Nation
THE STATES
Adamawa
There are indications that the Peoples Democratic Party in
Adamawa State may explode following the recent political developments in the state. However, the explosion, it was gathered, may take a religious dimension.
It was gathered that the plan to impeach the former governor, Murtala Nyako, was agreed to with the understanding that Ngilari would be spared and be allowed to become the governor after his boss must have been sacked, but a powerful group within the PDP, at both the national and state levels, was said to have insisted that Ngilari too must be removed.
The plot, it was gathered, forced the deputy governor to resign before the seven-man probe panel set up by Acting Chief Judge of the state, Justice Ambrose Mammadi, to investigate allegation of misconduct against the former governor and his deputy.
The setting up of the panel was as a result of directive from the state House of Assembly.
Bauchi
The Authorities of the Federal Polytechnic, Bauchi State,
has outlined a programme of academic activities to enable the recovery of the period lost to the nine months strike by the Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics (ASUP).
The institution’s Public Relation Officer (PRO), Malam Mohammed Wada, said in Bauchi State Thursday, that academic activities resumed fully July 30, and that the semester would last for only two months.
Wada explained that lectures would hold for five weeks, while examination would commence on September 8 and last for three weeks.
“We were one month into the second semester of the 2012/2013 academic session when the strike commenced in October 2013. ”What we are trying to do now, is to see how we can complete the syllabus within five weeks, so that examination would commence in the sixth week and end in the eighth week”, he said.
Ekiti
Peoples Democratic Party in Ekiti State has accused
Governor Kayode Fayemi of alleged plot to use the 19 new Local Council Development Areas as conduits to siphon about N10bn out of the state’s treasury.
The party in a statement by its State Publicity Secretary, Kola Oluwawole, in Ado-Ekiti on Thursday alleged that the money would be taken out of the treasury before the October 15 expiration time of the administration.
It alleged that the money was part of the accumulated slashed allocations due to the original 16 local government areas, and other foreign and local aids collected by the All Progressives Congress government since its inception in October 2010.
But the Commissioner for Information, Tayo Ekundayo, in his reaction refuted the allegation saying, “such money is not available in the first place.”
FCT
The National Youth Service Corps last Thursday announced
the redeployment of corps members from seven northern states. The affected states are Adamawa, Bauchi, Borno, Gombe, Jigawa, Kano and Yobe states.
A statement last Thursday in Abuja by the Director of Public Relations in NYSC, Mrs. Bose Aderibigbe, said the decision followed the high rate of insecurity in some parts of the North. The corps members are part of the 2014 Batch ‘B’ Orientation Course scheduled to commence next week Tuesday August 5, 2014.
The NYSC said due to logistic reasons, the orientation course will be conducted in two streams for different states. The Stream One exercise will be conducted from Tuesday, August 5 to Tuesday, August 26 2014 in Lagos, Ondo, Ekiti, Kwara, Oyo, Niger, Abia, Akwa Ibom, Anambra, Benue, Bayelsa, Cross River, Delta, Ebonyi, Edo, Enugu, FCT, Imo, Kebbi, Kaduna, Kogi, Katsina, Nasarawa, Ogun, Plateau, Rivers, Sokoto, Taraba and Zamfara states.
Corps members posted to states listed in the Stream One category will undergo the orientation course in their respective states of deployment. The statement explained that the Stream Two exercise, meant for the affected northern states, had been scheduled for Monday, September 1, 2014 to Monday, September 22, 2014.
Kwara
Former local government councillors In Kwara on
Thursday protested over the non-payment of the severance allowance owed them from 2007 to 2010, totalling N2.25bn.
The aggrieved Councillors barricaded the main gate of the Government House in Ilorin while displaying placards with various inscriptions. They vowed not to stop their protest until Governor AbdulFatah Ahmed attended to them.
The Chief of Staff to the governor, Mr Toyin Sanusi, who came out to address the protesters, was chased back.
The governor later invited the protesters for a closed door meeting which lasted three hours. After the meeting, Hon. Sulyman Olota, the spokesman of the group, told newsmwn that the meeting with the governor was fruitful.
Katsina
Residents of Funtua and its environs in Katsina State
are mobilising for prayers as they had increased community surveillance to avert the activities of suspected insurgents in the area.
The District Head, Alhaji Sambo Idris, told newsmen last Thursday in Funtua that he had instructed religious, traditional and community leaders in the area to organise for prayers sessions against terrorism.
Idris said he had also directed residents of the area to pray against all forms of violence and restiveness in the community and the nation at large and he appealed to the people to increase surveillance in their areas and to contact security agencies over any movement of suspicious persons.
According to him, he also advised the people against taking the law into their hands in their effort to make the area safe and free from terrorists’ activities and Idris expressed appreciation with security agencies, the state and local government authorities for their prompt response during emergency situations.
Lagos
The Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities
(SSANU), Lagos State University (LASU) Chapter, on Friday suspended its three-month old strike.
The Chairman of the association, Mr Saheed Oseni, said in Lagos that the strike would be suspended till Aug. 30.
He said that the decision was taken at a congress meeting on Friday morning following an agreement the union reached with the LASU Governing Council.
The union demands reduction in tuition fee, repeal of LASU’s ‘no-vacancy-no-promotion policy, and implementation of the 2012 Universities Miscellaneous Provision Act.
Nasarawa
The Nasarawa State House of Assembly and the state Chief
Judge, Justice Justice Sulaiman Dikko, may be heading for a showdown over the composition of the seven-man panel put in place to investigate allegations of wrongdoing by Governor Tanko Al-Makura as the assembly wants Dikko to dissolve the panel on the grounds that it is made of loyalists of the All Progressives Congress of which Al-Makura is the leader in the state.
The Chairman of the House Committee on Information and Security, Baba Ibaku, disclosed this in a telephone interview with our correspondent in Lafia, on Monday said that the lawmakers resolved to demand for the dissolution of the panel during their emergency sitting at the assembly complex at 10am on Monday .
He argued that the fact that the panel members held political positions in the state was against the provision of Section 188 of the 1999 Constitution as amended.
The lawmaker said, “We had an emergency sitting to deliberate on the seven-man panel that was set up by the Chief Judge on Friday last week. We asked him to dissolve the seven-man panel because the members of the panel are APC members that hold various political positions in the state.”
Osun
Operatives of the Department of State Service, DSS,
yesterday stormed Osogbo, the Osun State ca pital and other major towns in the state preparatory to the August 9 governorship election in the state, even as the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, assured that the poll would be free and fair.
The DSS operatives were strategically positioned in major areas of the town while some moved round major streets. It was gathered that over 5,000 operatives were deployed to the state to maintain law and order before and during the governorship election.
The state government, in its reaction to the development, described it as an attempt to militarise the state ahead of the election. The Special Adviser to the Governor on Environment, Mr Bola Ilori noted that the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, was behind the deployment of the operatives to the state.
Oyo
The Oyo State chapter of the All Progressives Congress
(APC) has asked former governors of the state, Adebayo Alao-Akala and Rashidi Ladoja, to stop shedding what it termed “crocodile tears” over the recent rumoured impeachment bid of the state House of Assembly against its party-led government, saying the two governors were products of chaotic governments and cannot now pretend that theirs were governments of peace.
The party made this known in a statement issued by its party chairman, Chief Akin Oke, in reaction to two separate statements credited to the two former governors last weekend.
The APC said the two former governors did not have the moral right to postulate or advise any government on peace, since they headed governments that were renowned for brigandage, thuggery, bloodshed and where peace eluded the people of the state.
“Is it not an irony that Akala and Ladoja would tell us how peaceful our state would be with a House of Assembly that is devoid of rancor? Both of them ran governments whose Houses of Assembly were like Israel and Palestine and the Governor’s Office like Gaza, even when members were of the same Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)”, the party said.
Nation
SIM-NIN: Subscribers Kick Against Today’s Deadline, Demand Extension
The National Association of Telecommunications Subscribers has requested that the Nigerian Communications Commission extend the deadline scheduled for the disconnection of telephone lines not linked to National Identification Numbers beyond Friday, March 29, 2024.
The subscribers’ body argued that telco agents were failing to capture all necessary information needed for verification, just as it also cited difficulties in uploading the captured data on the National Identity Management Commission’s server.
The President of NATCOMS, Adeolu Ogunbanjo, told The Tide’s source last Wednesday that NCC needed to order telcos not to disconnect telephone lines, considering the ongoing difficulties faced by subscribers.
The telecom regulator had insisted that there would be no changes to the deadline for the next phase of disconnection
The disconnection process was rolled out in stages, with the second phase scheduled for March 29, 2024, following the initial phase that occurred on February 28, 2024.
The third phase is slated to commence on April 15, 2024, as previously announced.
Earlier, the Director of Public Publicity at the NCC, Reuben Mouka, told The PUNCH, “We issued a publication that you can refer to. We specified certain deadlines and stipulated that subscribers who do not comply with the directive would be barred. And that has not changed.”
The National Association of Telecommunications Subscribers has requested that the Nigerian Communications Commission extend the deadline scheduled for the disconnection of telephone lines not linked to National Identification Numbers beyond Friday, March 29, 2024.
The subscribers’ body argued that telco agents were failing to capture all necessary information needed for verification, just as it also cited difficulties in uploading the captured data on the National Identity Management Commission’s server.
The President of NATCOMS, Adeolu Ogunbanjo, told the source on Wednesday that the NCC needed to order telcos not to disconnect telephone lines, considering the ongoing difficulties faced by subscribers.
The telecom regulator had insisted that there would be no changes to the deadline for the next phase of disconnection
The disconnection process was rolled out in stages, with the second phase scheduled for March 29, 2024, following the initial phase that occurred on February 28, 2024.
The third phase is slated to commence on April 15, 2024, as previously announced.
Earlier, the Director of Public Publicity at the NCC, Reuben Mouka, told the source, “We issued a publication that you can refer to. We specified certain deadlines and stipulated that subscribers who do not comply with the directive would be barred. And that has not changed.”
At the last deadline on February 28, 2024, about 40 million lines that were not linked to NIN were barred.
The NATCOM president said before the first deadline, subscribers had appealed to the NCC for a one-month extension.
However, the NCC explained that there was no issue as the process was designed to occur in phases.
According to the president, the Operator’s Consumer Centre stands as the primary location for consumers to complete their registration fully, with data provided there being verifiable.
However, the president noted that telecom agents were bypassing crucial information during the registration process, resulting in incomplete registrations of subscribers.
“For example, during interactions with telecom representatives, some agents fail to collect all required the information from subscribers.
“If a subscriber cannot provide certain details, agents often leave the registration incomplete. Consequently, these incomplete registrations are deemed unverifiable,” he said.
Further, Ogunbanjo noted that NIMC also shares responsibility in this process.
He said the challenges often arise when telecom companies attempt to upload collected data on NIMC’s server, owing to network issues.
“These network difficulties, beyond the control of subscribers, hinder the timely completion of the registration process,” he said.
“NIMC’s inadequate network infrastructure exacerbates the problem. While they intend to accept data uploads, technical issues prevent them from doing so effectively.
“We urge the NCC to address NIMC’s shortcomings, improve their services, and acknowledge that meeting the deadline will be challenging given the current issues,” the president added.
NIMC is a statutory Nigerian organisation that operates the country’s national identity management systems.
NIMC’s enrollment figures as of December 31, 2023, stand at over 104.16 million unique records.
About 530,345 Nigerians in Diaspora have gotten NINs. 59.12 million male and 45.04 million female Nigerians have NINs.
When The PUNCH reached out to NIMC for comments on technical glitches, the Head of Corporate Communications, Kayode Adegoke, clarifies that the commission’s server has consistently remained operational, debunking reports suggesting otherwise.
He emphasizes that the NIMC’s services are fully functional and accessible to all users
“Our server has never been down. You can go to the various NIN centres and confirm.
Adegoke further explained the process for subscribers to link their NIN to their SIM cards,
“These individuals only need to submit their NIN and complete the verification process through their respective telcos providers.
He encouraged those who have not yet obtained their NIN to visit any NIMC centre for enrollment.
Adegoke assured Nigerians that upon enrollment, individuals can expect their NIN to be available within three hours.
However, for those requiring corrections, such as rectifying date of birth errors, the process may take up to 72 hours.
Last week, the National Identity Management Commission and the NCC issued a joint statement unveiling a strategic partnership aimed at simplifying the NIN-SIM linkage procedures for telecommunications subscribers nationwide.
Both agencies reaffirmed their dedication to enhancing the processes involved and improving efficiency regarding the NIN and SIM card linkage initiative.
They acknowledge the importance of this initiative in bolstering security measures and enhancing service delivery across the country.
The SIM-NIN linkage initiative is a crucial step towards improving the integrity of subscriber data and enhancing security measures within the telecommunications industry.
The NIN-SIM linkage policy was initially introduced by the Nigerian government in December 2020. This directive requires all telephone line users in Nigeria to associate their SIM cards with their NIN.
In December of the previous year, the NCC issued a directive stipulating that all telecommunications operators in Nigeria, including major providers like MTN, Airtel, and Globacom, among others, must enforce complete network barring on all phone lines for which subscribers have not provided their NINs by February 28, 2024.
Barely two weeks ago, the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project issued a warning to take legal action against the NCC if it does not revoke the directive instructing network providers to block the phone lines of individuals who have not linked their SIM cards to their NINs.
Nation
Reps Query N15bn Payment To Remita
The House of Representatives’ Public Accounts Committee has queried the N15billion payment made to Remita from the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation for two years.
This is just as the committee accused the Central Bank of Nigeria and commercial banks of complicity in the sharing of the N15billion remittance.
The committee’s Chairman, Bamidele Salam, made the allegation at the resumed investigative hearing on revenue leakages in Abuja yesterday.
Remita is a payment solution that helps individuals and businesses make and receive payments, pay bills, and manage their finances.
The round table: Delta Bloodbath: Senate Meets Service Chiefs As Troops Comb Creeks.
Salam said that the Remita payment from the OAGF from 2016 to 2018 was questionable, adding that the OAGF paid the money without agreement or contract.
“The money is an illegal payment. There was no budget provision. So, where did they source the money from?” the chairman queried.
“If someone pays N150,000 as a Remita, you will pay 7.5 per cent Value-Added Tax in addition to it.
Salam said that the Remita payment from the OAGF from 2016 to 2018 was questionable, adding that the OAGF paid the money without agreement or contract.
“Ordinarily, that whole sum of VAT ought to go to the Federal Inland Revenue Service, but what they are doing in this transaction is that they will now add that VAT to the N150.000.
“They will add it up, gather the money together, and take it to the CBN,” he claimed.
He said, “System Spec and Remitta, both collecting revenue for the Federal Government, will share 50 per cent, while the banks and the CBN will also have their share.”
He said that by the time the committee finished its reconciliation, “I am very sure that hundreds of billions of naira will be the VAT component that was not remitted to FIRS.”
Salam stated that each bank ought to take the money and directly remit it to FIRS.
“Now, Remita is saying that each of those collecting the money will come and calculate the money that has been shared into shreds. Now, how do we track this kind of money? “he asked.
The Director, Banking Services, CBN, Mr.Ahmed Abdullahi, said it was necessary to source for an alternative way of remitting revenue, adding that Remita and System Spec were selected because they had been rendering similar services to banks.
The Chief Accountant, Treasury Single Account Department, Oyewole Adewale, representing the Accountant-General of the Federation, accused the CBN of not honouring its letters to reconcile the revenue accrued to the country through the Treasury Single Account.
He noted that the OAGF had developed a system where all revenue generated by the Ministries of Departments and Agencies of Government could now be monitored with little or no interference.
The Director, Remita Payment Services Ltd, Aderemi Atanda, while reading the summary of the TSA collection record, maintained that 10, 20, and 50 per cent were shared among CBN, commercial banks, and Remitta respectively.
Collections, he noted, often vary, saying, “In 2015.
Nation
Nigeria Needs Community-Driven Police, Not State Police -Shekarau
Former Governor of Kano State, Mallam Ibrahim Shekarau, has said that the country needs to adopt community-driven police rather than establish state police.
Shekarau noted that it would be more effective in addressing the current security challenges in the country.
The former minister of education spoke in Akure at the Federal University of Technology, Akure (FUTA) during the launch of a book titled ‘The Psychology of Growing Old: A Personal Experience for both Young and Old,’ written by Sehinde Arogbafa.
Shekarau argued that community police would be better controlled than state police as well as devoid of political and religious leaders’ influence.
He the involvement of communities in state policing would enhance trust, cooperation, and collaboration between the police and the citizens.
Shekarau argued that community police would be better controlled than state police as well as devoid of political and religious leaders’ influence.
He the involvement of communities in state policing would enhance trust, cooperation, and collaboration between the police and the citizens.
“I’ve been an advocate of community policing. It is different from what is being paraded as state police. Community policing means community watch.
“There is hardly any community in Nigeria that does not have what we call the vigilante group. All we need to do is the government should organise them, the government should own is up, and the government should promulgate a law.
“If I may give you an example of Kano, I’m sure you must have had experience with the Hisbah Guards; that is community watch. We set up a committee of 12 elders in every ward to do the selection of 20 responsible and respected young men for the Hisbah Guards. And we recruited them and mandated that the local government take charge of them. We’re paying them allowances. And they know everybody in the community.
“Within one to two years in Kano State, ask anybody; we don’t have any vices, no drugs, nothing in all the communities because that is community watch.
“We have over 10,000 Hisbah Guards in Kano; I did not nominate a single one; not a single party leader nominated one. It was all the elders in the community. The government created a law; we didn’t leave it in a vacuum. The number one assignment of the Hisbah Guards was to support and complement the work of all the Nigerian armed forces and the police. And they were working with them peacefully.
“Ask anybody in Kano today, and they will tell you that people prefer to report their cases to the Hisbah Guards office rather than even the police stations or even going to court. What we need in Nigeria is community watch, not just when you ask a state to create 2000 to 3000 state police bombarded by party thugs, and you will find out that you are going back to the same intimidation. There will be abuses by political leaders.
“But if you allow the communities to select with the backing of the government, the government will pay them all their allowances, provide vehicles for them, and support them, and there is a chain of command from the state to the local governments, to the wards, and even to the villages.
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