Nigeria Content Online

Former president, Olusegun Obasanjo,
did not have a closed-door meeting nor any discussion with Dimeji
Bankole, during their “chance meeting” on Tuesday in Lagos, an aide to
Mr Obasanjo said on Wednesday.

A statement signed by Adeoba Ojekunle,
Mr. Obasanjo’s special assistant, stated that contrary to media
reports, the meeting at the Presidential Wing of Murtala Muhammed
Airport “was an inadvertent development and not a secret or
‘closed-door’ meeting.” The statement specifically referred to a
newspaper report which claimed that the former president and the
Speaker of the House of Representatives discussed behind closed-doors
at the airport.

Father-son talks

“While General Obasanjo was waiting
for a private plane to convey him to Kinshasa yesterday, June 29, 2010,
he and honourable Speaker Bankole happened to be at the Presidential
Wing of the airport together,” said Mr Ojekunle. “At the chance
meeting, the honourable speaker greeted General Obasanjo as a son would
greet his father, and General Obasanjo also responded accordingly, as a
father would greet his son. There was neither a closed-door meeting nor
discussion of any issue.

Mr. Ojekunle, however, said that the
speaker must have visited Lagos to attend a meeting, or was on another
appointment, and not necessarily to have any discussion with Mr.
Obasanjo. “General Obasanjo was not part of such meeting and the nature
of such meeting is not known to him,” he stated.

Mr. Obasanjo, who arrived at the
airport 20 minutes after the speaker landed at the VIP tarmac from
Abuja on a Nigerian Air Force (NAF) aircraft, headed straight to the
airport lounge without saying a word to journalists. Mr Bankole, who
had been in Lagos since Friday, left for Abuja on Monday only to return
at about 2.30pm on Tuesday at minutes interval to the former president
arrival too.

The duo met behind closed doors for
about 30 minutes at the presidential lounge of the Murtala Muhammed
Airport (MMA), Lagos. The meeting between the two men may not be
unconnected with Mr. Bankole’s current battle to retain his position as
the Speaker of the House, amidst allegations of financial impropriety
and contract inflation. The two men, however, refused to answer
questions about the reason for their meeting.

When confronted by aviation correspondents, Mr. Obasanjo refused to
answer any of their questions which included queries about the meeting;
his views about Ibrahim Babangida’s 2011 presidential aspirations; the
country’s 50 year anniversary; and the amount earmarked for the
celebrations; and Goodluck Jonathan’s bid for president come 2011.
Turning to his daughter, Kemi Obasanjo, the ex-president said: “They
(reporters) love my face and I love their faces.”

The Senate has
blamed the federal government and the government of Zamfara State for
the tragic death of 163 people, mostly children below the age of five,
during the recent outbreak of lead poisoning in the state. A minute
silence was observed by the senators on the back of a motion by Sahabi
Ya’u (PDP Zamfara state) which noted the federal government’s carefree
attitude to issues concerning the lives of Nigerians.

The senators
criticized both the federal and local governments, for allowing the
disaster happen. They argued that if the government had strictly
implemented the mining laws, built a clinic within the community, or
even responded to the disaster rapidly, the deaths would have few. “It
is a pity we have to mourn this avoidable death of our citizens due to
our carelessness.” Patrick Osakwe (PDP Delta state) said.

“If we had taken the mining act seriously, we wouldn’t have been here discussing this today.” Ayogu Eze (PDP Enugu state) said.

John Shagaya (PDP
Plateau state) lamented the lack of urgency in the manner that the
federal government has handled the disaster, noting that till date
government has not inaugurated a committee set up on the issue.

Blame game

Ahmed Yerima (ANPP
Zamfara state) who was governor of the affected state for eight years
also decried the inability of the federal government to send relief
materials to the surviving victims.

“In other
countries, the government would have declared a state of emergency in
the area.” Mr. Yerima said. “But till now federal government has not
done anything by sending relief to the affected people.” The disaster
was caused by the activities of illegal miners of iron ore in Anka and
Bukkuyum local government areas of the state in April this year.

The villagers
turned miners were said to take crushed rocks home from the mine and
this resulted in the soil being contaminated from lead and the people
were thereafter poisoned through hand to mouth contamination. Many were
contaminated by contacts with contaminated tools and water.

The poisoning had
both social and economic effects on surviving victims and will likely
affect their ability to procreate while damaging livestock and crops.

While debating the
motion, Erhiawarie Eferakeye (PDP Delta state), a professor of
pharmacology, advised that the government immediately begins proper
medical screening of the survivors as the poisoning could have long
term after effect.

The Senate,
however, resolved to investigate the crisis and urged the federal,
state and local government to embark on sensitisation campaign on the
danger of illegal mining.

The senate, on
Wednesday, deferred debate on the request of the government of Sao Tome
and Principe for the alteration of terms for a $30 million loan it owes
Nigeria.

The senate stood
down the request because the request was not presented to the senators
with the required details on Wednesday. President Goodluck Jonathan had
requested the lawmakers to approve a request by the government of Sao
Tome and Principe to extend the tenor of the $30 million soft loan
which it received from Nigeria early this year from the agreed six
years to thirty. According to Mr Jonathan, the prime minister of Sao
Tome and Principe asked for the alteration of the loan conditions due
to an IMF program which the country entered into recently which does
not allow them to take only long term loans.

New terms

Earlier this year,
both the senate and the Executive Council of the Federation had
approved the USD30 million loan to the government of Sao Tome and
Principe with a tenor of six years, no interest charge, and moratorium
with a disbursement plan of $10 million every six months, over an 18
months period. Now, the prime minister of Sao Tome and Principe is
asking for the same loan amount but for a tenor of 30 years, a six
years moratorium and three years disbursement plan, still at no
interest charge.

Although the first
tranche of $10 million have been disbursed, the loan agreements are yet
to be signed by the government of both nations. “In view of the
strategic nature of our relationship with Democratic Republic of Sao
Tome and Principe, and considering the need to provide all necessary
and reasonable support to the country, the prime minister’s request was
acceded to,” Mr Jonathan stated in his letter indicating that the
executive arm have agreed to the borrowing country’s request.

More details required

President Jonathan
said the adjusted conditions will not adversely affect the finances of
Nigeria but the senators said they want a detailed document, besides
the later, to be enable them make up their minds adequately. “Unless
somebody presents the details of the document, we have nothing to
contribute,” said James Manager (PDP Delta state). His submission set
up an argument that led to the eventual withdrawal of the request for
proper presentation on another legislative day. “Although the letter is
self explanatory, we will step it down and take it on another
legislative day,” said Senate president David Mark.

Henceforth,
associations seeking registration as political parties are expected to
establish and maintain functional and verifiable offices in at least
two-thirds of the 774 local government areas in the country in order to
qualify for registration.

They will also have at least 10,000 registered members in at least two-thirds of the 36 states.

These are some of
the conditions adopted by the House of Representatives yesterday to
streamline the numbers of political parties in the country.

The adoption was
based on the report of the House eight-member ad-hoc committee it set
up on June 1, which made the recommendations.

Others
recommendations by the committee, chaired by the minority leader,
Mohammed Ali Ndume, and which were adopted by the House at the
resumption of the review of the amendment of the Electoral Act, are
that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) shall have
powers to deregister any party which breached any of those requirements
for registration; or which fails to win a seat in the National or State
Assembly election; and that the commission shall verify the claims of
the associations seeking registration, and publish same in at least
three national newspapers before registration.

However, following
a suggestion by the Speaker, Dimeji Bankole, the House rejected a
proposal by the panel that INEC should forward report on the parties
registered to the National Assembly, not necessarily for approval, but
for the records.

Following the
adoption of the recommendations, a new subsection will be inserted
under Section 80 of the substantive Electoral Act, while Section 83
will be amended to read “Power of the Commission to register and
de-register political parties.”

The committee was
set up to synthesise the views of members on the issue of political
parties registration in a Bill for an Act to establish the Independent
National Electoral Commission and make appropriate recommendations to
the House. However, the amendment will scale through if the Senate
concurs.

The members of the
committee are Mohammed Ali Ndume, Ita Enang, Cyril Maduabum, Abdullahi
Shuiabu Hashiru, Ibrahim Mustapha, Lanre Agoro, S.Y. Ahmed, and Hannatu
Jankara (Assistant Clerk of the House), who is the secretary.

Mr. Ndume said,
during its assignment, the committee consulted widely with members of
the House and that at its meeting, all the options were considered.
“The members of the committee, after exhaustive deliberations, came up
with recommendations which they felt would go a long way in creating
broad-based national political parties.”

He also explained
that the committee did not request the parties to have two-thirds
registered members in all the local government areas and the states at
the same time, to avoid ambiguity.

He said the
intention of the panel was not to give powers to the National Assembly
to approve the parties that applied to be registered by the commission,
but just to have such information in its record.

Heated debate

The issue of the
number of parties to participate in the 2011 general elections had
generated a heated debate in the House when it began the amendment of
the Electoral Act with some members, particularly those in the
opposition, calling for a two-party system while others demanded a
multi-party system that will only have five parties.

Yet, others
insisted that the multi-party system, as presently obtained in the
country, should be left intact in the Act. Most of the members of the
ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), which has about 280 members in
the lower legislative chamber, canvassed the registration of five
parties. Some of the lawmakers had argued that since the return of
democracy in the country, the number of the political parties has risen
from three to 57 because of the grant given to the parties, and which
is usually pocketed by their leaderships without fielding candidates
during elections.

They noted that
some of the leaders of the parties, which they described as “portfolio
parties”, only become active politically when it is time to receive the
grants. On two occasions, the lawmakers could not vote on the amendment
to Section 80 of the Electoral Act 2006 to include a clause regulating
the number of parties in the country.

However, on May 20,
amid protests and rowdiness, which spanned over an hour, the House, by
a vote of 172 to 48, dumped the proposal for a two-party system. But
members of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), Action Congress (AC),
and a handful of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the House, who
wanted a two-party system, kicked against the result and staged a walk
out in protest.

The minority parties were led by the same Mr. Ndume during the walk out.

Members of the
opposition party in Osun State House of Assembly have approached an
Osogbo High Court seeking an order to nullify the screening of the
state Independent Electoral Commission (OSSIEC) members while an appeal
were pending in court on the matter.

Led by Timothy
Owoeye, the legislators that are members of the Action Congress (AC) in
the Assembly, through the suit number HOS/M70/2010, are seeking the
order of the court to declare the screening of the chairman and members
of OSSIEC while the Appeal, in suit number HOS/M41/2009, was still
pending as an abuse of court process. In the originating summon, dated
June 29, 2010, the AC lawmakers also wanted the court to determine
whether “the filing of a stay of execution of a judgment by a party
against whom the judgment is given has not put the judgment in abeyance
until the ruling on the application is delivered.” They also wanted the
court to determine whether an appeal properly filed at the High Court
registry is for onward transmission to the Court of Appeal could be
properly terminated at the same high Court registry by mere filing of
notice of withdrawal of Appeal.

The trend

The summon, which
was filed by Kolapo Alimi, counsel for the plaintiffs, Minority Leader,
Mr. Owoeye, also averred that on March 27, 2010, an attempt was made to
serve him a notice of withdrawal of appeal at the premises of the state
House of Assembly which he rejected upon perusal that showed his name
was not written on it. On March 30, 2010, Mr. Owoeye claimed that
members of the House of Assembly were served with the list, and the
curriculum vitae of nominated chairman and members of the OSSIEC.
Amongst whom were, retired Justice Titus Oyeyemi Adewuyi, Remi Alabi,
Bamidele Isola Ezekiel Ogunjuyigbe, Adebisis Gbolagade, Razak Adegbite
and Akinboye Ogunola.

He also claimed
that his advice to the Assembly not to violate the law by screening the
persons named on the list while the appeal was pending in court was
overruled by the Speaker, Adejare Bello.

He however
mentioned in the 15 paragraph affidavit that he and other members of
the AC caucus staged a walk out of the floor of the parliament to
protest their grievance with the development.

An Osogbo High Court presided over by Justice Jide Falola had
earlier this year, ruled that the composition of OSSIEC was illegal,
while the state government filed a notice of appeal but in a twist,
sent a fresh list of OSSIEC members to the parliament for screening and
approval. No date has yet been fixed for the hearing of the suit.

NEXT columnist,
Pius Adesanmi, is among three Nigerians shortlisted for the inaugural
Penguin Prize for African Writing. He is listed with Chika Ezeanya and
Tanure Ojaide, along with 13 other African writers.

The prize comes
with a cash award of R50000 (about N1million), a publishing contract
with Penguin Books South Africa, and worldwide distribution via Penguin
Group companies.

The competition,
organised by Penguin Books South Africa, is broken into fiction and
nonfiction categories, with a prize winner emerging from each category.

Messrs Adesanmi and
Ojaide are shortlisted for nonfiction, while Ezeanya is in the fiction
category. Organisers had called for entries of unpublished full length
works of between 60,000 and 100,000 words in length. Approximately 300
submissions were received from authors across the continent.

Others on the
shortlist are Ellen Banda Aaku (Zambia), Moraa Gitaa (Kenya), Shubnum
Khan (South Africa), Isabella Morris (South Africa), and Mukoma wa
Ngugi (Kenya, shortlisted for last year’s Caine Prize) in the fiction
category; and South African writers Andrew Barlow, Ruth Carneson, Ahmed
Mortiar, Anli Serfontein, and Tebogo Tlharipe, for non-fiction.

An Abuja High
Court, on Tuesday, said that an order forcefully ejecting Eseme Eyiboh,
the chairman of the House Committee on Media and Public Affairs, from
his house in Abuja was given in error. The court ordered Mr. Eyiboh to
take back possession of the home.

Earlier this month,
armed policemen stormed Mr. Eyiboh’s residence, located at 7A Iyamoye
Close, off Gimbiya Street, Area 11, Garki, at about 8 a.m and threw out
his belongings. They were accompanied by officials of the court and
relations of the man who is disputing the property with the lawmaker.

History of the case

Mr. Eyiboh, a
member from Akwa Ibom State, has been engaged in a contentious dispute
with Senator Hassan Muhammed Gusau since 2008 over the land on which he
erected his house.

The lawmaker said
that he bought the property in 2007 from the family of late Sheik
Mujaddadi. However, Mr. Gusau also claimed to have purchased the same
property from the same administrators.

When he discovered
the counter sale, Mr. Eyiboh sued the administrators of Mujaddadi’s
estate and sought a court order to keep from being evicted from a
property he claimed he validly bought.

However, in
February 2008, Mr. Eyiboh testified that the senator invaded his home
with 14 young men, a team of armed policemen, and a bailiff from the
Upper Court Area with the intent to evict him.

Mr. Gusau, a
senator from Zamfara, had got a writ of possession from a Sharia court
in Jigawa State and a letter from an Abuja Upper Area Court judge,
directing the police to aid the enforcement of the eviction. Mr. Eyiboh
said that he called in his lawyers who intervened and succeeded in
dissuading the team from carrying out the eviction.

Last month, the
member petitioned the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related
Offences Commission (ICPC), alleging that Mr. Akoyi, the judge who
authorised the letter, had abused his office and should be investigated
by the commission.

“I strongly believe
that M.U. Akoyi attempted to help my adversaries take illegal
possession of my property, because he must either have been bribed or
given some other incentives to knowingly exceed his jurisdiction,” Mr.
Eyiboh said.

“I cannot
comprehend how an Upper Area Court in Gwagwalada can direct execution
against a property located in Garki, in the centre of the city,” he
said.

In his written
address, Mr. Gusau argued that he had asked Mr. Eyiboh to sell the
property to him because Sharia law does not allow a non-Muslim to buy
the estate of a Muslim when he dies.

However, Mr. Eyiboh
dispelled that argument, saying that the Sharia Law clause does not
specify that the buyer must be a Muslim, but rather, that the buyer
must be a neighbour, which Mr. Eyiboh was, and Mr. Gusau was not.

The ruling

Delivering the
ruling, Othman Musa said that the court’s decision took precedence over
any of Mr. Gusau’s eviction orders, including the most recent one made
on June 3, 2010. He ordered that the Chief Registrar of the High Court
take the necessary steps to restore Mr. Eyiboh’s possession of the
property without delay.

“I have gone
through the prayers and its counter views canvassed by the third
respondents (Mr. Gusau). It shows clearly that the application has
merit,” said Mr. Musa.

“It is regrettable that the court, on May 28, granted an ex parte
order, which temporarily dispossessed Eyiboh of his valid property.”

Cable television
networks will soon operate pay-as-you-go. Eddy Aina, a director at the
office of the Director General of the Nigerian Broadcasting Commission,
NBC, said the organisation is working on and will soon establish a
policy that will compel cable television networks in Nigeria to charge
as the consumers use their services.

Mr. Aina was
responding to concerns raised at the Consumer Forum organised by the
Consumer Advocacy Forum of Nigeria (CAFON) at the Lagos Television,
Agidingbi, Ikeja on Tuesday. Many consumers, including Shola Salako,
president, CAFON, and the convener of the forum complained that the
major cable networks in the country, DSTV and HiTV, are ripping
consumers off by charging for services that are sometimes not provided
or they cannot access due to poor power supply. “In the next few
months, NBC is going to come up with a pay-as-you go policy for the
cable TV networks,” said Mr Aina. “As for tariff, it is an industry
thing. They set up the tariff and if you ask why it is so high in
Nigeria they will tell you the poor infrastructure like poor power
supply made it so. But when government is able to settle the issue of
electricity then we can ask them to reduce the tariff.”

At this edition of
the monthly consumer forum which focused on getting better services
from cable TV networks, officials and members of the Sports Viewing
Centres Association of Nigeria voiced their grievances, particularly as
it relates to their on-going tussle with HiTV.

‘It’s a rip off’

The president of
the association, Seye Aluko, said they are insisting on not paying the
N15,000 monthly subscription fee that HiTV is charging for viewing
centres as against N6,000 for home use. “HiTV started well by telling
us to buy decoder with subscription for N2,500; that time it was only
La Liga they were showing. The next season they got English Premier
League and they increased to N3,000. From that to N4,000; from N4,000
to N6,000; from N6000 to N15,000, haba! HiTV,” said Deolu Ogubanjo,
president of the National Association of Telecom Subscribers of Nigeria.

Mrs. Salako advised the proprietors of the viewing centres to
register with the NBC and the Lagos State Consumer Protection Committee
so that their case can be settled through those authorities. She also
raised questions of consumers who had contacted her before the
programme, including why the cable network goes off when it is raining,
considering that the consumer’s money is still reading whether there is
rain or not? The representatives of DSTV, Segun Fayose and that of
HiTV, Vivian Chigboh, attempted to answer all the questions.

Indication emerged on Tuesday that about half of those who picked forms to join the police are barely literate.

Olabisi Okuwobi,
Police Public Relations Officer, Oyo state command, who gave the hint
in Ibadan yesterday, expressed dismay that almost 50 per cent of the
applicants screened in the command headquarters could seldom read or
write simple English, while many among them could not even spell their
names. “Even with the presentation of their school certificate with
credit in English, they could neither read nor write,” Ms Okuwobi said.

The police
spokesperson, also a member of the five-member screening panel for the
applicants in the state, declared that a number of the applicants who
are ‘half-literates’ stand disqualified. “Police force is not a dumping
ground for educational delinquencies,” she said. “We asked them to read
simple English in the dailies they could not, some of them even failed
to write or spell correctly their names.” Assuring that the police
would do a thorough job in screening all the applicants, she described
as unfortunate the fact that a number of them were not qualified,
wondering how they got their results in the first instance.

“Even those who passed through the screening will still undergo
written text to further clarify their competence,” she said, adding
that the police would also verify the certificates of those who pass
the written tests from their acclaimed examination bodies for
clearance. Speaking with journalists, the state commissioner of police,
Baba Adisa Bolanta, expressed satisfaction with the large turnout of
young Nigerians for enlistment into the police, describing it as a good
omen for the future of the country and the profession.

The Nigerian
Communications Satellite (NigComSat) Ltd. yesterday said it is working
with the Nigerian police to use satellite technology to combat crime in
the country.

Ahmed Rufai, the
managing director of NigComSat, made this known during the visit of a
group called the Jonathan Youth Vanguard to the company headquarters in
Abuja. The group had wanted to learn about the electronic voting system
and other devices designed by the company.

“In the next three
months, we will be able to provide a modernised public safety network
for effective policing because policing and crime control thrive on
their capacity to gather intelligence, track and process information,”
said Mr. Rufai. “If you don’t have this capacity, then the criminals
are a step ahead of you.”

The technology

The technology, a
code division multiple access (CDMA) channel, allows several people to
communicate over the same bandwidth at the same time, without
interfering with each other. It is currently being used in radio
communication technologies.

Mr. Rufai said
there are five channel towers in Abuja, three of which were built in
Utako, Nyanya, and Kubwa, and the rest two will be situated in Kuje,
and Gwagwalada. He said three more towers will be needed to fully cover
the city.

The Abuja version of the technology will be commissioned in the next few months,

and the police in the city will be enhanced to monitor and track incidences that are of interest to them, said Mr. Rufai.

“When we are able
to that, Nigerians will be able to sleep with their eyes closed,
because before a criminal can strike, the police should have [struck]
first,” he said. “We now want the police to stop a crime before it is
committed.” The president general of the youth group, George Turner,
commended NigComSat’s efforts and said the money invested by the
federal government in the company was not a waste.

Mr. Turner
expressed his hope that the development would address the problem of
unemployment to a very large extent in the country.