MAPOLY graduate wins 6^th Ships & Ports Essay Competition

 Babalola Yusuf Abiola

Miss Abimbola Olotu, a 2010 graduate of Moshood Abiola Polytechnic, Abeokuta, Ogun State, has emerged the winner of the sixth Ships & Ports Annual national Essay Competition in Lagos.

She however carted away the N100, 000 star prize cheque though, Olotu’s feat at the prize presentation ceremony makes her the first female star prize winner since the competition, which has transformed into a strong brand, kicked off in 2006.

Aside olotu other price winners in this year’s competition include Mr. Onyema Emmanuel Ngwakwe, Sifax Group Prize for Creative Writing & Presentation; and Mr. Babatunde Bello, Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) Prize for Outstanding Essay.

 A Correspondent of Businessday newspaper, Miss Uzoamaka Anagor; and Messrs Ejike-Ume Felix Ifeanyi, Daniel Henry Onovo and Christopher Okeke also won the  NIMASA Prize for Outstanding Essay.

It would be recalled that one of this year’s winners of the NIMASA Prize for Outstanding Essay, Messr Ejike-Ume Felix Ifeanyi, a lawyer, was the star prize winner of the 2009 edition of the competition.

A journalist with the Nigerian Tribune, Peter Chukwuma Okparaocha, won the 5^th edition in 2011; a Post-Graduate student of the University of Ibadan, Mr. Uchenna Jerome Orji, won the star prize of the 4^th edition carting away a new Kia Piccanto.

 Ejike-Ume Felix Ifeanyi won the 3^rd edition; Mr. Adewale Opeyemi, a Masters degree student of Archaeology at the Federal University of Technology, Minna Niger State won the 2^nd edition while a naval officer; Navy Captain Atakpa Sunday Daniel won the star prize in the maiden edition of the competition.

In his welcome address, the Chief Executive Officer of Ships & Ports Communication Company, Mr. Bolaji Akinola disclosed that the Essay Competition was designed “to encourage Nigerians to think aloud about the maritime sector and to revive and sustain vivid, contentious and creative essay writing about the sector.

He continued, “The enormous interest the maiden edition generated among Nigerians and industry stakeholders were the stamp of approval we needed to institutionalize the competition”, Akinola stated.

How Jonathan & Obasanjo Fell Apart… Possible Implications For Jonathan

In Abeokuta last Friday, governors, leaders of the National Assembly and political heavy weights gathered to lay the foundation stone of a mosque at the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library (OOPL) complex.

 Even former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, who has had a bitter political battle with former President Obasanjo attended the event and donated N5 million towards the project.

Conspicuously absent was President Goodluck Jonathan. He was not there in person. He was not represented by any minister or presidential aide.

President Jonathan’s absence at an event that touches the heart of his benefactor is one of the manifestations of the divide between the two leaders.

Obasanjo it was who influenced Jonathan’s political rise as Deputy Governor of Bayelsa State, through Governor, Vice President, Acting President, substantive President and Jonathan’s election as president in the 2011 elections. Though unspoken, the feud is now in the open, like a festering wound.

Obasanjo, on his part, has kept away from the Aso Rock Presidential Villa in the last few months. He didn’t attend the last Council of State meeting in July. His voice was not heard sympathising or commiserating with the first family over the illness of Dame Patience Jonathan and the death of Jonathan’s younger brother, the late Meni, respectively. Instead, the volley of attacks and counter-attacks directly and by proxy has replaced the filial relationship between them.

Obasanjo even dumped his position as chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) board of trustees – a position he fought very hard to keep. Ever since that decision, things continued to fall apart between the two.

How Jonathan and Obasanjo fell apart
The crack between Jonathan and Obasanjo began to emerge shortly after the 2011 presidential election. A close associate of Obasanjo revealed to Sunday Trust that after the bitter battle before, during and after the polls, Obasanjo asked Jonathan to mend the divide between the North and South by visiting those who contested against him in the presidential primaries and the election.

But Jonathan refused to do so. Secondly, it was alleged that Obasanjo warned Jonathan against reducing the presidency to an Ijaw affair, when it was apparent that the president had surrounded himself with his kinsmen, some of them ex-militants. Again, Jonathan ignored him.

Then, when Jonathan wanted to constitute his cabinet, it was gathered, Obasanjo recommended some names from the South-West, considering the fact that the region which voted for Jonathan overwhelmingly had no governor. Sunday Trust gathered that Obasanjo was shocked when Jonathan threw away his list, and the South-West did not make it to any of the top 10 cabinet positions.

Combined with the suspicion that Jonathan may have deliberately traded the South-West governorship positions with Asiwaju Bola Tinubu’s Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) to enable him win the presidential election, Obasanjo felt used and dumped. To worsen the situation, it was alleged that the president stopped picking Obasanjo’s calls.

Obasanjo turns critic of Jonathan administration

Indications that Obasanjo accepted his maltreatment and was looking in a different direction, perhaps, to take his pound of flesh, manifested in reports alleging that he was looking North-ward for Jonathan’s replacement, come 2015. 

Though he denied ever endorsing Jigawa State Governor Sule Lamido and Rivers State Governor Rotimi Amaechi as his choices for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP’s) presidential flag bearers in 2015, Obasanjo’s body language told the world that he had shifted his support from Jonathan.

 At local and international fora, he took a swipe on the Jonathan administration for wasting the country’s foreign reserve, put at about $35 billion in 2007. Obasanjo had said, “We left what we call excess crude, let’s build it for rainy day, up to $35 billion; within three years, the $35 billion disappeared. Whether the money disappeared or, like the governor said, it was shared, the fact remains that $35 billion disappeared from the foreign reserve I left behind in office. When we left that money, we thought we were leaving it for the rainy day… But my brother said the rain is not falling now.

But the fact is that when the rain is falling, we will have nothing to cover our heads with because we have blown it off. The Chinese do not think that way.” The statement was an allusion to the Jonathan administration, as both foreign reserve and excess crude account sank shortly after the 2011 elections.Obasanjo’s statements became more and more critical of the Jonathan administration.

On November 11, he spoke in Dakar, Senegal about the alarming rate of unemployment in the country, and concluded that the country was sitting on a time-bomb.

 He told the gathering at an entrepreneurship programme under the auspices of that Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the African Development Bank that when he became president, youth unemployment was put at 72 per cent, but that he reduced it to about 52 per cent.

Now, it has ballooned to unmanageable proportion. Obasanjo underscored his fears with this remark: “I am afraid. And when a General says he is afraid, that means the danger ahead is real and potent. Despite the imminent threat to Nigeria’s nationhood there is no serious, realistic short or long term solution to youth unemployment.”

Though Obasanjo argued that his remarks were not meant to instigate Nigerians against government, few days after the Dakar event, he was in Warri, Delta State to frontally attack Jonathan over his ‘weak’ approach to insecurity. 

At the 40th anniversary of Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor’s call to ministry at the Word of Life Bible Church, Obasanjo said, “They (Boko Haram) stated their grievances and I promised to relay them to the authorities in power, because that was the best I could do. I did report. But my fear at that time is still my fear till today. When you have a sore and fail to attend to it quickly, it festers and grows to become something else.

“Whichever way, you just have to attend to it. Don’t leave it unattended to. On two occasions I had to attend to the problem I faced at that time. I sent soldiers to a place and 19 of them were killed. If I had allowed that to continue, I will not have authority to send security whether police, soldier and any force any where again. So, I had to nip it in the bud and that was the end of that particular problem.”

Referring to criticisms that he foisted Jonathan on the nation, Obasanjo said, “The beauty of democracy is that power rests in the people, and every elected person would seek your votes to come back; if you don’t want him, he won’t come back.”

Jonathan fires back

Obasanjo’s reference to how he tackled the Odi crisis attracted a length remark from Jonathan during the presidential media chat on Sunday, November 18. The tragedy, which happened on November 20, 1999 led to the killing of many persons in the Bayelsa State community. 

Though Obasanjo said it halted militants’ attacks on the army, Jonathan disagreed, bluntly saying, “When the Odi matter came up, I was the Deputy Governor of Bayelsa State, and I can give you the narratives of what led to the Odi crisis. The peak of the activities of the militancy in Niger Delta was when 12 police officers were killed in a cold blooded murder. That made the federal government to invade Odi. And after that invasion, the governor and I visited Odi.

“Ordinarily, the governor and the deputy governor were not supposed to move together under such a situation. And we saw some dead people mainly old men and women and also children.

None of those militants was killed. None was killed. So, bombarding Odi was to solve the problem but it never solved it. If the attack on Odi had solved the issue of militancy in the Niger Delta, the Yar’adua government, in which I had the privilege of being the Vice President, wouldn’t have come up with the amnesty programme.

So, that should tell you that the attack on Odi never solved the militancy problems. People will even tell you that rather it escalated it. It attracted international sympathy and we had lots of challenges after that attack on Odi.”

Implications of the face-off for 2015:

Obasanjo does not forgive. Obasanjo has always had the last laugh. These two expressions have become aphorisms in the Nigerian political circle because of some antecedents. 

Many politicians who attracted Obasanjo’s anger regretted it. Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar; former Ogun State Governor, Otunba Gbenga Daniel; former Speaker Umar Gha’li Na’Abbah, former Senate President Anyim Pius Anyim; the late Senate President Pius Okadigbo, former PDP National Chairman, Chief Audu Ogbeh and even the late President Umaru Musa Yar’adua were not spared. In different ways they disagreed with Obasanjo. In different ways they lost out.

As the political alignment for 2015 intensifies, there are fears that the Obasanjo group could pull the rug off Jonathan’s 2015 ambition. In Abeokuta last Friday, many governors from the North, some of whom have presidential ambition, engaged in a closed door meeting with Obasanjo after they contributed to the fund for building the presidential library mosque. If anything, the harmony demonstrated at the meeting pointed to the reality of power shift from the South to the North, a change that Obasanjo has openly canvassed for.

The big alliance being planned by the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) would provide a veritable alternative to dissenting groups in the PDP, if Jonathan picks the party’s ticket for 2015 presidential election.

In his reaction to the face-off between Jonathan and Obasanjo, the National Publicity Secretary of the Conference of Nigeria Political Parties (CNPP), Mr Osita Okechukwu, described it as ‘nemesis at work’.The divide between Jonathan and Obasanjo may influence the country’s future political leadership. An intense power struggle may be in the offing in 2015.

source:africansportlight.com

Displaced Aggression: Aftermath Of Boko Haram Attack On Police Anti- Robbery Squad Offices In Abuja PoliceMen Pounce On Journalist

Aftermath of the attack on the Police Anti- Robbery Squad Offices in Abuja Police Men Pounce on Journalists who dare to take pictures of the incident that occur on the early hour of Monday.

According to SaharaReporters an online media a photo journalist from Daily Independent newspaper who attempted to take a picture of the scene of the attack was severely beaten by the police and immediately arrested and detained.

Though it was reported that the attack was carried out by a group of well-armed gunmen on the Special Anti -Robbery Squad detention facility in Garki area 11 in Nigeria's federal capital Abuja.

The detention center used by the Nigerian police to hold high level violent criminals was attacked in a brazen manner by the attackers from the Boko Haram sect. The center reportedly holds some senior commanders of Boko Haram including the wife of the Kabiru Sokoto, the Christmas day Catholic Church bomber in Suleja, Niger State.

Police spokespersons did not respond to calls regarding the attack. SaharaReporters learnt the police authorities are too embarrassed to discuss the attempted jailbreak barely twenty four hours after the sect attacked a military church near Kaduna killing at least 10 people including military officers.

The area has since been cordoned off by Plain clothed policemen.

More report coming up.

Boko Haram Call Of Ceasefire: The Buhari Connection

By Babalola Yusuf Abiola

When the dreaded Boko Haram sect announced its readiness to cease fire should the government of the country meets its demands, everybody in the country especially those who were directly affected by the level of insecurity were happy that at last peace will return to the northern part of the country and the country at large.

Part of those who were happy were mainly the business men and women whose businesses and source of livelihood were affected by the crisis also, my Igbo brothers that have lost all what they have labored for. But why some of them were lucky to come back to their region with their lives many were not fortunate as their lives were lost.

Though, considerable numbers of the Easterners has returned to their respective villages and states but lives have never remained the same for most of them since their arrival in their home state so when the call for ceasefire was announced by the sect the joy of many who wished to go back to the region to continue their business knew no bound and were praying for the condition to be what the government can meet.

The conditions as announced by the sect were the arrest and persecution of the former Borno State Governor, Senator Ali Modu Sheriff, government should compensate the group, rebuild their place of worship that was destroyed during the 2009 uprising, release all their members in police custody and rehabilitate into the society the children and wives of their members that were displaced.

However, the sect in their bid to stop the killings and bombing of innocent lives and properties want Saudi Arabia to be the meeting point with General Muhammadu Buhari, Shetimma Ali Mongonu, Bukar Abba Ibrahim, Gaji Gaitima and Barrister Aisha Wakil and her husband as mediator. Also, at the round table negotiation discussion on the side of the sect are Abu Mohammed Abdullaziz, Sheik Abu Abas, Sheik Ibrahim Yusuf, Sheik Sani Kontagora, and Mamman Nur.

But, of all the issues mentioned by the Boko Haram sect what has attracted the attention of Nigerians is not the call for the arrest of the former governor of Borno state neither is it the compensation to the wives of their member that was killed during the uprising rather it was the nomination of (RTD) General Muhammadu Buhari as the chief negotiator between the sect and the federal government.

Moreover, Since the sect has named the former head of state and five others a lot of verbal attacked has been hauled at Buhari while some Nigerians were calling him the leader of the dreaded group some were calling him the financier and that the blood of innocent Nigerians that have lost their lives are on him.

This people that resorted to name calling has forgotten that Buhari is one of the most loyal, dedicated and disciplined leaders left in Nigeria as while other past head of states collect salaries and arrears whenever their helps are needed in the country Buhari never did.

When he was the chairman of the petroleum trust fund during the tenure of General Sanni Abacha he never collected salary or arrears from the federal government of Nigeria saying he receives salary from the government as a former head of state so he needs not collect salary for rendering service to his beloved country.

My question is who among the present crop of leaders we have in the country can do that, what about Buhari’s call for audit into his years as the petroleum trust fund chairman  who among Nigerian leader can single handedly call for probe after his tenure except the only disciplined Mai Gaskiya meaning the honest man in Hausa language.

Some even call him religion bigot who thought because of his ambition to Islamize Nigeria makes him sponsors the sect, but the move to tell this same people that Buhari’s personal driver and cook are Christians falls on deaf ears. 

Add to it that one of the people Buhari respects most in the country is Gen. Theophilus Danjuma, a Christian, former Chief of Army Staff, and later Defence Minister, they block their ears with wax. And to further prove that he has no antipathy towards Christianity, remind them that Buhari picked a pastor and preacher as running mate in last year’s presidential elections then they will tell you Tunde Bakare was formally a Muslim before converting to Christian.

To me the choice of the retired General Muhammadu Buhari was not unconnected with the fact that the sect knew that buhari is one of the remaining loyal northern leaders in the country or if in doubt call a Hausa motorcyclist and asks him about Muhammadu Buhari then you yourself will hear what they will say about him.

Am not holding brief for him neither am I supporting him but everybody in this world has his own past, so saying Buhari is being hunt by his past won’t be an understatement but I won’t advise us to throw away the baby with the bath water, we should not hastily conclude that because Buhari has promised fire and brimstone after the presidential election then he is part and parcel of the dreaded group. 

But what about the statement made by some Northern People Democratic Party (PDP) leaders that promised to make the country ungovernable for president Goodluck Jonathan if he should run for the presidency, what was done to them what about the words of one of the presidential aspirant of the party, then why label Buhari a dog because we want to crucify him.

Now that Buhari has refused to be a negotiator between the federal government and the sect that means there will still be continuous loss of lives of innocent Nigerian who know little or nothing about the Boko Haram reason for insurgencies.

Also, will the attack on the respected general by the president attack dog for asking the PDP to put it house in other and who will the Boko Haram call upon in the North to do the lob respected General Buhari has dissociated himself from.

I won’t blame him for doing that because should he accept the role then what we hear from Nigerians will be, Buhari has gone to Saudi Arabia to pacify his foot soldiers, Buhari has ended what he started and on like that and the name he has built over the years will be soiled by hell bent individual who have been looking for every thing to nail my own MR INTERGRITY. 

Also, before the federal government jumped to accept the call for negotiation we need to decipher whether this group calling for ceasefire is the real member of the sect because the way and manner in which they called for the truce is suspicious.

According to Daniel Elombah, in an article posted on the Internet under the headline, ‘This desperate attempt to link Buhari with Boko Haram,’ Elombah asked pertinent questions about the olive branch waved by Boko Haram through one Abu Mohammed Ibn Abdulazeez, who spoke on behalf of the sect last week. 

The germane posers are as follows: this purported spokesman had not hitherto been known to the media, how then can anyone be sure he is authentic? Two, he spoke in English, a language never known to have been used by Boko Haram spokesmen, who usually speak in Hausa, and use the name Abu this or Abu that.

Three, Abdulazeez did not ask for the implementation of Sharia law across Nigeria, a long-term demand of the sect. Four, the leader of Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau, had always disowned any idea of talks with the government through videos posted online.

 Is Shekau now part of this deal? Why not then come out to authenticate it? Elombah concluded:

Left for me the truth remains that (RTD) General Muhammadu Buhari is somebody who does not have the resources or financial capacity to finance or sponsor the dreaded Islamic sect but for anybody who have a genuine evidence and case that can link Buhari with Boko Haram should come out with it because not even the federal government have it because should they have it, Buhari who happened to be the number one enemy of the purported mafias in Nigeria should be in jail by now.

So, I believe this man called Muhammadu Buhari still remains the best president Nigeria never had like the late western region premier Chief Obafemi Awolowo and I hope we never regret it as a country.