Monday, January 21, 2008

Imo agog as Yar’Adua Visits, today - The Tide Online

As President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua begins a one-day official visit to Owerri, the Imo State capital today, the state government says it has put in place modalities towards the success of the visit.

The commissioner for information and strategy told newsmen in Owerri that the state government was ready to host the president.

According to him, every thing had been put in place to make sure that the one day visit was successful.

He commended the president for his policies which have endeared the state and its people to the government, stressing that the people were very happy that the president has brought Imo State into the coastal states committee. Full Story

"Leaders" Head for Davos Meeting on World Economy -

(oh what fun!)
The official theme of the meeting, The Power of Collaborative Innovation, appears intentionally vague.

The icy Swiss mountains are to host the world's business and political elite this week for their annual gathering in Davos, where the cooling temperature of the world economy is set to focus minds.

The Davos event, a unique spectacle of wealth, power and debate, begins Wednesday when chief executives and heads of state gather in the chic Alpine ski resort for five days of public discussions and private deal-making.

Started in 1971 and known as the World Economic Forum, the gathering provides a unique opportunity to gauge the mood and preoccupations of some of the world's most powerful people.

This year's invitation list includes 27 heads of state or government, 113 cabinet ministers and a smattering of stars from the world of entertainment, notably British actress Emma Thompson and singer and campaigner Bono.

Among the presidents, Afghanistan's Hamid Karzai, Israel's Shimon Peres, Colombia's Alvaro Uribe, Nigeria's Umaru Yar'Adua and his counterpart from the Philippines, Gloria Arroyo, are likely to draw particular attention. Full Story

UN concerned at removal of Nigeria anti-graft head - Reuters Africa

By Mark Heinrich

VIENNA, Jan 21 (Reuters) - The chief of the United Nations crime office said on Monday he was concerned about the removal of the head of Nigeria's anti-corruption agency.

Antonio Maria Costa wrote to Nigeria's president on Jan. 7 saying the sidelining of Nuhu Ribadu could hobble the crackdown on fraud in Nigeria and send the wrong message to EU donors who poured $35 million into the project via the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime.

"The jury is still out. (But) there are reasons for us to be concerned about the removal of Mr Ribadu," Costa told Reuters in an interview at his Vienna office.

Costa, who is guiding an uphill effort to carry out the U.N. anti-corruption convention of 2003, said he would hold talks with Ribadu later this week.

Costa expressed doubt about a decision announced by Nigeria's national police chief to send Ribadu, a ranking police officer, to a one-year policy and strategic studies course at a remote institute in central Nigeria.

"Someone discovered in Ribadu's CV that he had not undergone formal police training, so they decided after five years (in office) that he had to get it. It looks like a decision taken at the senior bureaucratic level," said Costa.

Nigerian President Umaru Yar'Adua was elected last May pledging zero tolerance for corruption in a country internationally notorious for the scourge.

Costa said more and more of the world's political leaders were being elected on clean government platforms but were often thwarted by senior officials in the bureaucracy, judiciary and police who survived electoral changes. Full Story

Nigeria looks to oil to boost its regional power - Tiapei Times

Nigeria must address its domestic woes and win legitimacy at home before having a hope of fulfilling international ambitions

By Ike Okonta

Tuesday, Jan 22, 2008, Page 9

Russia is not alone in seeing oil as a means to transform its global standing. Nowadays, the mantra of Nigerian President Umar Yar'Adua, who took power last June following controversial elections, is to transform the country into one of the world's 20 largest economies by 2020. Yar'Adua and his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) are struggling to stamp their authority on an unwieldy and restive country of 140 million people, and the government views rapid growth as a means to achieving that aim.

Nigerians can use a dose of hope. Olusegun Obasanjo, who became Nigeria's first elected president in 1999 after nearly two decades of military dictatorship, left vast swathes of the country trapped in poverty when he handed power to Yar'Adua.

With oil nudging US$100 per barrel and energy-hungry giants like the US and China beating a path to its door, Africa's leading oil producer wants to use petrodollars to cure the nation's economic ills and flex its muscles in the international arena.

While riding the crest of the last oil boom in the late 1970s, Nigeria's military leaders nationalized the assets of British Petroleum and became champions of pan-African cooperation, financing several African liberation movements. The interests of the West and Nigeria repeatedly clashed, but Nigeria always stood its ground.

Inept government and economic decline in the 1980s and 1990s obliged Nigeria's leaders to focus on problems closer to home, like the civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone. But old habits die hard. Full Story

'Are we Dangerously Intelligent? II: Umar Yar’Adua – The Unwilling President' - Nigerian Village Square

In The Beginning

When in 2006, at the peak of campaigning for the 2007 election, the dangerously intelligent cabal of Obasanjo and his dragons that surrounded him convinced and drafted a man – Yar’Adua - who was just content with managing the people and government of Katsina to run for president, I knew we were about to witness another era of unwilling presidency.

It was Leonardo da Vinci that said, “I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.” But Mr. President was never willing, he never had a vision for Nigeria, he never knew the level and gravity of enormous tasks that waits the Nigerian President, so, how could he feel the urgency? How can he apply? How can he do?

I think the biggest question to all Nigerians at this critical stage in nation building should be; “Is being indifference part of being dangerously intelligent that we take the easiest way out or worse still join the dragons in the dance of shame?” Our greatest enemies are indifference, inaction, indecision and incompetence.

Just recently, Mr. President said that $10bn had been invested in the sector between 2000 and 2007 with nothing to show for it and that is why he is not prepared to inject money in the power sector “without a stable project management arrangement”. So he deliberately left out power project in the 2008 Appropriation Bill. I hope I didn’t get that right. What this means is that we have to buckle up for a year of darkness and inactivity at improving the power supply in the country. The national electricity supply is down to 2,000MW. The required nation-wide supply is about 30,000MW, and nothing is being planned till 2009? Beautiful nonsense! Full Story

'Sex Scandal - Expel Obj From PDP - Isyaku Ibrahim' - Leadership(Abuja)

Posted to the web 21 January 2008

Christy Iliya

A founding father of the ruling PDP, Isyaku Ibrahim has urged the party to expel former president Olusegun Obasanjo from its fold.

Ibrahim hinged his stance on the alleged incest charge against Obasanjo. The former Nigerian leader was recently reported to have had an illicit affair with his son's wife.


Ibrahim said Obasanjo lacks the moral basis to be the chairman of PDP's Board of Trustees since the "BOT is the soul and conscience of the party."

He said that unless the party expels Obasanjo, the electorate will wonder if the PDP is a morally decadent party that can not be trusted. "What are we teaching people by allowing such a character to remain in our ranks? The truth is that Obasanjo is a morally bankrupt fellow. I was never fooled by the man right from the 70's when I began to uncover his deceptive character. I have been vindicated several times."

He urged President Umar Musa Yar'Adua to address the issue "frontally". He said "if Yar'Adua claims he will fight corruption then this must be one of them, because this is moral corruption. He must deal with this."

'Niger Deltans Charged to Be Self-Disciplined- Orubebe' - Leadership(Abuja)

The minister of special duties in the presidency, Elder Godsday Peter Orubebe, has stressed that the main objective of his being in government is to complement the efforts of President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua in finding lasting peace in the Niger Delta and for the development of the country.

In a statement signed by his chief press secretary, Mr. Ekenwan Akwagbe, the minister appealed to youths in the area to take the issue of education seriously if they must enjoy the dividends of democracy such as securing job opportunities.


Orubebe gave the charge during his Christmas visit to his village of
Tuomo in Burutu local government area of Delta State, reiterating the unflinching commitment of President Yar'Adua's and Vice President Goodluck Jonathan, in ensuring massive infrastructural development, and creating employment opportunities for the teeming youths of the region. Full Story

Yar'aduanomics And the Poverty Question - Leadership(Abuja)

Posted to the web 21 January 2008

S. K. Mazawaje
Kaduna

One will be right by way of personification, to say that poverty and crime are twin brothers born of a mother whose name is unemployment. Some one once argued that, of all the evils known to mankind, worklessness is the worst. Unemployment is a direct source of poverty the worst affliction that man can suffer. This unemployment situation lowers self esteem and morale, it is indeed dehumanizing.

The level of poverty has since become a major bench mark for gauging the health of any nation's economy. According to Dudley Seers, a world renoun political economist, the questions to ask about a country's development are three, namely; What has been happening to poverty? What has been happening to unemployment? What has been happening to inequality? If all these three have declined from high levels, then beyond doubt, this has been a period of development for the country concerned". When you apply these standards or indices which are intertwined to the Nigerian situation, the answer becomes very obvious and does not need to be repeated, they have all been on the rise. Nigeria is currently facing profound socio-economic challenges, the most worrisome and distressing of them being wide spread poverty and high rates of crime especially armed robbery, corruption, murders, drug-related crimes and youth militant up-risings. Full Story

'Why I Shunned Yar'Adua - Buhari' - Leadership(Abuja)

Posted to the web 21 January 2008

Nasir S. Gwangwazo
Abuja

The presidential candidate of All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) in the last general elections, General Muhammadu

Buhari (rtd), has given the legitimacy question dogging the Yar'Adua administration as a key reason for his rejection the presidency's recent invitation to him to be part of the meeting to discuss the problems facing the nation's electoral problems.


President Yar'Adua had recently called a meeting of all stakeholders in the nation's politics to discuss distortions in the electoral system.

While leaders of some political parties, including those of ANPP, attended the meeting, the AC-led Conference of All Nigerian Political Parties boycotted it.

A Buhari-led faction of ANPP also shunned the meeting, which took place recently in the presidential villa, Abuja.

Giving reasons for not attending the meeting in an interview with the BBC Hausa service monitored in Kano last night, Buhari said he still refused to accept Yar'Adua's victory in the last general election.

"It is better for you to understand and agree that we are in court challenging the credibility of the 2007 election. Therefore, we cannot accept the person who was announced as winner and his entire government. Full Story

Nigerian inmates in Saudi cry for help from Yar’Adua

An appeal has gone to President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua to intervene in the case of the 13 Nigerians who are rotting away in a Saudi jail despite having completed their jail terms.

The jailed Nigerians, who thanked Yar’Adua for his concern for them, after reading about their plight in the Sunday Tribune of November 11, 2007, urged him to wade into the matter “urgently to prevent the Saudi authorities from executing us because three months after the president’s intervention, nothing has happened.
The 13 Nigerians involved are: Kazeem Afolabi, Abass Mojeed Akanni, Muritala Amoo, Nurudeen Sanni, Amin Gbenga Shobayo, Abass Azeez, Muhammed Abdullah Yusuff, Waheed Elebute, Saliu Amod Suberu, Hammed Abass, Nofiu Obadina and Nurudeen Owode Owoalade.

Source: http://www.uprotocols.com/wp/2008/01/21/nigerian-inmates-in-saudi-cry-for-help/

New British High Commissioner assumes duties - Vanguard

Written by Chinyere Amalu
Monday, 21 January 2008
ABUJA—Mr. Bob Dewar has assumed duties as the new British High Commissioner in Nigeria.
Mr. Dewar, presented his credentials to President Yar’Adua on 18 January. He succeeds Sir Richard Gozney. Mr. James McLaughlin, 2nd Secretary (Political) British High Commission, said weekend that Mr. Dewar has been a career diplomat since 1974, and has spent most of his career in Africa.

“His last job was as the British Permanent Representative to the African Union and Ambassador to Ethiopia.

“Mr Dewar is married to Jenny who is with him in Nigeria and has one daughter, Jenny aged 19, and one son, Bob aged 12”, he said.
Source: http://www.vanguardngr.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4848&Itemid=43

‘Yar’Adua’s govt is on course’ - Nigerian Tribune

Professor Abdullahi Michael, a former governorship aspirant in Kogi State, speaks with Bode Adewumi on political developments in the state and other national issues. Excerpts:

Many people have criticised President Umaru Yar’Adua regarding recent happenings in the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). What is your view about this?
That is a wrong assessment. We all know that what is happening at the EFCC is nothing unusual. We all know that the president has said he is ruling based on the rule of law, therefore, it will be wrong to say what he is doing right now negates the rule of law because they are still in line with the constitution. Us Nigerians are funny people and it makes me wonder at times. Are we saying Malam Nuhu Ribadu should remain permanently in EFCC? In any case, it was the administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo that appointed him and ordinarily he ought to have left with the former president for obvious reasons. Full Story

Buhari Hails Election Tribunals

The All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) presidential candidate in the 2007 presidential election, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, has hailed the judgments of election tribunals across the country, saying that there may yet be hope for the country’s democracy.
Reacting to last Friday’s annulment of the election of Governor Sullivan Chime of Enugu State, Buhari said the judgments delivered so far had given him and his party the confidence that unlike in 2003, the Judiciary would save Nigeria’s democracy.
The former head of state made the remarks in Birnin Kudu while fielding questions from journalists.
He was in the town to flag off campaigns for the local government elections in Jigawa State.
After comparing the performance of the Judiciary in the aftermath of the 2007 elections with what obtained in the past, he concluded that the Judiciary had done much better than it did after the 2003 elections.
Buhari, who is challenging the election of President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua in the 2007 presidential election, said: “Well, the Judiciary is the last hope and I will give you one or two examples to show why those of us who have been involved in the struggle since 2003 are hopeful. Full Story

Withheld N224bn NDDC fund has expired — Yar'Adua

Written by Emmanuel Aziken Sunday, 20 January 2008
An estimated N224 billion due to the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) but held back by the immediate past administration has “expired,” President Umaru Yar'Adua has told Senators from the Niger Delta region.

This drew flak immediately from the South-South Senators who had gone for a meeting with the President last Wednesday at the Presidential Villa, blamimg it on the immediate past administration of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo.

The all-important talk was also attended by some senior administration officials including the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Ambassador Babagana Kingibe, and the Chief of Staff to the President, Major-General Abdullahi Mohammed.

President Yar'Adua equally expressed his frustration at the militancy fanned by some youths in the region.

He lamented that continued violence was denying the region needed development, noting the increasing reluctance by many construction companies to take jobs in the region.

The expiration of the funds, the President said, was hinged on the administration’s policy of returning all unspent funds to the treasury. Full Story