₦airaland Forum

FANS waiting to hear when the Champions League draw will take place have been left confused by UEFA.
By JACK WILSON


UEFA announced on their official website that the semi-final draw would take place at 13:00CET on Friday.

The Europa League draw would be held first at 12:00CET, UEFA added.

But there is confusion over the exact time of when the balls will be pulled out given UEFA’s wording.

The draw will be held in Nyon in Switzerland, which is currently under Central European Summer Time.

That’s different to Central European Time, which is one hour behind Central European Summer Time.

It means it will in fact take place at 13:00CEST - not CET, as UEFA state - which will be 12:00 in the UK.


WHEN IS THE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE DRAW?
Real Madrid and Bayern Munich are the big-hitters in the draw but Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp does not under-estimate surprise package Roma.

On the night when the Reds were securing a 5-1 aggregate win over Manchester City, the Serie A side produced a major shock in overturning a 4-1 first-leg deficit to beat Barcelona on away goals.
Drawing them would produce an early reunion for 39-goal Mohamed Salah, who left the Italian capital in the summer in a £38million deal which is now looking good value.

"I walked up the stairs and somebody told me (Roma had gone through) - I really thought it was a joke," he said after the win over City.

"Not that I don't respect Roma, the absolute opposite. They have a fantastic team. They lost Mo Salah and they are in the semis, that's quite a big thing."


Who is in the Champions League draw?
Bayern Munich

Liverpool

Real Madrid

Roma

When will the matches be played?
The first legs will be on Tuesday 24 and Wednesday 25 April, with the returns on 1 and 2 May. The exact schedule will be confirmed in the afternoon of the draw.



Who does Jurgen Klopp want to get?
"I don't care who is in (the competition). We are here and we deserved it, and I am really happy about that," the Liverpool boss said.

"So far, we fought for each opportunity to get it - and then to use it is so hard. But that's what we will do.

"It's obviously a while ago that Liverpool were in the semis. It was a while ago that I was in the semis (in 2013).

"Now we are there together - so that's quite a cool moment and I'm really happy about it.

"The other teams will have their targets as well when we meet them in the semis; I think they are not without ambitions."

Has Champions League draw been leaked?
The Champions League draw takes place at 12pm today with question marks over whether it’s already been leaked.

Express Sport revealed earlier today how Roma were displaying the fact they had drawn Liverpool on their website.

Tickets were in the pipeline to be sold to Roma fans despite the draw not taking place until today.

It’s led to questions over the draw and whether it has ALREADY been completed - or whether it was a genuine mistake.

If Roma’s website is to be believed it would leave Real Madrid and Bayern Munich fighting it out in the other semi-final.

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BBNaija 2017 reality show winner, Efe Ejeba has come under serious criticism from his fans who feel he doesn’t have bragging rights to claim his songs have been hits back to back.
Efe money as he likes to call himself revealed this when he announced the release of his EP titled ‘Am Sorry for Winning’ featuring several other artists including Olamide.

However, Nigerians were quick to put him in his place and school him. They stormed the comment section of his post to let him know how disappointed they have been with his songs and he was sure to reply them.
See some reactions below:

Meanwhile, he has quickly deleted the comments and deactivated the comments on this particular post.

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What Lessons Has Yahaya Bello Been Learning From Mr President?
By Tunde Olusunle

Yahaya Bello, the governor of Kogi State, loves to make issues of everything. Just everything.

When he became governor in very controversial circumstances in January 2016, he prided himself as the youngest governor ever in Nigeria's political history. His publicists, uninformed as their principal, joined in blowing the flute of falsehood.

As if this same country didn't once produce an Ali Sa'ad Birnin-Kudu as governor of Jigawa State, way back in 1992. Birnin-Kudu was barely 30 years old when he was democratically elected on the platform of the erstwhile Social Democratic Party, SDP, in December 1991. He was in office between January 1992 and November 1993, when Gen Sani Abacha, sacked that dispensation and installed himself Head of State.

Debonair, suave and brilliant Donald Duke was less than 38 when he became governor of Cross River State in 1999. By the time he left office in 2007, after two eventful terms, Duke was just 46!

Yet the young Donald Duke laid the bedrock for the contemporary renaissance of Cross River State. He repositioned agriculture; rediscovered tourism; rejuvenated urban development and made Cross River the cleanest state in Nigeria. He built the Tinapa Resort to boost commerce and investment in the state. The annual Calabar Carnival and the Obudu Mountain Race which have become international brands were products of the young and visionary Donald Duke. It is a measure of his statesmanship, that Duke, on behalf of the federal government, hosted the erstwhile Liberian President, the tempestuous Charles Ghankey Taylor, between August 2003 and March 2006, in the aftermath of his ouster from office as President.

Like everything contentious and controversial about him, Yahaya Bello claimed different ages when he became governor. First, he was 40, which was no big deal, especially since younger people had held such office elsewhere and excelled. When he was interviewed during the 57th independence celebrations a few months back, he said he was 'twelve years younger than Nigeria.' So he confirmed he had been lying about his true age all along.

Recently, Yahaya Bello has been telling Nigerians how he visits Aso Villa every day, notepad in hand, to take lessons in leadership, from President Muhammadu Buhari. He says aside from the President's immediate family, he can wake the man up from siesta, whether or not his doctors advised to the contrary, to ask questions about what next he should be doing in managing Kogi State.

You wonder whether the lessons he has been taking including that of inflicting untold pain and hardship on the people he should be governing in Kogi State, where people have not been paid salaries for over a year now.

You wonder if the lessons he has been receiving, includes freewheeling, unaccountable spending, just the way the various tranches of the Paris Club Refund and the regular monthly statutory allocation to Kogi State, have been swept away by the harmattan waves of River Niger.

You wonder if his regular tutorials encapsulate absolute insensitivity to the plight of the talakawa, the vulnerable mass on whose back his mentor rode to victory in the March 28, 2015 presidential election.

You actually wonder if Mr President has been teaching him how to dodge missiles and satchet water which are regularly hurled at him at every other public appearance in various parts of Kogi State, because of the seething global resentment for him and his style of governance.

He surely has taken a vital lesson though, from President Buhari, in ensuring that Kogi State becomes a free-range grazing ground for cattle, in a milieu when other states are enacting anti-open grazing laws. And he has assured dissenting traditional rulers that they risk losing their royal stools.

Did you notice just how low and despondent Kogi State has degenerated under the regime of Gov Yahaya Bello?

The highest rate of kidnapping in Nigeria, takes place within Kogi State territory. Either on the Abuja-Lokoja stretch of the federal highway; the Okene-Lokoja; the Okene-Kabba; the Lokoja-Obajana; the Lokoja-Ajaokuta; the Ajaokuta-Ejule; the Ejule-Ankpa, or other routes in the state, the story is the same.

You must have heard that Kogi State under Bello is a functional police state. You disagree with government and you are hurled into the Government House gulag, superintended over by the Chief of Staff to the Governor. Ask Austin Okai, the social activist, among others. There has been a suggestion that the administration actually funds a hit squad which takes out perceived antagonists of the government.

Under Yahaya Bello, Kogi State is not in a hurry to shed its toga of Nigeria's most constrained and dirtiest state capital. The place is just not growing, the vision of the founding fathers, eternally stymied. It is a contemporary testimonial of arrested development.

Lawlessness has been elevated to an executive pastime under Bello's watch. Whenever the governor feels ignored by his constituents who seem to have developed a thick skin to his juvenile tantrums, he tests his gubernatorial powers on the federal highways. You don't want to be on the road, driving by Lokoja, on a day Yahaya Bello has business in Okene or Kabba. The two sides of the expressway, from the Abuja approach and the Okene end, are blocked and barricaded by outsiders and security vehicles, to allow his majesty, the emperor, drive through in royal splendour. If you ever thought the late Abubakar Audu was a bully on the highways, don't pray to be on the road at the same time with Yahaya Bello.

President Muhammadu Buhari presents his budget to the National Assembly and recognising the seriousness and formalness of the occasion, a major state event, something of a 'State of the Union' address, his aide-de-camp is decked in his ceremonial dress. Not the regular work-day dress or military fatigue.

About the same time Yahaya Bello is presenting the 2018 budget to the State House of Assembly on Thursday December 22, Gov Simon Lalong is undergoing the same ritual next door to Kogi in the North Central State of Plateau. His ADC, a police officer, is adorned in his ceremonial dress.

In Kogi State, however, the business of governance which has typically been reduced to a job-for-the-boys preoccupation for jesters. So Mr Yahaya Bello strolls into the State Assembly and because of the levity and unseriousness with which everything is handled, under this government, the ADC equally comes behind him in plain clothes! To an event that is perhaps the single most serious annual function, which commands the presence of all arms of government in the hallowed chambers of the parliament.


Are these the kind of lessons Yahaya Bello is taking from President Muhammadu Buhari? What manner of student is he?

Under Yahaya Bello, the rule books have been holistically rewritten. The Office of the Deputy Governor has been bifurcated. There is Deputy Governor I, a position occupied by the self-styled, all-powerful Chief of Staff to the Governor, the erstwhile bank staff with questionable service records, Edward Onoja. He is in direct competition for power and authority with Yahaya Bello, cruises around in a convoy of exotic cars, ever accompanied by a retinue of gun-wielding, trigger-happy goons. His word is law and he tells anybody who cares to listen, that he is 'a twin brother' to Yahaya Bello. When Bello is commissioning his palatial mansion which pops up like an oddity in the rural, indigent, aesthetically depraved landscape of Okene in Kogi Central, Onoja is equally performing tape-cutting rituals in Kogi East, as the de facto Deputy Governor that he is.

The constitutionally recognized Deputy Governor, who is Deputy Governor II, Simon Achuba, has been consigned to poring over newspapers and following national and global events on satellite television in his office, a shouting distance from the Governor's. He's rarely seen, perhaps in his local church on select occasions, never heard, because he cannot be seen to be in competition with the recognized 'twin brother' to his principal. He has absolutely no view on any issue and is never consulted by the Governor.

If the supposed substantive Deputy Governor is so relegated in the scheme in Kogi State, you can imagine the trauma and perpetual humiliation of the Secretary to the State Government, Dr Arike Ayoola. If Gov Bello is attending a function and the Chief of Staff is expected at the same function, protocol officers in the new dispensation reserve a place on the high table for the Chief of Staff, while a backrow seat, in the same sitting area with aides of the Governor, is reserved for the SSG!

And Yahaya Bello has been taking lessons from President Buhari. He watches the snippets from the federal executive council meetings every other Wednesday and sees the sitting arrangement: Mr President at the head of the conference circumference; flanked to his immediate right by the Vice President, who in turn is flanked by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation; before the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation; before the National Security Adviser; before the Chief of Staff to the President. I hope I'm correct.

But in Yahaya Bello's Kogi State, disorder is order; order is disorder.

This is what we get when Nigeria's electoral laws are interpreted to instal a man who never canvassed for votes, as governor of a state. Kogi State is the first example in contemporary political history of an appointed Governor of a State as socio-culturally diverse as Kogi State.

And what does he bring to the table with his quantum inexperience?

That will be talk for another day.

Chief Olusunle was a former Special Assistant to ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo

Kogi East Elders Council (KEEC) the apex socio-cultural body has described the government of Gov. Alhaji Yahaya Bello of Kogi state as an unmitigated disaster.
In a news conference in Abuja today the Chairman of Kogi East Elders Council (KEEC), Sen. Dr. Amadu Ali said the Kogi East Elders Council, in its attempt to give the young administration the benefit of the doubt, had restrained itself from taking a critical posture, in the hope that the current leaders would retrace their steps and take the right path.
THE FULL STATEMENT:
PRESS STATEMENT BY KOGI EAST ELDERS COUNCIL ON THE DEPLORABLE STATE OF KOGI STATE
HELD IN ABUJA, FCT ON NOVEMBER 16, 2017
Gentlemen of the Press,
Welcome,
Kogi East Elders Council (KEEC) is the apex socio-cultural body formed on the principles of equity, justice, fairplay and good governance in Kogi State. The Council has laboured behind the scene to ensure harmony among various political divides in the State, even across the three senatorial districts. Though it is not strictly a political organization, Council has consistently counseled those at the helm of affairs at both the state and federal levels, encouraging them to engage in measures that would lead to peace, harmony and the well-being of the people of the state. An example is our communique as published in The Graphics of February 9, 2016.
It is, therefore, with absolute distress that the Kogi East Elders’ Council has decided to go public on the deplorable and deteriorating condition of resources-rich Kogi State. In the last two years since Alhaji Yahaya Bello providentially took over the mantle of leadership as the Governor of the state, impulsive and ill-informed steps taken by the administration have left in their trail the sounds of wailing and lamentation in villages, towns and cities across the state. The Kogi East Elders Council, in its attempt to give the young administration the benefit of the doubt, had restrained itself from taking a critical posture, in the hope that the current leaders would retrace their steps and take the right path. However, our hopes that the government would take the right path was being dashed as the leadership is sinking deeper into errors, making a shipwreck of the opportunity given to this younger generation to steer the ship of Kogi State towards a greater future. Consequently, as at today, Kogi is in dangerous waters, rudderless and sailing wildly into difficult storms. That is why we, Kogi East Elders Council, have come out to address this press conference on the current situation in Kogi State and to advise the way forward.
STALEMATE IN KOGI STATE UNIVERSITY
The termination of the appointments of 135 academic staff of Kogi State University by the State Government was an evidence of its ignorance with regard to administration. The lecturers had embarked on a strike action for over a period of six months because of unpaid salaries. Instead of government to pay up what it owed the lecturers, it rather glossed over the issue and insisted that the academic staff sign attendance registers as evidence that they had acquiesced to government’s arm-twisting strategy of compelling them to return to work under duress. These lecturers, some of them professors and PhD holders, were sacked from the state’s university, at a time when many universities in the country are hunting for intellectuals to beef up their faculties. The state government’s action has a tendency to depreciate the academic standard of the university by a huge percentage.
In our attempt to salvage the situation, the Kogi East Elders Council had sent a delegation, led by a former Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Architect Gabriel Aduku, to the governor with the following suggestions in the form of a communiqué:
1. The KEEC frowns at the lingering crisis between the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Kogi State University Chapter and the Government of Kogi State
2. The Council believes that the termination of the appointment of 135 academic staff of the university is unhealthy and inimical to progress and orderly development of the institution.
3. The Council requests that the Kogi State Government review this action by granting an unconditional pardon to the affected staff as a demonstration of magnanimity in order to create conducive environment for teaching, learning and research.
4. The Council is of the opinion that the proscription of the Kogi State University chapter of ASUU was hasty as it would rather aggravate than solve the labour crisis and advises the Government to rescind its decision.
5. The Council expressed its fears that unless steps are urgently taken, the Kogi State University, Anyigba stands the risk of losing accreditation of many of its current academic programmes as well as the positions of the first among state universities and seventh overall during the 2011 institutional accreditation conducted by the National Universities Commission.
6. The Council calls for a speedy conclusion of the tortuous staff screening exercise that appears to be the longest in the history of this country. Consequently, many civil servants are owed salaries of one year and above in spite of several bailout funds received by Kogi State.
Instead of hearkening to this appeal and voice of reason by the Kogi East Elders’ Council, the state government rebuffed our moves, claiming self-righteousness and proclaiming that it is on a mission to sanitise the civil service.
INSECURITY IN KOGI STATE:
The state of insecurity in Kogi is unacceptable. It has culminated in a situation in which a labour leader, Mallam Abdulmumuni Yakubu, was reportedly killed in Okene on November 1, 2017. The evidence of the widespread insecurity was manifest in the imposition of 24-hour curfew on five local government areas by the state government on November 9, 2017. The LGAs include Adavi, Ajaokuta, Okene, Ogori/Magongo and Okehi. Thuggery and senseless killings are not the only definitions of insecurity in the state. There is kidnapping, armed robbery, conflicts between herders and farmers, leading to the loss of lives and properties. The crimes have continued to fester dangerously, while government beats its chest for fighting the menace through donations of vehicles and other facilities to the police. Crimes are defeated, not only with facilities, but through intelligence gathering from the communities. Moreover, some known criminals flaunt their invincibility before their hapless victims because they have been recruited into the political strategies for the next elections. We state unequivocally that this situation is unacceptable and cannot be allowed to persist. We call on the police and other security agencies in the state to put all hands on deck, oil their intelligence network, arrest these criminals and bring them to justice, no matter their political or ethnic affiliations. Without a secure atmosphere there can be no development in the state.
UNPAID CIVIL SERVANTS SALARIES AND RELATED CRISIS:
Sworn in on January 27, 2016, Governor Yahaya Bello noted in his inaugural speech that, “We know salaries have not been paid to some of our Civil Servants for some months now. We propose to commence paying as promptly as possible while implementing strategies to gradually defray the arrears. While doing this we shall count on the understanding of all the good people of Kogi State.” Instead of fulfilling this promise, Governor Bello has been beclouded with the fixation that the civil service is mired in monumental corruption. He embarked on series of staff audits that saw to the non-payment of staff salaries for close to 21 months and counting. Over this period, Governor Bello claims to have uncovered 10,000 ghost workers, many of whom have cried out aloud that they are bona fide civil servants of Kogi State, not ghosts. It is becoming increasingly evident that the ghost workers narrative is exaggerated and at best false. Rather, it is an unqualified excuse to downsize the Kogi State civil service workforce without justification. The never-ending staff audit has pauperized civil servants, leading to frustrations, deaths and suicides. Recently, 40 senators had to donate 1,260 bags of rice to Kogi State civil servants in order to ameliorate the hunger and starvation that the obnoxious staff audit brought upon the people of the state. At the last count, five different committees had been set up with regard to the exercise:
1. Screening committee chaired by General Paul Okutinmo
2. Screening committee headed by Dr J Agbaji
3. Back-up committee chaired by the Auditor-General of Kogi State, Mr. Y. Okala
4. Validation Committee headed by the same Auditor-General of Kogi State, Mr Y. Okala
5. Appeal Committee also headed by the Auditor-General of Kogi State, Mr Y. Okala
6. Verification exercise now on-going.
The staff audit or verification could, in this way, continue for eternity, and so the suffering of the civil servants in the state. As at today, open sources provide the following data with regard to the state’s work force:
SUMMARY OF KOGI STATE WORK FORCE AS AT SEPTEMBER 30, 2017
BS/No Categories Number
1. Work force as at January 2016 (when Governor Yahaya took over) 76,275
2. Staff cleared by verification/appeal committees 65,832
3. Uncleared Staff 10,443
4. Outstanding Salaries Between 2 and 18 months
5. Some Uncleared Staff have been pardoned No available figure
The ugly atmosphere has not been lifted after almost two years of the screening exercise, and culminating in the slavish management policy of clocking in and out of staff at various Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), as a means of monitoring staff attendance. Seen as a measure that runs contrary to current labour laws, in an atmosphere of non-payment of salaries, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Kogi State chapter, embarked on an indefinite strike action, since September 21, 2017, which was called off only last weekend, November 10, 2017. While the strike lasted, most government offices in Kogi State were under lock and key, as workers defied the brutish but fruitless measures of using security outfits to break open office doors. Though the workers have called off the long strike, the terms and conditions of the rapprochement should be adhered to by government, as any act of betrayal of trust, especially on the part of government, could bruise the unhealed wounds and engender another bout of conflict and confrontation with Labour.
However, we consider it ironic that the government is feigning the lack of resources to pay civil servants and pensioners their emoluments in spite of the huge funds that accrued to the state and local governments from the federation account and internally generated revenues since 2016. Our findings have shown the following inflow of cash into the coffers of Kogi State government since 2016.
1. FAAC Allocations to the State 60, 500,000,000.00
2. FAAC Allocations (LGAs) 49, 300,000,000.00
3. FG bailout 20, 000,000,000.00
4. Paris Club Refund (1st & 2nd tranches) 17, 200,000,000.00
5. Internally Generated Revenue (estimated as at
September 30, 2017) 20, 000,000,000.00
Total N167, 000,000,000.00
From the above figures it is apparent that the average monthly inflow or receipts of funds by the Kogi State Government for 21 months is, on the average, N8 billion. In terms of expenditure, below is an outline of civil servants and pensioners salaries and emoluments between 2012 and 2015 before Governor Bello took over:
1. State workers’ salaries/pensions 2, 600,000,000.00
2. LGAs Staff Salaries/Pensions 847,800,000.00
3. LGAs Teachers’ Salaries/pensions 1, 300,000,000.00
Total N4, 747,800,000.00
The average monthly emolument to workers in Kogi State before Governor Bello’s tenure (including those of the so-called ghost workers) was of N4.8 billion. At present, the excess after wage bill is put at N3.2 billion, therefore, the total surplus that has accumulated from January 2016 to September 2017 is N67 billion. This amount should be available for infrastructure development, but the projects which might have gulped this sum are not on ground for the people of Kogi State to see. If the government is not engaged in the construction of vital infrastructure in the state, why has government been unable to pay the salaries of even the ‘cleared civil servants’ as at when due? Why did the state government embark on a borrowing adventure from commercial banks, and what has government used the borrowed money to service? The government wasted millions of naira on newspaper advertisements to showcase the number of employees who have been cleared and paid, but it shamelessly admitted that in spite of the funds accruing to the state, government still owed the salaries of some ‘cleared workers.’
It is nothing short of wickedness for the Kogi State government to deny workers their salaries and pensioners’ stipends in the face of such abundant financial resources. The excuse of refining the civil service system or of running a digital administration does not hold water, as every improvement on an administrative system is supposed to produce a positive result, not a negative one that leaves the people in anguish and penury. The condition of Kogi State has degenerated to a situation in which federal lawmakers had to donate bags of rice to Kogi State workers, when the state government has stuffed workers’ earned salaries under its armpit.
We wish to reiterate the fact that the situation in Kogi State is totally unacceptable to Kogi East Elders Council. Therefore, we declare our positions on the various contending issues as follows:
1. His Excellency, President Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR, should intervene in the crises in Kogi State by setting up a presidential committee to investigate the purported staff audit and ensure that staff salaries are paid.
2. The Federal Government should investigate how the funds that went to Kogi State as bailout and Paris Club refunds have been utilized, to the point that the president’s directive that civil servants’ salaries should be given priority in the disbursement of the funds was not adhered to.
3. All trade unions in Kogi State’s tertiary institutions should be allowed to operate undeterred. The proscription of these unions by the state government was not in good faith, and has worsened the teaching and learning conditions in tertiary institutions in the state.
4. The State Government should immediately pay up all salaries and emoluments due to the state’s civil servants and pensioners, because there should be enough money in its coffers to do so.
5. The staff audit should be brought to a logical conclusion immediately or halted, so that it is not used as an excuse for non-payment of staff salaries.
6. All the 135 academic staff members of Kogi State University who have been sacked under the draconian policy of the state government should have the termination of their appointments reversed unconditionally.
7. Kogi State Government should keep to all the terms and conditions of agreements reached with trade unions in the state to ensure industrial harmony.
It is worth putting on record that Kogi State belongs to over three million people who hail from the Confluence State and not the few persons who hold political offices in various capacities today. Every indigene of the state is interested in lifting it from its parlous state to the height of progress and prosperity. Therefore, the state government should consider critical voices as partners in progress, not enemies. It is imperative for this government to run an all-inclusive administration as that is the better way in which the state can move forward.
Thank you.

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