A Call for help for the less privileged

This saturday, November 24th 2012, clebrity radio show host with cool fm abuja, Kryss 'tha boss ' Molokwu will lead a host of people in a bid to give back to the society, in a bid to aleviate the plight of the less privileged in the society. 

Tagged "KRYSS N FRIENDS'', the visit to orphanages has been going on for some time now but started getting much publicity in the past 3 years, with other celebrity Tv, Radio hosts and musicians and philantrophists joining in.

 This year, there's a little twist to the "KRYSS N FRIENDS'' event it will experience a slight departure from the norm, a visit to the Home for the Blind and Disabled people has been put on the bill while there will also be a stop over at an orphanage home. Doctors and drugs have also been put on the line up to ensure that the health of the less privileged is also looked into. 

   For more information and possible participation, call 08079962395. This is a yearly event so you might as well start planning for next year. God bless you as you bless others.

SAD DAY IN LAGOS

Two sisters – Toyin and Bukky Coker – were killed on Wednesday when a part of the two-storey building they lived in at M20, Jakande Low Cost Housing Estate, Isolo, Lagos, collapsed.

Their mother identified simply as Iya Coker was injured.

Three out of the six flats on one of the two wings of the building completely collapsed at about 12:05am.

It was learnt  that the deceased and their mother lived on the first floor.

Toyin, was a 30-year-old medical doctor, while Bukky recently finished her national youth service. Both sisters were graduates of the University of Lagos (now Moshood Abiola University).

One of the survivors, Ahmadu Omoniyi, who lived on the ground floor of the building said he informed Mrs. Coker of the impending danger at about 11.40pm  on Tuesday night when he heard the building cracking.

He said, “When I got home on Tuesday evening, I observed that sand and stone were falling off from the walls and the decking. I informed the caretaker immediately. I moved into the apartment in September.

“Around 11pm, I suddenly woke up feeling uneasy.  I roused the other two people staying with me and asked them to start packing vital things while I went to Mrs. Coker’s place to draw her attention to the situation.

“When I got to her floor, she answered me from inside saying, ‘God will see us through till tomorrow’. Nobody stayed on the second floor, so, I joined my other flat mates downstairs.

“To my utmost surprise as soon as we removed our vitals documents from our apartment and moved like three steps away, the building collapsed. It was God that saved us because the whole place went down.”

A resident of the area, Opeyemi Fagun, said the sound of the collapsed building drew neighbours’ attention to the scene.

He said despite starting the emergency operation started the incident happened, Coker could not be rescued until after about four hours.

He said, “We heard the woman saying, ‘please help, please help’ but we couldn’t locate her on time because of the amount of debris that had fallen all over the place.

“We finally located her at about 4am where a wooden cupboard had fallen over the lower part of her body on the bed she slept. Meanwhile, the cupboard prevented the hard core debris from falling on her.”

It was learnt that calls placed by residents to the number of her two daughters after their mother had been rescued rang out.

Fagun explained that Coker could not also give a comprehensive account of the number of people in her apartment as she seemed to be in shock at the time she was being taken to hospital.

Fagun said, “We kept on searching the debris. We later sighted a leg, which turned out to be that of Bukky under the debris. Toyin’s corpse, which was also buried under the debris was also sighted.

“Both of them were found dead under the debris. We concluded the search and rescue at about 5am after Toyin’s body was recovered. Government emergency officials later started coming around some minutes to six blaring sirens all over the place.”

General Manager of the Lagos State Emergency Management Agency, Dr. Femi Oke-Osanyintolu, said the bodies of the sisters had been taken to the morgue.

When one of our correspondents visited the scene, oficials of the Lagos State Building Control Agency were seen marking the buildings on the M Zone of the estate for demolition.

Survivors of the incident told one of our correspondents that emergency officials, who were alerted to the impending disaster did not come.

A resident, Daramola Victor, told one of our correspondents that about 11.40pm, it was noticed that the walls were about to give way.

He said, “I live in the second wing. But we noticed that the other wing was cracking and we called the National Emergency Management Agency, Lagos State Emergency Management Agency and fire service on the phone. Only the Red Cross came later after the collapse.

“All these agencies are here now acting as if they are doing something useful. They could have saved lives if they came when we called on them.”

He said when he noticed that one of the wings of the building had collapsed, he rushed back into his apartment and evacuated his family.

“I really don’t know where to go now. All our properties are outside. Neither LASEMA nor NEMA is giving us any assistance in this direction,” he said.

Residents of the buildings at the site that have now been tagged “distressed” and sealed by the  Lagos State Building Control Agency, said no effort was made in the past by government officials to test the state of the buildings in the estate.

Earlier, the Commissioner for Housing, Mr. Bosun Jeje, who was at the site briefly, had said the buildings were “inspected frequently by our engineers.”

He said, “This is a responsible government, whenever anything like this happens government always ensures that those who are affected are taken care of.

“Government will offset the medical bills of victims who are receiving treatment in the hospital. As you can see, the buildings have been marked for demolition because they are weak.”

 Managing Director, Lagos State Property Development Corporation, Biodun Oki, also said the residents had been given notice to quit the buildings prior to the collapse.

“The markings of the distressed buildings had been before now and even some of them moved out before now,” Oki said.

But residents said the buildings were marked for demolition immediately after  Wednesday’s incident. They claimed there was no prior warning from government agencies.

An angry resident, who pleaded anonymity said, “If anybody tells you that they had inspected these buildings before, they are only lying. We had called on the government at different times to compel the owners of the buildings to renovate them but they did not take any step.

“I did the renovation of my own apartment when I moved in. I would have packed out of the apartment if not because I am financially handicapped.

“If government had inspected the houses and said they were “distressed” we would have packed out without complaint. They don’t care about us.”

Another resident, Ibrahim Ade, who corroborated this, said he was angry when he saw government officials sealing other buildings on Wednesday.

He said the inefficiency of government cost the two sisters their lives.

“Go to all the buildings, you will see that they are not in good condition, but government refused to do what was necessary until people died,” he said.

President of the residents’ association, Abiodun Taiwo, also berated the officials for their insensitive attitude to the state of the buildings in the estate.

Culled from the Punch Newspaper

Obasanjo fights with Jonathan on Odi

LAGOS — The alleged strained relationship between President Goodluck Jonathan and his one time benefactor, former President Olusegun Obasanjo was further stretched, yesterday, after Obasanjo rebuffed the incumbent president’s claims that the army invasion of Odi in Bayelsa State in 1999 was a failure.
In a detailed response to the claim by President Jonathan, Obasanjo asserted that contrary to  the claim, the invasion of Odi not only killed the militants but decimated their capacity to wage such acts of terror against the state.
Obasanjo, however, said the Odi treatment would not necessarily be adaptable to the Boko Haram insurgency.  President Jonathan had during the presidential media chat on Sunday rebuffed claims of weakness made against him by Obasanjo, asserting that the invasion of Odi ordered by Obasanjo in 1999 was a failure.
“After that invasion, myself and the governor entered Odi…and saw some dead people. Most of the people that died in Odi were mostly old men, women and children, none of the militants was killed,” Jonathan said on Sunday.
He continued: “If bombarding Odi was to solve the problem, then it was never solved. If the attack on Odi had solved the problem of militancy in the Niger Delta, then the Yar’ Adua government would not have come up with the Amnesty programme. So, that should tell you that the attack on Odi never solved the militancy problem and we had more challenges after that attack on Odi.”
Following the presidential media chat, Obasanjo reportedly briefed Mr. Femi Fani-Kayode, who served as his Special Assistant on Public Affairs and subsequently Minister of Aviation.
Upon the briefing, Fani-Kayode rebuffed President Jonathan’s claims that the Odi invasion was a failure.

A tale of 2 presidents.

            
He said: “During a live broadcast of the Presidential Media Chat to the nation on the evening of November 18, 2012, President Goodluck Jonathan said that the military operation in Odi by the Nigerian Armed Forces in 1999, which was ordered by President Olusegun Obasanjo, did not solve the problem or stop the killing of soldiers, policemen and innocent civilians in the Niger Delta area by the terrorists and militants. He also said that all he saw in Odi after he went there on an official visit as Deputy Governor were the dead bodies of old people. With the greatest respect to Mr. President this is factually incorrect. He has either forgotten the relevant facts or he has been misinformed. Whichever way he is mistaken and it is important for those of us that proudly served the Obasanjo administration to respond to him in order to clarify the issues, clear the air and set the record straight for the sake of history and posterity.
“I had  the privilege of being briefed about all the facts by President Olusegun Obasanjo himself and Col. Kayode Are, the former DG of the SSS, immediately after the Presidential Media Chat and I believe that it is appropriate to share some of those facts with members of the Nigerian public given the grave assertion and serious charge that President Jonathan has made. Those facts are as follows:

Why Army invaded Odi

 “Five policemen and four soldiers were killed by a group of Niger Delta militants when they tried to enter the town of Odi in Bayelsa State in order to effect their arrest. This happened in 1999. After the brutal killing of these security personnel, President Olusegun Obasanjo asked the then Governor of Bayelsa State, Governor Alamieyeseigha, to identify, locate, apprehend and hand over the perpetrators of that crime.
“The Governor said that he was unable to do so and President Obasanjo, as  the Commander-in-Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces, took the position that security personnel could not be killed with impunity under his watch without a strong and appropriate response from the Federal Government. Consequently he sent the military in, to uproot and kill the terrorists and to destroy their operational base which was the town of Odi. The operation was carried out with military precision and efficiency and it’s objectives were fully achieved. The terrorists were either killed and those that were not killed fled their operational base in Odi. They were uprooted, weakened,  demoralised and completely dispersed. That was the purpose of the whole exercise and that purpose was achieved. The truth is that the killing of security agents and soldiers with impunity by the Niger Delta militants virtually stopped after the operation in Odi and remained at a bare minimum right up until the time that President Obasanjo left power eight years later in 2007. I advise those that doubt this to go and check the records.
”The same thing was done in Zaki-Biam in Benue State in the North-central zone of Nigeria in 2001 after 19 soldiers were murdered in cold blood and then brutally beheaded by some terrorists from that area. Again after the Federal Government’s strong military response in Zaki Biam, the killing of security personnel with impunity stopped. The objectives of the military operations in both Odi and Zaki-Biam were to stop such killings, to eliminate and deal a fatal blow to those that perpetrated them and to discourage those that may seek to carry out such barbarous butchery and mindless violence in the future.
“Those were the objectives and nothing more and clearly those objectives were achieved. There is no doubt that after Odi, there were still unrest, agitations, protests, kidnappings and the blowing up and sabotage of oil pipelines in the Niger Delta area but there were hardly any more attacks on or killing of soldiers and security personnel by the terrorists and militants because they knew that to do that would attract a swift and forceful reaction and terrible retribution from the Nigerian military.

Odi, Zaki-Biam successful — OBJ

“To stop and deter those attacks and killings was the objective of President Obasanjo and that objective was achieved. President Goodluck Jonathan was therefore in error when he said that Odi did not solve the problem of killings in the Niger Delta area by the Niger Delta militants. Not only did it stop the killings but it is also an eloquent testimony of how to deal with terrorists, how to handle those that kill our security personnel with impunity and how to deter militants from killing members of our civilian population and thinking that they can get away with it. If President Obasanjo had not taken that strong action at that time, many more of our civilian population and security personnel would have been killed by the Niger Delta militants between 1999 and 2007.
“By doing what he did at Odi and Zaki-Biam, President Obasanjo saved the lives of many and put a stop to the killings and terrorism that had taken root in the Niger Delta area prior to that time.”
Fani-Kayode further insisted that President Obasanjo’s comments last week were also misconstrued and misrepresented in certain quarters.

When two elephants fight... what happens next?

           
“He never said that the Odi treatment should be applied to Boko Haram or that such action is appropriate in these circumstances. What he said was that a solution ought to have been found or some sort of action ought to have been taken sooner rather than allow the problem to fester over time like a bad wound and get worse.
“There can be no doubt that he was right on this because, according to President Jonathan’s own Chief of Army Staff, no less than 3000 people have been killed by Boko Haram in the last two years alone. That figure represents approximately the same number of people that were killed by the IRA in Northern Ireland and the British mainland in the 100 years that the war between them and British lasted and before peace was achieved between the two sides.
“The same number of casualties that the IRA inflicted on the people of the United Kingdom in 100 years, is the same number of casualties that Boko Haram have managed to inflict on our people in just two. This is unacceptable and it is very disturbing. The Federal Government must cultivate the courage and the political will to stop the killings by Boko Haram and to find a permanent solution to the problem.”

ACN  slams Jonathan, aides

The ACN on its part, also faulted the Jonathan administration as lacking in credibility, saying the president’s response to issues was at variance with the several responses given by his administration’s officials.
In a statement issued by the party’s National Publicity secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party cited a number of past actions and assertions by government officials that were rebuffed by the president on Sunday.
The party said: “Credibility is a key issue in governance, and lack of it renders a government impotent. Perhaps this worsening credibility gap in the Jonathan Administration is one of the reasons that it had so far failed to perform to expectation,” it said.
Citing what it described as the flip-flop or sheer disinformation by officials, the ACN said the president contradicted claims by his spokesman, Dr. Reuben Abati that the government has revoked the power contract awarded to Canadian firm Manitoba.
He also cited reports credited to Dr. Abati in August and this month, that the government was engaged in “backroom channel” talks with Boko Haram, which was also categorically denied by the president on Sunday.
According to the ACN, “it is also instructive that President Jonathan has finally confirmed the reported illness of the First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan, even when the spokespersons for the President and the First Lady said she was hale and hearty, and implied she was vacationing abroad, even as reports circulated that she was being treated for an illness in Germany.”
“We also recall that this flip-flopping and deliberate disinformation or both did not just start on Sunday, and that it has been the hallmark of the Jonathan presidency. For instance, while some spokespersons at the presidency once described the report of the probe of the oil sector by the House of Representatives as merely of ‘advisory’ value to the presidency, others said the presidency has indeed started its implementation.
“Also, shortly after Dr. Doyin Okupe rubbished the Petroleum Revenue Special Task Force Report as inconclusive and therefore not implementable, the President announced the setting up of a White Paper Committee on the report, indicating that Dr. Okupe, in his usual exuberant disposition, may have been speaking for no one but himself.
“This development, which we must say has now been patented by the Jonathan presidency, is of great concern to us as a party and, we are sure, to all Nigerians. This is because the credibility deficiency syndrome now afflicting the Jonathan presidency has far-reaching
implications. It impacts negatively on governance, and sends the wrong message to investors, both local and foreign, as well as the
entire international community.
“We are therefore left with no choice than to ask: Who is in charge at the presidency? Who speaks for President Jonathan? Who do Dr.
Abati and Dr. Okupe speak for? Do we henceforth take whatever these men say about the government with a pinch of salt? Or is the
Jonathan Administration deliberately misinforming Nigerians? If so, for what purpose?” ACN queried.

Fashola defends intended introduction of Chinese in Lagos schools

 

Ikeja –  Lagos State Governor,  Mr Babatunde Fashola, said on Sunday that the plan by the state government to introduce Mandarin in public schools was not  to discourage the teaching of indigenous languages.
The governor said during the commemoration of 2,000 days of his administration in Ikeja that the introduction of Mandarin in schools was to give  pupils functional education in consonance with current realities.
He said the emergence of China as a major economic power should compel any serious government to begin to plan for the future.
Fashola, however, said that  no child would be compelled to take the language in school.
The Commissioner for Education, Mrs Olayinka Oladunjoye, recently announced plans by the government to introduce Chinese language in all public schools.
“Our plan to introduce Chinese in schools is not to discourage or stop the teaching of indigenous languages in schools.
“We will continue to teach Yoruba and other languages but we are saying that giving our pupils the opportunity to learn Chinese will be an advantage in a changing world.
“Whether we admit it or not the Chinese are taking over the global economy and we are only preparing our pupils for the opportunities that the use of Chinese language as the possible language of the future  might provide,“ Fashola said.

Mr Babatunde Fasho

He said the various interventions  by the state government in the education sector had made positive impacts on the standard of education in the state.
The governor said the state was now ranked among the  states with the best public education in country, while the pass rate in WAEC had  moved from less than 20 per cent in 2011 to over 38.28 per cent in 2012.
He further said the recent  training and deployment of over 3,000  health volunteers to Primary Health Centres across the state had boosted healthcare delivery at the grassroots.
Fashola said the the establishment of Maternal and Child Care centres had significantly reduced cases of infant mortality and promoted mothers` health.
Commenting on infrastructure development, the governor said the contract for the expansion of Mile 12 to Ikorodu had been awarded, while a number of inter-city roads across the state had been constructed.
He said the state had recorded some achievements in sports with sound sports development initiatives, saying competitions like the Governor`s Tennis Cup and Principal Cup had helped in discovering some talents.
The governor said the decision of the state to host the18th National Sports Festival was to further develop talents and promised that this year’s edition would be the best ever.
Fashola said the development of inter modal transport system, comprising light rail, BRT system and ferry services was to facilitate the easy movement of people and goods.
He said the enactment of the traffic law was to address the problem of congestion in the state and ensure safety and security of lives.
He restated the commitment of the state government to make life more meaningful for residents and called on residents to support the government through compliance with rules and payment of taxes.
Some of the guests present on the occasion include Brig. Mobolaji Johnson and  Alhaji Lateef Jakande, both former governors of the state as well as Mr Frederick Faseun, leader of Oodua People’s Congress(OPC).
Others are members of the state Executive Council as well as representatives of interest groups, voluntary organisations, traders and artisans. (NAN)

Nigerians wait endlessly for Reps’ report on Lawan, Otedola

 Six months into the investigations by the House of Representatives on the controversial $620, 000 bribery allegation, the report is still not ready.

As at Sunday (yesterday), the House Committee on Rules and Business,had neither been briefed on the report of the probe nor had any document been submitted to it.

 “There is uncertainty over the fate of this report.

“It is seven months running since the House started this investigation, but we no longer know what is happening,” a senior lawmaker confided in  Abuja on Sunday.

The bribery transaction involved a four-time legislator (1999 to date), Mr. Farouk Lawan, and oil business mogul, Mr. Femi Otedola.

Otedola claimed to have given Lawan the bribe in the wake of the April fuel subsidy probe by the House to remove the names of Otedola’s two firms from the list of indicted companies by the committee.

Lawan headed the ad-hoc committee mandated to conduct the probe.

The panel uncovered how fraudulent marketers colluded with government officials to rob the nation of over N1.07tn in subsidy scams.

              

The House had mandated its Committee on Ethics and Privileges in June to investigate the allegation and submit a report within 21 days.

Findings, however, indicated that despite several assurances by the House that the report would be produced, there was none as at Sunday.

Three weeks ago, a member of the Committee on Ethics and Privileges, Mr. Victor Ogene, announced that the panel would lay the report as “soon as the House resumes from the Sallah break”, but nothing happened.

The House resumed from the Sallah break on November 6.

Ogene, said the report was ready, added that the committee was merely awaiting “scheduling” by the House.

The chairman Committee on Rules and Business, Mr. Albert Sam-Sokwa, stated that so far, there had been no contact between his committee and Musa’s over the progress of the $620,000 probe.

He said, “The committee has not brought it (report) to me.

“It is still with the committee. If they bring it, mine is to cause it to be laid for consideration by honourable members.

“For now, my committee has nothing to do with it because no report has come to us from the Committee on Ethics and Privileges.