Nigerian President vows to deal with culprits

President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday evening vowed that all those involved in the “padding” of the 2016 National Budget which led to the discrepancies in the document would face the most severe punishment. He said the alterations which he described as embarrassing and disappointing, made the document being debated in the National Assembly completely different from what was prepared by the Ministry of Budget and National Planning. According to a statement on Wednesday by his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Mr. Femi Adesina, the President spoke in Riyadh while addressing the Nigerian Community in Saudi Arabia. The President was said to have condemned the distortion of the budget proposals by those he called entrenched interests. He said since he had been holding public offices, he had never heard about budget padding before this incident. He regretted that the unauthorised alterations had completely changed the document from the one he presented to the National Assembly. The President however gave the Minister of Budget and National Planning, Udo Udoma, a clean bill of health, saying he worked did a good job. Buhari said, “The culprits will not go unpunished. I have been a military governor, petroleum minister, military Head of State and headed the Petroleum Trust Fund. “Never had I heard the words budget padding. Our Minister of Budget and National Planning did a great job with his team. “The Minister became almost half his size during the time, working night and day to get the budget ready, only for some people to pad it. “What he gave us was not what was finally being debated. It is very embarrassing and disappointing. We will not allow those who did it to go unpunished.” The President also assured members of the Nigerian community that his administration was working diligently to fulfill its campaign promises, particularly on security, unemployment, and corruption. Reaffirming his government’s zero tolerance for corruption, Buhari said the war against corruption was a monumental task that he is determined to tackle successfully. “We have zero tolerance for corruption and other unethical practices. We will deal decisively with anybody found wanting,” he promised members of the Nigerian community.

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Nigeria: One Die As 18 Passengers Bus Tumbles, Bust Into Flames On Third Mainland Bridge

One person was said to have burnt to death while 18 passengers escaped death by whiskers, Wednesday morning , when an 18 passengers Mazda bus fully loaded went up in flames on the Third Mainland Bridge in Lagos. The incident was said to have occurred at about 7.15am at the UNILAG axis of the bridge when the 18-seater bus was journeying inward the Lagos Island from Ikorodu. Vanguard gathered that the bus with number plate MUS 781XB tumbled twice and eventually went up in flames due to over speeding on the part of the driver. It was gathered that all the occupants of the bus were trapped but were lucky to have escaped death before the vehicle went up in flames as they were later rescued by sympathisers and law enforcement agents. More details soon

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Armed-drone club growing thanks to China

WASHINGTON -- Early this month, a Nigeria military crew operating a Chinese-built drone struck a suspected terrorist base tied to Boko Haram in the county's remote Sambisa Forest. The strike on Feb. 2 marked Nigeria's first foray into drone warfare, making it the sixth country to use remotely piloted drones for targeted killing. The United States and and the United Kingdom fly U.S.-made armed MQ-1 Predators or MQ-9 Reapers, and Israel builds its own. But the three newcomers -- Nigeria, Pakistan and Iraq -- all took advantage of China's growing exports of the unmanned aircraft systems that are reshaping modern warfare. That worries some military analysts who see China as undermining U.S. attempts to control a technology that gives poorer countries a relatively inexpensive bombing system. China is "engaged in an ambitious effort" to sell drones in Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia, said Ian Easton, a research fellow at the Project 2049 Institute, which is based in Arlington, Va., and tracks security issues in Asia. A total of 78 countries now deploy surveillance drones. More than 20, including the six named above, either have or are developing armed drones, according to the New America Foundation, a nonprofit public policy institute in Washington that tracks the industry. The U.S. is by far the most prolific user of drones. Independent groups say more than 500 U.S. military and CIA drone strikes have killed about 3,800 militants, about 400 civilians and at least eight Americans, in seven countries over the last decade. Most U.S. military drone exports are limited by the Missile Technology Control Regime, a 1987 international accord meant to limit the spread of ballistic missiles. The State Department agreed in February 2015 to relax those Cold War-era restrictions. Each sale requires congressional approval under the foreign military sales program, and only two foreign sales -- Spain and Italy -- have gone through in recent months. David McKeeby, a spokesman for the State Department's bureau of political and military affairs, said the U.S. policy is to try to ensure future sales aren't high-risk. "Moving forward, the United States intends to work with foreign partners to develop international standards for the sale, transfer and use of military [drones] more broadly," he said. China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp., a state-owned entity, has found a ready market for its medium-altitude, long-distance drones since 2011, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Sweden that documents the global arms trade. China has sold at least five armed CH-3 drones to Nigeria, four to Iraq and an unknown number of larger CH-4 drones to Pakistan, the institute says. The CH stands for "caihong," or "rainbow." The CH-3 is a stubby-looking plane with a 26-foot wingspan and a propeller in the back. The CH-4 appears to be a copy of the U.S.-made Reaper, with a bulbous nose, a 60-foot wingspan and a V-tail fin. "There is increasing demand around the world for this technology, and China is seizing on it," Pieter Wezeman, a researcher at the Stockholm institute, said in a telephone interview. "China does not have political restraints to sell arms. So when they see an opportunity, they will take it." The proliferation became obvious last year. On Sept. 6, Pakistani military spokesman Gen. Asim Bajwa announced on Twitter that the army had launched its first drone strike to kill three "high-profile terrorists" in North Waziristan, a tribal area in northwestern Pakistan. Three months later, on Dec. 6, the Iraqi military announced that it had used a Chinese CH-4 drone during its offensive to retake the city of Ramadi from Islamic State militants. The first sign of Nigeria's CH-3 drone fleet emerged in January last year when one crashed, and photos of the debris appeared online. The next was this month's airstrike against the Boko Haram camp in the forest. "We are not concerned about [Nigerian government forces] having this technology," said Lt. Cmdr. Anthony Falvo, spokesman for Pentagon's Africa Command, "as long as it is applied in a responsible manner and solely in an effort to better secure their borders against violent or illegal activities that disrupt stability or present a danger."

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FEMALE GENITAL MUTILATION...TO BE LEGALIZED???

Mild female genital mutilation should be legalised – Gynecologists Two United States gynecologists, writing in the Journal of Medical Ethics have said that mild female genital mutilation should be made legal. They argued that permitting more minimal procedures would allow families to uphold cultural and religious traditions while protecting girls from more dangerous forms of cutting. According to CBC news, communities which support FGM often consider it a prerequisite for marriage. Many also see it as a religious obligation, although it is not mentioned in the Qur’an or Bible. Gynecologists Kavita Shah Arora and Allan Jacobs said procedures that slightly changed the look of a girl’s genitalia without damaging them were comparable to male circumcision or cosmetic procedures in Western countries like labiaplasty. As written in the in the specialist publication by the British Medical Journal, the women said laws against mild modifications were “culturally insensitive and supremacist and discriminatory towards women.” Female genital cutting and female circumcision, is the ritual removal of some or all of the external female genitalia. Typically carried out by a traditionalist using a blade, with or without anaesthesia. FGM is concentrated in 27 African countries, Indonesia, Yemen and Iraqi Kurdistan, and found elsewhere in Asia, the Middle East and among diaspora communities around the world. It is conducted from days after birth to puberty and beyond. In half the countries for which national figures are available, most girls are cut before the age of five. The procedures differ according to the ethnic group. They include removal of the clitoral hood and clitoral glans, removal of the inner labia, and in the most severe form (known as infibulation) removal of the inner and outer labia and closure of the vulva. In this last procedure, a small hole is left for the passage of urine and menstrual fluid; the vagina is opened for intercourse and opened further for childbirth.

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IMPORTATION A MENACE TO THE ECONOMY

Chief Eric Umeofia, Chief Executive Officer, EriscoBonpet Group, who disclosed that 91.9 percent of imported tomatoes pastes from China into Nigeria are substandard, said that the simplest way to stop dumping is to ban importation of finished goods. A fully loaded truck in one of the inland dry ports in the sub-region, will be delayed, harassed for bribes by the numerous security agents along the region’s transport corridor before it gets to its destination. Umeofia whose company produces tomato paste locally, said: “Importation is doing a lot of damage to us. The influx of foreign goods is one of the dangers the Nigerian manufacturers and producers are facing, because the cost of production here is quite high. The power situation, the cost of diesel, compared to production cost in Asia, we discover that the goods that come in here from those places would be far cheaper and at times, leave only a small margin between our cost of production and cost of sales. So, it is a very big problem, so many producers cannot just survive. “Fiscal policy should be put in place to discourage much of the importations of these goods and services. High tariffs should be placed on those goods they know that we have the capability of producing here in Nigeria. It is not too difficult to take a census or to sample goods that are being produced here and such goods; government should have a deliberate policy from Ministry of Finance hiking the tariffs of the imported ones. “That is the simplest way to stop it and it takes some good patriotic and political will to do this, and I encourage the government and the CBN to do this for the good of us all. I agree that the world is a global market right now, but we have to look at our position, we are a consuming nation. Those that are exporting to us right now, we must realise that there was a time when they had a closed market, and they did not allow goods from outside their country to flow in,” he said. According to Umeofia, a study conducted by NAFDAC recently, revealed that majority of the tomato pastes in the market across the country fall short of required standard. “The laboratory analysis of study which covers 27 main markets and four major supermarkets in Lagos indicated that 286 tomato paste out of 298 sampled fall short of the codex standards and the Nigerian Industrial Standards has specified that tomato content should be 28 percent minimum.” He said that another survey carried out by Nigerian Institute of Science Laboratory Technology, NISLT, showed that of 16 tomatoe paste samples analysed for 13 parameters selected, some manufacturers compromised standard in area of amount of lycopene, starch content and heavy metal contamination. He said it will be in the interest of local manufacturers for imported tomato paste brands in retail packs from China and other high risk countries to be suspended and immediate mop ups of those brands of tomatoes paste already in circulation. “Apart from killing Nigerians with their substandard tomato pastes, these people are also killing the Nigerian economy as they dump these substandard tomato pastes with subsidies from their home government. In the end, genuine manufacturers of tomato pastes find it difficult to remain in business as the consumers unfortunately go for this perceived cheaper tomato paste brands, not knowing they are paying for ill health and untimely death,” he stated. Umeofia commended CBN for its recent monetary policy tools, adding that the forex measure is a welcome development which will help reshape and reposition the real sector. He further urged CBN to monitor all the banks to ensure that the forex made available is not diverted to traders and Bureau De Change dealers, stressing that government should focus on industrialising Nigeria and not to trade the country away. Read more at: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2016/02/importation-doing-us-a-lot-of-damage/

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