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Lawmakers of the
Action Congress of Nigeria, in line with their party’s leadership, on
Thursday broke ranks with their colleagues over the ongoing amendment of
a section of the 2010 Electoral act to enable lawmakers become part of
the executive council of their parties.

The ACN lawmakers,
who said the amendment was self-serving, announced their position on
Thursday after a meeting with the party leadership in the National
Assembly complex, Abuja.

They said the
current amendment of the electoral act, which seeks to order all
political parties to have a National Executive Committee comprising all
the federal lawmakers, offends the Constitution and stifles the ability
of the parties to make their own constitutions and decide who attends
their executive committee meetings.

“Instead of the
feeble defence offered by its authors, that it will strengthen internal
democracy in the political parties; we say unequivocally that it can
only succeed in turning the parties to political zombies,” Usman Bugaje,
the party’s national secretary who represented the party chairman said.
“How can a zombie party thrive on internal democracy? This is a paradox
that is glaring to all except those behind the obnoxious misadventure.”
Mr Bugaje argued that prescribing uniform constitution for the parties,
with regards to the constitution of the party’s NEC, the conduct of
primaries and the other party guiding principles in the 2010 electoral
act, would limit the choice of which party Nigerians could opt for.

“This to us is like
prescribing one medicine for all ailments. This is wrong. It is not for
the National Assembly or INEC to tell all parties how to conduct their
primaries. Democracy cannot grow through such regimentation. We reject
it in its entirety,” Mr. Bugaje said.

Internal democracy

The PDP-led national
assembly, however, had argued that the various amendments in the 2010
electoral act will ensure internal democracy in the political parties.

“The talk about
internal democracy, as a reason for regulating party primaries, by the
PDP-led National Assembly, is a smokescreen, self-serving move. While
the PDP may have a reason for doing that – to satisfy a faction, we at
the ACN do not have such problems and should not be railroaded into one a
one-size-fits-all kind of arrangement. It is up to parties to determine
how their candidates will emerge,” Mr. Bugaje said.

The party criticised
almost every amendment in the electoral act, ranging from the
sequencing of elections to the proposed amendment which will make most
of the legislators member of their party’s NEC.

“We believe that the
ongoing attempt by federal lawmakers to gate crash into NECs of various
political parties is anti-democratic, self-serving and downright
unconstitutional. The national assembly as a whole whether senators or
House of Representatives fully associate ourselves with the position of
the party on this issue,” Mamora Olorunmibe, leader of ACN caucus in the
national assembly said.

Femi Gbajabiamila,
leader of ACN in the House of Representatives corroborated Mr. Mamora’s
stance. He also said some members are being victimized for opposing
contents of the proposed 2010 Electoral act amendment bill.

Strolling while the
Nigeria’s National Anthem is being recited may soon be punishable by
law, as the Senate on Thursday passed its bill through second reading.

The advancement of
the bill is a significant step in standardising its rendition as well as
protecting the National Anthem, which most of the senators agree is
currently exposed to risk of annihilation.

The bill is
sponsored by Osita Izunaso PDP from Imo state who also sponsored the
bill to mandate doctors to treat accident victims without police
reports.

“Our National Anthem
if not backed by law, might be rightly jettisoned into the historical
dustbin if any President feels he does not like it,’’ Mr. Izunaso said.

The bill seeks,
among other things, to give a legal framework to the National Anthem and
gives protection to it against unwarranted tampering and abuse.The bill
is to make the playing of the Nigerian Anthem a revered, respectful and
solemn occasion and prescribes penalties for anyone who deliberately
brings contempt and ridicule to the act.He lamented that the national
anthem which “encapsulates our collective pride and patriotism, is not
backed up with any legal instrument.”

Significant bill

Currently,there is no legislature on the use of the National Anthem.

Ayogu Eze, the
senate spokesman, said the bill is very significant as it will save the
current national anthem from the fate of the initial one.

“If we have had the
bill like the one on the floor now years ago , the old anthem will
still be in existence, because if you ask me, the old one is better than
this new one.” Mr. Eze said.

Mr.Izunaso said it
is regrettable that successive past governments “either out of oversight
or lack of political will did not care about this thereby exposing our
national anthem to the vagaries or vicissitude of tomorrow.” Every
senator who spoke supported the bill. They said if passed, the bill
would help to strengthen the sense of our national identity within and
outside of Nigeria.

The bill was
referred to the senate committee on interior matters , which would hold
public hearing on it and report back to the senate, possibly before
their tenure expires in May 2011.

Veteran filmmaker, Tunde Kelani, has
defended the governor of Lagos State, Babatunde Raji Fashola, against
criticism over his suggestion that filmmakers should befriend pirates.

Mr Fashola had, while declaring open the
2010 Association of Movie Producers (AMP) Eko International Film
Festival at the National Theatre, Iganmu, Lagos, on Monday referred to
pirates as “our brothers and sisters”. He also told filmmakers to
constructively engage pirates in order to have a win-win situation in
the fight against the menace.

“Let us understand that, they do not
dislike you. It’s not that they have a personal quarrel with you but
there is an economic opportunity there and that is the best way they
have responded to it,” Fashola had said.

However,speaking during a courtesy visit
to NEXT on Thursday, Mr Kelani, who has lost substantial revenue on
‘Arugba’, his latest film, due to piracy, said Mr Fashola meant well.Mr
Kelani, who described the Lagos State governor as the number one fan of
the entertainment industry, said people have misunderstood the man as
he would never succumb to illegality.

“I know Babatunde Raji Fashola very well
and I’m privileged to know that he has great plans for the reformation
of the entertainment industry in Lagos. Personally, he has identified
with artists and he is the number one fan of the entertainment
industry,” he said.

Reforming the industry

The award-winning filmmaker, member of a
panel Mr Fashola set up to reform the entertainment industry in the
state,disclosed that the committee had submitted its report.

“He has great plans for the
entertainment industry in Lagos State. He is passionate about that
industry. The governor knows the importance of ‘Eko’, the city of Lagos
as a major entertainment hub in the whole of Africa and [his] government
is ready to claim the number position in the entertainment
destination,” Kelani said.

Kelani, who also spoke in support of a
number of film events and festivals across the country, said it is an
indication of growth that will also boost tourism in the country.

“It’s an aspect of packaged culture which leads to tourism. This is
going to drive tourism because everybody knows that at this particular
time of the year, it is Akure, this particular time, it is Ibadan, Port
Harcourt or Yenagoa.”

The Northern
Political Leaders Forum (NPLF) on Thursday refuted reports claiming that
its consensus candidate, Atiku Abubakar, beat former military
president, Ibrahim Babangida, by a single vote.The rebuttal was
contained in a press released by the forum’s secretary, Bello Sabo
Abdulkadir.

Mr. Abdulkadir said
the report cannot be true because he was the only non- member of the
NPLF present at the voting and that none of the reporters spoke to him.

“Unknown to the
peddlers of this false report, I, Bello Sabo Abdulkadir, Secretary to
the consensus Committee was the only person present, who was not a
member of the committee,when the voting to choose the consensus
candidate took place. Yet, even I have no idea which member of the
Committee voted for which candidate simply because the voting was by
secret ballot and no member volunteered any information to that effect,”
he said, adding that “the forum would have totally ignored the report
if the report did not also attribute its story to ‘a source, who
witnessed the vote.”

He said the report
in question failed tenets of journalism in the sense that none of the
reporters spoke to him or to any member of the consensus committee. “As a
matter of fact, each member of the committee has assured me that they
have never met with any of the reporters nor spoken to any since the
conclusion of the process. How then did the reporters come about their
vote count, not to talk of matching votes and voters to specific
candidates? The report is, to say the least, highly irresponsible and
regrettable,” the statement said.

He also apologised to “all whose hard earned reputation the report
seeks to tarnish, especially the aspirants who submitted themselves to
the consensus process.”

Lawmakers of the
Action Congress of Nigeria, in line with their party’s leadership, on
Thursday broke ranks with their colleagues over the ongoing amendment of
a section of the 2010 Electoral act to enable lawmakers become part of
the executive council of their parties.

The ACN lawmakers,
who said the amendment was self-serving, announced their position on
Thursday after a meeting with the party leadership in the National
Assembly complex, Abuja.

They said the
current amendment of the electoral act, which seeks to order all
political parties to have a National Executive Committee comprising all
the federal lawmakers, offends the Constitution and stifles the ability
of the parties to make their own constitutions and decide who attends
their executive committee meetings.

“Instead of the
feeble defence offered by its authors, that it will strengthen internal
democracy in the political parties; we say unequivocally that it can
only succeed in turning the parties to political zombies,” Usman Bugaje,
the party’s national secretary who represented the party chairman said.
“How can a zombie party thrive on internal democracy? This is a paradox
that is glaring to all except those behind the obnoxious misadventure.”
Mr Bugaje argued that prescribing uniform constitution for the parties,
with regards to the constitution of the party’s NEC, the conduct of
primaries and the other party guiding principles in the 2010 electoral
act, would limit the choice of which party Nigerians could opt for.

“This to us is like
prescribing one medicine for all ailments. This is wrong. It is not for
the National Assembly or INEC to tell all parties how to conduct their
primaries. Democracy cannot grow through such regimentation. We reject
it in its entirety,” Mr. Bugaje said.

Internal democracy

The PDP-led national
assembly, however, had argued that the various amendments in the 2010
electoral act will ensure internal democracy in the political parties.

“The talk about
internal democracy, as a reason for regulating party primaries, by the
PDP-led National Assembly, is a smokescreen, self-serving move. While
the PDP may have a reason for doing that – to satisfy a faction, we at
the ACN do not have such problems and should not be railroaded into one a
one-size-fits-all kind of arrangement. It is up to parties to determine
how their candidates will emerge,” Mr. Bugaje said.

The party criticised
almost every amendment in the electoral act, ranging from the
sequencing of elections to the proposed amendment which will make most
of the legislators member of their party’s NEC.

“We believe that the
ongoing attempt by federal lawmakers to gate crash into NECs of various
political parties is anti-democratic, self-serving and downright
unconstitutional. The national assembly as a whole whether senators or
House of Representatives fully associate ourselves with the position of
the party on this issue,” Mamora Olorunmibe, leader of ACN caucus in the
national assembly said.

Femi Gbajabiamila,
leader of ACN in the House of Representatives corroborated Mr. Mamora’s
stance. He also said some members are being victimized for opposing
contents of the proposed 2010 Electoral act amendment bill.

The world’s poorest
countries are trapped in boom-bust cycles and their medium-term
prospects are a cause for concern, the United Nations Conference on
Trade and Development (UNCTAD) said in a report issued on Thursday in
Addis Ababa.

The 49 states,
categorised as Least Developed Countries (LDCs), weathered the global
downturn better than expected, but they now need a new systematic
international approach to development, rather than ad hoc emergency
measures, to reduce their economies’ reliance on raw materials, UNCTAD
said.

“They have not been
able to benefit from any global trends to wean themselves away from
increasing dependence on commodities,” UNCTAD secretary general,
Supachai Panitchpakdi, told a briefing.

The 258 report,
which was titled ‘Towards a New International Development Architecture
for LDCs,’ said though these countries were coping with recession, they
remain stuck in ‘boom-and-boost cycle’, which have long plagued their
economies, and that their medium-term prospects posed a cause for
concern.

The report said the
49 poorest countries need better-designed financing – rising from an
estimated $4 billion to $17 billion per annum by 2030 – to cope with the
difficulties posed by climate change.

“They will have
difficulty escaping poverty and ending the chronic vulnerabilities, and
even boom periods have done little to improve living standards in those
countries,” it stated.

Optimistic on growth

It said that
aggregate growth indicators showed that average GDP growth in LDCs was
4.3 percent in 2009, higher than in other developed countries.

It also stated that
donors appear reluctant to scale up their external assistance, but that
the new multilateral lending may have partly cushioned the downturn, but
it certainly contributed to the build-up of external debt.

“While debt owed to
official creditors remains far below its level of year 2000, in the
median African LDCs it increased by 1.5 percent of GDP,” the report
stated.

“By April 2010, a
total of 10 LDCs were in a situation of debt distress and another 10
were at high risk of debt distress,” it said.

The report, which was jointly presented by Jean-Noel Francois of the
Trade and Investment Department of the AU Commission, and Maryam
Dessables of the UN Economic Commission for Africa, said in spite of the
challenges, most of the LDCs would achieve the MDGs by 2015.

The Anglican
Communion plans to open a university in Jos, Plateau State to enhance
educational development. Nicholas Okoh, the Primate of All Nigeria
,Church of Nigeria, Anglican Communion, has said.

Mr. Okoh disclosed
this on Thursday in Abuja during the Anglican Educational Stakeholders’
Forum, stating that although the communion already has two universities
located in Oyo and Anambra states, it has seen the need to open another
one in Jos.

He said the
communion plans to build the new university so that those who want to go
there for ease of proximity can access to education there, instead of
travelling to far away Oyo, and Awka in Anambra States

Ihiala local
government council of Anambra State has received more than N9 million
from the Federal Government/World Bank for the Fadama III programme.

Augustine Egolum,
the director of agricultural services in the council, said on Thursday
in Ihiala that “our Fadama User Groups (FUGs) have received close to N10
million from the Federal Government for the various Fadama III projects
in the council, and the projects so far are sailing smoothly.

“We commend the
Federal Government/World Bank for the initiative, which has come to
change the fortune of farmers and other farming related productive
enterprises in the council area. It has also created jobs for school
leavers in our communities, especially in oil palm processing, animal
husbandry, and fishery projects,” she said.

She added that the money was disbursed in tranches to the various FUGs in the area.

Ebonyi rice farmers
may record low production due to the re-emergence of pest known as
‘rice gall-midge’, the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports.

The largest rice
producing Izzi and Ikwo Local government councils are worst hit by the
pest attack.Emmanuel Echiegu, the state commissioner for Agriculture and
Natural Resources, told NAN on Thursday in Abakaliki, that the
re-emergence of the pest came to the ministry as a surprise.

‘‘We thought it had
been completely eradicated. The effect of the pest in Izzi and Ikwo from
what I saw when I visited the areas is devastating and would definitely
result in poor harvest this year’’.

“Unfortunately,we
did not distribute the tolerant varieties to farmers on time to ward off
the pests from their rice farms as we did not anticipate the
re-emergence of the pest,” Mr. Echiegu said.

The Nigeria
Association of Road Transport Owners (NARTO) on Thursday in Abuja
threatened to withdraw its services nationwide if the Federal Government
fails to tackle the challenges in the oil sector.

Lawal Isah, the
National Operations Coordinator of the association, issued the threat at
a news conference on Thursday in Abuja.He said the association would
only rescind the threat if government granted an immediate bail-out of
the oil industry,by injecting physical funds to assist stakeholders who
are directly involved in the sector.

Mr. Isah said
government must also intervene in the ongoing impasse between some major
indigenous oil marketers and some financial institutions.

He added that,
government should also wade into what he described as a “frivolous
court order’’ obtained through an ‘exparte motion’ which led to the
closure of MRS group’s accounts with all banks in the country.