₦airaland Forum

I dont know much about cable cars, but I think investing in water transportaion may be the panacea to the transportation problem of lagos given the peculiarity of the terrain

The day GEJ starts to genuinely fight corruption that day i may start taking him serious.
With coruption left intact, how long do you think these refurbished trucks will last. Plus dont even try to know how much was 'spent' on the refurbishment

@Sincere9gerian . I dont think you are sincere! In your ealier post you accused Buhari of sectionalism for awarding the contract for Kaduna Refinery, when somebody pointed out that Buhari actually initiated two refineries- warri and kaduna, you now did an about turn that Buhari did not initiate the kaduna refinery afterall!

You are not sincere

Wonderful stories. ma sha Allah

Recruitment Scandal - Presidency Allocated 250 Immigration Slots


A controversial recruitment exercise which allegedly favoured a section of the country is going on at the Nigerian Immigration Service with jobs slots being secretly allocated to top government officials, sources told Daily Trust.

This is happening just three months to the exit of Controller General of the service Mrs. Rose Chinyere Uzoma, who is accused of favouring her kinsmen from the Southeast in the distribution of the vacancies.

A source in the House of Representatives said already the committee on Federal Character has opened investigations and asked the Immigration service to suspend the exercise.

The source said Uzoma appeared before the House committee last week to defend accusations of failure to publicly advertise vacancies and giving undue favouritism to the Southeast.

Uzoma, according to the source, told the lawmakers that the service did not advertise the jobs so as not to unknowingly employ terrorists, but the lawmakers reminded her that even the Military and Police are advertising their vacancies in spite of the prevailing insurgency.

She also said she had already obtained approval from the Head of Service of the Federation to employ 4,560 people.

The committee therefore asked her to provide details of the present distribution of the Immigration work force based on state of origin.

A committee member said they found out that out of over 25,000 Immigration staff, Uzoma’s husband’s state of origin Imo has the highest number with 1,190; Kano has 350; Lagos has 400; while Sokoto has the least with 200.

The committee therefore ordered her to stay action on the recruitment until she provides details on how she intends to share out the slots, but with priority to be given to the states that at present have low representation in the service.

Daily Trust learnt that before the lawmakers tried to pull the brakes, Uzoma had already offered hundreds of job slots to top government functionaries, including the Presidency which is offered 250 slots, Jonathan’s mother 40 slots, First Lady 100 slots, Interior Minister Abba Moro 100 slots, two commissioners of the Immigration board 30 slots each, and the Federal Character Commission 250 slots.

A source said the Federal Character Commission was given those job slots for giving the Immigration service waiver on the advertisement of the vacancies.

Presidential spokesman Reuben Abati did not respond to text a message sent to him asking for his comments on the alleged offers of Immigration job slots to the Presidency and Jonathan’s mother and wife.

For its part, the Federal Character Commission, through its spokesman Usman Jimada, denied being compromised by the Immigration Service. Jimada added that the commission will continue to pursue its mandate of fair and equitable recruitment in a manner that is transparent and beneficial to all Nigerians.

When asked for comments, spokesman for the Immigration service Mr. Olumbar Joachim said he was not aware of the Presidency getting offers to fill certain vacancies but added that there was nothing wrong with the Presidency or other officials making recommendations to the service.

“I am not aware of that and I don’t think it is correct,” he said, adding: “But for the Presidency giving recommendations, it is a different thing. Assuming that you, you know this person is of good character and all that, it’s a different thing. You are recommending somebody; it is not as if it is mandatory that that person would have to be recruited. What it means is that you are saying this person is not a criminal, you are saying that this person is a Nigerian.”

Joachim also denied that the CG is recruiting massively from her state of origin Abia and her husband’s state Imo. He said the exercise was open to scrutiny from the Federal Character Commission since it is mandatory that every state filled its quota.

“You cannot say madam is from Abia her husband is from Imo, Immigration is recruiting 1500 now Imo is producing 500; it is not possible anybody will ever do that,” he added.

He said all state controllers of Immigration were involved in the recruitment exercise.

Joachim said also the service introduced stringent vetting measures including having a guarantor to ensure it does not admit criminals, referring to a recent incident where an Immigration officer was arrested on suspicion of being a Boko Haram member.

“One thing is certain, the service will not engage in any exercise that will endanger the lives of innocent Nigerians. Two, considering the situation we are in now we will go the extra mile to ensure that criminals and terrorists are not brought into the service,” he added.

‘This cannot stand’

When Daily Trust contacted chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Federal Character, Rep. Ahmed Idris (ACN, Plateau), he said they have opened investigations into the “illegal” recruitments in the Immigration service.

“We have met twice with the Comptroller General, the last was on Saturday and she told us that they are recruiting 4,500 new officers out of which 1,200 is for senior cadres or degree holders while about 300 is for Diploma and secondary school leavers,” he said.

“Based on the reports we got, we have asked for their nominal roll and her last recruitment which will be given in a template that will reflect state by state distribution and even local governments. Section 4 of the 1999 constitution is very clear about Federal character in every government organisation and we won’t allow anybody who violates it to go scot-free.”

On whether the committee will reverse the recruitment, Idris said: “Certainly we will not only reverse it but we will go further and apply for their prosecution for perpetuating illegality.”

http://www.dailytrust.com.ng/index.php/other-sections/lead-stories/184124-recruitment-scandal-hits-immigration

A former Minister of Petroleum who has no filling station
a former military Governor who has no house in his state capital

Fresh Air!

Fresh Air!

By Nasir El Rufai

When I wrote an article in 2011, stating that the government of President Goodluck Jonathan was spending two billion naira every day, including weekends, on security without commensurate returns on the lives of Nigerians, the president’s reaction was to have his then chief goon, General Awoye Azazi, arrest and detain me for publishing ‘misleading information’. In retrospect, I agree with the accusation – because the amount I stated hugely understated the grand larceny going on in government.

An opening into what is really going on in government was provided a few days back by the Punch newspaper, which found that a staggering 5 trillion naira – or $31bn has been stolen under Jonathan’s 30-month stewardship of our nation’s affairs.

Assuming that Jonathan has been in power since May 2010, that works out to an incredulous $1bn stolen each month. If you add the average borrowing of another $1bn per month since Jonathan took office, then the true scale of the epic theft becomes clearer.

President Jonathan is making a mockery of himself if he continues to insist his government is determined to fight corruption, or that Nigeria under his watch has not finally lost the war on graft. It is no accident that Nigeria is perceived as the second most corrupt country in the world by a recent Gallup poll. According to International audit firm KPMG, the cost of fraud in the first half of 2012 alone is $1.5bn (N225bn), the highest on the African continent. And that is only because they have no real idea of what is going on in government circles While Nigeria is ranked third behind USA and China in backlogs of orders for personal private jets, the Economic Intelligence Unit (EIU) asserted that our nation is the worst place to be in 2013 due to deteriorating indicators of human security..

One day, we read that billions of naira of pension funds have been stolen, and the next, it becomes trillions of unbudgeted fuel subsidy monies. It seems Nigerians have simply gotten numb to these figures, or have not appreciated the opportunity cost of the sums being stolen in terms of goods and services forgone. To put things in context, if one spends one hundred thousand naira daily, it will take about 53 years to spend one billion naira! A billion dollars is of course some 150 billion naira, so go ahead and do the math.

In short, what would $31bn do for Nigeria or Nigerians? For a person who lives for 100 years, he would have to spend the sum of $310m dollars a year for an entire century – near a million dollars a day, weekends included to finish it all. And if he decides to join the league of private jet owners, that amount would purchase 1,550 planes at an average cost of $20m each.

If the funds were to be used to finance the operations of the Nigerian government, the $31bn sum effectively covers Nigeria’s N4.8trn 2012 budget with a leftover of about N200bn. And is only less than N1 billion short of the proposed N4.92trn budget for 2013. From another perspective, according to an MoU signed by government this year, 6 refineries would be constructed in modular forms within 30 months at a cost of $4.5bn. Each refinery would process 30,000 barrels of crude per day with an output of 5 million litres of gasoline. This means that with $31bn about 41 new refineries can be built.

The immediate implications of that are: the very volatile fuel scarcity situation existing all over Nigeria would be solved. And hundreds of billions of naira that are ordinarily stolen annually in the guise of fuel importation would be saved. Similarly, of the 41 refineries, one would be sited in every Nigerian state, with an extra five clustered or evenly distributed around larger consumption centres like Lagos, Ibadan, Kano and Abuja. There is simply no telling how many jobs this would create for Nigeria’s tens of millions of unemployed citizens.

And speaking of employment, some of the decisions by this government are simply confounding because the MoU for the refineries indicated that 6 months of construction work will be done in America, followed by one month of test-running and dismantling of the refinery. Another month is provided for transporting the dismantled refinery, and an extra 4 months to reassemble the plant and commence production. Not one Nigerian job will be created in the construction of the refineries for which $4.5bn was to be spent! And like everything with this hapless administration, nothing has been heard of the construction of these modular refineries, only a report of yet another committee on refineries.

The design and construction of rail services in Abuja which the Obasanjo administration awarded in 2007 and due to have been completed in 2010 was recently “re-approved” by the Federal Executive Council for about the same it was originally awarded – some $823m, less than a billion dollars. The vanished $31bn would have conveniently provided a project similar to the Abuja light rail system for 32 of our 36 states. Imagine the jobs we would have created, the savings on road repairs, reduction in accidents, cost of transportation and improvement in the standards of living we would have had.

Similarly, what became the Primus Specialist Hospital in Abuja, was awarded for less than N5 billion by the FCT Administration, and reportedly finally completed at multiples of the original price. Assuming it would cost N100 billion to build and equip such a facility, it would mean that if the looted $31bn was channelled into healthcare, it would have comfortably built about 31 hospitals of that calibre. And if it had not been inflated, the same amount might have built a world class hospital in every state capital with the best equipment anywhere. Incidentally, the First Lady would not have had to go to any German hospital for any reason. Nigeria would also have saved the N450 billion we lose annually, travelling overseas for medical treatment.

In the last two fiscal years, less than N20 billion have been budgeted annually for the capital needs of all federal universities. Between 2004 and 2007, the FCT administration and the Petroleum Technology Development Fund contributed about 200 hectares of land plus $10 million, and $25 million respectively as virtually sole contribution to the set-up of the African University of Science and Technology (AUST), Abuja. With the stolen funds, the federal government would have financed the capital programmes of all federal universities for some 250 years! And if the same funds were applied to building new universities, we could easily have got at least 60 AUST- like institutions up and running all across the country.

From every perspective one looks at it, the amount of stolen funds would have improved the lives of Nigerians: if the $31bn had been invested in road construction, Nigeria would have emerged with one of the best road networks in all of Africa; even at the reported N89.53bn at which the Lagos Ibadan expressway was ‘concessioned’ in 2009, the amount would have translated into about 525,500km of roads, several multiples of the paved road network we now have nationally.

Meanwhile, was it not this administration that set up an assessment committee to look into cases of abandoned Federal government projects? The final report of the committee can be summed up in 2 points: there are 11,886 abandoned federal projects across Nigeria, and it would cost an estimated N7.78 trillion to complete these projects. With the $31bn in stolen funds, Nigeria would have successfully completed about 65% or some 7,000 abandoned projects all across Nigeria that would create jobs and improve our standards of living.

The report of the committee has not been implemented; instead, President Jonathan recently sent a letter to the National Assembly requesting approval to borrow $7.9bn to fund a pipeline of projects between 2012 and 2014. This is not to say borrowing money to fund national developmental priorities is a bad idea. But we all know that most of these monies will add up to the Jonathanian statistics of stolen funds.

On the issue of debt, if we add the proposed borrowing to our currently known $5.7bn debt burden at the end of 2011, our external debt stock would rise to $13.6bn by 2014. It leaves little to wonder if Nigeria can sustain servicing its rising debt profile. Curiously, the proposed foreign borrowing and the requests were not included in the 2012- 2015 Medium Term Expenditure Framework presented to the National Assembly last year by the President himself, thereby violating the Fiscal Responsibility Act 2007.

The most frightening aspect of the $31bn question is: what if international and reputable audit firms had been engaged to audit Nigeria’s accounts not just at the federal, but also at state and local government areas? What would have been the findings? It is not hard to imagine that Nigeria would have been labelled the world’s most corrupt country by far, without a close second.

What should concern every Nigerian is that the President knows where mass fraud is being perpetuated, yet chooses to ignore the goings on. Why else have all the reports on the petroleum subsidy fraud only resulted in more ad-hoc committees, and then white paper committees whose reports are never ever published, and then finally abandoned to gather dust with no pretext at even attempting to implement any of the recommendations? No wonder, Dr. Faruk Lawan had to be compromised, while deliberate attempts were made to discredit the Ribadu Task Force report.

If the President wants to be regarded with any vestige of respect now or in the future, he must rise up with some spine, face corruption squarely and fight it with sincerity. He must de-emphasize reliance on foreign and domestic borrowings that simply line up the pockets of the lenders and the few unpatriotic Nigerians serving their interests. He must order the Debt Management Office to publish information on existing loans, tie them to the projects for which they were obtained, and make this information public to all Nigerians on a regular basis.

In the meantime, what most Nigerians simply want to know from the president is what happened to N5trillion in 30 months. That is the $31bn question which Dr Jonathan ought to answer.

http://www.gamji.com/

According to the bible "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." Mark 10:25
A pastor that owns a private jet is obviously rich.

And by the way does the verse also apply to the rich members of the congrgation as well?

how i wish this subsidy fraud was uncovered under a buhari presidency!

The thing is obj is directly responsible for the failures recorded in his regime and viocariously liable for the failures of both Yar'adaua and jonathan.- because of the role he played in bringing both men to power

Please what is Jonathan's score on the issue of fighting corruption

when was Jesus born? Nobody knows the year he was born yet some people celebrate christmas on 25th December! My question for them is: 25th December of which year?

When was Jesus born?

dirtymoney: 10 million ARABIC trees? must everything in that region be religiously related... even tree sef.!
hardluck to my Maidas frends sha...

Is Arabic a religion? See what sentiment and phobia can do to a human being

A company owned by a daughter of former President Olusegun Obasanjo is among the beneficiaries of the Federal Government’s recent secret allocations of prize oil blocks, Daily Trust investigations show.

Findings reveal that All Grace Energy, in which Senator Iyabo Obasanjo-Bello has majority stake, got the oil block Ubima Creek field OML 17 in a discretional process without competitive bidding.
Some oil companies and industry experts said the secret allocations are against international best practices.

Daily Trust learnt that the secret allocations were done over the past one year, even though government had said the process of awarding oil licences were to be executed publicly through competitive bidding.

A newspaper report recently said All Grace Energy is among companies that benefitted from the deals.

Records made available to Daily Trust by the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) revealed that Iyabo Obasanjo-Bello is the major shareholder of All Grace Energy, which was registered on July 12, 2006 with N30 million share capital.

Mrs Obasanjo-Bello has six million shares, followed by other directors/shareholders: Abe Magnus Ngei (2 million), Mrs Abiri Dorcas (3 million), Dr. Adenikinju Adeola (3 million), Ugbeya Donatus (1 million), Alabi Yekini (1 million) and Alhaji Abubakar Abdullahi (1 million).

The company was registered “to operate marginal fields for the purpose of producing petroleum, natural gas, liquefied petroleum gas etc,” and has filed annual returns only up to 2007, according to CAC records.

Apparently reacting to the recent report that oil blocks were awarded illegally, Director of the Department of Petroleum Resources, Mr. Osten Olorunsola, said at a conference in Houston, United States, that the president is empowered by law to make such allocations.

This development flies in the face of the Federal Government’s consistent pledges to conduct fresh oil bid round. The last public oil bid was conducted during President Olusegun Obasanjo’s regime.

In 2010, for instance, Petroleum Minister Diezani Alison-Madueke said government was trying to “sort out some issues” surrounding the previous bid rounds before it starts fresh ones.

Instead, the government apparently resorted to secret allocation of choice oil blocks to companies belonging to cronies, family members and associates, industry analysts say.

A player in the oil industry, who craved for anonymity, told Daily Trust the government’s action would discourage competition among indigenous oil operators and also send wrong signals to international investors.

A source at DPR said that the process of awarding the oil blocks to Iyabo actually started during Obasanjo’s administration but “a disagreement between Shell and DPR over the area to farm-out couldn’t be reached until recently when the Malabu oil block deal was sealed between the Federal Government and the multinationals.”

Oil block deal conditions not met

When our reporter contacted the spokesperson for the DPR, Mrs Belema Osibodu, she did not confirm or deny that Iyabo’s company was given the oil block but said the marginal fields were awarded based on some conditions.

She said the conditions included the development/execution of a public private partnership (PPP) model for three pilot projects under the small scale gas utilisation scheme.

Under this arrangement, Osibodu said, a gas-fired power plant of not less than 5mw shall be dedicated to supply electricity to Ubima community of Rivers State; an LPG extraction plant shall be installed as part of gas processing facility; and a part of the produced liquefied petroleum gas shall be designated for domestic use and support of small scale industry in the community.

But when a Daily Trust reporter visited Ubima community in Ikwerre local government area, there was no indication that such project was being executed. The community happens to be the country home of Governor Rotimi Amaechi.

The chairman of Ubima community, Elder Daniel Anwuzurike, told Daily Trust that the community has been living without electricity supply for the past three months.

Anwuzurike said he was not aware of any power project going on in the Ubima community.

‘Secret oil block deals going on for long’

The controversial oil field is considered under “marginal oil fields” which the Petroleum Act (Amended) 1996 defines as “such field as the President may, from time to time, identify as a marginal field.”

The law provides that the holder of an OML can farm out (lease out) any marginal field which lies within the Oil Mining Lease (OML).

Also, the president may cause the farm-out of a marginal field which has been left unattended for a period of not less than 10 years from the date of the first discovery of the marginal field.

Reverend David Ugolor, Executive Director, African Network for Environment and Economic Justice (ANEEJ), said this was not the first time such secret allocation of oil blocks was done by a president.

“In any case, the development contravenes global best practice of open competitive bidding and as such should be discouraged,” Ugolor said. “Nigerians are also kept in the dark as to how much accrued to the country from the exercise. The unresolved regulatory issues has not allowed potential investors, both local and international, to make huge financial commitment in the sector. Nigeria is losing huge resources from the dwindling investment in the sector and there is also loss of potential revenue from royalties,” he added.

Ifeayi Izeze, an Abuja-based consultant on strategy and communication, said the controversies surrounding the delay in passage of the Petroleum Industry Reform Bill (PIB) could be blamed for the delay/shifting date for the 2012 oil bloc bid round.

When Daily Trust contacted the spokesman for the Nigerian Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI), Mr Orji Ogbonnaya Orji, he said it is not the responsibility of NEITI to decide how oil bid rounds will be conducted.

He however added that NEITI expects to be invited to observe the process in line with provisions of the law.



http://www.dailytrust.com.ng/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=171156:iyabos-firm-benefits-in-secret-oil-block-deals&catid=2:lead-stories&Itemid=8

A high-powered delegation of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) led by its national leader Ahmed Bola Tinubu yesterday met with General Muhammadu Buhari, the national leader of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) at the Kaduna residence of the latter where they resolved to ensure free and fair elections in the country ‘at any cost’.

Speaking to reporters at the end of a closed door meeting that lasted for about two hours, Tinubu said the ACN team was in Kaduna to discuss how to bring about ‘positive change to the country in 2015’, stressing that it was necessary to promote the cause of free and fair election as well as rule of law to ensure national development.


He said: “We must promote, at any cost, the course of free and fair election and rule of law because it is so critical to our national development and growth. This is the area that we can conquer poverty and fight so many things. It is not all about politics; it is all about progress and collaborative efforts that will result in free and fair election in this country.

“That change may be about us to form the government of our own. Every democrat must be able to work hard and sacrifice for a free and fair election. Any democrat must be able to accept and celebrate the result of a free and fair election in order to deserve the joy of victory. Every democrat must resist the abuse of power, manipulation and irregular victory in elections,” the ACN leader stated.

Tinubu also said: “Politics is not a darkroom event; it is about openness, transparency and about how to work with one another to sell a common agenda. And that is the purpose that brought us here. We are still looking for how we can help our nation. Patriotism is defined by putting national interest above self interest.

“If we have security agencies that are charged with the protection of the sovereignty of the country at the expense of their own lives, then the leaders must be able to make sacrifice and must be flexible enough to help redirect the country. Not anybody can steer the ship of a nation but it takes exceptional leadership to chart the course to take the country to a proper destination.”

When asked for his comment, Buhari only said; “I’m satisfied with what Senator Tinubu told you people, thank you.”

Buhari, had sometime in May, paid a similar visit to the ACN leader at his Lagos residence where the two leaders were said to have laid the foundation for collaborative political effort ahead of the 2015 election. Sources in the ACN and the CPC said yesterday’s visit was a reciprocal gesture by the ACN leaders, and that the meeting built on discussions earlier held in Lagos.

“The meeting built on the earlier discussions held in Lagos and other meetings in Abuja. It is about the planned alliance that would include other opposition parties too,” a source said.

The ACN delegation comprising Bola Tinubu, Ogun State governor, Ibikunle Amosun, his Ekiti State counterpart, Dr Kayode Fayemi, Chief Audu Ogbe and Alhaji Lai Mohammed arrived at the Kaduna international Airport at about 5:40pm and drove straight to Buhari’s residence along Sultan Road in Kaduna metropolis.

Immediately on arrival at Buhari’s residence at about 6:44pm, the ACN team was received by Buhari himself in company of many CPC stalwarts including former FCT minister, Malam Nasir el-Rufa’i and Senator Abu Ibrahim from Katsina State, former minister of works, Alhaji Hassan Lawal and the party’s gubernatorial candidate in Kaduna State, Haruna Sa’eed Kajuru.



http://www.dailytrust.com.ng/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=164630:we-must-have-free-elections-at-any-cost-buhari-tinubu-declare&catid=2:lead-stories&Itemid=8


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fresh air!