EXPOSED: United States to Collaborate with FG to fight Boko Haram

The long awaited US support in the country’s most trying era of terrorism has come. This was revealed to journalists in Abuja. The Federal Government and the U.S government are set to embark on a joint effort toward training, sharing of intelligence and modernization of security services and logistics in order to overcome the current threats posed by the Boko Haram sects.

After an understanding was reached on this subject in a meeting held in Abuja between officials of both countries, under the auspices of U.S-Nigeria Bi-National Commission, US Deputy Assistant Secretary for African Affairs, Mr. William Fitzgerald, had stated that the commitment would cover revisiting and reviving the Nigeria security services to attend suitably to security challenges and threats in Nigeria.

He said the technical sub-working group of the meeting will continue to meet in Abuja to explore development of a Nigerian intelligence fusion capability.

Fitzgerald said the talks will be organized through the US Embassy in Abuja, in conjunction with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other relevant Nigerian agencies.

He said: “Both sides re-affirmed their commitment to enhance the
operational capabilities of Nigeria’s security services by identifying avenues that would enable them to respond appropriately to internal
security challenges and other threats”

He reaffirmed that “Prominent areas of collaboration may include training, intelligence sharing, and modernization of the security services,logistics and other requirements”

It was gathered that the Federal government of Nigeria and theUnited States governments have agr eed to parley in more persistent working level commitment and collaboration on security matters, through the United States Embassy in Abuja, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other relevant security bodies

Fitzgerald said that “ both the Nigerian and US governments agreed to follow-up on these commitments and seek further collaboration to address the challenges that have been identified during the meeting”

Speaking at the occasion, the permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Martin Uhomoibhi, affirmed: “Government would continue to sensitize Nigerians on the need to take issue of security as responsibility of all, and not that of the security agencies alone.

This is a national responsibility, a responsibility to be discharged by all Nigerians and indeed all residents in the territorial state of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.” He buttressed

Tags: BOKO, COLLABORATE, FIGHT, HARAM, NIGERIA, STATES, TO, UNITED, WITH

EXPOSED: N1.76trn Paid in Subsidy in 2011 Alone, CBN Tells House of Reps Committee

Members of the ad hoc committee of the House of Representatives probing the federal government’s so-called subsidy on petrol had to brace themselves today as a Deputy Governor of the Central Bank, Mr. Kingsley Moghalu, told them N1.76trn was the total amount paid on it in 2011 alone.  

Mr. Moghalu’s testimony is in line with previous accounts which described an inexplicable and whopping increase in the spending on the item under Mr. Jonathan.
Mr. Moghalu, who was representing CBN Governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, explained, however, that the role of the bank in fuel subsidy management is limited to ensuring ensure monetary and price stability.  It is not involved in paying the subsidy, he said.  
He also told the committee that the level of the subsidy went up eight-fold in 2009, totaling over 110 percent.  By October 2011, it hit over 500 percent.

Asked why there was a sudden increase in subsidy payment, Mr Moghalu suggested “likely manipulations,” as previously observed by other senior officials of the government who have testified before the committee, but that the Central Bank lacked concrete evidence “because we are not EFCC.” 
Also queried on who authorizes payment of the subsidy, he said that was the purview of the fiscal authorities.

EXPOSED: The IMF and AFRICOM Join Hands To Rob the African Continent

• Lagos Dissents Under IMF Hegemony 
• Nigeria: The Next Front for AFRICOM

On a recent trip to West Africa, the newly appointed managing director of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde ordered the governments of Nigeria, Guinea, Cameroon, Ghana and Chad to relinquish vital fuel subsidies. Much to the dismay of the population of these nations, the prices of fuel and transport have near tripled over night without notice, causing widespread violence on the streets of the Nigerian capital of Abuja and its economic center, Lagos. Much like the IMF induced riots in Indonesia during the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, public discontent in Nigeria is channelled towards an incompetent and self-serving domestic elite, compliant to the interests of fraudulent foreign institutions.

Although Nigeria holds the most proven oil reserves in Africa behind Libya, it’s people are now expected to pay a fee closer to what the average American pays for the cost of fuel, an exorbitant sum in contrast to its regional neighbours. Alternatively, other oil producing nations such as Venezuela, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia offer their populations fuel for as little as $0.12 USD per gallon. While Lagos has one of Africa’s highest concentration of billionaires, the vast majority of the population struggle daily on less than $2.00 USD. Amid a staggering 47% youth unemployment rate and thousands of annual deaths related to preventable diseases, the IMF has pulled the rug out from under a nation where safe drinking water is a luxury to around 80% of it’s populace.

Although Nigeria produces 2.4 million barrels of crude oil a day intended for export use, the country struggles with generating sufficient electrical power and maintaining its infrastructure. Ironically enough, less than 6% of bank depositors own 88% of all bank deposits in Nigeria. Goldman Sachs employees line its domestic government, in addition to the former Vice President of the World Bank, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who is widely considered by many to be the de facto Prime Minister. Even after decades of producing lucrative oil exports, Nigeria has failed to maintain it’s own refineries, forcing it to illogically purchase oil imports from other nations. Society at large has not benefited from Nigeria’s natural riches, so it comes as no surprise that a severe level of distrust is held towards the government, who claims the fuel subsidy needs to be lifted in order to divert funds towards improving the quality of life within the country.

Like so many other nations, Nigerian people have suffered from a systematically reduced living standard after being subjected to the IMF’s Structural Adjustment Policies (SAP). Before a loan can be taken from the World Bank or IMF, a country must first follow strict economic policies, which include currency devaluation, lifting of trade tariffs, the removal of subsidies and detrimental budget cuts to critical public sector health and education services.

SAPs encourage borrower countries to focus on the production and export of domestic commodities and resources to increase foreign exchange, which can often be subject to dramatic fluctuations in value. Without the protection of price controls and an authentic currency rate, extreme inflation and poverty subsist to the point of civil unrest, as seen in a wide array of countries around the world (usually in former colonial protectorates). The people of Nigeria have been one of the world’s most vocal against IMF-induced austerity measures, student protests have been met with heavy handed repression since 1986 and several times since then, resulting in hundreds of civilian deaths. As a testament to the success of the loan, the average laborer in Nigeria earned 35% more in the 1970’s than he would of in 2012.

Working through the direct representation of Western Financial Institutions and the IMF in Nigeria’s Government, a new IMF conditionality calls for the creation of a Sovereign Wealth Fund. Olusegun Aganga, the former Nigerian Minister of Finance commented on how the SWF was hastily pushed through and enacted prior to the countries national elections. If huge savings are amassed from oil exports and austerity measures, one cannot realistically expect that these funds will be invested towards infrastructure development based on the current track record of the Nigerian Government.

Further more, it is increasingly more likely that any proceeds from a SWF would be beneficial to Western institutions and markets, which initially demanded its creation. Nigerian philanthropist Bukar Usman prophetically writes “I have genuine fears that the SWF would serve us no better than other foreign-recommended “remedies” which we had implemented to our own detriment in the past or are being pushed to implement today.”

The abrupt simultaneous removal of fuel subsidies in several West African nations is a clear indication of who is really in charge of things in post-colonial Africa. The timing of its cushion-less implementation could not be any worse, Nigeria’s president Goodluck Jonathan recently declared a state of emergency after forty people were killed in a church bombing on Christmas day, an act allegedly committed by the Islamist separatist group, Boko Haram. The group advocates dividing the predominately Muslim northern states from the Christian southern states, a similar predicament to the recent division of Sudan.

As the United States African Command (AFRICOM) begins to gain a foothold into the continent with its troops officially present in Eritrea and Uganda in an effort to maintain security and remove other theocratic religious groups such as the Lord’s Resistance Army, the sectarian violence in Nigeria provides a convenient pretext for military intervention in the continuing resource war. For further insight into this theory, it is interesting to note that United States Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvaniaconducted a series of African war game scenarios in preparation for the Pentagon’s expansion of AFRICOM under the Obama Administration.

In the presence of US State Department Officials, employees from The Rand Corporation and Israeli military personnel, a military exercise was undertaken which tested how AFRICOM would respond to a disintegrating Nigeria on the verge of collapse amidst civil war. The scenario envisioned rebel factions vying for control of the Niger Delta oil fields (the source of one of America’s top oil imports), which would potentially be secured by some 20,000 U.S. troops if a US-friendly coup failed to take place At a press conference at the House Armed Services Committee on March 13, 2008, AFRICOM Commander, General William Ward then went on to brazenly state the priority issue of America’s growing dependence on African oil would be furthered by AFRICOM operating under the principle theatre-goal of “combating terrorism”.

At an AFRICOM Conference held at Fort McNair on February 18, 2008, Vice Admiral Robert T. Moeller openly declared the guiding principle of AFRICOM was to protect “the free flow of natural resources from Africa to the global market”, before citing China’s increasing presence in the region as challenging to American interests. After the unwarranted snatch-and-grab regime change conducted in Libya, nurturing economic destabilization, civil unrest and sectarian conflict in Nigeria is an ultimately tangible effort to secure Africa’s second largest oil reserves.

During the pillage of Libya, its SFW accounts worth over 1.2 billion USD were frozen and essentially absorbed by Franco-Anglo-American powers; it would realistic to assume that much the same would occur if Nigeria failed to comply with Western interests. While agents of foreign capital have already infiltrated its government, there is little doubt that Nigeria will become a new front in the War on Terror.

___________________

Source: Nile Bowie via InformAfrica.com

EXPOSED: The damning KPMG Report FG, NNPC, do not want Nigerians to See

As far as the 41-page report is concerned, the NNPC is a cesspool of monumental corruption and fraud

On Thursday December 1, the Minister of Finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, cringed when the senate joint committee investigating the management of funds set aside for petroleum subsidy handed her a seven-day ultimatum to produce a secret forensic report on the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation in her custody.

The audit, done for her ministry by renowned audit and advisory consultancy, KPMG, which exposed the massive financial malfeasance and monumental corruption in the NNPC, is one document the federal government, the petroleum ministry and the NNPC have worked hard to conceal for a little over a year now.

The report, which could trigger a fierce face-off between the federal and state governments, is one of the most closely guarded secrets in Nigeria today.  It contains shocking details of how the NNPC, and by implication, the federal government has been swindling the states.

So when the committee requested Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala to produce it, she became a bit uneasy, knowing that doing so might embarrass the administration and spark some troubles for the NNPC, a source close to her told the Times. Initially the minister didn’t make any commitment, but when pressed by committee members, she reluctantly acceded to the request.

It is not known at press time whether she has sent the document to the committee. Contacted yesterday, her spokesperson, Paul Nwabuikwu, said he had no information on the matter.  Calls to the chairman of the senate joint committee, Magnus Abe (PDP, Rivers), were unanswered. But as at noon today, long after the ultimatum given to Mrs. Okonjo-iweala expired, a source close to the committee said the minister was yet to make the report available. He said there was high-powered lobby by the NNPC not to make the document public.

The damning report

But the Times has scooped the report for you in case the minister fails to produce it or does so to the committee in camera.

As far as the 41-page report is concerned, the NNPC is a cesspool of monumental corruption and fraud. The report detailed the corporation’s sharp business practices, violation of laid down rules and regulations, illegal deductions of funds belonging to the state, and failure to account for several billions of naira that should go to the federation account.

The agency, the report says, has also severely defrauded our country in subsidy claims. Auditors found that between 2007 and 2009 alone, the NNPC over-deducted funds in subsidy claims to the tune of N28.5bn. It has not been able to account for the sum ever since.

The over-deduction from its remittance to the federation account for 2010 and 2011, believed to be in several billions of naira, is not captured in the report.    

The Federal Government, through the Federal Ministry of Finance, hired KPMG and another Nigerian auditing firm, S.S. Afemikhe & Co., in July 2010, to look into the books of the corporation following allegations of “wrongful deductions at source by the NNPC to fund its operations” by the 36 state governors.

There were also concerns at the time that “the procedures for managing and reporting the country’s crude oil and gas revenues are opaque and characterized by gaps, overlaps and inconsistencies in the role of key parties responsible for the assessment, collection and reporting on these revenue streams.”

Officials of the petroleum ministry and the NNPC, a source at the finance ministry disclosed, developed cold feet after the auditors were sent in, and indeed tried hard to frustrate the representatives of the two audit firms by failing to supply evaluation criteria for commercial bids submitted in respect of petroleum products importation.

Believing that would turn the auditors away, our source further explained, the corporation also failed to provide them with other relevant documents such as the criteria for allocation of products and product volumes to importers/suppliers and periodic prequalification lists of approved products importers/suppliers.

But in spite of the difficulty they faced, the auditors were able to determine that the NNPC had been anything but transparent in the management of our country’s oil resources.

The report that emerged from the audit was just too damning that the leadership of the petroleum ministry, the NNPC and some few other elements in the Federal Government have worked hard to keep it away from the 36 state governors and federal lawmakers in particular and Nigerians in general.

Stealing the states blind

In what is likely to anger state governors, the audit established that the corporation was in the habit of arbitrarily estimating subsidy claims and then over-deducting funds from proceeds of domestic crude sales.

“For example,” the report said, N25bn was deducted as subsidy estimate for September 2009 from domestic crude sales proceeds while PPPRA approved a subsidy of N23.8bn. N35bn was also deducted as subsidy estimate from November 2009 but PPPRA approved of N21.3bn.”

 The auditors’ analysis indicates “over-deduction for these two months amounted to N14.9bn. However, only N4.2.bn was swept into the Federation Account by the NNPC as adjustment for subsidy claimable in the two months.” That is beside the N11.8bn subsidy claim the NNPC claimed it paid for imported products that didn’t reach consumers.

 State governors have always complained that the NNPC was shortchanging them through illegal deductions from revenues payable to the federation account.

Fraudulent underhand tactics

Over-deduction is however not the only way the corporation is defrauding the federal and state governments. According to laid down regulations, the NNPC is invoiced in dollars for domestic crude allocations but is expected to remit the equivalent naira value to the Federation Account. But auditors found to their chagrin that in doing that, the corporation used exchange rates far lower than those published by the Central Bank of Nigeria.

Using this “fraudulent underhand tactics”, the NNPC succeeded in cheating the three levels of government of a whooping N85.2bn in three years – N25.7bn in 2007, N33.8bn in 2008 and N26.7bn in 2009.

When the auditors requested explanations for these exchange rate disparities, the NNPC claimed it obtained the exchange rates it used from the CBN via telephone.

The report also severely indicted the NNPC over the shoddy and non-transparent manner it renews crude sale contracts every year. The auditors noted that “evaluation criteria for renewal of contracts are not clearly stated in the contract document”, and that the selection exercises were based on individual discretion and wrong assumptions and criteria.”

The NNPC claimed that renewal of contract was based on performance of off-takers (buyers). But the auditors observed that the basis and process for determining performance were not clearly defined.

The auditors wondered why in 2007 and 2008, some companies not on the approved list of buyers for that year were allocated crude, a practice the examiners believe led to crude being sold to non-credible buyers, even with relevant guarantees and safeguards not implemented.

Specifically the auditors queried the allocation of crude to Ovlas Trading (2, 852,316 barrels in 2007 and 906, 269 barrels in 2008) Petrojam (2,818,914 in 2007), Oil Fields (950,166 barrels in 2007) and Zenon (906,000 barrels in 2008) even when they were not on the list of authorized buyers for that year.

Contracts for the importation of products, the auditors wrote, were also routinely awarded without regard for approved guidelines and procedures. “We observed that contracts for the importation of petroleum products were awarded to companies and suppliers not listed in the approved prequalification list used for the fourth quarter 2008 importation,” the report noted.

The auditors specifically queried the award of contracts in that manner to Astana Oil Corporation Limited, Natural Energy and Oando, when they were not prequalified for patronage that year.

Among other forms of misdemeanour, ranging from poor accounting to shoddy record keeping, the auditors also indicted the corporation for leaving its own storage facilities, unused, and then proceeding to incur additional cost from leasing of third party storage facilities.

The auditors reported that DPK tanks (with storage capacity of 18,000 cubic metres) at the PPMC depots within the Mosimi Area had not been used for three years even though there were in good condition. Yet the corporation, the examiners added, had been leasing storage facilities from third parties.

The spokesperson of the NNPC, Levi Ajuonuma, declined to comment on the report, saying he had nothing to say until the government releases it officially.

Credit: Musikilu Mojeed via Premium Times 09/12/2011 10:12:00

NEWS: Joint Statement From Wole Soyinka, J.P. Clark, Chinua Achebe – Warn Against Another Civil War

Three Nigerian literary icons: Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe and J.P. Clark in a joint letter called for an end to the spread of violence across the country, warning that Nigeria cannot afford another civil war at this time in history.

A statement jointly signed by the trio and entitled “LET NOT THIS FIRE SPREAD!!! An Appeal to the Nigerian Nation Community”, reads in full:

“The fears we have all secretly nursed are coming to realisation. The nightmare we have hugged to our individual breasts, voicing them only in family privacy, or within trusted caucuses of friends and colleagues – lest they become instances of materialising evil thoughts – has finally burst through into our social, physical environment. Rumblings and veiled threats have given way to eruption, and the first cracks in the wall of patience and forbearance can no longer be wished away. BOKO HARAM is very likely celebrating its first tactical victory: provoking retaliation in some parts of the nation.

We insist however that this need not be, and should not be so. And as long as any part, however minuscule, opts for the more difficult path of envisioned forbearance, we are convinced that its responses will find neighbour emulation between homesteads, between towns and villages, between communities on all levels and indeed – states. This hard, demanding, but profoundly moral and heroic option will be recognised and embraced as the only option for the survival, and integrity of the whole. All who claim to be leaders must lead – but in the right direction!

We urge a proactive resolve in all such claimants to leadership. It is not sufficient to make pious pronouncements. All who possess any iota of influence or authority, who aspire to moral leadership must act now to douse the first flickers of ‘responses in kind’ even before they are manifested, and become contagious. We urge that, beginning from now, leaders become true leaders in all communities, utilise the platforms of their associations, professions, clubs, places of instruction and places of worship, NGOs and other civic orgnisations, that they relentlessly spread the manifesto of Community – capital letters! – as an all-embracing human bond, and refuse to be sucked into the cauldron of mutual attrition that is the purpose of the religious warmongers among us.

What is proposed here is not any doctrine of submission, of ‘turning the other cheek’, or supine supplication to divine intervention etc. etc. Very much the contrary! Self-defence is a fundamental human right and responsibility. However, we caution that we must place the total humanity of our nation above the methods and intent of a mindless, though programmed minority that are resolved to set religion against religion, community against community, destroy the internal cohesion of homes, render meaningless the very concept and imperatives of guest, strangers, the extended human family, and the universalist obligations of hosts as practiced under the finest traditions of human encounters. Our duty is to denounce the killers among us, to deny them, right from source, the sump of blood that is their nourishment, the chaos that is their ambition, and the hatred that has poisoned their collective psyche. Our mission is to prove ourselves superior to them in understanding, to leap ahead of their perverse scheming and preserve our own humanity even as they jettison theirs – if ever they even were aware of its existence.

Calls have been made in the past – sometimes in response to a crisis within the nation, other times as an objective necessity even in the most tranquil of times – for the convening of a National conference to debate just how the nation should proceed in reinforcing civic and political life, and decide, in full freedom, the terms of her integrated existence. The government is urged to stop shying away from this project, pretending that those who happen to have been elected into the nation’s legislatures are best qualified to undertake the exercise, largely through piecemeal tinkering. This surely begs the question, since the very system and terms under which these – often dubiously – elected, serve, including the intolerable strain these institutions place upon the nation’s resources – are all at issue. That last indeed, the very inordinate exaction of running a presidential system, forms part of the impatience of the public, as new avenues for economic hardship are opened in a people’s struggle for survival, such as the recent crisis of the removal of petroleum subsidy. We call upon the government to re-think this measure. We warn the Security forces to recall that their primary duty is to protect all citizens, and most especially those in opposition to government policies, in the exercise of their democratic rights. We cannot turn a blind eye to the killing of our fellow citizens even before the earliest manifestation of popular discontent gets under way. The first single Security notch on the gun is always the signal for a countdown towards two, then three, moving to four figure statistics in the struggle for human dignity. Syria is our current cautionary instance. We know how Libya ended.

The Security arms of government should recognise where their urgent and immediate capabilities and competence are needed, where the greatest threat to nationhood since the Nigerian Civil War has been gloatingly launched, and with a daily toll of casualties of the innocent. We call upon the Nigerian government to intensify its obligations to protect the citizenry it claims to govern. The basic professional strategy of preventive policing, which appears no longer in fashion, must be re-activated. Security may appear less glamorous than the moral imposition that is articulated in appeals such as this, but it is nonetheless a crucial partner in the very existence of civil existence and the preservation of civic dignity. Necessary measures to curb the activities of a homicidal few, no matter under what name, faceless or disguised, whose minds have been warped beyond recovery, must be taken, and without flinching. Public evidence of the effectiveness of such measures makes our call for restraint meaningful. It reduces the stress placed daily on a people’s aspirations to a visionary fortitude, and reinforces the resolve for an engagement under forbearance in the ultimate pursuit of social justice as the foundation of peaceful co-existence.

This Appeal comes from Three Survivors of the Pioneering Writer/Teacher Generation of a half-century, post-Independence Nigeria, in her continuous struggle for a viable Nation-Being:

Chinua Achebe
J.P. Bekederemo-Clark
Wole Soyinka




Source: informationnigeria.org

EXPOSED: How Okonjo-Iweala Misled Jonathan With Figures

On the eve of Nigeria’s general strike to protest the removal of petrol subsidy in the country by the Goodluck Jonathan administration, I have been researching the archives, using the Freedom of Information law as cover, to find out how President Jonathan reached his present anti-people policy.

It all started on 6 December last year, when Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, the Finance minister and the coordinating minister for the economy (a position not provided in our constitution) presented ‘briefs’ to the Federal Executive Council on why the Jonathan administration must end the subsidy in less than a month.

When Nigerians go through these so called facts, they will find that Okonjo’s conclusions are the typical, ‘working to the answer’. Her thesis cannot stand the test of a strict scrutiny and indeed calls into question her credentials as a financial expert.

For starters:

1. Okonjo’s thesis was wrong from the beginning: she says that subsidy does not reach the poor, that only the rich and the middle class are the beneficiaries. The hollowness and shallowness of the position have been profoundly proven by the cries of agony by Nigerians. Who have been the most hit by the anti-people measure? The poor. Who have been crying loudest? The poor.

Even, if we accept her theory that the rich and middle class are the greatest beneficiaries of oil subsidy, are they not Nigerians? Are they not entitled to some goodies from their government?

2. Okonjo posited that Nigeria had spent N3.6 trillion on subsidy in five years, an average of N660 billion yearly, but fails to explain how the figure rose to N1.3 trillion in 2011, the same year like 2008 when international oil prices shot to the roof.

Using Okonjo’s statistics, the average crude oil price in 2008 was $101.78 dollars, compared with $113.98 in 2011. The amount of subsidy in those years was at variance by more than 10 per cent that any reasonable, rational, logical person will expect. What accounted for this difference? Was subsidy fund stolen to fund Jonathan’s re-election campaign? Was the increase in subsidy expenses because the oil cabal presented bogus claims for settlement?

Mrs. Okonjo Iweala did not explain and no one provided any details.

3. Okonjo’s analysis to paint subsidy as bad and to justify why it must go, were based on two oil prices and it was obvious she did so to arrive at her bogus conclusion.

In one breath, she used $113 dollars as the base price of crude oil to determine how Nigeria’s subsidized oil price ranks with other African countries. At 46 cents, petrol is cheapest in Nigeria, compared with mainly non-oil producing countries, such as Cape Verde, CAR, Malawi, Ivory Coast, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, and Mali etc. Angola, an oil producer is also classified as selling its petrol higher than Nigeria at 69 cents a litre. If only Mrs. Okonjo had looked at her figures and graph, she would have seen two other oil producers in Africa, seating pretty below Nigeria on this price graph. These countries are Algeria, which unlike Nigeria sells more refined products than Nigeria, which sells its crude to the world, without trying to add value, by refining and creating jobs at home. The other country is Libya. Algeria sells a litre of petrol at 32 cents and Libya sells its own at 17 cents. They are fellow oil producers like our country. According to Okonjo, these countries offer cheap fuel to their people because they are not as populated like Nigeria and because they have higher per capita than Nigeria.

However missing from her explanation was whether those countries behave like Nigeria’s irresponsible rulers, spending three-quarters of their budget on recurrent expenditure, cutlery, bullet proof cars and so on.

4. In another breath, Mrs. Okonjo compared Nigeria’s oil price last year, with a mixed bag of European, Latin America and African nations, all oil producers. These statistics showed that Nigeria’s price at N65 was not the cheapest in the world. Although petrol sold cheaper here then than Angola and Sudan, in Venezuela, it is almost free at 3 cents. Brunei, Yemen, Oman, Algeria, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Iran all offer their petrol very cheap to their people. In Iran, it is 10 cents, compared with Nigeria’s January 2012 price of almost $1. The Saudis sell their oil at 17 cents, Kuwait at 22 cents.

5. With subsidy removed, we can already feel the effects the increase has had on the Nigerian people: it has further pauperized them and has made things more difficult for the 90 per cent living on less than $2 a day, according to Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, the Central bank governor.

6. In further analysis, Okonjo presented another graph that shows Nigeria’s position, among other oil producers and African nations after the subsidy removal. The graph puts the cost of fuel at 69 cents, using another oil price as basis—$90 per barrel. Of course all Nigerians know that the fuel they are selling at gas stations is between N141 and N150, which is very close to $1. Curiously, on the same graph sits USA. There, a litre of oil is 80 cents, cheaper than what the Russians (84 cents), the Indonesians (83 cents), war-torn Iraq (81 cents) pay for a litre of fuel.

7. Nigerians need to ask Okonjo the logic that supports citizens of an oil-producing nation, like Nigeria, paying more money for fuel than the Americans, oil importers, pay. America has a greater per capita than Nigeria; the least income earner in America earns at least $24,000 a year, compared with Nigeria where 90 per cent live on $2 a day.

Will this policy not diminish further our people’s capacity to get out of the vicious bracket of poverty? How now will 90 per cent of Nigerians starving on $2 a day, not be economically asphyxiated when commodity prices have jumped, in some cases by 100 per cent?

In my view, her argument and the entire policy of removing the fuel subsidy are ill thought out and ‘callous’ as some Nigerians have said.

Written by Bayo Onanuga via naijacommunity.net

DISTURBING: Jonathan Expends N114 Billion In Eight Months?

The Stabilisation Fund Account which is meant to save funds for the future generation has been depleted by the Federal Government with periodic withdrawals made of over N114 billion in eight months, documents available to Daily Trust show.

President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration made withdrawals in different instalments between September 2010 and May 2011 for various expenditure, including loans to the police and funding of committee activities, according to the documents.

The revenue sharing laws provide that 0.5 percent of funds accruing to the Federation Account should be remitted to the stabilisation account. The account had balances of about N120 billion in August 2010 but was depleted to N37 billion by October 14.

Funds were withdrawn for activities of the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC), the National Council on Finance and Economic Development (NACOFED) and the Consolidated Revenue Fund Charges (CFR), consumer car finance scheme, police peace keeping mission in Haiti, INEC, among others.

Documents reveal that the Federal Government withdrew over N75 billion in September 2010 alone. On September 1 and 15, the government withdrew N40.5 billion and N35.5 billion which was purportedly “released to CFR as loan to fund the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for 2010 General Election.”

Another N11.3 billion was withdrawn on October 13 and “released” to INEC as loan for the same election.

The stabilisation account rose to about N36 billion between January to May 2011 only to be depleted again to N11 billion. Also, about N400 million was withdrawn as funding for the activities of FAAC and NACOFED between January and May 2011.

Also, N150 million was withdrawn through five memos on the same day.

Another withdrawal was made on January 26, 2011 of N255 million as “funding for NACOFED & FAAC Activities for 2011.”

A number of other withdrawals for FAAC and NACOFED were backdated as payments for 2004 and 2005 activities. The breakdown shows: N31 million was “released to FAAC Secretariat for year 2004;” N25 million for “NACOFED conference expenses for year 2004;” N27 million was “release to FAAC secretariat for year 2005;” N26 million was NACOFED  conference for year 2005” and N35 million was released to FAAC Secretariat for year 2006.”

FAAC comprises largely state commissioners of finance and headed by the minister of state for finance. Officials told Daily Trust that since these commissioners come to FAAC meetings on official assignment from their states, it was unlikely that the Federal Government would truly spend these millions on “FAAC activities.”

On May 11, 2011, N242 million was withdrawn and “granted as loan to Inspector General of Police (IGP) for purchase of vehicles for UN peace keeping in Haiti- 1st instalment.” Another N33 million and N32 million were released on the same day to the IGP, according to the documents, as second and third instalments for the vehicles purchase.

Similarly, N4.5 million was withdrawn and released “as loan granted to pay the second Tranche of FGN 50 % contribution to the funding of 2006 Tranches of the Pioneer Consumer Car Finance Scheme.” Another N10 billion was withdrawn and released as “loan granted to pay 2nd Tranche of FGN 50% contribution to the Phase II of the Pioneer Car Finance Scheme for public servants and in the paramilitary agencies.”

Other withdrawals were N4.5 billion loan granted to fund 2006 virement; N827 million equivalent of loan granted Sao Tome ($5m); N1.6 billion loan granted to fund 2006 virement; N2.8 billion loan granted to pay 2nd Tranche of FGN 50 percent contribution to the Phase I of the pioneer car finance scheme; distribution of 50 percent of balance in the Excess Crude Proceeds Account in 2004 and another N985 million advance to FGN to meet shortfall in revenue since beginning of year 2011. All these withdrawals were made on May 11, 2011.

‘This is profligacy’

Yinka Odumakin, a spokesman for former head of state Muhammadu Buhari, described these withdrawals from the stabilisation account as the signature tune of the ruling party characterised by profligacy and waste of public resources.

“It is a pity that Nigerians have signed a prodigal nation. The country is broke because the PDP regime has emptied all the treasuries.

“The same government has depleted our foreign reserve, excess crude account and now stabilisation account. The country is broke, that is why we are being forced to buy new drivers licence, new plate numbers and worst of all pay N145 for petrol litre,” he said.

Spokesman for the opposition Congress for Progressive Change Rotimi Fashakin said, “There is nothing surprising in Jonathan government dipping its hands into the stabilisation account having specialised in financial recklessness and waste of public funds.”

He said “due to the insatiable quest for public funds, the ruling party has also depleted our foreign reserves, excess crude account, among others. The regime conducted the most expensive elections in the history of the country in 2011. We are not surprised at the level of its financial recklessness.”

In his reaction, the Publicity Secretary of the Conference of Nigerian Political Parties (CNPP), Mr Osita Okechukwu, said that the development is the usual “food- is- ready” politics of the ruling PDP.

“It is not surprising at all; it is the usual food-is-ready style of the PDP. It is very tragic as well,” he said. The government “has carved a niche for itself in squandering the country’s resources. That is why the same government in the last 12 years couldn’t complete a single federal road; build or even maintain our refineries or resuscitate our railway system.”

He said that the depletion of the stabilization account is tantamount to toying with the future of “our children and grandchildren.”

Source: Daily Trust

PHOTO NEWS: Anti-Fuel Hike Protest Kicks Off In Lagos

Protesters gather in large numbers at the NLC office in Yaba, Lagos

Wife of late chief Gani Fawehinmi leads

Source:   Sahara Reporters, New York

NEWS: Mass Protest Against Fuel Subsidy Removal at Eagle Square Abuja

News reaching us says there is heavy military and police presence at the Eagle Square in the Central Business District of Abuja, the venue of the Fuel Subsidy Removal Protest Register Signing being organised by a former member of the House of Representatives, Hon. Dino Melaye. The security personnel have been...

turning all those sympathetic to the protest back since around 1:30pm. Former FCT minister, Nasir El-Rufai, made a surprised appearance at the venue to show solidarity with other well-meaning Nigerians.

As at the time of posting, Policemen at the Eagle Square Abuja are reported to have seized the Official Register opened for the fuel subsidy removal protest and being signed by protesters. Protesters are still been prevented from gaining access into the venue... The turnout is improving.

Source: Olufamous Blog