₦airaland Forum

This is the second piece of garbage this particular OP has pulled out of his anus today... Duly noted.

dear Christine Lagarde; Mr President will not devalue our currency.. you have tried every avenue to convince, cajole and manipulate his decision on this.. Give it a rest already..

although the article doesn't mention this directly, its implied summary is yet another attempt at forcing currency devaluation, otherwise they haven't said anything new... Mr president is resolute on non devaluation and i agree with that policy.

heading says PHOTOS...opens thread no PHOTOS, there seems to be alot of that going on here lately

BULLY PULPIT02.28.16 6:01 AM ET
This Shady Trump-Supporting Preacher Gave a Sex-Scandal-Plagued Nigerian Pastor $1 Million and a Rolls-Royce
Mike Murdock, that ‘seed-money’-obsessed prosperity gospel preacher, recently endorsed Trump. His other recent activity includes shelling out for a preacher accused of sketchy pursuits.
I Am The Best Thing…
That Ever Happens…
To A Sad Person.
—Mike Murdock’s pinned tweet.

Mike Murdock wants you to plant a seed.
Theoretically, it can be a seed of anything you need or want more of. But in practice, Murdock wants you to plant a seed of money.
He says you have to trust that it will grow and return to you a hundred times more than what you planted. Ten dollars will come back to you as $1,000. One thousand will become $100,000.
Fifty-eight dollars, a popular sum based on Murdock’s 58 blessings, will bring you back $5,800.
In reality, it probably will grow with Mike Murdock. From there it just might end up as a seven-figure gift to a fellow sex-scandal-embroiled Nigerian pastor. But that hasn’t stopped people from giving Murdock their last $100, because God doesn’t care about need. “God has never responded to pain,” Murdock says. “He only responds to faith.”
The prosperity preacher became the latest evangelical leader to endorse Donald Trump this month, calling the upstart presidential frontrunner damn near a “genius.”
But the true genius lies in the tax-exempt business model Murdock has built for himself in the name of God—no tax disclosures, a sprawling Texas megachurch, and a fabulously tacky home that he put on the market for $3.5 million.
And while seed giving doesn’t sound like the kind of business advice Donald Trump might give, the pastor has declared the GOP frontrunner the divinely anointed choice for president.
“He has a warrior spirit for restoring America in the eyes of the world and he has a warrior’s heart,” Murdock told Bloomberg Politics. “I am endorsing him for president.”
On his internationally-available television show, Wisdom Keys with Mike Murdock, Murdock went so far as to call Trump a living legend with a “phenomenal mind.”
“He says you want to know what the other person you’re dealing with is needing [from a negotiation],” Murdock explained on the show. Then he pivoted to God.
“If you find out what God is wanting, and God is wanting to be believed,” he said. “His only passion is to be believed. God has a craving to be trusted.”
What better way to show your belief in God than by giving Murdock a seed that you trust will come back to you?
The prosperity gospel has become somewhat of a joke in mainstream circles, but continues to have a wealth of popularity around the world, preaching the message that great wealth is a sign of favor with God. Favor that stems from great faith. Trump did not respond to a request for comment about whether he endorses that theology.
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Murdock first gained popularity in the 1980s on the PTL Club with Tammy Faye and Jim Bakker. But as the Bakkers’ empire crumbled amid financial and sex scandals, Murdock seemed to survive unscathed, and has been spreading the Lord’s word on TV and his church for decades.
His version of seed faith asks those who have little to give a lot to the ministry. For example, a $1,000 donation will “break the back of poverty”—if it doesn’t break the back of he who gave it.
(Murdock has previously denied any personal gain from the “seeds.” “If any of this money is for Mike Murdock’s personal gain, may a curse be upon me and my ministry and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth,” he has often said.)
There’s little evidence that shows donations given through the church go anywhere but to the church, which has a sprawling building in Fort Worth. The ministry’s homepage, which sports a cheap casino aesthetic and was last redesigned in the mid-aughts, offers a link to donate to the Rebekah Home—an anti-abortion center for unwed mothers that shares a name with an abusive, now-defunct charity by the same name. The Daily Beast was unable to locate such a facility in Texas, though funds for the project are donated via a general donation page to the church.
A 2003 exposé by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram found the church had practically nonexistent financial giving. “For nearly a decade, less than 1 percent of donors’ money has been used for such charitable works,” the paper wrote. Shortly thereafter, the ministry reincorporated itself as a church, which is made exempt from financial disclosures.
The ministry did not return a Daily Beast request for comment.
The three-part investigative report on Murdock’s ministry was damning. The man of letters had no degree, it claimed, as Murdock had dropped out of seminary and his Ph.D. (Murdock prefers to be referred to as “Dr.”) is from an online school—and only honorary.
The Star-Telegram also found that 60 percent of the ministry’s revenue went to overhead costs rather than charities. The pastor was driving a $70,000 car. On the grounds of his sprawling home, he had exotic animals, including a camel, an antelope, and even a lion. He boasted about buying private jets—with cash.
At the time, Murdock took home about $250,000 a year from the ministry, though the Star-Telegram reports the ministry paid some of his expenses directly. His income for the decade since that 2003 report is unknown.
“In 2000, when the ministry received $3,858,637, it spent $2,056 on ‘needy families and benevolence,’” the Star-Telegram wrote. “That same year, it spent $65,348 on flowers and gifts.”
The newspaper also found that Murdock owned three for-profit businesses that licensed his songs and books. “Their boards include ministry officials. They have done business with the ministry. Murdock also promotes his books and songs through the ministry and on Wisdom Keys,” the article read. “What’s more, the ministry sells the books and music cassettes on its website and at seminars.”
The paper reported that IRS filings showed the companies made money from the sales arrangement with the nonprofit.
Public records show two of those for-profit companies are still active, while one was suspended “involuntarily” for tax reasons. (At the time, Murdock denied making a profit on those items.)
In the midst of the Star-Telegram investigation, Murdock replaced some top leaders in the church, including accountants James and Doris Couch. He later said that any incongruities in his taxes were their fault, not his.
But Doris Couch told The Daily Beast that she wasn’t fired, but resigned when Murdock hired a larger firm. She added that the tax forms she filled out for Murdock were clean, and that her faith in Murdock was unshaken, even though she hadn’t been “planting seeds” lately. Her husband, James, died last year, and she said she hasn’t spoken to Murdock in ages.
“If he were to call me today, I’d go, ‘What can I do for you?’” she said. “He knows more of the Word than anybody.”
Far more recently, Murdock found the cash to give his friend Biodun Fatoyinbo, a Nigerian pastor, $1 million and a Rolls-Royce during a January 2014 visit to his COZA church in Abuja.
“This 68 year old Wealthy Prominent and Adept Preacher released a Million-dollar Gift to the Senior Pastor of COZA,” a gospel blogger who reportedly witnessed the exchange wrote. “The Gift of a Rolls-Royce threw the Church into Shouts of Celebration and moved the Pastor and his wife to tears.”
(Reports don’t indicate whether the gift was in U.S. or Nigerian currency.)
Fatoyinbo has been accused of infidelity for years, before the pricey gift from Murdock. A Nigerian X Factor contestant publicly accused Fatoyinbo of engaging in extramarital sex with her in 2013, while another woman accused Fatoyinbo of taking her to his hotel room and then trying to bribe her to delete the evidence. The first woman, Ese Walter, claimed the pastor had singled her out for a leadership role in the church, and then propositioned her while on a trip to London, where she was enrolled in graduate school.
There, Fatoyinbo allegedly asked her to the roof of his hotel. “While there, he sat on a reclining chair and asked me to come sit on his laps,” she wrote on a Nigerian website. “He said he had told me to feel free with him and loosen up. I found myself strolling to sit on his laps.”
They had sex that night, she said, and it went on for a week. Though she wasn’t sexually assaulted, Walter said she “felt trapped in this affair.”
“Now read my lips, I know there are people here that are not part of our church, read my lips, we are going to speak but we are consulting to come out with a robust reply,” Fatoyinbo said in response. “One thing you can be sure of is that my wife and I love you.”
Murdock, who has been trailed by allegations of extramarital sex himself—a book by his son’s supposed childhood friend said the pastor had mistresses and a huge porn stash—defended his friend.
"Pastor Biodun …Is One of The Most Integrity Leaders I Have Known,” Murdock tweeted in his defense. “Attack…IS Proof of Divine Favor.”
Murdock and Fatoyinbo are far from the only religious figures to encourage so-called seed faith. Megarich California megachurch pastor Rick Warren, who gave the invocation at President Obama’s first inauguration, also advocates it on his website and sermons.
“It may not make sense to you to give away something that you need more of, but that is exactly the kind of attitude that God wants to bless and that will produce fruit in your life,” Warren writes. “When you have a need, don’t gripe about it, don’t wish about it, and you don’t even have to pray about it—just plant a seed!”
And true believers are seemingly undeterred, despite the proliferation of websites dedicated to debunking seed-giving as practiced by televangelists. (Murdock was also one of several lampooned by comedian John Oliver this summer.)
One website explains the biblical root for Murdock’s theology to highlight its perversion. “Now right here anybody with even a minimal level of reading comprehension should be able to see that this parable has nothing to do with money,” it reads. “The seed is the Word of God. Even a brand new baby Christian should be able to look at this and say, ‘I don’t think these fellows are teaching this correctly.’”
And there are plenty of sites that aim to take down Murdock himself.
One introduces him as “the Fleecer.” “He presents himself as a man of letters,” it reads. “But he is ‘Dr. Mike Murdock,’ seminary dropout, and the letters we found are F-R-A-U-D.”

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/02/28/shady-trump-supporting-pastor-gave-a-sex-scandal-plagued-nigerian-pastor-cash-and-a-rolls-royce.html

By MICHELLE FAUL, Associated Press

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — It was supposed to be a U.S.-led naval training maneuver off the coast of West Africa when real-life drama intervened, with pirates taking over an oil tanker and turning the exercise into a rescue mission.

Navies from the United States, Ghana, Togo and Nigeria tracked the hijacked tanker through waters off five countries before Nigerian naval forces stormed aboard on Feb. 20 amid a shootout that killed one of the pirates.

It was the first big success in international maritime cooperation in the pirate-ridden Gulf of Guinea, the commodore in charge of U.S. operations in Africa and Europe told The Associated Press.

Capt. Heidi Agle, the commodore, had been directing a training exercise against piracy with maritime agencies of Ghana when the hijacking provided a real-life lesson, she said in a telephone interview Friday from her base in Italy.

First word came from the French Embassy, which sent information to Agle's USNS Spearhead via Ghanaian officials and U.S. diplomats of a possible pirate ship loitering off Abidjan, Ivory Coast.

There, pirates seized the Dubai-owned MT Maximus, on lease to a South Korean company and carrying 4,700 tons of diesel fuel, on Feb. 11.

The Spearhead tracked down the hijacked Maximus, identified it and then monitored its progress for two days as it sailed from Ivorian into Ghanaian waters. Then Agle handed over to Ghana's Navy, which continued to shadow the ship until it entered the waters of Togo, when that country's navy took over.

As the pirates steamed across the gulf toward the tiny island nation of Sao Tome and Principe, officials there contacted the Nigerian government for help.

The tanker had sailed nearly 800 miles (1,280 kilometers) before the Nigerians made the assault.

Dirk Steffen, maritime security director of Denmark-based Risk Intelligence, agreed the operation was "the first anti-piracy success in the region of this scale."

"Never has a West African navy carried out an opposed boarding before," he said.

Agle called it "a coordinated effort and the biggest piece in progress in the region" since the United States began training with African nations in the Gulf of Guinea in 2009.

The rescue was directed by Nigerian Rear Admiral Henry Babalola, who told the AP that it was made possible by a maritime agreement allowing Nigeria to patrol Sao Tome's waters.

"When we challenged them (the pirates), they said that they were in international waters" with the law of the sea on their side. But the agreement allowed the Nigerians to storm the ship after eight hours of attempted negotiations.

"International cooperation is the new mantra for maritime security," Babalola said. "We cannot go it alone."

Six pirates were captured and 18 crew members freed. Several pirates escaped with two crew members who remain hostages, Steffen said.

Babalola stressed the economic impact of piracy, pushing up the price of maritime insurance with costs ultimately passed on to consumers.

One-fifth of all maritime crime in the world is committed in the Gulf of Guinea, but that is only the tip of the iceberg since an estimated two-thirds of piracy acts there are never reported, according to Ocean Beyond Piracy, a private, Colorado-based organization.

The Gulf of Guinea is primed for economic growth, a major route for oil supplies shipped around the world with a mild climate that is ideal for commerce, docking and fishing.

Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


http://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2016-02-26/us-nigerian-navies-ship-rescue-success-for-cooperation

Nigeria and Saudi Arabia will cooperate in stimulating the global oil market and combating Islamist militancy, the countries’ heads of state said on Tuesday.

The West African nation and the Gulf state are two of the biggest oil producers in the world and are both members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Saudi Arabia was the world’s second-biggest oil producer in 2014, behind the U.S., while Nigeria is Africa’s petroleum giant. Both have been hit hard by plummeting oil prices, with Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari in particular under growing pressure to devalue the Nigerian naira in order to cope with falling foreign exchange revenues.

Buhari met with Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz on Tuesday during a visit to the Gulf, in which he will also visit Qatar, a fellow OPEC member. The two leaders committed to stabilizing the market and raising the price of oil, which has fallen from highs of $115 per barrel for Brent crude in summer 2014 to $32 in February 2016.

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Both Nigeria and Saudi Arabia are dealing with security issues posed by militant groups. A six-year insurgency in northeast Nigeria waged by Boko Haram, which pledged allegiance to the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) in March 2015, has cost around 20,000 lives and displaced more than 2 million people. Buhari insisted in December 2015 that Boko Haram had been “technically” defeated, but the group continues to launch suicide bombing attacks in Nigeria and neighboring countries in the Lake Chad region.

Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, established a 34-member Islamic military coalition in December 2015 to fight against “the evils of all terrorist groups and organizations.” The coalition was criticized by ISIS , which released a number of videos in response calling for attacks on Saudi Arabia and other members of the coalition, including Bahrain. Nigeria is not a member of the coalition, which includes its neighbors Chad and Niger.

Buhari commended Saudi Arabia’s efforts and said that, following the November 2015 attacks on Paris by ISIS militants in which 130 people were killed, “we have to come together to find a common solution to the problem of terrorism.” In response, King Salman urged Nigeria to consider becoming a full member of the coalition and said the Saudi government would support Nigeria in fighting Boko Haram.

Saudi Arabia and Russia agreed earlier in February to freeze oil output in a bid to stabilize prices, so long as other major oil-producing countries agreed to do the same. Iran, the world’s seventh-largest oil producer, indicated it would not be willing to freeze its output, according to Reuters.

http://europe.newsweek.com/boko-haram-isis-429799?rm=eu

what were the contents of the bilateral trade agreements? how were they detrimental to the overall well-being of Nigeria? surely the agenda and premise of the bilateral trade and security discussions must have been clearly outlined between both parties well ahead of the signing ceremony in Dubai.. in any-case we need alot more information on this .

can someone transcribe this for the benefit of those who do not understand the language?...the video does puts things in some perspective.

i was there.. it was freaking EPIC!

@Naptu not seen you on here in a while...good

in the eyes of the law, omehia does not exist as a former governor,.this is unconstitutional, paying him any benefits and entitlements will be illegal.

@ OP what is his name? where was he last seen and how old is he? , what was he wearing at the time he went missing?, does he have relative in the area in which he was last seen? is he a special needs child? ... more information would help

effin' brilliant...Game On!

Truly impressed, expected someone much much older.

some individuals are irredeemably daft..

what are the names of the agitators for this LNC? who are the physical individuals behind these post election loss calls?

signed...

kudos ICS...laudable example

shopped.

GoldCircle:
I like my Nigerian brothers. Many of the people harsh tagging and calling for boycott still have their subscriptions running and their smart cards inside their decoders.

Well, I am not boycotting dstv simply because they are still the best there is. Others are far far behind and are no substitute. if you personally want to boycott them, then feel free and go ahead but I wont join such a campaign.Where are our regulatory authorities? where is Daarsat, HiTV, Montage, Consat and co? why can't they give them a run for their money? HiTV got a chance a few years ago. What happened?! it is like saying I should boycott MTN because of their exorbitant tariffs when I know they alone have the coverage I need for the tracking device on my vehicle that plies the length and breadth of Nigeria.

see, if we all hold our people accountable, we wouldn't be in this mess in the first place. There are so many other ways we can make our voices heard. This campaign thing IMHO is the least effective of the lot because I know my Nigerian brothers. I know them.

could you kindly suggest more effective means of objections? thank you

As Nigerians go to the polls on March 28 to elect a president they will be hoping the upcoming elections go off without a hitch.
They will just want a peaceful, free and fair election. And they won’t be the only ones. Teams of local and international election observers are preparing to monitor the polls to make sure it is “free and fair” – and why not?
Free and fair is good. But there’s more to democracy than free and fair.
The problem with free and fair elections however is that they have not delivered much for Africa. According to data from the African Elections Database, over 90% of the 172 presidential elections held across the continent between 1990 and 2012 were declared free and fair by the panoply of election observers that descended on each one, yet in almost every case, the results were disputed by the losing candidate(s). Nigerians are all too familiar with this. Riots broke out in 2011 after current president Goodluck Jonathan won disputed elections with 800 people reportedly killed. There were widespread protests and rigging allegations in 2007. Both of these elections were certified free and fair. It may be time to reconsider.
Data from the Afrobarometer survey which seeks to capture perceptions of the political, social and economic atmosphere in the country suggest that about half of Nigerian voters believe elections are generally not free and fair, although that fraction dropped to about 48% in the 2012 survey.

In many African elections, there is often not much to choose between the candidates. And the upcoming Nigerian election is no different, policy comes secondary for many to identity politics of region and religion. Incumbent president Jonathan has campaigned on a platform of tackling the Islamist insurgency in the north, diversifying Nigeria’s oil-based economy and reducing youth unemployment. His main challenger, former military ruler Gen. Muhammadu Buhari has promised almost the same package with some regional nuance.
Change can be good

But, there is a real possibility that we might see a transfer of power from the government to the opposition for the first time. There has not been a change from the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) since Nigeria’s return to democracy in 1999. If that happens, it will be a great advertisement for Nigerian democracy, much like recent elections have been for neighboring Ghana.
Ghana’s elections are often closely contested but this alone does not satisfactorily explain why Ghana is often held up as a good example of a thriving democracy. We can point to several other factors – from its free press to the central role civil society plays in shaping political discourse – but the most significant factor is its emerging tradition of power transitions between the government in power and the opposition.
Such power transitions are critical because they bring in fresh new faces and new ideas to government. On a much deeper level, these transitions are a powerful demonstration of what democracy is really about – that all citizens have a realistic chance of having their voices heard.
It is rare to have elections in Nigeria–and indeed many other African countries–where allegations of vote rigging do not surface after the results are announced. Frequently, these allegations are made even before the first ballot is cast. Already, Gen. Buhari’s All Progressives Congress (APC) has leveled allegations of a wide plot by the government to rig the elections, including a plot to sabotage voter card readers on Election Day and sponsoring ethnic militias to create chaos and violence after the elections.
Given the close nature of the race, the failure of the government to convince voters that nothing untoward is afoot is worrying. With such allegations hanging over the elections, there is a high possibility that if the results don’t go their way, opposition supporters will protest and riots could break out. And that is the last thing Nigerian democracy needs.
A consolidation of democracy in Nigeria is not only desirable for its own sake but is critically important for democracy on the continent. As Africa’s most populous country and largest economy, a strong democratically stable and prosperous Nigeria can assume its rightful place as the big brother in West Africa. For the rest of Africa, successful and peaceful democratic transition in Nigeria will be yet another powerful demonstration that closely contested elections in a polarized environment can have a positive outcome
Democracy works best when citizens feel that their votes count. And opposition parties have little incentive to disrupt the polls or prime their supporters to protest the results when they have a realistic chance of coming to power through the ballot. Perhaps the best way to break this cycle of post-election protests and riots and to consolidate democracy in Nigeria is for power to cycle regularly between the government and the opposition. These upcoming elections present just such an opportunity.
Quartz is launching in Africa in June 2015. Sign up for announcements and updates here.


http://qz.com/367558/if-nigerians-change-their-government-next-saturday-it-will-be-a-boost-for-african-democracy/

it would have been amusing...if it wasnt so EPIC in shock value, many in the audience kept mute when she made those statements, i will draw some solace from that.. wow

this man has waaayy too much time on his hands...for a governor

don't do drugs,..drugs are bad..m'kaay?

Davidson Iriekpen with agency report
With the dust yet to settle over the procurement of seven gunboats by a private security firm belonging to ex-Niger Delta militant, Government Ekpemuplo, aka Tompolo, purportedly for the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), it has emerged that two British businessmen have been arrested on suspicion of bribing a Norwegian official alleged to have been involved in the controversial sale of the former naval vessels.


According to the London-based Independent newspaper, a joint investigation by the City of London’s Overseas Anti-Corruption Unit (OACU) and their counterparts in Norway, Okokrim, examined how the former warships, including missile-torpedo boats (MTBs), ended up under the control of a former Niger Delta militant who now runs privatised national security contracts worth millions of dollars that have been authorised by the Nigerian president, Goodluck Jonathan.


Detectives from the OACU arrested a man in his early 40s at his home in Alfreton, Derbyshire, and a man in his late 50s at an address in East Molesey, Surrey.


The two are alleged to have made payments to a Norwegian civil servant totalling more than $150,000.
The money, in two separate transactions, is alleged to have been paid directly into the official’s personal bank account. The cash is alleged to have helped secure the sale of the decommissioned Norwegian Navy ships by disguising the eventual destination of the warships.


Under Norway’s ethical foreign policy rules, the direct sale of the decommissioned warships to a private Nigerian company regarded as effectively running the country’s outsourced national coast guard, could have proved difficult.


With a general election in Nigeria scheduled for February, both the Norwegian Ministry of Defence and the country’s foreign affairs departments in Oslo, were likely to have asked for a lengthy political assessment of the export deal if the destination of the vessels had been fully known.


It is understood that the Norwegian authorities assumed their former naval MTBs, post-sale, would be converted to unarmed vessels and operate under European laws.


In addition to the two arrests in England, a business address in Surrey was also searched by the OACU with computer equipment and documents seized.
The UK police have not named the company involved, stating only that it was involved in “international risk management for the maritime industry”.


However authorities in Norway have said the arrested men are connected to a UK firm called CAS Global, which is headquartered in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey. The firm described itself as specialising in “maritime services”.
CAS also has registered offices in Nigeria’s largest city, Lagos, in Tema in Ghana, and in Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown.
Police in Norway have arrested a third man in Tonsberg on the country’s south west coast.


DCI Danny Medlycott, head of the OACU, said the operation was a “great example” of how his unit was working closely with other international enforcement partners “to combat bribery and corruption.”


Although the OACU have been involved in 150 corruption and bribery operations since it was established in 2006, its most high-profile success is Operation Cent, which resulted in the convictions of those involved in producing and selling fake “substance detectors”.
The “useless” devices, which had a £3m annual turnover, were sold around the world and marketed as capable of finding explosives. The trial judge said the scam investigated by the OACU had “damaged the reputation of British trade abroad”.


The former Norwegian missile torpedo boats are now part of a private fleet under the control of Tompolo. He was a militia leader in the 2009 Niger Delta insurgency that fought the Nigerian army and destroyed oil installations in widespread protests against corruption and mismanagement in the region’s high-value oil industry.


Since the uprising and following Jonathan’s first election victory in 2011, Tompolo’s security firm, Global West Vessels Specialist (GWVS), has won lucrative state contracts that have been criticised in some quarters as undermining the authority of the Nigerian Navy.


Okokrim – Norway’s National Authority for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime – were tasked with investigating how the sale of the vessels was fast-tracked to a UK-registered company but ended up in the fleet owned by Tompolo, who is a close political ally of the Nigerian president.

http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/two-britons-arrested-over-bribe-involving-gunboats-sold-to-tompolo/199755/

Goddy Egene

Worried by the dwindling fortunes of Ikeja Hotels Plc and determined to rescue the company from going under, some shareholders of the company on Tuesday removed its chairman, Mr. Goodie Ibru.

He was removed at an extra-ordinary meeting held in front of Sheraton Hotels, Ikeja, Lagos.

Three shareholders (Alurum Investments Limited, Dadifoll Limited, and RFC Limited) on behalf of others, had procured an order of the Federal High Court in Lagos sanctioning the EGM. However, on getting to the venue of the meeting yesterday, the shareholders were prevented from entering the venue through another order procured by representatives of Goodie Ibru from another Federal High Court sitting in Abuja.

Despite the fact that the venue had been paid and receipted for the shareholders were locked out by the management of Sheraton Hotels. However, the shareholders decided to conduct the EGM standing outside the premises of the hotel and passed all the resolutions for the EGM through a poll. At the end of the voting, 53.34 per cent voted for the resolutions, while 0.001 per cent voted against the resolutions.
Consequently, Ibru was voted out as the chairman of the company. Apart from the removal of Ibru as chairman, other resolutions passed at the EGM include: the appointment of Mr. Olumide Braithwaite and Mr. Tunde Sarumi as directors of Ikeja Hotels Plc; the appointment of the audit firm, KPMG Nigeria Limited, for the purpose of carrying out a forensic audit of the management of the affairs of the company from the period of 1999-2014; forensic audit of the share register and verification of the funding and payment for the shares of the company, by holders, directly or indirectly, of shares that amount to two per cent or more of the company’s issued share capital.

Although Ibru was absent at the meeting, two directors-Mr. Rasheed Olaoluwa, who represented the interest of Bank of Industry(13.1 per cent) and Fadeke Alamatu who is the alternate to Oba Otudeko- were present.

Though the meeting was scheduled to begin at 10.00am, it did not start until 11.20 am. The shareholders nominated Olaoluwa to move all the motions for the resolutions.

Speaking at the meeting, Olaoluwa having formed a quorum, the shareholders had to recourse to the provisions of Section 240(1 and 2) of the Companies and Allied Matters Act (CAMA), to conduct the meeting.

According to CAMA, “The chairman, if any, of the board of directors shall preside as chairman at every general meeting of the company, or if there is no such chairman, or if he is not present within one hour after the time appointed for the holding of the meeting or is unwilling to act, the directors present shall elect one of their number to be chairman of the meeting. If at any meeting no director is willing to act as chairman or if no director is present within one hour after the time appointed for holding the meeting, the members present shall choose one of their number to be chairman of the meeting.”

Speaking on the validity of the EGM, Braithwaite said the shareholders acted within the provisions of the law so as to save their investments in the Ikeja Hotels Plc.

He said the order procured from Abuja was null and void, saying it was a clear abuse of court process.

“We have an interim order by a Federal High Court(in Lagos), dated 16 December stating that the meeting is properly convened and valid. But the other party ran to Abuja to another Federal High Court and procured another order that is displayed at the venue of the meeting, which does not, in any way, invalidate the earlier order convening the meeting. This order conveying the meeting is still subsisting because it has not been vacated. The only way the order for the EGM can be vacated is by a court of superior jurisdiction, that is either the Court of Appeal or the Supreme Court. Going to a Federal High Court in another state is a gross abuse. The first order predates any order in the absence of vacation and it is valid, legal and subsisting. The shareholders are entitled to hold the meeting despite the fact that the hall has been paid for and it was locked. The other party, in its own wisdom does not want the meeting to hold. But the meeting will hold and the shareholders will decide,” Braithwaite said.

Some of the shareholders who spoke at the EGM said they were tired of the way the company was being run and were determined to rescue it. They decried the fact that Ibru, who is lawyer and former President of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) is showing bad example in corporate governance.

For instance, the President, Nigeria Solidarity Shareholders Association (NSSA), Chief Timothy Adesiyan said, “We are rescuing this company from the hands of the cabals. We are legally authorised to hold this meeting. The regulators have failed us, let them come and see what is happening. We want to remove the virus that is eating deep into this company. How long shall we wait? You will see changes after today. There must be transparency and accountability in this company. Our auditors have also compromised.”

Speaking in the same vein, the General Secretary, Independent Shareholders Association of Nigeria, Mr. Bayo Adeleke, said: “We have been very passive. The frustrations on the part of shareholders that they have not gotten commensurate value for their investment for so long has triggered this incident. People are simply demanding a restructuring of the board and for more accountability. For the past six years, no dividend has been paid.”

The National Chairman, Progressive Shareholders Association of Nigeria, Mr. Boniface Okezie, said: “We want a change , the company must be salvaged from this mess. For the past five years, no return, even the people that contributed immensely to the growth of the company, you did not put them on the board. We have three companies as subsidiaries but they refused to pay dividend.”

Ikeja Hotel Plc owns the Sheraton Lagos Hotel and is also a core investor in Capital Hotel Plc (owners of Sheraton Abuja Hotel) and a core shareholder in the Tourist Company of Nigeria (owners of Federal Palace Hotel & Casino, Lagos).
The company recorded a dip of 50 per cent in profit after tax from N2 billion in 2012 to N998 million in 2013. It ended the nine months to September 30, 2014 with a loss of N2.554 million compared with a profit of N984 million in the corresponding period of 2013.

http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/shareholders-remove-ibru-as-chairman-of-ikeja-hotels/198555/

9jatriot:
Bros put link na...

done.


http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/11/17/opinion/the-nigerian-status-quo.html?_r=1