The Kogi State governor, Alhaji Yahaya Bello, was said to have involved in an auto accident leading to a leg injury, as a result of which he now walks with clutches.
The governor appeared today, at Aso Villa Presidential Villa to attend the All Progressive Congress (APC) governors meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari. He was walking with clutches on his two sides. His left foot is swollen up and heavily bandaged.
Information had it that governor Yahaya Bello was returning from Abuja last Friday, being driven in a BMW saloon car when the accident happened around the Lokoja market area.
He was said to have been dragged by the vehicle for some metres before the driver could realize what was happening and halted the car. The governor was said to have been rescued by the security operatives and others in the convoy.
Governor Yahaya Bello was returning from Abuja after the caucus and the National Executive Committee (NEC) meetings of the APC with the intention of attending the funeral of the late Deputy Majority Leader of the House of Representatives, Hon Buba Jubril. But the accident prevented him from attending as he was immediately rushed to an undisclosed hospital and was represented at the funeral by his deputy, Simon Achuba.
The Director General, media and publicity to the governor, Kingsley Fanwo, confirmed the incidence, saying that the governor injured his leg as he “missed his footing.”
A statement by the media aide said Yahaya Bello injured his left foot while alighting from a vehicle, denying the allegation that the governor had been flown abroad for medical attention.
The statement read: “We wish to refute rumours that the Governor of Kogi State, His Excellency, Alhaji Yahaya Bello is either hospitalised or otherwise incapacitated.
“The Governor missed his footing last Friday, March 30, 2018, while alighting from a vehicle and injured his left foot. He was treated by his doctors, who bandaged the leg and discharged him.
“We thank all the Governor’s supporters and well-wishers who reached us to inquire after his wellbeing. His Excellency is doing very well and will be at work as usual after the Easter holidays.” [myad]
A chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Plateau State, Alexander Mwolwu, has accused former President Olusegun Obasanjo of being an ungrateful and corrupt Nigerian leader.
“Even though OBJ’s plots to discredit PDP to promote his own political party, SDP, he seems to have missed it and not knowing what he is doing. He is the most ungrateful and corrupt Nigerian leader, who never knew how PDP was formed.”
Mwolwus told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Pankshin that Obasanjo introduced corruption and that he corrupted the National Assembly with his third term failed ambition.
According to him, OBJ corruptly sold out government properties to his cronies and spent billions of Naira on electricity, which Nigerians couldn’t see its impact but only darkness.
that OBJ’s pronouncement is “very unfortunate’’ and “selfish in nature’’.
The PDP Chieftain also accused Obansanjo of plotting to discredit the party to promote Social Democratic Party (SDP).
While describing PDP’s apology to Nigerians through its National Chairman as “a right step in the right direction’’, he said: “Only great men own up to their mistakes.”
“If PDP had apologized willfully haven owned up to its mistakes, I shouldn’t be castigated for that because every human organization has its own limitations
“But all the same, his party will not be anywhere close to having the confidence of Nigerians if that is the way he wants to go drumming for support to it.
“Obasandjo was never a member of PDP but out to sheer pity and magnanimity, the party brought him out of prison and made him president on a platter of Gold.”
Mwowus said: “we made him who is is today, yet he had the guts to spit and shout against us.” [myad]
A Nigerian serving Senator, representing Kogi State West Senatorial zone, Dino Melaye and the four suspects rearrested for alleged conspiracy and unlawful possession of prohibited firearms will be charged at the Federal High Court in Lokoja, Kogi on May 10.
The Nigeria Police Force Spokesman, Jimoh Moshood, who briefed newsmen on the arrest of four of the six suspects today, Tuesday in Abuja, said that two of the suspects are still at large.
The suspects are: 31 year old Kabiru Seidu, alias Osama, 25 year old Nuhu Salisu, alias small, 27 year old Musa Mohammed, alias Iko and 26 year old Emmanuel Audu. The Police Command in Kogi State had, on March 28, announced the escape from lawful custody of six suspects including Seidu and Salisu.
Jimoh Moshood said that Seidu and Salisu who were principal suspects were rearrested in Tafa Balewa Local Government Area of Bauchi State and Ganaja Village, Lokoja, Kogi.
The Police spokesman said that the six accomplice in the case arrested by the police would be prosecuted with the six rearrested suspects, adding the suspects are: John Beneche, 22, Seye Atowoju, 27 Danjuma Yunusa, 35 , Egga Ochai,50 Abbas Haruna, 30 and Gloria Audu, 28.
He said that the suspects would be arraigned in court for prosecution on completion of investigation.
Moshood warned that the police would not relent in its efforts to check activities of unscrupulous politicians, adding that they must play the game according to the rules.
He commended members of the public for giving the police timely information that aided the re-arrest of the suspects.
The spokesman said that the force`s fight against crimes and criminality in the country remained unequivocal and unwavering.
One of the suspects, Seidu had confessed that Melaye handed over to him a bag containing one AK47 rifle, two Pump Action guns and N430,000.00 to share with his boys. [myad]
Nigeria’s foreign exchange reserves have gained 8.8 per cent as at March 28, to $46.2 billion, compared to same period in February 2018.
According to data from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), the reserve is still far from the peak of $64 billion recorded in August 2008.
It shows that debt sales such as Eurobond offering by Federal Government helped Nigeria to accrue billions of dollars in foreign reserves, Reuters reports.
The government raised $2.5 billion in Eurobonds in February and it is hoping to raise more.
The apex bank held its statutory Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting, today, April 3 and the meeting will be concluded tomorrow April 4, 2018. [myad]
President Muhammadu Buhari has extolled the bravery and forthrightness of the former governor of Edo State, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole as he turned 65.
In a birthday message today, President Buhari described Oshimhole as foremost labour leader, who rendered courageous and selfless service to humanity, the nation and his community.
He said that as a former leader of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) and a governor, Oshiomhole instituted long lasting changes in Edo State for eight years, particularly the investments in people by enhancing the health, educational and physical infrastructure standard of the state.
The President extoled the vision, bravery and forthrightness of Comrade Oshiomhole, adding that as a unionist and labour leader, he played frontline roles in ensuring a return to democracy and the entrenchment of democratic principles in governance by continually challenging the norms and emphasizing the rule of law, people friendly policies, probity and accountability.
Buhari acknowledged that the nation has benefitted a lot from the robust and responsive leadership style of the former governor, believing that as he grows older, his invaluable wisdom will be most useful for the growth of the nation. [myad]
Senator Representing Anambra North Constituency, Stella Adaeze Oduah, has described a list containing treasury looters in the past Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as released by the minister of information and culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed as a childish altercation.
The Senator, who name made the list as Aviation minister in the Goodluck Jonathan government regretted, in a statement reacting to the list that the illusionary list of looters was by treachery or by happenstance.
“It is worrisome how a serving Minister could condescend so low in what appeared like a childish altercation to start mentioning names of his alleged looters without verified or verifiable facts, in order to win what he considered a quarrel.
“ In deliberately taking on those he considered prominent in the achievements of the past administration, he mentioned my name against an allegation of a whooping sum of N9.8 billion naira. But for the records, i would have simply ignored him since his notoriety in making false and laughable statements has gained prominence in recent times.
“Record has it that my achievements as the Aviation Minister are unbeatable till date. I did not engage in any financial impropriety as the Minister and the allegation involving the said sum of N9.8 billion is not only untrue but laughable. The said contract awarded by the Ministry of Aviation under my watch was executed and based on the request of the contractors, they were paid their money which they utilized in the manner they did.
“The records are still with the Ministry. I have no business with the companies that took part in
executing that contract and till now, I do not understand how anything went wrong over that contract that was executed. I have never taken any illegal proceeds from the government purse.
“God had since blessed me tremendously before I joined politics in the quest to serve my country
and I remain content and grateful to God. The trend of harassing past office holders with false and malicious allegations to score a political point destroys rather than helps the integrity of the anti-corruption stance of the government and indeed makes holding public office very discouraging.
“The machines seized/forfeited by the Federal Government over the allegation on the said money are not mine. I challenge Lai Mohammed to provide evidence linking me with his wild allegations. I have been waiting for that evidence and I am yet to see any.
“All allegations made against me remain mere media sensations orchestrated for mere political reasons. Oftentimes, I ignore them believing the orchestrators would repent after several failed outings.
“Mis-using the media and misleading the society through the media at the expense of innocent citizens in order to win a medal is unfortunate and most irresponsible. Governance is not warfare. Calumny is evil.” [myad]
President Muhammadu Buhari has described the passing away of South-African anti-apartheid icon, Mrs. Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, as a huge loss to Africa, of a courageous woman.
The President said that she was a woman of uncommon determination, steadfastness and perseverance who held aloft the torch of the struggle against institutionalized discrimination even while her ex-husband, the late Madiba, President Nelson Mandela was incarcerated.
A statement by the senior special assistant to the Presieent on media and publicity, Malam Garba Shehu, quoted Buhari commiserating with the family of the deceased, the government and people of South Africa on behalf of the government and people of Nigeria.
He urging the South Africans to be consoled by the knowledge that the late Winnie Mandela’s contributions to ending apartheid will not be forgotten, adding that she remained a pride not only to the African woman, but all Africans.
President Buhari prayed that God will comfort all those who mourn the departed and grant her soul eternal rest. [myad]
The anti corruption organization, Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) has asked President Muhammadu Buhari’s government to send former President Olusegun Obasanjo to jail over alleged $16 billion fraud committed during his regime.
The anti-corruption organization, in a letter addressed to the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Water Samuel Nkanu Onnoghen, insisted that an independent counsel should be appointed to investigate the $16 billion which Obasanjo’ s government spent on power projects between 1999 and 2007.
In the letter dated 24 November, 2017 and signed by Mr. Timothy Olawale, the organization’s Senior Staff Counsel, SERAP said that the request was based on Section 52 of the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences (ICPC) Act 2000 as well as the letter and spirit of the Act, and the object and purpose of the 1999 Constitution (as amended).
SERAP recalled that a parliamentary hearing by the House of Representatives into the spending of $16 billion on the power project between 1999 and 2007 revealed, through testimonies of witnesses, that the amount budgeted for the power project may have been stolen by some government officials and others and cannot be accounted for.
It pointed out that the parliamentary hearing, which took place between March 11 and 12 March, 2008, revealed that Mr. Bernerd Mensen, the Chief Executive Officer of German firm, Lameyer, was paid N370 million (out of the total contract sum of N600million) just for a feasibility study on a power station. Mr. Mensen, SERAP recalled, however, confessed that he had never visited the site of the Mambilla Hydro-Electric Power Project in Taraba State.
Similarly recalled was the revelation that N200 million of the N370million collected was spent to build a bungalow at Gembu, apparently to create the impression that work was in progress, but the project was later abandoned.
A witness, who testified at the hearing, recollected SERAP, said that the ground-breaking was done at Gembu, about 25kilometers from the Mambilla, and that they never got to the Mambilla.
He also disclosed that the sample of oil Lameyer collected for test was dumped at somebody’s compound that the company did nothing to implement the project, which was expected to generate 2,600 megawatts of electricity.
The investigative committee, SERAP reminded the CJN, was equally told that the contracts awarded for the Kainji, Egbin, Afam and Ugehlli power stations were never executed despite being included by the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) in its report to the hearing on how it spent its budgetary allocations between 1999 and 2007.
The hearing also revealed that there were about nine of such contracts, with an aggregate value of $142million.
“Section 52 of the Corrupt Practices Act requires the Chief Justice of Nigeria to authorise an independent counsel to investigate any allegation of corruption against high-level public officials at the federal or state level-and to report his findings to the National Assembly or appropriate house of assembly,” SERAP stated in the letter.
It expressed the belief that the findings by the parliamentary hearing provide sufficient ground for the CJN’s intervention in the matter.
“We therefore urge you to interpret this provision robustly and flexibly in the light of the unique role of the judiciary in the efforts to prevent and combat corruption and its destructive effects on the society.
“We believe your urgent intervention will contribute to improving the integrity of government and public confidence and trust in their government. It would also serve as a vehicle to further the public’s perception of fairness and thoroughness, and to avert even the most subtle of influences that may appear in an investigation of highly-placed executive officials,” the organisation said.
SERAP advised the CJN to be guided by the overall public interest of the right to uninterrupted power supply and the spirit and letter of the constitution, not by technicalities of ICPC Act.
“In particular, Chapter 2 of the 1999 Constitution dealing with Fundamental Objectives and Directive Principles of State Policy, high-level public officials have a clear obligation to eradicate all corrupt practices and abuse of power,” it further stated.
SERAP observed that inadequate electricity supply has compelled many Nigerians to use contaminated surface water for drinking and robbed them of the ability to boil, purify, disinfect and store water. It further argued that the situation has affected Nigerians’ ability use irrigation to boost agricultural productivity, thereby limiting food supplies and shrinking employment opportunities.
The organization also pointed out that the constitution prohibits the exploitation of the country’s human and natural resources for any reasons other than collective interest, a position that it said is backed by the provisions of the UN Convention against Corruption to which Nigeria is a state party.
“In exercising your statutory and constitutional responsibilities, we urge you to work very closely with both the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) and the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC),” SERAP counseled.
The organization noted that successive governments have failed to tell the public that the $16 billion expenditure on power supply amounts to failure.
It added that corruption in the energy sector have resulted in the epileptic power supply and corresponding deprivation and denial of access to quality healthcare, adequate food, shelter, clothing, water, sanitation, medical care, schooling and access to information. [myad]
Chief Olusegun Obasanjo and President Muhammadu Buhari
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has once again descended on President Muhammadu Buhari’s government, asking the government to stop giving excuses for the challenges it met when it came in in 2015.
“As I said, stop giving excuses; we met challenges. If there are no challenges, then we wouldn’t need you to come. You come in because you know there are challenges and then giving us excuse that you have many challenges, that is why you haven’t achieved results.”
Obasanjo, who spoke today, Monday when he hosted a group of young professionals under the aegis of Nigerian Young Professionals Forum and New Nigeria 2019 in Abeokuta, Ogun State, regretted that despite the alleged failure of President Buhari, he still wants to contest the 2019 elections for a second tenure.
“And then you still want to go. The first lesson I learnt in my military training is never reinforce failure. What we have now is failure. Never you reinforce failure. Let failure be failure.”
He advised the youth to take charge of their destiny instead of waiting for tomorrow that may never come, urging them to ignore excuses from leaders he described as incompetent and ineffective.
Obasanjo suggested that a coalition of all the movements in the country and poaching of the ‘uninfected members’ of the leprous APC and PDP to join the mass coalitions, would bring about the needed change in leadership in 2019.
“The point is this: the way to wrest power is to know that those that are there, you have to carry them along so that they will willingly (yield space).. so that they will not be frightened, they will not be intimidated.
“But this time, for us to make it, we need all hands on deck. You see, I have publicly said and I mean it, that as a party, neither PDP nor APC can get us there as they have been.
“Never mind about reforms and apology and all that. And yet we have to get there. I asked one of the foundation members of PDP, the PDP when we started, was it a grassroots party? He said it was an elitist party.
“Really, we have never had the so-called grassroots party. Even NEPU which we could say is the nearest, was not grassroot enough.
“And I believe strongly that we must have a strong popular grassroots movement to bring about the change, sustainability and stability that we need in our democracy and development.
“I am happy to meet with you but don’t take anything for granted. There will be a lot of work that we have to do.
“What those I call power addicts would want to do is to divide you based on gender, age, tribe, religion and region. You have one commonality – interest of Nigeria.
“And it doesn’t matter where you come from. We had that interest. The truth is this: when you have an ineffective and incompetent government, we are all victims.
“And don’t let anybody deceive you. Those of you who are in business, your business could have been better today if we have a competent and effective and performing government.
“And if you do not see what you should see, you will then be a victim of what you don’t like because it’s only when you see what you should see and you do what you should do that you put away what you do not like. And if you don’t see what you should see and you don’t do what you should do, you will be a victim of what you don’t like.
“But let us bring together all these movements because we are pursuing the same thing. If we allow ourselves to be take piecemeal, it is finished. Now if we are together… Yes, I said you cannot take PDP as it is and APC as it is; but they are not all made of evil people.
“There are good people. I said PDP is leprous hand, APC is leprous hand, but there are some clean fingers in them. So, let’s take those clean fingers in them and graft the clean fingers in our own.
“That is the way to go and if we go that way, we will get there, we will move together, and we will will move fast and we will move far.”
The Presidency has formally asked President Muhammadu Buhari to declare to run for a second term in office in the 2019 Presidential election.
In a chat with news men at the Presidential Villa, the senior special assistant to the President on media and publicity, Malam Garba Shehu said: “yes, I will (ask him to re-contest) because he richly deserves a second term in office.”
Reacting to calls by Buhari’s contemporaries in the military and former presidents not to run for that office, Garba Shehu said: “my response to them is that if they like they can come and contest against president Buhari. He will defeat them, all of them.”
He said that with all the noise the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is making, “even during their tenure as President, did they give breakfast lunch and dinner to every citizen? Is there any country in which someone does not go hungry?
“I am not saying it is perfectly in order but they are just politicizing these issues. This is a government that has removed this country from the shame of food importation, every state of the country now is into rice production, and we are feeding not only Nigeria but to West Africa. And the government is working on having respectable prices for food items; food inflation is coming down grossly.
“Everyone complaining of hunger should go and work. And you know that this is the only government that has introduced social investment schemes; we pay out now for the poorest of the poor, the least they will get is N5,000 and a lot of these jobs that are being created are from loans with little or no interest from the Central Bank, Bank of industry, Banks of Agriculture, Development Bank and the rest. So there is a lot going for people who really want to go out there to work especially in Agriculture.
Responding to a question on some Nigerians In Diaspora who see the President as not changing or reshuffling his cabinet members as a sign of weakness, the Presidential spokesman said that the President is the one who wears the shoes and who knows where it pinches.
“If the President hasn’t sacked his ministers, it means that he wants to continue to work with them. Maybe those agitating for the sack of the ministers are also looking for a chance to come in to replace those who are there. In that case, they are driven by selfish motive.
“As President and Commander In Chief, he reserves the right to hire and fire. For the fact that he hasn’t done that does not mean that he does not have the power to do that. I am sure if he wants to do it, he will do it at his own pace.
“I think people should just be busy let them go and start farming instead of sitting down to speculate whether they can be made ministers or not.” [myad]
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