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Murtala Yar’adua,
the nephew of Umaru Yar’Adua, the president, yesterday appeared for the
Senate ministerial screening, promising “youthful energy” to the
cabinet, in a move seen as a knock on the group that tried to keep the
ailing president in power.

Mr. Yar’Adua was
the 16th nominee to be screened by the Senate on Tuesday. He harped on
offering the nation his private sector experience and “youthful
energy”, which will lead to finding “new ways of doing old things.”

“The energy of
youth is very important.” Mr. Yar’Adua told the senators. “I can draw a
lot of experience and advice on new ways of doing new things.”

Although he did not
condemn the ‘old ways’ of doing things, he said energy was apparently
lacking in the cabinet. “Energy is what we need,” he said, promising a
bridge to reconnect the old generation of leaders with the youth. “We
find there is (a) disconnect between our generation and yours, and I
hope to bring hope for that connect,” he added.

Mr. Yar’Adua’s
nomination is seen as an attempt by the acting president’s team to
dispel the uncertainty that has clouded President Yar’Adua’s tenure. He
faced less inquiry from the senators on Tuesday, as he made remarks
touching more on contemporary procedures of governance, rather than on
politics.

Organised plenary

Unlike the chaotic
screening session witnessed the previous day, the Tuesday plenary was a
lot more organised. The senate had taken about 45 minutes before the
plenary started properly to hold a closed door session during which
they resolved the grouse generated from the previous screening.

The senate plenary
started at about an hour before midday and lasted till about 6pm,
during which the senate screened 24 nominees, bringing the total number
of screened nominees to 27. A new nominee, Aliyu Idi Hong, the former
minister of state for health, was added to the list that already has 39
nominees.

Although the
screening of Sanusi Dagash, a former senator, was expected to be
stormy, he was allowed to ‘bow and go’, a gesture Mr. Dagash said
surprised him. He was accused of pitching the Senate against President
Yar’Adua over the 2008 budget passage. He, however, started out by
apologising to the senators collectively after he admitted lobbying the
senators individually before the screening. The senators chorused “go
and sin no more” as he headed out of the red chamber.

Evasive ministers

During the
screening, each nominee was asked an average of three questions, which
were answered swiftly. The re-appointed nominees were screened first.
They were each asked to assess their performance in the last cabinet
and then say why they should be re-appointed.

Most of the
re-appointed nominees were, however, evasive with their reactions to
questions. Most claimed they had performed well but could not state
specific projects they executed while in office.

Godswill Orubebe,
who headed the Niger Delta ministry, for instance, while reacting to a
question on whether the amnesty program for the repentant militants in
the Niger Delta has performed well, said, “Amnesty so far is on the
move and I believe (that) the level we have reached now only needs
re-invigoration to move forward.” Mr. Orubebe said the Niger Delta area
did not witness massive constructions during his reign because they
were still planning on how to develop the area. “Planning takes a long
time,” he said.

Other nominees like John Odeh, who headed the environment ministry,
and Humphrey Abba, who was a minister of state for commerce, also
claimed their best achievements as ministers were plans, studies,
program blue prints and “well organised” workshops.

The former Minister
of State for Power, Nuhu Wya, said Tuesday that Nigeria’s total power
generation slumped to 1500 Megawatts in the middle of his tenure, down
from the 3700 Megawatts he met in December 2007.

Mr. Wya has been
re-nominated for a new term by the acting president, Goodluck Jonathan,
while his colleague, the substantive minister of power, Rilwan
Babalola, has been dropped. It is, however, not yet known if he will
remain at the Ministry of Power.

Speaking at the
senate ministerial screening where his nomination was considered for
approval yesterday, Mr. Wya told lawmakers that our nation’s power
generation capacity was itself unstable from his assumption at the
ministry on December 24, 2007, to his removal in early March 2010.

“I don’t want to
delve too much into that,” he said in response to a question raised by
a Senator on what the actual problem with electricity in our country is.

“But it is
important to say that we were faced with a challenge of what we could
not control.” The challenge, he said, was the inadequate supply of gas
which officials of the ministry have echoed in the past.

During an earlier
remark, which the senators rebuffed, the former minister had claimed
that the ministry under his watch, “toured the nation and was able to
improve power supply to a level which, however, was not commensurable
with the money spent.”

Power failure

The former minister
admitted, in response to a question by the Senate President, David
Mark, that the power production level plunged to 1500MW in the middle
of his tenure as the Minister of state.

“I thought you will
answer in a straightforward manner, whether power generation dropped or
increased during your stay in office,” Mr. Mark said, to which the
nominee confirmed there was a significant crash in the generation
level, a situation which he said was mainly caused by gas shortage.

Key officials of the power ministry had, before the dissolution of
the federal cabinet by Mr. Jonathan, repeatedly explained the extent of
the fall in power generation in the country. This was especially as the
December 31, 2009, target date for increasing the power generation to
6000MW, elapsed.

In keeping with a common practice in
modern, participatory democracy, Nigerians should ideally witness the
screening of new ministers live on television. It is mandatory that we
comprehend the knowledge level a minister brings to the turbulence of
governance.
Any ministerial nominee that
demonstrates ignorance during the screening exercise of those natural
processes that feed into economic growth, and the impacts of climate
change on them, belongs to the 19th Century, and should either be kept
in the National Museum or be politely requested to go home and do
something else.
So here’s a brief tutorial as an assist, both to the examiners in the Senate and their candidates:

Terrestrial habitats
Nigeria’s
terrestrial habitats are mainly savanna woodland and grassland. Montane
vegetation grows on some elevations above 1 500m in the eastern margins
of the country. Mambilla and Obudu hills are accessible examples.
40 million people
live and procreate at a rate of 3 per cent per annum. This has
consequences. All but 10 per cent of the original forest estate is left
in Nigeria! The resulting high ecological footprint is gradually
spreading to the country’s semi-arid, northern borders. In southern
Nigeria, the oil industry has shaved off swathes of rich mangrove
forests in the Niger Delta. Population drifts to coastal cities, Lagos,
Port Harcourt, Calabar, Warri, Yenagoa, Badagry, impacts moist forests
that protect a low-lying Atlantic shoreline from storm surges and
erosion.
With the exception
of patches in Ogun, Edo, Bayelsa and Delta States, 30 per cent of the
remaining forests in Nigeria are in Cross River State. The gene pool
there is impressive, because this area survived the great ice age that
affected the whole of central and West Africa many millions of years
ago. There are more than 400 varieties of trees, around 170 species of
reptiles and amphibians, 140 fish species in Cross River State. Of the
904 bird species recorded in Nigeria, 425 occur in Cross River.
Increasing demands
on Nigerian forests are mainly for wood, food, fuels, industrial
materials, medicines, unsustainable (largely illegal) logging,
agricultural encroachment, over-harvesting of non-timber forest
products, overgrazing of livestock in the savanna, infrastructure
development without impact assessments, inadequate and ineffective
legal frameworks for forest governance, poor research and insecurity of
land tenure, are the major threats.

Sustainable energy sufficiency
In the process of
photosynthesis, tropical forests can absorb 10 per cent of annual
man-made greenhouse gas emissions. But destruction of these forests
contributes over 17 per cent to these emissions per annum. Nigeria must
establish programmes for energy efficiency, to move away from
over-dependence on combustion of fossil fuels, while making sure this
does not impact food security and biological diversity.
Destruction of forests is an environmental problem that needs an
economic solution. Carbon credits must be generated for forested states
if they reduce vegetation loss to an agreed level each year. This can
be monitored by satellite technology. The monies paid for such
environmental services could then be channelled into forest
conservation, agricultural intensification, renewable energy, education
and small businesses, building better roads and infrastructure in order
to stimulate development and create alternative livelihoods.

The Central Bank of
Nigeria (CBN) yesterday said it is developing a comprehensive template
to guide and regulate microfinance banking in the country.

Joe Alegienu, the
bank’s Director of Development Banking, said this at a meeting with the
management of the National Poverty Alleviation Programme (NAPEP) in
Abuja, adding that the new template will become operational before the
end of this year’s second quarter.

According to Mr.
Alegienu, microfinance banking has failed in the fight against poverty
as a result of the proliferation of mini-commercial bank operators
masquerading as microfinance operators.

The CBN, he said,
has observed with dismay the negative impact of the activities of these
operators, adding that most of them are former staff of commercial
financial institutions that failed to meet the conditions under the
recent banking sector consolidation policy.

“We do not want a
situation where the microfinance banks that were established to support
the fight against poverty among rural people are allowed to turn into a
monster that would consume the people,” Mr. Alegienu said. “We will
soon publish an operational template that would serve as a guide on how
microfinance banks are going to do business. It is time to tell those
not qualified to do the business to stay away.

“Every operator
must adapt itself to the principles of micro financing, which is that
microfinance banking does not succeed with large deposits mobilised
from depositors, but on large number of savings from ‘small peoples’,”
he said.

Beyond tricycle

Magnus Kpakol, the
Senior Special Adviser to the President and National Coordinator,
NAPEP, explained that the meeting was convened to enable coordinators
and microfinance bank operators discuss the various approaches to adopt
in the fight against poverty, which he said would not be won if the
people were not exposed to ways of applying the resources at their
disposal to their benefit.

“We want to go
beyond ‘keke NAPEP’,” Mr. Kpakol said. “We have to come up with
strategies on combating poverty. We must be seen as investing in
people. We are a wealthy nation in terms of resources, but to use the
resources to create wealth and raise income for the people is
important.”

He condemned the
practice where the government doles out money directly to cooperative
societies, saying this should be stopped or a way found to minimise the
practice, pointing out that the market place should henceforth be made
to allocate resources to the people.

“We have already written to state governments to lend interest-free
funds directly to the microfinance banks, which will lend to people at
commercial bank market rate of 20 percent and not cooperative
societies. These lending should be tied to performance and delivery. We
are also trying to involve the local government to ensure that they set
up at least five production activities every year.”

The
Lagos State House of Assembly has again decided to revisit and
investigate the allegations of corruption and constitutional violations
levelled against the Lagos State Governor, Babatunde Fashola.

The resolution was
made after the lawmakers deliberated on the petition submitted
yesterday by the renowned True Face of Lagos group.

The petition, dated
March 30 and signed by the group’s chairman, Adesina Adebayo, contained
many of the previously published allegations plus a few new ones.

Basis for allegations

The group, in the
petition, stated that a high level of accountability was expected from
the state government because many Lagosians have lost their means of
livelihood through “massive displacement by the present government”
besides the high compliance of residents with the tax system of the
State.

“Lagosians took all
these in their stride as our own contributions to the advancement of
our beloved centre of excellence,” the petition stated. It also said
that Fashola’s administration has spent, as budgetary allocations,
about N1.1 trillion since inception, an amount that surpassed the
entire budgetary allocations of the state from 1992 to 2007, by 30 per
cent.

“So, there is the
need to question some of the ways the governor has been expending tax
money, which in our opinion reflects financial recklessness,
mismanagement, gross constitutional violations, and abuse of office,”
the petition stated.

To substantiate the
allegation that an up-front payment of 70 per cent is always paid to
contractors, the group attached a list of contracts awarded between
January and August, 2009, by the Sstate’s ministry of health.

Two minutes of silence

After the Clerk of
the House read the petition during the House’s plenary session, two
minutes of silence was “observed” by the lawmakers, who seemed
dumbfounded that the petition resurfaced just 24 hours after a
committee set up to investigate the allegations was dissolved based on
a court ruling.

The silence was
finally broken by the majority leader, Kolawole Taiwo, who said, “I
don’t know what is in the mind of this True Face of Lagos but I can see
a determination in them. We are running towards election period and our
party’s determination to change Lagos is at stake. I don’t know how
Lagosians will feel about it but don’t you think we need to clean
ourselves of (the allegations)?” he asked.

Babatunde Adewale
(Apapa II) observed also the group’s resoluteness. “The court judgement
referred to them as faceless but they have appeared here today,” he
said. Also, the group now has a physical address as stated on its
petition as: “centre for the common man’s defence, behind 59 Ayanwale
Street, off Adeogun Street, Ojokoro, Lagos.”

Expectations and demands

Though none of the
lawmakers rejected the notion to investigate the allegations, some
expected the group to have a different approach.

“The group has been
silent since the court gave its verdict. I had expected that they will
criticise the judgement on the pages of the newspaper,” said Lola
Akande, the deputy chief whip of the House.

Ahmed Omisore
(Ifako-Ijaye II) also said the group should not only submit the
petition to the House but should present it to the governor also. “It
is important for them to take the petition to the governor rather than
use the House as a weapon,” he said.

However, Babatunde
Ogala (Ikeja I) said the House should not just accept the petition “as
is” but should invite the petitioner to prove the allegations.

“The group should be given an opportunity to come and prove their allegations in whatever manner they want to do it,” he said.

A sudden sickness

The Speaker of the
House, Adeyemi Ikuforiji, said he “became ill” while listening to the
Clerk’s reading of the petition letter, because of the scale of the
allegations.

Mr. Ikuforiji, who
was still visibly angry that the House’s effort to ensure transparency
in government was thwarted by the court, said, “We have investigated
allegations in this House before, based on newspaper publications, and
nobody complained.

“Akionla was alive when we investigated the Sunborn Yacht and he
never came up then. That we are not appealing the judgement does not
mean we agreed with it. I still disagree with the judgement,” he said.

Power
failure on Tuesday stalled the viewing of video recordings of the
Special Investigation Panel (SIP) in the alleged attempted murder of
the publisher of the Guardian Newspaper, Alex Ibru.

The SIP had in 1999
investigated Al-Mustapha Hamza alongside three other persons, James
Danbaba, Jibrin Yakubu and Rabo Lawal, in connection with the attempted
murder.

At the resumed
hearing, the court could not view the video tape because the generating
set powering the court-room had developed a fault, while the Power
Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) had failed to restore light.

Consequently, the
presiding judge, Mufutau Olokooba, was forced to adjourn the case to
Wednesday, March 31, 2010, when the power issue would have been
resolved.

The court had
adjourned at the last sitting, for the prosecution to show the video
recording of the SIP to identify a prosecution witness, Felix Ogbaodu,
an assistant inspector general of police.

The prosecution
team led by Lawal Pedro, had previously said it would be relying on the
tape to identify the police officer as being a member of the SIP at the
time of the initial investigation.

But the defence
counsel, C.K. Nmakwe, Olalekan Ojo, and Chinedu Ikegbule, urged the
court to impress it on the prosecution to furnish them with the master
copy of the tape.

The defence had earlier noted that the tape was edited because there
were portions in the proceedings of the SIP which contained images of
torture and abuse of the defendants.

Governors of
Plateau State’s neighbouring states will soon converge in Jos, the
capital of Plateau State, for an on-the-spot assessment of the causes
of the persistent ethno-religious conflicts in the area, with a view to
finding a lasting solution to it.

This resolution was
part of an agreement reached at a meeting of the Solomon Lar-led
Presidential Panel on Jos Crisis and the northern governors at the
Presidential Villa, Abuja on Tuesday.

The Acting
President, Goodluck Jonathan, presided over the meeting; governors and
deputy governors from Bauchi, Jigawa, Nasarawa, Kaduna, Taraba, Kano,
Adamawa and Plateau States were in attendance.

Plateau State governor, Jonah Jang, reacted to the proposed tour of his state by his other colleagues:

“The northern
governors, in their last meeting, agreed that they will visit me in Jos
and we will sit down and look at the problems affecting the northern
states and Plateau to ensure that we get to the roots of these crises.

“It is Plateau
today, it could be somewhere else again. I don’t pray so. But it is
good that we sit down. Until we have peace in the north, it will be
difficult for investors to come and do business. Nobody will like to
come and set up a business and tomorrow, it will be set on fire.”

He said he expects
that when the governors meet, they will tell each other home truths as
leaders who have sworn to defend the constitution of the nation.

Pariah to investors

The governor argued
that the entire northern part of the country could become a pariah to
investors if there is continued unrest in the region, and that this
would further diminish its development fortunes. “Besides, the peace of
Plateau is the peace of the entire north,” he emphasised.

Mr. Lar, who was a
former governor of the state, also said the meeting is very important
because “the character and the nature of the problem have taken a new
dimension in the sense that those who are affected don’t live in one
place. They are all over the neighbouring states and when the
neighbouring governors have discussed with us, we will go back and take
the necessary action to implement what we have discussed.”

The date for the meeting is to be conveyed to the respective governors.

Gbenga Daniel, the Ogun State governor,
yesterday alleged that the Yoruba people have no common agenda, making
them “like a sheep without shepherd”.

Mr. Daniel, who spoke at a meeting of
governors and traditional rulers of the south west states held at the
Governor’s Lodge, Oke-Igbein, Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital, said
the Yoruba race now wanders in the wilderness of disunity and
infighting. “Today, the Yoruba nation is in disarray and our people now
speak with Babel of tongues, with no common agenda in sight,” Mr.
Daniel said.

The state governor expressed doubt over
the emergence of a Messiah for the race, waxing biblical and asked
rhetorically, “Where is the Moses to lead our people out of its (their)
Egypt, and where, and when we can find the Joshua to lead Yoruba into
the land of her unity of purpose?”

He argued that what is noticeable is
the claim of leadership of a divided people, stressing that while all
desire to head the kingdom, none seems to ponder, in practical terms,
on the existential condition of the kingdom within an empire called
Nigeria.

Mythical curse

“Or are we condemned to the mythical curse of Alaafin Aole, as we wander aimlessly in the wilderness of disunity?” he asked.

He added that the
traditional rulers have a major role to play, to rally the people
behind an economic agenda for the benefit of their race.

“I dare say our
traditional rulers have much to do because of the general assumption
that they are fathers to all; and their respective stool is guaranteed,
not by the colour of the partisan politics, but by the custom and
tradition of their people.”

Some of the traditional rulers at the meeting included the Ooni of Ife and the Owa Obokun of Ijeshaland.

The memory of
theatre legend, Hubert Ogunde came to the fore on Tuesday March 30 in
Abeokuta, Ogun State, at the launch of his complete musical works, now
packaged for public consumption.

The ceremony
attracted dignitaries and high ranking traditional rulers from across
the South-West, including the Ooni of Ife, Okunade Sijuwade; Owa Obokun
Ijesaland, Adekunle Aromolaran,Alake of Egbaland; Adedotun Gbadebo; and
Awujale of Ijebuland, Sikiru Adetona, among others.

The launch event,
held at the Hubert Ogunde Hall of the June 12 Cultural Centre in
Abeokuta, was also attended by the children of the late theatre guru,
both at home and from abroad. The programme was sponsored by the Ogun
State government.

The musical package
contains 95 tracks, all composed and performed by Ogunde, who died 20
years ago. The ceremony featured artistic performances, a screening of
Ogunde’s famous Yoruba film, Aropin N’Tenia, as well as a rendition of
his classic song, Yoruba Ronu.

The Ogun State
governor, Gbenga Daniel–who was accompanied to the venue by his
counterparts from Osun and Ekiti States, Olagunsoye Oyinlola and Segun
Oni–later unveiled the work at the ceremony venue, which was filled to
capacity.

Ogunde’s offspring
trooped out to sing a number of their father’s favourite songs. As they
did so, many guests stood up in excitement.

Beneficial to all

Speaking on behalf
of the Ogunde family, one of his daughters, Sunbo Badamosi, said the
package of his musical work was for the benefit of all and sundry. She
also expressed the family’s appreciation to all who contributed to the
success of the package.

She added that plans were underway to revive the Ogunde Film
Village, while her father’s home in Ososa would soon be turned into a
museum for the benefit of culture. Badamosi also assured that the
family would not relent in their efforts to ensure that Ogunde’s legacy
lives on.

The Comptroller-General of Customs, Abdullahi Dikko, has gone to a Federal Capital Territory (FCT)

High Court in
Abuja, seeking an order committing Lagos lawyer, Festus Keyamo to
prison for allegedly publishing a libelous statement over his (Dikko)
certificate, and writing to the acting president on the matter.

Mr. Dikko, through
his Counsel, Amobi Nzelu, in a motion on notice brought pursuant to
order 41 Rule 2 of the Court Civil Procedure, said the actions amount
to contempt of court and “malicious and reckless” disobedience of an
order handed down by Abubakar Talba of the FCT High Court on October 7,
2009.

Specifically, Mr.
Nzelu in an affidavit in support of his motion on notice, said that
upon assumption of office by Mr Dikko as the Comptroller-General of
Customs, Mr. Keyamo and Scroll Publishing Limited and others, began to
publish libelous statements/publications against his client regarding
alleged forgery of certificates by the customs boss.

Attached to the
motion on notice was a letter sent to the acting president, Goodluck
Jonathan, by Mr. Keyamo titled “Forgery of certificates by the
Comptroller-General of Customs, Alhaji Abdullahi Inde Dikko: the grand
cover-up”.

Mr. Nzelu said his
client filed an action in court restraining Mr. Keyamo from further
publishing the statements against him, and that on October 7, 2009, Mr.
Talba gave “an order of interim injunction restraining the
defendant/respondents, including the respondent who is the fourth
defendant/respondent in the suit, from publishing or further publishing
any libelous statement against him.” He said the order is still
subsisting and has not been vacated by the court, but that Mr. Keyamo,
in a flagrant disobedience of the court order, wrote a damaging letter
on Mr. Dikko to the acting president, which was copied to the Director
General of State Security Services (SSS), the National Security Adviser
(NSA), the Inspector General of Police, the Minister of Finance and the
Attorney General of the Federation.

Mr Keyamo’s letter,
which was attached to the suit, said in part: “I am totally ashamed
this minute to be a Nigerian as I write this. For more than six months
now, it has become public knowledge that the Comptroller-General of
Customs, Abdullahi Inde Dikko has been pointedly accused of forging his
WAEC Certificate and that of the Nigerian Institute of Management and
yet nothing has been done by the authorities up till this minute.

“I have decided to
bring this to your attention because what frustrated the investigation
before now is the family tie between Alhaji Dikko and Hajia Turai
Yar’Adua, the wife of the ailing president. This is because before now
I have written to ALL the security agencies on this matter, and all of
them developed cold feet because of Hajia Turai Yar’Adua.”

The letter further
asked for how long the nation can continue to tolerate a
Comptroller-General of Customs “whom the whole world knows has
questions to answer regarding the authenticity of his certificates and
who is being blackmailed left, right and centre by those who know but
have decided to cover him up? How can the Chief Security Officer of the
nation’s borders — land, air and sea — perform without fear or favour
with such an albatross hanging around his neck? The security and
economic implication of a Comptroller-General of Customs who is
susceptible to blackmail is very grave indeed and cannot be
over-emphasized.”

Legal militancy

Mr. Keyamo also
narrated how, on October 22, 2009, he secured an order at the Chief
Magistrates Court, Wuse Zone 6, for the police to probe the
certificates and report to the court, and how the police bluntly
refused to do anything about the matter.

“Curiously,
immediately the order was given, the Chief Judge of the FCT directed
the investigation of a spurious petition written by Mr. Dikko against
the magistrate, which petition was never served on us, and which
effectively stopped the progress of the case.

“In all of these,
there is a grand cover-up of this very, very messy issue and it is
causing all of us shame and embarrassment. Even a section of the press
that should uphold high standards in public life has blacked out the
issue and refused to talk about it. Instead, some hired goons of Alhaji
Dikko have taken out paid adverts attacking my person with the hope of
silencing me. I have remained unbowed because such attacks only
re-invigorate my determination to see to the end of this national
shame”.

Mr. Nzelu, in a
reply to the letter, said, “Despite the order of the court which has
not been set aside by any superior court or the same court, Festus
Keyamo went ahead on March 24, 2010, to circulate the malicious
publication concerning the person of our client. The only deduction
from the conduct of Festus Keyamo is that he feels he is above the law
and can get away from any thing. He will be proved wrong sooner than
later.

“Festus Keyamo
should confine himself within the norms of the profession by allowing
the court to determine this matter one way or the other. He should
equally season his language so that the dignity of this our cherished
profession will be intact. He should not sensationalise the matter nor
be allowed to overheat the polity of the nation. There is no militancy
in the legal profession. That, he must be told in no mistaken terms.”