How Reps Shunned Atiku For Jonathan

Facts emerged on Friday as to how former Vice President Atiku Abubakar was denied a planned endorsement by the caucus of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

The planned adoption was scheduled a week after the lawmakers had endorsed President Goodluck Jonathan as their candidate ahead of the National Convention of the PDP.

Sources confirmed that shortly after Jonathan was adopted by the legislators during a consultation with the president, Atiku also moved to secure their backing.

A source in the National Assembly told the Saturday Tribune that Atiku’s supporters in the House, led by Honourable Emeka Ihedioha, reached out to Speaker ‘Dimeji Bankole to request that the Speaker set up a consultative meeting with the former number two man.

Source further confirmed that the Speaker told the emmisaries that the PDP caucus in the House did not have any resources left in its coffers to host Atiku.

It was leant that Ihedioha, who was later joined by returnee Honourable Dino Melaye, ran back with the message that the House caucus was broke.

Sources confirmed that the camp of former vice president offered to offset the bills for drinks and other logistics that would go with the meeting.

“The Speaker agreed to host the meeting when the aspirant’s men gave their words that their man would offset the bills,” a source said, adding that Atiku’s men then began an intense lobby of members of the House so as to upturn Jonathan’s earlier endorsement.

Another source said that Atiku’s men in the House, who are only four, moved from House to House to convince members that the former number two man would perform.

It was gathered that the main issue on the agenda was to get the members of the House of Representatives upturn the earlier endorsement they gave Jonathan.

After Atiku spoke, his loyalists were eager to hear Bankole put the question which they were eager to chorus a loud ‘ aye’, but they were disappointed that the speaker never provided any such opportunity.

“What the Speaker did was to clearly send the signal that Jonathan remains the adopted and anointed candidate of the 257 members of the House of Representatve caucus. The message was very clear,” a source said.

It was gathered that the Speaker only gave Atiku the floor after which he asked one of the members to give the vote of thanks.

Sources also confirmed that a plan to set up a similar meeting with members of the Senate caucus of the PDP had failed since the Senate President David Mark did not provide the space for the meeting.

Sources in the Senate said that the senators had adopted President Jonathan as their candidate for the presidential election.

A source who monitored the Reps’ meeting with Atiku said: “Atiku’s loyalists in the House had apparently told him that they would push the Speaker to put the question, just like it was done for President Jonathan. They thought that it would be a big blow for Jonathan if the Reps could pull that off, but Speaker Bankole did not provide them the chance.

“They kept shouting, Mr. Speaker put the question repeatedly. Bankole kept his cool and followed a pattern of the usual courtesy visits. A member only gave a vote of thanks afterwards. The aim of securing the House and Senate endorsement were defeated,” the source said.

Meanwhile, the animosity between President Jonathan and former Vice President Atiku at the weekend assumed a new twist as Jonathan raised an alarm about purported bid by the former vice president to blackmail him ahead the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential primaries early January.

Jonathan alleged that the Atiku Campaign Organisation had compiled fictitious information about his person and has been moving round media houses to sell the document with some measure of desperation, just to malign him and portray him as unfit to get the PDP presidential ticket for the 2011 election.

The president, however, warned Atiku, his co-contestant on the platform of PDP, to desist from any attempt to blackmail him, just as he counselled the media to discountenance any pressure put on them to use any damaging information against him.

Director Planning, Research and Strategy in the Goodluck/Sambo Campaign Organisation, Mr. Mike Omeri, in a statement, said the president would not take kindly to any attempt to blackmail him on any issue and hence warned media houses to be wary of the intent to blackmail him by his opponents.

Meanwhile, the Campaign Organisation of Abubakar has reacted and stated that the president was only crying wolf where there was none.

In a chat with Saturday Tribune, a member of the media team in Atiku’s Campaign Organisation, Mr Paul Ibe, said the organisation was not aware it circulated any documents against the President, stating that the former vice president was too busy at the moment to contemplate doing such a thing.

“We are at the moment getting prepared for the primaries of our party and moreover, this is a season of celebration and so, we are not aware of any plan to blackmail anybody because we are busy,”he said.

During the last National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting of PDP in Abuja, President Jonathan had warned the former vice president to desist from making remarks capable of jeopardising national security. He warned that he would not hesitate to wield a big stick against any aspirants noted.

Christmas Eve bombings in Nigeria leave dead, injured

Five blasts went off in the Nigerian city of Jos Friday night as residents were celebrating Christmas Eve, leaving dead and injured, a regional government official said.

The exact number of casualties was not determined, but an eyewitness said he counted eight dead.

Choji Gyang, a special advisor to the governor of Nigeria's Plateau state, said two bombs went off in the Angwa Rukuba area of Jos. Within five to 20 minutes, three more blasts happened in the area of Kabong, he said.

"We have a lot of casualties and are struggling to cope," Gyang said.

Hassan John, a Jos resident and journalist with the media department of the Anglican Diocese of Jos, had just come out of church about 7 p.m. (1 p.m. ET) when he heard the sound of the first explosion. He rushed to the site, which he described as a beer parlor frequented by locals.

"By the time I got there, there were women crying, people screaming. It was all chaos, people were screaming, blood everywhere."

"I counted eight corpses all over, seven in the building," John said. He added that a second blast went off within a couple of minutes after the first one. "We cannot say if there are more bodies under the rubble because it was dark," John said.

Gyang, who is special advisor on religious affairs to the governor, said it was unclear who set off the blasts or whether they were related.


"It was Christmas Eve, lots of activities was going on. People were still preparing for Christmas, lots of people were coming into town. A blast went off, those around the area -- some were killed, some injured and the houses and cars caught fire," Gyang said. He said he received reports of "a lot of dead bodies."

"The way they went off was in the same manner. They all went to where people were concentrated,"Gyang said.

Several injured people were taken to a local hospital while some who were not severely injured left the scene on their own.

John said the beer-parlor scene was chaotic as residents, especially young men, became agitated over the lack of security in what has been a volatile area. Hundreds of people from both faiths have died in violence between Christians and Muslims in Nigeria in the past decade.

"Soldiers fired a couple of rounds into the air because a riot was developing," John said.

The first blasts occurred just a few buildings away from a police station and a military checkpoint, according to both Gyang and John.


Gyang said that during the preceding two days, a special task force that had been sent to the Plateau state by the federal government had gone on radio telling residents to go about their business and not to worry about the security situation in the area. The government had increased security and checkpoints throughout the past week, including additional a patrols in various areas of Jos, Gyang said


"Five different bombs blasts in the heart of Jos. This is the height of insecurity in this city," Gyang said.


"There is a lapse in security, specifically by the special task force," he said. "They have not been doing what they were expected to and as a result we had these attacks."


In recent weeks, the governor's office had received letters purported to be from some Muslim organizations threatening attacks against Christians, Gyang said. "The security officials didn't take the threat letters seriously. They were thought of as gimmicks, and at the end of the day, they became reality."

Mass failure recorded in WASCE •As 80% of candidates fail English, Maths

THIS Christmas may not be the best period for most candidates who wrote the October/November 2010 West African Senior School Examination (WASCE) as 80 per cent of them failed.

The Head of National Office (HNO) of the West African Examinations Council (WAEC), Mr Iyi Uwadiae, said at a news conference on Thursday in Lagos that 62,295 (20.04 per cent) of the candidates passed with English language and Mathematics.

According to him, a total of 324,998 candidates registered for the examination out of which 310,077 comprising 168, 835 males and 141,242 females sat for it.

Statistics showed that 250,487 candidates representing 80.78 per cent had two credits and above; 217,161 candidates (70.03 per cent) had three credits and above while 180, 480 (58.20 per cent) had four credits and above.

The results also revealed that 141,167 candidates (45.52 per cent) obtained five credits and above while 99, 750 candidates obtained six credits and above.

According to the HNO, a total of 133,507 candidates obtained credit and above in English language while 151, 569 candidates (48.88 per cent) obtained credit and above in Mathematics.

However, the results of 51,876 candidates, representing 16.73 per cent were being withheld based on various reports of their involvement in examination malpractice.

Commenting on the poor results, which had gone progressively worse in the last three years, Uwadiae attributed it to lack of quality teachers and infrastructure in various schools.

He stated that the results had fluctuated from 23 per cent pass in 2008; 21 per cent in 2009 and 20 per cent in 2010. He called on teachers and students to pay more attention to the use of WAEC syllabus, saying it could go a long way towards improving subsequent results.

Uwadiae said that unless the students, parents and teachers changed from their habit of cheating during examination, more candidates would continue to fail.

He said that 15,567 candidates still had their results being processed because of various anomalies, adding that errors were committed during the registration and actual conduct of the examination.

UN team to visit Nigeria over arms shipment

THE United Nations is sending an eight-man team to Nigeria in the third week of January over the arms shipment intercepted from Iran, a senior official has said.

The UN panel of experts on Iran is expected in the country on January 18 for a three-day working visit, the official told reporters on the condition of anonymity.

The panel’s earlier request to visit Nigeria this month was not cleared from Abuja due to administrative reasons, the official said.

Yesterday, Iranian businessman Azim Aghajani, who is facing trial along with three Nigerians over the importation of the illegal arms into Apapa port in Lagos, was granted bail by an Abuja High Court.

The Nigerians on trial with him are Ali Abbas Jega, Aliyu O. Wamako and Muhammed Tukur Umar.

They were arraigned before a Magistrate’s Court which remanded them in SSS custody.

The Iranian,　on Dec 16, approached the court through his lawyer, Chris Uche (SAN), for bail, relying on sections 341(2) and (3) of the Criminal Procedure Code; and Section 35 (4) 39 of 1999 Constitution.

He also prayed that the bail be sustained, pending his trial by the court.

Granting the bail application, Justice Ishaq Bello held that since the prosecution failed to file a counter affidavit to the application, there was no basis denying the accused bail.

He ordered him to produce two sureties in the sum of N20 million each.

The sureties must be citizens of Iran and officials of the embassy.

The eight-man UN panel was appointed last month by the UN Secretary-General to monitor states’ implementation of the sanctions against Iran.

Nigeria’s Maj-Gen. Ishola Williams is a member of the panel, which is coordinated by Salome Zourabichvili of France.

Other members of the panel expected to visit Nigeria are Jonathan Brewer from the UK, Kenichiro Matsubayashi from Japan and Jacqueline W. Shire from the United States.

Also on the team are; Elena Vodopolova from Russian, Christof Wegner from Germany and Wenlei Xu of China.

The panel while in Nigeria will meet with officials of some key government agencies involved in the investigation.

They will also inspect the seized cache of arms.

Nigeria reported Iran to the UN in November after security agents intercepted weapons hidden among building materials on a ship docked in Lagos in October.

Four persons, including one Iranian, were arrested and charged to court over the seized weapons.

The weapons include assorted calibers of mortars and 107 mm rocket launchers, designed to attack static targets and used by armies to support infantry units.

Sales Manager Wanted At Main One Ltd

Main One Cable Company Limited (‘Main One’) is the first submarine cable company offering open access, wholesale broadband capacity in West Africa. Main One is wholly African-owned with a vision to expand the much needed capacity on the African continent and reduce costs of broadband communications across the Continent. This vision is being realized via a submarine cable system that was declared ready for service in July 2010 with initial landing stations in Nigeria, Ghana and Portugal – linking West Africa to the rest of the world via Portugal and the United Kingdom.

JOB TITLE: SALES MANAGERS
Reporting to: Sales & Marketing Executive
Location: Nigeria

Reponsibilities
• The Sales Managers will be responsible for the sale of wholesale capacity and broadband solutions and manage relationships with targeted accounts to drive increased network utilization.
• They will develop respective plans for aggressive achievement of high value sales in timely fashion and negotiate detailed technical requirements and performance expectations with customer.
• They will also interface with customers at the C-Level and below in the organizations to drive sales and see to effective deployment and growth on the Main One network.

Requirements
• A University degree in Marketing, Business Administration or related field
• Minimum of 8 years cognate experience with at least 6 in sale of technology or telecommunications products or services in a B2B model
• Excellent communication and presentation skills
• Must also be able to identify customer needs and work with the Main One technical team to proffer appropriate solutions
• Must possess good relationship management and customer service skills

Remuneration
Attractive remuneration packages, a pleasant working environment, and challenging career prospects await the successful candidates.

Method of Application
To apply, please email your curriculum vitae – only once – to hr@mainonecable.com within two weeks of this advertisement. Ensure you indicate your name and the role you are applying for, in the subject line of the email.

All applications will be treated in confidence. Only short-listed candidates will be contacted.

For more information contact : hr@mainonecable.com

Trouble in Ikole-Ekiti over alleged plan to relocate federal varsity

Trouble returned to Ekiti State in the early hours of Thursday when irate protesters stormed the streets of Ikole-Ekiti in Ikole Local Government Area of the state over alleged plan by the state government to move a federal university allocated to the state and earlier slated for the community to Oye-Ekiti in Oye Local Government Area of the state.

But the state government has accused leaders of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the state of being behind the spreading of the “falsehood” that precipitated the protest.

Secretary to the State Government (SSG), Alhaji Ganiyu Owolabi, who spoke with the Nigerian Tribune on telephone over the matter, said the government had not made any such pronouncement, adding that some PDP leaders from the state, operating from Abuja, spread a rumour that the university would be sited in Oye and not Ikole where the state governor, Dr Kayode Fayemi, in his power over the Land Use Act, had promised to site the university.

The protesters, made bonfires in strategic places in the town and displayed placards of various inscriptions, condemned the alleged plan to move the proposed university.

The Ekiti State government, however, assured the people of the state that the decision to site the university in Ikole-Ekiti remained unchanged despite the subversive activities of “a few cabal.”

According to a statement issued by the Special Adviser to the governor on media, Alhaji Mojeed Jamiu, following deep consultations with relevant stakeholders, including officials of the Federal Government, state government, traditional rulers and community leaders, Governor Fayemi chose Ikole-Ekiti as site of the new university.

He said, “before the decision to site the university in Ikole was made public, the governor had also consulted with President Goodluck Jonathan, the Federal Ministry of Education and the National Universities Commission (NUC).”

“The decision to site the university in Ikole-Ekiti was informed by the need to avoid unnecessary acrimony among communities at a time we are still grappling with self-inflicted crisis, borne out of indiscriminate and self-serving siting of tertiary institutions in the state.

ANPP chief seeks audit of riverside polling stations

Ahead of the re-run election in Delta State, the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) governorship aspirant, Chief Michael Aristotle Ighofose has urged the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to conduct an audit of polling stations in riverside communities.

Ighofose, who was said to have been wrongfully excluded from the 2007 governorship election, maintained that for a free and fair re-run election, INEC must set up a special election monitoring task force for the riverside areas.　

Ighofose made this appeal at a press briefing in Warri during which he said experience in previous elections showed that elections hardly took place in the riverside communities, adding that both the electorate and INEC officials often shied awway from the creeks for fear of violence, intimidation and kidnapping.

He said: "Our experience in previous elections have shown that elections hardly take place in these areas as both the electorate and INEC　officials shy away from going to the creeks to conduct elections for fear of intimidation, violence and sometimes kidnapping."

　He alleged that election results declared from the creeks often showed candidates get more votes than the number of eligible voters there.　

Ighofose expressed confidence in the ability of INEC to conduct credible re-run election, stressing that the re-run election in Delta State was a litmus test for INEC and the integrity of Prof. Attahiru Jega.　

He said ANPP was ready to wrest political control of the state from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), adding that campaign committees and coordinators have been appointed for the various senatorial districts.

He further said if elected, his government will focus on peace and security, youth empowerment and wealth creation, free education at primary and secondary school levels, subsidy for tertiary education and infrastructural development of rural and urban centres to promote industrialisation.

He urged the electorate to rise against election riggers and ensure that their votes count.