Acting IGP, Mohammed Abubakar AdamuThe Inspector General of Police (IGP), Mohammed Adamu has vowed to find the killers of Mrs. Funke Olakunrin, daughter of the leader of the Pan-Yoruba socio-cultural organization, Afenifere, Chief Reuben Fasorantin, even as Police boss ordered his men and officers to intensify security surveillances in the Southwest and South South.
As is usual with him, President Muhammadu Buhari could not hide his feeling about the set of ministers that formed his first term Federal Executive Council, with whom he was holding, mainly, weekly Executive Council meeting.
Speaking at a dinner he had with the leadership of the National Assembly on Thursday, July 11, at the Presidential Villa, the President made it clear that he did not know most of the ministers he worked with in his first term, from 2015 to 2019.
The President, not given to hiding his feelings or pretending, said: “The last cabinet which I had, most of them, a majority of them I didn’t know. I had to accept their names and recommendation from the party. I worked with them for three and a half years.”
Well, it is not very clear what the President implied by such statement: was it that he was not comfortable with the ministers, who, by the implication of his postulation, were forced down his throat all through the three and half years? Yes, he did not know most of them, which was understandable as it was impossible for him to have known them before he appointed them, but was the fact that he did not know them had any negative impact in their general performances in office?
We in Greenbarge Reporters feel, and strongly so, that the question of knowing everyone across the 36 States of the federation in governing a country as widely dimensional in every respect as Nigeria does not make a good case. In other words, it does not make any social or political sense for a leader to know beforehand, every other person he would appoint for the federal executive council, and more importantly, that such knowledge of the ministers is a guarantee for superlative performance of same.
There is even argument in some quarters that those who easily disappoint leaders are those that are well known by such leaders. An example is the former National Security Adviser (NSA), Lawal Daura, who was alleged to have betrayed his uncle, President Buhari when his loyalty was most needed. Remember that Daura was kicked out of office by the Buhari’s administration on the basis of such betrayal.
It is a universal fact that one usually gets to know other people through acknowledgement from others who know such person, and even in as wide as Nigeria, a leader cannot insist that he MUST personally know all the appointees before he would appoint them. It is practically impossible.
As a matter of fact, what President Buhari is saying, including the fact that he is being pressurized to appoint ministers, is that Nigerians should keep on waiting until he is able to gather all the people he personally know before he settles for business of governance; for, governance, in our own kind of democracy, can only be done with ease, along with egg-heads and technocrats, sitting together regularly to fashion out fresh directions. And do we assume that such wait will take another one year or more?
It is our humble opinion that the President should move fast, make quick consultations and come out with the ministers before the end of July, when he would have spent clear two months since he was sworn-in for a second term and five clear months since he was formally declared winner of the February 23rd Presidential election by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). The President should know, as he actually acknowledged, that he has just four more years to correct all the anomalies in the polity and some mistakes he made in his first tenure.
We remind Mr. President that one thing with time is that it moves faster than we imagine. This means that before one would say Jack-the-little-boy, definitely, we would have been preparing for the 2023 general elections, which may beat into background, whatever noise anyone would like to make about achievements or no achievements.
Philosophers have warned us not to postpone to tomorrow what we can do today. Mr. President Sir, assembling ministers is what you can do within a week. And you have the liberty to ease out any of them that is not performing later. It is allowed.
We humbly and patriotically submit that tomorrow may be too late, sir.
Gani AdamsThe chief war lord, Aare Onakakanfo of Yorubaland, Gani Adams, has issued a war threat over the killing of Funke Olakunrin, the daughter of the leader of pan-Yoruba socio-cultural group, Afenifere, Pa Reuben Fasoranti.
There’s a notorious programme currently going on called THE BIG BROTHER NAIJA. The winner of this notorious show is expected to walk away with a whopping N25 million and a breathtaking car. All that is required to win this show is to be Live with a bunch of fellow crazy, irresponsible people, do all sorts of immoral things, and, viola, you’re the winner.
Segun FaforeLagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu has appointed a public relations professional Olusegun Michael Fafore as his Executive Assistant on Public Relations and New Media.
Until his appointment, Fafore was the Consultant-in-Chief of Reputation Plus Limited, a reputation and communication management company he founded a few years ago.
Fafore’s career in the Corporate Communications and Brand/Reputation management business began shortly after he graduated with a B. A. (Hons), degree in English, from Obafemi Awolowo University in 1999. He joined Access Bank where he rose to become the Head of Corporate Communications of the bank with outstanding achievements in managing the image of the leading Bank in Nigeria.
Fafore had since then, taken up senior communication roles in corporate organizations across the Banking and Oil and Gas sectors of the economy, which had afforded him the opportunity to help leading brands and institutions in Nigeria to establish good business reputation and brand awareness.
Before setting up his company, Fafore was in charge of external communications and stakeholders’ engagement initiatives at Nestoil, a leading Nigerian Oil Service company operating in the upstream and midstream, engineering, procurement and construction.
He was able to develop and supervise the execution of strategic plans in the Corporate Communications Department, thereby facilitating the achievement of organizational goals.
He also guided corporate communication team members towards successful execution of integrated communications and corporate social responsibility agenda.
Fafore, apart from graduating from OAU, also attended the University of Leeds (2014 to 2015) where he bagged Masters of Arts (M.A) in the field of Corporate Communications and Public Relations. He also attended Rutgers Business School (2015) for a ‘Mini MBA’ in the Field of Social Media Marketing. He also has a diploma in Public Relations and graduated with distinction from 2010 to 2011 (Chartered Institute of Public Relations).
Fafore is a highly resourceful PR practitioner who has contributed immensely to the growth of many of the organisations he has worked for. His expertise is in Public Affairs and Crisis Communications, Corporate PR, Financial PR, Media Relations, Stakeholders Management, communication and Campaign Planning, Political Communication and Content Development
Orji Uzor KaluThe Chief Whip of the Nigerian Senate and former Governor of Abia State, Senator Orji Uzor Kalu has said that he provided land for Fulani herdsmen for their trade when he was the governor of the State between 1999 to 2007.
At an interaction with the Senate Press Corps today, July 12, the lawmaker, who is a member of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), said: “I provided land for herders in Umuahia during my time as governor of Abia State where cattle were brought from the North for sale across the Southeast and there were no problems.
“When the executive members of Miyetti Allah approached my government, I chose where Shoprite is located now for them along the Port Harcourt expressway.
“One day, I took a 32-seater bus and I asked their Executives to follow me to where I showed them and they agreed that it was appropriate for them and that was how I established RUGA.”
The Chief Whip said that he trades in cows, saying that cow business is profiteering.
According to him, many Nigerian elite have cows and they are interested in that business, adding that it is wrong for people to see cow business as exclusively that of the Fulani.
The Court of Appeal, sitting in Abuja, the Nigeria’s federal capital, has dismissed a suit seeking to nullify the candidature of President Muhammadu Buhari on basis of his academic qualification.
A three-man panel of the court, led by Justice Tinuade Akomolafe-Wilson, in a unanimous judgment, affirmed the earlier verdict of the Federal High Court in Abuja which had dismissed the suit, filed by Kalu Kalu, Labaran Ismail and Hassy Kyari el-Kuris. The federal high court had struck out the suit because “the matter was brought outside the specified period of time.”
Justice Mohammed Idris, who read the judgment, held that the case was brought later than the stipulated period of 14 days when a pre-election matter ought to have been instituted.
“I have no doubt in my mind that the cause of action arose on October 18 when the documents said to be false that is the Curriculum Vitae and affidavit were submitted to INEC in form CF001.”
The judge said that “serious” attention has to be paid to when the cause of action arose.
Justice Mohammed Idris said that the court could not accord itself any jurisdiction outside that given to it by the law.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has made another intervention in the retail Secondary Market Intervention Sales (SMIS) to the tune of $2698.71million in addition to CNY 39.69million in the spot and short tenured forwards segment of the inter-bank foreign market.
The Director in the Corporate Communications Department of the apex bank, Isaac Okorafor, said today, July 12 that the interventions in dollars were to meet requests in the agricultural and raw materials sectors even as the transactions in Chinese Yuan were for Renminbi- denominated Letters of Credit.
Okorafor said that the bank’s management is satisfied with the stability in the forex market, stressing that the bank would continue to make necessary interventions in order to ensure liquidity in the Nigerian foreign exchange market.
He said that the bank is encouraged by the improved inflow of foreign exchange, which has kept the exchange rate around the N360/$1 for close to 30 months.
While calling on Nigerians to continue to support the policies of the CBN aimed at boosting the production capacity of local industries as well as creating jobs for citizens, he assured that the bank would remain committed to ensuring that all the sectors of the forex market continue to enjoy access to the needed foreign exchange.
Meanwhile, a dollar exchanged for N360 while CNY1 exchanged at N55, at the Bureau de Change (BDC) segment of the foreign exchange market today, July 12.
Former President GoodluckFormer Nigeria President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan has given reasons why his government could not implement the recommendations of the 2014 National Conference which he convened to address some of the challenges the country was facing, including security and national cohesion.
Speaking today, July 11 in Lagos at the launch of a book to commemorate the 80th birthday of a frontline politician, Senator Femi Okurounmu, Dr. Jonathan said: ”my administration was prepared to change the narrative for our constitutional democracy with the assurance that sovereignty really belongs to the people.
”However, we were time constrained. The conference was concluded less than one year to the end of my tenure. We received the report specifically on August 21, 2014, at a time the nation was in the mood of electioneering.
”Then, members of the National Assembly, whose duty it was to consider and validate the process were pre-occupied with the battle of political survival.
The former president said the implementation of the recommendations of the conference required amendment of the constitution and the National Assembly did not have the time to go through the process.
”I noticed that each time I express this belief and optimism, I always get hit with the counter narrative that seems to question my inability to implement the recommendations during my presidency.
”This is a question I have answered in many fora. In my book,”My Transition Hours”, Chapter 10 provided detailed answers in this regard.
”I believed that given the nature of the consultations and due deliberations involved in advancing the process, an orderly and systematic implementation could have been concluded in less than a year. It was obvious we did not have that time before the end of my administration.”
Jonathan said his administration did not insist on a rushed implementation because he did not want be seen to have organized the conference to gain political popularity.
Jonathan, who was chairman of the book launch, said he believed the implementation of the conference report would heal frayed nerves and promote solidarity, adding that the solutions to most of the problems Nigeria is facing today “lie in our honest assessment of the recommendations of the 2014 National Conference.
”Our country is faced on all corners by a multiplicity of challenges, bothering mainly on security and national cohesion. Although these problems are not new, the discord has continued to widen over time.
”I understand that efforts are being made toward addressing some of these challenges, however, we seem to play politics with sensitive and serious matters.
”The call for reforms has continued to grow louder, gathering the kind of momentum that should no longer be overlooked, if the nation must make real progress.
”If we take politics out of our consideration, there is every likelihood that a diligent implementation of the key recommendations of the conference will lead the nation out of the woods,”
The former president described the author as a great politician who was not given to politics of bitterness.
He said Okurounmu was one of the critics of his administration, but his observations were always constructive and helpful.
Dr. Jonathan commended the politician for documenting his experiences in the memoir, saying that the book would provide great lessons for the present generation and posterity.
”He has shown courage by documenting some of his experiences in the course of his glorious service to his nation and community for the sake of posterity,” he said.
The book, a memoir by the politician, is titled: ”The Dream: Pursuing the Black Renaissance Through The Murky Waters of Nigerian Politics.”
Source: NAN.
Salute To Nduka Obaigbena, The Duke Of Possibilities
Love him or loath him, you can’t take one thing away from Prince Nduka Obaigbena: his phenomenal pluck. The word “impossibility” simply doesn’t exist to him. So, he dares where most will dither. He throws himself and everything and everyone around at his latest ideas. And he is always brimming with them, for he is an ideas man, a dreamer of dreams. But he is not just an idle dreamer. He is also a man of action. The possibility of failures scares him not, fazes him not, immobilises him not. So he keeps walking. And dreaming.
If the dream turns sour—as dreams sometimes do— he just pauses, then dreams more. And when he succeeds—as dreamers sometimes do— he barely pauses, savours the fruit of his dream a bit, then dreams more. He comes across as someone who gets bored easily and is constantly looking for new grounds to break. His is a spirit in constant exploratory mode. You can accuse Obaigbena of many things, but it is difficult to successfully indict him of lacking imagination, or of not daring to dream BIG.
Obaigbena’s first audacious move that captured the country’s imagination was in 1986 when as a 27-year-old he started ThisWeek, an all-gloss national news magazine. Though he had had some stint as a cartoonist and satirist at The Nigerian Observer (published out of Benin City) and as a representative of the supplement sections of Newsweek and Time magazines, Obaigbena did not have the intimidating journalistic pedigree of a Dele Giwa (who with three other journalism notables of the era started Nigeria’s first quality news magazine, Newswatch in 1985) or the deep pockets and national name recognition of an MKO Abiola (publisher of the Concord Group of newspapers) or the old money background of a Alex Ibru (who was assisted by the legendary Stanley Macebuh to start The Guardian, which for a long time towered, colossus-like, above the quality newspaper landscape in Nigeria).
What Obaigbena lacked in all of that, he more than compensated for with uncommon boldness. He plunged headlong into the elite league of magazine publishing in Nigeria. And he did it in a way that couldn’t but be noticed, with nerve and panache, two attributes he will later be known for down the decades. The new kid on the media block in 1987 was not there to play. Rather, he was there to play big. He pulled together a respectable board of directors that included the late Gamaliel Onosode and renowned journalists from the leading media houses of the time, led by the inimitable Sonala Olumhense.
And not a man for half measures, he wanted his newsmagazine to be comparable to Time and Newsweek not just in terms of content but also in print quality. ThisWeek was thus printed in London, freighted into Lagos, and sold in major cities in Nigeria. In short steps, ThisWeek became a force to reckon with, giving Newswatch (the king of the pack of that period) a good run for its money. But ThisWeek’s dazzling run came to an end in 1991. This happened due to different reasons, depending on whom you speak to. Based on how the experiment ended, most people would be traumatised. And even if they are not, it would be impossible to convince investors and journalists to come with them again. But not Obaigbena. It was just a break in transmission. He would be back.
And he did come back. After a not-so-eventful stint in politics, he returned with THISDAY in 1995. Not many gave the refreshing newspaper a chance—including my humble self. The received wisdom was that whatever initial advantage that THISDAY enjoyed was because the major newspapers of the day were under proscription. Once the ban on established newspapers like National Concord, The Guardian, Punch and others was lifted, THISDAY and others that came to fill the void would pack up. The established papers returned, and indeed most of the space fillers gasped and disappeared. But not THISDAY. The paper is not just still here as the paper of choice for Nigeria’s political and business elite and getting ready to mark its 25th anniversary in January, it has been a major force in Nigeria’s media landscape. It would be hard for anyone to write an authoritative history of Nigeria’s traditional media in the last three decades and not devote sizeable space to THISDAY, and I say this as a more than casual student of the 160 years of newspapering in Nigeria.
THISDAY’s reputation as a media trailblazer is not in doubt. I am one of those who still think that the paper could have done much more and probably be better managed. But even at that, the sterling contributions of THISDAY to the following milestones in Nigeria’s media cannot be over-emphasised: the comprehensive treatment of breaking stories, the prioritisation of political and economic analyses, the emergence and popularity of back-page columnists, the tasty coverage of fashion and high society in glossy pull-outs, and the emergence of full-colour newspapers.
At some point, THISDAY almost became synonymous with not just breaking stories but also breaking new grounds for the industry, a trait that Obaigbena has also taken into other trailblazing and pan-African ventures such as THISDAY Excellence Awards, THISDAY South Africa, THISDAY International, THISDAY Music and Fashion Festival, and ARISE Television. To be sure, the staff and management of THISDAY and others contribute in no small way to this pioneering propensity. But the bulk of the credit must go to Obaigbena who constantly pushes the limits and refuses to believe anything is impossible.
This publisher (who actually prefers to be called the editor-in-chief or just a reporter, depending on his mood) is not your passive publisher. He is always in the thick of things, working his expansive rolodex and access for stories and insights, deploying his artistic impulses to give the paper and other ventures distinct aesthetic edge, tapping into his cosmopolitan reach to comb for ideas that can be simultaneously localized and internationalized, and spotting and playing talents to their sometimes hidden strengths.
There are two other personal attributes that I don’t think people give Obaigbena enough credits for: he can be surprisingly generous and he can be disarmingly forgiving. Those early days of THISDAY, he would return from trips abroad with gifts for his staff, and because he has a good taste you could be sure of the quality of what you get from him, be it wrist watches, perfumes or shirts. Beyond token gifts, he is also known for giving out major gifts, including brand new cars. I have been one of such beneficiaries, even when I was no longer in his employ. How forgiving he could be is the more surprising for me. THISDAY is known as the place that ex-staff could always return to, even if they had a hostile exit. I joke that he embodies the free-entry/free-exit spirit of the competitive market (he is an unapologetic believer of the gospel of Free Market).
Like the rest of us, he is just human. A Hausa proverb says the best a man can be is nine out of ten (and not a perfect ten). But his talents, his boldness, his contributions to journalism and cultural landscapes, and those touching traits give, in my book, a rounded and more than redeeming view of this exceptional prince of Owa Oyibu who is also a citizen of the world. As the man for whom the word audaciousness seemed coined turns sixty on July 14th, I wish him good health and many more years of pluck and possibilities.
Adio is former staff of THISDAY and now the executive secretary of NEITI.