Sunday, 7 June 2015

Confusion In Aso Rock’ As Buhari Fails To Move In

One week after the inauguration of Muhammadu Buhari as president and Yemi Osinbajo as vice president, both men are yet to settle into the presidential villa, the country’s seat of power.

Although Goodluck Jonathan, the immediate past president and Namadi Sambo, his deputy, took Buhari and Osinbajo on a familarisation tour of the villa a day before handing over, their successors only hosted the inauguration dinner at Aso Rock and have been operating from different locations ever since.

While Buhari has been performing his duties at the defence house, official residence of the president-elect where he met with service chiefs on Wednesday, Osinbajo has been operating from his private residence in the Asokoro area of Abuja.

Buhari does not reside at the defence house, situated in the Mataima area of the federal capital territory (FCT). He only hosts visitors there, and returns to his private residence at Aso Drive, still in the FCT.

A state house correspondent told TheCable that the current development is affecting a lot of things.

“There is so much confusion at the moment. We don’t go to the villa anymore. The key staff like security, protocol and media have resumed at defence house,” he said.

“We just resume and hope to cover one assignment or the other. It is not a conducive place to hang around because there are not enough seats. Nothing happened at the defence house today (Friday).

“We were told to go to his [Buhari’s] residence at Aso Drive for some assignments only for us to get there to discover that they had finished. We went to the mosque after we left the house and it has been very quiet since then.

“We heard this might continue for another two weeks or more.”

Garba Shehu, senior special assistant to the president on media and publicity, said Buhari had yet to move to the villa because his official residence was not ready for habitation.

“As far as the president is concerned, the place (his official residence) is not ready yet,” he told Punch. “Workers are cleaning and refurbishing the place. Once the exercise is completed, the president will move in.”

But some Nigerians have expressed dissatisfaction with Shehu’s response.

“I read what was attributed to Shehu and I shook my head. What do they take us for?” asked Sanya Ladenobi, a businessman based in Lagos.

“Even if we are to believe that the official residence is being rehabilitated, what about the offices? I just don’t see any reason in all this. Could they be carrying out some spiritual cleansing or what, because this is Africa where a lot happen.”

Michael Otobo, a civil servant in Abuja, is of the opinion that the government is not starting on a good note.

“Some people are saying it is too early to make comments about this government without knowing that every minute in the life of any nation counts,” he said.

“This administration had eight weeks for planning, eight solid weeks. For me, I feel the government has hit the ground crawling, as against the running it promised.

“Osinbajo in Sudan, Buhari in Niger, Chad and Germany. International travels would always be there every other day, but your first impression as a government would not be there.

“Five days in our expectant national life, yet no ministers, no economic plan, even the 15 advisers, we don’t know. The government with the largest goodwill in the nation’s history has to sit up.

“We have just been getting different rumours on appointment. Time is of essence.”

Source: TheCable

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President Buhari Leaves Tomorrow For G7 Summit In Germany

President Muhammadu Buhari will leave Nigeria on Sunday morning for Germany.

According to a statement on Saturday by his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, the President will be traveling to Germany to attend the G7 Summit that is scheduled to take place in Bavaria from June 7 to 8, 2015.

Shehu said invitation to the summit was extended to Buhari by German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, before he was inaugurated as President on May 29.

“The invitation is a clear indication of the international community’s willingness to cooperate with the new government of Nigeria,” the presidential spokesman said.

He, however, explained that Buhari would not be participating in the main meetings, since Nigeria is not a member of the G7 group.

He added, “He (Buhari) is in a group of seven other Heads of State who were called in as guests.

“He will equally be holding key side meetings with some of the seven Heads of State at the summit.

Source: PunchNg

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Saturday, 6 June 2015

We will declare our assets after they have been verified – Pres. Buhari

President Buhari says he and his vice, Osinbajo, will declare their assets publicly after the Code Of Conduct Bureau does its verification on the asset declaration form they submitted on May 28th.

The new President gave this assurance in a statement released today by his media aide, Shehu Garba. In the statement, President Buhari said he hopes that the verification will be conducted within their 100 days in office.

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Timaya – “Eedris Abdulkareem Never Treated Me Well

You’d remember that a while back, Eedris Abdukareem stated that he was the one that Timaya who he is today.

Well, In a recent interview with Punch, Timaya has spoken on his relationship with Eedris Abdulkareem from way back.

Timaya said “When I was with Eedris Abdulkareem, did he give me due recognition? Eedris did not make me who I am today. I was the one that went to meet Eedris in his house. He never treated me well. I would stay at the front of his gate from morning till night and he would send somebody to tell me to come back after a week. When I returned the following week, he would not see me. I used my money to pay to attend his shows even though I was his band member. I was not celebrated.

“The only money Eedris paid me in his life was N1, 000 and it was after we had the Kuramo Beach show. That was nothing compared to the money I had been spending on transport. I was not bothered because I wanted a platform and I was learning.

“Like I always tell people, whatever you want in life, you just need to make sacrifice. Even if they feed you poop, you are not going to eat it forever. I gained a lot from that experience. It was through him that I met Sound Sultan and a lot of people. Eedris and I don’t do the same kind of music, so he does not influence me musically. I have never been in a studio where he was recording before and he never gave me that opportunity, so how did I learn anything from him,” he queried.

Timaya said Eedris is still his boss and he will always respect him.

“One major thing I learnt from him was his stage performance. He is a lion when he is on stage, he is a super performer and I give that to him. I learnt that from him. For me to have admitted that I was his back-up singer was my way of giving him due recognition because he did not see me in that light. I could have said I was never with him but because I respect him, I opened up. There is no way I am going to write my story without putting his name. He is still my boss. If I am in a show and I see him, I would prostrate for him.

“It was so bad that he did not even know my name then, he referred to me as Bayelsa boy. If he was going for a show outside Lagos, nobody would tell me. I would eventually know and use my money to transport myself there. I would call his boys and they would tell me the hotel they were lodging and I would take a bike to meet them. In his whole crew, who is better now? I was eager to make it,” he said.

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The Next Finance Minister Will Face A Difficult Year – Okonjo-Iweala

Former Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has said her successor will face a “difficult” year because of plunging oil revenues. She therefore stressed that the economy needs expert management to come out fine.

“We have a serious situation with a cash crunch,” she told Bloomberg in an interview in Cape Town, South Africa at the World Economic Forum on Africa. “But fundamentally, the economy is strong. If we can get through the cash crunch, manage the way through, build on some of the assets we have, by next year, things will be better.”

Fall in global oil prices have put Nigeria in a bad financial position with authorities forced to cut spending and states relying solely on allocation from the federal government owing workers salaries for months. The government relies on oil for about 75 percent of its income.

Okonjo-Iweala said the next finance minister must focus on “a strong policy, the fiscal consolidation path that we have and looking toward diversification of revenue resources”.

Like several other Nigerians, the former minister says she is waiting for the new finance minister to be named.

Now out of a job after her tenure as minister ended, Okonjo-Iweala said she plans to take a break until August and will then consider her career options.

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Cross River Governor Orders Payment Of Salary Owed To Workers

Cross River State Governor, Ben Ayade, has ordered that the one month backlog of salary owed civil servants must be payed on or before Tuesday, June the 9th, 2015.

According to a statement signed by his Chief Press Secretary, Mr. Christian Ita, Ayade explained that the decision to clear the one month salary owed the state workers was in keeping with his policy of ensuring that workers are paid on the 25th of every month.

On assumption of office, Ayade had vowed to make prompt payment of workers’ salaries, saying that “a labourer deserves his wages”.

He also promised to create about a thousand jobs for unemployed youths in the state during his first 100 days in office as part of his short term achievements.

While he committed to paying workers on time, the governor also demanded that workers get early to work, warning that civil servants who do not report to work latest by ten minutes before 8am will be sanctioned

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Former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar visited Jimeta market bomb blast site in Yola earlier today. His media representative also released a statement on the bomb blast:

Former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar has expressed sympathy with the victims of Thursday’s bomb explosions in Jimeta-Yola, in Adamawa State, which damaged a greater portion of the popular Jimeta market and caused widespread destruction of lives and property.

The former Vice President also condoled with victims of the recent bomb blasts in Maiduguri.
Atiku in a press statement by his media office in Abuja on Friday, 5 June 2015, lamented that these renewed attacks have sowed seeds of fear, violence and destruction in many parts of the North east region of the country.

The former Vice President urged the people to unite and isolate the agents of the terrorists among them and to support the government in its effort to degrade activities of the insurgents.
Atiku Abubakar said further that the recent spate of bomb attacks is a wake-up call on the need for improved vigilance on the part of the people and intelligence on the part of the security agencies to forestall such heinous attacks.

He called on the people and the security forces to monitor carefully the displaced person’s camps to ensure that insurgents do not infiltrate the latter and where they have done so, to deny them the liberty to operate by neutralising them, isolating them and then having them fished out for prosecution.

The Turaki Adamawa said that the Boko Haram offensive against the Nigerian people would eventually fail, as the measures and alliances being put in place by President Muhammadu Buhari administration would result in the defeat of the group where ever they are found.

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