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The Independent National Electoral Commission
yesterday officially released the schedule for next year’s general
elections, listing the presidential and gubernatorial polls for January
22 and 29 respectively.

With a new Electoral Act as guide, and a hefty N87.7
billion budget, the timetable represents the commission’s first major
move towards the decisive elections, and ends weeks of public concern,
which peaked with the worry about government’s inability to finance the
election budget.

Attahiru Jega, the commission chairman, however,
denied the stories over the weekend, saying the commission had what it
required financially. He announced on Monday that a fresh voters’
register, a key element in the buildup, will be ready by December 9,
2010, while the actual polls may hold as early as January 8, 2011.

The schedule, released late Tuesday afternoon,
contained marked differences from earlier approved dates, which
political parties said were sent to them last week.

The National Assembly elections come first, as
prescribed in the Electoral Act, and would hold on January 15, 2011;
followed by the presidential election, which is to be conducted on
January 22.

Governorship elections and the state Houses of
Assembly elections are to hold the same day: January 29, 2011,
according to the INEC released table.

Run-offs for the governorships and the presidential
polls, if any, will hold within seven days after the announcement of
the result of the respective elections, in accordance with sections 174
and 134 of the amended constitution.

The timetable, delivered to journalists by Solomon
Shuebi, the commission’s chairman on information and publicity, showed
an ambitious drive by the commission to overcome a pertinent challenge,
which Mr. Jega acknowledged on Monday: time.

“Obviously, the more time we have, the better job we can do on this assignment,” he said on Monday.

“We have made a case for funding, and we have
received the funding that we have requested for. However, the time
constraint is still of concern, although we are doing our best to see
that we overcome it,” he said.

Start with primaries

That concern is reflected in the released table, with
critical preliminary electioneering processes, which kick up with the
voters’ registration, spanning just between September through December,
2011.

The conduct of party primaries is the first, and opens on Saturday, September 11 to October 30, 2010.

“This is to enable political parties democratically
nominate candidates for the elections, as required by section 87 of the
Electoral Act,” the commission said in the statement.

The much expected voters’ registration holds between
November 1 and 14, 2010, while substitution and replacement of
candidates by parties will end December 14.

For the registration, Mr. Jega said the commission targets 70 million Nigerians and will be rounded off in two weeks.

“We have estimated that it may take between 9 to 10
minutes to register one person using the Direct Capture Machine with
one registration officer. If we are to work 8 hours daily, we expect
that we can register up to about 70 million in 14 days.

“This has taken into consideration even possibility
of unexpected delays and so on. If there are 70 million registerable
Nigerians out there, we believe that with the deployment capacity that
we have planned for, we should be able, within a period of two weeks of
capturing with 8 hours in a day, to capture all of these,” he said.

A Federal High Court judge, David
Okorowo, disqualified himself from hearing the $180 million Halliburton
bribery scandal on Tuesday, after the federal government failed to
produce the accused persons in court.

Three weeks ago, the attorney general
of the federation and minister of justice, Bello Adoke, assured that
the suspects involved in the case would be arraigned in court. However,
when the matter came up yesterday, there were no suspects in court.

The Federal government’s counsel, Olu
Fatunde, informed the court that he had yet to serve the suspects with
court processes. Mr. Okorowo said the matter could not be mentioned if
the suspects were not in court and had not been served yet. He sent the
case file to the chief judge for re-assignment to another judge and
adjourned the suit, pending when it is assigned.

“I have no jurisdiction to entertain this matter,” declared Mr. Okorowo.

Scrambling for explanations

Several foreign companies, most notably
the U.S. oil and gas giant, Halliburton, are accused of paying bribes
worth millions of dollars to high-ranking government officials during
the process to award the contract for Africa’s first liquefied natural
gas plant in 2002 and 2003.

Mr. Adoke, who just returned from a
trip to the UK, admitted that the suspects have not been formally
served, despite being charged last week.

“The files were returned because the suspects have not been formally charged,” he said.

The attornery general added that the defendants would be served tomorrow and a new trial date would be “formally announced.”

However, in an earlier interview with NEXT, he promised that all those involved in the scam would be charged to court.

The suspects include some of the
nation’s most powerful people, but Mr. Adoke assured that the trial
would be conducted without bias, as it would boost President Goodluck
Jonathan’s anti-corruption credentials as the 2011 elections approached.

Though Mr. Adoke’s counsel refused to
release the charges to the press, suspects to be arraigned are George
Mark, the former personal assistant to ex-president, Olusegun Obasanjo
; Ibrahim Aliyu, a former federal permanent secretary; Hans George
Christ; Heinrich J. Stockhausen; Julius Berger Nigeria Plc; Bilfinger
Berger GMBH; AVM Abdullahi Dominic Bello; Mohammed Gidado Bakare; Urban
Shelter Limited; Intercellular Nigeria Limited; Sheerwood Petroleum
Limited; Tri-Star Investment Limited; Maizube Holdings Limited; TSKJ
Nigeria Limited – (a) Technip S.A.; (b)Snamprogetti Netherlands B.V.;
(c) Kellog Brown and Root Inc.; (d) Japan Gasoline Corporation of Japan.

Already in US courts

A court in the United States has already begun prosecution of the case.

In 2008, one of the suspects, Albert J.
Stanley, admitted that he orchestrated more than $180 million in bribes
to senior government officials in Nigeria. Mr. Stanley said that the
bribes were channelled through a UK-based lawyer, Jeffery Tesler, in
four installments of $60 million, $32.5 million, $51 million, and $23
million between 1995 and 2005 in London.

Top government officials and their
accomplices stashed the funds in private accounts in France, the United
Kingdom, Switzerland, Portugal, and The Seychelles.

Last week, $130 million worth of funds were uncovered in Mr. Tesler’s account in Switzerland and frozen by the US government.

Why he wants to contest

Ekiti is a place
that I know very well. I grew up there, I know the challenges that
people face day in, day out, and things are not the way they should be.
I believe we have all it takes to be a developed state. We have the
resources that God has endowed us with. Our land is very good for
agriculture. I think that is one of the things our forbearers like
Obafemi Awolowo worked on. He was able to do a lot. We want to put all
these resources together to liberate us from the bondage of poverty
that is already depressing our lives.

His line-up of programmes

If you travel from
round most of the towns in Ekiti State, apart from the state capital,
there is not much economic activity going on. I know we have the
capacity to feed Nigeria and that means many people would be gainfully
employed. The government focus would be to provide the environment for
it, either in agricultural input, and also to provide infrastructures
that are needed to make these work, good roads and hospitals that are
really functional.

It is not a strange
thing if we are saying what we had as industry, which is education, has
crumbled. We want to revive it. We are getting back to the basics.
Ekiti was different from others, so we are getting back to the basics
to build our land. If I come in as governor, we would give opportunity
to people to excel. There would be a lot of programmes to re-orientate
the youth on how they can channel their energy into productive use.

His ability to confront the incumbent state executive

It is a beautiful
thing that the reform that is being carried out in the party is
providing a level playing field for everybody. The party chairman has
said it several times over that the issue of special delegates would be
looked into so that it would create the same opportunity for everybody.
So, we are praying that such reform would be carried through to the end
so that each would almost be at the same level, selling our ideas to
the people. Ekiti people are intelligent. They know what they want.
Once they listen to ideas, they would be able to identify which one can
work, which suits their purpose, which one can really deliver. We have
seen things that are not working and we cannot just continue to fold
our hands and continue the same way, thinking that things would change.
I’m happy that there is an opportunity that there is an opportunity for
all of us to sell our ideas to the people and the people would decide.

Revenue generation challenges

If we are used to a
way of life and it is not giving us a desired result, it is time we
start thinking of other ways and I believe that just relying on
something that comes from the centre would not be strong enough to
deliver us economically. Ekiti State is regarded as a civil service
state. There are so many in the civil service that are not supposed to
be there. Their passion and talent is probably elsewhere. People are
just managing where they are and, of course, the best would not
necessarily come from them. I’m sure a lot of people would be
encouraged to resign voluntarily from that civil service to come and do
something that is more profitable to them and they would pay their
taxes and we would all be better off. We are going to have some
agencies, and their goals are to generate funds for us and they would
be given targets of which at the end of the day what comes from Abuja
would look like peanuts compared to what we are making here.

Challenges of getting people to pay taxes

Let me bring up two
that I am familiar with. There is no rich man in the world that is not
involved in the stock market. There is no financial institution in the
world, especially the big banks, that does not have a platform for
Forex and people are making huge money from it every day and these are
markets everybody can access. So, if we have an agency that we task:
grow this money to this point, it is money that every individual can
access. We employ people that can do the trading for us. If you hear
banks are declaring so much profit, most of it come from this trading.
If we have such a platform too, or we have an agency that can do that
on our behalf, I see no reason why we can’t be grossing or netting N35
billion per month.

Lack of power and his plan to transform the state

Let’s take the
present situation as a thing that would not prevail for much longer,
because we are hoping that the power problem would be tackled. There
are so many inventions in power supply, small and medium scale, that
can power little communities. I believe that by the time we have 10
communities coming together, acquiring power generation, gradually the
whole state would be covered. We want a situation whereby people would
say in Ekiti, no power interruption and before you know it, people are
relocating to Ekiti. In fact, when people think of a place to relocate
to, they would think of Ekiti and it would become a destination choice.

Reviving moribund industries in the state

Government has no
business in business. What we can do is to encourage people and of
course we would do that. I did not know the importance of burnt bricks
until I travelled outside the country. Most of the houses you see in
Europe are made with burnt bricks. Whatever inputs we can put in, and
with proper monitoring, many of those industries would come up, not
just Ire and Ikun but many of them in different parts of the state. All
these businesses, we want to ensure that we put them in the hands of
the right people, if we have to sell them through bids and of course
see how we can come in to support. Once those companies are coming up,
people are employed and everything is on.

His background

I gained admission
to Ife in 1989, where I bagged a first degree in Mathematics, and after
my service year, I went for further studies in Mathematics at the
University of Ibadan. After that, I went for another Masters in Agric
Econs before I started working in the banks. I worked in two banks. The
first was the defunct Allstates Trust Bank, then later Intercontinental
Bank before I now decided to be on my own. Presently, I’m into a little
bit of farming, property and also into electronic Forex trading.

Is “Niger Delta” an
environmental, political or economic definition? Does it have a
homogenous nationality in it, irrespective of an identity of that
unique tunic we call a “jumper,” and hat costume? When the traders at
the Wuse Market in the FCT hassle you to have a look at their
‘south-south collection’, you probably know what they mean. The jumper
is about 200 years old, and not of Ijaw origin or creation.

This was what
natives of the Niger Delta saw British merchants wearing in the 18th
Century, when they docked to load cargoes of slaves and palm oil. These
white men were sometimes called “hooligans” in the UK, after ruffians
from an Irish family living in South London. Bottles of whisky and
schnapps thrown overboard by foreign traders are dredged up and sold as
cultural artifacts in the Niger Delta till this day. If you meet an
Irish Mr Hooligan, please do not laugh; there’s nothing wrong with him.

Fashion simply
revolves. Great entrepreneurial types, successful designers and
technical people often retain an important sense of heritage in
creating a new style. Today in Nigeria, this dress-code of British
hooligans is identical with oil wealth, political authority and
dignity. It may be of minimal interest, but you never know the origins
of what you acquire or imitate from other cultures. It’s like you don’t
want to enter a restaurant kitchen to see how the food is prepared if
you want to enjoy your meal.

Heads are turned,
security men rush to open doors when men clad in this ancient outfit of
the British Merchant Navy alight from heavy Hummer Jeeps at the big
hotels in Abuja. Tailors in Nigeria are now churning out jumpers and
hats. A new elite, political, south-south identity is born! Why not?
Everybody loves a winner. Nigerians are suddenly falling over each
other to identify with and claim origins from the Niger Delta.

Fraudsters use the
jumper-and-hat to dupe, boasting of being either ‘militants’ or oil
magnates. My friend of over 50 years started wearing the jumper with
hat just a couple of years ago, claiming, “I have to show where I come
from. I’m a free-born!” I wonder that this Niger Deltan didn’t know
this all along.

New politics

As we approach the
general elections of 2011, there is a noticeable shift from tribal to
resource-based politics – even though ethnicity remains the hidden
epicentre of associations. Numbers of individuals in a particular tribe
are now less important than the size and value of minerals in a
particular area, inside the soil. If geopolitics is increasingly
encouraging Nigerians to show how much they ‘own’ in natural resources,
one has to wonder where we place individual or even group excellence
and civic organization.

Countries have gone
to war with each other over land and resources, but within a nation the
dangerous competition over resource rights must be snuffed out through
land reforms and satisfactory fiscal federalism. This is what
proponents of a Sovereign National Conference are talking about.

No one is exactly sure of the physical expanse of what constitutes
the Niger Delta, South-South, or Oil-Producing Areas, or the
demographics in these undefined enclaves. Under a resource-based
democracy, the fear of a backlash from resource-poor folks should not
be ruled out. That could be in the form of armed conflict.
Nevertheless, it has to be remembered that mineral resources are not
limitless, and few environmental conditions are permanent. Once oil is
struck in the Chad Basin of Borno State, I’m sure Nigerians will hurry
to adopt the fashion of the Kanuri.

Rail transportation is the only means to address the
ports congestion that has continually threatened the nation’s maritime
industry, Peter Irabor, the former President General of the Maritime
Workers Union of Nigeria, has said.

Mr Irabor said that the port operators are trying
their best to find a lasting solution to the perennial problem, but
advised that the federal government should not leave the responsibility
to the internal operators alone. He expressed dismay at the non
availability of functional rail system to service the ports. “How can
you have a port without rail lines to the ports? If you have rail
transportation to the ports, you can transfer containers from the port
to the north, east and other western states,” he said.

Mr Irabor, who is also the Vice President of Nigeria Labour
Congress, called on the federal government to provide rail lines from
the ports to connect all other parts of the country. “All goods that
come into the country, including cars could then be transported on
rails,” he said. The labour leader also criticized the port authorities
for their failure to replicate what they saw in other countries. “I
don’t know why our people go out there,” he said. “When they go out
there to acquire the knowledge, they drop it at the airports on their
way back to the country. They don’t take it to the industry. That is
the problem. They know what to do, but they don’t want to do it.”

The Congress for
Progressive Change (CPC) in Nasarawa State has accused Governor Aliyu
Akwe Doma of plotting to manipulate the forthcoming general elections
to the advantage of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP).

The CPC, in a
statement by its interim chairman, Muhammad El-Yakub, said part of the
plot includes elongating the tenures of local government chairmen to
give the PDP more time to manipulate the election at the local
government council levels to its favour.

Undemocratic elongation

“We declare that
the process to be embarked upon by the government is uncalled for and
undemocratic. The CPC in Nasarawa State will do everything possible to
stop any attempt to elongate the tenure of these occupiers of the
councils with all the strength we can muster,” according to Mr.
El-Yakub.

The party also said
the plot would be carried out in conjunction with the state assembly,
which is expected to pass a law that would elongate the tenure of the
chairmen.

However, the state
government has denied knowledge of the allegations. The information
commissioner, Mamman Alakayi, said he could not comment because he had
not seen such statement. He called on the party to come forward for
discussions.

“The CPC has the
alternative to engage the government for a dialogue that would make the
democratic norms in the state strong,” he said.

Poor oversight

The CPC also
slammed the Nasarawa State Independent Electoral Commission (NASIEC)
for inadequate preparations for the local government council elections,
even though the tenures of the present chairmen expire next month.

The party said the
poor preparations, compared to last year’s elections, were an
indication that the commission may be co-conspirators in the plot.

“Up till now,
NASIEC is yet to come up with guidelines for the elections; the
timetable for the elections is yet to be released,” said the party.

“Under normal
circumstances, NASIEC should have already started meeting with all the
political parties that are interested in contesting the council
elections,” it said.

The CPC stated that it would not “fold its arms and watch the alleged manipulation unfold.”

The party reminded
the state government of a judgment by a court in Lafia, the state
capital, that restricted it from appointing anyone to oversee the
affairs of local government councils.

“We enjoin NASIEC that the world is watching and it is in the best
interest of the body that it should begin, without delay, the
modalities towards conducting free, fair, and credible elections,” it
said.

The Social Action and Ogoni Solidarity Forum, two
Niger Delta based community groups, have called for the immediate sack
of Mike Cowing, the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP)’s
project coordinator in the ongoing assessment of the environmental
impact of oil contamination in the region.

In a statement issued by Celestine Akpobari, the
national coordinator of the Ogoni Solidarity Forum during a protest in
Port Harcourt against the interim report, the groups expressed concern
over the final outcome of the investigation, the final report of which
is expected to be submitted in January next year.

“UNEP’s reliance on data provided by weak government
regulatory agencies and Shell, a major polluter in the Niger Delta and
sponsor of the said exercise, has totally discredited the anticipated
report and should be considered a fraud,” said Mr Akpobari.

“We are worried that if an agency of the United
Nations is unable to protect oppressed citizens, then the people must
begin to find every lawful means of protecting themselves, and this may
be the beginning of a global crisis.” The groups decried the interim
report submitted by UNEP which claimed that 90 per cent of the oil
spills in Ogoni are caused by the locals in the process of stealing
crude from the pipelines.

Open secret

“It is an open secret that Shell and the Nigeria
government are all parties to the Niger Delta conflict. Relying on data
from their officials as a basis for assessing damages to the once
beautiful Niger Delta environment is, to say the least, the greatest
disservice to humanity, and we reject it.

“The mere allocation of figures (90:10 per cent) to
such an important issue is a complete devastation of a people’s
God-given environment and the total destruction of their livelihood.”
Mr Akpobari described the report as “a soft landing and a face-saving
measure for Shell after the show of shame in the Gulf of Mexico spill”
and called for its rejection.

The UNEP interim report, which was submitted to
Goodluck Jonathan last week, led to international controversy over its
independence. Amnesty International accused the group of being
sponsored by Shell, the Anglo-Dutch oil company, while the
environmental rights group, the Environmental Rights Action/Friends of
the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN), described the report as “not only
outrageous, but scandalous.”

UNEP, in its reaction, had said its report was interim and that the study was yet to be concluded.

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission
(EFCC) said on Monday that its officials in Kwara State arrested two
local government chairmen for alleged financial misconduct.

According to the agency’s spokesperson, Femi
Babafemi, the arrested chairmen were Tajudeen Bada of Irepodun and
James Olaniyi of Oke-Ero Local Government Areas.

Mr Babafemi said that some other persons in the
state, who were linked to the alleged misconduct, had fled Nigeria. He
said that the commission was committed to fighting corruption in our
country, in spite of what he described as “unpleasant statements from
some Nigerians”, adding that the EFCC would not be intimidated by what
it called the “level of propaganda”.

He added that the commission had a legitimate duty to investigate
and prosecute all forms of economic and financial crimes in all parts
of the federation.

In spite of
uncertainties over his membership status in the People’s Democratic
Party (PDP), former vice president, Atiku Abubakar, yesterday declared
that there is no cause for alarm over the waiver that will determine
his eligibility for the party’s presidential primaries.

Mr Atiku spoke with
the press after an inspection of the party’s secretariat which was
damaged by fire last week, and a closed-door meeting with national
chairman, Okwesilieze Nwodo, which lasted for more than 45 minutes.

Mr Atiku said that
the issue of his waiver did not come up during the meeting, saying that
their discussions centred on the “state of affairs” of the party.

“The issue of
waiver is left for the party leadership,” he said. “You people are
always with the party leadership and should find out and let me know
their position, which other Nigerians are interested in knowing, too.”

Constitutional obstacles

Mr Atiku left the
Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) to join the PDP in April, but faces a
number of restrictions within the party’s constitution before he is
eligible to run for office on its platform.

Article 8.9 of the
PDP’s constitution specifies that anyone who rejoins the party will be
placed on a year-long probation, unless granted a waiver by the party’s
executive committee. The party’s constitution also demands that
returnees have to be recommended for a waiver by the party’s chapter in
their state of origin.

However, the Adamawa State chapter of the PDP has distanced itself
from the former vice president. In addition, Mr Atiku was not on the
list of those granted waivers at the party’s National Executive
Committee (NEC) meeting last month

Ondo State
governor, Olusegun Mimiko, yesterday lamented the depleting nature of
the agricultural sector which had been neglected because of the
discovery of petroleum.

Mr. Mimiko, who
disclosed this while presenting N1 billion large Scale Agricultural
Credit Scheme letters of offer to the beneficiaries from the 18 local
government areas of the state in Akure said the agricultural sector was
stuffed with subsistence characteristics such as: low productivity,
lack of credit facilities, storage facilities, and relatively scarce
mechanisation infrastructure.

He, however, noted
that agriculture, if given the deserved attention could go a long way
in reducing the high rate of unemployment in the country. He also
informed that the state was the first in the Federation to benefit from
and disburse to farmers, the N1 billion large cale Agricultural Credit
Scheme put in place by the Federal Government for on-lending to States.

The credit scheme,
according to him, is to fast-track the development of the agricultural
sector and boost food production in the nation.

Mr Mimiko disclosed
that the Commercial Agriculture Credit Scheme was meant for the
production of crops such as maize, cassava, vegetables adding that
livestock, fisheries and agricultural processing activities were also
involved.

According to Mr
Mimiko, the Scheme offered to States by the Federal Government was to
upscale productivity, employment generation, diversification of the
revenue base and increase in foreign exchange earning capacity, as well
as availability of raw materials for the industrial sector of the
Nigerian economy.

He said, “In line
with our strategy, the State has accessed the N1 billion Commercial
Agriculture Credit Scheme Credit facility for on-lending to our
farmers, the State Executive Council, as part of its implementation
strategy, constituted both the Cabinet and Technical Committees working
in collaboration with officials of the Central Bank of Nigeria, United
Bank for Africa Plc (UBA) and other stakeholders to determine the modus
operandi for the loan scheme.

“Eligibility
criteria for accessing the Commercial Agriculture Credit Scheme include
among other things, genuine and practicing farmers, non-indebtedness of
beneficiaries to financial institutions amongst others. The Commercial
Agriculture Credit Scheme interest is 9% including all charges, maximum
tenure of 2 years and moratorium period of 6 months.

“I wish to say for
the avoidance of doubt that the N1 billion Agricultural Credit is
guaranteed by the State Government because of its genuine interest in
the well-being of our farmers and promotion of the agricultural sector.
Every beneficiary must, therefore, endeavour to utilise the credit
facility and pay back within the stipulated time frame. This would
enable others to benefit from the facility if and when repayment
schedule is duly honoured.”