Ondo PDP berates national leaders for congratulating Mimiko

---

From TUNDE RAHEEM, Akure
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Ondo State yesterday berated some of its national leaders for congratulating Governor Olusegun Mimiko over his re-election victory.
The PDP said it took serious exception to the obvious lack of camaraderie in the attitudes of the national leaders of party and the indecent haste of certain functionaries to fall on each other in congratulating Governor Mimiko. In a press statement signed by the state Director of Media and Publicity of the party,
Ayo Fadaka, he described the attitude of the national leaders as not only being ridiculous but undermining the integrity of the party in the state. “Our attention has been drawn to various comments and congratulatory messages sent by the National Publicity Secretary of the party and even some leaders of the party to Dr. Olusegun Mimiko over his victory in the last election that is fraught with irregularities.
This flurry of messages, particularly by our kith and kin in the PDP without due consultation with us at the state level to discover what actually went wrong has the potent tendency to misconstrue our position and the actions we intend to take on this matter. “We take serious exception to the obvious lack of camaraderie in our party and the indecent haste of certain functionaries to fall on each other in congratulating a man who essentially is a beneficiary of a compromised election.
It is important to place on record that the avalanche of the security provided for the election was lethargic and absolutely in contrast to what obtained in Edo State. The posted security men were only visible and present in the urban areas and the rural areas and villages unpoliced, thereby allowing Mimiko and his goons to compromise the election.
“We are still gathering evidences of malpractices perpetrated in this election and what we have gathered so far will shock every apostle of one-man-one-vote to their marrows, therefore we declare most irrevocably that we will contest the result of this election and we assure our people, we will get victory and Mimiko will leave government the same way he came.
“As far as the PDP in Ondo State is concerned, the battle is just beginning and victory is certain, let whoever so desire continue to congratulate Mimiko but we will battle him legally. We call on our members to remain undaunted in the face of this abandonment by those who ordinarily should show understanding and care at a time like this.”
TheSun

I was a victim of domestic abuse - Laila Jean St. Matthew Daniel

|by TUNDE AYANDA

Laila Jean St Matthew Daniel

Laila Jean St. Matthew Daniel is the biological mother of Funke Kuti and one of the few voices fighting against abuse of women in Nigeria as the Executive Director of ACTS Generation, an NGO that guards against domestic violence and abuse. She spoke about herself and her NGO in this chat with TUNDE AYANDA WHAT is ACTS Generation all about?
ACTS Generation is an organisation that is built to cater for abused women, youths and children, even men.
This organisation, which is non government, non profit and voluntary is specially committed to cater for the healing of the mind and body of troubled people, especially women and ‘at-risk’ children, using biblical principles irrespective of class, race, ethnic or tribal affiliation. I am the executive director cum coordinator of this project and it was launched last year with the Lagos State government’s Ministry of Women Affairs supporting us. I’ve been in this for as long as I remember because it’s what I’m duly passionate about.
Why do you preach against domestic violence and abuse and not other causes?
We strongly believe that you do not need to resort to violence before you get your point noted, you don’t need to resort to violence to resolve an issue. When you lash out, you are the one that is out of control and you need help. So, that is what we are trying to solve. We also found out that people who are violated are most times misunderstood and these are the perpetrators of the reaction and I tell them that you are not the one that is at fault but your other half are the ones that need to be examined. If it is the woman that is the abuser then she’s got a big problem, so that is it. Thus, I have a passion for women who are abused and violated, whether emotionally or verbally. People go through emotional violence, domestic violence and verbal violence where they won’t know what is going on. Most people refer to it as nagging but there is a stage where nagging turns to verbal abuse and you are abusing the man or the woman. Other people are seeing to other causes but we feel little attention is given to this and that is why I’ve spearheaded it.
So, what is ACTS Generation up to this year?
Like we did last year, we are organising a walk on Thursday October 25, 2012 from Ojuelegba through Western Avenue to Teslim Balogun Stadium where we would be advocating against domestic violence and abuse on people. It’s actually tagged ‘Stomp Out Domestic Violence and Abuse’ awareness walk,  and we have entertainers like Funke Kuti, Weird MC, The Engager, Kate Henshaw and Funke Akindele walking with us. We are using the month of October because it’s the month that the world has chosen to campaign against abuse and violations. Throughout the year, we try to help people sort out their problems legally and morally,
How does your organisation help abused people?
People going through abuse must be ready for help; if not, they keep going back because we have had such cases. The level of interference is totally dependent on the victims. If it is heavy or physical abuse, we try and see the abuser to seek therapists but if the abuser refuses and calls our bluff, such persons would be picked up if he or she refuses to stop battering their partners because it’s now a punishable offence in Lagos State, but if it is minor it goes back to the abused person’s decision. And when it is minor, the first step is to invite the abuser and find a lasting solution because this is not an NGO that disrupts marriages but if the marriage or relationship has broken down, then the children are the most concerned and in such cases you find out that emotions are gone and it’s always the abused looking for a way out.
Your passion about this project seems to come from a personal experience, how correct is this? 
Well, yes, I had the experience. I was once a victim of domestic abuse. I was involved in an abusive relationship once with my husband. I have been abused and violated myself. It’s a situation you never knew or imagined would happen but it happened. May God rest his soul as he later became the best of all men; he was a fantastic human being.
You said you were once violated, how were you violated?
Domestic violence, physical violence and it actually started with a hot dirty slap and all that but I have healed, I didn’t know but I started healing when I started having a reconciliation with myself and I knew that I’m wonderfully, beautifully and intricately made by God almighty and nobody has the right to violate and abuse me. You see, there is a circle called a circle of violence, the first time, you are shocked and surprised and you keep hoping that he or she would change and as you are hoping so your self-esteem keeps eroding and going down because you begin to ask yourself questions and wonder if it was you or your fault, and when people say you should leave, you say it’s not that easy and I can tell you that the people who are batterers are charmers.
NigerianTribune

Dele Cole : Balkans, Singapore Top Buyers of Stolen Nigerian Oil

Oil tanks

The main buyers of the 180,000 barrels of oil that thieves steal from Nigeria each day are organised criminal networks in the Balkans and refiners in Singapore, according to a former presidential advisor who launched a campaign against the practice on Monday.

Dele Cole, a politician from the oil-rich Niger Delta, at the heart of Nigeria's two million barrel a day (bpd) industry, told Reuters that 90 percent of oil snatched was sold on world markets, based on estimates from oil firms and the ministry.

Just 10 percent was refined locally by gangs operating in the creeks and swamps of the delta, he said.

Oil companies say so called 'bunkering' -- tapping into oil pipelines to steal the crude -- and other forms of oil theft are on the rise in Nigeria, despite an amnesty that was meant to end a conflict there in 2009 over the distribution of oil wealth.

Yet while local gangs hacking into pipelines to steal small quantities for local refining are the most visible sign, it is industrial scale oil theft involving collusion by politicians, the military, Western banks and global organised crime that is the real drain on Nigeria's resources, he said.

"International theft is diverting huge quantities ... and the sophistication of the exercise -- from breaching the pipeline, to having barges, to knowing when ships are at the port, to being paid -- is major," he said.

Cole, who has passionately argued for a global solution to the problem in the past, opened a campaign on Monday to raise awareness and try to nudge the government into action.

"It's been a problem for a long time, but when it was 50,000 barrels, people thought was tolerable. Now we're at a totally different level," he said.

Nigeria relies on oil for more than 95 percent of government revenues. The figure of 180,000 bpd stolen comes from the upper end of an estimate by Shell, the biggest operator in the country, which frequently complains about the practice.

"Some estimates go as high as 25 percent of oil revenue. The oil companies are going to realise they're working for these bunkerers and the government that its losing revenues to them."

Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said in May that the government lost a fifth of its oil revenues to theft in April.

Cole said much of the oil sold had been traced to criminal networks in the Balkans, especially Ukraine, Serbia, and Bulgaria, better known for things like cigarette smuggling or trafficking sex workers.

"On the evidence we have, the Balkan mafia organisations are well represented in Nigeria ... You can't chase these guys easily. They're as slippery as the proverbial eel."

Singapore, the world's top refiner, was also taking a large chunk. He urged Nigeria to confront Singaporean authorities.

The 2009 amnesty sharply reduced militancy in the Niger Delta, a network of creeks and wetlands where the Niger river tips into the Atlantic, but bunkering has worsened since then.

Part of what facilitates it, Cole said, is that neither the state oil firm, nor the government nor the oil companies were publishing transparent figures about how much oil they produced, making it much harder to detect missing cargoes.

He called for better metering, accounting of ships coming to and from major oil ports, questioning crews of ships suspected to be involved and cracking down on collusion by the military.

"We want to make bunkering a lot less attractive," he said.

ThisDay

No merger will succeed against us in 2015 – PDP

 by John Ameh and Adelani Adepegba 

National Chairman of the party, Dr. Bamanga Tukur

The Peoples Democratic Party has said that mergers and alliances planned to defeat it in 2015 will fail. The party spoke against the background of plans by opposition parties to form mergers and alliances to battle its candidates in the 2015 general elections.

The National Secretary of the ruling party, Olagunsoye Oyinlola, who spoke to journalists in Abuja on Tuesday, dismissed the planned alliances as ‘gang-ups’.

Two major opposition parties – the Action Congress of Nigeria and the Congress for Progressive Change – are believed to be in talks to defeat the PDP in 2015. Earlier this year, the leaders of both parties had met in Kaduna to discuss the modalities of an alliance that would unset the ruling party.

But the PDP secretary, who based his assertion on certain events in the nation’s political history, insisted that the alliances would not threaten the ruling party.

He added, “We don’t think we are threatened by what we would call gang ups. In those days when the National Party of Nigeria and Nigeria Peoples Party closed ranks, it was called an accord. When the Unity Party of Nigeria and Great Nigeria Peoples Party did the same, they called it gang up.

“Honestly speaking, ganging up is an indication of some weaknesses. Why can’t a party stand on its own and contest elections if it is sure that it would be acceptable to the people? You don’t need to gang up.

“If you are ganging up then you don’t have the strength. The only true national party today that cuts across every nook and cranny of the Nigerian federation is the PDP. Gang up has never succeeded; it will not succeed.”

Oyinlola also said that the PDP would stick to its zoning formula at all levels.

He added that it would be dangerous for the party to jettison the formula.

Only last month, a member of the PDP and former Vice-President, Atiku Abubakar, had said that it was high time the party dumped zoning as it was no longer relevant.

But Oyinlola argued that zoning was the glue that bound the different groups in the PDP together.

He said, “It is the binding glue that holds the people together and, as such, it would be politically dangerous to abandon it at this stage. That it is our binding force.

“What has endeared the PDP to people from all over the country has been the zoning arrangement. It has given hope to those in the minority that they could have access to power.

“There is an adage in my language (Yoruba)  that says when a medicine is working for you, you don’t throw it away. So we will continue with the zoning arrangement because it is working very well.”

He added that the Bamangar Tukur-led National Working Committee of the PDP would soon undertake a reconciliation tour of all the six geopolitical zones in order to bring all its warring factions together.

“As you know, were it not for our differences, we would have won Ogun State. We lost Oyo State because of the differences between the Senator Rasheed Ladoja-led Accord Party and the Alao-Akala-led PDP,” he said.

The National Secretary promised that the face-off between the Presidency and the PDP-dominated National Assembly over the 2013 budget oil benchmark would be resolved soon, through dialogue.

 He added that the party would continue to be in control of its primaries, adding that it would not succumb to attempts by the Independent National Electoral Commission to interfere with its internal affairs.

 According to him, under the Electoral Act 2010, INEC has no powers to dictate to parties on how to run their affairs.

 Reacting, the Publicity Secretary, CPC, Mr. Rotimi Fashakin, said political alliance is part of constitutional democracy, noting that the current government in Britain is a product of an alliance.

He said, “We understand Oyinlola’s paradigm. For a man who spent most of his adult life in the military, where authoritarianism holds sway, it is inconceivable to expect him to grasp (the concept of) political alliance.

“Again, when you also understand that his purported re-election as governor was voided by a court of law, it will be too much to expect such person to believe in election-winning collaborations. Quite unfortunately, the anti-democratic vomit of the grand patron of the PDP and the generallisimo of ‘do or die’ politics is what all the members of the behemoth are munching and regurgitating. So do you see where the PDP National Secretary is coming from?”

Although efforts made last night to get the spokesperson for the ACN, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, to react to Oyinlola’s remarks were abortive, the opposition party had spoken on the matter in August.

Mohammed had said, “What is the interest of the PDP in whether the merger works or fails? It only shows it is fearful. I want to assure you that when the merger works, it will be a surprise to the ruling party.

“Our fear is that when it works, the PDP may not exist anymore because the party deteriorates every day.”

 Punch

Protest day 2: One Okada rider feared dead…As protesters destroy another LAGBUS bus

BY OLASUNKANMI AKONI AND MONSOR OLOWOOPEJO
LAGOS — An unidentified commercial motorcycle operator, popularly called Okada rider was allegedly killed in the early hours of yesterday, at Pen Cinema, Agege, area of Lagos State, when men of the Nigerian Police attached to the state’s security outfit, Rapid Response Squad, RRS, accosted the victim while he attempted to evade arrest.
The Okada riders in the state continued their protest yesterday at Kola Bus Stop, on Lagos-Abeokuta Express way, damaging a LAGBUS bus.
Similar incident happened at Ikotun Ejigbo Road as Okada riders blocked the major highway with burning tyres  to register their displeasure over what they termed indiscriminate arrests and extortion by men of the Nigeria police and the new road traffic law banning their activities from 475 roads in the state.
It would be recalled that the Okada riders on Monday, resorted to violent protest across the state, vandalising Bus Rapid Transit, (BRT) and LAGBUS buses operating on Ikorodu Road.
According to an eyewitness who identified himself as Rasaq, the late Okada rider was hit by the men of the RRS at Pen Cinema while trying to escape with his motorcycle from being impounded by the security officers.

*okada-riders

Rasaq, who spoke in Yoruba,narrated: “As the Okada rider was trying to evade arrest from the police, he quickly diverted his motorcycle towards Ogba-Ijaiye Housing Estate. The men of the RRS also did not retreat, they continued the chase. During the process, one of the police officers hit the rider with his baton and he collapsed immediately.
“On seeing his helpless body on the ground, operators of tricycles, popularly called “keke NAPEP,” quickly rushed him to the nearest hospital.”
The protesters chanted anti-war songs and increased their activities to adjoining bus stops on the axis.
According to another eyewitness, Mr. Godwin Udofia, the situation began as early as 9:00 am with the protesters armed with stones and other equipment.
The scabs among the operators who did not join in the protest were also attacked with stones.
The situation resulted in hundreds of commuters being stranded at different bus stops, as heavy traffic gridlock was experienced on the ever busy Ikorodu Road.
…ACN reactsMeantime,
the state chapter of the Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, has appealed to residents not to allow themselves to be used by desperate politicians to cause chaos in the state in the name of protesting against the ban of commercial motorcycle operations in some parts of Lagos.
The party made this appeal in the wake of the attacks on government vehicles and properties by people masquerading as commercial motorcycle operators.
The party urged law enforcement agencies to deal with those destroying government properties on the pretext of protesting ban on Okada operations.
In a release by the party’s Publicity Secretary, Joe Igbokwe, the ban on Okada operators was done in the best interests of the people at heart.
Do have your say:
Do you support the ban on okada by the Lagos State government on major roads in the state.
Vanguard

Fuel scarcity: Mass protest imminent, warns CPPA

---

By LOUIS IBA
As Nigeria’s fuel supply situation continue to degenerate with every passing day, the Centre for Public policy Alternatives (CPPA) has warned of an imminent protest by citizens if managers of the industry failed to step up efforts to reform the distribution mechanism of petroleum products and ensure consumers get full benefit of being citizens of a major crude oil producing nation.
The latest crisis has been attributed to shortfalls in supply owing to the refusal of some firms hitherto involved in the importation of fuel to continue in the business over the non-settlements of debts (under the fuel subsidy scheme estimated at N200billion) by the federal government. In Lagos, petrol in some fuel stations now sells above N105 per litre, while in other parts of the country it it selling above N200 per litre owing to the scarcity.
The exit of the local importers from the business has since left the NNPC, as the sole importer of the petroleum products, and the state-owned firm has been struggling to fill the gap alone. Presently, about 30 million litres of petrol is consumed daily in Nigeria. So far about $19billion is believed to have been sunk into the subsidy scheme in the last five years, the bulk going however to fraudulent marketers, who hardly import nor supply the goods to consumers, yet queue up and get paid by government alongside genuine importers and marketers.
Folarin Gbadebo-Smith, who heads the CCPA in Nigeria, said going by the latest revelations by the various probe commissions in the industry, it was apparent that the sector was immersed in massive fraud that needed to be unearthed, adding that the system should be restructured for efficient and improved services to citizens. “The current system of energy subsidies is shown to be imperfect in a number of ways and one of them is that the benefits flow disproportionately to wealthier citizens,” Folarin said.
“Transparency is a key mechanism to improve credibility and reduce opportunities for corruption,” he added. According to a data from regulator, the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA), the subsidy bill for petrol jumped from N151.9billion to N673billion between 2006 and 2010, and spiked N2.19 trillion in 2011.
And probe or audit reports have shown that the spike was as a result of graft where the book was cooked up to reflect a faulty daily increase of consumption pattern from 30 million litres to 33 million litres. But the Lawan Farouk House of Representative probe committee had established that subsidies were paid for volumes of petrol not supplied to the Nigerian market. Folarin said badly managed subsidies impose lots of costs on the economy, including smuggling of subsidized fuels out of the country.
“A long term solution to the energy pricing problem hinges on introducing more efficient redistributive mechanism,” said Folarin. “Otherwise the fuel subsidy protests will return,” he warned.
TheSun

Forbes nominates Dangote, Elumelu, others for award

The President of Dangote Group, Alhaji Aliko Dangote and the Chairman of Heirs Holdings, Mr. Tony Elumelu, have been nominated for the Forbes Africa Person of the Year Award.
They are the two Nigerians who made the five-man list.
Others on the list are Malawian President Joyce Banda, Managing Director of Kenya’s Equity Bank Limited, Dr. James Mwangi and co-founder of Aspen Pharmacare, Mr. Stephen Saad.
A statement by the organisers said: “Aliko Dangote: founder and president of Dangote Group. Motivation: Last year’s runner-up to Forbes Africa Person of The Year, is still Africa’s richest man, worth more than $11.2 billion. Dangote continues to be one of the continent’s biggest employers. He promises to donate most of his fortune to charitable causes upon his retirement.
“Dr James Mwangi won the Ernest and Young Entrepreneur of the Year award 2012 as well as Africa’s Innovation Leader of the Year Awards in 2012. Equity Bank is planning to extend its financial services to Ethiopia when the country opens its banking industry for foreign investors.
“Banda, Malawi’s first female leader, has restored strained diplomatic ties with neighbours and the international community. Her administration has embraced investor-friendly economic policies: she cut her salary by 30%; sold the presidential jet and a fleet of luxury cars in an austerity drive.
“Elumelu: founder and chairman of Heirs Holdings. Motivation: The multimillionaire grooms African business leaders and entrepreneurs through the Tony Elumelu Foundation. He is the leading advocate of Africapitalism, an economic philosophy that embodies the private sector’s commitment to Africa’s economic transformation through long-term investments.
“Saad is the biggest shareholder of the largest publicly-traded drug manufacturer, Aspen. The company has a market capitalisation of $6 billion. Saad became a multimillionaire at 29. Now aged 47, he employs more than 6,000 people.”
The winner of this award would have had an influence on the events of the year gone by on the African continent.
TheNation