Friday 3 January 2014

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

Hillary Clinton Debuts New Haircut, Bangs: See the Picture

New year, new mayor, new hair! Hillary Clinton debuted a new haircut at the inauguration of New York City's new mayorBill de Blasio on Wednesday, Jan. 1, complete with a fresh set of bangs.

PHOTOS: Famous political families

The former Secretary of State, 66, cozied up beside husbandBill Clinton as the power couple watched the ceremony take place on the steps of City Hall. Wearing a long, black wool coat and leather gloves, the blonde political player debuted a shaggy, short bob with choppy, layered, side-swept bangs grazing her forehead.

PHOTOS: Celebs' political affiliations

Former President Clinton smiled beside his chic wife in a gray wool coat and checkered scarf; the two sat beside New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo and former NYC MayorMichael Bloomberg.

Not since Michelle Obama revealed her bangs last January -- which the First Lady subsequently removed due to the style's "irritating" nature -- have bangs created so much buzz!

PHOTOS: Stars who've played President

Clinton's new look, however, was actually not her first attempt at rocking choppy, layered locks. In July, the stylish mother-of-one revealed lauded, lightly-styled, wavy, side bangs that designer Oscar de la Renta later said he had inspired. "I told her a while back she should cut her hair," the American designer told Gothammagazine back in August. "She said she couldn’t do it then because when she arrived in a foreign country and asked for a hairdresser, Homeland Security would have to check the person out."

This article originally appeared on Usmagazine.com: Hillary Clinton Debuts New Haircut, Bangs: See the Picture

YahooNews

'Great Train Robber' Ronnie Biggs defiant even in death

A floral tribute stands against the coffin of Ronnie Biggs as his funeral cortege arrives at Golders …

By Alexander Winning

LONDON (Reuters) - "Great Train Robber" Ronnie Biggs arrived for his funeral on Friday in a hearse bearing a large flower display in the shape of an obscene two-finger "V-sign", a fitting emblem of his lifelong defiance of the British authorities.

Biggs, a small-time criminal who became a celebrity during a life on the run after the notorious 1963 robbery, died last month at the age of 84 in a London nursing home.

He had served just 15 months of a 30-year jail term when he escaped in 1965, fleeing to Australia, then Brazil, from where he flaunted his freedom, partying in exotic locations and giving interviews to the British press.

But after 36 years on the run, Biggs returned to Britain in 2001, broke and in poor health, going back to jail until illness prompted his release in 2009.

In his final year, Biggs appeared in public twice, frail and wheelchair-bound, but unrepentant for his role in the heist in which the gang stole 2.6 million pounds ($4.2 million) from a Royal Mail train, equivalent to about 40 million today.

At the funeral of the robbery's mastermind Bruce Reynolds in March last year, Biggs found the strength to stick two fingers up at the cameras.

On Friday, a cortege of Hell's Angels bikers and a brass band playing "When The Saints Go Marching In" led Biggs' coffin into a north London crematorium, followed by his family and various underworld figures, and watched by a scrum of media and some passers-by.

"Biggs was not a major criminal but he had a eye for publicity. This is a circus, and everyone has fallen for it," said local resident David Rose, watching as the coffin draped in the British and Brazilian flags passed by in heavy rain.

HERO OR VILLAIN?

The Great Train Robbery became one of the defining events of 1960s Britain, coinciding with the Profumo affair - a sex-and-spies scandal that rocked the British establishment - and the rise of the Beatles and other working-class heroes. It spawned several films.

Biggs, the most famous member of the gang, was a latter-day Robin Hood to some but an unrepentant villain to those who pointed to the violence used on the train driver.

Jack Mills was hit over the head with a iron bar during the robbery and died seven years later, with some people blaming the injuries for his death.

A 67-year-old local resident who came to see what the media fuss was about, but declined to give her name, said: "I am ashamed I have come to watch a common criminal being buried."

Biggs, who was born in south London, always said he had never regretted his role in the robbery as it had given him a "little place in history".

His life, chronicled in a 2011 autobiography entitled "Odd Man Out: The Last Straw", made ideal fodder for a film script.

After escaping from London's Wandsworth Prison in 1965 by scaling a wall with a rope ladder, he used his share of the loot for plastic surgery and passage to Australia.

He later fled to Brazil, via Panama and Venezuela, pursued by his great adversary, London police detective Jack Slipper ("Slipper of the Yard"). The fact that he had a son with a Brazilian woman eventually spared him extradition.

Tanned and sporting his white hair in a ponytail, he regularly gave interviews to British newspapers. In 1978 he even recorded a song, "No One is Innocent", with the British punk band the Sex Pistols.

In 1981 he was abducted from Rio by former British commandos who took him to the Caribbean on a yacht, hoping to sell him to the highest bidder.

YahooNews

Scholar Forces Nigerian Corruption Story To Global Agenda

By SaharaReporters, New York

Nigerian scholar and political anthropologist, Wale Adebanwi, Friday, put the story of Nigeria’s challenge with corruption back on the new year’s national agenda when his book, Authority Stealing: Anti-Corruption War and Democratic Politics in Post-Military Nigeria was picked by Foreign Affairs, a leading global journal on foreign policy and global affairs, as one of the best three books from Africa in the past year. [Download some pages of the book here: http://www.cap-press.com/pdf/2262.pdf]
A Nigerian edition of the book was published as A Paradise for Maggots: The Story of a Nigerian Anti-Corruption Czar, in 2011.
Foreign Affairs assesses that in Adebanwi’s book “Readers will be rewarded with a thorough education in the personalities, practices, and political culture that allow billions of dollars of Nigerian state revenues to disappear every year.”
Mr. Adebanwi, an associate professor in African American and African Studies, at the University of California, Davis, United States, holds two doctorates, one in political science from the University of Ibadan and another from the University of Cambridge in social anthropology.
The book, according to the journal, “ranges broadly across recent Nigerian history, [and that] its central purpose is to assess postcolonial Nigeria’s most serious campaign to eradicate large-scale corruption. In 2003, President Olusegun Obasanjo appointed Nuhu Ribadu as chair of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, a position he would retain until 2008, when Obasanjo’s successor, Umaru Yar’Adua, removed him.”
In an interview Friday, the scholar minimised the honour, tersely saying “very flattering,” and bouncing the honour to the subject of the book. “It speaks more to the value of what Nuhu Ribadu was able to accomplish at the EFCC despite intimidating challenges than to my own effort to document the process.”
Mr. Adebanwi’s book shares a place on the pick list with External Mission: The ANC in Exile, 1960–1990 By Stephen Ellis which paints “a fascinating history of the internal politics of the African National Congress (ANC) in the 30 years during which it was banned in South Africa and was forced to operate from bases outside the country,” and Poor Numbers: How We Are Misled by African Development Statistics and What to Do About It, by Morten Jerven, which “demonstrates with devastating clarity that African governments produce imprecise economic statistics that should not be trusted.”
Cambridge University Press will publish Mr. Adebanwi’s latest book, Yoruba Elites and Ethnic Politics in Nigeria: Obafemi Awolowo and Corporate Agency in an African Lifeworld in March 2014. http://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/african-government-politics-and-policy/yoruba-elites-and-ethnic-politics-nigeria-bafemi-awolowo-and-corporate-agency
Mr. Adebanwi who started his career as a news reporter before switching to the academia, has won honours around the world including the Bill and Melinda Gates Scholarship, UK, MacArthur Foundation (US) Grant, Social Science Research Council, New York Fellowship, Claude Ake Memorial Scholarship, Rockefeller Foundation, Bellagio, Italy, Fellowship and Rhodes Senior Scholarship, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa. In May 2013, he gave the prestigious Oxford University African Studies Centre Annual Lecture.
He has served on the editorial board of the Nigerian Tribune and is a contributing editor of TheNEWS magazine.

Saharareporters

BREAKING NEWS: Rivers Assembly Majority Leader, Chidi Lloyd, Arrested For Murder

The Rivers State Police Command said it had arrested the Leader of the Rivers State House of Assembly, Mr. Chidi Lloyd, for the alleged murder of his kinsman, Mr. Kingsley Ejeuo and a police sergeant, Urang Obediah.

A statement made on Thursday night indicated that Lloyd was purportedly arrested on his way to join the state Governor, Mr. Rotimi Amaechi, in his private jet in order to escape justice.

The statement sent via e-mail by the State Police Public Relations Officer, Mr. Ahmad Mohammad, specified that Lloyd knocked down Obediah while pursuing Ejeuo, identified to be his political opponent.

Lloyd, who was still standing trial for his involvement in the fracas that took place in the State House on July 9, 2013, was said to have rammed into Ejeuo’s Passat car with a bulletproof vehicle and killed him (Ejeo).

The police command pointed out that it had initially thought it was an auto accident until Lloyd relocated to another hospital, “conscious of what he did.”

“The Rivers State Police Command has arrested Hon. Chidi Llyod of the Rivers State House of Assembly for murder of police Sgt. Urang Obediah and Mr. Kingsley Ejeuo, his kinsman and arch political opponent.

“He was arrested on his way to join Governor Amaechi Rotimi in his private jet at the Airforce base to escape justice.

“Hon. Chidi Lloyd on December 30, 2013 while pursing his political opponent, knocked down Sgt. Urang Obediah, in spite of his effort to stop him, rammed and killed him and went ahead to crush the Passat car of Mr. Kingsley Ejeuo was driving and killed him.

“Initially the Police thought that it was a mere accident, which ought to have been a manslaughter. The Commissioner of Police directed ACP Aliyu Garba, the Area Commander Metro, to visit him in his hospital bed and commiserate with him, conscious of what he did, Chidi Lloyd relocated to another hospital.

“Facts emerged that Chidi Lloyd drove a bullet-proof vehicle while pursuing his political opponent, late Mr. Kingsley Ejeuo, and he (Lloyd) knocked down Sgt. Urang Obediah, who died on the spot and (Lloyd) moved ahead to smash a political opponent in his Passat car who equally died instantly,” the statement reads.

The statement added that late Ejeuo, who hailed from the same place with Lloyd was believed to be in the PDP camp led by Elder Felix Obuah.

The statement also indicated that the Leader of the House allegedly escaped from the hospital where he was being guarded by four policemen.

However, a top government official told our correspondent that the claim by the police that Lloyd tried to join Amaechi in his (Amaechi) private jet in order to escape justice was a blatant lie.

It will be recalled that Lloyd, who presented himself to the Nigeria Police after a video clip showed him hitting a member of the House of Assembly, Mr. Michael Chinda, with a mace on the head, was charged to court on a six-count charge, including attempted murder.

Lloyd was later granted bail in order to receive medical attention after sustaining injury during the July 9, 2013 free-for-all in the chambers of the State House of Assembly.

InformationNigeria