Air Crashes, Weekends and Sacrificial Circles by Femi Fani-Kayode

Every single major air crash in Nigeria in the last 10 years has taken place on a weekend. EAS Airline crashed in Kano on June 4th 2002 resulting in the loss of 77 souls. This took place on a weekend. Bellview Airlines crashed in Lisa village just outside Lagos on 22 October 2005 resulting in the loss of 117 souls. This took place on a…
weekend. Sosolisso Airline crashed in Port Harcourt on 10 December 2005 resulting in the loss of 108 souls. This took place on a weekend. ADC crashed in Abuja on 29th Oct. 2006 resulting in the loss of 105 souls. This took place on a weekend.
A Nigerian military plane crashed in Oko village, Benue state on Sept. 17th 2006 with the loss of 15 Generals of the Nigerian Army. This took place on a weekend. Wings Aviation Airline crashed on March 15th 2008 in Cross Rivers state with the loss of 3 souls. This took place on a weekend. In 2009 and 2010 there were a series of small light aircraft crashes, an airforce jet crash and helicopter crashes in Kano, Lagos and Kaduna that took place each resulting in the loss of life. They mostly took place on a weekend.
An OAS Helicopter crashed in Ife Odan in Osun state on 29th July 2011 resulting in the loss of three lives. This took place on a weekend.
On June 2nd 2012 A Nigerian cargo plane shot off the runway into the highway behind Accra’s Kotoka Int.Airport resulting in the deaths of 10 Ghanaian souls that were driving past the airport in a bus. This took place on a weekend. The following day on June 3rd 2012 Dana Air crashed into a residential area in the suburbs of Lagos resulting in the loss of 176 souls. This took place on a weekend.
Curiously the Dana crash of June 3rd 2006 took place exactly 10 years and one month (less one day) after the EAS crash of 3rd May 2002 took place. This clearly represents the end of a 10 year sacrificial cycle. Another curious fact is that there had been an earlier ADC Airline plane crash on 7th November 1996 in which 142 souls had perished. Exactly 10 years (less 9 days) later, on 29th Oct 2006, another ADC Airline plane crashed again with the loss of 105 souls. This again represents the end of a ten year sacrificial cycle.

TICKER: Salary ranges of mega-church pastors revealed

 by Isi Esene.

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According to the 2012 Large Church Salary Report by Leadership Network, senior pastor salaries rose about 2% per year for the last two years, indicating that salaries for megachurch pastors have increased over the last two years after a short period of stagnation. For the most part, these pastors were found to be leading growing congregations. Leadership Network has been conducting salary surveys of large churches since 2001. The study is the largest-scale project of its kind. The network began looking into the salaries of megachurch leaders as many of them asked for salary comparisons with peer churches, Leadership Network’s Director of Research and Intellectual Capital Development, Warren Bird noted.
The 2012 report looked at salary trends for 209 megachurches — which is the highest number of participants since Leadership Network began the survey — all of the megachurches had a weekend worship attendance of at least 2,000. These surveyed churches are considered “game changer” churches or “pacesetting innovative churches.” Church size was found to be the most influential factor in setting staff salaries. The larger the church, the higher the salary for its leaders. “For each additional 1,000 people in attendance, annual salary increases by roughly $8,000 on average for large church senior pastors,” the report stated. Salaries – or total cash compensation – for senior pastors ranged from over $80,000 to more than $260,000, though most of the salaries for megachurch pastors were in the $100,000 to $200,000 range. Annual giving at each of these congregations ranged from almost $2 million to over $30 million. Most of the surveyed churches have an attendance of 2,000-4,999 while 44 of them see more than 5,000 attendees each weekend.
Geography was also found to influence salary as well. Megachurch pastors in the South were the highest paid, followed by pastors in the West and Northeast. The lowest paid geographic region was the Midwest. The report also revealed that the highest salaries for megachurch leaders were found in an older residential area in the city, followed by an older suburb around the city, a downtown or central area of the city, and a newer suburb around the city, respectively. The churches that were surveyed were founded from as early as the 1800s to as late as 2005; are both non-denominational and denominational; and a majority of the churches are predominantly white. In other findings, founding pastors receive $515 more per year than successor pastors; a longer tenure doesn’t necessarily mean higher pay; the second highest-paid person in churches (usually the executive pastor) receives 66% of the senior pastor’s salary; and pastors of multi-site churches do not necessarily get paid more compared to leaders of single site churches. The median age for the senior pastors was 51 and the median tenure is 13 years at their current church. For this report, “salary” included cash paid toward housing and compensation amounts funded by love offerings. It did not include benefits such as hospitalization, book allowance or retirement.
The previous salary report in 2010 provided specific salary figures — the average salary was $147,000 for a lead pastor in 2010 — researchers chose to withhold specific salary figures in the latest report that was made public. The exact salary figures can be acquired in the second version of the report that was given to survey participants. ”Deciding what to release was a difficult decision,” said Bird. “We were mostly guided by trying to give people helpful numbers. Media reports tended to pick up the outliers, especially the very highest salary,” he continued. “Likewise we weren’t convinced that looking at the very midpoint (the average) was helpful, so we’re following what Chronicle of Philanthropy and others do by giving four percentiles.” Leadership Network pointed out that there are a few “extremely high salaries in a handful of very large churches.” But the network believes these “off-the-charts compensations” represent only a tiny percentage of the whole.
Leadership Network says its survey is not a true random sample and its findings “are not statistically accurate for all larger churches, nor are they longitudinal, meaning that the same churches did not participate each year – although some did.”

Nigerian students spend N160b in Ghana varsities, says Babalakin

By Adekunle Jimoh, Ilorin.

Dr Babalakin

 No fewer than 75,000 Nigerian students are currently studying in three Ghanaian universities   incurring a total of N160billion expenditure annually, the Chairman, Committee of Pro-Chancellors of Nigerian Universities, Dr Wale Babalakin, has said.
The expenditure is less than the Federal Government’s total budget for all its universities last year,  Babalakin, Pro-Chancellor, University of Maiduguri added.
 He spoke in Ilorin, the Kwara State capital, at the weekend at an award night organised by the University of Ilorin Alumni Association in honour of Governor AbdulFatah Ahmed and three  other  alumni of the institution.
 Also honoured were the outgoing Vice Chancellor of UNILORIN, Prof Ishaq Oloyede; Vice Chancellor of the Kwara State University (KWASU), Malete, Prof Abdulrasheed Na’Allah; and the Managing Director/ Chief Executive Officer of UTC Nigeria Ltd, Mrs. Folusho Olaniyan.
 Babalakin, who was the chairman of the occasion said: “University education is at a crossroad in Nigeria. Only in 1973, four Nigerian universities were rated among the best 20 in Africa. Today, none of them is among the best 30, while none is among the best 1000 in the world.
 “University education is a collective effort. University education can only grow properly with government and active support of the populace. Leaving it for government alone is not fair. Everybody should contribute to ensure education that grows in Nigeria.
 “Since 2009, when the power to appoint VC had been delegated to the university, it has been done relatively peaceful. Most people are surprised that there has not been any rancour in the appointment of VCs. This is the first step towards university autonomy. There are still so many areas that are still not autonomous. It is when we become totally autonomous that all the universities will have the necessary energy to develop at their own pace.
 “The university should be allowed to generate money internally for development purposes. If we generate substantial money within the university and those monies are spent with great discretion, you will be alarmed at how far it will go and the catalytic effect of development.
 “Nigeria government should put measure in place to attract foreign students to Nigerian universities. In the 70s and 80s, so many went abroad for their ‘A’ level and came back to the Nigerian universities.”
  “Before the just concluded Olympic games everyone of us was happy that Nigeria was participating, but I told some of my colleagues that Nigeria would have a dismal outing. This is because we don’t have outstanding primary, secondary and tertiary institution competition.”

Nigeria’s National Economic Management Team – Incompetence Meets Absurdity

A meeting of the national econmoic management team

By Abdulmumin Yinka Ajia

Nigeria’s Economic Management Team is chaired by President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan and it includes  the Vice President Mohammed Namadi Sambo who serves as the Vice Chairman, other members are the Finance Minister, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Minister of National Planning, Minister of Trade and Investment, Minister of Power, Minister of Petroleum Resources, Minister of Agriculture, Minister of Works, Minister of Education, Minister of Health, Minister of State, Finance, Minister of State, Health, Governor, Central Bank of Nigeria, Chief Economic Adviser, Special Adviser, Monitoring and Evaluation, Director General, Budget, Director General, Debt Management Office, Director General, Bureau for Public Procurement, Director General, Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission,  Director General, Bureau of Public Enterprises, Honourary Adviser on Agriculture and Governor of Adamawa State, Honourary Adviser on Finance and Governor of Anambra State, Honourary Adviser on Economy and President, Nigerian Economic Society, Mr. Atedo Peterside, Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service, Director General, Security & Exchange Commission, President – Manufacturing Association of Nigeria and Africa’s richest man -  Aliko Dangote, controversial banker - Mr. Aigboje Aig Imoukhuede and oil baron - Femi Otedola.
PRESIDENT Goodluck Jonathan inaugurated the National Economic Management Team, NEMT, with a charge to fast track the economic development of the nation. At the inauguration ceremony, the President said “as a government we have made substantial gains in our objective of accelerating the pace of economic development in our country over a short period of time; I believe that with the economic management team in place, and with the commitment of its members, we will be in a vantage position to achieve a lot more”.
He further charged members of the team to “combine their individual strengths, to generate ideas and initiatives in line with our goal of transforming every sector of Nigerian life and society, particularly the economy”.
Is it not laughable that an economic management team will consist of oligarchs like Aliko Dangote, vulture capitalists like Femi Otedola, and profiteers like Aig Imoukhuede? What sort of advice will they give the President? Perhaps, the people can expect to hear stories of import waivers, petroleum subsidy fraud, and the stripping of our national assets. I am particularly dismayed at the way they all came out to dismiss citizens’ concern as it relates to the proposed N5000 banknote and the coinage of N100, N50, N20, N10, and N5 banknotes. Regrettably, President Goodluck Jonathan has allowed buccaneers and vulture capitalists to hijack his administration and derail his agenda.

The National Economic Management Team in Nigeria is similar to the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) in the United States. It is an agency within the Executive Office of the President and it advises the President of the United States on economic policy. It is a misnomer in Nigeria that a similar advisory body is called a management team and peopled by questionable characters.
It is curious that no member of academia is part of the so called National Economic Management Team. Take the case of the United States where past and present members of the Council of Economic Advisers are renowned economists and policy wonks.   The current Chairman of the CEA is Alan Krueger and a former professor at Princeton.
Unlike its Nigerian counterpart, The American council of Economic Advisers was established by the United States Employment Act of 1946 to provide US Presidents with purposeful fiscal analysis and advice on the growth and execution of a wide range of internal and global economic policy issues. Some of its influential past chairs are: Alan Greenspan and Arthur F. Burns. While influential past members are: James Tobin and Nobel Economist, Paul Krugman.
It is clear from the foregoing that its Nigerian version cannot achieve even a miniscule of the goal that has been set for it. This is not as a result of a dearth of qualified personnel in Nigeria but because time and again Nigeria’s elected officials has shirked their responsibility to the Nigerian people and have a penchant for constituting irrelevant committees and loading such with incompetent individuals. Take the case of the Federal Capital Territory, dirty, chaotic, and leaderless.
The biggest problem in my political party, the Peoples’ Democratic Party lies in its inability to manage the political success that comes out of its ability to cobble together a winning coalition. Those of us on the left to center of the party will continue to call out the leadership to this glaring inadequacy. The proposed currency restructuring agenda is dead on arrival and posterity will not be kind to those who are bent on mortgaging the future of the next generation of Nigerians.

At Gatwick Airport, Air Nigeria Asks Passengers To Donate £40 Each To Buy Fuel For Flight To Lagos

Passengers stranded-Photo credit-Lekan Fatodu

Passengers waiting for luggage at 2:00 AM-Photo credit-Lekan Fatodu

Photo credit: Lekan Fatodu

By SaharaReporters, New York

In a scandalous twist of events, SaharaReporters learned that an Air Nigeria crew at Gatwick Airport yesterday asked passengers to contribute £40 each to enable them purchase fuel to depart for Lagos several hours after the flight’s takeoff was delayed.
About 190 passengers on Flight LOS-VK 0292/08 said they were surprised by the request.  They confronted the airline official who had made the request, and he quickly disappeared from the riotous scene.
The flight, which was scheduled to fly out of London at 9:50a.m, eventually did so at 5p.m., arriving in Lagos at 12:30a.m.   But the ordeal of the passengers was hardly over.
A passenger, Lekan Fatodu told SaharaReporters that when they arrived at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport in Lagos, they discovered their baggage had not arrived with them. They were left stranded for several hours before an official of the airline told them to return the next day for their luggage.
It was learned that the airline’s bag handling service, Swissport, refused to provide ground-handling services to the airline because Air Nigeria had not met its obligations to the company.
Air Nigeria’s embattled owner, Jimoh Ibrahim, last week announced the sacking of over 500 workers at the airline and suspension of all flight services starting from tomorrow, September 10.
Mr. Ibrahim claimed that his workers were disloyal to the company but the workers said during a street protest that Mr. Ibrahim was a bad manager who diverted funds given to the airline by the Nigerian government and is negligent in aircraft maintenance. The workers have not received salaries since April 2012.
Mr. John Nnorom, a former chief financial officer of the airline told SaharaTV yesterday that of the 11 aircraft in Air Nigeria's fleet, only one is serviceable. SaharaReporters learnt that most lessors have repossessed their aircrafts from Air Nigeria, leaving it with only four aircrafts.
Following the publication by SaharaReporters of a powerful petition by Mr. Nnorom detailing the troubles facing the ailing airline, Air Nigeria’s operations were suspended.
The petition appeared on June 4, one day after a Dana Air MD-83 aircraft crashed near the Lagos airport killing 159 people.
The international flights were operated through a wet lease arrangement between Egypt Air and AirNigeria.
 

Porn, Rape allegations: Gaiya has to resign from the Sports Committee ~ Jide Fashikun

I read the two allegations against the Chairman, House of Representatives committee on sports, Godfrey Gaiya. Like the prescriptions of our laws, you ain’t guilty until so proven.
As a well-trained journalist, I had to search for his telephone number and sent him an SMS to help me to deny or confirm the allegations against him. He refused to reply or acknowledge the receipt of the SMS which may mean ‘go write any nonsense you want’.
By virtue of the fact that all my youth and adulthood has been about sports. Knowing also that models are the ones needed in sports for the kids and youths to aspire to be like, the chairman of the law making agencies (Senate and the House of Representatives) like their members have a duty to be models both in their private and public lives, Hon. Gaiya may have failed to have that correct record.
Therefore, Nigerians of merit and worth need to ask the Speaker, House of Representatives, Hon. Ibrahim Tambuwwal to please for the decorum of the nation, employ the powers imposed on his office to please ask Hon Gaiya to step aside until proven otherwise.
In this case, we demand a panel to be put in place to investigate and report this matter for public interest. For now, he cannot continue to remain and be addressed as the Chairman, House of Representatives Committee on sports as that will also rob off on me as a likely rapist and porn watcher which I am not.
Therefore, we shall cause a public petition to ask for Gaiya to be relieved of that position until investigated and proven otherwise.
This is a recap of the report in one of the latter issues of the pornography. That of the attempted rape was earlier published on www.olajidefashikun.blogspot.com
London 2012: Rep got Gold in pornography
*Paid N60,000
There is no doubt that with the Paralympics, the London Olympics has come and gone. While the nation struggled and could not raise a medal of any colour in the main Games, the Chairman House of Representatives Committee on Sports, Hon. Godfrey Ali Gaiya got a medal.
He got the medal in a non-scoring event – pornography. He was allegedly said to be busy enjoying himself at the prestigious Marriot Hotel, where he lodged.
Hon. Gaiya, who represents Jaba/Zangon Kataf Federal constituency of Kaduna state in the Federal House of Representatives in Abuja, was said to have attracted a big attention to himself when he was about to check out of the hotel.
The allegation was that he watched pornography in his room. The issue is that there’s nothing wrong with that. The hotel management had requested that Gaiya should settle his total bills before he could be allowed to go.
At this stage, he got peeved insisting that the hotel was trying to play a fast one on him. While the hotel was restrained not to embarrass him with the disclosure of his bill, the action of Hon. Gaiya had already attracted attention of busy bodies and concerned Nigerians.
At a stage, when the hotel could not withstand the unfolding drama, it was disclosed that while the honourable was in his room, he was busy watching pornography channels that were considered premium channels with premium charges.
At this stage, many were shocked and embarrassed that while Nigerian athletes were busy trying to do the country proud, the Honourable was busy watching adult films in his hotel room.
He was reported to have eventually admitted watching the channels and was made to pay about two hundred and forty pounds sterling, (£240).
When the honourable was contacted, he neither picked his phone nor responded to the short message (text) sent to his phone.

2015: Obasanjo Dumps Jonathan

by Theophilus Abbah.

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. As a new political bloc emerges in PDP, the former president’s associates regroup for the next political battle

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo, who saw to the nomination of President Goodluck Jonathan as the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate in 2011, may have kept a distance away from groups advocating for Jonathan to run for a second term in 2015, checks by Sunday Trust have revealed.

Sunday Trust learnt that the former president is disenchanted with many political and administrative steps taken by President Jonathan and that may have prompted his decision to thrown in the towel as the Chairman of the PDP Board of Trustees. Apart from resigning as the BOT chair, Obasanjo was absent at the recent Council of States meeting held in the Presidential Villa on June 11, 2012, which discussed strategies for tackling the insecurity in the country. Also absent at the meeting were former President Ibrahim Babangida and former Head of State Muhammadu Buhari.

Already, a bloc is emerging in the PDP which tend to have the support of Obasanjo. Members of the bloc include governors who may take a shot at the Presidency in 2015, and they include Governor Sule Lamido of Jigawa State, Governor Ibrahim Shema of Katsina State, Governor Murtala Nyako of Adamawa State and Governor Musa Rabiu Kwankwaso of Kano State. None of these governors, who are known associates of Obasanjo, will run for a second term, and have been engaged in subtle moves to contest for the PDP presidential ticket in 2015.

One associate of Obasanjo and former Governor of Nasarawa State, Senator Abdullahi Adamu, has declared that the 2015 Presidency is for the North. According to the senator, who was Obasanjo’s secretary in the BOT, “the PDP has no choice but to give the presidency to the North in 2015. I believe that everybody is saying the same thing – a northern president for 2015; I believe that the north should have a crack at it again. I believe that it is no sin... Take it or leave it, the country is divided; it is North and South. This is a fact; it’s either North or South.”

This statement by Senator Adamu is in consonance with what  a former minister in Obasanjo’s cabinet told our reporter last night. Though he didn’t want to be quoted, he revealed that, “Obasanjo is not involved in any campaign for Jonathan for 2015. Rather, what we have is that those of us who worked with him during his years as President have begun to regroup to form a new power bloc within the PDP. As you can see, even many serving governors don’t tend to agree with Jonathan, and may not support his re-election. Obasanjo is disposed toward a president from the North, and there are several possible candidates. From the South-South, he is likely to support Governor Godswill Akpabio as Vice President. A clear picture of the situation will emerge by the middle of 2013. But you’ll realise from Obasanjo’s recent comments on several issues that he’s not on the same page with the president.”

In an interview published by Sunday Trust on September 2, 2012, Obasanjo had made allusion to the clear division in the country, and his discontent with the squandering of money he left in the foreign reserve. He said, “When I came in 1999, we only had $3.7 billion in our foreign reserve. And we were paying $3 billion yearly to manage the debt of about $35 billion. By the time we left in 2007, we had over $45 billion in foreign reserve while the total debt left behind was less than $3 billion. We also saved $25 billion in what we called Excess Crude Account for the rainy day. And when we left, they said the rain had come. They spent the money.”

Also, Obasanjo declared his opposition to the ongoing plans by the Jonathan administration to introduce N5,000 note when he lamented that the move would hike the cost of production for the manufacturing sector. Previously, he would have reserved his position and, perhaps, made his discontent known to Jonathan personally.

Recently, the Peoples Democratic Movement (PDM), a political organisation in which Obasanjo, the late Shehu Yar’adua, and former Vice President Atiku Abubakar belonged was resuscitated. Sunday Trust learnt that its structure would become an alternative to the PDP if the emerging bloc in the ruling party is shoved aside.

In spite of this political development, some elements in the South-South have insisted that President Jonathan must seek re-election in 2015.