“FG must pay us before selling power firms” – Workers

Workers of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria have vowed to halt the handover of the five power generating firms to successful bidders unless the Federal Government pays off their severance packages.
The workers were reacting to Tuesday’s opening of bids for five power generation companies and the naming of the preferred bidders by the National Council on Privatisation.
The General Secretary, National Union of Electricity Employees, Mr. Joe Ajaero, told our correspondent on Wednesday that the workers would resist any attempt to take over the Ugheli, Geregu, Sapele, Shiroro and Kainji power plants if the severance packages of the workers were not fully settled.
He said, “If they feel they can allocate it to themselves, let them go ahead. But like we have said, nobody takes any of those companies without the workers getting their rightful entitlements. That is an area that is not negotiable; but if they like, let them not complete negotiations, let them continue with their bidding.
“From the list of preferred bidders, it is pertinent to observe that the winners are those that have little or no technical expertise to manage and drive the power needs of the country. But one thing is sure; Nigerians should not expect that the workers will need to sacrifice by settling for anything short of the contents of the Condition of Service.”
“If the government claims lack of funds to settle the labour issues; that concept will be vehemently resisted, since they have decided to sell the companies at ridiculous prices,” he added.
In his reaction, the General Secretary, Senior Staff Association of Electricity and Allied Companies, Mr. Abiodun Ogunsegha, said, “We have decided not to disturb the bidding process because our primary concern is the payment of our benefits.
“After the bidders have finished bidding, the next thing will be for them to take over, but we will not allow that to happen if our benefits are not paid.”
Asked if the government had given assurances on the payment of workers’ benefits before the firms would be taken over, Ogunsegha said the parties were still negotiating.
He said, “The BPE is doing the bidding and the sales but the government is the one to pay staff liabilities.
“But that is not our business. Our business is that before any of these companies take over a company where it will be obvious that the employees will no longer be needed or would have ceased to be employees of PHCN; our members must be paid, or we will not allow that to happen.”
Ogunsegha said the pronouncement of the government and the report of the eight-member Ajiboye committee on the loss of over N200bn in the PHCN Superannuation Fund were aimed at watering down the demands of the unions.
“No amount of tricks, misinformation or manipulation will remove the fact that the demands of the workers are factual, legitimate and right,” he said.
BusinessNews

Patience Jonathan Battles Parkinson’s Disease

First Lady , Mrs. Patience Jonathan

By SaharaReporters, New York

Nigeria’s First Lady, Patience Jonathan, is battling an onset of Parkinson’s disease that has complicated her recovery from a surgical procedure in Germany, several reliable sources have disclosed to SaharaReporters.
SaharaReporters broke the news that Mrs. Jonathan was flown to a hospital in Wiesbaden, Germany close to a month ago to undergo emergency treatment after a botched procedure in Dubai.
In interviews with three sources familiar with Mrs. Jonathan’s health status, SaharaReporters learnt that the Nigerian president’s wife is beset by Parkinson’s disease, a degenerative syndrome. The disease is a progressive disorder of the nervous system. A medical source described it as “a fairly common disorder that occasions degeneration of the nervous system.” The source added that the disease leads to “progressive impairment and disorder of movement.” An online medical site notes that Parkinson’s “is characterized by progressive loss of muscle control, which leads to trembling of the limbs and head while at rest, stiffness, slowness, and impaired balance. As symptoms worsen, it may become difficult to walk, talk, and complete simple tasks.”
The bombshell revelation about the First Lady’s medical woes was first made by a source familiar with Mrs. Jonathan’s previous secret treatments in Spain and Italy. The source disclosed that Mrs. Jonathan had battled Parkinson’s for some years now. In addition, doctors had advised her to “do something urgent about her morbid body mass index (BMI),” said the source. She added that Mrs. Jonathan had indeed considered undergoing the kind of tummy tuck procedure that former Governor Diepreye Alamieyeseigha once had.
Two other sources close to the Jonathans confirmed that the First Lady has been dogged by Parkinson’s. One said the disease was largely responsible for her clumsiness, drawling speech and slow movement at public events. He added that Mrs. Jonathan has been suffering serious trembling in the left hand. “That’s why she always uses her right to hold the microphone when speaking at public events,” the source revealed. Mrs. Jonathan also reportedly is affected by stiffness of the limbs and trunk which affects her movement.
A news staffer at the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) told SaharaReporters that Mrs. Jonathan’s aides warned reporters covering her never to film her beyond her waist. “Her senior personal assistant told the crew covering her long ago: ‘Don’t ever film Madam’s waist. Show her face only.’ That’s been the code at NTA.”
Two of our sources stated that Mrs. Jonathan had made efforts to slow the disease that had started to ravage her. “She has been visiting a health farm in Italy on a regular basis since 2010,” one source revealed. “To alleviate her pain, she has been taking her medication religiously.”
A friend of Mrs. Jonathan’s said that the First Lady’s health maladies include anxiety, occasional memory loss and disorientation. In addition, her blood pressure often rises to dangerous levels, forcing her to take a cocktail of anti-hypertensive drugs.
Also, our sources said that some officials attached to the First Lady’s office described her as constantly depressed, prone to snapping at people at the slightest provocation. “The First Lady can just get angry at the slightest provocation and rain abuses at anybody in sight,” he said.
As happened during the health crisis of the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, the Nigerian Presidency’s reaction to Mrs. Jonathan’s health condition is to be mum. When SaharaReporters contacted a senior aide of President Jonathan on the matter of the First Lady’s illness, he sharply said, “I’m not saying anything. And please don’t mention that you spoke to me.” SaharaReporters learnt that officials of the Presidency are under a virtual oath of secrecy on the issue of Mrs. Jonathan’s health crisis.

How four Northern Governors robbed their states of N1b for PDP Chairman Bamanga Tukur

SaharaReporters has unearthed a fraudulent contribution of a whopping N1 billion by the governors of Gombe, Bauchi, Adamawa, and Taraba as a gift to the Peoples Democratic Party Chairman, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur on the occasion of the launch of his biography.
Each of the four Northeastern governors contributed an astounding N250 million to the launch of “The Global Villager in Abuja,” written by a veteran journalist, Eddie Aderinokun, to commemorate the 77th birthday of Tukur.
It would be recalled that early last week, President Goodluck Jonathan pleaded with PDP governors for “donations” for the launch, which they had boycotted.
President Jonathan, who was accompanied to the event by Chief Edwin Clarke, Professor Jerry Gana, Chief Arthur Eze and several others, was surprised to find that only three of the party’s 23 governors were present, although they were all in town for a meeting with the president.
New revelations show that the state governors made substantial donations to the event after all, with some of them also donating expensive memorabilia for distribution to guests at the event. Some of the memorabilia obtained by Saharareporters included handmade leather iPad covers emblazoned with embossed photo and name of Mr. Tukur “BMT@77″ on them.
DailyPost

PHCN Swindle: IBB, Otedola’s Involvement An “Insult” To Nigerians, Says CDHR

Former military dictator Ibrahim Babangida And Femi Otedola

By SaharaReporters, New York

The Committee for the Defence of Human Rights (CDHR) says the ongoing process to acquire the nation’s power plants is only an exercise to further enrich the looters of Nigeria’s collective wealth.
In a statement signed by its National Vice-President, Comrade Taiwo Otitolaye, the group called the participation in the process of former military dictator, Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida (IBB), an insult to Nigeria’s collective intelligence, and called for his North-South Power Company Ltd and Elumelu’s Transcorp and Otedola’s Forte to be disqualified from bidding.
CDHR expressed regret over the role of the Economic and Financial Crime Commission and the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission, describing them as moribund anti-graft institutions.
“Were it to be in other climes, the likes of Babangida should not be walking the streets as a free man,”
CDHR said.  “With likes of Femi Otedola and IBB, the credibility of the bid process is highly undermined,” the statement said, recalling that Otedola still has a case to answer in the “Farouk Gate” affair.
Stating that in a decent polity, people like IBB would be tried for grave economic and political crimes against humanity, it recalled that the transition he implemented and then truncated on June 23rd, 1993 gulped over N40 billion.
warned that the country is yet to recover from the trauma and political turbulence of that electioneering period, and that IBB’s interest in North-South Power Company Ltd alone is enough to disqualify the company.
“Nigerians want to know the source of the company’s wealth giving its connection to Babangida,” the statement demanded.  “Going by Pius Okigbo’s report on Gulf War Oil gains, IBB was indicted and the CDHR demands for the implementation of that report.”
CDHR warned that not all Nigerians have lost their memory and sanity, stating that the deceit, looting of the collective treasury, political trickery and institutionalization of corruption that characterized IBB’s regime has not been forgotten.
“For how long can we continue to struggle with old-soiled recycled hands in our polity and economic circles?” the statement asked, calling for the probe of IBB in the $12.4b Gulf War oil swindle.

Kogi Floods: FG Mobilizes Contractors to Site, Alternative Route Ready Today

Motorists resort to using Canoes to Navigate the Route

The Federal Government has mobilized three construction firms to the site of the Lokoja-Abuja road which has been rendered impassable by floods for about a week.
Minister of Environment, Mrs. Hadiza Mailafia, addressing journalists at the Federal Executive Council meeting yesterday said the government was on top of the situation as the environmental disaster could negatively impact on the nation’s food supply.
She said the trio of construction firms namely Julius Berger, Dantata & Sawoe and RCC had been mobilized to the site in order to restore normalcy to the area.
Mailafia said, “The consequences (of the flood) is that there are huge losses of farmlands, there are likely threat to food security, we are likely going to have challenges that have to do with the health of the people in some areas.
“The flooding we are experiencing in the country do not in any way fall into what you can term man made.
“This is a natural phenomenon that cuts across the globe. With the technology in places like the United States, they still had the flooding there, in China and even our neighbour Niger with an arid land.
“For anyone to think that government has not done well or that there was something that we needed to do that we have not done is a little bit awesome because there is a limit to which you can fight nature.
“Where you have in a country where well over 5,000 farmlands washed away, then there is cause for attention. It is of national interest. So all what we are saying is that it is a national emergency. It calls for sober reflection,” she said.
The mnister added that an alternative route would be ready today.
BusinessNews

You have 24 hours: Nigeria gives an ultimatum to Saudi Arabia to release detained female hajj pilgrims

by Hauwa Gambo

inShare

The Nigerian government has issued a 24-hour ultimatum to Saudi authorities to resolve the issues surrounding detained Nigerian female pilgrims in that country.
The government said Wednesday it expected Saudi Arabia authorities to act fast and set the Nigerian women free to perform the hajj, according to a report by the News Agency of Nigeria.
Four hundred female pilgrims from Nigeria, who arrived in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia for this year’s hajj,  were on Sunday separated from their male counterparts and detained by Saudi authorities for failing to provide her Muharram  that is, the approved male companion accompanying her on her trip, usually a husband, father or brother.
There are reports that the number of detained women had risen to 1000 but that could not be independently verified by this newspaper.
The matter has sparked a fierce diplomatic row between the two countries, with the foreign ministers of the two countries unable to resolve the logjam.
Shortly before the ultimatum was issued, the Nigerian Senate asked President Goodluck Jonathan to intervene in the matter.
The Senate has urged President Goodluck Jonathan to intervene in the plight of 400 Nigerian female pilgrims in detention in Saudi Arabia.
The Senate stressed the need  for President Jonathan to talk directly to King Abdallah of Saudi Arabia to ensure that the  detained women were allowed to perform the Hajj.

YNaija

Ajegunle Champ: Social Media Gone Wrong: How Omojuwa Is Harnessing The Power Of Twitter To Extort Arik Air

Omojuwa

Those of us on Twitter have all read with amusement the rantings of a certain Japhet Omojuwa about Arik ‘stealing’ his iPad.
Truth is his postings would be funny if they weren’t a serious case of one individual using lies, half-truths and misinformation to not only sully the corporate reputation of another, but to engage in blatant extortion in broad daylight.
To put the narrative in its proper perspective, by his own admission, Japhet Omojuwa was negligent in leaving his iPad on an Arik Aircraft:

“…the pilot announced that we were almost landing and all the routine of sitting upright, putting out electronic equipment meant that I had to stop using the ipad. I put the ipad in the seat pocket right in front of me.
… When we got to Allen Avenue, I realised I had left my Ipad in the aircraft.”
-Japhet Omojuwa

Who is responsible for his loss?
Even in a perfect world, with the statement above, there is no way Arik Air could be considered liable for his iPad, or how else does a person admit personal negligence in one breath and then hold another responsible for the consequences in the next?
Common sense dictates that if he did leave his iPad in the aircraft:
1) Any of the passengers who disembarked after him could have taken it from where he allegedly put it before proceeding to play ‘finders keepers, losers weepers’ with it.
2) Assuming there were no passengers disembarking after him or no other passenger picked it up, then it stands to reason that an Arik staffer could have found it, Arik has however publicly stated that no one who works for the airline came across the device.
Even if Arik is lying (and why would they), the onus is on Omojuwa to prove that they are and not on them to prove they aren’t.


Was there ever an iPad?
The story gets more interesting, Japhet Omojuwa was asked by Arik to provide a description of the lost iPad, his response, merely that it was an “iPad.”
He could not and did not provide any descriptive information, not even something as simple as whether it was 3G or Wi-Fi, whether it was a 16 Gb or 64 Gb model or whether it was Carrier branded e.g AT&T or plain. All he could say is it was an iPad 2. To which I say, really?
Most importantly, he could not provide ANY of the vital pieces of information that every iPad in the world can uniquely be identified with, the unique Serial Number belonging to that device, and if he claims it was a cellular model, the device’s unique IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity) Number or the Mobile Equipment Identifier (MEID) number.
I am no iPad genius, but I know that even if he has lost the original packaging,  simply  (and you do need iTunes to get any sort of initial functionality from an iPad) and clicking ‘Open Preferences’ , then clicking on the ‘Devices’ tab and moving the mouse over ‘backups’ will display the Serial Number, and again, if his is a cellular model, the IMEI/MEID, or maybe Arik also ‘stole’ his laptop, desktop and iTunes login information.
The fact that Omojuwa could not furnish any of the above pieces of information makes his whole claim of ever owning and iPad and then losing it very suspect.
Arik’s Reaction
But let’s get back to Arik. Within 45 days of his first public announcement about his ‘stolen’ iPad, Arik Air agreed to settle with Omojuwa.
As is standard with such settlements anywhere in the world, part of the agreement presented was that Omojuwa would agree not to comment any further on the issue, not seek any further damages and not disclose terms of the settlement.
The amount offered by Arik was obviously not enough and Omojuwa refused to accept it, instead choosing to harass Arik everyday via Twitter with numerous accusations that they had ‘stolen’ his iPad. He also filed a complaint with the Consumer Protection Council (CPC) demanding N50 Million from the airline to cover the cost of:
a) Getting him a new Ipad
b) The monetary value he’s lost for each day he’s been without it since the 16th of June, 2012
c) The cost of my time and sum of money spent pursuing his case against Arik
Now, I don’t know about you,  but to me when it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, it is usually a duck, only in this case the duck is a straight up case of a corporate shakedown AKA extortion engineered by Japhet Omojuwa.
For those who don’t know, here’s how shakedowns usually work:
Create / identify a problem (in this case claiming Arik stole his iPad (which it didn’t by his own admission)
Make a lot of noise about how serious the problem is (daily tweets about his ‘stolen’ iPad and Arik’s responsibility for its loss)
Announce that the only way to make the problem go away is to compensate those who brought the problem to light in some way- (N50 Million to Omojuwa in this case)
Receive payment
Once the above steps are followed, the problem magically goes away.
In conclusion
Unfortunately for Omojuwa and fortunately for Arik, while free speech remains just that, the laws in most western democracies, and even in Nigeria have put limitations on how that right to speak freely can be exercised. When the message is both damaging AND untrue, it’s liable – and becomes a legal liability for whomever is propagating it.
From Omojuwa’s personal admissions, it is obvious that his claim is BOTH untrue and his intentions are to damage the corporate reputation of Arik. Hence Arik has every right to sue him for libel, assuming the Nigerian Police does not step in first to charge him to court for blackmail and extortion, both of which are illegal in Nigeria last time I checked.
 DailyPost