The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Greek

  • Greek club PAOK’s president gets 3-year ban for gun incident

    Club PAOK Salonika’s president Ivan Savvidis has been banned from all football stadiums for three years for storming onto the pitch with a gun during a league game.

    The Greek league’s disciplinary committee, which made the statement, also said on Thursday that the club was stripped of three points, thereby ending their title chances.

    Savvidis, a Georgia-born businessman and former Russian state Duma deputy, charged onto the pitch with a gun in his belt.

    His action was as a result of a PAOK disallowed goal in a match against fellow title contenders AEK Athens on March 11.

    The game was interrupted and the incident prompted an immediate suspension of the league by the Greek government.

    The world football governing body, FIFA, considers possible action against Greece over repeated crowd trouble and violence in the stadiums.

    The government lifted the ban on Tuesday with Super league matches set to resume over the weekend.

    Read Also: Greek club PAOK wants Sunday Mba

    Savvidis was also fined 100,000 euros (87,539 pounds) and the club, fined an additional 63,000 euros, and must play three matches behind closed doors.

    PAOK sports director Lubos Michel, a former international referee, was banned for 90 days and fined 15,000 euros after also entering the pitch and complaining to the referee.

    The disciplinary committee awarded the game to AEK Athens and stripped two points from PAOK from next season’s championship.

    PAOK said they would appeal.

    “The sanction is harsh and was delivered under the pressure of a coordinated media storm against PAOK,” the club said in a statement.

    “We are proceeding with an appeal and wait to be judged on real facts.”

    FIFA has warned Greece to clean up football or risk a possible international ban.

    “The word Grexit is no more impossible. Greek football is going to an edge,” Herbert Huebel, head of a FIFA monitoring committee for Greek football, said earlier this month.

    NAN

  • Greek parliament adopts law limiting use of Sharia norms in Muslim community

    Greek parliament adopts law limiting use of Sharia norms in Muslim community

    The Greek parliament adopted on Wednesday a law limiting the use of the Sharia norms for the Muslim community in the northeastern region of Western Thrace.

    The law significantly limits the use of Sharia, which will now not be mandatory in the sphere of family issues such as marriage, divorce and testament.

    If one of the parties does not want to use the Sharia law, it may appeal to a court.

    The new legislation sets the procedure of muftis’ appointment and dismissal as well as their powers and salaries.

    The only party, which opposed the law, is the far-right Golden Dawn, which believes the Sharia law must be completely removed from the Greek judiciary system.

    Read Also: Buhari’s New Year message, a Greek gift – ADP

    “Greece is the only European country, which continues to use Sharia on such [family] issues,” Golden Dawn’s lawmaker Panagiotis Iliopoulos said at the parliament’s hearing.

    The Sharia law has been used in West Thrace in accordance with the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne signed after the Greek defeat in the Turkish War of Independence.

    In November 2017, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras vowed to remove the mandatory use of the Sharia law for the Muslim community during his trip to West Thrace.

    NAN

  • Pope Francis calls for change in ‘The Lord’s Prayer’

    Pope Francis calls for change in ‘The Lord’s Prayer’

    Pope Francis has said the Roman Catholic Church should adopt a better translation of the phrase “lead us not into temptation” in the ‘The Lord’s Prayer,’ the best known prayer in Christianity.

    “That is not a good translation,” the pope said in a television interview on Wednesday night.

    Francis said the Catholic Church in France had decided to use the phrase “do not let us fall into temptation” as an alternative and indicated that it or something similar should be applied worldwide.

    Read also:Pope Francis prays for peace in Nigeria

    The prayer, also called ‘Our Father’, is part of Christian liturgical culture and memorized from childhood by hundreds of millions of Catholics.

    It is a translation from the Latin vulgate, which was translated from ancient Greek, which was in turn translated from Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus.

    Liturgical translations are usually done by local Churches in coordination with the Vatican.

    NAN

  • Greece arrests suspected Islamic State terrorist

    Greece arrests suspected Islamic State terrorist

    Greek authorities on Friday said they had arrested a Syrian man suspected to be member of the Islamic State terrorist organisation.

    Police said that they found incriminating data, videos and photographs, including scenes of executions, on his mobile phone.

    He has reportedly confessed to being a member of Islamic State.

    The 32-year-old, who arrived illegally with his wife and two children on the island Leros in June 2016 after traveling from Turkey, was arrested on Thursday.

    The family moved through several refugee camps after their arrival, planning to continue further north to Europe.

    Police became aware of the suspect after his wife filed a report alleging violence against their children.

    The man is due to appear in front of prosecutors on Saturday.

    Report says authorities are still checking the suspect’s background prior to his arrival in Europe.

    Read Also:IPOB as a terrorist organisation: What the Law, legal experts say

  • National duty or Greek’s gift?

    •The Senate’s July 27 passage of the NFIA bill could strengthen or weaken the fight against corruption, depending on the overbearing motive 

    On the structural plane, the Senate did right by passing the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Agency (NFIA) Bill, which moved the old Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) from an “autonomous unit” under the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), to a full-fledged administrative agency, now located in the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

    This not only suits both the letters and spirit of the EFCC Act of 2004, which indeed stated the NFIU would be an “autonomous” unit, it also approximates global best practices, in which administrative FIUs are located outside a crime agency, as in the United States; and most countries in West Africa, where FIUs are located in the Central Bank, Ministry of Justice or the Ministry of Finance.

    Yet, the speed with which the Senate passed the bill — riffling from introduction to passage in just one week — cannot but draw suspicion it may be a legislative equivalent of a subversive gift from the Greek; after the old Greek gift of Trojan horse that destroyed Troy.

    The Senate-Ibrahim Magu confrontation has been an open feud. The Senate loves to flaunt a Department of State Services (DSS) report, on which it purportedly anchored its decision not to confirm Mr. Magu as EFCC chair, despite his demonstrable elan at the job. Still, its body language shows clear unease, if not outright panic, at Mr. Magu keeping his job. For a body that has continued to show base motives, when absolute transparency is called for in doing its legislative duties, the Senate has lent itself to legitimate charges of wanting to, at all cost, scupper Mr. Magu.

    Yet, in this case, both the EFCC and the highest legislative chamber appear guilty of self-indictment.

    On the EFCC part, its chairs have been guilty of removing and replacing FIU directors, almost at whims; thus gravely undermining its autonomy, and scuppering its capacity to provide financial intelligence for the many government agencies combating sleaze and allied crimes. That has not only led to friction among these agencies — who rightly or wrongly perceive EFCC as using the FIU as own joker — it also led to umpteenth warnings, from the Egmont Group of Financial Intelligence Units, the global regulators, for Nigeria to ensure the autonomy of its FIU.

    That came to a head when, after its July 2-7 meeting in China, the Egmont Group suspended Nigeria. Not only that. It also threatened that if by January 2018 an autonomous Nigeria FIU was not in place, the country faced possible expulsion. That would have been well and truly tragic, for Egmont Group, of 151 countries including the United States and the United Kingdom, is the global clearing house for intelligence in financial crimes and money laundering.

    Were Nigeria to be expelled, the consequences would be dire. First, it would lose access to the pool of financial intelligence shared among the 151-country network; lose the ability to recover stolen funds abroad, lose track of money laundering intelligence, particularly as they fuel terrorism; and risk a possible blacklist of Nigeria from international finance. That could impair the issuance of MasterCard and Visa credit and debit cards by Nigerian banks to customers and negate the business models of Nigerian banks.

    Might this clear and present danger then have propelled the Senate to its turbo-charged passage of the bill? Maybe.  Maybe not. But one thing was clear: the imperative to relocate NFIA (noble and patriotic goal) was yet another front in the war to vanquish Magu (ignoble motive). That portrayed the whole exercise as legislative cant, even if the final institutional result is supposed to be beneficial.

    It could well still be — if a person with the right temper and who is above board could be appointed to boss the new agency. That way, his focus would be his job and his oath: to feed all the anti-sleaze agencies with all the financial intelligence they need to rid the country of the menace of corruption.

    But it could also go tragically awry — if the appointee is another turf warrior, zealous and merry to be recruited into the unfinished Senate-Magu war. That way, even an autonomous NFIA could well mean some institutional trigger, to ensure the agencies work at cross-purposes, and scatter the war against corruption.

    Still, all these are symptoms. The real problem is the inability to build strong state institutions. If the Egmont Group insists on NFIA, its assumption is that policy continuation is a function of strong institutions, hardly strong personalities, even if right personalities lay solid foundations for strong institutions.

    If every party learns this sole truth, it could be the beginning of a systemic, sustainable and productive war against corruption.

  • No Greek gift from J.P. Morgan

    Recently, the international mogul JP Morgan decided to delist Nigeria from its government bonds. The reason is that the new Central Bank regime on foreign exchange transactions does not favour its own light of good capitalism. It has created a set of chain reactions and the stock market has turned a little giddy.

    But I am happy the CBN is not yielding to the shark of a bank.

    J.P. Morgan and its types come from a culture of due process and transparency. But it is a bank that knows how to trick governments and naïve citizens. Was it not the same bank that was fined close to $20 billion for a series of unethical and unprofessional conduct? It paid a major role in swindling Americans in the mortgage scandal a few years ago, and paid $13 billion in fines. It also paid $1 billion over the “London Whale scandal” and $6 billion over the manipulation of a felon called Bruno Iksil. It paid $2 billion for allowing Berne Madoff swindle innocent American investors. It was in cahoots with companies, such as Goldman Sachs to tease Greece into its crisis by crafting a system to hide its debt while profiting by it. Now, Greece is suffering alone. If JP Morgan cannot live with transparency in Nigeria, we can live without their geeks. We abhor another Greek gift

  • Greek gift

    Greek gift

    •The Euro crisis is a cautionary tale for Nigeria and ECOWAS single currency dream

    No country on earth can regard the crisis in Greece and the Euro zone without economic self-awareness. Not least Nigeria and the West African sub-region, which has long begun a process of establishing an integrated currency perhaps tentatively known as ECOI.

    The case of the European country is instructive for a number of reasons. A sense of communal cheer characterised the embrace of the single currency in Europe. The countries looked to a time of cooperative strength derived from robust economic exchange, with one country’s weakness buoyed by collective strength. It was also anticipated as potential engine for a European renaissance, a sort of hark back to the age of the continent’s status as the indispensable continent and driver of world prosperity. In subtle hints, it projected itself as a counterfoil to American hubris, and the United States did not conceal its nervousness over what some of its citizens saw as conspiracy fuelled by envy.

    One other highlight of the Greek crisis is that the one-time centre of world civilisation constitutes just two percent of the European economy. Yet, the rest of Europe has treated it with a delicacy that reveals the danger of signing such cooperative deals. Great Britain voted in a referendum to stay out of the currency because it saw the Euro as part subjugation and part economic strangulation. It was vindicated because it did not need a European parliament to work its currency in the last recession. It favoured Germany as other countries became enthralled by its own powerful economy.

    Nigeria may well know that many constraints work against a common currency in West Africa. First, the region does not have great internal trade. Even China today, for all its high tide, chafes under weak internal consumption, and it has not helped its currency in international play. The fact that there is little internal trade will put tremendous pressure on the Naira.

    Two, the Naira does not have any convertibility status, and that means the Nigerian economy would meld into the sub-region and it will take great economic management and statecraft for Nigeria to take advantage of its position as the preeminent nation.

    The Economic Community of  West African States has been from inception working towards a unified monetary policy under what it calls West Africa Monetary Zone (WAMZ), which will cover such countries as Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Gambia, Guinea and Liberia as well as the Union Monetaire l’ovest Africaine (UMOA) countries constituted by Benin, Togo, Cote d’Ivoire, Niger, Mauritania, Senegal, Burkina Faso and Mali.

    Currency sovereignty is not the only plus in avoiding such a tie-up, but also a freedom to decide when to control and print currency as part of monetary rescue and self-assertion.

    That was the allure that drove Greece to a referendum in which the citizens chose sovereignty over subjugation. The French West African countries use the CFA but it is linked to the French Francs, and that implies that they run a captive economy. Launching ECOI faces entanglement with French colonial past and that may endanger its freedom from its first sigh. Liberia and Cape Verde have expressed reservations over a unified currency.

    Integration is a romantic idea. But as Greece has shown, it is not a practical way for a country like Nigeria still searching for an economic system and values system that transcend our foibles like leakages in ports and borders. Nigeria is also a consumption-laden land with industrial hiatus.

    Our currency is more fragile now than any time in history. We will do well to first put our economy on a stand footing, and not meddle in romanticism that may not only undermine our relative advantage in the sub-region but also our pride.

    ‘Integration is a romantic idea. But as Greece has shown, it is not a practical way for a country like Nigeria still searching for an economic system and values system that transcend our foibles like leakages in ports and borders. Nigeria is also a consumption-laden land with industrial hiatus’

     

  • Greek debt negotiations weigh on European stocks

    European stocks have fallen after a Greek minister said Athens would struggle to meet its upcoming debt payments.

    Interior Minister Nikos Voutsis made his comments during a TV programme.

    Stocks on Greece’s ATG index are trading 2.13 per cent lower on the day at 822.34.

    Greece needs to strike a deal with its creditors in order to release €7.2bn (£5.1bn) in remaining assistance.

    “The four instalments for the IMF in June are €1.6bn, this money will not be given and is not there to be given,” Mr Voutsis said.

    The country’s finance minister meanwhile has told the BBC on Sunday that progress was being made.

    “Greece has made enormous strides at reaching a deal,” Yanis Varoufakis told the Andrew Marr Show.

    Other benchmark indexes across Europe have also fallen.

    The IBEX is down 2.21 per cent to 11,298.3 after Spain’s voters punished the ruling Popular Party (PP) in local and regional elections.

    France’s Cac-40 is down 0.84 per cent to 5099.5, and Italy’s MIB is down 1.99 per cent to 23,308.

  • Electricity Tariffs reduction as Greek gift

    IR: President Goodluck Jonathan’s desperation knows no bounds. How can a government reduce electricity tariffs for private companies’ services or is it a lie that the electricity sector has been privatised? What an election gimmick!

    Recently NERC told Nigerians that electricity tariffs would be increased

    from June 2015 because of the free fall of the naira that is not commensurate with the current economic reality. What informed this deceitful move from the federal government?

    It is an indisputable truth that Nigerians all over the nation are crying out and complaining bitterly about high tariff for a nonexistent service through the supply of power by these private electricity distribution companies despite the purported trillions of naira expended by the government, which has rather turned Nigeria into one huge ball of darkness.

    One is aware that because of the clamour for change, this government

    in misreading the mood of the nation came up with fake palliatives including reduction in the pump price per litre of petrol from N97 to N87. But the reality of the situation is that except in Lagos and Abuja, in most other states, the pump price per litre of petrol is above N100 and for some weeks now, fuel queues resurfaced again; so who is fooling who?

    Nigerians should not, as the general elections draw nearer, fall for Greek gift because they don’t last long.

     

    • Nel-jumi,

  • EU aides play down Greek reform plan

    Euro zone officials played down plans submitted by cash-strapped Greece to its international creditors in a bid to secure fresh funds, a day after Athens’ outspoken finance minister irked EU partners by raising the prospect of a referendum.

    Speaking before finance ministers of the currency area meet in Brussels,  Eurogroup chairman Jeroen Dijsselbloem said steps outlined by Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis in a letter last week were serious but “far from complete”.

    “This is a process that’s just going to take a long time,” the Dutchman said, adding that it would be very difficult to complete Greece’s reform programme during the four-month extension of its EU/IMF bailout that runs until end June.

    Varoufakis, who wants a negotiated restructuring of Greece’s debt to official lenders, said in a newspaper interview published on Sunday the leftist-led government could call a referendum or early elections if European partners rejected its debt and growth plans.

    The Finance Ministry later clarified that the Marxist former academic had been replying to a hypothetical question and that any referendum would “obviously regard the content of reforms and fiscal policy” and not whether to stay in the euro.

    A senior politician in German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative bloc said on Monday that Greece would be better off outside the 19-nation euro zone, suggesting that Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble privately shared that view.

    “By leaving the euro zone, as Finance Minister Schaeuble has suggested, the country could make itself competitive again from a currency perspective with a new drachma,” former transport minister Peter Ramsauer, a member of the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU), wrote in Bild.

    Merkel and Schaeuble have both said publicly they want to keep Greece in the currency area. But in a sign that German sentiment may be shifting, Ramsauer said a temporary “Grexit” would be a “great opportunity” for the country to boost its economy and administration “making it fit to return to the euro area from a position of strength”.

     

     

    German Deputy Finance Minister Steffen Kampeter said in a radio interview he did not expect substantial decisions on Greece at Monday’s Eurogroup meeting because ministers were waiting for more financial details on the reform plans.

     

     

    He criticized Varoufakis’ talk of a referendum or returning to elections, saying it would only delay the implementation of the economic measures Greece needed.

    An opinion poll published on Monday showed a large majority of Greeks want Athens to reach a compromise deal with international lenders to avoid having to leave the euro.

    Some 69.6 percent of Greeks say the new leftist-led government should look for an “honorable compromise” to resolve the crisis, according to a Marc survey for the newspaper Efimerida Ton Syntakton. Only 27.4 percent of those questioned wanted Greece to refuse any compromise, even if that meant having to leave the euro zone.

    Leftist leader Alexis Tsipras won power in January promising voters a radical renegotiation of the bailout package that requires strict budget discipline and which has imposed wrenching austerity, shrinking the economy by about 25 percent.

    Despite rifts in his Syriza party because of concessions the government has had to make, polls show it remains popular.

    The government submitted a bill last week to offer free food and electricity to thousands of poverty-stricken Greeks as its first legislative act in parliament — a symbolic move to address what it calls a humanitarian crisis.

    About 88 percent of respondents supported these initial policy steps, according to the survey.

    Shut out of debt markets and with international loans frozen against a background of falling revenues, Greece could run out of cash later this month.