Nigeria Content Online

The Nsukka Local
Government Council has commenced the distribution of fertiliser free of
charge to registered farmers. Nnamdi Ubochi, the Supervisory Councillor
for Agriculture in the council, told journalists in Nsukka, Anambra
State, on Wednesday, that the beneficiaries included members of the All
Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN) and Fadama User Groups.

He said that 200 AFAN members had collected 200 bags of the 50kg
category of the commodity and according to him, 150 members of the
Fadama User Groups will collect 1,500 bags of the 25kg category
provided by the state government. When contacted, Bartholomew Ugwu, the
AFAN Chairman in the area, confirmed that his members had collected
their share of the commodity, while Nkeiru Agbo, the Desk Officer,
FADAMA User Group said “that only genuine registered members with
demonstration farms will collect the fertiliser.”

Three telecoms
firms have subscribed to a new undersea cable linking Nigeria and West
Africa to Europe, paving the way for a transformation in Internet
access in Africa’s fastest-growing telecoms market.

The Nigerian arm
of Etisalat, South Africa’s MTN and Nigeria’s Starcomms are among the
first to sign up for broadband services from the cable, its operator
the Main One Cable Company said on Wednesday.

The 7,000 km fibre
optic cable, built in partnership with U.S. firm Tyco, runs from
Portugal to Nigeria and Ghana, and also branches out to Morocco, the
Canary Islands, Senegal and Ivory Coast.

Main One says the
cable delivers more than ten times the broadband capacity of the South
Atlantic Terminal (SAT-3), Nigeria’s sole existing undersea cable, and
will enable service providers to offer cheaper and more reliable
internet access.

“Those
pre-construction customers … that have taken up our services to date
are Etisalat, MTN and Starcomms,” Main One chief executive Funke Opeke
told investors and telecoms executives at a launch ceremony in the
commercial hub Lagos.

Participants from
Bangalore, London and Johannesburg took part in the launch using
teleconferencing facilities — not previously possible in Nigeria —
hosted by U.S. router maker Cisco Systems Inc, which is partnering with
Main One to develop applications for the Nigerian market.

Steven Evans,
chief executive of Etisalat’s Nigerian arm, told Reuters his firm was
testing the cable and would go live on it within a day or two.

“We are working
very hard at the moment to go live on the network, hopefully within the
next 24-48 hours … so that we will be one of the first people to be
having broadband on the main network in Nigeria,” Evans said.

Evans said the
cable would enable mobile phone operators to launch enhanced services,
increase speed and lower prices, boosting competition in Africa’s most
populous nation of 140 million people.

MTN is Nigeria’s
biggest mobile operator but faces tough competition from local firm
Globacom and from India’s Bharti, which last month completed a $9
billion acquisition of the African operations of Kuwait’s Zain.

Main One’s cable will close the technology gap between Nigeria and
other parts of the world. The cable, which has a capacity of 1.92
terabits, can accommodate 1 million MP3 downloads and 100 million voice
calls per second. South Africa’s capacity is 1.28 terabits.

The
senate yesterday opened hearing into the “insolvency” controversy of
the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation and was presented with a
letter in which the company admitted it has financial difficulties.

In the
correspondence sent to the Federation Account Allocation Committee,
headed by the Minister of State for Finance, Remi Babalola, the NNPC
spoke of the challenges it has faced in meeting its responsibilities
and said it was “insolvent.”

“NNPC is facing
financial difficulties evidenced by amongst others, the inability to
pay for domestic crude as at when due and delays in settling bills for
fuel imports; the financial difficulties essentially stem from
disequillibrium between costs and cash inflow streams; that the
corporation is owed substantial amounts as un-reimbursed subsidy on
petroleum products,” the corporation said in the letter.

“NNPC spends
increasing sums of money in repairing/replacing vandalized assets and
is suffering from products loses arising therefrom; the cost of holding
strategic reserve of petroleum products on behalf of the Federal
Government including demurrage are borne by NNPC.

“NNPC is insolvent
as current liabilities exceeded current assets by N754 billion as of
December 2008 and so; NNPC is incapable of repaying the N450 billion
owed to the Federation Account unless it is reimbursed the N1.156
trillion from the Ministry of Finance,” the letter concluded.

The NNPC Group
Managing Director, Austin Oniwon and Mr. Babalola, yesterday, appeared
before the Senate committee on Petroleum Upstream and Downstream, in
the aftermath of the controversy raised by Mr. Babalola’s comment that
the company is “insolvent”.

Mr. Oniwon said the
memo was to explain the challenges that the cooperation faces which
made it unable to pay up the N450bn it owes the FAAC.

Refusal to pay debt

The corporation’s
boss told Senators that although the NNPC was in a position to pay the
debt, it refused to do so because of the Federal Government in turn
owes it N1.5 trillion.

The amount results
from years of withdrawal effected by past governments who ordered for
funds without receiving National Assembly approvals, the Mr. Oniwon
said.

He said when the
Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) was to be established, the then
President directed the NNPC to release N651 million for the take off
but the money was not refunded.

Also, he said when
a sugar company was to be established, the president (unnamed) again
asked the corporation to release $18 million, which has not been
refunded.

The Senators who expressed shock at such directives, ordered the corporation to present its annual accounts since 1999.

Mr. Babalola denied knowledge of the Federal Government owing the
NNPC N1.5 trillion as, according to him, the Federal Ministry of
Finance has always released funds for the payment of petroleum subsidy.

The Federal Capital Territory (FCT) is set to generate its
electrical energy from waste, Bala Mohammed, the minister of FCT said yesterday
in a meeting with the senate committee on FCT on Tuesday in Abuja.

The minister said the city has enough sewage and other wastes to
fuel the power plant for 10 years. “I have discussed with President Goodluck
Jonathan and he gave us the go ahead to conduct a feasibility study on the
project,” he said. He added that the feasibility study showed that the city’s
waste pile can generate enough electricity to power the city centre and its
suburbs. “We will convert waste to power, enough to power the FCT,” he added.

The power plant is one of the infrastructural development
projects the minister says he intends to achieve in his administration. Besides
the power plant, the minister also said he is restructuring the estate
development policy and the tenancy law to discourage “suit case developers” and
protect tenants from harsh demands by the developers respectively.

Urban planning and
control

“We will not continue to condone suit case developers who will
carry lands in their suit cases for profiteering rather than develop them,” Mr.
Bala said. He added that since the past eight years, only about 2.8 percent of
the lands given out to developers have been fully developed.

Meanwhile, demographic statistics indicate that about 50, 000
people and settle in the FCT every month. The senate committee chairman,
Abubakar Sodangi (PDP Nasarawa state) had earlier told the minister how
dissatisfied his committee was with the disproportionate growth of
infrastructure and human population in the city.

Mr. Sodangi, however, blamed the unbalanced growth on the inability of the
past ministers. “FCT transport sector is in a serious state of disarray or
chaotic,” he said. According to the minister, the intended tenancy law will
outlaw the requirement of paying more than one year rent from tenants.

He added that regulating the rates charged by landlords will reduce the
incidence of corruption, arguing that the cut-throat cost of rent, and the
demand for two or three years advance rent by landlords fuels corruption. He,
however, stated that the new tenancy law will also protect the interest of
developers. “There is need for a tenancy law that is in tandem with our micro
economy,” he said.

The Supreme Council
for Sharia in Nigeria has extended its lawsuit to the National Agency
for the Prohibition of Traffic in Persons and other Related Matters
(NAPTIP) for its investigation of Zamfara State Senator Ahmed Yerima to
an underage Egyptian girl.

The council asked a
Federal High Court sitting in Abuja, to join NAPTIP to the suit because
it had twice invited Mr. Yerima to appear before it over his marriage
to a girl who could be as young as 14.

Mohammed Ndanusa
Katu, the lawyer representing the council, said the essence of joining
the agency to the suit was to make its support for the senator clear.

The council said that Mr. Yerima had the right to marry up to four
wives under Islamic law, and that the National Assembly had no right to
interfere with such marriages.

The trial judge,
Adamu Bello, granted the application and joined NAPTIP to the suit,
saying the organisation was not opposed by any of the parties already
involved.

Justice Bello
adjourned the case until October 22 and told parties to file and
exchange written addresses so as to pave way for their adoption.

The council had
sued the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the National Human
Rights Commission (NHRC). It asked the court to declare that Mr.
Yerima’s fundamental human rights had been breached by the
organisations’ decision to investigate the marriage.

The council had
also asked the court to stop the lawmakers from taking any steps,
decisions, or actions in relation to the matter.

Chairman of the Nigeria Union of Journalists, Lagos State Council,
Wahab Oba, said his new project is to rehabilitate his abductors if the federal
government gives him backing and support.

He spoke on his ordeal in the hands of his kidnappers. Excerpts:

Kidnappers’ grouse

At a time we were discussing with these boys, they told us what
led them into the crime was a result of neglect by the government. They alleged
further that politicians used them to get to offices to loot the treasury, only
to later abandon them.

Hence, they resorted to using their own brain to make money
through kidnapping. It was at this stage that the thought of rehabilitating
them came to me. I even promised to swear for them to know how genuine my
proposal was.

Rehabilitation for
kidnappers

Even their leader said if he has a means of livelihood, of
getting N15, 000 as salary every month, he would drop the guns. They said
amnesty promised them by government is not forthcoming, when he said this, it
was then I started thinking how do I get to these boys if we are eventually
released?

I want to use my
influence as Chairman of NUJ to get in touch with their state governor, which I
am already doing. I also desire to connect the president to give them amnesty,
to reach understanding. It may not be announced. To let them come and not
arrest them or prosecute them, to give them that freedom to come out and
surrender their guns. When they do that, I will now rehabilitate them. I will
now re-orientate them.

I will now repackage
them. When we do that, they would have means of livelihood. Then we can now use
them as agent to change others who are still in the bush, to have a better
life. That is the target. That also depends on if they call me. I gave them my
own phone number, but they didn’t give me their own numbers. So, if they call
me and trust me, because they didn’t trust anybody, then we will now see how to
do that.

Kidnappers have
informants

Another worry about the operations of the kidnappers is that
they operate effective networking with their informants. Investigations while
with them revealed that their informants are mostly females who gave them
adequate information about police operations.

The truth is that, consistently, they have people who informed
them on the operations of the police and people outside. How the police were
moving, how police are strategizing. Somebody kept informing them and that
voice is a woman’s voice. So, they have informant. Even apart from that, they
have informants in the community.

A nongovernmental organization, The Patriots, has called on the
National Assembly to pass a law to prescribe death penalty on anyone found
guilty of aiding and abetting production and distribution of counterfeit drugs
in the country.

The organization made the appeal at the 8th edition of its free
mobile clinic held at Papalanto, in Ewekoro Local Government area of Ogun
State. President of the organization, Olatubosun Fadeyi, said introduction of
death penalty for producers and hawkers of substandard drugs would prevent
perennial problems of loss of lives as a result of consumption of these drugs.

“The government should also come up with a legislation which
will establish a death penalty for anyone guilty of aiding and abetting the
production and distributions of fake drugs in the country,” he said. Mr Fadeyi,
who is also the Senior Registrar, Family Medicine, Sacred Heart Hospital,
Lantoro, Abeokuta expressed worry that many Nigerians have lost their lives due
to lack of access to modern healthcare services.

“It is disturbing to note that many of our people are dying
slowly of ailments which could have been prevented had our governments put in
place adequate health enlightenment programmes,” he said. “It is pertinent to recognize
the fact that the government cannot do it alone. It requires the concerted
efforts of all and sundry, this is why The Patriots came in to educate and
enlighten people on health-related matters, as well as provide free healthcare
services.”

Stop the crime

The Permanent Secretary in the Ogun State Ministry of Project
Monitoring, Tokunbo Odebunmi, said the group’s call was one way to stop the
crime. “Death sentence is synonymous to the people who can kill like armed
robbers,” he said. “Anybody that produces fake drugs wants to kill, so, if he
is caught before he kills, he should be killed too before he kills anybody. I
don’t have anything against very penal and stiff penalty against fake drugs
hawkers, because of money you want to kill other people. I don’t think that is
good.”

The representative of Lafarge, the company that sponsored the exercise,
Irene Adesina, advised beneficiaries to use the free drugs given to them as
prescribed by the physicians and urged the people in the community to support their
leaders for the development of the area. “Three months ago, they (The Patriots)
came to us and we supported them financially; they must be commended because
despite their educational background, they are involved in social services,”
she said. Over 500 people were given free medical services, including screening
for diabetes, hypertension, mass de worming exercise, health education and free
distribution of drugs worth N800, 000

When he first came into Nigeria and paid a visit
to Ministry of Information and Communications, Enrique Fernando Arrundell,
Ambassador of Venezuela to Nigeria courted controversy after expressing
dissatisfaction with the suffering of Nigerian masses.

Now, his embassy has decided to lend a helping
hand by providing 30 Nigerian students with scholarship in Venezuela.

In this interview, he talks about his expectations and how the scholarship
works. Excerpts:

The scholarship programme
for Nigerians

What I will like the people of Nigeria to know is that this
scholarship is a programme put in place few years ago in Venezuela, called
Programas de Becas Scholarship and involves collaborating with developing
nations where we have our embassies. We have stepped in to give the less
privileged a scholarship.

This scholarship basically is for students aspiring to study
Medicine and Agriculture. Children who will benefit from this scholarship will
have great advantage over other children. When they get to my country, they
will be attended to by my people with all the love and we will make them at
home. It is not only education package that we are offering them, we will give
them love, inspiration and hope. Because we know the tragedy that Africa
somehow is passing through: the aftermath of colonization.

The wound is very fresh in the lives of the Africans. So we will
offer them tenderness, make them understand that they have a future and that
they can be individuals that will change their nations. It will offer them
opportunity to mix with children from other parts of the world. Something that
is going to happen is that when these children come back to Nigeria, they also
would have learnt Spanish language. They will understand the other parts of the
planet. We want them to be citizens of the world.

The selection process

This year, we have 30 Nigerian students who have obtained
scholarships to study either Medicine or Agriculture in Venezuela. Time was
very short and we sent a letter to the federal ministry of education, informing
them of what we wanted to do. But next year, we hope to send a large number of
Nigerian students to Venezuela and I hope the Ministry of education will work
together with the embassy in order to achieve this.

I would like the ministry to be more involved because last year
we sent a letter to them; they replied us saying they were going to send a
list. We were not asking them for a list, but for them to know what we intended
doing. So what we did was to speak to principals of some public schools in
Kaduna, Nasarawa, Imo State, Taraba and other parts of Nigeria.

We wanted a majority of students from different places, so we
went to the public schools and the principal gave us a list of students that
have just graduated. A delegation from the Becas Foundation came here and
interviewed them. The main set of children we are looking for are the less
privileged. None of those we selected had been to an airport before. None of
them had stepped onto an aircraft and some did not have the money to the
airport on the day of their departure. Even one of the governors in north-east
helped out in supporting some of them, especially with the clothes they wore
while leaving Nigeria.

2011 Selection Exercise

We will continue. My only expectation is for the ministries of
education and foreign affairs to participate more closely. We need to have
meetings so they can help us coordinate everything. We are expecting to
increase the number of children participating in this programme next year. We
are planning that, from the 36 states, we will have about four or five children
each.

This will add up to about 180 Nigerian children travelling to
Venezuela next year to study Medicine and Agriculture. So we will have a full
representation of Nigerians in my country. Right now, I am also building a
school in Taraba State for about 600 children and we have a programme in which
we locate schools that are severely damaged and we renovate them. We believe
that more than businesses and politics, we have to think about the people. They
need us and what they demand for us is attention. In my country, our attention
is focused on the people.

Venezuela education
policies

Since our president, Hugo Chavez came to power, we have built
over 19 new universities in my country in less than ten years. Education is absolutely
free from kindergarten to university and we have a programme in which we feed
children in school.

We give them books and give then everything because we know that
if a nation is well educated, the possibility of its being successful in the
future will be much higher. Few years ago, the United Nations Educational
Scientific and Cultural Organization, UNESCO declared Venezuela a
non-illiterate country. So we do not have illiterate people.

Government introduced a particular programme that made it possible
that, within one year and half, we taught over one million and half Venezuelans
that cannot read and write how to be literate.

We copied the programme from Cuba and it is called ‘I CAN’. What
works is cooperation, brotherhood and love for the nation.

Utilisation of petroleum
resources

We are an oil producing country and 60 per cent of oil money in
my country goes to social programmes. Drugs are given free also. Education is
free and this because the oil belongs to the Venezuelans. We control our resources
and distribute it in appropriate way that each Venezuelan can enjoy the
resources.

We also have the lowest cost for fuel in the world. We only need
two dollars to fill a fuel tank. That is why we can say now that we are totally
independent – politically, economically, and educationally. In Venezuela in
1919, we made a constitution and, in one of the chapters of the constitution,
it was agreed by all the masses that no one can rent it, lease our natural
resources, because it belongs to Venezuelans. So, if the gold, iron, oil,
diamond, uranium belong to the Venezuelans, they have to first enjoy all the
resources. It is not a big thing.

Advice to Nigeria

I do not like giving advice because I know Nigerians are
capable. They are one of the most important and intelligent people. I am not
saying this because I am a diplomat in Nigeria, but it is something that is
true and has been proved. The only way we can help is through collaboration and
cooperation and that is why we are here.

If the people that are in charge of health or education can sit
down with us, we can share our experiences and it is up to them to take what is
convenient for them. We cannot pretend because it is only Nigerians that have
solution to their problems. If Nigerians have control of their resources, they
will have solution to their problems. It is only Nigerians that can do that. We
want them to get closer to us just as we want to get closer to them.

Africa has to erase colonialism from her brain and stop looking
to the North (Europe) for assistance.

The Federal Government on Tuesday, in Abuja,
released 45,000 tonnes of assorted grains, from the National Strategic
Food Reserve (NSFR), to the general public, to cushion the effect of
high prices of food commodities in the country.

The grains are paddy rice, gari, millet, maize, and sorghum.

The minister of agriculture, Sheik Ahmed Abdallah,
while flagging off the occasion, said it was meant to ease the high
prices of food stuff in the country, adding that the president,
Goodluck Jonathan, had directed that the grains be sold at subsidised
prices.

According to Mr. Abdallah, the commodities are to
be sold at 30 percent subsidy as follows: 50kg of maize N1, 855 or N37,
100 per tonne; sorghum N33,600 per tonne and N1, 680 per 50kg bag; 50kg
of millet, N1, 890 or N37, 800 per tonne; while 20kg of gari would go
for N1,050 or N42, 100 per tonne. Paddy rice goes for N42, 000 per
tonne, and per 50kg of the commodity would be sold at N2, 100.

He disclosed that 15,000 tonnes of assorted grains
had been approved as donation to Niger and Chad Republics, to fight
hunger in the two countries, as requested by the ECOWAS Committee of
Ministers.

He said a similar exercise would be carried out in
eight other states where the food reserve silos were located, pointing
out that some allocations had been made for sale to some stakeholders
and various groups in the states.

The National Association of Ondo State Students, has urged
members of the National Assembly to urgently pass the anti kidnapping bill
before it.

The National President of the group, Temidayo Temola also
criticised security operatives for failing to combat the increasing rate of
abduction in the country.

“It is glaring that the police have failed in discharging their
duties. They have failed to track down the kidnappers of journalists. They are
only effective on the pages of newspapers parading innocent people as
criminals,” he said.

“Our senators and House of Representative members need to brace
up and make sure that the anti-kidnapping is urgently passed into law. So that
those who have made abduction their source of daily living can be prosecuted
and sent to jail.

The students however lauded the Ondo State House of assembly for
passing the anti-kidnapping bill.

The bill, which recommends twenty year jail term for kidnappers,
will go along way in reducing the trend, the students said.

The union also pleaded with government to spend more money to
fund education which, they said, is not receiving the it needs to grow.

“It is not funny that the money allocated to education is too ridiculous
compare to what is being experienced in the other countries. It is high time
our government increased the budgetary allocation to education, so that
graduates being churned out by tertiary institutions across the country can
compete favourable with their colleagues all over the world,” he added