The Nation Newspaper

Tag: FG

  • FG urged to support community policing

    FG urged to support community policing

    The Federal Government has been called upon to invest heavily on community policing by giving adequate support to organizations and groups that engage in grassroots mobilization for information and intelligence gathering to assist security agencies in their operations.

    Speaking on a topic “Community policing as a modern tool to enhancing efficiency on security matters”, a security expert, Mr. Fredrick Davies, President of Global Security Network, Dallas, Texas, USA, observed that the performance of security agencies all over the world in modern times are enhanced on the embrace of community policing which gives encouragement to grassroots mobilization and intelligence gathering.

    Mr. Davies, whose organization is an affiliate of International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) USA, spoke at a two-day training workshop organized for members of the Police Assistance Committee (PAC) in Lagos, where he stated that the modern technique of fighting crime globally is based on intelligence gathering which security agencies obtain through cooperation with organizations at the grassroots, particularly organized groups that enjoy community-based support and membership like the Police Assistance Committee.

    The security expert, therefore, urged the Federal Government and all security agencies in Nigeria to keep encouraging a group like the PAC whose organization has been assisting security agencies in Nigeria through information dissemination and intelligence gathering and with installation of computers and internet services at police formations over two decades ago, with moral, logistics and financial support, adding that such a group with its members that cut across low cadre populace in the society are better positioned to access information and intelligence within the system.

    Also speaking at the event, Director-General of PAC, Dr. Martins John-Oni, commended the office of the Inspector General of Police, Senate Committee on Police Affairs who have been patnering the Police Assistance Committee in organizing and conducting seminars/workshops to train its members and other stakeholders on information/intelligence gathering, and also the Office of the Vice President who had shown willingness to work with organization, urging the government and security agencies to keep showing more support to the Police Assistance Committee morally, financially and logistically as a way of encouragement.

  • FG’s N-Power: Where is continuity?

    Sir: Employment and unemployment are two sides of a coin. While the former brings about happiness, self-esteem and fulfillment, the later brings about its direct opposite. The history of unemployment is as old as man and civilization. Public works and ancient colossal projects commissioned by kings and emperors come to the rescue to provide work for teaming army of the unemployed.

    Since the era of industrial revolution, the face of work and labour has been redefined radically. Hence, modern man and society have been faced with the challenges and herculean task of labour and productivity.

    It is in this direction that nation-states are perennially faced with the social-economic and political implications of unemployment in a fast changing world. Developed economies are better off as they produce for themselveswith enough to export while the underdeveloped ones are caught in the web of dependency.

    Developing economies are perennially laden with the negative consequences of failed policies, policy summersault, lack of political will to implement and political manipulations leading to truncation of well thought out policies. This is why dearth of continuity became synonymous with the faces of successive governments in Nigeria. We are witness to past short-lived programmes with obviously good intentions subverted as soon as we have a change of government.

    Where is; DFFRI, NDE, PTF, SURE-P Graduate internship scheme and other intervention poverty alleviation programs before now?

     

    • Comrade Ogbu A. Ameh,

    Akatekwe Kingdom, Benue State.

  • FG alerts Nigerians on new ISIS strategy

    The Federal Government on Thursday alerted Nigerians of the latest antics of the Islamic State.

    According to a statement issued by the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, ISIS has launched a new mobile application designed to propagate Jihad to children.

    The statement signed by Mr. Segun Adeyemi, Special Assistant to the minister, said the mobile application, tagged “Huroof” (Arabic alphabets or letters), would be used by ISIS to teach children the Arabic alphabets with the aid of guns, military tanks and cannons.

    ”The application utilizes colourful illustrations that attract and engage the attention of young children,” the minister said, urging members of the public and parents in particular to be vigilant and prevent their children and wards from being indoctrinated.

  • FG targets more foreign loans

    FG targets more foreign loans

    The Federal Government will in the next three years focus more on obtaining foreign  loans in the face of the dwindling income from oil and to diversify the economy.

    The government is opting for external loans in order to allow Nigerian banks to assist the private sector to grow by borrowing to the sector.

    The Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, disclosed these to State House correspondents at the end of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting chaired by Acting President Yemi Osinbajo.

    She was accompanied to the briefing by the Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed and the Minister of State for Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed.

    According to her, the new policy is part of the Debt Management Strategy for the years 2016 to 2019 approved by FEC on Wednesday.

    She said: “Today I presented a memo to the FEC which was approved for the debt management strategy for the years 2016-2019.

    “Nigeria started producing debt management strategy in the year 2012 and three years debt management programme and the previous ones had expired in December 2015 and there was a need for a new one.

    “There was a need for a new one for two reasons, one was that the previous one had expired and secondly, given the current economic challenges and then the economic circus of this government to reflate and diversify the economy.”

    She also explained that there is a need for a new debt strategy in order to base it on the Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF).

    The new MTEF prepared by the Ministry of Budget and National Planning, she said, assumed that the domestic debt would reduce from one percent of GDP to 0.7 percent by 2019.

     

  • FG and the banks

    Gale of sacks in the financial sector is worrisome; but threats of licence withdrawal is wrong

    It was perhaps expected that the Federal Government will react sternly to the gale of job shedding in the financial services sector. With banks spurning its directive to halt the on-going industry-wide staff rationalisation, it threatened to revoke the licence of any bank that violated the order. In a note that sounded desperate, Minister of Labour, Chris Ngige, warned: “the Federal Government gave the licences to the banks to operate and if its directives are not adhered to, the licences will be withdrawn if the need arises”.

    We consider the threat as not only unwarranted but smacks of an overkill.

    Was the Federal Government right to be alarmed? The answer is, yes. What is debatable is whether it can claim such powers, particularly under a democracy whose bedrock is the rule of law, without being accused – rightly in our view – of acting arbitrarily.

    That is not to suggest that the gale of retrenchment is nothing to worry about. Barely a month ago, it was First Bank which, through its parent company, FBN Holdings, announced that it planned to reduce the number of its workers by 1,000 to cut costs. Three other banks have since followed in quick succession: Diamond Bank – 200; Ecobank – 1,040; and Skye Bank 175 – all of these within the month. The common factor in all of the retrenchment is the claim of poor profitability and harsh economic situation.

    The poor shape of the economy is of course beyond deniability. The point here is that the management of the banks, being private entities, are answerable to their shareholders and perhaps to a lesser degree, to the regulatory authorities. With their primary consideration being the bottom-line, it is expected that they will do anything – including sacrificing the workers – for a healthy bottom-line. Their case unfortunately finds some merit in the increasingly harsh operating environment and declining profitability recorded in the preceding year.

    We must however not fail to point out another side to the argument. The first stems from their social responsibility as financial operators who derive their sustenance from the society. This requirement should ordinarily impose the burden on the banks to be socially sensitive and responsible – a burden which unfortunately, they have neither learnt nor shown disposition to bear. This obviously explains why the hapless workers are the first to go at the onset of the threat to the bottom-line; nothing about the fat and sometimes outsized compensations to their executives which, they are able to creatively hide from the prying eyes of tax authorities. Time in our view for the bank executives to do some soul-searching.

    Of course, we know for a fact that most, if not all of these banks are not unionised, not to their own choosing but simply because their management would have none of it. As a consequence, the workers are not only rendered powerless but easy targets of arbitrary actions of the management. It seems to us about time the workers assert their right to have a say in the affairs of their institutions, in so far as it affects them.

    No doubt, the government as the guarantor of the public good cannot be expected to keep mum in the face of the one-sided action of the banks’ management. This is even more so when many of these banks would have long gone under without government patronage. We expect the Bankers Committee to step in to stop the gale of sacks. At this time, it is the least it can do to halt a possible social cataclysm.

  • Don urges FG to document indigenous languages

    A professor of Yoruba and Linguistics, Prof. Akinloye Ojo, wants the Federal Government to document Nigeria’s indigenous languages with a view to boosting the chances of their survival in future.

    Ojo, who is of the University of Georgia, United States, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos that about 5,000 Nigerian indigenous languages were currently threatened.

    He said that the affected languages are spoken mainly in the North-East Zone by the aged and adults.

    The don, who said that though the languages are threatened, they are not necessarily nearing extinction because there are a few speakers.

    He, however, said that some languages have fewer than 50,000 speakers.

    The don said documenting various indigenous languages in writing, video and audio would promote their chances of survival.

    He canvassed that government should empower languages as well as their speakers to become inventive.

    He said:”Languages in Nigeria, according to the linguistics associations, are more threatened than in North America.

    “Whereas, some languages are considered threatened they still have thousands of speakers.”

    Ojo described some languages as ‘struggling’  because speakers are being lost while children no longer speak them.

    “Some languages are, however, empowered daily, particularly the national languages like Yoruba, Hausa and Igbo.

    “People always worry about what they are going to be doing with indigenous languages as a course in tertiary institutions.

    “I think part of the things government can do is to encourage university students irrespective of their majors to take one or two semesters on Yoruba.

    “A lot of people in different parts of the world where most invention comes from stumble upon a need.

    “Maybe someday, somebody will take Yoruba at UNILAG or LASU and develop application that will teach our children in indigenous languages.”

    Ojo also said that if government could reward proficiency in English, it should also reward proficiency in indigenous languages.

  • Group wants FG to adopt JAMB’s CBT for future recruitment

    The New Initiative for Credible Leadership has urged the Federal Government to adopt the Computer Based Test (CBT) introduced by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) across board for all government examinations and recruitment tests.

    A statement issued by the group’s Executive Secretary, Samson Onwu, on Sunday in Abuja, explained that the confirmation by stakeholders that CBT had successfully checked examination fraud in the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) was proof that the method is the innovative way to go.

    The statement noted that the doubts that usually accompanied government examinations and job tests would be a thing of the past if CBT was adopted since the method had proven trustworthy enough to result in the abolition of post-UMTE tests that tertiary institutions used to conduct.

    The statement reads: “We know that the results of common entrance examination into secondary schools and Unity School entrance examinations usually have acceptability issues since examination fraud has spread even to that level of education.

    “We believe that what the Registrar of JAMB, Professor Dibu Ojerinde has done with CBT for UTME should be introduced at that level.

    “The CBT could also help end the rowdiness usually associated with written interviews for government jobs since Nigerian youths usually apply in their hundreds of thousands.

    “JAMB successfully conducted the UMTE for over 1.5million candidates using CBT without the kind of stampede that had claimed lives in government job interviews. This makes CBT a lifesaving alternative to the existing system. It can be applied for the competency test before recruitment processes move to the next stage.

    “We are certain that the corrupt tendencies like cheating, favouritism and nepotism that plague examination and government recruitment processes would become things of the past with the adoption of this system,” the statement said.

    The group further stressed that what the Professor Ojerinde led JAMB has done is a testimony to the fact that the organization can handle such assignment in addition to its mandate of conducting entrance examination for tertiary schools.”

     

    It added that “JAMB should partner with the Federal Character Commission and recruitment agencies to give Nigerians confidence in the numerous initiatives that President Muhammadu Muhammadu has introduced in the implementation of the change agenda.

     

    “This will also ensure that the infrastructure for CBT are in use all year round with continuous opportunity for improvement based on experience from each examination or test conducted.”

     

  • Why we can’t stop influx of non-Nigerian herdsmen — FG

    Why we can’t stop influx of non-Nigerian herdsmen — FG

    The Federal Government yesterday gave the ECOWAS Transhumance Protocol as a reason why non-citizens of Nigeria are still allowed to graze their cattle across the country.

    It has been established that many herdsmen who are involved in clashes in Nigerian villages are not Nigerians.

    The ECOWAS Transhumance Protocol, the government stated, has given the right of free movement to citizens of member countries.

    The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh, who disclosed this at the opening of a two-day Stakeholders’ Consultative Forum on Grazing Reserves and Stock Routes in Abuja on Thursday, told journalists that the law is similar to the fundamental right to freedom of movement in the Nigerian constitution.

    Chief Ogbeh said: “The Nigerian constitution has given every citizen the fundamental right to freedom of movement in search of legitimate businesses; transhumance pastoralism is seen along these lines.

    “For pastoralists from neighbouring West African countries, access to grazing rights in other countries in the ECOWAS zone, including Nigeria, is guaranteed by the ECOWAS Transhumance Protocol of 1998 and ECOWAS Protocol of Free Movement of Goods and Persons in West Africa.”

    Chief Ogbeh stated that the ECOWAS Transhumance Protocol allows for herders to move across borders in search of pasture upon fulfilling the conditions laid down in the Protocol.

    The minister noted that pastoralists who provided bulk of livestock and dairy products consumed locally, employ mobility as a production strategy.

     Chief Ogbeh regretted that the movement of animals within and across agro-ecological zones had precipitated resource use competition that had resulted in high incidence of conflicts between crop farmers and pastoralists across the country.

     According to chief Ogbeh, the conflicts had taken a massive tool on the nation’s economy, stressing that, “the present deadly conflicts reportedly occur mostly between the Nigerian transhumance herders and/or the cross border transhumance pastoralists on one hand and the local crop farmers on the other.”

    On ways to mitigate the conflicts between the groups and promote commercial livestock production, the minister stated that grazing reserves and stock routes development and utilization had been stepped up in recent years.

    “The grazing reserves are to settle transhumance pastoralists and reduce or eliminate crop farmer-pastoralist conflicts,” he stated.

    Chief Ogbeh also said the federal government was planning to meet with key leaders of Fulani   to get their support on the establishment of grazing reserves for cattle rearers.

     The move, he said, would effectively halt the recurrent clashes between herdsmen and farmers.

  • FG ‘yet to recover’ arms imported by Dasuki

    FG ‘yet to recover’ arms imported by Dasuki

    The Federal Government has said it is yet to recover all “sophisticated arms and ammunition” allegedly imported and kept away by the ex- National Security Adviser (NSA), Col. Sambo Dasuki (rtd).

    The government said although it has recovered some of the arms and ammunitions, including cash in foreign currencies in Dasuki’s Abuja home, security operatives were yet to locate others.

    The government stated these in an application filed on June 3 before the Federal High Court, Abuja, seeking witness protection arrangement for prosecution witnesses in Dasuki’s ongoing trial for illegal arms possession and money laundering.

    The government said, in the application filed by prosecution lawyer, Oladipo Okpeseyi (SAN), that Dasuki was a man of huge influence across the country, and that the safety of witnesses it intends calling would be threatened if their identities were not concealed.

    “The defendant (Dasuki), while serving as the NSA, imported into the country a large cache of highly sophisticated arms and ammunition, most of which have not been accounted for.

    “Upon the search of the defendant’s residence, some of these arms and ammunition were recovered, while the whereabouts of others is not known till date.

    “A huge volume of these highly sophisticated arms and ammunition is feared to be in the possession of persons, who are sympathetic to the defendant.

    “The defendant was the immediate past National Security Adviser (NSA), a retired senior military officer and crowned prince of Sokoto Caliphate, who undoubtedly, commands large followership throughout the length and breadth of Nigeria and, who may be aggrieved by this trial.

    “Most of the witnesses in this case are security personnel, who are involved in other operations across the country, while others are residents within the area of dominance of the defendant and have expressed fears of being identified by members of the public, who are sympathetic to the defendant,” it stated.

     

     

  • FG asks banks to suspend retrenchment

    FG asks banks to suspend retrenchment

    The Federal Government yesterday told  banks, insurance and financial institutions to stay action on their ongoing or planned retrenchment immediately.

    Labour and Employment Minister Chris Ngige, in a statement in Abuja, said there was need to conclude the conciliatory meetings in the industry  first.

    “Following spate of petitions and complaints from stakeholders in the banking, insurance and financial institutions, I hereby direct the suspension of the on-going retrenchment pending the outcome of the conciliatory meetings in the industry,” Ngige said.

    He added: “This is as a result of the apprehension by my office of the various disputes in the sector in accordance and in compliance with the provisions of the labour laws of Nigeria.”

    The minister said that the continued retrenchment and redundancy by the sector were jeopardizing the outcome of the reconciliatory and mediatory processes undertaken by the ministry.

     “In this wise, all the retrenchments and redundancies done in the last four months and all proposed ones should be put on hold pending the outcome of the proposed stakeholders’ summit for the banking, insurance and financial institutions’ employers and employees slated for July.”

    Several banks have fired thousands of workers, amid an economic crisis. This week, Ecobank has reportedly sacked about  a thousand staff.