Nigeria News
INTERVIEW: Jonathan means well for Nigeria – Yuguda
Bauchi State Governor recently granted an interview where he cleared the air on speculations surrounding his aspirations for the 2015. In this interview with Leadership, He gave an insight to the achievements of his achievements and much more.
What do you think of Boko Haram amnesty being planned by Federal Government?
I believe this is a welcome development. The extension of the hands of friendship to the group is a good development and we are happy about it and we pray that God Almighty will make it possible for a final solution to be found to the problem that has been staring the nation in the face. I don’t expect any of the parties to soft-pedal on this initiative. The government should fast-rack its agenda to end this ugly scenario in our land. The group should also see the offer as an opportunity for peace and dialogue with the government.
There are rumours you are battling to upstage the Vice President Namadi Sambo in 2015. Why?
I have read something like that in the papers but seriously, there is no iota of truth in it. The VP and I are very close friends. I cannot, in all honesty do anything to undermine him or his position. He is aware of my love and friendship with him over the years and nothing can separate us. In the first instance , I don’t have blind ambition. Those who are familiar with me know that I have never lobbied or struggled for any of the positions I have occupied in life. You are aware that I have been a bank managing director twice. I have been a minister of the federal republic of Nigeria twice and also been a governor twice.
In all of these, God paved the way for me to occupy those positions and render service to society without coveting anyone. What I should rather do at this stage in my life is to say to God, thank You for all that you have done for me, instead of going to pull down another person put in place by the Almighty God in his time. I know that God would unfailingly punish me if I don’t show appreciation for what he has done for me and wickedly go to bring down the Vice President. I look up to the VP as a senior brother just I look up to Mr. president as a senior brother. I know that what they expect from me is total loyalty and not competition with them.
As a matter of fact I have never competed for any office in my life. As a bank MD, I was interviewed and given the job out of many others who competed for the post. But as a minister, President Obasanjo called me and offered the job and out of the 65 ministers who worked with him between 1999 and 2003, I was among the only three ministers who were retained by the government without lobbying to be returned.
God used Obasanjo to return me and two others. I did not lobby for it. When I wanted to become governor, I went to the PDP but some people made life very difficult for me then and I went to the ANPP and God made it possible for me to defeat PDP in Bauchi. So, as far as I am concerned, God has a path for everybody. I am a loyal PDP member who is bound by the constitution of the party, faithfully committed to the party leaders at all levels in the country and unwilling to do anything against the interest and well being of our great party.
There are also allegations you are running for the Presidency, Nigerian Governors’ Forum or the Northern Governors’ Forum. Which of these are you really going for?
Like I told you before, if I say that I’m not grateful to God and that I would pursue inordinate ambition, then I would be out of tune with my God. I never knew that God had planned for me to become a managing director of a bank at the age of 32 after graduating from the university. I didn’t know that God had also planned for me to be made the managing director of a second bank just as I never imagined that God had destined for me to become a minister twice in this country not to talk of becoming a governor straight from the banking sector.
You can imagine how difficult it could be for someone who is coming from the corporate world devoid of political connections to partisan politics. This is a profession bound by secrecy and somehow cut off from the general public. It is a profession that only the private sector players dominate.
It is God that makes a president and not an ordinary human being. Even Mr. President himself has said it many times that he is grateful to God that He has taken him to the peak of power in Nigeria from the humble beginning he started without knowing where it would lead to as a number one citizen of Nigeria presiding over a population of over 160 million; someone who is from a minority tribe that has never been reckoned with to occupy such post in the history of this country.
But as God wants it, he is the President of Nigeria and there is nothing any man can do about it. So for any person, all this satanic people who fabricate rumours deliberately to cause dissension and bad blood between the leadership and their followers, they should know that there are repercussions for every evil done to another person especially if he is innocent.
They should be wise enough to know that it is God who placed me here as the governor of the state and any deliberate attempt to blackmail me and my family without any justification, would earn the wrath of the Almighty God. Let the Nigerian press begin to see itself as an anchor for development and justice for all and not an instrument for blackmail.
So, where are you going after completing your tenure as governor?
I’m a loyal PDP member and I’m a professional banker and by extension, I’m a businessman. We are trained to start business and work well. We can even revive ailing companies and turn them around. One thing is certain, I will remain in PDP and continue to work for its interest after 2015.
What do you think about the emergence of APC?
I’m happy about the development, which shows that Nigeria’s democracy is deepening by the day. What the APC is doing is good for the polity. We as a party are also working hard to regain those states which they took from us. But one thing the APC people should note is that power belongs to God and that no matter the kind of alliances they go into, they will never defeat PDP by the grace of God because of the good intention that the PDP and the president of this country have for Nigeria.
President Jonathan means well for Nigeria and he has a good heart to move the nation forward. For these and other reasons, the opposition will never win over the PDP. The hearts of some of the leaders of the merging parties are not good. In other words they do not love this country and God will never allow them to defeat the PDP in any election. God will never allow these people to rule Nigeria.
How far has your power project gone?
We have gone far with the processes. In just waiting for the signing of the loan agreement between Nigeria and the Chinese Exim Bank, for which they have availed us with $ 1.6billion out of which I am getting $ 171 million to jumpstart the project. At the same time, we are waiting for the release of the Power Intervention Fund to us by one of the commercial banks in Nigeria to start the project. In the next 18 months Bauchi would have sufficient power for use and for sale.
We have already signed a memorandum of understanding with a distribution company in Jos to buy the excess power from the plant. The good thing again about our IPP is that we now have access to crude oil very close to us. Therefore the cost of lifting the oil has been made cheaper for me. You can see that the break even period for the project would be shorter than envisaged.
It’s good news that I have access to gas within 200 kilometres. And I have a tank farm that can keep gas for six months. There is also a capped well in Yankari that we can use to run the plant.
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Posted in Nigeria News. A DisNaija.Com network.
Source: Nigerian Gazette
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The Kano State Government on Saturday said it has transferred 1,098 ‘almajiris’ to different states of the country.
The commissioner for local government, Murtala Garo, disclosed this while presenting a report before the state’s task force on COVID-19 at the government house, Kano.
Almajiris are children who are supposed to be learning Islamic studies while living with their Islamic teachers. Majority of them, however, end up begging on the streets of Northern Nigeria. They constitute a large number of Nigeria’s over 10 million out-of-school children.
Mr Garo said the Kano government transported 419 almajiris to Katsina, 524 to Jigawa and 155 to Kaduna. He said all of them tested negative for coronavirus before leaving the Kano State.
Despite the coronavirus test done in Kano for the almajiris, the Jigawa government earlier said it would quarantine for two weeks all the almajiris that recently arrived from Kano.
Mr Garo said another 100 almajiris scheduled to be taken to Bauchi State also tested negative to COVID-19.
In a remark, Governor Abdullahi Ganduje said the COVID-19 situation in Kano was getting worse. He appealed for a collaborative effort to curtail the spread of the virus in the state.
Mr Ganduje, who commended residents for complying with the lockdown imposed in the state, said the decision was taken to halt the spread of the virus.
Kano State, as of Saturday night, has 77 coronavirus cases, according to the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control.
The decision to transfer the Kano almajiris is part of the agreement reached between Northern governors that almajiris in each state be transferred to their states of origin.
However, even before the latest agreement by the governors, the Kano government had been transferring almajiris to other states and neighbouring countries after it banned street begging in the state, most populous in Northern Nigeria.
Despite the transfers, however, no concrete step has been taken to ensure such children do not return to Kano streets as there is freedom of movement across Nigeria although interstate travel was recently banned to check the spread of the coronavirus.
Sourced From: Premium Times Nigeria
By Ugochukwu Alaribe
Operatives of the Abia State Vigilante Service, AVS, popularly known as ‘Bakassi Boys’ have arrested 24 market women hidden in a container truck, at Ekwereazu Ngwa, the boundary community between Abia and Akwa Ibom states.
The market women, said to be from Akwa Ibom State, were on their way to Aba, when they were arrested with the truck driver and two of his conductors for violating the lockdown order by the state government.
Driver of the truck, Moses Asuquo, claimed he was going to Aba to purchase stock fish, but decided to assist the market women, because they were stranded.
A vigilante source told Sunday Vanguard that the vehicle was impounded while the market women were sent back to Akwa Ibom State.
Commissioner for Home Land Security, Prince Dan Okoli, who confirmed the incident, said that smuggling of people into the state poses great threat to the state government’s efforts to contain the spread of COVID- 19.
Sourced From: Vanguard News
Operatives of the State Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department (SCIID), Yaba of the Lagos State police command have arrested one Mrs Nene Steve for allegedly killing her maid, Joy Adole
The maid was allegedly beaten to death by Nene for requesting for her salary at their residence located at 18, Ogundola Street, Bariga area in Lagos.
Narrating the incident, Philips Ejeh, an elder brother to the deceased said that he was sad when they informed him that his sister was beaten to death.
He explained that the deceased was an indigene of Benue State brought to Lagos through an agent and started working with her as a maid in January 2020.
‘’She reported that her boss refused to pay her and anytime she asked for her salary she will start beating her.
She was making an attempt to leave the place but due to the total lockdown she remained there until Sunday when her boss said she caught her stealing noodles and this led to her serious beating and death,’’ Ejeh said.
He called on Lagos State Government and well- meaning people in the country to help them in getting justice for the victim.
The police spokesman, Bala Elkana, stated that the woman and her husband came to Bariga Police Station to a report that their house girl had committed suicide.
Detectives were said to have visited the house and suspected foul play with the position of the rope and bruises all over the body which confirmed that the girl had been tortured to death and the boss decided to hang up the girl to make it look like suicide.
He said: “The police moved on with their investigation and found a lot of sign of violence on her body that she has been tortured before a rope was put on her neck.’’
He added that the police removed the corpse and deposited it in the mortuary for autopsy to further ascertain the cause of the death.
Elkana said the matter has been transferred from Bariga police station to Panti for further investigation while the couple have been arrested and will be charged to court.
Ostensibly alarmed by the latest killings of dozens of soldiers by Boko Haram insurgents, President Muhammadu Buhari has summoned an urgent meeting of Service Chiefs to find ways to stop the trend.
He has also dispatched the Minister of Defence, Mansur Dan Ali, to the neighbouring Republic of Chad for an urgent meeting with President Idris Deby and his defence counterpart.
Knowledgeable sources said in Abuja on Friday that the president is worried by on the deterioration of security situation on the Nigeria – Chad Border that has led to the recently increased Boko Haram terrorism in the area.
The sources which did not want to be named in Abuja said: “Nigeria has a Chad problem in the Multi-National Joint Task Force (MNJTF) put together to secure the Lake Chad basin areas and repeal the Boko Haram terrorist attacks against all the countries neighbouring the Lake.”
The sources noted that Chad is believed to be having their own internal security challenges and this has reportedly led to their pulling away their own troops manning their own border around Lake Chad, saying: “That lacuna is being exploited by the Boko Haram terrorists, who go in and out of Nigeria, Niger and Cameroon to launch terrorist acts. This is a clear illustration of the fact that terrorism is beyond national borders.”
When contacted, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, confirmed that the Defence Minister is going to Chad but said he is unaware of the purpose.
Meanwhile, the military authorities are said to be in the process of identifying the families of the latest victims with a view to making contact with them.
Credible sources revealed that it is the reason the president is yet to make any pronouncement on the matter.
“The President has called an urgent meeting with the Service Chiefs, as well as the fact that families of the latest victims of the Boko Haram are being identified and contacts made before a government pronouncement on the tragic attacks. This, it is understood, is the reason for the silence of the government over the incident,” the source said.
Sourced From: Tribune
Nigeria records 55 new COVID-19 infections, total now 165,110
Military, Police Ring Abuja to Forestall Boko Haram Attack
UFC: Usman gets N584m after beating Masvidal
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