Ministries, agencies in end-of-year spending spree

by Salisu Suleiman

Federal Government’s ministries and agencies are blowing billions of naira in an apparent end-of-year spending spree to mop up unspent budgeted funds, Daily Trust investigations show.
Findings revealed that government offices are trying to ensure all the monies provided in their 2012 budget estimates are spent before the elapse of the fiscal year by the end of the month.
Sources told Daily Trust that accounting officers and heads of government offices have been very busy in the past two weeks coming up with ways to ensure the paper work is done to cover all expenditure.
The funds are mostly being spent by ministries and agencies on hurriedly-arranged trainings, workshops and seminars, in order to beat the December 31 deadline when government accounts will close in line with the budget law.
Among the spending items to organize the conferences are placement of newspaper and broadcast advertisements, hotel bills, conference papers as well as honorarium for resource persons and participants.
Most of the events are being organized in choice hotels in Abuja, Lagos, Port Harcourt and in some other state capitals.
Billions were earmarked in the 2012 budget for local and international training and so-called capacity building conferences.
An analysis of the 2012 budget show that these billions were captured in the ministries’ budgets under sub-headings such as ‘travels and transports: training’; as well as ‘international travels and transports: training.’
Last-minute spending spree
During the past weeks, the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) organised a workshop on professional assessment of its staff; National Communication Commission (NCC) held consumer forum in Oshogbo; Center for Black Culture held a conference in Osogbo; and the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) held a three-day meeting with State Universal Basic Education Boards (SUBEBs) chiefs in Asaba.
The Education ministry held examinations conference in Abuja; Nigeria Customs Service had a conference in Katsina; National Planning Commission’s conference on state of GDP in Nigeria held in Abuja; NAFDAC’s workshop for registration of Biosimidars in Lagos; and NACA’s workshop on fight against AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria held in Abuja.
In some instances, two different ministries organized separate workshops on the similar subjects, like the Ministry of Justice organized a workshop on Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in Abuja and days later the Ministry of Information also held another workshop on FOIA.
The Ministry of Information said its own workshop was on information management and good governance for national transformation. It also convened a meeting of the National Council on Information, which had state information commissioners in attendance.
Others are National Orientation Agency (NOA)’s workshop on youth skills acquisition; Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE)’s workshop for capital market correspondents in Lagos; NDIC’s workshop on internal assessment of deposit insurance in Lagos; Nigerian National Order of Merit (NNOM)’s forum for laureates in Abuja and Institute of Public Analysis of Nigeria’s workshop on sampling analysis and modern trend in Lagos.
Checks by this reporter over the past two weeks show that most of the big hotels in Abuja were hosting some training or workshop by various government agencies.
Some hotels even host more than two such meetings on same days.
In most of the hotels visited by Daily Trust in Wuse, Utako, Jabi, Garki, Asokoro, Maitama last week, there were more than three banners displayed at their gates indicating the presence of these agencies doing one form of programme or the other.
Daily Trust could not confirm the total amount of monies spent in the end-of-year spending spree, but the 2012 budget offers an insight through the sums voted for trainings, conferences and workshops.
For the outgoing year, some of the budgets for training are State House N1.9 billion, Foreign Affairs N3.196 billion, Finance N800 million, Health N424 million, Office of the Head of Service of the Federation N637 million, Defence N448, Niger Delta N449 and Petroleum N400 million.
There are also the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission N436 million, Information ministry N204 million, Justice N368 million, Lands N185 million, Power N298 million, Transport N285 million, Works N193 million and Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation N204 million.
NigeriaIntel

Kidnapping as a national scourge

Thankfully, the 82-year-old Prof. Kamene Okonjo, who was abducted about a week ago, has been freed by her kidnappers following intense activities of the police, under the special task force set up by the Inspector General.
Her abduction, along with those of numerous other prominent citizens, points clearly to the disgusting level and the complicity that the kidnapping malaise is assuming. The arrest of 63 persons by the police is indicative that shadowy individuals, possibly in positions of authority, may have been involved in many of the kidnappings.   Besides financial gain, which makes th scourge a booming industry, political kidnapping cannot be ruled out. There is need for the authorities to address it squarely as number-one public enemy.
Professor Kamene Okonjo, mother of Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the Coordinating Minister of the Economy and Minister of Finance and queen of the Obi of Ogwashi-Uku, Prof. Chukwuka Okonjo, was abducted from the Ogwashi-Uku royal palace in Delta State on December 9, 2012. While the authorities were running helter-skelter to get her released in Delta State, another set of gunmen on December 11, abducted Mrs. Tayo Rotimi, wife of Nigeria’s former Ambassador to the United States, Gen. Oluwole Rotimi (rtd). Mrs. Rotimi was reportedly grabbed in front of her company, AOP Logistics Limited, on New Life Road, Ibadan, at about 6.30 pm by four hefty armed men at the close of work.
Although Professor Okonjo was released five days later, it is unacceptable that any citizen, irrespective of status, could be abducted so easily by gangs of kidnappers in different parts of the country. The malaise has assumed epidemic proportion, which should no longer be tolerated. And government should be proactive rather than merely reactive. Besides, all kidnapping victims deserve the kind of prompt and serious attention given to Mrs. Okonjo.
Whereas Mrs. Rotimi’s kidnappers allegedly demanded N200 million ransom, those that kidnapped Prof. Okonjo reportedly demanded a whooping $1 billion, which the police, however, dismissed as untrue. Nevertheless, the two incidents have further raised public apprehension and added to the alarming wave of insecurity and criminality ravaging the country. This is strongly condemnable. Kidnapping has clearly become a national malaise, with an epicentre in the South generally, and the South-South and South-East axis, in particular. Both the federal and state authorities should face the major challenge thus ensuing, bearing in mind that for every reported case, many cases are not reported for fear of victimisation by the perpetrators.
No government worth its name should allow the kind of permissiveness now associated with kidnapping which has made it intractable across the country. The fear of kidnapping has made many people uncomfortable and unwilling to visit their homes.
There is no doubt that the extant level of policing in the country is ineffective. If the country is to fully tackle kidnapping and other criminalities plaguing it, it should be ready to re-examine the structure of policing, and to eventually work towards decentralisation in line with the dictates of desirable federalism. Law and order is non-negotiable as a stimulus for peace and development in the country.
The authorities should equally be worried that the level of insecurity in the country has so overwhelmed the police, such that in most of the kidnap incidents, police orderlies were killed.  It is better to police the entire community than individuals. Experience shows that not only has attaching one or two police orderlies to an individual failed to prevent criminals from attacking, the arrangement actually makes policemen more vulnerable to daring criminals.
The proliferation of arms in the country is something that has helped in criminal activities. The infiltration of all sorts of arms shows failure of security. The governance structure has failed to live up to expectation. Government should work to curb arms’ proliferation.
One factor that has helped to promote kidnapping is the ostentatious life style of government officials and politicians. It is common to see politicians, even local government chairmen, rise from nothing to affluence, parading chains of exotic vehicles in a system that is stricken with poverty, and to the chagrin of the suffering masses.
There is no doubt that people are bitter with the system. Millions of young people have no jobs. Good governance that will ensure gainful employment to the teeming youth, and bridge the wide gulf between the rich and the poor is an urgent imperative to eradicating kidnapping and other criminal activities in the land.
NigeriaIntel

Yakowa: Kaduna’s Delicate Dance

by Salisu Suleiman

The new governor must strive to balance delicate interests…

The tragic death of Governor Patrick Yakowa of Kaduna state on Saturday has brought to the fore once again the delicate balance in majority/ minority politics in Kaduna and other states in Nigeria. Like Kaduna, where barely muted distrust exists between the largely Muslim north and the substantially Christian south, states like Plateau, Gombe, Adamawa, Borno, Benue, Cross River, Taraba, Nasarawa and others also have challenges with majority/ minority politics.
In the case of Kaduna, only the elevation of Mohammed Namadi Sambo from state governor to vice president made it possible for his deputy, Yakowa to become governor of the state. This by itself raises serious concerns about our brand of politics, the concepts of majority and minority, competence in the selection of candidates and the entire electoral process itself.
Based on public service experience, if there ever was a candidate qualified to be governor of Kaduna state, that candidate was Yakowa. He rose to become a director in the federal civil service in key ministries like Water Resources and Defence, was state sole administrator of a political party, commissioner in Kaduna state for several years, federal permanent secretary and minister of solid minerals under Gen. Abdulsalam Abubakar.
After retiring as a federal permanent secretary, Yakowa became Secretary to the Kaduna state government, and upon the death of the former Kaduna state deputy governor, took over that position under then Governor Makarfi. Ordinarily, he should have stepped into his boss’s shoes and become governor in 2007, but so timid was minority politics that he hardly bothered to contest the primaries.
After the political abracadabra that brought the then relatively unknown Sambo to Kaduna Government House, Patrick Yakowa was content to remain as deputy governor: That was the limits of his political aspirations, restricted as it were, not by lack of ambition, but the issue of minority and majority politics.
The questions are: what if President Yar’adua had not died? Or what if another of the numerous contenders for the position of vice president had been nominated? That would mean that Yakowa, as qualified as he was – with his far reaching contacts and many Muslim friends in Kaduna and elsewhere across Nigeria would never have become governor, though he had more experience in public administration and governance than his two predecessors in office – Senator Makarfi and Vice President Sambo combined.
When in 2011, Yakowa decided to contest the seat in his own right, the groundswell of opposition was massive. Clearly, the issue was not about his qualification, but about why a candidate from the so-called minority should govern the majority. Though eventually declared winner by INEC and the courts, there were many who believed Yakowa did not legitimately win. The violence that broke out left hundreds of people dead. Today, Muslim refugees from many parts of southern Kaduna have been unable to return home – what is left of their charred homes, that is.
And that, precisely, is the point of this piece. As long as the indemnity of identity – be it ethnic group or religion remain more important than experience and qualification in contesting public office, the kind of mediocrity that is visible in the Presidency and the federal executive council and virtually all public office in Nigeria will continue. As it were, despite many qualified people, southern Kaduna must now be wondering if they will ever produce a governor again, barring unforeseen circumstances.
In Benue state, the Tivs would probably never surrender the governorship to an Idoma no matter how qualified and experienced. This was reflected in 2007 when Mike Onoja, an Idoma with all the right contacts lost the PDP primaries to the relatively inexperienced Gabriel Suswan from the majority Tiv. If the Idomas succeed in getting Apa state, the Igedes would become the minorities in the new state and may never produce a governor. In Taraba state, only the unfortunate plane crash of Governor Suntai paved way for a minority to become acting state governor, pending Suntai’s return.
Similarly, in Adamawa state, religion and ethic group remain key determinants of who gets what, where and how. In Plateau State, no member of the Muslim minority has managed to become even a jobless deputy governor. The highest elected office grudgingly conceded to them is that of deputy speaker of the State House of Assembly. Even in relatively cosmopolitan and homogeneous Ogun state, disputes exist between the Egbas and the Ijebus. In Cross River state, Ogoja people feel neglected. In Kogi, tensions exist between Igalas and Igbira.
In essence, at a time when Nigeria should be electing its best people to strategic positions, too many states and local government areas in the country remain bogged down by the politics of balancing ethnic and religious interests. Thus, competence, capacity, qualification, experience, honesty and other considerations that should determine a candidate’s eligibility and electability are relegated to the background.
In the final analysis, this is a time when Kaduna, like other states battling with majority/ minority agitations should reach out to all groups to forge a consensus. This is a sombre, delicate dance that the new leadership must do in order to rebuild trust and togetherness.

NigeriaIntel

Things I Can’t Write/Speak About By Okey Ndibe

Okey Ndibe

Some Americans are fond of saying that two things are guaranteed in life: death and taxes. One is dubious about the inclusion of taxes in the equation. If you’re wealthy enough, or can afford an attorney who’s clever enough, you have a shot at avoiding taxes – or, at any rate, getting away with paying next to nothing. It’s a different matter with death. In the end, we’re all bound to die.
Yet, there are moments when death shows up in such rude, shocking garbs that we are forced to pay particular attention – even as, ultimately, we’re unable to stitch together any coherent speech.
Such a moment came last week, on December 14, to be exact. It was one of three wedding anniversaries for Sheri and me, for we had wed thrice: before a Justice of the Peace, in church, and at a traditional ceremony where we put relatives and the ancestors on notice. In my accustomed fashion, I had absolutely forgotten that it was our anniversary. It was already late afternoon when Sheri reminded me, in her ever gracious, patient and quiet manner.
By then, it did not matter. For she and I had heard accounts of one of the vilest events in our life. A young man armed to the hilt had entered an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, forty minutes from our home, and executed twenty kindergarteners and several adults. My first instinct was to protest that this callous killer had chosen our anniversary to enact his infamy. But I held my tongue, realizing in time that there can be no date when such an evil, spine-jangling bloodlust would be less shocking.
It went without saying that I had to write about the Newtown Horror. Still, I had the intimation that I didn’t know what to say. Certain forms and scales of horror are simply unspeakable. Where does one find the words; how discover a handle on which to hang thoughts? What does one say about a young man, himself a kid in some ways, pointing a gun at his mother and pulling the trigger to deadly effect – and then proceeding to an elementary school to take deadly aim at one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen sixteen seventeen eighteen nineteen twenty innocent, harmless children?
As a parent myself, I wished I could say that I understood the pure, heart-bursting pain felt by parents, grandparents or guardians who dropped off their vibrant, energetic kids at school with kisses only to be summoned an hour or two later to brace for the harvest of corpses. But I own that it’s impossible to approach the sorrow and grief of, say, a parent who’s lost a child in such senseless, unfathomable circumstances.
I wanted to imaginatively enter the skin of the victims, to conjecture their emotions as the assailant turned his bloodthirsty ire on each confused target. I recoiled, for my powers of imagination were no match for the task.
There was something impenetrable about the whole thing. I was face to face with evil, no question; but it was evil masked, and I had no mechanism for penetrating that mask.
It was not the first time I had felt an urge to write about something so fundamentally disturbing, but lacked a vocabulary to describe the experience or to broach its emotional gravity. There was a time I watched a TV documentary on the travails of women raped by soldiers in the Congo. One woman, so thin she could have been all bones, her gaunt face sad, told the interviewer about being gang-raped by several soldiers. Then, ashen eyes fixed on the camera – and on whoever was watching – she asked, “What crime did my vagina commit against them? Was it not a vagina that gave birth to them?” Her words carried the weight of Olympian pain. They touched a region of grief that I was too scared to enter. Devastated, I cried for hours, embarrassed on behalf of those who’d brought her to the edge of hell.
Then there was the Rwandan genocide. I once read a magazine story about the country’s former Minister for Women Affairs who encouraged the mass rape of Tutsi women. One victim related how she and other Tutsi women were herded into a stadium filled with Hutu men. Then the then Women’s Affairs minister gave a charge to the ravenous, hate-filled Hutu men. “I don’t want any of you to tell me tomorrow that you don’t know how Tutsi women taste.” The men fell to in a repellent, rapacious orgy. Afterwards, the ravaged women were lined up and hacked to death, a select few of them spared – in the final evil gesture – “in order to remember.”
Having experienced such horror, how does a woman cope with bearing the burden of memory? It strikes me as one of those untenable occasions when the living begrudge the dead: when, in fact, so-called survivors wish they had the relative joy of the grave.
As a child myself, I lived through the horrors of the Biafran War, that tragic chapter in Nigeria’s history that claimed anything between two and three million lives. My parents did their best to shield me and my siblings from the more stark horrors of that war. Even so, their love and concern could not protect me from the pangs of hunger that was the lot of most Biafrans, children and adults alike. They could do nothing to stop the sudden eruptions of air raids, the incessant strafing by low-flying Nigerian jets whose engines shook the very earth and sent everybody scurrying for the shelter of makeshift bunkers. There were ubiquitous images of children plagued by kwashiorkor, bellies bloated with air, eyes sunken, skins sallow and sickly, bottoms flattened and bony.
Certain kinds of tragedy take the breath away. They stun us into silence, into shocked speechlessness. They make our voices to shake and tremble. Yet, it is in learning to speak about the unspeakable, in stuttering back to some form of speech and groping our way back to the salve of memory that we rescue ourselves from abject despair.
Yes, the carnage of Newtown, Connecticut is as difficult to write about, as impossible to grasp as the daily carnage in Nigeria and other postcolonial addresses where the poor, the elderly, the weak are daily savaged, dehumanized, destroyed. Yet, we must strive to hold on to memory. It is memory – the stubborn remembrance of the things that happened, happy as well as sad, glorious as well as horrific – that helps us to resurrect or reclaim the dead, to illuminate our paths, and to enable us to move forward and move on.
I may not be able to write/speak about last week’s carnage in Newtown, any more than I am able to write/speak about the callous bombings that maim and kill innocents in Nigeria or the Congo. Still, I must seek to remember. For it is in our personal and collective remembering that all the world’s slain innocents achieve the magic of staying alive.
May their souls rest in peace.
Saharareporters

Uh-oh: Miss Guyana falls down on stage at Miss Universe event (PHOTOS)

by Rachel Ogbu

The Most Beautiful Girl in Nigeria, Isabella Ayuk was in full form at the early stage of the Miss Universe competition at the Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino in Las Vegas.
 But that cannot be said for Miss Guyana, she became a fashion victim of her floor-sweeping evening dress and crashed to the floor in front of the judges in Las Vegas.
 Eighty nine beautiful women from all over the world have gathered to battle it out for the much coveted title of Miss Universe 2012.
 This preliminary stage helps to decide the 16 semi-finalists that will be announced on pageant night on December 19 together with results of the ongoing online voting on the Miss Universe website.
 ‘Rounds’ at this stage in the competition included posing in bikinis and evening gowns.








Miss Guyana:



YNaija.com

Nkiru Sylvanus: Nollywood ‘cries for help’

The stakeholders of the Nigerian motion picture industry, globally known as Nollywood are angry over the recent abduction of one their own screen goddess, Nkiru Sylvanus.
Nkiru, who was also a Special Assistant on public affairs to Imo State Governor, Owelle Rochas Okorocha was reportedly kidnapped in Owerri, Imo State capital alongside her personal assistant on Sunday.
According to the Actors’ Guild of Nigeria (AGN), President Ibinabo Fiberisima, the Industriy is calling on the State and Federal Government to come to the aid of the actress.
‘We are trying to liaise with her state government to find a solution to it. It’s unfortunate that people can do things like this to people who make them happy‘, the AGN President lamented.
She urged well meaning Nigerians to” ‘Please pray for her!‘.
Another Nollywood actor who craved anonymous in a telephone chat with DailyPost condemned the act, calling on Jonathan and his cabinet to do something about the increase rate of kidnapping in the country.
He said: “This nonsense must stop, why must kidnappers feast on Nollywood? Are we politicians? First, it was Nkem Owoh, Pete Edochie, John Okafor’s family, now it is Nkiru Sylvanus, enough of this rubbish. The federal government should do something about this because we are not on salary anywhere.” The bearded actor said.
DailyPost gathered that the abductors of the actress of the “Cry for Help’ fame are demanding a whooping N100m ransom.
DailyPost

Military Chiefs Suspect Sabotage In Helicopter Crash

Military bigwigs are seriously pursuing the angle of sabotage in the helicopter crash that killed the Governor of Kaduna State, Patrick Yakowa, and the former National Security Adviser, General Andrew Azazi, as they continue to find out what led to the crash.
A source in top echelons of the Western Naval Command, who declined to be named because of how sensitive the issue is, said sabotage cannot be ruled out, especially going by reports they got that the helicopter exploded before it crashed.
“There is strong reason that it could be way more than a mechanical crash, especially going by the VIPs on board.”
The aircraft, believed to be one of those attached to the Chief of Naval Staff, crashed on its way from Olokoba. Other passengers on board were Dauda Tsoho, Warrant Officer Mohammed Kamal, Commander Muritala Daba and Lieutenant Adeyemi Sowole. They were departing the venue of the funeral of the father of presidential aide Oronto Douglas.
The aircraft was said to have been on an aerial reconnaissance mission in the creeks before being redeployed to the service of the naval chief.
The crash was the main topic of discussion among top military officers as they debated whether the plane was compromised or shut down.
According to the naval source, it was said that the plane exploded two to five minutes after take-off.
“We don’t know what really happened, hence the investigation. A lot of rumours have flying around. Some are even alleging sabotage. The real story from the investigation would clear this up.
TheHerald