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For the second time
since assuming office, President Goodluck Jonathan has sent a request
to the national assembly for the approval of his outstanding borrowing
plan for 2010.

In a letter to the
Senate president dated November 4th , the President asked the lawmakers
to approve the loans, saying the money will be applied to critical
projects that will improve the living standards of Nigerians immensely.
The presentation of the president’s letter is coming just a day after
the lawmakers cried out that the nation’s loans are getting high.

The National
Assembly had in April partially approved the 2010 borrowing plan which
was forwarded to them alongside the 2010 budget proposal. It will be
recalled that out of the $5.22 billion loan amount proposed under the
2010 borrowing plan, $915 million – loan amount of the World Bank
negotiated projects – was approved by the lawmakers leaving out $4.31
billion from other donors.

“Consequent upon
netting out the loan amount of $915 million already approved and
removal of two pipeline projects, the proposed loans/credits
outstanding for National Assembly approval now amounts to $3.702
billion.” the president said in his letter.

The loans and
credits would be secured on concessionary terms with repayment periods
of 25 to 40 years and a moratorium of 7 to 10 years.

According to the
President in his previous letter in August, the borrowing plan is
segmented into three broad categories that includes projects that had
been negotiated, those that were being evaluated as well as the
pipeline projects.

“The loans would be
lent to the participating states on the same terms and conditions they
are obtained from the donor agencies under a subsidiary loan agreement
that would be executed between the states and the federal ministry of
finance,” the president explained in his letter.

2011 – 2013 expenditure framework

Meanwhile,the President also forwarded the 2011 to 2013 Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) to the lawmakers.

The 2007 Fiscal Responsibility Act stipulates that the budget be
based on the MTEF which is to be approved by both the Federal executive
Council and the National Assembly before becoming effective. “The MTEF
was duly approved by the Federal Executive Council on September 8th ,
2010,” the president said in the letter accompanying the document.

The National
Assembly, yesterday appealed a Lagos high court ruling that the
constitution recently amended by the lawmakers is incomplete without
the assent of the president.

A Federal High
Court sitting in Lagos, presided over by Okechukwu Okeke, ruled on
Monday that the purported amendment to the Constitution remains illegal
until it is presented to the president for his assent and approval. The
court also declared the 2010 Constitution Amendment Act as null and
void, saying it would remain void until it is sent to the president.

However, counsel to
the National Assembly, Yusuf Ustaz Usman, in response to a suit filed
by Bamidale Aturu at a federal high court in Abuja, urged the court to
nullify the ruling delivered by Mr Okeke, saying the judge ruled in
error.

Mr Aturu however
told the court, presided over by Ibrahim Auta, that since a similar
matter has just being decided upon by a Federal High Court in Lagos, he
should invoke sections 295 (2) and refer the matter to the Court of
Appeal for interpretation, because of its urgent nature and to avoid
conflicting decisions on the same matter.

Mr Usman said he has no objection in sending the case to the court of Appeal for interpretation.

Justice Auta in his
ruling said, “I invoke section 295 of the constitution and refer the
matter to the Court of Appeal for interpretation” and subsequently
transferred the matter to Court of Appeal.

In a four page Notice of Appeal Suit No: FHC/L/941/10, Mr Usman urged the Appeal court to nullify the Lagos ruling.

“The honourable
learned judge erred in law in holding that the plaintiff has the locus
standi to institute the action,” Mr Usman argued.

He added that the
trial judge also “erred in law in holding that the Presidential Assent
is necessary in order to amend the Constitution of the Federal Republic
of Nigeria when Section 9 of the said Constitution is a special
provision which stipulates the conditions and procedures for the
amendment of the Constitution.” He urged the Appeal court to nullify
the ruling on the ground that the “trial judge violated the Appellant’s
natural and Constitutional rights of fair hearing when he failed to
consider the additional authorities submitted by the Appellant’s
Counsel which authorities were also served on the Respondent’s Counsel
far before the ruling/judgement was delivered.”

Work in progress

The lawmakers also
went ahead with the second amendment to the 1999 constitution with the
handing over of the clean copy of the document to the speakers of the
state Houses of Assemblies in the National Assembly.

Ayogu Eze, the
Senate spokesman argued that the Lagos High Court ruling has nothing to
do with the second alteration of the constitution.

“They (the courts) cannot arrest the process, they can only arrest the product,” he said.

Mr. Eze, who dispelled fears of the process heating up the polity,
noted that the process is “good for this test to go on because after we
have tested it and come to a crystallized decision; nobody is going to
revisit it in the future. We are setting line marks and these landmarks
are things that will benchmark our democracy and make our democracy
what it should be. It is a healthy development so far.”

Two of the
suspended members of the House of Representative; Ehiogie Idahosa (Edo
State) and Olugbenga Onigbogi (Osun State), were, on Tuesday, recalled
after more than three months of suspension. The duo, and nine other
members, were suspended for asking the Speaker, Dimeji Bankole, to quit
on allegation of fraud.

The members had
asked for Mr Bankole’s removal, accusing him of misusing funds budgeted
for the House’s capital expenditure in 2009, which amounted to N9
billion. On June 22, an agitation for the Speaker’s removal led to
violence which left two members injured. The leader of the group, Dino
Melaye, and five are challenging the suspension in court.

The House announced
on Monday that it will review the orders on individual basis on
conditions that the affected members quit litigations, and tender
apology. Messrs Idahosa and Onigbogi, who were both absent during the
violent session, turned themselves in for internal probe by the House
Ethics and Privileges Committee.

Their excuses

Mr Onigbogi said he
was away in India on June 22, 2010 and was not part of the events,
while Mr Idahosa said he “now understood every house has rules.” Mr
Idahosa, who is serving his third session in the house, told the
committee that since 1999 he has been a member, saying “the house has
trained me, I have enjoyed it and it has supported and exposed me by
giving me capacity.” Both members apologized before the committee,
according to the report, and have withdrawn their court actions,
standing down their allegations that Mr Bankole misused the money. As
the reports came up for consideration yesterday, they were promptly
cleared, and asked to resume sitting today where they are expected to
tender a public apology.

Mr Melaye, Solomon Awhinawhi, Bitrus Kaze, Doris Uboh, Annas Adamu,
and Independence Ogunewe have retained their challenge in court, and
have denied allegations of leading for pardon form the house
leadership. They expect a ruling November 15, 2010. The committee said
three other members of the group, Gbenga Oduwaye and Kayode Amusan, and
Austin Nwachukwu, have waived their rights to court action and last
week offered to be investigated. Weeks after the suspension, the House
Ethics Committee, which also investigates corruption allegations
against its members, promised it will probe the N9bn charge against the
speaker. No reports have been made on that.

Two
members-sponsored bills have shown up at the National Assembly, again
seeking to allow political appointees serve as delegates at the
conventions of political parties, weeks after the Senate dumped a
similar bill and the House promised to do same.

The bill, sponsored by the 44 members of the
committee on Constitution amendment, was read the first time at the
Senate, on Tuesday, while the House passed its version, released for
the first time through a second reading.

The Senate’s bill is a milder version of an earlier
amendment bill, which was proposed by the Presidency but thrown out by
the Senators, who described the earlier amendment as “toxic” to the
Electoral Act 2010.

The new bill proposes that the Section 87(8) of the
2010 Electoral Act, which prohibits political appointees at all
government levels from participating as voting delegates at party
congresses, be amended to accommodate political appointees who are
elected officials of the party.

“No political appointee at any level shall be a
voting delegate at the convention or congress of any political party
for the purpose of nomination of candidates for any election, except
where such a political appointee is also an elected officer of a
political party,” the new bill proposes.

Even though the new bill negates the rule of the
Senate that any bill which was thrown away from the floor of the Senate
cannot be re-introduced until after six months from the day the bill
was rejected, the Senate appears keen on passing it.

Ayogu Eze, the Senate spokesperson, argued that the
new bill is not on the same subject matter as the executive bill, which
the lawmakers rejected a few weeks ago.

Automatic delegates

The insistence of the lawmakers to go ahead with the
bill, despite their rules, may be linked to another change the bill
will bring to the Act. The bill seeks to set the quality and membership
of the National Executive Committee (NEC) of all political parties in
the Act by introducing subsection 12 to section 87.

According to the bill’s proposal, the membership of
every parties NEC shall include presiding officers of the National
Assembly, who are members of the political party, and chairmen and vice
chairmen of standing committees, who are members of the party in both
the Senate and the House of Representatives. There are 55 standing
committees in the Senate and 85 in the House of Representatives. Going
by the proposal of the bill, the National Executive Committee of the
People’s Democratic Party, the largest party in National Assembly,
would have about 240 lawmakers as members.

Conventionally, members of the National Executive Committee are automatic voting delegates at party primaries.

“In our own view, any law that we will make to ensure
our party rule more democratically, to ensure that there is good
governance, to ensure that you pull in more voices to increase the
breath of consultation within the political parties themselves, that
law is a desirable law, because at the end of the day, the people you
are sending there are the representative of the people,” Mr. Ayogu Eze
said, justifying the amendments.

“In any case, most of the other political parties,
except a few in the country, already have member of the National
Assembly as member of their NEC. What we are doing is not new or
strange in that law,” he added.

The House’s version of the bill is sponsored by Cyril
Maduabum and Igo Aguma. The bill, according to its sponsors, targets
“inconsistencies” in the already amended Electoral Act. One of them is
the mention of the Independent Candidate in the document, even when it
was rejected during constitution amendments.

The bill is to also reconcile provisions made about
dates in the Act, as well as the constitution. But the final part of
the bill seeks to make all members of the National Assembly automatic
members of the National Executive Committee of their parties.

The committee, to be the highest making body of the
parties, is expected to provide for an easier decision on the choice of
the bulk of party delegates.

Mr. Maduabum has denied that the bill has ill
intentions. He said yesterday that the bill is not a “reincarnation” of
the one rejected by the Senate and is not out to destroy democracy. The
House promptly read the bill the second time on Tuesday without debates.

Disbursing the loan
in Gombe, the NDE Coordinator, Abdulkadir Madubi, said the facility
will enable the beneficiaries to start off their individual businesses.
He added that the beneficiaries had learnt various trades under the
directorate’s skills acquisition programme. Each of them received
N20,000 payable within three years without interest. The Chairman of
the Physically Challenged Persons Association of Nigeria, in the state
Ali Goro, commended the NDE for the gesture and gave assurance that the
recipients would use the loan for the stipulated purpose. The
beneficiaries had undergone a three-month training in bead making,
weaving, fashion design, leather work and knitting.

The strike was
embarked upon jointly by the academic staff of Kano State
Polytechnic,Sa`adatu Rimi College of Education, Aminu Kano College of
Islamic and Legal Studies as well as College of Arts, Science and
Remedial Studies. The Commissioner for Higher Education, Aisha Ismail,
stated that all the parties were able to reach an agreement to call off
the strike ‘‘based on mutual trust’’. She noted that in view of the
fact that Kano is the most populous state in the country, available
infrastructure in its institutions were over-stretched due to
increasing number of student’s enrolment. Ismail reiterated
government’s commitment to the provision of necessary facilities and
structures at the institutions, through various strategies, including
Public Private Partnership.

For allegedly
flouting the local content bill, the Nigeria National Fitters
Association (NNFA), an affiliate of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC),
has petitioned the Local Content Commission and Monitoring Board over
alleged contravention of the bill by oil companies in the oil rich
Niger Delta region.

The Delta State
zonal chairman of the NNFA, Morrister Idibra, who disclosed this in
Warri, shortly after the inauguration of the Udu/Ughelli South local
government central unit, accused oil multinationals of alleged
deliberate disregard to the local content bill.

Mr. Idibra said
Nigerian fitters have not failed in their job, but their major
challenge has been the influx of foreigners. He then called on the
commission to take action and sanction multinationals that refuse to
respect the bill. He said it is unacceptable for jobs that could be
done by local fabricators to be given to foreigners.

The newly
inaugurated chairman of the Udu/Ughelli South LGA, Sugarry G. Djukpan,
said the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB), awaiting passage by the
National Assembly and the Nigeria Oil and Gas Content Bill, which
encourages employment of indigenous professionals in the downstream
sectors, are major development in the nation’s oil and gas industry.

Mr. Djukpan
expressed optimism that the bill would enable locals to be real
stakeholders in the management of natural resources found in their
locality, adding that locals should be allowed to participate as way of
developing their local communities and the entire nation.

He, however,
appealed to multinationals in the region to be more responsive and
ensure that the local content bill, which enables Nigerians to handle
local work in the industry, is not violated.

The Anambra State government aims to achieve over
70 percent implementation of the 2010 budget by the end of the fiscal
year, the commissioner for budget and economic planning, Chinyere
Okunna, has said.

Ms. Okunna, who addressed the media yesterday in
Awka at a town hall meeting, said only about 40 percent had been
achieved, owing to the rains, which she said had stalled road projects.

She said the purpose of the town hall budget
meeting was to ensure that the various communities made their inputs
into next year’s budget by specifying their areas of need, so that
money would be allocated to them.

“The town hall meetings are part of government’s
participatory budget preparation, which we have been pioneering. It
allows people to make their input into budgeting, unlike the situation
in the past when government imposed budget on the people,” Ms. Okunna
said.

She also noted that the state appreciated its poor
resource base and thus needed to budget meticulously and precisely by
involving the people in the planning.

The officials also said most of those involved in
the budget preparation were also part of the Millennium Development
Goals (MDGs) programme, where she said the state had equally been doing
well.

Providing water

She said the state had scaled up the provision of
boreholes to communities to enhance availability of water. This, she
said, is a back-up to bigger water projects such as five water schemes
going on in parts of the state.

Assuring them that massive road construction would
recommence after the rains, Ms. Okunna scored the state government high
in such areas as health, education, agriculture, among others.

According to her, the recent provision by the
state government of 100 buses to secondary schools, as well as the
earlier provision of computers, boreholes, generating sets, and
construction of classroom blocks in each of the 177 communities in the
state, had marked the state out as an education-friendly state.

Activities at the University of Benin (UNIBEN) and
the University of Benin Teaching Hospital (UBTH) were yesterday brought
to a halt as both the Academic Staff Union of University (ASUU), UNIBEN
chapter, and the Association of Resident Doctors, UBTH chapter,
embarked on separate protests, calling for the immediate release of Mr.
Eugene Okpere, a professor and the former Chief Medical Director, CMD,
of the University of Benin Teaching Hospital, UBTH, who was kidnapped
on Sunday morning.

The protesting doctors barricaded the ever-busy Ugbowo-Lagos Road, resulting in heavy vehicular traffic.

They also hijacked one of the recently
commissioned Edo Intra-City buses, and discharged all the passengers
who demanded a refund of their fares.

Chairman of the UBTH Resident Doctors, Omoigo
Casmir, said the state was no longer conducive for them to practise
their profession. He said they would from today embark on total strike
action and would no longer attend to emergency cases.

“We are protesting the incessant kidnappings in
the state. We want the government to wake up and fight kidnappings and
other crimes in the state. We don’t know what has happened to all the
kidnappers they have arrested,” Dr. Casmir said, calling for a total
overhauling of the security personnel in the state.

The lecturers protested through some major streets in Benin City, ending at the State Government House in GRA.

Chairman of UNIBEN ASUU, Kenneth Ilavbare, said they were demanding
the release of Mr. Okpere, who is a lecturer in the medical school of
UNIBEN.

Abductors of former
Chief Medical Director (CMD) of the University of Benin Teaching
Hospital (UBTH), have demanded for a ransom of N50 million before
releasing the man.

Eugene Okepere was kidnapped on his way to church on Sunday morning.

A close family
source told journalists yesterday that the abductors contacted the
family on Sunday night, where they made their demands and thereafter
switched off their lines without giving room for any negotiation.

Meanwhile,
activities in government hospitals across the state remained skeletal
yesterday owing to the directive from the leadership of the state
chapter of the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) to restrict their
services to only emergency cases and those already on admission before
Sunday.

Dr. Philip Ugbodaga,
the association chairman, said they had to still continue to render
skeletal services because of the presence of the old politician, Anthony
Enahoro, who is still recuperating at UBTH.

“Ordinarily, we are
to stop work totally, but we have a special guest in one of our
hospitals, Anthony Enahoro, so we are attending to people already with
us because of him, and also emergency cases. The leadership of the NMA
will meet to take a critical position on this development where medical
workers are now targets of kidnappers,” he said.

Meanwhile, as at the
time of filing this report, it was gathered that the Medical and Dental
Consultants Association of Nigeria (MDCAN), UBTH chapter, was meeting
to review the situation and may embark on total strike action to call
for the unconditional release of the former CMD who is believed to have
improved on the infrastructural and personnel status of the teaching
hospital.

Police sources
confirmed the latest development on the demands of the suspected
kidnappers, but refused to disclose what they were doing.

The state police spokesperson, Peter Ogboi, was said to be at a meeting when checked at his office yesterday.