No fewer than 285 drivers have been declared wanted in connection with the disappearance of 3.5 million truck tyres from the store of Dangote Group and other theft. The missing tryes have the company’s imprints.
The Coordinator of the company’s National Patrol Unit, Alhaji Abdullahi Magaji, a retired Commissioner of Police, told newsmen in Lokoja that each tyre of the company had an identification number and the number was registered against the driver’s name at collection point.
”Already, 285 drivers identified to have collected 285 tyres have been declared wanted while a number of others are on the run. Already, we have stopped their salaries and we are looking for them. So far, about 3.5 million tyres are missing from the company and we believe they are in circulation within and outside the country. We are determined to recover them.
”We are appealing to those patronizing the drivers and who encouraged them to steal our tyres to stop forthwith. Dangote tyres are customized and marked. Dealers and vulcanisers should please beware.
”People should ensure that the tyres they buy either as new or second hand are not customized Dangote tyres. We have arraigned some drivers and dealers caught with tyres and efforts are being made to arrest vulcanisers involved,” he said.
According to Magaji, security agents are presently on the trail of an identified kingpin who comes to Obajana and Kano to buy the tyres of the drivers.
“Our appeal to vulcanisers is to always look out for our logo on the tyres and report accordingly,” the coordinator said.
He said that the president of the group of companies, Dr. Aliko Dangote, had expressed concern over the incident, adding that the company was trying by all means to stop the ugly development.
The former commissioner of police appealed to those in custody of the tyres to return them “quietly,” either to the company or to the nearest police station to avoid unpleasant consequences, if caught.
He expressed Dangote’s gratitude to the media for sensitizing Nigerians on the zero-tolerance disposition of the management of the company for reckless driving and illegal haulage.
Magaji noted that while illegal haulage had dropped by about 85 per cent, accidents involving Dangote vehicles had reduced drastically, adding that a silent revolution was going on in the company’s transport section to sanitize it.
Acting President Yemi Osinbajo has expressed the feeling of the Presidency to the hardships which Nigerians are going through.
Professor Osinbajo admitted, in his opening remarks at the consultative forum between the Economic Management Team (EMT) and the Private Sector on the Economic Recovery Growth Plan, which is to be launched later this month that Nigerians have the right to complain about the slowness of the economy.
“We hear you clear; those who are on the streets protesting the economic situation and even those who are not, but feel the pain of economic hardship. We hear you loud and clear. You deserve a decent life and we are working night and day to make life easier.”
The Acting President recalled the words of President Buhari a few months ago quoting Buhari as having said: “I know that uppermost in your minds today is the economic crisis, the recession for many individuals and families is real. For some it means not being able to pay school fees, for others it is not being able to afford the high cost of rice, millet, or of local or international travel. And for many of our young people the recession means joblessness, sometimes after graduating from university or polytechnic.
I know how difficult things are, and how rough business is. All my adult life I have always earned a salary, and I know what it is like when your salary simply is not enough. In every part of our nation people are making incredible sacrifices.”
Osinbajo said that the journey out of the damage caused by years of neglect and corruption is bound to be difficult but that there is a glorious light at the end of the tunnel.
“Let us work together, steadfastly and patiently for the economic change that will come very soon.” [myad]
The Assistant Director and Desk Officer in the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr. Adeleke Muftau, has raised an alarm that African armyworm caterpillar, pests in maize, are currently ravaging farms in 22 states of the country.
Dr Adeleke Muftau, who is in charge of Maize Value Chain, spoke to news men in Abuja today, Monday, saying that that the outbreak was a threat to national food security and maize production in the country. He said that the affected states are spread across the six geo-political zones of the country.
He said that this could lead to scarcity of maize in the country if not adequately controlled.
The officer, who expressed concern over the extent of damage the worms had done to farms, said that the government would embark on massive training for selected farmers across the country.
“Maize is an integral food, staple food in the country and one of the major food crops apart from rice and wheat. The ministry is planning to train farmers on how to control the menace.
“We have visited farms and we have seen the devastation that has occurred in those farms and for us to reduce or alleviate farmers suffering and losses, we need to train them.
“The usual method of spraying chemicals is not effective because it was discovered that the armyworms usually bury themselves in the maize.
“The normal way of spraying does not touch the worms and that is why farmers are complaining that the chemicals are not effective. It is the method of application that is wrong.”
The desk officer noted that the ministry had made provisions for the control of the disease in the 2017 budget to avoid further spread of the pest.
He said that the pest was also capable of infecting guinea corn and millet.
Muftau disclosed that the ministry was collaborating with the International Institute for Agricultural Research to develop a resistant variety to the pests. [myad]
The Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) has constituted a high-powered technical committee to manage and curtail the menace of cattle grazing and rustling in the Territory.
The 22-Member Committee has Engineer Uthman Mohammed as Chairman and the Acting Secretary of the FCT Area Council Secretariat, Hajiya Amina Abubakar as Secretary.
Other members include the FCT Police Commissioner, FCT Director of DSS, Commandant of the Brigade of Guards, FCT NSCDC Commandant, Chairmen of the Abuja Municipal, Bwari, Kuje and Gwagwalada Area Councils as well as the Ardo of Bwari, Kuje and Abuja Municipal respectively.
The Committee also has as members, the Chairmen of Miyetti-Allah and Miyetti-Allah Kautal Hore, FCT Chapter respectively, Acting Coordinator of the Abuja Metropolitan Management Council; Acting Secretaries of FCT Area Council Services and Agriculture & Rural Development Secretariats respectively; Dr. Aminu Sa’ad, FCT Directors of Security as well as Information & Communications.
Inaugurating the committee today, Monday, in his office, the FCT Minister, Malam Muhammad Musa Bello it to build on the works of similar committees set up by previous Administrations to jump-start its activities for immediate impact.
He said that the terms of reference of the Committee include discussing with the various Secretariats, Departments and Agencies (SDA’s) to see what plans are already on ground within the FCT Administration for the proper use of grazing reserves and to cater for farming communities as well as the needs of other stakeholders.
The minister also mandated the Committee to study the recommendations of relevant committees of the past and also from the various MDAs and come up with harmonized implementable action plan and template that will guide how the FCT can have a very efficient system that guarantees safe living by all within the city and even the surrounding suburbs and Area Councils.
“In a way, you will notice that what your committee is doing is being done by similar committees all over the country and particularly a national committee under the Inspector General of Police. So, I will expect that you would reach out to some of these Committees, especially those within the North Central Geo-Political Zone or even the office of the Inspector General of Police to be able to leverage on some of their works and some of the information available to them.
“At the end of the day, we want to have a Territory that is very peaceful, that is vibrant economically and is a melting pot where everybody comes in and relates freely with the other party.”
Muhammad Bello said that it is the decision of the FCT Administration as a responsible government to designate grazing reserves for those who are rearing cattle to prevent them from wandering into the city centre and obstructing traffic flow.
“Your Committee will need to liaise very closely with the Ona of Abaji, Alhaji Adamu Baba Yunusa, who is the Chairman of the FCT Council of Chiefs, because at the end of the day, whatever recommendations you give us, the implementation has to be through the Council of Traditional Chiefs.”
The Chairman of the Committee, Engr. Uthman Mohammed who responded on behalf of the members appreciated the confidence and trust the Administration has reposed in them, saying that cattle grazing and rustling are not peculiar to the FCT alone but that if it is not well managed, it could get out of hand. [myad]
National Hajj Commission of Nigeria (NAHCON ), Barrister Abdullahi Mukhtar Muhammad, has given assurance that the Commission would do everything possible to reduce the cost of performing Holy pilgrims for the intending pilgrims in 2017.
“We have developed a strategy of approaching and negotiating directly with service providers, thus eliminating the middle men. With this, we are optimistic that we will be able to reduce the cost of Hajj.” Barrister Mukhtar spoke to news men shortly after an interactive meeting held between the leadership of of the NAHCON and the Nigerian Christian Pilgrim Commission (NCPC ), during which the two originations agreed to join forces to end the perennial sectarian crises in the country.
The NAHCON boss stressed that his Commission is working assiduously to ensure that in spite of the economic challenge in the country, the intending Pilgrims for the 2017 Hajj would enjoy improved services. [myad]
The three members of the House of Representatives who were accused of sexually harassing some hotel waitresses and soliciting for sex in United States of America last year have filed $1billion suit against the US government.
The Representatives members were exonerated of sexual misconduct allegations leveled against them by the United States Embassy in Nigeria.
Their lawyers filed the suit in the US while the plaintiffs will continue to reach them through electronic means from Nigeria, since they are barred for now from entering the US.
The affected lawmakers are House Deputy Chairman of the Committee on Petroleum Resources ( Upstream ), Terse Mark-Gbillah of All Progressives Congress (APC) from Benue; Samuel Ikon of the Peoples Democratic Party, Akwa Ibom and Mohammed Garba-Gololo of the APC from Bauchi State.
A former US ambassador to Nigeria, James Entwistle had alleged that the three honourable members failed to comport themselves during a visit to the US last year April, prompting the Nigerian legislature to call for an investigation.
In October 2016, the House exonerated the members after a report by its Joint Committees on Ethics/Privileges and Foreign Relations, found no wrongdoing on their part.
Mark -Gbillah, who spoke for the accused lawmakers, told the Punch that the lawyers had been identified and that efforts were on to finalise consultations on the suit. He added that the lawmakers’ US visas revoked in the wake of the allegations were yet to be restored.
Mark -Gbillah said: “We have identified lawyers willing to take the case and are currently planning for the required funds to initiate the action.
“We will communicate with our lawyers via other media for now , but we can be granted entry by the court if we are required to appear in person . We won’t be willing to disclose the costs at this time.” [myad]
Senior Specials Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on media and publicity, Malam Garba Shehu has made it clear that the President is not on admission in hospital and that he will return to Nigeria from London any moment from now.
“I just spoke to the President’s personal doctor, and he told me that President Buhari is not in any serious condition as to worry about. He is not in hospital. He is in the residence at the Nigerian High Commission.”
Garba Shehu, in a statement, said that the President is ready to return with his delegation but for the delayed test results, which he said has since arrived. “He and his delegation were ready to come home today but for the delayed test result which came in today which necessitated that he delays his return. “There is nothing to worry about as far as his condition is concerned.” The position of the Presidential spokesman came hours after the president wrote to the National Assembly to inform lawmakers of his intention to extend his medical vacation in London and was silent on the new date of his return. Astatement by his special adviser n media and publicity, Femi Adesina said: “President Muhammadu Buhari has written to the National Assembly today, February 5, 2017, informing it of his desire to extend his leave in order to complete and receive the results of a series of tests recommended by his doctors.
“The president had planned to return to Abuja this evening but was advised to complete the test cycle before returning. The notice has since been dispatched to the Senate President, and Speaker, House of Representatives. “Mr. President expresses his sincere gratitude to Nigerians for their concern, prayers and kind wishes.” [myad]
The Indomitable Lions of Cameroon have beaten the Pharaohs of Egypt to win the 2017 Edition of the African Cup of Nations.
Mohammed Salah gave Egypt the lead in the first half. Salah on the right played an excellent angled pass to find him in space in the box. There wasn’t much on, so he decided to sidefoot a rising shot that beat Ondoa at the near post.
Cameroons Equalizer came from the substitute centre-back Nkoulou. A corner was half-cleared and fed back out to Moukandjo on the left.
With no pace on the ball, he coaxed a superb dipping cross towards the six-yard line, where Nkoulou towered above Hegazy to plant a downward header into the corner. El Hadary dived but missed.
Vincent Aboubakar won it for Cameroon with a sensational goal in the 88th minute.
Siani drove a long pass to find him on the edge of the box, all on his own against three defenders. He took it down with his shoulder, flipped it over the head of Gabr and then contorted his body to hit a bouncing volley across the motionless, El Hadary and into the corner. [myad]
Every time I saw Innocent Okparadike, he reminded me of Gabriel, an Ibo man and our village photographer. I never get tired of telling the tragic story of Gabriel, who was consumed by the national crisis of 1966.
I never told Innocent Okparadike this story; maybe he read the many newspaper accounts I have given of Gabriel. If he did, we never discussed it. Innocent Okparadike like Gabriel were embodiments of the contradictions of our postcolonial history.
I grew up knowing Gabriel as an Ibo man in the midst of predominantly Tiv speaking people in the middle belt of Nigeria. He spoke Tiv fluently, like any Tiv man. Born in the north to a photographer father, he inherited his father’s trade. If his father taught him the art of photography, he never showed him the way to their village in eastern Nigeria. By the time of the 1966 crisis, his father was long dead and Gabriel was left on his own.
My maternal grandfather, a reverend gentleman, working with two American missionaries – Reverend Ralph Baker and Eugene Rubing – tried his best, ferrying Gabriel through Takum into Cameroon, like he did with many other Ibo men who sought refuge in our home. While the other Ibo men successfully made the trip to the east through Cameroon, Gabriel always found his way back to our village with a cock and bull story to tell. On one of such ill-advised trips to the north at the heat of the crisis, he ran into a prowling mob of murderers who were in search of Ibo men to kill. Of course they did not waste a minute in hacking him to death.
I first met Okparadike in 1983 at the Press Center in Kaduna. It was a popular spot for journalist to unwind in those days. I joined the table he sat with some other friends. As I was introduced, he asked whether I was the columnist at the New Nigerian. I said yes, expressing surprise that he could know a relatively junior journalist like me. He replied that those of them in the south take the New Nigerian and it’s writers rather seriously. Okparadike – then with the Concord newspapers – was already a big name in the Nigerian media at the time.
But it was at the News Agency of Nigeria I first heard of him. He and some other journalists were the foundation staff of the News Agency. By the time I joined NAN a few years after its take off, he had already left but he was always a reference point at in-house discussions at NAN. At the Concord, he was a big gun, one of the leading columnists in the paper who displayed incisive minds.
From the Concord, he moved over as Editor to the Democrat which made its debut in Kaduna in 1983. But the Democrat itself was faced with a heavy storm after the military capsized democracy in the evening hours of 1983. He bailed himself over to the New Nigerian as Deputy Editor. By his body language and movement, Okparadike was clearly offering a handshake across the Niger – to paraphrase OdumegwuOjukwu.
Then the big surprise: President Ibrahim Babangida in one of his great Maradonic moves appointed Innocent Okparadike as Editor of the New Nigerian. Very few expected the appointment. The New Nigerian was a paper set up by the Sardauna of Sokoto, Sir Ahmadu Bello, for the Northern Region when he was its Premier. He made it clear from inception that it was a newspaper for the north. Even when the military forcefully appropriated it in 1975 and made it a Federal Government newspaper, the traditions and conventions of the newspaper were left intact. Positions like that of Editor were a natural preserve for northerners. The appointment of Okparadike, a southerner as Editor was novel, out of convention and historic.
By the time he came to the New Nigerian, I had moved on. When in 1987 Group Captain David Jang appointed me into his government in Gongola State, he sent me a moving congratulatory letter in his own hand writing. I was so moved by the contents of that letter that on a visit to Kaduna, I went to his office to thank him for his kind words and prayers for me. I still keep that letter to date.
But the contradictions of a southerner editing a newspaper set up to fight for the north soon caught up with him. The forces ranged against him were formidable. Whatever were his good intentions were soon neutralized by those who did not want him in that office in the first instance and went the extra mile to sabotage his tenure as Editor of the newspaper. His fall was only a question of time and when it came, it was no surprise at all. But the military government conscious of the fact that he was a victim of circumstances found a soft landing for him; taking him to MAMSER and then to the Daily Times.
The last time I saw him was in Kaduna after he left the Daily Times as MD. I saw him standing by the road in the scorching sun, waiting to pick a taxi. I stopped immediately and offered him a ride to wherever he was going. He was happy to meet me, only regretting that he searched for me all over Nigeria in vain when he was the MD of Daily Times and wanted me there as an editor. He sounded real and I have never doubted him.
We became friends on one of the social media networks last year. When I sent him a message that the Nigerian media missed him, he said he still wished to come back. “I hope to come back very soon as an editorial board member and columnist” he wrote to me last year. Alas, this will never be.
Innocent Okparadike lived a remarkable life as a Nigeria journalist. His strides as a journalism scholar and practitioner will be a reference point for a long, long time. He was not an innocent man though his first name proclaimed him so. Those who worked with him and were closer to him than me know his shortcomings. None of us is an angel anyway. Still, he will certainly be remembered as a man who tried to break away from his tribal cocoon and join hands with Nigerians of different backgrounds to make our country work. [myad]
Former Military President, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (IBB), has returned to Nigeria after a 7-week medical vacation in the Switzerland.
He arrived in Minna International Airport on Saturday evening at 6.45 pm.
General Babangida expressed gratitude for prayers and goodwill messages from different quarters during his vacation.
He said: “I am feeling stronger and better now. I must thank Nigerians immensely for the prayers and concerns over my health. I must use this opportunity to also call on Nigerians to continue to pray for the leaders and the country to move forward in positive direction.
“We should remain united and work collectively towards the progress of our nation by thinking positively about the leaders and providing constructive criticisms and solutions to any challenge we may face.”
On the situation in the country, IBB said that the current economic recession is not peculiar to Nigeria.
“I am aware that other countries face different political, social and economic challenges. I believe the current government is working assiduously towards addressing some of the issues. We need to support all arms and tiers of government in their efforts to ensure economic recovery and political stability.”
General Babangida left the country for medical vacation in Europe on December 18, 2016. [myad]
We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
National Hajj Commission of Nigeria (NAHCON ), Barrister Abdullahi Mukhtar Muhammad, has given assurance that the Commission would do everything possible to reduce the cost of performing Holy pilgrims for the intending pilgrims in 2017.
