News
The last batch of 108 Nigerian police officers has been withdrawn from the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) after five years of service.
UNMIL said the remaining 108 Nigerian FPU officers, the last UNMIL uniformed contingent remaining in Liberia, withdrew as part of the UN mission’s termination.
The batch of 200 Nigerian peacekeepers withdrew from Liberia in February as part of the termination of the mission’s mandate, scheduled on March 30, the mission said.
“The Nigerian contingent has been deployed in Liberia since UNMIL was first established in 2003.
Nigeria has been a main contributor of military and police to UNMIL.
“The United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) has been a steadfast partner to Liberia for the last 15 years.
“It has supported security and security sector reform, rule of law, efforts to disarm, human rights and sustainable peace.
“The Mission will complete its mandate on 30 March 2018.
“UNMIL was established in September 2003 with 16,475 uniformed personnel to monitor a ceasefire agreement in Liberia, following the conclusion of the Second Liberian Civil War”.
An official farewell ceremony was held in February in honour of the last departing 689 uniformed personnel – 404 military and 285 police personnel – who had served with the Mission.
This symbolised the end of UNMIL’s military and police operations in Liberia, more than 14 years after UNMIL was deployed in compliance with Security Council resolution 1509 (2003).
Nigeria’s Maj.-Gen. Salihu Uba is the Force Commander and Head of UNMIL’s Military component of men and women from various countries, including Nigeria, Pakistan and Ukraine.
Uba was Commander of the Training and Doctrine Command of the Nigerian Army before his appointment as the Force Commander for UNMIL by the former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Jan. 9, 2015.
The Formed Police Unit composed of Nigerian and Chinese personnel and since 2003, 61 contingents from various countries had served in Liberia, UNMIL said.
According to Uba, the mission’s uniform component military and police have taken greater stride towards strengthening peace and security, rule of law, governance among others in Liberia.
The Force Commander stated that it was not all roses particularly for the military which had the highest fatalities of 138 personnel while the police lost 21 persons.
“We will continue to pay special tribute to them and those who contributed to peace and security in Liberia” the Major General said.
The Force Commander, on behalf of the Police Commissioner Simon Blatchly, expressed their profound appreciation to the uniformed component of UNSMIL.
“While my colleagues in uniform are writing the last pages of the peacekeeping operations here, Liberians and their Leaders have started writing the first pages of a brand new chapter in their history.”
Liberian President George Weah commended UNMIL for its longstanding support to peace and stability, saying the Liberian people will forever remain grateful to them for their bravery and service.
Weah said: “Thank you for your hard work and sacrifice you have made over the years to keep the peace and stability of our beloved mama Liberia. As you leave us now, we will forever remember you”.
NAN
Police in Nigeria’s Southeastern Abia State have reiterated that they do not know the whereabouts of pro-Biafra leader, Nnamdi Kanu.
Commissioner of Police Anthony Ogbizi told the local Punch news portal that as far as they were concerned Kanu has a case before court. That he had been granted bail with three sureties, those persons according to Ogbizi were best placed to tell where Kanu was.
“Nnamdi Kanu was charged to court; he still has a case in court. He was granted bail by the court, but we heard that he jumped bail.
“The sureties, who secured the bail conditions for Nnamdi Kanu, should tell us his whereabouts,” he stressed.
An Abuja Federal High Court granted Kanu bail in April 2017 after over a year in detention on treason charges. He, however, went missing after members of his group, the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) clashed with the army at his family home in September 2017.
The army insists it is not holding him and the government has since secured a court order proscribing the group. Kanu failed to show up at the last hearing date for his trial. The trial judge has since ordered his lawyer to produce him at the next sitting on March 28.
The three sureties who signed his bail bond were: Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe, a Jewish High Chief Priest, Immanuu-El Shalom and a Chartered Accountant, Tochukwu Uchendu.
Kanu is leading a secession movement pushing for the independent state of Biafra. The earlier push for a separate republic of Biafra was championed by Chief Ojukwu nearly 50 years ago.
The declaration of independence sparked a civil war which left more than a million people dead. President Buhari has previously said the unity of Nigeria was non-negotiable.
Africanews
he Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board has said it will release no fewer than 1.3 million results of candidates that sat for the 2018 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination on Monday (today) after they had gone through security checks and found to be without malpractice.
The JAMB Head of Information, Dr. Fabian Benjamin, who stated this on Sunday in an interview with our correspondent, added that the UTME results of Computer-Based Test centres where the CCTV showed malpractices had been cancelled.
The JAMB spokesman said, “We are presently viewing the CCTV to ensure that results are not released in several batches. On Monday, we will release over 1.3 million results. These are the results of the CBT centres that have been screened. We cannot say how many cases of malpractice we have yet, because we are still viewing the CCTV to discover more cases.
“Some strange findings that the CCTV has showed us include a situation where the CBT owners were collecting money from UTME candidates and seeing to how they could assist them. Our officials at the centres raised the alarm but they were also afraid so that their lives would not be endangered.
“What the JAMB officials did was to silently play along with them, but we were watching everything on the CCTV. We later sent operatives to the centres and caught them. Such UTME results were completely cancelled. We knew that there were some innocent candidates in such centres and we have asked them to go to other CBT centres and rewrite immediately.”
Benjamin said candidates whose fingers could not be captured during the biometric verification before the examination, would not be allowed to retake the examination, as the biometric verification had already disqualified them.
“We have also concluded all arrangements to do the UTME for blind candidates. The examination is taking place in five centres. These are Abuja, Lagos, Kano, Benin and Enugu. The candidates are writing on Monday (today),” he added.
Punch
The ECOWAS Network of Electoral Commissions (ECONEC) has lauded the National Electoral Commission (NEC), Sierra Leone, for its professionalism during the March 7 general elections and urged it to sustain the exemplary conduct through the completion of the presidential run-off vote scheduled for March 27.
“Conducting four elections in one day (presidential, parliamentary, district and local council) is not a mean feat, and in spite of minor hitches reported by election observers, Sierra Leone’s political stakeholders - the electorate, government and security agencies, civil society and NEC, deserve commendation for the responsible conduct and patriotism exhibited during the first phase of the electoral process,” said Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, President of the ECONEC governing board and Chair of Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
In his goodwill message to NEC on 18th March, the ECONEC President expressed his optimism that NEC will live up to the high expectations of Sierra Leoneans and the international community in its determination to deliver peaceful and credible elections. This will contribute to the consolidation of stability and democracy in the country and the ECOWAS region as a whole.
Prof. Yakubu further reiterated ECONEC’s commitment to continued support for NEC Sierra Leone in line with the Network’s mandate of assisting its members, including through information and experience sharing, peer collaboration, pooling of resources and advocacy for technical and logistic support.
Last July, Prof. Yakubu led an ECONEC delegation on a Needs Assessment Mission to Sierra Leone. This was followed by an advocacy that resulted in the donation of logistics items by the Nigerian government to NEC Sierra Leone.
The support includes five 4Wd pick-up vehicles, two trucks, two speed boats and five motorcycles. Some of the items have already arrived in Sierra Leone.
Also, members of the ECOWAS Election Observation Mission to Sierra Leone monitoring the electoral process in the country include ECONEC secretariat staff.
Leaders of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the three senatorial districts of Oyo State have warned the party’s national secretariat to stay clear of its internal affairs.
They also vowed to resist any form of imposition and impunity from the national secretariat.
The PDP leaders also passed a vote of confidence in the state’s executive of the party – from the wards to state level – under the chairmanship of Alhaji Omokunmi Mustapha.
The party leaders from Oyo Central Senatorial District who passed the vote of confidence include Senator Ayoade Adeseun, Oloye Jumoke Akinjide, Chief Bisi Ilaka and Olasunkanmi Salami.
Others are: Asiwaju Adeyemi Aderibigbe, D. A. Lawal, Oladepo Oyedokun, Abiola Olaniyan, Matthew Abioye and Moruf Akinwande, among others.
A statement at the weekend in Ibadan, the state capital, by PDP’s State Publicity Secretary Akeem Olatunji, said the party leaders also affirmed former Governor Rashidi Ladoja as the party’s leader in the state.
The statement said the PDP leaders rose from their senatorial district meetings in Oyo South, Oyo North and Oyo Central, declaring that they would leave the party en mass, if PDP’s national leadership tampered with the state executive.
The statement reads: “Consequent upon the meeting of the Oyo Central, Oyo North and Oyo South senatorial districts, the meeting came up with the following resolutions.
“The party members and leadership in the three senatorial districts completely throw their weight behind the leadership of the party in Oyo State, Senator Rashidi Ladoja, in his fight against imposition and impunity of whatever forms within the party.
“We dissociate ourselves from the sentiments expressed by a politician, as published in Nigerian Tribune with the headline: Ladoja Cannot Intimidate Oyo PDP. The self-acclaimed leader did not speak the minds of teeming PDP members in Oyo Central Senatorial District.
“We re-affirm our support and belief in the stewardship of all members of the State Executive Committee of the party as it presently constituted under the leadership of Omokunmi Mustapha as the Chairman.
“We associate completely with the position of the leader of our party in the state that all forms of imposition and impunity hereby rejected and should not be tolerated, no matter how little.
“Anything contrary to this will be vehemently rejected. Nevertheless, the meeting pleaded with all and sundry who are still nursing grievances as a result of the last state congresses to bury their hatchet and join the progressive train in order for all of us to ferry together to the Government House in 2019.”
The Nation
Chief Olu Falae, National Chairman of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), says his party will defeat President Buhari if he decides to run for second term.
The former presidential candidate of the defunct Alliance Democracy/All Nigerian Peoples Party declared that SDP is the party to beat.
“It is the absolute prerogative of President Buhari and his party to decide whether he should go for second term or not”, he told Vanguard
“Constitutionally, he is entitled to second term. It is his right and, if he chooses to go, it does not bother me. If he goes, it means we will meet him on the field on election day and we will defeat him.
“If he does not go, he will spare me that pain of having to defeat my good friend in the election. If his party brings somebody else, by the grace of God, we will defeat that person.”
Falae also spoke on alleged marginalisation of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu in the ruling APC after he had helped the party to capture power at the federal level.
“We had in the past made our position clear through our leader, Chief Reuben Fasoranti, that Yoruba leaders believe that part of why he is treated that way is because of where he comes from.
“We might be wrong, but that is what we believe. He is a smart guy and a politician who knows what to do to favour him at every time and every stage in his life.
“He is not a baby, he has not said he needs my advice or tutoring or mentoring, so it is unnecessary to ask for an unsolicited advice on his behalf.
“So if tomorrow Asiwaju Tinubu decides to come to the SDP, he will be welcomed. Of course yes; we were both members of the SDP before, so it will be ‘welcome home Bola Tinubu”.
On the way out of herdsmen’s crisis, Falae who has been a victim, said the authorities was acting as if dealing with the issue was impossible.
“Almost every nation on earth eats cows as we do. But you don’t go to California and run into cattle on the tarmac. You don’t even go to Ghana and find cattle in the city square.
“We found the solution at the National Conference in 2014 that free grazing of cattle is out of date, disappeared over 200 years ago in most countries and that we cannot continue to live in the past.
“Ranching is the answer, not by walking your cattle from Kano to Akure and, by the time they get here, they are all bones, and that’s why they desperately needed my maize and cassava to become fresh again so that the cows could be sold at good prices.”
DailyPost
President Muhammadu Buhari says it is too early for him to declare his intention for the 2019 presidential election.
The Senate and the House of Representatives have asked ministers and heads of agencies to heed President Muhammadu Buhari’s sack warning by appearing for the defence of the 2018 budget this week.
The PUNCH’s investigations showed that after Thursday’s late-night meeting with Buhari at the Presidential Villa, the Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki, and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mr. Yakubu Dogara, relayed the outcome to key committee chairmen working on the budget.
It was gathered on Sunday that chairmen of the committees of both chambers had started sending reminders to ministers to come for budget defence this week.
A senior parliamentary source in the House said, “The chairmen were told to issue fresh reminders to heads of ministries, departments and agencies, who had been uncooperative in their attitude to the budget defence.
“They are expected to improve on their appearances, this week, before the committees to defend their estimates.
“The President seemed not to know the cause of the delay of the budget prior to the meeting.
“However, from the meeting he had with the leadership of the National Assembly, where the Senate President and Dogara were in attendance, Buhari realised that he had to caution his cabinet members.”
He stated that the committees had started sending reminders through their respective clerks.
He said, “They (the committees) are writing to the MDAs and stating clearly the information they are required to submit to the committees.”
The N8.612tn budget has been held up at the National Assembly since November 7, 2017, when the President presented it to the lawmakers.
It was learnt that Buhari, who was worried over the delay, had invited the leaders of the National Assembly to the meeting to discuss it, among other issues.
At the meeting, Saraki and Dogara reportedly blamed ministers and heads of agencies for the delay.
The government officials were said to have always given one excuse or another as the reason they were unable to appear before the committees.
The committees also complained that a few officials, who bothered to appear, were unprepared, as they did not come with the breakdown of their budget proposals.
The PUNCH gathered that of particular concern to the committees was the performance of the 2017 budget.
The President, after the Thursday meeting, had threatened to sack about 50 heads of the MDAs, who had yet to defend their budgets, should they ignore further invitations from the legislature.
Findings indicated on Sunday that many committee chairmen had started sending reminders to the ministers and heads of agencies to appear this week.
“The expectation is that they (ministers and agency heads) will take Mr. President’s warning seriously,” a lawmaker told The PUNCH.
When contacted for his comments, the Leader of the House, Mr. Femi Gbajabiamila, said it was a good development that the heads of MDAs had been cautioned by Buhari.
Gbajabiamila asked them to comply with the President’s directive by coming to the National Assembly.
He said, “My advice to the (heads of) MDAs is that they should report to their various committees to defend their budgets so that it can be passed and the government can continue to function for the benefit of all Nigerians.
“In the first place, they did not need the prompting of Mr. President to do the right thing; but now that he has, I expect them to obey.”
The Chairman, House Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Mr. Abdulrazak Namdas, also told The PUNCH that the outcome of the meeting had “cleared the air on who is delaying the budget.”
“This issue of the heads of MDAs not cooperating; we have been shouting it; but nobody has been listening to us.
“It is always convenient to blame the National Assembly. Now that Mr. President has intervened, we expect maximum cooperation from the MDAs so that collectively, we can pass the budget quickly,” he added.
In the Senate, it was gathered that the committees had been told to take the MDAs as more officials were expected for budget defence this week.
The Vice-Chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriations, Senator Sunny Ogbuoji, told one of our correspondents that the MDAs would be welcome for the defence of their budgets.
He said, “They are supposed to obey the President. This is purely about the executive arm of the government and it is their responsibility. If the head of the executive gives an order, I expect that it will be complied with.”
The Senate had, on February 14, 2018, asked 63 agencies and parastatals under the Federal Government to submit details of their proposed 2018 budgets within one week.
The upper chamber of the National Assembly had lamented that while Buhari complied with the law by laying the 2018 Appropriation Bill along with details of estimates before the lawmakers, agencies of the government disregarded the law.
The lawmakers alleged that ministers and heads of the Federal Government departments and agencies were frustrating legislative work on the budget proposal.
But the Director-General, Budget Office of the Federation, Mr. Ben Akabueze, had denied the allegation, stating that the National Assembly had enough details to work with and pass the appropriation bill.
Senator Shehu Sani, has said that despite the ongoing reconciliation by President Muhammadu Buhari through a leader in the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu, there is still a “civil and cold war.”
Sani, who represents Kaduna Central District, said this at the weekend during an interview on Fresh FM, in Ibadan, Oyo State capital.
“He (Tinubu) was given the task of bringing peace between Arab and Israeli”, Shehu added, wondering if the task could be achieved before the 2019 elections.
On election re-ordering, he explained that the National Assembly took the decision to prevent what he called a “mass trial and mass conviction” of its members.
On his revelation of Senator’s salaries, Sani said: “The National Assembly is made up of distinguished personalities: doctors, lawyers, engineers, academics and all who made it in life.
“But because of this culture of secrecy and silence, people who found themselves in the National Assembly are criminalised and stigmatised.
“The dome of the National Assembly is being seen to house people of questionable character and integrity.
“So, what I did was to rescue the honour and credibility of the National Assembly by removing the veil secrecy to bring it once and for all to an end”.
DailyPost
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo on Saturday said Nigeria has become too solid as a country for any force, calamity or misgovernance to destroy it.
Mr. Obasanjo, who spoke exclusively to PREMIUM TIMES from Azerbaijan where he is chairing a meeting of the InterAction Council of Former Heads of State and Government, was responding to reports quoting him as saying Nigeria would collapse if President Muhammadu Buhari is reelected to office in 2019.
The reports claimed that the former president made the comment in a speech at the Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford University, on Friday.
But Mr. Obasanjo vehemently denied making the comment, saying he had not even been to London since early January when he spoke on transformational leadership in Africa at Oxford University.
“I won’t and can’t say that (that Nigeria will collapse if Buhari is reelected),” the former president said. “There will be nothing that will make Nigeria collapse. When Nigeria did not collapse under a civil war, it won’t collapse now.
“My faith and conviction about Nigeria is so strong that I don’t see the country either being dismembered or collapsing.
“The worst has passed on Nigeria. Once we were able to survive the civil war, once we are able to survive (Sani) Abacha, nothing can be worst than those two. And our democracy is waxing strong. Although there are a few things we need to get right.
“As far I am concerned, the worst is over. What remains is for all of us and for our leadership to show good faith and commitment to do what is right. Then Nigeria will grow from strength to strength.”
When reminded of his recent criticism of the Buhari administration for misgovernance, corruption and ineptitude, Mr. Obasanjo said even those administrative weaknesses were not enough to wreck Nigeria.
“I regard those as aberrations and they will pass away,” the former President said. “Such aberrations will pass away with the regime that bring them.
“Don’t forget that Abacha did more than that. Of course Abacha’s regime was not a democracy, it was a military dictatorship. If we survived that, then we will survive any shenanigan against democracy. That’s the greatest advantage of democracy.”
Mr. Obasanjo, who ruled Nigeria as a democratically elected president between 1999 and 2007, supported Mr. Buhari to become president in 2015.
But on January 23, the former president released a 13-page statement calling on Mr. Buhari not to seek re-election in 2019.
In a special press statement entitled, “The Way Out: A Clarion Call for Coalition for Nigeria Movement” Mr. Obasanjo said Mr Buhari had performed far below expectation and should honourably “dismount from the horse” to join the league of the country’s former leaders whose “experience, influence, wisdom and outreach can be deployed on the side line for the good of the country.”
PT
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Some parents of the 110 Dapchi missing schoolgirls have expressed their lack of faith in President Muhammadu Buhari’s promise during his visit that the girls would be rescued.
DAILY POST reported that President Muhammadu Buhari last week Wednesday visited families of the 110 schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram insurgents at Government Girls Science and Technical School, Dapchi, on February 19.
But the parents have now said that they were not convinced by the president’s words and promise to use military operation to rescue their daughters.
Kachalla Bukar, secretary of the forum of parents of abducted Dapchi girls, said only the rescue of the girls could convince them of government’s efforts.
He told Sun, “We are not convinced about efforts to rescue our girls because we haven’t seen anything. We haven’t seen much of the military work.
“The Buhari that we know is a gentleman. I don’t think he will stand before us and promise to rescue our girls without fulfilling it. Of course, we are not convinced about the efforts to bring them back since we’ve not seen anything.”
Similarly, Zara Adamu, one of the parents, said only the safe return of her daughter could convince her.
“Baba Buhari has spoken. I don’t know what they are doing to bring our daughters back, but he said they are doing something. I will be convinced when I see my daughter back alive,” she said.
Mother of one of the girls, Harira Damagun also said, “Only Allah cannot fail, not human being,we have taken the incident as an act of God.
“We see it as an act of God. Oh Allah, help us from this predicament and save our children!
“All we plead is for the government to help us secure the release of our daughters,” she said.
DailyPost
Despite Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) effort to promote financial inclusion,Nigerian banks lost over 2 million customers between 2016 and 2017.
According to statistics from the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS), the number of active bank accounts also reduced by 1.5 million, dropping from 65 million to 63.5 million.
The statistics obtained by the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) from the NIBSS website on Sunday, showed that the total number of bank customers dropped from 61 million in 2016 to 59 million in 2017.
According to NIBSS, the banking sector, however, made great strides in linking customers’ account using the Bank Verification Number (BVN).
The report showed that linked BVN accounts grew from 26 million in 2016, to 41.3 million in 2017.
According to a banking industry source, the reduction in banking customers is not unconnected to the Federal Government’s declaration to fight against corruption.
“When Buhari assumed office, many people abandoned their accounts, especially civil servants because of fear of investigation.
“While some out rightly closed down their accounts, others opted for gradual withdrawal so as not to raise alarm,’’ the source said.
The source, who works at one of the top five banks in the country, blamed the BVN for the low patronage of banking products, especially in the rural areas, where awareness was already very low.
A bank customer, Mr Olaitan Alagbe told NAN that she closed some of her accounts due to unnecessary and illegal charges by banks.
“First of all, the interest rate is next to nothing, so there is little reason to keep your money at the bank when you can turn it over doing other businesses,” she said.
Another customer, who preferred to remain anonymous said he opened several accounts during the Ponzi scheme boom in the country, but was forced to abandon them after the schemes crashed in late 2016 and early 2017.
However, a source at the CBN told NAN that the reduction in the number of banking customers was caused mainly by the introduction of BVN.
“The reduction may not necessarily be a bad thing. For example, many people opened accounts using different variations of their names.
“A person bearing Musa Salisu Mohammed, may have other accounts as Salisu Mohammed or Musa Salisu.
“So with the introduction of BVN, such customers were forced to regularise their names, however, some opted to close down their accounts, which resulted in the reduction of active bank accounts and customers,’’ the source said.
The CBN source was, however, optimistic that the financial inclusion strategy of the bank would succeed in bringing in more people into the formal banking system.
The Financial Inclusion strategy aims to ensure that major bulk of the money in the economy remains within the banking sector.
A major challenge in the financial inclusion process is how to ensure that the poor rural dwellers are carried along considering the lack of financial sophistication among this segment.
The CBN, Money Deposit Banks, Micro Finance Banks and other stakeholders are curre implementing different policies designed to enhance financial inclusion in the country.
NAN
The Interior Ministry of Yemen ordered the freeing of at least 800 undocumented African migrants held in southern Aden on Saturday, according to a Yemeni official.
Al-Ulvani said the minister requested the evacuation of the refugee center and suspended the activities of it.
However, al-Ulvani warned that there are AIDS patients among the African migrants and some of them are also suspected to be members of Daesh and Al-Qaeda terror groups.
He added that therefore freeing them could cause a threat to the social peace and security in the city.