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Tag: President

  • IBA announces Reynolds as new President

    The International Bar Association (IBA) has announced Michael J. Reynolds, Partner at law firm Allen & Overy, as the new President of the IBA. His two-year tenure succeeds that of Mr. Akira Kawamura of Anderson Mori & Tomotsune in Tokyo, Japan, who held the position from January 2011.

    Based in the Brussels and Washington DC offices of Allen & Overy, Mr. Reynolds said on taking the helm, “I feel privileged to have been elected President of the International Bar Association and I look forward to building on the work and momentum of my predecessors.” He went on: “During my presidency, I shall be focusing on the impact of climate change on all of us, but especially on the disadvantage.”

    Reynolds said he is determined to bolster the work being done “in this field in the context of the new climate agreement to which the international community has pledged commitment to the attainment of defined goals by 2015.”

    He said: “We will also look at other ways of how the lives of the underprivileged are being destabilised, and will focus on the ways to enhance or preserve their access to justice.”

    Mr. Reynolds said he would use his tenure to strengthen IBA’s engagement with legal professionals across the globe, in particular in the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa); Mexico; Asia, with a specific focus on Vietnam, Indonesia and Myanmar; and in Africa, including the African French and Portuguese-speaking countries.

    As cross-border transactions increase and more work is done through the IBA to enhance cross-border law and standards, Reynolds said: “Cross-border transformations have perhaps been seen at their most radical in new technologies and social media. An IBA task force will explore the impact and potential of these for justice and the practice of law.

  • Mr President, please stop this bloodshed

    Mr President, please stop this bloodshed

    SIR: I write in reaction to President Goodluck Jonathan’s statement on New Year day that all the Boko Haram suspects responsible for the various attacks in the country have been apprehended. The President also gave himself kudos for preventing a wave of terror attacks from the extremist sect during the Yuletide. I beg to say that this is nothing but unnecessary vain-glorying.

    All over the world, leaders are always privy to information that the general populace does not possess. This is why they are people of few words; this is so that they do not reveal sensitive information which are inimical to their interests. An example is President Obama having knowledge of Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts a year before the operation to take him out was eventually carried out.

    President Jonathan in all honesty cannot say he does not know those behind these attacks. Then why do we have the SSS,DMI,DDI,Police Army, Navy, Airforce, NIA, e.t.c? All these agencies submit daily reports to the President yet he is in a quandary about what to do. I know that he might not have enough evidence to arrest these evil fellows but he can employ Machiavellian principles to bully these fellows to stop their fiendish acts. This will also create an image of strength thereby helping his Presidency. Let us not forget that Former President Obasanjo employed these tactics between 2003 to 2007 to pursue his objectives. No wonder Baba as he is fondly called cried out recently that Jonathan is doing nothing while Nigeria gradually slides into the abyss.

    Great heroes are birthed from the womb of great crises. Let him put aside political considerations, because if he fails to act now, he will forever be consigned to the dustbin of history and posterity will never forgive him.

    • Peter Ovie Akus

    University of Port Harcourt.

  • Tasks before Ghanaian President

    THE inauguration yesterday of Mr. John Dramani Mahama as the fourth President of Ghana marked another striking similarity in the Nigeria-Ghana political history. Mahama is the new man of destiny in the West African country of 25million people.

    Ghana is recorded as a country with one of the fastest growing Gross Domestic Product – 14 per cent.

    Ghana has a young population. This has imposed pressure on schools and health facilities. The government is thus expected to maintain standard.

    The country is one of the few giving hope on the African continent. It has held a fifth peaceful and successful election and has a rich history of transfer of power from one major party to another. It is, therefore, seen as a shining example for other African countries, including Nigeria . It blazed the trail in the sub-region with biometric voter registration. This has made the elections more transparent. The seven-member election commission headed by Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan has a reputation for being incorruptible.

    Perhaps the most daunting task for the 54-year-old President is promoting unity in a country fractured by the December 7, 2012 elections. The new president, who contested on the platform of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), managed a narrow victory with 50.7 per cent of the votes to the New Patriotic Party’s (NPP’s) 47.74 per cent. While previous elections were similarly fought closely, the opposition has taken its case before the Supreme Court for adjudication.

    This has raised eyebrows as it constitutes a challenge to the legitimacy of the Mahama administration. While the administration has been inaugurated, the court case, whenever it comes up, is bound to call attention to the fact that nothing is settled yet. And, if not determined on time, it could be a source of distraction for the government from which so much is expected.

    There are, however, so many lessons that Nigeria could learn from Ghana. The process of candidate selection is less acrimonious. The internal democratic mechanisms in the political parties have matured over the years. Although the aspiration by wife of former President Jerry Rawlings to pick the NDC ticket heated up the polity for a while, when a congress was held to decide between Atta-Mills and Konadu Agyemang Rawlings, the late president was the clear choice of the party.

    Her attempt to run the race on the platform of a hastily coupled New Democratic Party (NDP) failed when she could not meet the deadline in returning nomination forms. President Mahama who replaced the late Atta-Mills as NDC candidate won the confidence of almost all party members at a Special Delegates Congress held on August 30, last year. The death of Atta-Mills and the elections could not threaten the health of the polity.

    The only contentions were the few challenges encountered at the polling centres. Some of the electronic machines malfunctioned and a resort had to be made to manual voting in some polling units. This, given the returns, raised the hopes of the opposition that, if the court could be persuaded to upturn some of the results, it could replace the NDC in constituting the government.

    Can President Mahama rise up to the challenge of the moment? Is he in position to heal the wounds opened by the election and overcome the post-election challenge posed by the suit instituted by the NPP? Is Mahama sufficiently schooled to lead Ghana on the path of prosperity and sustain the high regards she enjoys in the comity of nations? These are questions to be answered over the next four years.

    However, it must be said that Mahama has the basic qualities to take Ghana to the summit. He was a Member of Parliament from 1997 to 2009 when he was inaugurated Atta-Mill’s Vice President. He was, within the period he served in Parliament, a party apparatchik and Minister. He is respected as a welfarist born into a political family, his father having served in the Kwame Nkrumah administration.

    His education, exposure and experience are expected to serve him well in taking Ghana to a new height.

     

  • PDP demands respect for President

    PDP demands respect for President

    The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) yesterday urged opposition parties to show respect for the office of the President, saying it remains the only institution that unites the nation.

    A statement by the National Publicity Secretary, Chief Olisa Metuh, deplored the manner opposition parties “abuse President Goodluck Jonathan in the name of criticism.”

    The statement reads: “The Presidency is the highest institution in the country and it deserves our collective respective. There should be a limit between criticism and abuse.

    “That President Jonathan is from a minority geo- political zone should not be the reason why the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and other opposition parties should be heaping insults and abuses on him in the name of criticisms.

    “There must be a limit and we implore that we use the spirit of the New Year to say that enough is enough.”

  • A President’ New Year promise

    A President’ New Year promise

    Welcome to 2013, a year declared by President Goodluck Jonathan as one that will witness improved governance. Just as it is natural at this time of the year for individuals and households to project on the promises of the immediate future, our President, in addition to his charming Goodluck, seems to have taken to the ancient mystical art of crystal-ball gazing in the bid to assure us that the journey to his Nigerian Eldorado is on course.

    First, was the occasion of the foundation laying ceremony of Living Faith Foundation Bible College in Kaduna on Christmas Eve where the President spoke of better times for the citizens in the New Year. His words: let me assure all of you and indeed Nigerians that 2013 will be better for us than 2012 in all aspects of the nation’s history (sic). The New Year shall be better for us in terms of job creation, wealth creation and improved security among others”.

    Days after – this time at the Christmas Service in Abuja, the President broached on the subject of perception of his administration as being a slow one.

    Again, his words: “people say this government is slow. Yes, by human thinking, we are slow; but I can say that we are not slow. He added, perhaps for emphasis, that “the government will not, because of the perception, begin to rush….”

    Although, the latter must have come to many Nigerians as a new one, from the President, it may well be evidence that the cries and anguish on the Main Street have finally pierced through the impervious walls of the Villa.

    A snail speed administration? C’mon, that would be far more tolerable than the astonishing inertia or even the outrageous but expensive presidential indulgence of outsourced governance – the variant of which finds expression in irrational fatalistic abdication; the practice of leaving routine matters of governance in the hand of the supernatural in a supposedly secular, presidential democracy.

    Without taking anything from the rare candour of the presidential admission that the past year was a colossal disaster as far as governance went, I have struggled in vain to find the substance in the so-called solid foundation on which the President plans to erect his transformational infrastructure.

    Let’s begin with the touted claims of achievement. The most obvious one of course is the “improved” performance in the power sector. Considering the state of power generation which is said to have hit the 4,500 Mw, it must be galling to most Nigerians that a federal government that has poured over $20 billion in the last decade has been on an orgy of wild jubilation over the incremental achievement – a notional improvement that is no more than 25 percent – in electricity supplies.

    Or the railways. Amazingly, the nation is supposed to be in frenzy that the railways has been primed to run –on the same old, disused Lugardian tracks. How about touting the “feat” of the overpaid Chinese contractors in fixing the relics in the age of high speed trains as “transformation”!

    In the last year, more industries closed shop than we have had new start-ups. We know why: the same old, worn, recycled but nonetheless valid tales of inclement policies, infrastructure deficit, high interest rates, and other countless bureaucratic impediments which constitute the body and soul of industries’ lack of competitiveness.

    And the result? Manufacturing remains at the abysmal low level of 4 percent contribution to the GDP – the level it was at independence. We remain net importer of just about anything – from refined fuel to domestic consumables, and to industrial spares.

    We have since found a magic in starting our charity abroad. Not for Olusegun Aganga, Jonathan’s Trade and Commerce minister, the reciprocity subsumed in global trade relations. Progress, Nigeria style, is denominated in foreign investment: the higher the number of those high-octane cocktails in off-shore hotels packaged as foreign investment drive, the more progress is said to be made. The question of how foreign investments would thrive in an environment littered with carcasses of dead industries hardly matter. How about herding our policy wonks for a refresher course in Globalisation 102?

    Today, the single greatest threat to the nation’s socio-economic stability is unemployment. The figure is said to be some 25 percent with youth unemployment put at a frightening 50 percent rate. That’s nearly twice the population of our neighbour, Ghana. What’s being done? The last I heard was that the inelegantly couched Sure-P headed by Christopher Kolade, an extra-constitutional contraption very much like the PTF, has been drafted to the rescue.

    What more can be written about the security situation that is not already known? There is war with the Boko Haram in the North; kidnappers are threatening to overrun the South. The capacity of the nation’s military is stretched thin – bogged down with internal security operations with no signs of respite on the horizon. The police, being no match for the sophistication of the criminal gangs on rampage appear overwhelmed.

    Why the picture of these realities? It is to show where the nation is coming from. It seems to me the only way to evaluate the President’s prognosis for the year. After all, isn’t it said that were wishes to be horses, beggars would ride?

    So much for the President’s exaggerated picture of 2013; last year for instance, it took a paralysing protest over the fuel price hikes to move the President to act on the racket of fuel subsidy funds administration. Twelve months after that holy rage forced the President to commit his administration to the establishment of three new refineries, it has since backtracked: the refineries are no longer on the table.

    In the year ended, the nation spent N1.3 trillion on fuel imports; this year, the figure is likely to be much higher. Lost on the hierarchs of the administration are the drag-on effects of the avoidable fuel import regime on the nation’s foreign exchange reserves and the economy as a whole.

    Consider also that it took the threat of impeachment to prod the President to implement the capital provisions of the 2012 budget. Thanks to executive-bureaucratic inertia, the roads remain a picture of abandonment. Sprucing up airport terminals may be Minister Stella Oduah’s idea of modernisation, the aviation sector is nowhere modern or safer any more than new entrants are willing to venture into the sector.

    My prognosis for the year? Nothing will change. Not in the quality and pace of governance. The bazaar driving its processes will continue no doubt. Industry capacity utilisation is likely to remain, pretty even. Surely, no one expects unemployment to come down; Not the interest rate. The monetary authorities will continue their ‘inflation targeting’ while the real economy grinds to a halt.

    You ask why? I say there is too much thinking within the box. Isn’t it said also that ‘what you see is what you get’?

    Happy New Year!

     

  • ‘Our president has no shoes’

    ‘Our president has no shoes’

    No one can forget President Goodluck Jonathan’s shoe speech of seduction. We remember it not for its rhetorical distinction. Jonathan has not delivered any speech that stuns except for playing games with facts. But the shoe speech distinguished itself by its bare bones fact, its evocative familiarity. He said he did not have shoes as a little boy and walked barefoot to school.

    It was a seduction speech because he tapped the experience of many who grew up in his days, whether in the Niger Delta, in the Southeast, in the Southwest or all parts of the North. In the 1970’s in Warri, we called it “tearing ten toes.”

    Most people did not buy shoes. They could not afford it, and it did not seem then like a big deal if you did not have shoes because many did not. That was the point President Jonathan did not make. He was not alone without shoes. He grew up in a generation of shoeless school goers. He was not an isolated poor. We all had that foot deficiency with blisters, petrified soles and toes, limping over wounds coming and going.

    He delivered the speech when he declared he wanted to run for president after he survived the plots and ululations of the so-called cabal or kitchen cabinet. Those were the men and woman who would not give him the right to which providence and the law entitled him, and he broke a law on his own called zoning in his party in order to declare his “I did not have a shoe” speech. It was perhaps the most resonant appeal in all speeches declaring a presidential ambition in Nigerian history. I might also say it was the most opportunistic.

    But that is not the point today. It is because President Jonathan has spent one hundred days in office and he seemed to bask in false glory in an organised media chat in which he failed to elevate his thoughts. He was incapable of generating an enthusiasm among Nigerians about whether he had a direction. Editors found it hard to cast any good headline because in the two-hour exposure he did not make any meaningful exposition. Not on security, not on the federal question or power or infrastructure development or on the vexing bugbear of education did he utter any succinct line of policy. As a PHD, he did not sound coherent. As a former teacher he did not inspire one to take notes. As a past technocrat, he showed no sign of the policy wonk.

    Yet, the nation is in dire pains. Poverty worsens by the hour, and all the challenges we face in the areas of Boko Haram eruptions, the failure of power, the exodus of businesses, the rising illiteracy levels, all show how poverty continues to grow like an ominous monster feeding fat in the sewer.

    In all of these, I don’t think he knows the significance of his shoe speech. It was not just an emotive moment. It was a challenge, a potentially inspirational moment. It was a pact with all those who live at the level he lived in the shoeless era. He vowed – if he did not realise it on that incandescent stage that Abuja afternoon – to ensure that those who could not afford shoes in 2011 should be able to afford them by the time he is done in office.

    It was a very simple pledge. It was an IOU. It is time to start paying up. But from how he has performed since he took over as a substantive president- though he has been president for over a year now- I see no signal of progress. No one is asking him to set up a shoe factory. That will not cut it. And no one is asking him to go on a charity spree, buy shoes in their millions and distribute them to the poor of subaltern Nigerian or even in the city.

    That will be phony. In fact Nigerians have become so adept at second-hand shoes that even the very poor afford threadbare varieties of footwear. What Jonathan should focus on now is to create conditions that will make it easy for the poor to afford shoes. It sounds simplistic. But that is the power he needs to tap for a successful presidency.

    Before a boy of school age whose parents cannot afford shoes can afford them, certain things have to happen. The parents have to be able to have enough money, and not just enough to feed, but also for shelter, for school fees, and other essentials. Shoes were seen as luxuries in those days. You had to afford the basics and later go to the level of footwear. Footwear was at the bottom of the list. Shoes are still a luxury today. For the parents to get money, they have to have jobs and jobs do not spring from lumbering economies.

    What this means is that Jonathan should make it possible for the poor to rise out of their present state of misery. But for a presidency that has not narrowed its objectives and set a coherent strategy for implementation, the story of all those with shoeless lifestyles remain endangered.

    In his first duty as president, which is security, he has proved out of sync. Jos has become a cauldron of weekly and sometimes daily tragedies. In the approach to the Boko Haram eruptions, he is engaging in counterterrorism without intelligence. Nobody wages a war without intelligence. If knowledge is power, how can you fight without knowledge? This is a typical Nigerian paradox.

    How can businesses flourish, or education standards rise and infrastructure develop in the absence of security? That is what Nigeria is today.

    This is not the time to allow himself to dither. This is not the time to be distracted by the issue of a six-year term. He made it clear it was not six years he was proposing but seven. He said Nigerians presumed he was going to benefit from it. He did not make any categorical statement about whether he was going to exploit it. Not that any such categorical word was going to mean anything. Zoning is an example.

    Agriculture is still behind, and Nigerians live on less than a dollar a day. Yet the value of the Naira to the dollar has dropped about N15 in only three months. The banks do not show the real values. Go to the Bureaus de change to find out the truth. The Nigerian is devaluated like our currency and that does not presage good things for those without shoes.

    The worse the situation, the more likely it will be for those with shoeless boys and girls to afford shoes. The president ought to take this seriously. How marvelous it would be though if the president does well and at the end of four years, we are able to pick those whose lots have so improved that they can afford shoes for their children to go to school.

    If not, that rhetoric of seduction on that gleeful stage of intention would be a big waste, a grandiloquent lie. The president could protest his failure by taking off his shoes. But we cannot have that of our president because people will say our president has no shoes.

     

    •This article, first published on September 19, 2011, was one of four articles with which Omatseye won the NMMA Columnist of the Year.

     

  • The President and NCC’s dirty war

    The President and NCC’s dirty war

    In contrast to the oil sector which has remained a by-word for corruption, waste and inefficiency since the seventies, there is widespread public perception that the old telecommunication sector, at least from the advent of mobile telephony some eleven odd years ago or so, has turned into an excellent demonstration of how privatisation can turn the fortune of an economic sector around.

    This public perception has a sound basis. Today mobile phones number in their tens of millions in sharp contrast to less than 15 years ago when fixed phones were only for the well-heeled or well-connected and numbered only in their few thousands. Mobile phones have also been relatively cheap to buy and use compared to what we had before, if not compared to elsewhere in the world. Not least of all, the services the private phone companies provide have been making quite a bundle for their shareholders and users alike.

    Behind this public perception of a relatively efficient and profitable telecommunication sector, however, there seem to lurk a level of corruption which seems different from that of the oil sector less in its nature than on its depth and scope. Indeed there are experts I know who believe, given the way Nitel, the government telecommunication company, was privatised, corruption in the sector is worse than in the oil sector, regardless of the public perception.

    We may quibble about the depth and scope of the corruption in the telecommunication sector, but no one can deny that it is there – and that it is big.

    Any Doubting Thomas need only refer to recent newspaper reports of how the management of the Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC), the regulator of the industry, has been washing its dirty linen in public.

    It would seem the first blood in the commission’s running feud was drawn by Dr Bashir Gwandu, NCC’s Executive Commissioner (Technical Services), who has been at daggers drawn with the Executive Vice-Chairman of the commission and its chief executive, Dr. Eugene Juwah, almost from the day Juwah took over from him as acting chief executive following the retirement of the penultimate chief executive, Mr Ernest Ndukwe, a couple of years ago.

    On October 8, Leadership ran a front page lead story in which it alleged that President Goodluck Jonathan had approved a waiver of a little over 1billion Naira to a company, MTS First Wireless Services, which Dr. Juwah had worked for and in which he had shares before it went belly-up a few years ago. This was also before he became the CEO of NCC. The insinuation in the story was obvious.

    Even the most casual reading of a full page advert entitled “Mr. President, Please Save NCC now!”, published in the Daily Trust of October 23, among other newspapers, and signed by five members of a Business and Technology Publishers Forum (BTPF), which they claimed is “a professional body of seasoned Nigerian journalists who are actively engaged in the reportage of Business and Technology especially ICT in the country,” can only lead one to conclude that Juwah and his sympathisers believed the source of the Leadership story was Gwandu.

    Predictably, the BTPF advert’s conclusion was that the only way the P4resident can save NCC is to sack Gwandu who, it alleged, has been a serial saboteur of the commission’s management since he was first appointed a commissioner about seven years ago, all, they said, in his bid to become the commission’s CEO.

    BTPF is not alone in its call for Gwandu’s sack. Sources close to the supervising ministry say it too would not be averse to sacking the executive commissioner.

    The President may yet succumb to the pressure to do so, even though this would not be so easy because it requires the approval of the Senate. But even it were so easy, the President would be ill-advised to listen to the BTPF because sacking Gwandu will not make the issues involved in the now open management feud in the commission and about which Gwandu is accused of talking to the press, to go away. On the contrary, it can only raise questions about the President’s oft-stated commitment to fight corruption. For, there are indeed sordid goings-on at the NCC.

    First, no one has denied that the President has approved a huge waiver for the MTS with which Juwah had had links. I believe the insinuation in the Leadership story that this was his handiwork is somewhat unfair to the man. He may have worked there before, but the initiative for the waiver did come from him. Instead it came from his supervising ministry. Besides, the President did not have to approve. So even if he had a residual interest in MTS, the blame for the waiver should go to the minister and the president.

    In his own attempt to defend himself from the charge of conflict of interest in the case, the Executive Vice-Chairman told Thisday (October 21) that the allegation was an attempt by enemies of the Jonathan administration to discredit its record of performance.

    “It is,” he said, “now obvious that there is a motive and an agenda by some elements who are enemies of this administration and who are bent on stopping us from excelling.” Coming from someone I do not believe should be blamed for the MTS waiver, this is rather disingenuous.

    As Juwah himself said in the interview in question, the waiver came about because of moves by a new putative owner of Starcomms, Multilinks and MTS to merge and transform the three into a company that can compete with the Big Four in the industry, namely MTN, Glo, Airtel and Etisalat. All three merging companies, he said, applied for waiver but only MTS was given. This, he said, was because of the three, only MTS had gone bankrupt. This was in 2007. “It was,” he said, “no longer a going concern unlike Starcomms and Multilinks.”

    Surely as an industry consultant, Juwah must know that when you buy companies, as the chap he said was behind the planned merger of the three did, you buy them with all their assets and liabilities. Why was it necessary for anyone to ask government to shoulder the liabilities of MTS?

    Juwah, obviously, could have done better than trying to defend the indefensible.

    Then, of course, the MTS is not the only indefensible going-on at the NCC. There is even the more serious issue of the improper underselling of spectrum in no bid deals, the two most prominent of which were the sale of one spectrum to Open-Skies Limited led by Chief Emeka Offor – someone whose permanence in the corridors of power is almost legendary – and a similar sale of another spectrum to another company with the almost cynical name of Smile Communications Limited (Could it be that its owners enjoy smiling all the way to their banks at the expense of others?).

    In both cases the spectrums could have fetched the country much, much more that the price at which they were sold. And in the case of Open-Skies, not only did it pay peanuts for its spectrum; it failed to meet the deadline for payment more than once. Worse, it did not and still does not have a licence from NCC to use any spectrum.

    Worse still, at the time the company bought the spectrum it was yet to be properly retrieved from the Nigerian Police Force to which it had initially been allocated for security purposes but which it had failed to use.

    Again, it seemed more than mere coincidence that Open-Skies rushed to complete its payment only after the police had acquired a $406 million security surveillance system in preparation for the use of the spectrum. This can only fuel suspicions that Open-Skies acquired the spectrum merely to speculate with it, akin to land speculation.

    Certainly the President should move to save the NCC, as our telecommunication beat reporters have urged him to in their advert. However, what he should move against is not Gwandu but the messy goings-on at the NCC which the commissioner has been complaining about but which our concerned reporters see as the antics, indeed, “the lies of an ambitious Commissioner,” to use their own words.

     

  • ACN, ANPP chide President

    ACN, ANPP chide President

    The Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) yesterday expressed serious concerns over conflicting statements emanating from the President and his spokespersons.

    In a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party said: ‘’Credibility is a key issue in governance, and lack of it renders a government impotent. Perhaps this worsening credibility gap in the Jonathan Administration is one of the reasons that it had so far failed to perform to expectation,’’ it said.

    Citing the latest examples of “what can be described as flip-flopping at best and sheer disinformation at worst,” ACN said President Jonathan on Sunday, during his Media Chat on national television, denied that his administration has revoked the power contract awarded to Canadian firm Manitoba, even though his spokesman, Dr. Reuben Abati, had been widely quoted as saying – unequivocally – that the President has cancelled the contract.

    Also, the party said while Dr. Abati has been widely quoted as saying, in August and this month, that the government was engaged in ‘’backroom channel’’ talks with Boko Haram, President Jonathan was categorical in saying, during the Media Chat, that there is no dialogue with the sect because there has yet been no face to it.

    According to the ACN, it is also instructive that President Jonathan has finally confirmed the reported illness of the First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan, even when the spokespersons for the President and the First Lady said she was hale and hearty, and implied she was vacationing abroad, even as reports circulated that she was being treated for an illness in Germany.

    ‘’We also recall that this flip-flopping and deliberate disinformation or both did not just start on Sunday, and that it has been the hallmark of the Jonathan presidency. For instance, while some spokespersons at the presidency once described the report of the probe of the oil sector by the House of Representatives as merely of ‘advisory’ value to the presidency, others said the presidency has indeed started its implementation.

    ‘’Also, shortly after Dr. Doyin Okupe rubbished the Petroleum Revenue Special Task Force Report as inconclusive and, therefore, not implementable, the President announced the setting up of a White Paper Committee on the report, indicating that Dr. Okupe, in his usual exuberant disposition, may have been speaking for no one but himself.

    ‘’This development, which we must say has now been patented by the Jonathan presidency, is of great concern to us as a party and, we are sure, to all Nigerians. This is because the credibility deficiency syndrome now afflicting the Jonathan presidency has far-reaching implications. It impacts negatively on governance, and sends the wrong message to investors, both local and foreign, as well as the entire international community.

    ‘’We are, therefore, left with no choice than to ask: Who is in charge at the presidency? Who speaks for President Jonathan? Who do Dr. Abati and Dr. Okupe speak for? Do we henceforth take whatever these men say about the government with a pinch of salt? Or is the Jonathan Administration deliberately misinforming Nigerians? If so, for what purpose?’’ ACN queried.

    The ANPP advised President Jonathan to take action on major policies instead of talking.

    Nigerians, the ANPP said, are fed up with his “much” talk, which the party said is not yielding any reasonable result.

    It accused Dr. Jonathan of not tackling corruption frontally.

    A statement in Abuja by the National Publicity Secretary, Mr. Emma Eneukwu, said: “When asked about the ongoing constitution amendment, the President declined to take any position on the myriad of issues being raised for amendment in the constitution, with the self-serving explanation that it would be in the best interest of Nigerians to suggest areas in the constitution to be amended. However, we believe that it is the sign of a leader with ideas and direction to have a clear-cut legislative agenda, as a signature of his policy philosophy.

    “Secondly, when he was reminded about his campaign promise of reducing poverty, President Jonathan quickly charged in to tell Nigerians that he never promised to reduce poverty, but rather told the populace when he was campaigning for their votes that he wanted to ‘create wealth’. This is a clear political equivocation, which is patently illiterate at best and self-indicting at worst. Nigerians are now left to wonder who Mr President had set out to empower all along. This is because, for sure, creating wealth might actually be a metaphor for putting more money into the hands of his already rich party members and cronies, while leaving the poor of the nation in the hands of chance.

    “Thirdly, The President tried to evade the question of his government’s lack of ‘‘enforcement’’ in the fight against corruption. But when he was forced to give an answer with specific reference to the Siemens and Halliburton cases, narrated that it was difficult for an incumbent government to fight the corruption carried over from a previous administration. We wonder whether he was trying to say that previous governments had vacated the State House with all the paraphernalia and powers of law enforcement and relevant documents needed to know what is the reality concerning these and many other clear cases of corrupt practices at the highest level.

    “We believe that the international community that rated us abysmally low in the fight against corruption had already seen the insincerity of the present government in tackling corruption head-on. In fact, the foreign firms indicted in the corruption saga had been punished in their own countries, while this PDP government tries to sweep everything under the carpet in order not to rock their gravy train of ‘chop I chop’.

    But the PDP alleged that there is a plot by the opposition parties to destabilise government.

    National Publicity Secretary Chief Olisa Metuh, in a statement yesterday, cited propaganda as the weapon being deployed by the opposition parties to destabilise the administration.

    He said the opposition had voted a huge amount of money to discredit President Jonathan, the government and the PDP in the eyes of the public.

    The statement reads: “We have uncovered a game plan by CPC and ACN on a propaganda war against PDP, the President and its elected officials to deceive the public.

    “ In the next few weeks, the nation will see a huge blackmail, lies and cheap propaganda, which they have budgeted very huge amount of money to discredit PDP.

    “We, therefore, direct millions of our supporters to be calm about these elements that have nothing to show except cheap lies.

    “We challenge the opposition to come and debate on programmes, actions and governance of the PDP rather than cheap blackmail. We will prefer to lift Nigerian political situation to the next level through issue based debate.”

    “We have been able to stabilise the economy in the midst of world global recession such as the case in Italy and Spain. We have not witnessed any bank that collapsed in Nigeria.

    “We are happy with the President and his visions towards transforming Nigeria. We have a President whose humility is unparallel, who has shown love to his people through his vision for his people,” he said.

     

  • President seeks lawmakers’ nod on $1b bond

    President seeks lawmakers’ nod on $1b bond

    President Goodluck Jonathan has asked the House of Representatives for permission to issue bond worth $1billion — “in continuance of the programme initiated under the administration of President Umar Musa Yar’Adua “

    The president made the request in one of his three letters to the National Assembly. He applied for amendments to 2012-2014 Medium-Term External Borrowing Plan and requested for a “$100 million Diaspora Bond”.

    Though the letter did not enumerate the projects of the late Yar’Adua that he wishes to complete, Jonathan said the federal government was developing a low-income housing finance facility to support affordable homes for Nigerians.

    The letter reads: “The federal government is currently developing a low-income housing finance facility to support the provision of affordable homes for Nigerians. This scheme will be financed using a $300 million credit facility from World Bank. We would like to swap this new $300 credit facility with the proposed guarantees for the power sector in the draft borrowing plan, thereby ensuring that we do not increase the overall size of loans proposed in the external borrowing plan.”

    Jonathan said $200 million will be also be sourced from the African Development Bank (ADB) to fund a water project in Rivers State.

    The President in two other letters requested the approval of the House for the 2013 budget proposal of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and the Universal Service Provision Fund (USPF).

    The House of Representatives has asked its standing committees to submit their findings on the oversight carried out on Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs)across the country on the implementation level of the 2012 budget, within two days.

    Speaker Aminu Tambuwal at the plenary yesterday asked all the chairmen of the 89 standing committees to submit their reports.

    The level of the implementation of the 2012 budget has been a source of friction between the House and the Presidency.

    The final reports by the House Committee Chairmen are meant to guide the House in its deliberation on the 2013 budget, the benchmark of which is another source of battle between the House and the Presidency.

     

  • Open letter to the President

    Open letter to the President

    SIR: In the spirit of citizenship, patriotism, love and faithfulness and in the words of a renowned American President who said “think of what you can do for America and not what America can do for you”, I am writing to you from the secret place of the most High God where wisdom and revelation emanates and disseminates.

    In view of the present ethno-religious, socio-political and economic crises ravaging our great country, there is urgent need to employ and utilize strategies that will settle the spate of terror attacks, political agitations, kidnappings and corruption among other numerous ills bedeviling our nation.

    I am a patriotic and service-oriented Nigerian who absolutely believes in the oneness and unity of our country. I believe that Nigeria is a great country and can only remain great if we are undivided and united. For this to be achieved, we must have a clear and common philosophy, ideology, ethics and values transferred and ingrained into the mentality of every Nigerian.

    The crises we hear and see in Nigeria today stems mainly from ignorance, prejudice and mindsets. This calls for a conscious campaign, education, orientation and enlightenment of the Nigerian people and nothing can be more important now!

    While the security agencies are doing their work in quelling insurgences, crime and criminality, it behoves of us to swing into action by transversing the length and breadth of our great country to establish our values, spread love, propagate right living, understanding and compromise in our polity.

    If the Nigerian people are orientated to do what is right from our families to our places of work and service, Nigeria will regain his place and good reputation in the comity of Nations. No institution can do this better than the already established National Orientation Agency.

    The National Orientation Agency must lead the campaign for peace, unity and corporate existence of our nation. The agency should be pragmatic and not just attend functions to make speeches. They should be mass recruitment of citizens in the 36 states of the federation who should be trained to carry out the campaign of religious harmony, political consensus, fairness and fair-play. Let us take this campaign to our schools, churches, mosques, market places and shops. Like the popular campaign banner goes, it should be door-to-door and neighbour to neighbour. As our dear President, Gen. Yakubu Gowon said before, “to keep Nigeria one is a task that must be done”. Lets do this not by violence or force but by negotiation, discourse and education.

     

    • Monfum Ebine,

    Nfom, Ogoja, CRS