Monday, 10 May 2021
Aregbesola: Nigerians in diaspora with expired passports can renew at airports.
Rauf Aregbesola, minister of interior, says Nigerians in diaspora with expired passports can travel back home “without fear of harassment”.
The minister gave the assurance at a webinar organised by Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NIDCOM) on Saturday.
He said the establishment of front offices have been approved at Lagos, Kano, Abuja and Port Harcourt airports to help Nigerians “who arrive the country on expired passports to have their passports renewed immediately”.
“It is in this regard that the NIS recently granted a waiver for Nigerians with expired passports desirous of coming to Nigeria to do so without fear of harassment by airlines,” the minister said.
MAY 31 DEADLINE TO CLEAR BACKLOG
Aregbesola also said he has given a May 31 deadline to clear all backlogs of passport applications.
The minister said the delay in passport issuance experienced by Nigerians is one of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
He said the federal government has reached an “advanced stage” of domesticating the production of passport booklets to avert a future recurrence.
He said: “The Nigerian Immigration Service in recent time has been facing challenges in passport issuing, particularly because of a shortage of booklet, both locally and abroad. The ministry and NIS have been frantically working to resolve this.
“I gave a May 31st deadline to clear all backlogs of passport application. To ensure a permanent solution to the recurrent scarcity of booklet, the federal government is at an advanced stage of domesticating the production of passport booklets here in Nigeria.
“So, with what we are commencing on June 1st, I am confident that we shall no longer experience any shortage of booklets and the issuance and renewal of passports will be seamless starting from the 1st of June.
“To ensure efficient and effective service delivery to Nigerians, we have recently reviewed the passport issuing process with a view to streamlining the process for better performance while also eliminating the activities of touts.
“All passport applications and issuance are to be made online. Effective June 1, all passport application and issuance will take a period of six weeks to enable the NIS to carry out due diligence on all applicants.”
The minister added that the NIS recently approved the revalidation of all payments for passports made by Nigerians sequel to the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic.
“This is to enable the service conclude action on all pending passport applications,” he said.
TheCable
Sunday, 9 May 2021
Supreme Court Okays INEC’s Deregistration Of 74 Political Parties. By Sunday Ejike
THE Supreme Court on Friday affirmed the judgment of the Court of Appeal which upheld the deregistration of 74 political parties by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). The commission had last year deregistered the parties over failures to win any election during the 2019 general elections.
In the judgment prepared by Justice Chima Nweze, the apex court said the deregistration of the National Unity Party (NUP) and the 73 others was done in line with the law and compliance with the extant provisions of the constitution and the Electoral Act.
The NUP had challenged its and the others’ deregistration by INEC at the Federal High Court and the Court of Appeal. The Abuja division of the Appeal Court had on July 29, 2020 affirmed INEC’s powers to deregister political parties.
Delivering the lead judgment of a panel of the court, Justice Adamu Jairo held that INEC did not err in law in deregistering the NUP which filed the appeal.
The court then faulted the judgment of Justice Taiwo Taiwo of the Federal High Court in Abuja which had earlier in May cancelled the deregistration of the NUP and the 73 other political parties for being in breach of Section 225(a) of the constitution.
The constitutional provision spells out the minimum election victory a party must record or percentage of votes it must score to sustain its status as a registered political party.
INEC, in deregistering the affected 74 political parties in February, stated that they failed to meet the minimum requirement.
After Justice Taiwo’s judgment on the NUP in May, other judges of the Federal High Court in Abuja had also upheld the deregistration of almost 40 other affected parties.
tribuneonlineng.com/
Our Olympus Is Falling: Who Can Rouse the General? By Ugoji Egbujo
The presidency is in a dithering mode.
Premium Times
Today all our chickens are coming home to roost. We have been on the brink many times. Siddon-look looks dangerous. Many rural communities in the North are now desolate. The South-East is slipping. Fatwas are flying around. Anambra governorship election, due in a few months, is in clear jeopardy. Our last hopes are crumbling. Who can rouse the president?
Buhari’s aura has dimmed. Our lion looks castrated.
Once tall, rigid and fearless. He is now slow and timid. The lion we had run to for protection now watches wild goats eat palm fronds on our head. Even with the fangs of the presidency, our bold lion now lets hyenas feast on our cubs. When he roars, we hear a whimper, the one who chased the wild dogs of Maitatsine into oblivion. Why does he watch our slow dismemberment?
Our lion looks castrated. If the gods are not to blame, how did our lion become a lame squirrel? He had sworn he wouldn’t let corruption kill us. Let us say corruption is a ghost. But how can’t a General trained to protect by killing our enemies, watch bandits and terrorists desecrate our sacred educational temples, slaughter the young and the old?
The devil has gone footloose.
We pampered the bandits in Zamfara and Katsina and incentivised organised crime. We let Sheikh Gumi trivialise terrorism and sow seeds of discord in the military. He even suggested the bandits were only asking for a piece of their denied national pie in ransoms. But had our lion not become drowsy and allowed cockroaches to grow teeth, who would have bothered with the apparent drunkenness of Gumi.
After waiting in vain for a military onslaught to scorch the scourge, governors started cuddling terrorists. Schools in the north, out of caution, complied with the philosophy of Boko Haram and shut down. We should hide our faces in shame. The ransoms we paid have instigated a bloom of evil. More groups have joined the gold rush. Who would have believed it? But if we didn’t pay ransoms, how would we have collected 300 corpses of young school children of Kankara?
We had thought a General would contain all such nuisance. We didn’t know a General could give written warnings to terrorists, let alone issue twenty such sissy notices in a single week. We are now surfeited with bafflement. They have beat their drums of war and taken the sleep of women and children but our lion can’t be startled.
Direct death threats have been issued to governors and traditional rulers, and nothing happened. Oh, sorry, somebody jumped out of the presidency to remind a bemused public that those crimes are not federal crimes. You need not laugh. Perhaps that’s why the federal Attorney General is aloof. The chief law officer of a nation sliding into anarchy.
In Niger State, a certain community has taxed members and paid bandits for a slice of peace. Nobody knows when their payment would expire and if the bandits in Niger would seek to renew the agreement, and at what fee? Niger, perhaps, has the fastest-growing terrorism industry in the world. Somewhere in Borno, some people had tried a brigade of prayer warriors. Now our politicians are openly begging for foreign mercenaries.
My grandmother used to describe certain absurdities as humorous evil. Under the watch of the great lion, a bunch of armed robbers, you can call them unknown gunmen, sourced and found the audacity to visit a governor’s home at 9 a.m. on a Saturday. They killed police officers and burnt the house. When President Obasanjo allowed one funny chap in Anambra to kidnap a sitting governor, we said we had reached the depth. But perhaps, just perhaps, we could soon have a situation where a sitting president could be negotiating with some unknown gunmen to release a sitting governor kidnapped from a government house. These things would have made a blatantly preposterous Nollywood script six months ago.
The presidency is in a dithering mode. The picture is of a scarecrow filled with air, fluttering in the wind, bobbing its head and watching some wild birds, accustomed to its impotence, defy its flailing hands, and devour precious crops.
Direct death threats have been issued to governors and traditional rulers, and nothing happened. Oh, sorry, somebody jumped out of the presidency to remind a bemused public that those crimes are not federal crimes. You need not laugh. Perhaps that’s why the federal Attorney General is aloof. The chief law officer of a nation sliding into anarchy. The Foreign Affairs Minister is too urbane, too suave, to attend to threats against the country coming from foreign lands. So, who would blame state governors who have become chickens? The rumours that some state governments have begun paying protection monies to organised crime groups masquerading as freedom fighters might, after all, not be unthinkable.
If the government thinks the chaos is the handiwork of its political opponents, it has not fought like a schoolchild from whom a cookie is being snatched. By the standards of African cabals and kitchen cabinets, this Buhari cabal must be the most spineless. Even for self-interested reasons, why can’t they bring in muscular effort to protect their government against worms and pests?
“Shoot on sight everybody found with assault weapons.” That was the president’s last whimper. Since then, an entire State police command and prisons have been sacked and burnt by hoodlums. A governor’s house burnt. But all he has done is to issue warning to criminals not to mess around with him. Is he now desperate to be seen as a born-again democrat? Our fate is bleak.
Schools are shut in the North. Police stations are sitting chicks for hawks in the East. And now some university students in Okigwe have been abducted. At first sight of violence, we didn’t put our foot down. Perhaps we had left it to our lion. He deterred and deterred and whined about the cattle right of way.
Who would have thought that we would see a respected legal luminary, who bears no animosity towards the president, come on national TV and advise the president to hand over to a military regime stylishly? And he said it with all the patriotism an 83-year-old man could conjure. Nearly a week after he made the strange plea, nearly a week after a National Security Council resumed a frantic meeting, nothing, no practical reassuring changes have been effected.
The aura of the lion is what keeps his adversaries away. That aura is built by his conquests, muscularity, roars, mien and alertness. That aura deters the forest and saves him a thousand fights. The glory of our lion is fading. Not because he has tried to bite and failed to tear and crush. But because he has picked his teeth and watched goats eat palm fronds on our heads. So even scrawny hyenas are gathering and nibbling at him, on the tail. His time is running out. Our last hopes are crumbling. His legacy is in peril. We are in shambles.
We know the goats eating palm fronds on our heads will grow canines. When the palm fronds are finished, they might chew our heads and tear us apart. Yet we hope. Because what would it take the lion to whom the gods had given all our fangs to use and pounce.
Schools are shut in the North. Police stations are sitting chicks for hawks in the East. And now some university students in Okigwe have been abducted. At first sight of violence, we didn’t put our foot down. Perhaps we had left it to our lion. He deterred and deterred and whined about the cattle right of way. He didn’t fume against people marching through the forests with AK 47s, massacring whole villages in reprisals for cattle. We legitimised militias when we made ordinary citizens feel helpless and hopeless.
Today all our chickens are coming home to roost. We have been on the brink many times. Siddon-look looks dangerous. Many rural communities in the North are now desolate. The South-East is slipping. Fatwas are flying around. Anambra governorship election, due in a few months, is in clear jeopardy. Our last hopes are crumbling. Who can rouse the president?
Ugoji Egbujo is a member of the Board of Trustees of Centre for Fiscal Transparency and Integrity Watch.
Premium Times
Saturday, 8 May 2021
Nigeria is sleepwalking into war. Punch Editorial Board
6 May 2021
SLOWLY but steadily, Nigeria is sliding into war. Shortly after bandits slaughtered three of the kidnapped 23 undergraduates of Greenfield University, Kaduna, Wole Soyinka, a Nobel laureate, captured the moment explicitly in a statement entitled, ‘Endless Martyrdom of Youth.’ He said, “This nation is at war, yet we continue to pretend that these are mere birth-pangs of a glorious entity.” Seriously, Nigeria is on the brink of catastrophe because of the bloody violence that has ensnared it on the watch of the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.).
Soyinka’s perspective on the current “cowardly savagery” coincides with other notable voices, all calling on Buhari to seek help, review the impotent security system or return Nigeria to true federalism. But there is a sense of doom with Buhari in charge. The President has not shown the willpower to steer Nigeria out of violence.
State failure is playing out extensively. Before the ink dried on Soyinka’s warning, the bandits, who demanded a ransom of N800 million, had killed two more of the Greenfield students. Their audacious threat to massacre the remaining 17 students in their custody is foreboding.
Plainly, Buhari has lost control of non-state actors; Nigeria is at war in many theatres. The human and economic costs of this anarchy are simply unsustainable. In the North-East, Islamic terrorists have regained the upper hand over the military. Boko Haram, which has killed more than 100,000 persons and displaced millions, is better armed than the military. Insurgents are recapturing territories, with Geidam, Yobe State, and southern Borno State their latest prizes.
Hitherto relatively safe, bandits have seized control of the North-West. Mass abduction at schools and random killings are their signature atrocities. Apart from the deadly mission to Greenfield, bandits abducted scores of students at the Forestry College in Kaduna. In the Sahel region, writes Larisa Brown, The Times (London) Defence Editor, jihadist insurgent groups are also becoming “blurred” with bandits who steal cattle and money from local people, making it extremely difficult to distinguish who is working for whom.
The Kaduna State Government said 393 persons lost their lives in the first three months of 2021; 926 were kidnapped. Despite the presence of the military in internal security operations in 34 states, 741 Nigerians were killed and over 1,000 kidnapped in the first 96 days in office of the new Service Chiefs. That excludes the deaths and destruction of property from communal strife. This is nothing but a descent into war. In Israel, where 44 people died in the annual Lag B’Omer religious festival stampede last weekend, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promptly visited the site and declared a national day of mourning.
The North-Central is bleeding blood again. Eleven soldiers were butchered early in April in Benue State. Between late April and early May, bandits and Fulani herdsmen slaughtered 70 people in an IDP camp in Makurdi. Before this died down, 19 others were massacred on Monday in the Gwer LGA of the state. The bloody frenzy has spread to Nasarawa, Plateau, Taraba and Kogi states. Its more deadly version occurs in Niger State, where Boko Haram has hoisted its flag in 50 villages in two LGAs. Various international reports categorise Nigeria among the world’s three most terrorised countries.
Those making inciting statements plotting to destroy Nigeria – DSS
The South-East is at the point of anarchy. Police, soldiers, and government institutions have been attacked since March. Attacks on the Imo State Police Command HQs, the prisons, military checkpoints, and police stations in Abia, Ebonyi and Enugu states depict the weakness of the Nigerian state in arresting the slide into internecine war. In Anambra State, there is hardly a day that goes by without loss of lives from cult-related clashes, especially in Awka. The Imo State governor, Hope Uzodimma, lost his country home in Oru to invaders. Offices of the Independent National Electoral Commission are under serial attacks in the South-South and South-East. Lives are being wasted in Rivers State. Beyond empty rhetoric, the security agencies rush to blame the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra as the mastermind.
Insecurity is ravaging Ogun, Oyo, Ekiti, Ondo, and Osun in the South-West. A duo was abducted in Ofada, Ogun State, last weekend. A group of ranch owners was abducted in Ibarapa, Oyo State, where Fulani herders are rampaging freely. ‘Freedom fighters’ and self-determination groups are emerging from the chaos. The United States Embassy has just issued an advisory, warning American citizens to be careful of traffic robbers in Lagos. Kidnappers are moving to the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway and the adjoining areas without any serious pushback from security agencies. With an uncontrolled influx of commercial motorcycle riders, it is a matter of time before criminals seize control of the megapolis.
All over, the threat level is higher than what triggered the Civil War in 1967. Several factors are to blame, some of them self-inflicted. The Buhari regime is mistrusted by the other regional groupings because of its divisive, clannish appointments into the security apparatus. The police are short-handed, their plight aggravated by the deployment of a third of the force in illegal VIP duties. Any President serious about security will clamp down on this anomaly and initiate a decentralised police system. The military is poorly armed, under-motivated and lacks inspiring leadership in a time of war. Unnecessarily obdurate, the Buhari regime endangers the corporate existence of Nigeria by rejecting the agitations for a just restructuring of the political system.
Today, the country faces a break or save dilemma. As society breaks down, the breakup of the state is a foreboding reality. It will be dangerous to allow Nigeria to slide into a war it can ill afford. The readiness of the state governors to maintain law and order without fear or favour will help stanch the slide to chaos. As an immediate step to counter this trend, the President should declare a state of emergency on security, initiate security reforms and take necessary measures towards running an inclusive government. Eventually, fashioning a constitution that truly reflects the plurality of Nigerian society remains the only viable option to prevent the country from falling apart.
Copyright PUNCH.
Friday, 7 May 2021
Hadiza Bala Usman..The Descent And Sad End Of A 'Painted Devil'. As President Buhari Approves Panel To Probe Her - By Pius Ogundimu
It is the eyes of a child that fears a painted devil, so goes a popular saw, but when the painted devil is a ravishing female sitting atop Nigerian Ports Authority, she becomes an enigma of sort. If by virtue of her sass and unrivalled wiles, she wins the heart of Mr Minister, she succeeds getting him to wag his tail in utter submission to her craziest whim.
If she is devious enough, she exploits her position to amass great fortune for herself, often at the nation’s expense.
With unparalleled dexterity and finesse, she wields power like a utility weapon; sometimes like a hideous cloak, often like a deadly dagger. She adds inordinate vile to her already chilling nature and thus becomes terror to the most valiant of men.
She is Hadiza Bala Usman, the former NPA head honcho, and she could ruin a man with an imperceptible smile. Yes, Hadiza is as scary as that. And men and women who had been on the receiving end of her Machiavellian and ruthless plots have only gory stories to share.
The several victims of Hadiza are however, ecstatic over her suspension. That puts paid to her reign of terror; prior to her dire straits, Hadiza had mindlessly bullied and treated with disdain anyone who dared cross her path.
However, not all of Hadiza’s victims can confidently say that they have survived her cutthroat plots against them
There is no gainsaying Usman is manically haughty and high-handed. Many of her staff claim that she is a control freak who brooks no confrontation from anyone no matter how highly placed the fellow is; once you cross her path or incite her wrath, you are get in serious trouble and she always supported by the power that be.
Interestingly, like a dull actress that persistently forgets her part, Hadiza has exhausted her bounds of grace. As you read, reality bites her in vicious mouthfuls, the time for humouring her haughty bulk is unarguably over. Now, she understands the actual difference between being everybody’s darling and a social pariah of sort. Hadiza will finally understand and come to terms with the cold, bitter truth, that, it’s not actually her person that commanded the power she enjoyed but her office.
However, to Hadiza, love was the thorn that pricked her strides in the valley of marriage. She hurt and bled from sting. Since her celebrated marriage to Taminu Yakubu, the former chief economic adviser to late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, crashed, she has put her heart under lock and key.
EXCLUSIVE: How Buhari, Amaechi violated govt. policy in suspending NPA MD, Hadiza Usman
Hadiza Bala Usman, Managing Director of the Nigerian Ports Authority
Federal Government insiders are raising due process concerns in the suspension of NPA boss, Hadiza Bala Usman, who was axed Thursday.
ByTaiwo-Hassan Adebayo May 7, 2021 3 min read
The Managing Director of the Nigerian Ports Authority, Hadiza Bala Usman, was not queried, nor was she made aware of the allegations against her management prior to her suspension by President Muhammadu Buhari, PREMIUM TIMES can authoritatively report.
Presidential spokesperson, Garba Shehu, on Thursday night announced that Mr Buhari had approved the recommendation of the Minister of Transport, Rotimi Amaechi, to set up an administrative panel of inquiry to investigate Ms Usman’s management of the NPA.
“The President has also approved that the Managing Director, Hadiza Bala Usman, step aside while the investigation is carried out. Mr Mohammed Koko will act in that position,” Mr Shehu added.
However, PREMIUM TIMES determined Friday morning that the NPA managing director was not told what her offences were or formally communicated before her suspension was announced by the presidency.
When contacted early Friday morning, Ms Usman confirmed that she neither received a query nor a suspension letter. She declined further comments on her ordeal.
Not querying her or making her aware of her offence(s) before suspending her is a clear breach of the processes stipulated in the government’s own regulation for disciplining heads of government agencies.
According to a government circular dated May 19, 2020, and endorsed by the Secretary to Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha, when there is an issue of impropriety against the head of an agency, the federal government requires a minister, through the permanent secretary of the supervising ministry, to refer the matter to the governing board of the affected agency in line with its enabling law and chapters three and 16 of the Public Service Rules on discipline and government parastatals.
The board will then issue the affected official a query and subsequently advise the minister of its findings and recommendations.
But whether the board is itself the source of the allegation of misconduct against the chief executive or the chief executive is the chairman of the board, the minister, on the advice of the permanent secretary, still has to ensure a query is issued, requesting an explanation from the accused official.
“The Minister after due consideration of the submission from the Board shall, on the advice of the Permanent Secretary, forward the ministry’s position along with the recommendations of the Board and explanation of the Chief Executive Officer to the Secretary to Government of the Federation for processing to Mr President, for a decision,” the circular stated.
Upon receipt of the submission from the minister by SGF, the procedure then establishes another layer of the probe, requiring the SGF to “without delay, cause an independent investigation and advise Mr President on the appropriate course of action, including interdiction or suspension in accordance with the principles guiding Sections 030405 and 030406 of the Public Service Rules, pending the outcome of the independent investigation.”
Based on the outcome of the independent investigation, “it shall be the responsibility of the SGF to further advise Mr President on the next course of action,” the circular stated.
Continuing, the memo said it is the SGF that will “implement and/or convey the approval and directives of Mr President on every disciplinary action against the Chief Executive Officers in the Public Service.”
In this case, neither the governing board nor the SGF was carried along before action was taking on Ms Usman.
The chairman of the NPA board, Jide Adesoye, was not available to comment on this report. Repeated calls to his known telephone number were not answered. A source close to him said he was travelling abroad.
The spokesperson for the ministry was similarly unavailable.
The allegations against Ms Usman remain unclear as of 2 pm on Friday. But this newspaper learnt that Mr Amaechi and Ms Usman had been at loggerheads in the past few months over the procurement procedures for at least two multimillion-dollar contracts at the NPA.
Government insiders familiar with the matter said while Mr Amaechi wanted contractors handling the projects retained, Ms Usman insisted on a competitive tendering process in line with the Public Procurement Act 2004.
This newspaper also learnt that Mr Amaechi recently accused the NPA management of low remittances of revenues to the country’s Consolidated Revenue Fund and demanded an audit of the agency.
Our sources said both the NPA management and the Authority’s governing board rebuffed him, saying the agency had remitted funds to the government in line with its budget and as detailed in its audited financial statement.
Mr Buhari reappointed Ms Usman for a second five-year term in January several months before the end of her first tenure. That development is said to have surprised Mr Amaechi, with whom Ms Usman has endured years of tension,
PREMIUM TIMES
FG says prominent Nigerians to face trial for terrorism financing. By Don Silas
The Federal Government says some prominent businessmen and organisations will soon be prosecuted for alleged offences relating to terrorism financing in the country.
Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, revealed this when he fielded questions from State House correspondents in Abuja on Friday.
According to him, far-reaching investigations have indicated that high-profile individuals have been implicated in various cases of terrorism financing across the country.
He said: “As you will actually know, sometimes back there were certain convictions of Nigerians allegedly involved in terrorism financing in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
“That gave rise to wider and far-reaching investigations in Nigeria.
“I’m happy to report that arising from the wider investigation that has been conducted in Nigeria, a number of people, both institutional and otherwise, were found to be culpable.
“I mean some reasonable grounds for suspicion of terrorism financing have been established, or perhaps has been proven to be in existence in respect of the transactions of certain higher-profile individuals and businessmen across the country.
“I’m happy to report that the investigation has been ongoing for a long time and it has reached an advanced stage.
“Arising from the investigation, there exists, certainly, reasonable grounds for suspicion that a lot of Nigerians, high-profile institutions and otherwise, are involved in terrorism financing, and they are being profiled for prosecution.”
According to the minister, the Federal Government is initiating processes of prosecuting those high-profile individuals that are found to be financing terrorism.
Malami, who could not disclose the names or number of those to be prosecuted for terrorism financing, said more discoveries were being made as fresh facts were being uncovered.
“As to the number, the investigation is ongoing, and it has to be conclusive before one can arrive at a certain number, but one thing I can tell you is that it’s a large number and they are being profiled for prosecution.
“It is indeed a large number, and I’m not in a position to give you the precise number as at now because the profiling and investigation are ongoing,” he added.
The minister reiterated the determination of the government to “aggressively pursue those people that are involved in terrorist financing as far as the Nigerian State is concerned.”
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