Britain implores Nigeria to pass disability bill

THE British High Commission has implored Nigeria to pass into law the Nigerian Disability Bill with a view to addressing the plight of those with special needs.

In a statement from the High commissioner, Paul Arkwright, to commemorate the Human Rights Day today, he urged that the country should work to make disabled persons, who are usually the poorest in the society, to have a sense of belonging, pledging his commitment to work with government in achieving the goal.

I appeal to the relevant authorities to implement the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and its optional protocol by ensuring the passage of the Nigerian Disability Bill into law. The Act will provide for the establishment of a National Commission for persons with disabilities which will serve as the platform for the implementation and enforcement of all provisions of the Disability Act.
“On our part, we will continue to work with the Nigerian Government, NGOs and civil society to promote human rights for all including those living with disabilities.
“Already, the UK Department for International Development has a number of programmes designed to address some of the exclusion people with disabilities have to deal with,” Arkwright said.

Meanwhile, three Nigerian youths have been selected for the young leadership award from Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth. Imrana Alhaji Buba, Olanrewaju Adeloye and Olumide Femi Makanjuola are among the 60 young people from across the Commonwealth who are being recognised as exceptional leaders in their communities.

These 60 young people will receive a prestigious Queen’s Young Leaders Award.
The statement further indicated that the award will be presented in London by the Queen in 2016, and is part of her Young Leaders Programme.

The award celebrates the achievements of young people who are taking the lead to transform the lives of others and make a lasting difference in their communities.

This year’s award winners, aged between 18 and 29 and who come from all over the Commonwealth, are working to support others, raise awareness and inspire change on a variety of different issues, including education, climate change, gender equality, mental health and disability equality.

The Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Trust, in partnership with Comic Relief and The Royal Commonwealth Society, had established The Queen’s Young Leaders Programme in honour of Her Majesty’s 60 years of service to the Commonwealth at the time of her Diamond Jubilee.

The awardees are to attend a week-long residential programme in the UK in June after which they will receive the award at Buckingham Palace.

40 years after, group remembers Ugep Black Wednesday

IN a bid to set the records straight, the Umor Otutu socio-cultural organisation has commenced the process of unearthing the truth surrounding the 1975 massacre of dozens of persons in Ugep community in Cross River State by a contingent of Nigerian soldiers, who went berserk over the death of one of their own.

President General of the group, Pastor Ben Arikpo, who addressed reporters in Abuja on the 40th anniversary of the 1975 Ugep Massacre, described that day as a black Wednesday, where citizens in Ugep were massacred by soldiers over an offence they did not commit.

Arikpo gave the assurance that members of the association would do all within their powers to obtain the white paper, based on the report of the late Justice Okorobidu-led panel of inquiry set up by the late Head of State, Maj. Gen Murtala Muhammed. He believed the report of the panel might be in a government archive somewhere between Calabar, Enugu, Jos and Lagos.

He explained that the initiative was borne out of the need to not only seek compensation for the family of those affected but also pacify frayed nerves in the community required to ensure lasting peace and security in the polity.

Going down memory lane, Arikpo said the attack came after an erroneous assumption that the people of Ugep had killed a soldier, who was serving in the Army barracks that was then at Ugep. “Acting on the unsubstantiated allegation, soldiers from the barrack attacked the town at night, killing, raping and setting houses ablaze.”

From official report, 13 people were killed, 100 injured and 7,500 houses burnt. But the claim in the official report was, however, debunked by the people, who claimed the casualty figures were under-reported.

Oshiomhole seeks Okonjo-Iweala, ex-officials’ trial over arms deal

Oshiomhole

• Attempt to link me totally false, says former minister

ONGOING probe into the billions of dollars arms deal may not be meaningful, if search light is not extended to the Finance Ministers, under whose watch the deals were allegedly struck and executed, Edo State Governor, Adams Oshiomhole has said.

Speaking with State House correspondents after a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, yesterday, the governor, noted that restricting the probe to the National Security Adviser (NSA) Col. Sambo Dasuki (rtd) and those facing investigation, without extending the dragnet to the approving authorities would not yield the desired results in the president’s attempt to institutionalize a regime of transparency, integrity and honesty in governance.

Oshiomhole, who spoke on a wide range of issues pertaining to the economy, lauded the government’s current moves to regenerate decaying infrastructure through increased budgetary spending.

Oshiomhole said he was not surprised about the revelations coming out of the probe exercise.
His words: “I’m not shocked but I have been saying it and I have told a couple of persons that the government has to go the whole hog because I know as a governor that no money gets out of the treasury even after I have approved as the governor without the Commissioner of Finance endorsing it.

Those are the procedures. So the probe should go into whether or not these monies were properly appropriated.

“Through who did the money go out of the treasury? The Minister of Finance under the rules must endorse before money gets out of the treasury before the Central Bank of Nigeria will release the money.

“So all those Ministers of Finance, include Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, irrespective of what people say, must give account of what they did. You cannot be coordinating a corruption-ridden economy and you pretend to be an angel.”

However, Dr. Okonjo Iweala has condemned the attempt to link her to any misuse of those funds for any purpose other than security.

The rebuttal signed by Paul C Nwabuikwu, Media Adviser to the former Finance Minister said linking her as far as she understood it is totally false and cannot stand.

Okonjo-Iweala

Okonjo-Iweala said “she insisted on three conditions:

(a.) Only a part, not the entire Abacha funds would be spent on the arms; the rest would be invested in developmental projects as originally conceived

(b.) The money was to be treated as borrowed funds, which would be paid back as soon as possible

(c.) The NSA’s office was to account for the spending to the President who was the Commander in Chief, given the fact that the Minister of Finance is not part of the security architecture and does not participate in the Security Council.”

Speaking on other issues, Oshiomhole believes the 30 percent allocation to capital projects in the 2016 budget proposal by the government is a step in the right direction to begin the process of bringing back to life the almost comatose infrastructure by the government.

If you look at the amount allocated for capital projects for 2015 by the previous government, you didn’t have more that 10 percent for capital projects and this simply means that you are going to watch your infrastructure decaying by the day and plenty crisis in infrastructure across the country.

“But if you are going to reverse that trend and put more money on capital projects, then you need to increase the size of the budget.
“Now the option open to government is if you want to cut personnel costs in order to reduce recurrent expenditure then two things will happen; you either reduce wages or you reduce the number of workers, but because this government is committed to job creation, that option is clearly not on the card.”

According to him, “With all due respect to my brother governors, they missed the point.”
First it is offensive to talk minimum. How can the food of the steward be the reason why the elders have nothing to eat? In a conventional wisdom about tradition, if there are crises in the system, it is those who have excess fat that will shed weight, not the skeleton.
That is why the idea of using the term ‘minimum’ is very offensive to my own sense of morality.”

Save N-Delta from collapse, rights groups urge Buhari

BENIN—COALITION of civil society organisations in the country have raised alarm over what they described as the deteriorating state of the Niger Delta region, urging President Muhammadu Buhari to reposition the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, and other agencies set up for the region so as to save the region from total collapse.

President Muhammadu Buhari

The appeal was made by African Network for Environment and Economic Justice, ANEEJ, and Leadership Initiative for Transformation and Environment, at a briefing in Benin City, Edo State.

Executive Director, ANEEJ, Rev. David Ugolor, and Mr. Jerry Nwigwe, Senior Programme Manager for LITE, lamented that years after the establishment of NDDC and the Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs, 84 projects in 24 communities in four states in the region have been abandoned due to inadequate funding and poor planning.

They urged the President to hasten action on those agencies and also beam his searchlight on the Oil Commission Agencies in the states which they accused of abandoning the objective for which they were established.

Ugolor said, “The abandonment of important projects in the Niger-Delta by various institutions is a source of worry to most citizens of the region. The result of the research and citizen report card survey showed that the law setting up the agencies was explicit on their mandates including issues relating to sources of funding, areas of focus, representation and reporting among others.

“The report showed that development intervention in the Niger-Delta needs to be refocused to meet the needs of community residents. It reveals poor planning in some cases failure to properly, incorporate community residents in the development decision process and lack coordination among the development agencies in the region leading to duplication, abandonment and substandard projects in some communities,” he stated.

The Trap That Goodluck Jonathan Set For Muhammadu Buhari And The Way Out By Jasper Azuatalam

It is a well-known fact that the fuel subsidy debate is quickly becoming a major obstacle to the success of Nigeria.  

Nigerians Queue For FuelNigerian Bulletin

It was just a few days into the 2015 Presidential election that Goodluck Jonathan, realizing he might actually lose, reduced the pump price of fuel from N97 to N87.

This action left many confused, as a decrease was not demanded by anyone.  It is clear that there are only two reasons for his action.

1. To gather public sympathy towards the 2015 presidential election.

2. To create a difficult situation for the incoming administration if he loses the 2015 general election.

The first reason did not succeed, but the second did. Had fuel remained at N97 per liter, there would not be anything like the fuel subsidy discussion today. Since the Buhari government announced that subsidy, each liter of fuel has gone down below N15.

The price of crude oil has fallen to as low as $37, but the government is still paying over 100 billion monthly to marketers as a fuel subsidy. If the government continues to pay the subsidy, the fuel price will remain constant even if the price of crude oil falls to $10. One thing you also need to keep in mind is that the price of processing crude has remained constant, even as the price of crude dwindles. It is also true that the service charges foreign companies like Chevron, and other multinationals, collect from the export of crude and the cost of exploration remains constant.

Government must stop this carnage and waste called the subsidy. The market should be allowed to compete freely as this will bring down the pump price of fuel in a short while. If the subsidy is removed today, the pump price of fuel will remain below N100 and will subsequently reduce in a short time when competition takes hold of the market.

What the government should do it is make sure that our refineries are working at optimum performance. By doing this, the government will begin to make a profit from the selling of fuel instead of paying the subsidies. This will also ensure that the price of fuel will naturally fall as competition sets in. The government should also provide enabling environment for oil marketers by giving licenses to intending marketers, and providing soft loans for them. If this is done, fuel will be like "gari", fuel scarcity will be a thing of the past and the pump price of fuel will fall while government will use the funds meant for a subsidy to build roads, schools, hospitals, and the development of infrastructure.