Sahara Reporters Latest News Today Tuesday 14th January 2020
Sahara Reporters Latest News Today and headlines on some of the happenings and news trend in the Country, today 14/01/20
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Ondo Government Yet To Open Negotiations With Us, Say Striking Doctors
Striking doctors at the University of Medical Sciences Teaching Hospital in Ondo State have said there is no going back on the strike embarked upon over the non-payment of their salaries and arrears.
The doctors under the umbrella of the Association of Resident Doctors, disclosed that the state government was yet to open any negotiation with them since they declared their industrial action.
The protesting doctors had on Friday, January 10th of January, 2020 demonstrated in Akure, the state capital, over the refusal of the Governor Rotimi Akeredolu’s government to pay their wages.
Many of them complained that they were been owned salaries and arrears between three and six months depending on when they joined the service of the government hospital.
Their ongoing industrial disharmony had already paralysed health activities at the state owned hospitals both in Ondo town and Akure.
Speaking with SaharaReporters, Taiwo Olagbe, Chairman Media Committee, Association of Resident Doctors, UNIMED, said the doctors are still standing by their demand for the payment of accumulated wages.
He said, “We have not been invited for any meeting as regards this ongoing strike although we don’t know what the state government is up to this week but we still stand by our demands.
“We have already compiled the list and categories of months being owed us as doctors working in the state government hospitals.
“We not only demand for the payment of our salaries alone, there are lots of deficiencies of welfare issues and capable hands that we are also fighting for and expecting the state government to do.”
Ondo State Commissioner for Health, Wahab Adegbenro, said the government would address the doctors soon.
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Never Again By Prof Wole Soyinka
Last year October, about a week after the nation space that we have generously agreed to refer to as Nigeria, celebrated her 59th independence from colonial rule, I found myself at the Athens Democracy Forum, Athens being of course that former nation-state that claims the honour of pioneering a system of governance that we all today celebrate under the name – democracy.
I have no intention of challenging Athens on her claims. What is of note in that claim is simply that the Greeks consider this system of socio-political arrangement of such primal validity, despite numerous challenges and setbacks, that they continue to flaunt it at the rest of the world as the ideal to which all of humanity should aspire.
What is even more striking is that much of the rest of the world continues to fall in line, join in the exercise, and propagate its virtues.
Two weeks after that conference, I was back on this soil of our own continent on an allied interrogation of history generated concepts. The venue of the second encounter was Dar-es-Salaam, the occasion, the bi-annual Conference on African philosophy.
My remarks today derive largely from issues raised by those earlier exchanges. There is a coincidence of timing and relevance for our present gathering here, both thematically and historically, a coincidence that almost qualifies as a gift of Providence, since all three encounters are geared towards the historic search of humanity for existential choices based on the exercise of collective wisdom.
I do not speak of wisdom as an abstract pursuit, a lofty aspiration that exists in a rarefied realm of its own, but wisdom as the very manifestation of the human ability to seize both phenomena and experience by the throat and squeeze them of any lessons they have to offer us in amelioration of human existence.
That claim is justified by the very theme of this encounter: NEVER AGAIN. It is not the first time most of us here have heard that expression. It is, unfortunately, also not the last time such an exhortation will echo in human caucuses, structured and/or casual, organized or improvised.
It is both sentiment and pragmatism, an admission of an error, of an anomaly, of a less than desired expectation of ourselves, what we believe we are capable of, what deficiencies in judgment we consider we are capable of transcending.
It is, to sum up, indication of our capacity for vision, a refusal to be stuck in a mode of thought that discountenances the possibilities of human transformation, of possibilities of transcending present limitations.
That resolve may emerge from individual or collective experience. Let me bring it down to the most mundane, accessible level. Let us say, in a foolhardy moment, we have exceeded the dictates of prudence in spending, overshot one’s budget.
What do we swear when the moment of realization descends? Never Again! Or perhaps – a more literally sobering experience – who still recalls his or her first hangover the morning after a night of over-indulgence? The very first words that emerge in that first flush of sobriety? Again, the two words: Never Again!
The trouble of course is that humanity tends to forget such lessons too soon, and will be found pursuing the same course of action again, all over again and again.
We become inured to what we consider our capacity for recovery, even boast of our increasing resistance to the effects of the night before.
However, we know only too well that, side by side with that seeming capacity for recuperation, there is a steady erosion of the physical constitution that comes from excess. Sooner or later, the liver – among other vital organs – will take its revenge.
That latter analogy is quite deliberate. Power intoxicates and, in that drunken state, human beings become mere statistics. Some people remain in a drunken stupor for years, alas, intoxicated by the sheer redolence of power and cheap access to the instruments of force.
And so I evoke that analogy to bolster those sober and anxious voices that warn, from time to time, that no nation has ever survived two civil wars.
The claim that no nation has ever survived two civil wars may not be historically sustainable but, it belongs to that category of quest that I have referred to as the pursuit of wisdom – in his case, we may equate it with the wisdom of not holding a bank note over a flame just because the Central Bank claims that it is fireproof. Or attempt to hold an exposed electric wire, just because NEPA is notorious for electrical incapacitation.
Correspondingly, our analogy is sternly directed as a mirror to those contrary voices which boast: “I have fought a war and put my life on the line to keep this nation one, and I am ready to do it all over again.”
That bravado, by the way, conveniently overlooks the reality that a parallel, often more devastating toll in human lives and lingering trauma is also exacted from untrained, unprepared non-combatants, burdening the future with a more unpredictable, indeed even irreversible hangover.
And that introduces us conveniently to my second conference in Tanzania for which my contribution was titled: WHEN IS A NATION? – with the sub-title, Power, Volition and History’s Reprimand. I believe you have begun to grasp the connection.
If not, let me remind you that Tanzania was one of the five nations that recognized the breakaway Republic of Biafra during the Nigerian Civil War.
Finding myself in that setting, among products of a very special historical formation – pre- and immediately post-colonial African – despite variations in detail, if was an opportunity to interrogate what, if any, could be considered a philosophical or ideological extract from a human event that consumed – it is estimated – two million and a half lives within two years. One of the preoccupations of philosophy is of course to immerse its processes in what actually makes humanity – tick.
So, there we were in Tanzania, a crucial player in the Nigeria – note, I do not say Biafran but – Nigerian tragedy.
Regarded as a progressive nation, with a track record of support for liberation causes both within the continent and outside – such as the Palestinians struggle for nationhood – serving as a front-line buffer against apartheid South Africa and thus incurring punitive attacks from that racist enclave, Tanzania nonetheless chose to go against the tide of opinion within the then Organization of African Unity.
She recognized a secessionist state at a time when such a position was not only unfashionable, but was even regarded by many as an act of race treachery, a rupture of the not-for-discourse, not-for-consideration political ‘absolute’ named: African Unity.
Yes indeed, that was the conjure word: African Unity. Unity as in non-fragmentation, non-divisible, was a proposition in transcendentalism, an Absolute.
A modern continent, offspring of multiple rapes – or indecipherable trading treaties – and externally imposed distribution lines, was to be weaned on the milk of a foster mother named – African Unity
So let us consider the implications of that collective position.
In objective terms, what exactly was it? A historic irony, I propose. We are introducing here a very plain issue that goes to the heart of national coming-in-being of any people, that issue being a polarity between volition and – dictation.
Perhaps you will now admit the relevance of my commencing reference to that other conference that occupied itself with the ancient socio-political system known as – democracy.
The Yoruba have a proverb for that implicit lesson in contradictions – it goes: won ni, amukun, eru e wo, o ni at’isale ni. Translation: The knock-kneed porter was told: that load on your head is skewed. His reply was – ah no, the problem lies at the base, at the beginning, not, in the consequence.
And so, the question is thrown open as a fundamental proposition: is democracy itself not vitiated, not a sham where the roots of coming-in-being of a people spell dictation, coercion as opposed to – choice? Volition? Consent and Participation? Those are the building blocks of Democracy.
Democracy is manifested in act, not in the rhetorical flourish. That is the irony to which I refer, an irony that commenced when the Organization of African Unity adopted the very protocol of the inviolability of national boundaries – that is, the sacrosanctity of given boundaries, dictated, imposed, arbitrary and artificial boundaries, and its members resolved to defend those boundaries to the last drop of our blood.
Now, a pause here is mandated. Tomorrow, I know that I shall open the pages of the newspapers and read that Wole Soyinka has advocated the breakup of Nigeria. One reporter will deduce that from an underlying principle I have just enunciated, jot it down in his or her notebook, and others will copy that conclusion verbatim.
Too bad for the nation’s Intelligence Quotient – known as I.Q. I have long given up, and will proceed – as I always have – on my own terms, with my uninterrupted dialogue with history, and in my own mode of expression.
Those who wish to catch up can do so in their own time. My extract from that Civil war remains what it always was – a simple self-interrogatory: Have we been had? Absolutes tend to resound with a clarity, an exclusionist proceeding that does not tax the brain.
Absolutes readily corral even millions into a comfort zones of unquestioning receptivity, simply from fear, or even just from the way they sound, not for the implications of their content.
Absolutes however remain what they are – glorified sound-bites such as: The sovereignty of this nation is non-negotiable. Yes, what exactly does that mean? We know what it meant for the first-comers at the helm of affairs in the Organization of African Unity.
It meant: to each his own, as exists at this moment of history. This is a club of leaders, let us keep things the way they are by respecting one another’s turf. No trespassing. No adjustment of givens. No agitation. No negotiation.
Again, I warn against reductionism. I do not belittle the passion, the sincerity, the dedication to the liberation of the continent from external control as diligently pursued by a number of those leaders.
I do not belittle the ideological determinism of a handful, the will to transform, to catch up the rest of the world and redress the history of enslavement – both by the Eastern and western worlds, the humiliating racism for which we are on the receiving end, even till today.
I do not for a moment underestimate the self-sacrifices and `I do not ignore the vision of a few individual leaders.
I do insist however that that protocol of sacrosanctity of colonial boundaries was a self-serving power mechanism of internal control and domination that had nothing to do with a structured, programmatic concern for the African masses who bore the brunt of effects of colonialism and its later, camouflaged successors – including internal colonialism.
And thus I continue to ask: Have we been had? Are we still being well and truly had? Do we continue to lay ourselves wide open to be cheaply had? Well then, consider the state of the world, at that very time that the conference in Tanzania was holding, just last October.
Let us take a look over the continental wall and instruct ourselves. That conference was taking place, sixty years of modernity after the Nigerian civil war, simultaneously with an ongoing upheaval in a distant continent, Europe, in a former colonial power, Spain.
Yes, that power, Spain, was embroiled in a secessionist move by a province known as Catalonia. The initial, dramatic proclamation took place in Catalonia’s own provincial parliament earlier that year, echoing that other allegedly retrogressive move thousands of miles away on this very continent, in this very nation, in a region abutting the Bay of Biafra – that is, history was being replayed a full sixty years after the precedent that was set in the Bay of Biafra.
In between of course, need I remind you of the dismantling of the monolith known as the Republic of Soviet Unions – with the nearly forgotten acronym of USSR?
Hindsight or foresight, irrespective of what triggers off recollection, it is all part of our humanity to call history to account from time to time, and most especially in those moments when its obscured fault-lines are exposed. And so we proceed to an even closer scenario – closer that is, even intertwined with our own history as former colonials – the United Kingdom, a fellow Commonwealth nation.
I refer to the attempted breakup of that once colonial power whose policies in the first place certainly contributed to a violent, devastating resolution on the Nigerian testing ground. The Brexit movement is taking place within a loose organization, so one can claim it is not quite the same as that ugly word, “secession”.
However, Brexit did lead, with remorseless logic, to a renewal – repeat, renewal of the calls for Scottish independence. It is a recurrent agitation that actually resulted in a referendum in 2014 – just six years ago – after a motion in the Scottish Parliament.
That motion, like Brexit, obtained the assent of the union government in Westminster. The UK government under David Cameron, found that it had to campaign hard to swing the votes for a “No”.
Some here may recall that even Lawn Tennis had a cameo role in that drama since the referendum took place close to the Olympics, and collateral anxieties built up – would Andy Murray compete as a Scot, or as a Brit? If only such weighty issues of governance and nation-being could be reduced to benign proportions such as the uncertainties of the game of tennis!
On a personal note, let me reveal here that I was in that very parliamentary house not long after the failed referendum where I addressed the International Society on European Enlightenment. It gave me the greatest pleasure to sympathize with members of the Scottish parliament on their abortive act of secession.
Closer home of course we have undergone the break-up of Ethiopia and Eretria, after decades of human wastage. There is of course the resolution of a Sudanese separatist uprising in negotiated divorce. When – or if at all – will a verdict be objectively delivered on whether this was ‘one giant step forward for humanity’, or one harrowing step for socio-political retrogression? What matters for those of us committed to a humanist mode of thought is this: a direction was finally agreed upon in favour of the survival of Sudanese humanity, the termination of its decades-long agony, and the annulment of the unwritten pacts of mutual decimation.
Let my comments during a eulogy to our own home grown secessionist leader, Odumegwu Ojukwu, who was once violently excoriated, later absorbed, after his military defeat, into the bosom of a “united” family – let those comments stand for some of the wider implications that derive – not to all, necessarily – but indisputably from some such events of dubious associations, even of the most benign. My eulogy went as follows:
“On that day, May 30, of the year 1967, a young, bearded man, thirty-four years of age in a fledgling nation that was barely seven years old, plunged that nation into hitherto uncharted waters, and inserted a battalion of question marks into the presumptions of nation-being on more levels than one.
That declaration was not merely historic, it re-wrote the more familiar trajectories of colonialism even as it implicitly served notice on the sacrosanct order of imperial givens. It moved the unarticulated question: “When is a nation?” away from simplistic political parameters – away from mere nomenclature and habit – to the more critical arena of morality and internal obligations.
It served notice on the conscience of the world, ripped apart the hollow claims of inheritance and replaced them with the hitherto subordinate, yet logical assertiveness of a ‘people’s will’. Young and old, the literate and the uneducated, urban sophisticates and rural dwellers, civilian and soldier – all were compelled to re-examine their own situating in a world of close internal relations and distant ideological blocs, bringing many back to that basic question: Just when is a nation?
Throughout world history, many have died for, but without an awareness of the existential centrality of that question. The Biafran act of secession was one that could claim that a people had a direct intimacy with the negative corollary of that question. Their brutal, causative circumstances – I refer to the massacres, the deadly hunts – could provide only one answer to the obverse of our question, which would then read: When is a nation not? In so doing, he challenged the pietisms of former colonial masters and the sanctimoniousness of much of the world. He challenged a questionable construct of nationhood, mostly externally imposed, and sought to replace it, under the most harrowing circumstances, with a vital proposition that answered a desired goal of humanity – which is not merely to survive, but to exist in dignity.
Even today, many will admit that, in that same nation, the question remains unresolved, that more and more voices are probing that question – when is a nation? – from Central Africa through India/Pakistan to Myammar and the Soviet Union – enquire of Cherchnya and the siege of Beslan!
Innumerable are the casualties from contestations of that facile and unreflective proposition that whatever is, is immutably ordered, which confers the mantle of divine ordinance on those spatial contrivances, called nations, even as they continue to creak at the seams and consume human lives in their millions.
Such arch-conservationists, sometimes imbued with a high sense of mission, see only a sacrosanct order in what was never accorded human approbation, as if it is not its very human occupancy that confers vitality on any inert piece of real estate.
Julius Nyerere was too astute not to know that his gesture of recognition was futile. That leaves us one extract – arguably others, but I wish to fasten on just one – symbolic.
Translated into the language of propulsive thinking, impelled to extract a lesson from an unrelenting cycle of human wastage, that lesson would read: Humanity before nation. Indeed, Nyerere’s justification of his action implied as much. And, when we finally met, during a North-South conference that took place in Lisbon after his retirement, at a critical phase of the anti-apartheid struggle, he reaffirmed the rationale behind his decision.
Well, it does not matter whether r or not that alone constituted the rationale for his position – we know he was a politician, and political motives are predictably multiple and interchangeable. What does matter for us today, is the imperative of a ‘revisionist’ attitude, even as a purely academic exercise. For example, ask ourselves questions such as: What price ‘territorial integrity’ where any slab of real estate, plus the humanity that work it, can be signed away as a deal between two leaders – as did happen between Nigeria and the Cameroon.
You seek an answer to the claims of territorial integrity? Ask the fluctuating refugees on Bakassi islands just what is the meaning, for them, of ‘territorial integrity’?
Again, I feel obliged to emphasize that this has nothing to do with whether or not one side was in the wrong or right, nothing to do with accusations of a lack of vision, of pandering to, or resisting the wiles and calculations of erstwhile colonial rulers, or indeed, taking sides in a Cold War that turned Africans into surrogate players and the continent into prostrate testing ground for new weaponry.
No, we merely place before ourselves an exercise in hindsight – with no intention however of denying credit to those who did exercise foresight – we propose that the loss of two million and a half people, the maiming and traumatization of innumerable others and devastation on a thitherto unimaginable scale, by a nation turned against itself even as it teetered on the edge of modernity, provokes sober reflection.
That’s all. Sober reflection. A re-thinking that is unafraid, especially as such scenarios, considered in some cases even worse, more brutish, have since followed. Need one recall Rwanda’s own entry into that contest in morbid pathology, one that surpasses the Biafran carnage when comparatively assessed in duration and population parameters? All remain active reminders to haunt Africa’s collective conscience – the existence of which, I know, is an optimistic presumption – and appears to elude the ministrations of politicians and/or ideologues, or indeed theologians.
I propose that we borrow a leaf from our brothers and sisters in the Diaspora. I have no qualms in reminding this, or any other Nigerian audience that, such is the ingrained slave mentality of the contemporary progeny of those who sold those exiles into slavery in the first place, that some in this nation actually consider it a duty, even honour, to take up cudgels on behalf of the denigrators of our own kind, of our own race.
Thus, they proceed to insult those who respond in their own personal manner to such racists, however powerfully positioned and no matter where on this globe – but let that pass for now. My intention is to jog your memories regarding that spate of serial elimination of our kind – the African-Americans – by white police in the United States at that very time, an epidemic that merely actualized the racist rantings of the current incumbent of the White House as he powered his way to the coveted seat in the last United States elections.
The African-Americans, tired of being arbitrary sacrificial lambs, the victims of hate rhetoric, went on nation-wide protest marches, carrying placards that read: Black Lives Matter.
Adopting that simple exhortation enables us to include the millions of victims of failed or indifferent leadership on this continent who are more concerned with power and its accruements, who see the nation, not as expressions of a people’s will, need, belonging, and industry, but as ponds in which they, the bullfrogs of our time, can exercise power for its own sake. It is they who militate against ‘nation’, not – I shall end on this selective note – not the products of migration from purely nominal nation enclaves who perish daily along the Sahara desert routes, who drown in droves in the Mediterranean.
They are the ones who confronted the question with, alas, a fatalist determinism. They asked themselves the question: When is a Nation? And the answer of those desperate migrants is clearly read as: not when we left where we called home! As long as our humanity opts for unmarked graves in the Sahara desert, or in the guts of the fishes of the Mediterranean, their answer remains to haunt us all.
Yes, indeed, let us internalize that Africa-American declaration as statement of a living faith, an expression of our humanity that may compel leadership to pause at critical moments of decision, thereby earn ourselves some space where we can re-think those bequeathed absolutes that we so proudly spout, gospels of sacrosanctity, pre-packaged imperatives or questionable, often poisoned “truths” that incite us to advance so conceitedly towards the dehumanization, and decimation of our kind.
Any time that leadership, on whichever side, is about to repeat yet again the ultimate folly of sacrificing two and a half million lives on the altar of Absolutes, any absolute, we should borrow that credo, paint them on prayer scrolls, flood the skies in their millions with kites and balloons on which those words are inscribed:
African Lives Matter!
Wole Soyinka
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EFCC Arrests Eight Suspected Internet Fraudsters In Ibadan
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has arrested eight people suspected to be Internet fraudsters in Ibadan, Oyo State.
The EFCC said its Ibadan Zonal Office effected the arrest over the weekend.
According to the commission, the suspects were arrested in different locations in the state, adding that their arrest was sequel to series of intelligence received by the commission.
“The suspects, whose ages range between 17 and 30 were apprehended at different locations across the ancient city.
“They are Abdulrahman Qozeem, Umoru Ibrahim, Umoru Abdulahi Gregory, Famous Ose Itahma, Umoru Shaibu Pedro, Durrele Oyeniyi, Umoru Evidence and Judge Okoye.
“Their arrest was sequel to series of intelligence received by the commission concerning their alleged involvement in Internet-related crimes.
“Items recovered from them include six exotic cars, various brands of phones, laptops, international passports and several documents suspected to contain false pretences.”
The anti-graft agency said the suspects arrested will be charged to court once investigations are concluded.
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Pension Fraud: Maina Begs Judge For Bail Variation
Maina in court
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Former Chairman of the defunct Pension Reform Task Team, Abdulrasheed Maina, has asked Justice Okon Abang of the Federal High Court in Abuja to grant him a bail variation following his inability to meet his current bail conditions.
Justice Abang had in November 2019 granted Maina bail in the sum of N1bn with two sureties in like sum.
Both sureties must be serving Nigerian senators with no criminal cases before the court and must have fully developed landed property in Maitama or Asokoro district of Abuja.
Maina is facing trial for a 12-count charge of money laundering charge to the tune of over N2bn preferred against him by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.
He was arrested by a joint team of the EFCC and the State Security Services after years of evading trial.
SaharaReporters had also exclusively reported that Maina has been able to bribe his way to receive special treatment from officials of the Nigeria Correctional Service where he is being remanded.
At the resumed hearing on Monday, Maina’s counsel, Afam Osigwe, presented an application pursuant to section 181 of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act seeking a bail variation for Mr Maina.
Osigwe informed the court that though two senators had been approached to stand as surety, they don’t have properties in the jurisdiction cited by the court.
He said, “They (two senators) have stated that they neither have properties in either Asokoro or Maitama worth the amount specified by the court.
“When you approach a person to be your surety and the person says I don’t have this property, I think it would be disrespectful to go behind investigating whether what the person has told you is true.”
Not moved by the plea of Maina, Justice Abang held that the court has reason for imposing such bail conditions and must be well convinced before it can be varied.
The judge said, “The court did not fix those conditions for fun. The court has reasons for imposing those conditions.
“So, if you want the court to vary it, convincingly, you have to establish the fact that the applicant is unable to comply with those conditions.”
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Bauchi Governor Hospitalised In London Over Undisclosed Illness
Bauchi State governor, Bala Mohammed, is on admission in a London hospital seeking treatment for an undisclosed illness.
The governor revealed this to the people while expressing victory over the pending judgment by the Supreme Court on his governorship election.
In a statement by his Senior Special Assistant on Media, Mukhtar Gidado, Mohammed wished his supporters victory as he prayed for a quick recovery.
“I am in hospital in London but we strongly believe that Allah is sufficient for us and He is able and capable to give us victory.
“Success shall be ours Insha Allah.”
The Supreme Court heard the appeal filed against his election on Monday along with five other appeals against the election of incumbents in Imo, Kano, Sokoto, Benue and Plateau states.
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EXCLUSIVE: Shehu Sani Writes Letter From Detention, Dares EFCC, Nigerian Government To Publish Any Evidence Against Him
Activist and former Kaduna-Central lawmaker at the National Assembly, Senator Shehu Sani, has challenged the Nigerian Government to provide evidence against him as the 14-day order for his detention by the Economic and Financial Crimes expires.
Sani, a fierce critic of President Muhammadu Buhari, was arrested by the anti-graft agency on allegations that he extorted Sani Dauda, owner of ASD Motors, to bribe Ibrahim Magu, Acting Chairman of EFCC.
In a letter exclusively obtained by SaharaReporters on Monday, Sani said the EFCC has no evidence anywhere against him despite detaining him for 14 days.
He said, “The allegations against me was purposely crafted, concocted and packaged.
“If the consortium of the government, EFCC and my accuser have any evidence in form of audio, video, cheque, draft or money transfer for their spurious, fabricated bribe, they should make it public by publishing it instead of issuing statements.
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“I strongly, boldly, unambiguously, and explicitly maintain, assent, affirm that the allegations against me are cotton of lies officially drenched in the pool of their dreams to reflect and portray a fake colour of graft.”
The former lawmaker said the EFCC collaborated with his accuser to write a statement against him without proof as part of a targeted witch-hunt.
He stated, “The EFCC has not behaved as investigators. They are behaving as puppeteers and partners of my self-acclaimed accusers. They vendor his lies, peddle his falsehood and hawk his fabrications while suppressing the content of my statement and proofs.
“My accuser was guided and directed by the EFCC investigations on what to write. My accuser was manipulated and guided by a lady in the legal department of the EFCC on what to write.
“The government, the EFCC and my accuser are partners in concoctions and companions in fabrications.”
Sani called on the Nigerian Government to do the right thing and release him unconditionally if the administration is to be seen as fighting corruption.
He added, “The owl in the logo of the EFCC is sick and suffers from myopia.
“Graft cannot be defeated when lies are grafted. They have no case against me but they have a cage to throw me in.”
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E2%80%99s-daughter Legal Practitioner, Jiti Ogunye, Condemns Usage Of Presidential Jet By Buhari’s Daughter
Outspoken legal practitioner, Jiti Ogunye, has condemned the usage of a presidential jet for a private trip by President Muhammadu Buhari’s daughter, Hanan.
The young Miss Buhari was conveyed to Bauchi in a presidential aircraft for a photography project as part of her academic project on Thursday, sparking outrage among citizens.
While reacting to the incident on Monday, Ogunye said that President Buhari was abusing his office by allowing such acts.
According to him, usage of facilities with presidential seal should be restricted to only people recognised by the constitution.
He said, “There should be protocols for such purpose. It will not be permissible for children of the president to be moving around with the presidential limousines or cars. That will not be permissible due to the dignity of that office.
“For the daughter of the president to use presidential jet on a private tour is an abuse. I’m not aware of any law regulating it.”
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E2%80%99s-richest-man-dangote I’m Buying Arsenal Football Club In 2021, Says Africa’s Richest Man, Dangote
Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, has revealed his plans to buy Arsenal in 2021 and take over from current owner, Stan Kroenke.
Dangote, who boasts a net worth of more than £8.5bn, according to a report by Daily Mail, made his fortune after founding Dangote Cement, Africa’s largest cement producer, and also owning stakes in publicly-traded salt, sugar and flour manufacturing companies.
He had promised a takeover bid in 2020 but with his refinery still under construction, he has moved the date back.
Arsenal fans’ frustration with current owner Stan Kroenke has been bubbling for years, with the Denver Nuggets and LA Rams owner rarely showing his face at the Emirates while the English Premier League side continue to look rudderless behind the scenes in their search for a route back to the top four.
Dangote said, “It is a team that, yes, I would like to buy some day, but what I keep saying is we have $20bn worth of projects and that’s what I really want to concentrate on.
“I’m trying to finish building the company and then after we finish, maybe some time in 2021 we can.
“I’m buying Arsenal when I finish all these projects because I’m trying to take the company to the next level.”
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Unlawful Account Freeze: Court Orders Bank To Pay Lawyer N25m
An Ikeja High Court has ordered Diamond Bank Plc to pay a Lagos-based legal practitioner, Adetokunbo Odutola, N25m as damages for unlawfully freezing his bank account.
Justice S.O. Nwaka held that the bank failed in its duty of care to Odutola and was thus liable for the injury that arose therefrom.
The court held as unacceptable the bank’s contention that it froze the lawyer’s account on the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission’s instruction, noting that only a court could make such an order.
Justice Nwaka delivered the judgment in a suit marked LD/ADR/800/17 between Odutola as sole claimant and Diamond Bank as the sole defendant.
The suit originally involved three banks as defendants but the first and third defendants settled with the lawyer out of court, leaving Diamond as the remaining defendant.
In his statement of claim, Odutola, who represented himself, sought N25m against the bank as both special and general damages he incurred due to the bank’s “negligence and breach of duty of care”.
He averred that he “suffered embarrassment, hardship, disgrace and loss of income” following the unlawful freezing of his account.
In particular, the lawyer averred that a cheque he issued was rejected by the bank, his practice was financially affected and he had to resort to borrowing “N500,000 to repay N750,000” from a money lender.
The lawyer further stated that during the blockage, he was “engaged in a brief which would have earned him N10mi” but which he lost.
But Diamond Bank, through its counsel, Olatunji Muritala, countered that the cheque was dishonoured on November 29, 2016 when it got a letter from the EFCC asking it to place a lien on the customer’s account.
It also challenged the claim for N25m on the ground that Odutola “failed to prove any economic loss suffered when his account was placed on Post No Debit”.
The defendant urged the court to dismiss the suit in its entirety and refuse all reliefs sought, with substantial cost against the claimant.
In her judgment of December 16, 2019, the judge upheld the lawyer’s claims.
Justice Nwaka held, “The bank went ahead to place PND on the account of the claimant on the instruction of the EFCC. The bank ought to have demanded from the EFCC an order of court to that effect.
“It is not in the power of the EFCC to authorise a PND on any customer’s account. The EFCC must not usurp the powers of a court of law. The duty of care owed the claimant by the second defendant (Diamond Bank) is nothing but breached.”
The judge said the bank’s inaction of not demanding for an order of court or an official letter authorising it to place PND on the claimant’s account “amounts to negligence. And this negligence is traced to the embarrassment and loss suffered by the claimant.
“This is a society whose affairs are supposed to be governed and conducted in accordance with the law. The EFCC and the bank taking law into their hands is nothing but shameful.
“I am satisfied that the claimant has proved his case on the preponderance of evidence and I so hold. Judgment is hereby entered for the claimant against the second defendant as per his claims.”
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SaharaReporters, New York
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E2%80%93runsewe Persons Interested In Government Property Behind My Sentencing By Court –Runsewe
Director-General of National Council for Arts and Culture, Otunba Segun Runsewe, has stated that individuals interested in converting government property to personal use were behind his sentencing by a court.
Justice Jude Okeke of the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory had sentenced Runsewe to prison for allegedly refusing to obey a court order directing stay of proceedings in a suit bordering on the demolition of the Arts and Craft Village located in the Central Business District area of the FCT.
The court held that the NCAC flouted the law and ordered the police to arrest Runsewe and hand him over to the Nigerian Correctional Service pending when he retraces his steps.
But reacting to the court’s verdict while speaking with journalists in Abuja, Runsewe said that he acted to protect and defend government property owned by NCAC and
He noted that some individuals with vested interest in the building wanted to acquire it for themselves, hence the reason they are trying to have him removed from office.
Runsewe said, “The property has been turned into a drug den for hooligans and criminals, a depot for illegal arms and sundry criminal activities, which turned the place to security threat not only to Abuja residents but to foreigners who visit the area.
“I wonder why some people are bent on converting government property to a haven of inappropriate engagement. That was why the police closed down the place.
“The Art and Craft Village belongs to the Federal Republic of Nigeria, it does not belong to me but to the Nigerian people.
“I would be failing in my duties as a public officer and appointee of government if I cannot protect government property to which I was mandated to oversee.”
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