Nigeria Content Online

The national
chairman of the Labour Party (LP), Dan Nwanyanwu said on Sunday that
the party will head for court to challenge the proposed bill making
members of the National Assembly members of the national executive
committee (NEC), once it is passed into law.

Speaking with
journalists in Abuja, Mr Nwanyanwu said the party has already contacted
its lawyers to seek redress in court and that the court processes are
being drafted.”We will challenge in court , we can’t afford to fold our
hands and see this bill passed into law,these lawmakers are just
arrogant , they only want to allocate more powers to themselves.” he
said.

The LP boss
wondered why the federal lawmakers are desperate in processing
legislation that is self-serving and that will not stand the test of
time.Mr Nwanyanwu said, “You will recall we told them and drew their
attention to the fact that for any act of the National Assembly to
become law must have presidential assent, including alterations and
amendments to the Nigerian Constitution, they said no, but they now
know better, the court nullify their position. Though they have
appealed but they won’t go far. “This present NASS is the worst ever,
what baffles us most is that the NASS is headed by a highly experienced
and successful military general who has served this country in
different capacities, as a military man, even as a minister. For all
these illegalities to happen under his nose is most unfortunate.
Probably it is so because of the way and manner they all got elected.

“We can forgive
Bankole as the Speaker, who is a young man who just came back from
abroad without any work experience in Nigeria, but suddenly found
himself in a position of the speaker. The man that should have guided
him and give him direction is also involved in all these.”

Beyond comparison

He said the
present crop of federal legislators cannot be compared to those of the
Second Republic. According to him, Abraham Adesanya,Wali, Nathaniel
Anah, Basil Okwu, David Dafinone, Olusola Saraki, John Wash Pam and
others were great senators who had the interest of the country at heart
unlike the current ones.

Mr Nwayanwu,
however, said it is not too late for the lawmakers to withdraw the
bill, saying, “It is not too late for the present NASS leadership to
retrace their steps and do the right thing, which is the most
honourable thing for them because this path they are towing will put
them on the wrong side of history.”

Fishermen in Akwa Ibom State have commended the Joint
Military Task Force (JTF) for freeing 19 oil workers abducted by
militants in the Niger Delta.

They also lauded the force for taking over more than
10 camps of the militants. Welcoming the JTF onslaught in the area, the
fishermen under the auspices of Artisan Fishermen Association of
Nigeria (ARFAN), urged the JTF not to relent until the hoodlums were
flushed out and their camps “annexed”.

Samuel Ayadi, ARFAN Chairman in the state, told NAN
in Eket in Akwa Ibom that the renewed activities of the militants in
spite of the amnesty programme had made it insecure to return to the
waterways for fishing.

Fifteen oil workers were abducted in Mobil and Afren
oil rigs in Akwa Ibom coastal waters in the last three weeks. Those
kidnapped including the foreigners, were freed along with four others
by the JTF operatives who raided the camps of the militants on
Wednesday.

The chairman said that resurgence of criminal
activities in the creeks had made fishermen, who were gradually
resettling sequel to the amnesty programme, to abandon their
settlements and seek refuge elsewhere.

According to him “We hail the JTF for this bold step
in restoring hope to coastal communities after renewed criminal
activities of the militants in the waterways.

“We particularly commend the military operation
which led to the freeing of the19 hostages and the take-over of many
camps used by the militants. We are grateful to the JTF and the Federal
Government for that ‘victory’ because it will enable all fishermen in
the area to return to their fishing settlements, which were vacated
following the renewed militancy,” he said.

He expressed concern over the sustenance of peace in
the area, stating that his association had lost many members who were
displaced by the militants and dispossessed of their fishing boats and
thrown into the river.

He therefore, urged the JTF to strengthen and sustain its present
posture in combating criminal activities in the coastal areas of the
region and pledged the support of fishermen in the state to the Federal
Government to maintain peace in the area “by reporting suspicious
movements and activities in the waterways to law enforcement agencies.</

Nigerian
universities should move from their traditional role of being ‘ivory
tower’ where knowledge is pursued for its own sake without it being
attuned to the immediate needs and developmental aspirations of the
society, Nigeria’s former Vice president, Atiku Abubakar has said.Mr.
Abubakar spoke over the weekend at the 5th annual founder’s day of the
American University of Nigeria, which he founded in 2005.

Speaking on the
theme, “Nigeria at 50, AUN at 5, : The Role of Universities in Solving
Societies problem,” Mr. Abubakar said the country’s attainment of the
golden age of 50 is worth celebrating, adding that the country has come
to stay.

“My position has
always been that despite the current challenges, the fact that the
various nationalities that make up the country have been together for
this long despite occasional hiccups is worth celebrating,” he
said.”Can you imagine 50 years of marriage without break up?

This is not to say
that the generalized frustration and rising incidence of poverty,
epileptic power supply, dilapidated infrastructure, collapse education
and pervasive insecurity are not justified, though.” Linking the
challenges facing the nation to the ill-preparedness of the country’s
universities to provide solution to the challenges, he stressed the
need for universities to be transformed to developmental institutions
to help arrest the decay in the country.

He said his
disenchantment with the country’s tertiary education system, which he
described as an “atmosphere where scholars engage in intellectual
pursuit but are disconnected from the practical concerns of everyday
life” was the main reason for the establishment of the AUN, which he
called a “developmental university” that which seeks to take active
participation in nation building.

Mr Abubakar said
the distinction between the traditional and developmental university
lies in the “consciousness” with which actively pursues its mission and
of being an active partner in the development process.

“In a developmental
university for instance, teaching and research are organized in such a
way as to consciously meet the development needs of a country” Mr.
Abubakar said.

Unaffordable luxury

Mr. Abubakar said
the notion of universities as ivory towers is a luxury we cannot afford
and called for universities in the country to move from their roles of
being traditional universities to one where they become “active
partners in both economic development and the nation building
processes”.

This founder’s day
was performed alongside the inauguration of the institution’s third
president, Margee Ensign. She joined the AUN in July 2010 from the
University of the Pacific, California, where she was dean of the school
of international studies.

Ms. Ensign, who
said her appointment is a great leap,announced the establishment of an
International centre for development and entrepreneur solutions and is
to be named after its founder, Mr. Abubakar.

Those at the event
are the deputy governor of Adamawa state, Bala James Ngillari; the
Lamido of Adamawa,Muhammadu Barkindo Aliyu Musdafa; Bamanga Tukur;
Ibrahim Bapetel; Dubem Onyia and Maxwell Gidado, among others.

Ahmed Joda,
chairman of the university’s Board of Trustees, said he was optimistic
the AUN would play a critical role in the country’s development.

Mr Ngillari said his adoption of the views espoused by Mr. Abubakar has made him a friend of the University.

The National
Information Technology Development Agency has trained at least 22,000
unemployed youths including graduates in Information Communication
Technology (ICT) over the past four years, Cleopas Angaye, its Director
General said at the weekend.

He said the agency works with states who have demonstrated willingness to develop the youth.

“The agency trained
15,000 people on basic computer appreciation skills, using mobile
internet units across various states/local government areas and
schools; 6,100 unemployed graduates on IT essentials; 600 graduates on
IT skilled acquisition and 100 primary school pupils in Niger State,”
he said.

“Niger state
responded and we trained 200 people from that state and provided all
the trainees with the laptops and printers. Other states did not
provide, but they made the training comfortable by providing some
subsidy for the participants, transported them and made them very
happy.”

He also said the
agency is also planning to train 750 lecturers from various tertiary
institutions drawn from the 36 states and Federal Capital Territory
(FCT) over the next six months in core IT curriculum.

He expressed concern over the unhelpful attitude of political leaders towards the development of ICT in the country.

Securing the Internet

Mr Angaye said the
agency has a target of training about 500,000 civil servants under the
ongoing Computer for All Nigerians Initiative (CANI) aimed at enabling
Nigerians to own personal computers at a cheap cost.

Mr Angaye added
that the agency also provided infrastructure backbone to networks and
connectivity for various MDAs at federal and state levels.

He also stressed
the need for the National Assembly to expedite the consideration and
passage of the Anti Cybercrime bill to reduce the spate of cybercrime
in the country, just as he unveiled the agency’s plan to introduce
SCAN-ICT initiative in an effort to tackle the menace.

“NITDA has embarked on some initiatives to improve IT diffusion in the country,” Mr Angaye said.

The Adamawa State
chapter of the People’s Democratic Party at the weekend reconciled with
Atiku Abubakar when it welcomed the former vice president to its
secretariat in Yola.

The state chapter
of the PDP had been in a long battle with the former vice president and
resisted his return to the party he left to join the Action Congress.

Mr. Abubakar marked
his return to the party with a donation of N5 million, saying he has
put past bitterness behind him and was looking to embrace the future
that lays ahead, especially as he is one of the party’s presidential
candidates.

He also said he would work for the victory of the party in the next general elections.

The former number
two citizen, who was received by top echelon of the PDP in the state
led by its state secretary, P. P. Elisha, told the gathering that he
was fully back into the party and admonished its leaders to imbibe the
tenets of internal democracy.

He enjoined the
party leadership in the state to forget their differences, while on his
own part he said he has forgiven those who tried to prevent him from
rejoining the party in the state.

“Bygone is bygone.
Let us join hands to deliver the state and the country in the next
elections. Together we can join hands to make a turn around. Let us
forgive and forget our differences in opinion, but we should stand for
the party,” he said.

Politics without bitterness

He also asked his
supporters who have left the party to return and denied insinuations
that he had a hand in the court actions being instituted by some
members against the leadership of the party in the state, wherein they
are seeking the dissolution of the state executive on the grounds that
it is illegitimately constituted.

Mr Abubakar said he
could not be associated with such double dealings and advised the party
leadership to disregard the “baseless accusations”.

“All members
intending to return to the party should be allowed back into the party
without inhibition,” Mr. Abubakar said. “PDP is a very large family
that can accommodate everyone.”

Mr. Elisha
acknowledged Mr Abubakar as an accomplished politician who was among
the founding fathers of the party and as a party man had worked to
establish the party in the state.

He said the
presidential candidate, as an astute party man, should be emulated by
all as he exemplified the truism of “politics without bitterness”.

The chairman of the party, Mijinyawa Kugama was, however, absent at
the occasion. A statement from the party said he was away attending to
his sick son in a Maiduguri hospital.

Burkina Faso’s
leader Blaise Compaore appealed to voters on Sunday to cast their votes
amidst early signs of a weak turnout in a presidential poll where he is
seen as the clear favourite.

Compaore, 59, has
carved himself a niche as an important and sometimes a controversial
power-broker in the unstable West African region,with analysts in
particular citing his role in pushing for a return to civilian rule in
Guinea.

A Reuters witness
who toured the capital Ouagadougou noted only a trickle of early voters
and said a number of opposition parties had failed to place
representatives at polling stations to monitor the vote.”Voters should
turn out in large numbers for this election because it is an
opportunity for us to take stock and also to plan for the future,”
Compaore told reporters as he cast his vote in a booth in the capital
Ouagadougou.

Compaore seized
power in a 1987 coup. Despite allowing multi-party politics he has
faced little or no real opposition in a gold-mining and
cotton-producing country where income per head is half the average for
sub-Saharan Africa.

Compaore last won
election in 2005 with an overwhelming 80.3 percent. A weak turnout
among the 3.3 million registered voters would nonetheless undermine the
credibility of the poll result, which is due to be declared by November
25 at the latest.

A landlocked
country of 15 million people, Burkina Faso has avoided the instability
that has plagued its neighbours and has in recent years benefited from
high gold and cotton prices.But while Ouagadougou hosts a top African
film festival and has established itself as a venue for international
conferences,it is stuck at 161st place out of 169 countries on the
U.N.’s Human Development Index, a composite measure of life quality.

“It’s true, here,
we haven’t got anything but at least we have peace and that is the most
important thing,” said pensioner Alfred Ilboudo. “This isn’t perhaps
the best regime but I am voting for peace — just look around us.”
Others said they would vote against Compaore, but had little faith in
any of the six opposition candidates, none of whom has has had the
financial means to match a campaign that has seen him hold rallies in
even far-flung rural areas.

“It’s a foregone
conclusion,” said teacher Omar Tapsoba. “I am voting just to ease my
conscience because I don’t want to think that tomorrow this government
will still be in power because I didn’t cast my vote.”

REUTERS

The Premier
Regional Catholic University, the Catholic Institute of West Africa
(CIWA), says all is now set for its first convocation in 28 years.

The News Agency of
Nigeria (NAN) reports that the Catholic university,the first in the
West African sub region, is to award diplomas, first degrees and post
graduate degrees in theology and religious studies during the
convocation.

A spokesman for the
university, John Gangwari, told NAN on Sunday in Port Harcourt that
events would commence on November 23 with a convocation mass to be
conducted by the Apostolic Nuncio to Nigeria, Augustine Kasujja.

He said His
Eminence, Anthony Cardinal Okogie, would deliver homily at the service
with more than 10 cardinals and bishops drawn from the Vatican and
other parts of Africa.

Mr. Gangwari said
that the convocation lecture on “Theology and the Future of the Church
in Africa and her People” would also be delivered.

He said the lecture
would be delivered by His Eminence, Peter Cardinal Turkson, the
President of Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Vatican City
through Monsignor Mathew Hassan-Kuka of the Kaduna Archdiocese.

President Goodluck
Jonathan, who is also expected to grace the occasion, would be
represented by the Rivers State governor,Chibuike Amaechi.

He added that
diplomas, first degrees and high degrees would be conferred on past
students of the institute and that 25 Nigerians would be awarded papal
honours during the event.

They are the PDP
National Chairman, Okwesilieze Nwodo, Governors of Kaduna,
Ebonyi,Anambra and Enugu States, Patrick Yakowa, Martin Elechi, Peter
Obi and Sullivan Chime and the Deputy Governor of Plateau, Mrs Pauline
Tallen.

Others are former
Governors of Rivers and mo States, Peter Odili and Achike Udenwa, ABC
Orjiako, wife of Lagos state governor, the vice-chancellor of the
Federal University of Technology, Owerri and Celestine Onwuliri.

Mr. Gangwari said CIWA had provided quality education in the last 28
years, but finances had been a great challenge, while “Government has
never extended grant to CIWA,” he said.

The Nigeria Customs
Service (NCS) says it has intercepted 11 containers of prohibited goods
valued at N100 million along the Owerri-Port Harcourt road.

The Spokesman, Wale
Adeniyi, in a statement issued on Sunday, said that the goods were
intercepted at the weekend by a special anti-smuggling squad of Zone
“C” Federal Operations Unit, Owerri.

The statement said
that the controller of the unit, Abdul Amadi, suspected fundamental
irregularities in the clearance of the containers which were falsely
declared as personal effects.Items found in the containers included new
household and office furniture with accessories and textile materials.
Others were assorted wines, canned foods,vegetable oil, tissue papers
and other supermarket items on the import prohibition list, the
statement said.

He re-affirmed the
Customs’ commitment to re-energising the nation’s economy by fighting
smugglers to a standstill.“The stakes are too high now. With the
general elections around the corner, we have stepped up our vigilance
to ensure that arms and other dangerous items are not imported into the
country.

“Economic saboteurs who bring prohibited goods must also be made to
lose their investment,” the customs said in the statement.The
statement said that the capacity of the customs in confronting
smugglers had been greatly enhanced through the acquisition of more
patrol vehicles and the increasing level of morale among customs men.

America is watching
her new television show, following her observations on Twitter, and
adjusting to an increasingly obvious idea: Sarah Palin has her eyes on
the U.S. presidency.

She told
interviewer Barbara Walters on ABC News this week that she thinks she
can beat President Barack Obama when he seeks re-election in 2012.

Polls suggest otherwise but Palin has two years to prepare and she’s busy.

This week, she
launched a weekly TV program “Sarah Palin’s Alaska.” Her daughter is a
contestant on another program called “Dancing With The Stars.” (Palin
appeared in the audience for that this week too). She was active in the
Congressional elections earlier this month, she’s promoting a new book
and offers her opinions on the internet as well.

The former governor
of Alaska, Palin emerged as a national figure just two-and-a-half years
ago, when then Republican presidential candidate John McCain startled
the country by choosing her as his vice-presidential running mate.

That was a campaign buoyed by surprise. This time the strategy seems to be saturation. And there are still two years to go.

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

Due to the
regular conflicts that occur between Fulani herdsmen and farmers in the
Gwagwada district of Chikun local government area of Kaduna State, a
conflict resolution committee has now been set up in the council.

The conflicts
usually arise over ownership of land between migrant herdsmen and
indigenous farmers, with cattle invading farms and destroying crops; or
cattle drinking from streams where humans drink. According to Habila
Kaura Jatau, who is a farmer and the chief of Dutse, a village in the
district, some portions of land far from the farms were initially
allocated to the herdsmen, but due to climate change, pasture has dried
up in that area and herdsmen are now occupying the same area with the
farmers.

“Before, they
gave the cattle rearers land far from the farmers, but with this change
in weather, we are now mixed up. What they do sometimes is that after
harvest, they rush down to where they can get feed for their cows. And
since we are mixed together, in the rainy season, and the lack of food
for the cattle, it would cause problem one way or the other between
farmers and cattle rearers in that when they come to somebody’s farm,
dispute will arise. We are already facing our own problem, because now
it is very hard to produce anything without fertiliser, and you now
come and destroy the crops, there will be problem,” he said.

Jamilu Sani, a
Fulani herdsman in the community, said they have been migrating
southwards over the years, basically looking for greener pasture for
their cows.

“We have some
problems because the cows do not have enough food to eat, so we have to
travel far to where we can find food for them,” he said.

According to Mr.
Jatau, such disputes are first taken to the village head, then to the
district head, then to the local council, with the owner of the
straying cattle usually asked to pay a monetary compensation to the
farmer whose crop was destroyed.

“But even if the
conflicts are resolved without violence, there will always be conflicts
because we are still together and since places are developing, it is
difficult to find bush where the cattle rearers can stay on their own,”
Mr. Jatau said.

Moving South

According to
Yahaya Ahmed, the chairman of the Developmental Association for
Renewable Energies, DARE, it has been discovered that about 200
villages have disappeared in the top northern Nigeria due to
desertification.

This was found
during their survey to substantiate their claim of adverse conditions
in the Sahel region of northern Nigeria, due to deforestation and
desertification for the approval of their Clean Development Mechanism
CDM project by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate
Change, UNFCCC. The project is distributing Save80 stove, a wood stove
which cooks food for about 50 people using just one kilogramme of wood
[dry sticks] as well as solar cookers. The Save80 stove is aid to be
saving 80 percent of trees in these regions.

“Since we could
not get any useful information from the government, we decided to do
the survey ourselves. So we started talking to migrants around Kaduna
and Abuja; we discovered that about three-quarter of them had migrated
from Yobe. That’s why we chose Yobe as our baseline.

“While we
interacted with the people there, we discovered that about 200 villages
have migrated from an area between a place called Dapchi, north of
Damaturu, to the northern border of Nigeria with Niger Republic. The
Sahara desert had taken over their villages and they had to migrate to
different parts of the country, including Lagos,” Mr. Ahmed said.

These migrations
do not happen only from northern Nigeria; some of the migrants also
come from Niger Republic. According to Mr. Ahmed, it happens mostly in
the dry season when many of the youth in the rural areas are idle.

They move into
cities southwards and take up jobs as cobblers, Okada riders
(commercial motorcyclists), and water vendors. They arrive cities like
Lagos on trucks bringing beans, tomatoes, onions, and cows. Some return
to the north to farm during rainy season, some don’t.

Decrease in farm yield

Adamu Tanko, an
associate professor of geography and agricultural development and the
head of Geography Department, Ado Bayero University, Kano, has been
conducting a research on Climate Change and Adaptation, sponsored by
Heinrich Boll Foundation, through Tubali, a non-profit organisation
focused on rural development.

In Cifatake, a
village in Kaduna State, he discovered a gradual decrease in the amount
of rainfall from 1000-1200mm about 50 years ago to 884-1000mm in recent
times. He also noted that rainy season now starts late April and ends
early November, as against March to end of November that it used to be
some years ago. Coupled with tree-felling for firewood, the vegetation
cover is gone and erosion has set in, said Mr. Tanko, resulting in low
yield. So, the people are taking up other professions as hunters and
blacksmiths.

Climate change is to blame

This situation
across northern Nigeria, which is linked to global warming and climate
change, is putting a lot of pressure on the land in the middle-belt
within the Guinea Savannah. This, according to some organisations
studying the “ethno-religious” conflicts that have led to the death of
hundreds of people in Jos and Kaduna, is the root of the conflicts.

“The conflicts
that people say are religious are not. Ethnicity and religion are just
the triggers because they are the major sources of identity for most
Nigerians. The key issue is fight for economic and political control.
Jos became a city where a lot people came because of the tin mining and
the serene environment until it was divided into different zones then
we started hearing of ‘indigenes’ and ‘settlers’ and the tussle began”
said Sani Suleiman, programme manager, Emergency Relief and Peace
Building, Justice Development and Peace Commission, JDPC, Jos.

Nnimmo Bassey,
the executive director of the Environmental Rights Action/Friends of
the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN), who was named winner of the Right
Livelihood Award (also known as the Alternative Nobel Prize) in 2009,
raised more alarm. He said Nigeria is not only threatened by the Sahara
desert, with increasing temperature due to global warming, the country
will lose coastal lands due to sea rise and hinterlands from gully
erosion in the southeast.

Economic survival

“The violence in
the middle-belt, particularly in Jos area, is not just an ethnic thing;
it’s not people struggling for political posts; it has an environmental
root. Because more pastoralists are going to come down from the North,
the more the desert spreads and Lake Chad dries up.

“They have to
look for good grazing land; fishermen are going to look for somewhere
else to fish. And the more the Niger-Delta environment gets polluted,
we will begin a system of eternal displacement from the South and also
from the North. And the displaced people will migrate and they going to
meet at the Middle-belt. Imagine if the southern part goes under water,
more people will be naturally displaced.

“So, the violence we are seeing in the Middle-belt is a foretaste of what our children are going to face,” he said.

Mr. Bassey said
one of the first steps in handling this environmental challenge is to
stop gas flaring in the Niger-Delta, which is one of Africa’s biggest
contribution to global warming.

Just as the
desertification in the North, coastal erosion is gaining ground along
the 853km Nigerian coastline. Properties along the coast like Goshen
Beach Estate, Lekki, Lagos, are now being threatened.

Larry Awosika,
the head of the Marine Geology and Geophysics Division of the Nigerian
Institute for Oceanography and Marine Research, NIOMR, said the sea was
over 100 metres away when the estate was built in 2003. Now it is less
than 20 metres away and the deep drain that was built to channel waste
into the ocean is now completely filled with sand.

He said the regular ship wrecks that lie perpendicular to the sea shore accelerate the coastal erosion.

“The littoral
drift, that is the movement of sediments in the near-shore, is usually
from west to east. So these ship wrecks act as groins. On one side,
there is deposition of sediments; while on the other side, there is
rapid erosion,” he said.

Apart from the
coastal erosion, experts say the recent flooding in various parts of
the country, especially in the Lagos region, is a result of the
ecological imbalance caused by climate change.

Climatic predictions

Victor Fodeke,
head, Special Climate Change Unit, Federal Ministry of Environment,
said climate change could exacerbate tension between and within
countries, leading to politics of insecurity, as countries focus on
protecting themselves from impacts.

The
Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, predicts that between
75 and 250 million people in Africa will be affected by flooding in
2020, which will result in the destruction of traditional living
environments, more limited access to clean water, decreasing food
production from farms, forests, and aquaculture; and threats to food
security.

Recent history in
Nigeria points to the fact that if this prediction and other climate
change predictions come through, more serious conflicts will most
likely generate from the Middle Belt region than can be handled by the
type of conflict resolution committee that currently exists in Chikun
Council.