MASSOB Group says OBJ offered them bribes

The Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), in response to comments made byformer President Olusegun Obasanjo, revealed that they were offered bribes by the ex-President.

Punch Newspapers reports that the MASSOB Director of Information, Samuel Edeson, said “In 2006, while Uwazuruike was in Keffi prison, Obasanjo invited us to Aso Rock where he promised us millions of naira. He also promised to send us out of the country for us to forget Uwazuruike to die in prison. But we rejected the offer.”

MASSOB also said contrary to OBJ’s claim that the Biafra agenda is dead, they are active and still pushing forward.

Obasanjo while presenting a paper at an event said Biafra was a dead issue, adding that “No right-thinking person who has experienced the horror of war will ever agitate for more war. Nigeria cannot afford to go from Boko Haram insurgency to any other insurgency under any guise.

“And on no account should we wittingly or unwittingly allow this to happen again.”

The group in its response also said “MASSOB wishes to tell Obasanjo that Biafra is not dead and will never die. Obasanjo should have known that despite the killing of over 1,000 MASSOB members at Umulolo, Okigwe, in Imo State, on March 29, 2003.

“The killing of MASSOB members in Onitsha, Anambra State in 2006/2007, and the detention of MASSOB members in various prisons in Nigeria never stopped our agitation.”

Series of protests have been going on in the South-Eastern region of Nigeria, calling for the creation of a Biafra, and the release of Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), and fore-runner in the agitations for a sovereign Igbo nation.

Nnamdi Kanu was charged for treason by the Federal Government of Nigeria, and is currently facing trial.

Nigerian striker wins Barclays Player of the Month of December

Nigeria international striker Odion Ighalo has been named theBarclays Premier League Player of the Month of December.

The Watford striker scored five goals in the month of December against  Liverpool, Sunderland, Norwich and Chelsea.

He beat the likes of Arsenal's Mesut Ozil, Marko Arnautovic,Riyad Mahrez, Romelu Lukaku and Dele Alli to win the award.

He joins that likes of Jay Jay Okocha, Yakubu Aiyegbeni andOsaze Odemwingie as the only Nigerians who have won the monthly gong.

Goodluck Jonathan becomes first African leader to receive Martin Luther King’s award

Former President Goodluck Jonathan has been honoured by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in Atlanta, Georgia in United States in recognition of his leadership in advancing human rights, social justice and the fight for universal freedom.

The SCLC was founded by  the late American Civil Right leader, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

As the first African leader to be honoured, Jonathan expressed his gratitude to the SCLC for inviting him and declared that it was “virtually impossible to separate this worthy body from its founder, the late great Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, or from epoch making landmark events of the American Civil Rights movement”.

“My personal takeaway from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, is service to God and the brotherhood and equality of all men before their Creator.

In keeping with that, I have learnt not to look up to any man, except he is taller than I, or to look down on a fellow mortal, except I am admiring his shoes”, he said.

The event is part of the activities leading up to the celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr Day on Monday, January 18th, 2016.

How Jonathan threatened to cage me - Oshiomhole reveals

Governor of Edo State, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, has alleged that former President Goodluck Jonathan threatened to cage him after May 29 for declaring his support for the candidature of President Muhammadu Buhari in the last general elections.

Oshiomhole, while speaking at a meeting with leaders of the All Progressives Congress (APC) on Thursday, Jan. 14, revealed that Jonathan threatened to cage him after the last general elections, which luckily for him did not go in favour of the People's Democratic Party (PDP).

He said: “The former President, Goodluck Jonathan told our National Chairman, Chief John Odigie Oyegun to inform me that after the election, he will put me, Adams, the son of Oshiomhole in a hole and I told Chief Oyegun to inform him to dig that hole very deep because although I am short, in the course of pushing me into the hole, nobody knows who will get there first.

“Since he is taller than me, he needs to dig the hole deep enough so that either of us can get in. In the end, he is inside the hole and I am busy putting dust into that hole”.

Oshiomhole continued, “In this hall, around this time last year, we held a meeting to share information about what was going on in various local governments and the specific challenges in each of those local government in order to fashion out appropriate response.

“Some of the statements that we shared in those meetings included threats that by June, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole would have been impeached because PDP would write results whether we liked it or not. They would overrun the House of Assembly and once the House is proclaimed in June, before the end of June, Comrade would be banished to his house in the village and from there to prison.

“Those who made those threats, who supervised those processes, even now in their early 90s are writing letters to explain how they shared money meant for defence. Every evil weapon they fashioned against me did not prosper and even the ones they are fashioning now will not prosper.”

He recalled how the APC languished in obscurity while the PDP called the shot, both at states and federal level.

“When we came in about 7 years ago, my party had no control even of one ward. We had no control of one local government, but today, we control wards, local, state and by the special grace of God, federal. Things have changed. The one who tamed a lionwith bare hands, now with automatic weapons, no antelope can dare us in our own forest.”

Oshiomhole had continually criticised the Goodluck Jonathan and particularly the former minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala for aiding the her boss and other officials of the government to misappropriate funds.

Donald Trump's Anti-Muslim plan disqualifies him from Presidency - White House

The Republican front-runner on Monday released a statement calling for the U.S. to refuse entry of foreign Muslims. His proposal was met with widespread criticism, including from several candidates in his own party, and now White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest says such a statement disqualifies him from serving as the President of the United States Of America.

"The fact is what Donald Trump said yesterday disqualifies him from serving as president," Josh Earnest said in Tuesday's press briefing. "For Republican candidates for president to stand by their pledge to support Mr. Trump, that in and of itself is disqualifying," Earnest said.
"The question now is about the rest of the Republican Party and whether or not they're going to be dragged into the dustbin of history with him. And right now the current trajectory is not very good. The Trump campaign for months now has had a dustbin of history-like quality to it," Earnest said.

Secretary of State John Kerry also rebuked Trump's comments.

"I would simply say that nondiscrimination and equal treatment are a pillar of not just American values but of our immigration and our admission policies in this country and the State Department remains totally committed to treating all religions with respect and without discrimination," Kerry said during a press briefing in Paris. He added, "As I travel around the world, it is clear to me and how both our friends and our adversaries watch and listen to the discourse in the U.S., and I believe that comments such as those that we just heard are not constructive - and I would say that is putting it diplomatically."

Okonjo-Iweala describes as baseless allegations of 'Illegal Diversion' of Abacha funds

Read the press statement below...

As part of the campaign of falsehood against former Minister of Finance, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala by Edo Governor, Adams Oshiomhole and other powerful and corrupt interests, another baseless story has been published by some online media. 

To achieve their evil propaganda objective of tarnishing her name, these evil elements have distorted the contents of a memo dated January 20, 2015 in which the former Minister of Finance, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala responded to a request by the former National Security Adviser, Col Ibrahim Dasuki (retired) for funds to prosecute the terror war against Boko Haram. 

Here are the facts:

·         The central responsibility of the Minister of Finance IS to find sources of funding for the financing of approved national priorities such as security, job creation and infrastructure. 

·         It will be recalled that throughout 2014, there were public complaints by the military hierarchy to President Goodluck Jonathan about the inadequacy of funds to fight the anti-terror war in the North East, resulting in Boko Haram making gains and even taking territories.  A lot of the criticism was directed at the Federal Ministry of Finance under Dr Okonjo-Iweala which was accused of not doing enough to find funds for the operations.

·         In fact, the Ministry, on several occasions, had to call press conferences to provide details of budgetary spending on the military, to show, against the background of limited resources and other urgent national priorities, that it was doing its best on funding security.

·        It was about this time that some new Abacha funds of about $322m were returned with another $700m still expected to be returned. (This is not to be confused with the Abacha funds returned in 2005-2006 under the Obasanjo government whose use for developmental purposes was monitored by the World Bank as earlier explained by Dr Okonjo-Iweala).  

·        Former President Jonathan set up a Committee comprising of the former Minister of Justice, former NSA and the former Minister of Finance to determine how best to use both the returned  and expected funds for development.

·        The NSA made a case for using the returned funds for urgent security operations since, he noted, there cannot be any development without peace and security. Based on this, a decision was taken to deploy about $322m for the military operations, while the expected $700m would be applied for development programmes as originally conceived.

·         Following the discussions and based on the urgency of the NSA’s memo, Dr Okonjo-Iweala requested the President to approve the transfer of the requested amount to the NSA’s Office for the specified purposes.

·         But, as captured in the memo, she insisted on three conditions: a. only a part, not the entire Abacha funds would be spent on the arms; the rest would be invested in developmental projects as originally conceived b. the money was to be treated as borrowed funds which would be paid back as soon as possible c. the NSA’s office was to account for the spending to the President who was the Commander in Chief, given the fact that the Minister of Finance is not part of the security architecture and does not participate in the Security Council.

 The attempt to link the former Minister’s name to any misuse of these funds for any purpose other than security as far as she understood it is totally false and cannot stand.  

Paul C Nwabuikwu

Media Adviser to Dr Okonjo-Iweala

Infrastructure Investments & Development of Micro,Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (MSMEs) in Nigeria: Remove the Bottlenecks; Experts Tells FG.

If Nigeria government can properly fund the critical infrastructures such as power, road network and communication which experts believe should be the responsibility of any nation's government such efforts will promote the growth and development of Micro, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (MSMEs)in Nigeria. Prof.Olukunle Frank
Odumosu  Acting Director General NISER made the statement in his welcome address at NISER Research Seminar Series (NRSS) the 11th and last of the series for the year 2015 at the NISER Headquarters lbadan.
He noted that though any investment on infrastructures is a capital intensive project that often involves long term cash flows but if it is done it will not only expand the productive capacity at enterprise level but will increase the GDP of the nation .
He added that infrastructure investments and development is very important and also "a key for the development of any nation'.
Prof. Odumosu later commends  the participants for their interest on regular participation and promised that every policy papers presented to the public will be treated with dispatch to the appropriate authority.

In his overview of the seminar topic the chairman Prof.P A Okuneye.Dept.of Agric.Econs and Extension. Federal University of Agriculture (FUNAAB) Abeokuta implore Federal government to provide the enabling environment with adequate infrastructure for the development of micro small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs)in  the country this according to him will reduce  the labor market growth.

Dr. Foluso Modupe Adeyinka of Economic Policies Research Dept. (EPRD)NISER Ibadan who represented the research team to present the paper titled Infrastructure Investments and Development of Micro. Small and  Medium-sized Enterprises (MSMEs) in Nigeria  noted that the objectives of the papers is to assess how  the contribution of MSMEs infrastructure investments affects the development of the country and reiterate some of the lingering problems that hinder the growth and development of the MSMEs in Nigeria; bring to the fore strategic

options in the reform growth and development of MSMEs and as well propose some policy recommendations as a way forward. On the research methodology and data analysis. Dr. Modupe Adeyinka stated that both quantitative and qualitative methods were used to analyzed the data collected, these according to her include simple descriptive statistics such as the measure of central tendency and the tabulation of data by firm size on infrastructure type; while research findings was on accessible, affordable and adequacy. Speaking on policy recommendations experts urge the three tiers of government through SMEDAN to play its role in the provisions of critical infrastructures, cheeck multiple taxation and involve the financial institutions to provide soft loan at very lower interest rate for the Micro, Small and Medium-sized enterprisers in the country all these things will expand the production capacity and give room for competition at the international market

SECURITY:Area Commader Frowns at Okada/Micra Cab Operators;DPO Harp on Manpowers as Koyewon Tasks Stakeholders

The Nigeria Police again reiterate its commitment towards the protection of lives and properties of the citizens and let them sleep with their two eyes close. Superintendent (SP.)Aderemi Balogun. Divisional Police Officer for Moniya Divisional Headquarters Ibadan made the comments while welcoming the new Area Commander Agodi Command Assist.Commissioner of Police. (ACP) Aloysious Chimezie who is on familiarization visit of
his division.

Speaking further on the challenges. Balogun stated that his division apart from housing the local Government Headquarters and it is also a gateway station that links Oke ogun. Oyo.Ogbomosho. Iddo way to Ogun
state and lagelu way to Osun state, this vantage position according to the DPO place a lots of burden on the division which have six outstations with strength of one hundred and sixty two personnel out of which thirteen are on special duty at 'B'ops,three on Peace Keeping Mission and five hospitalized,noted that the division only relied on one hundred and thirty nine personnel that now policing the division
porous environment.

In his address the Area Commader.ACP.Aloysious Chemezie show his displeasure over the behavior of both Okada/Micra cab operators in the state. He said police will no longer tolerate their nefarious activities in the state.
ACP.Chemezie while calling for partnership with the police on crime management and prevention observe that police alone can not win the crime war without the support of the community call for civility between the public and the police, stressing that with the arduous task a head of the police member of the public need to rally round them rather than crucify them when ever there is any little mistakes.
He urge the Okada operators to have identification code and not to violate the traffic and criminal laws.
The area commander latter sound note of warning on his men to always have good human relationships with members of the community they serve and promote morality with good virtues.

In his own address the Chairman PCRC Moniya Divisional Headquarters Chief Olaiya Babalola (aka) Koyewon stated that all hands are now on the deck to totally wage war with the criminals in the nooks and
cranny of the state
He enjoin stakeholders to provide useful information to the police in order to make the society crime free.Adding"no security, no life.' Chief Koyewon later lauds the DPO and his officers for effective coverages of the division and finally presented token gift on behalf of the executives and members of the Moniya Division PCRC to the visitor.