Senate President Bukola Saraki has arrived at the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) where his trial for alleged false declaration of assets continues.
He arrived at 10:05am in company of at least 12 senators.
Some of the senators are Ike Ekweremadu, deputy senate president; Sam Anyanwu, Dino Melaye and Andy Uba.
This is the lowest number of senators to accompany him to the CCT since the beginning of his case in September 2015 – the highest being 81.
In addition, this is the second day of his trial which started on Tuesday.
Although, this is the eighth time the senate president will appear at the CCT, his trial actually started on Tuesday.
The first time was on September 22, 2015 after the tribunal had issued a bench warrant for his arrest. He was accompanied to the tribunal by at least 50 senators on that day.
On the same day, he entered the dock, but he pleaded not guilty to 13 counts of false declaration of assets brought against him by the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB).
The second time was on October 21, 2015 when he was accompanied to the tribunal by at least 81 senators.
And the third time was on November 5, 2015, when his lawyers –Joseph Daodu and Mahmud Magaji – withdrew from the case in protest of the decision of the tribunal to continue the matter despite an appeal against the constitution and jurisdiction of the tribunal at the supreme court.
The fourth time was on March 11, after the ruling of the supreme court upholding the jurisdiction of the tribunal to try him while the fifth time was on March 18 when an application to stop his trial was heard.
The sixth time was on March 24 when the tribunal ruled that his trial must continue.
The seventh time was April 5 when the prosecution called its first witness, who narrated how Saraki allegedly laundered billions of naira using fictitious names.
The senate president had gone the whole hog to challenge his trial at the CCT, but he failed at every turn.
On February 5, the apex court dismissed an appeal to stop his trial paving the way for the continuation of the case at the CCT.
On Tuesday, Danladi Umar, chairman of the CCT, dismissed Saraki’s application for adjournment.
Ruling on the application, Umar held that the issue of jurisdiction of the tribunal had already been settled by the supreme court, adding that a motion for adjournment based on an appeal challenging the jurisdiction of the tribunal at the appeal court was unnecessary.
He, therefore, ordered the prosecution to produce its witnesses, and the trial commenced.
DickDastardly: HYPOCRISY is when you want 89yrs old BUHARI as president but is tired of seeing 59yrs old Cyril Stobber's face on NTA.
Buhari is there to fix the mess your hero has made of this country...Cyril Stober on the other hand has nothing to offer anymore..Let him just retire and go, so jobless youths like you and 1 can take over
masterblogger: How is that your problem. If he retired will you take over from Him? I hate people who poke nose and talk carelessly. How many have retired without seeing thier pension or entitlements for years. FYI after retirement you can be issued a contract. Use your head
shaarap! See person wey we dey because of am do marathon fasting dey chop pizza.. SMH
Saw some tweets by NTAnews some months ago wishing Cyril Stober a happy retirement and showering him with all sorts of encomiums. Fans, F & F also wished him well and thanked him for his service to the nation. One would expect that he would stop appearing on screen every 9pm to remind us of those days when We moved about freely with or without pants
Please I would like to know more about retirement in civil service..The maximum year one can stay in service and all..
I think Cyril Stober should retire already..Let the young/vibrant take over..He is though a good newscaster but I am so tired of seeing these old faces. (Not just his)
Lalasticlala, good morning
Mynd44, don't come here this time..cos whenever you appear on my thread, it is always to close it or bring it down
Some people have argued that there is freedom of religion, of course; Section 38 is very clear: We must not have a state religion, every Nigerian is allowed to practise their faith or even if they do not have any religion at all. However, those that are quoting Section 38 of the constitution conveniently forget Section 45 which says that you can regulate any human right if it would affect the right of others. You can practise your religion but you can’t do it in a way that abuses the right of another. There is nothing in this law that is not in conformity with the constitution, or there is nothing new about it other than expanding the scope and after we sent the bill to the House of Assembly, I saw an article that alerted us of what we did not include: Blocking of federal highways, but that is in the Penal Code. It is good to have put it there because every Friday you see most mosques blocking roads. Why? We had to call them to a meeting to have a system that police would be there to guard and also control the traffic. In my opinion, this is a law that we need not only in Kaduna State but almost all states in Nigeria and I want to assure you that, I just came back from the National Economic Council meeting, and a handful of the governors asked me to send them our own law because they thought they also needed it in their state. Everybody is watching to see how we will handle our own. We sent it to the state assembly in October 2015 because some people are saying we sent it because of the Shi’ite problem. No! It was the state assembly that kept on looking at it and saying this one ‘na hot potato’ until now. But, on a very serious note, we don’t have any ulterior motive other than to put a framework that would ensure that Kaduna State people live in peace with everyone practising their religion and disallowing every Tom, Dick and Harry to come and say he can preach.
What will be the major role of the government in this?
We do not regulate as such, we have formed two committees that would issue the licence. It is not the government that will issue the licence. It is a committee of Christian umbrella bodies and Muslim umbrella bodies. We will just have an inter-ministerial committee to be checking once in a while and be keeping records because we want to know who is preaching here and who is doing what there. For us, the reaction was just disproportionate and many of the people that are talking about the law have never even read it. If you read that law, it is very short; it is 16 sections. I tell people who disagree with the bill to read it and tell me what they don’t like about it. Don’t tell me you don’t like the entire law because we know we have a problem and I am the governor and I need a solution. Don’t say the solution is not to have the law; we need the law but tell me what you don’t like, then we can discuss it. We want to find a solution that brings peace. We are not fixed in our position, what we are fixed about is that Kaduna State people must live in peace and everyone must be allowed to practise their religion without hindrance. We took an oath of office to do that. Apart from that, every other thing can be discussed. Are you telling me it is okay for someone to put up speakers in the night and start making a noise, be it Islam or Christianity, disturbing people? Is that okay? Which chapter in the two holy books says that Jesus or Muhammad (SAW) did that. Are we not trying to copy them? Are they not the perfections of both our religions? Jesus said, ‘Give to God what is God’s and to Caesar what is Caesar’s.’ Government is the Caesar.
We have informed the Christian Association of Nigeria and the Jama’atu Nasril Islam that if they have problems with any section, if there is anything to be done, and if they don’t want the government to be involved, we will remove it, but they must regulate.
What is your take on the assumption by some in the state that hold that the bill is aimed at stopping the practice of Christianity and Islam in the state?
I have not seen anyone talking about Islam actually. Most of the people that say I would die, as if I would not die, are people who call themselves Christian clergy. Of course, I will die. If that apostle is truly an apostle, he should mention the day I will die. There is nothing in that law that prevents or infringes the practice of religion. It seeks to ensure that those that preach religion are qualified, trained and certified by their peers to do it. And some sections of the media have made it as if the law was drafted against Christianity. It is most irresponsible and I have nothing to say except to leave the matter to God.
Kaduna State Governor, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, in an interview with select journalists including GODWIN ISENYO, speaks on the proposed religious preaching bill, face-off with trade unions, among others
How has it been since you assumed office?
I want to say it has been an interesting and successful journey and we are grateful to the Almighty God for His intervention in the state which led to our election. I know we got elected because the majority of the people of the state wanted a change as the way things were going was not acceptable to them and that was why they all came out to vote for us. We are very grateful.
I never expected that running a state would be very different from being a federal minister. I thought that running a state would be the same as running the Federal Capital Territory but I was wrong on that. I have seen that things are quite different and more complex.
One of the challenges we are facing in this state is that everything seems to be politicised or “ethnicised” or “religionised”. A very simple problem that can be discussed and resolved by logic and facts becomes converted into issues of ethnicity and religion and so on. Thus, these are some of the challenges we have to face but we are doing the best we can.
As far as governance is concerned, we have addressed frankly what we felt were the issues; first low revenues. In the first month we got here, we got about N5bn from Federal Allocation but in the last two months, we got N2.8bn each. Thus, even from the time we started to now, there have been massive changes, but we are taking steps. We knew that all things are scanty and we need to do some things. That is why, from day one, the deputy governor and I have decided to give 50 per cent of our salaries as our contribution because we are going to ask public servants to make similar sacrifice.
We also reduced the size of government; the number of commissioners has been reduced from 24 to 13. It was all in an effort to cut cost. We inherited 38 Permanent Secretaries, but now we are operating with about 18 of them. We are looking at Ministries, Departments and Agencies that have similar functions and merging them just to cut cost. This is because if your revenues are collapsing, you need to cut your cost. We are reducing the length of convoys; the governor’s convoy had 21 vehicles, but now, we only have five or six cars that go out with me and they are all essential. I don’t go out with the ambulance because I don’t expect to drop dead anytime. This is all in the bid to reduce the cost of running the government.
In some states, the battle of salary alone has incapacitated the government. But in this state, we pay salaries. Yes, there are issues, but on the whole, we have done pretty well.
Education is an area we want to revive. We inherited 4,225 primary schools in Kaduna state. We were told that 1.2 million pupils were sitting on the floor; we saw that virtually all the 4,225 primary schools had no windows, doors and seats in their classrooms. No toilets and roof. We found out that pupils had to go to the bush when they were pressed, girls could not come to school when they were menstruating because there was no water. We had to take school as a priority and we started working by renovating them. In some classrooms, we had 200 pupils for classrooms that were built to accommodate 40 pupils. We can’t do anything immediately because we can’t build classrooms overnight but we are serious about correcting it. We need to make our children like going to school and that is more important than anything. And we said one of the things that this administration wants to do is to eliminate the almajiri system in Kaduna State.
What measures are you employing?
The first thing is to ensure that there is an incentive for children to go to school and that is the logic behind the school feeding programme. We want children to go to school and look forward to something. Secondly, the first 100 months of a child’s development is when his brain develops, when he has adequate nutrition. So, there is also the nutritional aspect to it. Thirdly, we decided that we wanted to take the burden of giving the children pocket money every day off the parents. We could not start it immediately because we had to do a lot of planning to minimise the problems. Then, we said we would fix the existing classrooms as they were those were the doors, windows, roofs and what have you.
Another thing we want to do is to improve teachers’ quality. We got a report that 38-42 per cent of our teachers are not qualified to teach and we can’t throw them out overnight. We want to give them a period to train and upgrade their skills but we intend to have good teachers in our primary and secondary schools.
We are making progress on all fronts. In our boarding secondary schools, we have enhanced money for their feeding so that they can get better quality food and we conducted an experiment of taking out the feeding from the hands of the principals and contracting it out to restaurants and caterers. This is because when you give the principal the money, you are making the principal a cook. He has to go and organise food from the market and that is not his job. Using Queen Amina College as an example of where we have started, the students are so happy because the quality of food has improved. We are spending N180 per day on each student. We are even looking at improving that if our finances increase.
We are taking steps to block loopholes in salary payment by requesting every employee of the state to open an account with a Deposit Money Bank so that they can have a Bank Verification Number. You cannot cheat on the BVN and that is the final thing that we are doing and I am very grateful to the public servants of Kaduna State for their patience because they have gone through this over and over again. After all this verification and the real staff have been separated from the ghost workers, the people in account and personnel will remove the real staff and put back the ghost workers again just to cause confusion. It is a continuous battle because those that created these ghost workers are beneficiaries of huge amounts of money every month.
Why the persistence on the issue of salaries?
We have had issues with payment of salaries not because we don’t have the money like other states, but because of arrangement issues. People in the system have been sabotaging our efforts. I don’t want to go into details but we have set strategies to deal with that. Another area we have a big problem with, is the local government payroll. Their records are much worse. We sorted out the state’s much earlier because those people that complained that they had not been paid salaries were mostly teachers and local government employees.
We are focusing now on the local government. We are doing a census of teachers so that we can know for sure who our teachers are. We are deploying technology to know if the teachers come to school or not. By God’s grace, before the end of the year, many of these issues will be sorted out and things will begin to work better. One thing that we know for sure is that we need to employ more teachers.
Is there a time limit to the ongoing verification exercise of workers?
The reason why I don’t want to say when it will end is practical. First of all, as an employer, you need to check the numbers of your employees from time to time and it is normal. It does not mean that after this verification exercise, we will stop or not do it again. Our hope is that the verification will uncover all the loopholes. We are dealing with crooks and staunch criminals that don’t want to give up the revenue from the ghost workers. So as we block one area of abuse, they open another.
Last week, the Trade Union Congress and the Nigerian Labour Congress expressed worry over a form that was designed by the state government asking workers whether they intend to be members of the unions or not. Why did you decide to make unionism optional in Kaduna State?
When we came into office, I wasn’t paid for three months. When I finally got an alert of three months’ salary, I asked a very simple question, ‘Thank you for the pay, but where is my payslip, since it is normal to have a payslip that will show you your basic salary and allowances, deductions for tax and any loan and so on?’ It took about three to four months before the Accountant General could organise our payslips. Thus, because of the absence of payslips, if the money they paid a worker last month was higher or lower than that of this month, then there was no explanation for it and there would be problems.
A worker complained that N2,000 was deducted as union dues from his salary. Imagine if all workers had such complaints; we have 87,000 employees in the state and local governments. It is a lot of money when you multiply N2000 by 87,000; you will have almost N170m. We called the unions and asked why the deduction and they told us that it was automatic. In fact, I asked why the government should be collecting check-off dues for trade unions? Do we charge them fee for collections? Thus we asked the Attorney General to go and check the law and give us an opinion. She came back and said it was compulsory for every employer to deduct union dues and remit to the union; as was the law. But she went on to say that the membership of the trade union was not automatic but voluntary. We then invited the trade unions and informed them that we would not be deducting the money of our staff until we know those who were members of the union and those that were not.
Personally, I would support trade unions. However, the law is clear; you have to legally declare that you are a member before we can deduct your money. That was how our argument with the TUC and the NLC started.
There is always a need to have a boundary between the union and the government. These are some of the things we are battling with. It is not that we are against the unions, but we are just doing the right thing. The unions are very supportive of us. Throughout the verification exercise, they stood by us and we appreciate that but that does not mean we should do what is unlawful or what is wrong. We met with them when they complained about this. They said the law made membership of the union compulsory. We asked them to write us and quote the section of the law that said that and they never came back. I think when they checked, they discovered that the Attorney General was right.
This is the basis on which we said that in the final verification exercise, we would have a box and ask workers to tick the box if they were members of any trade union or not.
After we printed the forms, the unions sent in their representatives who asked why we did not make it a negative question. Something like, ‘tick the box if you don’t want to be a member of trade union.’ I would have been happy to do it but we had already printed a hundred thousand forms and they had cost us a few millions. My point is that we try to accommodate everybody in the framework of the law.
How do issues get political and ethnic colouration in your state?
This is something I find both disturbing and disappointing. In any argument and situation, if you have your facts and you are right, you don’t need to refer to religion. Religion doesn’t win arguments for you. What I have found in life is that the moment a person introduces religion in any situation, I know they are wrong because if you are right, have facts and can justify your position, why bring God into it? God will judge us on the day of judgment. People only revert to religion and ethnicity when they have run out of convincing arguments. What I find in Kaduna State is that people can bring religion into everything. I think more than any state in Nigeria, Kaduna state has suffered more in terms of religious and ethnic divisions and that should be a lesson for us but what I found out is that the elite have one weapon and that is religion and it is sad. But, unfortunately for them they have not studied me. If anyone has studied my career at the FCT, they would know that playing the religious card with me will fail all the time, because the moment you play that card, I know you are an adversary that needs to be put down and I will not look back until I am done with you.
One of your policies that has generated a lot of controversy is the religious preaching bill. What does the government want to achieve when it becomes law and how are you going to tackle the anxiety that it has generated among the people?
Kaduna State, more than any state in Nigeria, if you take out the Yobe, Borno and Adamawa axis, which suffered from Boko Haram insurgency, has suffered the most from death and destruction of property due to misuse and abuse of religion. More people have been killed in Kaduna from the words that people have said. And if you go back in history to when the Maitasine incident happened; he was a Cameroonian that came to Nigeria and started preaching. The Emir of Kano had him deported back to Cameroon. After that, he managed to smuggle himself back again and continued preaching. He was preaching a version of Islam that was intolerant, a version that called other Muslims pagans and so on. But in spite of what he was preaching, he acquired followers and we all know what happened. Military operation had to be mounted to flush them out. Those that escaped from the Maitasine crisis moved to Borno State and started the Kalakato sect, which again led to many deaths and destruction in the early 1990s. All these came from people that were not trained in religious matters, people that woke up and started preaching and acquiring followers and inevitably their sects grew in large numbers to threaten communities and there were clashes.
That was also how Muhammed Yusuf started. He was a student of Sheik Jaafar Adam in Kano. They fell out because Jaafar felt that some of the views he was expressing were extreme and intolerant. He went and started his own sect and we all know what happened and we are still dealing with it.
Thus, when you have such things happening in your country, I think as leaders, we have to sit down and examine ourselves and the society and see what we can do to prevent it.
In my opinion, it is the lack of regulation of religion that led to all these circles of death and destruction. Just recently, we had the Shi’ite problem in Zaria, following a similar pattern.
I believe that before you start preaching in any religion, you should have gone through a system of education, training and some kind of certification. Even those that deal with the physical life get certified, let alone those that deal with the spiritual life. We initiated this bill from the Kaduna State Security Council, based on reports of new sects emerging in Kaduna State.
Are there recent cases?
There is one around Makarfi called Gausiyya, they do their Zuhr prayer around 11am, different from other Muslims. This is how this thing starts and if you don’t resolve it quickly, it grows into something else.
A woman in Makarfi said Prophet Muhammad (SAW) was speaking to her and sick people started going to her for their healing. The husband of this woman was busy collecting N1,000 as consultancy fee before people could see his wife. We had to take steps to end that movement because before you know it, people would start coming from far and wide and this woman would become our next problem.
It was the report of two or three of these that compelled us in the security council to ask the question, whether or not there was a law that regulates preaching. Then we were told there was a law; since 1984 after the Maitasine problems, the administration passed the law. It was subsequently amended several times to increase the fine and the imprisonment term. This is a living problem and we know it. Christian priests, the ones I know, go to seminary and spend so many years there, study under a more experienced Reverend to learn what to say and what not to say.
Religious leaders don’t preach hatred; they preach peace, tolerance and love. But today in my religion of Islam, anybody can wake up and start a sect; there is no control. In those days, from Islamiyya School, if you chose that line, you needed to study more books. After that, you would go to the East (Borno area) for more studies and training. Then from there, you would go to a mosque and begin to call people to prayer before you become an imam in any mosque. Before you became an imam of a Friday mosque, the community must agree that you were well learned and competent. But now, everyone can build a mosque, put up loudspeakers, call himself an imam and start disturbing people at night.
A priest that has gone through thorough teachings and training would not go and ask people to cause trouble and kill each other. They are trained men of God. In Christendom today, we all know that some people would drink something overnight and wake up the next day and claim they are apostles, that God had spoken to them. You could not disproof that because you were not there with him and he would start to collect followers. When he begins to preach hatred, what can you do? Is it the society we want? This is the question. The logic behind this law is to strengthen the 1984 laws so as to regulate and ensure that those that are given the opportunity to preach at least know what they are doing, they have a level of responsibility to develop the society rather than divide it. This is our goal; we don’t have anything against any religion or anybody.
A new report on Thursday said despite President Muhammadu Buhari’s attempt at ensuring transparency in the oil sector, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, still withholds billions in oil revenues from the government account.
The report by the Natural Resource Governance Institute, titled “NNPC still holds blank check” said that within the first six months of the Buhari administration, the NNPC withheld over $4.2 billion (about N824.7 billion) out of a total of $6.3 billion (N1.24 trillion) revenues realised from crude oil sales in the second half of 2015.
The withheld revenues represented about 66 per cent of the total revenue – $1.4 billion earnings from Nigeria’s regular crude oil exports for the period; $3.4 billion from domestic crude oil sales, and $1.5 billion from oil sold from the corporation’s upstream subsidiary, the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company, NPDC oil fields.
The report said only $2.1 billion (about N413.7 billion) was transferred to the Federation Account. The group said the unremitted revenues for the six months was about 14 per cent more than the amount withheld by the corporation under the Goodluck Jonathan administration in the first half of 2015, and about 12 per cent higher than the share withheld in 2013 and 2014.
The report said the figure of unremitted oil revenues in 2015 contrasted sharply with 2005 figures, which showed the NNPC remitted about 68 per cent of its total oil sale earnings to the Federation Account and kept only 32 per cent that year.
The report said while part of the withheld funds was used for servicing Nigeria’s share of the joint venture operating obligations, the NNPC did not fully explain what the other retained revenues from domestic crude and NPDC oil sales were used for.
In general, the report said despite the on-going reforms in the oil sector, the NNPC under the present administration was still retaining a major share of oil sale earnings and spending at will. Some of the reforms by the Buhari government, the report noted, have cut the number of passive, well connected middlemen that pocketed billions of oil revenues, while the administration has cancelled costly, unbalanced NNPC swap contracts as well as seek more efficient replacements.
The report lamented that recent announcements on NNPC reforms and the latest drafts of the Petroleum Industry Bill, PIB, by the Ministry of Petroleum Resources, failed to adequately address how NNPC and the government would share future oil revenues
“Until government establishes a clear, legally enforceable rule governing which revenues NNPC can keep and how they can be spent, oil sector corruption and waste could return to their prior devastating levels once the president (Buhari) leaves, or prices rise,” the report noted.
While encouraging government to push ahead with its reform plans for the oil sector, NRGI stressed the need for NNPC to adopt new financial controls and transparency measures for its subsidiaries, especially bordering on the several billion revenues retained each year from NPDC operations and its oil trading and marketing subsidiaries.
The Institute also called for the immediate replacement of the 445,000 barrels per day crude oil allocation for domestic refining with a fit-for-purpose mechanism for supplies to the country’s four refineries.
“The government should move to curb the corporation’s discretionary, unaccountable use of much-needed public funds. Until the government instates clear rules for NNPC financing, both the controversies and the underlying revenue leakages will persist,” the report said.
Describing the NPDC as one of the Nigerian petroleum sector’s “great black boxes”, the report said some of the oil from the company’s fields went to its strategic alliance partners, two of which were paid in oil for purportedly shouldering the company’s financial obligations.
From the production of an average of 30,000 barrels per day of Okono grade crude during the period, the report said NNPC retained all earnings ( about $12.3 billion over the past decade) from the offshore Oil Mining Lease (OML) 119 owned wholly by NPDC.
My only fear is, hope we don't run out of beans to feed Kanu and his gang on account of this. As we export, we should bear in mind the plight of our prisoners in Kuje.
Prisoners they may be, but they are still the zoo citizens- government should always remember that. Would be very bad to hear Kuje zoo prisoners are starving.
Nigeria’s League Management Company has slammed a N2.5 million fine and a 10-match ban on billionaire businessman, Ifeanyi Ubah, who was caught on camera slapping Heartland FC goalkeeper, Ebele Obi.
The LMC toughened its punishment for Ubah after video evidence nailed him. The regulator however said in a statement on Thursday that the billionaire businessman can appeal against the ruling if he deems so.
The statement read: “Chief Dr Ifeanyi Ubah, proprietor of FC Ifeanyi Ubah, is suspended from all NPFL match venues for the next 10 matches.
“He has now been fined N2.5m because LMC found him guilty of encroaching field of play & assaulting Heartland player Ebele Obi.
“The fabled billionaire is expected to offer a letter of apology & an undertaking to be a good ambassador of the NPFL.
“The LMC further bans all self- procured security services other than those sanctioned by the LMC from all NPFL match venues henceforth.
“Four of the 10-match NPFL ban is suspended for a probationary period till the end of the season. “Ubah has up till 5pm on Saturday to appeal this decision if he objects the ruling,” the statement concluded.
Parents from Chibok community in Borno State have denied a girl held by Cameroonian authorities, after an aborted suicide bombing mission, is one of 219 missing female students abducted by Boko Haram in 2014.
The girl had claimed she was one of the missing school girls, the Cameroonian government said. The Murtala Muhammed Foundation, involved in efforts to identify the girl, said in a statement on Wednesday that three authorised representatives of the community confirmed the girl was not one the school girls kidnapped on April 14, 2014. Read the group’s statement signed by Aisha Muhammed-Oyebode, its chief executive.
“On Wednesday, March 30, three authorised representatives of the parents of the 219 missing Chibok girls arrived the Murtala Muhammed Foundation (MMF) offices from Chibok Local Government Area of Borno State to view photos of the girl claiming to be one of the 219 missing students kidnapped by Boko Haram.
“Mr. Yakubu Nkeki, chairman, Lawan Zana secretary, Mrs. Yana Galang women leader of the Chibok Girls Movement, all of whose children are amongst the kidnapped 219 Chibok girls were upon their arrival shown photos of the girl who was arrested along with another woman on Friday March 25th carrying explosives in Limani, Cameroon.
“A set of photographs had been sent to the MMF on the evening of Monday 28th of March by Garba Shehu, Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity. A more recent batch of photos, taken at 2pm on Tuesday 29th of March was sent to the MMF by Ambassador Hadiza Mustafa, Nigeria’s High Commissioner to Cameroon.
“The earlier set of photos showed the girl partially clothed and squatting on the sandy floor within a low cement wall enclosure, which was surrounded by soldiers and some civilians. In that same batch, the woman was being carried in the arms of a soldier, with her face swollen and plaster covering different parts of her body. She was also partially clothed.
“In the more recent photos, however, the girl was fully clothed, standing against a wall and looking into the camera. The woman was also standing straight beside what appeared to be a hospital bed, she was fully-clothed. Her face still appeared slightly swollen with dressing on her forehead.
“The Nigerian government by Tuesday afternoon had already informed the MMF that the girl has clearly identified herself as Maryam Alhaji Wakeel, 12 years old, originally from Maiduguri but abducted from Bama when the town was overrun by Boko Haram a year ago. The woman has identified herself as Aishatu Usman, a 35-year-old mother of two children.
“However the identification process was still carried out to lay to rest any claims that the girl is one of the 219 girls kidnapped from their school in Chibok on April 14th 2014. Mr. Nkeki, Mallam Zana and Mrs. Galang have confirmed that the girl and the woman do not fit the description of any of the missing daughters from Chibok.
“We have also made arrangements for other stakeholders to view the photos at the MMF office in Abuja as we are yet to ascertain how the girl came to describe herself as one of the missing Chibok girls.
“The identity of the girl notwithstanding, the MMF has informed the Nigerian government of its willingness to continue to pursue the matter, and is willing to provide the captured girl and woman any support they may require.
“These girls and women are merely victims, and must be treated as such by the society. They have already undergone grave violence at the hands of their Boko Haram captors. We must ensure that they are not made to undergo additional violence at the hands of their compatriots.
“Nigerian government officials have informed the MMF that both Maryam Alhaji Wakeel and Aishatu Usman have been handed over to the Nigerian military this evening and are currently on their way back to Nigeria.”
The Association of Nigerian Electricity Distributors says ministries, departments, agencies and the Nigerian Army are owing the Distribution Companies (DISCOs) N60 billion from 2015 to February.
Sunday Oduntan, the Executive Director of the group, said this on Tuesday at a news conference.
He said the army owed Benin DISCO N2.3 billion; Eko, N1.9 billion; Ikeja, N1.6 billion; Jos, N2 billion; Kaduna, N6.6 billion; Kano, N301 million; Port Harcourt, N1.3 billion and Yola, N435 million.
Mr. Oduntan said out of the N60 billion owed to the companies, army’s total debt stood at N15 billion. He expressed dissatisfaction with the situation, particularly with the army.
He pleaded with President Muhammad Buhari to assist the distribution companies to ensure that the army paid its energy bills.
According to him, power sector requires $40 billion to ensure adequate, reliable and stable power supply in the country.
He added that the companies had improved on their facilities by installing smart prepaid meters, taken customers’ enumeration and installing new technologies for adequate electricity.
Mr. Oduntan explained that the DISCOs had made adequate plans to ensure safety in the electricity industry, adding that the facilities in the sector could absorb new 10,000 megawatts, if generated. He expressed concern that many customers did not want to pay their electricity bills, adding that this was hampering the sector.
Mr. Oduntan urged electricity consumers to settle their bills as this would help to develop the sector.
Prominent lawyer supposed that former president can be charged at least with conspiracy as all deals were done under his nose
i kinda agree with these lawyers
We entrusted our tubers of yam into your hands buh you couldn't keep them safe because you were so lost into drinking..now, we have found our yams in some goats belly and you expect us to leave you? Where were you when they were feeding fat with our yams?
– The spokesman for the Peoples Democratic Party ministers’ forum claimed that nobody has traced any money to Jonathan’s accounts
– Buhari’s anti-corruption committee reveals in what circumstances ex-president could be investigated
– Prominent lawyer supposed that former president can be charged at least with conspiracy as all deals were done under his nose
Professor Itse Sagay, the chairman of presidential committee against corruption, has explained when ex-president Goodluck Jonathan could be probed.
He has blamed ex-minister of national planning, Dr. Abubakar Suleiman, concerning the blameworthiness of Jonathan in the ongoing anti-corruption cases.
Suleiman, who is the spokesman for the Peoples Democratic Party ministers’ forum, had said that former president could not be held liable because no stolen funds had been traced to the former president’s personal bank accounts.
He had said: “All these issues of corruption under Jonathan happened between March and April last year. It was purely an election issue. Nobody has traced any money to Jonathan’s account up till now, but money was traced to Abacha’s accounts.”
Meanwhile, Sagay claimed that while he could not say if there was a case against former president or not Jonathan could be held liable if it could be established that he made unlawful approvals for funds to be paid into other people’s accounts.
Sagay said: “Only the EFCC can say if Jonathan is culpable. Guilt in criminal law requires proof and there must be evidence. So, what I would say is that if a case can be established against Jonathan as regards public funds, then he has a case to answer.
“I don’t know if that has been done. I have not seen anybody who says he was given the money by Jonathan himself although one can say that instructions to any institution that public funds should be released to other people for purposes, which those funds were not designated, is in itself a criminal affair.
“So, it is not only when money is found on you that you have a case to answer. If you are a person in authority, and you issue directives to people under you, who are keeping public funds like the Governor of the Central Bank, and an illegal order is given to him for the release of funds, that, in itself, will raise a case for Jonathan to answer if in fact he issued such an order.”
Another prominent lawyer Yusuf Ali, said it was too early to discharge anybody as probes into corruption that took place under the past government were still ongoing.
“The whole process is ongoing. Investigations are still ongoing. Until somebody is convicted, nothing bad can be said about such person. I believe when we get to the bridge, we shall cross it,” he stated.
“There is no point for anybody to be excited or be happy for now until the whole story is in the open. Investigations are ongoing.”
At the same time, Jiti Ogunye, a lawyer from Lagos, defined Suleiman’s statement as provocative and highly irresponsible.
According to him, the fact that a number of politicians, who served under the Jonathan government, were facing criminal trial was enough to probe the ex-president with conspiracy.
Ogunye said: “That statement by him is provocative and highly irresponsible. And the reason I say that is that former president Goodluck Jonathan was the head of the executive arm of government at the time he presided over the affairs of the country.
“All the officials that are being held to account and during whose trials, as we speak, Nigerians are now learning about the mind-boggling stealing or looting of public treasury, were answerable to him; they were running his errands and therefore Nigerians expect that being the person on whose table the buck stopped as of the time he was the President, that he would be able to superintend them and ensure that those his subordinates didn’t loot the nation’s treasury.
“Can’t the former president be charged with conspiracy? He can, on the basis of those revelations because for what purpose was the money given to those people? On the strength of that alone, a charge of conspiracy can be sustained against the former president.
“For anybody to be annoying Nigerians with such a statement that nothing has been traced to the former president, one wonders what he was thinking. This is not theatrics, we are talking about things that have wrecked this country and then people are engaging in ludicrous polemics.”
Since Buhari’s anti-corruption war commenced, a lot of prominent names have been indicted and still being probed, particularly the case of $2.1 billion arms purchase scandal allegedly perpetrated by former national security adviser Sambo Dasuki.
A lot of Nigerians have also called for the probe of Jonathan under whose nose the money was stoled and the nation’s treasury looted blind.
The anti-graft commission has reportedly received a nod from presidency to probe Jonathan as Buhari’s media aide said that there was no secret pact between the incumbent and former leaders to exclude the ex-president from the list of corrupt people to be investigated by this government.
While some Nigerians want a prospective probe to be limited to former president’s administration, some countered that it should be extended to all past governments.
joseph1832: On the contrary bro, with 50k you will definitely get a chic who is ten times finer than her. If you know what I mean
I totally agree with you.....Just trying to say the OP's stunt is childish. I wld rather tell a lady "I don't have" Or "I won't give" instead of this up here..let her go..some others will come just as she came.
And when you need sex from her, she asks you put a call through to your mother and put it on speaker...
icedbeatz: when did we get to monitizing pussyyy? Her pussi worths 50k? Thats why a G have to realize that no girl is doing favour being in a relationship, kick her off if she thinks so but do what you can to make your lady happy because you want to and not because you don't want to loose her or that she coerced you to. Is her pussii worth 50k? I guess not. Is she not going to enjoy the sex too or even more? Nigga please
bro, you make a lotta sense..buh why on earth can you not tell the girl you don't have Or you won't give, instead of all thses stunts? This is what I do..when a girl asks from me, I give when my spirit moves me to give or turn her down if I don't feel like..she can go to hell with her pit!
Wonders, they say, shall never end. A weird clip has been uploaded to YouTube purportedly showing a young man transforming into a ‘dog’ during a deliverance session at the popular church of Lagos-based preacher T.B. Joshua.
The video, uploaded by Joshua’s official YouTube channel Emmanuel TV, shows a man acting in an eerily bizarre fashion during a time of prayer, even to the extent of eating one of his shoes.
According to the video description, “The demon within this young Liberian man is shockingly exposed, the entirety of his features contorting to the resemblance, movement and eerie sounds of a wild dog.”
After the prayer, the man who introduces himself as Alexander Johnson, explained that his problems began after he was sexually molested by a mad woman aged six.
Thereafter, Johnson his life was characterised by frustration and a serious ‘lust’ for women. Reacting to his bizarre behaviour during the prayer, Johnson said he had no memory of what occurred.
“There is no way I could have done these things,” he asserted, insisting it was the influence of an ‘evil spirit’ and adding that he was ‘completely free’ after the prayer.
Comments on the video revealed a mixed reaction from the public, some insisting the video was nothing more than an act.
“How much did they pay you to do this acting?” wrote one viewer. “I agree there are a lot of false prophets in the world but Prophet T.B. Joshua is NOT one of them,” another argued.
This is not the first controversial video Emmanuel TV has released on YouTube. A video purportedly showing Joshua’s encounter with ‘lucifer’ recently went viral, amassing over one million views in a matter of weeks.
Joshua’s YouTube channel has over 320,000 subscribers, making it the third most viewed in Nigeria.
Politics › Re: Saraki’s Senators’ At CCT Shrink From 81 To 12 by midolian(op): 11:12am On Apr 06, 2016*. Modified: 11:42am On Apr 06, 2016
with white shirt 
