Monday, 13 January 2014

Don’t remove Tukur as PDP Chairman, Adamawa group tells Jonathan

A group of leaders of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in Adamawa State, has urged President Goodluck Jonathan to ignore calls for the removal of the party’s National Chairman, Bamanga Tukur.

The group in a statement made available on Monday in Abuja and signed by Umar Ardo, its coordinator, also condemned reports of a vote of no-confidence purportedly passed on Mr. Tukur, by some members of the National Working Committee, NWC of the party.

The group said it disagreed with the reasons given by the people calling for the ouster of Mr. Tukur.

“We recall with grave concern the same antics employed by the same members of the NWC, then led by Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola, to reverse the dissolution of the Pro-Nyako Kugama-led EXCO in Adamawa State in January last year, thereby undermining the very authority of the NWC itself and creating the basis for the current distrust between them and the National Chairman,” they said.

They also said they viewed the current act as another attempt by the same reactionary forces that then tried to undermine the political standing of the National Chairman and in the process almost wrecked constitutionalism in the party’s affairs.

The same forces, they said, were at it again; this time, trying to foster needless constitutional crises on the party in an election year on the altar of personal animosity and ego-driven avowed opponents of the National Chairman.

“It is a well-known prophetic saying that a house divided against itself will surely fall,” they added.

The Adamawa PDP pleaded with the President to see the current action of the members of the NWC as an act principally aimed at dividing the house and not uniting it.

“They failed then on Adamawa; they will fail now too, on Nigeria,” they said.

They also called on the president to take note of the fact that opposition to the PDP was mainly coming from the Hausa-Fulani core North, to which Mr. Tukur belonged, adding that many of them were still holding on to the PDP on account of Mr. Tukur’s leadership.

“The removal of the Chairman and the politics of his replacement will indeed unlock several chains of events the final outcome of which no one can fathom for the party,” they warned.

Defection not due to Tukur

The Adamawa PDP said those who left the party did not do so on account of the National Chairman but on account of the peculiar irreconcilable local politics in their constituencies.

“The chairman is merely a convenient excuse,” they said.

They said Mr. Tukur was duly elected in the party’s national convention and his removal will only further denigrate the party’s standing on the sanctity of elections and constitutionalism as the basis of holding elective public office in Nigeria.

Such denigration, they said, would create in the populace a rejectionist tendency towards the party that could adversely affect its electoral fortunes in 2015.

“We therefore appeal to the president not only to prevail on all the key national organs of the party to see reason and protect the National Chairman’s Office, but he should also call to immediate order these reactionary members of the PDP’s NWC to henceforth put the interest of the party above all other considerations. Their accusations against the National Chairman are lame and deceitful, and the dose of medicine they prescribed is far more deadly than the ailment being suffered,” they said.

OsunDefender

Friday, 3 January 2014

Edo: 3 Killed In Renewed Cult Clash

Renewed cult war between the Eiye confraternity and the Black Axe in Benin, Edo State has led to the death of three persons.

The cult war was said to have started near Oba market over issues of ticketing between members of a task force alleged to have been engaged by the state government and another group in the same area believed to have been engaged by Oredo council.

Eyewitnesses confirmed that three persons, one in Erunmwense area off Ekenwan Road, another by Lucky Way in Upper Mission road, a third near Ogbe area and another near Ogida, were found dead.

It was learnt that one of the dead just finished his Masters degree programme from the University of Benin.

Meanwhile suspected cultists, Monday, attacked The Nation newspaper reporter, Mr Ben Ogbemudia, along Eke Street, in Upper Sakpoba Road, in Benin City.

Trouble was said to have started for Ogbemudia when the hoodlums ordered him to repark his car which was near his wife’s residence.

According to him, he had reparked his car in the sandy street when the suspected assailants in a Nissan Almera marked Edo DGE 382 AA with three occupants identified simply as Emwanta, Adult and Osaretin attacked him and inflicted a deep machete cut on his left hand.

He was later rushed to a private clinic and later reported the incident at St Saviour’s Police Station.

InformationNigeria

Pope Francis condemns fundamentalism, urges setting an example over proselytizing

By Eric W. Dolan

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Pope Francis recently urged the faithful to understand reality by looking at it “from the periphery” in order to avoid becoming fundamentalists.

Francis meet with 120 superiors general of men’s religious orders at the Vatican in November. His comments were published Friday by La Civiltà Cattolica, a Rome-based Jesuit weekly.

“I am convinced of one thing: the great changes in history were realized when reality was seen not from the center but rather from the periphery,” the pope said.

To look at something from the periphery, the pope explained, meant analyzing reality through a variety of viewpoints, rather than filtering all experience through a centralized ideology.

“It is not a good strategy to be at the center of a sphere,” he said. “To understand we ought to move around, to see reality from various viewpoints. We ought to get used to thinking.”

“I often refer to a letter of Father Pedro Arrupe, who had been General of the Society of Jesus,” the pope continued. “It was a letter directed to the Centros de Investigación y Acción Social (CIAS). In this letter Father Arrupe spoke of poverty and said that some time of real contact with the poor is necessary.”

“This is really very important to me: the need to become acquainted with reality by experience, to spend time walking on the periphery in order really to become acquainted with the reality and life – experiences of people. If this does not happen we then run the risk of being abstract ideologists or fundamentalists, which is not healthy.”

La Civilità Cattolica noted that Francis expressed similar sentiments in his Evangelii guadiumregarding globalization.

The world needs to move towards unity without embracing centralism and crushing individualism, he wrote in the document, which was published in November.

“Here our model is not the sphere, which is no greater than its parts, where every point is equidistant from the centre, and there are no differences between them. Instead, it is the polyhedron, which reflects the convergence of all its parts, each of which preserves its distinctiveness.”

Francis also encouraged the leaders of men’s religious orders to “wake up the world.” He said the Church should grow through “attraction” rather than proselytization.

“Be witnesses of a different way of doing things, of acting, of living! It is possible to live differently in this world,” he said.

Joe Conason | Rich Catholics Threaten Pope Francis - Because He Frightens Them

JOE CONASON ON BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

If anyone wonders whether Pope Francis has irritated wealthy conservatives with his courage and idealism, the latest outburst from Kenneth Langone left little doubt. Sounding both aggressive and whiny, the billionaire investor warned that he and his overprivileged friends might withhold their millions from church and charity unless the pontiff stops preaching against the excesses and cruelty of unleashed capitalism.

According to Langone, such criticism from the Holy See could ultimately hurt the sensitive feelings of the rich so badly that they become "incapable of feeling compassion for the poor." He also said rich donors are already losing their enthusiasm for the restoration of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Manhattan — a very specific threat that he mentioned directly to Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York.

Langone is not only a leading fundraiser for church projects but a generous donor to hospitals, universities and cancer charities (often for programs and buildings named after him, in the style of today's self-promoting philanthropists). Among the super-rich, he has many friends and associates who may share his excitable temperament.

While his ultimatum seems senseless — would a person of true faith stiff the church and the poor? — it may well be sincere. And Langone spends freely to promote his political and economic views, in the company of the Koch brothers and other Republican plutocrats.

Still, a pope brave enough to face down the mafia over his financial reform of the murky Vatican Bank shouldn't be much fazed by the likes of Langone.

Yet Langone has reason to worry that the Holy Father is in fact asking hard questions about people like him. Indeed, he could serve as a living symbol of the gross and growing economic inequality that disfigures the American system and threatens democracy.

As a leader of the New York Stock Exchange, he was largely responsible for the scandalous overpayment of his friend Richard Grasso, the exchange president who received nearly $190 million in deferred compensation when he stepped down. Although New York's highest court eventually upheld Grasso's pay package, it was a perfect example of the unaccountable, self-serving greed of Wall Street's elite.

Anything but repentant following the revelation and repudiation of the Grasso deal by NYSE executives, Langone told Forbes magazine in 2004: "They got the wrong f—-ing guy. I'm nuts, I'm rich, and, boy, do I love a fight. I'm going to make them s—- in their pants. When I get through with these f—-ing captains of industry, they're going to wish they were in a Cuisinart — at high speed."

He embarked on a furious vendetta against Eliot Spitzer, who had fought to recapture Grasso's millions as New York attorney general. And when Spitzer was forced to resign as governor in the wake of a prostitution scandal, Langone's public gloating seemed to indicate that he had played a personal role in exposing his enemy's indiscretions. He particularly hated Spitzer for attempting to punish and curtail the worst misconduct in the financial industry.

While Langone passionately defended the outlandish grasping of the super-rich like his friend Grasso, however, he has displayed far less indulgence toward workers, especially those struggling to support their families on poverty wages. Until just last year, he was a director of Yum! Brands, the global fast food conglomerate that includes Taco Bell and Kentucky Fried Chicken among its holdings — and that spends millions annually to hold down the minimum wage and prevent unionization of its ill-paid employees and farmworkers.

What all this adds up to is hundreds of millions of dollars in questionable compensation for financial cronies, but not a dime more for low-income workers. It is exactly the kind of skewed outcome Francis means when he speaks about today's capitalists, "the powerful feeding upon the powerless," and the need for renewed state regulation to bring their burgeoning tyranny under control. He is talking about Langone, the Kochs and an entire gang of right-wing financiers.

"How I would love a church that is poor and for the poor," Francis said not long after his election to the papacy. This could be what he gets — and that might not be so bad, for the poor and for all of us, Catholic or not, who love justice.

BuzzFlash

Amaechi Has A Message For Rivers People About PDP, SEE What He Said

Gov. Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State has called on supporters of the All Progressives Congress, APC to get ready to mobilise so as to vote out the Peoples Democratic Party in the state.

Amaechi made this call during a New Year visit to inaugurate 100 motorcycles to begin the registration of APC members in Tai Local Government Area.

He said, “On the day of the election in 2015, I want you (the people of Tai) to support the All Progressives Congress, vote out PDP and you will get the implementation of the UNEP report.

Why APC Will Lose Even In 2019 – Senator Reveals

Chief Victor Ndoma-Egba, leader of the Senate, has said the All Progressives Congress (APC) has not set up structures that are required of a political party to win elections and therefore will not win in 2015 and even 2019.

He said APC still lacks party secretariats in most states of the federation, including senatorial offices, local government chapters and ward executives, saying the party is only carrying out a campaign of calumny against the PDP.

According to him, PDP will continue to win elections while the APC will be defeated in all the three tiers of government even in 2019, as it still exists only on pages of newspapers, radio and television broadcasts.

Victor said Nigerians will know they are ready to win and battle for power when they have put up the structures required in all the three levels of government.

“What I have seen on papers and television regarding APC does reflect on the actual position and strength of the party.

“PDP will continue to win elections in Nigeria because it is the only political party that put all the necessary structures in place, right from the federal level down to the local government,” he said.

The Senator added that Nigeria will conduct peaceful elections and transit to another administration, as those who have predicted the disintegration of the country will realise that the largest country in Africa is indivisible and indissoluble.

“Nigerians have agreed to stay together and they have seen democracy as the best option; so let us surmount every challenge and become one of the greatest countries of the world”, he said.

InformationNigeria

Sanusi’s $49.8bn letter to Jonathan - By Azubuike Ishiekwene

It’s already looking like the scandal over the unremitted $10billion will go the way of all scandals – under the carpet. Instead of dealing with the issue, Teflon Jonathan has been doing what his government does best: finding scape-goats for Christmas and buying time for a bigger scandal to break.

After the letter by the CBN governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, revealed that NNPC could not account for $49.8billion of crude oil sales for 19 months ending July 2013, the corporation quickly rushed to the press to say that Sanusi’s maths could not be trusted. Well, if there’s a problem with Sanusi’s math, there’s even a bigger problem with a system that allows billions of dollars worth of sales from crude oil to disappear from official records for months without any warning flag.

Accusing Sanusi of playing politics does not address the issue. Yet, if NNPC’s name-calling confirmed its status as the heart of Nigeria’s sleazedom, President Jonathan’s response was something else. He scrambled a face-saving meeting of the NNPC, the Ministry of Finance, the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) and the CBN among others. The meeting narrowed the missing figure down to $10billion – or $12billion, leaving at least $2billion in different versions still unaccounted for.

The missing money was just one of the three other issues mentioned in the letter by Sanusi. He also expressed concern about a domiciliary account held by the NNPC outside the CBN; opaque oil lifting and swap deals; and fraudulent purchase of hundreds of millions of dollars by bureaux de change from the inter-bank market. In November or December 2012, a first-tier bank took a heavy blow when hackers, working with some bureaux de change, infiltrated the forex account of a leading oil company with the bank and cleaned out $6m. No one is talking about how that happened or tracking the end use of millions of dollars in fraudulent BDC deals.

The president has said nothing about why it took him three years after he got the first hint from the CBN governor and three months after he received a letter from him to respond. Instead, he is outraged not at those who could not account for the missing money but at the whistleblower.

There’s a lot to worry about Obasanjo’s letter to Jonathan but Sanusi’s letter is by far weightier. It doesn’t matter how you slice it – whose report you believe – all parties (Sanusi, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and Diezani Allison-Madueke) appear to agree that at least $10bn (N1.7trn) of crude oil sales money could not be accounted for in 19 months.

This could only have happened in one or a combination of any three ways: 1) a conspiracy between JP Morgan Chase and the buyers of the crude 2) a conspiracy between JP Morgan Chase and the NNPC not to remit to CBN, and/or 3) a conspiracy between the buyers and NNPC to either under-remit to JP Morgan Chase or not remit at all. How can the president know this and still go to bed and sleep well?

We have had a long list of frauds, a number of them predating Jonathan. Yet from the petrol subsidy scam to the racketeering in the NCC spectrum licences and from the industrial-scale theft of crude oil to Stella Oduah’s N255m bulletproof cars, each scandal under Jonathan could have sunk a ship. The biggest scandal of all is not the serial scandals in themselves but the fact that the government has reconciled itself to these scandals and expects us to do the same.

And we’re almost there. That’s why the loss of $10billion from a resource that constitutes 90 per cent of the country’s revenue has drifted from the headlines and we’re happy to move on. Does the government seriously expect that stealing will continue this way without consequences? The missing N1.7trillion is the equivalent of the annual budget of at least half a dozen states in Nigeria; one-third of the 2014 budget; and the equivalent of N10,000 per capita of 170million Nigerians. How can Jonathan look Nigerians in the eye and say he cannot find this money?

Of all years, he has chosen a pre-election year – the time when even the most prudent governments play pork-barrel politics – to renew his pledge to fight corruption. I don’t know whether to cry or laugh it off. If he is serious at all, let him start with an independent audit of the NNPC at least under his tenure as president. Surely he does not expect us to believe that the current charade of reconciliation, which appears designed to put a spin on the numbers, will get to the root of the missing money.

The whole sordid drama is also a telling blow on the Department of Petroleum Resources, the office of the Auditor-General of the Federation and the National Assembly, especially the relevant oversight committees in both chambers of the federal legislature. If Nigeria were a company, not only would the board have removed the CEO by now, the company would have handed him over to the police for prosecution.

But Nigeria being Nigeria, expect that, in the next few weeks, Sanusi the whistleblower will become the hunted in a massive effort to bury the N1.7trillion scandal and every bit of the letter. Anything less would be a surprise.

Is Tribalism The Problem?

My friend and leading international columnist, Jonathan Power, wrote a recent piece in which he blamed tribalism for the crisis in the Central African Republic and across much of Africa. He cited Nigeria as an example of a country that is managing to contain this demon and urged others to take a leaf. Well, I disagree that tribalism is the problem here. I agree completely with Okwudiba Nnoli and Chinua Achebe that the problem with Nigeria – and indeed Africa – is squarely one of leadership. I am Ukwuani; my wife is Urhobo. My children – all born in Lagos – have no mush about tribe or tongue; they are a part of the 60 per cent of Nigeria’s youth population, linked to the netizens of the world. Poverty does not recognise tribe or tongue; politicians do and often exploit it to divide, rule and war!

Leadership