₦airaland Forum

Anyone else having issues with the game on PS 3? Bought the CD via Konga last month, have really enjoyed it since this is the one that finally cured my PES addiction grin but over the last couple of days, loading in between games has been terribly slow. Already vacuum cleaned the console but still having same issues, ideas anyone?
(Modify) (Quote) (Report) (Share)

Anyone else having issues with the game on PS 3? Bought the CD via Konga last month, have really enjoyed it since this is the one that finally cured my PES addiction but over the last couple of days, loading in between games has been terribly slow. Already vacuum cleaned the console but still having same issues, ideas anyone?

http://newswirengr.com/2015/08/07/lasuth-medical-director-begs-men-to-leave-the-sucking-of-breast-for-babies/?utm_source=&utm_medium=twitter#


Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH) Chief Medical Director (CMD), Prof Wale Oke has urged men to stop competing with their babies to suck the wives’ breast. Oke enjoined the men to allow their babies to enjoy their natural meal.

He spoke yesterday at the World Breastfeeding Week (WBW). The programme was organised by LASUTH Community Health Department in conjunction with the hospital’s Pediatrics.

According to him, the benefits of exclusive breastfeeding are many.

He said: “When a mother breastfeeds her baby, it creates bond between them. It is also a natural family mechanism as mothers cannot get pregnant. Breastfeeding mothers do not have bone diseases, breast and ovarian cancers.”

Oke said the state has created an enabling environment for mothers with its policies to work and still feed their babies.

“Working and breastfeeding can go together if mothers try because it is necessary to have healthy babies,” he said.

Wife of Lagos State Governor, Mrs Bolanle Ambode urged mothers to breastfeed their babies exclusively for six months so that they can be healthy.

This, according to her, will prevent babies from coming down with childhood diseases, such as cough, diarrhea and catarrh, among others.

Mrs. Amode, represented by the Permanent Secretary of the state’s Civil Service Pension Office, Mrs. Ademola Olabowale, said medical science has made it known that breast supplies basic nutrients to newborns, adding that the breast milk remains the most important protein for babies’ growth.

“The World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends exclusive breastfeeding for six months, and mixed breastfeeding up to two years,” she said.

Breast milk, she said, usually helps to build the immunity for the newborns, saying it would protect them from childhood killer diseases.

The state government, she said, has reviewed maternity leave for women in the state Civil Service from three to six months, adding that Lagos State is the only state in Nigeria where men go on paternity leave to support their wives with the burden of raising a new baby.

Head of Department, Community Health, Dr. Yetunde Kuyinu said the week would help to improve babies’ health.

She said the WBW is celebrated every year from August 1st to 7th in more than 170 countries to encourage breastfeeding and improve the health of babies.

She said working mothers can actually breastfeed their babies.

“It is a known fact that many of our working class nursing mothers face a lot of challenges combining breastfeeding with work either at their work setting or at home. They tend to stop breastfeeding very early in the life of their babies, thus losing the dual benefits breastfeeding provides for both mother and child,” she said.


Read more http://newswirengr.com/2015/08/07/lasuth-medical-director-begs-men-to-leave-the-sucking-of-breast-for-babies/?utm_source=&utm_medium=twitter

Armadillo Gets Shot, Bounces Bullet Right Back Into His Shooter's Head

https://www.thedodo.com/man-tries-to-shoot-armadillo-winds-up-shooting-himself-1277084468.html?utm_content=buffer43f20&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

A Texas man got his karmic comeuppance on Thursday when he tried to shoot an innocent armadillo … and wound up shooting himself by accident.

The shooting happened around 3 a.m. off the side of the highway. The man aimed at the armadillo, but the bullet ricocheted off the animal's hard shell and hit him in the head. He was hospitalized and treated for minor injuries — there's no word on the condition of the armadillo.

The man told authorities that he "felt compelled to shoot at the armadillo" after seeing him on the road, the Houston Chronicle reports. This isn't the first time someone has tried to shoot an an armadillo and gotten shell shock — back in April, a man shot at an armadillo but the bullet bounced off the animal's shell and hit the man's mother-in-law instead.

Armadillos are pretty cool animals — their name literally translates to "little armored one." They're actually closely related to sloths, but armadillos are unique as the only mammals with bony plates covering their bodies.

This story just goes to show: Shooting an innocent animal can come back to bite you in all sorts of ways.

slyopez:
This man did absolutely nothing. Most uncompleted structures i saw in the pics can be built by ordinary Alaba Intl market business man. He only renovated already existing structures, building 2 bedroom apartments with billions of naira. Yoruba's and hypocrisy, they believe the best must come from their tribe, beside how can any sane person rate this guy ahead of Akpabio. Keep on deluding. Bunch of hypocrites.

You don't have sense, you have never had sense but it is not too late for you to have sense. I am from Delta and I wish everyday that we could have someone do even 50% of what this man has done.

freshvine:
That moment you employs a school cert cattle herder to head your organization instead of a PhD holder

The moment you discover you actually aren't funny.

AlfaSeltzer:
You know that if we abort rape pregnancies, 90% of northern babies would be aborted.

Then the woman should be given the right to decide even if she wants to keep or abort. We cant keep using religion/culture to justify forcing women into living lives of misery.

AlfaSeltzer:
1 Timothy. 2:15

Women will be saved through childbearing–if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety

You don't have a clue do you? Where was faith when their hynies were being torn by the crazy sons of perdition who were probably high on adrenaline and other substances? How many people adopt kids in Nigeria with all the stigmatization and derision? Please, the UNFPA's plan is sound abeg; give these girls a chance to live their lives completely detached from all reminders of the dark days spent under Boko Haram. This is why I believe gay marriage should be allowed & gay couples encouraged to adopt unwanted babies.

The amount of BS spouted by the police in this report will fill a an Olympic-sized swimming pool easily. Shoddy work by the police based on nothing but their own prejudices and laziness but what else can one expect from an underpaid, ill trained, ill bred, mentally unstable collection of wackjobs. For all we know, the men could have been going to an orgy or something just as innocuous. How does the presence/absence of females prove anything exactly?

ZUBY77:
No, I prefer between your mother's legs. Bastaard.

LOL, another badly raised donkey.

ZUBY77:
Venue - Comrade Oshiomole 's country home..

Another smooth criminal.

Change change. Throw your hands up..
Sheeps

What venue should he have used; the cavernous wasteland between your ears?

You might be Albert Einstein, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet all molded in one human, but if you lack knowledge and understanding in a particular area and make no effort to gain that which you are deficient in, but rather create diversions and smokescreens, you will surely fail. You will be like a brilliant student who rather than understand and answer the questions he/she is given in an examination decided to ask himself/herself different questions and answer same and expects the Examiner to grade them based on their reputation and personal standards.

http://www.sayelbatimes.com/on-ben-murray-bruces-nationalist-posturing-by-fortune-godsson-alfred/

First off, let’s get one point cleared out straight away, viz: Mr Ben Murray-Bruce’s oratory prowess has never been in doubt at any point in time. Goodness me! The man is a showman; and a brilliant human being! So he will always produce the right soundbites to gain admiration and plaudits from people outside Bayelsa East Senatorial District and Bayelsa State.

So why am I not enthusiastic about him representing me in the Senate even though I know and acknowledge his natural endowment? You may ask.

My point of objection are that: 1. He does not know and/or understand the core concerns and aspirations of our people; 2. He has not made any effort or even pretended to understand and/or know the issues and concerns that represent the core interest of our people.

People! Words come easy to brilliant folks. I know it because I know many of such people.

You might be Albert Einstein, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet all molded in one human, but if you lack knowledge and understanding in a particular area and make no effort to gain that which you are deficient in, but rather create diversions and smokescreens, you will surely fail. You will be like a brilliant student who rather than understand and answer the questions he/she is given in an examination decides to ask himself/herself different questions and answers same and expects the Examiner to grade them based on their reputation and personal standards.

It is needless arrogance on the part of Ben Murray-Bruce to go to the Senate with Bayelsa East seat to be blabbing about Nollywood and entertainment and other things that do not have any remote or direct positive impact on the lives of the people whose seat(chance and hope of effective representation) he will be wasting with his personal legislative Agenda.

Mr Murray-Bruce must come to grip with the fact that he will first and foremost be the Senator representing Bayelsa East Senatorial District, a place where 98% of the communities are not connected to the National Electricity Grid, a place without any Federal Health Institution of any kind which has led to high maternal and infant mortality rates; and where the Strategic Brass LNG Project is begging for attention, before he is a Nigerian Senator.

There is a rap line from American Hip-hop star 50 Cent, I believe Mr Murray-Bruce would be familiar with, that says “There’s no places like home, New York, New York, I run the City, I don’t dance around like Diddy.” Bruce should stop dancing around and start thinking of returning home now to establish 3 functional Senatorial Offices to serve his people rather than staying in Lagos, giving the failed Emmanuel Uduaghan “Man of the Year” award and giving us needless populist speeches that will have absolutely no bearing on the price of Plantain, Garri or Nembe crayfish in Ogbia, Sangana or Odioma markets.

The people of Bayelsa East, Bayelsa State, the Ijaw Nation and the Niger Delta are still trying hard to recover from the shock brought to them by the defeat of one of their own who spent more than Five years in the top job in the land playing Nationalist in almost total neglect of them. The people don’t need another Nationalist at the moment; they need a Champion that will go to the senate to put their concerns in the National Agenda. And if the senator-elect cannot do that and would rather twerk around with his fantasy national agenda, then he should step aside even before the 8th Senate is inaugurated in June.

Given that Bruce is a businessman, I expect him to start studying the factors that have militated against the smooth kick off of the Brass LNG project that has the potential of creating more than 10,000 direct jobs and many more indirect wealth creation avenues for the people of his senatorial District. This is the kind of issue that should be occupying his time now and not pretentious populist Twitter rants.

As I type this, the Federal University Otuoke in Ogbia Local Government Area, which will be under Bruce’s District is yet to have a law backing its existence. Over 75% of communities in the Senator-elect’s jurisdiction (including his village) cannot be accessed by road. There is high rate of criminality such as Sea Piracy, due largely to the high levels of youth unemployment and poverty in Bayelsa East. These are just few of the many challenges facing our people, yet Bruce is playing Zik of Africa to their total neglect.

So you see why those who know the task before any genuine senator, of Bayelsa East Senatorial District who knows his onions, are not impressed by Mr Murray-Bruce’s shenanigans and oratory exploits.

The task before him is enormous and he cannot afford to fail. So, if I were in his shoes, I will consider this little piece of writing as a wakeup call and start studying hard to serve my people better than anyone else before me. As the saying goes, he, who fails to plan, plans to fail. Ben Bruce must not fail us. The clock has started ticking for the Silverbird honcho. To fail or to succeed is a choice he has to make.

Fortune God’s-Son Alfred is a Public Policy Analysts, a Strategist and the Publisher of www.sayelbatimes.com

amacastel:
U are confuse stop deceiving ur sef d earlier d beta for u

LOL, another Aro escapee.

Macelliot7:
There are bad eggs in some group of people.... I understands you...
I'm in support of the creation of the Anioma State...

Cool my brother, I am very Zen on this issue; hope you are good?

tonychristopher:
Efulefu ...fake igbo is ur type ur father nonentity ..ewu

Ok acronym is ur tribe ..go on

LOL, who let this animal out of his cage?

allcomage:
Then you are pure Igbo if you don't know where you belong.other tribes in Nigeria and delta state know you as Igbo and that is what you are.

LMAO, take your omniscient, patronizing nonsense to your household dude, have zero interest in debating a non-issue with you.

donshaddow:
May God bless you for taking such a stand.... I had terrible experience on a thread about me being an ukwuani man and not to be called an Igbo.

We are distinctive tribes ans should be called and recognised as one.

www.nairaland.com/2271528/list-igbo-dialects-where-speakers/19#33107549

Just laugh about it and move on; have seen this repeated a million times here and have grown a thick skin to it; no be today e start and no be tomorrow e go end.

tonychristopher:
lies..married there and it was not that high maybe i was given discount or then they were doing their seasonal promo



lol


but seriously it was not high and ukwuani babes, i give up to them, they are such a nice lady that i can categorically tell you...when you marry them go and sleep especially those from ogume, amai and obiaruku


very decent ladies, just that their weed farms are terrible but nice people i must say

ndi ogo m

SMH, you do notice I said #150 as in one hundred and fifty naira and not #150. Read through properly before jumping to conclusions.

allcomage:
Delta has five major tribes:urobho,Igbo,isoko,ishekiri and ijaw.which one do you belong to?

I am Ukwuani; Umu-Eziogoli to be precise. Any other question?

Macelliot7:
I detest the use of the word "Nonentities."
Every tribe is guilty of this....
If some few Yoruba men goes against the view of the majority, they will start condeming the few ones...
Even the Northern are worse... Going against the view of the majority up north can cost you your life... Even some Northern(Hausas) still refers to the Southern Muslims(Yorubas) as "kaffirs" (fake muslim)...
My bro, every tribe is guilty...
I don't expect such from you.... I'm disappointed....
God bless!

The use of the term "nonetities" is meant for those of our cousins across the Niger who do not believe we have the right of self determination. Nowhere in that post did I insult a whole tribe for the actions of a few morons; that would be me sinking to their level. Have lost count of the number of threads on here where an Anioma person is insulted and ridiculed for saying he/she is an Anioma.

Back to the topic itself, marrying an Anioma babe is one of the most inexpensive ventures ever known to man. In Ukwuani; bride price is #150. Pepper, salt, honey, yams and drinks are also part of it though according to what you can afford.

DelticStephEn:
.[/b]First of all if your going to be marrying one of us, you have to know how to address us. We are not delta Igbo, ( I have no problem whatsoever with Igbo people. Just love to be called with what we really are) we are Deltans or Anioma or if you want to be specific you say Ukwani, Aniocha or Ika.
.
Even We Anioma people have big problem,always dividing ourselves

True, we are but over time, it will get better. BTW, your avi rocks, where in Anioma are you from?

adellam16:
my dear I also don't get! Especially yorubas! Dey don't wanna know deltans r not igbos! Especially ika south! We r deltans abeg, stop mixing ur tribes abeg!

Yorubas are ignorant but our cousins across the Niger are worse; they insist we call ourselves Igbo and any attempt by us to define ourselves is condemned. Very soon, some of the nonentities on Nairaland will start calling you a Hausa/Yoruba slave; thing is funny as hell

lezz:
But is delta a tribe ? is Anioma listed as a tribe in Nigeria gazette ? I am sure you didn't fill up Anioma or Delta as a tribe when applying for jamb/employment etc.

So what tribe do you fill instead, Igbo? Apply sense and if you don't have, go and acquire some.

Sapele & Yenagoa are developed? Whoever posted this is high on some serious intelligence blockers.

I hope Late Yar'Adua and GEJ are seeing the rubbish they did. By creating this useless Amnesty Programme; we papered over the real issues and emboldened the criminals among us. The programme was a conduit pipe for looting for the GEJ government, same as the PTDF was under the OBJ government.

Whenever I hear about this Lower Niger nonsense, I laugh till I can't no more. One thing people fail to understand is that Nigeria is the common enemy in whose head all hatchets have been buried; remove that "head" and watch carnage ensue. Even the so-called united big tribes; Hausa, Igbo & Yoruba are not united so who is going to be with who in what banana republic?

francizy:
I came here for the gladiator fights between the two most loudmouthed regions in Nigeria..

*Pulls chair to join and grabs buttered popcorn with rum & ice*

A Nobel laureate who has been called the conscience of Nigeria told a Harvard audience on Wednesday that ruthless Islamist religious fundamentalism is “the enemy of humanity.”

BY MARK SULLIVAN, HARVARD CORRESPONDENT (MAY 06, 2015)


http://saharareporters.com/2015/05/06/nigeria-crossroads-harvard-gazette

A Nobel laureate who has been called the conscience of Nigeria told a Harvard audience on Wednesday that ruthless Islamist religious fundamentalism is “the enemy of humanity.”

Wole Soyinka speaking during a speech at Harvard
Harvard Gazette
“They do not want to reason — they kill,” said playwright and poet Wole Soyinka, urging vigorous international action against Islamist militant groups like Boko Haram, whose campaign of terror in northern Nigeria has included the kidnapping of thousands of women and girls.

“We’ve reached a state where there’s a party of life and a party of death,” he said, and those on the side of life must fight for their belief “as ruthlessly” as the foe they face.

Soyinka, a former political prisoner who became in 1986 the first black African to win the Nobel Prize in literature, spoke at the Barker Center in the wake of a historic vote in Nigeria. In a general election at the end of March, opposition candidate Muhammadu Buhari, former military ruler of the country, prevailed over incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan by more than 2.7 million votes.

When Jonathan conceded defeat, it marked the first time an incumbent president had been voted from office via the ballot box in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, with the continent’s largest economy.

Soyinka, an outspoken campaigner for human rights as Nigeria’s pre-eminent public intellectual, was invited to give his perspective on the political landscape of a nation troubled by a history of military dictatorship, corruption, and civil strife.

His talk, “Predicting Nigeria? Electoral Ironies,” was hosted in the Thompson Room by the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, the Department of African and African American Studies, and the Center for African Studies.

“It will not be easy to enthrone democracy as the norm,” Soyinka said. “This [won’t] happen in my lifetime, I’m sorry to say, but definitely we must assist the coming generation by reducing the handicap. This happened in Nigeria when, for the first-ever time, an incumbent president was unseated” by popular vote ― “even though,” he quipped, “we had to use a dictator.”

The newly elected president formerly led the country as a military strongman. Installed by one coup in 1983, deposed by another in 1985, Buhari brought an iron hand to what he called a “war against indiscipline” during a 20-month rule remembered for strict anti-corruption measures but also for human-rights abuses.

From the audience, Walter Carrington ’52, J.D. ’55, former U.S. ambassador to Nigeria, asked how optimistic Soyinka was at the prospect of Buhari’s presidency. Given the former general’s “frugality, honesty, and opposition to corruption,” Carrington asked, was it possible that Buhari “might become for Nigeria what someone like Lee Kuan Yew became for Singapore,” a strong leader who does “what probably needs to be done” yet adheres to democratic principles?

“I’m very, very cautiously optimistic,” Soyinka replied. He predicted that Buhari will be pressed by those around him to “keep his nose to the letter of the law,” though “in his zeal to absolutely eradicate corruption,” he might “take advantage of ambiguous areas” in the law and constitution “to empower himself to deal very ruthlessly and quickly with those who have robbed the nation blind.”

In any event, Soyinka suggested, Buhari hardly can do worse than his presidential predecessors as far as posing a threat to the country’s nascent democracy.

“I think that Buhari has a sense of history,” Soyinka said. “He knows that he must make a mark, a very positive mark, on Nigeria to be able to live with himself, or die with a clean conscience.” However, Soyinka stressed, “Make sure that Nigerians are not allowed to forget his past”; they should not “think that the messiah has finally arrived.”

“I think we stay on guard [and] continue to do what has needed to be done for the past 20 years or so,” said Soyinka, adding his hope that the next time he and Carrington meet, they will have occasion to “celebrate with a little glass of wine.”

The Hutchins Center’s director, Henry Louis Gates Jr., the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor at Harvard, is a former student and longtime friend and colleague of Soyinka’s. He asked Soyinka to expand on a remark that Boko Haram, and by extension the fundamentalist group ISIS, could create a complete redistribution of power and boundary lines in West Africa.

“We will never get rid of Boko Haram,” Soyinka replied. He described the jihadists who wish to impose Sharia law and ban Western learning across Nigeria as indoctrinated “fanatics who believe that if they die in the cause, they will go straight to heaven,” where they “believe literally in the 77 virgins awaiting their arrival.”

He said the “reconfiguration of West Africa could very easily have taken place if the army had not finally been assisted in the acquisition of new weaponry.” He called for continued vigorous action against Islamist militants, citing the French destruction of North African al-Qaida arms in Mali. “This is what we do, everywhere,” he urged.

“There’s a kind of complacency that frightens me about many world leaders,” Soyinka said. “Sometimes it’s because they’re balancing forces, in the Middle East and Africa.”

Soyinka was introduced by Biodun Jeyifo, professor of African and African American studies and of comparative literature at Harvard, who said Soyinka’s efforts as a champion of human rights had “stricken fear into the hearts of dictators” while inspiring millions of people in Africa and across the developing world who had never read his plays or poems.

Soyinka, who spoke under a large portrait of Theodore Roosevelt in a leonine voice that matched his shock of white hair, was welcomed with a standing ovation.

“What is happening at the commission is nothing but corruption and fraud,” said a staff member of the commission, who said he was outraged by the sale of jobs. He added: “Imagine, those who were shortlisted are not been contacted. Rather, people who never applied or sat for interviews are being issued with employment letters at N700,000, N800,000 and N900,000 depending on their power of negotiation.”


http://saharareporters.com/2015/05/01/delta-state-officials-involved-fraud-selling-jobs-n15-million-each

An investigation by SaharaReporters has revealed that several top civil servants and political figures in Delta State are involved in a fraudulent scheme by the state’s civil service commission. The fraud entails the sale of civil service jobs to desperate job seekers for as much as N1.5 million each.

Our investigators discovered the sale of employment slots began several weeks ago. Initially, slots were being sold for between N700,000 and N900,000, but skyrocketed to N1.5 million as hordes of job seekers scrambled for the few, though undisclosed, number of available jobs.

As far back as 2013, Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan had given the civil service commission the go-ahead to recruit workers. The commission required applicants to purchase application forms at N2,000 each in the form of bank drafts. The rest of the employment process was then to be completed online via an Internet site created by the commission.

However, public outcry over the fraud-ridden process led Mr. Uduaghan to prohibit the sale of employment forms, to shut the website, and to refund fees to applicants who had paid. SaharaReporters learned that the commission never carried out the governor’s order to refund fees.

In March this year, the commission released the names of about 2,000 applicants shortlisted to be interviewed at the commission's headquarters in Asaba, the state capital.

However, several sources in the state told SaharaReporters that, instead of issuing employment letters to successful shortlisted applicants, the commission began to sell job slots to the highest bidders, most of them people who were not shortlisted for the jobs.

“What is happening at the commission is nothing but corruption and fraud,” said a staff member of the commission, who said he was outraged by the sale of jobs. He added: “Imagine, those who were shortlisted are not been contacted. Rather, people who never applied or sat for interviews are being issued with employment letters at N700,000, N800,000 and N900,000 depending on their power of negotiation.”

Our sources said the fraud was being perpetrated with the knowledge of the board. An infuriated state employee said, “I can mention categorically the names of those involved in this racket. They include the commission's chairman, Mr. Tetsola Emmanuel, Mrs. Tialobi Roseline, Tuedon Richard, Mr. Andrew Akanigha, Pastor Ifeanyi Agbeyeke—who areall members of the board of the commission. And then there are Mr. Jerry Agbaike, the Permanent Secretary, and other directors. They are all perpetrating this evil and denying Deltans their opportunity of gainful employment.”

Our sources disclosed that a senior administrative officer, Eboh Goddey Oghenero, acts as the front for the commission's chairman, board members and directors in their corrupt scheme to sell employment opportunities.

A newly employed female employee told SaharaReporters that one of her friends bought a job slot for N1.5 million. “After paying the money, within three days an employment letter was issued to him and he was posted to a ministry,” she said.

One source at the commission revealed that at least 15 applicants paid money into Mr. Oghenero's bank account in Fidelity Bank with account number 6050871390. The payments ranged from N750, 000 to N1.5 million, according to the finding by our investigative team.

Some outraged staff at the commission said the officials should be challenged to provide the original list of shortlisted job applicants as well as the list of those that have been issued letters of appointment. “You’ll see that the two lists are different,” one commission official said.

Contacted by one of our citizen reporters, the chairman of the commission, Mr. Tetsola Emmanuel, denied the sale of employment slots. But the correspondent reported that Mr. Emmanuel was visibly shaking and looked dazed. When asked follow-up questions, he was unable to offer any coherent answers.

An undercover reporter contacted Mr. Oghenero, posing as a prospective applicant. Mr. Oghenero then gave the reporter the same account details in Fidelity Bank, instructing the reporter to deposit the sum of N1.5 million and thereafter forward his personal and academic details to Mr. Oghenero’s mobile phone number. Mr. Oghenero also asked the undercover reporter to come in three days for his appointment letter.

“Just do all I have told you, I have given you the account details already,” the reporter quoted Mr. Oghenero as saying. According to the reporter, the rogue administrative officer also reassured him by showing a list of people who had paid and had received their appointment letters and posts. He said Mr. Oghenero added, “Don’t be scared that you didn’t purchase the form before or come for the interviews. Once you pay, you get your appointment letter.”

The undercover reporter said Mr. Oghenero identified himself as “a senior admin officer.” He added that the front in the employment scam asserted that the commission’s board chairman, directors, and board commissioners “are aware of the payments. We just front for them and after payment we get our own cut. In most cases I deal directly with my madam, Mrs. Tialobi Roseline, the first commissioner in the board who will perfect the appointment letters at the receipt of the cash. As I told you, it’s a secret deal which the commission is fully involved [in].”

Our sources at the commission as well as some applicants who were earlier shortlisted have urged Governor Uduaghan to set up a panel to investigate the fraud at the commission. “His Excellency, Dr. Uduaghan should probe what has been going on. And anybody found wanting should be made to face the music,” an angry commission staff told SaharaReporters.

udeh3:
This man has done well. You don't need to be a newspaper governor before one sees your achievement... I'm a proud Deltan and I bodly stand to say "He is an achiever".

He might not have performed very well in all the sector, but has done remarkably well. I think when I see a development, I recognise one

Proudly Deltan and proudly a Nigerian!

Done well in what sense? That useless excuse for a human being a.k.a Uduaghan is a colossal failure, shame on you.

This Yam, This Goat, This Country: PWC On NNPC – Part 2

http://aguntasolo.com/2015/04/30/time-to-make-goat-meat-peppersoup-pwc-on-nnpc-part-2/

“No one has the right to retain money that should come to the federation account. Constitutionally, it should come and then , if expenses are legitimate, they should be presented transparently and properly approved. To even admit that you have withheld $10bn or $12bn and then say this is what I did with it is, frankly speaking, not even the beginning of an argument” – Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, speaking to Gavin Serkin, author of ‘Frontier‘



We now know the measurement of the yam ($69bn) that was left in the care of the NNPC goat. And we also know how much the goat handed back to the Nigerian treasury ($50bn). The debate now is what right the NNPC had to eat so much ($20bn) of the yam belonging to the Nigerian people, if it had the right to eat any at all.

A lot of the corruption and mismanagement and outright theft going on in NNPC is sickening and frankly, depressing. And it leaves Nigerians and especially the incoming government who campaigned from Potiskum to Port Harcourt with the message of ‘Change’. What do we do with NNPC? Can NNPC change? Can it be reformed? How do we change it? If you prevent the theft or mismanagement of even $1bn, that is potentially 1,000MW of electricity you can add to the grid. The sums in question are not small.

I Have Good News

In 2010, Transparency International and Revenue Watch carried out assessments of 44 oil companies (private and state-owned) around the world, including NNPC. On the question of Organisational Disclosure, here’s how NNPC scored in their ranking:

See Picture One

Yep, our own dear NNPC came last (or first from behind). TI and RW went on to describe NNPC as the world’s most secretive oil company. Nobody knew the size of the yam to begin with except the goat itself and it was never going to publish it in the newspapers. Any attempt at openness was always resisted.

Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, as CBN Governor, said he became ‘obsessed‘ with understanding how the oil industry worked and where the leakages were happening. People who are obsessed about something can be very useful indeed.

It is important to understand this point – SLS had no direct access to NNPC’s books. From his letter to President Jonathan dated September 2013, it is clear that he got no cooperation from NNPC. All the numbers he used were investigated and determined by his office.

And yet, he came very close. He calculated NNPC’s revenues in the period to be $65bn while PwC calculated it to be $69bn – he missed the target by 6%. Here we have the ‘world’s most secretive oil company’ but someone looking from the outside was able to, with a bit of hard work and ‘obsession’, come close to figuring out the numbers. (PwC had access to NNPC’s numbers and documented all the revenues with over 30 pages of calculations in their report).

This is the good news I have to share – It is now possible to know almost the exact size of the yam even if NNPC don’t want us to know. They can lie all they want, obfuscate all they want, pretend all they want – that will not stop a serious and determined person from knowing. The game where the goat repeatedly under reports the size of the yam or even tell us there was never any yam to begin with, is over.

How Much Yam Did The Goat Eat?

Now that we are able to determine the original measurement of the yam, independent of NNPC, the next step is to figure out how much of it has been eaten.

The even better news is that this one is easier to determine. If NNPC pays money into the federation account, many people will know about it. The account is at the CBN. The only other place NNPC can send money to is FIRS, the taxman. This was the cause of the initial discrepancy where SLS said the amount outstanding was $49bn – some of the money had apparently been sent to FIRS instead of CBN. No problem.

The important point here is that CBN and FIRS are outside of NNPC. If NNPC don’t cooperate, other people can.

This is the second leg of the equation – we can determine the amount of yam sent to the Nigerian treasury. This greatly reduces the challenge of dealing with an opaque organisation that refuses to cooperate.

And it means we can reduce the issue to a simple question that puts NNPC on the defensive – the original yam was $69bn, you have given us $50bn. Where is the rest of it and what did you do with it? Simple.

Before PwC There Was KPMG

In 2010, KPMG was hired by the Federal Government to investigate the usual NNPC shenanigans. It submitted its report in November 2010. Find it here.

See Picture Two

It is not much different from what PwC were asked to do last year – determine the size of the yam and compare with what had been declared.

As usual, KPMG found NNPC up to their usual goat tricks and games.

See Picture Three

They did not even bother to tell a plausible lie. This is the confidence of an armed robber in action. Of all the places to obtain an exchange rate for something so serious as remitting money to the federation accounts, these goats claimed they got it over the phone despite the fact that the CBN published the exchange rates on its website.


The same goat games yet again. Every single failing identified came with a recommendation on how to fix it by KPMG. And what happened? It went in NNPC’s left ear and came out of the right ear immediately. In 2009, NNPC reported that it lost N8bn due to pipeline vandalism. KPMG recommended increased monitoring of pipelines and use of technology. Ok. By the time of the PwC report, they were spending $48m on ‘pipeline surveillance systems’. Alas, the amount reported as losses from pipeline vandalism has now transformed to $760m. Sebi you people said they should deploy technology? Ehen na.

In 2010, KPMG observed that they were using Sun Accounting Systems and noticed that the system was not robust enough for its needs given that the system was not fully integrated and Excel was being used quite prominently. It recommended that SAP, a more robust system, be implemented as quickly as possible. No problem. By the time PWC did their work, they confirmed that NNPC was indeed using SAP. Yet, all that has happened is that a bigger piece of yam has disappeared.


Are We Here For Tea Party?

Do we really have time for this merry-go-rounding where we will be carrying out a forensic exercise on NNPC every 4 years like it’s The Olympics? And then the document is filed away and they pretend like nothing happened. I am not convinced that NNPC will suddenly come to a kind of enlightenment where they are able to look at the yam and leave it untouched.

In the meantime, there is a country in need of so much fixing that the problems are almost overwhelming. Every kobo counts and we can’t really afford a situation where people are making addition ‘mistakes’ costing $40m. We are not here for tea party as the intellectual Nigerian Minister, Musiliu Obanikoro, famously put it not too long ago.

There is something devious about NNPC and the way it seduces any government in power. Everybody ‘probes’ it but no one ever really reforms it. Obasanjo ‘temporarily’ made himself Petroleum Minister in 1999. He ended up doing the job for 8 years. NNPC enters the government like a virus and typically, when politicians are broke and looking for money, NNPC can produce the cash. This is how the corruption starts and typically, it can never be reversed.

A fundamental question must now be asked – is it really worth anyone’s time to embark on ‘reforms’ of NNPC? Are the chances of success for such reforms up to 10%, if not dead on arrival?

With Love From Mexico

In August 2014, Mexican President, Enrique Pena Nieto, signed a landmark energy reform bill into law. After 76 years, the law effectively turned Petroleos Mexicanos (PEMEX) into a private company. It will now need to be audited regularly and publish reports like any other private company.

Part of the problem with NNPC is that it gets too much time alone with the yam before anyone checks what is going on. So we are reduced to the roundabout games of ‘forensic audits’ every 4 years for something that should be done regularly. 4 years is a long time – long enough for a multitude of yams to disappear without trace. Certainly, if NNPC was forced to publish reports quarterly and being audited yearly (with a regular half-year audit), there will be less room for the kind of long standing problems we are seeing.

I don’t think privatising PEMEX was an easier job than for NNPC, and yet a President who was determined to do it before he ran out of steam, managed to get it done. What’s Nigeria’s excuse?

With Love From China

Western countries have typically privatised their national oil companies e.g BP in Britain. This has not stopped oil from flowing out of the North Sea. The government simply focuses on collecting the taxes. True, the Norwegians still have Statoil (67% owned by the government) but we can all agree that the Norwegians are outliers – they don’t even spend their oil money hence their mammoth sovereign wealth fund. Also worth noting that Statoil is not fundamentally different in structure from Petrobras in Brazil. Yet, they couldn’t be more different judging by the ongoing scandal in Brazil that has hobbled the President, Dilma Rousseff.

The Chinese take a different approach – instead of having just one national oil company, they have three – PetroChina, Sinopec and CNOOC – mighty ones which compete against each other in some ways and also go out into the world to gain business and expertise. Further, you can find the accounts for CNOOC, PetroChina and Sinopec on their websites. Go to NNPC’s website. If you can find any accounts there, I owe you goat meat pepper-soup.

This options means we break NNPC into say, 3 new companies that compete directly with each other. Some might say when you have a problem like NNPC, why do you want to multiply it into 3? Good question.

The point here is that there are several ways to achieve the same thing. There is absolutely nothing that says we should have this NNPC model and keep ‘reforming’ or threatening to ‘reform’ it every few years. Or we can vote for change just like we just did in the national elections.

Scatter The Place

There is however another option. The first thing to understand is that it is not by force to have a national oil company. The decision that gave birth to NNPC in the 1970s – a creation of Obasanjo – cannot be said to have been the correct one. Indeed, at the time Nigeria was going about nationalising things, the West and China were moving towards market economies. Since 1977 when it was established, the company has been a constant source of pain for the country. Much of what we are seeing today is not new.

My preference is for NNPC to be completely dismantled and the government moves to a tax based system. For it to cease to exist. For it to be completely neutered. We have had enough of this monster that no one is able to control anymore and which answers to its own rules. And now is the best time to deal it a decisive blow from which it will never recover. It has been exposed and is no longer able to be the secretive organisation it once was. If it lies, with a bit of investigation, we can find the truth. Nobody trusts a word it says anymore and the old trick of telling the public that we do not ‘understand how it works’ has now expired. We really do not even need to know. Once we know the original size of the yam and the amount it tendered, it will need to come up with an explanation for any differences.

What is needed now is political will to bring this goat to heel. It is all well and good making the right noise as President Buhari surely will. But the follow through is the koko. So many names are already being bandied about as possible petroleum ministers (mostly cowboys and charlatans so far). We are going to need someone who is determined and can zero in on a cause to smash this goat that corrupts a nation and its government to pieces. The person will need to have integrity in bundles. Ability to pray will be a bonus for we know there are demons in there.


FF

P.S I think it’s fairly obvious that people need to be severely punished for what has gone on in NNPC. But in case it’s not obvious that this is my position, I’m restating it. NNPC only gets away with what it is allowed to get away with. This must stop.

As someone said to me recently “I did not queue for hours on March 28th to vote for people to get soft landing”. President Buhari, be guided – People Must Go To Prison. No Ifs, no Buts.