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Non-implementation of the approved
tariff for imported items recently removed from the banned list is due
to ongoing negotiations among stakeholders.

The Comptroller-General of Customs,
Abdullahi Dikko, made this known to the News Agency of Nigeria on
Monday, stating that the negotiation was between domestic manufacturers
and the federal government. Textile fabrics, furniture, certain
categories of vehicles, tooth picks and cassava were among items
removed from the list of items banned from being imported into the
country.

Mr. Dikko said that the delay in the
implementation of approved tariff was caused by the negotiation on
incentives between domestic manufacturers and the government.

“The matter is currently undergoing
some discussions among stakeholders. The manufacturers are saying that
if the bans are implemented, its effect on domestic manufacturers’
products will be devastating. They are, therefore, asking that there is
the need for some backings from the government,” he said.

He also noted that the Customs as a
body has, however, seen the need for such incentives and government has
agreed to it. He said that government is negotiating on the type of
incentives that will be adopted before rolling out the structure of
duties.

“I believe no government will implement a policy that will affect the wellbeing of its citizens negatively.

The Seventh-Day Adventist Church has
appealed to the federal government to change the days of conducting the
forthcoming general elections from Saturdays to enable its members
participate, or else it will go to court.

Bassey Udoh, the president, Seventh-Day
Adventist Church, Eastern Nigerian Union, made the appeal in an
interview with the News Agency of Nigeria on Monday, claiming the
change will enable his members to vote and be voted for. According to
Mr. Udoh, “Saturday is the day of our worship and more than five
million members of the church will worship in 3,500 branches.”

He said that if the appeal is not
considered, members of the church will again be disenfranchised, just
like in the past. He said that the church had made presentations at the
last National Assembly Committee on Constitution Amendment on the
issue. According to him, the church is already considering the option
of going to court if members are eventually disenfranchised this time
around.

“We want to go to court to defend our
rights. We have been suppressed, marginalised and disenfranchised for
so many years and we are saying, ‘for how long?’ We are citizens of
this country and we should not be disenfranchised. We have not asked
our members not to vote, that will be wrong, but by implication if
election is put on Saturday, it means you have disenfranchised us” Mr.
Udoh said.

The church members worship on Saturdays, which according to Mr. Udoh
is “not for personal reasons but Biblical, which are founded in the
scriptures and dates back to creation. We believe that Sabbath is a
Holy Day and should not be used for any personal, civil or public
business. And that is why we are badly disturbed that the federal
government that is preaching one man, one vote, wants to conduct
elections on Saturdays,” the cleric said.

The national Chairman of the All
Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), Ogbonnaya Onu has asked youth in the
country to participate actively in the ongoing electoral process and
ensure that credible leaders and not violent ones are elected in April.

According to Mr Onu who spoke when he
received a delegation of the Confederation of Igbo Students (CIS), in
Abuja yesterday, said there is no reason for politicians who want to
serve the people to resort to violence.

He also warned that their participation
should be devoid of violence. The group conferred on him its highest
award and certificate of honour.

Mr Onu said it was time for Nigeria to
do what other civilised nations are doing in order to enjoy the
dividends of democracy, stressing that the ongoing voter registration
exercise is another opportunity for Nigerian students to make their
contribution to national development by voting the right candidates.

“The ANPP is committed to the unity,
peace and prosperity of our great nation. We cannot tolerate violence
in the party and you can all bear witness that wherever there is
violence the ANPP and the then APP were never involved,” he said.

Ogbonna Ogachukwu, President of the CIS
explained that the honour was conferred on Mr Onu because of his
achievements in the party since he took over in September 2010.

According to him, one of the
achievements was the emergence of Governor Ibrahim Shekarau of Kano
State as the party’s flag bearer.

Also speaking, the national publicity secretary of the association, Humphrey Onyia, commended Mr Onu for the success of the
convention and his laudable contribution to democracy in the country.
The ex-Officio 1 of CIS and country director of the West African
Student Union Parliament,

Victor Udoh, said that the chairman’s commitment to the principle of
internal democracy is responsible for the success he recorded.

A Lagos High Court,
on Monday, discharged and acquitted Lucky Igbinovia and Effong Elemi
Edu, standing trial over the 1995 murder of Pa Alfred Rewane, human
rights activist and a leader of National Democratic Coalition, after 15
years in jail.

Olusola Williams,
the presiding judge, held that the prosecution failed to prove its case
against the two accused persons beyond reasonable doubt. The court held
that the only evidence the prosecution relied on were the statements
allegedly made by the accused persons which the accused said they made
under duress.

The court added
that it was clear that the prosecution had nothing to support their
case as there was no evidence to support the charges levelled against
the two accused persons.

“I wonder what the
overwhelming evidence the prosecution referred to. The only things that
linked the accused persons to the alleged crime are the statements,
which they have denied. It is quite plain that there was nothing to
support the case of the prosecution. It appears to me that all what the
police did was to visit the scene of the crime and arrested workers of
late Pa Rewane,” said Mr. Williams.

The others

The defence team,
led by Moses Odiri, had earlier filed a no-case submission. However,
the court, in its ruling, only discharged Elvis Irenuma, a co-accused,
and held among others, that evidence by the prosecution could not link
him to the crime. Five other suspects: Sylvester Iyasele, Saturday
Egbeide, Ola Obanuso, Akeem Ali, and Sunday Obanobi had died in prison
custody while awaiting trial.

The accused persons
were arrested and charged for conspiracy and armed robbery. According
to the prosecution, they were accountable for the murder of Mr. Rewane
at his home, 100, Oduduwa Crescent, GRA, Ikeja on October 6, 1995.

One of the
defendants, Effong Elemi-Edu, during cross examination, told the court
that on the day of the incident, he left his house to buy Suya (grilled
meat) for his wife around 8.45pm.

According to him,
as he was about to reach “Mallam’s Sweet Suya Spot”, he heard sporadic
gun shots, and took cover. After the shots ceased, he decided to go
back home but suddenly from the dark, he allegedly heard a voice shout
“stop or I shoot!”

“In confusion, I stopped dead in my track. Then four men in mufti
pounced on me. I was screaming and wondering what would the robbers get
from me other than the N5 note I had budgeted for Suya? They ignored my
protests, rained more blows on me, and shoved me and a few other
persons into their van and drove to a place I later recognised as SARS
(Special Anti-Robbery Squad), at Oba Akinjobi Street, Ikeja,” he said.

The Conference of Nigerian Political Parties has condemned the presence
of the chairperson of the Independent National Electoral Commission at
the voter’s registration of the president in his hometown on Saturday.
The party, in a statement on Sunday, expressed its outrage at the
presence of the INEC boss Attahiru Jega, accompanying the president,
Goodluck Jonathan, during the latter’s voter registration at his
hometown Otuoke, Bayelsa State on Saturday.

The CNPP called on the
electoral umpire to ignore the style of followership practised by his
predecessor in office, calling on him to “wake-up, abandon the ignoble
cult followership, which converted former Independent National
Electoral Commission’s chairmen into puppets of former president, Chief
Olusegun Obasanjo and be on top of his duty post as an impartial
umpire.” “We had expected Professor Jega to be on top of his duty post
at INEC Headquarters Abuja; receiving reports of non-arrival and
late-arrival of officials and materials and the worrisome report of
malfunctioning DDC Machines, which has become the metaphor the
exercise,” the party said. The CNPP warned that “Nigerians do not want
the extension of the voters registration exercise under any guise.”

After an
assassination attempt against a Washington lawmaker that took the lives
of six other people, many Americans debated this week whether their
politics, culture and country have grown too violent.

“The anger, hatred,
bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous,” said
Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, who is investigating the crime.

The U.S. guarantees
the right to own a gun in its constitution and millions of its citizens
are proud of it. But no prominent political figure is as fond of gun
talk as Sarah Palin. The Republican activist has urged her followers,
“Don’t retreat, reload!” Before last November’s Congressional
elections, she also posted a map of the U.S. online, highlighting her
opponents’ home districts with gun-sight cross-hairs, as if taking aim.

One of the
districts she targeted belongs to Gabrielle Giffords, the Democratic
Congresswoman who is now recovering from a bullet wound to the head
suffered in last week’s rampage.

Giffords objected
to Palin’s map at the time. “When people do that,” she said, “they’ve
got to realize that there are consequences.” The truth is that
journalists and media personalities, politicians and protestors of both
the right and left tend to favor violent metaphors. Palin is hardly
alone.

There is also no
indication that the 22-year-old suspect who was charged with carrying
out the rampage ever saw her map or drew his inspiration from any one
source in particular.

“Acts of monstrous
criminality stand on their own.” Palin said. “They begin and end with
the criminals who commit them.” Is she right? Is it simplistic and
inappropriate to blame the crimes of a single deranged gunman on the
attitudes of an entire country that is law-abiding and peaceful for the
most part? Or are America’s angry politics and plentiful guns a
combination that was bound to turn deadly?

President Barack Obama cautioned against any quick conclusion but suggested Americans do have to be more civil.

“We can be better,”
he said. “We may not be able to stop all evil in the world but I know
that how we treat one another is entirely up to us.” Many American
politicians have tried to keep politics out of the collective grief and
mourning that have followed the attack, but they haven’t quite
succeeded.

Jonathan Mann
presents Political Mann on CNN International each Friday at 18:30
(CAT), Saturday at 3pm and 9pm (CAT), and Sunday at 10am (CAT).

The Action Congress
of Nigeria (ACN) has asked the Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF)
and Minister of Justice, Mohammed Adoke, to file criminal charges
against a senator, Iyiola Omisore, over his recent comments on the
president of the Court of Appeal and other members of the court.

The national
publicity secretary of the party, Lai Mohammed, said recent
advertisements paid for by Mr. Omisore and published in some national
dailies regarding a Court of Appeal’s ruling on the appeal for the 2007
gubernatorial election in Osun State that favoured the ACN candidate,
were contemptuous of the legal institution.

Mr. Adoke should
“stand up and protect the integrity of the nation’s judiciary by
immediately filing a criminal contempt charge against Iyiola Omisore
over his recent attacks against the president of the Court of Appeal
and other members of the court,” Mr. Mohammed said.

He also quoted some part of the advertorial which he said did not show sufficient respect for the judiciary.

“It is now
abundantly clear that Ayo Salami’s Court of Appeal has a special squad
that he deploys to prosecute Action Congress of Nigeria’s (read Bola
Ahmed Tinubu’s) agenda,” the advertorial said in part.

“While I pray that
God judges these knavish judges without mercy or compassion for
delivering a manifestly fraudulent judgement, let it be known that the
last has not been heard as far as the matter of the Osun Governorship
Appeal is concerned.”

Contempt of court

The ACN claimed
that Omisore’s “irresponsible frontal, crude, and unsubstantiated
attacks on the Court of Appeal and its members” constitutes contempt of
the court.

“If it (contempt of
court) had been committed in the course of the proceeding, it would
have amounted to contempt in the face of the court, in which case the
Judge would have put him in the dock immediately and summarily imposed
sanctions until he has purged himself of the contempt,” Mr. Mohammed
said.

It, however, noted
that “it is the duty of the AGF to file an action against Iyiola
Omisore because it is the constitutional duty of the AGF in such
situations to protect the integrity of the court and our judicial
system by filing an action which enables the court to exercise its
disciplinary jurisdiction.”

The Minister of
Justice was reminded that failure to act in defence of the integrity of
the judiciary would mean that he has failed in his primary
responsibility to the nation’s system of justice.

The former deputy
governor to Adebayo Alao-Akala during his 11-month stint as Oyo State
governor in 2006, Azeem Gbolarumi, has told his former boss to forget
about his ambitions to return to office in the next governorship
election.

Mr. Gbolarumi, who
described last week’s People’s Democratic Party primary where Mr.
Alao-Akala won the governorship ticket as illegal, expressed his
surprise that his name was not included in the ballot papers used at
the primary after he had been screened by a PDP committee in Abeokuta,
Ogun State.

Speaking with
journalists at his Bodija, Ibadan residence at the weekend, the former
aide to the late strongman of Ibadan politics, Lamidi Adedibu, said he
was not informed of his disqualification, declaring the process of the
governor’s emergence illegal, null and void and of no effect.

Messrs Gbolarumi
and Alao-Akala were former allies and close associates of the late
Adedibu, but since the demise of their political godfather, they have
split into different groups to further their political interests. Apart
from his former boss’ victory, Mr. Gbolarumi also challenged those of
other PDP candidates, who emerged through the party’s congresses
conducted last week, saying they fell short of provisions of law.

Threatening to
challenge the process in court and before the national body of the
party, he promised not to allow the governor get away with is victory
and promised to fight the battle to a logical conclusion.

Failed congress

The politician also
expressed his displeasure with the last congress of the party which was
ordered by the National Working Committee of the PDP. Alleging that
this was not conclusive, he said the Independent National Electoral
Commission officials and party members sent from Abuja to supervise the
election did not witness the process where state executive officers
were purportedly elected.

“With the outcome
of the said state congress, nothing has changed and it was natural that
the incumbent governor had, through that illegal process, secured an
undue advantage over other party contestants which he utilized at the
illegal primary.

“That is why we
will not fold our arms and allow somebody to foist himself on the rest
of us. No, it will not happen and we are going to fight it out,” he
said.

The INEC officials fled the state after the local government
congress held at Ona-Ara local government of the state turned bloody,
leading to the death of Lateef Salako (aka Eleweomo), the state’s
factional leader of the National Union of Road Transport Workers
(NURTW), and the subsequent arrest and incarceration of the senate
leader, Teslim Balogun.