “because we did not rise swiftly to defeat the forces that stood ever so strongly against the passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB).
“We lament that our Electronic Voting System project could not be brought to fruition. I am confident, however, that with the amendment of the relevant House Rules, the successor Assembly would move swiftly to conclude the half done issues.”
Following his valedictory speech, Tambuwal was given a standing ovation after which he had tedious moment of photograph session with all of his colleagues and everybody else on the floor of the House.

First impressions, they say, are everything. Not the same for anyone who is president of a country like Nigeria. With Nigerians, last impressions are just as important as first impressions. Goodluck Jonathan’s last week as President has seen Nigeria shut down due to power cuts and fuel scarcity. Lives have been lost, airlines cancelled flights, media houses and banks closing early, telecom companies declaring their services would be hampered by the scarcity of diesel. One could argue, despite the turmoil that characterised his tenure, that this has been Jonathan’s worst week as President. In the midst of what has looked increasingly like a national security issue, the government has offered nothing in terms of explanations or an attempt to offer the way forward.

But to sum the Jonathan administration up through the events of the last one week would be unfair. It would amount to saying a President who led a country for five years can be judged according to what happened within just a week. Yes, there has been a clear display of government failure over the last one week but the truth is, this administration has been failing for the better part of the last five years. It is only expectedly signing out, looking to clear the minds of those who ever doubted its incompetence to have such doubts cleared.

President Jonathan will be remembered as that man who appeared uninterested as Nigerians battled a cabal to have him installed as acting president, and eventually president. He was that politician that Nigerians, ignoring the platform he ran on, instead assumed they could vote for him without regard to the party he was representing.

Many will remember President Jonathan for insisting the October 2010 Abuja Independence Day bombing had nothing to do with MEND despite the group insisting it carried out the terrorist attack. Between 2010 and 2011, Jonathan was clearly the most loved politician in the country. His seeming harmless mien combined well with a good messaging had him win the 2011 election despite claims by certain people the election was rigged. Maybe, the election was indeed rigged but he really was the most popular candidate in 2011, hands down!

That didn’t last. By January 2012, the President had burnt all the goodwill he enjoyed with the people. Allowing marketers and corruption combine to milk the country of N1.6tn subsidy payments was bad enough, the President was now seen as working with the same cabal to transfer the cost of corruption and the inefficient subsidy system to the people. The revolt lasted for weeks but the President had his way by increasing fuel prices to N97 from N65.

He had his way then, many Nigerians simply bided their time. Maybe, things would have turned out differently had the administration prosecuted and jailed those mainly responsible for the 2011 subsidy heists, we will never know. Maybe, doing something about the increasing cost of governance would have made a difference will be hard to guess but things only got worse for the administration from there.

Boko Haram’s bombing activities became intense and persistent. If some thought he could not have done much about the bombings, a few would forgive him for the things he did just after some of such bombings. Two Nigerian states, Kaduna and Yobe, were under attack when the President departed the country to attend the Rio+20 United Nations Summit in Rio, Brazil. The smoke from the previous day’s bombing of Nyanya had not disappeared while the President was already in Kano, not only receiving an Ibrahim Shekarau defecting for the umpteenth time but indeed captured on camera dancing! The President was dancing while the nation mourned! Things simply kept piling up.

Fifty nine boys got butchered at Buni Yadi while the President and his handlers partied on, under the guise of a centenary celebration. Several more gaffes like that became the norm rather than the exception. If the President cared about the predicament of the North-East and its endless devastation in the hands of Boko Haram, his actions showed the exact opposite.

Then came the abduction of the Chibok girls in April. What followed is unforgivable and Nigerians indeed refused to forgive the administration on this one. Several acts of negligence, indecision and outright carelessness have simply meant that over 400 days after, the Chibok girls remain abducted. You better not even try to imagine what life would be for them now, for those of them that survived the snakes of Sambisa Forest and the terror of mad Abubakar Shekau and his fellow gang of murderers. The government was desperate to wish the Chibok issue away so it adopted the Bring Back Our Girls advocacy group as its opposition. It should never have done that; it lost that particular battle because at each turn, #BringBackOurGirls always showed the President and his government as not as interested in rescuing the girls as it was in making it look like the group was an enemy of the state.

Many things went down under the administration, that if Jonathan ever decides to reflect on his time as president, without the burden of office and the stanching miasma of sycophants, he’d see that he was the one person responsible for his own fall from power. Mrs Diezani Alison-Madueke stayed on forever as Minister of Petroleum Resources, while each new day she spent in office helped to further deplete the President’s political capital. She was an unnecessary liability he should have done away with strategically; she stayed on so they would both deservingly leave together this Friday. Princess Stella Oduah was eventually eased out of office but it was already an act too little – no prosecution – and too late. Seeing as it was apparent she had ordered two cars with N255mn of taxpayers’ money. There’d be no need to state that Abba Moro, Minister of Interior, who was culpable in the death of some 19 National Immigration Service job applicants in March of 2014, will this week exit government in the very same position.

That was an identity of the Goodluck Jonathan administration: incompetence was fine as long as loyalty was guaranteed; corruption was permission as long as usefulness to the government via election donation was on the cards. Heck! Embattled Buruji Kashamu was President Jonathan’s main ally in the South-West in the run-up to the 2015 elections. Things were really that bad.

When your administration has to deal with endless reports of missing money, missing children and adults, missing accountability and have that combined with endless political battles against the likes of Olusegun Obasanjo and governors of your own party, you’d have needed more than luck to retain power.

In the end, luck could only take Goodluck so far. In 48 hours, Nigerians will be saying goodbye to Goodluck Jonathan. You can bet most of them will not care about a farewell, there is proof of that, they made him the very first casualty of a loss by an incumbent president in the history of Nigeria.

For Jonathan though, his concession call to Buhari was probably the most important thing he did as President. That call was not just about him conceding the election, it did help to quell tension across the country. History will not be fair if it forgets to credit him for this. So then, Jonathan was a very bad President who somehow did a very good thing on his way out of power. Goodbye Jonathan!

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President Alpha Conde of Guinea has expressed confidence in the ability of the President-elect, Muhammadu Buhari, to fight corruption, adding that Buhari will fight corruption like he has done in his country.

One of the robbery suspects, 25-year-old Ajayi Solomon, told PUNCH Metro that he went into armed robbery because his parents were late and he needed to take care of his siblings.

The source said, “He initially denied hiring the thugs. But after a comprehensive interrogation, he confessed, saying the woman had been flaunting her beauty and committing adultery. He is giving us useful information to track the fleeing suspects.”

THE support for Senators Ahmed Lawan and George Akume as Senate President and Deputy Senate President in the Eighth Assembly has increased.
A ranking senator, who said this yesterday, added that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) leaders in the cham ber “are excited by the new team”, which has the support of 40 All Progressives Congress (APC) senators.
It was learnt that as the Lawan-Akume ticket was announced at the weekend, many senators-elect, who had not made up their minds before the retreat, supported the duo “because of the ticket and issue-based campaign”.
The “Unity Forum” of the Senate, led by Senator Barnabas Gamade, at the weekend, announced the coming together of the two aspirants.
Explaining that the ticket is unbeatable, ranking senators-elect likened it to the presidential ticket of the APC, which won the presidential election.
They added: “All senators-elect across the political divide in the yet to be inaugurated Senate are already identifying with team, especially those in APC.
“In terms of the experience, we have been telling our distinguished colleagues across party lines that the Lawan-Akume ticket will provide the nation with the much desired legislative know-how because Lawan is going to be the highest ranking APC senator in the Eighth Assembly. Senator Akume is a former governor and a legislator in the last eight years. He is the Minority Leader.”
The senators-elect said it was not difficult to sell the tickets to their colleagues as one that would be on the same page with the Executive on the issue of corruption “because Lawan and Akume, from the available record of their service to the country in the public domain, have been on the same page with Nigerians on the menace”.
“From the pronouncements of our party leaders and their body language, what is of utmost importance to them is for the National Assembly to start on a clean slate with principal officers who will be seen as not only transparent, but transparently honest and do not carry any baggage of past scandal, no matter how small,” they added.
It was gathered that the PDP leaders in the Senate have reaffirmed their readiness to vote for Lawan and Akume “with the collapse of the campaign structures of the two senators into one”.
APC ranking senators-elect said their counterparts in the opposition party told them that the Lawan-Akume ticket had made things easy for them, “following the ongoing engagements between APC leaders and the opposition leaders in the National Assembly”.
Some PDP senators-elect were quoted as promising not to “betray” the Lawan-Akume ticket should there be need for election on June 4 when the eight session of the National Assembly will be inaugurated.

President Alpha Conde of Guinea has expressed confidence in the ability of the President-elect, Muhammadu Buhari, to fight corruption, adding that Buhari will fight corruption like he has done in his country.

The Guinean President said this while speaking with journalists after a meeting with the national leader of the All Progressives Congress, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, and the Lagos State Governor-elect, Akinwunmi Ambode, in Lagos on Tuesday.

He said, “I came to Lagos to meet my brother, Tinubu before I meet with President Buhari. With the election of Buhari, who is a straight forward person that will fight corruption like me, I believe his emergence as President will culminate in a stronger relationship between Guinea and Nigeria.

“Before the last general elections in Nigeria, there were anxiety, fear and uncertainty over the land. It was the belief that the country would disintegrate. This is also drawn from the fact that Nigeria fought the Biafra war. The war against Boko Haram was also there which Africa has to jointly fight.”

Conde also described the outcome of the March 28 presidential election and acceptance of defeat by President Goodluck Jonathan as victory for Africa and Nigeria.

He said, “The election in Nigeria is a victory for Africa and Nigeria, being the biggest black African country. We also congratulate President Goodluck Jonathan for accepting defeat just like President Abdou Diouf of Senegal when he lost the presidential election.”

Tinubu said Africa must have its home-grown strategy to build its economy.

He said there was a need for Africa to address trade issues and conflicts being perpetuated by fundamentalists.
He said, “We must form that synergy amongst African countries to develop the continent. We must address open trade issues and conflict of fundamentalist. We must resolve our problems in order for our today to be better for a great continent of Africa.

“Now we have that leader; we have those leaders and they are working together to share ideas and share vision. We will rescue Africa from destitution, poverty and ignorance and that is all that we are working hard for.”

Ambode, in his remarks, assured Conde and the people of Guinea that the next four years would witness greater trade and commerce between Lagos and Guinea.

The Lagos State Police Command has arrested a herbalist, Ismaila Abdullahi, and a prophetess, Bola Ojo, for allegedly defrauding two bank workers of a sum of N6m in the Egbeda area of the state.

The suspects, however, told PUNCH Metro that the bank workers brought the money to them for prayers without being coerced.

They added that the bank workers wanted to perform ‘money rituals’.

According to the police, Ojo is the prophetess of a Cherubim and Seraphim church in the Iyana Ipaja area, while Abdullahi is a herbalist in the Egbeda area.

It was gathered that the suspects were arrested by operatives of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad after the victims wrote a petition to the Commissioner of Police, Kayode Aderanti.

Our correspondent learnt that the bank workers, whose names were not disclosed, had met one Ajibola, an alleged informant for the suspects, who is still at large.

Ajibola, posing as an aide of a renowned politician, had reportedly introduced a deal to them.

It was gathered that the worth of the deal was put at N5.8m, and Ajibola asked his victims to bring the money to a location with a promise that they would get fat rewards after the deal.

The bank workers were said to have withdrawn the said amount and headed for Samson Street, Oke Odo, Iyana Ipaja, where Ajibola had an office.

While at the place, Abdullahi and Ojo allegedly met the bank workers and hypnotised the duo.

The police said the herbalist allegedly gave the bank workers a soap and sponge to bath and collected the cash from them. The suspects allegedly fled thereafter.

Speaking with PUNCH Metro, Abdullahi, 47, from Ilorin, Kwara State, said the bankers had come to him for prayer and assistance to become wealthy. He added that the money he collected was to purchase the materials for the ritual.

He said, “Yes, I am a herbalist. I was introduced to the bankers by my brother, Ajibola. What happened was that one of the bankers, a woman, wanted to perform money ritual.

“She came to my house in Egbeda for prayers. She also wanted to get pregnant, and she told me she was planning to start her own business, that she was tired of her work.

“So, she brought the money, which I graciously collected. I told her that I was going to buy the materials for the concoction which would make her pregnant and wealthy. That is the truth. I am married with four children. I was arrested in the Ilogbo area of Ogun State.”

Ojo, 65, said she was invited for the deal by the herbalist, adding that her role was to convince the bankers to pay the sum.

She said, “I am a prophetess of the C&S. I live in the Iyana Ipaja area. I have three children. What happened was that Abdullahi asked me to pray for the bankers.

“And after the prayers, he gave me N200, 000. He is just a friend, he is not a lover.”

The Lagos State Police Public Relations Officer, DSP Kenneth Nwosu, confirmed the incident.

He said, “The suspects swindled the bankers of N6m and they have confessed to the crime.

“Efforts are on to arrest the third member of the syndicate.”

Mbilla:
Why is't that Yoruba old men and women commit crimes most than the younger once. Does it mean yoruba youths occupied all the agboro work in yoruba land while their fathers and grand fathers are busy raping their female childrean,doing ritual, drugs business, car stealing, picking pockets.

That move was also against the background of claims by the Lawan camp that they were in control of the majority of senators-elect from the North-West.

It was learnt, weekend, that senators of core northern extraction were being wooed by their emirs at the instance of the first-class revered monarch from the North-West to consider Saraki above Lawan in the contest.

A former Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Godsday Orubebe, has urged the Ijaw people of the Niger Delta to return to fishing, saying this would reduce the region’s overdependence on oil.

Orubebe said there was a need for the people of the South-South to devise a strategy that would make them to be less dependent on oil resources in order to move the region forward.

He made this suggestion in his presentation at a seminar organised by the Ijaw Professionals Association in Lagos, on Saturday.

Delivering a paper entitled, “The place of the Ijaw in Nigeria: A call for strategic action,” Orubebe said it had become imperative for the region to look inward by diversifying its economy in order to make the oil producing communities less reliant on oil, noting that “oil has been a problem for our people.”

The former minister noted that the people of the region were industrious before the discovery of oil.

He said that the discovery of oil distracted the Ijaw nation from its traditional economy and consequently left the people in poverty.

He said, “Because of oil we have abandoned what God has given us in our environment. Ijaw people naturally are fishermen. But we abandoned what God has given to us and we focused on oil which we don’t have absolute control of. And that is our dilemma. That is what has trapped us.”

The former minister also lamented the years of neglect of the region by successive governments.

He said, “Despite being one of the largest producers of oil in this country, the Ijaw have suffered marginalisation and infrastructural neglect. More than 90 per cent of the communities have yet to be connected with network of roads. Linkage to the national grid for electricity is still a dream.”

In his remarks, the Executive Director, Institute of Communication and Corporate Studies, Dr. Austin Tam George, who was the guest speaker, described the Petroleum Industry Bill as cosmetic, saying the responsibility of maintaining oil resources belong to the Federal Government.

He warned that the PIB would create problems if passed into law.

He said, “The Petroleum Industry Bill makes it as a fundamental objective to disentitle oil producing communities of their rights. These communities will fight for their rights and when they fight for their rights, we are going to have increased regional instability which in a way will cause instability in the country.”

He charged the participants to focus on how to diversify the economy of the Niger Delta region.

millionboi:
hmmmm......love could b wickked

Boko Haram fighters killed several people and destroyed dozens of homes in a raid on a town in northeast Nigeria’s Borno state, local residents, a vigilante and the military said on Sunday.
Scores of Islamist militants in trucks and on motorcycles stormed the town of Gubio, 95 kilometres (60 miles) by road north of the state capital, Maiduguri, on Saturday night.
“Boko Haram invaded our town last night and killed many of our people and burnt more than half of the town,” resident Babor Kachalla, who fled to Maiduguri following the attack, told AFP.
“We all fled into the bush amid volleys of bullets and rockets. We lost many people in the attack because the gunmen overpowered the soldiers guarding the town,” he added, without specifying a death toll.
Another resident, Adam Kakami, said the attackers, who were dressed in military uniform, withdrew after six hours.
“We stayed in the bush from where we could hear sounds of guns up to 3:00 am (0200 GMT) when the shooting stopped but we could see fire from all over the town,” he added.
“We decided not to return and moved towards Maiduguri because we were afraid they would return.”
Civilian vigilante Babagana Gunda predicted a high death toll because Boko Haram “had a field day”.
Last November the rebels invaded Gubio but were repelled by troops and vigilantes guarding the town.
A military officer in Maiduguri, who asked not to be identified because he is not authorised to speak to the media, said reinforcements succeeded in pushing the Islamists out of the town.
“The terrorists suffered heavy casualties but they inflicted large-scale damage on the town as half of it was burnt with rockets fired by the terrorists,” he added.
Boko Haram, which wants to create a hardline Islamic state in northeast Nigeria, has been pushed out of captured towns and territory since February by Nigerian troops with assistance from Niger, Chad and Cameroon.
The six-year conflict has claimed at least 15,000 lives and made more than 1.5 million people homeless.

ijustdey:
I say a big amen


"he who findeth a wife.... finds a good thing and obtain favour from the Lord"

lilmax:
This man is weak

The husband who lives at Echura Estate, Banana Island, B8, however told the court that he left the house because his wife wanted to control him.

A 28-year-old woman, Maria Igbaji, narrated to a shocked Orile-Agege Customary Court sitting in Lagos, how she invested all her life savings on her husband, only for him to turn around to reject her, saying she stinks and is not good enough for her.