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President Goodluck Jonathan has asked members of Peoples
Democratic Party (PDP) who were defeated in the party’s recent primary elections
to have a spirit of sportsmanship.

He stated this at a dinner in Abuja at the weekend where he
formally dissolved the Jonathan/Sambo Campaign Organisation, which handled his
campaign for the primaries.

Apparently jolted by the rate at which failed aspirants on the
party’s platform were defecting to other parties as well as the threat by
others to do so, Mr Jonathan said such action does not only portray them as
non-committed members, but amounts to anti-party activities.

“I advise people who did not secure their tickets not to leave
the party even if you were not a candidate today you will be one tomorrow. It
is anti-party to leave PDP and pick ticket from another party only to return to
the PDP. You should rather remain there,” Mr. Jonathan said.

Vice President Namadi Sambo in his remarks called on party
members to join hands to ensure the collective victory of the party at the
general elections while also reaffirming the ‘one man one vote’ assurance of
the government.

Also speaking, Senate President, David Mark urged the losers to
behave like Hillary Clinton by joining the winners to campaign for the victory
of the party.

Scores of PDP members across the federation who lost during the
governorship, senatorial, House of Representatives and State House of Assembly
primaries have either left the party or are at the verge of leaving.

Former vice president and presidential aspirant, Atiku Abubakar,
who lost the Presidential primary, has already dragged Mr Jonathan to the
Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) alleging that the exercise was
marred by bribery, coercion and rigging.

Mr Abubakar had previously said he would not leave the ruling
party but stated last week that he was ready for dialogue.

Mr Jonathan assured those at the dinner, including governors,
ministers and party chieftains that if those planning to defect change their
minds they will be accommodated in the party.

He thanked the governors for their tireless efforts,
cooperation, contributions and for assiduously working hard to ensure his
victory in the primary.

The president announced the formal disbandment of the
Jonathan/Sambo Campaign Organisation, saying it was imperative to pave way for
a larger campaign structure to be constituted by the PDP national leadership to
oversee the preparation for the main presidential election, which comes up on
April 9.

Campaign kicks on

Stating that it will be the beginning of the real campaign, Mr
Jonathan said that his nationwide campaign will be flagged off today (Monday)
in Lafia, the Nasarawa State capital in the North Central geo-political zone
after which the campaigns train will move to the five other zones.

The campaign will move to Ibadan (South West), Bauchi (North
East), Enugu (South East) and Port Harcourt (South-South).

Also speaking at the dinner, the acting national chairman of the
PDP, Bello Mohammed expressed gratitude to the Jonathan/Sambo Campaign
Organisation headed by the Dalhatu Tafida, Nigeria’s High Commissioner to the
United Kingdom.

He added, “PDP is the party to beat and Nigerians have realised
this. That is why PDP’s ticket is worth fighting for. So what we are witnessing
within the party is not fighting as a lot of people term it but competition for
tickets because it is the winning party and in President Jonathan we have found
a sellable candidate that will take us to the Promised Land.”

Mr Mohammed said that the party is ready to face the challenges
of the elections, saying “the way to earn respect and confidence of the people
of this country is to reach out to them. I say this because while PDP was going
round campaigning, a lot of our opponents were busy going to court.

“Once we launch the campaigns, we are not going to rest until we
deliver victory come April 2011. This time around, the President has promised
‘one man, one vote.’ We are going to win fair and square. PDP is for all
Nigerians and we are all co-founders and co-joiners.”

The acting chairman pledged to accommodate members of the organisation in
the larger campaign outfit to be constituted by the party.

“We are in a marathon war, and in this particular fight, we will
fight it to its logical conclusion.”

That was the pronouncement made by the Governor of Ogun State
Gbenga Daniel yesterday as he addressed supporters at the inauguration of
campaign committees held at Valley View auditorium in the government house,
Abeokuta.

Two factions headed by Mr. Daniel and former Nigerian president,
Olusegun Obasanjo, held parallel primaries to select the People’s Democratic
Party candidates for the forthcoming general elections in the state. Tunji
Olurin had emerged as the PDP gubernatorial candidate for the Obasanjo faction
while Gboyega Isiaka was elected in Mr. Daniel’s faction. Now both groups are
embattled in a series of legal suits to determine who will ultimately get the
top nominee spot.

“We have started this war since 2006,” the governor told his
supporters, “and I want you to shine your eyes.”

The governor claimed he had done everything possible to appease
the Obasanjo faction of the PDP, “yet the camp had remained difficult”.

“Therefore, at the stage the situation gets now, you cannot be
in the river and complain of cold,” Mr. Daniel said.

He added that those pushing Tunji Olurin to become governor, knew
that he (Olurin) could not win an election even in his Ilaro hometown.

War song

“They even used opposition media to fight us, an indication that
they are working together with [the] opposition party to destroy our party and
later move out,” said the governor.

Continuing the allegations against Mr. Obasanjo’s faction, Mr.
Daniel said that the political war against him started in 2006, with the
stealing of his administration vouchers as a way to implicate him. The governor
recalled that a number of his cabinet members were quizzed by the Economic
Financial Crimes Commision (EFCC), but eventually came out unscathed.

“Those who steal vouchers to nail me, where are they today?” he
said. “We were harassed and intimidated, but God was on our side. I am not
personally surprised with what we are witnessing today. You should not be
shocked because of what we have been facing.”

Insisting that his camp would produce all the candidates to contest the
elections, Mr. Daniel who also sang some Yoruba war songs, assured his
supporters that “by May 29, we will successfully transit to the government of
our choice.”

On a Thursday night
in early January this year, Pascal Adeniyi had just had dinner and was
getting ready to go to bed when his phone beeped, indicating that he
had received a text message. He picked up the phone and lay back on his
pillow to read the message. Very quickly, he sat up on his bed with a
broad smile on his face as he read the text message for the second
time. The message said that he has been selected to participate in a
contest where he could win N10 million and a car. To participate, he
was asked to reply “yes” to the text.

The message was
from a short code, 555, used by his service provider, Glo, for
promotional purposes. Mr. Adeniyi replied to the message quickly and a
simple question was sent back to him. He answered the first question
and was immediately pulled into in a maze of unending question and
answer texts which lasted five days and cost him a total of N35, 000 on
his contract plan.

Mr. Adeniyi, like
millions of mobile telephone subscribers in Nigeria, has been a victim
of what appears to be a new kind of fraud currently flooding the
largely unregulated but booming short code and mobile telephone
value-added service industry in Nigeria. Mr. Adeniyi feels cheated but
at least, his loss was to a legitimate game, the widely advertised “Glo
Text a Million Season 2 Promo” in which many people have been shown on
television to have won prizes. There are, however, many people losing
money to scores of other ‘not advertised’ scam mobile telephone
value-added services.

10 digit scam

Tochi Ude, for
instance, was defrauded on his MTN phone by a different type of
deceptive value-added service with a number longer than most short
codes. While at work in November last year, he got a text on his phone
from an unusual 10 digit number, 9609908918.

“Hi, I tried to
call you, call me back on this number. +9609908918,” the message read.
He quickly dialled the number and an automated voice answered, asking
him to wait while his service was sorted. He waited.

“I thought it was one of my friends in India, because the numbers looked like an Indian code,” Mr. Ude said.

It turned out to be
an unending Interactive Voice Response (IVR) leading him through a maze
of options and encouraging him to stay longer online. Eventually, his
air time ran out. He spent five minutes on the call but never got to
speak to anyone and could not find out who it was that wanted to reach
him. He hung up and checked his balance. He was billed N500 for the
five minutes he spent with the IVR.

“Each minute cost
N100, but the text never said that,” he said. “The number was strange
and there was no detail about the service provider and the cost. Just
the one sentence in the message.”

Later, he contacted
his three friends in India and all said they didn’t try to reach him at
that time. He got the same text three times that month but never called
it after the first scam. A couple of his friends also got similar
messages in December but in a different form and from a different
number.

Ojoma Ocheja was
scammed by a similar scheme. Last week, she got a text from a 10-digit
number, 6703302973. The message said a secret admirer had sent her a
love song. The text instructed her to call +6703302973 to hear the song
and the identity of the person that sent her the song.

“There was no
information of the cost of the service in the text neither did the
service providers indicate their identity so I thought it was from
MTN,” Ms. Ocheja said. She called the 10-digit number. It turned out to
be an unending IVR. She dropped the call three minutes later, after she
sensed that there was something wrong.

“I didn’t hear both
the song and the identity of the sender,” she said. “Rather, the female
voice at the IVR continuously gave me options luring me on.”

Moneyed scheme

According to
statistics from the National Communication Commission, as at September
2010, there were 75.362 million active GSM lines in Nigeria; all of
them vulnerable to these scams which come in different formats across
networks of various service providers. If 0.1 percent of the active
subscribers spend at least a minute calling any of these services each
day, subscribers will lose N7.536 million daily, N52.753 million in a
week and N1.582 billion in a month. If 1 percent of the active
subscribers use the service at the same rate, they will be defrauded of
N15.82 billion in one month. All victims interviewed by NEXT say they
received the messages more than once and spent more than a minute on
the call.

“Curiosity will keep you on the call,” Mr. Ude said.

The telephone
numbers that were used to defraud Mr. Ude and others in November were
different from those other complainants got in December and yet,
different from the numbers being used in the scheme now. Each of them
is deactivated for the next scam — with new formats — a NEXT
investigation has revealed.

No regulation

Although this
segment of the mobile communication industry spins billions of naira
monthly, mostly for service not rendered, the sector is not regulated.
On April 8, 2010, Ernest Ndukwe, then executive vice chairman of the
NCC, which regulates telecoms and operations in Nigeria, met with his
fellow board members in Abuja for a public inquiry into the proposed
guidelines on short code operations in Nigeria. Eleven months later,
the guidelines are still in a draft form but millions of Nigerians have
been scammed and lost money and there is no way to trace the
perpetuaters of the scam. Basher Gwandu, the executive commissioner,
technical services at NCC, said the commission is still working on
regulating the short code industry. promising to “investigate further
including the Glo number”.

The only form of
regulation for the short code in the telecoms industry, currently, is a
non-legally binding code of conduct document offered by Wireless
Application Service Providers’ of Nigeria (WASPN). WASPN is a voluntary
organization based in Lagos and admits third-party content developers —
most of whom own the short code services and use traditional network
providers — who are willing to give them a platform.

“Not all content
developers are members of WASPN …neither are they obligated to join,”
Eunice Benjamin Ade, the business application manager of WASPN told
NEXT.

Mrs. Ade explained
that it is only members of the association that are bound by its code
of conduct. She disowned the various fraudulent service providers
mentioned in this story saying: “I want to assure you that it is not
emanating from any WASPN member, because they are bound by the code of
conduct,” she said.

As things stand, it
appears that the first line of security and protection from fraudulent
content developers is the service provider. The service provider is the
bridge between the subscriber and the content developer. The service
providers deduct money from the subscribers’ accounts and share this
revenue with the content developers.

However, since
there are no laws or guidelines for the short code industry,
subscribers are at the mercy of their providers’ ability to sniff out,
con artistes. At the moment, service providers don’t appear to be doing
a decent job at this. There are also, of course, promos that are
conducted by the service providers themselves, like the one Mr. Adeniyi
participated in. These come with the traditional “terms and condition”
for its use. However, a lot of its users like Mr. Adeniyi say they feel
cheated.

“I think it is a
fraudulent game,” Iyabo Oyelese, another subscriber said. She argued
that the game is “unreasonably too long” and does not provide
sufficient information about the cost.

Bode Opeseitan, the
spokesperson for Glo could not be reached for comments on these
allegations. He did not answer calls neither did he reply to text
messages from NEXT.

MTN promised to respond to questions concerning the fraud practised via its network, but the reaction never came.

While service providers drag their feet in providing protection to
their subscribers from fraudsters, and the NCC finetunes the short code
guidelines, experts advise subscribers to stay way from these schemes,
and when they feel they want to give it a shot, they should only to put
at stake telephone credit they feel they can afford to lose.

Egypt has suffered
huge economic losses during political protests that broke out 12 days
ago but the government is committed to meeting its financial
obligations, finance minister Samir Radwan said on Friday.

“Certainly it’s
going to be huge,” Radwan said in an interview with Reuters Insider
television. “It’s too early to put the loss in terms of pounds and
pennies.”

He said the
Egyptian government would honour all financial commitments once banks
reopen on Sunday, including 21 billion Egyptian pounds worth of
Treasury bills that must be redeemed next week.

Radwan said the governor of the central bank had been in constant contact with the heads of banks.

“He has two major
concerns. One, not starve the market for cash, and two, not to put any
stringent measures on foreign investors and foreign dealers and so on,
and of course ease the pressure on the Egyptian pound,” Radwan said.

Two major sources of foreign exchange, tourism and remittances from workers abroad, had been hurt, Radwan said.

“One million
tourists alone have left the country already. This is the height of the
tourist season in Egypt,” he said. “The sooner the present stand-off is
over, the better our position will be to deal with the effect.”

Asked about food prices, he said they would not be allowed to get out of hand after the political crisis was settled.

“We are adamant
that markets should be controlled, that they should not be subject to
chaos. It’s normal that in a situation like this people would like to
put up prices,” Radwan said.

Day of Departure protest

Hundreds of
thousands of Egyptians marched peacefully in Cairo on Friday to demand
an immediate end to President Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule, but there
was no sign of his generals, or his U.S. allies, squeezing him out just
yet.

Turnout nationwide
seemed short of the million seen on Tuesday and which leaders had hoped
to match on what they called “Departure Day”. Many Egyptians, weary of
disorder, feel Mubarak did enough this week by pledging to step down in
September. Some also were wary of renewed violence by shadowy Mubarak
loyalists.

On the 11th day of
unprecedented massive protests which have revolutionised Egypt and the
wider Arab world, some 200,000 men and women from all walks of life
streamed past patient soldiers to the capital’s Tahrir, or Liberation,
Square.

A similar number marched in the second city of Alexandria and smaller pro-democracy rallies were held elsewhere.

“Leave! Leave!
Leave!” crowds chanted after Friday prayers on the square in Cairo. A
cleric praised the “revolution of the young” and declared: “We want the
head of the regime removed.”

“Game over” said one banner, in English for the benefit of international television channels beaming out live coverage.

Yet for all the
enthusiasm on the streets, and new-found tolerance by the army,
Mubarak’s fate, and that of a 60-year-old system of military-backed
rule, lies as much in bargains struck behind the scenes among generals
keen to retain influence and Western officials anxious not to see a key
Arab ally against radical Muslims slide into chaos or be taken over by
Islamists.

European Union
leaders echoed calls from the United States for Mubarak to do more than
promise not to run in September’s election: “This transition process
must start now,” they said.

The 82-year-old president said on Thursday he was “fed up” but would not stand down because that would create chaos.

Prominent figures

A handful of
prominent figures from academia and business said they proposed a
compromise under which newly appointed Vice President Omar Suleiman, a
former intelligence chief who has the confidence of Washington, should
take over real authority while Mubarak could serve out his fifth term
as a figurehead leader.

There was a
festive, weekend atmosphere as secular, middle-class professionals and
pious, generally poorer, members of the mass Islamist movement the
Muslim Brotherhood, mingled, sang and chanted under banners and
ubiquitous Egyptian flags.

Food and water, medical treatment for those overcome by heat and crowding, opinions and jokes were all shared.

Away from the
square, groups of Mubarak loyalists harassed journalists. Some attacked
the offices of Al Jazeera television. Others tried to deter people from
demonstrating. But there was little of the extreme violence seen on
Wednesday and Thursday.

In a reminder of
how events in Egypt are linked to a wider confrontation between
Islamists and Western powers in the oil-rich Middle East, Iran’s
supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei hailed an “Islamic liberation
movement” in Egypt.

Iran’s
anti-Western, Islamic revolution of 1979 against the repressive,
U.S.-funded shah has been cited by some in Israel and the West as
creating a possible precedent for Egypt to turn into a major hostile
force to Western power in the region.

U.S. discussions

U.S. officials said
they were discussing with Egyptians a number of options to begin a
handover of power that would keep Egypt stable. Though President Barack
Obama has called publicly only for an immediate start to “transition”,
one option, a U.S. official said, was for Mubarak to be replaced right
away.

Mubarak and
ministers in the government he appointed a week ago in response to the
protests insist stability is better and have appealed over the heads of
the marchers to a wider public.

“More than 95
percent of the Egyptian people would vote for the president to complete
his presidential term … and not (retire) now as America and some
Western states want,” new Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq was quoted as
saying by state media.

New Finance
Minister Samir Radwan told Reuters the economic losses after 11 days of
protest will be “huge”. The tourist business, centred on pyramids and
beaches, has been ravaged.

Radwan said the government had set up a fund worth $850 million to compensate people whose property had been damaged.

Islamist assurances

The long-banned
Muslim Brotherhood has sought to allay Western and Israeli concerns
about its potential to take power in a free vote. A day after Vice
President Suleiman broke ground by saying the Brotherhood was welcome
to join a national dialogue, it said it would not seek the presidency.

Liberal figurehead
Mohamed ElBaradei, a retired U.N. diplomat, said he too did not seek
the top job, but repeated he was willing to help in a transition if
Mubarak resigned now.

But Amr Moussa,
secretary general of the Arab League and former Egyptian foreign
minister, said he believed Mubarak would hold on until September’s
election. Though he added cautiously: “But there are extraordinary
things happening, there’s chaos and perhaps he will take another
decision.”

Any new government will face major challenges, not least the sheer
diversity of long-suppressed political opinion, religious tensions and
the high expectations aroused by the demonstrations of solutions to
unemployment and other economic ills.

A week long sifting
of thousands of names and records in large stacks of files, is likely
to come to an end today for officials of the Independent National
Electoral Commission (INEC), with the formal publication of the list of
candidates for the April general elections.

Clumped in a hall
at the commission’s headquarters in Abuja, the staff of the commission
have since Monday been going through documents trying to fish out areas
that could lead to disqualification of the candidates.

But the declaration
that will end what INEC officials have repeatedly termed “speculative
list” is expected to usher in a fresh wave of glory for some and also
some controversy, with expected upsets as well as corresponding legal
tussles.

Already, some
federal lawmakers who lost out of the primary elections of their
political parties have announced their intentions to press legal
actions against their parties and may be, the commission if the names
of their opponents, declared as winners by their parties, are listed
for the general elections by INEC today.

In Bayelsa State,
serving Senator, Nimi Barigha, has already secured a court injunction
restraining the listing of the name of Clever Ikisikpo, a serving
member of the House of Representatives, declared by the People’s
Democratic Party as the senatorial candidate for Bayelsa East
Senatorial District.

In the suit filed
at an Abuja High Court, Mr Amange also asked the court to bar Mr
Ikisikpo as the candidate for the seat in a classic model of the legal
intrigues that may come after the release of the list from the
electoral commission.

Mr Ikisikpo’s
colleague in the House, from Akwa Ibom State, Eseme Eyiboh, who lost at
the primaries and a rerun, has also warned of a tougher action if the
name of his opponent, Dan Abia, is announced by the same party for a
seat in the House.

In the first
election, Mr Eyiboh, the chairman, House committee on Media polled 179
votes, against Dan Abia’s 586. At the rerun, he polled only five votes
against Mr Abia’s 772. In a petition to the party leadership, Mr Eyiboh
said a purported relocation of the election venue, had violated
electoral laws.

Most of last week,
INEC, faced with the controversy of the replacements of some earlier
submitted names, said it is law-abiding and would strive to hold on to
court positions on any of the cases. “We will always obey the law. That
is our position,” said Emmanuel Umenger, the commission’s Director of
Public Affairs.

For most of last
week, as anxiety mounted about who will, or will not make the final
list, the commission staff, acting in unison, stayed away from formally
discussing the names of those affected across the parties. The
officials said they will wait until the formal release which by the
law, is supposed to come within seven days of receipt of the names from
the political parties.

Intense lobby

However, informed
sources have given hints that the list may be out today. All the
presidential candidates across different political parties, including
President Goodluck Jonathan are to make the list. Our sources also say
all governors on the platform of the PDP who have not completed their
second term are to be part of the list. It is not clear what will
become of the petition filed by former vice- president Atiku Abubakar
asking INEC to declare the PDP primaries null and void.

The one exception
here may be the Oyo State governor, Adebayo Alao Akala. The electoral
body had reportedly said his name was not dropped, but then told
reporters his case his being reviewed. Mr Alao-Akala’s bid has been
tempered by a string of court decisions and overturns, in which at
least one more ruling is expected February 10, 2011. Complaints
emanating from the conduct of the primaries-where parallel primaries
were held-have led to his being restrained by the Federal High Court in
Ibadan.

For PDP in Gombe
State where the governor is rounding a second term, former Accountant
General of the Federation, Ibrahim Dankwambo is expected to be listed
as the PDP candidate.

Some of the notable
names from the other parties could include the former governor of Kano
State and former Minister of Defence, Rabiu Kwankwaso. Mr Kwankwaso’s
submission was earlier contested against and is expected to stir
further controversies if announced by INEC.

From the other
parties, Yakubu Lado Danmarke is expected to be announced as the
gubernatorial candidate for the Congress for Progressive Change
gubernatorial candidate for Katsina State, the hot bed of the new party
championed by presidential aspirant, Muhammadu Buhari.

Besides several
states and federal lawmakers whose listings may spur further debates,
the most contentious nominations may be those from Ogun State currently
torn in two by a fight between the opposing political atmosphere
championed by former president Olusegun Obasanjo on the one hand and
governor, Gbenga Daniel on the other.

In the final twist
last week, Tunji Olurin and Iyabo Obasanjo (daughter of the former
president) replaced Adeleke Isiaka and Lola-Edewor Abiola -from the
governor’s camp- as the gubernatorial and senatorial candidates
respectively.

While INEC last
week confirmed it accepted the names submitted by the faction
sympathetic to Mr Obasanjo as replacements to those submitted by Mr
Daniel, it has firmly refused to comment on whether or not, the name of
Dimeji Bankole, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, who was
part of the governor’s list, is now on the new register.

The judgement list

“Let us all wait
for the final list to be released,” Kayode Idowu, media aide to
chairman, Attahiru Jega, replied NEXT when asked for a response on Mr
Bankole’s fate. The Speaker’s aide, Idowu Bakare, when asked by
correspondents about the position of his boss, was coy at first but
later through a text message, insisted that Mr Bankole’s name was never
part of the contradictions between Mr Obasanjo’s camp and Mr Daniel’s
faction of the PDP.

“There is no
dispute over the Abeokuta South Federal constituency, it was only one
primary election and the winner of that primary election was Dimeji
Bankole,” Mr Bakare asserted.

But in a
conversation with NEXT, prominent member from Mr Obasanjo’s camp,
insists the speaker can only be part of the list if some high wire
manoeuvring took place. According to our source, the former president’s
camp is well aware of what could happen and may not protest against it.

“I have the names on our list off hand and Mr Bankole’s name is not there,” the sources said. After Mr

Bankole’s opponent
stepped down at a parallel primaries by Mr Daniel’s camp, this person
who refused to be named said, one of the contestants, Fasiu Bakane, was
invited to take up the Abeokuta South seat on Mr Obasanjo’s camp.

Mr Bakane, himself
said to have believed he might be substituted refused to commit his
finances to the course. It was his name that was reportedly submitted
to INEC by the Obasanjo camp in place of Mr Bankole.

Egyptian President
Hosni Mubarak came to power at a moment of national crisis after a
dramatic act of political violence coupled with an armed insurgency.
Thirty years later he is clinging to power, with more than 130 people
dead in the streets and with no clear successor.

Throughout the
intervening three decades and despite scores of empty promises, Mubarak
has done nothing to create an institutional framework for a peaceful
and democratic transfer of power in the Arab world’s most populous
nation. Instead he has perpetuated a system in which politics in the
conventional sense hardly exists, running the country by administrative
fiat as if it were an army or a corporation. Mubarak owes his
presidential career to President Anwar Sadat, who saw him as a loyal
subordinate and appointed him vice president in 1975.

At the time he
was commander of the air force, with no political experience or
ambitions. When Sadat summoned him to the presidential palace to offer
him the job, the most Mubarak expected was that he would end up as
Egyptian ambassador in some European capital, he said in a television
interview in 2005. Islamist revolutionaries gunned Sadat down at a
military parade in Cairo on Oct 6, 1981, and Mubarak, who was sitting
next to Sadat and was slightly injured, stepped into the breach, to
widespread relief among ordinary Egyptians.

Security and stability

Islamist
insurgents, incensed by Sadat’s peace treaty with Israel,
simultaneously tried to take over the southern city of Assiut. Mubarak
sent in the army to crush them. At the time his solid presence and
cautious demeanour had a calming effect on a country traumatised by the
assassination of Sadat and fearful of chaos and civil war.

But once installed
in power, Mubarak never offered Egyptians any vision other than
economic development under the same authoritarian system he had
inherited from the army officers who overthrew the monarchy in 1952.

Mubarak has spoken
about democracy whenever the occasion arises but his actions have never
suggested he understood the concept to include the possibility of early
retirement or losing power through elections.

He preferred to
talk about security and stability, portraying himself as a benign
patriarch protecting the country from an array of enemies, some real
and some imaginary. During a lesser crisis during the presidential
election campaign of 2005, when Washington was leaning on him to loosen
up, he dismissed with contempt the advice of intellectuals who told him
he needed to create real institutions. Until 2005 Mubarak was the only
candidate in presidential referendums. Even in 2005 he never deigned to
debate his main rival, liberal lawyer Ayman Nour,

who was then imprisoned for five years on dubious charges of forging signatures.

Economy picked up

Even economic
development was slow and patchy until his son Gamal, a former
investment banker, persuaded him to bring businessmen and neoliberal
economists into the cabinet. Economic growth picked up, hitting 7.2
percent in the financial year 2007/8, but meanwhile the gap has grown
between rich and poor, inflation has stayed high and the poor complain
that they have seen none of the benefits. On the political front,
little changed. Businessmen friends and associates of Gamal Mubarak
moved into the upper reaches of the ruling party, the National
Democratic Party (NDP), which has been one of the prime targets of the
current uprising.

More and more
complacent and unimaginative as he ages, Mubarak has condoned or turned
a blind eye to the gradual erosion of the rule of law, making a smooth
and broadly accepted transition of power more and more elusive.

Police have
tortured with impunity anyone who challenges authority, and corrupt
politicians have monopolised the political scene by rigging elections
and fixing the rules to exclude all rivals. Officials say voting is
fair and that it investigates any cases of torture. Mubarak has seemed
oblivious to the dangers. Asked last year who would succeed him, he
said: “Only God knows who will be my successor. Whoever God prefers, I
prefer.” U.S. ambassador Margaret Scobie, summarising Mubarak’s vision
in a cable leaked by Wikileaks, concurred. “He seems to be trusting to
God and the ubiquitous military and civilian security services to
ensure an orderly transition,” she wrote.

REUTERS

On a Thursday night
in early January this year, Pascal Adeniyi had just had dinner and was
getting ready to go to bed when his phone beeped, indicating that he
had received a text message. He picked up the phone and lay back on his
pillow to read the message. Very quickly, he sat up on his bed with a
broad smile on his face as he read the text message for the second
time. The message said that he has been selected to participate in a
contest where he could win N10 million and a car. To participate, he
was asked to reply “yes” to the text.

The message was
from a short code, 555, used by his service provider, Glo, for
promotional purposes. Mr. Adeniyi replied to the message quickly and a
simple question was sent back to him. He answered the first question
and was immediately pulled into in a maze of unending question and
answer texts which lasted five days and cost him a total of N35, 000 on
his contract plan.

Mr. Adeniyi, like
millions of mobile telephone subscribers in Nigeria, has been a victim
of what appears to be a new kind of fraud currently flooding the
largely unregulated but booming short code and mobile telephone
value-added service industry in Nigeria. Mr. Adeniyi feels cheated but
at least, his loss was to a legitimate game, the widely advertised “Glo
Text a Million Season 2 Promo” in which many people have been shown on
television to have won prizes. There are, however, many people losing
money to scores of other ‘not advertised’ scam mobile telephone
value-added services.

10 digit scam

Tochi Ude, for
instance, was defrauded on his MTN phone by a different type of
deceptive value-added service with a number longer than most short
codes. While at work in November last year, he got a text on his phone
from an unusual 10 digit number, 9609908918.

“Hi, I tried to
call you, call me back on this number. +9609908918,” the message read.
He quickly dialled the number and an automated voice answered, asking
him to wait while his service was sorted. He waited.

“I thought it was one of my friends in India, because the numbers looked like an Indian code,” Mr. Ude said.

It turned out to be
an unending Interactive Voice Response (IVR) leading him through a maze
of options and encouraging him to stay longer online. Eventually, his
air time ran out. He spent five minutes on the call but never got to
speak to anyone and could not find out who it was that wanted to reach
him. He hung up and checked his balance. He was billed N500 for the
five minutes he spent with the IVR.

“Each minute cost
N100, but the text never said that,” he said. “The number was strange
and there was no detail about the service provider and the cost. Just
the one sentence in the message.”

Later, he contacted
his three friends in India and all said they didn’t try to reach him at
that time. He got the same text three times that month but never called
it after the first scam. A couple of his friends also got similar
messages in December but in a different form and from a different
number.

Ojoma Ocheja was
scammed by a similar scheme. Last week, she got a text from a 10-digit
number, 6703302973. The message said a secret admirer had sent her a
love song. The text instructed her to call +6703302973 to hear the song
and the identity of the person that sent her the song.

“There was no
information of the cost of the service in the text neither did the
service providers indicate their identity so I thought it was from
MTN,” Ms. Ocheja said. She called the 10-digit number. It turned out to
be an unending IVR. She dropped the call three minutes later, after she
sensed that there was something wrong.

“I didn’t hear both
the song and the identity of the sender,” she said. “Rather, the female
voice at the IVR continuously gave me options luring me on.”

Moneyed scheme

According to
statistics from the National Communication Commission, as at September
2010, there were 75.362 million active GSM lines in Nigeria; all of
them vulnerable to these scams which come in different formats across
networks of various service providers. If 0.1 percent of the active
subscribers spend at least a minute calling any of these services each
day, subscribers will lose N7.536 million daily, N52.753 million in a
week and N1.582 billion in a month. If 1 percent of the active
subscribers use the service at the same rate, they will be defrauded of
N15.82 billion in one month. All victims interviewed by NEXT say they
received the messages more than once and spent more than a minute on
the call.

“Curiosity will keep you on the call,” Mr. Ude said.

The telephone
numbers that were used to defraud Mr. Ude and others in November were
different from those other complainants got in December and yet,
different from the numbers being used in the scheme now. Each of them
is deactivated for the next scam — with new formats — a NEXT
investigation has revealed.

No regulation

Although this
segment of the mobile communication industry spins billions of naira
monthly, mostly for service not rendered, the sector is not regulated.
On April 8, 2010, Ernest Ndukwe, then executive vice chairman of the
NCC, which regulates telecoms and operations in Nigeria, met with his
fellow board members in Abuja for a public inquiry into the proposed
guidelines on short code operations in Nigeria. Eleven months later,
the guidelines are still in a draft form but millions of Nigerians have
been scammed and lost money and there is no way to trace the
perpetuaters of the scam. Basher Gwandu, the executive commissioner,
technical services at NCC, said the commission is still working on
regulating the short code industry. promising to “investigate further
including the Glo number”.

The only form of
regulation for the short code in the telecoms industry, currently, is a
non-legally binding code of conduct document offered by Wireless
Application Service Providers’ of Nigeria (WASPN). WASPN is a voluntary
organization based in Lagos and admits third-party content developers —
most of whom own the short code services and use traditional network
providers — who are willing to give them a platform.

“Not all content
developers are members of WASPN …neither are they obligated to join,”
Eunice Benjamin Ade, the business application manager of WASPN told
NEXT.

Mrs. Ade explained
that it is only members of the association that are bound by its code
of conduct. She disowned the various fraudulent service providers
mentioned in this story saying: “I want to assure you that it is not
emanating from any WASPN member, because they are bound by the code of
conduct,” she said.

As things stand, it
appears that the first line of security and protection from fraudulent
content developers is the service provider. The service provider is the
bridge between the subscriber and the content developer. The service
providers deduct money from the subscribers’ accounts and share this
revenue with the content developers.

However, since
there are no laws or guidelines for the short code industry,
subscribers are at the mercy of their providers’ ability to sniff out,
con artistes. At the moment, service providers don’t appear to be doing
a decent job at this. There are also, of course, promos that are
conducted by the service providers themselves, like the one Mr. Adeniyi
participated in. These come with the traditional “terms and condition”
for its use. However, a lot of its users like Mr. Adeniyi say they feel
cheated.

“I think it is a
fraudulent game,” Iyabo Oyelese, another subscriber said. She argued
that the game is “unreasonably too long” and does not provide
sufficient information about the cost.

Bode Opeseitan, the
spokesperson for Glo could not be reached for comments on these
allegations. He did not answer calls neither did he reply to text
messages from NEXT.

MTN promised to respond to questions concerning the fraud practised via its network, but the reaction never came.

While service providers drag their feet in providing protection to
their subscribers from fraudsters, and the NCC finetunes the short code
guidelines, experts advise subscribers to stay way from these schemes,
and when they feel they want to give it a shot, they should only to put
at stake telephone credit they feel they can afford to lose.

Created in 2004 by
the administration of Olusegun Obasanjo, the Excess Crude Account had
accrued up to $17.3 billion in 2007 and peaked at about $32 billion
from $5.1 billion when it was created.

In January 2009, the Excess Crude Account had a balance of $20 billion.

In February, the
Federation Account Allocation Committee recommended the sharing of $2
billion, after the state governors mounted pressure on the federal
government to share $4 billion.

In April, the National Economic Council approved $5.3 billion to fund the federal government’s power intervention.

Between June and
August 2009, $4 billion was shared by the government, after the state
governors went to court praying that the whole amount in the reserve be
shared.

Another $2 billion was shared to ameliorate the international oil price that was drastically reduced by global economic crisis.

Another $2 billion was injected into the economy as an economic stimulus towards the end of 2009.

In April 2010, $5.3 billion was released by the Accountant General Office.

In December 2010, $1 billion was approved by the president to be shared by the state governors.

The founder and president of the Oodua Peoples
Congress, Frederick Fasehun, yesterday, said his organization will
resist the rise of political dynasties which became apparent after the
primary election of all political parties in the country.

Mr Fasehun, while addressing journalists on what
he called “Wake up series: calling Nigerians to order,” also called for
a rallying point to preserve the sovereignty of the people from
impending loss. “Is democracy synonymous with the ‘Selectocracy’ that
now determines the emergence of parties’ candidates for elective
positions?,” he said. “How can we subject ourselves to being ruled by
those who us no allegiance whatsoever because of the prejudiced,
unfair, and undemocratic process by which they emerge? How does a
servant serve well who has not been mandated to serve and how do you
expect peace from a situation of social injustice?”

The fault

According to him, “the abuse of the wish of the
majority by party leaders is caused by the failure of the Independent
National Electoral Commission (INEC) to resolutely stamp its feet on
the nation’s political landscape as a non-partisan regulator it is
supposed to be.” “Consequently, the obvious trend in the nation’s
politics is that of supremacy of godfathers rather than the wish of the
people,” he said. Mr Fasehun said that true democracy cannot be the
nation’s lot as INEC, which he described in its present state as a
“toothless dog that can only bark but not bite”, is already laying the
foundation for a new era of rigging through its “ongoing systematic
official disenfranchisement.”

“This goes to show that Nigeria’s problem is not
the militants, but the politicians who find it difficult to provide
good leadership and social justice,” he said. “Or what is corruption if
we don’t count godfatherism, selectocracy, and rigging as its
attributes? Is institutionalization of [political] dynasties a feature
of democracy?” He added that more Nigerians need to actively speak
against social injustice because “our prophets – Fawehinmi, Beko, Chima
Ubani, Bala Usman, Enahoro – are getting fewer in numbers but we pray
the echoes of their prophecies will soon produce a worthy leader for
our currently leaderless 140 million people.”

Way forward

Mr Fasehun advised INEC to find a way to sanction
all political parties that have compromised internal democracy and
produced unpopular candidates. He expressed his reservation against
political litigations and advised the electoral commission to “open a
Department for Direct Public Complaints, where aspirants robbed of
their candidacy can file an appeal and reclaim their due mandate.” He
proposed a strict sanction for any political party that has, at least,
ten percent of its primary elections disputed. He also advocated a
statutory provision that will compel political parties to reserve at
least one third of their total candidates for women.

The Excess Crude
Account (ECA) was created and sustained in controversy. Section 162 (1)
of the Constitution on Public Revenue stipulates that, “The Federation
shall maintain a special account to be called ‘the Federation Account’
into which shall be paid all revenues collected by the Government of
the Federation.” However, that did not dissuade former President
Olusegun Obasanjo from going ahead to create the Account in 2004. The
objective was to enable government transfer all revenues earned from
crude oil exports at a price above the budgeted benchmark price
indicated in the annual fiscal appropriation.

Illegal account

On face value, the
objective seemed altruistic, as revenues in the account were supposed
to be saved for the rainy day, to provide succour for government in
times of extreme difficulty. The Revenue Mobilization Allocation and
Fiscal Commission (RMAFC), which has the constitutional responsibility
to supervise and superintend over the allocation of government revenue
has consistently condemned the account as illegal and unconstitutional,
as all revenues are supposed to be pooled in the Federation Account to
be distributed among the component units of the Federation.

This stand was
supported by the Governors Forum, a meeting of all the 36 governors,
which declared that it was an illegal creation and that all money
accruing to government should be shared by all tiers of government and
not kept in any ‘‘illegal’’ account. This stand by the governors is not
entirely selfless as they wanted a ‘‘share’’ of the pie to fund their
own things.

As at 2008, when
average crude oil benchmark price was $108 per barrel, official records
from the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation (OAGF)
indicated that accumulated revenue in the ECA rose to N1,728.48 billion.

However, as at December 2009, the account had been depleted to less than N72.74billion.

As at December last
year, after the Federation Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC) held a
secret emergency meeting in the twilight of last month to disburse
$1billion (about N150 billion) to the three tiers of government,
Minister of State for Finance, Yawaba Lawan-Wabi, said the balance in
the Account was about $3million,

Earlier in January
2010, $5.5 billion was withdrawn from the Account for projects in the
power sector under the National Integrated Power Projects (NIPP). The
following month, another $2billion was approved by the then Acting
President, Goodluck Jonathan, from foreign ECA for projects to help
stimulate the economy. Another N23.23 billion was disbursed from the
domestic ECA for the settlement of the cost of petroleum products
supply subsidy by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).

After the signing
of the 2010 Appropriation Act, total distributable revenue for the
first quarter of the year stood at N1.495 trillion. But, since the
allocation was based on the 2009 oil benchmark of $45 per barrel, the
figure was reduced to about N758.06billion, requiring about N736.985
billion from the ECA to augment. ECA balance as at May was about $4.393
billion.

In June, $2billion
was withdrawn from the foreign ECA, while N36 billion was taken from
domestic ECA for revenue to augment arrears for May. With the creation
of a new excess revenue account created to host all savings in monthly
revenue earnings in excess of a ceiling of about N365 billion pegged as
amount that could be shared by the Federation Accounts Allocation
Committee (FAAC), the balance in the dollar ECA was $3.2billion and
Naira ECA N29billion, while the new excess revenue account held a
balance of N40 billion.

About $179million
was paid in July, bringing the balance in the dollar ECA to
$3.54billion, while another N20 billion went into the domestic ECA,
raising the balance N53.9billion; N75billion was paid into the new
excess revenue account for the month.

In August, another
$2billion was withdrawn from the ECA, apart from $1billion withdrawn
from ECA as seed money for the take off of the proposed Sovereign
Wealth Fund (SWF). Additional $2billion was withdrawn from the ECA the
same month, bringing the balance to about $460 million, while the new
Excess Revenue Account (ERA) climbed to over N112 billion. With about
$387.2 million transferred during the month into the dollar ECA, the
balance came to about $1.16 billion as at last October, while about
N175 billion was transferred into the Excess Development Account (EDA),
and N31.2 billion into Domestic (ECA).

However, by
December, $1billion was withdrawn from ECA and shared to the three
tiers of government during a secret emergency FAAC meeting held on the
twilight of the year.