NERC recently issued two regulations entitled “NERC Regulation on Embedded Generation 2012,” and “NERC Regulation for Independent Electricity Distribution.”

The Embedded Generation regulation authorizes investors, communities, states and local governments to generate and distribute electricity for their exclusive consumption using facilities of existing electricity distribution companies or independent electricity distribution network operators, whilst the Independent Electricity Distribution regulation permits communities, local and state governments to invest in electricity distribution networks in areas without access to the grid or distribution network or areas poorly serviced.

The regulations empower States with electricity generation infrastructure to distribute electricity to their citizens. They also empower local governments and communities to partner with investors or look inwards in developing power solutions in order to provide their citizens with electricity.

Local governments can generate Power

“From now on, the much expected expansion in the electricity supply to the end- users would be easily realisable. With these regulations, we have further unlocked the opportunities in the sector to community, private and government participations. The laws are expected to revolutionise the sector.

Source: Punch

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A Federal High Court in Abuja, Wednesday, fixed April 27 to deliver judgment in a suit seeking to compel the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, and the Attorney General of the Federation, AGF, to disclose how the $12.4 billion oil windfall money that accrued to the Federal Government between 1988 and 1994, was spent.
The suit was filed before the High Court by six civil society groups led by the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project, SERAP, under the Fundamental Rights (Enforcement Procedure) Rules 2009.
Though the judgment has been stalled since last year when hearing was concluded on the matter, however, Justice Gabriel Kolawole, today, ordered all the parties to appear on the next adjourned date to re-adopt their processes to enable him to give verdict on the case.
Specifically, the plaintiffs beseeched the court for “an order of mandamus compelling the respondents, individually and/or collectively, to publish detailed statement of account relating to the spending of $12.4 billion oil windfall between 1988 and 1994, and to publish in major national newspapers a copy of the statement of account.”
It would be recalled that in 1994, the Federal Government constituted the Pius Okigbo Panel with a mandate to investigate the activities of the CBN and recommend measures for the re-organization of the apex bank.
In the course of its assignment, the Okigbo Panel reportedly uncovered that about $12.4 billion that was reserved in the ‘Dedicated and Special Accounts’, was depleted to $200 million by June 1994.
Consequent upon the alleged mismanagement of the said $12.4 billion by the then military Head of State, General Ibrahim Babangida, the investigative Panel, recommended an immediate discontinuance of the said ‘Dedicated and Special Accounts’.
In their suit however, the plaintiffs further pleaded the court to order the respondents to not only prosecute anyone indicted by the report, but to also recoup the money from them and return same to the national treasury.

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“By contrast Rivers State was allocated N3,965 per capita, and on average the oil producing South-South region received on average N3,332 per capita. This imbalance is compounded when the cost of an amnesty programme for militants in the delta is included together with an additional 1 per cent for a special development body for the Niger Delta. To boot, the theft of oil by profiteers in the region diverts tens of millions more weekly from federal coffers. – Sanusi Lamido Sanusi.

YES, forget these per capita figures! I agree the North is poor. Yes, I agree the poverty has bred millions of destitutes, who have become instant and easy recruits for Boko Haram. But my question is: Who impoverished the North?

A caveat: I am an unabashed capitalist who believes that every citizen has a right to do good business and make profit. I salute hard work and do not disparage honest efforts. However, uncompassionate capitalism driven by pulleys of aristocracy breeds a brutal class order worthy of condemnation.

In my last article titled – ‘El Rrufai’s amnesia: The day Boko Haram Wore Jeans’, I categorically stated that greed and the senseless chase for power by the Fulani aristocrats and political elite of the North are responsible for the extreme poverty of the North. I still and will always stand by that. My position did not go down well with my targets; they responded vituperatively.

Mallam Sanusi’s statistics was intended to mislead us by ruffling the rudder of our common sense. See, Ekiti state has a 2012 budget 0f N88 billion; Kwara State, N90 billion; Cross River State, N144 billion; Anambra State, N82 billion; Enugu State, N74 billion. Now let’s look at the 2012 budgets recently passed into law by the four major Boko Haram occupied states – Kano State has a budget of N 210 billion; Borno State, 150 billion; Gombe, N94 billion; Yobe State, 80 billion.

A simple comparative analysis shows that Ekiti State has about the same revenue as Yobe and Gombe, but only 17 students passed WAEC and NECO in Gombe state last year, while Ekiti is known for its high literacy level. Gombe State has a bigger budget that Enugu and Anambra, why has MASSOB not bombed anyone.

Borno State has a budget twice that of Enugu State but the poverty and unemployment level in Borno State is more than thrice that of Enugu State. Borno has a bigger budget than a Niger Delta state – Cross River. While the leaders of Cross River over the last decade have transformed it into the nation’s leading tourist destination; those of Borno have transformed it into a Somalia.

Kano State gets the highest statutory allocation from the Federal Government, because on paper Kano is the most populated state in Nigeria, yet Kano has about 1.6 million destitute Almajiris. Kano has a budget almost thrice the budget of Enugu, twice the budget of Kwara, Anambra and Ekiti, but how come almost 90 per cent of students in Kano fail WAEC? How come the poverty level in Kano is higher than all these states put together? Why is the North so poor? From the figures above I have shown that Southern states with lesser budgets have shown better development performance than most North Eastern states with bigger statutory allocation and budgets.

Now, I need to tackle the sensitive question of revenue allocation that has infuriated the Mallam Lamido Sanusi and Mallam Elrufai and their likes. Niger Delta states get higher revenue allocation because they contribute virtually all the eggs in the national crate. That is expected. Albeit the 13 per cent remains grossly inadequate, the CBN Governor has suggested that his Boko boys are resisting the disparity.

I want to posit that the North-East through their aristocrats and ex-military rulers (except Gen. Mohammed Buhari) rake in more oil money (from the Niger Delta) individually than any Niger Delta state, and collectively more than twice the entire Niger Delta put together. In this disquisition, I have attempted to show that 80 per cent of crude oil and gas produced by indigenous companies is controlled by the North-East. It is an area they have well conquered through Generals IBB, Abacha and Abdulsalami. However, the loots never get back home.

Uneven nature of the distribution

In this first part I will attempt to describe the very uneven nature of the distribution of the nation’s wealth among the Northern aristocratic families and their military generals who for decades looted Nigeria. They did so blatantly, and while Nigeria was weeping about oil windfall loot and others, Nigerians would wail if they know how much of the nation’s resources these folks allocated to themselves and their business fronts before they stepped aside.

Let us therefore begin: To the state of origin of Boko Haram: Borno State. Enter Cavendish Petroleum, the operators of OML 110 – with good yielding OBE field. This oil block was awarded to Alhaji Mai Deribe – the Borno patriarch, who even in death will remain the richest man dead or alive in the history of Borno State – by General Sani Abacha on July 8, 1996. OML 110 has a proven oil reserve in excess of 500 million barrels (more than the entire 300million barrels reserve of Sudan). As yet with the capacity to produce about 120,000 barrels of crude oil daily from its OBE 4 and OBE 5 wells. At optimal production levels, Cavendish nets circa N4billion monthly in crude oil sales (using current oil price of $100pb). Cavendish Petroleum’s N4bn monthly net dwarfs the monthly statutory allocation of Borno which is about N3bn and its internally generated revenue staggers around N1billion.

His mansion in Maiduguri has become a tourist attraction. A simple Google search will throw up different perspectives of Mai Deribe’s palatial home.

Enter Oriental Energy Resources Limited, a company owned by Alhaji Mohammed Indimi, a Fulani and close friend of General Ibrahim Babangida. Also worthy of note is that General IBB’s first son is married to Alhaji Mohammed Indimi’s daughter – Yakolo Indimi-Babangida, who also serves as a director in the company. Alhaji Indimi hails from Borno State.

Good yielding offshore oil blocs

Oriental Energy Resources Limited runs three oil blocks: OML 115, the Okwok field and the Ebok field. OML 115 and Okwo are OML PSC, while Ebok is an OML JV. All of them good yielding offshore oil blocks. OML 115 on its own is 228 sqKm. On OML115 Oriental Energy Resources Limited has 60 per cent while Equity Energy Resources AS. On Okwok, Addax has 40 per cent and on the Ebok field, Oriental Energy Resources shares with none: its 100 per cent. AMNI produces twice as much as Cavendish Petroleum.

I will then shift to the centre of the aristocratic hegemony in the North East – Kano. Here. Enter the Fulani Prince Nasiru Ado Bayero, Mallam (Prince) Sanusi Lamido Sanusi’s cousin. He is a key shareholder and director in Seplat/Platform petroleum operators of the Asuokpu/Umutu Marginal Field with a capacity of 300,000 barrels monthly and A 30mmfcsd gas plant capable of feeding 100MT of LPG. The Ado Bayeros, Yar’Aduas and Atiku Abubakar are Nigerian directors of Intels. It is a private port that has grounded three Federal ports in the South. Intels is discussed later.

Enter South Atlantic Petroleum Limited (SAPETRO). South Atlantic Petroleum (SAPETRO) is a Nigerian Oil Exploration and Production Company that was created in 1995 by General T. Y. Danjuma. General Sani Abacha awarded the Oil Prospecting License (OPL) 246 to SAPETRO in February 1998.

The block covers a total area of 2,590km2 (1,000 sq. miles). SAPETRO partnered with Total Upstream Nigeria Ltd (TUPNI) and Brasoil Oil Services Company Nigeria Ltd (Petrobras) to start prospecting on OPL246. Akpo, a condensate field was discovered in April 2000 with the drilling of the first exploration well (Akpo 1) on the block. Other discoveries made on OPL 246 include the Egina Main, Egina South, Preowei and Kuro (Kuro was suspended as a dry gas/minor oil discovery).

Derivation and deprivation

In June 2006, General TY Danjuma divested part of its contractor rights and obligations to China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) for $1 billion (N160bn). Akpo exports about 230,000 barrels of condensate daily. Condensate export is not regulated by OPEC, so SAPETRO/TOTAL exports as much as possible each day. Egina exports about 75,000 barrels of oil daily.

Therefore, Akpo and Egina fields export just over 300,000 barrels of oil/condensate daily (three times what the country Ghana exports). SAPETRO (TY Danjuma) get 25 per cent of this. Now, note I have not talked about the gas component – it’s about 2.5 trillion cubic feet. The money SAPETRO nets each month is more than the monthly statutory allocation of all the Niger delta states combined and also more than the oil revenue of Ghana. Do your maths.

Enter AMNI (or is it AMIN?) International Petroleum Development Company. AMNI owns two oil blocks – OML 112 and OML 117. In the production sharing contract, AMNI gets 60 per cent for owning the oil block and Total gets 40 per cent for providing technical advice. OML 112 was awarded on the 12/02/1998 while OML 117 was awarded 06/08/1999 all by Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar. Operations started on both blocks 0n 26/02/2006. The licenses are due to expire 11/02/2018 and 05/08/2019 respectively. (Now you see why the next election is important?)

The Okoro and Setu fields in OML 112 are operated by Afren Energy, a company substantially controlled by Rilwanu Lukman. The Okoro and Setu oil fields have about 50 million barrels in reserve and currently produce/exports just a little below 20,000 barrels per day. The chairman of AMNI International Petroleum and Development Company is Alhaji (Colonel) Sani Bello a Fulani from Kontagora, Niger State. Lest I forget, Alhaji Bello’s son – Abu, is married to General Abdusalami Abubakar’s eldest daughter.

Enter Express Petroleum and Gas Limited floated by Alhaji Aminu Dantata. General Abacha awarded him OML 108 on the 1st of November, 1995. CAMAC Houston, a company owned by Kase Lawal bought 2.5 per cent of Express Petroleum’s 60 per cent holdings. The other 40 per cent on OML 108 is owned Sheba E&P Limitedi. SEPCOL operates the Ukpokiti offshore field in Shallow water Nigeria, which was acquired from ConocoPhillips in May 2004.

Enter Shebah Exploration And Production Limited (SEPCOL) . It is the operator of the Oil Mining License 108 offshore Nigeria. Head office is in Lagos, but ‘head quartered’ in Minna.

Enter Consolidated Oil. Conoil Producing Limited is an integrated upstream oil and gas company. They are the operator of six blocks in the Niger Delta as well as 25 per cent Equity holder in the Joint Development Zone (JDZ) Block 4. Corporate Head office is in Lagos, but its ‘Headquarters’ is in Minna, Niger State.

Conoil signed a technical operator agreement with Continental Oil and Gas Limited (CONOG) to provide 100% funding and technical service agreement to operate blocks OML 59 on a 40 per cent (Conoil) / 60 per cent (CONOG) basis. Conoil entered into a Production Sharing Contract with the NNPC by virtue of an agreement executed on October 17, 2008.

Conoil’s has overall potential hydrocarbon resources of over 1.0 billion barrels of oil and 7.0 trillion cubic feet of gas. General Ibrahim Babangida awarded the first oil bloc to Conoil in 1991. The company produces about 100,000 barrels per day.

Enter Rilwanu Lukman, another Fulani multimillionaire with controlling holdings in Afren, the operators of AMNI oil blocks and also with very key interest in the NNPC/Vitol trading deal, Vitol is a London based oil trading company. Vitol lifts 350,000 barrels of crude oil daily from Nigeria.

Enter Intels and the Yar’Adua, Ado Bayero family and Alhaji Abubakar Atiku. The Oil and Gas Free Zone and Oil Services Centres, as well as support bases, are operated from government-owned facilities, leased to Intels under long-term agreements. Intels runs a ‘private port’, a venture that has systematically killed the Calabar, Warri and Port Harcourt ports.

More money in profit

There are over one hundred major companies operating at the Intel facility in Port Harcourt. The company makes more money in profit than the government of Rivers, Bayelsa and Delta states put together. I shall give details and figures in part two of this disquisition.

Finally, let me introduce you to NorthEast Petroleum. The name is as clear as the message it sends. I do not need to write so much about NorthEast Petroleum registered as NorEast. NorthEast Petroleum Nigeria Limited is the holder of OPL215 license, covering an area of 2,564 square kilometres in water depths between 200 to 1600 metres. NorEast is the parent company of Rayflosh Petroleum Nigeria which got the 2005 bidding round and was awarded the blocks OPLs 276 and 283 closing thereupon a Joint Venture Agreement with Centrica Resources Nigeria Limited and CCC Oil and Gas.

Not surprising, NorthEast Petroleum is owned by another Fulani businessman from the North East, Alhaji Saleh Mohammed Jambo. The license was awarded to him by General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida in 1991 and then renewed in 2004. So far $50million has been spent on the very promising Okpoi-1 and Egere -1 exploratory well.

In the Part II, we shall finish the discussion. We will table other North Eastern billionaires who make more money than their states of origin from Niger Delta oil blocks.

With all these oil blocs owned by ‘North- Easterners’ in the Niger Delta, it should be clear to El-Rufai and Sanusi who really benefits from the Niger Delta Amnesty Programme.

Sadly, the National Bureau of Statistics Poverty Profile Report just released shows the North East as the poorest region in the nation with 69.1 and 76.3 as absolute and relative poverty levels respectively, while the South-West had the lowest poverty profile with 49.8 as absolute poverty level and 59.1 relative poverty level. With these figures from the National Bureau of Statistics, I rest my case. The rich man’s wealth is his strong city: the destruction of the poor is their poverty. Let us reason together.

Source: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2012/03/derivation-and-deprivation-why-the-north-is-poor/

By Mrs. Bianca Ojukwu

How do I sum up 23 years in one page? I don’t know. How do I describe you? I cannot. Not in any depth. Not for anybody else – you were my husband, my brother, my friend, my child. I was your queen, and it was an honour to have served you.

You were the lion of my history books, the leader of my nation when we faced extinction, the larger-than-life history come to my life – living, breathing legend. But unlike the history books, you defied all preconceptions. You made me cry from laughter with your jokes, many irreverent. You awed me with your wisdom. You melted my heart with your kindness. Your impeccable manners made Prince Charming a living reality. Your fearlessness made you the man I dreamt of all my life and your total lack of seeking public approval before speaking your mind separated you from mere mortals.

Every year that I spent with you was an adventure – no two days were the same. With you, I was finally able to soar on wings wider than the ocean. With you I was blessed with the best children God in heaven had to give. With you, I learnt to face the world without fear and learnt daily the things that matter most. Your disdain for money was novel – sometimes funny, other times quite alarming.

It mattered not a whit to you. Your total dedication to your people – Ndi-Igbo – was so absolute that really, very little else mattered. You never craved anybody’s praise as long as you believed that you were doing right and even in the face of utmost danger, you never relented from speaking truth to power – to you, what after all, was power? It was not that conferred by the gun, nor that stolen from the ballot box. No. You understood that power transcended all that. Power is the freedom to be true to yourself and to God, no matter the cost.

It is freedom from fear. It is freedom from bondage. It is freedom to seek the wellbeing of your people just because you love them. It is the ability to move a whole nation without a penny as inducement nor a gun to force them. When an entire nation can rise up for one person for no other reason than that they love him and know he is their leader – sans gun, money, official title or any strange paraphernalia – that is power.

To try to contain you in words is futile. You span the breadth of human experience – full of laughter, joy, kindness and sometimes, almost childlike in your ability to find something good in almost everyone and every situation. You could flare up at any injustice and in the next instant, sing military songs to the children. You could analyse a situation with incredible swiftness and accuracy. In any generation, there can only be one like you. You were that one star. You were a child of destiny, born for no other time than the one you found yourself in.

Destined to lead your people at the time total extinction was staring us in the face. There was no one else. You gained nothing from it. You used all the resources you had just to wage a war of survival. You fought to keep us alive when we were being slaughtered like rams for no reason. Today, we find ourselves in the same situation but you are not here. You fought that we might live. The truth is finally coming out and even those who fought you now acknowledge that you had no choice. For your faithfulness, God kept you and brought you home to your people.

You loved Nigeria. You spent so much of your waking moments devising ways through which Nigeria could progress to Tai-Two!!! You were the eternal optimist, always hoping that one day, God will touch His people and give us one Vision and the diligence to work towards the dream. It never came to pass in your lifetime. Instead, the disaster you predicted if we continued on the same path has come home to roost. You always saw so clearly. Your words are indelibly preserved for this generation to read and learn and perhaps heed and turn. You always said the dry bones will rise again. But you always hoped we would not become the dry bones by our actions. Above all, you feared for your own people, crying out against the relentless oppression that has not ceased since the end of the war and saddened by the acceptance of this position by your own people. In death, you have awakened the spirit that we thought had died. Your people are finally waking up.

At home, you were the father any child would dream of having. At no point did our children have to wonder where you were. You were ever at their disposal, playing with them, teaching them of a bygone era, teaching them of the world they live in and giving them the total security of knowing you were always present.

In mercy, God gave me a year to prepare for the inevitable. I could never have survived an instant departure. In mercy, God ensured that your final week on earth was spent only with me and that on your last day, you were back to your old self. I cannot but thank God for the joy of that final day – the jokes, the laughter, the songs. It was a lifetime packed into a few hours, filled with hope that many tomorrows would follow and that we would be home for Christmas. You deceived me. You were so emphatic that we would be going home. I did not know you meant a different home.

The swiftness of your departure remains shocking to me. You left on the day I least expected. But I cannot fight God. He owns your life and mine. I know that God called you home because every other time it seemed you were at death’s door, you fought like the lion that God made you and always prevailed. In my eyes, even death was no match for you. But who can say ‘no’ to the Almighty God? You walked away with Him, going away with such peace that I can only bow to God’s sovereignty. Your people have remembered. The warrior of our land has gone. The flags are lowered in your honour. Our hearts are laden with grief.

A Unique Moment In The Life Of The Ikemba…

But I will trust that the living God who gave you to me will look after me and our children. Through my sadness, the memories will always shine bright and beautiful.

Adieu, my love,
My husband,
My lion,
Ikemba,
Amuma na Egbe Igwe,
Odenigbo Ngwo.
Eze-Igbo Gburugburu,
Ibu dike.
Chukwu gozie gi,
Chukwu debe gi.
Anyi ga afu na omesia.
________________________
Bianca Ojukwu Is The Widow Of Late Dim Chukwuemka Odumegwu-Ojukwu

Tochukwu E.EZEOKE
Reading, Berkshire
Tel. +447748612933

“Dibia n’ako otoro, okonyere ike ya n’ elu?” Inu Ndi-Igbo”
**************************************************************

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The governor also announced scholarships for all students of the state origin from primary to tertiary institution.

Speaking at the Imo Freedom Square, Owerri, Okorocha promised to pay scholarship of N100,000 to each student of Imo origin in Imo State University, adding that each recipient would get N70,000 free and N30,000 as a loan to be paid upon completion of studies, with no basis for collateral.

He also said students undertaking National Diploma (ND) at the state polytechnics would receive N60,000, with N40,000 free and N20,000 as loan, while those undertaking Higher National Diploma (HND) would get N60,000 free and N20,000 loan.

The governor disclosed that the scholarship fund would be paid from the next academic session, adding that by September, every school in the state would be autonomous.

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With this development, the strike embarked upon by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), might be called off since retirement age was one of the disputed issues.

The bill, however, fixed the retirement age of other academic staff below the rank of professor and non-academic staff at 65 .

Immediately after the passage of the bill, Senate President, David Mark, said that, “we have passed the bill into law to meet the demands of ASUU. There is the need to get ASUU back to the classrooms so that our children can go back to their classes”.

He further explained that, “there are serious constitutional issues to be addressed and we have to pursue them and unless we do that, we may be confronted with problems in the future and that is why we have to take cognisance of section 318 of the constitution.”

Mark commended his colleagues for their commitment with regard to the passage of the bills, expressing the hope that ASUU would reciprocate the gesture by calling off its three-month strike.

The Senate, however, refused to pass the section of the bill that guarantees payment of salaries to university professors after retirement despite the arguments by some senators that retired professors should enjoy pensions like retired military officers.

Senator Uche Chukwumerije, who sponsored the bill, stressed that in the course of the committee’s deliberations, memoranda were received from ASUU as well as other stakeholders and that based on the inputs, the committee resolved to first amend the bill to make room for separate Acts that would take care of the needs of universities, federal polytechnics as well as colleges of education at the same time.

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1. This is the second time in two weeks I will address you on the deregulation of the downstream petroleum sector. In the last seven days, the nation has witnessed a disruption of economic activities. Although, the economic imperatives for the policy have been well articulated by government, the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) went ahead to declare a nationwide strike.

President_Goodluck_Jonathan

3. At the inception of the deregulation policy, Government had set up the Justice Alfa Belgore Committee to liaise with Labour and other stakeholders to address likely grey areas in the policy, but despite all our efforts, Labour refused the option of dialogue and also disobeyed a restraining order of the National Industrial Court of Nigeria.

4. However, following the intervention of the Leadership of the National Assembly, and other well-meaning Nigerians, Labour accepted to meet with government, but this yielded no tangible result.

5. It has become clear to government and all well-meaning Nigerians that other interests beyond the implementation of the deregulation policy have hijacked the protest. This has prevented an objective assessment and consideration of all the contending issues for which dialogue was initiated by government. These same interests seek to promote discord, anarchy, and insecurity to the detriment of public peace.

6. Government appreciates that the implementation of the deregulation policy would cause initial hardships and commends Nigerians who have put forth suggestions and credible alternatives in this regard. Government also salutes Nigerians who by and large, conducted themselves peacefully while expressing their grievances. Let me assure you that government will continue to respect the people’s right to express themselves within the confines of the law and in accordance with the dictates of our democratic space.

7. Government will continue to pursue full deregulation of the downstream petroleum sector. However, given the hardships being suffered by Nigerians, and after due consideration and consultations with state governors and the leadership of the National Assembly, government has approved the reduction of the pump price of petrol to N97 per litre. The Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) has been directed to ensure compliance with this new pump price.

8. Government is working hard to reduce recurrent expenditure in line with current realities and to cut down on the cost of governance. In the meantime, government has commenced the implementation of the Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment projects: including the Federal Government- assisted mass transit programme which is already in place, and job creation for the youth.

9. Furthermore, the legal and regulatory regime for the petroleum industry will be reviewed to address accountability issues and current lapses in the Industry. In this regard, the Petroleum Industry Bill will be given accelerated attention. The report of the forensic audit carried out on the NNPC is being studied with a view to implementing the recommendations and sanctioning proven acts of corruption in the industry.

10. Let me assure Nigerians that this administration is irrevocably committed to tackling corruption in the petroleum industry as well as other sectors of the economy. Consequently, all those found to have contributed one way or the other to the economic adversity of the country will be dealt with in accordance with the law.

11. My dear compatriots, I urge you to show understanding for the imperatives of the adjustment in the pump price of petrol and give government your full support to ensure its successful implementation. I further appeal to Nigerians to go back to work and go about their normal duties as government has made adequate arrangements for the protection of life and property throughout the federation.

12. Government will not condone brazen acts of criminality and subversion. As President, I have sworn to uphold the unity, peace and order of the Nigerian State and by the grace of God, I intend to fully and effectively discharge that responsibility. Let me add that we are desirous of further engagements with Labour. I urge our Labour leaders to call off their strike, and go back to work.

13. Nigeria belongs to all of us and we must collectively safeguard its unity.

14. Thank you. God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

GOODLUCK EBELE JONATHAN, GCFR
President,
Federal Republic of Nigeria

President Jonathan and Labour Leader

However, he has been proved to be wrong, times are changing and people see what is happening in other countries such as the Arab spring that has toppled dictators like Ben Ali of Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt. Also with the help of western powers, Muammar Gaddafi of Libya was deposed and killed.

The foregoing should have made the government to thoroughly consider before making a monumental decision like the total removal of petroleum subsidy which has led to the increase of transportation and virtually everything in a country where majority of the people live below poverty line.

As a result, apart from the protests that broke out immediately, a day after the fuel price increase, the organised labour, Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC and Trade Union Congress, TUC started a nationwide strike with rallies. The civil society is also involved in the strike.

But the government is still insisting that it would not revert to N65 as demanded by the NLC and TUC before they enter into negotiations. And the government also insisted that the NLC must end the strike before they start negotiations. So there is a stalemate.

In any event, the issue of the removal of subsidy came to the limelight with the N18, 000 minimum wage that was signed into law last year before the April elections. The president and governors agreed to pay it before the elections, but it is yet to be implemented.

The governors complained that they didn’t have enough money to pay the minimum wage, so they pushed for the removal of the fuel subsidy. Though the tune has now changed that they would use the money for developmental projects, the question is, can they still do that and pay the minimum wage?

People are sceptical, believing that the money would be diverted. For example while the federal government has come out with its reinvestment project, we have not heard any such plan from the states, much less the local governments, making people to be more suspicious that the fund will be another milking cow.

In a democracy, the people’s will should prevail, and if the government wants to introduce an unpopular policy it should enlighten and educate the people. As reports indicate, many people don’t even know what fuel subsidy is, they feel the government is out to punish people.

The Minister of Finance, Ngozi Okonjo Iweala in defence of the government said there were adverts in the newspapers about it, but how many Nigerians read newspapers? Enlightenment in Nigerian languages and in the rural areas would make people at least know what the government is doing.

But to spring this suddenly on the people and expect them to make sacrifice without a whimper, or with a whimper then they would skulk away to suffer in silence is an insult to the people. The government should credit them with intelligence and common sense, especially now that people are aware of the billions in the budget for the president’s food and cars among other luxuries and the jumbo salary of legislators.

While the protest goes on, the government is raising alarm that politicians have hijacked it for their selfish end, so also hoodlums. But are the opposition politicians not part of Nigeria, are they not also affected by the government policies? And the so- called hoodlums are they not Nigerians and the product of Nigeria? This is not however condoning lootings, killings and arson.

Many have lost their lives through shootings by the police and the Inspector General of Police; Hafiz Ringim said without remorse that those killed were hoodlums. Shouldn’t they be arrested and tried, since these people are unarmed?

It is wrong for the government to assume that other Nigerians don’t have feelings enough to join the protest, blaming NLC for instigating people, does it means people don’t know where it pinches them?

If the government learns anything from this protest it is not take Nigerians for granted again, and it should go back to the drawing board.

The appointment of the former most beautiful girl in Nigeria which the President put as belonging to the special category is coming barely a week after her husband, Chief Ojukwu died in a London Hospital.

Also on the list of those submitted to the Senate for consideration as ambassadors were former national secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and ex-Foreign Affairs Minister, Chief Ojo Madueke for Abia State; the financial secretary of PDP, Alhaji Tukur Mani from Katsina State; permanent secretary of the Federal Capital Territory Administration, FCTA, Biodun Nathaniel Olorunfemi from Kogi State; and former Minister of Aviation, Mrs Fidelia Akuabata Njeze from Enugu State.

For more names, read: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2011/12/bianca-ojukwu-madueke-olorunfemi-make-envoys-list/

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