Iweiroyin: Aisha Buhari, Biya’s wife partner on women, childr...

Iweiroyin: Aisha Buhari, Biya’s wife partner on women, childr...: The wife of the president, Mrs Aisha Buhari, said yesterday in Abuja that she would collaborate with the First Lady of the Republic of Cam...

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

May 2, 2016

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 York Times, 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.

EFCC arrests Fidelity Bank MD for receiving $115m cash from Alison-Madueke

EFCC arrests Fidelity Bank MD for receiving $115m cash from Alison-Madueke

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.”