I didn’t say Nigeria is an Islamic country – Foreign Affairs Minister

247ureports
-
2

The Minister of State, Foreign Affairs (2), Dr Nuruddeen Mohammed has said, contrary to a story that has circulated in the media, he did not at any time declare that Nigeria is an Islamic country. The minister made this declaration in a statement issued and signed by him at the weekend. According to the minister, an interview he granted the Nigeria Television Authority (NTA) on the sideline of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) meeting in Mecca, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, in the middle of August, did not contain any element referring to Nigeria as an Islamic State.

The full statement issued by the minister is as follows: “My attention was drawn to some sensational news articles circulating in both the print, online, and the social media, pertaining to a statement I purportedly made while attending the Extra Ordinary Summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which held in Mecca, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, between the 15th and 16th of August, 2012. The reports alleged that I said, ‘Nigeria is an Islamic Country with the largest Christian population’. The reports alleged that I said this  through the NTA Network News anchored in Abuja on Wednesday, the 15th of August, 2012 by 9pm.

“For the avoidance of doubt, I said no such a thing in the said news bulletin. What I did say rather (among other things) was; “The King had extended invitation to the fifty-seven member states of the OIC, including his colleague and brother, Dr Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, who mandated the Vice President to sit in for Nigeria. The basic agenda of the meeting was to discuss the barrage of problems facing the Muslim world – the crisis in Syria, the crisis in Northern Mali, which is threatening the whole Sahel Region. And you know the Sahel Region is very important to OIC. Because, out of the fifteen member states of ECOWAS, fourteen, I mean twelve, are members of the OIC. And, of course, the issue of interfaith dialogue; in that respect, Nigeria featured prominently. We are the largest Islamo-Christian country in the world, and any initiative to encourage dialogue between faiths will come out to the greatest advantage of Nigeria”.

“This statement, despite being available in the most recent of NTA archives, the video of the news clip can also be viewed on YouTube via the following link: www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLgH5srB_NU“.

“My first reaction was to ignore the media frenzy, and dismiss it as just the wild and mischievous imagination of some evil-minded authors, but for two reasons. First, the expected negative reaction it generated from the general public, and particularly that of the President, Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, whom I naturally respect and defer to, as a leading religious leader and foremost statement, and had already personally consulted with him to set the records straight.

“Secondly, to respond to appeals, from friends, family, and political associates, cutting across different ethnic and religious divides, who either phoned or visited, since the unfortunate drama began, and demanded that I clear my name.

“Through family upbringing and political training, I had grown to groom myself, to consider our common humanity and its primary needs, as the foundation of my philosophy in public life. A fact reinforced by my choice of Medicine (which emphasizes service to humanity) as a profession. It is most disheartening that my innocent young self has been dragged in to this habitual, needless, and emotive religious controversy, that had done no one any good. A path that my generation can’t afford to tread!

“I finally appeal to the general public, and particularly media practitioners, to always reflect deeply, and be conscious of the huge civic responsibility resting on their shoulders while holding their pen,  and to always double check their facts while avoiding hasty conclusions”.

“As the Fourth Estate of the Realm,  that will not only improve the quality of our public discourse, and reinforce our stand as humans with superior reasoning, but will in the end help us all to build a better and just society for ourselves and generations yet unborn”.

Attorney-Gen. To Jega: You’ve No CEO Powers

247ureports
-
2

Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) chair Prof. Attahiru Jega has lost out in his battle to hold tight to executive powers at the agency.

Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice Mohammed Adoke has advised Jega to quit his role as the accounting officer of INEC.

There has been a running battle between Jega and some of the National Commissioners over the INEC chair’s alleged “acquisition of wide powers to himself”.

At a recent retreat in Lagos, the commissioners reportedly took the chairman up on such powers, which, in their view, are open to abuses.

They also said if the chairman continued the way he had been running the body in “a one man show arrangement”, it could lead to a major crack in the leadership and endanger the agency’s future.

Some of them buttressed their argument that Jega had been obsessed with power with his request for sweeping powers for the INEC chair in his proposal for an amendment to the Electoral Act 2010.

Jega, had last May, requested the National Assembly to amend the 2010 Electoral Act to allow for electronic voting in 2015 and to give him powers to appoint the Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs) because, according to him, “there is no clear sense of the relationship between RECs and the commission at the national level.”

He added:  “We will like to be given a role in order to streamline authority structure within the commission.”

The INEC boss said he wanted the electoral body to be allowed to sanction political parties that violate internal party democracy with a view to enhancing the democratic process.

He spoke at a retreat for members of the House of Representatives ad-hoc committee on the review of the 1999 Constitution in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital.

Jega, who urged the National Assembly to expunge Section 52 of the Electoral law which prohibits the use of electronic voting machine in elections, was represented by Mrs Thelma Iremiren, a National Commissioner.

To get the legal backing to his enormous powers, Jega had written a letter dated June 19, to Adoke, asking for clarification on who should be the accounting officer of the body.

He noted: “Since our assumption of office as a new Commission in July 2010, having regard to the fact that neither the Constitution nor the Electoral Act defined the role of the Secretary to the Commission as the Accounting Officer, I have considered myself as such, relying upon provisions of the Procurement Act, particularly Sections 18, 19 and 20 of the Act and Regulations issued by the Bureau of Public Procurement to the effect that in an MDA/Corporate procuring entity, the Chief Executive is the Accounting Officer.

“I have also done this, given the weighty personal liability which the Procurement Act places on the shoulders of the Accounting Officer. The tradition in INEC had been that a Permanent Secretary was posted as the Secretary, until 2008, when INEC, having regard to the provisions of the Constitution and Electoral Act appointed its Secretary. The functions/roles of the Secretary as specified did not say or imply that he is the Accounting Officer”.

Jega told Adoke that the clarification was necessary in the light of the restructuring and reorganisation going on in the commission as it prepares for what he described as “better, effective and efficient service delivery towards 2015 and beyond”.

He insisted that it was “pertinent to seek this clarification for the avoidance of doubt and in order to put lingering matters to rest.”

The “lingering matters” Jega spoke about, it was learnt, might not be unconnected with what a source described as the frosty relationship between the chairman and other commissioners over the chairman’s powers.

In a July 26 reply to Jega’s reply, Adoke declared categorically that the chairman is not the accounting officer of INEC.

Adoke said: “I have examined relevant provisions of the law particularly, the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999, the Electoral Act, the Public Procurement Act and extant Financial Regulations in order to determine whether the law has expressly provided for the position of either the ‘Chief Executive Officer’ or ‘Accounting Officer’ of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

“Regrettably, it would appear that no such terminology was used in the statutes examined. Item 14(1)(a) of Part 1 to the Third  Schedule of the Constitution only provides that the  Chairman shall be the Chief  Electoral Commissioner. The provision does not state that the ‘Chief Electoral Commissioner’ is the ‘Chief Executive Officer.

“I have similarly examined the functions and powers of the Commission as provided for in item 15 of Part 1 of the Third Schedule to the Constitution and sections 2, 3, 4 and 5 of the Electoral Act and wish to observe that these are functions and powers that can only be exercised by the Commission and not by the Chairman or any individual Commissioner except as may be delegated by the Commission under Section 152 of the Electoral Act or item 15(h) of Part 1 to the Third Schedule to the Constitution.”

“Consequently, in the absence of any clear donation of the powers of a Chief Executive Officer or Accounting Officer by the relevant statutes, and in the absence of any evidence to indicate that these functions and powers of the Commission have been delegated to the Chairman, I am unable to come to the reasoned conclusion that the law contemplates that the Chairman of INEC shall be the Chief Executive Officer or Accounting Officer of the Commission,” Adoke explained.

He added that the Electoral Act confers on the Secretary enormous administrative powers akin to those of  Directors-General, who are “statutorily the Accounting Officers and Chief Executive Officers of their various Commissions”.

Adoke pointed out that this is what obtains in similar commissions, such as Police Service Commission, National Population Commission and Federal Judicial Service Commission.

Some of the commissioners were said to have warned that unless Jega is checked, he could become a “dictator” as demonstrated by his actions after the Kogi State governorship election when Jega, who should be a disinterested party, directed that one of the contending candidates be sworn in as governor, fueling speculations that the electoral body has metamorphosed into a “game changer”.

Jega’s actions are according to sources, believed to have been buoyed by his membership of the Justice Mohammed Uwais panel on Election Reform.

Source: The Nation.

Libya: Some Still Sing for Gaddafi

247ureports
-
0
People take part in a protest at Martyr’s Square in Tripoli, against transforming the country into a federal state 9 March 2012.

New Libyan media outlets broadcast remotely still pledge their allegiance to the former dictator while attacks are carried out in Libya allegedly sponsored by former regime supporters living abroad.

In a few months Libyans will celebrate the second anniversary of the February 17 revolution which brought down Muammar Gaddafi’s regime.

There will be an official celebration on Libyan satellite television channels which now number over 30.

No one knows how the event will be marked on two recently launched stations – Al-Wadi (The Valley) and Watanna (Our Homeland) – that broadcast from Cairo.

Initially, Al-Wadi was perceived as an ordinary Libyan channel with no particular sympathy for the country’s former dictator.

However, at the beginning of Ramadan, pro-Gaddafi presenters – who had fled to Egypt when the opposition stormed Tripoli – began to appear on its screen.

The most notable were Widyan and Ashraf al-Sherif, who took the opportunity to heap abuse on the revolutionaries.

Widyan was captured by rebel forces when they entered the Libyan capital, but she was released, fleeing to Tunisia and then to Egypt.

There, she met some of the former regime’s supporters and set up a television station with them, sponsored by Libyan businessmen from Bani Walid who were close to Gaddafi.

On the last night of Ramadan, Widyan appeared on screen with Ashraf Sherif. Behind them was a large map of the Jamahiriyya, the Gaddafi-inspired political system imposed on Libya.

They discussed Eid al-Fitr rituals in every city. When it came to Tripoli, Widyan pointed her finger at Omar al-Mukhtar Street in the capital. She then repeated this bizarre gesture.

The next day, on the first morning of Eid, the capital woke up to two car bombs in the very same street.

A clip of her gesture then made the rounds on Facebook, Twitter and Youtube, where the majority of users took it to be a clear reference to the explosions.

This angered Libyans, who demonstrated in front of the Egyptian embassy, demanding that the Egyptian ambassador intervene to shut down these stations.

Then, when the perpetrators of the explosions were captured, they confessed that they were backed by Gaddafi supporters currently living in Cairo.

Libyan Prime Minister Abdul-Rahim al-Keib later travelled to Cairo and requested that the station be closed. Sure enough, the Egyptian authorities obliged.

The people behind the project did not, however, give up. Al-Wadi was soon re-launched on the internet, playing pro-Gaddafi songs and promising to be back on Nilesat – a television satellite company that covers the Arab world – with five channels and huge financial capabilities.

Watanna continues to call for people to turn against the new Libyan government and to raise the green flag of the Jamahiriyya.

Nilesat’s management has declared that the stations were now broadcasting by way of another satellite company, Noursat, which they cannot control.

Obama predicts election outcome, inauguration weather

247ureports
-
0
President Obama chats with staff and patrons at the Buff restaurant in Boulder, Colo.

BOULDER, Colo. — While his campaign aides like to say they take nothing for granted, President Obama showed off a little confidence Sunday as he worked the crowd at a Boulder, Colo., restaurant.

Obama didn’t quite predict he would swear in for a second term after the election, but he did predict the weather at the inauguration.

As Obama chatted up diners at the Buff restaurant, a breakfast and lunch place near the University of Colorado campus, Jim Osborne stood up from his meal to greet the president.

Osborne told Obama he had attended the last inauguration.

“It was cold that day,” Obama said. “This one is going to be warmer.”

“I’m looking forward to it,” said Osborne, who said later that he is an attorney from Los Angeles.

“That’s my goal,” Obama said.

Obama’s weather prediction may be a safer bet than his political one. It was about 28 degrees for his big day, the coldest inauguration since Ronald Reagan’s second, according to National Weather Service website that actually tracks such things.

The president is in Boulder for another college town rally, his fourth in a week. The campaign is trying to pile up new young voter registrations as students return to school. Obama opened his remarks, as he has at each college stop, by urging people to visit a special website for registering voters. And when the crowd booed a reference to Republicans he shot back his favorite replay.

“Don’t boo. Vote!” Obama said to a crowd estimated at 13,000, according to local officials. He joked that the from the looks of the food at The Buff and fun of the Boulder campus, “I could see folks forgetting to vote. They’re having too much fun. That’s why you are so important.”

Nigeria’s First Lady, Patience Jonathan hospitalized in Germany because of food poisoning

247ureports
-
4

Sources in Abuja state house squealed that Mrs. Patience Jonathan has been in a hospital in Germany in the last four days, undergoing treatment for food poisoning.

The reliable sources say Mrs. Jonathan, who is also a Permanent Secretary in the Bayelsa State civil service, was airlifted to the hospital by an air ambulance in midweek under emergency medical conditions.

Presidency sources stated that the emergency airlift departed for Wisbanden, Germany, but it is not clear if her treatment was being undertaken in that city. They said she was only able to speak earlier today, four days after her arrival, because the illness had been so severe that she lost her voice.

They could not say when she will return to the country. Meanwhile Nigeria’s political leaders and their families routinely seek expensive medical attention abroad, an irony occasioned by their failure to develop the same facilities at home. In the past few years, two former First Ladies have died on foreign hospital beds.

Reconstructing Nigeria for Prosperity [1] – By Chukwuma Charles Soludo

247ureports
-
4

Prof. Charles Chukwuma Soludo, Former CBN Governor
In my 2005 National Democracy Day Lecture, I strongly argued that “for sustainable democracy, fundamental changes are required in the constitution, the electoral system, the fiscal federalism, as well as a gamut of legal-institutional reforms that are developmental and capable of promoting private enterprise and competition”. Seven years later, I feel more strongly about this point, and almost a sense of urgency to it. In the last two years, I have given several lectures on Nigeria’s dysfunctional political economy. I am glad that constitutional amendments are being debated. At least, let us start the talking. There is a systemic failure, and our institutions cannot take Nigeria on a sustainable path to prosperity. In three articles, beginning with this one, I want to join the debate.

The word ‘restructure’ evokes all kinds of reactions. For some, it is a veiled campaign to dismember or weaken the Nigerian federation. I disagree. While I admit that Nigeria as a country or nation has been a colossal disappointment and a textbook example of “how not to do it”, I disagree that the solution is to dismember or weaken it.

I have three strong reasons to be a believer in one united and prosperous Nigeria. First, I am a pan-Africanist— an Nkrumaist in terms of Pan-African unity. As a scholar, about 60 per cent of my research and publications are on African economies. I am one of those dreaming of the second USA, the United States of Africa (with 54 states, encompassing the current 54 countries, with Nigeria as the Texas of Africa). Our destiny is tied together—the rest of the world simply sees one ‘Africa’ as if it is a ‘country’ but we think of ourselves as different. Combined, the 49 sub-Saharan African countries account for barely two per cent of global GDP (the size of Belgium with 10 million people). I see Africa’s future increasingly within the context of a more fully integrated continent. Enough of my dreams: now back to reality!
Second, I am proud to belong to the “big country”, and wish that it could become the “next China”. Nigeria is Africa’s most populous and its potentially biggest economy. In today and tomorrow’s world, size matters. Europe will inevitably move towards greater ‘federal Europe’ if the euro is to survive, and other efforts towards agglomeration are going on around the world. Nigeria accounts for far less than one per cent of global GDP (indeed if Nigeria were to submerge under a volcano tomorrow, the world would only notice it as a humanitarian disaster). I cannot imagine Nigeria breaking into smaller groupings. I do not see any of the groupings that will ‘happily’ stay together under one union without its own internal contradictions and tensions as in the larger Nigeria.

Third, I am aware that the hangover of history makes any reference to the word ‘restructure’ by an Igboman to be viewed with suspicion. I hate to think of public policy in those terms but if it helps this discourse, I make bold to say that as an Igboman, I will never support anything that will threaten the unity of Nigeria. Igbos have the greatest stake in Nigeria, and therefore stand to lose the most in the event of (God forbid) any disorderly unravelling of Nigeria. An enterprising, itinerant people with huge population in a tiny land mass, Igbos (like the Jews) are in need of a large domain or market for their commerce without molestation or discrimination. They are everywhere. Of the estimated 17 million Nigerians in Diaspora, I can bet that at least 10 million of them are Igbos. They dominate most markets, especially for motor spare parts, in Africa. Onitsha traders now suffer because of Boko Haram as their supply chains to and from many parts of the North are grossly diminished.

There is hardly any village in Nigeria or town in Africa without an Igboman, speaking the local language and probably owning a house and feeling much at home. Without fear of contradiction, I can assert that at least 80 per cent of the Igbo elite live outside of Igboland (mostly in Lagos and Abuja), and more than 70 per cent of the investments by Igbos are outside of Igboland. I know that more than half of Anambra’s population lives outside of the state. There is hardly any former public office holder (governors, ministers, senators, Reps, etc) since 1999 who lives in Igboland. As Mallam Nasir el-Rufai was quoted as saying sometime, Igbos have turned Abuja into their ‘sixth state’, and some estimates opine that Igbos constitute 30-40 per cent of Lagos State. Even traditional marriages are now celebrated anywhere. The reasons for these are for another day.

The point of emphasis is that Igbos have the greatest need to keep Nigeria or even Africa as one united and prosperous market. An elderly Igbo friend of mine summed it nicely: “in the 1960s Igbos fought to leave Nigeria and the rest of Nigeria refused; we lost our properties and lives; now that we have re-built them everywhere, we are going to fight to make sure no one else will leave the union: we are all in this marriage for better or for worse”. Enough said!

Our thesis here is that a society can only prosper under conditions of ‘good leadership’ as well as a ‘good system’ that supports competition and wealth creation. So far, the dysfunctional system and its perverse incentives that make it almost impossible to make sustained progress in Nigeria have received little attention in public discourse. For three consecutive years, Nigeria has retained the 14th position in the world as ‘a failed state’ (with Somalia as number one) and many people think it is a joke. I posit that any serious discussion of public policy that ignores this issue misses the point. We believe there is a systemic failure that cannot be fixed by ad hoc ‘reforms’ irrespective of the type of leadership.

We therefore use the term ‘restructure’ to refer to the gamut of transformations in the nature and structure of the Nigerian State and society away from the current entanglements with the pursuit of rents to re-establish the link between the state and the people/business, and to re-engineer a society where competition and hard work drive success. Let us divide Nigeria’s post-independence history into the pre-civil war (under the 1963 Republican Constitution and its provisions for competitive federalism under the regions and a revenue allocation formula that forced hard work and competition) on the one hand, and the post-civil war with its centralised, unitary-federalism, with the centre repeatedly ‘creating’ the unviable federating units each entitled to the free money from the centre.

On literally all accounts, the average Nigerian was better off in the first than under the second: per capita income in 1966 was about $1,000 and about $1,400 in 1973 and is currently about $1,200. In REAL terms, the average Nigerian today (despite Nigeria earning over $600 billion from oil since 1973) has less than half of the income in 1966; is poorer; has a shorter life span; with poorer educational system and infrastructure. All the industries and palm and cocoa plantations and groundnut pyramids built by the regions have collapsed.
Our current unproductive system was designed to keep Nigeria ‘united’ by creating a strong ‘centre’. In the process, we have neither a federation nor a unitary system (at best a corrupted unitary system). All incentives and institutions are designed around a command and control structure for sharing and consuming the lottery jackpot from God (oil rents). For fear of death, Nigeria has indeed decided to commit suicide! There is no incentive for productive governance. National politics of competition for the oil rents has assumed a life of its own. On a per capita income basis, Nigeria has the most expensive parliament in the world. Every village now wants to be a state to get its own ‘share’. Don’t talk about fiscal viability! Have you heard any state governor advertising the number of new businesses that were attracted to his state or number of private sector jobs created as ‘the’ key performance indicator? There is little incentive for such! Debate on leadership is about who will share and where he comes from. It is not about who has the best plans to create jobs and wealth. Because you don’t need any skills to share, just about anybody can be a ‘leader’. Our politics has become a road to nowhere.

We need good leaders but equally important, we need a competitive system that allows any potentially good leader to emerge and perform. To use the metaphor of football, you need good footballers in a good pitch to have great football. If you have 10 Lionel Messis in a team but you take them to play in a cassava farm as field, their talents and efforts may come to little. In fact, because the field is a cassava farm, the ‘best players’ that would emerge could be the street urchins. Our view is that the type of leaders thrown up under a democracy and the latitude they have for creative change depends upon the nature of the legal-institutional infrastructure and the incentive-sanction system. As an economist, I understand that to change behaviour, two keywords are critical: incentives and sanctions. Both summarise what are popularly termed ‘institutions’. An individual can make a difference but ultimately it is institutions that make all the difference. You can assemble a thousand technocrats, each with his/her ‘reforms’ and at best their positive impact will be at the margin.

Nigeria is in a chicken and egg situation. How will the ‘good system’ emerge without ‘good leaders’ and vice versa? Leave this for our next articles!

To prepare for life without oil, we need a new road map, and the starting point is a new constitution for prosperity! We need to understand the institutional/constitutional design that makes United Arab Emirates (UAE) produce the world class city of Dubai with little oil while other oil-producing countries of the Middle East are not diversified. We need to understand the incentive system that enables the State of Nevada in the US to prosper despite not having any natural resource in a country with oil rich states. It won’t be easy to repair the havoc oil and the destructive politics around it have wreaked on the society, including destruction of the productive elite. But the time to start is now.

To move forward, Nigeria must review the content and meaning of its current political map; rights over mineral resources and land; tax jurisdictions; citizenship rights; fiscal responsibility and fiscal federalism; powers of the central vis-a-vis regional governments; elimination of the suffocating hands of the Federal Government on the regions; etc. It is an oxymoron to repeat the same thing over and over, and expect a different outcome. For a new Nigeria to emerge, new thinking and new ways of doing business must be in place.

PhotoNews: Vice President Sambo at IBB’s Birthday Bash

247ureports
-
0

Former President Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida; Vice
President Mohammed Namadi Sambo And Pdp National Chairman Alhaji
Bamanga Tukur During The 71st Birthday Celebration Of Former
President Ibrahim Babangida At The Ibb Golf Classic Club 2012 In
Maitama,Abuja. On Saturday

–

[flagallery gid=5 name=Gallery]

Nollywood will head to the rock by 2015 …if – Awurum

247ureports
-
0

 

Charles Awurum and Victor Osuagwu

By: Ugochukwu Favour-Mayor

The prime mover and head honcho of Magic Lens Pictures, Charles Awurum has said that if the third high-rated movie industry in the world, Nollywood is not been rescued soon, that it will head to the rock.

Awurum made this disclosure at this year’s bi-annual award and talent hunt ceremony of Magic Lens Pictures Academy, which held last Saturday at the Nigeria Union of Journalists Press Center, Enugu State.

He stated that the only solution left for the industry is except the stakeholders and practitioners of the movie producing industry in Africa could reason together and find a long lasting solution that will revive it, and also sustain it for future growth.

The Nollywood actor and comedian, Charles Awurum disclosed that soon, his production company would be embarking on projects that will assist in the rebuilding of the fallen standards of the entertainment industry in Nigeria,“as to make our movies acceptable both locally and internationally,” adding that there is no doubt that the industry the people cherish so much will soon head to the rock by 2015.

“We need your advice, encouragement and assistance to enable us move forward. Nollywood is our collective business, and so, let us collectively support and build it up. Your assistance will go a long way in making a difference. Already, we are engaged towards establishing a School of Arts that will be aimed at helping the young people to hone their skills through courses and programmes, as to abreast with the current development in the movie industry,”he urged.

To achieve his company’s vision, Awurum stated that his production firm has the capacity to actualize any dream that surrounds the Nigeria entertainment industry, adding that Magic Lens Pictures as an active player in Nollywood had earlier avowed itself with commitment to deepen the industry through capacity building and creation of opportunities for up and coming artistes.

Continuing, the screen comedian stressed that with regards to deepening the character of Nollywood that Magic Lens Pictures had over the years proved its stand by producing high quality movies, which showcases the country’s cultural heritage and style in the very finest details.

Kwankwaso’s Men Attack Shekarau At Kano Airport

247ureports
-
1

The lingering tension between the two political titans of Kano State political theater appear to near a climax on the evening of Sunday August 26, 2012 as both men crossed path at the Aminu Kano International Airport in Kano.

According to the information available to 247ureports.com which was obtained through sources close to the activities at the Kano State government house, the former governor of Kano State, Malam Ibrahim Shekarau and his men were attacked by men attached to the present Governor of Kano, Malam Rabiu Kwankwaso on the evening [7pm] of Sunday August 26, 2012 at the protocol lounge of Aminu Kano Airport.

As gathered, the former governor, Malam Shekarau and some of his men were on their return trip from the Holy Land for pilgrimage. Their plane had arrived Aminu Kano Airport on Sunday evening – approximately the same time when the flight carrying the governor of Kano State, Rabiu Kwankwaso arrived from Abuja.

According to a source close to the State governor who was present on the said Sunday evening, “Shekarau returned that day to a rousing welcome which they [Kwankwaso] were not happy about” and, the governor, who was not received in the same manner was visibly irritated. Minutes after Malam Shekarau had acknowledged the crowd that had gathered to welcome him, he dashed into one of the vehicles that had come to pick him from the airport – leaving behind his men at the airport to retrieve his luggages from the conveyor belt.

As Malam Shekarau departed the scene, men dressed in uniform of security vigilante, trooped into the protocol lounge in search for someone. They had come to receive the governor. But according to the source, “they came to receive Kwankwaso who was returning to Kano from Abuja. And they now saw Shekarau’s car parked outside the airport and proceeded to destroy the vehicle [a 2011 Honda Concerto]“.  The source believes that the men had walked into the protocol lounge after they had destroyed the vehicle – hoping to see some of Shekarau’s men or Shekarau himself.

The vehicle’s windows and windscreens were smashed and the vehicle body destroyed.

The estimate cost of the damage meted to the vehicle is stated to be in excess of N500,000. The Kwankwaso men have refused to bare the cost of the repairs. This is according to a source close to Shekarau.

Efforts to get a reaction from Kwankwaso’s men failed. 247ureports.com placed calls nd text messages to the Chief Press Secretary [CPS], Malam Dantiye, and the State Commissioner of Information, Prof Farouk but they refused to respond. Malam Dantiye, on his part, after having received the text message sought to know the identity of the sender. When the identity was revealed, he switched off his phone.

stay tuned

Brutal Activities Of Osun State Swift Action Squad (SAS) Are Uncalled For

247ureports
-
0

    • We Condemn The Harrassment Of Defenceless Civilians By State Sponsored Sas
    • We Call For The Immediate Abrogation Of The Reign Of The “Army Of Occupation”  On The Streets Of Osun-State

Recently, the Students’ Security Committee of the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife received pathetic reports of sexual harassment and physical molestation being meted on innocent students residing outside the university campus. Before hand, our attention has been drawn to the activities of men of the Osun-State’s Swift Action Squad (SAS) who have illegally extended the constitutional framework of the armed forces and the police from guaranteeing the security of lives and property to the incorporation of “cultural values”. Under the influence of security uniform, and government ill-sanctioned policy, these security personnel have been battering, insulting and molesting innocent Nigerians on the premise that they do not meet “their tastes” of good dress code, walking posture, acquisition of electronic properties, good human physique and other human factors. Sadly enough, these actions which are product of a blatant legal fallacy have been extended to the innocent and defenseless students who have stayed in Ife for SIWES or medical students’ extension. First we reject the continuation of such actions. We term these actions sanctioned by the Osun State government and as perpetrated by security personnel majorly drawn from the armed force as illegal, unwarranted and superfluous.

Our rejection of this unnecessary and unlawful military attacks on ordinary citizens, especially students, is predicated on reasons ranging from legal logic to moral fallacies. Obviously the Nigeria constitution has made no equivocal error in defining the operational frame-work of military and paramilitary institutions in the country. The law has made it the primary responsibility of the armed forces to defend territorial sovereignty, and to the police and other similar constitutionally recognized policing institutions it has allotted the responsibility of maintaining law and order. All these, derived from the organic law of the land! Now the question is where the state government got the locus standi to put into security-fore, issues of private morality. Glaringly the laws of the land has never specified which cloth is legal to wear or which hairstyle to wear, neither has it stated that youths are not privy to own electronic properties nor that it is a matter of security threat for females to be naturally endowed. Then why are innocent Nigerians continually battered, molested and insulted for all these reasons when the security personnel constitutionally lack the locus standi under the law to correct these things. Apparently the government action is a legal contradiction that makes the government to act contrary to the law it has sworn to preserve by infringing on the rights of citizens instead of protecting it. It is even interesting that these actions are being perpetrated at a time when the IGP has officially banned the ill-conceived roadblocks. It is vital to remind these law-breaking “security outfit” that it is illegal and unconstitutional for security agents to arrest defenseless citizens without a warrant backed by the law, or a prior knowledge of the alleged crime he or she commits.

We are not also oblivious of the fact that the government has fallaciously predicated its action on moral and cultural values instead of the law, upon which its legitimacy is derived in the first instance. Still, appealing to moral does not save the uncalled-for actions of the SAS from illogicalities and gross superfluity. Had it been that these policy makers have considered the historical development of cultural values, they would have clearly acknowledged that cultural cum moral values are not static and that they are distinct- they vary with locations. Some decades ago in this part of the country it would be considered eccentric to see ladies in trousers, but what do we have now? A wave of change in cultural mentality and norms! For the government to be in a subjective position to determine whether a dress code is right or wrong is such a display of idleness. It only translates to subverting the always transiting nature of cultural values. In the face of global civility, the action of the state government to determine cultural values by use of force is undemocratic.

Good fated Nigerians who believe in democratic principles and the rule of law should reject this tyrannical action that is capable of making the control of States over force apparatus to degenerate into fascism. A situation where a governor would wake up one day and deploy policemen on the street to enforce grey uniform on civilians should be forestalled at this early stage of military tendencies in the Osun-State current democratic dispensation.

We demand (borne out of the fact that the uncalled-for activities of the SAS in Osun-State fail to meet up with legal and logical reasoning) that the SAS activities be checked, and be limited to the set constitutional framework guiding activities of security personnel rather than they harassing easy-going civilians out of idleness. We also warn that continual assault of any kind on students, or SAS movement on campus would not be taken slightly by great Ife students. We hence call on peace loving Nigerians to call the Osun-State government to order, before its action force students to take radical actions against it.

In conclusion, we are not opposed to good security in Osun-State, but we are rather opposed to the use of security apparatus to intimidate innocent workers, students and the poor. We hence advise the governor to concentrate on providing the good people of Osun-State qualitative security over forcing morals on them.

SIGNED

Samuel Adeolu (Com. Sammie)

Chairman, Students’ Security Committee.

1...5,4595,4605,461...5,680Page 5,460 of 5,680