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The chairman of the
Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Attahiru Jega, over
the weekend reiterated his commitment towards conducting credible and
acceptable elections in 2011 and promised that 2015 elections would be
one of the best in the world.

Mr. Jega, who spoke
at a roundtable discussion entitled: ‘The path to credible elections in
Nigeria’, organised in his honour by the Center for Research and
Democratic Studies, Mambayya House, Kano, promised that the 2011
elections would be far better than 2003 and 2007.

“The 2011 elections
will surely be better than the 2003 and 2007 elections and in 2015, God
willing, we would have one of the best elections in the world,” he said.

The occasion was
well attended by prominent politicians and political scholars, with
former Chief Justice of Nigeria, Alfa Belgore, as chairman.

He urged Nigerians
to be part of this challenge by playing their own various roles, so as
to bring drastic transformation, stressing that individuals cannot do
it alone.

“The
responsibilities of conducting free and credible elections is for all
stakeholders and patriots to work together in order to achieve the
desired objective.

“I want to use this
opportunity to call on credible persons to join the process, because if
good persons stay away, bad people will have a field day,” he said.

The former vice
chancellor of Bayero University, Kano, also admitted that the
challenges are enormous, but insisted he was equal to the task.

Big challenge

He said after
listening to the brilliant contributions by the different speakers, he
has become more knowledgeable than he ever was on the challenges of his
new office, pointing out that his five years mandate as INEC boss would
turnaround the political landscape of the country.

“It is a big
challenge, not only to me but to all Nigerians, who should make
sacrifices to enable us bring about a credible reform process, so that
we will take our rightful place in the comity of nations,” he said.

“I did not lobby
for this position. I never thought about it but it came on its own, so
I have no choice than to put in my best to give Nigeria the best of
leadership in the next dispensation.

“As a Muslim, I
swore by the holy Quran and I will stand by the oath I have taken. In
certain circumstances, our best may not be good enough and this why it
is indeed a collective responsibility of all major stakeholders to
ensure a free, fair, and credible election in 2011,” Mr. Jega said.

Mr. Belgore advised
Mr. Jega to make sure that voters registration exercise commence
immediately, stressing that time is no longer on his side and that if
it means soliciting for foreign assistance he should not hesitate.

Mr. Belgore also
supported the establishment of electoral offices tribunal, as contained
in the Muhammadu Uwais electoral reform report. He said it would
eradicate the issue of hooliganism during elections.

The chairman of the Transition Monitoring Group, Festus Okoye,
called for a new constitutional framework and credible voters register,
among others, to ensure credible elections in 2011.

Gunmen, suspected
to be kidnappers, who, last Wednesday abducted Rufai AbdulMalik Atta,
nephew of the former Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Atta, are
asking the family for a ransom of N50 million before they release the
hostage.

Mr Atta, who
retired as Deputy General Manager with the defunct Bank of the North,
had just returned from his Okene home when he was apprehended in front
of his friend’s residence at the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.
Family sources said that the former banker had arrived at his friend’s
house for an appointment when, on arrival, he was confronted by gunmen
who swooped on him and bundled him and a guard who had come to open the
gate, into a waiting car and sped off.

The sources added
that Mr Atta pleaded with the kidnappers to release the guard on the
grounds that he is ‘innocent’, and should be let go, to which the
gunmen obliged.

NEXT learnt that
the kidnappers opened a line of discussion with Mr Atta’s wife late
Thursday night and demanded N50 million ransom as condition to setting
her husband free.

The woman was said
to have pleaded with them for leniency and, by the weekend, the
abductors sliced it to N35 million, asking the embattled woman to get
across to them on a ‘dedicated account number’, the sum of N1 million
as the cost of taking care of her husband pending the full payment of
the ransom.

The Ebira ethnic
community in Kano, where Mr Atta is known for community participation,
also organized a special prayer for God’s intervention in the matter.

Hoping for early release

A family source
said Mrs Atta left Kano for Abuja yesterday morning after “a deposit of
half a million naira was paid by the family to the ‘dedicated
account’.” “One of the kidnappers called back to acknowledge receipt of
the funds but warned of dire consequence if the family fails to
expedite action on the ‘real deal’,” the source said. “He may regain
his freedom soon, as we have a reached a compromise with the
abductors.”

The police in Kano,
however, said they have not received any complaint over the incident.
The state police boss, Baba Muhammad, said the case might have been
reported where the incident occurred.

Efforts to get the reaction of the former Inspector General of
Police, Ali Atta, proved abortive, as several calls to his phone went
unanswered.

There are no plans
or directives for the reversal of the electronic payment system in
official transactions in the Federal Public Service, the Accountant
General of the Federation (AGF), Ibrahim Dankwambo, said in Abuja at
the weekend.

He was reacting to
reports that the government has reverted to the issuance of cheques for
certain categories of payments, particularly payment of pensions in the
federal civil service.

According to Mr.
Dankwambo, the benefits of the Integrated Payroll and Personnel
Information System (IPPIS), introduced in 2006 as part of reforms for a
computer-based payroll and personnel information system in the federal
civil service, have been so much that contemplating to reverse the
process would be ill-advised.

“I am not aware of
any such decision or directive for the stoppage of the policy. We have
seen the benefits of the IPPIS project designed to electronically
capture the data of workers in the federal civil service throughout the
country. Government has been saved billions of naira as a result, since
the introduction of the scheme, though it is still premature to say how
much .

“That is why
government will not hesitate to sanction any agency or organisation
that is brought to its notice tampering with the policy,” he said.

He said the
government has so far completed capturing the personal information data
of workers in at least 16 ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs),
while local and international consultants have been shortlisted and
prequalified, preparatory to the full systems to roll out nationwide
from January next year.

Reports that the
government had jettisoned the policy and returned to issuing cheques
became rife last week during the ongoing data verification exercise for
federal pensioners holding across the 36 state capitals and the Federal
Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja.

Paid with cheques

Pensioners who
participated in the exercise were issued cheques at the end of the
verification, as against the e-payment system introduced last year,
where their entitlements were credited directly to personal accounts in
their respective banks, followed by text messages sent to notify them.

One frail-looking
old man, who spoke with NEXT at the verification centre in Abuja, was
embittered that the government did not consider the fragile conditions
of some of them before taking the decision, pointing out that most of
them can hardly withstand the rigours of travelling long distances and
having to endure the harassment in long queues while waiting to present
the same set of documents always presented each time the exercise is
held.

But an official
involved in the exercise, who asked to remain anonymous, last Thursday,
explained the rationale behind the verification exercise, which has
been held at least six times in the last four years. “From time to
time, there is need to update the records of pensioners in the service.
It is natural to expect that some of the pensioners would die. But,
often, the relations of some of these pensioners would not report the
death to the relevant authorities, while government continues paying
their benefits. To help update government data and records for proper
planning, it is compulsory that all pensioners appear physically for
the verification, irrespective of who is involved,” he said.

Government’s
e-payment policy has been widely acknowledged as a positive step to
stem corruption, reduce administrative hostage-taking associated with
payment to individuals and contractors, as well as facilitate a more
transparent payment system that allows for effective monitoring.

The previous arrangement, where pensioners were paid with cheques
was fraught with abuses, as corrupt government officials exploited the
system to siphon public funds through ghost workers and pensioners.

There is nothing wrong with the fat
allowances the federal lawmakers get quarterly, newly-appointed
chairman of the House Services Committee, Yakubu Dogara, has said,
insisting that his colleagues deserve the reward, not only because of
the amount of work they do, but also because of the billions of naira
they have saved for the country.

Mr Dogara, whose committee oversees the
welfare of members as well as the budget and appropriation of the
House, said the National Assembly gets a mere 1.5 percent allocation of
the total federal budget yearly, and upbraided Nigerians, particularly
journalists, for raising issues pertaining to the allowances of the
lawmakers instead of asking questions on what the executive arm does
with the remaining 98.5 percent.

The members of the House have been
demanding an increment in their quarterly allowances from N27.2 million
each to N42 million, while the senators want theirs raised from N45
million to N80 million. If the demand sails through, each member will
get N168 million per annum, while each senator will take home N192
million.

“What I want to talk about is this
issue of allowances that they heard that members have been collecting
N27.2 million per head and senators N80 million. In fact, some media
houses have speculated that what we now earn is N42 million per
quarter. Now this quarterly payment has become an issue,” he said.

“I remember, even the agencies involved
in fighting corruption are raising issues, particularly media reports
suggest that the Chairperson of the EFCC once said that there is
corruption in the National Assembly. To this, my response has been that
what Nigerians forget is that the entire money in the allocation. If
you check the 2010 budget, the entire allocation to the National
Assembly is 1.5 per cent. Unfortunately, that is what most Nigerians
focus on. But do we ask questions from those managing the remaining
98.5 per cent? Have we asked questions?

“This parliament has done a lot, but
Nigerians do not appreciate because they do not even know what the
parliament has done. When we came in 2008, in the course of our budget,
we raised the allocation of the National Assembly from one per cent of
the total budget to 1.5 per cent that year; we saved over N450 billion
for the nation in unspent and un-remitted budgetary allocations. In
2009, more than N350 billion was paid back into the national treasury
as unspent funds. Now, if you sum the two, we are almost hitting a
trillion.”

Mr Dogara, who addressed journalists at
the weekend, also said Nigerians should rather be worried about what
happened to these unspent funds from 1999 to the time they came in, and
start insisting that MDAs should return unspent money at the end of the
year.

“What happened? How much would it have been? That is the investigation that I thought media houses would have done,” he said.

The lawmaker, who was until June 3 the
chairman of the House Committee on Customs and Excise, said though the
discovery of the unspent funds will not be used as justification,
Nigerians have enough issues to raise with the executive arm, which
manages most of the budget.

Holding back billions

The PDP member from Bauchi State also
said he wondered why Nigerians are not asking institutions that
generate revenue for government how much of this they hold back for
themselves.

“And then we talk about revenue
generating institutions of government where billions, if not trillions,
are generated and not remitted.

As a result of our oversight functions,
we have said, look there are limits that some these agencies can go,”
he said. “That those monies must be paid back into the government
treasury. Nobody has ever given us credit for that. We do not want to
use that as justification for whatever allowances that we collect but
certainly they are issues worth looking at.”

On the demand by the “progressives
members” for investigation into the finances of the House, Mr Dogara
said they did not avail themselves of its standing rules and other
extant laws, in making their demand.

“They should have recourse to the
resolutions of the House that was passed vis-à-vis the Rules of the
House and the provisions of section 24 of the Legislative Powers and
Privileges Act. But, unfortunately, that was not done,” he said.

“I have heard a lot of people allude to
the fact that Integrity Group had similar campaign against Patricia
Olubunmi Etteh when she was the Speaker and nothing happened to the
members of the Integrity Group; they were not suspended, but they first
went to the press.

“The appropriate response to this is that you cannot say you want to
steal because there was thief somewhere that has not been caught. Once
you know this is a rule, this is what we have adopted in the House,
therefore, whatever the House follows is there in the rules and nobody
has ever challenged it since we have been members in 1999.”

The Conference of
Nigeria Political Parties (CNPP), on Sunday, asked the Inspector
General of Police, Ogbonnaya Onovo to ensure that the office of the
Deputy Governor of Bauchi State is opened to Garba Gadi to enable him
serve the people of the state.

It also asked Babayo Gamawa to stop parading himself as deputy governor following the return of Mr. Gadi.

The Bauchi High
Court recently ordered the reinstatement of Mr. Gadi, who was impeached
by the state’s House of Assembly last year.

Following his
reinstatement, Mr. Gadi went to the office, now occupied by Mr. Gamawa,
the former Speaker of the State Assembly, to work, but was denied
access.

The CNPP, in a
statement by its spokesperson, Osita Okechukwu, said Mr. Onovo should
direct the state police commissioner to open the office, as a matter of
urgent national importance, to enable Mr. Gadi resume work.

“CNPP position is
that the Commissioner of Police and indeed all security agencies in
Bauchi State must ensure that the court judgment which reinstated
Alhaji Garba Gadi as the Deputy Governor of Bauchi State; must be
obeyed to the letter and Alhaji Gadi’s security guaranteed,” the
statement said.

“Accordingly CNPP challenges the Executive Governor Bauchi State,
Isa Yuguda, as the Chief Security Officer of the state to come down
from the high horse and accept the reality posted by the court judgment
for the interest of peace and security of Bauchi State,” the group said.

Government and
community officials have expressed worry over reports of persistent
oil-spill across the Niger-delta, Nigeria’s zone of oil exploration
activities. Oil-leakages and spillages of ranging quantity has been
reported in the last one month across the region, in states which
includes Bayelsa, Ondo,Akwa Ibom and Rivers.

At the weekend, an
association of 49 communities in the oil producing areas of Ondo State
called on the federal government to put in place a law that will make
it mandatory for all oil companies to always pay compensations to
victims of oil spills in the oil producing areas in the state. “Most
times when oil spills occurred, the oil companies always trade words
over which company is responsible for the spills,” said Wole Ogungbeje,
an official of one of the communities. “The spills always affect the
lives of the people of the area. Their water, farmland and fish are
always affected, living them at the mercy of these oil companies who
are avoiding their responsibilities.” He appealed to the state
government to compel the oil companies to visit communities in the
riverside area to access the extent of the effect of oil spills in the
affected area.

The Minister of Environment, John Odey, recently summoned officials
of ExxonMobil (parent company to Mobil Producing Nigeria) to a meeting
to discuss what the government said were a series of spills far
offshore, where militant attacks and sabotage are infrequent. Mobil has
also been at the heart of a controversy over recent spills in Akwa
Ibom. But the company said told NEXT that though there was oil spill in
Akwa Ibom, the volume was not as large as was reported. The company
also said it carries out its activities as a responsible corporate
citizen. “On May 1, a leak occurred in one of MPN’s offshore pipelines
more than 20 km offshore,” the company’s spokesperson, Nigel Cookey,
said. “MPN immediately isolated and depressured the line, shut in
production and notified regulatory authorities.”

The Economic
Commission of West African States (ECOWAS) has entered into a strong
agreement that will boost economic and political cooperation with the
South American country of Brazil.

ECOWAS leaders,
speaking at the end of a special summit of regional leaders and their
Brazilian counterpart in Sal, Cape Verde, at the weekend, said the two
parties agreed to focus their political initiatives on the promotion of
political dialogue, security collaboration, private sector
partnerships, improving infrastructure, capacity building, and cultural
exchange.

Speaking at the
opening of the maiden ECOWAS-Brazil Summit, ECOWAS chairman and
Nigerian president, Goodluck Jonathan, identified the establishment of
a special fund to support the capital base of the ECOWAS Bank for
Investments and Development as one of the key outcomes of the summit.

“It is expected
that the proposals in the presentations will facilitate collaboration
between Brazil and the relevant institutions of the sub-region,
particularly our financial institutions, with an objective to set up a
special fund to support the capital base of the ECOWAS Bank for
Investments and Development. This will be a welcomed initiative in the
interest of our sub-region,” Mr. Jonathan said.

Mutual benefits

He said the
opportunities that will accrue from this summit and subsequent ones
range from collaboration in the areas of renewable energy,
infrastructural development, to combating organised crime and other
related matters such as illicit trafficking in small arms and light
weapons, and the illicit traffic in drugs.

The eight page
declaration, announced at the end of the summit, includes a desire to
improve capacities to cope with development challenges, as well as to
strengthen the political, social, and economic institutions, and the
process of peace and stability-building.

The meeting also
called for the urgent reform of the international financial system in
order to make it fair, just, and inclusive and enable developing
countries to be represented in the decision-making process of such
institutions.

The summit, a
follow-up to the Africa-South America Summit, held in Abuja in November
2006, agreed to progressively uphold and open free and fair trade and
investment opportunities through the promotion of two-way trade,
investment, and business development for their mutual benefit.

In order to give
expression to their proposed cooperation in the area of transport, the
parties agreed to “deepen … cooperation in the area of air transport
in order to improve regular air transport services between Brazil and
ECOWAS Member States.”

Consequently, they
directed the ECOWAS Commission and the relevant institutions in Brazil
to convene a meeting of their national aviation authorities to discuss
the modalities for such a cooperation, including the expansion of
existing air transport arrangements and the signing of new ones.

Both parties also
committed themselves to cooperate in the promotion of clean and
sustainable energy and to support the activities of the ECOWAS Centre
for Renewable Energy, which is based in Praia, Cape Verde.

The ECOWAS-BRAZIL summit was held a day after the 38th ordinary
session of the ECOWAS heads of state meeting in Sal, Cape Verde, that
was attended by all ECOWAS heads of state, except the two suspended
ones of Guinea and Niger Republic.

Nigeria has assumed Chairmanship of the
Commission of D-8 countries for two years, as it hosts the current 28th
Session of the Commission. The D-8 Commission comprises the developing
nations of Nigeria, Egypt, Turkey, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Indonesia,
Iran, and Pakistan, and aims at promoting economic growth and
development among member-countries.

The session, which opened yesterday,
had the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Martin
Uhomoibhi, representing the country as Chairman of Commissioners at the
opening ceremony. Mr Uhomoibhi lauded the achievements of the
Commission since inception in 1997, noting that “bilateral trade
relations are on the upswing among member-states”. He noted that the
achievements would be improved upon to include other areas of
development, as contained in the D-8 Roadmap.

Uhomoibhi said that under the chair of Nigeria, issues bordering on
Preferential Trade Agreement and harmonisation of visa regimes would be
addressed, in a bid to boost the contribution of members to global
trade, from 5 per cent or $1.2 trillion to 15-20 per cent by 2018.

A non-partisan Group, Niger Delta Youths Movement
(NDYM), has criticised the allocation of money meant for the
development of the oil producing communities, on projects that are not
sited in the mandate area of the Ondo State Oil Producing Areas
Development Commission (OSOPADEC).

The group, in a statement issued by its National
Officer, Bright Omogbuyi, said it is an aberration for the state
government to use OSOPADEC fund to fund projects located outside the
riverside communities.

Specifically, the group cited the use of the
commission’s funds to carry out projects in some tertiary institutions,
saying the OSOPADEC fund is exclusively meant to develop the oil
producing communities.

“We want to state categorically that OSOPADEC fund
is meant to develop the communities in the oil producing areas, and not
the entire state. The fund is exclusively meant for the development of
the people where the fund that is being used to develop the entire
nation is found,” the NDYM said.

“By the virtue of the edict that establishes the
commission, it is wrong for government to use money meant for oil
producing communities to fund communities outside the mandate area. It
is an aberration for government to use such money to fund institutions
outside the mandate area. Since the government is not using state money
to fund the commission, we want to beg the present administration not
to follow the footstep of the past government.”

The group also pleaded with the state governor,
Olusegun Mimiko, to urgently pay the money being owed some contractors
handling projects awarded to them by the immediate past government in
the state.

The group also urged Mr Mimiko to revive all the ailing industries
sited in the Southern Senatorial district of the state, including Oluwa
Glass and Okitipupa Oilpalm industry.”

Governor Mamuda
Shinkafi, of Zamfara State, at the weekend expressed his support for
the 2011 presidential ambition of former military ruler, Ibrahim
Badamosi Babangida. Mr Shinkafi spoke with newsmen in Abeokuta after he
was conferred with chieftaincy title of ‘Aare Rotoba’ and his wife,
Aishat Babangida-Shinkafi as ‘Yeye Aare Rotoba’ of Owu Kingdom by the
Olowu of Owu, Adegboyega Dosunmu.

“He is the most
popular candidate at the moment because he has people in all the local
government in Nigeria and, as the president said, everybody is free to
contest election, we can see all aspiring now,” said Mr Shinkafi. The
governor, who is son-in-law to the former dictator, said it is his
belief that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) will
conduct free and fair elections. “There is internal democracy, there is
general democracy,” he said. “We belief President Jonathan will give
free and fair election in Nigeria which everybody, both within Nigeria
and outside, are going to be impressed with.”

Mrs
Babangida-Shinkafi said she is happy with the chieftaincy honour. “I am
very very happy,” she said. “This is the happiest moment in my life.
This has shown that I am their blood, and they are my blood.” She
called on all Nigerians to be united, saying “let us put our head
together and be one as a nation. Let us be our brothers’ and our
sisters’ keepers.”

The zoning gimmick

Mr Shinkafi also
said that the fuss over zoning by some members of the Peoples
Democratic Party (PDP) is not necessary. Speaking to aviation
correspondents at the General Aviation Terminal, Murtala Mohammed
Airport, Lagos, on his way back to Zamfara after receiving the
chieftaincy title, the governor described zoning as an arithmetic
adopted by the PDP for the 2011 general elections. “Professionally,
there shouldn’t be any zoning; but it was the party’s arrangement to do
some arithmetic to capture the centre but this is no longer useful and
PDP can do whatever they feel is good for them to capture the centre,”
he said.

He said it was his
view that anyone should be allowed to contest and that the ruling party
should be left to manage the issue of zoning. “Everybody is free to
contest and that is a party democracy and joint democracy in a
country,” he said. “Zoning is only a PDP arrangement and many people
have said that it should not have to be a problem, the PDP should be
left to manage associations and circumstances that come up in the
process.” He also described the process as a “political gimmick” by the
PDP that has been beneficial to the party, stressing that it is left
for the party to decide when to do away with practice.

“Zoning is a political gimmick to have power, it is only for the
PDP, and it was used by them to get power; I think when it is good for
them they will use it and when it isn’t they will abandon it,” he said.