Category: Northern Reports

KANO Inter-Agency Consultative Committee on Election Security (ICCES) has promised to protect facilities belonging to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), assuring violence-free electioneering campaigns and credible elections in the state next year.

This was just as the committee held a crucial security meeting at the office of the state Commissioner of Police, Mamman Dauda.

The meeting was necessitated by a series of attacks on the INEC facilities across states, particularly in the southern part of the country.

During the meeting, ICCES, comprising heads of all security and para-military agencies in the state, including the Kano INEC Resident Electoral Commissioner, resolved to mount security at all INEC offices and facilities in Kano State.

The Nation gathered that the police and other security agencies in the state were mapping out strategies to cover 11,222 polling units and 484 collation centres in Kano during the 2023 general elections.

ICCES Chairman and Commissioner of Police, Mamman Dauda, said, “Owing to attacks on INEC headquarters, offices and facilities in the southern part of the country, we have resolved to take proactive measures.

“At the state INEC headquarters, we will block the two major roads. Although, we are not praying for any attack by miscreants, we are doing everything possible to see that we provide adequate security for INEC.”

Dauda said within the last three weeks, the police in Kano recorded cases of snatching and stocking of PVCs of which the culprit was arrested and prosecuted.

He advised politicians and the electorate to stop selling/buying PVCs, “because it will be useless. Nobody can use any PVC that does not belong to him. And anybody who does not have PVC has no business coming close to the polling units, because if you are caught, you will be arrested.”

THE Plateau State Resident Electoral Commissioner, Dr. Oliver Tersoo Agundu, on Friday took delivery of the BVAS machines meant for the state.

The BVAS will be shared across the total number of polling units in Plateau during next year’s general elections for the purpose of accreditation of prospective voters.

It will be recalled that in line with the new Electoral Act 2022, which has allowed the deployment of technology in Nigeria’s Electoral system, INEC has sanctioned the deployment of BVAS as the sole means of accreditation for next year’s general elections.

Read Also: APC not against BVAS, says spokesman Morka 

The delivery of the machines signified the absolute and early preparedness of INEC to conduct the 2023 general election without hitches as planned by the commission.

With this delivery, Plateau State has joined the league of states that have so far received their share of BVAS, which is generally described as a game-changer in the evolution of Nigeria’s Electoral system.

THE Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) has begun training sixty-nine academic researchers on solution-driven research, innovation and sustainable development.

The year-long programme is on market-driven solutions on development and fabrication of prototypes.

Executive Secretary TETFund, Arc. Sonny Echono, said the TETFund Alliance for Innovation Research (TETFAIR) programme is designed to promote the institutionalisation of Research and Development (R&D).

Echono said this in Abuja at the TETFAIR opening ceremony for the new researchers.

He said, “The focus areas for the TETFAIR Programme which include Agriculture and Food Technology; Environment, Energy and Circular Economy; Health and Accessibility; Information Communication Technology; Security; Transportation, Aviation and Shipping; and Streamlining/Improving Production Process, were carefully selected based on strategic needs and national priorities.

“The choice of the focus areas which aligned with TETFund’s National Research Fund thematic areas is also based on our conviction that Science, Technology and Innovation have been, and will inevitably remain the most critical inputs to development process, particularly in the face of increasingly globalised knowledge-driven economies.

“The target is to achieve the desired goal of producing entrepreneurs, supporting start-ups as well as creating a generation of innovators and wealth creators for national development. Minister of State for Education, Hon. Goodluck Opiah, urged the participants to use the knowledge gained to improve the frontiers of Science and technology and the need to use Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) education in solving real life problems.

•Accuse rep member of raising false alarm, witch-hunting CBN Gov

A coalition of civil society groups on Friday, took a protest to the National Assembly over the N89 trillion stamp duty proceeds which the Central Bank of Nigeria has not been able to account for.

The protesters, numbering over four hundred persons, wondered how a House of Representatives member, Muhammed Kazaure, came up with such damning allegations, insisting that it was politically motivated to tarnish the image of the Central Bank Governor, Godwin Emefiele and President Muhammadu Buhari, both of whom are trying to effect a cashless policy to revamp the Nigerian economy. Some of the protesters carried placards with inscriptions such as; ‘Cashless policy a solution to poverty’, ‘Corrupt Nigerians are after CBN governor’, ‘89trn stamp duty is a blackmail’,  ‘Plans to discredit cashless policy will be resisted,’ among others. Recall that a House of Representatives member, Muhammed Kazaure, had raised an alarm of alleged theft of stamp duty proceeds running into N89 trillion.

The Jigawa-born lawmaker had claimed that he is in possession of valid documents to prove the existence of such funds in the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) custody. He had also alleged that the apex bank has not remitted stamp duty revenue to government coffers as tax, insisting that the bank remits only 60 per cent to the government while 40 per cent goes to private pockets.

The lawmaker had equally alleged that the CBN governor, Godwin Emefeile, kept another N171 billion dollars in the bank’s private investors’ account, being proceeds of stamp duty. But leaders of the coalition, Bassey Etuk Williams and Abubakar Ibrahim, who led the protest march to the National Assembly, said they observed that since the CBN governor announced the implementation of cashless policy and redesign of naira notes, a policy that probably does not go down well with some political class, they have been plotting ways of bringing to disrepute his personality.

Bassey said: “Our attention has been drawn to the funny allegation flying around about stamp duty mismanaged money allegedly to a tune of N89 trillion according to a dissolved presidential committee that had Kazaure as Secretary. We are amazed that despite the dissolution of the said committee, he is still pressing for submission of the report and going about slandering the name of the CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele.”

The group said it will not tolerate this based on the noticeable reforms being put in place by the CBN Governor.

THE Academic Staff Union of Polytechnic (ASUP) has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to, as a matter of urgency, wade in and stop the sales of Kaduna Polytechnic’s residential quarters.

Kaduna Polytechnic chapter of ASUP, which made the call while addressing journalists on Friday, disclosed that about 400 housing units belonging to the institution have been valued and offered with stringent conditions that will only make the houses available to strangers at the detriment of the polytechnic’s security.

Speaking on behalf of the union, ASUP chairman, Engr. Abubakar Abdulllahi, flanked by other executives and several members of the union, explained further that the entire process leading to the grant of offer, payment of application fees and deadlines for the initial down payment have been shrouded in secrecy without the involvement of the union.

The academic union recalled that former Minister of Lands and Housing, Ms Ama Pepple, had said in 2011, while leading the Presidential Implementation Committee on tour of the Kaduna Polytechnic’s quarters, that the property shall not be sold.

“Furthermore, the Senate Committee on Lands, Housing and Urban Development via a circular referenced NASS/S/COH/20/05 dated 7th November, 2012, affirmed that the institution’s properties were institutional and should not be leased.

“The presidential Implementation Committee’s white paper on the inquiry into the sales of Federal Government landed properties of 16 November, 2011, wrote to the then Acting Rector of the institution, Engr. Aminu Aliyu, in a response to a petition by the polytechnic tenants that all properties belonging to Kaduna Polytechnic are for purposes of Academic Research and Development, hence, should not be sold.

“While the union is not averse to the opportunity of owning houses by its members, unity of the union is being threatened by the denial of equal opportunity for most members who are non-occupants and whose fate in the ongoing arrangement is unknown. This concern is critical in the reality of numbers of current allottees, as against non-residents.

“It is note-worthy that, the Monetization Policy of President Olusegun Obasanjo did not capture the sales of institutional properties. The reference document titled “Tertiary Institution, Office of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria Gazette No. 82 for the sales of Federal Government houses in FCT to current Public Servants” states clearly in Preamble 4(L), and 4(M) exempting Barracks of the military, Police, Para-military, Institutional Residence (within Schools, Hospitals, Power Plants, Universities, etc), we see no good reason why Kaduna Polytechnic’s landed properties should be sold.

“It is even more disturbing that most of our members waiting to be beneficiaries cannot afford the values placed on these properties and may only become agents or vendors to other persons of higher net worth outside the institution’s workforce who are already looking around to take over.

The Katsina Emirate Council has released the programme for the installation and turbanning of the new Sardauna of Katsina, Ambassador Ahmed Rufa’i Abubakar.

A member of the council said Abubakar, the Director of National Intelligence Agency (NIA), will be turbaned on 31st December at the Emir’s Palace.

The title of Sardauna means the Prime Minister, leader of Princes and Commander of the Emirate’s Armed Forces.

The council said the appointment is bestowed, unsolicited, to the most courageous, most popular, and most deserving of princes.

Read Also: ‘No plan to strip Shekarau of Sardauna title’

The body thanked the Emir of Katsina, Alhaji Abdulmumini Kabir Usman, who imitated the Sardauna title from Sokoto, and maintained the integrity of the position.

The installation will begin with a Charity Polo Tournament on 27th December at Rubicon Polo and Resorts Centre, Idu, Abuja; a tournament at Katsina Golf Club is slated for the 28th.

From 29th to 30th, an inaugural conference with the theme, Tradition and Modernity; Trends and Issues on the History of Katsina, will take place at the Conference Hall of Katsina Motel.

The turbanning on the 31st will be presided over by Emir Kabir Usman with amid performances, glamour and celebration.