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Military
intervention in Cote d’Ivoire need not trigger civil war, presidential
claimant Alassane Ouattara said on Wednesday, as his rival seemed to
reverse a pledge to lift a blockade on his headquarters.

Mr Ouattara said he
preferred a peaceful solution to his post-election standoff with
incumbent leader Laurent Gbagbo, but dismissed negotiations, telling
France 24 television “Mr Gbagbo must leave power to allow Cote d’Ivoire
to return to normal.”

Mr Gbagbo has
refused to cede power to Mr Ouattara, widely seen as winner of a
disputed November 28 election, despite international pressure,
sanctions and the threat of force, and he has accused world leaders of
meddling in Cote d’Ivoire’s internal affairs.

Mr Ouattara’s aides
have called for a regional West African force to make good on a threat
to kick out Mr Gbagbo if he refuses to go, but there are fears it may
not be able to attempt such action without getting bogged down in war.

“I think he will be
responsible for the situation that he will face. Military intervention
does not mean that Cote d’Ivoire will ignite,” Mr Ouattara said of his
rival, from inside the Golf Hotel, where he is under U.N. protection.

“All that needs to
be done, as has been done in other African countries, is to come and
get Mr Gbagbo and remove him from the presidential palace.” Mr Ouattara
said an offer this week by Mr Gbagbo to negotiate an end to the crisis
was just an attempt to “buy time in order to recruit mercenaries to
kill Ivoriens and smuggle money out”.

Blockade goes on

Cote d’Ivoire
security forces on Wednesday maintained a blockade of the Golf Hotel,
despite a promise by Mr Gbagbo to ease it. Mr Gbagbo’s foreign minister
Alcide Djedje told a news conference on Wednesday the blockade would
not be lifted while the 300 armed rebels loyal to Mr Ouattara remain
inside.

“That constitutes a
threat for the president. It’s a question of the soldiers of the New
Forces (rebels) leaving the hotel as a condition of lifting the
blockade,” he said.

A heavy military and police presence was still sealing off roads leading to the lagoon-side hotel on Wednesday.

“Mister, don’t try and come through here. Turn your car around and don’t argue,” a soldier wielding an AK-47 said.

Only U.N.
helicopters and supply trucks have access. Mr Gbagbo is backed by his
security forces, some Ivorien youth and militia groups, and the
Constitutional Council, which overturned Mr Ouattara’s 8-point election
win, alleging fraud.

He has refused
exile in South Africa, Nigeria and the United States. “President Gbagbo
doesn’t need to go to Washington. He’s fine where he is and he intends
to stay there,” Mr Djedje said.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Johnnie Carson said on Wednesday he should cede power to Mr Ouattara.

“There is no question that the election in the Cote d’Ivoire was stolen by President Gbagbo and those around him,” he said.

After efforts at
mediation by four African leaders on Monday, Mr Gbagbo agreed to
continue talks to end the crisis. But an end to the standoff seems far
off.

More than 170
people have been killed since the dispute started, rekindling divisions
in the country that have festered since the civil war of 2002-03.

Diplomats and
security sources say many of the dead are victims of death squads
operating at night in neighbourhoods where Mr Ouattara is popular, and
the U.N. says hundreds more have been kidnapped by Ivorien forces and
allied militias.

Mr Gbagbo’s camp
says these are lies meant to discredit him. Despite the political
turmoil, cocoa for export is arriving at Cote d’Ivoire’s ports in
similar quantities to last season. Cote d’Ivoire is the world’s top
cocoa grower.

The country’s
Eurobond is trading at yield of 15 percent, after it failed to meet an
interest payment on Friday, although it will only be in default after a
month’s grace period.

In a statement on
Wednesday, the U.N. mission condemned what it called human rights
violations, including a raid by security forces on Mr Ouattara’s party
headquarters on Tuesday.

That raid killed an activist and left many people wounded, including some security forces, according to state media.

REUTERS

As hundreds of dead
birds fall from the skies across the United States, about a hundred
birds again fell off in Sweden shortly before midnight on Tuesday, just
as millions of dead fish surfaced in a bay in Maryland, United States.
Similar unexplained mass fish deaths occurred in Brazil and New Zealand.

The Baltimore Sun
reports that an estimated 2 million fish were found dead in the
Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, mostly adult spot with some juvenile
croakers in the mix, as well. In New Zealand, hundreds of dead snapper
fish washed up on Coromandel Peninsula beaches, many found with their
eyes missing, The New Zealand Herald reports. However Maryland
Department of the Environment spokesperson Dawn Stoltzfus says
“cold-water stress” is believed to be the culprit.

Residents in
Falköping, southeast of Skövde, found 50 to 100 jackdaw birds on a
street further echoing the unexplained incidents that commenced earlier
in the week across the Atlantic in southern US. A Swedish county
veterinarian, Robert ter Horst believes that the birds may have been
literally scared to death by fireworks set off on Tuesday night.

“We have received
information from local residents last night. Our main theory is that
the birds were scared away because of the fireworks and landed on the
road, but couldn’t fly away from the stress and were hit by a car,” he
explained to a Swedish online news platform — The Local on Wednesday.

“We will continue
to look at whether there are other theories, but then we have to do an
autopsy on the birds. The birds just now are in a car on the way to a
laboratory in Uppsala. We don’t know exactly what happened yet, but we
will continue the investigation,” he added.

Mr Horst noted that
he has also received some reports about pigeons, but the incident has
happened too quickly to assume that it is related to the untimely
demise of the jackdaws. The site where the birds were found has now
been blocked for a veterinary inspection of the birds. Emergency
services had cordoned off the area earlier on Wednesday. Across the
Atlantic, an estimated 4,000 to 5,000 blackbirds crashed into homes,
cars and each other in central Arkansas on New Year eve. Another 500
birds were killed and littered the highway in Louisiana. Diverse
theories such as fireworks and power lines sparks have been propounded.
It’s almost certainly a coincidence the events happened within days of
each other, Louisiana’s state wildlife veterinarian Jim LaCour said on
Tuesday.

“I haven’t found anything to link the two at this point.” Anders
Wirdheim of the Swedish Ornithological Society (Sveriges ornitologiska
förening, SOF) believes the nocturnal birds were likely frightened in
the middle of the night, then flew around in the dark and collided with
various objects. Bird deaths and fish kills at smaller numbers aren’t
all that uncommon, though the size and proximity of some of the recent
events have led people to allege their relation, though officials deny
the frequency of these wildlife deaths as being anything other than
coincidence.

President Goodluck
Jonathan will pay unscheduled visits to ministries, departments and
agencies to ascertain the level of commitment to work and the
punctuality of government officials.

Speaking shortly
after swearing-in three new Permanent Secretaries at State House
yesterday, Mr Jonathan said the Administration will no longer tolerate
absenteeism or lateness to work.

“You must have the
courage to query your errant subordinates, who do not conform to laid
down procedures or disobey the rules, so that we can have a disciplined
service”, he said. The three new Permanent Secretaries are Tunji
Olaopa, Atiku Abubakar Kigo and R. S. Jimeta.

He charged the new permanent secretaries to work hand in hand with the ministers in charge of their ministries and other staff.

“Because Nigerians
must continue to see themselves as one, we should not discriminate
against ourselves if we want to get to where we want to reach,” Mr
Jonathan said. “Do your work without bias, without sentiments. Be loyal
and show high degree of commitment to the development of this country.

“I expect you to
cooperate with your ministers because the greatest worries we have is
the problem of relationship between permanent secretaries and
ministers, ministers being political appointees but even these days the
permanent secretaries with the eight year tenure in service are semi
political appointees. We expect cooperation between ministers and
permanent secretaries that is the only way we can move forward because
without cooperation, government projects are always stalled. I will
charge you to cooperate with your ministers and work well with your
directors and other staff.”

Punish the loafers

The president noted
that one of greatest problems noticed in the civil service is the
inability of the leadership to restrain the followership.

“Sometimes the followership, for political reasons, display one attitude or the other. Please,

within this period
that I am here, there is no sacred cow. Anybody under you that is not
doing what he is suppose to do, you must take administrative measures
to correct it, that is the only way we can instil discipline in the
civil service,” he said.

Condemning the
culture of impunity where people come to work whenever they like and
decide to go on break without due process, the president said this
should no longer be tolerated.

“In this new year, I may be visiting some ministries without notice
because a situation where I’m told some people go to work by 9 a.m. and
by Thursday they have left, if they are not ready to work then they
should resign and allow others,” Mr Jonathan said. “We have so many
unemployed Nigerians who are ready to work. So, those who are too big
to work in the civil service should go to the private sector and make
the billions they want to make.”

President Goodluck
Jonathan yesterday inaugurated the presidential task team on education
to refocus and restructure the educational system in the country. This
is following a presidential stakeholders’ summit on education convened
October last year to identify the challenges facing the educational
sector.

Addressing the 30-person team, the president said they had been selected based on high integrity, competence and experience.

“It is on this regard that I have no doubt that you will handle this special assignment with total commitment,” he said.

The president who,
during the summit, had spoken on the fallen standard of education in
the country, noted that the question of meeting the country’s
educational aspirations had brought about the convening of the
stakeholders’ summit on education in October last year to identify the
challenges facing the sector.

Recommendations
from the working groups touched on issues that range from policy,
institutional arrangement and governance, funding arrangement and
resource mobilisation, legal framework, ethics and value system,
physical infrastructure and institutional facilities, teacher quality
and content, effect of sectional sentiments over quality, the role of
the community and NGOs as well as sustainability. It was also agreed
that education should henceforth occupy its central position in
national development agenda. To implement these recommendations, the
summit had agreed that the presidential task team should be constituted.

Terms of reference

Inaugurating the
team, the president said the team has the following terms of reference:
To refocus and restructure existing policies at all levels of
education, especially the concept and implementation of the 6-3-3-4
system of education. Determine the best institutional arrangement for
the management, regulation and coordination of education at all levels.
To propose a sustainable funding arrangements and transparent
management of resources for education. Examine all laws militating
against the delivery of qualitative education and proposed required
changes or amendments. The team will also examine the ethical issues in
education with steps necessary to restore ethics and values in
education at all levels as well as develop programmes and projects that
will attract talented and brilliant persons to the teaching profession
while re-training and motivating teachers. Chairman of the team, Peter
Obayan, said the group will do more than make the sky be their limit.
He added that the team will get to work immediately and make sure they
come to positive results.

The re-run adhoc
delegates elections ordered to be held by the national headquarters of
the PDP, after the cancellation of the December 28 ward congresses, has
ended in more controversy.

Some of the
governorship aspirants, Ardo Umar Kojolli, Joel Madaki, and Senator
Jubril Aminu expressed dissatisfaction with the re-run ward congress,
stating that there was nowhere in the state where ward elections took
place. The politicians described the re-run congresses as “worst than
the first.”

The aspirants
complained that most of the returning officers sent out by the
government were advisers and commissioners of the state governor,
Murtala Nyako’s administration.

“Unfortunately,
from the reports coming throughout the local government areas, no such
elections were held in virtually everywhere. We have several INEC
electoral officers in the various local governments that corroborated
our position,” Mr. Ardo said on behalf of the aggrieved aspirants.

They said since the
indirect option have failed, they want the national headquarters of the
party to order the use of the direct option, popularly known as option
A4, as a way out of the ward congress imbroglio.

According to Messrs
Ardo and Madaki, the re-peat congresse was the worst election ever
conducted in the state, and urged the party headquarters to disqualify
Mr. Nyako, whom they said had “become too partisan himself as a
candidate to allow any credible elections to be held in the state.”

Mr. Aminu, the
senator representing Adamawa central senatorial district and chairman
of the Senate committee on foreign affairs, also joined the call for
Mr. Nyako to be disqualified.

“Mr. Nyako, as the
leader of the party, should be held to account for this kind of thing.
If what we saw last week can be described as absurd, then this is an
outrage. At least the Adamawa people should be treated with some
respect. The officials responsible for these kind of things should be
disqualified,” Mr. Aminu said.

Faulting the ‘charade’

Mr. Aminu said if
the national headquarters of the party wanted to give Mr. Nyako the
ticket, they should go ahead rather than organise this “charade.”

“This is a slap on the face. If you are going to organise a re-run election, then you have got to organise it better,” he said.

He, therefore,
called on the leadership of the party to conduct a repeat congress,
saying if this is impossible, the party should consider upholding the
December 28th ward delegates elections which he described as “nearest
to a true reflection of a congress.”

However, Mai Adamu
Mustapha, leader of the election monitoring panel to Adamawa State,
said the re-run ward congress was conducted peacefully and devoid of
any hostilities. Mr. Mustapha said his panel was satisfied with the
congress which, he noted, was “credible, free and fair.”

He said anybody with complaints over the conduct of the re-run exercise “only wants to be mischievous.”

Both Buba Marwa and
Mr. Nyako each have different results sheets of the last congress,
which they want the national headquarters to authenticate.

NEXT gathered that the suspension of the Adamawa ward congress was
in part due to the confusion between which of the two result sheets it
had to authenticate. Both Nyako and Marwa expressed satisfaction with
the congress.

A governorship
aspirant of the People Democratic Party (PDP) in Kano, Mohammed Adamu
Bello, has said that despite recent defections of some PDP members out
of the party, it would still sweep the polls in the state come April
2011.

Mr Bello, who is a
serving senator, declared his ambition to govern the state yesterday at
the NUJ secretariat, saying the development would instead erase the
impression that the country is gradually drifting towards a one-party
state.

“You see, in the
first place, I don’t really agree that there is a mass defection from
our great party, the PDP. Even if it is happening in some states of the
country, it is good for our democracy; at least people would not say
Nigeria is moving towards a one-party state again. It is even funny
that people are now saying the PDP is losing power, they used to say we
were heading to a one-party state,” he said.

“But we have to
open the democratic space for people to participate, which is the
beauty of democracy. You can see what is happening in Kwara state where
father and son have disagreed over who should be the governor of the
state. But let me remind you that as people are defecting from our
party, several others are pitching tent with us and that is why the PDP
is a great party.”

Party to beat

Mr Bello, who
himself defected from the opposition All Nigerian Peoples Party (ANPP)
said it would take a miracle for any of the opposition parties to dent
the domination of the PDP in the country.

He said he believed
that the people of Kano, who are yearning for development, would have
their interests better served with a governor that belongs to the
mainstream party. He expressed optimism that he would triumph over
other leading governorship aspirants of the party, including Rabiu Musa
Kwankwaso and former military governor of Plateau State, Habibu Shuaibu
in the party’s governorship primaries scheduled to hold at the weekend.

Mr Bello promised
to offer selfless leadership if voted to power and enjoined party
delegates to eschew bitterness and work harmoniously to elect a
candidate that is capable of putting an end to the setbacks recorded by
the party since 2003.

“For me, this contest is not a do or die affair, as I believe that
power comes from Allah Who gives it to whomever he wishes. I am
strongly convinced that I am the candidate that can deliver the desired
result. As I look forward to emerging winner at the primaries, let me
intimate the good people of Kano that my administration would be
result-oriented. We shall build on the good legacies left behind by
Kano’s founding fathers,” he said.

Popular comedian,
Francis Agoda (I go dye) has the intervention of veteran comedian, Ali
Baba to thank for saving his life on Tuesday as military men on guard
at the Warri township stadium venue of Uduaghan re-run campaign almost
beat life out of him and his compatriot, Ogus Baba. According to an
eyewitness, the incident occurred when the two comedians allegedly
attempted to force their way past the stern-looking soldiers into the
stadium. The source added that the security men, who did not care about
their identity, ordered them to retreat or be dealt with.

Before the two
entertainers could make up their minds to withdraw from the gate, the
soldiers descended on them. It took the timely intervention of Ali
Baba, (who threatened to stop the show) for ‘I go dye’ to be released
by his tormentors. By then, he was already reeling in agony, with blood
all over him from the slashes of the horsewhips. The other comedian,
Ogus Baba, who showed some bravery by attempting to save his fellow
comedian from the horsewhips of the angry soldiers, was not spared
either as he also got his share of the flogging. He was said to have
been so badly battered that he had to be rushed to an undisclosed
clinic for treatment.

Also touched by the
brutality of the soldiers was a personal aide of ‘I go dye’ whose name
could not be identified, and another popular comedian, ‘I Go Save’, who
got some bruises on his arms and legs.

Paid to perform

In a telephone
conversation, the Warri-born comedian, Mr Agoda said he came to the
stadium with his entourage with the intention of performing on the
stage as he had been paid by the organisers of the event.

“On getting into
the stadium, I was accosted by one of the soldiers and in an attempt to
answer him, the other soldier unexpectedly slapped me from behind. The
most annoying thing about the whole incident was that when I tried to
explain to their superior officer, a colonel, the former soldier shoved
me aside and immediately, other soldiers descended on me, beating the
living daylight out of me,” Mr Agoda said.

He was later
treated by the medical team at the stadium after being rescued from the
soldiers by Ali Baba, who condemned the act of the uniformed men.

Mr Agoda has demanded for a public apology from the military for
violating his “fundamental human right.” “This must be published in
national newspapers,” he said.

The federal
government yesterday took on former vice president and presidential
aspirant of the PDP, Atiku Abubakar, over a letter he allegedly wrote
to President Goodluck Jonathan over the country’s economy, stating that
the letter was a desperate attempt to mislead the electorate.

The minister of
finance, Olusegun Aganga, who spoke on the issue, said Mr Atiku had
chosen to deliberately manipulate and misinterpret the economic growth
figures that are provided by the National Bureau of Statistics.

This, he said,
betrayed either a lack of understanding of the data or ignorance of the
economic context in which these various growth statistics were achieved.

“In any case, the
letter fails to point towards the real messages in the NBS data and
again is riddled with inaccuracies,” Mr Aganga said.

The former vice
president had, on January 2, written to Mr Jonathan warning him that
the proposal in the budget could worsen the state of the nation’s
economy. A statement by his campaign outfit, Atiku Abubakar Campaign
Organisation (ACO) in Abuja, also said the president was too ashamed to
personally defend the budget, insisting that the budget of a nation is
too serious a matter to defend through anonymous persons. But Mr Aganga
said he could not believe that such a letter could come from an
individual with aspirations to govern the country.

“Resorting to
outright lies and misrepresentation to seek cheap political points is
regrettable,” Mr Aganga said, adding that the letter may have been
written without Mr Abubakar’s knowledge.

Contrary to claims
by the former vice president that the economy is underperforming, the
minister said not even the global economic crisis was able to stop the
growth of the local economy, as the country had out-performed many
global economies. He said that the reports of the agencies Mr. Abubakar
quoted actually rated the country high, adding that he doubted if Mr
Abubakar actually read the report of the rating agencies he relied upon
to attack the president and government.

Speaking to
journalists at the State House in Abuja, yesterday, Mr Aganga said such
outbursts by the former vice president did not usually translate into a
credible alternative for the future of the economy.

“Nigerians deserve better and would see through the uninformed attack that is guided as a patriotic statement,” he said.

Vote of confidence

Regarding the planned $500million Eurobond, the minister said it had been expected that the issue would be oversubscribed.

“The advice we
received from international investors is that the debut Nigerian
offering is very eagerly anticipated and demand will be strong,” he
said. “Fits of laughter aside, we would advise the author of the letter
that the transaction will be closed only on the most attractive
commercial terms for Nigeria with investors being encouraged by our
strong external and fiscal balance sheet and not by high returns as
claimed in the letter.”

He said that apart
from published research backing investment in Nigeria by leading
investment banks, a leading financial institution, Goldman Sachs also
warned global economic players of the risk of not investing in Nigeria.

“These statements
directly contradict the ‘vote of no confidence’ that the author of the
letter and his advisers would like Nigerians to falsely believe,” he
said.

Mr Aganga also
debunked the claim that the president accumulated the highest level of
debt increase by any president in any given year, adding that this
depicted the failure of the writer to understand the global economic
and financial dynamics of the period 2008-2010, a period he described
as extraordinary for all economies both developed and developing.

“It is regrettable that a letter purported to have been written by a
former vice president should contain such misrepresentations and we can
only assume that he was ill-advised or it was sent without his
knowledge,” Mr Aganga said. “If this is indeed the case, it is clear
that this letter is a desperate attempt by the author to mislead the
electorate and the Nigerian public through the misrepresentation of the
facts and inclusion of inaccuracies with a view to making political
gain ahead of the elections.”

The letter sent by
former vice president and the People’s Democratic Party presidential
aspirant, Atiku Abubakar, to President Goodluck Jonathan at the weekend
was “arrogantly insensitive to the mood of the nation and an attempt to
divert media attention from the Abuja bomb blasts which is a major
national tragedy,” a group, the National Forum for Democracy and
Economic Sustainability Initiative (NESI), has said.

In the letter, Mr
Abubakar warns that the recently unveiled budget 2011 could only worsen
the state of the nation’s economy and is predicated on consumption
without corresponding investments in critical infrastructure. The
budget, Mr Abubakar said, is “a recipe for economic disaster.”

However, in a
statement issued in Lagos yesterday, the NESI convener, Mabel Asuquo,
said though it is the right of every Nigerian to make informed inputs
on how the country is run, “the timing of that letter, and the marathon
follow-up media statement from the Atiku camp has reduced whatever the
intent of that letter was to a mere media spin.”

“It is apparent
that Mr Atiku’s campaign was not comfortable with the public outrage
that greeted the former vice president’s disappointing statement on the
Abuja bomb. His media handlers knew they needed a desperate spin and
that possibly informed the release of the so-called letter on the
budget to the media on Sunday night when the whole of the nation was
mourning the souls of the victims of the bomb blast,” Ms Asuquo said.

She said though
this is a campaign period when every politician is jostling for
attention, “it is immoral and politically reckless for an aspiring
leader to dance on the graves of innocent Nigerians cut down by
senseless criminals.”

The group however advised that the government should respond to the allegations raised by the former vice president.