Alexander Okere, Benin

A returnee, who was recently evacuated from Libya by the International Organisation for Migration, has appealed to the Edo State Government for assistance to enable him start his life afresh.

The returnee, who gave his name as Osama from the Orhionmwon Local Government Area of the state, told Southern City News that he raised N800,000 to enable him travel to Europe, through the North African country.

But the experience for him in the desert was unthinkable as he lost six of his friends as a result of the hot weather condition during the torturous journey.

He explained, “I left Nigeria in May, 2017. I spent about N800,000. I got the money from my sisters. I told them that I was going to France to start a better life, to start making shoes.

“I was a shoemaker before I left Nigeria and I had a store. It was difficult. Some people died there (Libya) but I thank God that I am still alive.

“I lost eight of my friends in Libya. Six of them died in the desert because of the heat from the sun. There was no shade to cover us and water, so, they lost their strength and died.”

The returnee noted that though he earned an income as a worker in a hotel in Libya, he returned home empty and sad.

“My parents knew when I left and they gave me their blessing. I worked in a hotel in Libya and earned 500 dinars per day.

“If I have another opportunity, I would like to go to France by air. I am not happy that I am back but there is nothing I can do. I am a youth and I left because I did not have a job.

“So, if the government can help me with a job that would be good because I came back with nothing. I left Nigeria as a rich person but came back miserable,” he said.

Meanwhile, the state Agency for the Control of AIDS said that over 2,000 returnees had undergone medical screening.

The Executive Director of SACA, Floral Oyakhilome, said the new returnees had been cooperative with the agency with the understanding that it was important for them to know their health status and seek counselling or medical care where necessary.

“It has been very nice, unlike in the past when we had to beg them to have the test. Immediately we told the new set to get tested, they complied and we have had a good turnout.

“Over 2,000 persons have so far undergone screening under the agency. Over 60 persons from the new set have been tested.

“When they come, they go through pre-counselling to know what they are about to do so that they can willingly subject themselves to the test. If we have those who tested positive, we do post-counselling,” Oyakhilome said.

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Britain’s richest man, Jim Ratcliffe, has approached Roman Abramovich to discuss buying Chelsea Football Club after the Russian billionaire’s future in Britain was thrown into doubt.

Ratcliffe, 65, boss of petrochemicals giant Ineos, who is knighted today in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to business and investment, is understood to have offered about £2bn for the club.

It comes as Mr Abramovich, 51, struggles to renew his UK visa in the wake of Theresa May’s crackdown on rich Russians living in Britain after the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury.

SEE ALSO: 

The Chelsea boss was reportedly incensed at not being allowed to watch his club play in this year’s FA Cup Final on May 19 and within days he applied for and was granted Israeli citizenship.

Downing Street has made it clear that he cannot work in Britain on his Israeli passport, although he can visit for up to six months at a time.

Mr Ratcliffe topped this year’s Sunday Times Rich List with an estimated wealth of £21bn. Ineos’s annual turnover is about £45bn and it employs more than 18,500 people in 22 countries.

It is understood that Mr Abramovich has rejected the offer. Chelsea said only that its Russian owner – worth around £1.3bn – remains committed to the club, which he bought in 2003 in a deal worth £140m.

Mr Ratcliffe is a Chelsea season ticket holder – although he also supports Manchester United – and already owns a football club in Switzerland. Seven months ago, he bought the Swiss club Lausanne-Sport for an undisclosed sum as part of his company’s commitment to local sport.

He owns a house near Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge base in South-West London. The stadium was going to be demolished and replaced but last week Mr Abramovich announced that the £1bn plans were being shelved in retaliation to the hardline attitude of the Home Office.

Mr Ratcliffe’s spokesman said: ‘We cannot comment on rumour and speculation.’

(Mail)

Tayo Oke

“If you are born into a low-income family, what are the chances that you will rise higher regardless of your background?”

The above is the opening, searching question that encapsulates the latest World Bank report on the thorny issue of income inequality around the world entitled: “Fair Progress? Economic Mobility across Generations Around the World” published on May 9, 2018.  The 300 page long report (openknowledge.worldbank.org) is dense, some people might find it rather opaque and lacking in relevance, but that would be the wrong conclusion to draw from this important, once in a generation, piece of high quality research. Having taken time to read it for professional reasons, I wondered how the contents might be turned into a useful, interesting, everyday conversation via this medium. The choice of title for this conversation bears the hallmarks of both mythology and populism because it is how we tend to see the issue of economic mobility in Africa. We are an extremely fatalistic lot: First, it is that the trajectory of our economic fortune and/or misfortune in life is entirely out of human’s hand. Allah decides, God decides everything, no human agency. Clearly, the professionals at the World Bank feel slightly different. Data, to them, speak volumes. And, what are the sources of economic data? Well, human activities; deliberate, accidental, intentional as well as unintentional. This is not to deny the importance of theological explanation, but to say that theology belongs in the celestial realm; data analysis belongs in the touch, feel, smell the coffee here, and now, real world. That is also where we are at with this conversation here.

So, how does one get out of poverty and economic deprivation? Is it possible to imbibe the populist “rags to riches” mythology and actually live it out, as many people have actually done, in fact? Remember former Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan? A man who grew up “with no shoes” on his feet, but kept running into luck after luck until he made it into the Presidential Villa in this country? Or, former President Shehu Shagari, an average school teacher, who ended up punching above his weight as a civilian President of Nigeria from 1979 to 1983? Or, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, who struggled through early life, but made huge economic fortunes for himself before dabbling into politics and nation-building? He remains the iconic figure of the 20th century as a public servant generally for the country as a whole, but more specifically, for the South-Western part of the country. On his demise, he left behind a pair of old shoes which politicians of all hues in the South-West of Nigeria have tried in vain to step into. That is to say, these public figures moved from being born poor to becoming financially comfortable or even very rich by dint of hard work, desire and determination alone. There are loads of similar examples in the world of business and commerce, but the question is; are people’s life chances (social mobility) a matter of choice and desire, or are they more to do with family background and “connections” in modern Africa?

According to the World Bank report, “ability to move up the economic ladder matters for reducing poverty and inequality and can help boost economic growth”. In other words, poverty is not an act of God as many of us in Africa are wont to believe. Allah has not decreed that the lot of anyone is to remain poor for life, neither has God created beautiful rewards in heaven waiting for wretched of the earth. The researchers draw on global database of intergenerational mobility, covering 96 per cent of the world’s population, spanning 50 years. It is a quite hefty, data-driven stuff. Perhaps, the most heartrending point in the report is the not-too-surprising revelation that “trends in mobility in the developing world have stalled since the 1960s, making it harder to harness human potential for generating greater, and more widely shared, prosperity”.

 As I said earlier, the first and most important realisation to have in Africa is that mobility from one level of prosperity to another is not an article of faith; it requires deliberate planning through effective public policy. In the immediate post-independent Nigeria, social mobility had very little to do with family background and connections as such. There was a level playing field for everyone. A farmer’s son or daughter had as much a chance to attend a higher institution as the sons and daughters of the rich and the well-heeled. Private universities were unheard as of the time, there was sufficient investment in hospitals and schools across the board for everyone and anyone to take advantage of. This was particularly so in the defunct Western Region of Nigeria, which, against vociferous opposition, embarked upon the policy of universal free education for all. It was an audacious policy which accelerated the economic prospect of its citizens compared to the northern part of the country where there was no such policy.

Moreover, the healthy rivalry between the three main ethnic groups: Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba helped to focus minds on public service delivery, but it created an imbalance in the appointments to key positions within the federal civil service. Whilst the southern part of Nigeria could produce a number of highly trained technocrats in most areas of public service, the northern part with a much greater population lagged behind their compatriots in the South. Education had not been seen as a tool for social advancement in the North in the way it had been conceived in the South. That, itself, produced its own snags in form of ethnic imbalance in key government departments especially at senior levels. This was then the basis for the subsequent introduction of the “federal character” principle in the recruitment and appointment of civil servants into the top echelons of government bureaucracy in this country. The need to maintain “balance” in key areas of appointment ushered in the introduction of ethnically-based quota system and an end to meritocracy in favour of ethnic “harmony” by allowing appointments to key positions in the federal administration to reflect the geographical population of each region. For whatever positive impact this was meant to achieve, it has been blunted by the apparent skewing of the playing field in favour of one region over the other in the name of “federal character”. Mobility thus became first, a matter of ethnicity and regional affiliation, then, it became a matter of who you know, not what you know.

This is not only a Nigerian problem though. Similar public policy errors are replicated across the continent in the aftermath of independence, and has been perpetuated with vigour since. According to the World Bank report, “across regions, the prospects of relative mobility are the lowest among children in Africa and South Asia”.  Education (formal and informal) holds the tool for economic advancement for most people. In this wise, the finding that although “average educational attainment has increased across generations, but the gap between advanced and developing economies has persisted” is one that ought to concern policymakers across the continent.

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As the release of the N9billion allocated for cancer machines that could check suffers delay without explanation, the Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, has so far released N120 billion for pet projects by lawmakers at the National Assembly, PREMIUM TIMES can authoritatively report today.

Eight federal university teaching hospitals were identified for immediate supply of cancer machines in the 2017 budget after relentless calls for the federal government to address the collapse of the less than 10 machines available in the country.

Medical experts of a combined seven in a country of an estimated 180 million people.

But as hospitals and learning institutions across the country suffocate amidst abysmal release of their allocations by Mrs Adeosun, the minister has advanced up to N120 billion to Nigeria’s 469 lawmakers for their so-called constituency projects which are neither urgent nor transparent.

The funding of lawmakers’ self-enriching projects were intensified despite President Muhammadu Buhari’s promises that his government would not tolerate slush payments to lawmakers, especially at a time of harsh economic realities that calls for austere measures.

But the finance minister would rather prioritise the repainting of a town hall in rural Enugu at a whopping N20million ahead of life-saving concerns like the replacement of at the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital, an ongoing investigation by PREMIUM TIMES and UDEME shows.

Our findings show that the payouts were released in three tranches of N50billion for 50 per cent implementation for ; N50 billion for so-called constituency projects surreptitiously tucked by lawmakers in budgets of federal ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs); and another N20billion for zonal intervention projects.

Federal lawmakers have always allocated N100 billion yearly for zonal intervention projects. , the lawmakers also proceeded to secretly insert in the budgets of MDAs projects insiders said would cost the nation above another N100billion. They call those constituency projects.

Those familiar with the arrangement said nothing differentiates ZIPs from constituency projects. Lawmakers devised the semantics to evade scrutiny from citizens and advocacy groups who have long identified constituency projects as one of the multiple layers of corrupt enrichment by lawmakers.

“It was only in recent years that lawmakers reworded constituency projects as ZIPs,” a National Assembly insider told PREMIUM TIMES. “What they now describe as constituency projects are initiatives they secretly insert into budgets of MDAs.

“On the surface, the items appear in the budget as though they are capital projects of the domiciled MDAs, but they only serve as another conduit for lawmakers to siphon taxpayers’ money through the back channel.”

Our findings show that the scheme has become so pervasive that it is difficult to establish how much of constituency projects are inserted in federal budget by lawmakers, largely at the expense of critical developmental projects.

The projects could range from training and supply of tailoring equipment for artisans to erosion control in a remote village.

The N50 billion released for constituency projects tucked in MDAs is what PREMIUM TIMES and were able to confirm based on Ministry of Finance documents. The amount released could be significantly more.

Local business, national funding

PREMIUM TIMES and UDEME analysed cash releases for projects lawmakers initiated and compared them with funds made available for priority projects compiled by the executive. The process uncovered higher intensity of releases for low-priority projects suggested by lawmakers.

The review also found that projects nominated by principal officers of the National Assembly are more and received significantly higher cash backing than those of ordinary members.

The Minister of Works, Power and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, could muster barely a half of his ministry’s N305billion budget for critical road infrastructure, but Mrs Adeosun generously released N50billion for some 165 pet projects initiated by lawmakers.

Thousands are estimated to die annually on Nigerian roads that have long remained in a state of disrepair and have become death traps, but the country’s funds managers do not appear to see this as a problem needing priority funding.

The Ministry of Health budgeted about N1 billion for the replacement of the radiotherapy machine at the UNTH, Enugu, but no release has been approved by Mrs Adeosun, and the facility’s authorities fear time is running out for the close of the budget year.

The hospital’s radiotherapy facility is the only one in the South East, but Mrs Adeosun prioritised release of about N1billion for a slew of pet projects promoted by Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu and his colleagues from the zone, which include the repainting of a town hall and construction of a rural access road that sees only a few users a day.

In Kwara, Mrs Adeosun released over N2 billion for pet projects initiated by Mr Saraki, including N485million for the construction of junior model schools in Kwara Central. The Appropriation Law provided N450 million for the project. But in what has continued to baffle many people, the finance minister released N485million for the project, N35million above the approved amount.

Mrs Adeosun could not be reached for comments. Calls and text messages to her telephone lines went unanswered for two days.

The spokespersons for Messrs Saraki, Ekweremadu and Dogara did not respond to requests for comments for two days.

While Mr Ekweremadu’s media aide, Uche Anichukwu, initially acknowledged receipt of enquiries and promised to get back on time, he failed to do so. Subsequent calls and messages sent to him were neither returned nor acknowledged.

‘No going back’

In recent years, lawmakers have acknowledged citizens’ concerns that they are using constituency projects to enrich themselves. But rather than suggest a water-tight solution, principal officers like Mr Dogara have slammed concerned citizens as ignorant and mischievous.

At a forum on 2018 budget in late March, the Speaker praised the pet projects by lawmakers as “the only evidence of federal government presence in most rural communities of Nigeria.”

He vowed that lawmakers would not be cowed by the condemnations that have trailed the constituency projects scheme over the years.

Lawmakers also consider constituency projects as parts of their larger charitable intervention to constituents.

It is true that “MDAs execute some of our projects,” said Lanre Smart, a legislative aide to Femi Gbajabiamala, the House Majority Leader who inserted N1.25 billion in ZIPs in the 2017 budget. “But to say that Mr Gbajabiamila “received certain amount for some projects is false.”

Mr Smart said his principal “struggles to attract several projects to his constituency” by drawing from his own pocket or partnering with international organisations.

Several lawmakers said their constituency projects brought enormous benefits to their constituencies.

But that lawmakers benefit financially from constituency projects is perhaps the worst kept secret, said a former lawmaker who served between 2003 and 2007.

“It is okay for my former colleagues to deny, but Nigerians have known this technique for as long as it has been in existence,” said the lawmaker from a North-Central state who preferred not to be named because he is still a consultant to nearly a dozen serving lawmakers.

The lawmaker said the president could stop the projects or at least frustrate lawmakers’ ploy to corner funds through them, citing an approach once taken by former President Olusegun Obasanjo.

“I remember a year when I pushed for a massive hospital for my constituency,” the lawmaker said. “My plan was that I would nominate a contractor then earn a good kick-back from it, but by the time the contract was awarded, it was so random that they gave it to a contractor from Adamawa State.”

“This is someone I never even heard of in my life,” he said. “It was the same thing that most of my colleagues experienced in the hands of Mr Obasanjo at the time.”

Chidi Duru, a former House member from Anambra State, said he had been a long time opponent of pet projects because they proffer simplistic solutions where a broader approach is required.

“It is better to have a water works office that covers a 10-kilometre radius than to construct a borehole that would last only a few months at most,” Mr Duru said. “It is also the same way that a trunk-A road that cuts across constituencies is expected to be jointly sponsored by lawmakers from those constituencies rather than having a lawmaker insert project to build a road that truncates after two or three kilometres away.”

Mr Duru said the president could exercise discretionary powers over constituency projects, especially when they fail to conform with an administration’s policy thrust.

“Budget process is a holistic intervention. It is a strategic thrust of government on how policies should be implemented,” he said. “This haphazard approach of releasing money for pet projects by lawmakers should be discouraged.”

Lawmakers’ move to shore up their constituency projects by cutting funding for projects the Buhari administration consider key to national development .

The minister scolded senators for slashing appropriations for the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, Second Niger Bridge, amongst others. But this was rejected by the Senate, which said low-priority projects must be funded to “achieve equity”.

Shady past, shady future

The constituency projects scheme was introduced during the regime of Mr Obasanjo between 1999 and 2007. But its initial purpose had little or nothing to do with self-enrichment, said anti-corruption campaigner Ezenwa Nwagu.

“There was a little benefit for the citizens from the beginning and now lawmakers have completely ambushed the process and using it to benefit themselves rather than the people,” Mr. Nwagu said.

He said constituency projects play key role in executive-legislature relations and that lawmakers appear to be having a better bargain.

“This is lawmakers muzzling the executive to get their projects into the budget and in turn they cooperate with the president’s requests,” Mr Nwagu added.

“They’ve registered borehole drilling companies and construction companies,” he said. “You don’t carry out corruption in a brazen manner like this. A borehole that was installed in my constituency has never supplied water to residents despite the huge amount sunk into it.”

Martin Obono, an Internet rights and transparency advocate, said he had tracked constituency projects over the years and found that they are hardly executed.

“By and large, what we found was that constituency projects usually turn out as white elephants,” Mr Obono, head of Cyber Crimes and Fraud Awareness Foundation in Abuja, told PREMIUM TIMES.

Mr Obono attributed this to the insufficient fund release for the projects, but said lawmakers are okay with this disorderly approach because it is usually a win-win for them.

“Even when they know money would not be fully released, they push MDAs to start the project so they could use it to amass votes from their constituency.”

“They would share whatever is released and ask contractors to go and start the project, and still use the project even when it is not completed to boast that they brought federal presence.”

The claim of  Microsoft co-founder, Bill Gates, and Amazon’s owner, Jeff Bezos, to being the world richest person is false.

This is according to  US Financier and the chief executive officer of Hermitage Capital Management, Bill Browder, who claimed Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, is the world wealthiest.

Browder reportedly told senators that Putin is richer than both Bezos and Gates combined.

According to , Browder estimated Putin’s net worth at $200bn, while Bezos and Bill are worth a combined $183bn.

Newsweek said that Browder’s company was once the largest portfolio investor in Russia and the financier was a shareholder in Gazprom, Surgutneftegas and other Russian state-run enterprises in the 1990s.

Around that time Putin reportedly made a deal with Russian businessmen that made him the “richest man in the world”.

Mr Putin’s personal fortune has been the subject of intense debate and speculation in recent years.

An official asset disclosure form, which is mandatory for all Russian government officials,  shows that Putin earns $133,000 a year and has a modest apartment in Moscow.

Bezos briefly became the world’s richest person as a result of a surge in Amazon’s share price ahead of the e-retail giant’s quarterly earnings report.

A woman who claims to have dated over 5,000 rich men has inaugurated an online course designed to guide interested women in catching and keeping rich foreign guys.

Online medium, Coconuts Bangkok, reports that the woman, a Thai citizen, counsels fellow Thai women who want an ATM as boyfriend, has announced via her Facebook page that she was launching a club that recruits eligible Thai women for rich “businessman friends.”

For a token fee of about $410 for VIP access, Praiya Suriya promises to set up her club members with either “Caucasian or Middle Eastern” men.

The tutelage comes equipped with online coaching on how to ask men for money and also how the women could be more confident in bed.

The coaching will be done within a private group on the LINE messaging app, she says.

Here’s what VIP members will learn:

• The tricks to asking men for money — Results are guaranteed 100 percent! Ask them for THB100,000 ($2,941.177) – THB300,000 ($8,820.936) to go shopping!
• A detailed sex strategy! You will feel confident like you’ve never felt before. Have quality sex. Have educated sex. Have sex like Praiya! Have sex like a pro!
• How to negotiate compensation before you go on a date or holiday with him. How to ask for a salary, house, condo, or car.
• English or Arabic sentences used to ask for money.
• Negotiate cash upfront before a date? Is that really dating?

The Facebook account has drawn criticism from online commentators, however; as many Thai women are enraged by how Praiya is seeming to worsen their image; while others say her business is straight-up prostitution.

But other women actually idolise Praiya, leaving messages of support on her Facebook page.

See Praiya Suriya’s photos:

Olalekan Adetayo, Abuja

The Acting President, Yemi Osinbajo, on Tuesday alleged that some of the projects initiated by the Niger Delta Development Commission for the region in the past years were not designed to succeed.

He claimed that the projects were deliberately meant to enrich some individuals.

According to a statement by his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Mr. Laolu Akande, the Acting President spoke while receiving a delegation from Bayelsa State regarding the $3.6bn Brass Fertilizer and Petro-Chemical Company that is expected to come on stream soon.

The delegation which included executives of the company was led by the state governor, Seriake Dickson.

Osinbajo was quoted as lamenting that only 12% completion rate was recorded in several of the projects undertaken by the NDDC in the past years, while the rest were abandoned.

“Sometimes, projects are designed not to succeed, but just for some people to make money,” the Acting President was quoted as saying.

Osinbajo however said that the present administration was promoting a new way of thinking and engagement that will secure the development of the region and the entire country.

That new approach, which he restated as the New Vision, according to him involves an active and effective collaboration between the government, the private sector and the communities.

He said the approach would ensure that whatever projects started would be completed.

“The Buhari administration, this government is committed to finishing whatever we start. At the end of the day, we shall ensure that,” he said.