Nigeria Content Online

The Chairman of
Bendel Insurance Football Club, Igbinomwahia Ekhosuehi was at the
weekend abducted by two armed men at his residence in Idemudia Avenue
of Erediauwa Street, Ekehuan road, Benin City.

The Edo State
Director of the State Security Services (SSS), Francis Adeyemi Sonaike
confirmed the kidnap saying that investigations are ongoing.

A family source had
also said that the kidnappers of Mr Ekhosuehi were said to have
demanded for a ransom of N10m and N1m daily for the victim’s feeding
and upkeep.

Also, the State
Security Services, (SSS), paraded five suspects for various crimes
ranging from blackmailing, rape, extortion, threat to kill and
kidnapping.

According to Mr
Sonaike, over 50 kidnap cases are pending in various courts in the
state, but said they have asked the state prosecutors to push for
accelerated hearing and trial of all the suspects currently facing
trials for kidnap related cases.

Seven Years

A Benin City
magistrate court yesterday sentenced one Osamuyi Osunbor to seven years
imprisonment without an option of fine for extortion and threat to kill.

Mr Osunbor was
arrested on November 2, 2010 while attempting to collect a ransom of
N100,000 paid into his account by a victim he had threatened to kill.

The Magistrate, J.U Oyomire therefore sentenced him to seven years after he pleaded guilty to the crime.

Anambra State
governor Peter Obi was moved to tears last weekend when he visited
victims of a fire disaster at Uli, Ihiala local government area of the
state.

Mr Obi said he had
come to commiserate with them and to assess the level of damage wreaked
by the inferno when a fuel tanker fell on the road leading to the
Anambra State University at Uli, destroying houses and goods worth
millions of naira.

Speaking during the
inspection, the governor said he wished the disaster had not happened.
He said he feels pained when any part of the state suffers in any way,
because there was enough hardship in the state already. He remarked
that his government was working round the clock to ameliorate the
situation.

The governor, who
had earlier sent a commissioner to assess the damage as well as
directed the State Emergency Management Agency to pay full attention to
the incident, said he felt compelled to visit in person to show how
dispirited he was.

Consolation

He assured the
victims that they would be compensated and promised that he will appeal
to the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) to replace the burnt
wire and restore electricity to the affected homes.

The Legislator
representing Ihiala 1 Constituency at the state house of assembly,
Simeon Ohajianya said that he was often humbled by the way issues
affecting any part of the state touched the governor.

“When I informed
him about the disaster, he was touched. For once, one could see a
governor who is passionate about the welfare of his people. If you do
not love this state, after dealing with the governor, you will be
inspired to love the state,” Mr. Ohajianya said.

The traditional ruler of Uli, Onyedi Ebekue, said that his people
were grateful to the governor who had continued to show them love and
care.

The Ekiti State
Police Command says it has deployed 750 officers to provide security
during the by-election into the Moba state constituency 1 in Moba
Council Area. The spokesman for the Command, Adebayo Jimoh, in Ado
Ekiti on Monday said that police authorities had ordered ‘stop and
search’ inspections on all vehicles coming out and going into the
constituency as part of measures to forestall any breach of the peace.

The by-election to
be organized by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is
scheduled for Wednesday, Dec. 22. The constituency became vacant
following the death of Saliu Adeoti, the former deputy speaker of the
House of Assembly on October 27. The election is expected to hold in 49
polling booths in five wards that make up the constituency.

“So far, 750 policemen from the command have been deployed to take
part in the Moba Constituency 1 by-election to ensure peaceful conduct
of the election. The Commissioner of Police has equally visited the
constituency and all the polling booths to assess the security
situation,” Mr. Jimoh said.

Gladys Nwafor, a
national commissioner at the Independent National Electoral Commission,
said the commission will prosecute anyone found guilty of malpractice
during the forthcoming voter registration.

Mrs. Nwafor said in
Bauchi at the weekend that the immediate prosecution of the offenders
would serve as a deterrent to other persons with similar motives.

According to her, the commission has set an example with the recent prosecution of some offenders in the Anambra by-election.

“We are using the
Anambra issue as a case study. So, anybody found guilty or engaged in
electoral malpractice will be dealt with accordingly, no matter his or
her status,’’ she said.

She however assured Nigerians that the Attahiru Jega-led electoral
commission would conduct free, fair and credible elections in 2011.

A healthy
environment will reduce the high mortality rate in Nigeria, says
Augustine Ebisike, Registrar, Environmental Health Officers
Registration Council of Nigeria.

Mr. Ebisike said in
Abuja on Monday that “ environmental health is paramount because if you
get your environmental health right, so many preventable deaths will be
cut short.

“Our mortality
rate; infant mortality rate are all related to environmental health; so
these are the broad issues that are posing health challenges in the
society,” he said.

According to him,
70 per cent of the diseases that cause hospitalisation in Nigeria are
not only preventable but they are environmentally related.

“If 70 per cent of the diseases that are preventable in this country
go away, what we will be left with will definitely be 30 per cent. None
of the 30 per cent of the diseases will cause an epidemic and none will
have children dying the way they are dying,” he said.

The Mashi Local Government Council in Katsina State has donated a cow to the Igbo community in the area as Christmas gift.

Speaking while
presenting the gift to the community in Mashi on Monday, the Chairman,
Sirajo Mohammed who was represented on the occasion, by the Head of
Personnel, Ma’aruf Abubakar, said that the gesture was part of the
Council’s contribution towards ensuring the welfare of the Igbos living
in the area.

“The Igbos have co-existed peacefully with the people of the area
and do contribute to the socio-economic development of the area hence,
the need for the local government to appreciate their contributions.”
He said. He gave an assurance of the Council’s continued support to the
Igbo community, urging them to continue to live in peace in the area.

The Chinese
government may have unwittingly given the world a new symbol of
opposition to oppression, an empty chair. But there’s another piece of
furniture that’s suddenly empty too and it delivers a different message.

The chair belonged
to Chinese author and activist Liu Xiabo, the laureate of the Nobel
Peace Prize for 2010, imprisoned for his writings and prevented from
travelling to Oslo to receive his award. It was placed instead on the
chair he would have occupied to mark his absence.

It’s quickly become
an iconic image and empty chairs have begun appearing in Chinese
Internet traffic. Cyberspace is closely policed in the People’s
Republic by thousands of censors. Within hours even the use of the
phrase ‘empty chair’ was being wiped from the web.

There is also an
empty table though, and that’s getting a little less attention. Norway
is a tiny nation of fewer than five million people that had been
negotiating Europe’s first free- trade agreement with China, an
exploding economy of more than a billion.

When the Norwegian
Nobel Committee honoured Mr Liu, Beijing suspended the negotiations.
The deal is at least temporarily off the table, potentially an enormous
blow to a range of Norwegian businesses and jobs.

Norwegian Foreign
Minister Jonas Gahr Store told me that his government has no influence
on the Nobel Committee and values the committee’s tradition of
independence. He said that Norway’s government wouldn’t sacrifice its
principles to please Beijing.

Norway is an
affluent country, with enormous oil and gas reserves that China and
many other nations are eager to buy. With or without the free-trade
agreement, its economy is in an enviable position.

But for governments without those assets and the assurance they
bring, the empty chair isn’t the only piece of furniture to remind them
of China’s reaction to this year’s Nobel Prize. There is also that
empty table.

About five months
to the end of his tenure as Ogun State governor, Gbenga Daniel at the
weekend challenged his predecessor, Olusegun Osoba to a public debate
on which of them performed better as governor of the state. Mr Daniel
threw the challenge at a public debate organized by the ruling People’s
Democratic Party {PDP} for all its aspirants ahead of 2011 polls held
at the June 12 Cultural Centre, Abeokuta.

“I am ready to
engage Osoba in a public debate, whether partisan or not. I am ready
for the open debate to be conducted anywhere. We should put on the
scale our account of stewardship. Let’s appear and present ourselves to
public domain to weigh our performances,’ he said.

Mr Daniel defeated
Mr Osoba, then of the Alliance for Democracy {AD} now Action Congress
of Nigeria {ACN} in the 2003 governorship election. But there has been
increasing condemnation of the performance of his government by Mr
Osoba and the leadership of the Action Congress of Nigeria {ACN}. The
governor also defended himself against accusations of promoting
violence, accusing the opposition Action Congress of Nigeria {ACN} of
masterminding violence in the state.

He also said
allegations of corruption leveled against his government by the
opposition was unfair, saying, “In Nigeria, how many governors openly
declare their assets as I did on assumption of office? It shows we are
transparent and I challenge anybody to fault this claim.”

General data collection processes of the Nigeria
Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) are to go live on
an automated platform in the new year, the executive secretary of the
agency, Zainab Ahmed, said in Abuja at the weekend. Mrs Ahmed, who was
reviewing the challenges and progress of the agency in the outgoing
year, said though it is gradually overcoming its challenges, NEITI is
looking forward to the best of times in 2011 as it remains positive
that enough has been achieved for Nigeria to be granted full Extractive
Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI) Compliant status.

“This is part of the processes to ensure accurate
data collection and timely auditing as well as reporting of revenue
receipts and payments of the extractive industries,” she said, pointing
out that “this will aid the speed of dissemination of quality
information about the revenues in the extractive industry to the
Nigeria public.”

While acknowledging the support of various
stakeholders, including government agencies, civil society
organizations (CSOs) and international development partners, she
assured that NEITI is now on course to fully deliver on its assignment.

“NEITI has acquired a new suitable office complex it
plans to move in next year. We have already commenced comprehensive
plans on public communication, technical services and management
programmes to meet national and international expectations in the New
year and beyond,” the NEITI boss said.

Fighting resource-curse

NEITI chairman, Assisi Asobie, who noted measures by
the National Stakeholders Working Group (NSWG) to strengthen the NEITI
secretariat, said the Board has responded positively towards meeting
the conditions set by the EITI Board for validation as full compliant
member-country.

Mr Asobie traced the high level of poverty associated
with natural resources-endowed countries to the common syndrome of
resource-curse, saying at the heart of the problem are issues of good
governance, transparency and accountability. He said because of the
nature of natural resources such as crude oil, the tendency for corrupt
practices and mis-governance is always high among countries endowed
with them, resulting in the paradox of poverty in the midst of plenty.

“The management of revenue accruing from the extractive sector in a
transparent, prudent and accountable manner is the panacea for resource
curse. But this has proved such a huge challenge in countries such as
Nigeria, though association with EITI has helped to provide the
technical know-how and the strategic direction to confront it,” he
said. Announcing that the 2006-2008 oil and gas industry audit report
is to be published early next year, Mr Asobie said the process to
commission the 2009 audit has already commenced, while that of 2010
would be commissioned in 2011 as NEITI moves into the solid minerals
sector.

The Vice President,
Namadi Sambo, is expected to lead Peoples’ Democratic Party leaders to
Ekiti State, for the final rally before next week’s bye-election for
the state House of Assembly in the state.

The Constituency I,
Moba Local Government Area election will be conducted to get a
replacement for the former deputy speaker, Saliu Adeoti who died some
months ago.

According to the
State Chairman of the party, Bola Olu-Ojo, in a statement issued in
Ado-Ekiti on Sunday, the party will approach the bye-election with all
the weapons in its political arsenal.

“We are not leaving
anything to chance as far as the bye-election is concerned. That is why
the campaign is going to be led by no less a personality than the Vice
President himself.

“As at yesterday
(Saturday), we have been to all the towns in the Constituency, except
Otun-Ekiti where the grand finale, which is going to be the mother of
all rallies, will be held on Monday (Today),” he said.

Banking on the
peoples support, Mr. Olu-Ojo said, “in Osun-Ekiti in particular, we
could see revenge on the faces of the people. One of their own, Adeleye
Awolumate, who was also our chairman for Osun Ward, was murdered in
broad daylight by the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) thugs and they
are rearing to vote against the party that killed their son.”

The Vice President
is expected to be accompanied by the Minister of State for Federal
Capital Territory, Caleb Olubolade, former governor of Ekiti State,
Olusegun Oni; a serving senator, Ayo Arise; House of Representatives
Member representing Ekiti North Constituency II, Duro Faseyi; PDP Vice
Chairman (southwest) Tajudeen Oladipo; the state Chairman of the Party,
Bola Olu-Ojo; and three former deputy governors including, Sikiru Tae
Lawal, Abiodun Olujinmi and Paul Alabi among others.