One of the 20 truckloads of relief materials sent to Taraba State for distribution to the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), by President Muhamadu Buhari has been declared missing.

The permanent secretary, Taraba state Emergency Management Agency (SEMA), Nuvalga Dan-Habu said the materials never arrived the supposed destination.

Dan-Habu made this disclosure while conducting newsmen round the venue where the relief materials were stored in Jalingo, Taraba state capital.

He said that a few weeks ago, he received a phone call from the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), North East zonal office Gombe, that twenty trucks of relieve materials, made up of maize, have been dispatched by President Buhari for IDPs in Taraba state and the materials were on the way from Abuja to Taraba state.

He said that the NEMA zonal office directed that the Taraba state Emergency Agency took the stock of the materials before distribution to the IDPs, but that instead of the twenty trucks as directed and informed by the Gombe zonal office of NEMA, only nineteen  trucks of the materials arrived in Jalingo.

“Instead of receiving 12,000 bags of maize as we were informed by NEMA, only 11,400 reached us. I informed NEMA promptly on the development.” [myad]

The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) has foreseen the re-occurrence of the 2012 flood in many parts of Nigeria even as it advised communities along the river Niger to evacuate immediately to safer ground.
The Director General of NEMA, Muhammad Sani Sidi, in a statement, said the floods may occur at any moment from now as a result of intense rainfall and rise in water level.
Sani Sidi said the agency has received alerts of the flood from information given by the authorities in the Republic of Niger that the present water level in the river has reached a point that may result in the flood.
“Niger Basin Authority notified Nigeria that rainy season, which started in the Middle Niger (Burkina Faso and Niger Republic) in June, 2016, has led to a gradual rise of the level of River Niger in Niamey, Niger Republic. This high level of water in Niger Republic is already spreading to Benin Republic, and invariably, to Nigeria.”
He said that the level of water in all the hydrological monitoring stations across the country, as at Friday, has exceeded the corresponding values at that time, which is an alarming situation that requires the prompt and coordinated action of all governments and stakeholders.
“if the heavy rainfall continues in intensity and duration within these regions of the River Niger, it is imminent that flood situation similar to that of the year 2012 may occur.”
The Director General of NEMA then called on all stakeholders to take necessary actions in line with their various mandates.
“The states and local government are advised to take action on the threat in order to avert imminent loss of lives and properties that might certainly arise in the event of flood.”
Sani Sidi identified the states along the River Niger belts as being the most vulnerable as well as those along its major tributaries that include Benue River belts, the confluence states and downstream to the Atlantic Coast.
The Agency’s Zonal and Operation offices, he said, have been instructed to continue with advocacy visit to the state governments and asked the states to utilize the flood vulnerability maps given to them earlier by NEMA to identify safer ground for temporary shelters in time of evacuation as well as reviewing all their contingency plans. [myad]

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has said that it is embarrassing for anybody to link him to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) which he left a couple of years ago.

Obasanjo, who reacted to a news story that went viral on Friday to the fact that he attended an event of the PDP at the Shehu Musa Yar’Adua Centre, Abuja said that the story was fabricated by some spin doctors to embarrass him.

In a statement on Saturday, the former President said: “The attention of the former President, His Excellency, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo has been brought to the photonews story, which has gone viral on the social media on Friday, August 5, 2016 of his purported being ‘spotted’ at a People’s Democratic Party (PDP) event at the Shehu Musa Yar’adua Centre, Abuja.

“While ordinarily his first reaction to the news was that those behind it targeted to get him annoyed and embarrassed him, his conclusion was that he has told the world that he has quit partisan politics and that is final. Anybody hoping to drag him back will fail like any man feeding mice to a dead cat.

“To clear the minds of doubting Thomas’s and those behind the orchestrated news in circulation and particularly those who had been calling to ascertain what actually happened at the Shehu Musa Yar’adua centre. On the invitation of the Commodities Association Stakeholders, His Excellency was invited to the ‘Zero Hunger Nigeria’ event at the Centre.

“He arrived at about 10.00am and immediately moved to the meeting. The meeting commenced but few minutes into the session, his attention was drawn to the presence of some people walking up to where he was seated.

“At closer glance, he recognized them to be politicians and they exchanged pleasantries, saying they came to greet him and they walked out again from the meeting. The former President cracked joke with them calling them ‘invaders and gate crashers’.

“The photo news in circulation, which claimed that he was spotted at a political party event is therefore mischievous, as a responsible journalist ought to have gone further to ascertain his actual destination in among the number of venues at the centre and not taking photograph of his alighting from his vehicle to read another meaning. Shocking also to note that the picture was actually taken while on his way out of the Centre after the programme he had attended had finished.

“This is the height of irresponsible journalism, which the former President is calling for its investigation and sanction on anybody involved in order to serve as deterrent to others who may want to be used either by omission or commission to misinform the public on such sensitive issue.” [myad]

Catholic Priest and Director of the Adoration Ministry, Enugu, Rev. Father Ejike Mbaka, has described the government of former President Goodluck Jonathan as a disaster.

Mbaka said Jonathan’s government laid the foundation for the mess in which the President Muhammad Buhari administration has found itself.

Mbaka, who was on Saturday reacting to stories in the media that he castigated the Buhari administration over the current hunger in the land and that the President was not likely to get the votes of Nigerians in 2019 if the situation persisted, insisted that the impact of the rot the Jonathan administration left for Buhari to battle had not been felt in full.

A statement by his spokesman, Maximus Ugwuoke, quoted the Reverend Father as denying that he attacked Buhari, saying he was quoted out of context in the message titled: “Bless and Be Blessed.”

He said that the initial message, which was followed by another one titled: “Mega Change of Conditions,” explained his position fully on: “Bless and Be Blessed.”

He was quoted as having said in the second message where he absolved the President of blames over the hunger situation in the country: “There is sword that is moving about in the country. People are dying like flies. The sword of Hunger is eating the land. And as I have told you this is just the beginning.

“If anybody is telling you it is going to be well very soon that person is deceiving you.

“This is because many of us were among those that were alive during the years of the past government.

“The past PDP government was a grasshopper and locus to Nigerian. The past government was a disaster to the land of Nigeria; the past government was cancer to this country. There is no need trying to cover their incalculable and iniquitous mess. If you don’t feel it now, you will feel it later.

“The impact of their horrific mess is yet to be felt. It was a regime where hooliganism became a political slogan; where looting became the order of the day; where the neglect of youths became a pattern of administration. The result is what we are passing through now.

“Hunger is everywhere; the hunger was created before this new government came in. Buhari is not the maker of the hunger.

“The hunger was created during the Jonathan PDP administration but Buhari should abate the long procrastination, bureaucracy and slow methods in tackling it.

“Understand it very well. People will know the truth and the truth will set us free. Buhari is just an agent of change. The money in our treasury was nothing to write home about before this new regime came. The country was in an embarrassing mess.

“Apart from the petroleum that we sell and get money, what other means of foreign exchange do we have? The foundation of the Nigerian economy is oil which has now collapsed and the foundation once destroyed what will the just man do? Psalm 11:3. The past administration did not prepare this administration for this season. That is why the sword has risen. Many will die by this sword but there will be survivors.

“That is why I have been saying and I keep on saying that the past administration should publicly come to apologize to Nigerians. They should not be foolhardy. They should not continue to perpetrate this type of iniquitous attitude planning about 2019 election for them to continue from where they stopped. All these years of Jonathan, nothing happened in Niger-Delta specifically to be recorded in the annals of history. What a shame? What an embarrassment. The place where the oil has been coming from remained underdeveloped under a man from the same soil. If you go to Niger Delta today you will cry. But what worries me is that our people are good in shifting blames.

“Somebody entered your kitchen carried your pot of soup, entered your store and farm, raked everything in the store and farm and ran away. And another person entered the kitchen where there is no pot at all and you want the person to turn the kitchen into a magical kitchen that will produce a magical pot and a magical soup, which soup?

“I am just telling President Buhari that people are hungry because he cannot not come to the street like me and notice people’s feelings. But Buhari is not the author of the hunger. The past government planted the tree of hunger and they want to come back to water it.

“If it is in a developed country by now from the Senatorial to the reps to the governors, all who participated in the last administration should have resigned with apologies to our youths; otherwise the youths one day will begin to stone them.

“They will soon confuse you that present governments don’t want to feed you. Feed you with what? It will surprise the whole Nigerians to know that even after Buhari was a petroleum minister and a military president of the country, he had no oil bloc. Is it not a shock? Don’t you hear the quantum of money that is being recovered from one person? Buhari just came as a redeemer. I don’t know if the people of this country are hypnotized.

“How can we be fighting somebody who is fighting for us? Apart from this Buhari, how can somebody talk to these political juggernauts and tell them to bring back what they have stolen? It is only a Beniah personality like Buhari that can enter into the cave and catch a lion and kill a lion in a snow season and come out. The president needs support. He doesn’t know where to begin because there are many holes dug for him by the past administration, and they carried the sand away expecting him to cover the holes with what?”

Ugwuoke said ‎that Mbaka “merely reinstated the obvious sufferings that Nigerian are facing (which even the president himself had at points acknowledged and sued for patience and perseverance) and advised the president on the ways to tackle it i.e. by engaging economic gurus and listening to good advisers.

“We wonder which portion of the message could be viewed as ‘an attack’ or ‘bombing’ of Mr President as twisted in the media. The acclaimed message of the cleric to Mr President to us is rather a further demonstration the cleric’s love to see that the president succeeds in his messianic rescue operation mission in Nigeria and that is why it is devoid of hypocrisy.

“It is obvious that those who are arm-twisting the said message of the cleric to Mr President as an attack on Mr President are those who want the president to fail or be blindfolded so as to use the obvious hardship Nigerians are facing as a weak point of his administration to ride onto power mindless of the fact that Mr President has done so well in fighting corruption and insurgency in the country, which are mega achievements that scores him above average in just few months of his administration.

“In the background of the message, Fr Mbaka encouraged the gallant warrior, President Buhari, to continue his battle against corruption and insurgency asserting that if not a man like President Buhari, by now people may have stopped going to church and mosques. Boko Haram might have wrecked this country. People might have equally stopped going to schools, markets etc. Kudos to Buhari .Fr Mbaka revealed that corruption, insurgency and poor governance by past governments gave birth to three horrible children (1) Hunger (2) Anger (3) Danger.

“He asserted that Buhari is not the cause of corruption and insurgency yet he is fighting them frontally and enjoined the president to extend same to hunger even though he is not the cause. He pleaded the President to begin a War against Hunger, as many are dying hopelessly. He stressed that if the hunger, anger and danger continue, Nigerians may not vote for him again, as they would mistake him for the cause of these maladies while in fact he is a solution.

“Fr Mbaka equally advised the President on being careful about how he appoints people to prominent positions, so that no region will appear marginalized- as happened in NNPC board and charged the President to make sure that those around him are not misguiding him. He advised the President on human empowerment and making sure that those who worked for him (Buhari) during the election ought to be empowered –as one good turn deserves another.

“For the purpose of clarity, granted that Fr Mbaka stated the obvious, that there is hunger in the land, he never attributed the cause of the hunger and economic hardship bedeviling the nation to Buhari rather he attributed it to the offshoot of the actions and inactions of the past administrations of this country.“We recall that earlier this year, Fr Mbaka had during his New Year message predicted that hunger and hardship will come upon the country this year and so we wonder why this message should make a headline at this point of the year.” [myad]