The Nation Newspaper

Tag: SHOCKER

  • Budget: Dogara only saw details last Tuesday

    Budget: Dogara only saw details last Tuesday

    The mysteries surrounding the 2016 budget details appear  inexhaustible after it emerged yesterday that Speaker Yakubu Dogara of the House of Representatives saw the breakdown only last Tuesday, six days after they were submitted to President Muhammadu Buhari  by the National Assembly.

    The figures contained in the budget details sent to the President for him to sign the Appropriation Bill into law are already worsening the delicate relationship between the executive and the legislative arms with indications that Buhari is unwilling to append his signature until amends are made.

    Presidency sources accused the National Assembly of removing entirely or reducing drastically the costs of some of the key projects in the budget proposals.

    It was unclear last night whether the president, who returned from a weeklong visit to China earlier in the day, had decided to return the budget to the National Assembly  to correct what most ministers call mutilation or sign it the way it is and send a supplementary budget later.

    Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and the ministers are said to be awaiting the President’s final decision on the issue although most of the Federal Executive Council members are in favour of the return of the bill to NASS.

    Fresh projects worth about N50billion are the latest hidden votes uncovered by the Executive in the budget details.

    Sources said yesterday that Dogara has had talks with the VP on the confusion.

    A principal officer in the House said: “From the agitation in the National Assembly by members on Wednesday, the row over the budget could have been messier.

    “This is why the Speaker is leading the initiative to review the budget details. Were it not for his maturity, the House would have been thrown into turmoil over the budget.”

    Responding to a question, the source said: “Dogara did not see the budget details until he convened the House leadership meeting on Wednesday. All the principal officers were even asking for the details at our meeting.

    “The Appropriation Committee deliberately shielded the details from the House leadership and members as if the committee were an independent arm of the chamber.

    “Many House members were treated with disdain by the committee. Dogara felt our pains but he applied wisdom to keep the House united.”

    Separate sources said some ministers have discovered that allocations to many projects were either cut or swapped without consultations with relevant committees in the Senate and House of Representatives and members of the Appropriation Committees in the two chambers.

    One such source said: “Some parts of the budget have been mutilated and are not implementable. Some projects were swapped or diverted to areas where they are not needed.

    “We also discovered that votes for a few projects were slashed and allocated to some self-serving demands of some lawmakers. About N50billion worth of projects were inserted into the budget outside the proposals of the Executive and without rubbing minds with the relevant MDAs.

    “From the look of things, only President Muhammadu Buhari can give the final say on whether to ask the National Assembly to review the budget details or to assent to the Appropriation Bill and opt for supplementary budget.”

     

     

  • Another crude shocker

    •Report on America’s oil storage is a wake-up call to Nigeria to diversify its economy

    For corruption-ridden and spendthrift Nigeria, the report that the current glut in the United States oil market might further dampen the prices of crude oil and refined petroleum products, further pushing the price down to as low as $20 per barrel, must have come as a terrible blow. Yes, terrible blow because Nigeria has failed to save for the proverbial rainy day, and neglected the diversification of its economic base over the decades.

    According to the Associated Press, America is running out of storage for crude oil because, on the average, about one million barrels of oil per day has been flowing into the country through importation and local production. If this continues, it is only a matter of time for the storage tanks to reach their operational limits, probably by the middle of next month. The implication is that crude prices could tumble. “The fact of the matter is, we are running out of storage capacity in the US,” Ed Morse, the Head of Commodities Research at Citibank, said at a symposium at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

    The difference between Nigeria and the United States is leadership. That is the singular factor that accounts for the robust planning that has put the United States in a position to attain its highest point in crude supply in about 80 years.

    While the U.S. has been working assiduously over the years to ensure that America attains its present level, irrespective of the government in power, successive Nigerian governments have continued to pay lip service to the development of the oil sector. While the governments keep talking about diversification, they’ve done little or nothing to actualise it.

    The sad aspect of it is that since the discovery of crude oil in Oloibiri in 1956, we also neglected agriculture, which until the advent of oil was the country’s economic mainstay. Perhaps if we had even paid serious attention to the oil sector beyond waiting for the monthly handout from the Federal Government to sustain the states, things would not have been this bad today, despite the shocks in the global oil market. But successive governments’ complacency and irresponsibility degenerated to the point where we abandoned our four local refineries and we now import a huge percentage of the refined petroleum products that are consumed in the country.

    What we now reap is a lose-lose situation irrespective of what happens in the global crude market: when crude prices were high Nigerians paid more for the imported refined products and when they are down as they are now, we can hardly derive any benefit as a nation because some costs, i.e. landing cost, etc. are fixed, meaning they still have to be paid whatever the price of crude oil. Worse still, many of our governments mismanaged the proceeds from crude sales instead of investing in worthwhile ventures.

    It is even worse under the present administration where incompetence and large-scale looting have deprived the country of huge resources that could have been spent on regenerative projects. All these explain why the country is now in a mess where many public servants at both the federal and state levels are now being owed salaries for months.

    Unfortunately, we had the same experience with oil glut in the Second Republic, during the Alhaji Shehu Shagari era, which made the government to declare austerity measures. That singular experience was enough to wake us up from our slumber to the urgency of diversification.

    But it is better late than never. Our current cash crisis should open our eyes to the reality that oil-driven economy is dying. We need to return to agriculture and agro-allied industry, even as we must unlock the potentials in many states which some extant laws prevent the states from exploiting. The government must also be ready to tackle corruption headlong because so much money had been stolen that should have been used for developmental purposes.

  • WORLD CUP SHOCKER: Blackout awaits Nigerians

    WORLD CUP SHOCKER: Blackout awaits Nigerians

    •$100,000 CAF fees threaten live broadcast
    •No Eagles/ Harambee tie on television
    •Late minute moves to get FG to pay cash likely

    NIGERIANS craving to watch today’s 2014 World Cup qualifier between Kenya’s Harambee Stars and Nigeria’s Super Eagles at the Moi Sports centre Kasarani live on terrestrial television had better think of something else to do.

    Sportinglife scooped exclusively that the much hyped game will not be shown on terrestrial television because of a bogus $100,000 broadcast fees fixed by the broadcast firm working with the Confederation of Africa Football (CAF), said to be too expensive.

    Nigeria’s broadcast body frowned at the bogus fees since it wouldn’t allow any of the terrestrial television stations to insert any corporate sponsorship, which many of the eggheads of the stations couldn’t understand where they would recoup their cash, in the event that they pay the fee.

    Sportinglife sought the views of one of South Africa’s-based all sports station Supersport chiefs who pleaded anonymity, if the game would be shown live on their network, he said: “No. Supersport does not have the broadcast rights. It is the Africa Independent Television (AIT).”

    AIT buffs informed Sportinglife as at 9pm on Friday that it was doubtful if the game would be shown live. But he still nursed the hope that the Federal government could cough up the cash as part of the government’s social responsibility to its citizenry.

  • CUP OF NATIONS SHOCKER Finally, Newcastle stop Ameobi

    CUP OF NATIONS SHOCKER Finally, Newcastle stop Ameobi

    Sportinglife can reveal exclusively that Super Eagles will be without the services of Newcastle striker Shola Ameobi during the country’s 2013 Africa Cup of Nations matches beginning with the tie against Burkina Faso on January 21.

    SportingLife’s checks on Newcastle’s portal on Sunday showed that: “Now Sky Sports are claiming a final conclusion, reporting that Alan Pardew has announced that Shola definitely won’t be going.

    “Whether Nigeria will try and do anything through FIFA is another matter but hopefully this has put an end to a saga which could have seen Newcastle deprived of their supersub for what could be a very tricky 4-6 weeks, with Cheick Tiote probably playing his last match on Wednesday before he heads off for the tournament.

    “We all wait to see what the outcome of the transfer window will be and while I’d love to see Newcastle retain Demba Ba AND bring in another quality striker, it would take a brave man to bet on Shola not being third choice striker at the very least, when the window eventually closes,” the report on Newcastle’s website read on Sunday.

  • Shocker from PPPRA

    Shocker from PPPRA

    THE joint Committee of the Senate and House of Representatives on Petroleum (Downstream) is correctly scandalised as to how a whopping sum of 5.7 billion naira can be spent on the emoluments of the staff of the Petroleum Products Pricing and Regulatory Agency (PPPRA). This incredible budget expenditure was shared as salaries of merely 249 members of staff, for the payment of their Pay As You Earn (PAYE), and National Health Insurance Scheme, according to the Executive Secretary of the agency, Reginald Stanley.

    He made the revelation when he appeared before the joint committee in Abuja, to defend the 2013 budget.

    But for this revelation, many Nigerians would not know that the PPPRA is deeply racketeering in-house just as it aligns with external accomplices in the subsidy regime, in terms of fleecing the national treasury. It is incredible that such amount of money can be spent as the budgetary need of that small, but notorious agency.

    Our curiosity is furthered by the fact that its 2012 and 2013 budgets were supposed to have passed through the scrutiny of the Federal Ministry of Finance. Specifically, we ask the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, how such a scandalous pay packet passed through her brief. It appears that despite the hullabaloo about scrutiny and coordination, budgetary process is still devoid of rigour.

    The proposed entitlements show that the PPPRA members of staff may be among the top earners in the country, in addition to their other sundry incomes. When it is factored in that the PPPRA is the primary agency presiding over the biggest corruption scandal in our recent history, commonly called the subsidy regime, there is a need for the anti-corruption agencies to look more closely at its modus operandi. In seeking responsibility for this in-house scandal, it may be necessary to find out how the agency arrived at the salary structure, vis-a-vis the approving authority, and the extant regulations guiding such acts. Or is the agency independent of the extant Federal Government’s regulations on salaries and emoluments?

    It is necessary for the National Assembly to conduct a thorough probe into this scandal, to see whether the budgeted money is a conduit for other higher interests. It needs to find out, what impact and leverage the Ministry of Petroleum Resources and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) have over the PPPRA and its budget process. Considering the predilection of the petroleum sector to act as conduit for state corruption, there is the need to spread the enquiry to find out who was responsible for this audacious rip-off of our national resources. Obviously this revelation explains why the NNPC did all it could to avoid its budget passing through the National Assembly.

    The claim by the PPPRA that it has saved 671.706 billion naira in subsidy payments, if indeed true, is a further confirmation that what happened last year as subsidy regime was unabated criminality. It is unbelievable that the same agency that shares, even if partly, the blame for the previous year’s scam and outlandish payments of phantom subsidy for products that were never supplied, would regard any form of restraint in this criminal act as saving the government money; when none of its staff has been indicted or punished for the confirmed malfeasance.

    If we may ask, what has happened to those responsible for those payments that the agency is claiming to have saved the nation, or is the claim enough restitution for criminality? By the time the joint committee receives the agency’s payroll; it would be interesting to find out what the huge pay amounts to per person. This issue and all similar queries raised since the budget defence started must be pursued to logical conclusion, in the country’s interest.

  • BATTLE OF CALABAR SHOCKER Yobo out

    BATTLE OF CALABAR SHOCKER Yobo out

    • Suffers knee injury in club game

    • Weeps in Turkey

    Captain of Nigeria’s senior team Joseph Yobo has been ruled out of Saturday’s crucial 2013 Africa Cup of Nations qualifier against Liberia due to a knee injury he sustained while playing for his Turkish side on Monday night.

    SportingLife gathered from those who should know about the team’s captain in Turkey that the Nigerian wept like a kid on the stretcher that took him out of the pitch after playing remarkably well for 70 minutes.

    But on Tuesday morning after seeing the team’s doctors, who warned that he shouldn’t risk the leg against the Liberians in Calabar on Saturday, Yobo promised to be in the Caanan City to cherer his mates to victory, stressing that, “I will sit on the bench to urge them on. Coach Stephen Keshi has done well for the team and it is just unfortunate that I won’t be part of the team to physically destroy the Liberians.”

    “I want to appeal to Nigerians to cheer the boys ceaselessly because that is what they need to motivate them to beat the Liberians. In the first leg game, they supported their players by wearing red, the whole stadium was painted in red. It was so intimidating when we first stepped onto the pitch. The Liberians cheered their players all through the match. But here in Nigeria, they will be beaten mercilessly.

    “Thank God what we need is an outright victory. We will go for it. I have been talking with the players and they have promised to die on the pitch, if that will ensure that Nigeria’s flag is hoisted among the comity of nations in South Africa next year for the Africa Cup of Nations. We missed out of the last editon and we promised ourselves to be in South Africa,” Yobo said.