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The Senate will on Monday, in a historical plenary, commence the
screening of the ministerial nominees sent by Acting President Goodluck
Jonathan. This is the first time the Senate will hold a plenary on a Monday.

Conventionally, the Senators do not sit on Mondays and Fridays,
but the leadership of the Senate said it was necessary to break the convention
and confirm the ministers in order to get the executive arm working,
considering the limited amount of time left to the expiration of their tenure.

This latest resolution is the second friendly gesture the Senate
has extended to the Acting President in recent times. It had earlier this week
postponed its Easter holiday by one week to enable them attend to the Acting
President’s request for the confirmation of his ministers and the formation of
a new cabinet.

Last week, Mr. Jonathan dissolved the Executive Council of the
Federation with a promise to re-constitute the council as soon as possible.

The screening would be a question and answer session between the
nominees and the Senators. Screening ministerial nominees is the Constitutional
duty of the Senate and it allows senators to ask the nominee questions and
determine their eligibility or otherwise.

“Bow and go”

Nominees who do not meet the expectations of majority of the
senators are usually dropped at this stage. Old hands are barely screened; they
are usually asked to “bow and go.” The Senate is however, threatening not to
use the “bow and go” screening method, even though their colleague, Bala Mohammed
(ANPP, Bauchi State), is amongst the nominees.

Mr. Mohammed led the pressure group whose actions led to the
unusual motion that empowered the Acting President to act while the president
is on sick leave.

The senators also booed when the Senate President read through
the list of nominees and mentioned “Sanusi Dagash”, who was a member of
President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua’s first cabinet, showing a sign of disapproval
and perhaps, stormy weather for the nominee.

The list, which was received by the Senate on Tuesday but made
public on Wednesday, has 33 names, nine of which were re-appointed.

The reappointed nominees include Fidelia Akuabata Njeze, Peter
Godsday Orubebe, Nuhu somo Way, Adetokunbo Kayode, Henry Odein Ajumogobia,
Akinlabi Olasunkanmi, Diezani Alison-Madueke, Shamsudeen Usman, and Dora
Akunyili.

The new nominations are: Chukwuemeka Ngozichineke Wogu, Iyom
Josephine Anenih, Labaran Maku, Chris Ogiemwonyi, Suleiman Bello, Murtala
Yar’Adua, Sanuai M.Dagash, Bala Mohammed, Nduese Essien, Josephine Tapgun,
Mohammed BelloAdoke, and Ernest Olubolade. Others are:

Olusegun Olutoyin Aganga, M.K Abubakar-Kebbi, Adamu Waziri, Umar Aliyu,
Awodele Najeem Adewale Alao, Abubakar Sadiq Mohammed, Yusuf Suleiman, Ruquiya
Rufai, Musa Sada, Sheik Abdallah, Emmanuel Iheanacho, and Jibril Martins Kuye.

The
long dredging of the lower River Niger, which is expected to pass
through 152 riverine communities at a huge N36 billion, is half
completed, Ahmed Aminu, the Managing Director of the Nigerian Inland
Waterways Authority (NIWA), disclosed on Wednesday.

Mr. Aminu told a
House of Representatives team that the 572 kilometers project started by
President Umaru Yar’Adua, has progressed at a steady speed and has left
no significant negative impact on the marine ecology and the adjoining
communities.

With the
development, he said, barges and small ships of 3000 metric tons can now
sail from Warri in Delta State, to Baro in Niger State.

“The former Minister
of Works (Mr. Ibramin Isa Bio) had said that it is about 60 per cent
completed, but that was an estimate,” he said.

“Work on Lot 2,
from bifurcation of Nuns River and Forcados, to Onitsha and Lot 4, from
Idah to Jamata, is about 80 to 90 per cent completed,” he told the
members of the South-South Parliamentary Caucus of the House of
Representatives, led by Andrew Uchendu, which said it met with the
managing director to appraise the progression of the project.

He said that the
project is divided into five lots, but that on the average, about 50 per
cent is completed. He also disclosed that NIWA is still working on the
inland ports that would facilitate cargo handling and sundry commercial
activities.

On the impact of
the dredging on the environment, he told the caucus that “there is no
way the dredging would affect the inflow and outflow of its
tributaries, since the dredging is not done with embankments.”

“The project is
being undertaken under the strict terms of the Environmental Impact
Assessment (EIA) carried out in 2002.

“So far, we have not heard any complaint from any community, because
the dredged materials, except in Lokoja, are usually dumped 300 metres
from the dredged channels. And you know that the Niger is on the average
about a kilometre wide. So the materials are still dumped into the
river,” he said.

The presiding judge of the Kano High Court, Haliru Abdullahi has
ordered a stay of proceedings on a libel suit instituted against the
multinational drug outfit, Pfizer.

Idris Mohammed, a professor of medicine had alleged that he had
been defamed by the content of Pfizer’s statement of defence in a suit brought
against the company. In the libel case filed against the company he is
demanding ₦120 million as damages against Pfizer.

Mr. Mohammed was mentioned severally in the statement of defence
filed by Pfizer as a result of the 1996 Trovan clinical trial in the outbreak
of meningitis epidemic in some northern states.

Prayer granted

Justice Abdullahi ruled in favour of Pfizer’s application for a
stay of proceedings on the matter pending when the Federal Court of Appeal in
Kaduna rule on an appeal filed by Pfizer’s lawyers on September 22 last year.

The decision came after Ado Balarabe Mahmoud who stood in for
Mr. Abdullahi prayed the court not to fall for Pfizer’s delay tactics in the
case at the Kaduna Court of Appeal.

Nelson Uzuegbu, who stood in for Pfizer, had in a 10 paragraph
affidavit applied for a stay of proceedings pending the determination of the
substantive suit at the court of appeal. He cited order 8, rule 47 and section
36 of the constitution to justify his demand.

Mr. Uzuegbu enjoined the judge to preserve the integrity of hierarchy of the
court since the appeal court is yet to determine the issue bordering the
substitution of the name of Pfizer in the libel case.

Two members of the House of Representatives have denied
knowledge of summons of the Libyan envoy to Nigeria, said to have been invited
by the House in the aftermath of Mr. Gaddafi’s call for Nigeria’s split.

After Mr. Gaddafi’s comments last week, the House, as part of a
series of resolutions last week, had urged the Federal Government to recall
Nigeria’s envoy to Libya for consultations, while his Libyan counterpart to Nigeria
was due to be summoned to the House, in protest.

Umar Bature, whose Foreign Affairs committee was expected to
conduct the planned talks with the envoy, and Halims Agoda, the sponsor of the
last Thursday’s motion, said they were unaware of such invitations to the
Libyan Ambassador, although it has been widely reported by the media.

Mr. Bature (PDP, Sokoto State), responded to inquiries by NEXT
on the date of such summons, saying, “To my knowledge, there is no such
invitation.” He said the House “only” condemned the comments of Mr. Gaddafi,
without enlisting further prayers.

Mr. Agoda, the House Air Force committee chairman, said although
they resolved to do more than “condemn” Mr. Gaddafi’s controversial remarks,
the prayers excluded summons on the envoy.

“We urged the Federal Government to recall Nigeria’s ambassador
for consultations which it has done, and also to liaise with the African Union
to investigate the link between the comments and the source of the infiltrators
who have been killing our people,” he said.

No formal rebuttal

During last Thursday’s session, Mr. Agoda, who sponsored the
original motion, had called for the condemnations on Mr. Gaddafi’s remark and
the investigations on the source of the attackers in recent violence in Jos,
Plateau State.

However, during the debate carried live on national television,
other members amended part of the prayers and called for the recall of Nigerian
ambassador to Libya and the summoning of Libyan envoy to Nigeria.

The House has made no formal rebuttal of the decision, even
after wide media reportage. Many of its resolutions sponsored by members have
been seen as largely routine and bearing no enforcement. According to the House
Legislative compliance committee, the level of adherence to such adoptions,
particularly by the executive arm, exceeds a little above 30 per cent by June
2009.

If last week’s resolutions are listed in the Votes and Proceedings, the
denials by the members will highlight such low compliance, which at times, even
the sponsoring members are accused of.

Residents of Plateau State who were displaced during the
violence in and around Jos city have been hit by diarrhoea and other forms of
diseases at their camps in Boto, Bauchi State.

Bala Yakubu, the Bauchi State Search and Rescue officer
disclosed this in Abuja.

He said the camps are facing an acute shortage of drugs to
combat the diseases.

According to him, medical personnel at the camps have run out of
drugs that were provided by the state government.

There are currently four camps operated by the State Emergency
Management Agency in Boto.

In Camp A, there are 1, 673 refugees, 170 in Camp B, all of
whom, he said arrived after the crisis in Jos .

He said the latest crisis caused an influx of 4,565 people,
mostly women and children who are now in Camp D.

Responding, the Director- General of the Governors’ forum, Bayo
Okauru, promised that the secretariat would look into how to provide more
relief materials to the camps and reach out to the governor, Isa Yuguda .

Mr.Okauru also told Mr. Yakubu to give him a list of what they
need so that he can forward it to the state governor.

It is great being an expatriate. You are away from the societal
pressures of your home country, and the ‘ties that bind’. You are free to
reinvent yourself as you wish. All the people who knew you growing up and who
had pegged and pigeonholed you as a certain type of person are no longer there
to force you to conform to the way you previously defined yourself. You are
liberated from those shackles.

At the Moorhouse Hotel on Sunday, I witnessed two French
expatriates here working technical jobs, pursuing their true vocations as ‘cool’
musicians playing the guitar, the saxophone and the flute. They were part of a
trio of jazz musicians who treated the brunch crowd to Bossa Nova standards,
Desafinado, and French Jazz classic, la vie en rose. The third person was
Nigerian, a gifted guitarist. It was a wonderful and energising time out.

It is great to be an expatriate regardless of your gender. For
the men, be you 28 or 68, you are forever young. Starting new jobs, engaging in
new responsibilities, taking on new pursuits, and entering new relationships
with mature and adventurous fellow world travellers or with young, beautiful,
ambitious and exotic local girls. Ah, la vie est belle! Just this weekend, I
heard from one of the arm-candy girls that the expatriate men are experts at
managing the balancing act of those relationships with young girls.

Venezuelan men are hard to tempt. Their girls back home are as
feline and assertive as ours, and have beautiful faces and bodies too. Germans,
Americans, and Englishmen are true connoisseurs of the West African beauty.
Women are women are women – they are looking for the same qualities that they
seek in a woman back home, plus that ‘je ne sais quoi’ exotic quality that
stands them out in a crowd, and makes them feel the way ‘true men’ are supposed
to feel. It has to be love, though.

Frenchmen, on the other hand, are reputedly tricky!!!! The word
on the street amongst the girls is that the men initiate those relationships
purely to have fun! ‘Quelle horreur!!’ There are exceptions, of course. I hate
stereotypes as a rule, but I have to be true to the reports I have received.
The French dangle a journey to Paris on one hand and the possibility of
marriage on the other, stringing the lady along for years sometimes, before
neither materialise. The francophone girls are NOT amused!!! They believe that
a Frenchman is more likely to marry an elegant and exposed black girl bred in
France than one from our shores.

Gentlemen, is this true?

As for the expatriate ladies, it is both a wonderful and
terrifying experience, but it is never dull!!! How many of us working women or
even housewives would love to leave it all behind and take off to a country
where your husband’s skills (usually), sometimes your own, are needed. You are
an expert, you are valued, you are treasured and looked after and pampered.
Your health and your recreation are the focus of meetings by managing directors
and HR directors of multinational companies.

Nothing less than a three-bedroom apartment in a complex with a
playground and swimming pool is good enough for you. You are assigned a driver
to take you shopping and convey you anywhere you wish to go. You are assigned a
cook/steward to ensure that you do not strain yourself seeking to feed yourself
and your family, and so that you can immediately become an expert hostess for
the inescapable social round of parties, teas, cocktails and dinners to further
your partner’s career. If you have children, you MUST have a nanny so that you
can focus on your health and beauty and QUALITY time with the children. You can
let someone else do the routine stuff. What a hardship! What is lovely is that
you get the time you need to further your interests, whether in philanthropy,
fashion, education, art or sport. Many expatriates who spent time in Nigeria learnt
to sail in Lagos Lagoon, according to John and Jill Godwin, the notable
architect couple who can proudly call themselves Nigerian-British after
residing here for over 50 years. Many have also picked up golf and discovered
unimagined and rewarding new skills and talents here.

This is where the terrifying part of being an expatriate partner
comes in. You really do need to stay healthy, beautiful and active.

You had better play golf and tennis and keep your bikini body
looking good, or work towards those two-pack abdominal muscles (six-pack may be
asking for too much) because you and your partner are ordinary to each other,
in an unusual environment. Yet you are each viewed as unusual and desirable in
the eyes of others. Which regard would YOU prefer? To retain your partner’s
affection, you have to compete with all the colleagues, subordinates, service
providers, and young men and women seeking the favour and the liquid currency
of your partner.

We all assume that expatriates have more money than regular
mortals. After all, they get all kinds of extra allowances and incentives for
working away from home. They generally have most of their local bills taken
care of or are living in a place where the cost of living is much lower than
their country.

If they are renting out their own home rather than maintaining
two, as some choose to do, their income can far exceed their expenditure.
Besides which they live in good homes, drive new cars, and love doing fun and
adventurous things. There are a whole raft of people on standby and eager to
help you spend your ready cash, or keen to divert it from its rightful
recipients to themselves. So, watch out! And fellow expatriates, the
experienced ones, are experts in giving you a helpful push into that sinkhole
of expat exploitation, degradation and ruin. Hey, they need your company there
to feel good about the antics that they are up to themselves. I won’t go into
the widespread salacious and sometimes tragic stories of what happens in
expatriate compounds all over the world. The US TV series, Desperate
Housewives, and the new UK series, Mistresses, have nothing on it.

To be fair, expatriates still have a lot to learn about
convoluted love triangles, thwarted passion, agonising betrayals and extreme
measures to capture and keep a desirable partner. Our domestic movie industry,
Nollywood, can educate them in that regard and show them endings in tears,
recriminations, and broken homes.

We hear you, we empathise with you, we feel you as you face your
unique travails during your residency here. There is something called expat
culture that explains the inevitability of many of the situations you find
yourselves in. They are a function of being brought into a different
environment as an expert expat or as the companion of one. We, the locals,
don’t co-operate as we ought to either. Don’t take it personally. It is not
about you; it is about your status as a transient guest, here to sample a
facsimile of our lives and then move on, abruptly cutting the fragile ties and
dependencies that have formed.

There are more advantages than disadvantages to being an expatriate, and
Nigerian expats enjoy them and suffer them too when they are posted or hired on
contract abroad. The trick is, not all foreigners here are expatriates. If you
are one of us, enjoy the benefits but avoid the traps of the expatriate
lifestyle; and if you are an expatriate, especially you French guys….be
nice!!!!

As the sale of the Nigerian Telecommunication Plc
(NITEL) to private investors is mired in controversy, scores of the
company’s staff in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, on Tuesday, staged a
peaceful protest against an alleged clandestine confirmation of
appointment and promotion of some top management staff.

The workers called on the federal government to intervene promptly and stop the purported promotions.

According to the protesters, the promotion will
further complicate the problem of the company when it is finally handed
over to the new owner.

While pleading with the federal government to effect
the payment of a backlog of salaries and allowances, the workers
accused it of contravening a court order which compelled it to
regularise the employment of staff who have remained casual employees
for the past 15 years and pay all their entitlements.

Ganiyu Shittu, the state chairman of the workers,
said since the order was given on 6 November, 2008 the government is
yet to implement it.

The workers said 25 March will mark the 21st month since the government last paid their monthly salaries.

Selective promotion

The staff alleged that senior officers confirmed
their own appointment and embarked on “promotion of some selected staff
to disorganise them”.

Insisting that the exercise was ill-timed, the
workers called for the intervention of the Federal Government, National
Assembly and Bureau of Public Enterprises and other Nigerians in the
matter.

“We wish to draw the attention of the Federal
Government, National Assembly, BPE and other Nigerians to the recent
unpleasant decisions of the top management wherein all the top
management staff had their appointments quietly and hurriedly confirmed
immediately after the last bidding process was concluded by the BPE.

“It is worrisome that at a time when NITEL staff are
appealing daily for the payment of the 20 months salary arrears owed
them by the government and BPE, the top management believes this is the
right time for them to confirm all their acting appointments and pacify
a selected few with promotions on the eve of handling over the company
to a new core investor,” the workers stated.

They also accused the government of not being fair to them by
delaying the payment of their salaries till it gets the proceeds from
the sale of NITEL, saying such was not the case with workers of other
privatised government companies like Ajaokuta Steel Company and the
Nigeria Airways.

Justice Ramat
Mohammed of the Federal High Court, sitting in Lagos, has fixed March
30, 2010 to deliver ruling over the application by the former governor
of Oyo State, Rashidi Ladoja, asking the court to quash the amended
charges levied against him by the Economic and Financial Crimes
Commission (EFCC).

Allegations against defendants

Mr. Ladoja,
alongside Waheed Akanbi, his former aide, are in court on account of
allegations levied by the prosecution stating that the defendants
conspired to convert properties and resources derived from an illegal
act, with the aim of concealing the illicit origin of the properties
and resources. The defendants were accused of committing fraud in the
sum of N1, 932, 940, 32. 48. They were alleged to have used as conduit
pipe a company, Bistrumm Investment, to siphon the sum of N77. 8
million for the purpose of purchasing a building for him, while Mr.
Ladoja was also alleged to have fraudulently transferred a sum of
600,000 pounds to one Bimpe Ladoja, amongst other allegations.

Counsel adopt written addresses

At the resumed
hearing, the counsel in the matter, Wole Olanipekun for Mr. Ladoja, and
Vitalis Amaotu for the commission, adopted their written address, on
the application by Mr. Ladoja.

In the application
filed on behalf of Mr. Ladoja by his counsel, Wole Olanipekun, the
applicant urged the court to dismiss the charges levied against him on
the ground that the court has no jurisdiction to adjudicate on the
counts as framed.

Mr. Olanipekun
argued that the allegations against the applicant are vague and do not
link him with the commission of any crime to warrant his arraignment
under any written law. He also contended that the proof-of-evidence
placed before the court by the prosecution has no connection with the
charge and that it does not disclosed any prima facie case against the
applicant.

Star witness is a tainted witness

Speaking on the
issue of proof-of-evidence, Mr. Olanipekun said it is wrong for the
prosecution to use the same proof-of-evidence for both the old and
amended charge. He also noted that the evidence of the star witness
(Adewale Atanda) in the old charge was given while he was an accused
person, noting that it is wrong for the prosecution to use Mr. Atanda
as a witness against Mr. Ladoja.

Previously, Mr.
Atanda was charged along with the defendants in the initial charges
preferred against the defendants. The commission had on March 25, 2009,
re-arraigned Mr. Ladoja alongside Mr. Akanbi, based on an amended
charge, as opposed to the initial charge wherein Mr. Atanda, a the
former commissioner of finance with Oyo State, was charged along with
the duo.

The counsel further
noted that Section 27(3) of the evidence act does not permit the court
to admit such evidence, from a person classified as a tainted witness.
“Adewale Atanda remains an accused person and a tainted witness in as
much as the EFCC is relying on his statement”, he said.

Mr. Olanipekun
further observed that the prosecution has failed to appreciate Section
14(1) of the money laundering act upon which his client was charged to
court. He said the section only talked about offences relating to
narcotic drugs and other substances.

He also noted that
if the amended charge has truly supplanted the original charge, then,
there is no proof of evidence before the court.

EFCC responds

In his response,
EFCC’s counsel, Vitalis Amaotu, urged the court to dismiss the
application of the applicant. He stated that a look at the applicant’s
reply to the prosecution’s submission shows that the applicant
re-argued his case.

He noted that the
offence alleged to have been committed by the 1st defendant amounted to
an offence at the time the offence was committed and that the charges
against him was brought under an existing law.

Mr. Amaotu maintained that the amended charge has supplanted the old
charge. According to him, the star witness (Mr. Atanda) is not an
accused before the court since the prosecution has withdrawn the charge
against him.