President Muhammadu Buhari has ordered the probe of two former Chiefs
of Army Staff, Lt Gen. Azubuike Ihejirika and Lt. Gen. Kenneth Minimah.
The two generals are among 54 persons to be investigated for their
roles in the evolving arms scandals that saw billions of dollars meant
for procurement of arms for the Nigerian military for the prosecution of
war against Boko Haram diverted to private pockets.
President of the Presidential Committee on the Audit of Defence
Equipment Procurement in the Armed Forces, AVM Jon Ode (Rtd) disclosed
this in a statement made available to our correspondent in Abuja on
Thursday.
The order followed the approval of the recommendations of the
committee charged with investigating the Defence Equipment Procurement
from 2007 to 2015, for further investigation of those involved, after
the committee found a number of irregularities in the contract awards.
I KNOW MANY GIRLS WILL NOT LIKE OR COMMENT IN THIS POST. The rate at which some girls live with their boyfriend (student) in their various off campus is coming very alarming.
Sometimes, it's a pity seeing a beautiful, promising young girl living
with a boy who is also her fellow student in school as room mate
(boyfriend) The worst part of it, is that if you ask her, she will open her mouth to tell you that the boy is her fiancee. You are in school every weekend you disappear in
to tin air and return Sunday evening or Monday morning in the name of
spending time with your boyfriend, keep flying, a day is coming that
your wings will be so broken on the high way ! You what the mean
You home telling your parent that you are resuming school only for you
to now hang on the road camping for week in this place before you
finally return to school you are doomed i must tell you..... See.....99% of campus relationship end at the school gate..... Stop fooling your self..... Girls wise up ! It's very painful because their parent are not aware and the keep collection house rent from them, Before you think of living with your boyfriend as your room mate. Ask your self this Question. Why am in school ? Doe this boy has a plan for his future ? Let alone yours ! What advice to will give to my children in future ? Where will this wrong relationship take me to ? *i weep for the young ladies* you call it school life But i call it stupidity of the highest order, you guy should desist from this ugly behaviour. It's bad !!!
If you agreed with this update comment "Tell them" and invite your
friend to learn 1 or 2 things as you are learning, Don't deny them that
opportunity, invite today. Am i on point ??? Yes Or No.
Buhari on naira devaluation debate
Naira notes
THE naira devaluation debate
resonated at the Presidential Villa with President Muhammadu Buhari
displaying his trademark rigidity at a meeting with members of the
Council of Retired Federal Permanent Secretaries. He told them that he
was not yet convinced of the benefits such an action would bequeath to
Nigeria given that previous efforts never impacted positively on the
economy.
Yet, the economy is crumbling.
At the parallel market, a dollar exchanges at N320, a rate very few
businesses could survive with. Already, large-scale job losses have
spread in many sectors as a result of low crude prices, forex shortage
and budget delay. According to the President, Manufacturers Association
of Nigeria, Frank Jacobs, 200 major companies risk closure due to the
scarcity of forex for raw materials procurement.
Essentially, a country
undertakes currency devaluation to boost export or make its goods
cheaper, thereby earning more foreign exchange; shrink trade deficit;
and reduce its sovereign debt burden. China, the second largest economy
in the world, trod this path last year when it devalued its yuan –
knocking off 3.5 per cent of its value to the US dollar – and thus
boosting exports. There is also a strong evidence of a sharp increase in
the inflow of capital following devaluation. But large currency
devaluations can hurt, too, by raising the price of imports and spurring
inflation.
But why is Buhari spurning the
devaluation of the naira? With hindsight, he told his guests that he
staunched the International Monetary Fund and World Bank requests to
devalue the currency and remove oil subsidy in 1985, but these were done
as soon as he was removed from office as a military Head of State.
Cynically, he enquired, “But how many factories were built and how many
jobs were created by devaluation?” He enjoys support from the likes of
Emeka Anyaoku, a former Secretary-General of the Commonwealth.
However, the President’s logic
is faulty. That Nigeria never gained from devaluations of the past does
not necessarily mean that a subsequent policy move in this direction
will beget a disastrous outcome. What may be wrong, however, with such
an undertaking now is the fact that our economic fundamentals are very
weak. Currency pegs allow nations to keep inflation and export prices
stable. But, what do we export apart from crude oil?
Truth is, hard choices still lie
ahead. The shortage of dollars for international business, which has
arisen from a steep decline in the global prices of crude oil —
Nigeria’s major foreign exchange earner — has triggered the alarm bells.
In response, the Federal Government introduced a slew of currency
restrictions to protect the naira, which include a fixed exchange rate
of N197-N199 to a dollar, limiting dollar sales at the foreign exchange
market and barring 41 items from the official forex market, among
others.
But the intended results have
not been achieved just yet. Instead, what is obvious is that the economy
is haemorrhaging; and inflation has hit 12.8 per cent on annualised
basis, the highest since July 2012. To be fair, the present dire
economic situation is not the fault of Buhari’s government. The Goodluck
Jonathan administration left us with a thoroughly plundered treasury
and an economy on the ropes.
Some experts have, therefore,
argued that the only viable option for the economy is to allow the naira
to float freely against the dollar and other major currencies; and by
devaluing, the gap between the official and parallel market will be
closed. Walter Lamberson, writing in the New YorkTimes,
said, “Buhari’s insistence on maintaining the peg at the current
official exchange rate is not only crippling production, it is also
encouraging corruption. He should abandon it as soon as possible and
allow the naira to devalue.” He has a point.
Even some of our own experts,
including a former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Mohammed
Sanusi II, support devaluation. At the Monetary Policy Committee meeting
of the CBN in January, Doyin Salami, a Lagos Business School scholar,
also voted in favour, stressing the imperative to widen the midpoint of
the currency band to N220-$1, from the current N197. But he was a lone
voice out of the 12-member MPC.
Really, there is no easy way
out. Currency devaluation is one of the most dramatic — even traumatic —
measures of economic policy that a government may undertake. For any
country with weak economic fundamentals and without a war chest of
reserves, any option is difficult. Having a fiscal adjustment is
difficult and having exchange rate depreciation is difficult.
For Nigeria, will the falling
oil prices not be too much for our lean foreign reserves to bear? If
Saudi Arabia can stick to its promise to use vast foreign exchange
reserves (valued at $592.6 billion as at February 2016) to defend the
riyal’s 30-year-old peg to the US dollar, can Nigeria do that with a
paltry $27 billion in fiscal buffers? With a small manufacturing base
and almost all goods coming in as dollar-priced imports, it is argued, a
cheaper naira would instantly make Nigerians much poorer without
providing any benefit to the wider economy via cheaper exports.
Nigeria is not alone in this
quagmire; all developing and weak economies are. The economies of other
oil commodity traders such as Brazil, Malaysia, Russia and Colombia are
facing raps, forcing them to undertake varying degrees of devaluation or
depegging of their currencies and adoption of other policy drives to
head off economic headwinds.
Yet, Nigeria has a unique
economic structure. Our fear is that an economy with a weak export base
and serious infrastructure gap such as Nigeria’s might be cutting its
nose to spite its face if devaluation is done in isolation. Contrary to
expectation, a devaluation that is not accompanied with other
structural economic reforms would potentially further depress economic
activity.
And the way out? The IMF has
just warned again that oil exporters are facing another year of heavily
reduced oil export revenues, and require ongoing fiscal consolidation
and reforms to cope with these losses and to diversify their economies
away from oil. We believe that considerable attention should be paid to
Nigeria’s peculiar economic environment before a decision to devalue our
currency is made. Richard N. Cooper, Department of Economics, Princeton
University, US, argues in a paper, Currency Devaluation in Developing Countries
(1971), “Because of the associated trauma…, currency devaluation has
come to be regarded as a measure of last resort, with countless partial
substitutes adopted before devaluation is finally undertaken.”
What Nigeria urgently needs is a
structural reform that will, among others, tame public corruption, open
up and diversify the economy, roll back public investment in business,
end importation of refined petroleum products, improve ease of doing
business, unleash foreign direct investment in railway and power sectors
and substantially reduce our food import bills. If Buhari is against
devaluation, then he should roll up his sleeves and change his sluggish,
laid back approach to economic management.
The Managing Director of Fidelity Bank Plc, Nnamdi Okonkwo, has been arrested by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.
Okonkwo,
according to sources, was arrested on Monday for allegedly receiving
$115 million in cash from a former Minister of Petroleum Resources,
Diezani Alison-Madueke.
He was said to have been arrested alongside some other staff of the Bank.
Others arrested included the Head of Operations of the Bank, Martins Izuogbe.
According
to informed sources, Alison-Madueke was said to have deposited the $115
million in the Bank as preparations commenced for the 2015 presidential
election.
She was said to have invited Okonkwo to Abuja, where she briefed him on the deal.
Okonkwo
allegedly accepted to receive the money into the Bank’s coffers despite
the fact that Alison-Madueke did not have an account with Fidelity Bank
Plc.
The discovery was said to have been made by the EFCC when
its operatives were probing how officials of the Independent National
Electoral Commission in Rivers, Delta and Akwa Ibom States allegedly
received N675.1 million.
The money was said to have been given to the INEC officials a day or two before the election.
The source of the money was traced to Fidelity Bank Plc.
Okonkwo
was said to have confessed that he was indeed invited to a meeting by
Alison-Madueke as preparations for the 2015 election began and that the
former Minister told him that some companies would deposit some funds in
his bank.
He said Alison-Madueke then told him she would give him further instructions on how the funds would be disbursed.
After the meeting, four companies made cash deposits into Fidelity Bank Plc.
These
were Auctus Integrated, which deposited $17,884,000; Northern Belt Gas
Company, which made a deposit of $60 million; Midwestern Oil and Gas,
$9.5 million; and Leno Laitan Adesanya, $1.85 million.
Okonkwo was said to have received $26 million in cash himself.
Alison-Madueke’s son, Ugonna Madueke, was said to have become the go-between after the cash deposits were made.
Ugonna allegedly supplied the names of the beneficiaries of the funds.
They included INEC officials, several interest groups and election monitors.
They were simply expected to compromise the electoral process.
Okonkwo was also said to have confirmed to EFCC operatives that it was Ugonna who sent him the list of the beneficiaries.
A
source in the EFCC said: “When Okonkwo found it difficult to convert
the money into Naira before the election as directed by the former
Minister, he notified her of the development.
“She in turn told him to use the Bank’s fund and then convert the Dollar into Naira after the election.
“This was promptly done and the fund was distributed as directed.”
The total sum in Naira then was put at about N23.3 billion.
Out of the sum, not less than N681 million was said to have gone to officials of INEC.
Among
those who allegedly benefitted from the money was the INEC Resident
Electoral Commissioner for Cross River State, Gesil Khan.
Khan allegedly got N185,842,000.
The
other INEC staff that reportedly got money from the
Alison-Madueke/Okonkwo deal were Fidelia Omoile, the Electoral Officer
in Isoko-South Local Government Area of Delta State, N112,480,000;
Uluochi Obi Brown, INEC’s Administrative Secretary in Delta State,
N111,500,000; a former Deputy Director of INEC in Cross River State,
Edem Okon Effanga, N241,127,000; and the Head of Voter Education of INEC
in Akwa Ibom State, Immaculata Asuquo, N214,127,000.
Oshiomhole’s deputy escapes assassination
Gunmen on Saturday opened fire on the
Edo State Deputy Governor, Dr. Pius Odubu, and his entourage in Auchi,
Etsako West Local Government Area of the state.
It was gathered that a policeman, an
operative of the Department of State Security and three other persons
were injured during the attack and were taken to an undisclosed
hospital.
Odubu had last Wednesday formally
declared his intention to contest the September 10 gubernatorial
election in the state under the All Progressives Congress amidst wide
speculation that his decision did not go down well with Governor Adams
Oshiomhole.
It was learnt that the former lawmaker
had earlier been denied access to the party’s secretariat in Fugar,
allegedly on the instruction of an official at the Government House.
Odubu was expected to meet with party delegates from the area but met the secretariat locked.
The situation was said to have angered
some delegates, who later forced the gate open to enable the deputy
governor meet with them.
He was said to have left for Auchi and
was meeting with some delegates when the gunmen suddenly appeared,
firing gunshots at his convoy.
A source, who did not want to be mentioned, told our correspondent that Odubu was not injured in the attack.
“No, he was not injured but two our security men were injured. It was in Etsako West, in Auchi.
“We ran for our dear lives. They injured
a policeman, an SSS operative and three civilians and destroyed
canopies. We learnt that they were paid N1m to carry out the attack,”
the source said.
Efforts by our correspondent to reach the Police Public Relations Officer, Mr. Osifo Abiodun, were not successful.
Calls put across to the Chief Press Secretary to the Deputy Governor, Mr. Kelly Odaro, also went unanswered.
A police source confirmed the attack.
He said, “It is true from the information we have heard.”
President Muhammadu Buhari has ordered the probe of two former Chiefs
of Army Staff, Lt Gen. Azubuike Ihejirika and Lt. Gen. Kenneth Minimah.
