From left: President of the Guild of Corporate Online Publishers (GOCOP) and Editor-In-Chief of PREMIUM TIMES, Muskiliu Mojeed; representative of the Corps Marshall of the Federal Road Safety Commission; Special Adviser to President Muhammadu Buhari on media and publicity, Femi Adesina; Key-note speaker, Professor Onigbinde; representative of Ibrahim Magu, the Acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) and former governor of Anambra State, Mr. Peter Obi at the First Annual Conference of GOCOP, held on Thursday, August 10, in Ikeja GRA, Lagos. [myad]
One of the three police officers dismissed by the Delta state police command for their alleged involvement in armed robbery, Nwakem Ebonzim, has confessed to the crime and said: “I am ashamed of myself now.”
The dismissed officer told journalists in an interview where he and others were paraded that he had been involved in the petroleum tanker robbery twice and got N500, 000 as his proceeds in the operations.
He expressed regret over the act, saying the three of them have served the force for 16 years.
“I am ashamed of myself now. I never knew what pushed me into it,” even as he advised serving officers to stay away from bad friends.
The officers who have been dismissed are Sergeant Christopher Onyegho, Sergeant Nwakem Ebenzim and Sergeant Michael Chima. They were paraded before news men in Asaba, the state capital, along with other suspects by the State Commissioner of Police, Mr Zanna Ibrahim.
Ibrahim said that the officers were serving with the Special Protection Unit (SPO), Base 5, Benin City but serving with Edo, Imo and Delta States Police Commands, respectively.
The Police boss said that two civilians were also involved in the petroleum tanker robbery, adding that the five suspects allegedly robbed the 33 liters load of petroleum tanker in Agbor, Ika North local government area of the state, arrested and handcuffed the driver, his assistant and threw them into the bush and consequently diverted the product to a filling station where it was sold in their usual manner.
According to him, the three police officers had under gone what he called, ‘department disciplinary measures’ and that the department proceeding was completed before they were dismissed from service.”
“What is left now is for us to charge them (five suspects) to court; and that we are going to do that onMonday 14th August 2017, the three ex-policemen and the two civilians who are already at Ogwashi-Uku Prison would be arraigned in court for prosecution.”
Zanna Ibrahim also paraded four suspects who allegedly murdered a legal practitioner, late Barrister Festus Ashiedu in Okpanam, a suburb of Asaba.
The late Ashiedu was shot dead recently by gun men at Globe Supper market Okpanam while arguing with the criminals over his car.
According to the Commissioner of Police, the slaughters of the late lawyer were arrested few days after they committed the crime, unearthing that one of the suspects, Obed Ikenna Oluchi of No 36 Chinudu Eze Street, off Agric road Asaba has confessed that the late lawyer was massacred by his group and not by assassins as earlier reported in the media.
Oluchi, however told journalists that the lawyer was slain by one of the gang members because the lawyer was reluctant to let go his car key when they demanded for it.
He said that it was after the lawyer was killed that they had access to the car which they used to escape from the scene as police were chasing after them.
Other hoodlums showcased by the Commissioner include cultists, kidnappers among other criminal offences.
Items recovered from them include cut to size locally made gun, cash and other dangerous weapons, the Commissioner said.[myad]
Authorities in Long Beach, New York, United States of America has agreed to pay $85,000 to settle a lawsuit that accused its police officers of stripping a Muslim woman, Kirsty Powell, of her head cover (hijab) during an arrest and making her spend a night in jail without it.
The federal lawsuit stated that male police officers forcibly removed the Long Beach resident, Powell’s head covering when they took her into custody in 2015, even after she explained she wore it as part of her religious beliefs.
Court documents said that the officers made Powell take a booking photo without the covering and did not return it until she was bailed out of jail the next day.
According to the lawsuit, “She cried throughout the ordeal and experienced humiliation when both her religious beliefs and personal integrity were violated.
“She felt that the male officers and male inmates had seen parts of her body that they should not have seen, according to her religious beliefs.”
The Long Beach City Council voted during the week to pay the settlement, which covers damages to Powell and her attorney’s fees.
Assistant City Attorney, Monte Machit said, “The city decided to settle because we viewed the claims by her as meritorious.”
According to DailyMail UK, officers who arrested Powell were following the Long Beach Police Department’s policy, but that policy itself was in the wrong, according to Machit.[myad]
Recessionary economy was not really alien to our country. We experienced it before in 1982-85. And we had some measure of it in the early 1990s, when the government of the day, expressed wonderment about its resilience, with its leader asking famously: why has the economy not collapsed? But this recession was different and President Buhari was on record to have said that it was the worst economic crisis our nation ever experienced. What better ways to underscore its profound uniqueness than the near 60 per cent fall in dollar inflow, the soaring inflation and negative growth and contraction in the economy?
Each time our nation trod this difficult path; we always talked about diversifying our mono-cultural economy. But decades after decades, nothing really changed in our economic profile. We remained addicted to oil, addicted to cheap petro-dollars. We merely paid lip service to diversification.
The Buhari government however is changing the narratives of past inaction, as it works systematically to wean Nigeria from crude oil, the Black Gold from the Niger Delta.
Read the full text of this paper, which was presented by Mr. Bayo Onanuga, Managing Director, News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), as Guest Speaker, at Guild of Corporate Online Publishers (GOCOP) Conference in Lagos on August 10, 2017
Protocols
INTRODUCTION
I stand before you literally wearing two caps. First, I am representing the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed. Second, I am also representing the News Agency of Nigeria, your partner in the business of newsgathering and dissemination.
The Minister asked me to tender his unreserved apology for his inability to grace this occasion. As I speak now, he is with the Acting President, other ministers and CEOs of government agencies on a retreat to review the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (2017-2020) officially launched by President Muhammadu Buhari in April.
The ERGP is a child of our recent experience, the economic recession. It is meant to re-engineer the nation’s economy, away from crude export dependence, to one built on agriculture, to ensure food sufficiency, energy, industrialisation, social investment and massive infrastructure, such as roads and railway.
It seeks to achieve 7 per cent growth in the economy by 2020. That I believe, you will agree, is an ambitious programme, if we bear in mind that right now we are billed to see some snail-like growth in the economy, months after we have been declared technically out of recession.
It is a remarkable coincidence that your Guild and the Nigerian Government are focusing on the same issue simultaneously. Your theme here is: Sustaining Growth through the Diversification of the Economy.
This is an issue that we all agree has become the central focus of the Buhari administration, especially having just crept out of the hellhole of recession, the immediate trigger of which was the collapse of oil prices. Our country’s case was worsened by the sharp reduction in oil output, caused by the sabotage of oil installations in Niger Delta, the sharp fall in dollar reserves, and the ensuing panic in the economic policies initially embarked upon by government.
Recessionary economy was not really alien to our country. We experienced it before in 1982-85. And we had some measure of it in the early 1990s, when the government of the day, expressed wonderment about its resilience, with its leader asking famously: why has the economy not collapsed? But this recession was different and President Buhari was on record to have said that it was the worst economic crisis our nation ever experienced. What better ways to underscore its profound uniqueness than the near 60 per cent fall in dollar inflow, the soaring inflation and negative growth and contraction in the economy?
Each time our nation trod this difficult path; we always talked about diversifying our mono-cultural economy. But decades after decades, nothing really changed in our economic profile. We remained addicted to oil, addicted to cheap petro-dollars. We merely paid lip service to diversification.
The Buhari government however is changing the narratives of past inaction, as it works systematically to wean Nigeria from crude oil, the Black Gold from the Niger Delta.
Alhaji Lai Mohammed asked me to inform this forum that Government is resolutely committed to making a paradigm shift in the economic configuration as it pays attention to agriculture and solid mineral development and lay all other blocks to make possible the building of a much better, much stronger economy.
Just like it was in the 60s, agriculture is now being restored to its pride of place. We are exporting yam; the vanished groundnut pyramids of the 60s, have been replaced by rice pyramids, at least in Kebbi State.
Just a few days ago, Kebbi commissioned the largest rice mill in Africa. Lagos, has also signed an agreement in Switzerland to build a mega rice mill in Imota, which will employ close to 150,000 people. The Dangote Group is investing $1.5billion in rice plantation and milling, all with the aim of making Nigeria self-sufficient in the product that we were importing shamelessly from Asia.
In a recent address to Conference of Speakers and Presiding Officers in the Commonwealth (CSPOC), Acting President Yemi Osinbajo summed up the effects of the government effort by revealing the sharp rise in rice production. He said importation went down by 80 per cent in 2016.
“In the last two years, Nigeria, which is the largest producer of rice in West Africa and the second largest importer of rice in the world has changed that story.
“Our rice import bill in 2014 was N1billion a month. Today, by a combination of progressive legislative appropriation to agriculture, and providing single digit credit, under our anchor borrowers programme for the purchase of right fertilizer quality and other inputs and credit, many rice farmers moved from getting yields of 3.5 metric tons per hectare to 7.5 mt per hectare”, he said.
The increased focus on solid minerals will also sooner begin yielding fruits.
We also have to mention some other efforts at diversification, largely private sector driven. After decades of importing petroleum products, the Nigerian government is solidly backing the $11billion petrol chemical complex, the largest in the world being built by Aliko Dangote in Lekki. The complex, that will refine 650,000 barrels of crude per day, has other spin-offs, a fertiliser plant and power plant that can add 12,000 megawatts to the grid. And there will be many other products from the petro-chemical complex, which we import today.
There is also the $1.5 billion fertiliser plant built in Port Harcourt by Indorama.
TAX HOLIDAY
To further spur the economy to move away from crude, government recently announced tax holiday for 27 industries, one of which is the creative industry.
The industries to enjoy tax breaks and pioneer status are: Mining and processing of coal; Processing and preservation of meat/poultry and production of meat/poultry products; Manufacture of starches and starch products; Processing of cocoa; Manufacture of animal feeds; Tanning and dressing of Leather; Manufacture of leather footwear, luggage and handbags; Manufacture of household and personal hygiene paper products; Manufacture of paints, vanishes and printing ink; Manufacture of plastic products (builders’ plastic ware) and moulds; Manufacture of batteries and accumulators; Manufacture of steam generators; Manufacture of railway locomotives, wagons and rolling stock, Manufacture of metal-forming machinery and machine tools.
Others are Manufacture of machinery for metallurgy; Manufacture of machinery for food and beverage processing; Manufacture of machinery for textile, apparel and leather production; Manufacture of machinery for paper and paperboard production; Manufacture of plastics and rubber machinery; Waste treatment, disposal and material recovery; E-commerce services; Software development and publishing; Motion picture, video and television programme production, distribution, exhibition and photography; Music production, publishing and distribution; Real estate investment vehicles under the Investments and Securities Act; Mortgage backed securities under the Investments and Securities Act; and,
Business process outsourcing.
Please note that all the industries granted pioneer status are those that are adding value to the production chain and the economy, not just those that will export products raw only to allow other economies to reap the benefits of processing and manufacturing in terms of jobs and so on.
The minister of information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, on the effect of the tax holiday for the creative industry, said it would transform the sector and really develops it into Nigeria’s creative industry.
“This is a shot in the arm for the creative industry, and it will definitely catalyze investments in the industry. It is also the answer to our quest to spur the establishment of world class studios in Nigeria for production and post-production of movies and music videos,” the Minister said.
I also want to draw our attention to something else that will boost our economy, which the Ministry of Information under Mohammed is pursuing: It is about the change in the National Broadcasting Code that will compel companies fond of splashing profits earned in Nigeria in promoting foreign football leagues. They are now to be compelled to spend 30 per cent of whatever they spend on Manchester United, or Arsenal on Nigerian football. After all, charity begins from home.
The change in the NBC code will also compel TV programme producers to produce programmes meant for Nigerian consumption locally, instead of producing them in Dubai or South Africa. Many of us will remember that the last Reality DSTV programme Big Brother Nigeria was done in South Africa, for all manners of excuses. Some of us with some spirit of patriotism watched with dismay how celebrities and artistes were transported from Nigeria to South Africa to meet Nigerian housemates. Nigerian housemates in South Africa! This was surely an oddity.
We can only imagine the many gains the localization of production would have brought to our economy.
The Media and Economic Diversification
All the developments in the economy chronicled earlier show an uncommon determination by the present administration to ensure that our economy does not experience the brutal recessionary mill the second time. For the first time in our history, we are really seeing a true march towards diversification of the economy.
MEDIA BUSINESS
How does this affect our media business?
It is a truism that whenever any economy is under throes of adjustment, (in our case technological and economic adjustments), the first sector to be affected is the media, in terms of lost advert revenue and copy sales. Conversely, when there is a boom, the media also benefit.
We are all living witnesses to the misfortune of our industry in the last decade, the massive reduction in both copy and advert sales, and how this led to newspaper closures, downsizing, the emergence of bloggers and online newspapers and the explosion in the social media. This is not a development peculiar to our country. It is global.
The collapse of the traditional business model of Newspapers, which started, between 2006 and 2009 in the United Kingdom and the U.S. is truly here with us. The paradigm of news publishing has had a tectonic shift.
As one media book authored by Sunday Dare proclaims: We are all journalists and publishers now, in as much as we have the capacity to load any content on the web or social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter and others.
I must commend your efforts in coming together to form an association to share your varied experiences and learn from each other. Do not try to be a trade union. Be a professional union.
One of the areas that you need to seriously compare notes is the explosion of hate speeches, hate-filled stories, outright lies, fake news that we read often online or on social media platforms.
I will cite some examples: One website wrote recently that the IGP was distributing arms to northern youths, at the height of Nnamdi Kanu’s campaign for Biafra Republic and the quit threat to Igbo residents given by some northern youths. The story was a mere fabrication. And its motive is clear: to create more distrust between North and South and set the country ablaze.
Another was the specious announcement that the Oba of Ijebuland, the Awujale had joined his ancestors. Again, there was no iota of truth in the story. And the way the story spread like the wildfire would make us wonder, whether the conveyors ever attended any Journalism School, where we were taught to always authenticate a story before we publish. These days, many bloggers do not really care about affirming the truth of a news story, they just press the ‘publish button’.
Even before this, false stories about the Nigerian leader being on ICU, committing suicide, dying several times, were published by some of your members.
Going into the future, your Guild needs to set rules of engagement for bloggers and online publishers, you need to establish a code of conduct, the way it was done for publishers and journalists by NUJ, Guild of Editors and NPAN decades ago. We must endeavour to protect the integrity of the cyberspace.
I urge your Guild to also focus on building capacity for members by organising seminars and workshops to teach the relevant skills to equip members with the necessary tools and ideas for the practice of Online Journalism.
Online journalism in my view is more exacting than newspaper or magazine publishing, in the kind of demands it makes on our skills, our time, and creativity. Many of us who migrated to online publishing, would have found that it demands more than just writing one story or two stories per day. I was told that to make any serious impact and to be able to attract a good traffic, a website must be able to publish a minimum of 200 stories per day, not just in text, but also in multimedia formats. This is the challenge of Internet publishing, where we now have at least 3.5 billion people connected globally.
I always compare the Internet to a notice board, this time a global notice board, as big as the Planet Earth, where trillions of materials are uploaded every day, where if we want to get noticed, we must offer extra-ordinary stuffs.
Some statistics will demonstrate the googol-size of things we upload daily online. Googol in Mathematics is the large number 10, raised to power 100. That is one and then you add 100 zeroes. The Internet world is crazy!
Take Flickr, where photographs are uploaded. Statistics showed that between 2004 when it was founded and 2016, about 6 billion photos were uploaded. In 2016, an average of 1.68million photos were uploaded daily, 51 million per month and 612 million a year,
Jeff Schultz, writing for blog.microfocus.com gave the following statistics about what comes onto the Internet every second, every minute, every day.
YouTube usage has more than tripled in the last two years, with users uploading 400 hours of new video each minute of every day!
Instagram users like 2.5 Million posts every minute!
Since 2013, the number of Facebook Posts shared each minute has increased 22%, from 2.5 Million to 3 Million posts per minute. This number has increased more than 300 percent, from around 650,000 posts per minute in 2011!
Facebook users also click the like button on more than 4 Million posts every minute! That is nearly 6 BILLION Facebook posts liked each day!
Around 4 Million Google searches are conducted worldwide each minute of everyday.
Schultz said further that if we do some quick calculations, we could see the amount of data created on the Internet each day. There are 1440 minutes per day…so that means there are approximately:
500 Million Tweets sent each day!
More than 4 Million Hours of content uploaded to YouTube every day!
According to The Radacati Group, 205 BILLION EMAILS are sent each day in 2015, and by 2019 that number will increase to 20% to 246 Billion emails each day!
WWW.webpagefx.com also presents graphically what happens online in real time. The amount of data uploaded in a single second is a staggering 24,000 gigabytes, it says. Facebook reports between 20 and 24 million posts per second and a similar figure of likes. These statistics should not be surprising as Facebook now has over 2 billion users.
I have dredged out these figures to show that we need to create compelling content on our sites to get noticed and to attract the traffic we need to make our online occupation profitable and worthwhile.
I must admit it is not an easy task. On Wednesday, I did a check of Alexa ranking and found that only very few newspapers are among the first 50 of most popular sites or blogs in Nigeria. Our spaces have been taken by betting companies, banks, online retailers and the kingpins of cyberspace, Google, Facebook, and Wikipedia etc.
We need to do more to break into the front row, for that is where we are supposed to be to earn big bucks form Google and the advertisers, who are now rushing to the Internet.
I will suggest that members of the association should explore collaboration, mergers and other strategies to strengthen content and offer a variety of menus, that will include not just text, but also video, infographics and so on.
As your partner, we are also trying to assist you with this content that you need as we are expanding our omnimedia, multimedia team and the news that they are able to produce. Because we know that the future of online publishing is text. The future is video, infographics and digital offering.
I wish you all well and I thank you for listening. [myad]
The Kenya election commission has declared that the incumbent President, Uhuru Kenyatta had won a second and final five-year term in the country after this week’s polls.
According to the election commission head, Wafula Chebukati, Kenyatta took 54.27 percent of the vote while the opposition leader, Raila Odinga took 44.74 percent.
Provisional and unverified reporting following Tuesday’s vote had given Kenyatta a wide margin of 54% to 45% with 98% of polling stations reporting. He garnered 54.27% of the final vote; Odinga received 44.74%.
The nation’s top elections official, Wafula Chebukati, said the vote was carried out in a “free, fair and credible manner.”
Odinga, a 72-year-old former political prisoner who has campaigned for the presidency four times, had refused to accept the results, claiming that the vote was hacked.
Speaking before the declaration, Musalia Mudavadi, co-principal of the opposition’s National Super Alliance (NASA), said that they would not be party to the announcement of Kenyatta as president, citing unresolved concerns about the veracity of the electoral process.
“The issues we raised have not been adequately addressed. One can conclude that the Kenya’s Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission were not keen on taking our concerns seriously.”
James Orengo, NASA party chief agent, described the process as a disaster. This has been an entire charade. The judgment is now out there in the court of public opinion.”
Odinga, running as the NASA candidate, told CNN Thursday that he doesn’t “trust” the paper forms from polling stations around the country that officials used to authenticate votes.
Odinga said the forms could have been “manipulated” before being returned to the capital. At a news conference Thursday, members of Odinga’s party gave no evidence to support any claims of election tampering, citing only unnamed sources at the election commission.
Kisumu’s main street “Oginga Odinga street,” named for Raila’s father who acted as the country’s first vice president, was largely deserted on Friday.
In a letter released Friday morning, Chebukati, the chairman of the election commission, rejected the opposition coalition’s evidence of election fraud, calling it “obviously and plainly falsified.”
On Thursday, Chebukati said tampering with the election system “was attempted but did not succeed,” without elaborating further.
Peaceful elections in East Africa’s largest economy would help provide stability to the region but allegations of vote rigging have sparked concern with some Kenyans fearing ethnic clashes similar to those triggered a decade ago.
More than 1,000 died in months of violence and bloodshed after Odinga — who had been defeated by the then-President Mwai Kibaki — claimed the 2007 election had been rigged.
Odinga and his party repeatedly called for calm this week as the final results were compiled.
Extra security forces have been deployed to the streets of Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, interior ministry spokesman Mwenda Njoka told CNN. Additional police have also been installed at the airport in the western city of Kisumu as a preventative measure.
Nairobi remained quieter than usual after the national holiday on Tuesday. Some businesses were open in the city center but mostly people were remaining indoors; other residents who went to their home villages to vote might also have stayed away.
In Kisumu, a local journalist described the city center as “a ghost town.”
At least two people died in election-related violence after brief protests broke out in several Odinga strongholds — in Nairobi and Kisumu — on Wednesday. The day before, a polling agent from Odinga’s party was killed in a machete attack in Tana River county.
“We do not want to see any violence in Kenya. We know the consequences of what happened in 2008 and we don’t want to see a repeat of that anymore,” Odinga told CNN on Thursday.
“I don’t control anybody. What is happening is that people just want to see justice. We also hope that the security forces are not going to use excessive force.”
The Federal Government has approved the refinancing of part of the country’s domestic debt through external borrowing. Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, spoke to news men shortly after the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting, yesterday, allayed fears in financial circle, of increased borrowing, saying that instead of borrowing Naira: “we are now borrowing dollars and at a cheaper rate.” The approval followed a proposal by the Debt Management Office (DMO) for the refinancing of part of the country’s domestic debts, particularly Nigerian Treasury Bills (NTBs), through the borrowing of $3 billion. The minister said that the move was informed by the lower US Dollar interest rates in the International Capital Market (ICM), with Nigeria expected to borrow at a rate not higher than 7%. This was even as issuances of the NTBs in the domestic market are at rates as high as 18.53%, making external borrowing cheaper by about 12%. Analysts agree that the implementation of the refinancing will result in substantial cost savings for the FGN in debt service costs. They noted that reduction in the cost of borrowing, the $3 billion is expected to be raised for a tenor of up to 15 years, which is very long compared to the maximum tenor of 364 days for NTBs. “This move will effectively extend the tenor of the government’s debt portfolio. The longer tenor enables the Government to repay at a time when the economy would be stronger and more diversified, to meet the obligations. “The reduction in the level of the FGN’s borrowing from the domestic market would result in a reduction in domestic interest rates and free up borrowing space in the economy, particularly for private sector borrowers. “The $3billion from the refinancing will also represent an injection of foreign exchange into the economy which will boost the country’s external reserves. “The approval of the National Assembly will be obtained for the proposed refinancing before implementation in line with the Debt Management Office, Act 2003.” [myad]
Acting President Yemi Osinbajo has assured the Nigerian Army that the idea of probing the human rights violation leveled against its officers fighting Boko Haram war in the North East is not to witch-hunt them but to clear them from such allegation. Inaugurating the panel, headed by Justice of the Court of Appeal, Justice Biobele George, the acting President praised the gallantry of the soldiers in the Boko Haram war-front, adding however that the probe would be in their own interest as the allegation of violation of human rights had taken international dimension. “I would like to use this opportunity to assure the Armed Forces and all of our uniformed forces, that exercises such as this should be regular and would be regular, and must not be seen as a witch hunt and in any way to denigrate the very great work that the Armed Forces and uniformed forces are doing all over the country.” Professor Osinbajo recalled a series of allegations that had been levelled against security forces by some local and international commentators, saying: “it is our belief that if left unaddressed, these allegations are capable of undermining the good work of the men and women of the Armed Forces who have largely conducted themselves in a disciplined and professional manner. “Failure to examine some of these allegations will also leave those who may have been victims of such abuses without any recourse to justice.” He made reference to history, which he said, had reinforced the fact that the failure of the nation’s justice system to adequately respond to crisis had been a recipe for greater conflict. “It is in the light of the following that I have mandated the panel to focus on the following terms of reference: · One, to review extant rules of engagement applicable to the Armed Forces of Nigeria and the extent of compliance thereto. · Two, to investigate alleged acts of violation of international humanitarian and human rights law under the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 as amended, the Geneva Conventions Act, the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights, Ratification and Enforcement Act and other relevant laws by the Armed Forces in local conflicts and insurgencies. · Three, to investigate matters of conducts and discipline in the Armed Forces in local conflicts and insurgencies; to recommend means of preventing violations of international humanitarian and human rights law in conflict situations. · Four, to make further recommendations in line with these terms of reference as may be deemed necessary.” The acting President contended that it is the responsibility of the Armed Forces and all of those in government to ensure that they interrogate their own activities to meet up with human rights norms and basic rules of decency observed across the world. Other members of the panel are a. Major-General Patrick Akem; b. Mr. Wale Fapohunda; c. Mrs. Hauwa Ibrahim; d. Mr. Jibrin Ibrahim; e. Mr. Abba Ambudashi Ibrahim; f. Mrs. Ifeoma Nwakama; and g. Dr. Fatima Alkali to serve as counsel to the Panel. The Panel also has a secretary from the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation.[myad]
Experts and stakeholders have made a collective appeal to the federal government to commit adequate funds to address the growing menace of malnutrition which has so far affected over 11 million Nigerians They insisted that the best way to avert the danger posed by malnutrition is for the country to fund projects targeted at treating the millions of children stunted by malnutrition and create adequate awareness campaigns to prevent the menace. Speaking at a one-day symposium on ‘malnutrition, child development and the media,’ organised by the Media Centre Against Child Malnutrition (MeCAM), project manager at the Civil Society on Scaling Up Nutrition Nigeria (CS-SUNN), Sunday Okoronkwo, said that the country currently does not have proper funding to address the problem. He warned that figures such as 11 million Nigerian children being stunted may be a poor representation of the reality. Okoronkwo, who stood in for CS-SUNN project director, Mrs. Beatrice Eluaka, lamented that the country’s $912 million action plan on nutrition for the years 2014 through 2019 remains largely unfunded, with Nigeria’s $100 million counterpart funding of the policy hardly making it into the annual budgets. According to him, the country’s 2017 budget has no provision for the plan which expires in 2019. Speaking on ‘Dealing with nutritional Fads and Fallacies,’ chairman of CHRI, Dr. Aminu Garba called for declaration of emergency on malnutrition. He advocated for sustained media engagement, among other steps, to address the many fallacies around the question of nutrition. Garba stressed the need to debunk cultural claims that giving new born colostrum exposes him to witchcraft or that children and women should not eat meat or take adequate milk. The national coordinator of MeCAM Nigeria, Remmy Nweke, said that the organisation evolved from the unique need for the media to respond to the national emergency on malnutrition. He insisted that government’s funding to combat malnutrition is not “commensurate” to the volume and potential consequences of the unfolding crisis. Representatives of other important stakeholders at the event are top pro-nutrition civil society groups, including Community Health and Research Initiative (CHRI), Scaling Up Nutrition Business Network Nigeria and Global Alliance on Improved Nutrition (GAIN).[myad]
The Chief of Army Staff, Lt. General Tukur Buratai has said that the economic impact of Boko Haram activities in the North East is estimated at $9 billion (N274.5 billion). Buratai, who was represented by Major General, Peter Dauke, General Officer Commanding 81 division Lagos, spoke at the first annual conference of Guild of Corporate Online Publishers (GOCOP), today, Thursday, in Lagios. The Chief of Army’s paper is titled Counter: Insurgency and Role of the Nigerian Army in Creating Conducive Environment For Nigeria`s Economic Development. General Buratai said that of the total amount, Borno had the highest impact of $5.9 billion (N180 billion). He said that loss of agricultural production in the North East caused by Boko Haram activities was $3.5 billion (N107 billion). The army chief said that Borno had 95 per cent of the 400,000 houses damaged by Boko Haram. According to him, the restructuring of the army’s operations in the zone in 2015 yielded fruitful results. “This restructuring changed the counter insurgency strategies by adopting aggressive posture, effective command and control, efficient use of weapon and logistics with particular attention to welfare of the troops.” Buratai said that the new strategy led to the recapturing of territories occupied by the insurgents, rescue of about 300,000 hostages. “Furthermore, not less than 1,009 Boko Haram terrorists have surrendered voluntarily, while 1,140 others have been arrested and another 1,500 confirmed boko haram terrorists are under investigation.” He stated that with improved security, the Borno Adamawa and Yobe governments had embarked on reconstruction of damaged schools, bridges, hospitals and other critical infrastructure aimed at recreating socio-economic activities of the areas. Buratai said that in keeping with its constitutional mandate of defending the nation, the army would ensure that the right atmosphere to promote economic development was maintained in the country. [myad]
Former Governor of Anambra state, Mr Peter Obi has identified three things that the Federal Government must vigorously pursued if Nigeria must get out of economic recession. Mr Obi was a Guest Speaker at the 1st Annual Conference of the Guild of Corporate Online Publishers (GOCOP) held on Thursday at Renaissance Hotel, Ikeja in Lagos.
Speaking on the theme “Sustaining growth through diversification of the economy”, he contended that Nigerian economy is already diversified.
Buttressing this, the former Governor said the non-oil sector is contributing about 80% to the nation’s GDP, noting that the tragedy is that the oil sector however accounts for 90% of our foreign exchange earnings.
He listed three ways to put the economy back on the path of growth. According to him, government must as a matter of urgency embark on aggressive savings, diversification of the economy towards manufacturing and lastly investment in developmental education.
“Our economy is fully diversified because the non-oil sector is actually contributing about 80 per cent to our GDP today.
“But the tragedy of our economy is that 90 per cent of our export revenue is derived from just one sector – oil”.
“Diversifying our economy through manufacturing and investment in education is what we require today to turn around our economy.
“And by aggressive savings we’ll be able to get the resources to bring about micro economic stability to the country, defend our currency and be able to attract FDI and portfolio investments and unlock the resources to invest in our deteriorated infrastructure,” Obi, who described himself as a trader and businessman said.
Another Guest Speaker and Managing Director of the News Agency of Nigeria, NAN, Mr Bayo Onanuga, charged GOCOP to come up with code of conduct for online media practitioners.
He also charged the leadership of the Guild to pursue capacity building for members through workshops and seminars to broaden their knowledge.
The NAN MD assured that his organisation would collaborate with GOCOP in generating contents, not only text but videos and photographs.
On his part, the keynote speaker, Prof Akinyemi Onigbinde, posited that we need to restructure the polity before talking about diversification of the economy.
“Let me say this, and it is with all sense of responsibility, that the proponents of this ‘diversification’ theory, with respect to the chronically ill Nigeria economy, are not being honest.
“Indeed, I dare say they are being mischievous, just as they insist on playing Nero as our Rome prepares to go up in flames. Truth is, for Nigeria, it may well be one-minute to midnight, if we continue to ignore the ‘first principle’ in nation-building.
“So, what is responsible for Nigeria’s arrested development, to put it in a counter thesis to GOCOP request: Nigeria economy cannot enjoy a sustainable growth and neither can it be diversified because there is even no basis for economic growth.
“As I had earlier suggested, what economy are we to diversify? And As I had also insisted on, there can be no economy to be diversified, hence there will be no growth as to speak of ‘sustainable growth.’
“But let us, however, say that Nigeria will continue to remain in a state of suspended animation, economically, so long as some sections of the Nigerian nation space feel short-changed by the Nigeria political economy, due, largely, to the operations of present structure of the Nigerian state.
“Truth is, so long as the centre holds a ‘veto power’ over the economic activities of Nigeria so-called federating units, so long will Nigeria manifest destiny remain dormant,” Prof Onigbinde said.
Representatives of GOCOP key partners like FRSC, Mobil, NLNG, EFCC delivered goodwill messages calling for sustained relationship while the GOC 81 Division of the Nigerian Army, Major General PJ Dauke, presented paper on counter-insurgency.
At the end of the one-day conference, the newly elected Executive Committee of GOCOP was inaugurated under the leadership of Mr Dotun Oladipo, Publisher, The Eagle Online.[myad]
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One of the three police officers dismissed by the Delta state police command for their alleged involvement in armed robbery, Nwakem Ebonzim, has confessed to the crime and said: “I am ashamed of myself now.”
Authorities in Long Beach, New York, United States of America has agreed to pay $85,000 to settle a lawsuit that accused its police officers of stripping a Muslim woman, Kirsty Powell, of her head cover (hijab) during an arrest and making her spend a night in jail without it.
Acting President Yemi Osinbajo has assured the Nigerian Army that the idea of probing the human rights violation leveled against its officers fighting Boko Haram war in the North East is not to witch-hunt them but to clear them from such allegation.
Experts and stakeholders have made a collective appeal to the federal government to commit adequate funds to address the growing menace of malnutrition which has so far affected over 11 million Nigerians
The Chief of Army Staff, Lt. General Tukur Buratai has said that the economic impact of Boko Haram activities in the North East is estimated at $9 billion (N274.5 billion).
Former Governor of Anambra state, Mr Peter Obi has identified three things that the Federal Government must vigorously pursued if Nigeria must get out of economic recession.