The Nation Newspaper

Tag: sabotaging

  • Shipping firms sabotaging inland ports, says ANLCA

    By Muyiwa Lucas

    THE Association of Nigeria Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA)  has accused shipping firms of sabotaging inland ports, including Kaduna Dry Port.

    The customs agents also accused the shipping firms  of frustrating the stemming of cargoes, thereby creating bottlenecks.

    Its President, Tony Nwabunnike who spoke on the side of a roundtable in Lagos, added that the shipping firms were pursuing their business agenda against national interest.

    According to him, a bonded terminal owned and operated  by a shipping firms in the heart of the north gets cargoes from Apapa without hitches as long as they are terminals.

    But in the case of Kaduna Dry Port, some shipping shippers have stated why cargoes cannot go there, he said.

    Nwabunnike said Kaduna Dry Port, which was inaugurated in January, last year by President Muhammadu Buhari, was aimed at boosting import and export because of its proximity to Niger Republic and other landlocked countries.

    Besides, the ANLCA chief added that his intervention also made it possible for the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) to unblock over 300  licences.

    He added that the blocked licences prevented its owners from engaging in any meaningful business.

    Nwabunnike assured that efforts were in top gear to boost the capacity of members through training.

    He described the alleged internal rumblings by some members of ANLCA National Executive Committee (NECOM) as part of efforts to resist change.

  • Amaechi: powerful people sabotaging maritime security

    Amaechi: powerful people sabotaging maritime security

    The Minister of Transport Rotimi Amaechi yesterday said the maritime security contract approved by President Muhammadu Buhari and the Federal Executive Council (FEC) is being frustrated by some powerful Nigerians.

    The contract, Amaechi said, was awarded by the government about two years ago to secure the nation’s maritime domain.

    Speaking at a stakeholders’ forum organised by the Nigerian Maritime Administrator and Safety Agency ( NIMASA), in Warri, Delta State, Amaechi threatened to give the names of those that are sabotaging the efforts of the government  if the issue becomes messy and could not be resolved on time.

    The theme of the event is ‘ Implementation of Executive Order 1 on Ease of Doing Business in a Secure Maritime Environment.’

    Amaechi identified high level of insecurity and criminalities going on in the  Delta region as one of the major reason  to protect the waters.

    He said the eastern ports are not attractive to business because of the ‘war’ insurance rate imposed by the international shipping companies on any vessel calling at the ports in the area.

    “The war insurance means if the goods cost $10,000 in Lagos I will $20,000 here because there is extra cost on it. There are people in the system sabotaging the $195million contract that will restore sanity and security on our waterways,”he said.

  • Senate not sabotaging anti-graft war, says Uzodinma

    Senate not sabotaging anti-graft war, says Uzodinma

    •Senator fires back at ex-Milad Umar

    The Chairman of the Senate Joint Committee on Customs, Excise and Tariff and Marine Transport, Hope Uzodinma, yesterday faulted an allegation by a former Military Administrator of Kaduna State, Colonel Mohammed Dangiwa Umar (retd.) that senators were attempting to sabotage Federal Government’s anti-graft war.

    The senator said the allegation was reckless and “un-statesmanly” of the former military administrator.

    He expressed surprise that a respected public figure like Umar made such sweeping remarks about the National Assembly without having the facts to back up his claims.

    Uzodinma said it was unfortunate that Umar was allegedly being used to malign the integrity of the Senate to satisfy the Managing Director of Nigeria Ports Authority (NPA), Ms Hadiza Bala Usman.

    The senator accused the NPA chief, who he described as Umar’s daughter’s best friend.

    He added that Ms Usman was allegedly frustrating the current Senate investigation into the disappearance of over 282 containers from the ports without a kobo paid to the Federal Government as revenue, among others.

    Uzodinma took issues with Umar in a statement in Abuja.

    The statement said: “I have a lot of respect for Col Umar. In fact, I see him as a nationalist; but on this one, he goofed.

    “While appreciating the relationship between the NPA’s MD and Col Umar’s daughter, I still felt that the statesman in him should have moved him to look at the issues on the ground very dispassionately without bias.

    “Honestly, I still don’t understand why the Senate is being blackmailed for performing its constitutional role. A petition was written to my committee by a company, which said it imported rice and paid the relevant duties to the Nigeria Customs Service. Then, when the rice came in, the Customs seized the containers. So, we discussed the petition at the committee’s level and decided to = forward a letter to Customs.

    “In the letter, we said we received a letter from this company alleging maltreatment and we implore you to look at the merits or otherwise through your internal mechanisms.

    “We never directed the cargo to be released anywhere in the letter. I still have a copy of the letter and the reply from the Customs. Col Umar would have even spoken with Col. Hamed Ali of Customs to verify this before rushing to press with a fiction.”

    On Calabar Channel, Uzodinma said: “We are not investigating Calabar Channel dredging now.

    “The issue of my interest in Niger Global is neither here nor there because I had long been a businessman, even before venturing into politics. And the company was incorporated in 1995, long before the contract was awarded to it in 2004.

    “As at 2004, I was not a senator; I was a businessman. Immediately I aspired to the Senate in 2011, I resigned my chairmanship of the company.

    “So, we are not even investigating NPA on Calabar dredging; we are investigating infractions in the import-export cycle where vessels would come into the country and offload goods and return without a dime paid into government coffers.

    “How should this investigation not excite any patriotic Nigerian? Why the sustained blackmail from the stable of the NPA, whose MD has refused four invitations of the committee to appear before it to answer to these alleged infractions?”

  • NCC accuses operators of sabotaging number portability

    NCC accuses operators of sabotaging number portability

    Regulator of the telecoms sector, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has accused mobile telecoms services providers of deliberately sabotaging the mobile number portability (MNP) scheme.

    The MNT was introduced about seven months ago to give subscribers more freedom to dump inefficient service providers.

    Speaking yesterday in Lagos at this year’s Telecoms Executive and Regulator’s Forum, Executive Vice Chairman/Chief Executive Officer, NCC, Eugene Juwah, said the regulator has been watching unfolding scenario in the implementation of MNP in the country, lamenting that operators have been frustrating subscribers willing to port out of their networks.

    He said this practice is particularly common among high value customers who for one reason or the other, express interest to port, warning that it will not hesitate to sanction erring operators.

    Juwah said MNP was NCC’s answer to subscribers prayers who c;lamoured for the introduction of the scheme in the country so that they could have ample opportunity to dump inefficient operators.

    “We should not be in a hurry to conclude that MNP has not succeeded. When compared with other countries where it has been introduced, it is too early for us to say it will not succeed.

    “We have been watching because some operators don’t want to play to the rules. We have evidence that high value customers are not allowed to go. People should play by the rules because if they do not, it will attract sanction,” Juwah warned.

    Earlier on, Director, Customer Care at Globacom, Maria Svesson, said since the scheme was introduced, less than 50000 subscribers have ported in and out of the networks. She identified constraints such as the window required for customers to be on the network and the issue of post-paid customers who might want to port out of the network without paying the debt owed the donor network.

    She said MNP has not succeeded as it should have because subscribers are already used to multi-SIMMing (use of multiple subscriber identity modules (SIMs).

  • Civil servants sabotaging my efforts, says Dickson

    Bayelsa State Governor Seriake Dickson yesterday lampooned some civil servants, lamenting their involvement in wage bill fraud.

    The governor said such civil servants were bent on sabotaging his administration’s efforts to prune the state’s high wage bill.

    Despite his efforts, he said the payrolls were still fraught with malpractices.

    The governor spoke in Yenagoa at the 15th edition of his monthly transparency press briefing.

    He insisted that the payrolls were still unclean.

    Dickson had at the inception of his administration embarked on an exercise to trim the N5billion wage bill inherited from his predecessor.

    While the efforts yielded some positive results, it was later discovered that the wage bill manipulation by civil servants had reared its ugly head again.

    The governor observed that some employees were still collecting salaries from two pay points.

    He lamented that civil servants who were due for retirement were still receiving salaries.

    Dickson said the monthly wage bill for civil servants was about N4billion, describing it as astronomical for the state.

    He said he would reduce the wage bill to enable him employ young persons.

    The governor said: It is criminal to bloat the civil service payroll to make quick money.

    “People who are supposed to retire are still in various ministries collecting double salaries monthly.”

    Dickson was reacting to an allegation that some employees in the Ministry of Transport were collecting double salaries.

    The allegation caused a stir at the Banquet Hall, the venue of the event.

    The Commissioner for Transport, Mrs. Marie Ebikaki, was rattled by the accusation.

    But she immediately defended her ministry, insisting that her payroll was clean.

    The Deputy Governor, John Jonah, who reeled out details of allocation and expenditure for last month said the government received N17.96billion.

    Jonah said N3.96 billion was used to pay civil servants.

    He said the Internally Generated Revenue was N658.39million, adding that the total bank savings for the month was N19.96billion.

    As part of the briefing, the government signed business agreements with three foreign firms to build two fish farms and an international golf course in Yenagoa.

    The projects are expected to be completed in 12 months.

    The governor said the fish farm project upon completion would increase the state’s revenue profile and create employment.

    Stressing the need for diversification from oil and gas, Dickson said investment in the agricultural sector, especially in aquaculture, remained one of the cardinal programmes of his Restoration Agenda.

    He said: “We want to be No 1 as far as aquaculture is concerned not only in this country but in our continent and beyond because we have the climate.

    “As you know, our government is serious about broadening the base of our economy because that is the right thing to do.”

  • ACN accuses Fed Govt of sabotaging Ribadu Task Force

    ACN accuses Fed Govt of sabotaging Ribadu Task Force

    The Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) has accused the Federal Government of sabotaging the Petroleum Revenue Special Task Force, headed by Mr. Nuhu Ribadu, following the controversy that marred the presentation of the task force’s report on Friday.

    In a statement issued in Lagos yesterday by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party said the decision to appoint two members of the committee, Mr. Steve Oronsaye and Mr. Bernard Otti, to positions in the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) while the task force was still working on its assignment was a deliberate booby trap.

    It said if the Federal Government did not have an ulterior motive, it would have waited for the task force to complete its assignment before appointing Mr. Oronsaye into the board of the NNPC and Otti as the Director of Finance of the same establishment.

    “Alternatively, both men should have resigned their membership of the committee the moment they were given the plum jobs to avoid conflict of interest. The fact that they stayed on, only to disparage the report of the task force at the end, is an indication that they were meant to play the role of spoilers,” ACN said.

    The party said the temerity with which the duo sought to denigrate the report of the task force in the presence of President Goodluck Jonathan showed that they must have been acting a well-prepared script.

    “All these two men needed to have done, if indeed they did not agree with the report of the task force, was to write a minority report and present it to the President, instead of engaging in theatrics as they did at the presentation, in front of the whole world.

    “Unfortunately, the President’s efforts to downplay the whole disagreement and give the dissenters a soft landing did more to accentuate the damage done to the report by the two men. The President’s statement that becoming board members of the NNPC does not disqualify them from being members of the task force is an indication of his innermost thoughts on this issue,” it said.

    ACN said it was not surprised at how things turned out with the task force, having warned in a statement it issued on February 8 that naming credible people like Mr. Nuhu Ribadu to head the task force might just be part of government’s ploy to poach credible personalities from the opposition so that it could decimate it (opposition) and tarnish the well-earned credibility of such personalities.

    “Among our observations in that statement, we said: ‘There is also the possibility that booby-traps will be set for such credible personalities to guarantee their failure in their assignment, after which they will be ridiculed and dumped like a chump’’’, the party noted.

    It added: “We hate to say that our fears have been justified.”

    ACN stressed that the Federal Government is not interested in an effort to clean up corruption and mess in the oil sector, and that it is engaging in window dressing by setting up committees upon committees, whose outcomes will add to the growing list of reports that are now gathering dust at the Presidency.

  • Minister to Nigerians: check criminals sabotaging investment in education

    Minister of State for Education Ezenwo Nyesom Wike has urged Nigerians to checkmate criminals sabotaging the Federal Government’s efforts to improve the education sector.

    Wike spoke during a visit to Edo State Governor Adams Oshiomhole and paramount ruler of the Benin Kingdom, Oba of Benin, Oba Erediuwa in Benin at the weekend.

    He said that the realisation that some officials of State Universal Basic Education Boards, connive with traders to sell free instructional materials to parents is worrisome.

    Wike said state governments must work hard to check the excesses of SUBEB officials.

    The minister, who was in Edo State on the advocacy tour to promote the enrolment of out-of-school children in the South, said the need to create access for out-of-school children was a collective responsibility for all stakeholders.

    He urged the Edo State government to allocate to the Federal Government a parcel of land to build a vocational school for out-of-school children .

    He said: “We are committed to ensuring that out-of-school Nigerian children have access to basic education. We started with the Almajiri children because they have the higher percentage of out-of-school children in the country. Since we have made tremendous progress in tackling the Almajiri challenge, we resolved to face the out-of-school in the South”.

    Oshiomhole, who was represented by his deputy, Dr Pius Odubu, commended the Federal Government for investing in the education of the less privileged.

    He said the Edo State government supports any investment in education, pointing out that the state believes education was vital to the development of the nation.

    At the Oba of Benin’s Palace, the traditional chiefs had interactive session with the Minister of State for Education on the efforts of the Federal Government to develop the education sector.

    The minister also inspected Federal Government’s project in the Federal Government Girls’ College in Benin. He expressed satisfaction with the level of work at the library project in the school.