Expose Criminals, Earn N.5 Million, Kogi Governor Encourages Whistle-Blowers
Governor Yahaya Bello of Kogi State has promised a cash reward of N500,000 to any person with useful information that will lead to the arrest of criminals and people who spread false information capable of disrupting public peace.
A statement in Lokoja, the state capital today, Monday, by the Chief Press Secretary to the Governor, Mrs Petra Onyegbule, today, said that the move is aimed at consolidating the security efforts of the state government and ensuring peace and harmonious relationship amongst the good people of Kogi.
The statement said that Yahaya Bello’s administration is out to ensure the reduction of crime in the State and to curb the attitude of some politically sponsored persons who spread false information against the government with a view to causing disquiet and rancour amongst the citizenry.
According to the statement, every information given will be treated with utmost confidentiality and called on the people to comply as the issue of security is the collective responsibility of everyone and vigilance should remain our watchword. [myad]
The Presidential Fertilizers Initiative of the Buhari Administration has started yielding results, with the production of more than 4,000 metric tonnes of locally-blended fertilizers in the first week of operation.
Nigeria Finance minister, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun has said that the Development Bank of Nigeria (DBN) is being positioned to address the lingering low financing of Small and Medium Scale Enterprises sector in the country.
The Department of State Security (DSS), has warned that its men and officers will henceforth arrest and detain any Nigerian, no matter his position in the society, who promotes hate speech.
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has said that President Muhammadu Buhari has so far done his best to save Nigeria from corruption and insecurity, even as he asked for continuous prayers for the country to get things right.
“You know I am not very happy with Nigeria. I have made that very clear on many occasions. Yes, Nigeria stood by us more than any nation, but you let yourselves down, and Africa and the black race very badly. Your leaders have no respect for their people. They believe that their personal interests are the interests of the people. They take people’s resources and turn it into personal wealth. There is a level of poverty in Nigeria that should be unacceptable. I cannot understand why Nigerians are not more angry than they are.
Acting President Yemi Osinbajo has described former Nigeria President and elder statesman, Alhaji Shehu Shagari as an inspiration to the younger generation as he celebrates his 92nd birthday today, Sunday.
James Ayatse: From Ivory Tower To Royalty, By Emmanuel Yawe
In the 70s, most students of northern origin seeking university admission applied to Ahmadu Bello University Zaria. It was the university established by the defunct northern region and naturally gave priority to applicants from the region.
A few of us from the north decided to differ. There was a university established in Ibadan, the capital city of the defunct western region. It was the first Nigerian university, established during the colonial era which also proudly advertised itself as the best. Each year, it carefully screened applicants for admission and selected the best students all over Nigeria to admit and matriculate. That was the university we applied to; that was the university that gave us admission. To Ibadan we went.
James Ortese Ayatse was one the few brilliant students from the north to matriculate as a student of the first and the best university in Nigeria in 1975. He was just one of us, the few northern students and even fewer Tiv students to matriculate in Ibadan that year. The next four years proved to be a wrenching ordeal as we struggled to obtain the celebrated meal ticket called a university degree.
We were all from very poor families. In fact without the government scholarship which covered our tuition, feeding, clothes and books – it never went above Five Hundred Naira per annum – many of us could not have survived the ordeal. As meager as the scholarship money was, some of us still used it to pay the school fees of our junior ones in secondary and primary schools.
To compound our problems, without a bridge across the Niger, the road to Ibadan then was winding. There were two routes; you went through Onitsha by one of the “buses” going to Lagos. What was called a bus then from Gboko to Lagos was actually a lorry – gongoro – built with the body looks of a bus. The sitting arrangement was terrible. Sometimes you sat with your back to where the bus was headed. The passengers were mostly lower rank soldiers, their wives, children and livestock – live chicken, goats and pigs. The stench in those contraptions cannot be described.
There was a second route. You could go through Shintaku, cross over to Lokoja and catch a taxi to Ibadan. There was no bridge in Lokoja at that time so we ended up crossing the confluence of rivers Benue and Niger at Lokoja by boat. On one of such trips, I almost got drowned with Joseph Akaanan, my friend and fellow student when our engine canoe malfunctioned and the boat almost capsized.
As if these problems were not enough, in our final year in 1978, General Olusegun Obasanjo decided to triple the cost of food on all university campuses. The students reacted with demonstrations and for the first time in Nigerian history, armed soldiers were unleashed on the campuses. They then proceeded to shoot and kill unarmed students abundantly from Lagos to Zaria. Most of us who survived it decided that if this was what getting a university education in Nigeria meant, we had seen enough of it.
One of the young Tiv lads who graduated from the University of Ibadan in 1979, James Ayatse had good reason to think differently from us. In the department of Biochemistry where he took a degree, he was the best graduating student. To him, the arcane world of the university was home.
Ayatse went ahead to obtain an MSc at the University of Calabar in 1982, where again he was the best graduating student that year. By then, he had caught the attention of the Commonwealth of Nations who gave him a scholarship to study at the University of Surrey, England for a Phd in Biochemistry.
Back to the University of Calabar, he became a Professor of Biochemistry in 1990 and added an MBA to it in 1992. His resume in the university system is most impressive. He was at different times the head, Department of Chemistry Benue State University, Makurdi, Director of Academic Planning, Benue State University and Member, Institute of Biology, Chartered Biologist, United Kingdom, as well as Institute of Medical Laboratory Science, United Kingdom and member, New York Academy of Science, USA.
He has capped it up all with the fact that he is the only Tiv man who has ever been appointed the Vice Chancellor of two Federal Universities – the Federal University of Agriculture Makurdi and Federal University of Technology Dutsima in Katsina State.
Those of us who took our first university degree with James Ayatse thought we had donated him permanently to the academic world. His seamless transition from the ivory tower to royalty makes us all very proud of him. May the reign of the new Begha u Tiv be very long. [myad]