Nigeria to sustain promotion of Commonwealth ideas (Read full details)

http://ift.tt/2mlCfBy

Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu

Queen highlights ‘cornerstones’ for peace
As Nigeria joins 52 other member nations to commemorate the 2017 Commonwealth Day, the Federal Government says it will continue to promote the ideas of the organisation.

The Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu, at the Commonwealth Day Celebration in Abuja, yesterday, maintained that Nigeria, in the last couple of years, had tried to maintain core values of Commonwealth nations, which were peace, fairness and equity.

The minister maintained that the Commonwealth has proved an effective partnership for development for member-nations.

He said: “The commitment to the idea of the Commonwealth has proved deep and deep-seated and long-standing more because of what it promises than the benefits that can be seen or felt.’’

Adamu noted that the theme of this year’s celebration: “A peace-building Commonwealth,” embraces strategies for peace-building and member nation’s commitment and undertaking to build and sustain a more peaceful and more stable world.

“Improving human security is the main task of peace-building; and this can only come from the cooperative efforts of different actors and stakeholders in government and civil society organization’s, at the international community, state, national and international levels to address the causes for the absence of peace and to ensure that life is lived in freedom from fear of any kind.’’

In her annual message to the Commonwealth, the Queen and Head of Commonwealth highlighted respect and understanding between nations as the key to peace.

“The cornerstones on which peace is founded are, quite simply, respect and understanding for one another. Working together, we build peace by defending the dignity of every individual and community.

“By upholding justice and the rule of law, and by striving for societies that are fair and offer opportunities for all, we overcome division and find reconciliation, so that the benefits of progress and prosperity may be multiplied and shared.

“As members of the Commonwealth family, we can find much to be thankful for in the inheritances we have received from those who came before us. Through consensus and co-operation, great things have been achieved,” she stated.

Meanwhile, the House of Representatives yesterday pledged its determination to improving the welfare of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in the country.

The lawmakers also expressed willingness to initiate policies that would protect and enhance the living conditions of children across the country.

The Speaker of the House, Yakubu Dogara stated this in Abuja when the leadership of the National Assembly met with pupils of the “School Without Walls’’ drawn from the four IDP camps in Abuja.

The pupils, numbering 657, who had come to mark the 2017 Commonwealth Day with the legislature, are among thousands that have in recent years been affected by insurgents’ activities in the northeastern part of the country.

The Speaker advised the pupils to dedicate themselves to the promotion of peace in the country, irrespective of their ages, saying that the future of the country lay in their hands.

He expressed concern that recent killings, kidnapping, inter communal clashes, terrorism and militancy recorded in the country had militated against a peaceful society.

Earlier, the Clerk to the National Assembly, Mr. Mohammed Sani-Omolori noted that the day was set aside by the United Nations to preach and promote tolerance among children of the world.

Vía Uzomedia http://ift.tt/2mGlhBC

APC, UNIBEN employees threaten strike over salaries (Read full details)

http://ift.tt/2mGqs4b

UNIBEN

UI workers down tools
Workers at the national headquarters of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) may have concluded arrangement to have it tough with the management over alleged salary arrears if feelers are anything to go by.

The development comes on the heels of yesterday’s resumption of office by President Muhammadu Buhari after more than 50-day medical vacation in the United Kingdom. Sources said the financial paucity might not be unconnected with the recession in the country worsened by dwindling oil receipts.

Findings indicated that the workers were being owed February and part of December 2016 salaries.

Efforts to reach the party’s National Publicity Secretary, Bolaji Abdullahi, for comments were futile, as he was to be out of Abuja. But a senior official who craved anonymity, however, denied the claims.

Besides, the University of Benin (UNIBEN) branch of the Academic Staff Union of the (ASUU) threatened a work-to-rule action over the alleged non-payment of full salary for the month of February to its members.

It was gathered that the union had at the end of its last congress issued a one-week ultimatum in this respect. The warning elapsed last Friday.

Reacting to the development, the Public Relations Officer, Michael Osasuyi, said activities were going on uninterrupted at the institution, adding that the Prof. Faraday Orumwense-led administration was committed to improving staff welfare.

Also yesterday, non-academic activities were grounded at the University of Ibadan as workers of the institution began a one-week warning strike to force the management to accede to their demands.

The affected unions, Senior Staff Association of Nigeria Universities (SSANU); National Association of Academic Technicians (NAAT) and Non-Academic Staff Union (NASU), are protesting against alleged illegal deductions of pensions and shortfall in their emoluments.

The chapter ASUU chairman, Dr. Deji Omole, urged members to endure the hardship, adding that the request to embark on same action was being considered by the union’s national headquarters.

Vía Uzomedia http://ift.tt/2mGlwwk

Imo team beats Anambra to emerge champions…See full details

http://ift.tt/2mGojpn

Competition sponsor, Chuma Anosike (left) handing over the champions’ trophy to Imo State at the end of the Seventh South East Cricket Championship in Awka… at the weekend.

Imo State Cricket team at the weekend defeated Anambra Team 1 by two wickets to win the Seventh South-East Cricket Championship, also known as Chuma Anosike Cup.

In the competition decided at the Paul University Cricket pitch, Awka.

In the final game watched by cricket aficionados from the South East and many other sports enthusiasts, Imo batted first and scored 113 runs for the loss of nine wickets in 20 overs. The team was led by Obidike Obiefuna, who had 39 runs off 35 balls, with Okere Chike scoring 27 runs off 12 balls in 24 minutes, just as Rickson Tetteh got 19 runs off 19 balls in 98 minutes and Ogbue Prince had 16 runs off 12 balls in one hour seven minutes.

Anambra’s Chukwudi Mgbojikwe took four wickets in four overs, Adaogu Chisom caught two wickets in three overs, while Emmanuel Ifediora, Ezeaguba Chijioke and Nnonka Frederick took one wicket each.

In the second innings, Anambra One scored 97 runs all out in 19.4 overs, with Obidike Obiefuna scoring 35 runs off 40 balls in 50 minutes. He was joined by Ifediora Emmanuel, who scored scored 15 runs off 20 balls in one hour seven minutes.

Imo’s Onwunrili Nnaemeka took four wickets in four overs, Onwunrili Chukwudi had three wickets in three overs, while Ogbue Prince took three wickets in 2.4 overs to hand their state the title for the first time.

At the end of the competition, Bagshaw Miebaka of Ebonyi State won the bowler of the series award, while the fielder of the series gong went to Pascal Okoye of Anambra One, with best batman of the series title going to Onyenka Tabansi of Anambra One.

The wicket keeper of the series award went to Ogbue Prince of Imo State; Douglas Humble of Ebonyi won cricketer of the series title, while Abia State won the best behaved team award.

Speaking at the event, Anambra State Commissioner For Youth and Sports, Dr. Uju Nwogu thanked the sponsor of the Championship, Chuma Anosike for enlivening cricket in the South Eastern States. She promised to relate her experience to Anambra State Governor, Mr. Willie Obiano, adding that the state would find a way of supporting the game.

Vía Uzomedia http://ift.tt/2nnKa3a

Team Surulere wins maiden Beach Olympics…See full details

http://ift.tt/2mYhCji

<img src="http://ift.tt/2mh4KjV&quot; alt="" width="1200" height="674" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-252506" srcset="http://ift.tt/2mh4KjV 1200w,http://ift.tt/2ne5hIv 640w,http://ift.tt/2mhbiiG 1062w,http://ift.tt/2ndYzSO 320w,http://ift.tt/2mh5DsQ 281w,http://ift.tt/2nea90g 562w,http://ift.tt/2mhbWg9 531w,http://ift.tt/2neaPT4 487w,http://ift.tt/2mh8UIA 974w,http://ift.tt/2ne7Nyg 600w" sizes="(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px"https://cdn.gdn.ng/, speed and strength sports, the Surulere Team topped the medals table with 13 gold, three silver, and two bronze medals.

In second position were Team Ikeja with four gold, five silver and two bronze medals, while Team Lagos Island placed third with two gold, four silver and seven bronze medals.

One of the highlights of the occasion was the invitational race for secondary schools where Air Force Secondary School came first in the 50 metres race in both the male and female categories. Awodi Ora Senior Secondary School was second while Iganmu Senior Secondary School placed third.

Other invited schools include Dowen College, St. Gregory’s College, Ojoku Senior High School, and Command Day Secondary School.Among the dignitaries invited for the occasion was the Managing Director of Discovery Brands Management, Mr. Uche Nwankwo, who had the honour of presenting medals to the invited schools.

Others were Mrs. Haddad; Consul General of Lebanon, who presented the 2017 Beach Summer Games trophy to the winning team. Nigeria’s first Olympic Gold Medalist, Chioma Ajunwa and Enefiok Udo-Obong and Brilla FM’s co-host Sean Amadi and Murphy Ijemba, were also present.

Teams at the end of events were awarded various cash prizes ranging from N1.5m for winners; N750,000 for runners up and N500,000 for third position respectively.

Vía Uzomedia http://ift.tt/2mh4Vvz

‘Binatone Skate Soccer Fiesta will highlight plight of polio victims’…See full details

http://ift.tt/2ne4NBW

polio

The maiden International Skate Soccer Fiesta, which will feature physically challenged athletes from Nigeria and Ghana, is aimed at taking polio victims off the streets, the organisers have said.

The competition will hold at the Independence Square in Accra, Ghana on March 19.The competition, which is organized by the International Federation for Skate Soccer (IFSS), is being sponsored by Binatone, a household electronic appliances manufacturer.

An inaugural event of the IFSS competition had taken place at La Pleasure Beach in Accra on January 15 with a team from Accra against another from the Ashanti region in Ghana.

Aside evoking memories of the age-old soccer rivalry between Nigeria and Ghana, the sponsors said the sport and the non-profit IFSS were created to bring together the physically challenged with a core focus on Polio sufferers, who have no ability to walk and who usually beg for alms. The benefit that IFSS hopes to bring to these individuals is food, shelter and help in finding a steady job.

Binatone Group Managing Director, Mr. Sunil Lalvani, said, “the cause is more than worthy, and the approach taken by IFSS make it a sustainable cause over the long term also. The organization not only works to give the players (and other non-playing Polio sufferers) a proper livelihood, but by taking them off the streets, they regain their dignity.”

After the upcoming Ghana versus Nigeria game, he disclosed that the organization will plan an African Cup of Nations style tournament to involve the whole continent, and the greater goal remain to take this riveting sport to the Paralympic Games.

Vía Uzomedia http://ift.tt/2mhaSss

Federal Government cuts budgetary allocation for Presidential Villa (Read full details)

http://ift.tt/2knwUui

National Assembly

The Federal Government yesterday gave indications that it has reviewed downwards the budgetary provision for the State House in the 2017 fiscal year. Permanent Secretary in the State House Mr. Jalal Arabi, who gave this indication yesterday, explained that government has re-prioritised projects in its medical centre and suspended most of its capital expenditure proposals for 2017.
‎
Specifically, Arabi said the budget for the State House had been reviewed downward from N16.567 billion to N13.567 billion in the 2017 appropriation bill being debated by the National Assembly.

The permanent secretary disclosed this when ‎members of the House Committee on Special Duties led by Nasir Daura, made an oversight visit to the State House.‎

According to him, while the State House headquarters, State House medical centre and State House Lagos liaison office received releases, no release was ‎made for the office of the Chief of Staff and that of the Chief Security Officer to the President. Both releases were still pending.‎

Arabi also said the 2017 budget has become less ambitious than the 2016 appropriation adding that personnel, overhead and capital costs were minimally reviewed upwards.‎

“The state house estimates were all based on existing projects that are classified as ongoing and that are simply rolled over from the 2016 appropriation and so, have the potential of being reduced in case ‎additional releases are made for the projects before the end of the ‎extended implementation period (March 2017). There is therefore no newly conceived project for the 2017,” he explained.‎

According to him, “we have equally re-prioritised the State House Medical Centre projects, which were undergoing a review, hence the suspension of all the capital expenditure proposals for now. We shall however take ‎advantage of the supplementary budget widow when necessary.”He told the lawmakers that that it had received a total of N5.19 billion as capital release from its approved 2016 budget.

This, he said represents 47.5 per cent of the N10.94 billion of the presidency’s capital budget for the year, thus leaving a balance of N5.74 billion (52.5 per cent) yet to be released. ‎‎

Arabi further said that of the amount released, N4.8 billion (93.1 per cent) has so far been expended on the capital projects for which the funds were appropriated.

He further disclosed that all allocations for the 2016 recurrent expenditure have been received up to December, while the capital releases were made for three out of five subheads in the State ‎House budget.

Chairman of the committee said the House of Reps panel was in the villa to determine the level of implementation of the 2016 budget as well as on a fact-finding mission to inspect completed and ongoing projects at the State House.

According to him, this will help the correct the lack of adequate information or outright misinformation about State House, as well as to curb corruption and ensure that the country comes out of recession.

Vía Uzomedia http://ift.tt/2jJhrTn

Efficient infrastructure it is

http://ift.tt/2kOLkDq

On arriving in the United Kingdom (UK) to commence my undergraduate programme at the London South Bank University (LSBU), l first took up residence with my paternal uncle, Prince Akabudike Ochei, a Queen’s Counsel. My uncle and his young family lived in a four-bedroom detached house in a middle-class neighbourhood of North West London. I was the typical conservative Nigerian boy, with all the traditional trappings. I had not travelled outside the shores of Nigeria before that trip to London. My first culture shock came not from a white person; it had come from my uncle’s three-year old daughter, who would insist on my kissing her “good night,” every night with mum and dad merrily looking on. The three-year old couldn’t understand why a teenager would fight shy of the routine act of kissing. I soon adapted. (I am eternally grateful to uncle Akabudike and his family for hosting me in that critical initial phase of my UK experience).

LSBU is situated in South East London. Every morning, I walked the 15-odd minutes distance from my uncle’s Ebbsfleet Road residence to Kilburn underground train station to catch a Bakerloo Line train to Elephant and Castle station, located some five minutes’ walk from LSBU. Kilburn to Elephant and Castle is a 25 minutes ride, with 14 stations between the two stations. Stoppage time at each station is approximately one minute; so actual traveling time is estimated at 10 minutes; a seemingly comfortable trekking distance; or so thought the new resident.

So after a few weeks, and in a fashion reminiscent of a kitten sporting dove, I started toying with the idea of trekking to and fro LSBU. Quickly, I closely consulted that first acquisition of every new London resident: the London A-Z road map. My second shock; Elephant and Castle station was no where as near as I had imagined. The road map showed that I was commuting 20-odd kilometers to and fro LSBU every day; and part of this daily trip was underwater (River Thames). Trekking was clearly not an option in the circumstances. It was a significant discovery for my young mind; not only have the Europeans conquered long distances, but they have also acquired mastery of nature to the extent of traveling underwater at amazing speed.

In effect, London train commuters travel at an average speed of one kilometer per minute; and each of these trains has the capacity for approximately 1,000 commuters. Contrasting the London situation with what obtained back in Nigeria impinged on my young mind the true meaning of socio-economic backwardness. I had worked with the Nigerian Customs and Excise Department in Apapa, Lagos, before travelling to the UK. Then, I commuted between Apapa and my parents’ rented apartment at Costain, close to the National Arts Theatre at Iganmu. Approximately eight kilometers separated Costain from Apapa; and commuter-buses usually took upwards of 50 minutes to cover that distance, carrying mere tens of passengers at a time. Simply put, 1,000 commuters in London travel more than six times faster than a couple of tens of commuters do in Nigeria! The designers of Nigeria’s infrastructural projects need to spend some time pondering this contrast, if Nigeria aspires to compete globally.

It’s been over three decades since my Kilburn/Elephant and Castle daily train rides; yet, today in 2017, a bus ride from Apapa to Costain takes upwards of 90 minutes, in spite of the billions of U.S. dollars that have been expended, and that continue to be expended on road construction in Nigeria. In the 1980s through to the 1990s, the 300-odd kilometers distance between Lagos and Benin City in Edo State was traversed in about three hours. Some 15 years later at the turn of the century, commuters were spending over half a day to undertake the trip! Today, after multiple contract-awards and expended billions of U.S. dollars, commuters manage to make the Lagos – Benin journey in five hours or thereabouts. A federal works minister in the previous administration became famous for aspiring to cut down that travelling time from five to three hours. (So much sounds and sights for taking Nigeria back to her twentieth century status).

The foregoing speaks eloquently of our political office-holders’ sense of progressive development. It ought to be obvious by now that it is not the sheer quantum of money and fanfare that are expended on a particular developmental project that count; rather, it’s the measurable impact of such projects on national economic efficiency that counts.

This is why I often wonder at the essence of the elaborate annual budget-proposal reviews (read rituals) that go on at the Legislative Assembles. For these reviews to make any sense, the Executives must, of necessity, indicate the percentage improvements, say on Gross Domestic Product (GDP), that a proposed capital project will impact on the national economy before such an appropriation could be passed into law.

Consequently, new roads must cut down on the travel times on existing roads; otherwise they are not worth the money and labour of putting them up; ditto for other infrastructural projects. A couple of weeks previously the world’s highest bridge was commissioned some where in South America. It was an engineering feat by all accounts, connecting mountainous terrains; but it was delivered all the same, cutting down previous traveling time by four hours! These savings could easily translate into doubling or tripling of GDP, thus transforming a Third World country to a First World. Infrastructural efficiency is what makes the difference; ask the G20 countries. United States’ new president is depending on little else to “make America great again.” Hear him, “Our infrastructure is in a terrible shape; we are going to spend heavily rebuilding our roads; bridges; airports; seaports… We are going to make America great again!”

Furthermore, new and efficient cities should be developed near our existing mega cities with well-thought-out nationwide road networks to make Nigeria holistically viable. The clustered and uncoordinated state of Nigeria’s economic components are proof that political office-holders in Nigeria have yet to imbibe the crucial lesson that GDP is largely determined by the speed with which people and goods are moved around in an economic space; this explains in part the reductionist approach they adopt in administering the country. Thus, what is sauce for the North East region is not necessarily sauce for the South East region. As a consequence, our imported goods are gridlocked within the seaports, while our locally produced goods contend with inefficient road networks and poorly maintained trucks. If a ranking member of the G20 could bemoan the state of its infrastructure, it’s no brainer to figure out that efficient infrastructure is the key to competing in the global market place.

• Nkemdiche is an engineering consultant, lives in Abuja.

Vía The Guardian NigeriaThe Guardian Nigeria http://ift.tt/2kOK5o0

Calm as Suleman returns to church after DSS invitation (Read full details)

http://ift.tt/2kSSwxs

Apostle Johnson Suleman

After the visit on Monday night by the President of Omega Fire Ministries (OFM), Apostle Johnson Suleman, to the Department of State Security (DSS), calm has returned to the church.

There were several prayer sessions in many of the branches in the state as they awaited his arrival. At Auchi Polytechnic where he has many followers, groups prayed and awaited official statement from the leadership of the church.

A statement by the Coordinator, Omega Fire Ministries Legal team, Samuel Amune yesterday reads: “This is to formally inform the general public, and lovers of Apostle Johnson Suleman in particular, that the DSS invitation was honoured by him and the encounter can be better described as successful as the DSS was professional. This would herald a new phase for the Christians in Nigeria.

“However, we use this medium to officially discredit the sources, dissociate and refute the news which has gone viral and credited to Apostle Johnson Suleman that El-Rufai should produce the Fulani herdsmen he claimed he paid money to stop killing Christians.

“Apostle Johnson Suleman did not and could not have said that.’’

Vía Uzomedia http://ift.tt/2koP2q2